Mistress Bradstreet (24 page)

The first months of Anne’s sojourn in Ipswich were spent largely indoors, and although it was helpful to have her sisters and mother close at hand, the lack of privacy was probably challenging.
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Her servants were helpful, but Anne had been taught that they were liable to get into trouble if not closely supervised. Although they could prepare food and draw water to wash the linen rags she used for Dorothy’s diapers, many responsibilities were Anne’s alone.

It was time for three-year-old Samuel to start reading his letters and to memorize the children’s catechism, which was forty-five thousand words long.
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Between household chores, therefore, Anne brought out the well-worn texts her father and mother had used to instruct her. While the kettles simmered and the women busied themselves sewing, knitting, and slicing turnips and onions, little Samuel began to mouth his letters and repeat the lessons of Puritanism:

A: In Adam’s Fall

We Sinned all.

And

T: Time cuts down all

Both great and small.

And

X: Xerxes the great did die

And so must you and I.
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Somber though these words seem, they were recited by children throughout Massachusetts. Anne would have felt remiss if she had not required Samuel to memorize them and to focus on readying himself for God. Since she was also responsible for her servants’ spiritual education, Anne might well have made them learn these verses, too.

AT LAST THE AIR
became sweet smelling, and when the daylight hours stretched past dinner and into the evening, Anne and her sisters grew eager to move into their new homes. All winter long they must have heard the strike of axes as their husbands and hired carpenters built their houses out of white oak and pine. Generally speaking, it would have taken at least three or four months of good working weather for the new homes to be habitable.

Each house was constructed around a towering chimney. Without brick, stone, or other fireproof material, the settlers made enormous clay-daubed structures, hoping their width would help ward off the sparks that inevitably flew upward. The mouths were so wide that two young Ipswich pranksters once dropped a live calf down the tunnel of their unsuspecting neighbor’s chimney, startling the man and no doubt horrifying the calf.

Most of these houses, like Anne’s cottage in New Towne, had two rooms on the first floor. The hall was where most activities took place: cooking, chopping food, sewing, eating, visiting, and sleeping. There was a big four-posted bed near the fire, a cradle for the baby, and a little sleeping pallet for Samuel. Another slightly more private room might hold another bed for the servants, a spinning wheel, or stored sacks of grain for easy access. Two rooms on the second floor provided additional storage and extra sleeping quarters during the summer. In the winter, though, everyone needed to sleep near the fireplace downstairs.

The walls, floors, and ceilings were often daubed with clay to keep out the wind. Sometimes, as additional fire protection, they were whitewashed or even, as time went on, plastered. But generally the planks of new wood were left untreated, and as a result the rooms smelled bright and clean, the resin from the pine perfuming the air. Rugs and bolsters were too precious to be laid on the floor. They were saved for bed coverings and were essential for enduring the long winter nights. Some women “sanded” their floors, sprinkling a white layer of sawdust or sand from the nearby beach across the planks as yet another layer between themselves and the damp pest-ridden earth.

As Anne and her sisters’ houses took shape, they started to plant their own vegetable and herb gardens, putting in the peas first and then the seedlings that they had grown indoors, near the warmth of the fire—carrots, rosemary, angelica, and lavender, to name just a few. A New England garden needed to contain not only squash, lettuces, and onions—as well as “pot herbs” (savory, sage, dill, mustard, and so on) for flavoring pasties, salads, soups, stews, and pottages—but also medicinal plants. There were no stores at which to buy the healing tinctures that might be needed and, in the earliest days of the settlements, no doctors to prescribe a treatment. Anne was responsible for the overall health of the garden and for properly selecting, harvesting, and storing each plant. If she could not find the varieties she needed in America, she would need to send for seeds from England. As one poet wrote: “Good huswives provide, ere an sickness do come.”
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She would have known that adder’s tongue was excellent for healing wounds and ground ivy for those struggling with a “ringing sound and humming noise” in their ears. Angelica could “abate the rage of lust in young persons” and was an antidote to poison, “all infections taken by evill and corrupt aire,” toothache, sciatica, and gout. Anise quieted “belchings and upbraidings of the stomach” and also helped mothers produce “an abundance of milk.” Artichokes eliminated “the rank smell of the arm-holes” because they produced such a “stinking urine” that the body was purged of all foul-smelling toxins. Basil was used by women in labor, as it “expelleth both birth and afterbirth.” Cinquefoil treated toothache, “falling sickness,” ulcers, liver disease, pleurisies and other lung complaints. There was cucumber for complexion; endive for “cool[ing]” the “heated” stomach; fennel for kidney, lung, and liver complaints; gentians for those who had fallen off a roof or to rub on the udders of cows that had been bitten by a snake.
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Herbs were also useful for emotional and spiritual complaints. Anne, who was prone to “droopings of the spirit,” would also have been sure to plant feverfew, which was famous for “draw[ing] away . . . melancholy,” but she would have known to avoid eating garlic, as this herb was considered harmful for those suffering from depression. Lavender could help when she was afflicted with too much “passion of the heart.” Blessed thistle could help bolster her memory; marigolds were known to help shore up the fearful. Mint would have been especially important to Anne because it was said to stimulate the mind. Rosemary could make you feel more “lively” and lift up your heart with joy. Sage also “quickeneth the senses,” enlivening those heavy in spirit, and Saint-John’s-wort was useful against melancholy and madness in general.
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It was not enough simply to grow these plants and then harvest them. You had to know whether they should be taken raw or dried. Should they be made into a syrup or candied? Were they most effective on their own or mixed with other herbs? Did you use the root, the leaves, or the oils? How long should the tinctures rest before use? At the old manor house in Sempringham, Anne and her sisters would have learned from their mother the delicate arts of “distilling and fermenting and brewing, seething and drying, and making waters and spirits and pills and powders.”
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This made the Dudley women an excellent resource for the others because, although a few handbooks were available, most housewives relied on their neighbors to learn this lore.

For example, one recipe for “dropsie, palsie, ague, sweating, spleen, worms, and jaundice” that also strengthened “the spirits, brain, heart, liver and stomach” is typical not only for the number of steps involved but for the sheer quantity of ingredients it demanded:

Take Balm leaves and stalks, Burnet leaves and flowers, rosemary, red sage, taragon, tormentil leaves, Rossolis, red Roses, Carnation, hyssop, Thyme, red strings that grow upon Savory, red Fennel leaves and roots, red Mints, of each one handful; bruise these herbs and put them in a great earthen pot and pour on them as much white wine as will cover them, stop them close, and let them steep for eight or nine days, then put to it cinnamon, ginger, angelica seeds, cloves and nutmegs, of each one ounce, a little saffron, sugar one pound, raisins . . . one pound, dates stoned and sliced, half a pound, the joints and legs of an old Coney, fleshy running Capon, the red flesh of the sinews of a leg of mutton, four young chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve eggs, a loaf of white bread cut in sops, and two or three ounces of Mithridate or Treacle, and as much . . . Muscadine as will cover them all.
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Such a recipe necessitated community involvement. What if you had run out of fennel or couldn’t afford to buy saffron or cinnamon off the boats from the West Indies? It was easy to lack essentials or to be unable to purchase what was needed. Wealthy, organized, and knowledgeable as they were, Anne and her family must often have played the role of town apothecary, supplying the needy with medicine and medical counsel.

But faced with the unpredictable growing conditions in America and the many unfamiliar plants, everyone had to try new concoctions and experiment with strange new roots and leaves. The risks were high. Using the wrong herb or too much of a dangerous plant could literally kill one’s patient. Still, some brave souls desperately scoured the countryside for plants that might hold within the secrets of a cure.

Puritans like Anne believed that those who were truly close to God had a better chance than others at this task because they would be better able to detect God’s presence in the universe. According to the seventeenth-century theory of “signatures,” God had left His “handwriting,” or clues to the uses of all the herbs, in telltale markings on their leaves, flowers, roots, and juice. For example, the liver-shaped leaves of liverwort meant that it would help with disorders of the liver. The bright red of poppies indicated that they were useful for diseases of the blood, or to stanch bleeding. Puritans also assumed that the cures for most afflictions lay close to home; for instance, if a man suffered from rheumatism because of “living in a damp and swampy” area, his nurse should make a tincture from the willow bark that grew nearby.
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Each housewife, then, had to be a detective seeking out the advice of experienced foragers and a chemist experimenting with new ingredients, at the same time that she prayed fiercely over her creations. But if preparing medical tinctures could be a confounding and even dangerous enterprise, cooking was no simple matter either.

Fireplaces were the command centers of the colonial home. They were equipped with an arsenal of cranes and hooks so that pots could be hung at varying levels. Anne first had to determine the kind of fire she needed. Low embers for custards, greater flames for roasting, a steady burn for stews. Then there were the utensils and pots to choose from. Double boilers “could be made by putting hay in the water at the bottom of a large iron kettle so a smaller kettle could rest inside.” There were “spiders,” or frying pans that balanced over the white ashes on their iron legs; spits for roasting foul and joints of meat; “toasting forks, long-handled dippers, earthenware dishes, glass bottles and copper kettles.”
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One could never let down one’s guard against the flames. For example, the beam that supported the entire fireplace could occasion disasters. All too often the wood closest to the fire would char and crumble, until suddenly the entire timber would shatter into pieces, falling into the flames, spilling hot kettles and spraying boiling pottages on anyone who could not jump back in time. The recipes themselves required “discretion and experience.” Like anything else in Puritan culture, a woman’s cooking expressed the state of her soul. Everything from her pie pastry to the ales and beers she brewed had to be touched with “grace.”
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These exacting preparations occasioned many visits back and forth between houses. When at last it was time for Anne to set up housekeeping in her own home, Ipswich must have seemed more like a town than she had dreamed possible only a few months before. Her family had contributed four more houses to the little collection of thirty or so dwellings: Anne’s home stood next to her parents’, while Patience’s and Samuel’s houses were only a few doors farther down the lane.

Not that anyone lived far from anyone else on the frontier. Each settler was required to build his home within a half-mile radius of the meetinghouse and then as close to others as possible. Living too far out made you an automatic target for Indian attacks. Also, proximity helped keep up spirits and allowed neighbors to keep an eye on each other. In fact, too much time alone occasioned suspicions of nefarious behaviors. As Anne reflected: “The arrow of a slanderous tongue” did not simply “kill the body” but “mangles [a person] in his grave.”
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One mother instructed her newly married daughter to spend as much time as possible with her neighbors, advising her “that she might better do her work” in “another body’s house” rather than spend too much time in isolation.
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Privacy was a dangerous commodity in the wilderness: It was against the law to walk more than a mile away from the settlement by yourself.

As in New Towne, the acreage the settlers owned spread out in a radius from the huddled dwellings of the town and was used for the joint grazing of the livestock and for growing crops. Wealth was not generally measured by the size of one’s house lot, since too much land could set you too far away from your neighbors for comfort. Instead it was the size and quality of one’s house that denoted one’s stature in the community. To create a fine home, complete with wainscoting, a snug door, and glass windows, was one way to beat back the taint of the wilderness, assert your gentle birth, and preserve your English identity. Thus it was always important to Dudley that his homes were carefully built, and Simon followed suit.

Though the little settlement felt slightly more civilized than Anne had anticipated, it was impossible to forget that they lived in a kind of war zone. Word came from the General Court that they needed to be on heightened alert; rumor had it that the nearby tribes were threatening to attack. The court declared that the settlers were required to carry a gun whenever they went outside. As the highest-ranking military man in the settlement, Patience’s husband, Captain Denison, was “put in charge” of establishing a schedule of continuous watches and preparing the men in the village for battle.
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