Lighthouse Kid Turned Poet

On cold days like this one, I am reminded of living in an offshore lighthouse where the word "cold" gains new meaning! Isles of Shoals Lighthouse, some ten or so miles off New Hampshire, was a cold place in winter and little  better in spring and autumn. In summer, I suspect you'd need a sweater--the cold ocean moderates the temperature, and the breeze cools everything. The wind blows relentlessly here, and the rock ledges hold on to their icy temperatures for a long time. Storms are the worst, throwing waves over parts of the light station, including the covered way that once connected the dwelling to the lighthouse. It was surely thunderous to walk through the covered way when a big wave washed over it! That feature is gone now, as no keepers are needed at the lighthouse these days. It is kept by seabirds that land on its gallery and spiders that crochet webs in the windows. Perhaps there's a ghost or two as well.

What follows is an excerpt from my e-book, Itty Bitty Kitty Guide to the Lighthouses of New Hampshire. If you have an e-reader device, it's a fun book with lots of information and photos, as well as a few unexpected lighthouses on lakes and other places in New Hampshire. Click on the title to find it on Amazon. Included in the book is a detailed profile of the legendary Isles of Shoals Lighthouse on White Island, and also the sidebar that follows about writer Celia Thaxter. Her father was a keeper at the lighthouse. She spent some of her youth there and grew up to be a famous poet. Lighthouses do inspire!

Growing up at a lighthouse often encouraged quiet and solitary pursuits and nurtured an introverted personality. Children of lighthouse keepers spent long hours indoors during winter or in bad weather, reading or doing crafts, playing board games, and writing letters. Such was the childhood of poet Celia Thaxter.

Celia’s father, Thomas Laighton, became keeper of the White Island Lighthouse in 1839 when Celia was four years old. She had been born in Portsmouth, and moving to the lighthouse must have been an abrupt change. It’s likely at first she sorely missed the sights and sounds and smells of the lively city, but she soon grew to love the seclusion and peace of the island and its raw displays of nature. On White Island, her parents constantly worried about the dangers of the ocean—so close to their door and often tempestuous—and kept their children indoors for much of the time. Celia and her brother, Oscar, played games in the house most of the time and did quiet activities.

Celia recalled in winter how the cold keeper’s dwelling formed frost on the inside of the windows. She and her brother “climbed into the deep window-seats” and held pennies in their hands until they were warm and then pressed them onto the frozen windows to make little portholes through which they could look out on the sea, the ships, and the other islands. Dreamy days, the fabled sea forming an apron around her home, the haunting seabirds and fickle weather, and the multitude of books in her ken, soon pointed Celia toward a love of literature.

Her first winter on White Island, she witnessed the wreck of the ship Pocahontas on a bar near the lighthouse. Everyone aboard died. People talked about the gruesome event for months. Celia was deeply affected by this tragedy and later recorded it in her poem “The Wreck of the Pocahontas.” Part of the poem details the lighthouse:

"I lit the lamps in the lighthouse tower,
For the sun dropped down and the day was dead.
They shone like a glorious clustered flower, -
Ten golden and five red."

When she was twelve, her father built a hotel on nearby Appledore Island and resigned from his lightkeeping job. The hotel became a destination for many of New England’s artists, writers, and thinkers. Celia rubbed shoulders with these intellectuals, whose influence certainly helped direct her future. As a hostess in the hotel, she met many famous people.

At age sixteen she married her father’s business partner and her academic tutor, Levi Thaxter, himself a noted intellectual. For a time, she resided with him and their three sons on the mainland, but Isles of Shoals drew her back. She returned to care for her aging, sick mother and raise her sons, while Levi Thaxter remained ashore, too sick himself to thrive on Appledore Island.

By this time Celia had earned success as a poet. Her writings had drawn people to the Isles of Shoals and put this scattering of islands on the map. She began writing for the Atlantic Monthly in the 1860s, and in 1870 collected her essays for the magazine in a best-selling book called Among the Isles of Shoals. The remainder of her life was spent writing and gardening at her island home.

Celia’s Victorian garden became the subject of her last book, An Island Garden, written in 1894. It was one of her most popular books and a wonderful epitaph to herself, though she probably didn’t know it at the time. She died the following year and was buried on Appledore Island. In 1914, her house on Appledore and her father’s famous hotel burned. But the garden endures today. It was reconstructed by the University of New Hampshire’s Shoals Marine Laboratory in 1977 according to Celia’s plans. It is a popular site for summer tourists. 

This image from the National Archives shows what the light station probably looked like in Celia Thaxter's time there. The postcard below shows it later, after the light tower was rebuilt.