The System of the World

Golden Square
THE SAME TIME

IF THE POINT OF A dinner-party was to bring interesting people together and lay excellent food and wine in front of them, then the Viscount Bolingbroke’s soiree was the event of the year. Some would complain that the guest-list was weighted too heavily to Whigs; but then, as of yesterday, Bolingbroke was Torydom, and as such needed no coterie. On the other hand, if the point of a dinner-party was to start fascinating conversations, then this was the grossest failure, to date, of the Age of Enlightenment; why, Robert Walpole was actually humming to fill in the silences. A dozen men were at the table; only two of them-Bolingbroke and Ravenscar-had authority to parley; and yet these two seemed perfectly content with plate and bottle, and with the dreadful silence of the room. From time to time one of the younger Whigs would try to launch a Topic of Conversation, and like a spark struck into moss it would sputter and smoke along for a few moments, until Bolingbroke or Ravenscar would dump a bucket of water on it by saying, “Pass the salt.” The meal sprinted from one course to the next, as the guests had nothing to pass the time save chewing and swallowing. It was not until pudding that Bolingbroke could be troubled to make a Gambit. “My lord,” he said to Roger, “it has been ages since I could free myself to attend a meeting of the good old R.S. Oh, are there any other Fellows present?” He looked round the table. His eyes were too close together, his nose was high-bridged and long: features more suited to a carnivorous beast than a human. So he was far from good-looking; yet his ugliness was of that sort that suggests caution, rather than mockery, to the onlooker. His mouth was tiny and pursed. But then, the muzzle of a gun was not so very large either. Bolingbroke’s one adventure in the realm of fashion had been to wear a radically small and simple periwig one day, when he went to pay a call on the Queen. She had rewarded him by asking if, next time around, he intended to show up wearing a night-cap. Tonight he had donned the full wig: white curls tumbling down beyond his shoulders, over his lapels, to somewhere between the latitude of his nipples and of his waist. His cravat was white, and wrapped many times round his neck, like a bandage. It and the wig framed his face like an ostrich-egg swaddled in a shipping-crate. This was the face that scanned down the left, then up the right side of the table, until it fell upon the Marquis of Ravenscar, who was seated at his right hand.

“No, my lord,” said Ravenscar, “there are only we two.”

“The study of Natural Philosophy has not captivated the Whigs of the new generation,” Bolingbroke concluded.

“The Royal Society has not captivated them,” Ravenscar corrected him. “What they study besides politics and wenches, I know not.”

At this, cautious laughter, less of amusement than of relief that a conversation seemed to be getting underway.

“My lord Ravenscar tries to stir up the old rumor that I know as much of wenches as Sir Isaac knows of gravity.”

“Indeed, like gravity, the fair sex doth exert a continual pull on us all.”

“But you change the subject-granted, to a more fascinating topic,” Bolingbroke said. “Is not the Royal Society the world’s foremost salon for the discussion of Natural Philosophy? How can a man claim to be an amateur of learning, and yet not aspire to become a Fellow? Or has it gone into decline? I’ve no way of knowing. Haven’t been to a meeting in ages. A shame really.”

“We have reached that part of dinner when we shove our chairs back, throw our napkins down, and pat our bellies,” Ravenscar observed. “Does that signify that your party has gone into decline?”

“I understand,” said Bolingbroke, after allowing those close-set blue eyes to wander round the ceiling for a few moments, as if deep in thought. “You mean to say that the Royal Society gorged itself on learning in the early decades, and now takes a respite, to digest all that it took in.”

“Something like that.”

“Too, is it not necessary, when one has acquired much, to defend it?”

“That sounds as if it might have a double meaning, my lord.”

“Oh, don’t be tedious. It has a single meaning, to do with Sir Isaac, and the fraudulent claims of the infamous Hanoverian plagiarist, Baron von what’s-his-name-”

“All the Hanoverians I have met are sterling characters,” said Ravenscar stolidly.

“Obviously you’ve not made the acquaintance of George Louis’s wife!”

“No one can make her acquaintance as long as he keeps her locked up in that Schlo?, my lord.”

“Ah yes. Tell me, is it the same Schlo? in which Princess Caroline is said to have taken refuge, when she took it into her mind that hashishin were stalking her through the gardens?”

“I haven’t heard that story, my lord-or if I have, I have not listened to it.”

“I have heard and listened-but I do not believe. I suspect that the Princess is somewhere else.”

“I have no idea where she is, my lord. But to get back to the Royal Society-”

“Yes. Let us do get back to it. Who can blame Sir Isaac, really?”

“Blame him for what, my lord?”

“For setting aside the pursuit of Natural Philosophy to defend his legacy from the aggression of the German.”

“You place me in an impossible situation, my lord-I almost feel as if we are in the House of Lords again, disputing an Act. But I shall answer a question you have not asked, and say that if fewer young men are coming to the Royal Society of late, it is perhaps because listening to Sir Isaac rant about Leibniz; perusing the latest incriminating documents about Leibniz; and sitting on committees, tribunals, and Star Chambers intended to prosecute Leibniz in absentia, simply does not happen to be their notion of a Good Time.”

“Von Leibniz. Thank you for reminding me of the man’s name. How shall we keep all of these dreadful German names straight if not for the Whigs, who know them so intimately?”

“It is difficult to acquire the German tongue, when French ones are perpetually thrust into one’s ears,” Ravenscar answered; a jest that was greeted with awed and terrified silence round the table.

Bolingbroke reddened, then had a good chuckle. “My lord,” he sputtered, “look at our fellow-revelers. Have you ever observed a more wooden bunch?”

“Only on a chessboard, my lord.”

“It all comes of the fact that we have drifted off into prating of Natural Philosophy-the surest way to kill a conversation.”

“On the contrary, my lord, you and I are having an excellent conversation.”

“Indeed-but they are not. Which is why we have Withdrawing Rooms, you know, and the like-so that enthusiasts may cabal in the corners and not bore the company to death!”

“If this is all some sort of a ploy to get us to drink port wine, it is needlessly elaborate,” observed Ravenscar.

“But where shall we drink it?” Bolingbroke asked.

“I dare not say, my lord, for ’tis your house.”

“So it is. And I say that these chaps, who plainly do not give a fig for Natural Philosophy, may drink it in the comfort of my Withdrawing Room; but you and I, inveterate enthusiasts that we are, shall repair to the observatory, three storeys above-far enough away that the other guests shall not suffer our philosophical prattle.”

“The Lord of the Manor has spoken; all must obey,” announced Roger Comstock, Marquis of Ravenscar, and shoved his chair back; and that was how he and Bolingbroke ended up on the roof of the house, ogling the latter’s Newtonian reflector. But as it was still twilight, and the stars were not out yet, her Majesty’s Secretary of State had to content himself with aiming it at terrestrial targets. The facility with which he did so gave Roger the idea that this was not the first time he had used the instrument to spy upon neighbors, near and far.

“The seeing is excellent this evening,” Bolingbroke sighed, “as the day was warm, and few have bothered to light fires.”

“This port is of the best,” Roger said, for they had brought a bottle up with them: the closest thing to manual labor that Bolingbroke’s servants would suffer the master to perform.

“Spoils of political conquest, Roger. We all lust after such spoils, do we not?”

“The profession of politics would be altogether too disagreeable,” Roger allowed, “without compensations above and beyond what is strictly appropriate.”

“Well said.” Bolingbroke was hunched over the eyepiece, twiddling the tube of the telescope this way and that, homing in on a target to the east. Roger phant’sied he might be pointing it at the dome of St. Paul’s, two miles away; but no, his host had trained it downwards, as at some target nearer to hand. By far the biggest and closest structure along that general bearing was Leiceister House, seen from here as a great rambling L-shaped manor. It stood in its own compound, which was nearly as extensive as the green square of Leicester Fields to the south of it.

“Presently night shall fall and Venus shall shine forth-we shall admire her beauty then. But while we await the Goddess of Love, we may content ourselves peering at some of her earthly worshippers.”

“I shouldn’t think you of all people would need a telescope for that,” Roger said, “other than the one God gave you.”

Leicester House presented to the Fields a public facade with a small forecourt below, where callers could dismount from carriages, amp;c. This was all that most people could see of it. Looking down on it from the excellent vantage-point of Bolingbroke’s roof, half a mile away, Roger was reminded that the house had quite a bit of property in back, hemmed in by newer buildings, so that most Londoners had no inkling it was there. Of this, about two-thirds, on the side nearer to Bolingbroke’s, was a formal garden. The rest was an enclosed stable-yard. Separating them was a long thin wing extending from the main house-really little more than a gallery.

“Pity. They are not out this evening,” Bolingbroke remarked.

“Who or what are not out, Henry?”

“The young lovers. A chap, strapping, blond, well-heeled, and a young woman, long chestnut hair, and an uncommonly erect-some would say noble, or royal-bearing. They tryst in yonder garden most every evening.”

“Touching.”

“Tell me, Roger. You, who know so much of these Germans who design to take over our country-have you met Princess Caroline?”

“I have had that honor once, on a visit to Hanover.”

“They say she has the most lovely fall of chestnut hair-is it true?”

“It is a fair description.”

“Ah! There she is now!”

“There who is, my lord?”

“The young lady I spoke of just now.”

“Which young lady, my lord?”

“Come, have a look, and tell me.”

Roger stepped forward with some reluctance.

“Oh, come and look!” Bolingbroke urged him. “It’s harmless. Half the Tories in London have peered through this eyepiece, and seen her.”

“That hardly constitutes a recommendation, but I shall humor you,” Roger said, and bent to the task.

Through the tiny lens of the eyepiece shone a bubble of green light, which swelled in his sight as he moved towards it; then it was his whole world. A moment’s work with the knob brought it to focus.

The gallery dividing the garden (foreground) from the stable-yard (background) was pierced in the center by a high vaulted pass-through: a gate, which was presently open. So Roger’s view to the stable-yard was blocked by the gallery, except for in that one place, where it was possible to peer through the open arch-way and see a narrow swath of yellow gravel in the yard beyond. That was enough to make it obvious that the stables were busy this evening: hooves, booted feet, and carriage wheels were passing back and forth, all foreshortened, by the telescope’s optics, into a flat impression, a living back-drop. Against which a solitary woman was visible, crouching in the center of that arch-way, in a sort of traveling-dress. She was changing out of her shoes, and into a pair of boots. The shoes discarded on the pavement beside her were mere slippers, only fit for wearing indoors. An open portmanteau rested nearby, overflowing with clothes. Suddenly a servant burst into the frame carrying a dress over her arm, and shoved it into the bag, then began hammering the contents down with the heel of her hand.

“I should call it a hasty departure,” Bolingbroke said in his ear. “More Mercury than Venus.”

Roger ignored him and sharpened the focus, trying to get a clear look at the young woman changing into her traveling-boots. She undoubtedly had a long fall of chestnut hair, which swept down over one shoulder and grazed the ground.

No, it was on the ground. In a heap. Roger blinked.

“What did you see!?” his host demanded. “Did you recognize her?”

“Stay, I’m not certain.”

The hair had most definitely fallen to the ground. The woman calmly finished tying her boot-laces and then picked it up. She had light blonde hair, going a bit silvery, all pinned up close to her skull. She held the chestnut wig out at arm’s length and gave it a shake, to make the tresses fall straight. Then she lifted it up and set it back in place atop her blonde head. The servant, who had somehow managed to get the bag closed, came round behind her to tug it into place and secure it with a long hair-pin.

“I’ll be damned,” Roger said. “The hair gives it away. If that young lady isn’t Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, then I am not a Whig.”

“Let me see! What is she doing now?” said Bolingbroke, and so Roger got out of his way. After a moment to adjust the focus and get his bearings, Bolingbroke said, “I can only see her from the back-her beau is nowhere to be seen-she is climbing into a carriage, I do believe.”

“Then I believe it too, my lord.”