“They cannot do that.”
“I fear they can, technically. The clause contains no exceptions, and your actions are a matter of public record. It is petty revenge on their part. But it is lawful.”
“Is Agassiz behind it?”
Rogers shook his head. “Agassiz believes he is right in every matter of science, and cannot suffer the offense of anyone believing he is wrong, but he is still a true scientist—he does not seek glory or power or money, only to prove time and again the supremacy of natural law. No, it is not Agassiz, but a new president of the college. He has just been elected by the Harvard Corporation,” Rogers said, pausing solemnly.
“A new president?”
“Charles Eliot, our own chemistry professor—ex-professor. He makes it plain that the moment I sign my name to your degree, the legislature will revoke all of our powers as a university. Our enemy was before our eyes all along. I am not afraid of Eliot; he is a shallow fellow to think he can run us down, and I will stand my ground to him as I have done before. It is because of you that no additional people were harmed. It is because of the actions of you and your classmates, as well as Miss Swallow, to save the city and stop Hammond’s engineer, that the legislature has offered us their commendation. It is because of you, indeed, that we sit here today with our first graduates, in a city with peace restored. I will fight Eliot with every fiber of my being, in the legislature, in the courts, in Washington, if I must.”
Marcus sat in silence, his expression composed, the only outward sign of emotion the tightening of his hands clasped in his lap. “No, sir,” he said finally.
“What?”
“My sincere thanks, President Rogers, but I cannot allow the risk to the future of the Institute. Why would I fight so hard for its survival if I could? I do not wish you to fight them—not over this. There are far more important battles to win.”
“Then I shall fight those, while I find some way to win this one, too, without giving Eliot the chance to put the Institute at risk. And if I cannot give you a degree today I give you my hand,” Rogers said, reaching out to him. “The survivors of the catastrophes you prevented will always be with you.”
“The dead are with me, too, President Rogers.”
“What have the doctors said of your hand?”
He grimaced, hesitating to reply. His right hand was in a specially made glove with extra cushioning along the fingers and joints. “I must give it more time.”
“Mr. Mansfield, I do possess some good news. I have a letter here, from the Northern Pacific Railway. They read about you and have offered you a position. It is for immediate employment, Mr. Mansfield, and you would leave at once for Montana to claim it, with or without a degree—it matters not to them. They’ve included tickets for your passage, of course.”
“Montana?”
“It is a first-rate opportunity for a young engineer, with excellent pay. They’re waiting for you as we speak. You merely have to show yourself there. I think you should accept it.”
Marcus deliberated for a few moments and then smiled slightly at his benefactor and nodded. “I’m sorry, President Rogers.”
Rogers was startled at the response. “But, Mr. Mansfield—”
“The nun who attends Miss Turner has been reporting to me the improvements she is making almost every day, improvements the doctors consider a miracle. She just began speaking a little this morning, and is now expected to recover fully with time. I must be here for that day.”
“Mr. Mansfield, an opportunity like this must not be taken lightly.”
“I would not. But I have made my decision.”
Rogers considered this, then nodded affectionately. “Very well, Mr. Mansfield. Then I have another idea, perhaps less adventuresome, but still worthwhile. Stay here.”
“To study?”
“No! To teach. You will be close to Miss Turner, and will help the students, as you have proven you can do in singular fashion.”
Marcus replied, wide-eyed, “A professor?”
Rogers laughed. “Not yet! But a professor’s assistant. We need many more of them, as demand for enrollment in the next freshman class is enormous since news of your triumphs. But one day, perhaps, a professor you shall be if that is what you wish. Do you know, Mr. Mansfield, why we have always been so careful to prohibit gambling and cards at the Institute? Not for the usual reasons alone. With their special skills and analytical techniques some of the students will inevitably face the temptation to cheat, first at cards, then to leave behind their fellow man in life. It must fall to us to instill the right approach in the young men still to come. As far as I am concerned, you are not only a member of the first class, you are the first son of Tech, and welcome here always. Together we have built something never seen before.”
They stood and shook hands again.
“President Rogers,” Marcus said with hesitation, “there is one thing more.”
“Yes?”
“If I walk out there without my diploma …” he started. “Well, they are all so excited out there to have them, they are holding them up, passing them around, reading them aloud, even kissing them! They are a loyal group. If I have to tell them right now what’s happened with Harvard, in the rush of their excitement, they will insist on fighting it. They may not accept their own degrees if I do not receive one. Well, I’d wager that’s what Bob Richards would insist upon.”
“Yes, I could imagine he might.”
“Some, at least, will put their own degrees at risk for mine.”
“You are their leader.”
“Chiefly their friend, I hope. But I want to have time to explain it to them individually, and keep their heads level.”
Laughter scattered through the corridor.
“This should be their time to celebrate,” Marcus continued.
“I understand, my son. What would you like to do? I can give you another paper to carry out.”
“No. I would not like to deceive them, and they will see if it is not real.” After a moment, he gestured to the window with a grin. The president questioned whether he would be injured, but after some gently reassuring promises from his pupil he opened the sash.
The older man watched from the window as Marcus landed on his feet. He began walking up empty Boylston Street toward the center of Boston, and then his step grew faster, buoyant, hopeful. Rogers, smiling to himself at the momentous day, closed the window, and as he watched, the glass fogged under his breath. He traced his finger on the glass pane around the figure of his newest member of the faculty as the image of Marcus Mansfield gradually became smaller.
“A perfect circle,” he whispered to himself, taking a step back.
Returning to the hallway once he had mastered his emotions, Rogers called out the next name. “Robert Hallowell Richards.”
Bob jumped to his feet, looking up and down the hall and then peering into the president’s office. “But where’s Mansfield?”
Rogers offered a bemused expression as though the question were incomprehensible. The new graduates exchanged glances of confusion.
The president cleared his throat. “Robert Hallowell Richards. You are coming in to receive your diploma, my son?”
As the other students whispered among themselves, Bob looked to Edwin and Hammie, who stood as if to start a search party for their fellow Technologist. Bob began to step into the office but paused at the threshold. He wheeled back around to his classmates.
“Three cheers for Marcus Mansfield. No: Three times three for Mansfield!”
President Rogers was almost as loud as Bob as they all roared at the top of their voices, loud enough for Marcus to hear as he walked along the sidewalk toward the sanctuary of Agnes Turner.
LX
Charley
IT WAS TOO HOT A SUMMER DAY out on the Charles for such strenuous activity, but Will Blaikie did not rest his squadron. They had more preparation to do for their trip to England and their race against Oxford for the Grand Prix of university ro
wing in less than three weeks’ time, and after the rainy spring they were sorely lagging. Their mission was far too important to Harvard, of which Blaikie was (almost) one of the newest alumni, and too important to Boston itself, to be interrupted.
“The Institute of Technology is beginning to make itself heard,” said one of the Harvard junior-class rowers out of the blue.
“What do you mean by that, Smithy?” Blaikie demanded.
“I mean, in the newspapers, after they managed to resolve that line of disasters before our own Agassiz did, even while under their own cloud of suspicion. Of course, I’ll always swear by Harvard,” he added hastily. “I hear old Bob Richards stayed there and is instructing metallurgy in the fall, while that Mansfield helps with teaching mechanical engineering. And I hear that Richards got down on his knee in the laboratory and proposed marriage to that lady scientist who was rumored to be studying there! That’s what the gossips say, anyway. Of course, they also say that a ten-foot-high man made of iron and fueled by steam assisted them in taking down the bridge to sink that runaway train, but that seems a tale.”
Ignoring the junior, Blaikie turned to the rower behind him, the recruit from the hated place, whom he had invited to row since his doctor had ordered Blaikie to continue to rest his injured wrist, and recited:
Thou heard’st the creaking gate, the moaning trees
Between the palaces;
Saw’st how, in clear-cold air of Jove, the snows
To icy coating froze.
“The harmonious treatment of the body as well as the soul is the only condition under which man’s mind may thrive,” the stroke oar said in a matter-of-fact voice. His wrist had also prevented him from completing his senior examinations, which meant he had not technically been graduated yet and was not yet (though really almost) an alumnus, a title he had looked forward to boasting since his childhood. “Smithy there pays too much attention to sentimental gossip, as you can tell. Every week, to sharpen our mental valor, we learn ten odes of Horace by heart, and recite them to one another during our rowing.”
“I swing the Indian club fifty times before breakfast,” Bryant Tilden offered, though this did not seem to impress the leader.
“Who do you think the better general was, newy? Washington or Napoleon?” asked another rower, renewing what seemed to be an old debate.
“Well, Washington was the American, wasn’t he?” Tilden responded forthrightly.
“Now that the faculty agreed to your admission, old salt,” Blaikie said to Tilden, “you must be able to sing ‘Fair Harvard’ by heart.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t you know it after a month here?”
“I suppose not by heart,” the new man said with the air of uncomfortable confession.
“Fellows, shall we repair the newy’s ignorance?” Blaikie asked. “Tilden, it’s sung to the tune of ‘Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms,’ by Thomas Moore.”
As they sang in time with their powerful strokes—“Fair Harvard, thy sons to thy jubilee throng!”—the rippling water began to bubble up from underneath them in a strange manner. Soon they could hardly pull through the water, and then the current seemed to suck their craft backward.
“Freighted with treasure thoughts, friendships and hopes, thou didst launch us on Destiny’s sea …” The lyrics melted away as all eyes rested on the powerfully swirling water beneath them, under which something solid seemed to slowly take shape.
“If I didn’t know better …” started one of the Harvard six.
“Don’t!” Blaikie barked at him, not wanting to hear a word about Charley, the sea monster they’d often alluded to as a means of frightening strangers or freshes.
From beneath them, a shiny ridge thrust the boat into the air, sending the team tumbling up and out in all directions. As they flailed about, they watched the back of a bright white beast, which looked much like a whale—though shinier than any whale spied by man—as it sprayed a torrent of water into their faces. It then sped away faster than any Harvard six had ever rowed.
“Is that a propeller on its back?” Blaikie demanded. “What was that? Newy! What are you smiling at? I’m speaking to you—what in the deuce was that?”
“Hurrah to the nineteenth century!” proclaimed Tilden, who could not help but enjoy the spectacle. “I’m smiling, Captain, at the future!”
AFTERWORD
The History and Future of the Tech Boys
ON MAY 25, 1868, the following special act was passed by the legislature of the commonwealth of Massachusetts:
Section 1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is hereby authorized and empowered to award and confer degrees appropriate to the several courses of study pursued in said institution, on such conditions as are usually prescribed in universities and colleges in the United States, and according to such tests of proficiency, as shall best promote the interests of sound education in this Commonwealth.
Section 2. This act shall take effect upon its passage.
Section 2 may read like legal boilerplate, but it was important. It meant MIT’s degree power was granted just weeks before its first graduation, despite the fact that this was seven years after founder William Barton Rogers had incorporated the college. It sparked my interest to think what was behind this timing: the resistance to the college’s fight for legitimacy at a time when the concept of technology and scientific education was considered unorthodox, even dangerous.
The initial image that came to me for the novel was a scene in which MIT students rowing the Charles River are pushed aside by a polished Harvard crew team. I’m not sure why this materialized before other moments, but I think for me it captured the daunting race with our futures we begin when we are young adults. The first “Tech” boys really had the weight of the world on their shoulders. Their futures depended on a radical new school that couldn’t promise them degrees, and that school’s longevity hinged on these students’ uncertain futures.
Besides transporting me into some of my favorite parts of nineteenth-century Boston, this novel also gave me a chance to build on my own modest ties to the world of science and the history of technology. My great-grandfather Louis Pearl was an inventor and manufacturer in Brooklyn, New York; another relative, Professor Richard Pearl, was once one of the country’s leading geologists and an expert in meteorites; and another relative, Harold Howard Hirsch, was a powder metallurgist at Los Alamos when he witnessed the first test of the atomic bomb, remarking later that he believed it would lead to the cessation of all wars. During my years at Harvard College, my roommates (a group that included mathematicians and a physicist—a somewhat unusual crowd for an English major) and I lived in Eliot House, named after Charles Eliot, one of the original chemistry professors at MIT. One of my wife’s ancestors, a Bostonian named Edward Tobey, was a chief fund-raiser for MIT, and he appears in this novel advising the faculty (she also happened to attend the John D. Runkle elementary school in Brookline, Massachusetts, named after MIT’s original mathematics professor).
The “picked-up lot” of MIT’s inaugural Class of 1868 offered me a colorful cast from which to select my main characters. Robert Hallowell Richards and William Edwin Hoyt were real students. Bryant Tilden’s disciplinary scrapes remain on record in the MIT archives, as do Albert Hall’s immaculate class notes, which allowed me to “enroll” in the original curriculum. Marcus Mansfield and Chauncy Hammond, Jr. (“Hammie”), are fictional, but in them can be seen composites of other Tech boys I researched. Marcus’s closest counterparts in history are Charles Augustus Smith, a son of a sailor who commuted every day from Newburyport to MIT and worked as a railroad leveler and assistant engineer to earn money for college expenses; Civil War veteran Channing Whitaker, who worked in a machine shop before going to MIT and ended up as a professor there for many years; and John Ripley Freeman, who came to MIT from a farm and traveled each day to and from Lawrence, except during busy periods of study, when he, like Marcus, boarded in Boston.
 
; Hammie is partially derived from Frank Firth, probably the most aloof member of the first group of MIT students; Hammie’s plan for a “steam man” comes from an invention patented in 1868 by a young mechanic in Newark, New Jersey. Ellen Swallow was a few classes behind the ’68 boys, sequestered in her own lab and not permitted to attend classes. She would later teach at MIT, where she was a renowned pioneer in women’s education and in environmental and nutritional sciences, working alongside her husband, Professor Bob Richards (who indeed proposed to her in one of the MIT laboratories). Daniel Chester French, appearing in this novel in his freshman year before he failed out of MIT, later became a celebrated artist, responsible for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and chosen (over all Harvard alumni) to create the statue of John Harvard. Whenever possible, the experiences, language, and spirit of those people on whom my characters are based have been incorporated, especially those who left behind records of their time at MIT.
The disasters that plague Boston in my novel are my creation; however, each one has a basis in real technologies developed at the time (often at MIT), and my research binders are thick with articles about train wrecks, destructive boiler explosions, early divers and submarines (including the Alligator and the Intelligent Whale of the 1860s, on which Hammie’s White Whale is based) and compass-related shipwrecks that allowed me to craft the relevant scenes in context. In addition, the fear and anxiety about the strange concept (and the strange word, at the time) of technology, and by extension the Institute, are grounded in fact; even the statement the Rogers character makes that the Institute of Technology, being such a vague concept, is seen by some as a front for some kind of brothel, comes out of the historical record. Edwin’s list of “unsolvable” scientific problems is derived from a contest promoted by a contemporary scientific journal.