On a Farther Shore (56 page)

When the
Life
magazine piece came out
: Life
, October 1962, pp. 105–10.

Earlier that year Carson had been approached
:
Houghton Mifflin internal memo, April 27, 1962, Beinecke.

Carson and Houghton Mifflin thought
:
Anne Ford to Carson, November 9, 1962, Beinecke. Ford worked in the publicity department at Houghton Mifflin.

When a producer and cameraman
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, p. 421. Lear fleshed out the story of the CBS production by way of an interview with
CBS Reports
producer Jay McMullen.

In late November
:
Ibid., p. 425.

Carson looked terrible
:
Personal observation. Just as she had in the
Life
magazine piece, Carson looked old and unwell in front of the camera for
CBS Reports:
“The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson” (Beinecke).

Afterward, Sevareid confided
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, p. 425.

Carson had already told Freeman
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, June 27, 1962, Muskie.

“I’m just beginning to find out”
:
Ibid., December 12, 1962, Muskie.

Since the stock market crash
:
“Timelines of the Great Depression,”
http://​www.​huppi.​com/
.

Among the dispossessed
:
“The Legacy of the Bonus Army,”
Washington History
19 and 20 (2007–8): pp. 87–95.

The veterans ended up
:
Ibid.

One of Ickes’s first orders of business
:
Look,
Interior Building
, pp. 11–17. I visited the Interior Building in the summer of 2010. Although Carson’s office is preserved, it is in an area that was closed for construction at the time.

In May 1942
:
Department of the Interior personnel records, promotion and transfer form, April 18, 1942, NCTC.

Colleagues, most of them men
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, p. 124. Lear gleaned this from her interviews with Bob Hines.

Like all federal employees
:
Department of the Interior personnel records, signed oath, May 29, 1940, NCTC. The Hatch Act became law on August 2, 1939. More broadly it also prohibits federal employees of the executive branch, other than president and vice president, from engaging in partisan political activities.

When she moved to the Interior Department
:
Department of the Interior personnel records, promotion and transfer form, April 18, 1942, NCTC.

Carson’s employment file did include
:
Department of the Interior personnel records, application for federal employment personal history form, April 20, 1943, NCTC.

In 1918, at the age of eleven
:
Carson, “A Battle in the Clouds,”
St. Nicholas
, September 1918, p. 1048, Beinecke.

News of this accomplishment
:
Personal observation. I visited the Rachel Carson Homestead, which is preserved as such, in spring 2010. Although the surrounding neighborhood is now fully developed, the house and its grounds are essentially unchanged since Carson’s girlhood.

Rachel Louise Carson entered the world
:
Maria Carson account, Lear Collection. Carson’s mother recorded observations about her daughter on three handwritten undated pages.

The Carson house was crowded
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, pp. 15–26.

The family’s financial situation
:
Ibid.

In 1910 he advertised
: Springdale Record
, February 5, 1910, Lear Collection.

Rachel continued submitting stories
:
Carson,
St. Nicholas
, January 1919, p. 280;
St. Nicholas
, August 1919, p. 951;
St. Nicholas
, July 1922, p. 999, NCTC.

Springdale’s school went only
:
Gail Williams, “Rachel Carson: Marine Biologist,” November 3, 1995, Chatham. Williams went to high school with Carson and wrote out this eight-page script for a speech she delivered to the Delta Kappa Gamma Society in Sun City, Arizona, on October 25, 1995.

Rachel’s like the mid-day sun
:
Ibid.

Rachel’s senior thesis
:
Carson, “Intellectual Dissipation,” senior thesis, Parnassus High School, 1925, Beinecke.

Pennsylvania College for Women
:
Dysart,
Chatham College
, p. 1. Pennsylvania College for Women—PCW as it was known when Carson attended—has undergone several name changes since its founding. It was originally Pennsylvania Female College, then PCW, later Chatham College, and now Chatham University.

The base of the high ground
:
Personal observation. I visited Chatham University in March 2010 to work in the Carson collection at the Jennie King Mellon Library and to see the campus, which retains its former charm.

The college itself comprised
:
Dysart,
Chatham College
, pp. 19, 86–87. Dysart’s book also includes a number of photographs of the college and its students.

She arrived on September 15, 1925
:
Pennsylvania College for Women, “Handbook,” 1925–26, p. 9, Chatham.

in a borrowed Ford Model T
:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, p. 26.

Carson had won a $100 scholarship
:
Ibid., p. 25.

Tuition in Carson’s freshman year was $200
:
Pennsylvania College for Women, “Announcements,” 1925–26, p. 82, Chatham.

Later, tuition rose
:
Ibid., p. 78.

The Carsons managed to keep up
:
Legal agreement between Carson and PCW putting up two of her father’s lots as collateral, January 28, 1929, plus various notes, invoices, and correspondence between Carson and PCW, including two pleading letters to Margaret Stuart, the college’s secretary and assistant treasurer, on February 27, 1931, and August 26, 1932, Chatham.

When one of Rachel’s classmates
:
Dorothy Thompson Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 13, Chatham. Dorothy Thompson, later Dorothy Thompson Seif, attended PCW with Carson. Her one-hundred-page monograph about Carson’s college and postgraduate experiences includes Seif’s detailed recollections of PCW as well a number of letters between Carson, Seif, Mary Scott Skinker, and another student, Mary Frye. Seif’s monograph is unpublished but copyrighted by the Rachel Carson Council. The copyright on the letters from Carson reproduced in the Seif monograph is owned by Roger Christie. Copies of the Seif monograph seem to be in a number of archival collections.

There were eighty-eight women
: Arrow
, September 18, 1925, p. 2, Chatham. The
Arrow
was a twice-monthly campus magazine at PCW.

Students were not allowed
:
Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 9–10, Chatham.

There were regular teas
:
Ibid., p. 11.

and a formal prom that was
:
Pennsylvania College for Women, “Handbook,” 1925–26, p. 9, Chatham.

Students were expected
:
Pennsylvania College for Women, “Announcements,” 1925–26, p. 78, Chatham.

though it was understood that the main aim
:
Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 10, Chatham.

Students at PCW studied
:
Ibid., p. 9; and Dysart,
Chatham College
, pp. 176–81.

Carson, dressed in blue bloomers
:
Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 8, Chatham.

At one game the cheering students
: Arrow
, December 16, 1927, p. 6, Chatham.

Carson suffered from acne
:
Linda Lear, interview with Helen Myers Knox, February 11, 1992, Lear Collection. Knox was friends with Carson at PCW. See also Lear,
Rachel Carson
, p. 30.

Like most of the other girls
:
Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 17, Chatham.

Never shy in class
:
Linda Lear, interview with Dorothy Thompson Seif, January 31, 1991, Lear Collection.

A few girls who got to know her
:
Ibid., p. 13.

Maria Carson made
:
Ibid., p. 12.

One of Rachel’s friends
:
Linda Lear, interview with Dorothy Thompson Seif, January 31, 1991, Lear Collection.

Mrs. Carson spent so much time
:
Ibid.

Carson’s assignment to write
:
Carson, “Who I Am and Why I Came to PCW,” Beinecke. Carson kept everything she ever wrote, including all of her college assignments.

What seems more probable
:
Oxenham,
Vision Splendid
, p. 17.

For her next theme
:
Carson, “Field Hockey,” Beinecke.

Carson entered college as an English major
:
Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 16, Chatham. 31
In the fall of 1925:
Pennsylvania College for Women, “Announcements,” 1925-26, pp. 28–29, Chatham.

By Carson’s senior year
:
Pennsylvania College for Women, “Announcements,” 1928–29, pp. 24–27, Chatham.

The force behind this change
:
Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 22–25, Chatham.

A dynamic and demanding teacher
:
Ibid., pp. 18, 22–25.

As a junior, she found herself
:
Ibid., p. 19.

In 1925, the National Academy
:
Personal communication with Janice F. Goldblum, National Academy of Sciences Archivist.

Even the gifted Miss Skinker
:
Dysart,
Chatham College
, p. 179.

She worked as a reporter for the
Arrow:
Arrow
, January 13, 1928, p. 11, Chatham.

In 1928, she published
:
Ibid.

One night in the lab
:
Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 35, Chatham.

In late February 1928
:
Carson to Mary Frye, February 22, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 33–34, Chatham. The after-party for the sledding outing would have taken place in the first-floor common room of Woodland Hall, the newer dormitory Carson moved into for her junior year. Woodland Hall, though expanded since Carson’s time, is still there.

Carson and another girl in biology
:
Carson to Mary Frye, March 6, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 37–38, Chatham.

She amused herself by dissecting a dogfish
:
Ibid.

In March 1928, friends arranged
:
Ibid., and Carson to Mary Frye, March 14, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” pp. 39–40, Chatham.

Carson saw Bob Frye at least one more time
:
Carson to Mary Frye, March 14, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 40, Chatham.

And then she never dated again
:
At least that is the best that can be surmised. Nowhere in the long written record is there even a hint of Carson going out with anyone after leaving PCW. Shirley Briggs, in a filmed interview, suggested—unpersuasively—that Carson might have had “gentlemen friends” who took her to concerts or plays and that she had a “perfectly normal social life” when they worked together in Washington in the 1940s. But there is no other evidence of this. Carson’s relationship with Dorothy Freeman will be fully discussed later on.

Not long after Carson finalized her decision
:
Carson to Mary Frye, March 14, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 39, Chatham.

A few weeks later, Carson learned
:
Carson to Mary Frye, April 23, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 42, Chatham.

Disconsolate, Carson
:
Ibid., and Carson to Mary Frye, July 23, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 43, Chatham.

She applied for admission
:
Carson to Mary Frye, April 23, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 41, Chatham; and Lear,
Rachel Carson
, p. 46.

By the middle of her senior year
:
Legal agreement between Carson and PCW putting up two of her father’s lots as collateral, January 28, 1929, plus various notes, invoices, and correspondence between Carson and PCW, including two pleading letters to Margaret Stuart, the college’s secretary and assistant treasurer, on February 27, 1931, and August 26, 1932.

Skinker was replaced by
:
Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 45, Chatham.

Whiting held a PhD
:
Dysart,
Chatham College
, p. 179. 37
But Whiting turned out:
Lear,
Rachel Carson
, pp. 48–49. 37
To keep their spirits up:
Carson to Mary Frye, July 23, 1928, in Seif, “Letters from Rachel Carson,” p. 44, Chatham.

Carson’s thoughts about life after PCW
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, November 8, 1954, Muskie.