On a Farther Shore (58 page)

“He
was very quick in his head movements”
:
Ibid., p. 244.

Williamson had been favorably disposed
:
Ibid., p. 9.

He even thought it possible
:
Ibid.

The One to rule a better world
:
Jefferies,
Story of My Heart
, pp. 120–21. In a passage that seems at odds with Jefferies’s solitary nature, he argues that all human affairs would be better managed if “a man of humane breadth of view were placed at their head with unlimited power.”

There was a renewal in Germany
:
Henry Williamson,
Goodbye, West Country
, p. 226. Williamson said that everywhere he went in Germany he met people who seemed to be breathing “extra oxygen” and who were firm in their belief that there would not be another war.

In the spring of 1936, the
Dorset County Chronicle:
Anne Williamson,
Henry Williamson
, pp. 190–91. Anne Williamson is Henry Williamson’s daughter-in-law. In both her biography
, Henry Williamson
, and in an epilogue for T. E. Lawrence’s
Correspondence with Henry Williamson
, she argues convincingly that Williamson’s infatuation with Hitler and his appreciation for Germany between the wars were mainly the result of his experiences in the trenches in World War I and during the Christmas Truce, when he became convinced that the Germans were not a natural enemy. Less convincingly, she also contends that Williamson was never truly a fascist except in his belief that fascism in Germany would prevent another war. She concedes that Williamson’s wholesale invention of a planned radio program with Lawrence was inexplicable, though it was, she insists, made without “malicious intent” and probably in the genuine belief that, had he lived, Lawrence would have agreed to the idea.

Whatever temporary luster this myth
:
Anne Williamson,
Henry Williamson
, p. 22.

In the spring of 1936
:
Carson, “The Real World Around Us,” Beinecke.

This she did not do right away
:
Carson, “Memo for Mrs. Eales on
Under the Sea-Wind
,” Beinecke.

In the spring, Carson entered
:
Carson to
Reader’s Digest
contest editor, April 30, 1936, Beinecke.

Then, in early 1937
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, p. 84.

In June, Carson finally sent
:
Edward Weeks to Carson, July 8, 1937, Beinecke.

In August, she received a check
:
Statement from the
Atlantic Monthly
, August 2, 1937, Beinecke.

Carson had the magazine
:
Carson to Edward Weeks, July 18, 1937, Beinecke.

The ocean is a place
:
Carson, “Undersea,”
Atlantic Monthly
, September 1937.

Even the largest pair of hands
:
Personal communication with diatom expert Mark Edlund of the Science Museum of Minnesota’s St. Croix Watershed Research Station, who provided this estimate of how many diatoms two human hands might hold.

If the underwater traveler might
:
Carson, “Undersea,”
Atlantic Monthly
, September 1937.

As early as 1521, while exploring
:
Murray and Hjort,
Depths of the Ocean
, p. 2.

Early in 1840, during the British Antarctic Expedition
:
Ibid., p. 5.

But this was soon disproven
:
Ibid., pp. 9–10.

The picture of the world’s oceans
:
Corfield,
Silent Landscape
, pp. 2–13.

By the time she returned to England
:
Ibid., p. xiii.

On March 23, 1875
:
Ibid., p. 204.

“In the silent deeps a glacial cold prevails”
:
Carson, “Undersea,”
Atlantic Monthly
, September 1937.

Individual elements are lost to view
:
Ibid.

Van Loon conveyed his enthusiasm
:
Quincy Howe to Hendrik van Loon, September 9, 1937, Beinecke.

Howe wrote to Carson
:
Ibid.

While the September issue of the
Atlantic:
Hendrik van Loon to Carson, September 10, 1937, Beinecke.

Carson, feeling unprepared
:
Carson to Hendrik van Loon, October 14, 1937, Beinecke.

In December 1937, van Loon told her
:
Hendrik van Loon to Carson, December 18, 1937, Beinecke.

finally went north in mid-January
:
Mrs. Hendrik van Loon to Carson, January 7, 1938, Beinecke.

Van Loon—a great man, she realized
:
Carson, “Real World Around Us,” Beinecke.

Explaining her plan to van Loon
:
Carson to Hendrik van Loon, February 5, 1938, Beinecke.

A delighted van Loon wrote back
:
Hendrik van Loon to Carson, February 6, 1938, Beinecke.

whose editors were initially receptive
:
Edward Weeks to Carson, June 7, 1938, Beinecke.

But when she sent a sample
:
Ibid., July 20, 1939, Beinecke. The date is correct; Carson had been toiling away for more than a year since she first proposed selling parts of the book to the
Atlantic
.

Carson and the editors discussed
:
Ibid., August 9, 1939, Beinecke.

Meanwhile, she wrote some book reviews
:
Statement from
Atlantic Monthly
, April 18, 1938, Beinecke.

In April 1938, Carson implored the
Atlantic:
Carson to A. G. Ogden, April 26, 1938, Beinecke.

The magazine declined
:
A. G. Ogden to Carson, April 27, 1938, Beinecke.

But a month later they relented
:
Ibid., May 23, 1938, Beinecke.

I have been more impressed with Mr. Williamson’s
:
Carson to A. G. Ogden, April 26, 1938, Beinecke.

In 1936, feeling dispirited with his life
:
Williamson,
Goodbye, West Country
, pp. 100–105.

When most of the line was out
:
Ibid.

A photograph of Williamson’s eventual triumph
:
Anne Williamson,
Henry Williamson
, p. 181.

Carson’s review of
Goodbye, West Country:
Carson, “Nature through English Eyes,”
Atlantic Monthly
, December 1938.

“ ‘I am all with you when it comes to’ ”
:
Williamson,
Goodbye, West Country
, p. 10.

As early as 1933, in a review
: New York Times
, October 11, 1933.

Writers in Germany were required
:
Evans,
Third Reich in Power
, p. 158.

Under National Socialism, German literature
:
Ibid., p. 155.

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.