The Great Unknown

by Peg Kingman

  Robert Burns had walked behind a plow, with a book always in his pocket. Had composed songs behind the plow; behind a horse as stupid as this one.

  Johnny Gunn sat and read. Under the influence of this unexpected calm and quiet, the horse gradually forgot to be alarmed by the alarming qualities of the unplowed corner of the field. After a while, it dozed, hipshot; roused, looked about, shifted its weight to the other hip, and dozed again, heavy lower lip falling away from the long teeth stained black and yellow, worse than any snuff-eating old dame’s. A bell sounded, at some distance: a schoolbell, calling in the scholars. This marker of the passage of time meant nothing, nothing at all to the reader nor to the horse. A dog barked. A man whistled. The reader read on. The horse dozed on. Hunger stirred in the belly of the reader, but he read on. Hunger stirred in the belly of the horse, too. Its guts rumbled noisily, and it awakened from a doze, its head jerking up. The sun was more westerly than it had been, and cooler.

  In the dusk, they finished plowing the terrifying corner of the field, calmly back and forth, as the moon rose. Johnny Gunn felt himself a god. Time was trivial, beneath his notice, the merest trickle. He had won: had prevailed: had imposed his will upon this stupid horse. Why should time mean anything more to him than it meant to God, or to this horse? A fine disregard.

  But the farmer who owned the field and the horse—and Johnny Gunn for the summer—took a different view; Johnny Gunn had been thrashed and sent to bed supperless for his sloth.

  Mr Gunn had been an ardent Chartist, for a while. Am I not a man? Have I not cultivated this garden all my life? Have I not paid taxes all my life? (Spontaneously the pun came: Taxus. That was yew; his cherished hedges.) He had attended Chartist meetings, when the Chartists had conducted them a few years ago; great well-attended meetings which drew working men from miles around. He had marched during the general election of 1841; had declared his fervent support at the hustings for the Chartist candidate—young Stevenson the stone merchant—who was standing against Macaulay; had actually dared to cherish a hope that Stevenson and the other Chartist candidates might actually win a few seats in Parliament! But the polling had concluded in dismal failure; despite spending a great deal of money, Stevenson had polled only 26 votes, against his opponent’s 300 and some. And then under the heat and glare of Crown prosecutions, the Chartists had once again melted away like summer snow. Some hundreds of imprisonments, deaths, and transportations inflicted upon the unlucky were sufficient to disperse the rest; to silence them, to send them slinking into silent exile in such remote and insalubrious places as France and Holland. Had not poor Holberry died in prison, undone by the treadmill? Had not Frost, Williams, and Jones been convicted of treason and sentenced to death by drawing, hanging, and quartering? The subsequent commutation of their sentences to transportation for life to Botany Bay was not mercy; no, it was a display of princely puissance and caprice. Where was bold young Stevenson the stone merchant now? (And the book that Mr Gunn, regrettably, had lent him?) Melted away; not to be heard of, a bounty offered for his capture and delivery to the Sheriff of Edinburgh, to be bound over to answer on charges of conspiracy, sedition, and no one knew what else. Mr Gunn felt certain all this was falsehood and injustice, but so many had been convicted, transported, imprisoned, on charges equally unjust: Vincent, Peddie, Lovett, the great O’Connor himself—and hundreds more besides.

  Were he and his fellow Chartists not men, after all? Had they hearts not of oak, but of willow, of whin? Had they proven themselves unworthy of the rights which, for a while, they had noisily demanded? Surely, any men worthy of the rights they demanded would have persisted in their cause. Opposition and even persecution should have strengthened their resolve, not dissolved it. What modest demands they were, after all, and how reasonable, those Six Points of the People’s Charter!

  In Scotland, nearly everyone learned to read. Every minister presided over not only his kirk, but a free school as well, so that everyone, rich and poor alike, learned to read and study Scripture for themselves.

  But people who can read will do so; they will read and study not only Scripture, but anything, and everything.

  Alongside the birds’ nests, Mr Gunn’s bookshelf held a row of books. There was a gap where one book was missing. He had lent it a few years ago to Stevenson the stone merchant about the time of that bitterly-contested election. When Stevenson had disappeared, the book had disappeared with him; Mr Gunn had resolved never to lend a book again. The lost book was called On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, and had been written by a Mr Patrick Matthew of Gourdiehill, an uncommonly prosperous farmer, long before, in 1831 (the year when all of Mr Gunn’s sons had died; all, within that terrible month). It treated mostly of how best to grow trees suitable for shipbuilding. Mr Gunn had bought this book because he had met Mr Matthew, another Chartist, and respected him; and because sylviculture interested him. But tucked into the back matter of this book was a curious little essay, an appendix which Mr Gunn had reread many times over the years. He thought that other people should read it, too. In it, the author declared that

  it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater power of occupancy than any other kind; the weaker, less circumstance-suited, being prematurely destroyed. This principle is in constant action, it regulates the colour, the figure, the capacities, and instincts; those individuals of each species, whose colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from enemies, or defence from vicissitude and inclemencies of climate, whose figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support; whose capacities and instincts can best regulate the physical energies to self-advantage according to circumstances—in such immense waste of primary and youthful life, those only come forward to maturity from the strict ordeal by which Nature tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction.

  It was, as the author remarked, an immensely wasteful design. Stupefying in its wastefulness. Insulting, in its wastefulness. How absurd, the husbandry Mr Gunn practised, in the face of such a principle! How futile.

  But it seemed to Mr Gunn that there was yet another impor­tant aspect of Nature’s harsh winnowings which went unmentioned by Mr Matthew—and by the unknown author of Vestiges, too—and that was Chance; Luck. It was not only the “weaker” or “less circumstance-suited” who were prematurely destroyed; for even the hardiest, most robust individuals, those best suited to circumstance (his sons!) might be felled nevertheless, by bad luck (surely, not by Malice!), without ever having met any opportunity to continue their kind by reproduction. (Surely it could not be Malice? It ought not to be Malice. Malus, he thought, his glance falling across the crabapple tree in the corner, where its stunted crabbed fruit was now turning red. How unbearable, to inhabit a Nature which operated upon a principle of Malice! Even Caprice, Indifference, or Ridiculousness was better than Malice.)

  Unlike the nameless author of Vestiges, Mr Matthew did not lard his remarks on this subject with any sanctimonious references to a Divine Creator, and His Mysterious Ways—and, unlike Vestiges, Mr Matthew’s book had escaped the notice of readers, and the criticism of reviewers.

  Why had the very interesting little appendix in this book attracted neither audience nor attention? Could so important, so manifestly true an idea as this fall to the ground unnoticed? Could so valuable a seed fail to germinate, take root, flourish, and bear fruit?

  Was he, Gunn, the only person who thought about such matters? What was everyone else thinking about instead?

  “Don’t speak to us of God Almighty! There isn’t any, or He wouldn’t let us suffer so!” It was at a strike, a rising of the unemployed weavers in 1832, that Mr Gunn had heard this blasphemy shouted by a miserable starving weaver; and it had stuck with him ever since, echoing through his mind. As time went on, these words had somehow tr
ansformed themselves in his mind’s ear; had become more blasphemous still, for now he seemed to hear instead: “Don’t speak to us of Goddle Mighty! There isn’t any, or He wouldn’t let us suffer so!” And once he had heard it thus, he was never again able to think ‘God Almighty.’ He could only think of Goddle Mighty, the addled Goddle who makes a muddle of all matters; a fat clumsy toddler.

  Goddle Mighty. He could not help it.

  There are crimes that are not sins; there are sins that are not crimes. But blasphemy is both sin and crime. To “asperse, ridicule, vilify, and bring into contempt the Christian religion and the Holy Scriptures” was to risk not only eternal damnation, but also to invite prosecution; was to risk imprisonment, and heavy fines, and felon’s treatment. The Edinburgh booksellers Robinson and Finlay did it quite deliberately, and were imprisoned for it, and served their terms, and were released laughing, and did it again. Well, they sold obscene publications, too—but only by special order; only to the prosecutor’s undercover agents who requested them; it was never proved against them that they exposed those for sale. The freethinker Thomas Paterson set up a bookshop in Edinburgh called the Blasphemy Depot and boasted of the handsome profits he made by selling his scurrilous Oracle to agents of the law, his best customers. When in 1843 he was sentenced to fifteen months’ felon’s treatment in Perth Penitentiary, and the Blasphemy Depot shuttered, his assistant Miss Matilda Roalfe carried on—by opening an Atheistical Depot in Nicolson Street. When she, too, was arrested and imprisoned—for selling such publications as A Home Thrust at the Atrocious Trinity—her friend William Baker came from London to help keep up the excitement.

  Mr Gunn had contemplated ridicule, and the ridiculous; and had arrived at some conclusions. First, a thing which strikes us as utterly ridiculous may nevertheless be perfectly true. Indeed, the more he thought of it, the more apparent it seemed that ridiculousness might rank among the prime principles in all creation: a law of ridiculousness. Consider this, from the author of Vestiges: “Who, upon becoming acquainted for the first time with the circumstances attending the production of an individual of our race, would not think them degrading? And be eager to deny them? And exclude them from the admitted truths of nature?”

  Nevertheless, we know this fact to be true beyond contradiction: this preposterous, degrading, and ridiculous act—this is how babies are made.

  And if it hath pleased Goddle Mighty to arrange matters His wondrous works to perform, by such ridiculous means as these!—have we any choice but to submit? And surely we are permitted to notice that it is ridiculous; and we are permitted to ridicule what is ridiculous? To a Goddle Mighty who so clearly cherishes ridiculousness, ridicule must constitute not blasphemy, but worship?

  Those are blasphemous thoughts. Put them away from thee.

  Presently he fell to thinking about “the circumstances attending the production of an individual of our race.” Remembering that. His wife, in those days: succulent, lubricious. The thick plaited rope of her black hair, lying between her white breasts. Or across her strong white back. Their bed; and the acts they had so ardently, so hungrily, performed there. That bed, a good one; contrived so strongly that it did not creak, no matter how they rocked it. That bed, somewhat damp, and smelling of themselves: like crab-meat; like frilled, trembling oysters; like bearded mussels, that tiny meat between hairy black shells opening willingly to heat, not force. Ah, Musselburgh! Its inexhaustible mussel beds! That ardency, that urgency. And then . . . the babies: the naked, wet red-and-blue squalling newborn sons, with their surprisingly enormous—ahems!

  He stood up; straightened his back, which ached. Stretched. Those are obscene thoughts. Obscene memories. Obscene acts. Or were they? His wondrous works to perform.

  He could not help but often hear the Chambers girls, in their play, or their squabbles:

  “Miss Slip-slop! If you were a bird, you’d be a pigeon, and build a slip-slop pigeon nest!” (For in the wild, pigeons and doves build their sketchy nests on rock ledges and cliffs: a few sticks, a few straws; just structure enough to keep the squabs from falling out.)

  “No, she’d be a guillemot, and never bother with a nest at all.” (For guillemots don’t; they, too, lay their eggs on bare rock ledges, not troubling with even so slatternly a nest as a pigeon makes.)

  “Then it’s very clever of them, you must admit, to lay pointed eggs.” (For guillemot eggs are elongated, and pointed. If disturbed, they roll around in a circle, not off the rock ledge.)

  “Oh, clever! But it is not cleverness, not in the least. No, they cannot help but lay pointed eggs.”

  “But what about the hatchlings? Don’t they fall off the edge?”

  “Not all of them, it would seem.”

  “Only the bold, rash, imprudent ones.”

  And, thought Mr Gunn, the unlucky ones.

  3

  “BUT DADDY: How does a bird know what sort of nest it is meant to build?” asked Tuckie’s high piping voice one evening. Constantia, nursing Charlie in her own room, could hear her through the thin partition wall. “How does a wren know it is meant to build a tidy wren’s nest—and not a messy slapdash jackdaw nest, in a chimney?” This seemed to Constantia quite a good question, and she regretted that it went unanswered, swamped by Jenny-or-Lizzy’s next question: “And Daddy, where do the jackdaws make their nests, if no chimneys are nearby?”

  “Or before chimneys were thought of?” added her twin.

  “Oh, there have always been chimneys, haven’t there, Daddy?”

  “Nay, lass,” said their father’s voice. “Not always, and not everywhere. Even now, the highland crofters have no more than a hole in the thatch, for the smoke to find its own way out.”

  “But where do highland jackdaws build their nests, then?”

  “They find a suitable nook elsewhere,” he said.

  “Fancy standing upon the edge of the nest,” said Tuckie, “just about to leap into the air for the very first time. How do fledglings know how to fly?”

  “I know how to fly,” said Annie. “If I had wings, I should be able to fly directly, without any lessons.”

  “As when you leapt from the roof of the garden shed?”

  “Nay, that was mere experiment; I found that arms are not suitable; wings are wanted—except in dreams. I do know how to fly, from my dreams.”

  “Oho!”

  “Do you not fly in your dreams? Never? Oh, it is grand! Wearying to the arms and shoulders, but worth the effort—such sights from above, you can’t think! And so convenient for escaping the wicked folk, too.”

  “Cannot the wicked folk fly as well, in your dreams?”

  “They cannot. I can aye be away from them, just out of their reach—and they, leaping with rage below.”

  “Oh, but why did God not give people wings? So delightful, to have wings,” said Lizzy-or-Jenny.

  “Silly, what do you take angels for, then?” said her twin.

  “But are angels a sort of human, Daddy, with wings stuck on? Or are they some other sort of creature entirely?”

  It seemed to Constantia that there was a moment’s consideration before their father’s voice replied, “Homo volans? or Angelicus sanctus? I suppose you know that naturalists, when determining the affinities of a creature, closely examine its skeleton; its bones and teeth. But no one, alas, has ever yet had the opportunity to examine the remains of an angel—for never a single specimen has been found. Never so much as a tooth.”

  “Oh, but why not, Daddy? That is most curious, isn’t it?”

  He might, thought Constantia, perhaps have gone on to list the vicissitudes to which skeletal remains were subject; or mentioned the inferred incompleteness of the fossil record—but instead Annie’s voice said, “Because angels are immortal! Aren’t they, Daddy? How could they leave their remains lying about for examination while they still go about in them, using them?”

  “Are angels immortal, Daddy?”

  “You had better ask your mother,” said he.


  “Or Lady Janet,” suggested Jenny-or-Lizzy.

  “But Dad, angels haven’t got skeletons,” said Mary.

  “No skeletons!” said Lizzy-or-Jenny. “How horrid and jiggly they must be, then—like jellyfish!”

  “Nay, Lizzy,” said her twin. “Never could an angel be like a jellyfish.”

  Nina’s voice now joined this discussion: “I have read that angels are unburdened with actual bodies; neither flesh-and-bone, nor jelly, nor any corporeal existence, at all,” she said. “They are celestial spirits, emanations of the Divine Will, and they assume just the semblance of a body only when they require to be seen.”

  “That seems dreadfully popish,” said Mary, “like saints and ghosts. But Lady Janet will know.”

  “She will certainly know,” said their father, in what sounded like agreement.

  LADY JANET, a nuisance in herself, brought with her an additional nuisance in the form of the cabinet she was japanning. She called it japanning, though her craft had nothing to do with Japan. She was very gradually—with pen, ink, and brush—transforming a plain pale-wood cabinet, about four feet high, into an “ebonized” cabinet decorated with pale-wood flowers and birds and “chinese” figures in “hindoo” landscapes, under “oriental” trees. In minute strokes, she inked in the entire background, leaving these figures as pale silhouettes; then she drew faint lines and hatchwork to delineate the details of the figures. Japanning had been a popular pastime twenty-five years earlier among ladies whose leisure was a burden to them, but it had since fallen out of fashion.

  Usually ladies had been satisfied with afflicting some small item—a tea caddy, a workbox, a watch-stand—with this painstaking form of ornament, but a few were inspired to attempt something larger and more permanent. Lady Janet had by now been working on this cabinet for some time, and several large areas of its surface were completely decorated. Alas, her drawing was awkward; her eyes, weak; her taste, indifferent. Consequently, the cabinet was not going to be a great success. As she possessed however the virtue of perseverance, it travelled with her to the various houses she visited as guest. There, space had to be made for it in the corners of various drawing rooms; and space not only for it, but also for her bottles of ink, and fine brushes, and quill pens, and penknives. All this had to be kept safe from the children of the household. Lady Janet had declared more than once that it was important to set an example of industry, not idleness, to the children.