Anne Bradstreet and Her Time Part 6

I've Princes seen to live on others' lands; A royal one by gifts from strangers' hands Admired for their magnanimity, Who lost a Prince-dome and a Monarchy.

I've seen designs for Ree and Rochel crost, And poor Palatinate forever lost.

I've seen unworthy men advanced high, And better ones suffer extremity; But neither favour, riches, t.i.tle, State, Could length their days or once reverse their fate.

I've seen one stab'd, and some to loose their heads, And others fly, struck both with gilt and dread; I've seen and so have you, for tis but late The desolation of a goodly state, Plotted and acted so that none can tell Who gave the counsel, but the Prince of h.e.l.l.

Three hundred thousand slaughtered innocents By b.l.o.o.d.y, Popish, h.e.l.lish miscreants; Oh, may you live, and so you will I trust, To see them swill in blood until they burst.

I've seen a King by force thrust from his thrones And an Usurper subt'ly mount thereon; I've seen a state unmoulded, rent in twain, But ye may live to see't made up again.

I've seen it plunder'd, taxt and soaked in blood, But out of evill you may see much good.

What are my thoughts, this is no time to say.

Men may more freely speak another day; These are no old-wives tales, but this is truth, We old men love to tell what's done in youth."

Though this is little more than rhymed chronology, there are curious reminders here and there of the spirit of the time. Gentle as was Anne Bradstreet's nature, it seemed to her quite natural to write of the "b.l.o.o.d.y, Popish, h.e.l.lish miscreants"--

"Oh may you live, and so you will I trust, To see them swill in blood untill they burst."

There was reason it was true; the same reason that brings the same thought to-day to women on the far Western frontiers, for the Irish butcheries had been as atrocious as any Indian ma.s.sacre our own story holds. The numbers butchered were something appaling, and Hume writes: "By some computations, those who perished by all these cruelties are supposed to be a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand; by the most moderate, and probably the most reasonable account, they are made to amount to forty thousand---if this estimation itself be not, as is usual in such cases, somewhat exaggerated."

Irish ferocity was more than matched by English brutality.

Puritanism softened many features of the Saxon character, but even in the lives of the most devoted, there is a keen relish for battle whether spiritual or actual, and a stern rejoicing in any depth of evil that may have overtaken a foe. In spite of the tremendous value set upon souls, indifference to human life still ruled, and there was even a certain relish, if that life were an enemy's, in turning it over heartily and speedily to its proper owner, Satan. Anne Bradstreet is no exception to the rule, and her verses hold various fierce and unexpected outbursts against enemies of her faith or country. The constant discussion of mooted points by the ministers as well as people, made each man the judge of questions that agitated every mind, and problems of all natures from national down to town meeting debates, were pondered over in every Puritan home. Cotton's interest in detail never flagged, and his influence was felt at every point in the Colony, and though Ipswich, both in time and facilities for reaching it, was more widely separated from Boston than Boston now is from the remotest hamlet on Cape Cod, there is no doubt that Nathaniel Ward and Mr.

Cotton occasionally met and exchanged views if not pulpits, and that the Bradstreet family were not entirely cut off from intercourse. When Nathaniel Ward became law-maker instead of settled minister, it was with John Cotton that he took counsel, and Anne undoubtedly thought of the latter what his grandson Cotton Mather at a later day wrote. "He was indeed a most universal scholar, and a living system of the liberal arts and a walking library."

Walking libraries were needed, for stationary ones were very limited. Governer Dudley's, one of the largest in the Colony, contained between fifty and sixty books, chiefly on divinity and history, and from the latter source Anne obtained the minute historical knowledge shown in her rhymed account of "The Four Monarchies." It was to her father that she owed her love of books.

She calls him in one poem, "a magazine of history," and at other points, her "guide," and "instructor," writing:

"Most truly honored and as truly dear, If worth in me, or ought I do appear, Who can of right better demand the same?

Then may your worthy self from whom it came?"

As at Cambridge, and in far greater degree, she was cut off from much that had held resources there. At the worst, only a few miles had separated them from what was fast becoming the center and soul of the Colony. But Ipswich shut them in, and life for both Mistress Dudley and her daughter was an anxious one. The General Court called for the presence of both Dudley and Bradstreet, the latter spending much of his time away, and some of the tenderest and most natural of Anne Bradstreet's poems, was written at this time, though regarded as too purely personal to find place in any edition of her poems. The quiet but fervent love between them had deepened with every year, and though no letters remain, as with Winthrop, to evidence the steady and intense affection of both, the "Letter to her Husband, absent upon some Publick employment,"

holds all the proof one can desire.

"My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, my more, My joy, my Magazine of earthly store.

If two be one as surely thou and I, How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?

So many steps, head from the heart to sever, If but a neck, soon would we be together; I like the earth this season mourn in black My Sun is gone so far in 's Zodiack, Whom whilst I joyed, nor storms nor frosts I felt, His warmth such frigid colds did cause to melt.

My chilled limbs now nummed lye forlorn, Return, return sweet Sol, from Capricorn; In this dead time, alas, what can I more Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore?

Which sweet contentment yield me for a s.p.a.ce, True, living Pictures of their Father's face.

O strange effect! now thou art Southward gone, I weary grow, the tedious day so long; But when thou Northward to me shalt return, I wish my Sun may never set but burn Within the Cancer of my glowing breast.

The welcome house of him my dearest guest.

Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence Till nature's sad decree shall call thee hence; Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone, I here, thou there, yet both are one."

A second one is less natural in expression, but still holds the same longing.

Phoebus, make haste, the day's too long, be gone, The silent nights, the fittest time for moan; But stay this once, unto my suit give ear, And tell my griefs in either Hemisphere.

(And if the whirling of thy wheels don't drown'd) The woeful accents of my doleful sound, If in thy swift Carrier thou canst make stay, I crave this boon, this Errand by the way, Commend me to the man more lov'd than life, Shew him the sorrows of his widowed wife; My dumpish thoughts, my groans, my brakish tears, My sobs, my longing hopes, my doubting fears, And if he love, how can he there abide?

My Interest's more than all the world beside.

He that can tell the Starrs or Ocean sand, Or all the gra.s.s that in the Meads do stand, The leaves in th' woods, the hail or drops of rain, Or in a corn field number every grain, Or every mote that in the suns.h.i.+ne hops, May count my sighs, and number all my drops: Tell him, the countless steps that thou dost trace, That once a day, thy Spouse thou mayst embrace; And when thou canst not treat by loving mouth, Thy rays afar salute her from the south.

But for one month I see no day (poor soul) Like those far scituate under the pole, Which day by day long wait for thy arise, O, how they joy, when thou dost light the skyes.

O Phoebus, hadst thou but thus long from thine, Restrained the beams of thy beloved s.h.i.+ne, At thy return, if so thou could'st or durst Behold a Chaos blacker than the first.

Tell him here's worse than a confused matter, His little world's a fathom under water, Nought but the fervor of his ardent beams Hath power to dry the torrent of these streams Tell him I would say more but cannot well, Oppressed minds, abruptest tales do tell.

Now post with double speed, mark what I says By all our loves, conjure him not to stay."

In the third and last, there is simply an imitation of much of the work of the seventeenth century; with its conceits and twisted meanings, its mannerisms and baldness, but still the feeling is there, though Mistress Bradstreet has labored painfully to make it as unlike nature as possible.

"As loving Hind that (Hartless) wants her Deer, Scuds through the woods and Fern with hearkening ear, Perplext, in every bush and nook doth pry, Her dearest Deer might answer ear or eye; So doth my anxious soul, which now doth miss, A dearer Deer (far dearer Heart) than this.

Still wait with doubts and hopes and failing eye; His voice to hear or person to descry.

Or as the pensive Dove doth all alone (On withered bough) most uncouthly bemoan The absence of her Love and Loving Mate, Whose loss hath made her so unfortunate; Ev'n thus doe I, with many a deep sad groan, Bewail my turtle true, who now is gone, His presence and his safe return, still wooes With thousand doleful sighs and mournful Cooes.

Or as the loving Mullet that true Fish, Her fellow lost, nor joy nor life do wish, But lanches on that sh.o.r.e there for to dye, Where she her captive husband doth espy, Mine being gone I lead a joyless life, I have a living sphere, yet seem no wife; But worst of all, to him can't steer my course, I here, he there, alas, both kept by force; Return, my Dear, my Joy, my only Love, Unto thy Hinde, thy Mullet and thy Dove, Who neither joys in pasture, house nor streams, The substance gone, O me, these are but dreams, Together at one Tree, O let us brouse, And like two Turtles roost within one house.

And like the Mullets in one River glide, Let's still remain one till death divide.

Thy loving Love and Dearest Dear, At home, abroad and everywhere.

_A.B._"

Of a far higher order are a few lines, written at the same time, and with no suspicion of straining or of imitation in the quiet fervor of the words, that must have carried a thrill of deep and exquisite happiness to the heart of the man, so loved and honored.

_"To my dear and loving Husband:_ If ever two were one then surely we, If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me ye women if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole Mines of Gold, Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that Rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay, The heavens reward thee, manifold I pray.

Then while we live in love let's so persevere, That when we live no more, we may live ever."

The woman who could feel such fervor as these lines express, owed the world something more than she ever gave, but every influence tended, as we have seen, to silence natural expression. One must seek, however, to discover why she failed even when admitting that failure was the only thing to be expected, and the causes are in the nature of the time itself, the story of literary development for that period being as complicated as politics, religion and every other force working on the minds of men.

CHAPTER VI.

A THEOLOGICAL TRAGEDY.

It was perhaps Anne Bradstreet's youth, and a sense that she could hardly criticise a judgment which had required the united forces of every church in the Colony to p.r.o.nounce, that made her ignore one of the most stormy experiences of those early days, the trial and banishment of Anne Hutchinson. Her silence is the more singular, because the conflict was a purely spiritual one, and thus in her eyes deserving of record. There can be no doubt that the effect on her own spiritual and mental life must have been intense and abiding. No children had as yet come to absorb her thoughts and energies, and the events which shook the Colony to the very center could not fail to leave an ineffaceable impression. No story of personal experience is more confounding to the modern reader, and none holds a truer picture of the time.

Governor Dudley and Simon Bradstreet were both concerned in the whole course of the matter, which must have been discussed at home from day to day, and thus there is every reason for giving it full place in these pages as one of the formative forces in Anne Bradstreet's life; an inspiration and then a warning. There are hints that Anne resented the limitations that hedged her in, and had small love of the mutual criticism, which made the corner stone of Puritan life. That she cared to write had already excited the wonder of her neighbors and Anne stoutly a.s.serted her right to speak freely whatever it seemed good to say, taking her stand afterwards given in the Prologue to the first edition of her poems, in which she wrote:

"I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits, A Poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on Female wits; If what I do prove well, it won't advance, They'l say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance.

"But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild, Else of our s.e.xe, why feigned they those Nine And poesy made Callippi's own Child; So 'mongst the rest they placed the Arts Divine, But this weak knot they will full soon untie, The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lye."

This has a determined ring which she hastens to neutralize by a tribute and an appeal; the one to man's superior force, the other to his sense of justice.

"Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are, Men have precedency and still excell, It is but vain unjustly to wage warrs; Men can do best and women know it well, Preheminence in all and each is yours; Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours."

Plain speaking was a Dudley characteristic, but the fate of Anne Hutchinson silenced all save a few determined spirits, willing to face the same consequences. In the beginning, however, there could have been only welcome for a woman, whose spiritual gifts and unusual powers had made her the friend of John Cotton, and who fascinated men and woman alike. There was reason, for birth and training meant every gift a woman of that day was likely to possess. Her father, Thomas Marbury, was one of the Puritan ministers of Lincolns.h.i.+re who afterward removed to London; her mother, a sister of Sir Erasmus Dryden. She was thus related in the collateral line to two of the greatest of English intellects.

Free thinking and plain speaking were family characteristics, for John Dryden the poet, her second cousin, was reproached with having been an Anabaptist in his youth, and Johnathan Swift, a more distant connection, feared nothing in heaven or earth. It is no wonder, then, that even an enemy wrote of her as "the masterpiece of women's wit," or that her husband followed her lead with a devotion that never swerved. She had married him at Alford in Lincolns.h.i.+re, and both were members of Mr. Cotton's congregation at Boston.

Mr. Hutchinson's standing among his Puritan contemporaries was of the highest. He had considerable fortune, and the gentlest and most amiable of dispositions. The name seems to have meant all good gifts, for the same devoted and tender relation existed between this pair as between Colonel Hutchinson and his wife. From the quiet and happy beginning of their married life to its most tragic ending, they clung together, accepting all loss as part of the cross they had taken up, when they left the ease of Lincolns.h.i.+re behind, and sought in exile the freedom which intolerance denied.

It is very probable that Anne Hutchinson may have known the Dudley family after their return to Lincolns.h.i.+re, and certainly in the first flush of her New England experiences was likely to have had intimate relations with them. Her opinions, so far as one can disentangle them from the ma.s.s of testimony and discussion, seem to have been in great degree, those held by the early Quakers, but they had either not fully developed in her own mind before she left England, or had not been p.r.o.nounced enough to attract attention. In any case the weariness of the long voyage seems to have been in part responsible for much that followed. Endless discussions of religious subtleties were their chief occupation on board, and one of the company, the Rev. Mr. Symmes, a dogmatic and overbearing man, found himself often worsted by the quick wit of this woman, who silenced all objections, and who, with no conception of the rooted enmity she was exciting, told with the utmost freedom, past and present speculations and experiences. The long fasts, and continuous religious exercises, worked upon her enthusiast's temper, and excited by every circ.u.mstance of time and place, it is small wonder that she supposed a direct revelation had come to her, the nature of which Winthrop mentions in his History.

"One Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church of Boston, a woman of a ready wit and bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errours:

"1. That the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person.