“It seems like a dream,” said Zabdiel shaking his head in wonder as he took his leave. “If you don’t mind, I would rather not spread the word of this invitation until I know for certain what it produces.”
“All manner of honors, I expect,” said Mr. Colman. “But I shall be as secret as the grave.”
At the beginning of August, Zabdiel advertised in the papers for people to settle their debts with him, as he was designing a voyage to London in a very short time. Meanwhile, he replied to Sir Hans, both to accept the invitation and to apologize for the unavoidable delay in doing so; it would take time—as much as a year, perhaps—to make suitable arrangements for his practice, his shop, and his family.
A few weeks later, Jerusha found her husband pacing back and forth in front of his bookshelf in the parlor one evening.
“I have had a word with Captain Barlow,” he said. “I do not know, Jerusha, how we will pay for my passage. . . . I must sell either my books or my horses.”
“The books,” she said without a second thought. “Did you think I would say anything else?” she cried, as relief flooded his face. “Books are replaceable. A fine bloodline such as you have spent years refining is not.” She crossed the room to put her arms around him. “But I do think you ought to consider parting with a few of your horses. Three or four.” Ignoring his dismay, she pattered on. “You must take some with you, Zabdiel. I don’t know how it’s done, though it must be possible, since horses are shipped this direction.”
“Take some—? Have you taken leave of your senses entirely?”
“You must go bearing some American gift worthy of royalty. I am not saying you will need it,” she said, laughing at the consternation on his face. “But surely you must go prepared. I have seen the stock that comes to us from England; we are no provincial backwater in the matter of horse breeding. And I cannot think of anything else we have that might be suitable.”
By October, Zabdiel had caused a small stir among the province’s literati, by selling his fine collection of books to a recent graduate from Harvard.
Sir Hans replied to Zabdiel’s note with a suggestion. Perhaps, during the delay, Dr. Boylston might consider submitting to the Royal Society some paper likely to be of interest to the Fellows?
Zabdiel considered consulting Dr. Mather. Instead, he rode up to the Salutation Inn.
“What the devil can they want?” he grumbled to Cheever. “What could I possibly know that they might find of interest?”
“What do they talk about?”
“Wonders of the natural world, I think. Curiosities like inoculation for the smallpox.”
“How about ambergris? There’s a curiosity for you.”
There were always whalers from Nantucket in the Salutation; he began his research that very night, over tankards of the Webbs’ best brew.
In February 1724, he began advertising for someone to rent two and a quarter acres of his garden, containing gooseberry, currant bushes, fruit trees, and an asparagus bed, among other useful plants. Also on offer was the right to sell its produce—as well as imported drugs—from his shop.
That spring, the king dispatched Mr. Maitland to Hanover to inoculate His eighteen-year-old Royal Highness, Prince Frederick, second in line for the throne after his father, the Prince of Wales. As a consequence, Prince Frederick received one light fever, five hundred pustules, and indemnity from the natural smallpox. Mr. Maitland received the lavish sum of £1,000. Inoculation had received the highest commendation the kingdom could offer.
Sir Hans retreated to the Repository, the Royal Society’s triangular nook of a library—strange but lovely design of Sir Christopher Wren—to open the letter from Boston. That it was not addressed in Dr. Mather’s crabbed handwriting had given him particular excitement; perhaps he would at last discover what he yearned to know, after being put off so long.
Dr. Jurin found him there a quarter of an hour later, laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face. “I wrote to ask Dr. Boylston of Boston whether he might grace us with a paper sure to be of interest to the Fellows, as his voyage has been postponed so long,” he gasped. “He has earnestly obliged.” He slid the paper across to Dr. Jurin.
The good doctor had written about the oceanic mystery of ambergris.
“Not bad, mind you,” said Sir Hans, wiping his eyes. “Indeed, I think it quite publishable. But how can he possibly have missed my reference to inoculation?”
The long-avoided day of doom was fast approaching. In November 1724, Zabdiel realized that perhaps a gift for the Royal Society would be in order, so he advertised for a large quantity of ambergris. Only he spelled it as New Englanders pronounced it—“ambergrease”—in an admittedly hurried scrawl—and the Courant’s typesetter got it confused with bear’s grease. “A most malodorous mistake,” sighed Jerusha, wrinkling her nose as she surveyed the pails full of hairy bear’s fat that kept appearing, as if by magic, every morning on the kitchen steps. But she couldn’t blame the donors, who carefully noted their names and the weight of their offerings. Ambergris was worth ten times what bear’s grease went for.
It was the least he could do, thought Dr. Mather, putting pen to paper in the middle of December, to help open doors into learned society for his beloved physician. No doubt Dr. Boylston would have tales of inoculation that the Royal Society would wish to hear from his lips. But Dr. Mather was hoping he might also prime the doctor with a few more personally useful tales as well. For he needed help—preferably help bodily present in Crane Court—to conquer once and for all a particularly vexing tribulation the Lord had lately poured upon him.
Suspicious of the fact that Dr. Mather claimed fellowship in the Royal Society but did not receive their journal, Dr. Douglass had induced some of his minions to pry into the Society’s official membership records. They had come up empty.
Dr. Mather, that odious Scot had begun crowing, was no member at all. His “F.R.S.,” was a miserable sham.
Dr. Mather was deeply hurt. He would never have adopted such august initials of honor had they not been offered to him by the bona fide secretary of the Society. He had written to the present secretary, Dr. Jurin, to say so, and to apologize for having trespassed—if indeed he had trespassed. He had also steadily offered the suggestion (so deeply wrapped in black velvet that he himself could barely discern it) that the Royal Society owed him an apology in return, not to mention a clarification of their error, trumpeted to the world.
He had at last received the clarification—his failure to appear on the membership rolls was a mere oversight of procedure. Not to worry, he was indeed entitled to his F.R.S. He had not, so far, had the apology, however.
Yes, providing Dr. Boylston with a letter of introduction was a fine thing to do.
To Dr. James Jurin
December 15, 1724
Sir,
Having lately addressed you with some number of letters, I have just now nothing to add but that I have an agreeable occasion of introducing to your knowledge and kindness a friend that has been to me as the golden wedge of Ophir. ’Tis Mr. Zabdiel Boylston, the sight of whom will doubtless be the more welcome to you because his name has already reached you.
He is a gentleman whose performances as a chirurgeon (and very particularly in lithotomy) have hitherto been equaled by no person in these parts of the world. And as a physician he has been to an uncommon degree successful, and so beloved and esteemed that his absence for a few months from us, on his present voyage, is a matter of uneasy apprehension to a multitude.
But that which will more particularly recommend him to your notice is that this is the gentleman who first brought the way of saving lives by the inoculation of the smallpox into the American world.
When the rest of our doctors did rather the part of butchers or tools for the destroyer to our perishing people, and with envious and horrid insinuations infuriated the world against him, this worthy man had the courage and conscience to enter upon the practice; and (generously beginning
with his own family) he alone, with the blessing of Heaven, saved the lives of I think several hundreds; yea, at one time he saved a whole town from a fearful desolation, after the smallpox had begun to do the execution of a great plague upon it. With an admirable patience he slighted the allatrations of a self-destroying people, and the satisfaction of having done good unto mankind made him a noble compensation for all the trouble he met withal.
You having done so much to oblige the public in your candid essays to procure a just reputation for a practice, which if mankind were not obstinately bent upon self-destruction would soon save the lives of millions, it cannot be unacceptable to you to have an opportunity for inquiring of this gentleman what has occurred in his own experiments, and particularly, how far he can justify the account I have given you of those few who died after the inoculation.
Yes, Dr. Boylston was just the person to attest to his accuracy. This was very satisfactory, indeed. So satisfactory that he thought he might venture quite a daring recommendation.
Yea, perhaps the Prince and Princess themselves, if informed of such a one coming to London, may not be unwilling to take some cognizance of a person so distinguished by an operation of so much consequence.
Your most hearty servant,
Cotton Mather, D.D., F.R.S.
The letter was such a good idea that he directly began another, to Sir Hans Sloane.
“He thinks the Royal Society is all his idea,” said Zabdiel to the Reverend Mr. Colman. “I don’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.”
“You do him a kindness,” said Mr. Colman, adding letters of introduction to the merchant Thomas Hollis and the minister Daniel Neal to his stack. “And in any case, it is most certainly his idea that you should defend his honor before the Society . . . I must confess, I also have a request to make of you.” He closed the door to his study. “Someone, you see, must talk sense to the governor. I am sorry to say that Elisha Cooke has announced his plans to sail to London; no doubt he will seek to sever all Governor Shute’s ties to this country. I am only afraid that he will sever other things as well. Possibly including most of whatever may be left of the goodwill the court bears us. May those of us in favor of peace between Council and town count on your discretion as an emissary?”
Zabdiel groaned and nodded in agreement.
So, early one morning at the end of December, Zabdiel, Jack, and Jackey—now six and, to Tommy’s everlasting envy, going along as page to Zabdiel—drove four of Zabdiel’s horses up the gangway and into a specially built pen on the deck of Captain Barlow’s ship. In his tiny cabin, Zabdiel stowed a stack of letters, the diary that held all his case notes for inoculation, a light waxy gray ball of ambergris, and a heavy burden of responsibility. Not long afterward, he kissed Jerusha and the children good-bye, while Jack and Jackey bade farewell to Moll. An hour later, they were under sail for London.
“I am sorry that the man’s practice has fallen off so drastically here at home that he feels he must seek his fortune abroad,” sniffed Dr. Douglass at a meeting of the Scots Charitable Society. “I am sorrier still that he has had the overweening gall to think he will make a splash in London’s medical milieu.” He took a sip of rum punch and leaned back with satisfaction. “He’ll be back soon enough, tail between his legs, I tell you. London has plenty of highly trained inoculators. What need have they of one more quack?”
In the intolerable quiet of Leicester House just after the New Year, the Princess of Wales was obeying tradition and good hygiene by keeping to her bed during the six-week period of lying-in after delivering the newest princess, Louisa, to the nation on December 18. In reality, she was fretting and fidgeting—and, as soon as her ladies turned their backs, up and pacing about the chamber.
Sir Hans was sent for, to see if he could calm her down.
For him, she was induced to sit in a chair and take a glass of wine.
He did his best to bring her news of the subjects she liked. “My grandson Stanley was inoculated on the twentieth,” he said. “Seems to be doing quite well.”
“Inoculation,” snapped the princess, fidgeting with the coverlet that Tich had insisted upon tucking around her. “Why does that man Boylston not come?”
Sir Hans sighed. “Boston is a long ways away, Highness. And not without peril. They say he once lost a brother bound for London by sea. Perhaps he is reluctant.”
“A man like that? Afraid of the sea? I do not believe it. Besides, we are going back and forth on the sea to Hanover all the time. I see that look, Sir Hans, you will tell me that crossing the Atlantic is different from crossing the Channel. But I am sure that wretched man Shute has done it four times.”
“Only once, madam. Though I will agree that it seems like four times.”
In Covent Garden and Twickenham, Lady Mary was enjoying a respite that very nearly amounted to retirement. The smallpox had waned across 1724, and the pluckings at her skirts and her sleeves, the notes that chased her down and said Please come or Please stay away had disappeared with the disease.
The physicians had wrested the practice away from her—they even came in for most of the praise for the discovery, at least in the serious matter of the saving of lives. Lady Mary found her name relegated to decorating poetry as a rescuer of beauty and wit.
She affected a relentlessly arch cheer and wrote flowing letters to her sister Frances, Lady Mar, sinking ever farther into despondency in her Parisian exile: I see everybody but converse with nobody but des amis choisies. Though, to be honest, a terrible number of her friends were slipping into long, silent conversations with death.
But Frances would not wish to dwell on Lady Mary’s creeping sadness for the passing of friends. She forced herself back into brightness: We have assemblies for every day in the week, besides court, operas, and masquerades. She thought of the absurdities of the rising generation, and shook her head. For my part, it is my established opinion that this globe of ours is no better than a Holland cheese, and the walkers about in it mites. I should be tolerably easy though a great rat came and ate half it up.
Lord, she sounded little less gloomy than her sister. How was such a letter to cheer up poor Frances?
Near the end of January, Zabdiel, his servants, and his horses at long last arrived in the metropolis. On the eleventh of February, 1725, he dressed carefully in the new suit that Jerusha insisted he have made for him, freshly powdered his best wig, and went off to Crane Court, to be introduced to the Royal Society.
There were many men milling about outside the meeting room, some hurrying to clap old friends on the back and draw them off to quiet corners, others standing about in proud poses and eyeing one another surreptitiously. He had the feeling that he was going to be miserable, when two men walked up together.
The younger and less imposing smiled and said, “Dr. Boylston, I presume?” At his nod, he introduced his elder companion—none other than Sir Hans Sloane—and was in turn introduced as Dr. James Jurin.
“Delighted, delighted to meet you I am sure,” they said all around, and Zabdiel thought that perhaps they might even mean it.
Soon afterward, they all filed in to the hall. Sir Hans—as vice president—took the chair in Sir Isaac Newton’s absence, and the meeting began. It was both dull and brilliant, as they read old minutes and moved to new ideas. They spoke first of a new French study of suppuration, and then of a home-grown treatise on vegetables; at last, they gave the floor to Dr. Jurin, who introduced him to the gathered company as “Dr. Boylston from New England.”
With some trepidation, Zabdiel rose and gazed over the gathered crowd. Briefly, he recalled the hostile faces leaning toward him at the selectmen’s meeting in Boston, but these faces—some a great deal more grand, others a great deal more dissolute, and some equally serious and sober—were for the most part politely interested. No doubt he himself formed part of their interest, he thought dryly. They were probably regarding him as just another exotic specimen.
Carefully, he unwrapped the immense lum
p of ambergris he had hauled all the way from New England, and presented it to Sir Hans and the Society, regaling them with a tale of Nantucketers discovering the stuff in a bag near the formidable genitals of a male sperm whale. It was moist and most offensive smelling when first found, he assured them, though after proper curing, its scent was legendary for its sweetness.
At Sir Hans’s request, the lump was broken open, so that they might see what was inside. It proved solid throughout, but the breaking proved valuable. A bit was designated for the Repository, but the rest was shared out among members with their own collections to feed.
Dr. Boylston was formally thanked, and the meeting broke up. Men crowded forward, all eager to speak with him—quite a few about ambergris, but many more, he found, about inoculation. Zabdiel was astounded to find that Dr. Richard Mead wished to speak to him. So did Dr. John Arbuthnot and Mr. William Cheselden, the developer of a promising new technique for extracting bladder stones, and the man Zabdiel regarded as the greatest living surgeon. Amid a cluster of fellows, he was swept across the Strand to their unofficial home at the Grecian coffeehouse, to indulge in conversation both more leisurely and more intense.
One morning later that month, Lady Mary sat at her dressing table in a long Turkish robe and idly pinned up her hair while her daughter galloped in noisy circles about the room. She will be a hoyden just like you, Mr. W had said upon hearing that Lady Mary had given their daughter a hobby horse, but Lady Mary thought the more the girl took after her and the less after Mr. W, the better.
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