he tells of his school-days, when necessity taught his hand the cunning
to make his own pens, slate-pencils, and ink-wells. “And they were a
very good sort, too,” he adds. “Those were home-made days. I remember my
homespun shirts, made of our own flax, yellow at first and as good as
ever hair-shirt could have been in the way of scratching penance. All my
playthings were home-made. How well I remember my trout-lines of braided
horsehair, and the sawmill in the brook that actually cut up the
turnips, apples, and cucumbers that I proudly fed it.”
“These, too, are home-made days of the best sort,” we think as we look
about the rustic porch and chairs made of silvery birch, and at the
silver-haired seer, surrounded by his grandchildren and the friends who
gather about him with the happy feeling of being most entirely at home.
“You like my chairs with the bark on?” he says. “It’s a sort of hobby of
mine to see how the natural forks and crooks and elbows which I discover
in the saplings and tree-boles can be coaxed into serving my turn about
the house, and I make it a point to use them as nearly as possible as
they grow.”
We sit on the porch at his feet, watching the chipmunks frisk along the
fences and the woodchucks creep furtively out of their holes. We do not
speak for several long minutes, because we want to taste the quiet life
he loves in the heart of the blue hills. We fancy that we can hear in
the twitter of the tree-tops a clearly understood mingling of familiar
voices, and that we feel in our hearts an answering echo that proves us
truly akin to the creatures in feathers and fur.
“Home sights and sounds are best of all,” says our friend, as he gazes
across at the purple shadows on Old Clump. “The sublime beauty of the
Yosemite touched me with wonder and awe, but when I heard the robin’s
note it touched my heart. Bright Angel Creek in the Grand Cañon found
its way into the innermost recesses of my consciousness in the moment
when it reminded me of the trout-stream at home.”
There is another pause, in which the silver-clear notes of the
vesper-sparrow come to us with their “Peace, good will and good night.”
“I think I am something like a turtle in the way I love to poke about in
narrow fields,” he adds whimsically; “but why should I rush hither and
yon to see things when I can see constellations from my own door-step?”
And so it is indeed true that the Seer of Woodchuck Lodge can still find
in a ramble among his own hills the land of wonder and beauty which he
found as a boy when he followed the flash of the unknown bird, and in
the glowing twilight of his years, with eyes that look into the heart
and meaning of things, can, from his door-step, trace constellations
undreamed of by day.
THE DEEP-SEA DOCTOR: WILFRED GRENFELL
As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry, “All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more,
Now, than flesh helps soul!”
BROWNING.
When people meet Dr. Grenfell, the good doctor who braves the storms of
the most dangerous of all sea-coasts and endures the hardships of arctic
winters to care for the lonely fisherfolk of Labrador, they often ask,
with pitying wonder:
“How do you manage it, Doctor, day in and day out through all the long
months? It seems too much for any man to sacrifice himself as you do.”
“Don’t think for a moment that I’m a martyr,” replies Dr. Grenfell, a
bit impatiently, “Why, I have a jolly good time of it! There’s nothing
like a really good scrimmage to make a fellow sure that he’s alive, and
glad of it. I learned that in my football days, and Labrador gives even
better chances to know the joy of winning out in a tingling good
tussle.”
Dr. Grenfell’s face, with the warm color glowing through the tan, his
clear, steady eyes, and erect, vigorous form, all testify to his keen
zest in the adventure of life. Ever since he could remember, he had, he
told us, been in love with the thrill of strenuous action. When a small
boy, he looked at the tiger-skin and other trophies of the hunt which
his soldier uncles had sent from India, and dreamed of the time when he
should learn the ways of the jungle at first hand.
He comes of a race of strong men. One uncle was a general who bore
himself with distinguished gallantry in the Indian Mutiny at Lucknow
when the little garrison of seventeen hundred men held the city for
twelve weeks against a besieging force ten times as great. One of his
father’s ancestors was Sir Richard Grenville, the hero of the _Revenge_,
who, desperately struggling to save his wounded men, fought with his one
ship against the whole Spanish fleet of fifty-three. Perhaps you
remember Tennyson’s thrilling lines:
And the stately Spanish men to their flag-ship bore him then,
Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,
And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;
[Illustration: Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell]
But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:
“I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;
I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do;
With a joyful spirit I, Sir Richard Grenville, die!”
How these lines sang in his memory! Is it any wonder that the lad who
heard this story as one among many thrilling tales of his own people
should have felt that life was a splendid adventure?
As a boy in his home at Parkgate, near Chester, England, he was early
accustomed to strenuous days in the open. He knew the stretches of
sand-banks,--the famous “Sands of Dee,”--with their deep, intersecting
“gutters” where many curlews, mallards, and other water-birds sought
hiding. In his rocking home-made boat he explored from end to end the
estuary into which the River Dee flowed, now and again hailing a
fishing-smack for a tow home, if evening fell too soon, and sharing with
the crew their supper of boiled shrimps. He seemed to know as by
instinct the moods of the tides and storm-vexed waves, which little
boats must learn to watch and circumvent. He became a lover, also, of
wild nature--birds, animals, and plants--and of simple, vigorous men
who lived rough, wholesome lives in the open.
Though he went from the boys’ school at Parkgate to Marlborough College,
and later to Oxford, he had at this time no hint of the splendid
adventures that life offers in the realm of mental and spiritual
activities. Rugby football, in which he did his share to uphold the
credit of the university, certainly made the most vital part of this
chapter of his life. It was not until he took up the study of medicine
at the London Hospital that he began to appreciate the value of
knowledge “because it enables one to do things.”
There was one day of this study-time in London that made a change in the
young doctor’s whole life. Partly out of curiosity, he followed a crowd
in the poorer part of the city, into a large tent, where a religious
meeting was being held. In a moment he came to realize that his religion
had been just a matter of believing as he was taught, of conducting
himself as did those about him, and of going to church on Sunday. It
seemed that here, however, were men to whom religion was as real and
practical a thing as the rudder is to a boat. All at once he saw what
it would mean to have a strong guiding power in one’s life.
His mind seemed wonderfully set free. There were no longer conflicting
aims, ideals, uncertainties, and misgivings. There was one purpose, one
desire--to enter “the service that is perfect freedom,” the service of
the King of Kings. Life was indeed a glorious adventure, whose meaning
was plain and whose end sure.
How he enjoyed his class of unruly boys from the slums! Most people
would have considered them hopeless “toughs.” He saw that they were just
active boys, eager for life, who had been made what they were by
unwholesome surroundings. “All they need is to get hold of the rudder
and to feel the breath of healthy living in their faces,” he said. He
fitted up one of his rooms with gymnasium material and taught the boys
to box. He took them for outings into the country. When he saw the way
they responded to this little chance for happy activity, he became one
of the founders of the Lads’ Brigades and Lads’ Camps, which have done
the same sort of good in England that the Boy Scouts organization has
done in this country.
When he completed his medical course, the young doctor looked about for
a field that would give chance for adventure and for service where a
physician was really needed.
“I feel there is something for me besides hanging out my sign in a city
where there are already doctors and to spare,” he said.
“Why don’t you see what can be done with a hospital-ship among the North
Sea fishermen?” said Sir Frederick Treves, who was a great surgeon and a
master mariner as well.
When Dr. Grenfell heard about how sick and injured men suffered for lack
of care when on their long fishing-expeditions, he decided to fall in
with this suggestion. He joined the staff of the Mission to Deep-sea
Fishermen, and fitted out the first hospital-ship to the North Sea
fisheries, which cruised about from the Bay of Biscay to Iceland, giving
medical aid where it was often desperately needed.
When this work was well established, and other volunteers offered to
take it up, Dr. Grenfell sought a new world of adventure. Hearing of
the forlorn condition of the English-speaking settlers and natives on
the remote shores of wind-swept Labrador, he resolved to fit out a
hospital-ship and bring them what help he could. So began in 1892 Dr.
Grenfell’s great work with his schooner _Albert_, in which he cruised
about for three months and ministered to nine hundred patients, who, but
for him, would have had no intelligent care.
Can you picture Labrador as something more than a pink patch on the cold
part of the map? That strip of coast northwest of Newfoundland is a land
of sheer cliffs broken by deep fiords, like much of Norway. Rocky
islands and hidden reefs make the shores dangerous to ships in the
terrific gales that are of frequent occurrence. But this forbidding,
wreck-strewn land of wild, jutting crags has a weird beauty of its own.
Picture it in winter when the deep snow has effaced all inequalities of
surface and the dark spruces alone stand out against the gleaming
whiteness. The fiords and streams are bound in an icy silence which
holds the sea itself in thrall. Think of the colors of the moonlight on
the ice, and the flaming splendor of the northern lights. Then picture
it when summer has unloosed the land from the frozen spell. Mosses,
brilliant lichens, and bright berries cover the rocky ground, the
evergreens stand in unrivaled freshness, and gleaming trout and salmon
dart out of the water, where great ice-bergs go floating by like monster
fragments of the crystal city of the frost giants, borne along now by
the arctic current to tell the world about the victory of the sun over
the powers of cold in the far North.
When Dr. Grenfell sailed about in the _Albert_ that first summer, the
people thought he was some strange, big-hearted madman, who bore a
charmed life. He seemed to know nothing and care nothing about foamy
reefs, unfamiliar tides and currents, and treacherous winds. When it was
impossible to put out in the schooner, he went in a whale-boat, which
was worn out--honorably discharged from service--after a single season.
The people who guarded the lives of their water-craft with jealous care
shook their heads. Truly, the man must be mad. His boat was capsized,
swamped, blown on the rocks, and once driven out to sea by a gale that
terrified the crew of the solidly built mailboat. This time he was
reported lost, but after a few days he appeared in the harbor of St.
John’s, face aglow, and eyes fairly snapping with the zest of the
conflict.
“Sure, the Lord must kape an eye on that man,” said an old skipper,
devoutly.
It was often said of a gale on the Labrador coast, “That’s a wind
that’ll bring Grenfell.” The doctor, impatient of delays, and feeling
the same exhilaration in a good stiff breeze that a lover of horses
feels in managing a spirited thoroughbred, never failed to make use of a
wind that might help send him on his way.
What sort of people are these to whom Dr. Grenfell ministers? They are,
as you might think, simple, hardy men, in whom ceaseless struggle
against bleak conditions of life has developed strength of character and
capacity to endure. Besides the scattered groups of Eskimos in the
north, who live by hunting seal and walrus, and the Indians who roam the
interior in search of furs, there are some seven or eight thousand
English-speaking inhabitants widely scattered along the coast. In summer
as many as thirty thousand fishermen are drawn from Newfoundland and
Nova Scotia to share in the profit of the cod-and salmon-fisheries. All
of these people were practically without medical care before Dr.
Grenfell came. Can you imagine what this meant? This is the story of one
fisherman in his own words:
“I had a poisoned finger. It rose up and got very bad. I did not know
what to do, so I took a passage on a schooner and went to Halifax. It
was nine months before I was able to get back, as there was no boat
going back before the winter. It cost me seventy-five dollars, and my
hand was the same as useless, as it was so long before it was treated.”
Another told of having to wait nine days after “shooting his hand”
before he could reach a doctor; and he had made the necessary journey in
remarkably good time at that. He did not know if he ought to thank the
doctor for saving his life when it was too late to save his hand. What
can a poor fisherman do without a hand?
The chief sources of danger to these people who live by the food of the
sea are the uncertain
[Illustration: The hospital at St. Anthony, Northern Newfoundland]
winds and the treacherous ice-floes. When the ice begins to break in
spring, the swift currents move great masses along with terrific force.
Then woe betide the rash schooner that ventures into the path of these
ice-rafts! For a moment she pushes her way among the floating “pans” or
cakes of ice. All at once the terrible jam comes. The schooner is caught
like a rat in a trap. The jaws of the ice monster never relax, while the
timbers of the vessel crack and splinter and the solid deck-beams arch
up, bow fashion, and snap like so many straws. Then, perhaps, the
pressure changes. With a sudden shift of the wind a rift comes between
the huge ice-masses, and the sea swallows its prey.
It is a strange thing that but few of the fishermen know how to swim.
“You see, we has enough o’ the water without goin’ to bother wi’ it when
we _are_ ashore,” one old skipper told the doctor in explanation.
The only means of rescue when one finds himself in the water is a line
or a pole held by friends until a boat can be brought to the scene. Many
stories might be told of the bravery of these people and their instant
willingness to serve each other. Once a girl, who saw her brother fall
through a hole in the ice, ran swiftly to the spot, while the men who
were trying to reach the place with their boat shouted to her to go
back. Stretching full length, however, on the gradually sinking ice, she
held on to her brother till the boat forced its way to them.
Perhaps the most terrible experience that has come to the brave doctor
was caused by the ice-floes. It was on Easter Sunday in 1908 when word
came to the hospital that a boy was very ill in a little village sixty
miles away. The doctor at once got his “komatik,” or dog-sledge, in
readiness and his splendid team of eight dogs, who had often carried him
through many tight places. Brin, the leader, was the one who could be
trusted to keep the trail when all signs and landmarks were covered by
snow and ice. There were also Doc, Spy, Jack, Sue, Jerry, Watch, and
Moody--each no less beloved for his own strong points and faithful
service.
It was while crossing an arm of the sea, a ten-mile run on salt-water
ice, that the accident occurred. An unusually heavy sea had left great
openings between enormous blocks or “pans” of ice a little to seaward.
It seemed, however, that the doctor could be sure of a safe passage on
an ice-bridge, that though rough, was firmly packed, while the stiff
sea-breeze was making it stronger moment by moment through driving the
floating pans toward the shore. But all at once there came a sudden
change in the wind. It began to blow from the land, and in a moment the
doctor realized that his ice-bridge had broken asunder and the portion
on which he found himself was separated by a widening chasm from the
rest. He was adrift on an ice-pan.
It all happened so quickly that he was unable to do anything but cut the
harness of the dogs to keep them from being tangled in the traces and
dragged down after the sled. He found himself soaking wet, his sledge,
with his extra clothing, gone, and only the remotest chance of being
seen from the lonely shore and rescued. If only water had separated him
from the bank, he might have tried swimming, but, for the most part,
between the floating pans was “slob ice,” that is, ice broken into tiny
bits by the grinding together of the huge masses.
Night came, and with it such intense cold that he was obliged to
sacrifice three of his dogs and clothe himself in their skins to keep
from freezing, for coat, hat, and gloves had been lost in the first
struggle to gain a place on the largest available “pan” of ice. Then,
curled up among the remaining dogs, and so, somewhat protected from the
bitter wind, he fell asleep.
When daylight came, he took off his gaily-colored shirt, which was a
relic of his football days, and, with the leg bones of the slain dogs as
a pole, constructed a flag of distress. The warmth of the sun brought
cheer; and so, even though his reason told him that there was but the
smallest chance of being seen, he stood up and waved his flag steadily
until too weary to make another move. Every time he sat down for a
moment of rest, “Doc” came and licked his face and then went to the edge
of the ice, as if to suggest it was high time to start.
At last Dr. Grenfell thought he saw the gleam of an oar. He could hardly
believe his eyes, which were, indeed, almost snow-blinded, as his dark
glasses had been lost with all his other things. Then--yes--surely there
was the keel of a boat, and a man waving to him! In a moment came the
blessed sound of a friendly voice.
Now that the struggle was over, he felt himself lifted into the boat as
in a dream. In the same way he swallowed the hot tea which they had
brought in a bottle. This is what one of the rescuers said, in telling
about it afterward:
“When we got near un, it didn’t seem like ’t was the doctor. ’E looked
so old an’ ’is face such a queer color. ’E was very solemn-like when us
took un an’ the dogs in th’ boat. Th’ first thing ’e said was how
wonderfu’ sorry ’e was o’ gettin’ into such a mess an’ givin’ we th’
trouble o’ comin’ out for un. Then ’e fretted about the b’y ’e was goin’
to see, it bein’ too late to reach un, and us to’ un ’is life was worth
more ’n the b’y, fur ’e could save others. But ’e still fretted.”
They had an exciting time of it, reaching the shore. Sometimes they had
to jump out and force the ice-pans apart; again, when the wind packed
the blocks together too close, they had to drag the boat over.
When the bank was gained at last and the doctor dressed in the warm
clothes that the fishermen wear, they got a sledge ready to take him to
the hospital, where his frozen hands and feet could be treated. There,
too, the next day the sick boy was brought, and his life saved.
Afterward, in telling of his experience, the thing which moved the
doctor most was the sacrifice of his dogs. In his hallway a bronze
tablet was placed with this inscription:
TO THE MEMORY OF
THREE NOBLE DOGS
MOODY
WATCH
SPY
WHOSE LIVES WERE GIVEN
FOR MINE ON THE ICE
APRIL 21ST, 1908
WILFRED GRENFELL
In his old home in England his brother put up a similar tablet, adding
these words, “Not one of them is forgotten before your Father which is
in heaven.”
Besides caring for the people himself, Dr. Grenfell won the interest of
other workers--doctors, nurses, and teachers. Through his efforts,
hospitals, schools, and orphan-asylums have been built. Of all the
problems, however, with which this large-hearted, practical friend of
the deep-sea fishermen has had to deal in his Labrador work, perhaps
the chief was that of the dire poverty of the people. It seemed idle to
try to cure men of ills which were the direct result of conditions under
which they lived.
When the doctor began his work in 1892 he found that the
poverty-stricken people were practically at the mercy of unprincipled,
scheming storekeepers who charged two or three prices for flour, salt,
and other necessaries of life. The men, as a result, were always in
debt, mortgaging their next summer’s catch of fish long before the
winter was over. To cure this evil, Grenfell opened coöperative stores,
run solely for the benefit of the fishermen, and established industries
that would give a chance of employment during the cold months. A grant
of timberland was obtained from the government and a lumber-mill opened.
A schooner-building yard, and a cooperage for making kegs and barrels to
hold the fish exported, were next installed.
This made it possible to gather together the people, who were formerly
widely scattered because dependent on food gained through hunting and
trapping. This made it possible, too, to carry out plans for general
improvement--schools for the children and some social life. Two small
jails, no longer needed in this capacity, were converted into clubs,
with libraries and games. Realizing the general need for healthful
recreation, the doctor introduced rubber footballs, which might be used
in the snow. The supply of imported articles could not keep pace with
the demand, however. All along the coast, young and old joined in the
game. Even the Eskimo women, with wee babies in their hoods, played with
their brown-faced boys and girls, using sealskin balls stuffed with dry
grass.
Knowing that Labrador can never hope to do much in agriculture, as even
the cabbages and potatoes frequently suffer through summer frosts, the
doctor tried to add to the resources of the country by introducing a
herd of reindeer from Lapland, together with three families of Lapps to
teach the people how to care for them. Reindeer milk is rich and makes
good cheese. Moreover, the supply of meat and leather they provide is
helping to make up for the falling-off in the number of seals, due to
unrestricted hunting. The transportation afforded by the reindeer is
also important in a land where rapid transit consists of dog-sledges.
Dr. Grenfell has himself financed his various schemes, using, in
addition to gifts from those whom he can interest, the entire income
gained from his books and lectures. He keeps nothing for himself but the
small salary as mission doctor to pay actual living expenses. All of the
industrial enterprises--coöperative stores, sawmills, reindeer,
fox-farms, are deeded to the Deep-Sea Mission, and become its property
as soon as they begin to be profitable.
Would you like to spend a day with Dr. Grenfell in summer, when he
cruises about in his hospital-ship three or four thousand miles back and
forth, from St. John’s all along the Labrador coast? You would see what
a wonderful pilot the doctor is as he faces the perils of hidden reefs,
icebergs, fogs, and storms. You would see that he can doctor his ship,
should it leak or the propeller go lame, as well as the numbers of
people who come to him with every sort of ill from aching teeth to
broken bones.