Pocahontas seems to have led a quiet life on her husband's tobacco plantation near the city of Henricus, until she visited England in 1616. Captain Smith, learning of her presence there, wrote a noble letter to Queen Anne, beseeching her kindness and relating in detail the story we have given of her goodness to him and to the starving colony.

She was well received at court. The high dignitaries of the church entertained her, and she conducted herself with the grave dignity and propriety demanded by the long, stiff stays which imprisoned her lithe body. The court was not conspicuous for the gravity or dignity of its own manners: but it found no fault with those of the American princess.

The shy little Indian woman could hardly have understood the interest she awakened in the bosoms of those grave and reverend seniors. Archbishops, bishops, and lesser clergy were all alike to her, differing only in the cut and richness of their robes. But to them she represented an answer to fervent prayer, the reward for lavish expenditure of health, hope, life, and fortune. As she stood before them, dignified in her enforced reticence, she seemed to them a miracle, the manifest incarnation of the Holy Spirit—nothing less.

Writers love to dwell upon the wonderful serenity of her manner, "softened by the influence of the court." The court manners were anything but soft, gentle, and serene. No coarser age, socially, finds record in English history. Pocahontas owed much to her limited knowledge of the language of the court. The coarse jest, the offensive double entendre, fell upon unhearing ears. Her Indian training forbade the least betrayal of emotion or surprise, and her incomprehensible Indian tongue spared her the merriment of the volatile court ladies, which might have been provoked by her ingÉnue remarks. Mighty is silence,—placing those who adopt it upon a plane the chatterer never attains.

And so it came to pass that poor little Pocahontas, stiff and uncomfortable in her long stays and quilted robes, behaved in a manner which demanded no indulgence and challenged no criticism. Lord and Lady Delaware were her sponsors and instructors in court etiquette. When her lips touched the hand of the Queen, no one could find fault with her demeanour. The clergy declared that less dignity was not to have been expected, since the hand of Divine Providence was manifest in her conversion. The blasÉ courtiers, with small appreciation of spiritual charms, protested they had "seen many English ladies worse favoured, worse proportioned, worse behavioured,"—which indeed we can easily believe.

Tradition preserves the astonishing fact that King James was greatly offended with John Rolfe for marrying a princess without his consent; not that he proposed to claim an alliance for "Baby Charles" or "Steenie," the new favourite and candidate for the peerage, or for any noble of his realm; but just from pure gossipy meddling, pure fussiness, pure folly; than which nothing was too foolish for "the wisest fool in Christendom."

Our Indian lady was introduced to Samuel Purchas, and he was present at the entertainment given in her honour by Dr. King, the Bishop of London; exceeding in splendour anything the author had ever witnessed. Probably Sir Walter Raleigh attended this fÊte. He had just been released, after thirteen years' confinement in the Tower, having walked out of the iron doors just as the degraded Earl of Somerset, Robert Carr, and his guilty wife walked in. It is certain he could not fail to meet Pocahontas. He was nothing to her, but her presence meant much to him. He had sowed, and others had reaped. Moreover, he must have scanned the peculiarly feminine lineaments of her face with wonder and keen interest. Through her he was brought face to face with the destroyer of his two colonies, so loved and so betrayed, upon which he had exhausted his treasury.

Her son was born while she was in England, or shortly before her coming thither, and the London Company made provision for him and for her. The smoke of London so distressed her that she removed to Brentford. The tiny smoky hut of her childhood she could bear—but not the London fog. At Brentford John Smith visited her. In mortal fear of offending the king by familiarity with a princess, he addressed her ceremoniously as the "Lady Rebekah," and this[79] wounded her so deeply that she covered her face with her hands and turned away, refusing to speak for two or three hours! It appears that he awaited her pleasure, and presently she reproached him for his distant manner, thinking perhaps that he was ashamed to own her before his own people. She reminded him that he had always called Powhatan "father," and so she now meant to call him, and be his child, and forever and ever his countrywoman; adding, "they did tell me you were dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth; yet[80] Powhatan did command Uttamatomakkin to seeke you and know the truth because your Countriemen will lie much."[81]

The Indian with the long name was Matachanna's husband, also known on these pages as "Tocomoco." Powhatan had sent him to number the English, which he proceeded to do by notches on a stick, but soon grew weary of such a hopeless task. He took great offence because King James paid him no attention, and never ceased abusing the English after his return, thus helping along the massacre of five years later.

Pocahontas was on her way home, "sorely against her will," when she was smitten with illness on board ship and taken ashore at Gravesend. There she died, March 1, 1617, sustained by the faith and hope of the true Christian. She was interred in the chancel of St. George's Church; the exact spot of burial is, however, not known.

Before she left England her portrait was painted by an unknown artist, and presented to Mr. Peter Elwin, a relative of the Rolfe family, by Madame Zucchelli. As Zucchero was a painter of the time, the name Zucchelli might have been mistaken for his. Zucchero painted a beautiful portrait of Queen Elizabeth with a marvellous jewelled stomacher, but without the monstrous fanlike wings of gauze at the throat with which we are familiar.

John Rolfe left his son in England to be educated, and he found his "match" once more, and married the daughter of a rich man at Jamestown. Pocahontas's son married also, and was the progenitor of some of Virginia's most distinguished citizens and statesmen. He visited his uncle Opechancanough and his aunt "Cleopatre" after he returned to Virginia. He was not ashamed of his Indian relatives! Nor are his descendants. The names of Pocahontas, Powhatan, and Matoaca are still borne by them.

It has been said that Pocahontas died of smallpox. We know nothing from printed record or parish register except that she was buried in the chancel of the church at Gravesend in the County of Kent; that the church was destroyed by fire in 1727, and a new church, St. George's, erected upon the site of the old one; and that the Rev. John H. Haslam, later rector, placed a commemorative tablet in the chancel recording all that careful investigation has yielded of the spot where her ashes lie. One could wish that she might have found her last resting-place under the skies of her native country; that from her "unpolluted flesh violets"—the lovely wild violets of Virginia—might "spring" with every return of summer.

The infant son of Pocahontas, Thomas Rolfe, was placed under the care of Sir Lewis Stukely, Vice Admiral of Devon; and here again the story of the Indian girl touches that of Sir Walter Raleigh.[82] It was this Stukely who afterwards basely betrayed his friend, Sir Walter, and by this treachery covered himself with infamy. The son of Pocahontas did not long breathe the atmosphere polluted by this traitor. He was removed to London and educated by his uncle, Henry Rolfe.

Thomas Rolfe's immediate descendants married into the families of Bolling, Randolph, Gay, Eldridge, and Murray. No trace of the Indian in feature or character survives in those highly esteemed Virginia families. The haughty, vindictive spirit of the cruel Powhatan may have burnt itself out in the veins of John Randolph of Roanoke, who left no descendants.

Pocahontas will always be interesting to the student of colonial history. The story of her life was a strange one, and stranger the story to its end. Her father and her kindred were consigned to the tomb with the rites and lamentations of the savage, and with wild heathenish invocations to the Devil of their imaginations. She, alone of all her tribe, simply as a consequence of one noble act, received Christian burial, in hallowed Christian soil, and is embalmed forever in grateful Christian hearts.