Martha's Vineyard

“ Very extensive fields of this sandy nature in southeastern New England have never been brought under tillage. Thus on the island of Martha's Vineyard there is a connected area containing about thirty thousand acres which lies in a very favourable position for tillage, but has been found substantially worthless for such use. The farmers have found it more advantageous to clear away the boulders from the coarser drift in order to win soil which would give them fair returns. ”

“ There is a tradition that the first settlement of Martha’s Vineyard was made in 1632, at or near the present site of Edgartown village, by several English families forming part of a company bound for Virginia, their ship having put in at this harbour on account of heavy weather. It is certain, however, that in 1642, the year after Thomas Mayhew bought the island, his son, also named Thomas Mayhew (c. 1616-1657) , and several other persons established a plantation on the site of what is now Edgartown village. ”

“ Ah, it does not seem possible that I should ever be deemed worthy of such honor!"
"We will continue to make it a subject of constant, earnest prayer," he said, "asking to be guided to a right decision; also we will open our hearts to your parents, and consult them. If they refuse consent to your going, we will see in that an indication that the Lord's will is not that we should go. Laborers are needed here also, and it may be that He will appoint us our work in this part of His vineyard." ”

“ With a single mighty impulse the vines took deep hold of the treasure in the storehouse beneath, spending it prodigally for sap to be poured into these waiting goblets of emerald and pearl. All the hoarded strength of leaf and tendril was caught up by the current, and swept blindly onward to its fruitful destiny.
And so the first faint hints of purple came into the tapestry, to spread and deepen and [Pg 310] divide and spread again until, in certain lights, the vineyard lay transfigured in an amethystine glow. ”

“ She sighed and turned her face away. The colour vanished from her cheeks, the youth from her figure. Pensively, she gazed across the valley to the vineyard, where the black, [Pg 6] knotted vines were blurred against the soil in the fast-gathering twilight. His eyes followed hers.
Rosemary
"I hate them," he said, passionately. "I wish I'd never seen a grape!"
"Were the children bad to-day?" she asked, irrelevantly.
"Of course. Aren't they always bad? What's the use of caging up fifty little imps and making 'em learn the multiplication table when they don't even aspire to the alphabet? ”

“ She began with the natural beauty of the country through which they were driving, observed that the roads were better adapted to a horse than to an automobile, noted the pleasant situation of the Marsh house on the river shore, veered for a moment to the subject of good roads in France, came back to the blue reflection of the sky upon the smooth surface of the river, admired the situation of the vineyard, said that Madame's phaeton was extremely comfortable, and concluded by asking if it wasn't almost time for apple-blossoms. ”

“ The nine slender birches, that had apparently paused in their flight down the hillside, were, indeed, very still. Not a twig stirred, and the white trunks were ghostly in the twilight. Seemingly they leaned toward each other for protection and support; for comfort in the loneliness of the night.
"Happy Muses," he responded. "No vineyard to look after and no school to teach."
"And no Grandmother," continued Rosemary, "and no Aunt. Nor any dishes or brooms or scrubbing-brushes, or stoves that are possessed by evil spirits." ”

“ On the stony slope above the orchard, the stock of an old and leafless vine, showing here and there over the purple flush of flowering marjoram and the more scattered gold of St. John's-wort, told the story of the perished vineyard. For centuries a rich wine had flowed from these slopes, but at length the phylloxera spread over them like flame, and now where the vine is dead the wild-flower blooms. A little higher a fringe of broom, the blossom gone, the pods blackening and shooting their seeds in the sun, marked the line of the virgin wilderness. ”

“ How they reach out like sentient hands! and when they have found, how strong and firm their clasp! Then, who does not know and love the curious aroma of her small green flowers, bringing back to memory the smell of a Southern vineyard? Very soon, now, autumn suns will swell the clustered fruit, and purple bloom will begin to show between the leaves. A Vine is one of the only plants whose every leaf, well nigh, may be painted with care in a picture, and yet not seem too much made out. Yet rarely indeed can human hand give the fine thinness and yielding texture of a Vine leaf! ”

“ Only a very moderate living, all the grapes we could eat, and a few bottles of musty old wine.
"Mother, of course, has very little to do with it, and, to her, it has come to represent some sort of entailed possession that becomes more sacred every year. It's a family heirloom, like a title, or some very old and valuable piece of jewelry. Other people have family plate and family traditions, but we've got [Pg 11] a vineyard, or, to speak more truthfully, it has us."
Happy Muses
"Look at the Muses," said Rosemary, after a silence. "Do you think they've gone to sleep?" ”

“ I visited, among others, the Le Franc vineyard, which dates from 1851, and is the pioneer in making wine-growing a regular industry. Here are about a hundred and seventy-five thousand vines, set out a thousand, perhaps, to the acre. The large, cheerful farm buildings are upon a gentle rise of ground above the area of vines, which is nearly level. An Alsacian foreman showed us through the wine-cellars. A servant-maid bustling about the yard was a thorough French peasant, only lacking the wooden shoes. ”

“ Many have adventured to make Vineyards in England, not only in these later days but in ancient times, as may well witness the sundry places in this land, entituled by the name of Vineyards, and I have read that many monasteries in this kingdom having Vineyards had as much wine made therefrom as sufficed their convents year by year, but long since they have been destroyed, and the knowledge how to order a Vineyard is also utterly perished with them. ”

“ Many of the families in the lower or middle rank of life, have small vineyards, and make wine for their own use. A freehold vineyard, which costs two hundred francs, or about eight pounds sterling, produced wine, more than sufficient for a family of five persons, as we were informed by one of these little proprietors. They cultivate the vineyards themselves ”

“ Only one house was near the river; the others were set farther back. The one upon the shore was the oldest and largest house in the valley, severely simple in line and with a certain air of stateliness. The broad, Colonial porch looked out upon the river and the hills beyond it, while all around, upon the southern slope between the opposite hills and the valley, were the great vineyards of the Marshs', that had descended from father to son during the century that had elapsed since the house was built. ”

“ A week of dreamy autumn weather came on, during which Beverley managed to be with Alice a great deal, mostly sitting on the Roussillon gallery, where the fading vine leaves made fairy whispering, and where the tempered breeze blew deliciously cool from over the distant multi-colored woods. The men of Vincennes were gathering their Indian corn early to dry it on the cob for grating into winter meal. Many women made wine from the native grapes and from the sweeter and richer fruit of imported vines. ”

“ Vines should be trained to the height of a man and the interval between the props should be sufficient to give room for a yoke of oxen to plough. The least expensive kind of a vineyard is that which brings wine to the jug without the aid of any sort of prop. There are two of this kind, one in which the earth serves as a bed for the grapes, as in many places in Asia, and where usually the foxes share the crop with man; or, if mice appear, it is they who make the vintage, unless you put a mouse trap in every vine, as they do on the island of Pandataria. ”

“ It opened upon a venerable vineyard, that dated back to the occupation of the padres, but was now given over to the chance cultivation of peons and domestics. Its long, broken rows of low vines, knotted and overgrown with age, reached to the thicketed hillside of buckeye that marked the beginning of the canada. Here Maruja parted from her maid, and, muffling the shawl more closely round her head, hastily passed between the vine rows to a ruined adobe building near the hillside. ”

“ When a new vineyard is made, they plant the vines in gutters about four feet apart. As the vines advance, they lay them down. They put out new shoots, and fill all the intermediate space, till all trace of order is lost. They have ultimately about one foot square to each vine. They begin to yield good profit at five or six years old, and last one hundred, or one hundred and fifty years. A vigneron at Voulenay carried me into his vineyard, which was of about ten arpents. ”

“ The open door framed an oblong of glaring white road, and tendrils of vine with the sun shining through their leaves, and the light struck up on the boarded ceiling, and dealt mercifully with the details of a long table with black bottles on it that was disposed beyond the region of the straw.
‘It is here that the vintagers eat and sleep,’ said the vigneron, taking a loving sip from the tumbler for fear it should overflow. ”

“ Long since it has ceased to grow grapes, though the name of the “Earl’s Vineyard” still clings to all that slope of land which lies between this house and a certain health-giving spring that bubbles from the bank the half of a mile away, in the waters of which sick folks come to bathe even from Norwich and Lowestoft. ”

“ These humble toilers in my vineyard had come nearer the truth of things than I had, and were happier. Night after night I have been glad of the shelter of the darkness and have moved back out of the circle of light made by the camp-fire, that none of them might see my face.
"One woman, too weak and ill to work, would lie down among the vines to rest, while her husband filled her basket from his own. They needed money for a crippled child who could be made right by an expensive operation. ”

“ If I should live to keep up my little specimen vineyard ten years longer, perhaps the greater part of the varieties now cultivated will have given place to others. The delicious Brighton requires no more space than a sour, defective variety; while the proprietor starts with the best kinds he can obtain, he will find no restraint beyond his own ignorance or carelessness that will prevent his replacing the Brighton with a variety twice as good when it is developed. Thus vine-planting and grape-tasting stretch away into an alluring and endless vista. ”

“ Our garden was another Moorish wilderness, another "Field of the Slothful," thick in a waste of weeds, blue borage, and yellow marigolds. But it was also a vineyard. Dead-looking branches of vines trailed [161] among the weeds, which later on were cut down with a sickle and turned into green meat for cows. Splendid muscats, we were told, our vines would produce: branches are spread over them in the summer as a slight protection from the sun, but the grapes are left on the ground and often soiled; nor has a Moor the slightest idea of picking them, or of preserving their bloom. ”

“ All the lads of the village were after her, but she cared only for John, a young huntsman, who was called by her father an idle vagabond, and sent away from his cottage in disdain. Now, the village where they lived was at the foot of a high mountain covered with a dense forest, into certain portions of which few were found to venture, so wild and lonely they were. One day Martha went, unknown to her father and mother, to ramble in the forest. She said to some of her friends that she meant to gather flowers and pick berries, to sell to a rich lady who lived near them ”

“ Up into the threads came the thousand stored sweetnesses of the earth, aspiring surely upward through devious, winding ways. The softness of leaves that had gone back to dust, the wine from fallen grapes that had dripped through the sand into the dark storehouse beneath, were only to be taken up again, for sap or fibre or bloom. ”

“ I do not know why the workers' shacks around the vineyard should remain idle practically all the time—there must be others in damp cellars in that crowded city who have become diseased, and who could be healed by the pure cold air up among my ancestral pines. ”

“ And it was on this work that old Paolo Vanni and his two sons were engaged when Sandro Bartoldi rode up the last steep bit of the hollow lane that climbed from the bottom of the valley to the level of the house.
A French vineyard is one of the ugliest agricultural sights in nature. Nothing can be more unsightly than little low bushes, not much bigger than ugly brown cabbages, set in rows along the fields. But France produces good wine, and declares that this is the only way to do so. ”

“ Richard Nash, we formed a Vineyard Society, the object being to prepare and trench a nursery for vines, to procure a collection of the choicest varieties, to preserve their names and identity, and to distribute them gratis to all who engaged to plant them in trenched ground. Some gentlemen reduced the rents of their lands to their tenants in proportion to the extent of their vineyards. ”