Read Online Graham Greene by The Spy's Bedside Book - Free Book Online Page B

and faithful pencil flow
The lines, the camp, the fortress of the foe;
Serene to counteract each deep design,
Points the dark ambush, and the springing mine.
    ANNA SEWARD
    â€¢
    John André (1751–80), Major in the British Army, was the son of a Genevese merchant settled in London. He received his education at Geneva, and upon his return to England became intimately connected with Miss Seward and her literary
coterie
at Lichfield, where he conceived an attachment for Honora Sneyd, subsequently the second wife of Richard Lovell Edgeworth. His relinquishment of mercantile for military pursuits has been attributed to the disappointment of his passion for this lady, whose marriage, however, did not take place till two years after the date of his commission, 4 March 1771.
    He joined the British Army in America, and in 1775 was taken prisoner at St John’s. Upon his release he became successively aide-de-camp to General Grey and to Sir Henry Clinton, who entertained so high an opinion of him as to make him Adjutant-General, notwithstanding his youth and the short period of his service. This position unhappily brought him into connection with Benedict Arnold, who was plotting the betrayal of West Point to the British. As Clinton’s chief confidant, André was entrusted with the management of the correspondence with Arnold, which was disguised under colour of a mercantile transaction, Arnold signing himself Gustavus, and André adopting the name of John Anderson.
    When the negotiations were sufficiently advanced (20 September 1780), André proceeded up the Hudson River in the British sloop
Vulture
to hold a personal interview with Arnold. To avoid treatment as a spy, he wore his uniform, and professed to be aiming at an arrangement with respect to the sequestrated property of Colonel Beverley Robinson, an American loyalist. His letter to Arnold on the subject having been shown by the latter to Washington, the American Generalissimo so strongly protested against any interview that Arnold was compelled to resort to a secret meeting, which took place on the night of 21 September. Arnold then delivered to André full particulars respectingthe defences of West Point, and concerted with him the attack which the British were to make within a few days.
    Meanwhile the
Vulture
had been compelled by the fire of the American outposts to drop further down the river, and André’s boatmen refused to row him back. He spent the day at the farmhouse of Joshua Smith, a tool, but probably not an accomplice, of Arnold’s, and had no alternative but to disguise himself as a civilian, which, as he was within the American lines, brought him within the reach of military law as a spy. He started the following morning with a pass in the name of Anderson signed by Arnold, and under the guidance of Smith, who only left him when he seemed past all danger.
    By nine on the morning of the 23rd he was actually in sight of the British lines when he was seized by three American militiamen on the look-out for stragglers. Had he produced Arnold’s pass, he would have been allowed to proceed, but he unfortunately asked his captors whether they were British, and, misunderstanding their reply, disclosed his character. He was immediately searched, and the compromising papers were found in his boots. Refusing the large bribes he offered for his release, the militiamen carried him before Colonel Jameson, the commander of the outposts, who had actually sent him with the papers to Arnold, when, at the instance of Captain Talmadge, André was fetched back, and the documents forwarded to Washington. Jameson, however, reported his capture to Arnold, and the news came just in time to enable the latter to escape to the British lines.
    André acknowledged his name and the character of his mission in a letter addressed to Washington on 24 September, in which he declared: “Against my stipulation, my intention, and without my knowledge