Look not on her with eyes of scorn—
Dorothy Q. was a lady born!
Ay, since the galloping Normans came,
England's annals have known her name;
And still to the three-hilled rebel town
Dear is that ancient name's renown,
For many a civic wreath they won,
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.
O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.,
Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
Such a gift as never a king
Save to daughter or son might bring—
All my tenure of heart and hand,
All my title to house and land;
Mother and sister, and child and wife,
And joy and sorrow, and death and life.
What if a hundred years ago
Those close-shut lips had answered, no,
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name;
And under the folds that look so still
The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill
Should I be I, or would it be
One tenth another to nine tenths me?
Soft is the breath of a maiden's yes;
Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast,
Through all the battles of wave and blast,
And never an echo of speech or song
That lives in the babbling air so long!
There were tones in the voice that whispered then
You may hear to-day in a hundred men.
O lady and lover, how faint and far
Your images hover, and here we are,
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,
Edward's and Dorothy's—all their own—
A goodly record for time to show
Of a syllable spoken so long ago!
Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive,
For the tender whisper that bade me live?
It shall be a blessing, my little maid,
I will heal the stab of the Redcoat's blade,
And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame,
And gild with a rhyme your household name,
So you shall smile on us, brave and bright,
As first you greeted the morning's light,
And live untroubled by woes and fears,
Through a second youth of a hundred years.
This Dorothy Quincy, it is interesting to note, was the aunt of a second Dorothy Quincy, who married Governor Hancock. The Wendells were of Dutch descent.
Evert Jansen Wendell, who came from East Friesland in 1645, was the original settler in Albany. From the church records, we find that he was the Regerendo Dijaken in 1656, and upon one of the windows of the old Dutch church in Albany, the arms of the Wendells—a ship riding at two anchors—were represented in stained glass. Very little is known of these early ancestors, but the name is still an influential one among the old Knickerbocker families.
Early in the eighteenth century, Abraham and Jacob Wendell left their Albany home and came to Boston. It is said that Jacob (the great-grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes) fell in love with his future wife, the daughter of Doctor James Oliver, when she was only nine years of age. Seeing her at play, he was so impressed by her beauty and grace that, like the Jacob of old, he willingly waited the flight of years. Twelve children blessed this happy union, and the youngest daughter married William Phillips, the first mayor of Boston, and the father of Wendell Phillips.
Fair cousin, Wendell P.,