From Catty’s talk I knew Barbara was running into increasing difficulties now the workshop was complete and actual construction of what was referred to—with unnecessary crypticism, I thought—as HX-1 had begun. The impending war created scarcities, particularly of such materials as steel and copper, of which latter metal HX-1 seemed inordinately greedy. I was not surprised when the fellows apologetically refused Barbara a new appropriation.
The next day Catty said, “Hodge, you know the haven wouldn’t take my money.”
“And quite right too. Let the rest of us put in everything we get. We owe it to the haven anyway. But you should keep your independence.”
“Hodge, I’m going to give it all to Barbara for her HX-1.”
“What? Oh, nonsense!”
“Is it any more nonsensical for me to put in money I didn’t do anything to get than for her and Ace to put in time and knowledge and labor?”
“Yes, because she’s got a crazy idea and Ace has never been quite sane as far as Barbara’s concerned. If you go ahead and do this you’ll be crazy as they are.”
When Catty laughed I remembered with a pang the long months when that lovely sound had been strangled by terror inside her so that these priceless instants were irrevocably lost. I also thought with shame of my own failure and contumely. Had I appreciated her when her need was greatest I might have changed the long and painful process which restored her voice in Midbin’s way, or at least eased and quickened it.
“Perhaps I’m crazy—do you think they would admit me to fellowship on that basis? Anyway, I believe in Barbara, even if the fellows don’t. Not that I’m criticizing the haven. You were right to be cautious, you have a great deal to consider. I haven’t. I believe in her—or perhaps I feel I owe her something. Anyway, with my money she can finish her project. I only tell you this because you may not want to marry me under the circumstances.”
“You think I’m marrying you for your money?”
She smiled. “Dear Hodge. You are in some ways so young. No, I know very well you aren’t marrying me for money. That would be too practical, too grown up. I think you might not want to marry a woman who’d give all her money away. Especially to Barbara Haggerwells.”
“Catty, are you doing this absurd thing to get rid of me? Or to test me?”
This time she again laughed aloud. “Now I’m sure you will marry me after all and turn out to be a puzzled but amenable husband. You are my true Hodge, who studies a war because he can’t understand anything simpler or subtler.”
She wasn’t to be dissuaded from the quixotic gesture. I might not understand subtleties but I was sure I understood Barbara well enough. Foreseeing her request for more funds would be turned down, she had deliberately cultivated Catty in order to use her. Now she’d gotten what she wanted she’d undoubtedly drop Catty or revert to her accustomed virulent abuse.
She did neither. If anything, the amity grew. Catty’s vocabulary added words like “magnet,” “coil,” “induction,” “particle,” “light-year,” “continuum” and many others either incomprehensible or uninteresting to me. Breathlessly she described the strange, asymmetric structure taking shape in the workshop, while my mind was busy with Ewell’s Corps and Parrott guns and the weather chart of southern Pennsylvania for July 1863.
The great publishing firm of Ticknor, Harcourt & Knopf contracted for my book—there was no publisher in the United States equipped to handle it—and sent me a sizable advance in Confederate dollars which became even more sizable converted into United States’ money. I read the proofs of volume one in a state of semi-consciousness, sent the inevitable telegram changing a footnote on page 99, and waited for the infuriating mails to bring me my complimentary copies. The day after they arrived (with a horrifying typographical error right in the middle of page 12), Catty and I were married.
Perhaps reticence in this narrative has given less than a picture of my wife. I can only say that no man could ask for one more beautiful, finer or more desirable. With the approval of the fellows, I used part of the publisher’s advance for a honeymoon. We spent it going over some of the battlefields of the War of Southron Independence.
We settled down in the autumn of 1951, I to work on volume two, Catty to help me and keep house. Somewhat, I admit, to my disappointment, she resumed her daily visit to Barbara’s workshop and again regaled me with accounts of my ex-sweetheart’s progress.
HX-1 was to be completed in the late spring or early summer. I was not surprised that Barbara’s faith survived actual construction of the thing, but that such otherwise level-headed people as Ace and Catty could envisage breathlessly the miracles about to happen was beyond me. Ace, even after all these years, was still bemused—but Catty…?
Just before the turn of the year I got the following letter:
Department of History
Leesburg, District of Calhounia, CSA.
December 19, 1951
Mr. Hodgins M. Backmaker
“Haggershaven”
York, Pennsylvania, USA.
Sir:
On page 407 of Chancellorsville to the End, volume I, Turning Tides, you write, “Chronology and topography—timing and the use of space—were to be the decisive factors, rather than population and industry. Stuart’s detachment, which might have proved disastrous, turned out extraordinarily fortunate for Lee, as we shall see in the next volume. Of course the absence of cavalry might have been decisive if the Round Tops had not been occupied by the Southrons on July 1….”
Now, sir, evidently in your forthcoming analysis of Gettysburg you hold (as I presume most Yankees do) to the theory of fortuitousness. We Southrons naturally ascribe the victory to the supreme genius of General Lee, regarding the factors of time and space not as forces in themselves but as opportunities for the display of his talents.
Needless to say, I hardly expect you to change your opinions, rooted as they must be in national pride. I only ask that before you commit them, and the conclusions shaped by them, to print that you satisfy yourself, as an historian, of their validity in this particular case. In other words, sir, as one of your readers (and may I add, one who has enjoyed your work), I should like to be assured that you have studied this classic battle as carefully as you have the engagements described in volume I.
With earnest wishes for your success,
I remain, sir, cordially yours,
This letter from Dr. Polk, the foremost historian of our day, author of the monumental biography, The Great Lee, produced a crisis in my life. Had the Confederate professor pointed out flaws in my work, or even reproached me for undertaking it at all with inadequate equipment, I would, I trust, have acknowledged the reproof and continued to the best of my ability. But this letter was an accolade. Without condescension Dr. Polk admitted me to the ranks of serious historians and besought me as an equal to consider the depth of evaluation.
The truth is I was not without my own increasing doubts. Doubts I had not allowed to rise to the surface of my mind and disturb my plans. Polk’s letter brought them into the open.
I had read everything available. I had been over the ground between the Maryland line, South Mountain, Carlisle and the haven so that I could draw a detail map from memory. I had turned up diaries, letters and accounts which had never been published. Yet, with all this, I was not sure I had the whole story, even in the sense of wholeness that historians, knowing they can never achieve a knowledge of every detail, accept. I was not sure that what I thought was the final and just estimate was really either one, or that I had the grand scene in perfectly proper perspective. I admitted to myself the possibility I had perhaps been too rash, too precipitate, in undertaking Chancellorsville to the End. I knew the shadowy sign—the one which says in effect, You are ready—had not been given. My confidence was shaken.