Events, so check out that website. Our event tonight is absolutely the highlight of our commemorative year. We are really privileged to welcome edith to speak with us. She is a historian, an awardwinning historian, a trailblazer in american womens history. She is a foremost leading expert on Abigail Adams. She has written several i other fees of abigail. Most recently, she edited the library of america volume of abigails letters speed letters. 100 letters were published for the first time. Today she is going to speak to us about the fascinating relationship of another remarkable revolutionary era , and, Mercy Otis Warren the relationship she had with Abigail Adams. I know you are going to enjoy this. Please help me welcome edith. [applause] edith i was saying earlier that i saw a couple of years ago a news broadcast with the queen of england and she was behind one of these podiums and all you could see was [laughter] edith i asked for a step. Thank you for that stunning introduction and thank you for being so cordial and accommodating to me. To the whole Abigail Adams birthplace friends, it has been wonderful to me all of you. Coming to thisor splendid site. It is really beautiful. It is a pleasure to talk about my friend and yours, Abigail Adams. Us in theirght at inhcentury dresses, posed an 18th century, we are enchanted by the force of character and power of personality that gives the spark of life to Abigail Smith adams in twocy otis warren early portraits of our revolutionary foremothers. These portraits invite us to know them and imagine their lives. We are intrigued because they appear feminine and poised and alert. Curiosity makes us wonder about the symbolism in the pictures. The significance of the nasturtiums that mercy reaches for, and the pearls that ornament abigails next. There may be meaning that they are both dressed in blue. We can compare them for the contrasts we see. The obvious disparity in the workmanship of the artists, the differing mediums, the voluptuousness of mercy stress mercys dress and the whole character as opposed to this bareness of abigails portrait. If we studied them closely, we see age difference, social rank, even attitude. Our imagination could carry us further to wonder about their absent families, their backgrounds and life stories, but we are stopped short. How can we know the particularly of these missing dimensions without more information . Without the written portraits we invent the rest of their stories. Language too creates portraits. Derived from the material legacy of their letters and the historical narrative that provides context, we may read the life stories, the biographical narratives that also forms a picture, one that moves and changes. Stories that have a beginning, middle and end. Both of these great women left written legacies. Abigails almost entirely in letters, and mercy in letters, poetry, plays, and history. These written legacies describe action and reaction, women in relation to others as well as the events of their era. The written portrait demonstrates motivation and resolution. They suggest ideology and analysis. They are dynamic. Portraits in words also challenge our imagination. Beyond the material basis in literature, our personal insights and scrutiny suggest meaning and dimension to people and events. In the end, its not just our sources and our skills but our inferences and analysis that create portraits in language. These portraits, however, remain blank at their centers, lacking the accuracy of facial features and expression. The dimension and carriage of the body. The emblematic gesture. The color and texture of clothing and background. Image, the the real painted portrait, even though it is static in time. It satisfies the imagination. Both the biographical and painted portraits can survive without the other, but in the end, each is poorer without the other. Portraits speak to us of another time, another set of people, another set of cultural conditions, and maybe historic events. Biography speaks to us of people whose behavior we can know and understand through the lens of our own time. Our visual image is enriched by reading the narrative outside the painting. Our portrait in words is grounded by reality of the visual image. The purpose of painted portraiture in colonial america, where few artists and no art museums yet existed, was family members to provide a legacy for descendents rather than as a cultural artifacts, a decoration as paintings became in the 19th century. Decorativemight be but its intent was to demonstrate lineage for prominent families. To show future generations where they came from, to provide Family History and to some degree, pedigree. Mostly portraiture was for wealthy people, to emulate the tradition of the genteel classes in europe that displayed privately and publicly their ancestral roots. Colonial portraits hung in parlors where they could be viewed and promote layers of social meeting social meaning to viewers. As portraiture had a special significance in the 18th century, so the portrait painters position in society was particular to that era. He, and to my knowledge there were no female painters, was in fact a craftsman, artisan, just as a silversmith or cabinet maker or a shoemaker was a craftsman. His only market as a painter was portraiture, for the citizens of colonies hadrican not developed a taste for decorative painting. If they did, it was in the form of imported prints or pictures torn from journals. That is how most american painters came to their craft. Learned by copying imported pictures, and then perhaps each other. Accounts for the emergence from an impoverished premiere new england portraitist beat portraitist. John singleton copley was probably born in 1738. His father passed away when he was 10 and he had to withdraw from school to help support his family. Within two years, his mother had remarried to peter pelham, a printmaker. A stroke of luck on several accounts. Printed thefather gifted young boy and in a few years he had gone beyond training for making prints to first using pastels and then oils. Soon he was painting portraits for bostons first family, and by the time he painted mercy in the early 1760s, he had reached his stride as a portrait painter. Copley paste placed mercy in a pastoral setting. The portrait represents are in the age of 35, well in her middling years by 18thcentury standards, still useful in appearance. Youthful in appearance. Going against the wisdom that colonial portraits represented was a matron, a mother of three who would yet give birth to two more sons. Mercy is captured in action, reaching for nasturtiums or turning away from them toward the viewer. Mercy is animated, pleasantly so. Her face is intelligent but unremarkable. For thetoo plain elaborate dress and headdress she wears spirit but she wears. But the color in her cheeks and red mouth against her dark eyes and beautifully glowing skin speaks to a young womans health. Anddelicacy of her figure hands are feminine while the high forehead and alert expression to note intelligence. Her posture and angle of her head more in keeping with the expensive dress, show pride of place in the world. Mercy was descended from the first families of massachusetts. We can easily imagine her itting down to tea, and she pours from a silver rather than pewter server. It failed to record her , because it was by her pen and ink that this was established. In 1763, mercy had hardly begun to write her surviving poetry and would only seek to publish her work after the next decade. Schooled in the classics alongside her brother, she drew on ancient literary allusions in a way that was rare for women of her generation. Eventually she would write plays set in greece or rome of antiquity. Contemporarymes of political importance. Andwas an American Patriot agitator, as was her younger brother, who she adored. Forum washowever, his the courtroom and newspaper, while she dearly while she hardly dared advertise her work. It was her supporter her husband who was her biggest supporter. Arrangedail and john for the publication of her work. As mercies allegiance and confidence freezes her as an means,s a matron of in motherhood. En letter is known about Benjamin Blythe little is know about Benjamin Blythe, who recorded in salem. D john just as frustrating is the tolure of either adams mention these portraits in voluminous correspondence. Minort, blythes reputation probably derived from his having recorded the future president and first lady long before either had achieved fame. Was born in salem, where he passed most of his productive years. He seems to have disappeared, perhaps into virginia, after the berlin revolutionary war. He was a selftaught, copying prints as well as american board whost born artists preceded him, and he works primarily in pastels. His soul videographer has thatvered 40 pastels survive in local public collections or in private hands. Of the blythe portrait is seated at a slight angle from the viewer. Her Left Shoulder receipts into shadow, though her face is highlighted, again by the shading on the right side, giving the impression she was frontly lit, perhaps by a candle. The shading gives dimension and depth to her figure. The face is freshness, it is calm, its intelligence attracts immediate attention. It is the face of use youth and highenergy. It is feminine and delicately colored in a way that gives prominence to the eyes. Her thick, dark hair is gathered in a pink bow at the back of her neck, reflecting the pink in her face, the pearls, lace color, and her exposed bosom. Echoing the modest, blue turquoise of the background. If the perspective and proportions are wrong, the eye adjusts, distracted by the sterling character that emerges from the somewhat awkward portrait. Abigails strong portrait appears in the vivid frontal as well her dark eyes as the set of her mouth. She might be ready to speak, move, and she is certainly taking in her surroundings. Perhaps she was merely intrigued by observing blythe at work or their conversation. She is an animated abigail. She is also an out of proportion abigail whose body appears large in comparison with of the head. I thought at first she might be pregnant but that did not check out. Instead, i have come to believe the art historian who suggested that enlarging a body was a painterly device for showing power or strength. That would seem to be the case here. This is no wilting flower of a woman, but rather a charming and gracious as well as strong woman. , i doubt abigail owned pearls at this time in her life. When many years later she was preparing for an audience with the queen and king of england, john purchased or a set of pearls. Then, mark in the wedding portrait. It was a signifier of matronly status. Traditionaled the status that colonial families acknowledged, family portraits at a significant transitional time in their life to be handed down for purposes of establishing family identity. Copleys mercy and blythes abigail are right for their time and failed to convey the passage of time. Abigail and mercy were introduced by john adams, who had been a companion to both james and mercy warren. She assessed he assessed that abigail would benefit from. Nowing the older warren following the first formal visit rrens home,n wa abigail did the proper thing and wrote a courteous note to her hostess. The kind reception hello . Is. E it the kind reception i met with at your house and the hospitality which you entertain me demand my grateful acknowledgment, she wrote. By requesting a correspondence, you have kindly given me an opportunity to thank you for the happy hours i enjoyed will stout lst at your whi house. Emboldened, i will not suffer my pride to debar me the pleasure and improvement i promise myself from this correspondence although i suffer by comparison. Paragraphs that the several grounds for anticipated improvement, abigail signed off once more, sounding the refrain of deference that established the earliest relationship with mercy otis wharton. Warren. I must beg your pardon for this detaining you, i have neglected my pen and unconscious i may make a poor figure. I my friendship and candor commit this. Your obliged friend and humble servant, Abigail Adams. Remarkable for revealing her transparent struggles to set the correct stage, the letter exudes humility. Not just because of Literary Convention but also because of person see her awe for the learning and social position of her new acquaintance. Most unselfconsciously, she ascended to her best style with a felicitous use of a metaphor of a timorous bird. This combination of uncertainty and vivid imagery would mark her early years of correspondence with mercy. It is a pastor frozen in time. Mercys magnanimous response likewise set the tone for their relationship. I shall pass over in silence the complementary introduction to your letter not because these expressions of a steam are frequently words of course without any other design than to convey politeness as a ,haracteristic of the person but in you i consider anything of the kind as a natural result of a friendly heart disposed to think well of those who have not been guilty of any remarkable instance of depravity to create discussed. Disgust. [laughter] mercys sincerity is equally apparent but her letter carries as well a patronizing affectation of humility in its elaborate and up secure o bscure language. Ath all of her pretensions language, mercy had not the gift of simple, elegant prose. Her sentences, though typical of learned people of the time, lacked spontaneity and grace. They are wordy, overwrought, and ponderous. From the 18th century equivalent of 21st ntury academic garden jargon. Her posture also frozen in time. Set the stage for the early relationship between mercy and abigail, with in balance created by differences in age, social class, personal style, and ambition. These letters further provide a snapshot portrait of two women a point in history, a starting point for the narrative that will be written by their pr covers for several centuries. Years old when she initiated the correspondence, mercy was 45. Both women were married to men destined to be political leaders in the revolution that they did not yet know was developing. Both were mothers. Tocy by 1773 had given birth five sons. Abigail had three Young Children and would give forth birth to one more surviving son. Mercy had grown up in the insperous otis home barnstable, educated by the same tutors that taught her brother. By 1773, she was already writing poetry and beginning to write the political plays that expressed her alliance for the colonial cause. Had been education more rudimentary, in the modest mouth rectory may directory of her father. Through her discussions with her husband and later as she read in his library during his long years of absence, abigails expressive medium would always be letters. The early friendship of abigail and mercy, based on many factors , was strongly predicated on their marriage to patriots in public service. Both women were undoubtedly attracted to their husbands because of the same qualities that lured these men into politics. Anticipated women was that politics would remove her husband from family for long periods of time. And mercy adjusted easily to what they called widowhood during their husbandss years of service to colonial independence. Made mores and meaningful as they described her circumstances to each other in letters. The letters at first described indignation at the abuses committed by the british government. , that baneful weed, has arrived. I hope opposition has been made to the landing of it. Of yoursyle and spirit , of the fifth of december, one would judge he was affected by the shocks of the political as the natural constitution, responded the more restrained and rational mercy. I hope we have less to dread then you apprehend, for its cathartic and sometimes violent exercises recommended by a physician has benefited by the and the latter, shaking of the arteries may be no less salutary to the former, drawing on a medical metaphor to refer to the indians who staged the recent boston tea party. Time passed. Both women suffered the preparations private asians and harshness of war. Rivations and harshness of war. I make a greater sacrifice to the public, wrote abigail to mercy. The bestng apart from of companions of our lives is exceedingly disagreeable to us both, mercy responded. Have sisters at hand and many agreeable friends around you, which i have not. Arguingnt further by her greater deprivation. Then a different pattern developed. Warreny 1776, james declined a seat on the massachusetts supreme court. Abigail informed her husband. I said everything i could to persuade him, but his lady was against it. John wrote to warren, i am vexed about your refusal of a seat on a certain bench. John adams continued to serve the john adams continued to serve the career wase uneven. Declinedarren positions, but sometimes event for office and lost. Over the years, each couple became less and the panic for the others position. It took a different turn. Why have you not written . Adams so wholly engrossed with the idea of her own happiness to think little of the absent . Why should i interrupt, if this is the case . The audacity. Encircled by her children in full health to look in upon her friend in this hour of solitude. Absent, ill with the smallpox, my father in pain, bridging closer. No friend to shorten the tedious hours. Abigail responded in kind. You, my friend, then experienced some of what i passed through. Only with this difference that your friend was within a days ride of you, mind hundreds of miles distance. The tone of the letters has changed. The imbalance disappeared, not only because of their greater familiarity with one another, but also because the conditions of the war. Abigail and murphy continued to correspond. There now existed a clear, antagonistic and critical and to their letters. Part of this posture had to do with the situation of husbands and children. Eager tomer, john was take leave of his position at the Continental Congress and he wrote, begging for a replacement. Send lincoln if you will. Somebody must send. Come yourself, by all means. I should have mentioned you in the first place. How toonded, i know not fill your place. Is there no other continent to which he might adjourn the summer months . Warren torn down turned down another appointment. All was not well in the warren household during the summer of 1776. James moran junior, their eldest son, a student at harvard suffered a nervous breakdown. Mercy was terrified that his condition would recapitulate that of her brother, whose mental instability had grown quite serious. A sympathetic abigail wrote to john, our friend has some family difficulties. , beyondr dear to him description, almost heartbroken by the situation of one dear to her, but did not mention the matter. Tis a wound that cannot be touched.