Читать книгу Norman Clyde - Robert C. Pavlik - Страница 9

CHAPTER 1

Seeking Out the Wild Places: Family, Boyhood, and Youth

Norman Asa Clyde was a descendant of Irish and American parents who had known hardship and deprivation firsthand. His father, Charles Clyde, was born in Antrim County, Northern Ireland, on May 9, 1856. By that time Ireland had long been in the grip of grinding poverty and food shortages that left more than one and a half million people dead or dying, with an equal number fleeing its shores for the New World. Charles Clyde’s parents would soon follow, immigrating to the United States at the beginning of the Civil War. They did not believe in education; they were rug weavers and descended from a line of shipbuilders. Prior to immigrating to Ireland, the Clydes had lived in Scotland and may even be descendants of the Bruce clan, a royal family that fought for Scotland’s independence from England.

Norman’s mother, Sarah Isabelle Purvis (“Belle”) was a native of Glade Mills, Pennsylvania, twenty-five miles north of Pittsburgh, where she was born on November 24, 1863. The Purvises were also of Irish descent but had long been established in America. Her ancestor John Watt was born in Ireland and had immigrated to the colonies in 1773. He served in the Continental Army as a Private Fourth Class under Captain Brisbane in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Several years later he fought in the Westmoreland Land Company Militia against the Indians.

Charles and Belle were married in Butler in 1884, later moving to Philadelphia, where their first son, Norman Asa, was born on April 8, 1885.¹ Eight more children would be added to the Clyde clan over the years: two brothers and four sisters survived into adulthood, with one child dying of typhoid and one of tuberculosis. As the eldest son, it was expected of Norman to look after his younger siblings, and to shoulder much of the burden of helping with the daily chores: hauling water, chopping wood, filling the coal bins for cooking and heat, and tending to the flocks of chickens and geese that every household raised for eggs and meat.

Charles Clyde supported his family as a Reformed Presbyterian minister of the Covenantor sect. Such a life would have been devoted to Bible study, hard work, and few luxuries. Members of the Reformed Protestant Church (including the Covenantors) eschewed modern conveniences and big cities because they were deemed to have a corrupting influence on the moral character of its members; hence, the Clydes lived at the very margins of civilization, wresting a living from near-wilderness conditions while bringing the teachings of Jesus Christ to their backwoods neighbors. Charles flitted from church to church, seldom staying for more than a year at any one location. Norman was three when the family moved to Northwood, Ohio; at the age of twelve he was uprooted to Lochiel Township, Glengarry County, Ontario, Canada, where they lived in the country, eighty miles from Ottawa. For the next five years Norman reveled in the outdoor life of the Laurentian region, hunting and fishing and being home-schooled by his father, an energetic scholar who taught his son the Classics in their original Greek and Latin, as well as German, Spanish, and French. Young Norman would later pick up a book of Portuguese and learn the language on his own.

Charles Clyde died of pneumonia in Brodie, Ontario, on December 7, 1901, at the age of forty-six. He had contracted blood poisoning as a result of a cut sustained while repairing the church’s stained glass windows. His passing left sixteen-year-old Norman in charge of the family. From what little we know of Clyde’s early life and his later years, it was not a role that he relished. Being thrust into a position of responsibility at such an age is difficult for any child, let alone one for whom domestic chores and younger siblings were the cause of strife and irritation. In addition, he appears to have inherited almost all of his father’s wanderlust; with one exception, the rest of his family stayed close to home during their adult lives. Following Charles Clyde’s death, the family stayed on in Canada for two more years, eventually returning to western Pennsylvania to be closer to Belle’s family.

Norman’s lack of formal education did not hamper his quest for knowledge. Prior to enrolling in Geneva College, a small liberal arts school in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, he had to make up work that was deemed essential to his education. Knowledge was an important commodity to the entire Clyde clan. All seven of the surviving brothers and sisters attended college, and five earned at least an A.B. degree, which was highly unusual for the time. They each attended Geneva College while working to support themselves and their family. Sisters Sarah, Clara, Grace, and Eva all became teachers. Brother John had two years of college, and brother Arthur became a very popular high school teacher and coach in Morgantown, West Virginia. According to Norman’s niece, Vida Brown, “The two [Norman and Arthur] were always wrestling; their mother couldn’t control them, they were always going at each other’s throats.”² Although a rough-and-tumble relationship between brothers is not uncommon, the intensity illustrates their commonly shared competitive nature and focused determination.

Following his makeup work, Norman pursued a degree in the Classics. He was on the staff of The Cabinet, the college’s magazine, and had two poems and several articles published therein. One poem, “A Winter Sunrise,” is worth reprinting here:³

The winter night has fled, and rosy morn

Has risen joyfully. An hour ago

The mounting sun, just passing the horizon,

Silvered the tall and silent pines, which rise

Above the eastern woods. It was a time

Of most impressive solemness. The gray

Twilight brooded over everything;

The long white slopes of snow enveloped fields,

The frozen lake and the old majestic woods.

The stars had disappeared; the sinking moon

Shone pallid through the bars of the western wood;

The clouds collected round the rising sun;

Shining gorgeously in gold and red.

It seemed to be a scene of grandeur scarce

Of earth; the silence and starry host

Which glittered in myriads through all the night,

Now sinking away into the depths of space;

The sun uprising slowly, silently

And sending forth the dawn upon the earth.

All this o’erpowered the mind with wonder and

Astonishment at Nature’s majesty

And endless harmony. So ever it is

Around us beauties and sublimities

Numberless, wrap us in their embrace,

Had we only the eyes to behold them.⁴

Clyde’s poem is interesting for what it can tell us about the author at this stage of his life. It illustrates an intimate knowledge of the natural landscape that surrounded him, as well as a love of the outdoors. The poem emphasizes the beauty of nature without creating a human presence to alter or dilute the scene. The speaker also chides those who are not aware of their surroundings, in effect dismissing them for a lack of sensitivity and awareness. Clyde’s poetry and world view shared similar themes and outlooks with those of another native Pennsylvanian who later settled on the California coast. The poet Robinson Jeffers studied the Classics, as well as forestry and medicine, and later applied his wide knowledge of human history and the natural world to his own powerful writings where he often, like Clyde in this poem, avoids an anthrocentric view of the world.

Throughout his college career Clyde took to the outdoors for respite from his schoolwork and other responsibilities. He liked to play football, explore caves in the surrounding Beaver Valley, and climb to the top of the nearby hills. In a Cabinet article titled “College Recreation” he wrote about one of his “customary rambles” in the local hills, describing a beautiful autumn day: “As the author gazed at the lovely spectacle, it occurred to his mind how little we know of the scenes of beauty which nature constantly spreads before us. It cannot be that the aspects of nature around us are not inspiring. The commonest of landscapes has something of interest to the watchful eye at any season of the year….Emerson says, ‘The moral sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes so easily, may not always [be] found, but the material landscape is never far off.’ But the country around us, far from being what might be called tame and devoid of interest, is quite picturesque. The hills skirting the Beaver form many striking views, there are numbers of romantic ravines in the vicinity, and the woods are not without beauty…”⁵ He goes on to remind his fellow students to take advantage of the great wealth of natural beauty that surrounded their small community, in order to see “what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom.”

By June 1909, at the age of twenty-four, Clyde had completed his studies and was awarded the A.B. degree from Geneva. He wasted no time in bidding his family farewell, and set out for the West. Although he would remain in touch with his family, and occasionally travel back to visit, he would never return to live in the East. Even though the frontier had disappeared from the American West, there still remained large expanses of wilderness sufficient to challenge the hardiest of outdoorsmen. And, in the wake of Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 proclamation of the end of the frontier, there were numerous groups and individuals who championed the outdoor life for physical, spiritual, and moral reasons. The growth of the Sierra Club in California, the popularity of the Boone and Crockett Club and the Appalachian Climbing Club in the eastern United States, and, after the turn of the century, the importation of the Boy Scouts from Great Britain all contributed to the zeal for outdoor life. Popular writers, including John Muir, John Burroughs, and John Van Dyke, extolled the virtues of the wilderness of mountain, forest, and desert. Their works found a kindred spirit in Norman Clyde.

Clyde was enormously influenced by John Muir’s writings, especially The Mountains of California (1894). It is a collection of Muir’s essays that had previously appeared in various magazines and one newspaper, and which Muir himself had selected for inclusion in his first published book. Muir wrote an overview of the Sierra Nevada especially for this volume. The Mountains of California is considered by many of Muir’s admirers to be his finest book.⁶ Its presence in l894, two years after the founding of the Sierra Club, satisfied a growing interest in the Sierra Nevada, and mobilized individuals to take a greater interest in conservation issues.

There are other parallels between the two men. As with Clyde, Muir was a Celtic native (from Scotland) who immigrated to the United States with his family at a young age, settling in the upper Midwest state of Wisconsin. Both came from households where religion was a dominant theme in their lives: Muir’s father was a Calvinist Presbyterian and lay minister. It may be safely assumed that at least some of the strict regimen and harsh discipline that had been visited upon John Muir was also the realm of Charles Clyde’s firstborn son. Self-reliance was an integral and indispensable characteristic of immigrants to North America who chose (or could afford) to live outside of the tenements of the Eastern seaboard and the Midwestern manufacturing centers. It was a characteristic of the Muir family, and the Clyde family as well.

Although both men hailed from religious parents, they each rejected Judeo-Christian morals and teachings and embraced an earlier (and universal) moral code, better known as the Golden Rule: to do unto others as one would have others do unto himself. This also means that one should respect the other person’s right to live as they see fit, without undue interference from outside forces, and in turn, to expect the same from others. That they lived in a time and place where they could be relatively free of encumbrances, be they governmental, social, or religious, enabled them to live their lives with a freedom once associated with frontier America.

Following in Muir’s footsteps

Norman wanted to travel; westward was the course of empire, and the direction and destination of Norman Clyde. Lacking the money to travel directly to California, he worked his way across the United States. Train travel was probably his means of transport, as automobiles were still in their infancy and interstate highways nonexistent.

Although he lacked the financial means to make his way across the country, he did not lack for intelligence or ingenuity. His years as head of the Clyde household following his father’s death gave him a depth and maturity far beyond his twenty-four years. He possessed an extraordinary physique and a brilliant mind, so that he could always find work with his hands as well as his head.

Following his graduation from Geneva College, Clyde landed a job aboard a Great Lakes steamship, bound for Duluth, Minnesota. Such a job would move him several hundred miles west in short time and put some much needed money in his pocket. He also cited a “‘[Francis] Parkman’ like love of nature in her wilder and more imposing aspects” as his chief reason for plying the chilly waters of the interior. In his account, written for The Cabinet, he lovingly describes the journey in the late summer and early fall of 1909, as the hardwoods began to turn and the first snows dusted the forests of pine, spruce, hemlock, and fir. Clyde found Lake Superior to be his favorite: “its dark waters, almost ice-cold even in mid-summer, stirred usually by breezes, tossed wildly sometimes by storms together with the cool, pure, refreshing atmosphere, fill one with delight.”

During the return journey from Duluth, he was witness to (and almost victim of) the ferocity of Superior’s storms. Assigned to the duty of midnight watchman, mountainous seas broke over him as the vessel pitched and rocked. Clyde “found himself grasping the railing and leaning over the leeward side of the boat with a votive offering for Neptune or whatever deity presides over Superior waters.” He managed to make his way to his forward post on the bow of the ship, a distance of seventy-five yards from where he came on deck. Clyde reported, “As the writer reached his point of lookout on the bridge, above the pilot-house, in the bow of the boat, the gale was shrieking through the rigging, flapping the canvas around the bridge, and carrying the spray of the foaming waves high into the air. The vessel plunged and lurched, now a wave breaking over her weather-side, then her lee gunwale rocking to the water’s edge. In spite of driving snow, flying spray and plunging boat the author remained at his post and experienced a grim pleasure and exultation in the raging elements….For three days, except for short intervals, we had gales, sleet, snow and rain. Still it was a magnificent sight when it temporarily cleared off to watch the myriads of black tossing waves on every side, rising and falling, their crests breaking into snow-white foam.” The crew, almost all experienced sailors, suffered from motion sickness and deep fear of the ship sinking from the battering it was taking from the tempest.

By the time the ship reached Chicago, Clyde had “earned the ill-will of the captain, [and] had the good fortune to get discharged.” He disembarked and stayed with a former Geneva classmate while exploring the Second City and sitting in on lectures at the University of Chicago. Clyde enjoyed auditing the classes but found the school itself a dull place in comparison with his alma mater. “One hundred Geneva students make as much stir as 3500 Chicago ones. There seems to be little college spirit, class spirit or any spirit at all except that of study. A very high standard of scholarship prevails, yet there is nothing else to do.” Clyde signed off his “tedious remarks” with the sobriquet “Cyclops,” a nickname he was apparently well known by at Geneva. In Greek mythology Cyclops was the one-eyed monster of tremendous strength who unleashed unmitigated terror against its enemies. Exactly what earned him this colorful title is not known. However, it could be inferred that the name applied to any number of possible traits, including his strength and stamina, single-minded focus, and hot temper.⁷

Following his stint as a merchant seaman, Clyde became a schoolteacher for the next eighteen years. His academic background prepared him well, and he no doubt chose it in part for the freedom it would afford him to spend time in the mountains during the summer months. Clyde worked his way across the United States as a high school teacher in North Dakota, Utah, and Florence, Arizona, where he arrived to teach school with a Colt handgun at his side. Clyde admitted that the locals were probably taken aback by a schoolteacher wearing a firearm. Clyde was merely relishing his arrival in the American West, playing the role of the lone stranger riding into town, complete with shooting irons.⁸ He spent the summer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (John Muir’s alma mater), and another summer working on a cattle ranch in Utah.⁹

A picture postcard written by Clyde to his mother on June 30, 1910, is an early expression of his proclivity for the mountains. The card was postmarked at Camp Curry, in Yosemite Valley. He wrote: “Dear Mother—I have come up to the Yosemite to spend some time. I have seen the Wawona Big Trees and made a wonderful knapsack trip into the High Sierras in which I climbed the highest mountains this region. Sincerely, N. Clyde.”¹⁰ Later, Norman wrote to his mother from Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park: “Dear Mother—Arrived here several days ago and shall leave in several more. This is a wonderful place for trees…thousands of great sequoias. Shall be going to McLoud [sic] a town in the northern part of the state near Mt. Shasta. Your son, N. Clyde.”¹¹ His natural attraction to the mountains, a strong interest in the Big Trees, and a matter-of-fact statement that he “climbed the highest mountains in the region” all point to his future as a mountaineer.

Clyde seemed to be seeking out the wild places that Muir had described many years earlier. His profession enabled him to spend summers rambling along the great backbone of the Golden State, from the Tehachapis to Mt. Shasta. Clyde taught school in McCloud and in nearby Weaverville, enabling him to hike, climb, explore, and restore himself in wild places.¹²

The desire for additional schooling pulled Clyde back to civilization, at least temporarily. Following his stint in Northern California he relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he taught at Lowell High School and attended U.C. Berkeley from 1911 to 1913.¹³ He later returned to Berkeley for the 1923-24 school year to pursue postgraduate studies in English. Following several years of study he lacked only one course and a thesis for completing his master’s degree. He refused to participate in a “Dramas of the Romance Languages” course, insisting that Italian plays should be read in Italian, French dramas in French, neither one in English; and he could not see the sense in writing a thesis that, once it was filed on the library shelf, may never be read or referred to again.¹⁴ He left the university without completing the degree, but then, perhaps his reason for attending graduate school in the first place was not for the degree but for the pleasure it gave him to be back in school. He could read in six different languages, and his interests were diverse. During his career as a teacher and principal he taught history, science, and Latin, and so his main motivation for attending school may have been for the sheer pleasure and enjoyment, without thought of or concern for upward mobility in his teaching career.¹⁵

Love and Loss

One of Clyde’s most private and painful experiences in his life was his brief marriage. On June 15, 1915, he was wed to Winifred May Bolster, a tall, slender, attractive woman with thick dark hair. She was born in New York on May 1, 1890, to William and Margaret V. Bolster. The family had moved to California when Winifred was twelve years old, settling in Pasadena.

Very little is known of Norman and Winnie’s acquaintance, courtship, and marriage. It is believed that they met while they were students, Norman at U.C. Berkeley and Winnie in nursing school in Oakland. They married in Pasadena, at the Lincoln Avenue Methodist Church. Winnie was attended to by her sister, Roberta “Byrd” Austin; her mother was a witness. Following the nuptials the couple honeymooned in Santa Barbara before returning to Oakland, where they took up residence. Norman was teaching and Winnie was working as a nurse in a tuberculosis hospital. It was there that she herself caught the dreaded disease, commonly known as “consumption.”

The couple relocated to Pasadena, near Winnie’s family, and she was placed in the La Vina Sanitarium of Altadena. She suffered for four years and died at age twenty-eight on Valentine’s Day, 1919. She was buried at Mountain View Cemetery three days later.¹⁶ According to Winifred’s nephew Walter Bolster, Winifred’s mother and sister blamed Norman for Winnie’s sickness; perhaps it was Winifred’s desire to have a career, maybe it was the young couple’s tenuous financial status that required a double income. Whatever the reason, it is likely that Winifred had been exposed to TB while working as a nurse, perhaps even prior to their courtship and marriage. The bitterness and vituperations caused a permanent rift between the Clyde and Bolster clans. Prior to the tragic turn of events, Norman and his in-laws had gotten along well; they enjoyed family get-togethers and he even took his brother-in-law on hikes in the nearby mountains. Following Winifred’s death, Norman left Pasadena and never contacted any Bolster family member again.¹⁷

Norman must have been devastated. He would rarely speak of his wife, or of the fact that he had been married, to anyone, not even his closest friends. One of the few people to have elicited this information from Clyde was Walt Wheelock, editor and publisher of Close Ups of the High Sierra. While Wheelock was conducting research for Close Ups he visited Clyde several times. As a retired Glendale Police officer who had worked on the force for twenty-seven years, Wheelock was successful in extracting information from his subject, even on topics as sensitive as his all-too-brief marriage. This bit of information came as a shock to many people, who always assumed that Clyde was simply a bachelor who jealously guarded his freedom. There is also that reserved—some might say suppressed—quality characteristic of both his time and upbringing, embodied in the prevailing attitude and outlook that pain and hardship is a part of one’s life. Outward displays of grief or dismay were strictly off-limits, especially to men. The bottling up of these intense feelings of loss and privation manifested themselves in other, more sinister and sometimes destructive ways. His marriage had a tremendous impact on his life, and would shape his future relationships, especially with women.