Page 21 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 2 Winter 2014

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honors and attentions which were encouraging as noth-
ing else is.”
The “critical moment” was one of several in Bond’s life
in which his various enterprises were yielding no income.
He began that December letter: “I would give anything to
be able to talk with you as I am in wretched condition
and you are the only man I could or would talk with. You
have no idea on what thin ice I have been skating, and
probably do not realise what you have done for me spiri-
tually and financially.”
Drury responded quickly to Bond’s melancholy letter:
“I only wish that I could prove of more practical value to
you as a friend. . . . How I wish, Oh, how I wish that you
were here, sitting right over there on that big sofa, and
either smoking a cigar yourself or watching me smoke. . . .
We’d go deeply into things, as we always do, – for we are
instinctive friends with no false bunkers between the
communings of our spirits.”
A few years later, writing from New Mexico, Bond con-
soled Drury about the death of a student, then updated
the Rector about life in the West: “Amy and I have been
out two months camping. I have been working hard on
my writing and can see an improvement, but the tech-
nique is still unsatisfactory. However, we are able to live
very cheaply this way and shall stay hereabouts until
Marshall arrives.”
In 1928, Bond wrote that he had been offered a job as
a stockbroker in Santa Barbara, “and needing the extra
income badly I took it, and am cooped up in an office for
the first time since I was [a] boy.”
The letters continued infrequently, with Drury noting
in 1931 that “we are instinctive friends, – we don’t write
very often, but when we do, our letters betray a joint
sensibility across the continent.”
Meanwhile the stock market crash of 1929 had wiped
out most of the resources the budding stockbroker had
managed to acquire, and he had recommenced seeking
his fortune in the goldfields, this time in the Mojave
Desert of California.
“In spite of being a great landed aristocrat and man of
leisure,” the aging prospector wrote sardonically to Drury
in 1935, “I am not above trying to make a few dollars with
my pen, but am not sure that a pick will prove to be the
tool best adapted to my mentality.”
“The chances of fortune are slight,” he continued, “but
the reward is generally large when it comes. However, as
riches are nothing else than the possession of the necessi-
ties for environment I am rich in having a storm-proof
tent, sufficient blankets and food, and I like it. . . . with
sixty-eight only a month off and with a heart hitting on
three cylinders I often watch the sun go down and think
of Marshal Foch’s last speech at the grave of the Un-
known Soldier in Paris. It contained but three words:
Regardez le crepuscule [Behold the twilight]. I think it
fine – and sufficient.”
Sam Drury visited his friend in California once more,
and Bond apologized in a later letter for not being strong
enough to accompany him to the airport: “My heart attacks
have almost always followed undue effort after a sleep-
less night.”
But still, after a visit the following year by his son Dick
and two granddaughters, “I must,” he wrote Drury, “return
to the desert and hunt for gold….Though I enjoy the out-
door life I often feel that I am making a great effort for
something I attach no value to. . . . If I had brains like you
I’d dig gold out of them and derive real satisfaction.”
“Marshall Bond never found the answer to a miner’s
prayer,” writes Marshall Jr. in his book’s epilogue. From
working the Mojave with his father, he knew firsthand
the struggle of trying to dig a living out of the earth, and
that hard work isn’t always enough, when riches some-
times come to those just turning up the first shovelful.
His father retired from mining in 1940 and died of
cancer the following year.
“My early experience with cattle when I rode on the
round-up on the plains of Colorado in the days of the
open range was probably the most thrilling and interest-
ing of my life,” he had written on his 68th birthday. “The
rest of what I value most are shooting, fishing, camping,
and people. . . . Good fortune, a restless nature, love of
adventure, and accident have given me a more interest-
ing life than that which falls to most men.”