Letters

The 1st Henry Burlingame (a fair copy of whose Privie Journall I found last week among the family papers) was one of that company of gentlemen who came to make their fortunes in Virginia with the 1st plantation in 1607, and, disaffected by the hardships of pioneering, made trouble for Captain John Smith — whose Secret Historie of the Voiage up the Bay of Chesapeake we also possess. The two documents together tell this story: In 1608, thinking to divert the mutinous gentlemen, Smith led them on a voyage of exploration from Jamestown to the head of Chesapeake Bay, to find whether it might prove the long-sought Northwest Passage to the Pacific. After a scurrilous adventure amongst the Accomack Indians of the Eastern Shore (detail’d in Smith’s history), Burlingame became a kind of leader of the anti-Smith faction, to whom he threaten’d to tell “the true story of Pocahontas” if Smith did not leave off harassing him & return the party to Jamestown. For it was Burlingame’s opinion (set forth persuasively in the Privie Journall) that Smith was a mere swaggering opportunist & self-aggrandizer, out for glory at anyone’s cost. But Smith’s own account (I mean the Secret Historie) is also persuasive. I conceive him to have been at once an able & daring leader & a thoro rogue; our ancestor to have been both a great complainer by temperament & a man much justified in his complaints.

In any event, so aggravated grew the dispute that shortly afterwards — the party having put ashore in the Maryland marshes & been taken captive by Ahatchwhoop Indians — Smith turn’d a tribal custom into a stratagem for ransoming himself & the rest of his company at Burlingame’s expence. It was the wont of the Ahatchwhoops, upon the death of their king, to choose his successor by a contest of gluttony, he acceding to the throne who could outgorge his competitors. Such was the principle, which must have produced some odd administrators had it not in fact been modified to permit an able but temperate candidate to enter the lists by proxy, sharing the privileges of office (including the queen’s favors) with his corpulent champion, but retaining the authority himself. Smith duped Burlingame (a man of great appetite, & half-starved) into taking the field on behalf of one Wepenter, a politico of modest stomach who must otherwise lose to his gluttonous rival for the kingdom and the hand of lusty Princess Pokatawertussan. Thinking it a mere eating contest with a night of love its prize, our forebear set to with a will & narrowly bested his fat opponent Attonceaumoughhowgh (“Arrow-Target”), who died on the spot of overeating. Grateful Wepenter takes the throne, & in the morning sets Smith’s party free. But when Burlingame makes to join them (having been too ill all night of indigestion to claim his trophy), he is fetcht back in triumph by the Ahatchwhoops, their captive & co-king!

There end both the Privie Journall & the Secret Historie. Not till nearly a century later (in 1694) does anyone learn the subsequent fate of our progenitors. Old Andrew II, it seems, in 1676 engaged as tutor for the twins Ebenezer & Anna Cooke a young Cantabridgean of many parts, named Henry Burlingame III: a master of all the arts & sciences (& an array of secular skills as well, from opium smuggling to sedition) who however had no idea who his parents were or whence came his name & numeral. His researches into this subject had directed all his life, led him deep into the politics of colonial America, involved him in a dozen disguises (for which he had the original gift pass’d down to the rest of us) & as many conspiracies — chiefly Leisler’s Rebellion in New York & John Coode’s in Maryland. It also brot him in touch with “Monsieur Casteene,” as a secret agent either for the French against the British or vice-versa — the 1st of what will be a grand series of such uncertainties! — and with conspiracies of runaway Negro slaves & beleaguer’d Indians to drive their white oppressors from the continent.