He was always ailing, and his friends in college doubted if he would ever reach maturity; yet he lived to be a grey-haired man, and published a number of excellent books. When he died, in 1878, there were not wanting malicious people to spread the report that he died of intemperance, though the wonder is how he could have lived so long. His death cast a shadow over the social life at Appledore so that it never quite recovered its former gaiety. About the same time several millionaires made their appearance; cottages began to arise upon the rocks; a small steam-yacht plied like a water-bug between the different islands, and the place became continually more fashionable and conventional. Whittier, feeling that he did not belong to this new order of things, retired to a quiet little inn at West Ossipee, in the White Mountains.
It was now that Professor John K. Paine, the musical composer, introduced a new element into the Shoals life. One morning he walked into Mrs. Thaxter's parlor with a large folio under his arm and said, "I am going to play you one of Beethoven's sonatas, for I think you will like it." Mrs. Thaxter was not quite sure that she would, but listened attentively. There had been a good deal of music before, in a small way; pupils of Eichberg playing on the violin with piano accompaniment, and even Eichberg himself,—which was quite a treat, though a single violin can never express a wide range of musical ideas. Beethoven's music she had also heard indifferently performed by young lady amateurs; but this was another affair.
Professor Paine is rather an organist than a pianist, and does not pretend to rare technical skill; but what is much better, he understands the music as only players like Rubinstein and Von Bulow can understand it, and he brought out the meaning with such joyous fullness as even the master himself might have been pleased to hear. It was a revelation to Celia Thaxter: it was easy to see there was no affectation in her enjoyment; neither did she lack words to express her delight. "Mr. Paine," said a classical gentleman who was present, "your playing reminds me of what Cicero said of Caesar's Commentaries, that a fool might think he could improve on it, but a wise man would not like to try." The Professor was so much pleased with Mrs. Thaxter's frank enthusiasm, that he dedicated a sonata he was composing to her, which was performed the following winter in Boston, and greatly praised also by the critics.
Piano recitals and concertos thus became the fashion at Appledore, and classical music was in good demand. Its refining and quieting influence on the little community was quite perceptible. It produced a change like the transition from flamboyant Gothic architecture to the pure Grecian style. At first only a few came to hear it: then the parlor was filled. The piazza became crowded, and finally gentlemen were obliged to find places on the rocks outside.
It is one thing to hear music in a crowded concert-room with gas-light and bad air just after we have left the jarring discords of the street; and quite a different affair to listen to it with congenial spirits in the summer air of these islands, which seems to have been made for attuning the senses to fine perceptions. To enjoy any kind of art, the mind needs to be like a clean slate on which every mark tells.
In 1881 Professor Paine improved his good reputation both here and in Europe by composing what is called his Greek music; that is, an overture to the play of "Oedipus Tyrannus," which was acted at Harvard in the spring of that year. Of course his seashore friends wished to hear him play it himself, and after the applause which followed had subsided, he said: "A little approbation is all the reward I get for my compositions. A good deal of money was made out of the Greek play by speculators, but none of it came to me." There was a general expression of regret; and then Mrs. Thaxter said, as if to herself, "If I were only the Commonwealth of Massachusetts I know what I would do." A physician at the house that summer warned Mrs. Paine never to let her husband work so hard again as he had that year.
I remember William Hunt, the portrait painter, in 1872 wheeling his youngest child, a beautiful boy named Paul, in a go-cart in front of the cottage. He looked like an Arab, with a beard nearly to his waist, and a decidedly Semitic head; but he had an aristocratic style, and the air of a man who was used to command. His friends congratulated themselves on his resemblance to Titian, and to the French artist Horace Vernet. Despite his proud bearing he was a tender-hearted man, and when in trouble always went to Levi Thaxter, who was a rarely sympathetic person. In 1879 he came again to the Shoals, flying from domestic affliction. He was also suffering from a severe nervous strain, the result of painting two immense pictures in the hall of the New York Assembly, at Albany; and was no longer able to work. Either of these by itself he might have contended against, but both together were too much for him.
One dark, rainy night he left the Thaxter cottage at a late hour, looking very sad and gloomy. The next morning his body was found in a freshwater cistern which had been built in a hollow between the rocks. There were some who thought that his death might have been accidental, but old Doctor Bowditch said, "My friends, there was only too much reason for it." Of all the wrecks on that dangerous coast was not this the most piteous and tragical! William Hunt narrowly missed being one of the greatest of painters. Though some of his portraits are wretched failures, there are others of his pictures that might grace any gallery in Europe.
Mountain air is better than sea air, both for those who are well and strong, and generally speaking for invalids; but people go to the sea because they like it,—for love of the dark blue ocean. Few things are more monotonous than sailing in a yacht. It is a confining sort of existence, subjects of conversation soon become exhausted, there are many inconveniences about it, and being becalmed in a ground swell is worse than riding in a stage coach on a hot and dusty road; yet how many men prefer spending their summer vacation in this manner to any other. It is that rolling, lisping, gurgling, mysterious, unfathomable unity which attracts them. Earth is the masculine element, sea the feminine; and all the cycles and epicycles of organic nature have resulted from these two. It develops imagination and romance in persons who would never have been suspected of possessing either. No wonder that the sailor delights in marvelous tales. It is a terrible destroyer, but at the same time a friend that we cannot do without.
Nowhere perhaps is that closeness to the ocean, this familiarity with the sea, so strongly felt as at the Isles of Shoals. There is really no land there: nothing but sky, rock and water. Living there is like a sea-voyage without the discomforts thereof. During the great storm of March '52, when the light-house on Minot's Ledge was overturned, an immense wave rolled across the centre of Appledore from side to side. There are windows in the hotel on Star Island where one can drop a pebble into the sea, and go to sleep listening to the murmur of the waves. Even in summer the surf sometimes runs so high that it is dangerous to approach the edge of the cliffs; and few people know how pleasant it is to watch the eddying swirl of the water round the promontories on the westerly side. One can sail in every direction, and if the wind does not suit one quarter it always will another. Better than any sailing, however, is rowing in an open boat at sunset or by moonlight, with one or two friends.