Science: Mrs. Byrd’s Land

Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd, last week, and for the first time since he came to fame, made public tribute to his wife. It was 14 years and a month after they were married. He, in Antarctica, had just flown over and claimed for the U. S. unknown land in the Pacific Quadrant* of the continent, between his base on Ross Sea and Sir George Hubert Wilkins’ base on Weddell Sea. The region is south of the long-known Alexandra Mountains and the Byrd-discovered Rockefeller mountains, a great stretch of rumpled iciness.

When Byrd returned to Little America, his base, he was meditative. Finally he said: “I have named this land after the best sport and noblest person I know, one who has borne the brunt of all my adventures and to whom the credit belongs for anything I may have accomplished. This new land will be Marie Byrd Land.”

The soft formality of that statement expresses something in Commander Byrd which the press, while hailing his exploits scientific and otherwise, has found it hard to understand. Byrd the explorer, Byrd the grown-up Boy Scout, have obscured Byrd the romanticist, who now, in his wife’s name, is recorded on the map of the world.

When they walk abroad in Boston, where in her father’s old brick house in Brimmer Street she lives during his exploring absences, or in Winchester, Va., where Byrds have long had their homes, Commander and Mrs. Byrd usually march side by side with their four children (Richard Evelyn Jr., Evelyn Bolling, Katherine Agnes, Helen) ranged behind them. In their home he has a ceremonious way of listening to her. He stands before her, heels together, tall slim body bent deferentially towards her. That was the way he used to stand when, as naval lieutenant and Harvard undergraduate, he courted her. It absorbs her into the Byrd tradition, reminds her of his bright ancestor. Henri of Navarre, Henri IV of France.

She has a token of the 250-year Byrd tradition, as precious as her wedding ring. It is a ring of old white gold set with diamonds. Two hundred years ago it belonged to Evelyn Byrd, “the fairest flower” of Colonial Virginia, who, when she was presented at the Court of St. James’s, met the gallant Earl of Peterborough. They fell in love and became engaged to be married. But when Evelyn Byrd returned to Virginia, her father flew into a rage. The Earl was a Catholic. The daughter of a loyal Church of Englander might never marry him. The lovely Evelyn died at 30, of a broken heart.*

When her son Richard Evelyn Jr. grows up and finds himself a wife, Mrs. Byrd will give Evelyn Byrd’s ring to the new bride, just as, 14 years and a month ago, she received it from her mother-in-law, Mrs. Richard Evelyn Byrd Sr., who still lives tranquilly at Winchester. . . . The discovery of Marie Byrd Land seemed likely to mark the end of Byrd explorations by air this year in Antarctica. Ice floes were closing in at the approach of antarctic winter. Last week the supply ship Eleanor Bolling was hurrying from New Zealand to succor the base bark City of New York in the fast-packing Bay of Whales.

*Cartographers divide the South Polar regions into Pacific, Australian, African and American Quadrants. The Pacific Quadrant is between the 90th and 180th lines of west longitude.

*See STRUGGLE: THE LIFE OF COMMANDER BYRD—Charles J. V. Murphy—Stokes ($2.50), most recent biography of the man. Commander Byrd tells practically nothing of his ancestors or his private life in SKYWARD—Putnam ($3.50). Skyward is his only published book. His Navigation of the Air is a thick pamphlet. He has in manuscript a book on philosophy.