One of the niftiest things about writing the Beatrix Potter mysteries is the relationship to other Potter people--people who really enjoy Beatrix's work. When I began working on the project, I did what I was trained to do back in graduate school and what I've always done when I work on an historical figure: I dug up everything I could find that had been written about Beatrix and began compiling a bibliography. I joined the Beatrix Potter Society and studied their newsletters to see who was currently working on her. That's how I ran into Linda Lear.
I already knew about Linda's definitive biography of Rachel Carson and admired its range, depth, and clarity. It was meticulously researched and absolutely thorough and balanced, yes--but far, far beyond that, I had the sense that here was a biographer who was so deeply engaged with her subject that she could see down to the bone. Linda embraced Carson's strengths but didn't gloss over the weaknesses: she understood them and could put them, thoughtfully and compassionately, into the context of the whole life. It's a rare biographer that takes that kind of time (she spent a decade on the project--a full decade!) and works with that sort of inclusive engagement.
So when I read in the BP newsletter that Linda was working on a new biography of Beatrix (due to be pubbed in 2007), I was delighted. I wrote to her as a fan, told her I was working on Beatrix fictions, and was thrilled when she wrote back. Over the past three years, Linda has read the manuscripts, answered my (often dumb) questions about Beatrix's life, invited me to be a part of her panel at last year's conference in Amherst, helped me connect to other Beatrix scholars, allowed me early looks at her fascinating manuscript, and engaged in long and productive email discussions with me about Beatrix's life and times. Wonderfully, generously helpful, of course--but that's an understatement. Linda is my lifeboat. She comes along when I'm feeling lost and lonely in the middle of a Beatrix puzzle and lifts me up.
Take Bertram, for instance, Beatrix's brother. Judy Taylor (Beatrix's chief British biographer, who is a fountain of knowledge about everthing Potter and also wonderfully willing to share), includes a few facts about his life in her fine study of Beatrix's life. Linda had more. In fact, Linda had even interviewed the niece of Bertram's wife and had visited the area of Scotland where he had his farm. And because Linda was willing to share her facts (not to mention the speculations we traded back and forth about the essential mysteries of Bertram's life), I could build this man into my current fiction with a strong sense of confidence. Although he will only appear in two of the eight books (three, at the most), he's an important character. He could have helped Beatrix once, when her parents refused to allow her to marry. He helped her later, in the same circumstances. Thanks to Linda, I think I know what he was about, more or less, and why he did what he did.
So today's post honors Linda Lear, mentor, friend, and writing buddy, who has lightened difficult days and provided advice and facts, facts, facts when I needed them most. When her biography of Beatrix is out, I'll let you know. In the meantime, read her study of Carson. Biography doesn't get any better than this.
Reading note, from Linda Lear's Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, p. 8:
Rachel Carson was first of all a child of the Allegheny River, its woods and wetlands. Although she could not see the wide bend of the Allegheny from the front porch of the Carson homestead near the top of the hill just off Colfax Lane, she could look over the white pines that grew along the north bank and see the traffic on the road running parallel along the opposite shoreline. She could hear the horns of the riverboats and paddle-wheelers coming and going on the river. In the spring the fog would rise over the river, hiding the road and muffling all sound, allowing an imaginative little girl to wonder where the river had been long ago and what sorts of things it had carried in its swift current as it curved sharply at Springdale and headed down its last sixteen miles on its way to converve with the Monongahela at Pittsburgh.