"Portia."
It was all the more lonely for Mrs. Adams that the winter was a severe one: "the sublimest winter" she ever saw. In December and January there fell the highest snow known in forty years; all through January and February, the Bay was frozen over, so that no vessel could pass through for a month. "We had neither snow, rain, nor the least thaw. It has been remarkably healthy, and we have lived along very comfortably, though many people have suffered greatly for food."
In the long winter days, how eagerly Mrs. Adams must have watched for the incoming mails! I do not know what were the postal arrangements of Braintree; very likely there were none. In Boston, the Post Office was opened every Monday morning from the middle of March to the middle of September, "at 7 of the clock, to deliver out all letters that do come by the post till twelve o'clock; from twelve to two o'clock, being dinner-time, no office kept; and from two o'clock in the afternoon to six o'clock the office will be open to take in all letters to go by the Southern and Western post."
A single letter cost one shilling to send; this rate held to the middle of the nineteenth century. Beside letters, the faithful Portia sent to her John all the papers and news-letters she could lay hands on.
Boston by this time had several newspapers. The first of these, appearing as early as 1704, was the Boston News-Letter, "Published by Authority." For some time this little sheet held the field alone; but in 1721 appeared the Boston Gazette, and the New England Courant. In both these, James Franklin, Benjamin's elder brother, had a hand; indeed, the Courant was his own paper, started when he was discharged from the staff of the Gazette. He seems to have been a quarrelsome fellow, was twice arraigned for contempt, and once imprisoned. Benjamin, then a boy of sixteen, astute from his cradle, contributed by stealth to the Courant more or less; but slipped away to Philadelphia without getting into trouble.
These papers, doubtless, Portia sent regularly to her John, who received them as often as Fate or the enemy allowed.
Now and then Mrs. Adams took her chaise and went into town to make some visits in Boston or Cambridge.
"Present my compliments to Mr. Dana," she writes. "Tell him I have called upon his lady, and we enjoyed an afternoon of sweet communion. I find she would not be averse to taking a voyage, should he be continued abroad. She groans most bitterly, and is irreconcilable to his absence. I am a mere philosopher to her. I am inured, but not hardened, to the painful portion. Shall I live to see it otherwise?"
This was written in July, 1780. We may fancy Madam Abigail setting out on this expedition, stately and demure in hoop petticoat and high-heeled shoes. We cannot be sure whether she wore a Leghorn hat or a calash. Here I pause for a moment; I remember a calash, in my childhood. It was made of thin green silk, shirred on pieces of rattan or whalebone, placed two or three inches apart. These were drawn together at the back by a cape, and thus, bent into hoop-shape, could be drawn so far over the face as to cover it entirely. The "bashful bonnet," the thing was called; certainly, no headdress ever was uglier, but it must have been "matchless for the complexion," as Madam Patti says of a certain well-known soap.
On the whole, knowing what the calash looked like, I should prefer to think that Madam Abigail wore a Leghorn hat over her fine dark hair. Leghorns were costly. I have heard of their costing twenty-five or even fifty dollars: but they lasted for years and years. It was not till some years after this that American women began to make their own bonnet straw. It became the rage, both here and in England, and women vied with each other in the amount and quality of their "straw-work." Hats and bonnets were not enough; women wore "straw-coats" or paillasses; these were made of "sarcenet, calico, or linen, and ornamented profusely with straw." A writer in the European Magazine exclaims: