With the Atlantic Ocean
as a backdrop, film and stage actor Marvin Einhorn performs
as Henry Beston in a special ceremony to observe the 40th
anniversary of the Outermost House being dedicated as a
National Literary Landmark. The event was held at the Cape
Cod National Seashore's Province Lands Visitors Center in
Provincetown on Monday, Oct. 11, 2004. Nearly 200 brave
souls endured a cold, gusty north wind to watch Einhorn's
one-man act, written by Cynthia
L. Cooper, along with audio clips from the first
ceremony in 1964 and a display of Beston / Outermost House
artifacts. (Photo by Jon March)
Henry Beston's 'Coronation'
remembered 40 years later
On Oct. 11, 2004, the date could have very
well been Oct. 11, 1964.
It was a windy fall day
at the Cape Cod National Seashore. A tribute was being paid
to author Henry Beston for his efforts writing the Cape
Cod literary classic The Outermost House. On the
stage, a man who had experienced eight decades of life was
on stage, gazing wide-eyed at the vast October sky.
This was the scene at the
Province Lands Visitors Center in Provincetown on Oct. 11,
2004. The Henry Beston Society was staging a re-enactment,
of sorts, 40 years to the day (and the hour) from when the
U.S. Department of the Interior dedicated Henry Beston’s
“Fo’castle,” the 20x16 house that was the base for his experiences
in his 1928 book, as a National Literary Landmark. The original
ceremony, referred to the Bestons as "the coronation,"
was held at Coast Guard Beach in Eastham, a stretch of seaside
sand that the elements have reduced greatly over the last
40 years.
Highlighting the program
was a one-man act by film and stage actor Marvin Einhorn
(A Beautiful Mind, A League of Their Own) of a script
by playwright Cynthia
L. Cooper of New York. The performance was centered
on Beston during the 1964 ceremony, with the author reflecting
on the events of the previous 40 years. Nearly 200 people
attended the Provincetown event, according to Cape Cod National
Seashore officials.
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With
the image of Henry Beston looking over his shoulder,
Marvin Einhorn brings the author of The Outermost
House back to life on Oct. 11, 2004 in Provincetown.
(Photo
by Kerrie March)
|
“The Secretary of the Interior
holds my book up in the air, as if it were a bird, a Northern
Wheatear perhaps, ready to make flight, kindly letting it
soak in the morning sun, the marsh and the moor, the unending
sands and the matchless surf,” Einhorn reads.
Einhorn, 83, who also worked
as a television director
at NBC (The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, Mr. Wizard)
for 30 years, bears a strong resemblance to the late author
of The Outermost House, who died in 1968.
Einhorn first became interested in Beston and The
Outermost House back in the 1950s, he read A Journal
for Henry Beston by Winfield Townley Scott. This prompted
Einhorn to contact Beston and ask his permission to re-enact
his story, which the author happily granted. “I think Mr.
Beston misunderstood me at first when I called,” Einhorn
recalled. “He thought we were going to make a movie and
that I wanted him to star in it.”
It took Einhorn several
decades before he could finally act on his quest to play
Beston. He eventually hooked up with Cooper, who undertook
a massive research project, crafting together a script and
enabling Einhorn to fulfill his longtime dream of
playing Beston. Einhorn performed the script in 2003 at
Eastham’s Chapel in the Pines as a benefit for the Beston
Society and WOMR-FM in Provincetown.
The reading begins with
Beston at the 1964 dedication
ceremony. “Slowly, Henry steps off the podium, reaches for
sand and lets it run through his fingers, like a timer;
he smells the sand, and rubs it all around his hands,” Cooper
writes in her script. Einhorn follows his sand activity
by exclaiming, “The duneland burns with the smell of sand,
ocean, and sun. Solitary and elemental, unsullied and remote,
visited and possessed by the outer sea, these sands might
be the end or the beginning of a world.”
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From
the 1964 dedication ceremony, from left: Elizabeth
Coatsworth, Henry Beston, Toni Peabody. (UPI photo
courtesy of The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, Mass.)
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The story soon drifts back
to the 1920s, Beston recalls his relationship to the woman
who would become his wife, Elizabeth Coatsworth. He talks
of his gruesome experiences in World War I: “On the loneliest
of nights beneath the blackened skies of France with exploding
torpedoes and landscapes littered with ripped bodies, I
dreamt about my prim New England village. No thoughts, only
longing, only pictures of my long walks down the beach searching
for a hermit crab.”
Adding to the program was
the appropriate timing of the descent of airplanes at the
nearby Provincetown Airport, one of which flew by as Einhorn
read of planes dropping bombs on the French countryside.
“He concluded with the line:
“For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given
to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion
and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach or
from a little house on the outermost reaches of the outermost
shore.”
The program, which ran slightly
over an hour at the Province Lands amphitheatre with a stiff
north wind blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean, began with
an introduction by Suzanne Haley of the Cape Cod National
Seashore. The program opened with an audio clip of former
Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody opening the 1964
event. Several audio clips, most provided by the Seashore,
were played throughout the program, all produced for the
program by Beston Society board member Jon March, an entertainment
professional from Connecticut.
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Henry
Beston Society Executive Director Don Wilding addresses
the masses.
(Photo
by Kerrie March)
|
Don Wilding, author of the
book Henry Beston’s Cape Cod and executive director
of the Henry Beston Society, served as master of ceremonies.
Wilding talked about the history of the first event, leading
into another audio segment of the late governor talking
about the influence of Beston’s words.
After Wilding recited many
quotes about The Outermost House, a special taped
message by Endicott Peabody Jr. – made especially for the
occasion – was played. The governor’s son recalled the events
leading up to the first occasion, and how his mother, Toni,
also played a large part in the organization of that event.
Following Einhorn’s performance,
which received a standing ovation, Wilding extended thanks
to Carol Green, Doug Green, the local media outlets, disc
jockey Tom Tuttle of Orleans, the Cape Cod Community Media
Center in Yarmouth, Beston Society directors Kerrie March,
Jon March, and Nita Wilding, and Annie and Marvin Einhorn,
who were provided transportation to and from New York and
lodging for the weekend by Carol Green.
The event closed with a
recording of Henry Beston himself from the 1964 ceremony
– reading from the final paragraphs of The Outermost
House.
After the ceremony, Wilding
invited guests to parouse the exhibit, ask questions, and
discuss the Beston Society's plan to
rebuild The
Outermost House -- a notion that was met
with spontaneous applause.
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Beston
artifacts on display during the Henry Beston Society
/ Cape Cod National Seashore event on Oct. 11, 2004.
(Photo
by Don Wilding)
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The Beston Society also
provided a display of artifacts, which included photographs
of Beston and The Outermost House, fragments of wood from
the original house, a first edition of The Outermost
House and a U.S. Armed Forces Edition of The Outermost
House, and a copy of an original invitation to the 1964
ceremony from Governor Peabody. A miniature version of The
Fo’castle, of which several were made by Jack Wallace of
Eastham in 1965 after the house was re-shingled, was provided
for the day by David LaPierre of Nauset Market in North
Eastham, and a piece of the drawer from the Fo’castle provided
by Robert Prescott of the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s
Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.
Among those in attendance were Cape Cod
author Robert Finch, and Henry Clark, who recalled meeting
Henry Beston was Clark was a child in Eastham. Clark often
talked about the Indians to Beston, who was enthused to
hear about it. Beston spent many months with the Navajo
Indians in New Mexico prior to his “year on the beach,”
and is believed to have learned his keen sense of the natural
world from them.
Marvin
Einhorn performs as Henry Beston while the audience listens
attentively -- and tries to keep warm as the north wind
blows in off the Atlantic. (Photo by Don Wilding)
