by Doug Dorst
The story that these “men” told to the San Diego Union reporter when they arrived was just the first of many mendacious accounts of the event, none of which acknowledged how the lot of them had wronged me. The only person who defended my account of the facts in print—and who stands by it even today, I believe—was the former Mrs. Quilcock. She is a far better woman than Philip St. John Kingslee has ever deserved; that much is certain.
Profile #424
Leslie Foxworth Fitzgilbert
The sad tale of Fitzgilbert’s decline is emblematic of the problems that plague the study of botany today. In his younger days, he was a hawk-eyed and methodical collector, a resourceful thinker, and an able steward of taxonomic consistency and decorum. This, lamentably, is a rare combination in our field.
Fitzgilbert, eight years my junior, joined me on the faculty at Mulholland in 1911, a time when the university and the department were held in the highest esteem worldwide. I appreciated him as both a colleague and confidant, just as I had when we were in the field together with Scottwell-Scott. His work in developing a coherent taxonomy of the family Tulaphyllaceae was top-notch. It remains uncontested, and rightfully so.
Unfortunately, Fitzgilbert was insecure as a man and as a scientist, and he fell victim to the siren call of Advancement. In 1911, when he took over the position and the spacious, well-lit office of the dean of sciences (replacing D. B. Plotz, who had died in that same office while “in the saddle” with a second-year coed, a detail that the newspapers still have not got hold of), he ceased to be a serious botanist and became instead a bureaucratic lickspittle and a coward.
I have little regard for lickspittles, and I believe cowards to be the lowest of the low. Yet these days, people of this miserable ilk obstruct the work of serious scientists, instead pledging their spineless fealty to the university or the donors or the trustees or the police, and leaving men of passion and integrity to twist in the wind. I shall never forget the day that “Fitz,” my former friend (and my subordinate on Scottwell-Scott’s expeditions!), appeared in the doorway of my office—costumed perfectly as the ascendant functionary that he was, in his new suit and polished shoes (which were, to my untrained eye, of a quite feminine style)—and informed me that my presence in the department—and, indeed, on the campus—would no longer be welcomed if I continued to “persecute,” “harass,” and “spread lies about” Professor Kingslee.
I was aghast. “Kingslee is a fraud,” I said, “and I will not allow the foetid stink of his dishonesty to fall over this university, this department, or my own achievements.” I informed him that he and his campus overlords in the Main Building ought to thank me for having the courage to defend the institution’s integrity.
“Look,” Fitzgilbert said, avoiding my eyes, “this isn’t personal.”
“The hell it isn’t,” I said. “Botany is nothing if not personal.”
“Yes, well,” he said. “I don’t know about that.”
“Of course you don’t,” I informed him. “You’ve prostituted your soul. You’ve abandoned your work on Aeolia, which was not half-bad, so you can cavort with high-hatted moneymen who want university buildings named for them.”
“Yes, well,” he said. He made some noises about asking Anna Sophia to join us in the office, as if her presence would make his betrayal of me less odious.
“Leave her out of this,” I said. “This has nothing to do with her.”
“Doesn’t it?” he asked.
I had visions of strangling him. “You know,” I said, “there was a time when you had the potential to be mentioned in a breath with, if not Scottwell-Scott, and if not with the few other great men in our field of study, then at least with those about whom, upon their death, one can say with a straight face, ‘He was a damned fine botanist.’ ”
He asked if I was threatening him, an accusation I ignored. “And now?” I continued. “Now you can’t even distinguish between Aeolia altimontii and A. brachyloba!”
“That was one mistake in a treatment of a large genus,” he simpered. “A man makes mistakes. You of all people should understand that.”
“I have made mistakes, but handing garland after garland to a filthy cheat will never be one of them.” Our discussion went on for some time and, I admit, at some volume.
This is what Bureaucracy does to science, reader. Be warned.
In the following weeks, it became evident that Fitzgilbert and Kingslee would exact their revenge in the financial arrangements in re my personal collection.34 and I will not tolerate any further delay in holding these fiends to their promise. Even if the courts do not vindicate me (for they have been as emasculated by cowards and lickspittles as has the academy), I shall go down fighting. Scottwell-Scott would have done no less.
On my final visit to the Mulholland campus (15 February 1925), I was walking through the halls of the biology building when I was accosted by Fitzgilbert and one Officer Raymond Calabash of the Ventura Police Department. They told me that a student had reported seeing me “brandishing” a weapon in the washroom. I informed him that I had been doing no “brandishing” whatsoever; I had merely been cleaning and oiling my old six-shooter, a practice of good maintenance and responsible firearm handling, not to mention an activity that I find calming. Officer Calabash shook his head—such condescension from a supposed public servant!—and asked me why smart people insist on making “stupid” mistakes.
“Excellent question,” I answered. “I take it, then, you’ve read Fitz’s work?”
With Fitzgilbert watching at a distance, clucking his approval, I was roughly ejected from the university to which I gave the best years of my life.
My weapon went unfired, which is unfortunate, as the situation presented an excellent opportunity to impart a few last lessons. In the struggle, though, the officer suffered several sharp kicks to the shin and knee, which must have raised some painful contusions. Just like the Cates boys, Calabash had to limp away from his encounter with H. A. Quilcock, Ph.D. One learns, with age, to take pleasure in one’s small triumphs.
I am grateful that the former Mrs. Quilcock was delivering a lecture at the time of this confrontation and did not have to witness such a miscarriage of justice. Philip St. John Kinglsee was off receiving an award in Geneva—a convenient alibi for someone wishing not to leave fingerprints at the scene of a crime he has orchestrated.
Profile #461
Philip St. John Kingslee
Some may purport to enjoy Kingslee’s company and behave as if his academic work is anything more than a latticework of lies, but this is only because Kingslee has been given the keys to the castle by the monarchs of our realm, which makes him a strategic ally for any up-and-comer. In truth, his overweening opinion of himself is, to any objective observer, repellent.
Of my dealings with him much has been said, written, narrated around campfires. I have attempted to set the record straight as much as my pledge to the former Mrs. Quilcock allows me, and if the world continues to turn a blind eye to the fact that Kingslee has never set foot within five hundred miles of the sky-islands of San Umberto, and refuses to examine more closely the itineraries of the former Mrs. Quilcock and her occasional botanizing companion, Mrs. Beard, in the spring of 1911, well, in the end there is not a thing I can do about it.
It is far from satisfying to limit myself to this brief profile of botany’s greatest disgrace, and I plan to devote an entire volume to Kingslee’s perfidious life once I can no longer do fieldwork. (That is a young man’s game, and lately I have not been feeling at all like a young man. The old digestive problems have returned with a vengeance, I feel flushed with fever, my heart is racing, my teeth feel loose in my gums, and my ears are ringing maddeningly with high-pitched tones. It is time, I believe, for me to leave my writing desk, pour a tall glass of Scottwell-Scott’s favorite Scots whiskey, and turn out the light. As the former Mrs. Quilcock was fond of reminding me, perhaps tomorrow I shall feel better.)35
S. J. Comerford & Sons
200 Madison Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10016
November 12, 1969
Dr. Jonathan Parker Kingslee
Department of Biology
300 Kingslee Hall
Mulholland University
Ventura, Calif. 93003
Dear Dr. Kingslee,
Thank you for submitting the excerpt from your manuscript, H. A. Quilcock’s Profiles in Botany: A Lost Manuscript Restored.
I regret to inform you that it does not suit our present needs. In short, I do not think the arcana of bygone rivalries in the world of plant taxonomy will be of interest to lay readers. I do think there is a home for this manuscript, although I believe it will be with an academic and not a commercial publisher. Surely you have options other than Stamen? I am no expert in academic life, but surely it is better to publish in a second-tier journal than not to publish at all.
I am curious, though: Do you mean to imply that your father represented your mother’s work on those “skyisland” plants as his own, and that she remained silent about this fraud? Why would your mother agree to cede credit that was deservedly hers? For his benefit? For yours? In her own self-interest? How much did Quilcock know about this deception, and why would he—for the most part—maintain her secret?
You ought to make any such claims explicitly; contemporary readers have neither the time nor the inclination to engage in a great deal of inference. If you do choose to add more “sizzle” to the interpersonal relationships about which you write (as Mrs. Beard certainly did in her recent memoir!), then perhaps a publishing house less established than ours will take a chance on your manuscript. Stories of treacherous father figures, long-suffering mothers, and their fractured families are very much in vogue, are they not?
Of course, if I am “off-base” and you have no such doubts about your father’s life and work, please forgive my lack of grace in offering these suggestions.
Warmest regards,
Spalding J. Comerford, Jr.
Editor and Vice-President
The Candidate in Bloom
The candidate is so tense he cannot walk without crutches. Renata grimaces as she walks behind him through the hotel lobby. Her job is to make him glimmer, and she has been in the election racket long enough to know that when the legs fail, the heart soon follows.
He enters the warm whoosh of the revolving door and fumbles his crutches. The tip of one catches in the door behind him, and the door jars to a stop, trapping him inside. Renata watches through the glass that separates them as he tugs and tugs on the crutch, watches his face darken and puff with toddler frustration. She sighs, then pushes backward on the door, using all her weight to create an inch of space that frees both crutch and man.
He galumphs out through a receiving line of three slouchy bellhops in brass-buttoned red uniforms and incongruous fezzes and makes his way to the rented yellow bus. The door of the bus creaks open, cranked by the driver, who doubles as the campaign’s district coordinator of yard signs.
They have a long night ahead, a night of riding in the yellow bus beneath the arc lights of the city. Renata has disapproved of the bus from the beginning. It reeks, she believes, of pale and bloodless populism; it is a desperate, flailing stab at aw-shucks bonhomie, and it is doomed to fail, message-wise. The bus is also a fat, slow-moving target for scorn and bullets, and the campaign has already endured much of both. (Sixty-two bullets, by her count. The scorn is unquantifiable.) But the candidate insisted. “Everyone loves school buses,” he said. “We all rode them and sang the same bus songs.” Such dreamy evocations of youth are part of his voter appeal, which is limited but passionate. He plays well among registered voters who self-identify as seeking that which cannot be reclaimed.
So, this bus. Idling in a blue diesel haze, it looks as ragged as the baggy-eyed, sag-cheeked candidate himself. Inside, dried gum polka-dots the floor, duct tape has been peeled away from green vinyl seat backs to reveal filler that looks disturbingly like hair, and seat cushions are minefields of sprung coils. She smells an exhaust leak, imagines her lungs turning shriveled and blue.
She and the candidate share a seat, and they lurch forward together as the driver pops the clutch and stalls out. He stammers out an apology to them and jerks the bus into traffic. Angry horns blare all around them. (Seven horns, she counts; seven new votes for the candidate’s opponent.)
They rattleclank and rumblebump through the city, potholing with great frequency. The district coordinator of yard signs is a terrible driver.
West of Main and south of Jefferson, they stop for a photo op at a day-care center. The bus unloads them in a weedy, cracked-concrete playground, where a dozen small children run in circles in the failing light, all shrieks and pounding feet and corduroy squeaks. One boy, freckled and lean and exuding the mirthless aggression of a bully, runs past the candidate and kicks out one of the crutches, sending it scuttering across the macadam. The candidate wobbles but does not fall, thank god, and as he clings to his remaining support, Renata looks daggers at the boy. The boy stops in his tracks, chastened and submissive. He retrieves the crutch and hands it back to the candidate, who tousles the boy’s hair and calls him scamp.
The press, unfortunately, is nowhere to be seen. She hands disposable cameras to the center’s staff: two spent-looking and gray-skinned women who reluctantly stub out their cigarettes to accept the gifts. “For posterity,” she tells them.
“Who’s Posterity?” one woman says, but she doesn’t wait for an answer. The two of them snap pictures as the candidate hands out green lollipops to the children. One little girl bursts into tears, and the candidate looks to Renata with the expression of a drowning man. Renata kneels next to the girl, asks her what’s wrong. The girl says she doesn’t like green. The candidate looks hurt. Green is his favorite.
Renata asks if she can keep a secret, and the girl snuffles and nods. Renata tells her that her green lollipop isn’t green at all, it’s a special new kind of lollipop that looks green and tastes green but is really red. “Really?” the girl asks, and Renata says, “Really,” and the girl skips away, happy again. Renata looks to the candidate, expecting to find gratitude. Instead, he looks at her with hangdog credulity: a special new kind of lollipop? Why didn’t she tell him they had one? And why on earth did she give it away?
Back on the bus. Renata watches as the candidate smiles and waves to the people outside. The sky darkens to purple-black and he waves. Traffic thins and he waves. The law-abiding return to the fragile safety of their apartments and he waves. Crotch-stained drunks teeter in front of liquor stores and he waves. Floppy-jean homeboys flip him the bird and he waves. He waves and waves even when no one is in sight, waves to televised ghosts flickering behind slatted blinds and iron bars, to lampposts and their bright sodium moons, to traffic signals winking amber, to retracted awnings and squat blue mailboxes and bags of trash left out for morning pickup.
The bus stops at a red light. On the sidewalk is a street singer, a bone-thin white kid with a face picked raw by speed-freak nails. He is spitting rapid-fire rhymes in a jagged tenor, punctuated by harmonica lines that punch and squawk and accuse and cry. His shoulders twitch and jerk. At his feet is a cigar box with its lid open; a few coins gleam like miracles in the streetlight. Renata wants to stay and listen, wants to fill his box with coins and tell him that he is beautiful—or someday may be, at least—and that his music, though dissonant and violent and frantic, is in a way beautiful and he has made the world more beautiful than it seemed moments ago (which is to say, wholly unbeautiful, beautiless, beautiempty, beautibereft), but the traffic light turns green, and the bus lurches forward and belches a diesel cloud, and the kid and his music are lost in the engine rumble and the whine of wheels.
She looks at the candidate. His eyes are closed and his head bobs up and down; he is lost in a different rhythm, in a song that, from first note to final echo, exists only in his own head. He soon falls asleep, his forehead resting against a window scr
atched with childish obscenities: I DID HEIDI G and FAT LARRY FUCKS ASS and assorted stick figures sporting inflated cocks that remind Renata of birthday-clown balloons. She covers him with the powder-blue blanket she carries everywhere in a canvas tote bag. These days he seems to doze off before finishing anything.
There is a snap and a crack and a pop as a bullet passes through the bus, in one shatterproof window and out another. Renata pulls the candidate into her lap, shields him with her own body. He stirs. “Thank you,” he says into her skirt.
At the hotel is a phone message from her sister, a woman who has a gated estate, four gifted-and-talented children, and a husband in perfect prostate health but still clutches to the sisterly rivalry of their teenaged years. Looks like you hitched your wagon to the wrong horse this time, the message says, the sneer in the words amplified by the desk clerk’s meticulous script. What her sister does not understand is that none of Renata’s horses are the wrong ones. Renata does not lose. Never has. This is why she is sought after, consulted, handsomely compensated, kowtowed to at pancake-and-prayer breakfasts.
With the candidate safely in bed, Renata reads his draft of the speech he will give at tomorrow’s fund-raiser with the riverboat-casino kingpins. She is shocked; his mind has slipped even further than she thought. In strong black ink he has written at the top of the first page: America. It is indescribable. It is so vast that even if we could grasp It by the lower jaw and wrench Its head free, we still could not fathom It. Then thirty minutes’ worth of delusions and outrage and paranoia. The conclusion, double underlined: America is in trouble today not because Her people have failed, but because She is a voluptuary, screwing everything in sight. Because Her shot of nostalgia was administered with a tainted needle. Because tomorrow it will rain and We will die. She sighs and opens a fresh notebook. Words spill from her as soon as pen touches paper. It is effortless; she is just the medium, the translator, the messenger to the Messenger.
