by Stuart Clark
Newton’s words rang in his head. They were as excruciating as the sensations in Fatio’s limbs. Burn it. Burn the manuscript.
He squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to drop the work to its destruction. Yet if he dropped it whole, it would snuff the little flames. Instead, he would have to feed it into the fire piece by piece.
As he held the first pages near to the flames he bit his lip. It was true that he never wanted to see the work again – it evoked too many bitter memories that were waking inside him even now, eating through him like acid – but to destroy the work . . .
At the foot of his bed was a trunk, its metal padlock more secure than the one on his apartment door. He opened the lid and pushed the contents aside to create a gap. Then he laid his manuscript to rest on the pale wood of the trunk’s base. After piling other books over it, he turned the key in the lock.
Who – Fatio wondered – would see the manuscript next?
Epilogue
The question of whether Isaac Newton’s work was irreligious was forcefully debated in a series of letters between his appointed champion, the English philosopher and cleric Samuel Clarke, and Gottfried Leibniz through Caroline, Princess of Wales. The correspondence ceased with the death of Leibniz in 1716 but was seen as so important that Clarke published it almost immediately. It remains in print to this day as The Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence.
Newton never wrote the requested letter of apology to Leibniz, who died in disgrace, branded a plagiarist. Today, however, the German philosopher is recognised as an independent co-inventor of calculus; indeed, it is the notation of Leibniz, rather than of Newton, that is used by mathematicians.
In death as in life, Robert Hooke was overshadowed by Newton. Recently, however, there has been a renewed interest in celebrating Hooke more openly for his wide-ranging contributions to science and architecture.
Newton died in 1727. Towards the end of his life he began to tell the story of how watching an apple drop from a tree inspired him to work on gravitation while at Woolsthorpe during the plague year of 1665. Lauded for his services to his country, Newton was buried in a magnificent tomb in Westminster Abbey. People soon began visiting his birthplace at Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, now a National Trust property open to the public.
Edmond Halley’s prediction that the comet of 1682 would return in 1758 came true. Spotted on Christmas Day by a German farmer, the comet’s reappearance proved to be a hugely successful ‘crucial experiment’. It ushered in the widespread acceptance of Newton’s work and methods, transforming them into central pillars of the Age of Enlightenment. The comet is now named after Halley and was seen again in 1835, 1910, and 1986. It will next return to our skies in 2061.
John Flamsteed collected all three hundred unsold copies of Halley’s Historia Coelestis Britannica (Britain’s Celestial History), cut out all the pages he wanted to re-use, then burned the remainder in Greenwich Park. He called the book-burning a sacrifice to heavenly truth. However, he died in 1719, not living long enough to complete his own version. His widow published it for him posthumously in 1725. When Margaret Flamsteed learned of Halley’s appointment as her husband’s successor, she stripped the Royal Greenwich Observatory of all its telescopes.
Halley was sixty-three when he became the second Astronomer Royal, but lived long enough to record the position of the Moon for an entire nineteen-year Saros cycle. He outlived his wife Mary by six years. On 14 January 1742, aged eighty-five, he drank a glass of red wine and passed away quietly. In his will he asked to be buried next to Mary at Saint Margaret’s Church in Lee, London.
Following his ordeal in the stocks, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier left England to wander Europe as a pilgrim. He eventually returned and claimed his manuscript on the cause of gravity was lost, but it was found in his papers after his death in Worcester in 1753. It was purchased by the Swiss physicist Georges-Louis Le Sage, who popularised the concept. However, he spread the idea under his own name rather than Fatio’s, and to this day it is referred to as Le Sage gravity.
It piqued interest well into the nineteenth century, when one of its champions was the influential Victorian physicist Lord Kelvin (William Thomson). By this time the re-investigation of gravity had assumed great importance because better telescopes were showing that the planet Mercury did not follow the route prescribed by Newton’s laws. Similarly, the question of why the Universe was not collapsing because of its combined gravity was also nagging.
Although no one could make the mathematics of Fatio’s idea work, the resurgence of interest in the nature of gravity captured the imagination of many, including the young German-born physicist Albert Einstein.
Einstein’s story will be told in The Day Without Yesterday, the final book in the trilogy The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth.
Acknowledgements
Restoration England was a fascinating place, not just because of the seismic shift towards science that was taking place. Religion and politics were in a state of explosive flux, too. My task in trying to bring it all to life would have been impossible without the work of all the authors, historians and scientists who preceded me. Their published non-fiction accounts of these people and events would make ideal reading to move on to if you are curious about where I found my inspiration.
I heartily recommend: The Leibniz–Clarke Correspondence by H.G. Alexander (ed.), The Calculus Wars by Jason Bardi, John Flamsteed by John L. Birks, England’s Leonardo by Allan Chapman, Isaac Newton by Gale E. Christianson, Newton’s Tyranny by David Clark and Stephen P.H. Clark, Edmond Halley by Alan Cook, The Coffeehouse by Markman Ellis, Restoration England by Peter Furtado, Halley in 90 Minutes by John and Mary Gribbin, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science by Peter Harrison, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke by Lisa Jardine, Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson, Newton’s Notebook by Joel Levy, Genius in Eclipse by Colin A. Ronan, A Brief History of Gresham College 1597–1997 by Richard Chartres and David Vermont, Never At Rest by Richard Westfall and Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer by Michael White.
This was a watershed moment between science and religion because it was the first serious suggestion that the new investigation of nature was somehow anti-religious. Even during the trial of Galileo, as readers will know, there was no direct suggestion that the act of studying the Universe was opposed to religion. It was more Galileo’s interpretation and his approach to disseminating the information that were judged.
The challenge I faced was how to dramatise an exchange of letters. As I am not Helene Hanff, I decided that the best way was to use my fictitious character, Winslow, and create a scene – the kind of scene that could plausibly have led to the subsequent exchange of letters.
So, please do not think that Halley and Newton were in fact dragged to the Tower and cross-examined. It is, as Newton says to Halley afterwards, ‘a fiction’. Nevertheless, the points they debate in that scene are those that Clarke and Leibniz chewed over in the letters. They are the very points that helped to drive a wedge between science and religion.
In portraying my characters I decided not to shy away from their sexuality. This was the Restoration, after all, with England released from the tyranny of the Puritans. The precise nature of Isaac Newton’s association with his roommate Wickens, and later with Fatio, is unknown. However, letters exist between Newton and Fatio that are couched in the most intimate and affectionate of terms. While this suggests attraction, there is no evidence to prove a sexual relationship. I have therefore chosen to portray Newton as a repressed homosexual.
I have also taken a conservative approach to Hooke and Grace. There is no doubt that Hooke and his niece shared a sexual relationship – Hooke recorded the events in his diary – the debating point is whether this extended to intercourse. For this story, I have assumed not.
As for the scandal surrounding Halley and Mrs Hevelius, no one knows the truth. All we know for certain is that he did purchase dress fabric for her upon his return to England, and that years later, at Oxford, he
was dogged by the rumour of his cuckolding Hevelius. I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt.
Finally, grateful thanks go to everyone who has helped me by believing in or working on this project: Hugh Andrew, Neville Moir, Alison Rae, Jan Rutherford, Kenny Redpath, James Hutcheson, Sarah Morrison, Vikki Reilly, Anna Renz, Caroline Oakley, Peter Tallack, Duran Kim, Hamish Macaskill, Anna Rantanen, Kim McArthur, Devon Pool, Anne Ledden, Kendra Martin, Ruth Seeley, Nic Cheetam, Stephen Curry.
Also, an enormous thank-you to the thousands of people who bought the first book. To those who came to see me at signings and lectures in bookshops and literary festivals around the world, I am extraordinarily grateful.
Always last, never least, to Nikki.