Writing about a Provincetown Artist

Because writing is generally a solitary activity, writers need to cultivate and maintain social contacts. For me the Cape Cod branch of the National League of American Pen Women serves as both a social and professional outlet. The following 1,000-word article was composed this week as the first in a series intended to deepen the connection between artists and writers who make up our organization. 

 A four-hour interview with photographer/writer Linda Ohlson Graham was the article's basis. I think it is a good example of how the methodical collection of information serves a writer. Other than the correct spelling of her name, her town of residence and the general impression that she led an interesting life, I had no specific knowledge about Linda prior to our interview. I've conducted countless interviews (and will write about the process in future posts!), but, regardless of length, each one requires people to trust me with something that belongs to them. 


                              A PROVINCETOWN ARTIST:  LINDA OHLSON GRAHAM

                 by Christie Lowrance

                                                               
 Linda Ohlson Graham is a woman whose life and art have been defined by space and place.  Her stunning photographs of sprawling, near shapeless coastal landscapes depict the glorious union of earth, sea and sky, a theme that has become the core of her writing as well as her photography.  Her tiny 200-square-foot room on the ground level of a hilltop house behind Bradford Street in Provincetown seems an anomaly until one learns she lived aboard a sailboat for five years and has survived three near-death experiences.

Born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, Graham moved to Provincetown at nineteen. Unhappy with the town’s in-season chaos, she decided to visit Detroit and stayed for six months, working in a restaurant and spending long, peaceful days in the presence of the grand frescoes of Diego Rivera in the Detroit Institution of Art.  When she returned to Provincetown, she worked at several restaurants, but left again when the opportunity to go sailing arose.

She spent most of her late 20s and early 30s on several boats, exploring the Inland Waterway and covering 12,000 miles visiting ports in the Caribbean and Central and South America.  Within these years she learned to meditate and chant, and cites an example of their benefit on a day the boat was becalmed and the engine “clanged and banged, then died,” says Graham. “We chanted for the wind and it came up.”  In her travels she used a Canon Rebel with Fuji film to photograph people from diverse cultures and countries and has some particularly striking images of Haitians whom she describes having “joy in their hearts and a lilt in their voices.”

Graham also began developing a skyscape collection.  “I always wanted the (shipboard) watches at sunrise and sunset because of the spectacularly gorgeous streams of color,’ she said. “Sunrises and sunsets are each so individual. The name “EARTH OCEAN HEAVENS came to me like a lightning bolt out on the open ocean, with the thought that I would publish a book some day by that title.” 

After returning to Provincetown in the fall of 1978, she took a job cooking at the Café Edwige. She also crewed occasionally for the Hindu, a 65-foot, two-masted schooner that made cruises and day trips out of Provincetown.  When she was 32, her mother encouraged her to come out to Colorado.  In Denver she married Douglas Graham, twenty-three years her senior, who owned an extraordinary 1,000-piece collection of works by English Romantic landscape artist J. M. W. Turner.  Together they opened his home as a Turner museum, and in it their daughter Isis was born. “I was proud of the museum and loved living in it,” Graham says. “We had popular concerts there once a month.”

She had not sought an explanation for her dizzy spells until she and her husband separated after nine years of marriage. A physician insisted she have a CAT scan immediately. It revealed a golf ball-sized cyst. She had brain surgery the next day.  After surgery she began writing, a voluminous collection now titled “Notes from My Journal Immediately Following Brain Surgery.” She says that the writing simply flowed, and from it she began to pull out single lines or passages that particularly appealed to her.  She has made framed work that incorporates both her photography and writings.

When she returned to the Cape in 1996, there was a rainbow over the Sagamore Bridge.  Coming back to Provincetown “was heaven,” she says. “It was home in my heart. I know so many people here; I have so many longtime friends here. I’ve known one since he was fourteen. “   

On a recent occasion she was heading back to Provincetown from an Upper Cape meeting on global peace.  Her violet wool beret, plum-colored scarf, long black skirt, socks and clogs readily identified her as artistically inclined. She stepped aside to let a visitor enter her L-shaped room which contains a bed, two large chairs, four small chairs, two tables and an inestimable number of books whose titles reveal her interests and passions: Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostic Bible, Pablo Neurda, Milton, Discourses on Rumi.  Photographs and mementos are everywhere.  Colorful rugs cover the floor and a small bowl of dried leaves and silky white milkweed seeds serve as decoration, as do a collection of necklaces, horseshoes, and her daughter Isis’ artwork.

Inches, not feet, separate the components of her home.  A small refrigerator is a few steps away from her bed, table and chairs, and Graham says she does a lot of cooking on the diminutive stove nearby. Perhaps it is her Thoreauvian lack of material burdens that enables Graham to explore whatever interests her, whether Stonehenge monoliths and crop circles in England or Caribbean shores.

But for a free spirit, she has quiet ways. In conversation her dark chocolate brown eyes may glance mischievously for a listener’s response to some surprising revelation or turn aside to watch a distant idea take shape. She plays with her glasses as she recites a poem, one of many she has memorized. She has a soft speaking voice, but demonstration of a chant proves it to be surprisingly loud. 

Graham has been a member of the Salt Winds Poets in Harwich and Gulf Gate Poets in Sarasota, Florida. Her art work has been displayed in solo exhibits at the Cape Cod Museum of Fine Art, Falmouth Library, and Cape Cod 5 Bank in Orleans, among others.  Out of the majesty of her photographic images and the personal urgency of her prose writing has come a purpose, a mission:  global peace. 

She has worked on several peace initiatives and was named poet laureate of Colorado’s Department of Peace. Graham believes it is attainable through quieting the human mind.  One of her favorite personal writings is “Please hold the thought with me that peace on earth and calm weather patterns can easily happen ...  in a moment or two of silence in enough of the collective mind.” She continues to write and photograph in hope that her vision of peace will find universal acceptance, if not today, perhaps tomorrow. 

PILGRIM CUISINE REVISITED

How do we know what the Pilgrims ate or how they cooked? With Thanksgiving a few days away, I’d like to offer readers my article on the work of research librarian James W. Baker which lead to a revolution in the way Pilgrim cuisine was presented at Plimoth Plantation, the renowned living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The museum’s Foodways program continued to evolve after this article was written in the 1990s, but this material describes fascinating background for the interpretation of 17th century Pilgrim cooking. Baker’s 2009 book Thanksgiving: The Biography of An American Holiday provides further detailed information.

 

Putting together an authentic 17th century English dinner for 150 people wouldn’t appeal to everyone, but Jim Baker was intrigued by the challenge. As research director at Plimoth Plantation, Baker was accustomed to extracting information, including recipes, from the museum’s extensive library. So when planning began for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Mayflower II’s historic 1957 voyage from England to America, Baker enthusiastically volunteered to recreate a feast that would have been familiar to the original Mayflower’s English passengers. Baker never imagined, however, that this meal would lead to reinterpretation of American culinary history.

In preparing the menu, Baker consulted Madge Lorwin’s historical cookbook Dining with William Shakespeare. The researcher was surprised by the unusual and complex recipes that combined herbs, spices, vegetables and dried fruits, and utilized bread-thickened rather than flour-thickened sauces. Since Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616, Baker reasoned that this type of cooking would have represented the native cuisine of the English colonists who first settled in New England. He was struck by the fact that it bore no resemblance to the then-current food presentation at Plimoth Plantation.

“There was a received body of knowledge that said Pilgrim food was simple, hearty, natural and not complicated,‟ said Baker. “When you think of colonial food, you think of corn bread, salt pork and a few vegetables.” As a historian, he had had no reason to contradict or even question this theory. “I had always thought the Pilgrims would have dropped the traditional English way of cooking,” he said. “Then I thought, well, did they?”

A critical part of Baker’s job was to determine the authenticity of every detail of the museum’s presentation, from hemlines to carpentry to regional European accents. The possibility that 17th experts – including himself – could have been completely mistaken in their interpretation of Pilgrim cuisine in the New World motivated him to search for culinary clues in European and American libraries and archives for nearly four years. His research was complicated by the obvious fact that cooking, unlike other forms of culture, is destroyed almost immediately after its creation. Early Plymouth Colony records Baker found offered extensive detail about treaties, boundaries, church laws and civil agreements, but virtually nothing on the subject of food. Food historian Karen Hess, who translated Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery, noted “No other aspect of human endeavor has been so neglected as home cookery,” which she attributed to “the endless deprecation of the work of women.”

Baker discovered two English books written by John Josselyn during the 1660s, New England Rarities and Two Voyages to New England, that both documented a significant on-going relationship between the New England colonists and their English heritage. Baker was particularly excited by a brief reference to colonial settlers in another English book published in 1654 with the provocative title Johnson’s Wonder Working Providence of Sions Saviour in New England: “...and in their fests [sic] have not forgotten the English fashion of stirring up their appetite with a variety of cooking their food.” For Baker, this was verification that the Pilgrims had not abandoned their native culinary traditions.

Although English political history of this period is called Elizabethan, or Early Modern, cultural history often progresses at a slower rate, Baker explained. For this reason, cooking in the opening decades of the 17th century was typical of an earlier period. Medieval cuisine had evolved gradually over 800 years and use of certain ingredients could be traced back to the Roman occupation. This manner of cooking reached a peak of expression in the 15th and 16th centuries through culinary drama, such as baking live snakes and toads into dishes for the delight of dinner guests. The children’s song about “four and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie” was based on fact, not fantasy, Baker said.

In the 17th century, the flamboyant excesses that highlighted Medieval cooking had died out; Late Medieval cuisine was characterized by moderate presentation and an abundance of herbs and species. A recipe of humble (intestine) pie in The Good Huswife’s Jewell, written in 1587 by Thomas Dawson, called for “halfe a handful of hearbes, following time, margerum, borage, persely and a little rosemarie and season the same, being chopped with pepper, closes and mace, and so close your pie and bake him.” A salad might typically include sage, mint, lettuce, violets, marigolds and spinach.

Spotting the increasing use of herbs and spices, some historians interpreted it as an attempt to disguise spoiled food. “Nonsense,” responded Baker. “The ability to preserve meat was as successful then as in later times. The great silliness of some early food historians was that if they didn’t like a flavor, they would assume it had some practical use, that there was some explanation for its use other than a desirable flavor. Spices and herbs were in fact just preferred tastes.”

A significant change in cuisine is often marked by the appearance of new cookbooks, which was the case with the Late Medieval period that preceded the Pilgrims departure for America. The sudden flurry of cookbook publications was not duplicated in cultural centers in Germany and France, which suggests the phenomenon, was English not European. And if Jim Baker was right, it was also American.

But how could the Pilgrims produce elaborate three-course meals in a primitive setting? The Pilgrims were yeomen, members of the middle-class, far more accustomed to buying necessities at a nearby town or village than foraging for them. “We now reject the idea that they came to America, stepped off the boat, and instantly became self-reliant frontiersmen,” says Baker. “During the early years they struggled but after they got things under control, they probably lived as much as they could as they had back home.” He pointed out this pattern is true of most immigrant groups and certainly characterized, for example, the Victorian English who colonized India and clung to the ways of their homeland.

The immigrating Pilgrims brought livestock and seeds to the new land, where similarities with England in soil and climate made it possible to grow such staples as beans, peas, and meslin. Since some four hundred European fishing vessels sailed across the Atlantic each year, it was not difficult to send for cheese, malt, ground flour, cloth and other goods.

Newly discovered trade routes made spices like nutmeg, ginger and saffron readily available. Even common sailors on the Mayflower carried a personal supply of spices, certainly indicating they must have been accessible to the more prosperous passengers. In reality, Baker says, the Pilgrims were no more isolated in Plymouth then they would have been in the eastern Fens of England.

By the time first and second generation Pilgrim women became household cooks, potatoes, celery, soy sauce and other previously unknown ingredients had found their way to North America and into housewives’ pots. The memory of “the English fashion of stirring up their appetite” was eventually lost as the Pilgrims, like other immigrants, embraced new ways and new times. By the end of the 18th century, the unique Late Medieval cuisine that Jim Baker theorizes was enjoyed by early New England Pilgrims had become extinct in both Europe and America. It is now found nowhere in the world, with one notable exception: Plimoth Plantation.

As a result of Baker’s research, the 17th century food program at Plimoth Plantation was transformed from an occasional demonstration to a daily activity in most of the twelve houses in the Pilgrim Village. For first person interpreters there, cooking means doing without measuring cups, stainless steel, electricity, refrigeration, salt shakers, or bagged sugar. But Plimoth Plantation cooks who have mastered the old art of making tansies and fruit tarts and roast beef say it beats microwaving by a mile. “I cook better on a fire than I do at home, and I like it better,” declared former interpreter Troy Creane.

New interpreters were trained to measure ingredients by sight and feel, and to cook on a hearth with 17th century implements and recipes. They had three weeks of classes and a dress rehearsal before they assume the name, background, family, “memory,” regional accent, and daily chores of actual colonists. In the village they cooked a midday meal, in addition to maintaining a cottage home and garden, and fielding countless questions from visitors on anything from sex to herbal tea to dentistry.

Approximately two hundred historic recipes have been tested and adapted to contemporary use. (Popular Late Medieval recipes like “chaldron of swan” or “lark‟s tongue stew” are understandably omitted from the Plantation’s menus.) Every morning before visitors arrive, a supervisor delivers ingredients and reviews cooking techniques with the interpreters. “Spices are what make the food unusual,” said Creane. “Today we don’t usually think of putting cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins and sugar in a meat pie.”

The familiar sight and good smell of food being prepared play a distinctive and effective role in the museum’s portrayal of Pilgrim life. As a visitor you might observe two women in long woolen skirts standing beside the communal outdoor bake oven, a dome-shaped hollowed mound of clay on a counter-high platform. They lean against it casually, chatting about everyday subjects obviously enjoying the afternoon sun as they wait for their bread to finish baking. If you ask how they know the bread is done, you may get the friendly reply, “Oh, I would judge that it be done by the odor. If it were a wet odor, it would be but cooking. If it smells dry and toasted, it must be done just proper, but if t’is a burned smell, then, of course, t’is too late.”

Chicken, and later cows, goats, and sheep were brought from England with the Pilgrims, but according to primary sources such as Woods New England Prospect and Morton’s New English Canaan, the Pilgrims found a wide variety of native wild fame and fish, including bear, moose, wolf, deer, fox, and 47 kinds of fish, and 41 kinds of fowl. Eagle was reportedly “an excellent meat, like mutton,” and eels were plentiful enough to fill a hogshead in a night. Although plentiful, not all types of shellfish were considered desirable. Records show that the inmates of a Pilgrim-era poorhouse lodged the complaint that they would not tolerate lobster more than three times a week.

The realism of Plimoth Plantation is especially impressive to people whose image of Pilgrims is limited to stereotypes derived from our modern Thanksgiving first observed in 1863. Museum staff are often frustrated by the dominating influence of a 19th century holiday on 17th century history. “Thanksgiving is all the Pilgrims are known for,” remarked Baker. “”They’re only real in November, otherwise, they don’t exist, like Santa Claus.”

References in William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation and a letter by Edward Winslow indicate the Pilgrims did hold a three-day secular feast to celebrate a successful fall harvest sometime between late September and early November of 1621. (The claim to the first colonial thanksgiving on Dec. 4, 1619, however, is made by Berkley Plantation in Virginia.) The only four adult women to survive the first New England winter probably organized that dinner for one hundred and forty people, including ninety Native Americans.

Although the food at the Pilgrim gathering was plentiful, it doubtless bore little resemblance to that served at our own Thanksgiving dinners. Mashed potatoes, celery sticks, celery stuffing, creamed onions, flour-thickened gravy, even coffee, were unknown in those times. Sugar was extremely scarce, so only a small amount scraped from a block was used for most dishes. Jellied cranberry sauce and sweet desserts would also have been missing form that historic meal.

The official creation of Thanksgiving Day seems to have been somewhat of a political ploy. Since 1769, Forefathers Day had been celebrated by New Englanders to commemorate the Pilgrims’ 1620 landing on Plymouth Rock. Later poems such as the Courtship of Myles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow idealized stalwart, hard-working Pilgrim men and women. In an attempt to focus public attention on traditional values and a common ancestry amidst the divisions of the Civil War, President Lincoln official established Thanksgiving Day as the last Thursday in November, 1863. Peace, brotherhood, and gratitude for the gifts of the Creator have continued to be predominant themes of this beloved American holiday.

Although Thanksgiving is celebrated today with televised football games, lavish parades and foods that would undoubtedly startle the original Pilgrims, they would no doubt have recognized the shape and tantalizing smell of the centerpiece on countless American dinner tables, and said with relish, as we do, “Pass the turkie, please.”

Note: A paper on Jim Baker’s research was first presented at the Dublin Seminar at Sturbridge Village. He once appeared at a Smithsonian Conference on Great Chefs with Julia Childs and Craig.

Thornton W. Burgess and JFK

Fifty years ago today, Thornton Burgess, then 89, learned along with the rest of the world the devastating news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed. Several weeks later he described his thoughts in a Dec. 8, 1963 letter to his Canadian friend, Stuart Trueman, editor of the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. “Shock follows shock,” he wrote. “We are still rather numb from the tragic loss of President Kennedy...we have lost an able and good man, a brilliant man, who had he lived might well have become a truly great man.”

But Burgess was no stranger to the horror of presidential assassinations. “[Kennedy] is the third President to be assassinated within the span of my lifetime,” he told Trueman. “I was a small boy when Garfield was shot and still have a vivid memory of the feeling of desolation that filled me as I heard the tolling of the village bells and saw the flags at half mast.” (1)  Burgess had been seven years old living in Sandwich, Massachusetts when Charles J. Guiteau shot President James Garfield on July 2, 1881. He was twenty-seven when President William McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901 and died eight days later.

In fact, all four American presidential assassinations impacted Burgess’ life, for the dark shadow of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination only nine years before the author’s birth surely fell upon his childhood years in a New England town that had lost forty men in the Civil War.

Whether or not they ever met, Thornton Burgess and JFK knew of each other and were clearly mutual admirers. Rose Kennedy mentions in her autobiography that her son John’s favorite Burgess book was The Adventures of Reddy Fox. A few years ago Gene Schott, executive director of the Thornton W. Burgess Society, was telling visitors to the organization’s museum in Sandwich, now closed, about Kennedy’s fondness for the author’s animal stories.  A woman in the group interrupted his talk with her own anecdote. Her father was a close friend of the president, she said. Knowing Kennedy’s fondness for Burgess’ animal books, her father had visited Thornton Burgess, then in his late 80s, at the Mary Lyon Nursing Home in Hampden, Massachusetts to obtain an autographed and inscribed copy of Reddy Fox for him. When he delivered the signed book to Kennedy in the White House, she said, the president immediately sat down in his rocking chair and began to read Burgess’ story of a headstrong young fox who had many lessons to learn.

(1) Information provided by the University of New Brunswick, Harriet   Library.

The Process of Discovery

At "A Book in Hand" author's forum in Dennis, Massachusetts, I spoke last month to a group of writers about the process of discovery throughout four and a half years of working on Nature's Ambassador. Here are a few points I covered:

Readers may not realize the enormous amount of revelation that takes place during the writing process. Even we writers can be taken aback by the discovery of new information that our original plan must unexpectedly accommodate. Not long ago I listened to novelist Dennis Lehane (Mystic River; Gone, Baby, Gone) humorously describe his surprise, irritation, resistance, and finally acceptance of the discovery that a minor character in one of his blockbuster novels simply refused to be eliminated. The author had to yield to his own fictitious character!

I had notebooks full of information about my subject when I started work on Nature's Ambassador. However, if the final published version were limited to what I knew then about Thornton Burgess' life and career, it would have been one-third of its eventual size. I was more than a year into my work before I had to accept the fact that I was not writing the tabletop book my publisher and I had envisioned, but a legitimate biography. As I told the publisher, I had not deviated structurally from the four-part outline of my book proposal, but, of necessity, my depth and range of detail had evolved. I had serious concerns. What if I pursued essential leads, but got seriously off track? Then again, what if I held to my plan, but ignored the massive momentum of my research? In the end, I resigned my self to letting the story lead me, as Lehane had done. 

What revelations occurred in my writing process? I knew Burgess had a popular radio program in the 1920s and 30s, but I didn't know it may have been the first children's nature program on radio. I knew the children's author was an ardent conservationist, but was unaware of the extraordinary extent of his effort. He conceived of and implemented through the popular People's Home Journal a private land conservation program that posted five million acres for bird sanctuaries. I found letters that heartily congratulated Thornton Burgess for his assistance in passage of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. I learned he was honored by the prestigious New York Zoological Society for influencing the environmental values of "millions of children." I remember thinking, "What's that figure again - millions? In 1919?" That was less than a decade into his career as a children's author. He wrote for forty-six more years. 

Photo: Dr. William T. Hornaday, director of New York Zoological

Society, credited Thornton Burgess with influencing the environmental values

of "millions of children." Courtesy of Greg Dehler.   

I was startled to learn the children's author had attended the 1931 Matamek Conference on Biological Cycles in Labrador, a meeting that assembled leading scientists from Europe and North America to consider the same environmental issues we study today. (Thornton Burgess, by the way, was equally startled to learn that these eminent scientists were quite familiar with and approved of his nature-based books and newspaper columns; his chagrined account of their insistence that he tell them a story is hilarious.)

Discovering Burgess' friendship and collaboration with distinguished Smithsonian curator Austin Clark added terrific detail. But when I was provided copies of their animated, near-daily correspondence through the generous assistance of Smithsonian researcher Marcel LaFollette, author of Science on the Air, and curator Dr. David Pawson and his wife Doris at the National Museum of Natural History, it required a marvelous new chapter: "Austin Clark and the Radio Nature League."

I knew Burgess had written dozens of books. (In Nature's Ambassador I clear up the confusion between 70 or 170 total books.) But I was astounded to discover those books had sold possibly eleven million copies by the mid-1960s. Booksellers have verified that this was an impressive sales figure at that time. I would learn he had multiple publishers, his last book came out the year he was 91, and that more than half of Burgess' books are still  in print, which booksellers say is also remarkable for early 20th century books. 

New research changed not just the shape and size, but the very purpose of my book. It solidified my growing conviction that an important children's author and conservationist had been significantly overlooked in the history of two fields. Without new discoveries, the last sentence in my introduction could not have been written!

So, I've come to expect and welcome discovery in the writing process, and wonder if all writers find this true?

A Writer's Firsts!

Every writer has dreams. A few dreams of mine have become reality in recent months. Let me share with you writing "firsts" that have come about since the publication of Nature's Ambassador, my biography of Thornton W. Burgess.

FIRST: Book sighting in a store

In the four and a half years I worked on Nature's Ambassaror, I always knew what would signify that the project was really finished: seeing my books in Titcomb's Bookshop. 

Titcomb's is a beloved family-owned bookstore in East Sandwich on Cape Cod. It has a wonderful, warm, welcoming atmosphere, complete with shelves stacked with books you're suddenly dying to read and toys you realize are perfect for any child you know. The staff is marvelously friendly, enthusiastic, and helpful; the fact that they wrap presents is alone reason to come here. Needless to say, I was delighted when owner Vicky Titcomb Uminewicz said she would love to host the official launch of Nature's Ambassador. 

A few days before the launch, I was driving past Titcomb’s on an errand when I spotted a large white sign near the road. It read “Christie Lowrance, Burgess Book Signing, Sunday 2-4.” I decided to stop in the bookstore on the return trip to thank the staff (and admire the sign!). As I walked up the stone path to the bookstore, I realized that the upper panes of its broad display window were ALL filled with copies of my book. Beaming, I opened the door and stepped inside. On a table near the front door nestled between Nancy Rubin Stuart’s outstanding Revolutionary War-era Defiant Brides and Susan Branch’s beautifully illustrated new book, A Fine Romance was a stack of my books. Oh my. What a gorgeous sight. So colorful! So celebratory! So …legitimate. 

The smile on my face lasted halfway home, but the smile in my writer’s heart lasted for weeks. 

FIRST: Book launch

A few days later the launch for Nature's Ambassador was held at Titcomb's Bookshop on a glorious blue-sky, late summer Cape Cod afternoon. With Nancy Titcomb and her husband Ralph, who had opened the bookstore decades ago, I greeted arrivals beneath a small canopy outside the front of the store. Later we would consume root beer floats, Thornton Burgess' favorite drink, and a huge sheet cake iced on top with a bold colored replication of the Harrison Cady illustration on the front cover of Nature's Ambassador.

Elizabeth Merritt, generally considered Titcomb's literary authority, invited everyone to go upstairs for my talk, and guests found a seat among the bookshelves in the upper level of the bookstore. I looked out at friends and neighbors seated smiling and expectant before me. My son Rob was grinning broadly, his wife Kimberly was snapping pictures, and their two children waved at Nana. As I waited for Elizabeth to introduce me, I realized I was relaxed, extremely happy, and completely ready for this moment.

The day held so many unique pleasures! How many people have the opportunity to dedicate a work to those they cherish? I am blessed with four grandchildren, "the ones Thornton Burgess wrote for." When I started this book, K was 3, R was 2, and G and J weren't yet born. K now stands up to my shoulders, R somewhat below him, J speaks French, and G can sing six verses of "Down by the Bay." To call two dear grandchildren forward, give them a Nana squeeze, and introduce them to those gathered at the launch was a golden moment in my life.  

It felt wonderful to present a copy of Nature's Ambassador to Nancy Titcomb, founder of the Thornton W. Burgess Society, who has believed so fervently in his message of love and stewardship to nature and wildlife. It seemed a privilege to provide a special thank you to someone who had done so much to promote the Burgess legacy. 

Photo: Christie Lowrance and Nancy Titcomb at book launch, by Kimberly Lowrance

It felt wonderful to present a copy of Nature's Ambassador to Wayne Wright, the research librarian at the New York Historical Association who wrote Burgess' complete bibliography (2000) and was such a great help in confirming countless details about the author's literary work. A childhood reader of Burgess books, Wayne had traveled from Oneonta, New York to attend the book launch at Titcomb's!

Photo: Christie Lowrance presenting book to Wayne Wright, by Kimberly Lowrance

As a professional writer for more than thirty years, I have savored many exquisite moments, but the book launch of Nature's Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess will remain one of the most purely happy days of my life.

WHO NAMED PETER RABBIT?

Harrison Cady illustration, permission by Thornton W. Burgess Society




 If you have been introduced to a delightful animal character named Peter Rabbit in the works of both Beatrix Potter and Thornton Burgess, you may have wondered which author named him. It is a sticky and confusing question, sometimes raised with the suggestion of copyright infringement. Here’s what my research for Nature’s Ambassador showed: 

 

In his autobiography Thornton Burgess clearly and unmistakably identifies Beatrix Potter as first to use the name Peter Rabbit when she self-published The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1901. Its instant success led Frederick Warne & Company to publish her charming little book in England. Her popularity spread across the Atlantic, but because Warne did not properly secure a U.S. copyright, both authorized and unauthorized versions appeared. Like countless other parents, Thornton Burgess read the captivating story of a naughty bunny to his young son Thornton W. Burgess III, for whom all rabbits soon became Peter. 

 

In 1910, nine years after Beatrix Potter’s book came out, Thornton Burgess’ first children’s book, Old Mother West Wind, was published by Little, Brown & Company. It introduced an American rabbit that Burgess, then a hard-working journalist, had named Peter to please his three-year-old son whose mother had died the day he was born.   

 

Both The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Old Mother West Wind became children’s classics, but neither had been composed as a literary effort.  Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated her Peter Rabbit story to comfort a sick child.  Burgess wrote the chapters of Old Mother West Wind as bedtime stories sent to Thornton who was away from home visiting relatives for a month. The headstrong English Peter Rabbit was a central Potter character from the beginning, but the naïve and inquisitive American bunny did not get his own book until 1914. Burgess’ character lived in the wild in a credibly depicted ecosystem with other mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. He and his friends and neighbors Jimmy Skunk, Grandfather Frog, Reddy Fox, and Sammy Jay, among dozens of other creatures, were presumably quite unfamiliar with hot chamomile tea.

 Did Burgess plagiarize the Potter character? That assessment depends on what standards you apply. According to some children’s literature and library science authorities, such borrowed usage is unacceptable and would be considered plagiarism by today’s publishers. Others, however, note that Burgess borrowed a name, not a character, not an uncommon practice in the early days of children’s literature when Burgess began writing. Incidentally, children’s literature historian David Mitchell says he knows of use of Burgess’ Peter Rabbit in a 1914 school reader. The story of “How Peter Rabbit Ran Away” by R. H. Bowles also mentions “Farmer Brown’s Boy,” another main Burgess character.

 Regardless of how you see the issue, one Smithsonian researcher told me that Nature’s Ambassador is one of the few books in which the controversy over Peter Rabbit’s name is discussed in detail.  Let me know what you think about the naming of Peter Rabbit!

 

…  A note from my research files:

Suzanne Price, an Oregon bookseller who specializes in children’s books, references the 2012 A Bibliography of Unauthorised American Editions of The Tale of Peter Rabbit in citing 308 instances by 80 publishers of “piracy” of Beatrix Potter’s children’s classic.  “Warne (Potter’s authorized UK and US publisher) made some errors in registering the copyright correctly for the US in their New York office,” says Price, “and they were not able to rectify their mistake fast enough.  Altemus was first to issue an unauthorized version in 1904.  People commonly call these unauthorized versions ‘piracies,’ but they are legal, as Peter Rabbit remained in the public domain.”