Sketches from Concord and Appledore Part 10

Mrs. Rymes is authority for the statement that White Island was not called so from its color, but from a family of Whites who lived on it before the light-house was built, and that the miser White who was murdered by Crowninshield in Salem was born on that island.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CELIA THAXTER. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1890.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAVID A. Wa.s.sON. FROM A PORTRAIT BY HIS SON GEORGE, TAKEN IN 1878.]

She made the best use of her material, which after all is much the same as Emerson's, with the difference between a barren island and a well-wooded country town taken into account. Another difference is that she looks at her subject objectively, and then treats it subjectively; whereas Emerson does exactly the reverse. It is like the difference between Schiller and Goethe, or Longfellow and Browning; and is the manner in which a poet always must write in order to be popular. Her verses are graceful, refined, and--as they should be--feminine. Yet there is a good deal of strength in it also: or if the phrase is permissible, a good deal of back-bone.

Her style reminds one of Whittier, but is sufficiently original.

Sometimes she escapes from concrete things into abstract subjects; and her short poem on "Heroism" seems to me the best she ever wrote. There was formerly a strong prejudice against this kind of poetry, but it seems to be disappearing. Those of her poems which Whittier included in his collection of English and American poetry are also fine, and may be said to deserve their place. Her criticism was better than is usually the case with poets; and her conversation about authors and literature always interesting. It was not didactic at all, but frank, spontaneous and open to correction. She liked the most diverse writers; Tennyson, and d.i.c.kens, and Browning. In early years I remember her speaking of Hawthorne in a tone of veneration; but later in life she preferred Emerson, even to Whittier. There was formerly a portrait of Goethe in her parlor with Emerson's lines about him underneath it, copied in her own picturesque hand-writing.

It seems strange that she never tried her hand at a novel, for of all resorts on the coast the Isles of Shoals is the best ground to study human nature on. People lose their artificial ways in that atmosphere and their peculiarities are brought out distinctly, as oil brings out the veins in black walnut. The epic gift, however, is very different from the lyric and the two are not often united in the same person. Mrs.

Thaxter's prose writings are almost as rare as Whittier's. She published a detailed account of a murder that was committed on Haley's Island about twenty years ago;--what would seem to be a peculiar subject for a cultivated person to fasten on--and yet she succeeded in giving it a good deal of dignity. One consequence of this has been that hundreds of people cross over every summer to s.m.u.tty Nose to stare at the miserable old shanty where the event took place, though there is absolutely nothing to be seen there.

It was a choice occasion in the old Shoals days when Mrs. Thaxter consented to read Browning or Tennyson to her friends. I think it was the finest reading I ever heard, simply because it was neither dramatic, rhetorical, nor elocutionary. It was plain, distinct reading with just enough of the dramatic element to give fullness to the meaning,--and with such a voice! Why is it that some people who have unpleasant voices are yet able to sing sweetly, and others who cannot sing are able to read or converse so it is music to hear them? I was formerly acquainted with an old man, much beyond the period of life when singers retire from the stage, whose voice was nevertheless, as one heard it at some distance, as musical as a Stradivarius.

With all her frankness and fearlessness, she was as sensitive to personal influences as poets usually are; and persons who called on her, who lacked delicacy of feeling, not only wearied her, but sometimes caused her positive suffering. In such cases she fortified herself with what she called a strong dose of conversation; would talk with great volubility on all possible subjects, as if in this manner to keep the unpleasant influence at a distance. "I wish all good people," she said, "were pleasant, and all the bad people disagreeable; for then life would be a more simple affair than it is now. The world is such a mixture that I never quite know how to take it."

At times she was a merciless critic. An admiring Quaker in Philadelphia wrote some verses in honor of Whittier, which were presented to Mrs.

Thaxter for her approval. When she was asked how she liked them, she replied, "I do not like it all; it goes humpety, lumpety, dumpety, b.u.mp;" and immediately changed the subject of conversation.

On another occasion she took up a volume of poetry which had been printed for private circulation, and said, "There are two really fine poems in this, which is more than can be usually said of such collections." Then she read them to us with such expressive grace as might almost make poetry out of Latin grammar. One was called the "Whip of the Sky," and the other was a sonnet about Pompeii.

She early discovered in herself the mesmeric power of a spiritist; and Wa.s.son was present at a _seance_ which she gave at the house of a friend in Newburyport, reporting messages from another world to various persons in the room. She thus naturally became a believer in spiritism, and finally a Theosophist; but she found that such supernatural performances were physically injurious and mentally demoralizing, so that in later years she rarely indulged in them.

One cold, foggy evening in August, 1868, we were gathered in the parlor of the Thaxter cottage, when some one proposed that we should make an experiment with planchette. So the little triangular board was produced, with a long pencil in the apex, and a large sheet of brown paper. Mrs.

Thaxter placed her left hand on it, and Mrs. H., a New York lady, placed her right hand, while the rest of us formed a circle around the table.

In five or ten minutes, planchette began to move, and wrote out "John Laighton," in plain, bold letters. "He was my great-uncle," said Mrs.

Thaxter; "and there used to be a proverb in Portsmouth, 'As honest as John Laighton.'" Then she wrote on the paper: "Where is my father?"

A few minutes afterward, Mrs. H. closed her eyes, and fell back in her chair, as if she were fainting. Suddenly coming to herself, she seized the pencil from planchette and wrote rapidly on the paper, while Mrs.

Thaxter held her other hand. She was at the left of Mrs. Thaxter, but I cannot remember now whether Mrs. H. wrote with her right or left hand.

Mrs. Thaxter was greatly excited and looked all the time in Mrs. H.'s face in the most earnest and impressive manner. Mrs. H. behaved like a person under the influence of strong emotion, and continued to write intermittently until the sheet of paper was nearly covered. Mrs. Thaxter read the sentences eagerly, but without saying a word. Several times Mr.

H. entreated his wife to desist, but she paid no attention to him. The whole performance lasted nearly half an hour, and when it was over, Mrs.

Thaxter said, "They are all answers to questions which I asked of my father," and remained very grave and quiet during the rest of the evening.

The next forenoon we examined the paper and found the writing on it was intelligible, but at the same time conveyed no real information. They were such answers as a woman might herself suggest to a person who was slow in making a reply. One of them was, "You will know everything perfectly when the right time comes." Mr. H. said, "My wife never could have imagined all this; there must have been some occult communication between her and Mrs. Thaxter. Neither do I think she ever heard before of John Laighton." Mrs. Thaxter evidently was satisfied that she had received messages from her father, who had been dead about two years; and though the rest of us did not credit this, the fact in itself seemed marvellous enough.

When some one remarked that he would give five dollars at any time to see a ghost, Mrs. Thaxter retorted, "I think you would give fifty to have him leave you again."

Where the poetical talent of the Laighton family came from is a rare mystery. Both of Mrs. Thaxter's brothers inherited a share of it. A poem of Oscar's was published in the "Atlantic" many years ago, and afterwards included in her first volume of poetry. Cedric wrote a very amusing parody on his sister's "Little Sandpiper," and sent it to her when she was staying in Boston. The scene was represented in winter when there wasn't any little sandpiper.

Mrs. Thaxter's poetry, however, was the making of Appledore as a summer resort. Between 1865 and 1875 thousands of people came there every summer to catch a sight of her. How she dared to go to the dinner-table in the face of such a mult.i.tude, I do not know; but after a time she retained a body-guard of friends, old and young, who were quite sufficient to keep intruders at a distance; and they could not be prevented from walking around her cottage, peering in at the windows, and stealing an occasional flower from her garden. Some even walked boldly into her parlor to demand an autograph. She received strange letters also from her unknown admirers. One was from a woman who wished to come to see her, but was afraid to do so on account of the green snakes which Hawthorne speaks of as inhabiting Appledore. (Hawthorne accidentally caught one of these pretty reptiles by the tail, and was not a little startled by it.) Another was from a naval officer who had been forcibly retired to a plantation in Maryland. I suppose she was secretly pleased by this rude homage of the vulgar, but no one knew better that the approval of her friends Weiss and Whittier was worth the whole of it.

Meanwhile social life at Appledore had risen to a height. Mrs. Thaxter welcomed every one who had a claim upon her recognition. Open table was her motto, rather than exclusiveness; but those who considered themselves of superior clay found no chairs to sit on in her parlor. Her cottage was a scene of gaiety by day, and revelry at night. Beautiful girls, charming women, and distinguished men dazzled the beholder.

Singing and laughter as well as instrumental music could often be heard there at a late hour. There are no people who are so full of good spirits in vacation as clergymen and college-professors--it is the reaction from their well-sustained gravity during the remainder of the year--and there was no lack of either.

Among them all none was so brilliant as John Weiss, though Eichberg the violinist came pretty close to him. Both were German Jews; Weiss, however, having been born in America. He belonged to the same type of men as James Russell Lowell and David A. Wa.s.son. He was the friend of both and equal to either in genius. He was the most eloquent preacher in New England at that time, and as a humorist only second to Lowell, if indeed second to any. His wit and his preaching were not, however, of a popular character: something more than phlegmatic common-sense was required to appreciate them. If he was not so popular as Lowell with the public, he was more so among his friends, in whose list might be counted almost every man of note and influence in Boston and vicinity. Bright flashes of his imagination came like the sudden gleam of a diamond, and would often convulse the company with laughter when one would least have expected it.

He was an excellent pantomimist; could perform all the parts in a comedy himself, and with the help of Fred Loring, or some other, would improvise a burlesque on almost any well-known play. It was after one of these performances that Whittier (who sat in his quiet corner enjoying it as much as an honest Quaker dared to) said to Mrs. Thaxter, "Celia, thou knowest I have never been to the theatre, but I think at last the theatre has come to me." Weiss was gay with the gay, but could be profoundly serious again at a moment's warning, and the biting shafts of his satire never wounded a human soul.

When some one spoke of the peculiarity of John Brown's spelling he exclaimed: "So much the better, so much the better! What good would a Webster's dictionary have been at Harper's Ferry? A whole edition of them could not have accomplished anything."

He was always ailing, and his friends in college doubted if he would ever reach maturity; yet he lived to be a grey-haired man, and published a number of excellent books. When he died, in 1878, there were not wanting malicious people to spread the report that he died of intemperance, though the wonder is how he could have lived so long. His death cast a shadow over the social life at Appledore so that it never quite recovered its former gaiety. About the same time several millionaires made their appearance; cottages began to arise upon the rocks; a small steam-yacht plied like a water-bug between the different islands, and the place became continually more fashionable and conventional. Whittier, feeling that he did not belong to this new order of things, retired to a quiet little inn at West Ossipee, in the White Mountains.

It was now that Professor John K. Paine, the musical composer, introduced a new element into the Shoals life. One morning he walked into Mrs. Thaxter's parlor with a large folio under his arm and said, "I am going to play you one of Beethoven's sonatas, for I think you will like it." Mrs. Thaxter was not quite sure that she would, but listened attentively. There had been a good deal of music before, in a small way; pupils of Eichberg playing on the violin with piano accompaniment, and even Eichberg himself,--which was quite a treat, though a single violin can never express a wide range of musical ideas. Beethoven's music she had also heard indifferently performed by young lady amateurs; but this was another affair.

Professor Paine is rather an organist than a pianist, and does not pretend to rare technical skill; but what is much better, he understands the music as only players like Rubinstein and Von Bulow can understand it, and he brought out the meaning with such joyous fullness as even the master himself might have been pleased to hear. It was a revelation to Celia Thaxter: it was easy to see there was no affectation in her enjoyment; neither did she lack words to express her delight. "Mr.

Paine," said a cla.s.sical gentleman who was present, "your playing reminds me of what Cicero said of Caesar's Commentaries, that a fool might think he could improve on it, but a wise man would not like to try." The Professor was so much pleased with Mrs. Thaxter's frank enthusiasm, that he dedicated a sonata he was composing to her, which was performed the following winter in Boston, and greatly praised also by the critics.

Piano recitals and concertos thus became the fashion at Appledore, and cla.s.sical music was in good demand. Its refining and quieting influence on the little community was quite perceptible. It produced a change like the transition from flamboyant Gothic architecture to the pure Grecian style. At first only a few came to hear it: then the parlor was filled.

The piazza became crowded, and finally gentlemen were obliged to find places on the rocks outside.

It is one thing to hear music in a crowded concert-room with gas-light and bad air just after we have left the jarring discords of the street; and quite a different affair to listen to it with congenial spirits in the summer air of these islands, which seems to have been made for attuning the senses to fine perceptions. To enjoy any kind of art, the mind needs to be like a clean slate on which every mark tells.

In 1881 Professor Paine improved his good reputation both here and in Europe by composing what is called his Greek music; that is, an overture to the play of "Oedipus Tyrannus," which was acted at Harvard in the spring of that year. Of course his seash.o.r.e friends wished to hear him play it himself, and after the applause which followed had subsided, he said: "A little approbation is all the reward I get for my compositions.

A good deal of money was made out of the Greek play by speculators, but none of it came to me." There was a general expression of regret; and then Mrs. Thaxter said, as if to herself, "If I were only the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts I know what I would do." A physician at the house that summer warned Mrs. Paine never to let her husband work so hard again as he had that year.

I remember William Hunt, the portrait painter, in 1872 wheeling his youngest child, a beautiful boy named Paul, in a go-cart in front of the cottage. He looked like an Arab, with a beard nearly to his waist, and a decidedly Semitic head; but he had an aristocratic style, and the air of a man who was used to command. His friends congratulated themselves on his resemblance to t.i.tian, and to the French artist Horace Vernet.

Despite his proud bearing he was a tender-hearted man, and when in trouble always went to Levi Thaxter, who was a rarely sympathetic person. In 1879 he came again to the Shoals, flying from domestic affliction. He was also suffering from a severe nervous strain, the result of painting two immense pictures in the hall of the New York a.s.sembly, at Albany; and was no longer able to work. Either of these by itself he might have contended against, but both together were too much for him.

One dark, rainy night he left the Thaxter cottage at a late hour, looking very sad and gloomy. The next morning his body was found in a freshwater cistern which had been built in a hollow between the rocks.

There were some who thought that his death might have been accidental, but old Doctor Bowditch said, "My friends, there was only too much reason for it." Of all the wrecks on that dangerous coast was not this the most piteous and tragical! William Hunt narrowly missed being one of the greatest of painters. Though some of his portraits are wretched failures, there are others of his pictures that might grace any gallery in Europe.

Mountain air is better than sea air, both for those who are well and strong, and generally speaking for invalids; but people go to the sea because they like it,--for love of the dark blue ocean. Few things are more monotonous than sailing in a yacht. It is a confining sort of existence, subjects of conversation soon become exhausted, there are many inconveniences about it, and being becalmed in a ground swell is worse than riding in a stage coach on a hot and dusty road; yet how many men prefer spending their summer vacation in this manner to any other.

It is that rolling, lisping, gurgling, mysterious, unfathomable unity which attracts them. Earth is the masculine element, sea the feminine; and all the cycles and epicycles of organic nature have resulted from these two. It develops imagination and romance in persons who would never have been suspected of possessing either. No wonder that the sailor delights in marvelous tales. It is a terrible destroyer, but at the same time a friend that we cannot do without.

Nowhere perhaps is that closeness to the ocean, this familiarity with the sea, so strongly felt as at the Isles of Shoals. There is really no land there: nothing but sky, rock and water. Living there is like a sea-voyage without the discomforts thereof. During the great storm of March '52, when the light-house on Minot's Ledge was overturned, an immense wave rolled across the centre of Appledore from side to side.

There are windows in the hotel on Star Island where one can drop a pebble into the sea, and go to sleep listening to the murmur of the waves. Even in summer the surf sometimes runs so high that it is dangerous to approach the edge of the cliffs; and few people know how pleasant it is to watch the eddying swirl of the water round the promontories on the westerly side. One can sail in every direction, and if the wind does not suit one quarter it always will another. Better than any sailing, however, is rowing in an open boat at sunset or by moonlight, with one or two friends.

Their climate is equally remarkable, and Doctor Bowditch considered it, from its soothing and also stimulating quality, one of the finest in the world, and much the best on the Atlantic coast. This is owing to their geographical position, islands on the coast of Maine being afflicted with cold fogs, and those south of Cape Cod with warm ones. There are no sultry nights in summer, and the cutting east-winds of Mount Desert are unknown there. The climate is warmer in April and November than on the mainland; in May and October about the same. The winters are disagreeable enough; but there is a kind of glory there in summer, and the view at night from the piazza of the Oceanic is beautiful beyond all faculty of description.

WHITTIER.

From under the north star's beam, Through a region wild and free, The waters of a mighty stream Roll onward to the sea.

In the deep clefts of the mountain, Lie never melting snows; And there from an icy fountain A clear cold torrent flows.

When we go to see the Falls of Niagara, we expect to be astonished, and are not disappointed; though the expectation takes away somewhat from our sensation. The grand phenomenon makes a strong and permanent impression on us, and yet there is no feeling of affection mingled with this. We have seen it once and do not care to visit the place again.

Many pictures have been painted of it, but they are not genuine pictures, for the human element is wanting in them. Niagara can turn no mill-wheels, and will float no ships. How different is it with those scenes of natural beauty which we never heard of and come upon by surprise--which we remember always with affection and a kindred interest.

Such were my thoughts many years ago at Amesbury, as I walked on the banks of the Merrimac and watched the calm, clear current of the river, as it hastened by, irresistible as time itself. I also reflected how often the poet Whittier must have walked in that same path; how dear to him must be that silent flood with its elm-trees, and great rolling hills; and how in times of darkness and discouragement he must have come to it for strength and consolation. The beauty of a river depends very much on its clearness and purity. The Rhine and the Tiber are more famous than the Merrimac; but their water is muddy and undrinkable.