A plump, broadfaced hausfrau sat quietly in the drawing room of the S. S. Belgenland as it lay in New York harbor last week. Although her eyes were laughing, she seldom glanced away from the frail-looking man with the tousled white hair and big, gentle brown eyes who sat beside her. The room was full of cameras, newsgatherers with vast questions on their tongues.
“Do you think religion can promote world peace?”
An interpreter turned to the frail-looking man, repeated the question in German.
“It never has in the past, and I am no prophet,” he answered.
“What do you think of Adolf Hitler [German Fascist leader]?”
He answered quickly: “Hitler is living on the empty stomach of Germany. …”
Newsgatherers read in his printed statement: “American genius may be able to establish a … satisfactory balance between manufacturer and consumer. . . the most important practical issue . . . of 1930.”
Most of the time the tousle-headed man laughed also. But occasionally his eyes looked frightened, his left hand opened and shut nervously. Then the quiet woman would lean toward him, pat his hand. She, Frau Elsa Einstein Einstein, knew that the world must continue making its legend about this small man, her double cousin to whom she has been married for 14 years.∙ She knows that popular imagination makes of him a hero who works in a solitary study mixing mathematical equations to get Truth as old-time alchemists mixed base metals to obtain Gold. She also knows that der Professor is afraid of and troubled by the world which makes a hero of him.
Fortnight ago the two started for U. S. from their small apartment home in Haberlandstrasse, Berlin. Frau Einstein had a busy time preparing for their long journey. So soon as Dr. Einstein announced last month that he would make his second trip to the U. S. to visit his scientific friends Dr. Albert Abraham Michelson, University of Chicago physicist, and Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan, chairman of California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. (TIME, Nov. 24), scores of U. S. private citizens, public officials, clubs, and universities sent invitations for teas, dinners, receptions. Frau Einstein, who is her husband’s keeper, had to reply with a refusal to every invitation. Her husband’s weak heart cannot stand the excitement of many public functions.
Because Mathematician Einstein cannot keep his bank account correctly, she had to make most of the arrangements for the trip. She purchased new traveling clothes for both of them, discovered at the last minute that her husband’s raincoat was too worn for visiting. A Berlin shopkeeper, impatient with her explanations, told her he must see her husband to fit the raincoat perfectly. She replied:
“If you knew how hard it was even to persuade my husband he needed a new coat, you wouldn’t expect me to fetch him here. I wish you had my worries.”
Frau Einstein is immensely proud of her husband. Says she: “He works like an artist. He sees a vision … he works feverishly … his temperature rises, his face becomes flushed and in his eyes there appears a far-away-look.” When he is working hard on his theories she makes a rite of leaving him alone. “All these things I must do so that he will think he is free. … He is all my life. … He is worth it. … I like being Mrs. Einstein very much. It is very important.”
Dr. Einstein especially dreaded his reception in New York. He remembered his visit nine years ago when, to find peace from questioning, he fled to the roof of Manhattan’s Commodore Hotel, played his violin alone among the chimneys. “I suffer more than anybody can imagine,” he said then.
Frau Einstein had with difficulty persuaded him on this second trip to grant U. S. newsgatherers the short interview on the Belgenland.∙ After it she saw him receive the warmest reception ever given by Manhattan to a scientist. Crowds and applause followed him when he went ashore to dinner with Dr. Paul Schwarz, the German consul; when he had luncheon with Adolph Simon Ochs, publisher of the New York Times; when he spoke on Zionism over the radio, when he went to the Metropolitan Opera House to hear Maria Jeritza sing Carmen; when he was escorted to City Hall by Columbia University’s President Nicholas Murray Butler to shake hands with wisecracking little Mayor Walker.
After his press ordeal, Dr. Einstein had a good time in Manhattan. He looked up two old friends, Poet Rabindranath Tagore and Violinist Fritz Kreisler, called upon John Davison Rockefeller Jr., met Helen Keller. Arturo Toscanini, conductor of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, invited the Einsteins to a concert, sat them in a box belonging to Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. — So impressed were U. S. citizens with the fame of their guest that few atteided the significance of his remarks. At a meeting of the New History Society, Bahai (universal worship) organization, he urged all pacifists to organize, suggested the League of Nations as organizer. His point: If only as much as 2% of men eligible for military service would refuse to fight, there would not be jails enough to hold them, there could be no war. Mme Rosika Schwimmer, pacifist-author, acted as interpreter when the regular translator was struck dumb with excitement.
After four busy days in port, Dr. & Frau Einstein steamed away aboard the Belgenland via Panama for San Diego, Calif, where Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan will meet them. Their California hostess will be a pleasant, greying woman who also knows what it is to be the wife of a famed scientist, Mrs. Robert Andrews Millikan. Born in Oak Park, Ill. she married Dr. Millikan 28 years ago. When she has time, she goes to meetings of Pasadena women’s clubs, is active in the Pasadena Drama League, Community Playhouse Association. But of first importance to her is her husband’s comfort and privacy which she, too, guards vigilantly. Also at Pasadena will be Frau Einstein’s friend Edna Stanton Michelson, wife of Dr. Albert Abraham Michelson, who is carrying on new light measurements. Mrs. Michelson is a daughter of the late Edgar Stanton, onetime U. S. Consul at St. Petersburg. She has been married to her scientist for 31 years, has three children, four grandchildren. She speaks and reads German and French, wrote magazine articles when younger. She dislikes Society, publicity, will not release her picture for publication. Her husband’s friends know her as one of the more charming, amusing hostesses in the intimate social life of the University of Chicago.
Many another scientist’s wife has struggled with her famed husband’s indifference to practical life, his desire for isolation. Louis Pasteur (1822-95) French chemist, obtained protection by marrying the rector’s daughter of Strasburg Academy while he was professor at the University of Strasburg. Emma Wedgwood of the English pottery family became the wife of her cousin, young Charles Darwin (1809-82). Although she loved theatres, gay parties, she was very religious, regretted that Charles was not. He made her promise, however, never to interfere with his work on Evolution. During acute attacks of his 40 years’ ill-health she was constantly near his bedside at night, corrected proof sheets for him by day.
At the age of 28, handsome Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-94) “Father of Modern Chemistry,” married a 14-year-old girl. She learned Latin so that he would not be ashamed of her, taught herself English to translate his articles. Gentle, smiling Mrs. James Watt, first wife and cousin of the steam engine’s inventor (1736-1819) had continually to encourage her husband to work.
Rare have been the scientists’ wives who could join actively in their husbands’ scientific pursuits. In most such unions, the couples have met and worked together as young students. Marie Sklodowska was 27 when she first knew Pierre Curie at the Sofbonne. The George Frederick Dicks (she was Gladys R. Henry) worked together at McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases (Chicago), developed their famed scarlet fever test nine years later as man & wife. University of Pennsylvania has its Clarks—Dr. Elliott Round and Eleanor Acheson Linton—who have done notable work together on cell microscopy.
But, “women who are . . . scientific . . . are a race set apart … a neutral people,” in the opinion of Albert Einstein. And no neuter-lover is he. He was divorced 15 years ago from his first wife, Clara, Serbian mathematician, with whom he studied at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute and who bore his two sons, Albert and Edward.
∙It was by a previous marriage that she had her daughter Margot who was married last fortnight. ∙After the interview an irate newsreel man approached a camera man. Said he: “What’s the idea of his giving photographers 15 minutes and newsreel men only five minutes?”
“That’s his new theory,” answered the camera man.
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