“THEY FOUND HER IN A SITUATION OF EXTREME MISERY. TWO OF HER CHILDREN WERE DEAD AND THE THIRD WAS SICK UNTO DEATH…WE CANNOT BE SURPRISED THAT, UNDER THESE DISTRESSING CIRCUMSTANCES, HER HEALTH, WHICH HAD BEEN MUCH IMPROVED BY HER VOYGAGE TO ENGLAND, SHOULD HAVE AGAIN DECLINED. SHE WAS HERSELF SUFFERING.”
In the spring of 1774, the British occupied the city of Boston.
“The difficulties between the colonies and the mother country had by this time increased to open hostilities,” wrote Wheatley biographer Margaretta Oddell. “The inhabitants of Boston were fleeing in all directions.”
Phillis moved to Providence, Rhode Island with the Wheatley’s daughter Mary.
Susannah Wheatley, her former mistress, became seriously ill during Phillis’ trip to England. She returned to help care for her mistress and even after she was granted her freedom she continued to care for the sick woman. It was Susannah Wheatley who purchased Phillis, brought her home, recognized her gifts, sought to teach her language skills, and encouraged her poetry. Susannah Wheatley was her greatest supporter and was directly responsible for arranging to publish Phillis' book of poetry.
When Susannah Wheatley died on March 3, 1774, Phillis suffered a devastating loss.
“I have lately met with a great trial in the death of my mistress,” Phillis confided to her friend Obour Tanner on March 21, 1774. “Let us imagine the loss of a parent, sister or brother, the tenderness of all these were united in her. I was a poor little outcaste and a stranger when she took me in—not only into her house but I presently became a sharer in her most tender affections. I was treated by her more like her child than her servant. No opportunity was left unimproved of bringing me the best of advice, but in terms how tender!”
In a letter to John Thornton, a Wheatley family friend on March 29, 1774, Phillis described the death of Susannah Wheatley:
“I should not so soon have troubled you with the letter but the mournful occasion will sufficiently apologize. It is the death of Mrs. Wheatley. She has been labouring under a languishing illness for many months past and has at length took her flight from hence to those blissful regions…”
“O, could you have been present to see how she long’d to drop the tabernacle of clay and to be freed from the cumbrous shackles of a mortal body…About half an hour before her death, she spoke with a more audible voice than she had for three months before. She called her friends and relations around her and charg’d them not to leave their great work undone till that hour, but to fear God and keep his Commandments.”
“Being asked if her faith failed her, she answer’d, ‘No!’ Then spread out her arms crying, ‘Come! Come quickly! Come! Come! O pray for an easy and quick passage!’”
“She eagerly longed to depart to be with Christ. She retained her senses till the very last moment when “fare well, fare well” with a very low voice were the last words she utter’d. I sat the whole time by her bedside and saw with grief and wonder the effects of sin on the human race.”
In an another letter to Thornton, October, 1774, she wrote:
“By the great loss I have sustain’d of my best friend, I feel like one forsaken by her parent in a desolate wilderness, for such the world appears to me, wandring thus without my friendly guide. I fear lest every step should lead me into error and confusion. She gave me many precepts and instructions; which I hope I shall never forget…The world is a severe Schoolmaster.”
One by one, Phillis’ support system crumbled. By 1778, nearly half the Boston Dignitaries who signed her letter of support, had passed away. In March 1778, her former master John Wheatley died and left Phillis nothing from his considerable fortune.
In September 1778, Mary Wheatley, who taught Phillis to read, also died. Her brother Nathaniel, who accompanied Phillis to England, would die in 1783.
Since the day she was set free, Phillis knew she had to struggle to make a living on her own.
In her letter to Col. Worcester on October 18, 1773, Phillis stated that she was determined to join the commercial publishing market.
“The more subscribers there are,” she wrote, “the more it will be for my advantage, as I am to have half the sale of the books. I am now upon my own footing and whatever I get by this is entirely mine and is the chief I have to depend upon.”
Phillis wrote to her friend Obour on May 6, 1774: “I have rec’d by some of the last ships 300 more of my POEMS.”
She had to sell her books.
On April 1, 1778, despite skepticism and disapproval from some of her closest friends, Phillis married John Peters, a free black man she had known for some five years.
“He kept a grocery in Court-Street, and was a man of very handsome person and manners; wore a wig, carried a cane, and quite acted out 'the gentleman,'” Margaretta Oddell wrote. “He proved utterly unworthy of the distinguished woman who honored him by her alliance. He was unsuccessful in business, and failed soon after their marriage; and he is said to have been both too proud and too indolent to apply himself to any occupation below his fancied dignity. Hence his unfortunate wife suffered much from this ill-omened union.”
“In the course of these years of suffering, she became the mother of three infants, who inherited the frail health of their parent; and thus to her other cares was added the anxiety of a mother, watching the flickering flame glowing in the bosom of her offspring, and trembling every moment lest the breath of adversity should extinguish a life so dear to her.”
None of Phillis’ children lived past infancy.
Meanwhile, Phillis continued her efforts to publish a second volume of poetry. In 1779, between October 30 and December 18, she placed six advertisements in the BOSTON EVENING POST & GENERAL ADVERTISER announcing her new book of poems. It was to be a volume of 300 pages, "Dedicated to the Right Hon. Benjamin Franklin” that would include thirty-three poems and thirteen letters. She asked for subscribers to purchase the book.
Once again, the people of Boston were not interested. The book failed to obtain the financial backing it needed. Phillis’ second book was never published.
The war with England wasn’t going well. “Universal distress prevailed,” wrote Margaretta Oddell. “The provincial army was scantily provided with clothing and food; and the families of those who were fighting for their country…were glad to obtain their daily bread.”
According to Oddell, “Phillis accompanied her husband to Wilmington, Massachusetts. In an obscure country village, the necessaries of life are always obtained with more difficulty than in a populous town, and in this season of scarcity, Phillis suffered much from privation—from absolute want.”
Phillis found a job as a maid in a boardinghouse. For the first time in her life, she had to perform physical work, “painful exertions to which she was unaccustomed, and for which her frail constitution unfitted her,” Oddell wrote. “We cannot be surprised that, under these distressing circumstances, her health, which had been much improved by her voyage to England, should have again declined.”
Toward the end of her short life, Phillis’ friends and supporters lost track of her. “We now learn nothing of her for a long interval,” said Oddell. “At length, a relative of her lamented mistress heard of her illness, and sought her out. She was also visited by several other members of that family. They found her in a situation of extreme misery. Two of her children were dead, and the third was sick unto death. She was herself suffering for want of attention, for many comforts, and that greatest of all comforts in sickness--cleanliness. She was reduced to a condition too loathsome to describe.”
“In a filthy apartment, in an obscure part of the metropolis, lay the dying mother, and the wasting child. The woman who had stood honored and respected in the presence of the wise and good of that country which was hers by adoption, or rather compulsion, who had graced the ancient halls of Old England, and rolled about in the splendid equipages of the proud nobles of Britain, was now numbering the last hours of life in a state of the most abject misery, surrounded by all the emblems of squalid poverty!”
Phillis placed one last advertisement for her book in the September 1784 issue of THE BOSTON MAGAZINE. Three months later, on December 5, 1784, Phillis Wheatley died. She was 31 years old. Her infant child died with her.
“The thread of life, attenuated by suffering, at last snapped suddenly,” Oddell wrote. “The friends of Phillis who had visited her in her sickness, knew not of her death. Peters did not see fit to acquaint them with the event, or to notify them of her interment.”
A Wheatley relative learned of Phillis’ passing by chance. She was “passing up Court-Street, met the funeral of an adult and a child. A bystander informed her they were bearing Phillis Wheatley to that silent mansion where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.”
On December 8, 1784, mother and daughter were buried together in an unmarked grave. John Peters sold his late wife's manuscripts and books to cover his debts.
The first American edition of her POEMS was finally published in America in 1786.
HYMN TO THE MORNING.
BY PHILLIS WHEATLEY
ATTEND my lays, ye ever honored Nine,
Assist my labors, and my strains refine;
In smoothest numbers pour the notes along,
For bright Aurora now demands my song.
Aurora hail! and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,
On ev'ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;
Harmonious lays the feathered race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.
Ye shady groves, your verdant bloom display,
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope, awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire.
The bowers, the gales, the variegated skies,
In all their pleasures in my bosom rise.
See in the east, the illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away--
But oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,
And scarce begun, concludes the abortive song.
HYMN TO THE EVENING.
BY PHILLIS WHEATLEY
SOON as the sun forsook the eastern main,
The pealing thunder shook the heavenly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
Through all the heavens what beauteous dyes are spread,
But the west glories in the deepest red:
So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,
The living temples of our God below!
Filled with the praise of him who gives the light,
And draws the sable curtains of the night,
Let placid slumbers soothe each weary mind,
At morn to wake, more heavenly, more refined;
So shall the labours of the day begin
More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.
Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,
Then cease my song, till fair Aurora rise.
ON THE DEATH OF J. C.
An Infant.
BY PHILLIS WHEATLEY
No more the flow'ry scenes of pleasure rise,
Nor charming prospects greet the mental eyes,
Smiling, disportive, flushed with ev'ry grace.
The tear of sorrow flows from ev'ry eye,
Groans answer groans, and sighs to sighs reply;
What sudden pangs shot through each aching heart,
When Death, thy messenger, despatched his dart!
Thy dread attendants, all destroying Power,
Hurried the infant to his mortal hour.
Could'st thou unpitying close those radiant eyes?
Or failed his artless beauties to surprize?
Could not his innocence thy stroke control,
Thy purpose shake, and soften all thy soul?
The blooming babe, with shades of death o'erspread,
No more shall smile, no more shall raise its head,
But, like a branch that from the tree is torn,
Falls prostrate, withered, languid and forlorn.
"Where flies my James?" 'T is thus I seem to hear
The parent ask. "Some angel, tell me where
"He wings his passage through the yielding air."
Methinks a cherub, bending from the skies,
Observes the question, and serene replies:
"In heaven's high palaces your babe appears:
"Prepare to meet him and dismiss your tears."
Shall not the intelligence your grief restrain,
And turn the mournful to the cheerful strain?
Cease your complaints, suspend each rising sigh,
Cease to accuse the Ruler of the sky.
Parents, no more indulge the falling tear:
Let Faith to heaven's refulgent domes repair,
There see your infant like a seraph glow:
What charms celestial in his numbers flow
Melodious, while the soul-enchanting strain
Dwells on his tongue, and fills the etherial plain!
Enough--forever cease your murmuring breath;
Not as a foe, but friend, converse with Death,
Since to the port of happiness unknown
He brought that treasure which you call your own.
The gift of heaven intrusted to your hand
Cheerful resign at the divine command:
Not at your bar, must Sovereign Wisdom stand.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Friday, January 8th 2010 at 1:27PM
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