My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

At the Bushwick Club I lunched in a small room with friends, and a feeling of pleasure warmed my heart. During the reception words of confidence were spoken and somehow filtered into my mind. I shook hands until my arms were sore, bowed my head until my neck ached. I was forced to retire. Later there was dinner at the club, after which I received seven hundred singers. By this time I felt like a machine. My brain was blank. About midnight, utterly exhausted, I arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria, where I fought through a crowd in the lobby. I think I sat and listened to Mrs. Cook telling me news of home and the family until night merged into morning.

Next day the storm through which I was being swept began again. During that and the days following I made many mistakes, did and said unwise things. I want to show you, in telling of these events, just how helpless I was; what a victim of circumstance; how unfitted to bear the physical and mental demands of a ceaseless procession of public functions, lectures, dinners, receptions, days and nights of traveling, and how unable to cope with the many charges. In sixty days there were not less than two hundred lectures, dinners, and receptions, not to mention the unremitting train of press interviews. With no club of friends or organization of any kind behind me, I stood the strain alone.

I was ignorant of much that was said about me. I had no one to gauge my situation at any time and advise me. About me was an unbearable pressure from friends and foes; I stood it until I could stand it no longer. There was not a minute of relief, not a minute to think. Coming after two years spent in the Arctic, at a time when nature was paying the debt of long starvation and hardship, the stress of events inevitably developed a mental strain bordering on madness. Where could I go to get rest from it all? This was my last thought at night and my first thought in the morning.

During my second day at the Waldorf I had to read proofs of the narrative to be printed in the Herald, go over the plans of my book with the New York publishing house with whom I had signed a contract, and examine hundreds of films to select photographs. There were hundreds of letters and telegrams; scores of reporters demanding interviews; hundreds of callers, few of whom I was able to see. An army of publishers, lecture managers, and even vaudeville managers sent up their cards.

The chief event of the first day in New York was the inquisition by newspaper reporters. They both interested and amused me. I had gone through the same ordeal in Copenhagen, and I knew that American interviewers are famed for their wolfish propensities.

Before I saw the sensation-hungry press men, I got certain news that shocked my sense of the fairness of the American press. Someone interested in my case had sent me unsolicited copies of all telegrams, cables and wireless messages passing between New York and the Peary ship. These messages now continued to come daily, and thus I was afforded a splendid opportunity to watch an underhand game of deceit wherein Mr. Peary was shown to be in league with a New York paper aiming secretly to further his claims and to cast doubt upon mine.

Among these was a message asking a certain editor to meet Peary at Bangor, Maine, to arrange for the pro-Peary campaign of bribery and conspiracy which followed. In another, and the most remarkable message, Mr. Peary first showed the sneaking methods by which the whole controversy was conducted. A long list of questions had been prepared by Mr. Peary at Battle Harbor, covering, as rival interests dictated, every phase of Polar work. These questions were sent to the New York Times with instructions to compel answers from me on each of a series of catch phrases.

When the Times reporter came to me with these, I recognized the Peary phraseology at once. I afterwards compared the copy of Peary's telegram with that of the Times, and found in it nearly every question asked by the reporters. While the questions were being read off, it required a good deal of patience to conceal my irritation, as I knew Mr. Peary was talking through the smooth-faced, smiling press cubs, none of whom knew that he was Peary's mouthpiece. Every one of the Peary questions, however, was amusing, for I had answered each a dozen times in Europe. But if Mr. Peary must question me, why did he stoop to the hypocrisy of doing it through others? The other reporters asked many questions, the reports of which I have not seen since. But the duplicity of this little trick left a strong impression of unfairness.

At about this time I began to examine critically the many efforts which Mr. Peary had begun to make to discredit my achievement. In going over such of his reports of his own claims as had gotten to me, I was at once struck with the statements parallel to mine which he had sent out, and since these so thoroughly proved my case I felt that I could be liberal and patient with Mr. Peary's ill-temper.

I now learned that after Mr. Peary got the full reports of my attainment of the Pole at the wireless station at Labrador, he withdrew behind the rocks to a place where no one was looking, and digested that report. His own report came after the digestion of mine. In the meantime, his delay in proceeding to Sydney, Nova Scotia, and his silence, were explained by the official announcement that the ship was being washed and cleaned. This was manifestly absurd. No seaman returning from a voyage of a year, where sailors have no occupation whatever except such work, waits until he gets to port before cleaning his decks. Furthermore, this hiding behind the rocks of Labrador continued for weeks. What was the mysterious occupation of Mr. Peary? The Roosevelt, as described by visitors when she arrived at Sydney, was still very dirty. When Mr. Peary's much-heralded report was finally printed, every Arctic explorer at once said the astonishing parallel statements in Mr. Peary's narrative either proved my case or convicted Mr. Peary of plagiarism. My story, by this time, had got well along in the New York Herald. To help Mr. Peary out of his position, McMillan later rushed to the press. He was under contract not to write or talk to the press, nor to lecture, write magazine articles or books, as were all of Peary's men. But this prohibition was waived temporarily. Then McMillan made the statement that Dr. Cook must have gotten the "parallel data" and inside information from Mr. Peary's Eskimos. Everyone acquainted with Greenland, including McMillan, knows that such inter-communication was impossible. I had left for Upernavik by the time Peary returned to Etah. Therefore, McMillan and Peary both were caught in a deliberate lie, as were also Bartlett[23] and Borup later. These were Mr. Peary's witnesses in the broadside of charges with which I was to be annihilated.