1692

1st Day

After Meeting, John Peele approach’d me and ask’d if he might not come to the House on a Visit later that day. I waited for him, and again I had a fore-knowledge of what he might say. We sat in the Parlour, me with my coif on and a clean Apron and he with his black Hat in his lap. He said he brought with him the news of a propos’d Match. He said the Match was with a Member of our Society and did I consent to hear it. I told him I did.

It is with Edward Swift whose wife Mary died these two years past. Her grave marker is but a rod from Mother’s. He has two boys about my age, and Sarah who I was at School with. He is accounted a hard-working man, with several of the Trades. I believe the two trivets we have are iron wrought by him.

Oh, I have not the Skill to record the flagging of my Spirit at this proposal. I had not thought such a thing would work upon me so. I tried in my Thoughts to be fair and generous, and mindful of my own and Dorcas’s fate, and yet I wished to push it all from me, as one might push away a meal for which one has no Appetite.

In time I was able to answer, and instructed John Peele to tell Edward Swift that I would consider his Offer and would Pray over it, but could not say when I might be clear in the Matter, that he would have to wait. He nodded gravely, and as I thought, Sensible of some misgiving. I told him I would keep Silence about the Proposal, thinking that that might be what clouded his mind. But the look of Conscience did not abate.

Perhaps he is Sensible of having gone from asking me a Month ago did I not wish to return to School, to asking me would I consent to be married. And to a man Father’s age.

I was left with the Evening falling, and the Parlour fire turning to Embers.

4th Day

We have had a great, blasting Storm. Dorcas does not remember Snow from last Winter. She would go to the Kitchen window and look out at the Dooryard, and then toddle to the Parlour Window to see if it was snowing as well at the Carters’. It seem’d as a Miracle to her.

Edward Swift sent his two boys over. I believe their names are Edward and James. They clear’d the Snow off the Woodpile and set about making a kind of lean-to over the pile that it might be kept dry. I watch’d them from the Kitchen with Jupiter curl’d up in my lap. They did not ask did we want such an Improvement, but they were handy at the job.

6th Day

Are not men ugly? Jane Beecher ask’d me today. We were at her house doing our laundry together. I have not yet told her of Edward Swift. With their Beards and their coarseness, she said, were not men ugly? I said I suppos’d they were, that I might fall into her Humour. And she went on in a like Vein, saying a woman was so much more handsome, for we are soft and smooth of skin. She said she was sure any woman would prefer a smooth Face to kiss than a prickly one. Was it not a Pity that women could not marry women? She laugh’d at this and I laugh’d, for it took me out of myself and was Sport as I might have had with Hannah and Martha. And then she made more Sport of men and of their Courting, mimicking them in their walk and showing her Muscles as if she were one such. She made to embrace me in Mockery and kiss me. We were in a Fit by then and the water in the Washtub slopp’d between us. Thy lips, O my spouse, she said, drop as the honeycomb, and she embrac’d me again as a man might. And then she did kiss me, holding me behind my head, but I push’d her away. I was laughing for I thought we were still in the Riot of her mood, but when I look’d again, her face was strain’d and of a Passion I know not wherefrom.

Perhaps she is more afraid than I allow. Perhaps she feels a need to strut and contend, or otherwise it were to show Weakness, and that by showing it she would become it.

We are both of us lost, I suppose, and unsure how to find our way.

7th Day

I have had a Dream. We were all together and it was warm, and there was a Light over all and over all was a Warmth that was not of the world alone, but seem’d to come from the Hearts and out of the Eyes of Mother and Father and Dorcas, and out of their Prudy too, as if we were each other’s Light and Comfort. I know not how to describe it, but we seem’d to swim in an Air and a Light that was warm and was of the Air, and yet was of us too.

How horrible it was to wake into the cold and the dark and the Knowledge that it was not so! So overcome with Griefe was I that I could not help myself and cried. I went then and stood over Dorcas’s trundle-bed and I felt a deep Wound at the sight of her, for I could not give her my Warmth and she could not give me hers.

That we might have the Light always! That we might understand! But we move in Darknesse, as it seems to me. We do not know who we are. We do not know who others are. We do not know how they work on us.

5th Day

I have rais’d up the courage (I know not why I should need courage, but I did) to tell Jane of Edward Swift. Her face grew hard at the Knowledge and she said that she expected something of the like was about. She had a great Sorrow for me, and then a Despair that I should be so forc’d. We were in her keeping-room and it was not yet dusk tho’ the room was dark and Wintry. She took my hand and held it in a way that was like an older sister to me and I felt greatly moved by her Care of me.

We talk’d and talk’d, and it grew darker in the room, and the darker it grew, the more her Fancy seem’d loos’d, so that she spoke of how she sometimes dreams of going away, of leaving Newport and all the town behind. Even her children, she said in this Fancy. She dreams of going into the Wildernesse and living alone in a house by herself as a Pilgrim, or as I suppose, a Hermit.

Other times, she said, she imagines going with her children, and at still others, with other women, that they might make a Household away from the World and become Quaker Separatists, as we hear they have in England.

Other times, she said, she feels the Leaning is God’s, that he is calling her to make a Testimony elsewhere than Newport. That a new Life of Women separate from Men might be to live even more clearly in the Light. For if we have our Meetings separated by Sex, she says, then might not we have our households, yea, our whole Lives so separated? If it is right for the One, why is it not even more right for the All? She pos’d this Question to me, and I must admit it had a great Force of Logic, altho’ I cannot conceive of life with Women only, nor believe the Lord intends such Separation. Perhaps she means only to point out the Unfairness of our separated Meetings, and our separated Schools, for if being a Friend is to treat all as Equal, and not to honour a Magistrate above a fishwife, why are we then so apart?

However she meant it, she seem’d greatly inflam’d with her Conception.

7th Day

The Snow is melted and it is turn’d so warm that Dorcas and I went out without our cloaks. I fashion’d a Purpose to walk past Edward Swift’s house that I might see it and appraise it and try to imagine myself its Mistress. Young Edward was at the Forge and he stopped his hammering long enough to watch me go past. He is much bigger than I am. And I would be his Mother!

I may confess here that I do find myself sometimes when I am a lazy Slow-worm thinking of John Pettibone and of his lovely unruly hair, and of his laugh which leaps out of him as if it were a Jack-in-a-box, and of the fun he and Hannah and Henry Whitlow and I used to have playing skipjack down along the breakwater. Oh, that those times might return, and everything else vanish as if a Dream!

3rd Day

The Lord grant that someday I may show these Pages to someone who has a love of me. That he might understand me, and know who I am in my inmost Self.

5th Day

This evening I had a most beautiful sad Colloquy with Jane. We had done our work and were sitting in the Kitchen as the sun went down. We did not rise to light a candle, but sat in the Dark with the Fire low and talk’d. We talk’d of our old Selves, and Jane said it was as if they had been set adrift and lost over the Horizon. This Picture work’d on me greatly, as I think it did her. Our old Selves as if in a Tub, set upon the Waters and drifting vanishingly away even as we watch’d from the Shore.

O! to what unknown Countries, and to what Centuries hence?