The Northern Lights, page 24
Dear Friend,
From the Fleurent Delicatessen please buy:
Colonial Ware marmalade, unsalted butter from Europe, milk—very important, it comes from a Hygienic dairy in Hungary, cream, slow-cooked chicken, biscuits. There are many things that you will need to buy for the house, I shall tell you where to find them. I have been looking for a servant for you and have written to Bertha Ryman, who is a maid at the Hotel Continental. She is efficient and not too pretty, therefore not too much of a temptation for three Don Juans! You can buy a bath at Gastin’s, 11 Ville Nationale. For your kind and friendly letter I thank you with all my heart. You cannot believe how glad I am to be with you. Come briefly at 7 p.m. to see me. I am not very well but will try to get better soon.
With my heart’s friendship,
Hella Spandonides
In early May Hella and Birkeland made their first excursion out of Helwan together, to the Khan el-Khalili market in Cairo to buy furniture for the house. Hella took Birkeland to the famous El Mahal el Kadeem, “the Old Shop,” that had been a caravanserai built, legend had it, by Saladin as a place for traders to meet and rest. In its lofty halls and balconies men could sit and smoke shisha, do business or play cards, eat, sleep, wash, and pray. There they would water their horses and camels before the long treks between oases, across the deserts of Africa to distant trading centers—Omdurman, Marrakesh, St. Catherine and Medina. Now the grand old building was home to Hazem Moustafa Nono & Brothers who bought any object, modern or antique, that had once been desired in the hope that it would be wanted again one day. Narrow walkways ran through towering piles of wardrobes, washstands, lamp bases, chairs, bathtubs, hatstands, umbrella stands, sheaves of walking-sticks, picture frames, screens, chaise longues, vases, dinner sets, small statues, inkstands, clocks of every dimension (though none working), and much else that was hidden behind bedsteads or under the thick layer of dust that coated every object, rather dimming the riot of color that would otherwise have startled the eye.
Birkeland bought several pieces of furniture, as he had decided to stay in Helwan for at least two more years. The location was good for observing the Zodiacal Light and he was becoming attached to Hella. They shared many characteristics. She, like him, was driven by her work and, despite her illness, had conducted grueling tours across Europe, was a respected teacher at Athens’ first music school, and was retraining her voice to professional level. She had not married or had children in order to concentrate on the career that, she claimed, kept her sane and distracted her from her illness. Although she knew little about science, she had shown a passionate interest in Birkeland’s researches, accompanying him onto the roof of his house to learn the names of the constellations and to hear his theories about the Northern Lights, the Zodiacal Light, and the formation of the solar system. She had started to learn basic mathematics in order to understand Birkeland’s work better and began to turn down requests to perform at concerts that she received from her agent in Athens—on grounds of health and out of a desire to stay with her new friend.
Birkeland wrote to Amund Helland:
I am experiencing my life’s greatest adventure here although its character is still a hundred times more diffuse than the Zodiacal Light. But what I have experienced is incredible.
On the evenings when bright moonlight ruined the possibility of observing the Zodiacal Light, Birkeland would take long walks with Hella to the edge of the desert or through the town, to drink coffee and talk. On clear days Birkeland and Karl would leave Skolem to work on his mathematical models with the new photocell results, to venture alone into the desert. They would set off soon after lunch, traveling as far south as they could by dusk, which fell at around 5 p.m., to escape the soft light that could be seen above Cairo, thirty kilometers to the north. Although it was only April, the desert around Helwan reached 30 degrees Celsius at noon and both men suffered badly with their fair Nordic skins. After several of these excursions, they found a good location opposite the four pyramids at Dahshur. They would drive beside the Nile until the massive shapes of the Bent and the Red pyramids, built by Pharaoh Sneferu nearly four thousand years before, were behind them. A track up to their left led to a small area of ancient tombs that had been partially excavated. Their entrances served as shelter from the wind and dust for the magnetic recording equipment. During these nights, Devik and Birkeland grew yet closer, the professor always referring to Karl in his articles as “Devik, my indefatigable assistant and friend.”
They also found evidence using the magnetometers that there were very slight variations in the magnetic field during appearances of the Zodiacal Light. To confirm his hypothesis that electron radiation caused at least some of these variations, Birkeland continued his work at the observatory with Knox-Shaw, using the new photocell equipment. Despite registering subtle variations, Birkeland could not convince Knox-Shaw that they were emissions from the sun rather than changes in the atmosphere of the Earth. The two men were working on the same experiments for different ends— Knox-Shaw to pursue his interest in the penetration of ultraviolet light through the Earth’s atmosphere from star nebulae and Birkeland to gather evidence for his cosmogony. In June, Birkeland decided to send Devik to Salisbury, in Rhodesia, to make simultaneous observations of the Zodiacal Light from a location as far south of the equator as Helwan was north. By observing the Light from two locations too far distant to share the same weather or atmospheric conditions, he hoped to record similar variations in the Light and thereby prove that atmospheric effects could not cause them.
Devik had been gone only a fortnight when news was received in Egypt that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary and his wife had been assassinated on 28 June in Sarajevo. Birkeland immediately recalled how the assassination of the Empress of Austria in 1898 had been preceded by the dramatic displays of red Northern Lights across Europe. Few political ramifications had followed that grisly event, and Birkeland assumed the consequences of these murders, too, would be resolved diplomatically between the countries involved. Hella was more distressed by the news, understanding better than her new friend the unsettled situation in the Balkans. She decided she could not delay her departure any longer and told Birkeland that she planned to leave Helwan to travel to a sanatorium in Germany, as Egypt was too hot for her in the summer. In Europe she would take singing lessons and give concerts, then take a cure in the beautiful mountains of Thessaly in Greece, and return to Helwan in late September for the winter. They arranged a meeting in Berlin in late summer and, three weeks after hearing of the assassination, Hella took the train to Alexandria to board a steamship for Europe. Before leaving, she wrote a note to Birkeland, explaining her desire to buy a house upon her return where she wanted him to have a room as she looked forward to the day that they could live together.
Birkeland and Skolem pored over the news reports that arrived in Egypt after Hella had left. Nearly a month after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, it seemed a political crisis was indeed brewing in its wake. Isolated from Norway, both men prayed that there would not be a major conflict, but on 2 August the German ambassador delivered a declaration of war on Russia. Two days later Great Britain declared war on Germany. The following day Austria declared war on Russia, and Great Britain and France declared war on Austria on 12 August. The Serbians, perpetrators of the original crime, had seemingly been forgotten. Birkeland and Skolem were left horrified that such a conflagration could have arisen from a single act of violence they had all but dismissed.
Skolem left immediately for Norway before it became too difficult to travel but Birkeland chose to stay. He had little to return to and in Egypt his work was progressing; he also had the hope that Hella would manage to return in the autumn. After Skolem’s departure, Birkeland was alone. He and Devik sent messages by telegram concerning observation times, but otherwise Birkeland had only his work for company. The declaration of war was the start of his own, inexorable slide into tragedy.
AFTER WAR was declared, Egypt was pronounced a British protectorate. The tranquil town of Helwan filled with British and Egyptian soldiers and Cairo, already a teeming city, was swollen with the personnel and paraphernalia of war. Birkeland made regular trips to the city to visit his friends at the Danish consulate, the Eriksens, and their physician, Dr. Louis Roeder, whom they recommended to Birkeland when he complained of kidney pains and other ailments. The doctor’s surgery was in an impressive block of apartments on the Sharia el Dine, built by the khedive for those of his relatives who could no longer afford to live in palaces, or chose not to. Glamorous residents walked through the courtyard of the building, traveling in gilded lifts to their apartments or passing into the street to their waiting chauffeurs. Roeder, doctor to many of them, as well as to the Scandinavians in Egypt, was a competent and discreet professional, but perhaps too accommodating of his patients’ neuroses. He gave Birkeland prescriptions for veronal and other medications to alleviate his symptoms, without making any attempt to understand the underlying cause of his frequent maladies. Consequently, Birkeland spent a great deal on medication but his health improved very little. In Cairo, he stayed at Shepheard’s Hotel, where the famous terrace was now crammed with officers from the British HQ, including T. E. Lawrence, later known as Lawrence of Arabia. Drunken soldiers wove through the prostitute district. Thousands of posters, signed by General Allenby, whose name in Arabic was Allah-Naby, “Prophet of God,” called upon the fellahin to volunteer. The posters, thus authorized, would have been a persuasive invitation had the fellahin not been asked to fight for the British Protectorate of Egypt, “protectorate” in Arabic being translated as himaya or “degradation.”
The war was beginning to affect Birkeland’s research, as he noted in The Cairo Scientific Journal:
We have at different times tried to make simultaneous registrations of the Zodiacal Light from two distant stations. My friend and indefatigable assistant, Mr. Devik, has gone three times to Aswan and Salisbury while I was working in Helwan. But owing to celestial, terrestrial, and even military difficulties, we have not succeeded so well as we want to do, so have to continue.
Without Hella and Skolem and with Devik away in Aswan or Salisbury, Birkeland was lonely but the Eriksens became good friends, and he relied on work to fill his long days. He wrote regularly to Hella and received replies every fortnight or so.
16 July 1914
Dear Friend,
I have the pleasure of answering your lovely letter, that everything goes well and smoothly. My health is almost better here than in Egypt, I sing every day and the voice is returning. The mathematics keeps less pace, but I still have hope there as well! My work is my all; it compensates me for everything that I have ever sacrificed. I have been to the opera only once, to see “Elektra,” but it made up for everything that you and I missed during the first performance.
I miss our long, open-air walks, full of harmony. I await with anticipation the results of your work and look forward to the time that I will be able to live with you. My plan is to come to Egypt in September.
Good work. Always in faithful friendship,
Your H. S.
The war, however, prevented their planned meeting in Berlin.
Devik, meanwhile, visited Helwan every three or four months throughout 1914 and 1915 and the tireless efforts to record the elusive phenomenon of the Zodiacal Light continued. Birkeland’s theoretical models of the density of the Zodiacal Light had been well received on their publication in The Cairo Scientific Journal, earning praise even from Schuster and the Royal Society:
The Council of the Royal Society at its meeting held this afternoon passed a resolution expressing their sense of the importance of the experiments, which Professor Kr. Birkeland of Christiania has undertaken to investigate the nature of the Zodiacal Light. At the same time, they express the hope that all facilities will be given to Professor Birkeland in order to enable him to carry his experiments to a successful conclusion.
Arthur Schuster
Secretary of the Royal Society, Burlington House,
London W.
15 October 1914
Birkeland kept the letter carefully, aware that he might need it should the British army commandeer the Helwan observatory for military operations. He was gratified to receive an endorsement from the Royal Society, after a lifetime of repudiation, hoping this might be a turning point in his relations with the British scientific establishment. If he could prove his ideas about the Zodiacal Light, perhaps at last they would acknowledge his wider theories about the influence of electromagnetic forces in the solar system, or at least his solution to the mystery of the Northern Lights.
Hella wrote to Birkeland that she would have to delay her arrival in Egypt as she was needed to perform charity concerts for refugees in the Athens Royal Theatre and possibly in Paris as well. She sent him a program of the music she was to play and wished that he could be there to hear it. Birkeland also wanted to see her and asked her to find out whether the coast between Sparta and Navarino would be suitable for observations. She replied that there was nowhere to stay there and in a tent they would freeze. He should remain in Egypt, as she would soon return.
By the end of the year Birkeland was becoming increasingly homesick and ill. He wrote to his colleague and friend at the University of Christiania, Ellen Gleditsch:
12 November 1914
I have been ill for seven days with “sandfly fever.” I thought I was going to die several times and although I am now much better, I am still not back on my feet. Apparently, a small mosquito is blown in from the desert but it particularly attacks people with sensitive nerves, as you know I have. In Egypt, people lie in the sun to cure themselves and I was thinking of inventing a “solar blanket” impregnated with “phosphorer liquende,” a radioactive material that will imitate the effect of the sun for those living in colder climes. What do you think?
Norway is the most beautiful country in the world if you don’t have to spend winter there. Summer here is even worse for my health than winter there . . .
Despite his ailments, Birkeland was constantly having new ideas for inventions. At Christmas 1915 he sent a warm letter to Amund Helland, accompanied by a box of Turkish caviar, having cajoled the recipe out of an Egyptian acquaintance, and suggested the idea of making caviar out of cod roe in Norway. Helland’s response, received several weeks later due to the disrupted postal services, was positive. He promised to give the caviar and the recipe to a friend in the fisheries industry. In the meantime, Birkeland and Ellen Gleditsch had taken out a patent for the “solar blanket,” and Birkeland also had plans for new telephone designs. His insomniac nights were always productive, even if his ideas were becoming increasingly unusual.
Sometimes disturbing news from home caused Birkeland to regret that he was not there to defend his interests. After his efforts to gain the Nobel Prize, Eyde was now trying to write Birkeland out of the history of Norsk Hydro and the development of the furnace. A pair of books were published in Norway and Denmark in early 1915 called Lives of the Inventors in which the biographies of inventors of the past few hundred years were summarized. Richard Birkeland sent the entry on Birkeland and Eyde to his cousin, who was incensed by its contents.
[ . . . ] In 1905, Eyde established “The Norwegian HydroElectric Nitrogen Company.” As director, he was responsible not only for the technical development of the method, but also the administration and economical management of the company as well as the others based on this industry.
Eyde was quoted as saying that the project was a success because he used young engineers with no experience, thus ignoring Birkeland’s role and dramatically undervaluing his expertise. The author, Per Wendelbo, had given the text to Eyde to make any corrections required, but had not sent it to Birkeland. Eyde had a free hand to present his own version of events and he made full use of it. Birkeland decided not to let the matter stand and wrote an open letter to Aftenposten, which was published on 28 June 1915.
[ . . . ] The author’s exposition is so incomplete that it becomes entirely misleading and I thus, regrettably, have to make objections.
The core of our invention was created through tedious and persistent experimental work over several years under my leadership. Eyde was mainly occupied with administration work: we were both directors of the Nitrogen Company. This is not mentioned with one single line. On the contrary, it is said the invention was due to the lack of experience! The fact is, very few inventions have been made with more experimental experience than the Norwegian method for nitrogen production . . . Despite the fact our field was partly new, we managed to proceed at the high speed Eyde required.
For a long time I fought, without noticeable support, for my opinion that larger ovens were the way to defeat the new Baden oven. Had I given up, only German nitrogen ovens would be burning in Norway today and Eyde, at best, would be sitting as director of a German industry in our country.
I hope you understand that my remarks are necessary when having the future in mind.
Yours sincerely, Kr. Birkeland
The author promised to make changes to the account should the book be republished, but it never was.
Toward the end of 1915 Birkeland realized that Hella was not going to return to Egypt that winter, so he decided to purchase a house himself. When Devik returned from Rhodesia, they divided their time between comparing their drawings and photocell recordings of the Zodiacal Light and looking for a villa on the edge of the desert that they could make a permanent home containing a well-equipped laboratory, an observatory, and a purpose-built darkroom.
If they stayed up at night to observe the sky, Devik would sleep until lunchtime, waking to an impatient Birkeland, who wanted him to work at the same hectic pace as he himself did. Birkeland had become more short-tempered and suspicious since Devik had last seen him, sleeping even less than before and drinking large quantities of coffee and whisky. In his worst moods, he would accuse his favorite assistant of being deliberately unhelpful and difficult. Devik saw that the professor’s nerves were frayed by the war and its effect on his work and personal life.
