Summers in Rachel's House

MAINE'S ISLANDS-July/August 2009
by Robin Clifford Wood
Photograph by Bill McGuinness

“If once you have slept on an island, you’ll never be quite the same …”

You might find these lines on a yellowed copy of Rachel Field’s famous poem tacked to the wall of any coastal home in the country. But the people of Cranberry Isles, Maine, embrace both poem and author as their own. This small group of islands off the coast of Mount Desert Island captivated the heart and pen of Rachel Lyman Field, exuberant writer of poetry, plays, and novels in the early 1900s.

On Sutton Island, one of the Cranberry Isles, sits her former house, its deep front porch perched on a craggy cliff. Here Field found creative inspiration for nearly twenty years. By some stroke of luck, or perhaps through the workings of fate that so often play upon the lives of her characters, that house became my own in 1994.

Little has been written about Field beyond the basic facts of her life and career, and she has no descendants. She was prolific, successful, and sadly short-lived. Born in 1894, she died at age 47, leaving behind her husband and a two-year-old adopted daughter. Among her many honors for children’s literature was a 1930 Newbery Medal, the first won by a woman, for Hitty: Her First Hundred Years. One of her best selling novels for adults, All This and Heaven Too, became a film and earned a best picture nomination in 1940.

Outside of her writing life, Field was a loyal and generous friend and an engaging conversationalist. She cooked a famous clam chowder, loved her Scottish terrier, hooked rugs, and joined friends for mushroom hunting and picnics. In her writing, hardship and toil have their place, but they are balanced by a hopeful steadfastness and a sincere delight in the natural world. The more I learn, the more enchanted I become by this vibrant woman, described by one fan as “just like Christmas!”

Like me, Rachel Field first arrived on Sutton Island as a teenager and found her bliss. Referring to “that small, beautiful, wooded island,” she wrote, “I suppose that it, more than any other one thing in my life, has helped me with my writing. For it means roots and background to me.”

“Roots and background” are the cornerstone of much of Field’s most successful writing—about American history, Maine sea captains, and her own ancestors. Inspired by her island home, she weaves into her histories a magic timelessness of setting, landscape, and artifact.

When my husband and I first set foot in the Field house as prospective buyers, it had experienced a long period of neglect. Even so, the house’s layered histories spoke to us through the dust.

Here were the original wicker chairs, crockery, utensils, and creaky beds that had accompanied every island guest. On one doorframe were the penciled growth lines of children from 1903 to 1919. Books, letters, and magazines dated summer visits throughout the twentieth century. Chests were filled with musty clothes and linens, and beachcombing treasures were strewn over shelves and tabletops.

Under the attic eaves the wreckage of nearly a century awaited repair, festooned in a labyrinth of cobwebs. Underneath the raised building spread a landscape of discarded appliances and furniture, too cumbersome to cart away. It would take a lifetime of clearing and sorting, painting and repairing, exploration and discovery. We were sold.

I was captivated by more than just the archaeological promise of this domestic museum. The place seemed rife with artistic inspiration. And in fact, since Rachel Field’s time, many creative souls found their muse within these walls, not only hopeful amateurs, but successful professionals like poet Hortense Flexner, artist/illustrator Wyncie King, and composer Laurence Rosenthal.

Now each time I arrive, I breathe a sigh and sit still in Rachel’s house, exhilarated by the atmosphere. Somehow, this house feeds the soul—through the warm glow of sunrise on golden-varnished woodwork, the surrounding nobility of moss-draped spruce, the pounding, rhythmic soundtrack of wind and waves, or perhaps through an intangible sense of irrepressible life.

The deeper I look into her life and read the work of this friend I never met, the more connected I feel to Rachel Field. In her poems, I recognize artifacts that I still use—a key, a piece of china, a painted chair. Her lingering presence is most with me, however, when I sit in “Rachel’s room,” on the old sleigh bed that was hers, under her hooked rug that hangs on the wall. I touch the embroidered initials that she sewed into a linen towel, as I gaze out her doorway at the same view, and that magic timelessness washes over me. How right she was. I’ll never be quite the same.

Photograph courtesy of J.P. Wood

“Hitty” at Cranberry House

In June of 2008, the Great Cranberry Island Historical Society opened Cranberry House, home to the Preble-Marr Museum, a small cultural center, and a café. One display area is dedicated to Rachel Field, and especially Hitty, the adventurous doll from Field’s award-winning book. Compelling evidence places Hitty’s home on the island, and Hitty fans from all over the country come to visit. For more information, go to cranberryisles.com/gcihs/cranberry-house. The house’s seasonal phone number is 207.244.7800.