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 WOMEN OF COLONIAL AND 
 RE VOL UTIONA R Y TlMES?s== 
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 BY ALICE BROWN 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS 
 
 NEW YORK MDCCCXCVI
 
 Copyright, 1896, by 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 fflm&rrsttn IJrrss : 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 7V/ DESCENDANTS 
 
 OF 
 
 MERCY OTIS WARREN 
 xr 
 
 PLYMOUTH AND AT DEDHAM 
 
 \ 
 
 287923
 
 PREFACE 
 
 There are few consecutive incidents, save the 
 catalogue of births, marriages, and deaths, to 
 be gathered concerning the life of Mercy Otis 
 Warren. Therefore it seems necessary to regard 
 her through those picturesque events of the na- 
 tional welfare which touched her most nearly, 
 and of which she was a part. It is impossible 
 to trace her, step by step, through her eighty-six 
 years; she can only be regarded by the flash- 
 light of isolated topics. 
 
 In compiling this sketch of the Revolutionary 
 period, I am especially indebted to Window 
 Warren, Esq., and Charles Francis Adams, 
 Esq., for their generosity and courtesy in allow- 
 ing me the use of the valuable manuscripts in 
 their possession. I have also to make grateful 
 acknowledgment to the Collections of the Massa- 
 chusetts Historical Society ; the Life of James 
 Otis, by William Tudor ; the Life of Thomas 
 Hutchinson, by James K. Hosmer ; a History 
 
 vii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 of American Literature, by Moses Coit Tyler 
 American Literature, by C. F. Richardson; the 
 Governor's Garden, by George R. R. Rivers; to 
 all Mrs. Alice Morse Earless delightful pictures 
 of a by-gone day, and to scores of books so vivid or 
 so accurate as to have become the commonplace of 
 reference. 
 
 A. B. 
 
 BOSTON, October 3, 1896. 
 
 viii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 Ancestry of Mercy Otis Old- World Associations of 
 the first John Otis Dissension in Hingham John 
 Winthrop's Trial Life on Cape Cod Distinguished 
 Members of the Otis family 
 
 II-BARNSTABLE DAYS 
 
 Childhood in Colonial Times Intimacy bet ween James 
 and Mercy Otis James Otis's Tastes and Education 
 Life at the Barnstable Farmhouse A Harvard Com- 
 mencement Professional Life and Marriage of James 
 Otis Marriage of Mercy Otis to James Warren . . 15 
 
 III LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 Ancestry of James Warren Early Events of his Life 
 Development of Mercy Warren's Character in Rela- 
 tion to Events Life at Clifford Removal to Plym- 
 outh Town Birth of Children Writs of Assistance 
 James Warren's Advance in Political Life Attack 
 upon James Otis - Birth of Mercy Warren's Two 
 Youngest Sons Her Friends and Intellectual Life 
 John Adams's Relation to the Warren Family Friends 
 and Correspondents of Mrs. Warren The Celebrated 
 Mrs. Macaulay Committees of Correspondence The 
 Colonial Clergy 33 
 
 IV THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 An Academic Style James Warren's Letters His 
 Account of the Battle of Bunker Hill Letter "To 
 a Youth just Entered Colledge " Mrs. Warren's 
 
 " Vapours " 67 
 
 ix
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 WOMAN'S PART 
 
 Feminine Abstinence from Luxuries The Squabble 
 of the Sea Nymphs Satirical Poem Hannah Win- 
 throp's Letter on the Battle of Lexington Fear of 
 British Troops Mrs. Warren's Character-Drawing 
 The Small-Pox 
 
 I EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 English Source of American Literature Our First 
 Book-Makers American Colleges and Newspapers . 
 
 I LITERARY WORK 
 
 Period of Mercy Otis Warren Her Undaunted Ex- 
 pression in Political Matters John Adams's Flattery 
 His Defence of Satire The Group The Adulator 
 and The Retreat Poems Mrs. Warren's Place 
 among the Pamphleteers 
 
 ^HITHE HISTORY OF THE RESOLU- 
 TION 
 
 Letters from James Freeman A Collection of Mottoes 
 Mrs. Warren's Portraiture of Public Men Distrust 
 of the Order of the Cincinnati 
 
 IX AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 John Adams's Remonstrance Mrs. Warren's Retort 
 Talk of Monarchy Comparison of the History 
 with its Manuscript Reconciliation An Exchange 
 of Gifts ai 
 
 X THOUGHT AND OPINION 
 
 Intolerance of Scepticism Exchange of Literary Criti- 
 cisms with Abigail Adams Attitude toward the Woman 
 Question Criticism of Lord Chesterfield ... -233
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 XI THE BELOVED SON 
 
 Three Copleys The Dark Day Winslow's Sailing 
 Purchase of the Hutchinson House Winslow's 
 Return and Second Trip Abroad Death of Charles 
 Warren Winslow's Return and Death Death of 
 George Warren 246 
 
 XII ON MILTON HILL 
 
 The Hutchinson Estate Governor Hutchinson The 
 Warren Family at Milton Their Return to Plymouth 
 Present Aspect of the Hutchinson- Warren Estate . 264 
 
 XIII TERMINUS 
 
 An Aged C.ouple America after the Revolution "I 
 Mrs. Warren's Dread of an American Monarchy 
 
 Death of James Warren Mercy Warren's Illness and . | 
 
 Death Her personal Belongings Her Influence . 289
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 I 
 
 IX THE BEGINNING 
 
 MERCY OTIS WARREN belongs to that vital 
 period when there came between the two Eng- 
 lands, New and Old, the breaking of ancient 
 bonds, the untwining of fibres grown from the 
 hearts of each ; she was bora at a day when 
 the Colonies were outwardly stanch in alle- 
 giance, and she lived through the first irritation 
 preluding wrath " with one we love," to defec- 
 tion, victory, and peace. In time, in feeling 
 and influence, her life kept pace, step for step, 
 with the growth of a nation. 
 
 Throughout the first youth of our Colonies, 
 New England was still the willing daughter of 
 her motherland. To every pilgrim settled here, 
 and even to his children, born in a species of 
 exile, it was "home;" and few were they who 
 quite relinquished hope of returning thither, 
 either for travel, study, or the renewal of 
 precious associations. Indeed, spite of the ful- 
 i i
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 filment of desire in having reached that air of 
 freedom for which they so long had fainted, 
 our forebears honestly felt with Cotton Mather : 
 " I conclude of the two Englands what our 
 Saviour saith of the two wines : ' No man hav- 
 ing tasted of the old, presently desireth the 
 new ; for he saith, tha o!4 is better.* " Thus 
 identified in recent life and ever-present longing, 
 there is some special savor in tracing family 
 descent at a period when every bud was near 
 the parent stem ; for, in the beginning of our 
 stock, it is possible to catch some lustre cast by 
 Old World culture and beauty, the while you 
 detect the hardening of sinews responsive to 
 the stimulus of Old World wrongs. 
 
 The ancestry of Mercy Otis took rise in 
 that hardy yeomanry which has ever been the 
 bulwark and strength of England. John Otis. 
 founder of the American branch to which she 
 belongs, is usually believed to have been born 
 in Baj^s^aple^Devon, whence he.^-aame to 
 Jlingham. of the Massachusetts, in,JL635^ and 
 there drew lots in the first division~bf land.. 
 This incident of the allotment of land is virtu- 
 ally the first mention of him ; and because it 
 took place in the company of the Rev. Peter 
 Hobart and his twenty-nine associates, it 
 has been conjectured that, like alt the band, 
 Otis came from Hingham in Norfolk. It may
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 be, however, that he left Devon and lived for a 
 time at Hingham before embarking for America. 
 Or, if the genealogical ferret would run down 
 a further quibble, he may scent it in a note 
 among the Hingham records, of land granted 
 John Otis in June ; and whereas Hobart only 
 arrived at Charlestown in June, and did not 
 proceed to Hingham until September, John 
 Otis was very evidently there before him. 
 
 The name, as it crops out in old records both 
 here and in England, is variously spelled as 
 Ottis, Otys, Ote, Otye, and Oatey ; but happily 
 it is not to be identified with the one-syllabled 
 Otes relegated to Titus of unholy memory. 
 Thus varied, it appears significantly in the 
 Subsidy Rolls, a quantity of most precious 
 manuscript, preserved at the Rolls Office in 
 London, and brought thither from the Tower, 
 where it lay for more than two hundred years, 
 rich in truthful records which are now invalu- 
 able. Therein are set down the names and 
 residences of most English people from the time 
 of Henry VIII. to that of Charles II., a 
 means whereby the genealogist may occasion- 
 ally put his finger on the still-beating pulses of 
 the past. It is a trivial fact that among the 
 Somerset families appears, under several forms, 
 the name Otis ; yet when snapped into another 
 isolated record, it completes an unbroken chain
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 of inference. For there was one Richard Otis 
 of Glastonbury, who, in 1611, gave, according 
 to the terms of his will, all his wearing apparel 
 to his sons Stephen and John. Now, was this 
 the John who afterwards made his temporary 
 stay in Devon or Norfolk, and then found his 
 last home in America ? 
 
 Apparently it was ; and here is the pretty rea- 
 son for such guesswork. On the fourth of June, 
 1636, there were granted to our John Otis of 
 Hingham, in the Massachusetts, sixteen acres 
 of land, and also ten acres for planting ground 
 on Wear i- All- Hill. That name alone is signi- 
 ficant. Says the historian of Hingham, rela- 
 tive to the latter grant : " It is very steep upon 
 its western slope, and from this cause known 
 to the early settlers, in their quaintly expres- 
 sive nomenclature, as Weary-All-Hill." But 
 the reason is possibly further to seek than in 
 the spontaneous fancy of the town fathers ; for 
 it goes back to England and to Glastonbury 
 town. Every pilgrim to Glaston knows the 
 step ascent, lined now with houses built of the 
 severe gray stone so common there (much of it 
 filched from the ruined Abbey), at the top of 
 which is a grassy enclosure, and a little slab 
 to mark the spot where Joseph of Arimathea 
 rested when, with his disciples, he stayed his 
 wanderings in Glastonbury and built there a
 
 J^V THE BEGINNING 
 
 little wattled church, the mother of England's 
 worship. On the top of Weary-All-Hill he 
 struck his staff, a thorn-branch, into the earth; 
 and it burst into bloom, the first of all the 
 famous thorns to blossom thereafter at Christ- 
 mas time. The hill was and is a beloved and 
 significant feature of the town, and without a 
 doubt John Otis named his New England hill 
 in memory of it, and so proved himself in the 
 doing a Glaston man. It is quite true that a 
 Devonian might have been perfectly familiar 
 with Weary-All-Hill in " Zuramerzett," or that 
 the name might have been evolved from its 
 significance alone ; but I like best to think it 
 a fragrant reminiscence of home, like the bit 
 of soil an exile bears jealously from the 
 mother sod. 
 
 In loyalty to the romance which is truer than 
 truth, let us believe that John Otis sprang from 
 Glastonbury, and trace in his temperament 
 the serious cast of that dignified, and rich yet 
 melancholy landscape, the outward frame of a 
 spot ever to be reverenced as the nursery of 
 ecclesiastical power. One might even guess 
 what dreams he dreamed, and what images 
 haunted him, when he turned the mind's vision 
 backward over sea. There they lie, as he saw 
 them, the fertile fields of Somerset, the peaty 
 meadows cut by black irrigating ditches ; now, 
 
 5
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 as then, Glastonbury Tor rises like a beacon, 
 Saint Michael's Tower its crown. Yet Glas- 
 tonbury is not wholly the same. One vital 
 change has befallen it: the wounds of its sacred 
 spot show some semblance of healing, for now 
 the jewelled ruins of the Abbey are touched 
 with rose and yellow sedum, and the mind, 
 through long usage, has accustomed herself to 
 the evidences of spoil and loss. But when 
 John Otis sailed for America, it was less than 
 a hundred years since Henry VIII. had set his 
 greedy mark upon the Abbey; less than a 
 century only since Richard Whiting, last Abbot 
 of Glastonbury, had mounted the Tor to die in 
 sight of his desecrated church and all the king- 
 doms of the earth for which he would not 
 renounce the crown of his integrity. There 
 are periods when history marches swiftly ; and 
 such vivid events as these were the folk-tales 
 heard by John Otis at the fireside and in his 
 twilight walks. 
 
 But if, before his flitting to America, he did 
 remove from Glastonbury to Barnstaple, in 
 Devon, the change in mental atmosphere was 
 distinct and bracing, from a sacerdotal to a 
 thriving merchant town, where minds had not 
 yet done thrilling, since Elizabeth's day, with 
 dreams of adventure and trade with the " golden 
 South Americas." The little parish church, as 
 
 6
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 you may see it there, on any present pilgrim- 
 age, is full of significant hints of the manner 
 of men who built it, worshipped under its roof, 
 and then claimed shelter for their last long 
 rest. The walls are lined with mortuary tab- 
 lets, testimonial to the good burghers who, 
 having done famously in life, gave munificent 
 alms for the poor to come after them, and 
 doubtless also as a cake to Cerberus, thus 
 forwarding the safe passage of their own 
 thrifty souls. There were men of mark in 
 Barnstaple ; let it be assumed that Otis was 
 of them. But wherever he started in life, he 
 took root in our Hingham, and doubtless did his 
 share in building up the sturdy independence 
 so characteristic of the place. For this Colony 
 was on the outskirts both of Plymouth and 
 Massachusetts Bay, and it owned not too en- 
 tire an allegiance to any but its own judgment, 
 nor brooked interference. 
 
 Hingham was a hot-bed of individualism, and 
 it can never be mentioned without remembrance 
 of one vivid scene connected with its early 
 days, one of those commonplaces of the time 
 destined to fructify and thus endure. In 1645, 
 a novel case came before the General Court of 
 Boston, founded primarily on dissension in the 
 town of Hingham over the choice of a captain 
 for its trainband. Variance spread, hot words 
 
 7
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 abounded, and some of the delinquents were 
 summoned to Boston to answer for their indis- 
 cretion before the General Court. Old Peter 
 Hobart violently espoused their cause, as against 
 the magistrates, and expostulated so boldly with 
 the latter that they grew wroth, and replied 
 that if he were not a minister of the gospel 
 he should be committed. Thereupon the war- 
 fare continued through the requirements of 
 the magistrates and the virtual refusal of the 
 Hinghamites to do anything whatsoever which 
 they might be bid, especially to appear meekly 
 for trial ; and finally the latter rose with bold- 
 ness, and, crying that their liberties had been 
 infringed upon by the General Court, singled 
 out John Winthrop, the Deputy-Governor, for 
 prosecution. 
 
 No scene more picturesque and impressive 
 belongs to this stirring time than that of John 
 Winthrop, stepping down from his official sta- 
 tion, and sitting uncovered, in dignified acqui- 
 escence, " beneath the bar." The case turned 
 upon the question of the power of the magis- 
 trates, and the possibility of their endangering 
 the liberties of the people through over-much 
 arrogance. The Deputy-Governor was acquitted, 
 but, after taking his place again upon the bench, 
 "he desired leave for a little speech;" and 
 then was uttered his wonderful exordium upon
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 liberty, destined to live in the minds and ears 
 of the people so long as they shall love just 
 thought and noble expression. He began with 
 these fit and burning words : 
 
 " There is a twofold liberty, natural (I 
 mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil 
 or federal," and after defining the first, went 
 on to that other higher, spiritual liberty, the 
 " civil or federal ; it may also be termed moral, 
 in reference to the covenant between God and 
 man, in the moral law, and the politic cove- 
 nants and constitutions among men themselves. 
 This liberty is the proper end and object of 
 authority, and cannot subsist without it ; and 
 it is a liberty to that only which is good, just 
 and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, 
 with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) 
 of your lives, if need be." 
 
 And so was the stiff-backed Hingham of 
 the time responsible for an enduring piece of 
 thought, a noble moral precedent. 
 
 In those days, the minister was the man of 
 mark; and Peter Hobart proved himself doubly 
 the leader of feeling in this exigency, not only 
 from his position, but from his almost aggres- 
 sive individuality. It is significant to read, in 
 another instance, the verdict of the time upon 
 him, and to realize how strongly he must have 
 influenced his people to independence, even 
 
 9
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 though it led to revolt. In 1647, a marriage 
 was to be celebrated in Boston, and, as the 
 bridegroom was a member of " Hobard's " 
 church, " Hobard " was invited to preach, and 
 indeed went to Boston for that purpose. But 
 the magistrates ordered him to forbear, saying 
 plainly, " That his spirit had been discovered 
 to be adverse to our ecclesiastical and civil 
 government, and he was a bold man, and would 
 speak his mind" 
 
 From the concerted action of the time, it 
 is possible to guess the individual; from the 
 public attitude of the town of Hingham, to 
 imagine what spirit animated its citizens. JThis 
 was the, .jair... breathed, _bj; jojar_j[eomaa-jOtis ; 
 Jihe^social _ atmosphere which he doubtless did 
 his part to preserve clarified, bracing, free. 
 And no one who has followed the line of his 
 descendants can doubt that he also could 
 " speak his mind." 
 
 From John Otis was descended, in the fifth 
 generation, Mercy Otis, the third among thir- 
 teen children. She was born September 25, 
 1728, atHS^StaBfe^ Massachusetts, whither 
 John, son otthr~ftrst John, had moved in 
 ^678,^ build his house on land known there- 
 afte>-S Otis Farm. It belonged to that part 
 of the town called Great Marshes, now the 
 West Parish, or West Barnstable. When it 
 10
 
 /AT THE BEGINNING 
 
 comes to guessing out life-history from exter- 
 nal evidence, every spot identified with fam- 
 ily life becomes significant ; for nature, even in 
 her common phases, holds deep meaning, which 
 the growing soul inevitably absorbs. Personal 
 history becomes, to a vast extent, topographi- 
 cal, provided only a family line lias grown and 
 thriven in one spot. Given the sensitive, im- 
 pressionable temperament, and it is possible 
 to say, " Show me the landscape, and I will 
 show you the man." To be born in Barnstable 
 means to be born on Cape Coflj^- potent phrase 
 to those who know, either by birthright or 
 hearsay, that strong and righteous arm of 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 Barnstable has no thrilling story ; she has al- 
 ways held herself in self-respecting quiet, ready 
 to meet public questions, or content to be of 
 the happy nations that have no history, save 
 of industry and thrift. She had rich resources, 
 and in 1639 they attracted the Rev. John 
 Lothrop, who moved thither with his congre- 
 gation. She owned her land honestly by just 
 though thrifty bargain with the Indians (what 
 though it be recorded that thirty acres went for 
 " two brass kettles, one bushel of Indian corn," 
 and the fence to enclose the tract ? When we 
 sell for a song, sometimes the song outweighs 
 the purchase). All the peculiar beauties des- 
 11
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 tined to make Cape Cod so unique and lovable 
 were hers : the scrubby growth of pine and oak 
 crowning the knolls, fair little valleys, great 
 marshes where the salt grass sprang, sweet 
 fresh-water ponds dotting the inland tracts, 
 and, at her door, the sea, challenger to fear 
 and purveyor of good, insistent, mighty, in- 
 ducing in men that hardy habit and longing 
 which belong as truly to Cape Cod as to 
 Devon. "The duck does not take to water 
 with a surer instinct than the Barnstable 
 [County] boy," says a local historian. " He 
 leaps from his leading strings into the shrouds. 
 It is but a bound from the mother's lap to the 
 mast-head. He boxes the compass in his in- 
 fant soliloquies. 
 
 bythe time heflies a kite." __ 
 
 OFMercy Otis's dozen brothers and sisters, 
 three deserve especial remembrance. One, the 
 eldest, was James Qtis T the patriot. The sec- 
 ond,. Joseph^ held various important positions 
 during Revolutionary days, and gave his coun- 
 try definite and picturesque service in opposing 
 the attempt of the English to destroy a priva- 
 teer which had sought refuge in Barnstable har- 
 bor. Samuel Allyjie, one of the younger sons, 
 founded a memorable house ; for he married 
 Elizabeth, daughter of the Honorable Harrison 
 Gray, and their son was Harrison Gray Otis.
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 To the New England ear comes no sweeter 
 sound than the hint of Mayflower ancestry ; 
 there is, moreover, somewhat of a supersti- 
 tious savor in it, and the historian licks his lips 
 at the possibility, as though some pious salt 
 had touched them. Therefore let it be said 
 with reverence that the moth fir of Mercy Otis 
 belonged to that sacred strain. She was_JM[ary 
 Allyne, great-granddaughter of Edward Dotcn, 
 or Dotej, who came over in 162L; and, being 
 fortunate in topographical conditions, she was 
 doubly well-born, for she entered this earthly 
 stage in the old Allyne house at Plymouth. 
 No wonder she is designated " a woman of su- 
 perior character." When it comes to the May- 
 flower with Plymouth in conjunction, noblesse 
 
 The name Mercy (or Marcia, as Mercy Otis 
 sometimes spelled it) was a favorite one in the 
 family. It keeps cropping out, from generation 
 to generation, like some small plant that runs 
 and flowers on the wall. The line begins with 
 Mercy Bacon of Barnstable, the wife of John 
 Otis, grandson of the first John. This Mercy 
 had a daughter named for her, and her hus- 
 band's two brothers had each a daughter Mercy; 
 and so did two of the next generation. Indeed, 
 one of those sons had two Mercys, one little 
 girl having died a baby. Quite evidently the 
 
 13
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 name was a source of love, as it afterwards be- 
 came of pride to the succeeding generations, 
 when they could look back on the woman who 
 virtually made it her own, through significance 
 of life and thought.
 
 n 
 
 BARNSTABLE DAYS 
 
 FIRST of all, one would fain know something 
 about the little Mercy Otis, instead of recon- 
 structing a shadowy image from the outer cir- 
 cumstances of other childhood at that time. We 
 want the magic mirror wherein events grow 
 clear. There are those who had it. Such, ac- 
 cording to Hawthorne, was old Esther Dudley 
 of the Province House, the weird woman who 
 habited there in the interregnum after Howe 
 left and before Hancock came in. Who would 
 not bargain for her uncanny power ! 
 
 "It was the general belief that Esther could 
 cause the governors of the overthrown dynasty, 
 with the beautiful ladies who had once adorned 
 their festivals, the Indian chiefs who had come up 
 to the Province House to hold counsel or swear 
 allegiance, the grim Provincial warriors, the severe 
 clergymen, in short, all the pageantry of gone 
 days, all the pictures that ever swept across the 
 broad plate of glass in former times, she could 
 cause the whole to reappear, and people the inner 
 world of the mirror with shadows of old life."
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Such a mirror do I want, and such an enchant- 
 ress, to summon up the figure of one modest 
 Colonial maiden ; and such a mirror have we not. 
 
 The first daughter of the family, little 
 Afgrcy__ had that trying position of over-much 
 affection at the start, and later, the responsi- 
 bility of action and example when the house 
 became crowded with young life. It is 
 easy to imagine her trotting about with her 
 ugly home-made doll (or hoarding worship- 
 fully one of the toys so sparingly sold in 
 Boston, at that early date, thence to reach 
 the country towns on some market joiir- 
 ney), a quaint little figure like all the child- 
 figures of the time, with Jong skirt^jmd a close 
 capto protect her head from the searching 
 Cape winds fighting their way through the 
 draughty house. For even in such well-to-do 
 " habitations " (as the grown-up Mercy deco- 
 rously called her home) , the entries were speak- 
 ing-tubes for all the winds of heaven, and 
 Arctic terrors beset the " long black passage 
 up to bed." (Fortunate indeed was the child 
 who could betake herself nightly to the trundle- 
 bed in mother's room, close neighbored by the 
 kitchen and some flickering warmth before the 
 embers were covered, though the apartment 
 itself were that horror of early American life, 
 a dark bedroom.) 
 
 16
 
 BARNSTABLE DAYS 
 
 Undoubtedly she went through all the con- 
 ventional miseries dealt out by an inscrutable 
 Providence to the babies of that and an earlier 
 time. She was probably put into fine linen 
 slips, and her mottled arms were bare. For 
 hardships which no grown man would feel 
 called on to endure, save for conscience's sake, 
 were then made the portion of the young of 
 our New England race, possibly in some in- 
 nocent obedience to the law which brings about 
 the survival of the strong. Luckily it was un- 
 necessary for our little maid to endure the 
 extreme rigor of the ceremony of baptism ; 
 for being born before the dead of winter, it 
 was probable that the water was not ice-cold, 
 thus to contribute to her undoing. But it is 
 only fair to assume that she became a victim of 
 other intolerable hardships. She was of a deli- 
 cate organization, and if she fell ill, she must 
 have been drenched with black draughts of 
 simples, bled, and bolused back to health. She 
 was not " innoculated," though that was one 
 of the new lights of her childhood ; in her case 
 it was to come later. Certain things we do 
 know about her ; that she had her task Jind^ 
 her s_eam t and that there was time in summer 
 for sweet outdoor delights. She must have 
 picked cranberries^ not as a little Cape girl 
 would do it nowadays, from cultivated marshes 
 
 2 17
 
 MEJ$CY WARREN 
 
 and for a price, but the sharp wild fruit, owing 
 nothing to the care of man, but born of the 
 benison of sun and air, and relegated to a 
 child's playhouse rather than kitchen use. She 
 gathered barberries for candles, and healing 
 salvg* and came in odorous of their powdered 
 sweetness, better than " Myrrhs, Aloes, & 
 Cafsias smell," like a spice-laden ship from 
 the farther East. In winter, too, she could 
 shut her eyes as she sat by the dying candle, 
 and see as in a vision conjured up through its 
 breath, the pasture where that fragrance had 
 birth, the darling knoll and hollow, and so raise 
 up the image of her summer days. 
 
 Strange pabulum she may well have found 
 in print ! Even at so late a period of Colonial 
 history the child of any household where books 
 had entrance, knew things whereof even the 
 learned of the present generation are happily 
 ignorant. I have no doubt that little Mercy, 
 omnivorous reader from the fi rst, had shudder- 
 ingly perused the JQay_^_I)oomj and could 
 rehearse the fate of "Jdglaters," "Blasjjhenr 
 ers," " Sw_earers_ s^rejy^^jtlie_ 
 Ravenous," and 
 
 " children flagiti-ous 
 And Parents who did them undo 
 by nurture vici-ous." 
 
 18
 
 BARNSTABLE DAYS 
 
 Perhaps she even skimmed Cotton's Spiritual 
 Milk for Babes, and, from the Bay Psalm Book, 
 
 could voice her lamentations : 
 
 " My heart is fmote, & dryde like graffe, 
 that I to eate my bread forget : 
 By reafon of my groanisgs voyce 
 my bones unto my fkin are set. 
 
 Like Pelican in wildernes, 
 like Owle in defart so am I : 
 I watch, & like a fparrow am 
 on houfe top folitarily." 
 
 All through her childhood and youth runs 
 the lovely suggestion of duality and comrade- 
 ship ; for she was the chosen companion of her 
 brother James. The intimate spiritual relation 
 between them through their later years makes 
 it possible to assume this double kinship of 
 their early life. When, a man of middle age, 
 the crowning calamity of mental derangement 
 came upon him, it was Mercy's voice which had 
 power to soothe him and lull him to self-con- 
 trol ; and in 1766, when his patriotic mission 
 had just begun, he wrote her : " This you may 
 depend on, no man ever loved a sister better, 
 & among all my conflicts I never forget yt I 
 am endeavoring to serve you and yours." 
 
 Such nearness was not only the kinship of 
 blood ; it was an intimacy of soul. To me their 
 early days on the Cape suggest another lad 
 and lassie, Maggie Tulliver and Tom. As 
 
 19
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Maggie trotted about after Tom, adoring, wor- 
 shipful, glad of a glance, so the little Cape 
 girl followed and imitated her big brother. 
 They were more or less alike in temperament, 
 ardent, mobile, brilliant, though the girl 
 must have had a stronger balance-wheel to 
 fit her for the ills of life. The intellectual 
 air of the ^f armhoujse^jqust have"" been keen 
 and wholesome. 'Think what events were to 
 be talked over, and in what vivid guise ! In 
 those days when news travelled by hot word 
 of mouth, and an overflowing though infre- 
 quent post, every hint from the outer world 
 became strangely dramatic, and even the chil- 
 dren must have gained such an idea of the 
 wonder of life as is scarcely conceivable now. 
 Think how fast the New England drama had 
 swept on from the bleak curtain-raising on 
 Plymouth shore ! Reminiscence had only to 
 stretch forth a finger into the immediate past 
 to bring it back covered with honey or gall : 
 but nothing neutral. There were strange do- 
 ings in the Massachusetts to be talked over by 
 night when the fire leaped high and the cider- 
 mug hissed by the coals : Merry Mount and 
 he unhallowed revellers who dared reinstate 
 ay Day in godly New England ; John Endi- 
 cott, the apostle of intolerance, doing his pic- 
 turesque deed of jcutiang the red crossfrom 
 20
 
 BARNSTABLE DAYS 
 
 the banner^ofJEio^land, lest a savor of Popery 
 contaimmite ithe air, and Anne HutchinsQu. 
 brought up before the bar of public injustice. 
 
 The witchcraft delusion was not so far 
 agone, and even a family of such breadth of 
 thought and enlightenment must have been 
 touched, in some fashion, by a vestige of that 
 horror which, like a lifting mist, still lay along 
 the land. Children knew strange lore, and 
 talked it over in secret ; or, not daring to 
 speak, even to each other, hugged it to their 
 own little breasts. They knew perfectly well 
 how _witches charm the butter and keep the 
 cream from rising. They could guess the hid- 
 den cause when horses fell lame, and cows 
 pined in pasture ; they knew how maidens 
 wasted while a waxen image burned. They 
 recognized in a black cloud of the early even- 
 ing some adventurous madam sailing over the 
 town on her faithful broomstick. When they 
 sat on their little stools close within the yawn- 
 ing fireplace, they traced weird figures in the 
 embers, and they knew what used to happen in 
 Salem town when naughty children swore them- 
 selves bewitched, and snatched away inno- 
 cent lives. One little girl of a somewhat later 
 period, in Duxbury, used to sit dreaming over 
 the coals in the beloved company of the iron 
 fire-dogs, in shape two Hessian soldiers ; and 
 21
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 when no one was looking, she slyly wiped 
 their little noses on her pinafore, to make 
 them feel alive and cared for, and told them 
 all the secrets intrusted to no one else. 
 Mercy Otis, too, may have had such com- 
 panions to share her heart-secrets, and wher- 
 ever they are, possibly they waken at night- 
 time, like the puppets of German fairy-lore, 
 and tell the tale we wait to hear. There 
 were fresh legends of Indian life and present 
 Jean of^ |n <] \ fl n nnfll^ n gVi t. to be conjured up by 
 the childish mind. The present might abide 
 in tranquillity, but who that had heard of scalps 
 and ambush would not tremble, and, liko_John__ 
 Fiske, in his precocious boyhood, fail to be 
 comforted by grown-up reassurance ? For that 
 youthful sage, living peaceably in his New 
 England home, one luckless day read of the 
 massacre at jSckejoe_fitady-, and thenceforward 
 shivered at night over the logical prospect of 
 its repetition. No one could comfort him ; the 
 assertion that all the hostile Indians were 
 hundreds of miles away bore no fruit for his 
 inflamed imagination. Did they assure him 
 of his own safety ? He shook his wise little 
 head, in a conviction stronger than fact. " Ah," 
 said he, mourning over the futility of ready- 
 made platitudes, " that 's what they thought at 
 SchenectadtfJ "
 
 BARNSTABLE DAYS 
 
 Mercy Otis learned, like all proper maidens, 
 the arts that go to the making of good house- 
 wives ; yet I cannot believe that they wholly 
 appealed to her. She was one of the children 
 whose vision is inevitably set toward " the vista 
 of the Book." She was created for the intel- 
 lectual life, and in that day, when the feminine 
 intelligence could demand no special training, 
 she must have taken refuge the more in the 
 vicarious joy of her brother's possibilities. Not 
 only through her childhood, but until her mar- 
 riage, it is possible to read her mental phases 
 chiefly through reference to him, a soul so 
 vivid that it might easily illuminate another 
 more confined. This was an age when needle- 
 work and housewifery were all that could be 
 expected of a woman ; if she also sang a little, 
 painted a little, and played tinkling tunes on 
 the harpsichord, so much the more elegant was 
 her status ; and Mercy Otis was thus doubly 
 fortunate in sharing, though at second-hand, in 
 her brother's intellectual pursuits. He was a 
 close student, and thj^Jiejc^Jtonatlian- Russell, 
 who prepared him for college, was Mercy's 
 tutor also, and the director of her reading. He 
 loaned her Raleigh's History of the World, and 
 encouraged her in the study of histoj-y in gen- 
 eral, for which she had a passion. Years after, 
 in a satirical letter of advice to a young lady, 
 
 23
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 she begs her, with mock seriousness, to have 
 nothing to do with any save frivolous and 
 sceptical topics, since they are the only ones 
 likely to pass current in the drawing-room ; 
 and adds, with a special stress gained from the 
 devotion of a lifetime : 
 
 " If you have a Taste for the Study of History 
 let me Urge you not to Indulge it, least the Pic- 
 ture of human Nature in All Ages of the World 
 should give Your Features too serious a Cast or 
 by becoming acquainted with the rude State of 
 Nature in the Earlier Ages, the Origin of So- 
 ciety, the Foundations of Government & the Rise 
 & Fall of Empires, you should Inadvertently glide 
 into that unpardonable Absurdity & sometimes 
 Venture to speak when Politicks happen to be the 
 Subject. In short, Science of any Kind beyond 
 the Toilet, the Tea, or the Card Table, is as Un- 
 necessary to a Lady's figuring in the Drawing 
 Room as Virtue unsully'd by Caprice is to the 
 Character of the finish'd Gentleman. She may 
 be the admiration of the Ton without the One & 
 He the Idol of popular Fame without the Other." 
 
 There spoke the woman devoted not only to 
 history but to " politicks," and whose later life 
 but copied fair her past. 
 
 Unfortunately, very little material is extant 
 relative to James Otis's youth ; he, as the boy, 
 might easily have had a Boswell where a girl
 
 BARNS TABLE DAYS 
 
 would have passed on in an unrecognized ob- 
 scurity. Like his life, his history is incomplete, 
 illuminated here and there by flashes of insight, 
 but never harmonious and consecutive. We 
 know him to have been brilliant, erratic, no less 
 a genius in capacity than in temperament. A 
 creature of mental impulse, he nevertheless 
 carried the ballast of reverence for exact study. 
 His mind was of the vivid touch-and-go quality, 
 but lie was wise enough to feed it on the solid, 
 the permanently satisfying. " If you want to 
 read poetry," he wrote from the experience of 
 his later years, " read Shakespeare, Milton, 
 Dryden, and Pope, and throw all the rest in the 
 fire ; these are all that are worth reading." 
 
 He entered college in 1739 (a wrench for the 
 little sister, then only eleven, left at home to 
 pore over her Raleigh's History), and though 
 for two years he seems to have been rather 
 beguiled by the amusements of college life, he 
 afterwards settled down to such serious appli- 
 cation that even during his vacations at home, 
 he so bound himself to his books that the neigh- 
 bors seldom saw him out of doors. Mercy was 
 entirely his equal, so far as the ardor of intel- 
 lectual life was concerned ; and here again, as 
 in her first childhood, one can fancy that her 
 attitude toward his studies was that of dear 
 Maggie Tulliver in her ambition to conquer
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Euclid, which was not above Tom's capacity 
 and therefore quite within her own. Do we 
 not all remember that heartsick moment when 
 Maggie, in young ambition, asserted her men- 
 tal equality, and Tom appealed to the tutor, to 
 know whether girls also were intended for the 
 higher culture ? 
 
 I " They 've a great deal of superficial clever- 
 ness," said Mr. Snelling, " but they could n't 
 go far into anything." Conventional dictum, 
 made to fit Maggie Tulliver and Mercy Otis as 
 well ! And one was as likely to be satisfied 
 with it as the other. 
 
 James Otis proved an excellent model. He 
 was a classical scholar, and he saw the neces- 
 sity of forming written English upon those 
 types of perennial beauty belonging to the 
 greater past ; he had, too, a singularly clear 
 appreciation of the value of a general culture in 
 his own chosen profession of the law. In his 
 maturer life, he writes his father in regard 
 to the younger son, Samuel Allyue, who was 
 about to study law, that extraneous culture is 
 not a question of outward ornament, but an 
 absolute necessity to a man who would shine in 
 his profession. "I am sure," he says, "the 
 year and a half I spent in the same way, after 
 leaving the academy, was as well spent as any 
 part of my life ; and I shall always lament that
 
 BARNSTABLE DAYS 
 
 I did not take a year or two further for more 
 general inquiries in the arts and sciences before 
 I sat down to the laborious study of the laws of 
 my country." Culture is indeed not so much 
 acquisition as an attitude of mind, and he had 
 it in its broadest significance. 
 
 The life of the Barnstable farmhouse at the 
 West Marshes was prosperous and abundant, in 
 the manner of the time. Thg. father^ James 
 Otis, was a man of public influence and distin- 
 guished character, who owed his standing to a 
 mind of native ability rather than to any ex- 
 ceptional training. How greatly the intellec- 
 tual atmosphere of the household was bright- 
 ened by the home-comings of the brilliant eldest 
 son, and the sharing of his fresh experiences, 
 one can easily guess. His course at Harvard 
 was at a period marked by great public ex- 
 citement, both in the polity and the religious 
 feeling of the college. It was during this time 
 that Whitefield had stirred up Cambridge to a 
 fervent heat by an arraignment of the college 
 for its neglect of religious observances. It 
 shared his ban with other universities ; their 
 " light had become darkness." Some of the 
 students, during his visit, were "wonderfully 
 wrought upon ; " but the chief effect of his 
 diatribe was to raise in New England a wave of 
 theological controversy which culminated when 
 
 27
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Dr. Wigglesworth, then Hollis Professor of Di- 
 vinity, published a full and elaborate refuta- 
 tion of his charges, and sufficiently vindicated 
 the college from a suspicion of irreligion. All 
 this turmoil of other-worldly logic and iron- 
 bound speculation must have reached the Barn- 
 stable farmhouse not only through the ordinary 
 channels, but hot from the mouth of so impet- 
 uous a witness. Mercy Otis was sharing her 
 brother's education ; she was learning to think. 
 She seldom went from home, but one of the 
 rare occasions was to attend his Commencement 
 at the college. This, in old New England days, 
 was a fete indeed: a fete so important as to 
 be attended by giant expenditure and sinful 
 extravagance. Indeed, so early as 1722 in its 
 history, an act was passed " that thenceforth 
 no preparation nor provision of either Plumb 
 Cake, or Roasted, Boyled, or Baked Meates or 
 Pyes of any kind shal be made by any Com- 
 mencer," and that no " such have any distilled 
 Lyquours in his Chamber or any composition 
 therewith," under penalty of twenty shillings or 
 forfeiture of the said provisions. Five years 
 later, several other acts were passed " for pre- 
 venting the Excesses, Immoralities, and Dis- 
 orders of the Commencements" by way of 
 enforcing the foregoing act. These, with a 
 simplicity of conclusion which brings a smile,
 
 BARNSTABLE DAYS 
 
 declare that " if any who now doe or hereafter 
 shall stand for their degrees, presume to doe 
 anything contrary to the said Act or goe about 
 to evade it by Plain Cake," they shall forfeit 
 the honors of the college. 
 
 But Commencement was still a great day. 
 Even before Otis's time, the Governor and his 
 bodyguard rode out to Cambridge in state, 
 arriving there at ten or eleven o'clock in the 
 morning. A procession was formed of the 
 Corporation, Overseers, magistrates, ministers, 
 and other distinguished guests, and marched in 
 stately file from Harvard Hall to the old Con- 
 gregational Church. There were orations, and 
 disputations in logic, ethics, and natural philos- 
 ophy, and later, the conferring of degrees ; 
 after which, the mighty men of learning and 
 state went back to Harvard Hall for dinner. 
 But the ceremonies were not concluded ; for 
 after dinner they returned to the church for 
 more disputations and conferring of the Mas- 
 ters' degrees. Then the students escorted the 
 Governor, Corporation, and Overseers, still in 
 procession, to the President's house, and the 
 day was over. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that when Mercy 
 Otis, a proper maiden, clad in New England 
 decorum, adorned with the graces of her day, 
 went up to see these learned gymnastics, 
 
 29
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 she was conscious of a homesick yearning 
 for the same intellectual game, only to be 
 partaken of vicariously. From the very first, 
 she longed to know, to do ; and I fancy there 
 was in her heart a properly disguised ache over 
 the fact that, for the intellectual woman, the 
 world had apparently no definite place. 
 
 After this, her line of life lay only briefly 
 with that of her brother. He left home a 
 little later, in 1745, to study law in the Bos- 
 ton office of Jeremiah Gridley ; and after two 
 years' practice at _Ply mouth, he took up his 
 residence in jBoston. But with those Plymouth 
 years she had a pleasant connection, and there 
 lives to this day a witness to testify of it. Tra- 
 dition says that Mercy Otis used to visit her 
 brother there, and it says also that a certain 
 piece of her handiwork, the embroidered top of 
 a card-table (now the property of her great- 
 granddaughter at Plymouth), was done about 
 that time. And I like to think she drew 
 the faithful stitches to the accompaniment of 
 maiden dreams, as she sat by the window in 
 the quaint little town and looked up, quite with- 
 out intention, to receive a greeting from that 
 very personable young man, James Warren, 
 riding in from the farm. 
 
 In_JJ55^J^^s_Ojj^-jnaixied, and thence- 
 forth he and the " little sister " were separated 
 
 30
 
 BARNSTABLE DAYS 
 
 as regards the life of personal association, 
 though they were never divided in feeling. 
 For her, the Barnstable days went tranquilly 
 on until, at the age of tvvenfcv^sixjjjie married 
 James Warren, this same young merchant of 
 Plymouth. 
 
 31
 
 Ill 
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 IN every period of intense moral or intellect- 
 ual life, there are scores of men of whom not 
 even the scholar takes cognizance. The mo- 
 ment of England's great dramatic blossoming 
 is, to the million, Shakespeare's day and that 
 only. They agree to recognize him alone, as if 
 he had sprung, in isolated magnificence, from 
 a soil nourishing no undergrowth ; they leave 
 untouched by a glance the stems that flour- 
 ished about him only to be obscured. So must 
 it be in all strenuous times of whatever com- 
 plexion. The one is selected for universal 
 worship; the unrecognized many sleep. Our 
 pre-Revolutionary period bred intellect and 
 spirit, not yet knowing what should be its 
 use. Some of it came to name and fame ; 
 other, as worthy, has to be sought in musty 
 archives. But let it be remembered that, as 
 the great are but the embodied spirit of their 
 age, so the great who do not absolutely " ar- 
 rive " (according to that many-headed monster, 
 the crowd) are exponents of that spirit also. 
 
 32
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 James Warren of Plymouth was one of the 
 men who, in actual power of influence among 
 the first of his day, is yet not always remem- 
 bered with them. He was not conspicuous: 
 not a " master of the puppets," as Hutchinson 
 called Samuel Adams, that wily mover of the 
 pieces in the game ; not a man of worldly mark 
 like Hancock, thus deputed to do the double 
 duty of a patriot and a figurehead. He had 
 not the brilliancy of Otis, nor the shining qual- 
 ities of certain others among the van, but 
 throughout the Revolution he was one of those 
 quiet, steady, irresistible forces which bring 
 the end. He was of good stock. JThe first 
 American Warren of this branch was Rich- 
 ard, wlib came over in the Mayflower and set- 
 tled in Plymouth. From him was descended, 
 in the fifth generation, James Warren, who was 
 born in the farmjiouse_at Plymouth, November, 
 1126,. In 1745, he wasagradu'ate of Harvard 
 College. There he probably had the acquain- 
 tance of James Otis, who was graduated only 
 two years earlier, and possibly Otis not only 
 made the Plymouth household a stopping-place, 
 on his way home to Barnstable,but often young 
 Warren went riding down to the farmhouse 
 with him, to meet the stately damsel who after- 
 wards became his wife. After that marriage 
 (which took place in November, 1754), for a 
 
 3 33
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 long period, before its own outspoken Sturm 
 und Drang, Mercy's life must be known 
 through the medium of his. The records of 
 her entire youth have been so completely lost, 
 that I could only think, as I sought them 
 vainly, of The Minister's Great Opportunity, 
 that slyly humorous tale of the funeral sermon 
 made up, in despair of other data, from the pub- 
 lic events which had taken place during the 
 course of a colorless but very long life. Yet 
 it is more or less legitimate to regard the 
 Mercy Warren who has so effectually hidden 
 her youth, through the medium of circum- 
 stances ; not because she lived so feebly, but 
 because she lived so well. For that very rea- 
 son it is possible to assume that she felt thus 
 and so, since this or that wind of destiny was 
 blowing upon the public. She was a creature 
 so alive to great issues which to the common- 
 place mind are not great until they have passed 
 into history, that it is possible to guess how 
 they affected her even before the days when 
 we know, in slight measure, how she affected 
 them. There was never a lack of stimulus 
 from without to excite all the capacity for 
 thought and expression which, in so rich a 
 nature, could not long lie dormant. Before ber 
 prime, came our turmoil with the French, and 
 in 1759, the surrender of Quebec and the death 
 
 34
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 of Wolfe ; and she had not been a year married 
 and settled at Plymouth when the Acadians 
 were expelled from Nova Scotia (" the hard- 
 est [case] since our Saviour was upon earth," 
 and just as poignant for not having yet been 
 celebrated in verse), and some of the poor 
 exiles later drifted down to Plymouth, pic- 
 turesque remnants of a shattered community. 
 In the spasmodic growth of a new nation, 
 there was such matter for thought as to super- 
 sede the necessity for technical education. 
 
 Mercy Warren's own life had been late in 
 developing. To be married at twenty-six was 
 virtually to be an " old maid," just passing on 
 into that limbo of patient acquiescence in the 
 joy of others. There had not yet been exactly 
 the right combination of events to display her 
 powers to the world. Of course she was an 
 irreproachable housewife, and doubtless she 
 was already submitting to her proud husband 
 the poetical effusions over which she seems 
 always to have had a very genuine shyness. 
 Family life went quietly then in the old farm- 
 house at the head of the beach. This was 
 known as " Clifford," named, as one or another 
 has said, though by what authority I know 
 not, by Mrs. Warren herself. It was the old_ 
 n( ^ was inherited b 
 
 James Warren on the death of his father, in
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 1757. That farmhouse, as it stands to-day, is 
 not so different from its older estate, and from 
 it you may reconstruct a morsel of the past. A 
 street-car route leads thither now, some three 
 miles out from Plymouth (though not by the 
 old road ; that lies further inland), and all 
 along the way are manifold beauties not un- 
 like the scenery of Cape Cod. There are the 
 same knolls and dimpling hollows ; oak woods 
 fill the distance, and beside the modern track 
 lie lowlands rich in flag and purple iris, and 
 bosky thickets of bayberry and wild rose. The 
 Clifford farmhouse is within the turn of a 
 road, a small, gambrel-roofed dwelling, not 
 so much changed save that the tiny window- 
 panes have been removed to make way for 
 modern glass in more commodious squares. 
 It is a modest house with but one room on 
 either side of the front door ; but it looks 
 out on a prospect full of beauty. An aged 
 linden is its neighbor, populous with bees, and 
 gray-green willows line the way beyond. From 
 the rough, lichened doorstone you may look 
 down into bright green marshes where the Eel 
 River winds and glimmers, or on and up into 
 the distance where the tree-clad hills are fair. 
 There were pleasant walks on that estate, then 
 acre upon opulent acre. You might wander 
 down to the curving beach, and look over to
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 Clark's Island and Saquish, or Manomet Point 
 away to your right ; or you might thread the 
 woods, by some green bridle-path, arid approach 
 the Point itself. There Mercy Warren began 
 her married life, and there, in tranquil visits, 
 after she had moved into Plymouth town, she 
 didjj^rej^ammmt of literary work. 
 
 At his father's death, James Warren stepped 
 into his place as high-sheriff, appointed by his 
 Majesty's Governor ; and so truly was he a man 
 of weight and integrity, and so well did he fit 
 the office, that he retained it to the breaking 
 out of the Revolution, notwithstanding his 
 instant and undaunted stand against Great 
 Britain. I am persuaded that a very pretty 
 farmer was wasted when James Warren was 
 forced to spend his life in serving his country. 
 He loved growing things, and chronicled the 
 state of the crops and the weather with an un- 
 failing interest and delight. He had studied 
 agriculture as a science, too, according to the 
 light of those days ; and I fancy he would have 
 been well content, had nothing more urgent 
 demanded his attention, to settle down to the 
 absorbing occupation of planting a seed and 
 watching it grow. But he became a merchant 
 of Plymouth, and dealt in shipping ventures, 
 foreign and domestic. Meanwhile, he had re- 
 moved into Plymouth town, to the house on 
 
 37 
 
 287923
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 the corner of North and Main Streets, once 
 occupied by Colonel Winslow, commander of 
 the forces sent to expel the unhappy Acadians. 
 The house " is living yet," and trade has crept 
 into it, though not with the effect of any vital 
 change. It is a commodious dwelling, very 
 picturesque under its gambrel roof ; and there 
 are still those who remember it unaltered 
 within, its ancient staircase and broad win- 
 dow-seats. To-day it is the near neighbor of 
 other dwellings, but then it must have had the 
 company of grass and trees. This was to be 
 Mercy Warren's real home, where she lived a 
 life broken chiefly by Sittings to Clifford and 
 visits to her husband when he was in Water- 
 town and Cambridge. 
 
 James Warren marched steadily into prom- 
 inence of act and position. For Mercy Warren, 
 too, the great events of domestic life were 
 treading evenly with those of the outer world. 
 On October 18, 1757, her son^Jajncs was born, 
 and March 24, 1759, her darling Wmslow^jthe 
 child of her heart. His name came into the 
 family with Penelope Winslow, who married 
 James Warren's father, and he is especially to 
 be noted throughout his mother's life ; for 
 tender as she was in all domestic relations, for 
 this one son her affection seems to have been 
 a yearning passion.
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 On April 14, 1762, was born her sonjDharJa- 
 only a little after the fire had sprung up in the 
 Colonies and begun to crackle and run, fanned 
 diligently by James Otis. For events were 
 happening at this time which proved to be of 
 extraordinary import to the Otis family, and in 
 which Mrs. Warren must, not only for that 
 reason, but from their public bearing, have 
 taken the keenest interest. Now at the moment 
 when amity between England and America 
 should have been strengthened by their com- 
 mon cause against the French, and the virtual 
 termination of that great strain, came the issu- 
 ing of Wj'its of^Assistance^whereby a man's 
 house ceased to be his castle. These men of 
 the Colonies were of English blood ; what one 
 of them would tamely tolerate an instrument 
 to be granted by the courts empowering the 
 officers of the customs to enter a man's house 
 at will, and search it for concealed goods? 
 
 Previously, there had been run into the web 
 of events a little thread of personal history 
 of which the royalists were fain to make much. 
 In 1760, Chief-Justice Sewall died, and Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor Hutchinson, who had already 
 been given an overflowing quota of public offices, 
 was appointed his successor. To heap a further 
 trust upon him was manifestly unjust to other 
 waiting merit. Moreover, this event belongs, at 
 
 39
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 least by implication, to the Otis family ; for it 
 was believed that Governor Shirley had, in his 
 day, virtually promised the place, when it should 
 be vacant, to James Otis's father, and that 
 when this understanding was repudiated, a 
 sudden opposition to the royal government 
 sprang up in the son, and he vowed, in revenge- 
 ful indignation, to " set the Province in flames, 
 if he perished by the fire." To subscribe to so 
 basely personal a motive was wantonly to tar- 
 nish a patriot's fair fame. It is inevitable that 
 Otis, with other thinking men of the Massachu- 
 setts, must have looked with alarm upon Hutch- 
 inson's accumulation of office, implying as it 
 did the recompense of an unquestioning loy- 
 alty ; and there must also have been a natural 
 though unjust resentment, with the suspicion 
 that Hutchinson had craftily used his personal 
 influence to steal away the place. Who shall 
 ^ay that James Otis's subsequent resistance to 
 tyranny was not the outcome of patriotism, and 
 patriotism alone ? Only those who would tear 
 up lilies and plant nettles in their place. But 
 in that first seed of distrust sown by Hutchinson 
 lay perhaps the germ of the scorn which Mercy 
 Warren (in common with every other patriot) 
 felt for him to the end. 
 
 Following dramatically on the heels of this 
 personal affront came the battle over the Writs . 
 
 40
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 of Assistance, wherein customs and Colonists 
 strove mightily. _Jitis, as Advocate-General, 
 was called on, by virtue of his office, to argue 
 the cause of the former. He refused^Jind ro- 
 signed his place ; then, despising fees in such a 
 cause, he espoused with Thacher the side of the 
 merchants of Boston. Jeremiah Gridley, his 
 old master in the law, spoke for the rights of 
 the crown ; and though Otis treated him with a 
 winning and filial deference, he smote his argu- 
 ments valiantly, and came out victorious^ The 
 scene was lighted by the dignified Splendor of 
 the time. The trial took place in the Council 
 Chamber of the Old Town House, where, look- 
 ing down on rebels and horrified loyalists, were 
 the full-length portraits of Charles II. and 
 James II. A concourse of deeply anxious 
 citizens filled the hall, and amon^ thg fivp 
 judges who presided was Hutchinson, after- 
 wards to be unmercifully satirized by Mercy 
 Warren, to the everlasting delight of the patriots 
 whose hatred he won. That Council Chamber 
 of the Old Town House had already become a 
 theatre of dramatic action, and to review the 
 events of the Revolution is to find it hung, like 
 a rich arras, with the life history of stirring 
 times. 
 
 "The Council Chamber was as respectable an 
 apartment as the House of Commons or the House 
 41
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 of Lords in Great Britain, in proportion ; or that in 
 the State House in Philadelphia, in which the 
 Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. 
 In this chamber, round a great fire, were seated 
 five judges with Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson 
 at their head as Chief-Justice, all arrayed in their 
 new, fresh, rich rohes of scarlet English broad- 
 cloth; in their large cambric bands and immense 
 judicial wigs. In this chamber were seated at a 
 long table all the barristers-at-law of Boston and 
 of the neighboring county of Middlesex, in gowns, 
 bands, and tie wigs. They were not seated on 
 ivory chairs, but their dress was more solemn and 
 more pompous than that of the Eoman Senate, when 
 the Gauls broke in upon them. Two portraits, at 
 more than full length, of King Charles the Second 
 and of King James the Second, in splendid gold 
 frames, were hung up on the most conspicuous side 
 of the apartment. If my young eyes or old mem- 
 ory have not deceived me, these were as fine 
 pictures as I ever saw; the colors of the royal 
 ermine and long, flowing robes were the most 
 glowing, the figures the most noble and graceful, 
 the features the most distinct and characteristic, 
 far superior to those of the king and queen of 
 France in the Senate Chamber of Congress, 
 these were worthy of the pencils of Kubens and 
 Van Dyke. There was no painter in England 
 capable of them at that time. They had been sent 
 over without frames in Governor Pownall's time, 
 but he was no admirer of Charles or James. The 
 42
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 pictures were stowed away in a garret, among 
 rubbish, until Governor Bernard came, who had 
 them cleaned, superbly framed, and placed in coun- 
 cil for the admiration and imitation of all men, 
 no doubt with the advice and concurrence of 
 Hutchinsoii and all his nebula of stars and satel- 
 lites. One circumstance more. Samuel Quincy 
 and John Adams had been admitted barristers at 
 that term. John was the youngest; he should be 
 painted looking like a short, thick archbishop of 
 Canterbury, seated at the table with a pen in his 
 hand, lost in admiration." 
 
 So, remembering the days of his youth, did 
 John Adanis write, in his old age, to William 
 Tudor. 
 
 It is only necessary here to speak of Otis's 
 share in the argument; for that was the illu- 
 minated initial point of the Revolution. In 
 the words of John Adams : 
 
 " Otis was a flame of fire; with a promptitude 
 of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid 
 summary of historical events and dates, a profusion 
 of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes 
 into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous 
 eloquence, he hurried all before him. American ._ 
 wa,s then and t,bprfi hr" n " 
 
 What a story to bear back to the fireside at 
 Plymouth, and how Mercy Warren must have 
 
 43
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 chanted in her heart those splendid prophetic 
 words on which was laid the foundation of the 
 Revolution : " No taxation without representa- 
 tion ! " James Otis had revived them, and 
 made them walk in living power. Thencefor- 
 ward the drama ran very swiftly, and became, 
 for Mercy Warren, a source of intimate per- 
 sonal history : for in^ every act her . husband 
 boreja_4iart. His name is constantly found 
 appended to the local documents, as one of 
 almost every committee of public safety. At 
 the time of the Stamp Act, he was chosen a 
 member of the General Court from Plymouth ; 
 and when, after the repeal of that act, there 
 came a revulsion of feeling wherein no patriot 
 could be blamed for retiring to lament a lost 
 cause, he was one of those who, with Samuel 
 Adams, never paused to doubt, but clung to the 
 word resistance^a^d. led the people on. At the 
 death of Joseph Warren, he was made Presi- 
 dent of the Provincial Congress, and while the 
 American Army was at Cambridge, he was 
 Paymaster-General. But though, merely by 
 course of events, this is anticipating, it is per- 
 haps not illegitimate, for with James Warren, 
 what he was officially seemed to be of far less 
 importance than what he did in the way of 
 direct, personal influence. He was evex-nn the 
 side of revolt, and even in a simple, more or less 
 
 44
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 social circumstance, his attitude was consistent. 
 In 17J9,_ the Old ... Colony Club was formed to 
 celebrate the anniversary of the Pilgrims' land- 
 ing, and when it dissolved, having split on the 
 rock of political discussion, James Warren, 
 who had joined soon after its organization, was 
 among the disaffected who believed in war, and 
 who could not suppress his " Everlasting Yea." 
 About this time came a calamity which not 
 only involved the Colonies in loss, but especially 
 touched the name of Otis. In 1769, James 
 Otis retired from active political life, through 
 one of the incidents so consistent with his 
 dramatic career. He had grown every day more 
 erratic, more unguarded in his utterances ; and 
 finally his indignation against the four royal 
 Commissioners of Customs burst unguardedly 
 forth. He was too dangerous a man not to 
 have excited their animosity ; and they, with 
 Governor Bernard, had not only insinuated 
 treasonable charges against him in public re- 
 ports, but they had in secret letters gone to 
 an outer limit of accusation. Copies of these 
 letters were procured and furnished him, and 
 their reading filled him with an ungovernable 
 and righteous indignation. Conscious of his own 
 public rectitude, and aware of being estranged 
 from Great Britain only so far as a higher patri- 
 otism demanded, he was stung to the soul by 
 
 45
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 the implication of treason. His very slight 
 endowment of prudence fled away on the wind, 
 and he published in the " Boston Gazette " a 
 k-llur as offensive as it was furious, mentioning 
 his four traducers by name. Next evening, John 
 Robinson, one of the Commissioners, was at the 
 British Coffee-IIouse on State Street, with a 
 number of officers and public men, when Otis 
 came in. Hot words were followed by blows, 
 
 I the lights were extinguished, and Otis, assailed 
 by a band of Robinson's adherents, was seri- 
 ously wounded in the head. 
 This attack completed the mental alienation 
 which had already begun, and his brilliant 
 faculties fell into speedy and irreparable decay. 
 
 tis public career was closed. He retired into 
 ic country, and withdrew almost entirely from 
 the practice of his profession ; and although, in 
 1771, he served as Representative, he had in 
 reality nothing more to bestow upon his country. 
 There were traces of the old vigor and momen- 
 tary flashes of wit when he was among his 
 intimate friends ; but James Otis the patriot 
 was dead to the world. It was a costly tribute 
 which the Otis family had paid to the turmoil of 
 the times. A fragmentary letter written to him 
 by Mrs. Warren, relative to the assault, is of in- 
 terest only in the general tenor of dignity and 
 restraint dominating her horror at the outrage. 
 
 46
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 She is penetrated to the soul by what he has' 
 suffered, but she begs him not to avenge him- 
 self, nor to be drawn into that last resort of 
 honor, the duel. Non-resistance was never her 
 standard ; but she would have you resist as if 
 the eyes of the world and a Greater than the 
 world were upon you. 
 
 Before this time of grief and loss, two more 
 sons had been born to her, Henry, on the 
 twenty-first of March, 1764 ; and George, on 
 the twentieth of September, 1766. Her family 
 of five was now complete. 
 
 There was good talk in the Plymouth house- 
 hold. Possibilities were discussed there which 
 afterwards grew into reality. No wonder Mrs. 
 Warren wrote, in one of the periods of her 
 husband's absence, when the men of the grow- 
 ing nation were called together for serious 
 deliberation : " I am very well only Wish for 
 the Company of my Husband & a Little Com- 
 pany of the Right Stamp sociable Learned 
 Virtuous & polite." To such society she was 
 well used. She hints at the debates which had 
 preceded the great discussions afterwards to 
 take place under the eye of the people, when, 
 on July 14, 1774, she writes John Adams : 
 
 " Though Mr. Adams has Condescended to ask 
 my sentiments in Conjunction with those of a per- 
 son qualified (by his integrity & attachment to the 
 
 47
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 interest of his Country) to advise if it were need- 
 ful at this important Crisis, I shall not be so pre- 
 sumptuous as to offer anything but my fervent 
 Wishes that the Enemies of America may Here- 
 after forever tremble at the Wisdom the firmness 
 the prudence & the justice of the Delegates Deputed 
 from our Cities, as much as ever the phocians or 
 any other petty State did at the power of the 
 Amphyctiones. 
 
 " but if you sir still flatter me so far as to express 
 another Wish to know further my oppinion, I would 
 advise that a preparatory Conference should be held 
 at the North west Corner of Liberty Sq Plimouth 
 on any day you shall Name preceding the 12 of 
 August, but whether you agree to this project or 
 not I hope to see my friend Mrs. Adams here in a 
 short time." 
 
 From the very first, she was rich in " troops 
 of friends," and it is necessary to remember 
 that, in order to see how vigorous her intel- 
 lectual life must have been, how wide-reaching 
 in influence, both in what it gave and in what it 
 took. To consider the dearth of special educa- 
 tion for women, and the isolation of the times, 
 is to deplore for our great-grandmothers the ab- 
 sence of modern advantages; but in Mercy War- 
 ren's case it is only necessary to remember that 
 she had the constant stimulus of a wonderful 
 mental companionship. The facilities of travel 
 were agonizingly slow, and she complains more 
 
 48
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 than once, in the absence of her husband, of 
 the intellectual leanness of Plymouth ; but 
 bulky letters were always on their way to her, 
 full of a golden interchange of thought. Her 
 intimacy with Abigail Adams was of very early 
 date. Indeed, her public sympathies, and all 
 the larger interests of her life, might almost be 
 traced through reference to the family at Brain- 
 tree alone ; for she and her husband, and John 
 Adams and his wife, made a notable partie 
 carree of plainspoken and affectionate alliance. 
 John Adams's letters to General Warren are 
 invaluable as to the insight they afford in regard 
 to the true character of both. Especially do 
 they show how constantly Warren's advice was 
 sought on all the topics suggested by the great 
 questions of the day. Not only were they in 
 official rapport, Adams as delegate to the Gen- 
 eral Congress and Warren as President of the 
 Provincial Congress, but Adams is always 
 pouring in upon his friend a fiery flood of interro- 
 gation, forjiidyice, for definite information in 
 regard to events ancTthe state of mind in Massa- 
 chusetts, one impetuous query almost tumbling 
 over another in its haste to be there. In 1775, 
 letters follow one another thick and fast. " What 
 think you of an American Fleet ? " he asks. 
 Would it protect the trade of New England ? 
 Would the Southern Colonies feel a laxity about 
 
 4 49
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 undertaking it, since their own trade was being 
 carried on in British bottoms ? He wants to 
 know what has become of the whalemen, cod- 
 fishers, and other seamen belonging to our 
 Province, and " what number of them you ima- 
 gine might be enlisted into the service of the 
 Continent." 
 
 What ships, brigantines, or schooners could 
 be hired ? What places are most suitable for 
 building vessels ? What shipwrights are to be 
 had, what men for commanders and officers ? 
 October 19, 1775, he writes : 
 
 D B SIR, I want to be with you Tete a Tete to 
 canvass, and discuss the complicated subject of Trade 
 . . . Shall we hush the Trade of the whole Continent 
 and not permit a Vessell to go out of our Harbours 
 except from one Colony to another ? How long will 
 or can our People bear this? I say they can bear 
 it forever if Parliament should build a Wall of 
 Brass, at low Water Mark, We might live and be 
 happy. We must change our Habits, our preju- 
 dices our Palates, our Taste in Dress, Furniture, 
 Equipage Architecture &c But we can live and 
 be happy But the Question is whether our people 
 have Virtue enough to be mere husbandmen, 
 Mechanicks & Soldiers ? 
 
 Oct 20, 1775. 
 
 DEAR SIR, Can tlie Inhabitants of North Amer- 
 ica live without foreign trade? There is Beef & 
 Pork and Poultry, and Mutton and Venison and
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 Veal, Milk, Butter, Cheese, Corn, Barley Eye, 
 Wheat, in short every Species of Eatables animal 
 and Vegetable in a vast abundance, an immense 
 profusion. We raise about Eleven hundred thou- 
 sand Bushells of Corn, yearly more than We can 
 possibly consume. 
 
 The Country produces Provisions of all Kinds, 
 enough for the sustenance of the Inhabitants, and 
 an immense surplusage . . . But cloathing. If 
 instead of raising Million Bushells of Wheat for 
 Exportation, and Rice, Tobacco, naval stores Indigo, 
 Flaxseed, Horses Cattle, &c. Fish, Oyl, Bone, 
 Potash &c, &c, &c, the Hands now employed in 
 raising surplusages of these articles for Exporta- 
 tion, were employed in raising Flax and Wool, and 
 manufacturing them into Cloathing, we should be 
 cloathed comfortably. 
 
 We must at first indeed Sacrifice some of our 
 Appetites. Coffee, Wine, Punch, sugar, Molasses, 
 &c and our Dress would not be so elegant Silks 
 and velvets & Lace must be dispensed with But 
 these are Trifles in a Contest for Liberty. 
 
 October 21, 1775, he writes again : 
 
 DEAR SIR, We must bend our Attention to 
 Saltpetre, We must make it. While Britain is 
 Mistress of the Sea and has so much Influence with 
 foreign Courts, We cannot depend upon a supply 
 from abroad. 
 
 He goes on with an enthusiastic disquisition 
 on the making of gunpowder. The process is
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 very simple ; it has been made, it must be made 
 again. And he concludes : 
 
 "I am determined never to have Salt Petre out 
 of my Mind but to insert some stroke or other about 
 it in every Letter for the future, it must be 
 had." 
 
 February 3, 1777, comes an appeal which is 
 almost pathetic in its solemnity : 
 
 "I will be instant & incessant in Season and out 
 of Season in inculcating these important Truths, 
 that nothing can Save us but Government in the 
 State and Discipline in the Army. There are so 
 many Persons among my worthy Constituents who 
 love Liberty better than they understand it that I 
 expect to become unpopular by my Preaching. But 
 Woe is me if I preach it not. Woe will be to them 
 if they do not hear." 
 
 It is difficult to forsake these trenchant, 
 impetuous letters of John Adams, himself one 
 of the most wholly lovable characters of the 
 time, with his peppery temper, his irrepressible 
 sense of humor, his moral earnestness and per- 
 sonal vanity. Never was a truer soul, more de- 
 voted to his country's weal ; never, perhaps, 
 when beside himself with the knowledge of 
 wrong, either personal or general, a man more 
 difficult to manage. 
 
 52
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 " I write every Thing to you who know how 
 to take me," he says to James Warren, in a letter 
 of October 25, 1775. " You don't expect Cor- 
 rectness nor Ceremony from me When I 
 have any Thing to write and one Moment to 
 write it in I scratch it off to you who don't 
 expect that I should dissect these Things, or 
 reduce them to Correct Writing. You must 
 know I have not Time for that." 
 
 On the twentieth of May, 1776, he sets down 
 one sentence which stirs the mind like a noble 
 thought dressed in a splendor like its own: 
 " Every Post and every Day rolls in upon us 
 Independence like a Torrent." 
 
 All through the letters runs the swift specu- 
 lation on saltpetre. He dreams saltpetre ; he 
 eats and drinks it. And all these unbosomings 
 came to James Warren, the plain man of no 
 rhetoric, who marched straight forward, and 
 "never doubted clouds would break." Warren 
 was not only a strong force, but a steady influ- 
 ence, whose power was not to be computed. He 
 was one of those men who dominate change ; and 
 what his wife said of him, in a family letter, 
 shows the simple tenacity of his purpose, as well 
 as his affection : 
 
 " His attachments are strong, and when he likes 
 or dislikes either men or measures, the shaking of 
 a leaf will not alter his opinion." 
 
 53
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Again, a quiet utterance of his own pictures 
 him in all his mental directness and simplicity. 
 So late as July, 1788, he writes John Adams 
 that he regrets not having been able to meet 
 and welcome him on the very first day of his 
 landing in America, and adds : 
 
 I hope soon to have the pleasure of seeing you, 
 & shewing you that I am in Sentiment, in principle 
 Character & Conduct the very same man you was so 
 perfectly acquainted with in your old friend 
 
 & Humble Serv* 
 
 J. WARREN. 
 
 The tastes and pursuits of the two men were 
 delightfully in unison. Both had at all times 
 a true and touching longing for domestic joys ; 
 John Adams was not alone in wishing he might 
 dine " upon rusticoat potatoes " at home, in 
 preference to the gayest banquet under heaven. 
 Both were devoted to the farm ; and when they 
 could return to assume the management of 
 affairs just where this had been left to the 
 careful housewives, great was their joy. 
 
 It is hardly possible to take Mrs. Warren's life 
 consecutively, like those careers which develop 
 from year to year in response to personal stress ; 
 rather must it be read in reference to public 
 periods and emotions. Possibly there is some- 
 thing misleading in throwing the friends of her 
 
 54
 
 LIFE .AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 youth and her later life together in a vocal 
 symposium ; but only by viewing it as a whole 
 can we understand what a goodly company 
 this was. There were not only the Adamses, 
 but Mrs. Adams's sister, Mrs. Shaw ; Hannah 
 J^mthrop, the wife of Dr. Winthrop of Har- 
 vard(Prl5fessor of Mathematics and Natural 
 Philosophy), with whom she corresponded as 
 Philomela to Mrs. Winthrop's Honoria. At 
 one time she made Mrs. Winthrop (who then 
 figured as Narcissa) known to Mrs. Adams 
 (Portia), to their mutual delight. She became 
 acquainted with Mrs. Montgomery (whose hus- 
 band was killed, m 1 TO, 111 Hie Uttack on Que- 
 bec) through addressing a letter of condolence 
 to the heart-broken widow. The friendship 
 grew and continued to their increasing satis- 
 faction. (I cannot but feel that Mrs. Warren's 
 admiring attention was drawn to the husband 
 and wife through that rather theatrical excla- 
 mation of his on setting forth, "You shall 
 never blush for your Montgomery ! " Like 
 all imaginative persons, Mercy Warren loved 
 " a piece of purple.") Then there were__Mrs -~ 
 .Waahiagton^ and Mrs. Hancock, a group of 
 noble dames. Some of theseladies had a 
 very pretty taste for sentiment, which was 
 not totally abolished by the great themes on 
 which they wrote. Their fictitious names are 
 
 55
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 only less high-flown than those which flut- 
 tered about the "Matchless Orinda;" over- 
 sea there had flourished such pseudonyms 
 as Rosania, the " adored Valeria," the " daz- 
 zling Polycrite," and " noble Palacmon," and 
 we were only a step behind with our Portias, 
 Dianas, and Aurelias. No wonder, when ma- 
 jestic events were stalking through the land, 
 that there was some cosey joy in embroidering 
 an occasional mood with fancy. 
 
 The men of the time were Mrs. Warren's 
 intellectual comrades; she received letters 
 from Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Dickinson, 
 Gerry, Knox, and had occasionally a formal 
 letter from Washington, which, with others from 
 his wife, indicated the friendly footing between 
 the two families. But one vivid intellectual 
 stimulus came to her from abroad, more 
 powerful, perhaps, from the precise circum- 
 stances of the case than from the ability of the 
 person who exerted it. This was the lady to 
 whom she refers, with careful reverence, as 
 " the celebrated Mrs. Macaulay." 
 
 At a cursory glance, Mrs. Macaulay seems to 
 have held in Great Britain somewhat the same 
 position which Mrs. Warren occupied in Amer- 
 ica ; moreover, their opinions and intellectual 
 tastes were strikingly similar. Mrs. Macaulay 
 was an enthusiast in the study of history, and
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 her conclusions were of the most radical dye. 
 Liberty was her chosen mistress, her theme and 
 her aspiration; and her pronounced views in 
 favor of democracy must have endeared her to 
 Mrs. Warren in the same measure in which they 
 rendered her distasteful to the Tory contin- 
 gency of her own country. Indeed, the two 
 kept pace in work of about the same amount of 
 earnestness and intrinsic value, save that Mrs. 
 Macaulay's historical output came first. She 
 was several years younger than Mrs. Warren, 
 and it was when she was a little over thirty that 
 the first volume of her History of England from 
 the Accession of James I. was sent forth, to be 
 immediately rent and torn by Tory critics, who 
 spared neither it nor its author. But the com- 
 pletion of the work, a few years later, gave 
 Mrs. Macaulay a more than respectable stand- 
 ing among impartial students ; and she reaped 
 abundant laurels in the social and intellectual 
 world, was feted in Paris, and crowned by the 
 approbation of Madame Roland. She went 
 back to England so infected with French fash- 
 ions that the world in general (especially the 
 Tories !) lost all patience with her. 
 
 " Painted up to the eyes," said John Wilkes, 
 with a too realistic pun, " and looking as rotten 
 as an old Catherine pear." 
 
 Then again she fell into indiscretion : when 
 
 57
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 she was between forty and fifty, she challenged 
 the world's judgment by marrying a youth who 
 had not half her years. The passee Catherine 
 became Catherine Graham, and seemed well 
 content with the change, though she thereby 
 estranged an influential friend and patron, Dr. 
 Wilson, rector of St. Stephen Walbrook, who 
 had given her a house and furniture, and who, 
 though he was too generous to recover his gift, 
 never forgave her for declining into the green 
 sickness of so incongruous a union. The lady 
 was evidently eccentric, and careless of public 
 opinion, though even so decorous a matron as 
 Mrs. Warren does not impeach her morals. 
 Indeed, the American dame is shown at her 
 best in the large-minded fairness with which 
 she sets aside current gossip, and takes instead 
 the witness of the spirit. 
 
 " The celebrated Mrs. Macaulay Graham is 
 with us," she writes her son, in 1784. " She 
 is a lady whose Resources of knowledge seem 
 to be almost inexhaustable . . . When I con- 
 template the superiority of her Genius I Blush 
 for the imperfections of Human Nature & when 
 I consider her as my friend I draw a Veil over 
 the foibles of the Woman. And while her 
 distinguished tallents exhibit the sex at least 
 on a footing of equality their delicacy is hurt 
 by her improper connexion. Her Right of
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 private judgment & independency of spirit may 
 Vindicate the step but I fear the World will 
 not readily forgive. Yet Mr. G. appears to be 
 a man of understanding & virtue." 
 
 Mrs. Graham's own social world was not 
 equally generous to her, so far as her radical 
 views were concerned ; and one need go no fur- 
 ther than Dr. Johnson for an antipathy, if not to 
 her, at least to her theories. More than once 
 he gave her a down-setting ; for they met only 
 to differ, he to quiz her and she to retort, until 
 jocose friends proposed that they should marry 
 and make the feud perennial. Here is the old 
 story of one encounter : 
 
 " Sir," said Dr. Johnson, " there is one Mrs. 
 Macaulay in this town, a great Republican. 
 One day when I was at her house, I put on 
 a very grave countenance, and said to her, 
 * Madam, I am now become a convert to your 
 way of thinking. I am convinced that all 
 mankind are upon an equal footing ; and to 
 give you an unquestionable proof, Madam, that 
 I am in earnest, here is a very sensible, civil, 
 well-behaved fellow-citizen, your footman. I 
 desire that he may be allowed to sit down and 
 dine with us.' I thus, sir, showed her the 
 absurdity of the levelling doctrine. She has 
 never liked me since." 
 
 Mrs. Macaulay and Mrs. Warren corresponded 
 
 59
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 in a fashion suggesting the severest intellectual 
 decorum. Nothing short of a dynasty or politi- 
 cal " earthquake and eclipse " seemed worthy 
 the sweep of their ambitious pens. Mrs. War- 
 ren, albeit she writes to a British subject, 
 arraigns the government of Great Britain 
 without a qualm ; and Mrs. Macaulay acqui- 
 esces in the justice of her stand. She, in 
 return, tosses about the monarchies of Europe 
 like shuttlecocks, predicting and pondering 
 over the fate of each. Possibly she, at least, 
 would have liked to mention chiffons for a 
 change, for her Paris life had taught her the 
 value of extraneous charms ; but, having taken 
 the stand of feminine superiority, she held her- 
 self strictly to the issue at stake. Is it too 
 trivial a mental attitude to suggest that she 
 might have done better ? When the Immortal 
 Gods have need of historians, they will create 
 them; but even they do not often give us a 
 female Pepys, a chronicler of gossip and 
 custom. 
 
 In 1784, Mrs. Macaulay visited America 
 with her husband, and was a guest of the 
 Warrens, as well as at Mount Vernon. Com- 
 ments in regard to her, questions and eager 
 answers, fly about in the letters of the day, 
 and it is evident that her visit created no 
 small breeze. But like so many figures which 
 
 60
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 flourish by reason of strong personal force, or 
 mediocrity in their immediate contemporaries, 
 her star has declined, until she must be zeal- 
 ously sought for even in the company she once 
 adorned. The judgment of time has rele- 
 gated her to an inconspicuous niche very far 
 outside the temple of fame which she once 
 bade fair to enter; and "the celebrated Mrs. 
 Macaulay " of Mrs. Warren's day is emphati- 
 cally "no more." 
 
 It is good to think what must have been 
 said at firesides and in informal meetings of 
 patriots when every man " put his whole soul," 
 not in a jest, but in a worshipful panegyric on 
 Liberty, or a picture of her radiant guise. Men 
 were always getting together to exchange in- 
 formation or impressions. Daily life became 
 an incessant carrying of news, good or bad, 
 but always, from its bearing, great. Commit- 
 tees of Correspondence were formed through- 
 out the Colonies to transmit intelligence by 
 letter ; and before Samuel Adams had formu- 
 lated the scheme and brought it into definite 
 operation, it was much discussed, especially in 
 the house of James Warren, of Plymouth, where, 
 according to Mercy Warren, it originated. This 
 was her version of a debated point : 
 
 " At an early period of the contest, when the 
 public mind was agitated by unexpected events, 
 61
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 and remarkably pervaded with perplexity and anx- 
 iety, James Warren, Esq., of Plymouth, first pro- 
 posed this institution to a private friend on a visit 
 at his own house. Mr. Warren had been an active 
 and influential member of the General Assembly 
 from the beginning of the troubles in America, 
 which commenced soon after the demise of George 
 the Second. The principles and firmness of this 
 gentleman were well known, and the uprightness 
 of his character had sufficient weight to recommend 
 the measure. As soon as the proposal was com- 
 municated to a number of gentlemen in Boston, 
 it was adopted with zeal, and spread with the 
 rapidity of enthusiasm, from town to town, and 
 from province to province. Thus an intercourse 
 was established, by which a similarity of opinion, 
 a connexion of interest, and a union of action 
 appeared, that set opposition at defiance, and de- 
 feated the machination of their enemies through 
 all the colonies." 
 
 When, at the beginning of the year 1773, 
 the scheme came into actual being, it was no 
 nursling ; it had virtually existed before, at 
 moments of public exigency, and so far as 
 individuals were concerned, it had already 
 lived long. For talk was everywhere rioting, 
 the talk which is the precursor of deeds, 
 and private letters had been disseminating 
 it. Patriotism was flaming from the pulpit ; 
 it was the fire on the altar. There was Dr.
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 Mayhew, who, in his sermon^ on the Repeal of 
 the Stamp Act, in 1766, said the things which 
 were afterwards done in blood. No utterance 
 could have been more trenchant, less to be mis- 
 taken. It was like one crying for liberty from 
 the housetops. He dared allude to the black- 
 ness of the day when the Stamp Act was to 
 enter into being, and his exultation at finding 
 the cloud had passed, and his peroration to 
 Liberty, " celestial maid," were never to be for- 
 gotten. There was Dr. Chauncy, calmer of 
 temper but no less unyielding, who asserted 
 in cold blood that the cause was so righteous 
 that, in the event of failure, eternal justice 
 would send a host of angels to its rescue; 
 and Dr. Samuel Cooper, whose pen was ready 
 like his speech in freedom's name. He was 
 a man of such culture that the French offi- 
 cers allied to us took delight in his society, 
 and no doubt aided him in that very question- 
 able accomplishment of his (according to Co- 
 lonial estimate), a knowledge of the dangerous 
 and pernicious French language. 
 
 But to offset these good men of a godly 
 cause was that altogether delightful old wit 
 and Tory, Dr. Mather Byles. His sympathies 
 were frankly loyal, and he kept on praying 
 for the King and "consorting" with British 
 officers until his congregation very logically 
 
 63
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 concluded that he was no longer fitted to pray 
 publicly for them ; and in 1776, his connection 
 with them was dissolved. But all through the 
 years of his pastorate, good stories about him 
 were always flying over the Province, to be 
 repeated at every table. His puns are as in- 
 trinsic a part of New England history as those 
 of Lamb and Sydney Smith in the literature of 
 England. Tudor's stories about him are per- 
 ennially good. Doubtless his people would 
 have made him, like his colleagues, commit 
 himself in the pulpit on the subject of poli- 
 tics, that they might have him on the hip ; but 
 he was not to be beguiled. 
 
 "I have," said he, " thrown up four breast- 
 works, behind which I have entrenched myself, 
 neither of which can be forced. In the first place, 
 I do not understand politics ; in the second place, 
 you all do, every man and mother's son of you; in 
 the third place, you have politics all the week 
 (pray let one day in seven be devoted to religion) ; 
 in the fourth place, I am engaged in a work of 
 infinitely greater importance ; give me any subject 
 to preach on of more consequence than the truths 
 I bring to you, and I will preach on it the next 
 Sabbath." 
 
 He was of all men " good at the uptake," and 
 perpetually ready. Having been denounced, he 
 
 64
 
 LIFE AT PLYMOUTH 
 
 was tried and confined for a time in his own 
 house. One day he persuaded the sentinel to 
 do an errand for him, while he kept guard ; and 
 the townspeople were amused beyond measure 
 at seeing the doctor " very gravely marching 
 before his door, the musket on his shoulder, 
 keeping guard over himself." It was he who, 
 assigned one sentinel and then another, and 
 finally left to his own devices, remarked that 
 he had been " guarded, re-guarded, and disre- 
 guarded." It was he who, when two of the 
 selectmen stuck fast in a slough, and alighted 
 to pull out their chaise, said to them respect- 
 fully, " Gentlemen, I have often complained to 
 you of this nuisance without any attention be- 
 ing paid to it, and I am very glad to see you 
 stirring in the matter now." 
 
 It was he who, on the Dark Day of 1780, re- 
 turned word to a timorous matron who had 
 sent her son to him for spiritual or scientific 
 explanation, " My dear, you will give my com- 
 pliments to your mamma, and tell her that I 
 am as much in the dark as she is." 
 
 Did these shafts move Mercy Warren to 
 laughter in spite of the jester's odious prin- 
 ciples ? Sometimes I doubt it, for in all her 
 voluminous legacy of print and manuscript, I 
 fail to discover one real gleam of humor ; satir- 
 ical fancies there are many, but no gambol- 
 
 5 65
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 lings for pure love of fun. But I know who did 
 laugh, the jovial, genial man, her husband. 
 He could not only see a joke " by daylight," 
 but he was one of that happy fraternity who 
 can smell them out in every bush.
 
 IY 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 THE most casual glance at the correspond- 
 ence of Mercy Warren is enough to send the 
 mind fondly and appealingly in another direc- 
 tion, toward that chapter in Cranford where 
 dear Miss Matty goes over the letters of her 
 " ever-honoured father" and " dearly-beloved 
 mother," prior to laying them on a sacred 
 funeral pyre ; for one grieves that the real 
 woman had not been beset with the worldly 
 longings of the imaginary one, or that, having 
 them, she had shamed to put them in words. 
 One feels like praying Mrs. Warren to chronicle 
 her desire for a " white Paduasoy," or her 
 need of instruction about the " pig-killing." No 
 hope of that ! she is painfully abstract, and, so 
 far as her correspondence bears witness, she 
 lived upon stilts. She seldom indulges in a 
 request so severely practical as that of Abi- 
 gail Adams to her husband at Philadelphia, 
 in 1775: 
 
 67
 
 MERCY WAS REN 
 
 "Purchase me a bundle of pins and put them in 
 your trunk for me. The cry for pins is so great 
 that what I used to buy for seven shillings and 
 sixpence are now twenty shillings, and not to be 
 had for that. A bundle contains six thousand, for 
 which I used to give a dollar; but if you can pro- 
 cure them for fifty shillings, or three pounds, pray 
 let me have them." 
 
 Expect nothing from her as to " dammasks, 
 padusoy, gauze, ribbins, flapets, flowers, new 
 white hats, . . . garments, orniments." Nay, 
 she not only, as might be expected, clings to 
 the stately phraseology of the period, but it is 
 never bent to the unworthy uses of small beer. 
 Her mind goes ever rustling about in stiff bro- 
 cade. Those were the days of an ultra-refine- 
 ment of speech. Youths and maidens did not 
 baldly fall in love ; their " affections were en- 
 gaged." There was much talk of " hearts 
 endowed with the most exquisite sensibility," 
 of " sentiment the most refined, expressed in 
 a nervous and elegant style," and the mar- 
 riage ceremony endowed one with a " partner," 
 a " companion," or, term of decorous restraint, 
 a " friend." And of all this verbal euphuism 
 Mrs. Warren is mistress supreme. 
 
 One strikingly characteristic letter is that 
 wherein she avows to her husband her inten- 
 tion of ignoring politics for the time being,
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 having so many items of domestic interest to 
 tell him. The mind starts up in pleased alert- 
 ness. Now at last we are to know something 
 actual about the stately dame ! Thereupon she 
 describes a memorable walk with her sister, 
 Mrs. Otis. After a general allusion to the 
 " Beauties of Nature," she adds : " We moved 
 from field to field & from orchard to orchard 
 with many Reflections on the tumultuous joy 
 of the Great and the gay and the restless anx- 
 ieties of political life. Nothing was wanting 
 to compleat the felicity of this Hour of Rural 
 Enjoyment but the Company of Strephon & 
 Collin Whose observations might have im- 
 proved the understanding while their pres- 
 ence would have gladdened the Hearts of their 
 favorite Nymphs." 
 
 Reflections, forsooth ! Catch up thy skirts, 
 dear dame, now thou art out of door, and 
 caper away to the oaten pipe ! We shall love 
 thee the better for it. 
 
 You can never, so to speak, take her unre- 
 servedly to your heart. Moreover, she is too 
 academic to appeal often to a reader through 
 those engaging lapses of spelling so endearing 
 in the writers of an earlier day. When Abi- 
 gail Adams apologizes for a long silence by 
 saying that she has not used the pen on ac- 
 count of " a very bad soar finger," the very
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 heart in one's bosom goes out to her ; she com- 
 pensates, in a measure, for our past suffering 
 in learning to spell. But little of that engaging 
 sort can be expected of Mrs. Warren. Her 
 errors are very infrequent ; she is capable of 
 knowing more or less about "simme colings, 
 nots of interrigations, peorids, commoes," and 
 the like, and though her style and expression 
 are often sufficiently imperfect, it is seldom 
 through forgetfulness or lack of care. She was 
 evidently as closely attached to her husband as 
 it is possible for a wife to be ; yet throughout 
 her letters she addresses him with a measured 
 decorum as her friend, only breaking out in 
 sudden flame under stress of great loneliness 
 and longing into " the best friend of my heart." 
 Not such is Margaret Winthrop's yearning ten- 
 derness, nor Anne Bradstreet's pathetic rhymed 
 lamenting in the absence of her dear. 
 
 James Warren had no such epistolary re- 
 straint. He evidently felt himself to be a 
 plain man, with no special knack of expres- 
 sion. " I never write well," he says to one 
 intimate correspondent ; but his letters are 
 so graphic, so full of a homely humor, that 
 one turns to them with a breath of relief after 
 the stately perorations of his spouse. He has 
 no hesitation in expressing his love for her in 
 other than measured terms. She is his " saint,"
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 his "little angel," his "beloved." When she 
 is absent, he misses her beyond expression. In 
 May, 1763, he writes her from Plymouth, while 
 she is making a visit in Boston : 
 
 "I took Winslow from School as I came into 
 town, his first Enquiry was for the pretty things. 
 The Trumpet satisfied his wishes & made him for 
 a while Happy. Charles has forgot you & is in- 
 different to me, is as fond of Aunt Nabby as he 
 ever was of his Mamma, she is very fond of him, 
 & returns his affection for her in a degree that you 
 would rather wish than Expect. 
 
 ... I need not tell you that I am uneasy with- 
 out you, that I wish for the time I am to return. 
 In short I feel so little satisfaction in my own mind 
 the Days are so tedious & every thing appears so 
 different without you." 
 
 Another letter, written from Concord, April 
 6, 1775, is so instinct with the despairing 
 patriotism of the day, and ends so sweetly 
 human in his boyish fondness for her, that 
 our hearts go out to him anew : 
 
 MY DEAR MERCY, Four days ago I had full 
 Confidence that I should have had the pleasure of 
 being with you this day, we were then near closeing 
 the Session. Last Saturday we came near to an 
 Adjournment, were almost equally divided on that 
 question, the principle argument that seem d to pre- 
 71
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 ponderate, & turn in favour of setting into this 
 week was the prospect of News & News we have, 
 last week things wore rather a favourable aspect, 
 hut alas how uncertain are our prospects. Sunday 
 evening hr ought us Accounts of a Vessel at Marble- 
 head from Falmouth, & the English Papers &c 
 hy her. I have no need to recite particulars you 
 will have the whole in the Papers, & wont wonder 
 at my forgoeing the pleasure of being with you. 
 I dare say you would not desire to see me till I 
 could tell you that I had done all in my power to 
 secure & defend us & our Country. We are no 
 longer at a loss what is Intended us by our dear 
 Mother. We have ask- for Bread and she gives us 
 a Stone, & a serpent for a Fish, however my Spirits 
 are by no means depress-, you well know my Senti- 
 ments of the Force of both Countrys, you know my 
 opinion of the Justness of our Cause, you know my 
 Confidence in a Righteous Providence. I seem to 
 want nothing to keep up my Spirits & to Inspire 
 me with a proper resolution to Act my part well in 
 this difficult time but seeing you in Spirits, & 
 knowing that they flow from the heart, how shall 
 I support myself if you suffer these Misfortunes to 
 prey on your tender frame & add to my difficulties 
 an affliction too great to bear of itself, the Vertu- 
 ous should be happy under all Circumstances. 
 This state of things will last but a little while. 
 I believe we shall have many chearful rides to- 
 gether yet. we proposed last week a short adjourn- 
 ment & I had in a manner Engaged a Ch amber 
 72
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 here for my Beloved & pleased myself with the 
 health & pleasure the Journey was to give her, 
 but I believe it must be postponed till some Event 
 takes place & changes the face of things. All 
 things wear a warlike appearance here, this Town 
 is full of Cannon, ammunition stores &c &c & the 
 army long for them & they want nothing but 
 strength to Induce an attempt on them, the 
 people are ready & determined to defend this Coun- 
 try Inch by Inch. The Inhabitants of Boston 
 begin to move, the Selectmen & Committee of 
 Correspondence are to be with us ... but to dis- 
 miss publick matters let me ask how you do & 
 how do my little Boys especially my little Henry 
 who was Complaining. I long to see you. I long 
 to set with you under our Vines &c & have none to 
 make us afraid. ... I intend to fly Home I mean 
 as soon as Prudence Duty & Honour will permitt. 
 
 April 7th 
 
 The moving of the Inhabitants of Boston if 
 Effected will be one Grand Move. I hope one 
 thing will follow another till America shall ap- 
 pear Grand to all the world. I begin to think of 
 the Trunks which may be ready against I come 
 home, we perhaps may be forced to Move : if we 
 are let us strive to submit to the dispensations of 
 Providence with Christian resignation & Phylo- 
 sophick dignity. God has given you great abilities, 
 you have improved them in great Acquirements. 
 You are possess^ of Eminent Virtues & distiii- 
 73
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 guished Piety, for all these I Esteem I Love 
 you in a degree that I can't Express, they are 
 all now to be called into action for the good of 
 mankind for the good of your friends, for the pro- 
 motion of virtue & patriotism, don't let the flut- 
 tering of your Heart Interrupt your Health or 
 disturb your repose, believe me I am continually 
 Anxious about you. ride when the weather is good 
 & don't work or read too much at other times. I 
 must bid you adieu. God Almighty Bless You no 
 letter yet what can it mean, is she not well she 
 can't forget me or have any objections to writing. 
 
 " She can't forget me ! " And this lover's 
 doubt after more than twenty years of married 
 life ! All the delicate fears of love were with 
 him still. 
 
 But James Warren was no just critic of his 
 own limitations. " I never express myself well !" 
 On the contrary, when he had something to 
 say, his prose became so simple, homely, and 
 natural (as befits the word of a man of action), 
 that we would not for worlds give it in ex- 
 change for gilded rhetoric. Read his message 
 on a day after a greater one, and conjure up 
 the picture therein : 
 
 WATER-TOWN June 18 1775 
 
 MY DEAR MERCY, The Extraordinary Nature 
 of the Events which have taken place in the last 
 48 Hours have Interrupted that steady & only In- 
 
 74
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 tercourse which the situation of publick affairs 
 allows me. the Night before last our Troops pos- 
 sess* themselves of a Hill in Charlestown & had 
 time only to heave up an Imperfect Breastwork the 
 regular Troops from the Batterys in Boston & two 
 Men of War in the Ferryway began early next 
 Morning a Heavy Fire on them which was Con- 
 tinued till about Noon when they Landed a large 
 Number of Troops & after a stout resistance & 
 great Loss on their side dispossessed our Men, 
 who with the Accumulated disadvantages of being 
 Exposed to the fire of their Cannon & the want of 
 Ammunition & not being supported by fresh Troops 
 were obliged to abandon the Town & retire to our 
 Lines towards Cambridge to which they made a 
 very handsome addition last Night, with a Sav- 
 age Barbarity never practised among Civilized 
 Nations they fired, & have utterly destroyed the 
 Town of Charlestown. We have had this day at 
 Dinner another alarm that they were Advancing 
 on our Lines, after having reinforced their Troops 
 with their Horse &c & that they were out at Kox- 
 bury. We Expected this would have been an Im- 
 portant day. they are reinforced but have not 
 Advanced so things remain at present as they were. 
 We have killed them many Men & have killed & 
 wounded about an hundred by the best Accounts I 
 can get, among the first of whom to our inexpres- 
 sible Grief is My Friend DocF Warren who was 
 kill d it is supposed in the Lines on the Hill at 
 Charlestown in a Manner more Glorious to him- 
 75
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 self than the fate of Wolf on the plains of Abra- 
 ham. Many other officers are wounded & some 
 kill d . it is Impossible to describe the Confusion 
 in this place, Women & Children flying into the 
 Country armed Men Going to the field & wounded 
 Men returning from there fil the Streets. I shant 
 attempt a description. Your Brother borrowed a 
 Gun &c & went among the flying Bullets at Charles- 
 town ret d last Evening 10 o'clock, the Librarian 
 got a slight wound with a musket Ball in his head. 
 Howland has this Minute come in with your Let- 
 ter. The Continental Congress have done & are 
 doing every thing we can wish D r Church ret d last 
 Evening & Bro 1 resolutions for assuming Gov 1 & 
 for supplying provisions & powder & he tells us tho 
 under the rose that they are Contemplating & have 
 perhaps finished the Establishment of the Army 
 & an Emission of money to pay & support them 
 & he thinks the operations of yesterday will be 
 more than sufficient to Induce them to recommend 
 the Assumption of new forms of Gov 4 to all the 
 Colonies. I wish I could be more perticular. I 
 am now on a Committee of Importance & only 
 steal time to add sentences seperately. I feel for 
 my Dear Wife least her apprehensions should hurt 
 her health, be not concerned about me, take care of 
 your self. You can secure a retreat & have proper 
 Notice in Season, & if you are safe & the Boys I 
 shall be happy fall what will to my Interest. I 
 cant be willing you should come into this part of 
 the Country at present. I will see you as soon as 
 76
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 possible, cant say when, the mode of Gov* pre- 
 scribd is according to the last Charter, some are 
 quite satisfied with it you know I wish d for a more 
 perfect one. it is now Monday Morning. I hear 
 nothing yet but the roaring of Cannon below, but 
 no Body regards them. I need not say that I long 
 to see you, perhaps never more in my life. I shall 
 try hard for it this week. I hope your strawber- 
 ries are well taken care of & that you have fine 
 feasting on them. Your Brother is waiting for 
 Freeman who with all his patriotism has left us 
 for 10 days. I have Letters from both M r Adams 
 & Gushing. I can't Inclose them, because I must 
 answer them when I can get opp y I am calld on & 
 must Conclude with my wishes & prayer for yr 
 Happiness & with Love to my Boys & regards to 
 Friends your aff Husband 
 
 JA? WARREN 
 
 S. Adams is very unwell the jaundice to a great 
 degree & his spirits somewhat depress 3 . Church 
 hopes he will recover. I hope some of us will sur- 
 vive this Contest. 
 
 Church has put into my hands a Curious Letter 
 full of Interesting Intelligence I wish I could give 
 it to you you may remember to ask me about it & 
 the Author. I have shown it to Coll. Otis if he 
 goes before me enquire of him. Your Brother 
 Jem dined with us yesterday behaved well till 
 dinner was almost done & then in the old way 
 got up went off where I know not, has been about 
 at Cambridge & Eoxbury several days. 
 77
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Who is not thrilled by this simple picture of 
 a noble mind o'erthrown, the mad patriot, 
 James Otis, wandering about, confused by the 
 clamor of the time and totally incapable of 
 dominating it! The touch of yearning human 
 tenderness completing the message is sweet be- 
 yond measure. With the smoke of battle still in 
 the foreground of his day, James Warren could 
 picture his little angel in her green retreat, and 
 hope she had fine feasting ! No wonder Mercy 
 Warren adored the friend of her heart. 
 
 There was a great deal of love in this Plym- 
 outh household, hearty, wholesome love ; and 
 one letter, where Mrs. Warren does actually un- 
 bend, shows her at her best, moved by ma- 
 ternal pride and joy. It was written September 
 21, 1775, after one of her frequent absences 
 from home : 
 
 Just as I [got] up from dinner this day yours of 
 the 15 & 18 came to hand ; No desert was ever more 
 welcome to a luxurious pallate, it was a regale to 
 my longing mind: I had been eagerly looking for 
 more than a week for a line from the best friend 
 of my heart. 
 
 I had contemplated to spend a day or two with 
 my good father, but as you talk of returning so 
 soon I shall give up that and every other plea- 
 sure this world can give for the superior pleasure 
 of your company. I thank you for the many ex- 
 pressions in yours which bespeak the most affec- 
 78
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 tionate soul, or heart warmed with friendship & 
 esteem which it shall ever be my assiduous care 
 to merit. but as I am under some apprehensions 
 that you will be again disappointed and your re- 
 turn postponed, I will endeavor to give you some 
 account of the reception I met from our little 
 family on my arrival among them after an absence 
 which they thought long: your requesting this 
 as an agreeable amusement is a new proof that 
 the Father is not lost in the occupations of the 
 statesman. 
 
 I found Charles & Henry sitting on the steps 
 of the front door when I arrived they had just 
 been expressing their ardent wishes to each other 
 that mamah would come in before dinner when I 
 turned the corner having our habitation. One of 
 them had just finished an exclamation to the other 
 "Oh what would I give if mamah was now in 
 sight," you may easily judge what was their 
 rapture when they saw their wishes instantly 
 compleated. 
 
 The one leaped into the street to meet me the 
 other ran into the house in an extacy of joy to 
 communicate the tidings, & finding my children 
 well at this sickly season you will not wonder that 
 with a joy at least equal to theirs I ran hastily into 
 the entry; but before I had reached the stair top 
 was met by all the lovely flock. Winslow half 
 affronted that I had delayed coming home so long 
 & more than half happy in the return of his fond 
 mother, turned up his smiling cheek to receive a 
 79
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 kiss while he failed in the effort to command the 
 grave muscles of his countenance. 
 
 George's solemn brow was covered with pleasure 
 & his grave features not only danced in. smiles but 
 broke into a real laugh more expressive of his 
 heartfelt happiness than all the powers of language 
 could convey and before I could sit down and lay 
 aside my riding attire all the choice gleanings of 
 the Garden were offered each one pressing before 
 the other to pour the yellow produce into their 
 mamah's lap. 
 
 Not a complaint was uttered not a tale was 
 told through the day but what they thought would 
 contribute to the happiness of their best friend; 
 but how short lived is human happiness. The 
 ensuing each one had his little grievance to repeat, 
 as important to them as the laying an unconsti- 
 tutional tax to the patriot or the piratical seazure 
 of a ship & cargo, after much labour & the promis- 
 sing expectation of profitable returns when the 
 voyage was compleat but the umpire in your 
 absence soon accommodated all matters to mutual 
 satisfaction and the day was spent in much cheer- 
 fulness encircled by my sons. . . . My heart has 
 just leaped in my bosom and I ran to the stairs 
 imagining I heard both your voice & your footsteps 
 in the entry. Though disappointed I have no 
 doubt this pleasure will be realized as soon as 
 possible by 
 
 Your affectionate 
 
 M. WARREN.
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 James Warren is constantly expressing his 
 joy over the appointment of Washington and 
 Lee; and on this question, as on all others of 
 a political nature, his wife was in accord with 
 him. One of his letters, written to John 
 Adams, contains a paragraph strangely pro- 
 phetic of the reward his own services were to 
 receive: 
 
 July 7, 1775. 
 
 I am Content to Move in a small Sphere. I 
 expect no distinction but that of an honest Man 
 who has Exerted every Nerve. You and I must 
 be Content without a Slice from the great pudding 
 now on the Table. 
 
 As to his wife, her most serious apprehen- 
 sions were for him. She had an abiding 
 faith, broken only by occasional seasons of 
 gloom, that the republic would live; but it 
 often seemed to her that it could only continue 
 at the sacrifice of what was dearer to her than 
 life itself. September 13, 1776, she writes 
 "James Warren Esq. att Watertown": 
 
 ... I am grieved at the Advantages Gained 
 by our Enemies and anxious for our friends at 
 New York but I own my Little Heart is more 
 affected with what gives pain or endangers you than 
 with everything else. What do you mean by the 
 part you must bear in the Late Military Call, or 
 why suppose any pity excited in my Breast but 
 6 81
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 what I daily feel for a man whose Constant appli- 
 cation and fatigue is sufficient to Break the finest 
 Constitution and to wear out the spirits unless 
 supported by Grace as well as Resolution, do he 
 more Explicit. I hope Nothing is Like to carry 
 you farther from me. When my head was layed 
 on my pillow Last Night my Heart was Rent with 
 the Apprehension, your Life is of Great Value 
 Both to the public & to the family as well as to 
 one who would be Miserable without you. Could 
 I be assured you would not be exposed in the 
 field your refusal to go to Philadelphia would give 
 me the slightest pleasure, but a certain appoint- 
 ment was dreaded by me for many months & 
 has been a source of pain to me ever since it was 
 accepted. I ever was sensible it would cost you 
 much Labour & trouble even if you should Never 
 be Called to action & if you should I forbear to 
 tell my fears if I thought that was probable I 
 believe I should almost persuade you to Go to 
 Philadelphia but I know not what is best. I desire 
 therefore to leave you in the Care of Providence 
 & to trust in the divine protection to guard and 
 guide your steps whithersoever you go. 
 
 I fear this people have been too confident of 
 their own strength. We have been Eeady to say 
 our own arms shall save us instead of looking to 
 the God of Battle. ... I shall write again to- 
 morrow knowing you will not be tired of seeing 
 the signature of your Beloved & 
 
 Affectionate 
 82 MARCIA.
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 Dont think I am discouraged . . . when I 
 write my thought so freely & fully. I seem to 
 feel this day & Evening amidst a thousand gloomy 
 fears as if our God was about to Bring us deliver- 
 ance by means which we cannot foresee, the less 
 we have to hope from man the stronger is my 
 confidence in Him Who presideth over the Earth 
 and will be Glorify d in His doing, and many times 
 when we are Eeady to say with peter Lord help for 
 we are sinking then is His arm stretched out to 
 save. 
 
 To judge the serious and weighty character 
 of Mrs. Warren's letters, it is necessary to 
 anticipate the events of her life and view her 
 correspondence as a whole. It was when she 
 wrote her sons, especially her son Winslow, 
 who lived long abroad, that she gave full sway 
 to her besetting vice of dwelling upon the true 
 and the beautiful to the exclusion of all the 
 homely affairs of life. Winslow grew up to be 
 a handsome, brilliant young man, decidedly his 
 mother's favorite. At least, she gave him that 
 adoring love, mingled with pain, which belongs 
 to the creature of shining qualities who is 
 especially attracted to a life of pleasure. She 
 displays the keenest solicitude lest he fall 
 into the snares lurking everywhere for youth. 
 She asserts again and again, with a certain 
 pitiful whistling to keep her courage up, that
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 she knows he will not be attracted by sin ; and 
 then she refers to the "solicitude of a tender 
 parent " as her reason for continuing in page 
 after page of declamatory moralizing, which, in 
 all respect be it said, no merely human young 
 man could be expected to tolerate, even if he 
 were so filial as to read it. Indeed, that as- 
 pect of the case occurs to her also ; and after ex- 
 tended disquisitions upon nature and the moral- 
 ities, she fancies her son replying, "Does my 
 Good Mother forget that too much Moralizing 
 tires, and too much Reasoning often chills the 
 Mind ? " This is pleasantry, but it is perti- 
 nent to the case. Even when she descends to 
 what is for her a very light-minded sort of 
 trifling, she proceeds with the statclincss of a 
 literary minuet. In the failure of letters, she 
 speculates on the possibility of their being 
 lost at sea, adding: 
 
 "But if most of them as is probable are Devoted 
 to the Oozy Nymphs who attend the Watry God 
 below it may serve as an Interlude amidst tlie 
 Variety of political packages consigned to their 
 perusal in these Days of danger and uncertainty." 
 
 This is grave fooling, and not entirely 
 unconsidered ; but it is much from so serious 
 a pen. Fancy, in the days when letters were 
 weeks on their weary passage over what was
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 so truly the "estranging sea," taking up 
 a closely written missive, all the more pre- 
 cious for having achieved so stormy a flight, 
 and finding it a homily upon spiritual life! 
 Scarcely a word of the Plymouth news, the 
 farm, the willow-trees where the exile cut his 
 whistles when a boy ; nothing but a desire 
 that he may inherit " the things that are more 
 excellent. " The father's letters, on the con- 
 trary (for he in his simple human kindness is 
 always quite unconsciously challenging com- 
 parison with his wife), are full of homely 
 details; and especially in the latter part of 
 his life, when he writes the farm news to his 
 son Henry, does his account of the pigs, the 
 ducks, the hoeing, transport the reader to 
 the very spot, and make him long with the 
 writer for a much-needed rain. To read Mrs. 
 Warren at what she would consider her best, 
 and what seems to us her very worst state of 
 literary abandon, one need not go further 
 than her letter "to a youth just entered Col- 
 ledge." It need not be pursued to the bit- 
 ter end, but perhaps we shall find ourselves, 
 like Affery, the better for " a dose. " It was 
 written in 1772 : 
 
 "If my dear son was not sensible her affection 
 was so great that she never could forget him while 
 she remembers anything, he might be able to 
 85
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 suspect it from the late unusual silence of his 
 mother; but a variety of cares united with an in- 
 different state of health, since you last left me, has 
 prevented by renewed precepts to endeavour to 
 fortify the mind of a youth who, I flatter myself, 
 is well disposed against the snares of vice and the 
 contagion of bad example, which like an army of 
 scorpions lie in wait to destroy. I do not much 
 fear that I shall ever be subjected to much disap- 
 pointment or pain for any deviations in a son like 
 yourself, yet when I consider how eassily the gen- 
 erallity of youth are misled, either by novel opin- 
 ions or unprincipled companions, and how easily 
 they often glide into the path of folly and how 
 imperceptibly Jed into the mazes of error, I tremble 
 for my children. Happy beyond expression will 
 you be, my son, if amidst the laudable prosperity 
 of youth and its innocent amusements : you ever 
 keep that important period in view which must 
 wind up this fleeting existence, and land us on 
 that boundless shore where the profligate can no 
 longer soothe himself in the silken dream of pleas- 
 ure or the infidel entertain any further doubts of 
 the immortality of his deathless soul. May the 
 Great Guardian of Virtue, the source, the fountain 
 of everlasting truth watch over and ever preserve 
 you from the baleful walks of vice, and the devi- 
 ous and not less baneful track of the bewildered 
 sceptic. 
 
 " What vigilance is necessary when the solicita- 
 tions of thoughtless companions on the one side,
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 and the clamour of youthful passions on the other, 
 plead for deviations: and ever stand ready to ex- 
 cuse the highest instances of indulgence to de- 
 praved appetite. If you escape uncontaminated 
 it must be in some measure by learning easily to 
 discriminate between the unoffending mirth of the 
 generous and openhearted and the designed flighty 
 vagaries of the virulent and narrowminded man." 
 
 More even than any word of her own do 
 the letters of James Warren, while he is 
 absent at Watertown, disclose the estimation 
 in which he holds his wife's intelligence, and 
 his acquiescence in her connection with public 
 affairs. There is no question of withholding 
 from her any news of state, except it be of a 
 private nature. She walks step by step with 
 him. He trusts her discretion, her secrecy, 
 her judgment. It is only when there is a pos- 
 sibility of letters miscarrying, as they did 
 miscarry in those troublous times, that he 
 retains some piece of vital news until he shall 
 see her and communicate it by word of 
 mouth. 
 
 And she is as discreet in her use of intel- 
 ligence as he in its transmission. All are 
 solicitous to know what he writes from the 
 seat of affairs, she informs him; but she is 
 cautious. "I tell them you are too much 
 engaged in devising means for their salvation 
 
 87
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 to indulge yourself in writing so much as 
 we wish." She and Mrs. Adams had uncon- 
 sciously succeeded in convincing two at least 
 of the first men of the time that women need 
 not be excluded from the graver matters of 
 life. In 1776, John Adams writes Mrs. War- 
 ren, with his habitual air of gallantry, which 
 by no means proved him the less sincere : 
 
 "The Ladies I think are the greatest Politicians 
 that I have the Honour to be acquainted with, not 
 only because they act upon the Sublimest of all 
 the Principles of Policy, viz, that Honesty is the 
 best Policy but because they consider Questions 
 more coolly than those who are heated with Party 
 Zeal and inflamed with the bitter Contentions of 
 active public life." 
 
 Again, after pages devoted to franK discus- 
 sion of the great questions of the Revolution, 
 he continues : 
 
 "This is a very grave and solemn Discourse to 
 a Lady. True, and I thank God, that his Provi- 
 dence has made me Acquainted with two Ladies 
 at least who can bear it." 
 
 Like all those actors in a great cause who 
 value the deed and care not who bears away 
 the palm, John Adams, at this juncture, is 
 frankness itself in confessing his need of 
 counsel. He is constantly besieging James
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 Warren with a running fire of speculations 
 and hard questions, and quite as a matter of 
 course he includes Mrs. Warren in the circle 
 of his advisors. One letter of hers in answer 
 to a forgotten query hints prophetically at the 
 beginning of those fears by which she was tor- 
 mented when, at the end of the Revolution, it 
 seemed as if America might forget the sim- 
 plicity of earlier days. 
 
 PLIMOUTH March 10 1776 
 
 DEAR SIR, As your time is so much Devoted to 
 the service of the publick that you have little 
 Leisure for letters of friendship or amusement, 
 and Conscious of Incapacity to write anything 
 that would be of the smallest utility to the common 
 weal, I have been for some time Ballancing in my 
 Mind Whether I should again Interrupt your 
 Important Moments, but on Eeperusing yours of 
 January 8, I find a query unanswered. And 
 though the asking my opinion in so momentous a 
 question as the form of government to be preferred 
 by a people who have an opportunity to shake off 
 the fetters both of Monarchic & Aristocratic Tyr- 
 any Might be Designed to Eidicule the sex for 
 paying any Attention to political matters yet I 
 shall venture to give you a serious Reply. And 
 notwithstanding the Love of Dress, Dancing, Equi- 
 page, Finery & folly Notwithstanding the fondness 
 for fashion predominating so strongly in the female 
 Mind, I hope never to see an American Mon-
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 archy, However fashionable in Europe or How- 
 ever it Might Coencide with the taste for Elegance 
 and pleasure in the one sex or cooperate with the 
 Interests or passions of the Other. [I have Long 
 Teenan Admirer of a Republican lorm of Govern- 
 ment. And was convinced even before I saw the 
 Advantages deliniated in so Clear & Concise a 
 manner by your masterly pen that if Established 
 upon the Genuine principles of equal Liberty it 
 was a form productive of Many Excellent qualities 
 & heroic Virtues in Human Nature which often 
 lie Dormant for want of opportunities for Exertion 
 and the Heavenly Spark is smothered in the Cor- 
 ruption of Courts, or the Lustre obscured in the 
 Pompous Glare of Regal pageantry. . . . However 
 we may Indulge the pleasing Eevery and Look 
 forward with Delight on the well Compacted Govern- 
 ment & Happy Establishment of the Civil police 
 of the united Colonies yet with you sir I have nrg; 
 fears that American Virtna lias Tint, vat Ttfiap.bed 
 the sublime pitch which is Necessary to Bafle the 
 arts of the Designing & to counteract the weakness" 
 of the timid, as well as to Resist the pecuniary 
 teniptaFions and AnibJAi mig WigTiPg whir.b will arise 
 in the Breasts of More Noble minded & exalted 
 Individuals if not Carefully Guarded. 
 
 But Mrs. Warren's relation to her husband 
 happily betrays the softer, albeit, as it might 
 seem to her, the weaker side of her nature. 
 The letters between these two loving souls 
 
 90
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 disclose that which draws us closer to the 
 woman than we are ever drawn by respect 
 for her stately presence. We penetrate their 
 inner confidence to find her " pure womanly " 
 in her nervous imaginings and apprehensions. 
 She was unalterably brave and even stoical in 
 intention, but sometimes only by dint of shut- 
 ting her teeth and holding on. A creature of 
 fine nervous organization, she was "capable of 
 fears." Like the best as well as the weaker 
 of her sex, she was cruelly beset by the 
 "vapours." Hers was the precursor of the 
 American type, ready heroically for an emer- 
 gency, able to stand with unmoved face in the 
 van of battle, but so delicately made as to 
 become the prey of formless dread and vague 
 anticipation. For all her heroics, Mercy War- 
 ren was absolutely feminine, and with her hus- 
 band she did not live always upon the high 
 plane of intellectual superiority. It was her 
 imagination which led her into quagmires, 
 and she had no hesitation in confessing that 
 she did a deal of whistling to keep her cour- 
 , age up. Several of her letters are inter- 
 spersed with pathetic little wailings for his 
 absence. 
 In 1775, she writes from Plymouth : 
 
 "I awaked this day . . . trembling under the 
 agitations of a frightful dream you know me so 
 91
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 well I should not be afraid of being called super- 
 stitious if I was to give you the dream and my 
 interpretation thereof but I will only tell you 
 I could not but reflect . . . whether we were not 
 arrived at that difficult strait where there is no 
 passing or retreating and that the props the sup- 
 ports & the strength of my family may be among 
 the first who sink beneath the torrent but all 
 Dreams fancys or allegories apart I seriously 
 wish there was any equitable decent & honourable 
 method devised to put an end to the contest 
 and be again reconciled to old friends not that 
 I have the least doubt of the final success of so 
 righteous a Cause but I Greatly fear some of the 
 worthyest characters in the present Generation 
 will fall in the Conflict and perhaps the whole 
 land be involved in blood." 
 
 When, in 1776, General Lee fell into the 
 hands of the enemy, she was depressed indeed. 
 Then did she write her " Dearest Friend " : 
 
 "The political Clouds at the southward with 
 the Gathering Blackness towards the North with 
 the stormy appearance of the Natural World at 
 this season has an affect upon my spirits, timidity 
 Vexation Grief & Resentment Alternately rise in 
 my disturbed Bosom, yet I struggle to Resume 
 that Dignity of Character that philosophic & Re- 
 ligious Resignation you so often Recommend till 
 I feel the Courage of an Heroine & the Intrepidity 
 of a Roman matron. But I am soon dissolved into 
 92
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 weakness when I Eecollect that the Dissolution 
 of the tenderest ties may be at hand, that every 
 social joy is at stake & that I may be left a naked 
 helpless Vine without the Ceder or Its Branch to 
 defend me from the Rude storms ... on the 
 American shores." 
 
 James Warren was precisely the man to 
 deal with, this temperament, a nature near 
 the good brown earth, wholesome, sweet, and 
 equable. He rallies her delicately upon her 
 " vapours. " Thus he writes her from Boston, 
 June 6, 1779 : 
 
 MY DEAR MERCY, I have read one Excellent 
 Sermon this day & heard two others, what next 
 can I do better than write to a Saint, what if 
 she has Trembling Nerves & a palpitating Heart. 
 She has good Sense. She has Exalted Virtue & 
 refined Piety. She is amiable even in that weakness 
 which is the consequence of the Exquisite delicacy 
 & softness of her sex. she would be so to me if 
 she had more of that rough fortitude which the 
 Times & the circumstances pictured in her Letter 
 of ye 2 d Instant rec d Yesterday may seem to you 
 to require, all Nature is a Mystery, why then 
 should I attempt to explore the reasons, & to say 
 how it is that a mind possessed of a Masculine 
 Genius well stocked with learning fortified by 
 Philosophy & Eeligion should be so easily Im- 
 pressed by the adverse circumstances or Incon-
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 veniencys of this world, but they will happen 
 whether we can account for it or not. A brilliant 
 & Busy Imagination often if not always accompanys 
 great qualities, it commands admiration but is 
 often Mischievous, & when yours is not directed 
 to the bright side of things I often wish it as 
 sluggish as my own. but I long to Banter & 
 Laugh you out of your Whimsical Gloom. What! 
 want Fortitude because I have Faith. Curious 
 indeed. Be unhinged because self Interest Wick- 
 edness & wicked Men abound, when was it other- 
 wise, it is Glorious to defeat them and after all 
 the Struggle what? why secure to ourselves and 
 entail to Posterity Independence Peace & Happi- 
 ness, this is a subject for an Heroic Poem, rouse 
 therefore your Muse. Tune it with Nervous har- 
 mony to Celebrate the sweep of this great struggle 
 & the Characters of those whose Integrity & Virtue 
 have defeated the Policy & Force of our Enemies, 
 & above all that Providence by whose direction I 
 verily believe without a doubt we shall be saved. 
 
 A fragment, written in 1779, is to the same 
 tune : 
 
 "I am glad to find you are better, but strange 
 it is how you suffer your Imagination Instead of 
 giving you & all your friends delight & pleasure 
 to torment you with anxious fears & gloomy appre- 
 hensions & by that means give your Friends Pain. 
 Evils there are in the world & will attack us sooner 
 or later but certainly our anxieties cant avoid or 
 94
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 delay them . . . We have no sight of the French 
 Fleet yet. I reed last evening my answer to a 
 Billet I wrote the Admiral ... & am this morn- 
 ing to have a T/isit from his Excellency so I must 
 hasten to put on my best Bib, for our Marine Offi- 
 cers who dined on B d yesterday I believe have led 
 him to expect to see a great Man ... if you Love 
 me Enjoy the Goods of Providence with a Chear- 
 ful Grateful Mind and at least imagine that our 
 Lines are in a pleasant place." 
 
 But though he rallies her, it is not through 
 lack of apprehension. On April 2, 1780, he 
 writes from Boston : 
 
 MY DEAR MERCY, I am just returned from 
 public worship, the next act of religion is to 
 write to my beloved wife . . . Don't however 
 think I am in the shades of gloom & despondency. 
 I see & find difficulties from every quarter but my 
 faith & Hope are as strong as ever. . . . When 
 shall I hear from you. My affection is strong, 
 my anxieties are many about you. you are alone, 
 you are very social, your sensations are strong, 
 your frame is delicate, the weather is cold &c &c. 
 if you are not well & happy how can I be so. if 
 you are few things can make me otherwise. 
 
 She was not always repining. December 
 29, 1776, she writes him : 
 
 "Man is a strange being & it has often been 
 said that Woman is a still more unaccountable 
 95
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Creature : I know not how it is, but notwithstand- 
 ing the present Gloomy aspect of affairs my spirits 
 do not flag with regard to the great public cause : 
 they rather rise on misfortune I some how or 
 other feel as if all these things were for the best 
 as if good would come out of evil we may be 
 brought low that our faith may not be in the 
 wisdom of man but in the protecting providence 
 of God." 
 
 Often as she flies to him for comfort and for 
 strength, so often does she reassure him. On 
 March 29, 1790, she writes urgently from 
 Plymouth, begging to know when he is com- 
 ing, and adding: "Yet depend upon it, I be- 
 have very well & keep up my spirits remark- 
 ably." "Do not let your mind suffer the 
 smallest anxiety on my account." 
 
 She is never tired of showing a frank 
 admiration of his courage and ability. She 
 tells him : " Your spirit I admire were a few 
 thousands on the Continent of a similar dis- 
 position we might defy the power of Britain. " 
 
 But however the political game may go, she 
 longs continually for his presence. It is in 
 1777 that she writes him from " Plimouth " : 
 
 "It is a matter of equal indifference with me 
 whether I am in the City or the Villa provided I 
 have the Company of that man of whose friendship 
 96
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 I have had more than twenty years Experience & 
 without whom Life has few Charms for me." 
 
 Only secondary to her desire for his com- 
 pany is her longing for letters. June 1, 1777, 
 she writes from Plymouth : 
 
 MY DEAREST FRIEXD, What a Letter every day. 
 yes why not. I wish for one & why not forward 
 one to a person who Loves them as well as myself. 
 Shall I go on & give a Eeason Ask another ques- 
 tion & then answer it my self. yes. why then 
 truly they are not Worth so much stating the in- 
 trinsic Value of both taking into Consideration the 
 difference of your situation & mine your superi- 
 ority of character your advantages of Intelligence 
 and the Exchange must be rated at Least fifteen 
 for one. I own the paper I deal in is Depreciated 
 while I estimate the Returns at the true sterling 
 value, but as you are a Generous Dealer you will 
 take no advantages Least you soon Eeduce me to 
 bankruptcy & oblige me to throw up my pen in 
 despair. 
 
 She thinks of him with an unchanging 
 constancy. She begins and ends her year in 
 longing for him. This, on December 30, 
 
 1777: 
 
 " This extream Cold Season gives me great Con- 
 cern for you who Can so illy bear the severity of 
 Winter more especially from your own fireside 
 
 7 97
 
 MERCY WARREN. 
 
 where it is the study of Every one to make you 
 happy, oh! these painful absences, ten thousand 
 anxieties Invade my Bosom on your account & 
 some times hold my Lids waking Many hours of 
 the Cold & Lonely Night, but after a day or two 
 has succeeded such a Restless Night & no 111 tid- 
 ings arrive, my Eestless Bosom is again hushed 
 into peace & I can calmly hope the same provi- 
 dential Care which has hitherto protected will pre- 
 serve your Valuable Life, yet when I reflect how 
 many years have Rolled over our heads we have 
 Little Reason to Expect many more should be 
 added to the Tale." 
 
 To return to the beginning of the struggle 
 is to find her confiding her anxious forebod- 
 ings to Mrs. Macaulay Graham: 
 
 "Ere this reaches your hand you will doubtless 
 have seen the resolves of the provincial & the re- 
 sult of the Continental Congress perhaps there 
 never was any human law to which mankind so 
 religiously & so generally adhered as the Ameri- 
 cans do to the resolutions of those assemblies 
 and now a firm undaunted persevering people with 
 the sword half drawn from the scabbard are pa- 
 tiently waiting the effects of those measures. . . . 
 but if pacific measures do not soon take place none 
 can wonder that a timid woman should tremble 
 for the consequences more especially one con- 
 nected by the tenderest tie to a gentleman whose 
 principles & conduct in this province may expose 
 98
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF LETTERS 
 
 him to fall an early victim either in the day of 
 Battle or by the hand of vindictive Power. 
 
 "Will you pardon me Madam if I own that my 
 apprehensions are sometimes awake least Britain 
 should be infatuated enough to push the unhappy 
 Americans to the last appeal I behold the civil 
 sword brandished over our heads & an innocent 
 land drenched in blood I see the inhabitants 
 of our plundered cities quitting the elegancies of 
 life, possessing nothing but their freedom taking 
 refuge in the forests I behold faction & discord 
 tearing up an Island we once held dear as our own 
 inheritance and a mighty Empire long the dread of 
 distant nations, tott'ring to the very foundation." 
 
 And then, as some sort of intellectual balm, 
 she begs Mrs. Graham for "the indulgence of 
 a few more of your excellent sentiments & 
 judicious observations."
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 WHILE the men of the Colonies were risk- 
 ing life and fortune in the building of a 
 nation, the women were bearing as uncom- 
 plainingly the great burden of patience. They 
 frowned upon amusements while their country 
 should be in anxious mood. They forswore 
 the luxuries of every-day life, electing to be 
 clad in homespun rather than commerce with 
 the British market. "I hope," wrote Mrs. 
 Gushing, "there are none of us but would 
 sooner wrap ourselves in sheep and goat skins 
 than buy English goods of a people who have 
 insulted us in such a scandalous manner." 
 They discountenanced the use of mourning, 
 because it was imported from England. With 
 their families, they gave up eating lamb and 
 mutton, that the sheep might be devoted in- 
 stead to the production of wool for clothing. 
 When the time came for battle, they not only 
 sacrificed the lead of window-panes, but their 
 precious pewter to the making of bullets. The
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 Daughters of Liberty were enrolling them- 
 selves, and in 1769, Hannah Winthrop writes 
 Mrs. Warren : 
 
 "I went to see Mrs. Otis the other day. She 
 seems not to he in a good state of health. I 
 received a Visit lately from Master Jemmy. I will 
 give you an anecdote of him. A gentleman telling 
 him what a Fine lady his mama is & he hoped he 
 would he a good Boy & behave exceeding well to 
 her, my young Master gave this spirited answer, 
 I know my Mama is a fine Lady, but she would 
 be a much finer if she was a Daughter of Liberty." 
 
 Thus was the younger generation preparing 
 to fill the ranks when their fathers should 
 fail or perish. But most heroic denial of all, 
 these women of the Colonies gave up their cher- 
 ished tea. In 1768, the students of Harvard 
 College bound themselves to use no more of 
 "that pernicious herb," and they were not 
 alone. Scores of families in Boston had also 
 agreed to forswear it, and the rage for holy 
 abstinence spread until invention was swift to 
 find expedients to take its place. A sternness 
 of denial sprang up everywhere at the mention 
 of the word " tea. " In 1774, John Adams writes 
 his wife from Falmouth (Portland): 
 
 ''When I first came to this house it was late 
 in the afternoon, and I had ridden thirty-five 
 101
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 ^ \y, f miles at least. 'Madam,' said I to Mrs. Huston, 
 t 'is it lawful for a weary traveller to refresh him- 
 self with a dish of tea, provided it has been hon- 
 estly smuggled, or paid no duties?' 'No, sir,' 
 said she, ' we have renounced all tea in this place, 
 but I '11 make you coffee.' Accordingly I have 
 drank coffee every afternoon since and have borne 
 it very well. Tea must be universally renounced, 
 and I must be weaned, and the sooner the better." 
 
 The ladies especially, like those of a later 
 generation, had loved their tea and made it 
 the enlivening influence at stately gatherings. 
 Abigail Adams, when abroad with her hus- 
 band, sighed for the remembered joys of those 
 bygone meetings, and Mrs. Warren replied to 
 her, in 1785, in sympathetic kind: 
 
 "You seem to wish for the afternoon interviews 
 of your country, which custom has rendered an 
 agreeable hour. I assure you we miss you much 
 at the little tea parties." 
 
 The continuance of denial hardened into a 
 national habit. We became a nation of coffee 
 drinkers, a state of things not at all to be 
 expected from our English fostering. Dame 
 Warren was not sufficiently addicted to gossip 
 over concrete affairs to hint at her own stand 
 in the matter. She never tells us whether she 
 drank Liberty tea, and whether at Clifford 
 102
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 Farm she went out to gather innocent herbs, 
 free of duty, and prepared them for drying 
 with her own hands. Neither can we assert 
 from any but internal evidence that she made 
 use of raspberry leaves, currant or sage, the 
 virtues of which she must have known. But 
 her thorough-going nature was not one to 
 "come tardy off." She was the very woman 
 to make her daily cup of some native product, 
 and glory in the drinking. But with the 
 great tea-making in Boston Harbor she had an 
 intimate after-connection. One of the most 
 telling of her poems born of public events 
 owes its inception to John Adams, and his 
 hearty and outspoken delight in the Boston 
 Tea Party. On December 22, 1773, he writes 
 James Warren from Boston: 
 
 "Make my compliments to Mrs. Warren and 
 tell her that I want a poetical genius to describe 
 the late Frolic among the Sea Nymphs and God- 
 desses there being a scarcity of Nectar and Am- 
 brosia among the Celestials of the Sea, Neptune 
 has determined to substitute Hyson and Congo 
 and for some of the inferiour Divinities Bohea. 
 . . . The Syrens should be introduced somehow I 
 can't tell how and Proteus, a son of Neptune, who 
 could sometimes flow like Water, and sometimes 
 burn like Fire, bark like a Dog, howl like a Wolf, 
 wbine like an Ape, cry like a Crocodile, or roar 
 103
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 like a Lyon But for want of this same Poetical 
 Genius I can do nothing. I wish to see a late 
 glorious Event, celebrated by a certain poetical 
 Pen which has no equal that I know of in this 
 Country." 
 
 The poetical pen was ready, and it is easy 
 to imagine the haste with which it travelled ; 
 for the subject was one to appeal to Mrs. 
 Warren in every requirement. I can think 
 of no form of last resort which would suit her 
 more exactly. The baited patriots had risen 
 and asserted themselves. Better than all to 
 her mind, they had risen dramatically. 
 Driven to the wall, they had turned upon their 
 tyrants and treated them to a taste of the 
 absolutely unexpected. It was a challenging 
 subject. It roused her to something more 
 than her ordinary classical calm. Yet she 
 does not propose to execute the friendly com- 
 mission blindfold. On the nineteenth of Jan- 
 uary, 1774, she writes Mrs. Adams : 
 
 " . . . If there was anybody in this part of the 
 World that could sing the Eivals Nymphs & Cele- 
 brate the Happy Victory of Salacia in a manner that 
 would merit Mr. Adams s approbation he may be 
 assured it should immediately be Attempted: but 
 I think a person who with two or three strokes of 
 his pen has sketched out so fine a poetical plan 
 need apply only to his own Genius for the Com- 
 
 104
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 pletion. but if he thinks it would be too great 
 Condescension in him to Associate much with the 
 Muses while under the direction of Apollo his 
 time is so much more usefully & importantly fill d 
 up a particular friend of his would be glad of a 
 Little clearer Explanation of some of his Charac- 
 ters she not being well Enough Versed in ancient 
 Mythology to know who is meant by the son of 
 Neptune (who can so easily transform himself into 
 the Mischievous of every species), as there are 
 several modern proteus s to whom this docility of 
 temper [is] equally applicable." 
 
 She is, as ever, very modest about display- 
 ing her effusion, and it is only after Mrs. 
 Adams has begged her for something " in the 
 poetical way" that on February 27, 1774, 
 she is emboldened to send her two friends a 
 " piece " formed as nearly as possible on the 
 lines marked out by Mr. Adams, explaining 
 that she would have done it before, save that 
 she had hoped he would write further in re- 
 gard to his tutelar deities. She says: 
 
 tt [I] must insist that this falls under the obser- 
 vation of none else till I hear how it stands the 
 inspection of M r Adams s judicial eye, for I will 
 not trust the partiallity of my own sex so much 
 as to rely on M re Adams judgment though I know . 
 her to be a Lady of taste & Decernment. If Mr 
 Adams thinks it deserving of any further Notice
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 & he will point out the faults which doubtless are 
 many, they may perhaps be corrected, when it 
 shall be at his service. If he is silent I shall con- 
 sider it as a certain Mark of disapprobation, & in 
 despair will for the future lay aside the pen of the 
 poet (which ought perhaps to have been done 
 sooner) though not that of the Friend which 
 I Look upon as much the most amiable & Distin- 
 guish d Character." 
 
 To John Adams, what she does still bet- 
 ters what is done. This was, as usual, beyond 
 praise, and he writes James Warren : 
 
 BOSTON, April 9, 1774. 
 
 DR SIR, It is a great mortification to me to 
 be obliged to deny myself the Pleasure of a Visit 
 to my Friends at Plymouth next Week. But so 
 Fate has ordained it. I am a little Apprehensive 
 too for the State upon this Occasion for it has 
 heretofore received no small advantage from our 
 Sage deliberations at your Fireside. I hope Mrs. 
 Warren is in fine Health and Spirits and that 
 I have not incurred her Displeasure by making 
 so free with the Skirmish of the Sea Deities 
 one of the most incontestible Evidences of real 
 Genius, which has yet been exhibited for to 
 take the Clumsy, indigested Conception of another 
 and work it into so elegant and classicall a Com- 
 position, requires Genius equall to that which 
 
 106
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 wrought another most beautifull Poem, out of the 
 little Incident of a Gentlemans clipping a Lock 
 of a Ladys Hair, with a Pair of scissors. 
 
 His wife had heralded the news of the tea- 
 party, though with no poetical embroidery. 
 On the fifth of December she had written Mrs. 
 Warren words which rose at the end into an 
 exultant cry : 
 
 "... The tea that bainful weed is arrived. 
 Great and I hope effectual opposition has been 
 made to the landing of it To the publick papers 
 I nmst refer you for particulars you will there 
 find that the proceedings of our citizens have been 
 united spirited and firm The flame is kindled 
 and like lightning it catches from soul to soul." 
 
 Mrs. Warren's poem is headed " The Squab- 
 ble of the Sea Nymphs : or the Sacrifice of the 
 Tuscararoes." 
 
 Bright Phoebus drove his rapid car amain, 
 And plung'd his steeds beyond the western plain, 
 Behind a golden skirted cloud to rest. 
 Ere ebon night had spread her sable vest, 
 And drawn her curtain o'er the fragrant vale, 
 Or Cynthia's shadows dress'd the lonely dale, 
 The heroes of the Tuscararo tribe, 
 Who scorn'd alike a fetter or a bribe, 
 In order rang'd and waited freedom's nod, 
 To make an offering to the wat'ry god. 
 
 Grey Neptune rose, and from his sea green bed, 
 He wav'd his trident o'er his oozy head ; 
 107
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 He stretch'd, from shore to shore, his regal wand, 
 And hade the river deities attend ; 
 Triton's hoarse clarion summon'd them by name, 
 And from old ocean call'd each wat'ry dame. 
 
 In council met to regulate the state, 
 Among their godships rose a warm debate, 
 What luscious draught they next should substitute, 
 That might the palates of celestials suit, 
 As Nectar's stream no more meandering rolls, 
 The food ambrosial of their social bowls 
 Profusely spent ; nor, can Scamander's shore, 
 Yield the fair sea nymphs one short banquet more. 
 
 The Titans all with one accord arous'd, 
 To travel round Columbia's coast propos'd ; 
 To rob and plunder every neighb'ring vine, 
 (Regardless of Nemisis' sacred shrine ;) 
 Nor leave untouch'd the peasant's little store, 
 Or think of right, while demi gods have power. 
 
 But nymphs and goddesses fell into squab- 
 bling over the brand of drink to be preferred. 
 
 'Till fair Salacia perch'd upon the rocks, 
 The rival goddess wav'd her yellow locks, 
 Proclaim'd, hysonia shall assuage their grief, 
 With choice souchong, and the imperial leaf. 
 
 The champions of the Tuscararan race, 
 (Who neither hold, nor even wish a place, 
 While faction reigns, and tyranny presides, 
 t And base oppression o'er the virtues rides ; 
 While venal measures dance in silken sails, 
 And avarice o'er earth and sea prevails ; 
 While luxury creates such mighty feuds, 
 E'en in the bosoms of the demi gods ;) 
 Lent their strong arm in pity to the fair, 
 To aid the bright Salacia's generous care ; 
 108
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 Pour'd a profusion of delicious teas, 
 Which, wafted by a soft favonian breeze, 
 Supply'd the wat'ry deities, in spite 
 Of all the rage of jealous Amphytrite. 
 
 The fair Salacia, victory, victory, sings, 
 In spite of heroes, demi gods, or kings ; 
 She bids defiance to the servile train, 
 The pimps and sycophants of George's reign. 
 
 The crying question of the day becomes, 
 " What can we do without ? " And Mrs. 
 Warren appears with her pertinent occasional 
 poem : " To the Hon. J. Winthrop, Esq. Who, 
 on the American Determination, in 177Jft to 
 suspend all Commerce with Britain, (except for 
 the real Necessaries of life) requested a poetical 
 List of the Articles the Ladies might comprise 
 under that Head. " 
 
 It is in her customary vein of satire. She 
 inquires : 
 
 But what 's the anguish of whole towns in tears, 
 Or trembling cities groaning out their fears ? 
 The state may totter on proud ruin's brink, 
 The sword be brandish *d or the bark may sink ; 
 Yet shall Clarissa check her wanton pride, 
 And lay her female ornaments aside ? 
 Quit all the shining pomp, the gay parade, 
 The costly trappings that adorn the maid ? 
 What ! all the aid of foreign looms refuse ! 
 (As beds of tulips strip'd of richest hues, 
 Or the sweet bloom that 's nip'd by sudden frost, 
 Clarissa reigns no more a favorite toast.) 
 For what is virtue, or the winning grace, 
 Of soft good humour, playing round the face ; 
 109
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Or what those modest antiquated charms, 
 That lur'd a Brutus to a Portia's arms ; 
 Or all the hidden beauties of the mind, 
 Compar'd with gauze, and tassels well combin'd ? 
 
 But does Helvidius, vigilant and wise, 
 Call for a schedule, that may all comprise ? 
 'T is so contracted, that a Spartan sage, 
 Will sure applaud th' economizing age. 
 
 But if ye doubt, an inventory clear, 
 Of all she needs, Lamira offers here ; 
 Nor does she fear a rigid Cato's frown, 
 When she lays by the rich embroider'd gown, 
 And modestly compounds for just enough 
 Perhaps, some dozens of more flighty stuff ; 
 With lawns and lustrings blond, and mecklin laces, 
 Fringes and jewels, fans and tweezer cases ; 
 Gay cloaks and hats, of every shape and size, 
 Scarfs, cardinals, and ribbons of all dyes ; 
 With ruffles stamp'd, and aprons of tambour, 
 Tippets and handkerchiefs, at least three score ; 
 With finest muslins that fair India boasts, 
 And the choice herbage from Chinesan coasts ; 
 (But while the fragrant hyson leaf regales, 
 Who '11 wear the homespun produce of the vales ? 
 For if 't would save the nation from the curse 
 Of standing troops ; or, name a plague still worse, 
 Few can this choice delicious draught give up, 
 Though all Medea's poisons fill the cup.) 
 Add feathers, furs, rich sattius, and ducapes, 
 And head dresses in pyramidial shapes ; 
 Side boards of plate, and porcelain profuse, 
 With fifty dittos that the ladies use. 
 
 But though your wives in fripperies are dress'd, 
 And public virtue is the minion's jest, 
 America has many a worthy name, 
 Who shall, hereafter, grace the rolls of fame. 
 110
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 Her good Cornelias, and her Arrias fair, 
 
 Who, death, in its most hideous forms, can dare, 
 
 Bather than live vain fickle fortune's sport, 
 
 Amidst the panders of a tyrant's court ; 
 
 With a long list of gen'rous, worthy men, 
 
 Who spurn the yoke, and servitude disdain ; 
 
 Who nobly struggle in a vicious age, 
 
 To stem the torrent of despotic rage ; 
 
 Who leagu'd, in solemn covenant unite, 
 
 And by the manes of good Hampden plight, 
 
 That while the surges lash Britannia's shore, 
 
 Or wild Ni'gara's cataracts shall roar, 
 
 And Heaven looks down, and sanctifies the deed, 
 
 They '11 fight for freedom, and for virtue bleed. 
 
 The necessity for abstinence and denial 
 went into all the affairs of life. The question 
 of active patriotism had little to do with 
 abstractions. It was no small thing for men 
 with families whom they dearly loved to 
 pledge not only their lives and sacred honor 
 but their fortunes to the chances of the time. 
 Every patriot who, like John and Samuel 
 Adams, James Warren, and all that great 
 company, relinquished ease and preferment, 
 judging the choice to be sweet and commend- 
 able, took the step deliberately, knowing how 
 absolutely they risked their chances of stand- 
 ing well with the gods of time and place. 
 John Adams left Abigail at Braintree to carry 
 on the farm. James Warren left Mercy at 
 Plymouth, and spent his time at Watertown 
 and Cambridge. Both the husbands congrat-
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 ulate themselves that the wheels of domestic 
 empire run so smoothly during their absence ; 
 and General Warren takes delight in writing 
 Adams at Philadelphia that he has stopped to 
 call on Mrs. Adams on his way to Watertown, 
 and that he never saw the farm looking better. 
 She was an excellent manager. Samuel 
 Adams daily made the choice of poverty, and 
 the burden, perhaps, rested more heavily on 
 his wife than on himself; for it was only 
 through her thrift that the family had food to 
 eat or clothes for its back. So the catalogue 
 of privation might be continued. Wherever 
 there existed active patriotism, there lived 
 also danger of suffering and denial, for women 
 as for men. 
 
 But there was one peril more actual even 
 than tha,t of hunger or cold. When offensive 
 and defensive operations had begun, it became 
 evident that the scene of action might shift; 
 and no woman felt for a moment sure that 
 her roof was safe over her head. One of those 
 who shared the flight from Cambridge after 
 the battle of Lexington was Hannah Win- 
 throp, who had lived so near the seat of war 
 that the first shock and tumult left her cov- 
 ered with dust and smoke. After that dread- 
 ful day she writes Mercy Warren a letter, 
 which is very intense in this significant 
 112
 
 TEE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 portion, through its picturesque and dramatic 
 simplicity : 
 
 'Nor can she ever forget, nor will old Time ever 
 erase the horrors of the midnight Cry preceeding 
 the Bloody Massacre at Lexington, when we were 
 roused from the henign slumbers of the season, by 
 heat of drum & ringing of Bell, with the dire 
 alarm That a thousand of the Troops of George 
 the third were gone forth to murder the peaceful 
 inhabitants of the surrounding villages. A few- 
 hours with the dawning day Convinced us the 
 bloody purpose was executing. The platoon firing 
 assuring us the rising sun must witness the Bloody 
 Carnage. Not knowing what the event would be 
 at Cambridge at the return of these bloody ruf- 
 fians, and seeing another Brigade despatched to 
 the Assistance of the former, Looking with the 
 ferocity of barbarians, it seemd necessary to re- 
 tire to some place of safety till the calamity wass 
 passd. My partner had been a fortnight confind 
 by illness. After dinner we set out not knowing 
 whither we went, we were directed to a place calld 
 fresh pond about a mile from tlie town but what a 
 destressd house did we find there filld with women 
 whose husbands were gone forth to meet the Assail- 
 iants, 70 or 80 of these with numbers of infant chil- 
 dren crying and agonizing for the Fate of their 
 husbands. In addition to this scene of distress we 
 were for some time in sight of the Battle, the 
 glistening instruments of death proclaiming by 
 8 113
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 an incessant fire, that much blood must be shed, 
 that many \vidowd & orphand ones be left as 
 monuments of that persecuting Barbarity of Brit- 
 ish Tyranny. Another uncomfortable night we 
 passd some nodding in their Chairs, others rest- 
 ing their weary limbs on the floor. The welcome 
 harbingers of day give notice of its dawning light 
 but brings us news it is unsafe to return to Cam- 
 bridge, as the enemy were advancing up the river 
 & firing on the town, to stay in this place was im- 
 practicable. . . . Thus with precipitancy were we 
 driven to the town of Andover, following some of 
 our Acquaintances, five of us to be Conveyd with 
 one poor tired horse & chaise. Thus we began 
 our passage alternately walking and riding, the 
 roads filld with frighted women & Children Some 
 in carts with their tatterd furniture, others on foot 
 fleeing into the woods. But what added greatly 
 to the horror of the scene was our passing thro the 
 Bloody field at Menotomy which was strewd with 
 the mangled Bodies. We met one affectionate 
 Father with a Cart looking for his murdered son 
 & picking up his Neighbours who had fallen in 
 Battle, in order for their Burial." 
 
 She begs Mrs. Warren to depict the "mov- 
 ing scene " with her " poetic pencil. " But no 
 pencil of whatever sort could work with half 
 the effect of this graphic eye-witness. 
 
 These years brought a constant series of 
 apprehensions even for those at home. Ply ra- 
 in
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 outh, though far from the seat of war, was 
 not exempt from fear. In 1775, Mrs. Warren 
 writes " Mrs. Temple Lady of Robert Temple, 
 Esq.," that an attack is expected at Plymouth, 
 though she feels that the comparative insig- 
 nificance of the town will be its protection. 
 But the general nervousness continues. Again 
 she writes Mrs. Lothrop, at Fairfield, that the 
 town had grown into a confusion of fear ; but 
 that she herself had never thought Plymouth 
 would be one of the first points of attack to 
 the enemy when there were a hundred places 
 more important. Consequently, in the midst 
 of the confusion, she had reassured her family, 
 and, without taking the trouble to move her 
 goods to a place of safety, as her neighbors 
 were doing, she had set out that day to visit 
 her husband at headquarters. Imagine the 
 stately dame, "calm amid difficulties," con- 
 tinuing her household duties, and then tran- 
 quilly carrying out her plans as if the enemy 
 were not at the door! But rumor grew so hot 
 that even she had to concede something to 
 prudence. She writes her husband : 
 
 PLIMOUTH May 3 1775 
 
 Yours of the 12 instant received this morning 
 was a Cordial to my mind though be assured my 
 spirits are on as high a key as can be expected at a 
 
 115
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 time when so many of my fellow creatures & par- 
 ticularly such a number of my friends are in dis- 
 tress: and though you are likely to be detained 
 longer than we expected I will console myself with 
 the hope that you will be instrumental in the hand 
 of providence to promote the peace the Glory & the 
 happiness of your Country: and notwithstanding 
 my painful apprehensions I pass my days in a con- 
 siderable degree of cheerfulness & at night repose 
 myself trusting in him who alone maketh us to 
 dwell in safety I awake refreshed with quiet 
 slumbers : though greatly concerned for the safety 
 of my dear husband: I feel a Confidence that 
 heaven will protect & Guard his precious life that 
 we may be prepared for all that is before us is con- 
 stantly & fervently breathed from my heart. I 
 have written to Mr Hitchcock to take two of our 
 sons but he declining the charge am at a loss where 
 to apply next I shall send a part of your prop- 
 erty to some place of safety this week and shall 
 do everything in my power for the interest & safety 
 of your family : and would not have you add to the 
 load of your cares a too great anxiety for your wife 
 & children. If the public service can be promoted 
 by your making a journey to Conneticut I will 
 not make the least objection to your going. I need 
 not say how tedious is your absence : but the Great 
 Lessons of self denial and resignation are what the 
 present Generation are admonished to learn I 
 think it no arogauce to say few men are better 
 qualified for such an important embassy therefore 
 
 116
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 let your concern for me be no hindrance : & if it 
 will be any inducement to you to go on this Dele- 
 gation I will arrange my affairs at home so as to 
 leave them with convenience & meet you at provi- 
 dence & accompany you on your journey. 
 
 The important question you mentioned as pre- 
 venting your leaving Congress yesterday leads me 
 to offer my thoughts on the perplexed state of af- 
 fairs I think such a question should not be agi- 
 tated untill you have a new Choice of Delegates 
 if anything of that nature is done it ought to be 
 in full assembly in an assembly of men of judg- 
 ment integrity & fortune for nothing perma- 
 nent or that will give general satisfaction can be 
 done with regard to that matter unless there are 
 a considerable number of men of property to give 
 consequence to the measure, men of this descrip- 
 tion ought not to sit still at home when every thing 
 is afloat do you not think as Congress has been 
 weakened by calling of several of its active mem- 
 bers to other departments it would be best to supply 
 their places by a speedy appointment of fresh hands 
 for if by a little too much precipitation in so 
 great an affair or if by making an effort when 
 you have not sufficient strength to carry it through : 
 and the movement should thereby prove unsuc- 
 cessful it would have been better never to have 
 attempted it but believe all will agree that it 
 ought to be postponed no longer than the thirty 
 first instant. 
 
 I am not about to obtrude my opinion or advice, 
 117
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 am sensible my judgment is too weak : yet consid- 
 ering the difficult & perplexed state of affairs I 
 think every one who is capable of any reflection 
 should divulge their sentiments: which may be 
 rejected if purile & indigested: or improved to 
 advantage if they contain any hint that can con- 
 tribute to general utility. 
 
 Your son Winslow the bearer of this has so 
 great a desire to see the American army that I 
 thought proper to consent : as I supposed it would 
 have no 111 Effect upon his millitary disposition 
 but would have him return as soon as possible 
 by your son you will let me know if I must en- 
 gage the house at taunton as it is likely to be 
 taken up by the inhabitants of Boston Your 
 advice in every step is requested by your 
 
 affectionate M WARREN- 
 
 since the above have heard a number 
 of Marines are landed at Boston and 
 a formidable body of British troops near 
 at hand 
 
 There is something in that agitated post- 
 script which, even after so many days, is 
 calculated to stir the blood. Not so did Mrs. 
 Warren write in her moments of ease ! 
 
 Four days later her husband writes John 
 Adams from Watertown: 
 
 " After I had Executed my Commission at Provi- 
 dence I returned Home set Mrs. Warren down in 
 118
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 her own habitation, made the last provision I could 
 for the security of our Family and some of our 
 Effects which we Considered to be not very safe at 
 Plymouth. & I Immediately hastened to this 
 place in order to Contribute my mite to the pub- 
 lick service in this Exigence of affairs. ... I 
 could for myself wish to see your Friends "Wash- 
 ington & Lee at the Head of it [the army] & 
 yet dare not propose it though I have it in Con- 
 templation." 
 
 But though Mrs. Warren was more tranquil 
 in the circumstances of her life than certain 
 other women of the time, she suffered much 
 from loneliness. 
 
 "I shall soon be impatient to hear from you," 
 she writes her husband, "and more so to see you 
 remind our friends to write often. Tell Dr. 
 Winthrop I long to be at their social fire side lis- 
 tening to the delightful Voice of real friendship 
 and the language of philosophy." 
 
 Her husband was often with the Winthrops ; 
 for they lived at Cambridge, whither his duties 
 led him. 
 
 The moment never comes when he can leave 
 Madame Mercy for a stay at Watertown or 
 Cambridge without taking her heart with him. 
 In his absence she is desolate indeed. On 
 December 11, 1775, she writes Mrs. Adams:
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 "You have sisters at Hand & Many Agreeable 
 friends around you which I have not. I have not 
 seen a friend of an afternoon Nor spent one abroad 
 Except once or twice I Kode out since I came from 
 Braintree." 
 
 Mrs. Adams occasionally visits her at 
 Plymouth; but there is always a longer or 
 shorter stop at Braintree when Mrs. Warren 
 goes to Watertown for a stay with her hus- 
 band. The two stop over, if not for a visit, 
 for a friendly call, and then there is warm ex- 
 change, not only of sentiments, but the tragic 
 knowledge of the times. July 14, 1775, Mrs. 
 Warren writes her Portia relative to a little 
 visit which she has just made at Braintree, 
 and she wonders how it could have been so 
 tranquil in the midst of war and alarm. 
 (They were getting the habit of daily mis- 
 fortune, these patriots !) But the conclusion 
 is the thing, pregnant betrayal of her ever- 
 present impatience under inaction. "Every- 
 thing is Hostile," she says, "yet Nothing 
 Vigorous." She would have had her country's 
 enemies slain and buried without undue dis- 
 crimination. That entire year was a grievous 
 one, full of alarms and confusion, even with the 
 drawback of " nothing vigorous. " Mrs. War- 
 ren did not always find Plymouth a peaceful 
 resort when she unwillingly left her "friend "
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 and returned to her lonely "habitation." She 
 writes thence, September 11, 1775 : 
 
 "I arrived in safety at my own Habitation & 
 found my family in Health though sickness rages 
 around us and Death has been knocking at the 
 doors of my Nearest Neighbours. The uncommon 
 Mortality which everywhere prevails is a Dark 
 frown of Heaven upon the Land." 
 
 Mrs. Warren was said by her contempora- 
 ries to have been a mistress of social grace, 
 and especially of the elusive charm of con- 
 versation. A eulogy of the time thus bears 
 testimony : 
 
 "Her talents as a writer were exceeded by her 
 powers of conversation. In the charms and graces 
 of this amiable art she was surpassed by none. 
 Grave or playful, serious or facetious, as the sub- 
 ject or the occasion required; imposing restraint 
 only upon indecorum, and inspiring modest merit 
 with confidence; copious in expression, complacent 
 in manner, clear in argument, uniform in elegance, 
 varying in grace, and never forgetful of the dig- 
 nity of her sex and character, she charmed or be- 
 guiled into silence and approbation, those whom 
 she failed to persuade or convince." 
 
 Yet with so many incentives to the delights 
 of a social life, she seemed to be little inter- 
 ested in the amusements in Watertown; but 
 121
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 that is only because she cared so passionately 
 for the society of her "friend." Moreover, 
 the times were too grave for much social 
 beguilement. No woman could give her mind 
 to gayety while Rome was burning. Grave 
 speculations occupied her time; real dangers 
 confronted her. She had to wonder how she 
 might chance to feel when, as was eminently 
 probable, she might be driven into the woods 
 by the remorseless Britons. Mrs. Adams 
 agrees with her in a disinclination for diver- 
 sion. She implores her to write very often 
 "whilst you tarry at Watertown. " She 
 adds : 
 
 "I fear I shall not see you at Watertown. I 
 feel but little inclination to go into company 
 I have no son big enough to accompany me, and 
 two women cannot make out so well as when they 
 are more naturally coupled. I do not fancy riding 
 through roxbury with only a female partner. So 
 believe you will not see Your Portia." 
 
 These two women not only compare their 
 sentiments of unshaken trust in the good that 
 is "the final goal of ill," and their belief in 
 the validity of resistance, but they occa- 
 sionally look danger in the face and with 
 unshaken nerve set down "his form and 
 pressure." January 28, 1775, Mrs. Warren
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 writes that she perceives from her friend's last 
 letter the apprehensions under which she is 
 suffering. She owns their validity : 
 
 " I am very sensible with you my dear M r8 Adams 
 that by our Happy Connection with partners of 
 Distinguish^ Zeal integrity & Virtue, who would 
 be Marked out as Early Victims to successful Tyr- 
 any, we should thereby be subjected to peculiar 
 afflictions, but yet we shall never wish them to do 
 anything for our sakes Kepugnant to Honour or 
 Conscience but though we may ... be willing 
 to suffer pain & poverty with them, Rather than 
 they should deviate from their Noble Principles 
 of Integrity & Honour, yet where would be our 
 Constancy & Fortitude Without Their assistence 
 to support the Wounded Mind. And Which of 
 us should have the Courage of an Aria or A Portia 
 in A Day of trial like theirs, for myself I dare 
 not Boast and pray Heaven that Neither M r Adams 
 nor my friend may be Ever Called to such a Dread- 
 ful proof of Magnanimity. I do not mean to die 
 by our own hand Rather than submit to the yoke 
 of Servitude & survive the Companions of our 
 Hearts, nor do I think it would have been the 
 Case with either of those Celebrated Ladies had they 
 lived in the Days of Christianity, for I think it is 
 much greater proof of an Heroic soul to struggle 
 with the Calamities of life and patiently Eesign 
 ourselves to the Evils we Cannot avoid than cow- 
 ardly to shrink from the post alloted us by the 
 
 123
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 great Director of the Theatre of the Universe 
 Before we have finished our part in the Drama of 
 life." 
 
 These fears are destined to walk with her 
 throughout the struggle. On February 27, 
 1774, she writes: 
 
 "... Shall I own to you that the "Woman & 
 the Mother daily arouse my fears & fill my Heart 
 with anxious Concern for the decission of the 
 Mighty Controversy between Great Britain & 
 the Colonies, for if the sword must finally termi- 
 nate the dispute besides the feelings of Humanity 
 for the Complicated distress of the Community, 
 no one has at stake a Larger share of Domestic 
 Felicity than myself, for not to mention my fears 
 for him with whom I am most tenderly connected : 
 Methinks I see no less than five sons who must 
 buckle on the Harness and perhaps fall a sacrifice." 
 
 But she reiterates her determination to 
 utter no complaint; she will leave it "in his 
 Hand who wills the universal Happiness of 
 his Creatures." 
 
 Her vivid imagination was, as her husband 
 rallyingly declared, an enemy that lived al- 
 ways within her gates. Yet her dark appre- 
 hensions were supported by all the probabilities 
 of the hour. " But oh ! " she writes, October 
 15, 1776, "the Dread of Loosing all that 
 
 124
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 this World can Bestow by one Costly sacrifice 
 keeps my Mind in Continual Alarm. " In the 
 fear of loss, she died daily. The realization 
 of what her costly sacrifice might be consti- 
 tuted the actual sacrifice of the moment. 
 
 But though Abigail Adams, absorbed in 
 agricultural and domestic problems, had no 
 heart for any social circle from which her 
 husband must be absent, she was not averse 
 to news from the centres of social life. She 
 besieges Mrs. Warren for portraits of those 
 whom she meets while at her husband's side, 
 portraits of the officers' ladies, portraits of 
 the officers themselves. For James Warren 
 was on friendly and intimate terms with all 
 the notabilities of Cambridge, and his wife had 
 ample facilities for character drawing. I love 
 to see her take her pen in hand, and sit down 
 to the task with a well-satisfied sigh, warmly 
 interested in human creatures, and modestly 
 conscious of being able to hit them off ! Here 
 is a sample of her skill : 
 
 WATERTOWN April 17, 1776 
 
 If my dear friend Required only a very Long 
 Letter to make it agreeable I Could easily gratify 
 her but I know there must be many more Eequi- 
 sites to make it pleasing to her taste, if you 
 Measure by Lines I Can at once Comply, if by 
 
 125
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 sentiment I fear I shall fall short, but as Curi- 
 osity seems to be awake with Eegard to the Com- 
 pany I keep & the Manner of spending my time 
 I will endeavour to gratify you. I arrived at my 
 Lodgings before Dinner the day I Left you, found 
 an obliging family Convenient Room & in the 
 Main an agreable set of Lodgers. Next Morn- 
 ing I took a Ride to Cambridge and waited on 
 M r8 Washington at 11 o clock where I was Re- 
 ceived with the politeness & Respect shown in a 
 first interview among the well bred & with the 
 Ease & Cordiallity of friendship of a much Earlier 
 date, if you wish to hear more of this Ladys Char- 
 acter I will tell you I think the Complacency of her 
 Manners speaks at once the Benevolence of her Heart 
 & her affability Candor & Gentleness quallify her 
 to soften the hours of private Life or to sweeten 
 the Cares of the Hero & smooth the Rugged scenes 
 of War. I did not dine with her though much 
 urg'd but Engaged to spend the ensuing day at 
 headquarters. She desired me to Name an early 
 hour in the Morning when she would send her 
 Chariot and Accompany me to see the Deserted 
 Lines of the enemy and the Ruins of Charleston. 
 A Melancholy sight the Last which Evinces the 
 Barbaraty of the foe & leaves a Deep impression 
 of the suffering of that unhappy town. M r Custice 
 is the only son of the Lady [I] Have Discribed, 
 a sensible Modest agreeable young Man. His 
 Lady a Daughter of Coll Calvert of Mariland, ap- 
 pears to be of an Engaging Disposition but of so 
 
 126
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 Extremely Delicate a Constitution, that it Deprives 
 her as well as her friends of part of the pleasure 
 which I am persuaded would Eesult from her Con- 
 versation did she enjoy a greater Share of Health. 
 She is pretty, genteel Easy & Agreable, hut a 
 kind of Languor about her prevents her being so 
 sociable as some Ladies, yet it is evident it is not 
 owing to that want of Vivacity which renders 
 youth agreable, but to a want of health which 
 a Little Clouds her spirits. 
 
 But there was one enemy of the time which 
 was sufficiently grewsome, and yet, from a 
 social aspect, so amusing that it deserves 
 consideration. This was the small-pox. It 
 was no new visitor, nor was the remedy of 
 inoculation new. The disease was in evidence 
 early and late, and in 1721 it had laid Boston 
 waste. At that time inoculation had been 
 introduced into England, despite great opposi- 
 tion, by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She 
 had begun the crusade by operating on her 
 little daughter, and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, of 
 Boston, had the same courage of conviction. 
 He inoculated his own son, a child of six, a 
 proceeding which was thought little short of 
 murderous. But Cotton Mather stood loyally 
 by him; he even invited the physicians to 
 meet for consultation, " that whoever first be- 
 gins this practice may have the concurrence 
 
 127
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 of his worthy brethren to fortify him." But 
 the physicians were wary even of this godly 
 divine, and Dr. Boylston went on his lonely 
 way, still inoculating. Out of the two hun- 
 dred and eighty-six persons operated on but 
 six died, and of the five thousand seven hun- 
 dred and fifty-nine not inoculated, eight hun- 
 dred and forty-four died. This was sufficiently 
 hard for the growth of the town thus early in 
 its history ; but in 1776, when even a slight 
 impulse was sufficient to distract the public 
 mind, the reappearance of the disease proved 
 to be no small matter. But, as its previous 
 visits had shown, the social side of the case 
 was full of humor. Hospitals for inoculation 
 were established, and patients compared notes 
 with avidity. The hospitals were no new 
 thing, nor was the social complexion of the 
 occasion. Mrs. Earle quotes a letter from a 
 Boston merchant to Colonel Wentworth, in 
 1775: 
 
 "'Mr. Storerhas invited Mrs. Martin to take 
 the small-pox in her house ; if Mrs. Wentworth 
 desires to get rid of her fears in the same way 
 we will accommodate her in the best way we can. 
 I 've several friends that I Ve invited, and none 
 of them will be more welcome than Mrs. Went- 
 worth . ' 
 
 "These brave classes took their various puri- 
 
 128
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 fying and sudorific medicines in cheerful concert, 
 were ' grafted ' together, ' broke out ' together, 
 were feverish together, sweat together, scaled off 
 together, and convalesced together." 
 
 Hannah Winthrop writes to Mrs. Warren : 
 
 ' ' The reigning suhject is the Small Pox. Boston 
 has given up its Fears of an invasion & is busily 
 employd in Communicating the Infection. Straw 
 Beds & Cribs are daily Carted into the Town. 
 That ever prevailing Passion of following the 
 Fashion is as predominent at this time as ever. 
 Men Women & children eagerly crowding to in- 
 noculate is I think as modish as running away 
 from the Troops of a barbarous George was the 
 last year." 
 
 The local letters of the time are full of it. 
 July 24, 1776, John Adams writes to James 
 Warren : 
 
 "This, I suppose, will find you at Boston, 
 growing well of the Small Pox. This Distemper 
 is the King of Terrors to America this year. 
 We shall suffer as much by it as we did last Year 
 by the Scarcity of Powder. And therefore I could 
 wish, that the whole people was inoculated it 
 gives me great pleasure to learn that such numbers 
 have removed to Boston, for the sake of going 
 through it, and that Innoculation is permitted in 
 every town. 
 
 9 129
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 11 1 rejoice at the spread of the Small Pox, on 
 another account, having had the Small Pox, was 
 the merit, which originally, recommended me to 
 this lofty Station. This Merit is now likely to 
 be common enough, & I shall stand a Chance 
 to be relieved. Let some others come here and 
 see the Beauties and Sublimities of a Continental 
 Congress. I will stay no longer. A Hide to 
 Philadelphia, after the Small Pox, will contribute 
 prodigiously to the Restoration of your Health.' 7 
 
 On August 17, he writes : " I had a letter 
 from you by the Post yesterday, congratulate 
 you and your other self, on your happy Pas- 
 sage, through the Small Pox." 
 
 Enter now an old Tory friend of ours to 
 enliven the situation. This reminiscence, in 
 the words of John Adams, is relative to his 
 own previous experience: 
 
 "After having been ten or eleven days inocu- 
 lated, I lay lolling on my bed in Major Cunning- 
 ham's chamber under the tree of liberty, with half 
 a dozen young fellows as lazy as myself, all wait- 
 ing and wishing for symptoms and eruptions; all 
 of a sudden appeared at the chamber door the 
 reverend Doctor [Mather Byles] with his rosy face, 
 many-curled wig, and pontifical air and gait. ' I 
 have been thinking,' says he, 'that the clergy of 
 this town ought upon this occasion to adopt the 
 benediction of the Romish clergy, and, when we 
 
 130
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 enter the apartment of the sick, to say in the for- 
 eign pronouncation Pax tecum I ' These words are 
 pronounced by foreigners, as the Dr. pronounced 
 them, < Pox take 'em.' " 
 
 Here is another picture of the time, written 
 by James Warren to John Adams : 
 
 BOSTON July 17 1776 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, When you are Informed that 
 in the variety of Changes that have taken place in 
 this Town it is now become a great Hospital for In- 
 oculation you wilt wonder to see a Letter from me 
 dated here, but so it is that the rage for Inocula- 
 tion prevailing here has whirled me into its vortex 
 & brought me with my other self into the Crowd 
 of Patients with which this Town is now filled, 
 here is a collection of Good, Bad, & Indifferent of 
 all Orders, Sexes, Ages & Conditions, your good 
 Lady & Family among the first, she will give you 
 (I presume) such an ace' of herself &c as makes it 
 unnecessary for me to say more on that head. She 
 will perhaps tell you that this is the reigning sub- 
 ject of conversation, & ffhat even Politics might 
 have been suspended for a Time if your Declara- 
 tion of Independence & some other political Move- 
 ments of yours had not reached us. the Declara- 
 tion came on Saturday & diffused a general Joy. 
 Every one of us feels more Important than ever, 
 we now congratulate each other as Freemen, it 
 has really raised our Spirits to a Tone Beneficial 
 to mitigate the Malignancy of the Small Pox, & 
 131
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 what is of more consequence seems to animate and 
 inspire every one to support & defend the Inde- 
 pendency he feels. I shall Congratulate you on 
 the Occasion & so leave this subject, & go to one 
 not quite so agreeable. Congress have acted a part 
 with regard to this Colony, shall I say cunning or 
 Politic, or only Curious, or is it the Effect of Agita- 
 tion, has the approach of Lord Howe had such an 
 effect on the Southern Colonies that they have for- 
 got the very Extensive Sea Coast we have to de- 
 fend, the Armed Vessels we have to Man from 
 South Carolina to the Northern Limits of the 
 United Colonies, that a large part of the Conti- 
 nental Army is made up from this Colony, that the 
 General has not only got our Men but our Arms 
 & that they within two months ordered a reinforce- 
 ment of three Battalions to the five already here. 
 Lucky for us you did not give time to raise these 
 before your other requisitions reached us, or we 
 should have been striped indeed, dont the South- 
 ern Colonies think this worth defending, or do they 
 think with half our men gone the remainder can 
 defend it with Spears & darts, or with Slings (as 
 David slew Goliah). I was surprised to find the 
 Whole five Battalions called away, no determina- 
 tion is yet taken how their places shall be supplyed. 
 ... I cant describe the Alteration & the Gloomy 
 appearance of this Town. No Business, no Busy 
 horses but those of the Physicians. Euins of Build- 
 ings, wharfs &c &c wherever you go, & the streets 
 covered with Grass. 
 
 132
 
 THE WOMAN'S PART 
 
 Here appears the domestic atmosphere of 
 the question, set forth in a letter from Mercy 
 Warren to her husband : 
 
 PLIMOUTH 25 Nov 1776. 
 
 The letter my dear Mr. Warren will receive to- 
 morrow I almost wish I had not wrote. I own I 
 was a litle too Low spirited, but my mind was 
 oppressed & I wanted to unbosom, it is this even- 
 ing no less free from care though I feel a little 
 Differently. I was ready to think the task of 
 Governing & Regulating my Children alone al- 
 most too much I now am forced to strive hard 
 to keep out the Gloomy apprehension that the 
 Burden may soon be lessened in some painful 
 way. I have been this afternoon at the hospital 
 wbere I left your three youngest sons. Poor Chil- 
 dren it was not possible to make them willing 
 to give up the project, they thought it a mighty 
 priviledge to be innoculated. I wish nor they nor 
 we may have Reason to Eegret it but I cannot 
 feel quite at Ease I Want to Discourage Winslow 
 from going in yet am afraid. Their accomoda- 
 tions are not altogether to my liking nor are their 
 Nurses sufficient but they talk of getting more & 
 better but if my dear Children should be very 
 ill I must go & take Charge of them myself Incon- 
 venient as it is 48 persons were innoculated this 
 afternoon & near as many will offer to-morrow. I 
 think it is too many for one Class. But there they 
 are & it is as easy for the Great phisition of soul 
 133
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 & Body to Lend Healing Mercy to the Multitude as 
 to the Few, and if He Brings them Back in safty to 
 their several Habitations I hope we shall Adore the 
 Hand that Heals, and give Glory to the Eock of 
 our salvation. 
 
 Weusday 24 of Nov. Your house Looks Lonely 
 and Deserted in a manner you can hardly conceive 
 but three or four weeks will soon run away & if 
 my family should then be Returned in safty to my 
 own Roof I shall be thankful Indeed. 
 
 They were returned "in safty," and per- 
 haps nothing shows so truly the anxiety their 
 mother had suffered as the havoc thereby 
 wrought in her spelling. The " Great phisi- 
 tion" had not been trusted in vain. 
 
 134
 
 VI 
 
 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 AMERICAN literary history does not begin in 
 America. Back to the first clear fount it 
 goes, to Piers the Plowman and the ferlies of 
 Malvern Hills, to Chaucer's spring song set 
 to the rippling accompaniment of leaves, and, 
 still nearer the moment of its individual 
 being, to the splendid creative energy of the 
 Elizabethan period. The literary achieve- 
 ment which, in England, immediately pre- 
 ceded our written word, was beautifully at 
 one with these. It held the lofty plane of 
 being where art is not to be judged as form 
 alone, but as the appropriate garment of life 
 itself. Let it be remembered that John 
 Smith sent home his vital word relative to 
 the New World only eight years before 
 Shakespeare died, and that at the moment 
 Spenser and Sidney were young in the memory. 
 The time was just declining from that great 
 height of glorious action when life looked 
 infinitely precious in possibilities, and the 
 
 135
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 world was a football for any eager soul. The 
 riches of being seemed then unplumbed; the 
 possibilities of thought and action were unfet- 
 tered. Men were sane, robust, enamored of 
 colossal deeds, and so in love with life that 
 they read her inner soul and created her twin 
 sister, the drama, through a careless retrospect 
 of what they and their fellows had enjoyed and 
 suffered. 
 
 Then followed, parallel with our Colonial 
 infancy, that incredible period of perfect lyric 
 expression, when every man could strike a 
 blow and sing a song. Even the soldier told 
 his love in phrases we scarce dare touch 
 to-day, though with a finger-tip of praise, so 
 precious have they grown in lone perfection. 
 These were but gauds of time to Pilgrim and 
 Puritan, wilfully deaf to beautiful achieve- 
 ment; but even they could not fail to be 
 affected by the strenuous vitality of a spring 
 which brought such buds to flower. While 
 our forefathers meditated upon the exact 
 complexion of a future state, there were men 
 who lived gayly in contempt of death, their 
 only petition (carolled lustily, as though 
 Tristram of Brittany led the stave), 
 
 " A short life in the saddle, Lord ! 
 Not long life by the fire ! "
 
 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 Never was a greater contrast; but those 
 stern forbears of ours, who had been so justly 
 stirred to bitter reaction, could not escape the 
 benison of the art life they despised. In some 
 sweet corners of England the lyric world was 
 at the morn; its light was meant to grow and 
 spread. Again there was the crowding of 
 deeds. No more such broidered pageants as 
 when men went sailing over sea, to return 
 with dusky natives, gems of price, and tales 
 more precious yet of savage land and open 
 treasure, not these, but the civil upheaval 
 of a nation. And so the great historic and 
 literary spirit of the time passed on into the 
 next century, with its artificial restraints, but 
 brightened by the essay and the robust begin- 
 nings of the novel. 
 
 The seriousness and the amount of Mercy 
 Warren's work entitle her to a place in local 
 literary history; and, indeed, weighed with 
 her contemporaries, she was of no small im- 
 portance. Therefore she can only be justly 
 estimated with reference to her background 
 and environment; and especially, although 
 the literary pulse beat intermittently from 
 Massachusetts to Virginia, with reference to 
 her own immediate surroundings, the mental 
 life of New England. To weigh the causes 
 which must have formed her intellectual 
 
 137
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 activity, it is necessary to look beyond her 
 own life and work, back to the childhood of 
 the book as it grew in America. 
 
 Here, as ever at that period, you come at 
 once upon Old England regnant over the New. 
 The first book-makers among us John Smith, 
 Bradford, Winthrop, Winslow were born 
 in the mother-country. They were Eng- 
 lish to the bone, though, once under these 
 brighter skies, their outlook changed and their 
 expression became swiftly modified by soil 
 and climate and dramatic conditions which 
 were absolutely strange. It was no mere 
 romantic phrasing which named ours the New 
 World. This was not only an unfamiliar land, 
 but a land untouched, unspoiled. In the 
 merely picturesque, it must have appealed 
 almost with passion to natures sprung from 
 that mellowed soil where traditions have been 
 overspread like fine inscriptions on priceless 
 manuscripts. The almost limitless spaces, 
 the floods of crystal air untainted by a breath, 
 the solitudes shared only with wild things or 
 men as wild, the deep wood recesses where 
 any tree might seem some hoary eremite (in 
 that among such myriads it might never yet, 
 in all its growth, have caught the eye of 
 man). This was the new scene, the God- 
 given and God-governed theatre of action. 
 
 138
 
 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 To take up life so illuminated and inspired 
 was to stand forth another man in the first 
 Eden. Even to us who, in going abroad, 
 leave civilized conditions for others more 
 civilized yet, a foreign shore is strangely 
 thrilling ; it caresses the mind and the eye as 
 well. We are awakened to an ecstasy hitherto 
 unknown. We renew an infancy of jo}' in the 
 foretaste of experiences absolutely untried. If 
 travel be thus for us, pilgrims of the common- 
 place, what must it have been to men who 
 made the journey hither the great culminating 
 act of their lives, the leap into an unknown 
 less tangible to them than that other far 
 country of death! And having once set foot 
 on their chartered land, day by day offered a 
 bewildering drama, strenuous enough to start 
 even the ice-locked torrent of the Puritan 
 nature. 
 
 Even their warfare was dramatic. Torn 
 from a battlefield where the enemy had been 
 moral and spiritual, and where, if they fell 
 on death, it was according to the civilized 
 rules of the game, here they must grapple 
 with the possibility of ambush, torture, or 
 hideous massacre. Their foes were colossal, 
 formless, like monsters in the dark, savage 
 nature, starvation, cold, and plague. Day by 
 day, like a monotonous drone and burden, 
 
 139
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 went on the sordid cares of household life. 
 Yet informing every trial was the exhilarating 
 certainty of freedom of soul and action (save 
 for Baptists, Quakers, and such small deer !), 
 an abiding consciousness of actual birth into 
 another star. 
 
 From such an overplus of life there could 
 not fail to be great results, though action 
 swept on very swiftly and gave impressions 
 little time to fructify and bloom again in the 
 perfect forms of art. With the moral and 
 actual call to arms sounding about them on 
 every side, it was impossible for the colonists 
 to pause between great blows and set down 
 words according to accepted canons. The 
 deed came first. The word, as it ever should 
 be, followed, her attendant minister. Per- 
 haps the most notable exception during that 
 period of earnest being was George Sandys, 
 who, in the midst of bleak conditions, kept 
 his hand ever upon the pulse of living anti- 
 quity, and made his translation of Ovid the 
 noble purpose of a devoted life. Thus arose 
 in the wilderness the voice of Latin poetry, 
 a fine, pure note, preluding, let us hope, the 
 reverence of the New World for the general 
 motherhood of literature. Thus, perhaps, was 
 laid the foundation of our house of art. 
 
 Moreover, not only did utility hold every 
 
 140
 
 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 inch of ground against the patient goddess, 
 Beauty, but for the latter the Puritans, 
 through the very limitations of their nature, 
 had absolutely no use. This, said they, is a 
 dying world, crass expression of an antique 
 philosophy, so savagely shot forth that it 
 wounded where it fell, themselves most of 
 all. They sought an abiding kingdom, and 
 with a sad and childlike logic they bound 
 infinity with their own interpretation of 
 "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not." They 
 classified beauty among the unrealities of life, 
 and, with a boastfully passionate renunciation, 
 swore fealty to truth. But the Spirit of Beauty 
 is not to be offended. She has the patience of 
 God. Give her a sand-heap, and she will 
 bring forth a flower there. She still abode 
 with them in the wilderness, like the rejected 
 mistress of the olden tales, who, in page's 
 garments, follows her love, and ministers to 
 him whether he will or no. 
 
 And so, throughout the unconscious expres- 
 sion of their hot living come slight glimpses 
 of the divine, the imperishable. To return 
 to that first page of American literature is to 
 find it significant: John Smith's True Rela- 
 tion of Virginia, trenchant, curt, a soldier's 
 letter, the sword-thrust of a man of action, 
 the braggadocio of a fighter and swashbuck- 
 
 141
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 ler, full of snorting defiance for the gentlemen 
 of England "who sit at home at ease" and 
 teach their betters how to weather a gale. It 
 breathes the freedom of speech incident to the 
 New World ; that swaggering egoism caught, 
 perhaps, from intoxicating winds and great 
 bright spaces and grown now into a national 
 vice. It was personal as well as epistolary ; 
 and so, in the main, were all the beginnings 
 of the book among us. 
 
 For these men who first set pen to paper 
 had a homespun desire to enlighten stay-at- 
 homes as to the exigencies of the new life, to 
 coax recruits, and to justify themselves for 
 coming. There wore at their very doors 
 wonders whereof even Elizabethan England, 
 sweeping the heaven with such an eye as has 
 never yet regarded it, of which even she saw 
 nothing. The Indians were a never-failing 
 source of curiosity to our cousins over sea. 
 The hardships of life in the wilderness were, 
 in their eyes, dramatic as the doings of the 
 Children of Israel. Not an exile among our 
 fathers but knew this, and would fain send 
 home some Relation, some News from New 
 England, or discursive tale of a colony. 
 Moreover, John Smith was not the only man 
 to be suspected of drawing the longbow. The 
 learned Josselyn, forerunner of our naturalists
 
 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 and observers, told some strange tales out of 
 the school of open air, of frogs " as big 
 as a child of a year old," or the monstrous 
 Pilhannaw who " aeries in the woods upon the 
 high hills of Ossapy." The Pilhannaw may be 
 as unsubstantial as the bread-and-butter fly, 
 but her creation is worth while, if only that 
 it might give birth to a sentence so alluring 
 in remote, sweet sound. 
 
 From Winslow and Bradford, fathers of 
 American history, through the ponderous 
 annals of Cotton Mather, our early writing 
 was a chronicle of events ; and, like the civil 
 polity of the day, its very form was based 
 upon religion. The fountain-head of inspira- 
 tion was ever the Bible. A man might know 
 the tongues and quote them fluently, but the 
 source of life was Hebraic. To realize this 
 simple dependence on the literal interpretation 
 of Scripture, and to realize the hold it had, it 
 is only necessary to turn to matters politi- 
 cal ; and I know of no more pregnant instance 
 than one connected with John Winthrop's 
 public life, where he considers the project of 
 furnishing aid to La Tour in his Canadian 
 warfare, and gravely bases his argument, not 
 on political expediency, but on the one point 
 whether La Tour is to be considered " a neigh- 
 bor." For if he be a neighbor, then the 
 
 J43
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Scriptures command that he shall receive help 
 in time of need. 
 
 Throughout these vivid beginnings, how- 
 ever, there is no slightest hint of intentional 
 fine writing. The first chroniclers aim only 
 at plain fact, but, in spite of them, it is 
 garnished with aspiration, touched here and 
 there by some sudden, thrilling beauty of 
 phrase, or lighted sparsely with rays of a 
 naive, unconscious humor. Sometimes they 
 rise to a height unattainable by us who do 
 not speak from the altitude of such spiritual 
 desire; their words become Miltonic. There 
 is a dignified simplicity in their touch which 
 transcends elaborate description. Young tells 
 of " a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of 
 wild beasts and wild men." Could word be 
 stronger, and at the same time less intention- 
 ally challenging ? l3ut if one might choose a 
 representative paragraph out of abundant 
 beauty, let him take Bradford's description of 
 the Pilgrims departing from Holland : 
 
 "And y e time being come that they must de- 
 parte, they were accompanied with most of their 
 brethren out of y e citie, unto a towne sundrie miles 
 of called Delfes-Haven, wher the ship lay ready to 
 receive them. So they left y* goodly & pleasante 
 citie, which had been ther resting place near 12 
 years ; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked 
 144
 
 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to 
 y e heavens, their dearest cuutrie, and quieted their 
 spirits. When they came to y e place they found 
 y e ship and all things ready; and shuch of their 
 freinds as could not come with them followed after 
 them, and sundrie also came from Amsterdame to 
 see them shipte and to take their leave of them. 
 That night was spent with litle sleep by y e most, 
 but with freindly entertainmente & Christian dis- 
 course and other reall expressions of true Christian 
 love. The next day, the wind being faire, they 
 wente aborde, and their freinds with them, where 
 truly dolfull was y e sight of that sade and mournfull 
 parting; to see what sighs and sobbs and praires 
 did sound amongst them, what tears did gush from 
 every eye, & pithy speeches peirst each harte; that 
 sundry of y e Dutch strangers y 4 stood on y e key as 
 spectators, could not refraine from tears. Yet com- 
 fortable & sweete it was to see shuch lively and 
 true expressions of dear & unfained love. But 
 y e tide (which stays for no man) caling them away 
 y* were thus loath to departe, their Reve d : pastor 
 falling downe on his knees, (and they all with 
 him,) with watrie cheeks comended them with 
 most fervente praiers to the Lord and his bless- 
 ing. And then with mutuall imbrases and many 
 tears, they tooke their leaves one of an other; which 
 proved to be y e last leave to many of them." 
 
 This has the dolor, not so much of Scripture, 
 as of some simple tale of " old, far-off, forgot- 
 
 10 145
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 ten things," perhaps like Malory's parting be- 
 tween Launcelot and Guenever. 
 
 Nor was there dearth of simple human- 
 ity, whether you take that very humorous 
 gentleman, the Cobbler of Agawam, or the 
 sweet-natured Sewall, with his sober sanity, 
 his predilection for widows, his inspection of 
 the family coffins (with the after-comment, 
 " 'T was an awful yet pleasing treat "), his 
 ingenuous tribute to the tooth which dropped 
 out in meeting, and his mental quickening in 
 those first days when "the swallows unani- 
 mously and cheerfully proclaimed the spring." 
 No eye roving through the byways of Ameri- 
 can literature could possibly slip past this 
 sweet soul without loving communion, no mat- 
 ter how eagerly one would get on " to Hecuba. " 
 
 Until England's fortunate obtuseness to 
 her own interests and our needs, America was 
 simply a collection of Colonies differing amaz- 
 ingly in forms of speech, habit of thought, and 
 social customs. The settlers were unlike in 
 nationality and religion. They represented 
 different classes of society, with their various 
 traditions, beliefs, and prejudices; and seizing 
 a foothold on a continent where even climate 
 itself is sufficiently unstable to vary a common 
 type, they crystallized into isolated communi- 
 ties having only a family likeness. Had not
 
 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 the fortunate blow of the Stamp Act come at 
 the significant moment, to jar us into unity 
 and coherence, we should have been a polyglot 
 nation. All the low mutterings of revolt 
 along the horizon culminated then in flash 
 and peal, significant as a tocsin calling the 
 people to arms. From that instant every 
 mind was bent upon identical issues, and 
 from that instant began a national life, and, 
 inseparable from it, a national literature. 
 Then a splendid vitality went into speech and 
 pamphlet, of a nature to overtop the more 
 labored efforts of any piping time of peace. 
 This was the day of undying phrase, struck out 
 in the heat of argument, or born in the night- 
 watches, when every man thought prayerfully, 
 worshipfully, of that great possibility, the 
 scope of which he knew not as yet, but which 
 was destined to be his country and the coun- 
 try of us all. Here again, as in Elizabethan 
 England, was a time when deeds were linked 
 indissolubly to high expression; as, in later 
 days, our own Grant could indite his simple 
 style with soldier pen, and Lincoln, a plain 
 man, who yet knew the issues of life and 
 death, could make immortal phrases because 
 he served immortal issues. Through the 
 entire course of Colonial disaffection, from the 
 first petition to the culminating Declaration 
 
 147
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 of Independence, there was the same pertinence 
 of phrase. 
 
 The estimate of the time is best summed 
 up in the words of Chatham, one among our 
 champions in Great Britain who saw us 
 justly. In 1775, he thus addressed the House 
 of Lords : 
 
 "When your lordships look at the papers trans- 
 mitted us from America, when you consider their 
 decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but 
 respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. 
 For myself, I must avow that in all my reading 
 and I have read Thucydides and have studied and 
 admired the master-states of the world for so- 
 lidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of 
 conclusion under a complication of difficult circum- 
 stances, no body of men can stand in preference to 
 the General Congress at Philadelphia." 
 
 And with all these men who slowly attained 
 unto vigorous expression, what contributed to 
 their mental life ? What was the stimulus 
 strong enough to make a woman like Mercy 
 Warren the equal of statesmen who had ten 
 times her advantages ? Though the atmos- 
 phere of art was absolutely lacking in this 
 early life of New England, there had been, 
 from the first, a sustained intellectual activ- 
 ity. The wise builders of our nation had 
 shown their just estimate of values by making 
 
 148
 
 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 church and college the complement of material 
 and industrial life. No sooner were they 
 settled than they erected a meeting-house, and 
 there were held weekly services which had 
 more than a sacred significance. They were 
 austere mental exercises. The minister was 
 the epitome of general culture. He stood 
 forth not only the savant of the skies, capable 
 of mapping out the scheme of heaven and hell, 
 but he was an intellectual gymnast, crammed 
 with book-learning, skilful in argument, a 
 master of long-winded discourse. When it 
 came to scholarship, those old divines were 
 sometimes tremendous, as tough in the men- 
 tal sinews of attack as their congregation in 
 receptivity and endurance. The intellectual 
 exercise of the week lay in following their 
 polemics, calculated either to turn men into 
 maniacs or thinkers. The hair-splitting dis- 
 cussions of mediaeval schoolmen could scarcely 
 have been more interminable or dreary; nor, 
 let it be said, more conducive to that habit of 
 mental attention which has such disciplinary 
 use. 
 
 Before 1765, seven colleges had been estab- 
 lished, Harvard first of all, in 1636. And so 
 were letters kept alive as truly as in the Dark 
 Ages of Europe by monastic and university 
 life. Isolated as were the Colonial centres in 
 
 149
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 the days before national calamity brought 
 about national union, the colleges contributed 
 toward a common life, a common understand- 
 ing. For a young man might attend a college 
 not at his very door, and thus find himself 
 shorn of sectional prejudices and broadened 
 by knowledge of customs unlike his own. 
 But best of all, the fire of learning was kept 
 alive and burning brightly there. Training 
 in the classics was something extraordinary 
 for severity and perfection. One significant 
 change came with the birth of the new nation, 
 a change in social atmosphere. For where- 
 as, previous to the class which was graduated 
 in 1773, the names on the Harvard catalogue 
 were arranged according to social precedence, 
 after that moment, when all men were about to 
 assert themselves free and equal, the lists 
 were made alphabetical. 
 
 The new America had also her newspapers, 
 the earliest one that lived to grow up being 
 the Boston News Letter, " of 1704. Then there 
 were almanacs, even before Poor Richard's, 
 and a flood after him, little commonplace 
 books, full of predictions, observations, and 
 counsel, destined to fill a large share in the 
 dull hours of the house-bound ; and as to their 
 margins, excellent for the writing of verse. 
 The Rev. John Cotton, who put his almanac 
 
 150
 
 EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 to that use, was not the only sober New 
 Englander who dropped into poetry. It was 
 a vice and a saving virtue of the time. 
 Nothing save cloistered life was ever more 
 austere, more rigid, than this of New Eng- 
 land. To ignore beauty, to preserve an in- 
 tense self-scrutiny, to hunt sins to their lair 
 till they turned and rent their pursuers, 
 this was a large part of the sombre duty of 
 the day. Sin gave them a great deal of 
 trouble. One almost feels that the sinner, in 
 irritated despite, was harried into it. Even 
 William Bradford wrote of wrong-doers: 
 
 11 An other reason may be {[for sin] that it may 
 be in this case as it is with waters when their 
 streames are stopped or darned up, when they gett 
 passage they flow with more violence, and make 
 more noys and disturbance, than when they are 
 suffered to run quietly in their owne chanels. So 
 wikednes being here more stopped by strict laws, 
 and ye same more nerly looked into, so as it cannot 
 rune in a common road of liberty as it would, and 
 is inclined, it searches everywher, and at last breaks 
 out wber it getts vent." 
 
 In such an atmosphere of unnatural re- 
 pression there must have been more than a 
 slight satisfaction in the outlet of verse. It 
 eased the heart. It fed some sense of the 
 great craving for art in a rhythm and melody 
 
 151
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 however faulty. Some of it is sufficiently bad, 
 but even the worst has a pathos all its own ; 
 it is a childlike striving for expression. The 
 most serious of men broke forth, too, into 
 anagrams. They wrote them on every occa- 
 sion, notably for funerals, when they must 
 have added a horror to death. 
 
 Thus, sometimes weak and striving for 
 breath, and again drawing deep draughts of 
 exultant power and shouting aloud on the 
 hilltops, literature kept herself alive ; and 
 when Mercy Warren took up the pen, there 
 were appreciative ears, and hands ready to 
 applaud. 
 
 152
 
 VII 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 MERCY WARREN belonged to that more 
 advanced period of literary activity when effort 
 was not altogether tentative. Vague or rough 
 as it might be, she had a background, though 
 she was not to prove herself eminently superior 
 to it. Her work was by no means the out- 
 come of that welling impulse we are accus- 
 tomed to call inspiration, but the product of 
 an intellectual and moral activity which might 
 easily have been otherwise expressed. 
 
 In her handling of public affairs, she had 
 all the true woman's scorn of expediency and 
 intolerance of any action short of taking the 
 bull by the horns. Thus, seizing the medium 
 of verse, she gave free play to her powers of 
 reflection and satire ; and, with Mrs. Warren, 
 what her " heart thinks " her " tongue speaks." 
 For her there was never a middle course. Life, 
 and even political life, was right or wrong. 
 There were moral blacks and whites; there 
 were no grays. Tell-tale evidence lies in a cer- 
 
 153
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 tain reminiscence of hers called forth by John 
 Adams. December 16, 1778, she writes him, 
 reminding him that six years before he had 
 said by the Plymouth fireside, in a moment of 
 despondency, that " the dispute between Great 
 Britain and America would not be settled 
 untill your sons and my sons were able to visit 
 and negociate with the different European 
 courts. A Lady replied (though perhaps not 
 from prescience but from presentiment or 
 presumption) that you must do it yourselves 
 that the work must be done immediately. " 
 
 If the patriots who, at Plymouth, discussed 
 the political weather, needed heartening or 
 even a bold push into the storm, Dame Mercy 
 was more than ready, though always in cour- 
 teous deprecation lest she overstep the bounds 
 of her feminine province. One letter written 
 her husband in 1776 contains this pertinent 
 extract : 
 
 " I am very glad to hear the provincial Congress 
 
 is so full and that you are not apprehensive of 
 
 immediate danger from the king's troops yet I 
 
 cannot say I am altogether so well pleased with 
 
 i/ the expression that you are all very easy without 
 
 mentioning anything energetic that you are about 
 
 to do. it appears to me there has been a hesitance 
 
 full long enough and if on the whole it is thought 
 
 most expedient your body should not act with more 
 
 154
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 decission and vigor would it not be most for the 
 honour of individual Gentlemen to make some 
 plausible excuse and retreat homeward?" 
 
 " Act, and act well, " she is always virtually 
 saying, " or keep yourself within the bounds of 
 a dignified silence." 
 
 Again she writes, in her uncompromising 
 worship of the strait way: 
 
 " I much admire the letter from Dr. Franklin 
 except his advice with regard to a sum of money 
 sent hither from England to Bribe the American 
 patriots. I by no means approve his proposal 
 and I am sure you dislike it as much as myself 
 Let their money perish with them but let not 
 the shadow of venallity even for a moment pollute 
 the hands of an American patriot." 
 
 This is Mrs. Warren to the life. She is 
 very fond of talking about Roman virtues; 
 and it would have been no vain pretence had 
 she claimed them for herself. The ideal of 
 liberty, as she saw it, was crystalline, pure, 
 not to be approached save through ways as 
 spotless. If there must be war, and she 
 was never one who really shrank from that 
 issue, it should be a holy war. . She was 
 ready to stand by and gird her very dearest 
 for a contest from which they might never 
 return. She thought "in blood and iron;" 
 
 155
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 and, so far as earnestness goes, thus she wrote. 
 Her verses were passed about from hand to 
 hand, long before publication (and, indeed, 
 when she was not in the least sure they ever 
 would be published), to receive no small meed 
 of praise. Thus far in Colonial life, women 
 had not been encouraged in the pursuit of 
 literature. Even Governor Winthrop, writing 
 always with malice toward none, consigned 
 them to the limbo they had earned. He 
 says : 
 
 "The Governour of Hartford upon Connecticut 
 
 I came to Boston, and brought his wife with him (a 
 
 I godly young woman and of special parts) who was 
 
 I fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her under- 
 
 I standing and reason, which had been growing upon 
 
 I her divers years by occasion of her giving herself 
 
 wholly to reading and writing, and had written 
 
 many books. Her husband, being very loving and 
 
 tender of her, was loath to grieve her; but he saw 
 
 his errour when it was too late. For if she had 
 
 attended her household affairs, and such things as 
 
 belong to women, and not gone out of her way and 
 
 calling to meddle in such things as are proper for 
 
 men, whose minds are stronger, &c., she had kept 
 
 her wits, and might have improved them usefully 
 
 and honourably in the place God had set her." 
 
 Still, when a star had really risen (especially 
 if it took good care not to depart from its 
 
 156
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 orbit; the woman poet must, like Mrs. War- 
 ren, attend also to her household minutiae), it 
 was hailed with acclamation. For this was 
 a century after Anne Bradstreet had been 
 crowned a "Tenth Muse," and flattered to a 
 point inconceivable even to us, who set rush- 
 lights to reign briefly in the heavens. Mercy 
 Warren was the centre of a scarcely less 
 astonishing influx of approbation. John 
 Adams uses, in writing to her, a language 
 warmer than that of the courtier to Aspasia. 
 His "sugar upon honey and butter upon 
 cream " are enough to lure a bird out of a 
 bush. He writes her from Braintree, January 
 3, 1774: 
 
 MADAM, I remember that Bishop Burnet in a 
 letter he once wrote to Lady Kachell Russell the 
 virtuous Daughter of the great Southampton, the 
 unfortunate wife of Lord Russell who died a Martyr 
 to English Liberties, says, "Madam I never attempt 
 to write to you but my pen conscious of its Infe- 
 riority falls out of my Hand" The polite Prelate 
 did not write to that excellent Lady in so bold a 
 figure with half the Sincerity that I could apply it 
 to myself when writing to Mrs. Warren. 
 
 He prays that "a double Portion of her 
 Genius as well as Virtues [may] descend to 
 her Posterity," refers again to her as "an 
 
 157
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 ^incomparable Satyrist of our Acquaintance," 
 'S and goes on to say : 
 
 " My most friendly Regards to a certain Lady, 
 tell her, that God Almighty, (I use a bold style) 
 has intrusted her with Powers, for the good of the 
 World, which in the course of his Providence he 
 bestows upon very few of the human Eace. That 
 instead of being a fault to use them, it would be 
 criminal to neglect them." 
 
 Again, he writes her husband in a strain of 
 almost delirious admiration: 
 
 tt E/emember me, sir, in the most respectful 
 manner to your good lady, whose manners, virtues, 
 genius, and spirit will render her immortal, not- 
 withstanding the general depravity." 
 
 Mrs. Winthrop, who was a friend of Mrs. 
 Warren's youth, expresses the frankest admira- 
 tion for her. Indeed, her attitude, like many 
 another of this devoted band, was that of a 
 naive surprise that anybody could possibly be 
 so clever. " When ever my Philomela Tunes 
 the harp," writes Hannah Winthrop, "my 
 soul is in raptures." She takes a journey, 
 and prays Philomela to celebrate it in verse ; 
 and thereupon appear the lines " To Honoria, 
 on her Journey to Dover, 1777." Abigail 
 Adams has always a reverent respect for her 
 friend's "intellects" and her use of language, 
 
 158
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 quite unconscious of the fact that her own 
 letters are far more vivid and picturesque 
 than any prose of her stately model, and, 
 with human perversity, clinging ever to an 
 awed admiration of that form of intelligence 
 which can embody itself in rhyme. More- 
 over, she is never done with encomiums of 
 Mrs. Warren's skill in character-drawing. 
 In 1776, she writes: 
 
 "I acknowledge my Thanks due to my Friend 
 for the entertainment she so kindly afforded me in 
 the Characters drawn in her Last Letter, and if 
 coveting my Neighbours Goods was not prohibited 
 by the Sacred Law I should be most certainly 
 tempted to envy her the happy talant she possesses 
 above the rest of her Sex, by adorning with her 
 pen even trivial occurrances, as well as dignifying 
 the most important. Cannot you communicate 
 some of those Graces to your friend and suffer her 
 to pass them upon the World for her own that she 
 may feel a Little more upon an Equality with 
 you?" 
 
 John Adams has no less admiration for 
 her skill in mental portraiture. In 1776, he 
 writes her: 
 
 " I was charmed with three Characters drawn by 
 a most masterly Pen, which I rec d at the southward. 
 Copeleys Pencil could not have touched off with 
 
 159
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 more exquisite Finishings, the Faces of those 
 Gentlemen. Whether I ever answered that Letter 
 I know not. But I hope Posterity will see it. if 
 they do I am sure they will admire it. I think I 
 will make a Bargain with you, to draw the Char- 
 acter of every new Personage I have an opportunity 
 of knowing on Condition you will do the same. 
 My View will be to learn the Art of penetrating 
 into Mens Bosoms, and then the more difficult art 
 of painting what I shall see there." 
 
 Mrs. Warren was universally supposed to 
 have a special skill in that dangerous pastime 
 of analyzing human nature and relegating 
 virtues and vices to the little niches set aside 
 for them by human intelligence. Her friends 
 besiege her for " reflections " on the character 
 of persons prominent in official life, and re- 
 ceive her conclusions with ready applause. 
 
 But that she had herself sometimes a doubt 
 of the validity of such warfare is plain enough 
 from her own ingenuous appeal to John 
 Adams, January 30, 1775 : 
 
 " . . . Though a Man may be greatly criminal 
 in his Conduct towards the society in which he 
 lives, how far sir do you think it justifiable for any 
 individual to hold him up the Object of public 
 Derision. 
 
 " And is it consistent with the Benevolent sys- 
 tem of Christianity to Vilify the Delinquent when
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 we only wish to Ward of the fatal consequences of 
 his Crimes. But though from the particular Cir- 
 cumstances of an unhappy time a Little personal 
 Acrimony Might be justifiable in your sex, Must 
 not the female Character suffer and will she not be 
 suspected as Deficient in the most Amiable part 
 thereof that Candour & Charity which ensures her 
 both Affection & Esteem if she indulges her pen to 
 paint in the Darkest Shades even shapes whom 
 Vice & Venality have Eendered Contemptible ? " 
 
 He responds with a set of generalities calcu- 
 lated to lay her scruples to rest, but, neverthe- 
 less, assuming a dangerous infallibility : 
 
 BRAIXTREE March 15 1775 
 
 MADAM, In requesting my opinion, Madam, 
 concerning a Point of Casuistry, you have done 
 me great honour, and I should think myself very 
 happy if I could remove a Scruple from a Mind, 
 which is so amiable that it ought not to have one 
 upon it. Personal Eeflections, when they are art- 
 fully resorted to, in order to divert the Attention 
 from Truth, or from Arguments, which cannot be 
 answered, are mean and unjustifiable: but We must 
 give up the distinction between Virtue and Vice, 
 before we can pronounce personal Reflections, always 
 unlawful, Will it be said that We must not pro- 
 nounce Catiline a Conspirator, and Borgia a Ras- 
 cal], least we should be guilty of casting personal 
 Reflections ? The faithfull Historian delineates 
 11 161
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Caracters truly, let the Censure fall where it will. 
 The public is so interested in public Characters, 
 that they have a Right to know them, and it be- 
 comes the Duty of every good Citizen who happens 
 to be acquainted with them to communicate his 
 Knowledge. There is no other way of preventing 
 the Mischief which may be done by ill Men; no 
 other Method of administering the Antidote to the 
 Poison. 
 
 Christianity Madam, is so far from discounte- 
 nancing the severest Discrimination, between the 
 good and the bad, that it assures us of the most 
 public & solemn one conceivable, before Angells 
 and Men; and the Practice and Example of Proph- 
 etts, and Apostles, is sufficient to Sanctify Satyr 
 of the Sharpest Kind. 
 
 The Truth is, Madam, that, the best Gifts are 
 liable to the worst uses & abuses, a Talent at 
 Satyr, is commonly mixed with the choicest Powers 
 of Genius and it has such irrisistable Charms, in 
 the Eyes of the World, that the extravagant Praise, 
 it never fails to extort, is apt to produce extrav- 
 agant Vanity in the Satirist, and an exuberant 
 Fondness for more Praise, untill he looses that cool 
 Judgment which alone can justify him. 
 
 If we look into human Nature, and run through 
 the various classes of Life, we shall find it is really 
 a dread of Satyr that restrains our Speeches from 
 exorbitances, more than Laws, human, moral or 
 divine, indeed the Efficacy of civil Punishments is 
 derived chiefly from the same source. ... But 
 162
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 classical Satyr, such as flows so naturally & eas- 
 ily from the Pen of my excellent Friend, has all 
 the Efficacy, and more, in Support of Virtue and 
 in Discountenancing of Vice, without any of the 
 Coarseness and Indelicacy of those other Species of 
 Satyr, the civil and political ones. . . . 
 
 Of all the Genius's whch have yet arisen in 
 America, there has been none, superiour to one, 
 which now shines, in this happy, this exquisite 
 Faculty, indeed, altho there are many which have 
 received more industrious Cultivation I know of 
 none, ancient or modern, which has reached the 
 tender the pathetic, the keen & severe, and at the 
 same time, the soft, the sweet, the amiable and 
 the pure in greater Perfection. 
 
 Weigh the drop of honey "at the end ! No 
 wonder my lady went on satirizing. No 
 wonder either that, in her old age, in all 
 innoccncy, she dealt out to Mr. Adams him- 
 self the sauce he had prescribed for others, 
 and " drew " his character as she honestly saw 
 it. His was a dissertation which he may 
 have been ironically amused to remember 
 when his own turn came. But she did noth- 
 ing wantonly and in unconsidered haste. 
 These were no random shots sped in feminine 
 light-mindedness or malice. They were mis- 
 siles of warfare in a righteous cause. She 
 was among the skirmishers who supplement y 
 
 163
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 the regular troops, and she primed her guns 
 as carefully as they. In 1776, she wrote John 
 Adams : 
 
 " Do you Remember the Requests of my Last 
 Cant you get Liberty Cannot you furnish me with 
 the characters transactions and Views of some of 
 the Busiest players of the political Game. I want 
 to know a Little More of the philadelphian system, 
 not merely from female curiosity but for another 
 Reason which you shall know hereafter." 
 
 She wants her groundwork. She will have 
 knowledge, and do no dishonest fighting in 
 the dark. 
 
 Of all her work, The Group is most incisive, 
 most earnest, and was probably widest-reach- 
 ing in its influence. It was evidently sent to 
 her husband as the various scenes were com- 
 pleted, and proudly submitted by him to his 
 associates under seal of confidence. But the 
 secret was an open one. Mrs. Warren's name 
 needed no mention; no intellect was so poor 
 as not to guess out the "incomparable satyr- 
 ist." James Warren lost no time in commu- 
 nicating it to John Adams. January 15, 1775, 
 he writes him : 
 
 " Inclosed are for your amusement two Acts of 
 a dramatic performance composed at my particular 
 desire, they go to you as they came out of the 
 
 164
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 hand of the Copier, without pointing or markirse 
 If you think it worth while to make any othe^ 
 use of them than a reading you will prepare them 
 in that way & give them such other Corrections 
 & Amendments as your good Judgment shall 
 suggest." 
 
 But the secret is too open, and a month 
 later the following letter was written : 
 
 11 A certain Lady of your Acquaintance is much 
 Concerned at hearing it is reported that she wrote 
 the Group. Parson Howe tol$ a large Company 
 at Table that she was the Author of it. if this 
 was true how came he by his information, would 
 a certain friend of ours have so little discretion 
 as to Communicate such a matter to his parson if 
 he knew & much less if he only Conjectured it. 
 do speak to him about it. if he has set his parson 
 a prating he ought to stop him." 
 
 There was soon popular call for the com- 
 position, and on May 21, 1775, John Adams 
 writes James Warren from Philadelphia: 
 
 " One half the Group is printed here, from a 
 Copy printed in Jamaica. Pray send me a printed 
 Copy of the whole & it will be greedily reprinted 
 here, my friendship to the Author of it." 
 
 The Group is a boldly satirical piece of 
 work, which we are forced to consider a farce 
 
 163
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 tbause the titlepage bids us. The inscrip- 
 lon at the start sets forth its scope and inten- 
 tion: "As the great business of the polite 
 world is the eager pursuit of amusement, and 
 as the Public diversions of the season have 
 been interrupted by the hostile parade in the 
 capital ; the exhibition of a new farce may not 
 be unentertaining. THE GROUP, as lately 
 acted, and to be re-acted to the wonder of all 
 superior intelligences, nigh head-quarters at 
 Amboyne. " 
 
 To us, save as a literary curiosity, Mrs. 
 Warren's farce is eminently dull ; but we 
 must not forget that its reason for existing 
 has itself ceased to be. To an inflamed 
 patriotism it must have been a vivid delight 
 to find the enemies of peace held up bleeding 
 under the eye of day, to hear some one voice 
 the hot rancor of every heart and say what all 
 patriots would fain have said themselves had 
 they been clever enough. The author frankly 
 avows her purpose at the outset, cannily 
 prophesying that her Prologue " cannot fail of 
 pleasing at this crisis " : 
 
 " What ! arm'd for virtue, and not point the pen. 
 Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men, 
 Dash the proud Gamester from his gilded car, 
 Bare the mean heart which lurks beneath a star. 
 
 166
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 Shall I not strip the gilding off a knave, 
 
 Uuplac'd, unpension'd, no man's heir or slave 1 ^6 
 
 I will or perish in the gen'rous cause ; 
 
 Hear this and tremble, ye who 'scape the laws." 
 
 To my mind the last four lines amply 
 express the author and her attitude : 
 
 " Yes, while I live, no rich or noble knave 
 Shall walk the world in credit to his grave ; 
 To virtue only, and her friends, a friend, 
 The world beside may murmur or commend." 
 
 This was Dame Warren indeed, crystalline 
 in purpose, uncompromising in word and 
 judgment. Her condition of mind is only 
 impaired by the foil of those virtues, the too 
 rash attempt to answer the old question, 
 " What is truth ? " It is all very well to 
 gibbet your villain ; but to fulfil all the con- 
 ditions of Rhadamanthine justice, be sure you 
 prove him so. Mrs. Warren was the voice of 
 the time, but that this was a somewhat too 
 ruthless voice is evident in her portraiture of 
 Governor Hutchinson: a Tory to be sure, a 
 man faithful rather to the crown than alive to 
 this alarming fever of Colonial revolt, and a 
 man who, like even the patriots, thought all 
 fair in war, and thus succeeded in rous- 
 ing against himself a sort of hydrophobia 
 madness. 
 
 Her dramatis persona are the vanguard, and 
 
 167
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 the attack by the very significance of 
 neir names, of which Hateall, Humbug, 
 , Spendall, Mushroom, and Dupe are the more 
 significant. The .first stage direction inevi- 
 tably recalls the remark of that American 
 millionnaire who, in suggesting a statue, bid 
 for " a female figure reflecting on the future 
 prospects of America. " Her setting is equally 
 vague, equally ideal and emphatic ; but let us 
 not smile, for to those who read, it was easy, 
 from the properties of a fiery imagination, to 
 construct even from such dramatic qualities a 
 burning scene. For, behold ! the actors in this 
 avowedly satirical production are "attended 
 by a swarm of court sycophants, hungry har- 
 pies, and unprincipled danglers, . . . hover- 
 ing over the stage in the shape of locusts, led 
 by Massachusettensis in the form of a basilisk ; 
 the rear brought up by proteus, bearing a 
 torch in one hand, and a powder-stalk in the 
 other: The whole supported by a mighty army 
 and navy, from blunder-land, for the laudible 
 purpose of enslaving its best friends." 
 
 Never was there a more frankly partisan 
 piece of work, showing, according to the 
 patriotic standpoint, vice "her own image." 
 One overmastering joy of the performance lies 
 in the fact that out of their own mouths 
 are the public enemies condemned. Hateall 
 
 168
 
 v/ 
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 frankly avows himself to have no purpose 
 save murder and pillage. Others plead ambi- 
 tion or weakness as their excuse for espous- 
 ing the Tory cause ; and poisoned epithets fly 
 about like angry hornets. The axiom that 
 no man shall criminate himself melts into 
 thin air. Dame Mercy, having hypnotized 
 her enemies, forces them to drag forth their 
 inmost minds, and own themselves either 
 wilfully dastard, or misled by the arch-traitor 
 always Hutchinson into espousing a cause 
 manifestly evil. They are of that hopeless 
 ilk who, knowing good, still choose the worst. 
 Sylla voices the general concession by refer- 
 ring to "a brave insulted people," and cries 
 out in a just horror of self : 
 
 " And shall I rashly draw my guilty sword ? " 
 
 The entire Group of actors are "selfish, 
 venal men." Their mutual confessions of 
 premeditated guilt could be no franker were 
 they irreparably lost souls comparing crimes 
 in hell. Her arrows stuck. Hutchinson, 
 who had before, in certain dramatic frag- 
 ments, figured as Rapatio, was thenceforth 
 not to be known otherwise to the inner circles 
 of patriotism, and Samuel Adams's common- 
 place statement, "Rapatio is now gone to y 
 
 169
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Middleboro to consult his Brother Hazelrod," 
 is after the speech of the time. 
 
 The Group is not included in her miscel- 
 laneous works. It is a very precious pam- 
 phlet, of which the copy belonging to the 
 Boston Athenaeum bears, in faded ink, oppo- 
 site the dramatis personce, the names they 
 wore among men. There is something very 
 curious, very touching, in that cast of charac- 
 ters in these days of reconsidered verdicts. 
 Mercy Warren meant it for an embodied cata- 
 logue of vices. It is simply a list of loyalists, 
 most of them honest men, who believed it 
 well not only to serve God but to honor the 
 King: 
 
 Lord Chief-Justice Halze- 
 
 rod [Hazlerod], Oliver. 
 
 Judge Meagae [Meagre], E. Hutchinson. 
 
 Brigadier Hateall, Kuggles. 
 
 Hum Humbug, Esq; Jn? Erving. 
 
 Sir Sparrow Spendall, Sir W. P. [William 
 
 Pepperell]. 
 
 Hector Mushroom, Col. Murray. 
 
 Beau Trumps, Jn Vassall. 
 
 Dick, the Publican, Lechniere. 
 
 Monsieur de Francois, N. E. Thomas. 
 
 Crusty Crowbar, Esq; J. Boutineau. 
 
 Dupe, Sec. of State, T. Flucker. 
 
 Scriblerius Fribble, Leonard. 
 
 Commodore Batteau, Loring. 
 170
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 Certain of these men were hateful to the 
 patriots for special reasons, but all because 
 they were loyalists. The Oliver family was 
 especially detested. Perhaps Andrew had the 
 jleast claim on public mercy, because he had 
 'accepted the unfortunate office of stamp dis- 
 tributor, and did not save his credit even by 
 publicly renouncing it under the Liberty Tree, 
 in the face of scornful thousands. Peter, the 
 Chief-Justice, sufficiently filled the eye to be 
 prosecuted, banished, and to endure the con- 
 fiscation of his estates. Elisha Hutchinson 
 was a son of the Governor, and to him and his 
 brother had been consigned a third part of the 
 tea destined to sacrifice in Boston Harbor. 
 To Timothy Ruggles much might have been 
 forgiven, even at the moment of his sturdiest 
 opposition, for he had a pretty wit, albeit a 
 rude one. He was a brave man and a learned. 
 That served him no good turn in the eyes of 
 his enemies ; but surely they may have given 
 him one lenient smile, remembering that col- 
 lege escapade when, with other irrepressible 
 students, he stole a sign and conveyed it to 
 his room. A suspicious proctor came mous- 
 ing up the stairs, but the boys had locked the 
 door, put the sign on the fire, and were hold- 
 ing vigorous prayer-meeting till the inanimate 
 witness should be consumed, for no student 
 
 171
 
 MER&Y WARREN 
 
 might be disturbed at prayers. Meanwhile 
 Ruggles wrestled passionately with the angel, 
 and cried aloud: "A wicked and adulterous 
 generation seeketh after a sign ; and there 
 shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of 
 the prophet Jonas." 
 
 But to enter Mrs. Warren's catalogue of 
 crime it was not necessary to have risen in 
 armed resistance to Colonial freedom. It was 
 sufficient, as in the case of Lechmere and 
 Erving, to have signed loyal addresses to Gage 
 and Hutchinson. To Boutineaii, somewhat of 
 a personal interest attaches in the fact that he 
 was the father-in-law of John Robinson, who, 
 in 1769, had been guilty of the attack on James 
 Otis. He defended Robinson in the resulting 
 suit, and when the man was judged guilty and 
 assessed two thousand pounds' damages, signed 
 in his own name the submission craving Otis's 
 pardon. Thereupon the latter released the 
 offender from payment of his bond. 
 
 The Group was submitted to Mrs. Warren's 
 little public (parva sed aptaf) in parts, as 
 scenes were completed. It is delightful to 
 see how humbly she set all her work before 
 one indulgent critic, her husband. One poem, 
 despatched when there was much to hear and 
 answer, can be no other than the effusion on 
 the Tea Party, to which she refers as a " per- 
 
 172
 
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 formance done in consequence of the request 
 of a much respected friend. It was wrote off 
 with little attention ... I do not think it 
 has sufficient merit for the public eye. " She 
 adds : 
 
 " I now send you another scene of the Group 
 this you will dispose of as you judge proper, but 
 whatever you do with either of them you will 
 doubtless be careful that the author is not exposed 
 and hope your particular friends will be convinced 
 of the propriety of not naming her at present." 
 
 It must have been a fond pride with which 
 James Warren displayed the work of his 
 ^"little angel," conscious that it could chal- 
 lenge criticism among such men as his asso- 
 ciates. Even at that time, when women were 
 willing to take the bitter with the sweet and 
 own themselves weaker as well as fair, Mercy 
 Warren had, so far as her husband was con- 
 cerned, all the rights she could have desired, 
 a faith and tender homage which left her 
 free to act. 
 
 Later she made a timid effort to see her 
 tragedies in print, perhaps even (0 last 
 infirmity of all our noble minds !) on the 
 stage. She writes John Adams, adviser, 
 friend, and confidant : 
 
 173
 
 MERGY WARREN 
 
 MILTON Jan 4 th 1787 
 
 SIR, The most of my leasure hours since I 
 have resided on the Hill at Milton have been 
 devoted to my pen, yet I have never adventured 
 to lay any of the productions before the public 
 eye. But I have such full confidence in your 
 judgment & friendship that I now submit to you 
 either to dispose of to the best advantage or to 
 return by some safe hand a Dramatic Work com- 
 posed about two years since, & locked up privately 
 in my cabinet. I am sensible the writing an un- 
 exceptionable tragedy requires Judgment Genius 
 & Leasure. There fore [I] have felt a grteat degree 
 of diffidence in the Attempt & own myself a very 
 improper judge of the merits of the execution. 
 But two or three judicious friends to whom I have 
 shown it have pronounced so favourably as to in- 
 duce me to offer it to your inspection Who I know 
 will make the most candid & generous use thereof. 
 
 I am told that works of this nature when they 
 happen to strike will yeald a considerable profit 
 by the sale, I had no Views of this kind when 
 it was written, & it is now far from being a 
 primary object, it was wrote at the request of 
 a young Gentleman & Friend of yours while sepa- 
 rated from his Connexions & Country. But as 
 I am informed it is customary for Men even of 
 Fortune & ability in the Country where you re- 
 side not to give away their time it may not be 
 thought censuarable for your American correspond- 
 174
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 ent to make the best use of hers both for herself 
 & her family. Therefore if at any Value you will 
 dispose of this little Work to the most advantage 
 of your friends : if it is of none you will never 
 expose the temerity that attempted it. 
 
 To no other Person would I entrust the secret, 
 of no other Gentleman whose time is chiefly de- 
 voted to the most important National affairs would 
 I ask such a favour. But having your unshaken 
 friendship I am sure it is perfectly safe and that 
 you will not regret the proper attention it may 
 require, you will see the Dedication is to your- 
 self, which you will correct or curtail as you shall 
 judge most for the Honour of the Patron and 
 the Patronized. Esteem & respect might have 
 prompted me to say many more things which are 
 justly due to the character of my Honourable 
 Friend but anything that might bear the smallest 
 imputation of flattery would be equally painful to 
 him & to myself. And as I am ambitious to avoid 
 both the principles & the stile of the Vulgar Dedi- 
 cation I have suppressed them. . . . And shall 
 I go on to tell you sir that certain annals recorded 
 as events took place have lately been thrown into 
 a concise History of the American Eevolution by 
 the same Hand. 
 
 Mr. Adams's reply is dated "London Deer 
 
 251787": 
 
 MADAM, The Sack of Borne has so much 
 merit in itself that for the honour of America, I 
 175
 
 MERGY WARREN 
 
 should wish to see it acted on the Stage in London. 
 The Dedication of it does so much honour to me, 
 that I should be proud to see it in print even if 
 it could not he acted. I have shewn it, in dis- 
 creet Confidence to several good judges, but least 
 their opinion might not be satisfactory I procured 
 it at last to be seriously read by several of the 
 first tragical Writers in this nation, among whom 
 were the Author of the Grecian Daughter and the 
 Author of the Carmelite. They have noted their 
 opinion in a writing that is inclosed. It requires 
 almost as much interest and Intrigue to get a Play 
 Acted, as to be a Member of Parliament, and a 
 printed Play that has not been Acted will not sell 
 I have not been able to find a Printer who 
 would accept the Copy on Condition of printing it. 
 In short nothing American sells here. Ram- 
 says History Dvvight & Barlows Poems are not 
 sold, nor, I fear will Dr Gordons notwithstanding 
 the . . . materials he must be possessed of. 
 
 The Adulator and The Retreat had preceded 
 The Group, and though far less harmonious 
 in conception, they were equally incisive and 
 pregnant of result These were fragments 
 suggested by the discovery of the Hutchinson 
 and Oliver letters, private letters warm 
 with personal conclusions which Dr. Franklin 
 had secured in England and sent back to 
 America, on condition that they should not be 
 
 176
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 printed, and that they should be returned, no 
 copies having been taken. Through a wily 
 combination of circumstances, they did get 
 into print, and their perusal inflamed the 
 patriots to frenzy. In the after-light of his- 
 torical reflection, they seem to hint at no 
 more pronounced opinion than the writers 
 themselves had sustained in public ; and alto- 
 gether the case made " a marvelously strong 
 illustration of the most vehement possible 
 cry, with the slightest possible amount of 
 wool." 
 
 But not such were the fatal documents at 
 the moment. They proved a terrible motive 
 power to precipitate results. In these two 
 dramatic fragments of Mrs. Warren's, Hutch- 
 inson is always Rapatio, the hated, the venal, 
 the hypocrite doubly damned because he 
 sinned by intention and love of self and 
 intrinsic evil. Let the author herself define 
 her motive in writing them : 
 
 11 At a period when America stood trembling for 
 her invaded liberty when the refined acts of certain 
 interested politians had spread the tales of false- 
 hood untill the people as usual were deceived in 
 characters . . . several dramatic sketches were of- 
 fered the public with a design to strip the Vizard 
 from the Crafty. 
 
 " The writer recollecting the maxim of the Car- 
 12 177
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 dinal de Eetz that ' a song will sometimes more 
 forcibly impress the necessary political operations 
 than the most solid arguments or the most judi- 
 cious reasonings,' advertised March, 1772, to be 
 exhibited for the entertainment of the public at 
 the grand parade in upper Servia the Adulator a 
 theatrical performance of three acts." 
 
 Then follows a cast of characters quite as 
 significant as that of The Group, wherein 
 Governor Hutchinson figures as Rapatio, 
 Bashaw of Servia ; Andrew Oliver as Limpet, 
 Peter Oliver as Hazelrod, and James Otis as 
 Brutus, Senator. 
 
 "The above Dramatic Extract was deemed so 
 characteristic of the times and the persons to whom 
 applied that it was honoured with the voice of gen- 
 eral approbation : but before the author thought 
 proper to present another scene to the public it 
 was taken up and interlarded with the productions 
 of an unknown hand. The plagiary swelled the 
 Adulator to a considerable pamphlet, this led the 
 author of the sketch when she again resumed the de- 
 sign of bringing the delinquents on the stage to give 
 a new title." 
 
 jjfri" As a proper prologue, the author has selected 
 "eight lines from a celebrated writer: " 
 
 " Oh ! how I laugh when I a blockhead see 
 Thanking a villain for his probity. 
 178
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 Who stretches oat a most respectful ear 
 With snares for Wood-Cocks ill his holy leer; 
 It tickles through my soul to see the Cock's 
 Sincere encomiums on his friend the Fox, 
 Sole patron of her liberties and rights 
 While graceless Reynard listens till he bites." 
 
 Within this list of characters there is an 
 overpowering scale of virtues; for after the 
 Tory contingent, appear, in conscious recti- 
 tude : 
 
 Helvidius, Hon. J. "Winthrop, Esq. 
 
 Cassius, " S. Adams, " 
 
 Hortensius, " J. Adams, " 
 
 Eusticus, " J. Warren, " 
 Honestus, <( J. Bowdoin, " 
 
 Brutus, " J. Otis, " 
 
 In 1790, appeared the little book of Poems 
 Dramatic and Miscellaneous Printed at Boston, 
 by I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, At Faust's 
 Statue, No. 45, Newbury Street. The dedi- 
 cation was, like all her work, submitted to 
 James Warren. Though anything but a liter- 
 ary man, he evidently filled for her the 
 requirements of taste and solid sense ; or 
 perhaps she took pleasure, like other loving 
 womankind, in assuming for him a headship 
 over her own province as well as his. This 
 dedication was to " George Washington, Presi- 
 dent of the United States of America, " and it 
 
 179
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 brought forth a letter in that gentleman's 
 usual restrained and courtly style : 
 
 NEW YORK, June 4, 1790. 
 
 MADAM, I did not receive before the last Mail 
 the letter wherein you favored me with a copy of 
 the Dedication which you propose affixing to a 
 "Work preparing for publication. Although I have 
 ever wished to avoid being drawn into public view 
 more than was essentially necessary for public pur- 
 poses; yet, on the present occasion, duly sensible 
 of the merits of the respectable and admirable 
 writer I shall not hesitate to accept the intended 
 honor. 
 
 With only leisure to thank you for your indul- 
 gent sentiments, and to wish that your Work may 
 meet with the encouragement which I have no 
 doubt it deserves, I hasten to present the compli- 
 ments of Mrs. Washington, and to subscribe myself, 
 with great esteem and regard, 
 
 Madam, 
 
 Your Most Obedient and Very Humble Serv*, 
 G. WASHINGTON. 
 
 Several months afterwards came his distin- 
 guished recognition of the work itself : 
 
 MT. VERNON, Nov. 4 th , 1790. 
 
 MADAM, My engagements since the receipt 
 
 of your letter of the 12 th of Sept., with which I 
 
 was honored two days ago, have prevented an 
 
 attentive perusal of the Book that accompanied it 
 
 180
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 but, from the reputation of its Author from 
 the parts I have read and from a general idea 
 of the pieces, I am persuaded of its gracious and 
 distinguished reception by the friends of virtue 
 and science. 
 
 George Washington was not alone in com- 
 mending it to "virtue and science," and 
 Samuel Adams's congratulatory note in ac- 
 knowledging a copy but voices the delighted 
 admiration of a widening circle: 
 
 "However foolishly some European writers may 
 have Sported with American Eeputation for Genius, 
 Literature and Science : I know not where they 
 will find a female Poet of their own to prefer to 
 the ingenious Author of these Compositions." 
 
 The book is chiefly occupied by two long' 
 and very dull tragedies: The Sack of Rome 
 and The Ladies of Castile, dull, yet truly 
 significant in that they mirror the constant 
 tendency of the author's mind. Throughout 1 - 
 her life she was almost morbidly apprehensive 
 over the danger which might befall the hardier ) 
 virtues of a state by the enervating approaches 
 of luxury. The old Spartan principles of toil 
 and endurance were, in her mind, never too 
 austere. In her preface to The Sack of Rome 
 she avows the motives which have led her to 
 select the period in question : 
 
 181
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 (t The subversion of the western empire, and the 
 Sack of the city of Rome, by Genseric, form an era 
 in the revolution of human affairs, that strikes the 
 mind with peculiar solemnity: Perhaps, at that 
 period, the character of man was sunk to the lowest 
 stage of depravity. Debilitated by the habits of 
 every species of luxury, a long series of tragical 
 events, and the continual apprehensions of pro- 
 scription, or death; the powers of the mind were, 
 at the same time, obscured by the superstitions of 
 weak, uninformed Christians, blended with the 
 barbarism and ignorance of the darker ages. . . . 
 
 "In tracing the rise, the character, the revolu- 
 tions, and the fall of the most politic and brave, 
 the most insolent and selfish people, the world ever 
 exhibited, the hero and the moralist may find the 
 most sublime examples of valour and virtue; and 
 the philosopher the most humiliating lessons to the 
 pride of man, in the turpitude of some of their 
 capital characters : While the extensive dominions 
 of that once celebrated nation, their haughty usur- 
 pations and splendid crimes, have for ages furnished 
 the historian and the poet with a field of specula- 
 tion, adapted to his own peculiar talents. But 
 if the writer of the Sack of Home has mistaken 
 her's, she will, doubtless, be forgiven, as there 
 have been instances of men of the best abilities 
 who have fallen into the same error." 
 
 She concludes with one paragraph which 
 strikes pathetically upon the ear of every man 
 
 182
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 or woman of letters who has been bitten by 
 that peculiar madness, the desire to write 
 a play and to see its characters rise and 
 walk: 
 
 "Theatrical amusements may, sometimes, have 
 been prostituted to the purposes of vice ; yet, in an 
 age of taste and refinement, lessons of morality, 
 and the consequences of deviation, may perhaps, 
 be as successfully enforced from the stage, as by 
 modes of instruction, less censured by the severe ; 
 while, at the same time, the exhibition of great 
 historical events, opens a field of contemplation to 
 the reflecting and philosophic mind." 
 
 The Ladies of Castile is equally significant 
 of her temper of mind. Her son Winslow, 
 then abroad, had suggested her writing a 
 tragedy, and the stately preface, addressed to 
 "a Young Gentleman in Europe," indicates 
 an equally characteristic motive for her choice 
 of this Spanish period. Winslow had pro- 
 hibited an American subject, and " seemed to 
 have no predilection in favor of British inci- 
 dent. Therefore, notwithstanding events in 
 the western world have outrun imagination, 
 notwithstanding the magnitude of prospect a 
 rising empire displays, and the many tragical 
 scenes exhibited on an island whence it derived 
 its origin, I have recurred to an ancient story 
 
 183
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 in the annals of Spain, in her last struggles 
 for liberty, previous to the complete estab- 
 lishment of despotism by the family of 
 v^Ferdinand. " 
 
 Liberty, always liberty! And in a solilo- 
 quy of Donna Maria, wife of the commander 
 of the Spanish troops, certain significant 
 words might have been spoken by Mercy 
 Warren herself, in a like tragic exigency: 
 
 " But if, ungratefully, ye spurn the gift, 
 And fly the field, and yield the proffer'd prize 
 Bend thy weak necks, and servilely submit, 
 Affronted virtue leaves such dastard slaves 
 To faint and tremble at a despot's nod. 
 
 " I, for myself, a bolder part design ; 
 And here, before the soldiers and the Cortes, 
 In presence of the eternal King, I swear, 
 Most solemnly I bind my free born soul, 
 Ere I will live a slave, and kiss the hand 
 That o'er my country clanks a servile chain, 
 I '11 light the towers, and perish in the flames, 
 And smile and triumph in the general wreck. 
 
 " Come, shew one sample of heroic worth, 
 Ere ancient Spain, the glory of the west, 
 Bends abject down by all the nations scorn'd : 
 Secure the city barricade the gates, 
 And meet me arm'd with all the faithful bands : 
 I '11 head the troops, and mount the prancing steed ; 
 The courser guide, and vengeance pour along 
 Amidst the ranks, and teach the slaves of Charles 
 Not Semiramis' or Zenobia's fame 
 Outstrips the glory of Maria's name." 
 
 The rest of the poems are nearly all occa- 
 sional : To Fidelio, Long absent on the great
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 public Cause, which agitated all America, in 
 1776, To the Hon. J. Winthrop, Esq., To a 
 Young Gentleman Residing in France, and 
 the like. Yet these were not all. To study 
 the pile of yellowed manuscript in the obscure 
 but painstaking chirography of that hand 
 which seemed never to tire, is to find page 
 after page of rhymed and metrical reflection. 
 The wonder is, with this Revolutionary dame, 
 f that she found time for such an extraordinary 
 /amount of work. She owns once, in a com- 
 fparative estimate of the status of men and 
 women, that woman's mental labor is far 
 harder to pursue because it must be inter- 
 rupted by household cares; but she says it 
 without complaint. Her own domestic life 
 was full to the brim. She could have found 
 little time for literature. She had five boys 
 to educate and train. She had an enormous 
 correspondence; and yet, ever welling into 
 light, is this irrepressible desire to put the 
 world into verse. She copies her own letters, 
 and those of other people. Her clerical labors 
 are enough to afflict a scribe. 
 
 But this does not prevent her from address- 
 ing " lines " to all her little world. She apos- 
 trophizes Winter, paraphrases the Nineteenth 
 Psalm, and prayerfully indites a solemn Ad- 
 dress to the Supreme Being. Her unpublished 
 
 185
 
 MERGY WARREN 
 
 poems are perhaps more abounding in senti- 
 ment and sensibility tban those which received 
 the sanction of print : On reading the History 
 of the Sufferings of the Divine Eedeemer ; A 
 Thought in Sickness ; A Thought on the ines- 
 timable Blessing of Reason; On Hearing of 
 the Sudden Death of a Sister ; Alluding to the 
 Sudden Death of a Gentleman a few days after 
 Marriage; On the Early Death of two Beau- 
 tiful Young Ladies Misses Eliza and Abigail 
 Otis; From my Window in a very Clear 
 Starlight Evening; Extempore to a Young 
 Person beholding the motion of a Clock. 
 
 She writes an interminable set of Alpha- 
 betical Maxims to her little granddaughter 
 Marcia, of which she thought well enough to 
 send them to the Reverend James Freeman, 
 to receive in return only a courteous phrase of 
 thanks with no commendation. They begin : 
 
 "This Alphabet, Marcia, is not made for a child, 
 But for ripening merit, if not early spoil'd : 
 Do you wish to be handsome ? believe me tis true 
 There 's nothing you say, or aught you can do, 
 Will beauty improve, or adorn a fine face, 
 Like Good-Nature & Science, assisted by Grace." 
 
 "Admiration gazes with pleasure on a handsome 
 face, but beauty without the graces of person, 
 makes no lasting impression, and more frequently 
 disgusts than pleases." 
 
 186
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 And so it trails its moralizing length to 
 Xantippe, Youth, and Zeal. Poor little grand- 
 daughter, Mercy Otis Warren ! Did she 
 stagger long under the delusion that all child 
 literature was like this ? 
 
 But Mercy Warren's place is not among the 
 poets. She has left no line so inevitable, so 
 perfect, as to have struck root into the soil 
 of literature, to grow and flourish there. In 
 form she is strained and artificial, like the 
 greater of her day ; and it is only her abiding 
 earnestness which succeeds in loosening the 
 shackles of too elaborate artifice and lets her 
 fcreathe and speak. Her home is among those 
 lighting souls who swayed the time through 
 (onslaught upon special abuses. That her 
 work was thrown into poetical form does not 
 debar her from taking her rightful stand] 
 among the pamphleteers. For this was the 
 __Age of the political pamphlet. It flourished 
 as the theological essay had done at an earlier^ 
 date. When the political situation had become 
 unbearable, and the air was heavy with 
 thought, the lightning of words played hotly. 
 There was little time for considered literary 
 effort, but great will for hurling polemical 
 fire-balls, and they flew thick and fast. 
 
 The struggle had not fairly begun when 
 James Otis published his Vindication of the 
 
 187
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Conduct of the House of Representatives. 
 After the Boston Massacre and the trial of 
 Captain Preston, Samuel Adams, over the 
 signature Vindex, reviewed the testimony in 
 a series of papers tending to prove the evil 
 designs of the British soldiery, and thus 
 astutely fanning the flame of Colonial resent- 
 ment. John Dickinson, the "Pennsylvania 
 Farmer," created much pother through Letters. 
 Thomas Paine's Common Sense struck a bold 
 blow in advocacy of an independent republic, 
 and that while it was treason even to formu- 
 late the thought. John Adams entered the 
 arena, and, as Novanglus, answered through 
 the newspapers the defence of Great Britain 
 set forth by Massachusettensis (Jonathan 
 Sewall). These letters appeared throughout 
 the winters of 1774 and 1775, until the wordy 
 warfare was cut short by the battle of Lexing- 
 ton ; and therein Adams traced the origin of 
 the struggle, and the policy of Bernard and 
 Hutchinson with a vigor which owed nothing 
 to deliberate workmanship. 
 
 There were many sucn pseudonyms, lightly 
 cloaking patriotic zeal. There were other 
 anonymous correspondents as powerful and 
 fervent, who can never now be traced. And 
 throughout the entire struggle Mercy Warren 
 hung upon the enemy's flank and harassed
 
 LITERARY WORK 
 
 him without cessation. She was one of the 
 gadflies of the war. A circumstance which 
 rendered her services invaluable is that she 
 was always ready. When an egg was found 
 in Plymouth, bearing the legend, " Howe will 
 conquer," it was Mrs. Warren who at once 
 sat down possibly in an interval of needle- 
 work or brewing and wrote a counterblast 
 in her customary satirical vein, reducing egg 
 and prophecy to naught. A rhymed disserta- 
 tion on " A Solemn debate of a certain bench 
 of Justices to form an address to Governor 
 Hutchinson just before he left the Chair " is 
 in her own uncompromising humor; but per- 
 haps the best of her unpublished work comes 
 under the heading, "An Extempore Thought 
 on a late flattering address to Governor 
 Hutchinson," or, as she bitterly denominates 
 it elsewhere in a hasty note, a "servile ad- 
 dress from the long venerated Seminary of 
 Harvard Colledge " : 
 
 " Oxonia's sons in abject lays 
 Could chaunt their idle fulsome praise 
 
 To Stewarts treacherous line ; 
 Their adulating strains express 
 With servile flattery's address 
 
 And own the right divine. 
 
 " Then Freedom found a safe retreat 
 In Harvard's venerated seat. 
 A liberal plan was layed. 
 189
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 How will her annals be disgraced 
 How Harvard's sons are thus debased 
 The Gen'rous Works betrayed. 
 
 " A Tyrant's trophies to adorn 
 Thy noble ancestors would scorn 
 
 In ancient virtuous days. 
 No sacred texts they 'd violate 
 (But weep to see thy fallen state) 
 
 A parricide to praise." 
 
 Much as we have in hand to prove her zeal 
 and faithfulness, doubtless far more lies hid- 
 den under the seal of anonymous contribu- 
 tions. That one who wrote so fearlessly and 
 with so prolific a pen should have given 
 abundantly to the newspaper warfare of the 
 day is inevitable. She hints as much in the 
 denial that she wrote certain communications 
 which had been ascribed to her; but she 
 expresses no surprise at having been thus 
 credited. The accusation was no new thing. 
 She was one of the teachers of the time ; she 
 reiterated, she insisted and warned. Like 
 John Adams in his quest for gunpowder, she 
 was determined to think of nothing but lib- 
 erty, and to repeat that splendid cry until the 
 echo, at least, came back from other mouths. 
 
 190
 
 VIII 
 THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 DOUBTLESS Mrs. Warren would have con- 
 sidered her History of the Revolution the 
 crowning labor of her life, the evidence through 
 which it should afterwards be weighed. It 
 had been undertaken, like most of her literary 
 work, under the spur of expectation and praise 
 from without. Her husband fondly urged her 
 to it, and a circle of ever-admiring friends 
 lovingly demanded it of her. It seemed to 
 them a fit tribute to be paid by one who had 
 been so nearly a part of those colossal events, 
 before she should pass on and leave the esti- 
 mate of the times to those who might know 
 them only by hearsay. They were ready to 
 assert full confidence in her mental poise and 
 grasp. But she had her moments of doubt, 
 when, with afflictions gathered round her, she 
 said, in resignation and despair, that if the 
 work should never be desired by the public, 
 it would at least be precious to her children. 
 ( To them alone it would have a peculiar value 
 as the record of their mother's mental life. 
 
 191
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 An existing manuscript of those three vol- 
 umes is a pathetic sight, and especially does 
 the prefatory inscription appeal to the heart. 
 After the publication of the work it was re- 
 copied upon thick foolscap paper, yellowed 
 now with age; it is in the handwriting of 
 Mrs. Warren and her son James, and the 
 initial inscription explains that many notes 
 are included which may be required for the 
 second edition for which this copy was made 
 ready. Sad confirmation of that uncertainty 
 of result which must ever pervade the world 
 of letters ! For every book is the launching of 
 a little craft, in ignorance whether its light 
 is to live or go down into darkness and never 
 be heard of more; and though Mrs. Warren 
 might thriftily prepare for her second edition, 
 no one could guess whether it would ever be 
 demanded. Some of the notes are written on 
 scraps of paper fastened to the page by old- 
 fashioned, clumsy pins. Did Madam Warren's 
 precise hand fix them there ? So they have 
 rested for more than three-quarters of a 
 century. 
 
 One note especially is of much interest to 
 the student of Boston society as it existed a 
 hundred years ago. In the printed volume of 
 her history Mrs. Warren gives the following 
 stanza, written on the death of James Otis, 
 
 192
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 referring to the author as "a gentleman of 
 poetic talents": 
 
 " When God in anger saw the spot, 
 
 On earth to Otis given, 
 In thunder as from Sinai's mount, 
 He snatch'd him back to heaven." 
 
 But in the manuscript note the initials of 
 the author are appended : " Dr. S. C. " Surely, 
 Dr. Cooper! 
 
 The History was not published until 1805, 
 but it was completed before the end of the 
 previous century. In 1803, there was talk of 
 a subscription list, and of getting the work into 
 the hands of the printer. And that brings 
 into remembrance one of the most interesting 
 circumstances connected with its publication, 
 the influence of its godfather, the Rev. 
 James Freeman, that serene and lovely soul 
 who was in this country the first avowed 
 preacher of Unitarianism under that name. 
 He was a literary man to the finger-tips, even 
 though he did once say, with his humorous 
 gentleness : 
 
 "All books are too long. I know only one book 
 which is not too long, and that is Robinson Crusoe; 
 and I sometimes think that a little too long." 
 
 His letters to Mrs. Warren especially appeal 
 to the student of book-making. Dr. Freeman 
 
 13 193
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 was an excellent man according to the moral 
 law, but he had likewise a typographical 
 religion which is also, in the eyes of many 
 among us, a very good thing. Letters are 
 swiftly exchanged between him and Mrs. 
 Warren on this momentous subject of publish- 
 ing a book, though the birth was not such 
 matter of travail as the great Cotton Mather's 
 Magnalia. Book-making had grown to be an 
 easier question than in his time, a century 
 before. But to realize that life was march- 
 ing then as swiftly as it has for us, since 
 Mercy Warren's day, it is only necessary to 
 glance back at the Sisyphus labor of getting 
 into print in 1700. No one can better Mrs. 
 Earle's paraphrase of Mather's story: 
 
 " At the first definite plan which he formulated 
 in his mind of his history of New England, he 
 'cried mightily to God;' and he went through a 
 series of fasts and vigils at intervals until the book 
 was completed, when he held extended exercises of 
 secret thanksgiving. Prostrate on his study floor, 
 in the dust, he joyfully received full assurance in 
 his heart from God that his work would be suc- 
 cessful. But writing the book is not all the work, 
 as any author knows; and he then had much dis- 
 tress and many troubled fasts over the best way of 
 printing it, of transporting it to England; and 
 when at last he placed his * elaborate composures ' 
 194
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 on shipboard, he prayed an entire day. No ascetic 
 Papist ever observed fastdays more rigorously than 
 did Cotton Mather while his book was on its long 
 sea-voyage and in England. He sent it in June in 
 the year 1700, and did not hear from it till Decem- 
 ber. . . . Then he learned that the printers were 
 cold; the expense of publication would be 600. a 
 goodly sum to venture; it was 'clogged by the 
 dispositions' of the man to whom it was sent; it 
 was delayed and obstructed; he was left strangely 
 in the dark about it; months passed without any 
 news. Still his faith in God supported him. At 
 last a sainted Christian came forward in London, a 
 stranger, and offered to print the book at his own 
 expense and give the author as many copies as he 
 wished. That was in what Carlyle called ' the 
 Day of Dedications and Patrons, not of Bargains 
 with Booksellers.' In October, 1702, after two 
 and a half Icrtig years of waiting, one copy of the 
 wished-for volume arrived, and the author and his 
 dearest friend, Mr. Bromfield, piously greeted it 
 with a day of solemn fasting and praise." 
 
 But Mercy Warren had much advice to ask, 
 and Dr. Freeman was delightfully scrupulous 
 and accurate in answer. One tell-tale cir- 
 cumstance in his correspondence strikes with 
 a familiar ring upon the ear, betokening the 
 hard-pressed student, the dilatory man of let- 
 ters who has so much to do with the pen that 
 he takes it up only under protest. For usually 
 
 195
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 he begins with an excuse for delay. He has 
 not "married a wife," or "bought five yoke of 
 oxen," in Biblical phrase, but he has been pre- 
 vented, unavoidably prevented, from writing 
 sooner ! One paragraph has a peculiar interest 
 for the student of international differences, 
 concerning, as it does, our early divergence 
 from the English on an irritating point: 
 
 "Your letter respecting the letter u I have not 
 yet rec'd; but I understood, when I had the hap- 
 piness of visiting you at Plymouth, that it was 
 your plan to leave it out in all words of Latin 
 origin, such as honor, error, & to retain it only in 
 words of Saxon origin, such as endeavour. Ac- 
 cordingly I directed Messrs. Manning & Loring to 
 print in this manner. This orthography is adopted 
 by many good authors; and as it is begun, 1 would 
 advise you to persevere in it to the end of the 
 work." 
 
 He then continues with that loving care for 
 detail which distinguishes the true man of 
 letters, to say that the best way of judging a 
 titlepage is to have one struck off. This the 
 printers shall do, according to his direction, 
 upon which he will send it for Mrs. Warren's 
 approval. For himself, he adds, with a good 
 taste which might well be emulated in this 
 modern day of the revival of book-making, he 
 judges that a titlepage should be simple and 
 
 196
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 in few words, and not disfigured with black 
 letters and printer's ornaments. Then with 
 the same studious consideration, he goes on 
 to speak of mottoes, concerning which Mrs. 
 Warren has asked his advice: 
 
 The motto to a title page is generally a Latin 
 sentence. The best passages of the ancient authors 
 have been anticipated by former historians ; but the 
 following, I believe, have never been used. 
 
 Quiafuit durum pati, 
 Meminisse dulce est. SENECA. 
 
 This sentence will apply to the author and her 
 friends, & to others who took active part in the 
 revolution, to whom it must be pleasant to remem- 
 ber the toils and dangers through which they have 
 
 Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri 
 
 Per compos instructa, tud sine parte periculi. LUCRETIUS. 
 
 These lines will apply to the young reader, who 
 in history contemplates with delight battles and 
 other scenes of distress, in the dangers of which he 
 does not participate. 
 
 Quern dies vidit veniens superbum, 
 
 Hunc dies vidit fug iens jacentem. SENECA. 
 
 This motto describes Great Britain, whom at the 
 beginning of the war we saw in all the pride of 
 power, and at its close humbled at our feet. 
 
 Invisa nunquam imperia retinentur diu. SENECA. 
 197
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 This verse also refers to Great Britain, whose 
 tyrannical government did not last long. 
 
 Et errat longe med quidem sententia, 
 
 Qui imperium credat yravius esse aut stabilius, 
 
 Vi quod fit, quam illud quod amicitid adjungitur. TERENCE. 
 
 These lines likewise apply to Great Britain, who 
 might have retained her connection with the col- 
 onies by friendship, but could not by force. 
 
 Deus ipse faces animumque ministrat. VIRGIL. 
 
 This verse acknowledges the overruling provi- 
 dence of God, who supplied us with arms and 
 courage. 
 
 Quis credat tantas operum sine numine moles. MANILIUS. 
 
 This line is to the same purpose, and may intend, 
 that so great a work as the American revolution 
 could not have been effected without the interposi- 
 tion of the Deity. 
 
 None of these mottoes please me so well as that 
 which you have pointed out. My only motive in 
 suggesting them is to show that I am not inatten- 
 tive to your request. 
 
 With great respect, I remain, dear Madam, 
 
 your most obedt Serv't, 
 
 JAMES FKEEMAN. 
 
 However, in spite of this array of pigeon- 
 holed learning ready to her hand, Mrs. War- 
 ren kept to the honest vernacular, and her 
 page bears Saint Paul's splendid antitheses: 
 
 198
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 "Troubled on every side . . . perplexed, but 
 not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; 
 cast down, but not destroyed." And follow- 
 ing it, the quotation from Shakespeare : 
 
 " O God ! thy arm was here . . . 
 And not to us, but to thy arm alone, 
 Ascribe we all." 
 
 Further letters from Dr. Freeman mark out 
 the weary way trodden by authors when patron- 
 age was not a thing of the past, since, in a 
 measure, subscription is patronage. Before 
 publishing, one must get the consent of one's 
 friends. On February 22, 1803, he writes 
 from Boston: 
 
 "The history, I have 110 doubt, would meet with 
 a favorable reception from a large part of the com- 
 munity. ... I would recommend that the work be 
 published as soon as possible. Let Proposals for 
 printing it by Subscription be issued, and put into 
 the hands of your friends, and of the most emi- 
 nent booksellers of the United States; and in the 
 mean time let a contract be made with printers, who 
 will execute the work in the most correct and elegant 
 manner, and on the most reasonable terms. Hav- 
 ing had a great deal of experience in business of this 
 nature, I am able to point out Manning and Lor- 
 ing as the most suitable persons. They understand 
 their art perfectly, and are strictly honest." 
 199
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Now comes the up-hill business of the sub- 
 scription list. February 20, 1805, he says: 
 
 "... I have postponed writing you, till I 
 could give you some account of my success in 
 obtaining Subscriptions. Many gentlemen, whom 
 I have expected to meet in a body, I have, from 
 unavoidable accidents, missed seeing. I have how- 
 ever communicated the proposals to several of my 
 friends, who have readily put their names to the 
 paper. About the beginning of March the His- 
 torical Society will assemble, when I shall not fail 
 to urge the business to the utmost of my power." 
 
 Another letter, dated October 13, 1803, is 
 full of a purely technical interest : 
 
 MADAM, ... I have seen Messrs Manning 
 and Loring, who, after taking time for considera- 
 tion, have communicated to me the terms on wbich 
 they will engage to print your History of the Bevo- 
 lutionary War. If tbe work is impressed on small 
 pica type, they demand sixteen dollars, fifty cents, 
 for their labour, a Sheet, a Sheet containing six- 
 teen pages. If on pica type, which is of a larger 
 and more suitable size, and on which I presume 
 you made your calculation, the price will be thir- 
 teen dollars, fifty cents a Sheet. As each volume 
 you say, will consist of upwards of four hundred 
 pages, I will take it for granted that the three vol- 
 umes will contain about thirteen hundred pages, 
 or about eighty-two sheets. The cost therefore of 
 
 200
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 printing at $13.50 a Sheet will be $1107. The 
 whole work will consume about 265 reams of paper, 
 if fifteen hundred copies are printed. The paper 
 ought to be of the quality of that which is sold at 
 $5 a ream, which will make the expense of the 
 paper $1325. Books in this country are commonly 
 delivered to subscribers bound in leather. But 
 this is a bad method, as a book is much injured in 
 its appearance if it is bound before it has been 
 printed at least a year. The European practice of 
 publishing in boards is the best on every account. 
 If you should issue your History in this form, the 
 cost will be, for three times fifteen hundred vol- 
 umes, or 4500 volumes, at .10 Cents each $450. 
 The whole expense therefore (excepting issuing 
 proposals, advertising, &c) will be as follows : 
 
 $1107- Printing 
 
 1325- Paper 
 
 450- Binding in blue boards 
 
 Total 2882, which will make each volume cost 
 you .64 Cents or $1.92 Cents for the three. The 
 volumes ought to be sold at $2 each. The sale there- 
 fore of 481 copies would cover the whole expense 
 (excepting as above). If the books are bound in 
 Sheep, the price will be 2 Shillings each; if in 
 calf .75 Cents. 
 
 Mr. Larkin, the bookseller informs me that he 
 
 has made your son an offer to publish the history 
 
 at his own risk, paying you a certain sum of money, 
 
 after eight hundred copies are sold. I believe him 
 
 201
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 to be an honourable man, and tbat his proposal 
 would be esteemed advantageous by authors in 
 general. 
 
 An estimate of the present year gives the 
 type-setting and press-work of the same book 
 as $1,316.70, the price of paper $500.40, and 
 that of binding in boards $585.00, a total of 
 $2,402.10 ; proving at a glance that labor has 
 become higher, while paper is much reduced. 
 Thus the identical books could be manufac- 
 tured for nearly five hundred dollars less than 
 at the beginning of the century. But in at 
 least one particular the most aesthetic printing 
 of the day coincides with the older standard ; 
 for Mr. William Morris declares with Dr. Free- 
 man that a book should be printed at least a 
 year before being bound. 
 
 Two years later he is writing to say that, 
 amid some discouragements, the subscriptions 
 are coming in, and he adds : 
 
 "I would most cheerfully undertake the correc- 
 tion of the press, if it is inconvenient for you to 
 attend to it; but as the proofs are generally sent 
 in the evening, and I never spend a night in town, 
 I fear I could not be entirely depended on. I will, 
 however, engage to do what I can, and, if agree- 
 able to you, ask Mr. Emerson, the minister of the 
 Old Brick, to supply my place, when I am out of 
 
 202
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 the way. He is always ready to perform these 
 obliging offices, & I have the most perfect confi- 
 dence in his accuracy. It would be necessary to 
 have a third person in reference ; and I can think 
 of none at present more suitable than Mr. George 
 Blake, who is a very good scholar." 
 
 With the same nicety of dealing with detail, 
 he goes on to tell her that an index will be 
 necessary, and to give her careful directions 
 for its compilation. Finally he sends the 
 joyful news that he has seen two or three 
 proof-sheets, which are eminently satisfactory, 
 and he adds, in words calculated to reach 
 the heart of the hard-tasked author of any 
 time : 
 
 "The progress of a work through the press is 
 to an author of sensibility and talents a season of 
 great anxiety. I congratulate you that one third 
 of these painful moments have passed. I hope you 
 will soon have the pleasure of dispatching the last 
 proof sheet, when your mind being relieved of a 
 weight of care, you can cheerfully repeat, 
 
 ' Now my tedious task is done, 
 I can fly, and I can run.' " 
 
 Perhaps the chief drawback of the History, 
 from a literary point of view, is that it proves 
 to be what the titlepage honestly leads you 
 to expect, "Interspersed with Biographical,
 
 WARREN 
 
 Political, and Moral Observations." Mrs. 
 Warren was, as we have been accustomed to 
 find her, too abstract, too sparing of the red 
 blood of life. She is a little dry and very 
 verbose, and it perhaps seems to us now that 
 she had not always a judicious discrimination 
 as to the relative value of events. Her por- 
 traits are very bold, very trenchant, as those 
 of an " incomparable satirist " must ever be ; 
 but they are not portraits after the Clarendon 
 type, warm, living, and dressed in English 
 which could not have been imagined other- 
 wise. When she wholly approves she is less 
 graphic than when she recoils through moral 
 aversion. Witness her characterization of 
 George Washington, which is exceedingly 
 dignified, but runs as sluggish as a fenland 
 stream : 
 
 "Mr. Washington was a gentleman of family 
 and fortune, of a polite, but not a learned educa- 
 tion; he appeared to possess a coolness of temper, 
 and a degree of moderation and judgment, that quali- 
 fied him for the elevated station in which he was 
 now placed; with some considerable knowledge of 
 mankind, he supported the reserve of the statesman, 
 with the occasional affability of the courtier. In 
 his character was blended a certain dignity, united 
 with the appearance of good humour; he possessed 
 courage without rashness, patriotism and zeal with- 
 
 204
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 out acrimony, and retained with universal applause 
 the first military command, until the establishment 
 of independence. Through the A r arious changes of 
 fortune in the subsequent conflict, though the slow- 
 ness of his movements was censured by some, his 
 character suffered little diminution to the conclusion 
 of a war, that from the extraordinary exigencies of 
 an infant republic, required at times the caution 
 of Fabius, the energies of Caesar, and the happy 
 facility of expedient in distress, so remarkable in 
 the military operations of the illustrious Frederick 
 [of Prussia]. With the first of these qualities, he 
 was endowed by nature; the second was awakened 
 by necessity; and the third he acquired by experi- 
 ence in the field of glory and danger, which extended 
 his fame through half the globe." 
 
 It is only when she approaches Thomas 
 Hutchinson, the object of what seems to her a 
 just detestation, that she becomes truly piquant 
 and human ; after remarking that " it is ever 
 painful to a candid mind to exhibit the 
 deformed features of its own species," she 
 goes on to characterize him as "dark, in- 
 triguing, insinuating, haughty and ambitious, 
 wbile the extreme of avarice marked each 
 feature of his character. His abilities were 
 little elevated above the line of mediocrity; 
 yet by dint of industry, exact temperance, 
 and indefatigable labor, he became master of
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 the accomplishments necessary to acquire 
 popular fame. . . . He had acquired some 
 knowledge of the common law of England, dili- 
 gently studied the intricacies of Machiavelian 
 policy, and never failed to recommend the 
 Italian master as a model to his adherents." 
 
 This, as has been said, is one of the judg- 
 ments of the time which posterity has reversed. 
 Mrs. Warren was no less enlightened, no less 
 keen of vision than her associates; but they 
 were all too near the object of their scrutiny, 
 and too hot-headed with the rage born of 
 oppression to judge justly. Thomas Hutch- 
 inson was not perhaps a martyr, but he was a 
 most intelligent man, who tried conscien- 
 tiously to perform the duties of an impossible 
 situation, and failed, as any one would have 
 failed who had not gone over, heart and soul, 
 to the Colonists. 
 
 Perhaps the worst thing that can be said 
 about him is that he had no sense of humor. 
 He was a man of clear, judicial mind, and great 
 moderation, candor, and fairness, which be- 
 came apparent in his historical work, a man 
 with a sincere love of his native country, but 
 one who held what then seemed a gigantic and 
 monstrous delusion: that America should, at 
 any cost, form an obedient part of the regnant 
 kingdom, her head. Other good men of the 
 
 206
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 REVOLUTIC 
 
 day believed the same heinous article, ar. 
 not hesitate to act in favor of it; but a. 
 intensely partisan moment they were proscri, 
 and without honor. 
 
 Her cool down-setting of Hancock is r. 
 freshing, as applied to a popular idol: 
 
 "Mr. Hancock was a young gentleman of fortune, 
 of more external accomplishments than real abili- 
 ties. He was polite in manners, easy in address, 
 affable, civil, and liberal. With these accomplish- 
 ments, he was capricious, sanguine, and implaca- 
 ble: naturally generous, he was profuse in expense ; 
 he scattered largesses without discretion, and pur- 
 chased favors by the waste of wealth, until he 
 reached the ultimatum of his wishes, which centred 
 in the focus of popular applause. He enlisted early 
 in the cause of his country, at the instigation of 
 some gentlemen of penetration, who thought his 
 ample fortune might give consideration, while his 
 fickleness could not injure, so long as he was under 
 the influence of men of superior judgment. They 
 complimented him by nominations to committees of 
 importance, till he plunged too far to recede; and 
 flattered by ideas of his own consequence, he had 
 taken a decided part before the battle of Lexington, 
 and was president of the provincial congress, when 
 that event took place." 
 
 Hers was no light task, to face her own 
 contemporaries with what she intended for ab- 
 
 207
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 solutely faithful portraits, drawn without fear 
 or favor. There can be no doubt that she wrote 
 her History with a religious fervor consecrated 
 to the cause of truth and justice. When she 
 erred it was through the natural fallibility of 
 human eyes when they dare to scrutinize 
 human motives. Perhaps none of her de- 
 scriptions approach so near the standards of 
 truth and of good literature combined as that 
 of Samuel Adams : 
 
 "Mr. Adams was a gentleman of good education, 
 a decent family, but no fortune. Early nurtured 
 in the principles of civil and religious liberty, he 
 possessed a quick understanding, a cool head, stern 
 manners, a smooth address, and a Roman-like firm- 
 ness, united with that sagacity and penetration that 
 would have made a figure in a conclave. He was 
 at the same time liberal in opinion, and uniformly 
 devout; social with men of all denominations, grave 
 in deportment; placid, yet severe; sober and inde- 
 fatigable; calm in seasons of difficulty, tranquil 
 and unruffled in the vortex of political altercation ; 
 too firm to be intimidated, too haughty for conde- 
 scension, his mind was replete with resources 
 tbat dissipated fear, and extricated in tbe greatest 
 emergencies." 
 
 Throughout her History Mrs. Warren never 
 deviates from the sternest patriotism, which 
 displays itself nowhere more plainly than in 
 
 208
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 her prevailing distrust of the Order of the Cin- 
 cinnati. She traces its development, owning, 
 in every line, her timidity over the tendency of 
 an order militating against republican prin- 
 ciples; and she says, in her usually emphatic 
 style (Mrs. Warren herself would have called 
 it a "nervous " style): 
 
 "As the officers of the American army had 
 styled themselves of the order, and assumed the 
 name of Cincinnatus, it might have been expected 
 that they would have imitated the humble and dis- 
 interested virtues of the ancient Roman; that they 
 would have retired satisfied with their own efforts 
 to save their country, and the competent rewards 
 it was ready to bestow, instead of ostentatiously 
 assuming hereditary distinctions, and the insignia 
 of nobility. But the eagle and the ribbon dangled 
 at the button-hole of every youth who had for three 
 years borne an office in the army, and taught him 
 to look down with proud contempt on the patriot 
 grown grey in the service of his country." 
 
 She refrains, with scrupulous veneration, 
 from censuring Washington for becoming, in 
 1783, the President of the Society, but she 
 quotes the opinion of others in an impartial 
 fashion which leaves us in no doubt of the 
 complexion of her own: 
 
 " It was observed," she says, "by a writer in 
 England, that < this was the only blot hitherto dis-
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 covered in the character of this venerable hero.' 
 The same writer adds * It is impossible, however, 
 to exculpate him : if he understood the tendency of 
 his conduct, his ideas of liberty must have been less 
 pure and elevated than they have been represented ; 
 and if he rushed into the measure blindfold, he must 
 still be considered as wanting in some degree, that 
 penetration and presence of mind so necessary to 
 complete his character.' He was censured by sev- 
 eral opposed to such an institution, who wrote on the 
 subject both in Europe and America : it was con- 
 sidered as a blameable deviation in him from the 
 principles of the revolution which he had defended 
 by his sword, and appeared now ready to relinquish 
 by his example." 
 
 210
 
 IX 
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 THE History of the Revolution had its epi- 
 logue : a controversy which Mrs. Warren had 
 all unwittingly provoked, and which was of 
 an aspect to mar the satisfaction of any author 
 in the publication of his dearest book. To 
 her it must have proved a heavy cross, though, 
 even under attack, she would not have with- 
 drawn a syllable from what she had written, 
 no matter how severely it might be questioned. 
 She was a just woman, and she had said her 
 say in what appeared to her absolute impar- 
 tiality; but she was also a woman of strong 
 affections, and I believe she would gladly 
 have cast the whole work to the " oozy 
 nymphs," if she might thus have spared 
 offence to one of her old associates. This 
 controversy over her book does, indeed, con- 
 stitute a very pretty quarrel as it stands, pro- 
 ceeding in the classical fashion, from the 
 " retort courteous " to the " countercheck quar- 
 relsome," and touching delicately on the "lie 
 211
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 direct; " after which the disputants "measured 
 swords and parted." 
 
 The History had been safely launched upon 
 the world when, on the eleventh of July, 1807, 
 John Adams, then a man of seventy-two years, 
 in residence at Quincy, addressed a letter to 
 Mrs. Warren, saying that he was not about 
 to write a review of her work, but that he 
 wished to point out certain inaccuracies relat- 
 ing to himself, that she might judge whether 
 it would be expedient to correct them for a 
 future edition. In this honestly meant but 
 rather ill-calculated first letter, he brings her 
 to book for saying that "his passions and 
 prejudices were sometimes too strong for his 
 sagacity and judgment," for underrating the 
 value of his commission for negotiating with 
 Great Britain a treaty of commerce, and for 
 the assertion that "unfortunately for himself 
 and his country, he became so enamoured with 
 the British constitution and the government, 
 manners, and laws of the nation, that a par- 
 tiality for monarchy appeared, which was 
 inconsistent with his former professions of 
 republicanism." 
 
 The letter is warmly written, though with 
 
 careful restraint, and it must be owned that, 
 
 in her reply, Mrs. Warren strikes at once the 
 
 wrong note. She steps out of the common- 
 
 212
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 wealth of letters, where the passionate artist 
 welcomes censure in order to approach per- 
 fection. She throws their difference at once 
 upon the ground of personal animosity. It 
 is, at least, an unfortunate statement made in 
 her opening paragraph : 
 
 "Had not the irritation of the times or some 
 other cause unknown to me have agitated his mind 
 too much for the gentleman or the friend, I should 
 not have received a letter couched in such terms as 
 his of the llth of July." 
 
 So the correspondence continues, Mr. Adams 
 growing warmer and more unguarded in his 
 language, and Mrs. Warren keeping too 
 rigidly the position of feminine invulnerabil- 
 ity. From the first she is intrenched in the 
 woman's stronghold of noli me tangere. She 
 forgets that in art as in argument, the most 
 unwelcome assertion becomes worthy of re- 
 spect, if honestly meant. It is quite evident 
 that, until he throws discretion to the winds, 
 and gives rein to that blazing temper of his, 
 Mr. Adams has the best of it, regarding it as 
 a fair up-and-down controversy " with no 
 favor;" for he shells her camp with docu- 
 mentary proof, and justly charges her with 
 those slight inaccuracies which are too preva- 
 lent in her work. 
 
 213
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Mrs. Warren wields with undeniable effect 
 the weapon of revolt under personal indignity. 
 She inquires midway in the game why she has 
 been so "indecently attacked." She has no 
 hesitation in characterizing his mode of 
 address as " angry and virulent." She touches 
 upon one contingency in a manner which 
 becomes exceedingly interesting in view of 
 the careful preservation of their letters and 
 the share which the world has already taken 
 in them. She tells him that his former letters 
 are not lost. 
 
 "Nor," she adds, "do I intend your more 
 recent ones shall ever be lost. They shall be 
 safely deposited for future use, if occasion 
 shall require it." 
 
 It was a prophetic suggestion which has 
 been amply fulfilled. Posterity has been 
 admitted to the inner courts of that old 
 friendship, read its inscriptions, and gone 
 away inspired with no less love and reverence 
 for the two fiery patriots. The letters have 
 been published by the Massachusetts Histori- 
 cal Society, not to embalm an ancient differ- 
 ence, but because they contain so much matter 
 of vital interest relating to the Revolutionary 
 period. 
 
 It is only fair to own that Mrs. Warren 
 does, at more than one point, assume an 
 
 214
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 ungenerous attitude. Her antagonist indulges 
 in page after page of passionate recapitulation 
 tending to disprove her assertion that he 
 appeared at one time to "have relinquished 
 the republican system." Thereupon she puts 
 him calmly aside with the dictum that she 
 can "see no pleasure or benefit in dwelling 
 on such a theme, or following a thread spun 
 out to such a length. " Surely, if it were her 
 metier to draw and publish historical conclu- 
 sions, it was also a necessity to establish 
 them, when challenged by an old friend whom 
 she had, whether justly or unjustly, wounded 
 to the quick. One phrase especially sticks in 
 the great patriot's throat. She has accused 
 him of "pride of talent," and that "is a 
 notion " he " cannot endure. " He refers to it 
 again and again, with increasing bitterness, 
 and it suddenly crops out in his reproach that 
 she should have recognized the appointment of 
 Jay to Madrid, and ignored his own (two days 
 later); whereupon he concludes with the bit- 
 ing remark : 
 
 "I am not able to account, Madam, for your 
 
 knowledge of one event or your ignorance of the 
 
 x- other. If it was not ( pride, ' it was presumption 
 
 \ 'of talent,' in a lady to write a history with so 
 
 J imperfect information or so little impartiality."
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 This inevitably rouses a counter-irritation, 
 from which Mrs. Warren replies that after 
 one of his strictures on the knowledge of the 
 " celebrated Mrs. Macaulay, " she cannot won- 
 der at his calling it " presumption in a lady 
 to write a History with so little information 
 as Mrs. Warren has acquired. Perhaps that 
 presumption might have been excited by your- 
 self, when, with the warmest expression of 
 friendship, you acknowledged you had received 
 a letter from an incomparable satirist, and 
 requested your most profound respects might 
 be presented to her, desiring her husband at 
 the same time to tell her that ' God Almighty 
 (I use a bold style) has intrusted her with 
 powers for the good of the world, which in the 
 course of His providence he bestows upon 
 very few of the human race ; that, instead of 
 being a fault to use them, it would be criminal 
 to neglect them. ' " 
 
 There she had the best of it. His flattery 
 of her, as we have seen, had always been 
 egregious. If she had not been a woman of 
 splendid mental balance and great modesty, 
 it could scarcely have been John Adams's 
 fault if she had believed herself intellectually 
 but little lower than the angels. Nevertheless, 
 it cannot be denied that in confronting him 
 with his former attitude, she proves herself
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 no fair antagonist. She commits the woman's 
 error of recurrence to the past, wilfully goad- 
 ing a man to madness by reminding him, 
 " Thus you used to do ; this you used to say. " 
 Moreover, she resorts to a feint not altogether 
 admirable by which his arguments are actually 
 subverted to his own undoing. No better 
 instance of such apparent logic and false 
 reasoning exists than in certain cool perver- 
 sions, whereby she makes him absurd through 
 the counter-assertion to the remarks which 
 have awakened his ire. She says : 
 
 "On what point of ridicule would Mrs. Warren's 
 character stand, were she to write her History over 
 again, and correct her errors, as you seem to wish 
 her to do, by contradicting her former assertions. 
 She must tell the world that Mr. Adams was no 
 monarchist; that he had no partiality for the 
 habits, manners, or government of England; that 
 he was a man of fashion, that his polite accomplish- 
 ments rendered him completely qualified for the 
 refinements of Parisian taste : that he had neither 
 frigidity nor warmth of temper, that his passions 
 were always on a due equipoise; that he was be- 
 loved by every man, woman, and child in France; 
 that he had neither ambition nor pride of talents, 
 and that he ' had no talents to be proud of : ' that 
 he was never hated by courtiers and partisans, nor 
 thwarted by the Count de Yergennes, but that this 
 minister and himself were always on the most 
 217
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 cordial terms; that he was a favorite of the admin- 
 istrators of the affairs of France; that they loved 
 him for his yielding, compliant temper and man- 
 ners; that he was always a republican, though he 
 has asserted there was no possibility of understand- 
 ing or defining the term republicanism; that in 
 France he was always happy; that in England he 
 suppressed the American insurrections by the de- 
 fence of their Constitutions; that his writings 
 suppressed rebellion, quelled the insurgents, estab- 
 lished the State and Federal Constitutions, and 
 gave the United States all the liberty, republican- 
 ism and independence they enjoy; that his name 
 was always placed at the head of every public com- 
 mission; that nothing had been done, that nothing 
 could be done, neither in Europe nor America, 
 without his sketching and drafting the business, 
 from the first opposition to British measures in the 
 year 1764 to signing the treaty of peace with Eng- 
 land in the year 1783." 
 
 It is easy enough to reduce an antagonist to 
 pulp in this fashion, if you are moderately 
 clever, and willing to adopt a woman's license 
 of speech ; but " ce n'est pas la guerre. " 
 
 In historical narrative, ill-judged suppres- 
 sions or wrongly balanced statements of fact 
 are surely as damaging to that approximate 
 truth for which the historian should pray, as 
 inaccuracy in regard to fact itself. To write 
 history is to challenge contradiction ; and no 
 
 218
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 one, not even an aged and honored lady, can 
 justly, in that situation, adopt the habit of 
 "uniform silence relative to any criticisms 
 that might appear from public scribblers, or 
 the disquisitions and interrogatories of others 
 in a more private character." 
 
 But the cause of this lamentable lapse of 
 friendship was less personal than public. It 
 must be referred to the events of the time and 
 their influence on opposing forces. Mr. Adams 
 and his old friend were unfortunately placed 
 . /Tn relation to each other. He was a Federal- 
 / ist, upholding a centralized form of govern- 
 / ment. Mrs. Warren adhered to what she 
 considered an ideal and abstract republican- 
 ism. It was, as we have seen, a constant fear 
 of hers that the republican standard should 
 become tarnished, and that the decay of this 
 young democracy should be brought about 
 through luxury and lust for wealth and titles. 
 She was not alone in including John Adams 
 among those who might minister to such a fear. 
 He had retired to private life under the burden 
 of great unpopularity. He was the " colossus 
 of Independence ; " yet by the spirit of the 
 times, the apprehensions of the times, he had 
 been placed in a position which must have 
 proved inexpressibly galling to a man con- 
 scious of rectitude of intention. He had been 
 
 219
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 attacked from without until he was raw and 
 bleeding; and it must have seemed to him, 
 when it came to Mrs. Warren, that he had 
 been wounded in the house of his friends. A 
 man of great directness, of rash, confiding, 
 and sometimes ironical habit of speech, he 
 was more than justified in feeling that when 
 she gave weight to popular calumnies by re- 
 peating them, supplemented by the conclusions 
 drawn from her intimate acquaintance with 
 him, the attack was not to be borne. It 
 was true, he had talked of monarchy ; but so 
 had other men. In October, 1775, he had 
 written : 
 
 " What think you of a North American Mon- 
 archy? Suppose we should appoint a Continental 
 King and a Continental House of Lords, and a 
 Continental House of Commons, to be annually, or 
 triennially or septennially elected? And in this 
 Way make a Supreme American Legislature?" 
 
 One bit of her evidence against him is not 
 only pertinent in showing the character of his 
 mind, but it paints in vivid colors the dash 
 and frankness of conversation both at Plymouth 
 and Braintree. She writes : 
 
 "Do you not recollect that, a very short time 
 after this, [1788] Mr. Warren and myself made 
 you a visit at Braintree? The previous conversa-
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 tion, in the evening, I. do not so distinctly re- 
 member; but in the morning, at breakfast at your 
 own table, the conversation on the subject of mon- 
 archy was resumed. Your ideas appeared to be 
 favorable to monarchy, and to an order of nobility 
 in your own country. Mr. Warren replied, ' I am 
 thankful that I am a plebeian.' You answered: 
 ( No, sir : you are of the nobles. There has been 
 a national aristocracy here ever since the country 
 was settled, your family at Plymouth, Mrs. 
 Warren's at Barnstable, and many others in very 
 many places that have kept up a distinction simi- 
 lar to nobility.' The conversation subsided by a 
 little mirth. 
 
 "Do you not remember that, after breakfast, you 
 and Mr. Warren stood up by the window, and con- 
 versed on the situation of the country, on the 
 Southern States, and some principal characters 
 there? You, with a degree of passion, exclaimed, 
 ' They must have a master; ' and added, by a stamp 
 with your foot, ' By God, they shall have a master.' 
 In the course of the same evening, you observed 
 that you l wished to see a monarchy in this country, 
 and an hereditary one too.' To this you say I 
 replied as quick as lightning, 'And so do I too.' 
 If I did, which I do not remember, it must have 
 been with some additional stroke which rendered it 
 a sarcasm." 
 
 Perhaps his remark, too, was intended to 
 be taken with a grain of salt.
 
 M&RCY WARREN 
 
 There was a great deal of more or less 
 serious talk about monarchy at that formative 
 period ; but a man was not necessarily less 
 of a patriot for dabbling in it. Conscious of 
 his general intent, of his great services to his 
 country, the specks upon Adams's armor were 
 so small that he must have felt like saying to 
 his friends : " You at least should not have 
 pointed them out. " Like every one of us, he 
 wanted to be judged au large, by intention 
 rather than according to the flawed and faulty 
 act. 
 
 To Mrs. Warren the entire affair must have 
 been not only painful but distinctly bewilder- 
 ing; for had not John Adams himself written 
 her, in 1775, "The faithful historian deline- 
 ates characters truly, let the censure fall 
 where it is " ? She had honestly obeyed him. 
 She had used the lash, and he had not only 
 winced but retaliated. Let it be again remem- 
 bered that these conclusions of hers were not 
 hers alone. They were duplicated in popular 
 feeling. Even certain unnecessary personal 
 strictures were matters of common belief. 
 She had naively and honestly set down that 
 "his genius was not altogether calculated for 
 a court life amidst the conviviality and gayety 
 of Parisian taste. " She had pictured him as 
 "ridiculed by the fashionable and polite as 
 222
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 deficient in the je ne sais quoi so necessary 
 in polished society," to which he bitterly 
 responds: "Franklin, Jay, Laurens, Jefferson, 
 Munroe, Livingston, Morris, and Armstrong, 
 I suppose, were not deficient in this je ne sais 
 quoi. " 
 
 Although Mrs. Warren was a woman of 
 "sensibility," I cannot help thinking that a 
 sense of humor would have enabled her to 
 guess that a spade must be dignified by some 
 euphemism when it comes to personal habits 
 and manners; yet she was not alone in that 
 criticism, and probably she was quite right. 
 John Adams was a plain man and no courtier ; 
 and no shame to him for that. In 1787, 
 Jonathan Sewall wrote to a friend in regard 
 to Adams : 
 
 " He is not qualified, by nature or education, to 
 shine in courts. His abilities are, undoubtedly, 
 quite equal to the mechanical parts of his business 
 as ambassador; but this is not enough. He cannot 
 dance, drink, game, flatter, promise, dress, swear 
 with the gentlemen, and talk small talk and flirt 
 with the ladies ; in short, he has none of the essen- 
 tial arts or ornaments which constitute a courtier. 
 There are thousands, who, with a tenth part of his 
 understanding and without a spark of his honesty, 
 would distance him infinitely in any court in 
 Europe. I will only add that I found many Ameri-
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 cans in London, whose sentiments and conduct 
 towards him were by no means so liberal or polite 
 as I could have wished." 
 
 But there is a curious later evidence con- 
 nected with this controversy, which, though 
 slight, is of no small interest; and I am per- 
 suaded that if John Adams had had recourse 
 to the existing manuscript of the History of 
 the Revolution, he would have been a little 
 mollified in finding how hard it had been 
 for his old friend to decide upon a just por- 
 traiture of his inner self, and how consci- 
 entiously she had tried to shade the picture 
 in conformity with her severe ideals of accu- 
 racy and truth. There are erasures where 
 she failed. There are softening phrases 
 which were afterwards omitted, in condensing 
 for the press, and which would have done 
 much to qualify resentment. For more than 
 one opinion in this less labored draft repre- 
 sents the popular judgment. When it has 
 reached print, it stands out incisively as her 
 own uncompromising conclusion. Those quali- 
 fying phrases are small; yet, in the face of 
 what accompanied their omission, they are 
 not insignificant. 
 
 From her historical page you read that " it 
 was viewed as a kind of political phenome-
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 non when discovered that Mr. Adams's former 
 opinions were beclouded by a partiality for 
 monarchy." The manuscript says: "It was 
 thought by many that his own political sys- 
 tems were beclouded by his partiality for 
 monarchy. " 
 
 jt- Turn again to the printed page and find: 
 "Pride of talents and much ambition were 
 undoubtedly combined in the character of the 
 president who immediately succeeded General 
 Washington." The same paragraph in the 
 manuscript begins with "Great virtues and 
 strong passions, " and though it goes on to the 
 "pride of talents" which Mr. Adams found it 
 so difficult to forgive, and to his "unbounded 
 ambition," the more fortunate prelude might 
 have softened him to bear the rest. 
 
 " It is to be charitably presumed, " says the 
 printed volume, "that the splendor of courts 
 and courtiers may have biassed Mr. Adams's 
 judgment into thinking an hereditary mon- 
 archy the best government for America." 
 But the manuscript is neither so patronizing 
 nor so dogmatic. Even from the fact of its 
 greater length, it makes the allegation less a 
 matter of fact than opinion. It seems there 
 as if she would " use all gently " : 
 
 "From Mr. Adams's religious professions and 
 his general regard to moral obligation, it is candid 
 
 15 225
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 to suppose that he might, by living long near the 
 splendor of courts and courtiers, united with his 
 own brightened prospects, have become so biassed in 
 his judgment as to think an hereditary monarchy 
 the best Government for his native country." 
 
 The quarrel swept on until John Adams 
 had said that which he should not, and Mrs. 
 Warren had retorted with what was at last a 
 properspirit. It is good to see, however, that 
 Tier last word holds a suggestion of softness 
 and regret: 
 
 As an old friend, I pity you; as a Christian, I 
 forgive you; but there must be some acknowledg- 
 ment of your injurious treatment or some advances 
 to conciliation, to which my mind is ever open, 
 before I can again feel that respect and affection 
 towards Mr. Adams which once existed in the 
 bosom of 
 
 MERCY WARREN. 
 
 The controversy dropped, and for a time it 
 seemed as if the old friendship were dead ; 
 but, like all precious things, it had in it the 
 seeds of resurrection. The common friends 
 of the two families would not allow it to 
 cease; and through the mediation of Elbridge 
 Gerry, then Governor of Massachusetts, in 
 whom Mrs. Warren had confided, a reconcil- 
 iation was firmly established. He seems to
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 have entered upon his hard task with great 
 tact and impartiality ; and a paragraph from 
 his opening letter shows how sincerely he 
 tried to look on both sides of the shield : 
 
 " The object of Mr. Adams, as expressed in the 
 first page of his letter of July llth, was certainly, 
 under the sense of injury which he afterwards 
 expressed, consistent with the character of a gen- 
 tleman of sense, honor, and reputation, and, had 
 it been carefully pursued, would probably have 
 committed to oblivion the letters themselves, and 
 have terminated to the mutual satisfaction of the 
 parties ; but if he did not ' conceive resentment ' 
 and was not 'hastily changed into an enemy,' he 
 approached so near to these points as that his best 
 friends must allow he appeared to be in contact 
 with them." 
 
 A frankly humorous and human incident 
 also belongs to the little drama. A letter 
 to Mrs. Warren from Dr. James Freeman, 
 dated April 14, 1810, indicates that she had 
 confided the matter to him under injunction 
 of secrecy; and he replies in well-guarded 
 and politic fashion, saying that he wishes " to 
 write in such a manner, as to express that 
 warm approbation " which he feels for her, 
 without unduly censuring Mr. Adams. But 
 he owns that he does not like, in writing, to 
 say anything about a brother man which is 
 
 227
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 not at once prudent and kindly. (Evidently 
 he adheres to the golden rule laid down by 
 Rhoda Broughton's born flirt and jilt: "Never 
 write ! In the length and breadth of Europe, " 
 says Miss Churchill with a modest pride, 
 " there is riot a square inch of my handwriting 
 to be obtained ! ") When he goes to Plymouth 
 he will talk it over. But he had previously 
 written the most delightfully personal letter 
 to James Warren, Jr. : 
 
 BOSTON, 6th May, 1808. 
 
 DEAR SIR, Your favour of the 20th of April, 
 owing I suppose to the new arrangements of the 
 post-office here, I have just received. It reminds 
 me of my neglect in not answering the very accept- 
 able letter, which enclosed the Alphabetical Max- 
 ims. For this and all other favours I sincerely 
 thank you & Mrs. Warren. 
 
 I am not unmindful of her injunction as to a 
 certain gentleman. Soon after my return from 
 Plymouth, I was closely questioned by his nephew, 
 whether his letters to your mother had been com- 
 municated to me. I inquired, "what letters?" 
 and was informed, "That they were very smart 
 & very severe." At that time I gave him no 
 direct answer: but a few days after I took an 
 opportunity of saying to him, that I thought him 
 a strange man; that he had asked me a question, 
 which I could not with propriety answer in any
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 way; that whether ignorant or acquainted with 
 the subject, I ought not to be pressed on it ; that 
 whenever a gentleman was admitted into the bosoin 
 of a private family, he had no right to betray its 
 secrets, or even to intimate that he had heard any- 
 thing of a secret nature. How ought I then to 
 address a man, who asks me such questions? He 
 answered, in a good natured manner for he is a 
 pleasant young man " Tell him, that it is none 
 of his business." I replied, "I do say to you then, 
 Mr. S, that it is none of your business." After this, 
 I conclude, I shall hear no more of the matter from 
 that quarter. Whenever therefore I go again to 
 Plymouth, I think I may be safely indulged with 
 the perusal of the letters. I have a great curiosity 
 to read them; and I did violence to my inclina- 
 tions, when, influenced by the motive of prudence, 
 I forbore to urge your Mother to communicate their 
 contents. 
 
 From the moment of reconciliation the 
 friendship ran in an unbroken course, only 
 to be interrupted by death. Its renewal was 
 followed by an interchange of gifts, still exist- 
 ing when the hearts whose affection they sym- 
 bolized have fallen into dust. Their story is 
 told in a letter written at Quincy, December 
 30, 1812, by Mrs. Adams to Mrs. Warren : 
 
 "With this letter, I forward to you a token of 
 love and friendship. I hope it will not be the less 
 
 229
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 valuable to you for combining, with a lock of 
 my own hair, that of your ancient friend's at his 
 request. The lock of hair with which you favored 
 me from a head which I shall ever respect, I have 
 placed in a handkerchief pin, set with pearl, in 
 the same manner with the ring. I shall hold it 
 precious." 
 
 Ring and pin are now in the possession of 
 Winslow Warren, Esq., of Dedham. The pin 
 is an oblong surrounded by small pearls, with 
 Mrs. Warren's initials in the centre. The 
 ring, a square top set with pearls in the same 
 manner, has suffered from the lapse of time ; 
 for most of the hair has disappeared, and the 
 letters " J. & A. A.," which were originally 
 in gold, have turned black. 
 
 And Mrs. Warren's reply, dated January 
 26, 1813, begins with warmth : 
 
 " A token of love and friendship. What can 
 be more acceptable to a mind of susceptibility? 
 
 "... I shall with pleasure wear the ring as a 
 Valuable expression of your regard; nor will it be 
 the less valued for combining with yours a lock of 
 hair from the venerable and patriotic head of the 
 late President of the United States. This, being 
 at his own request, enhances its worth in my esti- 
 mation. It is an assurance that he can never for- 
 get former amities. For this I thank him. When 
 I view this testimonial of their regard, I shall be 
 daily reminded from whose head the locks were
 
 AN HISTORIC DIFFERENCE 
 
 shorn ; friends who have been entwined to my heart 
 by years of endearment, which, if in any degree 
 interrupted by incalculable circumstances, the age 
 of us all now reminds us we have more to think of 
 than the partial interruption of sublunary friend- 
 ships." 
 
 Was it well that this ancient feud should 
 have been brought to light by publication ? It 
 seems to me eminently well, not only that the 
 treasury of historical fact might be somewhat 
 enriched, but because it lends us a more inti- 
 mate personal acquaintance with the two con- 
 testants ; for therein do we find them not the 
 more perfect, but the more human. 1 am 
 rather glad that two aged patriots could so 
 completely lose their tempers on the brink of 
 the grave. They had still the warmth of good 
 red blood. On both sides the excuse was ample. 
 John Adams's apologia lies in the bitter cir- 
 cumstances of his later life. Mrs. Warren's 
 plea was of a different nature. Well fitted, 
 from her personal contact with events, for vivid 
 historical writing, she was not, either from 
 the habit of a lifetime or the expectation of 
 that deference due her great age, calculated to 
 endure attack. It was a pity that she had not 
 found herself moved to write personal remi- 
 niscence rather than reflections which must 
 be more or less autocratic; but the bent of 
 
 231
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 her mind was ever toward abstract virtue and 
 vice, and on that road she wore no bridle. 
 The scathing nature of her satire (which, 
 remember, had always been received with 
 applause !) had educated her into a freedom of 
 speech which was somewhat too like Lesbia's 
 " wit refined " : 
 
 "... when its points are gleaming round us, 
 Who can tell if they 're designed 
 To dazzle merely, or to wound us ? " 
 
 And the time was yet young for balancing 
 events which were too new in the memory for 
 an unerring testimony. Neither Mr. Adams 
 nor Mrs. Warren could stand off and view, 
 with absolute wisdom in relation to results, 
 circumstances of which they had been a living 
 part 
 
 232
 
 THOUGHT AND OPINION 
 
 HAD Mrs. Warren herself, according to that 
 lifelong habit of kers, set out to draw Mrs. 
 Warren's character, what would she have writ- 
 ten ? Possibly something after this sort : 
 
 "Affable without familiarity, gracious to 
 her equals, and condescending to those whom 
 the social order denominated her inferiors; 
 of an heroic temper, which was nevertheless 
 sometimes shaken by the adverse currents of 
 a nervous organism ; deeply affectionate, and 
 yet, save in rare cases, studiously reserved. 
 Her intellectual habit was distinguished by 
 an extraordinary acumen in the judgment of 
 character and an ability to portray it. She 
 was possessed of vivacity of speech, and un- 
 varying address in action," but labored an- 
 tithesis is not to be attained by the modern 
 pen. What did Mrs. Warren betray herself 
 to be after her character had crystallized into 
 shape ? Her literary likings are not far to 
 
 233
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 seek. They conform to the highest and most 
 rigid ideals of her time. She subscribed 
 without qualification to the classic formula of 
 "days and nights to the study of Addison. " 
 Pope and Dryden, with their measured morali- 
 ties and even-paced rhythm, seemed to her the 
 refinement of poetic ability and good taste. 
 But through all her intellectual pursuits, her 
 character marches like a soldier, ready to 
 give blow on blow. No mere cleverness, 
 even on her darling grountl of historical writ- 
 ing, can blind her to a shallow estimate of 
 things sacred. Her moral judgment is never 
 hoodwinked by mere intellectual ability. She 
 reads Abb6 Raynal's Philosophical and Politi- 
 cal History of the East and West Indies with 
 a peculiar interest and approval ; for were not 
 his democratic principles exactly after her 
 own heart ? She reads Gibbon and Hume, 
 but with more than a grain of protest. To 
 her mind, their general conclusions were in- 
 validated by their sceptical tenor of thought. 
 No one, she would say, who fails to include 
 the Great Author of the universe in his 
 earthly scheme can justly weigh and measure 
 events. But especially does the furore over 
 Lord Chesterfield awaken her to a righteous 
 and outspoken indignation. Briefly she would 
 have agreed with the ruthless dictum that the 
 
 234
 
 THOUGHT AND OPINION 
 
 Letters teach " the morals of a prostitute and 
 the manners of a dancing master." She has 
 observed that infidelity is gaining ground in 
 America, and in 1799, she writes: 
 
 "For more than thirty years there has been 
 reason to dread the influence of the opinions of 
 Voltaire, de Alemhert &c on the rising generation, 
 and in more modern times I have held in equal 
 contempt those of Hume Gibbon and Godwin, 
 but as we hear the sacred volume is again coming 
 into fashion through mere detestation of the French 
 nation, I hope my countrymen will be so far Nel- 
 sonized as after the example of that gallant com- 
 mander to place their bibles in their bedchamber 
 instead of the metaphysical or atheistical trump- 
 ery imported either from France, Germany or 
 England." 
 
 She has no tolerance for Tom Paine, demo- 
 crat though he be. His writings are "blas- 
 phemous and without principle." 
 
 Her intellectual life seems never to have 
 been broken by any periods of lassitude or 
 dulness. Though her health might fail, her 
 voracity for knowledge remained insatiable. 
 Even when she was a woman of seventy, retired 
 with her husband to an uneventful existence, 
 she could write : " We read the newspapers 
 on all sides and everything else we can get." 
 She is forever lingering over memoirs. These,
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 with history, constitute her daily food. She 
 delights in Mrs. Chapone, whose "style is 
 pleasing, the sentiments elegant, and the 
 observations instructive." At Mrs. Adams's 
 request, she reads Mrs. Seymour's Letters on 
 Education, and they provoke from her a truly 
 characteristic comment; for whereas Mrs. 
 Seymour has declared that generosity of dis- 
 position is first to be awakened in a child, 
 Mrs. Warren urges that nothing should take 
 precedence of truth. Lay the foundation with 
 that, and all other virtues may be built upon it. 
 Books and pamphlets are constantly ex- 
 changed between her and her best woman 
 friend, accompanied by criticisms and com- 
 ments on their reading. December 11, 1773, 
 Mrs. Adams writes : 
 
 I send with this the 1 volm of Moliere and 
 should be glad of your opinion of them I cannot 
 be brought to like them, there seems to me to be 
 a general want of spirit, at the close of every one 
 I have felt disappointed. there are no characters 
 but what appear unfinished and he seems to have 
 ridiculed vice without engageing us to Virtue 
 and tho he sometimes makes us laugh, yet tis 
 a smile of indignation there is one Negative 
 Virtue of which he is possess'd I mean that of 
 Decency ... I fear I shall incur the Charge of 
 vanity by thus criticising upon an author who has
 
 THOUGHT AND OPINION 
 
 met with so much applause You, madam, I hope 
 will forgive me. I should not have done it if we 
 had not conversed about it before your judgment 
 will have great weight with 
 
 your sincere Friend 
 
 ABIGAIL ADAMS. 
 
 Mrs. Warren's reply is dated January 19, 
 1774: 
 
 ". . . . I shall return a small Folio belonging 
 to Mr. Adams the first safe & convenient opportu- 
 nity, tell him I almost regret the Curiosity that 
 Led me to wish to Look over the pages in which 
 Human Nature is portray d in so odious a Light 
 as the Characters of the Borgian Family Exhibits. 
 
 " ... as I am called upon both by M r & M rs 
 Adams to give my opinion of a celebrated Comic 
 Writer, silence in me would be inexcusable tho 
 otherways my sentiments are of Little Consequence. 
 
 the solemn strains of the tragic Muse have been 
 generally more to my taste than the Lighter Repre- 
 sentations of the Drama, yet I think the Follies 
 and Absurdities of Human Nature Exposed to 
 Ridicule in the Masterly Manner it is done by 
 Moliere may often have a greater tendency to re- 
 form Mankind than some graver Lessons of Moral- 
 ity, the observation that he Ridicules Vice without 
 Engageing us to Virtue discovers the Veneration 
 of my Friend for the Latter. But when Vice is 
 held up at once in a detestable & Ridiculous Light, 
 & the Windings of the Human Heart which Lead
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 to self deception unfolded it certainly points us 
 to the path of Eeason & Eectitude . . . and if 
 Mrs. Adams will Excuse my freedom & energy I 
 will tell her I see no Reason yet to call in question 
 the Genius of a Moliere or the judgment of the 
 person by whose Recommendation I read him." 
 
 One cannot but take a sly sort of delight in 
 her attitude toward the unborn cause now 
 heralded under the words, The Advancement 
 of Woman. Of the organized protest of the 
 present day, she anticipated nothing. She 
 seems to have occupied the tranquil position 
 of a superiority which was hers by right, and 
 always accorded her unasked. Abigail Adams, 
 on the contrary, did not hesitate to express 
 her own dissatisfaction with the recognized 
 state of things, and humorously appealed for 
 relief to the man who could not have given her 
 a more reverent homage had she been legally 
 declared his equal : 
 
 "He [Mr. Adams] is very sausy to me [she 
 writes Mrs. Warren in 1776J, in return for a List 
 of Female Grievances which I transmitted to him. 
 I think I will get you to join me in a petition to 
 Congress. I thought it was very probable our 
 Wise Statesmen would erect a New Government 
 & form a New Code of Laws, I ventured to speak a 
 Word in behalf of our Sex who are rather hardly 
 Dealt with by the Laws of England which gives
 
 THOUGHT AND OPINION 
 
 such unlimited power to the Husband to use his 
 wife 111. I requested that our Legislators would 
 consider our case and as all Men of Delicacy & 
 Sentiment are averse to exercising the power they 
 possess, yet as there is a Natural propensity in 
 >4Iuman Nature to domination I thought the Most 
 Generous plan was to put it out of the power of 
 the Arbitrary & tyranick to injure us with impu- 
 nity by establishing some Laws in our Favour 
 upon just & Liberal principals. 
 
 / " I believe I even threatened fomenting a Ee- 
 f bellion in case we were not considerd and assured 
 I him we would not hold ourselves bound by any 
 / Laws in which we had neither a voice nor repre- 
 sentation. 
 
 ^ " In return he tells me he cannot but Laugh at 
 my Extradonary Code of Laws that he had heard 
 ;heir struggle had loosned the bonds of Govern- 
 ment, that children & apprentices were disobedient, 
 ;hat Schools and Colledges were grown turbulent, 
 that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes 
 grew insolent to their Masters. But my letter 
 was the first intimation that another Tribe more 
 Numerous & powerfull than all the rest were grown 
 discontented, this is rather too coarse a compli- 
 ment, he adds, but that I am so sausy he wont blot 
 it out. 
 
 " So I have helped the Sex abundantly, but I 
 will tell him I have only been making trial of the 
 disinterestedness of his Virtue & when weighd in 
 the balance have found it wanting. 
 
 239
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 "It would be bad policy to grant us greater 
 power say they since under all the disadvantages 
 we labour we have the ascendancy over their 
 hearts 
 
 ' And charm by accepting, by submitting sway.' " 
 
 But though John Adams might receive such 
 an appeal with a jest, he conceded royally to 
 feminine powers. It was in the previous year 
 
 ithat he had said to James Warren, after own- 
 ing how inevitable it was that politics should 
 be influenced by women : 
 
 "But if I were of opinion that it was best for 
 il general Rule that the fair should be excused 
 from the arduous Cares of War and State, I should 
 certainly think that Marcia and Portia ought to 
 be exceptions, because I have ever ascribed to 
 those Ladies a Share and no small one neither, 
 in the Conduct of our American affairs." 
 
 Mrs. Warren treads delicately the ground 
 occupied by the modern anti-suffragist (when 
 the latter is a woman of intelligence). She 
 considers herself the equal, mental and moral, 
 of the more fortunate sex ; hut she concludes 
 that, for purposes of social organization and 
 government, a technical headship is neces- 
 sary. Such ascendency need not of necessity 
 find its root in the nature of things. It 
 merely happens that the well-being of society, 
 
 240
 
 THOUGHT AND OPINION 
 
 according to the Divine dispensation, demands 
 it. She very concisely defines her " platform " 
 to one of the young ladies who so often sought 
 her for counsel and advice : 
 
 " . . . You seem hurt by the general aspersions so 
 often thrown on the Understanding of ours by the 
 Illiberal Part of the other Sex. I think I feel no 
 partiality on the Female Side but what arises from 
 a love to Justice, & freely acknowledge we too 
 often give occasion (by an Eager Pursuit of Tri- 
 fles) for Reflections of this Nature. Yet a discern- 
 ing & generous Mind should look to the origin of 
 the Error, and when that is done, I believe it 
 will be found that the Deficiency lies not so much 
 in the Inferior Contexture of Female Intellects as 
 in the different Education bestow'd on the Sexes, 
 for when the Cultivation of the Mind is neglected 
 in Either, we see Ignorance, Stupidity, & Ferocity 
 of Manners equally Conspicuous in both. 
 
 "It is my Opinion that that Part of the human 
 Species who think Nature (as well as the infinitely 
 wise & Supreme Author thereof) has given them 
 the Superiority over the other, mistake their own 
 Happiness when they neglect the Culture of Reason 
 in their Daughters while they take all possible 
 Methods of improving it in their sons. 
 
 " The Pride you feel on hearing Reflections 
 indiscriminately Cast on the Sex, is laudable if 
 any is so. I take it, it is a kind of Conscious 
 Dignity that ought rather to be cherish'd, for 
 
 16 241
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 while we own the Appointed Subordination (per- 
 haps for the sake of Order in Families) let us by 
 no Means Acknowledge such an Inferiority as 
 would Check the Ardour of our Endeavours to 
 equal in all Accomplishments the most masculine 
 Heights, that when these temporary Distinctions 
 subside we may be equally qualified to taste the full 
 Draughts of Knowledge & Happiness prepared for 
 the Upright of every Nation & Sex; when Virtue 
 alone will be the Test of Eank, & the grand 
 (Economy for an Eternal Duration will be properly 
 Adjusted." 
 
 There speaks the feminine wisdom of the 
 ages : " My dear, it may be necessary for you 
 to seem inferior ; but you need not be so. Let 
 them have their little game, since it may have 
 been so willed. It won't hurt you; it will 
 amuse them." 
 
 Of this same subtlety of worldly wisdom, 
 though of another complexion, is the sage 
 advice written to her son Henry's young wife 
 soon after marriage: "Many of our thought- 
 less sex as soon as the connubial knot is tied 
 neglect continual attention (which is neces- 
 sary without discovering the exertion) to keep 
 the sacred flame of love alive." 
 
 Note the significance of the italicized words ! 
 Mrs. Warren had learned that the woman who 
 would reign must be mistress of an exquisite 
 tact. 
 
 242
 
 THOUGHT AND OPINION 
 
 She is not to be deluded by conventional 
 judgments, the snap-shots of criticism. In 
 writing Mrs. Adams, she refers to their com- 
 mon curiosity regarding certain political let- 
 ters, adding: 
 
 " [It is] the one quality which the other sex so 
 generously Consign over to us. Though for no other 
 Season but because they have the opportunity of 
 indulging their inquisitive Humour to the utmost 
 in the great school of the World, while we are con- 
 fined to the Narrower Circle of Domestic Care, 
 but we have yet one Advantage peculiar to our- 
 selves. If the Mental Faculties of the Female 
 are not improved it may be Concealed in the ob- 
 scure retreats of the Bedchamber or the kitchen 
 which she is not Necessitated to Leave." 
 
 But alas ! when she speaks from the inse- 
 cure morass of nervous panic her conclusions 
 are less assured. Thus does she write in the 
 early days of the war, after much talk of polit- 
 ical apprehensions : 
 
 "As our weak & timid sex is only the echo 
 of the other, & like some pliant peace of Clock 
 work the springs of our souls move slow or more 
 Kapidly: just as hope, fear or courage gives mo- 
 tion to the conducting wires that govern all our 
 movements, so I build much on the high key 
 that at present seems to Animate the American 
 patriots." 
 
 243
 
 WARREN 
 
 Again does she appear in the field, in 
 outspoken championship. Her son Winslow 
 has professed himself " enraptured " with Lord 
 Chesterfield's Letters. This alone is suffi- 
 ciently alarming to her moral sense, and she 
 writes him a protest so scathing of the polite 
 author that it was considered worthy a general 
 reading, and through other hands found its 
 way into the newspaper under the prefatory 
 note : 
 
 4 ' The enclosed letter was written by a Lady 
 born and educated in this State, Whose friends 
 bave repeatedly ventured offending her delicacy by 
 obliging tbe public with some of her ingenious 
 and elegant productions." 
 
 After criticising his lordship's morals and 
 manners with an unblenching rigor, Mrs. 
 Warren takes him up on this especially offen- 
 sive point : 
 
 "His Lordship's severity to the ladies only 
 reminds me of tbe fable of the lion and tbe man : 
 I think his trite, backney'd, vulgar observations, 
 tbe contempt be affects to pour on so fair a part of 
 the Creation, are as much beneath tbe resentment 
 of a woman of education and reflection, as deroga- 
 tory to tbe candor and generosity of a writer of 
 bis acknowledged abilities and fame; and I believe 
 in this age of refinement and philosophy, few men 
 indulge a peculiar asperity with regard to the sex 
 
 244
 
 THOUGHT AND OPINION 
 
 in general, but such as have been unfortunate in 
 their acquaintance, unsuccessful in their address, 
 or sowered from repeated disappointments. Had 
 I not made my letter so lengthy, I would add an 
 observation or two from the celebrated Mr. Addi- 
 son, who did more to the improvement of the Eng- 
 lish language and to correct the style of the age, 
 than, perhaps, any other man." 
 
 Whatever conclusions Mrs. Warren formed 
 were distinguished by rare strength of judg- 
 ment, a sane common-sense ; and these could 
 not fail to assert themselves in this question 
 of sex. She was impartial enough to see that 
 tweedledum is exceedingly like tweedledee. 
 Witness an example : When the world curled 
 its haughty lip over Mrs. Macaulay's mar- 
 riage to her callow suitor, what said Mrs. 
 Warren ? She wrote John Adams that prob- 
 ably Mrs. Macaulay's " independency of spirit 
 led her to suppose she might associate for the 
 remainder of life, with an inoffensive, oblig- 
 ing youth, with the same impunity a gentleman 
 of three score and ten might marry a damsel 
 of fifteen ! " 
 
 There was always a tang in her words like 
 that of good honest cider or the west October 
 wind. She could not only think and feel, but 
 most emphatically she could speak. 
 
 245
 
 XI 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 IN the house of Winslovv Warren, Esq., at 
 Dedham, hang three portraits which are of 
 especial interest to one who would become 
 in the least acquainted with Madam Mercy 
 Warren. On entering the room, you are 
 confronted by the lady herself, as she appears 
 at the beginning of this book, in her attitude 
 of well-bred calm, one hand delicately ex- 
 tended toward the enlivening nasturtiums of 
 the canvas. She is dressed in a gray-blue 
 magnificence (although the list of Copley's 
 works does denominate it " dark-green satin ! " 
 curiously enough, a gown which appears to be 
 the duplicate of several others in the portraits 
 of that time), the puffs edged with a gilt 
 embroidery, and the sleeves adorned by lace 
 which is now in the family possession. She 
 looks like a person of great " sensibility, " ab- 
 solute firmness, and an admirable amount of 
 intelligence; nor can we subscribe to her 
 own disparaging dictum when, in later life, 
 
 246
 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 promising to send Mrs. Janet Montgomery a 
 miniature of herself, she refers to hers as a 
 " countenance only indifferent in the bloom of 
 youth." Lighted by vivacity and the play of 
 varying expression, it must have exercised 
 great fascination of a superior sort. Her 
 neighbor on the wall, hangs the bluff, florid 
 yeoman, her husband, the man who could tell 
 a good story, laugh a hearty laugh, and smile 
 away his wife's megrims: "A good heart, 
 Kate, is the sun and moon ; or, rather, the sun, 
 and not the moon ; for it shines bright, and 
 never changes, but keeps his course truly." 
 
 But the third picture, a remarkably fine 
 Copley, was one of Mrs. Warren's chief treas- 
 ures. It is the portrait of a young man of 
 handsome, strongly-marked features, and an 
 unmistakable expression of pride bordering on 
 arrogance. His eyes almost invoke apologies. 
 They have the indisputable air of saying, 
 "What are you doing dans cette galere?" 
 This is Winslow Warren, the son who was at 
 once the pride and the anxiety of his mother's 
 heart; and the picture is, according to her 
 own words when she received it, in 1785, "a 
 most striking likeness of a son inexpressibly 
 dear. " 
 
 From his letters, at least, he seems to have 
 been a man of much vigor of mind, and, 
 
 247
 
 M&RCY WARREN 
 
 according to the comments of others, well- 
 equipped with social graces. For during a 
 long stay abroad he evidently took the stand 
 of a young gentleman of fortune and breeding. 
 The pleasures of fashionable life especially 
 appealed to him, and he was fitted by nature 
 for ease and gayety. But however he might 
 appear to the world, his mother valued him 
 more than "one entire and perfect chrysolite." 
 He was not only her cherished son, but her 
 adviser, her friend. She referred to him on 
 various points which might require the expe- 
 rience of a man of the world, submitting to 
 him possibilities of travel for his younger 
 brothers, and in one case sending him a copy 
 of her tragedy, The Sack of Rome, with a 
 request for his criticisms. And he gave 
 them, perhaps with a freedom which none of 
 the other sons might so boldly have used. 
 The manuscript copy which travelled to Lisbon 
 and back again has his intelligent but free- 
 and-easy remarks, wherein he quarrels with 
 some of her motives, and her unities of time 
 and place, and, in short, treats her rather 
 like an intellectual equal than a superior. 
 
 He spent many of the later years of his life 
 abroad, and the pathos of the mother's yearn- 
 ing love was enhanced by the pain of that sep- 
 aration. It was not then, as now, a trifling 
 
 248
 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 incident of travel to "run over" for the sum- 
 mer. Vessels were weeks in going, and let- 
 ters were subject to the chances not only of 
 time, but of piracy and loss. It was the nine- 
 teenth of May, 1780, when Winslow sailed, 
 carrying, we can imagine, a freight of fond in- 
 junctions, and weighted with parental advice. 
 His mother afterwards reminded him that they 
 sat together before his sailing, and talked, in 
 a time of unprecedented darkness, a deeply 
 solemn vigil, at least to her. This was the 
 Dark Day so alarming to New England : the 
 day when Colonel Abraham Davenport, of 
 Connecticut, elected to do his "present duty," 
 and went on with the business of legislation 
 among the candles' "flaring lights." To one 
 of Mrs. Warren's temperament it might have 
 seemed ominous on the eve of a step so vital. 
 At Newfoundland, Winslow's vessel was de- 
 tained by the English; and, as his mother 
 writes with pride, young as he was, he vol- 
 untarily pledged himself as hostage for the 
 liberation of certain of his countrymen suffer- 
 ing on board the prison ship there. 
 
 However, he was very courteously treated, 
 and allowed to continue his journey; but in 
 England he fell under suspicion, during the 
 next year, for keeping patriotic company. On 
 April 28, 1781, he reports himself as "having
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 been arrested in London on suspicion of too 
 intimate an acquaintance with Temple, Trum- 
 bull &c. Lord Hillsborough asked me many 
 questions about my situation & views . . . 
 His lordship condescended to give me a great 
 deal of advice saying he was prepossessed in 
 my favor from my appearance. ... He lav- 
 ished many praises on my mother's letters 
 said ' they would do honor to the greatest 
 writer that ever wrote ' and added ' Mr. War- 
 ren I hope you will profit by her instruc- 
 tions & advice.' I had the honor of three 
 private conferences with him. On the last 
 which was the day before I left London I 
 requested a passport from him to Ostend. He 
 answered that the communication was free 
 and open to every one, that he did not think 
 it necessary, wished me a pleasant ride down 
 & an agreeable passage over . . . After this 
 when I arrived at Margate 1 was again ar- 
 rested by his lordship's orders. You may 
 easily suppose how much I was astonished at 
 this but I have every reason to suppose it 
 was done in hopes of getting hold of Mr. 
 Temple by again seizing my papers but in 
 this they are monstrously disappointed. Sir 
 James Wright told me before I left it that 
 I was watched during my whole stay in Lon- 
 don: where I went when I removed lodg- 
 
 250
 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 ings who accompanyed me to the house of 
 Commons & who were my acquaintances." 
 
 But it was not long after his arrival, in 
 July, 1780, that we find a cursory mention of 
 an enemy of our own : 
 
 " Everybody or tout le monde as the french say 
 are attacked with the influenza which has made the 
 tour of Europe coming from Eussia & so on into 
 Germany England Holland &c This disorder is 
 matter of much Speculation and none can give any 
 satisfactory account of its origin & cause it has 
 heen fatal in many places where it has heen improp- 
 erly treated in the commencement." 
 
 In November of the same year Mrs. Warren 
 had dramatic news to send him : 
 
 "No very capital stroke has heen struck on 
 either side. . . . You will have a Narrative of the 
 Blackned treachery of Arnold and the fall of the 
 Brave Major Andre. While every tongue acceded 
 to the justice of his sentence every eye droped a 
 tear at the Necessity of its Execution. Thus a Man 
 capable of winning the Brightest Laurels of Glory 
 in the field has died by the hand of the Execu- 
 tioner amidst the armies of America, but without 
 one personal Enemy." 
 
 From Nantz, in 1782, he writes that he has 
 carried about one of his mother's letters ever 
 
 251
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 since receiving it, and read it to so many 
 Americans that he knows it by heart. "It 
 is, "he adds with emphasis, "universally ac- 
 knowledged to be as good language and as 
 just sentiment as ever were put together." 
 
 Meanwhile the Warrens had, in 1781, pur- 
 chased the Governor Hutchinson house at 
 Milton, a place which seemed thenceforth to 
 be bound up with dreams of Winslow and 
 plans for his coming. His mother approves 
 his enterprise in wishing to engage in mercan- 
 tile pursuits abroad. Commerce, she believes, 
 must broaden the mind. But she would fain 
 have him at home, or even settled abroad 
 in some steady pursuit. One extract from 
 a letter of his shows an amusingly different 
 temper in mother and son. He is perpetually 
 wishing to be at home again, either from some 
 personal love of Milton Hill, or from the 
 warmth with which the family describe their 
 present home, and one day he adds jocosely 
 that he would gladly return and live near 
 them in a tree-shaded spot, with "a Woman 
 whether handsome or not would be immate- 
 rial with me, provided she had at least 5000 
 Guineas. I would live in perfect happiness. 
 my residence in America was hardly long 
 enough to find such a Girl if you will follow 
 the french fashion I am at your orders." 
 
 252
 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 But this boldness of speech is offensive to 
 Mrs. Warren's decorum. She carefully cor- 
 rects the letter, inserts an adjective, so that 
 the "not impossible she" figures as "an 
 agreeable woman," and, carefully lining out 
 the crass and mercenary "5000 Guineas," 
 supplies the more temperate phrase, " a com- 
 petent fortune." 
 
 In the spring of 1783, she writes him at 
 Philadelphia, a glad, spontaneous little cry: 
 " Is my son again on the same Continent ! " 
 and eighteen days later, after hearing that he 
 proposes returning to Europe without coming 
 to Milton, she breaks out in a spirit of remon- 
 strance noticeably rare in her intercourse with 
 him : " It cannot it must not be ! " 
 
 This year a family calamity is to be chron- 
 icled. James Otis, who had been living his 
 quiet life at a farmhouse in Andover, was 
 killed by lightning; and thus, in June, does 
 Mrs. Warren write her son : 
 
 "The great soul of this superior Man was in- 
 stantaneously set free by a shaft of lightning 
 set free from a thraldom in which the love of his 
 Country and of mankind had involved him. We 
 cannot but behold with wonder & astonishment 
 the naming car commissioned to waft from the 
 world one of the greatest yet most unhappy of
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 In a letter written in March, 1784, when 
 Winslow is still planning a trip abroad, his 
 mother wonders with much gentleness whether 
 his continued absence from home may not be 
 caused by his dislike of saying good-by ; but 
 the morrow is his birthday : " The birds sing 
 sweetly come tomorrow if you can we 
 will have no bidding adieu, you shall see as 
 much heroism as you wish in Yours &c. M. 
 Warren." 
 
 Did he come ? Did she have the peace 
 of that birthday to remember, with her hand- 
 some son at her side ? Let us believe it, for 
 it was to be followed by another long absence. 
 Winslow, still with commercial projects on 
 foot, went to England, France, and Portugal, 
 and in the latter country settled at Lisbon 
 in the hope of receiving an appointment as 
 Consul General from the American States. 
 He writes in very evident distaste for Lisbon. 
 The city had had her lesson; for after her 
 Babylonian gayety had come the earthquake, 
 and the debris of her ruin was not yet cleared 
 away. Doubtless he heard there the story of 
 the handsome Englishman, Sir Harry Frank- 
 land, rescued from the crumbling city by 
 Agnes Surriage, the unhappy maid of Marble- 
 head ; but he does not mention it. There he 
 waits for his consular appointment, which 
 
 254
 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 never comes, meanwhile leading the life of 
 a gentleman of ease and fashion. He is ex- 
 cellently fitted for the consulship, for he has 
 learned the language, and knows much of Con- 
 tinental life and affairs; his mother implies, 
 with a little natural though dignified resent- 
 ment, that the memory of his father's distin- 
 guished services in America might have roused 
 certain high officials here to the necessity of 
 advancing him. He does not lack for society. 
 The English are very polite to him, knowing 
 his official expectations. But, either out of 
 compliment to his mother, or in some youth- 
 ful discontent, he sighs continually for home. 
 Mrs. Warren tells him how carefully she has 
 followed his direction in planting certain trees 
 at Milton ; and he responds in a strain calcu- 
 lated to gladden her heart. He has received 
 her letters : 
 
 "I wish to God [he adds] I was at the Win- 
 dow you wrote them from. Most assuredly there 
 is not so pleasant a one neither in France nor 
 Flanders nor in England or Holland and your 
 stables are vastly more pleasant than the Queen's 
 palace in Lisbon." 
 
 But how did Mrs. Warren estimate modern 
 gallantry when she read a certain letter tell- 
 ing how her son, with a party of friends, went 
 
 255
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 "down the river " sight-seeing ? One of their 
 attendants struck a villager, "which was re- 
 sented by the whole & in a few moments we 
 were surrounded by an hundred men beside 
 Women & Children. their Gallantry was 
 our security. We sheltered ourselves behind 
 the ladies untill an officer came and liberated 
 us from our dangerous situation . . . But the 
 dark assassinating disposition of this mur- 
 derous people cannot well be conceived with- 
 out a residence among them. A Story is 
 related of the minister of an Asiatic Despot 
 that never left his master's presence with- 
 out feeling to see if his head was upon his 
 Shoulders So I never arrive in my chambers 
 without looking around me to see if I am 
 safe also." 
 
 Meanwhile the house at Milton, where 
 General Warren was again in private life, 
 had been left more desolate. George was 
 studying law at Northampton; and in 1784 
 Mrs. Warren writes that Charles, warned by 
 consumptive symptoms, had gone on a voyage 
 in pursuit of health. A second voyage did 
 him no permanent good ; and in the spring of 
 1785, he arrived home again from Hispaniola, 
 as the island of Haiti was then called. In 
 August of that year, with a last despairing 
 attempt to use all means for recovery, he set 
 
 256
 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 sail for Europe, and died at Cadiz, alone, save 
 for his attendant. He met with great kind- 
 ness in that land of strangers and an alien 
 belief. At the end a father of the Catholic 
 Church offered him the consolations of that 
 faith; but, as his mother recounts with a 
 sorrowful pride, he refused to accept them, 
 and died in the religion of his fathers. 
 
 Winslow's last return from Europe was in 
 the spring of 1791; and instead of going to 
 the warm home-corner in Milton, he was de- 
 tained in Boston (through some personal dif- 
 ficulties, it would seem), and there he was 
 compelled to linger, while his mother's heart 
 must have been wrung with an almost unbear- 
 able poignancy of pain. Her letters, though 
 written with a careful self-restraint, are almost 
 too intimate, too sacred, to be quoted. She 
 still preserves toward him that patient obedi- 
 ence to his desires which is so pathetic from 
 a mother to the son who has once lain in her 
 arms. Her own prayer is to make nothing 
 harder for him. She wishes, of course, to fly 
 to him ; but since he prefers her to remain at 
 home and keep a bold front, she will obey. 
 At this time her husband proposes her giving 
 a dinner to certain of his associates, and she 
 admits the policy of thus preserving the dig- 
 nity and decorum of life, though her head may 
 
 17 257
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 have been brought in sorrow to the dust. One 
 can imagine the brave lady sitting through 
 that dinner, composed and smiling, with the 
 fox gnawing at her heart. But by dint of 
 much exertion, Winslow's affairs were ar- 
 ranged, and he joined St. Glair's forces organ- 
 ized for the suppression of the Indian troubles 
 in the West, setting off hastily, no doubt, 
 for he did not see his mother before he went. 
 Her spirit was never broken, but it had by 
 this time become subdued and chastened, and 
 the patience breathing through her letters 
 comes touchingly from one so proud and firm. 
 She loses heart for her literary work, and faith 
 in its success. On the tenth of June she writes 
 Winslow: 
 
 "It is my wish, if there is any value in my 
 printed volume [the Poems] to bequeath the copy- 
 right solely to your use. I have nothing else I 
 can so properly call my own." 
 
 That which is most truly her own must 
 belong to him ; the others are tenderly loved, 
 but he is a part of her very self. Then, sud- 
 denly, terribly, came the final blow. Winslow 
 was killed, November 4, 1791, at Miami, in St. 
 Clair's defeat. Thereafter little dismal cir- 
 cumstances came dropping in to irritate her 
 wound. She was eager to receive his trunk, 
 and, after long delay, it appeared; but it had 
 
 258
 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 been several times opened on the way, and 
 was found to contain nothing of value. She 
 had hoped for something intimate, personal, 
 like a message from his hand; but the tragedy 
 was to be consistent to the end, silence and 
 parting. A year after, in language as true as 
 simple, she wrote of his death that it was "a 
 wound too deep for philosophy to palliate or 
 the hand of time ever to heal." One little 
 treasure which had been near him she did 
 possess. His brother George had inherited 
 Winslow's watch, and he loaned it to his 
 mother for life. 
 
 In November of 1791 Henry married Mary 
 Winslow, daughter of Pelham Winslow, and 
 settled at Clifford. But Mrs. Warren was to 
 have only two sons near her in old age, for 
 George, on the completion of his studies, went 
 to Maine, and there not only practised law, 
 but became an ardent agriculturist (inheritor 
 of his father's tastes), a politician, and a land- 
 owner. Indeed, he bought land until both 
 father and mother wondered over the wisdom 
 of such accumulation. No one could take 
 Winslow's place in the mother's heart, but 1 
 fancy it is easy to find in her letters to George 
 a peculiar warmth and intimacy, the more pro- 
 nounced when he developed what proved to be 
 a mortal illness.
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 In 1800, his father is also ailing, and neither 
 he nor the two other sons can undertake that 
 long journey through the drifted Maine snows, 
 conscious though they are that George has 
 abandoned all hope of recovery. Mrs. War- 
 ren's letters then become very yearning and 
 tender. She assures her son again and again 
 of their affection for him. The need of ex- 
 pression grows with his weakness. They love 
 him; they long to be with him. It is only 
 the hard circumstances of illness and rough 
 weather which prevent. This is a good and 
 thoughtful son, one after her own heart, who 
 had been, as she said of her dearer child, 
 educated "according to the tenets of Greek 
 patriotism and Roman virtue, with Chris- 
 tian precepts." They exchange criticisms and 
 comments on the Book of Job, and George, 
 ever a good citizen, consults her as to the 
 principles of government. He confides to her 
 the status of his beloved new town, Winslow, 
 and in connection with his desire to establish 
 there a church of the most liberal principles, 
 grave counsel falls from her lips. She owns 
 her reverence for breadth of belief, but urges 
 him not to fall on the other side. She bids 
 him remember that "there are bigots to liber- 
 ality as well as to superstition." 
 
 One amusing instance of the difference 
 
 260
 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 between her and General Warren in their 
 manner of regarding old age appears in this 
 correspondence. Throughout George's life in 
 Maine he has the strongest desire to induce 
 his father to visit him ; but the good patriot- 
 farmer has reached the point where it is easier 
 to stay by his own hearth. Even when he is 
 temporarily forsaken by the gout, and thus in 
 good health, he still defers and hesitates. 
 Mrs. Warren, on the contrary, not only urges 
 her husband to go, but would even set forth 
 herself, if he and the other sons would con- 
 sent. They think the weather too rigorous, 
 the journey too hard for her years ; but she 
 has no doubt, so she boldly announces, that 
 she could bear it very well, and that it would 
 do her good. There was no growing old for 
 her, not even when she had to record long 
 and frequent illnesses, and confinement to her 
 elbow-chair. She had a spirit indomitably 
 young. 
 
 The bulletins from Maine grew sadder and 
 more sad. The waiting family were placed 
 in that terrible position of an enforced and 
 idle patience. George wants for nothing. 
 His mother has not even the pleasure of find- 
 ing it necessary to send him little delicacies, 
 for he can find them there. He has friends. 
 He has everything save the personal tendance
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 of his own kin. Then comes the news that he 
 has died, as his mother writes, " an example 
 of Christian fortitude." The Warrens, like 
 the Stuarts, could die like gentlemen. 
 
 March 23, 1800, Mrs. Warren writes from 
 Plymouth to her brother, Samuel Allyne Otis, 
 at Philadelphia : 
 
 "Rightly my dear brother have you denomi- 
 nated me your afflicted sister, the waves have 
 rolled in upon me the billows have repeatedly 
 broken over me : yet I am not sunk down. ... I 
 have been broken by sickness bent down by sor- 
 row, yet here I stand and may I stand cheerfully 
 humbly and gratefully rejoicing in the present ex- 
 istence so long as I can in any degree be useful 
 to my diminished circle of domestic friends." 
 
 It is not difficult to guess at the charac- 
 ter of young Winslow Warren, for his let- 
 ters abundantly illuminate it; but as to the 
 others, there is less basis for speculation. 
 Mrs. Warren had written Mrs. Adams in 1785 
 that George was a "very dilligent student;" 
 that Henry was " not too gay, " and that he and 
 Charles, as soon as the health of the latter 
 would permit, wished to take the "mansion 
 and stores " at Plymouth, and go into business 
 together. But that was never to be. One 
 deliciously priggish bit of epistolary litera- 
 
 262
 
 THE BELOVED SON 
 
 ture remains to the memory of these two 
 brothers, a relic of their college days. In 
 1780 Charles had written his father from 
 Cambridge : 
 
 "We make progress in Literature. We are 
 both studious and sober seldom surly, often Sen- 
 timental, kind, affable, gentle & generous to each 
 other, & harmless as Doves, we enter deep 
 enough in Study for the improvement of our minds, 
 and deep enough in amusements (and believe 
 me Sir no deeper than) for the advantage of our 
 bodies." 
 
 Is this written in a Rollo-esque sincerity, 
 or did the scribe read it aloud with a wicked 
 roll of the eye for his brother's delectation ? 
 For even college lads were not an absolutely 
 different species a hundred years ago. 
 
 263
 
 XII 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 To return to one definite phase of personal 
 history is to find that the step accomplished 
 by the Warrens in 1781 had been earnestly 
 debated in family council. This was the pur- 
 chase of the Governor Hutchinson house at 
 Milton; and it was a venture which might 
 have been regarded as not altogether wise, 
 since the father and mother were no longer 
 young, and by no means in the best worldly 
 circumstances. The bargain was concluded, 
 not without serious misgivings of their own, 
 for the reduction of their fortune was no mere 
 figure of speech. They could only pay for 
 their new plaything by the exercise of strict 
 economy, as General Warren implied in writ- 
 ing his son Winslow, who had not been long 
 abroad : 
 
 "... Were I not pushed to pay for this Farm 
 I should forward you some Bills, but as matters 
 are it is out of my power, every resource must 
 be Employed for that purpose and barely sufficient 
 will they all prove for payments now due. for you 
 are to consider I can sell nothing at Plymouth." 
 
 264
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 There is a strange dramatic interest in the 
 fact that the house of the detested Hutchinson 
 should have come into the hands of two 
 patriots who regarded him with cordial abomi- 
 nation, and one of whom had affixed a last- 
 ing stigma to his name. It had as pictur- 
 esque a history as that of any old house in the 
 Province. It was in the happiest possible 
 situation, and Governor Hutchinson had not 
 found it necessary to embroider, when, in 
 conversation with George III., 1774, recounted 
 in his Diary and Letters, he said : 
 
 " My house is seven or eight miles from town, a 
 pleasant situation, and many gentlemen from abroad 
 say it has the finest prospect from it they ever saw, 
 except where great improvements have been made 
 by art, to help the natural view." 
 
 It had indeed a rich and lovely outlook. 
 Only far enough away to lie bathed in the 
 bloom of distance lay the blue hills of Milton. 
 Facing the house was a dream-landscape of 
 delight: sweet meadows dressed in green, or 
 the soft russet of the yellowing year, where 
 the Neponset River winds and lingers ; and 
 still beyond, Boston Harbor, with its twink- 
 ling lights at night and sunlit brilliance by 
 day. To the left lay the sleeping city, far 
 enough away to intensify the peace ever 
 
 265
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 crowning the hill ; and plumy trees and haze- 
 clad greenery softened and allured between. 
 This was Neponset (in the beginning, the 
 Indian Unquity), and with the first half of the 
 eighteenth century it rose rapidly in social 
 importance. The eyes of the prosperous and 
 the officially great were attracted to it from 
 its promise of peace and the ever-present 
 witchery of beauty; and among them was 
 Thomas Hutchinson, who, in 1743, built the 
 house afterwards to pass into the hands of 
 James Warren. He builded well and on good 
 old models tested by time. Says the author 
 of The Governor's Garden: 
 
 (l The house stood about a quarter of a mile from 
 the wooden bridge crossing the Neponset River, set 
 well back from the Braintree road. The frame was 
 of English white oak, so solid that what remains of 
 it to-day scarcely feels the sharp edge of the car- 
 penters' tools. The plan was a simple one, but the 
 unrivalled scenery of hill, river and ocean lent it a 
 special charm. The walls were fully a foot thick, 
 and packed with seaweed to keep off the cold in 
 winter, and the heat in summer. [It was] a long 
 low structure with pitched roof and gable ends ; 
 ... In its east end were the coach-house and 
 stables ; beyond, the quarters for cattle and swine, 
 and haylofts above. To the west of this was the 
 farm-house and outlying buildings."
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 Society was born on Milton Hill and flour- 
 ished there; and no one was better fitted to 
 give it tone and flavor than he who, as Governor 
 of the Province, was destined to be rejected 
 by the people. There were gay doings then 
 at Milton, as well as in the fine mansions of 
 Boston town. Even the memoranda relative 
 to the Governor's "deaths" are enough to 
 paint a picture of the stately scene wherein 
 he figured, bravely arrayed. Like all the 
 proper men of his day (critical because they 
 had some liberty of choice beyond our rigorous 
 black and white !), he was thoughtful and even 
 exacting over his wardrobe. One oft-quoted 
 extract shows him at his best in this mood 
 of deliberation over such vital minutiae. On 
 October 5, 1769, after his elevation to the 
 chief magistracy, he sends to London for ap- 
 propriate furbishing : 
 
 To Mr. Peter Leitch : 
 
 I desire to have you send me a blue cloth waist- 
 coat trimmed with the same color, lined, the skirts 
 and facings, with effigeen, and the body linnen to 
 match the last blue cloath I had from you : two 
 under waistcoats or camisols of warm swansdown, 
 without sleeves, faced with some cheap silk or 
 shagg. A suit of cloaths full-trimmed, the cloath 
 some thing like the enclosed, only more of a gray 
 mixture, gold button and hole, but little wadding 
 
 2G7
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 lined with effigeen. I like a wrought, or flowered, 
 or embroidered hole, something though not exactly 
 like the hole upon the cloaths of which the pat- 
 tern is enclosed; or if frogs are worn, I think they 
 look well on the coat; hut if it he quite irregular, 
 I would have neither one or the other, but such a 
 hole and button as are worn. I know a laced coat 
 is more the mode, but this is too gay for me. A 
 pair of worsted breeches to match the color, and a 
 pair of black velvet breeches, the breeches with 
 leather linings. Let them come by the first ship. 
 P. S. If there be no opportunity before February, 
 omit the camisols, and send a green waistcoat, the 
 forebodies a strong corded silk, not the cor du 
 soie, but looks something like it, the sleeves and 
 bodies sagathee or other thin stuff, body lined 
 with linen, skirts filk. My last cloaths were 
 rather small in the arm-holes, but the alterations 
 must be very little, next to nothing. 
 
 Again, in 1773, his wardrobe needs a further 
 replenishing: 
 
 " I desire you to send me by the first opportunity 
 a suit of scarlet broad-cloth, full trimmed but with 
 few folds, and shalloon lining in the body of the 
 coat and facing, the body of the waistcoat linen, 
 and the breeches lining leather, plain mohair but- 
 ton-hole; also, a cloth frock with waistcoat and 
 breeches, not a pure white but next to it, upon the 
 yellow rather than blue, I mean a color which 
 has been much worn of late, button-holes and lin- 
 
 268
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 ing the same, the coat to have a small rolling cape 
 or collar. Also, a surtout of light shag or beaver, 
 such color as is most in fashion : a velvet cape 
 gives a little life to it. ... Write me whether 
 any sort of garment of the fashion of velvet coats, 
 to wear over all, which were common some years 
 ago, are now worn, and whether of cloth, and what 
 color and trimmings. I should not chuse velvet." 
 
 One would fain have seen the personable 
 Governor in his scarlet broadcloth "full- 
 trimmed," or his surtout of the fashionable 
 color, walking, stately and gracious, down 
 Milton Hill, exchanging an affable word with 
 his neighbors. So fond is he of that where- 
 with he is clothed, that one feels a regretful 
 pang over his rare self-denial. One would 
 fain have assured him that the laced coat of 
 the prevailing mode was not in the least too 
 gay. Surely the Governor could have carried 
 it off! But if his buttonholes turned out irre- 
 proachable, doubtless that was an abiding com- 
 fort, all the mere human satisfaction one 
 could expect in a fleeting world. 
 
 An accomplished scholar and a gentleman, 
 at one time universally trusted and beloved, 
 Governor Hutchinson had the tastes of the 
 country squire; and these he indulged at 
 Milton, where he was far enough from the 
 turmoil of office to become forgetful of it, save
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 in those great exigencies when it clamored 
 after him and pursued his track. He dearly 
 loved the good brown earth, and it was his 
 pleasure to experiment with fruits, to set out 
 trees, budding and grafting them with his own 
 hand. A row of sycamores on either side of 
 the street leading over Milton Hill were the 
 Governor's gift, planted not alone by his will, 
 but partially through his personal effort. For, 
 says tradition, he worked among the laborers 
 deputed to the task, wielding his spade with 
 the best. The trees (all but one survivor) 
 have died out within the present century; 
 but substitutes have, through the care of good 
 citizenship, replaced them. Thomas Hutchin- 
 son was also a good citizen, a public-spirited 
 and generous man. The highway over Milton 
 Hill was a narrow thoroughfare until he gave 
 a strip from his own estate to turn it into 
 that imposing highway of which Milton is 
 justly proud He was on excellent terms with 
 his neighbors until public disturbances rose to 
 spoil domestic peace; and he spent many of 
 his few tranquil days among them, mingling 
 in the village life, sometimes attending the 
 local church, and again driving into Boston to 
 King's Chapel, his chosen place of worship. 
 Milton's History quotes a bit of remembered 
 tradition pointing to the fact that the Governor 
 
 270
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 was very humanly regarded by his townsmen, 
 and that he could even be chaffed upon 
 occasion : 
 
 " One pleasant Sabbath afternoon, as he was re- 
 turning in his carriage [from King's Chapel], he 
 found himself stopped by the village tithingmaii 
 with his long black wand. The tithingman was 
 an Irishman of wit, and some standing in society, 
 who had been elected as a joke. He accosted the 
 Governor : 
 
 <( l Your Excellence, it is my business when 
 people travel on the Sabbath to know where they 
 have been and where they are going.' To this the 
 Governor replied : 
 
 "'Friend Smith, I have been to Boston, and 
 attended my own church both parts of the day, and 
 have heard two very fine sermons.' To this Smith 
 responded, ' Faith, sir. the best thing you can do 
 is to go home and make a good use of them ! ' And 
 the Governor drove on." 
 
 Hutchinson was on Neponset Hill (for this 
 was the name used by these earlier residents 
 interchangeably with Milton and Milton Hill) 
 when the Bostonians gave their famous Tea 
 Party, a festivity to which he was not in- 
 vited. His own account of it to the Earl of 
 Dartmouth sufficiently shows his trouble of 
 mind, his fatuous inflexibility. The de- 
 spatch was dated December 17, 1773:
 
 WARREN 
 
 "my Lord, the owner of the ship Dartmouth, 
 which arrived with the first teas, having been re- 
 peatedly called upon by what are called the Com- 
 mittee of Correspondence to send the ship to sea, 
 and refusing, a meeting of the people was called 
 and the owner required to demand a clearance from 
 the custom-house, which was refused, and then a 
 permit from the naval officer to pass the Castle, 
 which was also refused ; after which he was re- 
 quired to apply to me for the permit; and yester- 
 day, towards evening, came to me at Milton, and 
 I soon satisfied him that no such permit would be 
 granted until the vessel was regularly cleared. He 
 returned to town after dark in the evening, and 
 reported to the meeting the answer I had given 
 him. Immediately thereupon numbers of the people 
 cried out, ' A Mob ! a Mob ! ' left the house, re- 
 paired to the wharf, where three of the vessels lay 
 aground, having on board three hundred and forty 
 chests of tea, and in two hours' time it was wholly 
 destroyed. The other vessel, Captain Loring, was 
 cast ashore on the back of Cape Cod in a storm, and 
 I am informed the tea is landed upon the beach, and 
 there is reason to fear what has been the fate of it. 
 I sent expresses this morning before sunrise to sum- 
 mon a Council to meet me at Boston, but by reason 
 of the indisposition of three of them I could not 
 make a quorum. I have ordered new summons this 
 afternoon, for the Council to meet me at Milton 
 tomorrow morning. What influence this violence 
 and outrage may have I cannot determine." 
 
 272
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 He was terribly moved with anxiety and 
 uncertainty of the proper course to take ; for 
 most of all did he wish to prevent any reck- 
 less deed (involving a " promise to pay " in 
 the form of subsequent action), either on his 
 own part or that of the angry citizens. 
 
 His days were not to be long in the land he 
 so tenderly loved. A civilian was scarcely, at 
 this juncture, suited to the cares of state. On 
 May 13, 1774, General Gage arrived to take 
 his place ; and on the first of June in that year 
 the hated Hutchinson left his Milton manor 
 for what, he believed, would be but a tempo- 
 rary absence in England. Milton could never 
 have been lovelier than in that month when he 
 departed from her forever. She was clothed 
 in the new green of the year, and jocund in 
 fairness. All the "tender nurslings" of his 
 garden smiled up to bid him an unconscious 
 farewell. But possibly his mood at parting 
 was not irretrievably heavy, because he could 
 hug to his heart the prospect of return. Had 
 some prophetic instinct suggested to him the 
 certainty of an unending exile, had some voice 
 whispered, 
 
 " All these things forever forever thou must leave," 
 
 there would have been in his soul the bitter- 
 ness of death. He walked down the Hill bid- 
 is 273
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 ding his neighbors on the right and left a 
 dignified farewell. They could not but honor 
 him in his capacity of private citizen; and 
 even those who had learned the prevalent dis- 
 trust may have been awed and hushed for the 
 moment by the fulfilment of their desires. 
 He entered his coach, and was driven to 
 Dorchester Point, whence he was rowed over 
 to the island of Castle William (now Fort 
 Independence), and thence he set sail. But if 
 those who hated him, believing him to be 
 the arch-enemy of liberty, could have guessed 
 how fondly his after-thoughts returned to the 
 land of his birth, they would have owned that 
 his punishment for what they considered wil- 
 ful treachery was up to the measure of his 
 deserts. He loved America. Ever in Eng- 
 land did his mind turn fondly back to her, 
 and it was Milton for which he longed. He 
 wrote his son that he had "shipped for his 
 Milton garden a parcel of cuttings of much 
 finer gooseberries than he ever saw in New 
 England." He expressed his anxiety about 
 the pear orchard, and gave orders to have the 
 "stocks that failed last year re-grafted." "I 
 can," he said, "with good proof assure you 
 that I had rather live at Milton than at Kew." 
 After visiting Lord Hardwick's house, Wim- 
 pole Hall, he exclaimed, "This is high life, 
 
 274
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 but I would not have parted with my humble 
 cottage at Milton for the sake of it." 
 
 When he took his departure, a large mass 
 of manuscript was left behind. He was a man 
 of great method, and had carefully preserved 
 documents, both important and unimportant, 
 in his letter-books. These, when the tea-mobs 
 threatened him, he carried to Milton ; and, as 
 he owned, it did not come into his head where 
 he had put them. The house had been left in 
 charge of the gardener, and it was not until 
 after April 19, 1775, that the authorities 
 wakened to the necessity of taking possession 
 of it; and meantime it had been entered, and 
 many articles carried away. Tradition says 
 that the letter-books were originally found 
 in the sacking of beds; and they were ulti- 
 mately bought by the State for fifty pounds, on 
 the chance of their containing important evi- 
 dence. The entire correspondence is now in 
 the possession of the Massachusetts Archives 
 in the office of the Secretary of State. 
 
 When Governor Hutchinson said patheti- 
 cally, "New England is wrote upon my heart 
 in as strong characters as ' Calais ' was upon 
 Queen Mary's," he expressed an affection not 
 in the least surprising. Neponset Hill was a 
 spot to be beloved, and the Warrens loved it 
 no less than he. After he left the country, the 
 
 275
 
 MERl'Y WARREN 
 
 estate passed into the hands of a merchant, 
 Samuel Broome, of whom James Warren 
 bought it. It is a very pretty letter which 
 Mrs. Warren writes her husband in regard to 
 the purchase. She is evidently a little shy 
 as to the responsibilities of the step, but all 
 eagerness for him to have his heart's desire. 
 And she closes the letter with a burst of 
 affection which for once forces her quite 
 outside her shell of decorous reserve. First 
 of all, he must not, on any account, regret 
 the step he has taken, unwise though it may 
 seem : 
 
 What sort of a Mistress I shall make at the head 
 of a family of Husbandmen & Dairymaids I know 
 not but your inclination shall be my Care. I beg 
 you would not be anxious about paying for the 
 place if you bave really made your bargain. I don't 
 doubt we shall get through that by & by. ... I 
 know no place within twenty miles of Boston I like 
 so well. Indeed I tbink tbere cannot be a pleas- 
 anter spot & if Life is spared us I do not believe 
 you or I sball regret the purchase. . . . believe I 
 am very Happy with a flock of Dear Children about 
 me who seem always pleased to see me so. 
 
 I hope I never sball be unmindful of the full 
 Cup of Blessings showered on our heads. 
 
 But in a kind & faithful friend is doubled all 
 my store 
 
 276
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 I am his gratful affectionate fond tender Cheer- 
 ful Careful Dutiful Wife 
 
 M. WARREN. 
 Let me insist upon it you 
 do not Lie awake pospone 
 your Calculations and your Cares till 
 you return. I will help you make the 
 one & Dissipate the other. 
 
 Thus the father writes to Winslow, who 
 has been a year abroad: 
 
 BOSTON June 3, 1781. 
 
 MY DEAR WINSLOW, I came to Town two 
 days ago with your Mamah & Brother George hav- 
 ing left Plymouth for the present to reside at Mil- 
 ton upon the Farm that was Governor Hutchinson's 
 which I purchased last Winter of Mr. Broome as I 
 have wrote you in a former Letter, our Furniture 
 is on the Water & I hope will be up Tomorrow. 
 When you return shall he happy to see you at our 
 new habitation. This remove is thought by some 
 an Extraordinary Step at our Time of Life, is ap- 
 plauded by some & thought by others to be wrong, 
 but if you have not altered your Mind is an Event 
 that falls within your Taste. 
 
 Again he writes : 
 
 BOSTON September 28, 1781. 
 
 ... I am now on Milton Hill, the place is 
 pleasant. I could enjoy it if it was paid for, but 
 you know I hate to be in Debt. I struck a Bold 
 277
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 Stroke when I Bo't it. I gave a great Sum for it 
 but should have done well enough if there had 
 not been such a revolution in the Currency . . . 
 but I will struggle to keep it, it is too sweet a place 
 to part with, wont you send me soon handsome 
 papers for two Lodging rooms each side of the Hall 
 & for two Entries. 
 
 During the winter and spring before the 
 removal, Mrs. Warren had been very ill, "hav- 
 ing an Immoderate Humour settled in her 
 Eyes which . . . deprived her of the pleasures 
 of reading and writing for several months & 
 . . . Impaired her Health in other respects. " 
 It was reasonable to hope that she would 
 benefit from the change, and the family ex- 
 pected a summer of great happiness on Xepon- 
 set Hill. It was broken, however, by the ill- 
 ness of the eldest son. James Warren, Jr., 
 was an officer on board the Alliance dur- 
 ing her foreign cruise in company with the 
 French allies, and in her engagement with the 
 Serapis, 1779, he was wounded in the right 
 knee. He came home to suffer long and 
 grievously. His leg was amputated, but the 
 shock and nervous strain had told upon his 
 constitution, and he was never thereafter the 
 same man. 
 
 The wearing anxiety connected with the 
 failing health of Mrs. Warren's family had now 
 
 278
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 fairly begun. Her son Charles had for some 
 time been a constant sufferer, and it was not 
 until the autumn of 1782 that he pronounced 
 himself better, saying that his vigor was re- 
 turning, and that comparative comfort did not 
 seem then, as it had formerly, only a lull 
 between paroxysms of pain. But this was 
 not to last. As we have seen, life became for 
 him a weary pursuit of health, only to be 
 terminated by his death in 1785. 
 
 But at Milton, General Warren, freed from 
 the more active cares of state, was beginning 
 to indulge his lifelong dream of agriculture. 
 That had never left him; and even in this, his 
 later life, he expressed a wish that he might 
 go abroad to study the state of the science 
 there. They had been three years at Milton 
 when Mrs. Warren writes Winslow : " Your 
 good father is Determined to Beautify & 
 Adorn his delightful Villa." She adds in a 
 postscript: "The Carpet is very much admired 
 I think it the handsomest of the kind I ever 
 saw. I send you the Dimensions of one for 
 the Red Room." This is one of her sparing 
 allusions to the goods of this world, more 
 refreshing than bread-fruit to the starving 
 traveller. 
 
 It is to be hoped that Winslow's taste was 
 to be trusted, for he seems to have taken with 
 
 279
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 enthusiasm to the filling of orders. "I have," 
 he writes, "a fine Blue Paper with an Ele- 
 gant Festoon which will be very handsome for 
 yr Hall." 
 
 These later years of General Warren's life 
 were almost devoid of public cares and duties ; 
 but they were to be full of reminiscence of 
 a praiseworthy activity. He had been Com- 
 missioner of the Navy Board, and aiter the 
 Constitution was formed, was many years 
 Speaker of the House of Representatives. In 
 1780, he was elected Lieutenant-Governor 
 under Hancock, but refused to serve; and, 
 indeed, declined other important offices. At 
 the close of the war he had virtually retired, 
 although he did accept a seat at the Council 
 Board, and, as the last act of his official life, 
 became a presidential elector and threw his 
 vote for Jefferson. But leisure had come at 
 last. 
 
 The daily life in the midst of this wealth of 
 beauty was full of moments ministering to 
 peace ; and Mrs. Warren, when her eyes would 
 permit, occupied much of her leisure in lit- 
 erary work. Yet, according to the habit of 
 humankind, she did sometimes cast backward 
 a regretful glance at the turmoil of the past. 
 She sighed for Plymouth, where she had been 
 lonely and not too well content. In an undated
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 letter from Milton she refers to the tranquil- 
 lity of her days, adding : 
 
 "Yet I often look back upon Plimouth, take a 
 walk from room to room, peep through the Lattices 
 that have lighted my steps, revisit the little Alcove 
 leading to the Garden and place myself in every 
 happy corner of a house where I have tasted so 
 much real felicity. I climb to the top of my 
 favorite Trees and from their lofty summit take a 
 view of the water prospect which exhibits a kind 
 of majestick Grandeur : . . . The shady walks, the 
 pleasant Groves that adorn this little Villa are ex- 
 tremely pleasing, and when the Eye is wearied with 
 the bolder view exhibited from the Portico, the de- 
 lightful landscape from the parlour windows & the 
 warm influences & beautiful aspect of the west- 
 ern Sky lead me to give a temporary preference to 
 Milton." 
 
 But slightly to anticipate the course of the 
 years is to find that the Warrens gave up the 
 place, after a ten years' residence, and went 
 back to Plymouth. They were probably induced 
 to do so by still straitened circumstances, and 
 possibly by the course of Winslow's life. He 
 was living abroad, and from a thread of sug- 
 gestion running through his mother's let- 
 ters, it seems evident that she had intended 
 the place for him ; that she had either hoped 
 he would at some time come back and make 
 
 281
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 his home with them, or that he would begin 
 there a new life for himself. But he showed 
 no sign of settling, and they relinquished care 
 and expense by withdrawing to their old " habi- 
 tation." The place was sold in different lots. 
 Thereafter it passed into various hands, but it 
 seemed always to atttract to itself the romantic 
 and unusual. A time of prodigal living had 
 riot there. Madam Haley, the sister of John 
 Wilkes and widow of a rich London merchant, 
 had come to America to look after her hus- 
 band's property. Here she married her stew- 
 ard, Patrick Jeffrey. Madam Haley was an 
 eccentric character, who aimed at making an 
 impression on the times. She lived in great 
 magnificence. When Charlestown bridge was 
 opened, she paid, as tradition says, five hun- 
 dred dollars for the privilege of being the first 
 to drive over it, and headed the procession, 
 drawn by four white horses. The story goes 
 that a countryman once called at her Boston 
 house, and having been accorded the privilege 
 of seeing her, owned that he came from curi- 
 osity, having heard so much about her. There- 
 upon Madam Haley asked what he might have 
 heard. 
 
 "That you were so rich," he returned with 
 admirable bluntness, "that you live in such 
 style, do so much good, and are so homely." 
 
 282
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 "Now you see me," said the lady, "what do 
 you think about it ? " 
 
 The man must have been a mirror of can- 
 dor. Said he: "I swear I believe it's all 
 true ! " 
 
 Finding her marriage uncongenial, the lady 
 returned to England, and Jeffrey lived a gay 
 life in the Hutchinson house. He was in pos- 
 session of all the furniture, plate, and orna- 
 ments which had belonged to the first husband 
 when alderman and mayor of London ; and, 
 with a retinue of servants at his command, he 
 entertained magnificently. A club of men 
 dined with him every week; and after the 
 good talk and good wines, the guests took 
 their leave and were driven to the front door, 
 where they sat in their carriages, while the 
 host, bareheaded, pledged them in one glass 
 more. After his death, the splendid and 
 curious furnishings of the house were sold at 
 auction, and Milton held a three days' car- 
 nival in the purchase of bric-a-brac. 
 
 What is left of the Hutchinson-Warren 
 estate is to-day a goodly spot. Perhaps no 
 part of it has suffered less change than the 
 fair prospect of meadow, river, and sea, spread 
 out below its gates ; yet that, too, is only in 
 a measure the same, for Boston has grown 
 beyond belief, and looms large in the distance, 
 
 2R3
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 and many inventions of an increasing popula- 
 tion have worked their will upon the earth. 
 But the marshy meadows are untouched in 
 sweetness, and the Neponset winds happily to 
 its home. The harbor lies serenely under fleet- 
 ing sails, and at night, as if for beauty only, 
 the lights spring out and glimmer there. The 
 scene, when the eye first rests upon it, has an 
 instant and appealing loveliness. Whoever 
 may henceforth own the estate is destined al- 
 ways to possess more than the freehold in his 
 name ; he feeds daily in a limitless kingdom 
 of delight. 
 
 The place itself is rich in suggestions of its 
 former honorable days. The old farmhouse 
 lives remodelled into modern guise; but the 
 ample stables are almost unaltered, save for 
 sheathing here and there, a new partition, or 
 some slight detail of comfort. Practically they 
 are the same as when the horses of a cen- 
 tury-old life ate their grain within the stalls 
 and pranced forth to give Mistress Hutch- 
 inson or Mercy Warren the air. The beams 
 of the roof look as if they were calculated 
 to "last till doomsday," and thickly stud- 
 ding the framework are valiant hand-wrought 
 nails. 
 
 But the old manor-house is gone, pulled 
 down some quarter-century ago. The owner 
 
 284
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 of that day, from whom the present residents 
 have inherited it, coming home from the East 
 and desiring to build him " more stately man- 
 sions," had the roof taken off, to be raised a 
 story; and at that fatal stage the builder 
 declared that it was attacked by dry-rot, and 
 could not be returned. 
 
 But the new house stands on the same spot, 
 and even the arrangement of its lower rooms 
 is relatively the same. Within those modern 
 walls lie abundant relics of the past. Gov- 
 ernor Hutchinson's period is there in a carven 
 mirror and table; Madam Haley's, in a sofa 
 and chairs. But the one fragrant souvenir 
 of all lies without: that is the Governor's 
 garden, a living memory of old days, kept as 
 nearly as possible as it was when he left it, 
 and as it lived through the Warrens' time. 
 There are the pleached alleys, two of them 
 green -sodded, and one covered with the dese- 
 crating gravel of a later use. Straight down 
 from the house they lead, the middle one 
 through the lofty colonnade of a grape arbor, 
 thick with vines and jewelled by clinging 
 fruit. The trees scarcely meet over the alleys 
 as in their younger days, for even nature fails 
 with time; but everywhere still is there a 
 multitude of leaf, and the protecting symmetry 
 of branches, the soft, blue-green of a plumy 
 
 285
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 pine, the ancient chestnut strewing the ground 
 with tassels, and the shagbarks to which the 
 place owes now its name. Everything is al- 
 lowed, under the liberty of a protecting reign, 
 to follow the errant will of its nature. The 
 box border has grown into a hedge, and every 
 old-fashioned flower that blows is welcome to 
 set foot and flourish there. In spring the air 
 is sweet with narcissus and matted lilies of 
 the valley ; in autumn it flares out in a glory 
 of yellow. There are columbines, marigolds, 
 flaunting coreopsis, and hardy English fox- 
 gloves. "Every flower that sad embroidery 
 wears," and all the gayer ladies of the border, 
 have agreed to make their bower here. It 
 is, in New England eyes, a spot almost as 
 moving as Shakespeare's garden. Below, at 
 the end of the alleys, runs transversely the 
 ha-ha, or sunk fence; and beyond, lying de- 
 liciously below the eye, is the wild garden 
 where fragrance and color riot together and 
 drench the summer air. Still farther on, at 
 the outermost bounds of the garden, stand 
 lofty trees, shutting it from the street and 
 keeping the noise and dust of the bustling 
 world from entering that green shade. 
 
 I love to think of Governor Hutchinson 
 walking in stately fashion up and down the 
 paths, giving his workmen the knowing direc- 
 
 286
 
 ON MILTON HILL 
 
 tions of a practical farmer, and of Madam War- 
 ren in her day, with jingling keys at her side, 
 taking a turn as soon as the dew was off the 
 grass, picking a mulberry from the tree with 
 dainty fingers, and speculating on the peas for 
 her hearty " companion's " dinner. Perhaps 
 there was some righteous joy in plucking the 
 gooseberries and currants set out by the recre- 
 ant Governor. But no ! private resentment 
 must have lain somewhat in abeyance, for 
 the Governor was dead, and that account was 
 closed. Save in the interest of what seemed 
 to her historical accuracy, she would think 
 no ill of him ; and treading the paths he had 
 ordered, one can fancy how she would repeat 
 to herself the substance of that qualifying 
 passage in her History whereby she vouchsafes 
 his hated character a thin regilding : 
 
 "He was educated in reverential ideas of mo- 
 narchic government, and considered himself the ser- 
 vant of a king who had entrusted him with very 
 high authority. As a true disciple of passive obe- 
 dience, he might think himself bound to promote 
 tbe designs of his master, and thus he might prob- 
 ably release his conscience from the obligation 
 to aid his countrymen in their opposition to the 
 encroachments of the crown. In the eye of candor, 
 he may therefore be much more excusable than any 
 287
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 who may deviate from their principles and profes- 
 sions of republicanism, who have not been biassed 
 by the patronage of kings, nor influenced in favor 
 of monarchy by their early prejudices of education 
 or employment."
 
 XIII 
 TERMINUS 
 
 BUT it was time "to take in sail." The 
 days had come when, save for a rare grace 
 and courage, these two aged patriots might 
 have said, "There is 'no pleasure in them.' " 
 Mrs. Warren had long been troubled by 
 the baffling " humour " in her eyes, and all 
 through these later years her letters are in 
 the hand of an amanuensis. General War- 
 ren loves his fireside, and his peaceful drives 
 to Clifford, where Henry and his wife are 
 living. He has really grown old ; and some 
 of his letters written at this period of re- 
 tirement from active life are pathetic indeed, 
 for they are by a hand so trembling as scarcely 
 to have been able to guide the pen. His sin- 
 gularly affectionate and lovable nature blos- 
 soms out, during the leisure of these later 
 years, when the cares of state have fallen 
 away. It is good to read about his agricul- 
 tural delights ; to catch his spirit of joy in 
 growing things. Nothing is too small for
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 him to chronicle. He writes Henry, June 5, 
 1794, of a visit to Clifford, where he found 
 the farm life thriving. There are all the old 
 homely items beloved from year to year by 
 those born for country cares. Polly, the wife, 
 was " much Engaged in her dairy. " He would 
 have been there again next day had the 
 weather permitted. And he continues in a 
 whimsical paragraph on the moral aspect of 
 the time : 
 
 " I have begun to think this world a farce, & a 
 Ludicrous one too. Principles are talked of that 
 never operate & Pretensions made that have no 
 Effect, had I the pen of Tacitus, the satirical 
 genius of Churchill or the descriptive powers of 
 Anacharsis I would make an effort. I would at- 
 tempt to describe the present Times & to Compare 
 them with 1775. I would Contrast the Energy 
 virtue & wisdom of the last with the imbecility 
 of the first, but alas! the subject is too extensive 
 the Contrast is too great, the Gulf is too deep." 
 
 Here, too, is a bit from an old man's love- 
 letter, not the less honeyed for dealing in 
 beef and bacon. It is from James Warren to 
 Mercy, who was visiting in Boston, June 28, 
 1790:- 
 
 "... Here the weather is fine & all nature in 
 Bloom. I long to pluck a rose & gather a plate of 
 290
 
 TERMINUS 
 
 strawberries for my litle angel but the distance 
 is too great. I must be content to hope she is 
 happy without the varigated country beauties of this 
 very fine season which I long to describe but dare 
 not attempt till you send me your poetick mantle 
 . . . if I had a better foot I should have had a 
 fine ramble but that is more than I Expect this 
 summer, the Gout is a dreadful thing indeed for 
 a Farmer. I wish we could confine it to the lazy 
 citizens. Will you run over & take part of a fine 
 piece of Beef & Bacon & a most excellent Line of 
 Veal no green pease but potatoes, sallad & horse 
 radish, if we had peas or rubies & diamonds we 
 would give them to you. we have strawberries & 
 cream at your service. . . . adieu, for why should 
 I attempt to express the full of my affection for 
 you." 
 
 Again he writes to Henry, January 9, 
 1799: 
 
 " . . .1 did hope my short span of Life would 
 enable me to see the downfall of Kings & Con- 
 querors till none remained to curse mankind with 
 their ambition, avarice & destruction. The French 
 seem to me to be marked out by Providence to 
 effect it. I have therefore wished them success. 
 They committed an Error in the Egyptian Expe- 
 dition. Buonaparte if in Europe would soon pros- 
 trate Austrian, Eussian & Turkish Tyranny, but 
 Providence don't want means to form another Buo- 
 naparte & I presume will do it." 
 
 291
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 One of his letters to Henry deserves quoting, 
 if only from its delightful play of humor. A 
 son has been born to the household : 
 
 PLYM? Jan 22, 1795. 
 
 DEAR, HENRY, I told you in my last that your 
 son was a very pretty fellow & I told you right 
 they say who have seen him which I have not yet 
 done, hut he has come among us with ominous 
 presages. The Elements have been in an uproar 
 from the day of his birth to this Moment. Storms 
 Tempests hurricanes Snows frosts Shipwrecks &c 
 have filled \ip the whole space of his Existence 
 and while you at Boston would suppose your 
 Mamah making visits at Clifford our roads there 
 have been impassible but to foot travellers & with 
 difficulty to a Horse & there is yet no approaching 
 his Illustrious Majesty but through a storm of 
 rain over head & snow banks underfoot, is it not 
 natural to Enquire what all this indicates & to 
 apprehend that if at this time of day he makes 
 such a racket in the physical world he may when 
 he arrives at the size & magnitude of his Papah 
 disturb the moral & political world ? become an 
 Enthusiast in religion or an aristocrat in politics : 
 in short the auspices denounce him as a turbulent 
 & dangerous fellow. What then shall be done 
 with him? Shall we abandon him or heave him 
 into the river. Many Nations of antiquity would 
 choose the first and some Moderns the last, you 
 must choose for yourself.
 
 TERMINUS. 
 
 The close of the Revolution was not for 
 America the end of a drama, after which, the 
 curtain having fallen on a grand finale, the 
 audience might go home to sleep. She had 
 to struggle with new questions, none the less 
 harassing than those which had been defi- 
 nitely solved ; she had to formulate her course. 
 Mercy Warren writes : 
 
 "Thus, after the conclusion of peace, and the 
 acknowledgment of the independence of the United 
 States by Great Britain, the situation of America 
 appeared similar to that of a young heir, who had 
 prematurely become possessed of a rich inheritance, 
 while his inexperience and his new felt inde- 
 pendence had intoxicated him so far, as to render 
 him incapable of weighing the intrinsic value of 
 his estate, and had left him without discretion or 
 judgment to improve it to the best advantage of 
 his family." 
 
 Problems confronted the new republic on 
 every side. A large army was to be disbanded 
 and turned loose upon the country ; the treas- 
 ury was depleted, real estate had depreciated, 
 and the formation of the Constitution divided 
 friends and families. Moreover, the patriot 
 who had risked all for his country was quite 
 likely to find in the altered hue of affairs 
 something which seemed to him vastly like 
 ingratitude on the part of those for whom he 
 
 293
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 had toiled. James and Mercy Warren were 
 among those who felt that blow in all its 
 heaviness. They were locally very much 
 alone in their position of anti-Federalism, 
 and their neighbors at Plymouth gave them 
 the cold shoulder. This rouses Mrs. Warren 
 to an outspoken bitterness of feeling. All 
 the ills of her own life she might be able to 
 bear; but when injustice touches the man on 
 whom she bestows an increasing affection, and 
 who, she is persuaded, has helped America to 
 a dearly bought peace, she speaks hotly and 
 to the point. In November, 1792, she writes 
 her son James, then at Hingham : 
 
 "When you feel a little vexed that your father 
 has lost his popularity remember that he retains 
 his integrity, that neither his public or private 
 virtue has ever been shaken nor does malice itself 
 impeach his probity. His political opinions have 
 differed from the intriguing and the fortunate, and 
 he has had too much sincerity to conceal them 
 for this he has suffered these are the sour grapes 
 for which the Children's teeth have been set on 
 edge." 
 
 She has learned to expect nothing from 
 the recognition of a nation. In 1785, John 
 Adams had written her at Milton, "When 
 shall I again see my friend Warren in public 
 
 294
 
 TERMINUS 
 
 life ? " And she had responded with some bit- 
 terness, " 1 answer when republics are famed 
 for their gratitude and the multitude learn 
 to discriminate." 
 
 These were the days of her almost nervous 
 
 fear lest America might sigh for monarchy. 
 
 January 4, 1787, she had written her husband 
 
 from Milton, discussing the state of a nation 
 
 /"" Emancipated from a foreign yoke the Bless- 
 
 ( ings of peace restored on the most Honorable 
 
 ft terms, with the liberty of framing our own 
 
 ^ Laws, Choosing our own Magistrates & adopt- 
 
 /ing Manners the most favorable to Freedom 
 
 / and Happiness. I am sorry to say there is 
 
 ( too much reason to fear we have not Virtue 
 
 \j3ufficient to avail ourselves of those superior 
 
 advantages. " She goes on : 
 
 "The Glorious Fabrick which you and your 
 compeers with so much labour & assiduity success- 
 fully Reared may totter to the foundation before 
 the civil feuds are Hushed that have justly atlarmed 
 the Continent & the Massachusets in particular. 
 lately armed for an opposition to Rp.ga.1 
 
 Jherejeems to be a boldness of spirit on the OTIP. . 
 side that sets at Defiance all authority Government^ 
 ef-orcter: And on the other not a secret Wish~ 
 o~nly but an open avowal of the Necessity of draw- 
 ing the reins of Power much too taught for Repub- 
 licanisrn. if not for a Wise & limited Monarchy. 
 295
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 The Cause of the late Commotions may be easily 
 investigated but the Consequences must be left 
 to the hand of time. Where abouts the political 
 ship will Land it is not easy to say though I 
 think the Rioters in the Western Counties will 
 soon be quelled. But some think the Cincinnati 
 who are waiting a favorable tide to waft them on 
 to the strong fortress of Nobility are manifestly 
 elated by the present prospects, others are flatter- 
 ing themselves that our Aristocratic power is fast 
 forming. While many of the younger Class par- 
 ticularly the students at Law and the youth of 
 fortune & pleasure are crying out for a Monarchy 
 & a standing army to support it yet perhaps a 
 termination more favorable to the system of the 
 Genuine Patriot than has been apprehended may 
 still take place." 
 
 In 1787, she writes Mrs. Macaulay in the 
 same very evident distress. The Cincinnati 
 especially inspires her, as it did from the 
 beginning, with a vivid alarm: 
 
 " These joined by the whole class of Cincinnati 
 who are panting for nobility; and with the eagle 
 dangling at their breast, assume distinctions that 
 are yet new in this Country these parties make 
 a formidable body ready to bow to the sceptre of 
 a king, provided they may be the lordlings who 
 in splendid idleness may riot on the hard earnings 
 of the peasant and the mechanic : These plead 
 the necessity of a standing army to suppress the 
 296
 
 TERMINUS 
 
 murmurs of a few who yet cherish that spirit of 
 freedom which only calls forth the exertions and 
 leads to the best improvement of the human 
 mind." 
 
 Mrs. Warren was ever an excellent repub- 
 lican. True worth had, in her mind, no 
 relation to rank or station. In 1774, a time 
 when she could write that, in twenty years 
 of housekeeping, death had not entered her 
 family, an old servant, who had been with her 
 for at least nineteen years, was taken ill and 
 died. Mrs. Warren attended her so faithfully 
 that her correspondence had to be neglected ; 
 and her sorrow over the woman's death was 
 very keen. This is her observation on the 
 event : 
 
 "Unimportant as one in that station appears 
 yet when they have acquitted themselves faith- 
 fully and fulfilled the duties of life the distinction 
 between the master and the servant, the prince 
 and the peasant may be in favour of the latter." 
 
 In 1789, she writes : 
 
 "It is true we have now a government organized, 
 and a Washington at its head; but we are too 
 poor for Monarchy too wise for Despotism, and 
 too dissipated selfish and extravagant for Republi- 
 canism. It ill becomes an infant government 
 I whose foreign and domestic arrearages are large,
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 and whose resources are small, to begin its career 
 in the splendour of Royalty : to shackle its Com- 
 merce, to Check its manufactures, to damp the 
 spirit of agriculture by imposts and excises, and 
 in short to deprive the people of the means of sub- 
 sistence, to amass sums for the payment of exorbi- 
 tant salaries, to support the regalia of office and 
 to keep up the ostentatious pomp for which the 
 ambitious have sighed and desired from the mo- 
 ment of the institution of Cincinnati." 
 
 To recur to Mrs. Warren's literary life is to 
 find a strangely familiar ring in one circum- 
 stance belonging to the year 1791. Evidently 
 American publishers even then not only sailed 
 under the black flag of piracy, but cheerfully 
 elected to do so. She had received from Mrs. 
 Macaulay Graham a pamphlet written by that 
 lady, and which, so Mrs. Warren says, was 
 composed of "ingenious and just observations 
 on Mr. Burke's strictures on the National As- 
 sembly of France." It seemed to be entirely 
 unknown in Boston, and General Warren pro- 
 posed to Andrews, the printer, that he should 
 republish it. And thus Mrs. Warren writes 
 the " celebrated " author : 
 
 t( Profit is not yet a stimulus with American 
 authors. The printer was rather unwilling to 
 undertake the republication lest it might not sell 
 in our degenerate day, but on assuring him the
 
 TERMINUS 
 
 risque was small, that the profit if any should be 
 solely his, and only the honour yours, he agreed 
 to strike off a number of copies." 
 
 Thus early was the division of profit and 
 honor in the case of an author who could 
 make no legal claim upon us. 
 
 There is something lovely in the picture of 
 General Warren and his wife, now old people, 
 at their fireside, still eager over the intel- 
 lectual life, and looking forward to the life 
 immortal. Their affection never failed. Each 
 is to the other still the most desirable of 
 humankind, and the General has not ceased to 
 be guardian and lover, as well as friend. 
 Sally Sever is one of the younger generation 
 of whom Mrs. Warren is especially fond; and 
 this little confidence was written to her: 
 
 "Alas! it is late in the evening and candlelight 
 very unfriendly to weakened eyes, yet mine are not 
 so impaired as to forbid the attempt. But you 
 know the kindness of my good Mr. Warren ' My 
 dear it is bedtime you will be sick in this way 
 you must not write so 'much in the evening 
 I cannot spare those eyes,' &c &c &c." 
 
 In 1797, the aged couple (Mrs. Warren now 
 nearing her terminal threescore and ten, and 
 her husband having passed it) take a little 
 
 299
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 trip together, and her ever-youthful spirit 
 rises in response to the stimulus from with- 
 out. Not much younger than her husband in 
 years, she is infinitely so in feeling. She de- 
 scribes the journey in writing her son George, 
 then in Maine, and dwells movingly upon the 
 renewal of old associations in the home of her 
 youth : 
 
 "He thought it a mighty business for us old 
 folks [she adds, in spirited allusion to General 
 James], but it was a pleasant little jaunt : we 
 both enjoyed it and are the better for the exertion. 
 If he could view these things just as I do, I think 
 he would soon be with you." 
 
 If everybody had viewed things just as Mrs. 
 Warren did, throughout her entire life, the 
 cause of moral empire would have moved 
 faster. 
 
 Her affection for the young was genuine, 
 tinged with no patronage, but animated rather 
 by a generous respect. She seems always to 
 have been touched by any expression of their 
 admiration and love for her, and to feel that 
 it must be a good sign when age could com- 
 mend itself to youth. Mercy Warren had 
 determined to have no shackles upon her 
 mind and spirit. She would grow while life 
 was left her; she would keep in touch with 
 
 300
 
 TERMINUS 
 
 the new generation to the very end. In one of 
 her moral disquisitions, after enlarging upon 
 the duties of the young, she continues : 
 
 "At the same time the aged who have experi- 
 enced the afflictions, the disappointments of the 
 world, who have seen the ingratitude, the haseness, 
 the versatility of human conduct, should he care- 
 ful that his own mind does not hecome so soured 
 by defeated expectations as to behold everything 
 through the gloomy medium of discontent he 
 should be watchful that he indulge no morose feel- 
 ing towards the new generations that arise : let 
 him cherish with Candour & good humor every 
 spark of worth in those younger than himself in 
 knowledge & experience instead of denying any 
 excellence that may appear in a different garb from 
 that to which he may have been accustomed. It is 
 discouraging to the exertions of virtue & disgusting 
 to the feelings of the heart when age will not allow 
 merit in younger life because not exactly squared 
 to the standard of his happier days. The sum of 
 virtue may remain nearly equal among the genera- 
 tions of men in spite of external habiliments & 
 fluctuating opinions Yet political & evil insti- 
 tutions & the commotions that frequently result 
 therefrom, may at different periods be more or lass 
 favorable to improvements both in knowledge & 
 morals. But under no form of government, changes 
 of time or caprice of fashion, can the individual 
 be released from the obligations above-mentioned. 
 301
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 This mutual exertion to contribute to the happiness 
 of others would pare down the reluctance & take off 
 the restraint so often observed in the interviews 
 between the young & the old improve the under- 
 standing on one side, increase the Cheerfulness 
 of the other and strengthen the benign virtues of 
 both." 
 
 To one who has traced this woman's life, 
 there must be something singularly pathetic 
 in the change which came over it with age. 
 You begin by admiring her intellectual gifts 
 and her force of character; finally it is her 
 gentleness by which you are chiefly impressed. 
 She has always been strong in affection, but 
 toward the end it has become a yearning 
 devotion which was once quite foreign to 
 her. Life, to a less vivacious, less persistently 
 cheerful temperament might now have seemed 
 hopelessly circumscribed. She had a great 
 deal of time to think; and in one of those 
 moments devoted to letter-writing appears a 
 spice of her old satirical habit. It was still 
 left her in age. The letter, written Decem- 
 ber 22, 1792, is addressed to her brother, 
 Samuel Allyne Otis, and it contains this sly 
 little paragraph : 
 
 "The gentlemen of this and the neighbouring 
 towns had an elegant entertainment in public, at 
 and are now regaling themselves at the old
 
 TERM:* 
 
 Colony hall by invitation from the Club, while 
 their dames are left alone both afleiaoua even- 
 ing to reflect OB the difference between modern 
 manners and the rigid virtues of their amjfjUma, r 
 any other subject that solitude may smggtsL** 
 
 She begs her friends to write to her, to visit 
 her. On December 28 7 1807, she writes Mrs. 
 Adams : 
 
 " The great debility which has long afflicted my 
 eyes has & still deprives me of the use of my own 
 pen, nor is it easv to express the effusions of friend- 
 ship, or the sensibilities we feel on any other occa- 
 sion, when we borrow that of another. This with 
 the death of very many of my best tminpoaiirati 
 has almost broken off the habit of Letter-writing 
 in which I once so much delighted: 
 
 ' Should I ask } r Adams what he thinks the 
 Emperor Xapoleon was made for ? I presume he 
 would not tell me.* 
 
 That is a question of unfailing interest. 
 The retired patriots were never tired of toss- 
 ing it back and forth. They seem to have 
 agreed excellently that Bonaparte had some 
 use in nature, chiefly as a lash for the flagel- 
 lation of Europe. Here is the calm and philo- 
 sophic opinion of Dr. Freeman, written to 
 Mrs. Warren : 
 
 The events which have taken place in Europe 
 during several past years have been of so painful a
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 nature, that for some time I have turned from them 
 with disgust, & have forborne to look at them. I 
 now seldom read a newspaper; and am therefore 
 but ill qualified to give an opinion on publick 
 affairs. In general, however, I have no doubt that 
 the government of the universe is in wise hands; 
 that what I contemplate with pain, as well as what 
 I contemplate with pleasure, are necessary to the 
 good of the whole; and that heroes, murderers, 
 hypocrites, & usurpers, and Napoleon among the 
 rest, like earthquakes, volcanoes, and pestilences, 
 are essential parts of the system of divine provi- 
 dence. When I read the past events of history, 
 where I can see both the beginning & end, this 
 truth forces itself on my mind; and I cannot but 
 believe that Nebuchadnezzar, & Alexander, Caesar, 
 & Charlemagne were raised up by God to effect 
 the purposes of his wisdom and goodness. Amidst 
 the passing events the heart is afflicted & bewil- 
 dered with the rapid succession of crimes and mis- 
 eries; but judging from analogy, I believe that 
 when the whole transaction is completed, posterity 
 will be able to discover that it was right; & that 
 Bonaparte was as useful an instrument in the 
 hands of the Supreme Being, as any of the conquer- 
 ors and tyrants who preceded him. What are the 
 particular purposes which are intended to be 
 effected by this extraordinary man, & whether he 
 is especially destined to restore the Jews to their 
 own country, it is impossible to conjecture. The 
 prophecies, I believe, afford no light to assist our
 
 TERMINUS 
 
 conjectures; because, in my opinion, they never 
 become intelligible until they are fulfilled." 
 
 Mrs. Warren seems to have agreed with 
 him. Napoleon was the instrument of God, 
 no less divinely meant in that he was appar- 
 ently evil. 
 
 A letter written to Mrs. Adams, in the 
 summer of 1807, touches on the same ques- 
 tion, and ends with a solemn note of reminis- 
 cence, as that of one who sits by a dying fire, 
 and hears the lonesome wind without. Here 
 she prophesies that Napoleon may be allowed 
 to go on "to be the scourge of kings and of 
 nations," and she adds: "I sometimes amuse 
 myself with the fanciful idea of listening to 
 a long political conversation between the two 
 venerable sages, your husband and mine : 
 but it seems to me to resemble the fabulous 
 dialogues of the dead." 
 
 "Death," she says solemnly, when his pres- 
 ence touches her more nearly, "death is a 
 familiar word." 
 
 But she was not the slave or even the inti- 
 mate of discontent. "I still possess all the 
 necessaries, most of the conveniences, & some 
 of the Luxuries of life," she wrote. "I have 
 an elegant habitation, a good fire, plenty of 
 provisions, a healthy family, and a thankful 
 heart. Yet 
 
 20 305
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 " ' Do not Friendship's joys outweigh the whole? 
 Tis social converse animates the soul.' " 
 
 One spiritual grace possessed in great meas- 
 ure by these stern-fibred men and women was 
 a serenity of faith in "final good." For them 
 there was no whining of pessimism. They 
 had mounted far enough, not to lose sight of 
 the clouds, but to know they lay below. In 
 the very last year of Mrs. Warren's life John 
 Adams wrote her in a strain which she could 
 have echoed : 
 
 il A gloomy philosophy, or a more melancholy 
 religion, disposes men to misery and despair; but 
 a more cheering confidence in the wisdom and 
 benevolence that governs the universe ought to 
 dispose us, not only to submit, but to make the 
 best of every thing. 
 
 " I can neither applaud nor approve of the lamen- 
 tations over 'Few and evil days,' 'Days in which 
 ihere is no pleasure,' 'Vale of tears,' 'Miseries of 
 life,' &c. I have seen no such days, and those 
 \vbo think they have, I fear have made them such 
 by want of reflection." 
 
 But in 1808 came the greatest affliction 
 which Mrs. Warren could possibly feel, the 
 death of her husband. To the last he was 
 tranquil and resigned, proving himself no less 
 capable of estimating his own life than events 
 which were external to him. He had done
 
 TERMINUS 
 
 his duty simply and manfully; he had finished 
 his course. There is much dignified nobility 
 in what he said, a few days before his death, 
 to a friend who encouraged him with the 
 thought of recovery : 
 
 " I do not expect ever to recover more health. 
 The season of the year is against it; my age is 
 against it. I have had a long life, and have en- 
 joyed a thousand blessings. I have uniformly 
 endeavored to do my duty; I think I have gener- 
 ally done it, and wherein I have erred, I shall be 
 forgiven. If deatb should make its approach this 
 day, I should not be alarmed." 
 
 Mrs. Warren's very silence is thereafter sug- 
 gestive. She still writes her friends, though 
 by an amanuensis ; but there is no very tragic 
 outbreak over this one worst affliction of all. 
 It was too great for tears. Moreover, time, so 
 far as she herself was concerned, must have 
 begun to seem to her a gift likely to fall from 
 the hand at any moment. The letters belong- 
 ing to the last years of her life are very sweet, 
 very loving, full of peace and anticipation; 
 yes, full even of the old courage : 
 
 " We are hourly expecting the depredations 
 of the British," she writes, June 30, 1814. 
 " I would not have you think me alarmed by 
 womanish fears or the weakness of old age. 
 
 307
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 I am not. I sit very tranquilly in my elbow 
 chair patiently awaiting the destination of 
 providence with regard to myself, my family, 
 my friends & my Country." 
 
 "I think I do not murmur," she writes, 
 not long after. "I see the light of the Sun 
 ... I have recollection I have hope. " 
 
 In the same year came the death of her 
 brother, Samuel Allyne Otis, a blow severe 
 enough to render her tremulous. 
 
 "As to myself," she writes, "I feel daily 
 bending down to the tomb under a weight of 
 years and infirmities, yet considering my 
 age am remarkably well. . . . The recollec- 
 tion of a visit made me a short time before he 
 went on to Washington has been & will be a 
 source of comfort to me. Yet I recollect his 
 going backward to the door, getting into the 
 carriage, & fixing his eyes upon his Sister as 
 she stood at the window looking at his intelli- 
 gent Countenance where she thought she read 
 in every feature that he never expected to 
 behold her faded countenance again in this 
 world." 
 
 Again she writes her sister-in-law, Mrs. 
 Otis, in August of the same year : 
 
 "Pray for me that I may follow your example 
 though late but not insensible that this ought to 
 have been done in the daya of my affliction when
 
 TERMINUS 
 
 my younger friends had a right to look up to me 
 to exemplify by my own conduct what I so much 
 applaud: perfect resignation and fortitude under 
 the severest trials of a transient life. 
 
 " . . . Do let me hear from you soon & often. 
 I frequently feel as if I loved my friends if possible 
 better than ever. Is it because I am about to 
 leave them, or is it because the circle is so circum- 
 scribed that when I retrospect the rich treasures of 
 social life which I once enjoyed, I only find one, 
 two, three or four, and then look into another state 
 of existence where our excellent departed friends 
 are gathered." 
 
 She kept her mind and memory to the last ; 
 and by some happy chance many of her rela- 
 tives were with her during the concluding 
 weeks of her life. It was a renewal of the 
 bonds of blood and friendship. 
 
 "It seems to me," she said, "as if my 
 friends were clustering round me for the last 
 time." 
 
 Her illness was short, and one of her last 
 messages went to the dearest friend of all : 
 
 "Tell my dear Mrs. Adams to pass two 
 hours with me," she said to Dr. Freeman. 
 "If that be not possible, to write one more 
 letter to her friend whom she will soon meet 
 in heaven. " 
 
 She died on the morning of Oct. 19, 1814. 
 
 309
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 "Saturday & Sunday," wrote James, "her 
 pain was agonizing and distressing to my 
 astonishment on Monday Morning she got up 
 from her bed to her breakfast table but it 
 was a momentary effort she in a few minutes 
 returned to her bed from which she never 
 again rose. On Tuesday she seemed more 
 comfortable. At eleven o'clock of that even- 
 ing we went to bed without any immediate 
 apprehension." At two o'clock he was called 
 into her room; but before he could reach her 
 she had died. 
 
 This wa's the good son who declared in the 
 first freshness of grief over her death, that the 
 last fifteen years of his life had been " devoted 
 to the every wish of my dear mother. But," 
 he adds, " I have not done enough. " 
 
 Mrs. Warren was buried in the family tomb 
 at Plymouth, as were all her immediate family 
 who died at home. There she lies on Burial 
 Hill, close by the church where she sat under 
 the preaching of Chandler Bobbins and Dr. 
 Kendall. Plymouth is not rich in memories 
 of her. She seems, save in her unconscious 
 influence from the " choir invisible, " to have 
 slipped quite away into the unseen. Her 
 great-granddaughter has a few pieces of her 
 china, a screen, and some beautiful silver 
 candlesticks, her lace, two hair bracelets made 
 
 310
 
 TERMINUS 
 
 to fit a very slender wrist, and best of all the 
 historic card-table, inherited through the 
 little granddaughter Marcia, for whom the 
 Alphabetical Maxims were evolved. The 
 card-table is not only a curious relic, but 
 is possessed of a quaintness and beautj^ indi- 
 cating a delicate artistic sense in the woman 
 who designed its decoration. It is of a goodly 
 size (wrought out of solid mahogany) and was 
 intended for the game of loo. The lifted leaf 
 discloses a top of canvas, worked in worsted 
 and silk stitches fine as tapestry, according to 
 a truly unique and charming design of flowers. 
 And Mrs. Warren was indebted to no con- 
 ventional hand for her pattern ; she gathered 
 the flowers from her garden, pressed them, 
 and copied them with her needle. They are 
 all effective, and some of them very true to 
 nature. Her ground is in two colors, green 
 and brown. A gorgeous bouquet lies in the 
 middle of the canvas, and an encircling 
 garland about the edge. Between the two, 
 thrown carelessly on the green foundation, 
 are several cards, wrought with admirable 
 exactness, and the similitude, in the form of 
 disks and fishes, of counters once in the posses- 
 sion of the family. The whole is a triumph 
 of patience and artistic skill ; and if many of 
 those careful stitches were set by candlelight,
 
 MERCY WARREN 
 
 there was more than poetic justice In the 
 "humour" which attacked my lady's eyes. 
 These, with an extraordinarily fine silver tea- 
 kettle at Dedham, are the authentic personal 
 belongings of Mercy Otis Warren. 
 
 The living representatives of her line trace 
 their descent through her son Henry. None 
 of the other sons married, and of the two 
 who survived her, James (who became post- 
 master in Plymouth) died in 1821, and Henry 
 in 1828. 
 
 It is not easy to compute the influence of 
 Mercy Otis Warren. By no public word of 
 hers, no definite deed to be traced to her 
 hand or brain, can it be sufficiently indicated. 
 And because she was a woman of rich domestic 
 life, as well as public effort, let what George 
 Eliot said of Dorothea be recorded also of 
 her: 
 
 "Her full nature, like that river of which 
 Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in 
 channels which had no great name on the 
 earth. But the effect of her being on those 
 around her was incalculably diffusive : for the 
 growing good of the world is partly dependent 
 on unhistoric acts." 
 
 312
 
 INDEX 
 
 ADAMS, Abigail, intimacy of, 
 with Mrs. Warren, 49 ; letters 
 of, 68 et seq.; admiration of, 
 for Mrs. Warren's literary 
 skill, 158; gifts of, 229; on 
 the status of women, 238. 
 
 Adams, John, letter of, describ- 
 ing the Council Chamber in 
 the Old Town House, 41; on 
 the argument of Otis, 43; 
 letters of, to General Warren, 
 49 et seq. ; dependence of, 
 upon the Warrens for coun- 
 sel, 88; letters of, to his wife, 
 101 et seq.; on the Boston 
 Tea Party, 103; on small- 
 pox, 129 ; flattery of Mrs. 
 Warren for her literary skill, 
 157; letter of, criticising The 
 History of the Kevolution, 
 212; controversy of, with 
 Mrs. Warren, 213 et seq.; 
 reconciliation of, with Mrs. 
 Warren, 226. 
 
 Adams, Samuel, congratula- 
 tions of, 181 ; on the Boston 
 Massacre, 188 ; pen portrait 
 of, 208. 
 
 Adulator, The, 176. 
 
 Allyne, Mary, ancestry of, 13. 
 
 BACON, Mercy, 13. 
 
 Boutinot, J., 172. 
 
 Boylston, Dr. Z., inoculates for 
 
 small-pox, 127. 
 Bradford, Governor, literary 
 
 style of, 144. 
 Broome, Samuel, 276. 
 Byles, Dr. Mather, anecdotes 
 
 of, 64; on small-pox, 130. 
 
 CHATHAM, address of, to the 
 
 House of Lords, 148. 
 Chauncy, Dr., assertions of, 
 
 63. 
 
 Cincinnati, Order of the, de- 
 scription of, 209. 
 Clifford Farm, description of, 
 
 35 et seq. 
 Commencement at Harvard in 
 
 1722-27, 28; in James Otis's 
 
 time, 29. 
 Committees of Correspondence, 
 
 origin of, 61. 
 Cooper, Dr. Samuel, writings 
 
 of, 63. 
 
 DICKINSON, John, 188. 
 Doten, Edward, arrival in May- 
 flower, 13. 
 Dudley, Esther, reference to, 15. 
 
 313
 
 INDEX 
 
 ENDICOTT, John, 20. 
 Erving, John, 172. 
 
 FISKE, John, story of boyhood 
 of, 22. 
 
 Frankland, Sir Harry, in Lis- 
 bon, 254. 
 
 Franklin, Dr., 176. 
 
 Freeman, Rev. James, connec- 
 tion of, with The History of 
 the Revolution, 193 et seq.; 
 letter of, to James Warreu, 
 Jr., 228; on Napoleon's 
 career, 303. 
 
 GAGE, General, arrival of, 273. 
 
 Gerry, Elbridge, mediation of, 
 2-26. 
 
 Glastonbury, 4; abbey and ab- 
 bot of, 6. 
 
 Gray, Elizabeth, marriage of, 
 12. 
 
 Gray, Harrison, marriage of 
 daughter of, 12. 
 
 Gridley, Jeremiah, 30; defends 
 the Crown, 41. 
 
 Group, The, a satire, 164; anal- 
 ysis of, 165. 
 
 HALEY, Madam, anecdotes of, 
 282. 
 
 Hancock, John, pen portrait of, 
 207. 
 
 Hancock, Mrs., 55. 
 
 Hingham, home of John Otis, 
 7 ; train band of, 7. 
 
 Hobart, Rev. Peter, 2; in de- 
 fence of his townsmen, 8; 
 influence of, 9. 
 
 Hutchinson, Anne, 21. 
 
 Hutchinson, Elisha, 171. 
 
 Hutchinson, Governor, made 
 Chief-Justice, 39; satirized 
 
 in The Group, 169; pen por- 
 trait of, 205 ; home of, in Mil- 
 ton, 266; rural tastes of, 269; 
 description of the Boston Tea 
 Party, 272; departure of, for 
 England, 273; love of, for 
 Milton, 274; correspondence, 
 of, 275 ; house of, at Milton 
 at the present time, 284. 
 
 JEFFREY, Patrick, marriage of, 
 282; life of, in the Hutchin- 
 son house, 283. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., on Mrs. Ma- 
 caulay, 59. 
 
 KENDALL, Dr., 310. 
 
 LADIES of Castile, The, 181; 
 
 selections from, 184. 
 
 Leclnnere, , 172. 
 
 Lothrop, Rev. John, arrival of, 
 
 in Barnstable, 11. 
 
 MACAULAY, Mrs., position of, 
 in Great Britain, 56; histori- 
 cal studies of, 57; marriage 
 of, 58; as described by Dr. 
 Johnson, 59; correspondence 
 of, with Mrs. Warren, 59; 
 visit of, to America, 60. 
 
 Mather, Cotton, on the two 
 Englands, 2; belief of, in in- 
 oculation for small-pox, 127; 
 publication by, of Magnalia, 
 194. 
 
 May hew, Dr., utterances of, 63. 
 
 Merry Mount, 20. 
 
 Montgomery, Mrs., 55; prom- 
 ise to, 247. 
 
 OLIVER, Andrew, 171. 
 Oliver, Chief Justice Peter, 171. 
 
 314
 
 INDEX 
 
 Otis Farm, location of, 10. 
 
 Otis, Harrison Gray, 12. 
 
 Otis, James, 12; affection of, 
 for his sister Mercy, 19; 
 preparation of, for college, 
 23; temperament and tastes 
 of, 25; enters college, 25; on 
 culture, 26; commencement 
 of, 28; begins the study of 
 law, 30 ; marriage of, 30 ; dis- 
 interestedness of patriotism 
 of, 40; resigns his office as 
 Advocate-General, 41 ; in de- 
 fence of Boston merchants, 
 41; eloquence of, 43; retire- 
 ment of, from active political 
 life, 45; accused of treason, 
 46; assailed and wounded, 
 46 ; close of public career of, 
 46; Vindication of the con- 
 duct of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, 187 ; death of, 253. 
 
 Otis, John, arrival of, in Massa- 
 chusetts, 2; spelling of name 
 of, 3; grant of land to, 4; 
 English home of, 5. 
 
 Otis, Joseph, in Revolution, 12. 
 
 Otis, Richard, will of, 4. 
 
 Otis, Samuel Allvne, marriage 
 of, 12; death of, 308. 
 
 PAYNE, Thomas, influence of, 
 
 188. 
 Preston, Captain, trial of, 188. 
 
 RETREAT, The, 176. 
 
 Revolution, The History of, the, 
 inception and character of, 
 191; manuscript of, 192; sug- 
 gestions for titlepage of, 197 ; 
 estimate for publication of, 
 200; pen portraits in, 204 et 
 seq. 
 
 Robbins, Chandler, 310. 
 
 Robinson, John, 172. 
 Ruggles, Timothy, 171. 
 Russell, Rev. Jonathan, tutor 
 of James and Mercy Otis, 23. 
 
 SACK of Rome, The, 181. 
 
 Sever, Sally, 299. 
 
 Sewall, Chief Justice, death of, 
 39. 
 
 Sewall, Jonathan, in defence of 
 Great Britain, 188 ; on John 
 Adams, 223. 
 
 Seymour, Mrs., Letters on Edu- 
 cation of, 236. 
 
 Shirley, Governor, 40. 
 
 Small-pox, breaking out of, 127. 
 
 Surriage, Agnes, in Lisbon, 
 254. 
 
 TUDOR, William, letter to, 43. 
 
 WARREN, Charles, birth of, 39 ; 
 voyages of, 256; death of, 
 257. 
 
 Warren, George, birth of, 47; 
 studies law, 256; settles in 
 Maine, 259; illness of, 260; 
 death of, 262. 
 
 Warren, Henry, birth of, 47; 
 marriage of," 259; birth of 
 son to, 292; descendants of, 
 312 ; death of, 312. 
 
 Warren, James, meets Merry 
 Otis, 30; marriage of, 31; 
 character of, 33; ancestry of, 
 33; birth, youth, and young 
 manhood of, 33; appointed 
 high sheriff, 37; love of, for 
 agriculture, 37; removal of, 
 to Plymouth, 37 ; prominence 
 of, in public affairs, 44; 
 President of the Provincial 
 Congress and Paymaster- 
 General, 44; originates idea 
 
 315
 
 INDEX 
 
 of Committees of Correspond- 
 ence, 61; letters of, to his 
 wife, 71 et seq. ; as a writer, 
 74; description of battle of 
 Bunker Hill, 74; confidence 
 of, in his wife, 87; on small- 
 pox, 131; purchase by, of 
 Governor Hutchinson's house 
 at Milton, 252; love of home 
 of, 261; letters of, to his son 
 Winslow, 277 et seq. ; offices 
 held by, 280; return of, to 
 Plymouth, 281 ; death of, 306. 
 
 Warren, James, Jr., birth of, 
 38; foreign cruise of, 278; 
 wounded, 278 ; death of, 312. 
 
 Warren, Mercy Otis, ancestry 
 of, 2; birth of, 10; given 
 name of, 13 ; childhood of, 16 ; 
 books of her day, 18 ; affec- 
 tion of, for her brother James, 
 19 ; intellectual sympathy of, 
 with her brother, 23; passion 
 of, for history, 23; attends 
 her brother's Commence- 
 ment, 28 ; visits of, to Plym- 
 outh, 30 ; marriage of, 31 ; 
 life of, at Clifford Farm, 37; 
 removal of, to Plymouth, 37; 
 births of her sons, James and 
 Winslow, 38; birth of her 
 son Charles, 39; letter of, to 
 her brother James, 46 ; birth 
 of her sons, Henry and 
 George, 47; letters of, to 
 John Adams, 47 et seq. ; in- 
 timacy of, with Abigail 
 Adams, 49 ; on her husband's 
 character, 53 ; correspond- 
 ence of, with distinguished 
 men, 56; acquaintance of, 
 with Mrs. Macaulay, 56; let- 
 ters of, to her husband, 78 
 et seq. ; tendency of, to moral- 
 
 ize, 83; letters of, to Abigail 
 Adams, 104 et seq. ; poem of, 
 entitled The Squabble of the 
 Sea Nymphs, or The Sacri- 
 fice of the Tuscararoes, 107; 
 other poems of, 109 et seq.', 
 social graces of, 121 ; skill of, 
 in character drawing, 125; 
 on the small-pox, 131 ; in- 
 tellectual environment of, 
 137 ; moral impulse of literary 
 work of, 153; flattery of, 
 from John Adams, 157; abil- 
 ity of, as a satirist, 164; The 
 Group, 164; The Adulator 
 and The Retreat, 176; vol- 
 um6 of poems of, including 
 The Sack of Rome and The 
 Ladies of Castile. 181; mo- 
 tives of, in writing the for- 
 mer, 181; moral earnestness 
 of, 187; patriotic zeal of, 188; 
 The History of the Revolu- 
 tion, 191; on the Order of 
 the Cincinnati, 209; contro- 
 versy of, with John Adams 
 regarding The History of the 
 Revolution, 212 et seq.; rec- 
 onciliation of, with John 
 Adams, 226; character of, 
 233; intellectual life of, 235; 
 on Moliere, 237; on the status 
 of women, 240 et seq.; on 
 Lord Chesterfield's Letters, 
 244; on Mrs. Macaulay 's 
 marriage, 245 ; Copley's por- 
 trait of, 246; letters of, to 
 her son Winslow, 251 et seq.; 
 makes her home in Milton, 
 252; on the death of her 
 brother, James Otis, 253; 
 affection of, for her son 
 Winslow, 257; letters of, to 
 her son George, 260 ; youth- 
 
 316
 
 INDEX 
 
 ful spirit of, 261 ; description 
 of home of, at Milton, 265; 
 illness of, 278; literary work 
 of, 280; return of, to Plym- 
 outh, 281 ; dread of monarch- 
 ical tendencies, 295 et seq.; 
 affection of, for the young, 
 300; effect of age on, 302; 
 craving of, for affection, 303; 
 on Napoleon's career, 305; 
 death of, 309; burial of, 310; 
 relics of, 310; influence of, 
 312. 
 
 Warren, Richard, death of, 35. 
 
 Warren, Winslow, birth of, 38; 
 Copley's portrait of, 247; 
 social graces of, 248 ; depart- 
 ure of, for Europe, 249; 
 arrest of, in London, 250 ; 
 visit of, to Lisbon, 254; re- 
 turn of, 257; departure of, 
 for the West, 258; death 
 of, 258. 
 
 Washington, George, letters of, 
 to Mrs. Warren, 180; pen 
 portrait of, 204. 
 
 Washington, Mrs., 65. 
 Weary-All-Hill, location and 
 
 name of, 4. 
 Wentworth, Colonel, letter to, 
 
 128. 
 
 Whiteneld, in Cambridge, 27. 
 Wigglcsworth, Dr., refutes 
 
 Whitefield's charges, 28. 
 Wilkes, John, 282. 
 Wilson, Dr., 58. 
 Winslow, Mary, marriage of, 
 
 259. 
 
 Winslow, Pelham, 259. 
 Winslow, Penelope, marriage 
 
 of, 38. 
 Winthrop, Hannah, 55; letter 
 
 of, to Mrs. Warren, 101; on 
 
 the battle of Lexington, 113; 
 
 on small-pox, 129. 
 Winthrop, John, prosecution 
 
 and acquittal of, 8; on 
 
 women, 156. 
 Winthrop, Professor, 55. 
 Witchcraft, influence of, 21. 
 
 317
 
 WOMEN OF COLONIAL 
 REVOLUTIONARY TIMES 
 
 OW READY: 
 
 Mercy Warren 
 
 By Alice Brown 
 
 Eliza Pinckney 
 
 By Harriott Horry Ravenel 
 
 Dolly Madison 
 
 By Maud Wilder Goodwin 
 
 Margaret Winthrop 
 
 By Alice Morse Earle. 
 
 Eisb tcitb photogravure portrait or facsimile reproduction, gilt top, 
 iuu-ut edges, Si.af. 
 
 THE SET, FOUR VOLUMES IN A BOX, $5.00. 
 
 The purpose of this series is to present not 
 only carefully studied portraits of the most 
 distinguished women of Colonial and Revolu- 
 tionary times, but pictures, as backgrounds 
 for these portraits, of the domestic and social, 
 instead of the political and other public life of 
 the people in successive periods of national de- 
 velopment. The project thus includes a series 
 of closely connected narratives, vivid in color 
 and of the highest social and historical value, 
 of the manners and customs, the ways of life, 
 and the modes of thought of the people of the 
 various sections of the country from the days 
 of the earliest colonists down to the middle of 
 the present century. The cordial reception of 
 the series by the public is an indication of the 
 widespread interest that is taken in the study 
 from authentic documents of the daily lives 
 of the people in Colonial and Revolutionary 
 times.
 
 MERCY WARREN (sister of James Otis). 
 By ALICE BROWN, author of " Agnes Surriagc," 
 " Meadow-Grass," etc. With Portrait in Pho- 
 togravure, 12mo, $1.25. 
 
 Miss Brown's book gives a graphic picture of 
 the social, domestic, literary, and political life 
 in Eastern Massachusetts as Mercy Warren 
 knew it during and after the Revolution. 
 Chapter Headings 
 
 I In the Beginning VIII The History of the Eev- 
 
 II Barnstable Days olution 
 
 III -Life at Plymouth IX An Historical Difference 
 
 IV The Testimony of Letters X Thought and Opinion 
 
 V-The Woman's Part XI The Beloved Son 
 
 VI-Early American Literature XII On Milton Hill 
 
 VI I- Literary Work XIII Terminus 
 
 ELIZA PINCKNEY (wife of Chief Justice 
 Pinckney, of South Carolina). By HARRIOTT 
 HORRY RAVENEL, Great-great-granddaughter 
 of Mrs. Pinckney. With Facsimile Repro- 
 duction, 12ino, $1.25. 
 
 Milwaukee Sentinel: "In the life of Eliza Pinck- 
 ney a wholly new chapter is opened from the 
 carefully conned history of our Kew York and 
 New England, or even our Maryland and Vir- 
 ginia, ancestors." 
 
 Philadelphia Press: "Mrs. Ravenel's book is of 
 quite exceptional value, and depicts in great de- 
 tail and with an indescribable charm the manners 
 and customs of a past generation. It has a 
 decided historical as well as an intimate personal 
 interest." 
 
 St. Paul Pioneer Press : " The record of her life, 
 as shown in the letters written and received by 
 her, gives a picture of the period which is digni- 
 fied and admirable from every point of view. The
 
 character of the woman herself stands out with 
 unusual distinctness." 
 
 Chicago Inter- Ocean : " The book presents a series 
 of as beautiful and artistic pictures of life in the 
 South, from the middle to the latter part of the 
 last century, as could be drawn." 
 
 DOLLY MADISON (wife of James Madison). 
 By MAUD WILDER GOODWIN, author of " The 
 Colonial Cavalier," The Head of a Hundred," 
 etc. With Portrait in Photogravure, 12mo, 
 $1.25. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly: "The Story of Dolly Madison 
 gives us a pleasant gossiping account of life in the 
 social circles of the post-Revolutionary era." 
 Congregationalist: " Mrs. Goodwin's entertaining 
 style and thorough familiarity with the age make 
 the volume a fascinating one." 
 N. Y. Sun: "This is something more than an 
 account of a person ; it is a sketch, done in 
 careful but still easy fashion, affording glimpses 
 of life and manners in Virginia and in Washington 
 during the last half of the eighteenth and the first 
 half of the present century. . . . We repeat, that 
 this is an unusually good piece of biographical 
 work. It is well written, and it displays an 
 admirable sense of what is worth while. Mrs. 
 Goodwin is to be congratulated." 
 
 MARGARET WINTHROP (wife of Gover- 
 nor John Winthrop, of Massachusetts). By 
 ALICE MORSE EARLE. With Facsimile Repro- 
 duction, 12mo, $1.25. 
 
 N. Y. Tribune : " It is a vivid portraiture of the 
 life of the Puritan woman, and properly introduces 
 the series of volumes in which we are to see the
 
 social development of the country illustrated in 
 the careers of representative women of Colonial 
 and Revolutionary times." 
 
 Boston Advertiser: "The volume is history, biog- 
 raph}', romance combined. It is accurate in its 
 descriptions, authoritative in its statements, and 
 exquisitely charming in its portraiture. Mrs. 
 Earle has already done some excellent work ; 
 but her 'Margaret Winthrop' is her best, and 
 can hard I}- fail to become a classic." 
 Chicago Dial: "Outwardly the volume a 
 shapely, well-printed duodecimo, prettily bound 
 in crimson linen, with plain gold lettering is 
 a model of taste ; and, altogether, the publishers 
 are to be congratulated on the conception and, 
 thus far, the execution of their venture." 
 
 In Preparation 
 
 MARTHA WASHINGTON. By ANNE H. 
 WHAETON, author of " Through Colonial Door- 
 ways," " Colonial Days and Dames," etc. With 
 Portrait in Photogravure, 12mo, $1.25. 
 
 Miss Wharton's studies in the social life of 
 the Colonial and Revolutionary periods, which 
 have given her a multitude of appreciative 
 readers, qualify her admirably for the task of 
 portraying the personality and the times of 
 Washington's spouse. Chapter Headings 
 
 T A Little Virginia Maid VT A Journey to Cambridge 
 
 II An Early Marriage VII Camp Life 
 
 III-The Young Virginia VIII After the War 
 
 Colonel IX Life in New York 
 
 IV Early Days at Mt. Vernon X Philadelphia the Capital 
 
 V The'Shadow of Coining XI Last Days at Mt. Vernon 
 Events 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers 
 153-157 Fifth Avenue, New Ywk
 
 
 
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