It was “grandpa’s wig-block,” so Reuben Jencks said, when he saw it later; his grandfather had added to his duties of tavern-keeper, roadmaster, selectman, and deacon, that of wig-maker. And in that day, when all men of any station wore handsome flowing wigs, and all, even poor men, wore wigs of some kind, it was a calling of importance. Moreover, an Indian with a tomahawk cut but a sorry figure when he tried to scalp a man who wore a wig; it was a deriding insult to the warlike customs of the whole Indian race.
There is a fine old brick tavern still standing in a New England seaboard town, and now doing service as a rather disreputable road house. It is a building rigidly square, set due north, south, east, and west, with four long, narrow doors opening over broad door-stones to the four ends of the earth. A long tail of summer and winter kitchens, a wash-room, brew-house, smoke-house, wood-rooms, sheds, barns, piggeries, pigeon-houses, hen-houses, once stretched a hundred feet or more adown the road, part of which is now torn down. Each joint of the tail helped loyally in olden times to furnish good cheer to the traveller. The great square rooms of the main house are amply furnished; one was a taproom, and in each second-story room still are two double beds, save in the corner room next the kitchen tail of the house, where stands nailed firmly to the floor of the room a somewhat battered oaken table. A little open staircase in the corner of this room leads down to the working end of the house, and was used in olden days to carry supplies to the upper table from the lower kitchen.
It has been many a year since good cheer was spread on that broad oaken board, though at one time it was the favorite dining place of a choice brotherhood of old salts, called the Mariners’ Club, who gathered there when on shore to tell tales of wild privateering, and of sharp foreign trade, and to plan new and profitable ventures. Many of these Mariners’ Clubs and Marine Societies existed in seaport towns at that golden time in New England’s marine commercial history.
This room was the scene about seventy-five years ago of a somewhat unusual expression of feminine revolt – that is, both the expression and the revolt were unusual. One of the most constant frequenters of the tavern, the heaviest eater and deepest drinker, the greatest money-spender at these Mariners’ dinners, was one Captain Sam Blood, who ran a large coasting brig, which made but short trips to Atlantic seaports. Thus he was ever on hand for tavern fun. He had a large and rather helpless family which he kept somewhat in retreat on a gloomy farm two miles inland; his mother old and feeble, yet ever hard-working; a large number of untidy children, and, worst of all, a sickly wife, a tall, gaunt woman who whined, and whined, and ever whined from her patch-covered couch, over the frequent desertions of her spouse to the tavern-table, and his wilful waste of money, while she could never leave the house. One night a specially good dinner was set in the Mariners’ room, roast and boiled meats, pies and puddings, a grand array of full pitchers, decanters, and bottles; the assembled group of old salts were about to ascend from the taproom to seat themselves comfortably at the round table for solid work, when a terrible crash and scream were heard, each seeming louder than the other, and before the startled eyes of the landlord and his guests, as they rushed up and into the room, there were all the steaming dishes, all the streaming bottles, with table-cloth and plates in a disorderly hopeless wreck on the floor. “Who could have done it?” “There he goes,” shouted one captain, as he ran to the window; and, surely enough, a slender man in nautical garb was seen striking out from under the sheltering walls of the ell-kitchens and sheds, and running desperately across the snowy fields. Full chase was given and the marauder finally captured; he was swung roughly around with oaths and blows, when sudden silence fell on all. It was Sam Blood’s wife in Sam Blood’s togs. “I’ll settle for this dinner,” said Sam Blood, blackly.
On his next voyage Mrs. Blood sailed with the captain. With the usual ethical inconsistencies which prevail in small communities, Mrs. Sam Blood the despoiler attracted more attention and sympathy than Mrs. Sam Blood the poor, hard-working, sickly wife; it was the universal talk and decision of all the women in town that the captain’s wife needed a change of scene; and she had to take it in that ironical form decreed to the wives of old-time ship-owners, in a voyage of uncertain length and certain discomfort on a sailing vessel, with no woman companion and the doubtful welcome of the male members of the crew. Off she went to Savannah. At that port she was no better, cried all the time (the first mate wrote home), and seemed little like the woman of spirit who had wrecked the Mariners’ dinner. The captain decided to go with a cargo to South America to see how the tropics would serve the ailing woman. His old home crew shipped back to Boston, not caring for the trip far south, and a crew of creoles and negroes was taken on the supplemental trip.
When Captain Blood and his schooner at last came into port at home, he landed with sombre countenance, a mourning widower, and soon was properly clad in trappings of woe. Mrs. Sam Blood was no more. Her husband stated briefly that she had died and was buried at sea off the island of Jamaica. A discreet and decent term of mourning passed, and Mrs. Blood, as is the way of the living – and of the dead – was quite forgotten. Once more the Mariners’ Club was to have a dinner, and once more the table in the Mariners’ room was spread with good cheer and ample drink. Captain Blood, in somewhat mitigated bereavement, was among the thronging guests who lingered over a final stomach-warmer at the bar. The landlord ran out of the room and roared down the main stairs that dinner was ready, and even as he spoke, crash! smash! came a din from the Mariners’ room, and there was all the dinner and all the broken bottles with the table-cloth and the upset table on the floor. It was a very unpleasant reminder to Sam Blood of a very mortifying event, and his friends sympathized with him in silence. This time no miscreant could be found in house or on farm, but the landlord suspected a discharged and ugly servant, who might have run down the little corner staircase, as Mrs. Blood had before him.
The ruined dinner was replaced by another a week later. The guests were gathered, the landlord was bearing a last roast pig aloft, when smash! crash! came again from the Mariners’ room. Every one in the house rushed up in tremendous excitement: the table-cloth was off, table upset, bottles smashed. An ominous silence and a sense of the uncanny fell on all in the room; some glanced askance at Sam Blood. More than one sharp-eyed old salt noted that the great, hairy, tattooed hands of the widower shook amazingly, though his face was the calmest of all the bronzed, weather-beaten figure-heads staring around.
There has never been a meal served from that table since, though many a meal has been spread on it. The landlord, a stubborn man of no nonsense and no whims, grimly nailed the legs of the table to the floor, and proceeded to set the succeeding dinner on the bare boards. It mattered not, cloth or no cloth, every dinner small or great was always wrecked. Watchers were set, enjoined not to take their eyes from the table, nor themselves from the room. Something always happened, an alarm of fire, a sudden call for help, an apparent summons from the landlord – this but for a single moment, but in that moment smash! crash! went the dinner.
Captain Blood lived to a rather lonely and unpopular old age, for he was held responsible for the decay and dissolution of the Mariners’ Club; and unjustly enough, for Neptune knows it was no wish of his. When occasional dinners and suppers were given by nautical men in wholly mundane rooms in other taverns, with no spiritual accompaniments, – that is, in the form of ghosts, – the captain was left out. Men did not hanker for the companionship of a man who left port with a wife and came home with a ghost. He has been dead for decades, and is anchored in the old Hill graveyard, where he sleeps the quiet sleep of the righteous; and the name and virtues of Elvira, his beloved wife, are amply recorded on his tombstone. But her ghost still walks, or at any rate still wrecks. I don’t like ghosts, but I really should like to meet this lively and persistent Yankee wraith, clad in the meek and meagre drooping feminine attire which was the mode in the early part of this century, or perhaps tentatively mannish in peajacket and oilskins as in her day of riot of old. I really wish I could see the spry and spiteful spirit of Mrs. Sam Blood, with her expression of rampant victory as she twitches the table-cloth off, and wrecks the bottles, and says in triumphal finality, “I’ll settle for this dinner”; thus gaining what is ever dear to a woman, even to the ghost of a woman – the last word.
Late on a November night in the early part of this century the landlord and half a dozen teamsters sat drinking deep in the taproom of the Buxton Inn. These rough travellers had driven into the yard during the afternoon with their produce-laden wagons; for a heavy snow was falling, and it was impossible wheeling, doubtful even whether they could leave the inn in forty-eight hours – perhaps not for a week. Their board would not prove very costly, for they carried their own horse-provender, and much of their own food. Some paid for a bed, others slept free of charge round the fire; but all spent money for drink. It was a fierce storm and a great fall of snow for the month of the year – though November is none too mild any year in New England. Though this snow was too early by half to be seasonable, yet each teamster was roughly merry at the others’ expense that he had not “come down” on runners.
With dull days of inaction before them there was no need for early hours of sleep, so all talked loud and long and drank boisterously, when suddenly a series of heavy knocks was heard at the front door of the inn. Bang! bang! angrily pounded the iron knocker, and the landlord went slowly into the little front entry, fumbled heavily at the bolt, and at last threw open the door to a fine young spark who blustered in with a great bank of snow which fell in at his feet, and who was covered with rolls and drifts of snow, which he shook off debonairly on all around him, displaying at last a handsome suit of garments, gold-laced, and very fine to those country bumpkins, but which a “cit” would have noted were somewhat antiquated of cut and fashion.
He at once indicated and proved his claim to being a gentleman by swearing roundly at the landlord, declaring that his horses and servant were housed ere he was, that they had driven round and found shelter in the barn before he could get into the front door. He could drink like a gentleman, too, this fine young fellow, and he entered at once into the drinking and singing and story-telling and laughing with as much zest as if he had been only a poor common country clown. At last all fell to casting dice. The stakes were low, but such as they were luck all went one way. After two hours’ rounds the gentleman had all the half-dollars and shillings, all the pennies even, in his breeches pocket; and he laughed and sneered in hateful triumph. Sobered by his losses, which were small but his all, one teamster surlily said he was going to sleep, and another added, “’Tis high time.” And indeed it was, for at that moment old Janet, the tavern housemaid, came in to begin her morning round of work, to pinch out the candles, take up part of the ashes from the chimney-hearth, fill the kitchen pots and kettles, gather in the empty bottles and glasses; and as she did so, albeit she was of vast age, she glanced with warm interest at the fine figure of fashion slapping his pockets, sneering, and drinking off his glass. “Why, master,” she said, staring, “you do be the very cut of Sir Charles off our sign-board.” “Let’s see how he looks,” swaggered the young blade; “where’s a window whence we can peep at him?” All trooped to a nigh window in the tavern parlor to look at the portrait of Sir Charles Buxton on the swing-sign, but to no avail, for there was yet but scant light without, and they peered out only on thick snowdrifts on the window panes. But when they reëntered the kitchen, lo! their gay companion was gone. Gone where? Back on the sign-board, of course. All who heard the oft and ever repeated wonder-tale would have scoffed at the fuddled notions of a drunken group of stupid teamsters, but the dollars and shillings and pennies were gone too – the devil knows where; and who was to pay the score for the double bowl of punch and the half-dozen mugs of flip Sir Charles Buxton had ordered while the dicing was going on, and a large share of which he had drunk off with all the zest of flesh and blood? Besides, Janet had seen him, and Janet’s eye for a young man could never be doubted.
I spent one night a few summers ago in a tavern haunted by the ghost of a dead past. A sudden halt in our leisurely progress from town to town, caused by a small but unsurmountable accident to our road-wagon, found us in a little Massachusetts village of few houses. The blacksmith had gone to a neighboring village to spend the night. It was twilight, and we decided not to attempt to reach our intended place for sojourning, six miles distant. We asked of a passer-by which house was the tavern. “There isn’t any,” was the cheerful answer; “if you stay here over night you’ll have to stay at the poorhouse.” Now this was rather an unalluring alternative to any self-respecting citizen, but the night was coming on, and, after vainly searching for some resident who had ever had summer boarders, we determined to investigate the poorhouse. We found it the best house in the village. It was the almshouse, but it had been for half a century a tavern in reality, when the post-road lay through the town and travellers were more frequent than to-day. There was evidence of its tavern days in the old taproom, which had been converted into a store-room. The house with twenty acres of land had been bequeathed to the town by one of the old Bourne family that had lived in it so long. This last Bourne owner was a childless widower, a St. Louis man, who had been away from the home of his youth since early childhood and had little love of it from old associations.
The poormaster and his wife we found to be tidy, respectable folk, even folk of a certain dignity, who owned the adjoining farm. Their own house had burned down. So for ten years they had run the poorhouse. It had not proved a very difficult task. Often there were no occupants; one year there were two Portuguese cranberry pickers, stricken with rheumatism from exposure in the cranberry bogs. Now both are married to American wives and own prosperous cranberry bogs of their own. The poorhouse had its usual quota on the night of our sojourn; we found two paupers living there.
There was not time to prepare an extra meal of extra quality for the travellers who came so suddenly for a night’s shelter, but the good tea, plentiful milk, fine bread and butter, honey, hot griddle-cakes, and fried bacon bore testimony of ample fare and good housewifery. The two paupers sat at the table and ate with us – a silver-haired old man of exquisite cleanliness, and a grotesque little humpback. We noted that the old man was ever addressed by all who spoke to him as Mr. Bourne, and during his short absence from the room after supper the poor-mistress told us that the almshouse had been the home and this the farm of his grandfather. The supper was served in the great kitchen, and here we sat till a curfew bell rang from the little church belfry at nine o’clock.
Considerable jealousy was shown by both paupers in their eager desire to talk with us, and we learned that the dwarf was regarded as a genius; he composed wonderful epitaphs, and had written poetry for the county newspaper. He could set type, and could thus earn his living, but was temporarily more feeble than usual, on account of a weight falling on his back; after a few months he would go to work again. He represented the brilliant and intellectual element of communal life, but was hopelessly plebeian; while Mr. Bourne stood for blood and breeding. This the dwarf Peter scorned, being a Socialist in his creed. A curious and touching atmosphere of simplicity and confidence filled the old kitchen. The farmer and his wife were deeply solicitous for the comfort and health of their two charges; and as I sat there, tired by my long drive, a little lonely from the strangeness of the surroundings, there was nevertheless a profound sense that this poorhouse was truly a home.
It was in the middle of this night that the experience came to me of the greatest sense of passive comfort that I have known – and think of the absurdity, in a poorhouse! We heard at midnight a light patter of quick rain, and soon soft footsteps entered and our window shutters were carefully closed. “It’s me,” said our landlady, ungrammatically and pleasantly. “I didn’t mean to wake you, but I always go to Mr. Bourne’s room when it rains to close his window for fear he’ll take cold, so I looked at yours,” and the old-time figure in petticoat, shawl, and ruffled nightcap withdrew as quietly as it had entered. Then came the hour of half-sleep, a true “dozy hour,” as Thackeray said. In this poorhouse, with no book, no ready light, I fain must lie in silence, hence an hour such as has been told in perfection in a simple yet finished piece of descriptive English; let me give the classic prose of Sam Pepys – the words are his – but the happy hour was mine as well as his: —
“Rode easily to Welling, where we supped well, and had two beds in the room, and so lay single, and still remember it that of all the nights that I ever slept in my life I never did pass a night with more epicurism of sleep; there being now and then a noise of people stirring that wakened me, and then it was a very rainy night, and then I was a little weary, that what between waking, and then sleeping again one after another, I never had so much content in all my life.”
When we awoke the following morning Mr. Bourne was awaiting our coming with some eagerness. The dwarf was absent, and the old man apologized for one or two of Peter’s remarks the night before which had seemed to him uncivil. These were, however, only some of Peter’s mild bitternesses about division of property, the injustice of modern laws, the inequalities of taxation, etc., which had seemed harmless enough in the mouth of a pauper.
While waiting the leisurely repairs of our vehicle at the hands of the captured blacksmith, I yielded to Mr. Bourne’s eager invitation to come with him to see a piece of land he owned. “It’s been in the family near two hundred years,” he said proudly. “Peter says I ought to be ashamed to tell of my folks’ grasping all them years God’s gift of the soil that ought to be just as free as the ocean and the sky; but I’m glad I’ve got it. Peter’s folks came from Middleboro way, and never did own no land nor nothin’, and I’ve noticed it’s them sort that’s always maddest at folks as does have family things.” After a few minutes of silence he added: “Peter can’t help it. It’s born in him to feel that way, just as it’s born into me to feel proud of my property.” We walked along the sandy road under the beautiful autumnal sky. A dense group of stunted cedars and one towering fir tree rose sombrely in a little enclosed corner below the church. “This is my property,” said the old man, cheerfully, “and they’re all Bournes and Swifts in it. There lies my great-grandfather, the old parson, under that flat stone come from England. Here is my mother. That slate headstone over there is for my brother lost at sea on one of his voyages. I am going to be put exactly here. Them four stones I put to mark it. And Peter hasn’t any graveyard – don’t even know where his father is buried – so he’s going to lie over here in this corner. He’s the only one as ain’t a Swift or a Bourne, and it’s a great honor to him. He’s had to pay me for it, though; he’s written me an epitaph, and it’s a good one; it’ll be the best one in the whole graveyard.”