She was reported sunk off Cape Hatteras, but for many
years a haunting report persisted that she had been captured by the
pirates that then infested coastwise trade. So Theodosia--barely thirty
years old--vanished from the world so far as we may know. The dramatic
and tragic mystery of her death seems oddly in keeping with her life and
that of her father. Somehow one could scarcely imagine Theo growing old
peacefully on a Southern plantation!
Her father never regained his old eagerness for life after her loss.
He lived for years, practised law once more with distinction and
success on Nassau Street, even made a second marriage very late in
life, but I think some vivid, vital, romantic part of him, something
of ambition and fire and adventure, was lost at sea with his child
Theodosia.
And now shall we go back, for a few moments only, to Richmond Hill?
Counsellor Benson (or Benzon) is generally supposed to have been the
last true-blue celebrity to inhabit the famous old house. He was
Governor of the Danish Islands, and an eccentric.
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