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 Five. Flight to Siberia

Young Frank Willard, better known by the pen name of Josiah Flynt, under which he had done hobo articles for the Century and Harper's, had a newspaper commission in the early summer of 1896 to write articles on the Pan-Russian Exposition and Fair at Nizhni Novgorod, and on the Trans- Siberian Railway, then in process of construction. He thought it would be nice if Rob accompanied him. Rob thought so too, but the expense, in terms of transportation alone, if it had to come out of his own pocket would be (as the Scotch say) damnable.

Josiah Francis Temperance Union Willard Flynt had six more drinks, one for each of his names and pseudonyms, and concocted a Machiavellian scheme. For himself, he had already managed to wangle a personal letter from Prince Hilkorff of the Russian Ministry of Railways, giving him limitless first- class transportation and directing all railway officials to favor him in every possible way. His proposal was that Rob become the self-appointed correspondent of an imaginary American newspaper and obtain a similar free joy ride over the longest new railroad on earth. Wood’s New England conscience couldn’t quite be stretched to the point of inventing an imaginary newspaper — but he recalled that he’d once written a couple of pieces for the San Francisco Examiner. So he closed his eyes while Willard had some handsome cards printed, and salved his conscience by deciding that he actually would do some articles for the Examiner and supply copies to the Russian authorities in honest return for the transportation[4]. All necessary passes, documents, and visas were obtained.

And then it turned out that Rob was also to help in a spot of amateur smuggling! It seemed that Willard had previously visited Count Tolstoy, and had promised, at the great man’s piteous request, to smuggle in for him a dozen or so of his works which had been published in Berlin but were banned in Russia. Tolstoy had never seen them in type. It was a serious offense, even for a foreigner, to smuggle them in.

The books were duly purchased and hidden in the luggage, and as they approached the Russian frontier, the two conspirators tied the thick, paper-bound volumes beneath their coats, like life preservers, around their chests and middles, with heavy twine. There was an awful moment at the customhouse when police guards in full uniform, with long sabers hanging from their belts, came down the line “frisking” everyone by vigorous slaps. By the grace of God they were fortunately spared this ordeal, possibly on account of the contrast between their more or less respectable appearance and that of the muzhiks, small merchants, gypsies, and other assorted riffraff who had piled their belongings on the long benches of the customhouse.

On reaching Moscow, they made contact with Chekhov. He was a friend of Willard’s but scarcely known outside Russia at that time. They gave Chekhov the contraband volumes for Tolstoy “in the dark of the moon”, and he subsequently delivered them via the “underground railway”.

For the rest of their trip, I can’t do better than hand Wood the microphone. He tells it well.

Willard had some business with the American Consul in Moscow, and before starting for Siberia we went to see him. We found him in an old dark, dirty office on a second floor, sitting at a roll-top desk over which hung his framed credentials, ornamented with a screaming American eagle and covered with flyspecks. He was apparently Teutonic and could neither speak nor understand English. How he communicated with Washington, if he ever did, was a mystery. Willard had a letter from our Ambassador in Berlin to the Ambassador in St. Petersburg, and hoped for an opportunity to have a word or two with Czar Nicholas. What we got, in deep, guttural disapproval, was:

“Who are you, that you should ask to see THE — GREAT — WHITE — CZAR!”

It was a purely rhetorical question, and we did not press the point. I spent most of my time lugging my forty pounds of camera, tripod, and dry plates around — occasionally also making water-color sketches, frequently pestered by formidable gendarmes. When they were too suspicious or belligerent, I displayed Prince Hilkorff’s letter. We went to St. Petersburg first, and then to Moscow.

From Moscow to Nizhni Novgorod and the Fair was a night’s trip. As we had unlimited transportation free, we spent a week shuttling back and forth between the two cities, saving hotel bills by sleeping on the night express, the Kourierski. The first-class compartment for two had a single wide seat extending from the window to the wall of the narrow corridor. By raising the back, which was hinged to the wall, and then fastening two bolts, we had an excellent upper and lower berth.

We finally got off for Siberia on the Moscow night express to Chelyabinsk, just beyond the Ural mountains, where the then new trans-Siberian line started. We got along well and economically living on trains in Russia. We had our teapots and blankets and were able to buy food at a cost of about half a ruble (twenty-five cents) a day. We lived chiefly on fruit and “meat balls” as we called them — a hash of meat, chicken, and whatnot, enclosed in dough and fried in deep lard. One of them made a meal, and they cost only about five cents apiece, hot from the pot at every railway station. With plenty of fruit, it made a not too badly balanced diet, and we thrived on it. Also, across the tracks, at every railroad station, there was a huge brass samovar, the size of a barrel. At each stop it was charged upon by a crowd of men and women armed with teapots. Hot water was free, and there was always a “free for all” around the samovar. Willard and I formed a “De Land wedge” (football in the nineties), with the help of two or three men we’d met on the train, and went through the crowd like a snowplow through a drift.

At one point in the first stage of the trip, we had an opportunity to leave the train and travel by river for a day or so — on the Volga between Syzran, as I recall it, and Samara. We steamed all day in the bright sunshine, through a flat country, drawing up late at night against a few boards laid on the bank which served as a wharf. It was pitch dark and the single small oil lantern disclosed a pool of ankle-deep, soft mud beyond the makeshift wharf, through which we waded to the road where vehicles awaited us. They were primitive carts or chariots, with wide and shallow wicker baskets half full of straw swung between the high wheels. We piled in with our legs hanging over the edges, and were off at a gallop with shouting and cracking of whips, across the steppes, in total darkness…

At Chelyabinsk we got aboard a trans-Siberian construction train, and had a compartment in a first-class coach which carried construction engineers. The road wasn’t yet open for passengers. These trains ran at irregular intervals, perhaps one a week, and made only about twenty miles an hour over rails that had been merely spiked to crossties that lay in the sand. The stone ballast hadn’t yet been put down. Most of the stations were merely shanties where the telegraph operator lived. The whole job was going to cost over $175,000,000.

Omsk was the first large town we reached. The train was to remain there four days, and we wanted to live aboard her, but the guards and crew (small blame to them) insisted on locking it up for the period. Forced out, we took a room in the Hotel Moscow, where we had to sleep, with our own blankets, on bare mattresses, since sheets and blankets were not supplied. Russian travelers in those days were in the habit of carrying their own bed linen. The mattress was infested with bugs, and our first night was a horror. We brushed the bugs to the floor, but they kept crawling back. Then we put saucers filled with kerosene under the legs of the bed. Then the bugs climbed the wall to the ceiling and began dive bombing us. Next morning we went down to the station, exhibiting our tortured hides — and the letter from Prince Hilkorff — saying we knew His Highness wouldn’t want protégés of his to be eaten alive and begging permission to sleep in the locked train. They took pity on us, and we spent a delightful three days in Omsk, walking, riding in the “haycart” cabs, and swimming in the Irtish.

Willard was writing for American newspapers, and in one of the old clippings, this paragraph occurs.

Except in simplest transactions, the language was a stumbling block. My vocabulary was painfully limited, and Rob could say nothing at all in Russian. When my words gave out, we resorted to pictures which Rob drew with his clever pencil. They spoke with a greater eloquence than words. After he had drawn what we wanted, I would present the sketch to the person with whom we were dealing, and pointing to it, say, “You can?” The man looked sometimes as if he thought we wanted to sell the sketch and were hoping he’d make a bid on it. But as a general thing we were understood, and got what we wanted.

There were no paved streets in the town and the dust kicked up by the galloping horses and the bouncing wash- basket chariots they drew was terrific. We preferred long drives out over the open fields and prairies. We sang and shouted. We were “American Indians” who knew no better, and nobody cared or stopped us.

A few more days in the creaking, creeping train brought us to Tomsk, where we were sitting at a long table alone in the taproom, drinking vodka, when the door opened suddenly, and looking around we saw a man framed against the darkness of the night. He stared at us for a moment. Then suddenly both he and Willard exclaimed, “Well, I’ll be goddamned!” It was an old friend of Willard’s, a journalist who’d been doing Siberia from the opposite direction. He’d left Vladivostok many weeks before, coming partly by train, as the road was under construction from both terminals, then by horses. He told us the three hundred miles at the eastern end was finished and in operation. We drank vodka until nearly dawn and staggered up to bed. He was gone when we got up next day.

On the whole Willard and I decided that Siberia was not awfully exciting. What we saw of it was mostly flat as a pancake, with miles of watermelon fields often extending to the horizon. How they ate all those melons, I can’t imagine. We used to dig a hole, scoop out the best meat in the center, and throw the carcasses out the window. The train guard caught and stopped us. Section hands were working along the road, and even at only twenty miles an hour, he told us, a big watermelon might knock a man out if it hit him on the head.

The soil seemed good — for raising melons — and land could be bought at fifty cents an acre, but we didn’t invest. The truth is we didn’t care much for Siberia. We probably hadn’t seen enough, but we’d at least seen all we wanted. On the trip back, we found a nice, first-class compartment marked “Ladies”, Since there were no ladies on the train, we moved into it. The amiable conductor made no objection, but when we reached Omsk an “incident” occurred, in which we (and our letter from Prince Hilkorff) were worsted by some gentlemen of the Russian High Command. As soon as our train had stopped, two soldiers began throwing luggage into our ladies’ compartment, regardless of our protests. We began throwing it out of the windows as fast as it came in through the door — and then locked the door. In a few minutes there was a sharp pounding. It was our old friend, the stationmaster who had saved us from being bitten to death by bugs, but now he was accompanied by a miniature army. It consisted of an escort of gendarmes, two petty officers, and two impressive generals in long gray coats with full insignia. The station- master said in German,

“This compartment is for ladies, and you gentlemen must ’raus”.

“But are these generals ladies?” we asked, and refused to vacate.

The captain of gendarmes now stepped forward and said something to us, very politely, in Russian. “What’s he say?” we asked the stationmaster. “He says he would regret profoundly the necessity of putting you under arrest”.

We produced our magic letter from Prince Hilkorff and the Ministry of Railways. The gendarme captain read it, bowed again, and said something, even more politely than before. The stationmaster again obligingly translated. “He says it’s very nice indeed that you have a letter from His Highness — but that you have to ’raus mit”.

After we were out and the generals, who were no ladies either, installed, the stationmaster flipped over the placard, so that it now read “Reserved”. The generals bowed to us, and the stationmaster whispered philosophically, “I am sorry for you — but you see, the Little White Father and Prince

Hilkorff live far away in St. Petersburg, while those two generals live here in Omsk, and I have to live here with them."

Wood says that he did not see his friend Frank Willard again until some six or seven years later, in America. He was sitting in his laboratory one day, when the telephone rang. His account continues:

“Hello, Bobbie”, said a husky voice. “Who’s speaking?” I replied. “Frank”, said the voice convincingly. “Frank who?” I asked. “Frank”, he repeated. “Doan you know ole Frank’s voice, ole Frank Willard?” “For the love of Mike”, I said, “where are you?” “Here in telephone shentry box, Union Shtation. Say, Bobbie, you got any ’bjection my singin’ lil’ shong?” “No”, I said, “if your door is shut”. Then came, in a wailing voice of despair, pitched in a high key, “All I want is fifty million dollash”. Pause. Then, “Shay, Bobbie, I got interesting fren’ with me — going to bring him up — Joe Dollard, bigges’ safe-cracker ’n bank-robber all time. Scotland Yard after him five years. How I get to you?” I gave him directions and hung up as he commenced again, “Shay, Bobbie, you got any ’bjection my singin’…"

In about fifteen minutes they arrived. Mr. Dollard did not look like the pictures of bank-robbers in Mr. Hoover’s F.B.I. magazine. A man slightly gray, well past middle life, he looked more an old and trusted paying teller in a bank than a bank’s safe-opener. Willard had a bottle, and we all had a “lil’ drink”, as he said, out of three small laboratory beaker glasses. We talked awhile of old times, Mr. Dollard listening respectfully but slightly bored, and then, having business elsewhere, he excused himself in a very dignified manner and departed.

Frank told me that he had come to Baltimore at the request of Mr. Leonor F. Loree, then president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Mr. Loree wanted to employ him, disguised as a tramp, to test the efficiency and loyalty of his railroad detectives; he was to be the house guest of Mr. Loree, but had been on a jag for ten days, and could we take him in for the night as he was broke — while he sobered up for his visit? He talked quite normally, if permitted to sing the opening bar of his “lil’ song” at intervals. This seemed to relieve the strain of pretending sobriety, as a slight cough will relieve a long- endured tickling of the throat in a theater. So I took him along in my car to the house. Gertrude was out. Frank had evidently slept in his clothes and was apparently wearing the perspiration that he was born with, as Gertrude once said of a Spanish lady in Mexico who was entertaining her at tea. So I filled the bathtub full of hot water, and suggested a nice warm soak before dinner. Hearing nothing from him for half an hour, I tried the door, which opened disclosing Bacchus asleep in the tub. I woke him by turning on the cold water.

In the course of half an hour he appeared spick and span and in excellent humor. He began by reciting some of his recent adventures and showed not the slightest sign of his spree. We listened entranced, for he was a brilliant talker. Finally he slumped slightly in his chair and turning to Gertrude said, with a rather silly smile, “Mrs. Wood, would you have ’n’ objection to my singin’ a lil’ song?” “Why, no, Mr. Willard, I’d be delighted to have you”. Then he really relaxed and his voice came out strong and clear like that of a drunken sailor: “All — I — wan’ — is — fifty — million — dollash!” He paused, blinked once or twice, and resumed the conversation where he had left off, as if nothing had occurred.

Gertrude had telephoned for a thick steak and a bottle of Major Grey’s Indian chutney, and dinner was announced. There was a large dish of Hamburg black grapes between the candles on the table, and Willard, refusing all other nourishment, ate them slowly one by one as he talked, until, like the Walrus and Carpenter with the Looking-Glass oysters, he’d eaten every one. After dinner we listened enthralled to the story of his travels in Afghanistan, where he walked over the celebrated Khyber Pass into India. It was two o’clock before we even thought of bed. He passed out of our hands the next day and we never saw him again.

His end was very tragic. He contracted pneumonia in Chicago, locked himself up in a room in a cheap hotel, with a few bottles of self-prescribed “medicine”, and only shouted “No — keep out”, when the maid knocked at the door. He had been dead twenty-four hours when the door was unlocked from the outside.

In the autumn of 1896, the Woods returned to America with their two children growing out of babyhood and the German Kinderfrau whom they couldn’t bear to leave behind. They spent the winter at his mother’s house in Jamaica Plain, while Robert continued his independent research in the laboratories at M. I. T. Professor Charles Cross of the Physics Department had extended this courtesy and given him a laboratory. There he continued his work on vacuum-tube discharges. By the next spring (1897) successful negotiations were under way for an instructorship at the University of Wisconsin.

The Wood family spent the summer at Cataumet, Massachusetts, on Buzzards Bay. Wood’s cousin, Bradley Davis, was working at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, within bicycling distance, and some old friends owned a summer cottage there. Wood says he was taken on as outboard ballast by the owners of one of the small racing boats that took part in all the Corinthian yacht club races; he hugely enjoyed the jockeying for a start, which was a new experience for him, though he had sailed a small boat all his life. While in bathing one day he happened to invert a wooden pail over his head, and holding it down on his shoulders with his hands and kicking with his feet, amused the children by the sight of an animated pail moving along by itself. Next day he cut a rectangular hole in one side, set a piece of plate glass in it for a window, and put forty pounds of lead boat ballast around the rim. This weight held the bucket down over the head when filled with air and submerged in water, and enabled the wearer to sink comfortably to the bottom. Then, antedating Beebe, they connected the bucket to a bicycle pump (operated on a rowboat) with twenty feet of rubber tubing, and stayed under water as long as they liked, viewing the fish, seaweed, and submarine landscape.

STUDENT IN BERLIN: Wood in the private laboratory he rigged up in the attic of the University of Berlin laboratory.

LILIENTHAL’S LAST FLIGHT: A photograph made by Wood in 1896 of the last successful flight of Otto Lilienthal, Germany’s great pioneer glider. On his next attempt the following day – Wood was invited to attend but couldn’t – Lilienthal was killed.