Images of Nineteenth Century Maine Farming in the Prose and Poetry of R.P.T. Coffin and C.A. Stephens
[In the following essay, Anderson explores Coffin's writings and those of another Maine author, C.A. Stephens, with regard to their "utility to historians. "]
Long before historians turned to matters of daily life as objects of inquiry, poets and novelists dealt with the essentials of the human condition. Authors often have searched for universal elements in the lives of our ancestors. The better poets and novelists offered their readers images that captured the essence of common people's lives. This literature, then, is an often untapped source for the historian trying to understand the experiences in earlier generations.
Life on a nineteenth-century Maine farm is a theme explored by a number of authors of both that century and ours. Two of the most entertaining and insightful writers on farm life were Robert P. Tristram Coffin and C. A. Stephens, both of whom have deep roots in Maine. The writings of Coffin and Stephens illuminate, sometimes in startling ways, farming in nineteenth-century Maine.
R. P. T. Coffin is best known as a poet, in part because he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for his volume of poetry Strange Holiness. However, poet is too thin a handle for a man who, in his nearly 50 books, also wrote biographies, novels, criticism, essays, and history. He served for 20 years on the Bowdoin College faculty. However we label him, Coffin wrote intimately of both the farm and the sea. He grew up on a saltwater farm outside of Brunswick, Maine, and both worlds fill his works. He did not merely write about farming and seafaring, he wrote as an insider would view these settings. Even though he wrote in the twentieth century, Coffin's images of nineteenth-century life are profoundly knowledgeable.
C. A. Stephens, on the other hand, was a nineteenth century writer. Born in 1844 in Norway, Maine, Stephens, like Coffin, grew up on a farm. He drew upon this experience in his work as a writer and editor for The Youth's Companion, a popular family magazine published in Boston. While Coffin was somewhat more readily accepted in literary circles, Stephens has usually been viewed as "just" a writer of juvenile stories, much like his early mentor, Elijah Kellogg. However, both writers wrote for popular audiences rather than for the critics. Both used a realistic style embellished with a touch of romanticism for rural life.
Whatever the literary merits of the works of either Coffin or Stephens, the utility of their work to historians need not be overlooked. They both provide us with another window on the past, and thus they serve as models for hundreds of regional authors whose nineteenth-century works are rich sources of historical material, sources that can be a delight to explore.
There are three themes of the farm existence in Maine that this paper explores. It is clear that Coffin and Stephens both knew of the same life, because each explored these three themes. Such complementary images from literary sources provide one way of assessing the historical validity of the ideas.
The first image of the nineteenth-century farm that is inescapable is that of diversity. While the specialization of twentieth-century agriculture leads us to acknowledge rather narrow agricultural occupations such as potato farmers or dairy farmers, their nineteenth-century counterparts were clearly farmers in a broader sense of the word. In a series of books based upon stories that first appeared in The Youth's Companion, C. A. Stephens related the...
(This entire section contains 4288 words.)
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details of farm life in Norway, Maine just after the Civil War.1 In the series, the protagonist's grandfather, affectionately known as the Old Squire, is a progressive farmer of some considerable success. The Old Squire's output included sheep, dairy, apples, vegetables, beans, honey, potatoes, corn, geese, hay, grain, ice (for the dairy), and wood products. Some of these were subsistence items and others were cash crops, but they all had a place in the yearly routine of the farm.
Such diversity was required for several reasons. Most obviously, markets were limited by transport costs, so farmers could not sell their produce if they relied on only one crop produced on a grand scale. Farmers could not reach markets sufficiently large to support specialization. More important, such diversity spread the risk of farming over several enterprises and spread labor more evenly over the year. Diversity was the word of the day, not only among enterprises, but within any enterprise itself. When Stephens' protagonist first arrives at his grandfather's farm as a young boy, his cousin Theodora shows him the apple orchard, among other parts of the farm:
"I am going to show you the good apple trees," she continued, and led the way through the orchard. "These three great ones, here below the garden wall, are Orange Speck trees; they are real nice apples for winter; and there is the Gillflower tree. Over here is the Early Sweet Bough; and that big one is the August Sweeting; and out there are the three August Pippins. All those down there toward the road are Baldwins and Greenings. Those two by the lane are None Such trees. These by the corn fields are four Sweet Harvey trees,' and next below them are two Georgianas. I learned all their names last year. But this one here by the currant bushes is a Sops-in-wine. Oh, they are so good! And they get ripe early, too, and so do the August Pippins and the Harveys and the August Sweetlings; they are all nice. Those small trees just below the barnyard fence are pears, Bartlett pears, luscious ones! and those vines on the trellises are the Isabella and Concord grapes; some years grapes don't get ripe here in Maine; but they did last year, pretty ripe, in October. (Stephens, When Life Was Young, 16-17)
A similar degree of diversity was maintained in the farm's grain production, which was not limited to corn.
After haying came grain harvest. There were three acres of wheat, four of oats, an acre of barley, an acre of buckwheat and three-fourths of rye to get in. The rye, however, had been harvested during the last week of haying. It ripened early, for it was the Old Squire's custom to sow his rye very early in the spring. . . . With the rye we always sowed clover and herdsgrass seed for a hay crop the following year. This we termed "seeding down." (Stephens, When Life Was Young, 247)
Since much of farming was for subsistence rather than for market, such diversity in feed grains provided the household a more diverse diet. Grains were held in storage on the farm and then milled as needed, with payment to the miller made in grain itself.
The diversity of the farm in Maine was opportunistic. The Old Squire cut birch logs for sale to a New York dowel manufacturer—Norway is in Maine's hardwood region, not the spruce-fir forest commonly associated with the state. In the farms that Coffin wrote about, the opportunities more often came from the sea than from the forest. In the book Portrait of an American Coffin created a fictionalized account of his father's life.2 A peripatetic man, Coffin's father could never quite settle on a homestead for the family after he had conquered a site. He was always looking for a new home site to challenge him. For several years the family tackled a farm on one of the more remote islands of Casco Bay which presented its own set of opportunities:
William [Coffin's father] was not contented with his island alone. The corks of shad nets were soon bobbing in the path of the June sun, miles out at sea. He seined the smelts in October and dipped them by lantern light as they leaped up along the rock stairway of Spinney's Creek in April nights. William's lobster buoys were soon thick around the island. He would pull fifty traps before breakfast. . . . He loved the smell of tar just as he loved the glow of phosphorescence turned up by his oars on a November night. Rain or shine, no matter what he did, his day was a symphony from the time he rose till he lay asleep on his bed. (Coffin, Portrait of An American, 59-60)
With this kind of diversity, life on the Maine farm was never dull.
Another opportunity for diversification that both Coffin and Stephens documented was bee keeping. Coffin's father, according to his son, became an expert at everything to which he put his hand or his mind. Bees were no exception.
William went in for bees. He made the hives and all himself, changing the models as years made him wiser. The whole field back of the kitchen orchard filled up with these tenement houses of workers he loved to have about him, perhaps because they were a kin to himself. He became an expert at handling the new swarms. The children were awed to see him take down a runaway swarm in a dip-net from a tall tree. He encouraged his wife to newer and larger flower-beds for their honey's sake. He came to grief only once; and that was because of one of those unforeseen panics that visit bees on occasion. That day remained marked in his children's memory for the sound of pans and kettles beaten for hours. It was high May, and two swarms departed to set up new housekeeping at the same time. The net went wrong with one of them. The bees separated from their mass and turned into burning bullets. Mrs. William saw her husband streak past the house and over the bank and throw himself into the bay. The dog Snoozer followed his master in. Later, Mrs. William took a dozen drowned bees from her husband's shirt. (Coffin, Portrait of An American, 118-19)
In order to keep bees, one had to hive a swarm in this manner, and the earlier in the year the better. Stephens tells a similar story of hiving a swarm early in the year.2 What he remembered most was the proverb on whether capturing this particular swarm was worth the effort.3
This was an early swarm, hence valuable. Gram repeated to us a proverb in rhyme which set forth the relative value of swarms.
A swarm in May is worth a load of hay
A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon
But a swarm in July is not worth a fly
July swarms would not have the time to lay up a store of honey during the season of flowers. (Stephens, When Life Was Young, 83)
Enterprising diversity obviously was a necessity, but one that contributed to a richness of life that changed with the seasons. Whether haying in July or cutting wood in March, putting up fruit preserves in summer or slaughtering a pig once the temperature was cold enough in November to keep fresh meat on the hook in the barn, each season of the year had its routine. It was a routine that could be scheduled by the calendar. The custom of the Old Squire was to begin haying the Monday after the Fourth of July, for example.
However, on the Maine farm, in particular, nearly all farm work revolved around the second image of nineteenth-century life—winter.
In both physical and psychological terms, winter was (and to some lesser extent remains) the dominant season in Maine, the one around which all other seasons revolved. Coffin referred to this dominance of winter in his deeply personal poem, "This is My Country,"
These are my people, saving of emotion,
With their eyes dipped in the Winter ocean
The lonely, patient ones, whose speech comes slow,
Whose bodies always lean toward the blow,
The enduring and the clean, the tough and the clear,
Who live where Winter is the word for year.4
R.P.T. Coffin has a whole book dedicated to chronicling the passage of seasons on the saltwater farm, a beautifully illustrated (by Coffin himself) folio called Coast Calendar. It is a no coincidence that he begin this work with the month January. It reflects the centrality of winter in Maine life.5
Winter was not an idle time on the Maine farm, but it was more relaxed than the short, frantic growing season during which chores never seemed to end. Stephens talked of the need to cut and yard 50 to 60 cords of hard wood for the following year's fires, certainly not an idle undertaking. Yet even the wood harvest and preparation usually came in March, after the back of winter had been broken. Both Stephens and Coffin provided graphic descriptions of ice cutting, doubly hard work for the cold. Stephens' story is one of the family cutting ice on the nearby lake for their farm creamery, supported by their growing herd of Jersey cows. Coffin's is a description of the commercial ice industry on the Kennebec River, an industry that provided winter employment, and thus much needed cash, for many a Maine farmer in the nineteenth century.6
But more important than the work, winter was a time through which to survive, to take stock, and to rest. The work of summer had, by contrast, only one purpose, to provide enough to get the household and the farm animals through another year. Coffin described the January world as an interior one:
The thermometer falls below zero, the high moon blazes like noon, and the lonesome white bays crack for pain of the cold. Honey bees crawl to new combs and warm themselves in the hive at the heat of last summer's sun. The stars snap like sapphires, you hear the hiss of their burning, and the teapot hisses continuously on the back of the stove. The barrel of quahogs in the cellar is halfway down . . .
An old book is a good dish for a long night. Grandfather thumbs the Old Farmer's Almanac as he sits on the wood box back of the stove. There will be plenty more snow. The little boy lies under the cookstove and bakes himself through like a biscuit.
The young boy smells the newsprint of the Boston Transcript around the hot brick that warms his toes in bed. It snows two feet. The farmer knits a lobster head as he sits with his stocking feet in the oven, which still smells of mince pie. . . .
It is a long month, a hard month, the fish and furrows take a good rest. . . . The January world is as much inside as out, and a good one.
As much as winter was the heart of the year, summer was in some ways to be dreaded in Maine, not only for its hard work, but also for its weather. Those who chose to stay on the Maine farm often found even the brief summer appearance objectionable. Stephens related the Old Squire's wisdom about "dog days" in Maine, days that probably seemed rather temperate to his southern kin.
I had never heard of "dog days" before and was curious to know what sort of days they were. "They set in," the Old Squire informed me, "on the twenty-fifth of July and last till the fifth of September. Then is when the Dog-star rages, and it is apt to be 'catching' weather. Dogs are more liable to run mad at this time of the year, and snakes are most venomous then." Such is the olden lore, and I gained an impression that those fortytwo days were after a manner unhealthy for man and beast. (Stephens, When Life Was Young, 249)
Summer weather was perhaps more bearable on the saltwater farm, for Coffin's family had the luxury of picnics spread among the summer chores. He tells of one such picnic on a far island of Casco Bay, perhaps the abandoned island homestead described above.7 Coffin believed that picnic weather like this could only be found in Maine; it was weather that took the sting out of summer—certainly these were no dog days.
Then you must have an island with fir trees packed so closely together that you might walk along their tops, if you were spry, and you must have the myrrh of the balsams in your nose along with the smell of the sea all a Summer's day. It must be a day in August and one of the kind that you will find nowhere else on this round earth save Maine; northwest wind blowing the sky as clean and clear as a bell, a blue sky that you can fairly hear ring, and white galleons of clouds with flat keels which sail over by thousands and yet never get in the way of the sun. The sunshine turns everything to amber and crystal and pours over the world like a tide. You can hear it lapping the granite coasts. The whole world is very hot yet airy; you can smell the tar in the caulking of the boats. Your face turns into a russet banner. Your brain turns into sunlight. The ocean grows darker and deeper blue between the whitecrests that are coming in from far Spain. 'The sea and the sun get in under your soul.
You add spray all over everybody, especially the children; for my picnic would lack spice if all of us were not well drenched down with brine and salted down till our eyes were a fast blue. To have the best spray you need a flooding tide to kick up a chop against the wind.
But these were rare moments, and perhaps all the more beautiful for their rarity. They were simply interludes between one winter survived and one which to prepare.
It is in this survival and preparation that is the final image of nineteenth century Maine farming. This image is that of the simple physical demands placed on the farm family. The hard physical labor of agriculture before mechanization is difficult for many of us to appreciate. Although Coffin was often accused of overly romanticizing rural life in his writings, he never shirked from discussing the hard work of the farm. Nowhere is that clearer than in Lost Paradise, an autobiographical account of his youth on a saltwater farm.
The story is told by Peter (Coffin's middle name which he never used personally), who at one point was sent away from the farm to a nearby town to live with his older sister so he could attend a proper school. He missed his paradise farm dearly and was trying to cope with the loss. "The game Peter was playing now was trying to think of the hardest work he had to do on the farm. He was doing his best to wean himself of thinking of it as a place that was all apple pie and huckle-berry jam."8
Coffin's Peter ran through a list of arduous jobs on the farm to make his confinement to town more palatable. They were sawing wood, cleaning tieups, pounding crabs for hen feed, digging clams, haying, turning the grindstone for his father and brothers to sharpen their scythes, bringing in the salt hay and tending the water fences. Unfortunately for him, Peter found redeeming value in each chore, so was unable to convince himself of the relative benefit of staying where he was.
Even so, bringing in the salt hay from the farm's salt marsh entailed particularly nasty burdens.
The Marsh was too soft to cut with a horse. Every inch of it had to be mowed by hand. Half of it, the parts up back of the beaver dams, was a poor cross between sweet hay and salt, called black grass. The rest beyond the beaver dams on both sides of the creek was salt thatch. The thatch had not only to be cut, but it had to be carried out of the tide's way green. A middle-sized armful of it weighed more than a man. It had to be carried on handlebars with cross-pieces. Edward did the cutting of it, that was his share, he said. So Peter and Ansel had to do the lugging.
And Ben Sudbury. Peter and his brother stumbled blind with their burden high between them. Their legs sank half to their knees at each step in the blue mud. The black flies stung them in their faces till their faces were big as balloons and they couldn't see out of their eyes. Ben Sudbury swore like a house afire. He didn't care what he said when he was on one end of the handle-bars. The mosquitoes worked on their hands and arms. The hay had to be spread out to dry on the beaver dams and between the brackish pools where they had harvested the black grass. The thatch cut like so much barbed wire.
Stephens was not reluctant to explain the physical demands of the farm either. When his storyteller first came to the Old Squire's farm, he was unprepared for the day's work he would face.
By the time I reached the farmyard, where the Old Squire had hung up a large iron kettle and had water boiling in it, I was very tired indeed. What with splitting wood in the very early morning, catching seventy sheep and digging and carrying poke, I had put forth a good deal of muscular strength that day . . . (Stephens, When Life Was Young, 79)
The best work story, for me, however, is when Coffin describes the work it took to maintain water fences. Since the farm described in Lost Paradise was a point of land jutting into Casco Bay, the ocean was used as one side of the fence for the pastures. To do this, Coffin's father had constructed a water fence. That is, two barbed wire side fences had to be anchored in the ocean below the low tide line so that the cows could not get around them.
It was dirty heavy work. You and Ansel had to carry the heavy flat stones to weigh down the threecornered fence posts your father had run up, to keep your fence from coming up the bay to meet you when next you rowed home. . . . The mud was deep and black and got all over you and finally into your eyes, if there were black flies around. The job was a low-tide job, and low tide was their refreshment hour. . . . Just when you sat back and thought it was done for good till Winter's ice would take it out, you looked up, and there were all twenty cows in the sweet-apple orchard, or knee deep in the beans. (Coffin, Lost Paradise, 45-46)
As was true of many of Coffin's themes, he came back to this again and in poetic form, a poem called "Water-Fence" which appears in another book of poems called One Horse Farm.9 Construction of the water fence was an annual endeavor; like so much on the salt water farm, one driven by the seasons. While the seasonal change was a source of continuity in the farm life, it was a source for frustration as well, for much work was never really done. A final image of frustration is embodied in the water fence:
All the wires festooned with green and gray
Until some sagging barbed-wire strand gives way
And the cows can step over the top.
And, of course, some breach cow hip-hop
Will swim around the fence looking for love
And bulls, and when the frisking cow will shove
Off into the ocean, all will follow
And leave the fence a mockery, plain hollow.Though the fence is taut enough to bear
All the tons of rockweed hung like hair
Upon its strands and no tide can so shift
The stones that hold it and set it adrift,
The winter ice will lift it neat's can be
And take the fence and carry it out to sea.
Like calf-love and the grasshopper's green song
A water-fence is but one Summer long.
The hired man feels his bare backsides itch.
He sighs to himself, "That elegant son-of-a-bitch!"
NOTES
1 See, for example, When Life Was Young at the Old Squire's (Boston: The Youth's Companion, 1912); A Great Year of Our Lives (Boston: The Youth's Companion, 1912); and A Busy Year at the Old Squire's (Boston: A Youth's Companion, 1922). The books were collections of stories that first appeared in The Youth's Companion beginning in the 1870s.
2 R. P. T. Coffin, Portrait of An American (N.Y.: MacMillan, 1931).
3 Interestingly, Coffin, in his book Coast Calendar (N.Y.: MacMillan, 1912), relates part of the proverb in almost exactly the same language in the chapter on the month of May. His version is:
A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay
4 This poem first appeared in Harpers in 1935 and then in book form in Saltwater Farm (New York: Macmillan, 1937), a volume of images of the coastal farm experience.
5 Similarly in Henry Beston's Northern Farm (New York: Rinehard, 1948), a twentieth-century analog to the works of Coffin and Stephens, the chronicle began in January. This is not because January begins the calendar year, it is because that month is the very heart of the year in the Maine farm experience.
6 Stephens' story is "Cutting Ice at 14 Degrees Below Zero" in A Busy Year at the Old Squire's; Coffin's is "Kennebec Crystals" in Kennebec: Cradle of Americans (Boston: The Youth's Companion, 1912).
7 The story is "Codfish Chowder and Sun" contained in his second book of essays, An Attic Room (New York: Doubleday, Duran, 1929). Coffin tells another picnic story, this one on the last picnic opportunity in fall, in Chapter 19 of Lost Paradise (New York: MacMillan and Co., 1934).
8 Coffin, Lost Paradise, 38-39.
9 R. P. T. Coffin, One Horse Farm: Downeast Georgics (N.Y.: MacMillan, 1949).
