The Lure of the Camera

by Charles S. Olcott

As we approach Appledore, the islands still seem to be only a cluster of barren rocks, with a few scattered buildings. The charm which they undoubtedly exert upon those who come year after year does not immediately manifest itself to the stranger. He must spend a night there, breathing the pure sea air, watching in the early evening the glistening lights on the far-off shore, and finally falling asleep to dream that he is in mid-ocean, on one of the steadiest of steamers, enjoying the luxury of absolute rest, for which there is no better prescription than an ocean voyage. In the morning, he must walk around the island—it can be done in an hour or two—threading the narrow paths through the huckleberry bushes and picking his way over the high rocks that present their front to the full force of the waves, on the side of Appledore that faces the sea. Here he will see artists spreading their easels and canvases for a day’s work and less busy people settling down in various shady nooks, to read, to chat, to knit, to dream.

To get the real spirit of the islands it is advisable to find one of these quiet nooks and read Celia Thaxter’s “Among the Isles of Shoals,” a book of sketches for which the author needlessly apologizes, but of which Mrs. Annie Fields says, “She portrays, in a prose which for beauty and wealth of diction has few rivals, the unfolding of sky and sea and solitude and untrammeled freedom, such as have been almost unknown to civilized humanity in any age of the world.” Celia Thaxter is herself the Spirit of the Isles of Shoals, and if we are to know and love them, we must take her as our guide. She will be found an efficient one and there is no other.

CELIA THAXTER’S COTTAGE

With this purpose in mind, we began our tour of the islands, book in hand, stopping first at the cottage of Mrs. Thaxter. One room is maintained somewhat as she left it, with every square foot of wall space covered by her pictures. But the flower-garden is sadly neglected. Only the vines that still clamber over the porch, and a few hollyhocks that stubbornly refuse to die, remain to suggest the dooryard where the garden flowers used to “fairly run mad with color.” The salt air and some peculiar richness of the soil seem to impart unusual brilliancy to the blossoms and strength to the roots of all kinds of flowers, whether wild or cultivated. Celia Thaxter was one of those people for whom flowers will grow. They responded with blushing enthusiasm to the constant manifestations of her love and tender care. Flowers have a great deal of humanity about them after all. They refuse to display their real luxuriance for cold, careless, or indifferent people, just as babies and dogs know how to distinguish between those who love them and those who love only themselves.

“More dear to me than words can tell Was every cup and spray and leaf; Too perfect for a life so brief Seemed every star and bud and bell.”

Celia Thaxter loved her flowers with a devotion born of the hours of solitude when they were her sole companions. “The little spot of earth on which they grow is like a mass of jewels. Who shall describe the pansies, richly streaked with burning gold; the dark velvet coreopsis and the nasturtiums; the larkspurs, blue and brilliant as lapis-lazuli; the ‘ardent marigolds’ that flame like mimic suns? The sweet peas are of a deep, bright rose-color, and their odor is like rich wine, too sweet almost to be borne, except when the pure fragrance of mignonette is added,—such mignonette as never grows on shore. Why should the poppies blaze in such imperial scarlet? What quality is hidden in this thin soil, which so transfigures all the familiar flowers with fresh beauty?”

Unfortunately, the mysterious quality hidden in the soil, assisted by the warm sunshine and the salt air, with all their powers could not maintain the island garden after the loving hands of its owner were withdrawn, and the little inclosure is now a mass of weeds.

Celia Laighton was brought to the Isles of Shoals as a child of five, and lived with her parents in a little cottage on White Island where her father was the keeper of the lighthouse. She grew to womanhood in the companionship of the rocks, the spray of the ocean, the seaweeds, the shells and the miniature wild life she discovered among them, the tiny wild flowers which her sharp young eyes could find in the most secret crannies, and the marigolds, “rich in color as barbaric gold,” which she early learned to cultivate in “a scrap of garden literally not more than a yard square.” She shouted a friendly greeting to the noisy gulls and kittiwakes that fluttered overhead, chased the sandpipers along the gravelly beach, made friends and neighbors of the crabs, the sea-spiders and land-spiders, the sea-urchins, the grasshoppers and crickets, and set in motion armies of sandhoppers, that jumped away like tiny kangaroos when she lifted the stranded seaweed. And then the birds came to see her. The swallows gathered fearlessly upon the window-sills and built their nests in the eaves, seeming to know that the loving eyes watching their movements could mean no evil. Now and then a bobolink, an oriole, or a scarlet tanager would be seen. The song sparrows came in flocks to be fed every morning. With them, at times, came robins and blackbirds, and occasionally yellowbirds and kingbirds. Sometimes, in hazy weather, they would fly against the glass of the lighthouse with fatal results. “Many a May morning,” says Mrs. Thaxter, “have I wandered about the rock at the foot of the tower mourning over a little apron brimful of sparrows, swallows, thrushes, robins, fire-winged blackbirds, many-colored yellowbirds, nuthatches, catbirds, even the purple finch and scarlet tanager and golden oriole, and many more beside—enough to break the heart of a small child to think of.”

It is no wonder that such a sympathetic soul could even summon the birds to keep her company—as she frequently did with the loons. “I learned to imitate their different cries; they are wonderful! At one time the loon language was so familiar that I could almost always summon a considerable flock by going down to the water and assuming the neighborly and conversational tone which they generally use: after calling a few minutes, first a far-off voice responded, then other voices answered him, and when this was kept up a while, half a dozen birds would come sailing in. It was the most delightful little party imaginable; so comical were they that it was impossible not to laugh aloud.”