Swans Island founder gets due in Camden playwright’s latest

There will be a little bit of Swans Island in Rockland later this month.

Camden playwright Robert Manns announced that his play, “The Swan that Slept,” will be presented at Rockland Lincoln Center for the Arts from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2.

The play is written about a bizarre chapter in American history when Capt. James Swan, founder of Swans Island, was condemned to a debtor’s prison in Napoleonic France for 22 years for a $500,000 tax debt which he felt he did not owe.

Swan was a fascinating character, even before this sad episode. He was sort of an early Zelig who showed up at important junctures of the American Revolution.

He was at the Battle of Bunker Hill at age 18.

He was one of the “Indians” at the Boston Tea Party.

He was a pal, he said, of none other than George Washington, Lafayette and other “players” during the war.

He wasn’t sitting in Cambridge drinking tea during the war. He was wounded twice.

Once the Revolution was over, he first established Swans Island in 1784 and built a saw mill and gristmill, just to keep the natives (if there were any) busy. Then he followed Lafayette back to France just in time for their revolution. He tried to spirit Marie Antoinette out of France to save her head (and much of the rest of her), but he was stopped by the navy and forced to return to port.

No one knows if this aborted rescue attempt was connected, but soon after he returned to port, Swan was arrested and jailed for an unpaid tax bill. In a testament to his personal wealth, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts still has a collection of his donations of furniture and paintings, including a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Swan. Mr. Stuart did not just paint any old patriot.

Swan had so much money that he funded lavish parties (which he could not attend) at his Paris apartment for his freeloading friends during his imprisonment.

Why then, Manns was asked this week, did he refuse to pay the bill and spend 22 years in jail? “He was Scottish,” Manns replied. “It was the principle of the thing. That is the nexus of the play.” Swan was finally released by Louis Phillippe in 1830, but died three years later.

Among the Rockland audience will be Louise Strandberg of Great Cranberry Island, a descendant of Swan. She wrote to Manns when she learned of the play’s production to explain that she understood Swan’s decision to choose prison. “He had a great moralistic point to make,” she told the playwright.

Obviously, Strandberg has some Scottish blood in her, as well. Manns, 77, is hoping that the production will end up in New York City. “That is the plan,” he said.

Manns was born in Detroit and worked at Wayne State University under English Professor Jacque Salvan, an early translator of Jean Paul Sartre. (Some of us are still trying to translate Sartre.) Manns wrote his first play at 19 and taught drama at Emory University in Atlanta and was director of the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center.

His play on the death of Abraham Lincoln, “Death in the White House,” has been forwarded to several Hollywood agents.

The Rockland production will be directed by Beaumont Glass, who has produced opera in Europe. The cast will be Paul Hodgson and his wife Jennifer, Michael Fletcher and Peter Panagore.

Maine Poet Laureate Baron Wormser said the play “is thoroughly compelling. It is the perennial stuff of human courage and human weakness.”

I never argue with poet laureates.

Manns remains amazed that the Swan story has never reached the Broadway stage or the Hollywood screen.

Maybe he can do something about that.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.