The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone

Author:Daniel Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

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The letters kept arriving at Marian’s house, delivered early in the morning during out-of-the-way detours Fairchild took by the Bells’ house to the office. Marian would respond, enamored by the attention, but she was unwilling to equal Fairchild’s more poetic, often unedited pronouncements.

For their first official date, on January 13, 1905, Fairchild took Marian to the Washington Symphony Orchestra to see the Scottish pianist Eugen d’Albert. Fairchild took her hand as d’Albert played Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. And when they left, he tucked the program in his pocket to remember the occasion. He wrote her later that night.

That music was so deep and took such a hold that my brain is awhirl. . . . You were very good to let me hear it and I do like the intoxication of it though it seems very showy and leaves one a bit weak.

David

Marian enjoyed responding with tantalizingly little, but enough to invite more missives.

I like the way you write—it’s very simple and direct.

Marian

There was a lot Marian began to like about Fairchild, and eventually his demeanor became part of his charm. At a party hosted by the Grosvenors, Fairchild flailed his hands while he told a story. He knocked over a candle and spilled hot wax all over his coat, ruining it, but Fairchild continued the story as though he had made the same faux pas dozens of times before. Marian would later note, in longhand, how she enjoyed his resilience in the face of setback, however minor.

In February of 1905, a month that brought blankets of snow, they both took trips away from Washington. Marian left first for Detroit on art business. The collector Charles Lang Freer wanted to donate to the Smithsonian Institution a portion of his personal collection, and Marian, on account of her father’s connections and because she had studied art, was asked by the Smithsonian to inspect the gift. Fairchild, not long after, took the train to Florida. He wrote to her from his Department of Agriculture office, and then once he departed, on any stationery he could find, at each stop feeling more comfortable with himself, more flirtatious, in the way an uncertain lover finds his footing.

January 31, 1905

Department of Agriculture of the United States

Marian,

Did you ever look at a friend’s photograph through a big microscope? I’m going to look at you through mine—my new one for there is something real about the image that the delicate fashioned lenses cast. This letter shall reach you earlier than the others for it will catch the last delivery. I hope it will find you in the sunshine and not the shade. I send a leaf from a winter’s day which I spent years ago in the Adriatic, with a dear old Italian monk, looking for a new sort of grape which is now growing in California. You will excuse this letterhead note paper will you not? It is some left from the last trip. Now come the letters, more of the artificial moonlight and a tramp home in the snow.

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