On a Farther Shore (63 page)

Carson and Brooks agreed
:
Ibid., March 5, 1954, Beinecke.

March came
:
Ibid.

because she told Dorothy
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, January 25, 1954, Muskie.

One day she spoke to
:
Ibid.

But just two weeks after telling Brooks
:
Carson to Paul Brooks, March 20, 1954, Beinecke.

This time, Brooks pushed back
:
Memo from Paul Brooks to Lovell Thompson, April 4, 1954, Beinecke.

Brooks then wrote to Carson
:
Paul Brooks to Carson, April 6, 1954, Beinecke.

One editor told Brooks
:
Memo to Paul Brooks from “ACW,” April 15, 1954, Beinecke. ACW was evidently Ann Wyman of the editorial staff at Houghton Mifflin.

Brooks took this criticism to heart
:
Paul Brooks to Carson, April 20, 1954, Beinecke.

To Brooks’s relief
:
Carson to Paul Brooks, April 27, 1954, Beinecke.

but she also reminded him
:
Carson to Paul Brooks, May 4, 1954, Beinecke.

He told her she’d managed
:
Paul Brooks to Carson, May 4, 1954, Beinecke.

calling Carson’s latest efforts “wonderful”
:
Memo to Paul Brooks from “ACW,” May 4, 1954, Beinecke.

The editor who had
:
Ibid.

Carson was happy to hear this
:
Carson to Paul Brooks, May 5, 1954, Beinecke.

but she urged Brooks to hold
:
Ibid., May 16, 1954, Beinecke.

everyone involved was overjoyed
:
Paul Brooks to Carson, August 25, 1954, Beinecke.

In August 1954, Brooks again visited
:
Ibid.

But back in Maryland in November
:
Carson to Paul Brooks, November 2, 1954, Beinecke.

Brooks wrote back to say
:
Paul Brooks to Carson, November 4, 1954, Beinecke.

But in early January
:
Carson to Paul Brooks, January 10, 1955, Beinecke.

At the end of January she told Brooks
:
Ibid., January 30, 1955, Beinecke.

A month later she said
:
Ibid., February 8, 1955, Beinecke.

Then, on March 15, it was done
:
Paul Brooks to Carson, March 17, 1955, Beinecke.

Brooks wrote to tell Carson
:
Ibid. In an act of exceeding gallantry, Brooks added that the manuscript had arrived on March 15 “as promised.”

which Dorothy described as “The Revelation”
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, February 20, 1954, Muskie.

Carson’s only regret was
:
Ibid., February 13, 1954, Muskie.

Dorothy said they were caught up in
:
Ibid.

Carson said it was a process of “discovery”
:
Ibid., February 20, 1954, Muskie.

In late March 1954
:
Ibid., March 20, 1954, Muskie.

Carson met with Paul Brooks
:
Ibid., and Carson to Dorothy Freeman, April 3, 1954, Muskie.

Dorothy had promised to bring
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, March 20, 1954, Muskie.

She also admitted to Dorothy
:
Ibid., March 1, 1954, Muskie. Carson had earlier told Dorothy that part of what made work on
The Edge of the Sea
so difficult was the not knowing whether she could “do it again.” She said—far too grandly—that her work was a matter of “destiny” and that she had a hard-to-explain feeling that she was merely “the instrument” though which something fine had been created, a process that had “little to do with” herself (Carson to Dorothy Freeman, February 20, 1954, Muskie).

In April, Carson delivered two speeches
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, February 21, 1954, Muskie.

Carson thought it odd that
:
Ibid., May 3–4, 1954, Muskie.

Carson told Dorothy she didn’t like
:
Ibid., May 1, 1954, Muskie.

Then, for five days in May 1954
:
Carson,
Always, Rachel
, p. 41. Editor Martha Freeman gives the dates for this retreat as May 17–21, 1954. 192
They stayed mostly at Carson’s cottage:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, May 3–4, 1954, Muskie.

They had lazy, laughter-filled
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, n.d., ca. Christmas 1954, Muskie.

Carson, who was happy that
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, April 11–12, 1954, Muskie.

One day they heard
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, n.d., ca. Christmas 1954, Muskie.

Another time Dorothy surprised Carson
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, May 23, 1954, Muskie.

Carson briefly returned to Silver Spring
:
Ibid.

Carson bought a “terribly sporty looking”
:
Ibid., June 22, 1954, Muskie.

Carson told Dorothy she loved
:
Ibid., May 27, 1954, Muskie.

Dorothy enjoyed exploring the shoreline
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, n.d., ca. Christmas 1954, Muskie.

One time Carson took Dorothy to a special place
:
Dorothy Freeman to Paul Brooks, June 21, 1971, Muskie. Brooks had asked Freeman to read and comment on the manuscript for his book about Carson,
The House of Life
.

Under water that was clear as glass
:
Carson,
Edge of the Sea
, p. 3.

Dorothy seemed to remember everything
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, n.d., ca. Christmas 1954, Muskie.

Months earlier, the woman who
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, February 6, 1954, Muskie.

Then, on the day of their cruise
:
Ibid., July 28, 1955, and Dorothy Freeman to Carson, n.d., ca. Christmas 1954, Muskie.

Carson and Dorothy agreed to think
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, May 30, 1954, Muskie.

In a candid, almost elegiac letter
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, April 15, 1956, Muskie.

Suddenly, at one of the most dramatic moments
:
Ibid.

One time, as Carson and Dorothy lounged
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, n.d., ca. Christmas 1954, Muskie.

“Darling,” she wrote to Carson
:
Ibid.

Carson had finally written a letter
:
Carson to Henry Beston, May 14, 1954, Beinecke.

Beston invited her to come over
:
Elizabeth Beston to Carson, May 30 and September 25, 1952, Beinecke.

At the end of the season
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, November 8, 1954, Muskie.

And so, as you know
:
Ibid.

Carson had recently discovered
:
Ibid., November 27, 1954, Muskie.

They debated over which hotel
:
Ibid., December 2, 1954, Muskie.

Could they, Carson wondered
:
Ibid., December 26, 1954, Muskie. There is a frisson in the correspondence both before and after this escape to New York—but no proof that it was an occasion for physical intimacy. Carson and Dorothy spoke about their longing for each other often, but had few occasions to be alone together in this way. So what might be taken more than a half century later for sexual tension may have been only happy anticipation.

Carson and Dorothy spent two nights
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, January 6, 1955, Muskie.

A day later Dorothy again wrote
:
Ibid., January 7, 1955, Muskie.

“Darling, again let me tell you”
:
Ibid.

She said they’d had
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, January 6, 1955, Muskie.

Dorothy could cook
:
Personal communication. This is how Madeleine Freeman remembers it.

what the classicist Allan Bloom called
:
Bloom, “Commentary” in
Plato’s Symposium
, p. 55. Bloom first published this essay as “Love and Friendship” in 1993. The inevitable question as to whether Carson and Dorothy had a sexual relationship cannot be answered. But the weight of the circumstantial evidence is that they did not. My own view is that their love was much like that shared between the writers Martin Amis and the late Christopher Hitchens. In an interview, Amis explained that their relationship was like an “unconsummated gay marriage,” in which the bond was not sex but rather in each of them knowing with certainty exactly how the other thought and felt about everything. Martha Freeman, with whom I have discussed this issue at length, would argue for an additional consideration: the ability possessed by women, but not by men, to form deep, loving attachments that involve emotional and physical closeness, but not sex.

A few weeks after
:
Dorothy Freeman to Carson, January 31, 1955, Muskie.

Oh, darling, live over those days
:
Ibid.

Darling, I’m sure now
:
Ibid.

When Carson finished
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, April 12, 1955, Muskie.

In the spring of 1951
:
Carson to T. A. Stephenson, April 5, 1951, Beinecke.

I am at work on a
:
Ibid.

Ricketts was originally from
:
Lannoo,
Leopold’s Shack and Ricketts’s Lab
, pp. 8–13.

he fell under the influence of
:
Ibid., pp. 22–23.

Ricketts had gotten married
:
Ibid., pp. 13 and 22.

He opened a biological supply company
:
Ibid., p. 22–24.

Ricketts operated out of a dilapidated house
:
Ibid., pp. 59–73.

He believed there was
:
Ibid., pp. 29–31.

Free in his thoughts
:
Ibid., pp. 24–31 and 59–73.

He failed to stop
:
Ibid., pp. 1–2.

They chartered a seventy-six-foot fishing vessel
:
Steinbeck,
Log from the Sea of Cortez
, p. 8.

We have looked into the tide pools
:
Ibid., p. 15.

Many years ago
:
Ricketts and Calvin,
Between Pacific Tides
, p. 196.

her favorite being St. Simons Island
:
Carson, field notes, and Carson to Marie Rodell, October 26, 1957, Beinecke.

The tides following the recent
:
Carson to Dorothy Algire, n.d., Beinecke.

Writing of the sand dollars
:
Carson,
Edge of the Sea
, p. 140.

Walking back across the flats
:
Ibid.

Carson called the edge of the sea
:
Ibid., p. 1.

In a draft of
The Edge of the Sea:
Carson, manuscript draft, Beinecke.

Then in my thoughts
:
Carson,
Edge of the Sea
, pp. 249–50. This is perhaps the loveliest passage in all of Carson’s work, a reach for deeply felt emotion and cosmic significance that actually catches hold of both.

In May 1955
:
Carson to Paul Brooks, May 8, 1955, Beinecke.

Just before the Fourth of July
:
Carson to Sanderson Vanderbilt, July 3, 1955, Beinecke.

The speech she mentioned
:
Undated newspaper clipping, Beinecke.

Ignoring the fact that
:
Carson to Henry Laughlin, July 19, 1955, Beinecke. Laughlin was the president of Houghton Mifflin.

Laughlin was out of the country
:
Lovell Thompson to Carson, July 21, 1955, Beinecke.

A week later he wrote
:
Ibid., July 29, 1955, Beinecke.

When Henry Laughlin got back
:
Henry Laughlin to Carson, August 2, 1955, Beinecke.

Charles Poore caught the
: New York Times
, October 26, 1955.

Apparently Miss Carson
:
Ibid.

Earl Banner, writing in the
: Boston Globe
, October 30, 1955.

Freely mixing its
: Time
, November 7, 1955.

Jacquetta Hawkes said
: New Republic
, December 23, 1955.

And Farley Mowat wrote
: Toronto Telegram
, December 3, 1955.

Good writing, Langdon said
: Books and Bookmen
, February 1956. 217
It is not an accident:
Ibid.

Four weeks after
: New York Times Sunday Book Review
, November 20, 1955.

In mid-December
:
Ibid., December 11, 1955.

She told Dorothy Freeman
:
Carson to Dorothy Freeman, October 29, 1955, Muskie.

“I’ll be happy that it is”
:
Ibid., November 20, 1955, Muskie.