BEGINNINGS.
There are travellers who insist that, as they near American shores
in May or early June, the smell of corn-blossom is on the wind,
miles out at sea, a delicate, distinct, penetrating odor, as
thoroughly American as the clearness of the sky and the pure, fine
quality in the air. The wild grape, growing as profusely to-day on
the Cape as two hundred years ago, is even more powerful, the
subtle, delicious fragrance making itself felt as soon as one
approaches land. The "fine, fresh smell like a garden," which
Winthrop notes more than once, came to them on every breeze from
the blossoming land. Every charm of the short New England summer
waited for them. They had not, like the first comers to that coast
to disembark in the midst of ice and snow, but green hills sloped
down to the sea, and wild strawberries were growing almost at
high-tide mark. The profusion of flowers and berries had rejoiced
Higginson in the previous year, their men rowing at once to "Ten
Pound Island," and bringing back, he writes: "ripe strawberries
and gooseberries and sweet single roses. Thus God was merciful to
us in giving us a taste and smell of the sweet fruit, as an
earnest of his bountiful goodness to welcome us at our first
arrival."
But no fairness of Nature could undo the sad impression of the
first hour in the little colony at Salem, where the Arbella
landed, three days before her companions reached there. Their own
cares would have seemed heavy enough, but the winter had been a
terrible one, and Dudley wrote later in his letter to the Countess
of Lincoln: "We found the Colony in a sad and unexpected
condition, above eighty of them being dead the winter before; and
many of those alive, weak and sick; all the corn and bread amongst
them all, hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight, insomuch
that the remainder of a hundred and eighty servants we had the two
years before sent over, coming to us for victuals to sustain them,
we found ourselves wholly unable to feed them, by reason that the
provisions shipped for them were taken out of the ship they were
put in, and they who were trusted to ship them in another, failed
us and left them behind; whereupon necessity enforced us, to our
extreme loss, to give them all liberty, who had cost us about L16
or L20 a person, furnishing and sending over."
Salem holding only discouragement, they left it, exploring the
Charles and the Mystic Rivers, and finally joining the settlement
at Charlestown, to which Francis Higginson had gone the previous
year, and which proved to be in nearly as desperate case as Salem.
The Charlestown records as given in Young's "Chronicles of
Massachusetts," tell the story of the first days of attempt at
organization. The goods had all been unshipped at Salem and were
not brought to Charlestown until July. In the meantime, "The
Governor and several of the Patentees dwelt in the great house
which was last year built in this town by Mr. Graves and the rest
of their servants. The multitude set up cottages, booths and tents
about the Town Hill. They had long passage; some of the ships were
seventeen, some eighteen weeks a coming. Many people arrived sick
of the scurvy, which also increased much after their arrival, for
want of houses, and by reason of wet lodging in their cottages,
etc. Other distempers also prevailed; and although [the] people
were generally very loving and pitiful, yet the sickness did so
prevail, that the whole were not able to tend the sick as they
should be tended; upon which many perished and died, and were
buried about the Town Hill."
Saddest of all among these deaths must have been that of the Lady
Arbella, of whom Mather in a later day, wrote: "She came from a
paradise of plenty and pleasure, in the family of a noble earldom,
into a wilderness of wants, and took New England in her way to
heaven." There had been doubt as to the expediency of her coming,
but with the wife of another explorer she had said: "Whithersoever
your fatal destiny shall drive you, either by the waves of the
great ocean, or by the manifold and horrible dangers of the land,
I will surely bear you company. There can no peril chance to me so
terrible, nor any kind of death so cruel, that shall not be much
easier for me to abide, than to live so far separate from you."
Weakened by the long voyage and its perpetual hardships, and
dismayed, if may be at the sadness and privations of what they had
hoped might hold immediate comfort, she could not rally, and Anne
Bradstreet's first experience of New England was over the grave,
in which they laid one of the closest links to childhood and that
England both had loved alike.
Within a month, Winthrop wrote in his journal: "September 30.
About two in the morning, Mr. Isaac Johnson died; his wife, the
lady Arbella, of the house of Lincoln, being dead about one month
before. He was a holy man and wise, and died in sweet peace,
leaving some part of his substance to the Colony."
"He tried
To live without her, liked it not and died."
Still another tragedy had saddened them all, though in the press
of overwhelming business, Winthrop wrote only: "Friday, July 2. My
son Henry Winthrop drowned at Salem," and there is no other
mention of himself till July 16, when he wrote the first letter to
his wife from America.
The loss was a heavy one to the colony as well as the father, for
Henry Winthrop, though but twenty-two, had already had experience
as a pioneer, having gone out to Barbadoes at eighteen, and became
one of the earliest planters in that island. Ardent, energetic,
and with his fathers deep tenderness for all who depended on him,
he was one who could least be spared. "A sprightly and hopeful
young gentleman he was," says Hubbard, and another chronicle gives
more minute details. "The very day on which he went on shore in
New England, he and the principal officers of the ship, walking
out to a place now called by the Salemites, Northfield, to view
the Indian wigwams, they saw on the other side of the river a
small canoe. He would have had one of the company swim over and
fetch it, rather than walk several miles on foot, it being very
hot weather; but none of the party could swim but himself; and so
he plunged in, and, as he was swimming over, was taken with the
cramp a few roods from the shore and drowned."
The father's letter is filled with an anguish of pity for the
mother and the young wife, whose health, like that of the elder
Mrs. Winthrop, had made the journey impossible for both.
"I am so overpressed with business, as I have no time for these or
other mine own private occasions. I only write now that thou
mayest know, that yet I live and am mindful of thee in all my
affairs. The larger discourse of all things thou shalt receive
from my brother Downing, which I must send by some of the last
ships. We have met with many sad and discomfortable things as thou
shalt hear after; and the Lord's hand hath been heavy upon myself
in some very near to me. My son Henry! My son Henry! Ah, poor
child! Yet it grieves me much more for my dear daughter. The Lord
strengthen and comfort her heart to bear this cross patiently. I
know thou wilt not be wanting to her in this distress."
Not one of the little colony was wanting in tender offices in
these early days when a common suffering made them "very pitiful
one to another," and as the absolutely essential business was
disposed of they hastened to organize the church where free
worship should make amends for all the long sorrow of its search.
A portion of the people from the Arbella had remained in Salem,
but on Friday, July 3Oth, 1630, Winthrop, Dudley, Johnson and
Wilson entered into a church covenant, which was signed two days
after by Increase Nowell and four others--Sharpe, Bradstreet,
Gager and Colborne.
It is most probable that Anne Bradstreet had been temporarily
separated from her husband, as Johnson in his "Wonder-working
Providence," writes, that after the arrival at Salem, "the lady
Arrabella and some other godly women aboad at Salem, but their
husbands continued at Charles Town, both for the settling the
Civill Government and gathering another Church of Christ." The
delay was a short one, for her name stands thirteenth on the list.
Charlestown, however, held hardly more promise of quiet life than
Salem. The water supply was, curiously enough, on a peninsula
which later gave excellent water, only "a brackish spring in the
sands by the water side ... which could not supply half the
necessities of the multitude, at which time the death of so many
was concluded to be much the more occasioned by this want of good
water."
Heat was another evil to the constitutions which knew only the
equable English temperature, and could not face either the intense
sun, or the sudden changes of the most erratic climate the earth
knows. In the search for running-water, the colonists scattered,
moving from point to point, "the Governor, the Deputy-Governor and
all the assistants except Mr. Nowell going across the river to
Boston at the invitation of Mr. Blaxton, who had until then been
its only white inhabitant."
Even the best supplied among them were but scantily provided with
provisions. It was too late for planting, and the colony already
established was too wasted and weakened by sickness to have cared
for crops in the planting season. In the long voyage "there was
miserable damage and spoil of provisions by sea, and divers came
not so well provided as they would, upon a report, whilst they
were in England, that now there was enough in New England." Even
this small store was made smaller by the folly of several who
exchanged food for beaver skins, and, the Council suddenly finding
that famine was imminent "hired and despatched away Mr. William
Pearce with his ship of about two hundred tons, for Ireland to buy
more, and in the mean time went on with their work of settling."
The last month of the year had come before they could decide where
the fortified town, made necessary by Indian hostilities, should
be located. The Governor's house had been partly framed at
Charlestown, but with the removal to Boston it was taken down, and
finally Cambridge was settled upon as the most desirable point,
and their first winter was spent there. Here for the first time it
was possible for Anne Bradstreet to unpack their household
belongings, and seek to create some semblance of the forsaken
home. But even for the Dudleys, among the richest members of the
party there was a privation which shows how sharply it must have
fared with the poorer portion, and Dudley wrote, nine months after
their arrival, that he "thought fit to commit to memory our
present condition, and what hath befallen us since our arrival
here; which I will do shortly, after my usual manner, and must do
rudely, having yet no table, nor other room to write in than by
the fireside upon my knee, in this sharp winter; to which my
family must have leave to resort, though they break good manners,
and make me many times forget what I would say, and say what I
would not."
No word of Mistress Dudley's remains to tell the shifts and
strivings for comfort in that miserable winter which, mild as it
was, had a keenness they were ill prepared to face. Petty miseries
and deprivations, the least endurable of all forms of suffering,
surrounded them like a cloud of stinging insects, whose attacks,
however intolerable at the moment, are forgotten with the passing,
and either for this reason, or from deliberate purpose, there is
not a line of reference to them in any of Anne Bradstreet's
writings. Scarcity of food was the sorest trouble. The Charlestown
records show that "people were necessitated to live upon clams and
muscles and ground nuts and acorns, and these got with much
difficulty in the winter-time. People were very much tried and
discouraged, especially when they heard that the Governor himself
had the last batch of bread in the oven."
All fared alike so far as possible, the richer and more provident
distributing to the poor, and all watching eagerly for the ship
sent back in July in anticipation of precisely such a crisis. Six
months had passed, when, on the fifth of February, 1631, Mather
records that as Winthrop stood at his door giving "the last
handful of meal in the barrel unto a poor man distressed by the
wolf at the door, at that instant, they spied a ship arrived at
the harbor's mouth with provisions for them all." The Fast day
just appointed became one of rejoicing, the first formal
proclamation for Thanksgiving Day being issued, "by order of the
Governour and Council, directed to all the plantations, and though
the stores held little reminder of holiday time in Old England,
grateful hearts did not stop to weigh differences. In any case the
worst was past and early spring brought the hope of substantial
comfort, for the town was 'laid out in squares, the streets
intersecting each other at right-angles,' and houses were built
as rapidly as their small force of carpenters could work.
Bradstreet's house was at the corner of 'Brayntree' and Wood
Streets, the spot now occupied by the familiar University Book-
store of Messrs. Sever and Francis on Harvard Square, his plot of
ground being 'aboute one rood,' and Dudley's on a lot of half an
acre was but a little distance from them at the corner of the
present Dunster and South Streets." Governor Winthrop's decision
not to remain here, brought about some sharp correspondence
between Dudley and himself, but an amicable settlement followed
after a time, and though the frame of his house was removed to
Boston, the town grew in spite of its loss, so swiftly that in
1633, Wood wrote of it:
"This is one of the neatest and best compacted Towns in New
England, having many fair structures, with many handsome contrived
streets. The inhabitants most of them are very rich and well
stored with Cattell of all sorts."
Rich as they may have appeared, however, in comparison with many
of the settlements about them, sickness and want were still
unwelcome guests among them, so that Dudley wrote: "there is not a
house where there is not one dead and in some houses many. The
natural causes seem to be in the want of warm lodging and good
diet, to which Englishmen are habituated at home, and in the
sudden increase of heat which they endure that are landed here in
summer, the salt meats at sea having prepared their bodies
thereto; for those only these two last years died of fevers who
landed in June and July; as those of Plymouth, who landed in
winter, died of the scurvey, as did our poorer sort, whose houses
and bedding kept them not sufficiently warm, nor their diet
sufficiently in heart."
Thus far there were small inducements for further emigration. The
tide poured in steadily, but only because worse evils were behind
than semi-starvation in New England. The fairest and fullest
warning was given by Dudley, whose letter holds every strait and
struggle of the first year, and who wrote with the intention of
counteracting the too rosy statements of Higginson and Graves: "If
any come hither to plant for worldly ends that can live well at
home, he commits an error, of which he will soon repent him; but
if for spiritual, and that no particular obstacle hinder his
removal, he may find here what may well content him, viz.,
materials to build, fuel to burn, ground to plant, seas and rivers
to fish in, a pure air to breathe in, good water to drink till
wine or beer can be made; which together with the cows, hogs and
goats brought hither already, may suffice for food; for as for
fowl and venison, they are dainties here as well as in England.
For clothes and bedding, they must bring them with them, till time
and industry produce them here. In a word, we yet enjoy little to
be envied, but endure much to be pitied in the sickness and
mortality of our people. And I do the more willingly use this open
and plain dealing, lest other men should fall short of their
expectations when they come hither, as we to our great prejudice
did, by means of letters sent us from hence into England, wherein
honest men, out of a desire to draw over others to them, wrote
something hyperbolically of many things here. If any godly men,
out of religious ends, will come over to help us in the good work
we are about, I think they cannot dispose of themselves nor their
estates more to God's glory and the furtherance of their own
reckoning. But they must not be of the poorer sort yet, for divers
years; for we have found by experience that they have hindered,
not furthered the work. And for profane and debauched persons,
their oversight in coming hither is wondered at, where they shall
find nothing to content them."
This long quotation is given in full to show the fair temper of
the man, who as time went on was slightly less in favor than in
the beginning. No one questioned his devotion to the cause, or the
energy with which he worked for it, but as he grew older he lost
some portion of the old urbanity, exchanging it disastrously for
traits which would seem to have been the result of increasing
narrowness of religious faith rather than part of his real self.
Savage writes of him: "a hardness in publick and ridgidity in
private life, are too observable in his character, and even an
eagerness for pecuniary gain, which might not have been expected
in a soldier and a statesman." That the impression was general is
evident from an epitaph written upon him by Governor Belcher, who
may, however, have had some personal encounter with this
"rigidity," which was applied to all without fear or favor.
"Here lies Thomas Dudley, that trusty old stud,
A bargain's a bargain and must be made good."
Whatever his tendencies may have been they did not weigh heavily
on his family, who delighted in his learning and devoted spirit,
and whose affection was strong enough to atone for any criticism
from outsiders.
Objectionable as his methods may sometimes have been--sour as his
compatriots now and then are said to have found him, "the world it
appears, is indebted for much of its progress, to uncomfortable
and even grumpy people," and Tyler whose analysis of the Puritan
character has never been surpassed, writes of them: "Even some of
the best of them, perhaps, would have seemed to us rather
pragmatical and disputatious persons, with all the edges and
corners of their characters left sharp, with all their opinions
very definitely formed, and with their habits of frank utterance
quite thoroughly matured. Certainly ... they do not seem to have
been a company of gentle, dreamy and euphemistical saints, with a
particular aptitude for martyrdom and an inordinate development of
affability."
They argued incessantly, at home and abroad, and "this exacting
and tenacious propensity of theirs, was not a little criticized by
some who had business connections with them." Very probably
Governor Belcher had been worsted in some wordy battle, always
decorously conducted, but always persistent, but these minor
infelicities did not affect the main purposes of life, and the
settlement grew in spite of them; perhaps even, because of them,
free speech being, as yet, the privilege of all, though as the
answering became in time a little too free, means were taken to
insure more discretion.
In the meantime Cambridge grew, and suddenly arose a complaint,
which to the modern mind is preposterous. "Want of room" was the
cry of every citizen and possibly with justice, as the town had
been set within fixed limits and had nearly doubled in size
through the addition in August, 1632, of the congregation of the
Rev. Thomas Hooker at Chelmsford in the county of Essex, England,
who had fallen under Laud's displeasure, and escaped with
difficulty, being pursued by the officers of the High Commission
from one county to another, and barely eluding them when he took
ship for New England.
One would have thought the wilderness at their doors afforded
sense of room enough, and that numbers would have been a welcome
change, but the complaint was serious enough to warrant their
sending out men to Ipswich with a view of settling there. Then for
a time the question dropped, much to the satisfaction, no doubt,
of Mistress Dudley and her daughter, to whom in 1633, or '34, the
date being uncertain, came her first child, the son Samuel, who
graduated at Harvard College in 1653, and of whom she wrote long
after in the little diary of "Religious Experiences":
"It pleased God to keep me a long time without a child, which was
a great greif to me, and cost mee many prayers and tears before I
obtained one, and after him gave mee many more of whom I now take
the care."
Cambridge still insisting that it had not room enough, the town
was enlarged, but having accomplished this, both Dudley and
Bradstreet left it for Ipswich, the first suggestion of which had
been made in January, 1632, when news came to them that "the
French had bought the Scottish plantation near Cape Sable, and
that the fort and all the amunition were delivered to them, and
that the cardinal, having the managing thereof, had sent many
companies already, and preparation was made to send many more the
next year, and divers priests and Jesuits among them---called the
assistants to Boston, and the ministers and captains, and some
other chief men, to advise what was fit to be done for our safety,
in regard the French were like to prove ill neighbors, (being
Papists)."
Another change was in store for the patient women who followed the
path laid open before them, with no thought of opposition,
desiring only "room for such life as should in the ende return
them heaven for an home that passeth not away," and with the
record in Winthrop's journal, came the familiar discussion as to
methods, and the decision which speedily followed.
Dudley and Bradstreet as "assistants" both had voice in the
conclusions of the meeting, the record of which has just been
given, though with no idea, probably, at that time, that their own
movements would be affected. It was settled at once that "a
plantation and a fort should be begun at Natascott, partly to be
some block in an enemy's way (though it could not bar his
entrance), and especially to prevent an enemy from taking that
passage from us.... Also, that a plantation be begun at Agawam
(being the best place in the land for tillage and cattle), least
an enemy, finding it void should possess and take it from us. The
governor's son (being one of the assistants) was to undertake
this, and to take no more out of the bay than twelve men; the rest
to be supplied, at the coming of the next ships."
That they were not essential to Cambridge, but absolutely so at
this weak point was plain to both Dudley and Bradstreet, who
forthwith made ready for the change accomplished in 1634, when at
least one other child, Dorothy, had come to Anne Bradstreet.
Health, always delicate and always fluctuating, was affected more
seriously than usual at this time, no date being given, but the
period extending over several years, "After some time, I fell into
a lingering sickness like a consumption, together with a lameness,
which correction I saw the Lord sent to humble and try me and do
me Good: and it was not altogether ineffectual."
Patient soul! There were better days coming, but, self-distrust
was, after her affections, her strongest point, and there is small
hint of inward poise or calmness till years had passed, though she
faced each change with the quiet dauntlessness that was part of
her birthright. But the tragedy of their early days in the colony
still shadowed her. Evidently no natural voice was allowed to
speak in her, and the first poem of which we have record is as
destitude of any poetic flavor, as if designed for the Bay Psalm-
book. As the first, however, it demands place, if only to show
from what she afterward escaped. That she preserved it simply as a
record of a mental state, is evident from the fact, that it was
never included in any edition of her poems, it having been found
among her papers after her death.
UPON A FIT OF SICKNESS, _Anno_. 1632.
_Aetatis suce_, 19.
Twice ten years old not fully told since
nature gave me breath,
My race is run, my thread is spun, lo! here
is fatal Death.
All men must dye, and so must I, this cannot
be revoked,
For Adam's sake, this word God spake, when he
so high provoke'd.
Yet live I shall, this life's but small, in
place of highest bliss,
Where I shall have all I can crave, no life is
like to this.
For what's this life but care and strife? since
first we came from womb,
Our strength doth waste, our time doth hast and
then we go to th' Tomb.
O Bubble blast, how long can'st last? that
always art a breaking,
No sooner blown, but dead and gone ev'n as a
word that's speaking,
O whil'st I live this grace me give, I doing good
may be,
Then death's arrest I shall count best because
it's thy degree.
Bestow much cost, there's nothing lost to make
Salvation sure,
O great's the gain, though got with pain, comes
by profession pure.
The race is run, the field is won, the victory's
mine, I see,
For ever know thou envious foe the foyle belongs
to thee.
This is simply very pious and unexceptionable doggerel and no one
would admit such fact more quickly than Mistress Anne herself, who
laid it away in after days in her drawer, with a smile at the
metre and a sigh for the miserable time it chronicled. There were
many of them, for among the same papers is a shorter burst of
trouble:
UPON SOME DISTEMPER OF BODY.
In anguish of my heart repleat with woes,
And wasting pains, which best my body knows,
In tossing slumbers on my wakeful bed,
Bedrencht with tears that flow from mournful head,
Till nature had exhausted all her store,
Then eyes lay dry disabled to weep more;
And looking up unto his Throne on high,
Who sendeth help to those in misery;
He chas'd away those clouds and let me see,
My Anchor cast i' th' vale with safety,
He eas'd my soul of woe, my flesh of pain,
And brought me to the shore from troubled Main.
The same brooding and saddened spirit is found in some verses of
the same period and written probably just before the birth of her
third child, the latter part containing a touch of jealous
apprehension that has been the portion of many a young mother, and
that indicates more of human passion than could be inferred from
anything in her first attempt at verse.
All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joys attend;
No tyes so strong, no friends so dear and sweet
But with death's parting blow is sure to meet.
The sentence past is most irrevocable
A common thing, yet oh, inevitable;
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,
How soon 't may be thy Lot to lose thy friend!
We both are ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot's untyed that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
And if I see not half my dayes that's due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
The many faults that well you know I have,
Let be interred in my oblivious grave;
If any worth or virtue were in me,
Let that live freshly in thy memory,
And when thou feel'st no grief as I no harms,
Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms:
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
Look to my little babes my dear remains,
And if thou love thyself, or loved'st me,
These O protect from step-Dames injury.
And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
With some sad sighs honor my absent Herse;
And kiss this paper for thy love's dear sake
Who with salt tears this last farewell did take.
--_A. B._