Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century

by Robert A. Heinlein

  He put on a brave front for Ginny and Lurton and John Campbell: “I was in no real danger—but I now have an acute, emotional appreciation of the old standard s-f situation of the man in a spacesuit whose air is giving out!”24

  Heinlein hadn’t felt any nausea while the emergency was on, but he was grateful he hadn’t had to throw up in the helmet: “It is not a good idea to get sick inside your helmet; it not only trickles down your armpits, it clogs your valves and ruins your visibility.”25 He planned to get back into that suit, but it would have to wait until he could get settled. “Much as it scared me,” he told Ginny later, “I would not have missed this mishap for anything; it is a thousand dollars worth of authentic material.”26

  With the screenplay nearing completion and marketing actually getting under way, it was time for him to leave Los Angeles. His family was in an uproar that summer. Mary Jean was sick and worried about both Bam and Rex. By August, Heinlein’s father was starting to be interested in things again, and that had everybody in a tizzy: you just don’t recover from involutional melancholia. That was the orthodox medical opinion—which, apparently, wasn’t worth anything at all. But it meant that Heinlein now had family obligations he could not escape.

  He had taken care not to let his mother know that there was a possibility he might be back in Hollywood for an extended period, but when he contacted his brother Rex, back in May, about his parents’ golden wedding anniversary, Rex had told others in the family, and shortly Robert’s mother phoned, hinting he could take some of the burden off Mary Jean if he settled here permanently. “The answer to that is, no! … Oh, nuts, I try to think about it as little as possible.”27

  Also, his sister Louise had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was scheduled for an emergency mastectomy. Bam was traveling out to Albuquerque to take care of the little Bacchi,28 and the family was back-and-forthing about visiting and care arrangements that threatened to suck him in.

  I don’t know just what my duty is. Men have to keep their jobs. My job is writing. I can’t just drop a job without writing off the financial return expected. In this case I have several other people to whom I am committed. I don’t know. I feel as if I were failing to carry my weight. I’m rather in a tizzy … . I am weeks overdue on this screenplay and very impatient. It is possible, even probable, that we have been beaten to the punch by another producer. I’ve run out of cash except for the royalties due in three days on Rocket Ship Galileo, and I don’t want to drive cross-country alone, and I’m a big crybaby.29

  He added: “If the money gets low, Wuzzum’s morale goes down into his boots. This is a Natural Law.”

  In addition to the family problems and the financial strain, Heinlein had been struggling with himself. At the age of forty-one, he knew himself, his habits and inclinations—and had no inclination to lie to himself about them. Ginny’s fears they might never reconnect were not entirely groundless. It was a serious question, whether he could reasonably promise to curb his wandering eye, to “cleave only unto her.” “Honey,” he wrote seriously to Ginny, “I’ve reached the dangerous age.”

  Like Kipling says, “There are times that you think that you mightn’t and times that you know that you might.” I expect to keep it pretty well under control—but I hope you won’t kick me out if I slip. Don’t judge this frank statement too harshly. There is literally no way for me to tell you just what goes on inside me in the way of erratic judgment when I begin to spin around my gonads. Anyhow, you lecherous little wench, if I were not subject to such spasms of cockeyed rut-controlled, lack of judgment … I wouldn’t now be proposing to make a fairly honest woman out of you.

  I’ll try to behave but I am not giving any iron-clad promises. I think I will behave.30

  The period of separation from Ginny—and the obvious emotional strain the separation placed on her—had forced him to resolve his own self-doubts.

  I’m tired and have had several disappointments, frustrations, and dilemmas lately and I’m feeling poor. A sale would help a lot, especially the sale of this movie. I don’t have to have it, but it would mean freedom to do things comfortably and pleasantly. I could pay the Jacobs for what they have done for me free—and they need the money. I could give mother a lump sum and thereby buy myself a limited freedom from family responsibility.

  And I could marry Ticky without a nagging worry as to whether or not I could feed her.

  Yes, wench, I want to marry you! Little as I care for the institution of marriage as it is set up at present, I want your company and your help and your love and the lift I get from having your small and rather screwball presence around me. I had hoped to sell this screenplay before coming out flatfooted with plans—coming, as it were, to lay a bag of gold at your feet. I know that you have never held out for a thin dime, but the subject of money matters to me when I haven’t got it. The presence of poverty and the fear of poverty goes way back into my childhood; I wanted us to start out right, with a good bank balance and a healthy chunk of paid-up life insurance as an estate. Well, maybe I’ll get it yet. But I do want to marry you … .

  I think you’ll be taking a hell of a risk in marrying me, but it may be better than living in a rooming house and going to an office or lab. Anyhow, I love you, wench—I love you to pieces and I plan to beat you up every Saturday night.

  How about it?

  W.31

  Ginny seriously considered the proposal:

  Other women: How about crossing that bridge when we come to it? I darned well wont kick you out if you slip. Hey! Rut-controlled lack of judgment! Connected with Ticky too! I’m not sure I like that! Objection.

  (Objection will be overruled, I’ll bet.) Seriously, though, if you don’t feel like being monogamous, that’s up to you. I promise not to try to hinder you. You’ll have to judge for yourself what’s best for you. I shall be as nice to the ladies as I know how, but I don’t think you’d kick over the traces too hard. Anyway, it might just be that you’ll settle down after a little fling, and what’s the sense of trying to guess the future? Let’s just take those things in our stride, shall we?

  … About families, well, the less said, the better.

  Sure, I’ll take the hell of a risk, because I love you too. It’s not just to get out of the rooming house and job. Anyway, I kinda like the job. And I’m looking forward to the Saturday night beatings. Masochist, that’s me.

  I love you, darling, and I want to see you happy, and no matter what it takes to make you happy, that’s what I’ll do.

  All my love, Ticky32

  Robert wanted to settle down into a stable relationship—with Ginny and not in Los Angeles. Ginny didn’t want to live in New York. Robert proposed Colorado Springs, one of his favorite places in the entire country.33 He would put off writing stories until he got there. “That is, it would be nice to write them there if Ticky were there … .” after fifteen grueling weeks of separation. 34

  Heinlein prepared to leave Hollywood bogged down by a cold. He wrote a “drop dead” file of notes (that is, in case he were killed or incapacitated), recommending Jack Parsons for technical advice on the rocketry if anything happened to him. He also left in van Ronkel’s hands a letter firing Lou Schor as the agent for the writing partnership as of September 1 and removing his power of attorney to agent Rocket Ship Galileo. In the month since he had made the introduction to Pal, van Ronkel had become dissatisfied with his performance as an agent—more dissatisfied than Heinlein—but Heinlein realized Schor couldn’t function without the full confidence of both partners. Van Ronkel could use the termination of agency at his discretion.

  Heinlein left Hollywood on the last day of August. As he made one last check at his mailing service, he found waiting for him his six author copies of Space Cadet.

  For company on the long drive, he pinned the Ticky doll Ginny had made for his Christmas stocking to the front seat, and took off across the great Southwest desert. A gas station attendant told him the Ticky doll had been flirting with an Indian.35
On his way to Colorado, he stopped in New Mexico to see his childhood friend Don Johnstone. Johnstone remembered the occasion:

  I was living in Los Alamos, and one evening got a phone call from Bob, who said he was at a motel in Española. I invited him up to the hill—told him I’d have a pass at the gate for him—but he said no, he wanted me to come down to Española, and he’d tell me why when I got there. I did and he did, and it turned out that, as he put it, he had made a “lucky guess” some time before, had been grilled at length by Security people, and the last place in the world he wanted his name to show up was on the admission list of any atomic energy facility. 36

  Heinlein arrived in Colorado Springs on the second or third of September 1948. His year of waiting for the divorce to be final would be up in three weeks—on September 22. That would be time enough to get settled in, and then he and Ginny would get married.

  Life would be very different. Not only was she a very different person from Leslyn, but he was a different person with Ginny than he was with Leslyn—and that was, finally, fine with him. Ginny could not come out until sometime after he arrived in Colorado Springs—her boss would not release her before a proper two weeks’ notice—but the delay would actually work in their favor, as, now the proposal was definite, there was no point any longer to the risk and the emotional discomfort of living together illegally. Ginny had brought up the subject explicitly before he left Los Angeles, before he was committed:

  I’ll tell you, honey, I’ve wavered back and forth about living in sin again, but have decided that it really isn’t for me. Sometimes, when I’ve been desperately lonely, I’ve thought I would kick my hat over the Moon, but since you’ve been talking of marriage, I don’t really see the sense of jumping the gun for a mere two weeks or so. Honestly, darling, that just doesn’t make sense to me. There’s an old Chinese proverb, about not raping the girl when you’re going to marry her the next day, and that’s the way I feel about it. Not to mention the fact that I really would like to get a few nice things to wear for Wuzzum and say goodbye to family, etc. 37

  Nevertheless, Ginny would fly out to Denver (though she hated flying) as soon as she could get away from her job in New York, and he would meet her there. Jumping the gun for a mere two weeks or so was better, all said and done, than those same two weeks alone in New York.

  She initially had trouble getting a reservation and finally found a flight on a “nonscheduled” airline. Heinlein did not care for that, so he pulled in favors and found her a controlled seat on a major airline. She would arrive on September 11, 1948, so he would have several days in Colorado Springs to prepare before she got there.

  As soon as he got into town, Heinlein started scouting for a rental and two other items he wanted Ginny to find when she got into town. For housing, he found an old, furnished, Spanish-style house at 1313 Cheyenne Boulevard. He was even able to purchase a used piano—a Wurlitzer spinet—to replace the piano she had had to sell last year, when they were so broke in Fort Worth. The other item—

  [I] finally tracked down a kitten in a litter belonging to a mama cat who is a free citizen; she belongs to no one but is the official mouser for an entire block. I catnapped him, a beautiful little orange-flavored tom, with fluffy hair.38

  This kitten would have to be Pixie II, commemorating the kitten she’d had to give up in Mississippi, so he came up with a formal name of the bombastic sort suggested by Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats: Ethelrude Pixilated Colorado.39

  On Saturday, September 11, 1948, Robert took a commuter flight up to Denver to meet Ginny’s flight from New York.

  For the next ten days, Robert and Ginny had to keep a very low profile. They acquired a companion kitten for Pixie II—a tan-colored kitten they named Café au lait au sucre—“Caffy.” Pixie and Caffy took to each other immediately, noisily mock-battling all morning and sleeping together in the afternoon, then more rounds of sparring in the evening. The decree nisi would be issued in a little less than two weeks. They quietly went about their business, not calling much attention to themselves until they could be married and take up their new life. The kittens provided most of their social life.

  Heinlein began planning his workload for the rest of the year: he wrote to Alice Dalgliesh asking for her latest deadline for the ocean ranching book so that he could schedule more suit diving—possibly in Florida.40 She found the idea “thrilling” but cautioned him not to get too technical—and if possible put in a girl this time.41 That was not a problem, since he was planning to build the story around a family.

  September 22 came and went, and no word from Los Angeles about the divorce. Both Robert and Ginny were holding their breaths: if this situation went on too long, everything would be spoiled. On September 23, Lurton Blassingame told him that both Ginny’s parents had contacted him simultaneously, wondering what had become of Ginny.42 Both Robert and Ginny jumped to fix that one—but the social white lies needed to keep things smooth could very easily become too big to handle. Robert had not mentioned Ginny in any of his correspondence for the last year. Now it was time to take the wraps off, since in a matter of days the masquerade would be over anyway. “I’ll try to clear up the mystery,” he told Blassingame:

  I’ve acquired the habit of keeping silent about my private life because of how I have been forced to live these past five years—I’m afraid I have come to carry it to extremes … .

  Yes, I’m married again. I would have gotten around shortly to telling you so, by the usual formal announcement. The mix-up with Ginny’s parents came about this way: She wired both of them as soon as she got here but did not give an address as we had not yet obtained a house. When we located a house, she wrote to each of them and put the letters in her purse, intending to stamp and mail them downtown.

  We found them about a week later, the next time she wore that purse.43

  They couldn’t keep things quiet much longer, and while people might wink at a couple living together a few weeks before marriage, if it went on too long …

  Bill Corson had written suggesting Heinlein find someone local to follow up on the decree nisi, as these things didn’t just happen automatically.44 Heinlein asked Sam Kamens—his Los Angeles lawyer and Leslyn’s lawyer for the divorce—to look into it and do whatever was necessary, since Leslyn apparently wasn’t up to finalizing the divorce. Leslyn, in fact, had disappeared from her job at Point Mugu—“compulsory resignation because of refusal to do work the way her boss wanted her to do it,” Bill Corson told him, adding, “Complicated to unknown extent by liquor.”45 She turned up “in a sanatorium at Long Beach, taking the cure.”46 She had joined AA. 47

  Kamens sent Heinlein a form “Affidavit for Final Decree of Divorce,” and Heinlein found a notary in Colorado Springs on Columbus Day, October 12. The affidavit was filed with the court on October 15, three weeks and two days after the year was up—five weeks minus one day since they had set up housekeeping in Colorado Springs without benefit of clergy.

  Even living as quietly as possible, they had neighbors, and they had started to make friends in Colorado Springs. Ginny had even agreed to do an ice-skating exhibition for the Broadmoor Hotel and Resort in the winter. They had started to put down roots.

  But they had a clock problem: when they got married, the announcement would appear in the local newspaper, and everyone would know they had been “living in sin” for the last six weeks. At the very least, they would be snubbed. It was common knowledge that in this kind of situation, some of the local merchants might make trouble. It was not out of the range of the possible that the local constabulary might suggest the community didn’t want to be associated with “their type.”

  If they could not handle the transition discreetly, they would have to pull up stakes and move again.

  The Final Judgment of Divorce was issued, pending recording, on October 19. On October 20, 1948, Sam Kamens telegraphed Heinlein and followed it up with a letter: “All conditions complied with contract terminated.”48

&nb
sp; Heinlein was impatient to make it legal. New Mexico did not have the three-day waiting period to issue a marriage license—and if they were married out of state, it wouldn’t appear in the Colorado Springs papers. That would solve their social problem perfectly.49 The next day, October 21, 1948, they drove to Raton, New Mexico, just across the state border, and were married before a Justice of the Peace in a Methodist church.

  Here is a poem I wrote for our wedding:

  The bride was old/the license was new/the money was borrowed/the groom was blue. (Ginny didn’t like it.)50

  To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stock-still. Now the man who has his heart on his sleeve, and a good whirling weathercock of a brain, who reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully hazarded … keeps all his pulses going true and fast, and gathers impetus as he runs, until, if he be running towards anything better than wildfire, he may shoot up and become a constellation in the end … .

  Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind … . The noise of mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land.