Marie Curie - Kathleen Krull [6]
A chemist in the beet-sugar factory helped out by giving Marie twenty basic chemistry lessons. She took time to learn all the scientific aspects of farming. She also taught local peasant children how to read and write in Polish—an activity for which, if caught, she would have been exiled to Siberia in the barren eastern reaches of Russia.
Romance “absolutely does not enter into my plans,” she wrote. But it did anyway. She fell in love with Casimir when he came home on break from the university. They set about making plans to marry. Suddenly any pretense of treating Marie as an equal was dropped: Casimir’s parents didn’t want him marrying someone who had to work in other people’s houses. Casimir couldn’t stand up to his parents. Even more painfully, for several years he kept Marie hanging, on the hope that perhaps they would marry someday.
Staying on as a governess was both a character-strengthening and hideously awkward experience: “In spite of everything I came through it all honestly with my head high.” But there was a price. Once again she fell into “deep melancholy.” Later Marie wrote a sort of memo to herself: “First principle: never to let one’s self be beaten down by persons or by events.”
Returning to Warsaw in 1889, she continued working as a governess and kept sending money to Bronia in Paris. But on Sundays and evenings she secretly attended the “Museum of Industry and Agriculture.” It was in actuality an illegal lab training Polish scientists, directed by one of her cousins.
At the “Museum,” Marie got to work in a real lab for the first time: “I tried out various experiments described in treatises on physics and chemistry, and the results were sometimes unexpected. At times I would be encouraged by a little unhoped-for success, at others I would be in the deepest despair because of accidents and failures resulting from my inexperience.” As slow and frustrating as lab work could be, it was also exhilarating, a rush.
Meanwhile, Bronia was reaching her own goal of becoming a doctor. In 1891, she was one of three women in a class of thousands to get her medical degree at the renowned Sorbonne, the central school at the University of Paris. She married another doctor, and with their thriving practice they could finally afford to bring Marie to Paris.
Now, after almost eight years, the escape hatch was lifted. So did Marie rush to buy a ticket and take the next train to France? No. At the last minute, Marie almost gave up her dream, her ambition. Casimir may have still been in the picture. Also her father needed her in Poland. Her vision slid out of focus: “I have lost hope of ever becoming anybody.” She was confused, torn: “On the other hand, my heart breaks when I think of ruining my abilities.”
Bronia set her younger sister straight. “You must make something of your life,” she insisted in a letter, convincing Marie to abide by their pact. Her father, though pained to see her go, didn’t hold her back.
In 1891, the twenty-four-year-old mostly self-taught scholar boarded the train to Paris. A thousand miles, three days, sitting all the while on a chair she had brought with her (fourth-class travel didn’t provide seats).
Honoring the pact was a turning point in her life.
Paris was . . . amazing, and so different from Poland. There was a glorious sense of freedom. Brand-new contraptions (automobiles) appeared on the streets. Lamps were lit with a new “magic fluid” (electricity). And such beauty—graceful, arching bridges over the Seine River that curled around the breath-taking Cathedral of Notre dame, monuments like the Panthéon (final resting place for French heroes), lavish theaters like the Opéra, and the newly built marvel called the Eiffel Tower, the tallest structure in the world. Multiple-story apartment buildings with lacy balconies of wrought iron overlooked wide avenues with fabulous bookshops, boutiques and cafés, people strolling about in the most fashionable clothes. Impressionists like Mary Cassatt and Claude Monet wowed the art world. daily newspapers mushroomed, fueling readers