IF YOU WERE DOING A STUDY in similarities between E. B. White and Edmund Ware Smith, you could start with words like author, outdoorsman, amateur husbandman, keen observer, and that lifelong Maine designation of being “from away.” They both moved to Maine mid-career, spent time in Florida but found it wasn’t for them, and escaped their offices for the great outdoors as often as possible—White to the Belgrade Lakes and Penobscot Bay and Smith to a log cabin he and his wife built on a lake north of Katahdin and then to Damariscotta. They were birdwatchers, canoeists, small-flock poultrymen, and gin drinkers, and they both enjoyed making things out of wood. They were happily married, enjoyed a good county fair, and preferred houseguests to be of short duration.
Edmund Ware Smith was a natural storyteller and often based his stories on fictionalized versions of the many hunters, fishermen, game wardens, and outdoorsmen he knew, including “Jake’s Rangers” from the Damariscotta area. Their exploits were bigger than life, raucous, and generally told in regional vernacular. My grandfather wrote stories but did not voice them. His prose was spare, more formal in grammar and diction, and he was largely an armchair sportsman (although he might pick up a gun if there was a predator at the henhouse, and he enjoyed a fishing rod in a canoe well into his eighties).
Describing his book Woodsmoke from Old Cabins, Smith wrote, “In all men in some degree the wilderness wish exists, however hidden in the haste and habit of the world we make. For me, this wish is symbolized and fulfilled by log cabins I have known, built or lived in. I am thinking especially of certain remote cabins sequestered on the banks of rivers or the shores of little-known lakes.” For my grandfather, that cabin would have been the one he wrote about in “Once More to the Lake,” about his boyhood summers in (and his later return to) the Belgrade Lakes. He was also a fan of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond, and many of his letters (including some of those collected in Letters of E. B. White ) were written in a similarly austere boathouse on his shore in Maine. Clearly, both Smith and White shared that wilderness wish and enjoyed reading accounts of those who pursued it.
By the time Smith moved to Damariscotta, White had a head start on his saltwater farm up the coast. His chicken coops were well proven, having contributed to the war effort, and my grandfather liked nothing better than to discuss chicken farming and the best way to build a chicken coop or outfit it, so of course they would continue their correspondence. White’s introduction for A Basic Chicken Guide, reprinted here, is one of my favorites of his essays, with its pithy advice to “Be tidy. Be brave.” His letters to Smith detailing the essentials of a chicken coop are as useful today as they were then—and entertaining reading, besides.
Already the two men had shared their love of birdwatching, and songbirds in particular. Smith had published two of White’s essays on the subject in the Ford Times, “Feeding Station Birds” (1954) and “A Farewell to Wings” (1955), both illustrated by the inimitable Charles Harper. Some of White’s descriptions could have as aptly described the two men: “The Chickadee was put on earth to demonstrate the power of positive thinking.” And “An early carpenter with but one tool to his kit, the Downy [Woodpecker] arises at five and goes to work drilling holes, making a bright racket and waking everyone in the neighborhood. . . . In spring, when the sap runs and temptation is strong upon him, the Downy has been known to take a drink.”
And there you have it: spreaders of good news and cheer, early risers, carpenters, keen observers, and friends who enjoyed a well-written letter in the mail and a late-afternoon drink, especially along the coast of Maine.
—Martha White,
August 2019