At this time I was ten years old. We lived in a New England village,
Surrey, which was situated on an inlet of a large bay that opened into
the Atlantic. From the observatory of our house we could see how the
inlet was pinched by the long claws of the land, which nearly enclosed
it. Opposite the village, some ten miles across, a range of islands
shut out the main waters of the bay. For miles on the outer side
of the curving prongs of land stretched a rugged, desolate coast,
indented with coves and creeks, lined with bowlders of granite half
sunken in the sea, and edged by beaches overgrown with pale sedge, or
covered with beds of seaweed. Nothing alive, except the gulls, abode
on these solitary shores. No lighthouse stood on any point, to shake
its long, warning light across the mariners' wake. Now and then a
drowned man floated in among the sedge, or a small craft went to
pieces on the rocks. When an easterly wind prevailed, the coast
resounded with the bellowing sea, which brought us tidings from those
inaccessible spots. We heard its roar as it leaped over the rocks
on Gloster Point, and its long, unbroken wail when it rolled in on
Whitefoot Beach. In mild weather, too, when our harbor was quiet, we
still heard its whimper. Behind the village, the ground rose toward
the north, where the horizon was bounded by woods of oak and pine,
intersected by crooked roads, which led to towns and villages near
us. The inland scenery was tame; no hill or dale broke its dull
uniformity. Cornfields and meadows of red grass walled with gray
stone, lay between the village and the border of the woods. Seaward
it was enchanting--beautiful under the sun and moon and clouds. Our
family had lived in Surrey for years. Probably some Puritan of
the name of Morgeson had moved from an earlier settlement, and,
appropriating a few acres in what was now its center, lived long
enough upon them to see his sons and daughters married to the sons and
daughters of similar settlers. So our name was in perpetuation, though
none of our race ever made a mark in his circle, or attained a place
among the great ones of his day. The family recipes for curing herbs
and hams, and making cordials, were in better preservation than the
memory of their makers. It is certain that they were not a progressive
or changeable family. No tradition of any individuality remains
concerning them. There was a confusion in the minds of the survivors
of the various generations about the degree of their relationship to
those who were buried, and whose names and ages simply were cut in the
stones which headed their graves. The _meum_ and _tuum_ of blood were
inextricably mixed; so they contented themselves with giving their
children the old Christian names which were carved on the headstones,
and which, in time, added a still more profound darkness to the
anti-heraldic memory of the Morgesons. They had no knowledge of
that treasure which so many of our New England families are boastful
of--the Ancestor who came over in the Mayflower, or by himself, with
a grant of land from Parliament. It was not known whether two or three
brothers sailed together from the Old World and settled in the New.
They had no portrait, nor curious chair, nor rusty weapon--no old
Bible, nor drinking cup, nor remnant of brocade.
_Morgeson_--_Born_--_Lived_--_Died_--were all their archives. But
there is a dignity in mere perpetuity, a strength in the narrowest
affinities. This dignity and strength were theirs. They are still
vital in our rural population. Occasionally something fine is their
result; an aboriginal reappears to prove the plastic powers of nature.
My great-grandfather, Locke Morgeson, the old man whose head I saw
bound in a red handkerchief, was the first noticeable man of the name.
He was a scale of enthusiasms, ranging from the melancholy to the
sarcastic. When I heard him talked of, it seemed to me that he was
born under the influence of the sea, while the rest of the tribe
inherited the character of the landscape. Comprehension of life, and
comprehension of self, came too late for him to make either of value.
The spirit of progress, however, which prompted his schemes benefited
others. The most that could be said of him was that he had the
rudiments of a Founder.
My father, whose name was Locke Morgeson also, married early. My
mother was five years his elder; her maiden name was Mary Warren. She
was the daughter of Philip Warren, of Barmouth, near Surrey. He was
the best of the Barmouth tailors, though he never changed the cut of
his garments; he was a rigidly pious man, of great influence in the
church, and was descended from Sir Edward Warren, a gentleman of
Devon, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. The name of his more
immediate ancestor, Richard Warren, was in "New England's Memorial."
How father first met mother I know not. She was singularly
beautiful--beautiful even to the day of her death; but she was poor,
and without connection, for Philip Warren was the last of his name.
What the Warrens might have been was nothing to the Morgesons; they
themselves had no past, and only realized the present. They never
thought of inquiring into that matter, so they opposed, with great
promptness, father's wish to marry Mary Warren. All, except old Locke
Morgeson, his grandfather, who rode over to Barmouth to see her one
day, and when he came back told father to take her, offered him half
his house to live in, and promised to push him in the world. His offer
quelled the rioters, silencing in particular the opposition of John
Morgeson, father's father.
In a month from this time, Locke Morgeson, Jr., took Mary Warren from
her father's house as his wife. Grandfather Warren prayed a long,
unintelligible prayer over them, helped them into the large,
yellow-bottomed chaise which belonged to Grandfather Locke, and the
young couple drove to their new home, the old mansion. Grandfather
Locke went away in the same yellow-bottomed chaise a week after, and
returned in a few days with a tall lady of fifty by his side--"Marm
Tamor," a twig of the Morgeson tree, being his third cousin, whom he
had married. This marriage was Grandfather Locke's last mistake. He
was then near eighty, but lived long enough to fulfill his promises
to father. The next year I was born, and four years after, my sister
Veronica. Grandfather Locke named us, and charged father not to
consult the Morgeson tombstones for names.