Benjamin West                                       25

helps to explain strange and well-authenticated events that fol­lowed.

Even if we do not accept the story, its inclusion in the official biography West himself edited is significant. Why did the painter, who was already as famous as he possibly could be, want the public to believe such a falsehood? Or had he come himself to believe at the end of an almost fabulous career that he had been miraculously born?

West's first years had been spent to the sound of turning wheels and of guttural German voices. When he was four or five, his father seems to have moved to another tavern in the same neighbourhood, since in 1743 he applied for a new licence, stating that he had "rented a commodious house and all other conveniences there and to belonging for a house of entertainment on the road leading from Darby to Springfield and from thence to Conestoga, which is of late much frequented by the Dutch wagons, to the number of forty or fifty a day."

Every evening the unwieldy covered vehicles rumbled into the courtyard, the men walking beside the tired horses. There would be a burst of foreign jabbering, and then the wagons would dis­gorge a flood of women and children from the Palatinate who stretched and groaned, for they had been perched uneasily on the chairs and chests that were all their worldly goods. Boys of Ben­jamin's own age who could not speak his language stared gravely at him in the courtyard; later perhaps they threw stones at him with the sudden hatred that springs up in childish breasts at the sight of strangers. Often the lad must have helped in the tap­room or carried warming pans up to the crowded chambers where the Germans lay, covering the floor as well as the beds.

Thus the years passed until when Benjamin was six destiny inter­vened; he was, he told Gait, left to watch over his sister's baby. The vigil proved a long one and finally, in utter boredom, he reached for the pen and paper that lay on a near-by table and drew the infant's picture. On her return, Mrs. West was delighted. "I do declare," she cried, "he has made a likeness of Sally!" And she kissed him: "That kiss," West used to say sententiously, "made me a painter."

But more important was the fact that his father was deeply im­pressed, perhaps because he saw in the drawing the sign he was waiting for, or perhaps because he thought it remarkable that his son should spontaneously start to draw when he had rarely seen a picture. There were hardly any pictures in the region for him to see, since the Quakers frowned on all "images" as tending to­ward "Popish idolatry" and encouraging "the lust of the eyes." Had John West been -more orthodox, he might have regarded his son's leaning toward art as evidence of an indwelling devil, but the innkeeper, who was born a Quaker and lived in a Quaker community, had proved the independence of his mind by resign­ing from meeting over some doctrinal disagreement. However, he continually took his doubts and his family to worship, and many years later returned to the fold. We have the testimony of one of his neighbours that he was a very religious man.

Most amazingly, when John West exhibited to his more orthodox neighbours the drawings he now encouraged his son to execute, only a few followed the strict doctrinal line and denounced the boy's accomplishments as wicked; most of the Friends were im­pressed. If we accept the story of West's miraculous birth, this would explain their ready acquiescence, for they would never have dared question the manifest will of God; otherwise we can point out only that the Quakers who lived near Chester had already proved themselves one of the most radical communities in all America. As early as 1711, the sober farmers, sitting quietly in quarterly meeting, had adopted one of the first resolutions ever voted that denounced slavery, a resolution so revolutionary that it was greeted with horror by the central body of the Friends, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Year after year John West's neigh­bours sent their demands to.Philadelphia, until gradually other meetings followed their example. However, it was not till forty-three years after their first resolution that John Woolman pub­lished his famous Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, and still another four years were to pass before the Friends came out unequivocally against all forms of slavery. Benjamin West was to tell Gait that his father had started the movement by freeing a slave of his own and arguing with his neighbours. This must be an exaggeration, since John West, who was not officially a Quaker, did not reach America until three years after the Chester meeting had adopted its first resolution. However, innkeepers were men of influence in those days; his action may have materially strength­ened the movement for reform.