That summer, flush with success, Carson bought some land on Southport Island near Boothbay Harbor. She admitted that it felt “strange and inappropriate” to think of herself as an “owner” of a piece of the seashore. The lot was 350 feet deep, heavily wooded, and had a 140-foot frontage on Sheepscot Bay. It was near the village of West Southport, not far from the Hendricks Head lighthouse, and about a half mile south of a promontory called Dogfish Head.
Carson ordered a spacious cottage that would be ready the next summer. It was long and low, and featured a writing study with built-in varnished bookshelves and desk, plus a worktable where Carson could examine marine specimens. The main room was finished in knotty pine and had a redbrick fireplace. An enormous window overlooked the bay, filling the cottage with light. A long deck with white railings was perched between the cottage and a shrubby bluff, down which a narrow, winding, root-tangled path led to the rocks and tide pools at the shoreline.
At low tide, a large, uneven tableland of rock emerged along the shore. Directly below the cottage was a small, gravelly shallow area that could almost be called a beach. The tide pools were full of mussels, periwinkles, sponges, urchins, barnacles, and seaweeds. Although the rocks were treacherous when wet, a steady and sufficiently curious person could inch out onto them to inspect the pools, or venture to the edge and gaze at the open ocean beyond the widening funnel of the bay to the south. West across the bay were the sun-bleached rocks of Georgetown Island. Sometimes the swell of the North Atlantic swept into the bay in long, smooth columns, and the water was dotted with the brightly colored floats of countless lobster traps. Carson said that whales occasionally ventured into the bay and could be observed “blowing and rolling in all their majesty.”
Back in New York, Marie Rodell moved her office from East Fifty-fourth Street to Fifth Avenue.
PART TWO
Silent Spring
SEVEN
Dorothy
Southport Island belongs to a network of rocky peninsulas and islands that project into the ocean from Boothbay Harbor, Maine, bordering the estuaries of the Damariscotta and Sheepscot rivers. The island lies close to the mainland, to which it is connected by a bridge. It is about three miles long from north to south, a little less than half that wide across at its broadest point, and is shaped like a shark’s tooth. Heavily wooded, the island’s forest is dominated by spruce and fir, with maples, birches, and other hardwoods mixed in. The shoreline is steep almost everywhere. In 1953, Southport Island had 250 permanent residents and another 368 families owned summer properties there. When Rachel Carson built her cottage she became Southport Island’s second most famous part-time citizen, the first being the actress Margaret Hamilton, who lived in a house on an islet just off the island’s southern tip and who was said by everyone to be much nicer than her most memorable character, the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.
In the 1880s a Massachusetts Civil War veteran named Constant Whitney began visiting Southport Island with his family on summer vacations. In 1887 he bought a parcel of land on the shore of Sheepscot Bay, not far from the village of West Southport, near a steamer landing at the rocky point of Dogfish Head. At first the family camped there in a tent, then for several summers more they inhabited a rough single-room house that had a loft above. They dug a well that provided water for them and for several nearby cottages, and that also served as the community refrigerator, with milk and other perishables kept cool in buckets lowered to just above the water.
One summer a shipload of lumber washed ashore directly in front of the cottage. Family legend has it that Constant Whitney declared that as the Lord had seen fit to provide him with the materials for a house it was his duty to build one. He did so, moving a little closer to the water. Whitney and his heirs gradually expanded the new cottage in the ensuing years, adding a kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, plus an expansive porch on the front that looked out grandly over the bay. The cottage was passed down through the family, one generation to the next, until it belonged to Constant’s granddaughter, Dorothy Freeman, and her husband, Stanley.
In 1939, Stan and Dorothy bought a sloop and moored it in the cove near the cottage. Sixteen and a half feet long, with a white lapstrake hull and a green canvas deck, she was a “Town Class” design, which originated in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and at the time was the official racing class of the Southport Yacht Club. Her sail number was 158. This matched the first number chosen in the Selective Service lottery just before the war, and the Freemans named her Draftee. Stan and Dorothy loved cruising on the bay, and Stan and their son, Stanley, Jr., raced Draftee every Saturday and Sunday in July and August.
On Stan Freeman’s birthday, July 15, 1951, his son and daughter-in-law gave him a copy of The Sea Around Us, telling him to be sure to bring it to Maine so they could read it, too. The Freemans took turns reading aloud from Carson’s book on Draftee as they cruised on Sheepscot Bay that summer. A year later Dorothy was surprised to read in the local paper that Rachel Carson had purchased property in, of all places, West Southport—and was going to build a summer home there. Just before Christmas she decided to send Carson a note welcoming her to the island, mailing it to the famous author by way of her publisher in New York and having no idea what, if any, response to expect. Carson surely received hundreds of letters every month.
But Carson did respond. She sent Dorothy a note thanking her for the “thoughtful and charming” greeting from her new neighbors. Carson said she’d been in love with the Boothbay Harbor area for a long time and now looked forward to having a summer writing retreat. She said she hoped to be in her cottage by June—and asked the Freemans to please stop by to get better acquainted. Dorothy could scarcely believe it.
A half year later, on June 2, 1953, the Freemans got up early at their home in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London on their new television. Film of the twenty-seven-year-old monarch’s installation had been flown to North America for broadcast on TV within hours of the actual ceremony. This would have been the most interesting event of the summer had they not gone up to Southport Island and called on Rachel Carson at her new cottage after suppertime on July 12. In the evening light of midsummer Stan and Dorothy walked down the short, rocky path to Carson’s back door and into a different life.
Carson liked the Freemans right away. Although they were older than she was, Carson felt the three of them—but especially she and Dorothy—were much alike in their feelings for the Maine coast and for nature in general. Dorothy was pretty and vigorous. She had a New England accent, so that her new friend’s name came out as Rachul Cahsin. Stan was tall and handsome, with a high forehead and thinning hair. He was an accomplished amateur photographer who won over Carson when she learned he liked to take pictures of the many kinds of wildlife that visited Sheepscot Bay. Carson insisted they come back in a few weeks to inspect the shoreline below her cottage. The tides would not be so extreme as they were in the spring or later in the fall—when shore explorations were best—but there would still be wonderful things to find among the rocks. Carson advised them to wear sneakers and pants they could roll up, but promised that if anyone had to go in over their knees she’d do it, as she would have a change of clothing close at hand. The Freemans, starstruck yet also surprisingly at ease with Carson, were eager for another visit.
The collecting expedition came off one Sunday in early September. It was a happy affair. Marie Rodell was up from New York for the weekend and everyone, including Carson’s mother, Maria, got on well. Carson had advised Stan and Dorothy to come in the late afternoon in time to catch the falling tide. Dorothy was startled by the wealth of sea life that, unbeknownst to her previously, dwelled in the tide pools and crevices of the shoreline at West Southport. Carson—demonstrating an unsuspected agility—showed them how to climb along the slippery rocks and where to stop and peer beneath an overhang or reach into the water to retrieve a specimen. Dorothy watched as Carson all but
stood on her head to peer into the recesses of a small cave at the sea anemones clinging to the stone.
Anemones, small, tentacled predators that come in a wild and colorful assortment of species, were one of Carson’s favorite marine animals. She heaved away at mats of seaweed and collected bits of muck and algae in the small specimen bottles she carried with her, filling them as she went. She also had a bucket for larger captives. Dorothy never realized that sponges lived in the waters around Southport Island, and she especially enjoyed finding some. There was a good swell running that day, and a few waves crashed heavily enough on the rocks to soak everyone. Afterward, they warmed up with tea by the fireplace and then visited Carson’s study, where they looked through the microscope at what Dorothy called a “new world” that was “wonderful, beautiful, and unbelievable.” Dorothy could not get over seeing the pincerlike spines of a starfish under magnification, though she said it was only “one of a hundred eye-openers” that day. Dorothy also studied Carson more closely.
The author of The Sea Around Us wasn’t what she’d expected. Carson had become so famous that after a photograph of her with her cat appeared in a newspaper the cat started getting fan mail. So it was surprising to Dorothy that Carson seemed “tiny” and often wore a wistful expression. It was hard to believe that so much knowledge resided in such an unimposing person. Dorothy sensed something sad in Carson, who seemed overwhelmed by her sudden prominence. Still, she was humble and kind, and always ended a day like this one by taking all of the specimens she’d collected back down to the water to release them.
Carson was similarly impressed with her visitors. Stan had given Carson a picture he’d taken of some seagulls and she thought it looked nice on her end table. The Freemans had also commiserated with Carson over the recent death of a beloved cat, which Carson said had been heartbreaking and all but impossible to get over. Carson was only sorry they wouldn’t have more time to get better acquainted that summer, as the Freemans had to return to West Bridgewater. She sent Dorothy a farewell note, beginning it once again with “Dear Mrs. Freeman” and closing with a suggestion that they drop such formalities and call each other by their first names. She reminded Dorothy how happy she was that Dorothy had written to her the year before and said she was glad to have started “this very pleasant friendship.”
From the start, Dorothy worried that Carson would misread her intentions and think she was being friendly on account of Carson being a famous writer. Dorothy—who would soon enough prove a capable correspondent herself—respected the demands of the writing process and worried that in making friends with Carson she might interfere with her work. Carson had no such reservations. She wanted to get to know the Freemans, Dorothy in particular. The seasons at West Southport were regrettably short—the municipal water system utilized aboveground pipes and had to be shut down in the fall and did not reopen until spring. There was no possibility of staying on or even visiting through winter. Carson said she was sorry they hadn’t spent more time together over the summer, but agreed with Dorothy that this meant they could look forward to the following season in Maine. Evidently, Dorothy wrote several letters to Carson while Carson was still at West Southport—but urged Carson not to take time from her writing to respond.
Even so, in late September—perhaps experiencing the “wistfulness” Dorothy perceived in her—Carson sent off a long letter telling Dorothy everything that had been happening on Sheepscot Bay. Instinctively, Carson seemed to sense that Dorothy was eager to keep track of what she was doing. She enclosed a snapshot she’d taken down at the water’s edge during a spell of unusually high surf—the kind that almost never broke with such violence so far up in the bay. And she gave Dorothy a close accounting of various species of marine life she’d recently examined, including, she said merrily, an “exquisitely beautiful worm” that she had discovered living among a colony of diverse creatures hidden under the pink crust of corallines that covered the rocks in many places. Carson told Dorothy not to laugh—it was the “most beautiful worm in the world.”
Carson said the tides since Dorothy left had been magnificent and that for a while she felt she should divide her explorations among various locales. One of her favorite places nearby was Ocean Point, a sprawling, boulder-strewn headland east of Boothbay Harbor. In the end, though, Carson said she felt she owed it to herself to get better acquainted with her own shoreline and so had stayed close to home. Now it was going to be difficult to say farewell. She also wanted Dorothy to know that her writing was an often trying enterprise, no matter who was around to keep her company.
Carson said she was happy to know that Dorothy and Stan had reread Under the Sea-Wind and The Sea Around Us and had liked them just as much after having met the author. She told Dorothy she had to make herself bring her letter to an end or else it would start to feel like another book. Tentatively, almost as a person might lightly touch the hand of another in whom they were interested, Carson closed by saying “My best to all the Freemans, and to you my affectionate regard.”
A week later, Carson wrote again. This time she urged Dorothy to keep writing and forget her concerns that in doing so she would cause Carson to neglect her work. She was behind on the book for reasons that had nothing to do with Dorothy, she said. A big one was that she’d decided to completely rewrite a long section. Almost as an afterthought, Carson mentioned that she was going to be in Boston at the end of December for a scientific meeting and wondered if Dorothy might come into the city and meet her for lunch. This time Carson signed off “Affectionately yours, Rachel.”
Carson went off to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for more research on the seashore book, and she hunkered down long enough during a gale to write a couple of long, chatty letters to Dorothy. Carson was accompanied by her mother and the two nieces, Virginia and Marjorie. Also along was Marjorie’s twenty-month-old son—Carson’s grandnephew—Roger. Carson told Dorothy she was delighted by Roger’s enthusiasm for the beach. She took him out after dark to hunt by flashlight for ghost crabs and laughed when he picked up a strange shell and called it a “winkie,” as he did the periwinkles he’d collected at Southport Island. Carson reiterated how wonderful Dorothy’s letters were and how every one was filled with things they absolutely had to talk about at length the next summer.
As for their proposed meeting in Boston at the end of the year—Carson wanted to make a definite plan. She admitted to being nervous about the conference she was attending, a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at which she was going to deliver a formal paper on the effects of climate change on sea life along the coast. A capable but reluctant public speaker, Carson was more anxious than usual about making a presentation before such an august group of scientists—a prospect she told Dorothy that was “unnerving.” Carson wanted to make sure that she and Dorothy would meet the day after the AAAS talk, as she would then be at ease and better able to give Dorothy her full attention.
Carson told Dorothy she was glad Dorothy liked a book she had recommended—Conversation with the Earth by the German geologist Hans Cloos. Meanwhile, the storm in South Carolina had caused a number of interesting reef creatures normally found offshore to fetch up onto the beach. Carson told Dorothy how much fun she’d had examining brightly colored sponges, sea squirts, crabs, starfish, urchins, and even a “fair-sized octopus” that reminded her annoyingly of Irwin Allen’s documentary based on The Sea Around Us, in which an octopus had been made out as a “monster of the deep.”
Carson continued to make passing references to the seashore book, which was still not going well—though she was always careful to explain that this was her fault and in no way Dorothy’s. She confessed the progress she’d made over the summer had been disappointing. Although Paul Brooks at Houghton Mifflin was being patient, Carson almost wished he wasn’t so understanding, as she felt the end of the project was still so far off that it made her feel “desperate.” Miserable, Carson told Dorothy that life was too short to spend so much ti
me on one book. She wondered if getting started on a new chapter might be easier if she typed the words “Dear Dorothy” on the first page.
Silver Spring, Maryland, had been Carson’s home since 1938, except for the time she spent in Chicago during the war, and for a couple of years immediately after that when Carson and her mother lived in nearby Takoma Park, Maryland. Back in Silver Spring in the fall of 1953, Carson was beginning to think of herself as having several homes—the one in Maryland, of course, but now also the summer place at West Southport and, figuratively at least, in a charming cottage of the mind and heart that had come to life on the pages of the letters that had begun to flow between her and Dorothy.
Dorothy liked small, pastel-colored stationery—sometimes it had a flower or some other decorative design in the upper left corner—and she wrote her letters in a neat, up-and-down longhand that marched precisely across the page, leaving small margins at either end of every perfectly level line. Sometimes she made drafts in pencil before committing them to ink. Carson, who occasionally typed her letters, tended to write them on whatever was at hand. Sometimes that was pretty stationery like Dorothy’s, but it could also be a note card or plain typing paper.
In mid-November, Dorothy proposed that, rather than just meet for lunch after Carson’s speech in Boston, Carson should come down to West Bridgewater where she could spend a whole afternoon and evening with Dorothy and Stan before catching a late train back to Maryland. Carson said this would be fine, though she could not disguise her disappointment at the prospect of not having time alone with Dorothy in Boston. She told Dorothy she liked to imagine arriving in Boston and coming off the train “into your arms” even though she knew that wasn’t possible. Carson said that between the crush of preparations for her speech and the impending Christmas holidays she was “going mad.”
On a Farther Shore Page 18