Then something stirred.
Behind the bright fabric wall of the marquee, something huge and heavy sighed. There came the snort of steam, as if a locomotive had come to a halt just beyond the partition. A shadow, a movement... and then a vast and animal face poked out through the curtain. It blinked at us dolefully. A dinosaur!
It resembled in shape a rhinoceros, without its horn but many times larger, the skin cracked in thick wedges of bottle green. Its snout was as long as a man, the teeth the size of a human head. Thick smoke puffed from its nostrils. The power of it — the awesome power; and yet the thing was tame!
At her Ladyship’s call, it padded forward, heavy feet making the very ground tremble; our cutlery danced on the table in response to each step.
“The hydraulic workings are thanks to Mr Armstrong,” said Lady Lovelace — and Mr Armstrong bowed. The lady continued in the same gentle tone as before, as if this were all an everyday sight. “But the creature’s brain is an entirely new sort of engine. We programmed a number of simple operations. It has been a fascinating experiment: what combination of basic responses will create the semblance of autonomous thought. In point of fact, we need very few responses to conjure the illusion. The machinery is housed inside the beast, and there is room to spare. So there is still much that we might explore with the mechanism. This is merely the first stage.”
She made her way down the steps to stand with the vast creature, and it backed away to keep a discreet distance, snorting steam. The behaviour seemed completely natural, no different from an elephant who respects his keeper in the hope of earning a bun. The others stared in awe, but my profession demands certain instincts — and besides I was eager to ingratiate myself with the lady now I knew who she was.
“What is the next stage?” I asked.
Lady Lovelace fixed her extraordinary eyes upon me, and, like the beast, I felt an urge to take a step backward. The manner in which she looked at me was quite brazen. At dinner, I’d mistaken her candour for flirtation, under the influence of wine. But no, she addressed me as a man might; as an equal — no, as my superior.
“We will develop the programme,” she said. “Explore more complex operations. Perhaps even shed light on to the formulae involved in human thought.”
I might have said something cutting in reply, had I been able to think of it in time, but the Megalosaurus suddenly let out a deep sigh, exhaling a last bloom of smoke. It took a step towards us... and then was perfectly still. Its eyes remained open and staring. There was a soft ticking from within, as of hot machinery cooling, but otherwise the creature did not move. It might have been a statue. Lady Lovelace looked sad but not surprised.
“It is powered by more than steam,” she said, “and has an appetite for Daniell-cell batteries. We continue working on that.”
She ducked under the creature’s belly and, with a quick twist of her hand, opened a hatch which spat steam and oily droplets. Even so, she poked about inside — yes, in all her evening finery. I felt so affronted I turned away, to find Waterhouse Hawkins beside me.
“Well,” he said, offering a cigar. “What do you think of that?” I hardly knew where to begin, but fortunately, he did not press for an answer. “You can see why we’ve been burning up funds. And why we can’t halt proceedings here. My dear fellow, this is just the start. Think what we might do!”
“I think,” I said, “this is where you tell me what I might do on your behalf.”
Waterhouse Hawkins beamed. “We need our funds to continue. We need to improve the mechanics in time for the opening of the park, so our small creation might have an audience with Her Majesty.”
It seemed quite absurd; I told him so, but he only continued to beam. “Write that, then. Say it in so many words. Lay down the gauntlet and we shall deliver. If only we have funds!”
I did as he asked; I wrote an article on what I had witnessed that night. When I learned that the Illustrated London News had also covered the dinner — and had lithographs showing the table nestled inside the Iguanodon — I felt a low disappointment, for that journal’s circulation eclipsed that of my own publication.
Yet their account was — how does one put it? — overly melodramatic.
I pride myself that I describe the world and events as they are; there is no lurid embellishment, only a concise laying out of facts. But such facts! There was no need for added effects. To dine inside a dinosaur! Then to meet one, face to face! And the vast creature, breathing fire and obeying the commands of that madman’s daughter!
My account seemed more effective for being understated. It created a sensation. A longer monograph was published. I received a considerable fee, and donated a percentage to Waterhouse Hawkins for his work. He sent a curt reply, thanking me for my efforts if not in fulsome terms. I put that down to his being too caught up in his project.
No, I had little thought of a change in his attitude toward me until the tenth of June, Eighteen-fifty-four — and the official opening of the Crystal Palace Park.
What a transformation had been wrought since the night of the great dinner. That night I had borne witness to a wasteland of mud and earthworks, now there were gardens and vast ornamental lakes. Even more spectacularly, instead of a scant two dozen of us, huddled in a barn, there was now a great multitude of people in those virgin gardens, that Eden: later estimates said some forty-thousand attended. I jostled my way through them up the slope to the wide terraces that led to the bright cathedral of glass and steel, the Crystal Palace itself.
There were soldiers on duty but they knew my name; indeed they had read my articles and welcomed me almost as a friend, so I was passed on through to the royal enclosure. At least, that is what I thought. As I made my way up the last steps to the glass building, a figure hurried down to meet me.
“Benjamin,” I said. “I hope the day finds you well.”
He regarded me coolly. “You were not sent an invitation,” he said.
I brushed the matter aside. “It might have gone to the office in Manchester, or been mislaid while I was out of the country.”
“Mr Quake,” he said — and just his using my surname served to bring me up short. “You were not sent an invitation; it’s ill-mannered to come all the same.”
I could hardly believe it; for a moment I simply stared back at him, expecting that he would apologise for a joke in poor taste. But no, he stood quite firm.
“Am I allowed to know the reason for my fall from grace?” I asked him.
“You mean you do not know?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I have sought nothing but to champion your work — and you.”
“I see,” he said. “You have been our friend in the press?”
“Exactly,” I said, but the first doubts had crept into my mind. “If some part of what I wrote met with your objection, you have only to say. Whatever it was, I apologise. Come, let us not fall out today of all days. Indeed; allow me to correct any perceived wrong to you in a new piece I’ll write. If I spoke to you and Lady Lovelace…”
He regarded me with such disdain the words died in my mouth.
“You have already spoken enough,” he said, then turned away and marched up the steps. I started to follow, wanting to beseech him to have some measure of pity, but a soldier nodded his head, directing me back the way I had come.
As I made my way out into the hoi polloi crowding the ornamental gardens, I felt desperately sorry; for the truth was I knew what I had done to so offend my friend — and her Ladyship, too. I had known it when I composed my article, but dared believe — or dared fool myself — that it would be overlooked. Oh, the allusion was well drawn, and struck a chord with the reader. For these forty-thousand persons swirling round me had not come solely for the gardens and the glass palace. They were keen to see for themselves the animated dinosaur, the Megalosaurus, which I had dared to name a Frankenstein creation.
The public, of course, knew that book well and took the simile to heart. But they also knew th
e link between the devising of the story and the late Lord Byron. I had spoken, too, in my articles of Lovelace’s passion for her project, and her mannish bearing. In doing so, I had conjured the impression — without ever stating it baldly — that she might carry some of her father’s madness.
It had been a calculated risk, I assured myself as I made my way back down the terrace steps. Waterhouse Hawkins had asked me to engage popular support for his project; I had made his work a sensation, stoked a controversy and ensured his funding — for the scientific fraternity could not allow it to be thought that the project had failed due to the pressure of public distaste. Such a conclusion would have damaged investigations of every bent for many years to come.
I told myself that I had done Waterhouse Hawkins a favour, and that this would be acknowledged in time; we would be reconciled. But for the moment, I had been cast adrift. So I made my way down towards the southern corner of the gardens and the three small islands arranged on the tidal lake.
Already, a crowd filled the pathways and spilled over the grassy banks. I tried to get my bearings and establish in my mind where the studio had stood — but all was utterly transformed since the night of the grand dinner. What had been a muddy quagmire had become a vision of an ancient age, complete with concrete vegetation and ferns with iron leaves. There was much made in the official handbook of the way each island matched the conditions of a distinct era, and showed rock types within which fossils had been found. I dare say it was all correctly staged, but the people did not care for the rocks or fauna, only the creatures on display.
The sculptures were extraordinary. I marvelled at three examples of Labyrinthodon, like giant, bloated frogs; the Teleosaurs like modern crocodiles but for their long and slender jaws; the great head of Mosasaurus emerging from the lake; the huge sloth-bear Megatherium, grappling with a tree. And these enthralling monsters were but the curtain-raiser before the main event.
By the appointed hour, I had myself a position in the midst of the crowd on the upper bank at the very border of the park, with a good view of the three islands. There was such a fervour in the air, the whole mass giddy with excitement. I spoke to strangers as if they were old friends.
Then the clamour of voices faded. Word travelled, man to man down the hill from the Crystal Palace itself, that the Queen had begun her speech. We listened in rapt silence — and did not hear a word. For long minutes we strained to pick out any hint of sound.
Then there came a susurration, as if of great bodies of water moving through the pipes that I knew supplied the tidal lake. No; as the noise grew it became more clear: the throng of people ahead of us had erupted in applause. The noise came towards us like a tide and was quite infectious: I cheered and clapped just as keenly as my neighbours. That detail is important — the way each individual will was subsumed into the crowd.
It happened before the applause had died down. There was a commotion from across the park, towards the avenue of new trees. From our vantage point on the bank, my companions and I could make little of the disturbance; though we all felt, distinctly, that something had gone wrong. Then, yes, I detected the telling puffs of steam.
A woman’s voice cried out: “Save our unholy souls!” The words cut completely through me.
There were more screams, off towards the trees from whence the steam had its origin. People around me turned to one another. I heard a man tell his wife that perhaps they should make for the exit — and she told him not to be such a coward. But, as with the wave of applause just before, we were soon caught in a tide of fear; washing through us, every one.
Then I saw it: the dark shape lumbering through the mass of people. The same slow, comical gait I had witnessed once before. Smoke billowed from its nostrils as it came. The Megalosaurus striding freely among the people.
There were others, too — I saw more huge and heavy shapes move solidly between the trees, blowing smoke. Those around me started to jostle and push; some wanting to reach the south-western gate, others just as determined to stand their ground in this crisis. Had they not known, they said, that there would be a parade of mechanised animals? Had they not been thrilled by the thought, as described in that newspaper piece?
I wrestled with my own awful foreboding, telling myself that I felt no urge to flee. With contrived calm, I instead consulted the handbook in my shaking hands.
Megalosaurus, it said, “was decidedly carnivorous, and, probably, waged a deadly war against its less destructively endowed congeners and contemporaries”. There were now also two examples of Iguanodon that were roving about — “the character of the scales is conjectural” — and a Hylaeosaurus, with a row of spikes running down its spine. With each description there was a simple, bold sentence: “These mechanised creatures are under our control and will do no harm.” That note went entirely ignored.
There are many accounts of what happened next: the stampede of ordinary men and women from all classes, the acts of courage and barbarity, selfishness and self-sacrifice. The truth is, there was little kind of narrative, just an awful mess.
The crowd panicked. Those near the dinosaurs wanted to escape but there were too many people in their way. Instinct took over from reason; wild and animal instinct at that. I see it vividly, still: those trampled underfoot, those doing the trampling, those who fought and kicked their fellow men in their efforts to escape, all to no avail.
I managed to scale the bank and then up into a tree. I had not climbed one since my boyhood but in my terror the method came easily, like a second nature. Others followed, but too many crowded the lower branches, and they snapped — dropping those poor souls back into the mayhem. The few of us remaining clung tight to the higher branches, unable to save anyone else. I saw a child, held aloft above the heads of the crush. Hands reached out, and I saw the desperate effort to pass the small bundle towards the southern gate and safety. If those doomed souls had succeeded, it might have made the tragedy easier. But I saw the hands lose their grip, and the child lost.
Someone, anyone, might have caught the child and raised it up aloft. Someone might have but did not. It was but one example.
It’s said the dinosaurs trampled the bodies, that they charged, that they ate from the corpses. I know that isn’t true; I could see them plainly from my vantage point high up in the tree. They stood, unable to move in the chaos around them, unable to make sense of it, watching sadly as we murdered ourselves.
Waterhouse Hawkins went to jail for his part in the tragedy, and years later he travelled to New York to build dinosaur sculptures — static ones, of course — for the Central Park. Sadly, that project was never realised.
Richard Owen stood trial and was acquitted, but with his reputation marred. Within four years of the tragedy, it was shown from new fossil evidence that Megalosaurus and other dinosaurs had been bipedal — two-footed, not four. Owen continued to deny the hypothesis, and opposed Mr Darwin’s new theories when they were published the following year. It is an irony that the word Owen conjured — dinosaur — has taken a new meaning to describe a type of man.
Lady Lovelace was not put on trial: the authorities would not credit that a woman, even one from such a notorious lineage, could have been anything more than an assistant in the scheme. It is said she and Mr Dickens have grown close since his divorce, but I would not wish to intrude into her personal circumstance.
And the dinosaurs? They remain on their islands, for any to behold should they but happen by. The creatures in the south-western part of the Crystal Palace gardens no longer enthral a huge crowd. It is known even by the smallest child that the shape and character of the sculptures is entirely wrong. Indeed, it is not uncommon, should you sit and regard them of an afternoon, to hear passers-by dismiss them as “mistakes”.
The word twists a little in my heart, for they only slumber. On a quiet day you can just about hear the slow tick of their mechanical brains. Who knows, with a supply of new batteries and a little water, they might even walk among us once more
. In the meantime, as we laugh and wonder at them and then hurry away, they are watching.
I saw more huge and heavy shapes move solidly between the trees.
Circulation
Roger Luckhurst
8 Nov 1790
I left London early and reached Gravesend at nine in the morning. Weather execrable, the cloud low and that drear reach of the river filled me with melancholy humour. Our departure was delayed by low tides, which exposed the sandbanks, and I filled the time by domesticating myself in a cabin which surprised me with its comforts. The captain is a pleasant enough man, but rude; Forbes is his name. His sailors eye me with the calculation of card sharps. I unpacked my writing desk and wrote letters to my mother and master as the pigs that will feed us were driven up the gangplank, squealing.
I do not wish to go, yet have been obligated and so commanded.
13 Nov 1790
We are out in the open sea, having left Southampton behind. Weather continues intolerable. Everything must be tied down; alas not my stomach, which is bilious. A ship boy, Jem, brings me soup and speaks of fierce storms and schooners dismasted in the blast. He cannot fathom why his excitement turns me green. The first promise of landfall among the Windward Isles seems far distant. The boy, no more than eight or nine, has crossed the ocean many times, thinks nothing of it. I try to read, cannot. A wretched state in which to make preparations.
17 Nov 1790
The gales have gone, succeeded by dead calm. The captain paces fore and aft, waiting for the winds to fill the sails to push us across the ocean; they will come when they will, he says, with curt dismissal. Jem clambered up the mast like a monkey but he could see no clouds.
I was later called to the side of the ship to witness a shoal of flying fish and two dolphins swimming with them. I was struck with beauty of God’s creation; the colours are many and glorious, rippling in the glassy water, such as I had never seen. I thought the sailors thus struck, too, only to understand that they were tempting one of the creatures near to harpoon the beast and set supper. Their imprecations shocked me, but I did my best to hide it all. Not well, I think.
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