Literary Byways

We find particulars of one Philip Ratclif for making “hard speeches against Salem Church, as well as the Government,” sentenced to pay “forty pounds, to be whipped, to have his ears cropped, and to be banished.” The date of this case is 1631. In the Annals of Salem, under date for May 3rd, 1669, it is recorded that “Thomas Maule is ordered to be whipped for saying that Mr. Higgenson preached lies, and that his instruction was ‘the doctrine of devils.’”

The Quakers were very severely dealt with. At Salem, for making disturbances in the meeting-house, etc., Josiah Southwick, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Buffum, and other Quakers, were whipped at the cart’s tail through the town. After being banished, Southwick returned to Salem, and for this offence was whipped through the towns of Boxton, Roxbury, and Dedham.

In bygone times, hanging the remains of persons executed was general in England; in America it was an uncommon practice. Mr. Brooks, however, gives particulars of a few instances. At Newport, Rhode Island, on March 12th, 1715, a man named Mecum, was executed for murder; and his body hung in chains on Miantonomy Hill, where the bodies of some Indians executed three years previously were then hanging. A negro hanged at Newport in 1769 was gibbetted on the same hill.

A few lighter passages than those we have studied brighten up the records of American punishments, which were very severe. A prisoner in February, 1789, escaped through the jail chimney at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and wrote on the wall as follows: “The reason of my going is because I have no fire to comfort myself with, and very little provision. So I am sure if I was to stay any longer I should perish to death. Look at that bed there! Do you think it fit for any person to lie on?

“If you are well, I am well;Mend the chimney, and all’s well!”

To the gentlemen and officers of Portsmouth, from your humble servant,

William Fall

“N.B. – I am very sorry that I did not think of this before, for if I had, your people should not have had the pleasure of seeing me take the lashes.”

Curiosities of the Lottery is the title of another volume of Mr. Brooks’s “Olden Time Series.” Selling lottery tickets was regarded as a respectable calling. “The better the man,” says Mr. Brooks, “the better the agent. Indeed, it was generally thought to be just as respectable to sell lottery tickets as to sell Bibles; and we have them classed together in the same advertisement.” In England, we must not forget the fact that the business was conducted on the same lines in bygone times. The first lottery in this country was drawn day and night at the west door of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, from the 11th of January to May 6th, 1569. The profit, which was considerable, was devoted to the repair of harbours. The prizes consisted of pieces of plate.

In the United States, lotteries were instituted for a variety of objects, including building bridges, cleaning rivers, rebuilding Faneuil Hall, raising money to successfully carry on the work of Dartmouth College, Harvard College, and other seats of learning. The advertisements were extremely quaint, illustrated with crudely drawn but effective pictures, and supplied “a speedy cure for a broken fortune.” Rhymes as well as pictures were largely employed in advertisements for lotteries. Much has been spoken and written against lotteries; but, nevertheless, in some of the States of the Union they are still lawful.

With a dip into a volume called Days of the Spinning Wheel, we bring our old-time gleanings to a close. The items we cull relate to a trade once very general in the United States, but happily now a thing of the past. Advertisements similar to the following appeared in all the American newspapers; not a few of the publishers took an active part in the trade of buying and selling human beings. “To be sold,” advertises the Boston Evening Gazette, 1741, “by the printer of this paper, the very best negro woman in this town, who has had the small pox and measles; is as hearty as a horse, as brisk as a bird, and will work like a beaver.” The same publisher stated that he also had on sale “a negro man about thirty years old, who can do both town and country business very well, but will suit the country best, where they have not so many dram-shops as we have in Boston. He has worked at the printing business fifteen or sixteen years; can handle axe, saw, spade, hoe, or other instrument of husbandry as well as most men, and values himself and is valued by others for his skill in cookery.”

In the Gazette of May 12, 1760, is offered for sale “a negro woman about twenty-eight years of age; she is remarkably healthy and strong, and has several other good qualities; and is offered for sale for no other reason than her being of a furious temper, somewhat lazy. Smart discipline would make her a very good servant. Any person minded to purchase may be further informed by inquiring of the printer.” It will be gathered from the foregoing that the faults of the slaves were clearly stated.

Children were often given away; and many announcements like the following, drawn from the Postboy, February 28, 1763, appeared: – “To be given away, a male negro child of good breed, and in good health. Inquire of Green and Russell.”

Runaway slaves gave considerable trouble to their owners, and the papers include numerous advertisements, details respecting appearance, speech, dress, etc., of the missing persons. After describing his runaway slave, the owner concluded his announcement thus: “All masters of vessels and others are cautioned against harbouring, concealing, or carrying off the said negro, if they would avoid the rigour of the law.”

The Earliest American Poetess: Anne Bradstreet

To Northamptonshire belongs the honour of giving birth to the first woman poet who produced a volume of poetry in America. Her name was Anne Bradstreet. She was born in the year 1612. The place of her birth is not absolutely certain. “There is little doubt,” says Helen Campbell, the author of “Anne Bradstreet, and Her Time,” “that Northampton, England, was the home of her father’s family.” At an early age she sailed with her father, Thomas Dudley, to Massachusetts Bay, he being one of the earliest settlers in New England. For some years he had been steward to the Earl of Lincoln. He was a man of means, and belonged to a good family, claiming kinship with the Dudleys and Sidneys of Penshurst. Literature had for him many charms; he wrote poetry, and, says his daughter, he was a “magazine of history.” He left his native country and braved the perils of sea and land to settle in a distant clime where he might worship God according to his conscience. This stern, truth-speaking Puritan soon had his sterling merits recognised, and held the governorship of Massachusetts from 1634 to 1650. He closed at the age of seventy-seven years a well-spent life. After death, in his pocket were found some of his recently written verses. His daughter Anne was a woman of active and refined mind, having acquired considerable culture at a time when educational accomplishments were possessed by few. She suffered much from ill-health; in her girlhood she was stricken with small pox, and was also lame. Her many trials cast a tinge of sadness over her life and writings.

She grew up to be a winsome woman, gaining esteem from the leading people of her adopted country, and her fame as a writer of poetry reached the land of her nativity.

She married, in 1629, Simon Bradstreet, Secretary, and afterwards Governor, of the Colony.

Her first volume, published at Boston in 1640, was dedicated to her father. The title is very long, and is as follows: “Several Poems, compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of delight, wherein especially is contained a Complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, and Seasons of the Year; together with an exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz.: the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian, and the Beginning of the Roman Commonwealth to the end of their last King; with divers other pleasant and serious Poems. By a Gentlewoman of New England.” The book met with much favour, and soon passed into a second edition. In the third edition, issued in 1658, her character is thus sketched: “It is the work of a woman honoured and esteemed where she lives, for her gracious demeanour, her eminent parts, her pious conversation, her courteous disposition, her exact diligence in her place, and discreet management of her family occasions; and more so, these poems are the fruits of a few hours curtailed from her sleep, and other refreshments.” The work was reprinted and published in London in 1650, with the high-sounding title of “The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America.” Compared with much that was written in the age in which she lived, her poetry is entitled to a foremost rank, but it is not sufficiently good to gain for it a lasting place in literature. It mainly attracts attention in our time as being the first collection of poetry published in America.

Professor Charles F. Richardson, one of the soundest American critics, speaks of some of the poems as by “no means devoid of merit, though disfigured by a paucity of words and stiffness of style.” The estimable writer of this volume won words of praise from her leading countrymen. President Rogers, of Harvard College, himself a poet, thus addressed her: —

“Madam, twice through the Muses’s grove I walkedUnder your blissful bowers —Twice have I drunk the nectar of your lines.”

All her critics were not so complimentary as President Rogers. Some did not think that a woman had a right to produce poetry and to such she adverts in the following lines: —

“I am obnoxious to each carping tongueWho 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’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.”

Here are four lines on “The Vanity of all Worldly Things,” which, give a favourable example of her poetic power: —

“As he said vanity, so vain say I,Oh vanity, O vain all under sky;Where is man can say, lo! I have foundOn brittle earth a consolation sound?”

The next specimen of her poetry is an “Elegy on a Grandchild”: —

“Farewell, sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye;Farewell, fair flower, that for a space was lent,Then ta’en away into eternity.Blest Babe, why should I once bewail thy fate,Or sigh the days so soon were terminate,Sith thou art settled in an everlasting state?”“By nature trees do rot when they are grown,And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall,And corn and grass are in their season mown,And time brings down what is both strong and tall;But plants new set to be eradicate,And buds new-bloom to have so short a date,’Tis by His hand alone that nature guides, and fate.”

The lines which follow were written in the prospect of death, and addressed to her husband: —

“How soon, my dear, death may my steps attend,How soon ’t may be thy lot to lose thy friend,We both are ignorant. Yet love bids meThese farewell lines to recommend to thee,That, when that knot’s untied that made us oneI may seem thine, who in effect am none.“And, if I see not half my days that’s due,What Nature would God grant to yours and you.The many faults that well you know I have,Let be interred in my oblivious grave;If any virtue is in me,Let that live freshly in my memory;And when thou feel’st no griefs, as I no harms,Yet live thy dead, who long lay in thine arms;And, when thy loss shall be repaid with gains,Look to my little babes, my dear remains,And, if thou lov’st thyself or lovest me,These, oh protect from step-dame’s injury!And, if chance to thine eyes doth bring this verse,With some sighs honour my absent hearse,And kiss this paper, for thy love’s dear sake,Who with salt tears this last farewell doth take.”

In the year 1666, her house at Andover was consumed by fire, and her letters and papers destroyed, which put an end to one of her literary projects. Six years later she died, at the age of sixty years. It is said of her by an American author: “Her numbers are seldom correct, and her ear had little of Milton’s tenderness or Shakespeare’s grace; yet she was the contemporary of England’s greatest poets, the offspring of that age of melody which had begun with Spenser and Sidney, an echo, from the distant wilderness of the period of universal song.” Several of her descendants are amongst the most gifted of American poets; they include Channing, Dana, Holmes, and others. Her husband nearly reached the age of a hundred years, and was termed “the Nestor of New England.”

A Playful Poet: Miss Catherine Fanshawe

Several lasting contributions were made to poetical literature by Miss Catherine Maria Fanshawe. In the literary and artistic circles of London in the closing years of the last century, and for more than three decades of the present century she was popular.

Miss Fanshawe was born in 1775, and came of a good old English family. At an early age she displayed literary gifts full of promise. The following sonnet, written at the age of fourteen and addressed to her mother, has perhaps not been excelled by any youthful writer: —

“Oh thou! who still by piercing woe pursued,Alone and pensive, pour’st thy sorrows here,Forgive, if on thy griefs I dare intrudeTo wipe from thy lov’d cheek the falling tear.Dear mourner, think! – thy son will weep no more;His life was spotless, and his death was mild,And, when this vain delusive life is o’er,He’ll shine a seraph, whom thou lost a child.Then, as we bend before th’ eternal throne,Oh may’st thou, with exulting accents boast,‘Now shall my children ever be my own,For none of those thou gavest me are lost.’With rapture then thou’lt meet th’ angelic boy,And she who sow’d in tears shall meet in joy.”August, 1789.

A long playful poem composed at the age of sixteen, was addressed to the Earl of Harcourt, on his wishing to spell her name, Catherine, with a K. It displays much erudition, but it is too long to quote in full. We give a few of the lines pleading for the letter C: —

“And can his antiquarian eyes,My Anglo-Saxon C despise?And does Lord Harcourt day by day,Regret the extinct initial K?And still with ardour unabated,Labour to get it reinstated?I know, my lord, your generous passion,For every long exploded fashion;And own the Catherine you delight in,Looks irresistibly inviting,Appears to bear the stamp and mark,Of English used in Noah’s Ark;‘But all that glitters is not gold,’Not all things obsolete are old.Would you but take the pains to look,In Dr. Johnson’s quarto book(As I did, wishing much to see,Th’ aforesaid letter’s pedigree),Believe me, ’twould a tale unfold,Would make your Norman blood run cold;My lord, you’ll find the K’s no better,Than an interpolated letter;A wand’ring Greek, a franchis’d alien,Derived from Cadmus or Deucalion;And why, or wherefore, none can tell,Inserted ’twixt the J and L.The learnèd say, our English tongueOn Gothic beams is built and hung.Then why the solid fabric piece,With motley ornaments from Greece?Her lettered despots had no bowels,For northern consonants and vowels;The Roman and the Greek grammarianDeem’d us, and all our words barbarian;’Till those hard words, and harder blows,Had silenced all our haughty foes;And proud they were to kiss the sandals(Shoes we had none) of Goths and Vandals.”

She wrote a satire on William Cobbett, M.P., for Oldham, which was extremely popular amongst politicians at the period it was penned. This is not surprising, for it contains some most amusing lines. It is entitled “The Speech of the Member for Odium.”

In the lighter vein she produced some verses in imitation of the poetry of Wordsworth.

“There is a river clear and fair,’Tis neither broad nor narrow;It winds a little here and there,It winds about like any hare;And then it takes as straight a courseAs on the turnpike road a horse,Or through the air an arrow.The trees that grow upon the shore,Have grown a hundred years or more,So long, there is no knowing.Old Daniel Dobson does not know,When first these trees began to grow;But still they grew, and grew, and grew,As if they’d nothing else to do,But ever to be growing.The impulses of air and skyHave reared their stately stems so high,And clothed their boughs with green;Their leaves the dews of evening quaff, —And when the wind blows loud and keen,I’ve seen the jolly timbers laugh,And shake their sides with merry glee —Wagging their heads in mockery.Fix’d are their feet in solid earth,Where winds can never blow;But visitings of deeper birthHave reached their roots below.For they have gained the river’s brink,And of the living waters drink.There’s little Will, a five year’s child —He is my youngest boy;To look on eyes so fair and wild,It is a very joy: —He hath conversed with sun and shower,And dwelt with every idle flower,As fresh and gay as them.He loiters with the briar rose,The blue-bells are his play-fellows,That dance upon their slender stem.And I have said, my little WillWhy should not he continue stillA thing of Nature’s rearing?A thing beyond the world’s control —A living vegetable soul, —No human sorrow fearing.It were a blessed sight to seeThat child become a willow tree,His brother trees among.He’d be four time as tall as me,And live three times as long.”

It was related by the Rev. William Harness, who did much to make known the merits of Miss Fanshawe’s works, that when the foregoing lines were read to a distinguished admirer of Wordsworth’s poetry, she thought them beautiful, and wondered why the poet had never shown them to her!

Miss Fanshawe’s fame rests on the authorship of the celebrated riddle on the letter H, which has frequently been attributed to Byron, and appeared in more than one edition of his poems. At a party held one evening at the house of her friend, Mr. Hope, of Deep Dene, the conversation turned upon the abuse of the aspirate. After the guests had withdrawn, Miss Fanshawe retired to her room and composed her noted poem. Next morning she read it at the breakfast table, much to the surprise and delight of the company. It is as follows: —

“’Twas in heaven pronounced, and ’twas muttered in hell,And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell;On the confines of earth ’twas permitted to rest,And the depths of the ocean its presence confest.’Twill be found in the sphere, when ’tis riven asunder,Be seen in the lightning, and heard in the thunder.’Twas allotted to man with his earliest breath,Attends at his birth, and awaits him in death,Presides o’er his happiness, honour, and health,Is the prop of his house, and the end of his wealth.In the heaps of the miser ’tis hoarded with care,But is sure to be lost on his prodigal heir,It begins every hope, every wish it must bound,With the husbandman toils, and with monarchs is crown’d,Without it the soldier, the seaman may roam,But woe to the wretch who expels it from home!In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found,Nor e’en in the whirlpool of passion be drown’d,’Twill not soften the heart; but though deaf to the ear,It will make it acutely and instantly hear.Yet in shade let it rest like a delicate flower,Ah, breathe on it softly – it dies in an hour.

Some other riddles and charades appear in her collected poems, but none are of equal merit to the riddle on the letter H.

Our next example bears the title of an “Ode”: —

“Lo! where the gaily vestur’d throng,Fair learning’s train, are seen,Wedg’d in close ranks her walls along,And up her benches green.2Unfolded to their mental eyeThy awful form, Sublimity!The moral teacher shows —Sublimity of Silence born,And Solitude ’mid caves forlornAnd dimly vision’d woes;Or Stedfast Worth, that inly greatMocks the malignity of faith.While whisper’d pleasure’s dulcet soundMurmurs the crowded room around,And Wisdom, borne on Fashion’s pinions,Exulting hails her new dominions.Oh! both on me your influence shed,Dwell in my heart and deck my head!Where’er a broader, browner shadeThe shaggy beaver throws,And with the ample feather’s aidO’er canopies the nose;Where’er with smooth and silken pile,Ling’ring in solemn pause awhile,The crimson velvet glows;From some high benches giddy brink,Clinton with me begins to think(As bolt upright we sit)That dress, like dogs, should have its day,That beavers are too hot for May,And velvets quite unfit.Then taste, in maxims sweet, I drawFrom her unerring lip;How light, how simple are the straw,How delicate the chip!Hush’d is the speaker’s powerful voice,The audience melt away,I fly to fix my final choiceAnd bless th’ instructive day.The milliner officious poursOf hats and caps her ready stores,The unbought elegance of spring;Some wide, disclose the full round face,Some shadowy, lend a modest graceAnd stretch their sheltering wing.Here clustering grapes appear to shedTheir luscious juices on the head,And cheat the longing eye;So round the Phrygian monarch hungFair fruits that from his parchèd tongueFor ever seem’d to fly.Here early blooms the summer rose;Her ribbons wreathe fantastic bows;Here plays gay plumage of a thousand dyes —Visions of beauty, spare my aching eyes!Ye cumbrous fashions, crowd not on my head!Mine be the chip of purest white,Swan-like, and as her feathers lightWhen on the still wave spread;And let it wear the graceful dress,Of unadornèd simpleness.Ah! frugal wish; ah! pleasing thought;Ah! hope indulged in vain;Of modest fancy chiefly boughtA stranger yet to Payne.3With undissembled grief I tell, —For sorrow never comes too late, —The simplest bonnet in Pall MallIs sold for £1 8s.To Calculation’s sober view,That searches ev’ry plan,Who keep the old, or buy the new,Shall end where they began.Alike the shabby and the gayMust meet the sun’s meridian ray;The air, the dust, the damp.This, shall the sudden shower despoil;That slow decay by gradual soil;Those, envious boxes cramp.Who will, their squander’d gold may pay;Who will, our taste deride;We’ll scorn the fashion of the dayWith philosophic pride.Methinks we thus, in accents low,Might Sydney Smith address,‘Poor moralist! and what art thou,Who never spoke of dress!’‘Thy mental hero never hungSuspended on a tailor’s tongue,In agonising doubt;Thy tale no flutt’ring female show’d,Who languish’d for the newest mode,Yet dar’d to live without.’”

In Miss Mary Russell Mitford’s “Recollections of a Literary Life” are some genial allusions to Miss Fanshawe. “Besides,” wrote Miss Mitford, “her remarkable talent for graceful and polished pleasantry, whether in prose or verse, Miss Catherine Fanshawe was admirable as a letter-writer, and as a designer in almost every style.” Her drawings and etchings met with praise from those capable of judging their merits.

After Miss Fanshawe’s death, in 1834, her friend, the Rev. William Harness, printed for private circulation a small collection of her poems, expressing his wish “that some enduring memorial may exist of one who, in her varied accomplishments, her acute perception of the beautiful, her playful fancy, her charming conversation, her gentle and retiring manners, her lively sympathy with the sorrows and joys of others, and above all, her simple piety, was so cherished a member of a society, not very extended but intimately united by a common love of literature, and art, and science, which existed in London at the close of the last and the opening of the present century, and which, perhaps, taken for all in all, has never been surpassed.” In 1876, Mr. Basil Montagu Pickering issued “The Literary Remains of Catherine Maria Fanshawe,” with notes by the Rev. William Harness. Doubtless his admiration of the productions of the author prompted him to publish the volume. Only two hundred and fifty copies were printed. Mr. Pickering is entitled to the gratitude of lovers of choice poetry for publishing the charming volume.

A Popular Song Writer: Mrs. John Hunter

The name of Mrs. John Hunter stands high on the roll of English song writers. She is one of the most gifted women in her particular literary field Hull has produced, and it is most remarkable that she is not noticed in any local work devoted to history or biography. Her maiden name was Anne Home, and she was the eldest daughter of Robert Home, of Greenlaw, Berwickshire, surgeon of Burgoyne’s Regiment of Light Horse, and subsequently a physician in Savoy. He greatly displeased his parents by marrying at an early age, and on this account they declined to assist him in the outset of his professional career. He proceeded to Hull, and practised as a surgeon. In the year 1742, Anne, his eldest daughter, was born. She received a liberal education, and at an early age displayed considerable poetical gifts. Her early work found its way into the periodicals, and in one entitled the Lark, published at Edinburgh, at the age of twenty-three years, she contributed her well-known song, “The Flowers of the Forest,” and a song we quote as a specimen of her style: —