Mauve. Simon Garfield
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and shouted Huzzah! and Hoch! as the long-bearded fellow who had composed this recipe took his seat at the top table, and began ploughing through an elaborate meal. Beyond the oysters there was clear green turtle soup. Waiters then brought radishes and olives, and Terrapin à la Maryland. The saddle of lamb Aromatic came with brussels sprouts and chestnuts, the grouse with bread sauce and currant jelly, and for dessert there was a choice of cake, cheese, coffee and Nesselrode pudding. There was more champagne. The Louis Roederer was chased by Perrier Jouet Brut and Pommery Sec. And then at about 10 o’clock it was speech time, and a small orchestra appeared at the back of the hall.
The chairman for the evening was Professor Chandler, Perkin’s host in Manhattan, and he spoke of how moved he was to have such a great man in his presence. He mentioned a fund that had been set up to finance a chemical library at the Chemists’ Club (to be called the Perkin Library). The professor observed that there was not yet a single specialist chemistry reference library in the whole of America, and how such an institution would serve people far better than just another scholarship. He then proposed a toast to the President of the United States, the King of England and the Emperor of Germany, and everyone pushed their chairs back and joined in what they knew of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’.
Then a man from the Mayor’s office got up to read some old doggerel, which he dedicated to Perkin:
Come in the evening, or come in the morning,
Come when you’re looked for, and come without warning:
A welcome and kisses you’ll find here before you,
And the oftener you come the more we’ll adore you.
Now it was the turn of Dr Hugo Schweitzer, a German who had worked under Robert Wilhelm Bunsen in Heidelberg. Schweitzer was also the man who had spent the best part of a year organising the present gathering. He had some alarming news: what he had to say about Perkin might take fifteen hours. The diners looked at each other, perhaps wondering what would be served for breakfast. But they cheered when Schweitzer said he hoped to condense it into fifteen minutes. A week later, one Boston newspaper would describe how, during the speech, ‘vividly before one’s mind . . . trooped the great ordered cycles of the scientific progress of the last half-century’.
Schweitzer had got to know Perkin on a trip to London the previous year, and it was here that he had learnt of the background to his great discovery. ‘It is hard to realise today what an epoch-making idea it was at that time,’ he said. ‘It was truly the spark of genius . . .’
Schweitzer explained that Perkin’s discovery, which involved a specific treatment of coal-tar, was important not only for its direct and obvious effect, but also for the great many chemical advances it inspired. Perkin was indirectly responsible for enormous advances in medicine, perfumery, food, explosives and photography, and yet few beyond the immediate gathering appreciated his contribution. Even the newspapers which heralded his arrival did not fully acknowledge his achievements, and couldn’t possibly estimate the debt their own trade owed to Perkin.
As Schweitzer spoke, his words were interrupted by cheers and applause. Perhaps his audience also felt envy, for it was clear that no one present could hope to match the impact that Perkin had already had upon the world. How was it that one man possessed so much energy?
In 1856, Perkin had discovered the first aniline dye, the first famous artificial colour to be derived from coal. From coal: now, fifty years later, no one regarded this as in the least bit extraordinary. But some older diners remembered the initial rumpus, the huge rage – how someone, a very young man, had found how to make colour from coal . . . If they had remembered it accurately, they would have recalled years of torment.
Now, fifty years on, there were 2,000 artificial colours, all stemming from Perkin’s work. Initially, his colours were used on wool, silk, cotton and linen, but matters had progressed.
‘The lady’s hair is grey, or of a hue not fashionable at the time [but] coal-tar colours will assist her in appearing youthful and gay,’ Dr Schweitzer explained. ‘In eating the luscious frankfurter, your soul rejoices to see the sanguineous liquid oozing from the meat – alas, coal-tar colours have done it. The product of the hen is replaced by yellow coal-tar colours in custard powders . . . leather, paper, bones, ivory, feathers, straw, grasses are all coloured, and one of the most interesting applications is the dyeing of whole pieces of furniture by dipping them in large tanks, which transforms the wood into walnut, mahogany at your command, as carried out in our big factories in Grand Rapids.’
But actually this was nothing. Perkin’s discovery made sick people healthy. Coal-tar derivatives had enabled the German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich to pioneer immunology and chemotherapy. The German scientist Robert Koch was grateful to Perkin for his discoveries of the tuberculosis and cholera bacilli. Dr Schweitzer suggested that Perkin’s work had led indirectly to groundbreaking advances in the relief of pain in those with cancer.
Perhaps sensing disbelief in his audience, Schweitzer was relieved to find he could now regale them with a reasonable anecdote. He spoke of how only a few years ago a man called Fahlberg was working at Johns Hopkins and experimenting with coal-tar derivatives for scientific purposes. ‘Before leaving the laboratory one evening he thoroughly washed his hands, and was under the impression that he had taken every pain in doing so. He was therefore greatly surprised on finding that, during his meal, when carrying bread to his mouth, the bread had a sweet taste.
‘He suspected that his landlady had unintentionally sweetened the bread and called her to account. They had a little discussion, from which she emerged the victor. It was not the bread that tasted sweet, but his hands, and much to his surprise he noted that not only his hands but his arms had a sweet taste. The only explanation he could think of was that he had brought some chemical along from the laboratory. Rushing back to it and carefully investigating the taste of all the goblets, glasses and dishes standing on the working table, he finally came across one whose contents seemed to possess a remarkably sweet taste. Thus was made this remarkable discovery.’
Fahlberg had stumbled upon saccharin, four pounds of which possessed the sweetening power of a ton of beet sugar. He conducted some researches to find whether it was harmful to animals, and, no adverse effects being detected, was soon hailed as the founder of a huge new industry. At the time of the banquet in New York, the United States government had imposed laws banning saccharin as a sugar replacement in food on account of the devastating effects it was having on the sugar industry. This story was particularly appreciated by Professor Ira Remsen, who sat two places away from William Perkin on the top table. Fahlberg was working in Remsen’s laboratory at the time of this incident.
Meanwhile, Dr Schweitzer was reaching a conclusion, and briefly mentioned that Perkin was, predictably by this stage, very much responsible for the way women smelt, having once formed coumarin from coal-tar, which led to artificial musk, and then to the artificial production of the scents of violets, roses, jasmine and the ‘smell of the year’ – oil of wintergreen.
The same compound which formed artificial perfume was subsequently used with nitroglycerine as an explosive in the mines and as a weapon (‘the smokeless powder of the Russo-Japanese war’). Soldiers would also be grateful to Perkin for artificial salicylic and benzoic acids, both used to preserve canned foods.
At the beginning of the evening, a photographer had climbed on a ladder in the corner of the room and asked everyone to turn their chairs to face him. Almost everyone looked his way apart from Perkin, who chose to look ahead into the middle distance (Perkin was interested in the use of bags to take up the smoke of the flashlight, thus limiting the fumes of magnesium). The trick was, the photographer knew, ‘I can see you if you can see me’ and today we can still see them all – a remarkable record of the most distinguished chemists of the day trying their best to keep their eyes open for the duration of the long exposure.
The art of photography, naturally, was greatly enhanced by Perkin. At the time of the dinner, coal-tar preparations were responsible for the development of films and plates, and coal-tar colours improved the sensitivity of photographic emulsion, thus making it suitable for everyday snapshots. Further, in that very year, Auguste and Louis