[… . . . .]
[A farthing broadside, very popular in the winter of 1816-1817 throughout the South Bank and the East End. At the top of the sheet is a rough woodcut of a man wrestling a horned, two-headed dragon, with the Hand of God suspended in heaven above and between them, the hand pointing from its cloud in the direction of the man; various cherubim and winged fish adorn the skies, while the arena in which the two combatants battle is littered with fallen lambs, broken eggs, grinning skulls and scattered flowers; in the left-hand corner of the picture is a crowing cock atop a sheaf of wheat, in the right-hand corner a glowering owl, holding what appears to be a rabbit in its claws; the image appears to be recycled from the religious controversies of the 17th century. Scrawled on the verso side of the archived example are the words “December at Bell & Burbot, Bethnall Green—‘Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek’—burnt offerings at Gilgal—the sign of the baker’s peel, a key to the new Salem—anointure by trumpet?”]
Chapter 4: More Perils, or,
A Thousand Strokes of Mean Invention
“A Merchant Ship ought:
1. To be able to carry a great lading in proportion to its size.
2. To sail well by the wind, in order to beat easily off a coast, where it may be embayed, and also to come about well in a hollow sea.
3. To work with a crew small in number in proportion to its cargo.
4. To be able to sail with a small quantity of ballast.
[… . . . .]
. . . We can conclude nothing concerning the length, breadth, and depth of ships, since different qualities require conditions diametrically opposite to each other. We may succeed in uniting two of these advantages by a certain form and by certain proportions given to ships, but it is impossible to combine all four in an eminent degree. It is not possible to gain on one side without losing another.”
—Fredrik Henrik af Chapman,
Architectura Navalis Mercatoria (Stockholm, 1768;
translated by James Inman, 1820, ppg. 79-80)
“Porism: A proposition affirming the possibility of finding such conditions as will render a certain problem indeterminate or capable of innumerable solutions.
—John Playfair,
in The Transactions of the Royal Society in Edinburgh,
vol. iii (1794)
“Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense, such a dependency of thing on thing, as e’er I heard in madness.”
—William Shakespeare,
Measure for Measure, Act V, Scene 1 (1604/1623)
The gloomy fall of 1816 calved an even more lugubrious winter. The sun, already half-forgotten through a rainy summer and fall, abandoned London and the rest of Great Britain altogether. Rain, mist and clouds muted everything, casting the world in the dull bronze-grey shades of bell-metal and the soft sheen of vermeil and pewter. When the sun did appear it shone with an eerie, oily, reddish glow, as if blood were seeping through the gauze of heaven. No one was happy except the makers of umbrellas and those who supplied them with oiled silk and baleen ribs.
The McDoon household was very unhappy that fall; the rain, though irksome, was the smallest source of their melancholy. Most of their distress and frustration ran like rivulets just below the surface, near enough at all times to keep everyone’s feet wet without completely drowning anyone. The only members of the house on Mincing Lane—the house with the dolphin-shaped doorknocker—who kept up their cheer were Yikes (for whom the ceaseless rain was simply an excuse to stay napping by the fire) and Charicules (who sang in time to the raindrops on the windowpanes and in counterpoint to the wind rattling the sashes).
The Project crept ahead, fitfully, with erratic eighth-steps.
By Martinmas in early November, the McDoons had raised only half the necessary capital but decided to proceed any way (“what choice do we have?” said Barnabas). Despite the lack of full financing but against various forms of additional surety and further rights in collateral, Blackwall’s agreed to lay the keel for The Indigo Pheasant. The McDoons felt strongly that laying the keel for a choir-boat should best happen on November 22nd, the day of Cecilia—patron saint of music—to capture and bind into the vessel “in broken air, trembling, the wild Musick, . . . in a dying, dying Fall” (as Pope had written a century earlier). Yet their fortune was ill-annexed: the momentous occasion was delayed until Saint Nicholas’s Day on December 6th, due to last-minute contractual controversies and to difficulties maneuvering the length of elm for the keel into the yard. An irritable fate continued to dog the McDoons: at the keel-laying ceremony, a windy tongue of rain washed off the rowan branch that Sally had tied onto the bow-end of the keel. Some of the shipwrights, carpenters and blocksmen muttered under their sodden hats that the ship might be cursed or at least resolutely wayward if it would not accept the rowan’s warding and guiding powers. The McDoons pretended not to hear such talk.
Yuletide brought no respite. During the ember week of Advent, Blackwall’s caused further delays by disputing the proposed dimensions of the ship—not its total scantlings, but the degree of beam required for the housing of the mysterious device (still being designed by Maggie, Sally, Mr. Gandy, and Dorentius, with Reglum’s help) and its revolutionary steam-engine. Barnabas and Sanford did not finish “clarifying” with the shipyard until late in the afternoon of Christmas Eve.
“Quatsch, so much for the spirit of fraternity and putting to rest all discord during this wondrous season,” sighed Barnabas, as they rode in a hired carriage on December 24th back to Mincing Lane from Rotherhithe. He looked forward to a long river of wassail-punch, a small mountain of goose topped with rosemaried sausages, and a larger mountain (“no, better yet: an entire mountain range!”) of desserts, afters and delicacies.
“Men make much of a season when it meets their needs, less so when it would force them to more charitable conduct,” said Sanford.
“Takes a good eighteen months from laying the keel to launching the ship,” said Barnabas as the City’s rapidly darkening maze of streets, chares, alleys and snuggeries fled past their coach window (the driver was thinking of his own rendezvous with Christmas dinner, and did not spare the whip). “That means a midsummer delivery in 1818, at the earliest.”
“Given our unauspicious start, I would not stake more than a dod’s worth on even that early a date,” said Sanford. “The more so since the ship itself is not the main part of our worries—we have the Fulginator and its steam engine to think of too.”
“The heroes in all the stories never had to wait so long,” said Barnabas. “Buttons and butterflies! Add in the sailing time, slooping right out into the Somewhither and assuming no miswandering like the last time, that means we might arrive back in Yount sometime spring or summer 1819 by our clock-time here.”
“Just more proof that we are not in a one of those stories,” said Sanford. “No seven-league boots for us, no magic carpet, no hippogriff to whisk us like Orlando hither and yon. We can wish all we want for the winged chariot that flew Palmerin and Fiona to the End of the World in the blink of an eye, or for the enchanted wagon that took Silvander to Davinella his beloved in the Nonamerone . . .”
“Hard work being fairy tale heroes when we aren’t in a fairy tale.”
“I fear our task will get harder still, old friend.”
“You chastise my ambition! No more such bleak cheer from you, Sanford; it’s Christmas, after all!”
Yet, despite his admonitions to be earnestly cheerful, Barnabas thought with increasing despondency that evening of Tom and Afsana, Nexius and the Queen, the little Malchen and even the Cretched Man. Arriving almost three years’ hence might mean utter defeat for them, death, or worse.
“To Tom and Afsana,” he raised a glass, but by then everyone else had gone to bed. “For all we know, they might be dead already.”
The arrival of New Year’s Day ushered in no relief. The weather turned harsher than the almanacs’ most dour predictions: the Thames froze almost as far downriver as
Westminster, halting the erection of the Strand Bridge. Sleet laced the rain. Ice buckled gutters. Everything stank of brown coal. The sun—already on short rations—starved itself and all those who depended on it.
Everyone got sick, for weeks on end, with half-drowned lungs, distempers of the throat, agues of the head. The cold sneaked into even the best-heated rooms, lodging itself in knees and necks and the roots of teeth. It was so cold that the napping Isaak slumped herself against the bulk of the ever-dormant Yikes; no one could remember such a thing.
Charicules alone defied the dark and the cold, singing for hours, starting before what little dawn there was, with soft experiments and gentle matins to wake the house. Isaak was usually first to greet the saulary, coming down to the partners’ room while the only other sound was the maid cleaning out the fireplaces and Cook beginning the breakfast in the kitchen. Maggie was rarely far behind; Cook often found the three—bird, cat, and woman—alone together in the partners’ room, composing their own little antiphonies. Without realizing it, Cook sometimes hummed or even whistled a clumsy counterpoint when she left the room, and continued to do so intermittently throughout the day.
Legato lark, rhythm-bender, tactician of the fugue: Charicules recked not the cold and the wet. He sang ostinatos into the collied sky, building his themes upon the repetition. Maggie sang with him, providing the basso continuo, shaping motets and passacailles that would become part of the Great Song. They sang in and around the ticking of the clock, now fleeing the tempo, now meeting it gleefully. They poured out their own stabat mater speciosa to celebrate the joys of the blessed Mother, and plucked down grace notes to inflect the under-meles service in mid-afternoon. They seethed vespers with the hymn to the Alma Mater, layering hope-notes and chroma onto the steadily offered waves of thanksgiving.
Charicules gave the McDoons courage to continue, necessary since their business fortunes declined in the winter of early 1817. The funds from Coppelius, Prinn & Goethals (Widow) helped, of course, but as fast as money flowed in, the faster it flowed out again. The workers at Blackwalls, complaining of spectral disturbances and a spate of “unnatural” accidents, insisted on higher wages. For similar reasons, both Gravell—the watchmakers on St. John Street—and Wornum—the makers of pianofortes on Wigmore Street, by Cavendish Square—respectfully (but firmly) requested additional payment.
“Cost overruns, a goblin’s picnic of cost overruns!” said Barnabas, on Candlemas Eve. The saulary burbled quietly away in its corner of the partners’ room. Cook had thoughtfully brought up some Burgundy wine, as it was late afternoon and—more important—Barnabas was suffering from a very raw throat.
Sanford nodded without looking up from the latest pile of bills and invoices.
“Beans and bacon, most of these demands make little sense to me,” growled Barnabas, after a long sip of the Burgundy. “Bills from a maker of pianofortes—and now we are to engage the services of an organ-maker as well. What next? Makers of drums and flutes?”
“Maggie says the Fulginator needs elements of both these arts or it will not work properly,” said Sanford, still scratching with his pen at the sums before him.
“Well, yes, but at such an expense? Quatsch. And then there’s all the special wood she wants to house the blasted thing in. Sabicu, teak, macassar ebony . . . oh what else?”
“Bubinga, palisander, antiara, it is all specified quite clearly here, and here, and here,” said Sanford without looking up. “I like the cost even less than you do, but we must put our faith in Maggie. She says each of these woods will play its assigned role, some kinds for durability, some for their flexible nature, some because they most effectively withstand damp and salt, and so on. The list extends—as I suppose it must— to ‘sacassite bearings,’ ‘blue bolcotar oil,’ ‘indrademous stone for fittings,’ something called ‘terential colianasthium.’”
Charicules followed the rhythm of the names of the exotica, making a sonatina of
“sabicu, bolcotar,
bubinga, sacassite,
antiar’, colianasthium.”
Sanford glanced at the bird, recognition flitting across his Norfolk features.
“And very specialized, very expensive cabinet-makers,” said Barnabas, the Burgundy soothing his throat without smoothing his temper. “Morgan & Sanders in the Strand with something called a ‘metamorphic chair,’ and the fellows, what’s-their-names, in Soho with their fancywork and scroll-detailing and I don’t know what else. Quatsch.”
“Maggie says the housing and cradle for the Fulginator need the most profoundly precise assemblage, all the dovetails truer than true, the joints without flaw,” said Sanford. “I share your discomfort, but her arguments convince me that to spend less here is a false economy.”
“What does Sally say about all this? And how much will all that china clay of hers empty our pockets? The clay, I am so sorry to say, that cost Mr. Harris his life.”
Sanford put down his pen and paused before answering.
“That,” he said. “Bears thinking about in much deeper detail. What, in point of fact, is Sally’s opinion on this . . . or any of our related business, for that matter? She has not been with us enough lately to give us the benefit of her thoughts.”
Barnabas winced, and drank more of the Burgundy. In the house with the dolphin door-knocker, restless secrets ganged under the roof-beam and unacknowledged truths tip-toed up and down the staircases.
Sally was frequently absent. Ending her room-bound reveries and crises, Sally had swung into frenetic action—away from the house on Mincing Lane. While Barnabas and Sanford had all they could do with the raising of the capital and the constant shipyard negotiations, Sally took it upon herself to represent McDoon & Co. with the Project’s myriad other contractors. When Barnabas asked her about her sudden spate of errands, she said simply, “Tom’s not here, so I will be Tom.” Barnabas did not contest her right to act—after all, she had attained her majority and had full rights of procuration in the company—but meant only to show his concern for her safety, as she was so often in distant corners of the city. She retorted that Mr. Fletcher usually escorted her, but that she possessed a power more likely of use protecting Mr. Fletcher than the other way around (Barnabas thought better of mentioning the late Mr. Harris in this regard). Sally added that, far from questioning her, the rest of the house should be thanking her for taking on tasks that others either could not or would not handle. Barnabas retreated in a hurry.
Many evenings Sally also spurned Mincing Lane, visiting and calling on friends and establishing new connections. She called many afternoons on Mrs. Sedgewick, sharing long hours with her recovering friend, who absolutely refused to visit the house on Mincing Lane so long as Maggie was living there. Lizzie Darcy and her remote husband were in town for the season, at their house just off Grosvenor Square; Sally was a frequent guest there, and at their friends the Bingleys, and many others in that set. Sometimes Sally dined with the Babbages in Devonshire Street, sometimes with Mary Somerville in Hanover Square, sometimes she went to the lectures at the Royal Institution on Albemarle Street in Mayfair.
Above all, Sally received the great honour of an invitation to breakfast with Sir Joseph Banks, First Baronet, President of the Royal Society since 1778, confidante of the King, a Trustee of the British Museum; the Banks, who had documented the Great Auk off Labrador, and who had sailed with Cook on the HMS Endeavor to Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia, observing—among so many other things—the Transit of Venus; the Banks, who had played a role in Lord Macartney’s embassy to China and Sir Staunton’s publications about the embassy.
Sally did breakfast with Sir Banks and his wife at their famous house on Soho Square, the epicentre of British science, the crossroads where natural history, exploration, politics and state power all conversed. She did call on Mrs. Sedgewick, the Babbages, the Darcys, the Somervilles. She did visit offices and workshops to “clarify” on behalf of The Indigo Pheasant. One day she harangued the timber-merchants by
the Greenland Docks and at the Floating Mead in Lambeth, another day it was the turn of the cabinetmakers on Wardour Street and Gerrard Street in Soho, on the third day she browbeat the specialists at the Java Wharf in Bermondsey, on the fourth she was bedeviling the engineers at Henry Maudslay’s. She saved her most refined pressures for the representative of the china clay producers. The pianoforte manufacturer near Cavendish Square learned to dread her approach almost as much as he feared the appearance of the Green Lady (which was unfair, but he could not know that), as did his counterparts at Flight & Robson, the organ-makers on St. Martin’s Lane near Leicester Square.
But there was more to the story. Sally was away from the house on Mincing Lane far longer than even her expansive itinerary required. Four hours became six, and six became twelve, as Nicobella said in the well-known story. In the thin of the night, Sally sang up a glamour to dull and confuse the minds of the others in the McDoon house about her comings and goings, a cloak for her whereabouts. She even (reluctantly) cast her spell over Isaak.
Sally was going to James on every chance and pretext she could seize.
The Wurm leaned back in a chair in his sharded house half hidden in Hoxton Square. He laughed and hugged himself.
The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 Page 13
