Mistress Bradstreet

by Charlotte Gordon

  Over the years, Anne had become accustomed to yielding to Dudley’s outrageous commands, whether they were spurred by his Puritan piety or by his innate sense of adventure. Still, this particular challenge was worse than usual. The tiny boat, or “shallop,” was frighteningly unsteady, and these smaller vessels were notorious for their frequent capsizing. In fact, in the months to come, as boat after boat arrived from England, a few unfortunate individuals who had survived the months at sea would suffer the indignity of drowning a few hundred feet from dry land when their shallops overturned en route to the shore.

  The sharp, whitened rocks of New England’s ragged coastline seemed inhospitable and foreign to Anne and her family, but in the years leading up to their migration, these travelers had been prepared by their ministers to view their arrival in the New World as a return of sorts. It was a leap in logic that made sense to a people who had been taught to compare their “bondage” in England to the Israelites’ in Egypt, and who saw their journey to the New World as a reprise of the Jews’ famous exodus to the promised land.

  In fact, to seal their intimate relationship with God, some of the most devout Puritans suggested that everyone learn Hebrew, so that the only language spoken in New England would be the same as in Scripture.3 This proposal soon faded away, probably because the non-Puritans onboard complained bitterly. At any rate, such an ambitious project was far too steep for a people who would have to till fields, saw boards, dig wells, slaughter pigs, and fend off diseases, wolves, and other wild creatures from the moment they stepped ashore.

  As the water splashed over the bow of the flimsy boat and a strange land loomed ahead, Anne knew she was not supposed to be yearning for the Old World. But for someone who had loved her life in England as much as Anne had, this was a difficult proposition.4 Even if the Old World had truly been the “Egypt” of her captivity, as they drew closer to the shore, America gave no evidence of being the biblical land of vineyards, honey, and olive trees that her father had promised her. Instead, it soon became clear that a disaster had occurred.

  The tiny colony had all but collapsed during the winter. What remained was truly a pitiful sight: just a few acres of cleared land, littered with a motley collection of thatch-roofed huts and hovels. The surrounding forest contained the tallest, widest trees Anne had ever seen, and the two-hundred-foot pines seemed like gigantic monstrosities, terrible deviations that bore little resemblance to the slender poplars, willows, and ashes back home. If the size of the trees was any indication, what of the wild creatures that lurked in their shade?

  The inhabitants of Salem who had come out onto the beach to greet them were even more dreadful to look at than the landscape. Many of them appeared to be weaker than the sickest passengers on the Arbella, with their bones visible through papery skin. The outpost, it turned out, had endured a brutal winter, losing eighty people to starvation and illness. The survivors seemed lethargic and defeated. Many were invalids or were disoriented, withdrawn, and sullen, as is often the case with people suffering from scurvy, one of the diseases responsible for the devastation. Some of these sad souls also exhibited an incoherence that suggested they were drunk, while others seemed strangely drugged from the strong Indian tobacco that they smoked incessantly.5

  For once, Anne could take comfort from the fact that she was not alone in her misgivings. It was clear to Winthrop, and Dudley, too, that Salem was not Canaan. Despite the coolness of their sea-soaked clothes, the summer heat was oppressive. The stench given off by the little settlement was rancid and nauseating, its weak residents having resorted to emptying their bowels behind their own homesteads, covering the fecal matter with dirt. To the newcomers, it seemed that the Englishmen they had sent to improve the land had instead deteriorated into savages, and that the wilderness, instead of being subdued, had succeeded in toppling the forces of civilization.

  Further proof lay in the fact that the settlers had been unable to create adequate shelter for themselves. The laziest had dug caves in the hillside. Others had erected flimsy wooden huts. At best these structures had a wattle-and-daub chimney, a wooden door if the denizens had been industrious, and sometimes one small paper window. The dirt floors of all these dwellings were lined with reeds and wild grasses in a futile attempt to ward off the rain, cold, and damp.

  To the new arrivals, however, the structures that were most disturbing were the odd “English wigwams.” These were made from “small poles prick’t into the ground” that were “bended and fastened at the tops.” Like tepees, they were “matted with boughs and covered with sedge and old mats.” Copied as they were from Indian dwellings, these tiny hovels could only appear “little and homely” to the eyes of the English, since anything Indian was not worthy of Christians like themselves.6

  With this array of miserable homesteads, no one was even slightly heartened by the majesty of the pine groves, the gloriously uneven headlands, or even the blue noontime sky. Instead the land seemed lifeless, full of death and waste. Of course, this was an astonishingly arrogant viewpoint. New England was far from being the “empty” land that the English proclaimed it to be in order to assert their rights. In fact, this “desert,” as the Puritans called it, had been cleared for centuries by the Massachusetts, the tribe that dominated the bay region.

  Though their numbers had been depleted by contact with the 1620 Pilgrims and their diseases, especially smallpox, the best estimations of Indian population suggest that as many as one hundred thousand Native Americans continued to make their living along the shores of the bay. It should have been obvious to the Puritan leaders that the land had been cleared before. The groves that the settlers had at first termed “untrackable” were in fact full of paths and almost entirely free of undergrowth thanks to the Indians’ forestry skills. But most settlers, including Anne, saw the improvements that the Indians had made to the land as a divine gift rather than as a sign of Indian expertise.

  Needing to rest after their long morning’s journey, Anne, her husband, and the other leaders repaired to what the settlers called the “great house,” where Governor John Endecott, the gruff old soldier who had headed the advance party, made his home. This simple wooden structure, which had only two rooms on the ground floor and two rooms above, had originally housed the first Englishmen who had attempted to make a living from fishing the Cape Ann waters. The house had been floated, intact, along the shore from Gloucester; no one in Salem had attempted to build such a structure. Although to Anne it seemed like the house of a poor peasant family, it was the height of technological achievement for the colonists. Its boards alone represented long hours of labor in a sawpit.

  Once inside, there were not enough chairs and benches to go around. The two tiny rooms were dank and smelled of old smoke, sweat, and dirty linens. Yet despite their poverty, Endecott and his men used up the last of their provisions and prepared a delicious meal of “good venison pasty and good beer”—a supper fit for princes back home in England.7 The tales they had to tell, however, were every bit as grim as Salem itself. The winter had been colder than anything they had ever experienced. The food supplies of the poorest settlers had run out. They had had to rely on help from the Indians and from the few scattered old planters, adventurous Englishmen who had come to New England a few years earlier. These men were generous with aid even though Endecott had asked them to leave their plots in Salem to make room for Winthrop’s party. But this kind of scattered assistance could do little to ward off the disaster they faced, and even Endecott and his second in command, the minister Francis Higginson, had been weakened by their travails.

  It was with dismay, then, that the Salem men discovered that Winthrop’s people had actually looked forward to being fed by their struggling little community. Endecott had been counting on the arrival of fresh supplies from the Winthrop fleet; now a crisis seemed imminent. Somehow Dudley and Winthrop would have to solve the problem of food and shelter before the treacherous frosts brought them to their deaths, and they would have to do
this without any help from the Salem party. In fact, the Arbella’s leaders felt that the frailty of the little settlement could easily demoralize the rest of the passengers.

  Impelled no doubt by anxiety—it was already June, and everyone knew they had no time to plant crops, very little food left, and only a few months to erect homes—Winthrop and Dudley got right down to business, brusquely relieving Endecott of his command and asserting their own leadership. This is no more than Endecott expected, and he told the leaders about a deserted Indian settlement taken over by some of the Salemites who had been desperate for a fresh start and “champion land.” The English had named the place Charlestown, and Endecott emphasized that not only was it just a short sail away but there was also plenty of tillage suitable for planting. He had even had his men build a simple house and temporary structures there for members of Winthrop’s party to inhabit.8

  Endecott’s idea suited Winthrop and Dudley, who were eager to put some distance between their own party and the squalor of Salem. Although Anne must have been relieved as it gradually became clear that they would not have to stay in the depressing settlement, the idea of continuing their journey only raised more questions. What would they find farther south? Charlestown was a vague, shadowy place. While Winthrop and Dudley finalized their plans to go farther down the coast, Anne, her mother and sisters, and their friends soon discovered that peeking out of the undergrowth were wild strawberries. When they ventured a little way from the great house, they found that the ground was carpeted with the fruit and with the white flowers that promised more.

  To the women, this bounty seemed to have sprung out of the earth unbidden. But here was another example of the industry of the Indians, who had followed an ingenious agricultural rotation of fields, clearing more land than they needed so that some of the earth could stand fallow. As a result, almost no soil erosion had occurred; the earth was rich with nutrients. Since the epidemic that had reduced their numbers, the Indians had left the ground untilled for a number of years, giving the wild fruits of the region the freedom to multiply.9

  The women spent the rest of their afternoon in a paradise they had not anticipated. The weather was warm, the air was gentle, and as the daylight glimmered into evening, they rejoiced not only in the sweet fruit but also in the simple pleasure of being on shore. Maybe Eden was not so far off. But in case any of the berry pickers had forgotten they were not in the calm of the English countryside, as night fell, an unfamiliar pest began to swarm around their necks, ears, and eyes. Mosquitoes. There had been no such insects back in England. English gnats were small and persistent, but they were nowhere near as fierce as these American insects. No amount of swatting could clear away the ruthless clouds, so the women hastily headed back to shelter.

  When they had reached the safety of Endecott’s great house, however, Anne and the others encountered a group of strange-looking men standing near the fire inside the old governor’s dwelling. The first Indians Anne had ever seen had come to investigate the arrival of the new English boat. Even from a safe distance, Anne could smell the bitter odor from the herbs they had painted on their skin to defend against insects, various diseases, and the white man. And they were almost completely bare. Their chests and legs were shiny, hairless, muscled, and lean. They wore their hair long and loose like a woman getting ready for bed; a few even had on ropes of shell necklaces.

  Englishwomen were not allowed to gaze upon naked men—if indeed these Indians were entirely male. To the English, the Indians seemed a confusing mix of male and female, smooth and hard, warrior and girl, and such confusion was unacceptable. Indeed, English society was grounded in the distinctions between the sexes. Anne’s own roles in life—dutiful daughter and loving wife—were predicated on these assumptions; the Indians’ apparent disregard for everything that she had been trained to value was deeply disturbing.

  After a series of awkward exchanges, characterized by the incomprehensible formality of the Indians and the short bursts of translation by one of the old planters who spoke a little of their language, it soon became clear that the Indians would like to examine the Arbella. It was at this point that Anne, her sisters, and the other women appear to have made their first independent decision of the day. Winthrop reported that the ladies elected to stay on land and camp out with the colonists.10

  Despite the welcome novelty of finally sleeping on land again, for Anne and her companions there was no escaping the fact that this new country was more unpleasant and far more strange than anyone had realized it would be. As she tried to go to sleep, the distant howls of wild animals shook the night air, and Anne wondered how long she would be able to endure this terrible new country.

  Unfortunately, her fears were well founded. Between April and December of that first year, more than two hundred of the one thousand immigrants died. Two hundred more fled back to England on the first available boat. One colonist, Edward Johnson, reported that “almost in every family lamentation, mourning, and woe was heard.”11

  But good fortune lay ahead, too. Against all odds and in the midst of unthinkable hardships—privation, freezing cold and blistering heat, hunger, disease, loneliness, and self-doubt—Anne would raise eight children to adulthood, help found three different towns, and run the family’s busy household. Even more remarkably, she would find the strength and the time to write verse, diligently and fiercely, until finally in 1650 she had compiled enough poems to publish a book, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America. To her surprise, her words would catch fire and she would become the voice of an era and of a new country. Having composed the anthems of a faith, she would be famous.

  Anne Bradstreet’s work would challenge English politics, take on the steepest theological debates, and dissect the history of civilization. She would take each issue by the scruff of the neck and shake hard until the stuffing spilled out; no important topic of the day would be off-limits, from the beheading of the English king to the ascendancy of Puritanism, from the future of England to the question of women’s intellectual powers. Furthermore, she would shock Londoners into enraged attention by predicting that America would one day save the English-speaking world from destruction. Hers would be the first poet’s voice, male or female, to be heard from the wilderness of the New World.

  What would draw people to her was not just the glitter of her words but the story that lay behind the poems, a story that began in England long before The Tenth Muse, and long before the day she set sail on the first boat of the Great Migration to America. Not that Anne could have imagined such an extraordinary future for herself when she was growing up back in England, a well-bred gentleman’s daughter. If she wanted anything back then, it was to stay in one familiar place and learn to be a good Christian wife and mother.

  Chapter Two

  Lilies and Thorns

  IN 1620 A TERRIFYING JOURNEY across the Atlantic would have seemed impossible to eight-year-old Anne. The sort of travel she was accustomed to was the fifteen-mile road to St. Botolph’s Church from her home at Sempringham Manor in Lincolnshire. This dirt wagon trail made its way through marshlands of reed beds and scrub, the black earth damp from the frequent drizzle, the sky teeming with waterbirds, warblers, and terns. Travel here was almost always slow and difficult; depending on the condition of the horse, the wagon, and the road, it could take three hours or longer, especially in foul weather, when the ground was slick with layers of mud. Worst of all, with few trees on this vast, flat plain, there was no barrier to protect travelers from the bitter winds that swept across the low-lying county, even in the summer.

  Naturally, none of these hardships bothered Dudley, and so it was on this blustery path, which had become the most well-traveled thoroughfare in the county, that Anne and her family began their Saturday pilgrimages to hear the popular minister John Cotton preach. For most young girls, such an uncomfortable journey might have been unbearable, but for Anne it quickly became a hallowed routine. Their destination was well worth the unpleasantness of the trip,
and the wearisome hours she spent in the open wagon gave her plenty of time to think. Bundled in her thickest wool cloak, she could lose herself in her ideas, huddling close with her mother and younger sisters for warmth, while her father and her brother, Samuel, sat in the high driving seat, prodding the horse on.

  The proximity of St. Botolph’s was one of the benefits of Dudley’s move to this region of England in the first place. Anne’s father had instilled a sense of Botolph’s sacred importance in all of his children, so that all week long, Anne impatiently awaited sitting in the grand nave of the most beautiful church in the county. It was here that she listened to the sermons of her beloved minister, the man who was the pillar of the tightly knit Puritan community in Lincolnshire. In fact, from the windows of her new home at Sempringham Manor, Anne had a splendid view of the fens and of St. Botolph’s in the distance, a comforting reminder of Cotton’s steadfast presence in her life.

  At 280 feet tall, the tower of the minister’s church was impressive, with an octagonal lantern at the top, known as “the stump,” dominating the landscape for thirty miles around and looming over the town of Boston, where the church was built in 1341. Sailors depended on St. Botolph’s as their guide as they braved the voyage over the stormy North Sea from Holland. For Anne and her family, the yellow stone was also a reassuring beacon during the tumultuous years of the 1620s; it pointed them toward their wise minister and his vision of a redeemed England, a country that would finally be cleansed of what Cotton called “great blasphemies” and “desperate deceit and wickedness.”1

  Cotton invoked Botolph’s dramatic architecture frequently in his sermons, pointing up to “the stump” and telling his parishioners to “let the name of the Lord be your strong Tower.”2 They must steer their lives in the direction of the true God, he said, just as they directed their journeys by the sighting of his church. Anne took her minister’s lessons so seriously that she “could not be at rest ’till by prayer I had confessed [my sins] unto God.”3 Riding to Boston alongside her prattling younger sisters, Patience, Sarah, and Mercy, who in Anne’s opinion were remarkably untroubled by the significance of what lay ahead, she was often overcome with anxiety. As they drew nearer to the church, she grew increasingly “beclouded . . . with fear,” certain that she had fallen short of her spiritual ambitions yet again. With each jounce of the wagon, she silently counted her various misdeeds—“lying disobedience to parents”—feeling she was in what she called “a great trouble” and had been “overtaken with evils.”4