affected, they were sold
widely. Silver nitrate and lead acetate were less dangerous compounds, though
still not altogether safe, but they turned the hair raven-black. “You could see
it was artificial a hundred yards away,” Schueller remarked. Such blatant
artificiality scandalized people: Eugène’s own mother would point her finger at
a neighbor. “She’s using hair dye! And we thought she was a decent woman!” He
finished by writing so many articles on the subject for the Grande Revue Scientifique that he eventually made a little book out
of them: De l’Innocuité des teintures pour cheveux .
(It is not dated, but since among the author’s many listed
qualifications—Ingénieur-Chimiste, Diplômé de l’Université de Paris,
Ex-préparateur à la Sorbonne, Ex-chef du Laboratoire des Recherches de la
Pharmacie Centrale de France—he included “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur,” it
must have been published after World War I, when he received this
decoration.)
The hair-dye job meant working at the hairdresser’s
salon in the evenings, from eight till eleven, at the end of an already
unimaginably long day. Eugène’s excessive appetite for hard work had not
endeared him to his boss at the Institute, and he soon found himself exiled to a
factory at Plaine-St.-Denis, out in the northern suburbs. Work there started at
6:30 a.m. There was as yet no Metro. To arrive in time, he had to get up at 4:30
and take a tram. And at the end of the day, the hairdresser’s salon was on the
other side of Paris.
It was not long before Eugène fell out with the
hairdresser—in one account because the hairdresser took no interest in the work,
in another because Eugène wanted to claim all the credit for himself. The
probable truth was that Eugène’s acute business antennae sensed the moneymaking
potential of this work, and he preferred to pursue it on his own. The
hairdresser, too, must have had some notion of a harmless hair dye’s commercial
possibilities, else he would not have commissioned the work in the first place.
He specialized in hair dyes, and his clients referred to his store of bottles as
“the fountain of youth,” a phrase potent enough to start the mental
cash-registers ringing loud and clear. He had only employed Eugène because he
did not know how to make the new product himself and needed a consultant who
did. Unfortunately for him, the consultant fate allotted him happened to be that
extreme rarity, a brilliant scientist who was also a business genius, and whose
sensitivity to potential moneyspinners, and ability to make them spin money,
would turn out to surpass that of almost anyone else in France.
The prospect of working for himself with a definite
end in view, and of financial independence should he succeed, suited Eugène far
better than dreary academic security. He decided to continue his research on his
own account, and resigned from the Pharmacie Centrale. His boss was
disbelieving. He was still only twenty-six and was already being paid a special
salary, 250 francs a month. How could he give it up, just like that?
It was indeed an excellent salary—so much so that
during his three years at the Pharmacie he had managed to save 3,000 francs,
enough to support him while he perfected his formulas. The only snag was, he’d
lent most of the money to a friend who was not just then in a position to pay it
back. He resigned anyway, on 800 francs, the capital remaining to him. The
two-room apartment on rue d’Alger cost 400 francs a year, which since he had
also to eat and buy materials gave him a little less than two years. The dining
room became his office, the bedroom his lab. He lived alone, cooked for himself,
and slept in a little camp bed until it was crowded out by laboratory equipment,
when he took it up to a vacant storage room. “When I think back to those days, I
can’t imagine how I got through them,” he reflected forty years later.
His first product worked well on dead hair in
widely. Silver nitrate and lead acetate were less dangerous compounds, though
still not altogether safe, but they turned the hair raven-black. “You could see
it was artificial a hundred yards away,” Schueller remarked. Such blatant
artificiality scandalized people: Eugène’s own mother would point her finger at
a neighbor. “She’s using hair dye! And we thought she was a decent woman!” He
finished by writing so many articles on the subject for the Grande Revue Scientifique that he eventually made a little book out
of them: De l’Innocuité des teintures pour cheveux .
(It is not dated, but since among the author’s many listed
qualifications—Ingénieur-Chimiste, Diplômé de l’Université de Paris,
Ex-préparateur à la Sorbonne, Ex-chef du Laboratoire des Recherches de la
Pharmacie Centrale de France—he included “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur,” it
must have been published after World War I, when he received this
decoration.)
The hair-dye job meant working at the hairdresser’s
salon in the evenings, from eight till eleven, at the end of an already
unimaginably long day. Eugène’s excessive appetite for hard work had not
endeared him to his boss at the Institute, and he soon found himself exiled to a
factory at Plaine-St.-Denis, out in the northern suburbs. Work there started at
6:30 a.m. There was as yet no Metro. To arrive in time, he had to get up at 4:30
and take a tram. And at the end of the day, the hairdresser’s salon was on the
other side of Paris.
It was not long before Eugène fell out with the
hairdresser—in one account because the hairdresser took no interest in the work,
in another because Eugène wanted to claim all the credit for himself. The
probable truth was that Eugène’s acute business antennae sensed the moneymaking
potential of this work, and he preferred to pursue it on his own. The
hairdresser, too, must have had some notion of a harmless hair dye’s commercial
possibilities, else he would not have commissioned the work in the first place.
He specialized in hair dyes, and his clients referred to his store of bottles as
“the fountain of youth,” a phrase potent enough to start the mental
cash-registers ringing loud and clear. He had only employed Eugène because he
did not know how to make the new product himself and needed a consultant who
did. Unfortunately for him, the consultant fate allotted him happened to be that
extreme rarity, a brilliant scientist who was also a business genius, and whose
sensitivity to potential moneyspinners, and ability to make them spin money,
would turn out to surpass that of almost anyone else in France.
The prospect of working for himself with a definite
end in view, and of financial independence should he succeed, suited Eugène far
better than dreary academic security. He decided to continue his research on his
own account, and resigned from the Pharmacie Centrale. His boss was
disbelieving. He was still only twenty-six and was already being paid a special
salary, 250 francs a month. How could he give it up, just like that?
It was indeed an excellent salary—so much so that
during his three years at the Pharmacie he had managed to save 3,000 francs,
enough to support him while he perfected his formulas. The only snag was, he’d
lent most of the money to a friend who was not just then in a position to pay it
back. He resigned anyway, on 800 francs, the capital remaining to him. The
two-room apartment on rue d’Alger cost 400 francs a year, which since he had
also to eat and buy materials gave him a little less than two years. The dining
room became his office, the bedroom his lab. He lived alone, cooked for himself,
and slept in a little camp bed until it was crowded out by laboratory equipment,
when he took it up to a vacant storage room. “When I think back to those days, I
can’t imagine how I got through them,” he reflected forty years later.
His first product worked well on dead hair in
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