The Outermost House by Henry Beston
Why I Recommend This Book…
The holidays have passed. Ofttimes, they keep us distracted, as we encounter the shortest day of the year. But once over, we’re left with the lengthy month of January, cold and dark, and with nothing to divert our attention.
This is why I’m recommending Henry Beston’s The Outermost House as the book for you this month. It’s a classic of American nature writing and easily one of my favorites.
A Seeker of All Things Mysterious
Beston was a seeker of all things mysterious, as he writes, “There is always reserve and mystery, always something beyond, on earth and sea, something which nature, honouring, conceals.”
Beston reminds us that life is full of mystery, if only we remain seekers. And nature is the perfect place where so much of this mystery is to be found.
A Little Background
Henry Beston was born in 1888 in Quincy, Massachusetts. Educated at Harvard, he served in the First World War and was later employed as a teacher.
In 1926, he purchased fifty acres of dune land on the beach of Cape Cod and constructed a little cottage, a weekend retreat, 20 x 16, and affectionately named it Fo’castle.
I appreciate the coziness of this structure, since my own writing studio is 10 x 8. There’s just something nurturing about working in a small space.
Beston planned staying for only two weeks, but as September neared he, “lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held [him] that [he] could not go.”
Thus began his experiment of one year living on the great beach, much like Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden (who by the way, also spent time visiting and writing about the Cape, seventy years before Beston).
Fo’castle
Even though Beston had authored a war and naval life memoir, as well as several fairy tale books for children, it was at Fo’castle where he found his subject and style.
Celebrating Winter’s Rawness
Although Beston describes all the seasons in The Outermost House, I’ll share a few passages relating to winter, since he especially reveled in the majesty and splendor of the Cape during this season, celebrating all its desolation and rawness.
A few of my favorites:
“There is a new sound on the beach, and a greater sound. Slowly, and day by day, the surf grows heavier, and down the long miles of the beach, at the lonely stations, men hear the coming winter in the roar. Mornings and evenings grow cold, the northwest wind grows cold; the last crescent of the month’s moon, discovered by chance in a pale morning sky, stands north of the sun.”
“The ocean was purple-black, rough, and covered with somber whitecaps; the morning light was pewter dull, and over earth and sea and the lonely sands hung a pall of purple-leaden cloud full of vast, tormented motion as it crossed the Cape on its way to the Atlantic.”
“An invisible moon, two days past the full, had risen behind the rushing floor of cloud, and some of its wan light fell on the tortured earth and the torment of the sea. The air was full of sleet, hissing with a strange, terrible, insistent sound on the dead grass, and sand was being whirled up into the air.”
Now, keep in mind this book is not a novel; it does not have a plot. Essentially The Outermost House is a beautiful meditation on nature, and Beston’s writing is absolutely spellbinding, as you obviously see from the above passages.
Ghostly Shivers
But, there is a little bit of ghostly-shivers, what the Victorians would’ve called “The Pleasurable Shudder” when Beston describes an old wreckage rising from the sea:
“Presently there crumbled out the blackened skeleton of an ancient wreck which the dunes had buried long ago. As the tide rose this ghost floated and lifted itself free…There was something inconceivably spectral in the sight of this dead hulk thus stirring from its grave and yielding its bones again to the fury of the gale.”
And Some Romance Too
When Beston finished his experiment, he returned to his hometown and proposed marriage to Elizabeth Coatsworth, a novelist.
And here’s the part I love. He had a collection of disorganized notes, and Coatsworth gave him an ultimatum: “No book, no marriage.”
So, Beston spent the following year organizing his writings and publishing his book, and then he and Coatsworth were promptly married soon after.
And where did they honeymoon? At Fo’castle, of course!
The Sea Claims
In February 1978, the sea finally claimed Fo’castle. But with much gratitude to his wife, we have Beston’s words.
Beston reminds us that, “Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery, man ceases to be man.”
The Outermost House is quite possibly the perfect read for January.
This is my writing studio. It sits behind my adobe home in New Mexico’s high desert, and it’s the perfect place for crafting stories with romance and passion, mystery and history, memory and secrets.