The Surf Guru (20 page)

Pickwick was Scottwell-Scott's nemesis and an enemy of science itself. Of his many offenses, the most grievous was his assault on my mentor's reputation with allegations of academic perfidy (not true), clumsy passes at the wives of colleagues (unverified and unlikely), sadistic treatment of assistants (never), and excessive ingestion of both spirits and the various plants sacred to southwestern cave-dwelling tribes (exaggerated, and none of Pickwick's damned business, regardless). I shall not discuss any of his accusations further, as they belong in the ash heaps of history and not to works of academic integrity such as this.

Proof is still being gathered, but I believe that Pickwick sent minions out to infiltrate various herbaria to destroy the type specimens of many species described by Scottwell-Scott so that these species could be recollected, redescribed, and renamed by the dastard himself (e.g.:
Involvulus pickwickii
,
Zosum pickwickii
,
Pflugeria pickwickii
). Also, like that villain Gjetost,
²⁴
Pickwick used his connections to money and power shamelessly. He obstructed Scottwell-Scott's funding, added my mentor and me to the secret blacklist at
Stamen
, and arranged for the publication (in
Stamen
, of course) of Kingslee's traitorous review of Scottwell-Scott's magnum opus,
An Omnibus Guide to the Western Flora
, in which he made great sport of pointing out minor errors in the manuscript.

One of these, the manual's confusion of
Claemium bakerii
and
C. minor
, was, in all candor, a result of my own carelessness as I helped Scottwell-Scott prepare the manuscript. I am not above admitting my mistakes, and in any event, Scottwell-Scott delivered to me a reprimand that has served me well in all of my work since, emphasizing as it did the importance of meticulousness. It should be noted that the mistake is a common one; as I demonstrated in
Flora of Coahuila
,
²⁵
these two species never should have been separated to begin with. In that volume, I proposed that the proper “lumped” species be named
S. aeneii
, by way of honoring my ailing mentor, but my suggestion (like most of my work) has been studiously ignored by the despots in our field and the henchmen on their payrolls.

But I digress. In the wake of Pickwick's and Kingslee's calumnious campaign of mockery and destruction,
An Omnibus Guide to the Western Flora
was pulled from publication. Scottwell-Scott was never the same, withdrawing into seclusion, keeping even his allies at a great distance, and sitting idle as his mind and body deteriorated. He had always said he wanted to die while still doing his work—“in the harness,” as it were—but these villains robbed him of the ability to do so. I have vowed not to let them grind me down in the same way.

Together, these photographs of Prim and Gjetost make a diptych of thievery, mendacity, and manipulation: Prim, an unrepentant thief and a festering wen on the nether parts of honest botany; Gjetost, a monied but morally bankrupt fool and four-flusher. These two Norsemen worked together so closely that one wonders how they could tell whose trouser pockets were whose.

For decades they perpetuated their slander of me by repeating ad nauseam all the hoary falsehoods about my part in the Cates debacle and my claim of primacy with respect to the species of
Ptimorus
discovered on that expedition. No doubt they did so at the direction of that other botanical criminal, Kingslee.
²⁶
(If only any of these men had put a tenth as much effort into their scholarship as they have done in maligning me!) Their damnable fictions have obstructed the funding of my work, which has caused me much anguish and gastrointestinal misfortune.

Prim, at least, has gone and relieved us from his presence. On a visit to Bergen last autumn, he strode into the path of an onrushing taxicab. (No doubt he believed that people and machines alike were obligated to keep clear as he strolled importantly through the city.) Gjetost, the now-hostless parasite, was last seen crying in his lutefisk and writing the inevitable obituary-cum-hagiography for Prim in
Stamen
.
The sooner he, too, strides in front of a heavy conveyance moving at great velocity, the better. We shall all release a long-held sigh.

It cannot fail to dawn on one that Norwegians, who preserve their fish with lye, preserve their careers with lies. (I customarily leave punning to less serious scribes, but here I cannot resist.)

I cannot think of a single female botanist who possesses any of the conniving, mean-spirited, and destructive impulses that we male botanists have “in spades” (as the young people say). Of course, many botanically inclined women have produced embarrassingly half-witted work (e.g., Mrs. Beatrice Hilpert of Modesto, Calif., in her treatment of the genus
Catherwoodia
[
Stamen
, 9:1 33-36] and Mrs. C. P. Grüntz of Fredericksburg, Texas, in her
Flora of Gillespie County
[1924]), but incompetence alone is no sin, merely an irremediable condition. Incompetence twinned with treachery, however, is responsible for much of what is so damnably wrong with American botanical study today.

Miss Helen Fair is no incompetent. She is without doubt one of the most talented and dedicated herborizers around, with a vast knowledge of flora from
Adastra
to
Zyxum
. I have known her since she was in her early twenties, a bright spark of a girl who had not much interest in the mundane business of woo and courtship—not as long as there were
Rynesia
blooming in the desert! Not when the world lacked a definitive dichotomous key for the vast and complicated
Modicaceae
family!

Miss Fair has gone ahead and gotten herself married, to my heart's sorrow, taking the vows with Mr. O. O. Beard, the genial (if rather epicene) scion of a zinc-mining family and also a passionate lover of ferns. (I was unable to attend the wedding due to my rigorous botanizing schedule, but the former Mrs. Quilcock attended and reported that a spirited time was had by all.) This marriage will produce no issue, obviously, but their wealth has allowed Mrs. Beard to pursue her scientific inquiries free from interference.
Brava
, I say.
²⁷

C. B. Hoyt was referred to by his colleagues and students at Easterbrook College, Baltimore, as “Ol' Beans and Tape.” Though the origins of the sobriquet are obscure, common sense suggests that “tape” derived from his insistence on proper techniques (i.e., no glue!) for specimen preservation on herbarium sheets. (Compare, at your peril, Petitfour's likely choice of adhesive.) As for “beans,” I do not know; I shall limit myself to pointing out that Scottwell-Scott and I must not have been alone in thinking him a “windy” old gasbag.

Indeed, Hoyt was a past master in the use of hot air, as he demonstrated ceaselessly while chairing the North American Botanical Fellowship star-chamber proceedings against me, which were held in early 1916 in the aftermath of the Cates outrage. In the same proceeding, Hoyt and his footmen denied my claim against Prim
in re
primacy
in re
the discovery of
Ptimorus “catesii.”
(Of course, in my writings I have referred to the species by its rightful name, i.e., the one I had chosen for it:
P. annasophii
.)
²⁸
Scottwell-Scott, in his pained and miserable last days, roused himself from his sickbed to appear on my behalf, but he was in too compromised a state to make his points forcefully. I remain to this day convinced that I heard back-row snickers from Pickwick, Unterdorf, Prim, and Gjetost while Scottwell-Scott—frail, toothless, tubercular, and aphasic—valiantly defended my character and honesty. Reader, you should understand that a man does not easily forget such vile mistreatment of his mentor.

After the sham proceedings, I pursued remedies against Kingslee, Prim, Hoyt, and the Fellowship in the American civil court system—a Sisyphean endeavor if ever there was one. I served as my own attorney and, with a year or two of study, mastered tort law, in particular the case law regarding defamation, fraud, conversion, trespass to chattels, intentional infliction of emotional distress (and, in a later action, loss of consortium). Sadly, the legal system is also full to the brim with lickspittles, cowards, and toadies, and my efforts were fruitless.

In botanical matters, I find little fault with C. B. Hoyt's work. He would have ranked among the field's finest if he had not styled himself a gray-flanneled despot, lording over the world of plant taxonomy from his Baltimore throne. Power corrupts, yes, but it is only the corrupt who seek power in the first place.

Conklin is a well-meaning and eager young pup, but to call him even a mediocre botanist would be a colossal act of charity. He is also a damnably persistent writer of missives to men of science whom he imagines to be his mentors.

I allowed him to accompany me into the field once, to my great disadvantage, because my contracted assistant had quit on the eve of the trek, citing the revelations in the Cates fiasco (which, again, will not be dignified with comment herein). I warned young Conklin as we prepared for our explorations on the rocky outcroppings of Lower California's San Renaldo Bay that the terrain would be difficult, the weather unpredictable, the fauna hostile to our presence. He reassured me he was man enough for work, bouncing about on his toes and fluttering about the room and incessantly chirping gramercies, all in a mode of behavior unrecognizable to me as having any connection to masculinity.