Captain Abby and Captain John: An Around-the-world Biography

Оглавление

Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Captain Abby and Captain John: An Around-the-world Biography

Captain Abby and Captain John: An Around-the-world Biography

Table of Contents

Preface

Illustrations

The Blue Chest

1. The Birch Switch

2. Oak Fever

3. Houses by Euclid and Ships’ Carpenters

4. Begetter of a Chapter of American History

5. Young Mizzenmast

6. Abby Signs the Papers

7. The Bark Is Made Ready

8. A Housewife Looks at a House 25,000 Miles Wide

9. The Carnival of Venice

10. The Long Way Home

11. Reunion at Middle Bays and Harpswell

12. Farewell, Deborah! Hail, Elias!

13. The Cradle at the Mainmast

14. A New Ocean and a New Son

15. Sunshine on Abby and John

16. Last Page Out of Homer

17. Happy Family at Sea

18. Earthquake, Loup-Cervier, and Reunion

19. Where Rio’s Mountains Preach Eternity

20. Captain Abby Ashore

21. The Roll Call on the Headland

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Index

Отрывок из книги

Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Published by Good Press, 2021

.....

Whether or not Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ever bombarded Susan Chase (or Chace, as she spelled her name and her sisters usually did not) with passionate letters, other lovers did. There were many moths around that candle in Bunganuc. I have found two memorials to passion that burned hotly before the belle of Bunganuc’s shrine. At least two lovers sought her hand. And probably a third, as one of the two hints. One writes from Brunswick, December 11, 1838: “Madam,” his letter reads—Susan was twenty at the time—“I can no longer do so grate violence to my inclinations and injustice to your charms and merits as to retain within my one breast those sentiments of esteem and affection with which you have inspired me. I should have hazarded this discovery much sooner but was restrained by a dread of meeting censure for my presumption in aspiring to the possession of a lady whom beauty have conspired”—the lover’s heat involves his grammar here—“to raise so high above my reasonable expectations. Were our circumstances reversed, I should hardly take to myself the”—a gap where some wretched seal-collector has destroyed a phrase of love—“of doing a generous action in overlooking the considerations of wealth and making you an unreserved tender of my hand. I shall await your answer in a state of unpleasant impatience, and therefore rely on your humanity not to keep me long in suspense. I am, Madam, Your most humble servant, Elisha Snow.”

The heiress’s answer—and I hope it was mercifully speedy—must have been No. For we find her being besieged by another even warmer and more rhetorical tender of marriage on January 6, 1843. This one came from Portland, it came in care of Capt. Daniel Chase, and it cost the writer six cents to send. The suitor this time was a sea captain, he was just about to sail, and he embarked on three sentences at the beginning much too elaborate for any plain sea captain in his soberer moments ever to embark upon: “Madam, Those only who have suffered them can tell the unhappy moments of hesitating uncertainty which attend the formation of a resolution to declare the sentiments of affection; with which you have inspired me. Every one of those qualities in you which claim my admiration increased my Diffidence, by showing the great risk I run in venturing, perhaps before my affectionate assiduities have made the Desired impression on your mind, to make a Declaration of the ardent passion I have long since felt for you. If I am Disappointed of the place I hope to hold in your affections, I trust this step will not draw on me the risk of losing the friendship of yourself and family which I value so highly that an object less ardently Desired or really estimable could not induce me to take a step by which it should be in any manner hazarded.” The captain threw rhetoric to the winds and came out with sea-captainly frankness, he exposed his naked heart, probably without any letter-writing guide before him: “I am ready for sea the first opportunity to sail, and expect to be back in April, if it is God’s will, and shall call and see you and talk this over if you are not otherwise engaged, if you keep your promise good. And excuse me for sending this scribblin. I don’t expect you can find this out, but you can gess at part of it, I suppose. Plees excuse me giving you the trouble of this, and you will do me a favour in letting no one see the insides of this. I am, Madam, your affectionate admirer and sincere friend, E. D. Griffin.” And the captain adds a rather sour postscript that he supposes that Susan will be seeing a good deal of a Mr. Kelsey this Winter at her residence.

.....