On Sept. 9, Elisabeth M. Ogilvie passed away peacefully at the age of 89. When the news started to spread among her readers, we felt great sadness; but we were also grateful, and felt a certain measure of joy. Gratitude for her legacy–the books we have all loved–and joy to have entered her island world.
Elisabeth Ogilvie was a renowned Maine author, and a prolific one, publishing 46 books over the past 65 years or so. In addition to the beloved nine-volume Bennett’s Island series, she also penned the Jennie trilogy, several other novels (including mysteries), and fifteen books for young adults. While Elisabeth’s entire body of work is impressive, she is perhaps best known for her books set on Maine islands. She lived on two of them during her life–Criehaven (the inspiration for Bennett’s Island) and Gay’s Island–and loved them both. She knew she wanted to write about them, and ever since she published High Tide at Noon in 1944, she has taken us there, with nothing but her words to serve as our transport.
How to explain Elisabeth’s magic?
Well, she grabbed us with her stories, and wouldn’t let go. We met her characters and instantly knew them–and soon, loved them. She understood the islanders’ way of life because she lived it: love your family, work hard and do what’s right, and rejoice in the beauty of the island–as she deemed it, her “most important character.” Elisabeth captured the world of the Maine coast and allowed her readers entry. Whether you had loved Maine all your life, or had never visited, it didn’t matter. She made us all feel that we belonged.
On Elisabeth’s last day on this earth, her niece Barbara was seated at Elisabeth’s bedside, reading aloud to her from The Dawning of the Day, the fourth Bennett’s Island book. Barbara’s daughter Marilyn was sitting on the other side of the bed, and Elisabeth’s cat Otis was curled up on the bed next to her as Barbara read from the prelude:
“In midmorning a lobsterman’s boat went out of the harbor to meet the mail boat at Brigport. She plunged proudly into the tide rip, and the wake reached the moorings and set the skiffs and the dories to bouncing on the dark glittering water. But in a little while the wake died out, and the sound of the engine was lost behind the eastern harbor point. The island settled back into the cradle of familiar things that would go on forever: the rote on the far shores, the wind blowing, the gulls over the water, and the crickets and sparrows on the land. It was a day that began as thousands of other days had begun.”
Barbara looked up at Marilyn.
“It’s like a prayer,” she said.
I can think of no benediction more fitting for this beloved author, whose words will go on forever, like the waves that crash on the shores of Bennett’s Island.
— Melissa J. Hayes is co-author of A Mug-up with Elisabeth: A Companion for Readers of Elisabeth Ogilvie.
From “Last Waltz on Criehaven,” written by Elisabeth Ogilvie for Island Journal in 1996:
…The Criehaven survivors all have their favorite memories of life on their island, but every one of them says, “the dances…” in exactly the same tone. “Oh for one of those hours of gladness,” an old song goes about dancing in another place and time. “Gone, alas, like our youth too soon…oh, to think of it, oh, to dream of it fills my heart with tears.”
There is now a stable, if seasonal, population of lobstermen who work well together for the good of their community. It may not be completely Home, but it’s part of it; no one can stay there spring after spring, summer after summer, autumn after autumn, and not love it. There are a few summer people of whose affection there’s no doubt. There are no development schemes for the woods and bold shores; the Crie lands belong to a family who have preserved the homestead Robert Crie built and the buildings where his family kept the store and the post office…
But on winter nights one likes to think that the island hasn’t been simply left to the everlasting wind and the never-ceasing rote; it’s not alone, but richly crowded with ghosts, and everything is happening again on three planes. The MARY A. is coming into the harbor and Mike is striding down to the wharf to meet Stuart and the mail. In school a first-grader is learning how to read and someone else is working out fractions on the blackboard; or outside there’s a game of Steal Eggs, swings squeaking, the older children practicing “The Lady of the Lake” so they’ll be ready for the next dance, where nobody who knows the steps ever has to sit for long on the bench.
At the clubhouse the eternal pool game goes on, and the dancers are sedately circling in a waltz, or romping down the hall while the fiddle bow dances “The Devil’s Dream” and the guitars and accordion keep up with it. The musicians never get tired, and there’s never a last waltz.