Peirce’s enthusiasm for Quicktown, his dream of a comfortable, even elegant, country life with Juliette, had already begun to fade. In part this was due to the combined demands of managing the renovations, running the farm, and his professional work, but that was not all. He continued his letter to Jem: “But now I must turn to quite another side of the canvass.” The other side was “dear Juliettes health.” Peirce told Jem that her diseased lungs were even worse than they had been the previous year when she had been warned not to spend her winters in the North. Clearly, she would have to winter elsewhere again this year. To make matters worse, Juliette had become very depressed, a condition Peirce might have been prone to as well.52 On 11 July in an outburst of anger and frustration, Peirce struck a domestic helper, Marie Blanc, and a few days later was charged with assault. Joseph Brent speculates that Peirce may have lost his temper while attempting to upbraid Miss Blanc for not following Juliette’s orders.53 Such domestic tension could only have added weight to the pall that was descending over Quicktown. The case was not resolved until October when Peirce pled guilty to one count of assault and was fined twenty-five dollars plus court costs. Everything taken into account, life for the Peirce’s in the summer and fall of 1889 had taken a decided turn for the worse and tensions were mounting. But Charles and Juliette were resilient and still usually hopeful. In November they added significantly to their land holdings by purchasing an additional 1200 acres of woodland. Apparently Peirce was growing used to his new life. He continued his 30 September letter to Jem: “This living in the country is highly conducive to reading long works in many volumes. I have not a rage for reading; indeed I think an impulse to study and an impulse to read are rather antagonistic; but I get through a good many books here. I find nothing wears better than Sainte Beuve.”
Had Peirce and Juliette been content with modest country living, with an excellent library to fill their idle hours and with only infrequent trips back to New York for a fashionable dinner or an evening at the theater, they might have managed to avoid the terrible poverty that lay ahead. But they seemed determined to amass a great estate—adding yet another five hundred acres the following year—and modest living seemed to be out of the question. When it became necessary to deal with Juliettes winter convalescence, much of Peirce’s inheritance had been used up—the greater part that he had already received. Yet cost does not appear to have been a factor. Peirce explained to Jem that because of Juliette’s depression, he thought it “absolutely indispensable that she should be where she finds amusement” (30 September 89), and he thought that Sicily might be the place for her. As it happened, Jem had been in Europe for nearly three months and would be there for several more. Relations with Jem had improved since Aunt Lizzie’s death, and Peirce was relieved to have him there to watch out for Juliette.
On 21 November 1889, one day after Peirce had finally submitted his long overdue gravity report, a notice appeared in the Milford Dispatch announcing that Juliette would soon make a journey abroad for the winter in quest of health. Six days later Peirce watched Juliette and their dog, Bliss, board the SS Entella in the New York harbor, bound for Naples. Two days later Peirce wrote to Juliette: “What a terrible afternoon & night it was after you sailed! How did you get through? I was terribly anxious.” He told her he had seen the Pinchots, who lived in New York City except for the summers, and they had invited him to dinner, but he had declined because he did not have dress clothes with him. He had taken his Thanksgiving dinner at the Century Club with John La Farge and Clarence King. “I expect to get away this afternoon, but may not. They haven’t been very polite to me at the Lenox, & are evidently trying to get rid of me. I could not stay there with the least self-respect. I don’t pay enough…. Dear little girl! I do nothing but think of you, & can’t help talking too much about you. Good bye! Write from Gibraltar.”
Indeed, Peirce could not stop thinking about Juliette or his money woes. He wrote to his friend Annibale Ferrero, an Italian mathematician and geodesist who lived in Florence, to ask if there was not some position for him in Europe. He indicated that he would be prepared to leave the U.S. at once—perhaps hoping secretly to find a way to join Juliette while she convalesced. He had inquired of G. S. Hall a few weeks earlier about the possibility of a position at Clark University, so apparently he had begun shedding his illusions about Quicktown. Ferrero wrote back on 25 November urging Peirce to be patient. He was sure there could be something for Peirce with the International Geodetic Association, something appropriate to a scientist of his international reputation, but that sort of arrangement could not be hurried. With Juliette away, Peirce decided to spend as much time as he could in New York to see if he could find a way to turn his writing into cash. By now he must have understood that the correspondence course would never bring him much income and that if the farm were ever to make a profit, it would not be soon. He may have been feeling a little more secure about his Coast Survey salaiy, having just turned in the long report, but he had promised, quite unrealistically, that the second part would be finished promptly and he knew that before long he would be asked to turn it in. But even if he could keep his income from the Survey, that would not be enough—at least not until the farm could generate a substantial annual income. The immediate problem was to keep Quicktown operating and to provide for Juliette in Europe. Peirce had used up all of his reserves, and he was not sure how he would earn the money for the monthly disbursements he had promised Juliette.
Peirce wrote to Juliette again on the 6th of December. At the top of his stationary in place of “Quicktown” he inscribed “Sunbeams,” a name he sometimes called Juliette as an endearment. He was feeling lonely and greatly missed her. Beside the word “Sunbeams” Peirce made the impression of a kiss. André De Tienne has speculated that it may be from an anagram play on “baiser,” the French word for kiss, that Peirce first got the idea to rename his estate “Arisbe” as he soon would do.54 He wrote to Juliette about finances. He told her that he had returned to the farm and had been working twelve and thirteen hour days. In New York, Pinchot had encouraged him about the prospects for an arithmetic book he had started, but Peirce thought it doubtful that such a book could bring in more than $1000 a year, and other books he thought he could produce would not bring in more than half that. “Thus, you see if I write 4 with my own hand, the most I can expect is $3000 a year from them; and from all I can write myself or ever get written $5000 a year will be the most. We are spending that now.” On a more positive note, he told Juliette that he had learned that tuberculosis was not incurable, even though some lung damage might be permanent. Finding this out had been such a relief to him.
Peirce was running out of options. He tried to borrow from his friend George Butler. On 8 December, Butler wrote that he was “awfully sorry” but that he simply had nothing to loan: “I am probably harder up than you are.” Peirce did manage to raise a little money to ease the tension of the moment, but nothing would be more destructive of his relationship with Juliette or of his life overall than his constant and never diminishing, sometimes extreme, need of money. The problem would become almost intolerable in another year, after the loss of his income from the Coast Survey, but the expenses of Juliette’s trip abroad made the first half of 1890 almost as difficult. The day before Christmas, Peirce sent Juliette a check for six hundred and fifteen francs, apologizing for the delay and warning her that he might have some difficulty with “the next remittance.” Peirce knew that Juliettes steamer had reached Gibraltar on the 16th, but did not know that she had reached Naples when he wrote to her on the 24th: “I have had no letter from you yet…. I shall pass Christmas with the old bachelors of the club.”
Peirce spent New Year’s eve with George Butler and his wife at their country home in the Hudson Valley north of New York City. He had by then received a letter from Juliette, from Gibraltar, and was greatly distressed at how ill Juliette told him she was. He wrote back on New Year’s day expressing his concern: “I never would live without the sunbeam of my soul!” But Jem’s letters to Peirce suggest that Juliette’s stay in Europe came much closer to being the pleasant amusing time Peirce had wanted for her than she was ever willing to admit. On 23 January 1890 Jem wrote from Rome: “Your cablegram did not reach me till the 16th…. I telegraphed & wrote to the hotelkeeper at Palermo, & learned that Juliette had already left for Cairo. She is sure not to have been seriously ill, & to have been well lodged & cared for.” Jem’s opinion
