The Sensorium of God

by Stuart Clark

  Newton winced, and hoped he had disguised it. ‘Your noble duty would be fulfilled in the first place by one simple thing: a decree for the Royal Society to appoint a supervising committee to the observatory in Greenwich. We could then examine Mr Flamsteed’s work to determine whether it is fit for patronage.’

  ‘Of course, of course. You must do whatever you can. See my office when we’re back in London.’ George turned to one of his aides. ‘This man will be coming to see you. He wants to oversee the observationarium-ory – what’s it called?’

  ‘Observatory, Your Highness,’ supplied Newton.

  ‘Yes, that! At Greenwich. I want you to see to it that he can.’

  The aide nodded and Newton wanted to shout in triumph.

  Flamsteed, I have you!

  The Astronomer Royal read the piece of paper with an open mouth.

  ‘The trickster! I won’t comply.’ He thrust the inked sheet back at Halley, who refused to take it.

  ‘It’s a royal warrant,’ he said. ‘You have no choice. Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

  Flamsteed filled the doorway. ‘Newton offered to help secure patronage to pay for the costs of publication. Nothing was said about his assessing the data first.’

  ‘You cannot be surprised that some level of review is necess–’

  ‘My data are my own, and I will publish when I please.’ Flamsteed let the warrant drop. The breeze caught it and sent it skating across the ground. After tangling briefly round the legs of the bay mare that had drawn Halley’s carriage, the warrant fluttered away. Halley thought about going after it but decided to stand his ground.

  Flamsteed studied him from head to toe. ‘You used to be such a fine young man, Edmond.’

  ‘This is not about me. It’s about you doing your duty.’

  ‘Duty!’ Spittle flew from the crabbed mouth. ‘I’ve been the Astronomer Royal since the fourth of March, 1675. Every clear night – no matter how bitter – I have observed. I’ve observed until my body is broken, my bones are weakened and arthritic.’ He thrust the ruined fingers of his hands towards Halley. ‘I will not be lectured by a libertine.’

  Halley stared at the bloodshot eyes. ‘Mr Newton needs your data to complete a theory of the Moon and make our navigators safe at sea. It’s the very reason Greenwich was established in the first place.’

  ‘You deceive yourself. Even if Newton concocts his magic theory, how is a navigator going to use the information? It will require precise observations to be made, and how are you going to achieve those from the rolling deck of a ship when you cannot keep a telescope pointed anywhere? You must know that from your own sea voyages.’

  ‘Some way will be found,’ said Halley stiffly. ‘Now, John, your data, please? I’m here to collect it.’

  Flamsteed shook his head in disappointment. ‘I should have known you two were in league.’

  ‘We must all work together. For too long we have pursued our own goals without focus. Newton’s physics gives us a priority, a way of thinking. We are . . . we are Newtonians now. Anything else smacks of mediaevalism and superstition.’

  ‘Does it? After the visitor I had here the other day, I think it would be wise to distance myself from you altogether.’

  Flamsteed’s words caught Halley. ‘Who came to see you?’

  ‘It appears your new philosophy may not be quite as acceptable as you think.’

  ‘Who came to see you?’

  Flamsteed said nothing.

  ‘Very well.’ It was all Halley could do to control himself. ‘Where are your observations? In the name of the Queen I demand logs, ledgers, reductions, everything.’

  ‘I won’t comply.’

  ‘Face it, John. You’re an old man. I can take whatever I like.’ Halley climbed the final step. His elbow pressed into the doughy torso as he barged past the old astronomer.

  Newton’s stomach was churning as he stepped into the rowdy gin-house. He had hoped never to see one of these interiors again. This particular example reminded him of a cattle pen on market day, with the patrons lurching around like beasts.

  He had been forced to frequent such drinking establishments in his early days at the Mint, feigning friendships, buying drinks and loosening tongues in his efforts to track down counterfeiters. Through eavesdropping on the conversations around him and asking the occasional seemingly-innocent question he had compiled his evidence: the names of the ringleaders, the places they worked, their rivals and allies. He had logged every scrap of intelligence until he knew more about counterfeiting than any individual miscreant involved in the process.

  Then he had smashed them.

  Compared to those investigations, tracking down a Swiss mathematics teacher had been simple.

  Fatio was draining his glass when Newton arrived at the table. The young man looked bedraggled, even though the day was dry. His ears protruded through lank tresses and his once pert cheeks had sagged.

  ‘Isaac.’

  ‘You’ve changed,’ said Newton, wondering whether this had been such a good idea. Where was the beautiful boy he remembered?

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘I heard you were back in England.’

  ‘Please, join me,’ said Fatio, wiping his mouth.

  Newton drew up a chair and sat opposite. Feeling suddenly awkward, he thrust the book he was carrying into Fatio’s hand. ‘I’ve brought you something. It’s my Opticks. I thought you’d like a copy.’

  Fatio opened the stiff leather binding and flipped through the pages, pausing here and there to skim a passage or trace the lines of a diagram with his eyes. Newton had quite forgotten this hasty, careless facet of the man.

  ‘You publish your fluxions at last,’ said Fatio, reaching the back of the book.

  ‘A few early papers, that’s all. I tire of Mr Leibniz constantly snapping at my ankles.’

  ‘I published in defence of you against him a few years ago.’ Fatio spoke falteringly, as if he was unsure whether it had been a wise thing to do or to admit. His accent had thickened, but that might have been the gin.

  Newton said, ‘Let me see if I can remember the passage: “I recognise that Newton was the first and by many years the most senior inventor of calculus . . . As to whether Leibniz, its second inventor, borrowed anything from him, I prefer to let those judge who have seen Newton’s letters and other manuscripts, not myself.” I was – am – sincerely grateful for your support.’

  Fatio shrugged. ‘I thought perhaps you might have written to me when you read it.’

  Newton looked at the stained tabletop to avoid answering. He had still been angry at that stage, and had considered the document a rather pathetic attempt to curry favour.

  ‘I’ve followed your career at the Mint,’ said Fatio.

  ‘It was a good move, especially after . . .’

  ‘After us?’

  Newton gave a small nod, but then added, ‘After my temporary insanity.’

  Fatio looked forlornly into his empty glass. ‘What does it feel like to send a man to his death? The clippers and the counterfeiters, I mean. You pursued them without mercy.’

  ‘I did my job,’ said Newton. ‘But I never attended the executions.’

  ‘I did. I wanted to see the men you had beaten. Did you hear how Challoner begged for his life up there? Swore to the crowd that he was being murdered.’

  ‘A lie is a poor way to meet one’s Maker.’

  ‘He’d been dragged through the street on a sled. He was covered in mud and filth, shivering with cold. Stone cold sober. But he climbed the ladder and put on the hood before presenting his head to the noose.’

  Newton made no response. Where was this leading? This whole encounter had been a dreadful mistake. The past was the past.

  ‘I miss you, Isaac,’ said Fatio quietly.

  ‘I miss you, too,’ Newton found himself replying.

  ‘We’re both changed men,’ said Fatio.

  ‘We are.’

  ‘But I’ve been
thinking a lot about our final conversation. I was too young. I want to–’

  Newton held up a hand. ‘Not here.’

  ‘Here’s as safe as anywhere to talk about it,’ said Fatio.

  Newton almost laughed. ‘That’s what the counterfeiters thought.’

  There was a manuscript on Fatio’s desk that the younger man clumsily hid, but Newton had already recognised one of the diagrams; Fatio was still working on his impossible theory of gravity.

  The mathematics teacher was lodging in a room only half the size of the one Newton remembered. The plaster was damp and a used chamber-pot sat in the corner. Fatio made a bad job of emptying it through the window, then clattered the pot back on to the floor.

  ‘You wanted to tell me something,’ prompted Newton.

  Fatio nodded and sat on the bed.

  Newton joined him, careful not to position himself too close. ‘There are some things, Nicolas, that are perhaps best forgotten.’

  ‘No. I was naive before. You scared me. But I’ve come to understand what you said and recognise the truth. Tell me, do you still have the pamphlet you wrote for John Locke?’

  ‘It was destroyed,’ Newton lied. He had no idea where it was; floating around on the continent, he assumed. Thankfully, he had not signed it.

  Fatio grimaced. ‘Too bad. Your position in society now would be . . .’

  ‘You must never tell anyone what I said. It was a symptom of my delirium.’

  ‘But you were right.’ Fatio looked at him squarely. ‘Absolutely right. I see it now. I’ve been reading Revelations – I cannot believe that I was so blind to it before. I want everyone to know.’ With a flurry of movement Fatio dropped to his knees and bowed his head. ‘Bless me, Isaac. I cannot tell you how much it would mean to me. Please, bless me.’

  ‘Nicolas, you’re drunk. Get up.’

  ‘No,’ pleaded Fatio, ‘the Saviour is referred to as “the Lamb”. You were born at Woolsthorpe, your estate, your flocks of sheep . . . It all fits. And everything you said before, I remember it all. It all fits. I want everyone to know.’

  Newton reached out and touched the man’s greasy head to quieten him.

  ‘Let me repair the damage between us,’ begged Fatio.

  ‘There’s nothing to repair on my account.’ Newton removed his hand.

  ‘Truly?’ Fatio lifted his head; his eyes were filled with tears.

  ‘Truly.’ Newton forced himself to speak but his mind raged. What a disaster this was proving to be. Fatio was clearly insane. What would happen if he made these ludicrous beliefs public?

  His confusion mutated into cold logic. He could not ignore this. He had to protect himself.

  He looked at the babbling man.

  The threat had to be removed. For good.

  37

  Hanover, Saxony

  The library’s windows were dark and shuttered. The rain beat against the hidden glass and a single candle flickered in the draughts. Leibniz sat at his table, working in the restless flame’s pool of light.

  ‘Another book for you, Mr Leibniz.’

  Leibniz could hear the disdain in the servant’s voice. The family history was still not complete. As a result the Duke was refusing to see Leibniz about anything other than business directly related to the book. The snub was damaging the philosopher’s reputation throughout the household.

  So be it. He could survive without the servants’ respect. All that mattered was that he still saw Lady Caroline almost daily. She was proving a formidable scholar. Having just completed Thomas Aquinas’s thirteenth-century work Summa Theologica, she could now debate theology as well as any man, if not better.

  Leibniz accepted the book from the servant with feigned indifference. It was Newton’s new book on colours. Looking at the title page, his mouth went dry at the mention of addenda: Also two treatises of the species and magnitude of curvilinear figures.

  Why was Newton publishing his calculus papers now?

  It took just seconds to realise that these were old works, dating to Newton’s conception of the technique.

  What was going on in London?

  First, there had been Fatio’s pathetic accusation of plagiarism. It was well known that the man was an intimate of Newton’s, so it could hardly have been published without his knowledge. Now, here was a new book with a couple of outdated papers tucked in the back.

  Newton does nothing without intent, Leibniz told himself, and a sly thought lifted his mood. Why not return Fatio’s favour?

  Instead of writing a review of Opticks, he decided to review the calculus papers only – anonymously, of course – pointing out the similarity to his own previously published works on the same subject. Given the chronology of publication, who could say from where Newton had taken his inspiration?

  Yes, thought Leibniz, a parrying shot to finish the matter. Newton will understand the message and leave well alone.

  Dawn was leaking through the shutters when Leibniz put down his quill. His hand shook and his eyes smarted, but he felt buoyant.

  He blotted the final page of his review and folded it into letter form, sealing the package with wax and addressing it. His back was stiff from sitting in the same position all night and he stretched his hands above his head. As he did so he remembered that he was supposed to present new pages of the wretched history before dinner that night. And, of course, there was Lady Caroline to see at nine o’clock.

  He must snatch a few hours’ sleep. He fumbled to close the book but it slipped from his fingers, falling open at random. As he lifted it, a phrase leapt out at him. He blinked at it, convinced his eyes were playing tricks.

  The sensorium of God.

  Something prickled inside Leibniz. What did Newton mean by that?

  Unable to help himself, he hunched over the table and began to read the passage, then the following sentences and pages, and then the preceding ones. Time melted away. As he read, he lifted a hand to cover his mouth.

  The sensorium of God.

  Isaac Newton was peddling ungloved blasphemy to the English people as some kind of rational new philosophy. This could not go unchallenged.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Lady Caroline? Is that the time already?’

  Her pretty face was a mask of concern. ‘Are you quite well? You do not look at all yourself.’

  ‘I am of no concern, but you are just the person I would like to see now. Please, tell me what you think of this.’

  She hurried to the table and he showed her the book.

  38

  London

  The Royal Society’s new home was a tall cliff-face of stone, hidden at the rear of a narrow crevice just off Fleet Street. Both sunlight and casual passers-by found it difficult to drop into the courtyard by accident, ensuring that the building, if gloomy, was mostly protected from the intrusion of the surrounding city.

  Sometimes curious children would dive in to play there, but they were soon evicted if the President caught sight of them. Bellowed back into the streets, they carried tales of the ogre that lived in Crane Court, which inevitably brought more of their companions to explore the passageway.

  There were no children today. Instead it was Halley’s turn to suffer the ogre’s rage.

  ‘How can this be? How can this be?’ shouted Newton.

  Halley was sitting behind a desk full of Greenwich observations. Although he knew he was just the lens through which the President was focusing his anger, his heart-rate accelerated. He thought it best to remind Newton of the real villain. ‘It seems that Mr Flamsteed is somewhat reluctant to stay up much past midnight. That’s the only reason I can think of for the paucity of observations of the Moon’s third and fourth quarters, and I can find no observations at all for one year.’

  ‘An astronomer who cannot observe all night? Idiotic! How am I supposed to complete my lunar theory now?’

  ‘There’s only one way: a complete set of lunar observations over a Saros. My observatory in Oxford is almo
st ready.’

  ‘A Saros?’

  ‘Forgive me, it’s my word for the nineteen-year cycle of the lunar orbits that Kepler noticed were linked to the tides. It’s what I thought Mr Flamsteed’s observations would provide us with.’

  ‘Nineteen years!’

  ‘But there is another way to serve your theory of gravity,’ said Halley quickly. ‘I have devised a crucial experiment. The comets of 1682, 1607 and 1531 all appeared from the same part of the sky, and they all followed similar paths. I’m computing their orbits to see if they are actually the same object, looping round the Sun time and time again. If they are, I will be able to predict its return. A fine experiment, do you not think?’

  Newton showed no recognition of the question; something was at work deep inside him. ‘Flamsteed has proved himself utterly incompetent, if not criminally negligent. Get him here. He’ll answer for this. By my life, he will answer.’

  A week later, Halley was pacing the flagstoned yard and wishing for the umpteenth time that today was not happening. He told himself that Flamsteed had brought it all upon his own head. Even so, he still wanted to warn the man of what he was walking into.

  The noise of a carriage drew his attention, but his courage failed. What would Newton think if he happened to look out of the window and saw him talking to the enemy?

  With a curse, he hid in the shadows.

  It had been three weeks since Halley had looted the observatory, and the old man looked as if he had aged a year for every day since. He inched along, resting heavily on a walking stick, oblivious to his audience. If not for his portliness, Halley could have mistaken him for Hooke’s crooked figure.

  Wincing with effort, Flamsteed climbed the front steps. He fumbled with his walking-stick and it clattered to the flagstones. Paralysis finally broken, Halley rushed over and scooped it up.

  ‘Let me help.’ He took Flamsteed’s arm, smelling the unmistakeable whiff of age and its thin masking of lavender water.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ The voice wheezed with the effort. ‘Are you a Fellow here?’

  ‘John, it’s me. Edmond Halley,’ he said.

  His quarry tried to snatch his arm away. Halley squeezed it more firmly.