Thaxter, Celia

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

Celia (1835-1894), an American writer of poems and stories. Celia Laighton was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire , in 1835. Her father, disappointed in some ambition, left Portsmouth to become the keeper of a lighthouse on one of the Isles of Shoals, ten miles off the coast. He vowed never to set foot on the mainland again and kept his word, though the family moved once, to another lighthouse on Appledore, a larger island. Celia was five years old when they left the mainland, and tells of their isolated winter life. "Into the deep window seats we climbed, and with pennies (for which we had no other use) made round holes in the thick frost, breathing on them until they were warm, and peeped out at the bright, fierce, windy weather, watching the vessels scudding over the intensely dark blue sea all 'feather white.'" Celia lived a life almost as free as that of a seabird. Her father taught her to understand books and nature. The shore, waves, seashells, screaming seabirds, tempests, and passing ships were her companions. In the height of summer, boarders came to Appledore for a few weeks, and, when she was only sixteen, a Mr. Levi L. Thaxter, a young lawyer of Watertown, Massachusetts, carried her off as Mrs. Thaxter. In Boston Mrs. Thaxter was introduced to musical and literary people. In 1861 she wrote a poem of longing for her old island home on an old envelope for a friend. It found its way into the hands of Lowell, then editor of the Atlantic, who christened the lines "Landlocked" and published them, greatly to Mrs. Thaxter's surprise. From this time Celia Thaxter was led on--Whittier sending word "Write,--thee must--it is thy Kismet"--to contribute many tales and poems. Her prose books are Among the Isles of Shools and An Island Garden. Celia Thaxter's writings show that genius writes well on familiar subjects. Among her characteristic poems are The Burgomaster Gull, Milking, The Great White Owl, The Kingfisher, and especially The Sandpiper. We give the second stanza of the last named: Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high, Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach,-- One little sandpiper and I. Mrs. Thaxter made her winter home in Portland. She spent the rest of the year at Appledore, which became a delightful summer meeting place of the leading literary and artistic people of New England . Mrs. Thaxter died at Appledore, August 26, 1894, leaving a name and an influence in American literature distinctly her own.