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 Seacoast History Blog #22
December 20, 2008
A descendent of the "Island Poet" herself clued us into the fact that Celia Laighton Thaxter’s former home in Newton, Massachusetts is up for sale again. The restored and expanded single-family home (c. 1840) is on the block for $629K. That seems like a good price to us Celia fanatics who might take the place for a literary shrine. We all know that this is where she wrote her first published poem "Land-locked" while pining for the Isles of Shoals. (Continued below)
Land-locked in Newton, MA
VISIT OUR CELIA SECTION
In case anyone has forgotten, Celia was about 12 years old in 1847 when her tutor Levi Thaxter (11 years her senior and a Harvard grad wannabe actor) fell in love with his brilliant young pupil. Levi convinced his wealthy parents from Watertown, MA to invest $2,500 in the Appledore Hotel run by Celia’s father Thomas Laighton. They did not officially marry until Celia was 16. Initially she was happy, but life quickly soured after the couple moved inland to the "Newtonville" home purchased by Levi’s parents. Before long Celia was a middle-class housewife with three children and an out-of-work husband.
She wrote poems out of homesickness, longing, domestic exhaustion and marital depression. Her first published poem, "Land-locked," is one of her best because it was not written from the Shoals, but written toward the Shoals. In the poem, her heart sails down the Charles River and returns to her childhood island off the Maine and NH coast.
By the end of the Civil War Celia was confessing between the lines to the prominent editor James T. Fields (also from Portsmouth) that she was so depressed living in Masschusetts that only the rhymes in her head kept her alive. When her beloved mother died when Celia was 42, she wrote to James’ wife Annie Fields: "I wish I could go to you… but you know I have to go to Newtonville, where it is drear and sad and hard and not half so comfortable as any other place, but where my children are and where it is my duty to be, I suppose."
When Celia spent time on Appledore, her sons and husband were annoyed. When she returned to Newton, although by now a successful author and painter, Levi refused to allow her to hire domestic help. Although they never divorced, they were living separate lives by the time they sold the Newtonville house in 1880. They bought a home in Kittery, Maine, within view of the Isles of Shoals, but remained distant forever.
Celia House for Sale LINK (may expire after sale)
Land-locked
By Celia Thaxter (1860)
Black lie the hills; swiftly doth daylight flee;
And, catching gleams of sunset's dying smile,
Through the dusk land for many a changing mile
The river runneth softly to the sea.
O happy river, could I follow thee!
O yearning heart, that never can be still!
O wistful eyes, that watch the steadfast hill,
Longing for level line of solemn sea!
Have patience; here are flowers and songs of birds,
Beauty and fragrance, wealth of sound and sight,
All summer's glory thine from morn till night,
And life too full of joy for uttered words.
Neither am I ungrateful; but I dream
Deliciously how twilight falls to-night
Over the glimmering water, how the light
Dies blissfully away, until I seem
To feel the wind, sea-scented, on my cheek,
To catch the sound of dusky flapping sail
And dip of oars, and voices on the gale
Afar off, calling low, -- my name they speak!
O Earth! Thy summer song of joy may soar
Ringing to heaven in triumph. I but crave
The sad, caressing murmur of the wave
That breaks in tender music on the shore.
Blog text (c) 2008 J. Dennis Robinson on SeacoastNH.com. All rights reserved.
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