“Bloomsbury Street?”
“No place.”
“Have you ever kissed her?”
“I have.”
“Never done anything more than kiss her?”
“That is all.”
“Why did you stop at that?”
“Because I always treated her as a gentleman, and never went any further.”
The interrogation did nothing to clarify the relationship.
FLEMING
ONE OF THE EARLIEST MESSAGES Marconi sent across the English Channel was a brief telegram transmitted from his French station at Wimereux to the South Foreland station, where one of his men took it to an office of the post office telegraphs for relay by conventional land line to London. A messenger boy carried it to University College in Bloomsbury, near the British Museum, and there the telegram made its way to its intended recipient, John Ambrose Fleming, a professor of electrical engineering and friend of Oliver Lodge. On the date of the telegram, March 28, 1899, Fleming was forty-nine years old and possessed a degree of public fame and academic prominence just shy of what Lodge possessed. He was an expert in the amplification and distribution of electrical power.
The telegram read, simply,
Though it seemed the most neutral of greetings, in fact it marked the start of Marconi’s next attempt at seduction, and his most important, as future events would show.
Marconi recognized that with no revenue and no contracts and in the face of persistent skepticism, he needed more than ever to capture an ally of prominence and credibility. Through Fleming, however, Marconi also hoped to gain a benefit more tangible. His new idea, the feat he hoped would command the world’s attention once and for all, would require more power and involve greater danger, physical and fiscal, than anything he had attempted before.
When it came to high-power engineering, he knew, Fleming was the man to consult.
UNLIKE LODGE OR KELVIN, Fleming was susceptible to flattery and needful of attention, as evidenced by the fact that upon receiving Marconi’s telegram he made sure the London
For Marconi, the letter was an affirmation of his strategy to gain credibility by refraction. Oliver Lodge too recognized that Fleming’s letter had bestowed upon Marconi a new respectability and saw it as an act of betrayal. He wrote to Fleming, “My attention has been called to a letter of yours in the Times, in which it is suggested that you are attacking me and other scientific men who retain some jealousy for the memory of Hertz.” He called the letter an “indictment against men of science” and asked Fleming for an explanation.
Fleming bristled. “I made no attack on you or any other scientific men in my letter to the Times,” he replied. “I called attention to certain important achievements which in the public interest I thought should be noticed and described.” He wrote that he was simply raising a point acknowledged by others, “that the time had arrived for a little more generous recognition of Signor Marconi’s work as an original inventor. That after all is a matter on which different views may be held and if you dissent from it you are quite entitled to your opinion.”
Soon afterward Marconi asked Fleming to become scientific adviser to his company. On May 2, 1899, Fleming wrote to Jameson Davis to set out certain conditions and to define “my position and views a little carefully.”
If Jameson Davis cringed at this sentence, fearing a reprise of Lord Kelvin’s qualms, he was soon reassured. Fleming wrote: “I have a strong conviction of the commercial possibilities of Mr. Marconi’s inventions apart from their scientific interest provided they are properly handled. I should desire to see a genuine business of a solid character built up.” He added a paragraph that later events would show to be in contradiction to elements of his character, especially his own deep need for recognition. Fleming wrote, “All that a scientific adviser does in the way of invention, suggestion or advice should be the sole property of those retaining him so far as their own affairs are concerned. I have noticed that any other course invariably leads sooner or later to difficulties and perhaps disputes.”
Fleming agreed to work under a one-year contract, renewable at each party’s discretion, for a fee of ?300 a year. For the moment it seemed generous.
Now, Marconi revealed to him the nature of the grand experiment that had begun to occupy his thoughts. It would require two gigantic wireless stations and demand the production of more electrical energy than anything Marconi previously had attempted.
Though his maximum distance so far had been only thirty-two miles, what Marconi now proposed was to transmit messages across the full breadth of the Atlantic.
THE LADIES’ GUILD COMMENCES
BELLE’S AVOWED FONDNESS FOR BRUCE Miller had an important consequence. She told Crippen she no longer cared for him, and she threatened to leave him for Miller. Though they still slept in the same bed, they spent their nights without touch or warmth. They struck a bargain. Outwardly no one was to know of the strain in their marriage. “It was always agreed that we should treat each other as if there had never been any trouble,” Crippen said.
He gave her money just as always, “with a free hand whatever she seemed to want at any time; if she asked me for money she always had it.” She bought furs and jewelry and countless dresses. On one occasion he gave her ?35—about $3,800 today—to buy an ermine cape. In public she always called him “dear.”
In September 1903 Crippen went so far as to open a joint “current” account at Charing Cross Bank in the Strand. The account required his signature and Belle’s but did not require both to be present when a check was presented for cashing. About three years later the Crippens opened a savings account at the same bank, with an initial deposit of ?250—$26,000—under both their names.
Crippen paid for Belle’s evenings out with friends and sometimes even came along, acting always the part of an affectionate and indulgent husband. He paid too for Belle’s evenings with Miller.
Later Miller would contend that on some of his visits to the Crippens’ flat he had the feeling that Crippen was at home, elsewhere among the rooms.
One evening Miller arrived at the Store Street apartment to find the table set for three. Belle held up dinner “until quite late,” Miller recalled. Belle said, “I am getting uneasy; I expect another party to dinner.”
