Edward Gorey House, July 2009

Our friend Josh Sullivan is in town this week. Josh is a cartoonist and musician who has embarked on a year-long cross-country road trip, a project he calls "52 Friends". He is staying with a different friend in a different city every week for a year.

We've been having a lot of fun hosting him and showing him around Cape Cod. One local attraction that he wanted to see was the Edward Gorey House. This was the Cape Cod home of author/illustrator Edward Gorey.

Located in Yarmouthport MA on Cape Cod, the house was sometimes known as the Elephant House, because of some elephant-related collectibles inside and also because its original weathered shingles resembled the skin of an elephant.

The home houses an impressive display of Gorey's work and his personal collections.

These are props from the sets that Gorey designed for the TV series Mystery.

Outside is a sculpture of Gorey's famous "Doubtful Guest".

Here's Josh giving the Guest a closer look.

Josh is a huge fan of Gorey's artwork,so this was a great experience for him.

Here are some more Gorey props on the front door.

Edward Gorey had five cats in the house at the time of his death. They have all passed away as well, but the Gorey House has adopted a new (27 pound!) house cat who was napping under one of the tables when we took our tour.

The staff gave us a very nice tour loaded with bits of trivia and insight into the artist's life both here on the Cape and in New York City, where he won a Tony award for his costume design on the stage production of Dracula.

One of the famous features of the house is the massive southern magnolia tree, one of the very few of its kind on Cape Cod.

Its position near the house keeps it sheltered from winter weather. It was blooming when we visited.

Here is a bit of magnolia tree lore that is posted near the tree.

Here are some more shots of the outside of the house and Josh with the house in the background.

This is the back of the house. The upstairs is not open to the public, but it is apparently quite large (7 rooms upstairs). Gorey kept 45,000 books in the house, most of which were purchased by the University of San Diego's library after his death. He also was a frequenter of yard sales and among other oddities collected old cheese graters. These are on display in the house.

Here is the driveway, where Mr. Gorey would park his bright yellow VW.

Josh poses by the front porch columns.

And another shot in front of the house.

The museum has a nice book shop, and I ended up purchasing Donald Has A Difficulty, which Gorey illustrated.

I took it home where it soon attracted the interest of our cat, Trixie.

As Gorey himself observed: "Books. Cats. Life is sweet."