Mistress Bradstreet

by Charlotte Gordon

  In such tight quarters it was impossible to escape people you did not like. Frequently Anne was crammed down below with strangers, servants, or others she would never have had to consort with back in her old life. But despite the many weeks on the ship, she still would not have known the names of all the passengers, especially those who were not Puritans or were below her in rank. One passenger wrote that there were “about 140 persons out of the western parts from Plymouth, of which I conceive there were not six known either by face or fame to any of the rest.” Most people stuck to those they already knew from home, though some new acquaintances did spring up.21

  The voyage was turning out to be more than a test of physical limits. Spiritual and mental fortitude were essential and could only be had with the support of others. Those new relationships that did occur formed with an intensity not usually found in villages back home; existing friendships deepened, and marriages tightened. The opposite was also true. When fights broke out, they were fired by the pent-up frustrations of shipboard life.

  For Anne, Simon was the man upon whom she had lavished her “longing hopes” and “doubting fears.”22 But now that their old home was far away, there was no privacy for long conversations between a husband and a wife and even less opportunity for marital pleasures. In many ways, Anne was right back to where she had started as a young girl, immersed in the company of women as though she had never married and left home. Fortunately, Arbella was there, and their shared years at Sempringham, their mutual commitment to piety, and the fact that both were married but did not yet have children must have rapidly overcome their differences in stature and rank. It was their duty, after all, to shore up each other’s faith, courage, and strength, especially as the journey drew on and neither could ignore that many of the women were growing physically weaker, including Arbella herself.

  The sailor’s curses and rowdy songs were a shock for most of the gently bred Puritans, especially the women and children. Cotton Mather would describe this “obscene, smutty, bawdy talk” as “so much filthy bilge water.”23 Some measure of social hierarchy was preserved, since Anne and her family and friends all rated slightly better lodgings than the others, servants still obeyed masters, and richer people had more food to eat than their poorer brethren, but the differences in class were not as evident as on land; everyone suffered the same miseries during a storm and the same boredom when becalmed.

  The only amusements for adults and children alike, aside from prayer, contemplation, and conversation, were occasional fantastical sights from the deep. To begin with, there were “strange fish”—“some with wings flying above the water, others with manes, ears and heads, and chasing one another with open mouths like stone horses in a park.” The minister of the advance party, Francis Higginson, remembered the “bonitos, carvels, grampuses, sunfish and whales” that swam by the Talbot.24

  Sometimes the passengers managed to catch one of these curiosities, and then it was like a carnival onboard—the thrashing, dying animal, the cries of the men intent on subduing it, the shrieks of the thrilled onlookers. One traveler, Richard Mather, remarked that spearing porpoises and swinging them up on deck was “marvelous delightful recreation.” He also reflected that the dissection of these creatures “in view of all our company was wonderful to us all, and marvelous merry sport, and delightful to our women and children.”25 The fish they caught also provided a change in their diet, although not all of these creatures were such delicacies. Another traveler wrote that shark meat was “very rough grained, not worthy of wholesome preferment.” He did not much like porpoise, either, declaring that it “tastes like rusty bacon or hung beef, if not worse, but the liver boiled and soused in vinegar is more grateful to the palate.” A fellow passenger disagreed; he declared that he relished porpoise when it was fried “with salt, pepper, and vinegar.”26

  Early in May the passengers were startled by an apparition far more alarming than any they had yet encountered. On the morning of the eighth, the wind was strong, the rigging was whistling, and the ship was whisking along, when suddenly a fountain of water sprang up, at least thirty feet high, right in front of the bow. The lookouts shouted warning and the passengers rushed to see the biblical sight of “a whale, who lay just in our ship’s way (the bunch of his back about a yard above water).” The captain shouted for the sailors to tack and pushed the wheel hard to windward, but the whale followed them, as though he were lonely and wanted to play. Despite the wonder of such an encounter, the enormous animal could do great damage even to a ship this size. Repeatedly the Arbella shifted course, lurching back and forth between starboard and portside tacks, but despite these evasive maneuvers, “He would not shun us,” Winthrop wrote. Finally, for no apparent reason, the giant creature gave up and they passed “within a stone’s cast of him.” He did not follow but lay spouting up water, as though he had had his fill of the game.27

  Although none of the other passengers recorded their interpretation of this episode, they could only have experienced the whale’s presence as frightening, albeit in an exalted sort of way. A leviathan seemed incontrovertible evidence of God’s great might, and such a miraculous appearance suggested that the psalmist’s perspective was accurate: “They that go down to the sea in ships, and do business in great waters, these men see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.”28 The travelers were now among the select few who had had the opportunity to behold the wonders of God’s oceans.

  EVERYONE HAD HOPED that May would usher in warmer weather, since the first month of the voyage had been glazed by an arctic cold. But as time drew on and the weather remained frigid, it was hard for the passengers not to worry that freezing temperatures lay in wait for them in America.29 The loss of the blankets and bolsters they had thrown overboard weeks before must have made the chill even more difficult to bear.

  Although they shivered, Anne and her family were learning the ways of the sea. Winthrop could now observe that the passengers were no longer “sick” or “troubled” by storms even when they were “tossed” for “forty eight hours together.” Understandably, both he and Dudley took some pride in the staunch behavior of their people; it would be a weathered and toughened company that would land in America, and this boded well for their colony.30

  But there was still the naturally sinful inclinations of the passengers that had to be kept in check. Dudley and Winthrop required all of the faithful, and as many of the sailors as they could persuade, to listen to the minister, the Reverend George Phillips, who preached most Thursdays and twice on Sundays. These gatherings tended to unite the people, reminding the faithful why they had signed on for this adventure in the first place, and even converting a few non-Puritans to the “true religion.”

  On May 24 two of the sister ships appeared on the horizon, and a welcome exchange of news took place, although not all of the tidings were good. No one had seen the Talbot for many weeks; on the Ambrose, two passengers and two cows had expired; and on the Jewel, “one of the seamen died.” The Talbot was carrying many of the animals and extra supplies the settlers were counting on when they reached America. If she had been driven under by one of the storms they had encountered, the loss would be a serious one, and Anne and her family prayed anxiously for the ship’s safety.31

  From these reports, Anne and her family could see that the Arbella had fared well throughout these weeks of gales and cold. Their efforts at prayer, their careful scrutiny of their own consciences, and their attempts to eradicate sinful behavior from the ship must have helped God regard them with favor. And there was far more exciting news to come. The captains of all three ships had decided it was time to start checking the depths to see if the waters were growing shallow. They were approaching North America.

  On May 26 the sailors took their first sounding, and although they “found no ground,” the tenor of the voyage changed.32 The end was now in sight. Every few days the sailors took more measurements, and with tense excitement, the people clung close to the rails to hear thei
r findings. The soundings were a tricky procedure for Captain Milbourne, however, as he knew that they were approaching the dangerous sandy shoals of coastal New England. If he read the measurements incorrectly, they could easily founder off Cape Cod; if they overshot their mark, however, they could end up in Canada.

  It took almost a week of frequent soundings, and a penitential fast by the Puritan leaders, before the shore came within reach.33 On June 6, which was, auspiciously, a Sunday, or the “Lord’s day,” the wind strengthened from the northeast, and everyone lined the decks to catch a glimpse of the New World. After four or five hours, the passengers were rewarded for their patience. With barely contained excitement, the governor wrote:

  About two in the afternoon we sounded and had ground at about eighty fathom, and the mist then breaking up, we saw the shore to the N about five or six leagues off, and were (as we supposed) to the SW of Cape Sable.34

  This placed them at the southernmost tip of Nova Scotia, in the perfect location for a straight shot down the coast to Massachusetts. The next day the captain ordered a celebratory pause, the sailors furled the sails, and as it was “somewhat calm,” the men went fishing. To their astonishment, they caught “in less than two hours, with a few hooks, sixty-seven codfish, most of them very great fish, some a yard and a half long, and a yard in compass.” The catch was impressive, and this was a reason to rejoice. The Arbella’s “salt fish was now spent” and the passengers feasted with joy. Their suffering might soon be coming to an end.35

  But the speed of their arrival depended on the wind and the captain’s ability to navigate the new hazards of rocks, shoals, and uncharted islands. It would be all too easy to come to grief along the treacherous coastline. The weather was still alarmingly frigid, but on June 8 it turned from “close and to[o] cold” to “fair sunshine,” and to the joy of everyone onboard, “there came a smell off the shore like the smell of a garden: There came a wild pigeon into our ship, and another small land bird.”36 As the birds chirped and cooed, settling on the railings, it was impossible not to think of God’s promise to Noah after the flood. The future seemed bright, and the past dim and far away, as though the ocean had truly severed them from the corruption of their ancient land.

  Four days later, just before dawn, the sailors sighted the headlands of modern-day Marblehead and the rocky islands that marked the waters of Salem. Sixty-six days after leaving Yarmouth, men and women alike wept in thanksgiving. The captain “shot off two pieces of ordnance” as they “passed through the narrow strait between Baker’s Isle and Little Isle, and came to an anchor a little within the islands.”37 They had reached Salem’s Plum Cove.

  To all of the pious, arrival was a solemn occasion. With Winthrop’s words in mind, Puritan passengers understood that their safe crossing sealed their contract with God. Now they must turn their hearts toward Him or forever suffer His wrath. Undoubtedly, the Lady Arbella, who had been anticipating this moment for almost ten years, drew a sharp breath of elation. At last they had come to what she conceived of as the new kingdom of Christ; unlike Anne, she appears to have had no qualms about a New World covenant.

  But amid the grateful prayers of her fellow passengers, Anne found herself resentful, frightened, and perhaps even more unhappy than she had been during the journey. She was far from experiencing the pleasure she knew such a moment should have induced. Instead, she felt sick to her stomach.38

  Anne had no interest in America.

  Chapter Nine

  New World, New Manners

  I think that in the end if I live it must be by my leaving, for we do not know how long this plantation will stand.

  — THE COLONIST JOHN POND, IN A LETTER TO HIS FATHER, 1631

  ANNE’S FIRST HOME in Massachusetts was huddled on a shelf of land that ran out into Boston Harbor. Unprotected and desolate, Charlestown was a miserable place to live. During that first summer, most of the flimsy tents and huts offered very little protection; the sun glared down and the wind tore across the hills, ripping the drying laundry off the makeshift ropes and occasionally knocking down the fragile English wigwams.

  When the rest of the Winthrop fleet limped into the New World harbors in the months that followed the Arbella’s arrival, the Dudleys and the other leading families greeted each of the vessels, hoping that the livestock they had sent over had survived the journey. The meat, milk, and cheese might deliver them from their desperate straits. But it soon became clear there would be no such respite. Even when the Talbot, the ship they had thought was lost, sailed into Salem, there was no relief. As Dudley wrote, “[H]alf of our cows, and almost all our mares and goats, sent us out of England died at sea in their passage hither.”1

  Although the men in Anne’s family understood that they were coping with a humanitarian crisis of enormous scale—one thousand people would arrive from England that year—there was little they could do to ease the hunger and disease that plagued the little community. The comfortable-looking homes of the original colonists were no longer beacons of hope but instead served to underscore the privation of the new arrivals. Tempers began to fray. Prayer did not seem to do any good, although everyone considered it a blessing that neither the governor nor his deputy fell ill.

  By the end of July, after nearly two months of hard work and in the face of growing unhappiness among the emigrants, Dudley and Winthrop decided it was time to make a public stand of their commitment to America and create what they had come to New England for in the first place—a church based on their own religious principles. Perhaps this move would lift people’s spirits and stop the emigrants from fleeing back to the Old World. Dudley and Winthrop’s grand plan notwithstanding, no actual structure had yet been built—there had been no time. To the English, open-air praying was a little too close for comfort to the behavior of the Indians, who regularly worshiped under the sky, but—roof or no—it seemed the right moment to make a formal proclamation of their commitment to God and to each other. Maybe this would turn their luck around.

  Anne did not greet this idea with enthusiasm. Good Puritans knew that you endangered your soul if you made a vow to God that you could not fully embrace, and Anne was still filled with doubt about their venture. Later in life, she wrote that it was hard to be “convinced [that coming to America] was the way of God.”2 People were succumbing to disease and the privations of life in the wilderness. As Dudley noted, “yea almost daily” someone met his end.3 As one survivor recorded, “It was not accounted a strange thing in those days to drink water, and to eat samp or hominy without butter or milk.” Clams, mussels, and smelt helped keep the people going. In times of desperation they foraged for nuts and acorns, but no English person of the time believed that he could live without “beef, bread, and beer,” and the scanty diet took its toll.4

  For Anne, the physical hardships were compounded by the loss of her aristocratic lifestyle in England. It was disturbing to have to live in such close quarters with people she would never have met back in England: uneducated workers, non-Puritans, and roughened artisans. These men and women seemed uncouth and irreligious, and she was unaccustomed to the rudeness of their speech and customs.

  But Anne knew she would have to make up her mind that these challenges were actually part of God’s plan. The glorification of the Protestant martyrs of earlier generations probably helped make this idea seem possible, but in the years to come she would remember that she had to be persuaded to take the oath, although she never revealed how her mother, her father, the minister, and her husband talked her into joining them.

  At last, on the first day of August, Anne “submitted,” as she put it, to the will of God, the pressure of her family, and the exigencies of her life. She stood in the little clearing of Charlestown with the other leaders of the expedition, gazing at the odd little shelters their people had contrived, and vowed

  to unite . . . into one Congregation, or Church, under the Lord Jesus Christ our Head . . . and bind our selves to walke in all our wayses according to the Ru
le of the Gospell, and in all sincere Conformity to His holy ordinaunces, and in mutuall love, and respect each to other, so neere as God shall give us grace.5

  Although there was no mention of New England in this covenant, the implication was clear. The settlers were starting the process of shedding their loyalties to the Old World and vowing their allegiance to each other, a reformed church, and a fresh land. The summer sun burned their arms and faces. The pines rose sharply behind their backs. The earth was untilled and rocky. The men and women themselves were hungry, thirsty, sweaty, and tired, and yet these words were a crucial reminder of why they had voyaged to America; even Anne would be strengthened by this act. She was the thirteenth person to proclaim her faith, the second woman, right after her mother, Dorothy.6

  Unfortunately, the solemn proclamation of this covenant did not allay any of the suffering of the first year, even if it bolstered the spirits of those who participated. For Anne, the first test of her commitment to the colony was the illness of Arbella, who was battling a high fever back in Salem. The entire community waited anxiously as Arbella tossed and sweated on linen coverlets. This was the woman who had lent her name to their ship and who had provided the inspiration and monetary support to make emigration possible. But despite the many prayers said on her behalf, she died on a blistering day in August, never having witnessed the settlement in Charlestown.

  This was a dispiriting loss for everyone, not just Anne. Arbella had been a person of the highest rank and importance, and her demise seemed like a bad omen. But while the death of her friend must have been devastating for Anne, she recorded no lament for Arbella, nor did she allow herself to voice her yearning for England. She had asserted her loyalty to the new colony and would not be swayed, at least not visibly. She was Dudley’s daughter, after all, and her sorrows were not for outside eyes to see.