THE EXISTENCE of Pierre and Marie might have been altogether happy if they had been able to devote their strength to the impassioned struggle with nature in their poor laboratory.
Unfortunately, they had to engage in other struggles, from which they did not always emerge victorious.
For his salary of five hundred francs a month, Pierre gave a course of a hundred and twenty lessons a year at the School of Physics and directed the students’ experiments. This tiring instruction, over which he took great pains, was in addition to his research work. So long as the Curies had no children and Marie could manage the domestic work herself, five hundred francs covered the expense of the couple. But after Irène’s birth the cost of a servant and a nurse made heavy inroads on the budget. First Pierre and then Marie went on the warpath: new resources had to be found.
There are few more distressing things than the awkward and unhappy attempts of these superior beings to assure themselves the two or three thousand francs a year that they needed. The problem was not simply to find some subordinate work which would cover the deficit. Pierre Curie, as we know, considered scientific research as a vital necessity. It was more indispensable to him to work in the laboratory—or in the shed, rather, as there was no laboratory—than to eat or sleep. But his work in the school took up the greater part of his time. Rather than add other obligations to those he already possessed, the ideal would have been to lighten his task. But money was needed. What could he do?
The solution was simple—too simple. If Pierre were named professor at the Sorbonne, a post for which his work obviously fitted him, he would receive ten thousand francs a year, he would give fewer hours of lessons than at the school, and his scientific knowledge would enrich the students and increase the prestige of the university. And if the use of a laboratory were added to these duties, Pierre Curie would have nothing further to ask of fate. His humble ambition was contained in these words: a professor’s chair for earning his living and teaching young physicists: a laboratory for work. A laboratory with all that was so cruelly missing from the shed: electrical and technical equipment, room for some assistants, a little heat in winter.…
Wild demands, overambitious dreams! Pierre was to obtain the post of professor only in 1904, after the whole world had acclaimed his worth. The laboratory was never to be accorded him. Death is quicker than public officials to claim great men.
The fact was that Pierre, so beautifully made for puzzling out mysterious phenomena and for the subtle struggle against hostile matter, was awkwardness itself when it came to canvassing for a place. His first disadvantage was that he had genius, which arouses secret, implacable bitterness in the competitions of personalities. He knew nothing about underhand methods or combinations. His most legitimate qualifications were of no use to him: he did not know how to make them valued.
Always ready to efface himself before his friends or even before his rivals, he was what they call a “wretchedly bad candidate” [Henri Poincaré was to write of him, adding]: But in our democracy, candidates are not what we most lack.
In 1898, a chair of physical chemistry fell vacant at the Sorbonne and Pierre Curie decided to ask for it. In equity his nomination should have been assured. But he had not gone through either the normal or the polytechnic school, and was deprived of the decisive support given by those institutions to their former students. Moreover, the discoveries he had been publishing for the past fifteen years were not “exactly” in the realm of physical chemistry, certain captious professors asserted.… His candidature was rejected.
We are beaten [one of his partisans, Professor Friedel, wrote to him] and I should be left with nothing but regret for having encouraged you in such an unsuccessful candidature if the discussion had not been much more favorable than the vote. But in spite of the efforts of Lippmann, Bouty, Pellat and myself, in spite of the eulogies your work elicited even from your opponents, what can be done against a normal-school man and against the prejudices of mathematicians?
The fact that “the discussion had been favorable” to Pierre was a purely platonic compensation. No post of interest was free for months, and the Curies, absorbed by their great work on radium, preferred to muddle along rather than to waste their time further in antechambers. They made the best of a bad job and did not complain. Five hundred francs, after all, was not abject poverty. Life could be managed … badly.
Marie to Joseph Sklodovski, March 19, 1899:
We have to be very careful and my husband’s salary is not quite enough for us to live on, but up to now we have had some unexpected extra resources every year, which keeps us from having a deficit.
I hope in any case that my husband and I can soon find steady work. Then we cannot only make both ends meet, but can also make some savings to ensure the future of our child. I only want to pass my doctor’s examination before looking for work. At the moment we have so much work with our new metals that I cannot prepare my doctorate. It is based on this work, it is true, but it requires extra study which I cannot take up actually.
Our health is good. My husband no longer suffers as much from rheumatism since he has been on a diet consisting chiefly of milk, eggs and vegetables, doing without wine and red meat and drinking a great deal of water. I am very well, I don’t cough at all, and I have nothing the matter with my lungs, as has been shown by medical examination and several analyses of sputum.
Irène is developing normally. I weaned her at eighteen months, but naturally I had been giving her milk soups for a long time. Now I feed her on such soups and on fresh eggs “straight from the hen”!
HENRI BECQUEREL the First Scientist to Observe the Phenomenon of Radioactivity. (Illustration Credit 14.1)
PIERRE AND MARIE CURIE with the Bicycles on Which, During Their Early Married Life, They Roamed the Roads of France Together. (Illustration Credit 14.2)
1900 … In the account book the expenses were rising, passing the income. Old Dr Curie lived with his son now, and to lodge the household—five persons including a servant—Marie had rented the house in the Boulevard Kellermann: fourteen hundred francs’ rent. Driven by necessity, Pierre asked for and obtained a place as tutor in the Polytechnic School. He was to receive two thousand five hundred francs a year for this drudgery.
Suddenly there came an unhoped-for offer—but not from France. The discovery of radium, without having reached the general public, was known by physicists. The University of Geneva was willing to make an exceptional effort to get a man and a woman whom it considered in the first rank of European scientists: the dean offered Pierre Curie a chair in physics, a salary of ten thousand francs, an allowance for residence, and the direction of a laboratory, “the appropriation for which will be increased by agreement with Professor Curie, and to which two assistants will be assigned. After an examination of the resources of the laboratory the collection of instruments of physics will be completed.” An official position was to be accorded to Marie in the same laboratory.
Facetious on such occasions, fate allowed itself to bestow what had been desired above all things—but with one small variation that made it impossible. If the heading on the generous letter from the “Republic and Canton of Geneva” had read “University of Paris” the Curie pair would have been overwhelmed with happiness.
The position in Geneva was offered to Pierre with so much cordiality and deference that on first impulse he accepted it. In July, he and Marie went to Switzerland and were given a warm welcome by their colleagues. But during the summer their scruples were aroused. Were they to take several months and consecrate them to the preparation of new and important teaching? To interrupt their research on radium, which was not easy to transport, and postpone their work on purification of the new substance? It was asking too much of these two scientists, two haunted ones.
Pierre Curie, sighing, sent off to Geneva a letter of excuses, thanks and resignation. He put the temptation of the easy way aside, and made up his mind to remain in Paris for the love of radium. Exchanging one task for another better paid, he left the Polytechnic School in October for a post teaching at the P.C.N.,* an annex of the Sorbonne in the Rue Cuvier. Marie, who wanted to do her share of work, put in her application for a professorship in the Higher Normal School for Girls, at Sèvres, near Versailles. She received a letter of appointment from the vice-rector, reading:
MADAME,
I have the honor to inform you that, on my recommendation, you are charged with the lectures in physics for the first and second year students of the Normal School at Sèvres for the school year 1900–1901.
Will you put yourself at the disposal of the directors from Monday next, 29th?
Here were two “successes.” The budget was balanced for a long time to come—and the Curies were burdened with an enormous increase of work at the exact moment when their experiments in radioactivity called for all their energy. The only position worthy of Pierre had been refused him: that of professor at the Sorbonne. But the authorities were only too willing to entrust this master with time-filling lessons of secondary importance.
M. and Mme Curie bent over their textbooks, invented subjects for problems, picked out experiments to make in class. Pierre now had charge of two courses of instruction and the experimental work of two series of students. Marie, impressed by her first steps in French teaching, took the very greatest pains to prepare her lectures and organize the experiments of the Sèvres girls. She renovated the methods, and developed such original lessons that Lucien Poincaré, rector of the university, was struck by them and congratulated the young woman. Marie did not know how to do things by halves.
But what energy was wasted, what hours stolen from their true work! Carrying a portfolio crammed with corrected “homework,” Marie made the journey to Sèvres several times a week, in a maddeningly slow tram which she sometimes awaited for half an hour at a time, standing on the pavement. Pierre scurried from the Rue Lhomond to the Rue Cuvier, where the P.C.N. was, and from the Rue Cuvier to the shed in the Rue Lhomond. Hardly had he begun an experiment when he had to leave his apparatus to go and question the beardless physicists of the schools.
He had hoped that a laboratory would be attached to his new post. A laboratory would have consoled him for everything. But at the P.C.N. he was given only two tiny rooms. The disappointment was so great that he overcame his horror of asking for things and tried to get a larger place to work in. No success.
Those who have made similar demands [Marie was to write] know the financial and administrative difficulties one runs into, and may remember the considerable number of official letters, of visits and requests which are indispensable if one is to obtain the slightest advantage. Pierre Curie was extremely tired and discouraged because of them.
The effort had an effect on the working power of the Curies and even upon their strength. Pierre, especially, felt such exhaustion that it became urgent to cut down the number of his “hours.” A chair of mineralogy fell vacant at the Sorbonne just then—a chair for which the scientist who had evolved decisive theories on crystalline physics was particularly qualified. He presented himself. His competitor obtained the chair.
“With great merit and even greater modesty,” Montaigne wrote, “one can remain unknown for a long time.”
Pierre Curie’s friends sought by all means to bring him a little nearer to that inaccessible place of professor. In 1902 Professor Mascart insisted on making Pierre present himself as a candidate for the Academy of Science. His election was certain and would be of great use afterward to his material position.
He hesitated, and then obeyed without pleasure. He found it hard to make the customary visits to the academicians, as required by a tradition which seemed to him stupid and humiliating. But the physics section of the Academy pronounced unanimously in his favor. He was touched by this and became a candidate. Duly coached by Mascart, he asked for an audience from each member of the illustrious company.
When fame had come, and journalists began to dig up striking anecdotes about the celebrated scientist, one of them was to write of Pierre Curie’s round of visits in May 1902 in the following terms:
… To climb stairs, ring, have himself announced, say why he had come—all this filled the candidate with shame in spite of himself; but what was worse, he had to set forth his honors, state the good opinion he had of himself, boast of his science and his work—which seemed to him beyond human power. Consequently he eulogized his opponent sincerely and at length, saying that M. Amagat was much better qualified than he, Curie, to enter the Institute.…
On the 9th of June the results of the election were published. Between Pierre Curie and M. Amagat, the academicians had chosen the latter.
Pierre announced the news thus to his intimate friend, Georges Gouy:
My dear friend, as you had foreseen, the election turned in favor of Amagat, who received 32 votes whereas I got 20 and Gernez 6.
I regret, when all is said, having lost time in paying visits for this brilliant result. The section had presented me at the head of the list unanimously, and I allowed them to go ahead.
… I tell you all this chatter because I know you rather like it, but do not believe that I am sensibly affected by these little happenings.
Your devoted PIERRE CURIE.
The new dean, Paul Appell—whose lessons Marie had listened to with ecstasy in the old days—was soon to attempt another means of serving Pierre’s interests. He knew Curie’s uncompromising nature and prepared the way:
Paul Appell to Pierre Curie:
The Ministry has asked me to propose names for the Legion of Honor. You must be on my list. I ask you as a service to the faculty to allow yourself to be named. I realize that the decoration has no interest for a man of your worth, but I intend to propose the men of most merit in the faculty, those who have most distinguished themselves by their discoveries and their work. It is one way of making them known to the Minister and showing how we work at the Sorbonne. If you are named, you may wear or not wear your decoration, as it may please you, naturally—but I ask of you to let me propose you.
Excuse me, dear colleague, for annoying you like this, and believe me your cordially devoted
PAUL APPELL.
Paul Appell to Marie Curie:
… I have spoken several times to Rector Liard of M. Curie’s fine work, of the insufficiency of his equipment, and of the reasons which exist for giving him a bigger laboratory. The rector spoke of M. Curie to the Minister, seizing the occasion offered by the presentations of July fourteenth for the L’egion of Honor. The Minister appeared to take great interest in M. Curie—perhaps he would like to show his interest, as a start, by decorating M. Curie. On this hypothesis I ask you to use all your influence to keep M. Curie from refusing it. The thing in itself is obviously without interest, but from the point of view of practical results (laboratories, credits, etc.) it has considerable worth.
I ask you to insist in the name of science and in the highest interests of the faculty that M. Curie allow us to name him.
This time Pierre Curie did not “submit to anything.” His deep-seated aversion for honors would have been enough to justify his attitude, but he was animated by still another feeling. It seemed to him a bit too comic that a scientist should be refused the means of working and should at the same time, by way of “encouragement,” of “good note,” be offered a little enameled cross hung on the end of a red silk ribbon.
His reply to the dean was as follows:
Please be so kind as to thank the Minister and to inform him that I do not feel the slightest need of being decorated, but that I am in the greatest need of a laboratory.
The hope of an easier life was abandoned. In the absence of the desired laboratory the Curies contented themselves with the shed for their experiments, and the ardent hours passed in this wooden shack consoled them for all their setbacks. They continued to teach. They did so with a good will and without bitterness. More than one boy was to remember Pierre’s lessons, so clear and vivid, with gratitude. More than one Sèvres girl was to owe her taste for science to Marie, the fair-haired professor whose Slavic accent made even the scientific demonstrations sing.
Torn between their own work and their jobs, they forgot to eat and sleep. The rules of “normal” life, as set up formerly by Marie, and her performances as cook and housekeeper, were forgotten. Unconscious of their folly, the pair used and abused their ebbing strength. On several occasions Pierre was obliged to take to his bed by attacks of pain, of intolerable violence, in the legs. Marie, upheld by her tense nerves, had not yet had a collapse: she considered herself invulnerable since she had cured—by scorn and daily imprudence—the attack of tuberculosis that had disquieted her family. But in the little notebook where she kept a regular record of her weight, the figure grew lower every week: in four years of work in the shed, Marie lost seven kilograms.† The friends of the couple noticed her pallor and the emaciation of her face; one of them, a young physicist, even wrote to Pierre Curie to beg him to spare Marie’s health and his own. The letter is an alarming picture of the life of the Curies, and of the way they sacrificed themselves:
Georges Sagnac to Pierre Curie:
… I have been struck, when I have seen Mme Curie at the Society of Physics, by the alteration in her appearance. I know very well that she is overworked because of her thesis.… But this is an occasion for me to observe that she has not sufficient sources of resistance to live such a purely intellectual life as that which both of you lead; and what I say of her, you can take also for yourself.
Only one example to dwell upon: you hardly eat at all, either of you. More than once I have seen Mme Curie nibble two slices of sausage and swallow a cup of tea with it. Do you think even a robust constitution would not suffer from such insufficient nourishment? What would become of you if Mme Curie lost her health?
Her own indifference or stubbornness will be no excuse for you. I foresee the following objection: “She is not hungry. She is old enough to know what she has to do!” Well, frankly, no: she is behaving at the present time like a child. I tell you this with all the conviction of my friendship.
You do not give enough time to your meals. You take them at any random hour, and in the evening you eat so late that your stomach, weakened by waiting, finally refuses to do its work. No doubt your researches may cause you to dine late one evening, but you have no right to make this into a habit.… It is necessary not to mix scientific preoccupations continually into every instant of your life, as you are doing. You must allow your body to breathe. You must sit down in peace before your meals and swallow them slowly, keeping away from talk about distressing things or simply things that tire the mind. You must not read or talk physics while you eat.…
To warnings and reproaches, Pierre and Marie answered ingenuously: “But we do rest; we take holidays in the summer.”
And in fact they did so—or rather, thought they did. During the fine weather they wandered about, stage by stage, as in the old days. For them “rest” meant, in 1898, exploring the Cévennes on bicycles; two years later they followed the coast of the Channel from Havre to St Valéry-sur-Somme, then they went off to the Isle of Noirmoutiers. In 1901 we see them at Pouldu, in 1902 at Arromanches, in 1903 at Le Tréport and afterward at St Trojean.
Did these journeys bring them the physical and spiritual relaxation they needed? It is permissible to doubt it. The one responsible was Pierre, who could not stay at peace: after two or three days passed in the same place he became preoccupied and absent-minded. Unable to stand it any longer, he would speak of going back to Paris and would say gently to his wife, as if to excuse himself:
“We have been doing nothing for a long time now.”
In 1899 the Curies undertook a distant expedition which gave them great pleasure: for the first time since her marriage, Marie returned to her fatherland, not to Warsaw but to Zakopane in Austrian Poland, where the Dluskis were building their sanatorium. The Pension Eger, next door to the yard where the masons were at work, harbored an affectionate group. Professor Sklodovski was there, still very active, and rejuvenated by the happiness of seeing his four children and their four households united.
How the years had flown! Not long ago his son and his three daughters had been scouring Warsaw to find pupils. Today, Joseph, a highly reputed doctor, had a wife and children. Bronya and Casimir were founding a sanatorium, Hela was making a career as a teacher while her husband, Stanislav Szalay, directed a prosperous enterprise in photography. And little Manya was working in a laboratory and having her researches published—the dear “little rascal,” as he had used to call the baby of the family.
Pierre Curie, “the foreigner,” was the object of many attentions. His Poles were proud to show Poland to him. At first without great enthusiasm for the severe countryside, where the dark points of pine trees struck sharply at the sky, Pierre made an excursion to the summits of the “Rysy” and was moved by the poetry and grandeur of the high mountains. In the evening he said to his wife, in front of her family:
“This country is very beautiful. I understand now why you love it.”
He purposely spoke in his brand-new Polish, which, in spite of the bad accent, dazzled his brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law; and he caught the smile of pride on Marie’s glowing face.
Three years later, in May 1902, Marie was to take the train for Poland again—but with what painful anxiety! Letters had informed her of her father’s sudden illness and of an operation on his gall bladder which had resulted in the extraction of huge stones. She received reassuring news at first, and then suddenly a telegram. It was the end. Marie wanted to leave at once, but the passport formalities were complicated; hours went by before the red tape was all in order. After two and a half days’ travel, she arrived in Warsaw, at Joseph’s house where M. Sklodovski had been living. Too late.
Marie could not endure the thought that she was never to see that face again. She learned of her father’s death during the journey, and begged her sisters by telegram to put off the funeral. She penetrated into the funereal chamber where there was nothing but the coffin and some flowers. With a strange obstinacy, she demanded that the coffin be broken open. This was done. And to the serene, lifeless face, streaked by a thin line of blood from one of the nostrils, Marie said farewell and asked for forgiveness. She had always secretly reproached herself for remaining in France, and for disappointing the old man who had counted on finishing his days with her. Before the open bier, in silence, she repented and accused herself, until her brother and sisters put an end to the cruel scene.
Marie had the demon of scruple within her: she was torturing herself unjustly. The last years had been kind to her father—and kinder still because of her. The affection of his family, the satisfactions of a father and a grandfather, had made M. Sklodovski forget the vicissitudes of a life without brilliance. His last and strongest joys had come to him through Marie. The discovery of polonium and radium, the startling communications signed with his daughter’s name in the Proceedings of the Academy of Science of Paris, had been a source of intense emotion for the professor of physics, who had always been kept from making disinterested research by his daily tasks. He had followed his daughter’s work stage by stage. He understood its importance and foresaw its later renown. Just recently, Marie had informed him that she had obtained, after four years of perseverance, some pure radium. And in his last letter, six days before his death, M. Sklodovski traced these words, in a shaky hand which sadly deformed his fine and regular script:
And now you are in possession of salts of pure radium! If you consider the amount of work that has been spent to obtain it, it is certainly the most costly of chemical elements! What a pity it is that this work has only theoretical interest, as it seems.
Nothing new here. The weather is moderate, still rather cool. I must go back to bed now; I shall end, then, and embrace you tenderly.…
The happiness and pride of the good man would have been indescribable if he had been able to live another two years to learn that fame had seized upon his daughter’s name, and that the Nobel Prize had been given to Henri Becquerel, to Pierre Curie and to Marie Curie, his little girl, his “Anciupecio.”
Paler and thinner than ever, Marie left Warsaw. In September she was to go back to Poland. After this grief the Sklodovski “children” felt the need of gathering together, to prove that fraternal solidarity survived.
October … Pierre and Marie were back in the laboratory. They were tired. Marie, as she collaborated in research, was also drawing up the results of her work on the purification of radium. But she was without zest, and nothing aroused her. The terrible regimen she had inflicted on her nervous system for so long had strange repercussions: at night, slight attacks of somnambulism made her get up and walk unconscious through the house.
The coming years were to bring unhappy events. The first was a pregnancy, accidentally interrupted. Marie took this disappointment tragically:
Marie to Bronya, August 25, 1903:
I am in such consternation over this accident that I have not the courage to write to anybody. I had grown so accustomed to the idea of the child that I am absolutely desperate and cannot be consoled. Write to me, I beg of you, if you think I should blame this on general fatigue—for I must admit that I have not spared my strength. I had confidence in my organism, and at present I regret this bitterly, as I have paid dear for it. The child—a little girl—was in good condition and was living. And I had wanted it so badly!
Later on, again from Poland, came bad news: Bronya’s second child, a boy, had died in a few days of a tubercular meningitis.
I am quite overwhelmed by the misfortune that has fallen upon the Dluskis [Marie writes to her brother]. That child was the picture of health. If, in spite of every care, one can lose a child like that, how can one hope to keep the others and bring them up? I can no longer look at my little girl without trembling with terror. And Bronya’s grief tears me to pieces.
These sorrows darkened Marie’s life, which was undermined by another torment, the gravest of all: Pierre was not well. The violent attacks of pain to which he was subject, which the doctors—for lack of more precise signs—baptized rheumatism, came at frequent intervals and left him terribly weak. Shot through and through with pain, he moaned for entire nights, watched over by his frightened wife.
Just the same, Marie had to teach her classes at Sèvres; Pierre had to question his numerous students and supervise their laboratory manipulations. And far from the laboratory they had dreamed of in vain, the two physicists had to continue their minute experiments.
Once, and only once, Pierre allowed a complaint to escape him. He said, under his breath:
“It’s pretty hard, this life that we have chosen.”
Marie tried to protest. But she did not succeed in dissimulating her own anxiety. If Pierre was discouraged to this point, his strength must be leaving him. Perhaps he was affected by some terrible, implacable disease? And could she, Marie, ever conquer this dreadful fatigue? For months past, the idea of death had prowled about this woman and obsessed her.
“Pierre!”
The scientist, surprised, turned toward Marie, who had called him with distress, in a strangled voice.
“What’s the matter? Darling, what is the matter with you?”
“Pierre … if one of us disappeared … the other should not survive.… We can’t exist without each other, can we?”
Pierre shook his head slowly. Marie, in pronouncing those words of a woman in love, forgetting for an instant her mission, had made him remember that a scientist had no right to desert Science, the object of his life.
He contemplated Marie’s twisted, grief-stricken face for a moment. Then he said firmly:
“You are wrong. Whatever happens, even if one has to go on like a body without a soul, one must work just the same.”