Genes, Girls, and Gamow

by James D. Watson

  Going later into the drawing room for coffee, I lay down in front of the fireplace wanting to be warm if I had to be unhappy. The intellectual word games, for which I was so unequipped four years before, were equally so now. They started as soon as the coffee was gone and there were no more chocolates to munch down. Dominating the games were Av’s older sister, Lois, a product of Oxford’s Lady Margaret Hall, and Val, a Somerville intellectual, who never willingly conceded that her Oxford-trained brain did not work as fast as her brother’s. Also ferociously getting the answers right was Rowy, Murdoch’s robustly handsome wife, already the author of a book on history—an expected accomplishment for a granddaughter of one of Balliol College’s most illustrious masters. On one of her turns to answer, Christa popped up with an almost-right answer, while I might as well have been a zombie, given my inability to bring forth any answers either correct or amusingly wrong. Before tonight, the thought that I had a girl who was bright as well as pretty would be making me feel on top of the world. Now the prospect of losing brains as well as looks made me feel even sicker.

  The next morning, Christa came down late after plans had been finalized for a longish walk that was likely to go beyond lunch. The sun was out, but rain was in other portions of the sky when John and I set off with Murdoch and Av for a long slog through the moors to the west of Lochgilphead. The ruin of an ancient castle was our objective, but when we got there it hardly seemed worth waddling across four miles of spongy, water-soaked heather. Apples and hard-crusted sandwiches of ham and cheese kept us going with darkness coming on just before we got back. Christa was pleasant, but no more so in seeing that I got tea and biscuits, with it plain that she and Linda had been talking out their lives while the big hike was on.

  Not then easy to share confidences with was Nou’s guest, the writer Doris Lessing, then openly in contempt of American culture. Two bad marriages and three small children on top of a British colonial upbringing, which started in Persia and ended in Rhodesia, made her easier to take through her writings than her black-haired, bristling personality. But her inherently full-bodied sexuality led one of Av’s former Oxford companions to brag openly that she would be bedded by him before the holidays ended. No evidence later came that his late-afternoon attempts to so enliven Doris came even close to happening. Nor did Nou’s attempt to have Doris temporarily share thoughts with me on long walks. After we were pushed off as part of a group towards a distant hill, I stayed silent for an hour. Seeing a need to explain myself, but not wanting to reveal my agonies at beingjilted by Christa, I blurted out I could talk easily only to Francis. I immediately regretted my words, and was not surprised that Doris also stayed mute as we walked back through Forestry Commission lands.

  At dinner that night, I sat next to Dick, then 65, and always curious about where the science that propelled his sons forward was going. As the still-large and powerfully built white-haired Labour MP from the Midlands town of Kettering, Dick saw his role more to satisfy his constituents’ needs than his own ego. Back in the depression-ridden gloom of the early 1930s, Dick put out a little book called The First Workers’ Government believing then that raw capitalism would never lead to a satisfactory society. As early as 1931 and again in 1935, Dick had tried for a seat in the House of Commons, but only when there was a Labour landslide in June 1945 did he get elected. It was their politics and the fact they so admired each other that kept them together so long, despite Nou’s use of her celebrated novels to express passions that came to her so easily and strongly. Such attachments to others were never one-sided, with Dick’s personal guest over this holiday being Tish, a willowy close friend of years ago.

  Linda was not the person now to share the depths of my current Christa despair. Nor was Val, who I anticipated would tell me to seek a sensible girl who liked me much more than I thought I liked her. So I poured out my woes to Nou on the morning of my third Carradale day. She had personally long known the agony of loves misspent, and I was far from the first guest falling apart over a Carradale holiday. With Nou letting me monopolize our talk, I kept coming back to how easy it was to be with Christa. Given all the common feelings we shared about common acquaintances, particularly those from Cold Spring Harbor, it seemed to me that we would not later be torn apart by fundamentally different values. Of course, I worried whether she yearned more for an ebullient, German romantic type than my sort of unsentimental, pragmatic mind. There was also that awful German food, but we were both Americans and had grown up liking its hamburgers and hot dogs.

  Not wanting to make Christa leave the drawing room if I was there also to read the London papers when they arrived in the afternoon, I gravitated to the play area for Murdoch and Rowy’s two children, neither much past five but capable of precise speech far beyond their ages. With them I could use adult words, unencumbered by fear of their emotional overtones and yet enjoy the words that came back in response. In particular, Sally, like Victor Rothschild’s young Emma, was years ahead of her age. Later, when Dick had started offering to make pre-dinner drinks, Nou waved me to come into her study saying that she and Christa had just finished a long heart-to-heart.

  The news was not good. Christa was not going to trot, much less slide, back to me soon, if ever. She had told Nou that for more than a year she had felt trapped in an emotional box that was stifling her freedom. She wanted a bigger cage, if not wide open fields to explore. My jitters with our bodies worried her, and maybe she needed a more phlegmatic male, who would not take her so seriously and control her a little when she got out of hand. For my own good, Nou told me I should get Christa out of my mind. Almost unable to swallow, I knew that by wanting Christa so much I had never given myself a realistic chance of succeeding.

  On New Year’s Eve, everyone from Carradale House joined the local villagers at the local community hall for the fiddler-led dance that would go on to midnight. Long uncomfortable on a dance floor, and not at all equal to intricate highland reels, I first stayed on the side and looked towards Christa. When Nou got me on the floor, I only half successfully glided her much shorter and once-ripe body around the room. Av momentarily rose to the occasion of dancing with Linda but then ungallantly looked relieved when Murdoch cut in, not trusting Av to know how to disengage himself politely. Finally, when I had the courage to ask Christa to dance with me, she did not hold herself back, and fleetingly I remembered how we once happily square-danced at Cold Spring Harbor. Afterwards she was again very much part of the bigger group until midnight arrived, the dancing stopped, and, after the bagpipes sounded, we belted out “Auld Lang Syne.” It was a time for kissing, and Linda and I let ourselves go as if we were more than we were. I had to kiss Christa, too, and she didn’t resist. But then her face suddenly went blank, and we talked to others as we made our way along the path back to Carradale House.

  New Year’s Day was on a Sunday that year, and only the next day did the house party break up. John drove Christa and me to Glasgow Central Station, while he drove back to Cambridge. I could not bring myself to watch Christa go off to London alone, and so I waited with her for several hours until the overnight train arrived. Books and magazines marked the silence between us and kept me from too many last looks at her face. Later, after little sleep for several hours, I felt cold and blank in the Underground that took us around to Victoria Station. Walking up into its big drafty hall, the only consolation was that the boat train was still several hours from departing. But it was hard to put anything but despair on my face as we ate our cold, uninspired station breakfast of bacon, eggs, and baked beans.

  The time to say good-bye was on hand. Even a slight hug, now, would be wrong, and my last memory of Christa was her sleepless face disappearing into the train compartment. Walking back along the platform, I felt like vomiting.

  Cambridge (England): January–February 1956

  IN CAMBRIDGE, ON my return from Scotland, somehow I had to be more than a melancholic relic of a lytic love obsession. Retreating into college to take stock of my life ha
d no chance of working. My room was heated, but this was its only good point: it had not a trace of ancient charm. The only inspiration that I might get from looking out onto the drab brick tower of the National Socialist–like University Library would be the desire to jump off it. Back in the Cavendish Lab, I saw no point in hiding the fact that my personal life had collapsed over the holidays. But to the males about, the less said the better. Women-wise, Linda Pauling was still in Scotland and Mariette Robertson had not yet returned from her parents’ temporary abode in Paris. Odile Crick, of course, might have recently spotted some newish girl’s face with me in mind. But past experience suggested that such Cambridge popsies were inevitably already part of someone else’s life.

  I was not an animated sight over lab coffee. Now that Alex Rich had gone back to Bethesda, Francis was keen to finish our long-put-off manuscript on the structure of small viruses. But that morning in January 1956 my brain felt too heavy to have alternative thoughts about how we should phrase our arguments. More pressing was the wallet my parents had sent me for Christmas. Ordinarily I would have kept it in reserve because my current one, though shabby, was functional. Dumping it now could be the occasion for the picture of Christa I kept in it to go into the wastebasket, too. It had come with her birthday present to me of last April, which had seemingly implied that she finally would be mine. The time was on hand to tear it up, so that I would not have a later opportunity to retrieve it from the trash dump. Peter Pauling, however, cautioned me to keep the snapshot intact. It’s better to be able to look back at a true love, he said, than to recall girls that never made your heart stop.

  Over tea, Ann Cullis happily was in no immediate hurry to get back to her work for Max Perutz. Sensing my abject demeanor, she volunteered to cook me supper at The Green Door. Just after seven, I took my shell-shocked psyche up its narrow staircase, reassured that Ann knew firsthand the warm personality of my now lost love. Quickly downing an offered sherry and the refill that immediately followed, I soon stopped feeling sorry about my fate. My hostess’s strawberry blond mane and cooking skills made my mind instead turn to the unwanted fact that Ann’s weekends were dominated by an admirer, who came up from London in a vulgarly large and fast car. Yet I momentarily thought she might, soon, look at me as more than simply Christa-less. But as I left her flat, Ann matter-of-factly wished me good luck in finding someone else.

  The next morning, I saw the need to pen a note to Ernst but two weeks were to pass before I could compose a letter worth sending.

  Cavendish Laboratory

  Free School Lane

  Cambridge

  January 21, 1955 [=1956]

  Dear Ernst

  I imagine that Christa has written to you that she has decided not to marry me. As you might expect, this depresses more than a little, both because I love her and even more because I have always and even now think that we are basically very well suited to each other. Her answer seemed ambiguous and certainly her mood did not waver during the week at Carradale. So I imagine that I should take her answer as final. But this is very difficult, both for emotional reasons, and also because of the complete change from her September mood (and in letters afterwards) when I know she was quite in love with me and indicated that she would marry me. In Munich in November, the atmosphere was tense, partly because I just didn’t fit into her student existence and also because she was more than a little annoyed at my insistence that she see a first rate heart specialist. However, I didn’t much think about it and hoped that the Christmas visit might be more pleasant.

  As you no doubt were aware, Christa’s attitude toward me has always oscillated between extreme affection and almost complete indifference and so I cannot be sure that this is not one of her periodic phases and that she might view me differently on a new occasion. In a way, I think I understand her very well and I suspected that she would break things off before she could ever decide how she felt about me. At times she impresses me as still very young and not really knowing what she wants except for the ability to grow up and choose her own life. The age difference between us was very apparent in Munich and it was obvious that she preferred to be with young people who had their lives completely in front of them. She was constantly irritated by the fact that I didn’t lead the life of a penniless German student and instead preferred to travel by plane, eat good food, sit down at concerts, and generally adopt attitudes common to the English Middle Class among whom I now live. However I know very well that in about 3 years her attitude toward these things will radically change once these attributes of mine will no longer seem so disquieting.

  The basic reason she gave for her decision was that she didn’t love me any more and I know very well that she shall never marry anyone with whom she is not in love. But I also know that her ideas about love are very simple and that she shall find it a far more complex emotion than she now believes. Until I was 25, I was incapable of complete love and so Christa’s attitude is no surprise to me. And so I cannot be sure that her decision reflects an inherent inability to marry me or whether it arises from a feeling created largely by a situation thrust upon her before she was ready. I was always aware that the matter shouldn’t be forced but this was difficult to achieve since at times she was obviously in love with me.

  Naturally there is no point in trying to see her again before she returns to the States. Probably for the first time, she now feels completely free to act as she pleases and so it should be much easier for her to see if she finds anyone with whom she is basically compatible. For my part I cannot exist under the hope that Christa shall eventually marry me and so if I were to meet another girl that I could talk to as easily I should naturally try to marry her. The bloody trouble is that Christa is very much part of my system and I am afraid that it may take a long time to remove her from my dreams, as well as my reality.

  In a way, I would like to hear your views on the matter, largely for the reason that you know Christa very well. But I can also understand why you might prefer to say nothing.

  Otherwise my fortunes fare well. There is a good chance that arrangement of RNA within TMV shall be known before I return in early June and likewise the structure of Poly Adenylic Acid looks hopeful. Over the Easter holiday, I shall be lecturing in Israel and I shall call in at Cairo if Jeffries Wyman is about at this time.

  With my usual best greetings to Gretel and Suzie

  Jim

  Don Caspar, now back from Christmas skiing in Austria, gave me the fresh news that Rosalind Franklin’s group at Birkbeck College London had just located the RNA within tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). They did this by comparing the X-ray diffraction pattern of TMV rods with those from similarly shaped RNA-free rods, made by repolymerizing pure TMV-protein subunits sent from Tübingen. Most excitingly the very prominent TMV density maximum at a radius of 40 angstroms was absent in the particles lacking nucleic acid. Because the phosphate groups in RNA effectively act as “heavy atoms” in diffracting X-rays, the 40-angstrom density maximum had to represent the sugar-phosphate backbone of its RNA component. So RNA’s structure within TMV had to be completely different from that assumed when it folds up free in the absence of protein. By then our office no longer had space for more model-building following the arrival of Joe Kraut, John Kendrew’s newest American postdoc, here to work on myoglobin. At times, there were seven of us jammed together in our office, all trying to do our own thing. So I began daydreaming of a potential theoretical note to Nature by Francis, Aaron, and Joe. The alliterative Crick, Kraut, and Klug assemblance would make Gamow jealous.

  Impatient to publish her new TMV finding quickly, Rosalind was in a quandary as to how to give credit to Don’s earlier, unpublished Yale work. By now, their past squabbling about who should explore fivefold virus symmetry was a memory much better repressed. Rosalind, knowing of Don’s writer’s block, was actually writing up his Yale results so that she could properly acknowledge it in a companion manuscript to be submitted to Nature.

  Birkbeck College Crystall
ography Laboratory

  (University of London)

  21 Torrington Square, W.C.I

  Feb 10 [1956]

  Dear Jim

  Here is a very hasty version of Don’s note—I have done no rewriting, as you and Don will obviously want to do some anyway. I will send mine on as soon as it is finished (probably Monday). I’m sending a copy of this separately to Don in case it doesn’t reach you before you go to Scotland.

  Yours

  Rosalind

  Spurred on by Rosalind’s help, Don himself was writing up his observations on bushy stunt virus. Seeing great value in having Francis’s and my theoretical article on “Structure of small viruses” appear next to it in Nature, I stopped procrastinating and got on to its writing. A CIBA Foundation meeting on “The Nature of Viruses” was to be held in London in late March and our papers should be out before. So motivated, the manuscript was soon finished and submitted to Nature on January 23.

  By then, Linda was back. Remaining in a large, cold Edinburgh flat was no longer a sensible option, once she saw that Av never intended to give her the au-pair girl’s option of rebuffing advances from the household head. Moreover, the third of their ménage, John Godfrey, had started to make unmistakable hints that he was testosterone-driven to chase her. At best, Linda found this embarrassing, for it was Av’s bashful Haldane eccentricity, not his devotion to laboratory animals, that had led her to Edinburgh. Accepting advances from an underpaid socialist, obsessed by voles, wasn’t part of her strategy. On the morning of her departure, Av’s gallantry reappeared as he gave her the latest issues of Vogue and The New Statesman to read on the train. Linda now could take comfort in a unique experience, in which she had surmounted adversity, displayed much grace, and avoided chilblains.

  Mariette was also now back in town and happily spending more time with Peter, who had stopped driving out to Girton. Apparently Julia Lewis, his flame of the fall, had a bad flu bug that would not go away and she had not come back for the winter term’s first week of lectures. Linda and I were together more and more often, going to movies at the Arts Theatre and seeking out Alfred Tissières, whose rooms’ high ceilings and views out onto the Chapel invariably made having tea or evening coffee there a morale-sustaining event. Although the North Sea wind blew cold occasionally, there were enough almost balmy days above 50°F to let us take long walks along the Cam, sometimes as far as Granchester.