The Cleaveland House Christmas, West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard (2003)
Cleaveland House tea invitation (front)
Cleaveland House tea invitation (back)
2003
The Cleaveland House Christmas
West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard
A true tale of three weeks in an eighteenth century historic home, complete with multiple live-in guests; two birthday celebrations; winter solstice; a Tea and Open House for Vineyard friends; Christmas Eve with real candles lit on the tree, Christmas Day with a lavish meal; New Year’s Eve and a dramatic chimney fire — all worthy of retelling a la William’s favorite Christmas stories: both the Christmas chapter in Wind in the Willows and A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Chronicled here by William himself.
Dramatis Personae:
Janaia and Robyn, from California;
Betsey and Tara, from Vermont;
Harry and Jimmie, from True North Farm, and in transition;
and their friends Gretchen, from Vassar, and Michael, from New york City;
ML., from Martha's Vineyard, recently moved to Albany to live with her partner,
Rick, who accompanies her;
Frank, from Providence;
and William, from Lambert's Cove;
also three dogs: Jupiter, with Betsey and Tara; Calliope, with Harry and Jimmie;
and phenomenally well-behaved Percy, with Gretcheni;
two rats, Tara's intriguing familiars Ratigail and Ruby;
and Britty, the Cleaveland House cat.
The house's current owner, Cynthia Riggs, has graciously agreed to let William host his Christmas gathering here, while she goes to Canada to visit her son and daughter-in-law. He takes possession on December 18th, and welcomes Janaia and Robyn the next morning. A day later the human household doubles, with the arrival of Frank, and of Betsey and Tara, bringing goose, wine, and other holiday fare, along with boisterous Jupiter, and delightful, inquisitive Ratigail and Ruby. At supper that evening we celebrate Robyn's birthday, with Chicken Satsivi and later, in the parlor, a chocolate cake.
The next day is the Solstice. ML. and Rick arrive in time to go with us to the Roth Woodlands in Chilmark to cut our tree. We spend the early twilight in the woods, and Rick carries the tree back to the car, our Christmas Jew (by analogy with the Shabbos Goy, who does the chores on the Sabbath, when the Orthodox can't). We decorate the tree and light the candle on it, then later light the menorah that Rick has brought, widening our circle of tradition. We have supper of black beans, then Janaia kindly volunteers to drive to Vineyard Haven, to fetch our last arrivals from the boat. Harry, Jimmie, Michael, and Gretchen, Percy and Calliope arrive with a great clatter, and tonight twelve of us go to sleep in the Cleaveland House; our party is complete.
Unfortunately, it doesn't take long for Harry to discover that his medications have somehow been left behind. Much confusion, a futile trip to Falmouth, frantic calls for duplicate prescriptions, and gradually it gets resolved: just one more element in the atmosphere of chaos.
Tuesday, December 22nd: the tea party. A mammoth effort on everyone's part results in a beautifully decorated house and lavish tea table, and the samovar is bubbling when the first guests arrive. Over a hundred people pass through the house, and everything runs smoothly, thanks to hard-working houseguests and to Lily, a young woman that we've hired to help us out. At some point around seven, with maybe thirty of us left, we light the candles on the tree and gather round the piano for a full-hearted round of carols, with Janaia at the piano (except for Harry's remarkable solo rendition of "Away in the Manger," for which he accompanies himself on the ukelele). Lentil soup follows for those who stay. Finally, as things are winding down, a bit before ten o'clock, we hear singing from outside, and throw open the door to see a handful of local teenagers, their voices raised in song. We are delighted to recognize their visit as a precious part of our Christmas story: "I think it must be the field-mice," said the Mole, with a touch of pride in his manner. "They go round carol-singing quite regularly at this time of the year. And they never pass me over — I used to give them hot drinks, and supper too sometimes, when I could afford it." Of course we invite them in, and as we do so, we hear the church clock strike ten, echoing the bells that ring out from afar in the well-loved Yuletide tale. We offer them hot cider and scones, light the candles on the tree once more, and sing a few last carols around the piano, for a magical end to a very full day.
December 23rd is our "down day" between the tea party and Christmas Eve; still, there are many tasks to be done, and the day passes in a blur. We gather for a late tea, and Betsey bravely makes spaghetti with cauliflower for an even later but excellent supper.
Christmas Eve day is equally full, with lots of cooking and commotion, present-wrapping, and other comings and goings. Not surprisingly, everything takes longer than we anticipate, and it is a challenge to get supper on the table before it gets too late. But we savor our Vineyard bay scallops, despite the lack of leisure, and eight or nine of us walk over the brook and get to church in time for the ten o'clock service. After we return, Robyn offers her slide show of photos from the tea party, a lovely evocation of a memorable event. We wind down in our different ways, and finally the big old house grows still, the last faint embers on the hearth glowing with the last of Christmas Eve.
On Christmas morning we assemble in the dining room around eleven, after much back-and-forth and holiday preparation, and eat frittata as we gather round the tree. Jimmie distributes presents, with Tara as his elf, and a good two hours of opening ensues, touched with many moments of tenderness and delight. We go our separate ways in the early afternoon, but gather again for tea in the evening, in keeping with the rhythm of the day. Christmas Dinner is inevitably late in coming, but finally we are close to ready, and are just lighting all the candles when the electricity goes out, one more piece of magical synchronicity in a remarkable time-out-of time.
We sing before we sit to eat, then share a feast of goose with wild rice stuffing, quince and port wine gravy, platters of roasted roots, and watercress, orange, and pomegranate salad. Deciding to pause a while before dessert, we bring out the ritual flaming pudding and put it on a serving table, then add the other sweets, completing the alliterative quartet of plum pudding, pumpkin pie, poached pears, and quince crumble, for folks to help themselves to when they wish. Tara gets the sixpence that William has hidden in the pudding, one more instance of the magic of this season. We gather round the parlor fire, and Harry reads the Christmas Chapter from the Wind in the Willows, replete with field mice and other drama, resonant with memory and feeling. Midnight approaches, and Christmas draws slowly to its close.
Boxing Day is a day of recovery, though of course there are numerous chores that must be done. Elaine, the Brazilian housecleaner, arrives with her helper, and we figure out the schedule for the day. Dinner will be Jimmie's cassoulet, made with the last of the goose and True North lamb, the culminating glory of his many efforts in the Cleaveland House kitchen. Randi and Stephen, old friends of William's and Betsey's from college days, arrive for the weekend; they bring our household to fourteen, our biggest number yet. This is our transition phase: ML. and Rick, and also Gretchen, will be leaving on the morrow, with Frank, Betsey and Tara, and Randi and Stephen scheduled to depart in the next couple of days, and Cynthia returning soon as well.
At dawn ML. and Rick head out to catch the ferry, taking Gretchen with them. It is a difficult goodbye especially for ML., leaving her beloved Island home. This day, the 27th, is Frank's birthday; William presses Randi and Stephen into service, persuading them to make the moussaka. In the early afternoon the three of them, plus Harry, Jimmie, Michael, Betsey, and Tara, go on an outing to Oak Bluffs, to seek out the mysterious Twin Cottage, soon to be torn down. We find it, after a fascinating roundabout pilgrimage, and grieve its imminent demise while savoring the story of its past. We return for tea, and are getting close to dinnertime when Cynthia arrives, earlier than expected. We set a place for her at the table, and she joins us for a boisterous meal. In honor of Frank's birthday, William brings out an almond cake with candles, the first birthday cake he's had for close to seventy years. Despite it being hours past his bedtime, he seems delighted, and we are glad to have a beloved elder in our midst.
After a leisurely Sunday morning, Randi and Stephen offer to drive Frank to Providence from Woods Hole, a gracious offer he happily accepts. William drives them to the boat, then returns to find the remaining tribe about to retreat to the parlor, for a circle about right livelihood. William joins them while they are in session, but quickly leaves again, after a difficult exchange. Meanwhile, Cynthia has been mostly in her own space in the woodshed, and chooses not to eat with us, hinting at the challenges ahead. That evening, after dinner (is this the night of the first of Robyn and Janaia's excellent Thai meals?), we finally have a heart circle. Janaia speaks of the ways in which the holiday has been hard for her, and others speak movingly as well. All of us are sad to think that Betsey and Tara will be leaving in the morning, just as we are finally settling into a deeper space, the state occasions over with at last.
After Betsey and Tara's early departure, the focus of the day turns to accommodating Cynthia, who has decided to move to the cottage at Seth's Pond. William tries to tidy up the house, with Robyn and Janaia's help, and Robyn sets up Cynthia's computer. Back at the Cleaveland House, we settle into our new configuration as a group of six (Janaia, Robyn, Harry, Jimmie, Michael,and William), and a consensus emerges that we all want to devote the bulk of our remaining time together primarily to inner work.
A few days of considerable intensity ensue. Janaia and Robyn become the lady doctors, helping especially Jimmie, Harry, and Michael get clear about their situations and priorities. We make time for other things as well — an up-island tour for Jimmie and Michael in the antique auto, one on-one sharings, William's late-night reading of his story Moonlight, Water, Silence. There is the occasional moment of tension, but for the most part we move smoothly though the days. Intermittent disruption comes from Cynthia, who is troubled by various irritants — awkwardness begins to build, but she is mostly at Seth's Pond, and the Cleaveland House feels marvelously ours.
In the late afternoon of New Year's eve, Michael and Harry go to Cronig's to shop for their southern dinner, and Harry disappears. Michael summons Jimmie and William, and after an hour's anxious search and telephoning they learn that Harry has been taken to the emergency room, having been found unconscious on one of the back streets of Vineyard Haven. When Jimmie, Michael, and William get to the hospital, Harry is groggy but awake, and it becomes apparent that his seizure has been relatively minor, for which we are all profoundly grateful. The hospital staff assures us that he will almost certainly be released in the course of the evening, so Michael and William return to West Tisbury, leaving Jimmie with the Volvo to bring Harry home, presumably in a couple of hours. They return at around nine o'clock, and we gather round the fire in the parlor, relieved that things haven't turned out worse, glad to be together again for our Island New Year's Eve.
We move slowly through a quiet New Year's morning, and decide on an Oak Bluffs outing for the afternoon. We pile into the Chevrolet, and Harry, Jimmie, and Michael regale us with riotous song. We come into town by the back way and walk through the Camp Ground, then cross Circuit Avenue and get as far as Ocean Park when Harry needs to rest. William fetches the car, and discussion of plans ensues. The decision is made to have an early dinner in Oak Bluffs; we end up at Linda Jean's, since everything else is shut. Despite a tense moment between Janaia and William, we have an enjoyable meal, and experience the novel sensation of being at home with dinner behind us at only seven o'clock.
Friday, January 2nd. Our last full day together; Harry and Michael are busy preparing their southern dinner. Michael fries chicken for hours, the string beans stew away on the back burner, and nine o'clock comes and goes. Finally, it's nearly ready; Michael works on his do-rag while Janaia and Robyn wait quietly in the parlor. William tidies the mantel; Janaia says she's cold. William tosses some boughs on the fire, wanting to warm her up. Robyn says "don't do it," but already it's too late; soon a full-fledged chimney fire is roaring up the flue. After a minute of disorientation, we realize we must call the fire department. William dials 911, while Michael, engrossed in dinner, sings Prissie's Song from Gone with the Wind over and over again ("I works all day, I totes my heavy load"), oblivious to the cries of "Fire!" ringing through the house.
Soon the fire trucks arrive; the chief tells us to get out of the building, and we huddle in the cold, while the firemen get to work. They send a hose into the parlor, to be ready for use if needed, and put a fan in the window, to draw the smoke outside. Then they get a ladder up onto the roof, and wait to see whether the fire will burn itself out harmlessly, or whether there will be trouble. We watch anxiously as flames shoot out from the chimney, but Robyn assures us that this is the beginning of the end. The fire has consumed the creosote in the flue, from bottom to top, and is almost out of fuel. When the flames have completely died down, the fireman on the roof pours an extinguishing powder down the chimney; it will do no damage, we are told, but it will coat everything in the room with a thick fine dust. The drama over, we offer fried chicken to the firemen, but they refuse; and so we shrug our shoulders, give grateful thanks that no real harm was done, and sit down to our farewell meal, round about eleven o'clock.
Saturday morning, January 3rd: our closing day. Amazingly, the house smells not of smoke, but of fried chicken. Still, the mess in the parlor is substantial, and there is the rest of the clean-up to be done as well, so we will have our work cut out for us. Janaia takes Harry, Jimmie, Michael and Calliope to the boat; the festivities are over. Blessedly, we have arranged with Elaine the housecleaner to come today, instead of Friday; she and her helper tackle the parlor, while Janaia, Robyn, and William get to work on the rest of the house, changing beds, doing laundry, moving furniture, sorting out possessions, packing up the cars. Some time in the early afternoon Cynthia returns, a day later than she had wanted and expected; she stomps around the yard, turning over compost fiercely, waiting for us to be done. Finally, as night begins to fall, our task is complete; both cars are filled with not an inch to spare, and we are utterly, totally exhausted. We say our goodbyes to Cynthia, and leave for Seth's Pond, closing the door on the Cleaveland House Christmas, an amazing fortnight of magic, challenge, drama, hard labor, and delight.
—William Stewart
dinner menu
