Mauve Read online

  Mauve is the story of a man who invented a colour, and in the process transformed the world around him.

  Before 1856, the colour in our lives derived from animals, minerals or plants. Clothing, paint, print – their reds and blues and blacks came from insects or molluscs, roots or leaves, and dyeing was painstaking and expensive. One royal procession required ten million dead insects. But in 1856 a chemist called William Perkin discovered a way to produce colour in a factory.

  Perkin found mauve by chance, at the age of 18, working on a treatment for malaria in his tiny home laboratory in London. Instead of artificial quinine he made a dark oily sludge, but it was a sludge that turned silk a beautiful light purple. The colour was unique; it became the most desirable shade in the fashion houses of Paris and London.

  Mauve led to new crimsons, violets, blues and greens, and earned its inventor a fortune, but its importance extended far beyond ballgowns. Before mauve, chemistry was largely a theoretical science. After it, science created huge industries, and the impact of the new colour had fundamental effects on the development of explosives, perfume, photography and modern medicine.

  Perkin is honoured with the odd plaque and bust in colleges and chemistry clubs, but is otherwise a forgotten man. This is his story, and the story of how the reputation of a pioneering genius endures. Above all it is a fascinating tale of how the birth of a colour set in motion an extraordinary scientific leap forward that would change the world forever.

  MAUVE

  How One Man Invented a Colour

  that Changed the World

  SIMON GARFIELD

  For BJ, Jake and Diane

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  List Of Illustrations

  Part One: INVENTION

  1 The Celebrity

  2 Not the Land of Science

  3 Floating in the Air

  4 The Recipe

  5 Hindrance and Synthesis

  6 Mauve Measles

  7 The Terrible Glare

  8 Madder

  9 Poisoning the Clientele

  Part Two: EXPLOITATION

  10 Red Letter Days

  11 Self-destruction

  12 The New Eventuality

  13 Physical Acts

  14 Fingerprints

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  Index

  Plates

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  PLATE 1: William Perkin in 1852

  August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1818–92), engraving by C. Cook (Sheila Terry/Science Photo Library)

  William Henry Perkin in 1870 (Science Museum)

  PLATE 2: Print from recipe book of Roberts, Dale and Co., Cornbrook Chemical Works, 1862 (Jean Horsfall/Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester)

  Selection of early nineteeth-century synthetic dyes and dyed material, including Perkin’s original bottle of mauveine dye (Science Museum)

  PLATE 3: Silk dress, c. 1862, dyed with Perkin’s original mauve aniline dye (Science Mueum)

  PLATE 4: Le bon ton: fashion illustration (Hulton-Deutsch Collection Ltd)

  PLATE 5: Perkin and his laboratory assistants, 1870 (Science Museum)

  Greenford Works in 1858 and 1873

  PLATE 6: Perkin with fellow scientists at the British Association Meeting, 1906 (Science Museum)

  PLATE 7: The Perkin Medal (Science museum)

  Perkin in 1906 (Science Museum)

  Perkin’s house, ‘The Chestnuts’ (courtesy the Perkin family)

  PLATE 8: Paco Rabanne catwalk model (Chris Moore Agency)

  Stained micrograph of the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Science Photo Library)

  Part One

  INVENTION

  1

  THE CELEBRITY

  Despite his immense wealth, Sir William Perkin seldom travelled abroad. He had visited friends and colleagues in Germany and France, and had once been to the United States, but he found the experience tiring and quickly grew weary of sightseeing. Eight days to cross the Atlantic with nothing to do but read and look at the waves. Sometimes the sea made him nauseous.

  In the autumn of 1906, at the age of sixty-eight, he resolved to give travelling another chance. On 23 September he boarded RMS Umbria, bound for New York, taking with him his wife Alexandrine and two of their four children. He spent much of the voyage writing in his first-class cabin; he had a speech to give a few days after arrival, and some letters to attend to. He had recently received a request from a chemist in Germany asking for details of his early life for a lecture he hoped to deliver to his students. Perkin was famous now, and each post seemed to bring enquiries about his career and invitations to celebrations.

  He wrote in a modest and unflowery style. ‘The first public laboratory I worked in was the Royal College of Chemistry in Oxford Street, London, in 1853–1856.’ It wasn’t like the great electric laboratories of today, he noted, with your huge booming furnaces. ‘There were no Bunsen burners – we had short lengths of iron tube covered with wire gauze.’ It was a grey place. There were many nasty explosions.

  As the Umbria pushed on, newspapers throughout North America excitedly carried the news of Perkin’s imminent arrival. ‘Famous Chemist Visits Here,’ announced the Santa Ana Evening Blade. ‘British Invade City Hall,’ said the New York Globe. In most cities the very fact that Perkin had boarded a steamship was enough to make the front page, but the coverage was nothing compared to that greeting his arrival.

  Perkin and family disembarked in New York, where they were met by Professor Charles Chandler of Columbia University. There is a photograph of them all at the quay in their heavy tweeds and woollen coats, and they don’t look particularly thrilled to be there. I’m weary, Perkin told one reporter who met him at Professor Chandler’s apartment in midtown Manhattan. A few days later, the New York Herald racked up a list of his achievements, and proclaimed: ‘Coal Tar Wizard, Just Arrived in Country, Transmuted Liquid Dross To Gold’. In this story, Perkin had been elevated to the status of scientific saint, his merits placed alongside those of Watt and Stephenson, Morse and Bell.

  Everyone wanted to meet him. His schedule was frantic. On Saturday night there would be a big dinner in his honour at Delmonico’s, New York City’s premier banqueting hall. But before then, there was some flesh-pressing and some sightseeing. On Monday he would be the guest of George F. Kunz, the gem expert at Tiffany’s, who said he would escort him and his family around various stores of interest to chemists. The Perkins would then visit the zoo, New York Botanical Garden and the Museum of Art. The next day they were off to the country home, in Floyd’s Neck, Long Island, of William J. Matheson, a representative of a large German chemical firm. On Wednesday he would spend time with the mayor of New York, George B. McClellan. On Thursday, H. H. Rogers would take them on his yacht for a sail up the Hudson, and the next day it would be the Laurel Hill Chemical Works. The Sunday after the banquet there would be a leisurely evening at the Chemists’ Club on 55th Street.

  Then there was Boston for more of the same, and then Washington DC, where Perkin was due to meet President Roosevelt. The party was then booked in at Niagara Falls, followed by Montreal and Quebec City, and then back to the United States for honorary degrees from Columbia in New York and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

  Like many tourists before and since, Perkin found that Boston reminded him of English cities, and he especially enjoyed his trip out to Charlestown to see the battleship Rhode Island. ‘I am greatly looking forward to meeting your President,’ Perkin said as he boarded the Colonial Express bound for Washington. ‘It is a certain honour,’ Perkin told everyone who asked all about his great discovery. ‘I was in the laboratory
of the German chemist Hofmann,’ he explained, his comments recorded a day later in the Little Rock Gazette. ‘I was then eighteen. While working on an experiment, I failed, and was about to throw a certain black residue away when I thought it might be interesting. The solution of it resulted in a strangely beautiful colour. You know the rest.’

  *

  About 400 people gathered at Delmonico’s at 7 p.m. One reporter present noted how ‘If burial in Westminster Abbey is the highest of posthumous honours in the Anglo-Saxon world, we doubt whether a famous Englishman can receive a surer proof of his living apotheosis than when he is entertained by a company of representative Americans at Delmonico’s.’

  The banqueting room, a place of huge chandeliers and gilt mirrors, had been got up in English, American and German flags, and the top men (no women) from all walks of the chemical and new industrial worlds sat around forty-four tables drinking Louis Roederer Carte Blanche and telling stories about booming business and fantastic inventions. At least half of them wore fashionable moustaches. Their menu cards had been embossed, each carrying a brightly coloured tassel and a picture of Perkin looking like a benevolent country clergyman. The gold inscription read, ‘Dinner in honour of Sir William Henry Perkin by his American friends to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his discovery’.

  On everyone’s plate lay a facsimile copy of a London patent from 1856. ‘Now know ye,’ it proclaimed, ‘That I, the said William Henry Perkin, do hereby declare the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed …’

  Before the first course arrived, which was oysters, those disappointed with the seating arrangements took to reading the full details of Perkin’s invention. The chemists among them may have been surprised at its simplicity, but they would have conceded that fifty years ago they would have been astonished.

  I take a cold solution of sulphate of aniline, or a cold solution of sulphate of toluidine, or a cold solution of sulphate of xylidine, or a mixture of any one of such solutions with any others or other of them, and as much of a cold solution of a soluble bichromate as contains base enough to convert the sulphuric acid in any of the above-mentioned solutions into a neutral sulphate. I then mix the solutions and allow them to stand for ten or twelve hours, when the mixture will consist of a black powder and a solution of a neutral sulphate. I then throw this mixture upon a fine filter, and wash it with water till free from the neutral sulphate. I then dry the substance thus obtained at a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade, or 212 degrees Fahrenheit, and digest it repeatedly with coal-tar naphtha, until it is free from a brown substance which is extracted by the naphtha. I then free the residue from the naphtha by evaporation, and digest it with methylated spirit … which dissolves out the new colouring matter.

  The men clapped 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.