Mary Carlton Swope

From 1938, the year I was born, I spent childhood summers at my grandfather's house on Church Street in Woods Hole. The house was grand but wonderfully informal, with a winding staircase built into a stone tower that climbed two stories up to an enormous living room big enough to dance in, put on plays or play badminton. In the course of our childhood summers, we did all those things, I and my two sisters, Ann (now called Samm) and Rhona. When our grandfather, Newcomb Carlton, arrived from New York City for the summer, an entire community came with him: Alma, Nana and Ernest, his cook, maid and butler. Then there were Mr. and Mrs. Chambers (William and Anne) who lived year-round in the gardener's cottage attached to the garages, to take care of the vegetable and flower gardens and look after the place. They had come from England, where our father, Winslow, was born in 1907, when Grandpop worked in London before joining the Western Union Telegraph Company back in the States. From then on he lived in Manhattan all winter, and we did, too. He was on 72nd Street at the corner of Fifth Avenue, and we were on the corner of 68th and Madison on about the 10th floor. My bedroom window looked right downtown to the Empire State Building, ablaze with lights. But every summer we packed up the enormous steamer trunks and went to Woods Hole.

Those summer nights we slept with the sound of the Nobska foghorn in our ears, the sweeping light crossing bedroom windows, stuttering in through the sides of the dark green shades pulled down outside the casement windows (which opened inward) through a hole in the wall, and cleated fast. My grandmother's presence was felt in the house although she had died in 1929, the year our father graduated from Harvard. She had planned the decoration for every room, each with its distinct color and furnishings; the walls, wood and wicker were painted specifically for the different rooms: the orange nursery, the green guest room, my father's boyhood grey room with red and white striped curtains, and the master bedroom with its French divan, its nymphs and shepherdesses. The living room on the top floor had wicker furniture as well, the wicker tables topped with lamps with fringed shades sitting on fringed tablecloths. The top floor had a gloomy grandeur about it and, as you stared up at the great brown roof above you, it was like being under the hull of an enormous ship. Ship models hung from wires and half-models and paintings of ships adorned every wall.

We played in the sandbox, on the lawn and on the beach, sometimes with children who came to visit with their parents, like Avery and David Thompson, who became regular playmates. As we grew older our social circle expanded to our next-door neighbors, the Day and Crane children, their great-aunts Mrs. Nims and Mrs. Ratcliffe, and their grandmother Mrs. Long, whom I learned were called "the Flateau sisters" in St. Louis. We would see them on the beach, Mrs. Ratcliffe swathed in becoming chiffon, her black (and later, lavendar, white or grey) widow's weeds, with a large matching hat on her lovely white hair to protect her delicate skin from the rays of the sun. Not Mrs. Nims, however. She rowed across Nobska Pond to the beach with her husband, Arthur Nims, in a sensible bathing costume and wonderful large straw gardening hats, which she sometimes wore into the water when "bathing". She was an athletic woman, very fit, who showed us children how to float on our backs, demonstrating how tightly she held her abdomen, then closing her eyes and relaxing on the water as if asleep! To this day I can easily relax on my back in the roughest seas, remembering her example. She was a fabulous landscaper and created wonderful paths through her property at The Larches.

We spent many happy days with our neighbors Winnie and Davis Crane, Pam and Betsy Day and their little brothers Roger and George, on the beach and at various houses, and, when small, seldom ventured far from Nobska Point. I do remember driving with my grandfather into Woods Hole when I was very young to visit certain important people, like Miss Fish at the Western Union telegraph office, and Mrs. Cassick and her family across Church Street at the entrance to the Harrison House. Mrs. Cassick always had cookies for us and took us to collect warm eggs from the hens in the barn. She named one of her sons after my grandfather: Newcomb! We were regulars at Sam Cahoon's Fish Market where we saw Matty and sometimes Mr. Cahoon himself, though it was the lobsters swimming in their tanks that got our full attention -- and the squid, which they would give to us for bait, and the fish being loaded into barrels with ice and salt, onto trucks for Boston and other faraway places. I got to know the wonderful Cynthia Smith, too, in those early days and often saw her later on when she worked at Eastman's Hardware Store. She and I always talked about my grandfather, whom she remembered well. Her husband, Homer Smith, was General Manager of the MBL for many years and had a wonderful working friendship with my father-in-law Gerard Swope. But I'm getting ahead of my story!

As I grew a bit older, I rode my bike to Science School, where I saw my New York school friend, Betsy Loeb, and met other MBL children here for the summer with their scientist parents. As the years went on and we learned to sail and rode our bikes farther afield, we played with other Brearley School friends, Cornelia Hanna and Monique Harnley, went to the MBL science school movies and dances, expanding our horizons. There was no stopping us!

Then there was the library. I loved going to the Woods Hole Library. It had its own smell and special hushed atmosphere, with whispered voices as though each conversation conveyed a special secret. I learned to read the year I was five, and the library presented me with heaps of treasure. I could choose books and books, take them home with me and then go back when I had finished looking or reading or having them all read to me. Once in school, every summer I had an extensive summer booklist from Brearley, and I went to the librarian for advice about which books from the list I would like best. By the time I was beyond fourth grade, I had read every dog book and every horse book in the library as well as the Mickey Mouse books, the Little Twins books and most of the other series of that time. I read Louisa May Alcott, too, and longed to be a writer. I read poetry and wrote poems, which I copied into bound books my mother gave me.

Probably because I spent so much time there, Hanna Grey, the librarian, offered me my first job: to come into the library and help other children choose books. I also learned how to shelve books and help stamp the date due on the slips and cards attached to each volume. I don't remember how faithful an "employee" I was, but just that offer and the implied respect that went with it meant a great deal to me at the time.

Since becoming that Woods Hole summer child, I have traveled to many places in the world that became dear to me, married Nicky (Gerard) Swope, another Woods Hole summer child, whose mother I had come to know and love when the family owned the "airplane house" on Juniper Point. She played hostess to hoards of young boys and girls at regular square dance evenings in her living room, organized and taught by Mrs. Wickterman (sp?). We were married at the Church of the Messiah on Church Street, where I had gone to Sunday School under the care of Mrs. Bruce Crane Fisher when Mason Wilson was Rector. I learned there what it means to be part of a church community: when playing musical chairs in Sunday School, you always let the youngest person get the last chair. One of the highlights of every summer (along with the Falmouth Nursing Fete) was the Church of the Messiah Fair, where flowers and vegetables from gardens in the neighborhood were sold along with crocheted antimacassers, doilies and potholders. The church's silver service was brought out and polished, and the grand ladies of the village presided at either end of the long tea table in the dark grandeur of the Parish Hall, the first church Mr. Fay had built. Mrs. Fay, Mrs. Mixter, and Mrs. Dabney often sat there, in their hats. I'm sure there were others as well. There was always a "Grab Bag" for the children, with an attentive someone behind the curtain, perhaps "Sister" Fay, making sure that the mysteriously wrapped toy you "grabbed" was in some way appropriate to your age and gender.

Married on September 19, 1964, Nicky and I brought up our two boys, Tim and Ian, in Weston, Massachusetts and Washington, DC, but we took them to Woods Hole almost every summer, naturally, since both sets of grandparents were also here. The boys did many of the same things we had done, going to Science School and learning to sail in Quissett. In those years, I became increasingly involved in Woods Hole, first with the Church of the Messiah, then with the Woods Hole Community Association. Earlier, as a teenager, I had sung Vespers with other teens and some adults under Pat Brown, then with Elaine Ewing, and later on participated in more contemporary musical events there, like "Jesus Christ, Superstar" and "Joseph and His Technicolor Dreamcoat". We took out our guitars for outdoor evening services in the graveyard (or so I remember!). I served as a summer Vestry member for a year or so during Charles Hoffman's tenure. More recently, I helped Jane Vose and others revive the Messiah Coffee House, where good music and good food brought many people to Fisher House, and I began to see how much talent lives in our village and town.

In 1976 I joined the Woods Hole Cantata Consort at the MBL Club under Liz Davis and sang, among many other wonderful pieces, Bach's Magnificat in what became the Meigs Room the year Swope was completed. My friend Betsy Loeb, a gifted cellist, played in that concert. I learned that summer that she had inherited an incurable disease, and after we went swimming that night at Stony Beach in water alive with phosphorescent comb jellies, I was moved to write a poem about the entire evening: friendship, horseshoe crabs, and the experience of swimming in bioluminescent water.

The poem, called Phosphorescence, was eventually published in The Book of Falmouth, which our mother, Margaret Carlton, helped Mary Lou Smith and others compile and edit. I met Herman Ward and read Shakespeare with him and others. We shared our poems and did a few readings together, and I acted with him in a performance of some of his poems that told a story in letters, Winter to Spring. I felt that I was finally becoming a part of the real Woods Hole. In 2000, I became the chairman of the Cantata Consort and maintained that role for the next dozen years. I made posters, wrote publicity and fundraising letters and compiled many a printed program for the concerts and worked with many wonderful musicians and board colleagues. I found that a very good way to know a person was to work with him or her, and I found many close friends that way.

Of course, it had begun years earlier, this involvement with theater. As a teenager, with many others, I joined the Penzance Players, first as a stagehand and props assistant, then, when I was about 15, (1953?) won a part in "The Mad Women of Chaillot", as Gabrielle, whose key line, as I remember, was "I love men!" Aurelia, the Madwoman of Chaillot, was played by Pat Butcher, who also coached me, to my great relief. The play was performed as one of Three Tea Parties, for the benefit of the Community Association and the Woods Hole Public Library! One result of being in that play was getting to know Padraic Colum, who had known Yeats. I enjoyed talking with him and, once or twice, his wife Mary, and I showed him some of my poems, and listened to him recite his. "Tell me one of your poems", he'd say. Reading the Penzance Players printed program today, given to me by John Funkhouser, who married my playmate Avery, I note my offstage role, in charge of "tickets and program". Little did I think then that later in life I would find myself producing Christmas Revels performances and leading that non-profit theater organization in Washington, DC for almost twenty years!

In the year 2000, Gerry and I retired to Woods Hole full-time, to the house my parents, Winslow and Margaret Carlton, had built for their retirement on part of the land my grandfather had bought in 1920 when he built his house. Now in my seventies, I find myself firmly woven into the fabric of not only Woods Hole, but the town of Falmouth. I have been on the Buildings & Grounds Committee of the Church of the Messiah for many years and have filled several roles on the Vestry, including Junior and Senior Warden. I joined Frances Moore and a small band of interested people about a dozen years ago who called themselves the Ad Hoc Committee for Peace and Justice in the Middle East. Having visited Israel, they felt that Americans should know more about what was happening in that important region of our world, and they began a summer series of talks about the Middle East at Messiah's Fisher House. That series is still going on and has developed a devoted following that floods Fisher House each of the half-dozen times each summer that some expert has come to share his or her knowledge of that region.

I have been a singer and Board member of the Falmouth Chorale since the year Fred Johnson invited me to join the Durufle Requiem as a second soprano. I have just retired from the Board and am now a first soprano, having taken voice lessons from John Yankee, who taught me to find my voice and use it properly. Singing is my greatest joy apart from my family and friends, and I sing in the Church of the Messiah choir, the Woods Hole Cantata and the Village Quire. I also still enjoy going to the MBL Club, which I did regularly for years, to sing folk songs with Woods Hole children and their parents, many of whom first sang there themselves as children with Phyllis Goldstein. For several years in the recent past I enjoyed going to Anne Weissmann's exercise classes there as well, then going for a coffee and a bite at Pie In the Sky, whose coffee and popovers are among my favorite indulgences. I love going to the house sings that happen every summer in Woods Hole and I enjoy the many musical, theatrical and dance offerings at the Woods Hole Community Hall, including the Woods Hole Theatre Company productions, the Woods Hole Folk Music concerts and the monthly contra dances. There is a wealth of talent here in Falmouth, and not long ago I had fun creating with friends a couple of "Falmouth Follies" programs, based roughly on traditional London Music Halls in support of the Falmouth Chorale. I got to know Tim Radford then and the wonderful way he sings songs from his native area of England. I had the fun, too of dancing the Abbott's Bromley Horn Dance one New Year's Day with his wife, the amazing folk dancer and instrumentalist Jan Elliott, and her Sword dance team in the Walk around Eel Pond. What a blast!

Every time you turn around in Woods Hole there is something more to do or something that needs to be done. Life here is very full and most fulfilling. As Phyllis would put it, "Then here's to you, my Woods Hole town!"
-- Mary Swope, July, 2014