Steeplechase (16 page)

… I have a most intense, passionate fondness for trees in general, and have had several romantic attachments to certain trees in particular.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes,
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

A Favorite of Dr. Holmes

I
n the bedchamber just down the hall from the bathroom that was so splendidly appointed with fixtures from the J. L. Mott Iron Works in New York City, Horatio Biddle could not sleep. He turned and tossed. Visions of Josiah Gideon and Samuel Bigelow tumbled in his head, and also the shocking sight of a favorite teacher in the Sabbath school snipping at twigs with her embroidery scissors. Professor Jedediah Eaton had not been snipping or chopping, but his very presence with the others had been a blow. Horatio pulled the pillow over his head, but he couldn't banish the memory of Professor Eaton's shiny spectacles, his scholarly whiskers, and the opening and shutting of his faraway mouth.

These nightmarish images were bad enough, but at two o'clock in the morning, Horatio reared up in bed as another thought occurred to him, and it was far more horrible.

Slipping out of bed, careful not to awaken his wife, Horatio crept downstairs in the dark. In his study, he lighted the lamp with trembling fingers, carried it to the bookcase, and moved it along a shelf until he found what he was looking for,
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Horatio set the lamp down on his desk beside the bust of Cicero, then leafed through the book, his heart thudding in his breast. Yes, here was the passage he remembered. Dr. Holmes was rambling on and on about his “tree-wives,” the great trees that were his special delight, the old giants he loved to measure with his thirty-foot tape: “… I shall speak of trees as we see them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they are alive, holding their green sun-shades over our heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand whispering tongues …”

Nervously, Horatio turned page after page as the autocrat harangued the breakfast table on the subject of great trees. Paragraph after paragraph was devoted to his favorites, the Johnston elm, the vast elms of Springfield, Northampton, and Hatfield, and, good God, here was an alarming story about a tall poplar that had been criminally cut down.

And then Horatio's lifeless fingers nearly dropped the book as he came upon the paragraph he had half-remembered:

Now let us glory in the great
Castanea dentata
that stands in the burial ground in the town of Nashoba. This magnificent chestnut tree is a monument to our national history, a survivor from the seventeenth century, when it began life before the village itself existed, when few settlers dwelt beyond the limits of the town of Concord. Who knows but that deep within its mighty heart lies buried an arrow shot from the bow of a Nashoba warrior, the last of the tribe of Nipmucks who claimed these woods as their native soil?

Horatio closed the book, put it back on the shelf, and extinguished the lamp. Crawling back into bed beside his sleeping wife, he vowed never to reveal to her this painful news. At the same time, he prayed earnestly that Dr. Holmes might never again set foot in Nashoba to pay his respects to that “monument to our national history,” the magnificent chestnut tree in the burial ground, now cut down, destroyed, and vanished forever at the whim of Horatio Theophilus Biddle.

Ingeborg Goes to Law

I
t was infuriating to Ingeborg Biddle that her husband refused to take up the matter. What on earth possessed him? The case was perfectly clear. Josiah Gideon had violated an ancient grave and stolen valuable property belonging to the church. Justice demanded that he be prosecuted.

Well, if Horatio lacked the backbone to go to law, Ingeborg did not. She could not forget the humiliation of her outhouse encounter with Josiah Gideon. She was determined to seek revenge. Next day, she prepared herself for a visit to the office of attorney Jarvis Brown by dressing with care in a new outfit, one that required a different sort of undergirding. The wide-spreading skirts that had been popular during the war were no longer in style. Postwar fashion called for a more slender silhouette that billowed out at the back.

Ingeborg was a fleshy woman, but she pulled tight the strings of her stays and adjusted the new contraption around her waist. Then she hooked, snapped, and buttoned herself into her new gown, stepped out the door, and walked past the town green to the offices of Peabody and Brown. Of course, the name of the firm no longer meant an actual partnership, since Moses Peabody had passed away long ago. Stalwartly, Ingeborg mounted the stairs, eased her skirts into a chair, and explained to Mr. Brown the case against Josiah Gideon.

“I see,” said Mr. Brown, although he was already acquainted with the matter. By word of mouth, news of the extraordinary events of the previous day had raced all over town. “This concerns an unauthorized reinterment in the graveyard as well as the removal of valuable timber, is that correct?”

“Exactly.” Ingeborg edged forward on the chair. She was not yet used to the apparatus around her waist, and the bunched fabric took up so much room, she was afraid of slipping onto the floor.

If she expected Mr. Brown to seize his pen and begin scribbling a document couched in Olympian language, a lawsuit against that plundering bandit Josiah Gideon, she was disappointed.

“The burial ground belongs to the church?” asked Mr. Brown mildly. “Are you completely certain?” And then he posed several other thorny questions: Did any interments in the burial ground antedate the founding of the church? Had every person interred on the premises been a professing Christian? Had every one of them belonged to the congregation of the Nashoba Parish Church? Had it occurred to Mrs. Biddle that the burial ground might actually be the property of the town itself, a secular body established by the action of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts?

Taken aback, Ingeborg protested that although she did not actually know the facts in the case, it was common knowledge that the burial ground belonged to the church.

Mr. Brown merely looked at her serenely and advised her to look into the matter. “If it can in fact be proved,” he said, rising to show her to the door, “that the ground on which the tree stood was indeed the property of the church, then I will be most happy to write up a suit of wrongful seizure against the Reverend Josiah Gideon. Good day to you, Mrs. Biddle.”

Outdoors again in the harsh light of noonday, Ingeborg set off a little uncertainly for home. The street resounded with the rumble of farmers' carts and the rattle of buggy wheels, but overwhelming everything else was a wild scream from the sawmill of Isaac Pole as the savage iron teeth of his steam-driven saw tore into the wood of the chestnut tree, transforming the logs into boards that were rightfully the property of Nashoba's First Parish Church and its pastor, the Reverend Horatio Biddle.

Program Chairman

E
ben Flint was a resident of the town of Concord, not Nashoba. But when the program chairman of the Nashoba Lyceum retired, Potter Viles paid a call on Eben to ask him to fill the vacancy.

No doubt the request was urged on Mr. Viles by his daughter, Ella. At any rate, Ella insisted on driving her father to the Flint homestead in the Jenny Lind. As she halted the horse in front of the house, loud music poured from the window of the sitting room, where Eben's mother was rollicking through a favorite hymn and accompanying herself on the organ.

“O Lamb of God,” sang Eudocia, but she stopped abruptly when Eben shot past her to open the door.

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Flint,” said Potter Viles, settled on the sofa, “our committee has exhausted all the possibilities for speakers that we can think of.”

“And we can't bother dear Mr. Emerson again,” said Ella. “He has already favored us twice.”

Eben was flattered. “Well, I could try my hand. We might go a little farther afield. I'll see what I can do.”

By suppertime, he had decided where to start. He left the rest of the family discussing the subject of public speaking and went upstairs to his room to write a letter.

Around the table, the suggestions were plentiful. Even Sallie made a critical remark: “Why does the speaker always have to be a man? Why not a woman?”

“Good for you, Sallie,” said Ida.

“Second the motion,” cried Eudocia.

But Alexander only laughed. “The Concord Lyceum had a woman last year, remember, Mother Flint? She wasn't very good, but it was amazing she could do it at all.”

“Alexander!” Ida was indignant.

“My dear, I was only joking. I'm sure you could do a better job yourself.”

“Not better, perhaps,” said Ida, “but I could certainly do it.” She smiled around the table. “What would I lecture about?”

“I have it,” said Alexander. “‘Mrs. Alexander Clock will present a discourse on how to be an obedient and dutiful wife.'”

“No, no.” Ida gathered her skirts and climbed up on her chair. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, waving her arms in elocutionary gestures, “for all those of you with ears to hear, I will now explain how to organize a harvest festival. I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, these important affairs require years of experience in supervising the labor of hundreds of willing hands.”

Alexander laughed and said, “Hear! Hear!” and Sallie and Alice clapped noisily.

Then it was Eudocia's turn to mount a chair and present a brief disquisition on the spanking of naughty children. “Spare the rod,” she said, looking fiercely down at Horace, “and spoil the child.” Horace quailed, but when everyone laughed, he did, too.

Then Sallie bounced up on her chair and delivered a fiery endorsement of the opinions of Mrs. Stanton on the enslavement of womankind by their husbands, fathers, and brothers. “Me, I'm never going to get married,” cried Sallie, jumping down.

“Speaking as the only married man at this table,” said Alexander, “I am insulted.” Then he hoisted his nine-year-old sister-in-law up on her chair. “Your turn, Alice.” Alice looked blank and clutched her doll.

“Tell us about Amelia, Alice dear,” said Ida.

The laughter from the dining room drifted up through Eben's open window. He was bent over his writing table, composing a letter to a possible future speaker. It was short and, in Eben's opinion, too flowery.

My dear sir
,

The undersigned writes to request the favor of a Lyceum lecture to be delivered in the Town Hall of Nashoba on the 15th of September on any topic you choose, the sum of $25 to be the honorarium.

Sir, I am your obedient servant
,

Eben Flint
,

Sec'y, Nashoba Lyceum

Next morning, by a stroke of astonishing good fortune, Horatio Biddle happened to enter the Nashoba post office just as Eben Flint slipped his letter under the bars of the postmaster's window. Stepping forward to take his turn, Horatio could not help seeing the address on the envelope. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the young man open the door and step outside. Postmaster Phineas Wilder was hitching up his pants and looking the other way. Swiftly, without a twinge of conscience, Horatio reached out to retrieve Eben's letter, because it was addressed to—

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Esq.

164 Charles Street

Boston, Massachusetts.

A Pretty Fair Steeple

E
ben, too, had heard the rumor about Josiah's sacred edifice, but he said nothing as he helped stack the boards behind Josiah's barn. All six and a half thousand board feet of pale, sweet-smelling lumber had been carted into the back corner of Josiah's lot and dumped in clattering heaps among the blackberry canes. Every single piece of milled wood must now be stacked, each layer separated from the next with sticks. The boards looked ready to go, but they were not. In order that they not warp and shrink, they had to dry for a couple of months.

The stacking had to be accomplished in the long twilight of June evenings. During working hours, Eben was busy supervising the construction of a Baptist church in Waltham. And Josiah Gideon was kept on the move in response to crisis after crisis in the almshouses under his jurisdiction. An overseer in the town of Bexley reported the maltreatment of feebleminded women by a matron, and there had been an urgent letter from the superintendent of an asylum in Hudson, where one insane inmate had attacked another with a knife. Therefore, only Julia, Isabelle, and James were at home in the Gideon household during the day. The two women sometimes left the house to do errands here and there, but James was always at home.

One noonday, alone in the house, James stood in the high open doorway at the back of the barn, looked out at the heaps of lumber waiting to be stacked, and stepped out into the sunlight.

Isabelle's errands and Julia's visiting kept them away half the afternoon. When Isabelle came home at last, she went at once to the kitchen to put down her basket. Hearing a clatter from outside, she glanced out the window and was surprised to see a familiar-looking man working among the towers of boards in the backyard. Who was it? Then with a lurch in her breast, she recognized the fine head and strong back of her husband, James. It was James as he had been before going off to war.

With confused longing, Isabelle watched him lift one board after another with his iron hooks and drop them neatly into place on one of the stacks. But the sunny backyard was not screened by a line of trees. Isabelle worried that James might be seen by inquisitive passersby on Quarry Pond Road. When her mother came to stand at the window beside her, Isabelle murmured, “He should come in.”

Julia watched for a moment in silence and then said, “Let him be.”

Later in the afternoon, when Josiah and Eben walked into the backyard, they found someone else stacking boards, not James, but Dickie Doll. “Thank you kindly, Dickie,” said Josiah, throwing off his coat.