The Surf Guru (31 page)

Scottwell-Scott suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including migraines and debilitating back pain, which caused him to retire from fieldwork far earlier than he wanted. Quilcock's notes suggest that he felt unjustly robbed of his mentor's presence and support.

According to Quilcock's diary, an in-his-cups Scottwell-Scott told him that my father received this recognition because “he doesn't need it so damned desperately.” In the diary, the quote is followed with brackets that contain twenty-three question marks and a fair number of wild ink spatters.

Bear in mind that Grimshaw
wasn't
one of the many botanists with whom Quilcock had quarreled. Quite the contrary: Grimshaw was the best man at Quilcock's wedding to my mother in 1903, and I have found no evidence that the two men ever had a falling-out, personally or academically.

Quilcock believed that Cates had presented work by Petitfour, Prim, Schupe, and Woolforke as his own. Readers should note that Quilcock had no particular love for any of these four; he simply believed that everyone was entitled to fair dealing.

Quilcock's references to various details of the Cates affair appear
infra
, in Profiles #297 (Simoneaux), #298 (Prim & Gjetost), #299 (Brompton), #415 (Tenterhook), #416 (Jones-Anhinga), #417 (Tumressel), and #418 (Cates
fils
).

Ironically, this sounds like the way Quilcock met my mother. She was a junior at Mulholland and a recent student of his when she signed on to assist him and Scottwell-Scott with their summer fieldwork in the Sierra Nevada. They were married in the fall. As mentioned earlier, the union did not last; they separated the following July while collecting at Anza Borrego with a team that included Scottwell-Scott, Fitzgilbert, and my father (who had recently arrived out west, Harvard Ph.D. fresh in hand). It appears that Quilcock was right to have pegged my father right away as a rival not just for Scottwell-Scott's attention but for my mother's as well. “I was awfully young, and I'd never met anyone as passionate as Hart,” my mother told me. “When your father showed up, well, he was passionate, too, and he was a man of better moods and cleaner habits and better prospects. Hart wasn't a bad man, but
you
try living through a winter with him. . . . Besides, Scottwell-Scott didn't want anyone competing for Hart's attention, anyway.” (Interview with Anna Sophia Parker, Grizzly Meadow, Nevada [October 1, 1965]).

While collecting in the hills above Tierra Blanca, Petitfour was mistaken for a Villista revolutionary and felled by a
federale
's bullet.

Quilcock's basis for this assertion remains unknown.

See Profile #298 (Prim & Gjetost),
infra
.

Quilcock,
Flora of Coahuila
, pp. 96-129.

Quilcock's basis for tracing any conspiracy
in re
the Cates affair back to my father is unclear. In the absence of same, I find the accusation difficult to credit. He is no more specific with respect to his allegations that my father ever perpetrated an act of academic dishonesty.

My research suggests that she was the only woman other than my mother to whom Quilcock ever declared his love. His selection of her, though, was unfortunate; as her scandalous late-life memoir,
Pistils at Dawn: An Erotic Life in the World of Botany
(1961), made clear, her attentions were reserved for members of the fairer sex.

Imagine my father's reaction when he first heard of Quilcock's attempt to name the species after my mother!

My parents came to Mulholland in 1919, when Fitzgilbert, in his capacity as dean of sciences, recruited my father to take over as chair of the biology department. My mother received an assistant professorship as part of the arrangement. Quilcock, of course, took all of this as evidence of a conspiracy to drive him out of the university. Grimly defiant, he held his ground for six tense years, until he was undone by his erratic behavior. See Profile #424 (Fitzgilbert),
infra
.

Imagine my surprise to see my own name mentioned in Quilcock's profiles—and without derogation!

When I asked my mother if she understood what Quilcock was insinuating here, she called her nurse for more morphine, then smiled at me and made a cryptic and garbled reference to my eyesight. I did not pursue the matter further. In point of fact, my eyesight is generally excellent, although I do sometimes use corrective lenses to help with some mild farsightedness.

Prim was, apparently, a man of great patience. Had I been in his boots, my first act would be to call for a burlap sack, a length of rope, and a raging river to hurl the pup into.

Adding insult to Quilcock's injury, this plant was named—at Prim's suggestion—
Ptimorus catesii
.

Fitzgilbert had promised in 1917 that the university would purchase Quilcock's collection at a reasonable price upon his retirement, and Quilcock had planned to live off the proceeds. As Quilcock's mental and physical health declined over the years, his home fell into disrepair, and many of his samples suffered from exposure and infestation. A “reasonable price” for a collection in such a state would no doubt have seemed a pittance to Quilcock.

Hartford Anderton Quilcock died in his secluded and dilapidated cottage in Bondiga Springs, Calif., on October 30, 1931. Unless my collection is incomplete, this was the last Profile he wrote.