The Bones of Thomas Paine

"There are eight million stories in the Naked City," they used to say on TV.   Adjusting for inflation since the '60s, that comes to about 10 or 12 million stories in circulation in the Metropolis today. Some of these stories are, of course, not worth the trouble it takes to hear them, and others one cannot avoid hearing not matter how much one might wish.  Oh my anonymous nighttime companion, while I never caught your name, the fact that you could vomit on the street at such a volume that you could wake me from a deep sleep when I was three floors above is a testament to the kind of night you had, if perhaps not your good judgment.

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Even so, there is always a hope of sifting some gold out of the dross.  In the hope that, as Socrates remarks, knowing the men of the city is the origin of wisdom, or at least a source of temporary amusement, I have undertaken the labor on your behalf. This post I offer up as the result, the story of the sad death and bizarre afterlife of Thomas Paine

With some embarrassment, I must admit that heretofore my knowledge of Thomas Paine was limited to what was necessary to get a Five on the AP US History exam:  American patriot, pamphleteer and radical, author of Common Sense during the darkest days of the Revolution, et cetera, et cetera, I've written enough so can I go home now?  It was only recently that I found that Paine was an example of a trope that extends through history from the Gracchi to Trotsky, the revolutionary devoured by his own revolution.

In the aftermath of the American Revolution and receiving the thanks of the new nation, Paine had returned to his birth country of England, mainly for financial reasons.  Upon the outbreak of the revolution in France, Paine again became a propagandist for the cause, issuing pamphlets such as The Rights of Man to promote the spread of liberty, equality, fraternity, and so forth.  So ardent was Paine for the cause that in 1792, after fleeing to France to escape sedition charges, he was given citizenship and elected to the National Convention, despite the notable handicap of not speaking any French.    

Despite his impeccable credentials, Paine proved insufficiently radical for Robespierre and the Jacobins, and in 1793 he was imprisoned and sentenced to death. Desperate, Paine appealed to President Washington for salvation.  Washington, always more of an aristocrat at heart, did nothing, and it was only by a matter of days that the overthrow of Robespierre prevented Paine's execution.  The new regime in Paris, however, had little use for Paine, and he spent his time writing no-doubt heartfelt but considering the circumstances rather impolitic attacks both against George Washington and the Christian religion.  

Say what you like, T. Paine had excellent taste in chairs

Returning to the United States in 1804, Paine's humiliations were compounded.  He was denied the right to vote, and what writing he produced was mainly ignored, his enemies not even paying the compliment of considering Paine worth attacking.   In 1809, Paine died, like many a frustrated radical in years to come, in Greenwich Village.  The New York Evening Post's obituary summed up the general sentiment of the country: "He had live long, doing some good, and much harm."

In his will, Paine wished to be interned in the Quaker burial ground in New Rochelle, demonstrating the irrefutable fact that the only time anyone has wished to go to New Rochelle is after they're already dead.  After the Quakers refused, Paine was instead buried on his farm in the same city.  Here the matter rested, as it were, for 10 years, until the arrival on the scene of Mr. William Cobbett, late of London and His Majesty's Newgate Prison.

Faithful readers will no doubt recall Cobbett as the author of the delightful bit of invective from which this humble publication takes its name.  Never one to hold his tongue when advocating for his causes, Cobbett had come to America having already served one prison term for libel and fearing a return engagement in the conservative atmosphere following the Napoleonic Wars.  Cobbett settled on a farm in the vicinity of what is now New Hyde Park, keeping up with publishing and radical politics back in England and vigorously ignoring the many demands of farming life.  In 1819, as he was preparing to return to England, Cobbett struck upon a plan to disinter Paine from his humble plot and rebury the corpse with much more pomp and circumstance back in Albion.  

William Cobbett in Prison - A Contemporary View

While at first this might seem like one fighter for the cause paying respect to another, further inspection reveals a more complex picture, perhaps similar to a late Degas.  In the first place, there is the fact that Cobbett's action were not, strictly speaking, legal, with Cobbett digging up Paine's body in the dead of night right before leaving the country without a word to Paine's executrix, Madame Bonneville or anyone else, for that matter.  Cobbett pleaded lack of time, claiming that the farm was about to be sold, and Paine's remains placed in a potter's field.

Even allowing for this, however, there is still the matter of the motives behind Cobbett's actions.While Cobbett had long advocated radical reform, he was also priggishly nationalistic in a thoroughly English manner, and Paine's alliance with the French and attacks on religion made him an enemy of all the things that Cobbett held dear.  And, playing to type, Mr. Cobbett did not hold back on making his views on the matter very plain. In one of the less incendiary passages from the Political Register, for instance,  reads 

(To) Tom Paine, the author of Common Sense, the Rights of Man, Age of Reason, and a Letter to General Washington, I bequeath a strong hempen collar, as the only legacy I can think of that is worthy of him, as well as best adapted to render his death in some measure as infamous as his life;  and I do hereby direct and order my executors to send it to him by the first safe conveyance, with my compliments, and request that he will make use of it without delay, that the national razor may not be disgraced by the head of such a monster.   

Although in his own writings Cobbet claims that he was eventually convinced of the rightness of Paine's cause, accounts by his contemporary lend a much more mercenary view to the matter.  In Robert Huish's Memoirs of the Life of William Cobbett, Cobbett is depicted as scheming to use Paine's bones as a means to rally the discontented underclass all throughout Britain and "effect the Reformation of England in Church and State."  That such a plan was at least reasonable for Cobbett to consider is demonstrated by an incident at the Customs Office during his return to England.  Upon declaring that he possessed Thomas Paine's mortal remains, a whole crowd of onlookers formed around Cobbett and the body, with Cobbett quipping "Great indeed must that man have been, whose very bones attracted such attention."

Plaque Marking the Original Gravesite of Thomas Paine

Whatever Cobbett's ultimate plans were, however, he never carried them out.   Other causes attracted his attention, and after his death in 1835, Paine's mortal remains came into the possession of Cobbett's son, who apparently sold them off in dribs and drabs over the years. Parts were made into buttons in England, and the skull has apparently migrated to Australia.  Using genetic testing, a worthy group called The Citizen Paine Restoration Initiative is working to gather all these bony odds and ends and finally give them a decent burial back in New Rochelle.  One wonders what Thomas would have made of all the fuss, but perhaps he would at least appreciate the irony of returning back to his old farmstead, where his story ended and began.