Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Prologue: Epistlers of the Revolution
- 1 Commencement of a Civil War
- 2 Melted Majesty
- 3 Barren as a Pitch-Pine Plain
- 4 Life of a Cabbage
- 5 Hurried through Life on Horseback
- 6 Touch and Go is a Good Pilot
- 7 War and Greet Brittain
- 8 Keeping the Belly and Back from Grumbling, and the Kitchen-Fire from Going Out
- 9 The Mysteries of Lucina
- 10 Patience and Flannel
- Epilogue: Let Passion be Restrain'd within thy Soul
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
10 - Patience and Flannel
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Prologue: Epistlers of the Revolution
- 1 Commencement of a Civil War
- 2 Melted Majesty
- 3 Barren as a Pitch-Pine Plain
- 4 Life of a Cabbage
- 5 Hurried through Life on Horseback
- 6 Touch and Go is a Good Pilot
- 7 War and Greet Brittain
- 8 Keeping the Belly and Back from Grumbling, and the Kitchen-Fire from Going Out
- 9 The Mysteries of Lucina
- 10 Patience and Flannel
- Epilogue: Let Passion be Restrain'd within thy Soul
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Exhilaration mixed with disappointment upon Belknap's return to Dover in the first week of August, 1784. The images and experiences of the White Mountains continued to engage his mind and occupy his emotions. The recollection of failure continually replayed in his thoughts. He wrote to his friend Hazard almost by way of confession:
My very dear Friend, – Last Saturday I returned from my journey, in which I encompassed the White Mountains and partly ascended the highest, which, being in an angle of 45°, proved rather too fatiguing for my thorax, and, after labouring for 2 hours, I was obliged to leave my company to pursue the ascent, which they accomplished in about 3 hours more.
Belknap, writing from Portsmouth, where he had gone to pick up his mail, among other things, promised to write about the journey at large when he returned to Dover and felt settled. In the meantime he sympathized with his friend's sufferings with gout. He had himself likewise suffered on the journey to the White Mountains. The pains of the temporal state taught Belknap not to have ‘such an opinion of long life in this world as some people are fond of entertaining’. According to Belknap, the best remedy for life in general and for gout in particular was ‘patience and flannel, my good friend’ – as well as, perhaps, ‘a piece of lean raw beef applied to the hands and feet when hard swelled, and shift ed every 12 hours’, which ‘will soften the skin and help the exudation of the morbific matter’.
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- Ebenezer Hazard, Jeremy Belknap and the American Revolution , pp. 193 - 206Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014