87 pages • 2 hours read
Graham MooreThe Last Days of Night
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 56-61Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 56 Summary: “At the Foot of Beinn Bhreagh”
The chapter begins with a brief history of Bell’s highly successful telephone patent. He filed mere hours before his second-place competitor and only a few weeks before Edison. Though there have been many lawsuits, Bell’s patent has held strong. Bell then turned the creation and management of his company over to a distant relative and then disappeared, moving to remote Canada with his family.
Agnes tells Jayne she’s taking a last-minute trip with her mother, then tells Fannie she’s staying an extra week in Nashville. Despite her mother’s eventual wrath, Agnes accompanies Paul to see Bell. Their trip is joyful and pleasant, despite Paul learning more details of her engagement. Ironically, they pass the trip pretending to be an engaged couple with fake names. No romance takes place between them, although Paul’s dreams of Agnes are certainly romantic.
At Westinghouse’s introduction, Paul and Agnes are rare guests at Bell’s enormous palatial estate on its own private peninsula. Although he is the richest inventor Paul has ever met, Bell is dressed simply, as is Mabel Bell.
The couple welcomes Agnes and Paul warmly, promising a tour of the laboratory after lunch. Bell has been working on early flight designs and has been in touch with the Wright brothers. Mabel plays the piano, and Agnes sings. All are in great spirits together.
When Paul finally brings up Edison, Mabel leaves immediately, saying she didn’t move to Canada to hear another word about Thomas Edison. Bell says that she unfortunately must still hear his name often, as Edison and others have filed upwards of 600 lawsuits against his telephone patent.
Bell finds the telephone an annoying invention, both in reality and in the legal fallout. He claims he’s won every suit importantly because he did actually invent it: “Not that that always makes a difference. But this is what inventing has become in America, thanks to you lawyers. Courtrooms are the new laboratories” (278).
To Paul’s dismay, Bell encourages him to give up the fight against Edison. The moneymen hold the future, he asserts, not the inventors. He asks Paul what he’s fighting for, who responds with: “We’re fighting for the future of the nation” (279), but Bell doesn’t believe this. He says Paul is fighting for money or honor, which he finds worse.
When Agnes asks why Bell doesn’t just let Edison take his patent, he says it’s because he’s protecting his family and what’s rightfully theirs. In Bell’s laboratory, he’s free to work on anything he pleases. He says:
‘I am free of the terrors of public opinion that so torture Thomas Edison. I am free of the dull pains of manufacturing that so weigh down George Westinghouse. That is winning. To sit in the dark and create things. That’s how we all started. Yet somehow we all forgot that when we allowed our days to become consumed by bickering over which of us first ran which current through which wire’ (280).
Paul asserts that he won’t stop fighting. Bell says he will help him beat Edison but not because he hates him, as Paul does. Bell pities his rival.
Chapter 57 Summary: “The Reverse Salient”
In this chapter, Bell helps Paul and Agnes tease out a new strategy of attack against Edison. When Bell directs their attention to Edison’s stock, Agnes notes that it’s only strong because people believe Edison will defeat Westinghouse.
Paul asks if they’re supposed to spread rumors about Edison to depress his stock value, but Bell says no lies are necessary. Edison is obsessive, and this is his weakness, Agnes observes: “He becomes so fixated on one line of attack that he becomes completely oblivious to another one” (282).
Bell and Edison had the idea for the telephone at the same time, but Bell was timelier about getting it patented. Edison’s obsession with the telegraph blinded him to the race for the telephone. This has haunted Edison ever since, contributing to his aggressiveness in the Westinghouse suit.
Agnes suggests a reverse salient: a war strategy that gives a point of obvious weakness so as to entice the enemy to try to take advantage. Paul is jealous to learn she’s learned about military strategy by a general with whom she was friendly in London.
Edison is so focused on winning his patent war that he’s forgotten about the corporate aspect. The Edison Electric Company has no money of its own and Edison is spending all his money on legal fees. Bell asks who the largest shareholder in EGE is, besides Edison. Paul and Agnes remember J.P. Morgan’s share of 60%. As their plan forms slowly in their minds, Paul turns to Agnes and says that she may be the only person who can help him enact it.
Chapter 58 Summary: “The Metropolitan Opera House Ball”
Agnes sneaks Paul into the New Year’s Eve Ball at the Metropolitan Opera House. His intention is to speak to J.P. Morgan. However, Morgan has brought Edison with him to the ball, complicating their plan. He will have to find a moment with Morgan alone.
The ball is the second most highly regarded social event in Manhattan. Everyone who’s anyone in New York high society is there. Importantly, to Paul, Agnes’s fiancé is not in attendance. Agnes dances Paul through the crowd, trying to avoid Edison while getting closer to Morgan.
Chapter 59 Summary: “A Secret Meeting with the Richest Man in America”
The song they’ve been dancing to ends, and Agnes deftly inserts herself into the conversation of which Morgan is a part. She subtly edges Morgan out of the circle as she charms the group. Bored and not used to being ignored, Morgan eventually leaves.
Paul follows him across the ballroom, into the gentlemen’s lounge. The two other men already there leave when Morgan enters. Paul locks the door behind them and is finally alone with Morgan. At first, Morgan thinks Paul is going to rob him. A powerful man, he is unafraid of the young lawyer making a somewhat aggressive move to speak to him. He gets up to leave, but Paul blocks his exit. Morgan says Paul will be sorry when he gets out and speaks to his associates, or his muscle.
Paul has little time to make his argument. He tells Morgan that the war between Westinghouse and Edison is driving both companies broke. As Morgan owns 60% of Edison’s stock, this will be a big problem for him personally, Paul insists. He proposes a partnership, or licensing arrangement, between the two companies. Edison could sell A/C current and Westinghouse could sell Edison’s lightbulbs, putting the decision-making into the consumer’s hands:
‘Everyone wins. Let’s stop putting the future of these companies in the hands of the courts. Let’s stop leaving it to the vagaries of newspaper opinion and the shifting winds of the free market. Let’s put the important decisions back in the boardroom where they belong’ (295).
Morgan likes what he’s hearing from Paul but still sees many challenges in the proposal. The biggest one being Edison, himself: He hates Westinghouse. With Edison at the head of his company, a partnership would never work. Paul boldly places his hand on Morgan’s shoulder and suggests Morgan remove Edison from his position as head of his own company.
Chapter 60 Summary: “Bury a Penny”
Morgan and Paul meet in a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Morgan has arranged for the wing to be closed off from the public while they talk, displaying the power his vast wealth affords him. He cryptically begins their conversation with the telling of a folk tale about how to make a million dollars: one buries a penny for a thousand years, then digs.
The industrial baron’s wealth is unheard of. Morgan has amassed more money than any individual in history. Paul doesn’t trust Morgan but is surer of Morgan’s motivations than Edison’s or Westinghouse’s. He notes:
Money was a far more predictable motivator than legacy, or fame, or love, or whatever else might rouse a man from his bedsheets. An artist—or inventor—was a far more dangerous partner than a businessman. The latter’s betrayals could be planned for, even depended upon (298).
Morgan (and his more experienced lawyers, he points out) agree that Paul’s ideas are sound. Morgan is the only one who has the power to stage a coup against Edison, replacing him with someone sympathetic to their cause. He admits he doesn’t trust Paul either, then lets Paul in on a secret. Paul’s response will determine how much Morgan should distrust Paul; he says. The secret is that there is a spy high up in the Westinghouse Electric Company. Placed there by Morgan himself, this spy has been reporting all of Westinghouse’s plans back to Edison.
The chapter ends with Morgan alluding back to the parable from the beginning. To get to the fortune faster than a thousand years, he says, one must bury something a lot bigger than a penny.
Chapter 61 Summary: “A Fox in the Chicken Coop”
The man illegally spying on Westinghouse is Reginald Fessenden, the disgruntled ex-employee of Edison’s recruited by Paul over a year ago. Not only has Fessenden been reporting all of Westinghouse’s technological designs and business dealings to Edison, he sent Westinghouse to Tesla because Edison thought it would be a waste of time.
Paul feels exposed, “his thoughts and plans and seemingly clever moves over the past years now revealed to be but a pathetic sham” (302). He asks why Edison never made use of Tesla’s alternating current designs, having such access. Edison disagreed fundamentally with Tesla’s alternating current supposition. He mistakenly believed that his system was better. Paul is shocked to find Edison merely incompetent, rather than dishonest.
This whole plan was Morgan’s. Paul realizes he’s in the presence of a mind somehow beyond the geniuses of Westinghouse, Tesla, and Edison. This is how Morgan blocked their attempts for new investors, as well. Paul’s been in over his head since before he began. Morgan feels Paul’s judgment on him. He tells Paul that he’ll gain all the riches he desires by the end of all this. What he’ll lose, however, is “the illusion that you ever deserved it” (303). He muses that the poor think they deserve to be rich, but the rich live with the knowledge that they don’t. Paul doesn’t consider himself the same kind of man as Morgan, who sees Paul in his same class, “as if Morgan were Paul’s own reflection in a darkened mirror” (303).
Fessenden is most likely with Westinghouse in this very moment. Paul begins to rush to send a telegraph, then has an epiphany. He asks to use a telephone.
Chapters 56-61 Analysis
Chapters 56 and 57 see Paul and Agnes’s relationship deepen. Agnes lies to her fiancé and her mother and accompanies Paul to Canada to see Bell. On the train ride, they pretend to be a married couple, using fake names.
Paul speaks with Bell at length about his experience with Edison. Bell presents a grounded, calm perspective on the whole operation. He urges Paul to give up the fight initially, then agrees to help him but for Edison’s sake. Bell, the fourth major inventor in the novel, reveals his method and motivator for inventing. Rather than squabbling over who did what first, Bell prefers to tinker in his lab and “create,” a method reminiscent of Tesla’s visionary method, if a little less dramatic.
The next chapter is the first step in solidifying the plan that will eventually take Edison out. Bell helps Agnes and Paul realize that Edison’s greatest weakness is his tunnel-vision focus on winning, ironically something that Paul has been suffering from all along. They tease out the realization that Edison General Electric is financially failing due to Edison’s lawsuits. The man they need to turn to next will be J.P. Morgan, primary shareholder of Edison’s company.
Agnes’s behavior at the ball and her “war tactics” discussion with Bell prove her to be a strategist in line with Paul. When Paul finally gets Morgan alone, Morgan reveals that it is he, not Edison, who has been parrying Paul’s blows all along. The scene in the museum is something akin to an unmasking: Paul lifts the mask of Edison to reveal the true villain underneath: Morgan. Instead of looking like a towering figure of power and corruption, Edison suddenly looks incompetent.
While Paul had avoided comparing his tactics to Edison’s, he now realizes these tactics are Morgans. Morgan confirms this, equating Paul with himself. Just as with Edison, Paul doesn’t want to believe it, but it’s “as if Morgan were Paul’s own reflection in a darkened mirror” (303). He sees the similarities between them, but also sees Morgan as “darker,” and more corrupt. Perhaps Paul, in looking at Morgan, is gazing into what he might become should he continue along his immoral path.
