If it were ever intended that a desolate island in the deep sea should
be inhabited by one solitary family, then indeed Celia Thaxter was the
fitting daughter of such a house.
In her history of the group of islands, which she calls "Among the
Isles of Shoals," she portrays, in a prose which for beauty and wealth
of diction has few rivals, the unfolding of her own nature under
influences of sky and sea and solitude and untrammeled freedom, such
as have been almost unknown to civilized humanity in any age of the
world. She speaks also of the effect produced, as she fancied, upon
the minds of men by the eternal sound of the sea: a tendency to wear
away the edge of human thought and perception. But this was far from
being the case with regard to herself. Her eyesight was keener, her
speech more distinct, the lines of her thoughts more clearly defined,
her verse more strongly marked in its form, and the accuracy of her
memory more to be relied upon than was the case with almost any one of
her contemporaries. Her painting, too, upon porcelain possessed the
same character.
Her knowledge of the flowers, and especially of the seaweeds, with
which she decorated it, was so exact that she did not require the
originals before her vision. They were painted upon her mind's eye,
where every filament and every shade seemed to be recorded. These
green "growing things" had been the beloved companions of her
childhood, as they continued to be of her womanhood, and even to
reproduce their forms in painting was a delight to her. The written
descriptions of natural objects give her history a place among the
pages which possess a perennial existence. While White's "Selborne,"
and the pictures of Bewick, and Thoreau's "Walden," and the
"Autobiography of Richard Jefferies" endure, so long will "Among the
Isles of Shoals" hold its place with all lovers of nature. She says in
one place, "All the pictures over which I dream are set in this
framework of the sea, that sparkled and sang, or frowned and
threatened, in the ages that are gone as it does to-day."
The solitude of Celia Thaxter's childhood, which was not solitude,
surrounded as she was with the love of a father and a mother, all
tenderness, and brothers dear to her as her own life, developed in the
child strange faculties. She was five years old when the family left
Portsmouth,--old enough, given her inborn power of enjoyment of
nature, to delight in the free air and the wonderful sights around
her. She gives in her book a pretty picture of the child watching the
birds that flew against the lighthouse lantern, when they lived at
White Island. The birds would strike it with such force as to kill
themselves. "Many a May morning," she says, "have I wandered about the
rock at the foot of the tower, mourning over a little apron brimful of
sparrows, swallows, thrushes, robins, fire-winged blackbirds, many-
colored warblers and flycatchers, beautifully clothed yellow-birds,
nuthatches, catbirds, even the purple finch and scarlet tanager and
golden oriole, and many more beside,--enough to break the heart of a
small child to think of! Once a great eagle flew against the lantern
and shivered the glass."
Her father seems to have been a man of awful energy of will. Some
disappointment in his hope of a public career, it has been said,
decided him to take the step of withdrawing himself forever from the
world of the mainland, and this attitude he appears to have sustained
unflinchingly to the end. Her mother, with a heart stayed as
unflinchingly upon love and obedience, seems to have followed him
without a murmur, leaving every dear association of the past as though
it had not been. From this moment she became, not the slave, but the
queen of her affections; and when she died, in 1877, the sun appeared
to set upon her daughter's life. On the morning after Mrs. Thaxter's
sudden death, seventeen years later, a friend asked her eldest son
where his mother was, with the intent to discover if she had been well
enough to leave her room. "Oh," he replied, "her mother came in the
night and took her away." This reply showed how deeply all who were
near to Celia Thaxter were impressed with the fact that to see her
mother again was one of the deepest desires of her heart.
The development wrought in her eager character by those early days of
exceptional experience gives a new sense of what our poor humanity may
achieve, left face to face with the vast powers of nature.
In speaking of the energy of Samuel Haley, one of the early settlers
of the islands, she says he learned to live as independently as
possible of his fellow-men; "for that is one of the first things a
settler on the Isles of Shoals finds it necessary to learn." Her own
lesson was learned perfectly. The sunrise was as familiar to her eyes
as the sunset, and early and late the activity of her mind was rivaled
by the ceaseless industry of her hands. She pays a tribute to the
memory of Miss Peabody, of Newburyport, who went to Star Island in
1823 and "did wonders for the people during the three years of her
stay. She taught the school, visited the families, and on Sundays read
to such audiences as she could collect, took seven of the poor female
children to live with her at the parsonage, instructed all who would
learn in the arts of carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing,
braiding mats, etc. Truly she remembered what 'Satan finds for idle
hands to do,' and kept all her charges busy, and consequently happy.
All honor to her memory! She was a wise and faithful servant. There is
still an affectionate remembrance of her among the present
inhabitants, whose mothers she helped out of their degradation into a
better life."
If it was not in Celia Thaxter's nature to teach in this direct way
herself, she did not fail to appreciate and to stimulate excellence of
every kind in others. Appledore was too far away in winter from the
village at Star Island for any regular or frequent communication
between them. Even so late as in the month of May she records watching
a little fleet beating up for shelter under the lee of Appledore to
ride out a storm. "They were in continual peril.... It was not
pleasant to watch them as the early twilight shut down over the vast
weltering desolation of the sea, to see the slender masts waving
helplessly from one side to another.... Some of the men had wives and
children watching them from lighted windows at Star. What a fearful
night for them! They could not tell from hour to hour, through the
thick darkness, if yet the cables held; they could not see till
daybreak whether the sea had swallowed up their treasures. I wonder
the wives were not white haired when the sun rose and showed them
those little specks yet rolling in the breakers!" How clearly these
scenes were photographed on the sensitive plate of her mind! She never
forgot nor really lost sight of her island people. Her sympathy drew
them to her as if they were her own, and the little colony of
Norwegians was always especially dear to her. "How pathetic," she
says, "the gathering of women on the headlands, when out of the sky
swept the squall that sent the small boat staggering before it, and
blinded the eyes, already drowned in tears, with sudden rain that hid
sky and sea and boats from their eager gaze!"
What she was, what her sympathy was, to those people, no one can ever
quite express. The deep devotion of their service to her brothers and
to herself, through the long solitude of winter and the storm of
summer visitors, alone could testify. Such service cannot be bought:
it is the devotion born of affection and gratitude and admiration.
Speaking of one of the young women who grew up under her eye, she
often said: "What could I do in this world without Mine Burntssen? I
hope she will be with me when I die." And there indeed, at the last,
was Mine, to receive the latest word and to perform the few sad
offices.
To tell of the services Mrs. Thaxter rendered to some of the more
helpless people about her, in the dark season, when no assistance from
the mainland could be hoped for, would make a long and noble story in
itself. Her good sense made her an excellent doctor; the remedies she
understood she was always on hand to apply at the right moment.
Sometimes she was unexpectedly called to assist in the birth of a
child, when knowledge and strength she was hardly aware of seemed to
be suddenly developed. But the truth was she could do almost anything;
and only those who knew her in these humbler human relations could
understand how joyous she was in the exercise of such duties, or how
well able to perform them. Writing to Mine from the Shoals once in
March, she says: "This is the time to be here; this is what I enjoy!
To wear my old clothes every day, grub in the ground, dig dandelions
and eat them too, plant my seeds and watch them, fly on the tricycle,
row in a boat, get into my dressing-gown right after tea, and make
lovely rag rugs all the evening, and nobody to disturb us,--
_this_ is fun!" In the house and out of it she was capable of
everything. How beautiful her skill was as a dressmaker, the exquisite
lines in her own black or gray or white dresses testified to every one
who ever saw her. She never wore any other colors, nor was anything
like "trimming" ever seen about her; there were only the fine, free
outlines, and a white handkerchief folded carefully about her neck and
shoulders.
In her young days it was the same, with a difference! She was slighter
in figure then, and overflowing with laughter, the really beautiful
but noisy laughter which died away as the repose of manner of later
years fell upon her. I can remember her as I first saw her, with the
seashells which she always wore then around her neck and wrists, and a
gray poplin dress defining her lovely form. She talked simply and
fearlessly, while her keen eyes took in everything around her; she
paid the tribute of her instantaneous laughter to the wit of others,
--never too eager to speak, and never unwilling. Her sense of beauty,
not vanity, caused her to make the most of the good physical points
she possessed; therefore, although she grew old early, the same
general features of her appearance were preserved. She was almost too
well known even to strangers, in these later years at the Shoals, to
make it worth while to describe the white hair carefully put up to
preserve the shape of the head, and the small silver crescent which
she wore above her forehead; but her manner had become very quiet and
tender, more and more affectionate to her friends, and appreciative of
all men. One of those who knew her latterly wrote me: "Many of her
letters show her boundless sympathy, her keen appreciation of the best
in those whom she loved, and her wonderful growth in beauty and
roundness of character. And how delightful her enthusiasms were,--as
pure and clear as those of a child! She was utterly unlike any one in
the world, so that few people really understood her. But it seems to
me that her trials softened and mellowed her, until she became like
one of her own beautiful flowers, perfect in her full development;
then in a night the petals fell, and she was gone."
The capabilities which were developed in her by the necessities of the
situation, during her life at the Shoals in winter, were more various
and remarkable than can be fitly told. The glimpses which we get in
her letters of the many occupations show what energy she brought to
bear upon the difficulties of the place.
In "Among the Isles of Shoals" she says: "After winter has fairly set
in, the lonely dwellers at the Isles of Shoals find life quite as much
as they can manage, being so entirely thrown upon their own resources
that it requires all the philosophy at their disposal to answer the
demand.... One goes to sleep in the muffled roar of the storm, and
wakes to find it still raging with senseless fury.... The weather
becomes of the first importance to the dwellers on the rock; the
changes of the sky and sea, the flitting of the coasters to and fro,
the visits of the sea-fowl, sunrise and sunset, the changing moon, the
northern lights, the constellations that wheel in splendor through the
winter night,--all are noted with a love and careful scrutiny that is
seldom given by people living in populous places.... For these things
make our world: there are no lectures, operas, concerts, theatres, no
music of any kind, except what the waves may whisper in rarely gentle
moods; no galleries of wonders like the Natural History rooms, in
which it is so fascinating to wander; no streets, shops, carriages; no
postman, no neighbors, not a door-bell within the compass of the
place!... The best balanced human mind is prone to lose its elasticity
and stagnate, in this isolation. One learns immediately the value of
work to keep one's wits clear, cheerful, and steady; just as much real
work of the body as it can bear without weariness being always
beneficent, but here indispensable.... No one can dream what a charm
there is in taking care of pets, singing birds, plants, etc., with
such advantages of solitude; how every leaf and bud and flower is
pored over, and admired, and loved! A whole conservatory, flushed with
azaleas and brilliant with forests of camellias and every precious
exotic that blooms, could not impart so much delight as I have known a
single rose to give, unfolding in the bleak bitterness of a day in
February, when this side of the planet seemed to have arrived at its
culmination of hopelessness, with the Isles of Shoals the most
hopeless spot upon its surface. One gets close to the heart of these
things; they are almost as precious as Picciola to the prisoner, and
yield a fresh and constant joy such as the pleasure-seeking
inhabitants of cities could not find in their whole round of shifting
diversions. With a bright and cheerful interior, open fires, books and
pictures, windows full of thrifty blossoming plants and climbing
vines, a family of singing birds, plenty of work, and a clear head and
quiet conscience, it would go hard if one could not be happy even in
such loneliness. Books, of course, are inestimable. Nowhere does one
follow a play of Shakespeare's with greater zest, for it brings the
whole world, which you need, about you; doubly precious the deep
thoughts which wise men have given to help us, doubly sweet the songs
of all the poets; for nothing comes between to distract you."
It was not extraordinary that the joy of human intercourse, after such
estrangement, became a rapture to so loving a nature as Celia
Laighton's; nor that, very early, before the period of fully ripened
womanhood, she should have been borne away from her island by a
husband, a man of birth and education, who went to preach to the wild
fisher folk on the adjacent island called Star.
The exuberant joy of her unformed maidenhood, with its power of self-
direction, attracted the reserved, intellectual nature of Mr. Thaxter.
He could not dream that this careless, happy creature possessed the
strength and sweep of wing which belonged to her own sea-gull. In good
hope of teaching and developing her, of adding much in which she was
uninstructed to the wisdom which the influences of nature and the
natural affections had bred in her, he carried his wife to a quiet
inland home, where three children were very soon born to them. Under
the circumstances, it was not extraordinary that his ideas of
education were not altogether successfully applied; she required more
strength than she could summon, more adaptability than many a grown
woman could have found, to face the situation, and life became
difficult and full of problems to them both. Their natures were
strongly contrasted, but perhaps not too strongly to complement each
other, if he had fallen in love with her as a woman, and not as a
child. His retiring, scholarly nature and habits drew him away from
the world; her overflowing, sun-loving being, like a solar system in
itself, reached out on every side, rejoicing in all created things.
Her introduction to the world of letters was by means of her first
poem, "Land-Locked," which, by the hand of a friend, was brought to
the notice of James Russell Lowell, at that time editor of the
"Atlantic." He printed it at once, without exchanging a word with the
author. She knew nothing about it until the magazine was laid before
her. This recognition of her talent was a delight indeed, and it was
one of the happiest incidents in a life which was already overclouded
with difficulties and sorrow. It will not be out of place to reprint
this poem here, because it must assure every reader of the pure poetic
gift which was in her. In form, in movement, and in thought it is as
beautiful as her latest work.