Deephaven Society

It was curious to notice, in this quaint little fishing-village by the sea, how clearly the gradations of society were defined.  The place prided itself most upon having been long ago the residence of one Governor Chantrey, who was a rich shipowner and East India merchant, and whose fame and magnificence were almost fabulous.  It was a never-ceasing regret that his house should have burned down after he died, and there is no doubt that if it were still standing it would rival any ruin of the Old World.

The elderly people, though laying claim to no slight degree of present consequence, modestly ignored it, and spoke with pride of the grand way in which life was carried on by their ancestors, the Deephaven families of old times.  I think Kate and I were assured at least a hundred times that Governor Chantrey kept a valet, and his wife, Lady Chantrey, kept a maid, and that the governor had an uncle in England who was a baronet; and I believe this must have been why our friends felt so deep an interest in the affairs of the English nobility:  they no doubt felt themselves entitled to seats near the throne itself.  There were formerly five families who kept their coaches in Deephaven; there were balls at the governor’s, and regal entertainments at other of the grand mansions; there is not a really distinguished person in the country who will not prove to have been directly or indirectly connected with Deephaven.  We were shown the cellar of the Chantrey house, and the terraces, and a few clumps of lilacs, and the grand rows of elms.  There are still two of the governor’s warehouses left, but his ruined wharves are fast disappearing, and are almost deserted, except by small barefooted boys who sit on the edges to fish for sea-perch when the tide comes in.  There is an imposing monument in the burying-ground to the great man and his amiable consort.  I am sure that if there were any surviving relatives of the governor they would receive in Deephaven far more deference than is consistent with the principles of a republican government; but the family became extinct long since, and I have heard, though it is not a subject that one may speak of lightly, that the sons were unworthy their noble descent and came to inglorious ends.

There were still remaining a few representatives of the old families, who were treated with much reverence by the rest of the townspeople, although they were, like the conies of Scripture, a feeble folk.

Deephaven is utterly out of fashion.  It never recovered from the effects of the embargo of 1807, and a sand-bar has been steadily filling in the mouth of the harbor.  Though the fishing gives what occupation there is for the inhabitants of the place, it is by no means sufficient to draw recruits from abroad.  But nobody in Deephaven cares for excitement, and if some one once in a while has the low taste to prefer a more active life, he is obliged to go elsewhere in search of it, and is spoken of afterward with kind pity.  I well remember the Widow Moses said to me, in speaking of a certain misguided nephew of hers, “I never could see what could ‘a’ sot him out to leave so many privileges and go way off to Lynn, with all them children too.  Why, they lived here no more than a cable’s length from the meetin’-house!”