LIEUTENANT PEARY, ALONG WITH MATTHEW HENSON, CHARLIE Percy and Dr. Dedrick, returned from Greenland in the summer of 1902.
Peary, refusing all requests for interviews, ignoring, in public at least, Dr. Dedrick’s accusations that he had withheld food and medicine from the Eskimos in his employ, some of whom as a result did not survive the winter, went to Washington, where he was assigned to the Navy Yard. It was widely believed that in its quarters he would spend the rest of his career, scuffing about, barely able to walk, let alone try again to reach the pole.
It was said that he planned to spend his summers away from the heat of Washington in a Cape Cod house on Eagle Island, off the coast of Maine. He renewed my modest fame when he published in the Eastern Seaboard papers a note of thanks, a copy of which he sent directly to me.
Mr. Stead:
I wish to thank you for the part you played in minimizing the effects of the accident I suffered last summer in Greenland on the rescue vessel that was sent to retrieve my wife and child.
I confess that, having fainted because of some passing malady, I remember nothing of the incident except what others have told me. By their account, you acted without hesitation, lending me assistance at some risk to yourself and incurring a minor injury, which I am told has healed.
I will be forever grateful to you and wish you well in your own endeavours. I am told that you have chosen exploration as your field. There is no greater one. It may be that our paths will cross again.
Yours sincerely,
Lt. Robert Peary
“It is pure Peary,” said Dr. Cook in the drawing room, holding a newspaper copy of Peary’s letter in his hand. “He wisely waited until he was fully lucid to write it. Does he really think people will believe that in four years in the Arctic, he suffered nothing worse than a ‘passing malady’? He remembers nothing and is therefore not obliged to describe what happened. He has thanked you only because he had to. He has heard of how you were celebrated in New York and elsewhere during his absence. He has to thank you publicly. He would seem churlishly ungrateful otherwise. He wishes people to think that this is how explorers write to one another. That they are men of action, and therefore men of few words, not given to effusiveness no matter what the circumstances. Just as stoically as they endure, so do they stoically give thanks. By way of thanking you, he implies that he will lead further expeditions to the Arctic, that his days as an explorer are far from over. Well, the public may believe it, but those in the know will not. Peary will never officially declare that his day is done. Nor will anyone else presume to do so on his behalf. Not until after it has happened will most people notice that the torch has been passed. To see this letter in the paper, to know that people are reading it and being taken in by it, and to be unable to answer it—”
He stopped speaking and faced the fire. I was surprised to see him so upset.
“I don’t think anyone will be fooled by this letter,” I said.
Dr. Cook did not reply. He slowly tore up the paper he held in his hand and fed it to the fire piece by piece, as if he was burning the only existing copy of Peary’s letter, as if this ritual burning of it would somehow prevent readers from being taken in by it.
I replied in private to Peary. At Dr. Cook’s urging, I wrote as euphemistically as Peary did, saying that it was an honour to have “helped” him, especially as he and Francis Stead had once been “colleagues.”