The Exquisite Siren: The Romance of Peggy Shippen and Major John André

Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company. Very Good+ in Very Good+ dj. (c.1938). 3rd impression. Hardcover. [light wear to spine extremities, front hinge a little weak; jacket is clean and bright, with modest wear and a few tiny nicks along top and bottom edges, a bit of horizontal creasing at bottom of front panel]. (endpaper maps) Very scarce historical novel centering around the relationship between Margaret "Peggy" Shippen, aka Mrs. Benedict Arnold (his wife #2), and British Army Major John André, who served in America during the Revolutionary War. Major André was quite the popular guy in colonial circles (in the places occupied by the British, (truncated) of course): fluent in four languages, he drew, painted, sang, wrote comic verse, and was by most accounts a most charming fellow. He was also, as of April 1779, the head of the British Army's Secret Service in America -- i.e. the Brits' number one spy -- and in that role got deeply involved in clandestine negotiations with the traitor-in-the-works General Arnold. Peggy actually came into the picture a little before that: because of the prominence of her Philadelphia family, she first met Major André as a guest in her family's home, some months before she met Benedict; the latter hookup took place in the late summer of 1778, and by the following April -- at almost exactly the same time that Major André was promoted to head up the Secret Service -- she became the second Mrs. Arnold. So Peggy was perfectly positioned to act as a go-between for her "dear friend" Major André and her new hubby, and it's generally unanimous among historians that she was deeply complicit in the ensuing conspiracy between the two men -- which led, eventually, to an in-person meet-up on the shores of the Hudson River, not long after which André was captured by American forces, the plot was exposed, and Arnold took it on the lam. (Leaving Peggy and their infant child behind, thanks for nothing.) She soon joined him in London, however, where the couple were given a warm welcome: Peggy was presented to Queen Charlotte, who awarded her a £100 annuity to take of her children (she by then had two); King George III followed that up with a £350 gratuity for her "meritorious services." And what of Major André, you might wonder? He fared considerably less well: he was tried for espionage and hanged on October 2, 1780. (I just need to stop for a sec and inject this information: in April 1779, when she married Arnold, Peggy was a few months shy of her 19th birthday; Arnold was 38; André was about to turn 28.) So how is all this perfidy rendered into this "most glamorous story in the annals of American history"? Well, supposedly (per the jacket blurb) the book is "based on a new and authentic interpretation of the events leading up to [Arnold's] treason -- and in this telling Peggy is a "young, beautiful [and] ambitious" girl who is inevitably "drawn into the web of intrigue, of plots and counterplots" woven by "the man she loved," who in case you can't figure it out, ain't her husband. It's that darling Major André, "a brave and talented young man, who placed honor above everything else, and for it sacrificed love, happiness, even his life." Benedict Arnold, on the other hand (no spoiler alert here), "is revealed as a selfish, unscrupulous scoundrel to whom gold was the only god." (And as far as the marriage goes, here's a bit from page 255: "Arnold had 'bought' Mount Pleasant as a wedding present for Peggy, but what a mockery, what a sham even that had been! A grand gesture of the man who had forced and seduced her into a loveless and hateful marriage." Interestingly, despite the romanticization of the whole matter in these pages, author Haines (1877-1959), a prolific writer of magazine articles and stories (including for pulps such as "Weird Tales"), seems to have been something of a pioneer is establishing Peggy's guilty involvement in her husband's treason; in early 1932, he wrote a series of articles based on his research, fingering her as possibly even more treasonous than Arnold himself, which set some more traditional historians' hair on fire, and triggered a bit of a gentlemen's battle in the nation's press. (Supposedly, Haines subsequently repurposed his research into a play called "Peggy Shippen: A Drama of the American Revolution in Three Acts," but I can find no evidence that it was ever performed or published.) . (Inventory #: 26540)