Doctor Wood. Modern Wizard of the Laboratory: The Story of an American Small Boy Who Became the Most Daring and Original Experimental Physicist of Our Day-but Never Grew Up

Chapter Twenty One. In the Bosom of the Family

In the early twenties, John Rathbone Oliver inscribed on the guest book at East Hampton a tribute in verse to the Wood tribe. It — the verse, not the tribe — is graciously Victorian, abounding in polite conceits.

Except for the Victorian restraint and for the passage of the years during which Margaret’s children have grown up, Elizabeth has married and become mother of another little “Elizabeth”, etc., it remains a fair picture of the tribe. All the gracious comments are still true today. The Woods are indeed a gracious family — but that’s not the whole picture by a long shot. The Woods are also a fantastic family. This is not surprising, since the old New England stock from which they stem has brightened American history with many fantastic characters and families.

In truth the whole clan, when gathered together for family reunions or summer holidays, takes on some of the qualities of Sanger’s Circus, or of an imaginary play by Bernard Shaw and Noel Coward in collaboration. Robert, Jr., by the way, though extremely fond of beautiful young ladies, has remained a bachelor, is a business man in New York, and is generally to be found at the Harvard Club on his off evenings. A while back, he wrote a funny book entitled Hold 'em, Girls! It’s a Harvard man’s post-Emily-Post etiquette for young women invited to football games. The youngest imp in the household when it reunites is six-year-old Elizabeth Bogert, who has inherited more than her share of her grandfather’s prankishness and curiosity. When I first visited Dr. and Mrs. Wood in Baltimore, and while they were telling me about the second and third generation, none of whom I had yet met, Mrs. Wood said casually, “Elizabeth married a Dutchman”. I’d expected he’d be at least as Dutch as Hendrik Willem van Loon, but when I later met Ned Bogert, I discovered him to be Dutch — like the Kips and the Roosevelts. His people had been in New York ever since New Amsterdam was founded. The Woods are pure English stock — and pure New England stock — on both sides, since colonial times. They are fond of their son-in- law and treat him as a son, but “Elizabeth married a Dutchman”.

They are all full of violent opinions and prejudices, happily never the same ones, and if any opinion apart from family loyalty were ever shared by any two of them at the same time, the astonishment would be general. They engage frequently in debates which at times terrify the guest or stranger. Later he becomes even more bewildered. Robert, Jr., will denounce his father with the freedom and eloquence of an ex-artillery officer, or vice versa, and next morning they’ll be as affectionate as if they were “buddies” of the same generation. It’s the same with all the family. One night last summer at East Hampton, Mrs. Wood got into a hair-raising dispute with her son-in-law over the respective merits of certain Flemish and Italian paintings, and at the height of their difference exclaimed with outraged finality, “Well, that’s just what could be expected from a Dutchman!” Ned Bogert and I were tying some luggage on the back of a car next morning, when a heavy thundershower came up. I had on a leather coat, but Bogert had no raincoat or covering and was dressed for the city. Mrs. Wood rushed out, dragged him into the house, made him take off his wet jacket, felt his shirt to see whether he should take that off too, hung his jacket to dry before the morning log fire, and found him a raincoat. I stopped gratuitously worrying about the Woods’ family “quarrels”. The subjects on which they engage in Shavian denunciations and dialectics are seldom personal and never boring.

There is always, for instance, the tender subject of Dr. Wood and the piano. The legend is that after the age of sixty he learned to play the piano and executed the noisy Rachmaninoff Prelude in C sharp minor with such pyrotechnic brilliancy that all and sundry were astounded — and appalled.

“The story”, he said, “is grossly exaggerated — and all wrong anyway. I never played for guests, in Baltimore or here or anywhere”.

“What about your daughter’s version?” I asked.

“It’s utter and absolute nonsense, and the thing isn’t worth so much talk anyway. I don’t see what you want to put it in the biography for at all”.

I said, “What she told me is worth putting in anybody’s biography. If her version is apocryphal, suppose you give me the true version”. (Incidentally, he can’t whistle or hum “Yankee Doodle” to save his life without getting off the key.) He said:

Well, to begin with, I was given music lessons for a year or two when I was about twelve years old — and I hated ’em. The teacher was a maiden lady who came to the house. You know the sort. Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, and sugared tunes ad nauseam. Anyhow, I was taught to read music, in a way, but rarely spent any time at the piano until the end of my second college year. At Kennebunkport where we went in summer, there was a young Miss Banfield in the hotel, who was a wow at the piano. She played the Schumann Grand Sonata brilliantly and frequently (by request). I was captivated, and said to myself, “I’m going to play that." I had a piano in my room at college, mainly for the benefit of visitors, and on my return invested in the score of the sonata. I was taken aback by the price, as I’d never bought a “composition” before. Above the opening bar was printed “So rasch wie möglich" (As fast as possible) and on the third page, “Noch schneller” (Still faster). This was stimulating and quite different from songs without words. I went after it hammer and tongs, and after a year or two could play the whole of the first movement without notes. By the time our second child was born, I was through the second movement. Then my musical, long-suffering, devoted wife had a respite during our two years in Berlin where I could not get at a piano. But I played it through Chicago, Madison, and Baltimore until my children were old enough to join forces with their mother and persuade me to desist — from the Schumann sonata.

What I did in revenge was to buy the score of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude, with a red-seal record for a music teacher. This went even faster than the sonata, i.e., “faster than faster than possible”. It suited me exactly, but I was finally silenced for good and all by home influences.

Dr. Wood’s version, as above, is circumstantial and beguiling, but it doesn’t alter the fact that his daughter Elizabeth, Mrs. Bogert, “the Woodiest of all the Woods”, painted me a different picture of her papa’s ultimate atrocities on the pianoforte. Even if Dr. Wood is telling the partial truth and Elizabeth is embroidering the facts a little, it presents a pretty clear picture of how she felt about it. She says he came home one day in Baltimore with the Prelude under his arm, and began banging it out on the family piano. It was terrible for the family, she says, but in a month or so it rolled out with the inhuman perfection of a speeded-up electrical player piano. She says he became so inhumanly mechanically expert that it was really perfect — but that it was also “perfectly awful”, and that for a period thereafter he drove the family frantic by adopting the following tactics toward occasional guests or innocent strangers. When one would say, “Professor, do you play the piano?” he would smirk deprecatingly and reply, “Well, only a little. I can only play one or two tunes”. He would go to the piano, while the innocent victims would anticipate nothing worse than “Chopsticks” or “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree”. Then, while the family stopped its ears with mutual glances of commiseration, out would come crashing the whole Grand Sonata, or the Prelude, to its bitter end, while the chandeliers and ceilings trembled.

I tried to persuade Gertrude Wood to give me the exact and definitive version of all this, but she said, “There are limits to human endurance. I long ago refused to hear any more of it, and I now refuse to hear anything more about it”. He refused to play for me, so the legend must remain a legend — despite the fact that its central figure is alive, and will doubtless remain so for many a long year. The Woods are tough as the towering oaks of their New England.

Dr. Wood can drive a car — and can carve — as well as anybody when he keeps his mind on it, but doesn’t like to do either. Mrs. Wood consequently does all the carving and most of the driving. She likes to keep the indicator between fifty and sixty when roads are suitable, and on occasion steps it up to seventy and over. None of the Woods is slow or static. Dr. Wood’s preferred and almost only alcoholic beverage is the Old-fashioned, or in lieu of that a dry Martini. Mrs. Wood makes them very dry. He frequently has one or two before dinner. I was writing these notes in East Hampton, after one of the dinners, and had written, “Mrs. Wood does all the carving, and, to paradox an old Scotch phrase, despite her husband’s terrific personality, Wherever she sits is the head of the table”. I asked her kindly to look the script over, and left it on her desk. When I found it next morning, she had turned author herself and had written across the top of the page, “The Professor sits at the head of the table. Gertrude carves so that he can talk to his guests — or if not, so he can think out problems which are often solved during the meal — at which times he is sometimes silent when he should be talking”.

There’s another Scotch phrase, by Bobbie Burns, which ends, “… to see ourselves as others see us”. I still insist that Gertrude Wood sits at the head of the table, and not merely because she does the carving. For she directs the conversation, no matter how brilliantly her husband dominates it. Sometimes she makes him talk, when he has been silent too long, and she has also been known to explode with the well-bred Boston equivalent of “For God’s sake, shut up!” when his conversational pyrotechnics risk setting fire to some inflammable guest.

The household is hospitable, enjoys parties, people, gaiety. The rambling, remodeled Queen Anne farmstead, with ample space and appurtenances, has made it convenient in summer to entertain week-end guests, and they have had many famous ones. The guest book, with its autographs, verses, and frequent drawings, reads like a recipe for goulash concocted from Who’s Who and the Social Register with a dash of gossip sauce from the New Yorker.

The galaxy of autographs, touching both the starry firmament and Broadway’s neon lights, ranges from great astronomers to Dwight Fiske. They’ve even entertained Harpo Marx, by accident, and a celebrated safe-cracker by design. Nearly every autograph has some tale or reminiscence connected with it. One of the richest concerns the late Charles Nungesser, French ace of aces, who flew out to East Hampton during his last visit to New York, and left the following inscription: “A Monsieur Wood, et sa famille, en souvenir de leur charmante réception à mon arrivé en avion au golf”.

The “charming reception” accorded him when he landed on the golf course might well be written into next year’s script of Hellz-a-Poppin.

Robert Wood, Jr., and Nungesser had met one evening at the Harvard Club. The two young veterans had a lot to say to each other over the Scotch and sodas, and when Nungesser learned that the Wood summer home was at East Hampton, he mentioned the fact that he was flying out to the Maidstone Club for lunch on Saturday. So-and-so, or a Monsieur Tel as they say in French — he didn’t quite recall the name, mais un garçon charmant — had invited him. He had written the name down, but couldn’t just then recall it. He hoped Robert and his father would join them there for lunch or coffee or a drink.

Late Saturday morning, seeing a tiny plane high over the farm, the Woods, father and son, hopped into their car and went out to the club. As they arrived, Nungesser’s plane was circling the golf course, and he landed near the first tee. No sooner had he shut off the engine, than a big, red-faced, barrel- chested member in plus fours rushed toward Nungesser waving his driver and shouting:

“This is an outrage! You can’t land on the golf course of a private club! You took my wife’s eye off the ball! You spoiled her drive!”

Dr. Wood hastened forward and explained to the apoplectic golfer that the flyer was Nungesser — that he had come there by invitation to lunch — that he had shot down sixty-seven German planes — was the greatest of all air heroes. The golfer roared, “I don’t give a damn if he shot down five hundred planes! He spoiled my wife’s drive!”

Then the steward of the club rushed out shouting, “See here, you can’t land here! It’s against the rules”.

Dr. Wood said mildly, “But he already has landed”.

“But he can’t!”

“But he has!”

“But he can’t!”

“But he has! And furthermore he’s invited here to luncheon with a member of the club”.

“By what member?” demanded the steward. Nungesser fished the name out of his pocket, and the steward looked at it.

“But that man’s not a member. He’s not a member of the club at all. He only lunches here sometimes with Mr. Jones- Smith”.

It began to be apparent that the garçon charmant had been in his cups when he invited Nungesser to the Maidstone Club, and had forgotten all about it. So the Woods decided to take Nungesser home with them to lunch. In the meantime Dr. Wood, who had been an early member and shareholder in the club, decided that Nungesser ought to have a cup of coffee. The steward reluctantly agreed to let Mr. Nungesser have a cup of coffee. Whereupon Nungesser fumbled in his breast pocket, produced a visiting card the size of a large wedding invitation, but slightly more ornate, and presented it in a courtly manner to the steward. Wood says the card had everything on it but the Eiffel Tower — which is the French equivalent of the kitchen stove.

The steward was embarrassed and unimpressed. When the colored waiter came to serve the coffee, Nungesser produced another and handed it to him. The colored waiter was enchanted and terrifically impressed. The Woods then took Nungesser home to lunch, and later, a bit mystified at the strange ways of Americans, but happy and not out of countenance, he flew back to New York.

Apropos of William Beebe’s visit is a tale of the rats in the barrel — and apropos of Father Pigot’s, occurs a rhapsodic tribute to Wood’s homemade gin.

The barn and outhouses had become infested with rats, and a lot of them were caught alive in basket traps. They were to be loosed as is the custom and killed by terriers. This is not for fun or cruelty, as some imagine, but to train the terriers. In the meantime, Wood dumped the rats in a barrel and observed them with curiosity. He says that they began jumping and that their pink noses came up in waves, like pink bubbles on water, but didn’t quite reach the rim. Presently some of them began running wildly around the bottom of the barrel. Soon, like motorcyclists in World’s Fair saucers, they were whirling around the sides of the barrel, held by centrifugal force. They ran faster, spiraled up, and finally came hurtling over the rim!

Wood told his naturalist friends. Beebe at first refused to believe the story, but was finally convinced. It seemed evident that the rats in rushing and tumbling around over each other at the bottom were occasionally thrown against the wall and discovered that if they ran faster against the curved wall, they were pressed against it and could actually climb out in a spiral. Wood let the rats go for the fun he’d had watching them do it. They recalled to his mind his youthful conquest of the spiral balustrade, he says.

Father Edward F. Pigot, famous Jesuit scientist and seismographic authority, was here from Australia and visited the Woods in prohibition days, soon after the World War. Father Pigot was Irish in origin — and that his association with Dr. Wood was not confined entirely to learned discussions of earthquakes and astronomy is evidenced by the inscription the Reverend Father left in East Hampton:

— a poor, peripatetic star-gazer, late of the Emerald Isle and now from the Southern Cross, who sought in vain in America for some more stimulating beverage than “soft” drink to relieve the fatigue of his midnight vigils —

Now, however, he at last can say with Archimedes, “Eureka!” And he carries back to Australia, along with grateful recollections, the sample of liquor better than he sought — Wood Spirit!

You may believe, if you choose, that this is merely a metaphorical tribute — but I don’t. During prohibition days, Dr. Wood distilled and concocted for his friends and intimates a beverage which still causes the devout to cross themselves fervently. There was always the obvious joke that it was made of “wood” alcohol, but what he put in it remains a partial mystery. Just as the orthodox Moslems have ninety-nine names for Allah, plus an unknown hundredth name, Wood put in seven supposedly known ingredients, but there was a mysterious eighth which he refused to reveal. I don’t try to guess what it was. The Russians add ether and gunpowder.

Last summer was gay in East Hampton, with friends, guests, the family reunion, while Dr. and Mrs. Wood were preparing a jaunt to California. As usual, it was partly for science and partly for fun. Dr. Wood was going to install one of his big, improved diffraction gratings in the eighteen-inch Schmidt camera telescope on Mount Palomar. If it worked, they’d be wanting an immense one later for the 200-inch monster with its twenty-ton mirror in the other dome. There was a dinner party on the night of their departure. Nobody was in a hurry. Gertrude had the tickets and the money in her handbag. Rob was telling some of his best stories. They caught the train casually, by a couple of minutes’ margin.

On the day before they left, I’d noticed a new, mysterious, and strange device. The door of the bedroom occupied by Dr. and Mrs. Wood gives on the living room, and opens outward. This door had been newly fitted with a large and powerful coiled spring. It seemed so queer I had ventured to ask its purpose. Wood pulled the door open, let go, and it shut with a resounding bang. Said he, “It was a birthday present to my wife yesterday. For twenty years she’d been saying to me, ‘Will you shut that door!’.”

Then I noticed a small card tacked above, which read:

MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DOOR

At this point Elizabeth Bogert interpolated, “ — and the first time it returned, it knocked off mamma’s eyeglasses”.

If you ask the Wood family today what they think of its celebrated head in connection with some specific scientific achievement or some specific new piece of deviltry, their answers will be brilliant, voluble, and free. If they’re feeling at their best — and if it’s about anything in particular — you’ll get all the adjectives and epithets in the thesaurus — sometimes in pride and praise, sometimes filled with a sort of oh-my-god exasperation.

But if you ask the Wood family what they think of him in terms of wider generality, their words fail to flow so freely. He’s the head of the clan, he’s the husband and father, he’s famous, and has their profound respect as well as love. But this doesn’t alter the fact that they’ve got a sort of super Huck Finn in the house, which is perhaps never boring but not always restful. After they’d suffered from one of his pranks last summer, his daughter Margaret (Mrs. Victor White) exclaimed, “… my so and so and so and so… absurd and ridiculous father!” If you or anybody outside the clan used one of those adjectives about him, I can assure you that this same Margaret, or any of the rest of them, would skin you alive and nail your hide to the barn door.

The “Aunt Sally” who wanted to “adopt and civilize” Huck Finn could be voluble too… in particular… when it came to any particular thing Huck had done, but not even the genius of Mark Twain could express her feelings toward Huck in general. They went too deep for words. When it comes to the Wood family’s feelings toward him — they’re all in the same boat with Huck’s Aunt Sally… and so — may I add in conclusion? — is your humble and obedient servant, the author.