In 1924, when Emily Hahn was traveling cross-country, her letters to her family so captivated her brother-in-law that he sent them to the New Yorker magazine. Their publication launched Hahn`s writing career. Born in St. Louis in 1905, Hahn moved with her family to Chicago, where she attended Senn High School. She has traveled all over the world and has written 56 books. She still maintains an office at the New Yorker magazine, to which she remains a frequent contributor. Hahn, who now lives in Manhattan, and her husband, Charles Boxer, who lives in England, have two grown daughters. In a recent conversation with writer Norma Libman, she recalls the remark of a college counselor about ”the female mind” that set her off on a remarkable journey. I didn`t really get into writing until I was in China. I`d already begun to scribble a bit and I`d sold two or three things to the New Yorker. The way I did that was interesting. I`ve told it many times in English classes. I wrote letters. Now, my theory is if you write a good letter, you`re a writer. In 1924 I took a driving trip with a girlfriend all the way from Madison, Wis., where we attended college, to California. I wrote letters along the way and my brother-in-law, my eldest sister`s husband, thought they were good and he was a writer, sometimes, though he was also a lawyer. He simply took two of the letters that interested him and cut off ”Dear Mitchell” and ”Love, Mickey” and sent them to the New Yorker. And they bought them.
That trip across country in a Model T Ford, at a time when most people still traveled by train, and motels had not yet been invented, did more than just launch my writing career. It also got me seriously interested in travel and I`ve never stopped traveling since.
When I got to China, many years later, I naturally went on writing for the New Yorker and that was a good thing because (Harold) Ross, who was the editor, just adored China. He`d never been and he never would have gone, but there had been a Chinese laundryman on his street when he was growing up and they were friends, so that tipped him toward China. It got so I couldn`t write anything wrong. I was sending things from China until the war, though I was not a regular correspondent. One of my books, ”Mr. Pan,” is a collection of these pieces.
I suppose the three high water marks in my life were the major decision I had to make in China and two earlier ones, when I decided to go into mining engineering and then, later, when I decided to leave it. I got into the college of engineering in the first place because it was the only way I could take a particular chemistry course that I wanted when I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
I was perfectly prepared to return to the college of letters and science when it was over, except for a remark made by my advisor. He told me that I must get out of engineering because I`d never get a job in that field and, anyway, I`d never even get my degree because the female mind is ”incapable of grasping mechanics or higher mathematics.” The decision was made at that instant. I stayed and got my degree in engineering, completely forgetting that I had come to college to study the arts.
Incidently, I became the first female member of the Geology Club at school for essentially the same reason. A very distinguished professor was coming to lecture at a meeting and someone penciled in the words ”Women Not Invited” on the bottom of the announcement. Naturally I went, and although I wasn`t accepted graciously, they eventually gave in.
I did work in mining engineering for a year, but then I left it and sort of fooled around for awhile. I hadn`t been happy in the job and this was at the time when Charles Lindbergh was making his solo Atlantic flight. I decided that if he made it to France, I could be just as free as he was. He landed, and I quit my job.
In Africa I still was calling myself a mining engineer and that got me into trouble because they thought I was a spy. Some time after that, when I got a new passport, I decided I`d better change it and so I said I was a writer.
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My interest in primatology, a subject on which I`ve written several books, was all part of my interest and training in science. I grew up in St. Louis, which has a remarkably good zoo. And every Sunday I would go there with the family, or by myself when I got old enough. I suppose I probably went in a go-cart first. I simply was always just interested in animals. Terribly interested. One of my school teachers, when I was very small, knew this and gave me a book about animals and this also encouraged me.
My mother wouldn`t let us have pets until we were 12. She said we wouldn`t take care of them and would probably be cruel to them. And she had this fixed idea that cats carried typhoid. She gave in with me, I think, when I was 11 and let me have a dog.
When I was small, I intended someday to have a kennel and raise dogs. But then in Africa I found lots of animals, real animals, not animals in a book, and the idea of having dogs seemed rather tame. I got terribly interested in chimpanzees and monkeys and such. I think it was a natural transition. I`m not sure it really was a transition; I think it was always there.
I can`t say I did much work with animals. I was fascinated by the work others were doing, particularly in teaching the sign language to chimpanzees. So I got all tangled up in that and I wrote a series for the magazine and it came out in a book called ”Look Who`s Talking.” That led me from the chimpanzees into all kinds of communication between other animals and people. And I stayed with that and did research in the United States and in England.
I financed my trips by working and saving and then traveling until I ran out of money. I was terribly stingy. I recently found a notebook that I kept in those days and I`d written down everything, including ”charity-4 cents.” I never had a master plan. I didn`t know what I was going to do next when I got back from one place or another and that was always awful. It bothered me, partly because my mother bothered me. She`d say, ”What are you going to do? You can`t go on like this forever.” Well, of course, I did go on like this forever.
When I first came back from Africa it was terrible. It was very hard to pick up work and very hard to travel because of the Depression. After that, events sort of swept me along. I didn`t have to worry, at least, in China, because I was stuck there for nine years with the war going on. I couldn`t have got out if I wanted to. I was working for two newspapers there-one in Shanghai and then one in Hong Kong-and I was teaching English, which you can always do in China. They always need teachers.
China had the greatest impact on my life. I would have said, before that, Africa, as it influenced me towards animals. But China is where I met Charles Boxer, my husband. He was an officer in the British army, which was supporting China in its fight against Japan.
There are some things that just arrange themselves. When Japan captured Hong Kong, Charles was wounded and put into a prison camp. By this time we had a newborn baby daughter. I had to decide whether or not to let myself be put into a prison camp, but there was never any doubt. I was terrified that the baby would die of starvation because I knew there wasn`t enough food in the camps. I managed to lie my way out of that by saying I was Eurasian. So they put the baby down as half Chinese. They believed me because they were just farm boys from Japan. They weren`t officers. They couldn`t understand anybody claiming to be Eurasian if they weren`t. It just wouldn`t occur to them.
Eventually there wasn`t enough food outside of the camps, either. And I had to find enough not only for myself and the baby, but for Charles, as well. They allowed us to bring packages to the prisoners once a week and the food I brought Charles was helping him recover from his wound and stay alive. For this reason I had already turned down a couple of opportunities to leave China and return to the United States.
Finally I was faced with what I felt might be my last opportunity to leave Hong Kong with the baby. It was the most difficult decision I`ve ever had to make. I wanted to continue bringing food to Charles, but I was afraid the baby would die. There was a terrible shortage of food and other necessities. I did come home and what I did was right, as it turned out. But it was a gamble.
After I left I was told that Charles had been beheaded in camp. But I didn`t believe it. I don`t think anybody believes that kind of thing until it`s put before them. It was probably a couple of weeks before I knew for sure that he was all right. The story came out in the paper. A reporter had got into camp and had seen Charles and reported it.
When Charles came out of the prison camp, we married and that was not a difficult decision at all. It never occurred to me not to. We went to England to live, but we were in the United States when our second daughter was born. We were here because Charles was working in Washington at the Library of Congress, doing something or other for their Portuguese Department. Charles had retired from the army because his left arm was so badly hurt in the war, and had become a professor of Portuguese history. He taught in lots of places, but mostly King`s College, London, and here, at Yale.
Both of us were at Yale. He was teaching history and I was doing the occasional seminar. At other times we`ve taught at Virginia, St. Louis and Indiana. Now Charles is retired and lives in England. I`m allowed 91 days in England-I like the one day-before I`d have to pay British taxes. But we both travel a good deal and Charles comes here often. Right now I`m working on a project that`s taking me to several different countries as I interview college students who are studying abroad.
It`s hard to say how things would have gone for me if women had had more freedoms when I first started traveling and writing. I don`t suppose I would have been so defensive. I would have still been interested in science, but I might have gone into biology if I hadn`t been challenged on the mining engineering thing.
To women who want to tackle projects that are outside the common realm, I`d say go ahead. There are not so many people that you`ll find a lot of competition. I think a lot of women don`t try, even today. I think the women`s movement is fine, but I think at the moment it`s at a plateau. I get a cockeyed view, though, because I spend a lot of time in England where it`s much worse. I come back here and, of course, I`m full of the joy of life.
I think in England they still put a monetary value on the services of a wife if she`s taken away by somebody else. And the chap who`s taken her away has got to pay a certain amount. What would you call that?
My children didn`t interfere with my writing. In England we were well off enough to have a nanny. In China, of course, everybody had an amah, anyway. No, I`ve been a very bad mother that way.
My younger daughter once rebuked me for not being the kind of mother one reads about. I asked her what kind that was and she said the kind who sits at home and bakes cakes. I told her to go and find anybody who sits at home and bakes cakes.