Thunderstruck - Erik Larson [57]
Anyone reading the letter closely, however, would have seen that it presented anything but an objective, verifiable account of the experiments and instead derived its credibility entirely from the fact that its author was the great Ambrose Fleming. In effect, Fleming once again was asking the audience to trust him.
This letter—its glowful praise, its failure to note that Fleming was a paid employee—would prove costly. Not immediately, however. For now it merely kindled the curiosity, and professional skepticism, of Nevil Maskelyne, the magician.
MARCONI SHUTTLED BETWEEN the Poldhu Hotel at Land’s End and the Haven Hotel at Poole, though he spent most of his time at the latter. No railway ran directly from Poldhu to Poole, so Marconi had to travel first to London then catch another train south. This left him a lot of time for thinking and not a lot for his American beauty, Josephine Holman.
The engagement was still secret, and with nearly all Marconi’s time consumed by travel and work, Holman must at times have wondered whether it was real or an artifact of imagination.
They wrote letters and sent telegrams. Marconi knew the news of their engagement would upset his mother, but he seemed not to realize that the longer he kept the engagement a secret, the more likely she was to feel hurt at his not sharing so important a part of his life. Annie Jameson had been his earliest and strongest ally, and she believed herself still to be his protector even in small things. Though he by now had turned twenty-six and was wealthy and famous the world over, she doted on him as if he were still a boy sequestered in his attic laboratory. She stayed often at the Haven Hotel. In one letter to him, written from there, she wrote, “After you left this morning I found you had not taken your rug with you…. I sent it to you at 3 o’clock today and hope you will get it all right by tomorrow.” She urged him to keep “plenty of blankets” on his bed. “I have put all your things as tidy as possible in your room, and the key to your wardrobe I have put in one of the little drawers of your looking glass on the dressing table, but indeed there is little use in locking the wardrobe for all the keys are the same.”
Later, from Bologna, she wrote, “I am thinking if it has got warmer at the Haven Hotel you will want your lighter flannels. Mrs. Woodward has the keys of your boxes. Your flannels are in the box with the two trays. Summer sleeping suits on the first tray. Summer vests under the two trays. Summer suit, jacket, waistcoat and trousers in the wardrobe (side of window).”
In London Ambrose Fleming awoke to the fact that he had taken on something far more involved and consuming than he had expected when he agreed to become scientific adviser. In a letter to Flood Page he complained that the company was making “extreme demands on my time” and cited by way of example a long letter from engineer Richard Vyvyan “which will take several hours to answer.” His pay, he complained, was “in no way adequate.”
He wrote, “I am willing to do this work on a scale of payment proportional to the responsibility. You are engaged in a gigantic experiment at Cornwell which if successful would revolutionize ocean telegraphy.”
For him to continue, he wrote, his pay would have to be increased to £500 a year—more than $50,000 today. Further, he needed a promise of additional reward “if my work and inventions are of material assistance in getting across the Atlantic.”
One week later, on December 1, 1900, Flood Page wrote back to notify Fleming that