Forthcoming in 2021
A creative nonfiction account of the life of Colonel Herman Thorn, who played a significant role in establishing America’s social identity in the early 19th Century through his patronage of writers, artists, and politicians. Born in Schenectady in 1783, and variously referred to as a “gentleman who made noise”, an “American aristocrat”, an “American grandee”, and an “American prince”, Colonel Herman Thorn has been lauded as the most colourful character of his generation.
Excerpt
Interestingly, during Norman Leslie’s theatre run, Medina herself was caught in a sordid scandal over the death of a young actress, Missouri Miller, who had been in hers and Hamblin’s care. Medina nursed Miller when she fell ill with a “brain affliction”, but she died suddenly. Hamblin was accused of causing Missouri’s death by theatre critic, William Snelling, who derided Hamblin as a wretch, a criminal, and a villain; Hamblin was, in Snelling’s words, “a hoary leper,” a “Scoundrel whom even Texas vomited from her afflicted bowels”… Other rumours suggested Medina poisoned Miller, whom she saw as a rival for Hamblin’s affections. The intrigue deepened when Medina herself died a few months later from what, at the time, was identified as apoplexy. Hamblin fell under suspicion again.
Ironically, Missouri’s mother, “the doyen of brothel madams, had been opposed to her decision to be an actress, seeing it as a threat to her daughter’s good character” (Cohen 33). Especially when being mentored by one such as the dubiously bohemian Thomas Hamblin. It appeared that there was nothing more vulgar to the conservative classes of the time than theatre folk, which makes it even more curious that Jane Mary Thorn, Herman’s wife, though heiress of the Jauncey family fortune was the illegitimate progeny of John Jauncey and an unnamed “vulgar low actress (Pintard 25).”
Records suggest that John Jauncey, a Princetonian, suicided in his thirties. The childless William Jauncey adopted his niece, and with the help of his spinster sister, raised the child to make an advantageous match. Unfortunately for her uncle, Jane Mary spurned the proposed union with British Consul Colonel Barclay’s son, falling instead for the charming, lovable spendthrift, Thorn.
