“Julia” is a graphic biography of Julia Henshaw (1869-1937), who published the first book on the wild flowers of the Canadian Rockies in 1906. This was a relatively small aspect of her colorful life and author/illustrator Michael Kluckner chose her later role as an ambulance driver in World War I for his book’s cover.
Henshaw had a passion for the mountains, seeded on a visit to Switzerland from her native England as a young woman. She met both Mary Schäffer Warren and Mary Vaux Walcott on a visit to the Rockies for her journalism work in 1898. Kluckner concludes this visit helped focus her interest in the native plants. It is certain she learned much about the flora from the two American women, as well as the techniques of photography which were used to illustrated her book, “Mountain Wild Flowers of Canada” published in 1906 (the Miller Library has the American edition, which is the same except for the title).
Biographers disagree on the possibility of plagiarism in Henshaw’s book. Letters from Warren much later in life expressed bitterness that her protégé published a year earlier than her own book on the wild flowers. Nonetheless, the two women stayed in contact, as both were founding members of the Alpine Club of Canada, and participated together in some of that organization’s functions. One can only hope that their love of plants helped to mellow their professional rivalry.
The author is very skilled at drawing facial expressions that bring out the emotions of his subject and her companions. The tension between Henshaw and Warren is far stronger as portrayed in this media than in the words I have read in other biographies. Other tactics used by Kluckner include interspersing newspaper clips and occasional photographs from the period. He even put himself in the action, seeking answers from the ghost of Henshaw when more conventional research materials failed.
In one of these exchanges between author and subject, the ghost of Henshaw explains, “It works like this – you rest in peace until someone begins to fiddle with your legacy. That wakes you up and you get a chance to respond. The problem is, some biographers don’t listen.”
Excerpted in part from Brian Thompson’s articles in the Winter 2022 and Summer 2023 issues of the Arboretum Bulletin