Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  There are good roads through it in many directions, and many bridle paths, over which one may ride thirty miles on a summer’s afternoon, almost without leaving the shade; and if one cares for contrasts — which after all are the levers whereby beauty moves the world — one may find them here.

  It is toward four o’clock as you mount, and the quay of Buyukdere is beginning to be crowded again; the steamers are coming and going to and from the pier, and the white-shirted Kaikjis are alert for passengers; the Persian merchants are beginning to unroll their carpets for sale under the trees; a dozen smart saddle-horses are led up and down by Turkish grooms, the itinerant barber is shaving the head of a boatman in a shady corner, and the icecream seller yells “dondurma kaimak.” Out on the blue water three or four white - sailed cutters belonging to idle diplomatists are slowly beating up against wind and current, and the smell of warm roses floats out through the gates of the Russian Embassy garden.

  You ride away from it all, through the narrow little street beyond, between the shops of the butchers and bakers and grain-sellers, to the broad Meidan. Up to the right through the valley, then, and away into the mysterious forest, till you have left it all behind you — Stamboul, the Bosphorus, the Greeks, the Turks, the Armenians, and the diplomatists. And at last, if you ride far, you will come out when the sun is low upon a bleak moor which ends suddenly with the sharp precipice of a perpendicular cliff. There you may dismount from your horse and stand by the ruins which once were the house of exiled Ovid, gazing out upon the pale waves of the lonely sea, and dreaming, perhaps, of the land no longer distant from you now, which was the cradle of all those races, good and bad, that have struggled, and struggle still, and will strive for ages yet, over the world’s great bone of contention — Constantinople.

  Bar Harbor

  THE FIRST IMPRESSION made by Bar Harbor at the height of its season upon the mind of one fresh from a more staid and crystallized civilization is that it is passing through a period of transition, in which there is some of the awkwardness which we associate with rapid growth, and something also of the youthful freshness which gives that very awkwardness a charm. The name of Mount Desert suggests, perhaps, a grim and forbidding cliff, frowning upon the pale waves of a melancholy ocean. Instead, the traveller who crosses the bay in the level light of an August afternoon looks upon the soft, rolling outline of wooded hills, on the highest of which a little hotel breaks the sky-line, upon a shore along which villas and cottages stretch on either side of a toy wooden village, which looks as though it were to be put away in a box at night, and upon the surrounding sea, an almost land-locked inlet, in which other islands, like satellites of Mount Desert, are scattered here and there.

  As the little steamer draws up to her moorings the groups of people waiting on the pier stand out distinctly, and the usual types detach themselves one by one. The clusters of hotel-runners and expressmen are lounging listlessly until they shall be roused to clamorous activity by the landing of the first passenger; In knots and pairs, those serenely idle people of all ages, who, in all places and seasons, seem to find an ever-new amusement in watching the arrival of trains or boats, are as deeply interested as usual; the inevitable big and solemn dog, of nondescript breed and eclectic affections, is stalking about with an air of responsibility.

  And yet the little crowd is not quite like other gatherings on other piers. Girls in smart cotton frocks are sitting in shining little village carts, with grooms at their horses’ sleek heads, wedged in between empty buck-boards that look like paralyzed centipedes, the drivers of which wear clothes ranging from the livery of the large stables to the weather-bleached coat of the “native” from Cherry field or Ellsworth, who has brought over his horse to take his share of the “rusticator’s” ready money during the short season. There are no hotel omnibuses, no covered traps of any kind, as becomes a holiday place where winter and rough weather are enemies not meant to be reckoned with; everybody seems either to know everyone else, or not to care if he does not, and there is an air of cheerful informality about the whole scene which immediately makes one feel welcome and at home.

  In order not to be behind every self-respecting town throughout the Western world Bar Harbor has a Main Street, which plunges violently down a steep place toward the pier, and which is beautified for a short distance by a mushroom growth of tents and shanties, the summer home of the almond-eyed laundryman, the itinerant photographer with a specialty of tintypes, and the seller of weary-looking fruit, of sandwiches that have seen better days, and temperance drinks of gorgeous hues. Plymouth Rock also vaunts its “pants,” and young ladies are recommended to grow up with Castoria.

  Then come the more necessary shops — the tinsmith’s, at whose door a large bull-terrier benevolently grins all day; the tailor’s, where one may study the fashions of New York filtered through Bangor; the china shop, where bright-colored lampshades spread themselves like great butterflies in the window, and the establishment of Mr. Bee, the locally famous and indispensable provider of summer literature, and of appropriate alleviations for the same, in the shape of caramels, cigarettes, and chewing-gum. Directly opposite stands a huge hotel, apparently closed or almost deserted, but evidently built in the years when the gnawing tooth of the national jig-saw grievously tormented all manner of wood-work, a melancholy relic of an earlier time when, as “Rodick’s,” it was almost another name for Bar Harbor itself.

  No lover of Bar Harbor has been found bold enough to say that Main Street is pretty; and yet, between ten and twelve o’clock on a summer’s morning, it has a character, if not a beauty, of its own. Alongside of the “board walk,” which takes the place of a pavement, the buckboards are drawn up, waiting to be hired; in some of them, often drawn by four horses, are parties of people, consisting usually of more women than men, as is becoming in New England, already starting upon one of the longer expeditions, and only stopping to collect a stray member or to lay in a stock of fruit and sugar-plumbs. Farmers’ carts, with closed hoods like Shaker sunbonnets, are on their rounds from one cottage to another, meandering through the crowd, and driven with exasperating calmness by people who sit far back in their little tunnels, and cannot possibly see on either side of them to get out of anyone else’s way. Then there are all sorts of light private traps, usually driven by women or girls bound on household errands or visits, and psychologically unbalanced between their desire to speak to the friends who meet them on foot, and their anxiety lest they should be forced to recognize the particular acquaintance on whom they are just going to call.

  Along the board walk there is a row of little shops, some of them scarcely larger than booths, the proprietors of which perch like birds of passage, pluming themselves in the sunshine of the brief season, and taking flight again before the autumn gales. In one window a lot of Turkish finery looks curiously exotic, especially the little slippers, gay with tassels and embroidery, turning up their pointed toes as if scorning the stouter footgear which tramps along outside. Another shop is bright with the crude colors of Spanish scarfs and pottery; in another, Japanese wares manage to keep their faint smell of the East in spite of the salt northern air, and farther on you may wonder at the misplaced ingenuity of Florida shell jewelry, and be fascinated by the rakish leer of the varnished alligator.

  By one of the contrasts which make Bar Harbor peculiarly attractive, next door to these cosmopolitan shops there still thrives one of the indigenous general stores, where salt fish are sold, and household furniture and crockery, and the candy peculiar to New England stores and New York peanut stands, which keeps through all vicissitudes a vague odor of sawdust, and where you may also buy, as was once advertised by the ingenuous dealer, “baby carriages, butter, and paint.”

  Should you wish to give a message to a friend without the trouble of writing a note, the chances are more than even that you will find him or her any morning on the board-walk, or in the neighborhood of the post-office, for as there is no delivery at Bar Harbor, and as the mails are o
ften delayed, there is ample opportunity to search for an acquaintance in the waiting crowd. Here also congregate the grooms in undress livery, with leather mail-bags slung under one arm, who have ridden in from the outlying cottages, and who walk their horses up and down, or exchange stable notes with their acquaintances; sailors from private yachts, usually big, fair Scandinavians; mail orderlies from any men-of-war which may happen to be in port; boys and girls who do not find the waiting long, and all that mysterious tribe of people who look as if they could not possibly receive a dozen letters a year, and yet who are always assiduously looking out for them. As usual, the post-office is a loadstone for all the dogs in the village, and as there are many strangers among them, of all breeds and ages and tempers, walking round and round one another with stiff legs and bristling backs, unregenerate man is kept in tremulous expectation of a dog-fight as free as any in Stamboul. But somehow the fight rarely comes off, though the resident canine population has become fearfully and wonderfully mixed, through the outsiders who have loved and ridden away. One nondescript, especially, is not soon forgotten, a nightmare cross of a creature in which the curly locks and feathery tail of the spaniel are violently modified by the characteristic pointed breastbone and bandy legs of a dachshund.

  Wandering through the streets of the little village one is struck again and again by the sharp contrast between what may be called the natural life of the place and the artificial condition which fashion has imposed upon it. In some of the streets almost every house is evidently meant to be rented, the owners usually retiring to restricted quarters at the back, where they stow themselves away and hang themselves up on pegs until they may come into their own again. Here and there a native cottage has been bought and altered by a summer resident, and over the whole there is the peculiarly smug expression of a quarter which is accustomed to put its best foot foremost for a few months of the year. But in the back lanes and side-streets there are still the conditions of the small New England community, in which land is poor and work is slack during the long winter, so that although there is no abject poverty in the sense in which it is known to cities, there is also little time or inclination for the mere prettiness of life.

  An element of the picturesque is supplied by an Indian camp, which used for years to be pitched in a marshy field known as Squaw Hollow; but with the advent of a Village Improvement Society certain newfangled and disturbing ideas as to sanitary conditions obtained a hearing, and the Indians were banished to a back road out of the way of sensitive eyes and noses. They claim to be of the Passama-quoddy tribe, speak their own language, and follow the peaceful trades of basketweaving and moccasin-making, and the building of birch-bark canoes. Their little dwellings — some of them tents, some of them shanties covered with tar-paper and strips of bark — are scattered about, and in the shadow of one of them sits a lady of enormous girth, who calls herself their queen, and who wears, perhaps as a badge of sovereignty, a huge fur cap even in the hottest weather. She is not less industrious than other “regular royal” queens, for she sells baskets and tells fortunes even more flattering than the fabled tale of Hope. Some of the young men are fine, swarthy, taciturn creatures, who look as though they knew how to put a knife to other uses than whittling the frame of a canoe; but one does not feel tempted to rush upon Fate for the sake of any of the dumpy and greasy-looking damsels who will soon become like their even dumpier and greasier mothers.

  The whole encampment is pungent with the acrid smoke of green wood, and many children — round, good-natured balls of fat in all shades of yellow and brown — roll about in close friendship with queer little dogs, in which the absence of breed produces a family likeness. It is curious to see in the characteristic work of these people the survival of the instinctive taste of semi-savage races, and the total lack of it in everything else. The designs cut on the bark of their canoes, the cunningly blended colors in their basket-work, are thoroughly good in their way; but contact with a higher civilization seems to have affected them as it has the Japanese, turning their attention chiefly to making napkin-rings and collar-boxes, and to a hideous delight in tawdry finery, which is fondly, though distantly, modelled on current American fashions.

  Bar Harbor drinks the cup of summer standing. In mid-April the snow may lie six feet deep, and before the end of October long icicles are often hanging on the north side of the rocks, while even in August the northern lights shoot up their quivering, spectral spears from the horizon to the zenith. Some fierce days of heat there are in July, but on the whole the temperature is decidedly arctic, especially to one accustomed to a less rigorous climate. In New York we are used to having the kindly fruits of the earth brought to us long before their natural season, and it sounds strangely to be told at Bar Harbor that the first garden strawberries may be looked for about the fourth of July, and that June lilies will bloom early in August; but such trifles only give one a feeling of chasing the summer, as climate-fanciers follow the spring, and are certainly not to be reckoned as grievances.

  The people who have a certain very slight right to complain are the artists, who, having heard of the beauties of Mount Desert, come prepared to carry away at least a reminder of them on canvas or paper. They find that they have fallen upon a spot almost entirely deficient in what painters term “atmosphere,” and of which the characteristic effects almost defy reproduction. In what is known as a “real Bar Harbor day” the air is so thin and clear that there seem to be no distant effects, and objects lose their relative values. The sea is of a darker blue than the sky, and the rocks are very red or very gray, and the birches are of a brighter green than the firs, which stand out against the sky with edges as sharp as those of the tightly curled trees on wooden stands in the toy Swiss farm-yards dear to our youth. But that is all. Even the clouds seem to abjure mystery and take definite outlines; the water is spangled with shining points where the light breeze ruffles it, and one can see every patch on the sail of the old fishing-schooner making her leisurely way to her anchorage. Any attempt at a faithful rendering of such dry brilliancy is apt to have a fatal likeness to a chromo-lithograph, and the artist usually ends by leaving his paint-box at home, and giving himself up to enjoyment of the keen air that tingles through his veins like wine.

  The truthful chronicler is forced to admit that the climate of Bar Harbor has two drawbacks — high wind and fog, one usually following the other. Out of a clear sky, without a cloud, while the sun grins away derisively overhead, a southwest gale will often blow a whole day, filling the village streets with stinging dust and the whirling disks of vagrant hats, and making the little fleet of catboats and launches in the harbor duck and strain at their moorings; turning venturesome girls who try to walk into struggling pillars of strangely twisted drapery, and even in the heart of the warm woods tearing at the crowded trees so that they sigh and creek as they rub their weary old limbs against one another. The second day is gray and cloudy, on the third it rains, but still the wind blows, a nervous wind that makes one long to pick a quarrel with one’s best friend. And then the wind drops as suddenly as it rose, and the next day all discomfort, past and to come, is forgotten for awhile in sheer delight of beauty. For the air is still, and the sun shines gently on a dull green sea over which little shivers run now and then, and far in the offing there is the gray line of a fog-bank. Slowly it comes in with the southeast wind, stealing along the surface of the water, now closing softly round an island, then rising from it like a wreath of smoke, here piled into a fleecy mass, there turned to silver and scattered by a sunbeam, but coming on and on, and creeping up and up, until the trees on the Porcupines have their feet in the clouds like Wagnerian heroes; and presently they also are hidden, and the whole harbor is swathed in a soft cloud, from the depths of which come now and then the muffled, anxious whistles of the little steamers which ply about the bay — the Silver Star, from Winter Harbor; the Cimbria, from Bangor; and louder and deeper, the hoarse note of the Sappho as she feels her way across with passengers from the
ferry.

  When the oldest inhabitant is asked how long a fog may last he will shake his head, shift his quid, and decline to commit himself. There is a legend of a young man who came in on a yacht some years ago, duly prepared to enjoy himself and admire the scenery. His skipper groped his way to an anchorage in a mist so dense that he could not see fifty feet ahead or astern; the luckless young man went about for nine mortal days, swathed in a soft, smothering blanket; on the tenth day he sailed away, still in a thick fog, and swear-in mighty oaths. Even when the fog lies over the bay the air may be quite clear inland, and after a drive among the hills it is a curious sensation to come back to the shore. In the wooded uplands all is sunny and cheerful, but when the village is reached a cold breath is stealing through it as though the door of an ice-house had been left open, and on turning down a side-street toward the sea a gray wall of mist blots out trees and shore alike.

  To anyone not familiar with it, catboat sailing in a thick fog does not suggest itself as an amusement. It has a strong attraction of its own, however, for the breeze is usually steady, and the entire obliteration of the familiar landmarks gives an element of uncertainty and adventure. The course must be steered by the compass, and it is necessary to have accurate notes of the local bearings. If the harbor is at all crowded the little boat feels her way out slowly, close-hauled, as carefully as though she were alive; but once in the freer water the sheet is started, and she slips forward into infinite mystery. Every sense is strained to take the place of sight, which is baffled and almost useless in the thickly pressing veil that now and then grows thinner for a moment, only to close in again more densely. The sharp lapping of the water against the sides of the boat, the wash of the rising tide upon some island, the shrill scream of a gull overhead, the whistle of a launch astern in the harbor — all these make to themselves echoes, and by and by the far-off beat of a side-wheel steamer throbs with a great palpitation in the stillness. Boats which ply for profit or sail for pleasure are apt to make noise enough in a fog; but the fishermen give themselves less trouble, and slipping along, ghost-like, one may be suddenly aware of a larger and darker phantom ahead, to which it is wise to give a respectfully wide birth, without insisting too much upon the privileges of the starboard tack and the possible right of way, when the water is over-cold for much swimming. There does not seem to be any particular reason for ever turning back, when one is not bound for any visible point, and you may dream your dream out before you come about and run free for the harbor again. The fog is, if anything, thicker than when you started, and it is no easy matter to find your berth; but the boat seems to “kinder smell her way,” as an old sailor once remarked in a like case, and at last she bumps gently against her mooring-buoy.