Kate From Maine

Her book was published! The author’s copies had arrived, neatly packed in a sturdy box. There was even bubble wrap to protect the individual volumes from damage from shipping. Lauren was thrilled. She’d worked for over three years on the research and another year on writing and revising. At times she wasn’t sure if it was worth it. She hadn’t been able to title it “The Posey Lady” like she had wanted to, because the publisher was afraid people would think it was a children’s story. Laurel had to agree with that reasoning, so the title they’d both been able to live with was Kate From Maine. The subtitle was  The Life of Kate Furbish, Botanist. This might change if there ever was a second edition, but that was getting ahead of the story.

The Kate in question was not entirely unknown, but many people who lived in Brunswick had never heard of her, much less heard of her groundbreaking work. In her 97 years she covered miles and miles of Maine territory, searching for plants and sketching them with almost unnerving precision. The Bowdoin College Hawthorne-Longfellow Library housed Furbish’s 1300 illustrations which comprised fourteen volumes. She never had a library named after her, thought Laurel, although she knew there would soon be an elementary school that would recognize the accomplishments of a woman whose life had been dedicated to cataloguing Maine’s flora. Laurel had gradually become obsessed with the woman who had done so much with so little encouragement. It simply didn’t seem fair.

The local bookstore, Coast of Maine Books, organized a brief talk accompanied by a reading. It often held these events in support of local authors, whether they wrote poetry, fiction, or essays. The Special Collections department also wanted Laurel to give a library talk, for which they had planned to retrieve the hundreds of Furbish drawings from their safe storage area and place them in the cases on the third floor for people to admire. This pleased Laurel immensely, as she had written her book to bring more attention to a woman who had been an expert in her field but who had never been paid for her work. 

If the book sales went well, maybe she could do something she knew should be done. She felt that Kate Furbish’s home on Lincoln Street in Brunswick should be renovated and turned into a museum. They had done it with the Edith Patch house in Orono and Sarah Orne Jewett’s residence in South Berwick, so why not with Kate’s house? Laurel even had made herself a written reminder about slipping this idea into both the bookstore and the library presentations. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t certain yet how to carry out the project if people actually supported her idea. Maybe her friend Amalia would have some suggestions, seeing as how she worked for the Pejepscot Historical Association on Park Row.

***

The Coast of Maine was packed for the reading. Standing room only? No! There wasn’t even any standing room. Apparently Laurel’s idea that Kate from Maine was a forgotten figure had been wrong. At least the people who were in the little bookstore waiting to hear about Kate knew of her. On the other hand, maybe they were just drawn to local history no matter what the topic. The important thing was that more people were going to learn about the extraordinary woman who had lived in their town for nearly a century.

Laurel stood at the front of the small area where the folding chairs had been set out. They were all occupied and another twenty or so faces were distributed among the aisles of the store, waiting for the presentation to start. There was a low hum of voices. Laurel had chosen to wear a black suit-like outfit with a silk scarf that had yellow and blue flowers, subtle but perfect. She didn’t think she’d bother to tell the audience that the flowers were the colors of two plants that had been first identified by Furbish, much less tell them that one of them, the yellow one, was commonly called lousewort. People would laugh at the unfortunate name for the plant, and that wasn’t fair. Furbish herself had called the plant - still endangered - wood betony. It seemed to be a member of the snapdragon family. Pedicularis furbishiae did not retain any of the lovely names awarded it. The blue flowers in the scarf represented the wood or heart-leaf aster. It was likely that most Mainers had seen neither of these. At least the aster was not on the endangered list. That was encouraging, in any event.

The reading began normally, meaning that there was a brief introduction and then Laurel selected passages from the book that she thought would be to the audience’s liking. The audience really listened. Some of them whispered from time to time with the persons next to them. Others were nodding or looking surprised, such as when Lauren spoke of the immense volume of illustrations and specimens Furbish had produced. There were people of all ages in the audience - from elderly couples to a younger child or two, who were surprisingly well-behaved. Then came the time for Q&A, which could be very good or very frustrating to presenters at such events.

“Why did she move to Maine?” asked one person, a man in his sixties who obviously hadn’t paid attention to the fact that Kate had moved to Brunswick from New Hampshire because she was less than a year old and didn’t have much say in the matter at the time. He seemed more focused on determining whether Kate was a real Mainer or if she was ‘from away’. That question wasn’t fair, because Mainers feel that if you don’t have all four sets of grandparents who are born, raised, married, and buried inside te state boundaries, you are not a native.

“How did she get so interested in plants?” asked another member of the audience, a younger woman this time, maybe a student. Unfortunately, the only explanation anybody had ever found was that Kate Furbish’s father had taken her and her younger siblings for walks in the woods. Simple enough. Maybe not relevant.

“Why didn’t she get paid for her work?” That question, from a woman who looked to be in her fifties and quite serious (judging from her expression) was harder to answer. The best explanation was that apparently a woman who had enough income to live on didn’t need a salary. Jobs were for men, and Kate had lived from 1834 to 1931, when women didn’t have professions, except for some like the Skolfield sisters. Kate had had brothers to look after her (even if all of them were younger than she was). She could follow her nice little passion and not be worried about putting food on the table or having pin money.

“Why didn’t she get married?” That question, Laurel felt, was completely unnecessary. It certainly had nothing to do with the vast work of the botanical illustrator. She hadn’t seen who had wanted to know, so she ignored the query and hoped something more would be asked, something more important. Even asking about what types of transportation were available to Furbish, or how she chose the areas she explored (she went all over the big state of Maine, which covered more than 35,000 square miles), or how long it took her to produce a single illustration and where she got her art materials. The latter topics might be better ones to ask about, but old ways of thinking do die hard.

The event lasted just under two hours, including several signings of copies of the book, a few face-to-face comments, and a brief conversation with the owners of the bookstore. The idea of buying the Furbish home and converting it to a small museum had likewise gotten a good response and a very contented Laurel stepped outside to a still-warm evening. She thought she might walk by the house on Lincoln Street - only about four short blocks away - before getting her car to go home. 

It was not a good idea.

Outside the house with white wooden siding, which did not have much of a yard at all, Laurel stood quietly, wondering if she should be thinking about leading the effort to turn the Furbish home into a museum. What was the inside like now? How much would it cost to remodel it, since it would have to be transformed into a residence from 1900 or before? Where would the furnishings come from? (Well, there would probably be something fitting in the antiques emporium at the huge Cabot Mill just down the street.) Laurel thought about all of this, but said nothing, since there was nobody to talk to. When she was about to leave - she had only stood there for five minutes or so - and walk the remaining block to her car, a person came out of a side door onto the long, narrow porch. The porch was enclosed, but the windows were raised with the warm summer air, and screens allowed the person’s voice to travel easily to the sidewalk, only ten feet away.

“Get out of here! Go away!” The voice was rabid and hoarse. It was the voice of a heavy smoker. “You can’t have it! I won’t let you take it!”

Laurel scurried off, sensing she’d frightened someone without meaning to. She was very saddened by the clash of the person’s words with what she imagined to have been a peaceful home to a scholar and artist who had yet to receive the full recognition she deserved. She wondered if the person who had shouted at her really could have known about her dream of the museum, but decided that was impossible. She hadn’t mentioned the plan to anybody before that night at the local bookstore.

Three days later, in the library at Bowdoin College, accompanied by the brilliant images produced by Kate Furbish’s own hands, Laurel gave an even more compelling presentation. Compelling referred to both the book that revealed the genius and commitment of Furbish to her life’s passion, as well as her plea for funding of a museum. Book and plea were very well received. In fact, people offered to donate on the spot, because in college towns those people are not uncommon. Nevertheless, it wasn’t quite time to start raising the money. There were municipal codes, a budget to develop, and, too, there was the matter of the current residents of the house on 2 Lincoln Street. The latter was what made Laurel hesitate more than anything else.

She should have been concerned about other things and people.

Laurel was invited to give at least two more presentations, one at the public library and another at Brunswick High School. She continued to receive enthusiastic responses to her book and her fundraising idea, but was still looking into how to proceed. At the school, one person stood up and berated her for promoting ‘the lousewort lady’ who forced the dam up north to be relocated. The critic, a man around fifty, hadn’t figured out (or didn’t care) that Furbish was long dead when it was discovered that the endemic and endangered lousewort that bore her name grew in the area proposed for the dam.

“That cost Maine a hell of a lot of money, that lousy plant did!” (Some in the audience snickered at the play on the weed’s name, while others applauded lightly. “Movin’ around a whole big dam just on account of a weed that’s not good for anything! Maybe that Kate lady wasn’t around by then, but if she hadn’t discovered that thing, nobody woulda known it existed and the dam woulda been fine in that spot.” (Furbish had, in fact, been gone for at least four decades. She had no idea that in the 70s somebody would see fit to construct a dam near the Canadian border.)

The man, middle-aged with a few tattoos and a t-shirt that showed the effects of countless washings and looking for all the world like he had a permit to carry (forget the fact that guns were most likely NOT allowed in the school), finished his rant. He slumped down in his seat, having run out of steam. He was angry, furious, even, but he wasn’t stupid, Laurel thought. Had moving the dam affected him or his family in some way? She thought it unlikely, since the northern part of Maine was probably five hours away and most of Brunswick wasn’t worried about that part of the state, which wasn’t even on the coast. However, it did seem pretty personal for the man. Why?

About a week later, Laurel went to the cemetery near the intersection of Sills and Bath Roads, beside the Bowdoin Pines that had been planted by King George or somebody loyal to him (most likely). She stood by the utterly unobtrusive white granite marker for Kate Furbish, which was near the much-traveled Bath Road, and asked her:

“Kate, tell me: Why is it that some people think you did amazing work and others despise what you did?” She knew she wouldn’t get an answer, at least not there, beside the headstone, and certainly not from Kate herself. (Laurel was not an irrational person by any means. She did not think Kate would respond.) 

“Why do some of these people get so angry with me?” 

There wasn’t a lot more material that could be added to the Furbish saga, but perhaps there was still something missing, something that would do more than a little old book about the botanist’s life and work could do. Could Laurel find that missing part? How could she get more people to see the importance of the ‘Posey Lady’? Wasn’t that why she’d written the book? She couldn’t let go of her hope to pay proper homage to an extraordinary woman.

***

It should be noted that not long before Kate From Maine had been published, an expensive, elegant, much-needed edition of the more than 1300 drawings had been produced by Rowman & Littlefield. Due to its size and price, most copies of the book had been purchased by institutions, with some purchased by individuals with very expensive coffee tables that needed a good book to adorn them. The editor had precise data on when and where the copies of the first printing had been acquired. Many of the purchasers’ names were also recorded. Laurel could never hope to own a copy of her own, but she looked at it and admired the quality.

What would happen if all those volumes that weighed over thirty-five pounds (thirty-seven was the exact weight, according to one person who had been involved in producing the book) each were to disappear? If that happened, people would start asking what had made this woman (the one who never married, lest that be forgotten) so important that all the reproductions would be stolen? Were the original paintings still safe, in the Special Collection of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library? Somebody really should check. There could be a lot of publicity. That wasn’t a bad thing.

What about the people who had written about Furbish? Could they be implicated in any way? (Extremely unlikely.) More appropriately, could they shed any light on the situation, would they know why the books had disappeared? As one of that group, Laurel was on that list of people who merited questioning, but there were a few others who might have information concerning the matter.

The plan to question the experts on Kate Furbish was not going to resolve the problem that the books had, in fact, disappeared. The biggest hope was that the whole edition had not been destroyed or damaged. How could the thief or thieves have gotten past so many alarms in homes and institutions? Where could the huge books be hidden? The investigation was going to be casting a wide net. It seemed the Furbish fans would stop at nothing.

Laurel was really in trouble now.