EDWIN WAY TEALE

93 PARK AVENUE
BALDWIN, L. I.
NEW YORK

July 15, 1949.

Dear Rachel:

I have been away--again--hence the delay in answering your letter.
The lady at the Saxton Trust wrote me on June 9 and I send a letter on the
16th of June.I thought I sent you a copy but evidently did not as the carbon
which is enclosed was in the envelope with the letter from Miss Flashner. I
don't need to say I hope you get the fellowship although I never had any luck
in that direction.Roger Peterson and I had a really wonderful week on Cape
Cod in June.There have been a number of "sea" articles in the Scientific Mon-
thly recently which I suppose you have seen.We both send our best wishes...

EDWIN WAY TEALE

April 4, 1949.

Dear Rachel:

Your letter just arrived. As I am going to the city for the
Burroughs meeting, where the Cruickshanks get the medal tonight, I will
get off a reply to post there. It is too bad you are not coming the first
part of the week instead of the last part. I have to be in the city Monday,
Tuesday and Wednesday! The last two days I am going in for the Von Frisch
lectures on the "Language of the Bees"! I can come in on Thursday for lunch--
either around noon or later--one or even two--if you are coming from Wash-
ington on Thursday morning. Or, I could come in Saturday. Nellie doesn't feel
up to a city trip--in fact, she is having to miss the Burroughs meeting much
to her regret. But, this occurs to us: Could you make a bird-trip out on Long
Island on, say Saturday. You could come out early and we could drive to the
Tobay Beach Pond (where Bill Vogt once was warden-in-charge) and any other
noted spot on the island you would like to see. We could make a day of it
or a part of a day if you have to return on Saturday. Let me know what ar-
rangement would be best for you. Or you can call me Baldwin 3-4235. Sincerely,
Emmy

EDWIN WAY TEALE

November 6, 1950.

Dear Rachel:

The Guggenheim form arrived the day before your letter. I will fill it in and I am sure I can find a few good things to say without perjuring myself. I am delighted you are going to do the seashore guide. The one by Roy Miner (Putnam series: Field Book of Seashore Life) just came out and I reviewed it for the Herald-Tribune. I have been waiting for that for years and it is the dullest book on earth. However it contains a great deal and is, undoubtedly, the most complete guidebook of its kind. But it still leaves the field wide open for a really good and interesting guide and yours sounds like both.

With Best Wishes,

EDWIN WAY TEALE

October 9, 1950.

Dear Rachel:

We have not read such a success story as your letter in a long
time. I certainly did not need to advise you about selling chapters to mag-
azines—and what magazines! We both are happy over the way the book is get-
ting off to a glorious start. It really is a good idea to begin planning
other books as soon as you finish one. The mind races when it is relieved
from pressure and all things seem possible. I am looking forward to the happy
day when my mind can race relieved from pressure! I seem to be swimming in
the sea with the shore a long way off. You ask about Rutherford Platt. He has
wonderful Kodachrome slides and lectures well. His address is Care Platt-Forbes

Advertising Agency,386 Fourth Avenue,New York City,16,N.Y.I notice he is lecturing at the Bronx Botanical Garden on "What a Grasshopper Sees When He Hops Across a Field"! His Kodachromes on the mechanisms used by flowers are superb. But—he is also pretty busy and it will pay to write him immediately. The Insect Garden, after numerous reprieves, goes to the school board this week. There are just too many people and too many bulldozers on Long Island.

Nellie and I want to go back to the moose and mink and white-winged cross-bills of Maine! We both send our regards and our congratulations,

EDWIN WAY TEALE

September 17, 1950.

Dear Rachel:

The book, no doubt, is off your hands now and you have nothing to do but sit back and wait for the royalties to roll in! I am encouraged to know SOMEBODY finishes a book; I'm beginning to doubt if I ever get out of the woods--and the swamps and caves, as well--with the spring book. It is scheduled for the fall of '51. I should be all right unless we have another winter like the last. At the museum, last week, I had lunch with Robert Cshman Murphy. He had read your manuscript and was very enthusiastic about the book. Irita Van Doren, the editor of the Herald-Tribune Book Review asked me if there were any books I wanted especially to review this year and the only one I mentioned was yours. I have never asked to review another book before. Do you know about the Joseph

Wood Krutch book on nature writers coming out this fall--by Sloane? It should be an extremely good anthology from the way he described it to me. Roger Peterson dropped out of the clouds last week and stopped over to see us. He is drawing wildflowers ten hours a day but interrupted it to drive all night from here to get to Hawk Mountain for the broadwing flight. Nellie and I got away for two weeks in Maine in August. Our first vacation in three years and we certainly needed it. We found a wonderful camp above Jackman, on the Canadian line. I will enclose a folder as somebody you know may want to go to Maine and we can recommend this place without qualification. Only four log cabins at the camp so we had a quiet time. Could canoe back through a chain of beaver ponds into larch bogs and really remote wilderness. White-winged crossbills were everywhere. We had deer and moose and mink and beavers around us. It really was one of the best vacations we ever had. My Insect Garden is to be a thing of the past next week. After fifteen years there, it is to be replaced by a big new school! Have you sold any chapters as magazine articles? That helps advertise a new book as well as bringing in revenue. Nellie sends her best. Sincerely,

September 19, 1950

Dear Edwin:

Your good letter was so welcome that I must answer
it at once, especially since I've been wanting to write
for weeks anyway. When I was in New York in early July,
delivering the manuscript to Oxford and attending to other
matters, I thought I would surely call you, but the time
was so filled with necessary errands that I couldn't even
try until I was just about to take the train home -- and
then your phone was busy!

The vacation you and Nellie had sounds wonderful
and I'm sure you both needed it. I do hope the winter
will be better for you. You do not mention your mother,
but I hope that means she has improved. I have not yet
had a vacation myself, and after the two-year grind on the
book I'm needing one. Now I have to spend a few days in
the Hospital for some rather major surgery; after that is
well over I'm going to try to get away for a couple of
weeks.

There is good news on the book. Its publication
has been set forward to early next summer, but for most
satisfactory reasons. The New Yorker has taken 10 out of
its 14 chapters and will run a condensation of the book
over several issues some time this winter. They asked for
postponement to give them time to use some other sea piece
they had already contracted for, and felt there should be
about six months between that and my stuff. Of course
Oxford, my agent, and I are all pretty happy about this,
as being not only a nicely profitable thing in itself,
but first class promotion for the book. Of the remaining
four chapters, one is in the October Science Digest, but
pretty badly butchered in condensation, so that I do not
read it happily. Another will be in the autumn issue of
The Yale Review, out any day now. American Mercury will
probably use another if I can cut it down to their size
(of course that would be the longest chapter in the book);
the last one is still floating around homeless.

That was nice of Dr. Murphy. He has been so help-
ful all the way through, and very kindly read several chapter
ters for me. I tried to have each one read by the person
who, in my opinion, knew the most about that particular
subject. As one usually finds, the bigger the man, the
kinder he was about helping out in this way.

I have two -- well really three-- new books in the
planning stage, or to be more accurate, one of them is