Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (25 page)

Nikola Tesla is one of the great geniuses and most remarkable men who have ever had anything to do with electricity…It is as much of an honor to propose him for membership as his membership would be an addition to the club.

L
ETTER TO THE
P
LAYERS
’ C
LUB BY
S
TANFORD
W
HITE
¹

C
ommuting to New Jersey was only a temporary solution, and within a few weeks, Tesla returned to New York, where he secured a laboratory just below Greenwich Village, near Chinatown, at 46 and 48 Houston Street. Nervous and perpetually on the brink of exhaustion, Tesla began to experiment with the healing properties of his oscillators as reports began to filter in from around the country about its remarkable curative properties. These high-frequency “vitality boosters” would generate a “universal healing agent” that, when applied, would enable the body to “throw off all diseases,” said Dr. F. Finch Strong. “Effects obtained [included]…increase of strength, appetite and weight, induction of natural sleep, and elimination.”
²
Other doctors reported the ability to cure tuberculosis.

“Tesla believes that electricity is the greatest of all doctors and says that when his laboratory was burned, nothing but regular daily applications of electricity kept him from sinking into a state of melancholia.”
³
“My high frequencies,” he would say, “produce an anti-germicidal action.” Thus, as part of his routine for a day at the lab, the inventor would disrobe, step upon his apparatus, and turn on the juice. A prickly corona would envelop his body and restore it to a more pristine condition.

Electricity had become the new panacea; it could cure the sick, eradicate the criminals, and even eliminate recalcitrant undergrowth that “interfere[d] with the running of trains…Weeding has always been
considered very hard work, but with the aid of the electrical weeder, a man has only to touch a button and the weeds vanish.”
⁴

In May 1895, Tesla and the Johnsons attended the dedication ceremony for the new arch, situated as the gateway, looking south, to Greenwich Village at Washington Square Park and looking north to the beginning of Fifth Avenue. Designed by Stanford White, “the dashing man with the red moustache,” the lofty edifice stood taller and wider than any comparable one erected by the mighty ancient Romans or Greeks. Johnson had recited one of his poems in honor of the original wooden one which had been built in 1889.

This was but one more connection between Tesla and the celebrated Stanford White, whose many other monuments and buildings were rapidly reshaping the city into a regal testament to the great and vibrant gay era. Tesla would often run into White at the offices of the
Century,
where the artist would be commissioned to illustrate their covers, and at meetings involving the Niagara Falls enterprise at Delmonico’s, the Waldorf, and the theater or the Madison Square Garden roof restaurant. Having designed the Players’ Club in Manhattan in 1887, the Tennis Club in Newport, churches, and numerous mansions, White was also an interior decorator. It was said that he knew the color of the boudoir of every woman of note in the city. A trendsetter and sensualist, White became one of the leading choreographers of the ambience of the percolating metropolis. Good friends with the inventor, White often talked with Tesla about their shared vision of the future.

Tesla had met White in 1891 when the piano virtuoso Ignace Paderewski played the Garden for five breathtaking performances. Edward Dean Adams was in the midst of courting both men, Tesla for his inventions and White for his architectural prowess, and he wanted to get the two together to discuss the best way to place Westinghouse’s behemoth electric generators in the upcoming powerhouse.

“My dear Mr. Adams,” White wrote, “I duly received the information of the Cataract Construction Company and will pitch in [as soon as possible]…With McKim in Chicago and Mead in Canada I am here alone in a sort of maelstrom of work…If it were not for the Roof Garden and the ballet girls to cheer me up, I should have been dead long ago.”
⁵
By the end of the year, White had sent Adams designs for the proposed buildings. Adams reciprocated by sending White a magnificent text on precious stones and a “stunning gift” (most likely a ruby or emerald).
⁶

In 1893, Tesla and White crossed paths again, as both were cardinal participants in the Chicago World’s Fair. The following year, White, then forty, urged the inventor to become a member of the Players’ Club. “Will you not let me put you up for membership?” he inquired. “It is an
inexpensive club and the character of men I think you would like, and I know it would give me the greatest pleasure to meet you there now and then.”
⁷
Tesla requested that Johnson be included for membership, and White agreed.

In the heart of winter, in early 1895, White invited Tesla “for a little supper [for] the artist, Ned Abbey, in my room in the Tower,” and Tesla “sharpened his appetite for the occasion.”
⁸
There, in White’s sanctuary, where one’s mind could spin a thousand tales, the duo gazed out over the entire city. This moment symbolized the pinnacle of social achievement, for only the elite could enter White’s chamber and only the imagination of the outsiders could discern what might transpire. A month later, the inventor reciprocated by asking White, his wife, Bessie, and their son, Lawrence, to his den.

March 2, 1895

My dear Tesla,

I cannot thank you too much for your kindness in showing all your wonderful experiments the other day. They made a deep impression on me, as they did everyone, and I am going to see them again someday, if you will let me.

Sincerely yours,
Stanford White
⁹

A fortnight later, the laboratory was in cinders, but for the electronic savant, it was almost as if he were simply shifting gears. In the spring he received a risqué invitation to White’s outrageous “Girl-in-the-Pie Banquet.” As the story goes, and there are a number of versions, a dozen scantily clad maidens served a twenty-course meal at the notorious photography studio of Jimmy Breese at 5 West Sixteenth Street, the dinners having been shipped from Sherry’s. Attending the clandestine affair were other friends of White’s, including artists August Saint-Gaudens and Robert Reid, and the inventor Peter Cooper Hewitt. At the culmination of the feast, with the band playing, the young ladies returned in even more provocative outfits, singing and wheeling out a pie the size of a small automobile. To the tune of “Four and Twenty Blackbirds,” the crust burst open with the flutter of a flock of canaries, and out popped a topless young woman. Mum was the word until sketchy details were published in the
World.
¹⁰

Tesla became privy to the architect’s salacious activities and may have partaken himself in discreet entanglements, although it is just as likely that his phobia for germs or monastic inclinations would have inhibited him. White admired Tesla, as each, in his own way, was a sculptor of the New Age. Meeting occasionally for a round of pool at the Players’ Club or at a boxing match, perhaps with Twain, at the Garden, Tesla also accompanied
White for sailing jaunts out at Southhampton with a dozen members of the clique.

On one occasion, White asked Tesla to join him for an outing with Mr. William Astor Chamber, an African explorer. As usual, Tesla was busy at work, but after some tactful prodding, he relented. “I am so delighted that you have decided to tear yourself away from your laboratory,” White said. “I would sooner have you on board than the Emperor of Germany or the Queen of England.”
¹¹

The year 1895 was a peculiar one. The U.S. government was nearing bankruptcy. In the Panic of 1893 bondholders had wished to secure gold instead of paper money, and the mint had made good by depleting its reserves. By January 1895 the United States was within days of being unable to meet its debts. Quietly, President Cleveland had asked August Belmont, a wealthy Jewish businessman (and backer of the Westinghouse Company), to meet with the European Rothschilds to secure replacement gold reserves. The reality of the day, however, included an unfortunate worldwide wave of anti-Semitism. Only the year before, in a famous trial in France, the Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus had been convicted on a “trumped up charge of treason.” The Rothschilds were Jewish. How would it look to have Jewish financiers bail out an entire nation? It was for this reason, according to Morgan biographer George Wheeler, that J. Pierpont Morgan, an upstanding Episcopalian, was brought into the picture.
¹²
Morgan, with Belmont’s help, was able to secure $60 million in foreign gold reserves, and the country was saved from insolvency. The incident also marked the anointment of Morgan as King of Wall Street.

In October, a twenty-two-year-old, well-mannered stenographer named George Scherff walked into Tesla’s laboratory and applied for a job.
¹³
The inventor reviewed the secretary’s credentials and hired him. Although Scherff knew nothing about electrical engineering, Tesla was impressed with his demeanor and intelligence, and within a matter of days the youth was busy at work transcribing papers and taking over the general management of the office.

In the same month, Tesla forwarded a book on Buddhism to Luka, whom he hadn’t seen since the end of the summer. Johnson had traveled with his wife to Italy to receive a decoration from King Humbert for his work on securing a law for international copyright and during this period, Tesla had taken some time to attend lectures in Brooklyn on Buddhism by Swami Vivekananda.
¹⁴
. “My dear Friend and faithful stranger,” Johnson wrote back, “I am touched by your remembrance of me in sending the book…[I’ll] drop into your laboratory some day for old acquaintance’s sake.”
¹⁵

“Glad to know that you are again in town and established in the beautiful Johnson Mansion,” Tesla wrote Mrs. Filipov. “I cannot say as much for my laboratory which is [still in need of] furnishing.”
¹⁶

Tesla reported the local gossip, such as how Stanford had difficulty deciding between which of two beautiful sisters to spend an evening with; the gist of swami Vivekananda’s lectures on the external nature of God and the transmigration of souls, and of his progress in netting more millionaires. He was meeting with railroad magnate and U.S. senator Chauncey DePew; J. Beavor Webb, a fleet captain, shipbuilder, and Morgan man; Darius Ogden Mills, a stock market manipulator and principal in GE; and John Jacob Astor.

The wealthiest of the crew, except for Astor, was undoubtedly Mills, who had made his fortune in San Francisco during the California gold rush. Owner of the
New York Tribune,
and a palace on Fifth Avenue “opposite St. Patrick’s Cathedral…of which a Shah of Persia might have been proud,”
¹⁷
Mills had been the second private citizen in history, after J. Pierpont Morgan, to have his abode illuminated by electricity. As Herbert Satterlee tells the story, Mills was so impressed with the Edison invention that he insisted on becoming a partner in the company. “Only if for every share of Edison stock you purchase for yourself, you purchase one for me,” Morgan replied, and Mills agreed.
¹⁸
Tesla had much to tell his European traveling friends.

At the end of the year, Tesla began to apply more pressure on Edward Dean Adams to influence John Jacob Astor. The Colonel, as he was now called, was funding, of all people, mountebank John Worrell Keely. This was a situation that had to be changed. Keely’s motor hadn’t motored in twenty years; Tesla’s had turned the world. Martin wrote the inventor of his astonishment at Astor’s gullibility;
¹⁹
Tesla pressed Astor for a commitment.

Attempting, perhaps, to capitalize on the Christmas spirit, Tesla met with Astor and his nautical counselor, J. Beavor Webb, on December 19 and pitched his cause. “I am impressed with your endeavor, Mr. Tesla,” Astor commented, “although, as I understand it, your latest inventions are yet to reach the point of being marketed. Nevertheless, I’ll speak to Mr. Adams. By all means, let’s keep the door open.”

Tesla telephoned Adams that afternoon and wrote Astor the following day:

My dear Mr. Astor,

[Adams] would be only too glad to have you with us. We agreed that we would jointly provide from 500-1000 shares of the Parent Company for yourself and Mr. Webb at the price of $95 a share of a par value of $100 each.

The Parent Company owns my patents…[and rights in foreign and domestic markets, which I believe] will profoundly affect the present state of the mechanical and electrical arts, and
will create a greater revolution in their applications than my ideas on the transmission of power which are at present, generally adopted.
²⁰

Christmas was drawing near, and with it the renewal of the Serb’s link to his adopted American family. The invitation from the Johnsons was wholeheartedly welcomed. “My dear Luka,” Tesla wrote, “I am, as you know, very fond of millionaires, but the inducements you offer are so great that I shall set [them] aside…to partake in the splendid lunch which Mme. Filipov will [prepare]…[For] Christmas, I want to be at home—327 Lexington Avenue—with my friends, my dear friends—the Johnsons. If you will prepare a dinner for a half dozen and invite nobody, it will suit me…We shall talk of bless[ed] peace and be merry until then.”
²¹

Tesla did his best to overlook the erotic tension emanating from Katharine as she directed the servants, with Agnes, to set the dinner table and Tesla talked shop with Robert and his son, Owen. Katharine could never be part of the bond that existed between Tesla and Robert. Her heart ached for what it could not have and yet, simultaneously, was filled with what it now possessed.

With Robert out of the room, Katharine was too intense. She claimed a telepathic link to the wizard, her breast palpitated when he was near, hormones gushed. On one occasion she edged them to the line. He had no choice but to withdraw.