Patience Lovell Wright, a Quaker widow, was famous for her lifelike sculptures made of wax. In 1772, she traveled to England, where her first sitter was her compatriot Benjamin Franklin. She made portrait busts of other “eminent Personages” including the historian Catharine Macaulay, King George III, and Queen Charlotte, modeling the figures on her lap while engaging her sitters in conversation. Moving in London’s high society, Wright thought herself in a unique position to gather “Early Intelegenc and a few Hints” for the Americans, as she wrote her friend John Dickinson:
Howe is to land at new york. The Delancy Breed* is married in England and, by that means the names of the inhabitan in new york are Known to the ministry and they Expect to bribe them with Contacts and Places and ther port left open to devide the Coloneys and to deceve the peopl, But I depend on the Vertue of the Peopel. …
I am hapy to live in the days when I see with my own Eyes, I here with my own Ears, and Know the wicked Counsel that is against you, as also to be so Hapy to Know meny of the gentlemen in the Congress and am not a silent spectatr on the grand works of provedenc. … By good authority I write you this. Women are always usful in grand Events. …
Take this Hint from your old friend and devotd humbl srvt Patience Wright
* the DeLancey family of New York