The day I met Jeannette six-plus years ago, sheets of snow fell sideways as I tried to keep from sliding off the Maine Turnpike. It was February, yet more than chilling than the weather was the prospect of meeting my future editor. I already knew of her formidable reputation; a senior colleague and friend, Anne Whiston Spirn, had recommended her with ample warning. Plus, thanks to Google, I saw the distinguished list of authors she had advised. I thought I knew what I had agreed to until Jeannette opened the door. Then, I slipped off the road completely.
As we sat in her sitting room, with her Tibetan spaniel, Star, sniffing my ankles and finding me most uninteresting, Jeannette briefly praised my very rough manuscript before saying: “You can write very well, even beautifully, and you are a prodigious researcher but you are often an undisciplined thinker and the entire manuscript lacks any form.” Ouch. And the criticisms only got more incisive from there. Non-stop. At least I took some comfort when she said I was one of the few authors who cooked eggs properly (if scrambled, soft and slightly runny with not too much butter) or made a martini correctly (dry, but not banishing vermouth completely). On most days with Jeannette, I was completely lost.
As I recounted my experiences to colleagues at Bowdoin and beyond, most thought I was a masochist. A few, however, realized what a gift I had received. Soon, I realized it, too. In every criticism of metaphors overextended, assertions unsupported, grammar forgotten, or storylines neglected there was a constant stream of support. She was tough because she thought I could take it; more accurately, she believed absolutely that what I had to say mattered. Every critique, every marked-up page was confirmation of that even when doubts gnawed at my confidence.
In Jeannette, I had more than an editor; I had a mentor in the original sense in Homeric myth. Between discussions over my manuscript, she listened patiently to my anxieties as a young professor and new father. Just as readily, she offered advice (Jeannette always had an opinion) but she offered something else, too: courage tempered by wisdom. When I worried that my final book might be too political and interdisciplinary for an untenured historian, she parried my angst by saying: buck up and have the guts to stand by what you write. I did and I continue to reap the benefits of my courage.
Over time, I discovered the foundation of her own strong convictions: her work. Listening to adventures in journalism or many years in publishing, I was reminded that Google cannot yet tell us everything about a person’s life. Every visit revealed an extraordinary woman committed to justice, to equality, to scholarship and to good books. Each anecdote she told about an author or social activist or editor emboldened me because I saw that each encounter she recounted had emboldened her.
In the end, it was the privilege of joining Jeannette’s life that I treasure most. On my last visit earlier this spring, between conversations and eating, I looked again at her shelves. There, on the wall, sandwiched between some of the greatest men and women of postwar American letters. Later, she remarked that she recently used me as an example for another nervous first-time author of great promise who was reluctant to believe in their work. At that moment, I realized I had become a true scholar and author. Jeannette had helped to make me into the person I had wanted to become.
I’m forever grateful that a path I never anticipated traveling brought me to Portsmouth today to honor this singular human being. I grieve that I cannot work with her on another book, yet my gratitude toward her is boundless. She may be gone, but the work remains. There are more roads yet to travel and she has pointed the way.
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