Zane Grey

by Thomas H. Pauly

  “Tonight I read a review of my new novel Call of the Canyon in the N. Y. Times Book Review,” Grey wrote in his diary. “It was the best review ever given me, wholly unexpected, and vastly inspiring. I feel grateful, humble, amazed, and thankful to the bottom of my heart. How I have longed for understanding! Not praise so much as appreciation of my efforts! Here they are, at last. I cannot say what incalculable benefit I shall derive from this Mr. Robbins’ review.”18 “Did you like the Times review?” he wrote to Dolly the next day. “It just filled me with joy. And I immediately began to love you harder.”19 When his birthday arrived four days later, he elected not to work. Instead of writing away the day as he had done the year before, he took a break, enjoyed his newfound peace of mind, and gave thanks that the torment of the past year was behind him.20

  At the end of his Long Key stay, Grey decided to forego his customary visit to Arizona and to fish the Everglades instead.21 Dolly’s letters inspired him to write more easily than he had in years, and she reassured him that his family would be there for him when he returned. Back in Altadena, he wrote in his diary, “After four months I found my family well and happy.”22 A month later when he went to Avalon, he jotted a lone entry in his journal that said even more about his improved state of mind—“From violent anguish surely free.”23

  Grey’s summer return to Avalon brought an uncomfortable reckoning with the ill-will generated by his Tuna Club resignation and his outspoken call for stronger lines. Warily, he accepted his alienation and committed himself to a disciplined regimen of writing and fishing. The 413-pound broadbill that he landed on July 16 vindicated this decision and inspired him to believe that fortune again favored him. But the summer was not without problems. Zane learned that Tom Mix had purchased the Wiborn house down the hill from his, and Mix immediately covered its roof with a mass of glaring red lights.24 From Wiborn, Mix learned that the staircase to Grey’s residence extended across his property. Claiming that he did want his land used for a public thoroughfare, Mix had the staircase torn down and fenced off Grey’s access.25 Forced to remain aboard the Gladiator while a replacement was built, Zane fumed and pondered a relocation to his undeveloped property farther up the hill.26

  Meanwhile, Grey focused on his upcoming trip to Nova Scotia. For years he had been reading and dreaming about its legendary tuna. Back in 1919, when Robert Davis wrote that he was taking his vacation there, Zane had dispatched a flood of advice about tackle, and announced that he would be going there the following year.27 Although other interests preempted these plans, his feud with the Tuna Club revived them. His defection to a 39-thread line automatically disqualified any large fish that he landed in Catalina waters. The Islander’s disregard for his large broadbill that summer and its bias toward catches conforming to Tuna Club regulations steeled Grey’s resolve to go elsewhere. The tuna in Nova Scotia were reported to be four times the size of the largest Catalina tuna, and no one there bothered about how they were caught. Commercial fishermen considered the huge tuna a nuisance that tore up their nets and jeopardized their livelihood. They also believed that anyone presuming to catch one with rod and reel was foolish and doomed. Zane, on the other hand, was convinced that his years of fishing experience endowed him with the necessary knowledge and skill, and he was energized by the prospect of getting away from line restrictions and landing one of these giants.

  The origin for this trip extended back to his meeting with Laurie D. Mitchell during a 1923 visit to Abercrombie and Fitch in New York City. Mitchell was a Canadian who had graduated from Oxford, and during the war he had served as a captain in the Royal Engineers on the Saloniki front in Greece.28 Prior to his enlistment, Mitchell ran a guide service for fishermen in Nova Scotia. On Great Island, near Port Medway, he had a bungalow hotel and several skiffs for fishing. In 1914, L. Mitchell-Henry, an Englishman and no relation, hired Mitchell to take him fishing. Over the previous eight years, Mitchell had helped fishermen to hook seventy-nine tuna, but none had been landed. After a four-hour fight on his first day of fishing, Mitchell-Henry landed a 520-pound tuna that he proclaimed to be “the first tunny ever caught on rod and line unaided, in the open sea.”29 Since he had designed and constructed his own reel, Mitchell-Henry credited his unique success to his tackle. Conversely, when he lost ten fish over the days that followed, he attributed his setback to defective hooks. On his final day, he caught another large tuna that was forty pounds lighter, and he was so grateful for Mitchell’s help that he lent him his spare tackle when he departed. As he was boarding his train to leave, he learned that Mitchell had successfully landed a 710-pound tuna, a local record that endured until Grey’s visit.30

  The challenge of this fishing made earning a living as a guide so difficult for Mitchell that he sought work in New York at Abercrombie after the war. When Grey came to purchase tackle and met him, Mitchell’s unique fund of information about Nova Scotia convinced him to go fishing there and to hire Mitchell as his advisor.31 During visits to New York City during 1923 and the early months of 1924, Grey had a series of meetings with Mitchell in which they formulated plans rivaling those of a military invasion. Grey learned that the skiffs used by locals were either rowed or powered by slow engines without a reverse gear. After a thorough review of their advantages and drawbacks, he commissioned Mitchell to return to Liverpool and supervise construction of two boats, one eighteen feet long and the other twenty, with a variety of special features that included spoon-shaped bottoms. Grey’s Florida and Avalon experiences convinced him that he also needed a power launch. Initially, he intended this to be built in Nova Scotia as well,32 but Bob King, a Long Key captain, argued that a Fort Myers firm could provide a superior product, and he agreed to supervise its construction. During his spring trip into the Everglades, Grey stopped in Fort Myers to sign a contract for a twenty-five-foot boat with two engines, two propellers, two rudders, and two Catalina fighting chairs.33 As the boat neared completion that summer, King journeyed to California to confer with Grey and Boerstler about tackle and strategies, and he returned to the boatyard in Florida with a long list of special modifications.34 Several weeks before King left to pilot the new boat to Nova Scotia, Mitchell arrived there to arrange a network of commercial fishermen that would relay information back to them about fishing conditions from all over the area.35 With three boats, three captains, and a battery of local advisors, Grey was as prepared as he possibly could be.

  Given Zane’s substantial investment of time, energy, and money, it is hardly surprising that he was buffeted by doubt and anxiety as the date of departure approached. Back in Altadena and packing for Nova Scotia, he wrote in his journal: “I am tired and depressed, full of doubt and misgiving, uncertain whether or not I want to go away on another trip. … The love and reminder of my wife and children stops my heart. The passionate pursuit of adventure, romance, of all that drives me, begins to pall.”36

  To allay his fears of a relapse into loneliness and isolation, he arranged for R. C., his son Romer, Lillian, her new husband Jess Smith, and Mildred Smith to accompany him. This trip settled his evolving relationship with Lillian into a friendship that would never again be more than that. During Zane’s return to the Rainbow Bridge with Jesse Lasky in the early fall of 1923, Lillian had been included in his party, and she fell in love with Jess Smith, one of Al Doyle’s wranglers. In May 1924, she obtained a final divorce from Robertson, and quickly married Smith.37 Her open displays of affection for Smith upset Zane, and Dolly had to reassure him: “Sorry you were fussed about Lil but if you want her around you’ll have to put up with her idiosyncrasies—as with everyone else’s. Lil has her maddening qualities, but also her very good points. I’d find her easier to live with than Mildred. I’m glad she is crazy about Jess—let her sleep with him—that sort of thing wears off after a while, but it’s very thrilling while it lasts.”38 Despite his initial misgivings, Zane was able to accept Lil’s marriage and discovered that her relationship with Jess actually improved his friendship with her.r />
  Mildred Smith, ca. 1925. (Courtesy of Loren Grey.)

  Grey’s third trip to the Rainbow Bridge altered his relationship with Mildred Smith even more. She had been his secretary since 1916, when she came to work for him from the Worcester Film Company in New York City.39 Although Zane became involved with her shortly afterward, she quickly realized that he was fonder of Claire and Dorothy, and she concentrated upon becoming an indispensable secretary and organizer. However, Zane’s involvement with Louise reconfigured their relationship.40 When Louise returned to Ohio and Dorothy spurned his offer, Grey was left without a companion for his Arizona trip. At this point he invited Mildred; she accepted and was with him the whole time until his return to Altadena. That fall, he presented her with the gift of an album containing 629 photographs of the places they visited together, and he inscribed it “To Mildred: This is a photographic record of your wanderings from May until November 1923.”41

  However, the unfolding tempest of 1923 that intensified Grey’s relationship with Mildred also strained it. Even though she was willing to replace Louise, Mildred felt insecure and vulnerable. In June 1923 when Zane presented her with a brooch as a gesture of his affection, she realized that it was the same as the one he had given Dorothy, and she became very angry.42 During the trip to the Rainbow Bridge, she learned for the first time that Louise had gone there with Zane the summer before, and she stopped speaking to him for several days.43 Mildred objected strongly to Dorothy’s return to Altadena, and berated Zane for attempting to reconnect with her during his January visit to New York City. When Claire and Elma informed Mildred that Dolly did not want her in her home, Mildred pressed Zane to stand up for her. When he cautiously appealed to Dolly to be nicer, she shot back:

  And so I say to you, because you want one to view Mildred Smith through the same rose-colored glasses through which you are seeing her, that you are doing Dot a bitter injustice. You don’t have to go on with her, but at least be fair to her, and consider the position in which she was placed. Neither do I want you to give up Mildred Smith if she fills a present need for you. But don’t, unless you want me to lose what little respect I have for her, let her & Lil & Clare form a combination to injure Dorothy in your eyes.44

  Dolly’s insistence that Mildred was “not a very peaceful or peaceable person” was validated when she infuriated Zane by brazenly smoking in his presence when he failed to get Dolly to treat her better.45

  Despite these complaints and feuds, Mildred stayed with Zane through this trying period when all his other friends were leaving him. As Dolly sensed before Zane included her on the trip to Nova Scotia, Mildred was now his new favorite. At thirty years old and as stout as Dolly, Mildred was a striking departure from the young beauties that Grey had long preferred. For the past several years, he had been decrying flappers and their selfish preoccupation with their own wants and needs. Louise’s preference for a visiting classmate over him was a painful lesson in the fickleness and unreliability of younger women. The recent marriages of Claire and Lillian and the defection of Dorothy exposed the instability of multiple involvements. Mildred was neither exciting nor compliant, but she understood Zane’s peculiarities and accepted them. Like Dolly, she was competent, steadfastly loyal, and forgiving. Though she did not share Zane’s passion for fishing and outdoor adventure, she did like traveling, and she did a superb job of managing the arrangements. Over the years that followed, Mildred would openly declare that she was Zane’s mistress and usually behaved around others as though she was quite content with this role—even though her interaction with him did not always accord with this pose. Zane, on the other hand, did briefly (and unsuccessfully) pursue Nola Luxford, a beautiful, thirty-year-old actress from New Zealand.46 Since she was well aware of his wandering, Mildred accepted these dalliances and concentrated her energies upon retaining her improved status. She convinced Zane to take her with him on every one of his trips from 1924–29, even the trying boat ride down the Rogue River, and she orchestrated the returns so that she was always nearby. Dolly knew that the woman behind her husband’s request for better treatment was actually seeking a stronger commitment from him, and she wisely understood that this woman threatened her marriage more than Louise or Dorothy ever did. Hence, her unusual coolness toward this paramour.

  When Grey rallied the members of his party in Nova Scotia in early August, the normally mild weather had turned rainy, foggy, and cool, and it stayed that way for the next two weeks. The fishing was poor, and so too the prospects for improvement. Zane remained dauntlessly upbeat and persistent, even after a big tuna snapped his muscular 39-thread line. Finally, on August 13, after a draining six-hour fight, he landed a 684-pound tuna. Although this trophy made his trip a success, Grey was determined to take full advantage of his allotted time, and he continued to fish every day and to fine-tune his strategy for battling his quarry. He and the captain of his launch coordinated to keep a hooked fish away from reefs and to avoid a deep soundings that might allow it to escape.47 On August 20, after a three-hour-and-ten-minute fight, Zane landed the 758-pound tuna. This catch easily bettered Mitchell’s long-standing record of 710 pounds, and brought Grey his first world record. This tuna was a full 500 pounds heavier than Col. Morehouse’s still-unsurpassed Catalina catch that won international recognition for the Tuna Club back in 1899. Since Grey was fishing beyond the jurisdiction of the Tuna Club and employing a line that violated its regulations, the Islander ran only a brief notice of his catch that was relegated to a back page.48

  Grey countered this indifference and sullen opposition with aggressive promotion for his record tuna. From Liverpool, he dispatched several telegrams about his catch to J. A. Coxe, the maker of his special reel, who circulated the news to area newspapers. Next, he persuaded Field and Stream to publish a photograph of himself being congratulated by Laurie Mitchell in front of his fish and beneath a headline “World’s Record Tuna.”49 During a trip to New York City, he visited Bookman and persuaded this influential journal to run a promotional blurb that mentioned his “world’s record for tuna fishing.”50 As usual, he wrote an account of his trip that was published in American Magazine.51 “My Adventures as a Fisherman,” as he entitled his account, was expanded into “Giant Nova Scotia Tuna” for inclusion in his Tales of Swordfish and Tuna (1927). Since “My Adventures” did not appear until almost a year after his catch, he got Outdoor America to publish a picture story of his trip headlined as “Zane Grey’s World Record Tuna” in its February 1925 issue.52 Finally, he wrote an account entitled “Taking the World’s Record Tuna,” and hid his authorship by presenting it as the work of Captain Laurie D. Mitchell for the January 1925 issue of Field and Stream.53 Never before had Grey recycled an experience so many times and in so many different ways. Clearly his objective was to gain recognition for his world record.

  The most significant product of this self-promotion was a simple notation that appeared in the October 1924 issue of Field and Stream. In a two-page spread entitled “World’s Record Catches with Rod and Reel and Otherwise of 50 North American Popular Fresh and Salt Water Fishes,” he and his Nova Scotia tuna were listed opposite the entry for Thunnus thynnus.54 In this case, Grey’s achievement was not just the listing but also the list itself. Field and Stream was the first major journal to publish a comprehensive, up-to-date list of record catches. Since 1911, the magazine had been sponsoring an informal, unregulated national contest for the largest freshwater catches, but this was its first coverage of saltwater and areas outside the territorial United States. Prior to this list, information about record catches existed informally and unreliably—word-of-mouth memories shared by local fishermen or irregular notations in logs at regional organizations. The Tuna Club and affiliates like the Port Aransas Club were, of course, notable exceptions, but their records favored their regions and members who conformed to their regulations.

  Zane Grey and his 758-pound tuna, his first world record. Liverpool, Nova Scotia, August 20, 1924. (Courtesy of Loren Grey.
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  The authors of this new list were identified as John Treadwell Nichols of the American Museum of National History and Van Campen Heilner of Field and Stream. Nichols was a well-known ichthyologist on the museum’s staff, and Heilner had worked as his research assistant while he was an undergraduate at Trinity College.55 Heilner published his second book, Adventures in Angling (1922), at twenty-two, and it earned him positions as field representative for the Museum and as at-large correspondent for Field and Stream.56 Believing that the growth of interest in saltwater fishing with tackle warranted a listing of the largest catches of the major species, he persuaded Field and Stream to publish this first list with an agreement that periodic updates would follow.57 Meanwhile, with the assistance of Francesca La Monte, also a staff member of the museum, Heilner arranged for a display, in the museum’s exhibit of game fish, of a volume that presented the world’s record catches on loose-leaf pages in handwritten up-to-date entries.58

  Heilner would later be one of the original founders of the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) in 1939, and would serve as its vice president. His lifelong passion for saltwater fishing extended back to his youth and his meeting Zane Grey in Long Key when he was sixteen years old, a meeting that led to a close friendship spanning many years.59 In his foreword to the first edition of Heilner’s popular and highly respected Salt Water Fishing (1936), Grey mentions “the wonderful years that I fished with Van Campen Heilner in Florida and California, and off Seabright, New Jersey.”60 Heilner had obviously collected information for his Field and Stream list before Grey went to Nova Scotia, but its appearance only two months after Grey’s record tuna and during his period of aggressive promotion almost certainly was no coincidence.