8. World Travelers

    1. Virginia Heinlein, letter to Reginald Bretnor, 12/09/79.

    2. This incident is recorded in two places: RAH, Tramp Royale, 48; and in slightly different detail in Michael J. Patritch, “One Hundred and Fifty Minutes into Forever: A Meeting with Robert A. Heinlein,” Thrust SF & Fantasy Review, no. 33 (Spring 1989): 10.

    3. Heinlein’s discussion of his challenged assumptions and the conclusions he drew from his exposure to South American lifestyles and politics are scattered through chapters 2 through 6 of Tramp Royale, and Heinlein touches on them again in the concluding chapter.

    4. RAH, letter to Robert A. W. Lowndes, 03/13/56.

    5. RAH, letter to Robert A. W. Lowndes, 03/13/56.

    6. RAH, Tramp Royale, 63–64. These sentiments and conclusions appear at various places in Tramp Royale, sometimes somewhat repetitively, including Heinlein’s summation at the end of the book, of what he had learned by his travel.

    7. RAH, Tramp Royale, 368–9.

    8. RAH, Tramp Royale, 133.

    9. RAH, letter to T. B. Buell, 10/03/74.

  10. The title is taken from Rudyard Kipling’s “Sestina of the Tramp-Royal” (1896)—a poem which Heinlein has said he often reread (RAH, letter to “Mr. and Mrs. Collier,” 12/08/76). Mrs. Heinlein could not remember in her interviews with the author in 2000 and 2001 why the book title had the hyphen omitted and a rogue final e added.

  11. RAH, Tramp Royale, 93. Many of Heinlein’s remarks in Tramp Royale, especially about Ginny (he calls his wife “Ticky,” one of their pet names, throughout the book) are crafted to be funny and endearing, as she is treated as a viewpoint character for the travelogue. Nevertheless, at least some of them may be taken as factual, in one degree or another. This remark, about Ginny not being able to contain her disgust for the Perón fascist regime in Argentina, comports with other reported behavior later in the trip, as well as with Heinlein’s chosen persona for Tramp Royale.

  12. Virginia Heinlein, letter to “Doc & Mimi [Knowles], Lucky & Art & Barby [Herzberger],” 12/13/53. Heinlein repeated this sentiment in Tramp Royale, 108.

  13. Virginia Heinlein, letter to Robert and Vivian Markham, undated but by internal evidence about 12/15/53.

  14. In the Argentinian newspaper reports, Heinlein found the reporters had simply made up answers to questions he would not answer (boasting about how much money he earned stuck in his craw, though it seemed to be ordinary and expected in Argentina). The questions might be odd and even offensive by his admittedly parochial standards, he concluded—but reporters are the same everywhere.

  15. RAH, Tramp Royale, 112.

  16. RAH, Tramp Royale, 136.

  17. Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with the author, Second Series, Tape D, Side B.

  18. From a clipping in RAH supplemental notes to the draft bibliography for his 1975 “Are You a Rare Blood?” article for Encyclopedia Britannica, Op. 175 file, “MISCELLANEY Haptoglobins in Tristan da Cunha - H. Harris & E.B. Robson—Vox Sanguinis AABB 8 (1963): 226–30. RAH Archive, UC Santa Cruz.

  19. RAH, Tramp Royale, 151.

  20. RAH, Tramp Royale, 171–173.

  21. RAH, Tramp Royale, 180–181.

  22. RAH, Tramp Royale, 180–181.

  23. RAH, Tramp Royale, 190; Virginia Heinlein, letter to George Warren, 03/09/79.

  24. RAH, letter to Bjo Trimble, 09/06/61. If the photograph mentioned was preserved, it has not yet been identified in the Heinlein Archive at UC Santa Cruz. Curiously, it is difficult to find information about this Ntuli, as the reputation of his son Pitika Ntuli, also a sculptor as well as painter and poet, has eclipsed that of his father. Pitika Ntuli was born in 1942 and was, therefore, only eleven years old when the Heinleins visited their Ntuli.

  25. RAH, Tramp Royale, 228.

  26. Virginia Heinlein, letter to Janet Crawford, 02/26/78.

  27. RAH, Tramp Royale, 208.

  28. RAH, Tramp Royale, 210.

  29. RAH, Tramp Royale, 210.

  30. Dell Comic Book Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, 8 (November–January 1954). Marked on first page in RAH’s hand “purchased in Raffles Hotel, Singapore 28 Jan 54.” Space Cadet file, RAH Archive, UC Santa Cruz.

  31. RAH, letter to Poul Anderson, 09/06/61.

  32. RAH, Tramp Royale, 230.

  33. RAH, letter to J. E. Pournelle, 05/19/63.

  34. RAH, Tramp Royale, 233–4.

  35. RAH, Tramp Royale, 197–8. Pichel was to die a few months later, on July 13, 1954, of heart failure.

  36. RAH, Tramp Royale, 208.

  37. RAH, Tramp Royale, 252.

  38. RAH, Tramp Royale, 254. Nevertheless, koalas do scratch and bite if annoyed.

  39. RAH, Tramp Royale, 255.

  40. RAH, Tramp Royale, 257.

  41. RAH, letter to Alice Dalgliesh, 03/12/55.

  42. RAH, Tramp Royale, 276. American magazines were also embargoed.

  43. Lurton Blassingame, letter to RAH, 02/07/52.

  44. Virginia Heinlein, letter to Robert Bloch, 11/10/73.

  45. Virginia Heinlein, letter to Robert Bloch, 11/10/73.

  46. Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with the author, Tape 6, Side A. When the Heinleins finally got home, they found a complaint from one of those teachers that a postcard was a skimpy reply to a child’s effort to compose a letter. The teacher had discussed this serious matter in class and decided to let him eat his own books if they were so important to him.

  47. Brian Finch, secretary on Futurian Society of Sydney stationery, letter to RAH, 03/31/54. Inquiries made to Australian fans in 2003 and 2004 were unable to turn up copies of tape recordings made at the time.

  48. RAH, Tramp Royale, 299–300.

  49. RAH, Tramp Royale, 315–6.

  50. RAH, Tramp Royale, 309.

  51. This summary brings into one place Heinlein’s several observations scattered throughout his narrative about the New Zealand trip. He also made a (short) summary in Tramp Royale, 327–8 and again at 341–2.

  52. RAH, letter to Robert A. W. Lowndes, 03/13/56. Heinlein was to revise this opinion in subsequent trips.

  53. RAH, letter to Mr. and Mrs. Collier, 12/08/76. The quote is from Laurence Binyon (1869–1943) “For the Fallen.”

  54. This is essentially a paraphrase of the concluding chapter of Heinlein’s travel book about this trip, Tramp Royale.

  55. Virginia Heinlein, letter to Leon Stover, 03/17/89.

  56. Modern, and especially post-60s leftism has hardly anything in common with Enlightenment-era liberalism. Even though it appears to be a canon of faith among modern leftists that there is great continuity between, e.g., Jeffersonian thought and modern progressivism, such continuity doesn’t actually seem to exist in the historical record. For a big-government central-planning, urban-oriented progressive to try to claim the mantle of Jefferson is puzzling and disconcerting, since Jefferson’s maxim “he governs best who governs least” is well known, and his vision for America was as a land of yeoman farmers.

Heinlein’s political positions in succeeding decades can only be understood by referring his various positions to Heinlein’s idea of his own liberalism, which is closer to classical liberalism than to modern progressive leftism—though so individualist that it fits comfortably within neither extreme of this spectrum.

  57. RAH, letter to W. A. P. White, 04/20/54.