Early American

PAUL REVERE & THE WORLD HE LIVED IN--Esther Forbes--Houghton, Mifflin--($3.75).

God did not make Paul Revere a very exciting person, and for all her skill and devotion Biographer Esther Forbes has not managed to do much better. But her 464-page biography of the famous night rider, silversmith, dentist, bell caster, copperplate engraver, and revolutionary politician is absorbing reading. Reason: Paul Revere lived so close to the center of the historical storm of Boston (colonial population about 15,000) which influenced world history ever since that the context makes him impressive.

Biographer Forbes (A Mirror for Witches, O Genteel Lady!) is a persistent rummager in regional attics. She sometimes dotes a little too much on research (even noting a change in the size of the armholes of the Governor of Massachusetts' coat). But her life of Paul Revere is: 1) a levelheaded account of Boston's part in the American Revolution; 2) an engaging slide lecture on colonial and early republican life in New England; 3) a lengthy portrait gallery of revolutionists like Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren, Tory Governor Thomas Hutchinson.

The Real Ride. The one thing everybody knows about Paul Revere is his ride. But Biographer Forbes can only nod affectionately towards Longfellow's ballad. The Paul Revere who roused the Middlesex village and farms was no hotheaded youth, but a stocky family man of 40. Neither did he gallop in wild anapest down the road to Lexington. The lanterns that were hung in Christ's Church steeple ("one if by land, two if by sea") were not hung for Paul Revere. He had helped put them there. His ride was a cool, businesslike night's work, but at first Revere was rattled. He had forgotten to bring his spurs and a cloth to muffle his oarlocks. A girl friend of one of the oarsmen gave them her petticoat ("still warm") for the oars. Revere used to tell his children how his dog ran home with a note from him and came back with the spurs. In his old age he described the beginning of the adventure in a line more alive than any ever written about him: "It was young flood, the ship* was winding and the moon was rising."

Biographer Forbes catches some of the vitality of that line in her account of the ride and of the ground swell of war that began the next day. Her Battle of Lexington, even more than her description of the Boston Massacre, is a superb piece of historical writing.

Revere was already an old hand at revolution. He was the Boston Committee of Safety's most trusted courier, had ridden thousands of miles. He rode four times to Philadelphia; he could always be trusted to say the right thing. He rode to Durham N.H. to order a raid on the British fort at Portsmouth. Tired, he slept through the raid. He took part in the Boston Tea Party which "spread a windrow of tea from Boston all the way to Dorchester." Without sleep he started for Philadelphia to report what had happened.

Later on, he became a lieutenant colonel. He never went higher. He was a dutiful, unspectacular soldier. Whenever he could manage it, he slipped away to work on the "mushroom smoothness" of the silver in whose fashioning he was, in his unpretentious way, a great artist.

Revere was an etcher of sorts. His etching of the Boston Massacre was an effective propaganda piece. But he was the finest American silversmith of his time. After the Revolution, as life became more hurried and vulgar, his work in silver became more hurried too. In his 50s he turned to industry. His foundry, on a veering wind, fouled the linens of North Boston as he cast ship gadgets, stoves, anvils, chimney backs. He fought one of the first lawsuits over the water power of New England's rapid little rivers.

The Real Republican. He disliked Jeffersonian Democrats. "My sentiments," wrote Revere, "differ very widely from theirs. . . . I was always a warm Republican. I always depreciated Democracy as much as I did Aristocracy. Our Government is now completely Democratic; they turn every person out of office, who is not or will not be in their way of thinking and acting. . . ."

Revere had never been a proletarian. Now he was an enterprising manufacturer. He learned the tricky art of bell casting. His bells--he cast almost 400--clanged in steeples all over the Western Hemisphere and on ships at sea. He learned the secret of rolling copper, built the first successful U.S. rolling mill. His copper sheathed the dome of Boston's State House, Manhattan's City Hall, the hull of Old Ironsides--a greater service to his country, in Biographer Forbes's opinion, than his ride.

He had known the great men of his time, and had brushed against the forebears of great men still unborn. One of the boys at the Boston Tea Party was Herman Melville's grandfather. One of the privates in Revere's command was Thoreau's grandfather. Two of Revere's sons-in-law were named Lincoln. Down in Virginia a fourth cousin of theirs "had not yet married Nancy Hanks."

One Sunday in 1818 old Paul Revere died. In King's Chapel, his masterpiece, the passing bell of the City of Boston, tolled for his death, his sex (three strokes), his age (eight strokes, then three).

* England's 64-gun Somerset.

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