The Speckled Monster (81 page)

Sloane's conversations with the Princess of Wales and the king are based on his own reports. He does not give locations or specific times, but he does include the most important parts of the dialogue. The princess asked his advice about inoculating the princesses, he refused, and she followed up by asking if he would dissuade her. The king (who was famous for tiring out others on long walks in the park, regardless of the weather) asked whether inoculation would work and, when told accidents might happen, retorted that any physic might at times go wrong. I do not know whether Sunderland (or anyone else) was present, but as Sunderland was certainly close in the king's counsels and suddenly decided to inoculate his son just before the princesses' operation, it's a plausible supposition.

Beyond Amyand, Maitland, Sloane, and Steigerthal, I do not know who was present at the inoculation of the princesses at St. James's. I've drawn this scene from Amyand's and Maitland's reports to the Royal Society of what they did, and from contemporary and modern assessments of the royal family's character and habits. Princess Amelia was called Emily by the family; she took after the king in loving dogs, horses, hunting, and brisk walks outdoors; the prettiest of the three sisters, she was an extrovert and a flirt. Princess Caroline was a shy mother-hen who doted on her oldest sister and her mother. Pierre and Anne-Caroline are my imagination, though they fit in with the princesses' personalities. Princess Anne had become Handel's pupil at age eight, and often played for the family.

The accounts of the Sunderland, Amyand, Bathurst, Berkeley, Townshend, Tichborne, and De La Warr children follow factual reports by their physicians and surgeons. Arbuthnot—one of the attending doctors—provided the best account of the death of Bathurst's servant (though anonymously, in
Mr. Maitland's Account . . . Vindicated
); Dr. Wagstaffe supplied other details. The newspapers reported that the princess spent the evening of April 25 with her daughters, while the king and the prince went to Handel's opera.

Lady Mary's literary masquerade as a Turkey merchant, taking on the physicians, is genuine. It is not clear when she wrote it, though Grundy argues it was well before the edited version appeared in print. Lady Mary's run-in with Sloane is my supposition. She attended, however, many of the inoculations performed under the supervision of Sloane, Steigerthal, Arbuthnot, and Mead, and by Maitland and Amyand (though she did not give many particular names). Given the level of her ire, it seems improbable that she did not have regular disagreements with these men in person—she certainly knew Sloane, Arbuthnot, Mead, and Maitland well enough to speak her mind frankly before them. That one or several of them faced her with her literary “crime” also seems probable: by the following spring, someone had convinced her that the two deaths she here calls murders were not, in fact, due to inoculation.

Wagstaffe, Edmund Massey, and Isaac Massey were the leading opponents of inoculation in London.

Jurin made his report to the Royal Society at the time stated, later publishing it in the Society's
Philosophical Transactions,
as well as separately in a pamphlet.

As for the princesses' inoculation, I do not know who beyond the medical men attended the inoculation of Prince William at Leicester House—but that, even more than the princesses' operation, was an occasion of state importance: the little prince was third in line for the throne.

Lady Mary gave very few specific names of those who begged her presence and got it—though she said repeatedly that she was run off her feet in complying. The duchess of Ancaster, however, is a very good bet: Jane Brownlow Bertie was a childhood friend who had specific smallpox memories with Lady Mary. I have, however, given her the title of duchess about one month earlier than she acceded to it (by the death of her father-in-law); when her daughter was inoculated on May 11, 1723 (the same day as the prince), she was the marchioness of Lindsey. I have written the scene to bring to life the unbalancing difference between the hooting and jeering of crowds, and the anxious supplications of parents Lady Mary recorded in her diary. Her final words I have borrowed from the closing sentence of her inoculation piece in her
Embassy Letters
.

Whether or not Lady Mary and Zabdiel Boylston met remains one of the great enigmas of this tale. In solving the mystery, I have been more speculative in this chapter than in the others. I have built the story, however, on tantalizing fragments of evidence.

In brief, Boylston embarked for London in December 1724 on Captain Barlow's ship. During his year-and-a-half stay, he did not perform any inoculations, but he was in high demand to attend them. At the time, so was Lady Mary. Many of the same people who welcomed him warmly into the Royal Society were her close friends. So, although I have uncovered no evidence of their meeting, it is hard to imagine that they did not.

Here are the historical details:

Boylston's brief remembering of the end of the epidemic, through the summer of 1723, is accurate in the events, though I have supplied emotions and reactions that make sense. In May he inoculated six people who were soon packed off to Spectacle Island; Robie noted that they had been “forced” there by the “Boston mob.” Boylston was hauled before a town meeting. Though Boylston did write the medical excuse that got James Franklin released to the press yard, I do not know if it was Josiah Franklin who asked him to do so. Samuel Adams of Revolutionary fame was born as noted. The grim numbers are drawn from Boylston and Douglass, both quoting official town statistics.

Boylston family legend has it that Sir Hans Sloane invited Boylston to London. While I have found no hard evidence of such an invitation, it seems plausible enough. Sloane certainly chaired the first meeting of the Royal Society that Boylston attended—soon after his arrival in London. Boylston himself intimates that both Sloane and the Princess of Wales encouraged him to write up his account of inoculation early in the spring, again, quite soon after his arrival.

Additionally, Boylston's submission of a paper to the Royal Society before he took ship suggests that someone was pushing him to bolster his résumé, so to speak—or, as I have surmised, that someone at the Royal Society elicited a paper from him, assuming he would realize that what the Fellows really wanted to know about was inoculation. Both the bolstering (if it was that) and the writing are out of character for Boylston. In contrast to Mather, he took little pleasure in writing papers and letters to the Royal Society once he was a member—and did so only rarely. In no other instance did he write to publish without some kind of duress: self-defense, royal command, or (as is obvious in his few later communications with the Royal Society) a burdensome sense of duty too long neglected.

The instigator might well have been Cotton Mather, who wrote Boylston letters of introduction to Sloane and Jurin, suggesting a royal presentation. Sloane, however, was an even more inveterate collector of knowledge than Mather. He wrote voluminously to many people, and he was also the orchestrator of the English trials of inoculation—certainly at the princess's behest, but also, apparently, to satisfy his own professional curiosity. He may well have taken it upon himself to make such an invitation, or to solicit it through contacts like Mather—especially if it already had royal force behind it.

For the few words Boylston reads from Sloane's “letter,” I have used standard phrases of politeness that Boylston later employed in the dedication of his book.

Boylston's report home to Colman confirms that he was in part an emissary to the governor for the moderates of Boston. This may have been another inducement for him to go—though his aloofness from Boston politics make it unlikely that this diplomatic mission was his primary reason for heading to London.

I do not know whether Sloane or anyone else found Boylston's submission of a paper on ambergris funny. The merchant Thomas Hollis certainly thought Boylston “ingenuous” by London's worldly standards. Back in Boston, though, the “ambergrease”/bear's grease confusion was real: though it may have been a deliberate prank rather than a muddle-headed mistake, as the man then in charge of the
Courant
was none other than Benjamin Franklin.

It is not clear whether or not Boylston's family went with him, but the few extant clues suggest that they did not. His son Zabby certainly remained at Harvard, where he got into enough trouble drinking and carousing to be reprimanded by the president. None of the few notices of Boylston in London mention anything about his wife or children being there as well—though Hollis twice found fit to mention Boylston's horses. Furthermore, his advertisements appear to offer to rent part of his garden and the right to sell its produce out of his shop—but not to rent the house, stables, or shop itself. Finally, his first extant letter back to London—to Sir Hans—notes his joyous return to family, friends, and country.

A number of his horses, however, did go and caused something of a stir, at least among the Americans in London. I have assumed that Jack went with him, as servant and groom, and possibly Jackey as well. Curiously, I have found no scrap of evidence indicating whether or not he returned to America with the horses. That he took them at all is intriguing—it cannot have made for a small shipping charge or an easy crossing. Even more intriguing is Hollis's note that he was refusing to part with them even for very handsome sums, coupled with his own later offer (through Jurin) to send the royal children saddle pads, in what sound like surprisingly familiar terms. This suggests the possibility that he intended his horses as princely gifts, and quite possibly presented them—though again, I have turned up no evidence.

Family legend also has Boylston inoculating the first two royal princesses (Emily and Caroline); his great-nephew Ward Nicholas Boylston insisted upon this point, though it is patently impossible (Amyand did it, and Boylston was in Boston at the time, in any case). Dr. Boylston was, however, in London at the time that Princess Mary was inoculated. He may well have been invited to be present, given the royal family's penchant for having all possible experts dancing attendance: he was, after all, far and away the world's most experienced inoculator outside Turkey and western Africa. Sergeant Amyand did the cutting, once again, but Boylston's possible presence as witness seems a likely—and understandable—source for his great-nephew's later insistence that Boylston inoculated a princess or two.

I have drawn his encounters with Prince William and Prince George from their known personalities and interests, matched with Zabdiel's own pride in his horses. That he spoke to William is suggested—though not proven—by a letter he later sent to Dr. Jurin, offering to send “Prince William and the young princesses” saddle pads—a specific kind of American training saddle. In context (it occurs as an afterthought, in a postscript) it reads as if he has met the children—particularly William—and discussed horses with them. This certainly fits in with family legend that he met the royal family—and was given a reward for his work. (The stated sum, £1,000, is likely an exaggeration, however, as that was the lavish sum given by the king to Maitland for traveling to Hanover and inoculating Prince Frederick.)

Lady Mary's encounter with her father as he arrived unannounced in her dressing room was burned into the memory of her daughter, who was present; she in turn, passed the story on to her children. It was the only time that young Mary (later Lady Bute) recalled laying eyes on her grandfather. In the family tale, the visit stands alone, unconnected to any particular event: I have linked it to his decision to inoculate his heirs. In Lady Bute's much later memory, she seems at the time to have been of an age to make this connection plausible.

The letters from Mather to Jurin, Boylston to Colman, Lady Mary to her sister and Boylston's final letter to Sloane are genuine. Jerusha's “Come home to me,” however, is supposition, though surely some sort of plea must have been made.

Both Lady Mary and Boylston are hard to trace across the year 1725-26. What little information I've given for Boylston is what can be gleaned from later writings and genealogies. For Lady Mary, I have relied upon Isobel Grundy's biography—though I interpret the Richardson painting (c. 1725) differently. Her clothing comes very close to the Turkish costume described in her
Embassy Letters
—though the décolletage and the waistline have been altered to suit European style. The black boy is often referred to as a “page,” which may well have been his job; the disturbing gleam of a silver collar around his neck, however, surely indicates that he was a slave, whether or not he was hers. His identity has never been discovered. The Wortleys are not known to have had a black servant, though he may well have been “borrowed” from friends who did.

Richardson was a regular at the Royal Society's unofficial home at the Grecian, and his closest friends included many of the Society's staunchest advocates of inoculation: Arbuthnot, Cheselden, Mead, Sloane, and Dr. Frederick Slare. Another of the painter's dearest friends was Alexander Pope. (Both Richardson and Cheselden spent time with Pope at his villa in Twickenham; Pope stayed with Richardson when he was in London.) All of these people, with the exception of Cheselden and Slare, were also Lady Mary's good friends. Boylston certainly met all of the Fellows, and may well have crossed the Atlantic in part to learn the new method of lithotomy from Cheselden. Although I cannot finger a time or place when all these people came together, the circumstantial evidence that Boylston circulated among these people is very strong. It lends some credence, too, to the possibility that the painting in question does indeed commemorate the battle against small-pox. Such portraits were often commissioned by patrons other than the sitter; Pope, for one, was known to have commissioned and treasured other portraits of Lady Mary. Small groups of friends gathering to watch an artist at work in his studio was a common and convivial pastime among the leisured classes.