The Last Days of Night(106)

“If you would consider returning to New York,” he continued, “I have a humble request: Don’t marry Henry Jayne. Marry me instead.”

He took a step closer. “Do you know that in our adventures we came to know three men who in their own ways each changed the world? And do you know what I can’t stop thinking about? Why did they do it? What made them fight, strive, connive so hard for so long?”

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you want to talk about right now?”

“Just hear me out,” pleaded Paul. “What did they love? The three of them? Edison loved the audience. For him, it was the performance. It was the crowd. He remains the most famous inventor in the world. I’ll bet he’ll stay that way for generations. He wanted the applause. That’s what he was fighting for. Now, Westinghouse…Westinghouse was different. He loved the products themselves. And he made them better than anyone. He is the ultimate craftsman, isn’t he? He didn’t want to sell the most light bulbs. He wanted to make the best light bulbs. If they were too expensive, if they were too late into production, he didn’t care. They had to be the best. The most useful, the most current technology. And he did, didn’t he? It’s his products that won out. He wanted to perfect the light bulb and he did it. Then there’s Tesla. He was the third leg in this tripod. He didn’t care a bit about Edison’s public, or Westinghouse’s products. No, Tesla cared only for the ideas themselves. Their promulgation did not matter. Tesla was his own audience, and his ideas were his product, for consumption by himself alone. He had the idea, then he was done. Once he knew he’d solved a problem, he moved on. He knew that he’d made A/C work; he knew that he’d made the bulbs work. Actually building the things was irrelevant. That was someone else’s problem.

“And look: They all got what they wanted. Because they wanted such different things. I’ve been trying so hard, all this time, to understand them, and what I understand now is that I never will. Because I’m not like them.”

“You wanted to win,” said Agnes.

“Yes. And I did. It was the same as losing. Edison gets the audience. Westinghouse gets the excellence. Tesla gets the ideas. But all I really want is you.”

She smiled. In the years to come, Paul would see many of these smiles. He would come to know well their shapes, their shadings, their infinite variety of splendors. And yet of all the million smiles that she would show him, it would be this particular one, grinned on that particular afternoon, that would forever be his favorite.

“You’re getting better at the speeches,” she said.





The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.

—KARL POPPER



PAUL MARRIED AGNES Huntington in a ceremony at St. Thomas Church. They moved to an apartment on Fifty-eighth Street, one block from Central Park. Agnes soon stopped singing professionally, but never stopped singing at home. Sometimes Paul imagined that her voice had seeped so deeply into the apartment’s bright wood that the walls would reverberate ever on with the sound of her arias. Their daughter, Vera, was born in 1895. She looked the spitting image of her mother. Fannie Huntington lived close by.

Together, Paul and Agnes participated in the founding of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Paul became one of its officers. Paul served as corporate counsel for the Metropolitan Opera, and then the chairman of its board. In time, he would be a director of the Philharmonic, a trustee of the Juilliard School of Music, the chairman of the board of Fisk University, the president of the Italy America Society, and an official of the India Society of America. Paul and Agnes became among the greatest of Manhattan’s philanthropists.

And yet the name of Nikola Tesla would always haunt their marriage. Paul’s sins against the man would be recalled whenever they struggled both to do well and to do good, and whenever they fought behind closed doors.

In the years that followed, the Westinghouse Electric Company’s system became the national standard for generating and harnessing electrical power. By way of its licensing arrangement with the newly christened General Electric, Westinghouse provided the power to light the country from coast to coast using alternating current. At the same time, GE itself switched standards and sold many times more bulbs. Under Charles Coffin its profitability tripled. Both companies grew to be among the largest in the world.

Paul remained the lead counsel for the Westinghouse Electric Company for a while, until he was able to transition the company into hiring an in-house counsel. Paul chose the young man himself and remained on retainer as a consultant. It was time for him to move on.

Paul and Westinghouse remained cordial business associates, if not close ones. Paul never asked him about the fire. There was nothing Paul could do about it, and nothing, even if Westinghouse did admit it, that he could prove. No one would benefit from an argument. Their relationship cooled, but never froze. Westinghouse was not the father that Paul wanted. He had his own. Erastus Cravath even visited New York every now and again to see his granddaughter.

To be sure, those years saw their share of intrigue. J. P. Morgan attempted a hostile takeover of Westinghouse, failed, and then tried it again. The effective monopoly created by the licensing partnership didn’t suit his balance sheets quite so well as would a literal one. But Westinghouse, with Paul at his side, saw these attacks coming. Morgan was kept at bay, and the Westinghouse Electric Company remained free of outside ownership. Paul became known for his cunning, not merely on the lawyerly blocks of Broadway, but on Wall Street as well.