INTERMINGLING WELL

A few years ago, a month or so before heading up here for the summer, Rutherford Lodge, aged 99, of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, settled down in his study to reflect on the passing of Hannibal Brown who had died during the winter at age 101 and on the long history Hannibal and his descendants shared with Rutherford and his.  It had been thus, the parallel lives of the Lodges and the Browns, ever since Rutherford commissioned the building of the ‘cottage’ high up on the bluff on Peaslee’s Cove back in 1926 and had subsequently taken on young Hannibal as Caretaker.  In the late fifties and early sixties, I worked on the estate carpentering with my dad.

Linen writing paper carrying the embossed heading Above the Fray, under which appeared a nice ink rendering of the looming cottage as viewed from the shore below, could be found at the little writing desk in each of the nine bedrooms, each also with a bath and an expansive view of either the Thorofare to the East and West or the village of North Haven with the Camden Hills looming over its shoulder across the way to the North.  Out back, away from the water, ‘beyond the fray’ as it were, and looking out over the clothes yard and driveway, were six small and more sparsely furnished bedrooms reserved jointly for the butler, chauffeur, household maid, cook, scullery maid and governess, and two baths.  Back then the ‘help’, as they were known, were transported up to the island late each spring from the estate in Chestnut Hill.  A few days later the ‘Family’ would follow, settling in comfortably to their carefully and freshly prepared summer encampment. In spite of the opportunity for pretention, there was none.  The family knew, in 1926, what a gift they’d acquired when Rutherford bought the property and began construction of the cottage, and his practice of assembling them all for acknowledgement of that blessing at the first family meal each spring cemented the genuine appreciation of successive generations.  It has never diminished.  I’ve changed the names to avoid embarrassment but, truth be known, this sort of relationship between some of our summer residents and the island and islanders is not unusual.