Folklore
Edward Randolph's Portrait
Nothing is left of Province House, the old home of the royal governors, in Boston, but the gilded Indian that served as its weathercock and aimed his arrow at the winds from the cupola. The house itself was swept away long ago in the so-called march of improvement. In one of…
Work
- Type
- folk narrative
- Creator
- Charles M. Skinner
- Created, as stated
- 1896
The tale
Nothing is left of Province House, the old home of the royal governors, in Boston, but the gilded Indian that served as its weathercock and aimed his arrow at the winds from the cupola. The house itself was swept away long ago in the so-called march of improvement. In one of its rooms hung a picture so dark that when Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson went to live there hardly anybody could say what it represented. There were hints that it was a portrait of the devil, painted at a witch-meeting near Salem, and that on the eve of disasters in the province a dreadful face had glared from the canvas. Shirley had seen it on the night of the fall of Ticonderoga, and servants had gone shuddering from the room, certain that they had caught the glance of a malignant eye. It was known to the governors, however, that the portrait, if not that of the arch fiend, was that of one who in the popular mind was none the less a devil: Edward Randolph, the traitor, who had repealed the first provincial charter and deprived the colonists of their liberties. Under the curse of the people he grew pale and pinched and ugly, his face at last becoming so hateful that men were unwilling to look at it. Then it…
- Narrative type
- legend
- The printing this telling comes from
- Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896) (1896)
- First attestation in print
- 1886 — the earliest printing the archive holds. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-told Tales (1886) — the earliest printing of this tale the archive holds
The attestation
This archive holds a printing of this tale older than the collection its own telling comes from, and the passage below is the tale where it stands in that older volume. It is the earliest printing the archive HOLDS — not a claim about the earliest that exists.
wn, that the dark, mysterious picture had stai'ted EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 305 from the wall, and spoken face to face with Lieutenant- Governor Hutchinson. If such a miracle had been wrought, however, no traces of it remained beliind, for within the antique frame notliing could be discerned save the impenetrable cloud, which had covered the canvas since the memory of man. If the figure had, indeed, stepped forth, it had fled back, spirit-like, at the daydawn, and hidden itself behind a centiuy's ob- scurity. The truth probably was, that Alice Vane's secret for restoring
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-told Tales (1886) — the earliest printing of this tale the archive holds · the document, as the archive holds it
Tellings
A tale told several ways is one record and several tellings. Each is given whole, with its teller named — or recorded as unattributed where the collector left them unnamed, which is itself a fact about the collection.
As printed in Charles M. Skinner (1896)
Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Charles M. Skinner · 1896
Nothing is left of Province House, the old home of the royal governors, in Boston, but the gilded Indian that served as its weathercock and aimed his arrow at the winds from the cupola. The house itself was swept away long ago in the so-called march of improvement. In one of its rooms hung a picture so dark that when Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson went to live there hardly anybody could say what it represented. There were hints that it was a portrait of the devil, painted at a witch-meeting near Salem, and that on the eve of disasters in the province a dreadful face had glared from the canvas. Shirley had seen it on the night of the fall of Ticonderoga, and servants had gone shuddering from the room, certain that they had caught the glance of a malignant eye. It was known to the governors, however, that the portrait, if not that of the arch fiend, was that of one who in the popular mind was none the less a devil: Edward Randolph, the traitor, who had repealed the first provincial charter and deprived the colonists of their liberties. Under the curse of the people he grew pale and pinched and ugly, his face at last becoming so hateful that men were unwilling to look at it. Then it was that he sat for his portrait. Threescore or odd years afterward, Hutchinson sat in the hall wondering vaguely if coming events would consign him to the obloquy that had fallen on his predecessor, for at his bidding a fleet had come into the harbor with three regiments of red coats on board, despatched from Halifax to overawe the city. The coming of the selectmen to protest against quartering these troops on the people and the substitution of martial for civic law, interrupted his reverie, and a warm debate arose. At last the governor seized his pen impatiently, and cried, “The king is my master and England is my home. Upheld by them, I defy the rabble.” He was about to sign the order for bringing in the troops when a curtain that had hung before the picture was drawn aside. Hutchinson stared at the canvas in amazement, then muttered, “It is Randolph's spirit! It wears the look of hell.” The picture was seen to be that of a man in antique garb, with a despairing, hunted, yet evil expression in the face, and seemed to stare at Hutchinson. “It is a warning,” said one of the company. Hutchinson recovered himself with an effort and turned away. “It is a trick,” he cried; and bending over the paper he fixed his name, as if in desperate haste. Then he trembled, turned white, and wiped a sweat from his brow. The selectmen departed in silence but in anger, and those who saw Hutchinson on the streets next day affirmed that the portrait had stepped out of its canvas and stood at his side through the night. Afterward, as he lay on his death-bed, he cried that the blood of the Boston massacre was filling his throat, and as his soul passed from him his face, in its agony and rage, was the face of Edward Randolph.
Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)
Questions this record answers
Each answer is composed only from fields this record carries, and names the attestation for what it says. A question the record cannot answer from its own attested content is not asked here. Where a boundary is described as official it was promulgated by an authority with the power to draw it and is not amended by anything on the vernacular layer; where it is described as vernacular it is held by attestation alone and amends no official boundary.
In which printing does the archive hold Edward Randolph's Portrait?
Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896) The printing is dated 1896. This is the printing this archive's own telling was lifted from, and the archive can hand over the volume. It is not a claim that the tale was first printed there.
Attested by: Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)
When was Edward Randolph's Portrait first attested in print?
1886, in Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-told Tales (1886) — the earliest printing of this tale the archive holds — which is the earliest printing of this tale the archive HOLDS, and older than the collection its own telling comes from. It is not a claim about the earliest printing that exists; it is a claim about a volume the archive can hand over.
Attested by: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-told Tales (1886) — the earliest printing of this tale the archive holds
How many tellings of Edward Randolph's Portrait does the archive hold?
One telling: As printed in Charles M. Skinner (1896) (unattributed — the collector names no informant). A tale told several ways is one record and several tellings, each given whole with its teller named — or recorded as unattributed where the collector left them unnamed, which is itself a fact about the collection.
Attested by: Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)
Who collected Edward Randolph's Portrait?
Charles M. Skinner. The archive records the collector separately from the teller, because who wrote a tale down and who told it are different facts and collapsing them destroys both.
Attested by: Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)
What does the archive hold for Edward Randolph's Portrait, and under what license?
The Boston Archive holds this record of Edward Randolph's Portrait from Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Public domain — published before 1929 (public domain). 7 recorded transforms stand between the retrieved bytes and this record. Attribution is due to Charles M. Skinner.
Attested by: Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Public domain — published before 1929.
Related records
- documents — Myths and Legends of Our Own Land
Identity
- Identifier
- urn:lemay:boston:entity:edward-randolph-s-portrait
- Canonical URL
- https://boston.fyi/work/edward-randolph-s-portrait
- As JSON
- https://boston.fyi/work/edward-randolph-s-portrait.json
- Version
- 2 · last changed 3 September 2026
Provenance
- Source
- Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896) — source of record
- License
- Public domain — published before 1929 (public_domain)
- Retrieved
- 2 September 2026
- Source identifier
- EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT
- Attribution
- Charles M. Skinner
- Rights as stated
- Published 1896 and in the public domain in the United States.
Transform ladder
| # | Operation | Description | Tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fetch | retrieved the full text of the collection from its public-domain holding institution | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 2 | segment | split the volume into chapters at its own printed headings; the first occurrence of a heading opens the chapter and later occurrences are the running header, which is discarded | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 3 | corroborate | matched each heading against the book's own table of contents and took the index's spelling as the title; a heading the index does not carry was refused as a caption, a byline, or scanner noise | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 4 | filter | retained the chapters that name a Boston-area place, by the tale's own words | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 5 | normalize | collapsed the scan's line breaks; not one word of the telling was altered, added, or removed | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 6 | withdraw-unattested-setting | The setting recorded on this tale — "Boston and eastern Massachusetts" — is the same string carried by every folklore record in this archive. It is the scope of the collections these tales were drawn from, applied at accession, and not a setting read out of this tale by anyone. It was being served as the source's own wording, which it is not, and on a dozen records the tale printed beside it refuted it. The field is cleared rather than reworded: the archive does not hold a per-tale setting and will not imply one. | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |
| 7 | withdraw-unattested-collection-place | The collection place recorded on every telling of this tale — "Boston and eastern Massachusetts" — is the same string carried by every telling in this archive. These tales were compiled from print, not collected from informants in a place, and the field asserted a collection event that did not happen. It is cleared: the teller field already records, correctly, that the collector named no informant, and an absence stated is worth more than a constant that hides it. | archive-ingest 0.1.0 |