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Sag Harbor by the book

A literary tour of the village that hosted Steinbeck, Cooper and Capote

BY JOHN HANC | SPECIAL TO NEWSDAY

To really appreciate Sag Harbor's literary tradition, you have to do what the writers who have called this East End village home have been doing for almost two centuries:

Use your imagination.

"Imagine what this looked like a century-and-a-half ago," says former teacher Anthony Garro, standing near the landmark windmill in the center of town and gesturing toward Long Wharf. Thirty-five pairs of eyes turn to look down the 1,000-foot wharf, which, on this brilliant May morning, affords magnificent views of the harbor that gave the village its name and, beyond it, Shelter Island.

In the 1830s, however, things wouldn't have been nearly as tidy and serene. Here on Long Wharf were unloaded the barrels of whale oil that powered the economy of Sag Harbor, a major whaling village. Here on Long Wharf, one of the most famous characters in what generally is regarded as the greatest American novel showed up, as well.

The character is Queequeg, the stalwart South Seas "cannibal" and harpoonist; the brief passage, an anecdote about wheelbarrows, is in Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick." That the village even rates a mention in such an epic work is a symbolic feather in Sag Harbor's literary cap and hints at the reason it became such a remarkable, if under-the-radar, haven for writers.

"Whaling added an excitement and flamboyance to the town," Garro says. "Sag Harbor became cosmopolitan and that attracted writers," adding jokingly that "the 13 bars located along Main Street might not have hurt, either."

The idea for the literary tour, being held several times this year in conjunction with Sag Harbor's 300th anniversary celebration this summer, came to him several years ago. Garro, who moved to nearby Noyack in 1997, after retiring from a career as a high school social studies teacher in Massapequa, was immediately struck with the sense of the past. "I used to teach history," he says. "The first time I walked down the street in Sag Harbor, history reached out and grabbed me." He has been conducting free tours for five years now, and his next one is scheduled for July 29 at 9 a.m. For more info, visit hike-li.com or call Garro at 631-725-5861

Literary heaven

It was not just the celebrated whaling history of the place that impressed him but the attendant literary tradition, as well. The more he read about it, the more amazed he was. An astonishing range of writers -- not just novelists, but writers of philosophy, politics and religion -- lived or frequented establishments within just a few blocks of, and adjacent to, the village's Main Street that runs down to the foot of Long Wharf. Also, unlike other literary meccas -- say, Boston in the 1850s or Paris in the 1940s -- it's not just one movement or "school" of writing that has dominated here. "You've got critics, poets, philosophers, novelists," says Vince Clemente, a retired Stony Brook University literature professor and a published poet. Sag Harbor's attraction to wordsmiths of all kinds, he believes, "has something to do with the topography. You're water-locked here... . We're sort of an elbow in the Atlantic ... and you feel safe and secure."

Unlike its better-known-neighbor East Hampton, Sag Harbor is a modest community. The village puts up few plaques, a point that somewhat rankles Clemente. "In England, wherever a writer lived there's a plaque," he says. "Not here in Sag Harbor."

That's where Garro comes in. The energetic 68-year-old has become in essence a walking, talking plaque, full of enthusiasm as he leads his group down the quiet Saturday morning streets, stopping at one landmark building after another.

"This is where John Steinbeck did his drinking," he says, pausing across the street from some now-trendy bistro. He gestures excitedly down the block. "That's Schiavoni's Market. 'The Winter of Our Discontent' was set in the market. John Steinbeck loved Sag Harbor!"

Steinbeck, James Fenimore Cooper and Truman Capote -- plus Herman Melville (although it's not certain that he, as opposed to Queegueg, actually visited Sag Harbor), are the names from the village's literary register most recognizable to audiences today. But it's the slightly more obscure figures Garro relishes discussing during his two-hour tour.

For example, the tour stops by the former hotel at 55 Main St. where Prentice Mulford grew up. A troublemaker as a youth, Mulford left Sag Harbor during the California Gold Rush and started writing on the West Coast. A philosopher and spiritualist, he became a sensation among literary circles in America and England. At 57, having published 36 books -- and living the last part of his life like a hermit in the swamps of New Jersey -- he decided to finally return to Sag Harbor. He died en route. "A great mind never fully understood," is how Sag Harbor historian Dorothy Ingersoll Zaykowski describes him.

Even more obscure is David Frothingham, editor of the first newspaper on Long Island. Frothingham published the Long Island Herald from 1791 to 1798, out of his home on Main Street, which became known as The Herald House. For the first couple of years, Garro thought he knew where the old Herald House had been and would make it a stop on the tour, telling the story of the young editor -- whose invective against the administration of President John Adams rose to the point that the Sag Harbor journalist was arrested under the Alien and Sedition Acts and sent to prison for four months, never to return. One day, however, as Garro was relating the tale, a woman came out of her house and told him he was pointing to the wrong place. "The Herald House was on this side of the street," she said.

Writers' presence

Lovely as many of these historical homes are, the locations become almost secondary. Whether a writer lived at one address or another doesn't really matter -- the point one gets following Garro around town is simply that so many of them were here. "It's a fabulous tour," says Barbara McClancy of Amagansett, who is following Garro around town for the second time. "It's like a good book. The second time around, you get something more out of it."

Indeed, there's a great deal to learn here, and Garro is careful to distinguish between myth and fact. For example: Did James Fenimore Cooper -- writing in the Duke Fordham Inn on the corner of Main and West Water streets -- really base the famous character of Natty Bumppo (aka Hawkeye) on one David Hand, a Sag Harbor captain and Revolutionary War hero? "He supposedly used a physical description of Hand to flesh out the character," Garro says. "But we don't know for sure."

Hawkeye would become one of the first and most famous characters in American literature and was brought to the movie screen by both Randolph Scott and Daniel Day-Lewis. Cooper uses nearly two pages to describe his hero in "The Last of the Mohicans."

"His head was large, his shoulders narrow, his arms long and dangling, while his hands were small and delicate. His legs and thighs were thin, but of extraordinary length. ... His person, though muscular, was rather attenuated than full; but every nerve and muscle appeared strung and indurated by unremitted exposure and toil."

Did Cooper paint this detailed word portrait as he watched the then-aging Captain Hand ambling down Long Wharf; or as he saw him from his perch at a local groggery?

We'll just have to use our imaginations.