Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 16

[77] The insertion of the lengthy t.i.tle in full appears unnecessary.

[78] The celebrated commentator.

[79] We are warranted in the belief that the first services held in this plantation were those of the Church of England. The first, or borough, charter mentions the church chapel. Robert Gorges, in 1623, brought over an Episcopal chaplain, William Morrell, and with him also came, as is supposed, Rev. William Blackstone, the first inhabitant of Boston.

[80] Hutchinson says: "In every frontier settlement there were more or less garrison houses, some with a flankart at two opposite angles, others at each corner of the house; some houses surrounded with palisadoes; others, which were smaller, built with square timber, one piece laid horizontally upon another, and loop-holes at every side of the house; and besides these, generally in any more considerable plantation there was one garrison house capable of containing soldiers sent for the defense of the plantation, and the families near, whose houses were not so fortified. It was thought justifiable and necessary, whatever the general rule of law might be, to erect such forts, castles, or bulwarks as these upon a man's own ground, without commission or special license therefor."--"History of Ma.s.sachusetts," vol. ii., p. 67.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, FROM KITTERY BRIDGE.]

CHAPTER X.

AT KITTERY POINT, MAINE.

"We have no t.i.tle-deeds to house or lands; Owners and occupants of earlier dates From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands, And hold in mortmain still their old estates."

LONGFELLOW.

Louis XV. said to Bouret, the financier, "You are indeed a singular person not to have seen Marly! Call upon me there, and I will show it to you."

Our way lies from Old York to Kittery Point.[81] To get from the one to the other you must pa.s.s the bridge over York River, built in 1761. It inaugurated in New England the then novel method of laying the bridge super-structure on a frame-work formed of wooden piles driven into the bed of the river. The inventor was Major Samuel Sewall, of York, whose bridge was the model of those subsequently built over the Charles, Mystic, and Merrimac.

Kittery Point is separated from Kittery Foreside by Spruce Creek. It is also divided from Gerrish's Island, the outermost land of the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Piscataqua, by Chauncy's Creek. It is important at Kittery Point to get used to the names of Cutts, Gerrish, Sparhawk, Pepperell, Waldron, Chauncy, and Champernowne. They recur with remarkable frequency.

If coming from Portsmouth, the visitor will first traverse the village, with its quaint little church, built in 1714, its secluded cemetery, and fine old elms. They say the frame of the meeting-house was hewn somewhere about Dover, and floated down the stream. There are few older churches in New England, or that embody more of its ancient homeliness, material and spiritual. Since I was there it has been removed about sixty feet northward, and now fronts the south, entirely changing the appearance of that locality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NAVY-YARD, KITTERY, MAINE.]

Formerly, in leaving the church door, you were confronted by a sombre old mansion, having, in despite of some relics of a former splendor, an unmistakable air of neglect and decay. The ma.s.sive entrance door hung by a single fastening, the fluted pilasters on either side were rotting away, window panes were shattered, chimney tops in ruins, the fences prostrate. It was nothing but a wreck ash.o.r.e. This was the house built by Lady Pepperell, after the death of Sir William. Report said it was haunted; indeed I found it so, and by a living phantom.

Repeated and long-continued knocking was at length answered by a tremulous effort from within to open the door, which required the help of my companion and myself to effect. I shall never forget the figure that appeared to us:

"We stood and gazed; Gazed on her sunburned face with silent awe, Her tattered mantle and her hood of straw."

Poor Sally Cutts, a harmless maniac, was the sole inhabitant of the old house; she and it were fallen into hopeless ruin together. Her appearance was weird and witch-like, and betokened squalid poverty. An old calash almost concealed her features from observation, except when she raised her head and glanced at us in a scared, furtive sort of way.

Yet beneath this wreck, and what touched us keenly to see, was the instinct of a lady of gentle breeding that seemed the last and only link between her and the world. With the air and manner of the drawing-room of fifty years ago she led the way from room to room.

We tracked with our feet the snow that had drifted in underneath the hall door. The floors were bare, and echoed to our tread. Fragments of the original paper, representing ancient ruins, had peeled off the walls, and vandal hands had wrenched away the pictured tiles from the fire-places. The upper rooms were but a repet.i.tion of the disorder and misery below stairs.

Our hostess, after conducting us to her own apartment, relapsed into imbecility, and seemed little conscious of our presence. Some antiquated furniture, doubtless family heir-looms, a small stove, and a bed, const.i.tuted all her worldly goods. As she crooned over a scanty fire of two or three wet sticks, muttering to herself, and striving to warm her withered hands, I thought I beheld in her the impersonation of Want and Despair.

Her family was one of the most distinguished of New England, but a strain of insanity developed itself in her branch of the genealogical tree. Of three brothers--John, Richard, and Robert Cutt--who, in 1641, emigrated from Wales, the first became president of the Province of New Hampshire, the second settled on the Isles of Shoals, and the third at Kittery, where he became noted as a builder of ships.

This house had come into the possession of Captain Joseph Cutts[82]

about the beginning of the century. He was a large ship-owner, and a successful and wealthy merchant. Ruined by Mr. Jefferson's embargo and by the war of 1812, he lost his reason, and now lies in the village church-yard. Two of his sons inherited their father's blighting misfortune: one fell by his own hand in Lady Pepperell's bed-chamber.

Sally, the last survivor, has joined them within a twelvemonth.

Poor Sally Cutts! She rose to take leave of us with the same ceremonious politeness which had marked her reception. Her slight and shrunken figure was long in my memory, her crazy buffet, and broken, antiquated chairs, to which she clung as the most precious of earthly possessions.

It was one of her hallucinations to be always expecting the arrival of a messenger from Washington with full reparation of the broken fortunes of her family. Some charitable souls cared for her necessities, but such was the poor creature's pride that artifice was necessary to effect their purpose. Flitting through the deserted halls of the gloomy old mansion--dreading the stranger's approach, the gossip of the neighborhood, the jibes of village urchins--Sally remained its mistress until summoned to a better and kindlier mansion. I said the house was haunted, and I believe it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLOCK-HOUSE AND FORT, KITTERY POINT.]

A short walk beyond the cemetery brings you up with Fort M'Clary,[83]

its block-house, loop-holed for musketry, its derricks, and general disarray. Not many would have remembered the gallantry of Major Andrew M'Clary at Bunker Hill, but for this monument to his memory. The site has been fortified from an early day by garrison-house, stockade, or earth-work. It should have retained its earliest name of Fort Pepperell.

John Stark's giant comrade might have been elsewhere commemorated.

It is said no village is so humble but that a great man may be born in it. Sir William Pepperell was the great man of Kittery Point. He was what is now called a self-made man, raising himself from the ranks through native genius backed by strength of will. Smollett calls him a Piscataquay trader, with little or no education, and utterly unacquainted with military operations. Though contemptuous, the description is literally true.

Sir William's father is first noticed in the annals of the Isles of Shoals. The mansion now seen near the Pepperell Hotel was built partly by him and in part by his more eminent son. The building was once much more extensive than it now appears, having been, about twenty years ago, shortened ten feet at either end. Until the death of the elder Pepperell, in 1734, the house was occupied by his own and his son's families. The lawn in front reached to the sea, and an avenue, a quarter of a mile in length, bordered by fine old trees, led to the house of Colonel Sparhawk, east of the village church. With its homely exterior the mansion of the Pepperells represents one of the greatest fortunes of colonial New England. It used to be said Sir William might ride to the Saco without going off his own possessions.[84]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR WILLIAM PEPPERELL'S HOUSE, KITTERY POINT.]

There is hanging in the large hall of the Ess.e.x Inst.i.tute, at Salem, a two-thirds length of Sir William Pepperell, painted in 1751 by Smibert, when the baronet was in London. It represents him in scarlet coat, waistcoat, and breeches, a smooth-shaven face and powdered periwig: the waistcoat, richly gold-embroidered, as was then the fashion, was worn long, descending almost to the knee, and formed the most conspicuous article of dress. In one hand Sir William grasps a truncheon, and in the background the painter has depicted the siege of Louisburg.[85]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR WILLIAM PEPPERELL.]

Smollett accredits Auchmuty, judge-advocate of the Court of Admiralty of New England, with the plan of the conquest of Louisburg, which he p.r.o.nounces the most important achievement of the war. Mr. Hartwell said in the House of Commons that the colonists took Louisburg from the French single-handed, without any European a.s.sistance--"as mettled an enterprise as any in our history," he calls it. The honor of the Louisburg expedition has also been claimed for James Gibson, of Boston, and Colonel William Vaughan, of Damariscotta. But the central figures appear to have been Governor William Shirley and Sir William Pepperell.[86]

The year of Louisburg was an eventful one, for all Europe was in arms.

The petty German princes were striving for the imperial crown vacant by the death of the emperor, Charles VII. France supports the pretensions of the Grand Duke of Tuscany with a powerful army under her ill.u.s.trious profligate, Maurice de Saxe; Austria invades Bohemia; the old Brummbar swoops down upon Saxony, and his cannon growl under the walls of Dresden; the Rhenish frontiers, Silesia, Hungary, and Italy, are all ablaze.

England must have a hand in the fighting. Lord Chesterfield's mission to the Hague, the Quadruple Alliance at Warsaw, are succeeded by the stunning blow of Fontenoy. The allied army recoiled, and drew itself together under the walls of Brussels. The Duke of c.u.mberland was defeated by a sick man.[87]

It was at this moment of defeat that the news of the fall of Louisburg reached the allies. The Dunkirk of America had capitulated to a "trader of Piscataquay." It put new life into the beaten army, and was celebrated with great rejoicings in its camps.[88]

Among those who served with distinction under Pepperell were Richard Gridley, who afterward placed the redoubt on Bunker Hill; Wooster, who fell at Ridgefield; Thornton, a signer of our Magna Charta; and Nixon and Whiting, of the Continental army. It was sought to give the expedition something of the character of a crusade. George Whitefield furnished for its banner the motto,

"_Nil Desperandum, Christo Duce._"

A little more family history is necessary to give the reader the _entree_ of the four old houses at Kittery Point.

The elder Sir William, by his will, made the son of his daughter Elizabeth and Colonel Sparhawk his residuary legatee, requiring him, at the same time, to relinquish the name of Sparhawk for that of Pepperell.

The baronetcy, extinct with the death of Sir William, was revived by the king for the benefit of his grandson, a royalist of 1775, who went to England at the outbreak of hostilities. The large family estates were confiscated by the patriots.

The tomb of the Pepperells, built in 1734, is seen between the road and the Pepperell Hotel.[89] When it was repaired some years ago, at the instance of Harriet Hirst Sparhawk, the remains were found lying in a promiscuous heap at the bottom, the wooden shelves at the sides having given way, precipitating the coffins upon the floor of the vault. The planks first used to close the entrance had yielded to the pressure of the feet of cattle grazing in the common field, filling the tomb with rubbish. About thirty skulls were found in various stages of decomposition. A crypt was built in a corner, and the scattered relics carefully placed within.[90]

Dr. Eliot, the pioneer among American biographers, says Dr. Belknap often mentioned to him that his desire to preserve the letters of Sir William Pepperell led to the founding of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society. This object does not seem to have been wholly accomplished, as it is well known the baronet's papers have become widely scattered.[91]

Not far from the mansion of the Pepperells is the very ancient dwelling of Bray, whose daughter, Margery, became Lady Pepperell. It was long before the old shipwright made up his mind to consent to match his daughter so unequally. This house is considered to be two hundred and twenty-five years old, and is still habitable. Down at the water-side are seen the rotting timbers of the wharf where the Pepperells, father and son, conducted an extensive trade.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KITTERY POINT, MAINE.]