(Quasi-Auto-Biographical. Written for one’s children.)

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from Old Sea Chest / In the East Riding of Yorkshire

By Jesse Halsey

Beside my fireplace sits an old sea chest, battered from long hard use by successive generations of whalers. Substantial tar dipped smelly rope handles at either end of it.

Beside my fireplace sits a sea chest used by successive generations of whalers. It has tossed on all the seven seas, is battered and bruised, has substantial tar dipped smelly rope handles on either end, but when opened gives forth a subtle fragrance of far Cathay and the Moluccas and other islands of spice. No wonder; it is lined with cedar and San Domingo mahogany and sandal wood. In it now repose for appropriate safe-keeping some treasures of sentiment garnered from the now distant days of my youth.

I turn its rusted iron lock with a sizable brass key and push back the oak battened cover, on its hand hammered strap hang hinges. Inside is a big Bible, most of one, a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress illustrated with a dozen steel engravings and numerous cuts, an old log book or two, some mariner’s charts, some pages from a diary of my father’s, some account books of grandfather’s dated early in the nineteenth century. The chest with its meager and miscellaneous contents and an old fouling piece that stands on guard in the corner by the stairs—these bring back my boyhood which might in many respects have been that of a son of the house one or two or even three generations earlier.

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It is as it were, a sprightly evening in early winter and a fire is burning on the hearth. It seldom snaps; it never smokes for grandfather was a skilled mason and knew his trade. Supper is over and the dishes cleared away, from the kitchen come the sounds of cleaning up and the stirring of buckwheat cakes being “set to rise” for breakfast. A Kerosene lamp burns on the erstwhile dining table now covered with a turkey-red damask cloth. In a Boston rocker by the fire sits an old man and on a foot-stool, toasting his shins, stretches a little boy. Whether he is six or eight or ten I cannot quite tell—no it is not the smoke, grandfather was a capable mason—it must be my eyes. Against the wall, so near that the boy can lean on it, is a seaman’s chest. The old man is reading, the boy listening, when he gets drowsy he leans his head on the chest and dozes off, waking with a start as Napoleon leaves Moscow, or Alexander reaches Babylon.

We must open that chest. Its stout rope handle smell of oakum, its battered exterior betrays its history knocking ‘round the seven seas in more than one forecastle. We should like to see what’s inside. The hand-hammered strap hinges gently protest but the boy turns back the lid. I’ve read in William James that smells quicken sure remembrance—well, they are here in urgent suggestions of far Cathay, the Moluccas, of the Celebes and other spice islands. The old people call it “cassia,” though we say cinnamon; this chest must have brought home cassia on occasion: at any rate its lined with strips of red cedar and San Domingo mahogany and sandal wood. It has fragrance when opened that to me is pleasant, though pungent and pervasive.

The boy explores the contents while his father holds the lamp. A broken backed leather bound Bible, with s’s that look like f’s, an old log book, some maps and charts, a volume of town records, a bunch of yellow letters tied with a faded blue linen rag, a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress, a Bodwich’s Navigator and a box that used to hold a sextant. These and some sea shells from the south seas, (the boy holds one to his ear to hear the throbbing ocean), a few small nuggets of gold from California, more books—a lot of junk, so the boy thought—then. Now—with reverence he closes the lid realizing that the chest is empty—except for memories.

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Our ancestor, Thomas Sr. stayed on, as the old records show, was often fined for formulating “violent utterance,” and was elected to offices of trust in the town. A house that he built in 1660 still stands, older than any in Plymouth, humble but respectful. From that day to this his descendents have held such positions as were in the gift of their fellow citizens of the citizens of the township assembled in that pure democracy known as the “town meeting,” an institution which persisted until a couple of decades ago and was, next to Thanksgiving, the great high day of my young life. (The year I left the village for a somewhat belated college training, I was nominated for town clerk. Such things were in the family tradition.)

It’s time to get back to Pilgrim’s Progress. I was taught by precept and by example to love books. My first love was Pilgrim’s Progress. I remember it first as the book, the only one except the Bible, that was available for Sunday use. It had in it a few pictures—one of the Holy City that I often looked at after our mother died. (I was five then.) Another picture, a steel engraving, showed Christians passing through the Valley of the Shadow. The very word hobgoblin will chill my spine, to this hour. That valley was beset with them—hobgoblins. I was afraid to look yet could not forbear.

Father would read by the hour. After mother died his loneliness made him my companion. Night after night he would read me to sleep. Weeknights it was history, some poetry like Milton, stories from the Youth’s Companion, but chiefly history. That and stories that he had heard his grandfather tell, Indians, the ‘Red Coats,’ whaling—no end of that from Father and all his cronies (friends, I should say they were a dignified lot, mostly).

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The Sabbath was a long and weary day. Red socks that scratched like nettles, a Scotch kilt, a stiff collar, in these one went to Sunday school (after the one leisurely breakfast of the week, when we always had muffins—all I could eat—instead of the pancakes of week day, of which I tired—“nothin’ but buckwheat.”) After nine thirty Sunday school came eleven o’clock Church that lasted always an hour and a half. I sat, or squirmed through it, beside my father. Almost always when I got home there was a lickin’ for not sitting still. (One Sunday I happened to sit where I could see the minister’s daughter and thought that I could do what she did. I followed my exemplar; when we got home I was whipped with unusual severity. After that I made my own behavior patterns.)

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--> I learned the Bible not only from Sunday reading and Sunday school and long passages read in Church but chiefly, I surmise, from morning prayers which came immediately after breakfast every day of the year, rain or shine, sickness or health, feast or famine. Breakfast over, father got the big Bible and read a short passage; the family, the hired man, the kitchen servant (an old Indian), all knelt down and father prayed; some of his phrases come back to me, often “using the Lord’s mercies and not abusing them.” I know something about the great liturgies of the saints; his phrases thrill me still. He knew the diction of the Bible; it dignified his speech. My older brother who was the support of father’s old age died one morning just before breakfast time, after the meal (such as it was) father called the family together and read the forty-sixth Psalm—“God is our refuge and strength . . . therefore we will not fear” clear to the end. . . “The God of hosts is with us,” knelt down and without a quaver in his voice commended us to “God’s gracious mercy and protection.” Since then, and more than once, I have heard that benediction on the lips of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury in his vast cathedral. Lord Davidson, like the present Archbishop, was born in a Scottish manse and had “the liturgical gift” but the accents of that Puritan father whose unwavering faith found Holy Scripture its ready vehicle of expression are the ones that echo through the temple of my spirit.