A Conversation with Diana Parsell, Author of Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington’s Cherry Trees

I met Diana Parsell at a meeting of the Washington Biographer’s Group in 2015 or so. She was deep into research about Eliza Scidmore, the woman you’ll meet below (along with Diana herself). Her excitement about Scidmore was contagious. At the same time, she was not getting traction in finding an agent or publisher, and I admired her perseverance. Lo and behold, when the pandemic first hit in Spring 2020, I saw a Facebook post that she had signed a contract with Oxford University Press! With all the depressing news around us, I remember how good it felt to read this glimmer of positive news.

Since then, Diana completed her manuscript—and her book is coming out in March 2023 (just in time for cherry blossom season). Here’s a bit more about the biographer and her subject:

 Q: What are the outlines of Eliza Scidmore’s life? I know I am asking you to simplify years of your research, but what makes a biography of her necessary to 21st-century readers?

 A: Writing Eliza Scidmore’s story, I came to see her as a member of that all-too-large sisterhood we’ve come to think of as “hidden figures.” Scidmore fell into near obscurity for more than a century despite a legacy that includes her fight to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington, D.C. Research led me to uncover little-known details about  her pioneering work as a female journalist and travel writer, an expert on Alaska and Japan, a major voice in the burgeoning U.S. conservation movement, and the most important woman in the early history of National Geographic.

I was drawn to her story in part out of a keen desire to know how she managed to achieve all she did in her day, when most women did not have careers and female ambition was frowned on. Questions about her life seemed to resonate with my own experience and that of other women I know. Questions of how to make a life when one’s instincts don’t accord with family or societal expectations; how to reconcile a hunger for creative expression and freedom with the need to make a living; how to say true to oneself in a world that values conformity.

Q: How did you find her and what made you decide to commit yourself to telling her story?

A: The origin dates to a chance incident more than a decade ago, when I bought a paperback on a work-related trip to Southeast Asia. It was the reprint of an 1897 travelogue, Java, the Garden of the East. Who was this author, E.R. Scidmore, I wondered, and what had taken him to the East Indies? 

Naturally, I Googled the name. Results stunned me when I discovered the author was an American woman. Most surprising was her key role in giving Washington its cherry blossoms. I had lived in the area more than three decades. I went nearly every year to see the cherry trees in bloom. How had I never heard of Eliza Scidmore? I started researching her at the Library of Congress. Gradually, one tiny clue after another led me to relevant material at a couple dozen institutions, much of it “hidden in plain sight.” The many new findings I uncovered convinced me I had the makings of a significant work of scholarship in providing the first-ever biography of Scidmore.

Q: What was her reputation at the time? Did she write under her full name, and would people have recognized her byline?

A: I had been researching Scidmore a couple of years when a big breakthrough occurred. At first I found only patchy records of her journalism. Then one day, I discovered she used a pen name in her early newspaper work, a common practice of the day. She wrote as “Ruhamah,” her middle name. It was unusual enough that when I searched for that name in historical newspaper databases, I got a flood of columns and travel letters she wrote over a decade—about 650 for a single newspaper alone. That was a major development because the datelines gave me a core chronology of her travels.

Because editors freely excerpted work from other papers, Scidmore’s distinctive pen name became recognizable to readers across the country. Once she moved into magazine journalism in the late 1880s, she started publishing under her full name. That greatly elevated her national profile and made her something of a celebrity journalist. Newspapers routinely reported the comings and goings of “Miss Scidmore.”

 Q: Could she live off of her earnings as a writer? 

A; Amazingly, especially for a woman who came from modest circumstances and never married, she seems to have been self-supporting throughout her life. One newspaper colleague in Washington wrote that she earned more than some male reporters, thanks to her strategy of combining social reporting in the winter with travel writing in the other months. Her published work shows her to be a master at repurposing her material for different markets. In her extensive reporting from Asia, she had the financial advantage of favorable exchange rates and the practical benefits of a home base with her brother, a longtime U.S. consular official in Japan.

Q: What advice do you have for biographers when the subjects whom they like do unlikable things? For example, you had to deal with things she said and did that are not acceptable today—from use of language to attitudes to buying up cultural treasures in Asia.

A: Scidmore’s use of racist language and culturally insensitive stereotypes in some of her writings is a matter that, of course, I had to address in the text. I was concerned about how to handle it, as I’m not trained as an academic and didn’t have the theoretical foundation to discuss issues related to colonialism, cultural appropriation, and so on. Fortunately, I had a great editor at Oxford who offered to have the final manuscript reviewed by several people with scholarly expertise in these areas. Their comments were immensely helpful.

Q: Any favorite moments to share in the research or writing of this book?

A: My favorite part of doing this book was sharing Scidmore’s story with others. I started a website and blog early on. It brought a lot of queries from people who found me online –reporters, historians, women bloggers, educators, and students. An email from a young female park ranger led to a speaking engagement at Glacier Bay in Alaska (where a glacier is named for Scidmore). When I went to Japan for research, I was interviewed about Scidmore and her role in D.C.’s cherry blossoms on national TV.

I found, as many biographers do, that research is the best part of doing a book. A particularly memorable moment of “research rapture” occurred one evening at dusk when I was holed up in my cramped and shabby researcher’s office at the Library of Congress. A small window overlooked the rooftops of Capitol Hill, and I could see in the far distance the silvery ribbon of the Potomac River. I was reviewing an original copy of Scidmore’s 1893 travel guide on Alaska. It had a pocket at the back, containing a map. When I unfolded it to its full length, of about 7 by 28 inches, it showed, in the beautifully rich colors of nineteenth-century cartography, the route of Alaska excursion steamers in the 1880s. It was the same route along the Inside Passage that Eliza Scidmore had traveled on her historic first trip to Alaska in 1883.

Q: Conversely, what do you consider your biggest obstacles and how did you overcome them?

A: The biggest hurdle came in trying to secure an agent who believed in the story as much as I did. In retrospect, I realize I made a big mistake in pitching the book too early, when the significance and structure were not yet well gelled in my mind. That was reflected in the muddiness of my early proposals, which brought more than 30 rejections. In the end, I went with Oxford University Press because academic publishers don’t require agents for submission of proposals. Within days after I submitted a query to an editor at Oxford, based on a personal referral, she asked to see my proposal, followed by a request to send it out for standard peer review. All three reviewers gave the book a thumbs-up for publication. 

Other major obstacles included barriers of access to essential records. In one instance, an entire collection of letters I needed had been sent out for digitization, putting them off limits for nearly a year. Another institution with a strong proprietary hold on its archives rebuffed my repeated requests for access. I finally got around that by seeking out someone inside the organization who appreciated the importance of my research and used her clout to intervene. Then, of course, came the fall-out from Covid, just as I was trying to obtain the final records as well as historic photos for the book. It all made the push to the finish line pretty stressful.

Q: What is next for you?

A: This is my debut book. I started it around the time I turned 60, when most people are looking toward retirement. It took me a decade to complete, and I find it hard to think I might have the stamina to do another book. Having said that, I’ve been intrigued by a story that came to my attention while writing this one, so we’ll see. Meanwhile, I look forward to getting back to some serious blogging on Scidmore and her times. I’ve compiled a long list of ideas for interesting spin-off stories, and I find it very satisfying to write about history in smaller bites.    

Read more about Diana Parsell on her website, which includes a list of her upcoming speaking engagements. The book is available through bookstores starting March 1, or online via bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon. If ordering through the publisher’s website, at www.oup.com, use the code AAFLYG6 for a 30% discount.