Nothing had prepared me for the scene that met my eyes. I entered a large room lit by the cold sunset, which streamed over the river and through the great bay window at the far wall. This space had evidently formed the main tavern of the Boathouse at one stage of its operations, and was a grand chamber still, with a huge hearth great enough to roast a horse at the centre, a fire blazing within it almost as high as a man. A cascade of crystal chandelier hung from the stippled ceiling and reflected the firelight in a thousand flickering ways. The glow trembled like a butterfly, alighting now here, now there, upon this staring countenance or that, among the men and women who massed against the long wall, intent upon the curious operations in the middle of the room.
The heat was palpable, thick to the touch as honey; it pressed against the huddled spectators, whose faces sweated and shone in the firelight. Indeed, a pungent odour of humanity spread outward from the packed bodies, who, to be frank, seemed mostly to belong to the lowest order of men: farmers and labourers, in their heavy boots and work-stained vests, their broad arms crossed, their eyes wide with innocent amazement. Coughs and sneezes and shuffling feet broke the heavy silences, and there were many pinched noses and mopped brows. A pocket of more respectable ladies stood somewhat apart, bonneted and shawled, in a corner of the bay window. I noted in particular the trim figure of a young woman in a blue frock, whose sharp eyes shone despite a complexion alas somewhat ruined by the smallpox; and the more elderly elegance of a lady who had clearly once been a great beauty in her day – and had retained the charms of an ivory forehead and neck, large and trembling blue eyes, and a mouth still full and red, only a little softened by the years.
But the attention of a newcomer fixed immediately upon the fantastical operation under way in the middle of the bare wood floor – a space cleared of the tables, chairs and dresser now heaped together against the wall on my left hand. Tom ushered me towards the mass of men opposite me, an attention I particularly resented; but I drew forth my handkerchief to muffle the stench of the creatures among whom I had been thrust. Crossing my yellow leg behind me, I crouched to the ground, for the twin purposes of obtaining a clearer view of the experiment and ducking beneath the thick of the heavy atmosphere. Tom himself joined the figure in the centre, crying, ‘Now what’s all this fuss – everything’s turning nicely, hey?’ To which the Professor – for such I supposed him to be – only grunted before asking him, ‘Kindly to quit playing the fool, and give the world another spin, if it wouldn’t trouble him too much.’
From my low vantage I had every opportunity to study Tom’s associate, sitting no more than half a dozen feet from the tip of my weak chin, propped upon my knee. Allowing for his position, he seemed by no means a tall man. Indeed, he struck me as somewhat below the average height but appeared all the more powerfully built because of that: lantern-jawed, with a brave and stubborn chin, slightly darkened by a day’s growth of beard; a straight, strong, unhesitating nose; a thin upper lip bitten between his teeth, above a plump, rosy lower lip; sharp, broad cheeks crackling and shining with animal spirits in the skin drawn tight across them; thick, liver-spotted forearms bared to the elbow, trembling with his exertions; broad shoulders, with a slight hunch like the growl of fur upon a tiger’s neck. In short, a muscular creature, utterly at ease in his skin, well suited to the constant struggle of the flesh against the hard inanity of the world. And yet above his bright cheeks, the finer, more elegant spirit appeared: fair temples, those delicate doors to the brain; a broad and lofty forehead (furrowed in concentration) above the ‘O’s of his eyes, impossibly blue and large and strangely unhappy – as if they opened too wide upon the miseries of the world. Yes, a handsome gentleman, I confess, and a form worthy of the beauty of his enterprise – a journey through the eye of the mind to the heart of the world. I knew at once I had found my man.
His dress was coarse and plain, to say the least: loose trousers, much patched and stained; a cotton shirt, filthy with sweat and rolled up to the elbow; a leather jerkin, unbuttoned, and bald in several patches where the fire had caught it; leather sandals upon his feet. It was these that drew our collective attention, and the curious device by which they drove a burning globe madly above his head, spitting fire and smoke like a world reeling free of its orbit.
I will do my best to describe the contraption – I can give it no better name – upon which the Professor, well, perhaps rode is the only word for it. It appeared at first glance to be a greatly elaborated version of a spinning-wheel. Syme (as I supposed him to be) sat upon a kind of saddle, propped upon a pole – perhaps it was a saddle, for the device itself suggested the cobbling together of a dozen common items, rather than the execution of afresh design. From this vantage, he plied exhaustively the pedal at his feet, beating his sandals up and down – up and down – with such vigour, I half-expected the machine to stand up of its own accord and begin to gallop. This motion accorded his frame a curious recumbent activity, and accounted perhaps for the contradictory suggestions of strain and complacency upon his handsome features. Everyone in the room I am convinced suffered from the powerful illusion that the Professor was – to put it simply – going somewhere impossibly remote and difficult of access – despite the fact that, like the rest of us huddled about him, he had not budged from his spot.
The spinning-wheel thus driven by his considerable efforts glittered and grinded with speed, and lifted and retracted, lifted and retracted, at great pace a kind of piston or leg, which rose and fell in front of the Professor’s face – which suggested somehow the ludicrous expression of a man being dragged from behind by a one-legged horse (though neither horse nor rider of course shifted an inch). I mention this not to demean Syme’s unimpeachable dignity (and it requires a wonderfully weighty gravitas indeed not to be unseated by such athletic exertions), nor to introduce an unwarranted note of the comic into this remarkable scene, but to convey, somehow, the joyous quality of the whole. We stared spellbound at the experiment, with the same unconscious pleasure occasioned by a great display of natural power, a flash of lightning or a gust of wind – when some hereditary affinity with the living world moves in us a portion of the delight inseparable from energy of any kind. Yet the wonder of the Professor’s invention is to come.
By some arrangement of gears and levers, some confusion of cogs and wheels, the vertical motion of the lifted leg (I’m afraid the device has beggared my scientific vocabulary, and I must appeal to common objects to convey my impressions) had been translated to the circular and horizontal motion of – if I may be forgiven another commonplace – an arm; which held in its hand an enormous burning globe. This it swung in a dizzying circle around and around its – well, the machine had no head, unless it held that in its hands, but – shall we say? – around the absence where a head might have been. The globe itself resembled nothing so much as a smoking (again, it is far from my thoughts to demean the dignity of the experiment, but I wish to set down, as accurately as possible, the physical impression conveyed, for the use of posterity and such experiments in future) colander; for the sphere, composed of some well-fired clay, was holed on all sides like a pricked balloon, and from these cavities issued a thousand streams of black and ashy fume. Upon such clouds, we coughed and choked and spluttered, but held our breath as best we could, to attend to the running commentary issuing from the Professor, who exercised his tongue almost as tirelessly as he pumped his legs.
The most extraordinary part played in these proceedings belonged perhaps to the gentleman referred to (on more than one occasion) as ‘Tom, damn you’, whose job it was to attend to a slight projection from the revolving globe – a handle, as it were – by which he spun the world as swiftly upon its axis as it whirled along its orbit. He performed this task with great nonchalance, standing idly by in his black suit, only touching from time to time, with the tip of his finger, the flying handle, to send the globe upon another month of imaginary days and nights, afresh rotation. The effect of these twin motions upon the … vines of s
moke issuing from the globe was phantasmagoric in the extreme; their soft expanding tendrils entwined and parted, flowered in a thousand sudden springs, and shed their white blossoms in thickening cascades in just as rapid autumns.
Yet the impression of the whole – the revolution of the planet – was indeed far more violent, and, to be blunt, terrifying, than this image suggests. The burning colander whirled no more than afoot above the Professor’s head at such pace that the eye grew dizzy chasing it through its arc, whose radius extended perhaps some four or five feet. The pressed body of men leaned forward as it swung away, in an elaborate release of air and wonder – Oh! – and flattened themselves in fear, their breath and bellies retracted, as it hurtled towards them again, almost scraping the hair off their chins as it shot by. A full year passed as swiftly as a man might count to twelve, and encompassed in its revolution an orbit of some thirty feet – which tested the extent of the old tavern, and left few of its corners unlit by the globe’s smouldering path. The ladies were glad of their bay window, I can tell you – and stepped deeper and deeper into its darkening recess, as the large winter sun set behind them, and the small world spun before them. Moreover, each touch, no matter how gentle, of Tom’s finger sent the smoking planet shuddering and wobbling on its way; fresh gasps of fear attended the perilous launch – it is the only appropriate image – of each new day. In short, all was confusion and terror and delight – and none of us could suppress a powerful sense of imminent and enormous and wonderful disaster, of conflagration and world’s end.
The Professor’s discourse on the whole tended rather to soothe than excite. He talked as if he had the birth of creation well in hand – as a gentleman might discuss quite calmly, dismissively even, the glories of a picture whose inspiration he has seen for himself. Yes, he seemed to say, this and this is like; this much unlike; this touch falls short, this exceeds the original. In general the effect of his re-creation, he implied, was rather disappointing; there was nothing, after all, like having a look at the real thing. He could recommend it thoroughly, he seemed to say, the next time it came around. Much of his lecture he aimed above the education of his listeners, who belonged, as I mentioned, for the most part to the labouring and agricultural classes. Perhaps he believed their minds would delight as much in the fine words and learning they could not understand as their eyes delighted in the rich display they could not quite believe. I prided myself among that company for following the letter of his demonstration as closely as the burning example he had set before us.
‘I will not touch on’, the Professor declared, in as measured a tone as the action of his legs permitted him, ‘the absurdities of Werner.’ (How my heart rose up in protest at this casual slight. I vowed again to challenge so arrogant an upstart.) ‘Much to be said for the ocean – author I dare say of a great many fish – very pleasant, too, on sunny days – but hills, no – veins of coal, no – mountains, improbable.’
Here Tom, the fellow in the morning suit gently spinning the world with an idle finger, interrupted him. ‘Begin at the beginning, Sam,’ he said, ‘see how you like it. As in: description of experiment; method; aims.’
‘Damn you, Tom,’ Syme cried, not for the last time, ‘they know quite well what I’m about. Don’t you, gentlemen? (Beg pardon, ladies, fully aware, three steps ahead of meat least.) Great sin of your nature, Tom. Can’t let a thing speak for itself. Trust the eye and ear, Tom – that’s all. Take in much more than the mouth spits out, believe me. Here we are – birth of planet, you see – all the necessaries. Item one: globe, revolving sweetly. (Mind your bonnet, Mrs Simmons, next time she comes round, there we are, lovely red hair you once had, I know, but to colour in this fashion, something painful.) Spinning gently – once a day, Tom, not a month of Sundays at a go, gentle, gentle, as she comes. Where was I? Item one, the world – which we’ve split down the middle – heaped with coal, burning nicely, hot as hell-fire. Subsequently filled with iron, nickel, manganese, etc., to determine, as she cools, the disposition of the interior.’ To be fair, a certain suddenness was unavoidable, given the breathless exercise of his limbs; and Tom, shrugging his shoulders, kept quiet.
‘Following Hutton, you see – great man, went far – not far enough. He believed in fire, had a great passion for it – declared it lay at the heart of everything, always burning, never ending. Then his stopped short. Question was: what happens after the fire? As she cools? Question is: are there ends and beginnings, or only a great stretch of middles? (Mixed company – I know, Miss Thomas, don’t blush. Speaking geologically, of course.) Is it only repetition, repetition, repetition – or do we get on after a time and come to something else: new beginnings, new ends? As I said, Hutton, old fool, thought not, consigned us for ever to a great moiling and broiling, endless fires and modifications. Very unsettling to the stomach. Nonsense, of course, reasoned thus: anything with a beginning has an end; anything with an end has a beginning.’ He paused shortly to let this settle; some of the farmers nodded; this was talking, after all, stood to reason, don’t think much about this Hutton fellow.
‘Here we plan to have a look at both,’ he resumed, still pumping away. ‘How are we getting on? Internal fire, wonderful; fluid metallic interior, moiling and broiling, quite delicious, good, good. (Damn me – left out the action of the sun, pulling at the brew. Never mind, never mind, carry on.) Let me tell you what I think we’ll find, when tempers cool. In clumsy approximation of the original: the interior separated according to composition: iron, nickel, etc., smooth spheres, rounded by constant revolution like clay at a potter’s wheel, ha? Nested in each other, sphere upon sphere, quite hollow, like Russian dolls. If we’ve spun it fast enough, that is – that’s the great thing. The proof of our little experiment lies … lies less in my head than my feet – physiognomy of faith, hey? Jog on, jog on, and all that – a merry heart goes all the way … There’s nothing like creation after all for working at speed.’
This is the best impression I can give of his commentary, ranging as it did, quite democratically, through such broad zones – and appealing, by turns, to the greatest and least of his audience, myself included. He had a rich, deep voice, somewhat patrician indeed, and faintly clipped by the edge of – I conjectured – an English accent, though the breadth of his vowels and the heavy intonation of his first syllables were patriotically American. He spoke well, I suppose, if rather abruptly, as one who could summon his thoughts quickly and dismiss them lightly, willing slaves all. And there was a kind of intimacy among his conjectures, as if they all got along quite well together, and managed to survive, through the force of long habit, with scarce a word said between them. Unfortunately, we did not share this intimacy; and I often had the sense, then and later, in listening to Syme, of having stumbled upon a family of thoughts, brothers, sisters and cousins, among whom I hesitated to address any of them singly, uncertain of their relations to one another.
He spoke, I must add, with a certain peculiarity, which struck me sensibly at the time and ever after absorbed my interest: he held his head as a blind man might, upright, gazing steadily before him, as if his audience, though plentiful and just at hand, were somehow beyond him, out of sight – indeed, almost as if he feared to look his company in the eyes. As if – as if – now for an absurdity of my own – as if we filled his head and not his house, and he teased only the creatures of his own imagination, and never the thick flesh and blood sweating in the room.
At last even his powerful frame appeared to flag; the zest had gone out of the years, and the world spun gentler now, spilling less heat and ash upon its way. ‘Perhaps,’ he gasped, quite red in the face and sweating freely now, I’m not quite up to creation yet, on my own. Another minute – there – suppose we’re all well cooked by now. I need strength even for the cooling down. (Especially for the cooling down.) Where are the buckets of ice? Attend to them, Tom. Shall we, gentlemen, ladies, prepare to observe the end of creation, the beginning of the world? Mind the smoke, of course.’
Several buckets of snow, largely melted, stood at Tom’s side – a precaution I had supposed against the hot ash flying from the spinning globe. (Indeed, the black streaks of divers trampled fires marked the broad floor, where a particularly blazing particle of coal had fallen from the punctured sphere and burned away.) But I found now that I had been mistaken. Tom gave the globe an almighty thrust as it shot by, and then stooped to one of these buckets at his side – a great slushy composition of ice and water dusted by snow. He lifted it two-handed roughly by the lip and … and – what happened next I cannot describe with any precision. I suppose I saw the globe wheel burning towards him; I saw him lift the pail above his head, as the black tail of his suit slid up his rump; and I must have observed the first sudden cascade of ice, delayed an instant as it stuck against the wooden sides, before it came crashing down upon the burning planet.
The ice, I believe, was to blame; not Tom. He had not accounted for the solid block it had become, had hoped, no doubt, to tip a scattering of snow as the world came by, and cool the planet piecemeal, a little each year, as it were. As it was, he might as well have hurled the bucket at the globe and been done with it – not that we could see much of what followed. There was, at first, a tremendous hiss – as if the full ire and venom of the world had been roused to spitting vengeance. The smoke, the cloud that arose, as thick as nightfall, was instantaneous, and filled the room, blinding us all to the catastrophe to come. We heard, of course, the screams; mostly from the direction of the bay window, though I confess, guiltily, to a slight yelp. Each of these echoed and swelled, magnified immensely in our imaginations by the darkness, the stifling darkness – though again, darkness is perhaps an inadequate description of the lurid sightlessness to which we were confined, as the fire blazing in the hearth cast its red and flickering glow through the muffled air.
The Syme Papers Page 20
