A Wild, Romantic Undertaking (1810)
C H A P T E R X
A Wild, Romantic Undertaking
[ 1810 ]
DONIRAM did not mention Nancy Hasseltine when he wrote
to his mother and father the next day. Instead, he confined himself to a businesslike account of his letter to Dr. Bogue in England and the memorial he had presented in Bradford. AS he wrote, he realized that he did not yet know the decision of the General Association and put the letter aside unfinished.
At Bradford, meanwhile, the committee of three had made its report at the firSt session of the Association, which opened at seven in the morning. The committee agreed that the Students deserved Support, and recommended “That there be instituted, by this General Association, a Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, for the purpose of devising ways and means, and adopting and prosecuting measures, for promoting the Spread of the Gospel in foreign lands.” They recommended further that the students put “themselves under the patronage and direction of the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, humbly to wait the openings and guidance of Providence in respect to their great and excellent design.”
Adoniram was not one humbly to wait the openings and guidance. of Providence. When he resumed the letter to his parents nearly two weeks after setting it aside, he told them that a missionary board was to be established, but added impatiently, “I have not heard the precise object of these commissioners, nor when they are to meet.” The Students wanted to promote missions as actively as possible in the United States, but for themselves they wanted no action taken which would prevent their “soliciting British aid.” So long as they were sent on a mission soon, they did not care too much who sent them.
He told his parents that the students had a noteworthy addition —Gordon Hall, another Williams graduate. Hall, a friend of Mills, had been preaching in Woodbury, Connecticut. The congregation had just offered him a permanent appointment at six hundred dollars a year. While Hall was considering the offer, his interest in missions became known to Adoniram, through Mills, and Adoniram wrote to him. Hall immediately left for Andover to investigate. He had been in Andover only a few days when he declined the call from Woodbury and enrolled at the seminary with the class of 1811, in order to prepare himself for foreign missionary work. “He is sensible, judicious, learned, pious,” wrote Adoniram; “has been preaching nearly a year, and quite united the Woodbury people. There are now four of us who are ready to start, at three months’ warning, for any part of the world -— Hall, Newell, Nott, and myself. There are at least four others in the junior class who are ready to support the mission wherever it shall be established.”
He himself was preparing in every way he could for his future work. When he preached in the neighboring towns he seldom even used notes. “I hardly think that I shall write any more sermons. Why should I Spend my time in attempting the correctnesses and elegancies of English literature, who expect to spend my days in talking to savages in vulgar style?” His health was good, except that his eyes troubled him so that he could not study at night —-a common consequence of reading by candlelight. For several months he had been systematically hardening himself with deep-breathing exercises, a daily cold water Sponge bath, and long walks.
Of Nancy Hasseltine he made no mention, but there might have been a warm refleCtion of his feelings in his concern for his sister Abigail, who had not yet joined the church in Plymouth: “1 think sometimes that A. is all alone at Plymouth. There is a Friend, whose friendship, if she would secure it, would never leave her alone.”
Meanwhile, he himself was losing no time trying to secure the friendship of Nancy. One month from the day he met her he formally “commenced an acquaintanceship” with her, which meant that he formally declared his intentions as a suitor. This he did in a letter, and tradition declares that for several days she did not reply to it. Its contents were an open secret within the Hasseltine family, however, so much so that one of her sisters finally threatened to answer the letter herself if Nancy delayed any longer.
Her reply was nor encouraging, but neither was it a flat rejection. Evading the issue, she wrote that her parents would have to consent before she could even consider Adoniram. Privately, she speculated in her journal whether she would be able to commit herself “entirely to God, to be disposed of, according to his pleasure,” and decided, “Yes, I feel willing to be placed in this situation, in which I can do most good, though it were to carry the Gospel to the distant, benighted heathen.”
Adoniram promptly sat down at his table and ete to Nancy’s father urging...
I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next Spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left his heavenly home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with the crown of righteousness, brightened with the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Saviour from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?”
It was a letter that must have made John Hasseltine’s eyes pop nearly out of his head. One would have expected him to agree with the father of a friend of Nancy’s—one of the numerous Kimball clan -— who, when he heard that young judson was paying court to Nancy Hasseltine, declared stoutly that he would tie his own daughter to the bedpost rather than let her go on such a harebrained venture.
John Hasseltine took no such action. With many misgivings, he left it to Nancy to make up her own mind. Whatever her choice, she had his blessing—but let her consider carefully before taking an irrevocable action. Nancy’s mother had little to add to this advice. She hoped Nancy would not go. But she would not withhold her consent. Thrown back on herself, Nancy did not know what to do. She was beginning to love Adoniram—what woman could withstand such a combination of impetuosity and tenderness? —— and there must have been something irresistibly appealing about sharing his adventures in far places. But the hazards were appalling. Surely she would have children, she must have reflected. What of them? But on the other hand, how better could she serve God?
Torn this way and that, Nancy went to Beverly for advice early in September. Besides Rebecca, her sister Abigail was there now, teaching. She may have wanted Mr. Emerson’s counsel even more than that of her sisters. In spite of his mildness and a vein of gentle humor that endeared him to everyone, he was anything but soft; and on occasion he could be devastatingly frank.
When Nancy revealed her hopes and doubts to him, he told her that the issue was not as complicated as she thought: if she really loved Adoniram and wanted to submit herself to the Lord, there could be no better way of serving His will.
Encouraged, she wrote confidentially to Lydia Kimball in Salem:
I feel willing, and expect, if nothing in providence prevents, to spend my days in this world in heathen lands. Yes, Lydia, I have about come to the determination to give up all my comforts and enjoyments here, sacrifice my affection to relatives and friends, and go where God, in his providence, shall see fit to place me.
Possibly, like Adoniram, she was getting some enjoyment out of dramatizing her choice. But she could not admit, even to herself, that love for Adoniram had very much to do with it. She emphasized to Lydia, “Nor were my determinations formed in consequence of an attachment to an earthly object; but with a sense of obligations to God, and with a full conviction of its being a call in providence, and consequently my duty.”
Perhaps so. At least, whether love or a sense of duty came first, on her return to Bradford she was almost ready to tell Adoniram she would be his wife.
Adoniram graduated from the seminary the twenty-fourth of September, about the time she returned from Beverly; but he stayed on in Andover, preaching wherever he could and seeing Nancy often. More verbal and more objective, man-fashion, about his love than Nancy, he wrote to Nott that fall: “I have done nothing scarcely since I saw you, beside... riding about the country with Nancy. Pretty preparation, this article, for a missionary life—isn’t it?”
There was little else to do. The fifth of the month (the same day Brown awarded him the degree of Master of Arts) the Board of Commissioners, now coming to be known as the “American Board,” had met in F armington, Connecticut. Its deliberations produced little but advice to the missionary candidates “to pursue their studies until further information relative to the missionary field be obtained, and the finances of the institution will justify the appointment.”
Occupied with his courtship, Adoniram for once did not fret at the delay. Mary Hasseltine remembered him as he was then, “in the ardor of his first love. It may literally be said that he was a man of one idea, and that was, love, to Jesus, and a desire to manifest it in all its varied forms. Yet he was by nature ardent, impetuous, and ambitious, with the most unshaken confidence in his own judgment, irrespective of the advice of his elders.”
How long could a woman resist such a wooer?
Precisely when she said “Yes” is not recorded; but by mid-October nearly everyone in Bradford seemed to know that Nancy Hasseltine was going to marry Adoniram Judson and go to the Orient with him. Opinions were divided.
Some were like that of the Bradford matron who accosted an acquaintance on the street one day with, “I hear that Miss Hasseltine is going to India. Why does she go?”
The acquaintance replied mildly, “Why — she thinks it her duty. Would you not go if you thought it your duty?”
The opinion of the conservative half of Bradford sounded in the emphatic response: “But I would not think it my duty.”
Others felt like seventeen-year-old Harriet Atwood, who lived across the river in Haverhill. She was a close friend of Nancy’s and had admired her since they had first met as students at Bradford Academy more than four years before.
Like Nancy, Harriet had been caught up in the religious revival of 1806. She had been preoccupied with religion ever since, but not in Nancy’s vigorous way. Slender, frail, of a family prone to the tuberculosis which had killed her father two years before, she lived much more within herself.
When Harriet heard the news from Nancy’s own lips she confided in astonishment to her diary:
“A female friend called upon us this morning. She informed me of her determination to quit her native land, to endure the sufferings of a Christian amongst heathen nations—to Spend her days in India’s sultry clime — How did this news affect my heart! 15 she willing to do all this for God; and shall I refuse to lend my little aid, in a land where divine revelation has shed its clearest rays?”
In her secret heart, however, Nancy still sometimes found her determination undermined by fears:
“Jesus is faithful; his promises are precious. Were it not for these considerations, I should, with my present prOSpects, sink down in despair, especially as no female has, to my knowledge, ever left the shores of America to spend her life among the heathen; nor do I yet know, that I shall have a single female companion. But God is my witness, that I have not dared to decline the offer that has been made me, though so many are ready to call it ‘a wild, romantic undertaking.’ ”
As it turned out, however, Adoniram and Nancy were to be parted for nearly a year before the “wild, romantic undertaking” could begin.
The American Board had appointed Samuel Spring, Samuel Worcester, and the layman William Bartlet as a “Prudential Committee” to find means of supporting the missionaries. By December the fund-raising operations of the committee were exactly where they had been in September —— which was nowhere. The Committee finally decided, rather deSperately, that some joint arrangement might possibly be worked out with the London Missionary Society —the Prudential Committee to provide the missionaries, whom it would certify as of suitable character and qualifications, the Londoners to provide the funds, or at least mOSt of the funds.
On Christmas Day of 1810, Adoniram, Newell, NOtt and Gordon Hall appeared before the committee to go through the formality of examination and certification. This done, Adoniram was chosen as a representative of the American Board, to lay the proposal before the London Missionary Society. He was to sail on the first day of January, 1811 — a week hence — on the ship Packet, bound from Boston to Liverpool.
The committee was so lacking in money, however, that it could not even pay its representative’s passage. But Adoniram was able to raise a few hundred dollars from Mr. Bartlet and Mr. Norris, two of the seminary benefactors; and the committee promised to make up his expenses when he returned to the United States. He was supplied with a letter of instructions and a letter to the Reverend George Burder of the London Missionary Society. His instructions were explicit.
First, he was to find out what arrangements could be made for the American and London organizations to work together, and particularly whether the London society would support the missionaries for a while without insisting they be permanently and wholly under London’s control. Or, if the London group felt the mission should be supported partly by the Americans and partly by the British, who should have the control? These matters were to be Adoniram’s primary concern.
Second, he was to find out as much as he could about the various fields of endeavors for missionaries, the preparation necessary, and the correct method of carrying out missions.
With so short a time to prepare for departure, Adoniram had few opportunities to see Nancy, but from his room in Phillips Hall he poured out his heart in letters— one on the thirtieth of December, one on the thirty-first, and one (the Packet having been delayed in sailing) 011 New Year’s Day.
The first two were a mixture of affectionate chattiness and somewhat gloomy philosophy (the latter probably engendered by the fact that he had a cold). But in his letter of New Year's morning he rose to magnificence:
It is with the utmost sincerity, and with my whole heart, that I wish you, my love, a happy new year. May it be a year in which your wall; will be close with God; your frame calm and serene; and the road that leads you to the Lamb marked with purer light. May it be a year in which you will have more largely the spirit of Christ, be praised above sublunary things, and be willing to be diSposed of in this world just as God shall please. As every moment of the year will bring you nearer to the end of your pilgrimage, may it bring you nearer to God, and find you more prepared to hail the messenger of death as a deliverer and friend. And now, since I have begun to wish, I will go on. May this be the year in which you change your name; in which you take final leave of your relatives and native land; in which you will cross the wide ocean, and dwell on the other side of the world, among a heathen people.
When Adoniram had finished the letter, with speculation about how next New Year’s Day he and Nancy might wish each other a happy new year “in the uncouth dialect of Hindostan or Burmah,” he folded it, and arranged for its posting. Then he made his way to Boston to await the sailing of the Packet.