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Authors: Charlotte Gordon
Tags: BIO007000
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own life. In December 1643 Anne’s own mother was suddenly desperately ill. Although everyone assumed that Dorothy was in fine health, one morning after breakfast, just as she was compiling a list of things to do that day, she was gripped with “what felt like a gas pain in her chest . . . [and] by noon of the next day, when the doctor arrived, she was in agony.” 1 A week later she died, having succumbed to death so rapidly that it was a shock to everyone.
For Anne and her sisters, it was heartbreaking to have lost their mother and to have missed the opportunity to attend her deathbed, since this was an important ritual in Puritan New England and in the Old World, too. An individual’s final moment was often a public event. Some people actually rehearsed the lines they wanted to say, as they knew they would be surrounded by their family and neighbors. The last utterance of a dying person possessed an almost sacred charge (depending of course on the individual’s reputation for piety during his or her lifetime). Often these sayings were passed along from neighbor to neighbor and were even transcribed in the family records as a harbinger of truth or a forecast of the years to come.
But in facing death, Dorothy appeared to have been as quiet as she was in life; at least no one left a record of her last thoughts. And so it was Anne, ironically, who had the last word, just as New England, the daughter, had gotten the final speech in the poem Anne had composed six months earlier. Compelled to elegize her mother and to give voice to her unsung and quiet talents, she wrote “An Epitaph on My Dear and Ever-Honoured Mother, Mrs. Dorothy Dudley, Who Deceased December 27, 1643, and of Her Age, 61.”
In this sad little poem, Anne carefully listed all the qualities for which her mother was respected:
Here lies,
. . . . .
A loving mother and obedient wife,
A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Religious in all her words and ways,
Preparing still for death, till end of days:
Of all her children, children lived to see,
Then dying, left a blessed memory.
2
Anne’s evocation captured precisely what a pious Puritan woman should look and act like, but there was an unspoken truth buried in this poem as well. Without Anne’s words, this particular matron might have been forgotten. Anne could see that it was actually up to her, the literary daughter, to make sure her mother left behind a “blessed memory.” Otherwise the grandchildren—Anne’s children and the children of her sisters and brother—would forget Dorothy in a few years. Anne wrote, “As the brands of a fire, if once severed, will of themselves go out although you use no other means to extinguish them, so distance of place together with length of time (if there be no intercourse) will cool the affections. 3
IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of Dorothy’s death, Anne might have sought comfort from her father, but despite the fact that he declared himself “melted with sorrow,” Dudley was intent on finding a new wife, and with characteristic impetuosity he seized upon a nearby widow, marrying Katherine Hackburne (née Dighton) on April 14, four months after the death of Dorothy. 4 Of course, his children could not help but speculate about the duration of this courtship. Had it really only begun once their mother had died? Or had Katherine, his neighbor, been one of those helpful widow ladies who arrived with pie and other comforts to entice the soon-to-be-grieving widower into her own bed?
Whatever had really happened, Anne was aware that she would never know the whole story and it was a fait accompli. Katherine began to produce children with alacrity, and suddenly Anne’s elderly father had a new family. Although this was a fairly common phenomenon in the colonies—older widowers marrying young women after spouses had died—no doubt this was a somewhat alarming and discomfiting experience for Anne.
It must have been
For Anne and her sisters, it was heartbreaking to have lost their mother and to have missed the opportunity to attend her deathbed, since this was an important ritual in Puritan New England and in the Old World, too. An individual’s final moment was often a public event. Some people actually rehearsed the lines they wanted to say, as they knew they would be surrounded by their family and neighbors. The last utterance of a dying person possessed an almost sacred charge (depending of course on the individual’s reputation for piety during his or her lifetime). Often these sayings were passed along from neighbor to neighbor and were even transcribed in the family records as a harbinger of truth or a forecast of the years to come.
But in facing death, Dorothy appeared to have been as quiet as she was in life; at least no one left a record of her last thoughts. And so it was Anne, ironically, who had the last word, just as New England, the daughter, had gotten the final speech in the poem Anne had composed six months earlier. Compelled to elegize her mother and to give voice to her unsung and quiet talents, she wrote “An Epitaph on My Dear and Ever-Honoured Mother, Mrs. Dorothy Dudley, Who Deceased December 27, 1643, and of Her Age, 61.”
In this sad little poem, Anne carefully listed all the qualities for which her mother was respected:
Here lies,
. . . . .
A loving mother and obedient wife,
A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Religious in all her words and ways,
Preparing still for death, till end of days:
Of all her children, children lived to see,
Then dying, left a blessed memory.
2
Anne’s evocation captured precisely what a pious Puritan woman should look and act like, but there was an unspoken truth buried in this poem as well. Without Anne’s words, this particular matron might have been forgotten. Anne could see that it was actually up to her, the literary daughter, to make sure her mother left behind a “blessed memory.” Otherwise the grandchildren—Anne’s children and the children of her sisters and brother—would forget Dorothy in a few years. Anne wrote, “As the brands of a fire, if once severed, will of themselves go out although you use no other means to extinguish them, so distance of place together with length of time (if there be no intercourse) will cool the affections. 3
IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of Dorothy’s death, Anne might have sought comfort from her father, but despite the fact that he declared himself “melted with sorrow,” Dudley was intent on finding a new wife, and with characteristic impetuosity he seized upon a nearby widow, marrying Katherine Hackburne (née Dighton) on April 14, four months after the death of Dorothy. 4 Of course, his children could not help but speculate about the duration of this courtship. Had it really only begun once their mother had died? Or had Katherine, his neighbor, been one of those helpful widow ladies who arrived with pie and other comforts to entice the soon-to-be-grieving widower into her own bed?
Whatever had really happened, Anne was aware that she would never know the whole story and it was a fait accompli. Katherine began to produce children with alacrity, and suddenly Anne’s elderly father had a new family. Although this was a fairly common phenomenon in the colonies—older widowers marrying young women after spouses had died—no doubt this was a somewhat alarming and discomfiting experience for Anne.
It must have been
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