147. Mercy Otis Warren — Revolutionary Scribe
KIM: Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode, everyone, and Happy Independence Day! (This episode drops on July 4.)
AMY: Yes, which has us thinking about all the women who were involved in the founding of our nation. So many, many names spring to mind, right Kim?!
KIM: [Jokingly] Uhhhhh…. Okay, I can only think of Betsy Ross! I mean, I can think of wives, I guess, of founding fathers. But no, I mean…
AMY: I know, I'm being facetious When I said so many, many names spring to mind. It's hard. It's hard to come up with them.
KIM: We need a lost Ladies of the revolution. Or something like that. Anyway. Weren't there a bunch of women who served as spies? I think we talked about doing an episode about some of them at one point.
AMY: Yeah, that's true. Um, and maybe we will do that at a later point. Maybe this time next year we'll do the spies. But believe it or not, we also have a lost lady of lit from this time period in American history.
KIM: That’s interesting. Because when I think of people who wrote during the American Revolution, it’s always one of the “founding fathers.” Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas Paine…
AMY: Same. Interestingly, Jack, my 11-year-old son, was studying the American Revolution this year in school and they put on a little pageant for the parents where they all dressed up as different pivotal figures and that’s where I got the idea for the subject of today’s mini: Mercy Otis Warren. She was one of the characters in this little show they put on.
KIM: Okay, that name sounds vaguely familiar, but I don’t think I would have been able to say much about her prior to the prepwork we did for this episode.
AMY: Yeah, I didn’t know anything either. And I wound up checking out a book by Nancy Rubin Stuart for more information. It’s called The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation. So most of what we’ll be sharing for this episode comes from what we gleaned from this biography.
KIM: Okay, so Stuart refers to Warren as the “first female reporter of the American revolution.” As the wife of a high-profile patriot with connections to many of the big names we associate with the time period, Warren ended up chronicling the events she lived through. Her History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution was first published in 1805 and is considered a seminal and detailed account of the colonial cause.
AMY: And like you said, Kim, we don’t really think of many writers from this time period being female. The poet Phillis Wheatley is one that most of us know… but in terms of Mercy Otis Warren, scholars are not completely sure why she received the terrific education she did (because most daughters would not have been educated. There’s a line from Ben Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac: “Girls, mark my words: and know, For men of sense/Your strongest charms are native innocence.”
KIM: Okay, so… just be dumb.
AMY: Yeah. I didn't know we were gonna have to cancel Ben Franklin in this episode. No, I'm, I'm just kidding.
KIM: Kidding not kidding.
AMY: Yeah. So Mercy’s dad was a member of the Massachusset congress… and he fostered her intellect. But also keep in mind that she was the eldest daughter in a family of 13 (7 of the children survived) so as the oldest girl, she had a lot of domestic responsibilities. Scholars think she probably learned a lot by proxy from her older brother Jemmy, whom she was very close to and he attended Harvard. So he was sharing a lot of what he knew with her, including the work of philosophers like John Locke and this idea of “man’s right to perfect freedom.” (Jemmy suffered a mental deterioration later in adulthood, but prior to that he had been a real leader in the patriotic movement so it’s almost like Mercy felt compelled to pick up her brother’s banner where he left off.)
KIM: Right. So she went on to marry James Warren (who was a college chum of her brother Jemmy) and the couple settled into married life. They lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, had some kids and seemed like they had a happy domestic life. James Warren really appreciated his wife’s intelligence. Eventually, they befriended a young couple by the name of John and Abigail Adams.
AMY: And this is important, because John wound up having an important influence on Mercy’s writing career. He sort of became her mentor, reading her writing and encouraging her along the way. She had started experimenting with writing political poetry. (Prior to that all her poems had been more personal or about nature.) At one point, she wrote a poem for the Royal American Magazine which criticized colonial women for not making sacrifices on the homefront. Colonial women wanted all the lace and frippery and fine materials that came over from Britain, and she was like, “C’mon now, girls. You’ve got to be willing to give up the fancy clothes right now. This is not the time.” She writes: “...yet all unite/At once to end the great politic strife/And yield up all but real wants of life.”) I also love this poem, because she makes an allusion to the water-cooler book of the day, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa!
KIM: I love how you call it the water cooler book of the day.
AMY: Yeah, it was the book everyone was talking about.
KIM: I love that. So longtime listeners of this show will know that that book is Amy’s albatross! You mentioned it in episode #1 and Amy… update?
AMY: I still haven’t finished it. It’s on my nightstand.
KIM: I’m going to have to come over when we finish this and read it to you!
AMY: I’m going to be like, “Jack, you need to start reading this to me!”Yeah. I didn't know we were gonna have to cancel Brynn Franklin in this episode. No, I'm, I'm just kidding. Kidding. Um, Yeah. So Mercy's dad was a member of the Massachusetts Congress and he fostered her intellect, but you also have to keep in mind that she was the eldest daughter in a family of 13 kids.
Seven of the children survived. As the oldest girl, she would've had a lot of domestic responsibilities, so she wasn't having a ton of time to sit around reading and learning. But she did have this older brother Jimmy, that she was very close to, and he attended Harvard, had tutors, all that kind of stuff.
And she kinda learned a lot from him by proxy. He was sharing a lot of what he knew, including the work of philosophers like John Locke and this idea of man's right to perfect freedom. So later on in life, big Brother Jimmy, unfortunately, suffered a mental deterioration that kind of took him out of the cause.
But prior to that, he had been a real leader in the patriotic movement. So it's almost like Mercy felt compelled to pick up her big brother's banner where he left off.
Right. So she went on to marry James Warren. He was a college chum of her brother Jimmy. And the couple settled into married life. They lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, had some kids and seemed like they had a happy domestic life. James Warren really appreciated his wife's intelligence and eventually they befriended a young couple by the name of John and Abigail Adams.
and this is really important because John Adams wound up having an important influence on Mercy's writing career. He sort of became her mentor. He'd read her writing, and he encouraged her along the way. So she had started experimenting with writing political poetry because prior to that, all her poems had been more personal or you know, about nature, just lovely stuff.
But then at one point she wrote a poem for the Royal American Magazine, which criticized colonial women for not making sacrifices on the home front. Basically what was happening was colonial women wanted all the lace and the frippery and the fine materials that came over from Britain. And Mercy said in this home, come on now, girls, you've gotta be willing to give up the fancy clothes right now.
This is not the time. this is what she says. Yet all unite at once to end the great politics, strife and yield up all but real wants of life. And I also love this poem because she makes an illusion to the water cooler book of the day. Samuel Richardsons. Wait for it. Larissa.
I love how you call it the watercolor book of the day
Yeah, it was, it was the book everyone was talking
I love that. So longtime listeners of this show will know that this book is Amy's Albatross. You mentioned in episode number one and Amy an update.
I still haven't finished it. It is still on my
I'm gonna have to come over and read it to you after you finish reading the.
I'm gonna be like, Jack, you need to start reading this to me. It's sitting there on my nightstand, taunting me. but yeah, So this is what Mercy Otis Warren has to say about Clarissa. In this same piece.
Clarissa reigns no more a favorite toast. [Sort of a “let’s boycott Clarissa and all things British.”]
So what she's saying is, let's all boycott Clarissa and all things British we're acting like we love this book, but like, maybe let's not love it.
KIM: So maybe you don’t need to finish reading it, Amy! You’re taking a patriotic stand! So what else did Mercy Otis Warren write?
AMY: Well, she started getting into political plays. (I didn’t know this, but plays in New England were banned, so there really was no actual theater. Mercy had never even seen a play.
KIM: Because of Puritanism?
AMY: I think so. But plays were published in newspapers and you read them.) So she wrote this one play, anonymously, called “The Adulateur” which satirized Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson. Warren’s biographer Stuart writes: “With the publication of The Adulateur, Mercy made her debut as the patriots’ secret pen, whose barbed lampoons provoked laughter and longing for liberation from British rule.” (p. 49) She was in her late 40s when she wrote this. She went on to write other plays that satirized well-known Tories around town. Everyone knew who she was hinting at. At one point she wondered if maybe she’d gone too far with one of her plays lampooning someone, and John Adams wrote to her husband asking him to send “most friendly regards to a certain lady — tell her, that god Almighty (I use a bold style) has instructed her with powers for the good of the world, which … he bestows upon few of the human race. That instead of being a fault to use them, it would be criminal to neglect them.”
KIM: Ooh, that gave me chills.
AMY: Yeah, he gave her the green light.
KIM: Like yeah, you’re amazing. Keep doing what you’re doing. Oh, that’s so cool. I want to read it. And then following the Boston Tea Party, John Adams actually commissioned a piece from Mercy. He wanted her to memorialize that incident in a poem.
AMY: Yes, she called it “The Squabble of the Sea Nymphs,” and she wrote it in the mock-epic style of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. When he read it, John Adams called it “one of the incontestable evidences of real genius.”
KIM: Wow. This all actually seems really daring of her! To be calling people out in her writing?! And knowing that the representatives of the crown would be seeing it all?
AMY: Yes, well, she was publishing anonymously, remember, but yes, it was dangerous! In a letter to Abigal Adams, Mercy actually made mention to the fact that as the wives of the patriots, they could also be accused of treason. (The Coercive Acts passed at the time said anyone suspected of treason could be immediately apprehended and taken back to England.) It’s easy to forget how fraught and scary these times would have seemed (and possibly even futile… it would have been difficult to think you could take on England and win!) They must have felt at times like, “What the hell are we doing?!” She was writing anonymously to avoid retribution but it also worked to her advantage in that no one knew a woman had written it. It was taken more seriously because of that. (All of her work was anonymous until 1790 when she published a compilation of two decades of her work.) Like hey, surprise!
KIM: Hey, it’s me. Also, I’m thinking of that famous line from Abigail Adams: “Remember the ladies” (That needs to be part of our podcast branding, come to think of it!)
AMY: Yes! Oh, i love that! Let’s put it on a mug or something. I should also mention that Mercy has another mentor during this time. She wrote a fan letter to a famous female British historian, Catharine Macaulay, and the two ended up in a correspondence where she would tell her about everything that was happening in the colonies.
KIM: So as she’s living through all these incidents, her satirical writing for newspapers is galvanizing the colonists and getting them really fired up.
AMY: Yes, and then she’s also getting people fired up in her correspondence. During Britain’s siege of Boston in 1775, her husband wrote to John Adams urging him to stop trying to hammer out some sort of deal with George III. Mercy wound up adding her own paragraph to the letter and says, “You should no longer piddle at the threshold. [Piddle meaning pee, i assume?] “It is time to leap into the theatre to unlock the bars, and open every gate that impedes the rise and growth of the American republic.” And don’t piddle at the threshold…
KIM: I mean, Lady Macbeth, right there.
AMY: Don’t piddle is don’t pee.
KIM: Right, don’t piss there, actually go do something. Yeah. Whoa. And for a woman to write this, too.
AMY: She was also privately recording everything she was hearing. (Her home in Plymouth was basically a meeting place for secret meetings of the patriots, including the Sons of Liberty, and her husband is a political big-wig, so she’s hearing A LOT) News of Lexington and Concord… and then all the subsequent battles and hardships… she’s observing it all and recording her thoughts with her eye toward eventually writing a history of it all. I will say that I haven’t read this history. It’s three volumes and 1200 pages, so…
KIM: Will you be finishing Clarissa first?
AMY: I’d rather finish Clarissa.
KIM: But this book effectively made her America’s first female historian.
AMY: Yeah, but this book also prompted a little bit (actually, no, a lot) of flak with her old pal, John Adams, though.
KIM: Not her biggest fan!
AMY: Yeah, the tide turned. As the fledgling republic had its growing pains, Mercy and her husband started to part ways politically with John Adams. Adams was a Federalist and they were anti-Federalist (siding with Thomas Jefferson in the debate) and some of that philosophy spilled over into her work. I guess she kind of threw a little shade at Adams in her big history of the revolution, which Adams did not appreciate. He ended up telling someone that “History is not the province of the ladies.” So suddenly he is not singing her praises any more.
KIM: Yeah, apparently that rule about not discussing politics with people applies even to your friends who are ACTUAL POLITICIANs.] Mercy Otis Warren died in 1814 at the age of 86. In 2002 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY. And she has a spot on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.
AMY: Okay, I have done the Freedom trail in Boston several times but I didn’t realize there was one for the ladies!
KIM: Yes, you can do Freedom Trail Revolutionary Women’s Tours if you’re visiting Boston. Also, Mercy and James Warren’s home still stands on a street corner in Plymouth, Mass. It’s called the Winslow-Warren house. I love that it’s still there.
AMY: And we’ll still be here next week with another Lost Lady of Lit to learn about. Hope you tune in — and also, we really hope you could take one more minute now that this episode has wrapped to leave us a rating and/or a review wherever you listen to the podcast. It’s an easy way to tell us that you appreciate what we’re doing, and we appreciate it so, so much!
KIM: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.