CHAPTER XVI.
LAKE MEMPHREMAGOG.
We did not think to give you a report of this journey, but the day before we left home little books called Wheeling Notes were given us, with pages for day, route, time, distance and expense, and pages opposite for remarks.
These little books we packed in our writing tablet, and Friday afternoon, June 30th, we began our journey. Besides the note-books we had an odometer and a carriage clock, in addition to our usual equipment. Naturally we were much absorbed in our new possessions, and the remarks, in diary form have become so interesting to us that we gladly share them.
July 2—Rainy. Dropped in a back seat in a village church; only nineteen present. The little minister is a Bulgarian, and inquired for two classmates in Leominster. We practiced all day on pronouncing his name, and could say it quite glibly by time for evening service. He is very loyal to his adopted country, and urged all to make as much noise as possible all day on the Fourth. Not a boy or girl was there to hear such welcome advice, and we wondered if the parents would tell them.
July 3—Drove all day. Mr. Radoslavoff’s advice must have sped on wings, for the noise began early, and kept up all night. Three huge bonfires in front of the hotel at midnight made our room look as if on fire.
July 4—Somewhere between the southern and northern boundary of New Hampshire there is a park, the fame of which reached us several years ago, and we have had in mind to visit it some time. This year seemed to be the time, as, by our map, it was right on our way north. On making inquiries, we found it would give us five or six miles extra driving to go through the park, and the day being hot it took considerable wise arguing to make the vote unanimous. Importunity, however, will sometimes bring about at least acquiescent unanimity.
Suffice to say, we went through the park and now we are truly unanimous, and will give you the benefit of our experience. There is probably no town in New England that has not attractions enough, within reach of a walk or short drive, to last all summer for those who go to one place for recreation and change. But if you are driving the length of New Hampshire, Vermont or any other state, do not be beguiled by accounts of pretty by-roads, cascades, water-falls, whirlpools or parks, even one of 30,000 acres, with 26 miles of wire fence, 180 buffaloes, 200 elks, 1000 wild hogs, moose, and deer beyond counting. You may do as we did, drive miles by the park before and after driving five miles inside, and see only twelve buffaloes, one fox, a tiny squirrel and a bird—yes, and drive over a mountain beside, the park trip having turned us from the main highway. For a few miles the grass-grown road was very fascinating, but when we found we were actually crossing a mountain spur and the road was mainly rocks, with deep mud holes filled in with bushes, we began to realize thefolly of leaving our good main road for a park. To be sure, we might not see buffaloes, but we do see partridge, woodchucks, wild rabbits, snakes, golden robins and crows, and once, three deer were right in our path! And really we think we would prefer meeting a drove of cattle on the main road, to having a big moose follow us through the park, as has occurred, and might have again, if it had not been at mid-day, when they go into the woods.
Finally, our advice is, in extended driving, keep to the main highway, with miles of woodsy driving every day, as fascinating as any Lovers’ Lane, with ponds and lakes innumerable, and occasional cascades so near that the roaring keeps one awake all night. Then we have a day’s drive, perhaps, of unsurpassed beauty, which no wire fence can enclose, as along the Connecticut River valley on the Vermont side with an unbroken view of New Hampshire hills, Moosilauke in full view, and the tip of Lafayette in the distance, the silvery, leisurely Connecticut dividing the two states and the green and yellow fields in the foreground completing the picture. No State Reservation or Park System can compete with it.
July 5—We were in a small country hotel, kept by an elderly couple, without much “help,” and our hostess served us at supper. When she came in with a cup of tea in each hand, we expressed our regret that we did not tell her neither of us drink tea. She looked surprised and said she supposed she was the only old lady who did not take tea.
“O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!”
July 6—Received our first mail at Wells River, Vt., and as all was well at home, we began to plan our journey. For a week we had simply faced north day after day. If we kept right on we would come to Newport and Lake Memphremagog, which to us means the Barrows camp, but we need a month for that trip. A bright idea solved the problem. We drove north until we reached St. Johnsbury, left our horse there and took a morning train for Newport, where we connect with the Lady of the Lake for Georgeville, P. Q.
At the boat landing at Newport we met Mr. and Mrs. Barrows just starting for Europe. They insisted that we must go on to Cedar Lodge for the night, and make a wedding call on their daughter, recently married in camp, and forthwith put us in the charge of camp friends, who were there to see them off. The sail to Georgeville was very delightful. We were then driven two miles to the camp in the forest of cedars, and presented to the hostess, a niece of Mrs. Barrows, who gave us a friendly welcome.
The attractions of Cedar Lodge are bewildering. The one small log cabin we reveled in a few years ago is supplanted by a cabin which must be sixty or seventy feet in length, with a broad piazza still wearing the wedding decorations of cedar. Near the center is a wide entrance to a hallway, with a fireplace, bookcase, and hand loom, the fruits of which are on the floors, tables, couches, and in the doorways. At the right is the camp parlor, called the Flag room, draped with colors of all nations. It is spacious, with a fireplace, center reading table, book shelves, pictures, writing desk, typewriter,comfortable chairs, and a seat with cushions, the entire length of the glass front facing the piazza and lake.
On the left is the Blue China or dining room. Here is a very large round table, the center of which revolves for convenience in serving, a fireplace with cranes and kettles, and a hospitable inscription on a large wooden panel above. The telephone, too, has found its way to camp since we were there.
Not least in interest, by any means, is the culinary department. Instead of a cooking tent, where Mrs. Barrows used to read Greek or Spanish while preparing the cereal for breakfast, and a brook running through the camp for a refrigerator, there is a piazza partially enclosed back of the Blue China room, with tables, shelves, kerosene stoves, and three large tanks filled with cold spring water, continually running, one of which served as refrigerator, tin pails being suspended in it. The waste water is conveyed in a rustic trough some distance from the cabin and drips twenty feet or more into a mossy dell, where forget-me-nots grow in abundance.
Just outside the end door of the Flag room are flights of stairs to the Lookout on the roof. This stairway separates the main cabin from a row of smaller cabins, designated Faith, Hope, and Charity, in rustic letters. (We were assigned to Hope, and hope we can go again some time.)
These cabins are connected by piazzas with several others, one being Mrs. Barrows’ Wee-bit-housie. A winding path through the woods leads to Mr. Barrows’ Hermitage, or study, close by the lake, and another pathup the slope back of the cabins leads to a group of tents called The Elfin Circle.
We went to the bath wharf, followed the brook walk through the cedars, strolled to the hill-top cabin to see the friends who escorted us from Newport, and then we all met at supper, on the broad piazza, seventeen of us. The last of the wedding guests had left that morning. After supper we descended the steps to the boat landing, and our hostess and the best man rowed us to Birchbay for the wedding call. Though unexpected we were most cordially received, served with ice cream, and shown the many improvements in the camp we first visited years ago. We walked to the tennis court and garden, where the college professor and manager of Greek plays were working when no response came from the repeated telephone calls to tell them we were coming. We rowed back by moonlight.
We cannot half tell you of the charms of Cedar Lodge, but when we were driven from Georgeville a bundle of papers was tucked under the seat, which proved to be Boston Transcripts, containing an account of the wedding. A copy was given us and it is such an exquisite pen picture we pass it along to you:
_From the Transcript, July 6, 1905._
A CAMP WEDDING.
On the last Wednesday of June Miss Mabel Hay Barrows, the daughter of Hon. Samuel J. Barrows and Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, two very well-known figures in the intellectual life of Boston and New York, wasmarried to Mr. Henry Raymond Mussey, a young professor at Bryn Mawr. And the ceremony, which took place at Cedar Lodge, her mother’s summer camp, was one of the most original and picturesque which it is possible to imagine. Miss Barrows herself is a girl with a refreshingly individual outlook upon life, and with a great variety of interests, as well as a strong dramatic instinct, and every one who knew her well looked forward to this wedding as promising to be an occasion at once unique and beautiful. And they were not disappointed, those eighty odd guests, who traveled so far, from east, west, north and south, to the little camp snuggled away among the sympathetic trees bordering the Indian Lake, beyond the Canadian border.
Cedar Lodge, the Barrows’ camp, crowns a beautiful wooded slope above the lake, a steep climb by a winding path bringing one to the log cabin, with its broad piazza facing the sunset and overlooking the lake, through misty tree tops which still wear the tender freshness of hymeneal June. At either end of this ample balcony the guests were seated at four o’clock of that perfect Wednesday, leaving space in the center for the bridal party, of which there was as yet no visible sign.
Promptly at four one heard, far below, echoing poetically from the lake, the first notes of a bugle sounding a wedding march. It was the signal that the bridal party was approaching, and the guests began to tingle with excitement. Nearer and nearer, came the bugle, and at last through the green birch and alder and hemlock came the gleam of white—a living ribbon winding among thetrees. As the procession approached, zigzagging up the steep path, it was very effective, suggesting an old Greek chorus, or a festival group from some poetic page, as why should it not, the bride being herself an ancient Greek in spirit, with her translations of the classics and her profession as stage manager of Hellenic dramas? The bridal party, a score and eight in number, was all in white, with touches of red, camp colors. First came the bugler, blowing manfully. After him two white flower girls, scattering daisies along the path. Then followed the two head ushers, white from top to toe, with daisy chains wreathing their shoulders in Samoan fashion. Next, with flowing black academic robes, a striking contrast of color, climbed the two ministers—one the bride’s father, the other a local clergyman, whose word, since this was a “foreign country,” was necessary to legalize the bond. Two more ushers preceded the groom and his best man in white attire; and bridesmaids, two and two, with a maid of honor, escorted the bride, who walked with her mother.
As for the bride herself, surely no other ever wore garb so quaint and pretty. Her dress was of beautiful white silk, simply shirred and hemstitched, the web woven by hand in Greece and brought thence by Miss Barrows herself during a trip in search of material and antiquarian data for her Greek plays. The gown was short, giving a glimpse of white shoes and open-work stockings—part of her mother’s bridal wear on her own wedding day, of which this was an anniversary. The bridal veil was a scarf of filmy white liberty, with an exquisitehand-painted border of pale pink roses. It was worn Greek fashion, bound about the head with a fillet, garland of red partridge berries and the twisted vine. In one hand she carried a bouquet of forget-me-nots and maidenhair; in the other an alpenstock of cedar, peeled white, as did the rest of the party. As they wound slowly up through the beautiful wild grove, with the lake gleaming through the green behind them and the bugle blowing softly, it was hard to realize that this was Canada in the year 1905, and not Greece in some poetic ante-Christian age, or Fairyland itself in an Endymion dream.
So with sweet solemnity they wound up to the crest of the hill, passed through the cabin, and came out into the sunlit space on the balcony, the flower girls strewing daisies as a carpet for the bridal pair, who advanced and stood before the minister, the other white-robed figures forming a picturesque semi-circle about them.
The ceremony was brief and simple; the exchange of vows and rings; a prayer by each of the clergymen and a benediction; the hymn “O Perfect Love” sung by the bridal party. Then Mr. and Mrs. Mussey stood ready to receive their friends in quite the orthodox way. But surely no other bride and groom ever stood with such glorious background of tree and lake, ineffable blue sky and distant purple mountains, while the air was sweet with the odor of Canadian flowers, which seem to be richer in perfume than ours, and melodious with the song of countless birds, which seemed especially sympathetic, as birds in Fairyland and in ancient Greece were fabled to be.
After a gay half hour of congratulations, general chatterand refreshments, came word that the wedding party was to move once more, this time to escort the bride and groom down to the lake, where waited the bridal canoe.
Again the white procession passed the green slope, but this time merrily, in careless order, escorted by the guests, who were eager to see the wedded couple start upon their brief journey. For the honeymoon was to be spent at Birchbay, another camp hidden like a nest among the trees a mile farther down the lake. The bridal canoe, painted white and lined with crimson, wreathed with green and flying the British flag astern, waited at the slip. Amid cheers and good wishes the lovers embarked and paddled away down the lake, disappearing at last around a green point to the south. A second canoe, containing the bride’s father and mother, and a bride and groom-elect, soon to be elsewhere wed, escorted the couple to their new home, where they are to be left in happy seclusion for so long as they may elect. And so ended the most romantic wedding which Lake Memphremagog ever witnessed; a wedding which will never be forgotten by any present—save, perhaps, the youngest guest, aged two months.
On the following morning the little company of friends gathered in that far-off corner of America—a most interesting company of all nationalities and religions, professions and interests—began to scatter again to the four quarters of the globe—to California, Chicago, Boston, Europe, Florida and New York, and in a few days only the camps and their permanent summer colony will tarry to enjoy the beauties of that wonderful spot. But whether visible or invisible to the other less blissfulwights, the bride and groom still remain in their bower, among though not of them. And Romance and June linger along the lake, like a spell.
A. F. B.
July 8.—The Cedar Lodge bird concert aroused us betimes, and after breakfast in the Blue China room, we were driven to Georgeville. The morning sail was even finer than that of the afternoon before. The car ride of forty-five miles from Newport brought us to St. Johnsbury in season for a drive of ten miles to Waterford, for our last night in Vermont.
July 10.—Camped two hours on the top of Sugar Hill, with a glorious view of the mountain ranges and surrounding country, then drove down to Franconia for the night, near the Notch.
July 11.—Everything perfect! Cooler after the successive days of heat, the fine roads through the woods freshened as from recent showers. Echo Lake, the Profile House and cottages, Profile Lake and the Old Man, whose stony face is grand as ever, the Pemigewassett, clear as crystal, tumbling over the whitened rocks, the Basin, Pool and Flume—all these attractions of the Franconia Notch drive were never more beautiful. We left our horse at the Flume House stables and walked the mile to the end of the Flume, along the board walks, through the narrow gorge where the boulder once hung, and climbed higher yet the rocks above the cascade. The afternoon drive of seventeen miles through North Woodstock and Thornton brought us to Campton for the night.
July 12.—Drove from Campton to the Weirs. We well remember the zigzag roads from Plymouth up and down the steepest hills, and today they seemed steeper and longer than ever, for thunder showers were all about us. We stopped an hour at a farmhouse, thinking they were surely coming near, and from this high point watched the scattering of the showers, by the lake and high hills. We then drove into one, concealed by a hill, and got our first and only wetting on the journey. Two beautiful rainbows compensated.
We were cordially welcomed at the Lakeside House at Weirs, where we have been so many times and always feel at home. Here we found our second mail, and sent greeting to many friends associated with Lake Winnipiseogee.
July 14.—Spent the night at Sunapee Lake, where we were refreshed by cool breezes. A year ago this date we were at Sebago Lake, Me.
July 15.—A brisk shower just after breakfast made our morning drive one of the pleasantest, the first five miles through lovely woods, with glimpses of the lake. We spent an hour at a blacksmith shop before going to the hotel at Antrim for the night, and had to ask to have the buggy left in the sun it was so cool! While there we read of the disastrous thunder showers everywhere, except on our route, which had broken the spell of excessive heat.
July 16.—A perfect Sunday morning and a glorious drive—lonely, we were told, and perhaps so on a cold, dark day, but no way could be lonely on such a day. Theroads were narrow, sometimes grass-grown, with the trees over-reaching, and a profusion of white blossoms bordered the roadside.
Exclamations of surprise greeted us as we drove to the cottage by the lake, where we spent the rainy Sunday two weeks ago. We took snap shots of our friends and left messages for those soon to join them for the summer. We do not tell you where this restful spot is, for somehow we feel more in sympathy with our friends who like the seclusion, than with the man who would like to “boom” the place, and asked us to mention he had land to sell.
July 17.—Another bright day! What wonderful weather! And how lovely the drive over Dublin hills overlooking the lake, with beautiful summer homes all along the way and varying views of Monadnock!
July 18.—Took a parting snap shot of Monadnock, for the sun shone on this last day of our journey, as it has done on every other—except that first rainy Sunday, when stopping over for the rain brought us at just the right time at every point on the trip.
According to record of distances in Wheeling Notes, we have journeyed five hundred and forty miles, over four hundred by carriage, and the time record is two weeks and five days. If odometers and carriage clocks had been in vogue from the beginning of our journeying, the sum total recorded would be about 14000 MILES, and nearly two years in time. A journey now would seem incomplete without a note-book tucked behind the cushion, for remarks along the way.