THE CAPTAINS’ HOUSES
There is often more to a Cape Cod house than meets the eye. First, there is an atmosphere, which even the most insensitive person can notice if he is left alone with the house. Once I found myself in the hands of a most unusual real estate broker who volunteered to show me a house which she insisted she would not, under any circumstances, sell to me. It was technically “For Sale”, but it was, she said, “not a happy house”, and she did not want me to have it. She could not really tell why she felt as she did, but, standing in its front parlor, in the midst of parlor organ, wax flowers, and Victorian confusion, I suddenly sensed what she had felt. It had nothing to do with a creaking door to the upstairs, which alternately opened and closed, although there seemed to be no wind outside the house. No, it was just that all the bright sunlight streaming in from the windows could simply not dispel the sensation of trouble and sadness in the poor, little house. Each heavy drapery seemed to retain the sighs and each distorted mirror to reflect the tears of an unhappy time. It had been a Captain’s house because the familiar symbol of symmetrical spruce stood in the dooryard, but something was wrong about that house and even now it seems destined never to have a permanent tenant. Fortunately, I soon found my own piece of Cape Cod with an old Half House upon it in which at least two fine Dennis Captains had found comfort with their families. I knew at once that it had been a happy house where the sun shone in through crude, old glass as if it meant it, and where there had been laughter of the young, and enough love and affection to go around and fill its little rooms. Call it atmosphere, or spirits, or what you will, there is something about the feeling of an old house.
And structurally any old house can yield a story of its past. On the Cape this especially means when additions were made to accommodate an expanding family, or when a move or two was made across a field, or across a whole town, in order to enjoy the house in a better location. For the Cape Codder regarded his home as moveable as his vessel and they were built from the beginning so that you could up anchor and move her off with the greatest of ease. Even to this day the Town Report of Dennis lists among its Police Duties from 15 to 20 buildings “escorted through town” each year. My own house was no exception. Three ells have been appended through its long years of service and it has been moved to a new location at least once. Now it defies Cape tradition by facing north instead of south, but as the family room is now exposed to the sun, and the refreshing southwest breezes of summer, the break with tradition seems practical. It is easy to trace the structural changes that have taken place within the house to satisfy the taste of succeeding generations. There is the elimination of the partition of the “borning room” to make a larger living room, the installation of larger windows by a generation that couldn’t be bothered washing the old, small panes, the relocation of the stairs for convenience and safety, and many other changes that a little house-detective work reveals. Recently, in the course of some reconstruction, I revealed some timbers, in one of the newer walls, that were heavily encrusted with salt. Clearly they had come from the old salt works on the River. When the salt works were abandoned Cape thrift put their timber to work in many a home, sometimes to the despair of carpenters who find that a nail soon rusts out of such wood. But the wood places definitely the period of the reconstruction of the wall.
Wood with a more interesting story was found not long ago in a Captain’s house on Bass River, the large “Red House”. Mr. John Sears had been doing some carpentry work on an ell of the “Red House” when he was puzzled to come across some charred beams in the attic. He at first tried to think of some ancient fire at “Red House”, until he remembered a story he had heard when a boy. It seems that a Cape schooner, laden with southern lumber, was beating its way up the coast in 1812 when it was suddenly attacked by a British vessel. Being near the land, the unarmed Yankee crew beached the vessel and took to the woods. The British sent a party ashore to set fire to the stranded vessel and then sailed away. The American crew watched them go, and then ran from the woods to extinguish the fire. They floated the vessel on the high tide and proceeded up the coast to Bass River. Part of the cargo had been scorched and charred, but it was strong and sturdy timber, not to be wasted on Cape Cod, and plenty good enough for an attic beam where it would never be seen. So here in the “Red House” on Bass River a carpenter found sturdy beams that had been through an action in the War of 1812, and another old house had revealed some of the secrets of its romantic past.
Two Captains, Two Sisters
Just beyond Cove Road in South Dennis, where Nickerson’s Cove thrusts out from the River toward the white church on the hill, stand two large, white houses. They face different directions but their back doors are convenient to one another and these are connected by a footpath through a field. Both houses were built in the year 1849, the one to the north for Captain Obed Baxter Whelden, the one to the south for Captain Ellis Norris. The Captains had married sisters and it was they who had first worn the neighborly path between the two houses, a tradition that has never changed. The Captain Whelden house is now owned by his granddaughter, Miss Anna Nickerson, while Captain Norris’ house is owned by Mrs. E. S. LaRiviere who has named her home “The Skipper’s Stairway”.
Captain Norris’ stairway is unusual not alone for its beauty and craftsmanship, but because it may be the only stairway on the Cape that was entirely built at sea. Captain Norris was skipper of the “Maggie Belle”, and soon after his home was built he began planning his unusual staircase which was actually built at sea aboard his vessel. It was an almost incredible feat to accomplish away from home. Measurements must be precise so that the staircase would fit against the wall of the front hall of his South Dennis home. The unprotected side of the staircase (it was built in a graceful spiralling curve) was finished off with a single board which was subjected to steam for long hours and then, with infinite patience and care, molded into the intricate, twisting design of the stair. At last the staircase was finished and the ship was able to conveniently unload it at the foot of Cove Road where a wagon conveyed it in style to the house. There it was promptly installed, and there it remains today for all to see, a perfect fit, a thing of perfect beauty, a stairway to elicit admiration, indeed.
There are many beautiful staircases on the Cape and they somehow became synonymous with the prosperity of the owner of the house. None have the same appeal for me, though, as the simple beauty of the Skipper’s staircase. Aside from the stairs, themselves, it may have something to do with that little footpath which, despite changing occupants, has wound its way through the century from house to house and never once has been allowed to grow over. That is the way of it with neighbors on the Cape.
The little footpath ends at the homestead of Captain Whelden. This fine old house is picturesquely set on a knoll with a view of the winding Main Street of the village, of the Cove of Bass River, and the Captain’s Church on the hill. It is perfect example of the influence of classical Greek architecture on Cape construction of the last century, and so artfully is it placed among its plantings that it appears as if it must always have been there. If you should pass through the swinging front gate you would walk past beautiful English box trees that are over a century old and among the largest on the Cape. These and other beautiful trees, the handsome panelling within the house, and the original gold-leaf wallpaper that came by clipper from France to South Dennis, are only a few of the attractions of this lovely, white house. And—as with all Cape houses—it has a story of its own.
Captain Whelden was master of the coastwise schooner “Robert Graham Dunn”. He was another of the gallant men of South Dennis who chose a career at sea that gained success for himself and glory for his village. Unfortunately that career was cut off when, at the age of sixty-four, he contracted yellow fever in Florida and died aboard his vessel at Pensacola. With the same longing all Cape Cod men felt abroad, the Captain died with the single word, “home”, on his lips—and the First Mate of the “Dunn” was determined that the good Captain’s body should be taken to his beloved village for burial. But this was the eighteen eighties and the same superstitions that led Cape Codders to bury smallpox victims in an isolated spot (in the belief that this would stop the spread of the disease) held the crew in awesome fear of contracting the dreaded fever. They mutinied at the prospect of carrying the Captain’s body home.
The First Mate of the “Dunn” must have been a courageous, loyal, and determined man, for, at length, the ship’s mutiny was put down, and, in a metallic casket weighing well over a ton, the Captain’s remains began the sad journey back to the Cape. Captain Whelden succumbed to the fever on Memorial Day, 1888, and on July 4 he was laid to rest at South Dennis, just down the road from the home he loved so well. Twelve Captains carried the heavy casket. It was a fine tribute to the memory of the man whose big white house by the side of the road still graces the little village at the heart of the Cape.
East Is West
Not far from the houses of the two sisters the charming old Cape Cod homestead of Captain Alpheus Baker, Jr., sits beside the Upper County Road. It is a white Cape Codder, trim and snug and gracious, and it must look very much the same now as it did a century ago. Old trees throw a graceful pattern of shadows against it in the summer sunlight and there is a perpetual air of friendliness and serenity about it. The house would hardly be noticed by the stream of traffic that rushes by its dooryard in the summer months, but the house is complacent too, and wears the air of there being “nothing new under the sun”. One would not have to see the treasures within it to realize that it is a cosmopolitan house, content now to dream its dreams of a colorful past.
A “Short Trip Guide to America”, published as late as 1875, dismisses the Cape as a “wild and desolate”, but interesting, section of the Atlantic Coast,—this while devoting considerable pages to the description of the “wonders” of Lawrence and Lowell. It is curious that when a guide book was describing the peninsula as “wild and desolate”, perhaps because it did, indeed, lead a life quite apart from the Mainland, Cape Codders, themselves, were among the most cosmopolitan people on earth. For them, distances were measured in terms of days at sea, and days meant nothing while in pursuit of their fortunes. Through the medium of the wonderful clipper ship, and the blue seas that were always near enough to be seen from the rooftop of any house, the world was at their doorstep. The best illustration of this, which also throws light on Cape character, is the well-worn anecdote of the central Cape Captain who had travelled many times around the world but had never negotiated the twelve mile buggy ride to Chatham. When asked, “How come?”, by someone who must have been a Mainlander, he would reply, “I just never had any business there”. But the Captains did have business in Singapore and Hong Kong, in Java and the Indies, and in every important port throughout the world, and there they sailed often. At the time the “Short Trip Guide” was being written Captain Baker of South Dennis, still in his thirties, had already made several voyages to the Orient.
Once, on a return voyage from Hong Kong, Captain Baker brought with him to the Cape two Chinamen and one young Chinese woman. The woman was installed at the Baker homestead as a nurse for the Baker children, and, for what few stay-at-homes there were, a touch of the Orient came to South Dennis. The nurse was capable and attractive, and evidently her young charges were devoted to her. One can only guess at her thoughts as she stood on the bank of Bass River looking westward into the setting sun; or as she walked up the winding Main Street which must have seemed so silent and colorless after the bright hues and loud cries of Hong Kong. And one can only guess at the thoughts of the people of the town who looked through the curtained windows of staid, white houses at the strange figure in Oriental dress who walked their streets. It is to be hoped that they took her to their hearts and, if folks in the village then were as they are today, it is a certainty that they did. But one April, before the Cape burst into its myriad colors of coreopsis and broom, of lilac and daisy, and lupin, and all the wonderful signs of springtime that might rival the colors of China, she fell ill, and, in the little back parlor of the Baker home, she died.
At South Dennis, in the old cemetery on the hill, and hard by the Baker memorials, there is a plain white stone which reads, “Chinese Woman; Brought from Hong Kong by Captain Alpheus Baker, Jr.; April 5, 1872 at 31 years.” Not far away is a monument to the memory of Captain Baker, inscribed, “His sun is gone down while it is yet day”. For the Captain had outlived the Chinese woman by only two years and had died at the age of thirty-six. Strangely enough, he too had died in a foreign land and was buried in Sourabaya, Java, where another white monument denotes his final resting place.
The old cemetery on the hill at South Dennis is a quiet resting place, watched over by sentinel cedars and the towering steeple of the Captain’s Church. In summer there is the exotic perfume of wild roses, of fern, of sweet grass and of pine. It is very Cape Cod and, standing by the Baker plot in June sunshine, one feels the Orient is very far away. Still, if one took to the gleaming seas, and rode the wings of the clipper ships, Hong Kong was nearer than Chatham—at least if one had business there.