3
To the Sea! (1927-1929)
The House Without Windows & Eepersip’s Life There was published on January 21, 1927. Interest was such that all 2,500 copies had sold before it reached the shops, and a second printing was ordered.
January 8th, 1927
Dear Peter:
I am deeply grieved that you should suppose I had not written about the book. As a matter of fact, I did write just as soon as I received the package. For, although I did not open the package, I suspected what was in it. Smee can testify that I really wrote, and that to her knowledge (which surely you will not dispute) the letter was posted. Through what convolutions it now is wandering, who knows? Perhaps it isn’t wandering through convolutions but is pursuing a fixed path and, like a comet, will return at a predictable time; predictable, that is, if we knew all the factors—which, of course, we don’t. So that leaves it all very MYSTERIOUS, does it not?
It is well-nigh impossible, I fear, to recapture the first, fine, careless rapture of that letter bearing the familiar signature of JAS. HOOK. I believe I said that I was glad Peter Pan’s Own Story had been told. Practically all that most folk know of Peter, they have had to learn through the medium of (Sir) James M. Barrie; and naturally Barrie may not be perfectly accurate about everything. Then I think I quoted from Phineas Taylor Barnum, a man who would have made a most uproarious pirate if it hadn’t been for a number of things.
The book I discover, now that I have opened the package, to be as charming to the outward view as I had known it would be: binding, title-page, paper, types, and all. I haven’t had the opportunity to dip into it; and I think Helen will explain why, if you ask her. It is (as you will admit) quite necessary that I have a free and untrammelled mind for the two readings of it. I say two; for you will understand that I shall read it once for the sheer story of it, and once for all the mystical allusions between the lines.
Your faithful
Gee-ess-bee
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
730 Fifth Avenue
New York
11 January, 1927
Dear Barbara:
I hope you will get a moment’s pleasure out of learning that the second printing of The House Without Windows is ordered to-day, just ten days before publication. We shall try to make you a new and better jacket to-morrow. The correction “For what? Eepersip had not the slightest idea” will be made; and the sentence in the Colophon about the short descenders will be taken out.
Yours hurriedly,
Daddy.
January 19th, 1927
Dear Peter:
I think your book looks very charming, with its gay sprigged paper and all.
In fine—it’s quite properly Peter-Pannish; and what more is to be said?
Congratulatorily,
Jas. Hook,
Dedicatee
“Il pleut, il pleut, bergère” (“It’s raining, it’s raining, shepherdess”) is a song from Fabre d’Églantine’s 1780 operetta Laure et Pétrarque. The narrative pirate poem is Poppy Island: A Ballad of Pirates, Treasure, Poppies, and Ghosts. I don’t think Barbara got past imagining her “biography” of the gypsy girl.
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
January 20, 1927
My dear Mr. St. John:
Thank you for your two delightful letters in succession. You are the person whom I most look forward to hearing from, for you always have something interesting to say. You said in your last: “How strange it must have seemed to you that I have not written before now!” But I myself must now repeat that, and much more emphatically. I am very sorry about it—but how the time does fly!
I liked your last letter very much—for I feel that what you said about The House Without Windows really means something. I see now, perfectly well, my mistake about the vireo—but I was so over-eager in the revision of the story, that I never stopped to think whether the vireo nests in low clumps of grass, or not. Of course, chipmunks do sleep all winter—but, as you say, he was Eepersip’s chipmunk. I’m very glad to hear you liked the book; it means a great deal to have it appreciated by people I care for.
Thank you, too, for the book of songs. I like them very much, and the pictures are delightful. Among the French songs there is one that I learned by heart some time ago: Il pleut, il pleut, bergère.
I was very glad to hear about the little rock garden that you are planning to make. I hope you are going to have columbine in it—the columbine is my favorite flower, I think. And then, would bleeding hearts grow in that kind of place?
Are you well now? It was very disappointing to me, to hear you were sick again.
By the way—Rivernook next spring?
By the way—why don’t we climb Chocorua?
And, speaking of mountains, that reminds me: it is very possible that I shall be going up in the mountains late this month, for a few days, on snowshoes. I am going with two or three friends of mine, and it is very likely that we hover in the vicinity of Lake Sunapee, or climb Mount Kearsarge. And I was so delighted when I first heard about the possibility of it, that I wrote this little poem in anticipation (enclosed).
Here is a bit of news that made me very much excited: my book is in the second printing. The first printing is sold—twenty-five hundred copies—and it isn’t published till tomorrow! Daddy tells me that it is very good selling for a book to go into a second printing before publication—that most books don’t do it.
Speaking of books—if I recover from a bad cough, cold, and hoarseness before next Saturday, I am going to speak over the radio from New York. I shall probably read a narrative poem that I wrote a few days ago. I am both trembling and singing—at any rate, my blood is quite curdled. The trouble will be beginning. Then, I can’t imagine how difficult it will be to talk and talk, and know that people are listening—yet just talking into a motionless, lifeless thing!
The narrative poem is like this (You may think I am very faithless to Eepersip and Nature, but, all the same, I am wild over PIRATES—their unknown islands, masses of blood-drenched gold, mystic maps, wild seas, wild fights, wild deeds!): it contains everything from Blackbeard to myself, from poppies to sea-shells, from butterflies to pieces of eight, from ghosts to living pirates, from maps to palm-trees. And, if you are interested in this (my first attempt at real rhyme and meter) I will send you a copy.
But already I have promised far too many copies that never seem to get far—but they certainly will come in time, for my motto is: Slow but Sure.
But besides this pirate song, I have managed to find time for a story. To be sure, it isn’t written yet, but I have such a firm idea of what I mean to write that it will be very little trouble when I once get buckled down to it. It is about a little girl (nothing like Eepersip, however) who was always having strange, fantastic ideas about things, but most especially about pirates and gypsies. She writes little odd, quaint stories about everything she sees, and wants to be a gypsy herself. When her family moves from a tiny country village to a large city, she begins the business of fortune-telling, with the aid of a friend of hers—and for beautiful, written fortunes she is given various little odds and ends, mostly trinkets; and in this way she collects the necessities for a gypsy costume, until, finally, she is able to wander about dressed just like a gypsy—with golden bangles, and pearl bangles, and bracelets, and anklets, and a full flouncy skirt with bright embroideries. But it is her ideas and her writings that will make the main part of this biography; for I expect to put in many of them just as she might have written them. And in these stories, though she loved things of Nature, and was constantly making butterflies and birds and flowers play the main parts in her stories—she wrote mostly about pirates and gypsies: for her idea of pirates was much the same, mystic, blood-and-gold, unknown-isle as mine; and her idea of gypsies was simply a mysterious tribe who wore the golden bangles she was so fond of, and who told fortunes—just as she did. I am so overflowing with ideas for this new story that—well, if this letter should suddenly break off in the midst of a line or sentence, you would know why; I would be simply overwhelmed with a flood of irresistible ideas.
But all this time Farksolia is languishing. Not because I am tired of it, or because I have no more to say. Quite the contrary: I have had many admirable ideas about it, but simply haven’t had time to write them down. I am looking forward to next summer to get a great pile of writing accomplished: I expect to work a great deal more next summer, rather than running about aimlessly so much. The Natural History of Farksolia has been elongating so that I have decided to make of it a separate volume entirely from the plain, everyday history. There is quite a variety of birds, butterflies, flowers, trees, reptiles, etc. etc. almost indefinitely.
I am enclosing: thanks for the book of songs, thanks for your letters, wishes for your good health, the mountain poem, a promise for the pirate poem (if you want it), a promise for the letter-account, the keys, and lots of love from us all.
Your friend,
Barbara.
Barbara’s mountain poem, dated January 4, 1927.
SONG OF THE MOUNTAINS
I may never touch the snow-fringed Moon,
White-robed, her sandals bound with stars—
Never walk on heaving waves,
Or climb to radiant, fiery Mars.
I cannot dance the burning magic
Of the Earth, with sunbeam rays,
Whirling, softly golden—yet
On snowy sky-peaks I may gaze.
I have not trod those unknown isles
Where raging winds like sea-ghosts blow,
But I know mountains, sky-kissing goddesses,
And I have wandered amid their snow.
For my eyes there is no pirate treasure,
Nor have I seen an albatross,
Color of snow, like the playful foam
That laughing sea-winds gently toss.
But I have touched the feathers of the frost,
Pale mountain-ghosts; and their rippled wings
Are lacy shells from the Sunbeam Isles,
And whisperings from all magic things.
My heart is always with the mountains,
Wind-swept; their peaks deep-fringed with sky—
Up there I still hear the waves,
And the albatross—her lonesome cry.
I wish I had a recording of Barbara’s appearance on the radio. As far as I know no recording of her voice has survived. Symposium was an hour long, and the following listing is from the New York Times.
Today’s Radio Programs
WRNY, New York, January 22, 1927
11:00 A.M. – Symposium. L. Carillo, James Connell, Barbara Follett, Hilda Gold.
Publicity photos for The House Without Windows
Excerpts from A Mirror of the Child Mind, Henry Longan Stuart’s review of The House Without Windows, published in the New York Times on February 6, 1927.
[...] From the moment of her escape on “the foothills of Mount Varcobis” to the last line of the book, Eepersip is the protagonist of her own adventure. No attempt is made to invest the birds and beasts that become her friends with any human attributes, far less human speech. An unbridled imagination is checked at every moment by a literalness of description that is apparently the amazing fruit of keen first-hand observation. [...] Barbara Follett may live and write to 90. But she will never give us the flight of sea birds more truly and vividly than in these dozen and a half words she wrote at the time: “Strong, narrow wings that beat down the air as the birds rose again, to hover and swoop and plunge.” [...] There can be few who have not at one time or another coveted the secret, innocent and wild at the same time, or a child’s heart. And here is little Miss Barbara Follett, holding the long-defended gate wide open and letting us enter and roam at our will over enchanted ground.
Howard Mumford Jones (1892-1980) was a prolific writer. At the time of his review (Barbara Follett: Child of Genius, published in the New York World on February 13, 1927) he was teaching at the University of North Carolina. He would go on to have a long career at Harvard University, served as president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1964 won a Pulitzer for O Strange New World: American Culture—The Formative Years.
The jacket of “The House Without Windows” says that the book “will be of special interest to teachers and parents who are interested in education; for it is the expression of a child who has never been to school.” This is plain blah. “The House Without Windows” will interest anybody who cares a snap of his fingers for beauty and good writing. […] The author has never been to school. There seems to be no sane reason why she should ever go to one unless she wants to. […] She has the Mozartian calm. She writes as though she were living in that serene abode where the eternal are. It is as it should be. That is where she lives and where she takes us.
Excerpts from Lee Wilson Dodd’s long review (In Arcady), published in the Saturday Review of Literature on February 19, 1927.
This strange, delightful, and lovely book was written by a little girl as a present for her mother [...] This is very beautiful writing. But there are moments when, for one reader, this book grows almost unbearably beautiful. It becomes an ache in his throat. Weary middle-age and the clear delicacy of a dawn-Utopia, beckoning... The contrast sharpens to pain. One closes the book and shuffles about doggedly till one finds the evening paper and smudges down to one’s element—that smudged machine-record of what man has made of man. Of man—and therefore of childhood! […]
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
February 23, 1927
My dear Mr. St. John:
No words can describe how glad I was to hear that you will be in New Haven. I was quite beside myself with glee. Now you boil everything down to plain facts, it is a long, long time since we have seen each other and talked. Last summer has been gone a long time, and that was not a very thorough visit, anyhow. On Saturday I am free from all engagements, and I shall certainly keep it clear for you. When you arrive in the city, telephone Pioneer 5696, and we will make arrangements. My study is, you know, a temptingly quiet place for a good out-and-out talk.
I have my snowshoe trip to tell you about, my experience with the radio, my pirate tales, an interesting friend of mine (a little younger than I am)—and loads of other things. Please don’t change your plans!
We shall be exceedingly glad to see you, and we all send love.
Your friend,
Barbara.
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
February 27, 1927
Dear Mr. Jones:
I was glad to know that you liked my book; your review was delightful. That paragraph of The Sea that you quoted was the same one quoted from the New York Times. It is odd, but that place has always been one of my favorite bits, too. I always had a great deal of fun describing fishes.
I don’t blame anyone for not being able to pronounce my names. It took a long time for me to settle into any definite spelling of them at all—they seemed to defy all attempts at writing down.
The mystic art of inventing and contriving such oddities is lost to me now.
Your friend,
Barbara.
P. S. I was especially glad to hear that Eleanor liked the book. I wonder if she likes pirates. I am very fond of them myself, and have been writing stories on pages of gold with letters of pure bright blood! B. N. F.
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
February 27, 1927
My dear Mr. Oberg:
This is simply [a] hurried note in the midst of my business, to repeat the invitation which I gave on last October. Can you not plan to come away to N. H. on next Thursday, March 3rd—to stay over the week-end? We would all be very glad to see you—and I’m sure the butterflies need some talking over!
The reviews of my book are fast coming in, and perhaps we can find some time to file them up. All the reviews I have seen so far are very favorable, and it is interesting to keep them.
There is much to tell.
Your friend,
Barbara.
A letter from George Bryan from around February 1927.
Cartagene de las Indias
Nueva Granada
Dear Peter:
I know not whether you would much enjoy this place. The roadstead is indeed large and fine, and has at its entrance a goodly island—called, in the outlandish tongue common in these parts, Tierra Bomba. Seen from the water, the town is sufficiently handsome; for the beholder notes, first, gray walls of a prodigious thickness; then gray houses with roofs of red tiles; and back of these, hills of a considerable height, rising in a green ring.
But the spot when better known is less admired. The climate is by no means healthful. Great heat prevails, and neighboring swamps exhale vapors that are not at all salutary. Water for drinking is obtained chiefly from cisterns that have been built upon the town walls; in these cisterns the rain-water is caught. The streets are wretchedly paved and for the most part wonderfully crooked.
The Spaniards have managed this port as they have managed their other possessions in the region—that is, with the purpose of extracting all possible for their own enrichment and with no care whatsoever for the right administering of justice or for the welfare of the inhabitants. It would surprise you, my friend, to know how much treasure was hoarded here in the old days; and surprise you yet more to know how much was taken hence by some of the buccaneers in those fierce times of plunder of which I formerly told you.
These times are long past; and I am here not to land with a storming-party under cover of darkness but merely by way of a visit of the most peaceable nature. A brief season of leisure thus falling to me, I have been reading with the deepest pleasure the volume that I received from you and that was stowed in my sea-bag when I made ready for this journey. I now discover that the book is by none other than yourself. Upon the page dedicatory the initials J. H. are boldly printed. This is a high honor, forsooth, for one who once upon a time was in fair danger of swinging at Execution Dock!
On numerous pages do I find matters that you often have mentioned to me; only here they are given with a particularity and a smoothness belonging to the written word. Nor rarely do I fancy that I discover myself in surroundings and situations with which you and I in company were aforetime familiar. Unless I greatly err, there is much of yourself in this Eepersip—a name that I never encountered among the various peoples I have known on either side of the Atlantic. At times I follow you, I fear, but haltingly and laggardly, as I followed you in many a pas de deux under northern pines. But I nevertheless do seek to follow; and as I follow, do actually seem at times to float clear of earth and out into the sunset.
Our ship remains here until its captain has completed certain business. How long that may be is not yet determined.
Yours,
Jas. Hook
Bertha Mahoney’s review was published in the February 1927 issue of the Horn Book Magazine.
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
March 7, 1927
My dear Miss Mahoney:
This morning I received two copies of the Horn Magazine, sent from Daddy’s office at Knopf’s. It was a perfectly lovely little review of The House Without Windows, and I appreciate it very much. It was a beautiful idea to put Dorothy Lathrop’s little Christmas card in. I have thought before of how appropriate some of her fairy pictures are.
I was also glad to see that you had printed my funny little door-slip. At any rate, I was glad to see that you liked the book: my only suspicion is that it may start running away among young children, and consequently make me a lot of enemies. I already know of one little child who was tempted. Her father wrote to me about it!
Your friend,
Barbara Follett
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
March 7, 1927
Dear Mr. Jones:
Until now I had not realized what my book is going to do for the world. But now it seems that it is going to make enemies for me instead of friends. But tell Eleanor to cheer up and finish the book. I have many plans up my sleeve for an Eepersipian escape, and I should be very glad to have a comrade—especially Eleanor.
Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire—where we go for the summers—is a place where one may very well play Eepersip. The small Twin Lakes are entirely surrounded with unexplored woodlands (or, at least, unexplored by everyone except myself) and hills, and very swimmable sand-beaches. It would be just the place for a rendezvous and head-quarters.
But tell Eleanor she must not go without me. I know all the tricks. You see, we shouldn’t be entirely wild—we should be lightly connected with civilization, but I think our Lake Sunapee life would content Eleanor. I am out and across the hills from dawn till sunset.
My knowledge of pirates is rather limited too. Perhaps it is just as well—perhaps that is why I am so fond of them. My pirate learning comes from Peter and Wendy and Treasure Island. John Silver was a marvelous kind of pirate, because he could pretend to be so sublimely innocent. Billy Bones was different, but, somehow, I am exceedingly fond of him, too. The only real trouble with Treasure Island is that Long John should have been able to escape with his gang of rum-and-gold-lovers—with Flint’s treasure in the ample hold of the Hispaniola (as he first intended). Of course, Jim Hawkins should have become a fascinated worshiper of John Silver’s methods, and should have been converted, as Silver wanted. Then the doctor and the squire—also the captain—should have been slain or marooned. Somehow those three were not the kind of persons who should have become the possessors of that gold.
But I am not trying to teach anything to Robert Louis Stevenson.
Your friend,
A rare interview with Barbara, published in the March 13, 1927 Hartford Daily Courant. I’ve cut almost all of the long article—Peter Pan’s Sister Writes a Book—while keeping Barbara’s and her mother’s words.
“What studies have you preferred?” “I like Latin best.”
“Do you read any other language?” “A little French.”
“And next to Latin?”
“Possibly history. In this I have read and read again the stories of the founding of America and the war of the Revolution. Just now I am all wrapped up in the life of Joan of Arc, especially with the historical setting in the fifteenth century.”
“What other studies?”
“Natural sciences. These and their application fascinate me.”
“Does your mother conduct your recitations?”
“Yes, in a general but not a formal way. She gives me problems in algebra, natural history or science and she hears me recite my Latin declensions. She assigns me short stories to write and I have written several. My recitation hours depend somewhat on how busy Mother is.”
“Did you ever try to drive an auto?”
Barbara’s eyes flashed scorn at this suggestion of twelve-year old activity.
“No,” she answered. “I never even had a bicycle. But I love to walk. It was not many weeks ago that I walked twenty miles in one day and have walked over the Franconia range in the summer. I love swimming and I have swum half a mile at our summer home at Lake Sunapee.”
“What authors do you read most, Barbara?”
“Shakespeare, Shelley and Walter de la Mare. I like to read the old authors again and again and I have read and re-read many of Shakespeare’s plays. I have always been charmed with “The Treasure of the Isle of Mist” by W. W. Tarn. “The Three Mulla-Mulgars” by Walter de la Mare, I have read again and again.”
“Are you interested in music?”
“I take piano lessons from Bruce Simonds and violin lessens from Hugo Gortshak [sic]. I have been going to concerts ever since I was six years old.
“Are you going to college?”
“No plans have been made for it. I have always enjoyed my home life and my studies at home.” Which shows that Eepersip, Peter Pan’s sister, has grown up, a thing Barrie never permitted Peter to do.
“Barbara’s education,” explained Mrs. Follett, “illustrates the advantage of not being put into groups. Much creative ability is killed by the modern school. Barbara has been given every chance for expression, and she is taking advantage of them all. Children have much more to say than opportunity is given them to express in the school room. We have tried to allow Barbara a full and free expression. This child has had leisure and tools to work with in her language and thought. She has used both in writing the book. She has never been bored by the things that bore other children.”
Then Mrs. Follett took up the question of a college education where Barbara had left it.
“Selection of a college offers another set of problems,” she said. “Some persons are not so fond of a college course for their daughters as they are. We, Barbara’s parents, do not care much just now whether she goes to college or not. Whether she goes will depend upon conditions that develop later. If she wishes very much to go, she will go, but we shall not decide that for the present. If she shows signs of creative ability, I would not urge her to go for fear of affecting it unfavorably. If she turns out to be without initiative, we may have to send her. At present we feel there is not value enough in a college course for us to wish to force it upon her.”
Brookfield Center, Conn.,
March 14th, 1927
Dear Peter:
Your picture in the paper was mighty pleasing, and I recognized not only you but the setting; but were you really reading proofs?— and do you actually aspire to be a pirate? As Togo, the Japanese Schoolboy, said: “I inquire to know.”
I got a copy of the Wilson MacDonald book some little time ago, when the other Wilson spoke most highly of it to me. It seems to me quite worthy of the praise he gave it. I have read chiefly in the part called “The Book of the Rebel.” “Exit” in “The Book of Man” is a fine variation on an old theme.
By the way, did you ever ask yourself whether that review by Elinor Wylie told you much about the edition she was supposed to be reviewing? Didn’t it seem to you to be altogether too much about somewhat irrelevant things—especially about E. Wylie and various experiences of hers? She had been asked to tell us of a new and important (possibly the definitive) edition of the poet—an edition that most persons will be forced to see in libraries, if they see it at all (so costly it is); and I confess that she left me with no particular idea of the distinctive character and peculiar merits of it.
Thanks for the alphabet (you know what alphabet).
Jas. Hook
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
March 15, 1927
Dear Mr. Dodd:
I should have written to you long, long before this, if I had not been confident of seeing you and having the satisfaction of a private talk with you. Your review was perfectly lovely—it made me twice as happy as the others, though they were all favorable. It pleased me boundlessly to see you noticed my “daisied fawn.” For, though I have never seen a young fawn, I think they must look like a daisy field in full bloom.
It seems very strange that I should have written so much about deer without ever having seen one alive. That is, up to a few weeks ago, when I went north to Lake Sunapee with a friend of mine. We stayed there several days, and, on one of our marvelous excursions over to a large game preserve, we encountered a herd of deer, soft-eyed, half-wild does, and feather-antlered bucks. I remember one small buck in particular, who leaped over a fence before our eyes (a fence much higher than he), first throwing up his delicate front legs, and then making his nimble heels “kick at heaven,” as he landed almost silently on four feet of crusted snow. He was like a fairy, a real fairy, even if it is rather out of the ordinary to compare a quadruped to supernatural beings.
Never have I seen anything half so amusing as the antics of young kittens—I used to love to observe the various stray ignoramus cats we possessed at one time—that is why Snowflake is developed to such a great extent.
But I think we need a long afternoon to talk it all over.
Your friend,
Barbara.
From Lady Mary’s Letter in The Star (Wilmington, Delaware), dated March 27, 1927.
Another Infant Prodigy Produces a Novel
There are so many infant prodigies in these days that people almost have ceased to remark them all.
The latest is Barbara Follett. […] As a child lover I shall read the book, of course. But the work of prodigies often appalls when I examine it; usually these overbright youngsters amount to little later on!
Alice Carroll Moore (1871-1961) was head of children’s library services for the New York Public Library system and was probably the most important children’s book reviewer in the country at the time. Her essay, When Children Become Authors, was published in the New York Herald Tribune on March 27, 1927:
[…] I can conceive of no greater handicap for the writer between the ages of nineteen and thirty-nine, than to have published a successful book between the ages of nine and twelve. [...] What price will Barbara Follett have to pay for her “big days” at the typewriter, days when she rattled off, we are told, four to five thousand words of original copy at a speed of 1,200 words to the hour, producing at the end of three months a complete story of some 40,000 words. I have only words of praise for the story itself. […]
Columbia’s copy of Barbara’s response is an edited draft.
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
March 28, 1927
Dear Miss Moore:
It surely is very rash to slam down into the mud a childhood and a system of living that you know nothing about. There are things in your article of the 27th that are plain mistruths, which I feel the need of correcting. You write positively as if all children were alike, as if all children desired the same surroundings, as if they all liked the same things. Children are as different from each other as grown-up people; they are even more insistent in their variety of tastes; and a great deal more hurt when things do not go as they like. You say that you “can conceive of no greater handicap for the writer between the ages of nineteen and thirty-nine, than to have published a successful book between the ages of nine and twelve.” And is that true about everyone? Why should it be true at all to an intelligent person? If you think it makes me feel vain and self-conscious to have published a book, let me say that that is untrue: I wrote the story in the first place because I wanted to run away, but, realizing the impossibility of it, I made someone else do it for me. The book was not written to be published—it was written for the sheer joy of writing. I am very much amused at the favorable reviews which are being written—I do not take them at all seriously—but I do take seriously an article which distorts into a miserable caricature my living, my education, my whole personality.
You also said: “Children need the companionship of other children”—but you seem to take it perfectly for granted that I do not. What made you think that? For I do play with other children, and up to a certain point I like it. It is undeniable that I do not go to parties and social events as much as other children do—I do not even play with them as much as other children do, but that, from my point of view, is not a forfeit. Neither am I forced to stay away from them. I do so because I wish to—it is by my own free will.
There are countless other objections to going to school, but with me the chief of them is this: if I went to school, where would I get the time for the violin and piano music that I enjoy so much; where would I get the time for comfortable reading of good books; where would I get the time for the writing which gives me joy more than almost everything I do? If I went to school I should have to spend the afternoon in weary “home-work.” I should be able to write only during the summer months when I love to be outdoors and alone, and I should be doing hardly any music at all.
My life is very different from what you make it out to be: you write as if I was tyrannized over and coerced to be alone, coerced to write, kept away from children by main force. And that grieves me because it is so strictly untrue. It is also an insult to my parents.
Perhaps the most painful thing in the article is your absurd idea that I take a “professional attitude toward writing.” That is so untrue that I am ashamed even to look at it—ashamed that a supposedly intelligent person should say so much about a thing she knows absolutely nothing about. You have no reason on earth to suppose that. As I said before, I wrote the story for the sheer joy of writing, without taking the smallest glimpse of the “professional” side of it.
If you had read the book from the right stand-point, nothing could have made you say such abasing things. The book is an expression of joy—no more—and to a careful person it should be an expression of my home-life as well.
Barbara Newhall Follett.
Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) wrote the words for Morning Has Broken—a song covered many years later by Cat Stevens. Her review was printed in London’s Time and Tide on April 25, 1927, about when THWW was published by Knopf in London.
This is an enchanting book. I will be brief with explanations, which are, however, quite incapable of explaining it. The tale is a child’s dream of childhood, as it is and as it might be; and it is the work of a child of nine, rewritten, because it was destroyed, between the ages of ten and twelve. So the tongue of the dream is that of an age slightly advanced beyond the age in which the dream was created; but such nearness of speech and of conception can never have happened before in a work whose whole concern is childhood, and the radiant delight we lose as we grow older. Barbara Newhall Follett found her voice before she had lost anything; the book is bathed in a magical light which we older ones try to remember, or recapture, or assume. […]
I do not think the perfection of this books is an accident; I have seen charming and amusing things written by children who in later life did other things; I have never seen a piece of writing by so young a child which made me certain that it was written under the influence of that movement which makes poets write they know not how. What will happen when her more conscious mind begins to direct what Barbara Follett writes, I do not know; but that she will always have to write I am almost sure; and if, in each age, she can produce something as true to her immediate experience as this, she will have a wonderful record. […]
A letter to her father with an ominous opening line. The quote in the middle (“up to the pig-styes...”) is from Rudyard Kipling’s How the Leopard Got His Spots.
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
April 29, 1927
Dear Daddy:
It seems to us that New York must be a sort of Louis XI’s palace, full of snares, temptations, pit-falls, traps, and everything else for enticing and entangling its helpless victims. But now we have a stunning excuse for you to come home:
“The Brat” has a habit of calling at least forty-one times when Helen is in the house, but if she knows that Helen is out, she will hold her tongue. So we have the habit of going out for a walk every evening, as soon as the aforesaid “brat” is in. (She usually, however, has time enough to call three or four times before we are out.) Tonight, having nowhere in particular to go, we wandered over to see what the back-yards of our rich neighbors have developed into. (They are getting to be unusually nice back-yards.) Then a stunning idea occurred to me, and with much difficulty I persuaded Helen to scramble up Mill Rock a little way, and investigate the woods. Besides, I saw a patch of something green up high, which promised mystery. So up we went. The green proved to be a mass of plants which looked like overgrown mint, but among them, and up close to an overhanging rock, a columbine swung two or three red-and-yellow buds.
A long time ago, I had seen columbine up there, but I had never been able to find the place again. This time, however, I land-marked it carefully, and tomorrow I expect to take it up (since it is not a very large plant). But things developed tremendously in the course of a few minutes. There were multitudes of plants with leaves something like the leaves of bird’s-foot violets, but with small yellow buds. I shall watch them. Up still higher we came on to a grassy path, which wound up the ledges. There were high, leafing bushes with graceful streamers up there, on one of which hung a few clusters of a kind of dangling barberry. Down on the right side of the path
(Not a whole garden is so lovely quite
As a prim path with flowers on the right!)
were clumps of leaves which looked as if they belonged to some kind of bulb (long, narrow, pointed), and, on investigating, I found patches of iris growing wild there, with some of them already budded. It looks from the buds like a blue variety. I expect to help myself to some of them. Still farther along on this mysterious path, we came upon masses of white and purple violets, possibly the largest violets I have ever seen. But still farther along was the great surprise of surprises. It was a wall—a high brick wall, with shrubbery showing over the top, and a red magnolia flowering at the foot. Near it were clumps of still another bulb—pale green shoots, not well matured yet. I shall certainly keep an eye (perhaps two eyes) on them. But I have some clue as to what they are, and I believe they are some kind of lily. For amid the shoots was a dried stalk, surmounted with a withered, stiffened, brown flower-cup, which was the shape of a lily.
I intend to make a great many visits, basket and shovel in hand, to this veritable Eden-of-cultivated-things-gone-wild, and I hope you will come along
“. . . up to the pig-styes
and sit on the farmyard rails!
Let’s say things to the bunnies,
And watch ’em skitter their tails!
Let’s—oh, anything, daddy—
So long as it’s you and me . . .”
And there really are bunnies skittering their tails. We saw an adorable small-sized one, as we came down, who flickered his white puff-ball, and he skittered from bush to bush, crouching quietly and melting “Into the landscape.”
The wrens have again tenanted the green bird-house. Sabra was the first one to see them going in and out. Their songs are everywhere now.
The pansies are flourishing nobly . . . . lilacs are still budding . . . . seeds are coming up as well as could be expected . . . . daily I find new lily-of-the-valley shoots . . . . most exciting documents are pouring in from Brookfield Center way, including a delightful review of T. H. W. W., also a great many important hints on the subject of sunset-reading, which I have not come to be very proficient at. The only thing I can think of at this moment that is not progressing, is my pirate story. That is because the time I would otherwise spend on it, I am now glad to spend digging out-of-doors.
I wish you superb luck on your writing (whatever it is), only I am sorry you couldn’t do it here.
You will enjoy my new-found “Mrs. Derby’s garden” up there in the wood. It is very like the woods in which we found so many wood anemones and violets and yellow adder’s tongue, a long time ago. I always have remembered that walk: though I can’t even remember how we got out into the woods, or where we were living. I still remember certain anemone-carpeted glades in those woods, and how we wanted to pick them all. Now, with my new craze, I should probably want to transplant them all.
Sabra is making such marvelous progress in her reading, that I am greatly delighted and proud of her. She picks out the words come, away, play, and run, anywhere in her books. I got her to copy “come away, come and play,” from her first reader on the typewriter. This gives her a chance to learn the little letters. We try to do some every day. She still skips about singing: “It is, it is a glorious ‘fing’ to be a pirate king!” Tonight, as we went down the front steps, we heard: “Yo, ho-ho, and a bottle of ’er rum!” with a terrible accent on the “rum.”
We do hope you will tell us where you are staying. If Sabra should dance out the window tonight, or should be wafted away like Persephone, we couldn’t tell you of it until ————Monday morning!
(The Pirates————1940!)
All good cheer to you,
Regarding the treasure buried on Gardiner’s Island in the town of East Hampton, New York, Wikipedia says: “The privateer William Kidd buried treasure on the island in June, 1699, having stopped there while sailing to Boston to answer charges of piracy. With the permission of the island’s proprietor, he buried a chest and a box of gold and two boxes of silver (the box of gold Kidd told Gardiner was intended for Lord Bellomont) in a ravine between Bostwick’s Point and the Manor House... A plaque on the island marks the spot where the treasure was buried, but it is on private property.”
May 7, 1927
Dear Peter:
As you display such keen interest in the matter of treasure, I herewith communicate to you certain information that may prove of service.
The following valuables are supposed to have been found in a swamp on the west side of Gardiner’s Island:
[A detailed list of treasure, including about fifty pounds in gold, included here.]
It is alleged that this treasure was found buried in iron chests, and that it was intrusted to Mr. John Gardiner by Kidd with the reminder that he (Gardiner) must answer for it with his head.
Now, it is possible that further treasure was buried at Gardiner’s Island, either by Kidd or by others. As New Haven is on the coast, it would be possible for you to organize an expedition in the most approved fashion to sail to Gardiner’s Island and search there.
It has also been said that Kidd had caches on the coast of Connecticut and the banks of its larger rivers.
Yours for luck,
Jas. Hook
Hilda Conkling (1910-1986), whose Poems by a Little Girl (which included Mary Cobweb) was published in 1920, wrote to Barbara on May 31, 1927.
[…] “Mary Cobweb” was my one and only friend of mine and I felt very lost and sad when she left me. When I come to think over the likeness between my “Mary Cobweb” and your “Eepersip” I realize that they aren’t so very much alike after all. “Mary Cobweb” was more a “home girl” as they say while “Eepersip” was more for the out of doors. Though I love both equally well.
[…] I do like pirates! I used to tell myself wild stories of being caught by pirates. Of course there was always some handsome gallant that saved me in the end. But I’m sure that your pirate story will have it over mine entirely. What is its title? I wish I could read it sometime. Do you think I could?
lovingly your friend,
Hilda
In June 1927, Barbara sailed for ten days aboard the Frederick H., a three-masted lumber schooner, from New Haven to Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. George Bryan was her chaperone.
[undated, ca. late June 1927]
176 Armory Street,
New Haven, Connecticut
Dearest Shipmate:
As we figger it out, after great maneuvering, the ’hing weighs four lb. ten ounces; 74 ounces in all, divided by half, 37 cents, plus 10 for Special Delivery, 47—total 47; plus 2 for a letter which must be mailed: total 49. So here is 50 cents, and Gow Blass You.
This runs up a debt which could never be repayed, even though heaven should one day in the far future grant me the means, which it couldn’t, with all its power, do, I feel such an inexpressible gratitude, and never, though you live to be a thousand, could any deed outweigh in either words or worth this very climax of all generosity—oh, I have an idea I’d better stop, before I fall asleep in my chair.
The other shipmate,
Barbara.
P. S. One cent tip, as you notice.
Lake Sunapee
New Hampshire
July 14, 1927
Dear Mr. Oberg:
I presume you must think I am dead by this time. Of course, there has been the usual rush getting off to Sunapee. Otherwise I haven’t any excuse at all for not writing to you for such a long time. Oh yes! one excuse.
But that is a long story. Early in June a proud three-masted schooner sailed into New Haven, with a cargo of lumber from Nova Scotia. I went aboard her, climbed many times up to her lofty crosstrees, and out on her high jibboom. I became acquainted with the captain and the crew. A few days before she sailed, I had it all rigged up with a friend of mine to sail back in her with me to Nova Scotia.
Oh! that trip! It was marvelous—it will always be one of the treasures of my memory. We had unusually calm weather, mostly—the sails flapped and the reef points pattered. But when at last we had a wind, we had it hard. It was so hard, in fact, we took down the outer jib and the topsails. The waves were a vivid storm-green, crested with flying foam, and a furious white bone roared in the white teeth of the schooner. Over she canted, far to leeward. Imagine the thrill I had when we sat at table, using table-racks to keep the dishes from sliding off. There were times when even the sailors staggered a bit, walking from aft to forward. At night we almost rolled out of our bunks.
It seems to me, from what little I saw over one weekend, that Nova Scotia is a very beautiful country. And its inhabitants are very friendly and kind, even to strangers.
You should hear me repeat nautical words and phrases and sailor-slang; also, I like to show my knowledge of sailing ships.
I’ll tell you more of this later, but this must be mailed now.
Your friend,
Barbara.
“The Cottage in the Woods”
Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire
July 22, 1927
Dear Mr. St. John:
I think I have never let so many nice long letters come from you without a word from me in the meantime. But, things in general have interrupted other things, and it took me a long time to get “settled” into the ways of civilization when I came back from my sea trip. Before that, I was so excited about the schooner, and going down to see her almost every day, that I could think of nothing else, let alone write letters. Then there was the usual confusion of packing and getting up here—and now, at last, here we be, and it is truly the first spell of real quiet I have had since goodness only knows when.
Do you love the sea and ships, yourself? I do not see any reason whatsoever why you shouldn’t, but, somehow, I can’t associate you in my mind with anything but the woods, and trees, and flowers, birds, mountains. Perhaps that’s because I wasn’t going on my sea-rage when I last saw you, though I remember I was fond of pirates at the time.
Well, I got on a sea-rage all right, and, long before I had seen the Frederick H., I knew quite a bit about ships—ropes, spars, and whatnot. It was the most rash, suddenly unadvised thing I ever lurched forth upon. One day I simply decided I would go. And about three days afterwards I went. Oh! there is nothing in the world more thoroughly delightful than being under sails, the schooner leaning before a north-west gale, the green and foaming waves raging all about, the sails full and bellying out with wind, the howling and whistling of wind through the white canvas, the raging white bone the schooner would have in her white teeth, the far cant to leeward so that we had to use the table-racks, the calling out of “Hard-a-lee!” when we tacked, the bustle of men’s feet to the blocks and sheets; or in a calm for several days, nothing but the swell which rolled you out of your bunk at night, so that she almost rolled water onto her decks, and everything rolling and thumping, doors banging in the cabin, bottles and dishes jingling, the groaning of the booms as they would swing in and out, the billowing and flapping of the idle sails, the pattering of reef-points; and the sailor-life in general, the brief commands of mate and skipper, the nautical words and terms, steering by the light of the binnacle-lamp beneath the stars at night, when the moon would shine full on the sails, making them look like newfallen snow, the very reminiscence of the old sailor-life on clipper-ships, with watches, look-outs, two-hour tricks, the merry yarning of the crew when off duty in the fo’c’sle, the gayness of them all, the carefreeness—it was all just exactly as I had dreamed. Or being in thick fog; when you can’t distinguish sea from sky, everything is a moving, ghostly space that one can see and feel. Or hauling and lending a hand anywhere—on ropes which needed tautening, taking a turn at the wheel, sweeping the decks by the hour for my special friend, the mate, helping the old cook over his meals and his dishes, talking with all the crew—it was my great delight. And I loved to go up in the rigging, too, especially on hot days, for there was invariably a breeze aloft, and you got shade from the vast expanse of the sails—up and up I would go, into the taut ratlines, feeling the life and joy of the ship as if she were a living, happy creature—happy leaning before the wind, happy in the foam she made, her white wings and the furious bone she held in her teeth; up where the taut ratlins quivered a little beneath the strain of the wind, and I would sit on the cross-trees and swing my legs into space.
But do not think that I have forgotten about the mountains. No indeed. I am very eager to get up on to granite peaks again. And so Mother suggested (and I strongly seconded the idea) that you should stop on your way up to Passaconaway, and take me along, and climb a mountain or two with me. For that would be two-in-one—we should have our wished-for visit, and a mountain at the same time—a pretty fine combination, in my mind. Do you suppose that could be arranged? It wouldn’t matter to me what mountain! And it would be delightful if you could stop in this region two or three days, and become acquainted with Lake Sunapee once more.
As for flowers, Hooker’s orchid seems to be pretty well attached to me. I have seen three this summer, and saw three last summer. They are the weirdest, most mysterious looking blossoms I have ever seen, that mystic green, with the two pollen masses of golden-brown, looking for all the world like two eyes in a little green face. The leaves are very curious, too, so shiny, round, and almost leathery. I suppose you are acquainted with the flower.
We have no plans at all for the late summer, and, having no automobile, it is impossible for us to do anything on our own account. But stop here on the way up, anyway, and we’ll make plans then, and see about a capful of mountain-wind, or a shoeful of mountain snow.
Your friend,
Barbara (Sindbad, the Sailor)
The recipient of the next letter was almost certainly a descendant of Benjamin Stimson, who sailed with Richard Henry Dana, Jr., author of the 1840 book, Two Years Before the Mast. The 1911 edition published by Houghton Mifflin had a painting of the Alert on its jacket.
“The Cottage in the Woods”
Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire
July 26, 1927
Dear Mr. Stimson:
The book arrived late yesterday afternoon, forwarded from New Haven, and it carried with it a great mystery, and a great many questions. How in all this world did you know that I am what you might call mad, love-blind, over sailing ships of all descriptions, as well as over sailor-life in the square-rigged period? It has always been (or, not exactly always, but since about last fall), a great regret of mine that I was not alive during the clippers and square-riggers—before the age of steam. But it is too late now—to be sure, I can still go on schooner-trips, and I can still sail in the old row-boat of ours with a mast stuck into a whittled hole in the bow of it—but the old square-riggers have pretty well gone by, at least, in this country.
I can get them back, you see, only by means of books—and books do make things almost as real as actuality. From the very moment when I heard the title Two Years Before the Mast (which Daddy mentioned in a letter which he wrote to me when he forwarded the book up here), I thought to myself: “I think this is going to be a book I’m going to like.” And when I first laid my eye on merely the Alert painted on the jacket, I said: “I’m sure this is a book I’m going to like!”
To be sure, I cannot yet say very much about the book itself, having already read only a few chapters—but what I have read are full of the spirit of square-riggers (somehow it is very different from the spirit of schooners), full of both the hardships and the merriment of sailor-life, full of many little nautical words and terms (and the more I see of those, the better, for I am trying to learn them, full of the very sound of the sea and the whistling of wind through the sails—and it is the more vivid, of course, because it is the actual experience of the author. That is the best part of all.
Since you have been so mind-reading (or, perhaps, heart-reading) as to discover this close relationship between me and the sea, you may also know, through the same magical process, that I have just returned from a ten-day cruise on a three-masted schooner. To be sure you have—for it has appeared at least twice in News and Views of Borzoi Books! And so I thought you might be interested in a very condensed brief account of the voyage, which was a curious one, having both dead calm and a high gale, both sparkling clearness and a fog “thick as mud,” as the crew said.
Well, I had been on a sea-rage all right, long before I had seen the Frederick H. I had been delving into a golden treasury of ship-words and diagrams in the dictionary, and I had really learned quite a little about ropes, sails, spars, etc. And so, when a friend of mine, who had been a sailor all his life, told me that a three-masted schooner had come into New Haven, I lost not a second in getting down to see her. She was lying close to the wharf, and it thrilled me as I have almost never been thrilled before, to look up at her long jibboom and flying jibboom, or up into the mazes of the rigging (which I had secret hopes of being allowed to climb). We hailed the skipper, who was sitting on deck, superintending the work or discharging the cargo of lumber, and asked permission to come aboard. This was speedily granted, and aboard we went, helter-skelter, over the lumber-carts. The first thing I did was to climb out on the spanker-boom, which slightly overhung the water, and walk along it to the very end. The next thing I did was to ask if I might go into the rigging. The captain said I might; only I was not to go off the rope ladder, and I was to “hold hard.” I went, and never stopped until I reached the cross-trees. This was as much a surprise to me as to everybody else, for I had never dreamed of going more than a few steps. There I sat, just as Jim Hawkins had sat in his terrified flight from Israel Hands. I experienced great delight in knowing that I was sitting where he had sat on the Hispaniola! We became well acquainted with the skipper, Captain Read, and before very long it was arranged that he should take me and Mr. Bryan with him, back to Nova Scotia. I will not deny that the first thing I did was to dash upstairs to my dictionary, at full speed, and look up the points of the compass, which I learned by heart. Well, to cut a very long story very short (and at that this letter is getting long enough!) it was the most rash, sudden, unadvised, but most thoroughly delightful enterprise I ever lurched forth upon. Oh! but there is nothing more heavenly than being under wide-spreading sails, fore-and-aft, or square, or anything else, leaning before a north-east gale, the green and foaming waves raging all about, the sails full and bellying out with wind, the howling and whistling of wind through the white canvas, the raging white bone the schooner would have in her white teeth, the cant to leeward so that we had to use the table-racks, the calling of “Hard-a-lee!” when we tacked, the bustle of men’s feet to the blocks and sheets; or in a calm for several days, nothing but the swell which rolled you out of your bunk at night, so that she almost rolled water on her deck, and everything rolling and thumping, doors banging in the cabin, bottles and dishes jingling, the groaning of the booms as they would swing in and out, the billowing and flapping of the idle sails, the pattering of the reef-points; the sailor-life in general, brief commands of mate and skipper, nautical words and terms, the reminiscence of old clipper-ship sailor-life, with watches, look-outs, two-hour tricks, the merry yarning of the crew when off duty in the fo’c’sle, the gayness of them all, the carefreeness—it was all just exactly as I had dreamed; or being in thick fog when you can’t distinguish sea from sky, when everything is a moving, ghostly space that you can see and feel. Then I loved my part of it, too. I was often allowed a half-trick at the wheel, in daylight, or steering by the light of the binnacle-lamp beneath the stars, when the moon would shine on the sails, making them look like newfallen snow, or making the foam whiter and lovelier than ever. I used often to lend a strong hand on the hauling of too slack ropes, or sweep the deck by the house for my special friend, the mate, or help the old cook with his dishes, or just sitting and talking with all the crew. But the best of all was, of course, the rigging. Even on the hottest days there was breeze up aloft, and the vast white expanse of the sails shaded you. You think and feel that the ship is happy leaning before the wind, and happy between her furious white wings, and the raging white bone in her teeth. I used to go up there in good, fresh breezes, when the ratlines quivered a little beneath the strain of the wind, and the sails tugged furiously at the gaffs and booms.
Well, you can see what might happen to the paper supply if I keep on too long at this rate. I have been known to talk three hours at a time, steadily, fast, furiously, about this trip, and then do another three hours the next day, yet never repeat a word! I should be delighted to have a real talk with you sometime, on the subject of ships and sailors.
Daddy tells me, by the way, that you are the owner of a Block Island boat. A sort of small schooner without topsails, isn’t it? Do tell me when you intend to take command of it, for I want to get enlisted in your crew. You will find me a pretty able seaman, all things considered!
Again, thank you for Two Years Before the Mast. I’m sure I shall be just crazy over it, as I already am of what I have read.
Your friend,
Barbara Follett.
Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire
July 28, 1927
Dear Mr. Oberg:
Thank you for your letter; also for Sabra’s birthday cards. She liked them very much, and getting mail of her own seemed to her very important. Young children always do like that sense of independence—of importance—and Sabra does, especially. She had quite a little party yesterday—a two-layer cake, frosted, with four small yellow candles and a black-eyed Susan in the middle, stuck down into the frosting; and ice cream. She was quite excited over everything, and told the whole world that she was “four years old.”
I don’t think I ever had a more delightful experience than the schooner-trip. You now, I had always wanted to go on a large sailboat, and this was the most delightful opportunity. I was not long in arranging a passage, I can tell you! We had fair winds, and no wind, thick fog, and clear—just about all kinds of weather—mingled in with a good, stiff gale of wind, the waves raging green covered with white foam, and black squalls thundering up upon us ominously. The shrill voice of the captain could be heard through the howling of the wind, exclaiming: “Get down the outer jib and topsails, boys!” Fog is a very curious thing at sea. The air is wet, heavy, briny, and you can’t distinguish sea from sky—everything is a ghostly, moving, uncanny space. It has no shape, no outline, no horizon—to hear the boom swing back and forth, groaning, by the hour—the flapping of idle sails, the ceaseless pattering of the reef-points. The mate would say: “I hate to do nothing but sit here, and listen to her flap her wings and shake her feathers!” And that was a true description, too. Well, I might write or talk all day about that trip, and yet never get anyone to feel it. They might hear it well enough, but to feel it would be impossible for one who has not been under sails. Have you ever been under sails? When you crossed the Atlantic—was that in a sailing vessel or a steamer?
In your letter you mentioned going to Boston on business. Couldn’t you turn that business into pleasure, and take the train to Potter Place, and thence by stage up here. The driver of the stage is Mr. Crane, and he would undoubtedly stop at the head of the lane, between George’s Mills and New London. We should love to see you, and I hope you will find the chance to get up here. Of course there are certain disadvantages—for instance, the trip is very long and tiring, as of course you know.
Always your friend,
Barbara.
This letter may have been abandoned: there’s room on the first page for the start of a new paragraph.
The Cottage in the Woods
Lake Sunapee
July 29, 1927
Dear Daddy:
We have seen some most curious and marvellous cloud and sky effects today. In the afternoon, when Mother and I walked up to New London, a thunder-storm billowed up behind us ominously, and we received a spatter of rain, but it swung away to the southward, and, though it was obviously raining pretty hard on Mt. Sunapee and the southern hills, we got only a few rain-drops. The clouds were dark and grey, but very interesting, on the way back: there were ranges of sharp-peaked mountains along the horizon, there were billowy masses of greyish-white clouds in peaks, between which could be seen another and darker cloud which looked as though it might be the sea—that same dismal grey of dark weather. When we got down to the shore of the lake, a most curious range of sharp, steep hills was marching slowly, ever changing shape, over the actual hills, looking very mysterious and uncanny. At the same time the sky was full of long, fluffy tiers of white clouds, lighted up by the sun.
But at the sun’s eight bells, when it was the sun’s watch below, the sky and the clouds were the most marvellous. The tiers changed to pink, and pink mottlings dappled the zenith, while down low in the north-west the white clouds changed into a curious formation of wisps and bays and pools. The curious thing about sunset colours is that, while the changes are almost imperceptible while you watch, the clouds really go through such vast changes of shape and colour that one is amazed because it is so unnoticeable. The upper clouds were pink, and lower down were pools of dark gold, mingled with shadowy tiers of blue. Brighter and brighter it grew, and more and more colours kept showing, until the whole west, clear around to north-east, was brilliant with it. In the north-west was the bright pink, the gold, a burning, metallic gold mingled with the blue; towards the south-west was a long, narrow strip of blue-green sky, looking like a sea with islands, bays, coves, and peninsulas—the upper shore of which was a narrow rim of brilliant gold, above which was a dark blue cloud, and the lower shore of it was a purple-russet-maroon—all those colours intermingled. Higher in the southwest were brilliant golds, russets, pinks, and blue shadows mingled together into an indescribable brilliance, and across which stretched a dark blue wing of cloud, a sharp contrast with the pools of colour. A sea of fires glowed amid the lowest north-western clouds, growing steadily larger and brighter, and, higher in the north-west, there seemed to be a pool of blue water, with golden surf which flung itself high into the air along its shores, and almost concealed it. The blue clouds among the gold changed to a maroon, and the colours along the shore of the blue-green sea grew brighter. So it changed indescribably, until there was nothing left—nothing but wildly tossed about dark blue clouds, with a few quivers of scarlet among them.
An excerpt from the first of several letters from Mate Bill, a.k.a. William H. McClelland, first mate aboard the Frederick H. Barbara had sent him a jackknife for a present.
New York
July th 30 1927
Well Barbara
I Reicived the jack-knife sent I came in hear I had left Bridge water before the knife reach there so they sent it to me here
so now I am trying to think how I am gone to return the gif
we was 16 days coming over hear we had light fog all the way over and lots of head wind I though we was never gone to get here Barbara I am sending your things to you I spoke to the old man about them and he made no offer to send them so I thought I would send them to you […]
“The Cottage in the Woods”
Lake Sunapee, N. H.
August 30, 1927
Dear Jane:
Thank you ever so much for your nice letter about my book. I like to think that some children of my own age like the book, because everyone seemed to think that there was too much pure description of Nature in it for children—not enough story.
A great many things, especially in the third part, “The Mountains,” I have seen and known myself. I have been among “frost-feathers,” and I have watched them form out of driving mist which freezes on to the mountain-crags and is cut and carved by the wind. And I have been on Mount Moosilauke when the clouds broke away and the sun burst out almost exactly as I wrote it.
But all of part two, “The Sea,” is my imagination, for I have never lived by the sea, and I don’t know very much about it—at least, I didn’t at the time. I believe I saw sea-gulls once or twice down at the shore somewhere. Since then I know a lot more about it, and I know that if I wrote “The Sea” all over, I should write it much better. Early this June, I went off to sea in a three-masted schooner, carrying lumber down from Nova Scotia, and going back there without cargo. We encountered all kinds of weather—calm, thick fog, clear, and high winds. I lived “rough,” like all the sailors, and I picked up quite a lot about sailing of a schooner, and I learned how to do things on board—and I saw how the sea looks when the fog is so thick that you can hardly distinguish the water from the sky, and how it looks in a gale, when the foaming waves are high. I wish I could have had that trip before I wrote “The Sea”!
Just now, I am having a great deal of pleasure writing a long pirate story. That, of course, has a lot of the sea and ships in it, all of which I picked up just from those two weeks off in the schooner! Do you like pirates and buried treasure?
Please excuse my not writing sooner. The truth is, I came back from the mountains this year with an infection in my hand, so that I couldn’t use the typewriter.
I should be very glad to hear from you again. Perhaps we can keep up a real correspondence. Again thank you for your letter.
Your friend,
On September 11 and 12, Barbara, Helen, and Bruce and Rosalind Simonds took two long hikes in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. I’ve walked these same trails and it’s a thrill to read Barbara’s descriptions. On a clear day in late summer such as Barbara’s party had, the Crawford Path above the trees is particularly spectacular.
September 11, 1927
I think no one could have had more splendid luck than H. and I, in the way of weather! Perhaps it was due to the favour of Firefly, perhaps it was due to the magic talisman I wear at my belt—anyway, I can’t imagine a more gorgeous two days. Wednesday, when we drove up, the haze and clouds were low and thick—when we drove up through Franconia Notch Mount Cannon and the Old Man were clear—but Lafayette and the other peaks of the Franconia Range had vanished in haze. Even the nearer glimpses of the Presidentials, as we neared them, drawing further and further northward—were not glimpses at all! But in the evening, though the clouds were thick on Adams and Madison, at whose feet the house lies, there was a mighty north-west wind, and something sharp and cold in the night air promised good weather. In the morning, it proved to be the most gorgeous day of the whole summer—so they said—for climbing. Also, when we had looked out the window, long after dark, we saw the black clouds scudding along at a terrific rate, brightening with strange silver, and suddenly the moon, lacking three days, rose up, and rode proudly above the peak of Adams. We held a council of war—or, rather, a council of mountains—and decided to climb Adams by the Air Line, a trail branching off from the long Randolph Path.
Imagine the delight of not having to drive an inch before arriving at the trail. It begins practically in the backyard—and one is almost under the peak, which rises grimly above the world, like Olympus. First we ascended through low, open woodlands, crossing several small, mossy brooks and one large one; but the climbing begins almost immediately, and before long we could look back and see the mountains north of Randolph, rolling away and away to the sky. Then we came on to the summit of the first foothill of the mountain, and into forest-fired ground—which seemed like nothing but a path of destruction. Above us loomed gaunt, scraggly trees, which once had been mighty and green; about us were thick, new underbrush, and at our feet sprawled mats of snowberry, growing more thickly and luxuriantly than I have ever seen it, and spangled with pearly berries.
Then onward—up and up! We plunged into ever deeper forests of spruce and balsam, where there were high banks and rocks covered with moss on each side of the path—marvellously soft and vivid green moss. One bit of trail had a high bank on the left, overgrown with young spruces and balsams—growing in the midst of an even carpet of rich moss glowing with greenness, and sweeping, unbroken, down to the path. Then on, then on, and on—forever! For these mountains, rather than being more difficult to climb than some of the southern mountains, are just terrifically long—their spurs seem to reach out for miles and miles. But soon we began to notice a marked change in the luxuriance of vegetation. More and more stunted it grew, until, after passing through a few more banks of moss, we came out on the naked ridge—the bare knife-edge of Durand Ridge, which is the eastern wall of King Ravine. The wind was sweeping furiously across the crags—the bare crags with only little clumps of cranberry and other small mountain-plants growing in their crevices. There were to be sure, occasional clumps of spruce on the milder slopes, where they were growing flatter than juniper—but the great rocks seemed bare, treacherous, jagged. Then we began to have startling look-outs into the huge ravine, cut into the heart of the mountain. I was bolder than the rest, going so far as to venture out upon a crag overhanging space, the top of which was a narrow, pointed rock! Up and up the great Knife-edge we scrambled, and it seemed like a narrower and narrower ridge—between that vast bowl off to the west of us, and the Madison-Adams col east of us. Ahead of us were the two splendid peaks—the grey, rocky, but rounded cone of Madison to the left, to the right the sharp cone of Adams, looming far ahead, with wisps of cloud trailing delicately across it now and then; between them, and directly ahead of us, were the “sky-cleaving,” “eagle-baffling” crags of John Quincy Adams—really part of the main peak. And yet not eagle-baffling quite, for, tacking majestically, with silent wings, against the wind, rode a great eagle!
What a terrifying position to be in! Ahead the impassive walls of the near peaks, on all sides of us sheer drops into ponderous ravines, beneath us nothing but bare crags, behind us space and the blue billows of endless, countless mountains! Oh! no one then could take away from me the feeling that I love to revel in—the feeling of awe, of sublime solitude.
The trail skirted the peak of John Quincy, and began to slowly ascend the peak itself. Still the wisps of mist were floating over it—but they were nothing but thin fair-weather clouds—and the blueness behind us was sparklingly clear. The cone of Madison seemed to grow more and more like a peak—it became steadily sharper and sharper—the ravine (of which we were now skirting the headwall) to grow even more terrifying—if that were possible—and our own peak to grow more mountainous and superb than ever. The rocks which we were now scrambling over seemed nothing but sword-blades and rapier-points—they were jumbled together in a way that made you think they must have been hurled there by some great giant, landing at random anywhere. For they were all either on edge or on point—there was no smooth step anywhere! Madison began to rise surprisingly beautiful from a sea of surrounding blue summits—the Carter-Moriah range rose majestically to the right of it, making a gorgeous colour-background for the grey cone—now grown nearly as sharp as Chocorua. I have seen tawny peaks, dark grey peaks, blue peaks, green peaks, purple peaks, rose peaks—but never, until I had climbed Adams, had I seen that heavenly desolate light grey of the peaks of the Presidential Range (especially its northern summits), when you draw near to them.
Up and up! The wind grew staggeringly strong, and cold! Our hands were numb. The cone became more and more sinister, sharper and sharper as we went on, until, at last, we clung for shelter to the crags of the topmost boulder—before a mountain-wind, colder, fiercer than any I have ever known. The gorgeous thing about views from those high mountains of one range is that the most mountainous things you see are the peaks of the same range—they are so near that you see them in all their glory. Madison was now a sharp grey point below us, the Carters rose in their deep blue to the right, farther to the right was the huge bulk of Washington—a mass of blue-green crags and darksome, shadowy ravines and gulfs—with the carriage-road winding, a white ribbon, up its eastern spurs; further still to the right was Clay, from here nothing but a hump in the shoulder of Washington—farther still, and nearest to Adams except Madison, was the high, rounded hump of Jefferson, curious in that it did not seem grey like Madison—rather it was a brown velvet colour, because of the sedge-grass on it—though there were crags jutting out here and there. Its long spur, the western wall of the Ravine and the Castles, stood out prominently—so did the huge jutting crags—the Castles—along it. Then, to the right of Jefferson, and clear around the hemisphere back to Madison, were blue, far-off mountains.
The clouds had now ceased trailing over our peak—they hung high, and made the sky interesting. The Simondses said they had seldom seen a clearer day—we could easily see Mount Mansfield off in Vermont, and sharp Mount Blue far over in Maine. But the most spectacular were the nearest peaks of our own range.
I believe I forgot to say that, while we were ascending the cone, and while the clouds were still scudding across it, it often seemed as though the clouds were still, and as though the gaunt peak itself were slowly rolling and rolling over, like a great ship in a swell. You could feel the earth revolving—and it was most sinister and uncanny!
But it was impossible to stay long exposed to the full fierceness of the wind, so we floundered down again over those sharp boulders and ledges—down until we began to find little patches of warm grass, and then down farther until we were sheltered from the wind and could look things over. We were approaching the Adams-Jefferson col, and we hoped, if there was time enough, to go up over Jefferson itself. Now, looking back at the peak we had just come off from, it seemed nothing but a dark grey jumble of jags—the peak did not have a sharp form, as it did from still further down.
From the peak we had had two glimpses of delightful pools down below—one—Star Lake—just below the cone of Madison, and the other—Storm Lake—down in the hollow between Adams and Jefferson. Now, as we went down we passed tiny Storm Lake very close—I ran down the grassy bank and peered into it. It is a beautiful little pool down there, in that grassy hollow, looking up at the two ponderous peaks of Adams and Jefferson. From there our peak began to look more and more like itself—it became steadily sharper and greyer, and, by the time we reached the spring at the foot of the cone of Jefferson, it was looming up very much as Madison had loomed before—only higher—more impassible in appearance. First we saw the lower crags and slopes of it, rising gradually from the col, a weatherbeaten grey; then a more level stretch of barren ground, though still gradually rising; crowned with the unbelievably sharp grey peak, against the sky, and making a strange contrast with the deep, deep blue of the Carter-Moriah range, off to the right. It seemed incredible to have peak after peak rising off that way, without dipping below the scrub-line between—to have such a vast stretch of the peak of Adams especially, without a tree upon it. On other mountains I have climbed, when you are above the tree-line, you are practically at the top—here, the most exciting, and the most difficult part of the climb is above the trees.
We ate lunch there, in the shelter of a huge boulder, and gazing up at that glorious peak all the time—or off towards the Carters, or Washington. Afterwards we discovered that it was far too late to try to go up to the peak of Jefferson, but Bruce and I scrambled very hastily up to a large boulder jutting out from the shoulder of the mountain, to see what we could see. From there Adams was even more gorgeous than before—if that were possible—it seemed higher, and a little more distant, so that we could really see it better—it was gaunt and grey and weatherbeaten, as before, and the peak seemed even sharper—even more barren and desolate—and we could, of course, see much better, the flanks of the peak, as they rose up and up from the Adams-Jefferson col. It is needless to say that we could see much more of the Carter range—and they looked even deeper blue, and were even stranger as a background for that sharp grey.
Alas! We had to go down, whether we were willing to stay there all afternoon or not—so we presently started off down the true Randolph Path, beginning between the two peaks. For quite a way it was over bare ledges, then it dipped down into scrub spruce, so flattened down that often one confused it with that tiny evergreen vine, the crowberry! Then the trees grew more and more like trees, and, in surprisingly short time, we plunged into gnarled, stunted, rather mossy woods, steadily growing loftier and more luxuriant. The rest of the way down we went through very lovely evergreen woodlands, having blue glimpses of mountains ahead, through the trees every now and then. In the first part of the descent we had views of the round peak of Jefferson continually, and, after the peak had disappeared, we saw for quite a long way the ridge of the mysterious Castles, looming up opposite us. And there we were down before long, and, when we could look up again at the great peak towering above us—blue, wooded-looking—we could scarcely believe that we had stood on its highest boulder, and that it had looked so different—so much more sinister—that it had been so windy and cold there!
We came out of the woods just at sunset—the “glow” had begun to appear on the peaks—Madison, a rounded hump, was drenched in it, and the Carter-Moriahs had changed their deep, deep blue for that indescribable purple.
Another mountain-council was held, and another trip planned for the next day (for Bruce, being quite a good weather-prophet, thought the weather looked promising). We decided to drive over to the Crawford House—about an hour’s driving away—from there we should hire transportation to the little station at the foot of Washington where the tiny trainlet starts up—then we should take the Ammonoosuc Ravine trail up to the headwaters of the Ammonoosuc in the Lakes-of-the-Clouds. We had it previously agreed that we shouldn’t go up to the peak of Washington, for, by the time we got there, it would be about time for the train to arrive, so that the peak would surely be flooded with just the kind of people we most wished to avoid. Then we should go on down from the lakes, over the Southern Peaks (Monroe, Franklin, Pleasant, Clinton), by the beautiful Crawford Path (six miles above the tree-line), and down the Mount Clinton trail to the Crawford House again. I have always been eager to go over those Southern Peaks, and the idea of doing it the next day thrilled me so I could hardly sleep.
And—miracle of miracles—the next day was just as fair, clear, windy, and cold as the day before—in fact, the mountains loomed up even more sharply than before! I think it was about the first time during the whole summer that two such gorgeous days have followed on each other’s heels!
We started off early, as we did the day before, and we had that heavenly drive over to Crawford House, with glimpses of Jefferson and Washington every now and then, and, later, of the Southern Peaks in a long chain, with the great round dome of Pleasant seeming to dominate them. Then, after we had circled around Cherry Mountain, we had two or three looks at Lafayette and the rest of the Franconias, looming up, a gradual, very jagged peak, above the nearer hills. It seemed hardly five minutes before we had parked at Crawford’s, and had hired a car to take us over to the station.
I think I never felt more disgust than I did at seeing those people, clustered about, waiting for the train. Something about them irritated me terribly. But, before long, we were out of sight of them, off on the Ammonoosuc Ravine trail. We went first through open woods, on a level, very rooty path. There were masses of ferns on each side, and banks of rich moss. We went along for long stretches by the Ammonoosuc River—now nothing but a gurgling mountain brook. Sometimes we crossed it, and, in some places, the crossing was very exciting and dangerous. Sometimes we went across on quivering log bridges—sometimes just stepping from rock to rock. A little bit of steeper climbing, and we came out at a lovely little pool of the river. It fell over cliffs in a series of delicate cascades, and finally landed in a deep emerald-green rock basin. The cascades fell through a deep cleft, and there were high banks of green moss and young evergreens on each side. We stayed there a few minutes—then on we went, until, as Bruce said, we “began to climb trees.” It surely was as steep as climbing trees. In a very few steps we found ourselves high above the pool, which we saw, lying below us, like a gigantic pearl.
Now, behind us we began to have glimpses of blue mountains, rolling off, like billows, to the horizon. Ahead of us was ladder-like climbing over a very rooty trail, behind us the mountains, and on each side of us the high walls of the ravine which we were gradually climbing out of. We could see, on the northern wall, bits of the cog railway up the spur of Washington, and we could make out, now and then, little spurts of smoke, showing us how the train was inching along, up and up. Also, we saw the peak itself, through gaps in the trees—a great mess of grey rocks tumbled together—and that same mysterious grey that the peak of Madison and Adams had been, as we saw it from where we ate lunch the day before. And then we could see that the spruce and balsam forest was growing stunted.
Soon we came to a side-path from the main trail, leading down a few feet, to a view of two gorgeous water-slides. We clambered down it, until we stood on an overhanging ledge, and watched how the water slithered, in one long, smooth slide, from the top of the high cliff to a basin down below, rushing and roaring. Just above it the brook was split by a large boulder jutting out from it—the main water-slide on our side of that boulder, but there was another one on the far side of it—pouring down even more steeply than the other, over the cliff. We climbed down still farther, until we were almost at the basin in which they met, and we could look up and up at those great slides—they looked as though they were rushing down from out of the sky itself.
We climbed back on to the main trail again, and kept on going up—not so steeply now, but still enough to keep us going slowly. Soon we crossed the brook, where it was winding down a small rocky gorge, with almost sheer walls of vivid moss. We could look up at the brook—a long way up—and we could see the sparkle of the sun on cascades far, far ahead. Now we could see a decided change in the trees—they were beginning to be very mountainlike. We wound on, through forests of the stunted evergreens, always having gorgeous glimpses upwards at the vast peak of Washington, rising from terrifying ravines, which stretched their scraggly fingers of green trees up on the bare rocks, in zigzags and starlike shapes. Oh! the awe of it! It was like Adams, only huger, more powerful, more gaunt and terrible—yet the peak itself was not so pointed as Adams.
We came out on bare ledges, and began to scramble up over them, in sight of that glorious peak and its deep ravines all the time. We swerved off towards it slightly, and then, rising, bare and rocky, from a forest of stunted trees, we saw the cone of Monroe, the nearest to Washington of all the Southern Peaks. The climb became more and more striking—as we began to look back into the great ravine we had just scrambled out of, as well as off at jagged Monroe, or over at Washington. Great stretches of brown-yellow sedge-grass grew up there on the cone of the mountain, and they shone yellow in the sunlight, a strange and pleasant contrast to the grim grey of the rocks. Also, the long, gaunt fingers of scrub growth reaching up at the peak from the depths of the ravines, became more and more spectacular as we mounted higher and could see more of them.
The brook was now becoming very small—it was nothing more than a tiny trickle running down over the rocks. We crossed it many times—indeed, occasionally the path led over ledges of the brook-bed itself. After mounting a few more ledges and pitches, we saw ahead of us the Hut of the Lakes-of-the-Clouds—right down in the col between the cone of Washington and the great jags of Monroe. For a moment I stopped there to get breath, then, seeing the little hollow in the naked rocks where one of the Lakes must be, I scampered up over the ledges, and stood above the tiny lake! It is so lovely to see it there, nestling, blue as sapphire, down in the weatherbeaten sternness of the crags. It seems to cower down before the awe of the grim cone of Washington—it is sheltered on all sides by the ledges, except in one narrow opening, where the beginning of the Ammonoosuc trickles out. The north-west wind—quite a strong gale, but not so furious as it had been on Adams—came tearing in through that small opening, and sent little squalls rushing over the tiny lake—the sun-fairies danced even more brilliantly here than on Lake Sunapee, or on the sea—perhaps it was because there the water is so much nearer the sun and sky! I climbed up the grassy ledges on the east side of the lake, and, when I reached the top, I looked down into another lake, north-east of the first one, even bluer, not so round, yet just as lovely, nestling in its own sheltering banks. Above them both towered that gigantic mass of rocks that was the peak of Washington, looking more aweful every time I looked at it—looking more and more grey, with the golden-brown patches of sedge-grass looking like glints of sunlight in a dark forest. The fingers of green reaching out of the dark, shadowy ravines, seemed almost alive, as though clutching at the heart of the mountain.
We ate our lunch on the leeward side of a ledge overhanging the first lake. But soon we found that the wind was uncomfortably strong even there, so we crawled down deeper into shelter, and I found a little niche in the wall of a still higher ledge. Here I sat, in the midst of clumps of mountain cranberries, in the full sunshine, entirely out of the wind, and looking straight down into the little lake, feeling marvellously warm and comfortable for such a terrific altitude.
But never, as long as I live, shall I forget those lakes. The very name, Lakes-of-the-Clouds, thrills me whenever I think of it. Lakes-of-the-Clouds! What height—what smallness—among what barren ledges—that name suggests. Many things have been hideously named by mankind, but someone hit a lovely name then. Lakes-of-the-Clouds!
The long Crawford Path leads from Washington down to Clinton—about six miles from the Hut-of-the-Clouds. It leads just off the peaks of the southern part of the range, skirting almost below them. It doesn’t actually lead over the top of any of them, except possibly Franklin—the exact peak of which is rather vague anyway. But Monroe looked so jagged and gorgeous, and I felt that the view from it back at Washington must be so staggering, that I longed to go up to the top of it. Accordingly, Bruce and I left the Lakes-of-the-Clouds before the others, and bounded from rock to rock down from the ledges by the lake, until we had gotten on to a spur descending from the peak of Washington, up which the old Crawford Path used to lead. Before we came to the top of this spur, however, a very mysterious thing happened. The bottom of the little col between the spur and the ledges on the south side of the lake was full of grey rocks tumbled and jumbled together in just the way—the edgy, pointed way—they were on the cone of Adams. And as we were walking cautiously over their sword-blade edges, we heard a distinct gurgling and chuckling down below us—the sound a brook makes running over and around sharp rocks. It was a miniature Lost River—there was a tiny inlet of one of the Lakes tinkling away down below us— entirely hidden by the helter-skelter formation of the rocks!
We walked along this barren ridge, exposed once more to the swoop and slash of the wind. Then we were down in the grassy hollow just below the craggy peak of Monroe, looming up in a sinister way. Down in this hollow are three or four more little pools which also rank with the Lakes-of-the-Clouds—though they are not so lovely—they are little boggy springs. We took the loop which leads from the Crawford Path up over the summit of Monroe. We went up so quickly that both of us were breathing very heavily before many steps, and we settled down to a slower plod. I couldn’t go very fast up there—I couldn’t if it had been level, instead of the steep, rocky climbing that it was. Behind me rose the peak of Washington, growing, as Madison once had, more and more sharply pointed. Off behind its northern shoulder reached the rounded peak of Jefferson—deeper grey than Washington—almost a purple grey, in contrast to the lighter, more weatherbeaten grey. A long spur of it reached down, just above that spur of Washington up which the cog railway ascends. The main peak grew more and more gorgeous as we went up, because the gap between Monroe and it grew deeper and deeper, and we saw more of the grey flanks and crags. The splotches of brown sedge-grass blended in with the grey, and the long fingers reaching out of the ravines seemed weirder all the time, until they, too, began to blend in with the colour of the rocks.
We came up to the top of a lower ridge of Monroe, then, at the end of a short stretch of level ridge, rose the peak, only a few feet higher—a mass of dark crags. We stood on top for several minutes and looked about us. I cannot say more about how Washington and Jefferson looked—I am sure that I have already repeated the same things over and over again. But nothing I could ever say would describe the impassive grandeur of it. Nothing! When we stood there on that sharp peak, east of us rose Washington and Jefferson, out of space itself, the great peaks rising aloft from their own ravines and gulfs; west of us we could trace the whole Crawford Path clear over to Clinton, going down over what seemed like peak after peak, mostly rounded in appearance. First, and right below us, was the grassy green hump of Franklin, the highest point of which swings off in a long ridge over the vast expanse of Oakes Gulf; then, farther down, yet seeming to loom higher than Franklin, rose the still perfectly rounded dome of Pleasant; and farther still, the long ridge of Clinton, with Lafayette and all its jags, and the whole Franconia Range towering bluely above it. South of us stretched a long spur (Bootts Spur) of Washington, the higher part of which was grey with bare rock-ledges, the lower part becoming greener, then blue; almost below us was another part of Oakes Gulf, a staggering dip off into space. South-west rose mountains, deep, blue, billowing like gigantic waves of the sea. North were mountains, too, but not such formidable ones as the southern ranges.
I have been on mountains, such as Carrigain, where the nearest thing is Mount Lowell, on which you can see the crags and slides beautifully—yet it is far enough away to look only jagged and blue. Other mountains, like Chocorua, rise up alone from a swirling sea of far-off peaks. Everything around you is blue and far-off (except, of course, the three smaller peaks of Chocorua itself). Passaconaway juts out all by itself—Whiteface having such a deep col separating it from Passaconaway, that you would hardly realize it as part of the same range. On these mountains there is hardly anything to break the blue monotony. Here, on a peak such as Monroe, and on others which I shall try to describe later, you have everything in one tremendous sweep around you! You can be made to feel small— the proudest spirit, if it has any imagination, can be made to feel small—by a sweep of blue; but to see some peaks towering a sinister grey above you, others down below you in an unbroken chain of tawny and grassy-green, and then, between the tremendous ravines to see the blue as a contrast to the nearest peaks—that makes you more insignificant than the smallest insect!
We scurried down again to the rest of the party, and joined them where the loop of the Crawford Path branches out from the main trail to go over Monroe. And then we started off on that walk along the top of the sky—the walk I shall forget not even if I live to be a thousand. First we dipped smoothly around on the southern side of the peak of Monroe, and then we could look up at the crags of it, overhanging the path—almost. Washington disappeared behind it. Then we looked off to the south-west at the blue mountains. Every step we took a new one rose up from behind the long Bootts Spur. We saw the Sandwich Range, looking more peaked and stupendous than I have ever seen it look, terminated by Chocorua, of which you could see the main peak and the Three Sisters—all of them sharp, but none so sharp as the main peak, which was nothing but a small jag on the horizon, yet keeping the shape of the mountain as I have always known and recognized it. We were getting into the shallow Monroe-Franklin col, and so the peaks ahead obscured some of the western peaks, such as Lafayette and the Franconias.
Now, right here I might as well say that it will be absolutely hopeless for me to describe what we passed over on the Crawford Path. It is too much—too glorious—too like—and yet too changing—for my poor English. A Farksolian might describe it, but that is only because in that language there are so many more words meaning little details for which you have to write a full English paragraph—and then imperfectly. But even a Farksolian could not make you feel it— he might make you see it dimly—but to get the wonderful feeling of loftiness and solitude you have to be there yourself.
Well, we skirted the peak of Monroe, along the headwall of the vast Oakes Gulf, over rather grassy ground, with clumps of cranberries and the delicate white starry flower, which I discovered is called sandwort. Monroe is famed, earlier in the season, for the beauty and rarity of its Alpine plants and gardens. Then we saw the nubbin-peak of Little Monroe, and we went on until we could look back between Monroe and Little Monroe, and see, as if framed by those two peaks, Washington, sharper and greyer than ever, rising majestically out of space! Then the peak of Monroe itself began to look more and more horn-shaped—we could see how much sheerer it is on the southern side than the northern—how it seems to be leaning out and looking down into the great hollow below.
Then we started the very gradual rise over Franklin. From where we were we could see more gorgeously than ever how Franklin seems, in all its greenness, to be swinging out over space. Up on its grassy dome we went, with the peaks still rising up in the south and the west—also in the east. For now we had the same view which we had had before from Monroe, only with another peak, Monroe itself, added. We saw the great horn-shaped mountain leaning out—outlined against the sheer grey of Washington, which seemed always to be towering higher and higher above us; then there was majestic Clay, on the northern shoulder of Washington, now becoming more and more a distinct peak, and whose long grey spur reaching down, showing just above the railway spur of Washington; then was great round Jefferson, showing from behind the long spur of Clay, whose own spur reached down still higher than that of Clay. All these peaks seemed strikingly near—all of them were grey, but in varied shades of greyness. The grey down on the flanks of Franklin, where they jutted above the tree-line, was the lightest; then came Monroe, a small shade darker; then Washington, yet darker, but still the same grey which I have seen only in those peaks of the Presidential Range; then Clay, darker yet; and last Jefferson, almost purple-grey, and more mysteriously shadowed than any of the others.
It was the same way in the shades of green—for there was green reaching up from the hollows of them all. The lightest and the sunniest green was on Franklin, an almost golden-green; then Monroe, the green from whose ravines seemed touched only here and there by sunlight; then gaunt Washington, whose green fingers were dark and shadowed; and Clay, whose green seemed blending in with the dark, dark grey of its crags; and Jefferson, whose green was almost black—nothing but shadows stretching out from more shadows.
Again, it was the same with the various ravines between the spurs of each. The deep Ammonoosuc ravine, really on Monroe, not on Washington, was the brightest and sunniest; between the spurs of Washington and Clay we could see a ravine full of mysterious grey shadows; and on Jefferson, whose spur rose higher than any of them, and therefore of whose ravine we could see the most, there was nothing but a deep, deep sea, without depths, without soundings, full of shadows—a sea of black and purple and shadows.
Now we could see the glorious Franconia Range, surmounted with the sharp jags and teeth of Lafayette. Off south-west the Sandwich Range seemed clearer and sharper than ever—Carrigain loomed up like a great shadow, now that we were lower in altitude the peak of Chocorua was outlined more against the sky than it had been before, making it seem still higher. Of all the views of the White Mountains supposed to be gorgeous, I have seen nothing, even of far-off mountains, so lovely as from this Crawford Path. For each mountain, with its several spurs, interlaced gently with the others, so that the whole south-west country was made of these great mountains, deep blue, gently and regularly inter-woven together!
Then on, and on, along the sky-line, hoisted high above the trees, down into quite a deep col between Franklin and Pleasant [since renamed Mt. Eisenhower]. In this col, we dipped, for a few seconds, into very stunted, scrubby growth—because of the shelter of the two peaks—but I should hardly call it going below the tree-line. Every sign of a tree we had seen since leaving the Lakes-of-the-Clouds Hut had been tiny spruces, spread out as flat as crow-berry vines, on the grassy slopes. In going down into that col, we had, of course, to see Washington and Jefferson vanish behind Franklin—also Lafayette and the Franconias below the mound of Pleasant. But to the south we never, for a moment, lost sight of a deep and distant blue. That col was the most spectacular on all the Crawford Path—the dip being much more sudden, and seemingly deeper than any other. From tiny Red Pond—a little pool under the dome of Pleasant—we looked eastward at the huge expanse of green Franklin, looking like a very steep descent into the col; and westward we were overshadowed by Pleasant, rounder now that we were so near it than ever!
The path leads to the southward of the summit of Pleasant, but the Simondses thought that, in spite of the fact that we had none too much time left (having loitered and lagged all the way along), it would be very much worth while to go up to the top. The ascent is very steep for a little way—but grassy rather than rocky, as all Southern Peaks are. Up we went, through mats of cranberry and crowberry, until, after a steep but very even climb, we came on to the grassy summit of Mount Pleasant, with the green and brown sedge-grass rippling in the wind. The peaks of most of the mountains I have climbed have never seemed, when you are on them, as they look from down below. But Pleasant is unchanging—I have never seen it looking anything but round, and, even when you are on top, it is just as round and smooth as ever. On the very top is what looks like a very crude shelter—a small circle of stone-wall, not more than ten feet in diameter. On Pleasant you have the loftiest feeling of all the Southern Peaks, though it is not so high as Monroe, or even Franklin. But the view back at the Northern Peaks is just the same—except that it is more distant, and even more stupendous, and that you have another peak added, Franklin. First you look over at the great green slopes of Franklin, as it rises from terrific gulfs and ravines from all sides; then sharp Monroe, even more horn-like and craggy than before; and huge Washington, the grey of whose boulders seems softer and less stern; with Clay looming up from its shoulder; and then rounded, mysterious Jefferson. The shading of grey is just the same—growing steadily deeper all the way back to the spurs of Jefferson. But Pleasant and Franklin are a bright, sunny green, with tawny splotches of brown grass. The yellow-brown up on the cone of Washington looks more and more like glints of sunlight—but you can still see it plainly against the grey.
The Sandwich Range, the Franconias, and the other southern and western mountains, grow steadily more and more wonderful— they seem higher and more distinct the nearer we get. Again I was stunned by the sudden contrast in what we saw. To look from the grey boulders of Bootts Spur on sinister Washington, straight off into that sea of far-off blue ridges and spurs, interwoven, like a great woven pattern all over the world.
But we couldn’t stay up there on Pleasant half as long as I should have liked to, for it was getting dark. No, not dark, but we could see that it would surely be nearly dark by the time we got down Clinton [also known by its official name, Mt. Pierce]. So we dipped down again into the Pleasant-Clinton col, again dipping below a little subway of scrub, but not seeming like such a deep or sudden col as the Pleasant-Franklin one. In an unbelievable short time we saw the dome of Pleasant behind us melt back into the range again, rounder and lovelier than ever. I think perhaps that the view from Pleasant is the most gorgeous all along the Crawford Path. But that signifies nothing: I thought the same about every peak we went up on to.
So we walked up on the long, long ridge which leads, eventually, to the summit of Clinton. But just below the summit the Crawford Path dips down into the woods, and down, and down, off those glorious sky-places, to our own world again. All those six miles seemed very short in time and distance to me! So short—far, far too short! And now we were going up the last of those peaks! I should love nothing more than to wander from the Lakes-of-the-Clouds Hut over the Crawford Path, starting early in the morning, and wandering up to every peak, by the branching loops, and spending as much time as I wished anywhere I wished, sitting for long hours on each peak, and stopping whenever anything unusually beautiful rose out of its surrounding peaks. But there we were, up on Clinton. There wasn’t time to go even up to the top of the last peak—in fact, the Sandwich Range and the other Southern Mountains had vanished behind the long ridges of it before I realized that I had seen my last of them for the present. We paused for a moment before dipping down off the ridge—we looked back east again.
Oh! surely this was the most glorious of everything we had yet seen! Everything was just as it had been before—from mysterious Jefferson, up to the same “sky-cleaving” Washington, then over to Monroe, now grown small and uncannily hornlike, to the top of the high ridge of green Franklin, jutting out to the right of the glorious dome of Pleasant, green and tan! It was the same, only with yet another peak added! And Pleasant, so round and smooth and even, looked very strange down against the cone of Washington!
Well, goodbye to them! And we dipped below the scrub.
Goodbye—goodbye to them!
It seemed like dying by inches when, a few seconds afterwards, there was a gap in the trees—the stunted trees—and we looked back at them again—once—but it was the last look—really the last look. We never saw them again afterwards—except once or twice when, through thin places in the branches of the evergreens, we caught a fleeting glimpse of something massive, huge, and grey up there— which was probably the ghost of Mount Washington—or something shadowy, dark, unreal—the ghost of Mount Jefferson!
We plunged down at rather reckless speed through the beautiful mountain-forests of Clinton, arriving again at the Crawford House. Never have I felt such terrible sorrow at leaving the bare ridges—but I had been the whole afternoon on that heavenly trail, and I had let myself sink deeply into it—and when I left it struck upon me sharply. Nevertheless, the drive home was heavenly.
The sun took his watch below soon after we left the Crawford House. We saw that gorgeous “glow” all over the Southern Peaks, particularly Pleasant, when we came to that view of all the southern part of the range. Then, soon after we had come into sight of them for the second time, the colour had shifted from the southern peaks over to Washington, where it rested—only, instead of being gone, as we thought at first, it had increased in brilliance of purple—so that, when Bruce called to us to look back, it looked as though the whole great Mountain were wrapped in fire! Such burning purple I have never seen. Added to that, the sky was bright pink behind, and, in the midst of the colour, rode the moon, absolutely full, and a soft, rich gold! Imagine seeing it hanging over that flaming mountain—riding on high like a proud goddess!
We fled on before the night, but I watched the west, and what was happening among the clouds there. They changed into their usual gorgeous golds, purples, fire-colours, oranges, and all those other mysterious brilliances which you think of when you think of magic, and the Arabian Nights. (I don’t know, though, why the Arabian Nights always make me think of strangely brilliant and magical colours.) But the shapes of the clouds were unusually weird. They seemed as though they had been flung about recklessly, and now they lay crossing each other in strange, wild patterns, one colour gleaming through another, and each tiny wisp a slightly different shade. Over in the south were long, horizontal bars of gold, which slowly faded to bright pink, and then to grey. But there is nothing more wretched than trying to see a sunset from a car, and the Simondses were in a hurry to get home before dark, so I had only to crane and twist around as well as I could. I wished we had been able to stay and watch Washington and the moon until it had faded!
When we came to the place where there is a view of the Franconia Range, we saw proud Lafayette, a deep, deep night-blue, outlined vividly against a still glowing sky. And when we came to where you see Jefferson and Washington again, they, too, were almost black— the last of their “glow” had faded, and the moon hung, more brilliant than ever, over Jefferson. A little farther along, and we saw her again, proudly riding over the highest summit; and still farther she lighted up the sky above sharp Adams; then she set again behind Madison. But soon she was up again—we saw her silvering the top of Madison as she rose from behind it—and then there she was again, hanging over the lower mountains and hills—we saw her gleaming through the trees all the way home.
My two mountain-days were over! All over! How I wished myself night-bound at the Lakes-of-the-Clouds! And what we did the next day—the drive we took—does not belong to Adams and the Crawford Path. Those mountains are complete in themselves, and I don’t like to mix anything else up with them. The last thing I think of with that trip, was seeing Washington in the flames of the sunset, with the moon above that fiery peak.
Asthaveckia!
The Cottage in the Woods
Lake Sunapee, N. H.
September 13, 1927
Dear Bruce:
One of those impassible problems confronts me when I try to decide how I should thank you for those two mountain-days. I cannot use the conventional terms, such as—wonderful, beautiful, heavenly, gorgeous, etc. But I can say that those mountain-trips have meant more to me than any other mountains I have ever climbed or seen. When I think of the droning wind about the sinister peak of Adams, or of the Lakes-of-the-Clouds among their barren ledges, or of how the peak of Washington looked when we stood on Monroe, or on Pleasant—or all the Crawford Path—I can see that nothing I could ever say would tell you—or even give you any faint idea—of how I loved those two days.
One can’t even attempt to describe Washington, as it looked when we were driving back from the Crawford House—the peak seemingly wrapped in burning purple fire, the sky bright pink above it—and then, in the midst of the colour, to see the soft gold moon riding [sic] proudly, over the peak. You can’t describe it—you can’t even believe it.
The other day Helen was saying to me: “Were we up there on the tops of those mountains? Were we really, really there?” And I replied: “No, we weren’t—we couldn’t have been. It is just one of those impossible things.”
I have thought mountains of the second rank, such as Moosilauke and Carrigain, to be more glorious than anything else could ever be; I have considered the views and look-outs from them unrivaled—but, when I saw the mountains surging around me from Pleasant or Clinton—or Monroe, where those gaunt grey peaks of Washington and dark Jefferson loomed up behind into the sky; and where we saw that long chain of tawny-green humps of the Southern Peaks; and then, to see between them the glimpses of far-away blue—well, it was no wonder that Helen and I were pretty silent on the way home!
So I finally decided that it would be impossible, even to attempt to thank you. I have written an account of the trip—fourteen single-spaced typewritten pages—which perhaps you will see sometime when you have plenty of time! For plenty of time it will surely take to read it all! In that I strained my describing capacities to the utmost, and I found it very tiring work; but I did manage to make those mountains yield up a dim idea of some of their treasures, in written words.
With love to you and Rosalind,
Barbara.
New London,
New Hampshire,
September 13, 1927
Dear Mr. St. John:
I should have written to you much sooner, except that my hands became infected, and I had several yards of gauze bandage on them, for a long time, so that they were just about helpless.
But I want you to understand that I shall never, never forget the mountain-days I had with you at Passaconaway. I shall never forget the beautiful moss growing on the wet rocks up the slide; or the spectacular view from Signal Ridge on Carrigain. Thank you a thousand, thousand times for having me up with you for those few days.
Signe told us that you stopped here on your way back, Thursday. I was very sorry not to see you again—but at that same day, hour, and minute, I was ploughing slowly up Durand Ridge! Do you remember how, on Carrigain, we fell to talking about Adams? At that time, I considered Adams a far-away climb which I might take sometime in a year or two. And it was only a little while afterwards that I climbed to the summit of that great peak, in company with friends of ours who have been staying up at Randolph all summer! I must tell you more about that trip some day!
Thank you again for those few days I had with you.
Your friend,
Barbara.
[undated, ca. September 1927]
Dear Peter:
I have received from you such a sheaf of delightful letters that I hardly know how I should attempt to answer them. You must be acquiring an amazing speed on the typing-machine—otherwise you could hardly find the time to pour forth all those single-spaced pages. Me, I’m writing this in long-hand because Smee has fallen asleep quite near by and must not be awakened.
Down in this neck of the woods we have surely had the strangest season within recent memory. Almost all the fair days—and few enough they were—have been chilly; and for a good part of the time we have had cold, autumnal rains—easy and endless. The garden flowers have done badly for lack of sunshine, and even the wild flowers have lacked their usual abundance and brilliance. Piazza-sitting has been largely an impossible thing, and we have had hearth-fires and furnace-fires, both for comfort and to dry out the house. Sunspots may be to blame—I don’t know; but the general impression is fairly uncanny. Smee digs in the flower-beds, trying to loosen the soil that the rains have tamped down. The hybrid tea-roses have hardly blossomed. If you have been having this kind of thing—only colder, because of your latitude—even you must now and again have been shivery.
I suppose the new camp—the one on your side of the lake—has been in operation. That wholesale kind of thing seems to be overrunning New England. The magazines carry infinite advertising of such places, and the supply is apparently none too great for the demand. However, if Hook were up there, I know that it would be possible to maintain something of the old mystery and charm. I know it because the letters of Peter Pan reveal so clearly the fact that mystery and charm still are there in full measure if one knows their secret.
What a gorgeous outing you must have had with St. J.! I followed your account from point to point, and I realized what a mighty busy time you must have had. Mr. St. John must be a pretty vigorous fellow to keep up that pace. I have got out my A. M. C. “Guide” and am trying to trace your trips. Somehow, as I do so, I keep picturing again and again that view of Chocorua from the highway, across the Chocorua Lakes—it must be the most beautiful view in New England. Certainly nothing we saw in the Presidential or Franconia country impressed us anywhere near so much. How I do wish Smee and I had a cabin in the Albany Wilderness—with a guest-room for Peter!
(A little later.)
With the aid of the excellent detailed descriptions and the careful maps, I have, as well as I could, followed each day’s hike of yours. In one way, the White Mountains have a decided advantage. You can have some magnificent climbs without getting to such a distance into the wilderness that it is necessary to carry a lot of equipment and grub. None of your trips was such that you could not quite readily get back to your base on the same day—yet what a sense of remoteness and wildness you had! I wish I had had more out-of-doors life during the two seasons we were at Sunapee—there was always just a little too much work that had to be done!
Yours, as ever,
Jas. Hook
Judging by other reviews I could find, A. A. Milne’s Now We Are Six was published in October 1927. I can’t tell from the faded clipping in the Columbia archive which publication carried Barbara’s review of it.
NOW WE ARE SIX. By A. A. Milne; with decorations by Ernest H. Shepard, New York (E. P. Dutton and company).
Here’s our friend again, Christopher Robin! Three cheers for him! Has anyone ever had a heartier welcome? The more we know about him, the more we want to know about him, and the more we laugh at his childish caprices, the more we want to laugh!
And what comrades they are, Mr. Milne and Christopher Robin! One imagines them always together, playing, laughing, rhyming their small verses. With Christopher Robin’s own eyes the author sees the world, as if through a magic crystal; and he writes, in enchanting rhyme, thoughts so young and so little that they are unmistakably Christopher Robin’s. They are like the small, curly sea-shells which those two comrades are always collecting, as they walk, hand in hand, over the beach.
With the childish jingles, at which we laugh so much, there is much real and beautiful poetry. You have it in Us Two, in Blinker, and in even purer form, in The Charcoal Burner; so, too, in those exquisite little snatches, such as Sing Song, Wind On the Hill, Solitude, Buttercup Days.
Ernest Shepard, Mr. Milne and the immortal Christopher Robin seem to wander together very joyously—laughingly. We cannot think of the two without thinking of the tree [sic], and we hope that they will always stick together, as playmates.
Mr. Milne has written a delightful little explanative “Introduction,” calling it an “Er-h’r’m!” to the book. But I hope, and I think you will hope with me that it shall be the “Er-h’r’m!” not only to Now We Are Six, but to a still greater acquaintance with Christopher Robin!
Barbara’s review of Sails of Gold, edited by Lady Cynthia Asquith (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature on November 12, 1927.
“SAILS OF GOLD!” One imagines a ship under full sail to her moonraker dashing proudly through the waves, leaving her wake of foam behind her, and cleaving the seas with her cutwater. One sees her sweeping into the path of the sun, where her sails look like golden wings; and one sees foam along her sides, swirling and racing away in two long mountain-ranges of snow-capped peaks. As a book, one thinks of sea-stories, full of the sound of the wind and waves, and the sparkling of pirate treasure.
But there is not one story in this collection, “Sails of Gold,” that touches upon the sea; there is not even the echo of it that you hear within a great sea-shell. A strange and sudden shock! From the ideas with which the title fills your imagination, you turn to a totally different world. “Sails of Gold” sets you up for something wonderfully adventurous, full of the sea; but, on reading, you find almost every type of story that you can imagine—except stories of the sea.
Then why was it that the editor of this volume called her work “Sails of Gold”? Perhaps it was in honor of the authors, artists, and poets who built it up, sail above sail, into a majestic full-rigged ship. A beautiful idea—but it is not a ship which they built up.
But, after all, the title is not the most important thing. After you have let your ideas of wild adventure die down, you cannot help enjoying the book. For it is a perfect medley of everything under the sun, with prose and verse mingled together, and stories, totally different one from another, following upon one another’s heels. There is John Buchan’s tale of a magic-walking-stick which transported you from place to place—Merlin himself could not have contrived a better; there is A. A. Milne’s curious story, “Tigger Comes to the Forest,” which has in it Pooh, and Piglet, and Eeyore, and Christopher Robin, and all the others whom we have laughed at so heartily before; there is Algernon Blackwood’s odd and beautiful tale which he calls “The Water Performance,” and which has in it much of magic and mystery; Dale Mariford has written an extremely amusing bit of satire, called “The Dragon Who Didn’t”—satire on that old conventional idea that any princess worth winning has a fire-breathing dragon who must be slain by the daring and heroic prince. And others, many others. Then there is the verse, which, let me call for my own pleasure, the rope-ladders between the top and top-mast-cross-trees. There are fairy poems, and mermaid poems, and flower poems, and a clever fish poem by Laurence Binyon, and even a giraffe poem—a very humorous bit of verse by Geoffrey Dearmer; though perhaps Ianthe Jerrold’s poem, “A Lovely Lady,” is the loveliest of all.
Verse or prose—the child or grown-up is hard to please who cannot find something to his liking in this book, something that will stir his imagination. I cannot help hoping that our friends, A. A. Milne, Rose Fyleman, Hugh Lofting, E. Phillpotts, and all the others who have found their places in “The Treasure Shop,” “The Flying Carpet,” and this new collection, “Sails of Gold,” will keep on writing their delightful stories for children ad infinitum—that they may fill the holds of treasure ships brimming full of precious jewels and ornaments, and keep on weaving more and more of their wondrous golden sails.
The poet and literary critic William Ellery Leonard (1876-1944) was a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin.
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
November 14, 1927
Dear Mr. Leonard:
It would be hard for me to say how much I loved receiving your delightful letter, and reading it. However, I take the liberty in contradicting you in one thing—that I may have “outgrown” Eepersip. (I have heard, you must know, altogether too much on that tack concerning another thing, and I don’t want to hear it about her, too. So, stand by to come about, say I; or “Ha-a-a-rd-a-le-e-e-ee!” as our captain would whoop from the helm of the Frederick H.) I still love her, though I feel as though she might be written a great deal better; I love her because she is my way (or was) of writing down my own adventures—though, of course, in a slightly fantastic form. Much, more than anyone realizes, of that book is actual adventure—almost all of Part Three—the frost-feathers, the mist—is what befell Daddy and me on two or three trips across ranges of mountains. She is almost a diary, and so I could never “outgrow” her!
A little while ago, however, I faced about and tacked, as though in reply to some invisible helm, and set full sail close-hauled, starboard tack, one blast on the foghorn—close-hauled in an entirely nautical world (as you may have guessed). I was awed and conquered by a passion for sails, for square-rigged ships, for even schooners! The mountains sank momentarily in a cloud of spray. I yearned to know more, to see for myself, to live rough. It began with a wild craze for pirates; but, that failing, it took form in a simple longing for any vessel with sails—honest or piratical—and the common sailor began to appear to me nearly as thrilling as any pirate.
I thought a little while, and then I resorted to the Dictionary—like mad. I spent whole hours over a minutely detailed diagram of a ship, and other hours over the names of sails, and yet other hours over the points and quarter-points of the Mariner’s Compass, and still more hours over looking up every ship-word that I could think of, whether I really knew their meanings or not. I learned some—but not enough—not nearly enough—I couldn’t get from the Dictionary the real and deeply hidden meaning—the scent—the heart—the echo of the sea. I wanted real authority.
Then we discovered—Mother and I—a rich treasure: Mr. Rasmussen. He has been a sailor, mostly in square-rigged ships, for a great part of his life, but now he does ’longshore work as a carpenter. And he is full of tales and yarns of his seafaring days. Now, because he misses the sea so much, he owns a sloop, and takes her out every week-end that he is able.
But I didn’t dare to ask about the condition of sailing nowadays, because I feared so much a bitter disappointment. At last I asked him: were there any schooners that came into New Haven now? And then fell the thunder-bolt! “Why, yes—there’s a pretty little schooner in here now—a three-master. She come down with lumber from Nova Scotia, an’ she’s discharging now. Come in jist a couple o’ days ago—jist before me. Yes, she’s a pretty schooner enough—her name? I tink she’s called the Frederick H.”
My heart leaped a mile! “Do you think,” said I, and hesitated— “Do you think that they might let anyone come on board, mate?”
“Why, I think they’d be on’y too glad to let you aboard. The crew is all home boys and I reckon they’s lonely down here where they don’t know anyone.”
I trembled all over. I quivered and shook so that I hardly heard the directions for finding her that Mr. Rasmussen gave me.
Need I describe the excitement of the following day, when, radiant with anticipation, I dragged the entire Follett tribe down the street? Need I say how thrilled I was when first I saw the topmasts of the Frederick H. fretting the sky, as we walked down towards the wharf? That was my first glimpse of her: I loved her from then till the last look I took of her.
You can imagine better than I can tell the meeting with the delightful old Captain Read, who could tell more in a minute than an ordinary man could in a day! But no one can imagine the glory of the moment when I received permission to go aloft. Up I went (I had always, always longed for a chance), hand over hand, clear up to the cross-trees! I felt—but it was indescribable!
I became fonder and fonder of the schooner, I felt that I could never bear the day when she had finished discharging, and would sail away, away, perhaps never to be seen again by me, leaving me here. The only solution I could invent was that of sailing with her! It was quickly arranged. I burst wildly and furiously through the ranks of defenses like rows and rows of sharp-pointed swords, which the family pointed full at me. I arranged with a friend: everything was settled—off I sailed!
Who could describe, the way they ought to be described, the adventures of that voyage? It answered gloriously to my romantic expectations. Even being bound by fog “thicker ’n mud” and delayed by dead calms, was exciting in its way. And when at last we broke away from the fetters of stillness, into a furious north-east gale— that was the supreme moment of the trip! We watched the waves mounting higher and higher; we saw great crests of foam, like champing white war-horses of Neptune; we watched the breaking mountain-ranges of snow-capped peaks made by the flashing cutwater of the schooner; we felt the wind so strong that we could barely turn our faces to it; we heard its singing through the sails; we watched the full moon rise from the heart of the sea on a breezy night three or four days before the gale, making the sails gleam like newfallen snow, and the sea look foamier than ever. That was the night we saw the mermaids playing beneath our swinging dolphin-striker, in glistening herds and hundreds. That was the same night when the sky was crazy—when the stars wheeled about uncannily, rising and falling and always circling. Oh, but I feel sure that I should be able to tell it better in words, and I think you would be one to share its mystery with me. So I will tell you more when I see you someday.
And there is much to tell of the mountains, too. I am torn between them and the heaving sea. Which is more magical, the howling and raging of wind when it drones about a mountain-peak at night; or the whistling song of it through the meshes of white sails? I can’t say. The sea has its spray, the mountains their frost-feathers! The sea has its fog, the mountains their pearly mist. The sea has ships and sails, but on the mountains you are yourself, and nothing takes you, unless, like some, one chooses to ride up Washington in the cog railway train. As for me, I am not that sort. Again, I don’t know. What do you think? Which do you love more?
Your friend,
P. S. I shall write again sometime to tell you a little about this summer’s mountain-trip. I wish I could put it into Eepersip. You must know that I recalled the galley proofs several times to put in new adventures in Nature!
Another welcome note from Mrs. Knopf. The Voyage of the Norman D. takes the form of a long letter to “Alan”—Barbara’s nickname for Leo Meyette.
November 18, 1927
Dear Barbara:
I wanted to write you at once I had finished reading your manuscript but got tied up in so many things that I am only now able to tell you how much I like your letter and how you make me long to go on just such a trip. […] I am delighted with it and happy that we are publishing it.
With all kinds of affectionate regards,
Yours sincerely,
Blanche Knopf
George Bryan occasionally sought help for a psychological disorder. He spent much of the winter of 1927-28 at Craig House, a sanatorium in Beacon, New York. Future residents would include Zelda Fitzgerald, Marilyn Monroe, and Truman Capote.
Craig House,
Beacon, N.Y.
Nov. 26th, 1927
Comrade Peter!
It will forever be an impossibility for me to pay my epistolary debt; but the synchronous arrival of three letters from you in one morning’s mail is so striking an event that it calls for acknowledgement and heartfelt thanks. So here, dear Peter, are both—and do not disdain them, proud youth.
Well, here I am, with the more or less lordly Hudson flowing a bow-shot from my bower-eaves and Mount Beacon, where Revolutionary watch-fires warned, hoisting itself in my back-yard. (It’s an inconsiderable wart, from your sophisticated viewpoint, for it counts but 1,540 feet above the river’s level.) I’m in Craig House, a one-time manorial mansion, with gables, turrets, wind-vanes, and a real terrace, inclosed with a balustrade and even now brilliant with pansy faces. My room is most spacious, with a practicable fireplace, colorful rugs, chintz hangings, and easy chairs. Here I hold forth with an attendant who (really!) boasts the name Earl de Courcey, who sleeps on a day-bed in one corner of the vast apartment, and who valets me no end, so that I am quite fussed by the unwonted attentions.
Every day I go to the gymnasium; every afternoon that it is possible I walk; once I have been to the cinema (“What Price Glory?”); once up the mountain (most improperly by the incline railway), once to Newburgh (which is just across the river, with frequent ferry-boats to take you there). You should come visit me and swim in the fine heated indoor pool and pass the medicine-ball with me. Then we should wander over the landscaped acres, admiring the rare trees, the secluded walks through the shrubbery, the conversations at Wodenethe (the main house of this numerous group of houses), the sixty pigs, the vineyard, the waterfalls, the haze on the far hills. What say?
In Craig House are a Steinway grand and a pipe-organ. You should hear me thundering out “Les Rameaux” on the organ, with the trumpet stop out! There’s not much technique, but O puer, there’s a deal of tone!
Yesterday I had two infected molars drawn. To-morrow? Quien sabe? A friend sent me a review of the “House” from “The Nation,” and pride swelled in the buzzum of
Your shipmate,
Jas. Hook
A pioneer in conservation and credited with saving the American bison from extinction, William Hornaday (1854-1937) was the first director of the New York Zoological Park (the Bronx Zoo).
Craig House,
Beacon, N.Y.
Dec. 7, 1927
Dear Peter:—
Here is the letter that was to have been written on Sunday but didn’t quite get itself done. My schedule is, you see, though not terribly full, yet rather exacting—at all events it seems to one of my years and lazy temper. Egg-noggs are to be imbibed at specified seasons; exercise is to be punctiliously taken in the Gothic gymnasium; hydrotherapy is to be submitted to as gracefully as may be; walks are to be walked; errands are to be erranded in Beacon and Newburgh; the dentist (who presides in a white room filled with strange engines, the ultimate in such contraptions) is to be served; and soon, soon I shall have a pulley-weight affair installed in my own room and therewith shall do daily double-dozens for the benefit of that ole devil left leg of mine. Then shall my aged timbers shiver in right good earnest! In between, somehow, I have my social hours and my reading hours (just now I’m making a fist at doing Schiller’s “Demetrius” in the original—an odd choice, perhaps, but I have only two-three of my own books here and must glean what I can from the extensive but queerly assorted library here at Tioronda).
(Tioronda, you must know, is the name of the house I’m in. Craig House, the institution, has sixteen houses and cottages. The headquarters are at Wodenethe. Then we have the Meadows, Fairway, The Lodge, Garden Cottage, South Gate, The Cedars, et al. It’s a vast domain, with a special superintendent to look after the estate. The grounds around Tioronda were landscaped by the man that did Central Park, and they are filled with rare and exotic trees. I have pictures of this habitat of mine; and maybe you would one day care to see some of them.)
We had a bit of snowfall here on Saturday and Sunday and several of our group of serious thinkers have for two evenings been coasting down the hill in front of Tioronda. I could watch them from my window; the moonlight being uncommonly bright. The first evening, a nurse was injured when her sled collided with a tree. Later, if the winter holds, we shall have tobogganing.
I’m glad you met Hornaday. He’s a marvellous person in his field; and all his life long he has fought against the so-called “civilized” majority to have fair play given to the wild life. He has been the greatest single influence in my time in getting decent game laws enacted and enforced.
You may be interested to hear that the de Courceys are famed in French history and that a de Courcey was with William the Conqueror. My Earl has the air of a Russian refugee nobleman. It is passing strange to think that a former Tsarist officer may be attending the former pirate captain
Jas. Hook
Delicious nougats & caramels bearing Gilbert’s imprint have arrived. Did you send them? If so, a 1,000 t’anks!!
Barbara (or her nears and dears) decided not to include Bryan in The Voyage of the Norman D.
Tioronda,
Dec. 16, 1927
Dear Peter:
This is a mere fragment, sent in the hope that it may reach you on Saturday. It is to say that, on thinking of the matter, I feel I should not even suggest what I am to be styled in your forthcoming opus. (a) Because I must not interfere with your auctorial preferences, of which at this writing I know 0. (b) Because I must not get myself into conflict with others than yourself—those others who advise and criticize you. (c) Because I fancy I detect, even though you seek to conceal it, a feeling of impatience on the part of your nears and dears that you consider mentioning me at all. A similar, though less marked, impatience was in the air when you insisted on making me a co-dedicatee. Fly our paths, fly our greetings, wave us away!
Yours,
Jas. Hook
Tioronda,
12/18/1927
Dear Peter:
You know, the ancient works were preserved to us through the labors of mediaeval scribes. Your old friend Caius Julius dictated to a secretary or amanuensis. The secretaries employed by eminent Romans were usually cultivated men; sometimes Greek slaves. Cicero had a secretary who employed a system of shorthand, and presumably other amanuenses had systems of their own. The shorthand notes of dictated material were ordinarily written with a stylus on wax tablets. Later, these notes were written out with a pen on strips of papyrus. A manuscript of this kind was multiplied by slaves, one slave reading aloud while a group copied. If a papyrus book were much used, it became soiled and worn; and fresh copies had to be made by manual labor. In the Middle Ages, it was usual for a monastery to have a scriptorium, where those brethren who were assigned to the task copied MSS., one of them reading while the others wrote. Now, in order to shorten the labor, conventional abbreviations were used, such abbreviations being readily understood by the readers of the completed book. Many of our books to-day contain a great quantity of abbreviations (examples are telephone books, “Who’s Who,” or the dictionary). Not only so; but errors constantly crept in: the reading brother was misunderstood; the copyists were cold or drowsy or in a hurry. Hence, the job of deciphering these MSS. demanded great skill on the part of the scholars who had to edit them when printing was introduced. The difficulty was increased by the absence of marks of punctuation. The earlier printed texts of the classics used a good many abbreviations, imitating the MSS. From the time of the Renaissance down through the eighteenth century, classical scholars were much busied with the study of evidently corrupt texts, and some of them were noted for their clever conjectures as to how certain passages ought to read.
Here endeth the treatise. I shall never again attempt to be so instructive! My next letter must be quite different.
Yours,
Jas. Hook
From a note H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote to my grandfather sometime before Christmas 1927:
Let me see “The House Without Windows” by all means. You are bringing up the greatest critic ever heard of in America. Please give her my affectionate compliments.
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
December 19, 1927
Dear Mr. Oberg:
This is a mere fragment, written hastily amid a perfect stack mountain-high of other work which must be done. It is to say that your large and Mysterious Box has arrived safely, and that we are longing to see what Mysteries it contains this time! We are indeed!
And now, my friend, I shall pay you back in your own coin. As you have mystified me, so shall I you. I have a Mystery about me, too—a Christmas Mystery, in reality—but it must be unseen for some months after the Day. If I should let it be known to you now, the charm would be broken. So, my friend, you shall know either in February, or in late January—my magic fore-sight cannot tell as yet such delicate matters. It is enough to say that it is coming, though late; and do not despair. Only get up in your mind a great deal of Excited Curiosity. That is the main point!
And here’s the best of wishes for good cheer in one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-twenty-eight!
Mystifyingly yours,
Xaaxaaa
Shortly before next year’s Christmas, Helen will write the following to Anne Meservey. (Helen and some of my grandfather’s older friends continued to refer to him by his first name, Roy, instead of Wilson—the middle name he preferred.)
Last Christmas there was something wrong, something not quite honest in the atmosphere, and I didn’t have the slightest idea what it was all about, until that fateful telephone rang at two in the morning, and Roy’s voice answering and saying: “I tried to, but I couldn’t.” Never can I get those words out of my mind.
Ding, who was living in Providence with her son Robert while healing a broken leg, had told Mr. Oberg that there was “an interesting picture of you [Barbara] in the December number of a publication called Silhouettes.” Mr. Oberg couldn’t find a copy, and nor can I.
176 Armory Street
New Haven, Connecticut
December 29, 1927
Dear Mr. Oberg:
I know it’s a shockingly long time since I’ve written to you, and I am afraid that, even now, this will be only a pitifully short letter; but, anyhow, you know how it is just after Christmas!
It is to thank you for your wonderful box of mysterious packages, and their edible packing material: I thank you for everything—everything in it; the beautiful little hand-painted calendar, the pictures of Sabra and of the old house, and for the curious little rolling tow which comes back to you so lovingly as though it hated to be parted from you. Sabra was crazy with joy over that, and she has been rolling it around the house ever since. And, of course, the candy! You know how candy is around Christmas-time. One can’t have too much!
As for “Silhouettes.” It really isn’t much of a magazine, being very dull and uninteresting, and it really isn’t much of a picture, being only an extremely poor reproduction of a good photograph which was taken some time ago. But if you really would like a copy I will try to get one, though I don’t know whether I can, it is so late in the month. I will try, anyway.
Well, keep on being mystified, and everything will go fine!
Your friend,
Barbara
On December 23rd, Barbara went to Craig House with Mrs. Bryan for a brief visit.
There’s an unusually long gap in the archive for Barbara’s letters at this time. I don’t think there are any between the one above and March 7th. Fortunately, we have a few from George Bryan and one from Mate Bill.
Craig House,