• CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT •
THERE WAS A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF SCEPTICISM IN EDITORIALS IN newspapers around the world about Dr. Cook’s claim of having reached the pole, editorials that were reprinted in the Danish papers.
The New York editorials, aside from those of the Herald, were reservedly, noncommittally congratulatory. The British papers said they would reserve judgment on Dr. Cook’s claim until his “proofs,” about the very existence of which there was some question, had been examined.
But the explorers of the world quickly came to Dr. Cook’s defence—explorers such as Ernest Shackleton, just back from a farthest south in the Antarctic, and Gen. Adolphus W. Greely, of the infamous Greely expedition.
“The word of a gentleman explorer has always been sufficient ‘proof,’ “ said Roald Amundsen. “I can see no reason why this should not be the case with Dr. Cook.” Ernest Sverdrup professed to having not the slightest doubt that Dr. Cook and I had reached the pole.
But only Amundsen continued to speak publicly in support of Dr. Cook after what was called “the revelation at the Tivoli.”
A reception was held for Dr. Cook and me at the ballroom of the Tivoli Casino, the gilded walls of which were hung with wreaths of roses in our honour.
During the celebration, a man tiptoed from the back of the room to the head table and handed Dr. Cook a piece of paper as if he was officially serving him with some legal document. Dr. Cook glanced at it, then handed it to me. The paper read: “Peary Says Stars and Stripes Nailed to the Pole. Claims the Pole as His.” Someone snatched it from my hands.
Dr. Cook’s expression was suddenly so at odds with everything else—the garland of flowers that he wore around his neck, the white tablecloth spread with glasses of sherry and champagne, the merrymaking Danes with their glasses held aloft. A melting ice sculpture, someone’s version of the North Pole, lay in front of him.
The man who delivered the piece of paper said that Peary had, that very day, laid claim to the pole, and had said he could prove, as he was sure Dr. Cook could not, that he had been there. Peary and the members of the Peary Arctic Club were hinting that in claiming to have reached the pole, Dr. Cook was more than just “mistaken,” and that the world would soon know what they meant. The Danes on either side of Dr. Cook all looked grimly resolved, as if they had just heard that a long-predicted war had broken out at last.
Dr. Cook recovered his composure. He smiled and, holding aloft a glass of champagne, proclaimed to my astonishment that in the discovery of the pole, there was such glory that he would not mind sharing some of it with Peary.
In the wake of the revelation at the Tivoli Casino, there were new revelations every day. A controversy began that we were told was crowding all else from the front pages of the New York papers.
We learned that while we were returning from the pole, in the summer of 1908, Peary left Washington for Cape Sheridan on the Roosevelt. Shortly after his arrival, as the papers reported in mid-August, he encountered an emaciated, scurvy-ridden Rudolph Franke. The papers said that Dr. Cook had told the at first disappointed and resentful Franke that if he kept on going north, he would either die or “wreck” the expedition. Dr. Cook assured me he had said no such thing.
By the time Peary found him, the papers said, Franke was glad that Dr. Cook had sent him back, so unnerved was he by the prospect of another winter in the Arctic. Franke said that when he last saw him, Dr. Cook was well and proceeding north with Mr. Stead, a group of Eskimos and a team of dogs, his intention being to leave everyone else behind once he believed he was close enough to the pole to attempt the last leg on snowshoes. But Dr. Cook had not returned to Etah as expected in the summer of 1908. By the fall of that year, the whereabouts of both the Cook and Peary expeditions had been unknown.
It was reported in the Herald that Peary, a year later, on his way back from the pole in August, had encountered Harry Whitney at Etah. He was said to have caught Whitney in possession of some notebooks that Dr. Cook had asked him to take back to New York and give to Mrs. Cook. Peary said that he would strand Whitney in the Arctic if he tried to take on board anything of Dr. Cook’s. It was said that at Peary’s instructions, Whitney and Robert Bartlett, Peary’s first mate, buried Dr. Cook’s notebooks at Etah, though exactly where, no one, not even Whitney and Bartlett, seemed to know.
“Perhaps it was unwise of me to have left things of such value with an associate of Peary’s,” Dr. Cook told the Danish press, “or indeed to have let them out of my sight, but I dared not take them with me on my journey by foot over Greenland lest they fall to pieces.”
I confirmed Dr. Cook’s account of how decomposed the notebooks had been and said that Whitney had been the only hope of preserving what was left of them.
“Until I have those notebooks, nothing but another expedition to the pole using the very same route as I used could prove with absolute certainty that I was at the pole,” Dr. Cook told reporters. “Polar explorers, through the ages, have always been taken at their word. Why have I not been extended this courtesy, while Peary, who has no more proof than I do, has been taken at his word—by the press at least, if not by the people of America.”
Associates of Peary’s countered these accusations with a host of their own, saying that Dr. Cook’s account of reaching the pole was so vague and simplistic that it might have been written by a child and was therefore impossible to verify.
It was said that Dr. Cook’s account of his attainment of the pole differed every time he told it. His compass and sextant readings, inasmuch as he had reported them at all, were inconsistent. His description of the land he crossed and saw on his way to the pole seemed to contradict those of other explorers, whose reports were far more detailed and scientifically composed. The only thing he said consistently was that he knew he was at the North Pole because his compass needle pointed ninety degrees dead south—but it had long been known that at the North Pole, a compass would read ninety degrees south.
It was said that astronomers took exception to Dr. Cook’s descriptions of shadows at the pole. He had kept no record, or at least had none in his possession, of the variations in the earth’s magnetic field, which would have registered on his compass as he neared the pole. Had he kept such a record, these variations, the numerical value of which could not be predicted by scientists, could have been confirmed by a future expedition. Peary had not kept a record of these variations either, though he claimed he could prove that he had made allowances for them in his navigations.
Peary’s supporters said that in what few calculations Dr. Cook had divulged, he had failed to take into account the curvature of the earth, instead talking as if he believed the world was flat. They said that his two Eskimo guides, who at first confirmed that they had gone with him to the pole, had retracted their stories. They were said to have laughed when asked if they and Dr. Cook and Mr. Stead had made it to the Big Nail, asserting that at no point on their journey had they ventured out onto the polar sea far enough to lose sight of land.
Dr. Cook’s supporters: Peary, too, had no records, had made statements that were contradicted by the works of earlier explorers. As for the Eskimos, it was well known that in their eagerness to please white men, they would agree with any statement that was made and were therefore bound to contradict themselves.
Peary’s descriptions of the effect on the ice of the ocean currents and of the weather conditions were almost identical to those of Dr. Cook, who had published his report first. But Peary’s went unquestioned, while every detail of Dr. Cook’s was scrutinized.
Dr. Cook pointed out that Peary had sent back the only member of his expedition who had sufficient knowledge of the compass and the sextant to verify that he was at the pole. This man was Capt. Bob Bartlett, whom Peary said he sent back because he did not think that Bartlett had earned the right to share in the glory of reaching the pole, never having made a bid for it before. Matthew Henson and some Eskimos had, according to Peary, gone with him to the pole. To them, as they were not white but belonged to what Peary called the “inferior races,” went none of the glory.
Peary’s supporters replied that Dr. Cook, too, had sent back the only member of his expedition who could have verified his claims, Rudolph Franke.
Franke, Dr. Cook’s supporters pointed out, was a cook who was making his first trip to the Arctic and had no knowledge of navigation, unlike the experienced explorer and ship’s captain Bob Bartlett. They added that “Dr. Cook did not send back his long-time assistant, Devlin Stead,” but Peary’s supporters dismissed the idea that Mr. Stead could settle the controversy, declaring that he had no navigational knowledge and adding that, in any case, he would back up anything Dr. Cook said, so blindly was he devoted to him.
The controversy became so nightmarishly complicated that I wondered how laymen could possibly be convinced that Dr. Cook had beaten Peary to the pole.
“I wish I understood the science of it all,” I said. “If I did, I would be spending all my time defending you with proofs, with arguments, instead of just vouching for your honesty. You must not lose any time. You must defend yourself. Show what you remember of your records to experts who can verify your claims.”
“There are no experts who can verify my claims,” said Dr. Cook. “Nor any who can verify Peary’s. As for understanding the science of it all, no one does. Science is, as yet, too primitive. There is an expert in every subject, and not even the experts understand each other. As I told the press, my claim can be proved only by someone who retraced my footsteps as I remember them. And who is going to undertake an expedition to the pole just to prove that someone else got there before him?”
He waved his hand as if to dismiss the whole idea of defending himself against Peary and the members of his Arctic club. I decided to drop the matter temporarily, but to return to it before we left for home.
In the middle of all the controversy, the celebrations continued.
Dr. Cook met in the chancery of the University of Copenhagen with the rector magnificus, Professor Torp, and the royal astronomer, Professor Stromgren, whose technical questions Dr. Cook answered so satisfactorily that it was decided the university should confer upon him an honorary degree. This was done at the Great Hall, where he told the audience members—who had heard that, elsewhere, his claim was being met with scepticism and, in Peary’s case, outright accusations of fraud—that the two Eskimos who went with us to the pole would confirm his story, as would his records of observations, which, though not now in his possession, soon would be.
He stood in an elevated, canopied pulpit, leaning out over the rail of it towards his audience like the figurehead on the prow of a ship.
“I can say no more. I can do no more,” said Dr. Cook, extending his arms. “I show you my hands. I show you my hands. They are clean.” A great ovation followed.
That night, he received a telegram from Admiral de Richelieu: “Green-eyed envy and jealousy are doing their envenomed work, Dr. Cook, but we believe in you.”
We heard that the Danish poet Dr. Norman Hansen challenged to a duel a member of the press who had dared to call Dr. Cook’s claim of reaching the pole “a fairy tale.”
Again, we had dinner with the Danish royal family at the Charlottenlund Palace, where we sat at the right hand of King Frederick.
Mountains of telegrams of congratulation were sent up to our hotel rooms, along with telegrams inviting us to dine, to speak, to simply “appear.” We no longer mentioned Peary, not even to one another.