Produced by Steve Mattern
[Illustration: North Street, Plymouth]
PILGRIM TRAILS
A PLYMOUTH-TO-PROVINCETOWN SKETCHBOOK
BY FRANCES LESTER WARNER
With Drawings By E. SCOTT WHITE
The ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
BOSTON
Copyright, 1921, by
The Atlantic Monthly Press
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I Plymouth Towne
II Alden and Standish
III Winslow's "Great Lot"
IV The Cape
ILLUSTRATIONS
North Street, Plymouth
Plymouth Harbor
Site of First House, Leyden Street
"Nautical House"
Old Plymouth Doorway
Burial Hill
John Alden's House, Duxbury (1653)
The Myles Standish Monument
The Standish House, Duxbury (1666)
The Winslow House, Marshfield (1699)
"The Ark"
Old Fish Wharf, Cape Cod
The Pilgrim Monument, Provincetown
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
Clamshell 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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 Massasoit 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, embarrassing. 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 document 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.
[Illustration: "Nautical House"]
Another kind of house that stirs our "sense of the past" is the sort
that really does seem old on the outside. A little way down Sandwich
Street is the Howland House, built in 1666, recently repaired and opened
to visitors. If we are looking for a house that actually did come under
the eye of the Pilgrims, this is one. A plain gable cottage, now painted
the dull red that we associate with "little-red-schoolhouse" coloring,
it stands a little back from the busy street, and the visitor goes in
through a turnstile at the gate. Inside, all sorts of old furniture,
including spinning-wheel and carriage-top bed, make it look as much as
possible as if it were still inhabited. Other houses that were built in
the sixteen hundreds, especially the Holmes House, also repay the
trouble of searching them out. And when we find them, they look as if
they had been built in the spirit of Governor Bradford's specifications
about the colony's purpose in founding the Plymouth Plantation: "Not out
of any newfanglednes or other such like giddie humor, by which men are
oftentimes transported to their great hurt and danger, but for sundrie
weightie & solid reasons." There is not much "giddie humor" about the
old beams and rafters that have borne the solid weight of two hundred
and fifty years.
In Plymouth there are many houses made partly of brick, with iron
S-shaped anchors bolted through their brick-work to the beam inside.
There are some of these on the side of Leyden Street near LeBaron Alley.
And on North Street, there are great Santa Claus chimneys, with small
low houses built around them, the structure of the house looking
altogether too tiny to go with the generous flues.
Best of all, perhaps, because they have plenty of space around them, are
the unpainted gambrel-roofed houses on the outskirts of the town. Now
and then you find one where the shingles that cover the house from top
to bottom have weathered a silver gray. Here and there the shingles have
curled a trifle, so that they look like the bark of a shagbark walnut
tree, in no danger of flying away with the wind, but making the house
look crusted, picturesque. And there are some gabled houses where the
long slope of the roof has sagged a little, just enough to make a place
for moss and shadows, but not enough to look fallen in.
Barbara and I did not find all these the first day, or the next. We
spent a good deal of time scouting over the moors, among the bayberry
bushes and the pointed red cedars. Now and then we came upon a cranberry
bog, hidden away behind what one geologist calls the "tumbled hills of
Plymouth."
It was Alexander who showed us the best Colonial mansion. The frame was
got out in England, and brought over in 1754, and, tradition says, was
put upside down. It belonged to the Winslows--not the Edward Winslow who
wrote "Good News From New England" in 1624, but a later branch of the
family. The Winslow family seems to have prospered steadily in the early
days--one of the cases where, in the elder Winslow's own words,
"religion and profit jump together, which is rare."
"I want to show you the Winslow house," said Alexander; "the house where
Emerson was married."
"I think we passed it on the corner of North and Winslow," said I.
"Isn't it the fine square one, painted yellow and white, with the
carving of fruit around the doorways?"
"That's it," admitted Alexander placidly, "but you don't know that house
just by going past it on the street."
He led us down North Street to Winslow, and found the point where we
could get the best view.
[Illustration: Old Plymouth Doorway]
"Now," said he when he had planted us to his satisfaction, "notice the
doorway, with those two immense linden-trees shading the path. The
original shoots of the Winslow linden-trees were brought to this country
in a raisin-box. Up on the front of the house, over the upstairs window,
you see the carving of the British Lion and Unicorn. This branch of the
Winslows in Revolutionary days remained Tories and were very loyal to
the King; and after the war their property went into other hands. But
their Lion and Unicorn are as good as ever."
"Is it really true," asked Barbara, "that the house is upside down?"
"Well," said Alexander, "the legend is very old. And the second-story
rooms are a great deal higher-studded than the rooms downstairs. There's
one door upstairs that looks as if it had been made for a giant. But
they say that some of the English builders used to plan a house that
way."
Whether the house is upside down or not, one thing is certain--that here
Miss Lydia Jackson was married to Emerson. Once in a while an event in
the world takes place in precisely the perfect setting. Emerson's
marriage was one. The huge English door, almost as broad as it is tall,
with its great brass knocker and deep paneling, knows how to swing wide
open in a stately way of its own; a proper door to welcome Mr. Emerson.
And the rooms inside, with their high white paneling and delicate
beading around the top, have dignity in every line. In every room there
is a fireplace, with tiles. In the room where Emerson was married, the
tiles around the fireplace illustrate Scripture stories--the drawings
exactly in the style of the pictures in the New England Primer. Jonah
emerges from his specially constructed fish; Elijah sits under his
juniper bush; Jacob awakens from his dream. Under each picture is a
reference to the Bible, with chapter and verse; so that, if you should
fail to recognize any Bible worthy from his picture, you could look him
up.
In the hallway, the white staircase, with its mahogany rail, is deeply
paneled at the sides, and if you stand beneath the stairway where it
turns, you see still more careful paneling on the under side of each
stair. The spindles of the balustrade are white and delicately carved,
and the slender newel-post is twined with a perfectly proportioned white
spiral, like a smooth round stem of a vine, running round and round it,
and disappearing into the woodwork of the rail.
This house, with its linden trees, its traditions, its Lion and Unicorn
rampant over the sea, was the best example of old-time royalist elegance
that we saw.
* * * * *
"Are you going sketching this afternoon?" asked Barbara politely of the
artist.
"Yes, on Burial Hill," said he. "Want to come?"
"Don't you ever carry a camp-chair?" said I. For days I had been longing
to ask him that question, when I saw him starting out with no visible
sketching equipment except a leather affair, which looked like a
lawyer's brief-case, strapped over his shoulder.
"Yes, I always take a chair," said he. "It folds. It's in the leather
case."
I, who remember the days when people went sketching with an immense
French sketching-umbrella, a camp-chair, an easel, and a portfolio,
looked with respect upon the leather case.
"Before we go up to the hill," said the artist, "don't you want me to
show you the most stunning subject for a painting that I've found?"
Even Alexander rose to this. We followed our leader down past the old
Junk Shop, in among the old houses at the water-front, and as we picked
our way around the corner, the artist threw up his hands in despair.
"Oh, ye gods," we heard him say, "it's gone!"
We followed his tragic gaze out toward the harbor, expecting to find
that an ancient landmark had been razed to the ground.
"What was it?" said Barbara anxiously. "Have they moved it somewhere
else?"
"Yes," said the artist bitterly, "they've moved it somewhere else. It
was the washing that was out on that line--the colors--all the
accents--Portuguese as you can imagine--and they've _taken it in!_"
Alexander turned on his heel and left us to make our way back to Burial
Hill. He sympathizes with his brother's sorrows when fishermen go down
to their boats and change all the rigging the moment a marine sketch is
half done; but he is not quite advanced enough to grieve because
Portuguese laundry no longer flaps against the American blue.
"By the way," said the artist when we reached the Hill, "the lettering
on these stones is something remarkably fine. Pemberton identifies it
with Caslon lettering, Caslon the Elder, English typefounder in the
sixteen hundreds. I '11 show you the article when we get home."
Barbara was examining a very old stone. "Listen," said she,--
"The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable to man's tender tie."
As we made our way along the paths beside the family lots of the
Bradfords, Cottons, Harlows, LeBarons, and Howlands, we began to notice
how the wording varied with the relative age of the stones. For example,
"Edward Gray, Gent." is older style than "Josiah Cotton, Esq." And "That
Virtuous Woman, Mrs. Rebecca Turner" is of an earlier period than "Mary,
Relict of Deac. Lot Harlow."
We found one very stately epitaph to a young wife, the simplest
expression of the language of bereavement: "By this event a husband was
deprived of his best friend."
Far more elaborate is the tribute to Mrs. Lucy Hammatt, Relict of the
late Capt. Abraham Hammatt. Still clear and definite, the inscription,
deeply lettered on the face of the worn slab, records the ideals of an
exemplary life:--
Composed in suffering, in joy sedate,
Good without show, for just discernment great.
But Barbara's favorite among the epitaphs was one on the stone of a
young Southern bride:--
Phebe J. Bramhall
a Native of Virginia
and Wife of Benj. Bramhall
Possess'd of an Amiable Disposition
It suggests that our early ancestors were not impervious to Southern
charm.
On our way down the Hill, we went around to see the harbor at sunset.
Clark's Island in the distance, Captain's Hill, Manomet--we had begun to
think of these as our own landmarks.
[Illustration: Burial Hill]
"Since this is our last night at Plymouth," said Alexander that evening,
"don't you want to see the country by moonlight?"
"It's only a half-moon," said Barbara critically; but we went.
On our way, we went up to look at the town from the site of the old
Watch-Tower, on the very top of Burial Hill. We climbed the Hill this
time by the path nearest the sea. The low branches of the twisted tree
over the flight of steps made strange patterns above us against the sky.
There is one place on the summit where you can look out into the
darkness of the country, not toward the lights of town. Here you can see
only the shadows of the elm branches and the outlines of the slanting
stones. And here, I think, we found the time for the spirit of place to
be abroad. We did not see the kindly ghosts of Adoniram Judson and
Bathsheba Bradford and Captain Jabez Harlow. But we were in the midst of
something very real. All the odd phrasings of the epitaphs--the relicts
and consorts and phyticians--were hidden now, translated by the shadows.
We saw only the silhouette of the past; and it was not grim or gloomy,
but only brave. The record of antique sorrow is a quieting thing. Every
thought on this hill was thought a long time ago. The poignancy is out
of it now. And as we stand on the spot where the Pilgrims once set watch
every night for danger, we cannot help being stirred by the gray dignity
of their thoughts about the continuity of life.
We stayed only a moment. Then we went down again, pausing only to watch
the harbor lights.
Plymouth harbor is a quiet place by moonlight, and Burial Hill is a very
quiet place. Yet it gave us the most direct message we had--of spacious
thought dramatized in narrow setting, of definite achievement with
inadequate equipment, of the resourceful valiance of those early people,
and of what Governor Bradford calls "their great patience and allacritie
of spirit" in the face of life, and death.