Oldport Days
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Thomas Wentworth Higginson >> Oldport Days
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OLDPORT DAYS.
BY
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.
BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM.
1888.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS.
OLDPORT IN WINTER
OLDPORT WHARVES
THE HAUNTED WINDOW
A DRIFT-WOOD FIRE
AN ARTIST'S CREATION
IN A WHERRY
MADAM DELIA'S EXPECTATIONS
SUNSHINE AND PETRARCH
A SHADOW
FOOTPATHS
OLDPORT DAYS.
OLDPORT IN WINTER.
Our August life rushes by, in Oldport, as if we were all shot
from the mouth of a cannon, and were endeavoring to exchange
visiting-cards on the way. But in September, when the great
hotels are closed, and the bronze dogs that guarded the portals
of the Ocean House are collected sadly in the music pavilion,
nose to nose; when the last four-in-hand has departed, and a man
may drive a solitary horse on the avenue without a pang,--then we
know that "the season" is over. Winter is yet several months
away,--months of the most delicious autumn weather that the
American climate holds. But to the human bird of passage all that
is not summer is winter; and those who seek Oldport most eagerly
for two months are often those who regard it as uninhabitable for
the other ten.
The Persian poet Saadi says that in a certain region of Armenia,
where he travelled, people never died the natural death. But once
a year they met on a certain plain, and occupied themselves with
recreation, in the midst of which individuals of every rank and
age would suddenly stop, make a reverence to the west, and,
setting out at full speed toward that part of the desert, be seen
no more. It is quite in this fashion that guests disappear from
Oldport when the season ends. They also are apt to go toward the
west, but by steamboat. It is pathetic, on occasion of each
annual bereavement, to observe the wonted looks and language of
despair among those who linger behind; and it needs some
fortitude to think of spending the winter near such a Wharf of
Sighs.
But we console ourselves. Each season brings its own attractions.
In summer one may relish what is new in Oldport, as the liveries,
the incomes, the manners. There is often a delicious freshness
about these exhibitions; it is a pleasure to see some opulent
citizen in his first kid gloves. His new-born splendor stands in
such brilliant relief against the confirmed respectability of
the"Old Stone Mill," the only thing on the Atlantic shore which
has had time to forget its birthday! But in winter the Old Mill
gives the tone to the society around it; we then bethink
ourselves of the crown upon our Trinity Church steeple, and
resolve that the courtesies of a bygone age shall yet linger
here. Is there any other place in America where gentlemen still
take off their hats to one another on the public promenade? The
hat is here what it still is in Southern Europe,--the lineal
successor of the sword as the mark of a gentleman. It is noticed
that, in going from Oldport to New York or Boston, one is liable
to be betrayed by an over-flourish of the hat, as is an Arkansas
man by a display of the bowie-knife.
Winter also imparts to these spacious estates a dignity that is
sometimes wanting in summer. I like to stroll over them during
this epoch of desertion, just as once, when I happened to hold
the keys of a church, it seemed pleasant to sit, on a week-day,
among its empty pews. The silent walls appeared to hold the pure
essence of the prayers of a generation, while the routine and the
ennui had vanished all away. One may here do the same with
fashion as there with devotion, extracting its finer flavors, if
such there be, unalloyed by vulgarity or sin. In the winter I can
fancy these fine houses tenanted by a true nobility; all the sons
are brave, and all the daughters virtuous. These balconies have
heard the sighs of passion without selfishness; those cedarn
alleys have admitted only vows that were never broken. If the
occupant of the house be unknown, even by name, so much the
better. And from homes more familiar, what lovely childish faces
seem still to gaze from the doorways, what graceful Absences (to
borrow a certain poet's phrase) are haunting those windows!
There is a sense of winter quiet that makes a stranger soon feel
at home in Oldport, while the prospective stir of next summer
precludes all feeling of stagnation. Commonly, in quiet places,
one suffers from the knowledge that everybody would prefer to be
unquiet; but nobody has any such longing here. Doubtless there
are aged persons who deplore the good old times when the Oldport
mail-bags were larger than those arriving at New York. But if it
were so now, what memories would there be to talk about? If you
wish for"Syrian peace, immortal leisure,"--a place where no grown
person ever walks rapidly along the street, and where few care
enough for rain to open an umbrella or walk faster,--come here.
My abode is on a broad, sunny street, with a few great elms
overhead, and with large old houses and grass-banks opposite.
There is so little snow that the outlook in the depth of winter
is often merely that of a paler and leafless summer, and a soft,
springlike sky almost always spreads above. Past the window
streams an endless sunny panorama (for the house fronts the chief
thoroughfare between country and town),--relics of summer
equipages in faded grandeur; great, fragrant hay-carts; vast
moving mounds of golden straw; loads of crimson onions; heaps of
pale green cabbages; piles of gray tree-prunings, looking as if
the patrician trees were sending their superfluous wealth of
branches to enrich the impoverished orchards of the Poor Farm;
wagons of sea-weed just from the beach, with bright, moist hues,
and dripping with sea-water and sea-memories, each weed an
argosy, bearing its own wild histories. At this season, the very
houses move, and roll slowly by, looking round for more lucrative
quarters next season. Never have I seen real estate made so
transportable as in Oldport. The purchaser, after finishing and
furnishing to his fancy, puts his name on the door, and on the
fence a large white placard inscribed "For sale". Then his
household arrangements are complete, and he can sit down to enjoy
himself.
By a side-glance from our window, one may look down an ancient
street, which in some early epoch of the world's freshness
received the name of Spring Street. A certain lively lady,
addicted to daring Scriptural interpretations, thinks that there
is some mistake in the current versions of Genesis, and that it
was Spring Street which was created in the beginning, and the
heavens and earth at some subsequent period. There are houses in
Spring Street, and there is a confectioner's shop; but it is not
often that a sound comes across its rugged pavements, save
perchance (in summer) the drone of an ancient hand-organ, such as
might have been devised by Adam to console his Eve when Paradise
was lost. Yet of late the desecrating hammer and the ear-piercing
saw have entered that haunt of ancient peace. May it be long ere
any such invasion reaches those strange little wharves in the
lower town, full of small, black, gambrel-roofed houses, with
projecting eaves that might almost serve for piazzas. It is
possible for an unpainted wooden building to assume, in this
climate, a more time-worn aspect than that of any stone; and on
these wharves everything is so old, and yet so stunted, you might
fancy that the houses had been sent down there to play during
their childhood, and that nobody had ever remembered to fetch
them back.
The ancient aspect of things around us, joined with the softening
influences of the Gulf Stream, imparts an air of chronic languor
to the special types of society which here prevail in
winter,--as, for instance, people of leisure, trades-people
living on their summer's gains, and, finally, fishermen. Those
who pursue this last laborious calling are always lazy to the
eye, for they are on shore only in lazy moments. They work by
night or at early dawn, and by day they perhaps lie about on the
rocks, or sit upon one heel beside a fish-house door. I knew a
missionary who resigned his post at the Isles of Shoals because
it was impossible to keep the Sunday worshippers from lying at
full length on the seats. Our boatmen have the same habit, and
there is a certain dreaminess about them, in whatever posture.
Indeed, they remind one quite closely of the German boatman in
Uhland, who carried his reveries so far as to accept three fees
from one passenger.
But the truth is, that in Oldport we all incline to the attitude
of repose. Now and then a man comes here, from farther east, with
the New England fever in his blood, and with a pestilent desire
to do something. You hear of him, presently, proposing that the
Town Hall should be repainted. Opposition would require too much
effort, and the thing is done. But the Gulf Stream soon takes its
revenge on the intruder, and gradually repaints him also, with
its own soft and mellow tints. In a few years he would no more
bestir himself to fight for a change than to fight against it.
It makes us smile a little, therefore, to observe that universal
delusion among the summer visitors, that we spend all winter in
active preparations for next season. Not so; we all devote it
solely to meditations on the season past. I observe that nobody
in Oldport ever believes in any coming summer. Perhaps the tide
is turned, we think, and people will go somewhere else. You do
not find us altering our houses in December, or building out new
piazzas even in March. We wait till the people have actually come
to occupy them. The preparation for visitors is made after the
visitors have arrived. This may not be the way in which things
are done in what are called "smart business places." But it is
our way in Oldport.
It is another delusion to suppose that we are bored by this long
epoch of inactivity. Not at all; we enjoy it. If you enter a shop
in winter, you will find everybody rejoiced to see you--as a
friend; but if it turns out that you have come as a customer,
people will look a little disappointed. It is rather
inconsiderate of you to make such demands out of season. Winter
is not exactly the time for that sort of thing. It seems rather
to violate the conditions of the truce. Could you not postpone
the affair till next July? Every country has its customs; I
observe that in some places, New York for instance, the
shopkeepers seem rather to enjoy a "field-day" when the sun and
the customers are out. In Oldport, on the contrary, men's spirits
droop at such times, and they go through their business sadly.
They force themselves to it during the summer, perhaps,--for one
must make some sacrifices,--but in winter it is inappropriate as
strawberries and cream.
The same spirit of repose pervades the streets. Nobody ever looks
in a hurry, or as if an hour's delay would affect the thing in
hand. The nearest approach to a mob is when some stranger,
thinking himself late for the train (as if the thing were
possible), is tempted to run a few steps along the sidewalk. On
such an occasion I have seen doors open, and heads thrust out.
But ordinarily even the physicians drive slowly, as if they
wished to disguise their profession, or to soothe the nerves of
some patient who may be gazing from a window.
Yet they are not to be censured, since Death, their antagonist,
here drives slowly too. The number of the aged among us is
surprising, and explains some phenomena otherwise strange. You
will notice, for instance, that there are no posts before the
houses in Oldport to which horses may be tied. Fashionable
visitors might infer that every horse is supposed to be attended
by a groom. Yet the tradition is, that there were once as many
posts here as elsewhere, but that they were removed to get rid of
the multitude of old men who leaned all day against them. It
obstructed the passing. And these aged citizens, while permitted
to linger at their posts, were gossiping about men still older,
in earthly or heavenly habitations, and the sensation of
longevity went on accumulating indefinitely in their talk. Their
very disputes had a flavor of antiquity, and involved the
reputation of female relatives to the third or fourth generation.
An old fisherman testified in our Police Court, the other day, in
narrating the progress of a street quarrel; "Then I called him
'Polly Garter,'--that's his grandmother; and he called me 'Susy
Reynolds,'--that's my aunt that's dead and gone."
In towns like this, from which the young men mostly migrate, the
work of life devolves upon the venerable and the very young. When
I first came to Oldport, it appeared to me that every institution
was conducted by a boy and his grandfather. This seemed the case,
for instance, with the bank that consented to assume the slender
responsibility of my deposits. It was further to be observed,
that, if the elder official was absent for a day, the boy carried
on the proceedings unaided; while if the boy also wished to amuse
himself elsewhere, a worthy neighbor from across the way came in
to fill the places of both. Seeing this, I retained my small hold
upon the concern with fresh tenacity; for who knew but some day,
when the directors also had gone on a picnic, the senior
depositor might take his turn at the helm? It may savor of
self-confidence, but it has always seemed to me, that, with one
day's control of a bank, even in these degenerate times,
something might be done which would quite astonish the
stockholders.
Longer acquaintance has, however, revealed the fact, that these
Oldport institutions stand out as models of strict discipline
beside their suburban compeers. A friend of mine declares that he
went lately into a country bank, nearby, and found no one on
duty. Being of opinion that there should always be someone behind
the counter of a bank, he went there himself. Wishing to be
informed as to the resources of his establishment, he explored
desks and vaults, found a good deal of paper of different kinds,
and some rich veins of copper, but no cashier. Going to the door
again in some anxiety, he encountered a casual school-boy, who
kindly told him that he did not know where the financial officer
might be at the precise moment of inquiry, but that half an hour
before he was on the wharf, fishing.
Death comes to the aged at last, however, even in Oldport. We
have lately lost, for instance, that patient old postman,
serenest among our human antiquities, whose deliberate tread
might have imparted a tone of repose to Broadway, could any
imagination have transferred him thither. Through him the
correspondence of other days came softened of all immediate
solicitude. Ere it reached you, friends had died or recovered,
debtors had repented, creditors grown kind, or your children had
paid your debts. Perils had passed, hopes were chastened, and the
most eager expectant took calmly the missive from that
tranquillizing hand. Meeting his friends and clients with a step
so slow that it did not even stop rapidly, he, like Tennyson's
Mariana, slowly
"From his bosom drew
Old letters."
But a summons came at last, not to be postponed even by him. One
day he delivered his mail as usual, with no undue precipitation;
on the next, the blameless soul was himself taken and forwarded
on some celestial route.
Irreparable would have seemed his loss, did there not still
linger among us certain types of human antiquity that might seem
to disprove the fabled youth of America. One veteran I daily
meet, of uncertain age, perhaps, but with at least that air of
brevet antiquity which long years of unruffled indolence can
give. He looks as if he had spent at least half a lifetime on the
sunny slope of some beach, and the other half in leaning upon his
elbows at the window of some sailor boarding-house. He is hale
and broad, with a head sunk between two strong shoulders; his
beard falls like snow upon his breast, longer and longer each
year, while his slumberous thoughts seem to move slowly enough to
watch it as it grows. I always fancy that these meditations have
drifted far astern of the times, but are following after, in
patient hopelessness, as a dog swims behind a boat. What knows he
of the President's Message? He has just overtaken some remarkable
catch of mackerel in the year thirty-eight. His hands lie buried
fathom-deep in his pockets, as if part of his brain lay there to
be rummaged; and he sucks at his old pipe as if his head, like
other venerable hulks, must be smoked out at intervals. His walk
is that of a sloth, one foot dragging heavily behind the other. I
meet him as I go to the post-office, and on returning, twenty
minutes later, I pass him again, a little farther advanced. All
the children accost him, and I have seen him stop--no great
retardation indeed--to fondle in his arms a puppy or a kitten.
Yet he is liable to excitement, in his way; for once, in some
high debate, wherein he assisted as listener, when one old man on
a wharf was doubting the assertion of another old man about a
certain equinoctial gale, I saw my friend draw his right hand
slowly and painfully from his pocket, and let it fall by his
side. It was really one of the most emphatic gesticulations I
ever saw, and tended obviously to quell the rising discord. It
was as if the herald at a tournament had dropped his truncheon,
and the fray must end.
Women's faces are apt to take from old age a finer touch than
those of men, and poverty does not interfere with this, where
there is no actual exposure to the elements. From the windows of
these old houses there often look forth delicate, faded
countenances, to which belongs an air of unmistakable refinement.
Nowhere in America, I fancy, does one see such counterparts of
the reduced gentlewoman of England,--as described, for instance,
in "Cranford,"-- quiet maiden ladies of seventy, with perhaps a
tradition of beauty and bellehood, and still wearing always a bit
of blue ribbon on their once golden curls,--this headdress being
still carefully arranged, each day, by some handmaiden of sixty,
so long a house-mate as to seem a sister, though some faint
suggestion of wages and subordination may be still preserved.
Among these ladies, as in "Cranford," there is a dignified
reticence in respect to money-matters, and a courteous blindness
to the small economies practised by each other. It is not held
good breeding, when they meet in a shop of a morning, for one to
seem to notice what another buys.
These ancient ladies have coats of arms upon their walls,
hereditary damasks among their scanty wardrobes, store of
domestic traditions in their brains, and a whole Court Guide of
high-sounding names at their fingers' ends. They can tell you of
the supposed sister of an English queen, who married an American
officer and dwelt in Oldport; of the Scotch Lady Janet, who
eloped with her tutor, and here lived in poverty, paying her
washerwoman with costly lace from her trunks; of the Oldport dame
who escaped from France at the opening of the Revolution, was
captured by pirates on her voyage to America, then retaken by a
privateer and carried into Boston, where she took refuge in John
Hancock's house. They can describe to you the Malbone Gardens,
and, as the night wanes and the embers fade, can give the tale of
the Phantom of Rough Point. Gliding farther and farther into the
past, they revert to the brilliant historic period of Oldport,
the successive English and French occupations during our
Revolution,and show you gallant inscriptions in honor of their
grandmothers, written on the window-panes by the diamond rings of
the foreign officers.
The newer strata of Oldport society are formed chiefly by
importation, and have the one advantage of a variety of origin
which puts provincialism out of the question. The mild winter
climate and the supposed cheapness of living draw scattered
families from the various Atlantic cities; and, coming from such
different sources, these visitors leave some exclusiveness
behind. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, are doubtless
good things to have in one's house, but are cumbrous to travel
with. Meeting here on central ground, partial aristocracies tend
to neutralize each other. A Boston family comes, bristling with
genealogies, and making the most of its little all of two
centuries. Another arrives from Philadelphia, equally fortified
in local heraldries unknown in Boston.
A third from New York brings a briefer pedigree, but more gilded.
Their claims are incompatible; but there is no common standard,
and so neither can have precedence. Since no human memory can
retain the great-grandmothers of three cities, we are practically
as well off as if we had no great-grandmothers at all.
But in Oldport, as elsewhere, the spice of conversation is apt to
be in inverse ratio to family tree and income-tax, and one can
hear better repartees among the boat-builders' shops on Long
Wharf than among those who have made the grand tour. All the
world over, one is occasionally reminded of the French officer's
verdict on the garrison town where he was quartered, that the
good society was no better than the good society anywhere else,
but the bad society was capital. I like, for instance, to watch
the shoals of fishermen that throng our streets in the early
spring, inappropriate as porpoises on land, or as Scott's pirates
in peaceful Kirkwall,--unwieldy, bearded creatures in oil-skin
suits,--men who have never before seen a basket-wagon or a
liveried groom and, whose first comments on the daintinesses of
fashion are far more racy than anything which fashion can say for
itself.
The life of our own fishermen and pilots remains active, in its
way, all winter; and coasting vessels come and go in the open
harbor every day. The only schooner that is not so employed is,
to my eye, more attractive than any of them; it is our sole
winter guest, this year, of all the graceful flotilla of yachts
that helped to make our summer moonlights so charming. While
Europe seems in such ecstasy over the ocean yacht-race, there
lies at anchor, stripped and dismantled, a vessel which was
excluded from the match, it is said, simply because neither of
the three competitors would have had a chance against her. I like
to look across the harbor at the graceful proportions of this
uncrowned victor in the race she never ran; and to my eye her
laurels are the most attractive. She seems a fit emblem of the
genius that waits, while talent merely wins. "Let me know," said
that fine, but unappreciated thinker, Brownlee Brown,--"let me
know what chances a man has passed in contempt; not what he has
made, but what he has refused to make, reserving himself for
higher ends."
All out-door work in winter has a cheerful look, from the triumph
of caloric it implies; but I know none in which man seems to
revert more to the lower modes of being than in searching for
seaclams. One may sometimes observe a dozen men employed in this
way, on one of our beaches, while the cold wind blows keenly off
shore, and the spray drifts back like snow over the green and
sluggish surge. The men pace in and out with the wave, going
steadily to and fro like a pendulum, ankle-deep in the chilly
brine, their steps quickened by hope or slackening with despair.
Where the maidens and children sport and shout in summer, there
in winter these heavy figures succeed. To them the lovely crest
of the emerald billow is but a chariot for clams, and is
valueless if it comes in empty. Really, the position of the clam
is the more dignified, since he moves only with the wave, and the
immortal being in fish-boots wades for him.
The harbor and the beach are thus occupied in winter; but one may
walk for many a mile along the cliffs, and see nothing human but
a few gardeners, spreading green and white sea-weed as manure
upon the lawns. The mercury rarely drops to zero here, and there
is little snow; but a new-fallen drift has just the same virgin
beauty as farther inland, and when one suddenly comes in view of
the sea beyond it, there is a sensation of summer softness. The
water is not then deep blue, but pale, with opaline reflections.
Vessels in the far horizon have the same delicate tint, as if
woven of the same liquid material. A single wave lifts itself
languidly above a reef,--a white-breasted loon floats near the
shore,--the sea breaks in long, indolent curves,--the distant
islands swim in a vague mirage. Along the cliffs hang great
organ-pipes of ice, distilling showers of drops that glitter in
the noonday sun, while the barer rocks send up a perpetual steam,
giving to the eye a sense of warmth, and suggesting the comforts
of fire. Beneath, the low tide reveals long stretches of
golden-brown sea-weed, caressed by the lapping wave.
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