Juliette Peirce
Encyclopedia
Juliette Peirce was the second wife of the mathematician and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.
, but others have speculated that she had a Gypsy heritage (Ketner 1998, p. 279ff). On occasion, she claimed to be a Habsburg princess. Scanty facts about her provide only a few possible clues to her past. She spoke French, had her own income, had gynecological illnesses that prevented her from having children, and owned a deck of tarot
cards said to have predicted the downfall of Napoleon. She probably first met Charles in New York City
at the Hotel Brevoort's New Year's Eve ball in December 1876.
.
When he was being considered for a permanent post, one of the major American scientists of the day, Simon Newcomb
, who apparently did not like Charles, pointed out to a Johns Hopkins trustee that Charles, while an employee of the university, had traveled with a woman to whom he was not married. The ensuing scandal led to Charles's dismissal. His later applications to many universities for teaching posts were all unsuccessful, and in fact he never again held a full-time permanent position anywhere. As a result, Juliette was often blamed for Charles's failure to reach the eminent social stature his intellect might have commanded.
There were strains with Charles's mother Sarah, brother Jem (James Mills Peirce), and most of all his aunt Lizzie, who owned the house in which Sarah and Jem lived, but despite that and strains in the marriage itself, Charles remained powerfully attached to Juliette. In a diary entry for January 6, 1889, Charles wrote, regarding Juliette's health, "If I should lose her, I would not survive her. Therefore, I must turn my whole energy to saving her." Except during occasional travels by one or the other, they remained together until his death in 1914, and she never remarried.
, land that never yielded an economic return. There he had a 1854 farmhouse remodeled to his design. The Peirces named the house and land Arisbe. The local people, many of whom were French, accepted Juliette. The Peirces led an active social life there and became friends with relatives of Gifford Pinchot
. Except for occasional travels and stays elsewhere, the Peirces spent the rest of their lives there. They named their property Arisbe for possibly any or all of the following reasons:
Even as they sank into poverty, they continued to make expansions to the house, almost losing it and their land because of unpaid debts.
was his way of "informally ... paying tribute to his wife ... and to her cultural origins as a Spanish woman who was a Gitano, or Spanish Gypsy of Andalusia." It involves the movement of Gypsies into Spain along the pilgimage to Santiago de Compostela
, Santiago's being the patron saint of Spain, Juliette's being in Spain at the time when Peirce's friend and colleague Ernst Schröder
's Logik was published, and other reasons.
, a chronic, intensely painful condition (whose sufferers, oftener women than men, usually develop it after age 50) against which he self-medicated with drugs such as morphine
, cocaine
, and alcohol
. His mental and physical illnesses worsened with time, and he suffered numerous breakdowns over the course of his life, rendering him increasingly unreliable. His earnings from temporary posts, lectures and articles dwindled, until he and Juliette lived in poverty. At his death he had more than 100,000 pages of unpublished writing.
In her later years, Juliette was described as increasingly frail. She contracted, and eventually died of, tuberculosis
. When Charles died in 1914, Juliette was left destitute and alone. She lived another twenty years, dedicated to bringing Charles and his ideas the recognition she believed they deserved. An obituary in Science
described her as a "gracious lady" who "lived and passed away...in the distinction of her devotion."
, New Directions, 1999, consists of an essay and poems focusing on Charles and his wife Juliette. The spelling of the title is correct, referring to the old motor car company
, as well as punning for example on the Peirce arrow ("
"), logical symbol for "neither...nor...".
The historical novel The Queen of Cups by Mina Samuels, Unlimited Publishing LLC, 2006, imagines what Juliette's background and history may have been. In his review (see under "Bibliography" below), de Waal says that Samuels invents a plausible explanation tying together Juliette's sudden break with her past, her coming to the USA, and her lifelong gynecological problems, but de Waal is mostly critical, saying, among other things, that the novel includes fictional accounts of misbehavior and even violence by C. S. Peirce for which there is no real evidence, and includes fictions contrary to the evidence, for example about the nature of C. S. Peirce's drug use.
History
Almost nothing is known about Juliette Peirce's life before she met Charles - not even her name, which is variously given as Juliette Annette Froissy or Juliette Pourtalai. Some historians believe she was FrenchFrench people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
, but others have speculated that she had a Gypsy heritage (Ketner 1998, p. 279ff). On occasion, she claimed to be a Habsburg princess. Scanty facts about her provide only a few possible clues to her past. She spoke French, had her own income, had gynecological illnesses that prevented her from having children, and owned a deck of tarot
Tarot
The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...
cards said to have predicted the downfall of Napoleon. She probably first met Charles in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
at the Hotel Brevoort's New Year's Eve ball in December 1876.
Controversy
Charles Peirce's first wife, Harriet Melusina Fay, had left him in 1875, but he was not divorced from her until 1882. Charles and Juliette became close friends and travel companions, and were likely romantically involved before his divorce was official. This indiscretion is sometimes said to have cost him his career. Charles had a teaching position at Johns Hopkins UniversityJohns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
.
When he was being considered for a permanent post, one of the major American scientists of the day, Simon Newcomb
Simon Newcomb
Simon Newcomb was a Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician. Though he had little conventional schooling, he made important contributions to timekeeping as well as writing on economics and statistics and authoring a science fiction novel.-Early life:Simon Newcomb was born in the town of...
, who apparently did not like Charles, pointed out to a Johns Hopkins trustee that Charles, while an employee of the university, had traveled with a woman to whom he was not married. The ensuing scandal led to Charles's dismissal. His later applications to many universities for teaching posts were all unsuccessful, and in fact he never again held a full-time permanent position anywhere. As a result, Juliette was often blamed for Charles's failure to reach the eminent social stature his intellect might have commanded.
There were strains with Charles's mother Sarah, brother Jem (James Mills Peirce), and most of all his aunt Lizzie, who owned the house in which Sarah and Jem lived, but despite that and strains in the marriage itself, Charles remained powerfully attached to Juliette. In a diary entry for January 6, 1889, Charles wrote, regarding Juliette's health, "If I should lose her, I would not survive her. Therefore, I must turn my whole energy to saving her." Except during occasional travels by one or the other, they remained together until his death in 1914, and she never remarried.
Arisbe
In 1887 Peirce spent part of his inheritance from his parents to buy 2,000 acres (8 km²) of rural land near Milford, PennsylvaniaMilford, Pennsylvania
Milford is a borough in Pike County, Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat. Its population was 1,021 at the 2010 census. It was founded in 1796 by Judge John Biddis, one of the state's first four circuit judges, who named the settlement after his ancestral home in Wales.Milford has a...
, land that never yielded an economic return. There he had a 1854 farmhouse remodeled to his design. The Peirces named the house and land Arisbe. The local people, many of whom were French, accepted Juliette. The Peirces led an active social life there and became friends with relatives of Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service and the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania...
. Except for occasional travels and stays elsewhere, the Peirces spent the rest of their lives there. They named their property Arisbe for possibly any or all of the following reasons:
- The ancient city of Arisbe was a colony of the city-state of MiletusMiletusMiletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...
, which was the scene of much early Greek philosophy and science. - The IliadIliadThe Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
tells of AxylusAxylusAxylus is mentioned in Book VI of Homer's Iliad.Axylus is mentioned in Book VI of Homer's Iliad.Axylus is mentioned in Book VI of Homer's Iliad.:Diomedes, expert in war cries, killed Axylus,...
, who welcomed all passers-by into his house near a public road in Arisbe, Homer remarking that later none of them stood between Axylus and death in battle. - Reasons connected with other meanings of "Arisbe" (see Arisbe (disambiguation)).
- "Arisbe" is an anagram of French baiser, "to kiss".
Even as they sank into poverty, they continued to make expansions to the house, almost losing it and their land because of unpaid debts.
A Santiago conjecture
In His Glassy Essence (1998), p. 279ff, Kenneth Ketner speculates that Juliette was of Spanish Gypsy origin, and that Charles's adding "Santiago" to his nameCharles Santiago Sanders Peirce
Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce, better known as Charles Sanders Peirce, was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist. See Charles Sanders Peirce for the main discussion of Peirce...
was his way of "informally ... paying tribute to his wife ... and to her cultural origins as a Spanish woman who was a Gitano, or Spanish Gypsy of Andalusia." It involves the movement of Gypsies into Spain along the pilgimage to Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
, Santiago's being the patron saint of Spain, Juliette's being in Spain at the time when Peirce's friend and colleague Ernst Schröder
Ernst Schröder
Ernst Schröder was a German mathematician mainly known for his work on algebraic logic. He is a major figure in the history of mathematical logic , by virtue of summarizing and extending the work of George Boole, Augustus De Morgan, Hugh MacColl, and especially Charles Peirce...
's Logik was published, and other reasons.
Illnesses and Juliette's widowhood
Charles suffered from his late teens through the rest of his life with an ailment then known as "facial neuralgia" which would today be diagnosed as trigeminal neuralgiaTrigeminal neuralgia
Trigeminal neuralgia , tic douloureux is a neuropathic disorder characterized by episodes of intense pain in the face, originating from the trigeminal nerve. It has been described as among the most painful conditions known...
, a chronic, intensely painful condition (whose sufferers, oftener women than men, usually develop it after age 50) against which he self-medicated with drugs such as morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
, cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
, and alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
. His mental and physical illnesses worsened with time, and he suffered numerous breakdowns over the course of his life, rendering him increasingly unreliable. His earnings from temporary posts, lectures and articles dwindled, until he and Juliette lived in poverty. At his death he had more than 100,000 pages of unpublished writing.
In her later years, Juliette was described as increasingly frail. She contracted, and eventually died of, tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. When Charles died in 1914, Juliette was left destitute and alone. She lived another twenty years, dedicated to bringing Charles and his ideas the recognition she believed they deserved. An obituary in Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
described her as a "gracious lady" who "lived and passed away...in the distinction of her devotion."
In popular culture
Pierce-Arrow, by Susan HoweSusan Howe
Susan Howe is a American poet, scholar, essayist and critic, who has been closely associated with the Language poets, among others poetry movements. Her work is often classified as Postmodern because it expands traditional notions of genre...
, New Directions, 1999, consists of an essay and poems focusing on Charles and his wife Juliette. The spelling of the title is correct, referring to the old motor car company
Pierce-Arrow
Pierce-Arrow was an American automobile manufacturer based in Buffalo, New York, which was active from 1901-1938. Although best known for its expensive luxury cars, Pierce-Arrow also manufactured commercial trucks, fire trucks, camp trailers, motorcycles, and bicycles.-Early history:The forerunner...
, as well as punning for example on the Peirce arrow ("
"), logical symbol for "neither...nor...".The historical novel The Queen of Cups by Mina Samuels, Unlimited Publishing LLC, 2006, imagines what Juliette's background and history may have been. In his review (see under "Bibliography" below), de Waal says that Samuels invents a plausible explanation tying together Juliette's sudden break with her past, her coming to the USA, and her lifelong gynecological problems, but de Waal is mostly critical, saying, among other things, that the novel includes fictional accounts of misbehavior and even violence by C. S. Peirce for which there is no real evidence, and includes fictions contrary to the evidence, for example about the nature of C. S. Peirce's drug use.