this remarkable man’s life. A priest was not allowed to put anything into public print without his superiors’ approval. Teilhard’s dilemma was precisely the fact that science and religion were not unified. As a scientist, he could not bear to disregard scientific truth; and in his opinion, as a man who had devoted decades to paleontology, the theory of evolution was indisputably correct. At the same time he could not envision a life lived outside the Church.
God knew there were plenty of women who were busy envisioning it for him. Teilhard’s longest, closest, tenderest relationship was with an American sculptress named Lucile Swan. Lovely little Mrs. Swan was in her late thirties and had arrived in Peking in 1929 on the China leg of a world tour aimed at diluting the bitterness of her recent breakup with her husband. Teilhard was in town officially to engage in some major archaeological digs in China and had only recently played a part in discovering the second great “missing link,” the Peking man. In fact, the Church had exiled him from Europe for fear he would ply his evolutionism among priests and other intellectuals. Lucile Swan couldn’t get over him. He was the right age, forty-eight, a celebrated scientist, a war hero, and the most gorgeous white man in Peking. The crowning touch of glamour was his brave, doomed relationship with his own church. She had him over to her house daily “for tea.” In addition to her charms, which were many, she seems also to have offered an argument aimed at teasing him out of the shell of celibacy. In effect, the Church was forsaking him because he had founded his own new religion. Correct? Since it was his religion, couldn’t he have his priests do anything he wanted them to do? When she was away, he wrote her letters of great tenderness and longing. “For the very reason that you are such a treasure to me, dear Lucile,” he wrote at one point, “I ask you not to build too much of your life on me … Remember, whatever
sweetness I force myself not to give you, I do in order to be worthy of you.”
The final three decades of his life played out with the same unvarying frustration. He completed half a dozen books, including his great work, The Phenomenon of Man . The Church allowed him to publish none of it and kept him in perpetual exile from Europe and his beloved Paris. His only pleasure and ease came from the generosity of women, who remained attracted to him even in his old age. In 1953, two years before his death, he suffered one especially cruel blow. It was discovered that the Piltdown man had been, in fact, a colossal hoax pulled off by Charles Dawson, who had hidden various doctored ape and human bones like Easter eggs for Teilhard and others to find. He was in an acute state of depression when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of seventy-four, still in exile. His final abode was a dim little room in the Hotel Fourteen on East Sixtieth Street in Manhattan, with a single window looking out on a filthy air shaft composed, in part, of a blank exterior wall of the Copacabana nightclub.
Not a word of his great masterwork had ever been published, and yet Teilhard had enjoyed a certain shady eminence for years. Some of his manuscripts had circulated among his fellow Jesuits, sub rosa, sotto voce , in a Jesuit samizdat. In Canada he was a frequent topic of conversation at St. Michael’s, the Roman Catholic college of the University of Toronto. Immediately following his death, his Paris secretary, Jeanne Mortier, to whom he had left his papers, began publishing his writings in a steady stream, including The Phenomenon of Man . No one paid closer attention to this gusher of Teilhardiana than a forty-four-year-old St. Michael’s teaching fellow named Marshall McLuhan, who taught English literature. McLuhan was already something of a campus star at the University of Toronto when Teilhard died. He had dreamed up an extracurricular seminar on popular culture
God knew there were plenty of women who were busy envisioning it for him. Teilhard’s longest, closest, tenderest relationship was with an American sculptress named Lucile Swan. Lovely little Mrs. Swan was in her late thirties and had arrived in Peking in 1929 on the China leg of a world tour aimed at diluting the bitterness of her recent breakup with her husband. Teilhard was in town officially to engage in some major archaeological digs in China and had only recently played a part in discovering the second great “missing link,” the Peking man. In fact, the Church had exiled him from Europe for fear he would ply his evolutionism among priests and other intellectuals. Lucile Swan couldn’t get over him. He was the right age, forty-eight, a celebrated scientist, a war hero, and the most gorgeous white man in Peking. The crowning touch of glamour was his brave, doomed relationship with his own church. She had him over to her house daily “for tea.” In addition to her charms, which were many, she seems also to have offered an argument aimed at teasing him out of the shell of celibacy. In effect, the Church was forsaking him because he had founded his own new religion. Correct? Since it was his religion, couldn’t he have his priests do anything he wanted them to do? When she was away, he wrote her letters of great tenderness and longing. “For the very reason that you are such a treasure to me, dear Lucile,” he wrote at one point, “I ask you not to build too much of your life on me … Remember, whatever
sweetness I force myself not to give you, I do in order to be worthy of you.”
The final three decades of his life played out with the same unvarying frustration. He completed half a dozen books, including his great work, The Phenomenon of Man . The Church allowed him to publish none of it and kept him in perpetual exile from Europe and his beloved Paris. His only pleasure and ease came from the generosity of women, who remained attracted to him even in his old age. In 1953, two years before his death, he suffered one especially cruel blow. It was discovered that the Piltdown man had been, in fact, a colossal hoax pulled off by Charles Dawson, who had hidden various doctored ape and human bones like Easter eggs for Teilhard and others to find. He was in an acute state of depression when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of seventy-four, still in exile. His final abode was a dim little room in the Hotel Fourteen on East Sixtieth Street in Manhattan, with a single window looking out on a filthy air shaft composed, in part, of a blank exterior wall of the Copacabana nightclub.
Not a word of his great masterwork had ever been published, and yet Teilhard had enjoyed a certain shady eminence for years. Some of his manuscripts had circulated among his fellow Jesuits, sub rosa, sotto voce , in a Jesuit samizdat. In Canada he was a frequent topic of conversation at St. Michael’s, the Roman Catholic college of the University of Toronto. Immediately following his death, his Paris secretary, Jeanne Mortier, to whom he had left his papers, began publishing his writings in a steady stream, including The Phenomenon of Man . No one paid closer attention to this gusher of Teilhardiana than a forty-four-year-old St. Michael’s teaching fellow named Marshall McLuhan, who taught English literature. McLuhan was already something of a campus star at the University of Toronto when Teilhard died. He had dreamed up an extracurricular seminar on popular culture
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