Well, maybe once when I was in graduate school. That product was another Hog Island target: The Epic of Hog: The Todd-Bingham Family and the Establishment of the Audubon Camp in Maine. It’s what I needed to do to finish my MHumanities from Wright State in 1985.*
But that was really just a long paper: 4 chapters in about 125 pages, with a half dozen photographs and notes.
A book would have 300+ pages with a variety of chapters, extensive explanatory and ‘foot’ notes, and photographs. That’s where I’m heading, anyway.
The Dressy Adventuress began in 1981 when I first visited Hog Island. From within a couple hours of making footfall on the Queen Mary dock, Mrs. Todd’s island story has been brewing with me. I read everything I could get my hands on. I’ve visited the Sterling Library at Yale at least five times by now, sifting through the Todd Bingham family papers archive trying to find one delightful tidbit that perhaps I overlooked; that one detail that would sweeten the story even more.
My title, The Epic of Hog, must not be confused with Mabel Todd’s The Epic of Hog. Mrs. Todd’s Epic is a collection of short ‘sketches’ focusing on the island’s natural history and local folks and places.
These 27 unpublished, unfinished essays (some handwritten revision is evident) cover topics like the island heronry, hermit crabs, mushrooms, jellyfish, Capt’n Elisha King, Waldoboro, and Iceland moss.
The amazing thing to me is that nobody has seen these essays for years -- perhaps not since the mid-1960s when Millicent Bingham was still around -- unless they’ve trekked to Yale to peruse the family archive.
I’ve shared a few of the essays with Friends of Hog Islanders. My plan is to include the complete Todd Epic of Hog as an appendix in The Dressy Adventuress. Everybody should get the chance to hear what this stylish New England naturalist had to say about Hog Island a century ago.
In any case, know that the book is coming along. I know it’s taken too long to get here, but here I am. Over the years I’ve immersed myself in Mrs. Todd’s island story, whether or not I was putting pixels to paper. When I taught this part of the writing process to my junior and senior high school kids, we called it prewriting. It’s all the stuff you do to get ready to put words in sequence: reading, thinking, organizing, re-thinking, note taking, filing, securing sources, lining up consultants, et cetera. It’s all good -- and it has taken a long time.
As of now, the preface is in good shape (draft complete) with chapter 1 up next. Here’s the lineup of wanna’ be chapters -- just to whet your whistle:
- A capital girl
- Of astronomy & Dickinsons
- Sex in Amherst
- Sister Emily’s poems and letters
- Travels & publications
- Mabel Todd & her Camp Mavooshen
- Millicent Bingham & Audubon
- Finishing Mother’s work
- For the ages
The outline looks pretty filled out at this point, yet will get deep reorganization as the project develops. Next I want to read a few chapters re: Mabel’s childhood in Washington DC that appear in Sewell, Gordon, and Millicent Bingham herself. Then I will sketch out chapter content in web form on a fair-sized piece of drawing paper. I’m pretty sure the visual will help me see how the thread should run. At least that’s what I’m thinking right now.
Then it’s about one chapter a month through the end of winter. If all goes well, I’ll have a draft to distribute for revision comments and something I could take to an agent or publisher. Again, never been here, done that, so we’ll see how it goes.
But take heart, Pilgrim! The Dressy Adventuress is on the way. And I must say, there are so many great stories to tell! I’m really charged to keep it moving.
I don’t know exactly why and how, but the time is now.
* A text version of my Epic of Hog graduate paper will be available at fohi.org before too long. I’ll announce when it is posted. (No sooner than January 2012.)
image: Mabel Todd in Japan (1896). Photo from the Yale University Archive.
image: Mabel Todd in Japan (1896). Photo from the Yale University Archive.
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