The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World

by Neal Stephenson

  Isaac was already in movement toward the exit. “I have hired a carriage for the day,” he threw back over one shoulder. “Where shall I tell the driver we wish to go?”

  “Tell him,” Daniel returned, “that we are going to Bedlam.”

  The Carriage

  MINUTES LATER

  “…AND SO WE HAVE MADE an arrangement with Mr. Partry—but not disbursed any money to him, of course—nor do we expect to, until the end of this month,” Daniel said. He’d given Isaac an account of the Clubb’s late doings, mercilessly abbreviated because of the aroma of the mutton pies, which were waiting on a platter in his lap. The platter was a twenty-pound slab of silver done up in full Barock style and engraved with miles of tangled script: a paean to the sexual powers of Newton’s niece. Here she was referred to as Aphrodite, a code that Isaac was not likely to penetrate.

  In an apt demonstration of the principle of Relativity, as propounded by Galileo, the bawdy platter, and the steaming morsels thereon, remained in the same position vis-à-vis Daniel, and hence were, in principle, just as edible, as if he had been seated before, and the pies had been resting upon, a table that was stationary with respect to the fixed stars. This was true despite the fact that the carriage containing Daniel, Isaac Newton, and the pies was banging around London. Daniel guessed that they were swinging round the northern limb of St. Paul’s Churchyard, but he had no real way of telling; he had closed the window-shutters, for the reason that their journey to Bedlam would take them directly across the maw of Grub Street, and he did not want to read about today’s adventure in all tomorrow’s papers.

  Isaac, though better equipped than Daniel or any other man alive to understand Relativity, shewed no interest in his pie—as if being in a state of movement with respect to the planet Earth rendered it somehow Not a Pie. But as far as Daniel was concerned, a pie in a moving frame of reference was no less a pie than one that was sitting still: position and velocity, to him, might be perfectly interesting physical properties, but they had no bearing on, no relationship to those properties that were essential to pie-ness. All that mattered to Daniel were relationships between his, Daniel’s, physical state and that of the pie. If Daniel and Pie were close together both in position and velocity, then pie-eating became a practical, and tempting, possibility. If Pie were far asunder from Daniel or moving at a large relative velocity—e.g., being hurled at his face—then its pie-ness was somehow impaired, at least from the Daniel frame of reference. For the time being, however, these were purely Scholastic hypotheticals. Pie was on his lap and very much a pie, no matter what Isaac might think of it.

  Mr. Cat had lent them silver table-settings, and Daniel, as he spoke, had tucked a napkin into his shirt-collar—a flag of surrender, and an unconditional capitulation to the attractions of Pie. Rather than laying down arms, he now picked them up—knife and fork. Isaac’s question froze him just as he poised these above the flaky top-crust. “Is it the Clubb’s intention to remain idle for the entire month of July?”

  “Each member pursues whatever lines of inquiry strike him as most promising,” Daniel returned. “As you and I are doing at this very moment.” And he stabbed Pie.

  “And the other members?”

  “They have had little to report. Though at the most recent meeting, Mr. Threader mentioned that he had come by a scrap of information: Jack the Coiner is an associate of Mr. Knockmealdown, the infamous Receiver, and frequents the kens of the so-called East London Company in the Borough.”

  Now this, actually, shut Isaac up for long enough that Daniel was able to pitch a steaming load of mutton and gravy into his pie-hole. Isaac’s eyes remained fixed in the direction of Daniel’s face, but not focused on him—a good thing, since his phizz was in a state of gustatory rapture.

  “You know my opinion of Mr. Threader,” Isaac said.

  Daniel nodded.

  “He has had dealings with Jack—you may be certain of it,” Isaac continued.

  To Daniel this seemed about as likely as that his wife in Boston was secretly in league with Blackbeard. But his mouth was full of pie, he was contented, and he did not raise an objection—merely an eyebrow.

  “Mr. Threader must be terrified that the recent investigation of the coinage, set afoot by Bolingbroke, will discover his sordid dealings with Jack. Men have been quartered at Tyburn Cross for less.”

  Here Isaac let it drop, in true mathematician’s style, leaving the rest as an exercise for the reader. Daniel tried to communicate, with what he supposed were highly expressive shrugs, sighs, and brow-furrowings, that Isaac had quite lost him. But in the end the only thing for it was to swallow and say: “If Mr. Threader is so terrified of Jack’s being apprehended, why should he volunteer information as to the man’s habits?”

  “It was a subtile message,” Isaac said.

  “To what effect?”

  “To the effect that Mr. Threader is a willing turn-coat—for if there is little honor among thieves, there is even less among weighers and coiners—and would assist in catching Jack, in exchange for lenient treatment.”

  “Lenient treatment…from his own Clubb!?”

  “From the Master of the Mint,” Isaac said. “He wots perfectly well that you and I know each other.”

  “Thank you for making such a hypothesis known to me—unassisted, I never could have dreamed such a thing—so fanciful is it,” Daniel said, a bit surly, and suspended further debate with more Pie.

  LIKE A MELANCHOLICK in the corner of a crowded salon, Bedlam turned its broad back upon the City of London. It faced north across Moor Fields, the largest green space in the metropolis. Lunaticks with the good fortune to be lodged in north-facing cells enjoyed a pleasant prospect across half a mile of open ground that separated the hospital from the next edifice of any size: Mr. Witanoont’s Vinegar Yard on Worship Street at the foot of Holy-well Mount. The broadest part of Moor Fields, directly before Bedlam, had been outlined with a quadrilateral, and striped with a St. George’s Cross, of broad lanes bordered with regularly spaced trees. The trees were all about forty years old, as they’d been planted by the order of Hooke.

  The lane forming the southern boundary of Moor Fields was hemmed in between a picket-line of such trees on one side, and on the other, an extremely formidable fence. A small iron-mine must have been exhausted to supply those segments of this barrier that consisted of wrist-thick pickets, and a quarry must have been eviscerated to build up the parts consisting of stone blocks. As soon as this awesome maniac-stopping technology appeared out the right-hand window of the hackney-carriage, Daniel tossed down his flatware and began cleaning himself up with his napkin, whilst scanning the little poem that—by long-standing Kit-Cat tradition—had been carved into the bottom crust:

  Ye Product of Pie & ye Radius, Squared,

  Doth yield the Size of the Pan,

  An area vast enough to’ve been Shared,

  Not gobbled entire by One Man!

  Hooke had made the damned building something like seven hundred feet long—as wide as the whole Tower of London complex—a luxury afforded only to architects working immediately after the Fire. Though Daniel tried, he could not stop himself peering through the iron bars to see if any inmates were out disporting themselves. All he saw were roaming claques of holiday-makers, and lone prostitutes. No great loss; the really interesting madmen were not given liberty to walk around out of doors.

  Eventually the fence veered away from them on the right, and the trees did likewise on the left, as they rattled into a broad oval forecourt spread below Bedlam’s central cupola. This was lined with concentric rings of carriages and sedan chairs waiting for their owners and renters to grow bored of the entertainments within. As he and Isaac disembarked, Daniel paid the driver to take the silver back to the Kit-Cat Clubb.

  Despite being aged and distinguished Natural Philosophers, they had to wait in the queue just like everyone else. The Gate where every visitor had to pay his penny was commensurate with the Fence. Vaulting over it
was a stone cornice: a matched pair of gracefully curving ramps, rising up to almost kiss in the center. Each appeared to serve as a kind of chaise for a sculpted figure to lounge upon: on Daniel’s left, like a straw-man that has been blown down from its armature, Melancholy reclined, gazing off dully into the space above Moor Fields. On his right, Mania perched, touching the cornice only with his elbows, hip-bone, and ankles, as every muscle in his body was chiseled taut. His fists were clenched as he strained against his fetters and his eyes rolled back as he gaped crazily up into the weather. Daniel knew these two stony fellows well, and even took a sort of godfatherly interest in them. He had visited Hooke in his atelier under Bedlam’s cupola when Hooke had been sketching them, and had even dared to make suggestions, which Hooke had of course ignored. After they had been realized by sculptors, and hoisted into position, Daniel had walked beneath them many times, going to visit Hooke or to partake of the Royal Society’s crack-pated madness-experiments. Never until today, though, had he felt such a kinship with them. For today Daniel, who on so many days was the personification of Melancholy, was standing in this queue to the left hand of Sir Isaac Newton: Mr. Mania himself. He looked back and forth a few times between sculpted Mania—or, as the Vulgar styled him, Raving Madness—and Isaac, hoping that the latter would note the similarity. For Daniel could not quite muster the nerve to voice his thoughts. Finally Isaac sighed, rolled his eyes, and said, “Yes, it is very droll.”

  In due course they ascended some broad steps to the gate and paid their pennies. This gave them liberty to ascend more steps to the entrance of the building, where they were given opportunities to pay supplementary bribes to the staff members loitering around the door. This was not strictly necessary, but would ensure that they’d be ushered straightaway to see the most entertaining madmen and -women in the whole establishment. Daniel merely scanned their faces and, not marking the one he sought, led Isaac into the building.

  “I beg your pardon?” Isaac said, for he had heard Daniel muttering. “Did you say something?”

  A deep voice behind them said, “Begging your pardon, Sir Isaac, but you need pay him no mind. Whenever Dr. Waterhouse crosses yonder threshold, it is his habit to say a prayer that he shall be permitted to leave.”

  Isaac made a point of ignoring this, supposing that the words had come from some inmate who was lurking by the door, hoping to receive a coin in payment for his waggish remarks. Which was a good guess, but wrong. Daniel turned about to face the man who had spoken. Finally Isaac did, too.

  This was no lunatick, for his hair was long and lank. Inmates had their heads shaved. And his wrists and ankles were unfettered. Isaac stiffened, and drew back a step even as Daniel was approaching this fellow to shake his hand. For Isaac had recognized Saturn as a fellow with whom he had once had an encounter of an extremely dubious nature in a boozing-ken out back of Bridewell. But after a few moments’ consideration—finding himself surrounded by shaven-headed, chain-dragging maniacs and melancholicks—Sir Isaac made up his mind that the company of Saturn was not so very distasteful after all.

  At almost the same moment a fourth man, who’d been loitering near Saturn, presented himself for introduction. “Mr. Timothy Stubbs,” said Saturn, “who as you can see from his red tresses does not live here. But as you may guess from his indigo suit, he does work here. Take your hand out of your pocket, Dr. Waterhouse; he has already been bribed.”

  “We have been attending to John Doe as you prescribed, Doctor,” announced Timothy Stubbs after more formal introductions had been dragged out of Saturn. “He has been given every physic, every therapy known to modern medicine—but alas, he shows no sign of repenting from his delusions.”

  “Fancy that!” Daniel exclaimed. “I suppose you have had to keep him close, then.”

  “Indeed, Doctor, or he’d have knocked holes in all the walls by now. He is kept in a cell above.”

  “Where the most dangerous maniacs are pent up, on the upper storey,” Saturn translated.

  “Pray, where is Mr. Doe now?”

  “He is in the Machine for Calming Violent Lunaticks, sir,” said Stubbs, a bit startled by the question. “Just as you prescribed—four hours a day.”

  “Have the purges worked?”

  “If you mean, do they purge him, sir, why, yes, they do, mightily. But if you mean, have they cured his madness, I am afraid not—so we have doubled them again.”

  “Excellent!” Daniel exclaimed. “Which way to the Machine?”

  “It lies at the end of the men’s wing—a bit of a walk, I’m afraid,” said Stubbs, leading them carefully around a shaven-headed man who was lying on his stomach on the floor, darting his eyes from side to side and mumbling a stream of what sounded like military jargon, interrupted every few moments by spasmodic flinching as he reacted to imaginary shell-bursts.

  “Not at all,” Daniel returned cheerfully. “Bedlam is justly famed as the best Dry Walk in London.”

  “Small comfort on a sunny day I’m afraid,” said Stubbs, skirting a group of three young men in Mohawk coiffures, who stood shoulder-to-shoulder critiquing the performance of a maniac who was playing a fiddle and dancing a jig at the same time:

  “I’ll give you a penny if you play another—and tuppence if you stop!”

  “Why do we stand and watch this wretch, when there are dishevelled madwomen but a few paces away?”

  “When you see what a dishevelled madwoman actually looks like, your question shall be answered.”

  They passed out of the central hall and entered a gallery that stretched away for some hundred yards. On the right it was lined with windows admitting light from the sky over Moor Fields. On the left was a succession of closely spaced doors, each sporting a small barred window at head-height. Except for the very noblest and the most destitute, the full range of Londoners—men, women, gentry, commoners, adults and children, small gangs of rowdy apprentices, flocks of well-dressed young women, solitary females even better-dressed (these were whores), doughty gaffers and crones taking their constitutionals, dashing squadrons of boys, strutting Mohawks, preening dandies, and perpetually amused Cockneys—strolled from door to door, peering in at each window to behold whatever spectacle lay within. Costermongers fed and beered the visitors from their push-carts. From place to place a knot of indigo-suited attendants ganged up on some inmate who had gotten out of hand. But for the most part the prisoners mixed freely with the visitors, or as freely as men could when ankle was fettered to ankle, and wrist to wrist, with generous lengths of heavy chain. Some of them—melancholicks—sat huddled on the floor, or shuffled to and fro, ignoring even those visitors who poked them in the ribs with walking-sticks. Others—maniacs—carried on furious disputes with entities not visibly present, or raved about whatever phant’sy was most on their minds; the most animated drew small crowds, which laughed at those rantings of a sexual or political nature, and goaded them to further outbursts. A maniac was trying to tell the world that Louis XIV was controlling London from a secret ærie atop the dome of St. Paul’s, employing an army of Jesuits who could, through sorcery, metamorphose into gray doves. A young man told him that a whole flock of such doves had been sighted entering the cupola of Bedlam through a broken window. This news drove the maniac into transports of horror and sent him back to his cell as fast as he could waddle. The violent jangling of his chains mixed with the laughter and applause of the onlookers, making the gallery too noisy for conversation.

  After it had died down, Stubbs announced “We’ve had to swop out the straw in John Doe’s cell five times a day,” in case Daniel still had lingering doubts as to the efficacy of those purges. “The other inmates have learnt to stand clear of him—except for the coprophiliacs, of course, who must be beaten back with sticks.” He nodded to a door a short distance ahead. Coincidentally or not, an umber bullet flew out of its window and impacted on the wig of a passing fop, sending up a pretty burst of white powder. “He should have paid for a guide,” Stubbs remarked, leading Danie
l, Isaac, and Saturn on a long arc to keep them out of turd-range. “I do wonder whether Mr. Doe might respond well to beatings,” Stubbs continued wistfully. “I know you have forbidden it, Doctor, but if you would allow me to have a go at him with the cane—”

  “No,” Daniel said. “Your message to me yesterday stated that he had requested an interview—”

  “Indeed, guv’nor. Begged for it, more like.”

  “Let us withhold the cane, then, and see what the interview yields.”

  By this time they had come near enough to the end of the gallery to hear a persistent low hollow grinding and booming noise. Stubbs threw open a door at the end and led them into a spacious room—for they had entered into a sort of bastion anchoring the western end of the hospital, like the fist at the end of an arm—where that noise was a good deal louder. This salon was as cluttered with peculiar exhibits as the Court of Technologickal Arts at Clerkenwell, and as crowded with obstreperous madmen as a meeting of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. But the biggest object in the room—and the source of the noise—was an immense wooden drum, mounted above the floor like a wheel. Its axle spanned the interval between a pair of massive upright timbers, each of which rose to slightly above Daniel’s head. The drum was shaped like a fat coin, perhaps a yard thick. Its rim nearly grazed both floor and ceiling, which would make its diameter rather more than twelve feet. The circular faces of it—the heads and tails of the coin, as it were—had been fabricated in the same way as primitive cart-wheels, viz. of broad deals fastened side-by-side with long iron straps. The rim consisted of more planks pegged crosswise between these two disks.

  Projecting from one end of the axle was an enormous crank with a handle as long as an oar. A stout little stairway led up to a platform, large enough for two or three men to stand abreast and bend their backs to the operation of that crank. One crew was doing so now, and another stood by, quaffing beer to replace the moisture they’d sweated into their clothes.