Pantheon

Chapter Thirty-five

Eugenics? James squinted at the sign to make sure he had read it properly. Eugenics? How on earth did the science of human breeding — improving the quality of the human race and all that that implied — fit into everything that had happened these last few days and weeks? Unless, of course, it didn’t. Unless he had simply followed a random member of the Wolf’s Head Society with a scholarly interest in eugenic ideas and no connection at all to Lund, the Dean and his niece or, crucially, Florence and Harry…

Reason told him to walk away and to think again. And yet he had learned since that early morning in Oxford that reason did not always deserve the last word, that there was more to him than the power to add up logical propositions, one following another. He was made of flesh and blood, with instincts and intuitions — as well as rages and sorrows — that he had tried to deny for too long. And so he listened to his gut as it told him to ring the doorbell and attempt to get inside the New Haven branch of the American Eugenics Society.

He did not have to wait long. A bespectacled man, his glasses misting up in the heat of this last day of July, answered the door. Judging from his expression, and the sound of voices coming from within, he had been letting people in for a while: it seemed a meeting was underway.

Once again, instinct intervened. Instead of offering his name, James simply nodded and stepped forward.

‘Are you on our list?’ asked the man with the foggy glasses.

‘I should be,’ James said, in what he hoped was a tone that was part supreme confidence, part lightness and affability. The man on the door pointed James towards a table where two women were taking names. James thanked him and headed in that direction, only to drift away the instant the bell rang, summoning the sweating man on the door back to his duties.

The interior was cool and bright, like a London townhouse. He was standing in the hall on a floor made of stone tiles of black and white, like a diamond-shaped chessboard. Off it he could see a meeting room, the door open, the chairs already set out in rows in a fashion that recalled similar sessions at Oxford. This, he guessed, was that peculiar creature, the early-evening seminar: glass of wine, a show-off presentation, more show-off discussion.

He milled around, noting a crowd that looked utterly familiar: men, most of them middle-aged, in the crumpled linens and tortoiseshell spectacles of the academic. He avoided eye contact, fearing to be drawn into a conversation that might require him to explain himself. Instead, he chose to linger by one of the display tables covered with material relating to tonight’s talk. The title was ‘Eugenics, the next steps’ and the speaker was a Dr William Curtis of Yale Medical School. Was he another of McAndrew’s proteges?

Also on the table was a neatly-stacked pile of copies of a thin red volume which James took to be a kind of manifesto for the society, apparently offered free of charge. All true believers did this, James had noticed: communists giving away Marxist texts, evangelicals handing out bibles to passers-by. He wondered if this would be a scholarly seminar or an exercise in evangelism.

He picked up the book and saw that it was, in fact, a primer on the topic: What is Eugenics? by Major Leonard Darwin. The book did not mention what James already knew: that this Darwin was the son of Charles.

Not that he knew much more than that. He had long been aware of eugenics; it would be impossible to be an educated man in the 1930s and not be aware of it. There had been a Eugenics Society at Oxford, though whether it was still in business he would be hard pressed to say. There was the occasional lecture on the topic as well as frequent letters and articles in the periodicals. And yet James had let it pass him by. The language of the subject did not appeal to him and its leading advocates he found especially grating: so often well-born, busybody types all too ready to condescend to a scholarship boy from the provinces.

Now James ran his eye over the contents page of the junior Darwin’s book, picking out the chapter headings. Domestic Animals; Hereditary Qualities; The Men we Want; Inferior Stocks; Birth Control; Sterilization; Feeble-Mindedness; The Deterioration of our Breed, Eugenics in the Future; Selection in Marriage.

He glanced up to see that the room was filling up and for a while he eavesdropped on the greetings and handshakes taking place around him, with their talk of delayed trains from Boston and long drives from New York. This was, James understood, a meeting of scholars from beyond Yale, one that appeared to bring together colleagues from several Ivy League universities: Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and the like. When James sensed that someone was looking in his direction, he quickly ducked back to the book, reading the first line of the first page:

When the time comes for the old dog to die and when with sorrow we shall have to replace him, will not the breed of our new companion be our first thought?

He jumped ahead.

Owners of cattle have always known that care in the selection of stock for breeding purposes will pay them well in the long run… And if men, however savage or however cultivated, have always given so much time to the study of the breed of the animals they own, why have they not paid equal or more attention to their own breed? Before a marriage is contracted many questions may be asked as to the amount of money likely to be inherited by the bride, while no consideration is usually given to the qualities of mind or body which she is likely to pass on to her children — to her breed, in fact. The aim of eugenics is to prove that the breed of our own citizens is a matter of vital importance…

James wondered again if he was wasting his time. Could there be any connection between Harry, Florence and all of this? All he could think of was that his wife’s field was academic biology and eugenics was, he supposed, not too far away from that. Was it possible that she had been drafted here to Yale as a scholar on a research project, one that had to be kept secret, even from him? The thought made him shudder: it would have meant everything he had been told about her fear of invasion, her desperate desire to protect Harry, would have been a lie. He could not believe it; he would not believe it. If she had had work to do that entailed travelling to the United States, even highly confidential work, she would have told him about it, of course she would. And what kind of work on eugenics would demand secrecy? It was not exactly a matter of war or peace.

He felt an unspoken shift around him. People were no longer chatting or greeting friends, but slowly shuffling their way into the meeting room. The seminar was about to begin. He took a seat at the back, next to a man who had already produced a notebook, running his pen in a clean vertical line down the page to create a margin.

The speaker appeared. He was no older than James: sandy-haired, with an easy, smiling manner, dressed in a summer suit that hung lightly on him. To James’s untutored eye, he looked as if he came from old money.

The man cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to begin by thanking you all for coming on this warm summer evening. Some of you, I know, have come from far and wide.’ There it was, the same accent as Dorothy Lake. Reflexively, James looked around the room, just in case she was here.

‘As you know, this is an invitation-only gathering. Our usual discretion applies, but it is especially pertinent tonight. Some of the items on our agenda would be open to… ’ He paused, ‘… misinterpretation, were they to be disclosed more widely than I intend. I hope I have your co-operation.’

There was a murmur of assent.

‘Good. Some of you will have seen the copies of the Darwin book in the foyer. Of course, I don’t mean to insult anyone here in making such a well-known text my starting point this evening. But I thought it might be useful to return to first principles.

‘Let me begin with this important statement from What is Eugenics? ’. Curtis lifted the book to his eye-level as if he were an actor declaiming from a script, and read aloud: ‘“ In order to improve the breed of our race, we should now take such steps as would result in all who show any natural superiority producing a greater number of descendants than at present, whilst making all who are definitely inferior pass on their natural inferiority to as few as possible.”’ He lowered the book. ‘From that single paragraph we derive what we know of as the two different strains of eugenic thought. So-called “positive eugenics”, encouraging procreation by the fittest and most intelligent-’ here he made a sweeping gesture as if to encompass his audience, which elicited a warm chuckle of approval, ‘and also so-called “negative eugenics”, which seeks to stop the unfit from reproducing. Forgive me for teaching grandmother to suck eggs in this way, but I hope my purpose will become clear in due course.

‘Put simply,’ Curtis went on, ‘the eugenic idea holds that if we have more of the strong and fewer of the weak, then the nation itself will end up stronger. It’s true of a herd of prize cattle and it’s true of us. Note Darwin’s own language in his summary of eugenics’ primary aim.’

Curtis raised the little red book once more, in theatrical style: ‘“ A lowering of the birth-rate of all the naturally inferior types and an increase in the birth-rate amongst the naturally superior.”’

With each word he heard, the more James remembered his aversion to the whole eugenics business. It came back to him not as a thought, but as a feeling, a creeping sensation across his flesh.

Curtis was reading again, from the Darwin chapter entitled ‘The Men we Want’.

‘“ It has been suggested that, whilst getting rid of these extremely undesirable types, we should endeavour to create a group of supermen at the other end of the scale. If a few perfect individuals were to appear on earth, and if their perfection were to be acknowledged by all, this would be very good. These supermen would rule over us to our great contentment.”’

Curtis lowered the book. ‘It’s quite a thought, is it not, ladies and gentlemen? Imagine it, a latter-day pantheon of the gods, human and yet blessed with the strength of deities.’

The man at James’s side was scribbling furiously. No one had so much as raised a hand in objection, apparently unfazed by the notion of this ‘group of supermen’ ruling the world.

Curtis too was moving on. ‘The question arises, how exactly is society to get rid of these “extremely undesirable types”? Here Darwin’s chapter on eugenic methods is extremely helpful, though he eliminates what would of course be the easiest solution from the start.’

Another knowing laugh rippled across the room.

Curtis raised the book once more. ‘“ As to the inferior types, we cannot, as we have seen, reduce the number of their descendants by the simple expedient of murder. All that can be done is to lessen the size of their families.” He makes it sound so easy, doesn’t he? Easy enough for Major Darwin, sitting there in his study in Kent or Staffordshire’ — he pronounced it Stafford-shy-er — ‘or wherever it was. But not so easy for those of us who wish to translate these ideas into practical policy. So what should we be doing? What action should we be taking to, in Darwin’s words, “lessen the size” of those inferior families?

‘We’re all familiar with the obvious methods: birth control, sterilization and so on. These are all useful, and indeed I’m proud to say the United States has been a leader in sterilization. But we are rapidly being overtaken, thanks to laws permitting involuntary sterilization or its variants right across Europe: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, even little Estonia. And of course the true lead is now set by Germany, where forced sterilization has become a matter of state policy, the preferred methods being vasectomy for men, ligation — or tying — of the ovarian tubes for women and, in a few cases, the use of x-rays. Hundreds of thousands of Germany’s feebleminded or otherwise abnormal population have been prevented from reproducing under this programme. I hope it is clear that the old debate — on whether this range of available, medically-established methods should be used simply to persuade rather than to compel the naturally inferior to refrain from parenthood — is becoming rather out of date.’

James was watching the faces in the room, not one of which had so much as demurred. They were listening to this without a word of dissent, many nodding as Curtis moved onto definitions, quoting Leonard Darwin on what groups constituted the inferior: ‘“ These include the criminal, the insane, the imbecile, the feeble in mind, the diseased at birth, the deformed, the deaf, the blind, etc, etc.”’

The man on James’s left had now filled two pages of his notebook and was beginning a third, listing those whom Major Darwin, quoted by Curtis, further defined as undesirable for reproduction: the unemployed, those on low wages, who had thereby proved their lack of value to the wider society, as well as those who had experienced consumption or epilepsy. The lecturer helpfully spelled out Darwin’s exact words on the matter: ‘“ No one who has had unmistakable epileptic fits should become a parent.”’

‘ What, though, of those who seem sound enough in mind and body, but who have what Darwin calls “many defective relatives”?’ asked Curtis, affecting to sound genuinely vexed by the conundrum. ‘The answer is not immediately obvious, which is why such people, cursed by a family tree laden down with so much rotten fruit, should consult a doctor.’ Apparently Darwin was clear what the wise physician would propose in such a situation: ‘“ a marriage which should result in no more than one or two children.”’

Suddenly James knew, to the depths of his stomach, why he had declined the Oxford invitations to hear Miss Marie Stopes speak on the merits of contraception — yet another leaflet about that had landed in his pigeon-hole the day after Florence disappeared — why he had turned the page at the first sight of an editorial in praise of the eugenic approach to population control, why the idea had repelled him.

What right did these people have to say how many children he, or anyone else, was allowed to have? To them it was no more than arithmetic, a matter of simple utilitarian calculus, working out what set of arrangements would result in the greatest happiness for the greatest number. On that measure alone, it made perfect sense to reduce the number of criminals, lunatics and imbeciles along with the deaf, dumb and blind. But couldn’t they see that ‘utility’ could never be the only measure, that every one of those ‘defectives’ was a unique person, a person with a life and needs and desires and loves?

He thought of his parents, how they never referred to numbers of people but rather to ‘souls’: we had a good twenty souls at the meeting this morning. It was a habit of mind, a reminder that people were not mere building blocks in the creation of some theoretical utopia, but that each one of them was individual and precious. He used to mock such talk in his youth, but now he had a good mind to start hurling the phrase ‘sanctity of life’ from his back row seat, heckling the speaker and challenging this complacent audience of nodding heads by reminding them that human beings were not cattle to be bred but that each one was unfathomable and mys-terious and full of wonder — that people were never a means to an end, but an end in themselves.

But there was something else, too. He thought of his shattered shoulder. He recalled the repeated rejections from even non-military wartime service, explained to him by Bernard Grey down the telephone at Liverpool docks: not suitable for sensitive work. He remembered the verdict the Medical Examination Board had passed on him and which they might as well have branded onto his forehead: D1. He thought of all that and he realized his loathing for eugenics was grounded not only in principle but also in bitter, personal anger. He hated it because he knew that the likes of this William Curtis and his precious Leonard Darwin and probably everyone else in this bright, civilized seminar room would regard him, James Zennor — with his broken body, his blackouts, his rages and his torment — as ‘extremely undesirable’, as ‘inferior’, as ‘ defective’. And that, if Curtis and Darwin had their way, James too would doubtless have been told gently, and then compelled, to ‘refrain from parenthood’.

And it wasn’t just him, it was all the people these eugenicists were ready to throw aside like so much refuse. He thought of the young men born in the slums of Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow who were now the defenders of Britain, risking their lives to save the country. Eugenics would have branded these soldiers sub-standard, not good enough to last another generation. He remembered a friend in the International Brigade, Len, who one night admitted that he was the child of a prostitute, that he had never known his father. Eugenics would have preferred he had never been born, yet he was one of the finest, bravest men James had ever known. He thought of his own parents, his father the son of a Cornish tin miner whose lungs had given out when he was barely forty years old. What would Darwin and Curtis have made of him, eh? He would hardly have made the cut, would he? They’d have snuffed him out, along with his son and his son — all of them expendable, so much human rubbish.

Christ, the blood was boiling in his veins. His body seemed to be quaking with rage. He needed to get a hold of himself. In an act of will, his right hand gripped his left wrist and squeezed tight. He had to assert control. He needed to know what this group, the American Eugenics Society, was all about; what connection, if any, they had with the Wolf’s Head and how they might lead him back to Florence and Harry.

So he calmed himself and, as if fiddling with the dial on the wireless, tuned in again to the speaker. Curtis seemed now to have turned to the specific task that confronted eugenicists in America. Quite baldly, as if it were entirely uncontroversial, the speaker explained that one fifth of the current population of the United States should never have been born — and that it was their duty, as the leaders of the coming generation, to ensure that such people were not born in the future.

‘Happily,’ Curtis went on, ‘you find yourselves in the right place. While other cities in the United States of America still labour in confusion and uncertainty, we are privileged to gather at a university where eugenics has taken firm root. Take these words, for example.’ He raised his hand again to signal a quotation. This time he was holding not Darwin’s little red book, but a sheaf of notes: ‘“ We could make a new human race in a hundred years if only people in positions of power and influence would wake up to the paramount importance of what eugenics means… we could save the bloodstream of our race from a needless amount of contamination.” Those,’ said Curtis with a beam of institutional pride, ‘were the words of the founder and first president of the American Eugenics Society, Irving Fisher, who, I’m glad to note, was a professor in the economics faculty right here at Yale. I don’t need, I’m sure, to mention Ellsworth Huntington, who only stepped down as president of our society’s board of directors a couple of years ago. He, as you all know, was Professor of Geography here at Yale. Or what about these words? “ Granting that society can decide just which individuals it wishes to eliminate as genetically inferior… how shall it proceed to eliminate them? ” That was Edmund W Sinott, a botanist, here at Yale. Those of you who are not yet subscribers to the Journal of the American Eugenics Society, I suggest you become so immediately: there are gems like that in every edition!’ he said to polite laughter.

‘And lest you think we have no allies at the very top, let me reassure you by citing the name of James Angell.’ There were nods of recognition. ‘Angell was President of Yale University until three years ago. Well, let me — and I promise this will be the last one — let me quote him to you: “ Modern medicine, unless combined with some kind of practicable eugenic program, may result in an excess of feeble and incompetent stock. Certainly the preservation and increase of life for individuals unable to make reasonably happy and effective adjustments to the conditions of living is a highly dubious blessing.” So you see. We have support at the highest possible level.’

A worm of suspicion was forming in James’s mind, slowly and steadily turning through everything that had happened these last few weeks. He wanted to follow it, to watch it. But he needed to pay attention to what he was hearing in this room. Eugenics had crossed the Atlantic and seemed to have docked and found safe harbour here at Yale. Nor could it be dismissed as the marginal preoccupation of a few cranks: these people counted the former university president among their number.

The speaker was coming to his main point. ‘I tell you all this,’ said Curtis, ‘for two reasons. First, I believe we have wasted too much time on rather sterile — if you’ll forgive the pun! — debates over persuasion versus compulsion, and that those debates arise only because there is still some uncertainty over definitions. We still lack clear-cut, unambiguous understanding of what, or rather who, counts as superior and what, or who, counts as inferior. The next step forward for our discipline is to arrive at some commonly-accepted definitions. The project I wish to propose to you tonight aims to settle this matter once and for all.

‘Before I detail the specifics, I want you to be assured that I am not asking you or your institutions to take on anything that we here at Yale are not prepared to take on ourselves. Indeed, what we have already undertaken — with support, as I hope I have demonstrated, at the highest level.’

James could feel the tension in the room, which was now hushed. Everyone was rapt.

‘Two researchers,’ Curtis began, ‘one from Harvard, the other from Columbia, are pioneers in a field they describe as “Physique Studies”. They argue that a person’s body, properly measured, studied and analyzed, will reveal much about the intelligence, temperament, moral worth and even the future accomplishments of that person. But only if the study is extensive and meticulous.’

He paused to let his words sink in. ‘They believe they can gather the evidence that will not only confirm that there is a connection between physical prowess and intellectual ability, but will also demonstrate how this connection operates. First, though, they need to establish a set of different bodily configurations. Once defined, and set alongside long-term data on performance — marital, professional and in all other spheres — it will, these men submit, be a simple task to correlate each body type and physiognomy with later life history. They believe that the correlation will be strong, that these bodily traits will be shown to be unswerving determinants of character. They believe, in other words — and forgive the crudity of my summary of their complex thesis — that physique equals destiny.’

James could hear nothing but the sound of pen scratching on paper from his neighbour.

‘But none of this will be possible without a comprehensive collection of photographs of young American adults, that might, taken together, form an Atlas of Men and an Atlas of Women. The subjects in such a study will, of course, have to be photographed without clothing, in order that the bodily configuration be correctly classified. Discretion may demand that this work be done in combination, as it were, with another more conventional activity. But a full range of subjects is essential, so any study must include those likely to be at the higher end of the scale of intellectual achievement and moral worth.

‘Which is why today I call on you, my dear colleagues in our fellow Ivy League institutions, to give your best endeavours in assisting this vital project — one on which, I am glad to say, we here at Yale have already made a start.’

Suddenly James felt a shiver run through him. He was back at Frank Pepe’s pizza restaurant, George Lund’s briefcase open in his hands. Inside it were those photographs of men, naked as they stood before the camera, posing as if at a medical examination. And all of them were young, just as Curtis had suggested. Was this part of what George Lund had discovered? What he had been carrying in his bag — and what had been deliberately removed — was not a collection of pornographic pictures to titillate Lund, the secret homosexual. They were proof that Yale was engaged in the first stage of a study to show that the intellectual elite were defined by certain physical traits, that ‘physique equals destiny’. That was no crime; Yale could research whatever it liked. But what had Curtis just said? Discretion may demand that this work be done in combination, as it were, with another more conventional activity. Translated, that surely meant that the participants had not been told what they were posing for, that they had believed they were being photographed for some other reason. In other words, Yale had engaged in an act of deception, tricking its youngest members into posing naked for a camera. Was this the truth poor George Lund had stumbled across? Was this why he was killed?

James halted his train of thought before it ran away with itself. If Yale had been involved in such an act of academic chicanery it would certainly be embarrassing. The Dean would have to apologize, to be sure. But James knew what these university politicians were like: McAndrew would be able to say there had been a misunderstanding, that he had been misled, that he had thought this was a bona fide research exercise. He would do what all senior college staff did in such situations: he would blame someone else. James had seen that manoeuvre a hundred times before. And how shaming a scandal would it really be? Not that shaming, surely, if Curtis felt able to allude to this research exercise in a meeting of colleagues, albeit one that was invitation-only.

Besides, Lund had seemed convinced that Harry and Florence were caught up in whatever it was he had discovered. But how could they possibly have any connection with illicitly-taken undergraduate photographs? Both Lund and his widow had also suggested that much more was at stake than an academic scandal. You’ve stumbled into something much bigger than you realize. Bigger and more dangerous.

Curtis was still speaking, enumerating the challenges eugenicists like them faced in the coming years, identifying the potential sources of opposition, making the obligatory call for more funding for research. James was only half-listening, his mind furiously trying to assemble and re-assemble the pieces of the puzzle, desperate to construct a picture that might include his wife and child and that might reveal where he could find them.

The speaker was moving to his conclusion. ‘This, I know we agree, is an idea whose time has come. It is an idea that needs to be tested and taken to its logical conclusion, so that the world may be persuaded at long last of its truth and its urgency. Here I must defer to a man I know would like to have been here tonight — who indeed sends his apologies — a man who is a great friend to our cause. His latest thinking represents a new and exciting advance, one that understands the changing times in which we find ourselves, especially with regard to the unfolding events in Europe. I’m referring of course to the Dean of Yale University, Preston McAndrew.’

James did not wait for the end of the meeting, taking advantage of his seat at the back to slip out while Curtis was still basking in applause. He walked briskly onto York Street, the stones of Trumbull College almost amber in the evening sunshine. He checked his watch. If he was fast, he should get there in time. Unbidden, his mind calculated the time difference and worked out that it was past midnight in England. German pilots were probably in the skies right now, at this very instant, dropping their deadly cargo on cities, factories, homes, bedrooms…

He quickened his pace. He was getting closer, he was sure of it. Lund had discovered what McAndrew was up to. The photographs were part of it, but not the whole, they couldn’t be. There was something else. And Curtis had just confirmed it. His latest thinking represents a new and exciting advance…

What was McAndrew’s latest thinking? What was he doing or saying or planning that had got Lund so agitated and so frightened? It had been sufficiently serious that he had been killed to keep it secret. And somehow it involved Florence and Harry.

It was only once he had walked through the grand entrance of the Sterling Library, and was standing in the echoing stone lobby, that James realized he did not know exactly which department he was looking for. Was eugenics to be found in Natural Sciences or in Philosophy? Was it classified as biology or politics? Given the grandiosity of eugenics’ ambition, its desire to be taken seriously as objective, unarguable fact, he headed for the Natural Sciences reading room.

Approaching the librarian, a younger man who looked irritated to be taken away from his own reading, James attempted a smile. ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for the latest writings of Dr Preston McAndrew. He’s the head of the Medical-’

‘I know who Preston McAndrew is,’ the librarian replied. ‘Books or journals?’

‘Is it possible to look for both?’

The librarian looked up at the clock. ‘I could do that. Come back tomorrow morning, say, any time after eleven o’clock and I’ll-’

‘No, I’m sorry. It really is terribly urgent.’

‘Well, you need to be more specific, sir. Otherwise I can’t help you.’

James said the first thing that came into his head. ‘ The Journal of the American Eugenics Society. The latest edition. Let’s try that.’ That was what Curtis had mentioned, after all. And if McAndrew was going to air his ‘latest thinking’ on eugenics anywhere, it would surely be there.

The librarian looked at him sceptically, but eventually he turned to face the wall of drawers comprising the card index while James paced and paced, checking his watch, looking at the clock, replaying Curtis’s words in his mind, in case he had missed something important.

After much checking and cross-checking, pulling drawers open and closed with exasperated sighs, the librarian returned to the counter. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but that title you requested is currently with another reader.’

Damn. ‘I don’t suppose you could tell me his name, could you? So that perhaps I could see if he’s finished with it?’

The young man glowered, apparently weighing which would be more effort, acceding to this request or denying it and then having to argue over his decision with this troublesome-looking Englishman. He lingered for a moment longer, then went back to the card index and finally to a large ledger. Eventually he returned wearing an expression James had seen many times before. It said, I shouldn’t really be doing this, but…

‘I have the name, but this is rather-’

‘Of course. I’ll be extremely polite.’

‘All right. The book you requested is currently on loan to a reader whose desk number is four hundred and seventy-three. He’s a member of the faculty. His name is Dr George Lund.’