Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee [21]
Solomon Pynchon must have carried that letter with him to the Fitch house, for Robert Fitch’s reply is dated June 16, 1686. I do not know when Solomon spied Hannah and thought it worth his while to have his father negotiate for her hand. He may have been living in Salem; he or his father may even have had a cassock or buffcoat for a puff-sleeved linen shirt sewn by her. Or he may have been passing through, scouting a city and a profession, and found himself on an alert afternoon stopping in on the aging-father and crippled-son cabinetmakers. Hannah was fifteen, and by most accounts, pert and presentable, with the level gaze and open face of a country-raised child, despite the cramped and septic streets of Salem that had been her only society. The letter has survived in Pynchon family memorabilia, for the Pynchons are one of New England’s upstanding families. I take no particular pride in having discovered it; it is reprinted in several anthologies. This modernized example comes from Puritans Come A-Courting: Romantic Love in an Age of Severity (University Presses of New England, 1972):
My dear Fitch:
My son, Solomon Pynchon of this city, having attained the Age of three and twenty and completed the Apprenticeship suitable to his Calling and Competence in the Candling and Provisioning of Ships begs Leave to ask the Hand in Marriage of your fair Daughter, the esteemed Hannah Easton, beneficiary of your Christian Intervention at the Time of her ultimate Distress and Orphaning. The highest Praise of her sober craftsmanship and Diligence and Virtue have reached Our Ears, bespoken by those Patrons who wear and display with Pride its Evidence.
I am not a Wealthy man but as a publican my Prospects rise with that of my City. The steady Progress of these past Years give no Evidence of soon abating. I am therefore Pledged to make over to my Son the Sum of Five Hundred (500) Pounds Upon Successful Completion of Marriage Agreements and binding over of Legal Documents, and a further one Thousand (1,000) to follow upon exchange of Marriage Vows. Such amount shall permit the Establishment in Boston of Solomon Pynchon Ships Candlers & Provisioners, which, through careful Nurturing and the Beneficent Protection of the One True and Almighty God, shall provide Comfort and Security for the families and issue of this noble Union.
That particular letter is well known and frequently annotated for the evidence of close attention paid to finances and practicalities, and for the awkward display of passion in a Puritan context. The evidence of a dialogue, a response, however, has never been presented. For three hundred years the painfully earnest marriage proposal of the well-off Solomon Pynchon to the anonymous seamstress of humble origins, Hannah Easton, has gone unanswered and unacted upon. (Hannah apparently was known both by her birth name of Easton and that of her adoptive parents, but scholars had never put the two identities together.) For three hundred years, young Solomon has twisted in agony, a symbol of impotence and futility. (See Neyther Myles Standish nor Solomon Pynchon Bee: Marriage Negotiation in Two New England Societies, by my old Yale professor Asa Brownledge.) Scholars have cited the letter as evidence of social mobility in Puritan New England; feminists have seized upon its implied sexism. No one, however, identified Hannah Easton as Hannah Fitch aka Precious-as-Pearl and the Salem Bibi. If Solomon Pynchon’s marital overture had been accepted, the history of the United States would have been profoundly altered.
But there was a response.
“My dear Pynchon,” writes Robert Fitch, revealing a tone that seems slightly warmer, or at least indicative of earlier contact,
the Child to whom you refer and wish to welcome to your Family if by her leave she be so willing, is not my rightful Daughter, as might be ascertain’d at a glance, but is our Daughter none