Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 54

SAYBROOK.

"Says Tweed to Till, 'What gars ye rin sae still?'

Says Till to Tweed, 'Though ye rin wi' speed, An' I rin slaw, For ae man that ye droon, I droon twa.'"--_Old Song._

Rather more than a hundred miles from New York the railway crosses the Connecticut River, on one of those bridges that at a little distance resemble spiders' webs hung between the sh.o.r.es. From here one may look down quite to the river's mouth, where it enters the Sound; and if it be a warm summer's day, the bluish-gray streak of land across it may be seen. The Connecticut is the only river of importance emptying upon the New England coast that has not an island lodged in its throat.

It was on one of those parched days of midsummer, when the very air is quivering, and every green thing droops and shrivels under a vertical sun, that I first alighted at the station at Saybrook. The listless, f.a.gged, and jaded air of city swells lounging about the platform, the flushed faces of blooming girls and watchful dowagers, betokened the general prostration of weary humanity, who yearned for the musical plash of sea-waves as the withering leaves and dusty gra.s.s longed for rain.

How feminine New England exaggerates, to be sure! A group of three young ladies exchange their views upon the sultriness of the day: one observes, "What a dreadful hot day!" a second declares it "horrid"

(torrid, perhaps she meant to say); and the last p.r.o.nounces it "perfectly frightful," emphasizing the opinion by opening her umbrella with a sharp snap. What they would have said to an earthquake, a conflagration, or a s.h.i.+pwreck, is left to bewildering conjecture.

In a certain unquiet portion of the American Union, the term Connecticut Yankee is expressive of concentrated dislike for shrewd bargaining, a nasal tw.a.n.g of speech, and a supposed desire to overreach one's neighbor. How often have I heard in the South the expression, "A mean Yankee;" as if, forsooth, meanness were sectional! Here in New England a Connecticut Yankee is spoken of as a cunning blade or sharp fellow; as an Englishman would say, "He's Yorks.h.i.+re;" or an Italian, "e Spoletino."

The day of wooden nutmegs is past and gone, and Connecticut is more familiarly known as the "Land of Steady Habits." The whole State is a hive. Every smoky town you see is a busy work-shop. The problem of the Connecticut man is how to do the most work in the shortest time, whether by means of a sewing-machine, a Colt, or a _mitrailleuse_. If I should object to any thing in him, it would be the hurry and worry, the _drive_, which impels him through life--and in this I do not imagine he differs from the average American man of business--until, like one of his own engines that is always worked under a full pressure of steam, he stops running at last. That is why we see so many old men of thirty, and so many premature gray hairs in New England.

But what I chiefly lament is the disappearance of the Yankee--not the conventional Yankee of the theatre, for he had never an existence elsewhere; but the hearty yet suspicions, "cute" though green, drawling, whittling, unadulterated Yankee, with his broad humor, delicious _patois_, and large-hearted patriotism. His very mother-tongue is forgotten. Not once during these rambles have I heard his old familiar "I swaow," or "Git aout," or "Dew tell."[336] Railway and telegraph, factory and work-shop, penetrating into the most secluded hamlets, have rubbed off all the crust of an originality so p.r.o.nounced as to have become the type, and often the caricature too, of American nationality the world over.

One peculiarity I have noticed is that of calling spinsters, of whatever age, "girls." I knew two elderly maiden ladies, each verging on three-score, who were universally spoken of as the "Young girls," their names, I should perhaps explain, being Young. Once, when in quest of lodgings in a strange place, I was directed to apply to the two Brown girls, whose united ages, as I should judge, could not be less than a century and a quarter. But one is not to judge of New England girls by this sample.

Another practice which prevails in some villages is that of designating father and son, where both have a common Christian-name, as "Big Tom"

and "Little Tom;" and brother and sister as "Bub" and "Sis." One can hardly maintain a serious countenance to hear a stalwart fellow of six feet alluded to as "Little" Tom, or Joe, or Bill, or a full-grown man or woman as "Bub" or "Sis." On the coast, nicknames are current princ.i.p.ally among the sea-faring element; "Guinea Bill" or "Portugee Jack,"

presupposes the owner to have made a voyage to either of those distant lands.

The Italians count the whole twenty-four hours, beginning at half an hour after sunset. By this method of computation I reckoned on arriving at Saybrook Point at exactly twenty-two o'clock. I walked through the village leisurely observant of its outward aspect, which was that of undisturbed tranquillity. Modern life had been so long in reaching it, that it had been willing to accommodate itself to the old houses, and so far to the old life of the place. The toilets here, as elsewhere, encroached in many instances upon those of the last century, and were wonderfully like the portraits one sees of the time. Now, let us have the old manners back again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ISAAC HULL]

One of the pleasantest old houses in Saybrook is the Hart mansion, which stands in the main street of the village, heavily draped by the foliage of three elm-trees of great size and beauty. It was a favorite retreat of that gallant sailor, Isaac Hull, who lost his heart there.[337] Like Nelson, he was the idol of his sailors, for he was as humane as he was brave. He seldom ordered one of his old sea-dogs to be flogged, but would call a culprit before him, and after scolding him soundly with affected roughness of tone and manner, would tell him to return to his duty. The _Old Ironsides_ was loved with a love almost like that which man bears to woman. Ladies would have kissed the hem of her sails; men sc.r.a.ped the barnacles from her bottom, and carried them home in their pockets. I have seen no end of canes, picture-frames, and other souvenirs of this famous s.h.i.+p treasured by fortunate possessors; and one of the old merchants of Boston had his street door made of her oak.

Saybrook is languid. It is dispersed along one broad and handsome street, completely canopied by an arch of foliage. You seem, when at the entrance, to be looking through a green tunnel. In this street there is no noise and but little movement. The few shops were without custom.

After the spasm of activity caused by the arrival of the train--when it seemed for the moment to rub its eyes and brisk up a little, carriages and pedestrians having mysteriously disappeared somewhere--the old town dozed again.

The Connecticut is here tame and uninteresting, with near sh.o.r.es of salt-marsh flatness. Yellow sand-bars, green hummocks, or jutting points skirted with pine-groves, inclose the stream, which is broad, placid, and shallow. There are no iron headlands, or dangerous reefs. Nature seems quite in harmony with the general quietude and restfulness.

A few years ago there existed at the Point the remains of a colonial fortress, with much history cl.u.s.tering around it. It was raised in the very infancy of English settlement at the mouth of the Connecticut; and when the Revolution came, the old dismounted cannon, that had perhaps done duty with Howard or Blake, were again placed on the ramparts. The railway people have reduced the hill on which it stood to a flat and dreary gravel waste.[338] This is walking into antiquity with a vengeance! It is perhaps fortunate that the Coliseum, Temple Bar, and St. Denis are not where they would be valued for the cubic yards of waste material they might afford.

The Dutch antic.i.p.ated the English in the settlement on Connecticut River. The Hollanders at Fort Amsterdam, and the then rival colonies of Plymouth and Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, were each desirous of obtaining a foothold which each felt too weak to undertake alone. The country had been subjugated by the Pequots, whose territory neither colony might invade without bringing the whole nation upon them.

The Dutch were also first to visit the river, and to inform the Pilgrims of its beauty and advantages for traffic. In 1633, Ma.s.sachusetts having rejected overtures for a joint occupation, Plymouth determined to establish a trading-post upon the river without her aid. Apprised of this intention, the Dutch dispatched an expedition, which disembarked where Hartford now is. A house was hastily erected, and ordnance mounted, with which the Hollanders gave notice that they meant to keep out intruders.

The Plymouth expedition, under command of William Holmes, ascended the river, and, notwithstanding an attempt to stop them, pa.s.sed by the Dutch fort. They landed at Nattawanute, afterward Windsor, and, having made themselves secure, sent their vessel home. Word was sent to Fort Amsterdam of the invasion. A company of seventy dispatched to the scene advanced "brimful of wrath and cabbage," with drums beating and colors flying, against the English fort. Seeing the Pilgrims were in nowise disconcerted, the Dutch captain ordered a halt; a parley took place, and, having thus vindicated the national honor, Gualtier Twilley's men withdrew.[339]

The attempts of Plymouth to establish tributary plantations, with trading-posts, at the extreme eastern and western limits of New England, were equally disastrous. Ma.s.sachusetts stood quietly by, and saw her rival dispossessed at Pen.o.bscot, but at Windsor the Plymouth people soon found themselves hemmed in between settlements made by emigrants from the bay. As a quarrel would perhaps have been alike fatal to both, Plymouth gave way to her more powerful neighbor.

The English settlement of Connecticut is usually a.s.signed to the year 1635, the year of beginnings at Hartford, Wethersfield, and Saybrook. In the autumn the younger Winthrop sent a few men to take possession and fortify at the mouth of the Connecticut, as agent of Lords Say, Brook, and their a.s.sociate owners of the patent.[340] This expedition forestalled by a few days only a new attempt to obtain possession by the Dutch, who, finding the English already landed and having cannon mounted, abandoned their design.

Through the agency of the celebrated Hugh Peters, the patentees engaged, and sent to New England, Lion Gardiner, a military engineer who had served in the Low Countries. He arrived at Boston in November, 1635, and proceeded to the fort at the mouth of the Connecticut. He was followed by George Fenwick, sent over by Lord Say to be resident agent of the English proprietors. Fenwick, accompanied by Peters, reached the fort in the spring. The plantation was called Saybrook, as a compliment to the two princ.i.p.al personages interested in its founding.

Saybrook has perhaps acquired a certain importance in the eyes of historical writers to which no other spot of New England's soil can pretend. There is little room to doubt that Lord Say, and perhaps some of his a.s.sociates, strongly entertained the idea of removing thither.[341] A more debatable a.s.sertion, which is, however, well fortified with authorities, represents Oliver Cromwell, John Hampden, Pym, and Sir Arthur Haselrig as having been prevented from embarking only by an express order from the king: some, indeed, a.s.sert that they actually embarked.[342]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MOSS-GROWN MEMORIAL.]

In the old burial-place of Saybrook Point is the most curious sepulchral memorial in New England. I can compare it with nothing but a Druid monument, it is so ma.s.sy, so roughly shaped, and so peculiar in form.

Until a few years ago, it stood within a field south-west of the fort, over the dust of George Fenwick's wife, a woman of gentle blood. The "improvements" made by the railway in this vicinity caused the removal of the monument to its present position. When the remains of Lady Fenwick were disinterred, the skeleton was found to be nearly entire.

Beneath the skull was lying a heavy braid of auburn hair, which was parceled out among the villagers. My informant offered to show me the tress that had fallen to his share.

I acknowledge it, I am the fool of a.s.sociation; and when I see the spade thrust among graves, I wince a little. I would have Shakspeare's appeal and malediction inscribed over the entrance to every old grave-yard in New England. But, after all, what is Shakspeare's malediction to these trouble-tombs who antic.i.p.ate the Resurrection, and give the burial service the lie. Our bones ache at the thought of being tossed about on a laborer's shovel. Rather come cremation than mere tenure at will at the tender mercies of these levelers. When we have been "put to bed with a shovel," and have pulled our green coverlet over us, let us have the peace that pa.s.seth all understanding.

Not much is known of Lady Anne Boteler, or Butler, the wife of George Fenwick. It is surmised that she died in childbed. The inscription that her monument undoubtedly bore has been so long obliterated that no record remains of it. A newer one, with the simple name and date, "Lady Fenwick, died 1648," has been cut in the perishable sandstone. Some one has also caused the cross to be chiseled there.[343] Considering the peculiar aversion with which the Puritans regarded the cross, the appearance of one on the tombstone of Lady Fenwick is suggestive of the famous prohibition of the cemetery of Saint Medard:

"De par le roi, defense a Dieu De faire miracle en ce lieu."

Dr. Dwight states, as of report, that Fenwick, before his return to England, made provision for having his wife's tomb kept in repair. The sale of the t.i.tle of Lords Say and Brook by him, in 1644, to Connecticut, is considered evidence as well of the existence of the design of removal alluded to as of its abandonment. After the death of Lady Fenwick her husband returned to England, and is mentioned as one of the regicide-judges. He subsequently appears with the t.i.tle of "colonel," and is believed to be the same person who besieged Hume Castle, in 1650, for Cromwell. On being summoned, the governor sent his defiance in verse:

"I, William of the Wastle, Am now in my Castle: And aw the dogs in the town Shanna gar me gang down."[344]

The English at Saybrook Point protected the land approach with a palisade drawn across the narrow isthmus, which very high tides overflowed and isolated from the main-land. Their corn-field was two miles distant from the fort, and skulking Pequots were always on the alert to waylay and murder them. Some of the Bay magistrates having spoken contemptuously of Indian arrows, Gardiner[345] sent them the rib of a man in which one, after pa.s.sing through the body, had buried itself so that it could not be withdrawn.

Gardiner's manner of dealing with Indians was peculiar. When the expedition against the Pequots was at Saybrook Fort, distrusting Mohegan faith, he resolved to make a trial of it. He therefore called Uncas before him, and said, "You say you will help Major Mason, but I will first see it; therefore send you now twenty men to the Ba.s.s River, for there went yesternight six Indians in a canoe thither; fetch them now, dead or alive, and then you shall go with Major Mason, else not." So Uncas sent his men, who killed four and captured one, the sixth making his escape.

The old burial-ground of Saybrook is neat and well kept. Lady Fenwick's monument is just within the entrance, concealed by a clump of fir-trees.

Not a quarter of the graves have stones, and that part of the ground occupied by the ancients of the village is so mounded and overcrowded that you may not avoid walking upon them. In another spot head-stones jutted above the turf at every variety of angle, and several monuments had cavities, showing where they had been robbed of leaden coats of arms--to run into bullets, perhaps. All are of ample dimensions, and on older ones creeping mosses conceal the inscriptions. The variety of color presented by slate, sandstone, or marble upon green is not unpleasing to the eye, yet those reckonings scored upon slate shall endure longest.

In the Hart inclosure repose the ashes of the once beautiful Jeannette M. M. Hart, whose slab bears the symbol of her faith. She, the fairest of all the sisters, renounced the world and, embracing the Roman faith, became a nun. Her remains were brought home from Rome, and laid to rest with the service of the Church of England. In a little separate inclosure, whispered to have been consecrated by the rite of Rome, another sister is lying. When Commodore Hull cruised in the old frigate _United States_, one of these beautiful girls was on board his s.h.i.+p. She was seen by Bolivar, who fell desperately in love with her at a ball, and became so attentive that the American officers believed they were betrothed.[346]

Saybrook was also the original site of Yale College, fifteen commencements having occurred here. The building, which was of a single story, stood about midway between fort and palisade. Its removal, in 1718, to New Haven occasioned great excitement, and the library had to be carried away under the protection of a guard. The Saybrook Platform, so called, was adopted here after the commencement of 1708. Harvard and Yale were in infancy probably not different from those Scotch universities which Dr. Johnson said were like a besieged town, where every man had a mouthful, but no man a bellyful.

The sh.o.r.es about Saybrook offer little that is noteworthy. On the beach the tide softly laps the incline of sand, that looks like a slab of red freestone, fine-grained and hard. A dry spot flas.h.i.+ng beneath your tread, or perhaps a sea-bird circling above your head, attends your loiterings.

Look now off upon the Sound, where the golden sunset is flowing over it, gilding the waves, the distant sh.o.r.es, and the sails of pa.s.sing vessels with beams that in dying are transfused into celestial fires. Idle boats are rocked and caressed on this golden sea. Yonder distant gleam is a light-house, kindled with heavenly flame. The world is transfigured, that we may believe in Paradise. Soon yellow flushes into pale crimson, blending with a sapphire sky. Standing on the strand, we are transformed, and seem to quaff of the elixir of life. Now the violet twilight deepens into sombre shadows. A spark appears in the farther sea. Soon others s.h.i.+ne out like glow-worms in your path; while twinkling stars, seen for a moment, disappear, as if they, too, revolved for some more distant sh.o.r.e. The Sound becomes a vague and heaving blackness. And now, with gentle murmurings, the rising tide effaces our wayward foot-prints.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTES:

[336] The term "Brother Jonathan" originated with Was.h.i.+ngton, who applied it to Governor Jonathan Trumbull, of Connecticut. When any important matter was in agitation the general would say, "We must consult Brother Jonathan."

[337] General William Hart, an old soldier of the Revolution, was a wealthy and highly esteemed citizen of Saybrook. In 1795, with Oliver Phelps and others, he purchased the tract in Ohio called the Western Reserve. The Commodores Hull, uncle and nephew, married sisters belonging to this family. Commodore Andrew Hull Foote was also a nephew of Commodore Isaac Hull, whose widow was still living when I visited Saybrook in 1874.

[338] The eminence on which the fort stood, also called Tomb Hill, jutted into the river, being united to the sh.o.r.e by a beach, and bordered by salt-marshes. It was steep and una.s.sailable from any near vantage-ground. In 1647 the first fort was accidentally destroyed by fire.

[339] In the British State Paper Office is a translation of part of a letter, dated at Fort Amsterdam, in 1633, from Gualtier Twilley to the governor of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, concerning the right of the Dutch to the river. The governor says that he has taken possession of it in the name of the States General, and set up a house on the north side, with intent to plant. He desires Winthrop will defer his claims until their superior magistrates are agreed. The word "[Hudson?]" is placed after "river" in the calendars, but the date and other given facts are probably allusions to the Connecticut attempt.

[340] Lieutenant Gibbons, Sergeant Willard, and some carpenters.--"Lion Gardiner's Account."

[341] See the correspondence in Hutchinson's "History of Ma.s.sachusetts,"

appendix, vol. i., between John Cotton and Lord Say.