The System of the World

Bloomsbury
HALF AN HOUR LATER

“A ROMAN TEMPLE, on the edge of the city. Modest. Nothing gaudy,” had been Roger’s instructions to him, some twenty-five years earlier.

“I suppose that rules out having it be a Temple of Jupiter or Apollo,” Daniel had returned.

Roger had looked out the window of the coffee-house, feigning deafness, which was what he always did when he guessed Daniel was making fun of him.

Daniel had sipped his coffee and considered it. “Among your modest and humble Roman Gods would be…let me think…Vesta. Whose temples, like your house, stood outside the old boundaries of the city.”

“Well enough. Splendid god, Vesta,” Roger had said, a bit distantly.

“Goddess, actually.”

“All right, who the hell was she!?”

“Goddess of the hearth, chaste above all others…”

“Oh, Jesus!”

“Worshipped around the clock-or the sundial, I should say-by the Vestal virgins…”

“Wouldn’t mind having a few of those around, provided they were not pedantic about the virginity.”

“Not at all. Vesta herself was almost seduced by Priapus, the ithyphallic God…”

Roger shivered. “I can’t wait to find out what that means. Perhaps we should make my house a Temple of Priapus.”

“Every shack you walk into becomes a Temple of Priapus. No need to spend money on an architect.”

“Who said I was going to pay you?”

“I did, Roger.”

“Oh, all right.”

“I will not make you a Temple of Priapus. I do not think that the Queen of England would ever come to call on you, Roger, if you lived in such a place.”

“Give me another humble, unassuming God then!” Roger had demanded, snapping his fingers. “Come on, I’m not paying you to drink coffee!”

“There’s always Vulcan.”

“Lame!”

“Indeed, he was a bit gouty, like many a gentleman,” Daniel had said patiently, “but he got all the most beautiful goddesses-including Venus herself!”

“Haw! The rogue!”

“He was master of metals-though humble, and scorned, he fettered Titans and Gods with his ingenuity-”

“Metals-including-?”

“Gold and silver.”

“Capital!”

“And of course he was God of Fire, and Lord of Volcanoes.”

“Volcanoes! An ancient symbol of fertility-sending their gouts of molten stone spurting high into the air,” Roger had said meditatively, prompting Daniel to shove his chair away several inches. “Right! That’s it, then-make me a Temple of Vulcan-tasteful and inexpensive, mind you-just off Bloomsbury there. And put a volcano in it!”

This-put a volcano in it-had been Roger’s first and last instructions to Daniel concerning interior decoration. Daniel had fobbed that part of it off on a silversmith-not a money one, but an old-school silversmith who still literally smote silver for a living. This had left Daniel free to design the Temple of Vulcan itself, which had presented no difficulties at all. A lot of Greeks had figured out how to make buildings of that general type two thousand years ago, and then Romans had worked out tricks for banging them out in a hurry, tricks that were now second nature to every tradesman in London.

Not really believing that Roger would ever actually build it, Daniel had sat down in front of a large clean sheet of paper and proceeded to pile element on element: and quite a few Plinths, Pilasters, Architraves, Urns, Archivolts, and Finials later, he had ended up with something that probably would have caused Julius C?sar to clap his hands over his laureled and anointed head in dismay, and order the designer crucified. But after a brief sell job from Daniel in the back room of a coffee-house (“Note the Lesbian leaf pattern at the tops of the columns… Ancient symbols of fertility are worked into the groins… I have taken the liberty of depicting this Amazon with two breasts, rather than the historically attested one”), Roger was convinced that it looked exactly like a Temple of Vulcan ought to. And when he actually went and built the thing-telling everyone it was an exact reproduction of a real one on Mount Vesuvius-nine out of ten Londoners were content to believe it. Daniel’s only consolation was that because of the bald lie about Vesuvius, hardly anyone knew he-or indeed any living person-had been responsible for it. Only the Gods knew. As long as he avoided parts of the world with a lot of volcanoes, he would go unscathed.

During his most melancholy times, he was kept awake at night by the phant’sy that, of everything he’d ever done, this house would last the longest, and be seen by the most people. But with the one exception of being cut for the stone, every fear that had ever tormented Daniel in his bed had turned out, in the light of day, to be not all that bad really. As he plodded westwards on Great Russell Street toward its cross with Tottenham Court Road, passing by Bloomsbury Square, he sensed a massy white Presence in the corner of his eye, and forced himself not to look at it. But at some point this became absurd, and he had to square his shoulders, perform a soldierly right-face, and look his shame in the eye. And, mirabile dictu, it was not so very bad! When it had first gone up, twenty years ago, in the middle of a hog-lot, cater-corner from a timber depot, it had been screamingly bizarre. But now it was in the middle of a city, which helped a little, and Hooke had added on to it, which helped a great deal. It was no longer an alienated Temple but the buckle in a belt of Corinthian-columned arcades that surrounded Roger’s parcel. The wings gave it proportion and made it seem much less likely to topple over sideways. The friezes had been added to the pediment and to the tablatures while Daniel had been in Boston, a tangle of togas and tridents that diverted the viewer’s eye from the underlying dreadfulness (or so Daniel thought) of the architecture. Here Hooke had done him more favors by extending the horizontal features of the Temple into the wings, giving Daniel’s phant’sies and improvisations more authority than they probably deserved. All in all, Daniel was able to stare at the place for a solid five or ten minutes without dissolving in embarrassment; London’s boundaries enclosed much worse.

For the thirtieth time since crossing Gray’s Inn Road, he looked to see if Saturn was following him. The answer was again no. He crossed Great Russell and walked up the steps, feeling like a wee figure sketched into a rendering to show the scale. Passing between two fluted columns he swept across the Portico and raised his walking-stick to beat upon one of the massive front doors (gold leaf, with details in silver and copper, all part of the metallurgical theme). But the doors were drawn open so swiftly that they seemed to leap away from him. It gave him a turn-his eye was foxed into thinking that the doors were stationary, and he falling backwards away from them. He took a step forward to compensate; and, entering the cleavage between the doors, nearly fell into the one between a pair of breasts. It required some effort to stop himself, straighten his carriage, and look the owner in the eye. She was giving him a knowing look, but the dimples in her cheeks said, All in good fun, go on, have a good long stare then!

“Doctor Waterhouse! You have kept me waiting far too long! How can I ever forgive you?”

This sounded like an opportunity for Daniel to say something witty, but it whooshed past him like grapeshot.

“Er…I have?”

Ah, but the lady was accustomed to dealing with numb-tongued Natural Philosophers. “I should have heeded Uncle Isaac, who has spoken so highly of your strength of character.”

“I…beg your pardon?” He was beginning to feel as if he should perhaps hit himself with his stick. Perhaps it would restore circulation to his brain.

“A weaker man would have planted himself right there, where you were just now standing, on his first day in London, and said to all who passed by, ‘Look! D’you see that House? I built it! It’s mine!’ But, you!” and here she actually planted her hands on her hips in mock exasperation. But it seemed funny, not in the least affected. “You, Doctor Waterhouse, with your Puritan ways-just like Uncle Isaac-withstood that temptation for, what, a little more than two months! It is a mystery to me, how you and Uncle Isaac can delay your pleasures with such stony patience, when someone such as I would become frantic.” Then, because this perhaps sounded a bit risque, she added, “Thank you so kindly for answering my letters, by the way.”

“You are most welcome, it was my privilege,” Daniel answered without thinking. But it took a moment to remember what she was even talking about.

Catherine Barton had come to London round the turn of the century. She’d have been about twenty. Her father-Isaac’s brother-in-law-had died a few years earlier, and Isaac had shouldered the load of keeping the poor survivors fed, clothed, and housed. After a short time staying in the city with Isaac, she’d come down with smallpox and fled to the countryside to recover or die. It was during that time that she’d sent a letter to Daniel in Boston, a letter no less sweet and charming for being cleverly written.

Which reminded Daniel that he ought to say something. “It is fortunate for me that, through your letters, I was able to meet your mind before I was put in any danger of being swept off my feet by…er…the rest of you.”

She’d been trying to figure out why her uncle was the way he was. And not in a conniving way, but, it seemed, out of a sincere desire to be a good and understanding help-meet to this weird old man who had become, in effect, her new father. Daniel had written eight drafts of his letter back to her, for he knew perfectly well that one day Isaac would find it among her effects, and read it. He would read it every bit as shrewdly as a challenge from Leibniz.

Everyone knows Isaac as a brilliant man, and treats him as such, which is a mistake; for he is as pious as he is brilliant, and his piety taketh precedence. Mind you, I speak not of outward, conspicuous piety but of an inner fire, a light under the bushel as ’twere, a yearning to draw nearer to God through exercise of God-given faculties.

“Your advice was of inestimable value to me, after I recovered-thanks be to God-and returned to London. And insofar as I have been of any help whatever to Uncle Isaac, I daresay what you wrote was a boon to him as well.”

“I shall not hold my breath waiting for an expression of gratitude from him,” Daniel said, hoping it sounded like a wry thing to say. She had the good grace to laugh out loud. Daniel got the impression she was accustomed to having men blurt indiscreet things to her, and regarded it as excellent sport.

“Oh, nonsense! You understand him better than any man alive, Dr. Waterhouse, and he is keenly aware of it.”

This-though she said it with dimples engaged-was really more of a threat than a compliment. What was more, Daniel knew that Catherine Barton had said it quite carefully and deliberately.

He decided to stop waiting for the formal introduction of Miss Catherine Barton to Dr. Daniel Waterhouse. It would never happen. She had vaulted over that hurdle with ribbons and skirts a-flying, and obliged him to follow. “You might enjoy a look round,” she suggested, arching her eyebrows spectacularly. She did not need to speak aloud the second half of the sentence: if you could only manage to pry your eyes off me. In truth, she was more presentable than beautiful. But she had some beautiful features. And she was very well-dressed. Not in the sense of showing off how much money she could spend, or how a la mode she could be, but rather in the sense that her attire presented to the world a full, frank, and exhaustive account of all that was admirable about her body. When she spun around to lead him across the vestibule, her skirts swirled around her buttocks and thighs in a way that made their contours fully known to Daniel. Or he phant’sied as much, which amounted to the same thing. He’d been wondering, for as long as he’d been in London, what it was about this woman that caused great and powerful men to recite appalling poetry about her in the Kit-Cat Clubb, and to go all glassy-eyed when her name came up in conversation. He should have known. Faces could beguile, enchant, and flirt. But clearly this woman was inflicting major spinal injuries on men wherever she went, and only a body had the power to do that. Hence the need for a lot of Classical allusions in Catherine Barton love-poetry. Her idolaters were reaching back to something pre-Christian, trying to express a bit of what they felt when they gazed upon Greek statues of nude goddesses.

There were plenty around. The vestibule was an oval room lined with niches that had stood vacant the last time Daniel had seen the place. The decades since had afforded Roger all the time he’d needed to bankroll raiding-parties on Classical ruins, or to commission original works. As he followed Miss Catherine Barton out of the room, Daniel spun round a full three hundred sixty degrees to scan the vestibule. The two servants who had pulled the doors open on Catherine’s command-both young men-were caught staring at their mistress’s backside. Both of them snapped their heads away and blushed. Daniel gave them a wink, turned, and followed her out.

“I have shown this house to visitors an hundred times,” she was saying, “and so all sorts of prattle is on the tip of my tongue-all of it perfectly boring to you, Dr. Waterhouse, to whom this house needs no introduction! You know we are crossing the central hall, and that the important rooms are to the left…” She meant the dining hall and the library. “And the odds and ends to the right…” (servant’s quarters, kitchen, back stairs, House of Office) “and the Withdrawing Room straight ahead. What is your pleasure? Do you need to retire that way?” she asked, glancing to the right. She was asking him if he needed to urinate or defecate. “Or is there anything you would like there?” glancing left-meaning, did he need to take any refreshment. She kept her hands clasped together in front of her bodice and pointed to the left or right with tiny movements of her eyes, obliging Daniel to gaze into them attentively. “To be proper, I should conduct you into the Withdrawing Room where we might have a great argument as to who should sit in which chair. But after the war, French manners are quite out of favor with us-especially us Whigs-and I cannot bring myself to be so formal with you, who are like another uncle to me.”

“I should only make an ass of myself-I who have spent twenty years in a wooden house!” Daniel returned. “Only tell me this, I pray you: if we go into the Withdrawing Room, can I see-”

“The volcano has been moved,” she said, quite solemn, as if afraid Daniel would be furious.

“Out of the house, or-”

“Oh, heaven forbid! No, ’tis the centerpiece of the house as ever, Doctor! It is only that this part of the house, which is to say, the part you designed, began to seem, in some of its rooms, rather more small than suited Roger’s tastes.”

“That is when Mr. Hooke was brought in to add the wings.”

“You know the story, Dr. Waterhouse, and so I shall not bore you, other than to say that the addition contains a ballroom that is at last large enough to exhibit the volcano in the style it deserves.” And with that she wheeled around and pushed open a pair of doors across the hall from the vestibule, allowing light to flood in from the windows of the Withdrawing Room. Daniel stepped in, and then stopped, a-mazed.

When this room had been laid out, those windows had commanded a view to the north across a pasture, soon to become a formal garden: a view near to Daniel’s heart, as it was practically the same as the one from the back of Drake’s old house. But now the garden had been truncated to a court-yard with a fountain in the center, and directly on the other side, a stone’s throw away, rose a Barock palace. This room, which Daniel had conceived as a quiet retreat from which to enjoy a vast prospect of flowers and greenery, had been reduced to a sort of viewing-gallery for contemplating the magnificence of the real house.

“Vanbrugh,” Catherine explained. The same one who was doing Blenheim Palace for the Duke of Marlborough.

“Hooke-”

“Mr. Hooke did the wings, which as you can see, embrace the courtyard, and connect your Temple to Mr. Vanbrugh’s, er…”

Fuck-house of the Gods was on the tip of Daniel’s tongue, but he could hardly throw stones at Vanbrugh since he had started it. All he could summon up was, “What an undeserved honour ’tis for me, that Vanbrugh should finish so grandly, what I started so plainly.”

The chairs in the Withdrawing Room were arranged in an arc facing toward the window. Catherine passed between two of them and opened a pair of French doors that in the original scheme had led out onto the long central promenade of the garden. Instead of which he followed her onto marble paving-slabs and pursued her around the kerb of an octagonal pool. It had a bronze fountain in the center of it, a great Classical action-scene: muscular Vulcan thrusting himself forth on massive but bent legs, having a go at Minerva, the cool helmet-head, who was pushing him back with one arm. Swords, daggers, helmets, and cuirasses were strewn all round, interspersed with the odd half-forged thunderbolt. Vulcan’s knobby fingers were ripping Minerva’s breastplate away to expose a body obviously modeled after Catherine Barton’s. Daniel recognized the tale: Minerva went to Vulcan’s forge to acquire weapons and armor; Vulcan became inflamed with lust and assaulted her; she, being one tough deity, held him at bay, and he had to settle for ejaculating on her leg. She wiped it off with a rag and flung it on the ground, fertilizing Mother Earth, who later bore Erichthonius, an early king of Athens, who introduced the use of silver money.

The sculpture was heavy-laden with clews and portents: with her free hand Minerva was already reaching for a rag, and Vulcan was ominously close to making contact with her creamy thigh. Smaller sculpture groups decorated the ends of the fountain-pool; at the end nearer to Daniel’s building, a babe on the lap of a fertility sort of goddess (lots of cornucopiae) being fed grapes from a bunch. Opposite, near Vanbrugh’s building, a crowned King seated on a pile of bullion. As they skirted the pool, Daniel felt a perverse urge to swivel his head and find out just how the sculptor had handled certain particulars. He was especially keen to know from where the water was spurting. At the same time, he couldn’t bear to see it. Catherine was ignoring the fountain altogether; she did not want to talk about it, had turned her face away, her posture rhyming with Minerva’s. Daniel contented himself with pursuing her across the court-yard, albeit with even less success than Vulcan.

What with so many distractions, they were inside the new house before Daniel had really had the time to examine its interior. Probably just as well; he’d gotten a vague impression of lots and lots of statues, prancing along rooftops and balustrades.

“Rokoko, it is called,” Catherine explained, leading him into what must have been the grand ballroom. “ ’Tis all the rage.”

Daniel could only recollect Drake’s house, with its bare walls and floors, and one or two plain boxy pieces of furniture to a room. “It makes me feel old,” he said, baldly.

Catherine favored him with a brilliant smile. “Some say, ’tis the result of a surplus of decorators, combined with a deficit of houses.”

And a want of taste, Daniel wished he could say. “As you are the mistress of the household, mademoiselle, I shall make no comment on what some say.” She rewarded him with dimples. Without meaning to, he had made a sly comment on her Arrangement with Roger.

Daniel found these moments slightly unnerving. For the most part she did not look like Isaac-not even the young, frail, girlish Isaac Daniel had met at Trinity half a century ago. He would never have guessed she had a drop of Newton-blood in her veins if he hadn’t known as much already. But during the moments when she forgot to hide her cleverness, a family resemblance flashed forth, and he saw Isaac’s face for an instant, as if the author of Principia Mathematica were stalking him through a darkened room when lightning struck outside.

“Here is a curious invention you may find worthy of your attention, Doctor. This way, please!”

The volcano stood at one end of the ballroom. It was a great improvement on the volcanoes made by Nature, which were so rude, irregular, and unadorned. This one was perfectly conical, with forty-five-degree-angle slopes converging on a polished brass nozzle or teat at the summit. A semi-ruined Classical temple, complete with half-collapsed golden dome, had been erected there, enclosing the vent, which could be viewed between Doric columns of red marble. The mountain itself was black marble, veined with red, and adorned with the usual tiresome menagerie of nymphs, satyrs, centaurs, amp;c., all sculpted in gold. It probably stood no more than four feet from base to summit, but was made to seem much larger by the base that supported it: a hollow plinth rising from the floor to waist level, supported all round with caryatids in the shape of Typhon and other gross earthy monsters.

“If you come round back with me, Doctor, I shall a-maze you with the most marvelous Screw.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She had opened a hatch concealed in the back, and was beckoning. He came round, squatted carefully, and peered inside. Now he could see a fat cylinder that began in a copper basin on the floor, and ran up at an angle to the summit of the volcano.

“Roger wanted so badly to have a volcano that would spew rivers of molten silver. It would have been spectacular! But Mr. MacDougall was afraid it would set fire to the guests.”

“Which would have been spectacular too, in a different way,” Daniel mused.

“Mr. MacDougall persuaded Roger to settle for oil of phosphorus. It is prepared elsewhere, and brought here in casks, and poured into the tub. The Screw of Archimedes conducts it upwards, it gushes from the summit, and runs down the slopes as the centaurs and whatnot flee in terror.”

“They-flee?”

“Oh, yes, for it is meant to represent glowing streams of liquid fire.”

“That I understand. But how do they flee-?”

“They are clock-work creatures.”

“Also the work of Mr. MacDougall?”

“Indeed.”

“I remember hiring a silversmith named Millhouse but not an ingenieur named MacDougall.”

“Mr. Millhouse hired Mr. MacDougall to do the clever bits. When Mr. Millhouse died of smallpox-”

“Mr. MacDougall took over,” Daniel guessed, “and could not stop adding one clever bit after another.”

“Until Roger cut him off-somewhat emphatically, I’m afraid,” said Catherine, and winced in a manner that made Daniel want to stroke her hair.

“Is he still alive?”

“Oh, yes, he works in theatres, making apparitions, explosions, and storms.”

“Of course he does.”

“He staged the naval battle that burned down the Curtain.”

“I believe you. How frequently does the volcano erupt?”

“Once or twice a year, for important parties.”

“And Mr. MacDougall is called back from exile on those occasions?”

“Roger has him on retainer.”

“Where does he get his phosphorus?”

“He has it delivered,” she said, as if this were an answer.

“Where may Mr. MacDougall be found, I wonder?”

“The Theater Royal, in Covent Garden, is getting ready to stage a new production entitled The Sack of Persepolis,” Catherine said, tentatively.

“Say no more, Miss Barton.”