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Youthful slave and wife of John Peabody Harrington
"The life, with all it s drawbacks, was opening up a new world to me"
They tell tales, in the back rooms and archives and lecture halls of the anthropological world, of one John Peabody Harrington, linguist. Now that a comfortable fifteen years have elapsed sioee his death, they delight in his. maniacal dedication to his work. Example: Harrington was pulling on a billy goat's ears in a very painful manner. The billy goat was protesting. A passerby asked him, "Harrington, what in God's name are you doing?" Harrington, however, continued pulling, and the billy goat continued protesting. Fina1ly, when the passerby was about to burst with curiosity, Harrington sighed rapturously, "Isn't that the most perfect umlaut you've ever heard?"
Another story, somewhat more grim, concerns the enterprising Harrington signing up, for long-term field work, the widow of a linguist informant on the very day of her husband's funeral.
Carobeth Laird
Carobeth Laird, too, can laugh at these jokes now. She, one of a few in all the world, has had intimate experience with the late great Harrington's bizarre single-mindedness. Sixty years ago, at the eager, romantic age of 20, she married him and became his "youthful slave and disciple." Seven hardworking, disenchanting years later she left him, to live with and eventually marry George Laird, one of the Indians whose language she and Harrington had been studying. Last year, at the age of 80, Mrs. Laird published an autobiographical novel, Encounter with an Angry God, in which she attempts to explain.
At first meeting, Carobeth Laird, now living near Carmel Valley Road, Del Mar, resembles the kindly grandmother of a bedtime story. A second glance, however, reveals that this is no Mother Tums. The voice quavers, the words do not. Her face is extraordinary in its alertness and sensitivity. She is beautiful, it's true; but her beauty is of an unconventional sort.
"Enduring is something I'm very good at," Mrs Laird once remarked. From this point of view of a 1970s woman, she has certainly endured a great deal. Early in the course of their relationship, when Carobeth still imaged herself to be very much in love with Harrington (the one she described as looking like an "angry god") he expressed satisfied admiration for the way she "thought like a man."
This compliment, if so it may be called, was one of the few she was ever to receive from him. "In his frame of reference of that time, I did think like a man was supposed to think rather than like a woman was supposed to think. I don't say that women didn't think that way, or that men did think that way, but ... I had an analytical approach, a colder more analytical approach than women were supposed to have at that time." Harrington appreciated Carobeth's intelligence and efficiency for their usefulness to him in his work (his main purpose in life was to record Indian languages). But, she adds, "as a person with emotions, deep feelings, capable of being hurt, I was just a nuisance to him."
At the age of 58, long after he had been divorced from Carobeth, Harrington wrote to a friend asking that he find him a new wife. he specified that she be tall, German, and a typist. There is, from Harrington's point of view, a certain grim logic to these peculiar stipulations. Carobeth explains them thus: He wanted height because she, Carobeth, is quite short; he wanted a German because he had always respected that nation's scholars; and he wanted a typist because Carobeth's typing had proved extraordinarily useful to him in his field work.
Harrington had not found his first wife to be particularly docile. her emotional demands, few as they were, proved to be more than he could handle, for he had nothing whatever to give. As for his second wife, according to Mrs. Laird, "I guess he really wanted my opposite."
Carobeth stayed with him as long as she did, however, because "the life, with all it s drawbacks, was opening up a new world to me." She was born in a small, dreary Texas town. At the age of 19, when she met Harrington, she had, in addition to all other handicaps shared by intelligent women 60 years ago, an illegitimate infant daughter, no high school diploma, and a tremendous eagerness for education. Had she not married, she would have been forced to remain with her parents. Reading and self-directed sturdy would have been her only outlets. Marriage to Harrington offered a life full of the adventure and active education that she craved.
To be sure, with her small town upbringing, this adventure was at times almost overwhelming. Her talent for the field work earned her Harrington's trust to the degree that he sent her off to reservations to gather data alone. "It took a long time to grow out of the limitations of a small town country girl." To go alone, with no preparation, to an Indian reservation "was absolute agony at first." It was, however, either the reservation or the life of a dependent at home. She went.
At more than one place in Encounter with an Angry God, Mrs. Laird comments that she couldn't understand Harrington, that she never understood Harrington. Today, she remarks with a laugh, "I don't know if I understand him yet." Shortly before she was to leave for the Chemhuevi reservation on her own, she reached a conclusion about her husband that crystallized all the disappointment that had gone before. After a bitter, quarrelsome night, when she was to leave for a rare visit to her parents, she watched him scowl angrily while she remained impassive to his attempts at a goodbye. "I called him an angry god,' she through, 'and all the while he was just a dirty little boy having a tantrum.'" Finis. Within a few brief weeks she had met George Laird, and her life of dedication to the brilliant, eccentric John Peabody Harrington was over.
Carobeth's first marriage was ended, her second began, and children were born. She never went back to school. "The doors that I wanted so badly to swing open never did." A rather sad, dreamy smile accompanied this statement. It was the smile of a woman who got her education the hard way. A good deal of what she did with Harrington is now meaningless to her. She regards the detailed linguistic work as no more important than an interesting crossword puzzle. Her own research and writing about the Chemhuevi Indians, however, she regards as extremely important.
Some of this research was done in collaboration with her second husband. His was one of the Chemhuevi reservations into which Carobeth had gone alone, and at first things were far from easy for her there. But their discovery of one another made this initially trying assignment one of the best things that ever happened to her.
George Laird has been dead now for 25 years, but to his widow he is still "more real ... than any living person." She has another book coming out soon, to be titled, The Chemhuevi. One gets the impression that the publication of this book, containing a legacy of her husband's people, is a kind of tribute to Laird himself. She refers to the Chemhuevi tribe as "our tribe." In Encounter with an Angry God she comments, "At that time neither of us cared whether we were Indian or white; we just wanted to be alike."
In her youth, Carobeth was a pioneer of sorts; any female anthropologist of the early 1900s certainly deserves to be called a pioneer. Her appearance now is one of philosophical serenity. But she has suffered terribly, recently as well as in her youth. Her next book (she is bursting with ideas for books) will be a description of what she refers to as her "year of crisis," spent in a nursing hospital. "Everything happened ... when I had no income, no home to go to, no health, I was unable to walk.... This was almost a year that had to be just lived through, just endured from one day to the next." With the help of loving friend of her daughter, whit who she presently lives, the situation eventually resolved. Despite that year's happy ending, it is still with something of horror and sadness that she appears to remember it. Such memories can't easily be shaken off, and the subject absorbs her still.
Before she can begin her book on it, she must learn to use a tape recorder. Sitting at a typewriter, she quickly becomes tired. No matter, she will learn. Old age may appear to be quiet, and grandmothers may appear to be all twinkle, but looks can be deceiving, especially, perhaps, to the young. As for Carobeth, her parting comment to me was, "When you get to be 80, everyone looks so very young to you. So very, very young."
Here's something you might be interested in.
Youthful slave and wife of John Peabody Harrington
"The life, with all it s drawbacks, was opening up a new world to me"
Youthful slave and wife of John Peabody Harrington
"The life, with all it s drawbacks, was opening up a new world to me"
They tell tales, in the back rooms and archives and lecture halls of the anthropological world, of one John Peabody Harrington, linguist. Now that a comfortable fifteen years have elapsed sioee his death, they delight in his. maniacal dedication to his work. Example: Harrington was pulling on a billy goat's ears in a very painful manner. The billy goat was protesting. A passerby asked him, "Harrington, what in God's name are you doing?" Harrington, however, continued pulling, and the billy goat continued protesting. Fina1ly, when the passerby was about to burst with curiosity, Harrington sighed rapturously, "Isn't that the most perfect umlaut you've ever heard?"
Another story, somewhat more grim, concerns the enterprising Harrington signing up, for long-term field work, the widow of a linguist informant on the very day of her husband's funeral.
Carobeth Laird
Carobeth Laird, too, can laugh at these jokes now. She, one of a few in all the world, has had intimate experience with the late great Harrington's bizarre single-mindedness. Sixty years ago, at the eager, romantic age of 20, she married him and became his "youthful slave and disciple." Seven hardworking, disenchanting years later she left him, to live with and eventually marry George Laird, one of the Indians whose language she and Harrington had been studying. Last year, at the age of 80, Mrs. Laird published an autobiographical novel, Encounter with an Angry God, in which she attempts to explain.
At first meeting, Carobeth Laird, now living near Carmel Valley Road, Del Mar, resembles the kindly grandmother of a bedtime story. A second glance, however, reveals that this is no Mother Tums. The voice quavers, the words do not. Her face is extraordinary in its alertness and sensitivity. She is beautiful, it's true; but her beauty is of an unconventional sort.
"Enduring is something I'm very good at," Mrs Laird once remarked. From this point of view of a 1970s woman, she has certainly endured a great deal. Early in the course of their relationship, when Carobeth still imaged herself to be very much in love with Harrington (the one she described as looking like an "angry god") he expressed satisfied admiration for the way she "thought like a man."
This compliment, if so it may be called, was one of the few she was ever to receive from him. "In his frame of reference of that time, I did think like a man was supposed to think rather than like a woman was supposed to think. I don't say that women didn't think that way, or that men did think that way, but ... I had an analytical approach, a colder more analytical approach than women were supposed to have at that time." Harrington appreciated Carobeth's intelligence and efficiency for their usefulness to him in his work (his main purpose in life was to record Indian languages). But, she adds, "as a person with emotions, deep feelings, capable of being hurt, I was just a nuisance to him."
At the age of 58, long after he had been divorced from Carobeth, Harrington wrote to a friend asking that he find him a new wife. he specified that she be tall, German, and a typist. There is, from Harrington's point of view, a certain grim logic to these peculiar stipulations. Carobeth explains them thus: He wanted height because she, Carobeth, is quite short; he wanted a German because he had always respected that nation's scholars; and he wanted a typist because Carobeth's typing had proved extraordinarily useful to him in his field work.
Harrington had not found his first wife to be particularly docile. her emotional demands, few as they were, proved to be more than he could handle, for he had nothing whatever to give. As for his second wife, according to Mrs. Laird, "I guess he really wanted my opposite."
Carobeth stayed with him as long as she did, however, because "the life, with all it s drawbacks, was opening up a new world to me." She was born in a small, dreary Texas town. At the age of 19, when she met Harrington, she had, in addition to all other handicaps shared by intelligent women 60 years ago, an illegitimate infant daughter, no high school diploma, and a tremendous eagerness for education. Had she not married, she would have been forced to remain with her parents. Reading and self-directed sturdy would have been her only outlets. Marriage to Harrington offered a life full of the adventure and active education that she craved.
To be sure, with her small town upbringing, this adventure was at times almost overwhelming. Her talent for the field work earned her Harrington's trust to the degree that he sent her off to reservations to gather data alone. "It took a long time to grow out of the limitations of a small town country girl." To go alone, with no preparation, to an Indian reservation "was absolute agony at first." It was, however, either the reservation or the life of a dependent at home. She went.
At more than one place in Encounter with an Angry God, Mrs. Laird comments that she couldn't understand Harrington, that she never understood Harrington. Today, she remarks with a laugh, "I don't know if I understand him yet." Shortly before she was to leave for the Chemhuevi reservation on her own, she reached a conclusion about her husband that crystallized all the disappointment that had gone before. After a bitter, quarrelsome night, when she was to leave for a rare visit to her parents, she watched him scowl angrily while she remained impassive to his attempts at a goodbye. "I called him an angry god,' she through, 'and all the while he was just a dirty little boy having a tantrum.'" Finis. Within a few brief weeks she had met George Laird, and her life of dedication to the brilliant, eccentric John Peabody Harrington was over.
Carobeth's first marriage was ended, her second began, and children were born. She never went back to school. "The doors that I wanted so badly to swing open never did." A rather sad, dreamy smile accompanied this statement. It was the smile of a woman who got her education the hard way. A good deal of what she did with Harrington is now meaningless to her. She regards the detailed linguistic work as no more important than an interesting crossword puzzle. Her own research and writing about the Chemhuevi Indians, however, she regards as extremely important.
Some of this research was done in collaboration with her second husband. His was one of the Chemhuevi reservations into which Carobeth had gone alone, and at first things were far from easy for her there. But their discovery of one another made this initially trying assignment one of the best things that ever happened to her.
George Laird has been dead now for 25 years, but to his widow he is still "more real ... than any living person." She has another book coming out soon, to be titled, The Chemhuevi. One gets the impression that the publication of this book, containing a legacy of her husband's people, is a kind of tribute to Laird himself. She refers to the Chemhuevi tribe as "our tribe." In Encounter with an Angry God she comments, "At that time neither of us cared whether we were Indian or white; we just wanted to be alike."
In her youth, Carobeth was a pioneer of sorts; any female anthropologist of the early 1900s certainly deserves to be called a pioneer. Her appearance now is one of philosophical serenity. But she has suffered terribly, recently as well as in her youth. Her next book (she is bursting with ideas for books) will be a description of what she refers to as her "year of crisis," spent in a nursing hospital. "Everything happened ... when I had no income, no home to go to, no health, I was unable to walk.... This was almost a year that had to be just lived through, just endured from one day to the next." With the help of loving friend of her daughter, whit who she presently lives, the situation eventually resolved. Despite that year's happy ending, it is still with something of horror and sadness that she appears to remember it. Such memories can't easily be shaken off, and the subject absorbs her still.
Before she can begin her book on it, she must learn to use a tape recorder. Sitting at a typewriter, she quickly becomes tired. No matter, she will learn. Old age may appear to be quiet, and grandmothers may appear to be all twinkle, but looks can be deceiving, especially, perhaps, to the young. As for Carobeth, her parting comment to me was, "When you get to be 80, everyone looks so very young to you. So very, very young."
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