In 1937, Hitler had decreed: New York Times, July 19, 1937.
observed that city-dwelling modernists: Williamson, Goodbye, West Country, p. 53.
Carson wrote to van Loon that: Carson to Hendrik van Loon, February 5, 1938, Beinecke.
She asked van Loon to introduce her to: Ibid.
He believed that: Beebe, Half Mile Down, p. 3. This entertaining book about William Beebe’s underwater exploits is a page-turning classic.
Staring down into the depths: Ibid., p. 87.
In 1929, Beebe met a man: Ibid., pp. 87–137.
On another occasion: Ibid., pp. 153–54.
Here, under a pressure: Ibid., pp. 134–35.
Between their deepwater dives: Ibid., pp. 138–45.
But as Carson began: Carson to Hendrik van Loon, February 5, 1938, Beinecke.
The business of an advance: Ibid., June 2 and June 3, 1939, Beinecke.
“I suspect the best thing is just to”: Ibid., June 2, 1939, Beinecke.
Van Loon told her that: Hendrik van Loon to Carson, June 25, 1939, Beinecke.
Behind in his own work and testy: Ibid., June 21, 1939, Beinecke.
Carson meanwhile completed an outline: Carson to Hendrik van Loon, June 20, 1939, Beinecke.
Carson eventually agreed to: Ibid., April 5, 1940, Beinecke. Carson explained all this to van Loon because she was worried at not having heard anything from Simon and Schuster after sending them well over twenty thousand words of the book. Now she hoped that van Loon might intercede and find out what was happening. But Carson never sent this letter, as on the same day she composed it she finally got a letter from Quincy Howe saying that everyone at Simon and Schuster had read her manuscript and loved it. A day later she again wrote to van Loon, this time with the good news and a subtler plea that he might remind Howe of the promised additional advance, which Carson said she needed desperately (ibid., June 6, 1940, Beinecke).
In the summer of 1939: Department of the Interior personnel records, transfer Order, July 1, 1939, NCTC.
which had recently increased to $2,300: Department of Commerce personnel records, administrative promotion, June 16, 1939, NCTC.
A year later, the bureau was merged: Department of the Interior personnel records, consolidation order, June 27, 1940, NCTC.
Carson was transferred from Baltimore: Department of the Interior personnel records, station change, July 19, 1940, NCTC.
In the fall of 1938, Carson: Carson, field notes, Beinecke. There are a number of uncertainties surrounding Carson’s research at Beaufort in 1938. Her surviving field notebooks indicate she was there in mid-September. However, Linda Lear writes that Carson’s first visit was in July and that she evidently made more than one trip to Beaufort that year (Lear, Rachel Carson, pp. 93–94). The Bureau of Fisheries station at Beaufort, which is still there, now operating as the Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has no record of Carson’s visit, though it is an entrenched local legend. Complicating things further—and perhaps showing how fully formed Carson’s general scheme for the book was at this early stage—are “observations” included in Carson’s field notes concerning spring migrations, which she obviously could not have witnessed in either midsummer or early fall. If Carson could imagine the place at a different season it is perhaps not unreasonable to permit her biographers something less than perfect specificity in deducing from the skimpy record exactly where she was and when that year.
A quiet and for much of the year: Personal observation. I spent several days in Beaufort and on the Outer Banks in the summer of 2011. I was given a tour of the Coastal Fisheries lab by its deputy director, Greg Piniak. Greg and David Johnson, director of the lab and an old Beaufort hand, also shared their considerable knowledge about Beaufort and its nearby sounds and islands.
In 1899, the U.S. Fish Commission: Wolfe, A History of the Federal Biological Laboratory at Beaufort, North Carolina 1899–1999, p. 1.
Researchers at Beaufort conducted surveys: Ibid., pp. 18–58.
For several decades the station raised: Ibid., pp. 65–68.
Carson, who likely stayed: Carson, “Memo for Mrs. Eales,” Beinecke. Carson’s staying in Atlantic Beach is conjecture on my part, based on it being the most likely location and also because of Carson’s reference in this memo to the way people visiting the shore tend to “stay within sight of the piers and boardwalks of a resort beach,” as this would have been a fair description of the scene at Atlantic Beach.
This “lovely stretch of wild ocean beach”: Ibid.
Carson now thought she could give: Ibid.
She was moved by the words: Jefferies, Pageant of Summer, p. 9.
Carson had a special affection: Ibid., pp. 48–49. Carson cited this passage in her 1954 speech to Theta Sigma Phi, “The Real World Around Us,” Beinecke. She said Jefferies’s lines amounted to “a statement of the creed I have lived by.”
She made notes and wrote out: Carson, field notes, Beinecke.
“The crests of the waves”: Ibid.
By the spring of 1940: Carson to Hendrik van Loon, April 6, 1940, Beinecke.
Shortly before the book’s official publication: Mark S. Watson to Carson, October 31, 1941, Beinecke.
Carson would later admit: Carson, “Memo for Mrs. Eales,” Beinecke.
Between the Chesapeake Capes: Carson, Under the Sea-Wind, p. 105.
She was delighted when the book: Carson to Hazel Cole Shupp, September 17, 1941, Beinecke. Shupp, who arrived at PCW six years after Carson graduated, was a popular member of the English department faculty (Dysart, Chatham College, p. 196). Shupp had asked Simon and Schuster if she could get a photograph of Carson for the school.
In a glowing review: New York Times Sunday Book Review, November 23, 1941.
A slightly more critical: Saturday Review of Literature, December 27, 1941.
Toward the end of January: Maria Leiper to Carson, January 20, 1942, Beinecke. Leiper was Carson’s editor at Simon and Schuster.
Carson was gratified when: Sonia Bleeker to Carson, March 10, 1942, and Carson to Sonia Bleeker, March 15, 1942, Beinecke. Bleeker worked in the marketing department at Simon and Schuster, and went by the nickname “Sunnie.”
In fact, Simon and Schuster’s London agent: Marie Leiper to Carson, January 12, 1942, Beinecke. Leiper apparently enclosed the London agent’s harsh assessment, which was dated December 11, 1942.
Two days after the Japanese attack: Mary Scott Skinker to Carson, December 9, 1941, Beinecke.
but as Carson later put it: Carson, “The Real World Around Us,” Beinecke.
For a while, Carson held out hope: Carson to Sonia Bleeker, February 8, 1942, Beinecke.
But a mailing to six hundred members: Maria Leiper to Carson, September 21, 1942, Beinecke. This had been Carson’s idea, one of many she sent to Simon and Schuster for marketing the book. The frustration and disappointment that can be read between the lines in Carson’s suggestions are palpable.
Carson also discussed: Maria Leiper to Carson, January 7, 1942, Beinecke.
Around the beginning of March 1942: Carson to Maria Leiper, March 15, 1942.
with a ten-page memo: Carson, “Memo to Mrs. Eales,” Beinecke.
Shortly afterward, Carson was told: Maria Leiper to Carson, March 26, 1942, Beinecke.
Sales never reached: Carson, handwritten note, Beinecke. Carson totaled up the sales for each year since the book’s release on the back of the envelope from her January 1948 telephone bill.
In the spring of 1948: Carson to Tom Torre Bevans, March 27, 1948, Beinecke. Bevans apparently handled author contracts at Simon and Schuster.
She wrote them a letter saying: Carson to Maria Leiper, March 27, 1948, Beinecke.
CHAPTER FIVE: THIS BEAUTIFUL AND SUBLIME WORLD
Harold Ickes, Franklin Roosevelt’s strong-willed: Ickes, Secret Diary of Harold Ickes, vol. 2, p. 8.
but in the end opposition in Congress: Ibid., p. 25
7.
In the early 1930s: Egan, Worst Hard Time, p. 5.
One of the worst swept through: Ibid., p. 8.
Five days later the storm reached Washington, D.C.: Ibid., pp. 227–28. 98 Before the month ended: Ibid., p. 228.
President Roosevelt, enamored of the idea: Ibid., pp. 270–71.
Some 220 million trees were planted: Ibid., p. 310.
The Bureau of Biological Survey: “Administrative History,” National Archives Finding Guide to Records Group 22, and “Records of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Record Group 22,” NARA.
In 1896, the agency changed its name: Jenks Cameron, “The Bureau of Biological Survey: Its History, Activities and Organization,” Service Monographs of the United States Government, No. 54, 1929, pp. 1–49.
The Biological Survey advised farmers and ranchers: Vernon Bailey, “Directions for the Destruction of Wolves and Coyotes,” Bureau of Biological Survey Circular 55, April 17, 1907.
In 1907 more than 1,800 wolves: Cameron, “Bureau of Biological Survey,” p. 46.
In 1922 one of the agency’s: E. R. Kalmbach, Bureau of Biological Survey Special Report, No. 13, 1922, NARA.
For wolves, the agency declared: Cameron, “Bureau of Biological Survey,” p. 51.
Despite its best efforts: Ibid., pp. 177–78.
Less noticed, but having a greater: Ibid., pp. 55–56.
In colonial America: Ibid., p. 7.
In the early 1800s: Souder, Under a Wild Sky.
Once, while traveling down: Ibid., p. 176.
The Boone and Crockett Club began organizing: Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, pp. 152–53. The Boone and Crockett ethos centered on the idea that man’s true nature emerged and was best improved in a primitive environment.
In 1900, Congress passed: Clepper, Leaders of American Conservation, pp. 194–95.
In 1903, at the urging of: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, “History of Pelican Island,” http://fws.gov/pelicanisland/history.html.
Before European settlement of North America: Isenberg, Destruction of the Bison, p. 25.
In the early 1830s: Ibid., p. 103.
But much greater depredations: Ibid., pp. 104–9.
The destruction of the bison: Dary, Buffalo Book, p. 127. Dary quotes President Grant’s secretary of the interior, Columbus Delano, as saying that he “would not seriously regret the total destruction of the buffalo” as it would hasten the transformation of the nomadic Indians of the west into farmers.
In the late 1860s: David D. Smits, “The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865–1883,” Western Historical Quarterly 25, no. 3 (Autumn 1994): pp. 313–38.
By the 1870s: Isenberg, Destruction of the Bison, p. 130.
As early as 1832, the artist George Catlin: Ibid., p. 164.
But in 1868, Congress approved: Records of the Secretary of the Treasury Relating to Alaska 1868–1903, Record Group 22, NARA.
Then in 1872, Grant signed: Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, p. 108, 112–13. Nash quotes the authorizing legislation from the United States Statutes at Large 1872, and notes that Congress seemed more interested in finding a suitable use for land that had little agricultural value than in preserving it in a pristine state, as only specific resources within its boundaries were to be maintained “in their natural condition.”
The federal government had also been brought into: Worster, Passion for Nature, p. 403.
In the interim a group of students and professors: Ibid., pp. 328–29.
In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt established: Meine, Aldo Leopold, p. 76.
In a span of just four years: Ibid., p. 77.
In the summer of 1909, Leopold reported: Ibid., pp. 87–89.
Though inexperienced: Ibid., pp. 91–94.
In 1915, worried about the vanishing game: Ibid., p. 146.
Like other recruits to the Forest Service: Ibid., p. 78.
In 1921, Leopold published a paper: Ibid., p. 194.
and offered a definition: Quoted in Meine, Aldo Leopold, p. 196.
It had long been the subject of: Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, pp. 44–46. In the mid-1700s, during a period of growing appreciation for nature that was central to the Romantic period, Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful and Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime explored the idea that wilderness was to be appreciated and experienced, not feared and avoided.
eighteenth-century primitivists believed: Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, p. 47.
but when Thoreau traveled into the remote forests: Ibid., pp. 90–91.
Wilderness, Roosevelt said: Ibid., pp. 149–50.
as it was thought to be by George Babbitt: Lewis, Babbitt.
Leopold in 1924 helped establish: Meine, Aldo Leopold, pp. 196, 200–201.
In 1929, Leopold gave a series of lectures: Ibid., p. 266.
Game Management marked the true beginning of: Lannoo, Leopold’s Shack and Ricketts’s Lab, p. 34.
earned Leopold a professorship at the University of Wisconsin: Ibid., p. 47.
In early 1934, Leopold was named: Meine, Aldo Leopold, p. 315.
The so-called Beck Committee was formed: Ibid., pp. 315–16.
The deliberations turned contentious: Ibid., pp. 316–18.
Another month after that: Ibid., p. 319.
In 1935 Aldo Leopold became: Ibid., pp. 342–43. Leopold died of a heart attack suffered while fighting a brush fire near his Baraboo, Wisconsin, country shack in April 1948. He was not to be remembered fondly by Rachel Carson. In 1953, Oxford University Press published Round River, a compilation of essays and remembrances assembled from Leopold’s journals. Oxford, hoping for something they could use in publicizing the book, sent it to their most famous author—Carson—for comment. This backfired when Carson discovered the book included hunting and trapping escapades in which an assortment of animals were killed or tormented. Carson told Oxford they could quote her but that they wouldn’t want to, as Round River was in her opinion “a truly shocking book” that had left her in a state of “cold anger.” Carson said she had until then “believed in the legend of Aldo Leopold” but had now been “rudely disillusioned.” What Carson saw as “pious sentiments on conservation” in the book only made Leopold a hypocrite in her mind. Leopold, she said, was a “completely brutal man” (Correspondence between Carson and Fon W. Boardman, Jr., head of advertising and publicity for Oxford University Press, in September 1953, Beinecke and NCTC). In a later irony, the FWS named two of the dormitories at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia “Leopold” and “Carson.”
when her group was transferred: Department of the Interior personnel records, change of station notice, August 7, 1942, NCTC. This move was rumored and postponed over some months. Carson did not want to go and told Maria Leiper that every week’s delay was a gift.
The relocation was mercifully short: Department of the Interior personnel records, intratransfer and change in status, April 21, 1943, NCTC.
A year later, FWS created a new: Department of the Interior personnel records, transfer and promotion, June 1, 1944, NCTC.
after William Beebe had included two chapters: Beebe, Book of Naturalists, pp. 478–95. Beebe combined Carson’s two chapters on eel migration into one.
Beebe wrote back that he’d be delighted: William Beebe to Carson, February 1, 1945, Beinecke. Carson’s letter to Beebe in this exchange is not preserved.
Carson wrote to Beebe on a different matter: Carson to William Beebe, October 26, 1945, Beinecke.
Beebe wrote back to say: William Beebe to Carson, November 1, 1945, Beinecke.
Osborn answered that if: Fairfield Osborn to William Beebe, November 5, 1945, and William Beebe to Carson, November 10, 1945, Beinecke.
On November 12, 1944: FWS press release, November 12, 1945, NCTC. FWS press releases sometimes listed more than one au
thor and/or contact person. In this case the contacts were “Allredge” or “Carson.” Whoever drafted the release, both were familiar with its contents.
She promptly proposed: Merle Crowell to Carson, November 28, 1944, Beinecke. Crowell was a senior editor at Reader’s Digest.
That same month she published: Carson, “The Bat Knew It First,” Collier’s, November 18, 1944.
In April 1945: Jack Goodman to Carson, June 6, 1944, and Carson to Jack Goodman, June 7, 1944, Beinecke. Goodman was a member of the Transatlantic’s editorial committee. Carson was able to respond in a single day because Goodman was based in New York.
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.
On a Farther Shore Page 45