USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 17
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One consequence of Mr. Hatfield's purge he surely had not fore- seen : at the next annual town meeting, the town of Cottage City voted in favor of the licensed sale of intoxicating beverages. The sleeping dog had been aroused. The resort was legally wet, and although it was to seesaw through the years on the liquor issue, in common with most communities, it was never to be really dry in the old sense again.
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XXVII
Dr. Harrison A. Tucker
One could hardly have been a visitor to Martha's Vineyard this long without having made the acquainance of a figure in whom the golden age of Cottage City breathed and had joyous life. It was said of Dr. Harrison A. Tucker that he was to Cottage City what James Gordon Bennett had been to Newport. This allusion is vague and distant today, yet it retains a flavor of meaning. Dr. Tucker was the resort's most noted host: not only that, but its favorite host. To his cottage came many notables, and he, a lover of good living, dispensed, in the old phrase which can hardly be improved, a gracious hospitality. No committee was complete without Dr. Tucker; he sat on boards for the division of the town, he was prominent on the platform at meetings, lectures, services; he presided over cele- brations indoors and outdoors. His name headed almost every subscription paper, provided the cause was for Cottage City. He opened and closed the season, he helped underwrite programs of fireworks and the wages of brass bands. He knew everyone worth while, and everyone at Cottage City knew him and knew his cottage, which was a showplace of the resort for decades. He believed that Cottage City was the most beautiful and most desirable watering place in America, and he carried his pride and pleasure into every channel which an active mind, a genial and vigorous personality, and a love of living well with and among other people could open.
The phrase "the gay Nineties" is a glib, tripping phrase, but it was not only the nineties that were gay: Dr. Tucker came to the camp meeting just after the war of the states, he was one of the earliest cottagers, and he built his second cottage-from which Grant witnessed the fireworks-in 1872; he continued on through the years, and all that quarter of a century was gay. It is possible to see Dr. Tucker still, a solidly built man with a dark beard turning gray, rounded cheeks not lacking color, eyes accented by genial lines at the corners, a dignified bearing. He stands on the Oak Bluffs wharf waiting for the boat to arrive with a new delegation of guests and "he looks like a man whom an earthquake would hardly in- commode, and there is not a hard line in his face, either. He is the
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incarnation of passive strength, with the ability to know what he wants, the patience to work for it, and a splendid audacity with regard to results."
To a vast number of people who had never seen him face to face, Dr. Tucker was known as the discoverer and compounder of medi- cines of which No. 59 Diaphoretic Compound was the most fam- ous. No. 59 was "adapted to a wider range of disease than any preparation heretofore offered to the public (this was in 1870). It is particularly adapted to nervous and convulsive diseases, rheumatism, lameness of the joints, back, sick and nervous headache, toothache, cholera, cholera morbus, cholera infantum, dysentery and summer complaints; a certain cure for diseases of the liver, stomach and bowels."
Although this catalog seems fairly complete, it was lengthened considerably as the years passed. In 1895-the year after Dr. Tucker's death-No. 59 was being recommended also for "burns, frostbites, spinal affections, boils, ringworms, old sores, poison ivy and dog- wood, stings of bees, bites of poisonous insects, chilblains, corns, asthma, heartburn, sprains and wounds of all kinds, and cold feet."
In the broadest sense, No. 59 was good for what ailed you. But Dr. Tucker had other preparations, also: No. 64 was fever drops; No. 46, hair nutrifier; No. 53, styptic compound; and there were many more, all numbered, including nerve food, viburnum com- pound, magnetic alterative, helonias compound, resolvent liniment, expectorant and buchu compound.
Dr. Tucker quoted a standard rate of $2.00 for first consultation, subsequent consultation if no medicines were purchased, $2.00, and subsequent consultation if medicines were purchased, $1.00. No. 59 came in dollar and fifty cent sizes. Most of the other medicines cost from $1.00 to $1.50, but liver pills were fifty cents, and puri- fier was $2.00.
These details should be delivered in the modern style, with irony, sophistication and wit; but those who mock are too likely to be mocked themselves before they are done. As we look back over a period of years, we forget that time, after all, is not distance, and the things we see characterize us hardly less than they characterize the persons and circumstances we presume to study. These retrospects
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show us no strangers, but ourselves. We sec, even, our own foot- prints in moist ground which has not yet dried and baked in the sun. Today or tomorrow our new tracks may recross the old, and we shall not recognize the path because of a changed light, an approach from a different angle, an altered bush or tree.
Dr. Tucker was born in the town of Norton, Mass., on March 18, 1832, of what is characterized as sturdy old New England stock. He studied at the Harvard Medical School and at the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania where he was graduated. He prac- tised in Foxboro, the home of the Hon. E. P. Carpenter, then in Brooklyn, and later maintained offices simultaneously in Boston, Providence, Brooklyn and, in summer, on Martha's Vineyard. In his medical profession he believed he had a peculiar gift which he was content to call a "supersense" which enabled him to withdraw himself from all outside surroundings and look directly into the case at hand. This power he used for the benefit of all who suffered, and he turned no one away.
When he was a witness in the Cottage City park case, Dr. Tucker was asked what school of medicine he belonged to, and he replied, "Eclectic." In this case, too, he testified that he must have explained to different persons some two thousand times that the parks were ever to remain open, seeking to interest his New York friends in property at the resort.
Webb's Cottage City Directory, published in the summer of 1885, gave this description of the Tucker cottage "located in a commanding position on Ocean Avenue, facing the park, with attractively laid out grounds, ornamented with the flora of this and other climes :"
"The architecture of the villa is a combination of several different designs, so blended as to make a more attractive whole than had a single style been followed. Broad piazzas, of elaborate design, with spacious balconies above them; bay windows, affording a resting place for rare and beautiful plants; panels in patchwork of cathedral glass in the outer hall doors; griffins in terra cotta on the pediments that cover the steps leading to the piazza in front of the halls, and grotesque heads of the same material inserted in the sides of the brackets and spandrils of the piazzas and balconies; the apex of the roof to
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the bay window over the park is crowned with a griffin in a sitting position facing the park.
"The entire outside surface of the villa is covered with clap- boards, alternating with fancy cut shingles, and the painting throughout the building is striking and elegant. The shingles of the roof are dark green, on the second story Indian red; the clapboards of the first story are of Quaker drab, the trimmings bronze green, and the chimneys in terra cotta. The rooms are painted in shades of drab and green, except in the parlor, the ceiling of which is of robin's egg blue; the panels in the wall are of terra cotta and light olive; the frame work in Indian red, with a border of salmon shade surrounding the ceiling, with cornice of Pompeiian red bordered with gilt. The ceiling is ornamented with gilt moulding, radiating from the two gas chandeliers, the outer members forming a chain extending around the entire outside and across the center. A mantelpiece of cherry, of elaborate design; brass chandeliers of the latest pattern; curtain rods to match, with numerous other handsome ornaments complete the harmony of the most attractive parlor in this vicinity."
Here Grant and Joe Hooker and countless notables were guests. Here the cultivated life of Cottage City had its perfect flowering. Here Dr. Tucker drew about him with a sure instinct all that was consonant with the ideals of his people and his time, and radiated the atmosphere which was the essence, as pure as it ever came to be distilled, of the resort.
In the cottage parlor Dr. Tucker's daughter, Cornelia Deans, was married at high noon on a September day in 1893. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, a visitor whose name must be associated always with that of Dr. Tucker in the summer resort history of Martha's Vineyard. Dr. Talmage was assisted by W. C. VanDerlip, a magistrate, and also a member of the summer colony. The bridal couple stood under a canopy of smilax, ivies and goldenrod, from which graceful festoons extended. Sullivan's orches- tra played "O Promise Me," and Dr. Talmage stood erect and said in his gravest tone :
"In Paradise, with God's own voice and hand, marriage was instituted, and the fiery sword which afterward stood at the portals of the garden did not hinder this ordinance from coming forth for the blessing and joy of the race."
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Then followed the ceremony; and then the wedding breakfast which offered this selection of viands : consomme en tasse, oysters a la Maryland, chicken croquettes, salmon, sweetbread patties, boned turkey, aspic of foies gras en Bellevue, aspic of tongue, ice cream in fancy forms, biscuit glace a la Tortoni, fancy cakes gateaux, bon bons, mottoes, maroons glaces, coffee, lemonade and claret punch. The happy bride and bridegroom were showered with rice as they left by carriage for the New York wharf at Eastville to board the steam yacht Nashawena, owned by Commodore E. P. Boggs and borrowed for the occasion.
Dr. Talmage was one of Dr. Tucker's distinguished guests, and in at least one season he occupied a cottage of his own. The clergy- man was born in the same year as the physician, in Bound Brook, N. J. He attended the University of the City of New York, but was not graduated, although in 1862 the degree of A.M. was conferred upon him. He was graduated, however, from the Brunswick Theo- logical Seminary in New Jersey in 1856, and in that year he was ordained. His early career passed quietly, in Belleville, N. J., in Syracuse, N. Y., in Philadelphia. Then, from 1869 to 1894, he occupied the pulpit of the Central Church of Brooklyn, and won fame.
His congregation erected the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and Dr. Tucker was one of the trustees. The tabernacle burned in 1872, was rebuilt larger than before, and twice burned again, the last time in 1894. Then Dr. Talmage went to Washington. But while the tabernacle, in one or more of its incarnations, was still standing, Dr. Tucker was pleased to entertain Dr. Talmage and the entire board of trustees at his Oak Bluffs cottage.
Dr. Talmage's sermons were published for twenty-nine years without the omission of a single week, and at the turn of the century appeared in 3,600 different newspapers, reaching an audience esti- mated at thirty millions of people. The sermons, too, were translated into most European and many Asiatic languages. Not even in the age of radio was a congregation more imposing than this to be assembled regularly by any divine. In later years Dr. Talmage was an editor also, occupying chairs for the Christian At Work, Advance, Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine, and the Christian Herald.
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Concerning Dr. Tucker's valuable remedies, Dr. Talmage wrote as follows :
"To the People: I know by personal observation that Dr. H. A. Tucker's medicine, popularly called No. 59, is potent and safe. It ought to be on the shelf in every nursery and in the satchel on every journey. Going from home I always carry some of it with me, and have administered it to many in car and steamer who have been taken sick. Better smash your brandy flask and the various styles of Bitters which are Rum put up with enticing nomenclature, and take with you a bottle of Dr. Tucker's 59 as a pocket pistol with which to shoot down physical disorders."
In the seventies there was a movement to censure Dr. Talmage for his bouffe treatment of religious subjects; but his march to fame was not inpeded. One of his sermons in 1888 was on the text, "Till a dart strike through his liver." In this discourse the clergyman sug- gested that physical ill health was sometimes mistaken for sin.
"My brother," he said, "your trouble is not with the heart. It is a gastric disorder or a rebellion of the liver. It is not sin that blots out your hope of Heaven, but bile. It not only yellows your eyeballs and furs your tongue, and makes your head ache, but swoops upon your soul in dejection and forebodings."
This extract, with some added detail, was widely circulated to the world by the makers of Ayer's Sarsaparilla.
Dr. Talmage preached on watering places, taking his text from Mark vi, 31 : "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile." Here, the minister said, Christ advises his apostles to take a vacation.
"The city heats are pursuing the people with torch and fear of sunstroke. The long silent halls of sumptuous hotels are all abuzz with excited arrivals. The crystalline surface of Winni- piscogec is shattered with the stroke of steamer, laden with excursionists. The antlers of Adirondack deer rattle under the shot of city sportsmen. The trout make fatal snaps at the hook of adroit sportsmen and toss their spotted brilliance into the game basket. Already the baton of the orchestral leader taps the music stand on the hotel green, and American life puts on festal array, and the rumbling of the tenpin alley, and the crack
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of the ivory balls on the green baize billiard tables, and the jolting of the barroom goblets, and the explosive uncorking of champagne bottles, and the whirl and rustle of the ballroom dance, and the clattering hoofs of the race course attest that the season for the great American watering place is fairly inaug- urated.
"I have to declare this truth today (he went on), that some of our fashionable watering places are the temporal and eternal destruction of a 'multitude that no man can number.' "
Among the temptations of summer resorts he listed, each by number : (1) to leave piety at home; (2) "I never knew anyone to grow very rapidly in grace at the fashionable summer resort"; (3) horse racing (but here he paused for a eulogy of the horse which, he said, ought to be called the king of beasts); (4) hasty lifelong alliances- and here he condemned the "soft handed, soft headed fop"-"it would take five hundred of them stewed down to make a teaspoonful of calfsfoot jelly"; baneful literatute-"would it not be an awful thing for you to be struck with lightning some day when you have in your hand one of those paper covered romances" ?; and, (6), the temptation of alcoholic beverages, the temptation to tipple.
Although Cottage City was not specifically exempted from these strictures, apparently Dr. Talmage approved of the Island resort, for he was often there. In 1887 he visited Dr. Tucker and was one of the Fourth of July orators at a memorable celebration. The report in the Vineyard Gazette was in the frank, illuminating style of the editor, Samuel Keniston-franker, in all likelihood, because of the recent division of the town.
"Dr. Talmage had no sooner risen to his feet than he was greeted with loud and prolonged applause, which was repeated at nearly every one of his opening statements-about the only exception being when he remarked that he was an' optimist,' at which unfamiliar word, though emphasized in the speaker's best manner, and irradiated by a most beaming expression of countenance, the audience appeared somewhat bewildered, and to which they declined to tumble. The Doctor's way of slinging his words at his hearers may be imagined when it is known that he says 'yuh' for 'you' and 'tuh' for 'to,' and the secret of his success may be inferred further from the fact that the ap- plause seemed oftener to be incited by a peculiar twist of the
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countenance than by the verbal statement. The burden of the speaker's lay was that the world was growing better at a very rapid rate of progress-which he illustrated by numerous cita- tions from ancient, mediaeval, modern and recent history- and barring the studied mannerisms which characterized its delivery, the address was a highly satisfactory one from all points of view.
"Mr. St. Clair McKelway of the Brooklyn Eagle next took the stand and in a half hour's speech gave his hearers pessimism enough to cast a gloom over the whole glorious panorama which had been made to pass in review by the dis- tinguished divine who preceded him. Mr. McKelway, being the editor of the chief Democratic paper of Brooklyn, but realizing that he was addressing an assemblage largely made up of New Englanders and therefore presumptively Republicans, naturally chose the course usually adopted by Democrats under those circumstances, and went in on the mugwump principle. He de- spaired of the Republic .
General King and Will Carleton, the poet, who were to have spoken, were detained at home by indisposition.
E Dr. Tucker's greatest contribution to Cottage City-the Oak Bluffs Club-must remain to be separately described. His final visit to the resort was in May, 1894. He had not been well, and for weeks his dearest wish had been to get down to the cottage. At last the weary period of waiting ended, it was May, and he could make the trip from Brooklyn. As he walked off the boat at the wharf, his pace somewhat slower than of old, the deckhands and officers of the Steamer raised their hands in salute which he acknowledged with a smile. He breathed deeply of the Island air, he looked about him with shining eyes.
"Isn't it beautiful"! he exclaimed, as if he were seeing it for the first time. "I am glad I am here."
He went for a drive, gladdened and brightened by the beloved surroundings; and he sat at the cottage window and looked out over Ocean Park, already green. But two weeks after his arrival his life slipped away. All the flags of the resort were at half staff. It did not seem possible that Dr. Tucker was dead, and that something important of Cottage City had died with him. No mourning and no honor were spared at the services for his funeral.
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XXVIII
The Oak Bluffs Club
In the season of 1886 Dr. Tucker called together a group of prom- inent summer residents and imbued them with his ideas for a summer club, to enlarge the circle of hospitality and to make possible entertainment and companionship beyond the capabilities of a single cottager and the resources of a single summer home. The Oak Bluffs Club was founded, and Col. Nicholas Van Slyck of Providence -- for years the city solicitor-became president. He had been a cottager since 1868. Dr. Tucker was treasurer. The vice presidents were T. K. Boggs and Dr. J. M. Crane of New York, W. C. Van- Derlip of Boston, and Edward Wyman of Illinois.
Upon the roll of members there soon appeared the names of many members of the New York Yacht Club, including Commodore Gerry-who was later to serve as president-and the names of all the summer cottagers who were in the gay and expansive set. Holder M. Brownell was, naturally, among the number. At one of the most sightly and prominent sites in Oak Bluffs, the corner of Ocean and Sea View Avenues, two large cottages were joined together to form the clubhouse.
A spacious piazza extended around the two fronts, commanding fine vistas over Vineyard Sound. The parlor, on the east side of the building, was painted in green, turquoise, blue, cherry, maroon and terra cotta. Adjoining this apartment was the main hall with office and checkroom, and in the rear a staircase of ash with, on the oppo- site side, a large fireplace of Moorish design, embellished with terra cotta tile and medallions. Above the fireplace a breastwork of Somer- ville brick extended to the ceiling, and displayed in the center a large terra cotta panel portraying in relief a dolphin turned around Nep- tune's trident and a background of bulrushes, flanked on each side by grotesque faces. The room was painted in blue-gray, light blue, brown and scarlet.
The banquet hall was painted in four shades of yellow green. Adjoining it was the ladies' parlor, decorated in shades of gray and scarlet. In the rear of the main hall was a card or smoking room, adjoining a billiard room, both being tinted in light pink, Indian
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VINEYARD ROLLER SKATING RINK.
Hotel and Wharf at Ock Bleffs
1.24. 200$100.
W nk i .\mert ..
FRANK E. WINSLOW, Manager
Vineyard Roller Skating Riek
Unas Chapel.
Di Tuckers Cotta&*
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The Pazoće
Betbing Brech
A FEW OBJECTS OF INTEREST AT COTTAGE CITY,
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From an advertisement of the 1883 illumination, in the collection of Mrs. Arthur W. Davis
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red and scarlet. Throughout the first floor were rich decorations of gilt molding.
The second floor held twenty sleeping rooms, furnished luxu- riously. Electric bells in all the rooms communicated with an annun- ciator in the office. The house was piped for gas and had its own water supply.
The exterior was elaborately painted, the roof dark green; the part above the piazza roof Indian red; below the line of the piazza roof, green Quaker drab; and the trimmings bronze and green, with brown for the piazza floors. The clubhouse was built and finished under the direction of Capt. Shubael Lyman Norton.
The cost of this clubhouse was not far from $30,000, financed in part by an issue of bonds. Initiation fees of $50 were assessed, and the annual dues were fixed at $25, although there was an increase later.
Each summer, plans were made for the welcoming of the New York Yacht Club which regarded Vineyard Haven as one of the important objectives of its cruises. Whenever the yachts were in, the Oak Bluffs Club kept open house. Between Cottage City and Eastville there was a steady flow of traffic, carriages taking yachtsmen to and from the New York Wharf, in Vineyard Haven harbor. There were receptions, banquets, dances and friendly gatherings by the score, and summer life was more brilliant and more inclusive than it had been in the earlier years.
When Elbridge Gerry became president of the club in 1889, the cordiality between the Oak Bluffs group and the New York yachtsmen was cemented more closely. Three years later the yacht club estab- lished a permanent station at Eastville, maintaining a boathouse and landing stage for a long period.
Unfortunately, forces were at work underneath the surface which, in course of time, put an end to the lavish hospitality of the Oak Bluffs Club. All was as brilliant as ever on the surface, but an invol- untary petition in bankruptcy in January, 1896, made painful dis- closures. The establishment had been operating on a scale beyond its means; its larder had been kept too well supplied; elaborate din- ners had been prepared in anticipation of orders from yachtsmen, to be eaten by the servants when the yachtsmen failed to appear.
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A steward had been employed at a wage of $100 a month, and there had been a corps of other retainers. Everything had been run both fast and loose, and a day of reckoning could not be postponed. There was a floating debt of $15,000, and bonds outstanding amounted to $19,000. And, despite the large cost of the clubhouse, it could not be disposed of at a forced sale for much more than $10,000.
There was nothing to do but to arrange a compromise and a reor- ganization. The creditors and bondholders-most of whom were not members of the Club-bowed to the inevitable, and the New Oak Bluffs Club started its career in the summer of 1897. But some- thing had gone from the spirit, the enthusiasm of the previous seasons. Was it that Dr. Tucker was dead? Or was it that such a club cannot be operated successfully on a sound business basis, with continually balanced books and cash payments? Undoubtedly both factors had something to do with the situation, and the New Oak Bluffs Club tapered off and passed from the scene.
In the same year which saw the founding of the Oak Bluffs Club, the Martha's Vineyard Club was organized-later to be known as the Martha's Vineyard Carnival Club. This was an institution of a different sort. It was suggested by Charles Strahan, who had taken over the Cottage City Star, campaign organ of the division days, and turned it into a real newspaper, the Martha's Vineyard Herald. The object was to provide an agency to take the place of the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company, the patronage and parental care of which were now withdrawn. Band funds must be collected, fire- works and illuminations must be planned and paid for, celebrations and entertainments must be provided in their due times. The Martha's Vineyard Club was to be a means by which the resident and summer community could arrange these things, and, as well, promote har- mony and social intercourse. Dr. Tucker was, of course, the one choice for president when the club was launched, and meetings were usually held at his cottage. Some five hundred members paid dues. In 1888 the club engaged the Fitchburg Band of twenty-five pieces, and on its invitation the Washington Rifles, comprising "the elite of the national capital," spent two weeks in Cottage City in July.
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