The Last Days of Night(86)

“My lawyers summarized it for me in a letter,” said Bell. “In the past decade and a half, between Edison, Elisha Gray, and their friends at Western Union, I’ve been sued more than six hundred times over that silly telephone business.”

Paul and Agnes were dutifully impressed by the insanity of this figure.

“Have you ever tried one?” asked Bell.

“One what?” said Paul.

“A telephone, of course.”

“I haven’t yet.”

“I have,” said Agnes. “It was thrilling.”

“It wears off quickly,” said Bell. “Horrid things. Infernally loud. As soon as you wire one up, the damned bell never stops ringing. That’s why I won’t keep one around. All that fuss over something so annoying. Do you know I keep a place in Washington, just for the lawsuits? The Supreme Court sits in the fall, so the lawyers like me to spend a few months down there every year, to testify in person as Edison and his cronies rake my name through the mud.”

“Washington is lovely in the autumn,” suggested Agnes.

“I practically never leave the courthouse when I’m there. I make my yearly pilgrimage, raise my right hand, tell everyone the same boring story of that first telephone call. ‘Mr. Watson, come here.’ Like many future telephone conversations, it was rather less interesting than one might hope. I tell my story, and the court rules again and again that my patent is valid. Edison and his boys go back to New York to skulk around until they find another reason to sue me.”

“You’ve won every single one of those six hundred suits,” said Paul. “It’s remarkable.”

“It helps that I did actually invent the thing,” said Bell. “Not that that always makes a difference. But this is what inventing has become in America, thanks to you lawyers. Courtrooms are the new laboratories.”

“And you prefer the older kind.”

“If you’ve come here for advice, my friend, then you’re welcome to the very best advice I have: Get out while you still can.”

This was not what Paul had come to hear. Bell might be old and comfortable with retirement, but he was not.

“The Westinghouse Electric Company is soon to declare bankruptcy,” confessed Paul. “Edison is going to win the light-bulb suits. You can’t be saying that in my position you’d just as well let him.”

“No,” said Bell. “I’m saying that in your position, I’d have let Edison win a long time ago.”

Bell stood, stretching his legs with a stroll to the tall windows. He gazed out at the maple trees for a moment before he spoke again. “What is it that you think you’re fighting for?”

“We’re fighting for the future of this nation,” said Paul.

“You’re not,” said Bell softly. “You’re fighting for money. Or honor, which is worse.”

“What are you fighting for?” asked Agnes. “You haven’t let Edison steal your patent.”

Bell turned to Agnes.

“What do you think, Miss Huntington? Why do I go to Washington each fall?”

She seemed to find something in his eyes. Something silent and tender passed between them at a pitch that Paul could not hear.

Agnes smiled. “You do it for her. For Mabel.”

“And my girls,” said Bell. “But I control no company. I file for no other patents. Defending the royalty I have is enough trouble for one life. You want to make a fortune, Mr. Cravath? You already have. You’re George Westinghouse’s attorney, not even thirty. And you’ve a woman by your side, who let me add is as lovely and charming and smart as any man of your generation might hope to marry. It doesn’t seem so bad.”

Paul reddened in the face. He thought about correcting Bell, but to his surprise saw Agnes quickly motion him to be still.

“In my laboratory here,” said Bell, “I can work on any problem I choose. I can tinker all day on any device that strikes my fancy. I am free of the terrors of public opinion that so torture Thomas Edison. I am free of the dull pains of manufacturing that so weigh down George Westinghouse. That is winning. To sit in the dark and create things. That’s how we all started. Yet somehow we all forgot that when we allowed our days to become consumed by bickering over which of us first ran which current through which wire. Who cares?”

He turned to Paul as he continued. “The future you’re fighting for, it belongs to the moneymen. Not the inventors. Leave the former to their well-appointed hell. And tell the latter to join me here, where only genius matters, and only wonder thrives.”

Alexander Graham Bell was, in this speech, as decent a man as Paul had met in years.

“You are one of the smartest men in the world, Mr. Bell. Don’t tell me you think I’m going to stop.”

Bell gave a laugh. “No, Mr. Cravath,” he said. “I don’t.” He gazed again at the thick maple trees stretching for miles outside his window. He seemed lost in a series of thoughts that Paul was sure he would never understand.

“You really hate him, don’t you?” asked Bell.

“You don’t?”

“I pity him….You will not understand why I am doing this today, and you will not understand why I am doing this tomorrow. But when you do…well, just please remember that I warned you. I’m going to tell you what you want to know. I’m going to tell you how to defeat Thomas Edison. And I think you’re going to be successful. But please remember this. I’m not going to do it for you; I’m going to do it for him.”