Page 1 of Miss Whittier Makes a List
Chapter One
Not until the third morning out ofBostondid Hannah Whittier discover that she cared whether she lived or died. The brigMolly Claridgewasn’tpitching any less, but as she lay in her berth with her hands folded across her chest, she realized that her stomach was no longer ricocheting about from her big toe to her shoulder and back again. It stayed right in the center of her body, where it belonged, and when she pressed the flat of her hand against her middle, it growled back.
“Thank goodness for that,”she said to the ceiling. Or was it the deck above? Her brothers would tease her if they knew she could not remember nautical nomenclature. Her first attempt at dining two nights before had been a disaster of shocking proportions. But how was she to know that the jelly would quiver so, in time with the motion of the ship? That, combined with the greasy smell of pork roast, borne in by the ship’s cook and set before her with a flourish, was sufficient to send her stumbling down the companionway and out onto the deck, where she knelt and retched until the bile ran.
There were no more attempts at table. For two days, she wrestled with her stomach in the peace of her tiny stateroom, determined to die without an audience, and most especially not those sailors who had winked at each other as they swabbed upher stomach’scomplaints from the deck. There was no cause for more humiliation.She would die and let it go at that. The ship’s sailmaker could sew her into a canvas bag, and then drop her over the railing, where she would drift slowly down and commune with the fishes.
She smiled about it, now that her stomach was settled, and snuggled with a sigh into her berth, which rocked gently from side to side with the motion of theMolly Claridge.Papa had warned her about the motion.“For all that thee is well acquainted with little skiffs, Hannah, thee will be on the ocean, and that is a different matter,”he had warned in a series of last-minute admonitions before theMollyput to sea.
Hannah had laughed at him then.“I can only be grateful that thee is not here,”she said out loud, and then gave the matter further reflection. No one needed to know how disgraceful had been her conduct, not unless she chose to tell them. Hannah flopped comfortably onto her side and doubled the pillow under her head. It was rather like the first day of dame school, when she was six, and her brothers had already graduated to the celestial exaltation of theLattimerStreetSchool. No one was there to tattle on her. If she chose not to tell Mama the events of the day, Mama had no way of knowing; or Papa, either.“I will let thee think I am a proper sailor,”she said,“and Hosea, too,when he greets me inCharleston.”
She thought of Hosea, stiff and serious with responsibility when she last saw him on the dock at Nantucket.That was four years ago, when he was newly minted from Harvard, and embarking on the creation of another branch of Whittier Mercantile in Charleston. Mama and Papa had attended his wedding in that far-off city,and returned with tales of the new Mistress Mercy Whittier.“For all that she is a Friend, as we are,”Mamahad told her,“don’t those Charleston Quakers have a flair!”
“Flair. That is what I need,”Hannah declared. She leaped out of the berth, bracing herself as the ship rolled, and moved carefully to the little shaving mirror tacked to the wall, no, bulkhead, by the porthole. She peeked in, wondering what the ravages of seasickness had done to her bloom.
“Oh, dear,”she whispered, and crept back into the berth. The bloom was quite gone. Her chestnut hair was still much too curly for a Quaker miss, and her browneyes justas big, but that sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose that she so detested looked quite green, when contrasted with the paleness of her face.“So much for flair,”she moaned, and threw the covers over her head.
With the optimism of seventeen, her depression lasted only until she grew too warm under the blanket. She flopped it back, and reflected that aheavymeal and aturnabout the deck would put her back in proper trim.“But thee still will not have flair, Hannah Whittier,”she said.“That is not a birthright of New England Friends.”
She thought again of Hosea’s wife, now approaching the final month of her confinement. Hosea had summoned his little sister south to help out when the baby came.“For I know that Hannah will do all things proper, and provide Mistress Whittier with needed succor,”he had written. Hosea is so formal these days, she thought, remembering the letter. It must come from writing in ledgers too much. She thought then of Mama’s lecture on where babies came from, and was reassured that Hosea surely must have heard it, too. What a relief to know that he was not proper all the time.
She remembered the lengthy postscript to his letter, suggesting to Papa that his only daughter could likely contract an advantageous alliance of her own amongst the Friends of Charleston. He even mentioned the earnest Makepeace Thacker, who owned the town’s largest sailmaking establishment, a“man of certain consequence in these parts,”as Hosea had written.“He is a widower of some five years, and just the man to provide Hannah with that steadiness thee wishes for as a good match for thy daughter.”
“Bother it,”Hannah said succinctly, remembering herdisappointmentwhen Mama showed her the postscript. Of all the qualities in a husband that she and her friends had giggled about when Mama thought they were sewing samplers or reading improving works, steadiness was not high on the list.“I think it makesMr. Thacker sound rather like a mule or a family retainer,”Charity Wilkins had sniffed. Of course, Charity was engaged to Counsel Winnings, who probably never had a wild thought beyond whether to have white bread or brown with his mutton.
Perhaps Hosea would introduce her to someone more dashing than the redoubtable Makepeace Thacker, she thought, and then rejected the idea. Older brothers could be almost more prickly about such matters than fathers. No, depend upon Hosea to make her acquaintance with every boring, careful, parsimonious, devout, unentangled Friend inCharleston.
She gathered herself into a tighter ball, wondering what itwas she wanted. I am seventeen,she thought,and should have settled on a husband by this time. She listened to the water whispering against the hull of the brig, lulled by the sound of it, but far from content. If I expect a husband to drop onto the deck who meets all my requirements, I have windmills in my head, she thought. But what is it I want?
She sat up suddenly and looked about for her journal. She found it on the deck near the door, where the brig’s motion must have flung it. Hannah retrieved it and got back into her berth, sitting crosslegged. She turned to her last entry, the one written as seasickness descended.“Oh death, where is thy sting?”she read out loud.“Silly me.”
She shook her head over her own folly, and tore out a blank page from the journal. The stub of a pencil was still jammed in the binding. She removed it and held it poised over thepaper.“WhatI wish in a husband,”she wrote at the top, and then paused to consider, thinking of all those whispered conversations with her friends, all the giggling and the blushes.
He should be handsome, she thought, and wrote that at the top. If he had blond hair and brown eyes like Adam Winslow, I ld not mind, and if his shoulders were broad, that would be sufficient. I do not want him to be too tall. I am short, and I dislike skipping to keep up with people. It is not dignified, and Mama says it is high time I thought about dignity.
She added that to her list, and then paused again. He must be patient and slow to anger, like Papa. Her eyes misted over as she remembered when she was five, and Papa, to the scandal of the neighbors, taught her to swim.“I care not what others think,”he told Mama when sheobjected.“Iwill not have my daughter at the mercy of the water.”Yes, any husband of hers must be a patient teacher, and not liable to shout over inconsequentials. It went onto her list, with one underline.
He should be kind, she thought, dabbing the end of the pencil with her tongue, and writing the word. I must always know where I stand with my husband, and I must never have cause to fear him.
She drew her knees up and rested her chin on them. He should like children, because we will probably have plenty of them about. There would be daughters to train in all the domestic arts, which Mama had so laboriously drilled into her, and sons to follow his profession.
Hannah frowned, looking down at the page. He must have a respectable profession, if our sons are to follow after him.“There will be no whaling captains, or seafaring men of any kind,”she murmured.Nantucketwas full of children who saw their fathers only every four years or so, when a ship returned, full to the bumpers with sperm oil gleaned in faraway whaling grounds. Her older brother Matthew was a whaler, and Hannah knew the agonies of shyness his children suffered as they became reacquainted with a father they scarcely knew. She thought about the redoubtable Makepeace Thacker, and hisCharlestonsailmaking establishment. Perhaps Hosea was right, she admitted to herself. I insist that my husband stay on land, even if he makes sail, or rope.
“Devout,”she wrote next, feeling a little guilty that it was so far down on her list. She reminded herself that Mama never needed to know about the list anyway. She considered the matter, and then moved it up a notch. My husband must take his worship seriously, like Papa and my brothers. And no swearing, she wrote, underlining it twice.
What was left? She read over her list. He must love me excruciatingly, she thought, but she did not write it down. Hannah flopped onto her stomach, the list still in front of her. Mama never spoke to her of love, but she saw how Mama’s eyes lighted up when Papa came home every night, or most especially when he returned from a buying trip toBoston. Hannah smiled to herself. Mama and Papa would always find an excuse to go upstairs y after thoseBostontrips. Yes, he must love me and none other.
But it was more than that, she realizedas she rested her head on her armsandclosed her eyes. He must put my welfare before his. I must be the most important thing in his life. She opened her eyes and added,“My welfare first.”Written on the page, it looked so selfish that she added,“And I will esteem him equally.”
She stared at the list and could think of nothing more to add. I am seventeen, she thought. By a year from now, I will probably bemarried. She folded the list and placed it back in the journal. And I will be a long time married,so I hadbettertake a careful look about me.
But now her stomach was beginning to growl again. Surely it was near noon. For the longest time she hadbeensmelling salt pork and beans cooking somewhere on theMolly.Perhaps if she dressed, she would be in time for a meal. She would eat whatever was put before her,and spend the afternoon on deck, watching the waves and looking for dolphins.
She dressed quickly, her mouth watering at the thought of food after days of self-imposed exile from a dining table. Her hair took longer to brush than usual, knotted this way and that as it was from several days of tossing about in misery. This is surely to teach me patience, she thought, as she worked the brush through her curly hair.“This is not Quaker hair,”she announced to the little shaving mirror after aquarterhour’s effort. She pulled it back and tied it at the nape of her neck—grateful that Mama was not there to bully her into braiding it—and twinedit up on her head.
She also reconsidered her bonnet, and left it on the berth. There would be time enough,and to spare, to be proper inCharleston. Besides that, the sun looked so inviting, dancing like diamonds on the tops of the waves as theMollycut a shimmering froth. She wanted to feel the breeze on her face, unhampered by a bonnet.
Hannahpicked her way carefully along thenarrowcompanionway, moving slowly to retain her balance, and already marveling at the sound of sailors moving quickly on the deck above. How long did it take to be so surefooted, she wondered, as she concentrated on keeping upright.
