The Outermost House • Henry Beston

Anyone who’s followed my blog for a while knows I never miss a mare classic—so of course I snapped up the newest volume, The Outermost House by Henry Beston, which appeared just a few days ago. The series has always impressed with its variety while staying true to its concept: lesser-known travelogues, diaries, and novels by distinguished authors are newly published here—consistently in a now-rare, very high-quality production with slipcase, handsome cloth binding, and thread stitching. What awaits you in the newest book? I’ll walk you through it in this post, because once again there’s an unknown work to discover in German.

The content of The Outermost House is quickly sketched: author Henry Beston had a small wooden house built right on the dunes of Cape Cod, a peninsula in the southeast of Massachusetts, and from September 1926 spent a year alone on the beach. He first wrote down his impressions just for himself, later publishing them—after his fiancée made marriage contingent on his turning the notes into a book. He must really have loved her, because he published it in 1928, and it was an immediate success.

As I usually do with the mare classics, I only skimmed the flap text and didn’t really know what to expect. The book is a firsthand account and belongs to the genre of “nature writing,” in which nature takes center stage and observed natural phenomena are rendered, accessibly and in literary form, from concrete, lived observation. Put differently: the book reads like watching a nature documentary on Arte—think of the “Wild Scandinavia” series, for example. Just as in a documentary, Beston opens with a kind of aerial sweep over Cape Cod, describing the lay of the land. He then relates the many impressions he gathered over the year beginning in September 1926, arranged chronologically: the light, the sea of course, surf and tides, even scents and sounds. He also writes a great deal about the birds he watches—their behavior, how they strike him—and about their autumn departures south and spring returns. You accompany him through nights and high summer and, together with Beston in his tiny house, experience a mighty, awe-inspiring thunderstorm.

“Shortly afterward it began to rain softly, as if someone had gently opened a valve, and the soothing sound of the drops on the wooden shingles began—a sound I loved even as a child.” (p. 169)

Although the book has no suspense arc, I found it both engaging and very relaxing to read. Beston writes with an easy precision, and you can picture the landscape perfectly. He often goes into detail, naming the exact species he observes, and yet these meticulous descriptions repeatedly rekindle your own memories of the sea—the feeling of standing on the beach, gulls crying, waves breaking, the smell of sand in your nose. It’s like a brief mental vacation: atmospherically dense and beautifully phrased in many places. I really loved that.

“The view from the west-facing windows is especially beautiful in early evening. On pleasantly cool September evenings like these, the steady, horizontal, quiet light of dusk colors the sky as autumnally as the earth beneath it. Autumn holds the land, and autumn holds the air above. The marsh islands, glowing a tawny orange as they pass into darkness, the meandering waterways that dusk washes with bronze, the scarlet meadows shading into purple as night advances—all of them merge with the sky by giving their colors up to it.” (p. 24)

He never becomes overwrought, yet conveys his thoughts and feelings very well. He also offers a 360-degree view: several local shipwrecks, the work of the lifesavers with whom he was in regular contact, and their everyday routines—all vividly portrayed. It often feels exactly like a TV documentary, and I wouldn’t have guessed that could work so well in literary form. A similar, equally impressive book with a documentary character is In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides (also from mare, and like this volume translated into German by Rudolf Mast). That one is suspenseful—more an N24 action doc—while this book is closer to a calm nature documentary.

He allows himself a pleasantly subjective gaze at nature, offering interpretations here and there, and one passage strongly reminded me of Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf in how he writes about life and its fecundity—arriving, from another vantage point, at a conclusion much like London’s.

“As I stood there […] I began to think of nature’s ambition to sow life everywhere—to fill the planet with it, to people earth, air, and sea. To breathe life into every forsaken corner, every remote nook, every forgotten thing: the dead as well as the living. With overflowing, tireless, fervent ardor she lays down the seed of life. And all are her creatures, even those whose plans she threatens to thwart; what toil, what hunger and cold, what trials and torments must they endure to fulfill nature’s will? What conscious resolve of man can compare with her absolute, collective will to subordinate the existence of the individual to the necessities of life itself?” (pp. 150–151)

I found it striking that even in 1927 a whole load of oil waste was dumped into the sea, killing countless birds—a harbinger of what’s now practiced on a grand scale. Systematically wrecking the environment, sadly, already had tradition.

Naturally I was curious after finishing and wondered what the tiny house looked like and exactly where it stood. Online you can find some photos and even a map with its position. I couldn’t pinpoint it precisely on Google Maps, though. It was in this area here, but the Atlantic seems to have reclaimed a good bit of land over the last ninety years, splitting a spit into two. “Fo’castle” (forecastle), as Beston lovingly called his little two-room hut, was moved several times and was then destroyed entirely by a blizzard in 1978. You can get a feel for it in this YouTube video. In the book, Beston makes a cross-peninsula hike from the ocean side to the inner bay. In that context I enjoyed a report by a woman who retraced the same walk with her daughters and wrote about it.

I hadn’t heard of Henry Beston (1888–1968) before. He wrote more—some war reporting—but The Outermost House is his only famous book, chiefly in the English-speaking world. This mare edition appears to be the first German translation.

As for production, the book falls right in line with the series: slipcase, quality cloth binding, gilt ribbon marker, thread stitching—the usual premium territory. The cloth binding this time is comparatively restrained in color and design; personally I’d have preferred a scheme more closely echoing the strong hue of the sand, which Beston mentions several times. Overall, though, I love the book’s classic look, and I notice people tend to strike up conversations with me on the train when I’m reading such beautifully bound volumes—this one prompted that again. Almost always older fellow book lovers who can’t help noticing someone with a book in hand.

I found the afterword a bit mixed. You do learn something about nature writing as a genre and some background, but there’s also quite a lot of over-interpretation—what I’d call over-intellectualized babble. Still worth reading.

Conclusion: With The Outermost House, the superb mare classics series continues in its accustomed high quality. Once again readers are treated to a new discovery—here in German for the first time—and once again to impeccable production. Henry Beston’s lovely depictions of his year on Cape Cod’s shore awaken a longing for and memory of the sea. He writes wonderfully of his many impressions: the play of light on the ocean, the multitude of birds, flora and fauna, the sounds, the surf, and the human comings and goings along that lonely coast. At 224 pages it’s a brisk, pleasant read, strongly reminiscent of nature documentaries—only in literary form. If you’re after thrills or a plotted story, this won’t be for you; but for anyone who appreciates travel writing and nature description, I can only recommend this fine book.

Book information: The Outermost House • Henry Beston • mare Verlag • 224 pages • ISBN 9783866482692