There were also the inevitable letters expressing not congratulations but the writer's personal hobbyhorse. One from a Palm Beach man, for instance, declared that marriages between cousins are the cause of all the great evils that have afflicted mankind. Here I thought better of writing back to ask whether there had been any such marriages among his ancestors. Several days later, the managing director of the Swedish company that manufactured Läkerol throat pastilles wrote to say that he was having an export carton sent direct from his New York distributor. He noted his product's absence of harmful ingredients, which feature made it suitable for everyday use even in perfect health. Soon I began popping several of his pastilles each day after my cold turned into a sore throat. Unfortunately, they were of no effect, my throat misery persisting through days of celebration.
From a Warsaw, Indiana, podiatrist came advice that all disease results from two simple but pervasive problems—fatigue and respiratory imbalance. Through his research he had learned that these two root pathologies were themselves founded in abnormal foot mechanics and gait. He had treated many people who never caught cold because of therapeutic restoration of normal walking mechanics. Among the beneficiaries of the treatment course, which typically ran three to four years, was the correspondent himself. Another revolutionary way to stop colds was suggested by a New Mexico man of Scottish descent who had noted that the main characters in John Buchan's novels The Thirty-Nine Steps and John Macnab never even sniffled. This immunity the New Mexico man attributed to strenuous workdays in the cold, fog, and rain.
More poignant, but strange nonetheless, was a letter from a seventeen-year-old Samoan girl in Pago Pago who, after thanking the Lord for his love and kindness, introduced herself as Vaisima T. W. Watson. She hoped that I was related to her father, Thomas Willis Watson, a U.S. Marine supply sergeant during World War II. Her mother had never heard from him following his return to the States. In my reply, I pointed out that Watson was a common name, with hundreds of entries in the Boston phone book alone.
Soon the itinerary of my forthcoming Nobel week, in broad outline at least, was sent to me from Stockholm. I would be housed in the Grand Hotel with my guests. My personal expenses there would be paid by the Nobel Foundation, which would also cover the food and lodging of a wife and any children. As getting there would be my responsibility, the Nobel Foundation would advance some of my prize money for airfare. The prize presentations were to take place at the Stockholm concert hall according to custom on December 10, the date on which Alfred Nobel died in San Remo, Italy, in 1896 at the age of sixty-three. I was expected to arrive several days earlier for two receptions, the first given by the Karolinska Institutet for its winners, and the second by the Nobel Foundation for all laureates except for those in Peace, who always receive their prizes in Oslo from the Norwegian king. At the prize ceremony and at the banquet the following night at the Royal Palace, I was to be dressed in white tie and tails. Meeting me at the airport was to be a junior member of the Foreign Ministry, who would accompany me to all official functions and see me off at my departure.
Making it an even more meaningful occasion was the awarding of the year's chemistry prize to John Kendrew and Max Perutz for their respective elucidations of the three-dimensional structures of the proteins myoglobin and hemoglobin. Never before in Nobel history had one year's prizes in biology and chemistry gone to scientists working in the same university laboratory. The announcement of John and Max's prize came several days after ours was announced, on the same day the physics prize was awarded to the Russian theoretical physicist Lev Landau for his pioneering studies on liquid helium. Unfortunately, because of a ghastly automobile crash that had recently caused him severe brain damage, he would not be joining us in Stockholm. After the double helix was found, the Russian-born physicist George Gamow had much raised my ego by saying that I reminded him of the young Landau. Last to be announced was the literature prize, awarded to the novelist John Steinbeck, who was to deliver his Nobel address at the large banquet in the Stockholm city hall following the prize ceremonies.
In the long letter detailing how to prepare for Stockholm, I was informed that appropriate accommodations would also be reserved for special research assistants. If I could tactfully bring along my lab assistant of the past summer, the Radcliffe junior Pat Collinge, the occasion would be even more decorative. Her fey urchin manners, together with her intense, catlike blue eyes, were likely to have no equal in Stockholm. Alas, she now had a Harvard undergraduate boyfriend of literary aspirations, whom I was unlikely to supplant. Pat promised, however, to help me master the waltz steps that I would need for the customary first dance following John Steinbeck's speech.
For several days, I eagerly anticipated a November 1 state dinner at the White House to which I received a last-minute invitation. Though the event was intended to honor the grand duchess of Luxembourg, I was more keen to see America's royal couple in action. Only six months had passed since they had elegantly honored the nation's 1961 Nobel Prize winners, so I now thought the occasion might find me seated beside Jackie. All such thoughts, however, were abruptly interrupted by the Cuban missile crisis. JFK's speech to the nation on Monday, October 20, was not one to be listened to alone. Nervously, I went to the Doty home to watch it on their relatively big TV screen. Even before the speech was over I knew the gravity of the situation was such that a politically unnecessary state dinner was bound to be cancelled. From then on the president's attention would necessarily be focused on whether the Soviets would challenge the American blockade of Cuba, in which case the prospect of nuclear war seemed very real indeed.
Over the next several days, I had to wonder whether a month hence I would, in fact, be going to Stockholm. The Soviets might very well set up their own blockade of Berlin. Happily, less than a week passed before Nikita Khrushchev backed down. By then it was too late to reschedule the dinner for the grand duchess. The White House, however, kept me in view and invited me to a December luncheon for the president of Chile. But the thrill that came of seeing the White House envelope vanished when I opened it and saw that the date overlapped with Nobel week. I continued hoping that there might be a place for me at still another White House affair. But by the new calendar year I was no longer a celebrity of the moment.
A postcard from Berkeley brought me some unexpected happiness. It was from my former Radcliffe friend Fifi Morris, who five years before had become quite angry with me over a fondness I developed for her roommate. Equally unexpected was a letter originating in Chicago from Margot Schutt, whose acquaintance I made aboard a ship headed back to England in late August 1953. After graduating from Vassar, she had moved to Boston at the same time I came to Harvard. We had briefly dated in early 1957, until one day when she abruptly hinted that I was not a good enough reason for her to remain in Boston by announcing she would be setting off for London. Now she lived in Chicago and had read that I was scheduled soon to visit the University of Chicago.
The Chicago trip had been arranged some months before the Nobel Prize announcement. Suddenly it became a media event, with visits to my former grammar school and high school hastily arranged. Also making a return visit to Horace Mann Grammar School that day was Greta Brown, the principal when I was there between the ages of five and thirteen. Earlier she had penned me a warm letter recalling my bird-watching days and regretting that my very well-liked mother had not lived to enjoy my triumph. The school auditorium was crammed as I spoke from the stage, gazing once again upon its handsome big WPA murals. The next day, in the Chicago Daily News a nearly whole-page spread was headlined “The Return of a Hero” and quoted a teacher remembering me as “very short in stature but with a very eager mind.” Later at South Shore High School I spoke to an even larger audience including my former biology teacher, Dorothy Lee, who much encouraged me during my sophomore year.
At the University of Chicago, my new fame caused my scheduled lecture to be relocated to the large law school auditorium. Later I went for dinner to th
e Hyde Park home of a friend from my phage past, the University of Chicago biochemist Lloyd Kosloff. The next afternoon, I was at the ABC television studios for an afternoon taping of Irv Kupcinet's show. A real Chicago celebrity owing to his Sun-Times daily gossip column, Kup also hosted a three-hour talk show on which that day I shared billing with the authors Leo Rosten and Vance Packard.
That evening my dinner with Margot Schutt ended with a surprise twist. At a French restaurant on the North Side, we brought each other up to date on our recent pasts. She was currently working at the Art Institute, where the Sunday afternoon public lectures of my uncle Dudley Crafts Watson had been long appreciated. Though what had always most attracted me about Margot were her almost Jamesian mannerisms, I had not anticipated a Jamesian end to the evening. Over dessert she suddenly asked me if I would have actually gone through with marrying her if she had accepted my advances that spring of ‘57.1 didn't know what to say and the taxi ride back to her flat passed largely in an awkward silence.
The next day I flew on to San Francisco and went down to Stanford to talk science. Then I traveled across the bay to Berkeley, where I stayed with Don and Bonnie Glaser. Two years before, Don had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber, causing them to advance their wedding date so that they could fly off together as man and wife to Sweden. In her note of congratulations, Bonnie encouraged me to set my sights on a Swedish princess, suggesting Désirée for both her poise and beauty, as well as having more to say than her two older sisters. So I told them about a telegram from my Caltech friend, the physicist Dick Feynman, wherein he proposed the same scenario with even more irony: “And there he met the beautiful princess and they lived happily ever after.” More seriously we gossiped about my Radcliffe friend Fifi, now a Berkeley graduate student. I picked her up the next evening at her flat off Channing Way, driving to Spenler's fish restaurant near the water at the foot of University Avenue. There I again saw the good-natured, intelligent personality the memory of which had led me to conclude she would be a most appropriate Stockholm consort. But still haunted by Margot's Jamesian question, I kept our dinner talk light, letting her know that my father and sister happily anticipated being with me in Stockholm. The evening ended with our deciding to see each other again during my planned February visit back to the Bay Area.
My forthcoming Nobel address soon preoccupied me at Harvard. Maurice was to give his talk on his King's College lab work confirming the double helix; Francis would focus on the genetic code; and I would talk about the involvement of RNA in protein synthesis. Happily, my Harvard science of the past five years was equal to a Nobel lecture. I gave it a dry run in late November at Rockefeller University, using the occasion to visit the BBC offices in New York to let them tape my recollections of the man Francis was before his great talents had become widely appreciated. By then I had bought the necessary white-tie outfit at the Cambridge branch of J. Press, whose first shop in New Haven had long been purveyor par excellence of preppy clothing to Yale's undergraduates. Soon after coming to Harvard, I had begun getting my suits at their Mt. Auburn Street store, finding their clothes to be among the few available that fit my still-skinny frame. Perhaps sensing my high spirits, the salesman easily persuaded me also to purchase for the august occasion a black cloth coat with a fur collar.
Early on the afternoon of December 4 my sister joined Dad and me in New York for our Scandinavian Airlines flight. Our plans were to stop over for two nights in Copenhagen to see friends Betty and I had made when we lived there in the early 1950s. But after crossing the Atlantic, the pilots discovered that Copenhagen was fogged in. So we found ourselves in Stockholm two days earlier than expected. Bypassing customs as if we were a diplomatic delegation, we were whisked by limousine to the storied Grand Hotel, built in 1874, across from the Royal Palace, onto which looked my room, among the finest in the house. I soon joined my sister and Dad for a herring-heavy smorgasbord, where we lunched with Kai Falkman, the young Swedish diplomat who would accompany us to all our Nobel week engagements. After a much-needed nap, we all supped together in the rathskeller of a restaurant in the Old Town, whose buildings date back to the fifteenth century. There Kai told us that the youngest of the four Swedish princesses, Christina, wanted to spend a year at an American university, possibly Harvard, following graduation from her Swedish high school. Conceivably she would like to talk with me during my Nobel visit. Naturally, I pledged to make myself obligingly available to explain Radcliffe's unique relation to Harvard.
My sister, Betty, my father, and I upon our arrival in Stockholm in December 1962
Not waking until almost noon the next day, I saw my picture on the front page of Stockholm's Svenska Dagbladet together with a chatty article mentioning my interests in politics as well as birds. Unfortunately, the sore throat that had followed my bad cold of October soon forced me to seek medical attention. So my first view of the Karolinska Institutet complex was of its main hospital, not of its research labs. There I was examined by its leading nose and throat specialist, who saw nothing worrisome but did reveal he had been a member of the committee that had chosen me for the Nobel. In that official capacity, he greeted me when I arrived at Nobel House the next evening for the reception given by the Karolinska Institutet. This was not a formal event, and I arrived in the pinstripes that I had worn on the air journey to Sweden. The Foundation House also served as the home of Nils Stahle, its executive director, and I was pleased that his pretty, red-haired, unmarried daughter Marlin was at home for the evening, as was Helen, the very blond daughter of Sten Friberg, the rector of Karolinska.
My sister, Betty, watches as Princesses Désirée, Margaretha, and Christina take their seats.
Both girls were later welcome sights at the first formal event of the week, the Nobel Foundation's reception for all the year's laureates. In the grand library of the Swedish Academy, the dominant figure was John Steinbeck, who had arrived in Sweden only that morning. Though his anticipation of the honor had been keen, he was more nervous than happy, worrying about his Nobel address the next evening. William Faulkner's address of 1950 was still remembered with reverence, and Steinbeck was feeling the pressure of expectations. That evening he and his wife went off to dinner with the Swedish literary intelligentsia while I went with my fellow laureates in science to sup at the elegant naval officers’ mess room on Stockholm Harbor at Skeppsholmen.
The Nobel ceremony, December 1962. From left to right: Maurice Wilkins, Max Perutz, Francis Crick, John Steinbeck, me, and John Kendrew
Francis and Odile Crick brought their own princesses to Stockholm.
The next morning I got a sneak preview of the grandeur of the concert hall as my fellow laureates and I rehearsed the choreography of receiving a prize from the king's hands later that evening. As it usually is for most, this was to be my first experience of white-tie formality, and I was a bit self-conscious about how I looked. Betty, Dad, and I left the hotel at 3:45 P.M. to have more than enough time for me to join the backstage lineup. Precisely at 4:30 P.M. fanfare announced the arrival of the king and queen, who entered with their royal entourage and walked to their front-of-the-stage seats as the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra played the royal hymn. Then, with the trumpets again blaring, Max, John, Francis, Maurice, John Steinbeck, and I entered and took our seats near the front of the stage.
Before the king awarded each of the prizes, appropriate academicians read descriptions in Swedish of our respective accomplishments. To let us know what was being said, translations of their speeches had earlier been given to us. As the king handed each of us our leather-bound, individually decorated citations and gold medals, he also gave us checks in the amount of our individual shares of the prize money.
From the concert hall, we went directly to Stockholm's massive 1930s city hall for the Nobel banquet, which was held in the Golden Hall. Running the entire length of the beautiful room with vaulted ceilings was a very long table where all the laureates were seated with their
spouses as well as the royal entourage and members of the diplomatic corps. Placed at its center facing each other were the king and queen. I was seated on the queen's side. While Max, John, Francis, and John Steinbeck all had princesses next to them, my conversation bits were to be alternately directed to the wives of Maurice and John Steinbeck. Talking across the table made no sense, because of both its width and the alcohol-enhanced din created by more than eight-hundred celebrants. During the dinner, the chairman of the Nobel Foundation, Arne Tiselius, proposed a toast to the king and queen; the king, in turn, proposed a minute of silence to honor Alfred Nobel's grand donation and philanthropy.
As soon as dessert was finished, John Steinbeck went to the grand podium overlooking the hall to deliver his Nobel address. In it he emphasized man's capacity for greatness of heart and spirit in the endless war against weakness and despair. The Cold War and the existence of nuclear weapons silently lurked behind his message of the writer confronting the human dilemma. He saw humans taking over divine prerogatives: “Having taken god-like powers, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.” Ending his oration, he paraphrased St. John the Evangelist: “In the end is the Word, and the Word is man, and the Word is with men.”
I became increasingly nervous and could not listen attentively, since in just a few minutes I was to be up on the podium to offer the response of the laureates in physiology or medicine. I hoped my extemporizing would rise above platitudes. Only after I was back at my seat did I relax, knowing that I had spoken from the heart. I was pleased at my last sentences, in which I had aimed for the cadence of one of JFK's better speeches. Graciously Francis then passed across the table his place card with a note on the back: “Much better than I could have done.—F.” I could then enjoy John Kendrew expressing his joy at being part of a group of five men who had worked and talked together for the past fifteen years and could now come together to Stockholm on the same happy occasion. Then the party moved to the floor below for dancing, most of it done by the white ties and gowns of the Karolinska medical students.
Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science Page 19