Henry Lee

“ He was the son of Thomas Lee, and born in Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 14th of October, 1734. He was the brother of Richard Henry Lee, whose eloquence rose higher but whose reflections were no deeper than those of Francis. In childhood he was admired for his docility and amiable deportment, in youth he was the pride of every circle in which he moved, and when manhood dawned upon him he exhibited a dignity of mind and maturity of judgment that his fellow citizens highly appreciated and delighted to honour. ”

“ The growth of race ascendency and the expanse of race domination are unceasing. The picture is unique and the nation one, however the theater enlarges, however the scenes shift, however the actors differ in the drama. Gen. Lee was a representative democrat or republican, for I use the words in their generic sense. His grandfather was that young American Capt. Henry Lee, the ardent youth of nineteen, who at the head of his company of Virginia horse reported to Washington for duty when the first army of Continentals were ranging themselves upon the plains of Boston. ”

“ Robert E. Lee, the son of Henry Lee, an officer of engineers upon his staff. He was four times brevetted for gallant conduct and came back famous. When Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston led the Utah expedition in 1858 there marched on foot in his columns Lieut. William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, the son of Robert E. Lee. He was not a soldier by education, but by instinct. A graduate of Harvard College and the stroke oar of his class, he was well prepared for military life, and the third of his line to bear arms for the United States. ”

“ His family was one of the most respectable among the first settlers of that state. His father was for many years a member of the provincial assembly of Virginia. Henry Lee was prepared for college by a private tutor at his father’s residence, and afterwards graduated at Princeton College, New Jersey, under the superintendence of Dr. Witherspoon, then President.
Two years after his graduation, and in the twentieth of his age, he was appointed to the command, as captain, of one of the six companies of cavalry, raised by his native state; the whole under the command of Colonel Theodoric Bland. ”

“ He dedicated his earliest translation to Sir Henry Lee, master of the leash in Queen Elizabeth's household, who may perhaps be identical with Sir Henry Leigh of Egginton, high sheriff of Derbyshire in 1612. Hellowes certainly served as groom of the leash under Sir Henry Lee or Leigh as early as 1574 (see title-page of No. 1 below) . Resigning that office in January 1597, he became groom of the chamber in the royal household, and on 27 Jan. 1599–1600 received a pension of 12s. a day for life (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1595–7 p. 353, 1598–1601 p. 387) . ”

“ Lee was no more successful in finding other patrons, and considering himself and his invention treated with contempt, he embraced the offer made to him by Sully, the sagacious minister of Henry IV., to proceed to Rouen and instruct the operatives of that town—then one of the most important manufacturing centres of France—in the construction and use of the stocking-frame. Lee accordingly transferred himself and his machines to France, in 1605, taking with him his brother and seven workmen. ”

“ Lee's ambition was a calculated part of Ratcliffe's scheme. He was well aware that he had marked high game, and that in proportion to this height must be the power of his lure. Nor was he embarrassed because Mrs. Lee sat still and pale with her eyes fixed on the ground and her hands twisted together in her lap. The eagle that soars highest must be longer in descending to the ground than the sparrow or the partridge. Mrs. Lee had a thousand things to think about in this brief time, and yet she found that she could not think at all ”

“ Lee made himself useful to the king at home in the matter of the divorce, and on 1 June 1531 was one of a deputation which was sent to the queen to persuade her to forego her rights. He spoke with some freedom to the queen, who told him that what he said was untrue (Cal. State Papers, Hen. VIII, pt. v. No. 287) . In September Henry wrote to the pope requesting authority for Lee's elevation to the archbishopric of York. ”

“ He was now chairman of a committee of vigilance, and had come to Boston in discharge of his political and semi-belligerent functions.
General Charles Lee was a military man of a different stamp; an Englishman by birth, and a highly cultivated production of European warfare. He was the son of a British officer, Lieutenant-colonel John Lee, of the dragoons, who married the daughter of Sir Henry Bunbury, Bart., and afterwards rose to be a general. Lee was born in 1731, and may almost be said to have been cradled in the army, for he received a commission by the time he was eleven years of age. ”

“ Henry was informed that Lee had neglected these orders, and wrote to him reminding him that he had subscribed to the supremacy. Lee answered on 14 June that he had, according to order, preached solemnly in his cathedral on the injury done to the king by the pope and on the divorce, taking as his text, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come,’ but he acknowledged that he had made no mention of the royal supremacy. He besought the king not to suspect him, or listen to the accusations of his enemies (ib. viii. 869) . ”

“ Roony Lee had changed little from the Virginian of a century before; but Adams was himself a good deal nearer the type of his great-grandfather than to that of a railway superintendent. He was little more fit than the Virginians to deal with a future America which showed no fancy for the past. Already Northern society betrayed a preference for economists over diplomats or soldiers--one might even call it a jealousy--against which two eighteenth-century types had little chance to live, and which they had in common to fear. ”

“ Lee resented the charge. America, she maintained, had not worn her feelings threadbare like Europe. She had still her story to tell; she was waiting for her Burns and Scott, her Wordsworth and Byron, her Hogarth and Turner. "You want peaches in spring," said she. "Give us our thousand years of summer, and then complain, if you please, that our peach is not as mellow as yours. Even our voices may be soft then," she added, with a significant look at Lord Skye.
"We are at a disadvantage in arguing with Mrs. Lee," said he to Ratcliffe; "when she ends as counsel, she begins as witness. ”

“ LEE, Sir HENRY (1530–1610) , master of the ordnance, born in Kent in 1530, was eldest son of Sir Anthony Lee (d. 1550?) , of Borston, Buckinghamshire, who was M.P. for the county in 1648, by Margaret, daughter of Sir Henry Wyatt of Allington Castle, Kent. Sir Anthony Lee was descended from Benedict Lee, who was one of the six sons of John Lee of Lee Hall, Cheshire. ”

“ If she cannot be contented like other people, what need is there for abusing us just because she feels herself no taller than we are? What does she expect to get from her sharp tongue? What does she know, any way?"
Mrs. Lee certainly knew very little. She had read voraciously and promiscuously one subject after another. Ruskin and Taine had danced merrily through her mind, hand in hand with Darwin and Stuart Mill, Gustave Droz and Algernon Swinburne. She had even laboured over the literature of her own country. She was perhaps, the only woman in New York who knew something of American history. ”

“ Lee dashed at her Peonia Giant, who was then consuming his fish, and wishing he understood why the British Minister had worn no gloves, while he himself had sacrificed his convictions by wearing the largest and whitest pair of French kids that could be bought for money on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was a little touch of mortification in the idea that he was not quite at home among fashionable people, and at this instant he felt that true happiness was only to be found among the simple and honest sons and daughters of toil. ”

“ Certain it was that she seldom seemed to realise how very severe a tax it might be on a man, who had been hard at work in a contentious atmosphere all day and all the evening, to sit up by a sick-bed or break his sleep to soothe an invalid. Yet by a curious contradiction if there was ever any occasion when Sir Henry was tempted to leave politics altogether, or there was some possibility that he might be defeated by a rival in the contest for leadership, no one was more stubborn than his wife in the determination that he should suffer no such thing. ”

“ Lee's door, rang the bell. He was immediately admitted. Mrs. Lee was alone in her parlour and rose rather gravely as he entered, but welcomed him as cordially as she could. She wanted to put an end to his hopes at once and to do it decisively, but without hurting his feelings.
"Mr. Ratcliffe," said she, when he was seated- "I am sure you will be better pleased by my speaking instantly and frankly. I could not reply to you last night. I will do so now without delay. What you wish is impossible. ”

“ Lee was a very intelligent person. His modest admission of the resemblance gave her the opportunity to talk of Webster 's oratory, and the conversation soon spread to a discussion of the merits of Clay and Calhoun. The Senator found that his neighbour — a fashionable New York woman, exquisitely dressed, and with a voice and manner seductively soft and gentle — had read the speeches of Webster and Calhoun. She did not think it necessary to tell him that she had persuaded the honest Carrington to bring her the volumes and to mark such passages as were worth her reading ”

“ The 'Lee Papers' are in course of publication by the New York Historical Society. Vol. i., dealing with the period 1754-72, appeared in 1871; vol. iii., containing the full minutes of Lee's court-martial, appeared in 1878; vols. ii. and iv. are not yet published. The latest biography of Lee is in Appleton's Encyclopædia of American Biography. See also Account of General Charles Lee in Sir H. E. Bunbury's Life of Sir Thomas Hanmer, with notices of a Gentleman's Family, London, 1838; Lee Papers in Transactions of the Historical Soc. of New York ”

“ Lee a quick stroke in return such as a well-bred tortoise-shell cat administers to check over-familiarity; innocent to the eye, but drawing blood. One evening when he was more than commonly out of sorts, after sitting some time in moody silence, he roused himself, and, taking up a book that lay on her table, he glanced at its title and turned over the leaves. It happened by ill luck to be a volume of Darwin that Mrs. Lee had just borrowed from the library of Congress.
“Do you understand this sort of thing?” asked the Senator abruptly, in a tone that suggested a sneer. ”

“ The bills drawn by him on his agent in England to repay the advance of 3,000l. had been returned protested, Lee's property in England having been confiscated. Congress granted him thirty thousand dollars by way of indemnification, to be repaid if he recovered his English estates. Lee repaired to New York, and took command of the right wing of Washington's army. Artemus Ward had long since retired, leaving Lee second only to Washington in rank. He proved himself an intractable subordinate. ”

“ William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, second son of Gen. Robert Edward Lee, is dead. The bells here tolled late yesterday evening. A few hours before the general had crossed over the river and was at rest under his roof tree at Ravensworth, the southern sun lighted his deathbed and the autumn breeze sang his requiem. Afterlife's fitful fever he sleeps well. He was sick a long time, and as his disease was incurable, death was a relief. ”

“ In his shirt and a blanket coat, without a hat, he was tied on a spare troop-horse and hurried to the British camp through eighty miles of hostile country, whence he was sent to New York. The importance attached by the Americans to his capture is attested by their offer of six Hessian officers of rank in exchange. Sir William Howe [q. v.] rejected the offer, on the ground that Lee was a British deserter, a pretension he had to abandon under threat of reprisals. He was instructed from home to treat Lee as a prisoner of war, subject to exchange when convenient. ”

“ Lee's society, where rivals and enemies beset him on every hand. He was little better than a schoolboy, when he ventured on their ground, but when he could draw them over upon his own territory of practical life he rarely failed to trample on his assailants. ”

“ No sooner does the cotton pod arrive at maturity than its swollen capsules burst with an elastic force, in gaping segments, in order, as it were, to display to the most careless eye their white fleecy treasure, and to invite the hand of the observer to pluck it from the seeds, and to work it up into a light and beautiful robe. ”

“ Lee was not yet on those terms with him. These were all men, and there was no want of women in Mrs.
Lee's parlour; but, after all, they are able to describe themselves better than any poor novelist can describe them. Generally two currents of conversation ran on together — one round Sybil, the other about Madeleine.
"Mees Ross," said Count Popoff, leading in a handsome young foreigner, "I have your permission to present to you my friend Count Orsini, Secretary of the Italian Legation. Are you at home this afternoon? Count Orsini sings also." ”

“ To remove this objection in his own case (nothing is said of his grants) , Lee purchased for 5,000l. Virginian currency (about 3,000l. sterling) an estate in the Shenandoah Valley, in Berkeley co. Virginia, near that of his friend Horatio Gates. He did not complete the purchase until May 1775, when the second colonial congress was in session. To pay for it he borrowed money from Robert Morris, giving bills on his agent in England, and mortgaging the estate as security. ”