108                         America's Old Masters

often Copley must have seen black children of his own age un­loaded with the barrels of molasses, driven in terrified groups down Long Wharf to the markets where they were sold. How often he must have seen emaciated Negroes, once the pride of the jungle, hustled unmercifully off boats where there was no room for them any more, and allowed to die, for they were too infirm to have any . value.

Flanking Mrs. Copley's shop on Long Wharf were grog shops
which made the night hideous with the sound of drunken singing
and drunken fights. We need not be surprised that Copley reacted                                          ■

violently against his childhood environment Induced by his own
children to talk of those unhappy days, he told them that he had
escaped from brutal reality into the recesses of his own mind; he
became a quiet and studious lad. When the tough waterfront boys,
seeing his pale face at the window, dared him to come out and
hooted him as a sissy, he fled to an empty room, where he comforted                                         f

himself by drawing pictures on the walls. Family tradition tells us that at seven or eight he sketched in charcoal a group of martial figures engaged in some unnamed adventure. The Bible also was a source of inspiration to the well-brought-up lad, who showed his literal-mindedness by painting the sea Moses crossed a glowing red. Or did he think of all oceans as tinged with blood?

Copley's letters show that he had been well educated. Probably he went to the school conducted by Peter Pelham, for during 1748 his mother married that estimable widower. A month later the fol­lowing advertisement appeared in the Boston Gazette: "Mrs. Mary Pelham (formerly the widow Copley, on the Long Wharf, tobac­conist) is removed to Lindel's Row, against the Quakers' Meeting House, near the upper end of King Street, Boston, where she con­tinues to sell the best Virginia tobacco, cut, pigtail, and spun, of all sorts, by wholesale and retail at the cheapest prices."

Thus Copley escaped from the waterfront. However, his mother's marriage had an even more important consequence; Peter Pelham was the first well-trained mezzotint-scraper to appear in the Col­onies. He had already earned an English reputation before coming to America about 1725, and on his arrival he immediately secured all the business there was for engravings after portraits of leading citizens. Yet all the business there was did not suffice to keep him in food and lodgings; he was forced to open a school where, according to an advertisement published the year of Copley's birth, "young gentlemen and ladies may be,taught dancing, writing, reading, painting, and needlework." His dancing assemblies were immedi­ately criticized by the pious burghers of Boston. "What could give encouragement to so licentious and expensive a diversion in a town famous for its decency and good order? . . ." an indignant citizen asked in the Boston Gazette. "When we look back upon the trans­actions of our forefathers and read the wonderful story of their godly zeal, their pious resolution, and their public virtues, how should we blush and lament our present corruption of manners and decay of religious and civil discipline. ... In vain will our ministers preach charity, moderation, and humility to an audience whose thoughts are engaged in scenes of splendour and magnifi­cence, and whose time and money are consumed in dress and danc­ing."

Blue laws hampered the artistic-minded of Boston at every turn. During Copley's thirteenth year, the town had the excitement of its first theatrical performance. When two English actors announced that they would present An Orphan, or Unhappy Marriage at the British Coffee House and persuaded some rash Bostonians to take the minor roles, the citizens were so shocked at the idea of a play that everyone wanted to see it. A huge crowd gathered outside the coffee house, on King Street near Copley's home, and finding that there was not room to admit them all, they rioted. Immediately, with the entire approval of the mob that had been so eager to get in, the government passed an "Act to Prevent Stage Plays and Other Theatrical Entertainments" on the grounds that they "occasioned