Ipswich High School - Tiger Yearbook (Ipswich, MA)

Page 23 text:

went down the Ipswich River in a row- boat and took their lunch. They drew their boat and, scenes along the banks — cows grazing and boats moored at ebb tide. “Of the same age, talents, and aspira- tions” — so the sketchbook might be the work of either one — of Mr. Arthur Wesley Dow who was to become one of the foremost artists of his generation — or of Mr. Everett Stanley Hubbard, by profession a poet, but a youth of considerable artistic talent who used it for the encouragement of the greater talent of a real friend. Neither man has any close relatives living now who could definitely determine the authorship. In either case, the sketchbook is an un- written record of the crucial period in the life of a very famous artist who kept his integrity of purpose through the discouraging years of his youth, whether the drawings are actually the work of the artist himself, or that of a sincere friend who was sketching by his side, encouraging, cheering, and in- spiring by competition. Who are we to judge which of the two virtues is the greater? Ruth Wilson ’42 “GREEN MANSIONS” By W. H. Hudson W OULD you like to be transported through the realm of imagination to the tropical forests and savannahs of Guiana — visit Indian villages, see the exquisite foliage of tropical birds and glorious panorama of the surrounding countries? Undoubtedly, you already know that this is possible through the magic car- pet of books. For this particular imag- inative jaunt, it is necessary to have as a conductor, W. H. Hudson, and as a magic carpet, his book “Green Man- sions.” You will find that this book isn’t merely a travelogue. It is, by far, more digestible and interesting than that, for it is a story with an enchanting back- ground; a romance with its setting in a tropical forest. The story is built around Abel de Argensola and Rima. Abel, because of his participation in a political intri- gue in Venzuela, left there and started wandering through the neighboring countries. He often stayed at Indian villages, learning their dialect and ob- serving their customs. He endured hardships and dangers from hostile tribes. During one of his indefinite stays at a village of friendly natives he became acquainted with Rima, a strange, nymph -like girl. At times she seemed almost ethereal. Needless to say, they fell in love and there lies the story. Abel was willing to give up worldly things, his friends, the girl he had loved, for a simple primitive existeince with the bird-like girl Rima. Just when his dream of a perfect and beautiful love was realized and at its peak, it crashed. 21

Page 22 text:

the sketchbook which offered humor- ous sketches of houses and the river and landscapes.) Part of this lonely period of Mr. Dow ' s life was spent in teaching at the Linebrook school, and in aiding Rev. Augustine Caldwell of Worcester to se- cure enough information and illustra- tions of Essex County to complete and edit the unfinished genealogical work of Mr. Abraham Hammatt, whose early death prevented him from finishing it himself. Through Mr. Caldwell, Dow met a Mrs. Freeland of Worcester, from whom he received encouragement and instruction in art. (There are un- familiar scenes in the sketchbook which might conceivably be of Worcester.) Dow continued to draw under his own initiative, and it is mainly in a period corresponding to this that the sketches in the little book were made. At one point he determined to study the complicated anatomy of human beings by first becoming acquainted with that of lower forms of life. Hearing that a cow had died in a pasture on Little Neck, he procured the remains and trundled them home in a wheel- barrow. He boiled and bleached the bones in the kitchen while his patient mother looked on. He studied the curves of the cow’s bones before he at- tempted to draw live animals. (With a smile, I found a whole page of sketches of cows in various positions.) ‘Every day he sketched . . . the people about him; types of weather-beaten men interested him and he would get them to sit and talk (than which they loved nothing better to do) while he sketched them, adding to his increasing skill of hand and rich material for his collection of folk-lore.” (I notice the many drawings of men in the sketch- book, some rough-hewn, coarse, others scholarly, fishing, walking, lying in the grass, reading, smoking.) There seemed to be every indication that the great Mr. Dow himself had made that sketchbook. I was ready to swear that he had, until my eye fell upon the paragraph immediately fol- lowing: “It was during the latter part of 1880 that his career as a solitary Ips- wich artist came to an end for he found in Everett Stanley Hubbard” (the very man whom Miss Condon had mention- ed) “a neighbor of the same age, tal- ents, and aspirations as his own. There began a friendship which continued through many years. It ripened through days of companionship spent in sketch- ing about the town. They would choose the same subject and each inter- pret it in terms of his own reaction, then offer mutual criticism. The joy of companionship there was much of the pleasant zest of competition.” “The latter part of 1880” — I turn to the latter part of the sketchbook and find many drawings dated August 27, 1880. What a splendid time the two of them must have had that day! They 20

Page 24 text:

Rima, whose spirit was gay and blithe, was destroyed by fire. Their romance, while it lasted, was beautiful, strange, tragic, and almost fantastic. “Without ever departing from its quality of a tale, this story symbolizes the yearning of the human soul for the attainment of perfect love and beauty in this life — that impossible perfection which we must all learn to see fall from its high tree and be consumed in flames as was Rima, the bird-girl. After reading this book, when gazing at a dense forest or wooded district, you unconsciously think of the “green man- sions” of Abel and Rima. “Green Mansions” — “green” for the forest foliage and “mansions” for the high, lofty, majestic trees of South America, — even the name is symbolic of the story. Ruth Perley ’41 AGAWAM I am wanting something that describes and pictures in one word my village Her romantic past, lingering in wind- ing shady streets that first were cow- paths And have clung to the traditions of that early era; and we blindly follow them, Little realizing how much time we waste, but knowing very well that they are more charming the way they are. Having quaint names that hail from former times, Bordered with old, decrepit houses that hold whispers of lives that yearned and loved and wept much as we do now, and made history; And whose cellars sigh beneath the bur- den of their stored-up knowledge About passageways and musty closets holding documents and buried treas- ure unknown now to the world, but still existing. Streets passing by cemeteries filled with illegible gravestones that once were painstakingly wrought and painful- ly laid above the graves of the beloved dead. I sometimes wander through the crook- ed rows of them, Bent before seasons of storm and bleached by the sun, And wonder, “Where are these people now?” But unremembered and uncelebrated as their names are to me now, still I know That their lives have made you what you are, O town of my adoption; Village with farmers tilling the sandy soil, And factory-workers making stockings and fluorescent lighting, And carpenters measuring the gobd beam and building, building, Children studying and learning to live at the schools and playgrounds, and in the homes, 22