Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted (18 page)

Caroline Hampton was a solidly built woman, perhaps a bit masculine in appearance, and accustomed to being treated with the utmost respect she believed due her station. From the start she drew mixed reviews. Efficient, patrician, and mechanically minded, she was well suited to work with the patrician, introverted, and sarcastic Halsted. Though she proved capable of discharging the responsibilities of head surgical nurse, she continually clashed with her superior, Isabel Hampton. Halsted, searching for an agreeable solution, made Caroline his scrub nurse, thereby removing her from Isabel’s supervision, while keeping her close at hand.

A few weeks later, Caroline resigned her position at the hospital and she and Halsted announced their engagement. Osler was among the few who saw it coming; he had witnessed his colleague sitting close by Caroline, explaining the fine points of anatomy at a table strewn with human bones. It seemed so sudden and out of character that Osler composed a few lines gently mocking the surgeon. Halsted was capable of enormous charm and generosity of spirit, qualities that were rarely in evidence in the clinical setting but touched the few he welcomed into his world. To them, his engagement was cause for celebration. Welch and Osler gave dinners in his honor, as did others including the James family, Halsted’s old Baltimore friends. There was a genuine sense of happiness for him among the hospital staff. Putting things into proper prospective, Sister Rachel Bonner, the hospital
matron, spoke for most when she explained how well matched the new couple were, calling them both “a little odd.”

After Welch, Halsted’s closest friend was the anatomist and embryologist Franklin Mall.

By the time of Halsted’s marriage, Mall had decamped to Clark University, and then became professor of anatomy at the forward-thinking University of Chicago, before he was lured back to head the department of anatomy when the Johns Hopkins medical school opened. Upon the occasion of his engagement, Halsted wrote to Mall:

My dear Mall:

I know that you will be amused to know that I am engaged to be married. A good joke for you I know. I wish that I could see your chuckles. Miss Hampton reminds Booker & me very much of you. I suppose that is the reason that I proposed to her.

Yours,

Wm. S. Halsted

Both amusing and confusing, one is unsure exactly what to make of the letter. For a period Halsted was very close to both Mall and Welch. The three were bachelors at the time, though Mall married a medical student four years later. Some, including Harvey Cushing, saw Halsted’s friendship with Welch as more involved than was ever admitted by either man, but Cushing was the only contemporary to actually write that he believed a homosexual relationship existed between the two.

No evidence, offhand remarks, or writings have been uncovered to suggest anything more than friendship between Halsted and Mall. The letter stands alone as a successful attempt at humor. If the relationship was more intimate than we are aware of, then it would have a different significance indeed.

CAROLINE’S ATTITUDE TOWARD
her impending marriage was decidedly different from that of her intended. Three months before the wedding, she wrote to her aunt Lucy Baxter:

My life had very little ahead as matters stood before — now I do not see why I should not be happy. It is very pleasant to be the first with someone and be taken care of …. and tho’ of course a good deal of that will wear off I still think we are enough alike to make each other happy … One thing I am sure of is that I will never find Dr. Halsted anything but considerate and respectful … Some time in April I am going to N. Y. for clothes and we will be married in June. We are going to take a furnished house for a year and take time to get some nice house that can be well fixed up … Dr. H. is the most fussy of men and nothing suits him unless it is a little better than someone else’s which means considerable extravagance. Still if he makes the money he might as well spend it and I luckily am very moderate in my tastes.

It is a revealing picture. From the first line, “My life had little ahead …,” one sees the marriage through the eyes of a woman of few prospects and little prior happiness. The idea of a financially secure existence with a sympathetic partner seems to be aspiration enough for Caroline Hampton. The sad pragmatism of the young woman conjures a disturbing picture, which would seem more appropriate as a retrospective rationalization of a decades-old marriage.

The statement “Dr. H. is the most fussy of men …” quickly summarizes what many anecdotes illustrate. Halsted was a fussy and obsessive youth, and became more so with age. A man intolerant of a speck of dust on his hat and dressed by the finest English tailors and Parisian shirtmakers was about to marry a woman who paid little attention to her appearance; cared not at all for fashion; favored plain,
dark dresses and sensible, sturdy flat shoes; and wore her hair tied back simply in a bun.

CAROLINE HAMPTON AND
William Stewart Halsted were married on June 4, 1890. Festivities were held at the former Millwood estate—the Hampton family seat—and wedding services at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbia. William Welch served as Halsted’s best man. Welch was pleased to see his old friend joyful and optimistic about his marriage. To Welch, Halsted confided his amazement that a woman of Caroline Hampton’s stature could be interested in so unworthy a fellow like himself.

For their honeymoon trip, the couple went off to the Hampton family lodge in the Cashiers Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The old house and the dramatic land around it meant a great deal to Caroline. They represented the best part of her youth, and she was instantly at home in the country surroundings. Halsted was unfamiliar with the hunting-lodge lifestyle. He neither hunted nor fished, but he was charmed by the place, as he had been with all the traditions of the southern gentry. Their first visit as a couple extended from their early June wedding until the early fall and began their custom of lengthy absences from Baltimore.

The Cashiers Valley, in the westernmost extension of North Carolina, lies at the center of an equilateral triangle bordered by Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia. The newly married Dr. and Mrs. William Stewart Halsted made the 180-mile trip from Columbia, South Carolina, by rail to nearby Lake Toxaway. The final leg, from Lake Toxaway to the Hampton lodge, was fewer than 20 miles, but made by wagon over very difficult terrain, the trip was long and arduous. Poor roads and switchbacks through the mountains, with frequent obstacles and washouts, were the price of escape. The land was nestled between angular granite peaks of the Blue Ridge range and commanded vistas of startling, pristine beauty. The elevation of 3,600 feet in a southern latitude made
for sunny days and cool nights; 80 inches of annual rainfall provided deep, lush green, bountiful lakes and cascading waters. The remote environment was a paradise for Caroline and William Halsted.

For Caroline it was a triumphant return to the scene of her youth. For William, the initial interest was to escape the oppressive heat and humidity of the Baltimore summer. But the mystique of his wife’s southern heritage and his new role as loving husband brought an enthusiastic, if skeptical, attitude toward this new environment. He was a thoroughly urban creature, but the remote beauty of the setting immediately captivated him as well.

Halsted, who arrived with two trunks of city clothing and no more riding experience than an occasional jaunt through Central Park, was fond of telling the tale of his enthusiastic wife leading him on his first horseback tour of the property. At one point Caroline abruptly pulled up her horse, turned to him, pointed with her riding crop, and said, “William, there is a rattlesnake, get down and kill it.” Halsted bemusedly went on with his story: “There I was alone in the mountains with this comparatively strange woman, and she wanted me to get off my horse and kill a rattlesnake. She was terribly disgusted when I refused.”

His powers of observation and his sly sense of humor intact, Halsted threw himself into the life. He became a good rider, learned to drive a team, as well as the management of a farm that never quite became self-sustaining. Although the cash crops were Caroline’s domain, and he rarely interfered, the setting reawakened the Halsted family interest in flower gardening, which was so much a part of his youth at Irvington. Cashiers was a great physical and psychological remove from the city, and from the moment of their honeymoon trip, the old hunting lodge became an institution in their lives.

THREE MONTHS BEFORE
their wedding, Halsted had been promoted from head of the dispensary to surgeon-in-chief to the hospital and chief of the dispensary. This was a great show of confidence in his
performance, particularly when only a year earlier any appointment at all was in doubt. But a year later, and barely beyond his probationary period, the newly minted surgeon-in-chief went off for more than three months in the country, leaving the surgical service in the hands of his assistant, Finney; Hardy Phippen, the new resident who replaced Brockway; and the new assistant resident. Halsted’s summer absences were often stretched to five months: typically, two months were devoted to rest and restoration in the country, for much of the remainder he was totally out of touch with anyone, including his wife. These absences from his duties would become a recurring theme, which more than once brought him to the brink of dismissal.

Dr. and Mrs. Halsted returned to Baltimore in the fall of 1890 and set up housekeeping in a furnished house on Preston Street. Apparently the house was unsatisfactory, and little further mention is made of it. Before settling into a permanent residence, they moved to Madison Avenue in the Bolton Hill section, where they lived for five years. Welch, who continued to live in his two small rooms, was amused by Halsted’s pretensions, and wrote to a friend, “Halsted has taken a large house on Madison Avenue, one of the biggest in Baltimore and still feels that he has not enough room to move around.”

Apparently he was correct. In 1896, the Halsteds moved into the very large rented house at 1201 Eutaw Place, in the Bolton Hill district as well. Eutaw Place was a grand thoroughfare with an unusually generous, parklike center island, and was among the most fashionable streets of the city. Commanding a gentle curve at the corner of Dolphin Street, the house was a solid, three-story redbrick structure. Bulky limestone balustrades framed the three stone entrance steps, the lowest of which was canted to compensate for the slope of the street. Ornamental iron railings flanked the balustrades and decorated the base of the tall windows that gave onto the street.

The kitchen and dining room occupied the first floor, which was otherwise given over to work space, including Dr. Halsted’s surgical
library and secretarial space. The second floor housed Halsted’s apartment, the centerpiece of which was his beautifully furnished sitting room/work space. Near the center of the room sat his worktable and favorite chair. The large fireplace on the north wall was always ablaze with logs of white oak or hickory, 10 to 18 inches in diameter and aged under cover for two or three years before being shipped to Baltimore from North Carolina. As with most things in his life, Halsted was extremely particular about his fire. Choosing the wood and tending the fire were something of a family tradition, and with pride he would recall his father as “a great student of the open fire and decided ultimately that lignum vitae was the only perfect firewood, burning slowly with small flame and almost without smoke. That time he could buy the rejected pieces of this wood from a manufactory of tenpin ball and it was the most perfect fire I have ever seen. As I cannot command it, I use the next best, white oak or hickory …”

Against the wall opposite the fire sat an elegant secretary flanked by bookshelves. Fine Persian rugs and antique furniture completed the setting. In comfortable, old carpet slippers, a dressing gown over his shirt and necktie, Halsted read by the fire, smoked innumerable Pall Mall cigarettes through his ubiquitous white cigarette holders, and frequently worked late into the night. He rarely entertained guests or was visited by his secretaries in his suite, which was largely his private domain. A bedroom and bath completed the apartment. Several small service rooms occupied the rear. Mrs. Halsted occupied the third floor, where her apartment was similarly arranged, though in her case the large room giving onto Eutaw Place was used exclusively as a sitting room. Her bedroom and bath were on the third floor as well.

Windows were open all winter, and only the back half of the house was centrally heated. For the residential area of the house, including the second- and third-floor apartments, the carefully tended, open fires provided heat, which was then distributed through the rooms by the cool, fresh air blowing in through the open windows.

Each took breakfast alone. Halsted prepared coddled eggs and toast on the small gas stove in his private bathroom and ate before the fire in his study. He usually lunched at the hospital, and the couple dined together in the formal dining room on the first floor. For the most part, the hour and a half spent at table was the time reserved for each other. Dinner guests were infrequent. Following dinner, they retired to their respective apartments, Caroline reading or sewing, Halsted at his worktable, reading surgical literature or working on papers. The late 19th century saw the inception of the greatest period of sustained progress in surgical history. Papers were written and published at a furious pace, and it required time and dedication to keep up. For Halsted, this was a necessity and a joy, and until much later in life he was disinterested in any but professional reading.

Unencumbered by city responsibilities, Caroline extended her summer holiday to include the spring and fall as well. On evenings during the months of Caroline’s absence, Halsted resumed his pattern of dining at the Maryland Club, while she resumed her life as horsewoman, dog lover, and gardener, soon adding to it the unofficial title of farm manager. The Halsteds renamed the property High Hampton, probably in honor of the ancient Halsted home at High Halsted, in England, and the Hampton family lodge that it had been. Halsted, though every bit the urban patrician, was thoroughly charmed by the country life. He was enthusiastic about his riding lessons and learned to ride comfortably, though never at so accomplished a level as Caroline, and he enjoyed accompanying her through the North Carolina hills, their dogs running alongside. High Hampton was another world, and Halsted was another man when he was in residence.