For help with research, the librarians of Cambridge University Library, the Wren and the Whipple libraries; Patricia Fara and Simon Schaffer; my colleagues at Anglia Ruskin University; and the staff and students of the History and Philosophy of Science Department at Cambridge. My thanks go too to Diane and Eric Pranklin for stories about a fenland abattoir in winter and to Melanie Piper for help with the illustrations.
I thank the Hawthornden Trust for granting me a month-long writing fellowship in Hawthornden Castle in 2004, where this book was completed, and for the companionship of Daniel Farrell, Susanna Moore, Heather Dyer, and Sarah Stonich.
ILLUSTRATION AND TEXT SOURCES AND CREDITS
Endpaper art: Ms.add.3970:ff:544v-545r. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
70 Map of Murano, detail from the map of Venice drawn by Jacopo de’ Barbari, c.1500, a copy of which is in the Correr Museum in Venice.
72 Drawing of a glass furnace from a Whitall Tatum catalogue of 1879. Collection of Ian Macky.
73 Osias Beert the Elder, Bodgon (Oysters and Glasses), c.1610, oil on panel. Prado, Madrid. By kind permission of the Prado Gallery.
99 Newton’s drawing of his experiment with a bodkin, from the Portsmouth Collection, Add MS 3995, p.15; by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
102 Broadside of 1665: The Great Plague of London. Woodcut.
103 Map of Cambridge, drawn by George Braun in 1575, from George Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum. Coloniae, 1577–88.
107 Drawing of the experimentum crucis, MS361 of the Newton papers. A drawing for the second edition of the Optique. By permission of the Warden & Fellows, New College, Oxford.
198 Frontispiece from John Bate, The Mysteries of Nature and Art, 1635.
202 Detail from drawing of Trinity by David Loggan, Cantabrigia Illustrata, 1690, showing Newton’s rooms, garden, and alchemical laboratory.
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Extract from “The Dry Salvages” from Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot © Faber and Faber Ltd.
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1The British Museum archive of letters written by John Greene to Allesio Morelli dated 1667–72 establish that Morelli had been supplying the London glass sellers Greene and Measey for several years. For Morelli’s reactions to the shifts in status between English glass and Venetian glass see Vogelsang Papers, pp. 33–37.
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2See Dan Klein and Ward Lloyd (1984), The History of Glass; Eleanor S. Godfrey (1975), The Development of English Glassmaking, 1560–1640; W. Patrick McCray (1999), Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft; and R. W. Douglas and Susan Frank (1972), A History of Glassmaking.
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3For Antonio Neri see W. Patrick McCray (1999), Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft, pp. 153–55; for the death of Neri see Richard Westfall’s Web catalogue of biographical details on European alchemists, http://galileo.rice.edu/lib/catalog.htm.
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4For Morelli and Greene see R. W. Douglas and Susan Frank (1972), A History of Glassmaking, p. 14; Ada Polak (1975), Glass: Its Makers and Its Public, p. 115; and McCray (1999), Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice, p. 148.
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5See Antonio Neri’s L’Arte Vetraria (The Art of Glass; 1612, translated 1662).
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6See R. J. Charleston (1957), “Glass,” in History of Technology, vol. 3, edited by C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall, and T. Williams, pp. 206–44.
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7For the history of the Fens drainage see H. C. Darby (1956), The Draining of the Fens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sir William Dugdale travelled across the Fens on several occasions between 1650 and 1665 and wrote several firsthand accounts, including “Things Observable in our Itinerarie begun from London 19 May 1657” and The History of Imbanking and Draining of divers Fens and Marshes both in Foreign Parts and in the Kingdom, and of the Improvements thereby (1662). See also the account of Elias Ashmole, an alchemist and collector, “Observations in my Fen Journey, begun 19 May 1657” from Elias Ashmole (1717), Memoirs of the Life of Elias Ashmole (London).
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8A subsizar was the lowest status of scholar. Subsizars worked their way through their studies in the employment of a fellow. Though Newton’s family was not poor, it is interesting that his mother was not prepared to pay for him to have a higher status.
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9For Newton’s reading in Descartes see J. Lohne (1968), “Experimentum Crucis,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society 23, pp. 169–99; Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 345–47; M. Mamiani (1976), Isaac Newton Filosofo della Natura: Le Lezioni Giovanni di Ottica e la Genesis del Metodo Newtiano, pp. 81–94.
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10Key works on optics in the seventeenth century are A. I. Sabra, Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton (London, 2nd ed., 1981), and Allen E. Shapiro, “Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century,” Archive for the History of Exact Sciences 11 (1973), pp. 134–266.
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11Robert Hooke (1665), Micrographia, p. 54.
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12For the most extensively and densely researched account of Newton’s experiments with prisms see Simon Schaffer (1989), “Glassworks: Newton’s Prisms and the Uses of Experiment,” in S. Schaffer and S. Shapin (1989), The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences. See also Rob Iliffe (1995), “‘That Puzleing Problem’: Isaac Newton and the Political Physiology of Self,” Medical History 39, pp. 433–58.
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13For the history of Cambridge in the plague years see C. H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 1842–1908), vol. 3; C. P. Murrell (1951), “The Plague in Cambridge, 1665–1666,” Cambridge Review, pp. 375–406; Raymond Williamson (1957), “The Plague in Cambridge,” Medical History 1:1, pp. 51–64.
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14Keynes Ms. 130.10, ff. 2v–3 Newton Project. Newton also remembered buying a prism early in 1666, as he wrote to Henry Oldenberg: “In the beginning of the Year 1666 (at which time I applied my self to the grinding of Optick glasses of other figures than Spherical), I procured me a Triangular glass-Prism, to try therewith the celebrated Phaenomena of Colours.” Newton to Henry Oldenberg, 6 February, 1672; ed. H. W. Turnbull 1959–61, 3 vols Cambridge University Press Correspondence 1, 95–96.
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15Westfall argues that Newton was in Woolsthorpe for the entire period from early August 1665 to 20 March 1666. There is no conclusive proof, however, that Newton did not return to Cambridge for brief periods of time that winter. On Newton’s hypochondria and remedies for sickness see Rob Iliffe, “Isaac Newton: Lucatello Professor of Mathematics” in Shapin and Lawrence (1998), Science Incarnate, pp. 121–55. London: University of Chicago Press.
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16For the location of Newton’s rooms in Trinity see Lord Adrian, “Newton’s Rooms in Trinity,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society 18 (1963), pp. 17–24.
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17Simon Schaffer has discovered several other natural philosophers who worked with prisms; see H. Peacham (1606), The Gentleman’s Exercise; John Bate (1654), The Mysteryes of Nature and Art; G. Della Porta (1658), Natural Magick; and T. White (1654), An Apology for Rushworth’s Dialogues.
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18Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 23.
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19Keynes Ms. 136 (part 3): William Stukeley’s memoir of Newton, sen
t to Richard Mead in four installments (26 June to 22 July 1727), each with a covering letter to Mead. Newton Project.
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20See Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 62; Stukeley, p. 43; Keynes Ms. 130.2, p. 24.
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21More was not a practising alchemist until quite late in his life, but he was driven from the 1650s on by philosophical questions and beliefs that are inseparable from those of alchemical and kabbalistic writings; this is especially so in his passionate quest to demonstrate the intellectual inadequacy of any purely materialist account of either nature or man.
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22Newton referred to More’s book The Immortality of the Soul in his notebook, under the heading “Of Attomes,” describing it as the book in which the existence of indiscernible small particles is “proved beyond all controversie”: Cambridge University Library Add. Ms 3996, fol. 89r.
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23See More to Anne Conway, 8 May 1654 and 18 April 1655 in Marjorie Hope Nicolson, ed., Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and Their Friends (New Haven, 1930). See also Vogelsang Papers, pp. 34–41.
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24See Vogelsang Papers, p. 55.
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25Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 290–91.
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26Keynes Ms. 130.10, f.2v.
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27Louis Trenchard More (1934), Isaac Newton, p. 45.
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28Michael White (1997), Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, p. 95.
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29Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 176–77.
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30Ibid., pp. 177–78.
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31See Richard de Villamil (1931), Newton: The Man, p. 14. London: Gordon Knox.
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32See Samuel Newton (1890), The Diary of Samuel Newton, Alderman of Cambridge, edited by J. E. Foster, p. 72.
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33Vogelsang Papers, p. 56.
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34Vogelsang Papers, p. 57.
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35Vogelsang Papers, p. 60.
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GHOSTWALK. Copyright © 2007 by Rebecca Stott. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stott, Rebecca.
Ghostwalk / Rebecca Stott.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
1. Newton, Isaac, Sir, 1642–1727—Fiction. 2. College teachers—Fiction.3. Alchemy—Fiction. 4. Cambridge (England)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6119.T69G47 2007
823'.914—dc22
2006022326
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
eISBN: 978-0-385-52325-7
v3.0
Ghostwalk Page 33
