The painter, poet and printmaker Charles Wadsworth (1917-2002) began coming to Great Cranberry Island with his wife, the writer Jean Howard, in the mid-1940s. He was the first artist to take up residence on the island after the war. “Waddy,” as his family and friends affectionately called him, became an island fixture. Nearly every summer, he read from his poems in the island church and displayed his art in the island artists’ exhibition.
In this film portrait Wadsworth offers an engaging life sketch, starting with his “dismal high school record” and ending with a tribute to El Greco. In between, there are classes at the Art Students League; Conscientious Objector status during World War II (war is “man’s primary abomination,” he says); experiments at Harvard on a “Link Trainer” and a fateful invitation to visit Great Cranberry Island.
In one part of the film, daughter Laurie Wadsworth reads her mother’s account of the couple building their house on Great Cranberry from 1946 to 1948. Black-and-white photographs of the stone and wood structure as it rose from the ledge accompany the reading. The sequence recalls another wonderful tale of island house building, Charles Child’s “Roots in the Rock.”
Wadsworth recounts a visit by a young Ashley Bryan, long before he became the acclaimed children’s book writer and illustrator. Bryan insisted that he camp out even though a hurricane was bearing down on the island. Waddy thought up an excuse to lure him to the house for the night. When they returned to Bryan’s campsite the next morning, the tent was flattened by fallen spruce.
With eloquence Wadsworth describes his desire to make meaning of his life through art, which he did, admirably (although it sometimes led to “financially indefensible” decisions). A selection of his paintings and prints are featured in the film. He also describes some of the limited edition books he and his wife produced at The Tidal Press.
For those of us who knew Waddy, it’s a pleasure to encounter his friendly face again, his signature glasses with their yellowish frames, to hear his voice full of wit. It’s a pleasure similar to watching “My Dinner with Andre.” Wadsworth was filmed on September 16, 2001, not long after the death of his wife of 55 years, this “gallant woman” whom he admits missing “like I would miss a leg.”
Wadsworth was a brilliant wordsmith, penning sonnets to nature, to his fellow island artist Carl Nelson, to the Cranberry mail boat. It’s fitting that this moving portrait ends with a reading of “The House,” which was published in “Views from the Island” (1978). In a tribute to self-reliance, the poem ends, “I never thought to hire nor did my wife,/Others to shape our house or build our life.”
The film was produced in the new Community Multimedia Center on Great Cranberry. To order a copy, go to the Great Cranberry Island Historical Society website, www.gcihs.org.