9-10-11. 1605 Green House, Woods Hole, Cape Cod. We didnt go in search of Edward Hopper, but on the way back on South Pamet Rd, we passed under route 6, and were back in telephone land. So it was easy to look up his street address, since there had been a controversy in the last few years over a plan by the new owner to tear down the 840 square foot white cottage and replace it with something...well...more substantial anyway.
The lot in question,25-27 Stevens Way, is off Depot Road in Truro. There is not that much of a there there in Truro, not compared even to Welfleet to the SW, and Provincetown to the NE. Cape Cod's beckoning finger begins to curl Northward at Orleans, and so Welfleet harbor is very sheltered. The very wrap around bony witches tip of the Cape might be trying to wheedle the Gulf Stream closer.* Of course the real 'there' in Truro is what Edward Hopper came for; light.
You become aware of just how well Edward Hopper created his own ' unique experience of nature' ( to paraphrase the explanation of the creative process attributed to him in the 1950's that I found in some biography years ago ) when you get off Route 6 and either turn left down South Pamet road to Balston beach, or right and wander through the dirt roads that actually lead to his house and the other summer cottages. The glacial leavings of sand and granite boulder 'erratics', beset by wind and rain over centuries, and then attacked in the 1820's by human handed saws to feed the furnaces of the Boston and Sandwich Glass Factory that young Deming Jarves built at Sandwich (also the site of the oldest continously held Quaker Meeting in the USA), are naturally a somehow soothing landscape. What Edward Hopper saw was early regrowth. Bayberry, blueberry, baby scrub pine trees, and grasses, spartina and others. The grass and bayberry is still visible, but only where wind and water make any other growth difficult, like near his house. Along the dirt roads he traveled, the land is going through a scrub pine phase, The trees are only 20 feet tall and 6-10 inches in diameter now, but already their needles blanket the ground and keep poison ivy and other shrubs from growing. These were the trees you can see in his backgrounds..a gas station along route 6 for example..and in those places, they have been replaced by the larger oaks that are also the dominant tree here in Woods Hole.
These are the sandy roads and tracks that I remember in the early 50's. During a rain the water sluices and cascades down into depressions that become lakes, and the smaller depressions are then deepened by passing cars until they become potholes. The rains in July and August are warm as the Gulf Stream itself, and my finger tips would be all pruned from the watery labor of engineering the flow into the channels I dug in the road out in front of our house, before being called in for supper.
As far as I can tell, Edward Hopper wasn't much drawn to paint weather. Or water. He really liked human constructs, and the play of light on the surfaces they present. Of course the weather is implicit in every painting anyway, because it's the weather that makes those reds redder and that stark line of the shadow against the building against the sky just so very stark. Sala only has a week more here on the Cape for this season, and when we discovered that we had nothing planned for yesterday (Friday), we decided to drive to Welfleet and Truro. During tourist season I wouldn't be tempted to try this, but the people supply turned off, as usual, on last Monday night. Literally the next day Water Street was more or less empty, there was no line for the Vineyard ferry, and year 'round people I hadn't seen all summer were daring to parade in full view.
Although Sala does not appreciate Fuji's sharp little feet stamping all over her lap to try to see out the window, she still would rather ride shotgun than drive. Sala and Fuji do, of course, go through a graceful pas de deux in which Sala (with a considerable weight advantage) lifts Fuji and whirls her towards the gap between the seats while saying "back, good dog, back!". And Fuji, with perfect timing, splays out her little legs and suddenly becomes too wide to fit between the seats, while looking soulfully put upon. It's as much part of our driving ritual as is stopping at antique stores.
The store we happened to stop at was a little before Welfleet. I walked Fuji, and then joined Sala inside. The prices were still summer prices, but books were on sale. Plus Sala found a pair of older clip on sunglasses that just fit her favorite ( round ) prescription frames, and at what she assured me was a great bargain. I picked up a copy of The Old Man and the Sea, and a volume about salt water angling that happened to have a great description from the 1800's of sailing to Cuttyhunk. They also had some Sandwich glass...whale oil lamps as it happens..that was thank goodness too pricy for impulse buying. But beautiful. The guy behind the counter was the one who told me about chopping down the Cape's forests for the firewood. And oh yes, 'A brief history of time", because what library is complete without that basic book, and ours was borrowed some time ago.
We turned left a little further along route 6 and headed for Pleasant Point..who could resist the name? Small cabins with Novelty siding or shingles, screen porches and some retrofitted skylights, and a few new constructions in the same vein. The road turned dirt and meandered around trees. Finally it ended..at a timber retained wall with the sea grass marsh of Welfleet harbor just beyond. Fuji barked to a pleasant faced woman who appeared rather suddenly from the stairs up from the beach next to us, and with the introduction we found that the place to eat was PJ's, at the next large intersection, which, she said, looked like all the other places serving junk but knew how to cook it. Fifty years of eating junk food all up and down the Cape, she said.
So we went to PJ's, ordered a lobster roll with mayo, a cod sandwich with tomato and lettuce, a side of french fries, a root beer float and some water for Fuji. While waiting, I went with the little dog to the nearest walking place, which happened to be a cemetary. Slate tombstones, staggering under the ravages of time, and very few of marble too. The earlierst was 1783, most were from the early part of the nineteenth century. So some of these people probably cut down the trees, made the glass, fished for the cod and the striped bass and started the communities, dealt with the weather the Gulf Stream brought them, and built the structures that attracted Edward Hopper. Or perhaps Josephine?
Back at Pleasant Point, we went down the stairs and traipsed left towards Drummer Cove. The tide was going out, leaving a modest 20 feet of firm clean yellow sand, and then a dense and lovely swale of tall salt grass that bordered the actual water. A few small boats fastened to cement blocks were stranded in the grass until the next tide. And, now scrabbling and hustling to escape into the grass or to herd up against the timbered seawall, there were armies of fiddler crabs, uca pugnax. These fellas are scarce around Woods Hole..they make great bait for catching Blackfish or Tautog..but here there was still hoardes of them. And caught up in the windrows of dead eel grass, many more of the limulus exoskeletons I found at Tarpaulin cove last weekend. Only these were smaller, more delicate, still the same iconic shape.
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We ate (the lobster roll and fish were all right, the root beer float quite exotic when you are only having one or two spoonfulls), we walked, Fuji leaped into the mud after things she heard or saw (mostly imperceptable to us) and I collected exoskeletons ( you never know when you might need a pristine limulus exoskeleton).We talked to a couple who were wondering if there was a place to swim; they were considering a summer rental on Pleasant Point road. But this part of Welfleet Harbor, Drummer Cove, is very shallow..great for molting limulus and fiddler crabs and shellfish of all kinds, but not so great for washing humans.
Fuji feet were now not only sharp but also covered with marsh mud, and it seemed that Sala had kind of given up on the battle. With Fuji proudly and rendolently rampant on her lap, we forged on to find the Welfleet that I rememberd with some disliking, the downtown Welfleet, comlplete with a residuum of tourists and stores selling T shirts and salt water taffy
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The North pointing arm of the outer cape is one long beach, beginning down near Chatham and extending all the way up to Ptown. Balslton Beach, where South Pamet now ends, was noisy with Atlantic surf. Probably because of Hurricane Katia about a hundred miles offshore, there was a no swimming advisory, and the water is cold, anyhow. There was a good NE wind blowing, and the combination of big empty beach and moving air is like catnip for our little dog. If we want to play, that's great too, but she's perfectly capable of just racing in circles for the fun of it. And of course, barking at the waves and chasing any available shorebird. Meanwhile, Hopper blue skies and Hopper green grass and yellow sand cliffs..it's all there.
And finally, consulting the iphone to correct course, we were bumping along twisty turney Stevens way, which has probably not changed too much since Edward and Jo Hopper, in a car with better clearance than ours, bumped and swayed this way. We know Edward Hopper liked to paint from his car, and explored the area thoroughly. Some of his views are changed by the regrowth of trees. His house, on the last dune before Massachusetts Bay and overlooking the place where the Pilgrims encountered the Wampanoag, is there. Except I picked the wrong one to take a photograph of..turns out I recognized this house, in a fold of the hills, because he painted it. The studio they built is a bit further along the road. Square, asphalt shingle roof, white walls, facing the sea.
I can see why he came, and came back. Reportedly, he didnt socialize much, but I guess he didnt socialize muich in NY either. And I should know more about Josephine Nivens, his wife, than I do; she was an accomplished painter in her own right. But it's Edward Hopper that holds the stage in my mental museum . Edward Hopper and that amazing light.
Fuji and Sala both slept on the way back. NPR was on the radio. There was very little traffic. Summer is over, I guess. Time for the Hoppers to pack up and head back to NY.
Alan
*( I just had to spend some time with the Gulf Stream on line, and it's more impressive than ever with all the new virtual color maps. Thirty Sverdrups (1 Sverdrup is 30 million cubic meters per second..all of the rivers of the world total 0.6 Sverdrup) of water that flows north from Florida and conditions weather all the way to Scotland. And, not incidentally this time of year, breeds that uniquely American cyclonic storm, sometimes called Hurricane.)
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