Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  Fate continued to intervene in the tale of the treasure, however. The incident of the missing chest, so dramatized in the papers of the day, raised a certain public awareness regarding the Devil’s Half-Acre, and in the midst of a civic-minded housecleaning, Edgar Kelleher was arrested for promoting several forms of vice. In January of the next year, he died in jail of pneumonia.

  In February of 1897 the Sleeping Dog burned almost to the ground, despite the best efforts of the local volunteer fire department. A man was severely injured while attempting to climb into the cellar of the still-smoking ruins, and city officials declared the site a public hazard. The remains were filled in with several tons of dirt and gravel.

  After a good deal of research, I believe that I have located the very place where the Sleeping Dog once stood. It is a parking lot now, and pavement covers the possible answer to many a riddle and the proof of one of our oldest legends.

  Or maybe not . . .

  An acquaintance of mine, an historian by avocation, claims to have seen a photograph (which he has since been unable to locate) of that very site and the adjacent buildings, dated sometime in the 1920s. Just south of the empty lot there was a dry goods store, and beneath the name of the establishment (he claims) was the following legend:

  John Stewart Benning II, Proprietor

  The reader may be curious about the several locales of this story and gratified to know that many of the buildings and landmarks described remain to this day. Portland’s handsome Custom House is open to the public during business hours and is one of the jewels of that city. The Mariners’ Hospital at Martins Point is now a clinic.

  The Harraseeket Hotel in Freeport burned in 1909. The Wiscasset House is better known these days as the Nickels-Sortwell House and is open to the public during the warmer months.

  Fort Edgecomb occupies a point of land jutting into the Sheepscott River, and is as picturesque a place for a picnic as I know. The block house itself is open to the public during the summer and the grounds are wanderable year-round. The Marie Antoinette house is privately owned but visible from the Eddy Road in Edgecomb.

  What remains of the Shell Heaps on the Damariscotta River have been preserved by the far-sightedness of property owners. There are paths to these ancient middens, approachable from Route One, and a respectful public is welcome.

  The Lincoln Hall, site of the great bear scare, has been known for years as the Lincoln Theater. It has been the center of local culture for the past 120 years—variously employed as a town meeting place, a concert hall, a bowling alley and a basketball court. It has seen live acts, vaudeville, and for the last several decades housed a movie theater. It is has been refurbished by a local group and doubles as movie house and stage for live theater. The last time I was in the stage-left dressing room, just a portion of the legend The Moosepath League and the initials of its original members could be seen from behind a make-up mirror.

  On the subject of landmarks, the reader may be pleased to know that Mrs. Roberto did indeed make a career of parachuting from an ascended balloon “in an attractive suit of tights”—and was well thought of for it.

  I would like to acknowledge the often anonymous writers for the Eastern Argus, the Portland Daily Advertiser, and the Portland Courier for reporting so vividly the events of July 1896; also Eliza Dennison King of Freeport, whose poem concerning the Dash Dr. Moriarty quotes in a slightly altered version. Mr. Tolly’s “polar bear” story is adapted from a Norwegian folktale.

  The Moosepath League continues quietly to this day, and its members carry on the club’s tradition of civility, kind interest, and undaunted curiosity. Their creed includes the Waltonian Principles (named after our hero Mister Tobias Walton); and those principles are Tolerance, Compassion, Curiosity, and Humor. If Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump seemed a little too befuddled to possess a sense of humor, it is also true that they were quick to catch Mister Walton’s laughter after the incident of the bear in the Lincoln Hall, and so we hold out hope for them. Certainly Mister Walton himself was a man to admire.

  Though the club’s involvement with the Underwoods was minimal, the culminating events are spoken of (in Moosepathian circles) as “the First Adventure,” “the Minmaneth Adventure,” or “the Adventure of the Under-wood Treasure.” There were many such adventures; not the least being the one that followed, which involved the social columnist Mollie Peer, baseball player Wyckford O’Hearn, Sir Eustace Pembleton, and the little boy named Bird with whom Sundry and Mister Walton were so concerned. This was one of the most dangerous enterprises involving the Moosepath League, which did not entirely come to a good end, and is thought of (in Moosepathian circles) as “the Adventure of the Wooden Indian” or “the Adventure Underground.” Someday it may be told.

  As many of my readers know, Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League first appeared as a serialized story in a small town weekly newspaper in Damariscotta, Maine. It was April of 1995 and, at that point, the title of the work was, simply, The Moosepath League. I had only written (and rewritten) the first hundred or so pages before it began its original run.

  The challenge (to myself) was to write on the fly, carving out at least one episode a week, so that I would always have a safe distance between me and the printing schedule. This was, after all, how Charles Dickens had worked, and it was a delighted reading of Dickens’ first novel—The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club—that had inspired me, in the first place, to employ a nineteenth century gentlemen’s club as a springboard for a tale of varied and peripatetic adventures—comic and otherwise—throughout the State of Maine. Too, with few exceptions, the many newspapers of the era that I had been researching carried serialized fiction. The story that I had in mind, its initial inspiration, and my major sources of research seemed to meet one another in a confluence of form, style, ideas, and possibilities.

  Local readers were gracious and vocal from the start. I was working at the Maine Coast Book Shop, at the time, and folks would often come in to say hello and talk about something that had occurred or a character who had been introduced in the latest installment. Indeed, when Ephram, Eagle-ton, and Thump first appeared, it was the reception early readers gave those stalwarts that encouraged me to bring the Charter Members back into the story more quickly than I had originally intended, therefore altering Cordelia Underwood and every subsequent volume of the Moosepath Saga.

  I have always loved linear, episodic tales (which is why a book like the Pickwick Papers had so appealed to me) and the serialized form seemed to fit like a glove. I had only vague ideas where it was all going—letting surprises that I found in my research and my own curiosity about the characters and their world decide, at any given moment, where they would go or who they would meet next. As a shining example: I had no notion of a striking female figure parachuting from an ascended balloon in “an attractive suit of tights” till I accidentally came across a brief item about her (complete with those words in quotation) in a Portland newspaper from the era. Who could have guessed that the elegant and mysterious Mrs. Roberto would one day become a title character in the series? (Who could have guessed there would be a series?)

  The last installment of the serial was printed in June of 1997 and by then I was already re-editing, rewriting, and paring down the digressive story into a form more graceful and fitting for publication in a single volume. Before a work is read by the public, a writer usually has an opportunity to correct wrong turns or vet incidents that are germane to neither plot nor theme. But I had been “writing on the fly” and I felt a responsibility to tie up every loose end. Rewriting (and culling) after the final installment had been published was a liberating experience and I gladly cut the book down by about twenty percent.

  Bits and pieces of what I took out would show up in subsequent volumes, some passages would be jettisoned for good, but there was one excised section that I have long wished I had retained. Its inclusion, now, (in a renamed chapter) is the major divergence between th
is edition and the original version published by Viking Penguin.

  Otherwise, I revisited Cordelia Underwood as I might (politely) edit the work of another writer. I simplified a sentence here and there, reorganized some phrases, and “fixed” the odd page or paragraph where I felt my younger (if not exactly young) self had overused a particular word.

  Each book in the Moosepath Saga, thus far, has developed its own identity, often counter to my own expectations or intentions. Situations will veer in directions I could not have predicted and characters will, time and again, prove wiser and better than I. Mister Walton, in particular, will not be denied his best judgment, his kindest deeds, and (in one instance) his heart’s desire. He often thinks of things that I could not because he is a better person than I.

  Cordelia Underwood is, I think, the sunniest of the Moosepath adventures (thus far). It is characterized in my mind by the summer sun, white dresses, straw hats, and fireworks. It is also the most digressive of the series and, in many ways, the template for future installments. I doubt I that would ever be able to write anything like it again, and that is fine.

  From the very start, I hoped to conquer the one of the primary problems of a “series”—that is to make each new volume the same as its predecessors and also different—by creating a definite chronology from book to book. Characters and situations do not return to square one as each adventure comes to a close. Happenstance and revelation have permanent effects on characters’ lives and understanding.

  If larger events outside my characters’ lives do not often impede upon their conscious thoughts, lending a sense that all this is somehow outside history, the change of seasons has helped to show that time does pass on a larger than human scale. Moss Farm therefore marks (and is marked by) the wistful end of summer and the anticipation of brisker, wilder months; Mollie Peer is a darker, fallish tale; and Daniel Plainway is filled with winter, snow, and yuletide. We might long for, look for, rejoice or regret what has been or will be, but only in art or our imaginations do seasons linger for ever.

  It has been more than twenty years since I put pen to a pad of yellow, legal-sized paper and scratched out the first paragraphs of The Moosepath Saga. By the time this edition (and these words) see print, it will have been twenty years since readers became aware of Mister Walton and Company. One day, early in the first book’s serialization, I was on lunch break, walking the sidewalks of Damariscotta, when a man I did not recognize passed me by and wished me “Good afternoon!”

  “Good afternoon!” I replied.

  “See you on the Moosepath!” said he as he strode away.

  Surprised, all I could manage to say was, “Yes!”

  He was, perhaps the first “Friend of the Moosepath League,” a growing, non-organized collection of readers who would do the Grand Society itself proud with their kindness and good will—most especially toward yours truly, who continued to write by the light of their encouragement and support while the Gentlemen of the Club were, for a time, in a sort of publishing limbo. My deepest gratitude to every one of you who wrote or e-mailed or stopped me along the way to tell me that my humble efforts had touched them or made them laugh. And thanks, too, to the folks at bookstores and libraries who continue to support my work, most especially The Maine Coast Book Shop in Damariscotta, which is still my bookstore central more than a decade after I left work there to become a full time writer.

  I do love to hear from readers, and if it sometimes takes me longer than I would like, I do try to respond to every kind thought and curiosity. I can be reached at P.O. Box 186, Edgecomb, Maine, 04556, or at vanreid@tidewater.net. And there is also a group of readers gathered at the “Friends of the Moosepath League” Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/25763521771/, where I often announce speaking events and signings. And the latest breaking news from 1890s Maine can also (usually) be found at moosepath.com.

  Thanks go out to my agent Barbara Hogenson, as well as to Michael Steere and the folks at Down East Books.

  My greatest thanks, however, go to my wife, Maggie, our son, Hunter, and daughter, Mary, who constantly remind me of that world of decency and kindness, goodness and laughter represented by Mister Walton, Sundry Moss, and the honorable members of the Moosepath League.

  Van Reid

  Edgecomb, Maine