In 1951 Ernest Marshall was interviewed in Redding ridge, CT for the Bridgeport Sunday Post newspaper. Here is the clippinig, enlargement of pictures and the text of the interview, Thanks to Gloria.
From the Bridgeport (CT) Sunday Post, August 26, 1951:
' A Scotchman Can Do Anything,' Declares Redding's Ernest Marshall
Smoke and vapor are just perfume to scientists, 77.
By Bob Stock. x
"The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane
impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapors, soot and flame, poisons
and poverty..."
Yon quotable quote might well serve as a thumbnail biography of Ernest Marshall,
of Reading Ridge, the 77 year-old scientist who has been led by his test tube in
sanity to the far reaches of the globe.
The days of Mr. Marshall's Seeking's are nigh over now. Wracked by arthritis, he
finds himself confined to the reaches of his red brick, century old home in
Redding Ridge. But twas not always thus.
Weaned on a test tube.
Born in Scotland of a botanist mother and a civil engineer father, Marshall was
weaned on a test tube, he swears. As an infant, his mother carried him to the
laboratory in a clothes basket that she might better continue her research, and
he was early taught the fragility of a microscope.
"When I was about four," Marshall relates, "I sat by an old
geezer in a bus. He started to make conversation with the little boy by
inquiring of the contents of the lads pockets." Young Marshall proceeded to
pull forth botanical specimens, identifying them with the flip flow of greek --
"that's a spirogryra, family zygnemataceae."
Needless to add, the old gent subsided.
London University graduate.
There was nothing for it, but that young Ernest study science. He concentrated
on organic chemistry in high school and took his BS in that subject at London
University.
Marshall differed from the usual round of college grads in those days in at
least two ways -- is amazingly outsize, overhanging eyebrows, which he has to
this day; and an equally amazing cock sureness and inventiveness.
"One thing I've learned from life," says he, "is never to say no.
A Scotchman can do anything."
"I am an expert"
His first trial of this philosophy came after leaving college. He chanced upon
an advertisement for coffee expert and applied for the job with no experience
whatsoever. "Can you make coffee essence?" Asked his erstwhile
employer's.
"I'm an expert," said he, "I make the best coffee essence in the
world."
Marshall left the office promising to return the next day with a sample. He
bought some coffee, mixed it with alcohol, distilled the alcohol and brought
down the residue and had the next day for the coffee men, what they admitted to
be "the best coffee essence in the world."
Off to south America.
He immediately set about transforming the plant, removing unstable bacteria from
the company's product, reorganizing the business end of the firm. "Then
there was nothing more to learn." He recalls, and I answered an ad from the
offices of a South African firm in London to examine all the scientific items
they shipped."
Here again, he knew little about many of the firm's products. But after taking
apart a camera or two, and some further dabbling, he was more than able to
satisfy his employers. The Boer War ended that interlude.
In similar fashion, he first bluffed and then breezed through a number of
positions, each time changing because he had no more to learn. He worked on
England's first homogenized milk, stocked the Buckingham palace pond with fish,
and dabbled in motion pictures.
The perfume racket.
But the most exotic -- and remunerative -- of his ventures was production of
perfume essence, with which he purified and uplifted the often close air of
British movie houses. "What a racket, this perfume business," he
admits, "there are some perfumes on the market today for $1000 an ounce,
and I guarantee they don't cost more than $.50 an ounce to produce."
Marshall sniffed World War I coming, and with his first wife came to this
country. She was ill with influenza, and so the couple went straight to San
Diego as possessing the most healthful climate.
There he was employed by a salt works. In the course of his labor he noticed
that the mother liquid of salt was being discarded and managed to make a deal
with his employer to get the liquid gratis. From this he extracted chloride,
magnesium, Epson salts and potash.
The Sun Did the Work!
As war approached these minerals became priceless with the removal of the German
counterparts from the market. "Put the minerals out in the sun and the sun
did the work, we pulled in $40,000 a day."
All was going more than well, when the city of San Diego, in an effort to
alleviate a dry spell, hired a rainmaker for $150,000. The gentleman succeeded,
all too well. It came down for weeks, bursting dams and overrunning Marshall's
mineral gold mine.
Marshall sued the city for a million dollars after the deluge, but the case was
thrown out of court. His losses were ascribed to "God's will."
Canned Fruit to Seaweed.
A series of valued positions for the versatile scientist followed. He analyzed
canned fruits for a California wholesale house owned by Bernard Baruch's family;
sought carbonate of Magnesia in the desert; extracted chemicals from seaweed,
and on and on. With the war, he enlisted with the British and, typical Army
efficiency, spent a good deal of his time doing clerical work, before his
scientific experience was recalled. By 1918, he had added experience as a marine
engineer, to his skein of abilities.
Following the armistice, Marshall commenced world traveling in earnest. There
was a Jaunt to Russia aboard a freighter during the course of which he was
arrested by Russian police and released only after much discussion. The police
had discovered him tapping rocks in the desert and pursuit of another favorite
activity, geology.
A shipboard Buddy was picked up in Batum for pilfering, and Marshall nearly had
him released by explaining his actions in the light of a cocaine habit and
proceeding to explain the various and sundry effects of the drug on the human
nervous system.
Speaks many tongue's.
Marshall has made a number of trips to South America and has covered North
America in Toto in search of new experiences. He has speaking command of a score
of languages and dialects for, as he puts it, "I wouldn't speak to an
American when I'm outside this country for love or Money -- only the
natives."
The years have brought memberships in dozens of societies, including the
American chemical society, American geological society, American Mineralogical
Society, Natural History Museum and so on.
The scientist and his second wife, Carolyn Marshall, a painter, moved to Redding
Ridge, some 20 years ago. Marshall soon interested himself in things scientific
in the area (particularly geology), which were in a state of lapse.
It's just a crime.
Through the years he has sponsored and bolstered clubs for youngsters
hereabouts. For Marshall feels the lack of knowledge of the coming generations
about the world they live in is a crime.
"When I think that youngsters don't learn about the earth upon which they
put their feet, it's just a crime! A Crime!" And the explanation for the
situation, he believes, lies with the teachers, who "learn everything from
books."
In addition to the many scientific settings to his bow, Marshall produces more
than passable pastels. Most indicative of the man is one canvas displayed in his
home, A view of New York from a skyscraper upper floor with a microscope placed
prominently in the foreground. Here is science, in the form of the microscope,
represented as the be-all and the end-all.
For painter Marshall, as well as chemist Marshall, geologist Marshall, and
linguist Marshall, is one of a "strange class of mortals." Impelled to
seek his pleasure in the search of knowledge in the hy-ways and by-ways of
science.
