Remembering Katherine White through the eyes of her Devoted Husband Andy (the Celebrated Author E.B. White) and Fellow Garden Writer Elizabeth Lawrence

July 20, 1977

On this day, the garden writer Katharine White died.

Katharine was married to Andy - the author E.B. White - who wrote three beloved children's books, Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte's Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan.
(1970).

In the early 1930s, Katharine and Andy bought a farmhouse in North Brooklin, Maine. By the end of the decade, they left their place in New York for good and moved to the farmhouse permanently.

It was Katharine White who once wrote:

From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens - the garden outdoors, the garden of pots and bowls in the house, and the garden of the mind's eye.

After researching Katherine, I discovered some touching correspondence between Andy and Elizabeth Lawrence - her friend and fellow garden writer, 

In July 1979, Elizabeth wrote to Andy about Katherine's book (published after Katherine died):

Dear Andy,

Thank you for having the publisher send me Onward and Upward (it really is).

I have been re-reading and re-reading ever since, with great pleasure and great sorrow.

I can’t bear not [being] able to tell Katherine what a wonderful book [she wrote]…

[I am writing] to ask for permission to quote a paragraph from a letter you wrote to me [a while ago. You wrote:]

“Katherine just spent three days in bed, in pain, caused by a back injury brought on by leaning far out over a flower bed to pick one spring bloom — the daffodil Supreme. 

It seems a heavy price to pay for one small flower.

But when she is in her garden, she is always out of control. I do not look for any change, despite her promises."

 

I am not sure about your [species], whether it is the daffodil supreme, or the daffodil Supreme, Rijnveld, 1947, 3a.

But I don’t think it likely that any observer will know the difference. 

I thought the paragraph fits in with your loving introduction [to Onward and Upward in the Garden].

[. ..] I am having a miserable time trying to say something worthy of the book in the space allotted to me.

Aff,

Elizabeth

On March 24, 1980, Andy concluded a letter back to Elizabeth with these words:

Tired snow still lies about, here and there, in the brownfields, and my house will never look the same again since the death of the big elm that overhung it.

Nevertheless, I manfully planted (as a replacement) a young elm.

It is all of five-and-a-half feet high.

By Katherine’s grave, I planted an oak.

This is its second winter in the cemetery, her third.

Yrs, 

Andy 

Five years later, in 1985, Andy died at home in Maine.

He is buried next to Katherine in Brooklin Cemetery.