Just at the corner where Main Street meets the High Bank Road at South
Dennis there stands a little, gray half-house that was built back in
1835 by Captain Eleazar Nickerson. Above the door there is a beautiful
fan-light window to set this little house off from others of its kind
in the village. Wisteria vines have broken their way through the porch
flooring and press around the fan light and lilacs press against the
corner of the house. It is now an empty house and a sad house and it
will never again be quite the same house without Aunt Alice. But it
will be there along the High Bank for many another year and it will be
loved again and hear laughter again because it was built to endure. And
it was built with great artistry from its exterior dentil to its fine
old panelling. It will always be “Aunt Alice’s House”.
I had just reached the door of the old white church at South Dennis
after a Sunday service when I felt a tug at my arm and turned to meet
Aunt Alice. She was small and sparkling and it was difficult to believe
that she was eightyish. She was neat as a pin and there was a twinkle
in her eyes that betrayed a sense of humor and something in the way
she held herself that spoke of great inner strength. She was full of
enthusiasm for the Yarmouth Register and she wished to volunteer her
services in any way she could be of help. So, at eighty, she became
the village correspondent for the paper, gathering the news, putting
it down in faultless English in a firm, precise hand, and prefacing it
with an appropriate bit of verse that was like a breath of springtime
in any season. The problems of other people were always of more
importance to her than her own and it was sometime before I learned
very much about her. When I did I knew that my new friend was one of
the last living members of that large and courageous group of Cape
women who had gone to sea.
Many a Cape bride followed her husband to sea, undergoing the dangers
and inconveniences of that life in preference to the lonely night on
the Cape, where she would be forever in fear of the news that she had
joined the legion of women whom the sea had made widows. Many bore
their children at sea and with a somehow pathetic zeal set about making
a home of their husband’s vessels. It was something to be with their
men, but with their best efforts at decorating, and making things snug,
the rolling vessels were a far cry from the comfortable white cottages
to which they hoped some day to retire, always within sight of the sea,
but no more to be upon it.
Much of Aunt Alice’s strength must have come from her mother who, in
1882, travelled to New York with her ten-year old daughter, Alice,
Alice’s sister Helen, and a large assortment of luggage, to board
her husband’s three-masted bark, the Obed Baxter, for a trip to the
other side of the earth. The vessel was bound for the Orient, carrying
kerosene and oil for the lamps of China and, as the vessel pitched in
the high seas of a northern February, oil fumes constantly escaped
through the hatches. This, combined with the constant lurching and
rolling of the vessel, gave all of the women a bad two weeks of
seasickness where there was no cure and no hope except to get over it,
and gain immunity. They did--and became as seaworthy as any members of
the crew.
The skipper, Aunt Alice’s father, had done everything possible to
recreate a normal existence for his family aboard the vessel. The
cabins were fixed up as nearly as possible like a Cape Cod parlor, even
to a parlor organ, which doubled for entertainment purposes during the
week, and as church organ for the regular Sunday services aboard ship.
There were rugs and easy chairs and real beds, and for the children
there was a dog and a bowl of goldfish. On a top shelf of the main
cabin stood a row of handsome crystal jars from which the children were
given a daily ration of multi-colored hard candies. Education was not
neglected, and a great store of schoolbooks had been brought aboard
from which the children, under the watchful tutelage of their mother
and father, completed their daily lessons. Each morning the Captain
conducted a short religious service and each evening there were family
readings from the Bible by the light of an oil lamp that swayed with
the vessel as she drove westward. When schoolwork and household duties
were completed, the children would wrap themselves in blankets and
watch the cold waters slip by the prow of the ship. Hungrily they would
watch for another sail upon the horizon and it would be an exciting
moment when other American vessels drew near to signal navigation news
and gossip of the home ports and of friends from the Cape.
Aunt Alice had departed New York on Washington’s Birthday and it was
over three long months before the ship sighted land. Then it was the
rather grim and forbidding bulk of Christmas Island that met their
eyes rather than the soft and familiar outlines of a Cape Cod shore.
Like many another traveller since, they must have felt that the magic
of “Christmas” was a mis-nomer. But there were other lands ahead,
all with surprises of their own. At Java Head a wild and noisy lot
of nearly-naked, native traders swarmed aboard the vessel with live
chickens and fresh fruit to sell and once the girls had conquered their
fears at the strangeness of them they were full of gratitude for the
change in bill-of-fare.
The “Obed Baxter” arrived at Shanghai on June 25, four months out
of New York. The tumult and confusions of that port would have been
startling in any case for the Cape Cod wife and her two small daughters
but it was made more trying by the fact that the Captain’s sudden
illness sent him to a hospital and left his family alone. Cape Cod spunk
showed itself then as it would be called upon to show itself on many
another occasion. Mrs. Baxter gathered her two children and secured
quarters at one of the hotels of the city. From there they visited
the hospital and found time to do some sight seeing as well. What
an experience it must have been, with the mother called upon to act
fearlessly in order to conceal her worst fears from the children! And
all in a land that was many thousands of miles from the peaceful Main
Street of South Dennis and full of strange sights, sounds and smells.
As they walked the streets a horde of beggars, chattering fearfully,
tore at their clothes and pushed against them so that it took the
greatest control not to show fear. On one occasion the first mate
became so infuriated at being jostled about that he pushed a Chinaman
backwards. The coolie fell into a boat, broke his neck and died, and
the mate was arrested and sent to prison. While awaiting trial he
contracted the dreaded cholera that raged throughout the city and died.
Now the father-Captain was ill and his First Mate dead, and the three
Cape women were more alone than ever.
At last the Captain, though obviously far from well, was released from
hospital and the family was united once more. While lying in harbor,
waiting for an outward wind, they experienced a real typhoon which
raised havoc with shipping in the harbor but fortunately did no damage
to the “Obed Baxter”. Seeking shelter from the typhoon, other American
Captains had entered the harbor. They must have looked awfully good to
the South Dennis family. There was a Mr. Thacher from Yarmouth and Mr.
Andrews of Woods Hole, (Woods Hole was only a two day buggy ride from
Dennis, after all), and with other Americans, joined by the camaraderie
of the sea, they formed an American neighborhood in the harbor of
Shanghai. There was much visiting and exchange of gossip and presents
and as the favorable wind held off there was opportunity to go again
ashore, this time with friends and under more favorable circumstances.
There was sightseeing, and souvenir hunting for Oriental whatnots that
would someday grace the little parlor mantle back home, and there were
ricksha rides for a nickel that made the once-a-year advent of the
carousel at Hyannis seem tame and expensive by comparison.
After picking up the remainder of the cargo at Hong Kong for the
homeward journey the “Obed Baxter” set sail for home. One of the
greatest volcanic eruptions of modern times had taken place in the
Java Sea which lent the sky a weird, bright orange tone so that every
day was like a perpetual sunset. The girls occupied themselves with
scooping baskets of pumice and lava from the sea which was gray for
miles with the debris of the volcano. (Aunt Alice, when last I visited
her, had a piece of this pumice at her kitchen sink and reported it
excellent for scouring pots and pans.) The “Obed Baxter” plowed through
the South Seas, through raging storms and high seas, and through the
doldrums when the ship hung silent and listless on a sea of glass. And
then, while still thousands of miles from home, real tragedy struck the
vessel with the death of the Captain.
Now the widowed mother and two small daughters faced a real test of
courage and control. The ship was under the command of the Second
Mate, who had only recently been promoted from ordinary seaman by
the Captain. He had learned his lessons well, however, and there was
nothing to do but go on. Aunt Alice’s mother stood fast on one point.
Her husband’s remains were not to be committed to the sea but they must
rest where he would have wanted to rest, on the hill at South Dennis.
An understanding crew prepared the remains as best they could and,
after a brief religious service, the flag-draped casket was secured
upon the deck for the long voyage home. Then, after nearly a year
away, “the Obed Baxter,” her flag flying at half mast for its departed
skipper, made New York. Now it was left to the mother to organize the
trip back to the Cape where she must begin a new kind of life ashore.
They had travelled across and back a limitless and hungry sea to the
other side of the earth in a small vessel that, save for the skills at
the helm, was at the will of the wind. They had encountered typhoon
and volcano, wild waves and listless calms, disease and death, and
one hundred and one moments of the terrors of the unknown. But life
went on, and you thanked your God that it had been no worse, for, in
a sea-going community, the sea had claimed so many, and brought about
such tragedy, that Cape people stood up to the buffets of life as
bravely as their stout vessels stood up to the angry seas of the world.
This was part of the strength that I had felt in Aunt Alice from our
first meeting. It was a strength that came from an abiding faith in God
and in His sense of the fitness of things--in an era when the living
was not easy, and only the strong survived.
But along with spiritual strength Aunt Alice had many another
attribute. At eighty, her one intolerance was for other people who were
so concerned with being old that they had no eyes for the wonderful
world about them, and particularly for the natural wonders of Cape Cod,
its land and its four seas. She loved lights and laughter and music,
and they were as important to her at eighty as they had been at eight,
when she would dance and sing for the amusement of her sea-faring
father. Once, when a play was produced by a local group in Liberty Hall
at South Dennis, I foolishly expressed surprise when she told me she
had attended both performances, and been among the first ones there.
“Why,” she exclaimed! “Do you think I could stay to home doing nothing
while all that excitement was going on right across the street?” But
she could never have just “done nothing”. While she washed her dishes
her mind was busy composing little verses, and when her household
chores were done she would attend to a voluminous correspondence, or
an item of news for the Yarmouth Register, or perhaps sort out her
memories of her sea voyage as she looked at the oil painting of the
“Obed Baxter” that hung in her parlor. She could reminisce about bygone
days when she attended the first class of the new High School at South
Dennis, or when she and her husband sang duets at the services in the
old white church on Main Street, but she never dwelt upon the past,
because she was too interested in what the morrow might bring.
The little house at the corner of Main Street and the High Bank at
South Dennis is empty now and lonesome and soon the signs of her not
being there to “put it to rights” will commence to show. I miss my
visits at the old house, but I shall always remember--and thankfully--a
fine friendship that gave me much to remember and an insight into the
kind of character that led Cape people to achieve greatness around the
world.