Beston Society Calendar of historical
and upcoming events
ONGOING: More dates and details to be announced. Special exhibit, titled A Sense of Place, a joint effort by the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History and the Beston Society, is now open to the public at the Museum's Brewster location.
SEPTEMBER: Henry
Beston goes to the Fo'castle for a two-week stay in 1925.
He ends up staying on and off for a period of nearly two
years, and writes a book of his experiences, which he calls The Outermost House.
SEPT. 7-8: 2008 -- The Henry Beston Society will be on hand once again at Eastham's annual Windmill Weekend festivities from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Look for the Beston Society table on the Windmill Green. The Beston Society will hold a raffle, with several impressive Outermost House-related items as prizes.
SEPT. 12: 2008 -- Don Wilding, executive director of the Henry Beston Society and author of the book Henry Beston's Cape Cod, will present his lecture, The Legacy of Henry Beston and The Outermost House, at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster, Mass. on Cape Cod at 7:30 p.m.
SEPTEMBER 16: In
1963, Henry Beston writes to Nan Turner Waldron (author
of Journey to Outermost House), stating "your
letter brings the sense of the Great Beach back very vividly,
and it makes me happy to thnk that people who feel the beauty
as you do still shelter under the Fo'castle's roof."
SEPTEMBER 18: In
1944, Tom Kelley, former owner of the Overlook Inn in Eastham,
writes to Henry Beston informing him that the Fo'castle
is still intact after yet another storm, but work begins
to move The Outermost House for the second time, this time
to its final location next to Nauset Marsh.
OCTOBER 5: The
Outermost House is published
in 1928.
OCTOBER 10: The
Patriot Ledger newspaper
of Henry Beston's hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts gives The Outermost House rave reviews, 1928. Critic Walter
Emerson wrote "The average person living there alone,
probably within a week would toss himself into the sea if
he found himself without means of returning to civilization.
Henry Beston, however, is not an average person." The
review opened with Emerson writing "If you want to
know Henry Beston, read The Outermost House ... in
it he himself is revealed, his great love for untarnished
nature, his ever enquiring mind so filled with the beauty
and mystery of his carefully recorded observations, his
very religion and philosophy, are all there. And Henry is
indeed worth knowing."
OCTOBER 11: Henry
Beston's Outermost House is dedicated as a National Literary
Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior in a special
ceremony at Eastham's Coast Guard Beach, 1964. The ceremony
is presided over by Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody.
In 2004, the Henry Beston Society holds a 40th anniversary
tribute to that event at the Cape Cod National Seashore's
Provincelands Visitors Center in Provincetown, with stage
and film actor Marvin Einhorn portraying Henry Beston. Endicott
Peabody Jr. provides a special taped message for the 200
people in attendance.
OCTOBER 15: In
1926, Henry Beston told of the burning of The Pioneer,
a trawler out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, which he witnessed
from the Fo'castle during his "year on the beach"
but not told of in the pages of The Outermost House.
The crew members, many of them badly burned and injured,
were brought ashore near the Fo'castle after being rescued
by the Coast Guard, and were brought into Beston's humble
beach cottage, where they were bandaged up and served soup
and hot wine toddies by the Outermost Householder. Two days
later, the crew members were featured in a photograph in
the pages of The Boston Sunday Post.
NOVEMBER 8: Nan
Turner Waldron, author of Journey to Outermost House,
dies at the age of 78 at her home in Sharon, Massachusetts,
after a battle with cancer, surrounded by family members,
in 2000.
NOVEMBER 11: Henry
Beston speaks at Armistice Day ceremonies in Eastham, 1928.
NOVEMBER 22: In
1928, The Patriot Ledger newspaper of Quincy, Massachusetts
publishes excerpts of a book review of The Outermost
House from the December issue of Vanity Fair magazine.
In the review, critic John Riddell praises The Outermost
House, saying that "it stands alone, not only in
this publishing year, but it any year ... Mr. Beston has
done one incredible thing in this work which no other writer
to my knowledge has ever succeeded in doing before. He has
captured in prose the very sound of the sea ... I genuinely
believe that Henry Beston is one of the few great prose
writers in this country today. The Outermost House is strong medicine. I genuinely believe that it will live
for other generations."
DECEMBER 20 : Last day of the exhibit, A Sense of Place: The Works of Beston, Hay and Finch, at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in Brewster on Cape Cod. The exhibit, a joint collaboration between the museum and the Beston Society, opened on May 28, 2008.
DECEMBER 25: Henry
Beston and his daughter, Margaret, spend the baby's first
Christmas at the Whalewalk Inn on Bridge Road in Eastham,
1930.
JANUARY 1: Henry
Beston witnesses the ruddy turnstones on the beach, 1926.
JANUARY 29: Nan
Turner Waldron, author of Journey to Outermost House,
is born, 1922.
FEBRUARY 6-7: Henry
Beston's Outermost House is swept out to sea in a massive
winter hurricane, 1978.
FEBRUARY 7: After
an intense January storm leaves the Fo'castle hanging on
the edge of a cliff, work begins on moving the Fo'castle
back on the dune, 1933.
FEBRUARY 19-20: Winter
storm detailed in Midwinter chapter of The Outermost
House hits Cape Cod, 1927. Even on the high dune, Henry
Beston's Fo'castle is surrounded by high tides.
MARCH 5: Ownership
of 32 acres of duneland on the beach in Eastham, where Henry
Beston's Fo'castle is located, is officially transferred
to Beston from Edna Nickerson Hurd, 1932.
APRIL 5: Henry
Beston completes the manuscript to The Outermost House at his office at the Cliveden Building at the corner of
Hancock and Cliveden Streets in Quincy, Mass., 1928.
APRIL 15: Henry
Beston dies at the age of 79 at his Nobleboro, Maine home,
1968.
MAY 9: Ice storm
with high winds hits Coast Guard Beach and surrounds Outermost
House with abnormally high tides, 1977.
JUNE 1: Henry
Beston born, 1888.
JUNE 18: Henry
Beston marries writer / poet Elizabeth Coatsworth in Hingham,
Massachusetts, 1929.
JUNE: Carpenter
Harvey Moore and his crew begin a four-week project of building
the Fo'castle, a 20x16 cottage, for Henry Beston on the
beach in Eastham two miles south of the Nauset Coast Guard
Station, 1925. Moore's carpenters are paid a rate of $2.50
per day.
