Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 31

CHAPTER XVII.

PLYMOUTH.

"What const.i.tutes a state?

Not high raised battlements or labored mound, Thick walls or moated gate."

Plymouth is the American Mecca. It does not contain the tomb of the Prophet, but the Rock of the Forefathers, their traditions, and their graves. The first impressions of a stranger are disappointing, for the oldest town in New England looks as fresh as if built within the century. There is not much that is suggestive of the old life to be seen there. Except the hills, the haven, and the sea, there is nothing antique; save a few carefully cherished relics, nothing that has survived the day of the Pilgrims.

Somehow monuments--and Plymouth is to be well furnished in the future--do not compensate for the absence of living facts. The house of William Bradford would have been worth more to me than any of them. Even the rusty iron pot and sword of Standish are more satisfying to the common run of us than the shaft they are building on Captain's Hill to his memory. They, at least, link us to the personality of the man. And with a sigh that it was so--for I had hoped otherwise--I was obliged to admit that Old Plymouth had been rubbed out, and that I was too late by a century at least to realize my ideal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF PLYMOUTH.]

The most impressive thing about Plymouth is its quiet; though I would not have the reader think it deserted. There are workshops and factories, but I did not suspect their vicinity. Even the railway train slips furtively in and out, as if its rumbling might awaken the slumbering old sea-port. Although the foundation of a commonwealth, the town, as we see, has not become one of the centres of traffic. It has shared the fate of Salem, in having its commercial marrow sucked out by a metropolis "opulent, enlarged, and still increasing," leaving the first-born of New England nothing but her glorious past, and the old fires still burning on her altars.

Court Street is a pleasant and well-built thoroughfare. It runs along the base of three of the hills on whose slopes the town lies, taking at length the name of Main, which it exchanges again beyond the town square for Market Street. If you follow Court Street northwardly, you will find it merging in a country road that will conduct you to Kingston; if you pursue it with your face to the south, you will in due time arrive at Sandwich. Trees, of which there is a variety, are the glory of Court Street. I saw in some streets magnificent lindens, horse-chestnuts, and elms branching quite across them; and in the areas such early flowering shrubs as forsythia, spiraea, pyrus j.a.ponica, and lilac.

Many houses are old, but there are none left of the originals; nor any so peculiar as to demand description. On some of the most venerable the chimneys are masterpieces of masonry, showing curious designs, or, in some instances, a stack of angular projections. The chimney of Governor Bradford's house is said to have been furnished with a sun-dial.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PILGRIM HALL.]

Pursuing your way along Court Street, you will first reach Pilgrim Hall, a structure of rough granite, in the style of a Greek temple, the prevailing taste in New England fifty years ago for all public and even for private buildings. Within are collected many souvenirs of the Pilgrims, and of the tribes inhabiting the Old Colony. Lying in the gra.s.s-plot before the hall is a fragment of Forefathers' Rock, surrounded by a circular iron fence, and labeled in figures occupying the larger part of its surface, with the date of 1620. In this place it became nothing but a vulgar stone. I did not feel my pulses at all quickened on beholding it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BREWSTER'S CHEST, AND STANDISH'S POT.]

One end of the hall is occupied by the well-known painting of the "Landing of the Pilgrims," by Sargent. To heighten the effect, the artist has introduced an Indian in the foreground, an historic anachronism. A tall, soldierly figure is designated as Miles Standish, who is reported as being short, and scarce manly in appearance. The canvas is of large size, and the grouping does not lack merit, but its interest is made to depend on the figures of Governor Carver and of Samoset, in the foreground--both larger than life. We do not recognize, in the crouching att.i.tude of the Indian, the erect and dauntless Samoset portrayed by Mourt, Bradford, and Winslow. This painting, which must have cost the artist great labor, was generously presented to the Pilgrim Society. I have seen a painting of the "Landing" in which a boat is represented approaching the sh.o.r.e, filled with soldiers in red coats.[171] The late Professor Morse also made it the subject of his pencil.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS, FROM SARGENT'S PAINTING.]

There are on the walls portraits of Governor Edward Winslow, Governor Josiah Winslow and wife, and of General John Winslow, all copies of originals in the gallery of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society. The original of Edward Winslow is believed to be a Vand.y.k.e. There is also a portrait of Hon. John Trumbull, presented by Colonel John, the painter.[172]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARVER'S CHAIR.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BREWSTER'S CHAIR.]

The cabinets contain many interesting memorials of the first settlers, their arms, implements, household furniture, and apparel. I refer the reader to the guide-books for an enumeration of them. The chairs of Governor Carver and of Elder Brewster are good specimens of the uncomfortable yet quaint furnishing of their time; as the capacious iron pots, pewter platters, and wooden trenchers are suggestive of a primitive people, whose town was a camp. I fancy there were few breakages among the dishes of these Pilgrims, for they were as hard as their owners; nor were there serious deductions to be made from the maids' wages on the day of reckoning. I confess I should have liked to see here, instead of the somewhat confusing jumble of articles pertaining to Pilgrim or Indian, an apartment exclusively devoted to the household economy of the first-comers, with furniture suitably arranged, and the evidences of their frugal housewifery garnishing the walls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MINCING-KNIFE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEREGRINE WHITE'S CABINET.]

Many of the articles said to have been brought over in the _Mayflower_ are doubtless authentic, but the number of objects still existing and claiming some part of the immortality of that little bark would freight an Indiaman of good tonnage. There is a still pretty sampler, embroidered by the spider fingers of a Puritan maiden, with a sentiment worth the copying by any fair damsel in the land:

"Lorea Standish is my name.

Lord, guide my hart that I may doe thy will; Also fill my hands with such convenient skill As may conduce to virtue void of shame; And I will give the glory to thy name."

[Ill.u.s.tration: STANDISH'S SWORD.]

And here is the carnal weapon of Miles Standish, the living sword-blade of the colony. It lacks not much of an English ell from hilt to point, and looks still able to push its way in the world if well grasped. The weapon has a bra.s.s cross and guard, and resembles those trenchant Florentine blades of the sixteenth century, with its channels, curved point, and fine temper. The sword figures in Mr. Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish," where we may hear it clank at the captain's heels as he goes from his wrathful interview with John Alden, slamming the door after him, no doubt, like the tempestuous little tea-pot he was. The inscription on the blade has baffled the _savans_. For such a hot-tempered captain it should have been that engraved on the Earl of Shrewsbury's sword,

"I am Talbot's, for to slay his foes."

It could hardly have been this legend, with a point inscribed on a broadsword of the seventeenth century:

"_Qui gladio ferit_ _Gladio perit._"

Speaking of swords, I am reminded that the first duel in New England was at Plymouth, in the year 1621. It was between Edward Doty or Doten, and Edward Leister, servants of Steven Hopkins. They fought with sword and dagger, like their betters, and were both wounded. Having no statute against the offense, the Pilgrims met in council to determine on the punishment. It was exemplary. The parties were ordered to be tied together, hand and foot, and to remain twenty-four hours without food or drink. The intercession of their master and their own entreaties procured their release before the sentence was carried out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OLD COLONY SEAL.]

In the front of the court-house is a mural tablet, with the seal of the Old Colony sculptured in relief. The quarterings of the shield represent four kneeling figures, having each a flaming heart in its hands. On one side of the figures is a small tree, indicative, I suppose, of the infant growth of the plantation. The att.i.tude and semi-nude appearance indicate an Indian, the subsequent device of Ma.s.sachusetts, and are at once significant of his subjection, hearty welcome, and ultimate loyalty. The colony seal is said to have been abstracted from the archives in Andros's time, and never recovered.[173] Its legend was "Plimovth Nov-Anglia, Sigillvm Societatis," with the date of 1620 above the shield. The union with Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1692, dispensed with the necessity for a separate seal.

I saw, in the office of the Register, the records of the First Church of Plymouth, begun and continued by Nathaniel Morton to 1680. The court records, as well as the ancient charter, on which the ink is so faded as to be scarcely legible, are carefully kept.

But the compact, that august instrument, I did not see, nor is the fate of the original known. Its language bears an extraordinary similitude to the preamble of the Const.i.tution of the United States, in its spirit and idea. The name of the king is there in good set phrase; but the soul of the thing is its a.s.sumption of sovereignty in the people. See now how King James figures at the head and the tail of it, and then look into the heart of the matter:

"In ye name of G.o.d, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by ye grace of G.o.d, of Great Britaine, Franc, & Ireland, King, defender of ye faith, &c., haveing undertaken, for ye glorie of G.o.d and advancemente of ye Christian faith and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie in ye Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly & mutualy in ye presence of G.o.d, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves togeather in a civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of ye ends aforesaid; and by vertue hearof to enacte, const.i.tute, and frame such just & equall lawes, ordinances, acts, const.i.tutions & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenent for ye generall good of ye Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witnes wherof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd ye 11 of November, in ye year of ye raigne of our soveraigne lord, King James of England, Franc, & Ireland ye eighteenth & of Scotland ye fiftie fourth, Ano: Dom. 1620."

Bradford says the bond was partly due to the mutinous spirit of some of the strangers on board the _Mayflower_, and partly to the belief that such an act might be as firm as any patent, and in some respects more sure. It is impossible not to be interested in the lives of such men; they were deeply in earnest.

In 1630 the first public execution took place in Plymouth. The culprit was John Billington, who, as Bradford wrote home to England, was a knave, and so would live and die. Billington had waylaid and shot one of the town,[174] and was adjudged guilty of murder. The colony patent could not confer a power it did not itself possess to inflict the death penalty, so they took counsel of their friends just come into Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, and were advised to "purge the land of blood."

In 1658, the crime of adultery appears to be first noticed in the laws.

The punishment of this offense was two whippings, the persons convicted to wear two capital letters "A. D." cut in cloth and sewed on their uppermost garment, on their arm or back; if they removed the letters, they were again to be publicly whipped. Another law, that would bear rather hardly on the present generation, was as follows: Any persons "who behaved themselves profanely by being without doors at the meeting-houses on the Lord's day, in time of exercise, and there misdemeaning themselves by jestings, sleepings, or the like," were first to be admonished, and if they did not refrain, set in the stocks; and if still unreclaimed, cited before the court.

Josselyn, writing of the old "Body of Laws of 1646," says, "Scolds they gag and set them at their doors for certain hours, for all comers and goers by to gaze at." And here is material for the "Scarlet Letter:" "An English woman suffering an Indian to have carnal knowledge of her was obliged to wear an Indian cut out of red cloth sewed upon her right arm, and worn twelve months." Swearing was punished by boring through the tongue with a hot iron; adultery with death.

The chronicles of the Pilgrims have undergone many strange vicissitudes, but are fortunately quite full and complete. It would be pleasant to know more of their lives during their first year at Plymouth than is given by Bradford or Morton. Governor Bradford's ma.n.u.script history of Plymouth plantation was probably purloined from the New England Library deposited in the Old South Church of Boston, during the siege of 1775.

It found its way to the Fulham Library in England, was discovered, and a copy made which has since been printed, after remaining in ma.n.u.script more than two hundred years. The letter-book of Governor Bradford has a similar history. It was rescued from a grocer's shop in Halifax, after the destruction of half its invaluable contents.

The next best thing to be done is probably to go at once to the top of Burial Hill, which is here what the Hoe is to English Plymouth. Here, at least, are plenty of memorials of the Pilgrims, and here town and harbor are outspread for perusal. Seen at full tide, the harbor appears a goodly port enough, but it is left as bare by the ebb as if the sea had been commanded to remove and become dry land. Nothing except a broad expanse of sand-bars and mussel shoals, with luxuriant growth of eel-gra.s.s, meets the eye. Through these a narrow and devious channel makes its way. The bay, however, could not be called tame with two such landmarks as Captain's Hill on Duxbury side, and the promontory of Manomet on the shoulder of the Cape.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF PLYMOUTH BAY.]

Plymouth Bay is formed by the jutting-out of Manomet on the south, and by the long-attenuated strip of sand known as Duxbury Beach, on the north. This beach terminates in a smaller pattern of the celebrated Italian boot that looks equally ready to play at foot-ball with Sicily or to kick intruders out of the Mediterranean. The heel of the boot is toward the sea, and called The Gurnet; the toe points landward, and is called Saquish Head. Just within the toe of the boot is Clark's Island, named from the master's mate of the _Mayflower_; then comes Captain's Hill, making, with the beach, Duxbury Harbor; and in the farthest reach of the bay to the westward is Kingston, where a little water-course, called after the master of the _Mayflower_,[175] makes up into the land.

In the southern board Cape Cod is seen on a clear day far out at sea; a mere shining streak of white sand it appears at this distance.

Plymouth harbor proper is formed by a long sand-spit parallel with the sh.o.r.e, that serves as a breakwater for the shallow roadstead. It is anch.o.r.ed where it is, for the winds would blow it away else, by wooden cribs on which the drifting sands are mounded; and it is also tethered by beach-gra.s.s rooted in the hillocks or downs that fringe the harbor-side. Now and then extensive repairs are necessary to make good the ravages of a winter's sea-lashings, as many as six hundred tons of stone having been added to the breakwater at the Point at one time.

Brush is placed in the jetties, and thousands of roots of beach-gra.s.s are planted to catch and stay the shifting sands. The harbor is lighted at evening by twin lights on the Gurnet, and by a single one off Plymouth Beach. The latter is a caisson of iron rooted to the rock by a filling of concrete, and is washed on all sides by the waters of the harbor.

Sand is everywhere; the "stern and rock-bound coast" of Mrs. Hemans nowhere. Except one little cl.u.s.ter by the northern sh.o.r.e of the harbor, the Forefathers' is the only rock on which those pious men could have landed with dry feet. A few boulders, noticeably infrequent, are scattered along the beach as you approach from Kingston. The hills on which the town is built appear lean and emaciated, as if the light yellow earth with which they are furnished were a compromise between sand and soil. The gardens and house-plots, nevertheless, thrive if they have moisture enough. Few vessels were lying in the harbor, for Plymouth has at present little or no commerce; yet of these, two small colliers were larger than the little _Mayflower_ that carried a greater than Caesar and his fortunes.[176]

The Pilgrims brought the name of their settlement along with them, though Captain John Smith gives it first the Indian name of Accomack, changed by Prince Charles to Plimouth, as it appears on the map accompanying "Advertis.e.m.e.nts for the Unexperienced." The port was, however, earlier known to both French and English. Samoset told the Pilgrims, at his first interview with them, the Indian name was Patuxet.[177] Prince, indeed, a.s.signs a date (December 31st) for the formal a.s.sumption of the English name.[178]

Plymouth, England, from which the Pilgrims finally set sail on the 6th of September, 1619, is situated at the extreme north-west corner of Devonshire, and is divided from Cornwall only by the river Tamar. The name has no other significance than the mouth of the river _Plym_.