The handsome sailor, p.8
The Handsome Sailor, page 8
Herman enjoys his games, but so do I, as it happens. He bowed me back, and smiled a coy one, with barely a trace of the lemon-sucking expression for his learned lemon-sucking friends.
August 9. The literary men have this in common with all men everywhere, that every thing they do, from the eating of breakfast to the fighting of a holy war, will become a story at supper. Thus were we privileged to hear the travellers’ report from Lenox and Lebanon Springs.
Given the inside tour by the Shakers, they saw the many ingenious improvements on daily living, clever solutions like our famous race-course, the circle barn where their cattle are fed. Nevertheless, the one-eyed preacher remains the chief attraction. He and his congregation carry on, twisting and writhing, and crying out on high. The preacher warns them off the whore of Babylon in language so earthy that they redouble their licentious dances. “I have never heard such eager reference to the sexual passions, among those who make themselves eligible,” says Evert, “as here in Lebanon, among those who do not.”
With the possible exception of Mr. Hawthorne, who went with them, these are men with a determination to enjoy. And their ability to enjoy lies partly in their determination to enlarge—as with Evert’s nice description of the Lenox clock. The full moon of the clock, he says, lay just beneath the full moon of Berkshire last night, like two bright eccentric circles.
Thus he turns observation into experience, and experience into poetry. Whereas most men do not see the moon at all.
August 10. We had music yesterday, in the great hall, the B-minor Mass very beautifully played by our guest Miss Dillingham. I had planned refreshments in the garden-close, but it rained again just as we were moving outdoors.
Then, chaos. I accepted a flurry of gratitudes, and the literary men abruptly left us. (Better fish to fry.) Away they flew in barouche-and-pair, though moments later skies were clearing, and Evert’s moon was starting up over Hoosac.
Tomorrow, eleven strong we make the grand pilgrimage to Saddleback. We will stand upon the highest rock or clod in Massachusetts. Reverend Entler will be in the party, so Herman will have to behave. I trust Augusta to keep him within bounds on that front, for he would never insult the cloth in her presence. And I hardly care that he quibbles with his brother Alan. They both seem to enjoy the quibbling, and some say that is what all brothers do.
How will he behave toward me? Tonight he barely spoke a word; we had more of the polite new distance. The distance comes and goes, it is not always there but what makes it come and go?
I begin to think Herman is not the most straightforward of friends, though I ought perhaps to note how constant he is with the Duyckincks. They are his friends too, of course, and his guests this week. It may be no more than that: he has much more than Mrs. Morewood on his mind.
August 13. We are back from the mountaintop, and to say the trip was memorable is to say the very least. I truly believe we shall recall it vividly for the rest of our days on earth. It was a high point in more ways than one!
Some have found it a challenge to reach the peak of Mt. Greylock in hiking garb, with knapsacks. We reached it carrying ten pounds of ham, a dozen sacks of Heidsieck, half a dozen of cognac, chickens and bread for eleven, cushions, blankets, buffalo robes. In short, we not only ascended, we carried with us half the worldly goods of Berkshire, and more than half the visiting population.
Though we numbered eleven, only four of us qualify as natives. Two of us, Herman and I, qualified as host and hostess. This was inevitable. The guests were either his, or mine, so all arrangements were ours to make. We did take charge, and giving a party together, as it were, did serve to eliminate the distance. We were best friends again, of the best sort.
Evert had his needle out for us, though. He started calling us Mr. M. and Mrs. M., whether in mischief or, as he protested, “with simple accuracy.” He was the most satirical all day, especially regarding the difficulties of the trail. He was also the eldest, being in his middle thirties, and the least vigorous, and so frequently called for the cognac to fuel him onward, ever onward. As we carved a path through wild brush near Bellows Pipe, he grandly reclined and applauded George and Herman as they slashed away. The Reverend Entler, feeling perhaps the responsibility of being second eldest, charitably joined him, “for there are always implications that fall upon a solitary drinker.”
We reached the summit in full light and set about furnishing our sylvan home. Herman disappeared into the limbs of a tree, yodelayed from somewhere on high, then set to work at the base of the tower. He hollowed out a rotted stump and built a bonfire inside it, which he fed with logs past midnight. This was not for cooking (as our supper wanted only unwrapping) but for warmth. There is a wintry finger upon the windy Greylock summit.
We ate the first courses of our supper beside the glowing hearth, and then, at sunset, we rushed up into the tower. It stands at twice the height of our attic peak, so from the topmost platform one sees a matchless panorama, from the Connecticut River in east Vermont to the Hudson, coiling through the Catskills. The world lays out like a topographical map: field, forest, and lake. We counted a dozen church steeples, risen above the crowns of the elms at every village green. Words cannot do justice to these sights; not my words, certainly. Perhaps the literary men will prove equal to it, in the coming monthlies.
But here was a famous night, a night to never end—and it nearly never did. We greeted the stroke of midnight with a reprise of the cognac, accompanied by a quart of brandied cherries. Eat, eat, I urged them all, for the more we eat the less we carry back down the trail tomorrow. No one resisted this exhortation, nor the cherries, nor the last of the ham.
Only Allan could sleep. Augusta is afraid of the dark, and quite seriously feared that large rats were lumbering right past her head. Her brother suggested she sleep standing up, a trick he had from necessity perfected at sea: “Then the rats won’t take a vital organ, only the little toes.”
Poor Mrs. Pollack rolled over and over on the lumpy roots and stones, until she was virtually sharing a blanket with Evert. As he had begun the ribald theme, I gave some back to him by wondering aloud if the venue was not a little public for such nuptial rites. He grew bright cheeks at that (as did Reverend Entler) but I was only just beginning, for the night was magic, the place mythic, and the cognac inexhaustible. George threatens to release a careful “word by word transcription” of all my indiscretions, to launch his new blackmail business!
So kind a man is George Duyckinck that I am surprised he can even raise a joke about criminal enterprise. We were together through the long descent, filling our baskets with yellow raspberries; bending, picking, bumping backs and laughing. On the evidence of nothing more than these few days, I believe we will be friends for life. Indeed, we all shall be.
We slept (or did not sleep) as close to the stars as one can in the state of Massachusetts. It would make for a long night to be camped up there in January, but our ripe summer night was all too short and sweet.
When daylight broke, the mountain was swathed in that same impenetrable mist. Whatever we had seen the evening before, this morning we could not see each other across the stump. We were standing inside a cloud, I suppose; then one large gust blew across the peak and seized the shroud away. There it lay afresh: our bright green valley, through air clear as glass, for forty miles.
Herman and the Reverend made a strange pair at the breakfast pit. “Broiling Birds For Breakfast” was the song they composed and rendered, in harmony, as merrily they stoked their coals, and plucked the last reluctant feathers. Far from assailing one another on God and morality, as Rowland had forecast, they wassailed one another, and made a joyful noise. There was no end to the wonders of this extraordinary foot party.
A final adventure did lay in wait for us at North Adams, where the mysterious baggage contractor refused to take us from the hotel to the depot, and threw our luggage off the wagon. Happy indeed to have consumed most of the impost last night and this morning, we loaded our backs and made safari down to the railway platform, only to find the sheriff there, waving a warrant for Herman’s arrest!
Herman declined the honor and his brother Allan, who is after all an attorney, fired off some sallies from the statute book, chapter this and paragraph that, until the gentlemen’s necks were all grown red and half the vagabonds of the village had risen from their naps to witness the coming brawl.
It was all a ploy for money, an extortion. The contractor had piled his extra charges into fine print, and the sheriff was in his pocket. Herman demanded a bill, disdainfully paid it out, and we boarded the train. There was no brawl, only more laughter and song, and this last tale to tell.
In just a few hours, Rowland will be home, bringing the Van Winkles to supper. Good, I say. I have no fatigue. Boil the potatoes and bring them on. The rest of our party voted for total respite, but I was ready to cast lines on Lake Pontoosuc, where the bass are all but volunteering. Others may take life in bites, and rest up between courses. Not I.
Of course, I know what drives my locomotive. They have never yet lost life; never had a year fall out of their life as through a trapdoor. They have never been in a purgatory, where you may get better and you may get worse, so you better not move and can not breathe. They have not had that, but I have. I have rested enough.
August 14. Reverend Entler has caught a summer cold, for which I am being blamed—even though George Duyckinck caught a bass in Lake Pontoosuc and pronounced the same air that laid the Reverend low to be nothing less than “evaporated manna.”
The Duyckincks left us this morning, with a parting vow to stay in touch over winter. They propose we reproduce the Saddleback excursion, in all its details, next summer and every summer thereafter, on the 11 of August.
I am assigned these details, which should be simple enough. All lists and maps are drawn, though Herman reminded us we will need to hire a new wagoneer. “We will need to hire a new porker, too,” he adds, “and six new chickens.”
Lydia finally met them on their last evening. George she liked at once, Evert she found foppish, yet amusing. What they thought of her, I will likely never know.
August 16. An interesting contrast, at our neighbor’s farm. Allan reading newspapers in a lawn chair, Herman baking in the field, turning the hay. But Herman likes his farmer mode. The haying and harvesting rather suit him, so he takes it all on cheerfully, and tells us he is happy he cannot afford to hire it out. His horse is more reluctant, so Herman engages him in running conversation. “Take it home, Riley,” he encourages, “Take it home. It is your Christmas dinner, not mine.”
Meanwhile, he already has launched a new literary work. This time, he envisions a sunny Berkshire idyll, something to retain the savor of our recent “green and golden” days.
He is in such a sunny, mellow mood. Toward me, he is again very amiable, almost tender. There is less of our jousting, more of easy friendship. We are agreed to an hour of riding soon: day as yet unspecified, chaperone as yet unnamed.
Lydia cautions about overfamiliarity, announcing a mild disapproval of our magical night in the clouds. (Inklings of the coeducational campfire—of bedrolls overlapping, of Mr. Duyckinck and Mrs. Pollack as close as “horse and harness,” have naturally trickled down to her.) But I was quick to remind her that our very Reverend was present, and that he seemed at peace with all proceedings. Indeed, he provided us with an eloquent and instructive historical context, in his “starlight sermon.”
He recalled the tens of thousands who drifted into the American wilderness, not so long ago. Intrepid souls, who slept on skins and earthen floors, and hunted their breakfast in virgin woods. “Our nation is a mere sixty-two years of age,” said he. “I have a dozen parishioners older than that. Older than the nation.”
From this historical perspective, we were more than civilized up there in the clouds, with our ham sandwiches and European wine. Not to mention that the talk was all of Goethe, Schiller, and Waldo Emerson.
Perhaps, like moralists everywhere, Lydia is mostly envious that she missed the party. But like all moralists everywhere, too, she will not be budged from her bedrock. The nation is far from young, she holds, it is just as old as you like. My family (she holds) goes back to William the Conqueror, and my nation is more than firmly established, thanks you werry much.
August 20. For the first time since our river swim, I had a moment alone with Herman. He was very quiet, which I mentioned. He then spoke of the different kinds of silence—of Mr. Hawthorne’s wonderfully companionable silences (which I, of course, find to be less than companionable) and of the sort of awed silence that signals reverence for nature. Then he spoke of his love of solitude, and of solitude going hand in hand with silence.
Misunderstanding, I offered to leave him be, if such was his preference. His apology came quick and warm; genuine, I felt. “No, Sarah, I did not mean that. I only meant to tell you something of the sort of fellow you have for saddle partner.”
Thus suddenly, for the first time in our acquaintance, I became Sarah. (Neither Miss nor Mrs.) Through constant deprivation, he makes you grateful for the sound of your own name.
August 23. A brief chance meeting with Herman in the village, a sentence or two on the street, nothing of the least consequence. But I believe there is something new between us: a closeness perhaps too close, a male and female sort of closeness, with that kind of dangerous spark in the air.
This may be an excessive response on my part, though the truth is I had already felt something of this on Tuesday. In any case, when we ride on Saturday, the entire sisterhood will be riding with us, to chaperone away any sparks.
August 26. Left unsaid above was the obvious: that the spark is not merely dangerous, it is pleasant. Therein lies the danger, of course, for it is at bottom no more than the spark of life itself.
And I discover it is unmistakable even in the presence of chaperones. A kind of chill; a tightening at the breast, and as I say, unwelcome pleasure.
I am safe from it, of course. I am long in the tooth, at 27, to swoon away on forest floor, and married, let us hasten to add. Happily married. Herman is such an unquestioned gentleman that one is safe enough taking some small amusement from this callow agitation.
But does it have an outward form? Is it visible? Because today at the breakfast table, Rose said to me, “A shame Mr. Rowland must be so much from the family.” Why say it now? Rowland is away by design; he is at work, as he has been all these months. Was her intent to be sympathetic, or insolent? Does she read my mind? Or worse, has she read these pages?
She would not nor could she, since I keep the key. But perhaps the phenomenon does have a solid aspect; perhaps it is not mere vapor, but as definite as chairs and tables, and Rose has bumped her hip on one.
Our New York interlude will mark an end to this matter. By the time I return, it will be the start of the second week in September, and this ambigous summer haze surely will have lifted.
September 1. By taking the train trip Rowland takes, I see for myself that it is not punitive. Not the first time at any rate. The prospects are lovely on both sides, compartments are neat and private, and the ride is so smooth you can indeed be working—or writing in your diary.
I am also confirmed in the timeliness of this short trip. Yesterday, I experienced an unwelcome emotion, and an inappropriate one. Jealousy. Not of my husband, but of my friend. I knew that Herman had gone for tea with the Hawthornes and their houseguest, a visiting Swedish poet. The poet is a poetess (Fredricka B.) and I imagined the four of them being poetical together, hour by hour on the Hawthorne lawn.
Augusta could not tell me if this Swedish beauty was 25 or 65 years of age, and I could not ask a second time, or appear to be too keenly interested. I felt so ridiculous. I have a husband, Herman has a wife. It is for his wife to be jealous of Swedish poetesses.
September 7. Somewhat distracted still, hours out of every day. We are safe from our actions, yet never safe from emotions. Sometimes there is nothing that can dislodge an emotion—not age, nor geographical location, nor marital status, nor anything else.
Rowland is thoroughly absorbed in the timbering at home, which has begun, and in the dining room changes, which begin all too soon. Since the changes are more my hobby horse than his, he is right to presume my interest. Yet I cannot listen for long to his perfectly sensible discussions. I do not think about the timbering or the dining room, I think about those simple moments at the barn and on the hill; moments with nothing memorable about them, beyond that they occurred.
Is this emotion mutual, as I sense, or am I alone in my nervous agitation? One cannot easily picture Herman nervous, or agitated, and he is far too busy for emotion, between crops, books, and family—not to mention the companionable silences of his brother Mr. Hawthorne.
September 12. I am quite sane. I love and esteem my husband; I treasure my son. And never do I take for granted this fortunate life we share. So why do I wander to the window, with a hollow at my core? Why does my mind wander from what my darling Willie is telling me?
I am so aware, minute by hour, that Herman is just beyond the hill. I know that if I ride past to say hello, and hear his voice hello me back, my distraction eases, my balance is restored. But this can hardly be a solution, any more than the opium is an answer to the opium eater’s distress.
The question of mutuality haunts my thoughts. When I see Herman calm and confident, I am convinced there is nothing—and I am disappointed. Misery does love company. Yet am I not calm and confident in his eyes? Certainly I am trying to be, with all my wit and fibre.
Perhaps I am not quite so sane, after all. If this is summer reverie, though, born of mountaintops and sunny hillsides, it will exhaust itself as the season exhausts itself. In the meanwhile, I fear it must begin to show, though nothing bothers Rowland outwardly. He does not react to Mr. Smith’s indiscreet dinner reference to the Mr. M. and Mrs. M. theme from Saddleback. It seems, both to my shame and gratitude, that my dear husband has no idea what a fool he has wedded.
