The Recorder, Or, Lady's And Gentleman's Miscellany

MRS. WALKER.

In the Recorder of the 16th current, reference was made to a circumstance, which had occurred a considerable time since, between a certain great personage, and a lady in Albemarle county. We meant to publish it for various reasons. One of them is that the public have a right to be acquainted with the real characters of persons, who are the possessors or the candidates for office. A second reason is, that an enemy cannot refuse the right of being attacked with his own weapons. Every body must well remember the noise which was made by the democrats in summer, 1807, concerning a personage of the opposite party, who had fallen into an illicit commerce with another man's wife. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, say the proverbs.

A third reason, for publication is this. We have been loudly accused of a design to asperse the character of a most respectable lady. Whereas such a thing never once came into our heads. The Bee had published the story, with a contradiction or denial of it. Meriwether Jones, with his wonted judgment and delicacy, transplanted the article into his Examiner, so that the Recorder cannot be charged as the first publisher of the tale. That act of arraigning, we are going to vindicate Lady's character, if indeed a character so uncommonly respectable and amiable could be supposed to stand in want of a vindication. We beg to be understood that, if Jones had been silent, we should, most probably, have been so likewise: But a certain great personage has got such an absurd set of defenders about him as would be sufficient for destroying the character of any man. "We never before witnessed so complete an example of literary suicide. Without any common place declamation upon the sanctity of the seventh commandment, or the guilt of seduction, or such trite matters, we shall tell a plain story that is universally believed, and that ought long since to have been published. Mr. John Walker of Albemarle is a gentleman of independent fortune, and a most irreproachable character. His lady is universally represented as worthy to be the pattern of her sex. A great personage, who resides at some distance from Mr. Walker's, and who had been at school with him, had, at Mr. Walker's marriage, been in some measure, domesticated by him. Upon all occasions, he was received in Mr. Walker's family, with that cordial hospitality, for which a Virginian country gentleman is so proverbially distinguished. The return to this friendship was an attempt, as foolish, as it was infamous, to injure the virtue of Mrs. Walker, and the happiness of her husband. He was repulsed with the contempt he deserved; and his intended exertion of his ENERGIES for the multiplication of our species, was, in this instance, disappointed. The lady, at the request of the great personage, consented to the concealment of the proposal: She did this, on the promise of better behaviour. in time to come: Matters remained in that situation, for a certain period how long we do not exactly know. We did not suspect that the great personage had possessed that ardor of constitution, which was necessary for the renewal of so detestable, and so desperate a scheme. We have been, within the last fortnight, almost overwhelmed with reputable affirmations of what was, before, sufficiently credible. A second attempt was made; by slipping a billet into the lady's hand. In the commission of the very same crime. a multitude of subordinate circumstances may lessen or augment the proportion of guilt; and there is not; perhaps, any vice, where the degrees of guilt admit of a greater diversity than in that which is the subject of the present article. Upon a topic so delicate we decline the hazardous office of endeavouring to exculpate. We only say that, in combining the circumstances of this Albemarle conspiracy, there is not a single point of alleviation. Whether the great personage was, at that time married we do not pretend to say. We have, in relating this affair, adhered to a generality of expression, to prevent the little contradictions of our precious public printer. On receipt of the billet, Mrs Walker took her husband aside. She put the paper into his hand, and told him of the former attempt, that she had conditionally promised to suppress: The great personage received immediate permission to quit the house; and it is almost needless to add that this permission was accepted. Mr. Walker never mentions the name of the great personage but in epithets of the most ardent detestation. We have been assured that he received from the great personage either one or more letters of deprecation; and that, if any great clamour shall be raised by the democrats those letters, or that letter, will burst in continents the indignation of mankind. Now don't give us any more challenges to publish letters. You have had quite enough of that. For, in spite of the childish prattle of the Examiner, the Recorder of October 6th. made an impression which can never be recalled. Don't give us any more defiances to do all that we can do. If you had not violated the Sanctuary of the grave, Sally and her son Tom would still, perhaps, have slumbered in the tomb of oblivion. To charge a man as a thief. and an adulterer is, of itself, bad enough. But when you charge him with an action that is much more execrable than an ordinary murder, even than that at the Bloody Run, is the party injured not to repel such baseness, with ten thousand fold vengeance upon the miscreant that invented it?