Mistress Bradstreet

by Charlotte Gordon

  When New Towne became the seat of the Bay colony’s government during the first four years of settlement, rather than Winthrop’s Boston, this fact undoubtedly gave Dudley great pleasure. In 1636, when the magistrates of the General Court decided to move their meeting place from New Towne to Boston, the little settlement managed to retain its distinction, as it was honored over Roxbury, Dorchester, Watertown, and Salem to become the home of the country’s first college. Harvard College would be hammered into place about a mile up from the river in the field directly across from Anne’s neat little house.28

  Still, there was little evidence of the glories in store for this narrow site when Anne and her family first arrived. New Towne was a poor younger sibling compared with the giant next door, Watertown. By the time Dudley and Simon had decided to claim lots along the Charles, the land had already been largely gobbled up by settlers in the summer of 1630. This left only one twenty-five-acre spot “pinched” between Watertown and Charlestown for the settlers to share. A thick woods bounded a flat greenish brown clearing, and it was here that Dudley and Simon planted their flags of ownership, on a patch of earth that was, at best, a kind of last resort.29

  Undaunted, Dudley proudly declared that they had found “materials to build, fuel to burn, ground to plant, seas and rivers to fish in, a pure air to breathe in, good water to drink, till wine or beer can be made; which, together with the cows, hogs and goats brought hither already, may suffice for food.”30

  But despite the praise he had for the resources of New Towne, when he reported home to England on their situation, Dudley never allowed himself to write the kind of “hyperbolic” account he felt had led him astray. Instead, he reminded his English readers, “We yet enjoy little to be envied,” resisting the urge to entice others with falsely glowing accounts of the riches of America.31 In the New World there was no room, Dudley declared, for “profane and debauched persons.” In fact, he argued, “their oversight in coming hither is wondered at, where they shall find nothing to content them.” A true Massachusetts settler should be like a Christian martyr and fear “dishonor[ing] God” more than losing “his own life.” According to this logic, Anne and her family were now living among heroes and were themselves valiant Protestant warriors.32 At last Anne was becoming the kind of fearless soldier her father had always wanted her to be. She was certainly a braver, stronger person than ever before.

  Encouraged and armed with a more complete knowledge of the exigencies of the country, Dudley and Simon set their minds to making New Towne the ideal village. The soft green land was a pleasant improvement after the desolation of Charlestown. Indeed, as spring drew into summer, “the spacious plain” of New Towne that the Indians had cleared years before seemed to the colonists “more like a bowling green then a Wilderness.”33 For Anne the meandering Charles must have been a reminder of the Witham back home. Even the low-lying marshes and the gentle hills on the horizon felt more familiar than the stark windy peninsula of Charlestown, with the ocean rumbling only yards away.

  The small group huddled their homes as close to each other as possible and then created grazing lands for each family out of the land adjoining the town center. This was clearly the safest way to handle the threats of the wilderness, and it was a familiar arrangement imported directly from the Old World.

  When Simon and Anne chose their house lot, they likely believed that this was where they would live out their mortal years. Their new home was about a mile away from the Charles, situated directly across from “Watchhouse Hill” on a site not far from the current Harvard Yard. Dudley built his own, larger home a little farther south, closer to the river. Although there are no records of what these early structures looked like, they were probably modeled after the “great house” in Salem, with two rooms on the first floor, where most of the events of daily living took place—cooking, eating, talking, and sleeping—and one large loft overhead for storage.

  Anne’s ambitious father had other plans as well. Having endured months of lugging crates and chests and bolsters up from the Charles, Dudley decided the Bay colony government should sponsor the dredging of the creek that ran right by his front door. Before long he had gotten his way. On June 14, 1631, the digging commenced, and by the time the men were done working, they had carved out a twelve-foot-wide canal that led straight from the river to Dudley’s front door. Now a boat with a six-foot beam could float right into the settlement and deliver anything—lumber, corn, books, ale, cows, linens—practically on the settlers’ doorsteps.

  Civilization was beginning to conquer the wilderness, Dudley exclaimed, and when his daughter looked across the fields to the river, she could begin to feel a little optimistic. Perhaps they would survive. Perhaps God was truly smiling on them. Now all she wanted was proof that the Lord had taken her back into His favor, and so she begged Him for His mercy and for a baby—in her eyes, after all, the two were the same.

  Chapter Ten

  Upon My Son

  Thou heard’st me then and gav’st him me.

  — ANNE BRADSTREET,“Upon My Son Samuel”

  THE SECOND WINTER CAME UPON the settlers almost imperceptibly. As the days drew bleaker, a sense of urgency overtook the scattered villages. Nobody wanted to endure another “starving time,” and so most people plunged into preparations for the frightening months ahead.

  To help ready her household for winter, Anne would have had the assistance of at least one, and probably more, female servants. Although these women would have done the bulk of the heavy chores—milking, tending the goats and pigs, getting water, collecting eggs, washing laundry, and other tasks that Anne set before them—this did not mean that Anne had an abundance of leisure time. In some ways, her position was like that of a schoolteacher or a mother: She was responsible for her servants’ good behavior and their religious observance, even as she had to make sure their jobs were completed successfully.

  This last responsibility was an enormous challenge for a gently raised woman like Anne, who knew very little about farm life before arriving in America. It seems likely that her servants knew more about livestock and managing a homestead in such rough conditions than she did, an embarrassing position for a “mistress” like Anne.

  Worn down by the hard work and deprivation, by January 1632 she worried her family and felt further humiliated when she came down with “a lingering sickness like a consumption.”1 Incapacitated by fever and coughing, Anne had no choice but to leave her household wholly in the hands of her servants and her husband. Fortunately, her mother and sisters were nearby, as was her new sister-in-law, Mary Winthrop Dudley, the wife of her older brother Samuel and the daughter of the governor.

  Having tended so many of the sick and dying during the first winter and having endured other hardships in the wilderness, Anne now felt “humbled” by her own “lamenesse.” She suspected that this illness was yet another “correction” from God, and as such, it was a shameful public exposure of her spiritual frailty. Clearly He was punishing her for her initial resistance to America and her doubts about their mission.2

  Anne’s sense of shame could only deepen over time, since, when anyone fell ill in the little community, everyone else’s labors became heavier. Her mother and sisters had to provide food and nursing care. Simon had to make sure the servants were fulfilling their duties, and the neighbors had to pitch in as well: doing the mending, the butter and cheese making, the brewing of small ale, the dangerous and constant work of keeping the fire going—while she lay uselessly in the big bed next to the fireplace.

  Gradually the New Towne gardens and fields disappeared under a blur of snow, and the only traces left of the town were the muddled little houses. It seemed to be a time of winnowing away, of stripping bare, a stark fateful time in which only the essentials were left. This second winter, however, would be far easier for the settlers to endure. Most families had enough food to last until spring, and the death toll would be far lower than during the previous year.

  Still, in
such a climate it was easy to imagine one’s own death. Anne, who always underestimated her physical strength, felt sure that she had come to the end of her days. “My race is run,” she would write, “lo, here is fatal death.”3 And yet Anne did not despair but battled for many slow months until at last she emerged from the fever with a strengthened sense of confidence; God had allowed her to conquer yet another obstacle.

  She did not recover her strength all at once, however, and during this time of convalescence, she began to realize that her illness had actually been a powerful spiritual aid. Later she would remember, “I saw the Lord sent [this sickness] to humble me and try me and do me good.” God cared enough about her to single her out for spiritual improvement.4 Smallpox had chastened her, but this latest affliction had brought her even closer to union with the divine.

  Anne was not the sort of person to let this extraordinary experience pass. Without any fanfare, she turned to the discipline that her father had taught her back in the dim paneled halls of Sempringham—poetry. By counting out the beats for each line and searching diligently for beautiful rhymes, Anne found that she could fashion a tribute to God’s glory and make order out of the chaotic fear of the last months. When she completed her first poem, she gave it the suitable title, “Upon a Fit of Sickness,” including an additional note, “Anno. 1632. Aetatis Suae, 19.”

  Of course, needlework would have been the more ordinary occupation for a recovering young wife, but Anne found such activities tedious.5 And she knew that composing a proficient poem could please others: Simon, her mother, Sarah, Patience, Mercy, and even the minister from the church in Boston, John Wilson, who had probably traveled to the Bradstreet’s house to pray with Anne and Simon during her ordeal. A poem would be a fitting atonement for her many sins and a gift to all those who had had to shoulder her chores, mop her brow, tend her fire, and cook her food. But of all her readers, Anne would likely have been most conscious of Dudley’s opinion. After all, he had undertaken her education all those years ago, and she longed to make him proud.

  The first choice Anne had to make before she picked up her pen was what meter to use, since this was a crucial part of declaring her intentions as a Puritan and as a poet. Once she had decided, she could not waver. This was partly for practical reasons. Each page was precious to Anne. Although her wealthy father did have a larger supply of paper and vellum than most people and she herself had a small bound book to write in, once she had used up this writing material, it was expensive to get more, and it could take months to arrive from England. Mistakes were a costly luxury, therefore, and drafts were an impossibility. Anne would have to think out the lines first and memorize them before hazarding them onto paper.

  Her virtue was also put to the test. Just as ink blots had seemed evidence of her sinful nature when she was a girl, so now would the wrong word or a false note. Each poem was meant as an offering to God and to her community and was far too crucial for her to take lightly.

  The best choice for meter, she decided, was the one she was most familiar with, the ballad form. This popular kind of poetry, “the fourteener,” was not sophisticated, but it was the kind used in the Sternhold and Hopkins translation of the Psalms to which her family was devoted, even though it featured stanzas such as this:

  My shepherd is the living Lord,

  Nothing therefore I need;

  In pastures fair with waters calm,

  He sets me forth to feed.6

  The fourteener was also the meter employed by most Puritan writers, including the local minister. John Wilson had penned a long religious poem (“A Song, or Story, For the Lasting Remembrance of Diverse Famous Works, Which God Hath Done In Our Time”), and although it was neither beautiful nor particularly skillful, it was a comprehensive history of Protestantism and so was highly prized by Dudley and the pious colonists. If Anne could make it clear that she admired Wilson’s work, she would be able to demonstrate her loyalty to the New England way of thinking, and to Massachusetts Bay Puritanism in particular. Because her literary efforts would be regarded as exclusively religious in nature, she could then work on developing her technique without raising eyebrows.

  The poem succeeded. There was no greater honor than emulation, and Wilson was not immune to this kind of flattery. He would forever be one of Anne’s fans. In addition, Anne’s allusions illustrated that she knew Scripture and many poems of the “right” sort, according to the Reformed way of thinking. Better yet, she seemed well aware of the proper verse conventions for a pious writer. There were, however, some surprising elements in this modest composition. Despite her religious intentions, Anne introduced herself to her readers with an ambitious flourish that seemed to have nothing to do with Puritanism or proper feminine decorum.

  When she penned the Latin words “Anno. 1632. Aetatis Suae, 19” after the title, Anne hinted that she was regarding this first poem far more seriously than she should have according to Puritan teachings. Although many devoted souls in New England wrote poetry, few were capable of using Latin, or even knew that “aetatis suae” meant “her age.” Not that Anne herself was a Latin scholar; in fact, this would be the only such phrase she would use in her work. But this highly self-conscious literary manner gave the poem a “learned” feel; it also made it sound as if it were the first of many she planned to write, for an audience far larger than simply her family and friends.

  Perhaps this was not so remarkable after all. Even though Anne had been taught to think of poetry as another form of prayer, Dudley’s restless blood ran in her veins. Her father had trained her too well for Anne not to aspire to more than dutiful religious verse. Fame was on her mind, whether she realized it or not, despite the lectures she had heard about the vanity of such ideals and despite the propaganda against women—or men, for that matter—overreaching their bounds.7

  If Anne was aware of her own aspirations, however, she kept them hidden; it was, after all, unthinkable for any Puritan to entertain dreams of worldly success, let alone a Puritan wife. Her duty was to be humble, not ambitious, to direct her attention toward heaven, not earth. It is astonishing, therefore, that she revealed any aspirations that were not purely religious in nature.

  But perhaps Anne felt that the devout theme of her poem made up for any whiff of ambition in the title. “Twice ten years old, not fully told . . . lo, here is fatal death” she began in a conventional way, emphasizing her youth in an attempt to capture not only her narrow escape but also, perhaps, the deaths of countless young people in the colonies. On she went, citing the supremacy of God’s will and how death would usher in the good pilgrim’s salvation and the blessing of eternal life. These sentiments were in accordance with her religion, as were her laments about her own suffering. “For what’s this life but care and strife,” she declared, quoting a Puritan truism about the earthly “vale of tears.”8

  Whatever Anne’s intentions on composing this first poem, it does seem clear that the act of writing offered her a way of coping with the hardships she had to tolerate. She transformed her loneliness, disappointment, and profound disillusionment into verse, drawing on what she had learned not only from her most recent illness but also from the voyage and the first year in America. In so doing she discovered the tool that would allow her to endure and make sense of her experience in the wilderness. Only through “pain,” she declared, did she stand a chance to grow.9

  That summer, however, Anne’s initial compositional experiments abruptly ended. At last she was pregnant. To her this turn of events did not seem coincidental. Later she would write that this baby was the result “of prayers, of vows, of tears”; she had no doubt that God had “heard’st me” and “gav’st him me.”10 Her illness had spurred her toward a spiritual awakening, which had inspired her to express her devotion to the Lord in a poem. Now her womb was filled with life. Clearly, poetry writing had ushered in a baby.

  But children do not usually have the same effect on poems, at least not at first. For the next six years, Anne did not pen
another word, although she did not complain about not being able to write. Nothing was more important than being able to bear Simon children. Many Puritan wives worried that if they were barren, their husbands would desert or abuse them, and everyone had heard such stories through the local rumor mill. Though it would have been entirely out of character for the genial and even-keeled Simon to distance himself from her, let alone cast her out of the house, in Anne’s mind he would have had every right to spurn her if she could not provide him with a family.

  It was a relief, then, to feel her stomach slowly begin to distend. It was even a pleasure to experience the telltale nausea of the early months, especially as the older women reassured her that the more sick she was, the healthier the baby would be. There were even those who whispered that if the mother was very ill, the baby was surely a boy. There were other odd bits of lore: If one had conceived on a certain day of the week or in a certain cycle of the moon, the infant would be born female, or strong, or with blue eyes. Above all, Anne prayed for a successful delivery and a healthy baby.

  Practically speaking, she had some points in her favor. At twenty, she was stronger physically than when they had arrived in America. Thanks to the efforts of her father, brother, and husband, New Towne had grown into a recognizable little village with ample food and resources, and more homes were being built every day to house those fleeing the impositions of the king and his bishops.

  Since Anne and Simon were among the richest of the settlers, they had managed to fortify themselves admirably for the approaching winter, but this also meant that Anne faced more than the average amount of work to keep track of their raw materials—a job that demanded the foresight of a general supplying an army. In October Anne had to have a sense of what her household would need in February and to regulate the family’s use of corn, dried fruit, root vegetables, salted meat, and dairy supplies accordingly. If she were not careful, their food would go bad before it had gotten used. But if she allowed the servants to rush through their store, there would be nothing left to eat in early spring.