The Last Days of Night

Paul and Agnes have explained most of the situation through letters, but they still spend the entire day explicating the exact conspiracy to keep Tesla secret from Edison as well as Westinghouse. Paul’s parents take all the information in stride, vowing to care for Tesla as long as is necessary.

Tesla’s condition has regressed, due to the travel and stress. When spoken to, his response is: “The universe wears coats. The universe wears shirts. The universe shall be unbuttoned” (221).

After his parents have retired, Paul comes upon Agnes sneaking a cigarette on the back porch. It is surreal for him to experience her there at his childhood home, sleeping in his childhood bed. His worries about her response to Nashville were unfounded. Agnes has settled in comfortably and remains hands-on with Tesla. On the porch, she’s in a wistful, reflective mood, showing him yet another side of herself. She muses on Tesla’s mental isolation. Paul sees Tesla as “the emperor of his own private kingdom” (221), but Agnes sees him as its slave. She reminds Paul that Tesla came to New York with nothing, with no one, with only his mind.

Tesla’s otherworldliness is what made him what he is: His refusal to play the game hasn’t stopped him from becoming a famous inventor. As an actress, Agnes has played in this game; thus, she deeply respects Tesla for refusing it: “I’d very much like to live in a world that doesn’t see people like him eaten alive” (222). Paul petulantly asks if Jayne is of her same opinion. Having Agnes at his parent’s house has enabled an intimacy he’s been avoiding with her the whole journey. He bursts out that he should be used to coming in second place to men like Jayne. Agnes is surprised and confused. Fannie clearly hasn’t told her that Paul wanted to court her. Paul reveals that he had come by intending to court her, and Fannie refused him.

Agnes apologizes for her mother embarrassing him. The situation is complicated, she reveals. She is afraid to tell him the details, although she wants to. For the first time, Paul sees that Agnes is afraid. He insists she can trust him, being her lawyer, but Agnes confesses that she’s lied to him. Her name isn’t Agnes Huntington. 

This chapter describes how Agnes Gouge changed her identity into Agnes Huntington. Growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Fannie Gouge was a maid, and Agnes’s absent father was a sailor who’d only written his daughter once with no return-address. Agnes was always singing, to her mother’s encouragement. When Agnes was 14, Fannie moved them to Boston and worked for the wealthy and powerful Endicott family. Agnes’s auditions for the Bijou were unsuccessful, due to her lack of a name and social connections. In a bold and extremely risky move, Fannie stole an expensive dress and diamond necklace from Miss Endicott and gave it to her daughter. The stolen goods would become Agnes’s ticket to high society.

Fannie couldn’t stand watching Agnes become cynical. She wanted her ambitious, talented daughter to succeed, and was willing to hide in her shadow the rest of her life (the Endicotts would undoubtedly be seeking her, with police help). The pair embarks on a plan:

With only an impossibly expensive dress and a string of gems, the teenage Agnes would be reborn in Paris. There, she could be anyone she wanted. There were enough moneyed Huntingtons roaming the world that no one would be sure from which line she’d descended, and if she worked her manners, no one would be rude enough to ask (226).

Once in Paris, Agnes immediately fell into the high society party scene. Twenty minutes after sitting down at a chic cafe in her stolen dress and diamonds, a stranger invited her to a soirée. Wealthy men began buying her more dresses, and eventually she began singing for her new admirers (all men, as women didn’t trust her legitimacy).

Agnes eventually began performing in the Parisian theater, then moved on to London for a few years. Fannie pretended to meet her there from California, and their changed identities were complete. The English tour was very successful, and Agnes returned to Paris hailed as a champion.

When Agnes was 21, she and her mother returned to Boston. American high society welcomed them with open arms; neither were recognized for their true selves. Agnes’s continued success drives them on, rooted in Fannie’s sacrifice.

Paul understands now why Fannie wants Agnes married into the Jayne family: for protection against people uncovering her past. This is also why they hired him in the case against Foster. Paul knows he can never marry Agnes, and that she deserves the kind of security only a powerful family like the Jaynes could provide. Despite this realization, he kisses her.

The next morning, Paul and Agnes say their goodbyes to Ruth and Tesla. Erastus takes them to the train station. Agnes tells Paul that his father is proud of him, and Erastus is seeking Paul’s approval just as much as he is seeking Erastus’s. She tells Paul that he is very similar to his father, to Paul’s surprise. She advises him to tell Erastus that he respects him and admires him. Paul says he’ll try, which seems to satisfy her. He apologizes for kissing her. She tells him she wishes things were different and that she doesn’t regret their kiss.

Paul sees a headline stating a man in Buffalo has brutally murdered his wife. If he’s sentenced to death, it will be with an A/C-powered electrical chair. He abruptly and awkwardly leaves Agnes on the platform, bound for Buffalo.

Paul faces off with Brown before a Buffalo judge, fighting to keep Westinghouse’s A/C generators out of the hands of the state. The barre proficiency exam has not yet been enacted, so Brown’s claim that being apprenticed with a local attorney is enough to qualify him to represent himself, to Paul’s irritation.

Paul argues that even if New York had the right to electrocute a prisoner to death, they don’t have legal access to Westinghouse’s equipment due to bill of sale and licensing deals. The contract signed by purchasers of A/C generators explicitly forbids states that third party sales of the device. Brown asserts that he already has a Westinghouse A/C generator, sold to him by one of Westinghouse’s licensees. Paul’s partners had drawn up the licenses for local manufacturers to build and manufacture A/C generators while Paul was in the hospital. The local shops are supposed to pay Westinghouse royalties for sales from generators using Westinghouse contracts (238). If they were to craft their sales contracts in their own language, it would have been for the express purpose of double-crossing Westinghouse.

Charles Coffin, the president of Thomson-Houston Electric Company, stands and claims to be a licensee with the right to sell generators to whomever he chooses. He has sold it to Brown and switched to Edison’s side. Paul has lost again. Brown snidely tells Paul to consider this loss payback for kicking down his door.

Brown has the gall to invite Westinghouse and Paul to the execution of Buffalo’s axe-murderer, William Kemmler. Westinghouse refuses to go, but Paul feels he needs to represent his side at this important event. Edison doesn’t attend either, saying he thought that “Westinghouse’s current was a dreadful thing, and was fit for little else besides murder” (240).

A few reporters, the judge, medical experts, and Brown are there to witness, as well. The chair is composed of oak and leather. Kemmler says a few words then is attached to electrodes and strapped to the chair. The A/C generator is so large and loud that it’s in a different room, awaiting the warden’s cue. Paul looks at Brown, “who had the face of a child on Christmas morning and was tapping his shoes on the wooden floor” (242).

The warden rings his bell, and Kemmler’s body begins to seize, his arms straining against his restraints. As Westinghouse had previously showed Paul, the A/C doesn’t make his body inert, and Kemmler would have been able to get up if unrestrained. After 17 seconds, the warden gives the signal for the generator to be turned off. Everyone begins to leave, but they hear sounds coming from the chair. Kemmler is still alive.

The warden frantically rings the bell again, and the generator is turned back on, but Kemmler continues to seize. After four tries, he’s still alive. His skin begins to melt off, and blood pours from his body. Smoke rises from his head. People begin to protest, yelling for mercy. Suddenly, a bright flame of blue fire shoots from his mouth and incinerates his skull, hair, then the rest of him.

Everyone runs outside and many are sick on the lawn, including Paul. The medical professionals speak in excited conversations about the marvel they’ve just witnessed, their horror tinged with professional curiosity. Reporters scribble in their notebooks: “If Edison and Crown had wanted to demonstrate the stubborn safety of alternating current, they could have done no better job” (245). Horrified, Paul nonetheless feels his side has won a small victory.