“Phillis Wheatley, the extraordinary Poetical Genius”

By early 1773, as merchant John Andrews’s 24 February letter shows, news had spread in Boston that a London printer was ready to publish Phillis Wheatley’s poems. If there were widespread doubts or hostility about the enslaved young poet, we should expect skeptics to have spoken up in newspapers, letters, and diaries at that time.

Instead, Wheatley’s local profile had grown since the first proposal for a volume of her writing. Her poems about the deaths of the Rev. Timothy Pitkin’s wife and Thomas Hubbard’s daughter were published in 1772 as broadsides with her name attached. Her poem about the death of Samuel Eliot’s baby circulated in manuscript.

On 6 May 1773, the Boston News-Letter reported that Phillis Wheatley had departed for England after an invitation by the Countess of Huntingdon. That was premature, but it reflected how the young writer had become a local celebrity. The next week’s newspaper got the story right:

Saturday last Capt. [Robert] Calef sailed for London, in whom went Passengers Mr. Nathaniel Wheatley, Merchant; also, Phillis, the extraordinary Negro Poet, Servant to Mr. John Wheatley.

“Servant” was colonial New England’s euphemism for “slave.” The newspaper then published Phillis’s poem “Farewell to America.” Prof. William H. Robinson found mentions of Wheatley’s departure in the Providence Gazette, Boston Post-Boy, Connecticut Gazette, and New York Gazette as well.

Similarly, the 13 Sept 1773 Boston Post-Boy reported that Calef had returned to the harbor with four notable passengers, the last being “Phillis Wheatley, the extraordinary Poetical Genius, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley.” The same phrase appeared in the 16 September Boston News-Letter. Other articles about her return ran in the Massachusetts Spy, Providence Gazette, and Newport Mercury.

There’s no question that American and British readers responded to Phillis Wheatley’s writing based on their thinking about race and slavery. Thomas Jefferson, for example, denied any notable quality in what he called the “compositions published under her name.” Jefferson’s insinuation about authorship is clear (even if he would have mumbled a denial of that intent). But there’s little evidence that many colonial Bostonians entertained such doubt.

TOMORROW: The author of a new biography of Phillis Wheatley speaks in Boston.

The Wheatleys’ Men in London

On 19 Nov 1772, Robert Calef, captain of the Wheatley family’s ship London, set sail from Massachusetts to England. He carried:

• a document signed by eighteen local notables attesting to the genuine poetic talent of the family’s slave Phillis.
• a short biography of Phillis, probably drafted by herself and signed by John Wheatley on 14 November.
• a manuscript collection of her poems, possibly the same one he had failed to sell in London earlier that year.

In London, Calef met with the printer Archibald Bell. According to a letter that Calef sent back to Boston on 7 Jan 1773, about five weeks earlier the printer has met with Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon and read out copies of Phillis Wheatley’s poems. (It’s possible that Calef got the timing wrong, and Bell read from the new manuscript.)

Calef wrote:

he waited upon the Countess of Huntingdon with the Poems, who was greatly pleas’d with them, and pray’d him to Read them; and often would break in upon him and Say, “is not this, or that, very fine? do read another,” and then expressd herself, She found her heart to knit with her and Questioned him much, whether she was Real without a deception? He then Convinc’d her by bringing my Name in question.

Again, this was a person outside Boston, who had never had the chance of meeting Phillis Wheatley, needing assurances about her talents.

Bell planned to meet with the countess when she was in London that January, and to bring Calef (and the Bostonians’ testimonial) along. Lady Huntingdon was clearly leaning toward letting the book be dedicated to her, which would attract attention, and she had made one request:

She desir’d which She Said She hardly tho’t would be denied her, that was to have Phillis’ picture in the frontispiece. So that, if you would get it done it can be Engrav’d here, I do imagine it can be Easily done, and think would contribute greatly to the Sale of the Book.

That news got back to Boston by March 1773. The Wheatleys quickly commissioned a portrait of their slave, most likely painted by another artistically talented slave named Scipio Moorhead. His legal owner was the Rev. John Moorhead, a Presbyterian minister who had signed the attestation.

On 16 April, the Boston News-Letter carried this new advertisement:

PROPOSALS
From Printing in London by SUBSCRIPTION,
A Volume of POEMS,
Dedicated by Permission to the Right Hon. the COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON,
Written by PHILLIS,
A Negro Servant to Mr. Wheatley, of Boston in New-England.

Terms of Subscription.
I. The Book to be neatly printed in 12mo. [duodecimo], on a new Type and a fine Paper, adorned with an elegant Frontispiece, representing the Author.
II. That the Price to Subscribers shall be Two Shillings sewed, or Two Shillings and Six-pence neatly bound.
II [sic]. That every Subscriber deposit One Shilling at the Time of subscribing; and the Remainder to be paid on the Delivery of the Book.
Subscriptions are received by COX & BERRY, in Boston.

Cox and Berry ran a bookstore. Even though this book would include an engraving and be shipped across the Atlantic, its price was about a third less than what Ezekiel Russell had proposed, and thus closer to what Bostonians were used to paying for poetry.

TOMORROW: Boston’s response to this news.

Richard Cary: “The Negro Girl of Mr. Wheatley’s”

When Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., wrote about the life of Phillis Wheatley, he interpreted the “attestation” of her talents by eighteen Bostonians to be “one of the oddest oral examinations on record.” That’s an academic metaphor, reflecting his field.

I spent my first eleven years after college in commercial publishing, so I look at the same documents about Wheatley’s book from a different perspective. I can’t help but interpret them as evidence of an author seeking the best publishing deal, and her publishers doing their best to market her book.

As I pointed out earlier, by 1772 printers in Boston were already publishing Wheatley’s poetry, crediting her for it, and highlighting her status as a young African slave. People in Boston could visit the Wheatley household, or speak to the growing number of people who had met the girl. Ezekiel Russell’s proposal for a collection of her poems tried to dispel any remaining skepticism among potential customers by reminding them that “the best Judges…find that the declared Author was capable of writing” those poems.

But subscriptions didn’t come in right away. And that spring, the Wheatleys heard that Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon (shown above), was asking about Phillis. John and Susannah Wheatley had already hosted some of the evangelical ministers whom Lady Huntingdon had sponsored in America, and at some point Phillis had sent a copy of her poem about the Rev. George Whitefield, who was the countess’s official chaplain.

On 25 May 1772, the Charlestown merchant Richard Cary answered the countess’s inquiry:

The Negro Girl of Mr. Wheatley’s, by her virtuous Behaviour and Conversation in Life gives Reason to believe, she’s a Subject of Divine Grace—remarkable for her Piety, of an extraordinary Genius, and in full Communion with one of the Churches; the Family, & Girl, was Affected at the kind enquiry your Ladyship made after her.

What might Lady Huntingdon’s interest mean for the poetry collection? That year she sponsored the publication of A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself, one of the earliest autobiographies of an African who had been enslaved. Her prestige, and possibly her money, had raised that book’s profile.

At that point, I believe, Phillis Wheatley and her advisors decided that her best prospects lay in having her poems published in London. That would be more prestigious, and the result might look better as well. (Russell wasn’t known for beautiful printing.) As Boston merchant John Andrews later described the situation, Wheatley was “made to exp[ect] a large emolument if she sent ye copy home [i.e., to England], which inducd her to remand it of ye printer” in Boston.

The Wheatleys delivered that manuscript to Capt. Robert Calef, who set off on his regular trip to London. But apparently, even with telling printers about the countess’s interest, he couldn’t find a deal. Londoners, unlike Bostonians, couldn’t just drop by the Wheatleys to dispel their skepticism. They had been exposed to only a couple of examples of Phillis’s work (the poem about Whitefield and her lines on “Recollection”), in a much larger literary pool. So in the fall of 1772, Calef brought the manuscript back.

TOMORROW: The publishing environment of 1772.

John Andrews: “In regard to Phillis’s poems”

On 24 Feb 1773, the Boston merchant John Andrews, who had signed up for a book of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry months before, relayed news of the project to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia. That letter came back to the Massachusetts Historical Society, and today it’s available for online viewing.

In 1977, William H. Robinson published what I think was the first transcription of the relevant passage in his book Black New England Letters:

In regard to Phillis’ poems, they will originate from a London press, as she was [illegible, blam’d?] by her friends for printing them here & made to expect a large emolument if she sent the copy home [sic, i.e., England], which induc’d her to remand it of the printers & also of Capt Calef who could not sell it by the reason of their not crediting the performances to be by a Negro, since which she has had had [sic] papers drawn up & sign’d by the Gov. Council, Ministers & most of the people of note in this place, certifying the authenticity of it; which Capt Calef carried last fall…

The transcription on the Massachusetts Historical Society’s webpage for this document is similar.

However, in 1989 Julian D. Mason published an edition of The Poems of Phillis Wheatley which transcribed the same letter in a different way:

In regard to Phillis’s poems they will originate from a London press, as she was blamd by her friends for printg them here & made to exp a large emolument if she sent ye copy home, which inducd her to remand it of ye printer & dld it Capt Calef, who could not sell it by reason of their not crediting ye performance to be by a Negro, since which she has had a paper drawn up & signed by the Gov. Council, Ministers & most of ye people of note in this place, certifying the authenticity of it, which paper Capt. Calef carried last fall…

I shared my own interpretation of the letter back here. You can also download a big image of Andrews’s page for yourself.

One crucial difference is the phrase before “Capt Calef.” Did Wheatley take her manuscript back from printer Ezekiel Russell “& also of” Calef? Or did she take it back from Russell “& dld [i.e., delivered] it” to Calef? Andrews used the “dld” abbreviation in other letters; for example, on 28 Jan 1774 he finally wrote: “After so long a time, have at last got Phillis’s poems in print, which will be dld you by Capt Dunn.”

We know that Robert Calef made regular runs between Boston and London for the Wheatley family firm. That suggests he wouldn’t have been in Boston long enough to help sell the manuscript in there. But he would have been (indeed, we know he later was) the family’s agent promoting the project in London.

Then we have to interpret what pronouns mean. Does the “who” in “who could not sell it” refer to the Boston printer(s) and Calef together, or Calef alone? Does the “their” in “their not crediting ye performance” refer to book-buyers in Boston or publishers in London?

TOMORROW: My perspective.