Savage Grace - Natalie Robins Read online

  Stephane Groueff

  In the atomic bomb, one of the most important problems, and probably the most difficult to solve—I think it’s still one of the two or three biggest atomic bomb production secrets in the world, which any foreign spy would have given anything to have—involved Bakelite. When I was working on my book The Manhattan Project in the middle sixties, I had a sort of gentleman’s agreement with the Atomic Energy Commission that I would show them my manuscript because I wasn’t a scientist and the idea was that they would just correct all the spelling and so forth but that I would keep my total freedom. They sent me a brochure called “U.S. Atomic Energy Act” or something like that, and every paragraph began, “Anybody who knowingly or unknowingly has or divulges or even discusses,” and ended, “is punishable by death or twenty years in prison.” It was really a very scary thing.

  So I sent them my finished manuscript and then they called me in, and one of the things they were particularly sensitive about was anything having to do with Bakelite. They suggested that they would be most unhappy if I published this information, that it wouldn’t be in the national interest and things like that.

  So I took certain things about Bakelite out of the manuscript and handed those pages over to the Atomic Energy Commission, and they sealed this file in my presence and put all their stamps on it—which I signed and they signed—and then they locked it up.

  Brooks Baekeland

  Had my grandfather known what would evolve from plastics, he would undoubtedly have withheld his invention—just as I think Einstein might have paused before publishing the 1905 paper on relativity. Leo Hendrik Baekeland epitomized hope for the human race. He created himself and he saw no reason why the future could not be created, too.

  Letter from Leo Hendrik Baekeland to a friend, January 14, 1934

  If I had to live my life over again I would not devote it to develop new industrial processes: I would try to add my humble efforts to use Science to the betterment of the human race.

  I despair of the helter-skelter methods of our vaunted homo sapiens, misguided by his ignorance and his politicians. If we continue our ways, there is every possibility that the human race may follow the road of former living races of animals whose fossils proclaim that they were not fit to continue. Religion, laws and morals is not enough. We need more. Science can help us.

  Brooks Baekeland

  Had it only been possible for me to have been his son and not his grandson, we two could have taken the world by storm—yes, for we would have pursued the original dreams—dielectrics, textiles, resins, bonding powders for super-strong abrasives and aerodynamic components, molded hulls for boats and…but the list is endless. We would not have been able to foresee then the plastic-polluted world that has become such a monstrous joke, the blue plastic bucket and the plastic cups littering the insulted country roadsides—a world whose very destruction, by burning, only pollutes it more. LHB never dreamed of that. He would have recoiled.

  Letter from Antony Baekeland to Miwa Svinka-Zielinski, October 4, 1973

  Broadmoor

  Dear Miwa—

  I am sending you these dreams which I have had during the past few days at Broadmoor:

  Einstein hides a stop sign from police.

  I come back to my best friend, Jake Cooper, and we travel the world together. I see a fox eat a squirrel.

  My grandmother Nina Daly embraces me during a party given by a fellow here and myself. I cut up gobbets of meat.

  I can fly and go all over the place.

  I dream I am a successful writer and poet.

  I will continue to send you my dreams. There is so little to tell you except my dreams. I write them out in the middle of the night—there is no light so sometimes in the morning I have trouble deciphering them.

  Love,

  Tony

  From “Dreams and Realities,” a Lecture delivered at Johns Hopkins University by Leo Hendrik Baekeland, October 23, 1931

  Youth has many advantages, such as daring, speed of action, and quickness of perception. Intelligence is inborn, and develops by practice and opportunity, knowledge comes quickly to the intelligent; but experience lingers, and is only acquired slowly through life and mistakes.

  Céline Roll Karraker

  Grandpapa taught us always to question everything. And he also taught us to recognize the fact that what is true today is not true tomorrow—in science as well as in other things. He loved children, especially as he grew older. He certainly made everything great fun for all of us. He would sometimes give out Bakelite things, like pencil cases, and very beautiful Bakelite jewelry that looked like amber. I can remember the gorgeous iridescent colors.

  From English House & Garden, October 1981

  Bakelite in the museum. Everyday objects such as radios and amplifiers, cigarette boxes and soap dishes all look as if they are made in precious tortoise shell, amber, marble, leather and sometimes even in gold. Yet they are all made of Bakelite, that forerunner of plastic which from the twenties to the fifties was all the rage on both sides of the Atlantic.

  At the Boymans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam an industrial product is once again the centre of attention…. Three main trends in its use can be identified: the Art Deco style (where it is usually made use of as imitation) in radios and clocks after the Great Paris Exhibition in 1925; in functionalism in objects coming from Germany and the Lowlands and in the “aerodynamic” style of America in the forties and in postwar Europe. In short, a fashion and the symbol of an era.

  From the Guardian, June 16, 1983

  Apart from the plastic tie-press that spits out your creased cravat as if it were a serpent on heat, the nicest thing about Patrick Cook’s Bakelite Museum in London is that he does not take it terribly seriously.

  “There is a humorous quality about so much of the Bakelite,” he says, fingering a 1950s radio that opens up to reveal a portable vanity case with lights and mirror. “So much of it is a parody. The market in it is very strange. Sometimes I take stalls in the markets and sell things at rock-bottom prices to undercut those dealers who are trying to force the prices up.

  “Some of the early Phillips radios go for thousands of pounds, if you can get them. They have almost all been collected out of England into Holland,” he shook his head in disbelief. “The prices are very strange. When the Victoria and Albert Museum was setting up their Bakelite show, I let them have some of my early radios for about £30 each—a bargain….”

  He began hiring out some of his prize pieces to film and TV period shows like Pennies from Heaven, and his Bakelite Museum Society has a TV game called “Spot the Bakelite.” They have a Bakelite picnic every other year, lectures, and evenings to swap items and marvel at the invention of Dr. Leo Baekeland.

  From the New York Times, “Antiques View,” Rita Reif, June 3, 1984

  Bakelite. The name summons up a whole mystique of early plastics for Art Deco collectors, producing images of Cubist-styled 1930’s jewelry, mock tortoise-shell compacts, ersatz ivory combs, butter-scotch-toned desk accessories and what may well be the most glamorous plastics creations of the period—streamlined-styled radios.

  There was then, and there is once again, magic in what we call Bakelite radios. When they were new almost a half-century ago, these radios brought into the homes of millions the adventures of Jack Armstrong, the problems of Helen Trent, the jokes of Jack Benny and the nightly news. Now, with nostalgia running high for such vintage wares, the public will have an opportunity to view the most comprehensive display ever mounted of these passports to the past in “The American Radio Show—Bakelite Radios of the 1930’s and 1940’s,” an exhibition opening Wednesday….

  From the Private Diaries of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, October 13, 1909

  How few people will realize how much detail had to be gone into before Bakelite was a commercial success!

  From A Biographical Profile of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, Carl Kaufmann, Unpublished

  Leo Hendrik Baekeland a
pprenticed in a shoe repair shop, with his father, who was illiterate. His mother also was from a poor family, but she had been a maid and had seen life of families on the other side of the poverty line. She had no interest in having her son grow into a world as impoverished and closed as her own (there was one other child in the family, Rachel, who remained in Belgium all her life) and she looked upon education as his passport.

  From “Dreams and Realities,” a Lecture delivered at Johns Hopkins University by Leo Hendrik Baekeland, October 23, 1931

  My most important discovery at the university was that my senior professor of chemistry had a very attractive daughter. Hence, the usual succession of events.

  Brooks Baekeland

  Céline Swarts and Leo Hendrik Baekeland were the founders of a foundered family.

  From A Biographical Profile of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, Carl Kaufmann, Unpublished

  His personal life had been far from happy since his arrival in the U.S. Céline had returned to Belgium, at his insistence, for the birth of their first child. (Jenny, born in 1890, died at the age of five.) Leo assumed that, because of his modest circumstances, his wife would be better situated if with her family. However, after the baby was born, he made no move to bring his wife and child to America.

  Céline begged him to send money for her passage, writing that her funds were also exhausted, and adding the bitter note that her own father refused to come to her aid. Leo’s letters of response are not extant, but it is clear from Céline’s letters that he delayed repeatedly, arguing that he could not support a wife and daughter even if he could raise their passage to New York. Eventually they were reunited—family records do not specify when but it appears to have been about 1892—but not before Céline had been deeply hurt by what she regarded as Leo’s lack of affection. The separation left a wound that never quite closed. Though Céline remained a dutiful wife, and assisted her husband in keeping laboratory notes and financial accounts, she built much of her life around interests of her own, and was frequently separated from her husband for periods of several months.

  Letter from Céline Baekeland to Leo Hendrik Baekeland, Undated

  Dearie—

  Every time I am alone, I go back to my own self. It always takes some time and always takes much sorrow the first week. I miss you, I miss you dreadfully, then comes the power to crush that feeling, and unhappily I call forth every reason why I am a fool, why I should not feel badly, how hard and unkind you are, etc.—how this is wrong, and I know it, it brings me in a worse agony yet, and by and by the old Céline pops out, and I long again for you, not for the heartless you, but for everything which is good in you—that is why when we meet we both are good and kind and loving. Now this time I have been more alone than ever, and you might not believe me, but I would not give up my Summer for yours—I have been alone and at perfect peace most of the time.

  I have called in you all the good element there is—and I know that when you come back you will be a better man—I certainly am a better woman—and we both ought to have the thought to live the next years in peace and for the best of our children—think of people of our standard and intellect making each other unhappy for no reason whatever! Think of the beautiful life we could have if we both made up our minds to be happy and good to each other—if our lives had for an aim to be as kind to each other as possible. Our unhappiness is in one thought, let us tear that thought off and replace it by one of love and of peace.

  Yours, Céline

  The Creation of the Woman, a Sanskrit Fable found in typewritten form among Leo Hendrik Baekeland’s Miscellaneous Papers

  In the beginning when Twashtri came to the creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows: He took the rotundity of the moon and the curves of the creepers, and the clinging of tendrils and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves and the tapering of the elephant’s trunk, and the glances of deer and the blustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gayety of sunbeams and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock and the softness of the parrot’s bosom and the hardness of adamant and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger and the warm glow of the fire, and the coldness of snow and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kokila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrawska, and compounding all these together he made a woman and gave her to man.

  But after one week, man came to him and said: “Lord, this creature that You have given me makes my life miserable. She chatters incessantly and teases me beyond endurance, never leaving me alone; and she requires incessant attention, and takes all my time up, and cries about nothing and is always idle, and so I have come to give her back as I cannot live with her.” So Twashtri said: “Very well,” and He took her back. Then after another week man came to Him and said: “Lord, I find that my life is very lonely since I gave You back that creature. I remember how she used to dance and sing to me and look at me out of the corner of her eye, and play with me and cling to me, and her laughter was music and she was beautiful to look at and soft to touch, so give her back to me.”

  So Twashtri said, “Very well,” and gave her back. Then after only three days man came back to Him again and said: “Lord, I know not how it is, but after all I have come to the conclusion that she is more of a trouble than a pleasure to me so please take her back again.” But Twashtri said: “Out on you! Be off! I will have no more of this; you must manage how you can.” The man said: “I cannot live with her.” And Twashtri said: “Neither can you live without her.” And He turned His back on man and went on with His work. Then man said: “What is to be done? For I cannot live either with her or without her.”

  Brooks Baekeland

  My grandfather insisted on his own freedom. Most of the year he was away, somewhere in the world. Yet he adored and admired his wife. He never used the word “woman” without the prefixal adjective “silly” in front of it: “sillywoman”—one word. His wife was his one exception to “sillywoman.”

  Céline Roll Karraker

  My grandmother started something in Yonkers—Prospect House. It was a settlement-house-type place for children whose parents were working in the factories there. As Grandmother said, “The children come after school to be bathed, fed, and to have their talents encouraged.” Grandmother always believed in a good meal and a bath!

  She was a vegetarian, and a theosophist for many many years, and she brought to this country Indian gurus. And Grandpapa hated all of that. He was a real atheist—he didn’t like anything that had to do with anything religious, he didn’t like that at all. And then the funny thing was that Grandmother finally went to India and when she came back she stopped being a vegetarian, she quit theosophy, she would have nothing to do with gurus anymore—she was horrified by what she had seen in India. She thought, “If that’s the way it is there, if that’s what their religion has done for them…”

  Dr. Frederick Baekeland

  I had a lot of contact with my grandmother over the years, as everyone in the family did. She was a very matriarchal person, rather controlling in some ways but extremely generous also. She was an extraordinary person. She started to paint rather late, at the age of fifty. She was sort of an Impressionist. She studied with Hobart Nichols—which was quite a good thing—and she had a couple of shows.

  As a young woman she almost became a concert pianist, but she could never play the piano when Grandpapa was home because he didn’t want to be disturbed. He often worked in the house, this sort of old-fashioned house along the Hudson River. It had a tower and that’s where his study was and he would sort of secrete himself up there. My contacts with him were extremely limited—I personally spent maybe three times with my grandfather when I was a child. Once he took me into his lab, which was on the property, a
nd electroplated some pennies with mercury for me, and another time he took me up to his study and gave me a scarab. I had it for years and later lost it.

  Brooks Baekeland

  I once asked my Aunt Nina, my father’s sister, what it had been like, really, growing up at Snug Rock, my grandparents’ house in Yonkers. Such a question to my father would not have been thinkable. Her reply startled me: “‘Shhhh! The Doctor is working.’”

  Céline Roll Karraker

  My grandmother often played the piano for us on Sunday, after lunch, and Grandpapa would just go someplace else. Later I read somewhere that as a young man he used to go to concerts when he was visiting different places. This surprised me because I always felt he was so anti-music. Yet he did go to concerts by himself—you know, alone. I think there was real rivalry between my grandparents.

  Brooks Baekeland

  One of my grandmother’s teachers was Edward MacDowell, a famous composer and pianist. He wanted her to “go public”—how vulgar that phrase sounds, even now—that is, give public recitals, be a professional. This was nixed by my grandfather and always grudged against him by my grandmother.

  She loved playing the unplayable pieces of Liszt, but her heart was with Debussy, Fauré, Ravel, and Chopin. When I had grown up enough to read poetry and understand women—and understood the passionately un-slaked nature of my grandmother as it was revealed to me at her Steinway grand—those lines from “Kubla Khan” used always to come into my mind, particularly when she was playing one of Chopin’s celestial nocturnes: “A savage place! as holy and enchanted / As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted / By woman wailing for her demon-lover!”

  When my grandmother sat with her head bowed—not in benediction—before her piano and then started to play, I often felt tears come to my eyes, especially when she was very old and her playing was full of faults. As a child I made her play and play and play, and repeat and repeat, and play again and again. In my ears the sounds she made were like those of gold coins falling into a chest to a miser.