But owning a house was secondary in the life of both Pierre and Marie Curie. They simply made a home wherever they lived, for such money as might have gone for the purchase of her little dream house was always needed in the laboratory. She told me one day, with deep feeling, that one of the regrets of her life was that Pierre Curie had died without ever having had a permanent laboratory.
She had, as I have said, refused opportunities to come to the United States because she could not endure separation from her children. She was, I think, finally persuaded to face the long trip and the terrifying publicity attending it, partly because of her gratitude for the support given her scientific work, but principally because it offered a splendid opportunity for travel to her daughters.
There is in Madame Curie none of the legendary coldness and thoughtlessness attributed to the scientist. During the war, when she ran her own radiological truck and lived on the march from hospital to hospital in the zone of operations, she washed and dried and pressed her own clothes. Once during our American travels, we stayed in a home where there were several other house guests besides our party of five. I entered Madame Curie's room and found her washing her underclothes.
"It is nothing at all," she said, when I protested. "I know perfectly well how to do it, and with all of these extra guests in the house, the servants have enough to do."
On the night before the reception at the White House, at which President Harding was to present the gramme of radium to Madame Curie, the Deed was brought to Madame Curie. It was a beautifully engraved scroll, prepared in the office of Coudert Brothers, vesting all rights to a gramme of radium, the gift of American women, in Madame Curie.
She read the paper carefully, and then, after a few moments of thought, said: "It is very fine and generous, but it must not be left this way. This gramme of radium represents a great deal of money, but more than that, it represents the women of this country. It is not for me; it is for science. I am not well; I may die any day. My daughter Eve is not of legal age, and if I should die it would mean that this radium would go to my estate and would be divided between my daughters. It is not for that purpose. This radium must be consecrated for all time to the use of science. Will you have your lawyer draw a paper which will make this very clear?"
I said that it would be done in a few days.
"It must be done to-night," she said. "To-morrow I receive the radium, and I might die tomorrow. Too much is at stake."
And so, late as it was on that hot May evening, after some difficulty, we secured the services of a lawyer, who prepared the paper from a draft Madame Curie herself had written. She signed it before starting for Washington.
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