The Way I Heard It

by Mike Rowe

  “Dear God,” cried Peter, as he ran to Sir Samuel’s side. “What have you done?”

  The answer was self-evident: Samuel Romilly had severed his carotid artery, along with his windpipe. Heartbroken by the death of his beloved wife—which had occurred three days earlier—the poor man had entered a state of bottomless grief. Or was it something more than grief? Despair, perhaps? Devastation? Despondency?

  Call it what you will, the mental anguish had been more than Sir Samuel had been able to bear, and Peter could only watch as his uncle tried to scribble his final thoughts onto a piece of bloody stationery.

  “My dear,” he wrote, “I wish…”

  He couldn’t find the right words. He sat there instead, staring at the blank page, bleeding all over the bathroom floor. Moments later, he died in his nephew’s arms.

  Peter was no longer dumbstruck. He’d moved on to traumatized. Nonplussed. Astonished. Gobsmacked, he did what he always did when the chaos of an unpredictable world threatened to overwhelm him. He walked back to his study, opened his Treasure House, and started writing.

  * * *

  Two years later, sitting alone in the gloom of his parlor, Peter was once again searching for just the right word. Was he depressed? Probably. With a schizophrenic grandmother, a paranoid mother, a bipolar sister, an overly anxious daughter, and, of course, a suicidal uncle, Peter knew that melancholia ran in the family. But to what degree was he afflicted? Was he disheartened or merely down in the dumps? Was he disenchanted? Dismayed? Or demoralized? Would he succumb to the same darkness that had claimed his uncle?

  Call it what you will, but as Peter pondered the precise nature of his malaise, his ennui, his languor and lugubriousity, he couldn’t help but notice that the wheels on the carriages passing by his window appeared to be breaking the laws of physics. At least that’s how they looked through the slats of his partially opened shutters. Interesting. After much observation and careful thought, he concluded that his eyes were retaining an image of the spokes for a fraction of a second after the slats in the shutters had interrupted the rotation of the wheel, thereby creating the illusion that the spokes were moving backward. Hmmm. That wasn’t just “interesting”; it was intriguing. Titillating. Maybe even… beguiling?

  Call it what you will, Peter was definitely onto something. So, once again, he reached for his Treasure House, which was considerably thicker than it had been two years earlier. He began to write a detailed analysis of what he’d just observed. He called it “Explanation of an Optical Deception in the Appearance of the Spokes of a Wheel Seen Through Vertical Apertures.”

  It wasn’t exactly the title of a best seller, but then, Peter wasn’t writing one. He was just trying to make sense of the chaos in an unpredictable world. The result? Hundreds of scholarly papers on countless natural phenomena, in this case, a detailed explanation of the defect in the human retina that came to be known as “persistence of vision”—a principle that explains the illusion of motion. A principle that led Peter to fabricate a prototype. A prototype with a shutter similar to the shutter that hung in Peter’s parlor and an aperture similar to the window from which his shutter hung.

  Now, I could just say, “That’s the way I heard it”—and direct your attention to Tinseltown, where the name of the man most responsible for creating the motion picture camera is honored today with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I could, but I won’t, because ironically, or perhaps paradoxically—or better yet unjustly—Peter’s name isn’t there.

  Nor is it in the halls of NASA, even though Peter invented the slide rule—a mathematical breakthrough that enabled us to get a man on the moon.

  Nor is it on the aquifers of London—even though Peter did find a way to purify England’s drinking water.

  Nor is it on the facades of hospitals—even though Peter was primarily responsible for the development of general anesthesia.

  Peter’s name isn’t on the cover of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, though hundreds of scholarly papers he wrote, on countless natural phenomena, can be found therein: no fewer than 300,000 words written by Peter—words that helped explain the chaos of an unpredictable world.

  The point is, we don’t remember this prodigy, this polymath, this pansophic, for his incredible list of accomplishments; we remember him for his incredible list of words. Specifically, the list of words he compulsively compiled to combat the depression that perpetually plagued him. Words whose early assemblage began as a unique form of therapy but whose ultimate congregation went on to become an eponymous compilation of rhetorical replacements that went on to sell no less than 40 million copies over the next two centuries.

  I refer, of course, to the indispensable directory of dialectical determination that was destined to dramatically increase the word count of every term paper that’s ever been written, authored, or penned, while helping millions of aspiring writers prove conclusively that “alliteration almost always annoys.” I’m talking about an unparalleled linguistic lineup of syntactical substitutes; a crucial compendium of etymological options; a singular source of all things synonymous, conceived in serendipity and dedicated to the proposition that no crossword puzzle should ever go unfinished.

  Call it what you will: that tome on your bookshelf wouldn’t be there today but for the grief-stricken uncle who died searching for the right words—and the melancholy nephew who never stopped collecting them.

  A remarkable collection that Peter Roget called his “Treasure House.” Or, if you prefer Latin… his Thesaurus.

  * * *

  A while ago now, on a flight to Baltimore—the same flight I’m on now, in fact—I stumbled across an Atlantic article about Roget. It was not what you’d call complimentary.

  The article was written by Simon Winchester, who’s worked on various documentaries for the History and Discovery channels; I’ve had the pleasure of narrating a few. Winchester wrote a terrific book, too, about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary: The Professor and the Madman. I’d recommend it. In fact, I just did. But I was surprised to find that, putting it mildly—or gently or reticently—Winchester wasn’t a fan of Roget’s Thesaurus. In Winchester’s view, Roget did more to discourage good writing than encourage it. According to the Atlantic, “good writing” has little to do with finding the right word and everything to do with “the brave employment of the words that one already knows.”

  “Our literary powers are born,” Winchester wrote, “not out of banal and mediocre suggestion, not out of lexical shopping lists, but out of passion, thought, and intensity of feeling.”

  Is Winchester right? Beats me. With or without Roget’s help, I wouldn’t know how to write novels. I wouldn’t know where to begin. But I do write these stories and, from time to time, I must confess, my search for le mot juste compels me to consult the innumerable and countless, multitudinous and myriad, infinite, incalculable, and unnumbered possibilities that Roget’s affords. In fact, I did—when I wrote Roget’s story. Which begs the question, was the tale really diminished—lessened, minimized, or smallened in some way—when I started to lean on that linguistic crutch? What about my captain up there, in the cockpit. Is he cheating me out of an honest flight by relying on the autopilot? By the same token, did I cheat on my taxes this year by relying on the succor and support of a little machine I call the “calculator”?

  Whatever the answers are, good on you, Simon, for protecting the integrity, the probity, and the sanctity of the writer’s craft and profession. But let’s hear it, too, for those who have pulled themselves up by their own intellectual bootstraps while conceding that sometimes it’s okay to just ask for some help.

  NOT YOUR TYPICAL HOMEMAKER

  Julia stepped out of her tent after dawn and marveled at the sight in front of her: a sloping hill covered with wildflowers, a pristine beach, an unlimited view. Bill was a catch, no doubt about it: handsome, successful, ambitious. His proposal had taken her by surprise. But having slept on the idea, Julia was still undecided. Bill was
the kind of guy who believed a man’s home was his castle, which begged the question: Did he see himself as a king? If so, what did that make her? Bill’s happy little homemaker?

  Coincidentally (or maybe not?) Julia held in her hands a copy of yesterday’s San Francisco Examiner, which Bill had left on her suitcase. On the front page, just below the fold, was an article entitled “Rules and Advice for Wives.” It wasn’t really an article; it was more like a public service announcement, printed for the edification of America’s aspiring homemakers. Did he intend for her to see those rules before he popped the question? Julia didn’t know, but she perused them nevertheless.

  Don’t be extravagant. Nothing appeals more strongly to a man than the prospect of economic independence.

  Keep your home clean. Nothing is more refreshing to the eyes of the tired, nerve-racked worker than the sight of a well-tidied home.

  Do not permit your person to become unattractive. A slovenly wife makes a truant husband.

  Well, Julia thought, Rule 1 shouldn’t pose much of a problem. Her tastes were sophisticated, but so too were Bill’s. Surely, the purchase of a few nice things wouldn’t threaten his masculinity?

  Likewise, for Rule 2. She was all for keeping a clean house. But did Bill really expect her to be dusting and vacuuming? Surely a man with his resources would spring for a maid?

  Regarding Rule 3, Julia understood the importance of appearances. Hers would be maintained, regardless of their future together.

  Rule 4 read: “Do not receive attention from other men. Husbands are often jealous and some are suspicious without cause. Do not supply the cause!”

  Actually, thought Julia, that wasn’t bad advice. Bill was possessive and made no secret of it. She knew all about the phone calls he’d made before popping the question. Pointed calls to specific men with whom she had a history. If she said “yes,” Rule 4 might be worth heeding.

  Rule 5 was “Do not resent reasonable discipline of children by their father. Mothers should not assume that all chastisement of a child by his father is severe and unjustifiable.”

  Not an issue, thought Julia. Bill already had five kids (six, if you believed the rumors). If he wanted to slap them around, that was none of her business.

  Rule 6: “Do not spend too much time with your mother. You may easily, in such a way, spend too little time at home.”

  No worries there. If she said “yes,” Bill would become her priority—a simple fact she and her mother would have to accept.

  Rule 7: “Do not accept advice from neighbors. Have a plan of your own for the solution of home problems.”

  Neighbors? thought Julia. What neighbors? Julia doubted that there would be any neighbors at all. As for a plan of her own, that was a given. Julia never did anything without a plan.

  Rule 8: “Do not disparage your husband.”

  Funny, thought Julia, Bill is basically in the disparagement business. And what nasty thing could she possibly say that hadn’t been said a thousand times already?

  Rule 9: “Smile. Be attentive in little things. An indifferent wife is often supplanted by an ardent mistress.”

  Julia snorted. Bill had a mistress and everyone knew it, as well as a wife. But Julia understood attention to detail. Indeed, it was her obsession with the little things that had attracted Bill in the first place.

  Rule 10: “Be tactful. Men, in the last analysis, are but overgrown children. They do not mind coaxing, but they resent coercion. Femininity attracts and compels them. Masculinity in the female repels.”

  Julia snorted more loudly this time. She knew that certain men were impervious to feminine wiles, just as certain women were immune to the charms of men. It was a fact to which she could personally attest. Yet here she was, a single woman who’d been whisked away to this most romantic of locations to ponder a proposal from a married man with a mistress who’d promised to make all her dreams come true.

  Bill emerged from his tent holding two cups of coffee. Julia folded the newspaper and tucked it under her arm. They stood together in silence, sipping their coffee, admiring the wildflowers, the beach, the Pacific.

  “Location, location, location,” said Bill.

  “It is a good one,” Julia agreed.

  “Have you come to a decision?”

  “I have.”

  She turned to face Bill, who owned the newspaper tucked under her arm. She considered his reputation, his penchant for “yellow” journalism, for printing wild rumors and spurious gossip. She also considered his budget.

  “Are you sure you want me?” Julia asked. “I’m not your typical homemaker.”

  Bill grinned. “I don’t want a typical homemaker,” he said. “I want to build a home with you.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

  And so they did. Right there on a sloping hill covered with wildflowers.

  As always, Julia began with a plan. When construction ended three decades later, Bill’s family campground had been transformed into 123 acres of gardens, terraces, pools, and walkways—a zoo filled with exotic creatures—and in the center of it all, a new home with 165 separate rooms designed by the homemaker who’d had the good sense to accept Bill’s proposal.

  No, no, not a marriage proposal—a business proposal. A proposal to build a home unlike any other, made to the first female architect licensed by the state of California. A woman who left behind seven hundred unique buildings and homes, all marked by her tireless attention to detail and unwavering commitment to satisfy her many clients.

  Say what you want about Bill. Back in 1919, when Americans believed a woman’s place was in the home, he hired a homemaker to build one. A woman who shared her client’s belief that a man’s home was his castle. In this case, a castle by the sea, built by a trailblazing architect named Julia Morgan and made famous by the king who lived there.

  A king of media named… William Randolph Hearst.

  * * *

  I lived in a castle, once upon a time. Not like Hearst Castle but not unlike it, either. I wound up there because I’d been renting a room from a man who turned out not to own the room in question. This was a complicated, awkward situation that left me with less than forty-eight hours to find a new place to live and filled me with a level of domestic anxiety that briefly eclipsed the uncertainty surrounding my budding career in home shopping.

  The year was 1990. I’d been at QVC for three whole months. Now I was on the verge of sleeping in my car—a poor calling card for an aspiring TV personality with dreams of working in prime time. So I turned to the classifieds and found an ad in the real estate section that was impossible to ignore. “Owner of large country estate seeks discreet ‘caretaker’ to oversee home and grounds,” it read. “Free rent. Utilities included.”

  It wasn’t the “free rent” that caught my eye or even the “country estate.” It was the quotation marks around “caretaker.” I understood what a caretaker does. But a “caretaker”?

  The secretary who took my call told me that her employer was seeking a “discreet gentleman” to occupy a mansion she owned on a three-hundred-acre estate in Pennsylvania horse country.

  The mansion was called Georgia Farm.

  “Really?” I said. “Your boss wants someone to live in her mansion rent free?”

  “Someone discreet.”

  “How about someone confused?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m not sure I understand. What exactly would I be doing there, aside from being discreet?”

  “Very little,” she said. “There’s already a caretaker on the premises. He and his wife live in a separate building behind the barn. All that you have to do is occupy the main house and assist my employer… as directed.”

  “I see,” I said. “Your employer is seeking… companionship?”

  The secretary giggled. “Oh, no,” she said. “My employer has all the company she requires. You’ll live alone at Georgia Farm.”

  “Alon
e?”

  “And discreetly.”

  It was an utterly baffling phone call. But the secretary was nice. She sounded sane and seemed to like me. There and then, she arranged a time for an interview with her employer.

  “Time is of the essence,” she said.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  Marion Boulton Stroud was the socialite’s name. Her friends called her “Kippy.” I met her a few hours later on the patio of the Marshalton Inn, just outside Philadelphia. It was unusually warm for late October, but thanks to Joe, the bartender, my Heineken was unusually cold—just what I needed to process Kippy’s story.

  Kippy told me that Georgia Farm had been her childhood home. According to her, it was idyllic, exquisite—a perfect place—and now she had inherited it.

  “Well, then,” I said. “Why don’t you just move in?”

  “I’d like to,” she said. “But my father’s still there. We’ve never gotten along. Not even a little.”

  “Who did you inherit the estate from?”

  “My father, Morris Stroud. He died last year.”

  “But your father… he’s still in the house?”

  “Oh, yes. He walks the grounds at night. In the evenings, he sits in the great room by the fire.”

  Kippy was in her mid-fifties, well put together, and matter-of-fact. Like her secretary, she seemed sane.

  “And you want a caretaker who isn’t a caretaker because…?”

  Kippy smiled patiently and addressed me as she would a child. “The terms of my father’s will are problematic. Georgia Farm is mine for as long as I want to live there. I inherited that right without inheriting the actual property. But if I don’t move in within a year of his death, the estate goes to the Natural Lands trust. They’re itching to get their hands on it.”