Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 16, 1995 TAG: 9507170004
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOCELYN MCCLURG THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: DERRY, N. H. LENGTH: Long
The farm folk who were his neighbors and the stone walls, sugar maples and west-running brooks of New Hampshire's rugged countryside inspired many of the lyrics that made Frost America's best-loved poet during his lifetime.
Visitors can experience Frost's New Hampshire at two historic homesteads where the poet (1874-1963) lived with his family - the Robert Frost Farm in Derry and the Frost Place in Franconia.
The peripatetic poet - one biographer dubbed him the ``strolling bard'' because his teaching gigs at various universities kept him on the move - certainly had other strong New England ties. Vermont claimed Frost as its own by naming him state poet laureate in 1961, and indeed Frost once owned a home in South Shaftsbury, Vt., and spent many summers in a cabin in Ripton while he taught at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. (The cabin still stands and is near a Robert Frost Interpretive Trail that is open to the public.)
But Frost biographer Lawrance Thompson believed that New Hampshire was the muse that whispered most seductively in the poet's ear.
Long after he had become famous, Frost wrote: ``So you see it has been New Hampshire, New Hampshire with me all the way.''
As towering and beloved a figure as Frost became among his countrymen, it's difficult to believe that he had to leave America in order to be discovered - in England, when he was nearly 40 years old.
The large, white clapboard 1880s farmhouse, which was purchased for Frost by his grandfather, stands next to New Hampshire 28 on an impressive piece of land. Before the state bought the site, it was a junkyard littered with the bodies of dilapidated cars. (Pictures in the kitchen document this unsightly legacy.)
Here Frost and his wife raised their four young children, and the poet, according to biographer Thompson, ``began to study, admire and imitate the peculiarities of his farm neighbors.''
One of these was Napoleon Guay, who proposed the springtime ritual of mending a stone wall he shared with Frost. ``Good fences make good neighbors,'' Guay would say, a line that made its way into Frost's famous poem ``Mending Wall.''
One peculiarity of the L-shaped Derry farm is that the airy barn, an ``indoor'' outhouse, the woodshed and the farmhouse are all attached. The tour begins with a video in the barn, where an exhibition area includes turn-of-the-century farm implements and Frost family photos.
A guide takes visitors through the sturdy farmhouse. It is furnished simply with period pieces, including some original to the Frost family, such as a crib in the upstairs master bedroom. More significant is the Morris chair in the living room, where Frost wrote his poetry. The chair was found in pieces in the attic and reassembled.
On a nice day, grab a brochure and take the self-guided nature and poetry trail behind the house. This pretty walk alongside a meadow and through the edge of the woods passes by the stone wall where Frost and his neighbor met ``to walk the line/and set the wall between us once again.''
When he returned from England a published author, Frost looked for a new home in New Hampshire. What caught his eye in 1915 was a small rustic farmhouse in Franconia, a sleepy village tucked amid the White Mountains. The house was occupied, but that didn't deter Frost. The owner agreed to sell the property, which included 50 acres, for $1,000.
Frost may have been a virtual unknown when he moved to Franconia, but that didn't last long. In 1915 Henry Holt published the American edition of ``North of Boston'' and a few months later ``A Boy's Will.''
By the next year, Boston newspaper reporters were making the midwinter trek to snowed-in Franconia to visit the newly ``Famous American Poet.''
The directions the woman at the general store gave a newspaper reporter 78 years ago still approximate what it's like finding Frost's hillside house: ``Follow this road to the first bridge, keep to the right, take the second bridge and about a mile up his house is on the right.'' Truly the ``road less travelled by.''
First you see the old-fashioned rural mailbox, with ``R. Frost'' hand-lettered on the side. Walk back to the timbered barn and start your tour with a video about Frost's life and years in Franconia.
The tour through the house is self-guided. You will see the living room, which has a Morris chair and a reproduction of Frost's desk. Upstairs is a small bedroom with a simple one-drawer table, its varnish faded, where the poet wrote some of his best-known poems in front of the window. Take time to look at the display cases, which contain signed first editions of Frost's books, a rare collection of his Christmas card poems and a handwritten version of ``Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'' (``The woods are lovely, dark and deep/But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep''). A number of rooms are closed to the public because they are occupied by a visiting poet each summer.
Stop on the front porch and gaze at the view of Lafayette Mountain that Frost so loved. Then go around to the back of the house and take the self-guided poetry-nature trail. Soft pine needles crunch under your feet as you walk through the woods and stop to read Frost's poems, which are written on plaques and nailed to trees. Two poems - ``Evening in a Sugar Orchard'' and ``Good-By and Keep Cold'' - are placed at the very sites where Frost wrote them.
In 1920 Frost bought a house in South Shaftsbury, Vt., but he returned each summer to rent the old Franconia house until 1938.
Frost's images remain accessible and memorable. About 5,000 visitors make their way to the Derry farmhouse each year, while 2,000 pilgrims take the road to Franconia.
by CNB