Among the reminiscences of my boyhood, the dissolving views of the past will sometimes rise up like a vision, when I think of years long gone by, and of such is the memory of your grandfather, Mr Dumaresq. He was an intimite friend of my father, who settled in Hallowell, Maine soon after he came from England. The romantic island where your grandfather lived stands out among the green scenery of the Kennebec, fresh and vivid in my recollection, as though it had been painted on the mind by that solar invention to which we now owe so many portraits of our friends. In his person he was rather below the middle size, of a light, active form and fine symmetry, with a high forehead, blue eye, and quick in speech and motion.
Swan Island
He resided on a choice farm, near the head of Swan Island, not far from the shore, and facing the river and a small cove beneath the bushes, where he used to moor his boats. This island is very fertile, four miles long and over half a mile wide; below which Merry-meeting bay spreads out, receiving the flow of the Eastern and Androscoggin rivers, and forming a wide expanse between the shores. To the east lies Dresden. West is Richmond, named, it is said, from some resemblance to Richmond on the Thames. Here once stood Fort Richmond, which has since disappeared. In front of his house are Lovejoy's Narrows, divided by a small rocky island. From the rush of the tide through these straits, the water seldom froze in winter; and the adjacent eddies and coves were the favorite haunts of wild ducks. I mention this because your grandfather was not only a famous sportsman, but a fervent disciple of Izaac Walton. With his double-barreled gun and long fowling piece, he was skillful in stratagem to decoy the game. Sometimes about the change of tide, he would lie down in his dug-out or punt, kept for the purpose, and let the stream waft him softly along into the midst of a flock of ducks, and he was sure of a plentiful spoil. <r father, too, like most ENglishmen, was a sportsman on land or water; he was passionately fond of shooting, and was himself an adroit shot, always preferring to take his bird upon the wing. THey often joined in these sports. I suspect that Mr Dumaresq, however, thought more of his gun and rod than of the plough and harrow; but his farm was productive, and he lived independently. He took life easy; and to his cheerful heart, this world always seemed to present its sunny side couleur de rose. He had a refined taste for music, poetry, and the English classics; and his pleasures cast no gloomy shadow behind them, for he was an upright and honorable man.
His house was the abode of hospitality. I used to visit there with my father almost as early as I can recollect. We went down in the summer from Hallowell in our sail boat, and sometimes only made a call on an excursion to the mouth of the Kennebec, where we passed the night at Seguin, or some other island; perhaps near Harpswell, where Mrs Stowe has laid the scene of that charming romance, the Pearl of Orr's Island. Happy hour it was to me, when I first gazed on the boundless ofcean, or picked up curious shells on the sea shore. What memories there are, even in the peculiar odor of fresh kelp.
Law student
When a student at law in Wilde and Bond's office, on a summer day, I remember paddling my birch canoe from Hallowell along the shore to Swan Island; and in the winter season, one afternoon, Mr P (since a noted merchant) and myself skated down to your grandfather's, drank tea with him, and then hurried home on account of airholes in the ice - a distance of 16 miles in one hour and a half.
Perhaps such incidents may appear trivial; but they tend to show the genial character of Mr Dumresq, and how much even the young were attached to him. He was often at Hallowell Hook; so called from a peculiar bend in the river, about a mile below the chief settlement, where our old red house stood on a high bank, facing a long stretch of water some two miles or so; a very picturesque piece of scenery. Just below, in a nook of the river, was Sheppard's Wharf, and half a mile farther, in the midst of the channel, a huge rock - the top visible at low water - was famous for white perch. This old red house - where the margin of the parlor fireplace was once adorned with Dutch porcelain tiles, covered with scripture paintings, and some of whose apartments were said to be haunted - has all disappeared; and the romance of a habitation once gladdened by so many genial visitors has vanished away in the puff of a steam sawmill, which now marks the spot. And the noble trees which hung over the winding water round this Hook have gone too, except a few stragglers.
Spring thaw
It was from this point of land I remember to have seen the ice break up after a sudden freshet in the spring; a most magnificent sight. The crush and upheaving of the ponderous masses sounded in the distance like rolling thu8nder. The immense cakes of ice formed a dam at the projection of Brown's Island, three miles below the ferry, and pieces some feet thick would lodge and pile up 20 or 30 feet high, and flood the lower streets in the settlement like a deluge. Then the river would look like one vast scene of ruin and desolation - a polar picture, dismal as a description of the Arctic regions by the lamented Dr Kane.
It was the custom at Kennebec in the winter of those congenial days for parties living in distant towns, often many miles from each other, to visit their friends in flocks, not as single spies, but in battalions and sometimes pass the night. The banks of the Kennebec rung with echos of the merry sleigh-bells. Mrs Dumaresq was very handsome, tall and of a most delicate complexion. Her fathr, an independent farmer, Mr Farwell, lived at Vassalborough, some miles above Hallowell; a sleighing party to his house and a return after tea from Augusta on the ice are fresh on my mind, for our parents often took their children with them. It was on one of those splendid winter nights, so peculiar to Maine; when the blue starry heavens above, and the white drapery of snow beneath increased the charm of such an excursion. A sleigh ride of 16 miles to Swan Island was then but the pastime of an evening.
It would be an easy task to point out very many mansions up and down the Kennebec, where such social intercourse prevailed. A few only can be mentioned. The nearest was that of Dr James Tupper, who lived in the village (since RIchmond) two or three miles westward of Mr Dumaresq. He was educated a physician - a man most eccentric, hospitable and generous to a fault. He had read much in his younger days and was a warm and true disciple of Baron Swedenborg. He was a man of strong and vigorous intellect, a deep thinker and very original and often facetious in conversation. He was the inventor of the famous solid timber ship, which was lost on its voyage to ENgland. He had a very high and large forehead, well formed head ana SOcratic nose. One eye having been injured, was always shut; and when he gazed at you through the fixed blue splendor of the other, it seemed as though his inner man was looking through a telescope into the very depths of your soul. Dr Tupper dressed oddly, wearing generally a short sailor's jacket; but he had so much mind, his presence was always felt. He left two sons, since merchants in Charleston SC.
Court house
On the eastern side of Swan Island was the residence of Judge Bowman; and not far from it the old court house still stands embowered by trees, a monument of the eloquence of Rowland Cushing and James Bridge; and here John Gardiner, with whom Mr Dumaresq studied law, distinguished himself; he was the last of all the profession in this country who came into court in the black robe and flowing wig of an English barrister. He was lost in a packet off Cape Anjn, 17 October 1793; he had dreamed of being drowned on the trip but he laughed as such superstitions.
In the rear of the old court house was Fort Shirley, and a mile or more eastwardly SHeriff Bridge, so well known for hospitality, dwelt upon an intervale along the Eastern river. Ascending the Kennebec your grandfather would see the cheering abodes of many old friends. At Pittston there was a white cottage near the head of a leafy avenue musical with birds; it was the summer retreat of his uncle the venerable Robert Hallowell, of Boston, a great friend of my father. We often went down there to dine on pleasant Sundays after attending the Episcopal church on the other side of the river. On the opposite shore in Gardiner near the ferry once stood a yellow one and half story house with a wing at each end, where General Dearborn, secretary of war under Jefferson, resided. Brick stores now occupy the vicinity. It was an hour of deep interest to hear this patriot of the revolution, at an evening party at his fireside, relate to a large and silent circle the account of his expedition under Arnold, across the Highlands of Maine to Quebec. His son Henry, years after General Dearborn, Mayor of Roxbury, was then my senior at Hallowell Academy; he used sometimes to ride up to Hallowell in the winter, in a small sleigh drawn by a large dog. I was always attached to this elegant and noble-hearted man.
Proceeding a few miles further up the river, the mansion of the Hon Benjamin Vaughan, eminent for his fortune, learning and philanthropy, loomed up on a high hill in the distance, commanding a view of the river as it winds round the woods and village. It is from this standpoint that Hallowell appeared like an amphitheatre, the town lying on the declivities in the form of terraces. Three miles more beyond the old red house at the Hook stood Fort Western, and it is there to this day, and the long timber dwelling near it, built in the Indian wars, where the veteran Colonel Howard and his son Samuel, the major, lived in generous hospitality. In thye rear of this on a rising ground was the large and elegant house of Col Arthur Lithgow, sheriff of the county, one of nature's noblemen, whose brother-in-law Judge Bridge occupied another handsome building on the western side of the river, where Augusta is chiefly settled.
Scattered residences
These residences are introduced to show not only how much friends were separated and scattered up and down the river, but to note some of the places and persons so well known to your grandfather in the early convivial days of Kennebec. Others might be mentioned - John Merrick, Judge Wilde, then in large practice, and soon to be the most eloquent lawyer of Maine, and Judge Robbins, who with the smallest means held the most genteel rank in society of any man I ever saw - but space forbids. The splendid seat of the Hon Robert Gardiner of Gardiner, with its rich lawn running down to the water; and its scenic surroundings had not then appeared; they were to gladden all eyes in the passing steamer many years after.
These magnates of the east have all gone to their homes in the spirit land. The waters no more will ripple ot the dip of their oar, nor the woodlands echo to the sportsman's gun. The last of all this older society was the learned John Merrick, whose long white locks, spreading over his shoulders, had almost reached a hundred years. He died September 1861 in his 96th year. The Kennebec still flows on through the garden of Maine, enchanting as ever, and the steamer each summer comes like a bird of passage, and beneath the shady trees or in the midway stream glides through a watery landscape of cities and villages, glades and groves to its destination. But to one that knew your grandfather on Swan Island, when he was living among so many friends on the banks of this beautiful river, an excursion in the boat would now only cast a tinge of melancholy over that rich scenery which rises to view in the reveries of the past.
