There is, of course, a downside to the double standard, leaving the Navy officer corps open to charges of elitism and, later, in World War II, of running their own little empire in the Pacific. But the double standard was a custom over the whole country at that time and that place. King made it work by evenhandedly enforcing both sides of the standard. When a cook came to Mast over leave and King found that he had been delayed by a corrupt small-town policeman who claimed a straggler’s reward, King rousted out the Federal District Attorney, the county District Attorney, the mayor of that town, and his own court personnel to get the message across that this villainous practice would cease immediately.
Captain’s Mast is for rewards as well as punishment, and King consistently praised his men when their job was done to his satisfaction. Heinlein and Chief Schmidt and their Yeoman Second Class, Williams, once received a commendation for processing the hundreds of fleetwide annual examinations without any errors. Heinlein put Schmidt and Williams on the list for Mast the next day—and then had to assure the yeoman that he was not in trouble.
Heinlein tried to emulate King—but practice had not yet made perfect: he was still too heavy-handed about it, as he found out when he overheard his nickname among the crew—“Navy Joe” or “Military Joe” Heinlein.38
Several things were coming together in his life. He was filling several respectable and responsible positions in the Navy; he was learning fast under someone he considered a master in all the skills he needed to possess.
In the fall of 1931, after a severe cold, he had a recurrence of that nonspecific urethritis that had bothered him in the spring. This time it was more severe. It was diagnosed as prostate infection of Myxococcus catarrhalis, treated with cold serum plus “some syringe-injected drug for a short period, and by prostate massage (continued for four months) … sitz baths and diathermy.”39 He also had his tonsils out, to cut down the constant colds and respiratory infections—a minor operation for a child, but at the age of twenty-four, somewhat more serious and debilitating.
By Christmastime his medical problems were pretty much behind him, and he took a quick trip to Kansas City to clean up several outstanding matters. That was the first time he participated in what had become a sad family ritual: before breakfast on Christmas mornings, the family took roses to Rose Elizabeth’s grave. Rex Ivar was so deeply affected by her death that the family never owned a car again.40
Heinlein canceled the telephone subscription in his name and returned the lease on the room to Elinor. Within a couple of years, Elinor had left the room on Sixty-ninth Street. No trace of her can be found in Kansas City after 1934.41
He saw family, of course, while he was there. The Depression had already hit hard. Lawrence told him he was lucky to have a career in the Navy, where he probably would never be called on to fire into a crowd of his neighbors.42 That was a chilling likelihood with the Army Reserve and the National Guard.
Heinlein returned to San Pedro. That sordid episode of his first marriage was at last over, and he was a free man, only slightly soiled. The Oklahoma was ported at San Pedro over the holidays, and he had a chance to look up Cal Laning. This would be Laning’s last winter on the Okie, as he was going into submarine work. Laning had some news to report: he had been stirring around, poaching on Heinlein’s old stomping ground at Columbia Pictures, and he had come up with a girl Heinlein had missed.
12
LESLYN MACDONALD
Laning was positively aglow about his new girl, Leslyn MacDonald, in January 1932—very unusual for that casual and enthusiastic sex-hound. Heinlein was curious to meet this find of Laning’s.
Leslyn MacDonald, Laning told him, was Boston born and California raised, nearly three years older than they, which made her just twenty-six at the start of 1932. She was a very slim, intense dark-brunette with medium complexion, lively and attractive, not quite five feet, one inch tall—which made her just right for Laning, who was on the short side himself. She was an unusual woman—astonishingly intelligent, widely read, and extremely liberal, though a registered Republican. She had taken a master’s degree in philosophy in 1930 at the University of Southern California and had high school teaching credentials in history and public speaking. Between her undergraduate degree (also in philosophy, with a minor in drama) and the master’s, she had acted in several productions of the 1927 theatrical season of the Pasadena Playhouse and even directed two workshop productions of experimental theater.1 She was a published writer, with short poems in the Los Angeles Times as early as 1920 and 1921.2World Theosophy Magazine—her mother, Skipper, was a Theosophist3—had published a poem of hers, “The Great Mother,” in April 1931:
So I lay dreaming in the grass awhile
And felt the earth beneath my outstretched hands;
This was the mother-heart that understands,
The fertile earth with her unchanging smile.
I felt her veins go pulsing mile on mile
Under the fragrant flesh of all her lands,
Over high-breasted mountains and smooth sands
As down long limbs of continents they file.
I felt my fingers trembling in the grass,
A burning summer’s wind has blown along;
My heart began to beat with that great mass
Of vibrant living, and I burst in song,
Leapt to my feet, and felt my languor pass.
The earth awoke in me and made me strong.4
Her most recent placement was, of all things, a football poem for a collection of sports-related poetry to be published in 1933: “Before the Game” appeared in The Sportsman’s Hornbook, edited by Charles Grayson:
Blue was the autumn sky, and gold the sun,
Color and space and beauty everywhere.
The massive oval shone with living green,
And through the coliseum arches rose
The splendor of a park in bronze and flame.
A blare of music flung the senses high,
Into the limitless reach beyond the rim.
And thrillingly, a-sudden on the field
A score of supermen ran out for play.
Even the opponents gasped a bit for pride
That nature had made men so beautiful.
Suddenly one, more perfect than the rest,
Sprang out alone upon the wedge of green,
Poised like a dancer, swung, and kicked. The ball
Made a great sweeping arc and, curving, fell
Into the arms of a runner on the field.
O, singing harmony of rippling limbs
And power of body perfect for its work.
O, space of walls and height of glorious sky
And white gulls floating over burnished trees.
When all the race are giant-gods like these,
Then will the wings of men beat at the stars.
Leslyn had worked her way up to Assistant Director of the Music Department at Columbia Pictures (and she was rumored to moonlight as a story doctor). That explained why Heinlein had not met her before. Social life in Los Angeles meant the movie business, but he had been dating mostly starlet and administrative types. Leslyn wasn’t in the talent or administrative end of the business.
Surprisingly, given her other accomplishments, she was also skilled with needlework and had supported herself for a year by teaching knitting, crocheting, tatting, and other fancy work.5
Laning’s description made Leslyn MacDonald sound like a real Renaissance woman. Laning was seriously thinking of proposing marriage to her, after only a few dates, and wanted Heinlein’s opinion.6 Heinlein went with Laning to meet Leslyn and found Laning’s report, if anything, understated. She was a touch on the dramatic side—she wore costumelike clothing and habitually flung draping cloths over her shoulders in a dramatic gesture—but she was intelligent, highly intelligent, and ahead of him in some respects. She had a better grounding in philosophy than he did—and genuine insight, which can’t be faked. Her opinions on communism, for example, we
re sound (she was against it), and she had good things to say about the usefulness of a military career. She even had mystical leanings.7 They were very compatible.8
Laning left the two of them together, and they wound up in bed together that night—possibly even by prior arrangement with Laning, who may have intended to have a Companionate marriage himself. It was not so surprising, under the circumstances, that he might begin by sharing his wife-to-be with his best friend. What Laning could not have anticipated was that Heinlein would jump the gun on him: Laning joined them the next morning, and Heinlein shocked both of them silly by proposing marriage to Leslyn in front of him.9
Heinlein had already formed the pattern of making decisions quickly and acting on them with speed, but this was precipitous even for him. Some of the factors that may have gone into this decision can be guessed at: he must have seen the possibility that this attractive, intelligent woman could make the kind of life with him that he wanted for himself. In this he may have been working out the epiphany he had touched with Mary Briggs three years earlier. His marriage to Elinor Curry—also precipitate—had not worked out well, but Leslyn didn’t seem to have the same kind of emotional problems Elinor Curry had. She could be a real companion in life, someone who shared his own interests, and they could grow and develop together.
Leslyn was startled, but she accepted on the spot. Laning was dumbfounded—but he knew Heinlein, and he knew that Heinlein was known to be led about by the little head.10
What Leslyn found in him is a little more problematical. She must have found him intensely attractive, for the usual reasons: a handsome man who knows what he wants from a woman can be very persuasive. Also, he was intensely intelligent, possibly the brightest man she had ever met—and he had this undefinable something about him … .
It also could not have hurt that he obviously looked up to her intellectually and offered her the opportunity to shape him, as willing clay. This may have been wishful thinking on her part (as it almost always is).
But Heinlein had an extra dimension that came out in his relationships with women: sex was, to him, almost a religious rite, a rite of joy: in the secular and materialist twentieth century, he was—intense. Leslyn was, beyond doubt, utterly charmed by him.
Leslyn passed what must have been her first real test when she agreed to go with Robert: he would be going to Bremerton in April for the usual long layover in Washington while Lexington was being repaired and outfitted. Leslyn agreed to quit her job with Columbia Pictures and close up her apartment in Los Angeles. They would get something more permanent when Lexington returned to home port in Long Beach.
Robert and Leslyn had a brief but intense engagement. She did not drive, but Robert arranged outings when she was not at work—picnics, when the weather was good (not often in January and February in Los Angeles, when rain is often ankle-deep above the drains and punctuated with hail)—and outings to see the construction for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which was being expanded for the 1932 Olympics. They went also to places like Laguna Beach, where she had friends from college such as Elcy Arnold, wife of the actor Edward Arnold II.
Heinlein read to her the serialization of John Taine’s The Time Stream, then appearing in four installments (December 1931 through March 1932) in Science Wonder Stories. “John Taine” was the pen name of the mathematician Eric Temple Bell, and Heinlein particularly wanted to discuss the theory of time Bell was putting forth, discarding the use of “past” and “present” and “future” except as conveniences of perspective of the observer—a relativistic approach that tried to grapple with this business about space and time and the fourth dimension. Heinlein had been interested in the implications of n-dimensional geometry for everyday life for a very long time.
It was probably Leslyn, out of her background in philosophy, who suggested he look into Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum to supplement his reading of Dunne and Wells on the subject. Ouspensky had started from Kant’s critical idealism in 1912 and went on to Einstein-Minkowski space-time very early on. Ouspensky presented a unification of philosophy and science—and art and religion, too—just the kind of thing Heinlein and Laning and Gus Gray had been looking for in their Quest.11
Late in January Heinlein joined the new American Interplanetary Society that had been formed in December 1930 in New York, with fourteen charter members. Heinlein had membership number 22. He told people about it in the Navy—Buddy Scoles, especially—and found that he was considered something of a “goof” because rockets were “crazy Buck Rogers stuff”—toys, at best.12 The first bulletin he received from the society contained a report of a visit by French Academician Robert Esnault-Pelterie13 on January 27, 1931, saying he thought it might be possible to travel to the Moon and return as soon as fifteen years from now—1946.
That was a stunning thought: men walking on that airless surface within his lifetime. That he was a member of a group preparing the groundwork for it actually to come about could only have reinforced his sense of being among an elite, with special training and special knowledge to make the new world that was coming.
But he had his own part to do to make the new age. And now he would have a proper helpmeet. This time he was going into the marriage with eyes open. Leslyn was “advanced” and this suited her. She reregistered as a Democrat that year.14
The wedding would be on March 28, 1932. That would give her time to make arrangements for the formal ceremony she wanted. They couldn’t afford anything really fancy, but her friends would pitch in, and he could have the traditional military displays that go along with such things. He left all the arrangements to her.
On February 1, 1932, Lexington got under way, up the coast, their eventual destination Hawaii for fleet exercises. Suddenly, the lid clamped down, and they made an unscheduled overnight stop in San Francisco’s Hunters Point, under very strict secrecy. No liberty for crew, no shore leave for officers, no telephone calls at all. No mail was left for the ship. Nor did the radio shack accept messages.
They worked all night and into the next morning, unloading target ammunition and practice warheads, and taking aboard war ammunition and extra supplies of all sorts—real warheads. They topped off the oil, water, and aviation fuel and took aboard another squadron of thirty planes, pilots, crews for the planes. They were stocked well over their complement—120 planes instead of 90. There was news coming in by radio, but it went directly to Captain King—and he wasn’t sharing it with his crew.
Lexington made full speed for Hawaii as soon as the supplies were aboard, under radio silence and Condition “B” once clear of the Bay. Tension increased throughout the ship. They were supposed to be headed for a fleet exercise, but clearly they were headed into a real fight, not just an exercise. Heinlein found himself demoted to Junior Officer of the Watch again. When they got to Honolulu, they joined the entire Pacific Fleet to take part in the annual Grand Joint Army and Navy Exercises.
Heinlein always thought there was something more to it, something that had never been talked about in print:15 in February the Japanese had invaded China. This invasion was guarded by naval forces superior to the U.S.’s peacetime force, a clear violation of the Washington Naval Treaty. International tensions had been escalating ever since. President Hoover sent the Imperial Japanese government a warning to stop the invasion—and backed it up by assembling the Pacific Fleet within attack range. The Japanese backed down: they carved the enormous province of Manchuria away from China and installed the puppet Manchukuo regime in power, and there they stopped. That time.16
The U.S. Navy’s war games continued, the Pacific Fleet splitting into Blue and Black teams17 to run a simulated Japanese attack on Oahu. The Blacks defended and the Blues invaded. Lexington was in the Blue force; her sister aircraft carrier, Saratoga, carried the Admiral’s flag for aircraft, commanded by Admiral Yarnell.
Japan now had the third-strongest Navy in the world, after the U.S. and Britain. The U.S. Navy had begun reevaluating the shipping and bases in the
Pacific. The Naval War College had evolved a war scenario called “Plan Orange” 18 (which must have been the scenario Heinlein was briefed on while still at Annapolis). The Plan Orange scenario was based on the idea of a surprise attack—a favorite Japanese tactic that could produce devastating losses on the enemy. Plan Orange anticipated a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor, launched from aircraft carriers. Lexington and Saratoga ranged ahead of its battleship support and prepared to launch an air attack against Pearl.
Everyone had assumed the carriers would be detected and “sunk” by Black submarines or land-based planes long before they could get within range to launch their planes, but Saratoga evaded the Black patrol planes and came in northeast of Oahu in rain and squally winds. Once they launched their planes, the weather would carry them directly to Oahu; the pilots could roar through the rain clouds and burst into clear, sunny weather over Pearl Harbor … on Sunday morning, February 7, 1932.
Heinlein was scheduled to go up with Buck Brandley in a T4M as an observer for the attack. Lexington received an order to remain at complete darken ship in launching planes. He was startled when King burst into sulphurous profanity, “in approximately these censored words”:
“Deleted censored blank blank! I will not allow myself to be forced to have to write to the mother of some blank kid and explain to her how he got his censored head chopped off by a deleted prop of a blank plane he couldn’t see in the dark and was too inexperienced to know how to avoid! No, by blank, I will not! What in the blank censored did the Admiral think this was? A war? It’s a drill … and I won’t have my men killed just for realism in a blank blank blankety drill!”19
Completely justified—with the extra flight squadron on board, the flight deck was a tightly packed jungle. All the illumination the flight crews had was the faint blue lights of engine exhaust. Pilots and crew wouldn’t even have a chance to see the live propeller before they tripped and blundered into it.
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 18