by Max Howell
“I am at that. Look, I have a proposition for you, for your consideration that is. You can take as long as you like to think about it. Well, to put it bluntly, I wondered whether you would come with me and share the experience, for two, three or even four years. But before you say anything, it’s important that I say this. I do not want to be married, or engaged even… not now, not until we know each other better. You may not grow to like me, or I you. I have to be certain before I take that step again.
“So that’s my proposition, in a nut-shell. I will certainly understand it if you turn me down.”
She reached over and put her hand in his, and then said: “Henry, I believe I would go to the ends of this earth for you. Now I am happy, delighted, overjoyed to go to the ends of this earth with you.”
He beamed and pressed her hand, as she asked: “But when?”
“When? As soon as we can. It will take a while for you to talk to your parents, and me mine, we’ll buy a few cabin trunks to put our stuff in, and we will buy clothes on our travels.”
“But my job?”
“Your job is over as of now. Ring tomorrow and tell them to hire a new Special Collections Librarian”.
“My God, why not? But how will we travel, unmarried?”
“I’ve thought about that. The thirties are the dawn of a new age, women’s liberation and all that. In the 1890s everyone would have been horrified at unmarried couples travelling together, but people are more sophisticated now. It’s not such a big deal. Mind you, our parents may not agree about what we want to do, but this is our life, not theirs. So we will travel together, but I will not impose on you physically, if you know what I mean. We will always have single beds. There is no hidden agenda.”
“I trust you completely, you know that.”
“There is just one other thing. I have had my lawyer finding out which bank you have your funds in.”
“Which bank? I don’t understand.”
“I have placed one million dollars in your account, as of today.”
“One million dollars? That’s ridiculous.”
“Joanne, let’s put it this way. Now I only have about 94 million in my own bank.”
“But why, I don’t agree? I don’t want your money.”
“Maybe not. Look, Joanne, I have thought this out very clearly. This amount of money has no strings attached to it. It is unrelated to us going away together. It is for your own independence and security. If you now decide against going, it remains yours. If you decide in a month or a year’s time to leave me, it is yours. This way I know you are staying with me because of your innermost feelings.”
“Well, I still don’t agree, it is not necessary. But I can see your reasoning.”
“Then it’s a deal?”
“As they say in the business world, which I know nothing about, it’s a deal.”
Despite the crowded restaurant, he got up, walked around the table where she sat, and kissed her. The bargain was sealed.
Excited, she said: “What’s your general plan?”
“Well I wanted to go to China, to see Lin and her son, I was set on that, but the country has been in turmoil over the years. More so now. Over the years they have been faced with the country of Japan, which needs more territory for its ever-expanding population. Way back in 1895, I think it was, China ceded Korea, Taiwan and other areas to them to hold back any aggression. In 1930 Japan is again flexing its muscles, looking eagerly at Chinese territory. No-one knows what will happen, but it is a good supposition that they will indeed soon invade China proper.”
“Why don’t we get Lin and her son out?”
“My mother and father have often endeavoured to get them out. Lin will refuse, I know. After losing her lover and her parents she wants to help the Chinese people. She would not move, I know that. And it is impossible for us to travel there, our government has in fact already asked Americans to leave because of the mounting danger.”
“Anyhow, that’s what I would like to have done. As that is now out of the question, I thought we might locate in Greece for six months or so, and take side-trips to the areas you spoke about. I have been doing some catch-up reading on some of the things you said that you wanted to do, and it is all fascinating. We will play it all by ear, as they say, with no strict timetable. We have plenty of time to talk about it and plan on the ship going over.”
“I can’t believe all this, it is like a dream come true”, she effused.
He went on. “You may want to talk to your parents about all this, as I know it will come as a complete surprise to them, and of course you can change your mind at any time. If you want me to go with you to see your parents I am only too happy.”
“That may be a good idea”, she said.
“Done. How about to-morrow?”
“Whew! You don’t waste time, do you? To-morrow it is.”
“When do you hope to leave?”
“I estimate with the contacts that I have we should have your passport in seven days. I have booked us first class on the Mauretania leaving New York for Southampton in ten days. It leaves on February 2 1930.”
“I am so excited that I won’t be able to sleep the next ten days. I am frightened someone will pinch me and wake me up from a dream.”
“It is no dream, no dream at all. Just a couple of other considerations. First, I will pick you up each day until we go to New York. You stay at your place while I have a suite at the Boston Hotel. Second, I have no desire to do nothing all the rest of my life. I can afford a few years getting to know better the world in which I live, and some of the great discoveries that have taken place. There is no time-table on all this. But after our survey of the world is complete or reasonably so, I would like to use my fortune in some meaningful way. It is still undetermined in my own mind, but I would like to help poor people somehow. We will talk about it and think it through in the ensuing months. How was your meal by the way?”
“The meal of my life, it was glorious. I have never had caviar before.”
“Then how about dessert and coffee?”
“It is up to you, Henry.”
“Then why not finish up with Peach Melba and coffee?”
“That would be wonderful.”
He ordered. “Peach Melba”, he went on, “you know, was named after the world’s greatest opera singer of her time, Dame Nellie Melba. After an opera she liked something to soothe her throat, she would always order peaches, which reminded her of the country of her birth, Australia, and vanilla ice cream. Legend has it that one day the waiter tripped and the peaches went into the ice cream. She liked it, and it was called Peach Melba from then on.”
After they had finished Henry took Joanne home, gave her a kiss, and reminded her that he would be back at 10 a.m. the following day to meet, hopefully, with her parents. She thanked him profusely for the most wonderful night of her lifetime.
When she got into her bedroom, she looked into the mirror. Her face was flushed, from the excitement of what had transpired, and she flopped down on the bed, kicked off her shoes, and went over in her mind her night of utter and complete magic, again and again. Fate had certainly dealt her an unbelievable hand.
The meeting with her parents went better than they both had anticipated. They had been very concerned with their daughter over the years as she had shown more interest in books than the opposite sex, and though they had real misgivings over her non-marriage with Henry Luce, their commitment to each other was obvious to their parents and outweighed any objections they might have offered. As a farewell gift, her father took them into his bookstore, and presented them with Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, the Greek play Agamemnon, and what he could put their hands on about excavations undertaken in Greece, Crete, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt. Henry said, jokingly: “We’ll need another cabin trunk”, but was thankful for the gifts and the thought.
They then went to Henry’s parents, and though they had the same misgivings, they were delighted that their son had got over hi
s personal tragedy, one that might have affected him forever.
The next six days were spent on purchases necessary for their excursion, a passport for Joanne, and various travel arrangements. In what seemed no time at all they were aboard the Mauretania, registered as Mr. and Mrs. Henry Luce. That is how they would travel, they had both agreed.
It was a virtual honeymoon for both them, though the single beds they requested in their suite continually reminded them both of their agreement. The Atlantic, which could be very violent, was on its best behaviour on their almost six-day trip from New York to Southampton. It was a voyage of festivities, of dining formally each evening, with champagne, which was entirely new to her. They danced to the rhythm of the ship’s orchestra and relaxed listening to the singers who appeared, and they eagerly participated in the social activities presented by the ship’s personnel. In their spare time they read voraciously some of the books they had brought along with them.
During the trip over, Henry mentioned that they would next travel to Greece by sea, but the departure of the liner that would take them there allowed them to spend about two months in England. Joanne was overjoyed, as one of the ambitions of her life had been to go there, and she knew only too well that the museums there displayed unbelievable collections from various civilizations. What the British did not purloin, the Germans and the French did. She was aware that Napoleon had a team of experts with him in Egypt when he attacked that country, and they had avidly seized everything worth-while from an archaeological viewpoint, but when the French were defeated at the Battle of the Nile they ceded all their acquisitions to England in the ensuing peace treaty, including the Rosetta Stone found near Alexandria. All these finds were now in the British Museum.
The hotel where they stayed was the Park Lane Hotel, one of London’s finest. It fronted Hyde Park, and they both loved walking through the park, viewing the ducks and swans, listening to the bands which played there in the circular band-stands, and on Sundays wandering around listening to the various debaters and eccentrics who stood on soap-boxes extolling their particular ideas, many of them quite outlandish, even revolutionary. It was a marvellous example of democracy, and for that matter British tolerance. And crowding the pathway opposite the Park Lane were exhibitions of art by struggling artists, lithographs of London and other English scenes, and the fabulous chalk pavement drawings that she had been told about.
For six weeks they were the perfect tourists, spending their every available moment absorbing what London, indeed England, had to offer. Whenever they could they travelled via underground ‘tubes’, not realising that it was as far back as 1890 when the first one was completed in London. Motor bus was the other method of transport they used, which began in London in 1905, plus the distinctive London taxis. Train was their mode of transport when they ventured out of the city or into the more distant suburbs.
There were many highlights of their visit, but perhaps nothing exceeded their invitation to a garden party at Buckingham Palace, arranged by the US Consulate. They were mightily impressed at meeting the King and Queen. Many times they had walked to the Palace Gates and peered in, and had even seen the changing of the guard one day, a ceremony bound by tradition, and they had stood at the entrance of the House Guards, manned by a resplendent guard and his mount. But to see the Royalty, and actually converse with them, was an unexpected surprise.
The British Museum was visited three times, as the collection was so vast and was related to many of the places they would be visiting in the future. The Egyptian exhibit, with mummies and various artefacts, was enthralling, but the most exciting part to them was the Rosetta stone, found by one of Napoleon’s soldiers in the sand near Alexandria. Its significance was not apparent at the time, until it was realised that there were three languages on the stone, Greek, hieroglyphics and hieratic, a form of Arabic, and it was hypothesised that each script was repeating the same message. The hieroglyphic script was successfully broken by a young French boy, Jean-Francois Champollion, who concluded that the hieroglyphic words circled, called cartouches, were in actuality pharaohs. When pharaohs were evident in the Greek inscriptions it caused the break-through, and scholars throughout the world could thereafter translate the countless hieroglyphic writings on tombs, walls and so on.
They were fascinated by the extensiveness of the Mesopotamian collection in the British Museum, which included the Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Hittite civilisations, which they planned to look at in their travels. The Assyrian collection, in particular, captivated them due to its immensity, depicting the Royal Hunt and various battles. They wondered, through their size and weight, how the statuary could have been transferred from the lands where they were found, most from present-day Iraq, to the museum.
This wonderment increased when they viewed the so-called Elgin Marbles, brought to England in 1816 by Lord Elgin in a number of ships chartered by himself and at his own expense. At first disdained by the museum authorities they now held pride of place in the museum. It was purloined by Elgin from the Acropolis in Athens.
Then there were the countless thousands of vases in the Greek collection, as well as the Minoan and Etruscan exhibits. It was a veritable fairyland for the amateur archaeologist or well-heeled traveller.
It was hard for them to believe that the origin of the Museum went as far back as 1753, when the library and collection of the late Sir Hans Sloane were purchased. This was soon bolstered by the Harley and Cotton manuscripts and the Royal Library of George II.
Because they were later going to the island of Crete they made arrangements to go to Oxford University and stay there for a few days. They delighted in walking around the old town of Oxford, past the various Colleges, perusing the offerings in antiquarian bookstores, and sitting in the various tea-shops watching the undergraduates bicycling past with their flowing black undergraduate robes. As soon as they could they visited the Ashmolean Museum, which housed the Minoan Collection, brought back to Oxford and donated by Arthur Evans, who was knighted because of his contributions. While there they visited the Library, and were enthralled to see and read the actual daily note-books meticulusly recorded by a myopic Evans.
While sitting there in the library of the Ashmolean Museum, they noticed an old gentleman looking at various diagrams that were being brought to him by various librarians or assistants. One of them said: “Is there anything else you need, Sir Arthur?” They then realised that they were in the presence of Arthur Evans himself, who had done what no one man had been able to do before, and that is to write, alone, a new chapter in the history of civilization. He had excavated at the island of Crete since 1894, when he first visited there, and named and dated this pre-Greek civilization, the Minoan.
Henry whispered to Joanne: “Did you hear that? He is the legendary Sir Arthur Evans.” She nodded, as he said: “This is a unique opportunity. Come with me and we will introduce ourselves.”
They walked over to where he was working and said: “Excuse me, sir, but are you Sir Arthur Evans?”
Evans looked up without any hostility, stood up and stretched as they introduced themselves, and in an upper class English accent said: “Yes, I am indeed, and I have been working too long today. My doctor, who worries about me, keeps insisting that at 80 years of age I should slow down. But I admit, I do so with difficulty. There is a problem here I am currently working on that I have been unable to unravel. You are obviously Americans, and we get so few Americans here, and they never seem to come into the Library. I need a break, would you join me in a cup of tea?”
They could not believe their luck, and in short time an assistant was despatched to bring them all tea. He then ushered them into an office, and requested them to sit down.
“So what brings you to these shores?” he asked. They told him of their travel plans. He listened with real interest. “You know”, he went on, “I read history at Oxford until I became more and more interested in matters pertaining to the classics. I have to admit to having highly ed
ucated forefathers, and fortunately wealthy ones, and they indulged my eccentricities. Father and my uncle had made some significant flint and bronze finds in Britain and France, and I was fascinated by their work and the scholarly papers they wrote for learned societies. My father, when he died, left me his extensive collection of Stone Age implements. At my age I do go on, am I boring you?”
“Not at all, sir, please continue”, replied Henry.
“Anyhow, my interests were thoroughly approved by the family, though I was not interested in finds in Britain and France, rather I had a wider ranging interest. The Balkan countries fascinated me at first, and still do, but the insurrection in 1875, when Herzegovina revolted against Turkey, had me fired with idealistic passion, and what no-one knows these days is that I actually produced a book on Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was even a Special Correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, and I relentlessly criticised the Turks for the various atrocities I uncovered. Those were the days of my youth. Perhaps getting married to my dear wife Margaret in 1878 changed my perspective. She was a very good scholar herself, you know, and you will never guess what we did to celebrate our engagement. We went to see an exhibition of antiquities in London from an excavation at Troy by my later very dear friend Dr. Heinrich Schliemann. He discovered Troy, you know!. Margaret and I only had fifteen years of marriage, she was to die tragically in 1893.”
They nodded. They already knew a fair bit about Heinrich Schliemann, and felt they could not offer any meaningful sympathy about Evans’ wife.
“Dr. Schliemann influenced me somewhat, you know. I visited him and his wife Sophia at their delightful home in Athens. I had found some ancient seal-stones and rings in the antiquity markets in Athens, the very year my dear wife died. They were from the island of Crete. Schliemann had been there, and suggested that if he were still young – he was in his early seventies at the time – he would dig at Knossos. So it was there I went, in 1894, and the rest is, as they say, history. Will you be going there?”
“We certainly shall”, Henry said.