![\"Carson](\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2015\/02\/Carson-and-Teale-246x300.jpg\")
Research Center.<\/p>\nMy mother-in-law sometimes invokes an analogy to speak of the approach to seemingly overwhelming tasks: \u201cYou need to put water in the sink.\u201d\u00a0 This analogy is framed by the experience of beholding an overwhelming pile of dirty dishes in the sink, and her point, of course, is that you have to begin somewhere.\u00a0 Arriving to the Dodd Center in the late spring of 2014, through the generosity of a Strochlitz Travel Research Grant, I felt overwhelmed by the question of where to begin.\u00a0 Having researched Teale\u2019s influence on the DDT controversy that started around 1945 and enlisted such notables as Teale, Richard Pough, and E.B. White, I had learned of the correspondence between Teale and Rachel Carson on this subject and many others.\u00a0 Though my larger goal for the summer was to delve deeply into Teale\u2019s four 500-page journals kept at Trail Wood from 1959 to 1980, I felt the need to start more simply.\u00a0 For me, the water in the sink of the Edwin Way Teale Papers was the file of correspondence between Rachel Carson and Edwin Way Teale, which starts in 1949 and ends in 1966, shortly after Carson\u2019s death.\u00a0 The correspondence is largely one-sided, in that only a few of Teale\u2019s letters to Carson are preserved in the file via carbon paper copies or rough drafts\u2014though some of this correspondence is also preserved in the Rachel Carson Papers at Yale\u2019s Beinecke Library.\u00a0 These letters in the Teale Papers, albeit limited in number, are rich and full of meaning, inviting deep exploration and careful exposition.<\/p>\n
In 1942, seven years before the first correspondence in this file, Teale had published Near Horizons: The Story of an Insect Garden<\/em> to great acclaim, winning the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished natural history writing in 1943.\u00a0 Building on his success with Grassroot Jungles<\/em>, published in 1937 and featured on page one of The New York Times Book Review<\/em>, Teale had established himself as an expert on insect life and as one of the foremost macro photographers in the world, pioneering many insect photography techniques that subsequently came into common use.\u00a0 Nonetheless, despite its national prominence, the rented four-acre Baldwin, Long Island plot that had been the subject of Near Horizons<\/em> and the material source for both books was soon sold by its landlord to the Baldwin School Board.\u00a0 The insect garden that Teale had painstakingly built over six years was abruptly subject to the bulldozer of progress.\u00a0 This devastated Teale, and Carson, in a typed September 19, 1950 letter in which she invites him to be a part of the 1951-1952 National Audubon Society lecture series, adds the following handwritten postscript:\u00a0 \u201cI am sad about the Insect Garden. One lovely thing after another is swallowed up by \u2018progress.\u2019\u00a0 But it will live on in your books.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to lending the weight of his name and literary stature to her endeavors, Teale lent the weight of his insights on the reading public and the kind of book to which they might be drawn.\u00a0 In a November 3, 1950 letter, Carson writes, \u201cDo you remember that several years ago you told me you wished I would write a seashore book that would tell you, not just what the animals were, but some whys and wherefores of their existence?\u00a0 It seems I\u2019m about to do something of the sort.\u201d\u00a0 This \u201cseashore book\u201d would later take the form of her 1955 The Edge of the Sea<\/em>, illustrated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service illustrator Bob Hines.\u00a0 Realizing the strength of Teale\u2019s influence and the depth of his kindness, she adds the following postscript to an August 18, 1953 letter in which she laments her struggle to finish The Edge of the Sea:<\/em>\u00a0 \u201cI neglected to say that I think it would be fine if you will use your influence in Bob\u2019s behalf, and I know he would appreciate it enormously.\u201d\u00a0 She adds, \u201cBob does not realize his own ability and I am hoping his work on this book will attract enough notice to build up his self confidence.\u201d\u00a0 After the publication of the first serialized section of the book in the summer of 1955, Teale writes to Carson on August 22, declaring that her writing in the book \u201cis serene and fresh and strong with no residue of fatigue or stress in it\u2014and that, in truth, is a very great accomplishment.\u201d\u00a0 In this exchange, and in many others in these letters, we readily see what Ann Zwinger characterizes as \u201cthe generosity typical of the natural history community\u201d (xxiv).<\/p>\n As Rachel Carson embarked on the writing of Silent Spring<\/em>, she once again turned to Teale both for encouragement and to tap his vast knowledge of the insect world and his connections to others with like knowledge.\u00a0 In an August 15, 1955 letter to Teale, having just finished The Edge of the Sea<\/em>, Carson writes, \u201cJust now the thought of having to write makes me ill\u2014so you know how deeply I feel for you, tied to an unfinished book!\u00a0 Of course I\u2019m \u2018tied\u2019 to one not even begun, but I\u2019m resolutely not thinking about that!\u201d\u00a0 This seems a likely reference to Autumn Across America<\/em> (1956) for Teale, and, though it is never directly corroborated in these letters, for Carson the book that she is \u201cresolutely not thinking about\u201d seems likely to be Silent Spring<\/em>.\u00a0 The fact that Carson does not further elaborate on her book \u201cnot even begun\u201d suggests that Teale may already have been aware of its potential contents.\u00a0 Given the inevitable minefield of public, corporate, and governmental response that such a book was certain to engender, it is impossible to fully comprehend the depth of Carson\u2019s inevitable internal struggle to come to terms with writing and publishing it.<\/p>\n Nearly a year later, on December 30, 1956, Carson writes to Teale, excited about his upcoming visit to Washington, D.C., which she suspects is meant to overlap with the inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower.\u00a0 She is living in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland at the time and notes, \u201cI\u2019ll be delighted to have a chance to talk over a couple of ideas that are whirling about in my mind.\u201d\u00a0 Here again this seems a likely reference to Silent Spring<\/em>. Sixteen months later, on April 17, 1958, amidst a series of letters querying Teale\u2019s recommendations for her purchase of 35mm camera equipment, Carson writes, \u201cAs perhaps you heard, I suddenly find myself writing about insecticides.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t meant to, but it seems to me enormously important, and I decided far too many people (including myself only a few months ago!) knew what they should about it.\u201d\u00a0 Ironically, she adds, \u201cSo now I\u2019m into it, but hope to do it quickly and rather briefly.\u201d\u00a0 With the hindsight of history, the understatement of these sentences is striking, but perhaps it aptly illustrates the impossibility of predicting the sea-change in environmental consciousness that the publication of Silent Spring<\/em> would spur as well as the tempest of controversy that would spur that sea-change\u2014a controversy that remains in full force in some circles today.<\/p>\n Despite the fact that Carson\u2019s statements above suggest a project recently begun, a letter one month later suggests otherwise.\u00a0 In a May 19, 1958 letter to Teale, she writes, \u201cBesides the mountain of stuff I have here, I already have some 300 references on insecticides waiting for examination before I go to Maine.\u00a0 I do have the prospect of some help, but even so it is an appalling job.\u00a0 However, I am eager to have every scrap of information available, so I am grateful for all you have sent, or anything you may come across in the future.\u201d\u00a0 It seems unlikely, if not impossible, that Carson could have gathered this volume of material in the span of a few months, especially in a pre-Internet era.\u00a0 Instead, one has the distinct impression that the groundwork for the writing of Silent Spring<\/em> was laid deliberately over several years, despite Carson\u2019s matter-of-fact tone on April 17th<\/sup>.\u00a0 That tone, consciously or unconsciously, may represent an attempt to mitigate the ominousness of the task that would subsequently define her life for posterity.\u00a0 In the correspondence that follows, we see Teale\u2019s From Carson\u2019s perspective, Teale was the ideal resource: an expert entomologist, albeit not formally trained; a past president of both the\u00a0New York and Brooklyn Entomological Societies, with extensive professional connections;\u00a0 a supportive friend and colleague willing to lend his clout to her work; and a pioneer himself in terms of his vehement opposition to the indiscriminate use of DDT.\u00a0 In the March 1945 issue of Nature Magazine<\/em>, Teale had published a blistering, high-profile critique of indiscriminate DDT use, painting a dire picture of the potentially catastrophic results it would wreak on the natural world. Illustrating the article\u2019s significance, the editors of the magazine dedicated a full page of commentary to it, beginning, \u201cWe commend for serious and mature consideration the leading article in this issue of the magazine.\u00a0 It is, we believe, significant in thought and implication, even beyond the subject it discusses\u2014the new insecticide, DDT\u201d (145). \u00a0Teale\u2019s article, in fact, foreshadows Silent Spring<\/em>, both in message and tone.\u00a0 This is especially evident in the following passage:<\/p>\n If the insects, the good, bad, and indifferent insects, were wiped out in a wide area, the effects would be felt for generations to come.\u00a0 Songbirds, depending upon insects, or on seeds mainly produced by the pollinating activity of insects, would flee the area. A winter stillness would fall over the woods and fields.\u00a0 There would be no katydids, no crickets, no churring grasshoppers or shrilling locusts, no bright-winged and vocal birds.\u00a0 Trout and other gamefish, poisoned by the DDT or starving as the insects disappeared, would die in the lakes and mountain streams.\u00a0 Wildflowers, in all the infinite variety of their forms and shades, would gradually disappear from the openings and the hillsides.\u00a0 The landscape would become drab, clad in grays and greens and browns. [\u2026]. No drought, no flood, no hurricane could cause the widespread disaster that would follow in the train of the annihilation of the insects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (162)<\/p>\n Although Teale\u2019s article is not referenced in any of Carson\u2019s correspondence preserved in the Teale Papers at the Dodd Center, it seems certain that she would have been aware of it.\u00a0 A simple search of the Reader\u2019s Guide to Periodical Literature<\/em> for 1945 would have identified Teale\u2019s article.\u00a0 Since DDT had not been widely used as an insecticide until the latter half of World War II, the timeframe for Carson\u2019s literature search of DDT\u2019s pesticide use would have been necessarily narrow, further upping the likelihood that Teale\u2019s article would have come to her attention.\u00a0 Additionally, the material which he sent and for which she expresses gratitude on May 19, 1958 would almost certainly have come, at least in part, from the files he had compiled while preparing his own article.\u00a0 In this way, the conspicuous absence of Teale\u2019s article from the extensive references at the end of Silent Spring<\/em> seems a little enigmatic, though it might be explained by the general absence of popular literature in her source material in favor of peer-reviewed academic literature.<\/p>\n In reviewing the Carson-Teale correspondence in the Teale Papers, it is too easy to get fixated on the DDT-related materials, given the titanic role of Silent Spring<\/em> in the shaping of the modern environmental conservation movement.\u00a0 To do so, however, ignores the larger importance of the correspondence\u2014its capacity to illustrate by example the complex, private interactions that shape the lives of prominent writers in a given period.\u00a0 The relationship between Carson and Teale, as it is illustrated in these letters, is rich and varied, informative and vital.\u00a0 In their letters, for example, we see gentle humor when Carson, lamenting a book-signing appearance before the Maria Mitchell Association of Nantucket, quips in an August 12, 1952 letter, \u201cWhat will you give me not to tell them that Edwin Way Teale is coming to Nantucket, too, and they can have a double tea and autographing??\u201d\u00a0 We see authentic sympathy for the physical and emotional rigors of the writing process when, as referenced above, Carson confides that, after completing The Edge of the Sea<\/em>, \u201cthe thought of having to write makes me ill\u201d (August 16, 1955), and Teale reassures her that \u201cthe strain and struggle and frustration that I know went into shaping the book\u201d are not evident in the writing (August 22, 1955).\u00a0 We see the profound need of each for seclusion in nature when Carson writes, \u201cI now have about 350 feet of shoreline, with the house well protected on both sides [\u2026]. Such wonderful ferns, mosses, lichens, glades full of bunchberry and Clintonia, wood lilies, Indian pipes, ladies slippers\u2014real Maine woods\u201d (August 16, 1955), and when she writes on June 9, 1959 to congratulate the Teales on their purchase of Trail Wood, noting her certainty that \u201cyou and Nellie will have the time of your lives in such a place.\u201d\u00a0 Finally, we see the deepest intimacy of friendship when, in a December 10, 1960 letter, Carson confides that she has undergone a \u201cradical mastectomy\u201d to treat the cancer that will later kill her.\u00a0 Ultimately, these letters illustrate an abiding friendship underpinned by a deep commonality of view, of purpose, of artistic impulse, and\u2014perhaps most importantly\u2014of a far-reaching vision of nature, both in its wondrousness and its terrible fragility.<\/p>\n Richard Telford<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0teaches literature and composition at Woodstock Academy in Connecticut.\u00a0 He has a BA in English from the University of New Hampshire, an MS in English Education from the University of Bridgeport, and an MS in Environmental Studies from Green Mountain College.\u00a0Working with the Connecticut Audubon Society, he helped design and\u00a0found the Edwin Way Teale Artists in Residence at Trail Wood <\/a>program, which he directs.\u00a0 He was recently awarded a Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz Travel Grant by the University of Connecticut to support his ongoing research on naturalist writer and photographer Edwin Way Teale. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/p>\n \u201cCarson, Rachel, 1949-1966.\u201d Correspondence.\u00a0 Box 150, Folder 3040.\u00a0 Edwin Way Teale Papers, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.<\/p>\n Teale, Edwin Way. \u201cDDT: The Insect-killer that can be Either Boon or Menace.\u201d Nature\u00a0 Magazine<\/em>, March 1945, 121-4, 162.<\/p>\n Zwinger, Ann H.\u00a0 Introduction.\u00a0 The Sea Around Us<\/em>. By Rachel Carson. 1950. Oxford: Oxford \u00a0 University Press, 1989. xix-xxvii.\u00a0 Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Richard Telford Overwhelm.\u00a0 No other word so aptly describes the feeling of entering the world of Edwin Way Teale as it has been preserved in the Edwin Way Teale Papers housed in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at … Continue reading ![\"Carson](\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2015\/02\/Carson-Letter-Excerpt-300x141.jpg\")
<\/a>Edwin Way Teale thought a great deal of Rachel Carson, both personally and professionally, and in this modest collection of letters, we see several examples of his mentorship of her.\u00a0 On November 3, 1950, she writes to tell him, after the fact, of her inclusion of his name as a reference for a Guggenheim Fellowship application, noting, \u201cThere was no time to ask you if it was all right, as I would always want to do in such a case.\u201d\u00a0 While such an action might seriously strain both a professional and personal relationship, it also makes clear the degree to which Carson knew she had Teale\u2019s support.\u00a0 Having been awarded the fellowship, she writes on April 2, 1951, \u201cI\u2019m most grateful for the boost you gave it [the application] and hope when you eventually see the book you will feel repaid.\u201d\u00a0 When she wins the John Burroughs medal for distinguished natural history writing in 1952, for the l951 publication of The Sea Around Us<\/em>, she expresses concern that she will not be logistically able to attend the ceremony and asks Teale if he might accept the award on her behalf.\u00a0 In a March 22, 1952 letter, she notes, \u201cThere\u2019s no one I\u2019d rather have represent me on that occasion.\u201d\u00a0 Ann Zwinger, who would later collaborate with Teale on his final, posthumously published book, A Conscious Stillness<\/em> (1982), identifies the critical role that Teale played in Carson\u2019s literary rise.\u00a0 In her introduction to a 1989 special edition of The Sea Around Us<\/em>, Zwinger characterizes Teale as \u201cthe quiet and quintessential nature writer\u201d who \u201cimmediately recognized Carson\u2019s greatness\u201d (xxiv), freely offering his support to her by any means possible.<\/p>\n![\"Teale](\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2015\/02\/Teale-DDT-Article-Image-1-300x194.jpg\")
important role both in the development of Silent Spring<\/em> and, more broadly, in the evolution of the twentieth-century environmental conservation movement.<\/p>\n