Since she’d arrived in Luma, three weeks earlier, Margaret had let life unfold with the predictable rhythm of the village. She’d finally begun to think about how to tackle her fieldwork or, as Boas liked to call it, the “problem” she’d been sent to investigate. She’d managed to identify sixty-five teenage informants but had not yet interviewed any of them. At the moment, the scope of the undertaking felt overwhelming. She complained to Ruth:
I am furious that I didn’t come sooner. Why did I feel I needed six weeks to learn the language? But I was simply in a hurt daze. All the echoes of Edward’s inducements still sounded in my heart—everything seemed too hopeless to think about and I was an inert lifeless machine … if I’d been a quarter of myself I would have had sense enough to come out into the villages sooner.
* * *
“Thanksgiving was a turkey-cranberry celery-mince pie sort of a day,” wrote Ruth, making sure to keep her tone lighthearted. “May and Agnes came out and the dinner was really all that could be desired.”
With the meal at an end, and Stanley in bed, she could finally relax. She was in no hurry to join him. She took her time undressing, slowly folding her good cashmere sweater set and putting it away in a garment bag. Standing in front of the mirror she looked at herself. The lines in her forehead were more noticeable, the silver in her hair more pronounced. No wonder. These last few months had been stressful.
In her last letter to Margaret she’d mused, “I do wonder what living with the Holts will be like. It would be wonderful luck if you could like them.” But the fact was Ruth was not thinking about Samoa. She was worrying about Chicago—and Edward.
In a recent letter Margaret had reported, “His present point is that I must come to Chicago—on any terms. I see no clear path.” To Ruth it sounded like relocating to Chicago was actually under consideration.
Even Edward—although still pessimistic about being able to bring Margaret to Chicago—was now starting to address some of the practical considerations:
The bittersweet fact remains that I love Margaret and cannot bear the thought of indefinite separation. Now I am not in the least sanguine about being able to get her to come here. Quite aside from her own attitude in the matter, I don’t see clearly how people here can be induced to take on a girl so little known as yet.
But what if Edward did succeed?
Ruth wanted to be kept apprised of his every move, but the problem was that he was withdrawing. Letters from him had become less frequent. It was as though he viewed her as “an interloper,” and “grudged her knowledge” of the affair.
Picking up her hairbrush, Ruth began to brush, sweeping her hair back from her widow’s peak in hard, unforgiving strokes.
There were times when she felt it was a mistake to continue in the role of Cupid’s messenger. Not only was it duplicitous but it was dangerous. She’d told Margaret, “Sometimes I have a nightmare that I’m risking your love in this same role, and I wonder if I could take courage to go on.” But she knew if she didn’t intervene, Edward might succeed, and that would be devastating.
The next morning Ruth woke up thinking that she had to muster some self-respect. If Margaret chose to be with Edward, it was incumbent on her to get out of the way. She began her letter, “I pray that you may draw every drop of sweet the gods will allow out of your love for each other.…”
However, she couldn’t stop herself from sounding a warning: “… there is no way but to love Edward on his own terms. Do not even believe him if he protests differently.”
And then she passed on some choice gossip she’d heard from their colleague Paul Radin, who loved to talk about Edward. The story dated back to the early years of Edward’s marriage:
… he was so jealous he couldn’t bear to have Florence talk with the postman … he used to storm publically if Goldie telephoned his house, or if Radin sat beside her at a dinner.
It seemed that Edward had no control over his jealousy. Ruth went on:
Darling, by all the rules I should not be writing you in this fashion, and yet you know … it’s with eyes open wide—and still loving him—that you’ll be able to give him the most happiness.
Edward, she wanted Margaret to know, was powerless to understand the “cruel warping” of his psyche.
No sooner had she dropped the letter in the mailbox than she regretted it.
The next Monday, after returning to the city, Ruth went straight to the Museum of Natural History to speak to Pliny Goddard. The door to his office was closed, but she could see a light on inside. She knocked.
Goddard opened the door and greeted her with a wry smile. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “You’re here to talk about Margaret Mead.”
Self-conscious, but not enough to stop herself, Ruth asked Goddard when the board was scheduled to meet.
“What if I told you we’ve already had our meeting,” he said, his smile broadening. “We should be hearing something soon.”
Later that day Ruth wrote Margaret that she’d found Goddard cautiously optimistic, saying, “I hold that knowledge close.”
* * *
Edward was seated at his desk when the young woman first appeared. She was wearing a dark coat, navy skirt, and black boots. She stood in his doorway and addressed him as Dr. Sapir.
She knew who he was although she didn’t identify herself as his student.
Edward rose to his feet.
Her hand was small, her handshake firm. She seemed to take possession of him before the conversation had even begun.
Her name was Jean McClenaghan, “Miss Jean McClenaghan.” She said she’d heard him speak in Ottawa when he’d given a lecture on the connection between psychology and the formation of language.
“Ottawa?” He laughed out loud. “What were you doing in Ottawa?”
“That’s where I’m from.” She smiled.
“You have my condolences,” he said.
“Now I’m working here, at the Chicago Institute for Juvenile Research,” she said.
He noticed now that her eyes were striking, a pale green, like the color of crystals.
So far for Edward, coming to Chicago had been a blessing; this was yet another example of the surprising things that seemed to be happening to him.
His main problem, if he had to name one, was that he was forced to juggle too many social engagements. After Miss McClenaghan made a deliberate effort to contact him again, many of these engagements turned out to be with her. He learned that she was of Scottish Irish descent and was twenty-five years old. Her sudden inclusion in his life was met with resistance from some of his students, many of whom were the same age. In the end, he didn’t care that they disapproved and had to admit that he was terrible at managing his time.
Now, when Edward sat down to correspond with Ruth, he found that writing to her no longer felt like a release. On the contrary. He resented the fact that he was forced to defend his position in regard to Margaret:
Ruth, dear, I may be horribly unjust in all this. The truth is that Margaret and my values are too dangerously far from each other to make it humanly possible for my love to thrive. Assume if you like, that Margaret’s views are not only sincere but possible and even ideal, still I cannot accept them. Call me weak and conventional and anything you like. All I know is that I don’t feel at home in Margaret’s world.
For the first time it seemed possible that he might be facing a future that did not include Margaret:
Margaret has given me more than any woman has given me, which is precisely why she must give all or have her gift fade into meaninglessness. Is that so very hard to understand?
The fact was, this new woman, Miss Jean McClenaghan, had more than piqued his interest.
“Only life and years can teach Margaret,” he said, “certainly not I. And when she has finally learned, I shall be much too old to interest her.”
* * *
Margaret woke up feeling sick. She supposed it was the stress of the work she’d not yet started. After gargling
a glass of warm saltwater she went to the Holts’ door and knocked. Ruth Holt, still in a nightgown, opened the door. Margaret could tell she wasn’t happy to see her standing there. Margaret asked to have her temperature taken.
“My word,” Mrs. Holt said, “you’re so full of complaints. I’m beginning to wonder if you’re not a hypochondriac.” She put her hand to Margaret’s forehead and said, “You’re not even hot.”
Margaret returned to her room still wondering if she had a fever. Strange how Ruth Holt’s condemnation cut her to the quick. Describing her state of mind as “a borderline delirium,” she told Ruth:
I got into a terrific mood—which fortunately I spared you. I decided I’d lost my drive, that I didn’t give a damn about the problem or any other problem, etc. You’ve heard it all … and I’ve been in bed ever since with a sort of flu or tonsillitis or something.
She even thought to herself how “very comfortable it would be to die.”
To make matters worse, it was only a few days until her birthday.
As a girl Margaret had always demanded that her parents and siblings make a fuss over her birthday. At college, she’d expected her roommates to do the same. So it was on December 14, two days before she was to turn twenty-four, that she found the distance that separated her from everyone else especially hard to endure.
While in this mood she wrote to Ruth:
In my three months down here I don’t think I’ve made a single friend except the Samoans in Vaitogi. Probably it’s because I’m so wrapped up in my own silly little woes.
So far it had only been in Vaitogi that Margaret had felt appreciated. She certainly didn’t among her own people, the whites who resided in the naval compound. While not so long ago she had rejected the idea of immersing herself in a native household, saying, “I couldn’t live like that and do my problem,” she was now beginning to think that she’d made a mistake.
Then the situation with the Holts deteriorated even further, turning into “a lovely fiasco.”
Margaret had been in her room, working at her desk, going through her index cards, making a list of the adolescents she intended to contact. She had the list open so she could check off the names of any girls who came in to see her that evening, some of whom were already sitting in a circle at her feet.
Just then “a sweet little thing named Filialosa,” around twelve years old, came through the screen door and approached Margaret. Filialosa said that Tapuni, her older sister, was outside and wanted to come in, too.
Tapuni sauntered into the room. She was “a coarse slovenly creature” and looked to be about twenty-five to thirty years of age. Margaret recognized her as the village prostitute.
Standing in the center of the room, singing in a loud voice and rotating her hips, Tapuni urged the younger girls to stand up and dance. Raising her voice, she shouted at them to go faster and faster.
The performance was “pretty awful,” but Margaret decided that as long as it had started, she had better let it finish. Before she knew it, the noise was deafening.
Suddenly Edward Holt pushed aside the curtain and stood in the doorway. “Go a little slow on the racket, Miss Mead,” he said. “That wasn’t in the bargain when you came here.”
The noise of Tapuni’s dance had disturbed Mrs. Holt and awakened the baby but as far as Mr. Holt was concerned, what was really inexcusable was that Margaret had permitted the village prostitute to enter his home:
He’s a frightful prude, the psychology of his simper was simple enough—and tho he’s very nice he’s thin skinned and by no manner of means a gentleman. Just a silly little row. But they’ve refused to let me send any cables until I file my code.
The cable code was Margaret’s safety net. Being told that she couldn’t use it until she “registered” it with the naval administration was infuriating:
Oh Ruth, I am so damnably lonely—as long as everything goes like a song—comparatively—I manage reasonably well. I remember that I mustn’t cry—my eyes are sore enough as it is.… But just let some little thing go wrong and the whole superficial structure of efficiency goes under.
Once Margaret started to feel sorry for herself, there seemingly was no end to it:
And it’s the eve of my birthday. Usually I fall down stairs or break my best tea set or get into a fight on my birthday and I suppose I just started betimes. But oh, how spoiled, how terribly, terribly coddled I’ve always been—with one person and usually many more around who cared whether I lived or died. And now, when I cry Arthur [the Holt’s two year-old son] puts his arms around my neck and that’s all. And there’s five more months! I’m getting perfectly pathological about my time, my thoughts, everything being mortgaged to the NRC.
It had been thanks to Professor Boas that the National Research Council had agreed to finance her fieldwork in Samoa, and now Margaret was determined to accomplish what she’d been sent to do, not only because the men on NRC’s Board were expecting it, but also because Boas had gone out on a limb on her behalf. The possibility of failure kept her up at night worrying.
It also caused her to wonder if there was some truth to what Edward had said when he accused her of rating “love lower than external accomplishment.” In his last letter he’d complained that although her letters had many loving passages, they were “so riddled with … shoddy values,” their love was doomed. He seemed to be warning that he was going to end their affair. Was this an empty threat, or were his feelings changing?
She wished she knew.
* * *
On December 24, Sparks was sitting inside the radio room when the teletype machine hummed to life, signaling an incoming cable. The message was addressed to Margaret Mead. It stated that her appointment as assistant curator of ethnology on the scientific staff of the Museum of Natural History, beginning in October of 1926, had been formally approved.
Later that afternoon, with the cable tucked in her pocket, Margaret “walked along the beach alone,” reveling in the knowledge that her senior colleagues recognized her worth.
It was a marvelous sensation. The following year she would be returning to New York City with a prestigious job, earning an annual salary of $2,000. She no longer had to apply for another grant from the NRC to extend her time in Samoa.
She was, as she wrote to Ruth, “counting and weighing the minutes of the days” that were left in Samoa.
23
A BONFIRE ON THE BEACH
You see I’ve never stopped loving anyone whom I really loved greatly.
—MARGARET MEAD
January 1926
On the island of Ta’u, the celebration of the New Year began early in the day, in church. That morning Margaret watched as women wearing their finest fringed tapa (bark cloth) dresses walked past. She had decided not to join the partygoers because she’d resolved to start work on her “plan of research” for the NRC, the report she’d been putting off for weeks.
She sat on the dispensary steps, looking out at the sea. Dark, low-lying clouds were moving in fast and the day promised to be “wet and ominous.” A storm was coming. Teenage girls skipped by, unconcerned and carefree, colorful paper necklaces draped around their necks.
Margaret had compiled a list that included these girls and approximately fifty others who could be loosely classified as adolescents. They were to be her informants, but the prospect of interviewing them about their sexual conduct was daunting. All these girls had been indoctrinated with the values of Protestantism and the London Missionary Society. The primary emphasis of their education had been on tamping down their sexuality. How, with only a rudimentary command of the language, could she probe so sensitive a subject?
Margaret looked down at her hands now poised over the keys of the typewriter. The young professors back in Washington, D.C., the men who sat on the NRC, had made it clear they wanted to hear details about when and how the girls first started to have sex. Margaret had nothing to tell them but, conditioned to be a conscientious student and to do the very best
job possible on any and all assignments, she was determined somehow to meet their expectations. She began to type.
Two hours later the sound of laughter broke Margaret’s concentration. Looking up she saw some of the high-spirited churchgoers trooping back through the rain, “their paper necklaces already drooping pathetically.” She turned back to her draft, but a few minutes later she was interrupted again, this time by revelers from Faleasao who carried gifts and an invitation to return with them to their village. Sensing that it might be unwise to be out on the road, Margaret wrapped up tobacco and a few tins of salmon and sent her regrets.
The storm was getting too noisy for “consecutive work.” Wind whipped the palms and lashed the roof of the engine shed, sending pieces of tin flying. From where she was sitting Margaret could see Sparks and Mr. Holt in the front yard, looking toward the sea. Rising, she folded up her unfinished report and put it away, and stashed her typewriter on a high shelf.
Dinner was planned for four o’clock but soon enough rain was coming through the kitchen roof to fill several buckets. Using “butter that hadn’t seen ice for weeks,” Margaret made the hard sauce for a fruitcake while Ruth Holt “anxiously lit and relit the flames of the oil stove.”
The Holts’ long dining table was set for eight. By the time they sat down, the racket outside made it too noisy for conversation. “Pieces of tin banged on the roof and the palm over the engine shed lashed its tin roof in a perfect fury of chastisement.”
They all went out on the front porch to eye the storm. Margaret noticed that Mr. Holt was chewing on a matchstick, a sure sign that he was worried.
The wind was coming from behind them where a huge hill broke its force. Even so, at the other end of town, the buildings were kneeling down in “a long thatched line. A minute later the schoolhouse and the singing houses went down.”
Coming of Age Page 24