The Kingdom of Ohio (38 page)

Arthur Lower,
Colony to Nation
(Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1946), pp. 66-68.

In fact, this letter itself appears to be lost but is cited in a second letter, this one written to a third acquaintance by the original recipient of David Latoledan's correspondence, Edgar St. Simone, of Boston (St. Simone-McLelland Family Archive at Boston University, correspondence file, 1820).

Charles Porpington in a letter to the Prince of Wales, July 16, 1837 (courtesy British Royal Archives, London).

Daniel Yoder,
An Account of the Ohio Region
(Milwaukee: Barlow & Sons, 1908)
.

Surprisingly, considering the inexperience of their author, these endeavors were moderately successful. Although the Toledo Symphony closed its doors due to financial difficulties in 1895, the Toledo Museum of Art remains open and “is one of the most important and influential cultural institutions in the Midwest” (this from
Toledo Rocks! A Visitor's Guide to the Greater Toledo Metropolitan Area
, published by the Toledo Board of Tourism, 1981—although the “importance” of this museum, consisting of four small rooms, should be measured alongside the source of its inspiration, the Louvre).

An equally significant moment in the demise of the Kingdom occurred in 1885, when Claudius's carriage overturned down an embankment, killing him instantly. Upon his death, Louis Toledo ascended to the throne, and his inexperience at gov ernance unquestionably contributed to the continued decline of the Free Estate.

“M. Henri Latoledan,” by Giacometti Cipriotto, as reprinted in
Portraiture in the Era of Louis XIV
, Stefan Gaston, ed., George Mason University Library Series, 1966.

“Assault at the Waldorf” in the
New York News-Digest
, January 16, 1901. A nearly identical article appeared in the
New York Post-Times
on the same day.

Throughout his life, and with increasing severity, Tesla was prone to obsessive phobias, hallucinations, and fits of irrationality. As he would recall in his autobiography:
In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thoughts and action . . . . When a word was spoken to me the image of the object it designated would present itself vividly to my vision and sometimes I was quite unable to distinguish whether what I saw was tangible or not. This caused me great discomfort and anxiety.
(Nikola Tesla,
My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
, Ben Johnson, ed., originally serialized in
The Electrical Experimenter
magazine, 1919.)

Of course, in these days just after the millennium, it seems like almost everyone is feeling something similar: abruptly aged by the realization that rounding this chronological corner, which we'd all secretly hoped might make everything new again, changed nothing. That history's teetering pile of days only kept growing, the mistakes of the past still as present and near as they've always been.

The terse entry in the police logbooks simply reads:

(Courtesy New York Police Dept., 5th Precinct Blotter, January 18, 1901, approx. page 65, New York Police Department Historical Society, New York.) The case number (#19010115-84) refers principally to the date; case numbers were assigned chronologically so this case number reads: year (1901), month (01), day (15), the eighty-fourth case logged.

Names that still have the power to terrify, and with good reason. In 1901, particularly in the United States, mental illness was the subject of superstitions dating back to the Middle Ages. Although at the time, across the Atlantic in Germany and Austria, a revolutionary new understanding of the psyche was beginning to develop in the works of Freud, Krafft-Ebing, and others, these theories had barely reached the academics of America, much less the judicial system. Lunatics were believed by police, legal authorities, and common folk alike to be criminals; insanity was seen as a kind of moral failing.

Because of this, the mentally ill were objects of fear and loathing. They were locked up in either prisons or mental hospitals that were, if anything, worse than the prisons. The “treatment” that patients received at these hospitals was founded on the notion that, since madness was a moral lapse, the insane needed to be punished until they saw the error of their ways. They were doused with freezing water, confined in cages for the public to jeer at and scold (often in churchyards on Sundays, as examples to the faithful of the effects of sin), beaten, starved, electrocuted . . . .

Even before I found your photograph and began writing this, I'd spent my share of sleepless nights tormented by the thought of such a fate. How could I not? After all, I'd landed in Los Angeles (in the Land of Psycho: psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, psychobabble), the Mecca of madness and its experts. It wasn't long after my arrival, when I was still living on park benches and under beachfront piers, that the experts found me: a progression of social workers, their faces lit with bland compassion, intent on human salvage. Later, when I'd started to “recover” (that is, when I'd found an apartment and a job—because there are some things from which we never really
recover
), I escaped from their clutches, but I continued reading about the subject. And although I never found any answers in those books, I long ago became acquainted with the territory of madness and its history.

Jean Strouse,
Morgan: American Financier
(New York: HarperCollins, 1999), p. x.

After the first of these incidents, in 1895, President Grover Cleveland asked Morgan how he had managed this colossal feat. “I simply told [the financial interests of Europe] that this was necessary,” Morgan replied, “and they did it” (Frederick Lewis Allen,
The Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900-1915
[New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952], p. 119). ‡ Edward Steichen,
A Life in Photography
(New York: Doubleday, 1963). § Diary of Margot Asquith, November 13, 1911.

New York Times
, December 20, 1912.

The significance of the relationship between Morgan and his partners and the Edison project can hardly be overstated; for example, as one historian points out, “the meetings of the directors of the Edison Electric Light [Company] were regularly held in Morgan's office.” (Matthew Josephson,
Edison: A Biography
[New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1959], pp. 292-93.)

Of course, Edison's early installations were hardly free from complications. The electrical system at Morgan's office cost nearly four times the original estimate and, more embarrassing yet, the system in Morgan's mansion was a disaster. The steam-powered generators installed by Edison's engineers beneath the stables at 219 Madison Avenue belched noise and smoke in such great quantities that neighbors two blocks away complained. After numerous delays, the engineers solved these problems by installing rubber supports beneath the generators, lining the engine housings with felt, and digging a trench across Morgan's yard to funnel the smoke through the chimney of the house, away from the neighbors.

And even after these difficulties were overcome, problems remained. To celebrate the completion of the system, Morgan held a reception at his home to show off the electric lights to four hundred of his closest friends. Just before dinner, a loose connection set papers on the financier's desk on fire, filling the house with smoke. As the bejeweled ladies and tuxedoed men fled into the evening street, it began to snow: the crowd of New York's elite watched in silence as Edison's lamps exploded and went dark one by one, the delicate glass bulbs shattering in the heat of the flames.

In fact, the silent technical war that took place between 1888 and 1920 was fought mainly between J. P. Morgan and his partners, who backed Edison's DC electrical system, and George Westinghouse, who backed Tesla's AC system. Dur ing this time, a common tactic of these rival groups was to publish advertisements attacking the technology promoted by the other: the Tesla AC system was condemned as being dangerous and unreliable, while the Edison DC system was labeled as outdated and inefficient.

Still, over time, the two inventors themselves were increasingly drawn into the fray. For example, as one biographer of Edison notes, “In the presence of newspaper reporters and other invited guests, Edison and [his assistant] Batchelor would edge a little dog onto a sheet of tin to which were attached wires from an AC generator supplying current at 1,000 volts,” to demonstrate the perils of the AC system (Josephson, p. 347), and he helped to arrange for the world's first electric chair to be powered by one of Tesla's generators.

For his part, Tesla—who had once hoped to work with Edison—responded with contempt for the other inventor's work, writing: “If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of a bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. . . . I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor” (
New York Times
, October 19, 1931).

By 1920, Tesla's system—which had a vastly greater range of transmission and higher efficiency than the Edison generators—had prevailed, and remains the basic technology still in use today. Unfortunately for the inventor, to secure a merger that would stabilize his ailing company, George Westinghouse was forced to ask Tesla to give up his royalty rights to the AC system. Tesla responded by telling him, “The benefits that will come to civilization from my polyphase system mean more to me than the money involved. Mr. Westinghouse, you will save your company so that you can develop my inventions. Here is your contract and here is my contract—I will tear both of them to pieces . . . .” In doing so, the inventor relinquished ownership of what was arguably the most valuable discovery in modern history. (James O'Neill,
Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla
[New York: I. Washburn, Inc., 1944], pp. 80-82.)

As for the historical truth of what happened to James Force—really, I still don't have any clear evidence or answers. Still, I find myself haunted by a letter to the editors of the
Journal of the American Society of Electrical Engineers
, dated August 17, 1902, that I came across while researching Thomas Edison. In this letter, Edison (or more likely, one of his assistants) writes:

(
Journal of the American Society of Electrical Engineers
12, no. 5 [September 1902].)

New York Police Department 2nd Precinct Blotter, January 18, 1901, from an entry dated 7:20 p.m.—or at least, this is how the footnote ought to read. But in fact, the real story is more complicated (isn't it always?), the details more elusive.

According to the NYPD, the files that would contain this entry were lost during a fire in 1902. By an odd coincidence, the corresponding duplicate police records in the city archive can't seem to be located. In fact, the only remaining trace of these events is the entry reprinted in the “police log” section of the
New York Sun
, on January 20.

Only this one mention—and then silence.

No discussion of these occurrences can be found in Morgan's personal writings, and likewise none in Edison's. There are no newspaper articles on the subject (which, given the celebrities involved, should have caused a journalistic frenzy). Everywhere I've looked there is, simply, nothing.

What can a silence say? This is the question I find myself confronted with, reading this passage (and also, if I'm honest, with this whole history). Staring into these lacunae, I think of how Rossetti wrote about “God's word, which speaks in silence.” But above the low burble of my television, or through the radio playing at the neighborhood café where I have my morning coffee, such subtle voices are beyond my hearing. So in the end, I suppose, this absence can only stand for what such pauses have always meant: nothing in particular, and everything still unsaid.

According to the history books, McGurk's Suicide Hall

(Luc Sante,
Low Life
[New York: Vintage Departures, 1992], pp. 119-20.)