Dear America: Like the Willow Tree

by Lois Lowry

  At dinner we had Easter lily cakes. The girls who had been here last Easter had been telling the rest of us, the ones who are newer to Chosen Land, for months about the lily cakes. And they were not a disappointment. Beautiful, small, yellow and white cakes shaped and frosted to look like calla lilies. I wanted to save mine, not eat it, but it would have become stale. And of course there will be lily cakes again next Easter, and the one after that.

  At every meal, I glance toward the men and boys, and there he is. Who knows what he went through during the months he was gone? Whatever it was, it changed him. He no longer looks angry. At school I look toward Daniel’s desk, and there he is. One afternoon, when the boys were set to mathematics and were working hard on their papers, Sister Cora turned to the girls’ side and pulled down a map, for Geography. With her wooden pointer, she pointed to a country in the center of South America. Without thinking, I blurted out, “Paraguay!”

  I was right, and she commended me, and went on to talk about Paraguay’s major products. I glanced over toward the boys and saw Daniel look my way with a big grin.

  He attends to his schoolwork now, and after school he goes directly to the barn. I see him sometimes in the field, bringing the cattle up for their hay, and he walks with a different walk, no longer the stiff stride I remember.

  After Easter dinner, since it was the Sabbath, I didn’t run off to play with the other girls as I did yesterday. We each went our separate ways — to curl up with a book, or to take a quiet walk.

  I found myself, all alone, making my way up the hill behind the orchard. I had gone there once in the fall with the other girls to play, and we had flung ourselves, rolling, down the hill in soft dried grass. Now the ground was still firm — not thawed yet, though the snow was gone — and the grass was brittle, but I could see new green shoots at its base. I climbed up past the herb garden and beyond the apple trees, to the place where I could look down at the village. There was the girls’ shop, and the window of the retiring room that I share with Grace, Rebecca, and Polly. Behind it was the sisters’ shop where I had helped with laundry and burned my fingers, ironing. The candy-making was also in the sisters’ shop, and soon — soon, I hope — I will be helping there. Beside it, I could see the pale green willow tree with its sweeping branches. Behind the corner of the huge brick dwelling was the boys’ shop, where Daniel lives, and beyond it the barn, where Elder William’s dog lay napping in the open doorway.

  I took it all in, thinking of everything that had brought me here — the sadness, the losses, the fear, the loneliness, and even the things that had left me shaking with anger. All of that was part of me, the me I had once been. But most of me now was at peace. Standing there, I remembered the words of one of my favorite Shaker songs.

  ’Tis the gift to be simple,

  ’tis the gift to be free,

  ’tis the gift to come down

  where we ought to be,

  and when we find ourselves in the place just right,

  ’twill be in the valley of love and delight.

  From where I stood, I could see, suddenly, Grace and Rebecca walking along the road, each of them holding the hand of a little Beckwith girl. I took one more deep breath of the April air at the top of the hill. Then I started down to join my sisters.

  Epilogue

  With the other girls her age, Lydia moved as a teenager into the large brick dwelling and began to wear the Shaker dress.

  She watched her brother, Daniel, graduate from high school at the one-room Shaker school, and three years later Lydia herself graduated at the top of her small class. The Shakers sent her to study and obtain her teaching credentials at the Normal School in Gorham, Maine. It was assumed that she would eventually teach in the school that she had attended. She assumed it, too. But in Gorham, Lydia glimpsed the world that she had left behind. Much of it felt unfamiliar to her. Gradually, though, she began to yearn for something she could not at first put a name to.

  It was only when she met and grew to love a young biology professor named Ben Chamberlin that she understood the choice she would have to make. Returning to Chosen Land, she postponed signing the covenant. She talked to the eldresses and sisters, prayed for guidance, and eventually, not without sadness, left the Shaker life to marry when she was 23 years old. The Shakers gave her money — as they did for each one who chose to leave — to help her make a start in the world, and on the day she left Sabbathday Lake, Sister Jennie, with a hug, returned to her the opal ring that had been her grandmother’s.

  Lydia and Ben were married in 1930 at Woodfords Congregational Church in Portland. Eventually they had two daughters, whom they named Caroline and Lucy. In the years that followed, Lydia took her little girls occasionally to see the place where she had spent her early years. Noisy and giggling in the backseat, they always fell silent as the car turned onto the narrow road that separated the village, the same road Lydia had crossed each day to the schoolhouse. It was hard for them to imagine the quiet, orderly life that she had lived there. But they smiled shyly at the sisters who greeted her mother with such affection. One of them was Sister Jennie Mathers.

  Daniel was fond of his shy, pretty nieces, but marriage and children never were part of his life. From school he moved comfortably into the daily life of a young Shaker man, and for many years was in charge of the farm animals and equipment at Chosen Land. He signed the covenant when he was 21 years old and lived his entire life quietly and humbly at Sabbathday Lake.

  Lydia Pierce Chamberlin lived to be 83. She died in 1990, a widow by then, with six grandchildren. For many, many years she had sent gifts at Christmas to the young girls at the Shaker community, calling each year to find out the number so that there would be an identical gift for each. The numbers gradually diminished, until finally there came a year when there were no more children at Sabbathday Lake. Older Shakers remained, though, as they do to this day.

  Life in America

  in 1918

  Historical Note

  In early March 1918, a young soldier at a military base in Kansas reported to the infirmary. He had the flu. By the end of that day, over a hundred soldiers from the same base were also very ill.

  These were the first reported cases of what became known as “Spanish influenza,” the worst epidemic this country has ever experienced. It spread quickly. Soldiers on their way to war carried it to France, and it began to move across Europe. Soldiers returning home arrived in Boston, and so did the flu. The first case in Massachusetts — a soldier at Fort Devens — was discovered on September 7th. A week later, the civilian population in Boston was affected. And on September 21st, 6,000 soldiers at Fort Devens were ill. In October, almost 200,000 Americans died.

  The illness was fast and deadly, with symptoms of fever, hemorrhage, and pneumonia. A person who was well on Tuesday morning might feel ill by evening and be dead on Wednesday. In San Francisco, a hospital maternity ward held 42 new mothers. Nineteen of them died of the flu.

  It made its way around the world and up to Maine that fall. There were not enough doctors, not enough medicine, not enough undertakers, not enough graves.

  By the time the epidemic subsided after several months, there had been 675,000 deaths in the United States, much larger numbers than those who died in World War I. The actual worldwide mortality statistics are not known, but estimates range from 50 to 100 million deaths.

  Many children, like the fictional Lydia and Daniel Pierce, were orphaned by the flu in 1918. The Pierce children, despite the tragedy that befell them, were fortunate in where they lived. Growing up in Portland, Maine, they were 27 miles from a place called Sabbathday Lake.

  Two hundred years earlier, a small group of French religious radicals, exiled from southern France, arrived in London. In France they had been known derisively as Les Trembleurs (Shakers) because of their manner of worship, when a kind of trancelike ecstasy caused them to tremble and shout. In England they attracted few followers, but among those who did join them were former Quake
rs James and Jane Wardley. The deeply devoted Wardleys started a society of followers in Manchester, England, and in 1758 they were joined by a 22-year-old woman named Ann Lee.

  Ann Lee, who would eventually profoundly affect the entire religious culture of the United States, was the uneducated daughter of a blacksmith. Always religious, she found herself increasingly inspired after she joined the Wardley Society. She began seeing visions and having revelations, and she preached so powerfully against sin that she aroused hostility and was persecuted, beaten, and briefly imprisoned. In 1774, she and eight followers, including the man she had married twelve years earlier (and with whom she had had four children, all of whom had died), traveled by ship to America and arrived safely in New York after a dangerous voyage that took three months.

  In America she separated herself from her husband. Her insights and revelations had begun to create what would be the founding precepts of her faith, and one of these was celibacy. Another was confession. Newer, later visions brought her to believe in communalism, pacifism, and equality of the sexes.

  Gradually, her doctrine acquired converts in the new land. It did not happen quickly. The Declaration of Independence was signed and a war was fought and won. The small band of believers in the Shaker faith lived in a log cabin, women carefully separated from men, in the wilderness of upstate New York. In 1778, Eleanor Vedder became the first American convert.

  In 1784, Ann Lee, now known as Mother Ann, died. She was only 48 but had been weakened by imprisonment and physical attacks over the years. Others assumed leadership of the church, which was based on her teachings, and began to acquire believers. Over the next few years, between 1790 and 1794, ten communities gathered together in New York and New England. The one at Sabbathday Lake, in Maine, was the last of these.

  By 1800 there were about 1,375 Shakers. The religion moved westward, and in the next years, between 1806 and 1824, communities were formed in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

  By 1819, there were 3,500 Shakers. In the 1840s, the religion reached its highest numbers, as much as 5,000. Because they were celibate, Shakers never reproduced. Their converts came from other faiths, and some were former slaves. In addition, they took in and cared for orphaned children, and many of these, on becoming adults, joined the faith in which they had been raised.

  They lived what they believed in: lives of simplicity, equality, and hard work, following the teachings of Jesus and Mother Ann. They were industrious and innovative. They became famous for their inventions — the flat broom, the wooden clothespin, a double-chambered woodstove, the apple peeler, the circular saw, the washing machine — and for the meticulous quality of their furniture, clothing, baskets, and boxes.

  The community at Sabbathday Lake, known by its spiritual name, Chosen Land, was always the smallest and poorest. But it remained even as other communities, their numbers diminishing, closed down. By 1900 there were only 800 Shakers left in America. Today, as I write this, there are only three.

  At Sabbathday Lake, Brother William Dumont, who had become a Shaker at age nineteen, was appointed Elder ten years later, in 1880. At the same time, Sister Lizzie Noyes, who was then 35, became Eldress. Together they governed Chosen Land, working separately from each other but combining their business skills, religious devotion, and untiring energy to create a newly prosperous community.

  It was into this community in 1918 that a fictional orphaned girl in a dirty dress arrived and was greeted by Sister Jennie Mathers. Sister Jennie was the caretaker for the younger girls in those years. Later, she would go on to other jobs within the community. She died in 1946 at the age of 68.

  Elder William had died in 1930, at 78. Eldress Lizzie, 81, had died four years earlier.

  Brother Delmer Wilson, who as a boy had refused to leave when his mother came for him, remained a Shaker all his life. He contributed enormously to the community. He created the steam-fitted greenhouse, built furniture, managed the orchards, and became such an accomplished photographer that he started a postcard industry. He was appointed Elder but refused to use the title. He died in 1961, when he was 88. Many of the existing photographs of Chosen Land and its Shakers were taken by Brother Delmer.

  The Shaker songs that Lydia Pierce learned came from the many, many songs that I found in a collection published in 1884, called Shaker Music. The collected songs originated in many Shaker communities; I chose those with origins in Maine and New Hampshire.

  Chosen Land had increased in size in 1931, when the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine, closed its doors and its 21 Shaker sisters moved to Sabbathday Lake. (One of them, Sister Minnie Greene, was the last remaining Shaker from Alfred when she died in 2001, at the age of 91.) But the community eventually, inevitably, grew smaller and smaller in number.

  Several things conspired to bring change for the Shakers. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, children in need in America were shuffled about in various, sometimes cruel, ways. In the 1700s they were often indentured to work. Orphanages, sometimes appalling institutions, existed in the nineteenth century. In the late 1800s, thousands of children were sent west on “orphan trains” in vague hopes that they would find a new life in new territory. Finally, in the early 1900s, the first state laws to prevent child abuse and neglect were enacted. Gradually our country’s attention shifted to the protection of children, and with the Social Security Act of 1935, federal funding for child welfare increased. The foster care system began to evolve. No longer could an orphaned child be simply signed over to the Shakers.

  During the same decades, more attention was being paid to the safety of the population in terms of food and medicine. For the previous century, the Shakers, with their thriving gardens, had earned much-needed income through the sale of medicinal herbs. At Sabbathday Lake, they had packaged and marketed something called “The Shaker Tamar Laxative.” It consisted primarily of dried prunes and tamarinds, cassia bark, flavoring (sugar and wintergreen), and something called hyoscyamine, a powerful narcotic derived from the herb henbane. Tamar Laxative had been discontinued by the time Lydia Pierce arrived at Chosen Land because its popularity had decreased. But like the remedies sold by other Shaker communities, its end would have come with the passage of the Food and Drug Act in 1906, and federal acts that followed, which legally restricted the sale of drugs without extensive testing and precautions.

  In this era, too, factory-made cloth was suddenly cheaper than Shaker-woven fabric. Times were changing, and something seemed to be coming to an end.

  But at the same time as their membership decreased, there was a growing awareness of the historical importance of this quiet place in Maine. The Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village has now been designated a National Historic Site, and its assets have been placed in a public trust to ensure that the land and buildings will remain intact and unspoiled.

  If you visit Chosen Land, come in summer. The fields are green, dotted with grazing sheep and Scottish Highlander longhorn cattle. The lake reflects the sky. The herb gardens are a profuse tangle of leaves and blossoms. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, a guide will show you six of the eighteen buildings; the boys’ shop where fictional Daniel Pierce lived is now a museum. The building where the visiting dentist once had his chair now houses the Shaker shop. The one-room school has become the Shaker Library, where scholars of all sorts come and go; and next door, behind its fence, is the silent cemetery with its single stone, carved shakers, where Sister Jennie, Elder William, Eldress Lizzie, Brother Delmer, and the many others all rest.

  If you visit on a Sunday, you can attend the Sabbath service in the meeting house. It will be led by the three remaining Shakers: Brother Arnold Hadd, Sister Frances Carr, and Sister June Carpenter. As generations of Shakers have, they will read from the Old and New Testaments, lead the singing of the Shaker hymns, and invite testimony from the congregation.

  During the other days of the week, they lead busy, productive lives largely indistinguishable from life in any rural community. They tend their animals, thei
r gardens, their library, their kitchen, and their correspondence. They watch television in the evening — Sister June is an avid Red Sox fan — and enjoy visits from friends and relatives. They knit. They pray.

  They still lead a Shaker life.

  The Spanish influenza epidemic swept across the globe from 1918 to 1920, causing at least 25 million deaths. Above, American Red Cross workers take away victims of the flu in an ambulance. Below, a field hospital with tents is set up outside on a lawn in Brookline, Massachusetts, to help prevent further spread of the virus.

  Americans were encouraged to guard themselves against exposure to the Spanish flu. A street sweeper in New York City wears a mask over his mouth.

  A church service is held outside of Seamen’s Bethel Church in Maine, to prevent the spread of flu germs.

  A trial in San Francisco is conducted outdoors, for fear of exposure to Spanish influenza.

  Panoramic views of the Shaker village at Sabbathday Lake.

  The girls’ shop at Sabbathday Lake.

  The workroom in the sisters’ shop at Sabbathday Lake.

  Eldress Lizzie Noyes.

  Elder William Dumont.

  Poplar baskets made by the Shakers.

  Sister Clara Stewart weaving poplar cloth.

  Brother Delmer Wilson making poplar boxes.

  The dining hall at Sabbathday Lake.