Mrs. Cliff's Yacht

Mrs. Cliff's Yacht

Mrs. Cliff's Yacht follows Mrs. Cliff, a widow from the small town of Plainton, Maine, who has become immensely wealthy through her share of a treasure obtained with Captain Horn and his wife Edna. Returning alone from Paris and New York, she reflects on her new independence and resolves to live in her old home among her old friends rather than adopt the manners of the wealthy elsewhere. Arriving in Plainton, she finds her cousin and housemate Willy Croup oddly formal at the station, since the townspeople, unsure how to treat a suddenly rich woman, stayed away out of caution. Once Mrs. Cliff embraces Willy and insists on being her old self, the town's affection returns, and neighbors flock to her house that evening, though she withholds the exact size of her fortune. Her acid-tongued neighbor Nancy Shott visits with gloomy gossip and thinly veiled criticism, unchanged by Mrs. Cliff's new status. Mrs. Cliff struggles with how to spend her rapidly growing income without alienating her community or living like the wealthy Buskirk family on the hill, whom she privately dreads resembling. She hires a servant, buys a horse (which proves too eager to go home and is exchanged for a hired driver, Andrew Marks), buys a cow, and gives a large dinner that goes awkwardly due to her small dining room and Willy's inexperience serving. Her old shipmate George Burke, now rich and dressed as a fine gentleman, arrives in Plainton looking for advice on settling down. He and Mrs. Cliff become close allies; he alone knows the true size of her fortune. Burke proposes building Mrs. Cliff a grand new dining-room and additional rooms on a corner lot, to be constructed away from her old house and then physically moved into place to spare her the mess of construction—including relocating the Barnard family's house to another lot to make room. Burke oversees the entire building project, which becomes a local sensation, while townspeople speculate that he is courting Willy Croup for her supposed inheritance after they are seen riding together. Meanwhile, a group of Plainton women—Miss Cushing, Mrs. Ferguson, Mrs. Wells, Mrs. Archibald, and Miss Inchman—privately consider themselves Mrs. Cliff's rightful heirs and scheme to prompt her to make a will. Miss Inchman, asked to broach the subject, instead reveals it was about a proposed new cemetery, mortifying the other women and causing Mrs. Ferguson to faint. Mrs. Cliff enthusiastically supports the new cemetery and has her late husband's remains moved there. When the new addition is finished, it proves grand and spacious, giving Mrs. Cliff a fuller sense of being equal to her fortune. She, Willy, and the two Thorpedyke sisters—impoverished but well-bred former Boston aristocrats—travel to New York to furnish the house. There, Willy discovers that gentle Miss Barbara Thorpedyke is secretly in debt to a grocer, Mr. Bullock, and anonymously leaves her money to pay the bill. Mrs. Cliff, prompted by Willy, invites the Thorpedyke sisters to live with her; when their own house proves impossible to rent, Burke takes it himself as a tenant, solving the sisters' financial problem without wounding their pride. Back in Plainton, Mrs. Cliff's elevated household draws the attention of the socially superior Buskirk family, especially after Burke boasts to Mrs. Buskirk of Mrs. Cliff's planned public park (to be called "The Grove of the Incas") and invents the idea that she will soon own a yacht. Mrs. Buskirk visits, is quietly impressed by the house's superior furnishings, and invites Mrs. Cliff's household to luncheon, cementing Mrs. Cliff's social standing in town. Mrs. Cliff, though gratified, continues inviting humbler friends like Miss Cushing to her table. Persuaded partly by Burke's talk of using her wealth productively, Mrs. Cliff agrees to buy a steam yacht, to be named the *Summer Shelter* and used partly for charitable "country weeks at sea" for deserving poor people, so it will not seem an extravagance. She also sends her finest California blankets to the ailing, ungrateful Nancy Shott, and continues developing her planned park with a landscape designer. Burke searches New York and Boston for a suitable vessel and eventually finds one, which Mrs. Cliff and Willy inspect and approve after touring its decks and cabins with delight, and Burke purchases and outfits it, taking command as "Captain Burke." Before returning home, Mrs. Cliff and Willy plan a short trial voyage to the West Indies with Burke as captain. At a Brooklyn church Synod meeting, Mrs. Cliff meets Mrs. Arkwright and, moved by the sight of tired clergy delegates, impulsively offers to take a group of ministers from the Synod along on the yacht's trial cruise to the West Indies. The text breaks off as this invitation is being conveyed to some of the assembled clergymen, before the voyage itself begins.

By Frank R. Stockton · First published 1896 · Genre: Adventure, Humor, Drama · 34 chapters · 99,740 words

First lines

On a beautiful September afternoon in a handsome room of one of the grand, up-town hotels in New York sat Mrs. Cliff, widow and millionaire.

Widow of a village merchant, mistress of an unpretending house in the little town of Plainton, Maine, and, by strange vicissitudes of fortune, the possessor of great wealth, she was on her way from Paris to the scene of that quiet domestic life to which for nearly thirty years she had been accustomed.

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Mrs. Cliff's Yacht is listed on Textopian as a novel by Frank R. Stockton, dated 1896 CE.

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adventure · yacht · maritime · romance · mystery · wealth · society · exploration · friendship · humor · family · travel

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More by Frank R. Stockton