Anne Bradstreet and Her Time

by Helen Campbell

Few epitaphs hold as simple truth. "He was a man," says Felt, "of deep discernment, whom neither wealth nor honor could allure from duty. He poised with an equal balance the authority of the King, and the liberty of the people. Sincere in Religion and pure in his life, he overcame and left the world."

The Assembly was in session on the day of his death and, "in consideration of the long and extraordinary service of Simon Bradstreet, late Governor, voted L100, toward defraying the charges of his interment."

They buried him in Salem where his tomb may still be seen in the old Charter Street burying-ground, though there is grave doubt if even the dust of its occupant could be found therein. His memory had passed, and his services meant little to the generation which a hundred years later, saw one of the most curious transactions of the year 1794. That an ancestor of Nathanael Hawthorne should have been a party to it, holds a suggestion of the tendencies which in the novelist's case, gave him that interest in the sombre side of life, and the relish for the somewhat ghoul-like details, on which he lingered with a fascination his readers are compelled to share. On an old paper still owned by a gentleman of Salem, one may read this catastrophe which has, in spite of court orderings and stately municipal burial, forced Simon Bradstreet's remains into the same obscurity which hides those of his wife.

"Ben, son of Col B. Pickman, sold ye tomb, being claimed by him for a small expence his father was at in repairing it aft ye yr 1793 Or 1794 to one Daniel Hathorne, who now holds it." Having taken possession, Daniel Hawthorne, with no further scruples cleaned out the tomb, throwing the remains of the old Governor and his family into a hole not far off. The New England of Simon Bradstreet's day is as utterly lost as his own dust. Yet many of the outward forms still remain, while its spirit is even more evident and powerful.

Wherever the New England element is found—and where is it not found?—its presence means thrift, thoroughness, precision and prudence. Every circumstance of life from the beginning has taught the people how to extract the utmost value from every resource. Dollars have come slowly and painfully, and have thus, in one sense, a fictitious worth; but penuriousness is almost unknown, and the hardest working man or woman gives freely where a need is really felt. The ideal is still for the many, more powerful than the real. The conscientiousness and painful self-consciousness of the early days still represses the joyful or peaceful side of life, and makes angles more to be desired than curves. Reticence is the New England habit. Affection, intense as it may be, gives and demands small expression. Good-will must be taken for granted, and little courtesies and ameliorations in daily life are treated with disdain. "Duty" is the watchword for most, and no matter how strange the path, if this word be lined above it, it is trodden unquestioned.

As in the beginning, the corner-stone still "rests upon a book." The eagerness for knowledge shown in every act of the early colonial years has intensified, till "to know" has become a demon driving one to destruction. Eternity would seem to have been abolished, so eager are the learners to use every second of time. Overwork, mental and physical, has been the portion of the New England woman from the beginning. Climate and all natural conditions fostered an alertness unknown to the moist and equable air of the old home. While for the South there was a long perpetuation of the ease of English life, and the adjective which a Southern woman most desires to hear before her name is "sweet"; the New England woman chooses "bright," and the highest mark of approval is found in that rather aggressive word. Tin pans, scoured to that point of polish which meets the New England necessity for thoroughness, are "bright," and the near observer blinks as he suddenly comes upon them in the sun. A bit of looking-glass handled judiciously by the small boy, has the same quality, and is warranted to disconcert the most placid temperament; and so the New England woman is apt to have jagged edges and a sense of too much light for the situation. "Sweetness and light" is the desirable combination, and may come in the new union of North and South. The wise woman is she who best unites the two. Yet, arraign New England as we may—and there are many unmentioned counts in the indictment—it is certain that to her we owe the best elements in our national life. "The Decadence of New England" is a popular topic at present. It is the fashion to sneer at her limitations. Our best novelists delight in giving her barrenness, her unloveliness in all individual life—her provincialism and conceit, and strenuous money-getting.

"It is a good place to be born in," they say, "provided you emigrate early," and then they proceed to analyze her very prominent weaknesses, and to suppress as carefully as possible just judgment, either of past or present. Her scenery they cannot dispense with. Her very inadequacies and absurdities of climate involve a beauty which unites Northern sharpness of outline with Southern grace of form and color. The short and fervid summer owns charms denied a longer one. Spring comes uncertainly and lingeringly, but it holds in many of its days an exquisite and brooding tenderness no words can render, as elusive as that half- defined outline on budding twigs against the sky—not leaves, but the shadow and promise of leaves to be. The turf of the high pasture-lands springing under the foot; the smell of sweet fern and brake; the tinkle of cow-bells among the rocks, or the soft patter of feet as the sheep run toward the open bars—what New England boy or girl does not remember and love, till loving and remembering are over for the life we live here? Yet in all the ferment of old and new beliefs—the strange departures from a beaten track—the attitude always, not of those who have found, but of those who seek, there has ever been the promise of a better day. The pathos which underlies all record of human life is made plain, and a tender sadness is in the happiest lines. And this is the real story of New England. Her best has passed on. What the future holds for her it is impossible to say, or what strange development may come from this sudden and overmastering Celtic element, pervading even the remotest hill-towns. But one possession remains intact: the old graveyards where the worthies of an elder day sleep quietly under stones decaying and crumbling faster than their memories. It all comes to dust in the end, but even dust holds promise. Growth is in every particle, and whatever time may bring—for the past it is a flower that "smells sweet and blossoms in the dust"—for present and future, a steady march toward the better day, whose twilight is our sunshine.

INDEX.

Agawam
Andover, Mass.
Andros, Governor
Arbella, the
Bay Psalm Book
Belcher, Governor
Berkeley, Sir William
Bibles, Geneva
Blaxton, Rev. Mr.
Bradford, William
Bradstreet, Simon
" Anne
" Dorothy
" Dudley
" Hannah
" John
" Mercy
" Sarah
" Simon, Jr.
Buchanan, Mr.
Cage for Offenders
Cambridge, Mass.
" Synod of
Cattle keeping
Charlestown, Mass
Chapman, Version of Homer
Church Music
Chests, Family
Clapp, Roger
Compton, William, Lord
Coddington, Rev. Mr
Cotton, John
" Seaborn
Contemplations, a Poem
Cromwell, Oliver
Criticism, Personal
Dennison, Daniel
Digby, Sir Kenelm
Dodd, Puritan minister
Downing, Emanual
Drinking Customs
Dryden, John
" Erasmus
Du Bartas
Dunkirkers
Dudley, Anne
" Dorothy
" John
" Joseph
" Paul
" Robert
" Roger
" Thomas
" Samuel
Education in New England
Eliot, Rev. John
Elizabeth, Queen
Endicott, Rev. John
Fire, in Andover
Firmin, Giles
Folger, Peter
Food in New England
Four Ages of Man, (poem)
Four Elements, The, (poem)
Four Humours of Man, (poem)
Four Monarchies, (poem)
Four Seasons, (poem)
Fulling Mill
Furniture, Colonial
Galton
Gardener, Capt. Joseph
Goffe, Thomas
Grandmothers, Puritan
Harvard College
Hathorn, Daniel
" William
Hawthorne, Nathanael
Harvey, Discovery of Circulation of the Blood
Higginson, Rev. Francis
Hospitality in New England
Hooker, Rev. Thomas
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
House-lots
Homes, Nonconformist
Hutchinson, Anne
" Colonel
" Mrs. Lucy
Hurlstone, Mr.
Hubbard
Hunting
Indians
Inns
Ipswich, Mass
Jamestown, Va.
Johnson, Lady Arbella
" Isaac
" Rev. Mr.
Labor, Scarcity of
Lempingham, Castle of
Laud, Bishop
Law in the Colony
Libertines
Light, the Inward
Lincoln, Earl of
Lowe, Rev. Mr.
Marbury, Thomas
Marriage
Masson's Life of Milton
Mansell, Mt.
Mather, Cotton
Medical Profession in Mass.
Meditations, Divine and Moral
Michaud
Milton, John
Montaigne, Essays of
New England
Nonconformists
Northumberland, Duke of
Norton, John
Nowell, Rev. Mr.
Pareus, David
Parker, Thomas
Pemble, William
Peters, Hugh
Phipps, Sir William
Pearce, William
Pewter Plate
Pelham
Players
Poems, Anne Bradstreet's
Poets, American
Poole, Mrs. Elizabeth
Preston, Dr.
Puritan
Puritanism
Quarles, the Emblems of
Quakers in New England
Renascence
Revolution, a Spiritual
Religious Reflections
Road-making
Robinson, Rev. John
Rogers, John
Rupert, Prince
Ruskin, John
Russ, Goodman and Goodwife
Salem
Saltonstall, Sir Robert
Schools, Andover
" New England
Servants, English
" Indian

End of Project Gutenberg's Anne Bradstreet and Her Time, by Helen Campbell