USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 11
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Samuel Osborn, however, was not so easily dissuaded from a purpose. He had the reputation of a hard man, but a man with strength and shrewdness.
"I still stand by my position of two years ago," he said, "clean fisted and with no axe to grind. I advocated the building of the road because at a time of year when we most required intercourse with the outside world, our communication was practically cut off. I urged a larger cash subscription before the work started, but my advice was scouted, and the road was mismanaged from the begin-
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ning. Proposals were entertained from parties abroad without proper discrimination, and everyone knows what happened.
"The idea of some to give the stock away is absurd, and I hope the town will not sacrifice its birthright for a mess of pottage, so to speak. The railroad is in its infancy. Not half or a quarter of the railroads in the country pay the first year or two. The enterprise should be given a fair trial. Does a ship owner call home his ship because his first season's work does not pay? Or even if the whole voyage is unprofitable, does he hasten to sell his ship for what it will fetch? Not at all. He fits again.
"The road did almost as well last year as was ever claimed for it, $12,000 having been estimated as a season's work, and the receipts last year amounting to $10,000. The road cost too much to build and I am sorry for it, but that cannot be helped. It might have paid a dividend, which would have avoided a lot of trouble, but it was thought wiser to pay the debts as far as possible. The big dinners have gone by, the dummy has gone home, and. Capt. S. L. Norton has been doing the work of what was a thousand dollar office for nothing.
"If the town sells its stock, Edgartown shareholders will be at the mercy of the majority abroad, but now the town holds the key to the situation. As for the gentlemen who are so anxious for the town to sell, their sincerity would be more readily established in men's minds if they showed a corresponding anxiety to sell their own."
Mr. Luce declared the whole trouble was that there were two parties who wanted to control the road, and whichever way the vote went one or the other would be the gainer. In view of this fact and keeping in mind the rule that the time to sell was when somebody wanted to buy, he said the time for the town to sell was NOW. The road had not paid as it had been claimed that it would, and his own prophecies of two years before had crystallized into facts. The mingling of corporate with municipal interests was false in theory and disastrous in practice, as proved in this instance. The seductive influence of promised employ and dead-headism was already corrupting the public mind and injuriously affecting political action. Meanwhile the real estate was paying the taxes and the farm
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of Darius Norton and other farms were taxed to maintain a con- venience for the many who did not pay taxes.
Captain Jernegan opposed selling. He admitted the management had been bad, but said that only two directors wanted to sell, and that only to play into somebody's hands.
Captain Shubael Lyman Norton congratulated the town, some- what sardonically, upon possessing a prophet in the person of his friend, Ichabod N. Luce, a man whose far-seeing eye could reach into and explore the future. He spoke frankly of the condition of the road, explaining that many repairs had been found necessary because of defects in the original contract. As to the deadheads, he said that his report to the directors showed that, on the average, every person who rode during the season had paid the sum of thirty-three cents for each ride. The directors were satisfied with that showing, and he thought everybody else should be. Most of the agitation for the town to sell, he said, was brought about by a few who must rule or ruin, who were ready to crush everything and everybody who seemed to be doing anything by which they did not profit.
Then rose the Old Editor and spoke for selling.
"I verily believe," he said, "that a time will come when a large portion of the concern will be swept away by the elements in one of these storms which from time to time rake our coast. And even such a consummation will be preferable to the existence of such ill feeling as has been manifested here today. We never can transact any busi- ness properly, no two will work together, and the public arm is palsied."
The voting was by a division of the house, and the motion to sell was lost. The next year the railroad was extended from Katama to the South Beach, and a new passenger car was purchased. As to these improvements, opinion was divided : the aim was to build up traffic by taking passengers within a stone's throw of the surf, but the critics said the extension was a blow at Katama, and that the expenditure was unwise and unauthorized. In October, 1876, the road was attached by Laban Pratt to secure a debt of $10,000 with interest, which made the total amount $15,000. In the same month a northeast storm swept the beach and washed out track to the value of $1,000.
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Edgar Marchant wrote that the people of Edgartown felt "that an instrument sharper than a two-edged sword has cut them to the quick; that their honor has been tarnished; their good name defamed. They now desire to wash their hands of the entire affair."
In January, 1877, they did so. At the annual town meeting, with the Old Editor as moderator, the citizens voted to sell at auction the town's interest in the railroad. There was not a word of debate. A few weeks later the sale was consummated, Antone L. Sylvia of New Bedford purchasing the stock for the sum of $315. A gallant dream had been swept to a more distant sea than that into which the northeast gale washed the iron rails and wooden ties.
It may be assumed that this was a vindication of the statesmanship and foresight of that admirable Free Soiler, Ichabod N. Luce. To a certain extent this is true, but the matter is not so simple as all that. The speculative phase of the Martha's Vineyard Railroad was over, and the town of Edgartown had flung away fifteen thousand dollars and not a little of its pride. But the stockholders and the creditors now came together, as the road trembled on the quicksand of bankruptcy; creditors agreed to take two-thirds of their claims in cash and the balance in stock at par; stockholders gave up their stock for the purpose, and the road was cleared of floating debt. Time proved that the South Beach extension actually did improve the earning capacity, and in the summer of 1877, the railroad began to pay.
Then it ran for years, bringing to Edgartown its summer thous- ands, and lifting the old town to a new pitch of activity. There had been visitors and summer boarders before; but now there was a tremendous increase in numbers. The railroad made Edgartown a summer resort in a new sense, and for this service the town was not doing badly to have paid only fifteen thousand dollars. Over a long period of years the money returned again, puffing down the narrow gauge line on the beach behind the noble Active. True, the storms continued to cause inroads, but the reconstruction work of the first two years had erased many mistakes; and the Martha's Vineyard Railroad-with a broad retrospect of its failings and its accomplish- ments for the town of Edgartown-does not stand in history as a failure.
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XVIII
The Cottage City of America
"It was no Newport," Hosea M. Knowlton, a distinguished attorney general of the state had occasion to submit to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, "but the delight of the middle classes."
It was their delight notwithstanding the collapse of the land boom, and the appearance in the newspapers of columns of tax sales: Owner Unknown, 14 lots land at Grovedale, tax for 1877, 96c; 1 lot at Bellevue Heights, tax 1873, $1.14, 1874, 66c, 1875, 76c; So-and-So, Non Resident, 1 lot at Bellevue Heights No. 512, tax 1873, $1.14, 1874, 66c, 1877, 72c; Owner Unknown, 34 of lot No. 1509 on Vineyard Highlands, 1876, $1.08, 1877, 64c; So-and- So, Non Resident, 1 lot at Sea View Hill, No. 31, 1876, 72c, 1877, 64c. So the notices ran, the roll of the speculators, chart of the fever now cooled.
After the summer of 1873 there was no brisk market for lots, the Oak Bluffs Company and the Vineyard Grove Company were in debt and income was relatively small, improvements were no longer made in the old prodigal style : thus the resort saw the passing of the boom. But despite this, despite the casualties of speculation, the golden age went on.
There is no word in English to signify a little era, an epoch which has many epic qualities but is, when all is said and done, a sideshow. The golden age at Oak Bluffs, Wesleyan Grove and the Highlands was a little era, dwarfed by geography, time and circumstance, but retaining, none the less, the adventurous quality and the grand inflection of a fresh surge in human affairs. Although the stage was small, the actors were projections of a national spirit. Brittle and diminutive as the scene and the period may seem in retrospect, they came close to the inner art of life. "Parva sed apta" -- the cottages were, for the most part, small and fit, and magnificent. That was the mood of the time. If the sophisticate of a modern age of chro- mium, cellophane, and streamlining thinks too vainly of his advance from the gingerbread day which this resort embodied in full flower, he may be led into error; and the Cottage City of America, when all
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likenesses and differences are sifted, was more like the greatest show on earth than a flea circus.
Perspective is more likely to be an accident of time than an intel- lectual faculty, and most chapters of the past require more insight than this accident of itself permits. The gingerbread cottages of the camp ground replaced no older buildings. They were new, an improvi- sation in a spirit which had no roots in any particular tradition. Their only antecedents were tents, and their fragile scrollings, fancy windows, gables, turrets, stained glass, and balconies are a record of joyful pioneering. The halcyon quality was there, and there it re- mains for those who see history with history's own eye.
Expense was an important consideration. Most of the cottages were built for occupancy for a fleeting season, and they were built, not by the rich, but by the middle classes whose delight this resort was.
To begin with, an ordinary tent on the camp ground cost about fifty dollars. This consisted of a ridge pole, four upright poles for the corners, and a covering. Such a tent usually measured eight feet by twelve, and was floored. The owner paid ground rent to the camp meeting association of from three to six dollars a year, accord- ing to the location. The tenant had the privilege of releasing from year to year, and this privilege was often held at a high premium, sometimes running from fifteen to two hundred dollars. At night curtains were used to separate the tent into different sleeping com- partments, and in the day time bedding was tucked out of sight. A small family could live in this manner for an astonishingly small expenditure, particularly if cold provisions-"pies and things" were brought along with the trunks.
The better tents were much more expensive, and by means of fancy decoration some of them were made actually extravagant. With their out-houses they usually occupied an area of twenty by forty-five feet. There were board sides about six feet high, and an outside fly of canvas which stretched out over a front porch. Some- times the tent was divided into two apartments, or constructed of two separate tents pitched together. One section was used as a parlor and the other as a sleeping place. The owners of the more elaborate tents had various furniture, and in some instances complete
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Gateway of the Vineyard : the Sea View hotel and Oak Bluffs wharf. Note the railroad train on the wharf. The rink is in the background, and in the distance the Highland House.
Photograph courtesy of Dukes County Historical Society
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parlor and bedroom sets. Such a canvas establishment cost as much as $400. Intermediate arrangements cost between $150 and $200.
The expense of boarding varied, some boarding tents being operated on a "pay and grab" basis, and others with fairly elaborate menus.
5 .. The average cost of the cottages erected on the camp ground during the early years of resort growth was about $600. Larger cottages, particularly the more ornate ones with the prized French roofs, cost between $1,200 and $1,500. Senator Sprague of Rhode Island spent $3,500 for his cottage in 1869.
`., When the Oak Bluffs Company began operations, lots were sold at prices ranging from $100 to $400, and, during the period of demand, there were sales and resales at higher prices. The cottages in Oak Bluffs were, for the most part, larger and more pretentious than those of the camp ground; they cost from $750 to $4,000 in general, with some outstanding structures running into much higher figures.
As for hotel rates, the Sea View offered accommodations on the European plan for $1.00 a day up during July, and $2.00 a day up during August. On the American plan, the rate in August began at $4.00. In later years the prices were somewhat increased. The High- land House, in the eighties, charged from $2.00 to $2.50 a day, or from $12 to $15 a week; the Vineyard Grove House, on the camp ground, $9.00 a week.
Table board was quoted as low as $5.25 a week. Board and room in cottages, owners of which liked to make a little money during vacation, could be had for $1.50 a day.
Cottages could be rented for the season at from $75 to $150, depending on the size and location, and also on the nature of the demand at the time.
At the Mattakeeset Lodge, Katama, the rate was from $10.00 to $17.00 a week.
In the seventies one could buy an excursion ticket from Providence to Oak Bluffs and return for $3.25. The fare from Boston was $3.00. From New York, by way of the Fall River Line, the fare was $5.00. Steamers of the New York Steamship Co. ran direct to the old camp meeting landing at Eastville, and others to the New York wharf,
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and fare with berth in a stateroom was $4.00; excursion ticket, including berth, $6.00; and the intermediate class, $3.00 with berth in a stateroom. Meals were sold on these steamers at prices of from fifty to seventy-five cents.
Thousands of visitors were brought by excursion steamers from Providence, Hartford, Bridgeport, Boston and New Bedford. The year after Grant's visit, there were from fifteen to twenty steamers a day leaving the Highland or the Oak Bluffs wharf throughout the month of August. It was nothing unusual to see both wharves crowded, and boats lying off in the channel waiting an opportunity to land.
Although the resort had a national prominence and attracted visitors from all over the country, its summer population was drawn for the most part from the New England states. In 1872 the non-resident taxpayers were to be classified geographically as follows : Maine 3, New Hampshire 3, Vermont 1, Massachusetts 665, Rhode Island 123, Connecticut 47, New York 43, Pennsylvania. 1, Cali- fornia 1, England 2, Illinois 2, New Jersey 1, lowa 2, Florida 1, Kansas 4, Indiana 1, Michigan 1, Louisiana 1, Washington, D. C. 1, Ohio 1.
Most of the multitudes which thronged the streets at the season- end celebrations were transients, excursionists coming for the day or for a weekend; yachtsmen; and guests of the regular summer residents. Hotel accommodations in and around Oak Bluffs and the camp ground embraced something more than a thousand rooms; but the demand was great, and many were the rooms which held several persons when an illumination was due, or the eve of High Sunday had arrived. The cottages, too, held an incredible number of human beings.
"When the yachts are in," wrote one visitor, "the yachtsmen play a little game. They get up a pool with high, low and intermediate numbers. Generally it is forty to sixty for a two-room cottage, with a proportionate increase for those of larger size. Then they count the people as they come out. The high number almost invariably wins. You think this is exaggeration. Well, it isn't."
But of course it was, although the truth was amazing enough. The triple community, Oak Bluffs, camp ground and Highlands,
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was packed and crowded with people, and the people were willing to be tucked anywhere just for the sake of being there. From the start the resort had been nothing if not gregarious, and in its heyday it was gregarious with a unanimity, a solidarity which has probably never been equalled in a resort of equal size.
A diary kept by a young woman, Miss Henrietta R. Hawes, when she visited the Cottage City in August, 1872, tells what she saw and felt; and her words are particularly revealing as to the point of view of vacation guests at the Sea View hotel toward the camp meetings.
"Our rooms at the Sea View House," she wrote, "are very pleasant and look out toward the ocean . . . After we had our supper we went to the camp grounds. I never went to a camp meet- ing before and everything was so different from what I had expected. The little cottages which I had heard so much about were more numerous and far prettier and more homelike than I had supposed.
"The preaching had begun when we reached the camp ground. We heard three of the Methodist brethren speak. They were all very earnest in urging sinners to come to Jesus now. Quite a number went forward who desired prayers, while all united in singing 'Come to Jesus' and 'Come ye sinners, poor and needy.' The ministers would encourage the people to come and call out in the midst of the singing 'that's right, sister, come along,' or 'Come, brother,' 'keep the aisles open.' One called out 'if there is any brother of the colored persuasion let him not be afraid to come, salvation is free to all.' Then there were prayers, one man prayed God to 'prick de hearts of de peoples.' After walking among the tents for a while we came back to the hotel for we were all very tired and ready to go to bed."
On another evening : "The preaching was going on and there was a great crowd there. Gen. Burnside was at the meeting, he and his wife came to the hotel this evening. The services were quite long, they sang a number of hymns of invitation at the close among which was 'There is a fountain filled with blood' which sounded sweetly. A great many came forward and they became quite excited -I liked the prayers, they seemed so earnest and the people begged so hard for what they wanted, but it would have been as well if two or three had not tried to pray at the same time. Some would
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swing themselves to and fro while kneeling and groan and moan and shout 'Amen,' 'Come Lord,' 'Bless the Lord,' etc. Then there were a few moments spent in silent prayer.
"The minister asked if some sister would pray-there were two who did. One prayed very well, but the other became rather noisy, so another hymn was given out and they began to sing before she had finished her prayer. When they became too noisy the minister would cry out 'steady, steady faith.' There was something very impressing and touching about it all, yet I could not help feeling that in some cases it might only prove mere excitement and that perhaps the religion would be all gone tomorrow."
Returning to the hotel, the young visitor and her friends "sat on the piazza until we had seen the moon rise out of the water and then went to our rooms, but not to bed, for when four girls are together they don't always get to sleep very soon after going to their rooms. We were wicked and laughed about the camp meeting. We tried not to laugh while there, for we did not want to make fun of them. But when we got home we could not help laughing at some of the funny things which had been said."
To preserve more nearly the full reality of that place and time, one may quote some verses which appeared in the columns of the Seaside Gazette, a summer newspaper of the early seventies, pub- lished at Vineyard Grove. The anonymous poet mentioned some of the usual joys "of listening to low, sweet nothings, from lips that you love to kiss," and added, "But I tell you that flirting at Vineyard Grove is a long way ahead of this." His final stanza ran :
"But the pleasantest flirting station Is out on the bluff at night
When the evening stars are trembling And the moon sheds her silvery light.
For there, though a crowd may be near you, You are just the same as alone,
For nobody minds your courting, But each one tends to his own."
The impression which the city of cottages made upon visitors is preserved in their own words, and these are the best general descrip- tion, the best bird's eye view.
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Thus Charles Dudley Warner in 1872: "The stranger when he first goes there is struck by its foreign and bizarre appearance, and yet it is not like any foreign place he has seen; it is unique. It is a sort of Mayfair of pleasure, a city of the night, which is unreal and insubstantial in its beauty and apparently as likely to pass away from sight any moment as the ships on the water horizon."
A correspondent of Harper's Weekly, a few years earlier, had written : "The camp is in a beautiful grove of scrub oaks, washed on two sides by the sea, with a salt water pond in its rear, into which the sea flows at high tide over a narrow strip of beach. The grounds, including 150 acres, are owned by an association of Methodists, who have been offered a charter by the Massachusetts Legislature. There are over 200 cottages on the ground, one fourth of which have been erected during the present summer.
"In front there is generally a pretty little veranda, and three or four feet of garden may be fenced in before it. Over the front door there is generally a balcony. The high-peaked roofs, the balconies, the door and window frames, are all decorated with scroll work; stained glass, silver doorplates, hanging lanterns and other luxuries are beheld at every turn; the houses are gaily painted, the verandas bloom with rare flowers, the little miniature yards are decked with moss and shell-work, and under the trees, which cast a thick shade over all, are rustic benches and swings for children."
Agassiz, after a visit to the camp ground, was quoted as saying he had never seen anything remotely like it before. The precise text of his remarks was not preserved, but it is unlikely that he intended irony.
Another journalist, J. Jackson Jarves, wrote in the Galaxy under the title, "A New Phase of Druidism," expressing some enthusiasm for the cottages. "The best in style are what may be called American carpenter's renaissance, with dainty, light balconies, piazzas, orna- mental windows and Venetian blinds; a pretty style on the whole, and admirably adapted to its transitory uses. Each cottage of the better class has in front or rear space devoted to flowers or decorated with sea shells, wild vines, honeysuckles, classical vases, and even sculp- tures. Oriental furniture is very common on the balconies, while
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everywhere are the latest appliances for comfortable lounging and rocking which Yankee ingenuity has invented.
"Here, even domestic life itself is as open as the daylight. The reserve and exclusion which distinguish English homes do not obtain in this rustic life. Sauntering through the leafy lanes in close prox- imity to invitingly open doors and windows, one sees families at their meals, tempting larder in plain sight, and the processes of cooking, ironing and other household duties performed by the mothers or daughters themselves, with graceful unconsciousness or indifference to outside eyes. Occasionally, when curtains are not dropped or sliding partitions closed, beds and even their inmates are disclosed. Everywhere ladies and children, in full or easy toilet, reading, writing, gossiping, or amusing themselves at their discretion, unawed by spectators, and as completely at home as inside their own door. A veritable age of innocence, like Eve's before she bit the apple . . . "
"Looking merely on the surface of things," Mr. Jarves remarked, "a more fitting or favorable place for flirtations and falling in love could not be evoked out of sublunary scenery."
Rev. Gilbert Haven, editor of Zion's Herald, and later Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, recorded his observations in 1871. "The Vineyard grounds are as Eden-like as ever. There are three divisions of this Eden, though they are getting to be one feeling and one aim. The centre and hive is the old camp ground, still the most populous of all, and to lovers of old things, the most delightful. Its lanes are crooked as Quebec's, its parks as open as London's, though not as large, its plain and handsome cottages lovingly nestled to- gether . . . '
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