This period of social and moral ferment has been glossed over in history books, reduced to a quick mention of William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech (though it confusingly had something to do with silver coinage) and the Populists, who are given a sentimental portrait as prairie peasants earnestly playing with the co-op movement. They are related, somehow, but it is not quite clear how or why.
On May 3, 1893, a wave of selling took place on the stock market. The Panic of 1893 began—and Chicago was in the middle of it all. It was time for the Lyles to move back to Missouri.
Dr. Lyle wound up in Butler, Missouri, where he established a general practice making rounds in a horse-drawn buggy. When she was old enough, Bam enrolled in the Butler Academy, in the same class as Rex Ivar Heinlein, despite having taken a year off from school. The Academy gave a difficult and comprehensive general education, somewhat comparable to a junior college. They graduated together in 1896. Doubtless they were courting when, two years later, the Spanish-American War was declared.
Cuba had been in open revolt against Spain since 1895 (with the Philippines, another Spanish possession, following in 1896). Americans—and particularly Missourians—followed the news from Cuba with great interest; St. Louis was a hub for distribution of Cuban sugar and tobacco to the Midwest and West. Missouri agricultural and manufactured products were finding a market in Havana, and there were significant Missourian business interests in Cuba.
In January 1898, Cuban insurrectionists attacked newspapers that supported Spain’s proposals for “limited autonomy,” and the U.S. Consul-General in Havana interpreted the attacks as a threat against Americans. He asked for a warship to be sent to Havana. President McKinley responded by sending the USS Maine. On February 15, 1898, the Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, killing 266 American sailors. Two months later, on April 16, the U.S. Army began to mobilize. Spain declared war on the United States on April 22, 1898. The United States declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898, retroactive to the twenty-second. The Spanish-American War was under way.
Rex Ivar Heinlein, following his family’s conscious military tradition, signed up with the first wave of volunteers and enrolled as a private in the Second Missouri Volunteer Infantry, Company B, on May 4, 1898. The next day, Bam Lyle presented him with a small (three-by-four-inch) pocket New Testament and Psalms, inscribed with sentiments doubtless conventional but also doubtless heartfelt:
Rex Ivar Heinlein
Co. B 2nd Reg.
Butler, Mo.
Be true to self
and country
BAM
May 5, 1898
He left Butler for muster at Jefferson Barracks the next day, after a farewell banquet.
The Second Missouri left Jefferson Barracks for Camp Chickamauga, Georgia, on May 18, arriving on May 21. They were assigned to the First Brigade of the Third Division of the First Army Corps, commanded by General John R. Brooke.
This was the Rough Riders’ war—the war of the charge up San Juan Hill, the Buffalo Soldiers, William Randolph Hearst’s frenzied “Remember the Maine!,” and the Marines taking Guantánamo Bay. It was also the war of the Philippines, of General Aguinaldo, of the capture of Guam. But that is the war of romance, of Yellow Kid journalism and fictional history and popular myth. It was not the war Rex Ivar experienced.
Missouri had made no adequate preparations to equip, transport, or feed the volunteers. The Army was just as badly disorganized in Georgia. There were food shortages and no sensible plan for organizing and equipping the volunteers. A dispute within the Army resulted in failure to issue uniforms. Many soldiers lived through the month wearing only blankets. Haste and inefficiency resulted in poor handling of foodstuffs and unsanitary camp conditions. The canned beef was barely edible—the scandal over the “embalmed beef” provided to the military in the Spanish-American War prepared the ground for the public furor that in 1906 led to passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
After a month at Chickamauga, Rex Ivar’s regiment was sent to Lexington, Kentucky, then to Albany, Georgia. They were mustered out of service in March 1899, without seeing Cuba. Rex Ivar had been detached even earlier, desperately ill. He was “brought home on a shutter,” as his relatives recalled, and spent months recovering. Nevertheless, he was included in the public celebrations: the civic boosters of Butler threw a grand banquet for the returning war heroes. A flyer on glazed newsprint announced in multiple typefaces:
Welcome, Gallant Soldiers! The citizens of Butler, desiring to express in a substantial manner their appreciation of the gallant soldiers who so promptly responded to their Country’s call “to Arms,” less than one year ago, and are again at home, having been honorably mustered out of the service of “Uncle Sam,” will hold a GRAND RECEPTION and Banquet, in Butler on Evening of Friday, March 10th, 1899, to which every soldier from Bates County in the late Spanish-American war is invited to be present, as a guest.
The Cuban portion of the war ended with the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, though fighting continued in the Philippines until 1902.
Rex Ivar always remembered his service in the Spanish-America War with pride; Robert remembered his uniform hanging, pressed, in his parents’ closet decades later,17 and drew at least some of the inspiration that led to Starship Troopers from Rex Ivar’s thoughts about the Spanish-American War—the conviction, expressed in 1912, when Heinlein was only five, that “only those who fought for their country were worthy to rule it.”18
Rex Ivar Heinlein and Bam Lyle were married in Butler on November 20, 1899.
The story of Robert Heinlein’s immediate family picks up in the main text.
APPENDIX B
CAMPAIGN BIOGRAPHY
Leon Stover’s unpublished biographical sketch of Heinlein, Before the Writing Began, quotes Heinlein’s autobiography written for his campaign staff in 1938.
Political record:
1934 Precinct group organizer in Sinclair’s campaign. Board of Directors of West Hollywood Democratic Club.
1935 Precinct group organizer for James M. Carter’s campaign for council (3rd district in Imperial Valley). Managing Editor “End Poverty News” in city election. Assistant to state organizer and business manager in End Poverty League. Member of convention arrangement committee for first EPIC convention. Drafted End Poverty League constitution with Saul Klein and Luther Bailey.1
1936 Campaigned for Ordean Rockey [UCLA poly-sci—successful] primarily in finance committee. Mrs. H. managed Rockey-for-Congress Ball. Elected Democratic County Central committee in the primaries and thereafter 59th District chairman. Appointed to Democratic State Central Committee.2 Appointed to Veterans Division of the National Committee. Precinct work for Democratic ticket in 59th District. Both Leslyn and he worked in Harlan Palmer [ed. HOLLYWOOD NEWS] campaign for 59th District. Appointed by John Anson Ford (sitting on LA County Board of Supervisors) to investigate relief and WPA.
1937 Precinct organization for Ford’s mayoral campaign. Member of County Central Committee to investigate Metropolitan Water District Strike
at the San Jacinto tunnel. “Resigned chairmanship of 59th District in August 1937 in anticipation of running for Assembly. Was drafted by the Democratic County Central Committee to be chairman of Organization …” Announced candidacy on 3/15/38.
NOTES
Introduction (pages 11–16)
RAH, Time Enough for Love (1973) volume 2 of the Virginia Edition: the Definitive Collection of Robert A. Heinlein, 253.
Eleven minutes of the featurette is included as a Special Feaure on the DVD collection The Fantasy Film Works of George Pal (1985).
Transcribed from Virginia Heinlein’s personal videotape of Robert A. Heinlein’s appearance on CBS television, July 20, 1969. CBS destroyed the original videotape, and a copy was provided them from a digitization made by the author in 2001 (with Mrs. Heinlein’s permission).
1. The Heinleins of Butler, Missouri (pages 17–23)
Virginia Heinlein, letter to author
, 11/16/00. For an extended examination of the Heinlein and Lyle family history, see Appendix A.
The “understanding” was framed, in the reminiscences Virginia Heinlein received from Robert Heinlein, as an explicit promise, which was voided when Oscar married and had a son. Virginia Heinlein, IM (instant message—a real-time Internet communication) with author, 06/21/2000; Virginia Heinlein, letter to author, 11/16/2000. However, Oscar Allen Heinlein’s marriage to Kate Canterbury did not take place until 1910—three years after Rex Ivar Heinlein left Butler for Kansas City—and Oscar Allen, Jr., was not born until 1911.
In a birthday letter to RAH, dated 07/11/71, Maj. Gen. Lawrence Heinlein recalled: “I remember I had to ride herd on Ivar the day you were born to keep him out of the way.”
RAH, letter to Tom Eaton, 12/12/73.
Material about the Heinlein family in Kansas City from H. Bruce Franklin, Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 6–9.
At different times, Robert Heinlein gave different dates for the family’s move from Butler to Kansas City, 1907, 1909, and 1912, possibly because Bam made a practice of taking the children for extended visits back to Butler. An undated letter (sometime in the 1970s) from Kansas City Public Library archivist David Boutros, responding to a reference request by Heinlein, suggests using the 1910 Census and the city directories from the period 1907–1912 to determine when the entire family officially reported residence in Kansas City. No follow-up to this suggestion was found in Heinlein’s files.
Bam Heinlein, letter to RAH, 07/07/51.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by author, Second Series, Tape C, Side A.
Stammering, also called stuttering, typically begins in early childhood, with a mean onset age of thirty months, according to E. Yairi and N. Ambrose, “Onset of Stuttering in Preschool Children: Selected Factors,” Journal of Speech and Hearing Research XXXV: 4 (1992). This is the primary language acquisition phase for children.
Heinlein specifically attributed his difficulty to his family and particularly his two-year-older brother, Rex. Psychologists at Leeds University and Goldsmith College also report a high correlation of stammering with bullying and abuse (reported in The London Times Educational Supplement [06/11/99]).
It is certainly possible that Heinlein’s brothers were too rough on him, though his different attitudes toward his older brothers in adolescence do not suggest any intentional cruelty or abuse.
Franklin, Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction, 8.
RAH, letter to John W. Campbell, Jr., and Doña Campbell, 01/20/42.
RAH, letter to Dr. Chris Moskowitz, 09/06/61.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview with author, Second Series Tape B, Side A.
Franklin, 8.
RAH, telephone interview by Ben Bova, 06/29/79. This interview was never published commercially, but the corrected transcription has been included in the nonfiction volumes of the Virginia Edition collected works of Robert A. Heinlein, 2010.
Heinlein fictionalized this incident in his last book, To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987).
Virginia Heinlein, conversation with author, March 2 or 3, 2001.
RAH, letter to Tom Eaton, 11/06/73.
RAH, I Will Fear No Evil (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970), 250–51.
RAH, letter to Harlan Ellison, 09/06/61.
RAH, letter to Judith Merril, 05/16/57.
Pendergast did have a rival: Joseph B. Shannon led a minority splinter faction of the local Democratic Party, known as the Rabbits (the Pendergast faction was known as the Goats), but the Pendergast faction was clearly in the ascendency: the Rabbits had to make patronage deals with the Goats. Shannon was eventually kicked upstairs, into state politics.
An undated three-by-five-inch index card in Heinlein’s hand found in a miscellaneous box of papers contains Heinlein’s salient recollections of his life in 1912. The card may have been made during his preparations in 1972 to write Time Enough for Love.
Virginia Heinlein, summarizing remarks made by Heinlein to her, relates this incident in her preface to Requiem: New Collected Works of Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master, ed. Yoji Kondo (New York: Tor Books, 1992), 236.
RAH, letter to Ruth Clement Hoyer, 05/22/46.
RAH, interview by Alfred Bester, Publishers Weekly ( July 2, 1973), 44.
RAH, interview by Alfred Bester, Publishers Weekly ( July 2, 1973), 44.
The incident is recounted in his 1973 Forrestal Lecture, partly published as “Channel Markers” in RAH, The New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein: Expanded Universe (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1980) and again in his 1961 Guest-of-Honor Speech for SeaCon, published in Requiem, ed. Yoji Kondo. The full text from Heinlein’s draft is published in the Nonfiction volumes of the Virginia Edition, and a comparison of four versions including the full draft text and three shorter versions was published in The Heinlein Journal, Nos. 15 (July 2004) and 16 (January 2005).
2. Growing Up, Kansas City (pages 24–32)
RAH, letter to Tom Eaton, 12/12/73.
RAH, letter to Lewis Patterson, 07/26/73.
RAH, letter to Marion Zimmer Bradley, 04/06/63.
RAH, letter to Leon Stover, 06/08/86.
Ian Stevenson, M.D., Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, 2nd ed., revised and enlarged (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1960, 1980).
Solipsism, strictly speaking, denies the validity of other; treating self and other as parts of the same overarching reality is a different philosophical concept, but one that had, apparently, by the time Heinlein’s fiction began to appear, become less familiar than solipsism, since the mistaken label is so widely applied.
RAH, letter to Theodore Sturgeon, 02/11/55.
RAH, letter to Robert Bloch, 03/18/49.
Heinlein’s short story “They” (1941) embodies this feeling. His outline notes for this story begin: “Idea is based on the feeling I had as a kid that everything as I saw it was a deliberate plot to deceive me, that people didn’t do the things I saw them do when I wasn’t watching them.” Heinlein’s friend Cal Laning told biographer presumptive Leon Stover that these same feelings were still important motivating factors for Heinlein twenty years later, at the end of the 1920s. Leon Stover, conversations with author, 1999.
RAH, letter to Bam Heinlein, 07/11/62.
RAH, letter to Alice Dalgliesh, 02/17/59.
RAH, unpublished interview by Ben Bova, conducted 06/29/79.
RAH, letter to Robert D. Kephart, 11/08/73.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by author, Tape 12, Side A.
Dorothy Martin Heinlein, wife of Jesse Clare Heinlein, conversation with author at the Heinlein Centennial, 07/06/2007.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to author, 07/14/2001.
Howard Thurston (1869–1936) mounted his own show in 1902; in 1907 he took over Harry Kellar’s show and increased the size and effects to a three-hour production, which toured the world several times, beginning in 1908, and toured the United States frequently until his death in 1936. His stage show required ten railway cars to transport the props, scenery, and effects. His most famous illusion was the “floating lady.” James Steinmeyer, who as of 2010 is preparing a biography of Thurston, was unable to confirm that Thurston used this trick in his show. Nevertheless, Heinlein’s oral recollection, as conveyed by Virginia Heinlein in taped interview with author, Tape 12, Side A, is firm and unambiguous on this point.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by author, Tape 12, Side A.
During World War I, in addition to clothing drives and metal salvage drives, people were encouraged to collect and salvage other resources to aid the war effort. One of the stranger resource drives was to collect peach pits to be burned into charcoal, which could then be used in filter masks for the new poison-gas warfare being tried out in France.
RAH, letter to Tom Eaton, 12/12/73.
Virginia Heinlein, taped interview by Phillip Homer Owenby (1994).
H. G. Wells, The World of William Clissold (New York: George H. Doran, 1926), vol. 1, 61.
RAH, letter to Leon Stover, 06/08/86.
RAH, letter to Marion Zimmer Bradley, 04/06/63.
Virginia Heinlein, letter to Lynnie Ayer, 04/09/75.
Jay Clare Heinlein, biographical recollections of RAH, undated but probably 1989, in preparation for the biography to be written by Leon Stover. (Jesse Clare, later in life, formally changed his name to Jay Clare.)
Interview with Frank Robinson (unpublished), submission draft, p. 4.
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century Page 63
