Joe Lincoln of Cape Cod
Date: 2025-12-16T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Authors; American -- 20th century -- Biography; Lincoln; Joseph Crosby; 1870-1944

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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

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77475

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.

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Table of Contents

- JOE LINCOLN OF CAPE COD
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