The Lady and the Panda

by Vicki Croke

  The press was certain Harkness would return to catch more pandas, but she herself was sure of nothing. A beautiful night like this was enough. It would have to be. If she had learned anything, it was to embrace beauty as it materialized. When she had come to Shanghai months ago, bombs fell on the city. How could she not feel peace and happiness now, when in the dark of night it looked as though millions of angels were descending?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HELLO, I MUST BE GOING

  THE RETURN TO AMERICA was a relatively brief and unsatisfying interval in the life of Ruth Harkness. It seemed she just couldn't shake the nagging bits of bad luck that had dogged her throughout this expedition.

  After she docked in Victoria, British Columbia, on February 12, 1938, her planned flights every leg of the way were delayed because of deteriorating flying conditions. Seeking refuge in New Mexico, Harkness kept her cool and her sense of humor. LOST IN A CITY WHOSE NAME WE CAN'T EVEN SPELL, she wired from Albuquerque before boarding the California Limited, bound for Chicago.

  At every stop, scheduled or not, Harkness and the panda had roused gangs of newsmen and photographers. Nowhere would that be more true than in Chicago, where the ownership of two giant pandas was something to boast about. The travel delays may have even added to the anticipation when Harkness and the panda pulled in on Friday, February 18.

  As the two sat tight in a parlor car at the Dearborn Street Station, an excited committee of local VIPs—“a delegation of dignitaries, radio workers, numerous uniformed policemen, and newspaper and news reel cameramen,” according to the Chicago Tribune— came aboard to welcome them.

  Harkness and the panda arrive in Chicago.

  When the contingent was ready, they posed on the train's rear platform behind a railing that carried the California Limited logo. Before the assembled crowd, Harkness, in her leopard-skin coat, gave zoo director Edward Bean a kiss on the cheek as she juggled microphones, panda baby, and a big wreath of flowers sporting a satin ribbon that read FROM SU-LIN TO MY NEW PLAYMATE. The president of the board of county commissioners made a speech for radio.

  During the course of the media event, the panda popped Harkness on the nose hard enough that she had to retire to her drawing room for a moment. Harkness told the press, “Su-Lin did scratch me up when I brought her back, but she was gentle and demure compared to this little hoyden. I'm a mass of bruises and scratches.”

  Su-Lin and Mei-Mei meet at the Brookfield Zoo.

  The reporters asked her how she could have succeeded twice where so many others had failed. “I'm part Indian,” she told them, “one thirtysecond American Indian.” That bound her to the Chinese, and the people of the mountains, she explained. “That's why I can get pandas.”

  The group was soon whisked away in an open-air car, accompanied by a police escort, to the Brookfield Zoo. The newsreels covered every second of it, while two national radio broadcasts set up for the panda's arrival.

  At Brookfield, Harkness shed her sophisticated ensemble, slipping into zoo-issue striped overalls and wool workman's jacket. Appearing with staff members before a rapt crowd of children, the little twenty-fourpound panda cub and the 126-pound Su-Lin were introduced. At first, Su-Lin ignored the new arrival, and Edward Bean, walking over to herd the big panda toward the smaller one held by Harkness, grumbled, “Look at your baby sister, you mutt.” In closer proximity, Su-Lin batted at the little panda, and when keeper Sam Parratt intervened, he got a swat too. Harkness dabbed at his scratched face with a handkerchief.

  Finally, the throng got what it was waiting for when Su-Lin delicately touched noses with the little panda in a moment captured on Universal Newsreel footage. Harkness, concerned about both pandas, could be seen on film smiling at them and saying, “Oh! Oh!” each time they made contact. Su-Lin, known to those who cared for him as such a gentle animal—even standing on hind legs to listen to Mary Bean's baby talk— once again proved himself.

  By now Diana, who had been named after Quentin Young's wife, was being called Mei-Mei, or “little sister,” a nickname that would eventually win out entirely.

  Taking a suite at the Stevens Hotel, overlooking Lake Michigan, Harkness spent a few days in Chicago to settle the panda in and meet with officials. Zoo life seemed to agree with the littlest panda, and Harkness found him “in the pink of condition—seemingly happy and contented.” Su-Lin was too. In light of his continuing good health, Brookfield decided to cancel a five-thousand-dollar life insurance policy it had out on him.

  Mei-Mei's status was still a bit up in the air. Harkness owned him, and purchasing the animal who was thought to be another female would be up to the committee and board members from the zoo, which had not met yet.

  It apparently was a foregone conclusion to Harkness. When she swept into New York on Saturday, booking herself into the Algonquin Hotel and toting a two-foot-tall stuffed panda toy that she described as “a grand bedfellow,” she told The New York Times with certainty that the zoo would be sponsoring her next endeavor. The paper reported that “despite the natural obstacles of war, illness and economic reverses experienced by exploration in war-torn territory,” the panda hunter was planning to return to the Tibetan border for a male by the middle of summer. She felt duty-bound to provide a breeding pair of the animals because she was concerned about preserving the species in captivity. After this trip, she revealed, she would not go after pandas anymore.

  The loneliness of the last trip, and the behavior of zealous trappers desperate to yank these animals from the wild, was profoundly shaking Harkness's thoughts about her own future. She was no animal dealer, she told a reporter, and she would not persist in this work. If she was successful on this upcoming trek, she would put an end to her career in exploration, though not her life in China. She was vague about what exactly she would be doing, knowing only that she must return east, to the land she so loved.

  In taking stock of her life, she realized there was something she had to face up to. Harkness had always been a two-fisted drinker, able to keep pace with the hollow-legged sophisticates of the day. After the endless nights of corn wine up-country and cocktail marathons in Shanghai, she had decided to dry out aboard the Empress of Russia. Now she was keeping company with her hard-drinking brother, Jim, in New York, while being pampered by the Algonquin staff. She had no book project to occupy her, and was still pursued by the demons that had haunted her in the mountains of the borderlands.

  Booze was getting the best of her. Once, she invited Hazel Perkins from Connecticut for a visit, then went on an all-consuming bender for the entire stay. Perkie was no teetotaler, but Harkness had gone too far. That Tuesday, when the explorer came back to a sober, if throbbing, consciousness, her guest was gone, and she was repentant.

  She asked for a chance to make up for her behavior, pledging to stop drinking again. “Jimmy and I went on the wagon and I haven't had a drink since,” she wrote. “As a matter of fact I had been on most of the time since I left Shanghai with periods of falling off, but I'm on again now.”

  Her patient friend Perkie forgave her, returning to New York while Harkness had moved into an apartment for a very brief stay. As a host, Harkness toed the line, making up a clean bed, mixing her guest's favorite rye and ginger ale, and even serving duck—the simple things that blind drunk she had been unable to do. The two women could now indulge in a heart-to-heart, something Harkness was in need of.

  She managed to hide the melancholy from a public that still couldn't get enough of her. In March she made famed Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper's column, along with Dolores Del Rio, Kitty Carlisle, and Ginger Rogers, when she was named one of America's best-dressed women by the Fashion Academy in Rockefeller Center.

  The New York Times ran a splashy photo spread of her expedition in its “Rotogravure Picture Section” with the headline LONE WOMAN EXPLORER ON THE TRAIL OF THE PANDA, RAREST OF QUADRUPEDS. Alongside several exotic photos of Harkness in the field, a block of text chronicled her adventures “into a m
ountainous wilderness seldom penetrated by white men.”

  She gave lectures on her expeditions, one of the most memorable coming at the end of March when she shared the podium, before a crowd of four hundred, with Sinclair Lewis, the distinguished American novelist, for a book-and-author luncheon held at the Essex House by the American Booksellers Association. The next day, her book for children, The Baby Giant Panda, which would be praised by The Washington Post as “a touching yarn,” was published.

  HARKNESS WAS SKATING along in this rather undemanding life when, on Friday, April 1, news came that would send her staggering—Su-Lin was dead.

  The illness appeared to have begun the previous Monday when the night watchman noted on his report that the panda, who normally had a robust appetite, refused to eat his 5:45 A.M. breakfast. Curator Robert Bean assessed the animal that morning and detected some slight frothing at his lips, and some reluctance or inability to open his mouth. Suspecting distemper, he called in two veterinarians. The first, Dr. Kuehn, examined Su-Lin thoroughly, including inspection of his mouth, ruling out distemper. The veterinarian was not alarmed, thinking that the foaming would subside by evening. Su-Lin was able to consume milk and cereal over the course of the day. But at nine that night his condition took a turn for the worse—more frothing, and his jaw had become rigid. The Beans—Edward, Robert, and Mary—and keeper George Speidel conducted their own physical. Mary Bean found a two-and-a-half-inch-long piece of twig lodged at the base Su-Lin's tongue, which was removed. It had not been there on earlier examinations, but a rumor would leak out later that the splinter of wood had done Su-Lin in. That evening through the next day, the panda continued to refuse food, taking only some milk and water. His health deteriorated to the point that on Wednesday he had to be fed through a tube. Distraught zoo officials vainly placed an oxygen tent around the gravely ill animal. On Friday the Beans, Sam Parratt—as one of Su-Lin's devoted keepers—and the zoo veterinarian were with the panda when he died at 1:17 P.M. “She was so sweet in her illness,” Edward Bean would say of Su-Lin, “that it was pitiful. Up to the last three hours it was impossible to impress the doctors that she was really so sick.”

  Across the country hundreds of thousands of Americans mourned the animal's death. Telegrams of condolence poured in to the zoo and to Chicago newspaper offices. The Chicago Tribune ran a previously unpublished color photograph of Su-Lin and sold framed copies for one dollar each. Life magazine called Su-Lin America's favorite animal, and the Tribune reported that he was the most photographed. As his popularity had been stunning—with about two million people coming to the zoo just to see the panda—so too was the grief over his death. But “of her countless mourners,” Life noted, “none wept more bitterly than Mrs. Harkness.” Reached with the news, Harkness burst into tears. “This is terrible,” she cried. “I never expected anything like it to happen. She was the sweetest, best natured little animal I had ever seen.” Heartbroken, Harkness said she “could not feel much worse if Su-Lin had been a child.”

  The Beans assured her that everything that could have been done for Su-Lin had been done.

  A distinguished panel of pathologists from both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University was assembled. The cursory postmortem revealed nothing, so an edgy Edward Bean ordered Mei-Mei to be kept in a separate area until a close examination of Su-Lin's quarters could be completed. The body of the beloved panda was sent off to the Field Museum of Natural History where a team of medical experts, led by Dr. Wilfred H. Osgood, curator of zoology, and Robert Bean could perform a thorough check.

  The necropsy revealed several things. The heart was “grossly perfectly normal.” That meant that the altitude change had not harmed Su-Lin— good news to the zoo, which was keeping Mei-Mei and shopping for another panda. The lungs were a different story. Analyzed sections showed that Su-Lin had died of pneumonia.

  The press was agitating for answers, but a tight-lipped Robert Bean said only, “We shall neither confirm nor deny the findings until the Chicago Zoological Society's physician can make a complete examination. Until that time no official of the park will speculate as to what caused Su-Lin's death.” In fact, it would take more than a year for the discovery that Su-Lin was a male to come to light.

  EVEN IN DEATH, the animal was valuable to naturalists, this time to those at the Field Museum. A taxidermist there made a death mask of the beloved panda, then, using glue, burlap, and plaster, took his hide to create a mounted figure in a glassed-in exhibit. The effect was one of incredible pathos as the beautiful bear's face was forever set in an expression of deep sadness, his posture upright but slumped like that of a person with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  In the meantime, the horrible news was now twisted for Harkness. Word came from Chengdu that Smith had scored a remarkable triumph, collecting four giant pandas—three of them reported to be male cubs. Elizabeth Smith was telling the press that her husband planned to charter a plane to Hong Kong, bringing the animals west as quickly as possible. Papers everywhere carried the provocative bulletin, often combining it with stories about Su-Lin's death. Time magazine placed both items under the headline PANDAS GALORE. The Chicago Tribune said that “the bottom fell out of the baby giant panda market yesterday.” And The New York Times reported on his “record catch,” noting that Smith's were the only males believed to be in captivity.

  It was welcome news in Chicago. “Oh boy—wonderful!” exclaimed Robert Bean. It made sense the zoo would want to acquire a male, since they thought they still had a female. A member of the Chicago Zoological Society's animal committee not only told the press that the zoo would be very interested in a purchase, he also implied that Mei-Mei might just get the boot. Francis E. Manierre mentioned that while Mei-Mei was on exhibition, the panda had not actually been purchased yet—the implication being that there was still time to drop Harkness and pick up Smith. He was accurate in his description of the panda's status. The zoo had, in fact, retained the right to refuse a female panda, since it was assumed at the time that Su-Lin was also a female. And the zoo had not yet laid out the cash for Harkness's next venture. But with Su-Lin dead, getting rid of Mei-Mei to buy a lone male would make no sense—one panda, male or female, could not reproduce. Besides, the zoo hadn't heard a thing from Smith himself.

  Mei-Mei was proving to be quite an attraction even without Su-Lin. The first day the panda was exhibited, forty-two thousand people showed up—many lining up before opening time, several carrying stepladders in anticipation of the frenzy. A poll conducted in Chicago placed the panda's popularity equal to that of Chicago Cubs pitching ace Dizzy Dean. Not surprisingly, the zoo didn't go forward with the plan to throw Mei-Mei over for a Smith panda. The zoo's slight, public as it was, was only momentary, and it was clear it wanted a male in addition to MeiMei, not as a substitute.

  Privately, Harkness was livid over the public disloyalty, telling friends that Brookfield had “turned cold on my contract with them after news of Ajax's captures.” She had to have felt marginalized by the very people she had come through for.

  Enough had transpired for Harkness to speak up about a few things. She was no scientist, she freely admitted, but she began to realize that her basic common sense, which had resulted in successful panda captures in the first place, might just be valuable in determining the way the animals were kept.

  The zoo's insistence on feeding Mei-Mei cooked vegetables seemed preposterous to her. On previous occasions she had suggested that SuLin receive cornstalks and sugarcane to chew on. Now she became much more outspoken about the issue of a proper panda menu. “I realize that since I have turned Mei Mei over to the Chicago Zoological Society, I have no jurisdiction whatsoever in the matter of her diet or her care,” Harkness wrote to Edward Bean. “Nevertheless, that does not prevent my feeling about her or my interest in her welfare.

  “I am strongly convinced that she should have something—some hard substance—on which she could help to cut her teeth. In spite of what some
doctors say, I should think that a million years of rough—and exceedingly rough—diet warrants continuance of same. In spite of the fact that doctors say that all vegetables should be cooked, I would like to put myself on record as disagreeing with them.” The fact was, Harkness wrote, “the very nature of pandas is to eat hard, flinty substances (I speak from first-hand experience), and I don't think Mei Mei, for her own health and well-being, should be deprived of these.” She was right, of course.

  She also felt compelled to return to China, for Mei-Mei's sake. The zoo had at this point paid eighty-five hundred dollars toward her next expedition, prompting her to immediately plan “a third expedition to save Mei-Mei from loneliness.”

  At a luncheon lecture she gave before New York City's Town Hall Club in April, she revealed that perhaps Quentin Young would be available for the next campaign. She was playing her cards close to the vest, for she was already corresponding with Young, and within weeks he would be in the field on her behalf.

  The Bronx Zoo, meanwhile, made headlines with news of its own baby giant panda. The animal, named Pandora, was purchased from hunters by Frank Dickinson, a professor at the West China Union University in Chengdu. After all the wrangling and bitterness between Harkness and the zoo over the price of Su-Lin, Dean Sage, who was a trustee at the New York Zoological Society, could now gloat over the fact that the panda they were getting would cost only three hundred dollars—even factoring in transportation costs. It was a bargain-basement price, and one that set Harkness's friends buzzing. Simultaneously, the zoo entered negotiations with Smith to purchase one of his animals.

  Just then Quentin Young cabled Harkness with incredible news. Though there would be some confusion about it later, it appeared he had secured two pandas—one male and one female—and they were in Chengdu.