Text Message #3

Text Message #3

Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship

The Correspondence of E.B. White & Edmund Ware Smith

Down East Books

235 pp.

Like any bibliophile and reader, I have a TBR pile. I spend a lot of time rearranging the pile, reordering the books, adding and subtracting to the pile. I also maintain a TBA (acquired) list. I pass agonizing moments calculating the number of reading hours remaining in my expected life trajectory versus the number of books in my TBR and TBA. Long story short, I have a highly organized, doomed to failure reading plan.

Much as I enjoy, cherish, and stand by my plan, I can be spontaneous. Many of my favorite books were not from my TBR or TBA, not books I planned to read, not books I was looking for, and often, as in the case of the book pictured above, not books I knew existed.

This book was discovered on a rainy afternoon this past August, during my annual visit to Maine. I spent a week enjoying near perfect weather, doing everything short of sleeping outdoors. On my last day in Maine, the weather broke and the morning unleashed a downpour on Bar Harbor. Although I was sorry not to be out on the trails, I happily spent the morning in my hotel room, drinking coffee and reading while watching the wind have its way with Frenchman’s Bay. After lunch, the rain dropped to a drizzle and I ventured into the downtown for some browsing which, naturally, included a visit to Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop. I have spent many happy hours in this store, and know it has a section of books about Maine, tucked into a cozy corner. This corner boasts a fine selection of history books, as well as various guides about the flora and fauna of the state. Whilst browsing in this section, I noticed a book with a rather funny title.

Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship was enticing enough that I felt compelled to pick it up for investigative purposes. The book contains the correspondence of E.B. White and Edmund Ware Smith. Neither writer was a native Mainer (lifer, as they say) - Smith was originally from CT, and spent many of his later years living in South Bristol, Maine, while White, originally from NY, summered in Maine as a child, and grew up to spend part of every year in Brooklin, Maine (he divided his time there with New York City and Florida) - so both were considered “from away,” the highest form of insult if one is a lifer and something to aspire to if one bears the unfortunate moniker of tourist. Both men died and are buried in Maine.

All of that explains the Maine portion of the title. The gin is, I think, self-explanatory, the chickens perhaps not. It turns out that E.B. White was a chicken man. Many Americans, including this one, know White from his children’s books, notably Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. Many Americans meet White in a high school or college English class in the form of The Elements of Style which, in my collegiate English classes was always referred to as Strunk & White. A smaller group may be familiar with White’s essays, stories, and humor bits for The New Yorker, which he contributed to for over sixty years, as well as other publications. I would guess that not many alive today would associate the name E.B. White with chickens.

White raised chickens on his farm in Maine. He had a lot of practice and considered himself something of an expert. Many of the letters include White’s advice as Smith builds his own hen house and raises his own chickens, and White’s essay The Hen: An Appreciation, which served as the introduction for a guide to raising chickens, is included at the end of the book. This explains the chickens portion of the title.

I am not certain how the two men met. At some point, White wrote some pieces for a publication called Ford Times, with which Smith was associated, so I have formed the untested hypothesis that is how the two men came across one another. However it occurred, they nevertheless met and, as people sometimes did in the time when texting was non-existent and long-distance phone calls were expensive, began to correspond by post.

When I picked up the book in Sherman’s, I had no expectation of having any desire to purchase it. I thought the title was amusing and was curious what it meant. Fortuitous curiosity, I can now say. The description on the back caught my interest and I flipped the book open at random and read one letter. That was all it took. I probably would have stood in Sherman’s and read the entire book. Thankfully, my children are not that patient and began to hover, so I purchased the book and brought it home to NYC with me. That was in late August and I have read the book three times through since. I am still not done with it.

The book presented me with one of the most pleasurable reads of 2021, a stand out in a year of pleasurable reads, by turns hilarious, educational, touching, and poignant, so much so that when Smith rather abruptly dies after 11 years of letters, I felt the loss White must have felt in that moment. I pretty much fell in love with the friendship these two men shared. The correspondence starts fairly formally but quickly eases into a casual, intimate tone. One of my favorite letters comes about one year into the correspondence, when White, until then addressed as Mr. White, suggests to Mr. Smith that they adopt the monikers Whitey and Smitty in future correspondence. By this point, the friendship portion of the title is palpable, warming the pages as they turn. Some other favorites include the very first letter, in which Smith recounts a hilarious story in which he asked a man in Grand Central Station for a place to have baggage repaired but the man misheard and answered as if Smith had asked for a place for dagger repair, and a 1962 letter which includes, at White’s prior request, Smith’s directions for making a lime rickey which, after listing the ingredients and directions for combining them, concludes with the line, “Two or more of these, and you don’t care whether it’s a good recipe or not.” In the short but sweet category, White says, in a postcard sent from Florida, that Smith shouldn’t write about places where he has found stillness. “Quickest way to destroy stillness is to write a piece about it.” I frequently reread a 1963 letter which includes Smith’s rant about “mannerisms which infect our daily conversation like a verbal pox,” and goes on to list the offending terms, such as “you know,” “what I mean,” and “to be honest with you.” “Goodbye to Forty-Eighth Street,” in which White talks about the process of packing up his New York City apartment is also included at the end and demonstrates White’s sly wit. Suffice it to say that these two men were each characters in their own right, very different people who held much in common. I found myself imagining sitting on E.B. White’s oft-discussed terrace, listening to them jaw while sipping a lime rickey and watching the sun set on coastal Maine.

Taken together, the correspondence speaks to a long-term friendship, the pleasure of finding someone to share one’s passions, the lost art of formal letter writing, the difficulties and rewards of raising chickens, and the comfort of a friend’s recipe for lime rickeys.