Cliveden

John André sketched this knight of the Mischianza with his squire for the souvenir book he assembled for Peggy Chew. The picture is a bit of a puzzle. The knight is dressed in the colors of the Blended Rose, yet the motto on the shield belongs to Captain Watson, chief of the Burning Mountain knights. Sophie Ward says of it: "On the cover [André] has outlined a wreath of leaves around the initials "P.C.," and he has made a water-color sketch to show the design and colors of his costume as a knight of the 'Blended Rose,' and that of his brother, Lieutenant William Lewis André, who acted as his esquire and bore his shield, with its quaint motto, 'No rival.' The device, 'Two game cocks fighting,' must have proved too difficult to draw, for he uses as his picture that of Captain Watson -- a heart and a wreath of laurel, 'Love and Glory.'"¹

A few years earlier a family chronicler suggested a different explanation: "[T]he supposition may be hazarded that 'Love and Glory' was possibly yielded by André to Captain Watson, and he chose to resume his first choice in preparing the memento for Miss Chew." There is no evidence to support or deny either guess, though André's surviving drawings suggest he could have managed a pair of belligerent chickens if he'd set his pen to it.²

Peggy's souvenir book remains at the Chew house, Cliveden, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. It is "humbly inscribed to Miss Peggy Chew by Her move devoted Knight and Servant, J.A., Knt. Bd. Re. -- Philadelphia, June 2d, 1778." (Most unfortunately, it is on display in front of a window. When I saw it in June, 2003, the ink had faded away nearly to nothing.)³

Notes:

¹ John André and Sophie Howard Ward, "Major Andre's Story of the 'Mischianza,'" The Century; A Popular Quarterly 47 (1894): 684. [ back ]

² Elizabeth Read, "The Chews of Philadelphia," Magazine of American History 4 (1880): 201. [ back ]

³ Read, p201. Morris Bishop, "You Are Invited to a Mischianza," American Heritage (August 1974): p70, mentioned that the booklet was still in the family at the time he wrote his article. [ back ]