Pilgrim Trails Part 1

Pilgrim Trails.

by Frances Lester Warner.

CHAPTER I

PLYMOUTH TOWNE

"There!" said the artist, "isn't that a nautical-looking house?"

When the artist says that a house is nautical, he means that it looks as if it had been built by seafaring men; not by wealthy ship-owners, but by generations of skippers and men before the mast. When you build a nautical house, you should begin more than a hundred years ago with a small cottage on the side-hill over the harbor, and add on a snug cabin now and then, tucking in a shipshape companionway here and there, and running a new section out along the slope. If you like to indulge your taste in roofs, you make a different kind for every addition. One section may be gable, another lean-to, and the one-story addition may run out as long as you please, shaped on top something like the roof of a barge. Simply fit your building to the ups and downs of the land and the ways of the wind. A bit of faded blue paint somewhere on the blinds or near the door, and all your roofing weathered by many hundred harbor gales, and your house is nautical.

There are not as many of these in Plymouth as in Gloucester, but there are a few. In fact, at Plymouth you may find almost any kind of building you look for, from Mansard roofs and bungalows, to the lobster-houses down by Eel River, the shooting-boxes out on the sand-spit, and the dark old structures beside Town Brook and around the region once known as Clamsh.e.l.l Alley.

We had left the car at the garage, and had walked along the upper streets over the hill. The artist was going sketching, his brother Alexander was meeting a business appointment, and Barbara and I had come to see Plymouth.

"I'm going in among those places on the other side of Town Brook," said the artist. "The only way to find something good is to go everywhere you're not supposed to."

"But you and Barbara," said Alexander, as he prepared to escort us out to the main street, "might as well go where you're supposed to."

He paused for a moment to let his words sink in.

"The best way," said Alexander, "is to follow your guide-book."

"The best way," said the artist over his shoulder, "is to explore."

Barbara receives advice from her two brothers with the air of a young empress listening to the remarks of two prime ministers, but makes her own decisions. I have acted as her confederate and chaperon on so many occasions that I know enough to be quiet until the prime ministers have gone.

"The best way," said Barbara when this had happened, "is to ask a little boy."

Doubtless any real expedition to Plymouth ought to begin with the Rock.

We found our way down along the water-front, to the place where the Rock used to be, but it was nowhere in sight.

"When I was here before," said I, "the Rock was exactly here, under its canopy at the foot of Cole's Hill. You couldn't miss it."

Barbara looked out along the wharves. Some children were playing at the end of one of the piers.

"We'll ask a little boy," said Barbara, leading the way.

"They look like little foreigners," said I. "Do you think they would know?"

For answer, Barbara went out slowly to the edge of the pier, and stood watching the white seagulls flying over the harbor. The boys gave her a glance, made up their minds about her, and went on with their play.

"_Where's_ the Rock?" said Barbara casually, over her shoulder.

"They're moving it," said one.

"It's all broke up," said another.

"Want us to show it to you?" said a third.

"Yes," said Barbara. "Where are they moving it to?"

"Down to the edge. When they get it there, we can swim right up to it,"

said our guide with unction. "But now it's all broke up."

He was leading us rapidly back to Water Street, to a great pile of masonry by the roadside. "That's the rock," said he. "Here's some, and here's some, and here's some more. All broke up."

The boys were scrambling over the arches and hopping about among the blocks of granite.

"Oh, yes," said Barbara tactfully, "this is the old canopy that used to be over the Rock, isn't it? And where's the real Rock?"

Our guide looked puzzled. Then light dawned. "The little one with 1620 on it? Down on the other side of the road." He waved a brown fist.

"See?"

And there it was, the famous boulder, waiting to be taken to its new position at the water's edge. Plymouth Rock is a very satisfactory relic; just the shape of a Rock. Its prehistoric excursions with the glacier and its historic pilgrimages since 1620 have combined to lead it a roving life. In Revolutionary days it was on Town Square, with the Liberty Pole; then it migrated to the lawn in front of Pilgrim Hall; then it rested under its canopy at the foot of Cole's Hill--and in all these positions it inspired tourists to remarks about the agility of the Fathers in using it as a stepping-stone from the harbor to dry land. And now, in 1921, it goes back to the original landing-place, where the high tides will reach it again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plymouth Harbor]

Barbara and I congratulated ourselves on our luck in arriving at the right time to catch it on the move. Probably its fourth century of fame will bring it more visitors than ever before, including our friends, the little delegates from Portugal and Italy, who hope to swim near by.

"Now," said Barbara, "let's go up to Leyden Street and see if we can imagine that it's First Street, with the first houses and all."

Taking our imaginations well in hand, we found Leyden Street and the site of the first house. Probably it is not necessary to be thrilled at every inch of Plymouth. No matter how many times we visit it, I think we expect to find it looking more gray and spectral than it does; just as children, from much study of the map, half expect to see the land of China look yellow. There are fishing-coves on the Maine coast that look a good deal more like our childhood idea of Plymouth--weatherbeaten houses, low roofs, and great dark cliffs with the surf pounding against them. Mrs. Felicia Hemans is not entirely responsible for our misconception. We know that we shall not see the original block-house, but we still have a lingering feeling that Plymouth ought to look gray.

And Leyden Street does not. It is old, but not decrepit. A very short street, with close-set houses, some of them painted white or yellow; and at the head of the street, on what used to be Elder Brewster's Meerstead, the fine Post-Office building--it is hard to realize that this is the place where the Mayflower settlers staked off their nineteen plots of ground. Even in winter, there is no sweeping impression that anything very grim or perilous ever happened here. But one impression we do feel strongly. If we stand at the head of the street by Elder Brewster's spring, and look down past the site of the first house, at the blue harbor, and then turn and look up at Burial Hill, we find ourselves thinking of the compactness of it all. Within a three-minute walk, we have caught a glimpse of the landing-place, Cole's Hill burying-ground, the site of the first house, the first street, and the hill where, as Governor Bradford says, "they built a fort, both strong & comly, made with a flate rofe & batllments, on which their ordnance were mounted, and wher they kepte constante watch, espetially in time of danger." The times of danger seem remote from Plymouth now, "espetially"

at the corner of Leyden Street.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Site of First House, Leyden Street]

In order to feel the true sense of history,--not a worked-up sentiment, but the real thing,--you have to look at Plymouth, not in panorama but in detail. You have to accept with philosophy such modern phenomena as the Ma.s.sasoit Shoe-Shine Parlors and the Plymouth Rock Garage, and keep your eyes open for certain types of old houses scattered in unexpected places everywhere.

One of these is a neat old house in excellent repair, the ends of the house of brick, the side toward the street of wood, plain gable roof, stout chimney, the whole thing painted white, and all fascinating within. This is Tabitha Plaskett's house, on Court Street, near Pilgrim Hall. It is not so very old,--only two hundred years come 1922,--but it is the one of its kind into which visitors are most naturally admitted, for they sell antiques there now. But before the Revolution it was the home of Mrs. Tabitha Plaskett, the first woman to keep a school in Plymouth.

Barbara and I went in, seeking gifts, and we stayed to look at the doors. They are plain one-paneled doors, each made of a single piece of wood, with old hand-made hinges,--some the H-hinge, some the H and L,--with irregular hand-wrought nails, and on each door a polished door-latch of slenderest design. The tiles around the fireplace are blue and white, the central one showing a dog running very fast, with all four feet off the ground, and all his legs held perfectly stiff like the legs of a rocking-horse.

We were shown the place where Tabitha Plaskett used to do her spinning and her school-teaching at the same time. Every legend-lover recalls the story of Tabitha's famous way of punishing children, by slipping a skein of yarn underneath their arms and hanging them up on a peg on the wall, much as Mrs. Peter Rabbit in the story hangs all her little rabbits on the clothes-line. The soft yarn probably did not hurt the children, though the position must have been, for the moment, embarra.s.sing. We wonder whether Tabitha really did this often. If we remember our own schooldays, we know that the story of a punishment can take a fabulous turn in less than two hundred years. But from her epitaph on Burial Hill, we may be fairly sure that her relations with the public were not without an occasional breeze. She is supposed to have composed the epitaph herself, and it certainly sounds like the doc.u.ment of a vivid personality. We may read it now, carefully chiseled on her grave-stone, under an elaborate design of urn and weeping willow:--

Adieu, vain world, I've seen enough of thee And I am careless what thou sayst of me Thy smiles I wish not Nor thy frowns I fear I am now at rest, my head lies quiet here.

Well, Tabitha's headstone now overlooks the place where the little children go along to school. If you should go into the primary rooms after school-hours, you would see the sand-tables and the little desks, and, hanging around the walls, a series of paper cut-outs of the Three Bears and the Little Red Hen. And if you should ask to be allowed to look at the register, you would find there some names that would remind you of the cabins of the Mayflower and the Fortune and the Ann, together with some that came over in a later ship. Surely the boys and girls of to-day will not object if we imagine Tabitha calling the roll of their last names in alphabetical order? She stands beside her spinning-wheel and begins: "Alden, Cook, Crane, Dante, Davenport, Deschamps, Donovan, Kitchin, Kerrigan, Locatelli, Malaguto, Metz, Morgan--" And she goes on, adjusting her voice to the musical variety of the names, until she ends the alphabet with "Thornhill, Vacchino, Wood, and Worcester." It is like a pleasant chant of the nations.

It is a very pretty question whether Tabitha Plaskett could maintain the quiet orderliness that we see now in these primary rooms, and make headway with her spinning at the same time. Would she apply the skeins of yarn internationally? And would she know just what to do with the sand-tables? If she could keep school again in her old house now, perhaps, instead of punishing the wicked, she would reward the just by letting them go into the front room, when they were very good, to look at the dog running like a rocking-horse on the blue tile.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Nautical House"]