A Cottage By Any Other Name
When I told Serbian Ambassador Ljiljana Nikšić that I intended to call my book Tesla's Cottage, she was visibly upset. “Oh, no! Please reconsider.”
“Why? I asked.
“It would be an insult to the Serbian people.”
An insult? A disappointment, maybe, that Serbia's national hero did not live in a mansion. But an insult, I wondered. How?
Nikola Tesla's house at Wardenclyffe is not what most people would call a cottage. When he lived here, it was a two-bedroom house with a living room, kitchen, possibly a dining room, and a full-length porch that overlooked the Long Island Sound. Today, the house is larger, but that is due to an addition to the original building. Though the porch has been enclosed, the signature twin turrets, are intact. The front door is where it had been. Tesla's waterfront bedroom is pretty much as it was, and the old fireplace still sends smoke up the same old flue.
In Tesla's day, sea-side homes were the rage among the affluent. The palatial estates of Rhode Island were and still are called “cottages.” The famous architectural firm, McKim, Mead & White designed the beautiful cottages called “the seven sisters” at Montauk. (At the time, Stanford White was a close friend of Tesla's, and for a while, I thought my house might have been designed by White, so closely does it resemble some of his work.) The turrets and peaks, and cedar roofs of this rustic “single style” were spouting up in the best communities. And so, when James Warden decided to build a posh seaside resort, he called his seaside homes “cottages,” thus aligning himself with the communities of the uber-rich.
Even before I knew the history of my home, I, too, used the term, “cottage,” referring to the style of the house. Despite its generous size, the porch, the cedar roof, the bowed windows and, of course, the romantic turrets all signaled “cottage” in my mind. How on earth, I wondered could the term be an insult?
The word, “cottage,” as the Ambassador explained, translates into something like a hut or a shack, a building the elegant Tesla would never choose as a residence. Now I was caught in a dilemma. Not only did Warden use the term for the residence, but in later years, Tesla himself called the home a cottage. On his eightieth birthday his told a group of reporters that he often hid in the cottage when reporters came around. In order to be historically accurate, I decided to stick to my guns.
The Ambassador and I had a number of discussions. She proposed other titles. They were good titles, and in a weak moment, I almost caved. Ultimately, we came to a “diplomatic” solution. With the Ambassador's help, we found a Serbian publisher who would put the book out in Tesla's native tongue. The word “cottage” will be translated int a more appropriate designation in the text, and rather than Tesla's Cottage, the Serbian edition, to be published shortly, will be entitled, Return to Wardenclyffe.
