The Country of
the Pointed Firs
SARAH ORNE JEWETT
Note
SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909) was born and died in South Berwick,
Maine. Her father was the region's most distinguished doctor and,
as a child, Jewett often accompanied him on his round of patient
visits. She began writing poetry at an early age and when she was
only 19 her short story "Mr. Bruce" was accepted by the Atlantic
Monthly. Her association with that magazine continued, and
William Dean Howells, who was editor at that time, encouraged her
to publish her first book, Deephaven (1877), a collection of
sketches published earlier in the Atlantic Monthly. Through
her friendship with Howells, Jewett became acquainted with Boston's
literary elite, including Annie Fields, with whom she developed one
of the most intimate and lasting relationships of her life.
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is considered
Jewett's finest work, described by Henry James as her "beautiful
little quantum of achievement." Despite James's diminutives, the
novel remains a classic. Because it is loosely structured, many
critics view the book not as a novel, but a series of sketches;
however, its structure is unified through both setting and theme.
Jewett herself felt that her strengths as a writer lay not in plot
development or dramatic tension, but in character development.
Indeed, she determined early in her career to preserve a
disappearing way of life, and her novel can be read as a study of
the effects of isolation and hardship on the inhabitants who lived
in the decaying fishing villages along the Maine coast.
Jewett died in 1909, eight years after an accident that
effectively ended her writing career. Her reputation had grown
during her lifetime, extending far beyond the bounds of the New
England she loved.
Contents
----------------------------------------------------------------- I The Return
II Mrs. Todd
III The Schoolhouse
IV At the Schoolhouse Window
V Captain Littlepage
VI The Waiting Place
VII The Outer Island
VIII Green Island
IX William
X Where Pennyroyal Grew
XI The Old Singers
XII A Strange Sail
XIII Poor Joanna
XIV The Hermitage
XV On Shell-heap Island
XVI The Great Expedition
XVII A Country Road
XVIII The Bowden Reunion
XIX The Feast's End
XX Along Shore
XXI The Backward View
I
The Return
THERE WAS SOMETHING about the coast town of Dunnet which made it
seem more attractive than other maritime villages of eastern Maine.
Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that
neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to
the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to
be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges by the
Landing. These houses made the most of their seaward view, and
there was a gayety and determined floweriness in their bits of
garden ground; the small-paned high windows in the peaks of their
steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the
far sea-line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore and
its background of spruces and balsam firs. When one really knows
a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming
acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at
first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the
growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.
After a first brief visit made two or three summers before in
the course of a yachting cruise, a lover of Dunnet Landing returned
to find the unchanged shores of the pointed firs, the same
quaintness of the village with its elaborate conventionalities; all
that mixture of remoteness, and childish certainty of being the
centre of civilization of which her affectionate dreams had told.
One evening in June, a single passenger landed upon the steamboat
wharf. The tide was high, there was a fine crowd of spectators,
and the younger portion of the company followed her with subdued
excitement up the narrow street of the salt-aired, whiteclapboarded little town.
II
Mrs. Todd
LATER, THERE WAS only one fault to find with this choice of a
summer lodging-place, and that was its complete lack of seclusion.
At first the tiny house of Mrs. Almira Todd, which stood with its
end to the street, appeared to be retired and sheltered enough from
the busy world, behind its bushy bit of a green garden, in which
all the blooming things, two or three gay hollyhocks and some
London-pride, were pushed back against the gray-shingled wall. It
was a queer little garden and puzzling to a stranger, the few
flowers being put at a disadvantage by so much greenery; but the
discovery was soon made that Mrs. Todd was an ardent lover of
herbs, both wild and tame, and the sea-breezes blew into the low
end-window of the house laden with not only sweet-brier and sweetmary, but balm and sage and borage and mint, wormwood and
southernwood. If Mrs. Todd had occasion to step into the far
corner of her herb plot, she trod heavily upon thyme, and made its
fragrant presence known with all the rest. Being a very large
person, her full skirts brushed and bent almost every slender stalk
that her feet missed. You could always tell when she was stepping
about there, even when you were half awake in the morning, and
learned to know, in the course of a few weeks' experience, in
exactly which corner of the garden she might be.
At one side of this herb plot were other growths of a rustic
pharmacopoeia, great treasures and rarities among the commoner
herbs. There were some strange and pungent odors that roused a dim
sense and remembrance of something in the forgotten past. Some of
these might once have belonged to sacred and mystic rites, and have
had some occult knowledge handed with them down the centuries; but
now they pertained only to humble compounds brewed at intervals
with molasses or vinegar or spirits in a small caldron on Mrs.
Todd's kitchen stove. They were dispensed to suffering neighbors,
who usually came at night as if by stealth, bringing their own
ancient-looking vials to be filled. One nostrum was called the
Indian remedy, and its price was but fifteen cents; the whispered
directions could be heard as customers passed the windows. With
most remedies the purchaser was allowed to depart unadmonished from
the kitchen, Mrs. Todd being a wise saver of steps; but with
certain vials she gave cautions, standing in the doorway, and
there were other doses which had to be accompanied on their healing
way as far as the gate, while she muttered long chapters of
directions, and kept up an air of secrecy and importance to the
last. It may not have been only the common aids of humanity with
which she tried to cope; it seemed sometimes as if love and hate
and jealousy and adverse winds at sea might also find their proper
remedies among the curious wild-looking plants in Mrs. Todd's
garden.
The village doctor and this learned herbalist were upon the
best of terms. The good man may have counted upon the unfavorable
effect of certain potions which he should find his opportunity in
counteracting; at any rate, he now and then stopped and exchanged
greetings with Mrs. Todd over the picket fence. The conversation
became at once professional after the briefest preliminaries, and
he would stand twirling a sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and
make suggestive jokes, perhaps about her faith in a too persistent
course of thoroughwort elixir, in which my landlady professed such
firm belief as sometimes to endanger the life and usefulness of
worthy neighbors.
To arrive at this quietest of seaside villages late in June,
when the busy herb-gathering season was just beginning, was also to
arrive in the early prime of Mrs. Todd's activity in the brewing of
old-fashioned spruce beer. This cooling and refreshing drink had
been brought to wonderful perfection through a long series of
experiments; it had won immense local fame, and the supplies for
its manufacture were always giving out and having to be
replenished. For various reasons, the seclusion and uninterrupted
days which had been looked forward to proved to be very rare in
this otherwise delightful corner of the world. My hostess and I
had made our shrewd business agreement on the basis of a simple
cold luncheon at noon, and liberal restitution in the matter of hot
suppers, to provide for which the lodger might sometimes be seen
hurrying down the road, late in the day, with cunner line in hand.
It was soon found that this arrangement made large allowance for
Mrs. Todd's slow herb-gathering progresses through woods and
pastures. The spruce-beer customers were pretty steady in hot
weather, and there were many demands for different soothing syrups
and elixirs with which the unwise curiosity of my early residence
had made me acquainted. Knowing Mrs. Todd ...
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