The Speckled Monster (22 page)

Leafing quickly through the pages of Latin, English, mathematical equations, and astronomical charts, in Vol. 29, No. 339, for April-June 1714, Mather at long last found, on page sixty-two, what he had been yearning to see:
An extract of several Letters from Cotton Mather, D.D., to John Woodward, M.D., and Richard Waller, Esq
.

Scanning it, he had felt hot pleasure and pain suffusing across his skin—so sharp that he can feel it again, even in memory. True, they had printed his diligently researched and reported letters, but they had also mutilated them, whittling a hundred pages down to ten: Here, cast up like so much flotsam and jetsam amid the wreckage, were brief, teasing details of giants' bones found buried deep in the earth near Albany, Indian medicinal plants, bird behavior, the force of imagination, monstrous births (“nothing very observable,” someone, presumably the publisher, Dr. Edmund Halley, had commented), people cured of wounds that should have been mortal (“In this, little of philosophical information”). Here were his Indian time-keeping, rainbows, mock suns, prophetic dreams, rattlesnakes, thunder and lightning, earthquakes, hail big as hens' eggs, ice storms, exploding trees, and people living to great old age.

Burning and freezing with the honor of it, with the horror of it, he turned the page. And read:

 

A twinge of doubt, a flush of fascination. He read on, greedily. Pangs of pride and envy and disappointment swirled through him: his long-researched, carefully written series of thirteen letters had been chopped down to ten pages; Timonius's single offering had been “extracted” to ten and a half. If only he had thought to include that bit of knowledge, which after all, he had been privy to long before Timonius ferreted it out from Greek hags: perhaps he, too, would have been printed at length, without the sniping commentary. But he turned from that thought; he would not rail against Dr. Timonius. He would try harder, labor longer and more clearly, on his own part.

It had taken him a while, but he had an intimation of what he must do: he would write another series of letters.

It could only be seen as a glorious, even wondrous, challenge to his spirit, a blessing indeed, guarding him from becoming too proud.

In revenge for evil,
Do Good
. That was when he knew what he must do. Not only would he return to writing letters, he would comment as proper upon the other submissions to the
Philosophical Transactions
.

Now he turns to that task:

 

Five gone in two weeks. He cannot help counting them over in his head: his beloved second wife, Elizabeth, her two-week-old twins, Martha and Eleazar, born prematurely in the labor of nursing and the oncoming fever of her own terrible bout with measles, two-and-a-half-year-old Jerusha, and their maidservant. He remembers drawing up a list of his children. A terrible list. Of fifteen, nine dead.

He fears it will get worse, oh yes, he fears it. His favorite, Katharine, his Katy, twenty-five and lovely, a
Lamb
inexpressibly dear, is not only a fine cook, exquisite needleworker, and songbird, but his companion in study. Fluent in Hebrew and Latin, a composer of pious poetry, she is his secretary and scribe. She survived the measles, but for two months now she has been declining daily into a consumption—she is succumbing, in other words, to tuberculosis.

He wrenches his mind back to the smallpox.

 

The last time it came into the town, in 1702, he writes, he urged the physicians to try Dr. Sydenham's cool regimen, which he had seen discussed in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
. He is satisfied, he adds, that through his urgings, many lives were saved.

He flows on with his description of the treatment, forgetting utterly that he got it from the Royal Society in the first place, so the Fellows' need for a rehash is presumably minimal. He has fallen in love, as he so often does, with the very act of writing: with the way that words flow from him in a glory of speed, the thoughts bending, curling, curving at will, stretching to their utmost, but never breaking. So different from the torture of speaking, of smoothing through the stutter that once tempted him, so strongly, to deny the ministry and follow medicine. But he had proved strong enough—with the Lord's help—to deny the lure of ease and pleasure, to take the thorny path of righteousness.

 

Onesimus, Mather sighs to himself, scratching himself with his quill, leaving a faint scribbling of ink on his chin. He will have to do something about Onesimus. He has tried reasoning, cajoling, and beating his servant, and has returned once again to reasoning. But still, the man exhibits some actions of a thievish aspect: he will take small things when he wants them—needs them, as he says. Beads from a broken bracelet. Buttons. A chicken. Herbs from the garden. Bits of bright-colored cloth. This, even though he is allowed to work for himself outside the Mather home, and to keep his earnings, too, so long as some of them are put to pious purposes.

But then, his piety, it must be said, at times appears shockingly—yes, quite shockingly—lax. He still cannot, for instance, be made to see the blessing of losing his small son Onesimulus to the bosom of the Lord last March, before the wicked world had a real chance to corrupt the boy. Furthermore, he is proving a great disappointment as a servant. Growing useless, frorward, disobedient, rebellious. What is the word he seeks? Mather can sense it hiding there, peeping out behind some veil of darkness in his mind. He waits, with the cunning of a cat, and then pounces.
Immorigerous
.

Perhaps he should dispose of Onesimus and supply his family with a better servant. He frowns, bites his lip. Such a grave matter requires
Caution,
he thinks, much
Prayer,
much
Humiliation
before the Lord. Meantime, he has another project to finish.

He turns back to his letter. To the problem of smallpox. The mystery of inoculation. It works, of that he is certain. What he would like to know is, what does the Royal Society intend to do about it?

3

THE BEAUTY OF THE SEA

THE ship was sighted homeward bound on October 28, 1720: two snowy pyramids of sail skimming over the cold, gray horizon, threading through the scattered islands of Boston's outer harbor.

Boston watched with mounting excitement. Eight weeks out from London, she was not only expected, but longed for. The North Atlantic would soon shroud itself in winter, making transoceanic voyages all but impossible; she would be one of the last ships in from London until spring.

With a population hovering between eleven and twelve thousand, Boston was not only the largest port but by far the largest town in North America. Philadelphia was behind by several thousand, and New York was just over half her size. She was, in fact, one of the largest towns in the British Empire, home ports included.

It was her ships, her deep-water harbor, and her dour Puritan work ethic that had catapulted Boston to greatness: transformed her, quite suddenly, from a small haven of godliness to a queen of the sea, a trade hub of national if not yet world-class importance. Proud of her success, she draped herself in satin and silk, enjoyed strong Madeira wine and fast horses, and sipped coffee, tea, and chocolate poured from china and silver by black slaves in fancy livery. Deep in her old Puritan soul, she was also dismayed with herself: with her hunger for finery, for rum, for carnal riot. She was falling headlong from grace into giddy luxury, and she knew it. She just didn't know whether to weep or sing.

In the case of a ship from London, she usually chose to sing, and sometimes to dance as well.

This ship, like most in from the capital, would be carrying all the luxuries the town craved. Even better, if more fleeting, she would also be carrying news. In well-thumbed sheets of roughly printed flimsy paper and in stage-whispered gossip, Bostonians would soon learn who was in and out at court and in Parliament. They would trace the downward spiral of the stock market in the wake of the South Sea Company's spectacular, scandalous crash. They would devour news about wars and peace and devious political maneuverings the world over: Paris, Hanover, Vienna, Madrid, Moscow, Constantinople. They would flutter over the latest fashions in dress, hairstyles, and comportment, the very latest in music and books. For it was not just material wealth for which the city yearned: it was sophistication. And ships from London were her chief source.

This ship—properly a merchant brig—was all the more welcome for being commanded with a lively grace by Captain John Gore. Harvard College class of '02, member of the Brattle Street Church, mariner, scientific navigator, collector of fine books, and friend of many, he was only thirty-eight, but already coming to the fore as one of the city's favorite sons.

So Boston fairly craned her collective neck, watching the brig skim in toward shore.
Beautifully made and beautifully sailed,
the citizens congratulated each other—for they all laid claim to the fine ships that called this harbor home.
And beautifully furling her sails,
noted some doubting Thomas, with a frown. The town stood on tiptoe to see.

It was just so. Unaccountably, she was slowing—no, dropping anchor some distance from the wharves. The boat skidding merrily out to greet her veered aside into the wind. Then the town saw what the boat had seen: a flutter of yellow toiling up her mainmast. She was running up the yellow jack, the flag that warned “disease on board.”

Pulling oars, the boat drew in close enough to hear the shouted news, far enough off to escape contagion. After a few minutes, the boat drew back toward the town dock; a little while later it returned with one extra passenger, skirts whipping in the wind. Rebecca Gore. After a brief exchange of shouts, she blew her husband a kiss and stepped back, throwing a cloak over her face and turning again toward shore. The boat returned with Madam Gore and a tale to freeze the heart.

Soon after leaving London, Captain Gore had discovered he was in command of a coffin ship: after one sailor erupted into the smallpox, the captain had interviewed every last man and woman on board. He was lucky; they were all lucky. There were no more than seven more people aboard who had not yet had the disease. By the time they reached Boston, six of them had caught it. Again, they were lucky: only one body had slipped, canvas-wrapped, into the sea.