telling the truth about him.
I have not, in my lifetime, had another friendship I valued as much as his. When I first met Hugo, he was thirty and very eager. And naive. He was going to do great things. He used to bemoan the fact that the Nobel Prize was not given in his field. And he did accomplish great things. By the time he was forty, he had done more than most scientists do in a lifetime. With Jennie and her celebrity, he was forced to grow up in a great hurry, and this was a terrible shock to him. It was a shock that something awful could happen to him. Most of us, as we launch into adult life, feel invulnerable, or at least puissant, but some of us are more ready for tragedy than others. Hugo was not at all ready. Or if he was ready, he was blindsided; he never thought it could come from the direction it did.
It changed him. It changed all of us;
she
changed all of us. But Hugo, in particular, was never the same. I will tell you what I think. After Jennie, his science was no damn good. You see . . . Excuse me, I believe Iâm telling you the moral of the story before youâve heard the story. I will only say this. He was like so many scientists: he thought he could separate object from subject. He ignored the human dimension of scientific work, the effect of the observer on the observed. And
vice versa
! You see, what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our questioning. And what we are, of course, is a response to what we observe. This is what tripped Hugo up.
To the story, then. We can moralize later.
Hugo returned from the Cameroons in the early fall of 1965. A few days later he brought Jennie to work with him. She caused a sensation. He got off the fifth-floor elevator and came down that hall, with that little black chimp riding on his neck. Everyone started coming out of their offices. Hugoâs office was at the end of the hall, in the corner. It was smaller than most offices but had asplendid view. He had a hideous old Victorian wing chair, which Jennie promptly claimed as her throne. He plopped her down in that chair and she sat back like a princess receiving courtiers, her legs sticking straight out, her eyes half closed, extending to each visitor a languid hand. She was wearing only a diaper, a T-shirt, and a hat. That hat! It was absurd, and it sat like a crown on her head, nearly obscuring her eyes, propped only by her big ears. I remember shaking her hand while her eyes wandered about the room, looking over my head, at my feetâlike a rude guest at a party.
Even at six months she was full of the devil. At one point she snatched a pair of glasses from some hapless secretaryâone of those marvelous catâs-eye glasses decorated with rhinestonesâand they had to be pried out of her hands while she screamed piteously. It was as if she were being deprived of her last possession in the world. The glasses arrived back to their owner in a sad condition. Poor Hugo was always paying for something that Jennie had broken.
Jennie was a terribly captivating animal. There is something fascinating in looking at a chimpanzee, seeing an echo of humanity in the thing. I stayed on after everyone had left. Hugo gave Jennie a
National Geographic
magazine while we lit our pipes; I my Dunhill with Balkan Sobranie; Hugo that drugstore pipe filled with rum-soaked Borkum Riff Ready-Rubbed. Ugh.
Jennie was so small, she had to drag the magazine by both hands across the floor. She hauled it to my chair and hauled it up, where she settled in my lap, turning the pages. She then made a grab for my pipe.
I raised it out of reach. I told her that she was too young to smoke.
She did not like to be crossed. She gave my tie a yank, and then pulled off one of my buttons. Hugo scolded her, but she paid no attention.
The chimpanzee went back to her
National Geographic
, and coming to an especially interesting and colorful page proceeded to tear it out. Hugo took away the magazine and there was a
I have not, in my lifetime, had another friendship I valued as much as his. When I first met Hugo, he was thirty and very eager. And naive. He was going to do great things. He used to bemoan the fact that the Nobel Prize was not given in his field. And he did accomplish great things. By the time he was forty, he had done more than most scientists do in a lifetime. With Jennie and her celebrity, he was forced to grow up in a great hurry, and this was a terrible shock to him. It was a shock that something awful could happen to him. Most of us, as we launch into adult life, feel invulnerable, or at least puissant, but some of us are more ready for tragedy than others. Hugo was not at all ready. Or if he was ready, he was blindsided; he never thought it could come from the direction it did.
It changed him. It changed all of us;
she
changed all of us. But Hugo, in particular, was never the same. I will tell you what I think. After Jennie, his science was no damn good. You see . . . Excuse me, I believe Iâm telling you the moral of the story before youâve heard the story. I will only say this. He was like so many scientists: he thought he could separate object from subject. He ignored the human dimension of scientific work, the effect of the observer on the observed. And
vice versa
! You see, what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our questioning. And what we are, of course, is a response to what we observe. This is what tripped Hugo up.
To the story, then. We can moralize later.
Hugo returned from the Cameroons in the early fall of 1965. A few days later he brought Jennie to work with him. She caused a sensation. He got off the fifth-floor elevator and came down that hall, with that little black chimp riding on his neck. Everyone started coming out of their offices. Hugoâs office was at the end of the hall, in the corner. It was smaller than most offices but had asplendid view. He had a hideous old Victorian wing chair, which Jennie promptly claimed as her throne. He plopped her down in that chair and she sat back like a princess receiving courtiers, her legs sticking straight out, her eyes half closed, extending to each visitor a languid hand. She was wearing only a diaper, a T-shirt, and a hat. That hat! It was absurd, and it sat like a crown on her head, nearly obscuring her eyes, propped only by her big ears. I remember shaking her hand while her eyes wandered about the room, looking over my head, at my feetâlike a rude guest at a party.
Even at six months she was full of the devil. At one point she snatched a pair of glasses from some hapless secretaryâone of those marvelous catâs-eye glasses decorated with rhinestonesâand they had to be pried out of her hands while she screamed piteously. It was as if she were being deprived of her last possession in the world. The glasses arrived back to their owner in a sad condition. Poor Hugo was always paying for something that Jennie had broken.
Jennie was a terribly captivating animal. There is something fascinating in looking at a chimpanzee, seeing an echo of humanity in the thing. I stayed on after everyone had left. Hugo gave Jennie a
National Geographic
magazine while we lit our pipes; I my Dunhill with Balkan Sobranie; Hugo that drugstore pipe filled with rum-soaked Borkum Riff Ready-Rubbed. Ugh.
Jennie was so small, she had to drag the magazine by both hands across the floor. She hauled it to my chair and hauled it up, where she settled in my lap, turning the pages. She then made a grab for my pipe.
I raised it out of reach. I told her that she was too young to smoke.
She did not like to be crossed. She gave my tie a yank, and then pulled off one of my buttons. Hugo scolded her, but she paid no attention.
The chimpanzee went back to her
National Geographic
, and coming to an especially interesting and colorful page proceeded to tear it out. Hugo took away the magazine and there was a
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