Angle of Repose (38 page)
Another day several wagons, many mules, and a half dozen men set up a camp higher on the ditch, in the edge of the aspens. This was the new United States Geological Survey party, all veterans of King’s Survey of the Fortieth Parallel. A little while after they arrived, a long, thin, chinless, slouching man who wore his ugliness as elegantly as his snow-white buckskins rode down and made himself known: Samuel Emmons, one of the giants, Leadville’s Homer, one of Oliver’s heroes and an old companion of Prager, Clarence King, and Henry Adams. He had written a book that Oliver looked upon as a bible, and he had helped make the geological maps that he was now charmed to see pinned as decorations on the log walls. It took a woman, he said, to see the aesthetic possibilities of the Silurian.
Within days, Prager and Henry Janin came over the range, and within a week Clarence King himself, a man glitteringly famous, director of the Geological Survey, author of
Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada,
climber of Mount Whitney, exposer of the great diamond hoax. Susan didn’t think of him as “the best and brightest man of his generation,” because John Hay hadn’t yet made that remark about him; but she knew him as a literary man and she knew Oliver’s respect for him as a scientist; she had heard of him as the wittiest of talkers and a prince of story tellers. In a tone somewhere between awe and a giggle, she wrote Augusta that in his tent at the Survey camp he was served by a black valet, that he possessed an apparently inexhaustible supply of fine wines, brandy, and cigars, and that his riding clothes, like those of Emmons, were made by London tailors out of snow-white deerskins dressed by Paiute squaws in the Carson Valley of Nevada. Except for her report of one evening, her letters contain no samples of King’s celebrated conversation. Perhaps the mice got them.
Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada,
climber of Mount Whitney, exposer of the great diamond hoax. Susan didn’t think of him as “the best and brightest man of his generation,” because John Hay hadn’t yet made that remark about him; but she knew him as a literary man and she knew Oliver’s respect for him as a scientist; she had heard of him as the wittiest of talkers and a prince of story tellers. In a tone somewhere between awe and a giggle, she wrote Augusta that in his tent at the Survey camp he was served by a black valet, that he possessed an apparently inexhaustible supply of fine wines, brandy, and cigars, and that his riding clothes, like those of Emmons, were made by London tailors out of snow-white deerskins dressed by Paiute squaws in the Carson Valley of Nevada. Except for her report of one evening, her letters contain no samples of King’s celebrated conversation. Perhaps the mice got them.
With King was a large good-natured man named Thomas Donaldson, chairman of the Public Lands Commission, and in the two months that their camp was pitched there it drew a stream of celebrities. Where did they spend their evenings? Grandmother’s cabin, naturally. She was a lamp for every moth that flew. In her single room whose usable space was hardly fifteen feet square there assembled every evening an extraordinary collection of education, culture, talent, eloquence, reputation, political power, and intellectual force. There was no way to keep the two cots curtained off; they were always being exposed to serve as sofas. I doubt that Grandmother was offended to have her bedroom once again invaded; she was never more stimulated in her life. Braced for dutiful and deprived exile, ready to lie in the rude Western bed she had made, she found herself presiding over a salon that (she told herself more than once) Augusta’s studio itself could hardly have matched for brilliance.
If you do not believe we live gaily in Leadville, let me tell you about our July Fourth. I had Mrs. Abadie and Mrs. Jackson, whose husbands had not returned from inspection trips. Mr. Ward dropped in with his hands full of wildflowers, and then Frank Sargent on his way fishing. He helped me get lunch–Oliver has burned his leg with nitric acid and can’t stoop down as one must do to cook on our open Franklin. We had fish chowder (canned) from Boston, white muscat grapes (canned) from California, tea (English breakfast, contributed by Mr. Ward), tapioca pudding with raisins à la Leadville, contributed by the Geological Survey cook who saw we were having a celebration, and toast, made and burned by Frank. Our table service was somewhat permiscus. Frank sat on a packing box, Mr. Ward rocked in our rocker and pretended he was a bad little boy bent on spilling things (he is always the wag of the party, to his own great amusement), Oliver twirled in an old screw office chair and ate his grapes out of a Budweiser tumbler left over from our last picnic. After lunch an ice cream man came mournfully crying his wares along the ditch. Oliver and Mr. Ward rushed out (or Mr. Ward rushed and Oliver hobbled), and Mr. Ward bought some oranges as well. When we went down to dinner that evening there was a foot race going on, accompanied by a brass band. Nothing can be done here, from a tightrope performance to a show by a lot of short-skirted girls at the Great Western Amphitheater, without a band. After supper Mr. Ward took us to Chittenden’s to select carpets and cretonnes for his “trousseau”–he is building a house near us and next year will have a wife. You have no idea what elegant things can be bought here for money–lots of it.
Somehow we kept picking up other friends, and when we arrived home we
bulged
our little cabin. Mr. Jackson and Mr. Abadie had returned, which gave us three sedate couples, but there were in addition Mr. King, Mr. Emmons, and Mr. Wilson of the Survey, Conrad Prager and Henry Janin who have recently arrived, Mr. Donaldson of the Public Lands Commission, Oliver’s clerk Pricey, who hid under the chairs, practically, but immensely enjoyed himself, and Frank, who had returned from fishing with two fish which he handsomely presented to me. He helped me do the dishes left from lunch. Mr. King went up to his camp and brought back a bottle of brandy, and we toasted the republic and sang war and jubilee songs around the fire.
bulged
our little cabin. Mr. Jackson and Mr. Abadie had returned, which gave us three sedate couples, but there were in addition Mr. King, Mr. Emmons, and Mr. Wilson of the Survey, Conrad Prager and Henry Janin who have recently arrived, Mr. Donaldson of the Public Lands Commission, Oliver’s clerk Pricey, who hid under the chairs, practically, but immensely enjoyed himself, and Frank, who had returned from fishing with two fish which he handsomely presented to me. He helped me do the dishes left from lunch. Mr. King went up to his camp and brought back a bottle of brandy, and we toasted the republic and sang war and jubilee songs around the fire.
Most of these people are skeptical about our determination to bring Ollie out, and my determination to stay myself. Mr. King and Mr. Jackson, in a cynical way, pretended to believe that long and frequent separations are the only basis for a sound marriage. This brought Mrs. Jackson up yipping like a little terrier, for like me she followed her husband West. Yet even she doubts Leadville as a home. She urged Denver upon us. Leadville, she said, is too high. Grass won’t grow here, hens won’t lay, cows won’t give milk, cats can’t live. Needless to say, none of them persuaded us. Oliver, who normally tests his condition by how he feels after a hundred-mile ride, says he never felt better, and I must say I feel exhilarated.
I closed the evening by getting out a note I had just had from Professor Rossiter Raymond, who had left us a little while before, after a mine inspection. He had enjoyed himself by our fire, but had caught a tremendous cold as soon as he left the mountains. He sent this humorous little roofer to express his sentiments.
Let princes cough and sneeze
In their palaces of ease
Let colds and influenzas plague the rich;
But give to me instead
A
well-ventilated head
In a little log cabin on a ditch.
In their palaces of ease
Let colds and influenzas plague the rich;
But give to me instead
A
well-ventilated head
In a little log cabin on a ditch.
Don’t you think we have pleasant times? The only single hard thing is that Oliver has to be so much away inspecting mines that, as they say here, are too poor to pay, too rich to quit. He envies the Survey men, who can ride off in the morning with a sandwich and a geological hammer and spend the whole day hunting fossils, or just looking at magnified mountains through a theodolite.
5
“Let me pose you a question,” said Helen Hunt Jackson. “It has nothing to do with the Indian. I know how Americans respond when their interests conflict with the Indian’s rights. They respond dishonorably. But I would like to know something else. How does a government scientist act when he finds himself in possession of information worth millions to some capitalist, when all his closest friends are mining experts in search of precisely that sort of information?”
Filling the rocker but not rocking, she sat with arms folded across her stomach, her shoes hanging like sash weights two inches off the floor. Imperturbably she met the smiles, murmurs, and cries of mock dismay–when she chose to, she could make every eye in the room turn her way, every mouth stop talking. All but Mr. Jackson, who looked at the ceiling and clapped a hand to his brow.
Clarence King raised his plump, animated face and laughed. “I hope you’re not suggesting that any of us would have trouble telling the public interest from our own.”
“I suggest nothing,” said Mrs. Jackson comfortably. “I ask a question that occurs to me. Here sit you geologists charged with surveying the resources of the Public Domain, and here sit your friends whose whole business it is to get hold of such information, preferably before it’s published. It seems to me to offer a nice ethical problem.”
“Now,” said her husband, “you see the consequences of letting women in where men are transacting business. She’ll bring on a congressional investigation.”
“Tell me, Mr. King,” said Mrs. Jackson. “You’re the head of this great new bureau. Have you never been tempted to drop a word and make a friend’s fortune?”
Hoots of pained protest. King, spreading his hands, said, “Should you be asking
me
? All I have is authority. I defer to Emmons, who has information.”
me
? All I have is authority. I defer to Emmons, who has information.”
“There speaks a man who has been questioned by many Congressmen,” said Conrad Prager.
“If Emmons refuses to answer, I can order him to,” King said.
“Why should I refuse?” said Emmons. From the right-hand horn of their conversational crescent he turned his chinless, amused face to the middle, where Mrs. Jackson sat like Buddha in a bustle. “What’s information for, except to inform? What higher bond is there than friendship? What virtue outranks loyalty? Of course I drop confidential words. There isn’t a man here who isn’t richer for my friendship. I’m a good man to know.”
Protests, cries of “Judas!” W. S. Ward, the wag, pretended to take from his wallet and burn in the fire certain incriminating papers. From over against the wall, Oliver squinted through the smoke of his cigar. Frank and Pricey were crowded back on Susan’s cot in the corner.
“You choose to be frivolous,” said Mrs. Jackson. “What would you say if a Congressman did ask you such a question? As one sometime might.”
“But Helen,” said Henry Janin from the nearer cot, “none of these geologists has any information that’s worth thirty cents to your husband or me. I’ve pumped them, I know. The Survey’s function is to publish on pretty maps what’s already known to everyone.”
“Including the diamond-producing formations,” Emmons said into his empty brandy glass.
It seemed to Susan that for a moment everybody held his breath. She thought in dismay, It’s the kind of remark
duels
are fought over! But Janin only reeled from the hips, contorting his dark Creole features into an expression of anguish, and with his hand on his heart said in a high voice, “Unfair! Murder most foul!”
duels
are fought over! But Janin only reeled from the hips, contorting his dark Creole features into an expression of anguish, and with his hand on his heart said in a high voice, “Unfair! Murder most foul!”
“Poor Henry,” King said. “Deceived by unscrupulous men, he vouched for the authenticity of that wretched diamond mine. So a government scientist, whom out of modesty I forbear to name, had to expose the fraud. It very neatly demonstrates the difference you inquire about, being private interest and government principle.”
Conrad Prager, consulting his long beautiful hands, said, “I’ve always wondered about that case, if it wasn’t a put-up job. Private expert and government scientist could have planned the whole thing together, hired their accomplices, salted the mine. Janin could have gone and inspected it, all properly blindfolded and all that. Then comes King, like a knight on a white horse, to expose it–well after the accomplices have flown. Janin consoles himself for the trifling loss of his reputation with a good slice of cash–takes the cash and lets the credit go, you might say–and King gets not only cash but a great deal of credit. It’s like letting thieves into the vaults of the Bank of England and then knighting them for crying ‘Stop thief!’ after they’ve stolen everything.”
“Must I bear this?” Janin said.
They were all laughing, Susan not least. How characteristic, she was thinking, that these men of great capacity, captains and heroes involved in great affairs, should take their accomplishments as a light-hearted joke, and their expertness with such levity that they could joke Mr. Janin about his error, accepting the fact that they were his equals in that as in other things. Their life was the life toward which Oliver had always aspired, and she for him-a life that could provide real elegance and association with first class minds. Stopped for a moment while she watched Oliver, in shirt sleeves, sitting on the floor, reach King’s brandy bottle across to Emmons, she said, “I never till now knew how unprincipled you are, Mr. King.”
King said, “I call the jury’s attention to the way in which speculation has become supposition, supposition certainty, and certainty accusation. It’s a lesson in the workings of the expert mind, which can go from a hunch to an affidavit, and from an affidavit to a fee, within minutes. With great authority the expert says what is not necessarily so.”
“I was only suggesting some of the possibilities of government science,” Prager said.
“Now that you’ve abandoned ship and joined the enemy. Tell the people what’s happened to Ross Raymond, as a possibility of private expertise.”
Prager laughed and laid his hand on his thigh. “Alas.”
“Alas, why?” Jackson asked.
“Alas his mine is played out. It’s been high-graded to death.”
“According to whom?”
“According to an upright government scientist, who just might have been tipped off by a private expert. They both got here too late to keep him from making a mistake that’s going to cost somebody a lot of money.”
“Oh, what a shame,” Susan said. She had liked Rossiter Raymond, and he had been so uplifted by the altitude, and the prospects of the mine, and the company in her cabin. “He was such a good companion,” she said.
“When he had that well-ventilated head here,” Prager said. “Well, he’s like Henry, he’ll get over his error, unless he should make another mistake and come back to Denver and meet some of his principals. Then he’d
really
have a well-ventilated head.”
really
have a well-ventilated head.”
“Which does not answer my original question,” said Mrs. Jackson, placid in her rocker. “I know mining experts make mistakes–my heavens, I’m married to one. Mr. Janin pretends to think they are paid by investors to tell investors what investors want to hear. By that rule Mr. Raymond made no mistake at all. By any rule he hasn’t been dishonest. But how does a government scientist remain honest? I read newspaper editorials saying that Mr. King and Mr. Donaldson and Major Powell and Secretary Schurz are inaugurating a period of unfamiliar integrity in the Department of the Interior. Given the temptations, how can you guarantee any such thing?”
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