From Hero to Humbug

No legitimate publisher would touch Cook’s narrative in book form in 1911, so he formed his own “Polar Publishing Company” to issue and promote it and manage the lectures he planned to give after its publication.

T. Everett Harre was a subeditor of Hampton’s Magazine at the time Benjamin Hampton secretly contracted with Cook for a four-part serial in 1910, just before he returned to America from his self-imposed exile of a year after Copenhagen University rejected the “proofs” he had sent to them the previous year. Despite being identified as the “author” of the insertions into Cook’s serial that suggested that Cook, himself, was no longer sure he had actually reached the North Pole, and which was promoted as “Dr. Cook’s Confession” by the magazine, Cook hired Harre to manage his company and edit his manuscript that became My Attainment of the Pole. We have already dealt with its original issue in 1911. (see the post for November 10, 2025)

In 1912, the second edition appeared. It was issued by Mitchell Kennerley, British-born publisher and bookman, apparently through Harre’s influence. The second edition, much reduced in size from the original, sported bright red covers.

The content of the book was nearly identical to the original, however, with one major exception. One of the two “original observations” Cook printed in the book had a new set of figures printed parallel to the original ones, instead of replacing them with an entirely new plate. This was probably done through a misunderstanding, but the change proved significant. And it was probably this misunderstanding that led to the issuance in 1913 of a third edition, bound in blue-green, but in the same size and format as the second edition.

That same year, Kennerley published Harre’s “Eskimo Romance” The Eternal Maiden, which showed the influence of Harre’s association with Cook, in exactly the same style as Cook’s book, right down to the typeface used on its cover.

Unlike the second edition, this one had some textual changes, and both the “observations” were changed, mathematically. It also included some additional pages added at the end of the original text.

One change came in the introduction in which Harre’s role in writing any part of My Attainment of the Pole was limited to “certain purely adventure material.” Other than this, changes to the original text were slight. Another modified the caption beneath the picture that showed Peary’s Inuit mistress and his second child by her (facing page 493) to more explicitly insinuate Peary’s relation to the two.

The new material consisted of a number of short testimonials by “Arctic Experts” supporting Cook, and an additional 16 pages of new material that took the form of a reprint of an article from the New York Tribune by Edwin Swift Balch, of whom we will soon hear more, arguing in favor of the accuracy of Cook’s narrative on a comparative basis with other explorers’ reports, and several pieces aimed at supporting a Congressional investigation into Cook’s claims, then being prosecuted by Cook’s personal lobbyist, Ernest C. Rost on Capitol Hill. The new material ended with an appeal to the reader to “write your congressman calling for an investigation.” Early copies even included a postcard that could be used for this purpose.

In the new edition, a new plate was executed for the two observations, which changed their internal mathematics.

Ironically, the first to recognize the significance of the changes made to the observations was Cook’s own lobbyist. Apparently Cook met Rost when both served on the Executive Board of the Brooklyn Academy of Arts and Sciences before his polar attempt. Cook was a good judge of people and probably recognized Rost’s eye for detail, perhaps due to his craft as an etcher and photographer of note.

Rost, added by his wife, were very effective in their work for Cook. They authored several “Extension of Remarks” speeches that were inserted in the Appendix to the Congressional Record under the name of Representative Henry T. Helgesen of South Dakota, questioning Peary’s exploration career and credibility in general, but especially focusing on his claim to have reached the North Pole in 1909. They were so effective that Peary had to employ a personal lobbyist of his own.

But by 1916, Rost had fallen out with Cook over unpaid back wages. Rost got even on September 4, 1916, when Helgesen announced that he would place in the Congressional Record still more remarks on the North Pole question, but this time the subject would not be Peary’s credibility; it would be Cook’s.

One of the most significant parts of Rost’s analysis had to do with Cook’s errors in astronomical observations. He called attention to suspicious revisions made between the first edition and subsequent editions that could not be explained away as typographic errors. The revisions as presented in the third edition gave the same, reacquired results as those in the first while neatly correcting a fatal internal mathematical error the originals contained that brought into question the observer’s basic competence with navigational instruments. Rost deduced from this that Cook had intentionally adjusted the observations to correct this fatal error: “If Dr. Cook was as clever in making observations as in correcting thee errors after they were brought to his attention, he would be able to more convincingly demonstrate that he really knew anything about his geographical position during the various stage of his so-called ‘polar journey’ as his observation prove that he was either deplorably ignorant or inexcusably careless in asking his observation, we can place no more reliance upon them than we can upon Peary’s.”

Peary had a falling out with Matt Henson after the return of his attempt to reach the North Pole in 1909 over his attempt to prevent him from going on the lecture platform. Peary was especially disturbed to learn that Henson planned to exhibit some of his own photographs, including one he claimed was taken at the North Pole. Peary apparently was apprehensive that Henson’s photographs, which by contract were all supposed to be turned over to Peary after the expedition, might show something that would prove Peary had not actually reached the North Pole, for instance, measurable shadows on the ground, which would be a certain length on the days Peary claimed to have been there. He also was not comfortable with some of Henson’s statements he had made in newspaper interviews, either, regarding the trip to the Pole, some of  which varied considerably from his own reports. For instance, Henson said that Peary rode the sledges the whole way because of his mostly toeless feet did not allow him to walk over the irregular ice, and Peary felt he might reveal other details that conflicted with his already published version of events. Henson was even rumored to be proposing that he debate Dr. Cook, which horrified Peary at the thought.

To discourage Henson, Peary refused to provide lantern slides or maps to use in his lectures and did what he could to keep Henson off the lecture circuit entirely. But Henson went on a lecture tour  anyway, (see the post for June 17, 2024) which led Peary to say that “for a few dollars” Henson had been disloyal and that he “was through with him absolutely.” When Henson appeared at the Hippodrome, he sent Herbert Bridgman in person to get a look at Henson’s “North Pole” picture. He had nothing to fear. Although it was obviously taken at “Camp Morris K. Jesup,” as Peary called his polar camp, it was blurry and showed nothing definitely incriminating.

True to his word, Peary had nothing to do with Henson the rest of his life, with one exception. When Henson proposed to publish a book of his own on his Arctic experiences, Peary got interested in him again briefly. Peary had faced a lot of criticism in the Press for the content of a series of articles he had published in Hampton’s Magazine in 1910, for their lack of any “proof” that he had been to the Pole, and got more of the same after his own book, The North Pole, was published later that year (see the post for August 18, 2025), which had already resulted in a book questioning the legitimacy of his polar claim (see the post for September 29, 2025). Peary wanted no more conflicting statements from Henson to raise further suspicions.

So Peary agreed to write an introduction to Henson’s book and contribute $500 to defray the expenses of his publisher, Frederick A. Stokes, for publishing it, in return for having editorial rights over Henson’s manuscript. Stokes published it only as a favor to Peary, saying he could not imagine who would want to read it. When Peary’s lawyer went over Henson’s manuscript, some objectionable things were pointed out that he wanted removed. The book came out in 1912 under the title A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, and Stokes thought it was although better written than he expected. But even though Stokes had used Peary’s money to promote the book, it was, as Stokes predicted, a dismal failure, and a financial loss for the publisher.

Who actually wrote the book has never been revealed, since Henson was not functionally literate. Herbert Frisby, a school teacher and editor of an Afro-American newspaper, who knew Henson for the last 13 years of his life and championed him for years after (he was instrumental in getting a commemorative plaque put up to Henson in the Maryland State House in Annapolis), theorized, “Because of Matt’s limited academic background, I feel that his book was ghost written by someone from interviews with him.” One source suggested some of it may have been lifted from the extensive diaries of Peary’s surgeon, Dr. John W. Goodsell, as was a significant part of Peary’s The North Pole. In any case, no trace of any original manuscript of Henson’s book has ever been found.

In a letter to Peary, dated April 10, 1911, Henson states, “My wife and I are writing a book,” so perhaps Henson dictated his recollections to his wife, who wrote them down for him, with the finished book being written by a ghost writer working from her notes and using Goodsell’s diary to supply the chronology and “local color.” Some have proposed Peary’s ghostwriter, A. E. Thomas, as the author, but that seems unlikely. Thomas said Peary forbade him to talk with Henson during the writing of The North Pole, and Thomas never mentioned having any dealings with him later in interviews with him in the 1930s.

As far as its bearing on The Polar Controversy, there is not much to tell. Perhaps because of Peary’s lawyer’s intervention or editing at Stokes, it has no important direct conflicts with Peary’s version of things, and is especially short on detail of the most questioned aspect of it, the spectacular speed at which Peary made it to the Pole after leaving Bob Bartlett, and his even more spectacular speed on his return journey, on which he almost lapped the Captain getting back to his ship at Cape Sheridan. Curiously, however, the things Peary’s lawyer said he wanted Henson to remove, remained in the book.
Still, Henson’s book does vary in his reports of what they did on reaching the Pole. For instance, Henson implies that Peary never took a celestial observation before arriving at Camp Morris K. Jesup, and when he did he planted the flags only 150 yards west of their stopping point and where the igloos he had built were located, before taking his observation.

Henson’s descriptions of physical conditions encountered after leaving Bartlett and on the miraculously swift return to land, sketchy as they are, raise doubts that Peary could have made such progress as he claims to have done. These and other accounts by Henson, especially one he had given to the New York World and in an article he submitted to World’s Work in 1910, would be used by future skeptics like Lewin, Hall and Rost, to help discredit Peary’s account.

In his book Henson says at one point he quotes from his diary, but the so-called entry is contradicted by other known verifiable evidence. What’s more, no trace of ANY Henson diary for any of Peary’s expeditions has ever been found, although Peary kept at least copies of the diaries any of his expedition members kept, and there are no original writings by Henson in the small collection of Henson artifacts held by the Library of Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD.

Henson’s book, was, as Stokes predicted, a commercial flop in 1912, but with the rising interest in black history during the Civil Rights Movement, it was reprinted several times and did very well.

The reprint issued by Cooper Square Press in 2001 has a detailed new introduction by this author which addresses Henson’s biography in general and gives details on the background of how A Negro Explorer at the North Pole came into being.

On December 21, 1909, Dr. Cook’s “proofs” that he had reached the North Pole in 1908 were rejected by the special commission set up by the University of Copenhagen to examine them. Immediately he was branded nothing but a cheap fake, just as Peary had said he was. Merchants in New York City lamented that right in the middle of the Christmas shopping season (it was a lot shorter in those days!) they were stuck with all kinds of “Cook” toys and merchandise that would have no buyers, including “blue-eyed Eskimo dolls.” Recently a couple of those dolls came up for sale on Etsy.  

As described by the sellers, they are six-inches tall and three and one half broad. Their cloth bodies are clothed in faux-fur suits, and they have porcelain heads and appendages. The heads on both dolls are identical. The only way of knowing which is supposed to be which is a paper label attached to their backs with either “Cook” or “Peary” inked on it in Gothic letters.

The one labeled “Cook” incongruously has a ceramic jug strapped around his waist (a strange container to carry liquid in at sub-zero temperatures), while the one labeled “Peary” has two strips of wood strapped across his back, perhaps representing skis (which Peary never used). As to which one the head most looks like, that is probably Cook, because it has a beard, something Peary never sported.

No doubt they were manufactured in Germany, as porcelain headed dolls and other porcelain wares were a major export of that country in the early Twentieth Century. Germany had already contributed several porcelain items relevant to the rivalry between the two explorers, which can be seen in previous posts in this series.

The author has recently published a new study drawing on original sources. It is now available on Amazon.com.

In 1907, Robert E. Peary first claimed that when he stood on the heights of Axel Heiberg Island in June 1906, he sighted a distant land to the northwest.

Peary named it “Crocker Land,” after the banker George Crocker, who had contributed $50,000 toward the outfitting of his 1905 expedition aimed at reaching the North Pole. Although he failed in that effort, he claimed that in his attempt he had achieved a new “Farthest North,” exceeding the record claimed in 1901 by the Italian expedition led by the Duke of Abruzzi. Today, this claim is doubted, as is Peary’s unsupported assertion that he succeeded in reached the North Pole on his next expedition in 1909.

As to the first claim of discovering Crocker Land, an expedition led by Peary’s protege, Donald B. MacMillan, sent out to explore it, proved beyond doubt that it did not exist. On MacMillan’s attempt to reach Crocker Land he retrieved cairn records left by Peary at his points of observation, none of which made any mention of the discovery, which Peary rated as the second most important accomplishment of his 1906 effort to reach the Pole. Nevertheless, MacMillan excused Peary of deception by claiming that his experiences, on his own journey toward the position at which Crocker Land was supposed to lie, conclusively showed that Peary had been deceived by a Fata Morgana—a mirage caused by extreme refraction as rays of light bend when they pass through air layers of different temperatures.

In this first detailed comparison of the original field diaries kept by MacMillan and his companion, Fitzhugh Green, the author examines this claim that Peary was deceived rather than a deceiver, and considers whether MacMillan in claiming Peary had been deceived may have practiced deception himself. The Crocker Land Diaries also examines the questions surrounding the tragic aftermath of MacMillan’s attempt to reach Peary’s mythical land, which resulted in the death of one of his Inuit guides at the hands of Fitzhugh Green. Green claimed he was compelled to kill the Inuit to save his own life. The Crocker Land Diaries examines the circumstances surrounding this tragic incident, and based on the original sources, suggests other possible motives for the killing.

This is the fourth in an occasional series that will examine the published literature in book form relevant to the details of the Polar Controversy. These books will be discussed in the order they were published.

The quintessential book of the Polar Controversy is My Attainment of the Pole, Dr. Cook’s narrative of his 1908-09 expedition, and his comments upon his controversy with Peary. It appeared in August 1911. It has already been treated to a detailed analysis elsewhere on this site (see under the “Artifacts” section), but deserves a few more comments here.

It went through three editions, the first published by Cook’s own Polar Publishing Co., the last two published by Mitchell Kennerley, amounting to more than 60,000 copies. Between the years 1912-1916, as Cook toured as a Lyceum and Chautauqua lecturer, he sold the book at cost at all his appearances and gave many other copies away for many years after that. The book won innumerable friends for Cook, who through its pages were convinced Cook had reached the Pole and had been cheated of his glory by a moneyed conspiracy.

Many who read the book felt as reviewers had in Germany when the book was issued there in translation as Meine Eroberung des Nordpols by Alfred Janssen in 1913:

“The book shows the clever researcher on the difficult way to the Pole and on his return over the limitless wastes of icy water with its inhuman difficulties. Everything is told in such a self-effacing and sympathetic way that we can rejoice in its simple heroism.”

“The contents of the book have held us chained from beginning to end. The descriptions are simple and modest and so natural. It can be no lie what this man lets us experience, and even if it is a lie, it has eared a place in every library.”

His readers also sensed what another reviewer, this time of Cook’s Hampton’s series, did when he praised Cook’s abilities as a descriptive writer, “This is vivid and real. It is not imaginative literature. It is obviously descriptive of actual and unusual experience. As such the record is worth preserving, irrespective of the writer’s reputation for veracity.”

That was because Cook’s experiences as an explorer were real. He had personally encountered all the “inhuman difficulties” the book describes, even if he fell more than 400 miles short of the North Pole on his attempt to reach it.

Another attractive feature of the book is its treatment of the Inuit, who Cook, unlike Peary, sincerely admired, and to whose skills in adapting to the polar environment he gave full credit for his “success.”  This homage is memorialized in the book’s dedication, “To the Pathfinders . . .”, and by the original edition’s cover, which despite its singular title, shows his own profile between those of the two Inuit who accompanied him, Ahwelah and Etukishuk.

Unlike Peary’s book, which makes no reference at all to the Polar Controversy, Cook’s has a significant amount to say in rebuttal to points raised against his claim to have beaten Peary to the pole by nearly a year. It also contains many arguments intended to show that his claim was defeated by manipulations of the press and bribes orchestrated by an “Arctic Trust” of Peary’s rich and influential backers, and to cast doubt on their and Peary’s characters.

The one question still left unanswered at the time the analysis referred to above was written, was just how much of My Attainment Cook wrote himself and how much of it was ghosted by T. Everett Harré.

When I did my annotated transcription of the diary Cook kept on his polar attempt (The Lost Polar Notebook of Dr. Frederick A. Cook, available on Amazon or eBay) that question was definitively answered. A very large part of the book’s narrative content appears in that notebook, written in the underground igloo in which he spent the winter of 1908-09 with his two Inuit companions. In fact, a surprising amount of the book appears in practically unaltered form there.

Therefore, his description of Harré’s original contributions as limited to “handling of certain purely adventure matter,” appears accurate, and Harré’s statement that he acted simply in the ordinary role of editor of Cook’s already written narrative also seems accurate. So, unlike Peary’s The North Pole, Cook’s book was not ghosted from interviews, but was closely based on an already existing manuscript written by Cook himself.

Unlike Peary’s book, which was translated into at least a half-dozen languages, Cook’s was only translated into German. This was because, he, although born in America, was a pure German by birth, and his story raised a certain amount of national pride that one of German blood had been the one to discover the North Pole, and therefore it found a sympathetic ear within his ancestral homeland.

In addition to the full translation, in 1928 an abridged version under the title Zum Mittelpunkt der Arktis. Reiseberichte ohne die Pol-Kontroverse. (To the Center of the Arctic. The travelogues without reference to the polar controversy), edited by Erwin Volckmann, was issued by Westermann, Verlag. As indicated by the subtitle, the abridgment removed all references to Cook’s dispute with Peary, but retained the core narrative of his expedition.

This is the third in an occasional series that will examine the published literature in book form relevant to the details of the Polar Controversy. These books will be discussed in the order they were published.

Peary always had a strict rule that no expedition member could write anything about his experiences until one year after his own official narrative had appeared. He apparently made an exception for George Borup. The North Pole was issued in September 1910, and Borup’s book was released in March 1911. Perhaps this was due to both being issued by the same publisher, Frederick A. Stokes, who may have seen advantages in “striking while the iron is hot” with Borup’s book before interest in the “discovery of the North Pole” faded. Or Peary may have felt that the character of Borup’s book would not be seen as a rival to his own.

Borup was a recent graduate of Yale (1907), and his book is a reflection of that and being the youngest “assistant” Peary took with him in 1908. It is shot through with humorous asides, Hully Gees, Holy Smokes, Gee-Whizes and other college slang. However, it also has many interesting insights into Inuit culture and the individual personalities of the various Inuit that Peary and Cook lived and worked with, that Peary’s book almost totally lacked. Although some of these vignettes are the subject for Borup’s humorous asides, they also show a respect for Inuit resourcefulness and character, which give the book some lasting value. For instance, he described their habit of swapping wives: “The habit of changing wives does not break up the love of man and wife, which is sorter like German separable verbs.”

A page from Borup’s book. “Florodora” was a popular musical whose most memorable feature was a song and dance number performed by six gorgeous girls.

Looking beyond the hagiographic treatment of Peary it contains, the book’s content relevant to the Polar Controversy is still of subtle, if slight interest to connoisseurs of the subject. Borup was the third of Peary’s assistants to turn back on the polar journey, so he personally experienced many of the hard experiences needed to attempt to reach the North Pole, and although he mentions experiences of others who went farther, he gives no account at all of Peary’s experiences once the two had parted. These descriptions of Borup’s and others’ experiences on the polar journey, however, only add to the doubts expressed by Lewin that Peary’s own account of what he accomplished after leaving behind his last literate witness is doubtful in the extreme, it being so at odds with those recorded by Borup and others.

Borup describes the horrendous ice conditions encountered, and the backbreaking labor necessary to make forward progress.  He also describes the drift of the ice, first west, then east, that made the outward trail hard to follow, and which was often completely lost, and remarks on the considerable open water encountered, which held his party up repeatedly.  Because of these conditions, he estimates that it took three extra miles of travel to make ten miles progress north in a straight line.  He repeatedly reports the sledges going to pieces, at one point smashing eight of them to gain 60 miles, the constant troubles had with the dogs, and the Inuit’s great fear of the sea ice and their malingering and reluctance to go forward to face its obstacles.

After his return to land, while on a trip to Cape Morris Jesup to take tidal measurements, he and Donald MacMillan received via Inuit messenger, a letter from Peary dated April 28, 1909, stating “Arrived on board yesterday. Northern Journey entirely satisfactory.” Their ecstatic reaction recorded by Borup shows that they immediately took this to mean Peary had reached the Pole, even though the long letter, which he reproduces in full, made no specific mention of doing so, or any reference whatever to his “satisfactory” experiences otherwise.

Borup’s book also contains a brief account of Borup’s version of what Dr. Cook’s two Inuit companions said about their experiences with him on his 1908 polar attempt, intended to cast doubt that he ever traveled more than two days northward before turning back (see the post on this blog for January 27, 2023). He also discusses what he considers further evidence of Cook’s failure to get far toward the Pole in the form of a description of Cook’s one surviving sledge, which he says could not possibly have made the full journey to the North Pole and back due to its relatively intact condition, albeit it had been cut down to half of its original size. In so doing, he actually reveals the shortcomings of Peary’s “clipper-built” sledges, made perfectly plain in his account of his portion of the journey (which Peary put great emphasis on as one of the major reasons he was able to reach the Pole by exceeding the performance of any other explorer’s attempt) by describing how they started to come apart quickly and regularly once the journey over the polar ice began.

Although there is little in Borup’s book that would directly cast doubt on Peary’s claim other than his descriptions of traveling conditions, which raise doubt on Peary’s ability to travel as fast as he said he did, correspondence in Peary’s papers shows that he had his lawyer, Charles Nichols, carefully go over Borup’s manuscript to make sure it would not add anything to the numerous questions being expressed in the press in reaction to conflicts and contradictions between Peary’s serialized narrative, as it had appeared in Hampton’s Magazine, and The North Pole.

By the breezy narrative contained in A Tenderfoot with Peary, Borup became the darling of the expedition. He was given a job at the American Museum of Natural History, became the protege of Edmund Otis Hovey, the Museum’s geological curator and editor of its journal, Natural History. Hovey favored him over MacMillan, to lead an expedition partially sponsored by the Museum to visit and map Crocker Land, which Peary claimed to have discovered at a distance while standing on the heights of Axel Heiberg Island in 1906. Borup was even in the process of courting Peary’s teenage daughter in 1912 when he drowned in a boating accident on Long Island Sound, postponing the start of the Crocker Land Expedition until 1913.

Borup’s book also exists in a “souvenir edition” prepared by Stokes for the 11th annual dinner of the American Bookseller’s Association held at the hotel Astor on May 11, 1911.

This is the second in an occasional series that will examine the published literature in book form relevant to the details of the Polar Controversy. These books will be discussed in the order they were published.

It took less than a year before the first book appeared doubting Peary’s claim with the questioning title, Did Peary Reach the Pole? It was published in England by W. Henry Lewin, who styled himself merely as “An Englishman in the Street,” but who was something of a professional skeptic on a number of topics in all of his privately published later writings.

Using Peary’s own narrative in The North Pole, and comparing it with those published by other explorers on similar journeys, particularly Nansen’s Farthest North, Lewin was the first to identify the major questionable features of Peary’s claim:

• The implausible enormous distances Peary said he covered during the last three “marches” toward the Pole after leaving Bob Bartlett.

• The incredible difference between the time he took to return to his ship from the Pole and the time it took Bartlett to do the same thing. Although Bartlett had a 266 mile head start on him, Peary would have beaten him back had he not paused to rest upon reaching land again.

• The impossible difference in Peary’s daily speeds when compared to other explorers’ on their attempts to reach the Pole via dog sledge.

• Peary’s lack of observations adequate to keep the straight line course to the Pole he claimed, especially the absence of any observations for longitude at any point along the journey, or any for compass correction.

• Peary’s claim that despite the record of all other polar journeys, including his own previous attempts, that there was no lateral movement of the ice for large portions of his entire journey.

• Peary’s failure to account for the added distance needed to cover detours to avoid leads and hummocks, which when added to the distance actually traveled, even by Lewin’s very modest estimates, made Peary’s timetable even more improbable.

Nevertheless, although Lewin’s answer to the title of his book was a resounding “NO,” he declined to say that Peary’s polar claim was a fraud because Peary was a “man physically and mentally of a high type.”

“No such charge as attempting to bluff mankind can possibly be made against a man of Commander Peary’s type. The original high intellectual calibre of the man, added to the greatness of a record developed and enlarged by twenty-five years’ experience in the Polar solitudes must be proof-positive against any such possibility. . . .No man who has been brought face to face in the soul’s communion with Nature in its wildest form over such a period, could be knowingly guilty of such an atrocity.”

Instead he attributed Peary’s failure to inadequate observations and the difficulties involved in determining positions with a sextant when the sun was at so low an elevation as Peary encountered in early April 1909.

In any case, in his introduction he stated that his motivation in writing the book was not to disparage Peary, but to suggest that the monumental doubts his narrative raised also raised the possibility that an English expedition could still capture the Pole for the British Empire’s own glory. At its conclusion, He excused the award of a special gold medal to Peary by the Royal Geographical Society as possibly due to “certain diplomatic considerations,” rather than the strength of his “proofs.” Whether Lewin was aware at the time he was writing that the inscription on the medal said that it was being awarded for “Arctic Explorations 1886-1909” rather than for discovering the North Pole, is not known.

Whether or not he actually felt Peary was guiltless in 1911, twenty-five years later Lewin would write another book on the same subject, and in the interim had found cause to eat every word of this earlier evaluation of Peary’s character.

This is the first in an occasional series that will examine the published literature in book form relevant to the details of the Polar Controversy. These books will be discussed in the order they were published. The first is Peary’s personal narrative of his alleged “discovery of the North Pole,” a claim now almost entirely discounted as a fraud.

The book Peary published should have been the prime document stating his case and resolving all questions surrounding his claims, yet, The North Pole has been instead the primary document used to argue against his alleged discovery. How could it be that the book that claims to be the record of Peary’s ultimate success in the goal of a lifetime has come to be the sourcebook of those who brand it a fraud? Beyond the real questionable aspects of Peary’s claimed feat, the answer lies in the strange history of this book, which indicates that Peary had relatively little to do with the finished narrative that appears on its pages. In fact, Peary actually “wrote” none of it.

The book is largely derived from the series of articles that appeared in the pages of Hampton’s Magazine in 1910 as “Peary’s Own Story,” whose actual author was the poet, Elsa Barker. Barker was not the first choice to write Peary’s narrative, however. The man chosen to do the job of ghostwriting the articles was originally Harris Merton Lyon. His trial article was rejected, however, because after talking to Peary he could not fathom why anyone would want to reach the North Pole and it showed in the copy he provided Hampton’s. As a result, Ben Hampton, the magazine’s publisher, called in Barker, who had shown her enthusiasm for the story and who had written a preliminary article introducing the series to the magazine’s readers.

Barker left a detailed account of how she assembled material needed for the series, which has already been reproduced in this blog in the post dated May 25, 2025. Because it was assembled from interviews with not only Peary himself, but also with several of his associates, including Captain Robert E. Bartlett, and from many details plagiarized from the voluminous diary kept by the expedition’s physician, John W. Goodsell, and even from certain passages that had previously appeared in Peary’s 1907 book, Nearest the Pole, it necessarily lacked the singular perspective it would have had had Peary written it himself from his own point of view. Barker’s procedure produced a narrative that was sometimes contradictory even as to material facts. These flaws and the doubtful aspects of Peary’s speed after leaving behind his last navigation-trained witness, as well as discrepancies with accounts subsequently published by Matt Henson and other members of his expedition, were later exploited by those seeking to show the narrative of events his book contained to be unreliable. Despite her urgent requests, Peary seemed reluctant even when asked by Barker to provide specific material that she needed to fill out crucial parts of Peary’s narrative, especially in regard to the days he allegedly spent at the North Pole.

Even though inconsistencies were pointed out in the press as the Hampton’s series progressed, and many who read them found the narrative they contained unconvincing as “proof” of Peary’s discovery, most of these were not resolved in Peary’s subsequent book published by Frederick A. Stokes. The man chosen to ghostwrite the book version was a former reporter for the New York Sun named A.E. Thomas. Thomas was even more frustrated in his dealings with Peary over the material he sought, and so was forced to rely heavily on the content of the Hampton’s articles Barker had written. Thomas’s later claim that he wrote 80% of the book can be easily discounted because at least that much is drawn materially from Barker’s articles, most of it taken from them verbatim. Thomas, too, like Barker, was forced to rely on interviews with Bartlett, Goodsell and Donald MacMillan because Peary was away on a tour of Europe at the time, and when he returned seemed more interested in trying to get a bill through Congress that would retire him as a rear admiral than in providing copy. Thomas later excused himself for the result, saying that because Peary was “a damned dull human being,” incapable of providing exciting material, The North Pole was “a damned dull book.”

When published in September 1910, the book received largely good reviews, but Peary had antagonized so many by his boorish behavior during the late dispute with Dr. Frederick A. Cook, that it sold slowly and was not, in the end, a financial success. His German publisher was so dissatisfied with his sales that he brought suit against Peary to recover his purchase price for the rights, saying it didn’t sell because there was nothing in the book that could prove Peary actually reached the North Pole.

The book was reprinted once in 1910, but never again by Stokes. The book is rather common, but its plain dust jacket is very scarce.

Stokes also brought out a limited, signed edition of 500 copies, partially leather bound, dubbed the “Thomas H. Hubbard Edition,” after the President of the Peary Arctic Club.

There were two editions in England as well, the ordinary edition, which could be had in a slipcase, and another limited edition of 500 put out in white vellum binding, both showing a facsimile of the gold medal presented Peary by the Royal Geographical Society in 1910. The limited edition was signed not only by Peary but by Robert Bartlett as well, who, as a Newfoundlander, was a British subject.

The book was translated in to several languages, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Flemish, and Czech among them.

For a more detailed account of how the book was written, see the new introduction to the Cooper Square Press facsimile edition, 2001.

After his conviction for using the US Mails to defraud in 1923, Dr. Cook spent 16 months in the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth, TX pending his appeal. There he came in contact with John Western, an Australian who was being confined there by immigration authorities until he could be deported. It so happened that Western was an expert in fancy needlework, and Cook asked him to teach him how to do embroidery.

When his ex-wife visited him, as she did almost daily, Cook asked for her to bring him multi-colored thread. Cook turned out many pieces of embroidery during his confinement to pass the time, mostly tablecloths and table runners. And he continued his embroidery work after he arrived at Leavenworth penitentiary to start serving his 14-year sentence.

A few of his works of embroidery were among objects donated by his granddaughter’s will to the Sullivan County Historical Society in Hurleyville, NY., which maintains a room devoted to Dr. Cook. They can be seen in the following snapshots:

Cook signed his pieces with a small “FAC” monogram, seen here at the bottom of the central panel.

Generally, Cook did not accept visitors while in prison, but on January 20, 1926, he made an exception when Roald Amundsen, who was on a fundraising trip for his coming attempt to fly across the entire polar basin in a dirigible, stopped off to see him. Amundsen had known Cook from when they were both members of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897-1899, when Amundsen had been Second Mate and Cook the expedition’s surgeon. As a result of those common experiences, Amundsen felt he owed his life to Cook and felt a moral obligation to visit him while in the Midwest.

After their 45 minute reunion, Amundsen was quoted as saying, “I have read Dr. Cook’s story and I have read Peary’s. In Peary’s story I have not found anything of consequence not covered already by Dr. Cook.” This was widely interpreted as his saying Peary had no more proof that he reached the North Pole than Cook did. As a result, Amundsen was roundly blasted in the press, his lecture before the National Geographic Society was canceled, and he prepared to return to Europe.

When he reached New York before his departure, he found a small package addressed to him in his hotel room. When he opened it and saw its contents, his voice broke with emotion as he held up a beautifully embroidered linen table runner 15 inches wide and four feet long. “Well, and whom do you think this if from?” He asked the reporter who had accompanied him there. “The man I once thought was going go discover both the North and South Pole. Now, poor fellow, he is in Leavenworth Prison. And he did every stitch of it with his own hands. It is pathetic. Yes, it is from Dr. Cook, I am more touched by this gift than by almost anything that has happened to me in a long time.”

Today, Dr. Cook’s table runner is on display in Amundsen’s house, Uranienborg, in Oppegård, Norway. If you go to the virtual tour on its website, it is item #3 in the 3-D model of the Blue Room. You can see it at this web address: https://amundsen.mia.no/en/rooms/blue-room/

The snapshots are courtesy of Carol Smith. These items are currently not on display.

Frederick Albert Cook was born on this day 160 years ago in the hamlet of Hortonville in Sullivan County, NY.  

“History will give Dr. Cook a place–this may be high, it may be low, but a place is assured”

– from the unpublished memoirs of Frederick A. Cook