MARRIAGE
It was now the fall of 1908, and the time had come for me to visit
England again and try and arouse fresh interest in our work; and this
motive was combined with the desire to see my old mother, who was now
nearing her fourscore years. I decided to leave in November and return
_via_ America in the spring to receive the honorary degree of LL.D.
from Williams College and of M.A. from Harvard, which I had been
generously offered.
My lecture tour this winter was entrusted to an agency. Propaganda is
a recognized necessity in human life, though it has little attraction
for most men. To me having to ask personally for money even for other
people was always a difficulty. Scores of times I have been blamed for
not even stating in a lecture that we needed help. The distaste for
beating the big drum, which lecturing for your own work always appears
to be, makes me quite unable to see any virtue in not doing it, but
just asking the Lord to do it. If I really were convinced that He
would meet the expenses whether I worked or not, I should believe that
neither would He let people suffer and die untended out here or
anywhere else. Indeed, it would seem a work of supererogation to have
to remind Him of the necessity that existed.
The fact that we have to show pictures of the work which we are doing
is tiresome and takes time, but it encourages us to have pictures
worth taking and to do deeds which we are not ashamed to narrate. It
also stimulates others to give themselves as well as their money to
similar kinds of work at their own doorsteps, to see how much like
themselves their almoners are. Only to-day my volunteer secretary told
me that he honestly expected to meet "a bearded old fogey in
spectacles," not a man who can shoot his own dinner from the wing or
who enjoys the justifiable pleasures of life.
The religion of Christ never permitted me to accept the idea that
there is "nothing to do, only believe." Every man ought to earn his
own bread and the means to support his family. Why, then, should you
have only to ask the Lord to give unasked the wherewithal to feed
other people's families?
Lecturing for philanthropies, only another word for the means to help
along the Kingdom of God on earth, is in England usually carried on
through the ordinary missionary meetings; and in my previous
experience they were not generally much credit to the splendid objects
in view. The lectures were often patronized by small audiences largely
composed of women and children.
That particular winter in England I had the privilege of addressing
all sorts of workmen's clubs and city lecture-course audiences, people
who would have "the shivers" almost if one had asked them to attend a
"missionary" lecture. The collection, or even the final monetary
outcome, is far from being the test of the value of the address. To
commend Christ's religion by minimizing in any way the prerogative He
gave men of carrying on the work of His kingdom in their human efforts
is to sap the very appeal that attracts manhood to Him. I never wanted
to sing, "Oh! to be nothing, nothing." I always wished to sing, "Oh!
make me something, something"--that shall leave some footprints on the
sands of time, and have some record of talents gained to offer a
Master whom we believe to be righteous.
When spring came and the lectures were over, a new idea suddenly
dawned upon me. If I were going to America to festive gatherings and
to have some honours conferred, why leave the mother behind?
Seventy-eight years is not old. She was born in India, had lived in
England, and suppose anything did happen, why not sleep in
America?--she would be just as near God there. The splendid Mauretania
not only took us safely over, but gave me also that gift which I
firmly believe God designed for me--a real partner to share in my joys
and sorrows, to encourage and support in trouble and failures, to
inspire and advise in a thousand ways, and in addition to bring into
my distant field of work a personal comrade with the culture, wisdom,
and enthusiasm of the American life and the training of one of the
very best of its Universities.
We met on board the second day out. She was travelling with a Scotch
banker of Chicago and his wife, Mr. W.R. Stirling, whose daughter was
her best friend. They were returning from a motor tour through Europe
and Algeria. The Mauretania takes only four and a half days in
crossing, and never before did I realize the drawbacks of "hustle,"
and yet the extreme need of it on my part. The degrees of longitude
slipped by so quickly that I felt personally aggrieved when one day we
made over six hundred miles, and the captain told us in triumph that
it was a new record. The ship seemed to be paying off some spite
against me. My mother kept mostly to her cabin. Though constantly in
to see her, I am afraid I did not unduly worry her to join me on the
deck. When just on landing I told her that I had asked a fellow
passenger to become my wife, I am sure had the opportunity arisen she
would have tumbled down the Mauretania's staircase. When she had the
joy of meeting the girl, her equanimity was so far upset as to let an
unaccustomed tear roll down her cheek. That, at least, is one of the
tears which I have cost her which brings no regrets. For she confesses
that it often puzzles her to which of our lives the event has meant
most.
The constant little activities of my life had so filled every hour of
time, and so engrossed my thoughts, that I had never thought to
philosophize on the advisability of marriage, nor stopped to compare
my life with those of my neighbors. There is no virtue in keeping the
Ninth Commandment and not envying your neighbour's condition or goods
when it never enters your head or heart to worry about them; and when
you are getting what you care about no halo is due you for not falling
victim to envy or jealousy of others. I have not been in the habit of
praying for special personal providences like fine weather in my
section of the earth, or for head wind for the schooners so as to give
me a fair wind for my steamer, except so far as one prays for the
recognition of God's good hand in everything.
I can honestly protest that nothing in my life ever came more "out of
the blue" than my marriage; and beyond that I am increasingly certain
each day that it did come out of that blue where God dwells.
I knew neither whence she came nor whither she was going. Indeed, I
only found out when the proposition was really put that I did not even
know her name--for it was down on the passenger list as one of the
daughters of the friends with whom she was travelling. Fortunately it
never entered my head that it mattered. For I doubt if I should have
had the courage to question the chaperon, whose daughter she
presumably was. It certainly was a "poser" to be told, "But you don't
even know my name." Had I not been a bit of a seaman, and often
compelled on the spur of the moment to act first and think
afterwards, what the consequences might have been I cannot say.
Fortunately, I remembered that it was not the matter at issue, and
explained, without admitting the impeachment, that the only question
that interested me in the least was what I hoped that it might become.
Incidentally she mentioned that she had only once heard of me. It was
the year previous when I had been speaking at Bryn Mawr and she had
refused in no measured terms an invitation to attend, as sounding
entirely too dull for her predilections. I have wondered whether this
was not another "small providence."
A pathological condition of one's internal workings is not unusual
even in Britons who "go down to the sea in ships," but such genius as
our family has displayed has, so history assures us, shone best on a
quarter-deck; and on this occasion it pleased God ultimately to add
another naval victory to our credit. It is generally admitted that an
abnormal mentality accompanies this not uncommon experience of human
life, and I found my lack of appreciation of the rapid voyage
paralleled by a wicked satisfaction that my mother preferred the brass
four-poster, so thoughtfully provided for her by the Cunard Company,
to the risks of the unsteady promenade deck.
When the girl's way and mine parted in that last word in material
jostlings, the custom-house shed in Manhattan, after the liner
arrived, I realized that it was rather an armistice than a permanent
settlement which I had achieved. Though there was no father in the
case, I learned that there was a mother and a home in Chicago. These
were formidable strongholds for a homeless wanderer to assault, but
rendered doubly so by the fact that there was neither brother nor
sister to leave behind to mitigate the possible vacancy. The
"everlasting yea" not having been forthcoming, under the
circumstances it was no easy task for me to keep faith with the many
appointments to lecture on Labrador which had been made for me. The
inexorable schedule kept me week after week in the East. Fortunately
the generous hospitality of many old friends who wanted the pleasure
of meeting my mother kept my mind somewhat occupied. But I confess at
the back of it the forthcoming venture loomed up more and more
momentous as the fateful day drew near for me to start for Chicago.
This visit to my wife's beautiful country home among the trees on the
bluff of Lake Michigan in Lake Forest was one long dream. My mother
and I were now made acquainted with the family and friends of my
fiancee. Her father, Colonel MacClanahan, a man of six feet five
inches in height, had been Judge Advocate General on the Staff of
Braxton Bragg and had fought under General Robert E. Lee. He was a
Southerner of Scotch extraction, having been born and brought up in
Tennessee. A lawyer by training, after the war, when everything that
belonged to him was destroyed in the "reconstruction period," and
being still a very young man, he had gone North to Chicago and begun
life again at his profession. There he met and married, in 1884, Miss
Rosamond Hill, who was born in Burlington, Vermont, but who, since
childhood and the death of her parents, had lived with her married
sister, Mrs. Charles Durand, of Chicago. The MacClanahans had two
children--the boy, Kinloch, dying at an early age as the result of an
accident. Colonel MacClanahan himself died a few months later, leaving
a widow and one child, Anna Elizabeth Caldwell MacClanahan. She and
her mother had lived the greater part of the time with Mrs. Durand,
who died something more than a year before our engagement.
The friends with whom my fiancee had been travelling were almost
next-door neighbours in Lake Forest. They made my short stay doubly
happy by endless kindnesses; and all through the years, till his death
in 1918, Mr. Stirling gave me not only a friendship which meant more
to me than I can express, but his loving and invaluable aid and
counsel in our work.
In spite of my many years of sailor life, I found that I was expected
among other things to ride a horse, my fiancee being devoted to that
means of progression. The days when I had ridden to hounds in England
as a boy in Cheshire stood me in some little stead, for like swimming,
tennis, and other pastimes calling for coordination, riding is never
quite forgotten. But remembering Mr. Winkle's experiences, it was not
without some misgivings that I found a shellback like myself galloping
behind my lady's charger. My last essay at horseback riding had been
just eleven years previously in Iceland. Having to wait a few days at
Reikkavik, I had hired a whole bevy of ponies with a guide to take
myself and the young skipper of our vessel for a three days' ride to
see the geysers. He had never been on the back of any animal before,
and was nevertheless not surprised or daunted at falling off
frequently, though an interlude of being dragged along with one foot
in the stirrup over lava beds made no little impression upon him.
Fodder of all kinds is very scarce in the volcanic tufa of which all
that land consists, and any moment that one stopped was always devoted
by our ponies to grubbing for blades of grass in the holes. On our
return to the ship the crew could not help noticing that the skipper
for many days ceased to patronize the lockers or any other seat, and
soon they were rejoicing that for some reason he was unable to sit
down at all. He explained it by saying that his ponies ate so much
lava that it stuck out under their skins, and I myself recall feeling
inclined to agree with him.
The journey from Lake Forest to Labrador would have been a tedious
one, but by good fortune a friend from New York had arranged to come
and visit the coast in his steam yacht, the Enchantress, and was good
enough to pick me up at Bras d'Or. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who had
previously shown me much kindness, permitted us to rendezvous at his
house, and for a second time I enjoyed seeing some of the experiments
of his most versatile brain. His aeroplanes, telephones, and other
inventions were all intensely interesting, but among his other lines
of work the effort to develop a race of sheep, which had litters just
as pigs do, interested me most.
Francis Sayre, whom I had heard win the prize at Williams with his
valedictory speech, was again to be my summer secretary. On our
arrival at St. Anthony we found a great deal going on. The fame as a
surgeon of my colleague, Dr. John Mason Little, had spread so widely
that St. Anthony Hospital would no longer hold the patients who sought
assistance at it. Fifty would arrive on a single mail boat. They were
dumped down on the little wharf, having been landed in small punts
from the steamer, as in those days we had no proper dock to which the
boats could come. The little waiting-room in the hospital at night
resembled nothing so much as a newly opened sardine tin; and to cater
for the waiting patients was a Sisyphean task without the Hercules.
Through the instrumentality of Dr. Little's sister a fund of ten
thousand dollars was raised to double the size of the hospital, and
the work of building was begun on my return. Although the capacity was
greatly increased thereby we have really been unable ever to make our
building what it ought to be to meet the problem. The first part,
constructed of green lumber hauled from the woods, and other wings
added at different periods of growth, the endeavour to blast out
suitable heating-plant accommodations--all this has left the hospital
building more or less a thing of rags and patches, and most
uneconomical to run. We are urgently in need of having it rebuilt
entirely of either brick or stone, in order to resist the winter cold,
to give more efficiency and comfort to patients and staff and to
conserve our fuel, which is the most serious item of expense we have
to meet.
But at that time with all its capacity for service the new addition
was rising, sounding yet one more note of praise in better ability to
meet the demands upon us.
And _pari passu_ came the beautiful offer of my friend, Mr. Sayre, to
double the size of our orphanage, putting up the new wing in memory of
his father. This meant that instead of twenty we might now accommodate
forty children at a pinch. Life is so short that it is the depths of
pathos to be hampered in doing one's work for the lack of a few
dollars. Of great interest to my fiancee and myself was the selection
of a piece of ground adjoining the Mission land, and the erection for
ourselves of the home which we had planned and designed together
before I had left Lake Forest. We chose some land up on the hillside
and overlooking the sea and the harbour, where the view should be as
comprehensive as possible. But we feared that even though our new
house was very literally "founded upon a rock," the winds might some
day remove it bodily from its abiding-place, and therefore we riveted
the structure with heavy iron bolts to the solid bedrock.
One excitement of that season was Admiral Peary's return from the
North Pole. We were cruising near Indian Harbour when some visitors
came aboard to make use of our wireless telegraph, which at that time
we had installed on board. It proved to be Mr. Harry Whitney. It was
the first intimation that we had had that Peary was returning that
year. Whitney had met Cook coming back from the polar sea on the west
side of the Gulf, where he had disappeared about eighteen months
previously. I had met Dr. Cook several times myself, and indeed I had
slept at his house in Brooklyn. He had visited Battle Harbour Hospital
in 1893 when he was wrecked in the steamer in which he was conducting
a party to visit Greenland. We had again seen him as he went North
with Mr. Bradley in the yacht, and he had sent us back some Greenland
dogs to mix their blood with our dogs, and so perhaps improve their
breed and endurance. These, however, I had later felt it necessary to
kill, for the Greenland dogs carry the dangerous tapeworm which is
such a menace to man, and of which our Labrador dogs are entirely free
so far.
The picture of this meeting on the ice between Cook and Whitney gave
us the impression of another Nansen and Jackson at Spitzbergen.
Whitney had welcomed Cook warmly, had witnessed his troubles at Etah,
and his departure by komatik, and had taken charge of his instruments
and records to carry South with him when he came home. But his ship
was delayed and delayed, and when Peary in the Roosevelt passed on his
way South, fearing to be left another winter Whitney had accepted a
passage on her at the cost of leaving Cook's material behind. He had
met his own boat farther south and had transferred to her. He left the
impression very firmly on all our minds that both he and Dr. Cook
really believed that the latter had found the long-sought Pole.
A little later, while cruising in thick weather in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, my wireless operator came in and said: "There can be no harm
telling you, Doctor, that Peary is at Battle Harbour. He is wiring to
Washington that he has found the Pole, and also he is asking his
committee if he may present the Mission with his superfluous supplies,
or whether he is to sell them to you." Seeing that it is not easy to
know whence wireless messages come if the sender does not own up to
his whereabouts, I at once ordered him to wireless to Peary at Battle
the simple words: "Give it to them, of course," and sign it
"Washington." I knew that the Commander would see the joke, and if the
decision turned out later to be incorrect, it could easily be
rectified by purchasing the goods. A tin of his brown bread now lies
among my curios and one of his sledges is in my barn.
[Illustration: COMMODORE PEARY ON HIS WAY BACK FROM THE POLE,
1909]
On our arrival at Battle Harbour we found the Roosevelt lying at the
wharf repainting and refitting. A whole host of newspaper men and
other friends had come North to welcome the explorer home. Battle was
quite a gay place; but it was living up to its name, for Peary not
only claimed that he had found the Pole, but also that Cook had not;
and he was realizing what a hard thing it is to prove a negative. We
had a very delightful time with the party, and greatly enjoyed meeting
all the members of the expedition. Among them was the ill-fated Borup,
destined shortly to be drowned on a simple canoe trip, and the
indomitable and athletic Macmillan who subsequently led the Crocker
Land expedition, our own schooner George B. Cluett carrying them to
Etah.
My secretary, Mr. Sayre, was just about to leave for America, and at
Peary's request he transferred to the Roosevelt with his typewriter,
to help the Commander with a few of his many notes and records. I dare
say that he got an inside view of the question then agitating the
world from Washington to Copenhagen; but if so, he has remained
forever silent about it. For our part we were glad that some one had
found the Pole, for it has been a costly quest in both fine men and
valuable time, energy, and money. It has caused lots of trouble and
sorrow, and so far at least its practical issues have been few.
Our wedding had been scheduled for November, and for the first time I
had found a Labrador summer long. In the late fall I left for Chicago
on a mission that had no flavour of the North Pole about it. We were
married in Grace Episcopal Church, Chicago, on November 18, 1909. Our
wedding was followed by a visit to the Hot Springs of Virginia; and
then "heigho," and a flight for the North. We sailed from St. John's,
Newfoundland, in January. I had assured my wife, who is an excellent
sailor, that she would scarcely notice the motion of the ship on the
coastal trip of three hundred miles. Instead of five days, it took
nine; and we steamed straight out of the Narrows at St. John's into a
head gale and a blizzard of snow. The driving spray froze onto every
thing till the ship was sugared like a vast Christmas cake. It made
the home which we had built at St. Anthony appear perfectly
delightful. My wife had had her furniture sent North during the
summer, so that now the "Lares and Penates" with which she had been
familiar from childhood seemed to extend a mute but hearty welcome to
us from their new setting.
We have three children, all born at St. Anthony. Our elder son,
Wilfred Thomason, was born in the fall of 1910; Kinloch Pascoe in the
fall of 1912, two years almost to a day behind his brother; and lastly
a daughter, Rosamond Loveday, who followed her brothers in 1917. In
the case of the two latter children the honours of the name were
divided between both sides of the family, Kinloch and Rosamond being
old family names on my wife's side, while, on the other hand, there
have been Pascoe and Loveday Grenfells from time immemorial.
Nearly ten years have now rolled away since our marriage. The puzzle
to me is how I ever got along before; and these last nine years have
been so crowded with the activities and worries of the increasing
cares of a growing work, that without the love and inspiration and
intellectual help of a true comrade, I could never have stood up under
them. Every side of life is developed and broadened by companionship.
I admit of no separation of life into "secular" and "religious."
Religion, if it means anything, means the life and activities of our
divine spirit on earth in relation to our Father in heaven. I am
convinced from experience of the supreme value to that of a happy
marriage, and that "team work" is God's plan for us on this earth.