LITMIR.BIZ

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even if he could keep his income from the Survey, that would not be enough—at least not until the farm could generate a substantial annual income. The immediate problem was to keep Quicktown operating and to provide for Juliette in Europe. Peirce had used up all of his reserves, and he was not sure how he would earn the money for the monthly disbursements he had promised Juliette.

      Peirce wrote to Juliette again on the 6th of December. At the top of his stationary in place of “Quicktown” he inscribed “Sunbeams,” a name he sometimes called Juliette as an endearment. He was feeling lonely and greatly missed her. Beside the word “Sunbeams” Peirce made the impression of a kiss. André De Tienne has speculated that it may be from an anagram play on “baiser,” the French word for kiss, that Peirce first got the idea to rename his estate “Arisbe” as he soon would do.⁵⁴ He wrote to Juliette about finances. He told her that he had returned to the farm and had been working twelve and thirteen hour days. In New York, Pinchot had encouraged him about the prospects for an arithmetic book he had started, but Peirce thought it doubtful that such a book could bring in more than $1000 a year, and other books he thought he could produce would not bring in more than half that. “Thus, you see if I write 4 with my own hand, the most I can expect is $3000 a year from them; and from all I can write myself or ever get written $5000 a year will be the most. We are spending that now.” On a more positive note, he told Juliette that he had learned that tuberculosis was not incurable, even though some lung damage might be permanent. Finding this out had been such a relief to him.

      Peirce was running out of options. He tried to borrow from his friend George Butler. On 8 December, Butler wrote that he was “awfully sorry” but that he simply had nothing to loan: “I am probably harder up than you are.” Peirce did manage to raise a little money to ease the tension of the moment, but nothing would be more destructive of his relationship with Juliette or of his life overall than his constant and never diminishing, sometimes extreme, need of money. The problem would become almost intolerable in another year, after the loss of his income from the Coast Survey, but the expenses of Juliette’s trip abroad made the first half of 1890 almost as difficult. The day before Christmas, Peirce sent Juliette a check for six hundred and fifteen francs, apologizing for the delay and warning her that he might have some difficulty with “the next remittance.” Peirce knew that Juliettes steamer had reached Gibraltar on the 16th, but did not know that she had reached Naples when he wrote to her on the 24th: “I have had no letter from you yet…. I shall pass Christmas with the old bachelors of the club.”

      Peirce spent New Year’s eve with George Butler and his wife at their country home in the Hudson Valley north of New York City. He had by then received a letter from Juliette, from Gibraltar, and was greatly distressed at how ill Juliette told him she was. He wrote back on New Year’s day expressing his concern: “I never would live without the sunbeam of my soul!” But Jem’s letters to Peirce suggest that Juliette’s stay in Europe came much closer to being the pleasant amusing time Peirce had wanted for her than she was ever willing to admit. On 23 January 1890 Jem wrote from Rome: “Your cablegram did not reach me till the 16th…. I telegraphed & wrote to the hotelkeeper at Palermo, & learned that Juliette had already left for Cairo. She is sure not to have been seriously ill, & to have been well lodged & cared for.” Jem’s opinion is confirmed by an extant medical report from a Cairo physician who examined Juliette on the 24th and found nothing seriously wrong with her. Juliette stayed in Cairo until the end of March. Jem wrote on 5 April that he had seen Juliette several times recently and that he wanted to send his impressions about her state of health. “I cannot help thinking that her winter has been of substantial benefit to her. She speaks of the serious attacks which she still has, & seems to regard herself as doomed. But whenever I saw her, she looked & appeared strong & vigorous, & has evidently enjoyed much in her Cairene life and is familiar with Cairo through frequent visits to its streets & bazaars…. I have a strong faith that you will find that she has gained ground since she came abroad.” Later Jem would write that he did not believe Juliette was as ill as she imagined but that “She is easily excited & depressed” (13 June 1890). After Cairo, Juliette stayed in Alexandria for two or three weeks and then traveled back to Naples where, according to Jem, she stayed “at the Grand Hotel, a delightful house,” waiting for a steamer to New York. There is some obscurity about Juliette’s final days in Italy and when she finally sailed for New York, but it seems unlikely that she arrived back before early June.

      Juliette had been away for half a year. During that time, Peirce periodically returned to Quicktown to tend to the estate and probably to spend long hours on his definitions, but he spent the greater part of these months in New York where he had friends and where there was more opportunity to make money. On the first of February, Ernst Schröder wrote to Peirce, resuming a correspondence that had lapsed for five years. Schröder told Peirce that the first volume of his Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik (exakte Logik) would soon be published and that he had asked his publisher to forward a copy to Peirce. He was concerned that Peirce might have broken off their correspondence out of anger for “some unknown reason.” Their ensuing exchange of letters, until Schröders death in 1902, was a great stimulus to Peirce, especially concerning the logic of relations. On 5 March, Peirce received a letter of self-introduction from Ventura Reyes y Prosper, who also corresponded with Schröder.

      Such communications, and meetings with scholarly friends for dinners or at the Century Club, were important intellectual anchors for Peirce during a difficult time. Juliette’s absence caused Peirce much distress. At first he just missed her and was worried about her health, but the hardship he endured trying to provide the money she needed led to anxiety and a growing sense of failure. Gradually, with so few letters from her and with those he did receive expressing disaffection and disapproval, his frustration turned to disillusion and sometimes bitterness. Peirce wrote on 23 January, after she had been away for two months: “I have only had two letters…. I hear nothing, nothing. Good God, I shall go crazy if I don’t hear soon. This is terrible.” Three months later, feeling that he had done his best for her but having received not the slightest indication of any appreciation from her, Peirce wrote: “Your letters to me are so full of hate and rage, that I know not how to write to you. What my difficulties have been you do not know.”⁵⁵ Using the third person, Peirce went on to describe the changes in Juliette’s character that he had observed, starting with when they had met.

      She was a very true and noble heart, that nothing ever could corrupt. And then I knew her in Washington when she showed capacities which surprized me. Then there was a dreadful period when everything in life was terribly terribly embittered. I wish now I had been drowned before I had to pass through such things. Very gradually, the curse seemed to pass away, & there was a time in Milford when there seemed to be much happiness, shaded by some doubts only. All this time, I was getting to know and to adore this dear lady more and more and to love her more deeply. In the future I don’t know how it will be. The present is dreadful.

      The letter from Juliette that had agitated Peirce so much is no longer extant, but it is evident that Juliette had made an urgent and probably indignant plea for more money, perhaps claiming that she could not return without it. She must have threatened to sell a watch Peirce had given her for he pleaded with her not to do it and promised to send more money “no matter what happens, very soon.” He tried to borrow from friends and acquaintances but apparently without success. He urged Pinchot to hire him to tutor his children at fifteen dollars a week, and probably asked for an advance, but on 5 May Pinchot replied that he could not immediately make up his mind. On 14 May, Peirce wrote to C. R. Miller of the New York Times, with whom he had just concluded a successful newspaper debate on Spencer, proposing a series of fifty articles on evolution, but Miller did not think it could sustain the interest of his readers. As late as the first week in June, Peirce sought a consulting assignment with the Astor Library. By this time, however, Juliette must have already been on a steamer for New York, if she had not already arrived. The record does not indicate how she managed to settle her final accounts in Europe.

      It is difficult to know whether Juliette ever understood or even cared about how Peirce had managed to support her European convalescence, or whether Peirce became a changed man as a result. The scant evidence suggests that her anger over what he had not provided outweighed any appreciation for what he had managed to send.

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