ã Copyright 1997 Thomas Morley
I was born in the village of Baldwinville (Baldwinsville acc. to the P.O.), town of Templeton, Worcester County, in the midlands of Massachusetts. My father was Herbert Morley Small—in 1898 he had this legally changed to Herbert Small Morley—son of Sumner Small and Eliza Morley. My mother was Sarah Elizabeth Morton. She disliked the Sarah, and never used it. To their children they were known as "Pa" and "Ma", abbreviations which now seem to me particularly detestable.
My baptismal name was Sylvanus Griswold Small. The unwieldy and pompous combination of Christian names was an heirloom. It testifies to descent from the Connecticut Griswolds, and is reminiscent of 18th century pastoral nomenclature. Curiously and rather unfortunately, this generation has seen two S. G. M.’s when one would surely have sufficed. Bibliographers suffer. Some pressure was brought to bear on me to name one of my boys a junior, but it seemed that that would create a surplus. If either of them wishes to perpetuate the peculiar reinforcement of forest-lovers—Sylvan, gray wood—let him do so.
As for me, my family nickname was "G", and "G. Small" I remained even through my college days.
The country doctor who helped bring me into the world Feb. 23, 1878, was Dr. Batchelder. He lived three miles away in Templeton Center, and of course the only way to fetch him was to harness the horse to the buggy and go after him. Six children, all male, were born in that big square house with no more help than his. The first died in infancy of "summer complaint", when little more than a year old. His existence was a sort of household mystery to us children as we were growing up. I recall that once I asked my mother to tell me if it were true that she had had a child older than Mort so that we might know the truth and not contrive wild guesses about the matter. She consented and tears flowed from her eyes as she related the facts to me. Tho the child had died 15 years before. Women are like that.
To the west a rail fence cut us off from Bryant’s pasture. To the north was an unbroken expanse of land for quite some time. The upstairs windows on a clear day commanded a broadening view, with distinctive mountains on three sides. To the north Monadnocks across the N. H. line, with its children Gap Mt. and Little Monadnock; to the West Mt. Grace, and to the East Mt. Wachusett, small and neat. The view of Monadnock seen from the kitchen and dining room windows was always an inspiration to cooks and maids and family. The clouds that formed in the sky, the signs of storm and of clearing, were all best visible in the Monadnocks direction. It was a blow to our delight when Mr. Coolidge, a local editor, built his big house on the skyline and shut off part of our view. But he had a perfect right.
Our water-supply came from a well about 20 feet south of the house. At first, it was a dug well, and that served till the growing family made too great demands. Then a driller was hired to drive an artesian well. The man, whose name I have forgotten, undertook to locate water before he bored, he used the witch-hazel divining-fork to show him the sure spot. My father, who was far from superstitious, declared that he had seen many examples of successful divining. For example, on Norcross Hill exists a brook which flows for some distance underground, and the water guesser had traced its course up to its emergence, he being a stranger to the terrain. Not any person at random, could wield the hazel: it was a gift depending on magnetic properties of the gifted man.
Be that as it may, the fork did its duty by us. It pointed to an underground stream which chanced to flow directly under our old well. In its bottom, therefore, was the pipe driven and sure enough, at no great depth it struck abundant pure water, which rose within the pipe to less then the prescribed 32 feet from the earth’s surface.
For the old well, a hand-pump had sufficed. The new one must have more powerful suction. For many years a steel Aermotor windmill performed the task and threw water into a tank placed in the attic. How many years I listened to its slow drone, as shut off by paralleled tail, it swung uneasily back and forth in the breeze! How often, notified that the tank was low, by the height of a string gauge running from the attic into the bathroom. I ran out to loosen the chain that set the tail at right angles to the wheel, and heard it slowly start to gather speed and whirl faster and faster till the vanes melted in a buzz! The Aermotor paid its way some 15 years; but in summer long calms stalled it, as a ship at sea, and we had to pump by hand, a stiff chore, heartily disliked by us all. At last—but that was after our flock had flown—the gasoline engine reached practical perfection, and one was installed. It required attention and repair, like all machines. In the last year of his life, at the age of 89, my father climbed down the well to thaw a pipe frozen in the unprecedented winter of 1933-34. The well was covered by a well-house, connected with our piazza by a board-walk.
My parents had came to Baldwinville from Newton, where their families lived, in 1870 (?) My father owned and managed an asbestos paper mill on the Otter River. He built his own home, and it expanded regularly with each new child. Each should have a room to himself—an idea which set our family apart from most of the neighbors, who could not afford such privacy. In the end, and as I remember it, the house had 5 rooms on the ground floor, exclusive of toilet and narrow hall, running straight thru from front door to back. 7 rooms and a hall on the second floor, and a huge attic in which finally a small room was finished off for the last child, Sumner.
So long as there were not too many of us, our individual rooms were made attractive, even luxurious. Mort and I fared best. His room was done in red, mine in blue. A chimney between the two gave us each a fireplace. Mine had delicious blue and white tiles, with scenes from fairy-tales. A bay window to the south provided ample light, tho the view was only of the windmill and the well-house and the lane and Putty’s pasture. But my bed was the prized article in my room. It was made to order by a village carpenter, painted blue, and on the head-board bore a splendid train in color with its balloon-stacked locomotive sending out a cloud of smoke. The carpenter cannot have painted it, it is too perfect in detail. I was very found of my blue bed, and was glad when it came west to Berkeley. Now it is Tom’s. For another reason of which he knows nothing, it is dear to me.
The younger boys took the pickings. Herbert, after he left the "big bedroom" of parents and babies, possessed the northwest chamber. Raymond went for a time up attic. None had rooms decorated to his individual taste.
Downstairs, the huge south living-room was the true center of our collective action and being. On its west end was an ample fire-place, margined by tiles from the novels of Walter Scott. On the north side stood a Hallet and Davis square piano, surmounted by portraits; at the east a red brocaded sofa, whose sloping back had on its upper edge a groove, down which we children delighted to roll marbles. All sorts of mis-mated chairs stood in comfortable odd positions: a lounge chair where Pa liked to stretch his weary limbs, a red rocker reserved for Ma, and I don’t know how many more, but all comfortable, all convenient. The distinctive beauty of our living room however was its radiant bay-windows on the south. It seems to me that the whole side of the room was windows, and some of them were French doors. In summer all stood wide open: in winter the sun streamed across the carpet half way to the opposite wall. In winter, potted plants in a band occupied the south side floor: the date of moving the plants in and moving them out fixed definitively the limits of dangerous frosts. "Watering the plants" was a daily routine, just as much as "filling the lamps".
House PlanTwo rooms flanked the great living room. To the east a parlor—a typical New England parlor, stiff, unventilated, exhaling a very special odor of ancient upholstery. It contained two uncomfortable [chairs?] and a tall mirrored étagère loaded with rock crystals and undustable bric a brac. To the west was the toolroom, my father’s work shop, with his great tool chest and his writing desk A large wood-shed stacked with the winter’s supplies closed the house to the west.
In his active days my father was one of the prominent men in the town—one of the 3 selectmen, superintendent of the Congregational Sunday School, one of three founders of the Baldwinville Hospital Cottages for Children. This charitable institution for epileptic children throve largely under his guidance and is today a respected and useful work. He was president of the board of trustees almost up to the time of his death at 90.
In appearance he was slender when young, nearly 6 feet tall, oval face and brown eyes, regular features. I remember him as wearing a full beard. He was a skilled mechanic and carpenter, could build anything, and few pieces of machinery had any secrets for him. In college (Amherst, class 1866) he played on the baseball team, and sang on the glee club. He played the flute well, and sang with virile untrained voice. He enjoyed as perfect health as is granted any human being. He told me that he had been in a hospital once for a slight operation, and that he had escaped from it before the Dr. gave him permission because he did not like the confinement. For a slight summer indigestion he used to take a remedy given him by one of his Dr. friends. Aside from this occasion, I am not aware that he ever consulted a physician until death from natural decline was approaching in his 90th year. When he was 80 he could still do a longer harder days work than any of his boys. He wore no glasses till the far-sightedness of age compelled him to use them for reading, and he picked up odd pairs lying around the house, or bought them at the 5 and 10.
When the automobile made its halting appearance, he took to it at once, and owned a variety of makes—Yale, Stanley Steamers, Franklin. He made his own minor repairs and patched his own tires on the road.
Pa was kindly, glad to help others, chary to discuss his own affairs. Often, he absent-mindedly assumed that others of the family knew of some future plan when they had not been told. At table he often mulled over some inner idea, and did not hear when spoken to. Frequently he smiled to himself at some joke no one else knew, and he seldom told it. He had an impatient temper, usually under control, but when he had asked someone to do something once or twice, and that person whether by inadvertence or intention, did not obey, he took quick action, and either did it himself in a second of time, or made his order so effective that it was carried out at once. One evening, I was sitting with him and Corinne in front of the open fire cracking nuts. The bowl of meats, which he held, got in his way for putting on another log, and he held it out to C., saying "Here, take this" (He never was long on pleases, and the forms of courtesy were not well taught in our family). C. did not understand him aright and made no move to take the dish. He repeated the request, still she did not move, tho his outstretched hand was in front of her. Then he simply let go the bowl and it smashed on the hearth, scattering the shells far and wide. It was C. who apologized and she who picked them up. Such little flares of temper really meant nothing, but when used on me they startled my nerves and I never felt wholly at ease with my father.
There was in him much of the old pioneer spirit. He was totally fearless, and would tackle anything or anybody. Above all, he resented any infringement of his rights, and would fight rather than yield to coercion. Once when the family was going by train to Newton from Northboro, he had an altercation with the conductor which was typical. He held a mileage book of the Old Colony RR, good from Nboro to Framingham. There we changed cars and took the B&A. My father claimed the same coupons, thru a state law were valid on the B&A. The conductor on that road denied it, and insisted that he pay cash. My father refused. The conductor threatened to bring a baggage man to put him off the train. My father, knowing this was an idle threat, dared him to do it. Both lost their tempers, and when we finally alighted at N’ville without having paid a cent, they were shaking fists at each other as the train pulled out. What happened after that I do not know, but it was a prime example of weak diplomacy. Nations have fought for less.
In small matters he was daring, reckless and lucky. Up any rickety ladder he went, or to the end of a creaky limb, and tho he took many tumbles, never broke a bone. His luck was proverbial. He had narrow escapes by the score and lived to be 90. Sometimes his courage was better than his judgment.
As an auto-driver he took every chance, cut corners, forgot to give signals—not from any desire to break the law, but simply because he had sudden thoughts. He wore tires down to the last tread, and if he had a blow-out it was in town or at the worst under a shady tree. His machines quickly grew to look as seedy as his horses. He was interested only in their mechanical efficiency. There too he took long chances. When over 80 he drove one day from Portland, Me. to Newton with the connecting-rod in one cylinder broken. It just happened that the car remained drivable; he sensed it, and plugged on, not in the least perturbed by the clank-clank of the motor.
He was an admirable playmate for his boys. He always joined in our games, whether cards or base-ball or wrestling. We regarded him as one of ourselves, only bigger. When we three planned our bicycle trip to Europe in 1900, we tried our best to induce him to make the fourth. He refused. He was not especially interested in Europe, and felt probably with reason, that he would after all be an odd number in our diversions. But we really wished him to go.
As a business man Pa scored more failures that successes. The asbestos paper mill furnished a steady income in his most active years but it did not exhaust his energy. He dived into other ventures—a lumber mill in Florida, a slate quarry in N. Y. state, an asbestos soap business in Baldwinville. He dropped money in them all—how much none but himself knew. After G.P.’s death, with an income assured from that estate, he sold his mill to the Johns-Manville trust, and never after earned.
He disliked to discuss money matters and we had to go to my mother for any explanations of allowances or expenditures. In questions of sex the case was still worse. Pa never gave us any instructions or information whatever: he was completely inhibited on that side. So Ma had to do it, and she did, conscientiously, tho she was quite as prudish as he. It was to her like holding her hand over a flame. She was really much more of a Puritan than he, for after we boys were grown he told us many a broad yarn; but her sense of duty was imperative. She used to take us aside, one by one as we reached an early age, and convey to us by circumlocution facts of nature which we half understood and frequently garbled in our minds in a ludicrous fashion. I received the impression that the vital seed passed from male to female during the night by a mysterious act of God, without volition on the part of the married pair. Even homosexuality she tried to describe to us when we were too young ever to have heard of such a thing. It pains me to think of the torture she imposed on herself in performing these educational duties. No Sanger books existed then, and she was more advanced in social ideas than most women of her day.
She was a full Puritan, however, in one respect she believed the sex act was justified only by the desire for children. One coition to a child, unless more were required. What effect this tenet had on my father I don’t know, but he certainly never imposed upon her physically. To us she used to explain a system of what I now suppose was union without ejaculation, and she had some printed literature on the subject—all Greek to me when she gave it to me to read. I imagine I was 10 and 12 years old at the time.
Punishment also fell to her. Pa was seldom called in, and I don’t remember having been hauled to the woodshed to take a flailing. Ma used to spank us in regulation fashion, with a hair brush: tradition among us has it that for the worst offenses she used the bristle side, but I can’t swear to it on a Bible. I do know that on one occasion,—the offense must have been terrible—she took me into her dressing room and made me spank her. Yes, she actually exposed her flesh, put a brush into my hand and made me lay on some blows. They were feeble and she had to command me to strike harder. This cruel and unusual punishment really awed me. I spoke to the other boys about it and asked if she ever made them do that. I think she had. We were hugely impressed, and vowed to be good children after that if we were able. Certainly we were not.
Another form of punishment was "sitting on us". We were an unruly, hot-tempered, crew, full of the devil, and frequently would not promise to "mind." In such cases she laid the offender on the floor and sat on him till he had had enough. She took her sewing or reading and was prepared to stick it out indefinitely; half-an-hour usually sufficed. She also established the tradition that every command must be obeyed to the letter, and every promise kept. Thus, she once told one of us he must not eat a certain dish, and naturally he dipped into it. She found out the misdeed, mixed a brew of mustard, and made the culprit swallow it—holding his nose did that trick. Eventually the forbidden fruit came up; and the law remained unbroken.
Our mother was as you may judge, an unusual character firm of will and advanced in thought. She was gray-eyed, with straight nose and regular features, and as a girl when her hair was jet-black, must have been a beauty, as a daguerreotype attests. Her hair turned gray prematurely—overnight, she said, as the result of some painful illness. Her hair set her apart from all other women, for it was naturally short and she wore it in ringlets which scarcely reached her neck. The task of curling had to be performed each morning and I am sure that the image of my mother which is most firm in all our minds, is of her sitting before the mirror next the dressing room window, with a glass of water and the round wooden curling-stick about which each wisp had to be spiraled. An infinite number of hair-pins finished the process, and thus about 2 hours of each morning were consumed.
She was not a woman to jump out of bed in the morning, build a fire, and cook breakfast for the family. A maid was a necessity, and she always had one, sometimes a governess in addition. Ma was a brain worker. She read a great deal, but not of profound books; and she wrote interminably—mostly letters, in a firm clear hand as legible as print. Besides, she was a natural night-owl, not getting "wound up", as she put it, till late in the evening, and then she could go forever. George McDonald and Dinah Muloch were her favorite authors and she had a complete set of each.
My mother was blessed with an even disposition and I never saw her angry. She had a strong sense of humor, punned outrageously, and her eye twinkled at every jest. Upbraided for a specially atrocious pun, she retorted "But I think of so many worse ones which I do not say." She was not gifted with tact, and often said the wrong thing; but her intentions were always of the best. She was afflicted with migraines till she became aged, and often she shut herself away and could see no visitor for days. As these attacks often resulted from nervous strain, and as she was ill at ease in company, she withdrew from society more and more. She much preferred a letter to an interview. My father, on the other hand, grew more sociable with age, so their ways of life steadily diverged. Thanks to C., an excellent modus vivendis was worked out. She became Pa's inseparable companion, while Ma stayed in her room and kept up a correspondence which ramified all over the world. She was prominent in the local and state W.C.T.U. but seldom appeared in public. She gave to many charities—in fact, denied none, if she could help it, and she did not keep her accounts well enough to know whether or not she could spare the money.
At bottom, none the less, she was selfish and insisted on her own way. My father early learned that to contend with her meant unending friction, and adopted the well-known prudent motto "anything to keep peace in the family." He gave her all she wanted-more than he should have—while he did as he liked when she was not around. A striking example of her will was in our eating arrangements. She was a vegetarian, and no meat was served in the house. She had read somewhere that two meals a day were more hygienic than 3. Hence, we had breakfast at 8 and dinner at 2. How inconvenient this was for Pa one may imagine, since all his hands lunched from 12 to 1. But he put up with it, and often spent his afternoons taking Ma for a drive. He firmly believed that life was made to get the maximum of happiness from, and had no intention of becoming its slave.
Both regarded lying as the ultimate sin—worse even than drinking; but Ma was as skilled as any Jesuit in avoiding a literal lie, while conveying the opposite of the truth. Thus, when the white rabbit died during our absence, she replaced it with another. We, returning, noticed the difference at once, and plied her with questions; "Did Whitey die? Is this the same rabbit?" She strenuously avoided the issue, saying "What difference do you see? What makes you think it isn’t Whitey?" We were not slow in discovering this weak spot in her character and her prevarications became proverbial.
In two personal particulars she was excessively sensitive and therefore secretive—her weight and her age. The former we never learned, tho we laid traps to entice her on a scales; she avoided our snares with skill. Age she could simply decline to state, and did. One of us read in a paper the trick arithmetical computation by which one inserts in a formula digits representing the year and month of birth, and after certain calculations are made the results show the exact age and birthday. We asked Ma to furnish the requisite data for herself. This time she pretended to comply, but with the peculiar twist of conscience which enabled her by a mental reservation to tell herself she was not lying, she gave us wrong figures. We were innocent enough to take the result at face value, and for years believed her six years younger than she really was. Thus, in my 1893 diary, I find inscribed among the Memoranda:
"Pa, born Oct. 13, 1844.
Ma, born Oct. 31, 1849."
The second was the result of our calculation. The correct date was 1843. She was morbidly sensitive at being older than her husband. Not till many years afterward did we learn the truth when Herbert, rummaging in a store-room at Newton, found the old Morton Bible with the birth properly entered.
Ma fussed and made much of little things, but in a real emergency she became quiet, cool, and acted quickly, rising to the occasion. When the oil-lamp in the dressing room tipped over and set the room on fire, she put it out herself before anyone else arrived. In a family tragedy—the death of a son—she was outwardly calm and efficient; only she shut herself in her room and saw no one for a while.
Ma and I got on well together and understood each other perfectly. We spatted a good deal, but the irritation was superficial. Beyond question I was tactless and harsh. Once she said to me "I hope that some day someone will hurt your feelings as you hurt mine." She said it without bitterness—there was none in her spirit—and it surprised me a good deal for I never did realize that I hurt anyone’s feelings. Her wish came true—So Dharma: "tomorrow it will judge—or after many days." My father was closer to H. and R., who shared his mechanical bent, I could do nothing but read.
Both my parents were Universalists. This sect flourished about Boston; it is still much smaller than the Unitarian. The difference between the two, I believe is that the Universalists accept the divinity of Christ, and the Unitarians do not. Perhaps I am wrong; I would not exert myself to make sure. There was no Univ. Church in B’ville and of the Methodist and Congregational they chose the latter to support. They gave freely, attended regularly—at least in spirit, for Ma usually found an excuse to stay at home. We boys always dressed up and attended church and school. We were frankly bored with the former and dozed through the service as best we could. S.S. brought some companionship, so we didn’t mind . There was always a chance to see a girl there.
At least we received sound training in the Bible, and that is much. As far as religion goes, I probably believed in God and Divine Providence till I was 15 or so. At least I recall that I lost a knife under the big pines once, and that night prayed vehemently, with the utmost sincerity, that I might find it. The next day I went and looked, and there it was. But that is the last answer to prayer that I remember. By the time I reached college I was a convinced agnostic and have remained so. It would have been far pleasanter to believe, but logic forbade. My faith was weak. Yet the church background remains with me. I seldom attend, yet I love the atmosphere, the hymns, the singing—everything except the long prayer, a long sermon, and the contribution platter. I like to turn the radio to a service; I can eliminate the undesired portions.
I write of my parents now, appraising their virtues and failings with some objectivity, but as children and young men we never thought of criticizing them. We might be angry at them, quarrel with them about details, but it never occurred to any of us to survey them from the outside, and compare them objectively with other men and women. They were our father and mother, and what they did was right. I should say that I was 40 years old before I attained the power of sizing up my parents. This fact tells something of my own lack of objectivity, and it also indicates that Pa and Ma were pretty good to us as indeed they were. The other boys were in the same case. It would have been well for us financially had we realized sooner Pa’s weakness as a business man; we might have salvaged something of our inheritance. As heirs presumptives, we were entitled to ask the trustees for an annual accounting but until thru Ma we learned that her income was failing, no such idea entered our heads.
Was this blind respect characteristic of that day? To judge by my own children, the present younger generation feels no such respect for fathers at least.
Old American
My maternal grandfather, Wm. Morton, born Mar. 23, 1810, used always to warn his grandsons not to look up his family tree. He hinted that we might discover unwelcome creatures among its branches. A jailbird? An Indian? We never knew. On the paternal side the genealogy has been thoroughly studied as far back as 1680. Nothing disreputable is in it. On the contrary, it boasted a Revolutionary colonel and a Connecticut minister. But of "G.P."—in the family and not to his face we all, even my mother, shortened "Grandpa" to those initials—we do not know his father’s name. In my childhood days we saw him but once a year, it is true, when the family came to spend Thanksgiving with him, for he never traveled the sixty miles to visit us in the country.
G.P.’s wife had died long before. Two faithful servants, Mary Griffin, housekeeper-cook, and Michael Fitzgerald, gardener and factotum, served him well. The long, rambling wooden house stood atop a knoll in Newton Center, Massachusetts. A mansard tower rose above oak and chestnut trees. A curving driveway led to a graveled terrace, granite steps and a massive front door. From the enormous kitchen at one end to the silent oblong parlor at the other you walked from one room to the next, turning angles. The parlor was the most imposing and the least used. A fireplace where stick was never laid, supported a cold shiny marble mantel, and on it sat a black and gold clock which never ran. Three tall windows were never opened. Above the red brocade sofa hung a copy of a Landseer painting. A bookcase with glass doors held an encyclopedia of 1872, sets of Scott and Dickens, and the complete works of Henry Fielding.
The upper floor was reached at one end by a graceful winding staircase out of the front entry, and at the other by straight, dark, impossibly steep stairs leading from the kitchen. The spacious bedrooms were connected by a long, narrow hall, dimly lit by gas. At one point, marking the addition of an ell, three steps interrupted the level. You always put your hand against the wall as you came to them. It was easy to fall. At the kitchen end of the upper hall a hinged ladder, balanced by a cord and weight, lay flat against the ceiling. Whoever wished to use it raised his hand, pulled down the end till it rested on the floor, climbed it and pushed up a high trap-door. Then he found himself in the attic, scented by aged rafters. it was strewn with innumerable ancient black trunks and discarded, rotting port-manteaus. When a boy needed a traveling bag, he was told to go up attic and pick himself out one. He never found a bag to suit him. Each had a broken strap or a lock that would not work. Up attic, too, was the water-tank for the house. When the valve stuck, my father plunged his arm to the shoulder under the cold surface.
The bathroom had a tin tub painted white inside, with a black walnut rim. The wash-basin was of marble. A copper hot-water-boiler stood in an alcove, and heated the room. In winter the bathroom and the kitchen were the only surely warm rooms in the house.
Downstairs, the living-room was lighted by a comfortable bay-window to the south. Opposite it was a wide and practicable fireplace. My grandfather sat in a deep chair with his back to the window and read the daily paper. When we knew him, he read nothing else. His head, seen against the light, was magnificent. His snow-white hair, showing no sign of baldness, topped bushy black brows. He was clean-shaven, save for the beginnings of burnsides. An aquiline nose and a loose, ironic mouth completed the head of a statesman.
G.P. walked always with a cane, for he had injured one hip in a fall from a horse. He was a great lover of horse-flesh. In our time he drove trotters, either single or in a span, and he did not care how fast they went. The whip was there, but he never used it. He drove with a slack rein, sitting motionless, letting the lines lie carelessly in his left glove. But there was science in his grip. If the horse took fright at a steam-roller or a train, he let it run, merely guiding it in the right direction. When he passed another vehicle, an inch served him as well as a foot. Sometimes a grunt showed that the shave was close. He had been in many accidents, but his nerve was unshaken. We boys were not eager to ride with him, but he often asked for our company. Once I drove with him to his bank at Newton Corner. The Boston and Albany tracks had not yet been lowered, and the grade crossing was guarded by gates. G.P. started across the four lines of track just as the near gate was coming down. He did not see it as it closed behind us. The far gate too came to a rest, its dangling stick of support touching the ground, before the buggy reached it. The train rumbled in the distance. The gatesman called. G.P. looked about with small concern. He saw himself shut in; but the responsibility was not his. Slowly the gate in front rose up, and we drove on as the train shot behind us. I said nothing. G.P. had nothing to say.
After his accident deprived him of horseback exercise, he had a joggle-chair constructed for him. It stood in the living-room, upholstered in red. Tall handles rose on each side. You sat on the hard seat, leaned against the unyielding back, and pushed the handles violently back and forth. Then you were rewarded by a motion like a horse’s trot. I never saw G.P. use it, but we children thought it fun.
The barn, built like a Z, was a sequence of characteristic horsey smells. From the yard, paved with round cobbles, you ducked through a low doorway and passed the stalls, emitting fumes of mingled ammonia and hay. Then you came to the drinking trough and the broad carriage stand, with drainage holes for wash-water. Harnesses hanging from hooks on the far side filled the air with a scent of oily leather. Turning right, you crossed a trapdoor, leading to the cow-shed below, and came to a dark end in which stood a scales and corn shelling machine. To the right a small room opened off, musty with the smell of grain from sacks of oats and corn, and decorated with pictures of famous trotters. But if you wished to penetrate to the extreme end of the barn, you turned left and entered a drawn-out sloping corridor lighted on the right by small cobwebby panes. You descended four steps and came to the stuffy tool-room, thick with odor of rusty iron and decayed leather. The walls were lined with hammers, dies, punches, screwdrivers, pincers, tongs. An anvil stood in one corner; drawers bearing dingy illegible labels held rivets and buckles and screws. A rickety flight of stairs led you from there to the ground, and you found yourself at the bottom of the hill, having started at the top. Not far from there an inscribed marble stone under a willow tree marked the grave of my mother’s girlhood pony, Nellie.
The house was roofed with slate, but the barn kept the original split cedar shingles which had been fastened to it with hand-wrought nails in 1858.
During his active career Mr. Morton had owned a grocery store and harness shop in Boston. With his savings he had bought an extensive tract of land in Newton Center, then pasture and farm. He sold off lots as they increased in value, and invested the proceeds in first mortgages on his neighbor’s houses. He never put his money into any other security, and he knew each house personally. His business, during our time, consisted in driving about the surrounding villages, to Needham, to Newton Upper Falls, to Newtonville, collecting such interest as was not sent him by mail. He would not foreclose except in an extreme case. His debtors liked him, and he performed many charitable acts of which no one heard. To his grandsons he had one piece of advice to give: never endorse a note. He did not, even for his closest friends.
He spent many hours of each day sitting at a tall mahogany secretary in the dining room, "making up his accounts." By my earliest memory, he used quill pens, cut with his own pen-knife. A sand-box stood in a niche of the desk. Later, gold pen and blotter took their places. He was a meticulously neat penman, and a scrupulous inspector of the hands of others. As a boy, I was required to write him a weekly letter. The subject mattered nothing, but the writing must be clear and clean. In return he sent me a check for one dollar each month—a welcome example of his own hand. To us boys he was a distant image (an object of awe), and a potential source of presents.
One legacy which G.P. gave us in life was a household remedy enjoyed by few. Other mothers apply mustard plasters to a sore chest, but ours used Dr. _______’s Rubefacient. Dr. was G.P.’s old family physician, and he manufactured and offered for sale an ointment whose active ingredient was red oxide of mercury. The label advertised that this preparation was superior to mustard in that it irritated and reddened the skin only when inflammation was present on the under surface i.e. as sore throat or inflamed lung tissue. G.P. bought the little round wooden boxes by the dozen and presented them to all his friends. We children, of course, furnished the vile bodies for Rubefacient’s demonstrations, and we never failed to carry a box to school or college. How well I remember peeling long strips of dead skin down my chest after a siege of coughs! It was rather fun. The family name for Rubefacient was "redstuff"; sometimes "rub-your-face-in-it." When the old Dr. died, his heirs carried on the trade for a time, but it soon petered out. But G.P. had on hand a supply which lasted us some years after his death.
Our Thanksgiving visit was an annual state occasion. We made the pilgrimage by train or carriage, and descended on the house like locusts. Mary imported one of her relatives to help, and the dinner was all that a New England Thanksgiving dinner should be. A Puritan dinner, if you like: to be in character, G.P. should have served wines, or something stronger. Yet I never saw liquor in his house. Not even the pudding was served flaming.
The breakfast drink in that house was neither tea, coffee, nor chocolate, but "shells," an infusion of cocoa shells, aromatic and delicate. By the common trick of memory which underscores lesser details, sometimes the most significant, I recall this exotic beverage far more clearly than the turkey or the pumpkin pie. Shells, and the glorified turkey soup, Mary’s specialty, served the day after Thanksgiving—these I can still sniff.
From his language, however much he strove to temper it to our tender ears, we gathered that G.P. had been in youth something of a rascal and a brute. His speech was brief and pointed, and, when he spoke to Mike, punctuated with words not meant for us. After he became house-fast, he received calls from numerous ladies of all ages, moved partly, by charity, partly by actual enjoyment of his company and partly, perhaps, by the knowledge that he was able to contribute to good works and to make a will. He had true friends among them, and yet, I think that he regarded all of them with an ironic eye. Sometimes, after we boys were of college age, he vouchsafed us a remark upon them. One of the most admirable and cultured was a crippled lady who wrote and painted. I knew her well, and held her in a certain reverence. Frail, thin, ethereal, unable to walk without crutches, she seemed to me more a disembodied spirit than a human being. One day, after Mr. Morton had graciously, with the manners of an old-school gentleman, escorted her to her carriage, he turned to me and said:
"Did y’ever kiss her?"
"No" said I, absolutely taken aback and shocked.
"Well, give her one. She’ll like it."
Not till years after did it dawn on me that he was perhaps not so malicious as he appeared.
In those days I was spending nearly every weekend at his house, and I could see the old man fail. Slowly his stout mind lost its grip. One after another he dropped his daily activities. Mary and Mike reminded him of what he ought to do. His obstinate habit of command gave them trouble. One night—it is a trifle, but characteristic—he swallowed his daily pill in a spoonful of jelly from Mary’s hand, and promptly forgot that he had taken it. He said that he must have his pill. In vain Mary told him it was already down. He did not believe her, she fetched a spoonful of jelly with no pill. He was suspicious; not to be fooled, he poked with trembling finger in the jelly, and found no pellet. Nothing would do but he must take another—and he did.
In bed, he was given electric treatments on the skin. A machine, of Heaven knows what powers or lack of powers, a mess of batteries and plugs and wires, stood at his side. He held one pole, and the operator, holding the other, ran his other hand over the old man’s skin. I was one of those pressed into this service. I did not like it. I slid my palm over the smooth bleached skin of his shrunken limbs, and sent my mind back to his babyhood, and forward to my own future.
For G.P.’s funeral, the whole clan gathered. We rode in an interminable line of carriages from the big house to Mt. Auburn cemetery, where the family lot provided for many such contingencies. Thence, after the ceremony, I went directly to college.
The Small Grandparents
My father’s parents both lived to a ripe age in Northboro, the pleasant village where Sumner Small manufactured black piano keys for Steinway and other first class makers. We visited there less often than at Newton, but I recall clearly that bald, white-bearded, patriarchal grandfather, and his sweet, motherly wife, whom her children addressed as "Maman." I know not what story lay behind that term of endearment. As to Grandpa Small’s character; he was surely an estimable and esteemed citizen. He was born in Maine, where Smalls have flourished from of old. That my father’s temper came to him legitimately appears from a story he told me of his father: that once, vexed by a cat which interfered with something he was doing, he seized the beast by the tail, dragged it to the yard, and swinging it about his head, banged it against the fence with all his might. According to the legend, the cat was not killed. I never learned the reaction of the other members of the family to this misdeed.
Grandpa Small’s funeral was possibly the first I ever attended. I think that only the older boys were taken down to it. As is customary in these lugubrious functions, the body lay in state in the parlor to receive the farewell and curious glances of all the guests. I lagged apart, as I always do, but I saw Grandma Small bend over and kiss the brow, and heard her whisper: "I shall be with you soon, dear." She died years later.
My father had 3 sisters, Fannie, Cora, and Abbie. Fannie married George Dean of Cheshire, manufacturer and store keeper, a Republican politician of local note, and a close friend of Murray Crane. Cora and Abbie taught school in various spots, saved enough to bring them an annuity, and came finally to live together in a house of their own at Northboro. No one who ever knew them can forget those two choice spirits, the finest flowers of the New England old maids. Their clean and neat white house, with London Spectator and Atlantic Monthly on the living room table; the garden, tended with loving care; the delightful meals served by their life-long maid and friend, Kitty Burke who ate at table with them; their unpublished charities; their activity in every good work of the village; their intellectual momentum unabated up to the very end, for Cora began to study Italian when she was seventy. It was a benediction to share their life even for a day. As boys, we did not do yet so much as would have been good for us. We were afraid to go there unless dressed up and we feared our manners would not pass inspection in that spotless house. Only when older and too far away to profit, did we understand that "The Aunts" house was a symbol of their own natures, not of what they required of others.
Cora, she of the broad, high forehead, was the brainier, Abbie the more easy of approach. Both, for all their kindliness and charity, let fall in their precise speech the tiniest drop of acid. One felt they knew the world, and had judged it at its proper worth.
The Boys
There were five of us children—all boys. William Morton, named after his maternal grandfather, born in 1875; myself, 1878. Herbert Morley Small Jr. 1881; Raymond Kurtz, from the German great-grandfather side, 1882; Sumner Small 2nd, named after his paternal grandfather, 1886. So we came stringing along, and the house was always full of racket and pestiferous youngsters, for we were a live bunch. It was a real home.
Of Mort as a child, I have the dimmest recollection, tho I was in constant association with him. He had jet-black hair, a forceful infectious nature, and without doubt the best intellect of any of us. Had he lived, he might have made a mark. I cannot recall whether he and I were on friendly terms or not at B’ville; I think we had each our separate playmates. Of our relations at Goddard more will appear.
Herbert (then called Morley) and Raymond, being only a year and a half apart in age, were inseparable, and a mischievous pair of heavenly terrors they made. They fought, they made up, they pranked and were punished, they howled when denied; there were a couple of lovable rascals. Their howls were famous in that section of B’ville; tears did not satisfy them, but they opened wide their mouths and emitted jackal-like cantables which reached down to the Bryants and beyond. They should have been suppressed, but no one found the method. Both were mechanically minded, clever with tools and problems of construction, and hence chummed happily with Pa. Herbert was the gentler. Raymond had the fiercest temper of any of us, and that is saying much. In a fit of passion he lost all control of himself, and seized any instrument of his wrath. Once he drew his jackknife and opened it to attack his opponent—I don’t recall who. Ma usually sat on him in such emergencies, but she felt unequal to this one, and called on Fred Lemieux, the French—Canadian barn tenant, for help. Big Fred didn’t take a minute to subdue the snarling little wildcat; he simply grasped his wrists and tucked him under his arm and deposited him outdoors.
Many many family stories are told of H. and R. and their practical jokes. The most famous concerns Mr. Turner the plumber. He was doing some work about the well-house, and molested the boy’s white rabbit inexcusably. They longed to retaliate, but it had to be done in a judicious and worthy fashion. Turner left his tools overnight at the house. The boys took his hammer, sawed the handle almost across, and filled the crack with putty. Naturally when the old plumber gave his first stroke of the day’s work, off flew the head, pursued by curses. The culprits were not far to seek, and I presume they were punished. The crime was worth it.
In after years H. and R. drifted somewhat apart. H. took the electrical engineering course at Tufts, R. the liberal arts, with math major. H. and I were closer in some ways despite the difference in ages, and nothing has marred our friendly relations, however, much we argue and disagree. To him I turn for support in mental stress and for practical advice.
Sumner was the odd fish, even the black (or brown) sheep of the family. His mind was slow, his tastes were loutish, he could not even graduate from Goddard. He was quick neither at books nor tools. But he was not vicious, tho I am sure he is the only one of us who ever got drunk. He was kindly, enjoyed doing favors, and like me, was fond of walking and exploring roads. He received at birth a raw deal in health: bad circulation, constipation, headaches, plagued him all his life. He died of uremia very suddenly. He shared my liking for railroads too. In him it took a professional form, and for years he was a motorman on the electric ry. that served B’ville, Templeton, Gardner, and Athol. He was reputed a crack motorman.
Certain traits of the parents were peppered, hit or miss, over the offspring. Pa, Herbert, and Sumner were bad spellers. Ma, Mort, R., and I were good spellers. Pa, a college graduate and president of a hospital, misspelled "Berkeley" whenever he wrote me, and his letters were full of howlers. We were all weak at plain arithmetic; even R., a Prof. of math, adds and subtracts with difficulty. Our great-uncle Kurtz, whom I can barely remember as an old man was a C.P.A., and once at Newton, he undertook to show me how easy it is to add columns 3 figures at a time, instead of column by column and carry. It was easy for him; but I could as soon have jumped off the barn roof and flown as hold 3 columns in my mind at once.
In the family’s prime—that is when Sumner was no longer a baby—we were of a of a surety a jolly and homogeneous crowd. Pa usually read aloud in the evening, by the fireplace, and those who had no other interests sat about the big living-room listening. Ma and Corinne served. Sumner regularly fell asleep downstairs, and Pa carried him up and somebody undressed him and put him to bed. This happened till he was quite grown. Another custom that was made for solidarity was for all of us boys, on Sunday mornings, to "crawl into bed with Pa." At B’ville or Newton it was the big matrimonial bed, for Ma was always up early, and sat by the gas-stove fixing her hair. One after another, as we awoke, we came tumbling along in our nighties, and the bed always stretched to hold one more, no matter how tightly we were wedged. There we all lay, up to six, swapping yarns and jokes, and once in a while fanning the bed-clothes to ventilate the inner air, which began to "fog up" as Pa said. It was a time to talk over events of the past week and plans for the next; to invent or repeat the classic family anecdotes, which acc. to Herbert, who attempted to tabulate them, numbered _____. Ma, listening with gusto, put in her punning comments where they fitted. At last someone, usually I, always an early eater, became too hungry to stay longer, and crawled forth. H. and R. were always the last. Their comradeship with Pa was fine to see.
We continued to "crawl into bed with Pa" till we were men grown—long after Mort had gone and Sumner was away on his own, and we were all at Newton, in college or beyond, H. and R. and I kept it up.
My earliest memory—it has been repeated so often that it is probably really a memory of a memory—is of the day my brother Raymond was born. The story runs that when the event was about to take place I was moved out of my own room to the W. W. chamber, so as to be beyond hearing. The baby came in the night, and in the morning, when given the news that I had a new brother, I replied, "What? Another one? You quite disturb me!" This phrase I maintained was not my own, but was a quotation from a book I had read recently, applied of course in a different context from the original. R. was born Oct. 31, 1882; I was therefore about 4 1/2 years old. If authentic, this anecdote reveals at least two facts. I must have been reading somewhat advanced fiction at that age; and I already showed that impish and flippant wit which has gotten me into so many pickles. Authentic or not, this anecdote is wholly characteristic of me. The remark was (1) flippant, treating a serious event lightly; (2) sarcastic; (3) revelatory of advanced reading. These traits have been getting me into pickles all the rest of my life.
I was, in fact, like Mort, a precocious infant. We were a couple of years ahead of the average intelligence. If I remember right, I began Latin before I was 8; and had then read most of the English books in the house. The assortment was not of the best. George McDonald and Miss Muloch palled. Walter Scott was present, complete, and a favorite. The set of Dickens was at Newton, and we borrowed volumes.
Other scattered memories cannot be dated. Being seized with a vomiting spell in the night, and hearing my father say "He only ate tapioca pudding for supper, I don't see what there was in that could hurt him." Being kept at home from an anticipated picnic trip to Mt. Grace, on account of some mischief; getting lost on the Athol road, and giving the family a frightful scare. It happened this way: we all went out for a drive in the double buggy, Pa, Ma, Mort, and I, perhaps some other grown-ups and children. The house was left locked. As we drove wood-road a couple miles from home, Mort expressed a wish to walk by himself over Crow Hill, so we left him at the foot of it on one side, and drove to the other to await him. The details are obscure to me, but for some reason I was left at a turn in the road to await Mort, while the rest did some errand. I waited as long as I could stand it. After a while I became panic- stricken, and started running up the road, away from home. That wooded stretch was almost uninhabited, but after a time I came to a house, went in, and made myself known to the inmates. "Why this is Mr. Small's little boy, He's lost!" said they, and at once planned to return me. Someone was about to drive to town, so I was loaded in and soon deposited at our house. I had of course, no conception of the terror which must have overwhelmed my parents. I found the key under the doormat, let myself in; replaced the key and prepared a theatrical coup. It came off exactly as planned. The carriage load had returned to the rendezvous and Mort appeared after a time. But where, Oh where was G.? Woods, unfrequented cross-roads, swamps, he might be anywhere. They drove back and forth, almost frantic, calling and looking. In fact, they drove past the house I was in, while the horse was being harnessed, and never thought to inquire there. At last they decided to return home, deposit impedimenta, and organize a searching party. I heard them coming, and hid behind the door. They opened, My father was saying: "We will start off again at once" when I popped out at him. My mother caught me up with tears and laughter, and everybody asked at once, "Where were you?" There was no punishment. After all, the elders hardly exercised the best of judgment.
I must have been a nervous, sensitive little boy. I was an inveterate nail-biter, and sucked my thumb-joint to a condition of chappedness—both till I was twelve or more. I dreaded being hurt, and was frightened at the sight of blood. A series of minor operations in adult life—I'll list them later—have fairly knocked that out of me. As an example of my behavior in the face of medical attention, let me relate the story of a family vaccination. Dr. Batchelder came down for the purpose, prepared to put every member through the mill. He laid out his penknife and his vaccine—quills (it came in quills in those days) and the males and females marched before him. But I was not present. When my turn came—"Why, where is G.?" A search was set in motion, and finally I was located in the upstairs bathroom closet, trembling with fear. The elders dragged me downstairs, kicking and yelling, and held me tightly in front of the kindly old physician. Probably four were holding me, one to each arm and leg. But they reckoned without my head. I bent it down over the quills, and puff!, they went flying to the floor. I don't remember if the Dr. swore—but I was vaccinated just the same.
Our amusements were the usual ones of a country childhood. We played "3 old cats", and "knock up stick", "hide and seek", and "stick knife". Football had not yet begun its heavy march across the country. Fishing was never liked by any of us, but in winter I walked the ice on the Day Mill Pond, and watched men cut holes and set up their signal-sticks, with a red flag that went up at a bite. Once I expressed a desire to catch a trout, and Pa took Mr. Parker, his book-keeper, and organized an expedition for my special benefit. Mr. Parker, a swarthy, lithe man of middle age, was reported a skillful Walton, but I caught nothing, tho we took a lunch and stayed all day among the brooks east of Crow Hill. The only profitable memory I saved from this trout-fishing, was that Mr. Parker declined to drink milk out of a bottle, saying that that fashion of imbibing spoiled any beverage for him. "Now, much as I like beer" he remarked "I can't bear to drink it out of the bottle." I was scandalized. I didn't see how Pa could employ a book-keeper who drank beer, still less how the Bk. could have the nerve to mention it before Pa. True, it was no news to him, and the dark man's breath was a story in itself.
Within doors we read and played cards. No religious scruples prevented the latter. We learned, at home or at school, all the usual games—whist, cribbage, euchre, high low Jack, Casino—everything except poker, which we missed completely. Our parents made one restriction: No week-day game should be played on Sunday. This devil took several turns around the bush, as you may imagine. We were provided with Bible cards and other Scriptural games which were brought out on Sundays only. We introduced variations in our every-day games and dubbed them Sunday games. I fear that we even decided on Sunday to call a week-day game a Sunday game, and then on Monday decided it was a week-day game. As we grew up and left home we sloughed off with ease this particular parental training, and college found us, in advance of Mass. state law, quite ignorant of the day of the week in our diversions.
My father taught us all to swim at an early age. There were—and are—two large ponds (dammed reservoirs) at B'ville. One, the Otter River Pond, in the village, from which my father's plant and Smith and Day's chair factory obtained water-power, and the Day Mill Pond, half a mile west of our house, created for a saw mill. The second was where we all learned to swim. Not a house was near, and we put on tights, or not, as we liked. The dam furnished a quasi-sand-bar whence we took off. Pa's method of teaching was to place the boy's chin on the end of a long plank, and show him, thus supported, how to move his arms and legs. He taught us the simple breast-stroke, at which he excelled himself. I don't know whether crawls and overhands had been invented then. An island 1/4 mile away offered a convenient objective; but we had always to guard against the tree-stumps which infested the water.
Here it was that Charley Parkhurst nearly drowned one day. He became frightened when beyond his depth and called for help. I thought he was joking and swam out. He clutched me about the neck and came near sinking together. Luckily, we were drifting toward shore and my toes touched the sand just before my nose went under.
Charley was my first chum—a red-haired, freckled, good-natured village boy. We were together constantly in vacations till I went to college. I fear I remember him now chiefly as having provided the only case I ever witnessed of chattering teeth. Like drowning doormice and hair erect with fright, it is a phenomenon one reads of often and seldom witnesses. On a camping trip, we were sleeping in a tent, when a terrific thunderstorm arose—and there are no more severe electric storms than Mass. affords. The lightning flashed, the claps reverberated and rolled closer and closer, the wind blew and lashed the canvas, rain poured, and water ran under the tent; and Charley, scared blue but uncomplaining, lay in his blankets and rattled his teeth so that the clatter reverberated like an echo against the canvas.
We had some experience in rowing, and a little in sailing. My father liked to putter with boats, and tho he was not very experienced in managing sails, put a mast in his rowboat on the big pond, and practiced tacks and jibes. I have only the faintest memory of this, for he did not keep it up long. Perhaps the reason is that the boat capsized one day when he and Mort and the black dog Rover were in it. I do not know whether anyone was to blame. The tale as it strikes in my mind is that Rover seized Mort by the collar and saved his life. At any rate, they climbed on board somehow and no one was drowned.
Pa built himself also an ice-boat out of planks, a sail, and 3 skates. That too was in the earliest days. He sailed it on the same pond, but as it was little more than a mile long, an ice-boat had no play there. So great is its speed that as soon as it is well under way it must stop. I think he mastered the tricks of this even less than of the sail boat.
In winter, snow furnished its customary sports. Skis had not reached that part of the U.S.A. then, but we snowshoed and slid and skated and snowballed. A particular delight of ours was to tunnel under the snow. This could be done only when the snow was some three feet deep, and best when it was covered by a firm crust, as happened after a thaw and a freeze. Bundled in mittens, artics, caps and ear muffs we dug away with a shovel until the field between our house and the Sander’s was honeycombed with caves and passages. At Goddard, where the snow was deeper and lasted longer, we practiced the same art.
As to sliding, of course we had our simple sleds, but the double runner on an icy road was the real sport. No modern professional, with all his equipment, gets more thrill than we did in trying to go the whole length of Norcross Hill without tipping over.
Pets
When Mort and I were little we had a big black Newfoundland dog named Rover. All I can recall of him is that Pa made a two-wheeled dog cart and harness, and Rover drew us up and down the driveway. He must have disappeared before the younger boys arrived. We never had another dog. Cats were always with us—maltese ones, descending from one generation to another. White rabbits decorated the lawn, and when one died a new one was substituted surreptitiously, so that old Whitey was for us, eternal. Guinea pigs roamed the living-room, and busied the maid with cleaning-up their pellets. Raymond specialized in white mice, and kept one on his person, poking a nose or tail out of a sleeve or neckband. I had no particular animal friend, more than the cats. Like my mother, I have always disliked dogs and cows, avoiding them with instinctive fear, while I like cats and horses. We never had a saddle horse, nor learned to ride. That was a distinct gap in our training, but I made up for it later at Colorado Springs.
Too much was done for us. Pa often said "It’s easier to do a thing myself than to show somebody else to do it." It often is in life, but neither party profits by it, in the long run; the doer never learns to make others attend to minor details for him, the idler becomes lax of fiber, and fond of being waited on. Once, when we were of college age, Harold and I needed the double -sleigh to take two girls riding. Pa did the harnessing, as tho he was our valet, he even drove the rig up to the house from the barn, and all we had to do was to step in. Why did he do this? We were quite able to harness for ourselves. Perhaps because there was some kink in the rigging which we were not familiar with. Perhaps simply out of kindness, to save us trouble in an unaccustomed task. In fact, too much was done for us, and we grew up with a sub-conscious conviction that it was beneath us to earn money. We had our chores, at that. I sawed wood, and was paid a certain sum. During a depression in family finances—perhaps 1893?—the full-time maid was dismissed, and we boys took turns at getting breakfast. My specialties were omelets and muffins. For quite a period we washed the dishes. It is true a dish-washing machine was bought for the purpose. I remember very well pouring the hot suds into the top, grinding the cranks the prescribed number of minutes, drawing off the water, then rinsing with fresh hot water and setting the dishes in racks to dry. (But there were always some that had to be finished by hand.) Nevertheless, we grew up knowing that other boys of the neighborhood were not so well off as we; other boys took part-time jobs in the chair-shop or ran errands, but we were above it. I think it is probably true that until I became a teaching fellow at Harvard I was never paid a cent by anyone outside the family. At Barre once, walking on a downtown street, a woman offered me a dime to carry a parcel for her. I carried the parcel, but declined the dime.
The only real work I ever had to perform about the place, except for sporadic times in the kitchen and wood shed, was to take part in the annual haying. Grass was out on the lots in front and behind the house. Pa hired a mowing machine and one or two grown helpers, but we boys always took a hand. My duty was to rake. The machine left its neat rows of changeable green, and there it lay till dry. If rain intervened, it was hastily raked into cocks, covered with canvas caps, pegged down by guys to the ground, and spread again after the shower had gone. There was a horse-rake, but it missed much, and I with others gathered the odd wisps. Then I pitched for loading the wagon.
To stack and bind the hay on the cart is an expert’s job. Lastly, when the hay was pitched from the wagon into the barn loft, I was one of those within who with pitch forks seized the forkfuls as they came pushed thru the door and flung them into the far corners of the barn. The air was filled with dust, so we could scarcely breathe.
I did not like haying. It was hot, dirty, and hayseed got all inside your clothes. I was thin and weakly muscled, and doubtless of no great use. The only good feature of the chore was the generous pitchers of molasses and water which were set out in the shade of the shed for the hands. It was a refreshing drink that I never tasted any other time.
Another respect in which our home training was deficient was in formal manners. Mother and father were alike in this, that they regarded intention and accomplishment as all-important, and form as of no account. So it was that nobody told us to draw a woman’s chair at table, or to open a door for her, or any other of the little attentions which usually go without remark. My mother was an ardent suffragist, and of an independent nature. Perhaps she scorned to accept services which, after all, are often testimony that woman is the weaker vessel. If so she was more logical than those who proclaim woman’s total equality with man, and at the same time insist in perpetuating customs which imply that she requires special help at every turn. As to my father, he simply scorned or overlooked or knew nothing of little courtesies. In many ways he was the descendent of pioneer farmers, strong, self reliant, asking no favors, ignoring and despising frills.
The house was open to all, the neighbor children had a seat always ready at table, visiting ministers, or needy newcomers in town were invited to Sunday dinner, good and helpful deeds were scattered silently over the village, and of what importance were the little daintinesses of daily life? His horses were so old and slow that they were known in the village as "Small’s old plugs." His buggies (later his autos) were seldom washed; but they carried more passengers and did more good turns for the neighbors than any other.
Servants
How many cooks passed thru the B’ville home, I have no idea. Were my memory more retentive, I am sure they would make a diverting gallery. We did not ever possess one fine old faithful, like G.P.’s Mary. Each had her failings and her virtues, for, as we often remarked, there was something to put up with from each one. So we endured the weaknesses of each till familiarity magnified them beyond bearing, and then we exchanged that set for another. I can distinguish the image of but one servant, and she for the near-tragic event that caused her dismissal. She was a stout, blowzy piece of a young woman, and my mother told me—for certainly I never learned it myself—that her legs were of enormous girth.
One day, when she had been there for a few months—much less than nine—a scandal broke in the village. The body of a new-born infant was found in a cardboard box on a dump, and our maid had been seen to put it there. Question—whose baby, and who was its father? The necessary sheriffian investigation followed. The maid testified that a female friend had by letter asked her to meet a train, and at the station had handed her the box for disposal, and so gone on. The doctor testified that the maid had never had a baby. My father testified (I presume) that he knew nothing about box or baby. The maid was released, and if the putative mother was ever caught I never heard of it. But—the village gossips were not satisfied. They saw a whitewash, and debated whether Pa or Mort—then at an age of possibilities—were the infant’s father. Ma was momentarily ostracized (nothing could have pleased her better). There was talk of putting Pa out of the Sunday School. However, the stench blew over, like all small town scandals, and, not like all, left no great wreckage in its wake. The maid departed on her big legs, and disappeared into the ruck of maids.
Education
None of us went to school ever in the village. Until we were sent away to Goddard we were taught at home, and, since our father was too busy, and our mother too—occupied, governesses were brought in. I remember but two, Miss Rosemund Kelly, and Miss Corinne Robbins.
Miss Kelley specialized in art, and Mort and I at least, received regular training in sketching, water-colors and oils. Our aptitudes were those of the average child of ten to 12, and oil still-lifes,-pears-apples, and tomatoes from both our brushes still decorate, no doubt, the dining-room walls in the old B’ville house. Miss Kelly was tall, a bit angular and stooping, with medium brown hair; refined and aspiring. She was highly respected by my parents, as she deserved to be, and to them, I suppose, she owed the position as art-teacher at Goddard which she soon obtained. What were her own creative talents I cannot judge. She did a head of Corinne viewed from the back, to display the shades in her remarkable yellow-brown gold hair, and, if my memory serves me well, it was accepted for exhibit at the Chicago Fair in 1893. It too, is still at B’ville (1935). She was a splendid woman, but somehow she rubbed me the wrong way—doubtless because she declined to flatter my vanity, and deflated my ego frequently. I ought to have seen more of her. She had not been at Goddard many years when she died much mourned of typhoid fever.
Corinne Robbins, who followed her, was the daughter of a butcher in New Bedford in Eastern Mass. She had been left motherless at an early age, and her father died while she was with us. She had been educated at Framingham Academy, and had taught grade school in the middle west. By what channel she reached us I do not know. She never spoke with pleasure of her early experiences. She was—and is—rather short than tall, a peeling blonde with white lashes and slightly upturned nose. Her glory was her hair. Not platinum, like her brows and lashes, but corn-yellow, with varied glints of gold and pine needle—no two locks alike. When she came (date?) Mort and I were at Goddard, and she started the younger children on the road of A B C. After that her history belongs with our own. She had no outstanding mental gifts—just a plain, home-loving body, innocent at heart, like the rest of us, with unmixed and sincere emotions, good taste in decoration, and the home-making instinct was strong in her.
Neighbors
The Dougherties
When the Coolidges moved out of the big house to our North, the Dougherties moved in. Michael Angelo Dougherty (M. Angelo, he signed himself) was the new Congregational minister. He was short, black-haired, restless, pugnacious and irascible, a serious student. He preached fiery and learned sermons, and did not get on well with his parishioners. His wife was in almost every way his opposite. Tall, gracious, womanly, she performed with success the difficult task of raising an enormous family on a minister’s salary. There were 8 children, 2 boys and 6 girls, and whenever I by chance ate a meal there, I went prepared to tighten my belt for food was necessarily rationed by the owner, as in a Scout Camp. The miracles performed in feedings and educating that family will never be known, but luckily one or two relatives had some means and could help out in a pinch. Mr. D. did not remain long in the church at B’ville, but the family stayed after he left, while he scoured the country for supplies. He never stayed long in one place, but lived to a good age and was finally run down by an auto.
The children, in order of age (if memory serves) were Marion, a slender brunette, Proctor, Harold, Ethel, homely and sensible, Lucy, a handsome blonde, Edna, dark and snappy, Helen, and Constance. Varied in disposition and looks, they were all pleasant, and all behaved themselves or better, in life. Proctor climbed well up in the Otis Elevator Co., and was for a time one of the 3 commissioners of the D.C. Harold, my chum, entered Harvard, but did not finish, for lack of funds; worked into library service, and was librarian at Pawtucket, R.I., Newton, Mass., and Westfield, Mass. Constance wed Geoffrey O’Hara, the composer.
Speaking generally, the Ds possessed the social graces which the Smalls lacked. All seemed to inherit some of their mother’s suavity. They never made tactless remarks which hurt feelings and left a potential enemy behind. They always greeted properly, thanked properly, and said good-bye properly. Harold, at least, whom I knew best, was blessed with a smooth ingratiating manner that fitted him perfectly for public contacts. He never missed a trick in the daily meetings of life, and could crash a gate with blarney, as well as anyone. In childhood he suffered an attack of typhoid which deprived him of some share of vital energy. He is 6 feet 4 inches in height, and thin, tho not so thin as I, and when in college days we roamed the cities together, we must have made a towering pair.
So long as the Ds remained in town, the two flocks of children were natural playmates, only the surplus of girls to the north spoiled the combination. Proctor and Mort played together, and Harold and I. Below that, the dovetailing stopped. Herbert and R. were their own chums, and when Sumner came along, the Ds had left.
In books about boys, one reads customarily of their fights, their challenges, and their pummelings. I do not remember having witnessed more than one boy-fight in my life—we Smalls, tho verbally irritating, managed to dodge the physical clashes which ought to have been our reward—and that one was between Mort and Proctor Dougherty. The cause I do not remember, but the fight took place in front of the Hosmer’s house, down the main road. I and other younger kids watched with horror this battle of the giants. The two rolled on the ground, pounded, clawed and tore each other up until, I suppose, they were too exhausted to go on. If one was winner, I don’t know which. I followed Mort home in trembling awe, and he came into the kitchen, crying with bleeding nose.
But to me, the sore tragedy of the battle was the ruin of Mort’s new cap. Ma had just made him a beautiful fur headpiece with ear muffs, and it had been ripped to shreds. The thought of all the loving stitches she had put into it, and of the labor wasted, wrung my heart more than his bruises. The latter would heal themselves, the former represented sheer total loss of pure affection.
The Simmons
Another family with whom we kept up contacts for 40 years or more was the Simmonses. They too, for a time inhabited the Coolidge house—after the Dougherties. Why or how long I cannot say. They were Southerners—the real Aristocratic South, gentlefolk born; and impoverished, disposed, eking out a living God knows how, in the North. There was in the Simmons stock, a streak of near-genius, which cropped out in various ways; and a streak of instability also. Mr. and Mrs Simmons I knew as a white-haired, gracious couple. She long outlived her husband, and even today I can hear her deep-toned luscious drawl, with its clipped syllables. Many children here too; how many? Charles, Manna, Phonnie (Alphonsine), Laura, Fay, Dora, Roger, Demetina—perhaps another forgotten—all handsome, all full of vitality. Dee (Demetina) the perfect oval-faced brunette, was nearest my age; in college she was my first flame. But that is ahead of the story. Phonnie, poor little crippled Phonnie, whose physical life had been wrecked when her father tossed her, a baby, into the air and let her fall, was much my elder, but she took a liking to me, and I saw much of her till she died. She went about on crutches. She drew and painted, she retouched photographs for professionals. She wrote stories. She sold one to the Youth’s Companion, and it never appeared—that hurt, naturally, tho she received the check in advance. Laura, the poetess, achieved a small measure of success; she has sold verse to Harper’s Life, and scores of other periodicals; she published a volume of verse, she lectures before women’s clubs. She was a bit queer, and getting queerer as she aged. Fay had musical talent, and for many years was—I think still is—organist and choir director in a large N.Y. church.
Dora was a beauty, more like her mother than any of the other girls, vivacious, deep voiced, and winning, born to shine in society. She married E. Ray Speare, a wealthy Boston manufacturer, and the union brought the Simmons’s near-genius to a focus. Dorothy Speare, novelist, opera singer, scenario writer, has more talents than any one person should, as Laura used to say, a trifle sorrowfully. Money pours in on her, and she never needed it!, while Laura rents one cheap room on the poor side of Beacon Hill, and hangs on the fringes of literaria. Dora died in her prime, of cancer.
The males of this family did not do so well. They are both dead now, and their failings are of no importance.