The Bell Tavern Mystery

As printed in Samuel Adams Drake (1884)

Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Samuel Adams Drake · 1884 · Boston and eastern Massachusetts

THE Bell Tavern was a house for the entertainment of man and beast situated in the town of Danvers, fronting the highroad running through the village, and thus connecting its movement and its events with the rest of the world. So loug ago as it was the King's own highway, this road was the great artery of New England, through which the blood of its commerce, so to speak, flowed to and from the heart of its capital, Boston. Boston Stone was then the central milliarmm from which the diverging sections ran north and ran south into the most remote parts of the Colonies, — on the south to the Carolinas, and to the Kennebec settlements on the north. The Bell Tavern, being therefore exactly in the great current of travel as well as of events, has naturally a history of its own. The sign of the tavern was a wooden bell, suspended to the crossbeam of a post before the door, with this couplet under- neath : — I '11 toll you in if you have need, And feed you well and bid you speed. When the reader knows that within the limits of Danvers, while it was yet a precinct of Salem, the witchcraft tragedies were enacted ; that General Israel Putnam was born here ; that on its borders is the remarkable natural curiosity known as Ship Rock ; and that it is the usual residence of the venerable poet and philanthropist,Whittier, — hewill see so many reasons for spend- ing some hours in the place, should he ever chance to be in the neighborhood. But he will no longer find the Bell Tavern there. That has disappeared, although its traditions are still most scrupulously preserved. Let us recount one of them. The Bell was for some time the residence of Elizabeth Whitman, whose singular story, under the fictitious name of Eliza Wliarton, excited, forty odd years ago, the sensibilities of thousands. In this house she died ; and such was the desire of many to obtain some memento of her, that even the stones erected over her grave were near being carried away piecemeal. When I last visited the spot where she lies, the path leading to it was, to judge from appearances, the one in the old ground oftenest traversed. This is not strange, for even in winter, after a heavy fall of snow, the path has been kept open by the feet of the morbidly curious. I expected to read upon the headstone 198 NEW-ENGLAND LEGENDS. the words, " Good people, pray for her, she died for love." But, as I have said, the stone had been carried off nearly entire. The following letter, found after her death among her effects, is, however, at once the history and the epitaph of this most bril- liant and gifted, yet most unfortunate, of beings. After reading it, let him who is without sin cast the first stone upon her memory : — " Must I die alone 1 Shall I never see you more ? I know that you will come, but you will come too late. This is, I fear, my last ability. Tears fall so, I know not how to write. Why did you leave me in so much distress 1 But I will not reproach you. All that was dear I left for you ; but I do not regret it. May God forgive in both what was amiss. When I go from hence, I will leave you some way to find me ; if I die, will you come and drop a tear over my grave 2 " In the month of June, 1788, a chaise in which Avere two persons, a man and a woman, stopped at the door of the Bell Tavern. The woman alighted and entered the house. Her companion immediately drove off, and was never again seen in the village. It may be easily guessed that the very last place for seclusion or mystery was a Kew England village of a hun- dred years ago, since the entire population regarded even the presence among them of an rniknown person Avith suspicion; while any attempt at mystification was in effect a spur to the curiosity of every idle gossip, far and near. In self-protection the laws of hospitality as to the stranger Avere reversed. To this spirit of exclusiveness Ave doubtless OAve the national trait of in- quisitiveness so often ascribed to ns. Such, hoAvever, was the spirit of the laAVS under which these communities had grown up. It is true that the stranger Avas not required to shoAV his pass- port ; but as he valued his own ease, on no account must he betray any reticence concerning himself or his affairs. At the entrance of each village, as one might say, an invisible but watchful sentinel cried out : " "Who comes there 1 " Should the stranger happen to have his secret to guard, so much the Avorse for him. The unknown guest of the Bell — about whom everything — her beauty, grace of manner and address, announced her to be a person accustomed to the society of people above the ordinary condition of life — desired most of all to be unno- ticed and unmolested. She desired this for peculiar reasons. Each day her life steadily darkened ; every hour was bring- ing her nearer and nearer to the crisis of her destiny ; every moment was an hour of terror and remorse. It was necessary, however, to give some account of herself, or else suspicion and calumny would soon be busy with her reputation. She there-

Samuel Adams Drake, A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore in Prose and Poetry (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884)