E. B. White’s Elegant Words | New England’s Gifts

In April of this year, Charlotte’s Web was declared “the most popular children’s book ever” in a survey produced by BBC.com. E. B. White’s spartan boathouse, where much of the book was written, is still standing in a town in Midcoast Maine, although now the building has been prettied up by new owners.

White’s granddaughter and literary executor tells Yankee that White expressly requested that his saltwater farm never become a museum or be used for public tours. Instead, you could ride a train (and have a dream about a mouse named Stuart Little), hoist a sail on Penobscot Bay, or write a letter to the editor to help save the environment. Pick up a copy of One Man’s Meat and read his essay “Once More to the Lake”; then paddle a canoe on the Belgrade Lakes. Read his essay “Walden,” and visit that pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Or try “Dog Training” and invest in a rescued shelter dog, maybe a dachshund whom you’ll name Fred.

In 1929, long before the publication of any of his children’s books, E. B. White wrote a poem for his newly wedded wife, Katharine, from the King Edward Hotel in Toronto. Folk singer Pete Seeger later put it to music, and another composer recently put it into a chamber piece performed in Rockport, Maine, in 2014.

After White’s death on October 1, 1985, this poem, together with the Jill Krementz photo of White on the one-rope swing in his barn, were included in a pamphlet as part of his memorial service in Blue Hill, Maine,near the farm where he had resided for nearly half a century. 

—Eds.

Natural History

The spider, dropping down from twig, Unwinds a thread of her devising: A thin, premeditated rig To use in rising.

And all the journey down through space, In cool descent, and loyal-hearted, She builds a ladder to the place From which she started.

Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning.

—E. B. White