Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

It is my understanding that the Henry Beetle Hough house has been destroyed by its new and clearly bored owners. It is not unusual for such people to “move on” after an ownership of about seven years, possibly to commit historical and architectural mayhem elsewhere.

What has been lost is simply staggering. Besides writing his books, which helped instill Martha’s Vineyard in the national consciousness, he wrote Vineyard Gazette editorials there as well. At this house he conferred with many of the top academics, writers and journalists of the 20th century and the occasional celebrity.

His seasonal visitations at this house with ACLU founder and civil liberties activist Roger Nash Baldwin, were a sight to witness and a privilege to behold. Roger, ever the cheerful optimist, and Henry, ever the disconsolate pessimist, the closest of friends. Roger, in a high-pitched voice, “Yes, we can save the Island culturally and conservation-wise and humanity too!” Henry, in a more subdued voice, “Greed, selfishness and vapidness have won. We have lost the Island and mankind is doomed to stupid self-destruction.”

This was eerily reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau, a pessimist, in his encounters with Ralph Waldo Emerson, an optimist, at the Old Manse in Concord.

The destruction of the Hough house on Martha’s Vineyard is the local equivalent, metaphorically speaking, of tearing down Emerson’s house in Concord. It appears, sadly, that Henry Beetle Hough has won his case with Roger Baldwin, posthumously.

Peter Colt Josephs

Chilmark