USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Marion > Lands of Sippican on Buzzards Bay > Part 26
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"Hereafter only those who are residents of Marion shall in any way become members of the Association."
There were polite resolutions adopted in regard "to kind and generous interest shown" but that "the control shall be with the residents of Marion."
Somebody was intruding onto the Captain's deck!
But Richard Gilder placed the portrait of Mrs. Taber where it now hangs in the library.
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"The President" writes from the Kelly house, a long ram- bling farm house, which stood on the road just beyond Capt. Henry Allen's, where the Reed house is now. June 9, 1890, looking out over Little Island he writes:
"I started the fishing branch of the firm's business today and am glad to report that the season promises well. I found here a feeling of depression in the trade and on every side there seemed to be the gravest apprehension for the future. I determined to test the condition and am entirely satisfied that if the industry is properly cared for and prosecuted with zeal, industry and intelligence, satisfactory returns may be confidently relied upon. - I caught 25 fish with my own rod and reel - averaging larger than any fish we caught last summer, about equally divided in number between bass and tautog".
The town fills with politicians, statesmen, and reporters watching the greatest Democrat of his time.
Any morning in front of the Post Office could be seen a group of celebrated Democrats, Lamar, Lamont, and Sec'y Thurber looking as though they were settling question of state when probably they were guessing how the wind was going to be for fishing on Cleveland's ledge.
Everybody walked in those days. Along the roads would come Mrs. Cleveland with a big St. Bernard dog for company, or Mr. Gilder and Joe Jefferson or L. Clarke Davis, editor of the Philadelphia Ledger as devoted a fisherman as Mr. Cleve- land himself.
The eyes of the politicians and party leaders of America were on "the President" who sat and fished all day long, rain or shine. He never wanted to come in.
One beautiful June day he and Mrs. Cleveland occupied front seats in the Chapel at the Tabor Academy Commencement. Besides the official invitation from the trustees, a friend had asked him to his daughter's "graduation". The young voices rang out in the choruses, "Apollo strikes the Lyre", "Good night, Good Night, Beloved", and the essays and speeches went on and on.
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"THE PRESIDENT" IN MARION
"Oh, it was so warm", said the valedictorian nervously, "but I don't think he minded, do you?"
Buzzard's Bay was shining, and the wind just right for fishing!
Invitations poured in on him!
June 18, 1890 Marion, Mass.
"I acknowledge with thanks the invitation I have just re- ceived to be present at the unveiling of the monument - im- possible for me to accept -. "
Tammany was watching him, as Mr. Gilder tells the story, like "the old negro who risked his life, when he was fishing one day, to save a small darky.
'No sah! oh, no sah! He's not my son, sah!'
'No sah! oh, no sah! he's no relation, sah!'
'Well, sah, you see, the fact is, sah, that boy had the bait'."
With the breeze from the bay blowing through the farm house rooms, "the President" writes to Abram B. Tapper, Grand Sachem,
Marion, Mass., June 30, 1890
Dear Sir:
My absence from the city of New York, and plans which I have already made, prevent my acceptance of the courteous invitation which I have received to attend the celebration by the Tammany Society of the one hundred and fourteenth an- niversary of American independence.
The celebration contemplated by your ancient and time honored organization will, it seems to me, fall short in the im- pressiveness due to the occasion if it does not persistently present and emphasize the idea that the Declaration of Inde- pendence was a protest of honest and sturdy men against the wrongs and oppressions of misgovernment.
The reasons and justifications for their revolt are ex- hibited in their recital of a long list of grievous instances of maladministration. They complained that their interests had been so neglected and their rights as lawful subjects so vio-
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lated, under British rule, that they were absolved from further fealty.
Our fathers, in establishing a new government upon the will of the people and consecrated to their care and just pro- tection, could not prescribe limitations which would deny to political parties its conduct and administration. The oppor- tunities and the temptations, thus necessarily presented to par- tisanship, have brought us to a time when party control is far too arrogant and bitter, and when, in public place, the true interests of the country are too lightly considered.
In this predicament, those who love their country may well remember, with comfort and satisfaction, on Independ- ence Day, that the disposition of the American people to revolt against maladministration still remains to them, and is the badge of their freedom and independence, as well as their security for continued prosperity and happiness.
They will not revolt against their plan of government, for its protection and preservation supply every inspiration of true Americanism. But because they are free, and independent American citizens, they will, as long as their love and venera- tion for their government shall last, revolt against the domina- tion of any political party which, intrusted with power, sordidly seeks only its continuance and which faithlessly violating its plain and simple duty to the people, insults them with profes- sions of disinterested solicitude while it eats out their substance.
And yet, with all this, we should not in blind security deny the existence of danger. The masses of our country men are brave and therefore generous; they are strong and therefore confident, and they are honest and therefore unsuspecting. Our peril lies in the ease with which they may be deluded and cajoled by those who would traffic with their interests.
No occasion is more opportune than the celebration of the one hundred and fourteenth anniversary of American independ- ence to warn the American people of the present necessity on their part of a vigilant watchfulness of their rights and a jealous exaction of honest and unselfish performance of public duty."
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"THE PRESIDENT" IN MARION
Thus writes a great Amercan, one like Gov. Bradford; Ebenezer White, Representative; Geo. Bonum Nye; John Clapp, King of the saltmakers; Capt. Nathan Briggs.
On Saturday, Aug. 9, 1890, everybody went to the great- est of all of the "Marigold Days".
It was held on Judge James Austin's grounds, and "the President" came in from the ledge in time to buy a letter from the post office where just three lines were going as high as $10. signed "Francis Folsom Cleveland, Postmistress." She was "worked to death", she scribbled to a school girl, who treasures the blue scrap of paper to this day.
In a "Record of Friendship" by Mr. Gilder, we read that Mr. Cleveland himself got up an acrostic contest on the word "Marion" to raise money for "the day", and all the contest- ants met at the "Studio" that evening to open the envelopes.
Mr. Gilder was chairman of the committee on prizes. The prize was to go to the writer of the worst rhyme, and the winner was to give a certain sum of money to the treasurer of the Marigold Day and leave town in twenty-four hours.
There was one acrostic on the beauties of Marion, and one line gives the key to the whole.
"Rip ope thy cans of frenzied fire", and "the President", was the author.
When Mr. Gilder made the announcement, Mr. Cleveland got up and started to speak. He was very solemn. He said he had "been watching the chairman for days, having shrewdly suspected that he was at work upon some evil design - and here it was - an attack upon the property and sacred liberty of a citizen! He condemned the action of the chairman on legal and constitutional grounds. Money was to be demanded of a citizen at the very moment when it was plain that the festival must have seriously depleted his financial resources."
The Rev. Percy Browne followed in the same strain. Mr. Gilder reached over and passed a silver piece to Mr. Charles W. Bangs of Mr. Cleveland's law firm, retaining him as counsel, and immediately Mr. Cleveland rose again and said that since he last spoke "certain considerations" had presented themselves to his mind, and then he began a flowery eulogy of
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Mr. Gilder, "from the standpoint of character and good citizen- ship, and, as he kindled with his theme" writes Mr. Gilder in the description of the scene, "he turned upon Mr. Browne and expressed his surprise and indignation that the very next-door neighbor of the chairman, one who must necessarily be daily familiar with his well-known virtues, should so far forget him self as to indulge in language of criticism and derogation." A young visitor became alarmed and whispered in Mr. Gilder's ear, "He's angry!" And so he seemed to be. Jefferson had said that Cleveland could have been an actor!
The fooling went on while the fire flamed in the big chim- ney, and the pines sighed outside in the dark woodland.
One grey afternoon late, with the water sullen, the rain steadily falling, the wide hat brim shedding it from the grave face, "the President" sits patiently holding his rod.
The captain lifts his head looking at the pennant drooping at the mast head-the school boy mate lifts his eyes, too. No wind! Mr. Gilder, a little long faced and pale from too much tumbling about in the early part of the day, dodges up from the cabin now and then, watch in hand.
A train is thundering along from the tip of the Cape that Mr. Cleveland must take at Tremont, to be in Washington the next morning.
Nearly train time at the Marion station, and still he fished and fished, with Mr. Gilder getting more and more restless, the silent captain and the little mate watching the wind, and the rain steadily falling!
Time flying, and at last the captain said, "We must pull up anchor, Mr. Cleveland, or you'll lose your train."
Once more over for one more fish, and when at last they docked, Mr. Gilder was running to telegraph to hold the train at Tremont, while the fisherman changed his rain soaked garments.
Three or four days later, he was again on the ledge. "Wet the other night, weren't you?" said the captain,-"but you had time to change your clothes!"
"All but my shoes!" said Mr. Cleveland.
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"THE PRESIDENT" IN MARION
"Well, that wasn't bad. You could change them on the Fall River boat."
"Well," he said, "I didn't. I forgot to take any others." He looked up under his hat brim, "I didn't take them off. I was afraid I couldn't get them on in the morning", and he went on fishing.
A great American in Marion, and the little town filled with visitors watching, and the country listening to what Cleve- land was saying.
"The curious thing about the situation is", wrote Mr. Gilder on Nov. 20, 1890, "that Cleveland has not lifted his little finger to secure the nomination, and I think there are circumstances under which he might refuse to take it. The fact that he has a great future behind him, even if he should not have one before him, gives him extraordinary independ- ence and influence."
Land values had soared and increased by leaps and bounds, because of the Clevelands' coming to the village, and when "the President" tried to buy the "Kelly Farm House", the price of that increased. The old Geo. Bonum Nye's wharf with its surrounding farm lands, was Mrs. Cleveland's choice, but there were so many heirs and such a legal tangle that that plan was given up, and Marion lost "the President" and "the beautiful lady".
"The prices were a little higher than the President was paying that year," commented one reporter.
On Oct. 20, 1891 Cleveland is writing Mr. Gilder from New York:
"Mr. Simmons from the Times wants to get up a Marion fish story, and I want you if it won't interrupt you too much, to add a little of your veracity to what I mean to furnish him".
"The President" didn't bring any lunch today", said the captain to his wife as he came in one night after dark, from a long day on the ledge.
"He likes your ginger bread cookies!"
"Well, I never", said the wife, "Isn't he just real folks!"
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CHAPTER XVIII
ADVENTURERS SET OUT AGAIN FROM SIPPICAN
"We shall go always a little further; it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow."
FLECKER.
The summer that "The President" came, a young reporter named Richard Harding Davis, was rushing about New York on eighteen assignments a day, for $7 a week, and losing his job in the fall.
"My city editor didn't like me because on cold days I wore gloves", he writes, "and at the end of three months he dis- charged me as incompetent".
He was sitting on a bench in City Hall Park in September 1889, when with real "R. H. D. luck", Arthur Brisbane, editor of the Sun, whom he had met in London, came along.
The tide turned and in the spring, May 29, 1890, he is writing to his mother:
"Mr. Gilder has asked me to stay with them at Marion, and to go to Cambridge with Mrs. Gilder, and dear Mrs. Cleve- land and Grover Cleveland, where he reads the poem before D. K. E."
Youth comes up over the horizon in America!
For 200 years those young, according to the "Family Bible" on the Lands of Sippican, took prominent parts in the battle of life. They farmed, and built and commanded ships, and dickered in the tide-washed centers of the world, but they were old! old! Sometimes "grave and bearded seignors" at twenty-one!
Now youth, as youth, rides "drinking from life's en- chanted cup!"
تضخمه
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The Wharf - "Where the little schooners came in for wood and boxboards"
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THE HORSE SHOW.
"Gibson takes his Marion friends"
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For the first time youth speaks as youth, not as a copy of age. It begins to move restlessly under the weight of old cus- toms, the old way of thinking like father, grandfather, and great grandfather.
The tempo quickens from the mournful movement of the slow chords of the New England Psalm Book. It changes more slowly in the little villages of the Pilgrims than in the big centers.
Little children have come out from under the shadow of "Our days begin with trouble here
Our life is but a span, And cruel death is always near
So frail a thing is man."
And delighted eyes smile at Alice and the White Rabbit! It is not all of life to eat, sleep and toil under a stern sense of duty to some power, somewhere, harsh and hard.
All over America backs straighten: there is the sound of laughter: girls are riding bicycles: mothers and aunts are donning neat white braided blue bathing suits, and are jump- ing up and down in the sea as the Indians did so long ago.
A few old ladies are left, sitting and knitting in caps and ribbons. They had put them on at fifty and felt undressed without them.
Old age swings farther away than fifty voyages of a little planet in a tumbling passage around the sun, and shawls and caps are getting old-fashioned.
Beards, and bonnets, and the Wednesday evening prayer meetings slowly disappear from the real life of the village.
And instead of buying a share in a whaler the boys save the money to go to college to be a doctor, a minister, a lawyer.
"And why not take a half a dollar, once in a while, and give a party", said youth. "Why not buy a banjo? I don't see the harm!"
And the women! "No, I don't use soft soap any more. I like the bars I can buy down to the store!"
They are even taking a dislike to the heavy flowered Brussels and Ingrain carpets that have to be taken up every spring and dragged out by rebellious urchins or the male head
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of the family, and whacked and banged in the back yard, over the clothes line, under an aura of dust. Those red and green carpets that never have had a chance to fade, much less wear out in the closed, airless, shade-drawn rooms!
Straw mattings are going down even in the sitting rooms!
Long ago most of the Currier & Ives prints have been dis- posed of, with some old furniture, on the wood pile. "Wide Awake" and "Fast Asleep" are disappearing, hidden in the attic, propped up against an old cradle or a dismantled four- post corded.bed. Even the "Huguenot Lovers" and the "Rogers Groups" that show through the Nottingham lace curtains are less carefully dusted, for Gibson pictures are beginning to open windows on a new fresh romantic world.
Old Sippican had stared at the writer folk, the actors and musicians who came with the Gilders': had been whirled in the excitement of a crowded little town that held "the President and Mrs. Cleveland"; and now had come to the streets a group of talented gay young people, who gambled gaily with duty, and made rollicking trips out into the world and back again.
Among all the distinguished company that walked about, crowding into the little post office, in and out of the little houses, sailing, riding horseback, driving, fishing - Theodore Thomas, Walter Damrosch, Governeur Morris, Stephen Bonsal, Tait Mckenzie, Frederick Clay Bartlett, John Drew, Ethel Barry- more, Maude Adams, Fritzi Scheff, the two young Americans, Richard Harding Davis and Charles Dana Gibson were the ones they most pointed out.
"Who was that who took off his hat? Really? Richard Harding Davis!"
Gibson running up the street to get a notice of his sketches that had appeared in the Century!
"Is that Charles Dana Gibson? Well! he doesn't need to look for models! All he has to do is sketch himself and Davis!"
Davis, over six feet tall, who got to know according to F. Peter Dunn "more waiters, generals, actors and princes than any man who lived" and yet as Augustus Thomas said,
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"with an undisciplined indifference to great personages not in- consistent with his admiration of their medals", and Charles Dana Gibson, who with a stroke of his pen did away with bearded heroes and languid fainting females, and drew fine clean chinned young giants that the young men had to look like to gain the favor of the trim healthy girls who seemed suddenly to appear all over America in their shirt waists and sailor hats.
The two brought real youth to Marion!
Davis, the adventurer, like the sailors, had "watched sharks sliding through the phosphorus" in the Pacific, and "lights burning in huts along the shores."
He seemed to walk, ride with romance written in the air around him.
Like Richard Gilder, he had been surrounded by the great in art and letters, with a mother, Rebecca Harding Davis, a famous writer, and a father, L. Clarke Davis of the Philadel- phia Ledger, who complained that he had never been known for himself, first he was the husband of Rebecca Harding Davis and then the father of Richard Harding Davis. His mother advised him to send the story of "Gallagher" the boy who wasn't fired because he "beat the town", to Mr. Gilder. "In the old days", she said, "the Century. would not print the word brandy. But those days are over."
Mr. Gilder tired with reading manuscript, bringing out his fifth book of poems, is carrying on his business affairs in New York from the old grey house on the "Old Landing" road.
He writes on July 17, 1891.
"I find I am scudding under bare poles this summer. Have had no vacation! But am just off for a week or ten days now. I have had as many as fifty or sixty letters in a single day here to answer or annotate in my own hand."
Davis goes to see Mr. Cleveland about going into politics.
"He seemed to think breaking stones as a means of getting fame and fortune was quicker and more genteel. I also saw her and the Baby", he writes.
"Gallagher", the newspaper story, appears and in August the Pall Mall Gazette is saying, "The Americans, by the way,
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think that they have discovered a Rudyard Kipling of their own". Davis is famous almost over night. Stephen Bonsal gives a picture of the Marion group, one evening that winter in the Gilder New York Studio.
Davis is the center of a laughing, congratulating group. A little apart Bonsal is listening to Mr. Cleveland with divided attention.
His attention wandered more and more to the chattering group, when suddenly Mr. Cleveland's arm shot up into the air, and his fist came down with a bang!
"Look here! I think somebody might listen to me! I know I haven't written Gallagher, but I have been President of the United States!" and the gay circle breaks and laughingly surrounds "the President".
And back they come for the summer with the village a little quieter because "the President", although fishing on his ledge, lands his catch a little further up the bay.
Charles Belmont Davis in the Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis writes of the life in Sippican.
"A rather drowsy life for those who didn't fish - a great deal of sitting about on one's neighbor's porch and discussion of the latest novel, or the newest art, or of one's soul and specu- lating as to what would probably become of it. From the first Richard formed a great affection for the place, and after his marriage adopted it for his winter as well as his summer home.
As a workshop he had two rooms in one of the native's cot- tages and two more charming rooms it would be hard to imagine. The little shingled cottage was literally covered with honey- suckle, and inside there were the old wall papers, the open hearth, the mahogany furniture and the many charming things that had been there for generations and all of which helped to contribute to the quaint, peaceful atmosphere of the place.
Dana Gibson had a cottage just across the road and around the corner Gouverneur Morris lived with his family. At the time neither of these friends or Richard himself allied them- selves very closely to the literary colony and its high thoughts, but devoted most of the time to sailing around Sippican Har- bor, playing tennis, and contributing an occasional short story
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or an illustration to a popular magazine. But after the colony had taken flight, Richard often remained long into the fall doing really serious work and a great deal of it. At such times he had to depend upon a few friends who came to visit him, but principally on the natives to many of whom he was greatly attached. When he made it his permanent home he became an integral part and performed his duties as one of its leading citizens."
Winston Churchill who settled down later across the har- bor to work on Coniston, tells of meeting Davis in Marion.
"I first met him shortly after the publication of my first novel," he writes, "I was paying an over Sunday visit to Marion, that quaint water side resort where Mr. Davis lived for many years, and with which his name is associated. On this Monday morning as the stage started out for the station a young man came running after it, caught it, and sat down in the only empty place - beside me. He was Richard Harding Davis. I recognized him, nor shall I forget that peculiar thrill I experienced at finding myself in actual physical con- tact with an author. And that the author should be none other than the creator of Gallagher, prepossessing, vigorous, rather than a dry elderly relic, made my excitement the keener. It happened that after entering the smoking car that the remaining vacant seat was at my side, and here Davis established himself. He looked at me, asked if my name was Winston Churchill, he said he had read my book!"
Davis was the idol of the young writers of the day, and also as Booth Tarkington says, "a college boy's ideal."
Tarkington writes of "cutting an exam" at Princeton, "to go to the new Waldorf-Astoria to see the world at lunch in its new magnificence and Richard Harding Davis came into the Palm Room - then, oh then, my day was radiant! That was the top of our fortune; we could never have hoped for so much. Of all the great people of every continent, this was the one we most desired to see."
And Davis walking from the postoffice in the village reads an item in his folded newspaper, and off he goes.
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In a month he is riding horseback 110 miles in 33 hours in the South West; watching a ranger shoot splinters out of flying telegraph poles as the train rushes along; over in England helping Oxford boys tear down an iron barrier set by an ugly land owner across the Avon; "taking Coffee with the master of Baliol" and "seeing an Indian Princess in a cashmere cloak and diamonds who looked so proud and lonely and beautiful that I wanted to take her out to one of the seats in the quad- rangle and let her weep on my shoulders. How she lives among those cold people I cannot understand."
He lives as an English gentleman in London, "looking into Picadilly". Gibson and Davis met for the first time in the smoking room of a London hotel at midnight. Davis had been rowing up and down the Thames, disguised as a boatman, looking for adventure.
He comes home in August, 1892 and writes about it all. Into the little Post Office come French and English magazines. Army and Navy journals, and always at least one London Daily, and Mr. Hall, the Postmaster, passes them out to the tall young adventurer, who perhaps sees a single line, that that very night sends him to the far ends of the earth in search of wars and coming great events in the history of the world.
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