Joseph Crosby Lincoln was born in the Cape Cod village of Brewster on
February 13, 1870. Brewster was at that time a typical Cape Cod town
of about fifteen hundred inhabitants. Most of the men of the town were
captains in the merchant service, either active or retired. In fact,
in the Main Street of Brewster, on either side of the house where Mr.
Lincoln was born, for a distance of a mile, each house was the home
of “Cap’n” somebody or other. It is little wonder that when Lincoln
began in later years to write his books he drew on the scenes of his
birthplace and the many colorful old sea-going men who wrote the glory
of Cape Cod on the seven seas in their fast wooden sailing ships.
Lincoln’s father, Joseph Lincoln, went to sea as a cabin boy when he
was fifteen years of age, and was master of a full rigged ship at
the age of twenty-two. Captain Lincoln was one of a family of four
brothers, three of whom were sea captains. Captain Lincoln’s father,
Joe’s grandfather, also was a sea-going man.
Author Lincoln’s mother was Emily Crosby of Brewster, and on her side
of the house the sea-faring element was just as strong. Her only
brother was lost in the English Channel while on a voyage as first mate
of a ship commanded by a Brewster captain.
Captain Lincoln died of a fever in Charleston, South Carolina, in the
fall of the year in which his son was born. Young Joe attended school
at Brewster until he was thirteen years old when his mother took him to
Chelsea to finish his education in the schools there. Mrs. Lincoln was
a self-reliant woman as most of the Cape Cod women of the time were.
She had made many adventurous voyages with her husband, and young Joe
was left to her tender care, devotion and inspiration. He later paid
her loving tribute in many of his poems and stories.
In his boyhood young Joe roamed the Cape. He knew every nook and inlet,
every place to fish, every cranberry bog and was familiar with the
sand dunes which stretched along the Cape beaches for miles in both
directions. Best of all, he knew and loved most of the inhabitants of
Brewster and the surrounding towns where he lived. He rode the old
stage coach from Harwich to Chatham. He knew light keepers, fishermen,
the life savers who manned the life saving stations along the coast,
and the cracker barrel oracles in the village stores which at the time
were the nerve centers of news, gossip and the center of political
opinion of the times. Many of the scenes in Lincoln’s books are laid in
these villages, country stores and taverns from which emanated the many
characters about which he wrote.
As Lincoln explored the Cape in his boyhood, the perfume of the green
salt meadows, the Cape Cod pines and the smell of the Bayberry etched
themselves on his memory. The fishing boats, the dripping nets, “The
mighty surge and thunder of the surf along the shore” were a part of
his very existence. It was his wonderful familiarity with the subject
that asserted itself so pleasingly and convincingly in his later
stories. The racy vernacular of his characters rang true: his “Cape
Cod Folks” to which he referred when mentioning the characters in his
books, were real people.
Today the people about whom Lincoln wrote on the Cape are for the most
part gone. Only traces of the older families now remain in second and
third generations. Except for a few stubborn hangers-on the real old
time Cape Codder has died out. In later years when interviewed as to
where he got the material for some of his books Lincoln said that it
was necessary for him to go back many years to draw on the scenes
and characters about which he wrote. The Cape Cod of forty years ago
had changed considerably even in Lincoln’s day. Where the Cape, as
reflected in Lincoln’s books, was an old fashioned community in the
late eighteen hundreds and the early part of the present century it
has now become more streamlined and modern in its efforts to attract
the tourist trade which today is its main industry with the possible
exception of cranberries. It is true that such small villages as
Brewster, Sandwich, Chatham, Harwich, and Wellfleet as well as some
of the other fifteen towns and one hundred and forty-three villages
are physically much the same as they were years ago, but modern stores
and hotels have erased much of their old time charm as pictured in
Lincoln’s books. And so in order to recall what the Cape was really
like in its most interesting period it is necessary to go back through
the pages of his books in order to capture the true flavor of the
place. For, despite the fact that the Cape today is a beautiful
vacation resort, it is the romance of its past which gives it its real
flavor.
In the days when Joe Lincoln was a lad it was an accepted fact that
most Cape Cod boys, when they reached “cabin boy” age, should go to sea
as their fathers did before them. In fact, most of the young ladies
of the time “preferred” young men of the sea unless there was some
good excuse why a young man remained at home to run a store or to do
other important work. Most often Cape boys sailed with a neighbor, or
a relative who taught them the lore of the great sailing ships and
drilled them in navigation until they were ready to command their own
ships. But young Lincoln’s relatives had better plans for the boy.
They thought he would make a splendid financier and when he completed
his schooling in Chelsea it was arranged for him to become an office
boy in a wholesale salt house on State Street in Boston. Soon he left
this position to enter a brokerage house. In turn he left the brokerage
house to take charge of the books of a desk company in Sommerville.
After a year or two of bookkeeping, Lincoln decided that whatever else
he might be he was not particularly good as a bookkeeper, nor had he a
fancy for that sort of life. He soon decided to turn to making a living
as an artist.
One can picture the mental torture of the young man thus forced
to follow a calling not to his liking. In his novel, “Galusha the
Magnificent,” Lincoln takes the temperamental Galusha through the same
experience. Laughable enough as it seems as Lincoln wrote it in the
story, it is doubtful if his own affair seemed quite as humorous at
the time. Strangely enough, Lincoln was not the first writer to be
sidetracked into a career unsuited to one of artistic temperament.
It is often difficult for those without creative ability to fully
understand those who do possess talent and can be happy at nothing else.
After many months Lincoln escaped from the figures and accounts and he
confesses, “I have always felt that they were fully as glad to get rid
of me as I was to leave them.” He knew by that time what he wanted to
do. He wanted to be an artist. How many authors have started with the
brush, later to discard it for the pen!
In company with another student, Howard Reynolds, who had formerly been
a reporter, Lincoln took a small room in Pemberton Square, Boston, and
for a time studied with Henry Sandham, the Boston artist. He had always
had a fondness for drawings and caricatures and the months spent in Mr.
Sandham’s office were among the pleasant experiences of his life.
It was while attempting to sell his sketches that Lincoln began to
write rhymes to fit the pictures. At first he was not very successful
in selling his sketches and he found that by writing a verse or a
joke to go with the sketch it made them sell better. Presently he
found that the verses sold better than the pictures. He began to write
short stories and verses in earnest. The verses were in swinging meter
about the old home and folks down on the Cape. His stories revealed a
quaint, witty and wholly delightful people. They were like a breath of
invigorating salt air and the editors snapped them up.
Lincoln sold his first short story to The Saturday Evening Post; the
succeeding ones landed in many other prominent magazines of the day.
His verses appeared in Harper’s Weekly, Puck, The Youth’s Companion,
and others. Evidently young Lincoln had few of the trials and
tribulations of breaking into print which dogged other later successful
authors. Perhaps it was better that his early life was not a hard one
as it would have reflected in his writing and much of the easy-going
homespun humor of his books would have been lost.
About this time bicycling came into its heyday. The League of American
Wheelmen was flourishing, an organization of several hundred thousand
with an official publication known as “The Bulletin.” Lincoln spent
three years as associate editor and when the interest in bicycling
began to drop he wisely decided to try his hand as a full-fledged
writer.
By this time Joe had married Florence E. Sargent of Chelsea in May,
1897, and one night in 1898 he followed her into the living room after
the dishes were done and asked her a momentous question. It was a
matter of courage--and of faith. New York was already the mecca towards
which young authors addressed their prayers, and everything published
seemed to get its start there. “Florence,” said Lincoln, “have we
courage enough to put our furniture into storage, to live in one room,
to cut our ties here--and to see?”
They both knew that the rent has a pretty monotonous way of coming
due, but they decided to take the plunge together. They did move to
New York where they lived in one room in a boarding house in Brooklyn
and in 1902 Lincoln published his first volume of verses, choosing the
Cape for his milieu because it was in his blood. The book, “Cape Cod
Ballads,” was a small volume with pictures by Kemble. Many of these
verses were read each season when he later traveled about the country
lecturing on Cape Cod and “Cape Cod Folks.”
Lincoln’s first novel was “Cap’n Eri” on which he began work in May,
1903, and which was published in February of the following year. This
first book, which is the story of three old Cape Cod sea captains who
advertised for a wife, soon became a best seller. Lincoln completed
the book after devoting his spare time evenings and Sundays in writing
the book, often working on the corner of a kitchen table. During
the day-time he was employed as editor of a banking magazine. The
characters of “Cap’n Eri” were really a composite sketch of a number of
sea captains which Lincoln had known. The scenes of the book were laid
in no particular town, although the towns of Chatham and Brewster were
the towns with which Lincoln was most familiar. The rescue scenes near
the end of “Cap’n Eri” are among the most suspenseful one would find in
any book written before or since. The scene which depicts the gallant
but tragic efforts of a crew of Cape Cod Life Savers to rescue the crew
of a wrecked schooner during a raw winter gale was adapted from the
heroic rescue of the sole survivor of the Monomoy Life Saving Station
off Monomoy Beacon near Chatham in the winter of 1902.
Like most best selling first novels, Lincoln’s “Cap’n Eri” was written
in his spare time. For some strange reason it seems characteristic of
the writing business that young authors are at their best when working
under the pressure of necessity, often turning out their best work
when pressed for money or time. Such seemed to be the case with young
Lincoln and “Cap’n Eri.”
“Cap’n Eri,” which went into many printings, was easy reading,
however. Most of the writing in the volume lacked the expert polish
of Lincoln’s later work. Perhaps this simple homespun type of writing
served more effectively to introduce him to the large audience of the
times who enjoyed simplicity and the warm-hearted people about whom he
wrote. While exploring the pages of Lincoln’s first novel one cannot
help but compare the friendly good nature of the people of the times
as compared with the seemingly hard-boiled outlook and actions of the
world in general today.