“I left almost all of them behind in Massachusetts. But God willing they are at this very moment being loaded into the hold of a ship, Minerva, which I believe is known to you. She sailed from London in late April, and ought to have reached Boston Harbor last week.”
“When Minerva, God willing, returns to London, then you shall have need of more gold for making into cards,” Johann observed.
“By a happy coincidence,” Daniel said with a dry smile, “more gold is expected to reach us, by sea, at the same time. And so when I speak of our need for capital, I am not referring to gold for card-making.”
“As a sort of technologickal adventurer, Doctor, you are suffered, nay encouraged, to imbibe of a sort of optimism that in other disciplines—such as finance—would be reckoned incompetence,” Eliza said. “I am being asked to act as a financier, and can afford myself no such luxury. I say that you are gambling too much on the likelihood that two ships—one freighted with cards, the other with gold—shall arrive in London safely and at the same time.”
“The point is well taken,” Daniel said, “and so let me simplify matters by letting you know that the cards and the gold are on the same ship.”
“Minerva carries both?”
“And I think you know what a fine ship she is. I would sooner trust gold to the bilge of Minerva than the vaults of many a banca. It is safe to predict that, round the beginning of August, she will drop anchor in the Pool, and we shall have all of the requisites to punch a large number of these cards. What is wanted, in the meantime, is financing to sustain the operations of Clerkenwell Court, so that we may build the Logic Mill.”
“May I presume that you have already tried and failed to get additional support from your benefactor?”
“Roger Comstock is the one who proposed that I consult you, madame.”
“I never thought one such as he could run out of money.”
“Properly speaking, it is a question of liquidity. Much now hangs in the political balance, as you know. The perils that have forced Princess Caroline to seek refuge far from the gardens of Hanover, have not failed to press in, almost as hotly, on the Marquis of Ravenscar. He has extended his resources to the utmost, readying and arming himself for the coming struggle against Bolingbroke.”
“And not without effect, if yesterday’s news from Parliament be true,” Johann put in.
“Yesterday was a victory for Comstock—but it was little more than a skirmish. Ahead lie battles.”
“It is a wonder he has time or money for Logic Mills at all,” Johann remarked.
“In truth, he does not, and has quite forgotten about us for now,” Daniel said.
“So you require a sort of bridge loan,” Eliza said.
“Indeed, madame.”
“A bridge-builder cannot practice his trade, unless he knows the length of the span to be made—”
“The length is from now until a Hanover is crowned King or Queen of Great Britain.”
“That could be never.”
“And yet, as a wise woman once remarked, we are all gambling on it.”
“It could be years, then.”
“Queen Anne is as likely to live to the end of 1714 as I am to go to Naples and sell myself in the town square as a gigolo,” Daniel averred.
“What is the amount you seek?”
“A stipend, delivered at regular intervals. Mr. Ham has drawn up some figures.”
“That sounds boring,” Eliza said, “and so I propose a parting of the ways. Johann, who has a head for numbers, can look at Mr. Ham’s. Hildegard may wish to stay with him.”
“And you, madame?”
“I have a head for relationships,” Eliza said, “and so I shall join you in my carriage as you are delivered back to Clerkenwell Court, and I shall discourse to you of the relationship—or to be blunt, what precisely is to be my security for the proposed loan.”
“IT IS A CURIOUS sort of Mint that you have created,” Eliza remarked.
Daniel was startled out of a drowsy reverie. The Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm had been silent, staring out the window, as her carriage had taken them up the bank of Fleet Ditch and round the western approach of Holbourn Bridge. Now they were stuck in the absurdly mis-named Field Lane, a clogged chute of brick and horse-shit.
London had come awake reluctantly. The Mobility had devoted all of their energies, yesterday, to the Hanging-March; even those who had not actually pushed their way through the crowd to glimpse the awful Derrick raised above Tyburn Cross, had busied themselves picking the pockets, filling the bellies, or satisfying the urges of those who had. As for the Nobility, they had been as preoccupied with a violent and ghastly spectacle of a different character: down in Westminster, the Whigs had suddenly begun to ask pointed questions as to what had become of certain Asiento revenues. Persons of Quality had devoted yester evening and much of the night to liquidating their holdings in the South Sea Company, and gathering in Clubbs and coffee-houses to misinform one another.
But it was now mid-afternoon, and everyone, hanging-watchers and Parliamentarians alike, was finally awake. Except for Daniel Waterhouse, who had almost drifted off when pricked awake by this curious remark from Eliza. “I beg your pardon?” he mumbled, buying time to wake himself up.
“I am trying to hatch a similitude for what you are doing at Bridewell,” Eliza returned. Then, sensing that this answer had been none too informative, she straightened her spine, like a cat, and turned her face toward Daniel. She was so beautiful that he flinched. “Gold is meant to be fungible—an ounce of it here is no different from an ounce in Amsterdam or Shahjahanabad.”
I wish someone would explain that to Isaac, Daniel mused, then felt bad, as Isaac was a sick man just now—he’d collapsed in Westminster Palace a couple of weeks ago, and was still lying on a sick-bed at Roger Comstock’s house.
“A financier, asked for a loan, carries out a diligent summing-up of the debtor’s assets, to ensure that the loan shall be secured by something of worth,” Eliza continued. “You have gold. This gold could be weighed, to find its worth. There could be no better security for a loan. But there is a complication. You are not using the gold as gold. You are using it as a medium for storage of information. Or I might say it thus: you are informing it. Once informed by the card-punching organ, it possesses value—to you, at least—that it did not have before. If it were to be melted down, it would lose that value. The only like procedure that I can call to mind, is that whereby blank disks of gold are informed by the blow of a die at the Mint, making ’em into guineas, and thereby imbuing ’em with additional worth—seigneurage, they name it. And so I say that your organ at Bridewell is like a little Mint, and your punched cards are the Coin of a new Realm.”
“You have convinced me,” Daniel said. “I only hope that Sir Isaac does not hear of it, and denominate me a rival.”
“If the rumors as to Sir Isaac’s condition are true,” Eliza said, “you or some rival may soon be running the Mint at the Tower. But that is beside the point. Supposing you build the Logic Mill, and it works. Then the value—and I mean value not moral, æsthetic, or spiritual, but œconomic—of your Institute inheres in the ability to carry out logical and arithmetical work using the cards.”
“Indeed, madame, that is all we can offer.”
“If the cards were foreclosed upon by a creditor, and melted, the information would all be con-fused, the Logic Mill would not do work, and the value we just spoke of would be annihilated.”
“True.”
“It follows that the gold, once wrought into punched cards, becomes a poor form of security indeed, as it cannot be spent, in a monetary sense, without destroying your enterprise.”
“I agree without reservation that the gold cannot secure the loan.”
“Moreover, if I understand the nature of the project, the cards and the machine are to be shipped to the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg when they are finished.”
“That is true of the first set.”
> “But subsequent ones, supposing you build more, shall become the property of the Marquis of Ravenscar.”
“As currently envisioned, yes.”
“All that I would be left with would be some news that I might use to my advantage in certain markets. This is a sort of game I played to great advantage when I was young, and had nothing to lose, and no one who depended on me. But now I require tangible equity in exchange for my investments. I invest with my head, not my heart.”
“And yet it is plain that you support Dappa, and I have heard that you contribute generously to hospitals for Veterans and Vagabonds.”
“As charities, yes. But it is too late for you to remake your Institute as a charity.”
“Then let me tell you something of the Logic Mill that not even Roger knows,” Daniel sighed.
“You have my attention, Doctor.”
“It will not work.”
“The Logic Mill will not do logic?”
“Oh, yes, of course it will do that. Doing logic with a machine is not so very difficult. Leibniz took it up where Pascal dropped it, and I built upon Leibniz’s work for fifteen years in Boston. Now I have turned it over to a cabal of ingenious fellows who in fifteen weeks have advanced further than I did.”
“Then what do you mean, when you say it will not work?”
“When I returned from Hanover two days ago I devoted some time to reviewing the schemes that the ingénieurs have devised. I am most pleased with the results. But then I discovered a grave difficulty: we want power.”
“Ah, you spoke to me of this in Hanover.”
“Indeed, for then I had begun to suspect what I now know: that the Logic Mill shall require a source of Power, in the newfangled Mechanickal sense of that word, that is both mighty and steady. A very large water-wheel in a great river might serve; but much better would be—”
“The Engine for Raising Water by Fire!”
“If you were to invest in that, madame—and rest assured that it does want investors—you could obtain a controlling interest with little difficulty, thereby satisfying your requirement for Equity. With a new financial wind at his back, Mr. Newcomen could clear certain shoals on which the work has recently run aground, and drive on into open and beckoning seas. Meanwhile, here in London, the Logic Mill project shall arrive at an impasse, because of the dearth of Power. It shall happen soon—less than a year from now. You may then take the matter up with the Tsar, or with the Marquis of Ravenscar, or both; they will bargain with you then, madame, having no other choices.”
Eliza gazed out the windows for some minutes. By now they had run the length of Saffron Hill, and the driver had made a detour to the edge of Clerkenwell Green and up Rag Street so as to spare himself, his horses, and his passengers a disagreeable and perilous transit of Hockley-in-the-Hole, where at this very moment outrages were being committed that would be punished six weeks hence at the next Hanging Day.
They had entered into the extension of Rag Street called Coppice Row, bringing them full circle. Daniel, gazing forward out his window, spied a carriage stopped before Clerkenwell Court. His heart forgot to beat when he recognized it. Matters were about to become more complicated than he’d have liked them to be. He thumped on the roof, and the driver reined in his team at the corner, a stone’s throw short of the other carriage. “I will alight here,” Daniel said, “as this is an easier place to get your lovely carriage turned round.” Before Eliza could protest he opened the door, and one of her footmen jumped down to help him out.
“You have cast a new light on the matter,” Eliza announced, giving him a prim smile that was the beginning of good-bye. “I am now willing to consider the proposal. But I cannot come to any conclusions until I have become well acquainted with the gentleman who founded the company.”
“The Earl of Lostwithiel,” said Daniel, raising his voice, as he was now out in the street, addressing Eliza through the open carriage-door. “For some weeks he has excused himself from the House of Lords. The illness of his third son forced him to withdraw to the west country. The poor child’s demise extended his absence. I suspect that complications relating to the Engine have drawn it out even further. But even now, news is speeding westwards of yesterday’s doings in Parliament. Lostwithiel must return now. He will be back in London anon. I shall see to it that he pays a call on your grace at Leicester House.”
“THIRTY-SEVEN MINUTES AGO,” said the big horologist named Saturn, “a strange old Tory appeared at our gates and begain baying for Doctor Waterhouse.” He nodded at the carriage parked in front of his shop.
Daniel had already recognized it. “Where is Mr. Threader now?” he inquired.
“I have plied him with tea, and given him a brief look round the place—not letting him see any of the good bits—and then advanced from tea to brandy. He is drinking it three doors down, in that shop where the plasterers were finishing up yesterday.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hoxton,” Daniel said, putting a hand on the door to go out.
“You are welcome,” Peter Hoxton said, in a guarded way, “but I must say, if I had known, when Fate brought us together, what sort of persons you associate with, I should never have pursued the acquaintance.”
Daniel exited smiling. His expression changed over to one of surprise as a second carriage—a battered hackney, its wheel rims thumping from dents and clotted horse-turds—came up Coppice Row at reckless speed, and halted, in serial and ramshackle style, just ahead of Mr. Threader’s. The door flew open. Out stepped a red-faced, white-haired, black-suited Nonconformist. Immediately behind him came a small man in breeches, waistcoat, &c., of a more conventional cut, though made of materials so florid as to be almost tribal. And behind him came a common-looking bloke who was even bigger than Saturn. He stayed behind to flick coins into the outstretched palm of the coachman.
“Brother Norman. Mr. Kikin. What a pleasure,” Daniel said, moving to intercept them before they could reach the door of the clock-shop, and further damage Saturn’s esteem for him. “I had not been notified that our Clubb was to meet to-day; but I welcome you to Clerkenwell Court, and I shall welcome our Treasurer too, when I have run him to ground.”
“Mr. Threader is here?” said the astonished Mr. Kikin, and cast a comical look up and down Coppice Row. This was then mimicked by his bodyguard, who had taken up his usual station behind Mr. Kikin’s shoulder.
“Why?” demanded Mr. Orney; but just then the door of a vacant storefront burst open, and out came Mr. Threader, already red in the ears from brandy.
“I haven’t the vaguest notion of why you two are here,” he proclaimed, “but since you are, I hereby call to order an emergency meeting of the Clubb for the Taking and Prosecution of the Party or Parties responsible for the Manufacture and Placement of the Infernal Engines lately Exploded at Crane Court, Orney’s Ship-yard, et cetera!”
“First order of business: selecting a shorter name,” Mr. Orney suggested.
“The first order of business, as ever, shall be the Collection of Dues—presuming as always that you are still solvent, Mr. Orney.”
“If news from Westminster is true, it is not my solvency that bears examination—Mr. Threader.”
“It is of Parliament that I would discourse—which is why that is to be the second order of business—those Members who arrived late must wait their turn.”
“How can we be late for a meeting that was called after we arrived!?”
“Gentlemen,” Daniel said, “I fear we are disturbing our neighbors in Hockley-in-the-Hole. May we—please—take this inside?”
IT MIGHT ONE DAY serve as a pub or coffee-house, but for the nonce it was an empty room, freshly plastered, strewn with straw. The walls were white, darkling to overcast gray in the corners where still-damp plaster emitted palpable warmth and a nostril-stinging fragrance. The Clubb set up an impromptu Parliament there, using overturned buckets as chairs, and an upright barrel as lectern. These were improvised by Saturn and Mr. Kikin’s bodyguard during the time
that Mr. Threader raked in the Dues with all the weighing, biting, and microscopic examination of coins, and injurious commentary, that had become a Clubb custom. Then it was time for Mr. Threader to take command of the barrel. As he all too soon discovered, this was empty, and when struck with the fist emitted a tremendous boom, useful for rhetorical effect.
“When a Ship of Force appears before the breakwater, and lobs a mortar-shell (boom) into the town (boom), you may be certain of two things: first (boom) that the enemy has been laying its plans for many months in advance; second (boom) that more (boom) mortar (boom) shells (boom) are shortly to follow (boom boom boom).”
“More brandy, Mr. Threader?” suggested Mr. Orney; but Threader ignored him.
“Yesterday,” continued Mr. Threader, “the notorious leader of the Faction dropped (boom) a bomb (boom) in the House of Lords, discomposing the awful dignity, and shattering the traditional somnolence, of that August Body!”
“I have heard it said that if there were a way to invest in Apoplexy, one could have gotten rich in Westminster yesterday,” said the Russian.
“As you are a Foreigner, sir, your amusement, like your person, are tolerated even if not welcomed. Those of us who live here must consider it soberly.” He shot Orney a warning look to nip in the bud any plays on the word. “To revisit my similitude of the Ship and the Mortar-Shell, we must ask, how long has Ravenscar been planning this? And where will the next (boom) shell (boom) fall (boom)?”
“It’ll fall on your head if you keep striking that barrel-head,” Mr. Orney muttered.
“I have heard that yesterday was a lively one indeed for the South Sea Company, and doubtless for your enterprise, Mr. Threader,” Daniel said. “In fact, such must be the demands upon your professional services, that I am astonished to find you here. Yes, Comstock has put Viscount Bolingbroke on the spot regarding that Asiento money. But what has that got to do with our Clubb?”
“It has been a strange fortnight for men whose business is to handle money,” Mr. Threader said.
“Thank you for sharing that reflection with us, sir,” returned Mr. Orney. “How does it bear on the very reasonable question just asked by Brother Daniel?”
The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World Page 279