On a Farther Shore (60 page)
Read On a Farther Shore Online
Authors: William Souder
A few months later, Carson found
:
Carson, “Ace of Nature’s Aviators,”
Coronet
, November 1944; and Merle Crowell to Carson, November 28, 1944, Beinecke.
In early 1946, Carson pitched
:
Carson to Maria Caporale, February 20, 1946, and March 10, 1946, Maria Caporale to Carson, February 22, 1946, and Edward M. Stode to Carson, March 24, 1946, Beinecke.
Months before putting out an FWS
:
FWS press release, December 21, 1947, NCTC; J. A. Umhoefer to Carson, n.d., Carson to Oscar Dystal, September 23, 1947, and Carson to Merle Crowell, September 9, 1947, Beinecke.
The three of them sometimes lunched together
:
Transcript of Shirley Briggs’s interview for “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” an installment of the
American Experience
series on PBS, February 20, 1992, Lear Collection.
Briggs found Carson outwardly
:
Ibid.
Howe thought she seemed
:
Linda Lear interview with Kay Howe Roberts, June 22, 1994, Lear Collection.
Briggs, in a letter to her mother
:
Shirley Briggs to her mother, December 13, 1945, Lear Collection.
In the fall of 1945, she and Shirley Briggs
:
Ibid., October 16, 1945, Lear Collection.
One of these papers
:
Oscar Elton Sette, “Biology of the Atlantic Mackerel (Scomber scombrus) of North America,” U.S. Department of the Interior Fishery Bulletin 38, 1943, NCTC.
On August 10
:
FWS press release, August 10, 1945, NCTC.
A couple of weeks later
:
Ibid., August 22, 1945, NCTC.
Nine months later
:
Ibid., May 18, 1946, NCTC.
In the spring of 1946
:
Transcript of Shirley Briggs’s interview for “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” an installment of the
American Experience
series on PBS, Lear Collection.
The series, titled Conservation in Action
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, p. 132.
Over the course of several days
:
Ibid., p. 133.
The government had purchased its nine thousand
:
Carson,
Chincoteague: A National Wildlife Refuge
, Conservation in Action 1, 1947, NCTC.
Assateague is one of the barrier islands
:
Ibid.
Because Chincoteague was primarily
:
Ibid.
Settled by English immigrants
:
Randall,
Newburyport and the Merrimack
, p. 7. If the reader detects an affection for and familiarity with Newburyport and Plum Island it is because I lived there once.
Since the earliest settlement
:
Weare,
Plum Island
, pp. 43–48.
In 1929 a small, private bird sanctuary
:
Ibid., pp. 89–91.
The local residents
:
Doyle,
Life in Newburyport 1900-1950
, p. 245.
When Carson and Howe boarded the train
:
Kay Howe to Shirley Briggs, September 25, 1946, Beinecke.
The ocean, rising over a level bottom
:
Personal observation. The description of Plum Island is based on my experience from when I lived in Newburyport and a subsequent research visit I made to the area in the summer of 2010.
Standing at the water’s edge
:
Carson,
Parker River: A National Wildlife Refuge
, Conservation in Action 2, 1947, NCTC.
Carson and Howe toured the island
:
Carson to Shirley Briggs, September 28, 1946, Beinecke.
They found a restaurant in Newburyport
:
Ibid.
Howe hoped the weather
:
Kay Howe to Shirley Briggs, September 25, 1946, Beinecke.
There were rumors in town
:
Carson to Shirley Briggs, September 28, 1946, Beinecke.
In the end
:
Kay Howe to Shirley Briggs, September 25, 1946, Beinecke.
Carson began the second Conservation in Action pamphlet
:
Carson,
Parker River
.
A striking fact about the Atlantic flyway
:
Ibid.
Parker River was the only
:
Ibid.
“As you drive out from the town”
:
Ibid.
Carson had learned more
:
Ibid.
The fifth in the series
:
Carson,
Guarding Our Wildlife Resources
, Conservation in Action 5, 1948, NCTC.
“For all the people”
:
Ibid.
In the spring of that year
:
Meine,
Aldo Leopold
, p. 517.
Four publishers had already turned it down
:
Ibid., pp. 509, 511, and 517; and Meine,
Correction Lines
, pp. 152–53. Rejections had come from the University of Minnesota Press, Macmillan, Knopf, and William Sloan Associates. The latter didn’t literally reject the book but failed to act before Oxford bought it. Knopf, which passed on several versions of the manuscript, remained interested and had continued to discuss how the book might be reworked.
But Leopold died unexpectedly
:
Meine,
Aldo Leopold
, p. 520.
Oxford determined the book could still
:
Ibid., p. 524.
In one of the book’s essays
:
Leopold,
Sand County Almanac
, p. 204.
Leopold wrote that of the
:
Ibid., p. 210.
When
A Sand County Almanac
was reissued
:
Meine,
Aldo Leopold
, pp. 525–26.
“A thing is right,” Leopold wrote
:
Leopold,
A Sand County Almanac
, pp. 224–25.
“When we see the land as a community”
:
Ibid., p. viii.
“That land is a community”
:
Ibid., pp. viii–ix.
In the fifth Conservation in Action booklet
:
Carson,
Guarding Our Wildlife Resources
, NCTC.
Carson had managed to take
:
Carson to Maria Leiper, November 18, 1946, Beinecke.
They rented a cottage on the eastern shore
:
Carson to Shirley Briggs, July 14, 1946, Beinecke.
in a corner of the Pratt Library in Baltimore
:
Carson to Henry Beston, May 14, 1954, Beinecke.
Beston was born in 1888
:
Wilding,
Henry Beston’s Cape Cod
, p. 7.
Beston attended Harvard
:
Ibid., pp. 9–10.
Beston was nearly killed
:
Ibid., p. 10.
He returned to Massachusetts
:
Ibid., p. 12.
In 1923, Beston did a magazine piece
:
Ibid., p. 15.
In 1925 he bought thirty-two acres
:
Ibid., pp. 1–2, 51–54, and 89.
One night when the surf was churning
:
Ibid., pp. 21–22.
Beston stayed at the Fo’castle
:
Ibid., p. 18.
Beston, who was over six feet tall
:
Ibid., p. 30. Wilding quotes from an interview Beston gave to the
New York Times
.
Outermost cliff and solitary dune
:
Beston,
Outermost House
, pp. 5–6.
Night is very beautiful
:
Ibid., p. 166.
In 1940, while she was working on
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, pp. 101–2; and Dorothy Algire to Paul Brooks, February 15, 1970, Beinecke. Dorothy Algire, formerly Dorothy Hamilton, was a colleague of Carson’s at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and at Woods Hole. She was with Carson on the day they visited Beston’s little house.
Everywhere around the world
:
J. B. Hersey and H. B. Moore, “Progress Report on Scattering Layer Observations in the Atlantic Ocean,”
Transactions
29, no. 3 (June 1948), Beinecke. This paper was in Carson’s research files for
The Sea Around Us
.
Researchers eventually determined
:
Tom Garrison,
Oceanography
, pp. 447 and 449.
She made plans
:
U.S. Department of the Interior, records for the
Albatross III
, “Instructions for Cruise No. 10,” Lear Collection. On October 1 and 2, 1948, the ship stopped at Boothbay Harbor, Maine, for the annual meeting of the Atlantic Fisheries Biologists. For some reason, Carson would later pretend that a cruise she made with Marie Rodell aboard the
Albatross III
the following year was the first time any woman had ever done so. But the listed “collaborators” on the October 1948 trip included Joseph Puncochar, Jean Hartshorne, and Rachel Carson.
Equipped with sonar
:
U.S. Department of the Interior records, “Albatross III,” March 19, 1948, Lear Collection.
Carson began enlisting a group
:
Carson to Henry Bigelow, August 22, 1948, Beinecke.
He didn’t, but
:
Henry Bigelow to Carson, August 26, 1948, and March 14, 1950, Beinecke.
One university professor
:
R. G. Hussey to Carson, March 18, 1950, Beinecke. Hussey was at the University of Michigan. Carson consulted with him about the geology of the sea floor.
A no-doubt skeptical Carson
:
Carson to Thor Heyerdahl, September 23, 1948. Carson’s letter is not preserved but is referenced by Heyerdahl in his reply on October 19, 1948, Beinecke.
Heyerdahl wrote back
:
Thor Heyerdahl to Carson, October 19, 1948, Beinecke.
She waited more than a year
:
Carson to Thor Heyerdahl, January 9, 1950, Beinecke.
Heyerdahl, civil but again testy
:
Thor Heyerdahl to Carson, February 2, 1950, Beinecke.
Carson had meanwhile signed on
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, p. 149.
Undaunted, Carson sent Rodell
:
Carson to Marie Rodell, December 5, 1948, Beinecke.
By February 1949, Carson
:
Carson to Marie Rodell, February 23, 1949, Beinecke.
A month later she told Rodell
:
Ibid., March 26, 1949, Beinecke.
In April, Rodell
:
Marie Rodell to Philip Vaudrin, April 12, 1949, Beinecke.
By May she was in serious discussions
:
Marie Rodell, handwritten notes from telephone conversations with Philip Vaudrin on May 4 and May 5, 1950, Beinecke.
On June 3, 1949
:
Philip Vaudrin to Marie Rodell, June 3, 1949, Beinecke.
Carson resisted this
:
Carson to Marie Rodell, June 8, 1949, Beinecke.
Meanwhile, Carson made plans
:
Carson to William Beebe, April 5, 1949, and William Beebe to Carson, July 5, 1949, Beinecke.
Shirley Briggs accompanied
:
The account of Carson’s diving trip is recorded in a series of handwritten field notes spanning the years 1940 through 1951, Beinecke. Shirley Briggs also took some photographs on this trip, several of which are in the Lear Collection at Connecticut College.
She also unself-consciously wrote to
:
Carson to William Beebe, August 26, 1949, Beinecke.
A couple of weeks later Carson was off again
:
U.S. Department of the Interior records for the
Albatross III
, “Instructions for Cruise No. 26,” Lear Collection; and
Frontiers
, October 1950. Rodell’s nicely written magazine piece about the cruise includes the odd claim that she and Carson were the “first women ever to spend more than a few hours aboard” the ship. In a memo Carson wrote for her British publisher on the origins of
The Sea Around Us
, Carson repeats this false history. In the same memo, Carson also mentions having done “a little helmet diving” as part of her research. Carson—perhaps sacrificing accuracy in the interest of a better story—again overlooked her first cruise on the
Albatross III
in her later speech at a Theta Sigma Phi dinner, “The Real World Around Us.”
It was a hot morning
:
Ibid.
Not long after returning
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, pp. 172–73; Philip Vaudrin to Carson, October 4, 1949, and Carson to Philip Vaudrin, October 6, 1949, Beinecke. Lear writes that Carson discussed the Fuertes project with Rodell during the cruise aboard the
Albatross III
in July, and this seems probable. In her October letter to Vaudrin she says she is going to go over the Fuertes paintings with Rodell.
In the summer of 1950
:
Paul Brooks to Carson, July 20, 1950, Carson to Paul Brooks, July 28, 1950, and Paul Brooks to Carson, September 1, 1950, Beinecke. In his September 1 letter, Brooks formally asked Carson if she would do the book.
Carson told Marie Rodell
:
Carson to Marie Rodell, September 5, 1950, Beinecke.
