On a Farther Shore (59 page)

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.

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. 257.

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 author 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.