Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 6. Charles S. Peirce
Jem pleading with him to warm up to her:
If you had any discernment of human nature you would see that the worst thing you could do for me and the worst thing all round is to treat Juliette with any want of love & confidence. We have bad things to face in the near future, all of us; and you may be sure we had best stick together. That we can’t do if you are going to be distrustful of Juliette. She burns under a sense of your injustice to her. Half our misery comes from that. (c. 20 January 1887)
Jem’s reply was not conciliatory. He wrote that he had “no wish to enter on a disagreeable discussion,” but he went on to say that he could not permit himself “to be called to account for sentiments & conduct to which I am driven by the hard stress of facts” (21 January 1887). He insinuated pointedly that Juliette had acted disloyally to Peirce during that very week. Peirce responded sharply: “As you insist on putting me into the position of choosing between you and my wife,—quite unnecessarily—of course I choose my wife. You thus get rid of a troublesome relative very neatly, & at a time when he is more troublesome than ever” (c. 22 January 1887). The fact was, however, that Peirce’s own feelings for Juliette were mixed. Though he had become completely committed to her, he was aware that she had already caused him much harm and he did not fully trust her. When he had written to Jem earlier in January about the plans for his correspondence course, he said plainly that he was afraid Juliette would somehow interfere: “She may intercept letters from pupils & break up correspondence….” He added that Juliette would not permit him to have a clerk at their flat, nor have any woman work for him at all, and he revealed that he even suspected that Juliette was somehow to blame for his troubles with the Coast Survey. “Uncle Sam and Juliet [sic] are enough to drive me out of my wits.” But his feelings for Juliette fluctuated wildly. He ended by asking Jem to burn the letter, “which is imprudent, because I love her devotedly.”
As Peirce’s old social and family ties unraveled, he and Juliette began to associate with a more bohemian crowd—people like New York playwright and director Steele MacKaye and his wife Mary, writer and editor Titus Munson Coan, poet and stockbroker—and editor of the works of Edgar Allan Poe—Edmund Clarence Stedman, geologist and chemist Persifor Frazer, known for his atheism, and artists Albert Bierstadt, Alfred L. Brennen, and George B. Butler.13 One of Juliette’s New York friends, Mary Eno Pinchot, had a country estate in the Pocono Mountains just outside of Milford, Pennsylvania. Peirce and Juliette had visited Milford and were much attracted to the beauty of the surrounding countryside and, in particular, to the French community that had gathered there. The Peirce’s found that they were most easily accepted by people of French heritage. The need to economize, together with the attraction of an accepting community, convinced them to pull up stakes and move to Milford. It did not detract from this decision, as Joseph Brent has pointed out,14 that the Pinchot family had great wealth and that they regularly entertained the likes of the Vanderbilts, Stuyvesants, Harrimans, and Belmonts. Here seemed to be an opportunity for Peirce and Juliette to enter a rich society even if not the society of Peirce’s heritage. In later years, Peirce remembered the time differently. In a draft of his 1908 paper, “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” (R 842), Peirce reminisced: “In 1887, when I had attained a standing among American scientific men sufficiently to satisfy a man of very little ambition, I retired to the wildest country of the Northern States, south of the Adiron-dacks and east of the Alleghanies, where I might have the least distraction from the study of logic.” But though this may be what he came to value most highly about his retreat from city life, it is far from certain that this motive had anything to do with his decision to move to Pennsylvania.
The Peirce’s arrived in Milford on Thursday, 28 April 1887, and checked into the Hotel Fauchere. Within two weeks the Peirce’s had leased a house in Milford, characterized by Peirce’s mother as “luxurious quarters” (3 June 87), and proceeded to enter into the village life. Peirce joined the Episcopalian church and became friendly with the local clergy.15 He and Juliette became frequent guests of the Pinchots at their Norman-style mansion they called “Grey Towers.” Brent has described how they spent many afternoons and evenings at Grey Towers playing charades, capped with Peirce reading and reciting, and in September the Peirce’s “wrote, produced, directed, and acted” in a play given in the Pinchot’s private theatre.16
Although the move disrupted Peirce’s correspondence course and the preparation of his reports for the Coast Survey, it did not take him long to resume those efforts. The correspondence course would never achieve a critical mass and would gradually expire, but his Survey work would continue for another four and a half years. His official assignment at that time was to reduce the data from his post-1881 pendulum observations and produce publishable results, but his main interest would soon become the theory of the hydrodynamical effect of air on pendulum movement. Peirce also went back to work on his definitions for the Century Dictionary, and would spend the following three years working more intensively on his definitions than on anything else.
Peirce’s relations with his family deteriorated further after the move to Milford. Aunt Lizzie became even more vitriolic about Juliette. She wrote to Peirce’s sister: “I think that your mother blames me for the stand I take about Charles & Juliette…. We can not have them here at all. In fact I know Juliette enough from my own observation, that she would be a dreadful creature to have in the house. She is a liar & very artful, & she cares for nobody but herself, & she wd be worse than a rattle-snake in the house” (8 August 1887). She wrote of Juliette’s alleged genius for acting that “she always has been on the stage & ought to be an adept by this time” but that “if she is a genius I fear it is a cracked one,” and that “I utterly distrust her & hope I never see her again” (5 May and 9 June 1887). Even Peirce’s mother, who had alone seemed always to maintain a genuine concern in Juliette, seemed to turn against her. In August, Mrs. Peirce traveled to Newport with Jem after vaguely inviting Charles and Juliette to meet them, but Jem waited until it was too late—nine days into their visit—to write that they could come. When Charles learned of this, he was furious and wrote a scathing letter draft that he never sent:
It is best I should say once for all a few plain words which I shall not repeat concerning an expression in your last. You say you hope Juliette will let me come on to Cambridge. I wish Juliette would not urge me to go but would resent as I think she ought your insufferable and vulgar insolence. You insult me deeply in supposing or pretending to suppose I ever would go into that house. Whatever your object may have been in driving me to this decision, you have succeeded in that.
Your inviting us to meet you and mother in Newport and then not letting us know till you had been there 9 days when mother writes that I can put any construction I like on her silence, confirms me in [the] decision self-respect ought to have brought me to long ago.
I was deeply attached to you all, but you have all behaved ignobly & contemptibly, & I will pay up what I owe & be done with you. (22 Aug. 1887)
He did send a telegram that he immediately regretted sending and wrote to Jem to express his “sorrow and shame at having used an insulting expression.” He promised that “As long as mother lives, at least, I want to have the best relations possible with those she loves” (21 Sept. 1887).
Peirce’s mother would not live for much longer. On 4 October, Peirce was called to her bedside and she died six days later. Unfortunately, the tensions toward Juliette, who accompanied Peirce to the funeral and stayed on with him as he helped settle affairs, did not let up during the period of mourning. On the 15th, Aunt Lizzie wrote to Helen: “I hope I shall hear today when Charles & Dulcinea are going. I hope today but this I cannot expect. I wish she was at the South Pole, the North being too much in the neighborhood….” She wrote again on the 21st: “I do not hear any thing yet of Charles’ going—I hope & trust they will go this week & never return.” A few days later she could finally write: “Charles is going tomorrow & then I shall breathe freely. I am always afraid she will make an invasion. I feel quite sure that she has got Charles into her power—& she would like to get us all if she could…. However we need not be afraid of her if we can only keep her at a distance.” When Peirce’s mother’s estate was eventually settled about a year later, his share came to about $2000, including $1000 he had borrowed in 1885.