 Evelyn Morrell, together with her daughter, Joyce, lives in the house built more than 140 years ago by the island's third principal proprietary, Admiral William Fitzwilliam Owen. Because the house is too large for the two of them alone, and because they need the financial help to keep it up, they rent rooms to visitors during the tourist season. Unlike what any motel could hope to provide, the Owen house offers a cozy, relaxed, hospitable atmosphere in which one quickly feels at home on the island.
Outside Her Welshpool Home Evelyn Proudly Displays Her University of Maine Diploma which She Received as the School's Oldest Graduate
Now in her mid-seventies, Mrs. Morrell is the oldest student to graduate from the University of Maine. An eloquent storyteller, she explains what it was like moving to the island more than thirty years ago and how she and her family adjusted to life there.
"We came up and saw this house, and the day that we were supposed to call it off and decide it would be too much for us and we couldn't swing it because it was too big, too expensive, too this, that, and the other... that's the day we bought it. That's been almost thirty years ago. We had never been to Campobello before.
"My husband said he would never come in a house until he had the deed, proving the house belonged to him, and they held up the deed until November. So it was a terrible month to move to Campobello, but we did; we came here in November. You could scrape the frost off the walls. The first thing we had to do was take off doors and saw them so they would close. No doors would close. And my husband ripped up blankets and insulated around the doors to keep the draft out, because everything was crooked and uneven.
"Joyce was ten years old when we came here. She hated it. She thought she was buried in the woods. I was homesick, too, but I wouldn't let my husband know that I figured we had made a mistake. I wasn't going to admit it. I'd look out the front door and the scenery was so gloomy and so glum that I thought, 'Oh, isn't this awful.' It would get to the marrow of your bones, and I thought, 'But, I can never let Wayne know how I feel,' because, then, he was sixty-five when we came here. He had told me it would kill him; the transition would kill him. I said, 'It might kill you, but we're going to find the place we like.' After living here, he said he'd had the best ten years of his life. Before that, he just existed. When he came here, he lived. He loved it. He had retired when Joyce was in kindergarten because he was twenty-five years older than I.
"People looked at us at a distance for two years. Two years they just looked at us and sized us up and kept away.
"Electricity came to the island just two years before we moved here. When we moved here we had a lot of appliances and gadgets that people around here didn't have and one of the things Wayne brought was an electric grinder, for grinding an ax or knife or something, and he had it down in the cellar on a beam. Bertram Calder came up one day and he said, 'Mr. Morrell, I hear you have an electric grinder. I would pay you to grind this two-bitted ax.' Wayne said, 'I don't want any pay for it, Bertram, but I'd be glad to grind it for you.' So he took it down in the cellar and he ground it and did a good job and brought it up. Bertram was delighted. He said, 'Are you sure I can't pay you? What can I do for you?' Wayne said, 'Well, someday you just bring me a fish, big enough to cut into steaks.'
"Days went by; weeks went by; months went by. We never thought about the fish again. One day the three of us were sitting at the table and we looked down to the road at the end of our driveway. The gate opened and a man came through. He seemed to have sort of a pack on his back. He got a little closer and I said, 'Why, Wayne, that's Bertram and he's got a man on his back. He must have a sick man.' He kept getting closer and closer and closer, and he got up to the rise in the driveway. 'Holy smokes, what's he dragging? Why, that's a fish on his back!' And he came to the back door. Did you ever see the ad for Scott's Emulsion? The fellow had a cod fish over his shoulder and the tail was dragging on the floor. Just what he looked like. Wayne went to the door and he said, 'Well, Bertram, what's this all about?' He said, 'Morrell, I thought I'd wait 'till got a big one.'
"We'd been here just a few months. Later we had our own chickens and hen house, but, up to this point, we didn't. Mary Kelly lived down the road, just beyond our gate, second house on the left, with her husband, Heb, and his older sister, Liney Kelly. I guess they called her Liney 'cause her name was Caroline. And Mary had a few hens and she sold eggs. I used to go down and get these nice, big, brown eggs. Every time I went down Liney was sitting in the kitchen. She was an old lady in her eighties.
"I went down one day and Liney wasn't any place around and I said, 'Where's Liney?' I could see Mary looked kind of worried and she said, 'Well, Liney isn't well and she's taken to her bed.' Liney's room was right off the kitchen. She said, 'We're really worried about her.' Well, I said, 'Mary, if there's anything I can do, you will let me know.' She said, 'Thank you, Mrs. Morrell.' They called me Mrs. Morrell in those days. And out I went.
"Of course, Wayne and I were struggling with the problems around the house. It was early afternoon. We'd just had our lunch and were sitting in the den. We had a fire going in the fireplace. We were on either side of the fireplace discussing what project we would attack next.
"I heard the back door open and close and I heard steps come down the hall. Mary put her head in the doorway, and you could see her eyes were red; she'd been crying. Before I could ask her any-thing, Wayne said, 'Mary, dear, is there anything wrong? Come in. She says, 'There is Mr. Morrell. Liney passed away, and Mrs. Morrell said if I needed her I should come and get her. I want her to come down and lay her out.' I said, 'You want me to what?' She said, 'I want you to come down and lay her out.' I said, 'Why, Mary, I've never been around a dead person. I couldn't do that. I never could do that.' Remember, Wayne was twenty-five years older than me. 'Now,' he said, 'Mary, dear, you go on home. Don't you think another thing about this. My wife will come down and she would be delighted to lay out Liney.' She thanked him and out she went.
"I turned around and I said, 'Wayne, are you losing your mind? I couldn't do such a thing. No possible way could I ever do it.' He said, 'All right, let me explain it this way. We've only been here a few months. Now, you turn down this dear, old woman in trouble, and the whole island's going to know about it. Here s a chance to be a real woman. Go down, lay her out. Do it. Don't let me hear any more about it. Go!' And I went. When he said do something, you did it. There was no liberation in my life. I didn't want any.
"When I went down there I went in the kitchen door. Mary wasn't around, but I heard her rummaging in drawers upstairs. There was a little pantry off the kitchen and I found a white enamel pan. There was a pink towel over the towel rack and I took that. I found a cake of Ivory soap and a wash cloth. Got some warm water and I went in and the old lady was still warm.
"She had just died. She wasn't scrawny or disease-ridden or anything. She'd been beautiful when she was young: plump and firm, beautiful, warm. She just wore out.
"I washed her all over, and I powdered her. By the time Mary came down, I said, 'Go get me some underwear and get her dressed.' I remember putting the old-fashioned bloomers on her with the elastics around the knees; an old-fashioned shirt with a little drawstring and long sleeves, you know. Cotton stockings. She brought down a purple serge dress and I put that on her, and I said, 'Now find me a little piece of black velvet ribbon.' I tied the black velvet ribbon around her neck with a little bow in the back, and then I put a string of white pearls over that. Her hair was like spun, white, angel hair that you put on Christmas trees, you know. I fixed her hair up and she looked beautiful.
"When I went down there, oh, I weighed about a thousand pounds. After I did the job, oh, I felt light as a feather. So I looked at her and I was pleased and I went out the back door. I did the job and there was no more I could do and I came home. Wayne met me at the back door. He always called me, 'hon.' I'm anything but honey, but that's what he did, he called me, 'hon.' He said, 'How'd you make out, hon?' Flippantly, I said, 'Really, there's nothing to it after you get started. Really, I could lay out a morgue full.' So that was the adventure of my life since I've been here. And he was right: everybody on the island knew it. They said, 'Can you imagine why she would go to that woman instead of going to a native?'
"I went to the funeral. Mary's husband, Heb, was in the room with his two brothers from Lubec. Not one of them came up to me and thanked me for what I had done; for laying out their sister. I couldn't imagine why they never thanked me. I didn't want any money. I didn't want a gift. I wanted thanks, but they never did it. Just as though I never existed. Twenty years went on and I often wondered why they never thanked me. One of the brothers' wives, whom I'd been friendly with over the years, came over to see me last summer and I mentioned this to her. She said, 'Evelyn, Mary never told anybody that you laid out the old lady. She wanted the credit herself. The island knew it, but she didn't let on to the family. At least she let them think that she was the major one in doing it.'"
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