The most distressing loss was Zane’s breakup with Mildred Smith in October 1930.8 Over the previous two years, they had argued many times about people, literature, and his decisions, but their relationship had somehow weathered these tests. Whether she got fed up with him or with his unshakable commitment to Dolly, Mildred launched a withering assault that finally drove him away. As Zane confessed to Dolly several months before their final breakup:
She [Mildred] decided some time ago to quit me, and after burning under some of her rotten speeches, about my being a bore etc., etc., and a habitual disparagement of all that concerns me, I gave up the situation and I am through. This is the first time I ever came to that. … At first she meant to give back the house, and take what she actually spent on it herself, which was fair & ok. But lately she leans toward keeping the house—saying she will pay me for it. She can’t, of course, not in years and I confess this jarred me considerably. But it has not hurt me and I do not care.9
Later he would admit that her defection pained him deeply,10 and his wound was aggravated by her refusal to repay her loan and by her threats to publicize his letters to her if he took her to court.
In characteristic fashion, Grey looked to trips to alleviate his painful experiences in Lackawaxen and Arizona and to compensate for the loss of his friends, and by 1930 he was contemplating his most ambitious trip of all. Having completed three trips to New Zealand and two to Tahiti, he wanted to travel the world in quest of big fish. He envisioned a voyage starting from Tahiti and continuing along the atoll of islands to Fiji. He was captivated by the untested fishing in the straits of Carpiteria and around the Mauritius Islands in the Indian Ocean. From there, he planned to head through the Suez Canal for the United States.
Once again the centerpiece of Grey’s planning was a boat, and he wanted this one to be his grandest as well. Over the course of his visits to the South Seas, his thinking about boats had evolved, and he had concluded that the single most important feature of his new ship should be its ability to carry the burly launches he currently favored. During his first trip to New Zealand, Grey had enjoyed fishing from Francis Arlidge’s Alma G and was even more impressed by the Zane Grey that Arlidge’s brother purchased for Zane’s second visit. However, these experiences also left Grey uncomfortably aware of how murderous the South Seas could be. Aboard these vessels, he learned that the area’s violent storms frequently developed too quickly for even the fastest boats to outrun and that the area’s huge sharks and swordfish were capable of overturning most fishing boats and devouring anyone plunged into the water. These menacing conditions heightened his appreciation for the size and sturdiness of these launches and inspired a preference for even larger ones.11 For his third visit, he had Auckland shipbuilders build two even heftier boats, the Moorea and Tahiti.12 Because he wanted these launches for Tahiti as well as New Zealand and they were too large for the Fisherman to carry, he arranged for them to be freighted for his fishing there. His attempts to use the Fisherman in Tahiti exposed other drawbacks. Fretting over its vulnerability to storms, Grey insisted that his yacht anchor inside barrier reefs and away from the open ocean. During one awkward maneuvering through a complex maze of reefs, the Fisherman ran aground. Luckily, the tides allowed it to escape, but several more equally close encounters convinced Zane that his ship was too limited for his more ambitious plans and that selling it there would save him valuable time, perhaps money too. “In a way the Fisherman has been great for me,” he confessed to Dolly in early October 1928. “Probably added immeasurably to my reputation and, what is better, given me incalculable experience.”13 After several months of negotiations, he finally sold the ship to Father Rogier, a Frenchman who owned extensive coconut groves on Christmas Island. Rogier’s plan for converting the Fisherman into a freighter for copra (dried coconut meat) returned the ship to its original use and restored her original name—Marshal Foch.14
Grey used some of Rogier’s payment of $30,000 to buy R. C. a new Stutz that Christmas and plowed a larger amount into a new boat for his next visit to New Zealand.15 Unwilling to freight the Moorea and Tahiti back and forth, he commissioned the Auckland firm of Collins and Bell to build him a more substantial version of the Gladiator. His Frangipani was forty-eight feet long and had a deep V-shaped beam of twelve and a half feet, a characteristic of New Zealand construction that made their boats exceptionally seaworthy. Its triple-layered “skin” of Kauri wood protected the craft against worms and dry rot, and its two 110-h.p. engines, its 4,000 gallons of fuel, and its sleeping accommodations for eight endowed it with enormous range and flexibility.16
Meanwhile, he searched for a replacement for the Fisherman suitable for his world voyage. Grey once estimated that he had owned fifty boats and had twenty-two built for him.17 This was to be his biggest by far—and also his last. Prior to his 1930 return to New Zealand and Tahiti, he learned that a 180-foot, steel-bodied schooner with two large masts and powerful support engines was for sale. This imposing yacht, currently named Kallisto, was originally built by Krupps, the famous German arms maker, for the Kaiser Wilhelm II. The owners wanted only $40,000, but Grey realized that its renovations would be far more expensive than those for the Fisherman. After arranging a tentative commitment, he commissioned Lambry and Mabry, a firm of naval architects in Wilmington, California, to prepare blueprints with his modifications.18
In a letter written on the eve of his departure, Grey informed Claire that he had received several bids and the highest was $317,000 without engines.19 “There is no use for me to dodge the facts,” he wrote Dolly the same week. “I am crazy to have a ship and do these big things and I believe I’d be willing to mortgage my future to accomplish it.” He also explained that he needed this much larger yacht to stay ahead of William Beebe. Since his book that inspired Grey’s Galapagos expedition, Beebe had undertaken numerous Caribbean trips and pioneered deepwater dives in a bathysphere. This distinguished director of tropical research at the New York Geological Society was currently considering an expedition to the South Pacific, and Grey did not want his ambitious plans upstaged. “The trend is all toward the South Pacific and I am to blame for it,” he confided. “As sure as God made little green apples, if I don’t do something big and do it soon, I shall have shot my bolt and will be out of it.”20
The Kallisto was certainly large enough, but Grey worried that she was too cumbersome and that the renovations would be too costly. “If the Kallisto can be made do, well and fine,” he grumbled to Dolly. “But I’d hate to buy her and be disappointed.”21 En route to Tahiti in February 1930, he learned from Lambry and Mabry that he could have a ship with similar specifications built in Holland for $175,000. After several days of deliberation, he dispatched a wire and canceled his option on the Kallisto. He then fretted that a new ship would take longer to build and delay his trip until 1932, perhaps even 1933.22
Dolly complicated matters with news of trouble. First, the editors at Mc-Call’s requested that he eliminate the rape from “Robber’s Roost.” When apprised of this demand, Zane responded, “It never occurred to me that the motive was really rape. Most of the present day novels are worse than rape. But I’m glad I get a chance to correct the blunder.”23 A sudden reduction to his expected fee was harder to accept. With a new editor in charge, Ladies’ Home Journal had accepted two sixty-page novelettes, “The Ranger” and “Canyon Walls,” but the worsening economic situation had so devastated newsstand sales and advertising revenues that the acquisitions department demanded a renegotiation of its agreed-upon payment of $20,000 for each to $7,000, or the manuscripts would be returned.24 Normally, Dolly would have rejected any discounting and taken the stories elsewhere, but she knew that other magazines were also paying less and grudgingly accepted. She also complained to Zane about Paramount’s indifference to his recent work, and she debated whether she should propose a fee reduction or shop the film rights to another studio.
“So with the magazine profits eliminated and the motion picture inc
ome stopped,” Zane shot back, “where in the world will I get $300,000 for a ship and trip?”25 Part of his testy belligerence stemmed from his conviction that the country’s failing economy was temporary and that Dolly was overreacting, as she had many times before. He was also frustrated with the poor fishing. In his belated recollection of the 1930 trip to the South Seas, he would confuse his 1929 and 1930 visits to Tahiti and incorrectly claim that during 1930, rather than 1929, he went eighty-three days without a bite.26 Actually, the 1930 trip started well. During the first month of fishing, Grey landed a 618-pound silver marlin. Days later, he caught a 63-pound dolphin that outweighed his world record dolphin from the Galapagos trip by more than ten pounds.27 However, a long stretch of inclement weather and fishless days followed. “It seems most selfish of me to ask you to see me through this thing,” Zane appealed to Dolly during this period. “If you don’t help me, I shall never be able to accomplish it.”28
On May 17, several weeks after this letter, Grey successfully hooked and landed a giant Tahitian striped marlin that weighed 1,040 pounds. His description of this battle concluded his Tales of Tahitian Waters (287–98). After a grueling two-hour fight, as he hauled the weary giant to the boat and his double leader reached his reel, he felt a series of jerks and realized that sharks were attacking. Furious counterattacks failed to repulse them, and the sharks devoured large chunks from the marlin’s tail section, a maiming that reduced its official weight approximately 200 pounds and constituted grounds for disqualification.29 However, the authoritative list of records for 1933, prepared by Grey’s friends at the Museum of Natural History, cited this catch as the world record for striped marlin.30 This first landing of a fish over 1,000 pounds on rod and reel brought Grey a euphoric sense of achievement. When he returned to Altadena and resumed his personal journal, his first entry jubilantly proclaimed, “I hit it once and that by catching the greatest fish ever landed on a rod.”31
Zane Grey and his 1,040-pound striped marlin, Vairao, Tahiti, May 16, 1930. (Courtesy of Loren Grey.)
Grey’s world record marlin and dolphin validated his long-standing belief that the South Seas held enormous fish and bolstered his confidence that even larger ones might be caught in the remote, unfished waters west of Fiji toward the Indian Ocean. Determined to have the yacht he needed and keep his original schedule, he wired owners of the Kallisto that he would close on the ship as soon as he arrived back in the United States.
Grey never imagined that his mammoth marlin and exceptional good fortune would be his downfall. This momentary fulfillment of his lifelong quest for the biggest fish blinded him to looming danger. Dolly and Ed Bowen unsuccessfully tried to warn him about the worsening economy and slackening demand for his work to prevent him from assuming more debt, but Zane ignored their appeals. In a letter informing Claire that Mitchell had gone to New York to bring the yacht back to California, Grey exulted, “She is a beauty, Claire. If you saw her you’d give a gasp and a yelp.”32
During renovations over the late summer and fall of 1930, Grey settled in and wrote frenetically to complete The Trail Driver, Thunder Mountain, and Knights of the Range. In addition to acquiring bountiful supplies and tackle, he hired a new secretary. For the first time since 1913, when he hired Lillian and Elma to accompany him to Long Key and the Rainbow Bridge, he did not have a proven assistant whom he could entrust with his work. During his tempestuous involvement with Louise, who never worked as his secretary, he still had helpers who had been with him for years, but now even Mildred, who had served him loyally for almost fifteen years, was gone. As with his previous selections, he wanted someone who was young, attractive, and admiring. Dolly aided and supported his choice of Berenice Campbell because she was adventurous and qualified. She had fled a drab home life in the rural Midwest, and had spent almost a year hitchhiking her way to Los Angeles. Even more important to Dolly than her good looks, vivacious personality, daring, and secretarial skills was her acknowledgment of the critical need for lean budgeting and strict accounting. Amid the darkening clouds over the economy, Dolly interpreted Mildred’s departure as a ray of hope, since she had always been overly generous with bills and staff requests. If she could not prevent the upcoming trip around the world, Dolly did not want its mounting costs to become astronomical. Instructing Zane to be as frugal as possible, she arranged for Berenice to police the spending.
Grey and Berenice Campbell, ca. 1931. (Courtesy of Loren Grey.)
On December 17, 1930, Zane completed preparations for his departure and penned a final entry in his journal: “I am leaving soon on a great voyage, to be gone over a year. A year and more out of my life—away from home! It is fearful to contemplate and yet I am glad.” Troubled by Mildred’s defection and his financial difficulties, he drew reassurance from his recent completion of The Trail Driver, and vowed, “I shall try to make this trip the climax of all my life of adventure on land and sea. … In fact, it is almost a miracle that I have been able to stand loss and keep on.”33
When Zane and Berenice left for Tahiti in early January, Mitchell was already there readying his camp. Zane’s daughter, Betty, and Bob Carney, a photographer, who were scheduled to wed in mid-February, were to take another steamship with Loren and to use Zane’s voyage for their honeymoon. Meanwhile, the Kallisto, renamed Fisherman II, was nearing completion and supposed to arrive in Papeete shortly after the newlyweds.
“The place looks exquisite,” Zane informed Dolly when he reached Flower Point,34 but trouble erupted quickly. Having spent so much on his yacht, he badly wanted to please Dolly and to stay within his budget, but he discovered that bills for his new launch and improvements to his property exhausted his checking account, and he had to write Dolly for a $5,000 transfusion.35 To soften the blow, he cheerfully assured Dolly, “Berenice is just the dandiest girl I ever had around in every way.”36 Ten days of steady rain and bleak news from Dolly on the worsening economy elicited a long reply and this confession of remorse: “That I’ve got you into such a mental and physical state just flays me.” Vowing to write fewer serializations that were better, he revealed that the Mitchells were behaving peevishly “caty.” At the time of their departure, Zane had agreed to pay “Cappy” $950 for two months of service and a host of expenses. In Tahiti, Mitchell requested $450 more for some expenses that he had already billed. Mildred had never questioned this routine procedure, and Mitchell wanted to test Berenice’s new program of austerity. As Zane related:
There is a new regime here at Flower Pt. Berenice has taken over the finances, and things are happening. She has stopped the leaks, the graft, the needless expense. And she is going to cut the whole d—bunch. It is a novelty, for someone besides you, to try to save me money. What did you write this girl? She is inspired. She says, “I’ll know where every D—red cent goes!” She’s a wonder. … Everybody has to accept a cut, or walk the plank! This was B’s idea. My Gawd, imagine me thinking of such a thing!37
To Mitchell’s surprise and dismay, Berenice reimbursed him only $250. Knowing that Grey was awaiting a yacht that had cost more than $300,000, he was understandably vexed over this miserly quibbling. The Guilds, a New Zealand couple who had been caretakers for Flower Point for the past year, had several late-night meetings with the Mitchells to share grievances. When both couples avoided Grey and did not hide their ill will when they did run into him, Grey construed their animus as anti-Americanism from their Commonwealth backgrounds. But when another boatman informed him of Mitchell’s derogatory comments and blatant disregard for his orders, Grey dispatched an angry letter firing him. Having already conferred with the British Consul and a local attorney, Mitchell responded with a lawsuit for wrongful discharge that threatened to impound Zane’s boats and block his cruise. Shortly after Grey agreed to a stopgap measure of paying Mitchell $300,38 Mildred Smith suddenly appeared and let everyone know that she was there to testify in support of Mitchell’s complaint.39 Fearful of a plot and an exposé, Grey pressed for a settlement that awarded Mitchell a l
ump sum of $2,685 and the title to his new launch Sky Blue II, which had cost $6,500.40
Grey hoped to be off as soon as this nasty business was settled, but storms and mishaps kept delaying the Fisherman II. Betty, Bob, and Loren, who had arrived before they were expected, were likewise chafing to be under way. The tension of the situation intensified when Tahitian law blocked Mitchell from reselling his launch and he went on a drinking binge.41 The belated arrival of the new yacht and a hasty departure brought little relief. Three days out of port, the ship encountered turbulent seas and rolled so much that everyone became violently ill. Grey could not sleep, eat, or write, and Berenice “nearly died.” The ship handled this modest challenge so poorly that Zane doubted its ability to withstand a punishing storm.42
Meanwhile, back in Altadena, Dolly was having an even harder time staying afloat. Delays and rejections deprived her of funds she desperately needed for the yacht, taxes, and other debt obligations. From Tahiti, Zane had sent her ninety-five pages of “The Lost Wagon Train,” but she had been expecting a completed manuscript that she could shop. For eight months, American Magazine had been running advance notices for “West of the Pecos,” but until the serial actually ran, she could not collect the $45,000. Meanwhile, Harpers had agreed to an advance of $60,000 for The Trail Driver, but when an editor discovered that the story contained a masquerading girl very similar to the one in West of the Pecos, the manuscript was returned and Dolly was unable to place it elsewhere. “All markets are dead,” she complained, and she did not mean just for stories. She had no success with trying to sell her jewelry, her property, even her cars. Desperate to economize, she dismissed Takahashi, the family cook, canceled her upcoming trip to Europe, and dispatched Bowen to the Coin Exchange in New York to secure a $50,000 loan. Harpers agreed to underwrite the note, but it raised Zane’s indebtedness to the publisher to over $100,000 and obligated him to post eleven manuscripts as security and to forego 75 percent of royalties until the debt was retired. “I feel like Job with the Lord piling on more and more and burden upon burden,” she moaned.43
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