The House on Ipswich Marsh!

Our book today is The House on Ipswich Marsh, a lovely 2005 meditation by William Sargent on the “Pink House” at Ipswich on Boston’s North Shore (the title an obvious nod to Wyman Richardson’s great 1947 book The House on Nauset Marsh). Sargent received a grant to study ground-nesting birds that lived near the house, and he brought a camera and a journal to the task, keeping notes through all the seasons, starting with his rapturous first impressions of the house itself:

A carpet of the most brilliant red poppies nodded their heads by the front door; foxglove and hollyhocks swayed in the English-style cottage garden out back. Wisteria draped from the eves and sparrows darted in and out of pink Victorian birdhouses above the portal. A thousand rosebuds bobbed above a white picket fence that wrapped halfway around the front and corner of the house.

But as in all the best of these kinds of books, the ambit immediately widens from bird life to all life in and around Ipswich’s Great Marsh. Sargent is a very quiet writer, a careful observer with a deceptively simple writing style. Even when he encounters something unexpected and amazing while out on a photo-ramble, he mutes his enthusiasm with a bit of whimsy:

As I approach, the fawn becomes even stranger. It has a beautiful reddish brown coat and large soft ears. Yet its ears never twitch and its eyes never blink. Finally I’m sitting beside the fawn and can see her telltale row of white spots. I take several photos, then retreat out of sight to change my film. I return and she is still there. She hasn’t moved a muscle; she still holds her head to the side in a characteristic post. I move in closer to take a closeup and I can almost hear her say, “Damn, damn. What have I done now? Oh, what did mother say? Gotta keep still, gotta keep still.”

One main thread running through The House on Ipswich Marsh that differentiates it from its near-namesake is that while Wyman Richardson concentrated almost exclusively on the happy present, Sargent is continually noticing the past that’s all around him in remnants:

The remains of an old pier stand above the tidal marsh. During World War II this shipbuilding facility employed 600 men, who worked round the clock in shifts to build landing craft and wooden minesweepers in anticipation of D day. Now the former shipyard has reverted to a lonely marsh.

I’ve written many times before here at Stevereads of my love of salt marshes in all weathers, and that love is why I treasure The House on Ipswich Marsh and revisit it regularly, in lieu of the real thing.