The private life of Nikola Tesla. Robert and Katharine Johnson. Mark Twain. Kipling. Paderewski. Dvorak

The glory of a remarkable scientist quickly spread through New York, and soon across the country. In the shortest time Tesla became one of the most popular people in America. With the usual sensation for this country, newspapers against Tesla's will unrestrainedly advertised his works, often distorting their scientific content. But advertising was doing its job: crowds of people were waiting for Tesla to leave the hotel, gathered at the door of his laboratory. There was no way to hide from the machines of ubiquitous and unceremonious photo reporters and journalists demanding an interview, eagerly catching every word about the personal life of the "genius hermit", or, as it was sometimes called newspapers, a "lone wolf."

Even those who have seen the kinds of newspaper people seemed to be incomprehensible and mysterious. It turned out that Tesla, in complete solitude, without relatives and relatives, still lives in the hotel.

Having reached material security, he still worked round the clock, spending no more than four to five hours sleep. No one knew anything authentic about Tesla's laboratory, from the scientist's assistants it was impossible to extract a single superfluous word about the details of the ongoing research. The hoteliers also could tell a little about the life of Tesla, who usually occupied one of the best rooms in the upper floors, with windows overlooking the noisy streets of the city. None of the attendants were allowed to enter his room without a special call.

He is tall, slender, with blue eyes of the Slav and blue-black hair, dressed in taste, with a cylinder and gray suede gloves, with an unchanged cane in his hand, he always appears at the same time in the dining room of the Delmonico Hotel, the most fashionable in NYC.

He always dined alone, at the same table, hidden from the eyes of other visitors. Preparing dinner for a special, self-made menu, table setting and watching Tesla's food for more than twenty years was the responsibility of the same headwaiter. Often Tesla himself invented dishes for himself. To finally disaccustom from the coffee, in the detrimental effect of which on the work capacity of his body, he was convinced in his student years, the scientist ordered to put on a table at dinner a glass of fragrant black coffee, but never drank it. Gradually, it began to cause in him such disgust that it ensured from the danger of being tempted and violated the rule established for himself.

At one time, Tesla began inviting his close friends and good acquaintances to dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. At these dinners, exquisite and full of sparkling fun, there were outstanding figures of literature, art, science. Tesla became the center around which people of various interests and interests were grouped. His brilliant wit, soft subtle humor, accurate comments and statements earned him many friends. Tesla's famous dinners were spoken not only in New York, but also in Washington, Philadelphia and other cities-everywhere they knew the original scientist, who was known as an eccentric and unmercenious.

But the meals given by Tesla at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel were not a whim of a snob. Almost each of them ended with a trip to the laboratory, Fifth Avenue, where the scientist in an accessible form told about his experiments, their significance for science and, most importantly, for future industrial use. Always and in everything his first thought was to turn his discoveries for the benefit of mankind, to facilitate the life of the common man. And when, during or after a dinner, Tesla managed to draw attention to his work, he became the most eloquent popularizer, with an inspirational and unforgettable story about his dear, beloved, who became, as it were, the inherent electricity from him.

At these moments, he seemed charged to the highest potential and, scattering entire cascades of brilliant, advanced thoughts, talked about the extraordinary devices of the future, machines, apparatus, the phenomena of nature, still unexplained, but waiting for his researcher, and the listeners could not but get the enthusiasm of this Passionately carried away by his ideas of genius, following him into the future with his mind's eye. Among the dinner visitors there were many industrialists and financiers who could fully provide Tesla's materially researched research. But none of them did it ¹¹ . All his experiments, often requiring large sums of money, the scientist carried out only at his own expense.

Despite his loneliness, Tesla maintained constant contacts with his compatriots, often visited families in need, helping as soon as possible immigrants from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro. They came to him not only for money, but for advice, often invited as an intermediary, whose opinion was unquestionable, for resolving disputes and disagreements.

The city was told a lot of stories about the eccentric scientist, about his sometimes completely unexpected and incomprehensible acts. But a more attentive observer could always find in everything that Tesla did, the manifestation of his extraordinary humanity, kindness, justice and attention to people. Once in Tesla's room at the Waldorf-Astoretia hotel, a middle-aged Serb appeared and asked for money to go to Chicago, as he feared revenge from an unjustly offended neighbor. Tesla did not deny him money for the journey, but said:

"You can run away from the person you offended, but not from punishment for your offense," and with these words he began to "poke dust out of the trousers" of the visitor that he soon asked for mercy.

After the promise never to repeat the done, the unlucky guest received from Tesla a fair amount for the journey and for the device with the family in the new place. He left the hotel quite content with a fair "science."

The next day, Tesla came to the injured neighbor, gave him the apology of the offender and also provided serious financial assistance, which came very handy.

Tesla often invited the Serbian singer-guslar Perunovich to himself-and for a long time he listened to Serbian songs accompanied by a simple folk instrument.

Tesla loved the poems of the outstanding Serbian poet, progressive public figure and translator in the Serbian language of Pushkin, Lermontov, Shakespeare, Goethe, Arany, Petofi and the eastern poets of Iovan Zmai. The scientist often repeated the well-aimed, poignant lines of this poet:

Honor does not buy gold,

Honest honor will not yield,

Honor is necessary to him as light.

Glad to sell her dishonorable,

But, as everyone knows,

Honest honor does not exist.

Enthusiasm for poetry Tesla retained throughout his life. The note book with which he came to America was constantly replenished, and somehow he translated and published with his foreword a collection of poems by Serbian poets with the help of his friend, American poet-democrat and editor of Century Magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson. Soon Johnson was so carried away by the study of folk poetry, literature and the history of Serbia that he knew them no worse than Tesla himself. In the subsequent correspondence between Tesla and Johnson, which lasted more than forty years, the American poet invariably subscribed to "Luka Filipov", after the name of the main character of the eponymous poem I. Zmay. In the house of Robert and Katarin Johnson and their daughter Agnes Golden Tesla met with many outstanding people. Some of them specially visited the Johnson house to get acquainted with Tesla. The following letter has survived, addressed to the laboratory on Fifth Avenue:

"Dear Tesla, Kipling has just arrived in the city and should have dinner with us next Tuesday ... Will not you agree to dine with us and if so, at what time?" Kipling expressed the desire to meet with you, and I hope that You will be very pleased to get acquainted with him, since he is one of those who have not yet managed to deteriorate.Please, respond as soon as possible, if you can, even through the applicant of this letter and bring pleasure to Mrs. Filipova and your faithful Luka. " The meeting with Rudyard Kipling, who visited America already a famous writer after many years of life in India, did not remain without trace. Tesla was keenly interested in the writer, whose stories amazed with the freshness of artistic images, magnificent paintings of India's nature.

Kipling, in turn, was interested in the details of experiments on radiotelegraphy.

In one of the subsequent meetings, Tesla developed before Kipling his thoughts about the need for rapprochement of peoples, the elimination of disunity between them, and the wide mutual exchange of information. He passionately argued to Kipling that technical inventions would help to achieve this and the time would come when precisely their enormous power would become a reliable obstacle to the emergence of wars.

Did not these conversations with Tesla prompt Kipling on the ideas he developed in the article "Radio" and especially in the science fiction novel "Under the cover of night"? Written back in the days of the first flights of the Wright brothers, it contains the foresight of some modern achievements of aviation. In the future, Kipling suggested, aviation will unite the world firmly, wars will remain in the distant past, and all major world problems will be solved by the Bureau of Aviation Administration. But the unification of the world must happen ... under the aegis of the British Empire. In this short story Kipling, the colonizer, was fully revealed.

Tesla's humanistic dreams of peaceful unification of people through radio communication and extensive information exchange have nothing to do with these ideas of Kipling.

One day, Katharine Johnson met Tesla particularly briskly.

"I prepared a surprise for you." I hope you will be happy with the new acquaintance. - And, having introduced Tesla into the living room, she introduced him to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), who shortly before published his sensational novel "The Yankees at the Court of King Arthur."

You can understand the feelings of a scientist when meeting a writer whose works brought him so much joy in childhood, spent in the native gorges of Velebit! From the date of his acquaintance and until his death in 1910, Samuel Clemens remained a sincere and intimate friend of Nikola Tesla.

In 1891 in the living room Johnson appeared Polish pianist, famous for his performance of the music of Chopin - Ignacy Paderewski. The famous musician in a conversation with the Johnson said: - The person with whom I most like to meet this time is Nikola Tesla. Paderewski was delighted when he learned from Agnes that the "illustrious lychanin" would be in the Johnson house that evening. A few hours later Tesla listened with great pleasure to the pianist's virtuosic play.

Another great musician, Antonin Dvorak, was also proud of Tesla, who arrived at the end of 1891 from St. Petersburg to New York and soon became the director of the National Conservatory of the United States. In the fates of the representatives of two Slavic peoples, moaning under the yoke of the monarchy of the Habsburgs, there was much in common. The Czech composer often visited his friend in his laboratory. Tesla, in turn, felt real pleasure at the sounds of Dvorak's Slavic symphonies. He was one of the first listeners of the 5th symphony ("From the New World"), finished in early 1893. "Music evokes in me the desire to create, it inspires, calls us to a beautiful future," Tesla said with a smile and added: "To the future, in which, finally, my dreams will be fully realized, because they are also partly inspired by music.

Indeed, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, music, like works of other kinds of art, played a big role in Tesla's work. Pictures of great artists, good music, poetry always brought him into genuine delight.

Close friends of the scientist wrote later that Nikola Tesla had a kind, sympathetic heart. He was very sensitive to someone else's grief and is able to sincerely cry over the fate of the heroes of the opera "Jacobinets". But with people who aroused antipathy in him or were too persistently looking for his location, he remained unapproachably cold.