One day in the winter of 1782-83, an exiled American neutralist, Peter Van Schaack by name, was browsing through Londonâ??s West-minster Abbey when he was startled to see a familiar figure standing before a newly erected monument to Major John André, the young British officer who had collaborated with Benedict Arnold in the unsuccessful scheme to betray West Point. The thickset, hulking-shouldered man who was reading the tribute to the fallen soldierâ??s â??Zeal for his KING and COUNTRY â? on the marble face of the cenotaph was Benedict Arnold himself.
â??What a spectacle!â? Van Schaackâ??s son and biographer wrote later. â??The traitor Arnold, in Westminster Abbey, at the tomb of André, deliberately perusing the monumental inscription, which will transmit to future ages the tale of his own infamy!â?
Arnold was not alone. At his side was a young woman. Van Schaack had never met the former Margaret Shippen, the golden-haired Philadelphia aristocrat who a few years before had become the second Mrs. Benedict Arnold; but her appealing features had been described to him. He recognized her at once, and even as he turned from the scene â??in disgust,â? he must have found himself wondering what it was like to be the wife of the most despised man of his generation. What did life hold, after treason, for the exiled Benedict Arnolds?
Biographers have found partial answers in many scattered sourcesâ??in the London press, for example, which occasionally mentioned the Arnolds; or in the voluminous correspondence Peggy Arnold carried on with her family and friends in America. The picture that emerges is bittersweet. Jt is marked on the Generalâ??s part by a scramble for money and position, on his wifeâ??s by much inner turmoil. Historically Peggy stands in Arnoldâ??s shadow, but if their English autumn says anything to us at all, it says she was the stronger. Arnold had the power to act, to defy the stresses of business and the dangers of the battlefield; but Peggy had the power to endure. He could not cope with failure and disgrace. She couldâ??and did.
Read Full Article »