Volume 24-25, 1976-7 - The Arctic Circle - Home

VOL }Ofl/ }Tc. ITHE ARCTIC CIRCUIARcollege, and he was easy to dislike. vfhrile these factors may have abearing on ttre question of character assessnent, and jn Cook's case, tlrecorrsigrnment of Discrcverer to Historical Charlatan, they are beside thepoint. Ttrey lead tcnvards slnplistic judg'ents such as thre oft-guotedccnrnent by e>plorer Peter Freuchen, whose one-liner was, "Cook was a liarand a gentlenan. Pearlz was neither. "hle can emryz Freuchen and any of the other students of botlr Cook and Pearytatro have made such definitive statenrents over ttre years. Threy have madejudqrents of nrrtivation rather than of styIe. For it is one ttting if Cookor Peary, in thre presence of other witnesses , had made an asserbion thatthey had participated in a deception, or had faked obsenrations , or haddestroyed evidence thrat r,uculd have cast doubt on their alleged acccrrplishnent.But to our kncwledge, neither oplorer ever denied ttreir polarpriority. In Peary's case th-is is not rc surprisirg, but when we considerthe superficial body of critical literatr:re about Cook which has occupiedbooks and publications for alnpst two-thirds of thris centurlz, it isimportant to understand that, despite his public hrmiliation, the rejectionhe received at the hands of geographers and marry fellow explorers, and threinprisorrnent which he may well have r:njustly suffered for seven long years,Cook never acknorledged that he had knowingly participated in any fraud.It was e>pedient for irim to do so on several- occasions, bottrhis personal ccmfort and for the welfare of his family. Theepisode, v,/hichl involved the fake "@nfession" story rn'hicle wasin terms ofHampton I ssplashedacross ttre cover of thre multj--m-illion circulation nxrnthrly in Januarlz, 1911 ,may have been a classic in these abortive efforts. Hampton' s was thre Lifeof its decade, and at the tj-ne rrrhen Cook returned to Anerica and wasattenptirg to make his case, he quickfy accepted threir invitation to writehis story. Hampton's had previously run Pearlr's story (ghost written bya novelist and rcrnantic ficlionist by thre name of T. EVerett Hare) andpaid the club candidate $4O,OOO. Cook saw the value in telling his storythrrough the same medir-m, but the maqazine's editor, Ray Iong, had his ownideas as to hcxp it would be told. Thre accor:nt is related in a biography ofHanptonrs publisher, Oscar Odd Mclntyre, by another respected jorrnalist,Chrarles Driscoll: "Long . . tried to induce Cook to wri ue a dramatic storyof hos storms and Arctj-c wastes had caused him, in a delirilrn, to irnaginehe had disccnrered thre Pole, when he actually had not. CCIok refused, sayingtLrat would not be true. " Yet Hampton's persisted and printed thre story withediting that indeed impfied that Cook had "c.onfessed. " Driscoll ccncludedthat "the whole world was led to beli-eve that Dr. Cook had confessed ttrat hehad perpetrated a fraud and ttrat he had never reached thre Pole at all.Cook had done no such thing, but his naIIE and reputation \^/ere ruinedwas the most dastardly deed in the history of journalisrn. "Dr.it