USA > New Hampshire > Cheshire County > Dublin > Dublin days, old and new ; New Hampshire fact and fancy. > Part 9
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The identity of the client was not fully disclosed except for the fact that the party's last name was either Bird or Byrd. It proved to be Admiral Richard E. Byrd, soon to return from his first expedition to the South Pole.
The fact that the commander of this much publicized under- taking was to spend the summer in Dublin was of great interest throughout the community.
Lieutenant Charles Laughlin, his secretary, who went with him to that barren waste, joined him here.
Admiral Byrd devoted nearly every moment to the com- pletion of his report of his findings and accordingly was forced to decline invitations to a considerable number of social func- tions where his presence was very much desired.
All members of the Byrd expedition were said to have signed an agreement in advance, not to write or lecture concerning their experience for a period of two years after their return.
The Admiral waived this condition in the instance of his Secretary and allowed him to make speaking engagements during the summer wherever he chose.
We booked some eight or ten appearances for him in larger towns of this state and Vermont, but his first talk was given in the Dublin town hall.
Upon this occasion Admiral Byrd, wearing evening clothes, came in person and presented his Secretary from the town hall
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stage-a generous and impressive courtesy upon the part of a busy man.
Igloo, the little fox terrier dog who went with his master upon his eventful trip, was taken along by Lieutenant Laughlin and exhibited to several of his audiences, some of whom had previously seen the film showing Igloo pursued by those curious small, manlike creatures which inhabit the south polar regions -penguins.
NOTES
Senator Albert J. Beveridge, of Indiana, leased a summer home here-the W. B. Cabot house, now Mr. Lehmann's prop- erty. With his young male secretary he completed the dictation of his Life of John Marshall, in the shade of two great hemlock trees high up on Beech Hill.
Senator Beveridge was one of the nation's finest orators- a brilliant man, but not a tactful politician. He was very proud of his charming wife, niece of Mrs. Marshall Field.
Mrs. Field leased the Parson's residence, entertained lavishly, and gave me occasional requests for colored lights, necessitating a telephone call to Boston, in order to illuminate the grounds for her outdoor lawn parties. She took early morning walks and had a cordial greeting for every native she met-strangers, as well as friends-a charming lady.
Senator Medill McCormick, and his brother Robert, pro- prietor of the Chicago Tribune, were sons of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the reaping machine.
The senator's wife was the daughter of Mark Hanna; she was said to have inherited some of her father's keen political acumen.
Senator and Mrs. McCormick occupied Mrs. Burton's "Morn- ingside" cottage. Of simple tastes, they chose a quiet vacation and did but little entertaining. Long hikes through fields and pastures afforded them diversion and pleasure.
After the senator's death, Mrs. McCormick remarried.
Miss Emily Sears, of Boston, built her home on the Gilman
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Kendall place, the height of land on the old Harrisville road, where the Miss Amelia Jones' house stands, now occupied by Dr. Stewart.
Miss Sears belonged to the Miss Mary Anne Wales, Richard Parker, Daniel Dwight period, a delightful lady from one of the fine old Boston families, who greeted one with a cordial "Good Morning," perhaps at four o'clock in the afternoon.
Among distinguished visitors who have summered in Dublin, can be added the names of Miss Jane Addams, of Chicago's Hull House; Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer; Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells; Rev. Samuel Longfellow, the poet's brother; Prof. John Osborne Sumner; President John H. MacCracken, of Lafayette College; Henry Holt, the publisher; Basil King, author; Howard Elliott, railroad president; Robert Treat Paine; Albert Metcalf; Josiah Quincy and Henry Adams of Boston; Richard Burton; John J. Albright; John F. Archbold; Admirals Walker, Reeves, and Sims. Scores of names could be added to this group.
From Harvard's faculty can be included Justin Windsor, Professors Albert Bushnell Hart, Henry B. Hill, Edward B. Hill, Irving Babbitt, T. W. Richards, White, Sanger, and Philip Cabot.
Grenville Clark, of the Board of Harvard Fellows, dis- tinguished New York lawyer, now makes Dublin his legal resi- dence; Mrs. Clark has been coming to their home at the outlet of the lake since early childhood. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Dwight, bought the Thaddeus Morse place more than a half century ago.
An important conference, dealing with world affairs, the meetings instigated by Mr. Clark, was held here a year ago, with former Chief Justice Roberts in attendance, together with a group of scholars and statesmen.
The meetings attracted the attention of Boston newspapers who commented editorially and made reference to the con- clusions arrived at as "The Dublin Plan."
Late in 1950, a New York publisher produced A Plan for Peace, by Grenville Clark. The book makes reference to the consequences of a general war between the United States and the Soviet Union; a war which "would be protracted and in-
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credibly costly." Harvard University conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws upon Mr. Clark at its 1951 commencement.
Professor Raphael Pumpelly bought the Dexter Mason pas- ture and erected his home there on one of the lower spurs of Monadnock, at the east end of the lake, one of the highest resi- dential points in town, overlooking the water, with Monadnock to the west.
After his first house was burned, he built a larger and finer residence in its place. His daughter, Mrs. Handasyd Cabot, owns and occupies it at present.
Professor Pumpelly, connected with the United States Geo- logical Survey, was widely known for his work in this country and in China.
He was an accomplished horseback rider and equipped his entire family with saddle horses of various size, especially chosen to fit the riders they would carry. The Professor wore a flowing full beard and when he headed his family group, with all of them in the saddle, he led a picturesque assembly.
When Secretary of the Interior Ethan Allen Hitchcock was investigating Western land frauds during the Theodore Roose- velt Administration, William J. Burns, of the Detective Bureau, was summoned to town and engaged a room on the street in the lower village.
Mr. Burns occasionally dropped into the store for a friendly chat. He was a large man, about fifty years old, wore a sandy mustache, and was of a florid complexion. He made no allusion to his errand here but chatted about commonplace things and apparently enjoyed a friendly visit.
The engagement of Miss Ann Hitchcock to Admiral William S. Sims, of the United States Navy, was announced from the Dublin home of the young lady's parents by Secretary and Mrs. Hitchcock.
A LETTER FROM MR. WHITTIER
A small booklet which I published in 1891 contained Whit- tier's beautiful poem:
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MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSETT
I would I were a painter, for the sake Of a sweet picture, and of her who led, A fitting guide, with reverential tread, Into that mountain mystery. First a lake Tinted with sunset; next the wavy lines Of far receding hills, and yet more far Monadnock lifting from his night of pines His rosy forehead to the evening star.
A copy of the book was sent to Mr. Whittier; the Quaker poet acknowledged its receipt in a personal letter, written with violet ink:
Oak Knoll, Danvers, 9th Mo. 24, 1891.
Many thanks for your beautiful Dublin book. I have never seen Monadnock save at a distance and am glad to look at it and its lake in your pages
Yours truly, -JOHN G. WHITTIER
10
MARK TWAIN
It was during the month of March, 1905, that I received a telephone call from Mrs. Abbott Thayer, asking me to come to the house for an important message which she preferred not to give over the wire.
At her home she told me that a letter, just received from a New York friend, said he wanted to consider coming to Dublin for the summer if a suitable house could be found. The friend, she said, was Mr. Clemens, better known as "Mark Twain," and she described the requirements needed.
Accordingly, faithful Katie Leary, employed in the Clemens family for many years, came on. It had snowed hard the night before. On level ground the snow averaged to be fully thirty inches deep, and I carried up two pairs of snowshoes, for the road to Mrs. Copley Greene's house on Lone Tree Hill, a half mile away, which we planned to see, was not plowed out during the winter season.
Katie had never worn snowshoes before, but she was an in- telligent woman, perhaps forty or more years old, a real good sport, and got on surprisingly well for a first experience. We went 'cross lots in a direct line to the house and only once did
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she lose a snowshoe and plunge waist deep into the snow.
The house was so entirely satisfactory that she was not in- terested to see any other. After her return to New York with a favorable report to the family, a letter of acceptance followed immediately.
I remember Mr. Clemens as a tall, rather spare man, with flowing white mustache and long white hair which stood erect all over his splendid head. He wore a white flannel suit, with a black band some three inches wide encircling his upper left arm. His bearing was dignified; he spoke deliberately and im- pressed me as being a serious, thoughtful man.
Mark Twain was more than a humorist; he was a historian and philosopher-a gentle and lovable man who, in spite of all the honors bestowed upon him by royalty, by Oxford Uni- versity, by a multitude of literary friends and an admiring pub- lic, had tasted deeply of sorrow in the loss of an infant son, Langdon, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Susy, his pride and the joy of the entire family, and finally, the passing of his beloved wife who had been his devoted companion and guiding influence, and whose memory he honored by wearing the black band on his arm.
On Susy's headstone is inscribed:
Warm summer sun, shine kindly here; Warm southern wind, blow softly here; Green sod above, lie light, lie light- Good night, dear heart, good night, good night.
Mr. Paine, his biographer, said of him: "His face in repose was always sad; beneath the surface there were unforgettable sorrows."
Mr. Clemens liked his Joan of Arc best of all his books-it required twelve years of preparation and two years of writing. The others, he said, needed no preparation and got none.
But, he said, "I shall never be accepted seriously over my own signature. People always want to laugh over what I write and are disappointed if they don't find a joke in it. This is a
Y+⑇
Mark Twain
This photograph was made in Mark Twain's Copley Greene summer home in Dublin by the author.
The Mountain Brook
Monadnock Lake and Mountain From Beech Hill
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serious book. It means more to me than anything else I have ever undertaken. I shall write it anonymously." So Sieur de Conte is supposedly the writer of the manuscript.
A distinguished educator wrote: "I would rather have written your history of Joan of Arc than any other literature in any language."
As soon as it became known that the Clemens family was to spend the summer in Dublin, Colonel Higginson sent him a letter of welcome. In his reply Mr. Clemens said:
"I early learned that you would be my neighbor in the sum- mer and I rejoiced, recognizing in you and your family, a large asset. I shall hope for frequent intercourse between the two households. I shall have my youngest daughter with me." Jean, the youngest daughter, came to Dublin, saw the house, and went back charmed with it.
It was during the month of May that the family arrived and became a part of the summer colony. Their house was located high up on Lone Tree Hill, and the view from it was extensive and far-reaching, although situated among the woods. There were friendly neighbors who exchanged frequent visits and Jean enjoyed the shaded walks and mountain-climbing.
Clemens wrote to his friend, Dr. Twitchell: "We like it here in the mountains, in the shadow of Monadnock. It is a woodsy solitude. We have no near neighbors. We have neighbors and I can see their houses scattered in the forest distances for we live on a hill."
In his first visit to the village he said: "We like it; it is so quiet, hardly a sound can be heard-not even the bleating of a lamb." To a reporter he stated, "Dublin is the one place I have always longed for, but never knew existed in fact till now."
His orchestrelle was moved to Dublin and I recall my first meeting with his secretary, Miss Isabelle Lyon, with whom I had exchanged numerous letters in advance of their coming, as she sat at the great instrument: a dark complexioned young lady who presented a very pretty picture in her attractive pose.
Miss Lyon arranged that I should photograph Mark Twain, sitting in front of the fireplace in his living room. He wore his
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white flannel suit with black mourning band fastened around the left sleeve of his coat. It was an interior picture made with- out flashlight.
His biographer, Mr. Albert Bigelow Paine, wrote:
And so the days passed along, and he grew stronger in body and courage as his grief drifted farther behind him.
Sometimes, in the afternoon or in the evening when the neighbors had come in for a little while, he would walk up and down and talk in his old marvelous way of all the things on land and sea, of the past, and of the future, "Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate," of the friends he had known, and of the things he had done, of the sorrow and absurdities of the world. It was the talk of which Howells once said, "We shall never know its likes again. When he dies, it will die with him."
During Mark Twain's first season in Dublin, reporters came for interviews. To one correspondent he gave the following statement which was printed in a metropolitan journal:
Last January, when we were beginning to inquire about a home for this summer, I remembered that Abbott Thayer had said, three years before, that the New Hampshire high- lands was a good place. He was right-it is a good place. Any place that is good for an artist in print is good for an artist in morals and ink. Brush is here, too; so is Col. T. W. Higginson; so is Raphael Pumpelly; so is Secretary Hitch- cock; so is Henderson; so is Learned; so is Sumner; so is Franklin MacVeagh; so is Joseph L. Smith; so is Henry Copley Greene, when I am not occupying his house, which I am doing this season. Paint, literature, science, statesman- ship, history, professorship, law, morals-these are all repre- sented here, yet crime is substantially unknown. The sum- mer homes of these refugees are sprinkled, a mile apart, among the forest-clad hills, with access to each other by firm and smooth country roads, which are so embowered in dense foliage that it is always twilight in there, and
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comfortable. These forests are spider-webbed with these good roads; they go everywhere; but for the help of the guideboard, the stranger would not arrive anywhere. The village-Dublin-is bunched together in its own place, but a good telephone service makes its markets handy to all those outliars. I have spelt it that way to be witty. The village executes orders on the Boston plan-promptness and courtesy.
The summer homes are high-perched, as a rule, and have contenting outlooks. The house we occupy has one. Monad- nock, a soaring double hump, rises into the sky at its left elbow-that is to say, it is close at hand. From the base of the long slant of the mountain the valley spreads away to the circling frame of hills, and beyond the frame the billowy sweep of remote great ranges rises to view and flows, fold upon fold, wave upon wave, soft and blue and unworldly, to the horizon 50 miles away.
In these October days, Monadnock and the valley and its framing hills make an inspiring picture to look at, for they are sumptuously splashed and mottled and betorched from skyline to skyline with the richest dyes the autumn can furnish; and when they lie flaming in the full drench of the mid-afternoon sun, the sight affects the spectator physically; it stirs his blood like military music.
These summer homes are commodious, well built and well furnished-facts which sufficiently indicate that the owners built them to live in themselves. They have furnaces and wood fireplaces, and the rest of the comforts and con- veniences of a city home, and can be comfortably occupied all the year round. We cannot have this house next season, but I have secured Mrs. Upton's house, which is over in the law and science quarter, two or three miles from here; and about the same distance from the art, literary and scholastic groups. The science and law quarter has needed improving this good while. The nearest railway station is distant something like an hour's drive. It is three hours from there to Boston, over a branch line. You can go to New York in six hours per branch lines if you change cars every
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time you think of it, but it is better to go to Boston and stop over and take the trunk line next day, then you do not get lost.
It is claimed that the atmosphere of the New Hampshire highlands is exceptionally bracing and stimulating, and a fine aid to hard and continuous work. It is a just claim, I think. I came in May, and wrote 35 successive days with- out a break. It is possible that I could not have done it elsewhere. I do not know; I have not had any disposition to try it before. I think I got the disposition out of the atmosphere this time. I feel quite sure, in fact, that that is where it came from. I am ashamed to confess what an intolerable pile of manuscript I ground out in the 35 days. Therefore I will keep the number of words to myself.
This year our summer is six months long and ends with November and the flight home to New York, but next year we hope and expect to stretch it another month and end it the first of December.
I think Mr. Clemens' first year in Dublin was the happier one. During the season he wrote A Horse's Tale, and Eve's Diary, but he felt that his time was being taken up with too many social functions and he must accomplish more work by taking a house further away from friends the next year.
I was asked to find him such a place, if possible, and finally suggested Mrs. Upton's "Mountain View Farm," off the Jaffrey road, nearly two miles from the village.
The house and location pleased him, but it was necessary to have the telephone and electric light line extended to it. This was finally arranged and the house was rented for the summer of 1906.
Mr. Clemens wanted to come early, he said, "to see the bursting of spring," and he particularly requested that his bed- room be profusely lighted, for he did a great deal of writing in bed and liked to have a perfect flood of light in the room in which he worked.
Albert Bigelow Paine would come to Dublin during the
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summer to work on his biography which was already begun, and Miss Josephine Hobby, an expert stenographer who had suc- cessfully held secretarial positions with Charles Dudley Warner and Mrs. Mary Mapes, Dodge, would assist.
Mr. Paine had rooms in the village and sometimes rode back and forth to his work but generally walked each way.
Another request made, to be completed before the family's coming, was for the building of a small workshop for Jean, who did wood-carving and various types of sloyd work. I chose the crest of a nearby knoll for its location, a few rods west of the house, on a higher level. Jean enjoyed the thrill of horseback riding but "she was inclined to be silent at times, was tall, dressed always in white, was pale and classically beautiful."
The older daughter, Clara, a concert singer, married Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Russian pianist, and did not come to Dublin.
Mr. Paine has written:
It was mid-May, and lilacs were prodigally in bloom. The Upton house stands on the edge of a beautiful beech forest some two or three miles from Dublin, just under Monadnock, a good way up the slope. It is a handsome, roomy farmhouse and has a long colonnaded veranda over- looking one of the most beautiful landscape visions on the planet; lake, forest, hill, and a far range of blue mountains, a church spire glinted here and there, and all the handiwork of God is there.
I have seen these things in paintings, but I had not dreamed that such a view really existed. The immediate foreground was a grassy slope, with ancient blooming apple- trees; and just at the right hand, Monadnock rose, superb and lofty, sloping down to the panorama below that stretched away, taking on an even deeper blue, until it reached that remote range on which the sky rested and · the world seemed to end.
A magnificent description!
Mark Twain said, "I think I shall like it when I get ac-
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quainted with it, and get it classified and labeled and I think I will do our dictating out here on the porch; it ought to be an inspiring place."
Mr. Paine continued: "When it stormed we moved into the great living room where, at one end, there was a fireplace with blazing logs, and at the other, the orchestrelle."
Mr. Clemens loved kittens. He rented three from his nearest neighbor, the Sam Pellerin family. He didn't want to own them for he would have to leave them behind uncared for.
He called the three kittens Sackcloth and Ashes. Two of the kittens looked exactly alike, so one name answered for both. Mr. Paine said,
Their gambols always amused him. He would stop at any time in the midst of dictation to enjoy them.
Once he was about to enter the screen door that led into the hall, two of the kittens ran up in front of him and stood waiting. With grave politeness he opened the door, made a low bow and said, "Walk in, gentlemen. I always give pref- erence to royalty." And the kittens marched in, tails in air. All summer long they played up and down the veranda, or chased grasshoppers and butterflies down the clover slope. It was a never ending amusement to him to see them jump into the air after some insect, miss it, and tumble back, and afterward jump up, with a surprised expression and look of disappointment.
Once when he was walking up and down discussing some very serious subject-and one of the kittens was lying on the veranda asleep, a butterfly came drifting along three feet, or more, above the floor. The kitten must have got a glimpse of the insect out of the corner of its eye and per- haps did not altogether realize its action. At all events, it suddenly shot straight up into the air, exactly like a bound- ing ball, missed the butterfly, fell back on the porch floor with considerable force and with much surprise. Then it sprang to its feet, and after spitting furiously once or twice, bounded away.
Clemens had seen the performance and it took his
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subject out of his mind. He laughed extravagantly, and evi- dently cared more for the moment's entertainment than for many philosophies.
On one occasion he wrote,
The skies are enchantingly blue. The world is a dazzle of sunshine. Monadnock is closer to us than usual by several hundred yards.
The vast extent of spreading valley is intensely green- the lakes as intensely blue. And there is a new horizon, a remoter one than we have known before, far beyond the mighty half circle of hazy mountains that form the usual frame of the picture, rise certain shadowy dances that are unfamiliar to our eyes.
Mr. Paine was the author of several delightful animal story books for boys and gave my children copies of two-In the Deep Woods and In the Hollow Tree. He often dropped into the store and on one occasion showed us a group of pictures of Mr. Clemens, taken on the porch of the Upton house. We saw the pictures with Mark Twain's comments written on each, which have since been published in different periodicals. Mr. Paine's description follows:
It was just before one of his departures that I made another set of pictures of him, this time on the colonnaded veranda where his figure had become so familiar. He had determined to have his hair cut when he reached New York, and I was anxious to get the pictures before this happened.
When the proofs came-seven of them-he arranged them as a series to illustrate what he called "The Progress of a Moral Purpose." He ordered a number of sets of the series, and he wrote a legend on each photograph, number- ing them from one to seven, laying each set in a sheet of paper which formed a sort of wrapper, on which was written:
The series of 7 photographs registers with scientific
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precision, stage by stage, the progress of a moral purpose through the mind of the human race's Oldest Friend-S.L.C.
Toward the close of summer Mr. Paine said,
The days drifted along, one a good deal like another, except as the summer deepened, the weather became warmer, the foliage changed, a drowsy haze gathered along the valleys and on the mountainside. He sat more often now in a large rocking-chair, and seemed to be looking through half closed lids toward the Monadnock heights, that was al- ways changing in aspect-in color and in form-as cloud shapes drifted by or gathered in those lofty hollows.
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