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 /- ^ .^,^^^F;7S*'^■•-•^••"J^'*^•■*^^•|'';•f' ^> 
 
 THREE HERO'>-'c^-' r 
 NEW ENa^AND 
 ROMANCE 
 
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 y
 
 THREE HEROINES OF 
 
 NEW ENGLAND 
 
 ROMANCE
 
 lit rii !'.'» 

 
 THREE HEROINES OF 
 NEW ENGEAND 
 ROMANCE X 
 
 -vf^ 
 
 <;i^;'HEIR^true stories here- 
 ia set forth by(^Mr8- 
 Harriet Prcscott Spofford 
 Miss Louise Imogen Guiney 
 and Miss'Alice Brown^ 
 
 With many little picturings 
 duLhentic and fanciful by 
 Edmund H Gcirrctt and pub- 
 lished by Little Brown and 
 Company Boston* 1894 
 ^^ 
 
 ^A^
 
 Copyright, 1894, 
 By Edmund H. Garrett. 
 
 JEnitrersitg ^rcss: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
 
 Contents j^ 
 
 Priscilla 
 
 Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
 
 15 
 
 Agnes Surriage 63 
 
 Alice Brown. 
 
 Martha Hilton 109 
 
 Louise Imogen Guiney. 
 
 Notes 
 
 Edmund H. Garrett. 
 
 137
 
 Martha Hilton. " With her sweeping brocades 
 and a cushion towering upon her powdered 
 
 head " Fro7itispiece. 
 
 Priscilla at the spinning wheel 14 
 
 " In his rough cradle by the sounding sea " . . . . 17 
 
 Rose Standish 21 
 
 " The daring and spirited girl " 25 
 
 " Or in calmer moments reading the blessed promises 
 
 of His word " 29 
 
 Miles Standish 33 
 
 " Up and doTfVTi the sands I 'd pace " 36 
 
 " Her respected parent " 37
 
 lo List of Drawings. 
 
 " There, too, came Priscilla " 41 
 
 " Ponds set like jewels in the ring of the green 
 
 woods " 43 
 
 " First happened on the Mayflower " 45 
 
 " The blushing Sabbatia " 47 
 
 John Alden 49 
 
 " Silvers its wave, its rustling wave" 51 
 
 The wedding procession 53 
 
 Grape-vine 56 
 
 Woodbine 57 
 
 The ships of the merchants 59 
 
 " Up-stairs and down-stairs ran the streets " ... 64 
 
 " Houses set ' catty cornered ' " 65 
 
 " An old Marbleheader " 67 
 
 " The solid dignity of the old Town House "... 69 
 
 " The old graveyard " 71 
 
 " The wild azalea " 74 
 
 " The blackberry clings and crowds " 75 
 
 Butterfly 75 
 
 " Again he came riding " 77 
 
 " Bravely attired in small clothes and wigs " ... 81 
 
 " She learned to play on the harpsichord " . . . . 83 
 
 Frankland 85 
 
 " Tragic battlings of heart and conscience " . . . . 87 
 
 " All the more did she turn to Frankland " . . . . 89 
 
 ' The giant box and a few ancient trees " . . . . 92 
 
 " At the banquets " 93 
 
 ■*' His ancestral home " 95
 
 List of Drawings. 1 1 
 
 " The opera was the finest on the continent "... 97 
 
 Agnes Surriage 99 
 
 " They again visited Lisbon " 102 
 
 " Married a wealthy banker of Chichester ''.... 104 
 
 " The little figure with the swishing bucket " . . . 108 
 
 " Sly damsels in Puritan caps " no 
 
 " Gold laced dandies at Newport " in 
 
 " Nor need link herself with the neighboring yokel 
 
 whom Providence had assigned her" .... 113 
 
 Where Governor Wentworth was born 114 
 
 " A fishmonger in London " 115 
 
 " He had the mortification to see her prefer one 
 
 .Shortridge, a mechanic" 117 
 
 " His snuff-boxes and his bowls " 118 
 
 Governor Benning Wentworth 119 
 
 Wentworth house at Little Harbor 121 
 
 " Her strategic eye upon master's deciduous charms " 123 
 
 " The great buck of his day " 127 
 
 " Fiddling at Stoodley's far into the morning" ... 131 
 
 " Wharves now rotting along the harbor-borders " . 133 
 
 Old houses 139 
 
 An old English church 139 
 
 Picturesque barns 140 
 
 The Weston flag-staff 141 
 
 " Houses sheltered by great elms " 142 
 
 " Past fertile farms " 142 
 
 " Over picturesque stone bridges " 143 
 
 " Here is a noble elm " 144
 
 12 List of Drawings. 
 
 The Wayside Inn, Sudbury 145 
 
 Great elms at Hopkinton 149 
 
 Shirley Place 151 
 
 The Royall House, Medford 153 
 
 Medford Square 155 
 
 Street leading to Moll Pitcher's 156 
 
 Moll Pitcher's house and the graveyard 157 
 
 Some fishermen's hsts 159 
 
 Circle Street and Floyd Ireson's house 161 
 
 " This is where the sailors in pigtails and petticoats 
 
 used to be " 165 
 
 St. John's, Portsmouth 168 
 
 The Gardiner House and the linden 169 
 
 Stoodley's 171 
 
 Plymouth, the home of Priscilla 172 
 
 A country road 173 
 
 Decorative designs . . Title, 7, 8, 9, 12, 105, 106, 134, 175 
 
 Initials 15. 63, 109, 137
 
 PRISCILLA
 
 J ,vva,^-<l^^«-' 
 
 #
 
 PRISCILbA 
 
 'The swallow with summer 
 Will wing o'er the seas, 
 The wind that I sigh to 
 Will visit thy frees . J 
 "^77?^ ship that it hastens 
 
 Thy ports ivill contain, 
 ^^ht me -I shall never 
 
 ee England again!" 
 
 OFTEN fancy John Alden, 
 and others, too, among his 
 companions of kindly fame, 
 wandering down the long 
 Plymouth beach and mur- 
 muring to themselves 
 thoughts like these. And I 
 like to look in the annals of 
 the gentle Pilgrims and the
 
 1 6 Priscilla. 
 
 sterner Puritans for any pages where one 
 may find muffled for a moment the strain of 
 high emprise which wins our awe and our 
 praise, but not so surely our love, and gain 
 access on their more human side to the men 
 and women who lived the noblest romance in 
 all history. 
 
 So one comes on the story of the Lady 
 Arbella, and her love and death, with the 
 sweet surprise one has in finding a fragile 
 flower among granite ledges. So the Baby 
 Peregrine's velvet cheek has the unconscious 
 caress of every mother who thinks of him 
 rocked to sleep in his rough cradle by the 
 sounding sea. So the thought deals tenderly 
 with Dorothy Bradford, who crossed the 
 mighty darkness of the deep only to fall 
 overboard from the " Mayflower," and be 
 drowned in harbor, and would fain reap some 
 harvest of romance in the coming over sea, 
 three years afterward, of Mrs. Southworth, 
 with her young sons, Constant and Thomas, 
 to marry the Governor, who had loved her as 
 Alice Carpenter lang syne. And so the story
 
 
 ite<i,^
 
 Priscilla. 19 
 
 of John Alden's courtship is read as if we 
 had found some human beings camped in 
 the midst of demigods. 
 
 Certainly Miles Standish was not of the 
 demigods, if he was of the heroes. No Puri- 
 tan ascetic he, by nature or belief. One 
 might imagine him some soul that failed to 
 find incarnation among the captains and 
 pirates of the great Elizabeth's time, the 
 Raleighs and Drakes and Frobishers, and 
 who, coming along a hundred years too late, 
 did his best to repair the mistake. A choleric 
 fellow, who had quarrelled with his kin, and 
 held himself wronged by them of his patri- 
 mony ; of a quarrelsome race, indeed, that 
 had long divided itself into the Catholic 
 Standishes of Standish and the Protestant 
 Standishes of Duxbury; a soldier who served 
 the Queen in a foreign garrison, and of habits 
 and tastes the more emphasized because he 
 was a little man ; supposed never to have 
 been of the same communion as those with 
 whom he cast in his lot, — it is not easy to 
 sec the reason of his attraction to the Pilgrims
 
 20 Priscilla. 
 
 in Holland. Perhaps he chose his wife, Rose, 
 from among them, and so united himself to 
 them ; if not that, then possibly she herself 
 may have been inclined to their faith, and 
 have drawn him with her ; or it may have 
 been that his doughty spirit could not brook 
 to see oppression, and must needs espouse 
 and champion the side crushed by authority. 
 For the rest, at the age of thirty-five the love 
 of adventure was still an active passion with 
 him. That he was of quick, but not deep 
 affections is plain from the swiftness with 
 which he would fain have consoled himself 
 after the death of Rose, his wife ; and, that 
 effort failing, by his sending to England for 
 'his wife's sister Barbara, as it is supposed, 
 and marrj^ing her out of hand. That he was 
 behind the spirit of the movement with which 
 he was connected may be judged by his 
 bringing home and setting up the gory head 
 of his conquered foe ; for although he was 
 not alone in that retrograde act, since he only 
 did what he had been ordered to do by the 
 elders, yet the holy John Robinson, the in-
 
 %.
 
 Priscilla. 
 
 23 
 
 spirer and conscience of them all, cried out 
 at that, " Oh that he had converted some 
 before he killed any ! " Nevertheless, that 
 and other bloody deeds seem to have been 
 thoroughly informed with his own satisfaction 
 in them. His armor, his sword, his incon- 
 ceivable courage, his rough piety, that "swore 
 a prayer or two," — all give a flavor of even 
 earlier times to the story of his day, and bring 
 into the life when certain dainties were for- 
 bidden, as smacking of Papistry, a goodly 
 flavor of wassail-bowls, and a certain power- 
 ful reminiscence of the troops in Flanders. 
 
 That such a nature as the fiery Captain's 
 could not exist without the soothing touch 
 of love, could not brook loneliness, and could 
 not endure grief, but must needs arm himself 
 with forgetful ness and a new love when sor- 
 row came to him in the loss of the old, is 
 of course to be expected. If he were a little 
 precipitate in asking for Priscilla's affection 
 before Rose had been in her unnamed grave 
 three months, something of the blame is due 
 to the condition of the colony, which made
 
 24 Priscilla. 
 
 sentimental considerations of less value than 
 practical ones, — an evident fact, when Mr. 
 Winslovv almost immediately on the death of 
 his wife married the mother of Peregrine 
 White, not two months a widow, hardly more 
 a mother. 
 
 Apparently there were not a great many 
 young girls in the little company. The gen- 
 tle Priscilla MuUins and the high-minded 
 Mary Chilton were the most prominent ones, 
 at any rate. One knows instinctively that it 
 would not be Mary Chilton towards whom 
 the soldier would be drawn, — the daring and 
 spirited girl who must be the first to spring 
 ashore when the boat touched land. It is 
 true that John Alden's descendants ungal- 
 lantly declare that he was before her in that 
 act; but no one disputes her claim to be the 
 first woman whose root touched shore ; and 
 that is quite enough for one who loves to 
 think of her and of the noble and serene 
 Ann Hutchinson as the far-away mothers 
 of the loftiest and loveliest soul she ever 
 knew.

 
 Priscilla. 27 
 
 One can well conjecture Mary Chilton as 
 comforting and supporting Priscilla in the 
 terrors of that voyage, in such storms as that 
 where the little ship, tossed at the waves' 
 will, lay almost on her beam-ends, and the 
 drowning man who had gone down fathoms 
 deep clutched her topsail-halyards and saved 
 himself; or in calmer moments reading the 
 blessed promises of His word- Young girls 
 willing to undertake that voyage, that en- 
 terprise, and whose hearts were already so 
 turned heavenward as the act implied, must 
 have been of a lofty type of thought and 
 nature; they must often have walked the 
 narrow deck, exchanging the confidences of 
 their hopes and dreams. I see them sitting 
 and softly singing hymns together, on the 
 eve of that first Sunday on the new coast, 
 sitting by that fragrant fire of the red cedar 
 which Captain Standish brought back to the 
 ships after the first exploration of the forest. 
 Priscilla might have sung, " The Lord is my 
 shepherd," and the voice of Rose may have 
 added a note of sweetness to the strain. But
 
 28 Priscilla. 
 
 that gentle measure would never have ex- 
 pressed the feelings of the Captain, whose 
 God was " a man of war." If, out of the 
 tunes allowed, there were one that fitted 
 the wild burden, — and unless their annexa- 
 tion to the book of Common Prayer caused 
 the disapproval of " All such Psalms of 
 David as Thomas Sternholde, late Grome 
 of the Kinges Majestyes Robes, did in his 
 lyfe-tyme drawe into Englyshe Metre," — 
 I can feel the zest with which the Captain 
 may have roared out, — 
 
 " The Lord descended from above, 
 
 And bowed the heavens high, 
 And underneath His feet He cast 
 
 The darkness of the sky. 
 On seraph and on cherubim 
 
 Full royally He rode, 
 And on the wings of mighty winds 
 
 Came flying all abroad ! " 
 
 One might suppose that Priscilla, gentle 
 as tradition represents her, would have been 
 attracted by the fire and spirit of the brave 
 Captain. But perhaps she was not so very
 
 " / T I
 
 Priscilla. 31 
 
 gentle. Was there a spice of feminine co- 
 quetry in her famous speech to John Aldcn, 
 for all her sweet Puritanism? Or was it that 
 she understood the dignity and worth of 
 womanhood, and was the first in this new 
 land to take her stand upon it ? 
 
 The whole story of the courtship which 
 her two lovers paid to her is a bit of human 
 nature suddenly revealing itself in the flame 
 of a great passion, — a mighty drama moving 
 before us, and a chance light thrown upon 
 the stage giving the life and motion of a 
 scene within a scene. There is a touching 
 quality in the modest feeling of the soldier; 
 he is still a young man, not at all grizzled, 
 or old, or gray, as the poet paints him, — 
 perhaps thirty-five or thirty-six years old. 
 Daring death at every daily exposure of the 
 colony to dangers from disease, from the 
 tomahawk, from the sea, from the forest, 
 always the one to go foremost and receive 
 the brunt, to put his own life and safety a 
 barrier against the common enemy, — yet he 
 shrank from tellincf a cfirl that she had fired
 
 32 Priscilla. 
 
 his inflammable heart, and would fain let 
 her know the fact by the one who, if he has 
 left no record of polished tongue or ready- 
 phrase, was the one he loved as the hero 
 loves the man of peace, the one who loved 
 him equally, — the youth of twenty-three 
 whose " countenance of gospel looks " could 
 hardly at that time have carried in its delicate 
 lineaments much of the greatness of nature 
 that may have belonged to the ancestor of 
 two of our Presidents. 
 
 For the purposes of romance, fathers and 
 mothers are often much in the way ; and the 
 poet and the romancer, with a reckless dis- 
 regard of the life and safety of Mr. William 
 Mullins, her respected parent, represent Pris- 
 cilla as orphaned while her father was yet 
 alive. It was to Mr. Mullins that John Alden, 
 torn between duty and passion, and doubtless 
 pale with suffering, presented the Captain's 
 claims. If the matter was urged rather per- 
 functorily, Mr. Mullins seems not to have 
 noticed it, as he gave his ready consent. 
 But we may be confident that Priscilla did ;
 
 Priscilla. 35 
 
 and that, after all, maidenly delicacy would 
 never have suffered her to utter her historic 
 words, " Why don't you speak for yourself, 
 John?" if the deadly sinking of his heart 
 had not been evident in his downcast face. 
 Does it need any chronicle to tell us what a 
 flame of joy shot through John Alden's heart 
 at the instant of those words, — what an icy 
 wave of despair quenched it, — what a horror 
 of shame overcame Priscilla till her blushes 
 became a pain? For when she had dared 
 so much, and dared in vain, what else but 
 shame could be her portion? 
 
 They must have been dark days that fol- 
 lowed for the two young lovers. Can you 
 not see John Alden trying to walk away his 
 trouble on the stretch of the long beach, to 
 escape his sense of treachery, his sorrow in 
 his friend's displeasure, his joy and his shame 
 together? 
 
 " There, my cloak about my face, 
 Up and down the sands I 'd pace, 
 Makins; footprints for the spray 
 To wash away.
 
 36 Priscilla. 
 
 " Up and down the barren beaches, 
 Round the ragged belts of land, 
 In along the curving reaches. 
 Out along the horns of sand." 
 
 There, too, came Priscilla, without much 
 doubt, when the closeness of the little cluster 
 of log huts, within a few feet of one another, 
 grew too oppressive, or the notion that 
 others looked askance at her, lest in an> 
 recklessness of desperation the Captain, the 
 mainstay of the colony, threw his life away
 
 ,rv,W i-lA, 
 
 .'^:'J h/avi^*-
 
 Priscilla. 39 
 
 in the daily expeditions he undertook, — came 
 not as girls stroll along the shore to gather 
 shells, to write their names on the sand, to 
 pick up the seaweed with hues like those 
 
 " Torn from the scarfs and gonfalons of Kings 
 Who dwell beneath the waters," 
 
 as very likely she had done ere this, but to 
 forget her trouble, to diffuse and lose it. 
 For here, added to homesickness and horror 
 and impending famine, was a new trouble, 
 worse perhaps than all the rest. If her lover 
 had been lost at sea, she might have watched 
 for his sail, 
 
 "And hope at her yearning heart would knock 
 When a sunbeam on a far-off rock 
 Married a wreath of wandering foam." 
 
 But this was more unbearable than loss: she 
 had dishonored herself in his eyes ; she had 
 betrayed herself, and he had scorned her; 
 and she came to the sea for the comfort which 
 nearness to the vast and the infinite alwa}'s 
 gives. Even that was not solitude ; for there, 
 a mile away, lay the " Mayflower," still at
 
 40 Priscilla. 
 
 anchor, where the spy-glass made her pris- 
 oner, while it was not safe for a lonely girl to 
 tread the shore at night, watching the glow 
 of the evening star or the moonswale on the 
 sea. Perhaps, with Mary Chilton by her side, 
 or with some of the smaller children of the 
 colony, she climbed a hill, protected by 
 the minion and the other piece of ordnance, 
 which were afterwards mounted on the roof 
 of the rude church, and looked down over 
 the cluster of cabins where now the fair town 
 lies, and thought life hard and sorry, and 
 longed, as John Alden himself did, for the 
 shelter of Old England. Perhaps she had 
 no time for lovesick fancies, anyway, in the 
 growing sickness among the people, which 
 tasked the strength and love of all ; and 
 when, watching with the sick at night, she 
 thrust aside a casement latticed with oiled 
 paper, or chanced to go outside the door for 
 fresh water to cool a fevered lip, she saw a 
 planet rising out of the sea, or the immeasur- 
 able universe of stars wheeling overhead, over 
 desolate shore, and water, and wilderness,
 
 Priscilla. 
 
 43 
 
 she felt her own woe too trivial to be dwelt 
 upon; and when on the third of March her 
 
 ^ 
 
 it^Jii 
 
 ,1 1,7-- « - / , Z'— -^ ~ "^ "~» '' 
 
 ' k] V.' - ■,' ^' I '/ifn -^ » — - — i 
 
 \l ' if. \m . , ' 
 
 father died and was laid in the field where 
 the wheat was planted over the level graves 
 for fear of the Indians, we may be sure that
 
 44 Priscilla. 
 
 she saw her trouble as part of the cross she 
 was to bear, and waited in patience and 
 meekness either till the rumor came of the 
 death of Miles Standish in the Indian skir- 
 mish, — of which we know nothing, — or till 
 John Alden had made it up with his con- 
 science and found his chance, not in the 
 crowded little log huts, not on the open 
 shore, but within the leafy covert of the 
 freshly springing woodside, with none but 
 the fallow deer to see them, to put an end 
 to her unrest. 
 
 Probably that period of bliss now dawned 
 which makes most lovers feel themselves lifted 
 into a region just above the earth and when 
 they tread on air. It was in the hallowed time 
 of this courtship, on the skirts of the deep 
 pine forests, that they first happened on the 
 mayflower, the epigea, full of the sweetest 
 essence of the earth which lends it her name, 
 and felt as if love and youth and joy and 
 innocence had invented a flower for them 
 alone, — the deeply rosy and ineffably fra- 
 grant mayflower that blooms only in the

 
 
 Plymouth woods in its 
 pink perfection, and whose 
 breath must have seemed 
 Hke a breath blown out 
 of the open doors of the 
 new life awaiting them 
 together. If they had 
 ventured as far as any of 
 the numberless ponds, set 
 
 ^ 'il.AJ.^ JoUt^
 
 48 Priscilla. 
 
 like jewels in the ring of the green woods 
 about them, something later in their new 
 year, they would have found the blushing 
 sabbatia in all its pristine loveliness, — the 
 flower most typical of Priscilla herself; the 
 flower to which some fortunate fate, in view 
 of the sabbatical character of the region, gave 
 the name of an old Italian botanist, as if it 
 were its own from the beginning; a flower 
 which is to-day less rare around Plymouth 
 than elsewhere. Now, in the soft spring 
 evenings, too, it may be that they strolled 
 along the beach, and watched the phosphor- 
 escence of the waters playing about the sacred 
 rock with which the continent had gone out 
 first to meet them, all unweeting that it was 
 the " corner-stone of a nation." Now, — for 
 lovers will be lovers still, although the whole 
 body of Calvinism be behind them, and the 
 lurking foe of the forest before, — they sat 
 on the Burial Hill by night, and watched 
 such a scene as William Allingham has 
 pictured, —
 
 LJV^
 
 Priscilla. 
 
 Above the lieadlands massy, dim, 
 A swelling glow, a fiery birth, 
 
 A marvel in the sky doth swim, 
 Advanced upon the hush of earth. 
 
 51 
 
 " The globe, o'erhanging bright and brave 
 The pale green-glimmering ocean-floor, 
 Silvers its wave, its rustling wave 
 Soft folded on the shelving floor. 
 
 "O lonely moon, a lonely place 
 I Is this thou cheerest with thy face; 
 Three sand-side houses, and afar 
 The steady beacon's faithful star " — 
 
 only, instead of the three sand-side houses it 
 was " the Seven Houses of Plymouth," and
 
 52 Priscilla. 
 
 all the beacon was the light in the " May- 
 flower's " or the " Fortune's " shrouds. 
 
 That the betrothal did not impair the 
 friendship of the lovers with the impetuous 
 Captain Standish, we can understand from 
 the fact that when, subsequently, the Captain 
 built his house over on Duxbury Hill, John 
 Alden's house stood near it ; and that later, 
 — and unhindered, for aught we know, — 
 John Alden's daughter married the Captain's 
 son. It pleases me to think that the dear 
 daughter-in-law, by whom, in his last will 
 and testament, the old Captain desired to 
 be buried, was the daughter of Priscilla 
 Mullins. 
 
 Priscilla and John must have had time 
 enough for this sweet acceptance of life and 
 nature together, for although in other in- 
 stances courtship was brief, yet we know that 
 their wedding certainly did not take place till 
 May, as Governor Winslow then married Mrs. 
 White, and that marriage was recorded as the 
 first in the colony. There is indeed some 
 probability that the engagement of the young
 
 /; n 
 
 
 
 
 ^aa^'r:^.
 
 Priscilla. 55 
 
 people was of quite another character from 
 the incomprehensibly brief one just men- 
 tioned. Perhaps John Alden was building 
 his house, and it may be that it had to be 
 more or less commodious, since he probably 
 became the protector of the family which 
 Mr. Mullins left, and which is registered as 
 numbering five persons upon landing. But 
 if we accept the legend regarding the wed- 
 ding journey, we might have to postpone the 
 bridal for some seasons, as it was not until 
 three years after their arrival that Edward 
 Winslow, having gone to England and re- 
 turned with cattle, made such a thing possible 
 as that traditional ride on the back of the 
 gentle white bull with its crimson cloth and 
 cushion. 
 
 In fact, the incidents of real occurrence 
 and the traditions of real descent, concern- 
 ing the courtship of Priscilla, are very few. 
 We know that Rose Standish died ; that the 
 Captain sent John Alden to urge his suit 
 before Mr. Mullins, who replied favorably; 
 that Priscilla asked him why he did not
 
 56 
 
 Priscilla. 
 
 speak for himself; that 
 Mr. Mullins presently 
 died ; that Captain Stan- 
 dish presently married 
 elsewhere ; and that 
 John eventually married 
 Priscilla, lived in the neigh- 
 borhood of the Captain, mar- 
 ried his daughter to the Cap- 
 tain's son, and died in his old 
 age, being known to the end 
 as a severe and righteous and 
 reverend man. These are the 
 bare facts ; all the rest is 
 coloring and conjecture. Yet 
 one has the right to surround these facts 
 with all the possibilities of human emotion,
 
 Priscilla. 
 
 57 
 
 alike 
 in any 
 age and 
 with any 
 people, which 
 go to the mak- 
 ing of romance and 
 poetry, and which will 
 do so as long as hearts 
 beat, lips tremble, and 
 souls desire compan-. 
 ionship. 
 
 It is because we like 
 to make these people, 
 looming large through 
 the mists of time, and on 
 the stage of their mighty 
 drama, real enough for 
 our sympathies, that we love Mr. Longfellow's 
 version of their story. Nothing more skilful.
 
 58 Priscilla. 
 
 gentle, and beautiful has ever been written 
 concerning the Pilgrims than the beloved 
 poet's verses. Every incident in their pages 
 is absolutely true to the life of the period, 
 and although the anachronisms are many, 
 yet they do not exceed the province of 
 poetic license, — they are perhaps necessary 
 to it; and many of the events are those 
 which actually took place, if not at the stated 
 time. Thus, for instance, it was at a later 
 season than the poem intimates that the gory 
 head of the savage was brought home ; yet 
 it was brought home. It was at another date 
 that the rattlesnake skin filled with arrows 
 was sent ; yet it was sent. It was Governor 
 Bradford and not Captain Standish who re- 
 turned it stuffed with powder and shot ; yet 
 it was returned. It was much later than 
 represented that property was held in sev- 
 eralty, and individuals owned their dwell- 
 ings ; yet they did do so in time. It was 
 much later than the first autumn that the 
 ships of the merchants brought cattle ; yet 
 they did bring cattle. But whether the cat-
 
 Priscilla. 
 
 59 
 
 tie came early or late, that snow-white bull 
 with his crimson saddle-cloth gives occa- 
 
 sion for one of the most beautiful pictures 
 in literature. Europa herself, fleeing over 
 the meadow on her white bull, flecked with
 
 6o Priscilla. 
 
 warm sunshine, with shadows of leaves and 
 flowers, all white and rosy loveliness as she 
 fled, is not a fairer picture to the mind than 
 this exquisite one of the bridal procession, 
 where 
 
 " Pleasantly murmured the brook as they crossed the 
 
 ford in the forest, 
 Pleased with the image that passed, like a dream of 
 
 love, through its bosom. 
 Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the azure 
 
 abysses. 
 Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring 
 
 his splendors. 
 Gleaming on purple grapes that, from branches above 
 
 them suspended. 
 Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the 
 
 pine and the fir-tree. 
 Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the 
 
 valley of Eshcol, 
 Like a picture, it seemed, of the primitive pastoral 
 
 ages. 
 Fresh with the youth of the world."
 
 AGNES SURRIAGE
 
 ACNES 5URRIAGE 
 
 "Milled by Fancy's meteor ray, 
 By Passion driven , 
 ^utyet the light tijat led astray 
 h/iu liaht from Heaven 
 
 NE of the few perfect 
 jewels of romance, 
 needing neither the 
 craft of imagination 
 nor cunning device 
 of word-cutting lap- 
 idary, is that of 
 Agnes Surriage, so 
 improbable, according to every-day stand- 
 ards, so informed with the truest senti- 
 ment, and so calculated to satisfy every 
 exaction of literary art, that even the most 
 critical eye might be forgiven for tracing 
 its shifting color to the light of fancy, and 
 not of homely truth. Even at the present 
 day, when the "Neck" is overrun by the 
 too-civilized cottager, to whose gilded ease
 
 64 
 
 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 summer life everywhere most patiently con- 
 forms, Marblehead is one of our coast won- 
 ders, — a fortress perennially held by beauty, 
 and dedicated to her use; but let the remi- 
 niscent gaze wander back a century and a half, 
 
 and how entirely fitted to the requirements 
 of fancy would it find the quaint town, the 
 vagrant peninsula, and serenely hospitable 
 harbor ! The town itself was fantastically 
 builded, as if by a generation of autocratic 
 landowners, each with a wilful bee in his 
 bonnet. Upstairs and downstairs ran the
 
 _/ 
 
 ..C^J\ 
 

 
 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 67 
 
 streets ; they would have respected not my 
 lady's chamber. Their modest dwellings 
 seem by no means the outcome of a com- 
 munity governed by common designs and 
 necessities ; rather do they voice a capricious 
 and eccentric individualism. 
 
 " Well, you see," said an old Marbleheader, 
 indulgently, " they built 
 the houses fust, an' the 
 streets arterwards. One 
 man says to himself, 
 ' I 'm a-goin' to set here ; 
 you can set where you 're 
 a mind to.' But," he 
 added, in loyal justifica- 
 tion of his forbears, " I 
 
 tell ye what 't is, they done the best they 
 could with what they had to do with ! " 
 
 For they were governed by no inexplicable 
 and crazy fancy, — these sturdy fishermen of 
 Marblehead ; they were merely constrained 
 by the rigid requirements of their chosen 
 site. Building on that stony hillside, they 
 were slaves of the rock, dominated by it.
 
 68 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 pressed into corners. The houses them- 
 selves were founded upon solid ledges, while 
 the principal streets followed the natural val- 
 leys between; and with all such rioting of 
 irregularity, that long-past generation was 
 doubtless well content. A house set " catty- 
 cornered " to the world at large, sovereign 
 over its bit of a garden, was sufficient unto 
 itself, overtopped though it were by the few 
 great colonial mansions, upspringing here 
 and there, or by the solid dignity of the old 
 Town-House. The smaller dividing paths, 
 zigzag as they would, led to all the Romes 
 of local traffic, and presently the houses fol- 
 lowed the paths, the paths developed into 
 rocky streets, and lo ! there was Marblehead, 
 a town dropped from the skies, and each 
 house taking root where it fell. 
 
 But if any one reading the tale of these 
 wilful dwellings should soberly doubt the 
 common interests of the people, let him 
 climb the rocky eminence in their midst to 
 the old graveyard, where stood the little 
 church, the oldest of all; here the first set-
 
 
 i ^. 

 
 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 71 
 
 tiers worshipped, and here, in comforting 
 nearness, they buried their dead, within the 
 niches spared them by the rock. It was set 
 thus high, this homely tabernacle of faith, 
 
 to overlook land and water, that no stealthy 
 Indian band might creep upon the worship- 
 pers unaware, — for those were the days of 
 the church militant in more than a poetic 
 sense. An admirable spot this for the anti- 
 quary, wherein to pursue his loving labor of
 
 72 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 coaxing forward a reluctant past ! Ancient 
 headstones will salute his eye, and of these 
 said one local lingerer, garrulous as he who 
 discoursed on Yorick's skull, " I can tell the 
 date of 'em all, jest as I could a buildin', by 
 the architectur' ! " But let him not conclude 
 that in scanning the slabs erected two cen- 
 turies ago he has seen all, — for here lies 
 many an unrecorded grave. "They had to 
 send to England for their stones then," said 
 the Oldest Inhabitant. " Poor folks could n't 
 afford that, an' most of 'em went without." 
 
 Across the little harbor, at nightfall popu- 
 lous with white sails, stretches the " Neck," 
 once a lonely, rock-defended treasury of 
 beauty, besieged by wave, and alternately 
 lashed and caressed by the fickle, but persist- 
 ent foam. Well fitted are its girdling citadels 
 for enduring warfare ; their towers outlast the 
 feet that climb them, and their masonry 
 crumbles not below, save slowly, through the 
 infinite patience of the eternally tossing sea. 
 And when the eye tired of this majesty of the 
 illimitable, when it wearied of ocean spray,
 
 Agnes Surriage. Th 
 
 spouting column-like through some gigantic 
 cleft, and found itself oppressed by the 
 rhythm of rolling foam, what would it have 
 seen, on turning inland from Castle Rock, 
 that century and a half agone? A stretch of 
 green pasture-land, becoming yellow as 
 August marches on, — the "Neck" itself. 
 Then, wandering on unwearied, still travers- 
 ing the " Neck," sweet, bosky hollows, where 
 lie to-day such treasures of shining leaf and 
 soft-lipped flower as Paradise might claim. 
 These are the wild, sunken gardens on the 
 road to Devereux, glowing in the gold of a 
 royal tansy, greenly odorous of fern, and 
 sweet with the wild azalea, — honey-smeared 
 and pollen-powdered, loved of the bee, and 
 his chief tempter to drunken revels on the 
 way from market. The button-bush holds 
 aloft her sign of cool white balls ; loosestrife 
 stars the green undergrowth with yellow ; and 
 over stick and stone the blackberry clings 
 and crowds. There the wild rose lives and 
 blooms, fed on manna brought by roving 
 winds and fleeting sunlight, never unblest.
 
 74 
 
 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 even when the purveyors of honey come 
 winging by, to rifle her sweets, and leave her 
 to the ripening of maturity and the soHd 
 
 glow of her 
 red-hipped 
 matron- 
 hood. And 
 on the left 
 again, still 
 facing 
 south, is 
 the insistent sea, drag- 
 ging down its pebbly 
 beach, and on the right, the 
 dimpling harbor, reddened, 
 for him who is wise enough 
 to wander that way at sunset, 
 with flaming banners of the 
 sky. To cross the harbor 
 again, and follow the main- 
 land back to a point nearly opposite the 
 lighthouse of the Neck, is to find, neighbored 
 by the old graveyard, ruined and grassy Fort 
 Sewall, to-day the lounging-place for village
 
 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 75 
 
 great-grandfathers, or vantage-ground for 
 overlooking a yacht race, but in 1742, when 
 Charles Henry Frankland was Collector of 
 the Port of 
 Boston, just 
 a building. 
 And one day 
 in the pre- 
 vious year, 
 the gallant 
 
 young Collector, smartly dressed 
 in the fine feathers of the period, 
 and no doubt humming a song, 
 — since he seems to have ful- 
 filled all the conditions of an 
 interesting young galliard, — 
 came riding down 
 on some business 
 connected with 
 the prospective 
 fort. He stopped at the Foun- 
 tain Inn for a draught, — not 
 so innocent, perhaps, as that from the clear 
 well still springing near the spot, — and.
 
 76 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 scrubbing the tavern floor, there knelt before 
 him, in lovely disarray, the sweet beggar- 
 maid destined to be crowned at once by the 
 favor of this careless Cophetua. Let that 
 phrase be swiftly amended ! Agnes Sur- 
 riage was no beggar-maid, but the honest 
 daughter of hard-working fisher-folk, and 
 patient under her own birthright of toil. 
 Her beauty was something rare and delicate, 
 calculated to arrest the eye and chain the 
 heart; the simple dignity of her demeanor 
 was no more to be affected through her 
 menial task than a rose by clouded skies. 
 Her fair feet were naked, and blushed not at 
 their poverty, but Frankland's heart ached 
 with pity of them, and he closed her fingers 
 over a coin, to buy shoes and stockings. 
 Then he gave her " good-day," and rode 
 away, — but not to forget her ; only to muse 
 on her grace, and to start at the vision of 
 her eyes, shining between him and his bills 
 of merchandise and lading. Again he came 
 riding that way, and again he found her, still 
 barefooted ; but when he reproached her for
 
 Agnes Surriage. 79 
 
 having failed to put his coin to its destined 
 use, she blushed, and answered in the homely- 
 dialect of Marblehead, which yet had no 
 power over the music of her voice, that the 
 shoes and stockings were bought, but that 
 she kept them to wear to meeting. And 
 now the young Collector went often and 
 more often to Marblehead, until the day 
 came when he obtained her parents' permis- 
 sion to become her guardian, and take her 
 away to be educated. So the wild bird 
 entered voluntarily into the life of cages, to 
 learn the demeanor and song-notes which 
 were approved by the fashionable Boston of 
 the day. 
 
 The quaint, village-like, and yet all-regal 
 Boston of the past ! Perhaps this was one of 
 the most interesting pages of its life history, 
 before the royal insolence had roused in it 
 an answering manhood ; when fashion scru- 
 pulously followed a far-away court over sea, 
 and the daily life of luxurious British officials 
 was so distinct from that of the Puritan stra- 
 tum of society. In England, public affairs
 
 8o Agnes Surriage. 
 
 seesawed between the policies of George 11. 
 and Walpole, and from the world of letters, 
 Richardson and Fielding were amusing the 
 young bloods of the day, and by no means 
 toughening their moral fibre. The leisure 
 of the bold Britons who ruled over us was 
 not for a moment poisoned by fear of Amer- 
 ican defection from the royal mother-land. 
 Rather, for men like Frankland, was this 
 loitering in western airs their Wanderjahr, 
 a pleasant exile, whence they would some 
 day return, with treasures of new experience, 
 to sit down beside the English hearthstone, 
 and, Othello-like, rehearse the wonders they 
 had seen. Meantime, they walked the streets, 
 bravely attired in small-clothes and wigs, 
 discussing the troubles brewing with the 
 French, and seeking, so far as they might, 
 to build up a miniature England within the 
 savage-girdled settlements of the New World. 
 Sir Harry Frankland stands out from the 
 faint portraiture of the time as one of the 
 most knightly souls of all. He was young, 
 blest with an attractive presence, and his
 
 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 83 
 
 tastes were those of the gentleman and the 
 
 scholar. That he was sensitive and refined 
 
 even to the point of evincing that feminine 
 
 strain of temperament so 
 
 , y fascinating in a manly 
 
 man, is very apparent 
 
 from the fragmentary 
 
 g<^ records of his life, 
 
 but he lacked no 
 
 sturdiness of 
 
 temper or 
 
 demeanor. 
 
 Agnes Surriage responded at once to the 
 new influences about her. Indeed, she was 
 of those to whom borrowed graces are ex-
 
 84 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 ternal and almost unnecessary: Nature had 
 dowered her with the riches of beauty, nobil- 
 ity, and modesty of mien ; and to adorn her 
 by artifice was merely to remove the rose 
 from its garden bed, and set it in a silver 
 vase. From God's lady, fitted to scrub the 
 tavern floor and lose no charm thereby, she 
 became a dame who might have been com- 
 mended to courts and palaces. She learned 
 to sing, to play on the harpsichord, and dance ; 
 for painting, embroidery, and all the fragile 
 accomplishments of the day, she had a sur- 
 prising aptitude. She was surrounded by 
 luxuries which might have proved bewilder- 
 ing to a less simple and noble nature, and, 
 last of all, she stooped to receive the crown 
 of her guardian's love. Alas ! poor maid 
 of Marblehead ! for this was a crown that 
 smirched the brow and stung as with nettles, 
 no matter how bravely its blossoms nodded 
 above. Frankland loved her, but he was 
 bound by the fetters of an ancestral pride ; 
 he owed all to his fam.ily, and nothing to 
 his own manly honor, — and he could not
 
 ^x;^**^
 
 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 87 
 
 marry her. It is pitiful to guess with what 
 tragic battlings of heart and conscience her 
 overthrow must have been accomplished, but 
 even she could scarcely have counted the 
 cost, — the daily torture, the hourly pinch 
 
 of circumstance, when one after another of 
 Boston's best, who had not failed to recog- 
 nize the fishcr-girl, rich in nothing but her 
 dower of beauty and character, refused to 
 countenance the fine lady, so ironically fa- 
 vored of Fortune. In the humble home 
 at Marblehead, her name became the ke}--
 
 88 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 note of shame ; for though these fisher-folk 
 were rude of speech almost beyond belief, 
 though they caroused wildly half the year; 
 preparatory to their summer voyaging, they 
 had a hard hand and a rough word ready 
 for one who was light o' love. She had 
 given all for the one jewel, and both her 
 little worlds, of birth and adoption, trem- 
 bled from their centres. All the more did 
 she turn to Frankland, as to her sun of happi- 
 ness, and in the unfailing warmth of his affec- 
 tion she alternately drooped and smiled. 
 
 Then began the second and more glowing 
 chapter of this dramatic tale. Sir Harry 
 must have been bitterly moved by the social 
 ostracism of his ward and lady, and he short- 
 ened the period of her expiation by the only 
 possible device left him, save one, and took 
 her away. He had bought a large tract of 
 land in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and there 
 he proceeded to build a manor-house, where, 
 in a humble fashion, life might copy the 
 abundance and solid magnificence of Eng- 
 land's ancestral homes. The country itself
 
 ljlt£y /U^ m*\t^ cUc/ J-^^^ iM'n.
 
 Agnes Surriage. 91 
 
 was a wonder of hill and valley, — hills where 
 the loftier beauty of Wachusett and Monad- 
 nock might be viewed, valley where a happy 
 village nestled, and where clear, cool streams 
 flowed lightly to their outlet. Sir Harry was 
 a clever purveyor of the good things of life ; 
 he made his manor-house commodious and 
 fair to see, and erected a comfortable farm- 
 house for his laborers ; his great hall roof 
 was supported by fluted columns, and its 
 walls were hung with tapestry, rich of hue 
 and texture. The house was approached by 
 a long and stately avenue cut through mag- 
 nificent chestnut-trees ; the ground sloped 
 down in commanding terraces of blooming 
 sward, and the gardens and orchards were 
 marvels of growth and abundance. In his 
 gardening he took delight, but, alas for human 
 pride and power ! only the giant box of his 
 borders and a few ancient trees have seen the 
 present century, to attest his vanished life. 
 
 Here the two must have lived Arcadian 
 days, in all but lightness of heart. The 
 lovely maid, for whom no labor had been
 
 92 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 too menial, reigned the queen of this lavish 
 domain. She was the mistress of negro 
 
 5Pr 
 
 
 . i; ' I 
 
 1-1 ■!>• I. y 
 
 
 slaves, she walked in silk attire; and local 
 gossip assures us that her tastes and those 
 of Sir Harry were in the most perfect har-
 
 Ascnes Surriage. 
 
 93 
 
 mony. They rode together through their 
 own plantation or over the fascinatingly un- 
 broken country without ; they read the latest 
 consignment of books from England ; and Sir 
 Harry hunted the fox and hshed for trout in 
 the cold streams, possibly while Agnes did a 
 bit of graceful and ladylike sketching on her 
 own account, — for it must not be forgotten 
 that she belonged to that unexacting era 
 when large eyes and sloping shoulders were 
 much in vogue, and when the 
 work of womankind was all the 
 more attractive for being a 
 trifle thin and " very pretty." 
 Probably her accomplishments 
 were all the more entrancing 
 for matching " lady's Greek, 
 without the accents." Here in 
 their primeval wilderness, pri- 
 meval morals were more to be 
 tolerated, and the autocrats of Boston did not 
 disdain to visit them — undoubtedly without 
 their wives ! At least Sir Harry did not 
 lack society; and there is a tale that at the
 
 94 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 banquets, enlivened by the choice wines 
 which came in his way by virtue of his col- 
 lectorship, he, canny man! drank from a 
 glass cunningly made shallow, so that he 
 could toss off an equal number of potations 
 with his guests, and yet remain sober while 
 they slid imperceptibly under the table. For 
 in these days, it was almost incumbent upon 
 gentlemen to conclude a banquet by lying 
 reclined " like gods together, careless of 
 mankind." 
 
 But the swiftly moving drama could not 
 be stayed ; and Sir Harry, called to Eng- 
 land by imperative duties, carried his treas- 
 ure with him to his ancestral home. At 
 least there was this to be said in his favor, 
 during these doubtful days, — he was not of 
 those who love and ride away, and his loy- 
 alty to the one chosen woman never suf- 
 fered reproach. In England, either defiant 
 or strangely obtuse to the values of their 
 relation, he introduced Agnes to his family ; 
 but neither her beauty nor accomplishments 
 redeemed her unhappy standing, and she was
 
 As:nes Surriage. 
 
 95 
 
 made to suffer that social ignominy which 
 is so absolutely blighting to a sensitive spirit. 
 The strange irony of her position is very 
 dramatic in retrospect. A lovely and loving 
 woman, bound to the man who should have 
 
 been her husband, by all the most holy vows 
 of nature, she was destined to an unrelieved 
 and bitter expiation ; and though Sir Harry 
 doubtless suffered with her, yet, in obedience 
 to the laws that govern womankind, Agnes 
 must have endured a desolation of misery 
 entirely unimagined by him. Again they
 
 9^ Agnes Surriage. 
 
 went into happy exile, and made the grand 
 tour of the Continent, ending at Lisbon, at 
 that time a species of modern Sybaris. En- 
 riched by Brazihan gold, the court was sup- 
 ported in a magnificence then unparalleled 
 in Europe. The opera was the finest on the 
 Continent, and one pageant succeeded an- 
 other, obedient to the whims of any ever- 
 regnant luxury. Here, too, on the eminence 
 of the seven hills, a colony of wealthy English 
 merchants had congregated, and spent their 
 fairy gold, flowing back through the magic 
 portals leading to the New World, with a 
 prodigality emulating that of the court. Here 
 Frankland gave himself up to the fair god of 
 Pleasure ; he lived as if there were to be no 
 morrow, and lo ! the morrow came, and with 
 it the judgment of God. On All Saints' Day, 
 1755, the sun rose in splendor over the city 
 of Lisbon ; and all its inhabitants, from courtier 
 to beggar, took their way churchward, for the 
 celebration of High Mass. Frankland, in his 
 court dress, was riding with a lady, when 
 without warning the earth surged sea-like
 
 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 97 
 
 under them, and a neighboring house fell, 
 
 engulfing them in its ruins. The lady (who 
 
 was she, O Historic Muse? and was their 
 
 talk light or sober, that care-free 
 
 A day in Lisbon?), this unnamed 
 
 lady, in her agony and 
 
 terror, bit through the 
 
 sleeve of Frankland's 
 
 cloth coat, and tore a 
 
 piece of flesh from his 
 
 arm. And 
 
 for him, he 
 
 lay help- 
 
 less, reading the red record of his sins, and 
 adjudging himself in nothing so guilty as the
 
 98 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 wrong to the woman who loved him. Strange 
 and awful scenes had driven the city frantic. 
 Churches and dwellings had fallen; the sea 
 swelled mountain-high, and swallowed the 
 quay, with its thousands of bewildered fugi- 
 tives. Lisbon went mad, and beat its breast, 
 beseeching all the saints for mercy. But to 
 one great spirit, even the insecurity of the 
 solid earth was as nothing compared with 
 the danger of her beloved mate. Agnes 
 Surriage, aflame with anxiety for Frankland, 
 ran out, as soon as the surging streets would 
 give her foothold, and rushed about the deso- 
 lated city in agonizing search. By some 
 chance, strange as all the chances of her 
 dramatic life, she came upon the very spot 
 of his fearful burial. She tore at the rubbish 
 above him with her tender hands ; she of- 
 fered large rewards, so purchasing the avail- 
 ing strength of others, and Frankland was 
 saved. 
 
 To court and people, the earthquake voiced 
 the vengeance of an angry God; to Frank- 
 land, it had been a flaming finger, writing on
 
 Agnes Surriage. loi 
 
 the wall a sentence for him alone, and in 
 security he did not forget its meaning. Wait- 
 ing only for the healing of his wounds, he at 
 last besought the blessing of holy church 
 upon his love; and Agnes Surriage under 
 went a radiant change into the Lady Agnes 
 Frankland. And now for a time her days 
 became gleaming points in a procession of 
 happiness. Her husband returned with her 
 to England, where she was received as a be- 
 loved daughter of the house, and enshrined 
 in those steadfast English hearts, where fealty, 
 once given, so seldom grows cold ; and after 
 a tranquil space, the two set sail again for 
 America. Even amid the scenes of her 
 former martyrdom, Agnes was no longer to 
 be regarded as an alien and social outcast. 
 She walked into Boston society as walks a 
 princess entering her rightful domain, and 
 there took up the sceptre of social sway at 
 the aristocratic North End. Frankland had 
 purchased the most lordly mansion there, 
 of which the fragmentary descriptions are 
 enough to make the antiquary's mouth water.
 
 I02 
 
 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 The stairs ascending from the great hall were 
 so broad and low that he could ride his pony 
 up and down in safety ; there were wonder- 
 ful inlaid floors, Italian marbles, and carven 
 
 ^jT 
 
 -M^- 
 
 :^^ 
 
 •fr"' 
 
 pillars. There Agnes lived the life of a dig- 
 nified matron, and a social leader whose fiats 
 none might gainsay. Indeed, from this time 
 forward her story is that of the happy women 
 whose deeds are unrecorded, and is only to 
 be guessed through scanning the revelations
 
 Agnes Surriage. 103 
 
 of her husband's journal. His health seems 
 to have guided their movements in great 
 measure ; for they again visited Lisbon, and 
 then came home to England, where he died, 
 in 1768. 
 
 Lady Frankland returned to Hopkinton, 
 and there she lived through uneventful days, 
 with her sister and sister's children, oversee- 
 ing her spacious estate, and entertaining her 
 hosts of friends, until 1775, that fiery date of 
 American story. A jealous patriotism was 
 rife ; and it was not unnatural that the widow 
 of an officer of the Crown, herself a devotee 
 of the Established Church, should become 
 an object of local suspicion, hand in glove 
 as she was with the British invaders of our 
 peace. Like many another avowed royalist, 
 she judged it best to leave her undefended 
 estate at Hopkinton, and place herself under 
 military protection in Boston, and there she 
 arrived, after a short detention by some over- 
 zealous patriot, in time to witness the battle 
 of Bunker Hill from the windows of her 
 house, and to receive some of the wounded
 
 I04 Agnes Surriage. 
 
 within its shelter. Thence she sailed for 
 England, as our unpleasantness with the 
 mother-country increased in warmth, and at 
 this point she becomes lost to the romance- 
 loving vision, — for, 
 alas for those who 
 " love a lover," and in- 
 sist upon an ideal con- 
 stancy! Lady Frankland 
 was married, in the 
 fourteenth year of her 
 widowhood, to John 
 Drew, a wealthy banker 
 of Chichester, and at 
 Chichester she died, in 
 one year's time. But 
 after all, on that sober 
 second thought which is so powerful in re- 
 gilding a tarnished fancy, does not her re- 
 marriage suit still better the requirements 
 of romance? For instead of dying a staid 
 Lady Frankland, her passions merged in 
 the vital interests of caps and lap-dogs, she 
 transmutes herself into another person, and
 
 Agnes Surriage. 105 
 
 thus fades out into an unrecognized future. 
 Since neither the name of Surriage nor 
 Frankland is predominant in its legend, 
 even her tomb seems lost; and the mind 
 goes ever back in fancy to her maiden name, 
 her maiden state, when she was the disguised 
 and humble princess of Marblehead.
 
 MARTHA HILTON
 
 
 - ^^t— _
 
 MARTHA HILTON 
 
 EW ENGLAND 
 
 had her spurts of 
 human nature in old 
 times, whenever she 
 was not taken up 
 with the witches 
 and the Tories, and 
 could afford a nine- 
 days' wonder over 
 so simple a thing 
 as a marriage be- 
 tween high and low. 
 For we had not got then to a professional 
 denial of difference between high and low; 
 not as yet had the bell of Philadelphia
 
 no 
 
 Martha Hilton. 
 
 cracked its heart, Hke the philosopher Chilo, 
 with pubhc joy, and proclaimed the crooked 
 ways straight, and the rough places plain. 
 When some sweet scrub of an Agnes Sur- 
 riage captured a Sir 
 Harry, at the end of a 
 moving third act, there 
 was a thrill of awe and 
 satisfaction : and forth- 
 with the story went into 
 our folk-lore, and very 
 properly; since it had inci- 
 dents and char- 
 acter. Sly damsels in Puritan 
 caps made the most of a shift- 
 ing society, full of waifs and 
 strays from the foreign world. 
 Royal commissioners were yet 
 to be seen, and gold-laced Parisian barons 
 at Newport and Norwich, and pirate Black- 
 beards tacking from the Shoals, and leaving 
 sweethearts to wring ghostly hands there to 
 this day. So that no lass had too dull an 
 outlook upon life, nor need link herself with

 
 Martha Hilton. 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 the neighboring yokel whom Providence had 
 assigned her, while such splendid fish were 
 in the seas. Let her but wed "above her," and 
 she shall be a fountain- 
 head of precedent and 
 distinction, and 
 the sister ideal 
 of King Co- 
 phetua's beg- 
 gar-bride. 
 
 Poor Ag- 
 nes of Mar- 
 blehead, as faithful as the Nut-Browne Maid 
 herself, adorns her romantic station with liv- 
 ing interest; but Martha Hilton, who figures 
 in true histories and in Mr. Longfellow's 
 pretty ballad, is a heroine of the letter, 
 rather than of the spirit. We hear nothing 
 of her deserts ; we hear merely of her suc- 
 cess. She became Lady Wentworth (all per- 
 sonable Madams were Ladies then and awhile 
 after, even in the model republican air of 
 Mount Vernon !) and she had been a kitchen- 
 wench. But she was also the descendant of
 
 114 
 
 Martha Hilton. 
 
 the honorable founder of Dover, " a fish- 
 monger in London," even as the great and 
 gouty Governor, her appointed spouse, was 
 grandson to a noblest work of God, who, in 
 1670, got " libertie to entertayne strangers, 
 and sell and brew beare." In that house of 
 beer, the hearty-tim- 
 ,^_^^ ^ bered house planted 
 
 yet by a Portsmouth 
 inlet, with one timid 
 bush to be seen over 
 against the door, was 
 Benning Wentworth 
 born. Having sub- 
 dued the alphabet, 
 grown his last inch, 
 looked about, married, and buried his sons 
 and Abigail his wife, he enters upon our 
 tale "inconsolable, to the minuet in Ariadne^ 
 He had played a game, too, and lost, since 
 his weeds withered. Having proposed him- 
 self and his acres to young Mistress Pitman, 
 he had the mortification to see her prefer 
 one Shortridge, a mechanic. The sequel 
 
 
 'iJtr.

 
 Martha Hilton. 
 
 117 
 
 shows that Benning's Excellency could rise 
 grandly to an occasion, and also that he had 
 an amorphous turn for the humor of things ; 
 for he had the obnoxious mechanic kid- 
 napped and sent to sea, " for seven years 
 long," like the child in the fairy-lay. This 
 stroke of playfulness insured him nothing 
 but a recoil of fate. 
 Events restored 
 lovers to each 
 other, and he was 
 left to con- 
 sole himself 
 with his 
 restless col- 
 ony, with his snuff-boxes and his bowls. And 
 into that lonely manor of his, malformed and 
 delightful, sleeping over against Newcastle, 
 meekly as befits her menial office (though 
 it is to be suspected that she was always a 
 minx!) enters Martha Hilton, late the horror 
 of the landlady of the Earl of Halifax. That 
 well-conducted Juno of Queen Street, be- 
 holding a shoeless girl fetching water from 

 
 ii8 
 
 Martha Hilton. 
 
 the decent pump of Portsmouth, in a bare- 
 shouldered estate sacred only to the indoor 
 and adult orgies of the aristocracy, did not 
 content herself, as the poet hath it, with 
 
 " O Martha Hilton, fie ! " 
 
 Her comment had greater vivacity, and was 
 pleasingly metrical. "You Pat, you Pat, how 
 dare you go looking like 
 that ? " There seems to 
 be no doubt that the 
 pseudo-Hibernian did 
 reply with a prophecy, 
 and, better yet, that she 
 made it her business 
 to have spoken true. 
 Seven years, according 
 to the verses in ques- 
 tion, did Martha serve her future lord ; and 
 it is not for this oracle, on whatever com- 
 putation, to dispute with a son of Apollo. 
 There she shed her clever childhood, and 
 took her degree in the arts of womankind ; 
 busy with pans and clothes-lines, the sea-
 

 
 Martha Hilton. 
 
 121 
 
 wind always in her hair, her strategic eye 
 upon master's deciduous charms, and per- 
 haps, provisionally, upon master's only son, 
 " a flower too early faded " for any mortal 
 plucking. The latter was not fore-doomed, 
 either, to be a stepson, He died; and in 
 
 March of 1760, one year after, a moment of 
 historic astonishment befell the Reverend 
 Arthur Brown, shared by the painted Straf- 
 ford on the wall, when the good rector of St. 
 John's, having dined sumptuously at Little 
 Harbor, heard his host proclaim : — 
 
 " This is my birthday ; it shall likewise be 
 My wedding-day, and you shall marry me ! "
 
 122 Martha Hilton. 
 
 (Ah, no ; he marrified him, did that Rever- 
 end Arthur Brown from the north of Ireland, 
 who had so much to do, first and last, with 
 the matrimonial oddities of the Wentworths.) 
 And the victress, as all the world knows, was 
 "You Pat," suddenly found standing in the 
 fine old council-chamber, appropriately vested, 
 and radiant with her twenty years. Abruptly 
 were they joined, these wondrous two, and 
 Hterally " across the walnuts and the wine." 
 And now Martha had her chariot, as foretold, 
 and her red heels, and her sweeping bro- 
 cades, and a cushion towering on her pow- 
 dered head, and a famous beautiful carven 
 mantel, on which to lean her indolent elbow. 
 By able and easy generalship is she here, 
 with him of a race of rulers, aged sixty-five 
 and terrible in his wrath, for her gentle or- 
 derly, her minion. The rustling of Love's 
 wings is not audible in the Governor's cor- 
 ridors, perhaps would be an impertinence 
 there, like any blow-fly's ; but domestic com- 
 fort was secured upon one side, and power, 
 swaggering power, upon the other, — a heady
 
 
 
 If 
 
 
 "^ I
 
 Martha Hilton. 125 
 
 draught of it, such as might well turn a novice 
 giddy. Tradition saith that very shortly after 
 her elevation, Martha dropped her ring, and 
 summoned one of her recent colleagues to 
 rescue it from the floor. But the colleague, 
 alas ! became piteously short-sighted, and 
 could offer no help worth having, until my 
 lady, with great acumen, dismissed her, and 
 picked it up. 
 
 For a full decade she rolled along, behind 
 outriders, through the fair provincial roads, 
 with kerchiefed children bobbing respect- 
 fully at every corner. The strange, stout, 
 splenetic being to whom she owed her me- 
 ridian glory, disgusted with events, and out 
 of office, was gathered presently to his fa- 
 thers, and left all his property in her hands. 
 With instant despatch, the scene shifts. The 
 Reverend Arthur Brown beholds the siren of 
 Hilton blood again before him, with an im- 
 ported Wentworth by her side : one red- 
 coated Michael of England, who had been 
 in the tragic smoke of Culloden. For three 
 years now, in shady Portsmouth, he has
 
 126 Martha Hilton. 
 
 been striding magnificently up and down, 
 and fiddling at Stoodley's far into the morn- 
 ing, for pure disinterested enthusiasm that 
 the dancing might not flag ; a live soldierly 
 man, full of bluster and laughter, equal to 
 many punches, and to afternoon gallops be- 
 tween the hills of Boston and his own fire- 
 side ! The fortunate widow of one Georgian 
 grandee became the wife of this other, his 
 namesake; and save that Colonel Michael 
 Wentworth was a much more suave and 
 flexible person, besides being the "great 
 buck" of his day, there was small diver- 
 gence in him from the type of his pre- 
 decessor. Men of that generation fell into 
 a monotony : if they were rural, they were 
 given to hunting, bousing, and swearing; 
 the trail of Squire Western is over them 
 all. Well did Martha, tamer of lions, know 
 her metier. 
 
 Unto this twain gloriously reigning, came 
 Washington, in 1789, rowed by white-jacketed 
 sailors to their vine-hung, hospitable door. 
 They were the mighty in the land ; they had
 
 '^'U^ <frx»~^ -Vc*^*^'^ /} fsJo c^-o^ , ■'
 
 Martha Hilton. 129 
 
 somehow weathered the Revolution; they 
 were peers of — 
 
 " The Pepperells, the Langdons, and the Lears, 
 The Sparhawks, the Penhallows, and the rest," 
 
 with their stately Devon names ; and none 
 could more fitly honor the Father of the 
 Country. He went about the town, indeed, 
 in a visible halo, weaving the web of peace; 
 and his smile was called as good as sunshine, 
 and his Sunday black velvet small-clothes 
 elegant in the extreme. There was a younger 
 Martha in the house, curtseying to this kind 
 guest, who had grown up to play the spinet 
 by the open window in lilac-time, and who, 
 later, tautologically bestowed her hand on 
 a Wentworth, and passed with him to France. 
 Her father's cherry cheeks paled gradually, 
 before he gave up his high living, and took 
 to a bankrupt's grave, in New York, in 1795. 
 It was feared that he checkmated too hard a 
 fate by suicide. " I have eaten my cake," 
 he said at the end, with a homely brevity. 
 What was in his mind, no chronicler knoweth ;
 
 130 Martha Hilton. 
 
 but it is not unlawful to remember that in 
 that eaten cake Martha Hilton was a plum. 
 
 Legends such as hers have truth and rustic 
 dignity, and they tell enough. It will not do 
 to be too curious, to thirst for all that can 
 be guessed or gleaned. Let Martha herself 
 remain a myth, not to be stared at. // ne 
 faut pas tout corriger. Breathe it not to the 
 mellower civilizations that a myth of New 
 England can have a daughter only forty 
 years dead ! That, after all, is not the point, 
 and is useful to recall only inasmuch as it 
 assures sceptics that the myth was, in its 
 unregenerate days, a fact. It rode in stage- 
 chairs which performed once a week for 
 thirteen-and-six; it held babes to a porphyry 
 baptismal font stolen by heretics from Sene- 
 gal ; it looked upon the busy wharves now 
 rotting along the harbor-borders ; it pro- 
 duced love-letters on lavender-scented paper, 
 and with an individual spelling which the 
 brief discipline of a school for " righters, 
 reeders, and Latiners" was not calculated to 
 blight. Martha must have done these things !
 
 rm/r- *-rv/<r frit^ f>vffVvvi 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 fn^VVWK'A 

 
 Martha Hilton. 
 
 133 
 
 and it is no matter at all if they be sup- 
 pressed. Gossip concerns itself exclusively 
 with her first daring nuptial campaign, an 
 event of epic significance, and in the practical 
 manner of that immortal eighteenth century. 
 Is it so long ago that the shouting sailors in 
 
 ,_.. '.€'^^^'^.-,^; 
 
 
 pigtails and petticoats lounged under the 
 lindens, along the flagged lanes of Ports- 
 mouth, fresh from the gilded quarter-galleries 
 and green lamps of the Spanish ships? It is 
 not so to anybody with a Chinese love of 
 yesterday; which is an emotion somewhat 
 exotic, it is to be feared, on our soil. Near
 
 134 Martha Hilton. 
 
 to politics, if not to poetry, are the patriot 
 pre-revolutionary mutterings of our seaboard 
 cities, reaching the ears of the surly night- 
 watch, before the stocks were swept away. 
 And it was in that immediate past of effigy- 
 burning, and tea-throwing, and social panic, 
 that 
 
 " Mistress Stavers in her furbelows" 
 
 shook her fat finger at the little figure with 
 the swishing bucket, not dreaming how it 
 should blend with what we have of dearest 
 story and song. The life back of our democ- 
 racy is unsensational enough. The saucy 
 beauty from the scullery is one of its few 
 dabs of odd local color, and therefore to be 
 cherished. She is part forever of the blue 
 Piscataqua water, the wildest on the coast, 
 and of the happy borough which shall never 
 be again.
 
 NOTES
 
 NOTES 
 
 'T IS hard, methinks, that a man can- 
 not publish a book but he must presently 
 give the world a reason for it, when there 
 is not one book of twenty that will bear a 
 reason. 
 
 Sir Roger L'Estrange. 
 
 O I do now offer my excuses, and 
 leave a generous public to the 
 decision whether this book may 
 be regarded as the one of all the 
 twenty, or shall be counted among 
 the unhappy nineteen. Very many 
 there are who never hear a story 
 but they must at once know if it 
 be true ; and if it be but partly 
 true, they fain u'ould know just 
 how much is fact and how much fancy. It is to 
 satisfy such curious folk, so far as relates to three
 
 138 Notes. 
 
 New England heroines, that these true histories 
 have been written. The proverb runs that "Truth 
 is stranger than fiction; " and true it is that truth 
 is ofttimes more romantic, and does httle violence, 
 withal, to our delight in a tale. 
 
 He who reads " The Courtship of Miles Stand- 
 ish," and, later, learns something of the true lives 
 of its characters, must confess to a slight shock in 
 the discovery that the scholarly John Alden, of 
 Longfellow's lines, was but a cooper at Southamp- 
 ton. Then, too, the romance that surrounds the 
 martial Miles Standish is somewhat dulled, when 
 one reads of his parley with the Indians and of his 
 killing of some of them. And so, though we must 
 confess that the tale is not wholly true, we may 
 adopt the Italian saying, " So much the worse for 
 truth." 
 
 Sharp eyes might see, even were it not here 
 confessed, that Priscilla alone bears not the dig- 
 nity of her full name on the half-titles of this 
 book. Despite the eloquence of Juliet, one can- 
 not feel the need of Mullins. 
 
 Yet, after all is said, we cannot love the poem 
 less, but love the poet more. His genius the 
 brighter shines, the while our curiosity is satisfied.
 
 Notes. 
 
 139 
 
 
 Curiosity is a quality denied to few, and it is pleas- 
 ant to satisfy; and so three New England girls 
 have written these 
 three true histories, 
 while I, the artist, 
 have wandered here 
 and there, with an 
 eye to such pictur- 
 esque bits as may 
 have escaped calam- 
 ity and progress. This the excuse for the book, 
 and now the story of the artist's quest. 
 
 First to Hopkinton, from Wm- 
 
 ; ;-^ Chester, by bicycle, — a way which 
 
 lay by the " Wayside Inn." 
 
 Nothing is more disappointing 
 
 than such a search for oldtime 
 
 scenes, but yet it is a joy, for one 
 
 sees so much that is delightful, if 
 
 not closely related to the object 
 
 of the quest. The road wound 
 
 always to new beauties. The way 
 
 led by old houses and picturesque 
 
 barns, shaded by lofty trees, past fertile farms and 
 
 modern dwellings, bristling with gables and rising 
 
 
 _TS^».
 
 I40 
 
 Notes. 
 
 among green, smooth-shaven lawns. A season 
 earher I had spent in England ; and when Weston 
 was reached, with its quaint stone church, the 
 thought arose of those village churches of Old 
 
 England with their ivy-covered towers, and, all 
 about, God's acre. 
 
 But here no manor-house rose proudly above 
 the trees, no coat-of-arms was sculptured over the 
 cottage doors. Indeed, the picturesque cottages
 
 Notes. 
 
 141 
 
 themselves were missed, and in their stead were 
 the plainest of dwellings ; but upon the green rose 
 something far prouder than a coat of arms, the 
 
 flag-staff, and, at its head, the flag streaming in 
 the breeze. 
 
 This is the one distinctive feature of the typical 
 New England village. Always upon the village 
 green is seen the flag-staff, although the town- 
 pump may have long ago gone, and the band- 
 stand not yet come.
 
 142 
 
 Notes. 
 
 :.'^, 
 
 W 
 
 The ride continued, and still I found compari- 
 sons between Old and New England, but not to 
 
 the discredit of either. 
 
 Now are more old 
 
 houses sheltered by 
 
 great elms ; stone walls, 
 
 green fringed ; merry 
 
 children coming from 
 
 school ; pastures, with 
 
 grazing cattle ; and so 
 
 lies the way through 
 
 Wayland, by the fields and rivers, over picturesque 
 
 stone bridges, up hill and down, until we come 
 
 to Sudbury. 

 
 Notes. 
 
 143 
 
 Sudbury is connected with our Martha Hilton, 
 for her story makes one of the " Tales of the 
 Wayside Inn." The old hostelry does not look 
 
 
 particularly antique now. It reminds me of 
 what a friend of mine once said, " 'Tis wonderful 
 what one can do with a little putty and paint." 
 There are some who would, doubtless, prefer to 
 see the old inn without that fresh coat of yellow ; 
 and yet all will commend that generous public
 
 144 
 
 Notes. 
 
 ^>i 
 
 spirit which is preserving for us this shrine of the 
 muse. And it may be that it will longer resist 
 the attacks of time, protected by its jacket of yel- 
 low, than it would be able to, did it wear Nature's 
 soft mantle of gray. But yet the place is one of 
 interest, and all about is beautiful. The inn has, 
 at least, one merit, inasmuch as it leaves much to 
 be imagined, and it is 
 well worthy of a visit. 
 
 From thence to Hop- 
 kinton is a matter of a 
 dozen miles, the last four 
 of which are exceedingly 
 rough and hilly. At Ash- 
 land, it is said that it is 
 four miles to Hopkinton, 
 and three miles back. 
 From this it may be in- 
 - ferred that the village is 
 one of those which, " set 
 on a hill, cannot be hid." 
 Little of bygone days is 
 left for the sight of the 
 pilgrim to this village. Here is a noble elm, said 
 to measure twenty-five feet in circumference. It 
 
 f 
 
 Ik
 
 ■ / > ! 
 
 
 
 :t 
 
 '^-
 
 Notes. 147 
 
 IS said to have been brought from England, and 
 set out by the fair hands of Madam EUzabeth 
 Price, whose husband, then rector of King's 
 Chapel, was a close friend of Frankland. It was 
 in their house that Agnes Surriage found shelter 
 while she and Frankland were building their 
 home. 
 
 The Frankland mansion stood upon the old 
 highway, now a country road, pleasant and shady, 
 midway between Hopkinton and Ashland. The 
 old mansion was destroyed by fire in 1858, and in 
 its place now stands a modern structure, said, 
 though questionably, to bear a resemblance to the 
 original building. A bit of the ancient woodwork 
 is seen in a shed, at the rear ; and at the side is a 
 beautiful and gigantic flower vase, made from the 
 upturned stump of one of Frankland's great trees. 
 This is the tree to which Dr. Holmes refers in his 
 poem, "Agnes," where he says, — 
 
 " Three elms, high arching, still are seen, 
 And one lies stretched below." 
 
 This elm, too, is said to have had a girth of 
 twenty-five feet. Indeed, this is the legend which 
 attaches to all of the ancient trees hereabout, so
 
 148 Notes. 
 
 that I concluded that it was a figure of speech 
 equivalent to the forty-eleven of my boyhood and 
 the tre7ite-six of the French. The fine, noble elms 
 at the west of the lawn, said by Dr. Chadwick to 
 have been planted by the lovers, cast a broad cur- 
 tain of shade over the drive and lawn. Dr. Nason,^ 
 writing in 1865, records the circumference of the 
 largest two of these as twelve feet each, but doubt- 
 less by this time they have reached the conven- 
 tional girth of twenty-five. 
 
 Since Dr. Nason's time the old box of Sir Har- 
 ry's borders, described as having a height of ten 
 or twelve feet, has nearly disappeared except a few 
 plants remaining before the house, and on the ter- 
 races built by Sir Harry's slaves. One who knew 
 some of the descendants of Agnes and Frankland 
 well says that, in her youthful days, the young 
 girls were wont to gather this box, for Christmas 
 greens, with which to deck the old church, A 
 bright, sunny day will serve to dispel the terrible 
 ghost of Dr. Nason's early days, and the be- 
 witched pump no longer displays its weird way- 
 
 1 " Sir Charles Henry Frankland, or Boston in the Colo- 
 nial Times." Elias Nason, M. A. Albany, N. Y. : J. 
 Munsell.
 
 Notes. 
 
 151 
 
 wardness, but yields, instead, a cool, refreshing 
 draught. 
 
 The pilgrim to the places that knew Agnes 
 would naturally first visit Marblehead, her birth- 
 place ; yet, on my quest, I reached it last. Others, 
 in a similar pilgrimage, would go first where fancy 
 or opportunity leads ; and this is the true spirit of 
 roaming. So next to Roxbury, to visit Shirley 
 Place. The reader remembers how delightfully 
 Mr. Bynner introduced 
 Mrs. Shirley into his ro- 
 mance, and will recall his 
 story of Agnes's ride there, 
 in the collector's coach. 
 In my boyhood days in 
 Roxbury, the old mansion 
 was called the Eustis 
 House, and it stood in a 
 great field given over to 
 
 goats and burdocks. There are those living 
 who remember it when Madam Eustis still lived 
 there. This grand dame wore a majestic tur- 
 ban; and the tradition still lingers of madam's 
 pet toad, on gala days decked with a blue ribbon. 
 Now the old house is sadly dilapidated. It is
 
 152 Notes. 
 
 shorn of its piazzas, the sign "To Let" hangs 
 often in the windows, and the cupola is adorned 
 with well-filled clothes-lines. Partitions have cut 
 the house into tenements. One runs right through 
 the hall, but the grand old staircase and the smaller 
 one are still there, and the marble floor, too, in the 
 back hall. A few of the carved balusters are miss- 
 ing, carried away by relic-hunters. 
 
 "'Tis a great city," said Goody Surriage, as 
 she peered at Colonial Boston, over the shoulders 
 of Agnes and Mrs. Shirley. Now, it is truly a 
 great city, wreathed in smoke and steam ; and all 
 about are churches, school-houses, and factories, 
 while the "broomstick train" of Dr. Holmes' 
 fancy whirls along, close by the ancient mansion. 
 The engraving is from a sketch made many years 
 ago. Since then the old house has been entirely 
 surrounded by modern dwelling-houses. The pil- 
 grim who searches for it will leave the Mt. Pleasant 
 electric car at Shirley Street. 
 
 In Medford is a house often visited by Sir Harry 
 and Agnes, known as the Royall House. This 
 house, also, to-day shelters more than a single 
 tenant. Here is a little drawing of this home of 
 hospitality, which was forsaken so hastily by its
 
 
 %im rv ;-
 
 Notes. 
 
 155 
 
 fleeing owner, the Colonel, alarmed by the too 
 near crack of the guns at Lexington. "A Tory 
 against his will; it was the frailty of his blood, 
 wore than the fault of his judgment." The elec- 
 tric cars from Boston to Medford pass the door of 
 
 the old mansion, as it stands near the corner of 
 Royall Street. Medford has a picturesque town 
 square ; and it is only a pleasant walk to the Crad- 
 dock House, built in 1632, now converted into a 
 museum, and thus, after many vicissitudes, rescued 
 from the usual fate of ancient landmarks. 
 
 And now to Marblehead, by road or by rail as
 
 156 
 
 Notes. 
 
 one chooses. Perhaps the pleasantest route is 
 from Lynn or Salem by electric car. By either 
 route, the ride is a pleasure, and although little 
 remains to tell of Agnes in her girlhood, there is 
 much that is quaint and picturesque : and to visit 
 
 the old town is well worth one's time. Arrived at 
 Marblehead, the visitor walking down the main 
 road to Orne Street, and ascending the hill to the 
 old burying-ground, will see by the wayside the 
 old houses, " set catty-cornered," as the quaint old 
 saying is, and the bright gardens. Now upstairs 
 and now down run the streets, and likely enough
 
 Notes. 
 
 157 
 
 the visitor will meet " many an old jMarbleheader," 
 pictures in themselves. 
 
 Just where the road turns to skirt the burying- 
 ground at the left, is Moll Pitcher's house. Whit- 
 
 tier draws the portrait of our New England witch 
 in one of his poems, handling her no more gently 
 than he does her fellow-townsman, old Floyd Ire- 
 son. This house is the home of her youth ; as a
 
 158 Notes. 
 
 witch, she flourished in Lynn. I have often heard 
 stories of her predictions, and one of my cherished 
 possessions is a small square of yellow quilted silk, 
 which once formed a part of Moll's brave array. 
 
 Across the way stood the Fountain Inn. Here, 
 upon its site, and overlooking the harbor, are two 
 cottages, in front of which is the well of the old 
 hostelry, from whence Agnes drew the draught of 
 water which she offered to Sir Harry. This foun- 
 tain has been recently brought to light, and still 
 refreshes the traveller as of yore. Beneath the 
 apple-trees which shade it is found a restful seat, 
 from which one may look out over a scene of singu- 
 lar beauty. As often as one looks upon this scene, 
 it meets the eye with an added charm. 
 
 We little realize the beauty of our sea. In sum- 
 mer time it is ofttimes as blue as the waters of the 
 Mediterranean, a dark, intense blue, broken by 
 purple patches, by beautiful streaks of emerald, 
 dotted with warm, glowing rocks, and accentuated 
 by snowy, foaming breakers. Below the hill, to the 
 left, are some fishermen's huts, surrounded by nets, 
 drying in the sunshine, boats ashore, old lobster- 
 pots, and anchors, all in picturesque confusion, 
 ready to be sketched and painted.
 
 Notes. 
 
 159 
 
 Away up above the well and the cottages, is the 
 old burying-ground, with restful benches here as 
 well. Here, one can look across the little harbor 
 to old Fort'sewall, and here, just at the base of 
 the fort, so says Mr. Bynner, is the probable site 
 of the home of Agnes Surriage. 
 
 
 
 •l^-v'^^^^^l 
 
 ^PilliSi^ 
 
 A walk to the old fort is full of interest. Many 
 shady spots are there, in which to rest, and watch 
 the waves breaking on the rocks below. From 
 this point it is but a step to the terminus of the 
 electric cars, at the foot of Circle Street. In this 
 street, upon the right, is old Floyd Ireson's house, 
 dark and weather-beaten. But the tourist is ad- 
 vised not to ask too many questions concerning
 
 i6o Notes. 
 
 him, of the old Marbleheaders ; for it is a tender 
 point with them, and it is whispered that Mr. 
 Whittier's ballad is more fraught with fancy than 
 with fact. 
 
 From this point, it is interesting to walk up the 
 hill, following the windings and turnings of the 
 street. Let the traveller not fail to look into the 
 queer old back-yards, and at the gardens, filled 
 with old-fashioned flowers, gorgeous m their splen- 
 dor, nor to turn and view the prospect toward the 
 town. The quaint streets here are filled with old 
 and picturesque houses. Some are fine examples 
 of colonial architecture, and some are interesting 
 as the birthplaces of eminent men. These places 
 should be preserved and marked with appropriate 
 tablets. 
 
 Now cross over to the hill on which sits the 
 Abbott memorial. Here are many stately old 
 houses, well worth the attention of the sight-seer. 
 The electric cars or the steam railway are near at 
 hand, on the other side of the hill, and to return 
 to Boston by way of Salem is a pretty ride. 
 
 So much for Agnes and Marblehead. Her 
 stately house at the North End in Boston, from 
 the windows of which she watched the battle of
 

 
 Notes. 163 
 
 Bunker Hill, has long since gone ; but Copp's Hill 
 burying-ground, the Old North Church, Paul Re- 
 vere's house, and many other old houses are still 
 there. 
 
 And now, of Martha Hilton. Portsmouth was 
 her home and the scene of her brilliant matrimo- 
 nial campaign. This is one of the most picturesque 
 of our New England towns. Aldrich's " An Old 
 Town by the Sea " should be read by the pilgrim 
 on his way. No one loves the old town more, or 
 knows it better than he. Much remains, here, to 
 tell of Martha Hilton, but a day well suffices to 
 see it all. A short walk from the railway-station 
 is a pleasant, old-fashioned market square. At 
 times it is filled with wagons of hay and loads of 
 wood, while, all about, is a subdued bustle. From 
 this square leads Pleasant Street, well named, and, 
 only a few steps away, it is crossed by State Street, 
 once Queen Street, at the foot of which once 
 stood Stavers' Inn, the " Earl of Halifax." It was 
 in the doorway of this inn that Mistress Stavers 
 **fied" Martha Hilton circa anno Domini 1754. 
 No print or picture of this old inn is known to ex- 
 ist. Beyond State Street is Court Street, with in- 
 teresting old houses, and some of the ancient
 
 164 Notes. 
 
 flagging here and there. On the cross streets is 
 more of this, with sometimes a gutter in the mid- 
 dle of the street. All of this portion of the town is 
 interesting, dirty, primitive, and full of memories. 
 Parallel with Pleasant Street are Washington and 
 Water streets, from which, at right angles, run a 
 dozen lanes, not a whit altered since Martha's 
 time. Here is where the sailors in pig-tails and 
 petticoats used to gather. At the corner of Water 
 and Gardiner streets, let the visitor notice the great 
 golden linden, overshadowing a house as old and 
 as lovely as the tree itself. 
 
 The neighborhood is full of old houses, with hip 
 roofs and gables. The Point of Graves, a stone's 
 throw away, is sadly neglected. Children some- 
 times play on a large, flat tombstone, and curiosity- 
 seekers skip from one headstone to another, in 
 search of the oldest date. The old stones are 
 sculptured with grim skulls and cross-bones, or 
 with humorous cherubs. One thinks of the days 
 Tom Bailey spent here, when he was a blighted 
 being. Let us hope that it was a more secluded 
 spot then than now. 
 
 Close by is Manning Place, very short, and at 
 the corner is the square, strong house, built prior
 
 
 

 
 Notes. 167 
 
 to 1670, where Benny Wentworth and his sires 
 were born. A grand place this once was, with 
 its lawn extending to Puddle Dock. Once this 
 was a fair inlet, but now no one will dispute the 
 rightfulness of its name. 
 
 From this point it is a pleasant walk to the old 
 Wentworth mansion, where Martha came, slaved 
 and conquered, even receiving as her guest the 
 Father of his country. Skirt around the Point of 
 Graves, and follow along the water side, by the 
 Gardiner House and its big linden, over the bridge, 
 and past the Proprietors' burying-ground ; every- 
 where it is picturesque. From thence let the 
 traveller follow the left fork of the road in full 
 view of the river for a portion of the way, and 
 thence pass through pine groves and between great 
 bowlders, until, with a sudden descent, a fair pros- 
 pect seaward bursts upon the vision. At one's 
 feet, toward the left, is the old house, " malformed 
 and delightful." I well remember when it was 
 venerable in appearance and in its rooms were to 
 be seen the old spinet, the Strafford portrait, and 
 many other things so delightful to the antiquary. 
 But, alas ! it now is " spick-span " in yellow and 
 white paint, and set back in a well-groomed lawn.
 
 i68 
 
 Notes. 
 
 The visitor will, of course, wish to see St. John's. 
 It has an interesting interior. Here is the old 
 
 t 
 
 il 
 
 Kv^ y\^^ . 
 
 ttt-- 
 
 w 
 
 
 n:Oi>:AJ 
 
 plate, the "Vinegar" Bible, and other quaint and 
 curious things. The steeple is modern. All about 
 are fine old houses and great spreading trees.
 
 

 
 Notes. 
 
 171 
 
 Stoodley's, too, one will wish to see, where the gal- 
 lant captain " fiddled far into the morning." It 
 is the brick building, marked " Custom House," 
 and it stands at the corner of Daniel and Penhal- 
 low streets. 
 
 These are the principal points of interest con- 
 nected with the life of Martha Hilton, but Ports- 
 mouth old and quaint affords much more to which 
 the eye of the lover of the antique will surely 
 turn.
 
 172 Notes. 
 
 Every one visits Plymouth, the home of Priscilla. 
 There is Httle need to dwell upon this place here. 
 A Plymouth pilgrimage, if by sea, is easy and 
 pleasant. Of guide-books there is no lack, and all 
 that remains of the Puritan maiden's time is read- 
 
 ily found. Even Plymouth Rock is carefully en- 
 closed ; and rightly, too, else it would long since 
 have been carried away in fragments. On the 
 hill is the old burying-ground, from which fine 
 views may be had of the old town and of the har- 
 bor where the "Mayflower" lay at anchor, the 
 sweeping coast here low in sandy dunes, now high in
 
 Notes. 175 
 
 bolder bluffs. The electric car is here also, which 
 takes one the length of the town and far beyond, 
 passing the Memorial Hall, where are so many 
 relics of old colony days. Plymouth, indeed, is 
 easily to be seen. It is the Mecca, to-day, of many 
 pilgrims. What has been done for Plymouth, I 
 have tried to do for the other old towns into whose 
 histories are woven the lives of our heroines. Many 
 of these old houses will soon have passed away. 
 Many have disappeared within a few years past. 
 Let us hope, however, that the little now left to us 
 will long remain, and especially may we hope will 
 be preserved all that serves to remind us of these 
 Three Heroines of New England Romance.
 
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