Katharine S. White

It’s never too late in life to make new friends, or at least so I’ve always believed. But it does complicate matters a bit if your introduction to them is long after they have died. It becomes a rather one-sided friendship but, I have to say, better than not knowing them at all.

My very much alive-in-the-here-and-now friend Stephanie introduced me just lately to two amazing women – Katharine S. White (1892-1977) and Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985). My one-sided friendship with them has come about through a book that Stephanie gave to me for my birthday: Two Gardeners, A Friendship in Letters. She thought I would enjoy it because it is based on a long-time correspondence between the two women and she is a fan of my Dear Medora, Child of Oysterville’s Forgotten Years which is also based on letters written long ago. Stephanie couldn’t have chosen a better gift!

It is a paperback, published in 2002 by Beacon Press. A blurb on the back cover from the New Yorker magazine says this:

 In 1958 Katharine S. White, an editor at this magazine and the wife of E.B.White, began writing a gardening column, which appeared intermittently, like lady’s slippers, under the heading “Onward and Upward in the Garden’ until 1970.  The first essay prompted a fan letter from the distinguished Southern gardener Elizabeth Lawrence, who wrote a weekly column for The Charlotte Observer. In more than a hundred and fifty letters, they discussed subjects ranging for bloom times in their respective zones to meetings with cantankerous plantsmen, their burgeoning families, and, as time passed, the vicissitudes of old age. Those unfamiliar with Lawrence will be glad to meet her; for fans of the Whites, to hear once more about doings in North Brooklin, Maine, is akin to a visitation.

Elizabeth Lawrence

As I’ve immersed myself in the book this first time (and there will be many more read-throughs) I have found myself fascinated and transported and caught up in not the garden talk but in their descriptions and laments about the writing process. I so identify with them both, it’s hard to believe I didn’t write the words myself.

Katharine: My filing system such as it ever was which was nothing, has completely gone to bits and letters, files, catalogues, and sundry notes make my study a horrid mess. I despair of ever catching up…

Elizabeth: Far from writing easily…I write with the greatest difficulty and never get through even a letter without several interruptions…

Elizabeth Lawrence’s Desk

Katharine: As usual my lack of knowledge is catching me up…

Katharine: …I think my article is lousy and it is full of awkward wordings and even of errors in fact that distress me, because I had to do last minute corrections…by long distance phone so I finally gave up and said, “Do what you like,” which was a big mistake…

If this first-time reading is for affirmation, the second will definitely be for inspiration. I have simply glossed over all the fabulous garden information and, after all, I think that was partly editor Emily Herring Wilson’s point in putting the book together. Getting to know these women through their letters is certainly one of those ‘many levels’ experiences – like all good friendships.