In the winter of 1773, at the age of twenty, a sea voyage being advised, owing to her declining health, she accompanied a son of Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley to England. She was then at the height of her fame. Her reputation had preceded her. She was cordially received by Lady Huntingdon, George Whitefield, the great evangelist, Lord Dartmouth, after whom Dartmouth College is named, the Lord Mayor of London and other persons of the highest social position; but this popularity did not turn her head. During her stay in England the first bound volume of her poems was published and dedicated to the Countess of Huntingdon. A copper-plate engraving of the authoress appears, showing her in the attitude of meditation with her writing materials at her side. So true to life was this picture that when Mrs. Wheatley first saw a copy of the book she exclaimed: "See! look at my Phillis-! Does she not seem as though she would speak to me?" Arrangements had been made for the formal presentation of Phillis to George III, the reigning monarch, on his return to his court at St. James, but she was hurried home from Europe because of the tidings of the declining health of her mistress and benefactor, whose eyes after the return of Phillis were soon closed in death. Mr. Wheatley survived his wife by nine days. In the next month Phillis entered on another experience. Shortly after her return from Europe she had received an offer of marriage from John Peters, said to be a handsome and attractive gentleman of color who kept at one time a grocery, later was employed as a journeyman baker, and also tried to practice law and medicine, but who was utterly unworthy of so rare and precious a human jewel as Phillis Wheatley. The marriage seems to have proven, it is written, an unfortunate if not an unhappy one. Another source thus speaks of John Peters: "He was a man of talents and information; that he wrote with fluency and propriety, and at one period read law. It is admitted, however, that he was disagreeable in his manners, and that on account of his improper conduct Phillis became entirely estranged from the immediate family of the Wheatleys. They were not seasonably informed of her suffering condition or of her death." Regarding these two estimates, it is a most reasonable inference that the devotion of his wife to him and the death of both Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley, as well as the personal pride which Mr. Peters as a freeman of color naturally possessed, may have had not a little to do with these opinions. Three children were born to the young family, and all of them died in infancy. Unknown to her large circle of friends Phillis passed quietly away December 5, 1784. The Independent Chronicle gave the news to the world in the following paragraph: "Last Lord's Day died Mrs. Phillis Peters (formerly Phillis Wheatley) age 31, known to the literary world by her celebrated miscellaneous poems. Her funeral is to be this afternoon at four o'clock from the house lately improved by Mr. Todd nearly opposite Dr. Bulfinch's at West Boston, where her friends are desired to attend." The house thus referred to was situated on or near the present site of the Revere House on Bowdoin Square, formerly known at times as a portion of Cambridge Street and sometimes as the westerly end of Court Street. As an early American poet Phillis Wheatley has been sneered at these later years; but in her time her name was on every tongue and her merits freely acknowledged by competent judges. In the edition of her poems published in Boston in 1774 the following card, issued to silence criticism and objectors, speaks for itself: "We whose names are underwritten do assure the world that the poems specified in the following pages were as we readily believe, written by Phillis, a young Negro girl who was, but a few years since, brought an uncultivated barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been and now is under the disadvantage of serving as a slave in a family in this town. She has been examined by some of the best judges and is thought qualified to write them." Among the signatures are those of Thomas Hutchinson, then Governor of Massachusetts, Andrew Oliver, LieutenantGovernor, John Hancock, of Revolutionary fame, and John Wheatley, her master. The influence of her name and fame upon the rapidly growing anti-slavery sentiment in America was considerable, for the friends of the people of color took pleasure in pointing to her career as an illustration of the possibilities of the Negro under kind and considerate treatment and a fair opportunity for education. She was the very first of her race in America to attract attention because of her intellectual and moral character. Benjamin Banneker, who was twenty years her senior, had not compiled and published the almanac which brought him to general notice until nearly ten years after Phillis had died. Richard Allen who laid the foundation of the great A. M. E. Church and Absalom Jones, the founder of the first African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, as well as George Liele, the colored Baptist revivalist to whose activities the colored Baptist Churches at Savannah and Augusta, Georgia, owe their origin, were all later than Phillis Wheatley to be singled out as examples of the possibilities of the African in America. James Durham, the celebrated Negro physician, a native of Philadelphia, and whose fame was established by his professional success in New Orleans, though about the same age as Phillis Wheatley did not rise to eminence there until after her death. The most notable fact is that she was a native of Africa and- -a woman. As woman is the mother of the race, Phillis Wheatley's preeminence among the representatives of her race stands unassailed and unassailable, suggestive and significant, a fact both pregnant and prophetic. Though she had received marked attention while in England, at a time when the two countries, America and England, were on the eve of war, Phillis Wheatley was loyal to the colonies. That she shared in their general admiration for George Washing ton this correspondence abundantly proves. In a letter written to him from Providence, Rhode Island, under date of October 26, 1775, she says— Sir: I have taken the freedom to address Your Excellency in the enclosed poem, and I entreat your acceptance, though I am not insensible of its inaccuracies. Your being appointed by the Grand Continental Congress to be generalissimo of the Armies of North America, together with the fame of your virtues excite sensations not easy to suppress. Your generosity, therefore, I presume, will pardon the attempt. Wishing Your Excellency all possible success in the great cause you are so generously engaged in, I am Your Excellency's Most Obedient Humble Servant, PHILLIS WHEATLEY. Washington's reply was characteristic of the man. He writes as follows: Miss Phillis: CAMBRIDGE, February 2, 1776. Your favor of the 26th of October did not reach my hand 'till the middle of December. Time enough, you say, to have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences continually interposing to distract the mind and to withdraw the attention, I hope, will apologize for the delay and plead my excuse for the seeming, but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me, in the elegant lines you enclosed, and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents, in honor of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem, had I not have been apprehensive that while, I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This and nothing else determined me not to give it place in the public prints. If you should ever come to Cambridge or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the muses, and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations. I am, with great respect, Your obedient humble servant, GEORGE WASHINGTON. Jared Sparks, the biographer of Washington, thought that this poem was lost, and George W. Williams, the Negro historian, author of the History of the Negro in America, being unable to produce it arrived at the same conclusion. Fortunately, however, Washington's modesty in refusing it publicity lest his enemies might charge him with vanity did not succeed in concealing the poem from the world; for it appeared in the Pennsylvania Magazine or American Monthly for April, 1776, a publication of which there are very few copies extant. Thus runs the poem: Celestial choir, enthroned in realms of light, See Mother Earth her offspring's fate bemoan, The goddess comes, she moves divinely fair, Muse! bow propitious while my pen relates |