37 - EINSTEIN

Summary

Wordsworth, who had not seen him, wrote of Newton's statue:

The marble index of a mind for ever

Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.

I, who have seen Einstein, have to record something apparently—perhaps not really different—that he is ‘a naughty boy’, a naughty Jew-boy, covered with ink, pulling a long nose as the world kicks his bottom; a sweet imp, pure and giggling. It is obvious that literally he has had his bottom many times kicked, that he expects it, that he finds it compatible with truth and independence, almost a symbol of independence, and that it has not soured him.

The occasion was a lecture which I gave before the University of Berlin to which he came, followed by an official dinner to which he also came. They do not treat him as a star in Berlin. He was one of the few guests to whom I was not personally introduced—I had to seek him out for myself; and he sat at the table at the bottom place but one. My less lucky lot lay between Frau Rector and Frau Minister, Lydia's between his Excellency and his Magnificence. I did not recognise him at the first sight. Seeing a strange dark creature with a fine domed head sidling into the room, I said facetiously to my neighbour—Here comes M. Briand! But when the answer came—That's Einstein, I moved nearer and saw that the true comparison was Charlie Chaplin.