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Title: Joe Lincoln of Cape Cod
Author: James Westaway McCue
Release date: December 16, 2025 [eBook #77475]
Language: English
Original publication: Silver Lake P. O., Mass: The Cape Cod Publishers, 1949
Credits: Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOE LINCOLN OF CAPE COD ***
JOE LINCOLN
OF CAPE COD
_By_
JAMES WESTAWAY McCUE
_Published By_
THE CAPE COD PUBLISHERS
Silver Lake P. O., Mass.
Copyright 1949 by J. W. McCue
OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
“Romantic Cape Cod”
“Ski Lure”
“Sea Fever”
“Cape Cod Doctor”
“Deep Harvest”
“Recipes From A Cape Cod Kitchen”
“A New England Journey”
“Cape Cod In Pictures”
“Cape Cod Holiday”
“Yankee Boy”
“The Captain’s Daughter”
Published by
THE CAPE COD PUBLISHERS
Silver Lake, Mass.
Printed in the United States of America
By the Round Printing & Publishing Co.
on Cape Cod
Cover and Photos
by
RICHARD KELSEY
Chatham
Acknowledgement is made by the author to THE BOSTON HERALD for
permission to use its files and biographical material used in the
preparation of this book.
JOSEPH C. LINCOLN
* * * * *
Joseph Lincoln was not only a novelist of wide reputation, but he was
also a public benefactor. His success had in it something heartening
and corrective. In the midst of work which appeals to the base and
cynical in human life (American city life) his clean, wholesome,
humorous stories of Cape Cod Sea Captains and their neighbors gave
evidence of the fact that there was a huge public for decent, homely
fiction. Just as the success of his play “Shavings” was evidence that
there was a paying audience for decent and homely drama.
Lincoln’s books could be read aloud in the family circle with joy
to all members of it. They made no pretense of being profound, or
new, or “smart.” They were filled with characters and the humor which
was once native to the Cape. Lincoln knew these Cape towns and their
inhabitants as Irving Bacheller, another writer of the times, knew
his men of the North Woods, for he was raised among them and lived in
their neighborhood several months of each year. Joe Lincoln looked like
one of them, like an old skipper, hearty, unassuming and kindly. The
task which he set for himself was one which called for a keen sense
of character, democracy of sentiment and a fancy which never--or very
seldom--lost its hold on the solid ground of experience. His plots were
sometimes negligible, but his characters, even when they seemed a bit
repetitious, were a joy to his readers. His prosperity was well earned.
CHAPTER ONE
Joseph Crosby Lincoln was born in the Cape Cod village of Brewster on
February 13, 1870. Brewster was at that time a typical Cape Cod town
of about fifteen hundred inhabitants. Most of the men of the town were
captains in the merchant service, either active or retired. In fact,
in the Main Street of Brewster, on either side of the house where Mr.
Lincoln was born, for a distance of a mile, each house was the home
of “Cap’n” somebody or other. It is little wonder that when Lincoln
began in later years to write his books he drew on the scenes of his
birthplace and the many colorful old sea-going men who wrote the glory
of Cape Cod on the seven seas in their fast wooden sailing ships.
Lincoln’s father, Joseph Lincoln, went to sea as a cabin boy when he
was fifteen years of age, and was master of a full rigged ship at
the age of twenty-two. Captain Lincoln was one of a family of four
brothers, three of whom were sea captains. Captain Lincoln’s father,
Joe’s grandfather, also was a sea-going man.
Author Lincoln’s mother was Emily Crosby of Brewster, and on her side
of the house the sea-faring element was just as strong. Her only
brother was lost in the English Channel while on a voyage as first mate
of a ship commanded by a Brewster captain.
Captain Lincoln died of a fever in Charleston, South Carolina, in the
fall of the year in which his son was born. Young Joe attended school
at Brewster until he was thirteen years old when his mother took him to
Chelsea to finish his education in the schools there. Mrs. Lincoln was
a self-reliant woman as most of the Cape Cod women of the time were.
She had made many adventurous voyages with her husband, and young Joe
was left to her tender care, devotion and inspiration. He later paid
her loving tribute in many of his poems and stories.
In his boyhood young Joe roamed the Cape. He knew every nook and inlet,
every place to fish, every cranberry bog and was familiar with the
sand dunes which stretched along the Cape beaches for miles in both
directions. Best of all, he knew and loved most of the inhabitants of
Brewster and the surrounding towns where he lived. He rode the old
stage coach from Harwich to Chatham. He knew light keepers, fishermen,
the life savers who manned the life saving stations along the coast,
and the cracker barrel oracles in the village stores which at the time
were the nerve centers of news, gossip and the center of political
opinion of the times. Many of the scenes in Lincoln’s books are laid in
these villages, country stores and taverns from which emanated the many
characters about which he wrote.
As Lincoln explored the Cape in his boyhood, the perfume of the green
salt meadows, the Cape Cod pines and the smell of the Bayberry etched
themselves on his memory. The fishing boats, the dripping nets, “The
mighty surge and thunder of the surf along the shore” were a part of
his very existence. It was his wonderful familiarity with the subject
that asserted itself so pleasingly and convincingly in his later
stories. The racy vernacular of his characters rang true: his “Cape
Cod Folks” to which he referred when mentioning the characters in his
books, were real people.
Today the people about whom Lincoln wrote on the Cape are for the most
part gone. Only traces of the older families now remain in second and
third generations. Except for a few stubborn hangers-on the real old
time Cape Codder has died out. In later years when interviewed as to
where he got the material for some of his books Lincoln said that it
was necessary for him to go back many years to draw on the scenes
and characters about which he wrote. The Cape Cod of forty years ago
had changed considerably even in Lincoln’s day. Where the Cape, as
reflected in Lincoln’s books, was an old fashioned community in the
late eighteen hundreds and the early part of the present century it
has now become more streamlined and modern in its efforts to attract
the tourist trade which today is its main industry with the possible
exception of cranberries. It is true that such small villages as
Brewster, Sandwich, Chatham, Harwich, and Wellfleet as well as some
of the other fifteen towns and one hundred and forty-three villages
are physically much the same as they were years ago, but modern stores
and hotels have erased much of their old time charm as pictured in
Lincoln’s books. And so in order to recall what the Cape was really
like in its most interesting period it is necessary to go back through
the pages of his books in order to capture the true flavor of the
place. For, despite the fact that the Cape today is a beautiful
vacation resort, it is the romance of its past which gives it its real
flavor.
In the days when Joe Lincoln was a lad it was an accepted fact that
most Cape Cod boys, when they reached “cabin boy” age, should go to sea
as their fathers did before them. In fact, most of the young ladies
of the time “preferred” young men of the sea unless there was some
good excuse why a young man remained at home to run a store or to do
other important work. Most often Cape boys sailed with a neighbor, or
a relative who taught them the lore of the great sailing ships and
drilled them in navigation until they were ready to command their own
ships. But young Lincoln’s relatives had better plans for the boy.
They thought he would make a splendid financier and when he completed
his schooling in Chelsea it was arranged for him to become an office
boy in a wholesale salt house on State Street in Boston. Soon he left
this position to enter a brokerage house. In turn he left the brokerage
house to take charge of the books of a desk company in Sommerville.
After a year or two of bookkeeping, Lincoln decided that whatever else
he might be he was not particularly good as a bookkeeper, nor had he a
fancy for that sort of life. He soon decided to turn to making a living
as an artist.
One can picture the mental torture of the young man thus forced
to follow a calling not to his liking. In his novel, “Galusha the
Magnificent,” Lincoln takes the temperamental Galusha through the same
experience. Laughable enough as it seems as Lincoln wrote it in the
story, it is doubtful if his own affair seemed quite as humorous at
the time. Strangely enough, Lincoln was not the first writer to be
sidetracked into a career unsuited to one of artistic temperament.
It is often difficult for those without creative ability to fully
understand those who do possess talent and can be happy at nothing else.
After many months Lincoln escaped from the figures and accounts and he
confesses, “I have always felt that they were fully as glad to get rid
of me as I was to leave them.” He knew by that time what he wanted to
do. He wanted to be an artist. How many authors have started with the
brush, later to discard it for the pen!
In company with another student, Howard Reynolds, who had formerly been
a reporter, Lincoln took a small room in Pemberton Square, Boston, and
for a time studied with Henry Sandham, the Boston artist. He had always
had a fondness for drawings and caricatures and the months spent in Mr.
Sandham’s office were among the pleasant experiences of his life.
It was while attempting to sell his sketches that Lincoln began to
write rhymes to fit the pictures. At first he was not very successful
in selling his sketches and he found that by writing a verse or a
joke to go with the sketch it made them sell better. Presently he
found that the verses sold better than the pictures. He began to write
short stories and verses in earnest. The verses were in swinging meter
about the old home and folks down on the Cape. His stories revealed a
quaint, witty and wholly delightful people. They were like a breath of
invigorating salt air and the editors snapped them up.
Lincoln sold his first short story to The Saturday Evening Post; the
succeeding ones landed in many other prominent magazines of the day.
His verses appeared in Harper’s Weekly, Puck, The Youth’s Companion,
and others. Evidently young Lincoln had few of the trials and
tribulations of breaking into print which dogged other later successful
authors. Perhaps it was better that his early life was not a hard one
as it would have reflected in his writing and much of the easy-going
homespun humor of his books would have been lost.
About this time bicycling came into its heyday. The League of American
Wheelmen was flourishing, an organization of several hundred thousand
with an official publication known as “The Bulletin.” Lincoln spent
three years as associate editor and when the interest in bicycling
began to drop he wisely decided to try his hand as a full-fledged
writer.
By this time Joe had married Florence E. Sargent of Chelsea in May,
1897, and one night in 1898 he followed her into the living room after
the dishes were done and asked her a momentous question. It was a
matter of courage--and of faith. New York was already the mecca towards
which young authors addressed their prayers, and everything published
seemed to get its start there. “Florence,” said Lincoln, “have we
courage enough to put our furniture into storage, to live in one room,
to cut our ties here--and to see?”
They both knew that the rent has a pretty monotonous way of coming
due, but they decided to take the plunge together. They did move to
New York where they lived in one room in a boarding house in Brooklyn
and in 1902 Lincoln published his first volume of verses, choosing the
Cape for his milieu because it was in his blood. The book, “Cape Cod
Ballads,” was a small volume with pictures by Kemble. Many of these
verses were read each season when he later traveled about the country
lecturing on Cape Cod and “Cape Cod Folks.”
Lincoln’s first novel was “Cap’n Eri” on which he began work in May,
1903, and which was published in February of the following year. This
first book, which is the story of three old Cape Cod sea captains who
advertised for a wife, soon became a best seller. Lincoln completed
the book after devoting his spare time evenings and Sundays in writing
the book, often working on the corner of a kitchen table. During
the day-time he was employed as editor of a banking magazine. The
characters of “Cap’n Eri” were really a composite sketch of a number of
sea captains which Lincoln had known. The scenes of the book were laid
in no particular town, although the towns of Chatham and Brewster were
the towns with which Lincoln was most familiar. The rescue scenes near
the end of “Cap’n Eri” are among the most suspenseful one would find in
any book written before or since. The scene which depicts the gallant
but tragic efforts of a crew of Cape Cod Life Savers to rescue the crew
of a wrecked schooner during a raw winter gale was adapted from the
heroic rescue of the sole survivor of the Monomoy Life Saving Station
off Monomoy Beacon near Chatham in the winter of 1902.
Like most best selling first novels, Lincoln’s “Cap’n Eri” was written
in his spare time. For some strange reason it seems characteristic of
the writing business that young authors are at their best when working
under the pressure of necessity, often turning out their best work
when pressed for money or time. Such seemed to be the case with young
Lincoln and “Cap’n Eri.”
“Cap’n Eri,” which went into many printings, was easy reading,
however. Most of the writing in the volume lacked the expert polish
of Lincoln’s later work. Perhaps this simple homespun type of writing
served more effectively to introduce him to the large audience of the
times who enjoyed simplicity and the warm-hearted people about whom he
wrote. While exploring the pages of Lincoln’s first novel one cannot
help but compare the friendly good nature of the people of the times
as compared with the seemingly hard-boiled outlook and actions of the
world in general today.
CHAPTER TWO
Following the success of “Cap’n Eri” and when the royalties from the
book began to pile up, Lincoln wrote “Partners of the Tide,” continuing
along the same amusing and humorous lines of writing which had been so
successful in his first book. Then came “Mr. Pratt” and “The Old Home
House” and a string of notable successes beginning with “Cy Whittaker’s
Place,” “Galusha the Magnificent,” and so on, with a new book appearing
each year until his death at the Virginia Inn, Winter Park, Florida,
in March, 1944, when he died of an unexpected heart attack at the age
of seventy-four. At the time of his death Lincoln had written and
published more than fifty Cape Cod books, his last book being “The
Bradshaws of Harniss,” published in October, 1943. According to a
newspaper item shortly after his death he left an estate estimated at
$200,000.
One of the most remarkable things about Joe Lincoln’s success as a
writer was the fact (according to his publishers) that each succeeding
novel enjoyed a larger sale than the one which preceded it. During
his life time Lincoln devoted three or four hours every morning to
his work. From nine in the morning until noon or one o’clock Lincoln
disappeared into his workshop often the address of which no one but
himself knew. Here at work he scorned a typewriter and wrote with a
soft stubby pencil on large sheets of yellow paper. When his morning’s
work was done and when he was at his summer home on the Cape, Lincoln
spent his afternoons fishing and golfing and re-exploring the ponds and
lakes of his boyhood where the scrappiest bass and the largest pickerel
were to be found. Occasionally he took a jaunt to Maine or Canada to
try his luck with the northern fish or when he was at home on the Cape
spent his afternoons golfing on one of the beautiful golf courses near
his Cape Cod home or motoring over Cape Cod roads.
Joe Lincoln had little sympathy with the creators of fault finding and
sordid novels of small town life, who insisted that that sort of thing,
and it alone, was realism. He had no desire to attempt that style of
literature himself. Quite the opposite of George Bernard Shaw, who
once said to the effect that much of his success was due to making as
many people as possible hate either him or his work, Lincoln sought a
reputation in letters the hard way by making people love his work. Said
Lincoln, “perhaps I could write a story with wholly gloomy situations
and unhappy misadventures, but I wouldn’t like to try it. I would much
rather try to make people cheerful and keep myself cheerful at the same
time. Life contains both laughter and sorrow; and it seems to me that
one is as real as the other.”
The popular impression that Lincoln used actual people as his
characters in his books and actual localities for his scenes was held
by the author to be without foundation, despite the fact that many
people who spent time on the Cape swore that they knew just the place
or the person to which Lincoln referred in one of his stories. In reply
to this Lincoln said:
“In writing of a Cape Cod town or village, although I purposely
refrained from describing it as any one town in particular, I have
tried conscientiously to give it the characteristics of the Cape Cod
towns I am acquainted with. The promontories and inlets and hills and
marshes in ‘my’ Cape Cod may not be found where I have located them,
but I have tried very hard to make them like those which are, or were,
to be found on the real Cape.
“And so with Cape Codders in my stories. I have never knowingly drawn
the exact, recognizable portrait of an individual. I have, of course,
received hundreds of letters from readers who inform me, in strict
confidence, that they know the original of ‘Cap’t ----’ and recognized
him at once. Nevertheless, they were wrong for no character of mine had
lived. I have endeavored always to be true to type, and in writing of
the old deep-sea Captain, the Coasting Skipper, the Longshoremen or the
people of the Cape villages, I have done my best to portray each as I
have seen and known specimens of his or her kind. But I have endeavored
just as sincerely never to draw an individual portrait which might
offend or hurt. And in attempting to transcribe the habit of language
I have made it a rule never to use an expression or idiom I have not
heard used by a native of the Old Colony.”
As a matter of fact, Lincoln did not have to study Cape Codders. He
was, of course, one of them. His very speech marked him as such--the
slightly clipped, curt words: the “hev” and “hed” that once in a while
take the place of have or had, and even a touch of good old Yankee
talking through his nose. His proudest boast was, “I am a Cape Codder.”
Lincoln’s great success as his books became widely read brought him
to the happy stage which every author dreams of, where his work was
actually sought by editors for magazine publication months in advance
of publication. His books were eagerly sought after by theatrical
producers for plays and motion pictures. A play based upon his novel
“Shavings” was one of the real dramatic successes of the early nineteen
hundreds. It was rumored that he received $80,000 for the rights to the
book as a play.
When interviewed by a reporter at the peak of his career Lincoln
replied when asked to name his favorite author:
“I have a good many, for I read all sorts of books, and at all times.
I don’t know that I can name any particular author who may be called
my favorite. I am very fond of Stevenson, for instance--but then, so
I am of Kipling--Mark Twain, of Tarkington, and many others. I think
I like a story for the story’s sake. I like to like my characters or
dislike them in the old fashioned way. I realize--no one can help
realizing--the fine literary craftsmanship in a book like ‘Lord Jim.’
It is a wonderful piece of character mosaic, and yet in reading it I
am always conscious of the literary work. I say to myself, ‘this is
marvelous; see how the writer is picking his hero to pieces, thought
by thought, motive by motive.’ And being so conscious of the writer,
I do not lose myself in the story. This is not offered as criticism:
certainly I should not presume to criticize Mr. Conrad. It is more of a
confession of something lacking on my part. I enjoy reading ‘Lord Jim,’
or ‘The Old Wives’ Tale’ but I do not return to them again and again
as I do to--well, to ‘Huckleberry Finn’ or the ‘Beloved Vagabond.’
Perhaps this is, as some of my realistically inclined friends tell me,
a childish love for romance on my part. If it is, I can’t help it; as I
said, this statement is not offered as an excuse but as a confession.
“This sort of thing shows in my own stories. It would be very hard for
me to write a long story that would end dismally. It is only too true
that stories in real life frequently end that way, but I don’t like my
yarns to do so. So it is fair to presume that in the majority of books
I may hereafter write, the hero and the heroine will be united, virtue
rewarded and vice punished, as has happened in most of those for which
I am already responsible. Perhaps this same weakness for a story, a
cheerful story, makes me care little for the so-called problem novel.
It doesn’t mean that I am not fond of novels dealing with certain
kinds of problems. Winston Churchill’s political stories, or his ‘The
Inside of the Cup,’ I like immensely; but the sex problem--the divorce
question does not appeal to me. A morbid lot of disagreeable people,
married or otherwise, moping and quarrelling through a long story, seem
to me scarcely worth while. To a specialist in nervous diseases such a
study might be interesting, but I really doubt if the average healthy
man or woman finds it so. Certainly we should not care to associate
with such people were they living near us. We should get away from them
if we could.”
In his inimitable novels Joe Lincoln endeavored to uphold the finest
traditions of America. A compatriot said of him, “He is saving for us
a precious part of America writing down, before it is too late, a past
recent enough, but changing fast, a past closely woven into the very
fibre of our character and meaning as a nation. He shows us, too, the
coming era, the Cape Cod of today against the background of yesterday.
And when I say Cape Cod I mean pretty much any part of our country that
is not within the boundaries of a great city, but that has drawn from
the foundations of American heritage for its foundations.”
CHAPTER THREE
Although neither Joe Lincoln nor Irving S. Cobb will probably be
considered a major figure of American literature, the audience of each
was larger and more devoted than the followers of the most adroit of
our craftsmen. There was a pronounced difference between them and one
outstanding similarity. Lincoln had Cape Cod in his heart, soul and
mind. He portrayed the sandy, salty stretches and their inhabitants far
more appealingly than anyone else who has written about that section.
He did but one thing, but he did it in a way which endeared him to
millions and especially those who know “The Narrow Land” on the other
side of the Cape Cod Canal.
Cobb did for rugged Kentucky what Lincoln accomplished for the flat
Southeastern Massachusetts peninsula. The tobacco-chewing Judge Priest
of the Cobb detective stories is just as redolent of the border-state
mountains as the Lincoln figures are of the Cape. But Cobb was also a
journalist, a humorist, a wit, an essayist, a political writer, a war
correspondent, a sophisticated cosmopolite. Lincoln was satisfied to
cultivate his own country intensively. Cobb liked to plow all over the
world. He is said to have remarked that he had traveled in Pullman cars
so often that he couldn’t sleep at home without a cinder in his eye.
Neither Lincoln nor Cobb looked abroad for material. Each was a red
hot American and found no end of stuff under their noses here at home.
They visualized their own surroundings just as vividly as Herman
Melville told about his whaling days. Lincoln was probably the favorite
of women readers than of the men. Cobb, fat, lusty, go-as-you-please,
slopping over with zest at being alive, and fond of associating with
all kinds of folks, hit the men pretty hard; but his vivid imagination
and remarkable facility with words led him to the painting of canvases
more lurid and perhaps true than those of Lincoln. As each of them had
qualities which none of their contemporaries possessed in such richness
their passing left vacancies in the world of American letters which
will be hard to replace.
Joe Lincoln was at the peak of his career during an era in American
letters when such colorful names as O. Henry, Joyce Kilmer, Tarkington
and a host of other beloved American writers were also fellow
contributors to such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Ainslee’s
Magazine, and many other well known publications. During his winters
in New York Lincoln was fortunate enough to have for his friends other
writers like O. Henry, whose real name was Sidney Porter. Along with
magazine editors, and other writers in New York Lincoln often lingered
over the luncheon table talking of men, events, and books.
In a newspaper interview in 1926 Lincoln recalled that, “Porter
(O. Henry) was very popular with the crowd and in his very modest,
unostentatious way said many things which none of us could forget. He
loved the city and could hardly ever be persuaded to leave New York.
It was also hard to get him out anywhere--he shunned crowds. Then we
thought it was due a very peculiar sensitiveness. Later we realized
that although his love for the city was genuine, he was afraid someone
would recognize him and connect him with his unhappy past.
“Several times I asked him home to dinner, but he would not come.
Finally, I met him on the street one day and he told me he was coming
out that night.
“‘Well, it’s about time,’ I said. ‘I’ve asked you enough.’
“‘But there’s just one thing I want to know first,’ he said. ‘have you
got a butler at your house?’”
“‘No,’ I answered, ‘nothing like that.’
“‘Then I’ll come,’ he said. He did and we spent a delightful evening.
“Once a friend of his who had a big estate on Long Island got him to
come out for the week end. He had had many arguments with Porter about
the superiority of the country, and was anxious to show him the many
advantages of living out of town. He took him proudly around his place,
showed him the stables, etc., and finally wound up on the top of a high
hill where there was an excellent view. Porter followed him around
dutifully but saying little. After his friend had finished pointing out
the beauties of the scenery, he talked of the good train service, and
told him that one could obtain anything there which could be found in
the city.
“‘Anything you want,’ he wound up, ‘you can get here.’
“Porter rose to his feet and picked up his hat. ‘Can you get a ticket
to New York?’ he asked.”
Once Lincoln was trying to persuade Porter to do something or other
over the week end, and Porter protested that he was behind in his
work. At the time he was doing a series of Sunday stories in the NEW
YORK WORLD, stories that since have become famous and can be found in
thousands of libraries in his collected works.
While they were talking the telephone rang and the Sunday editor of THE
WORLD wanted to know when O. Henry was going to get his story in--it
was about Christmas time and a story dealing with Christmas was due for
the following Sunday. Porter had not even started it.
“Well, tell me what it is about,” said the editor, “so I can get the
artist busy with the illustration.”
O. Henry thought a minute and told the editor to have the artist draw a
picture of a girl in the living room of a cheap flat leaning against a
table, and a young man looking down at her.
“What is the story about?” asked Lincoln when O. Henry had finished his
instructions.
Porter replied that he had no more idea than Lincoln did, but he got
busy and dashed off a story in time for the paper. The story was “The
Gifts of the Magi,” the tale of the young wife who sold her hair to buy
her husband a fob for his watch, while he unknown to her pawned his
watch to buy her a comb for her beautiful hair.
Then there was the story of the halberdier, so well known to lovers of
O. Henry plots and people. “I had two endings to that story,” Porter
told Lincoln. “At first I thought I would have the man get mad at the
whole game and smash the showcase with his halberd, but then I thought
it would be better to have the girl come in and have a romantic ending
on the spot.”
“Porter hated to mix at big affairs,” Lincoln reminisced, “though he
loved the city and crowds of people. Once there was an excursion of
newspaper men and illustrators up the Hudson to Albany, and to the
great surprise of us all, Porter came along. There were four or five
hundred of us, and finally it got on his nerves, and he disappeared. He
left the boat at Poughkeepsie and went back.
“That man loved mankind and saw only the best in people. Those
qualities have been an inspiration to all of us who knew him. There are
writers today who apparently see only the evil and cynical things of
life--and call their work realism. We laugh at Pollyanna, but she is no
more unnatural than some of the cynical specimens we find in present
day novels,” Lincoln continued.
“Someone with whom I was talking recently summed it up this way: you
walk along a country road. There is mud in the middle, and spring
flowers growing by the roadside. Both are there, and the man who sees
the mud and not the flowers is not in the true sense of the word a
realist. A smile is just as real as a tear.”
CHAPTER FOUR
In December 1917 Joe Lincoln was interviewed by a young reporter on the
Boston Herald. Although neither the interviewed nor the interviewer was
aware of it at the time, the young reporter was to become one of the
greatest American poets of the century. His name was Joyce Kilmer, the
soldier-poet who was later killed in France during the First World War.
One can imagine young Kilmer, pencil and note book in hand, sitting
with Lincoln before the open fireplace at the Lincoln home which
was then in Hackensack, New Jersey, and asking the now famous “Joe”
questions about his work and career. Fortunate would have been the
casual eavesdropper on the conversation to have memories of such a
meeting. For America had already taken the work of Joe Lincoln to its
heart but was before long to remember the lines of Kilmer’s immortal
poem, “Trees,” which is still popular today.
According to Kilmer’s article which appeared in the Boston Herald
on January 2, 1917, in spite of its proximity to the humorous body
of water called the Hackensack River, there was nothing especially
nautical about the home of Joseph Lincoln. According to Kilmer one did
not expect to find Cap’n Eri lounging on the porch of this pleasant
suburban residence, nor Cap’n Warren and Cap’n Dan caulking the seams
of a rowboat on the broad lawn.
Kilmer wrote, “There was nothing nautical about the house: that is,
except its owner. Mr. Lincoln could not, if he would, disclaim the
title of Cape Codder.” Kilmer described him as, “thick-set and broad
shouldered, a good build for pushing a whaleboat through the breakers
and his skin was bronzed and his flesh hardened by winds laden with
salt spray.”
Kilmer went on to say that Lincoln at that time was unique among
contemporary fiction makers in having written from the first the things
he liked to write about. He had no tale of woe to tell about relentless
editors who had forced him to continue the annals of Cape Cod fishermen
when he wanted to write about Parisian sculptures or London flower
girls, or something of the sort.
“I am a Cape Codder,” Lincoln said as he sat with Kilmer before the
fireplace, which strange to say, was not of driftwood. “My people have
been Cape Codders for many generations. They have lived at Cape Cod
when they were at home, but most of the time, of course, they were out
at sea. I was born at Cape Cod and spend my summers there. I cannot
imagine myself tiring of Cape Cod.
“I didn’t,” Lincoln continued, “set out writing about Cape Cod. I wrote
about it because it was the place I knew best. My first book was a
book of poems entitled ‘Cape Cod Ballads.’ I continued to write about
Cape Cod and Cape Codders, not because I was forced to by editors but
because I wanted to.
“It has been said that magazines commercialize literature and force
writers who do one thing well to do that thing all the time,” Kilmer
said. “What do you think about this?” the young reporter asked.
“Well,” said Lincoln, “I don’t think there is much in it. I think
a lot of nonsense is written and spoken about the commercialization
of genius. I don’t think that a writer can prostitute his talent
successfully.
“There is very little real commercialism in genius, and the reason is
that commercialization of genius doesn’t pay. A man who is successful
believes in what he is doing when he is doing it. You hear people say:
‘What dreadful stuff so-and-so is turning out, and what amazing success
it is having! I could write stuff like that with one hand behind my
back.’
“But so-and-so’s critics couldn’t write successfully what he is
writing. They couldn’t do it because they couldn’t believe in it--and
if a writer doesn’t believe in his work the public won’t believe it,
won’t read it, and won’t buy it.”
“Then you don’t think that the magazines are harmful literature?”
Kilmer asked Lincoln. Evidently at that time stories in magazines
were considered doubtful literature in the beginning of the twentieth
century.
“Not at all,” replied Lincoln. “They pay the writers more money now
than has ever been paid them, but I can’t see it does any harm. I don’t
see how some people figure out that writing for money harms an author’s
work. It seems to me that the spur of the necessity of making a living
is a fine thing for a writer’s creative powers. Writers who are
subsidized, who are paid a regular salary irrespective of the amount of
work they turn out, would certainly not write as much as people who are
writing for a living, and I am inclined to doubt that the quality of
their work would be as high.
“Robert Louis Stevenson said that every good thing that was done
was done either directly or indirectly for money. And certainly the
greatest example of a man writing for money was Shakespeare. He wrote
to make a living and he had no hesitation in writing to order. When
Queen Elizabeth liked ‘Henry the Fourth’ she said to its author: ‘Let
me see the fat knight in love.’ And Shakespeare didn’t draw himself up
and say: ‘I will not commercialize my genius!’ Instead he hurried home
and wrote ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor.’
“And coming a little closer to our own time than Shakespeare, what
about O. Henry? Surely if any man ever wrote for money, he did,”
Lincoln continued.
“I think,” said Mr. Lincoln, “that a man can write a novel more easily
if it has been ordered before hand than if it has not. Once a famous
publisher in New York asked me what work I was doing. I told him I was
busy with a novel. ‘Have you thought about a publisher yet?’ he asked.
I told him that this was all attended to and the contract signed. ‘I
don’t see how you can write to order that way,’ he said. I explained to
him that the contract specified nothing about the plot or style of the
novel, and that I could write it much more comfortably if I didn’t have
to worry about finding a publisher for it. But I don’t think I put his
mind at rest.
“There may be a little truth in the theory that magazines harm
literature, but there is a great deal of nonsense to it. And of this I
am sure, that no literary career had ever been ruined by the magazines.
You may be sure that a man who is writing successfully for the
magazines believes in what he is writing, and is doing the best work he
can.
“Some publishers tell us, however, that the magazines harm literature
in this respect--A novel that has been serialized in a widely
circulated magazine does not sell well when published as a book. But
other publishers say that serialization helps the sale of the book
by advertising it. One publisher told me that the ideal plan was for
a writer to serialize his first two novels, thus advertising himself
and his work, and getting paid for the advertising, and then stop
serializing, bringing out his subsequent novels in book form without
giving them to the magazine for publication.”
“What about the fiction of our day?” Kilmer asked Lincoln. “Is it
better than it was twenty-five years ago?”
“It’s just as good, anyway,” Lincoln replied. “There are more short
stories and they are better paid for than they used to be. The writers
are getting a squarer deal than they ever got before. If a writer has a
good story to tell he will find no difficulty in getting it before the
public. The editors are more eager than ever to discover and encourage
young writers.
“Much of this talk about the lofty mission of the writer is nonsense. A
writer’s mission is simply to do as good work as he can, and that’s all
there is to it.
“As to those editors who are blamed for insisting that authors
continue to write a certain kind of story--well, we must remember that
the editor is merely the interpreter of the public. He knows what the
public wants and the public wants what they know to be the author’s
best work. Editors ask me for Cape Cod stories, but I get many more
requests for Cape Cod stories from the public. People write to me
almost every day telling me to stick to Cape Cod. So I can’t blame the
editors.
“While I was working in a bank I wrote ‘Cap’n Eri,’ giving my evenings
and Sundays to it,” Lincoln went on. “After it was published I
gradually gave up my editorial work, going to the office at first three
days a week, then two days a week, then not at all. Since that time
I have devoted all my time to writing. Now I write novels instead of
short stories most of the time--I have written only two short stories
in a year and a half.”
Lincoln mentioned with amazement the industry of one of the most
popular and highly-paid of modern writers of the time who sometimes
wrote for fifteen hours a day. “When I have worked four or five hours,”
he said, “I think that I have done a good day’s work.”
“What do you think of the custom of dictating fiction?” Kilmer asked
Lincoln in the interview.
“I tried it,” replied Lincoln, “But I had to give it up. I like to
write with a pencil. I correct as I go along. I change a sentence
perhaps a dozen times, and then I let it stand--I don’t revise the
complete story. And that is a hard thing to do in dictating. But I know
there are writers who get the best results by dictating their work.
James did this--he dictated, whether or not he got his best results
that way--and Thackeray dictated most of ‘Esmond’.”
Lincoln’s interview with Kilmer took place in December, 1917. Not
long afterward young Kilmer went off to war as a member of the Rainbow
Division and gave his life for his country on the battlefields of
France, leaving his wife and four small children behind. Had he lived
the full span of life he would have undoubtedly himself written an even
greater chapter in the annals of American letters.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was Joe Lincoln’s proudest boast that he was a Yankee and a Cape
Codder. In an article in the American Magazine in July, 1919, he
said, “I am a Yankee--I was born on Cape Cod which even a prejudiced
observer will concede to be within the boundaries of Yankee Land--and
my ancestors on both sides of the house since 1650 or there-abouts,
were Yankee, too. For thirteen or fourteen years I lived among the Cape
Yankees and, after that, divided my time between them and the Boston
variety. At present (1919) I am a New Jerseyman in the winter months
but I hasten back to the Cape just as soon as the early June breezes
begin to smell fresh and salty sweet; when leaning over the rail of
the ferryboat in New York harbor, the dirty water around New York City
begins to remind me of a beach where the water isn’t dirty.
“In all my forty odd years of experience with Yankees I do not remember
ever having met one who habitually whittled. I have, of course, known
some who whittled occasionally while they were making a ‘bow’n arrer’
or a boat for one of the children. But I never knew of one who whittled
while he was making a trade. And I know very few now-a-days who chew
tobacco. In fact, I have seen more tobacco chewing in the South than I
ever saw on Cape Cod. And I have known fewer still who were habitually
swindlers. As to their ‘shrewdness’--well, what is this so-called
Yankee shrewdness, anyway?
“It must exist, or at least some trait or traits must exist which
give to the New Englander the peculiar reputation he has borne for so
long. I think it, or they, does, or do, exist. I think there is such a
quality in the New England Yankee as a class. But it isn’t propensity
to cheat or swindle. Let’s see if we can get at what it is.
“We’ll dismiss in the beginning all such moss-grown yet ever-green
yarns as those of the Connecticut maker of wooden nut-megs, of the
Maine man who put green spectacles on his horse so that the animal
‘would eat excelsior’ thinking it was grass.
“These are ancient and decrepit relics of the swindle idea and they
were, and always were, lies, anyhow.
“There are plenty of crooks and rascals in New England,” Lincoln
went on to say, “but there are also plenty in the West, South, and
elsewhere. They are not respected anywhere, neither are they typical,
thank goodness, of their localities.
“Another characteristic of Yankee shrewdness, it seems to me, is the
faculty of observing and putting the results of observation to use. An
example of this,” said Lincoln, “is the observation by Cape Codders of
the cranberry which grew one hundred and fifty years on the Cape in a
wild form amid the sand dunes. One day a Cape Codder, noticing that the
cranberry grew best in sand, began experimenting and now the Cape Cod
cranberry brings the highest price in U. S. markets.”
Lincoln loved to tell stories about Cape Cod skippers, not only in
his books and magazine articles and stories, but whenever he got the
chance in conversation. One of his favorite stories was about a race
between a Cape Cod captain and an English master in two barks in the
Mediterranean. By bluff and shrewd observation of the wind the Cape
Cod skipper sailed his ship under scant canvas as if expecting a gale
during the day. The other skipper, observing that his opponent was
being cautious, figured that a gale was due and followed the Cape
Codder’s example. When night came the Cape Cod skipper crowded all the
canvass possible on his bark and left his rival far behind. This was an
example of Yankee shrewdness which Lincoln delighted to point out.
Lincoln loved to tell of the various characteristics of Cape Cod sea
going men in many different varieties of stories.
“The old sea captains of Provincetown were tremendously patriotic,”
Lincoln declared in a newspaper interview.
To stamp this point indelibly on his interviewer’s mind he resorted to
one of his beloved anecdotes.
“An old sea captain had his ship gaily bedecked with flags as it lay at
anchor in a foreign port.
“‘What’s the occasion of the decorations?’ inquired a British Consul,
as he stepped aboard.
“‘Why, this is the 17th of June, the anniversary of Bunker Hill’,
replied the captain.
“‘But why in the world should you Yankees celebrate that event?’ said
the Britisher. ‘You know we were in possession of that hill when the
battle was over.’
“The old tar leaned forward and tapping the consul’s shirt front with
his forefinger drawled.
“‘Yes, but who is in possession of the hill now?’”
In another example of Yankee shrewdness and judgment Lincoln told the
story of the slick real estate salesman who tried to do an old captain
a favor by selling him real estate of great value.
Said the old captain to Lincoln after having thoroughly squelched the
slicker: “When a perfect stranger is so ever lastin’ anxious to give
you a bite of his apple that he shoves it between your teeth, look out
for the worm.”
Still another yarn which Lincoln liked to spin was the story of the
Cape Cod captain who, after returning home from a long sea voyage, was
besieged by the town “dead beat” for a handout. The captain sent the
poor unfortunate what he thought he most needed--a cake of soap!
CHAPTER SIX
It would require many pages to tell the separate story of the success
of each one of Joe Lincoln’s fifty odd books. However, to mention a few
beginning with “Cap’n Eri,” published in 1904, “Petticoat Pilot” was
converted for motion pictures in 1910, and “Shavings,” which appeared
in Boston as a play in 1920, will give some of the highlights of his
early success. In the beginning, the immediate and lasting success of
“Cap’n Eri,” which was a best seller, enabled him to build a colonial
house at Hackensack, New Jersey, near his friend Sewell Ford and a
summer home at Chatham, Cape Cod. As the royalties from this first book
began to pile up the money assured him release from financial worry
so that he could keep on with his writing on an uninterrupted scale.
In 1912 the Lincolns lived for a while in England, traveled on the
continent and visited Switzerland. Later Lincoln traveled about the
United States delivering lectures on his “Cape Cod Folks” or giving
readings from his own books which followed the same unerring formula
and gratified a very large public.
“It would be very hard for me to write a long story which should end
dismally,” Mr. Lincoln once said. “It is only too true that stories in
real life frequently end that way, but I don’t like my yarns to do so.
It is fair to presume that in whatever books I may hereafter write, the
hero and the heroine will be united, virtue rewarded and vice punished,
as has happened in those for which I am already responsible.”
As a comedy, “Shavings,” the book and stage play which opened in
Boston as a comedy at the Tremont Theater and later ran on Broadway,
created quite a stir among the people at his old home on Cape Cod.
The play opened in New York on February 16, 1920. Few if any Cape Cod
sons had become so famous as “Joe.” His name was on every tongue and
his book discussed throughout the length and breadth of the Cape. It
became rumored around that the Jed Winslow of “Shavings” and the chief
character in the comedy, was a real person; that the study was taken
from real life.
As a result, Mr. Lincoln was besieged by inquiries (according to a
newspaper story of the day) as to who the person really was. Each
maker of toys along Cape Cod claimed the distinction and demanded
acknowledgment. Lincoln had a problem in settling the affair. He
admitted at the time that Jed Winslow was pretty nearly alive and in
the flesh. That is, that the character was based largely on an actual
personage, but he didn’t dare tell who the man was for fear of the
storm the information would arouse. For this reason he held off telling
the name of the man. As a result the Cape was all “hetup” in expectancy
over the revelation.
But the identity of Jed Winslow was not the only angle discussed in
connection with Lincoln’s play. Because the toy windmills made by Jed
were of paramount importance as exploited in the comedy an interesting
discussion as to who originated the idea and how the first windmill
came to be made began to sweep the Cape. There were various versions
as to the beginnings of the industry which exists even today. Lincoln
received many letters from all over the United States asking about the
origin of the toys and Lincoln endeavored to ascertain the facts but
there were so many conflicting stories he was puzzled.
All traditions seemed to agree on one point, however. That was, that
the first windmill was made without any idea that the manufacture and
sale of these toys would ever become, as it did, a big and profitable
field.
According to the general report, a Cape Cod boat builder was the first
to devise the toy windmill. He made it in his leisure hours as a
plaything for his child. Other children clamored for them and he made
more. Then, summer visitors wanted them for their children, and the man
began making them and selling them. The demand for them increased to an
extent that he abandoned boat building and devoted his time exclusively
to turning out these toys and he developed a profitable business.
According to newspaper reviews of 1910 “A Petticoat Pilot,” which was
converted into a motion picture, starred Vivian Martin, who appeared
in the leading role. The picture had its first showing at the Modern
Theatre in Boston during the week of February 3 and received fine
notices in the Boston papers.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As a poet Joe Lincoln excelled as well as in prose. Since his first
successful attempts at writing were in verse and his first book was a
book of poetry it is only fitting that he should also be remembered as
a poet.
The following poem, which was among the many published in newspapers
all over the country, appeared in the Boston Herald on January 31, 1915.
“I remember when a youngster, all the happy hours I spent
When to visit Uncle Hiram in the country oft I went;
And the pleasant recollection still in memory has a charm
Of my boyish romps and rambles round the dear old-fashioned farm.
But at night all boyish fancies from my youthful bosom crept,
For I knew they’d surely put me where the ‘comp’ny’ always slept,
And my spirit sank within me, as upon it fell the gloom
And the vast and lonely grandeur of the best spare room.
Ah, the weary waste of pillow where I laid my lonely head!
Sinking like a shipwrecked sailor, in a patchwork sea of bed,
While the moonlight through the casement cast a grim and ghastly glare
O’er the stiff and stately presence of each dismal hair-cloth chair;
And it touched the mantle’s splendor, where the wax fruit used to be,
And the alabaster image Uncle Josh brought home from sea;
While the breeze that shook the curtains spread a musty, faint perfume
And a subtle scent of camphor through the best spare room.
Round the walls were hung the pictures of the dear ones passed away,
‘Uncle Si and A’nt Lurany,’ taken on their wedding day;
Cousin Ruth, who died at twenty, in the corner had a place
Near the wreath from Eben’s coffin, dipped in wax and in a case;
Ears askew and somewhat cross-eyed, but with fixed and awful frown,
Seeming somehow to be waiting to enjoy the dreadful doom
Of the frightened little sleeper in the best spare room.
Every rustle of the corn-husks in the mattress underneath
Was to me a ghostly whisper muttered through a phantom’s teeth,
And the mice behind the wainscot, as they scampered round about,
Filled my soul with speechless horror when I’d put the candle out.
So I’m deeply sympathetic with some story I have read
Of a victim buried living by his friends who thought him dead;
And I think I know his feelings in the cold and silent tomb,
For I’ve slept at Uncle Hiram’s in the best spare room.”
Sometimes Joe Lincoln would write little verses on the fly-leaves
of his books which he sent to his friends whenever a new volume was
published. One of these verses went:
“Here’s to the good old days of yore,
The days of Old Lang Syne,
When your box stall was down the hall,
Just three doors off from mine.”
That Joe Lincoln loved life and had a wonderful sense of humor is
reflected not only in his poetry but in his books. His ability to see
the funny side and to make his readers chuckle with laughter as they
explored the pages of his works was quite evident. When he described
“Aunt” this or “Uncle” that the reader was often reminded of some
relative in his own family whose characteristics were much the same as
a Lincoln character.
When asked by a reporter in 1920 what his avocation or hobby was
Lincoln replied, “Hum, well, I don’t know. I play a lot of golf and I
am much interested just now in a model of a full-rigged ship which an
old sailor near Boston is building for me. I don’t know who is getting
the most fun out of it, he or I. Went down to see it the other day in a
snow storm, and it’s getting along nicely. It will be fully equipped,
all right, even to the galley-stove; but I don’t know whether I will
have sails put on it or not. They get yellow with age, you know.
“It will have the name of my father’s ship, ‘The Mist’, in which both
my parents sailed all over the world.”
It is easy to imagine the scenes Joe’s parents witnessed before his
birth, of the harbors in which they must have dropped anchor, of
typhoons in the China Sea, and the hurricanes blowing due east from
South America. Think of the storms in the North Atlantic, the cocoanut
palms along African sands and the wild monkeys of Honduras. And then a
return to the austere, tree shorn stretches of Cape Cod. With such a
family background it is little wonder that Lincoln in later years was
so prompted to write of the people he knew in his early life and the
sea which was in his family history and in his own blood.
“I write of village life,” said Lincoln quietly as he was interviewed
by a reporter from the old Boston Transcript in December, 1924. “I
know the characteristics and natures of these people. I began using
a Cape village for my background, and I continue to. After my short
stories became more and more successful, a certain New York publisher
sent for me and suggested that I string along a series of incidents and
make out of them a full length novel. I was reluctant at first. Then I
tried it, but I couldn’t do the work as he planned. I had to write the
whole manuscript over again. Finally the novel appeared in 1904. It was
called ‘Cap’n Eri’.”
“It takes me from six to eight months to do a novel,” Lincoln went on.
“Of course, like all writers, I get fearfully despondent, think the
story is very poor, not worth telling, or even planning. And then after
a time it is finished. The head of a New York publishing house once
told me that it seemed to him as if all novels were written in the same
way. First they were pushed up and up and up.” He gestured effectively.
“Then there came a point where they went gradually down, ending at
about the level at which they started. I think he was right. Other
authors tell me they have exactly the same moods of depression that I
have suffered. One great fear which always comes when you have written
as many novels as I have is the horror of writing yourself out. You
keep on asking yourself, ‘have I anything more to say?’ For an author
must drop his pen before the public begins to drop his books.”
While this interview took place in 1924, Lincoln of course, had no way
of knowing how long he could keep on turning out his books for he had
yet to continue his career for twenty years, turning out a book a year
of which the public never tired.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Friendship is built on shared experiences, be they of the mind, the
heart or the soul.” Perhaps that is why Joe Lincoln counted his friends
by the tens of thousands. For forty years as a writer he shared the
greatest adventure of all with the world--the adventure of living.
“He placed that adventure in New England, mostly on Cape Cod and he
found it chiefly among the people of the little towns, sometimes
inland, sometimes against the constant wash of the sea. But whatever he
was, to read him is to be one with his people, to share their laughter
and tears, to participate as no bystander could in their affairs; to
relish at first hand the homely wisdom and pithy wit which permeated
his pages and to identify experience, thought and feeling with one’s
own.”--Thus wrote Alice Dixon Bond, literary editor of the Boston
Herald, in an interview with Joe Lincoln in September of 1941. Further
describing her visit with Lincoln, she wrote:
“It was one of those rare September days when summer lingers in the
soft haze of a cloudless horizon and the warm sun turns garden and
field into a riot of brilliant color. The sea was a magnificent blue
ribbon around our world, held in place here by great sand dunes topped
with gently waving grasses.
“Mr. Lincoln sat contentedly puffing his pipe, gazing across the
nodding heads of flowers to the line of surf along the shore to where
Portugal was lifting her head from the sea, if we had the magic eyes to
see her.
“We were seated in the sun porch of his house at Chatham, a Cape Cod
house of gracious rooms and spacious views, filled with the treasures
he and Mrs. Lincoln had collected, and I had been asking him about his
newest book.
“‘No,’ he said, ‘I do not feel that realism and sordidness are
synonymous terms. I have wanted to tell of the people I have known.
By that I don’t mean that I draw my characters from life, for I most
certainly do not. If I did, I might hurt someone’s feelings. I draw
their characteristics from people I have known. I believe that most
people want to be decent according to their lights and capacities. I
never could write a crusader book, for the extreme reformer sees only
one side. There is always an excuse for any action, or if there is
not, we can find one. Life contains both laughter and sorrow and to me
one is as real as the other. I have chosen the cheerful side because
I would much rather make people cheerful and keep myself cheerful at
the same time. I think tolerance is essential. I have written of the
average man, for it is the average man who is the backbone of the
nation.’
“Joe Lincoln loved the Cape, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t
laugh at its peculiarities. And he made his reader laugh with him until
finally he created a world of laughter.
“The world owes Ripley Hitchcock,” according to Mrs. Bond, “a vast
debt, for it was he, back in the early days of Joe’s career, who
convinced young Lincoln that he could write a novel. Hitchcock was also
the man who discovered David Harum.
“‘I could go through the Cape,’ Lincoln said, ‘and find a great many
mean people, as one could anywhere for that matter, but I haven’t.’
In that fact lies one of the greatest charms in the Lincoln books.
For they have kindness in them. His work is not brash or contemptuous
or arrogant. His people are his readers’ people, impelled by the same
longings, harried by the same troubles; and if they prove to have feet
of clay, well--Joe managed, in one way or other, to get them sea boots
in which to weather the storm of life.”
During the interview Lincoln talked of the history of the Cape, of the
great fortunes which were made there. Many Cape Cod men were in the
revolution, but the war of 1812 affected that section more directly
when it fell under the blockade of New England’s seaboard. There was a
big frigate trapped in Provincetown harbor, and another in Nantucket,
and sloops patrolled the coast. Salt was one of the great businesses
of the day. Chatham alone had twenty-three salt works. But during the
blockade, Lincoln said, one authority states that two hundred thousand
bushels of that necessity remained static there.
After his son Freeman was born the Lincolns moved to New Jersey, and
later moved to a lovely home in Villa Nova, Pennsylvania. But the Cape
reclaimed Joe Lincoln and at the time of the interview in question
he was making his official residence at Chatham and he had again
become a legal resident of Massachusetts. This was in 1941. Lincoln’s
Chatham home was a lovely place. A great hedge guarded the house from
the street while the back opened to a lovely garden with magnificent
views of the sea and sky. The living room reflected his taste and his
affection, for here was the special loveliness of Cape Cod. Hooked rugs
of varied pattern strew the floor: the chairs and couches were simple,
practical, graceful in line and eminently comfortable. A miniature
bureau, shining like satin, flanked a chintz-covered love seat stirring
one’s imagination as to its history before it came to rest there.
Everywhere in the room the lovely grain of maple and pine was polished
to a burnished gleam. A set of shelves supported a rare collection of
old glass. In this room, too, was a Tobey jug from the Widow Nolan’s
collection and among the lustre pitchers was a Leeds Lustre resist in
the Bird pattern.
In the room also was a Sandwich glass salt dish with a cover--the only
one Lincoln had ever seen--and the mantle was dotted with choice China
ornaments collected here and there throughout the Cape. Among them were
two extremely supercilious dogs with flower baskets in their mouths.
The dining room held some lovely pewter, together with baseline
Sandwich glass, and everywhere throughout the house were paintings and
models of old ships.
Above the living room mantle was Harold Brett’s painting of Silas
Bradford’s Boy, while another one hung in the Lincoln’s bedroom above
the fireplace.
Upstairs the rooms were filled with furniture made from maples which
would turn an envious collector a delicate mauve. The rooms opened into
a spacious hall. The Lincoln suite was at one end of the hall and here
were some of the choicest objects in the house.
To describe Lincoln’s collection of paper weights, his ships or his
glass would take hours, according to Mrs. Bond.
For recreation the author played golf or fished. In his dining room was
a carved bass done by E. Harwick, the nationally known carver of birds.
Since this was the first fish Mr. Harwick ever did, and because it was
done at his instigation, Joe Lincoln treasured it accordingly.
“The New Hope,” said Mrs. Bond in her Boston Herald article, written as
the result of the interview, “is his latest book and will be published
September 29 (1941). It is another collaboration with his son, Freeman,
their third. Counting these, his volumes of poetry, and his one play,
this will be Mr. Lincoln’s forty-sixth book.
“Time never hangs heavily on his hands,” continued the article. “He
can’t sleep, once the sun comes into his room, so he is an early riser.
After breakfast, which is a modest one (every two years he takes off
fifteen pounds, for somehow they do keep returning) he reads the Boston
Herald--he volunteered this. By nine o’clock he is at his desk.”
Lincoln’s afternoons were spent on the links or with rod and reel,
while the evenings were given over to reading and the enjoyment of
friends.
“What he has done for New England,” said Mrs. Bond, “is priceless for
he has made her traditions, her manners, and her people a part of
America’s memory, while his characters reach out into universal living.
“So New England does well to honor this grand old man (Lincoln was
about seventy-one at this time) whose spirit is one of the blithe ones
of the world and whose kindly knowledge has helped many.
“Joe Lincoln has truly ‘lived in a house by the side of the road and
been a friend to man’.”
Lincoln’s new book, “The New Hope,” was published in September, 1941.
The story took place in the typical but also mythical town of Trumet
during the British blockade in the summer of 1814.
As far as Trumet was concerned, the townsfolk did not have to worry
about starvation. “You can’t starve a population that lives where
the bays and coves squirm with fish.” But they could worry about
stagnation. Coop a sea-faring man up on land and something is bound to
happen which it did in Lincoln’s book. It was Jonathan Bangs who first
gave Captain Isaiah Dole his big idea. Jonathan and the captain had
seen plenty of fighting together aboard a privateer, and Jonathan had
come to Trumet with the captain while the latter recovered from his
wounds. The idea had to do with converting an idle merchant ship into
a privateer, and then slipping out to sea past the British blockade to
claim whatever prizes the water might offer.
But the sailing was not smooth--for anybody. First the British brought
their ships in and closed the mouth of the harbor. Then, although “The
New Hope” was a cooperative venture and every man concerned was a loyal
patriot and a friend of everyone else, secrets began to leak through to
the enemy. More than one thing went wrong. Suspicion reared its ugly
head. There were unexplained happenings, voices in the darkness, a
lovely girl who might be English, an almost disastrous fire, a British
spy, and a foul murder.
For good measure the Lincolns threw in some pretty keen Yankee
ingenuity, some bitter hatred, some kindly “characters,” a nice
romance, and a woman “whose tongue always had a full breeze astern of
it.”
“The New Hope” at times had all the excitement and violence of a
riptide, as mystery, adventure, love and patriotism joined their swift
currents, forming a turbulent, full-bodied and suspenseful book. It was
Joe and Freeman Lincoln at their best.
CHAPTER NINE
One good way to learn about a man and what he is actually like is to
talk about him with his friends. One of Lincoln’s close friends at
Chatham on the Cape was John Emery, owner and proprietor of the famous
“Swinging Basket” Gift Shop, located opposite the Post Office. It was
in the house now owned by Mr. Emery and which houses the gift shop
that Lincoln wrote his book, “Mary Gusta”. As has already been stated,
Lincoln was fond of fishing, according to Mr. Emery, and spent much of
his time at Cliff Pond and Long Pond in Plymouth fishing for black bass.
Lincoln was very cordial and enjoyed meeting the public although he was
said to be somewhat retiring at times. This was possibly due to his
creative make-up. However, that is purely speculation.
In an interview by your writer with Mr. Emery in 1947 in regard to his
association with Joe Lincoln, Emery recalled the following account of a
trip they once took together along the coast of Maine. The story will
serve to record Lincoln’s comparison with the Maine coast to that of
Cape Cod’s flat sandy shores. The story is in Mr. Emery’s own words:
“He and I had gone down the whole coast line from New York harbor
to Mt. Desert, taking side roads all the way down, Kennebunk, Cape
Porpoise, Harpswell, Baileys and Orrs Island; Pemaquid, Boothbay,
Newagenport, Clyde, Christmas Cove, all the points that made out from
the mainland as far as Rockland.
“From there we went to Bar Harbor and North East Harbor and in the late
afternoon we drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain.
“We had beautiful weather all the way, clear as a bell and the view
from the top of the mountain was really something.
“I am and always have been overly fond of Maine,” said Mr. Emery, “both
the woods and the shore and Joe remarked on my enthusiasm and asked if
I liked Maine more than I did the Cape.
“That was a poser which could not very well be answered with a yes or
no--I would rather live on the Cape but as the Maine coast, like that
of the Cape, has also many beautiful harbors and villages, it was hard
for me to reply.
“Pointing to the distant mountains and the islands that appeared almost
under our feet I asked if he didn’t feel that I was at least partly
right.
“Joe said ‘yes, to a certain extent you are, but I still prefer Cape
Cod.’
“Naturally he would, but to get his reaction I asked him to make a
comparison of the two places and this as well as I can remember was his
reply:
“‘After seeing all that we have seen I am convinced that this really
is a young man’s coast. The ruggedness and the abruptness of the tide,
even on calm days, means but one thing, and that is that it would take
a young man’s heart and muscles to fight it.’
“‘These seas even on comparatively calm days are to a certain extent,
vicious, far different to the seas at home.’
“‘The tremendous power of the seas are more evident to us here due to
the fact that there are no outer bars to break their force before they
strike the rocky shore.’
“‘If a ship is caught on a lee shore here and is lifted up and dropped
on the rocks, that is all that there is to it, while at the Cape there
is a chance to either get to the ship or shoot a line out to her.’
“‘There is a constant motion of the tides here--there doesn’t seem any
slack period.’ (Here he was referring to the constant surging of the
rockweed which we noted at the Gurnet Bridge on the way to Baileys
Island and also at Pemaquid--a constant heaving back and forth while
the surface showed no sign of a ripple.)
“‘I will grant you that for sheer beauty I know of no coast that could
beat it but it is rough and boisterous and yes, demanding and after a
man reached a certain age I really believe it would be tiring,’ Lincoln
continued.
“‘Even a young man would grow old quickly fighting these tides and seas
day in and day out--you can see it in the faces of the fishermen we
have met.’
“‘Take it all in all, for the year in and year out,’ said Joe, ‘I am of
the opinion that Cape Cod is preferable to the Maine coast.’
“‘I like the ocean in the summer,’ Lincoln went on. ‘It is quiet a
great part of the time on the Cape, seldom really boisterous and the
soft blue on a summer’s day is really something to remember.’
“‘I like the Cape marshes with their different greens, the cranberry
bogs with their lavender shades, the stillness of the woods when you
ride through at night, the beauty of Cape ponds and lakes, of which we
have so many.’
“‘There is a serenity of life there, particularly in the Fall of the
year, that would be hard to duplicate--a quietness that is appreciated
more and more as we grow older and a friendliness that is nurtured by
the peaceful surroundings. I love Cape Cod.’”
And so Joe Lincoln expressed his feelings for the Cape as an answer to
the query of his friend, John Emery.
CHAPTER TEN
It would seem that even well known authors like to read the books of
other men and Joe Lincoln confessed to an interviewer one day in 1929
that he was fond of mystery stories.
“It seems to me,” he said, “that the vogue of psychological novels is
just about done. Men especially like to read mystery stories because
they read for the story itself. There are some darned good mysteries
right here on Cape Cod.” At this point Joe Lincoln was off on the
telling of another one of his famous yarns.
“There was Captain Sam Harding,” he said, “a man about ninety-four
years old, I should say. He was the skipper, and his brother the mate
of a ship. One night Cap’n Sam dreamed that he and his brother had dug
up a chest of treasure beside a lily pond. When they came to port the
two of them dug in the spot and did find something--it was a big iron
kettle full of chains.”
“What sort of chains?” Lincoln was asked.
“Well, I don’t know. You see, Cap’n Sam said all this happened more
than seventy years ago, and he said they threw the kettle and chains
away, they were so mad that it wasn’t treasure.” Lincoln puffed on his
pipe for a moment chuckling.
“The Old Cape that I used to write about,” he went on, “is pretty well
gone by now, with a good many other things. The automobile and the
summer visitor have done it, I suppose. When I want one of my stories
now I have to dig up stuff that goes back ten or twelve years. There
aren’t any more deep water men. A few fishermen go out day by day and
one or two who go out on longer cruises, but the Cape is different now.
“In the old days a man would go out on a long voyage and sometimes he’d
never come back. Then his family was faced with all the possibilities
of what might happen to him--drawing lots in a small boat and all that
sort of business. Then there’d be a stone in the cemetery with ‘Lost at
Sea’ and the name of another good Cape Codder carved on it, and another
mystery.
“There was Cap’n Nathan Foster’s ship, lost at sea. One boat was picked
up, and two were lost. What happened nobody knows. You can only guess
at all sorts of unpleasant possibilities.
“And then there was Cap’n Josiah Knowles, a Brewster man and a second
cousin of mine. He was cast away with others on a deserted island and
they had to build themselves a boat from pieces of wood they found
using cocoanut fibre for sails. Cap’n Knowles said he’s never sailed
a boat that didn’t fly the American flag and he wouldn’t now, so they
made a flag from a sailor’s old blue shirt, a white altar cloth and
something red on Pitcairn’s Island, which they finally reached. And
they sailed two thousand miles in that little boat.
“I’ve always written about Cape Cod,” Lincoln told the reporter. “If I
wrote anything else people would feel they were getting ‘gypped’ when
they bought one of my books.”
“I don’t do any work in summer,” Lincoln told the interviewer in 1929.
“I’ve written one short story and I’m going to start a novel next
month--maybe. My son and I had a lot of fun writing a mystery yarn,
too. He wrote about his crowd, the younger set, and I wrote about my
Cape Codders and we worked the two crowds into one book.
“In 1913,” Lincoln went on, “I went over to England because I
wanted to put a Cape Codder in a foreign atmosphere and of course
I had to have something first hand. Well, we stopped at a place in
Buckinghamshire--oh, a delightful place. And then I wrote to my
publishers and said, ‘you needn’t expect any work out of me, I’m having
too good a time’.”
“Did you ever do newspaper work?” the reporter asked Lincoln.
“No, I never did, and that’s why you didn’t hear me say when I met
you, ‘well, well, I’m an old newspaper man myself.’ Most of my friends
have done newspaper work, but I never did. I just wrote about Cape Cod
all my life.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Joe Lincoln always had a word of encouragement for embryo writers,
who were “starting out” in the battle of life. Lincoln himself was an
author who went through the mill. No daring expose or risque tour de
force gave him his start on the road to literary fame. He was first,
last and always a good workman. The technique of his craft he learned
through a long and hard apprenticeship, during which he accomplished
the feat indicative of an iron morale--that of working on a novel in
his spare time while working for his daily bread.
“One hears many theories advanced by young writers who are trying to
break in,” Mr. Lincoln once told a reporter in 1926. “But perhaps the
most illogical one, and the one most disastrous to success, is that
idea that ‘it takes pull’ to get started. It is easy to see why the
idea should receive circulation. Young writers who lack a knowledge of
technique cannot understand why their stories should be refused while
others, which seem to be no better, are published with great success.
Men who are discouraged naturally like to find a reason for their
failures which is beyond their control.
“There is every reason why every editor of every magazine should be
simply burning up to find new writers of promise. This is the day of
keen competition between publishers of magazines and books and none
of them want to let a good thing slip through their fingers and go
to somebody else. Furthermore, there is financial incentive. It is
not necessary to pay a new man as much as an author of established
reputation. Then there is the perfectly human instinct of the
collector--the desire to make a discovery. A publisher likes to look
back and recall that he discovered an author who later rises to
eminence. With all these things in his favor, the young writer who is
a hard, painstaking worker, and has something to say, should have no
trouble in finding a market in the natural course of events.”
Mr. Lincoln paused and indicated with his cigar a newly completed
formal garden on which the doors of the sun parlor opened. “You always
have to work hard and build well, always with the final effect in
mind--and then sometimes you have to wait. Thoughts like flowers have
to grow.
“There are all sorts of examples of books by unknown authors receiving
successful publication. Perhaps one of the most successful cases was
that of David Harum, by a man who knew Ripley Hitchcock and accepted it
for publication by the D. Appleton Company. That manuscript had been
sent around and rejected by all the publishers in town. It was not in
the form in which it was finally published. There was more about the
love affair of the young couple in the book, which at times threatened
to dwarf the character of David. Hitchcock saw the possibilities of the
character and under his direction the whole book was changed. Chapter
after chapter about the young people was taken out entirely--I guess
20,000 words or so were cut, and the story of David’s horse trade,
which was sunk in the middle of the book, was put at the start. That
book sold over a million copies, but ‘pull’ didn’t sell one of them.”
Lincoln went on to point out that the revamping of “David Harum” was
an illustration of the value of publisher’s suggestions. When Lincoln
himself started out to write a book, he first took his idea to his
publisher and talked it over, according to the story which the reporter
wrote in the Boston Herald on June 27, 1926. Together Lincoln and his
publisher talked it all over. Together they discussed the central
characters. These people in his books Lincoln knew well. They were not
as some people inferred, absolutely real, real people in the flesh.
They were real, however, in Lincoln’s mind.
It would have been interesting to sit in on one of these discussions
with his publisher. Doubtless they were of further value in “setting”
the character in the author’s mind, for after talking of him with
another person the character’s personality became more complete.
Once Lincoln had decided on his characters and plot, the author
explained, he went over the book with the publisher, chapter by
chapter, blocking out the prejudiced novel from title page to the end.
Then the contract for publication was signed. Next Lincoln returned
home to Chatham and started writing, or if it was in the winter, he
did his writing at his other home in Hackensack, New Jersey, where
he was then living. Lincoln, who did his writing in the morning,
locked himself in his room after an early breakfast, according to the
interviewer and worked revising as he wrote. Like Booth Tarkington,
Lincoln had no use for a typewriter for creative writing. At about one
o’clock he was through for the day.
“There is nothing complex about getting somewhere in the writing game
if the beginner really has the stuff,” Lincoln said. “The beginner
should simply write the best story he can in the best way he can, and
then send it to a magazine he would like to see it printed in. Then if
he gets it back, let him send it to the next magazine of his choice.
That’s all I can tell anyone. Of course there are many people who
think it takes pull to get a manuscript read. There are stories among
the readers in every publishing house of various methods adopted by
authors to determine in its return whether or not the manuscript has
been read. Writers will put hairs and little slips of paper between the
pages or turn down corners of the pages. Usually the readers replace
these devices. If the manuscript is unsuitable, and is returned, the
publishers often get angry letters from the author, in which they write
triumphantly, ‘just as I thought--you don’t even read the manuscripts
that come in from unknown people. I turned down page twenty-five of my
story, and it came back that way. It just goes to show that nothing but
drag counts with you.’
“It is often unnecessary for a reader to go farther than the first page
to discover that the story is worthless. If it starts in an impossible
manner with poor grammar and spelling, it is usually evident with a few
glances that it cannot be used.
“All manuscripts are given a fair trial by reputable magazines. There
is a sort of glorified sifter to separate the wheat from the chaff--a
graduated system of readers. We will say that a magazine receives a
thousand short stories a week. These are attacked by the first group
of readers--what you might call the first loosely-meshed sieve, who
are supposed to take out the worst of the bunch. Out of this thousand
there are perhaps a hundred stories by well known authors. These are
sent ahead immediately to the higher group of readers, because it is
assumed that whatever these men write can at least be considered. Then
the manuscripts sent in by well known literary agents are sent along
to the higher group. These agents are used by many of the best known
writers, and often have reputations for handling only high grade work.
They seldom handle the work of a newcomer without an established name,
unless they have great confidence in his ability. They save the author
all the trouble of sending his stories around to the magazines. They
send them out, get them back if they are rejected, and send them out
again and again, each time using a fresh cover, and retyping the first
and last pages if they become worn in transit.
“The remaining stories are gone through by the first group of readers,
and the ones which are obviously impossible are sent back with a
rejection slip. Some which seem promising but cannot be used in the
form submitted are accompanied by a letter with a suggestion or two
about the man’s future work. Those which seem possible are sent on
to the second group of readers, and they go through another weeding
process. Naturally a great many stories go back, for the magazine may
not be able to use more than five out of the thousand submitted.
“Finally the small group of stories which have survived are placed on
the desk of the editor, or his assistant. Final selections are made.
Men who publish magazines must get a living and naturally the needs of
the magazine are considered and not the needs of the author. The same
story which could not possibly be used in November might be just the
thing needed in August.”
In Lincoln’s early days at the writing game, there was an interesting
incident which illustrates his trying to break in. He had been trying
for a long time to place his stories with a magazine of national scope,
but story after story was returned.
“I nearly made it,” he recalled, “but not quite. Soon after my first
book came out I happened to meet the editor on the street. He had seen
my book. ‘Why don’t you ever send us any of your stories?’ he asked.
‘I’m sure you write the type of story I want for my magazine. Why in
the world haven’t you sent us some?’ After I got back my breath I gave
him a story I had in my pocket. He was going to Boston and said he
would read it on the train. Later he accepted the story.
“You see,” said Lincoln, “if he had seen my story at all he had seen
it in a bunch of others and when he saw my book it looked much more
important to him. A typewritten manuscript in a pile doesn’t look
nearly as attractive as a book you pick up in a leisure moment to read.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
One of the last articles to come from the pen of the beloved Joe
Lincoln before death beckoned him from the Cape Cod he loved so deeply,
appeared in the Boston Herald on April 2, 1944. In his article, which
was written during war time, Lincoln paid glowing tribute to the
Chatham “Victory Market,” one of the Cape town’s patriotic war efforts.
The article by Lincoln was as follows:
“A Cape Cod Woman Had An Idea.
“There is nothing extraordinary in this statement as it stands. Most
Cape Cod women have ideas and as any Cape Codder, male or female native
or adopted, will take pride in telling you, the majority of these ideas
are good ones. So the fact that Mrs. Francis G. Shaw of Chatham, the
town at the elbow of the Cape, had an idea, and a good idea, is only
what might have been expected.
“But this particular idea, and its development during the past two
years, has tucked a new feather in Chatham’s hatband and Chatham
residents are strutting a bit in consequence.
“The feather is the Chatham ‘Victory Market’. Mrs. Shaw, like every
patriotic American, was eager to do whatever she could to aid her
country in its struggle to preserve the American way of thinking and
living. She wanted to do her part. She wanted to help.
“There were various ways in which that help might be given. Many
ways and all good ones. The purchase of war bonds, of course, and
contributions to the Red Cross and to the various organizations formed
to make easier the lot of our sons and daughters serving in or with the
armed forces at home or overseas. (Lincoln’s only son himself a major
in the Army was at this time serving overseas). All these were worthy
of help and each needed help. Mrs. Shaw wanted to do her part to aid
these and intended to do it.
“It did, however, occur to her that, aside from these demands of
wartime, there were other causes, equally deserving, which, she felt,
were in danger of being more or less neglected because of the strain
put upon the average pocket-book by louder calls. For example: each
year, since its establishment, there has been a ‘drive’ for the Cape
Cod Hospital at Hyannis. The Hospital drives have met with encouraging
response from the people of the Cape, who fully realize the fine work
done by the institution. There are, also, drives for the Boy Scouts,
and other philanthropic and public-spirited agencies.
“These appeals would continue to be made, they must be; but every
such drive, no matter how deserving its intent, would be just another
‘drive’, and with the pressure of taxes and bond purchases and calls
for wartime aid, it was certain to be more difficult to keep up public
interest in them. Mrs. Shaw wondered if there was any way in which she
could coax even a little extra money from the purses of her fellow
townspeople and their visitors without those coaxed being aware of
the coaxing. She wondered if she could devise some plan which was not
a drive, nor a request for a contribution, but where the individual
parting with his or her money got a return for the outlay. If she
could do that the sum resulting might be distributed among the various
philanthropic organizations, those active in times of peace as well as
during the war. It might--probably would--be a small sum, but it would
be something--and every something helped.
“From Mrs. Shaw’s thinking and wondering was born the VICTORY MARKET,
located on Main Street in Chatham. She calls it a ‘Glorified Rummage
Sale.’ Not by any means a brand-new idea, she says, but just an
elaboration of an old one.
“Every well-regulated and thrifty New England home has an attic and
practically every attic is a storage receptacle for articles discarded
by the family as of no present use, but too good to be thrown away. The
fact that these articles were discarded by the family owning them did
not, of course, necessarily imply that some of them might not be found
desirable by other families, if they--the articles--could be displayed
for sale at low prices in some sort of central shop or market.
“‘Well,’ thought Mrs. Shaw, ‘why not?’
“The use of a vacant building was obtained without cost. A call for
‘discards’ was issued and the response was prompt and gratifying. In
they came: clothing, kitchen utensils, andirons, vases, pictures,
‘genuine antiques,’ Currier and Ives prints for the walls, shoes and
galoshes for the feet, caps for the head, umbrellas, music-boxes, eel
spears, fishing tackle, plaster statuettes, rat traps.
“An assortment as varied as the list of gifts which the ‘Pale Pilgrims
from across the sea’ brought to Pasha Bailey Ben in Gilbert’s ‘Bab
Ballad’:”
‘They brought him onions strung on ropes,
And cold boiled beef and telescopes,
And balls of string and shrimps and guns,
And chops and tacks and hats and buns.’
“Mrs. Shaw was on hand when the Victory Market opened and she has been
on hand, with very few exceptions, at least part of each day since. One
of the town ladies takes her place to sell when she is absent. Some
generous soul donated a second-hand stove and someone else agreed to
keep it supplied with fuel. As the market is open in the winter, as
well as in the summer, these donations are highly appreciated. A sample
of almost everything comes to the Victory Market to be sold and, as a
matter of fact is sold, for some price, sooner or later.
“The Victory Market opened in Chatham on March 2, 1942. During these
two years it has taken, in cash, about $5,842.10.
“A pretty fair sum. And this, remember, without asking for a single
cent. The articles sold were contributed, of course; but, as has been
said, they were, almost without exception, of no value to the person or
persons contributing. ‘Discards,’ that is all.
“There may be other victory markets. Certainly there are other rummage
sales and gift shops operated for charitable purposes. The cities
have theirs, of course. Chatham, however, is not a city, but a town
of approximately 2000 permanent residents and an indefinite number of
summer visitors. And the Chatham experiment has proved that Mrs. Shaw’s
idea was a good one and that she and her backers and helpers are doing
their part as Americans.
“The Chatham Victory Market, we think, deserves appreciation,
encouragement and applause. Also--and why not?--imitation in other
communities.”
According to a newspaper report in the Boston Herald on February, 15
1948, a drive was being conducted by the Chatham Historical Society to
raise funds to build a Joseph C. Lincoln Memorial wing on the society’s
present home, the Atwood cottage on Sage Harbor Road. At this writing
this memorial is expected to be completed during the early summer of
1949.
Initial plans for the memorial to this author who immortalized Cape Cod
and its people in his works were for a general meeting room at the rear
of the society’s building, the oldest home built in Chatham. Plans were
for a room of twenty-four by eighteen feet with a one-story attic. The
room will accommodate about seventy-two persons.
The plans provided wall space for many fine old paintings and prints
that were here-to-fore unable to be displayed and also a portrait of
Lincoln that was contributed by the noted artist, Harold Brett.
Mrs. Lincoln and her son, Freeman Lincoln, have contributed a number
of complete hand written manuscripts of Lincoln’s books, including
“Shavings.” A collection of all the author’s first editions, a total of
52, including all the novels, poems and plays, have also been donated.
When completed this memorial should be one of the major points of
attraction for visitors to Lincoln’s home town--Chatham.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Joe Lincoln’s keen interest in anything having to do with the Cape was
expressed in the following letter to the editor of the Boston Traveler
on December 26, 1935, in which he wrote:
“The preserving of Cape Cod as Cape Cod is, in my opinion, a vitally
important subject for consideration by Cape people. We are adding to
our summer population each year. The great majority of the visitors to
our county have been attracted to it because of its simplicity, the
charm which is its own. There are thousands of seaside resorts, but
only one Cape Cod.
“It seems to me that every Cape Codder and lover of the Cape should
realize how important it is to save our towns and villages from
becoming mere copies of towns and villages elsewhere. We come to the
Cape in the summer to get away from all we remember and love Cape Cod
as it used to be, we love it as it now is. We do not want to be an
imitation of anything. An original is always better than a copy. And
this is not entirely a sentimental consideration.
“In my opinion for Cape Cod to lose its individuality would be very
disastrous from a business standpoint. Cape Cod all-the-year residents,
its shop-keepers and business men and hotel keepers, should, I am
convinced, do everything in their power to save the old buildings
and landmarks, to preserve the genuine Cape Cod flavor where it is
possible. They will profit materially by doing so, I am sure. I am a
Cape Codder born and bred, and even now I spend almost half of each
year on the Cape.
“I want to keep on doing so. My summer neighbors are, many of them,
importations--they came to the Cape almost casually, were attracted by
the charm and individuality I have mentioned, came again and again,
and, at last built homes here. And they are now as staunch lovers of
Barnstable County as the rest of us. They are the sort of people we
want here as summer residents; they bring their families here, they
spend their money here. If Cape Cod becomes something other than the
Cape Cod they know and love, they will continue to do none of those
things. So, when any movement is on foot to save and preserve the real
Cape Cod it should have the support of us all. Let’s get together
and work for that end. That the work will be worth working for I am
certain. This letter is longer than I meant it to be. I apologize for
the length but--well, you see, Cape Cod, its people, its welfare and
its future are pet subjects of mine.”
The removal of the oldest windmill on the Cape, a 300-year-old
structure at West Yarmouth, had set Joe Lincoln and the Cape Codders
thinking that it was about time for them to band together to save the
old landmarks of the Cape. The windmill which was bought by Henry Ford
was moved off the Cape to be added to his collection of Americana.
Joe Lincoln was appreciated by his neighbors in Massachusetts as
few other writers have been during their life time. On September 30,
1941, hundreds of his admirers attended a luncheon in his honor at the
Copley-Plaza and sponsored by the Boston Herald. The luncheon which
marked the publication of his book “The New Hope,” took place in the
ball room of the hotel with many noted speakers including his son
Freeman, Dr. Claude M. Fuess, headmaster of Phillips Andover Academy,
who was toastmaster, Governor Saltonstall, Mayor Maurice J. Tobin of
Boston, Alice Dixon Bond, Herald literary editor, and Joe Lincoln
himself. Dozens of other guests who attended made the list look like a
special edition of “Who’s Who”.
One of the interesting side lights which the affair brought out was
that the author himself did not have a complete set of his own books.
However, Harry M. Fletcher, head of The Traveler printing shop and
a rabid Lincoln fan and one of the first to make reservations for a
ticket to the luncheon disclosed that he had a complete set of Lincoln
books, something which few others on hand were able to boast.
According to newspaper reports of the affair the audience was as
typically New England as the characters Mr. Lincoln bequeathed in his
46 books since the publication of “Cape Cod Ballads” in 1902. Dr.
Fuess, the toastmaster, read congratulatory messages from the governors
of the other New England states and described Mr. Lincoln as “A prophet
not without honor in his own country.”
Personal tributes were extended by Governor Saltonstall on behalf of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Mayor Tobin for the city of
Boston. There was a table of Mr. Lincoln’s 1885 classmates at Williams
Grammar school in Chelsea, where the author edited a paper while in
school.
Freeman Lincoln, junior partner of his novelist father, made a
gracious speech which he concluded with delightful imaginations and
likened his “New England Conscience” to a game of bridge “before bridge
became blitzkrieg” in which the cautious player “reserved” his bid.
Lincoln told a number of amusing stories about the casual wit of New
Englanders and explained how he came to write about “Our People.” “When
I was a boy,” he said, “the favorite indoor sport in winter was talking
about the neighbors, so when I started to write I wrote about those
same neighbors.”
“Our casualness is salted with what we claim to be a special brand of
dry New England wit--a definite way of saying things.” And with that he
told a group of New England stories; one of the man in New Hampshire
running down hill because he was too lazy to hold back, another, of the
Vermont housewife whose husband hung himself before doing his chores,
and a tombstone on the grave of a prating wife which read “Quiet At
Last.”
Then in a serious vein he said, “It was so kind of the Boston Herald to
bring this group together. What can I say--nothing, I’m sure. I’ll try
to pack into two words what I am thinking and say from the bottom of my
heart, thank you.”
Governor Saltonstall said in part:
“The people of the Commonwealth--and I like to include myself among
them--read Mr. Lincoln’s books because he always writes a good story.
But that is only one reason. As we have grown older, we have realized
that a Joe Lincoln story has other and, perhaps, more important
qualities; an appreciation of the best and most enduring elements of
the New England way of life, an ability to find the good which is in
all of us. Mr. Lincoln, as you see, enjoys life, and he understands how
to pass that enjoyment on to his readers. Massachusetts has given a
great many writers to its reading public. But Joe Lincoln is the writer
who, more than any other, has given Massachusetts to its readers.”
Mayor Tobin entered a claim in his speech for Boston in the prestige of
the author, explaining that at one time Mr. Lincoln “was in business
in our city.” The Mayor urged Mr. Lincoln to “for our sake, please
continue to write your delightful stories, or we will be disappointed
if we are unable to find your books on the shelves of our libraries.”
Alice Dixon Bond, literary editor of The Herald, wound the titles of
Mr. Lincoln’s books into an engaging and cleverly concise story, which
can readily be followed by readers of Mr. Lincoln.
She said: “He has gone back to ‘Cape Cod Yesterdays’ and found ‘The
Ownley Inn’ in ‘Our Village’ which is situated near the ‘Rugged
Water’ of ‘Fair Harbor’. ‘All Alongshore’ you will find ‘Partners of
the Tide’, ‘Cap’n Eri’, ‘Mr. Pratt’, ‘Keziah Coffin’, ‘Galusha the
Magnificent’ and even ‘Queer Judson’.
“When ‘Storm Signals’ flew, ‘The Depot Master’ and ‘The Postmaster’
and sometimes ‘Dr. Nye’ would gather at ‘Cy Whittaker’s Place’, and
‘Mr. Pratt’s Patients’ would be left to the tender mercies of ‘Cap’n
Warren’s Ward’. ‘The Big Mogul’ of the town was ‘The Aristocratic
Miss Brewster’ although ‘Aunt Lavinia’ owned ‘The Old Home House’ and
considered everyone else ‘Back Numbers’.
“It was a town of political differences, of obstinacies and
generosities, of strong loyalties and clannish insularity. ‘The
Rise of Roscoe Paine’ was attributed by some to ‘The Peel Trait’ of
perseverance but others thought it due to ‘Thankful’s Inheritance’,
which was so helpful in ‘Extricating Obadiah’ from the clutches of ‘A
Hall & Company’ and the machinations of ‘The Portygee’.
“When Christmas day drew near and the great ‘Head Tide’ could be seen
full and deep ‘Out of the Fog’, ‘Silas Bradford’s Boy’, who lived in
‘Blair Attic’ would walk with ‘Cap’n Dan’s Daughter’ along the curving
shore, letting their fresh young voices soar above the pounding surf in
old ‘Cape Cod Ballads’ or ‘Rhymes of the Old Cape’. He called her his
‘Storm Girl’, but when the wind was ‘Blowing Clear’ they would drop in
at ‘The Managers’ who were known as ‘The Woman Haters’, and there with
‘Shavings’ on the floor and ‘Kent Knowles, Quahaug’--he got his name
because of his trade--to join them, they would plan their future, full
of ‘The New Hope’ which the world needs so much.”
=Transcriber’s Notes=
Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOE LINCOLN OF CAPE COD ***
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