Revisiting My Family Through the Eyesof Hilary Spurling, Author of

Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck in China

“Everything you say is

lies.” “So you tell this story, which I love, where she wanders to the funerals and overhears the Chinese talking about how foreigners are grounding up babies’ eyes and making them into malaria pills. And she says to their face, “Everything you say is lies” and it causes the women to scream because they’ve seen the devil.”

-- Tom Matlack, talking with Hilary Spurling about his great-aunt, Pearl Buck

TOM: Thankyousomuchforspendingsometimewithmethisevening.

HILARY: Well, I’m delighted to hear from you. Tell me, how much did you know orwhat did you know about your great-grandfather?

TOM: Just to set the record straight, my mom is Jean Yawkey, and my grandmother is Grace Yawkey. And my great-grandparents were Absalom and Caroline. My daughter is named Kerry Grace; she was born just a few days before her great-grandmother, Grace, passed away at 94. So I know a tremendous amount about my grandmother, having lived with her, and then I met Pearl and I know a lot about Pearl. I didn’t know that much about my great-grandparents, which is why yourbookisjustabsolutelysofascinatingtome,becauseit’snotsooftenthatyougetaworldscholarwritingabookaboutyourfamily.

HILARY: It’s a long way back, too, isn’t it? Not many of us could go that far and know much about our great-grandparents.

TOM:Well,no.Yourtopic,obviously,isfromahundredyearsagoinadifferentcountry.Andsoit’sjustwonderfulfrommyperspectivetobeabletoreadaboutmyownfamily,frankly.

HILARY: What I was trying to do was re-create that world in which they lived, in which everything theydidseemedcompletelynatural.Itlooksveryoddtousnow,butwe’relivingwithadifferentmindset. So I was really trying to get insight that world, to recreate it, to penetrate it, to try and see the thing as it looked to them.

TOM: You did a wonderful job. I very, very much enjoyed it. My grandmother and Pearl were sisters and were very close.

HILARY: Yes.

TOM:YourmostrecentbookbeforethisonewasMatissetheMaster:TheConquestofColour,whichwontheWhitbreadAwardin2005.HowdidyougofromMatissetoPearl?

HILARY: Well, it was an absolute straight line. I’d never read Pearl Buck. Everybody I meet now tell me that her books were their mothers’ favorite reading. But they weren’t my mother’sfavorite reading and there weren’t any Pearl Buck books in the house when I grew up and I never readthem.ButwhenIwaswritingaboutHenriMatisse,therecameapointatwhicheverythingwentwronginhislife.Hiswifelefthimandhedesperatelytriedtostophergoingbutshedid.And his children sided with their mother instead of with him, and he couldn’t paint. He was so desperate.Whenhecouldn’tpaint,hereallywasfittobetied.Sohewasinaterriblestate,andhe said he read a book—in French, obviously—that was just published in Paris. And I was reading

Hillary Sperling

Tom Matlack

reading his correspondence. This was just before the war, ’38 or ’39, and his son, Pierre, was in New York where he was an art dealer. They corresponded veryregularly—atleastonceaweek—andthensuddenly,there’sthisletterinwhichMatissesaid,“I’vejustreadthisbook,thisnovel.IknowI’mnoth-ing like the man in it. Have you read it? You must read this book,” and there werethreeexclamationmarks.Andattheendoftheletter,there’saP.S.saying, “Have you read this book?” It was called in French, L’ange combat-

ant,whichIhadneverheardof.AndtheextraordinarythingisthatnowhereelseinMatisse’scorrespondenceisthereanythinglikethat.Hewasagreatreader.Hereadalotandheoftenmentionedbookshewasreading.Youmightlikethis,orIdon’tthinkyou’dlikethatorwhatev-er.Butalwaysinaperfectlycalmway.Noneofthisexcitement,theseexclamationmarks,theseYoumustreadit,andsoforth.Andthenreadinghisparallelcorrespondence,inthelettershe’dwrittentohisdaughterinParisatthesametimeIfoundthesamething.Haveyoureadthisbook? I know I’m not like the man in it. You must read this book.

So of course, I got the book and read it and it was your great-aunt’s novel called The Fighting Angel.IthadjustbeentranslatedintoFrench,andthatishowMatissereadit.Itisastudyofher father in the form of a novel, but it’s actually a biography of her father who was, as you know, was a missionary, and it’s a study of obsession. He was completely obsessed with the ideathathehadbeencalledtoconvertthewholeChinesenationtoaveryCalvinistformofPresbyterianism—which was not actually a possible thing to do, because they belonged to a deeplyBuddhisttradition.Anyway,itdidn’tsucceedatall.Ittookhimtenyearstomaketenconverts, and when he died they all melted away anyway because they were really coming for the free lunches. You cannot arrive, parachuted in like an alien from outer space, to theinterior of China and try to wean those people from everything they understand and every-thingtheyknow.Buthewasobsessedbythatuntilthedayhedied,andhealwaysthoughtthat was what made his life worthwhile. That was what he was living for. And it’s a brilliant book, I think. It’s very funny. If it hadn’t been very funny it would’ve been absolutely ghastly—anightmaretoreadbecausethisisamanwhosacrificedhisownlifetowhathethoughtofasthecause,andhesacrificedhiswife’slifeandthelivesofhischildren.Andtherefore,Pearlgrew up with this great burden of a father, obsessed, who couldn’t think anything was serious, whopaidalmostnoattentiontohisownchildrenandspentallthemoneyhehadandallthemoneytheyhadonthecause.Andtherefore,theygrewupingreatpenury,withgreatdifficul-ty,withakindofemotionallyblockedfatherwhodidn’treallyseethemashuman.Hecertainlydidn’t see their needs as important, because not only were they not heathens, but also they were girls: Pearl and Grace, his two daughters.

TOM:SowhydidMatissesaythatPearlhadexplainedhimtohimself?

HILARY:BecauseMatisse,too,wasamanobsessed.Hewasamanabsolutelyobsessedwith

totally.Hesacrificedhiswifeandhesacrificedhischildren.ThedifferenceisthatpeoplenowhavedecidedthatMatisse’spaintingswereworththissacrifice.Worthmil-lionsofpounds,toputitcrudely,buttheyaresomeofthemostextraordinary,finest,greatestpaintingspaintedinthe20thcentury.Whereasposterityhasnotsidedwithyour grandfather, the whole has decided that it was a folly to think you could convert China.Hefailed,andhewasboundtofail.Hebelongedtoawholegenerationofambi-tiousandthrustingyoungmenwhosehighestnotiontheycouldconcede,towhichthey could dedicate their lives, was this mission call. So he wasn’t peculiar. It’s just that posterity’schangeditsviewaboutthat.AndIthink—whyMatisse?Becauseobviously,hedidrecognizehimselfinthisman.Thecausewasdifferent,buttheeffectswerethesame.Andhewasverymuchquestioninghisownlifeatthatpointbecausehiswife—Ithinktheywereintheirsixties—hadfinallycavedinandlefthim.Sheneverlostherfaithinhispaintingsbutshedidfindhim.Hewasalmostimpossibletolivewith,Matisse,asyourgreat-grandfatherwas.(Laughs.)

TOM:(Laughs.)

HILARY:Sothesepeoplepaidaheavyprice.ButIfoundthatveryinteresting.IwashisbiographerandtryingtounderstandMatisseatthatpoint,sonaturallyI got the book and read it and that is my reading of it. And I was so impressed by the author. I thought it an absolutely brilliant study of obsession and what it can do to a man. I think now, as her biographer, that she began that book as a completejustificationofhermother,whosesideshehadalwaystaken,andshefelt her mother had been monstrously, badly treated by a coldhearted man who never understood her feelings and didn’t allow for them at all. And she led a life ofscrimpingandsavingandterribledifficultyand[having]tofightandarguefor every penny she had to spend on the housekeeping and so on. But instead of it being a work of revenge, which maybe it started out as—that’s to say she wantedtojustifyhermotherandshowhowbadlyherfatherhadbehaved.Ithinkshediscoveredveryquicklyhowlikeherfathershewas.She’dinheritedalot from him, of course, and also, therefore, that she understood him.

Soit’sanextraordinarybook.It’softenveryfunny,whichisanextremelygrownupwayoftreatingwhatactuallycould’vebeenareallytragicsituation—thatofherchildhoodwhichwasextremelyharshandbleak.Butbythistime,shedidn’tjustforgivehim;she understood him, which is something else, and then wrote this extraordinary book aboutit.AndMatisserecognized that. He understood that this was the kind of driven man that he was, that hetoohadhadnochoice,thathehadalwayssacrificed,givenuphislife,givenupev-erything else in his life, to what he thought was a cause of overriding importance. And he recognized himself.

TOM:Soinacertainsense,yourstudyofMatissewasaparalleltoPearl’sstudyofAbsalom.

HILARY: In a sense, yes. But I also was very impressed by the author, Pearl Buck, then I became extremely fascinated by her.

TOM: Set the stage for me a bit in terms of Pearl’s childhood. You say that she grew up listening to women screaming for their daughters at night.

HILARY: Yes.

TOM: Baby girls, dogs, bound feet.

HILARY: Yes. It was a harsh world. I think her parents loved her, but for her father, it was a mat-ter of form. Her mother truly loved her, but they had such a hard life that there wasn’t a lot of overtshowsofaffectioninthatfamilyatall.Hermotherneverembracedherorcuddledherorheldheronherlaporanythinglikethat,partlybecausethemannersofthetimewereagainstthat and partly because her mother was just so desperately busy trying to keep the family going atall.Therewasn’tanytimeforextrasandfrillslikethat.Soitwasahardupbringing,butPearlknew no other upbringing and it was perfectly normal so far as she was concerned. That’s how people were. She did have a lot of freedom, because her parents were both so busy with the church and house. She could run out the back gate of their house and play in the countryside, either alone or with the children of the Chinese farmers, Chinese peasants who lived in thevalley, who were her playmates. So she led this extraordinary double life, where at home she wasalittleAmericanchild,andoutsidethehome,whereshespentmostofhertime,shewasalittleChinesechildandshelivedwithotherChinesechildren.Andplayinginthefields,allChinesefields,Chinesefarmland,thewholeofChina,wasagreatgraveyard.Thatiswheretheyburiedtheirancestors,intheirfields.AndPearlwouldfindtinybones—justlittlehands,some-timeslegbones,onceaskullwithpartofanarmattached.Andsheknewwhattheywere.Theywere the bodies of babies, almost invariably girl babies, who had been strangled, killed at birth, andleftoutforthedogstoeat.Andwhenshefoundthesebones,shesaidshealwayswentoutwithalittlestringbagandwithaclub,ahomemadeclubwhichwasapieceofbamboothatshefixedastoneto,todriveoffwilddogsthathungaroundallthevillagesandwerescavengers.Theydidn’tbelongtoanybody.Nobodyfedthem.Sotheywerehangingaroundforanyoffal—andforthelittlebodiesofunwantedbabiesthatwerethrownout.

And this, to Pearl, was just absolutely part of normal life. She would collect the pieces, human remainsthatshefound,andshewouldbuildlittlegravesoutofmudandburythemanddeco-ratethegraveswithflowersandshells,whichwasexactlywhatlittlegirlsofhergenerationdid—only they were making mud pies out of mud. She was making mud graves. And I thought, that’s a very, very good image for the way her whole life worked. She grew up to write novels whichoftendon’treallyconfrontwhatthey’rewritingabout,butbetweenthelines,Ithinkbothsheandherreadersknewperfectlywellthatthereweresomeverybleakandbittertruthsbur-ied, as it were, between her lines, just as she had buried the bones. So there were a lot of things in her childhood that were really too frightening or too grim to face. Her parents’ marriage, for instance, was a very unhappy one and the children, of course, were well aware of that but it wasn’tanythingthatcouldbediscussedormentioned.Itwassomethingbetterburied.

TOM: I very much liked the line in your preface where you say it’s the territory that liesbetween what is said and what can be understood that is the nub of the book.

HILARY: Yes. And then, of course, there are the great public amnesias of the 20th century. In Europe,theHolocaust,whichagainwassomethinghorrificbutforalongtimewasn’tknownabout in the rest of Europe, or if it was known about, it couldn’t be talked about. And then whenitwasdiscovered,whathadhappened,itwastooterrible.It’stakenaverylongtime,Ithink,forthegenerationthatgrewupinthewar,whichIbelongedto,toface.Peoplewereintheirfiftiesandsixties.Thesearethingstooterribletoface,andinasense,Ithink[sowas]theGreat Depression in America. American novelists and writers have indeed faced all that and writtenaboutit,butittookawhile.Itwasn’tpossibletodoimmediately,andIthinkthatpartlyaccounts for the enormous success of Pearl’s novel, The Good Earth. It was refused by all the publisherswhosawit.Finally,averysmallpublishingfirmonthevergeofbankruptcyacceptedit and it became, overnight, a global bestseller. And Pearl won the Pulitzer Prize for it and then a few years later, the Nobel Prize. I think one of the reasons for that was that ordinary American readershadsufferedsomuchintheirownlives,andthesethingsweresodifficulttoconfrontand face and talk about. But The Good Earth is the story of an ordinary Chinese farming family, whowentthrough,asallChinesefarmersandChinesepeasantsdid,absolutelyhorrificordealsoffloodandfamineanddroughtandcivilwarandbanditsconstantlysweepingovertheirland,dispossessingthemofeverythingtheyhad.Thehouseitselfwoulddissolveinthefloodwaters.Therewouldbenothingtoeat.Thepeoplehadtoflee.Thesewereabsolutehorrorsthator-dinary people had to face, and Pearl tells that story completely accurately. In just the simplest terms, makes it clear that Chinese people were ordinary human beings like ourselves. And I thinkthatAmericanswhohadgonethrough,whohadsufferedsomuchthemselves,wereveryreceptivetothatstoryatthatmoment.Andyet,it’ssetinatotallyalienland,afarawaycountryof which we knew nothing at that stage. And therefore, it was somehow easier to read about these horrors, transpose yourself and read about the horrors other people have had to go through. And that somehow makes it easier to face what you’re going through.

So amnesia runs right through my book. That’s a method of dealing with horrors that are almost unfaceable in themselves. And of course, in China, worse things happened even than the Holo-caust,inthat—underMao—theCommunistregime,which[tookholdbythe]timePearlhadleftChina,butstillterriblethingshappened.Millionsandmillionsofpeoplewerekilled,anditwenton far, far longer than the Nazi regime in Germany. And these things couldn’t be talked about. People would be shot or tortured, punished, publicly humiliated if they did talk about them. So I think that amnesia is a thread that runs right through all of the lives of those people. And my title,BuryingtheBones,isakindofanimageofthat.

the territory that lies between what is said and what can be understood

TOM:OneoftheimagesIalsoloveisyourdescriptionearlyonofPearl,andherabilitytospeakChinese,eventhoughshewasalittleAmerican,blond-haired,blue-eyedgirl.

HILARY:ThatastonishedpeopleinChina.Pearl’sparentswereamongtheveryfirstmissionaries in China, and they arrived there in 1880. In the interior, there were no foreigners. So Pearl’s parents were literally foreign devils. No one had ever seen a human being with yellow hair.Pearl’shairwasalwayshiddenbeneathalittleredChinesecap.[Pearl’s]nurse,whowasChinese, said, “It’s not human, this hair. Human hair is black. You have this yellow hair. We have to hide it.” Pearl didn’t know any white children. So she felt completely one and the same as her Chinesefriends.Sheknewshelookedfunny,andtheyknewshelookedfunny,buttheystillaccepted her as one of themselves. So in a very deep sense, she was Chinese and not American.

TOM: So you tell this story, which I love, where she wanders to the funerals and overhears the Chinese talking about how foreigners are grounding up babies’ eyes and making them intomalaria pills. And she says to their face, “Everything you say is lies” and it causes the women to screambecausethey’veseenthedevil.(Laughs.)

HILARY: Absolutely, because it was inconceivable that a foreigner could speak Chinese like them-selves. And although the parents spoke Chinese, they had arrived as adults and spoke a very funny-soundingandprimitivekindofChinese.ButPearlspokeChineselikeaChineseperson.Soitseemedtothemreallylikewitchcraftthatshecouldtalktotheminthatway.

TOM: So let’s go back for a minute to my great-grandparents, Absalom and Carrie. They met in Hillsboro,WestVirginia,andtraveledtoShanghaiin1880.Alotofmywritingisaboutmanhood,andsoI’mveryinterestedinmygreat-grandfather.AndyouhavethisgreatquotefromPearlabouthimandaboutthefamilytravelingnorthofShanghaiforthefirsttimealongtheGreatCanal, where, as you say, there had been no missionaries. He had to himself an area as large as the state of Texas, full of souls who had never heard the Gospels. He was intoxicated with the magnificenceofhisopportunity.ThiskindofgetsbacktowhatyouweresayingaboutMatisse.I’mveryinterestedinwhatyouseeasAbsalom’smotivations,howhebecameamissionary,whatdrove him to go forward, how he viewed it—how he viewed goodness. What was he about? How would you describe him?

HILARY:Ithinkyou’veputyourfingeronthecoreofhisbeing.HeandhiswifebothhadgrownupintheCivilWar,andhewatchedhisfiveelderbrothersjoinuponeaftertheotherandgoofftofight.

TOM: Which side were they on?

HILARY: They were on the South. They were Confederate.

TOM: You’rekiddingme?SomybloodwasfightingfortheSouth?(Laughs.)

HILARY: Well, I think so. I remember your great-grandmother saying that, as a child, she believed that the Yankees were devils, that they had horns coming out of their heads. And that’s why they were so upset when West Virginia was separated from Virginia, because they were part of the South,themselves.ButwhenshefirstsawtheYankeesoldiersandtheydidn’thavethehornssproutingouttheirheads,shecouldn’tbelieveit.Shewasverydisappointedasachild.

It was a hard mountainy country anyway, and then it had been fought over and bled of all its re-sourcestofightthatwar,whichofcoursetheylost.SoAbsalom,whowasalittleboy,hadstayedathome with his father to run the farm, and therefore they had to work. It was very, very hard, harsh indeed. He hated the farming world. He longed to get away, and did in the end. Every single one ofthosesons,thesevensons,eachoneattheageof21left,leftthefarm,andnevercameback.Andtheyallbecameministers.Absalom,whowasthesmallestandpuniestandmosttimidofallofthe boys and who had been tormented by his older brothers, had greatly envied them and wanted manhood. That’s your word. To count for something in somebody’s eyes instead of always being the smallest, that frightened one.

He put himself through seminary, and decided that he would show his father what’s what by be-comingamissionaryandgoingtoChina.Sowhenhefinallyistheonlymissionaryinthisenormous territory of North Jiangsu—which, as Pearl said, was as large as Texas—then he has proved his worth. He is going to stamp his image on that whole enormous, vast territory, whichisinfinitelyandgranderandmoresplendidthananythinghisfatherhadimagined.AndChinawas the place where he was going to prove his manhood.

TOM:Buthowdoyouthinkheviewedgoodness,intermsofaveryCalvinisticbiblicalsenseofgoodand sinners?

HILARY:Hebelieved—absolutely,neverquestionedthatallthosemillionsofChineseweren’thea-then.Theyweredamned.Theyweregoingtoburninhell,exceptforatiny,thinlineofhimselfandpeople like him—there were twelve Southern Presbyterian missionaries when he arrived—which stoodbetweenthemanddamnation.Whentheyarrived,totheirgreatsurprise,Carrie,yourgreat-grandmother, started having babies, and it was a great impediment as far as he was concerned. And worsestillforher,thesebabiesdiedbecausetheywerelivingliketheChineseinChinesevillages.Two of her children died in a cholera epidemic. Malaria raged every summer. And dysentery was a terrible curse. Her fourth child died of dysentery. Her eldest son survived and grew to manhood.

Afterthat,shehadthreemorechildreninquicksuccession,andtheyalldiedassmallchildrenintheseghastly,terrifyingepidemicsoffevers.Pearlwasthefifthchild.Carriehadlosttwobabiesvery close together.

TOM: Arthur and Edith?

HILARY:Yes.Andshe’dlostherfirstdaughter,too,Maude,afewyearsbefore.Andshethenhadan appalling breakdown, obviously, and came very close to losing her faith—her faith in herself as well as her faith in God—and said to her husband, “I cannot stay here burying your child every eighteen months and watching them die. I’m going back to America and if you won’t come with me, I’m going by myself.” And he went with her. But he said years later to Pearl—who was a child conceived in America and brought back immediately to China, when she grew up enough toquestionhim—“Ihaveneverseensohardaheartasherswas.”Hewastalkingabouthiswife.His wife, who had just lost three babies. He only went back to America because the doctor said to him, “I cannot answer for her sanity. If you don’t, she’s going to lose her mind.” So he took her back to America, but he said, “I’ve never seen so hard a heart as hers was.” And what he meant was that she wasn’t able to think of the millions of Chinese who could’ve been saved or the very small numbers that he might’ve managed to save. They didn’t count for her compared to the loss of the children, the deaths of children she had bore and then watched die in her arms, and said shecouldn’tstandtoseethatagain.Thatwasasfarasherstrengthhadlefther.Shecouldn’tface this any longer.

TOM: It very much struck me.

HILARY:It’stwopeoplelockedonacollisioncourse,isn’tit?Andthey’reeachdrivingindifferentways.

TOM:I’mnotsurewhetheritwasCarriewhosaidthis,ormaybePearl,thatatthatpoint,[Car-rie’s]marriagehadbecomeirrevocableasdeath.Infact,youquotemygrandmother,Grace,saying that the death of the two children coming so close together a fortnight apart almost de-rangedhermother.Butatthesametime,Carriefoundstrengthaswell.There’sthisgreatstory,which I had actually heard before, but you tell it again? About the tea party?

HILARY:Yes.Thiswasbeforeeitherofthemwereborn.ItwaswhenCarriehadlostonelittlegirlandstillhadthreesmallchildren.Itwasadesperatelyhot,andmalariaragedunchecked.Thereweremosquitoeseverywhere,andthereforechildrenandwomen,too,diedlikeflies.Onedread-fulthing,whichmadeeverythingmuchworse,wastheChineseusedasfertilizerhumanexcre-ment,andtheystoreditingreatpotswhere,ofcourse,thefliesswarmed.Sotheair,thestenchwasfrightful,andthedangerwasverygreatbecauseofthebreedingoffliesandmosquitoes.

seeking converts, and she was alone with her children and her Chinese servant who helped her tolookafterthechildren.Itwasaterribletimeforthefarmersbecausetherewasadrought,andthey would have nothing to feed their children themselves. They blamed the foreigners, because theforeignershadjustarrivedanddemandedthatpeopleworshiptheChristianGod,andsoit seemed to the local Chinese that their gods had turned against them. Absalom had gone, so they said they would kill the woman and children. And this is a myth, no doubt, but Carrie said sheheardthemplottingunderherwindow,thattheywouldcomeatmidnightandtheywouldslaughter them.

She was unarmed. There was no one else she could turn to. And she decided she’d deal with themtheonlywayshecould.Shespentthewholeeveningbakingcakes.Shesweptthefloor.Sheput out her best china. She laid the table for an American tea party. And at midnight, the ap-pointedhour,sheflungopenthedoorsothatthesemenwouldnotfindthedoorbarredagainstthembutthedooropen.Shewasreadytoinvitetheminasguests.Herthreelittlechildrenwerewokenfromtheirbedsandbroughtdownstairsandwereplayingontheflooratherknee.Andshetotallydisarmedthebanditswhoarrived,cutthroatswiththeirknivesreadytodoadread-fuldeed,andasked[them]inasguests.Itunmannedthem.Andofcourse,theyaccepted.Theirleader accepted a cup of tea, and the others accepted tea. They couldn’t go forward with it. So in theend,theysimplythankedthemfortheirteaandleft.Andlaterthatnight,rainfell.

TOM: (Laughs.)

HILARY: The rain that they had all been praying for, praying to their paper gods for. Well, this may be a mythologized version. It probably was what actually happened. But it does represent the horrificdangersthatCarriefacedalonemostofthetime,becauseherhusbandwasmostlyawayand she had no one—no support. And also, the total culture clash between the world she came from and brought with her and the world that she was dumped in alone, among people who couldn’tunderstandwhatshewastherefor,whowerehighlysuperstitious,whoassumedthatthese people were nefarious and, in a sense, they were. They certainly had come to destroy the village life as it has existed in China for thousands of years. They thought it was their bound and duty to destroy and break up all that. So these two cultures are facing each other, and the person who bears the brunt of it is a defenseless woman with three small children. And that is the route that she took and it is indeed true that her children survived. They were not killed by Chinese people. They died of diseases later. But what an astonishing story? Even if it didn’t exactlyhappen as she said, her courage is absolutely undoubted. Her heroism and her strength, and the fact that she came through all those years, all those ordeals with her children intact, except that even she couldn’t defeat malaria or diphtheria.

TOM: I’veheardaverysimilarstoryfrommymotherandmygrandmother.It’salmostidenticaland this kind of sense that at the end, that the rains actually came and in a certain sense reward-ed the feminine courage to face this strange land and these strange men.

HILARY:Howdoyoufeelaboutyourgrandfather,whoafterall,isresponsibleforthosetinylivesof the children whom he’d begot on his wife?

TOM:It’sveryironicbecausealotofthewritingthatI’vebeendoingispartiallyaboutmyownlife, but also the lives of other men in 2010 who are struggling with that very same challenge, which is how to be superhuman at work and yet be good fathers and be good husbands at the sametime.It’salmostlikefeminismflippedonitshead,whichisthatfiftyyearsago,womenweretryingtofigureouthowtoleavehome,begoodmothers,andalsohaveaworklife.

HILARY:Ithinkit’ssomethingthateverygenerationhastonegotiateitforthemselves,andbothsexes, too. Not by any means solved for women, is it?

TOM:No.Well,Ithinkoneofthethingsthat’smostfascinatingabouttheteapartystoryisthatobviously that got passed down through Pearl and through Grace all the way to me. One of the reasons I’m most fascinated by your book is because I get to learn more about my great-grand-father. You say that Absalom retreated behind what had long since become an impenetrable barrieragainstemotionsthatthreatenedtoswamphim.Thatstuckouttomebecauseitseemstomethatmenarestillstrugglingwiththat.(Laughs.)

HILARY:Yes.Well,thathappensineverygeneration.Iwastryingtosuggest,anditseemstome,that he was not a man without feeling. In fact, if anything it was the other way around. He was a man of passionate feeling. And Pearl herself understood that later when she writes very sym-patheticallyabouthischildhood,theharshnessofhischildhoodandthefactthatnobodyreallyever took his part. He wasn’t special to anybody. He was just the runt of the family. The others werebig,fine,splendid,upstandingmen.ButAbsalomwasthesmall,timidonewhodidn’thavethe courage or strength of his brothers. In the end, he proved of course that he did.

The few stories he ever told Pearl about his childhood seemed to her heartrending, as a grown woman and the mother of a child herself. She understood how her father had felt, that he felt he couldnevercompetewiththesebrothers.Itwasanexceedinglycompetitivefamily,andhehadgreatpride,astheyalldidhave,buttheonlywayhecouldexpressitwasfindinganabsolutelyotherfield.AndbythetimehereachedChina,andespeciallybythetimehestartedhavingchildren, he had built himself a very thick skin that was necessary to him because he was asufferingcreatureinside.

So he built this thick, defensive skin that protected him. But of course, if you do that, you then do becomeinsensitivetootherpeople’ssuffering.Heneverdidseethathischildrenhadtheirownneedsandthathedidn’trecognizethathewasresponsibleforprotectingthem.Threeofhis

children died in circumstances that could—these could’ve been prevented if he hadn’t insisted thattheyliveinmalariaswamps.Theywould’vesurvived.Soeverythinghasitsconsequence,and I think he built himself this thick carapace. He had no sense of his wife’s feelings and how they were violated by his behavior and how she was forced by circumstances imposed by him to leadalifethatshecouldhardlybear,thatcrushedheremotionallyandphysically.

TOM: Do you think he had any sense that at the end of the day he realized, in retrospect, how futilethatwas?

HILARY:No.Idon’tthinkheeverdid.Pearlsaidheneverdid.Heneverquestionedhismotivesatall. He thought they were absolutely pure, and that he was called by God to do what he did and that anyone who tried to impede, namely his wife, was absolutely wrong. And Pearl, of course, hadaburningsenseofinjusticethatlittlechildrenhave.Itneveroccurredtohertothinkthathehadhispointofview,too,untillater,andthatisapartofwhatmakesPearl,Ithink,averyextraordinaryandfineandpowerfulwriter,thatshedidintheendcometounderstandwhathadmade him that way.

TOM:Well,Iguessthat’stheultimatecompassion.Let’stalkalittlebitaboutPearlandGrace,sinceIknowquiteabitaboutthatrelationshipfromGrace’sside.

HILARY: There are certain things that Grace knew about them and had observed that Pearl couldn’t because Pearl went back to college when she was 17 or 18, leaving Grace alone with her parents in those rather crucial years when the marriage really did separate, when Carrie realized that if she was to survive at all, she must have an independent life of her own. Grace was the third party there, the only witness, and must’ve seen an awful lot.

TOM: How do you suppose Pearl viewed Grace?

HILARY: Well, as far as I can tell, Pearl did her absolute best to help Grace. She may have been overbearing. But on the other hand, she was a second mother to Grace. She was, what seven when Grace was born?

TOM: Right.

HILARY:Andthatisalmostagenerationgapbetweenchildren.Andsheusedtorockhertosleepeveryafternoon,ababyinherarms.Pearlalwayslovedbabies,andshelovedGrace,andthere’sabsolutely no doubt of that. She just adored this baby from the moment she was born. And then later, she did her best to shield her, to help her when their mother was ill and dying. And when Grace, for instance, was being sent back in her turn to college in America, Pearl was extremely sensitivetowhatsheneededandgaveherallsortsofadviceandpresentsandlettersandthen

visitedher.Andagain,whenGracewashavingababyshelookedafterhersister.Ithinkshewasakindofidealeldersister,andcertainlyGracethoughtthat.OtherpeopleoftenthoughtthatGrace was totally overshadowed by Pearl, but there are two sides to that. In public and in her writingsandindeedinherletterstoPearl,shewasimmenselygratefulforwhathersisterhaddone.

TOM:Ithinkwheneveryouhavethatkindoffame,Ithinkthefamilyrelationshipsarestrained.It’s just the nature of the beast.

HILARY:Anditposesahugeburdenonthepersonthathasit.It’sextremelytime-consumingdealing with that kind of pressure, the pressure of celebrity and the huge demands made of you. Allthatofcourseeatsupyourtime.

TOM:IwanttogobackalittlebittosomeofthethingsthatyouwroteaboutPearlandreallyabout her impact. Early on in your book, you say that she had the magic power to tap directly intothecurrentsofmemoryanddream,secreteddeepwithinthepopularimagination.Whatdidyou mean by that?

HILARY: I was trying to understand the power of a bestseller. This is a book that sells in millions. However successful an ordinary author is, you can’t expect to sell millions of copies of your book. If you sell tens of thousands, that’s a huge success normally. Pearl she sold a million copies of TheGoodEarthinitsfirstyear,anothermillionthenextyear.Thebookisstillinprint.Itwas—hasbeeninprinteversinceitwasfirstpublished.Thisisadifferentpowerofwriting,asitwere,andmanyofherotherbookssoldintheirmillions,too.Andshewasattacked,heavilyattackedforthat.Peoplesaidshewrotepulpfiction—whichistrue,actually.Someofherlaternovelsareprettytrashy.ButPearlvigorouslydefendedthisandsaid,“Iwanttoreachahugeaudience,aswide as I can. I want to be read by millions of readers. What they are reading may not beliterature, but it’s something that they want more than they want literature, and I cannot despise it.”Ithinkthat’samagnificentdefense.It’syourgreat-aunt’sdefenseofthekindofbooksthatshe wrote.

PartofmyaiminwritingaboutherwastotrytounderstandwhatitisthatPearldefinedit—assomething that they want more than literature. It’s a basic human need, really, and I think that thefiguresdemonstratethat.Itgoesbacktomytitle,BuryingtheBones.TheGreatEarthisabrilliant novel, but a lot of her novels are almost unreadable today because they haven’t lasted. But they did reach enormous numbers of people in their day, and I think that they spoke to people’sdreams,topeople’sneedsandaspirations,notreallyfullyarticulatedbutbetweenthelines.Thatistosay,buriedemotions,buriedfeelings,buriedfear,andburiedguilt.Andthatismyimage of Burying the Bones. You know that wonderful American saying, which I love—“he knows where the bodies are buried?”

“I want to reach a huge audience, as wide as I can. I want to be read by millions of readers. What they are reading may not be literature, but it’s something that they want more than they want literature, and I cannot despise it.”

TOM: Right.

HILARY: Well, there are many instances in recent American commercial corporate banking life when people know where the bodies are buried, and some of those bodies have come to the surface, haven’t they? Well, I think that that is Pearl’s ter-ritory.That’swhatshewritesabout.Ithinkthereisoftenthekind of pact between her and her readers that they do know where the bodies are buried. And there are deep, subcon-scious needs and urges and fears in all of us, and I think she knew how to play on those fears.

TOM: You also say that she doesn’t really have a place in the feminist mythology.

HILARY: I think she should have.

TOM: Why doesn’t she? She was friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. She obviously opened the doors for women in any number of ways.

HILARY: She certainly did, and she never ever, in all of her life, doubted that women had a right to playanequalpartwithmen,whichisaviewhelduniversallymoreorlessintheWest.AndPearlwasoneoftheveryfirstpeopletoarticulateandargueforthat.

TOM:Well,I’mdefendingmygreat-aunt.Ijustfeellikeshegetsshortshriftonthatone.(Laughs.)

HILARY: I think so, too. That’s another thing that I hope, that maybe the feminists should think again.Forinstance,BettyFriedan,whenherbookTheFeminineMystiquecameout,itwasendorsedbyPearlontheflapofthepaperback.Andactually,BettyFriedan’sargumentswerethe same. I’m not saying she’d necessarily read Pearl; perhaps she hadn’t. But Pearl had been making and publishing the same arguments thirty years before.

TOM: Right.

HILARY: Her book, Of Men and Women, puts forth many of those same arguments, long before BettyFriedan.

TOM:Iinterviewalotoffamousmen,athletesandactorsandallthatkindofstuff,andIaskthemwhatwecallourmanhoodquiz.I’dliketoturnitaroundandaskyouthosequestionsandaskthemintermsofhowPearlmight’veresponded.Soforinstance,thefirstonewouldbe,whodo you think taught Pearl most profoundly about manhood?

HILARY:Well,that’saverygoodquestion.Ithinktheexampleofherfatherwasakindof

negativelearning.Ithinkshelearnedfromhimhowamanshouldnotbebecausecertainlyonthedomesticfront,theroleinwhichsheknewhim,heabdicated.Hedidn’treallyplayapartintheir family life. She was afraid of him, but she had no other feelings about him.

TOM:Sowerethereotherrolemodelsthatwerepositive?

HILARY: No. There were no uncles. Her elder brother taught her to walk.

TOM:Andthenheleft.

HILARY:Sohewasn’tpartofherlife.Shedidn’tseehimagainuntilhewas20.Sotherewasnoactivemalerolemodel.

TOM:Soshelearnedaboutmanhoodinabsentia?

HILARY: Well, I think so. She became very angry with her father. As a young child, she defended himandwasbitterlyupsetwhentheothermissionariesattackedhim.Butthenwithadolescenceandherteenageyears,shebegantoquestion:IsheactuallyGod?Hethinkshe’sGod.Heactslike God. But is he? And she saw her mother crying and she realized her father was the one who made her mother cry and she sided with her mother. And so her form of teenage rebellion was toquestionherfather’s,youwouldsay,manhood.Ithinkshewould’vesaidgodhead.HeactedasGod’srepresentativeonEarth,andtherefore,duetohimwasthekindofrespectandawethatyouwouldgivetoGodhimself.Thismaybeasacrilegiouswayofputtingit,butthatisthefact.Pearl said that she would never have occurred to her not to be standing when her father asked heraquestion.Shewasalwaysstandingup.Shewouldnothavedaredtositdowninhispresence, and as he told her to. And then as a young teenager, as all teenagers do, she began toask,WhydoIhavetoobeyhim?Hewasapunitivefather.Andatthesametime,hewasanabsent father. The people who brought her up were her mother and her Chinese nanny. She must’ve met Chinese men in the kitchen. The cook was a man, for instance. The gateman was a man. But these were servants.

TOM:HowdoyouthinkromanticloveshapedPearlasawoman?

HILARY:Shehadveryfewopportunitiesforitbecauseshelivedinaveryprotectedworldofthe missionaries where the idea of even talking to a young man, let alone ever going out with a youngman,wasabsolutelyfrownedon.Shehadnocontactwiththemalesex[incollege]exceptI think twice a year.

Soshewould’vebeen21,Ithink,whenshecamebacktoChina.Bythistime,herChinesecon-temporaries, all her girlfriends, were married. The boys and girls she played with when they were very young, they were all married people by then. So there were no young Chinese men. She taught at a boys’ school, and the students were only a few years younger than her. And she loved that and she loved the interchange, but they weren’t the same age as her and there was no questionofanythingmorethanteacherandpupilrelationship.

When she occasionally went out with one or two young American men from Standard Oil, she was holed up by the mission wives and told that she was a disgrace to their calling and that this must stop. It was a very prurient society. She was watched at every stage. So she had very fewopportunitiesforromanticloveandIdon’tthinkitplayedahugepartinherlife.ShehadacoupleofveryminorloveaffairsshipboardcomingbackfromAmericaalonetoChina,butthosejust lasted as long as the voyage did, a few weeks. And she was met by her father and returned then instantly to the mission community. Her own mother was rather ill by that stage, so there was not a lot she could do. Her father’s line was to suggest she should marry a Chinese boy, whichChinesemarriageinthosedayswasaverygrimaffair.Hermotherfoughtagainstthatasshe always did.

Andthenthefirstfully-fledgedloveaffairshehad,whenshereallyfellinlove,waswithherfuture husband, John Lossing Buck. And as she said later—because that marriage didn’t in the end last, they were divorced—she said, “Well, I married because I was there and there was nobodyelse.”That’snotanentirelyfairdescriptionofwhathappened.Shedidfallmadlyinlovewith him, and he with her. But partly because they were both so protected. There were so very littlechoices.Idon’tmeanitwasn’tagenuineloveaffair.Butneitherhadhadmuchexperienceat that stage.

TOM: Back to Absalom. What two words do you think Pearl would’ve used for Absalom todescribe her dad?

HILARY:Well,whenshewroteabookabouthim,calledTheFightingAngel,andthatreferstothequotationintheBibleaboutJesuscomingwithaswordinhishands.Aflamingsword.Andthatishowhesawhimself:asafightingangel.

TOM: How do you think Pearl was most unlike him?

HILARY:Shewasintenselysensitivetootherpeople.Sheunderstoodtheirfeelings.Shecouldenter into them. She created them as characters in her books but also in her life. She was an astonishing listener all her life, a very good listener to people and people told her their stories. Andthisisthestuffoutofwhichshethenwovehernovelsmuchlater.Shewaspassionatelyinterested in people.

TOM: What do you think Pearl would say was the mistake that she learned the most from?

hermarriageandthatshedidn’treallybegintoliveuntilshewas,Isuppose,40,untilshestartedto write. But so in that sense, she thought that her early life was all mistaken. She did eventually loseherfaith.Shecametotakeaveryobjectiveviewofherfather’smissioncallingandonbal-ance, she thought missionaries had done a great deal of harm in China. She also thought that she had married the wrong man in retrospect, that her younger self had been mistaken in that mar-riage.Shewasrightinthattheywerebothtoopowerfulpersonalities,sheandherhusband.AndI cannot really see how that marriage could’ve worked out. They were both people of immense ambition,veryhigh-powered.TheybothhadaveryclearvisionofthefutureofChina.Andeachof them needed a good deal of support. Two people who marry, each of whom need a great deal ofsupport,arenotinapositiontogiveittoeachother.Theonlywaythatmarriagescould’veworked would’ve been if Pearl had just simply denied herself, had lived the kind of frustrated and reallyextremelyunhappylifethathermotherdidbycompletelysuppressingandfrustratingallher own wishes and needs and desires. So that was a mistake.

In a sense, her child perhaps was not a mistake but a burden. The child developed very early on aproteindeficiencyanddidn’tdevelopeithermentallyorphysically,andPearlalsohadatumorinthewombthathadtoberemoved,whichmeantthatafterthat,shewasbarren.ButPearlwasnot the sort of person who sat down and allowed this to crush or defeat her. I think she watched thishappentohermotherandhermotherbeingcrushedagainandagainandagain,andgettingupeachtimeandpickingherlifeupagain,andpullingherselftogetherandcarryingon.Andthatwas Pearl’s way. So whatever mistakes Pearl may have made, she never allowed them to defeat her. She was a person who learned hugely from her mistakes.

TOM:Well,inaway,thestrugglesofherearlierlifeandparticularlywithherdaughterarewhatinspired her really as a writer. And she learned that courage from her mother.

HILARY:Yes,Ithinkshe’dgrownupwatchinghermotherknockeddowntimeandtimeagainbylife, by her husband, by everything, and picking herself up and going on.

TOM: Do you think Pearl was more successful in her public or her private life?

HILARY: I suppose one would have to say in her public life. It’s as if she went down a series of one-way roads in her private life and then they always ended in impasse and she came back and tried another one. Even her second marriage, which was a very happy and successful one, but at theend,afterherhusbanddied,shereallyditchedthat.Sheabandonedthefamilyhouse.Sheabandoned the children, the family that they had brought up in it—and I think that goes back to herearliestchildhood,whichhadalsobeenasuccessionofflightswhichsimplycomesfromherparentsattempting,asthemissionariesalldid,toimplantthemselves,torootthemselvesinatotally alien country, which was not possible.

And so she was used to their lives being uprooted. Her mother’s life had been uprooted. Her par-ents’ lives were uprooted when hey uprooted themselves from America and went to China and the…revolutionsinChina.ThefirstpeopletheChinesewouldturnonwerealwaystheforeigners.

Itwasawayofexpressingtheirdespairandtheirangerandtheirfrustration.Andmissionarieswouldbeslaughteredandothermissionarieswouldflee.SoPearlwasusedtotheseterrificdislo-cations.Theyrunrightthroughherlife.Andshecontinuedthatpatternallthroughherlife,toherlastflight,Isuppose.

SheleftChinaitself,whichshe’dneverexpectedtodo,in1934.andwentbacktoAmerica.Exactlyhalfway through her life. She was American, but it was a foreign land so far as she was con-cerned,andsheoftensaidsheneverreallyunderstooditorfeltathomeinAmerica.Andthenshebuiltthisterrificfamilylife,adoptedsixchildren,broughtthemup.Butwhenthatended,shefledagainfromthatfamilyhouse.Shelefteverythingandwentandcampedoutinthe woods in Vermont.

TOM:Well,that’swhereImether,inVermont.(Laughs.)

HILARY: Is it? Is it?

TOM:Yes.Soonelastquestion,andweoftenaskguyswhatmakesthemcry.WhatdoyouthinkPearl cared the most deeply about in the end and what do you think would bring tears to her eyes—particularlylaterinlife?Justfromyourresearch.

HILARY:Shewasn’tapersonwhocriedeasily.Shewasbroughtupinaworldthatwasverystiffupper-lipped. They didn’t cry easily in her family at all. I’m sure your grandmother didn’t either. There are very few accounts of Pearl crying. She loved babies always…

TOM: That’s what came to my mind actually: something about children. I think the one thing we haven’ttalkedaboutisherinvolvementinmixed-raceadoption.

HILARY: Well, you asked me about public or private, and her public life was so extraordinary andsheachievedsomuchinit.[In]herprivatelifesheachievedmuchbutthenthereweresomanyterriblefracturesandruptures,andthatpatternthatwassetdowninherchildhood,andshe’dheardfromhermother,too,ofterribleflightsthattheyhadhadtomakewhentheywereconstantlyhavingtoleaveeverythingandfleebeforethemob.Fracturewasthepatternofherlife, and she never really managed to root herself anywhere, and so her private life was fractured again and again and again. But in public, she gave her life, the second half of her life to campaign-ing for a series of causes which we’ve touched on. Women’s rights, black rights, rights of chil-dren(especiallydisabledchildren),andchildrenofmixedrace—allofthoseweredeeply,deeplyunfashionable causes in her day. They are all absolutely PC and accepted today, which is why I’m rathershockedthatPearldoesn’thavethereputationsheshouldhaveasapubliccampaigner.

But she was enormously successful in that, and I think also that there is no doubt, nobody would disputethatitwasPearlwhoinitiallychangedtheattitudesingle-handedlyoftheWesttotheEast.ItwasshewhomadepeoplefortheveryfirsttimerealizethatChinesepeoplewereordi-nary human beings like themselves. And that was a huge change in thinking. Before that, very

fewpeoplehadeverseenaChinesepersonexcepttheimmigrantswhomtheybitterlyresentedarriving in America and taking their jobs. That’s how they saw it. But the popular images of ChinesepeoplewereeitherakindofFuManchufigurewithslittyeyesandyellowskinandlongfingernailsdoingextremelyshadyandsinisterthingsinopiumdens,orthecomicChinaman.

AndPearlsingle-handedlytransformedthatperception.Sothatwasahugeachievement,absolutelyastonishing.ShealsobecameakindofunofficialadvocateforChina.ShewasveryskepticalabouttheNationalists,theAmericangovernment.Americanpoliticianswereveryoptimisticaboutthefuture,overoptimisticoftheNationalistgovernment.PearlhadnoillusionsabouttheNationalists.She’dlivedwiththem.SheknewChiangKai-shek;severalofherandherhusband’s students became ministers in his government. So she didn’t have at all an idealized viewofthem,butnordidshehavetheCommunists.IthinkshetookaveryrealisticviewoftheCommunists,whatwewouldfeelnowwasarealisticviewoftheirfuture.Andthey,ofcourse,bound her from China. She was considered a public enemy under Mao, a dangerous cultural im-perialist because her view—her absolutely accurate view of what it had meant to be a Chinese peasant,[which]wasn’tatalltheidealizedviewtheCommunistsheldofpeasantlife.

SoPearl,inallthoseways,wasatremendouspioneerandyearsbeforehertime.Sheforesawthe future of China as a superpower and the great, inevitable leader of Asia—those are her words,already in 1925 when she was a very young woman, which was really before anybody else, I think.Andshecampaignedforit,andasyousay,shesetupawholeadoptionagency.Shewasthefirstpersontodothat,forthechildrenofAmericanfathersandKoreanmothersintheKorean War, who were rejected by their own country, Korea, their mothers’ country, and re-jectedbyAmerica,ofcourse.AndthesamethinghappenedinVietnam.Pearlsawthesituationandwastouchedatthebottomofherheart.Itappalledherthatshecouldn’tadoptallofthesehundreds and thousands of children. She took in a lot of them to her house, but there comes alimittothenumberofchildrenonewomancanlookafter.SoshesetupanadoptionagencyfindingAmericanfamiliestoadoptthem.Andthatwashugelysuccessfulandstillrunstothisday.

That’sjustoneofthemany,manythingsthatshedid.Shewasanimmenselypracticalpersonandherorganizingpowerwasterrific,andherfundraisingpowerwasterrific.Andalotofherownfunds,whichcamefromherbestsellingnovels,wentintosupportingthesegoodcauses.Soshe was a feminist before the term. She was a tremendous campaigner for black rights, as well. ShewasafriendofmanyAmericanpresidents,from[Franklin]RoosevelttoKennedy,andgavethem extremely good advice about America’s role in Asia—and nobody really played a blind bit ofnoticetowhatshesaid.Iftheyhad,thewholehistoryoftheworldmightbedifferent.OurrelationshipwithChinamightbeverydifferentnowifpeoplehadlistenedto Pearl from the beginning.

But that’s not what my book is about. My book is about Pearl in China, but I haveagreatadmirationforherasapubliccampaigneragainstalltheodds.

About Tom MatlackTom Matlack is just foolish enough to believe he is a decent man. He has a 16-year-

old daughter and 14- and 5-year-old sons. His wife, Elena, is the love of his life.

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