I can’t be in Maine without thinking of the Whites, E.B. and Katharine (and Roger Angell of course). On our yearly long drive up here we pass through Ellsworth, one of the “big towns” close to Brooklin where the White’s saltwater farm is located. Anyone who has read White’s classic collection of essays, One Man’s Meat will come across mentions of Ellsworth. The old train line still exists in Ellsworth (the tracks exist, not the train itself. As someone who paid close attention to trains as a kid, I like to think of what it was like for the Whites to train from Manhattan to Ellsworth).
Thinking of the Whites automatically makes me think of Thurber. Sometimes I think about the still somewhat cloudy history in my mind (and in the accounts of their biographers) of exactly how Thurber came to The New Yorker via his connection to E.B.. However it happened we can be forever grateful that it did happen.
We should especially be beholden to E.B. White for rescuing Thurber’s penciled seal drawing “Hm, explorers.” (a redrawn version, by Thurber, shown here) out of Thurber’s trash bin at work, inking it in and sending to the magazine’s art meeting, where it was rejected (Thurberites will recall that it was Thurber’s initial attempt to redraw “explorers” led to his classic Seal In The Bedroom drawing). The success of White & Thurber’s collaboration, Is Sex Necessary (and White’s insistence that Thurber’s drawings illustrate the book) led to Thurber’s art beginning to appear in The New Yorker.
So that’s my train of thinking as we pass through Ellsworth each year. The Whites…Thurber…Thurber drawings…New Yorker. Although we’re away (and “from away”) in Maine, it’s very much like being at home.
— This is the third and last dispatch from Maine this week, and this year.
So much more on The Whites and Thurber:
Thurber’s The Years With Ross; Burton Bernstein’s Thurber: A Biography; Harrison Kinney’s Thurber bio, His Life And Times; Scott Elledge’s E.B. White: A Biography; Linda H. Davis’s Onward And Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White.