LITERARY WORK IN LONDON: 415 



the mccting-room at Hackney, was a lady of American 

 parentage, equally remarkable for her outward charms and 

 her inward accomplishments. Of this lady, destined to 

 take so large a part in the life of Philip Gosse, her only 

 son may be permitted to give at this point a more 

 particular account. Although IMiss Emily Bowes was 

 born in England, on November 10, 1806, both her father, 

 William Bowes, and her mother, Hannah Troutbeck, were 

 Bostonians of pure Massachusetts descent. Her people 

 had taken the English side in 1775. When "the Boston 

 teapot bubbled," her father — who had been duly baptized, 

 as befitted a good Bostonian, by Dr. Samuel Cooper, at 

 Brattle Street meeting-house — was hurried away by his 

 parents, whose nerves the "tea-party" had shaken, to 

 North Wales, where the family settled in the neighbour- 

 hood of Snowdon. But William Bowes, with his undiluted 

 Massachusetts blood, had been forced to be a loyalist in 

 vain, for, once grown to man's estate, to Boston he went 

 back for a wife, and secured a New Englander as true 

 as himself in Hannah, daughter of the Rev. John Troutbeck, 

 formerly King's Chaplain in Boston, U.S.A. Mrs. Bowes 

 was born in 1768, close to Governor Winthrop's house in 

 South Street, Boston. She lived to be eighty-three, and 

 the writer of these lines has been seated in her arms. In 

 Dr. O. W. Holmes's words — . 



'^ She had heard the muskets' rattle of the April running battle ; 

 Lord Percy'-s hunted soldiers, she could see their red coats still," 



and, when he thinks of her, her grandson thrills with a 

 divided patriotism. 



Through her father, Miss Bowes was directly descended 

 from one of the most distinguished families of New 

 England. Her great-grandfather, Nicholas Bowes, of 

 Boston, born in 1706, graduate of Harvard, and for twenty 

 years minister of New Bedford, married Lucy Hancock, 



