Hostages to Fortune by Peter C. Newman

Author:Peter C. Newman [Newman, Peter C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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IT HAD BEEN Nova Scotia’s hefty and aging governor John Parr—in 1783 he was almost sixty years old and weighed 250 pounds—who had overseen the transition of the Loyalists from refugees to the nation’s vanguard. Parr, historian Peter Burroughs concluded, “did not display the degree of solicitous sympathy the Loyalists felt they deserved, although much of their criticism of Parr reflected despondency, frustration, and anger at strained circumstances.” The Loyalists of Nova Scotia had every hope that better days were ahead of them when it was announced in 1792 that London had appointed John Wentworth as the colony’s new lieutenant-governor (in 1786, with the appointment of Guy Carleton as governor general of British North America, Parr had been demoted to lieutenant-governor). Having been the provincial surveyor for years, Wentworth knew Nova Scotia, quite literally, like the back of his hand. A man of amiable personality and proven Loyalist principles (he had been New Hampshire’s last royal governor before the revolution), Wentworth was an ideal successor to the harried Parr. His appointment made him only the second Loyalist to govern a British colony. The nine-year gap between Wentworth’s status as a political refugee and his designation as lieutenant-governor was a remarkable turnabout in fortunes.II

Wentworth’s rise in fortune was gradual. Upon being appointed Nova Scotia’s surveyor-general, he left his wife, Frances, in England where they had first found sanctuary. By 1784, Frances was reunited with John in Halifax. The two had wed in New Hampshire in 1769 after the death of her first husband, Theodore Atkinson, who was a cousin to both Frances and Wentworth. Frances was not a fan of life in Halifax, especially because Wentworth travelled so much of the time. Bored and lonely, she welcomed the attention and advances of young Prince William Henry, King George III’s senior son, during his visit to Nova Scotia in 1786. William made it a habit to bring his ship, HMS Andromeda, to Halifax for repairs and supplies. At the age of forty-one (the Prince was twenty-one), Frances was widely considered to still be stunning and dressed at the height of fashion, retaining the sophistication she had gained in England. She became Prince William’s mistress and the affair was renewed when the Prince made a second visit to Halifax the following year. Frances described her husband, who knew about her dalliance, in a letter as “the most diffident of men.” Or perhaps it was because Wentworth himself also engaged in extramarital affairs. As historian Judith Fingard observed, this episode “illustrates the liberalized relationship [Frances] and John maintained . . . in a style typical of the most civilized as well as the most debauched of Georgian aristocracy in England.” Frances’s dresses were the talk of the town. As one admirer rhapsodized: “At one ball she appeared in a gown richly interwoven with gold and silver, and trimmed with Italian flowers and the finest silk lace; the gown’s train was four yards long, and in her hair and on her wrists was a profusion of diamonds.

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