“I asked if she could write on any Subject”

Thomas Wooldridge was a British businessman who moved to St. Augustine after the Floridas became part of the British Empire in 1763. He got appointed as provost marshal, fort adjutant, and barrack master for the army base, and receiver general of quit rents for the civil government. The first jobs included some work, the latter none. Wooldridge married a local widow in 1768; she died two years later.

In 1769, Gov. James Grant started to maneuver Wooldridge out of his offices, so the man sent a plea for help to the Earl of Dartmouth (shown here). In November 1771 Wooldridge told Dartmouth that the governor hadn’t paid his salary. Since he was writing from New York, having left Florida without leave from his superiors, one can see the governor’s point. The following July, Grant’s successor suspended Wooldridge from his Florida posts.

Wooldridge went to London and tried to sell his positions, but the Secretary at War refused to accept his resignation under those circumstances. Wooldridge kept complaining to Dartmouth, and after he returned to North America he started sending reports on the political situation there. It looked like he had bet on the right horse when Lord Dartmouth became Secretary of State in the summer of 1772.

That October, Wooldridge was in Boston, where he encountered Phillis Wheatley. The next month, he sent his patron an account of their interactions:

While in Boston, I heard of a very extraordinary female slave, who had made some verses on our mutually dear deceased Friend [Rev. George Whitefield]; I visited her mistress, and found by conversing with the African, that she was no Impostor: I asked if she could write on any Subject; she said Yes; we had just heard of your Lordship’s appointment; I gave her your name, which she was acquainted with. She immediately wrote a rough Copy of the inclosed Address & Letter, which I promised to convey or deliver.

I was astonish’d, and could hardly believe my own Eyes. I was present while she wrote and can attest that it is her own production; she shew’d me her Letter to Lady Huntingdon, which I daresay, Your Lordship has seen; I send you an account signed by her master of her Importation, Education &c. they are all wrote in her own hand.

Pardon the account I have given you of this poor untutor’d slave, when, possibly, your precious time may be very ill bestowed in reading my scrawls

Along with his own letter, dated 24 November in New York, Wooldridge sent a letter and verses from Wheatley dated 10 October and a short biographical sketch credited to her owner’s son Nathaniel Wheatley and dated 12 October. (That would later be the basis of the biography that appeared at the start of her Poems on Various Subjects.)

Wheatley’s letter was printed in the 3 June 1773 New-York Journal, along with a further account of Wooldridge’s visit:

A Gentleman who had seen several of the Pieces ascribed to her, thought them so much superior to her Situation, and Opportunities of Knowledge, that he doubted their being genuine—And in order to be satisfied, went to her Master’s House, told his Doubts, and to remove them, desired that she would write something before him. She told him she was then busy and engaged for the Day, but if he would propose a Subject, and call in the Morning, she would endeavour to satisfy him. Accordingly, he gave for a Subject, The Earl of Dartmouth, and calling the next Morning, she wrote in his Presence, as follows…

(Both quotations come the 1988 edition of Wheatley’s works, edited by John C. Shields.)

Thus, we have a contemporaneous account of how Phillis Wheatley responded to a stranger skeptical about her ability to write poetry. We don’t have to imagine the details of a “tribunal” of eighteen Bostonians quizzing her in the Town House.

It’s a bit awkward that the evidence Wheatley produced was a tribute to a British government minister who soon became unpopular with Americans. But in the fall of 1772, Whigs held out hope that Dartmouth would change London’s colonial policies.

Phillis Wheatley composed her verses and letter for Lord Dartmouth just a few days before the date on the document in which Boston’s most elite gentlemen attested to her talents. Both steps were part of her preparations to have her poems published in London.

TOMORROW: Why not in Boston?

James Otis, Jr., Irks John Adams

One of the liveliest entries in John Adams's pre-Revolutionary diaries came on Tuesday, 27 Oct 1772, when his legal consultation with James Otis, Jr., turned into a tense conversation.

Adams was at the Edes & Gill printshop, where the radical Boston Gazette was published. Whig leaders used the "Long Room" room over that shop for meetings.

At the Printing Office this Morning. Mr. Otis came in, with his Eyes, fishy and fiery, looking and acting as wildly as ever he did. — "You Mr. Edes, You John Gill and you Paul Revere, can you stand there Three Minutes." — Yes. — "Well do. Brother Adams go along with me."

Edes, Gill, and their occasional engraver Revere were mechanics—they all worked with their hands. As committed as all three obviously were to the Patriot cause, they may not have met Otis's snobbish standards. He wanted to speak to Adams, a fellow lawyer and gentleman, and he wanted to speak privately. As for "acting as wildly as ever he did," by 1772 Otis had had his first episodes of madness, but people hoped he had recovered.

Up Chamber we went. He locks the Door and takes out the Kee. Sit down Tete a Tete. — "You are going to Cambridge to day" — Yes. — "So am I, if I please. I want to know, if I was to come into Court, and ask the Court if they were at Leisure to hear a Motion" — and they should say Yes — And I should say 'May it please your Honours I have heard a Report and read an Account that your Honours are to be paid your Salaries for the future by the Crown, out of a Revenue raised from Us, without our Consent. As an Individual of the Community, as a Citizen of the Town, as an Attorney and Barrister of this Court, I beg your Honours would inform me, whether that Report is true, and if it is, whether your Honours determine to accept of such an Appointment?'

"Or Suppose the substance of this should be reduced to a written Petition, would this be a Contempt? Is mere Impertinence a Contempt?"

This was the big political issue of late 1772, an otherwise quiet year: Was the London government planning to pay provincial judges, thus freeing them from dependence on the local legislature and the people they judged? Indeed it was. Those salaries came from the tea tax.

In the Course of this curious Conversation it oozed out that [Thomas] Cushing, [Samuel] Adams, and He, had been in Consultation but Yesterday, in the same Chamber upon that Subject.

John Adams had started the conversation thinking that Otis was asking his opinion especially, but at some point he realized ("it oozed out") that the older lawyer had already talked with other Whigs before him. And I suspect he felt a little miffed.

The two gentlemen turned to gossip.

In this Chamber, Otis was very chatty. He told me a story of Coll. [John] Erving [head of the Boston militia regiment], whose Excellency lies, he says, not in military Skill, but in humbugging.

Erving met Parson [John] Morehead near his [Presbyterian] Meeting House. You have a fine Steeple, and Bell, says he, to your Meeting House now. — Yes, by the Liberality of Mr. [John] Hancock and the Subscriptions of some other Gentlemen We have a very hansome and convenient House of it at last. — But what has happened to the Vane, Mr. Morehead, it dont traverse, it has pointed the same Way these 3 Weeks. — Ay I did not know it, I'l see about it. —

Away goes Morehead, storming among his Parish, and the Tradesmen, who had built the Steeple, for fastening the Vane so that it could not move. The Tradesmen were alarmed, and went to examine it, but soon found that the fault was not in the Vane but the Weather, the Wind having sat very constantly at East, for 3 Weeks before.

He also said there was a Report about Town that Morehead had given Thanks publicly, that by the Generosity of Mr. Hancock, and some other Gentlemen, they were enabled to worship God as genteely now as any other Congregation in Town.

Hancock was a Congregationalist, son and grandson of ministers, and he attended the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper's fashionable Brattle Street Meeting. But he also knew the political value of contributing to other churches—in a most visible way.

After We came down Stairs, something was said about military Matters. — Says Otis to me, Youl never learn military Exercises. —

Ay why not?

That You have an Head for it needs no Commentary, but not an Heart. —

Ay how do you know—you never searched my Heart.

"Yes I have — tired with one Years Service, dancing from Boston to Braintree and from Braintree to Boston, moaping about the Streets of this Town as hipped as Father Flynt at 90, and seemingly regardless of every Thing, but to get Money enough to carry you smoothly through this World."

This is the Rant of Mr. Otis concerning me, and I suppose of a thirds of the Town. —

Adams had indeed gone through a psychological or medical doldrum in 1771-72. He left the General Court after one term (which opened that seat for Otis again), said he would retire from politics, and even went to Stafford Springs in Connecticut to try the water cure. Adams wrote about all that in his diary.

But it was different to hear someone else comment on it! Especially someone he admired. And especially since Adams had started to think that everyone had bad things to say about him. So Adams laid into Otis—though only on this page of his diary:

But be it known to Mr. Otis, I have been in the public Cause as long as he, 'tho I was never in the General Court but one Year. I have sacrificed as much to it as he. I have never got Father chosen Speaker and Councillor by it [James Otis, Sr., held these posts, but well before James Otis, Jr., became a prominent politician], my Brother in Law [James Warren of Plymouth] chosen into the House and chosen Speaker by it, nor a Brother in Laws Brother in Law [okay, now I'm lost] into the House and Council by it.

Nor did I ever turn about in the House, betray my Friends and rant on the Side of Prerogative, for an whole Year, to get a father into a Probate Office, and a first justice of a Court of Common Pleas, and a Brother [Samuel A. Otis] into a Clerks Office.

Contemporaries and historians have indeed noted how Otis occasionally backtracked from his radical rhetoric, though the reasons aren't as obvious as Adams made them out to be.

There is a Complication of Malice, Envy and jealousy in this Man, in the present disordered State of his Mind that is quite shocking.

I thank God my mind is prepared, for whatever can be said of me. The Storm shall blow over me in Silence.

Oh, yeah. Adams was calm.

Dr. John Jeffries: physician, Loyalist, aeronaut, part 2

Yesterday's post left Dr. John Jeffries on his way to London in early 1779, seeking a more lucrative post within the British military medical establishment. At that time, British government appointments still came largely through the patronage system. To rise within the administration, a man had to find a powerful sponsor and offer money, either to the appointer or to the previous holder of the office. The rewards were a nearly guaranteed income from the best posts, and the chance to make more money from lower-level appointees and from eventually selling the office.

Jeffries decided on a strategy of lobbying Benjamin Thompson, "an American, the present Favourite of Lord Germain," as he wrote in his diary. Lord George Germain was the British Secretary of State for the colonies. Thompson (pictured here) was his personal aide, a Loyalist from Massachusetts but not one whom Jeffries had met before. Sanborn Brown, Thompson's biographer, says that the doctor offered two things to win the aide's favor:

• A collection of letters between the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, one of Boston's most prominent Patriot clergymen, and such London figures as Benjamin Franklin and former governor Thomas Pownall. Jeffries had apparently pilfered these letters during a trip home to see his father. Thompson took the letters, had them handsomely bound, and presented them to King George III. They remain British government property today.
• Mrs. Jeffries. At least, diaries record that Sarah Jeffries spent many evenings visiting Thompson without her husband during the summer of 1779.

John and Sarah Jeffries would not have been the first couple to curry favor this way. They were well acquainted with Elizabeth (Lloyd) Loring, niece and ward of the doctor's medical mentor, who had become Gen. Sir William Howe's mistress back in America. "Mrs. Loring" became notorious in letters and bawdy songs. Meanwhile, her husband, Joshua Loring, Jr., obtained several lucrative posts from Howe, apparently as a reward for his acquiescence. Even Benjamin Thompson himself was said to have obtained his high position in the British government from sexual services, to Lord Germain, or Lady Germain, or their daughters, or the whole family.

But the Jeffrieses' efforts came to nothing. Thompson rarely felt bound by unspoken agreements, or even spoken ones. Dr. John gave up, frustrated and angry, and sailed off to the navy in Savannah. Sarah died in 1780 while he was away. The doctor then returned to England and sold his post as Surgeon-General to none other than Joshua Loring, Jr.—who had no medical training, but had also reached a career dead end once Howe was no longer the main commander in North America. Philip Young's Revolutionary Ladies also notes a secret correspondence between Dr. Jeffries and Mrs. Loring in 1781.

And Benjamin Thompson went on his way, securing a cavalry command in North America just as Lord Germain's royal support was waning and thus keeping his own brillliant career alive. Eventually Thompson became Count Rumford, the celebrated scientist and inventor, Bavarian government official, and husband to Marie-Anne Lavoisier. No one played the patronage system better than he.

So in the early 1780s, Dr. John Jeffries was in England, cut off from his family in Boston, widowed with two children (in boarding schools, probably). Reportedly, a family of American Loyalists insisted he accept the gift of a carriage “as they could not be regularly attended by a physician who walked”—so his practice was solid. But Jeffries was still hungry for a way to distinguish himself. Then in June 1783 came startling news from France: the Montgolfier brothers had launched a balloon.

[Yes, Dr. Jeffries still hasn't made his aerial voyage, but there was plenty of gossip in this posting, wasn't there? And Jeffries does leave the ground in Part 3.]