Mason & Dixon Read online

The Carpenter of the Seahorse and his men have put up a structure solid as a Man o’ War, tarr’d the Roof and all the joints, rigg’d a couple of Blocks in a Gun-Purchase Arrangement allowing the Gentlemen to slide the Shutter open and clos’d from inside. “Get her down to the Water, step a Mast, put up some Canvas, and ye may sail her home,” the Carpenter assur’d them. It holds six snugly,— less awkwardly if, as Jet and Els now discover, two lie together upon one Astronomer’s Couch,— as, promptly, do Austra and Greet, upon the other.

  The storm drums at the Cone above, which sheds the Rain in Sheets. There is nothing to drink but Cape Madeira, a thick violet Liquid one must get thro’ six or seven Bottles of even to begin to feel at ease. There is no Question of Working, all Drudgery Logarithmick having been brought up to Date, the Clock seen to, the Shutter-Tackle made secure.

  “Now then,” Mason rapping upon the Table’s Edge with a sinister-looking Fescue of Ebony, whose List of Uses simple Indication does not quite exhaust, whilst the Girls squirm pleasingly, “as you young Ladies have been kind enough to visit during School-Hours, we must be sure that your Education advance upon some Topick,— wherefore our Lesson for today shall be, the forthcoming Transit of Venus.”

  Cries of, “Oh, please, Sir!” and “Not the Transit of Venus!”

  “Then what in the World are thee up here for,” Dixon’s Eye-Balls ingenuously gibbous, “if not out of Curiosity as to what we do?”

  They all take looks at one another, Austra at length detaching to smirk at Mason and cast her Eyes heavenward, where the Roar of the Storm goes on unabating. Her blond Procuresses all begin to expostulate at once, and Mason understands that the vocal assaults of the Vroom Poultry are not inborn, but rather learn’d in this World from their Owners.

  “Ladies, Ladies,” Mason calls. “— You’ve seen her in the Evening Sky, you’ve wish’d upon her, and now for a short time will she be seen in the Day-light, crossing the Disk of the Sun,— and do make a Wish then, if you think it will help.— For Astronomers, who usually work at night, ’twill give us a chance to be up in the Day-time. Thro’ our whole gazing-lives, Venus has been a tiny Dot of Light, going through phases like the Moon, ever against the black face of Eternity. But on the day of this Transit, all shall suddenly reverse,— as she is caught, dark, embodied, solid, against the face of the Sun,— a Goddess descended from light to Matter.”

  “And our Job,” Dixon adds, “is to observe her as she transits the face of the Sun, and write down the Times as she comes and goes . . . ?”

  “That’s all? You could stay in England and do that,” jaunty little Chins and slender Necks, posing, and re-posing, blond girls laughing together, growing sticky and malapert.

  The Girls are taken on a short but dizzying journey, straight up, into the Æther, until there beside them in the grayish Starlight is the ancient, gravid Earth, the Fescue become a widthless Wand of Light, striking upon it brilliantly white-hot Arcs.

  “Parallax. To an Observer up at the North Cape, the Track of the Planet, across the Sun, will appear much to the south of the same Track as observ’d from down here, at the Cape of Good Hope. The further apart the Obs North and South, that is, the better. It is the Angular Distance between, that we wish to know. One day, someone sitting in a room will succeed in reducing all the Observations, from all ’round the World, to a simple number of Seconds, and tenths of a Second, of Arc,— and that will be the Parallax.

  “Let us hope some of you are awake early enough, to see the Transit. Remember to keep both eyes open, and there will be the three Bodies, lined up perfectly,— the Heliocentric system in its true Mechanism, His artisanship how pure.” The Girls keep their Glances each looping ’round the others, like elaborately curl’d Tresses, trying to see if they should be understanding this, or,— being cruel young beauties ev’ry one,— even caring.

  10

  As Planets do the Sun, we orbit ’round God according to Laws as elegant as Kepler’s. God is as sensible to us, as a Sun to a Planet. Tho’ we do not see Him, yet we know where in our Orbits we run,— when we are closer, when more distant,— when in His light and when in shadow of our own making. . . . We feel as components of Gravity His Love, His Need, whatever it be that keeps us circling. Surely if a Planet be a living Creature, then it knows, by something even more wondrous than Human Sight, where its Sun shines, however far it lie.

  — Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, Unpublished Sermons

  “Show us upon the Orrery,” suggests Pliny.

  “I get to light the Sun,” cries Pitt, dashing for the card-table, where the Tapers are kept in a drawer.

  Tenebrae finds herself, in the general convergence upon the Machine in the corner, quite close to her Cousin Ethelmer, who is trying to remember how old she is. He cannot recall her looking quite this,— he supposes, nubile. And how old does it make him, then? Briefly he beholds the gray edge of a cloud of despair, promises himself to think about it later, smiles, and sallies, “Remember the time you snipp’d off a lock of your hair, and we fashion’d it into a Comet, and placed it in the Orrery?”

  “That grew back a long time ago, Cousin.”

  “When you were quite a bit shorter, as well. I almost had to sit down to kiss you hello. Yet now,— um, that is,— ”

  “Dangerous territory, Sir.”

  “How so? an innocent peck upon the cheek of a child?”

  “Had you thought to inquire of the Child,” Tenebræ’s chin rising slowly, “you might have found your education further’d in ways unexpected, ’Thelmer.” Ethelmer for a split second is gazing straight up into her nostrils, one of which now flares into pink illumination as Pitt’s Taper sets alight the central Lanthorn of the Orrery, representing the Sun. The other Planets wait, all but humming, taut within their spidery Linkages back to the Crank-Shaft and the Crank, held in the didactic Grasp of the Revd Cherrycoke. The Twins, push’d to the back, content themselves with the movements of the outermost Planets, Saturn and the new “Georgian,” but three years old. Dr. Nessel, the renown’d German Engineer, last spring show’d up unexpectedly in Philadelphia, having travers’d the Sea under wartime conditions, to add free of charge the new Planet to the numerous Orreries he had built in America. In each Apparatus, he fashion’d the Planet a little differently. By the time he got to Philadelphia, he was applying to the miniature greenish-blue globes Mappemondes of some intricacy, as if there were being reveal’d to him, one Orrery at a time, a World with a History even longer than our own, a recognizable Creator, Oceans that had to be cross’d, lands that had to be fought over, other Species to be conquer’d. The children have since pass’d many an hour, Lenses in hand, gazing upon this new World, and becoming easy with it. They have imagin’d and partly compos’d a Book, History of the New Planet, the Twins providing the Wars, and Brae the scientifick Inventions and Useful Crafts.

  “Here then,” the Revd having smoothly crank’d Venus, Earth, and the Sun into proper alignment, “— as seen from the Earth, Venus,— here,— was to pass across the Disk of the Sun. Seen from Cape Town, five and a half hours, more or less, Limb to Limb. What Observers must determine are the exact Times this Passage begins and ends. From a great many such Observations ’round the world, and especially those widely separated north and south, might be reckon’d the value of the Solar Parallax.”

  “What’s that?” Pitt and Pliny want to know.

  “The size of the Earth, in seconds of Arc, as seen by an observer upon the surface of the Sun.”

  “Don’t his feet get blister’d?” hollers Pitt, with his brother goading him on, “— isn’t he too busy hopping about? and what of his Telescope, won’t it melt?”

  “All of these and more,” replies the Revd, “making it super-remarkable, that thro’ the magick of Celestial Trigonometry,— to which you could certainly be applying yourselves,— such measurements may yet be taken,— as if the Telescope, in mysterious Wise, w
ere transporting us safely thro’ all the dangers of the awesome Gulf of Sky, out to the Object we wish to examine.”

  “A Vector of Desire.”

  “Thankee, DePugh, the phrase exact.” DePugh is the son of Ives LeSpark, like Ethelmer home on a Visit from School, in this case from Cambridge,— traveling the Atlantick to and fro by Falmouth Packet as easily as taking the Machine to New Castle. He has shown an early aptitude with Figures. God be merciful to him, silently requests the Revd.

  Somebody somewhere in the World, watching the Planet go dark against the Sun,— dark, mad, mortal, the Goddess in quite another Aspect indeed,— cannot help blurting, exactly at The Moment, from Sappho’s Fragment 95, seeming to wreck thereby the Ob,—

  “O Hesperus,— you bring back all that the bright day scatter’d,— you bring in the sheep, and the goat,— you bring the Child back to her mother.”

  “Thank you for sharing that with us . . . recalling that this is Sun-Rise, Dear, -Rise, not sun-Set.”

  “Come! She’s not yet detach’d!”

  “Let us see. Well, will you look at that.” A sort of long black Filament yet connects her to the Limb of the Sun, tho’ she be moved well onto its Face, much like an Ink-Drop about to fall from the Quill of a forgetful Scribbler,— sidewise, of course,— “Quick! someone, secure the Time,—”

  This, or odd behavior like it, is going on all over the World all day long that fifth and sixth of June, in Latin, in Chinese, in Polish, in Silence,— upon Roof-Tops and Mountain Peaks, out of Bed-chamber windows, close together in the naked sunlight whilst the Wife minds the Beats of the Clock,— thro’ Gregorians and Newtonians, achromatick and rainbow-smear’d, brand-new Reflectors made for the occasion, and ancient Refractors of preposterous French focal lengths,— Observers lie, they sit, they kneel,— and witness something in the Sky. Among those attending Snouts Earth-wide, the moment of first contact produces a collective brain-pang, as if for something lost and already unclaimable,— after the Years of preparation, the long and at best queasy voyaging, the Station arriv’d at, the Latitude and Longitude well secur’d,— the Week of the Transit,— the Day,— the Hour,— the Minute,— and at last ’tis, “Eh? where am I?”

  Astronomers will seek to record four Instants of perfect Tangency between Venus’s Disk, and the Sun’s. Two are at Ingress,— External Contact, at the first touch from outside the Sun’s Limb, and then Internal Contact, at the instant the small black Disk finally detaches from the inner Circumference of the great yellow one, Venus now standing alone against the Face of the Sun. The other two come at Egress,— this time, first Internal, then External Contact. And then eight more years till the next, and for this Generation last, Opportunity,— as if the Creation’s Dark Engineer had purposedly arrang’d the Intervals thus, to provoke a certain Instruction, upon the limits to human grandeur impos’d by Mortality.

  The Sky remains clouded up till the day of the Transit, Friday the fifth of June. Both the Zeemanns and the Vrooms speed about in unaccustom’d Bustle, compar’d to the Astronomers, who seem unnaturally calm.

  “Dutch Ado about nothing,” Mason remarks.

  Dixon agrees. “And they’re usually so stolid, too . . . ?”

  Els comes skidding across the floor in her Stocking Feet, heading for the Kitchen with an Apron’s load of Potatoes. “Nothing to worry about!” she cries,” ’twill clear up in plenty of time!” Even Cornelius is up on the Roof, scanning the Mists with a nautical Spy-Glass, reporting upon hopeful winds and bright patches.” ’Tis ever like this before a Cloudless Day,” he assures them. The Slaves speak inaudibly, and are seen to gaze toward the Mountains. They have never observ’d their owners behaving like this. They begin to smile, tentatively but directly, at Mason and Dixon.

  Of whom one is insomniac, and one is not. Afterward, none in the Household will be able to agree which was which. Drops of what proves to be ketjap in the pantry suggest Dixon as the sleepless one, whilst a Wine-Glass abandon’d upon a chicken-Battery indicates Mason. The Rattle-Watch make a point of coming by ev’ry hour and in front of Zeemanns’ singing out the Time of Night, adding, “And all’s clouded over yet!”

  Somehow, ev’ryone is awake at first Light. “The Sun ascended in a thick haze, and immediately entered a dark cloud,” as Mason and Dixon will report later in the Philosophical Transactions. Clock-time is o Hours, 12 Minutes, o Seconds. Twenty-three minutes later, they have their first sight of Venus. Each lies with his Eye clapp’d to the Snout of an identical two-and-a-half-foot Gregorian Reflector made by Mr. Short, with Darkening-Nozzles by Mr. Bird.

  “Quite a Tremor,” Mason grumbles. “They’ll have to ascend a bit more in the Sky. And here comes this damn’d Haze again.”

  Upon first making out the Planet, Dixon becomes as a Sinner converted. “Eeh! God in his Glory!”

  “Steady,” advises Mason, in a vex’d tone.

  Dixon remembers the Tale Emerson lov’d to tell, of Galileo before the Cardinals, creaking to his feet after being forc’d to recant, muttering, “Nonetheless, it moves.” Watch, patiently as before the Minute-Hand of a Clock, become still enough, and ’twould all begin to move. . . . This, Dixon understands, is what Galileo was risking so much for,— this majestick Dawn Heresy.” ’Twas seeing not only our Creator about his Work,” he tells Mason later, “but Newton and Kepler, too, confirm’d in theirs. The Arrival, perfectly as calculated, the three bodies sliding into a single Line . . . Eeh, it put me in a Daze for fair.” Whatever the cause, the times he records are two to four seconds ahead of Mason’s.

  “With all the other Corrections to make, now must we also introduce another, for observational impatience,” supposes Mason,— “styling it ‘Leonation,’ perhaps,— ”

  “As well might we correct for ‘Tauricity,’” replies Dixon, “or Delays owing to Caution inflexible.”

  The girls have also been observers of the Transit, having cajol’d a Sailor of their Acquaintance into lending them a nautickal Spy-Glass, and smoak’d with Sheep-tallow Candles their own Darkening-Lenses,— taking turns at the Glass, even allowing their Parents a Peep now and then,— Jet breathing, “She’s really there,” Greet adding, “Right on time, too!” and Els,— hum,— we may imagine what Els was up to, and what transpir’d just as the last of the Black Filament, holding the Planet to the Inner Limb of the Sun, gave way, and she dropp’d, at last, full onto that mottl’d bright Disk, dimm’d by the Lenses to a fierce Moon, that Eyes might bear.

  As before the Transit the month of May crept unnaturally, so, after it, will June, July, August, and September hasten by miraculously,— till early in October, when Capt. Harrold, of the Mercury, finds a lapse in the Weather workable enough to embark the Astronomers, and take them to St. Helena in. By which time, ev’ryone is more than ready for a change of Company. The North-West Rains have well possess’d the Town,— all Intrigue lies under Moratorium, as if the Goddess of Love in her Visitation had admonish’d all who would invoke her, to search their Hearts, and try not to betray her quite so much.

  After the Transit, Astronomers and Hosts walk about for Days in deep Stupor, like Rakes and Doxies after some great Catastrophe of the Passions. The Zeemanns’ servant difficulties being resolv’d, the Astronomers return to that Table, and for the next four months pursue Lives of colorless Rectitude, with the Food no better nor worse, waiting upon the Winds. In the Mountains, the Bull’s Eye is sovereign. All over Town, Impulse, chasten’d, increasingly defers to Stolidity. Visiting Indian Mystics go into Trances they once believ’d mindless enough, which here prove Ridottoes of Excess, beside the purpos’d Rainy-day Inanition of the Dutch. The Slaves, as if to preserve a secret Invariance, grow more visible and distinct, their Voices stronger, and their Musick more pervasive, as if the Rain were carrying these from distant parts of Town. Johanna and the Girls, after a brief few weeks in a nun-like withdrawal from the Frivolous,— Jet going so far as to cover her h
air with a diaphanous Wimple she has fashion’d of Curtain-stuff,— are all back to their old Theatrics, this time to the Delight of a trio of young Company Writers lately arriv’d at False Bay, Mr. Delver Warp and the Brothers Vowtay, coming home from Bengal non-Nabobickal as when they went out, with only enough in their pockets to draw the interest of Cape Belles who are far less particular than the Vrooms, and fearful that if they don’t get it, ’twill be as soon gambl’d away into the Purses of Sea-Sharpers. Corrupted by India, yet poor,— ungovernably lewd, yet unwrinkl’d,— and withal, what a Heaven-sent Source of White Blood are these Lads! Johanna can almost see those Babies now, up on the Block, adorable enough to sell themselves, kicking their feet in the air and squealing,— and she grows monomaniackal in her Pursuit, whilst Austra finds herself calculating which of the Sprigs shall be easiest to seduce, and which, if any, more of a Challenge. . . .

  Presently, from across the back-Yards jealously patroll’d by their predatory Hens, come once again sounds of feminine Merriment. Mason looks over at Dixon. “At least they’re back to normal over there,” he remarks. “For a while, I puzzl’d,— had the Town undergone some abrupt Conversion? Had I, without knowing it?”

  Dixon recalls when Wesley came to preach at Newcastle,— “His first sermon in the North-East,— the congregations immense,— all the Side, and beyond, transform’d,— belonging to the Spirit. It lasted for Weeks after,— tho’ it may have been months, for all I knew of Time in those Days,— I was a Lad, but I could make it out. Little by then surpriz’d me, yet this was the canniest thing upon the coaly Tyne since Harry Clasper out-keel’d the Lad from Hetton-le-Hole . . . ? Nothing like it again, that I’ve noatic’d . . . ? Until this Transit of Venus . . . this turning of Soul, have tha felt it,— they’re beginning to talk to their Slaves? Few, if any, beatings,— tho’ best to whisper, not to jeopardize it too much . . . ?”

  “The Dutch are afraid,” Mason is able to contribute, “unto Death.”