Private Life

by Jane Smiley

  Andrew was industrious about seeking out mentors—“I have been to England and met George Darwin! He was most kind to me, even after I told him (politely, dearest Mother!) that I question some of his findings, but he said to me, ‘That is what young men do, Early! Question you must, and if the old men fume and fuss, you must not pay a bit of mind.’ I consider our meeting to have been a great success, but though I have written three letters to him since, I have not received a reply.” He made at least four trips about Europe, meeting or attempting to meet astronomers he admired.

  Margaret had thought Darwin’s first name was Charles; undoubtedly there was another one. She dared not ask, though.

  There was one letter that he sent his mother not long after her famous trip to Baden, where he joined her for a month. In this letter he remarked that “Miss Maria Meyerhoff and Miss Meyerhoff seem to have gone away without a word of farewell,” but there was nothing to indicate the extent of his relationship to either of the girls, and, indeed, whether they were German, English, or American. The Meyerhoff sisters were not mentioned again, nor was any other girl. She winced a little at how these encounters might have gone, with Andrew so big and intent and frank-spoken, but it was no business of hers, was it? None of this was any business of hers, no matter what Mrs. Lear said, but she read on.

  The schooling in Berlin only put off the most pressing question, and by the time he was finished, Andrew was ready to find a place for himself in Europe—even in Russia. A return to the U.S. he seemed to view as a last resort. He wrote, “I have sent off the letter to Struve in Dorpat. Mauritz read the letter for me and complimented me on my felicitous German. I know I could learn Russian with perfect ease, if given the chance.” An inquiry had been made at Yale, which resulted in the following remark: “Should I go to Yale (though I know this is a fond wish of yours, dear Mother), I would find myself teaching not only mathematics (and the highest level would be simple calculus), but also chemistry and geology (!), not to mention elementary biology. No astronomy, as there is no observatory! (Even Crete, Nebraska, now has a new observatory!) The great thing now, anyway, Mother, is to go south—to South America or South Africa. There is an observatory in Lima (PERU, not OHIO—I know Ohio would be preferable to you, Mother!) run by Harvard University. But we would be far away from my brothers, and so I hesitate. I will not hide from you that I am in a great quandary. For your sake, I’ve thought of BORDEAUX and BESANÇON, but the likelihood of the French accepting an American, especially one educated in Berlin, is altogether remote.”

  These letters were dated with Andrew’s customary precision: “Operncafe, Unter den Linden, Berlin, April 2, 1894, 7:02 PM–7:22 PM.” The dates and addresses did give her a strange feeling. Margaret imagined him sitting “under the linden trees,” sipping an elegant cup of coffee and eating an apple tart of some kind in an impossibly fragrant world, surrounded not only by lindens, but by pots of geraniums and roses and daisies and other blooms of all kinds and colors, with mysterious notes of music floating among the various perfumes, and a horde of silent, graceful bicycles streaming by.

  After she read this packet (and carefully replaced the letters where she had found them), she made up her mind that Andrew was not so different from other young men, after all. He had not left (many) implacable enemies behind him. He had gone to a different country and fit himself into it with some success. She said nothing in particular about her investigations to Mrs. Lear, but one day, after Captain Lear had been home for a month, and they were eating beef and mutton and potatoes every night and the boys were sitting up straight, speaking only when spoken to, and ending every sentence with “sir!,” Mrs. Lear remarked to Margaret it was a wife’s first duty not to be taken by surprise.

  And it was true that now, when he said things like “People themselves are the problem,” she thought she understood what he was getting at. “The lens looks at something. The mirror refracts it. These instruments are not perfect, but they are more perfect than the eye, and the eye is more perfect than the mind.”

  She asked him whether he planned to send his paper on the bullet holes in to a journal. He said, “Here is the paradox. It only takes one man to find out what is true, but he cannot live long enough or see widely enough to do it. Ten men see ten truths, and then they spend ten years arguing amongst themselves. A hundred men are ten times worse, and a thousand ten times worse than that. I’ve come to despair at how the truth is dissipated and distorted with every mind that turns upon it.” He shook his head. They were walking to get the San Francisco papers and some vegetables and bread. He squeezed her hand.

  She said, “I looked at the paper, Andrew. It makes perfect sense to me.”

  “My exile is the best thing that could have happened to me, after all. Here I am, out at the edge of the world.” He stared down at her. “Even though the physical world has no edge, my dear, the scientific world does! And at this edge, I am relieved of the constant necessity of human intercourse, and so my mind becomes freer by the day.” She nodded, and put her hand through his arm. He smiled and patted it in an affectionate manner. But the paper remained where it was.

  • • •

  MRS. LEAR guessed her condition before Margaret did, one day when she drank tea and then felt her stomach turn at the sight of some smoked eel. It was about time, said Mrs. Lear, and then she insisted (“for the sake of the child”) on reviewing Margaret’s recent history with an eye to ascertaining “the breeding date,” and, “my dear, the foaling date.” She said, “These things do not happen by themselves, as much as you might be led to believe that they do. My own mother told me that she did not understand how she came to have nine children until at least number seven, when some ladies in her sewing circle took pity on her and told her. But it’s best to be well informed and not turn your modest gaze away from the whole subject, as so many are tempted to do.” She estimated that Margaret was about six weeks along, which would make for an early-fall “foaling date”—“Not at all bad, though when the time comes to take the infant out for air, you’ll have a bit of rain, but we shall consider that when we must.”

  Each day, she intended to tell Andrew what she suspected, but failed to do so. “Breedings,” as she now thought of them, were neither frequent nor easy. Some days, she made the case to herself that the very rarity of these events was reason enough to tell him that an effort had been crowned with success. Was Andrew any more knowledgeable about “breeding” and “foaling” than Mrs. Lear reported her mother to have been? Possibly not. This was her excuse. What she didn’t tell Mrs. Lear was that there seemed to be no way actually to produce the child she imagined, whose face came into her mind unbidden, simply a face, appealing but remote, with no maleness or femaleness attached to it.

  “Goodness me!” exclaimed Mrs. Lear. “You look so shocked, my girl. Shocked every day. But of course you do! I cried my eyes out the first time. Captain Lear had me in Lima, Peru, and for a while it looked like China, if you can imagine that. But you do get used to it. It may take years and one child after another, but you do get used to it. I am not saying, into your ears only, that I don’t sometimes find it a relief that Captain Lear is off to sea again next month, because I do, though of course he is a wonderful man, all things taken together.”

  Margaret walked about the island, and then about the town, staring at the children, boys and girls, young and old, being carried and walking by themselves, running, skipping, rolling hoops and playing marbles, fishing in the bay, and working, too, since the general population of Vallejo was enormously varied, and plenty of children were selling fruits and vegetables and eggs and newspapers and tobacco, or shining shoes or driving carts or riding horses or carrying things home wrapped in paper. She began to feel quite sanguine about the foaling, which would be followed by another breeding, and then another foaling, and then another breeding, and so on. Whatever Andrew’s propensities with regard to marital relations, he clearly understood that marriages produced children, and, according to the eviden
ce of his jovial pleasure in the Lear boys, he was bound to greet her news with pleasure, but still she didn’t tell him.

  It was almost March, her first in California. The rain poured down and the fog closed in. When the sound of the rain was not blocking out every other (except, of course, the constant clanging and roaring from the ship factories, but she had gotten used to that), the fog brought in a litany—ships calling to one another as they crossed the bay, ferry whistles and shouts of men, officers calling orders to sailors over in the quarters, bantering and laughing from the street. Once in a while, she heard someone singing. Even the calls of birds emerged from all the racket, especially at those fugitive moments when human sounds had suddenly fallen silent, and a crow would squawk or a heron would cluck or a goldfinch would carry on a conversation right outside her window.

  She began to feel what Mrs. Lear referred to as “morning sickness,” though these bouts did not take place in the morning. On the third or fourth evening of this, she was reading by the electric light, and she felt the strongest surge of nausea yet. Her first thought was that she should not have eaten, or, indeed, even cooked, the liver she’d made for supper. She had forced herself to eat a few bites—she decided while she cooked the liver (which Andrew had brought home) that she would tell him the next day, and then, perhaps, they would adopt a blander and more agreeable diet.

  She went into the kitchen to fetch a piece of bread, and suddenly vomited into the slop bucket beside the table. Then she felt so tired, much more tired than she had ever felt in her life, that she staggered back into the front room and fell into a sleep, or into a stupor, right there in her chair, with the electric light on. In the morning, Andrew told her that he had come in very late and attempted to awaken her, but with no success—so little success that he was alarmed and took her pulse, but her pulse was strong and not quickened, so he turned out the electric light and went to bed.

  When she awoke in the chair, stiff from her night’s rest, the sun was shining and she felt much better after a few stretches—rested and not at all sick. She tested herself by eating some bites of bread and drinking some tea—both went down well. Andrew came out of the bedroom, and a few minutes later, he and she were laughing at his consternation at finding her “practically comatose,” and afterward, when they ate lunch—sardines—she still felt perfectly fine. As soon as he went out, though, as soon as she sat down again to read, she found that she could not keep her eyes open, and she slept away the afternoon. Before she managed to awaken, Andrew had returned and found her, then gone next door to Mrs. Lear and elicited the whole story from her, including the probable “foaling date” and her bouts with morning sickness. When she awoke to make supper, she found that supper was made—a boiled chicken with slivers of carrot and parsnip and some baked beans, which were pleasantly sweet and easy to partake of. All of this Andrew had persuaded Mrs. Lear to provide—but, indeed, she was a kindly woman and needed no persuasion. They had a lovely evening, with Andrew staying at home and reading aloud the first chapter of Belinda in a sonorous, faintly Irish accent, and smiling, but pointedly refusing to allude to anything outside of the room—nothing in the past, nothing in the future, nothing in the world or the solar system or the universe. For that one night, it seemed, Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early allowed himself the luxury of a few hours of superstitious silence, where plans were not overconfidently expressed and hopes were left to mellow unsaid.

  But such momentary measures did not work. By supper the next evening, it was clear that the little face she could not help conjuring was not the face of this child. Andrew, too, was disappointed, and stayed with her for the next two nights, but, truly, it was a small thing, Mrs. Lear told them, common as dirt, though sad enough, of course. Her own mother had miscarried at least three times, in addition to the nine children, and it was possible that Mrs. Lear herself had miscarried between Dorsett and Hubert, when she was down with something for three days late one spring. And as for her sisters, well, she had despaired of her sister Edith’s ever having a child. She said, “I’m sure it’s better not to know, but now you do.” And she did. By the end of that week, that episode was finished—she looked at the children all around her in yet a different way, as a population of beings that she was cut off from, as if by a thin screen. And then that, too, passed.

  • • •

  AS nosy as she had been, looking for Andrew’s letters, checking the labels of his suits and shoes, peering into his books for clues to his life and his character, the next packet of letters was not one she found but one that fell into her possession, quite literally, as she was setting mouse traps in the linen wardrobe. She was brushing away dirt and what all, and bumped her head sharply against the upper shelf. As she then backed out of the wardrobe, it began to teeter, and when she pushed it back against the wall with both hands, one of the files that had been stored there, willy-nilly, fell out onto the floor and broke. There was the packet, this one not from Andrew to his mother but from Mrs. Early to Andrew. There were five of them.

  She carried them to her bedroom, and sat down on the bed. The first one read:

  January 14, 1901

  Darlington, Missouri

  Dear Andrew,

  I was pleased to read in your last that you find the arrangements I made for your comfort in your new place in Chicago very much to your liking. I did consider a lighter stuff for the window draperies, but even in the short time that I was with you there, it was evident to me that you would have both a strong west wind, off the prairies (and straight from Minnesota, you can count on that) and, on other days, an equally punishing wind off the lake, and so, if you feel cozy and well insulated, you may thank my foresight.

  I hasten to respond to your last, received today, because I sense in your dissatisfaction with Mr. C—— the ghost of the old difficulty, and this difficulty, son, resides in you, not in Mr. C——. I am going to be blunt with you, in the hopes that you will not allow your feelings to get the best of you. You must be patient. It is unfortunate that you and Mr. C—— crossed paths in Germany. He is certainly alert to your challenge to him. He is a short man, a younger man than you by at least a few years, and the only son of considerable wealth. He has not been given as much of a free rein as you have been given, to make the most of his abilities and to fly out of the paternal nest. He is undoubtedly sensitive to your claims and jealous of your abilities. This puts a strong onus upon you to be patient, forbearing, and, most of all, to drop old antipathies, even in the face of the fact that he outranks you at the observatory. I know you can do these things, and that you have, increasingly, shown yourself to possess a measure of tact. Your last disturbed me, it is true, but I have confidence in your discretion.

  Love always,

  Mother

  The next one was dated in April:

  Dearest Andrew,

  Thank you for your last. Mrs. Hitchens and I did enjoy our visit to Hot Springs. Apparently, there is a great plan afoot to open a horseracing track, and I was telling Mrs. Hitchens about how much we enjoyed the racing at Saratoga two years ago, and of your luck at the windows, when you told me that a superior European education was good for more things than one. Your grandfather, though a respectable man in every way, would have been proud of such sentiments!

  From your silence on the subject, I can only assume that you have laid aside your animus toward Mr. C——, and are prepared to take the long way round. THIS CAN ONLY BE GOOD. Son, you have not had the experience that other men have, which is to be part of an institution that works, and must work, in a certain way. Every institution has its own system, and woe betide those who rush in and attempt to change the system precipitously. Such efforts can only offend those to whom the ways of the institution seem just and appropriate, and those people will have their revenge, make no mistake about it. You have had things all your own way for all of your life (and for this, I must blame myself—your brothers are much more canny than you are about political issues). But I will leave it at that, and
praise you for your continuing forbearance.

  And then she went on with family news for a page and a half.

  Given her new interest in motherhood, Margaret read these letters with respect for her mother-in-law’s skill in finding words to address Andrew that were both straightforward and tactful. Andrew’s mother was not like Lavinia, who kept her feelings and thoughts mostly to herself until they burst out in a surprising and sometimes hurtful way that she later had to apologize for. But when she turned to the next letter, she saw that, however tactfully and honestly (and wisely) Mrs. Early expressed herself, it had had no effect. She wrote:

  June 2, 1902

  St. Louis, the Chouteau Hotel,

  Chouteau and South Broadway

  Dearest Andrew:

  John has forwarded your last to me here in St. Louis, where I am doing some business concerning the Gratiot Street property (and a thorny business it is, I must say, but too tedious to relate). I was dismayed to read that you have sent a list of objections and “suggestions” (which certainly read like ultimata) to your colleague Mr. C—— and also to your superior, Mr. D——. I cannot feature how you think this will help your case or promote your interests. I do realize that it is unfair for Mr. C—— to forbid to you use of the refracting telescope in Wisconsin, and I am sure, as you say, that his excuse for this—that you were not careful enough with it last summer—is simply patched together. But I am telling you that if you encourage him to repeat it too often, he will come to forget that it is a lie and a slander, and believe it as fervently as if it were God’s own truth. One reason for “turning the other cheek” is that each time an enemy lands a blow, he is motivated to land another. Soon there is no way of stepping back from the most extreme possible positions. I know you know this, because you have enunciated all the right sentiments, but now, in the heat of battle, it is as if you have forgotten everything you’ve learned. You are thirty-five years old, Andrew, and must understand that if you spoil this opportunity at the University of Chicago, you will never get another like it, and all of your hopes and dreams, not to mention your work, will have been for nought. When you were enduring the hardships of southern Mexico, it was for this very thing—the chance to work at such a place, with such men, at just such a time as this, when Americans have, as you say, thrown off provincialism in time for the new century. Yes, we have said that you were made for this position! You were! That the position requires something of you—some forbearance, some understanding, some CANNINESS—is not surprising to anyone who must make his or her way in the world. I urge you to step back now—to apologize to Mr. C——, to withdraw your complaints to Mr. D——, and to wait, simply to wait. If you can’t do it there, on the scene, then come home to Darlington for the summer and cool your heels.