The last days of night, p.34
The Last Days of Night, page 34
Paul watched the three inventors fall into silence as they stared out at the churning falls.
The current war already felt like an exotic and arcane quarrel. Like a strange dream whose plot had faded in the morning light. Their machinations would soon be forgotten. But the world it had led to, the one in which he now lived, was permanent.
Who had invented the light bulb? That was the question that had started the whole story off.
It was all of them. Only together could they have birthed the system that was now the bone and sinew of these United States. No one man could have done it. In order to produce such a wonder, Paul realized, the world required men like each of them. Visionaries like Tesla. Craftsmen like Westinghouse. Salesmen like Edison.
And what of Paul? Perhaps the world needed men like him too. Mere mortals to clean up the messes of giants. Clever men to witness and record the affairs of brilliant ones. Perhaps if Tesla had invented the light bulb, and Westinghouse had too, and so had Edison, well then, Paul had a claim to it himself. Maybe Paul was more of an inventor than he’d thought.
He smiled very briefly at the notion.
The men said their goodbyes. One by one, the inventors drained their glasses as they drifted back from the misty precipice.
Paul was the last of them to leave. He watched as the sun began to set across the water. The river glowed the day’s last rainbow of golden yellow and shimmering orange. He turned away, descending the stairwell into the darkening shadow of a country that was just becoming America.
AS A WORK of historical fiction, this novel is intended as a dramatization of history, not a recording of it. Nothing you’ve read here should be understood as verifiable fact. However, the bulk of the events depicted in this book did happen and every major character did exist. Much of the dialogue comes either from the historical personages’ own mouths or from the tips of their prodigious pens. Yet many of these events have been reordered and characters appear in places they may not have. I’ve frequently invented situations that very well could have happened but were certainly not documented. This book is a Gordian knot of verifiable truth, educated supposition, dramatic rendering, and total guesswork. What I’d like to do in this note is to help untangle it for you.
Additional material, including a chronology of actual events, can be found on my website: mrgrahammoore.com.
Almost all of the events that historians generally describe as forming the “current war” took place between 1888 and 1896. I have compressed the narrative into only two years, from 1888 to 1890. As you’ll see, even though most of the major scenes depicted did occur in one way or another, I’ve fudged their chronology. What was often simultaneous in real life becomes sequential in this book. I’ve frequently taken multiple events or multiple historical characters and amalgamated them. This is to help the reader’s tracking of the many story lines and to give narrative shape to the messily discrete events of history.
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, by Jill Jonnes, is for my money the most delightful nonfiction account of the current war. It contains brilliantly sketched portraits of Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla, as well as thoughtful insights into their rivalries and antipathies.
When I first discovered that a twenty-six-year-old attorney, only eighteen months out of law school, was at the center of the current war before going on to found one of America’s most preeminent law firms, I immediately wanted to learn everything I could about him. I was shocked to find that there is no proper biography of Paul Cravath. It was this absence of scholarly history that inspired me to write this book, and it was the paucity of material available that dictated it should be a novel.
The basic biographical information about Paul Cravath and his family contained in the novel is true. My descriptions of Paul and his life come from the few sources we have: The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors 1819–1948 (Robert Swaine, privately printed), a New Yorker profile of him from when he became chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera in 1932 (“Public Man,” The New Yorker, January 2, 1932), an entry in The National Cyclopædia of American Biography (Volume 11, 1902), his and Agnes’s wedding announcement (“Marriage of Agnes Huntington,” Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1892), the Oberlin student newspaper, and of course his court filings.
My depiction of Thomas Edison is largely based on The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World, by Randall Stross. It’s a wonderful and highly engaging biography of Edison, and it supplied a lot of Edison’s personality and biography in this book. Edison’s voice is drawn from his letters and journals, which are kept at Rutgers University. Edison wrote in his diary most every day of his life, and through it one gets a fascinating glimpse of his inner thoughts. The majority of the Edison Papers at Rutgers are online, as of this writing.
There is no definitive biography of George Westinghouse, but that’s a book that I would very much love to read one day.
All personal and biographical description of Nikola Tesla contained here is accurate. Margaret Cheney’s Tesla: Man Out of Time was an extremely helpful resource, as was Tesla’s own autobiography, My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla. It’s as singular a reading experience as you’d expect.
Many historical accounts of Nikola Tesla mention his impenetrable accent and the difficulties faced by those struggling to decipher his speech. In real life, however, his grammar was impeccable, if elaborate. It was only his thick accent that made him so hard for Americans to understand. This left me with a problem: How to convey Tesla’s accent on the page? I could transliterate his Serbian accent, but that seemed inelegant to read. (“Meeesterr Crahvahth…”)
But as I read through Tesla’s autobiography, a solution presented itself. Tesla wrote in long, winding, grammatically adventurous sentences. His English was fluent, but it was almost archaic, even for the 1880s. Every sentence reads as if it’s about to fall in on itself from the grammatical circumlocutions and unexpected word choices. What I’ve done here is to use his writing style as a model for his speaking style, while upending the grammar so he’s even harder to understand. This makes his sentences as confusing to read as they would be to hear.
When it comes to Agnes Huntington, the historical record is shockingly blank. All information that we have about her comes from an article about her career and marriage in The Illustrated American (December 3, 1892); her entry in The Dramatic Peerage from 1892; her entry in Woman’s Who’s Who of America (1914–1915); an interview she gave about her legal troubles with W. H. Foster (“Agnes Huntington’s Story,” The New York Times, December 14, 1886); her entry in Lippincott’s Magazine of Literature, Science and Education (Volume 49, 1892); a review of her performance in Paul Jones (“Paul Jones in New-York,” The New York Times, September 21, 1890); the 1870 U.S. Census of Kalamazoo; gossip reports of her engagement to Henry Jayne (Town Topics, November 3, 1892; “Did He Jilt ‘Paul Jones,’ ” The Washington Post, October 30, 1892; “Denied by Miss Huntington,” The New York Times, October 30, 1892).
From those sources, I can confidently assert the following: Agnes Huntington was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but never found renown (or even mention!) in society until her first appearance singing in London. She made a name for herself in Europe, accompanied always by her mother, who seemed oddly silent about their family background. As far as I can tell, even though Agnes and Fannie have the last name Huntington, they were not related to the famous Huntington family, either its California branch or its East Coast one. Agnes had some sort of murky legal squabble with the manager of the Boston Ideals. She had many gentleman admirers of very high status on both sides of the pond. She was engaged to Henry Jayne for a time, but he broke it off in 1892. She later married Paul Cravath, an up-and-coming New York lawyer who at that point in their lives would have been of considerably lower social status.
Everything else about Agnes’s story in this novel is imagined (the stolen dress, the borrowed name, etc.). The manner in which she meets Paul—hiring him as her attorney—is also imagined, though the case for which she hires him is real. (In reality her lawyer was named Abram Dittenhoefer.) In compressing the timeline of events, however, I’ve moved this legal case from 1886 to 1888. In real life it would have been resolved before Paul became Westinghouse’s attorney.
It is my belief—though I can’t prove it—that the historical Agnes Huntington was hiding something about her past. Something tells me her real story is even more fantastic than the one I’ve created for her in these pages.
Chapter 1: The opening scene of the burning workman is based on two real public immolations: one on May 11, 1888 (“A Wireman’s Recklessness,” The New York Times, May 12, 1888) and another on October 11, 1889 (“Met Death in the Wires,” The New York Times, October 12, 1889). Paul was likely not present for either of these, but as the first took place mere blocks from his office, placing him on the scene seemed reasonable enough.
Chapter 7: Reginald Fessenden did work for Edison before he went to work for Westinghouse, with a stop at Purdue in between, though the timeline has been simplified here. Fessenden was not actually Edison’s mole within the Westinghouse operation. The real mole was of lower status—a humble draftsman, arrested in 1893.
Chapters 15–16: Tesla did go to work for Westinghouse outside Pittsburgh in 1888, in exchange for a license on his alternating-current patents. The fundamental shift in strategy on Westinghouse’s side in going from a “house by house” electrical system to a “network” electrical system is discussed in Thomas P. Hughes’s fascinating Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930. However, in reality this shift was not as sudden as I’ve rendered it. Westinghouse had been interested in A/C technology for a few years before Tesla’s demonstration—which is real, though Westinghouse was not present for it. Westinghouse acquired a portfolio of A/C patents to develop as early as 1886; he just hadn’t gotten the technology to work yet.
Chapter 21: The crisis concerning royalty structures that confronted Westinghouse and his attorneys following Tesla’s sudden departure is real, though the timeline has been compressed and we don’t know whether the negotiating error was Paul’s.
Chapter 25: Both the mysterious fire in Tesla’s laboratory as well as Tesla’s ensuing mental breakdown and amnesia did occur. They just took place at different times, and in a different order, than the sequence presented here.
In 1892, Tesla’s long hours of work in his lab, on the concept of “wireless telephones,” sent him into a mental breakdown. He passed out and woke with no memories of his life at all, save scattered images of his infancy. He spent months in bed, struggling to regain his memories. It was some time before he was finally able to invent again.
This episode recalled other moments of mental illness in Tesla’s life. According to his autobiography, he experienced frequent hallucinations, both visual and auditory. He wrote: “[These hallucinations] usually occurred when I found myself in a dangerous or distressing situation, or when I was greatly exhilarated. In some instances I have seen all the air around me filled with tongues of living flame.” These visions, however, gave him insight into the machines he began to design. Thomas Hughes and others have explored whether Tesla might have been diagnosed with schizophrenia were he alive today; to my mind, it seems likely that he would have been. Tesla figuratively saw the world in ways that no one else did in part because Tesla literally saw the world in ways that no one else did.
Three years after this breakdown and recovery, on March 13, 1895, a fire engulfed Tesla’s lab. Tesla was not present when this fire broke out—he discovered it the next morning, at which point he became inconsolable as to the destruction of his machines.
Chapter 34: Paul’s big idea that he could construct an industrial system for the law—just as Westinghouse had for manufacturing and Edison had for inventions—is very much accurate. I think it’s fair to say that Paul Cravath invented the modern law firm, in exactly the same way that Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla invented the light bulb.
However, Paul is generally credited with inventing his “Cravath system” in the early 1900s. I’ve moved this idea to 1888–90, so that it might fit within this narrative. Whether Paul was in fact inspired by Edison and Westinghouse when he had this idea is impossible to say, but seeing as he did implement these ideas after his experience with those two inventors, it seemed to me likely that he was.
Chapter 36: Agnes’s interview with The New York Times is real, though I’ve combined two Times pieces—“Agnes Huntington’s Story,” December 14, 1886, and “Paul Jones in New-York,” September 21, 1890—into one.
Chapter 37: Harold Brown’s character and backstory are largely accurate and are discussed in Jill Jonnes’s Empires of Light as well as in Tom McNichol’s AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War, Mark Essig’s Edison and the Electric Chair, and Richard Moran’s Executioner’s Current.
The timeline of Brown’s campaign to promote the electric chair has been compressed—I depict the flurry of activity over the chair as happening in early 1889, but it actually happened at the end of 1887. The description of Brown’s horrifying animal electrocutions is accurate. Brown’s dialogue in these scenes is partially verbatim, though I’ve trimmed some parts and elaborated upon others for a more conversational tone. If anything, I have probably minimized the physical horrors he committed on these poor animals. In reality, he quickly progressed from dogs to horses to—seriously—an elephant.
Chapters 38–39: Someone really did break in to Harold Brown’s office in August 1889. After the burglary, stolen letters proving a connection between Edison and Brown were leaked to The New York Sun.
Did Paul do it? Most historians feel that someone on Westinghouse’s side did. If so, it stands to reason that Paul at least knew about it and kept the secret. So while this scene is invented, Paul’s moral culpability in the events thereof is certainly plausible.
Chapter 41: What Paul refers to as the “lie” on Edison’s patent application—that is, the discrepancy between the filament specified and the filament that his company would come to use—is accurate. However, I’ve simplified the progression of Edison’s filament experiments, and whether or not this constitutes deceit rather depends on one’s perspective about the nature of invention.
Edison’s undeniable fraud about when he’d gotten the bulb to work, on the other hand, has been depicted fairly. Edison’s habit of exaggerating to the loyal press—or in this case flat-out lying to them—was a recurring theme throughout his career.
Chapter 48: The courtroom scene of Paul arguing against A/C use in a New York State execution is a dramatization of a real case. The murder is real, but I’ve moved it from March 1889 to May 1889.
Westinghouse was in fact betrayed by Charles Coffin in the manner described, a treachery that took his team by surprise. One of Westinghouse’s lawyers really did go to Buffalo to try this case in court, though it was not Paul, and Harold Brown was not present.
Chapter 49: The description of the execution of William Kemmler is accurate and comes from contemporaneous newspaper accounts, such as “Far Worse Than Hanging,” The New York Times, August 7, 1890.
Also, while the electrocution itself is described accurately, neither Paul nor Harold Brown was in fact there to witness it.
Chapters 50–52: The financial crisis that followed the Baring Brothers collapse is real, though I’ve moved it from November 1890 to September 1889. The tactics by which Paul and Westinghouse attempted to weather the crisis have been rendered accurately. That Edison and Morgan then used their considerable Wall Street muscle to drive Westinghouse further toward bankruptcy is true, though it’s hard to know exactly what backroom deals were being made during the financial crisis.
Chapter 55: All descriptions of Fisk University are accurate, as are descriptions of the Cravath family’s involvement therein. (Based on The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors 1819–1948, by Robert Swaine, and Thy Loyal Children Make Their Way: Fisk University since 1866, by Reavis Mitchell, Jr.)
All description of the work on X-rays that Tesla conducts there is based on real work that Tesla did in 1895, though not, of course, at Fisk. The specific characters of the Fisk students are invented.
Chapters 56–57: The scene of Alexander Graham Bell is imagined, though Bell’s history and personality have been rendered as accurately as possible. All of the backstory on Bell depicted here is real—if simplified—and is based on Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention, by Charlotte Gray.
In this book’s final chapters, Paul Cravath hatches and implements a multifaceted plan to win the current war. This plan involves organizing a secret coup within Edison General Electric, backed by J. P. Morgan, to depose Edison as the company’s head and replace him with Charles Coffin. Then Nikola Tesla is talked into signing away his royalties on Westinghouse’s A/C systems. The current war is ended, with Westinghouse victorious and Edison tragically excommunicated from the company he founded.
All of these events occurred. However, the timeline of events has been compressed from a few years to just a few months, and Paul has been depicted as the mastermind behind the whole thing. In reality, we don’t know what his role was.
It is unlikely that Paul was present at the swindling of Tesla. Jonnes describes Westinghouse visiting Tesla alone and delivering the arguments Paul makes in this novel. Tesla seemed, in his own writing, proud of his decision to give away the royalty. He really did believe what Westinghouse told him.
Chapter 72: Paul, Westinghouse, and Tesla did attend an event at the Niagara Falls power plant on July 19, 1896. However, I’ve combined some details of this event with a subsequent one at which only Tesla was present, in January 1897.
Edison was not at either of these ceremonies. However, Tesla had taken refuge in Edison’s West Orange laboratory after the fire at his lab. The two men had become friends. And then on Tesla’s way to Niagara Falls he actually stopped by Westinghouse’s home outside Pittsburgh. Tesla spent many hours in the warm company of both Westinghouse and Edison in those days, some of which Paul, as counsel to Westinghouse, was present to witness.
