Waking Up in Eden (26 page)

Henrietta died. Isabella spun into paroxysms of grief. “She was my world,” she wrote. Dr. Bishop resumed his campaign to marry Isabella. This time she consented but barely concealed
her doubts. Now aged fifty, she insisted on wearing black to the wedding. She invited no guests. A friend tried to argue Isabella out of dressing for the wedding in deep mourning but got nowhere.

Marriage did little to improve her health. She developed a series of carbuncles close to the spine and was in deep, constant pain — surely an even better excuse than a headache to avoid conjugal relations? Eight months after their nuptials, the doctor contracted blood poisoning when operating on a foreign sailor suffering from a bacterial skin infection. Without antibiotics, it led to four years of crippling, degenerative health. As the doctor became incapacitated, he retained an uncomplaining nobility; at long last, Isabella declared love and devotion for him.

After her husband died on March 6, 1886, Isabella grieved for a year. But then she hatched a plan. What better monument to her good husband than a series of memorial missionary hospitals in the Far East? She went to London to study missionary nursing, then quickly ran off to Ireland for five weeks, ostensibly to study the Irish question, traveling in open carts during midwinter. She revived, discovering again in Ireland what she calls “a sad fact,” that delicate and ailing as she almost always was, “a rough, knock-about open-air life” always brought back health and strength. “Oh! To be beyond the pale once more,” she wrote, “out of civilization into savagery? I abhor civilization!”

She established a hospital at Islamabad, then that accomplished, she set out for a grand tour through Central Asia and Tibet, riding first on an Arab steed, then on the back of a yak, the half-wild ox of Tibet.

In 1890, she undertook her most perilous and perhaps most remarkable journey, from Baghdad to Tehran, from Isfahan to Erzurum, across snowbound passes and bandit-infested regions never before traveled by a European. She was almost sixty years old. Back in England for only a few months, she then set out again for a three-year trip through China, Japan, and Korea.

In 1900, Isabella turned seventy. She began lessons in advanced photography, conversational French, and cooking. Her only concessions to age were the purchases of a tricycle to replace her usual bicycle, and a small ladder for mounting and dismounting from the powerful black charger she rode through Morocco the following year.

It was her last journey. From October 1903 until her death a year later, she lay confined to bed or couch. Although she unrealistically dreamed of another trip to China, an internal tumor and heart disease finally consumed her. Her last months were spent in bed, surrounded by books and devoted friends.

Nearly to the end, she lived the words she had written decades before:

“I still vote civilization a nuisance, society a humbug and all conventionality a crime.”

T
HE HIGH-HEELED
silk pumps that matched the beige cocktail dress lay buried in a shoebox on the top shelf in the cottage closet. Torture chambers after months of bare feet and sandals. Holding up suits and dresses against my body, I felt like an archeologist exhuming a past civilization. Dr. Klein had already left for North Palm Beach, Florida, a winter enclave for the wealthy. We needed to attend posh fund-raising parties but also sort out a mess at our Florida garden. Dr. Klein's latest brainstorm had just blown up. With its expanse of lawn overlooking Biscayne Bay, The Kampong's nine-acre estate in Coconut Grove was a Gatsby-like setting. It had only recently been deeded to the National Tropical Botanical Garden and, although it was a nice garden sitting on high-priced real estate, we hadn't really figured out what to do with it. Dr. Klein had hired an event planner who busily rented it out for weddings and parties. Two weeks earlier, the neighbors nearly rioted in protest when a wedding band brayed blasts of loud salsa music late into the night. One neighbor, a Garden trustee as it happened, called the police. “With trustees like
that, who the hell needs enemies?” fumed Doug Kinney. He cancelled all future parties.

Bill and I hoped to calm everybody down, and then try to figure out how The Kampong could support itself. But he had another, deeper objective. Doug's intrusiveness into Garden operations had become so irritating that Bill Klein was ready to quit. “Doug's job as chairman of the board is to set policy, not oversee operations,” he steamed. “I'm going to tell him that I'm out of here if he doesn't back off.” Bill promised that he would get Doug to stop giving me orders, too.

I pulled a heavy suitcase from the back of a closet. I wore a swimsuit for the job. After loading the suitcases into the car for the drive to the airport, I was sweating. I took a last-minute shower before departing.

A
UNIFORMED MAJORDOMO
at the Seminole Club, an exclusive community for the wealthy in North Palm Beach, informed us that Mr. Kinney was at home. He offered to telephone for us. Bill and I waited in a room of overstuffed chairs and plaid, preppy furnishings. Doug arrived and we went into a room of bridge tables. Expansively, Doug greeted a number of men, retirement age like him. Most of them wore polo shirts with an embroidered head of an Indian on the breast, presumably a Seminole.

Bill pulled a written agenda from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket and started smoothly ticking off accomplishments. When he arrived at the Garden only three years ago, all its Hawaiian sites lay hurricane-damaged or closed. He reopened all four to paying visitors and had begun similar efforts for The Kompong. We raised more money than any time in history.
The annual budget was balanced. Already we had lined up $4.5 million of the $10 million campaign. Annual gifts netted $2.8 million — up $1 million from the year before. Construction had begun on a new, full-fledged visitor center. A new horticulture center would be next. Reconstruction of the Allerton estate house was nearing completion. A Ph.D. scientist was just appointed to a newly created chair of horticulture. A renowned biologist had agreed to a post as visiting scientist. We attracted a bounty of press clippings. Our new publications won awards, including best in the nation from the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta. . . .

Doug interrupted, “You've had a fabulous year. No question. The Garden is just popping with excitement.”

“Doug there's even more going on than you know,” Bill countered. And then he moved in, General Patton sending in the right flank. Now that Doug had volunteered his approval, Bill listed instances when Doug had meddled with staff. The Christmas card Doug wrote to Rick Hanna telling him to change computer connections at the Garden, without Bill's knowledge. The instructions to women on the staff to coddle one of the Garden's old-lady donors. His attempt to choose the visiting scientist, ignoring Bill's wishes.

It was all very cordial. Even-voiced pleasantries over egg salad. There were no ultimatums or threats. Doug took it with ease.

I doubted it would change one thing.

After lunch, Bill and I made the ninety-minute drive from Palm Beach to Coconut Grove. In the privacy of the car, I complimented him. “The written agenda was really masterful, Bill, to get Doug to acknowledge the positive accomplishments. How'd you think of that?”

“Experience, my dear. Experience,” he said. As we rehashed the lunch, he grew philosophical. “All in all, Doug and I did pretty well together as a team. I know if I had my way, I'd plan everything to death. Doug wants everything done at once. We balance each other.”

Something about Bill Klein invited confidences. “One thing I'd like to do is try a less aggressive and competitive approach to work,” I told him. “I'm a warrior.”

“I am, too,” he said.

“Yeah, but there's a spiritual side of you that makes you sort of like a great white chief. I battle too much. Using a machine gun when a fly swatter is all that's necessary. I mean, come on, this is a botanical garden.”

I had his full attention. He turned and said urgently, “Don't. The great temptation is to think that because this is a botanical garden, things will be easy and you don't have to fight. Don't believe that for a minute.”

T
HE
K
AMPONG WAS
a beautiful relic of Old Florida, built by plant explorer David Fairchild, often called the father of American botany. In explorations around the globe in the early 1900s, Fairchild collected and introduced to America seventy-five thousand plants. He single-handedly revolutionized the American diet, importing hundreds of new fruits and vegetables that are now commonplace, including soybeans and rice from Japan, cucumbers from Austria, figs from Algeria, sweet potatoes from Barbados, mangos from Indonesia, and a hardy Russian durum wheat able to withstand the harsh winters of our northern great plains. He transformed America's landscape with flowering cherry trees, now synonymous with spring in the
nation's capital. He organized the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction.

“Press on,” was his motto.

In 1926, Fairchild and his wife, Marian, bought the nine-acre Coconut Grove property, which they named The Kampong — Malaysian for
village.
After Fairchild died in 1954, The Kampong was sold to Dr. Catherine Sweeney, a wealthy intellectual deeply interested in botany. In 1986, she bequeathed the property to the Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii. The gift created an opportunity for the institution to successfully petition Congress in 1988 to change its name to the National Tropical Botanical Garden.

Dr. Klein hired a new director for the center, Tom Lodge, an environmentalist and author of a book about the Florida Everglades. Lodge sketched plans to open The Kampong to regular visiting hours and build a tiny visitors' kiosk and badly needed parking.

This evening, strings of white lights twinkled over The Kampong lawn and outlined a large tent on the tennis court, creating a fairyland setting. Weather forecasts warned of a freeze. Guests arrived in wool jackets buttoned up to the neck. A few of the more experienced Florida doyens trailed fur coats. I shivered in a new icy gray Armani silk suit I had bought on sale in Honolulu. One trustee's wife surveyed me from head to toe and sniffed, “I guess you didn't know we dress up here.”

When I told Bill Klein about the comment, he guffawed. “Wait until I tell Janet about that. You look mah-velous, just mah-velous.”

This was a first for The Kampong, a goodwill dinner for one hundred guests we hoped to cultivate as potential friends and donors.
“This is a historic night!” Bill told the guests in his after-dinner speech. He spoke passionately of his new vision for a reawakening at The Kampong, one that would allow it to take its place as an important site in the development of American botany.

After dinner I joined the stream of departing guests, falling into step with Doug Kinney. We walked along the lighted swimming pool. “Bill Klein talked too much,” he grunted. “As usual.” Doug got into his big black sedan for the trip back to North Palm Beach. Bill and I drove to the Hotel St. Michel, an elegant older hotel in Coral Gables. We were in high spirits, gossiping and comparing notes on the night, which we agreed was a big success.

At the hotel, we walked up the carpeted stairs, parting on the landing to head to our rooms on different floors. “I'll see you in the morning,” he called.

“We should leave at nine o'clock so we can get to The Kampong on time,” I reminded him.

I telephoned Bill's room at 8:30 the next morning, but received no answer.
Maybe he's having breakfast,
I thought, and went down to the hotel restaurant. I couldn't find him there, either. If he had gone jogging, he needed time to shower and dress. I walked down to the lobby and paused at the small, old-fashioned registration desk. Right then, the desk clerk handed me the phone.

“This is the emergency room nurse at Coral Gables Hospital. William Klein is here and asked me to call you. He fainted when he was jogging, and a rescue squad vehicle brought him in.”

I knew Bill had had emergency heart bypass surgery a few years before. But he seemed in good shape, always exercising and watching his diet. I used my cell phone to cancel our morning
meeting, then drove to the small community hospital where an ambulance had taken him. The ER physician escorted me into a small area with curtained patient beds. He spoke with professional clarity, “We think he's had a heart attack, but he seems to have stabilized now. There seems to be some occlusion of the veins. He said he had been having tightness in his chest for a few days. I'm not a cardiac specialist, and this hospital doesn't have the facilities to do a catheterization. I recommend that we transfer him to another hospital. Immediately.”

Bill lay flat on his back, bare-chested and hooked up to several monitors. He had big, bloody scrapes on his forehead and along his chin, from the fall. He ran a tongue along his teeth. “I've broken a tooth,” he said. I didn't see any breakage, but blood stained his teeth.

I took his hand in mind. He was lucid and somber.

“Bill, who was your heart doctor in Miami?” I asked.

He struggled to speak, and whispered a name. I had to bend my ear down to his lips to hear.

“Don't like him,” he said softly. “I want the best cardiologist in Miami. Have them go on without me for this afternoon's meeting with the lawyers.”

I still held his hand when a nurse walked in. It was a big hand, a strong hand, freckled from the sun. But pale and very cold. I asked the nurse to bring him a blanket.

“I
am
cold,” he said, noticing for the first time.

“His blood pressure dropped, lowering his temperature,” the nurse explained. She disappeared, then returned with a blue blanket, which she tucked in around him.