No sooner was Paine dead than the ghoul sat gloating upon him. I found in the Rush papers a letter from Cheetham (July 31st) to Benjamin Rush: "Since Mr. Paine's arrival in this city from Washington, when on his way you very properly avoided him, his life, keeping the lowest company, has been an uninterrupted scene of filth, vulgarity, and drunkenness. As to the reports, that on his deathbed he had something like compunctious visitings of conscience with regard to his deistical writings and opinions, they are altogether groundless. He resisted very angrily, and with a sort of triumphant and obstinate pride, all attempts to draw him from those doctrines. Much as you must have seen in the course of your professional practice of everything that is offensive in the poorest and most depraved of the species, perhaps you have met with nothing excelling the miserable condition of Mr. Paine. He had scarcely any visitants. It may indeed be said that he was totally neglected and forgotten. Even Mrs. Bournville (sic) a woman, I cannot say a Lady, whom he brought with him from Paris, the wife of a Parisian of that name, seemed desirous of hastening his death. He died at Greenwich, in a small room he had hired in a very obscure house. He was hurried to his grave with hardly an attending person. An ill-natured epitaph, written on him in 1796, when it was supposed he was dead, incorrectly describes the latter end of his life. He
"Blasphemes the Almighty, lives in filth like a hog,
Is abandoned in death and interr'd like a dog."
The object of this letter was to obtain from Rush, for publication, some abuse of Paine; but the answer honored Paine, save for his heresy, and is quoted by freethinkers as a tribute.
Within a year the grave opened for Cheetham also, and he sank into it branded by the law as the slanderer of a woman's honor, and scourged by the community as a traitor in public life.
The day of Paine's death was a day of judgment. He had not been struck blind or dumb; Satan had not carried him off; he had lived beyond his threescore years and ten and died peacefully in his bed. The self-appointed messengers of Zeus had managed to vex this Prometheus who brought fire to men, but could not persuade him to whine for mercy, nor did the predicted thunderbolts come. This immunity of Thomas Paine brought the deity of dogma into a dilemma. It could be explained only on the the theory of an apology made and accepted by the said deity. Plainly there had to be a recantation somewhere. Either Paine had to recant or Dogma had to recant.
The excitement was particularly strong among the Quakers, who regarded Paine as an apostate Quaker, and perhaps felt compromised by his desire to be buried among them. Willett Hicks told Gilbert Vale that he had been beset by pleading questions. "Did thee never hear him call on Christ?" "As for money," said Hicks, "I could have had any sum." There was found, later on, a Quakeress, formerly a servant in the family of Willett Hicks, not proof against such temptations. She pretended that she was sent to carry some delicacy to Paine, and heard him cry "Lord Jesus have mercy upon me"; she also heard him declare "if the Devil has ever had any agency in any work he has had it in my writing that book [the 'Age of Reason']."* Few souls are now so belated as to credit such stories; but my readers may form some conception of the mental condition of the community in which Paine died from the fact that such absurdities were printed, believed, spread through the world. The Quaker servant became a heroine, as the one divinely appointed witness of Tom Paine's recantation.
* "Life and Gospel Labors of Stephen Grellet." This
"valuable young Friend," as Stephen Grellet calls her, had
married a Quaker named Hinsdale. Grellet, a native of
France, convert from Voltaire, led the anti-Hicksites, and
was led by his partisanship to declare that Elias promised
him to suppress his opinions! The cant of the time was that
"deism might do to live by but not to die by." But it had
been announced in Paine's obituaries that "some days
previous to his demise he had an interview with some Quaker
gentlemen on the subject [of burial in their graveyard] but
as he declined a renunciation of his deistical opinions his
anxious wishes were not complied with." But ten years later,
when Hicks's deism was spreading, death-bed terrors seemed
desirable, and Mary (Roscoe) Hinsdale, formerly Grellet's
servant also, came forward to testify that the recantation
refused by Paine to the "Quaker gentlemen," even for a much
desired end, had been previously confided to her for no
object at all! The story was published by one Charles
Collins, a Quaker, who afterwards admitted to Gilbert Vale
his doubts of its truth, adding "some of our friends believe
she indulges in opiates." (Vale, p. 186).
But in the end it was that same Mary that hastened the resurrection of Thomas Paine. The controversy as to whether Mary was or was not a calumniator; whether orthodoxy was so irresistible that Paine must needs surrender at last to a servant-girl who told him she had thrown his book into the fire; whether she was to be believed against her employer, who declared she never saw Paine at all; all this kept Paine alive. Such boiling up from the abysses, of vulgar credulity, grotesque superstition, such commanding illustrations of the Age of Unreason, disgusted thoughtful Christians.*
* The excitement of the time was well illustrated in a
notable caricature by the brilliant artist John Wesley
Jarvis. Paine is seen dead, his pillow "Common Sense," his
hand holding a manuscript, "A rap on the knuckles for John
Mason." On his arm is the label, "Answer to Bishop Watson."
Under him is written: "A man who devoted his whole life to
the attainment of two objects—rights of man and freedom of
conscience—had his vote denied when living, and was denied
a grave when dead!" The Catholic Father O'Brian (a
notorious drunkard), with very red nose, kneels over Paine,
exclaiming, "Oh you ugly drunken beast!" The Rev. John
Mason (Presbyterian) stamps on Paine, exclaiming, "Ah, Tom!
Tom! thou 't get thy frying in hell; they 'll roast thee
like a herring.
"They 'll put thee in the furnace hot,
And on thee bar the door:
How the devils all will laugh
To hear thee burst and roar!"
The Rev. Dr. Livingston kicks at Paine's head, exclaiming,
"How are the mighty fallen,
Right fol-de-riddle-lol!"
Bishop Hobart kicks the feet, tinging:
"Right fol-de-rol, let's dance and sing,
Tom is dead, God save the king—
The infidel now low doth lie—
Sing Hallelujah—hallelujah!"
A Quaker turns away with a shovel, saying,
"I 'll not bury thee."
Such was the religion which was supposed by some to have won Paine's heart at last, but which, when mirrored in the controversy over his death, led to a tremendous reaction. The division in the Quaker Society swiftly developed. In December, 1826, there was an afternoon meeting of Quakers of a critical kind, some results of which led directly to the separation. The chief speaker was Elias Hicks, but it is also recorded that "Willet Hicks was there, and had a short testimony, which seemed to be impressive on the meeting." He had stood in silence beside the grave of the man whose chances in the next world he had rather take than those of any man in New York; but now the silence is broken.*