* Engineer Randel (orthodox), in his topographical report to
the Clerk of the City Council (1864), mentions that the
"very worthy mechanic," Amasa Wordsworth, who saw Paine
daily, told him "there was no truth in such report, and that
Thomas Paine had declined saying anything on that subject
[religion]." "Paine," testifies Dr. Francis, "clung to his
infidelity to the last moment of his natural life." Dr.
Francis (orthodox) heard that Paine yielded to King Alcohol,
but says Cheetham wrote with "settled malignity," and
suspects "sinister motives" in his "strictures on the fruits
of unbelief in the degradation of the wretched Paine."
Of what his principles had cost him Paine had near his end a reminder that cut him to the heart. Albert Gallatin had remained his friend, but his connections, the Fews and Nicholsons, had ignored the author they once idolized. The woman for whom he had the deepest affection, in America, had been Kitty Nicholson, now Mrs. Few. Henry Adams, in his biography of Gallatin, says: "When confined to his bed with his last illness he [Paine] sent for Mrs. Few, who came to see him, and when they parted she spoke some words of comfort and religious hope. Poor Paine only turned his face to the wall, and kept silence." What is Mr. Adams' authority for this? According to Rick-man, Sherwin, and Vale, Mr. and Mrs. Few came of their own accord, and "Mrs. Few expressed a wish to renew their former friendship." Paine said to her, "very impressively, 'You have neglected me, and I beg that you will leave the room.' Mrs. Few went into the garden and wept bitterly." I doubt this tradition also, but it was cruelly tantalizing for his early friend, after ignoring him six years, to return with Death.
If, amid tortures of this kind, the annoyance of fanatics and the "Painites" who came to watch them, and the paroxysms of pain, the sufferer found relief in stimulants, the present writer can only reflect with satisfaction that such resource existed. For some time no food would stay on his stomach. In such weakness and helplessness he was for a week or so almost as miserable as the Christian spies could desire, and his truest friends were not sorrowful when the peace of death approached. After the years in which the stories of Paine's wretched end have been accumulating, now appears the testimony of the Catholic lady,—persons who remember Madame Bonneville assure me that she was a perfect lady,—that Paine's mind was active to the last, that shortly before death he made a humorous retort to Dr. Romaine, that he died after a tranquil night.
Paine died at eight o'clock on the morning of June 8, 1809. Shortly before, two clergymen had invaded his room, and so soon as they spoke about his opinions Paine said: "Let me alone; good morning!" Madame Bonneville asked if he was satisfied with the treatment he had received in her house, and he said "Oh yes." These were the last words of Thomas Paine.
On June 10th Paine's friends assembled to look on his face for the last time. Madame Bonneville took a rose from her breast and laid it on that of her dead benefactor. His adherents were busy men, and mostly poor; they could not undertake the then difficult journey (nearly twenty-five miles) to the grave beyond New Rochelle. Of the cortège that followed Paine a contemptuous account was printed (Aug. 7th) in the London Packet:
"Extract of a letter dated June 20th, Philadelphia, written by a gentleman lately returned from a tour: 'On my return from my journey, when I arrived near Harlem, on York island, I met the funeral of Tom Paine on the road. It was going on to East Chester. The followers were two negroes, the next a carriage with six drunken Irishmen, then a riding chair with two men in it, one of whom was asleep, and then an Irish Quaker on horseback. I stopped my sulkey to ask the Quaker what funeral it was; he said it was Paine, and that his friends as well as his enemies were all glad that he was gone, for he had tired his friends out by his intemperance and frailties. I told him that Paine had done a great deal of mischief in the world, and that, if there was any purgatory, he certainly would have a good share of it before the devil would let him go. The Quaker replied, he would sooner take his chance with Paine than any man in New York, on that score. He then put his horse on a trot, and left me.'"
The funeral was going to West Chester; one of the vehicles contained Madame Bonneville and her children; and the Quaker was not an Irishman. I have ascertained that a Quaker did follow Paine, and that it was Willett Hicks. Hicks, who has left us his testimony that Paine was "a good man, and an honest man," may have said that Paine's friends were glad that he was gone, for it was only humane to so feel, but all said about "intemperance and frailties" is doubtless a gloss of the correspondent, like the "drunken Irishmen" substituted for Madame Bonneville and her family.
Could the gentleman of the sulky have appreciated the historic dignity of that little cortège he would have turned his horse's head and followed it. Those two negroes, travelling twenty-five miles on foot, represented the homage of a race for whose deliverance Paine had pleaded from his first essay written in America to his recent entreaty for the President's intervention in behalf of the slaughtered negroes of Domingo.* One of those vehicles bore the wife of an oppressed French author, and her sons, one of whom was to do gallant service to this country in the War of 1812, the other to explore the unknown West. Behind the Quaker preacher, who would rather take his chance in the next world with Paine than with any man in New York, was following invisibly another of his family and name, who presently built up Hicksite Quakerism, the real monument of Paine, to whom unfriendly Friends refused a grave.
* "On the last day men shall wear On their heads the dust,
As ensign and as ornament Of their lowly trust."—Hafis.
The grand people of America were not there, the clergy were not there; but beside the negroes stood the Quaker preacher and the French Catholic woman. Madame Bonneville placed her son Benjamin—afterwards General in the United States army—at one end of the grave, and standing herself at the other end, cried, as the earth fell on the coffin: "Oh, Mr. Paine, my son stands here as testimony of the gratitude of America, and I for France!"