The Lady and the Panda (25 page)

Of herself and her own capabilities, she said, she was a very fortunate person. “That it should be my luck to be the first human being to bring a Giant Panda—especially a baby one—out alive seems so unbelievable that there are times when I can hardly realize that it is true.”

Though she may have downplayed her determination, she now vowed that she would dedicate the “remainder of her life to adventure.” She made clear to the press that any reputable zoo that would finance her next expedition would get Su-Lin. She felt complete happiness while abroad, telling the scribbling journalists, “I loved the Chinese people and the country and can hardly wait to get back.”

Once the press had finally cleared, Harkness, along with her entourage, made her way to her apartment at 333 West Eighteenth Street. She would have an enormous amount of catching up to do with everybody.

The next night, Christmas Eve, Harkness found herself alone for what would turn out to be a few surprisingly dark hours. As radio stations played jolly and wistful tunes, candles and Christmas lights burned in the windows along the New York streets, and cheerful families rushed up the sidewalks with bright packages under their arms, a wave of melancholy came over the solitary explorer. She had felt such contentment in the lonely mountains in a lost part of the world, but now in the heart of one of the most crowded cities on earth, the place she had lived for her entire adult life, she was lonely. Though not the only Christmas she had spent without Bill, it was the first since his death. The sense of homecoming she had experienced so intensely in China would leave her feeling oddly out of place here. Surrounded by the familiar, she seemed not to belong.

Thankfully, a friend dropped in. They had cocktails, then went out, toting Baby down chilled Manhattan avenues in his wicker basket. As they indulged in a fine dinner in a favorite restaurant, Harkness declared
that charging an extravagant meal on credit was always a reliable antidote to feeling broke.

Right after Christmas everything started to hum again. There were some increasingly sour talks with the Bronx Zoo as the lofty zoological institution balked about taking the panda. Never expressed openly, it was almost certainly Harkness's demand for expedition money that put them off. Harkness wanted the same amount she had spent on her first expedition, which
Time
and
Life
magazines gauged to be twenty thousand dollars. She had said as much herself at one point, appraising her fourpound panda at five thousand dollars a pound.

It was a whopper of an asking price, way out of line with standard invoices for zoo purchases. Monkeys could be had by the dozen at $12 each, scarlet ibises for $15, and Malayan sun bears for $250 per pair. Besides, no matter what the price, the Bronx preferred and often expected catches brought in by well-mannered gentlemen to be donated.

That wasn't going to be the case with this woman. The director, W. Reid Blair, saw the newspaper stories in which Su-Lin was said to be worth anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000. So the zoo started its grumbling early. Blair complained to the papers that the explorer had been lax about staying in touch, asserting that “aside from a cable to the effect that Mrs. Harkness was on her way, the institution had had no word from her since she left China.” But more to the point, he said of her and the panda, “she'll probably want to sell it.” The zoo would be willing to acquire it only if the price were “reasonable.”

Furthermore, Blair told the
New York Herald Tribune
that “no zoological park desires to pay from $2,000 to $10,000 for a live animal unless there is a fair chance it can live a reasonable time in captivity.” Since a sick panda could be a colossal waste of money, some zoo officials began to wonder aloud if Su-Lin's perfectly natural bowed back legs meant he was suffering from rickets.

The Bronx, apparently, wouldn't budge above $2,000, and terms could not be agreed on. So Baby continued to live the life of a modern city panda—riding around Manhattan in taxicabs with all the windows rolled down, living in a nice flat, and attending cocktail parties.

Oddly, no other zoo was coming forward with a check for the most sought-after animal in the world, scared off no doubt by the price tag as well as the liability of caring for such a vulnerable baby. Harkness was surprised and discouraged. She had a “heavenly” fantasy of scraping together enough money to return to her lost world with Baby in tow. She also considered the possibility of bringing Quentin Young to the States. She wondered if he had, in fact, married the girl in the red sweater.

One sunny day in January, Harkness strolled around the streets of Manhattan, thinking of Young. As she watched the skaters at Rockefeller Plaza and looked up at the soaring skyscrapers, she decided to send her field companion his reward money, despite the fact that she still had no deal with any zoo. Her bank account was so close to empty anyway, she thought in true Harkness style, what would it matter if it drained out a little faster? She cabled Young the cash, musing about whether he would spend it on a ticket to America.

Harkness may have been downhearted about the zoo situation, but she had plenty to distract her. “The world came to my door by mail, by telephone and in person,” she recounted. Among others, there were author, critic, and radio personality Alexander Woollcott, whose promotion had been instrumental in the success of
Lost Horizon;
the great wildlife artist Charles Knight, coming daily to sketch Su-Lin; and the daughter of the Chinese ambassador to the United States.

Also, perhaps surprisingly, there were the men who had made names for themselves by killing pandas: the Roosevelts, Brooke Dolan, and Dean Sage.

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., arrived with his son Quentin and brother Kermit. The colonel was sitting with the woolly baby panda on his lap when a friend said that should something happen to Su-Lin, he could be stuffed and placed with the grouping of specimens that the Roosevelts had provided to the Field Museum. Roosevelt replied, “I'd just as soon think of stuffing Quentin and putting him in a habitat group.”

Sage had a similar reaction. “Do you know,” he said to Harkness, “I shall never shoot another Panda!”

“And this,” Harkness said, “from a man whose highest ambition three short years ago was to collect a Giant Panda Group in China for the American Museum of Natural History.… But I have since wondered if the American Museum would have had the wonderful Panda specimens Mr. and Mrs. Sage brought back, if Su Lin had seen the Sages first.” The baby panda's ability to convert hunters into peaceable admirers was not lost on the lady explorer. “I hope something will be done,” she wrote, “to prevent more of these rare and interesting animals from being killed. Science I believe has learned all that can be gained from dead specimens; it remains now to learn something about the live one.” As one Harvard mammalogist said of collecting specimens for museums, what was observed of an animal could be summed up by saying, “When we found it, it ran like hell, whereupon we shot it!”

Waging her soft campaign to disarm big-game hunters, she got the chance to address a slew of them. On Saturday evening, January 16, Ruth Harkness was the first woman to attend the annual banquet of the prestigious and all-male Explorers Club. Members had included President Theodore Roosevelt, Sir Ernest Shackleton, both Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, and Richard Byrd.

The club would not tolerate naming a woman the guest of honor— that glory went to the panda himself. But, as Harkness dryly pointed out, “They couldn't very well ask Su Lin without me.” Though they were forced to invite her, they made clear she was not being commended:
The New York Times
reported that Su-Lin was “ceremoniously announced as the one and only guest of honor.”

Wearing her gray Chinese otter coat over a peach gown, Harkness swept into the chandeliered lounge of the Plaza at 7:15
P.M.
, and parted the sea of hundreds who were milling about in formal jackets with their cocktails and cigars. Horrified by the billowing smoke, she dashed out just as quickly. Harkness, Su-Lin, a hotel employee, and a maid Harkness brought along, Frances Horn, hurried through the gathering once more, this time on their way to suite 363, rented for the evening, so windows could be opened to the fresh air for Baby. Harkness's anxiety and
the brief appearance of the panda caused enough of a stir among the gentlemen for
The New York Times
to note it.

During dinner, Harkness and Su-Lin were seated next to club president Walter Granger. At ten-thirty toastmaster Lowell Thomas signaled to Harkness. She wrapped Baby in a bath towel, and carried him to a microphone for a live broadcast. Granger asked a series of questions, to which Harkness responded for the panda. “What's your name?” he inquired, and Harkness answered, “Su-Lin.”

“Where do you come from?”

“I came from the border of Tibet.”

Before the broadcast ended, the annoyed animal did his own talking, which,
The Times
said, “was exactly like a baby crying.” Although there were a number of speakers, the paper asserted, “It was Su-Lin's show”— as it would be for some time to come.

Newspapers couldn't get enough of the panda and the panda hunter. Among others, the
New York American
told the tale in sizable and splashy spreads over four Sundays in February. For the series, Harkness's byline was accompanied by the legend “First woman to lead her own expedition into Chinese Tibet and the only explorer who ever caught a living specimen of the rare and elusive Giant Panda.”

THROUGHOUT JANUARY, HARKNESS
began to worry about Baby's care. She knew that her apartment was not adequate for his needs. It was also increasingly difficult to keep up with the growing animal's hunger. “Day by day, she grew bigger and stronger,” Harkness told a reporter. “Her appetite, always healthy grew by leaps and bounds.” The eight-ounce bottle was quickly replaced by a twelve-ounce, and four feedings a day had to be supplemented, but by what? Su-Lin seemed unaware that carrots, lettuce, asparagus, or celery were anything more than toys. A single stalk of bamboo that Harkness had saved because of the giant panda-tooth marks on it became a favorite possession. Though ragged, cracked, and dry, it held some magic for the little panda, who chewed on it endlessly.

Since this growing baby was obviously going to need solid food soon, Harkness was determined to get him into the hands of experts who could puzzle out a decent diet.

Edward Bean at the Brookfield Zoo had treated her well, so she negotiated with him to take Su-Lin on loan until matters could be sorted out. Late in the afternoon of February 6 Harkness once again boarded the
Commodore Vanderbilt,
this time heading west. Her friends saw her off from Grand Central Terminal, bringing roses and violets for the bittersweet farewell. She would stay one week, making sure little Su-Lin settled in properly.

Two days later the panda was welcomed at the zoo, where he would not be put on display for months. He was kept in the first-aid station, after zoo officials realized that the planned space in the Australian House was too hot for the woolly baby, and too frightening with the yips of the dingo dogs echoing through the halls. The director's daughter, Mary Bean, a registered nurse, would care for the baby by day; her brother, Robert Bean, the curator of mammals, took the night shift. Lloyd's of London insured the animal that Pathé News considered the most valuable in the world.

Clearly, Harkness wasn't the only one who saw the panda as nearly human. Kept in a large room, he was given a bright green Chinese grass rug, a cradle, a playpen, and a football. Harkness was pleased to see that her Su-Lin would receive “the sort of care and attention that have gone into the upbringing of the Dionne quintuplets”—then the most famous babies in North America.

Mary Bean would correspond with Harkness over time, providing details of Su-Lin's regimen. He would be fed on a regular schedule:

Carrots, celery, lettuce, and spinach leaves were provided for chewing, and the doting nurse said Su-Lin enjoyed “a little warm water two or three times a day.”

HARKNESS WAS ALL
smiles about the transfer, but it was with a great deal of emotion that she relinquished the panda into the Beans' care. Since the morning of November 9 she had hardly let Baby out of her sight. Now he would be gone for good.

That night, alone in her room, she woke sobbing. Tellingly, she wrote, “but for whom or what, I do not know.” She may never have been able to properly express her despair over Bill's death in her writing, but here was a glimpse of her pain. Su-Lin was Bill, his cause, the life the young couple should have had, the children they would never have. When she gave the animal away, all the other sorrows were laid bare.

HARKNESS RETURNED
to New York, eager to accomplish her objectives. She wanted to produce a book about her adventure, receive enough money to underwrite her next expedition, and get back to China and Tibet.

Her story was big enough, and she had enough connections to the publishing world—among others, Perkie had befriended author Faith Baldwin, and Harkness's in-laws had lived near a successful literary agent—that she landed a contract with a new publishing house, Carrick & Evans, for two books: one for adults and another for children. She could start right away, using as notes the stockpile of letters she had written home to Perkie during her expedition.

Gnawing at her at all times, though, was the impermanence of SuLin's situation. She met with various zoo officials and contacted others. All with little result. In frustration, she wondered aloud in the pages of
the popular
New York Herald Tribune
if she should just take the panda out of the zoo to return him to his native home. “There are times,” she said, “when I feel that the best thing to do would be to take Su-Lin back to her ancestral jungle, set her free and let her live her life the way Mother Nature intended.”