VII Literary Landmarks of New England
The quest for literary landmarks is always a fascinating pursuit, particularly to the amateur photographer who likes to take pictures that mean something. I have always found a certain exhilaration in seeing for myself and reproducing photographically the places made memorable by some favorite author. To look into the ground glass of my camera and see the reflected image of some lovely scene that has been an inspiration to poet or novelist, is like suddenly coming into possession of a prize that had ever before been thought unattainable. It brings the author of a by-gone generation into one’s own time. It deepens the previous enjoyment—makes it more real. When I stand before the house in which some great author has lived, I seem to see more than a mere dwelling. The great man himself comes out to meet me, invites me in, shows me his study, presents me to his wife and children, walks with me in his garden, tells me how the surroundings of his home have influenced his literary work, and finally sends me away with a peculiar sense of intimacy. I go home, reach out my hand for a certain neglected book on my shelves, and lo! it opens as with a hidden spring, a new light glows upon its pages, and I find myself absorbed in conversation with a friend.
I
CONCORD
For this kind of hunting I know of no better place in America than New England, and no better town in which to begin than the sleepy old village of Concord, twenty miles northwest of Boston. On the occasion of a recent visit, we walked out Monument Street and made our first stop at a point in the road immediately opposite the “Old Manse.” A party of school-children were just entering. Had we been looking at the grove on the hillside, at the opposite end of the town, where Hawthorne used to walk to and fro, composing the “Tanglewood Tales,” we might have supposed they had come to catch a few echoes of the famous story-teller’s voice, and I should have made a photograph with the children in it. But here they did not seem so appropriate, and we waited until they had gone. When all was quiet again, it did not require a very vigorous imagination to look down the vista of black-ash trees seen between the “two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone,” and fancy a man and woman walking arm in arm down the avenue toward the weather-stained old parsonage, its dark sides scarcely visible beneath the shadows of the overarching trees. The man is of medium height, broad-shouldered, and walks with a vigorous stride, suggesting the bodily activity of a young athlete. His hair is dark, framing with wavy curves a forehead both high and broad. Heavy eyebrows overhang a pair of dark blue eyes, that seem to flash with wondrous expressiveness, as he bends slightly to speak to the little woman at his side. His voice is low and deep, and she responds to what he is saying with an upward glance of her soft gray eyes and a happy smile that clearly suggest the sunshine which she is destined to throw into his life.
Thus Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody, his bride, on a day in July, 1842, passed into the gloomy old house where they were to begin their honeymoon. I say “begin” because it was not like the ordinary honeymoon that ends abruptly on the day the husband first proposes to go alone on a fishing excursion. Nor was it like that of a certain “colored lady” whom I once knew. On the day following the wedding she left William to attend to his usual duties in the stable and the garden while she started on a two weeks’ “honeymoon” trip to her old Virginia home, explaining afterward that she “couldn’t afford to take dat fool niggah along, noway.”
THE OLD MANSE
The Hawthorne honeymoon was one of that rare kind which begins with the wedding bells and has no ending. They were married lovers all their days. Hawthorne had seen enough of solitariness in his bachelorhood to appreciate the rare companionship of his gifted wife, and he wanted nothing more. The dingy old parsonage was a Paradise to them and the new Adam and Eve invited no intrusions into their Eden. Some of their friends came occasionally, it is true, but Hawthorne records that during the next winter the snow in the old avenue was marked by no footsteps save his own for weeks at a time. And his loving wife, though she had come from the midst of a large circle of friends, found only happiness in sharing this solitude.
During the three years in which Hawthorne lived in this “Old Manse,” he seldom walked through the village, was known to but few of his neighbors, never went to the town-meeting, and not often to church, though he lived in a house that had been built by a minister and occupied by ministers so long that “it was awful to reflect how many sermons must have been written there.”
Let us peep through the windows of the parlor at the end of the dark avenue and indulge in another flight of fancy. It is an unusual day at the Manse, for two visitors have called to greet the new occupant. The elder of the two, a man in his fortieth year, is Ralph Waldo Emerson, who lives in the other end of the town in a large, comfortable, and cheery house, which we expect to see a little later. He knows the Old Manse well. His grandfather built it shortly before the outbreak of the Revolution and witnessed the battle of Concord from a window in the second story. This good man, who was the Revolutionary parson of the village, died in 1776 at the early age of thirty-three, and a few years later his widow married the Reverend Ezra Ripley, who maintained, for more than sixty years, the reputation of the Manse as a producer of sermons, being succeeded by his son, Samuel, also a minister. In October, 1834, Emerson came there with his mother and remained a year, during which he wrote his first, and one of his greatest essays, “Nature.”
The other visitor is Henry D. Thoreau, a young man of twenty-five, then living with the Emersons. The two guests and their host are sitting bolt upright in stiff-backed chairs. The host speaks scarcely a word except to ask, for the sake of politeness, a few formal questions, which Thoreau answers with equal brevity. Emerson alone talks freely, but his words, however much weighted with wisdom, are those of a monologuist and do not beget conversation. Yet there is something in the manner of all three that seems to betray the unspoken thought. Hawthorne’s observing eyes seem to be saying, “So this is Emerson, the man who, they say, is drawing all kinds of queer and oddly dressed people to this quiet little village,—visionaries, theorists, men and women who think they have discovered a new thought, and come to him to see if it is genuine. Perhaps he might help solve some of my problems. What a pure, intellectual gleam seems to be diffused about him! With what full and sweet tones he speaks and how persuasively! How serene and tranquil he seems! How reposeful, as though he had adjusted himself, with all reverence, to the supreme requirements of life! Yet I am not sure I can trust his philosophy. Let me admire him as a poet and a true man, but I shall ask him no questions.”
Then while Thoreau is talking, Emerson gazes at Hawthorne and reflects: “This man’s face haunts me. His manner fascinates me. I talk to him and his eyes alone answer me; and yet this seems sufficient. He does not echo my thoughts. He has a mind all his own. He says so little that I fear I talk too much. Yet he is a greater man than his words betray. I have never found pleasure in his writings, yet I cannot help admiring the man. Some day I hope to know him better. I have much to learn from him.”
Meanwhile Hawthorne’s gaze has turned upon the younger visitor. “What a wild creature he seems! How original! How unsophisticated! How ugly he is, with his long nose and queer mouth. Yet his manners are courteous and even his ugliness seems honest and agreeable. I understand he drifts about like an Indian, has no fixed method of gaining a livelihood, knows every path in the woods and will sit motionless beside a brook until the fishes, and the birds, and even the snakes will cease to fear his presence and come back to investigate him. He is a poet, too, as well as a scientist, and I am sure has the gift of seeing Nature as no other man has ever done. Some day I must walk with him in the woods.”
Every man in the room loves freedom, and hates conventionalities. The ordinary formalities of polite society are unendurable. Therefore the four walls seem oppressive and the straight-back chairs produce an agonizing tension of the nerves. They are all glad when the call is over.
WALDEN WOODS
Now let the scene change. It is winter and the river behind the house is frozen. In the glory of the setting sun, its surface seems a smooth sea of transparent gold. The edges of the stream are bordered with fantastic draperies, hanging from the overarching trees in strange festoons of purest white. Once more our three friends appear, but the four walls are gone and the wintry breeze has blown away all constraint. All three lovers of the open air are now on skates. Thoreau circles about skillfully in a bewildering series of graceful curves, for he is an expert at this form of sport and thinks nothing of skating up the river for miles in pursuit of a fox or other wild creature. Emerson finds it harder; he leans forward until his straight back seems to parallel the ice and frequently returns to the shore to rest. Hawthorne, if we may recall the words of his admiring wife, moves “like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave,” as though acting a part in some classic drama, yet fond of the sport and apparently indefatigable in its pursuit.
Once more let the scene change. Summer has come again. The icy decorations have given place to green boughs and rushes and meadow-grass which seem to be trying to crowd the river into narrower quarters. A small boat is approaching the shore in the rear of the old house. In the stern stands a young man who guides the craft as though by instinct. With scarcely perceptible motions of the single paddle, he makes it go in whatsoever direction he wills, as though paddling were only an act of the mind. The boat is called the Musketaquid, after the Indian name of the river. Its pilot, who is also its builder, quickly reaches the shore, and we recognize the man of Nature, Thoreau. Hawthorne, who has been admiring both the boat and steersman, now steps aboard and the two friends are soon moving slowly among the lily-pads that line the margin of the river. Hawthorne is rowing. He handles the oars with no great skill, and as for paddling, it would be impossible for him to make the boat answer his will. Thoreau plucks from the water a white pond-lily, and remarks that “this delicious flower opens its virgin bosom to the first sunlight and perfects its being through the magic of that genial kiss.” He says he has “beheld beds of them unfolding in due succession as the sunrise stole gradually from flower to flower”; and this leads Hawthorne to reflect that such a sight is “not to be hoped for unless when a poet adjusts his inward eye to a proper focus with the outward organ.” We fancy that under these conditions their talk “gushed like the babble of a fountain,” as Hawthorne said it did when he went fishing with Ellery Channing.
But we must not linger at the gate of the Old Manse indulging these dreams, for we have other pleasures in store. A hundred yards beyond, we turn into the bit of road, at right angles with the highway, now preserved because it was the scene of the famous Concord fight. A beautiful vista is made by the overarching of trees that have grown up since the battle, and in the distance we see the Monument, the Bridge, and the “Minute Man.” The Monument marks the spot where the British soldiers stood and opened fire on the 19th of April, 1775, while the “Minute Man” stands at the place where the Americans received their order to return the fire. The Monument was dedicated on the sixty-first anniversary of the battle, Emerson offering his famous “Concord Hymn,” the opening stanza of which, thirty-nine years later, was carved on the pedestal of the Minute Man, erected in commemoration of the centennial of the event:—
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
The bridge is of no significance. It is a recent structure of cement, the wooden bridge over which the Minute Men charged having disappeared more than a century ago.
Hawthorne took little interest in the battlefield, though he did express a desire to open the graves of the two nameless British soldiers, who lie buried by the roadside, because of a tale that one of them had been killed by a boy with an axe—a fiendish yarn which we may be glad is not authenticated. The great romancer confessed that the field between the battlefield and his house interested him far more because of the Indian arrow-heads and other relics he could pick up there—a trick he had learned from Thoreau.
On our way back to the village we made a turn to the left, for a visit to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Never was such a place more appropriately named. An elliptical bowl, bordered by grassy knolls, with flowering shrubs and green groves, forms a perfect cradle among the hills in which sleep generation after generation of the inhabitants of old Concord. On the opposite side of the hollow, well up the slope of the hill and shaded by many trees, we came to the graves of the Emersons, the Thoreaus, and the Hawthornes, in neighborly proximity. The Emerson grave seemed eminently satisfactory. A rough-hewn boulder at the foot of a tall pine marks the resting-place of a strong, sincere, and unpretentious character, who lived close to Nature. By his side lies Lidian, his wife, with an inscription on her tombstone, which few, perchance, stop to read, but which ought to be read by all who can appreciate this rare tribute to a woman’s worth:—
In her youth an unusual sense of
the Divine Presence was granted her
and she retained through life
the impress of that high Communion.
To her children she seemed in her
native ascendancy and unquestioning
courage, a Queen, a Flower in
elegance and delicacy.
The love and care for her husband and
children was her first earthly interest
but with overflowing compassion
her heart went out to the slave, the sick
and the dumb creation. She remembered
them that were in bonds as bound with them.
Thoreau’s grave is not quite so satisfactory. It creates the impression that the poet and naturalist who brought fame to his family was only one of a considerable number of children and died in infancy with all the rest. It is marked with a small headstone and the single name, Henry. In the center of the lot a larger stone records the names of all the members of the family who lie buried there.
The Hawthorne grave is wholly unsatisfactory. It is not easily found by a stranger, even after careful directions. The small lot is inclosed by an ugly fence, only partially concealed by a poorly kept hedge. By making an effort one can peep through and see a simple headstone with the name Hawthorne. The most conspicuous object in the inclosure is a big sign warning the public not to pluck the leaves, etc., and ending with the curt injunction, “Have respect for the living if not for the dead.” The unsightly fence and the rudeness of the sign clang discordantly upon the sensibilities of those who have been taught to admire the gracious hospitality and courteous disposition of the man. We came to gaze reverently upon the grave of a man whom we had seemed to know for many years as a personal friend, but found ourselves treated with contempt as if we were merely vulgar seekers for useless souvenirs! Let us get back to the village and see the things of life.
Next to the Old Manse, the most interesting house in Concord is Emerson’s. It is southeast of the public square, at the point where the Cambridge Turnpike joins the Lexington Road. When Emerson bought it in 1835, it was on the outskirts of the village and not prepossessing. He said, himself, “It is in a mean place, and cannot be fine until trees and flowers give it a character of its own. But we shall crowd so many books and papers, and, if possible, wise friends into it, that it shall have as much wit as it can carry.” In September of that year, Emerson went to Plymouth and was married to Miss Lydia Jackson, in a colonial mansion belonging to the bride, who suggested that they remain there. But Concord had charms which the poet could not sacrifice, so the couple established themselves in the big house at the southern edge of the village, where, ere long, the philosopher was dividing time between his study and the vegetable-garden, while Lidian, as her husband preferred to call her, set out her favorite flowers transplanted from the garden at Plymouth.
HOUSE OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The first thing that strikes your eye, as you pass the Emerson house, is the row of great horse-chestnuts shading its front. Mr. Coolidge, of Boston, who built the house in 1828, remembered the lofty chestnuts of his boyhood home in Bowdoin Square and promptly set to work to duplicate them when he completed his new country house. Emerson added to his original two acres until he had nine, and planted an orchard of apple trees and pear trees, on which Thoreau did the grafting. “When I bought my farm,” said Emerson, “I did not know what a bargain I had in the bluebirds, bobolinks, and thrushes, which were not charged in the bill. As little did I guess what sublime mornings and sunsets I was buying, what reaches of landscape, and what fields and lanes for a tramp.” To appreciate the full extent, therefore, of Emerson’s domain, we must next visit the favorite objective of his Sunday walks, Walden Pond, only a mile or two away.
Walden Pond is a pretty sheet of water, about half a mile long, completely inclosed by trees, which grow very near to the water’s edge. I fancy the visitors who go there may be divided into two classes: first, those who go for a swim in the cool, deep waters, as Hawthorne liked to do; and second, those who go to lay a stone upon the cairn that marks the site of Thoreau’s hut. It is well worth a pilgrimage, in these days, to see the place where a man actually built a dwelling-house at a cost of $28.12½ and lived in it two years at an estimated expense of $1.09 a month. One of his extravagances was a watermelon, costing two cents, and this was classified in his summary among the “Experiments which failed!” The site of the hut was admirably chosen. It overlooks a little cove or bay, and the still surface of the pond, glimpses of which could be seen through the trees, reflecting the blue sky overhead, made a beautiful picture.
We must now return to the village, for there are two more houses to be seen, both on the Lexington Road. The first is the Alcott house, now restored to something like its original condition and preserved as a memorial to the author of “Little Women.” A. Bronson Alcott came to live in Concord in 1840, having visited there for the first time five years earlier. Emerson at once hailed him as “the most extraordinary man and the highest genius of his time.” He marveled at the “steadiness of his vision” before which “we little men creep about ashamed.” The “Sage of Concord” was too modest and time failed to justify his enthusiasm for the new neighbor. He came to admit that Alcott, though a man of lofty spirit, could not be trusted as to matters of fact; that he did not have the power to write or otherwise communicate his thoughts; and that he was like a gold-ore, sometimes found in California, “in which the gold is in combination with such other elements that no chemistry is able to separate it without great loss.”
Alcott was a “handy man” with tools, could construct fanciful summer-houses or transform a melodeon into a bookcase, as a piece of his handiwork in the “restored” house will testify. But in intellectual matters he fired his bullets of wisdom so far over the heads of his fellow men that they never came down, and therefore penetrated nobody’s brain.
This lack of practical wisdom came near bringing disaster to the family. But his daughter came to the rescue with “Little Women,” a book that has had an astonishing success from the first. Originally published in 1868, it has had a circulation estimated at one million copies and is still in demand.
In the winter of 1862-63, Louisa M. Alcott marched off to war, carrying several volumes of Dickens along with her lint and bandages, determined that she would not only bind up the soldiers’ wounds, but also relieve the tedium of their hospital life during the long days of convalescence. When she was ready to start, Alcott said he was sending “his only son.” Girl visitors to the old “Orchard house” take great delight in the haunts of Meg, Amy, Beth, and Joe, and particularly in Amy’s bedroom, where the young artist’s drawings on the doors and window-frames are still preserved.
Just beyond the Alcott house is a pine grove on the side of a hill and then the “Wayside,” Hawthorne’s home for the last twelve years of his life. When Hawthorne left the Old Manse, he went to Salem, then to Lenox, and for a short time to West Newton. In the summer of 1852, he returned to Concord, having purchased the “Wayside” from Alcott.
While living in Lenox he had written “The Wonder-Book,” which so fascinated the children, including their elders as well, that his first task upon settling in the new home was to prepare, in response to many urgent demands, a second series of the same kind to be known as “The Tanglewood Tales.”
THE WAYSIDE
In the following spring the family sailed for Liverpool, where Hawthorne was to be the American Consul, and from this journey he did not return until 1860, seven years later. He was then at the height of his fame as the author of “The Scarlet Letter,” “The House of the Seven Gables,” and “The Marble Faun.” As soon as his family was settled in the Wayside, he began extensive alterations, the most remarkable of which is the tower, which not only spoiled the architecture of the building, but failed, partially at least, to serve its primary purpose as a study. It was a room about twenty feet square, reached by a narrow stairway where the author could shut himself in against all intrusion. A small stove made the air stifling in winter, and the sun’s rays upon the roof made it unbearable in summer. Nevertheless, Hawthorne managed to make some use of it and here he wrote “Our Old Home.” I fancy he must have composed most of it while walking back and forth in the seclusion of the pine grove which he had purchased with the house. And here in this pleasant grove we must leave him for the present, while we go back to Boston and thence to Salem, to search out a few more old houses, which would fall into decay and finally disappear without notice, like hundreds of others of the same kind, but for the one simple fact that the touch of Hawthorne’s presence, more than half a century ago, conferred upon these dingy old buildings a dignity and interest that draw to them annually a host of visitors from all parts of the United States.
II
SALEM
On arrival at Salem we inquired of a local druggist whether he could direct us to any of the Hawthorne landmarks. He promptly pleaded ignorance, but referred us to an old citizen who chanced to be in the store and who admitted that he knew all about the town, having been “born and raised” there. Did he know whether there was a real “House of Seven Gables”? Well, he had heard of such a place, but it was torn down long ago. Could he direct us to the Custom House? Oh, yes, right down the street: he would show us the way. Any houses where Hawthorne had lived? Well, no,—he hadn’t “followed that much.” Had any of his family ever seen Hawthorne, or spoken of him? Yes—but he didn’t amount to much: kind of a lazy fellow. People here didn’t set much store by him.
We were moving away, fearing that the old fellow would offer to accompany us and thereby spoil some of our anticipated enjoyment of the old houses, when he called after us—“Say, there’s an old house right down this street that I’ve heard had something to do with Hawthorne. I don’t know just what, but maybe the folks there can tell you. It’s just this side of the graveyard.” We thanked the old man, and following his directions, soon stood before an old three-story wooden house, with square front, big chimneys, and its upper windows considerably shorter than those below—a type common enough in Salem and other New England towns. It stood directly on the sidewalk and had a small, inclosed porch, with oval windows on each side, through which one could look up or down the street. In all these details it agreed exactly with Hawthorne’s description of the house of Dr. Grimshawe. Adjoining it on the left was the very graveyard where Nat and little Elsie chased butterflies and played hide-and-seek among the quaint old tombstones, which had puffy little cherubs and doleful verses carved upon them. That corner room, no doubt, that overlooks the graveyard, was old Dr. Grim’s study, so thickly festooned with cobwebs, where the grisly old monomaniac sat with his long clay pipe and bottle of brandy, with no better company than an enormous tropical spider, which hung directly above his head and seemed at times to be the incarnation of the Evil One himself.
How could Hawthorne, in his later years, conceive such horrible suggestions in connection with a house which must have been associated in his mind with the happiest memories of his life? For here lived the Peabody family, Dr. Nathaniel Peabody and his highly cultivated wife, their three sons, only one of whom lived to maturity, and their three remarkable daughters—Elizabeth Palmer, who achieved fame as one of the foremost kindergartners of America and died at a ripe old age; Mary, who became the wife of Horace Mann; and the gentle, scholarly, and high-minded Sophia, who refused to come down to see Hawthorne, on plea of illness, the first time he called at the house, but fell in love with him at a subsequent visit. The calls were frequent enough after that, and before the family left the old house to reside in Boston, the lovers were engaged to be married.
During the period of the courtship, Hawthorne lived with his mother and two sisters in a house on Herbert Street not far distant, and the two families came into close neighborly relations. Of course, we walked over to Herbert Street to find this house, but what remains of it has been remodeled into an ordinary tenement house and no longer resembles the house to which Sophia Peabody once sent a bouquet of tulips for Mr. Hawthorne, only to have it quietly appropriated by his sister Elizabeth, who thought her brother incapable of appreciating flowers, though she kindly permitted him to look at them! In the rear of this building, fronting on Union Street, is the plain, two-story-and-a-half house, with a gambrel roof, where Hawthorne was born.
When the Hawthornes returned to Salem, after their residence in the Old Manse, they occupied the Herbert Street house, with Madam Hawthorne and her two daughters, Elizabeth and Louisa. This proved inconvenient for so large a family and they moved into a three-story house on Chestnut Street, well shaded by some fine old elms. This was only a temporary arrangement, and soon afterward, the family took a large three-story house on Mall Street, where the mother and sisters occupied separate apartments. Hawthorne’s study was on the third floor—near enough his own family for convenience, but sufficiently remote for quiet. It was to this house that he returned one day in dejected mood and announced that he had been removed from his position at the Custom House. “Oh! then, you can write your book!” was the unexpectedly joyous reply of his wife, who knew that he had a story weighing on his mind. And then she produced the savings which she had carefully hoarded to meet just such an emergency. “The Scarlet Letter” was begun on the same day.
It was to this same house that James T. Fields came in the following winter and found Hawthorne in despondent mood sitting in the upper room huddled over a small stove. The preceding half-year had been the most trying period in his life. Discouragement over the loss of his position and the prospect of meager returns for his literary work was followed by serious pecuniary embarrassment, for Mrs. Hawthorne’s store of gold was, after all, a tiny one. The illness and death of his mother had left him in a nervous state from the great strain of emotion, and this was followed by the sickness of every member of the household, himself included. The story of how Fields left the house with the manuscript of “The Scarlet Letter” in his pocket is well known. The immediate success of the novel proved to be the tonic that restored the author to health and happiness, and when he left Mall Street in the following spring he was no longer the “obscurest man of letters in America.”
The old Salem Custom House is the best-known building in the town. As we stood before it and looked upon the great eagle above the portico, with “a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw” and a “truculent attitude” that seemed “to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community,” it seemed as though we might fairly expect the former surveyor, or his ghost, to open the door and walk down the old granite steps.
THE MALL STREET HOUSE
I have already mentioned the apparent indifference toward Hawthorne of a certain old citizen of Salem—a feeling which characterizes a large part of the population, particularly those whose ancestors have lived longest in the town. One would naturally expect Salem to be proud of her most distinguished citizen, to delight in honoring him, and to extend a cordial welcome to thousands of strangers who come to pay him homage. Shakespeare is the principal asset of Stratford-on-Avon, Scott of Melrose, Burns of Ayr, and Wordsworth of the English Lakes. Every citizen is ready to talk of them. Not so of Hawthorne and Salem. The town is quite independent, and would hold up its head if there had never been any Hawthorne. The later generation, it is true, recognize his greatness, but the prejudice of the older families is sufficient to check any manifestation of enthusiasm.
This old Custom House upon which we are looking furnishes the explanation. When Hawthorne took possession as surveyor, he found offices ornamented with rows of sleepy officials, sitting in old-fashioned chairs which were tilted on their hind legs against the walls. These old gentlemen made an irresistible appeal to his sense of humor, such that he could scarcely have avoided the impulse to write a description of their whimsicalities. After his “decapitation” he yielded to the impulse and prepared in the best of good humor the amusing description of his former associates in the “Introduction” to “The Scarlet Letter.” It brought the wrath of Salem upon his head. These old fellows did not fancy being caricatured as “wearisome old souls,” who “seemed to have flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom which they had enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored their memories with the husks.” Especially enraged were the family of the Old Inspector of whom Hawthorne said nothing worse than that he remembered all the good dinners he had eaten. “There were flavors on his palate that had lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop which he had just devoured for his breakfast,” said Hawthorne with fine humor. “He called one of them a pig,” said a Salemite to me, indignantly.
After all, Salem never really knew Hawthorne. Though the town was his birthplace, he had little liking for it, and was seldom there. During the four years of his incumbency of the Custom House, he kept aloof from the townspeople, most of whom had no knowledge whatever of his literary efforts. When the fame of “The Scarlet Letter” had made Hawthorne’s name a familiar one throughout America and England, the author was no longer a resident of Salem, for immediately after the publication of his first and most famous novel, he was glad to seek relief from the gloomy memories of Mall Street in the fresh mountain air of the Berkshires.
Hawthorne, though apparently glad to escape, still allowed his thought to dwell in Salem, for in the same year of the completion of “The Scarlet Letter” and his removal to Lenox, Massachusetts, he began “The House of the Seven Gables.” The identity of this house has long been a matter of curiosity. Three old Salem houses, two of which have since disappeared, have been pointed out as originals, the authenticity of all of which has been denied by George Parsons Lathrop, Hawthorne’s son-in-law, who maintains that the author’s statement, that he built his house only of “materials long in use for constructing castles in the air,” must be taken literally.
It must not be supposed that an author need ever describe such a building in detail or provide for its future identification. He may do as Scott often did, put the details of three or four houses into one structure, taking his material, not “out of the air,” but from recollections of many places he has seen. It does not detract from the supposed “original” to find that the author has made material, even radical, departures from the original plan. The real point of interest is to know whether the old landmark suggested anything to the author, and if so, how much.
To those who follow this line of reasoning, an old house at the foot of Turner Street, now commonly known as “The House of the Seven Gables,” has many points of interest. It is a weather-stained old building dating back to 1669, and contains so many gables that you are reasonably content to accept seven as the number, though I believe it has eight, not counting the one over the rear porch, recently added.
The identification of this house as the one which, more than any other, suggested to Hawthorne the idea of a house of seven gables, rests upon two facts. The first is that in 1782 it came into the possession of Captain Samuel Ingersoll, whose wife was a niece of Hawthorne’s grandfather. It passed, later, to their only surviving daughter, Susannah. Her portrait, which now hangs in the parlor of the old house, shows that, as a young woman, she was not unattractive. An unfortunate love affair caused her to withdraw from society and to live a life of solitude in the old house, from which all male visitors were rigidly excluded. An exception seems to have been made in favor of her cousin Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, it is said, was a frequent visitor and listened with interest to the legends of the house as told by his elder cousin.
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES
The second fact of identification rests upon more recent evidence. The building was purchased in 1908 by a generous resident of Salem and turned into a settlement house. This lady, who possesses the highest antiquarian instincts, determined to restore the house to its original form. In doing so she discovered traces of four gables which had been removed. These, with three that remained, made the desired seven, but, unfortunately, about the same time an old plan was unearthed which proved that the house at one time must have had eight gables! So the house has been restored to its full quota of eight. When Hawthorne was calling there it had only three gables, and his elderly kinswoman must have told traditions of the time when it had seven or eight, as the case may be. And so the question of gables becomes as bewildering as Tom Sawyer’s aunt’s spoons.
Aside from this not very profitable speculation, the house is an interesting survival of the time when Salem was a seaport town of some importance. A secret staircase has been reconstructed according to the recollections of the man who took it down a quarter of a century ago. It opens by a secret spring in a panel of the wall in the third-story front room, now known as “Clifford’s chamber,” and ascends through a false fireplace in the dining-room. It will be remembered how Clifford mysteriously disappeared from his room, and as mysteriously reappeared in the parlor where Judge Pyncheon sat in the easy-chair, dead. Perhaps he came down this secret stairway, though Hawthorne forgot to mention it.
A little shop, where real gingerbread “Jim Crows” are sold, makes the present “House of the Seven Gables” seem real, so that when the bell tinkles as you open the door, you would not be at all surprised if Hepzibah Pyncheon herself should appear, entering from the quaint little New England kitchen on the right. A sunny chamber upstairs now called “Phœbe’s room,” and a pleasant little garden in the rear, still further heighten the illusion and make one feel that if this is not the real “House of the Seven Gables,” it certainly ought to be.
The conditions under which “The House of the Seven Gables” was written were quite the reverse of those which brought forth “The Scarlet Letter.” Instead of obscurity, ill health, and financial difficulties, the author was now in the full flush of his fame, reveling in the friendship of the most distinguished men of letters, enjoying the best of health himself, and happy in the consciousness that his dear wife was also well, and living amid the most delightful surroundings, free from care and taking no anxious thought for the morrow.
The people of Salem are now preparing to make ample amends for any neglect of Hawthorne in the past. A committee of prominent citizens has been at work for several years upon a plan to erect a handsome statue upon the Common, the design for which has been made by a well-known artist, and a portion of the funds collected. With this monument before them, we may reasonably hope that future generations will be able to forgive the frankness which irritated their ancestors, though it was kindly meant, and eventually open their hearts to adopt Hawthorne as their very own, just as Stratford does Shakespeare, acknowledging the full extent of their obligation for the luster which his brilliant genius has shed upon their town.
III
PORTSMOUTH
If Thomas Bailey Aldrich were living to-day and could enter the front door of his grandfather’s house in Court Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he would be likely to have a strange feeling of suddenly renewed youth, for his eyes would rest upon the same rooms and many of the same furnishings as those which greeted him in 1849, when he returned to the old house, a lad of twelve, to enter upon those happy boyish experiences so pleasantly related in “The Story of a Bad Boy.” And then, as he passed from room to room and gazed once more upon the old familiar sights, he would experience a deeper and richer joy—a sense of pride, mingled with love and gratitude, for this unique and splendid tribute to his memory, from his faithful wife and many loyal friends.
In the summer of 1907, following the death of Mr. Aldrich, which occurred in the spring of that year, it was suggested in a local newspaper of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that the old Bailey house, where “Tom Bailey” lived with his “Grandfather Nutter,” should be purchased by the town and refurnished as a permanent memorial to its distinguished son. The response was instant and hearty. The Thomas Bailey Aldrich Memorial Association was at once formed, and a fund of ten thousand dollars was raised by popular subscriptions, in sums varying from one dollar to one thousand dollars. The house, which had fallen into alien hands and had not been kept in good repair, was purchased and restored to its original condition, and the heirs gladly gave back all that had been taken away at the death of Grandfather Bailey. On June 30, 1908, the restored house was formally dedicated by a distinguished representation of Aldrich’s friends, including Richard Watson Gilder, William Dean Howells, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Thomas Nelson Page, Samuel L. Clemens, and many others whose names are well known.
THE BAILEY HOUSE
The “Nutter” house, or the “Aldrich Memorial” as it is officially known, impresses one with a sense of perfect satisfaction. I have seen memorials that are barn-like in their emptiness, so difficult has it been to secure a sufficient number of relics to furnish the rooms; others impress me like shops for the sale of souvenirs; others have the cold, touch-me-not aspect of a museum; and some are overloaded with busts, pictures, and inscriptions intended to convey an impression of the greatness of the former occupant. The Nutter house, on the contrary, looks as though Tom and his grandfather had gone off to the village an hour before, and Aunt Abigail and Kitty Collins, after “tidying” the rooms to perfection, had slipped away to gossip with the neighbors. The visitor has a feeling that real people are living there and is surprised to learn that at a certain hour each day the attendants go away and lock it up for the night.
Mrs. Aldrich told us that when her husband took her there for the first time, as his bride, the old house made such a strong impression upon her mind that when she came to restore the place, many years afterward, she remembered distinctly where every piece of furniture used to stand. The perfection of her work is seen in the hundreds of little touches—the shawl thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, the fan lying on the sofa, the books on the center table, the music on the old-fashioned square piano, grandfather’s Bible and spectacles on his bedroom table, the embroidered coverlet in the “blue-chintz room,” the netting over Aunt Abigail’s bed, the clothing in the closets, and even the night-clothes carefully laid out on each corpulent feather bed. I fancy the most loving touches of all were given to the little hall bedroom where Tom Bailey slept. There is the little window out of which Tom swung himself, with the aid of Kitty Collins’s clothes-line, at the awful hour of eleven o’clock, and tumbled into a big rosebush, on the night before “the Fourth.” The “pretty chintz curtain” may not be the one Tom knew, but it is very like it; and there is a very good imitation of the original wall-paper, on which Tom counted two hundred and sixty-eight birds, each individual one of which he admired, although no such bird ever existed. He knew the exact number because he once counted them when laid up with a black eye and dreamed that the whole flock flew out of the window. The little bed has “a patch quilt of more colors than were in Joseph’s coat,” and across it lies a clean white waistcoat waiting for Tom to put it on, as though to-morrow would be Sunday. Above the head of the bed are the two oak shelves, holding the very books that Tom loved. In front of the window is the “high-backed chair studded with brass nails like a coffin,” and on the right “a chest of carved mahogany drawers” and “a looking-glass in a filigreed frame.” A little swallow-tailed coat, once worn by Tom, hangs over the back of a chair, ready to be worn again. Surely Tom Bailey is expected home to-night!
Even the garret is ready in case to-morrow should be stormy. “Here meet together, as if by some preconcerted arrangement, all the broken-down chairs of the household, all the spavined tables, all the seedy hats, all the intoxicated-looking boots, all the split walking-sticks that have retired from business, weary with the march of life.” One slight liberty has been taken, in placing “The Rivermouth Theater” in one corner of the attic, next to Kitty Collins’s room, but this may be forgiven in view of the fact that the barn, where the “Theater” really was, has disappeared.
In our anxiety to see Tom’s room and the attic, we have rushed upstairs somewhat too rapidly. Let us now go down and inspect the other rooms with more leisure.
In the front of the house, on the second floor, and at the left of the tiny bedroom which Tom occupied, is Grandfather Nutter’s room. It was too near for Tom’s convenience, and that is why the young gentleman lowered himself from the window by a rope—at least, that was the reason he doubtless argued to himself in favor of the more romantic mode of exit, although as a matter of fact grandfather was a sound sleeper and Tom might have walked boldly downstairs without awakening him. Still he would have had to pass the door of Aunt Abigail’s room at the head of the stairs, and if the old lady had suddenly appeared, Tom could scarcely have escaped a dose of “hot drops,” which his aunt considered a certain cure for any known ailment, from a black eye to a broken arm. Aunt Abigail, it will be remembered, was the maiden sister of Captain Nutter, who “swooped down on him,” at the funeral of the captain’s wife, “with a bandbox in one hand and a faded blue cotton umbrella in the other.” Though apparently intending to stay only a few days, she decided that her presence was indispensable to the captain, and whether he wished it or not she kept on staying for seventeen years, and might have stayed longer had not death released her from the self-imposed duty.
On the right of Tom’s room is “the blue-chintz room, into which a ray of sun was never allowed to penetrate.” But it was “thrown open and dusted, and its mouldy air made sweet with a bouquet of pot-roses” on the occasion of Nelly Glentworth’s visit, and a very delightful room Nelly must have found it, if it looked as well then as it does now, under the skillful direction of Mrs. Aldrich.
Across the hall from Aunt Abigail’s room is the guest chamber. An old-fashioned rocking-chair by the window, with a Bible and candle conveniently placed on a stand close by, offer the visitor every opportunity to get himself into a proper frame of mind before taking a plunge into the depths of the snow-white mountain of feathers, hospitably piled up to an enormous height for his comfort.
“AUNT ABIGAIL’S” ROOM
Descending now to the main floor (for we are inspecting this house exactly contrary to the usual order), we step into the large corner room at our left. Here visions arise of Tom sitting disconsolately on the haircloth sofa, in the evening, driven to distraction by the monotonous click-click of Aunt Abigail’s knitting-needles, but sometimes happily diverted by the spectacle of grandfather going to sleep over his newspaper and setting fire to it with the small block-tin lamp which he held in his hand.
Across the hall is the parlor, which was seldom open except on Sundays, and was “pervaded by a strong smell of center table.” Here again we fancy Tom sitting in one corner, “crushed.” All his favorite books are banished to the sitting-room closet until Monday morning. There is nothing to do and nothing to read except Baxter’s “Saint’s Rest.” “Genial converse, harmless books, smiles, lightsome hearts, all are banished.” It was no fault of the room, however, that Tom felt doleful, for there is a fine, wide, open fireplace with big brass andirons from which a wonderful amount of cheer might have been extracted, while a piano in one corner and some shelves of books in another were capable of providing boundless entertainment, had the room been accessible on any other day than Sunday.
Passing down through the hall we enter a door on the left, into the dining-room. Do you remember how Captain Nutter tormented poor Tom at the breakfast table, on the morning of the Fourth of July, by reading from the Rivermouth “Barnacle” an account of the burning of the stage-coach the night before? “Miscreants unknown,” read the grandfather, while Tom’s hair stood on end. “Five dollars reward offered for the apprehension of the perpetrators. Sho! I hope Wingate will catch them,” continued the old gentleman, while Tom nearly ceased to breathe. And the sly old fox knew all about it and had already settled Tom’s share of the damages!
We now cross the hall into the kitchen, which we ought to have visited first, as everybody else does. A more delightful New England kitchen could scarcely be imagined. This was the only place where Sailor Ben felt at home—and no wonder, for how could any room have a more inviting fireplace? Here Tom sought refuge when oppressed by the atmosphere of the sitting-room and found relief in Kitty Collins’s funny Irish stories. And here Sailor Ben gathered the whole family around the table while he spun his yarn “all about a man as has made a fool of hisself.”
This is the delightful fact about the Nutter house of to-day—every room brings back memories of Tom Bailey, Grandfather Nutter, Aunt Abigail, Kitty Collins, and Sailor Ben. The furnishings are so perfect that we should not have been surprised if any one of these old friends had suddenly confronted us. Our minds were concentrated upon their personalities and upon “The Story of a Bad Boy.” The illusion is so complete that we scarcely gave a thought to the author of the tale until we entered the Memorial building at the rear. Suddenly Tom Bailey vanished and with him all the other ghosts of the old house. We stood in the presence of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the poet, the writer of a multitude of delightful tales, and the man of genial personality. Here, in a single large room, are brought together the priceless autographs, manuscripts, first editions, and pictures which Aldrich had found pleasure in collecting. Here is the little table on which he wrote “The Story of a Bad Boy,” and there are cases containing countless presents, trophies, and expressions of regard from his friends. The walls are hung with manuscripts, framed in connection with portraits of their distinguished writers, as Aldrich loved to have them. At the end of the room is a handsome oil painting of Aldrich himself. Everything tends to suggest the exquisite taste of the man, his genial nature, his varied attainments, and the extent of his wide circle of distinguished friends. Above all, the room speaks in eloquent terms of the affectionate loyalty to his memory that has led his family to bring together the material for a memorial unsurpassed in variety of interest and tasteful arrangement of details.
Even the garden in the rear of the house is made to sing its song in memory of Aldrich, for here are growing all the flowers mentioned in his poetry, blending their perfumes and uniting harmoniously their richness of color in one graceful tribute to the beauty and delicacy of his verse.
AN OLD WHARF
After living over again the scenes of “The Story of a Bad Boy,” in so far as they were suggested by the Nutter house, it was only natural that we should wish to stroll about the “Old Town by the Sea” in the hope of identifying some of the out-of-door scenes of “young Bailey’s” exploits. The first house on the right, as we walked toward the river, is the William Pitt Tavern. In the early days of the Revolution it was an aristocratic hotel, much frequented by the Tories, and kept by a certain astute landlord named John Stavers. He had formerly kept a tavern on State Street, known as the “Earl of Halifax,” and when it became necessary to move to the newer house in Court Street, he carried sign and all with him. But the patriots, whose resort was the old Bell Tavern, kept a jealous eye on the Earl of Halifax, and in 1777 attacked it, seriously damaging the building. Master Stavers, being at heart neither Tory nor patriot, but primarily an innkeeper, promptly changed both his politics and his sign. The latter became “William Pitt,” in honor of the colonists’ English friend and supporter, and the thrifty landlord began to entertain the leaders of the Revolution at his house. John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry, and Edward Rutledge decorated with their autographs the pages of his register as well as the Declaration of Independence. General Knox was a frequent visitor and Lafayette came there in 1882. Moreover, the old tavern has had the honor of entertaining the last of the French kings, Louis Philippe, who came there with his two brothers during the French Revolution, and the first American President, who was a guest in 1789.
All this glory had long since departed in Aldrich’s day, and his chief interest in the old tavern lay in the fact that he could climb up the dingy stairs to the top floor and listen for hours to the stories of the olden times, as told by Dame Jocelyn, with whom, as she asserted, Washington had flirted just a little, though in a “stately and highly finished manner”!
Continuing down the street, we found the empty old warehouses and rotting wharves among which Aldrich spent so many hours of his boyhood, and we took a picture of one old crumbling dock, which we felt sure must have been very like the one upon which the boys of the Rivermouth Centipedes fired a broadside from “Bailey’s Battery.” The old abandoned guns, twelve in all, were cleaned out, loaded, provided with fuses, and set off mysteriously at midnight, much to the astonishment of the Rivermouthians, who thought the town was being bombarded or that the end of the world had come. The old wharf possessed a singular fascination for me because I still recall how vividly the incident impressed me in my boyhood and how fervently I envied Tom Bailey his unusual opportunities. Nor did it mar my enjoyment in the least to learn that the wharf I was looking at was not the right place, the real one, where the guns were stored, having been removed some time ago. It was near the Point of Graves, the spot where the boys went in bathing and where Binny Wallace’s body was washed ashore after the ill-fated cruise of the Dolphin. The real Binny, by the way, was not drowned at all. The author, here, deviated from the facts to make his story more dramatic.
Point of Graves takes its name from the old burying-ground, occupying a triangular space near the river’s edge. It has quaint old tombstones dating back as far as 1682, with curious epitaphs, skulls, and cherubs carved upon them. Here is the place where Tom Bailey, disappointed in love and determined to become “a blighted being,” used to lie in the long grass, speculating on “the advantages and disadvantages of being a cherub”—the disadvantages being that the cherub, having only a head and wings, could not sit down when he was tired and could not possess trousers pockets!
A stroll through this part of the town, which in olden times was the center of its trade and commerce, is like walking through some of the old English villages. Every house, nearly, has its history, and I fancy the streets have not greatly changed their appearance since the days of Aldrich’s boyhood.
On the corner of Fleet and State Streets we came to an old house, which has an interesting connection with our story. A part of it was occupied as a candy store for nearly sixty years. On the Fourth of July, after Tom had treated the boys to root-beer, a single glass of which “insured an uninterrupted pain for twenty-four hours,” they came here for ice-cream. It is said that one of the ringleaders subsequently celebrated every third of July, until his death, by eating ice-cream in the same room. The story was based upon an incident that really happened in 1847, in which, of course, Aldrich could have had no part, as he was not then living in Portsmouth. I am inclined to doubt whether the real event was half so delightful as the tale which Aldrich tells, of the twelve sixpenny ice-creams, “strawberry and verneller mixed,” and how poor Tom was left to pay for the whole crowd, who slipped out of the window while he was in another room ordering more cream!
No doubt we might have coupled many other places in Portsmouth with “The Story of a Bad Boy”—for it is a very real story, though not to be taken literally in every detail. It is interesting to think of the town, also, as the scene of “Prudence Palfrey.” The old Bell Tavern, where Mr. Dillingham boarded, ceased to exist as a public house in 1852 and was destroyed by fire fifteen years later. It is pleasant also to follow Aldrich in a walk through the streets, with a copy of “An Old Town by the Sea” for a guide, and note all the fine old houses he so charmingly describes.
But we must not devote our entire time to Aldrich, for an older poet has a slight claim to our attention. The opening scene of Longfellow’s “Lady Wentworth,” in the “Tales of a Wayside Inn,” is laid in State Street.
“One hundred years ago and something more,
In Queen Street, Portsmouth, at her tavern door,”—
is the way the poem opens. Queen Street was the old name for State Street, and the tavern was the old Earl of Halifax before Master Stavers carried the sign over to the new house in Court Street. It has long since disappeared. It was before this house that the barefooted and ragged little beauty, Martha Hilton, was rebuked by Dame Stavers for appearing on the street half-dressed and looking so shabby, to which she quickly replied:—
“No matter how I look: I yet shall ride
In my own chariot, ma’am.”
The house to which she did drive in her own chariot, many a time in later days, as the wife of Governor Wentworth, is one of the most pleasantly situated of all the houses in Portsmouth. It is at Little Harbor, on one of the many peninsulas that jut out into the Piscataqua, below the town, and commands a fine view of the beautiful river and its many islands. The house is a large wooden building containing forty-five rooms, though originally it had fifty-two. Architecturally it is unattractive, external beauty of design having been sacrificed to utility.
“Within, unwonted splendors met the eye,
Panels and floors of oak, and tapestry;
Carved chimney pieces, where on brazen dogs
Reveled and roared the Christmas fires of logs.”
The historic building, with its great Chamber where the Governor and his Council met for their deliberations, still remains in almost its original state.
One could spend many days in Portsmouth investigating its connection with the history of the country, from the early explorations in 1603 of Martin Pring and the visit in 1614 of Captain John Smith, down through the settlements of David Thomson and Captain John Mason, the Indian wars and massacres, the incidents of the Revolution, and the rise and fall of the town’s commerce, and find plenty of old landmarks to give zest to the pursuit. But our search, at present, is for literary landmarks. We, therefore, take passage on the little steamer that plies to and from the Isles of Shoals for a pilgrimage to the Island Garden of Celia Thaxter.
IV
THE ISLES OF SHOALS
It is a pleasant sail down the Piscataqua, past the old “slumberous” wharves, where “the sunshine seems to lie a foot deep in the planks”; past the long bridges; the numerous clusters of islands; the white sails of the yacht club, hovering like gulls about the huge battleships, moored to the docks of the navy yard; the ruins of Fort Constitution, formerly Fort William and Mary, famed in history, but more interesting to us as the place where Prudence Palfrey came near surrendering her heart to the infamous Dillingham; the ancient town of Newcastle with its old-fashioned dwellings mingling with pretty new summer cottages, the whole dominated by the white walls of a huge hotel; Kittery Point, birthplace of Sir William Pepperell, the famous Governor and Indian fighter: and at last, the broad Atlantic, stretching to the eastward with nothing to obstruct the view save a few tiny specks, dimly visible in the distance. These are the Isles of Shoals, looking so small that they seem to be only rocks jutting a few feet above the sea, upon which it would be impossible to land.
As we approach Appledore, the islands still seem to be only a cluster of barren rocks, with a few scattered buildings. The charm which they undoubtedly exert upon those who come year after year does not immediately manifest itself to the stranger. He must spend a night there, breathing the pure sea air, watching in the early evening the glistening lights on the far-off shore, and finally falling asleep to dream that he is in mid-ocean, on one of the steadiest of steamers, enjoying the luxury of absolute rest, for which there is no better prescription than an ocean voyage. In the morning, he must walk around the island—it can be done in an hour or two—threading the narrow paths through the huckleberry bushes and picking his way over the high rocks that present their front to the full force of the waves, on the side of Appledore that faces the sea. Here he will see artists spreading their easels and canvases for a day’s work and less busy people settling down in various shady nooks, to read, to chat, to knit, to dream.
To get the real spirit of the islands it is advisable to find one of these quiet nooks and read Celia Thaxter’s “Among the Isles of Shoals,” a book of sketches for which the author needlessly apologizes, but of which Mrs. Annie Fields says, “She portrays, in a prose which for beauty and wealth of diction has few rivals, the unfolding of sky and sea and solitude and untrammeled freedom, such as have been almost unknown to civilized humanity in any age of the world.” Celia Thaxter is herself the Spirit of the Isles of Shoals, and if we are to know and love them, we must take her as our guide. She will be found an efficient one and there is no other.
CELIA THAXTER’S COTTAGE
With this purpose in mind, we began our tour of the islands, book in hand, stopping first at the cottage of Mrs. Thaxter. One room is maintained somewhat as she left it, with every square foot of wall space covered by her pictures. But the flower-garden is sadly neglected. Only the vines that still clamber over the porch, and a few hollyhocks that stubbornly refuse to die, remain to suggest the dooryard where the garden flowers used to “fairly run mad with color.” The salt air and some peculiar richness of the soil seem to impart unusual brilliancy to the blossoms and strength to the roots of all kinds of flowers, whether wild or cultivated. Celia Thaxter was one of those people for whom flowers will grow. They responded with blushing enthusiasm to the constant manifestations of her love and tender care. Flowers have a great deal of humanity about them after all. They refuse to display their real luxuriance for cold, careless, or indifferent people, just as babies and dogs know how to distinguish between those who love them and those who love only themselves.
“More dear to me than words can tell
Was every cup and spray and leaf;
Too perfect for a life so brief
Seemed every star and bud and bell.”
Celia Thaxter loved her flowers with a devotion born of the hours of solitude when they were her sole companions. “The little spot of earth on which they grow is like a mass of jewels. Who shall describe the pansies, richly streaked with burning gold; the dark velvet coreopsis and the nasturtiums; the larkspurs, blue and brilliant as lapis-lazuli; the ‘ardent marigolds’ that flame like mimic suns? The sweet peas are of a deep, bright rose-color, and their odor is like rich wine, too sweet almost to be borne, except when the pure fragrance of mignonette is added,—such mignonette as never grows on shore. Why should the poppies blaze in such imperial scarlet? What quality is hidden in this thin soil, which so transfigures all the familiar flowers with fresh beauty?”
Unfortunately, the mysterious quality hidden in the soil, assisted by the warm sunshine and the salt air, with all their powers could not maintain the island garden after the loving hands of its owner were withdrawn, and the little inclosure is now a mass of weeds.
Celia Laighton was brought to the Isles of Shoals as a child of five, and lived with her parents in a little cottage on White Island where her father was the keeper of the lighthouse. She grew to womanhood in the companionship of the rocks, the spray of the ocean, the seaweeds, the shells and the miniature wild life she discovered among them, the tiny wild flowers which her sharp young eyes could find in the most secret crannies, and the marigolds, “rich in color as barbaric gold,” which she early learned to cultivate in “a scrap of garden literally not more than a yard square.” She shouted a friendly greeting to the noisy gulls and kittiwakes that fluttered overhead, chased the sandpipers along the gravelly beach, made friends and neighbors of the crabs, the sea-spiders and land-spiders, the sea-urchins, the grasshoppers and crickets, and set in motion armies of sandhoppers, that jumped away like tiny kangaroos when she lifted the stranded seaweed. And then the birds came to see her. The swallows gathered fearlessly upon the window-sills and built their nests in the eaves, seeming to know that the loving eyes watching their movements could mean no evil. Now and then a bobolink, an oriole, or a scarlet tanager would be seen. The song sparrows came in flocks to be fed every morning. With them, at times, came robins and blackbirds, and occasionally yellowbirds and kingbirds. Sometimes, in hazy weather, they would fly against the glass of the lighthouse with fatal results. “Many a May morning,” says Mrs. Thaxter, “have I wandered about the rock at the foot of the tower mourning over a little apron brimful of sparrows, swallows, thrushes, robins, fire-winged blackbirds, many-colored yellowbirds, nuthatches, catbirds, even the purple finch and scarlet tanager and golden oriole, and many more beside—enough to break the heart of a small child to think of.”
It is no wonder that such a sympathetic soul could even summon the birds to keep her company—as she frequently did with the loons. “I learned to imitate their different cries; they are wonderful! At one time the loon language was so familiar that I could almost always summon a considerable flock by going down to the water and assuming the neighborly and conversational tone which they generally use: after calling a few minutes, first a far-off voice responded, then other voices answered him, and when this was kept up a while, half a dozen birds would come sailing in. It was the most delightful little party imaginable; so comical were they that it was impossible not to laugh aloud.”
To her love of birds and flowers, Mrs. Thaxter added a love of the sea itself, finding delight equally in the sparkle of the calm waves of summer or the wild beating of the surf in winter. She developed a marvelous ear for the music of the sea—something akin to that which enables John Burroughs to name a bird correctly from its notes, even when the songster is trying to imitate the call of another bird as the little impostors sometimes do. She says: “Who shall describe that wonderful voice of the sea among the rocks, to me the most suggestive of all the sounds in nature? Each island, every isolated rock, has its own peculiar note, and ears made delicate by listening, in great and frequent peril, can distinguish the bearings of each in a dense fog.”
Equally well did she know humanity. The daily life of the fishermen, the kind and quantity of the fish they caught, the adventures they experienced, the stories they told, the hardships they endured, the little domestic tragedies that now and then took place in their humble cottages, the sufferings from illness or accident, were all matters of everyday knowledge to her and enlisted her profound sympathy.
Everything in nature appealed to her—the sea and sky, the sunrise and the sunset, the winds and storms, the birds and flowers, the butterflies and insects, the sea-shells and kelp, the fishes and all the lower forms of life—all were objects of careful observation in which she took delight; and to these must be added a deep interest in humanity, particularly of the kind which she met in fishermen’s cottages, where her good common sense and knowledge of simple remedies enabled her to render, again and again, a service in time of need when no other assistance could be obtained.
Such was the unique character whose spirit dominates the islands even to-day,—a lover of nature worthy to stand with Gilbert White, Thoreau, or Burroughs, a poet, an artist, a friendly neighbor, and a womanly woman.
It was a part of our good fortune to have the actual guidance in our tour of the islands of the only surviving brother of Mrs. Thaxter, Mr. Oscar Laighton. In his little motor boat he took us to the tiny island known as Londoners, where for many winters he was the sole inhabitant. Although advancing years have now made it inexpedient for him to live in solitude, the little cottage still remains ready for occupancy at any moment. We stepped inside expecting to see, in so desolate a spot, only such rude furnishings as might be found in some mountain cabin or hunter’s lodge. To our astonishment we found it a veritable little bower, a model of neatness and order, and every room, including the kitchen, filled with well-chosen pictures and books, as though some dainty fairy, of literary tastes, had planned it for her permanent abode. Among the highly prized ornaments were many pieces of china, painted by Mrs. Thaxter. To our minds, the most valuable article in the house—valuable because of the lesson it teaches—is a typewritten card, hanging conspicuously over the kitchen stove, with this cordial greeting to the uninvited guest:—
“Welcome to any one entering this house in shipwreck or trouble. You will find matches in the box on the mantel. The key to the wood-house is in this box. Start a fire in the stove and make yourself comfortable. There are some cans of food on shelf in the pantry. Blankets will be found in the chamber on lower floor. There is a dory ready to launch in the boat-house.”
Three times have shipwrecked men entered the house and taken advantage of this kindly welcome.
Our next visit was to White Island, where, after much difficulty in getting ashore, we climbed to the top of the lighthouse. This is a very different structure from the old wooden building of Celia Thaxter’s childhood and only a small part of the original dwelling remains. But the landing is very much as she describes it. “Two long and very solid timbers about three feet apart are laid from the boat-house to low-water mark, and between those timbers the boat’s bow must be accurately steered.... Safely lodged in the slip, as it is called, she is drawn up into the boat-house by a capstan, and fastened securely.” Our boat was not drawn up, and we had to walk up the steep, slippery planks—with what success I shall not attempt to describe. Here, at night, the little Celia used to sit, with a lantern at her feet, waiting in the darkness, without fear, for the arrival of her father’s boat, knowing that the “little star was watched for, and that the safety of the boat depended in a great measure upon it.”
Haley’s Island, or “Smutty Nose,” as it was long ago dubbed by the sailors because of its long projecting point of black rocks, lies between Appledore and Star Island. Of the two houses now remaining, one is the original cottage of Samuel Haley, an energetic and useful citizen, who once owned the island. Nearby fourteen rude and neglected graves tell a pathetic tale. The Spanish ship Sagunto was wrecked on Smutty Nose, during a severe snowstorm on a January night. The shipwrecked sailors saw the light in Haley’s cottage and crept toward it, benumbed with cold and overcome with the horror and fatigue of their experience. Two reached the stone wall in front of the house, but were too weak to climb over, and their bodies were discovered the next morning, frozen to the stones. Twelve other bodies were found scattered about the island. How gladly the old man would have given these poor sailors the warmth and comfort of his home could he have known the tragedy that was happening while he slept soundly only a few yards away!
Star Island, once the site of the village of Gosport, was in early days the most important of the group. Before the Revolution a settlement of from three to six hundred people carried on the fisheries of the island, catching yearly three or four thousand quintals of fish. All this business is now a thing of the past. The great shoals of mackerel and herring, from which the islands took their name, have disappeared—driven away or killed by the steam trawlers. The old families departed long since, and new ones have never come to take their places, save a few lobster fishermen, who with difficulty eke out a bare living. A quaint little church of stone is perched upon the highest rocks of Star Island, but I fear the attendance is small, even in the summer time.
We found our way back to Appledore, content to spend the remaining days of our visit on this the largest and most inviting of the group.
“A common island, you will say;
But stay a moment; only climb
Up to the highest rock of the isle,
Stand there alone for a little while,
And with gentle approaches it grows sublime,
Dilating slowly as you win
A sense from the silence to take it in.”
Lowell was right. The greatest charm of the islands is felt when you stand on “the highest rock of the isle,” looking out upon the ever sparkling sea that stretches
“Eastward as far as the eye can see—
Still Eastward, eastward, endlessly”;
and feeling the restful quietude of the spot. I fancy Celia Thaxter stood upon this rock when she sang—
“O Earth! thy summer song of joy may soar
Ringing to heaven in triumph. I but crave
The sad, caressing murmur of the wave
That breaks in tender music on the shore.”
APPLEDORE
VIII
A DAY WITH JOHN BURROUGHS