17

The Curtain Closes

Hatcher continued his research on ceratopsians at Yale through November 1903. It’s clear that he planned to stay into December to finish his work there, but that did not play out as planned. On December 3, Hatcher intimated to Charles Beecher, “On my arrival home . . . I found that our youngest girl was down with scarlet fever, the oldest has since been taken [sick] with the same disease.” It’s tragically certain that the holiday season was not a happy one; the family records document that John Bell and Anna’s second daughter, Ruth, who was born in the Pittsburgh area two years earlier, tragically passed away on December 14. She was the third of the Hatcher’s seven children to perish before reaching the age of four. A letter of condolence came from F. von Iterson of Princeton, who, in addition to noting that Scott intended to study the Patagonian rodents as soon as he finished his work shortly on the sloths, also commiserated, “I regret very much the misfortune that has befallen you but such is life. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken as the scripture has it. I hope you and Mrs. Hatcher and your other children are well and may you be spared for many many a year from further loss.” Henry Fairfield Osborn also sent condolences, writing, “I regret to learn . . . of the sad loss which has befallen you in the death of your youngest daughter. I sympathize with you warmly.”¹

By early December, Eastman had returned from Europe and wrote Hatcher regarding other specimens that he’d purchased from an Italian collection and shipped to the Carnegie, which the Carnegie might or might not purchase. Hatcher responded that since it wasn’t clear who would eventually purchase these specimens, it would have been better to ship them to Eastman’s museum at Harvard so that Harvard could have paid the shipping costs. This tiff continued throughout December until New Year’s Day, 1904, when Hatcher berated Holland for his alleged lack of discretion in recent conversations with Eastman:“During my conversation with Dr. Eastman yesterday afternoon he informed me that you told him yesterday that I was afraid you would discharge me to make room for him & you have on two occasions implied as much during your conversations with me.” Hatcher felt wronged and feared Eastman would spread that information. Hatcher also claimed he had no such fears and had always “honestly endeavored to advance in every way possible the best interests of that department over which I was placed in charge,” citing the growth of the staff and collections, as well as work on the exhibitions and research—all aspects of his tenure for which he harbored “a certain feeling of pride.” Finally, he lectured Holland about keeping such matters within the “family” and requested that Holland withdraw his statement.²

In a follow-up on the eighth, Eastman informed Hatcher that he was pleased with the arrangements the two had worked out for working on the Bayet collection, and he trusted all the acrimony had been put behind them. Eastman also indicated that there was no chance he would give up his position at Harvard to replace Hatcher, and he didn’t think Holland would ever seriously consider such an action. Exchanges of correspondence between Hatcher and Eastman continued throughout January, with Hatcher going so far as to “decline to continue any further intercourse” with Eastman.³

Hatcher was, for the most part, more magnanimous with his staff in recommending that Holland raise the monthly salaries of Sydney Prentice, Earl Douglass, and Charles Gilmore to $75; Louis Coggeshall to $65; and A. S. Coggeshall to a whopping $110. In order to maintain the same level of staff funding needed during 1903, Hatcher recommended that another employee, Norman Boss, be encouraged to seek employment elsewhere.⁴

Hatcher also wrote Sternberg on January 5 to thank his colleague, with whom he’d begun work “nearly twenty years ago,” for the photos of the specimens Sternberg sent. However, Hatcher indicated that the Carnegie would be unable to purchase any of Sternberg’s “very desirable” fossils, in large part because Hatcher already had “over 700 boxes of unpacked material now in storage, and with our present space for exhibitions crowded to the utmost it does not seem advisable to purchase anything further until such time as our new building is more nearly completed. . . .” Nonetheless, Hatcher and Holland eventually agreed that they should pusue the possibility of purchasing Sternberg’s specimens of the gigantic fish “Portheus,” now called Xiphactinus, as well as the leviathan, leather-back, marine turtle called Protostega. Accordingly, Hatcher set out for Kansas to see what he might be able to acquire for a sum of $1,000. He was successful in obtaining both, although Sternberg lamented that he had to bear the cost of crating the specimens for shipment. All in all, Sternberg stated, “I wish to congratulate you on securing from me more in actual value than any other museum in America.”⁵

Also, Hatcher rang in the New Year with a complaint to Osborn that Osborn had offended both him and his coauthor on the paper regarding the Judith River beds:

I feel that you have been unjust to both Dr. Stanton & myself & I know that others think so. One correspondent has characterized your recent note in ‘Science’ as a “deliberate attempt to belittle my work on the Judith River beds & to entirely ignore that of Dr. Stanton.” While I am unwilling to believe that you deliberately intended to deprive either of us of the just credit for our work, yet I think you have nonetheless done us both a decided injustice, in taking for yourself the lion’s share of the credit . . . in connection with it. I hope this was quite unintentional on your part & I shall be pleased to receive an assurance from you that you are willing to so amend your note in ‘Science’ as to accord to us full recognition for the results of our investigations. . . .

Osborn responded by stating “regret” that Hatcher felt Osborn did him “injustice” in a note Osborn had published in Science regarding the fieldwork Hatcher had done with Stanton. Osborn defended himself on the eleventh, maintaining that what he wrote was in no way meant to either minimize the work of Hatcher and Stanton or overstate the contribution that Osborn had made to that research topic. He concluded:

Throughout the report . . . I make more reference to you than to any other paleontologist or geologist. In public and in private . . . I have always given you the warmest possible backing. I have repeatedly urged Yale University to give you a degree; in fact, I have always backed you up to the utmost of my ability, and always intend to do so. . . .

But Hatcher refused to accept Osborn’s claim that he had written the notice in Science based “verbatim” on an earlier version of the report that Hatcher had already approved. Hatcher also maintained that he would have conducted the fieldwork regarding the stratigraphic position of the Judith River beds whether or not Osborn had proposed coordinating that work with the USGS. Hatcher also reported that three prominent geologists had characterized Osborn’s note as “extremely egoistic” and “a shameful injustice,” as well as an attempt to belittle Hatcher’s work. Consequently, Hatcher informed Osborn that he intended to clarify in detail and in print who was responsible for contributing to the solution of the Judith River problem and “I may just as well say now that I do not think that [one of] those persons was [you] as the reader of your report in Science would certainly be led to believe.” Hatcher then summed up: “I . . . will henceforth look upon it as a simple difference of opinion between two parties perfectly friendly to one another.” For his part, Osborn, who still felt that the harsh statements of his “geological friends” were “utterly without foundation,” nonetheless promised to send Hatcher drafts of Osborn’s comments on Hatcher’s work before they were published to avoid similar problems in the future.⁶

Seemingly to balance the scales in this brouhaha, Osborn wrote on the eighteenth to protest that Hatcher had claimed in one of his memoirs on sauropods that Osborn thought sauropods were “aquatic reptiles.” Osborn elaborated, “The fact that an animal spends part of the time in the water does not make it aquatic. Both in my description of Diplodocus and in the restoration of Brontosaurus I have represented them as land animals which made occasional incursions into the water.” In response, after quoting the passage on page 213 of Osborn’s memoir on Diplodocus that led to the offending statement, Hatcher assured Osborn that he would amend his statement in print as soon as possible, which, rather pointedly, was what he had hoped Osborn would do regarding the Judith River research. In addition, Osborn was having parts of the Diplodocus tail called chevrons molded so that the Carnegie could use them in constructing their skeletal mount of the animal, as well as one of the front feet so that the Carnegie could replicate it.⁷

In other business, Viktor Uhlig of Vienna wrote to thank Hatcher for the cast of the Diplodocus limb, which he admitted was extremely precious and more valuable than anything he’d sent in exchange—a fact he insisted he’d rectify in the future. Also, Holland wrote to R. A. Franks, a Carnegie associate in the Home Trust Company, thanking him for the notice that Carnegie had instructed him to renew his appropriation for the museum’s paleontological work during 1904. With only $400 left in the fund, Holland requested that a check be sent as soon as possible to cover the $10,000 donation so he could pay the upcoming salaries due the staff. In addition, Holland requested another check of $2,000 to continue work on the Diplodocus mount, which Carnegie had pledged to support separately from the monies required for paleontological research. Currently, the fund for the Diplodocus mount stood at $240, because Holland had used $1,500 of it to purchase the Bayet collection, and Holland needed the additional $2,000 to pay the salaries for the five staff members expediting work on the mount. Intent on defending his frugality, Holland added,

I hope to accomplish this task for less than I suggested to Mr. Carnegie that it would cost. He authorized me to expend as much money as might be necessary, and our original estimate led me to suppose that it would cost anywhere from $7,500. to $10,000. to do the work. I hope to accomplish the work for a smaller figure and make not merely one, but five replicas of the original, as Mr. Carnegie suggested.

But he quickly cautioned Franks to keep those plans for more replicas a secret because Carnegie didn’t want anyone to know of them. They would be produced on the sly, so “Mr. Carnegie may be in a position to honor some other institution besides the British Museum, at a later date, with the gift. . . .”⁸

Consequently, quite a kerfuffle ensued in mid-January, when Holland received a letter from Carnegie documenting that Director Boule of the Paris museum had written Carnegie requesting a Diplodocus mount in exchange for other material, as Hatcher had proposed. Incensed, Holland insisted he had “enjoined absolute silence” regarding the possible production of more than one replica, except for the paleontological staff that was making them. Holland informed Carnegie:

It turns out now upon investigation that two of my subordinates . . . have been corresponding with M. Boule, forgetting my injunction . . . and that [replicas] are held here subject to your order and disposition and not . . . to be used in exchange. I have admonished the offenders . . . and have informed them that acting under my prerogative as Director of the Museum I shall require them hereafter to submit to me for perusal and advice all correspondence that relates to this property, which is yours. I regret very much that in spite of my oft repeated and express injunction to maintain strict secrecy there should have been an indiscreet communication to others of the possibility of our duplicating the specimens. . . .⁹

Holland then wrote Boule to explain that those corresponding with him did not have the authority to write him and say “that a duplicate cast of Diplodocus Carnegie [sic] is being prepared besides that destined as a gift to the British Museum.” For, at that time, no such decision had been made. Yet, Holland emphasized,

The reproduction which is being made is being prepared in response to the suggestion of King Edward VII of England, and is intended by Mr. Carnegie to be his personal gift to the British Museum. Of course it may be that at some time . . . in the future Mr. Carnegie might instruct me to make another reproduction. . . . The matter is wholly in Mr. Carnegie’s hands. I shall, however, respecting Mr. Carnegie’s wish . . . place your communication in my file, and should our kind patron . . . see fit to order another replica made for the Museum in Paris, I shall be only too happy to comply. . . . and would deem this Museum honored by being permitted to place one of these wonderful reproductions under the roof of the magnificent Museum which you represent. . . .¹⁰

Holland wrote Carnegie again in early March to say he and the staff were starting to look forward to having a new, larger building, for which construction was beginning. Hatcher hoped to complete the Diplodocus mount in August if Holland could find a large enough facility in which to assemble it. Holland hoped to secure an adequate space through Pittsburgh’s Exposition Society so that the mount could be completed and set up in England sometime in September. Although the size of individuals and different species vary, the skeleton reveals that D. carnegii was about ninety feet long and stood about fifteen feet high at the hips. Thus, Holland cautioned, “I may not succeed in this, but we are working to this end and are getting along as rapidly as could be expected. One half at least of the work is done, and I think the most difficult half. But it is very tedious.”¹¹

Toward the end of February, Hatcher forthrightly wrote Florentino Ameghino to emphasize that in his geologic paper regarding the Pyrotherium beds, Hatcher had followed Ameghino in placing those beds in the Cretaceous, although “at the same time expressing a doubt as to their being of Cretaceous age.” Hatcher went on to admit that he had been mistaken on another point:

Since the publication of my first paper it has been clearly shown that for the most part, at least the Pyrotherium beds and the fauna which you at first described as characterizing it, undoubtedly underlies the Patagonian formation, and there is no doubt but that I erred in considering some of the forms described by you as from the Pyrotherium beds as being the descendants or related forms in the Santa Cruzian formation. From what I can learn of the invertebrate fauna of the Pyrotherium beds, proper, and of the stratigraphic position of these beds it appears to me that there can be no reasonable doubt as to their Eocene age.

Hatcher once again implored Florentino and his brother Carlos to join him on a field trip during which they could see the key sites together in order to “come to a perfect understanding of the more important questions now in dispute between us.” Hatcher hoped to conduct that expedition in the fall of 1904.¹²

Gilmore, who was working in a jointly funded position at the Smithsonian, apparently wrote Hatcher to intimate that the Smithsonian might hire him full-time, to which Hatcher responded that although he would “hate extremely” to lose Gilmore, Hatcher “could not for a moment think of standing in the way of you or any other of the men in my department, if they had an opportunity of bettering their position.” Gilmore returned similar compliments on March 24, expressing his appreciation for the interest Hatcher had always shown him and adding that he’d told his mother, “If Mr. Hatcher was my father I could not ask him to do more for me than he has done since I have been connected with [his] department.” In addition, Gilmore’s preparation of the Triceratops skulls Hatcher needed for his monograph was proceeding in good order. By the twenty-sixth, Hatcher had heard from Merrill that the NMNH wanted to hire Gilmore full-time until July 1. Hatcher told Gilmore that was probably being done to alleviate the need for Gilmore to take a Civil Service examination before they hired him permanently.¹³

Hatcher’s habit of paying promptly for the artwork in his publications paid off with another of his illustrators, R. Weber, who wrote on January 13 that he’d finished his drawings early because he’d set aside his work for the AMNH, since they hadn’t paid yet, and taken up Hatcher’s work. Beyond that, he gave Hatcher a discount for his financial punctuality. Hatcher also engaged the legendary paleontological artist Charles R. Knight to do a painting showing Triceratops, “Hadrosaurus,” and Dryptosaurus both to hang in the exhibition hall and support Hatcher’s pertinent publications, including the Ceratopsia monograph. Knight wrote initially on March 29 to accept the commission, provided Hatcher supplied the necessary help and data required. He suggested that he’d make a colored sketch to start, then after any issues regarding the animals and composition were worked out, he’d produce the final painting. If major changes were requested to the original, he’d charge for the time needed to make them, but minor changes would be done for no extra cost. He was familiar with Triceratops and “Hadrosarus,” but he would need a good deal of advice and data for Dryptosaurus, and he asked Hatcher up front if he had preferences regarding the color of the animals. Hatcher responded that he hoped the painting could be completed by June 15 and directed Knight to have the Dryptosaurus partially concealed by Laramie plants, such as palmettos, “since our ignorance regarding structure is dense.” By the end of April, Knight was ready to proceed and suggested making several sketches with varied compositions from which Hatcher could choose. He requested more data and rough sketches showing the proportions of Triceratops and Dryptosaurus, as well as more information on the flora, and he advised Hatcher that the image would be much more effective if it was in color. By early May, Hatcher had decided to ditch Dryptosaurus and substitute another Triceratops, which Knight felt made a better picture. The canvas was forty inches by twenty inches, making, in Knight’s view, “a very long picture, but you of course have reasons for doing it.”¹⁴

On March 22, Yale’s fossil turtle specialist, George Wieland, wrote Hatcher that he’d heard from Sternberg that the Carnegie had purchased his specimen of the giant Cretaceous marine turtle Protostega. Wieland strongly endorsed that transaction and informed Hatcher on the sly that Hay had been pursuing a chance to publish on Yale’s fossil turtles. To turn the tables on Hay, Wieland requested the opportunity to study Hatcher’s newly acquired Protostega because, as Wieland confided, “I feel like paying him in his own coin if I get a chance.”¹⁵

The 1904 field season started at the end of April, with Utterback checking in from near Warren, Wyoming, while he was “gathering up some of the odds and ends discovered the past season.” He planned to open up some quarries as soon as the weather warmed. Apparently amused by a story in the Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph about the Carnegie Library staff objecting to the eyesore created by the construction of the museum’s new building, he advised Holland, “Ask them to vacate building entirely, and we’ll build up a museum to the Queen’s taste.” Meanwhile, subsequent to their meeting in New York, Hatcher was recruiting Theodore Olcott to join Peterson’s party in northwest Nebraska and southwest South Dakota from about May 15 to October 15 for $40 per month. Hatcher suggested Olcott come to Pittsburgh for a few days beforehand so he could meet Peterson, under whose supervision he’d serve, and accompany him to the field.¹⁶

In early May, Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum wrote Hatcher in agreement that the head and neck of the Diplodocus mount should be raised a little. He also approved of the forelimb posture as shown in Hatcher’s published restoration.¹⁷

Utterback had moved on to Musselshell, Montana, by May 24, when he reported he’d been all over to the north and northeast for sixty miles without finding more Judith River beds other than those on Willow Creek and those they’d worked the previous year. He would camp fifteen miles east of Musselshell, but he noted that he’d found Laramie beds near Junction that had yielded a large portion of two ceratopsian skulls. He expected Silberling shortly and hired another local to help. Hatcher was delighted with the news of possible ceratopsians and directed Utterback to return there to prospect if the Judith exposures proved unproductive. The Diplodocus mount for the British Museum was taking shape at the Exposition building, and Hatcher expected it to be completed by the first of July. In early June, Utterback had managed to take out a sacrum with the ischium and ilium of the same skeleton, along with sixteen dorsal vertebrae and six associated ribs. Silberling also excavated the rest of the caudal vertebrae for specimen CM 2394, about twenty in all. These were presumably duckbills or hadrosaurs, of which Utterback is credited in the Carnegie catalogue with collecting more than a dozen from 1903 to 1904. But their prospecting had turned up nothing more, and Utterback planned to head for the Laramie to find the coveted Triceratops skull, “and failing shall quit the bone business forever.”¹⁸

At the end of May, Peterson secured horses in Harrison, Nebraska, and prospected in the Gering Formation, finding only a “rotten” turtle. He didn’t expect much success in the “lower beds” but had met with better success in the upper Monroe Creek beds, collecting three oreodont skulls along with partial skeletons for two of them. He’d also tallied two lower jaws of a small dog, two jaw fragments of a larger dog, and jaw fragments of a camel, possibly of the “bear dogs” Delotrochanter, Daphenodon, or Ysengrinia, and the camel, Stenomylus or Oxydactylus. A week later, he returned to where he’d found his Promerycochoerus oreodonts and found another just five to eight feet away. He requested a sketch or photo of his specimens at Pittsburgh so he could orient the new one in position relative to the earlier ones he’d found. Hatcher sent the drawing and was pleased with Peterson’s news. Although he hoped for better luck in the Gering, Hatcher directed Peterson to focus on the underlying and overlying strata after prospecting the Gering for a week.¹⁹

Holland penned a letter to Carnegie on June 10, in which, after a paragraph of unaldulterated, obsequious drivel, he informed his patron that he’d notified the British Museum that the Diplodocus mount would be completed by July 15, so they needed to make arrangements for shipping it to London, where it would be assembled free of cost. The staff was now assembling the armature for the mount in the main building of the Western Pennsylvania Exposition Society, which had provided the space for free, and Holland was enraptured with it, especially since he was convinced it was better than the mount Osborn was erecting at the AMNH:

This framework I wish to say is in my judgment a very great advance upon anything of the kind that has heretofore been made. Very little iron-work will be visible, and we will avoid the unsightly and cumbrous mass of scaffolding which appears in the restoration of some of these skeletons. The beast turns out to be between 84 and 85 feet long from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail, when the vertebral column is laid down horizontally. When mounted, of course, with the necessary graceful curvature which belongs to the mounted skeleton, the length is diminished, so that it covers on the floor a length of only about 78 or 80 feet. The whipcord tail adds considerably to the length, but Hatcher swears that as three tails have now been found with the bones in position and all tapering out as is the case here, that we are quite right in putting on this long tail. . . . My friend Osborn is mounting an object in plaster of Paris at the American Museum of Natural History which he calls the restoration of the skeleton of Brontosaurus. We have enough material to set up a skeleton of Brontosaurus also. When we get our Brontosaurus up it will be a very different looking thing from the caricature which one of these days you may see mounted at the American Museum. Brontosaurus was a heavier beast that [sic] Diplodocus, but it was not nearly so long. It was clumsier in shape. The trouble with Osborn is that he does not possess enough in certain portions of the frame to allow him to put the thing up as it ought to be, and he is going upon his imagination—a very dangerous thing to do in science.²⁰

Knight had finished the Triceratops painting by the thirteenth and sent Hatcher the bill. Hatcher was curious about what Knight had done with it, but he suspected Knight had dropped it off at the Smithsonian for photographing. He promised to mail Knight’s check in a few days.²¹

Despite travels to Washington, Hatcher remained in close touch with his crews through the rest of June, expressing delight with Utterback’s success on the fourteenth and again endorsing his notion for striking out for the Laramie if prospects in the Judith dried up. Utterback had done just that by the twenty-sixth, informing Hatcher from Miles City that he’d left the Judith crates at Custer Station between Billings and Miles City and had been combing exposures between the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers for two weeks without any significant success. Persistence failed to pay off, as Utterback lamented on July 1:

Never have I seen better fields for fossils or met with more encouragement than we have since starting in the Laramie. We can find everything from large skulls to the smallest of bones yet can find nothing worth saving. You must not think we are going over the ground hastily or leaving anything of value. We work each stream systematically and thoroughly satisfy ourselves before leaving a locality. . . .

We are at present prospecting down Powder river toward Terry. About 50 miles down the river from here a party found some very fine bones and brought them to Miles City where I saw them.

Unless he is like all Montanians [sic], good liars, bones must be plentiful in that locality. If we find nothing in this section of the country am ready to vote Montana on the bum in the fossil line.

He sought Hatcher’s advice regarding his next move, cautioning that if he headed back toward Musselshell, he’d be retracing over ground recently covered by both Carnegie and AMNH crews, while if he headed for Wyoming, he’d be moving away from the rail line on which he was to return.²²

Peterson reported continued success in the Lower Loup Fork beds around Harrison on the thirtieth and planned to move on toward Vantassle and the Reservation. He was apparently suffering from an intestinal ailment that required him to eat oatmeal and syrup rather than greasy camp cooking.²³

But Hatcher was in no position to immediately respond to these reports, for as Holland wrote Peterson on July 1:

I dare say that you have been advised ere this of the fact that Mr. Hatcher is ill with typhoid fever. He was taken to the hospital a few days ago, and, I understand, is very sick, though not according to accounts in iminent [sic] danger. Of course the crisis of the disease has not yet been reached, and it is impossible at this time to make any prognosis as to the results of his case, as I am informed by the authorities of the hospital. He was somewhat run down before he was taken sick, having been exerting himself very strenuously, and this is of course to a certain extent against him. However, he naturally has, as you know, a constitution which seems, in spite of the hardships to which he has exposed himself, to be able to resist, and I trust that he may make a full and speedy recovery. Meanwhile, while he is ill and unable to attend to his work, you had better communicate with me directly in reference to any matters that require attention here at this end of the line.²⁴

When Hatcher had first felt ill, Holland had ordered him to go home and rest, but Hatcher had refused. There had been too much work to do. He’d still been suffering a few days later, and Holland had again insisted that Hatcher return home to bed. Feigning acceptance, Hatcher had complied, but despite his 102 degree fever, he’d snuck back into the museum that evening and locked himself in his office to keep working. On into July, Hatcher had persisted with his work, while joking about his sickness and willfully ignoring his doctor’s directives. Finally, with Hatcher’s strength nearly spent, his doctor had ordered him loaded into an ambulance and sent to the hospital. Holland visited him on Friday, July 2, and checked on his condition, which the doctor determined to be serious but not critical. Then Holland left on a long-scheduled trip to St. Louis. Upon his return on Wednesday, July 6, he learned that Hatcher had passed the previous Sunday night, July 3. Holland had just missed the funeral and burial on Wednesday afternoon.²⁵