Gulliver travels homeward

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels: Reading Notes, Part V (final)

The totalitarian streak in the Houyhnhnm society becomes clearer and clearer.

One aspect of the "natural" society of the Houyhnhnm is apparently racial stratification: "He made me observe that, among the Houyhnhnms, the white, the sorrel, and the iron-grey, were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the dapple-grey, and the black; nor born with equal talents of the mind, or a capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own race, which in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural."

From his dialogue with the master horse, Gulliver comes to see the superiority of the "rational" -- and unlettered -- Houyhnhnm, with their "general disposition to all virtues" compared with his own debased race and society.

Clearly said virtues do not include liberty: the Houyhnhnm practice birth control (through the social regulation of copulation) and also eugenics in the form of careful breeding so as "to preserve the race from degenerating." There is no romance: marriages are arranged. Nor is there love or pride of parents for their offspring, as the colts and foals are brought up collectively with the young distributed as necessary to maintain social equity.

The master horse reports to Gulliver on a debate at the Houyhnhnm grand council on whether to forceably annihilate the troublesome and inferior Yahoo population that has "infested" the nation. Finding that an extreme measure, the master horse himself counterproposes that the Houyhnhnm adopt a practice Gulliver described to him and simply castrate the Yahoo males.

At the grand council, it is further revealed that the first Yahoo came to Houyhnhnm after a shipwreck -- from their physiognomies, Gulliver believes they may be of English descent -- and propagated without control from then.

Yahoos are scapegoats for all ills of Houyhnhnm society. "The Houyhnhnm have no word in their language to express anything that is evil, except what they borrow from the deformaties and ill qualities of the Yahoos. Thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or unseasonable weather, and the like, by adding to each the epithet of Yahoo."

Gulliver describes his great contentment in the pre-modern Houyhnhnm society. In a first hint of collaborationism, his list of household arrangements mentions without note that the replacement leather for his shoes comes from Yahoo skin.

Gulliver becomes an assimilationist. He looks with horror on his reflection when he sees it in a pond and begins imitating the gait, gesture, and diction of his noble hosts.

The master horse reluctantly discloses to Gulliver that at the same great council at which the eradication of the Yahoos was discussed, it was "exhorted" that Gulliver should be expelled from the country.

Despondently, Gulliver begins building a canoe from the scrubby wood available in that land, "covering it with the skins of Yahoos" with a sail "composed of the skins of the same animals" sealed with pitch from "Yahoo's tallow" and, when completed, hauled down to the sea by Yahoo labor.

The grateful Gulliver bids farewell to his benevolent master: "as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honor to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular."

When Gulliver is discovered by others of his kind, Portuguese sailors, he is horrified to hear such "Yahoos" speak ("as monstrous as if a cow or dog would speak in England"). For their part, they laugh at the neighing pronounciation Gulliver has adopted.

Returning to England, Gulliver is repelled by his Yahoo wife and children ("the sight of them filled me with hatred, disgust, and contempt"), prefering the company of two young stone horses with whom he converses at least four hours each day.

Writing from a distance of several years from exile in England from his beloved Houyhnhnm, Gulliver is still not reconciled to Yahoo-kind, though he can now countenance all the vile sins he sees around him with one exception -- human pride.

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Gulliver in the land of Houyhnhnms and Yahoos

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels: Reading Notes, Part IV

"Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World: Part 4, A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms"

Gulliver's ship taken over by mutineers and he is set adrift near an unknown island, likely near Madagascar. He has with him the kinds of trading goods one employs in dealing with "savages" -- knives, bracelets of false pearl, small mirrors, and beads.

He encounters the Yahoos and is disgusted by their physical appearance, even as his description makes it apparent they are humanoid.

He next finds the Houyhnhnms, civilized horses, who are astounded to be confronted by a Yahoo with clothing -- "whereof they had no conception" -- and the faculty of speech.

The Yahoos are meat eaters; the Houyhnhnms vegetarians. Of necessity, Gulliver adopts a vegetarian, salt-free diet and "cannot but observe, that I never had one hour's sickness while I stayed in this island."

A dinner guest arrives at the home of the "master horse" in a sleigh drawn by four Yahoos.

Upon closer inspection, Gulliver realizes Yahoos are "savage" humans, but he refuses to see them as of his kind.

Gulliver avoids being seen without clothes in order to "distinguish myself as much as possible from the cursed race of Yahoos."

He relates that "the word Houyhnhnm in their tongue signifies a horse, and in its eytmology, the perfection of nature." In keeping with that perfection, the Houyhnhnm have no shame of "any parts of their bodies" and their language has no word for lying or, thus, for doubt or disbelief.

Gulliver describes to the master horse the life of servitude of his kind in England -- and of methods of training including bridles, saddles, whips, and spurs and the castrating of working horses to make them more docile -- drawing similar outrage as to when he told the Brobdingnag King about European munitions.

As Gulliver describes the variety of human behavior to the master horse -- lawsuits, drunkenness, whoring, gaming, sodomy, treason, murder, theft, poisoning, coining false money, rape, etc. etc. -- he needs to stop to explain every one of those vices as none exist among the Houyhnhnm. "This labor took up several days conversation before he was able to comprehend me."

Gulliver then embarks on an encyclopedic yet matter-of-fact enumeration of all the reasons why the princes of his own land go to war and a brief overview of the carnage of battle. To which the master horse responds that "whoever understood the nature of Yahoos might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice."

Then, Gulliver describes the profession of law, again unknown to the Houyhnhnm: "I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves."

The use of money, the extremes of Yahoo wealth and poverty, and global trade are expoused. England, Gulliver explains, exports the food that could easily feed its masses: "sending away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, from whence in return we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spread among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, foreswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and the like occupations; every one of which terms, I was at much pains to make him understand."

Gulliver then describes the diseases caused by the Yahoo's tendencies toward excess and then the medical profession with its love of purgatives and emetics. He further relates: "Besides real diseases we are subject to many that are only imaginary, for which physicians have invented imaginary cures."

The master horse contemplates the odiousness of the human form compared to other creatures and concludes it not unwise that those of Gulliver's homeland choose to cover their bodies "and by that invention conceal many of our own deformaties from each other."

Gulliver takes trips to observe the Yahoos in the wild and more and more sees the similarities in his species behavior in its natural state with that of civilized Europe. These field trips culminate in his nearly being raped by an 11 year old Yahoo girl when he his nakedness is revealed while swimming in a pond.

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Gulliver among the Laputans and nearby states

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels: Reading Notes, Part III

"Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World: Part 3, A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, and Japan."

Laputa a floating island that contains the royal court, hovering over the vassal lands below.

The entire principality impoverished by abstract science -- mathematics is the only topic of learning, astronomy the only subject of court discourse, and music the only art form. Those in the floating city detached from the reality below; those below live in rags, victims of a public policy focused on future projections -- the scientists are called "projectors" -- rather than present.

Laputans live with their heads tilted so that one eye is always looking at the stars. They are so lost in their own thoughts that servants are equipped with small baldders with which they gently hit their masters' eyes, ears, and mouths in order to remind them to look at, listen, and respond to their interlocutors.

Gulliver's tailor in Laputa measures him, inaccurately, with a sextant. Not surprisingly, then, ill-fitting clothes are common in Laputa.

Dining in Laputa: "shoulder of mutton cut into an equilateral triangle, a piece of beef into a rhomboid, and a pudding into a cycloid ... the servents cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and several other mathematical figures."

Among the experiments at the Academy of Science in the city below the floating island are projects to extract sun-beams from cucumbers; to return human excrement to its original food matter; to build houses from the roof downward to the foundation; and to prevent the growth of wool on young lambs in order to create a race of naked sheep.

The Academy also houses a primitive computer -- a twenty foot wooden frame with bits of wood strung along wires on which are written all the words of their language. By pulling all the wires simultaneously, the words are shuffled into a new order, with the sentences thus created scrutinized for meaning. In time, of course, all possible sentences and meanings would of necessity occur along the wires of the frame. The scientist ("projector") proposes to hasten his work by constructing fifty such frames (a network!)across the kingdom.

Gulliver finds equally dubious ideas under consideration at the Academy of Political Science, including proposals that princes choose ministers based on merit, make policy decisions based on the public good, "and many other wild impossible chimeras that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive."

Another Laputan political scientist proposes that the heads of political opponents be surgically opened and hemispheres of their brains swapped so that each legislator holds both perspectives.

Leaving Laputan possessions, Gulliver visits Glubbdubdrib, a land of the dead where he interviews great personages of the past and discovers the falsity of official histories and the prevalence of corruption, vice, cowardice, ingratitude, and dishonesty among the powerful and noble.

He next ventures to Luggnagg, where a small number of individuals each generation are born into immortality -- a miserable condition, Gulliver discovers, as those "struldbrug" experience life as a continuing process of decrepitude; an eternity of enfeeblement.

He returns via Japan which, interestingly, is in commerce with both the mythic lands of Gulliver's most recent voyages and with Europe.

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Gulliver in Brobdingnag

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels: Reading Notes, Part II

"Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World: Part 2, A Voyage to Brobdingnag."

Brobdingnag situated by Gulliver and by map in first edition as a peninsula on west coast of North America, well above known California settlements of Monterrey and Mendocino (and thus, it is fun to imagine, quite possibly the Long Beach peninsula of Washington State).

Encountering giant Brobdingnags, Gulliver muses on changes in status brought by size and power alone: "in this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forebear thinking of Lilliput . . . Where I was able to draw an Imperial Fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions which will be recorded forever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions. I reflected what a mortification it must prove to me to appear as inconsiderable in this nation as one single Lillupitian would be among us."

From living myth in Lilliput to insignificant morsel, Gulliver's initial status in Brobdingnag that of an animal; the farmer plucks him from amid the furrows and examines him as he would a weasel. "What could I expect but to be a morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that should happen to seize me."

Immediate reaction of farm family is to treat Gulliver like an animal or plaything despite his human characteristics and behavior -- the mother shrieks as if he were a toad or shrew; the son dangles and plucks at him the way all children are mischievous "toward sparrows, rabbits, young kittens, and puppy dogs"; and the infant sticks the tiny Gulliver in her mouth.

It is the young daughter who sees Gulliver's personhood (though she seems to enjoy dressing and undressing him as if he were a doll) and he comes into her care until the plan arises to exhibit him at the town fair for money arises. The daughter realizes Gulliver is to be taken away from her just as "last year, when they pretended to give her a lamb, and yet, as soon as it was day, sold it to a butcher."

Gulliver exhibited by the farmer far-and-wide, performing English mannerisms such as flourishing his sword and doffing his hat for the eager crowds. Resonance here with how natives were brought back to Europe by explorers as curiosities.

Gulliver's name in Brobdingnag is Grildrig (Little Man).

Gulliver sold to Queen, who finds him appealing. King at first cannot decide if he is an animal or clever clockwork. He becomes a part of the royal household, quickly earning the resentment of the Royal Dwarf, now supplanted as a curiosity.

Gulliver's size allows him to see how disguisting household flies are with their feces and secretions. He is horrified to see Queen devour entire birds, bones and all, though he devoured Lilliput's tiny viands in similar fashion.

Magnitude of Brobdingnagians makes apparent the imperfections of their flesh -- mottled, pitted -- just as miniature Lilliputians seemed physically perfect and charming.

Equivalent to looking through a microscope, Gulliver sees true nature of the world: "the most hateful sight of all was the lice crawling on their clothes. I could see distinctly the limbs of these vermin with my naked eye, much better than a European loise through a microscope, and their snouts with which they rooted like swine."

"Gulliver's Travels" as an ocular adventure. His great size in Lilliput allows him to see the pettiness of human society; his tiny size in Brobdingnag reveals the grossness and beastliness of human existence.

More disgust, this time ofalcatory: "The Maids of Honor . . . would often strip me naked from top to toe, and lay me at full length in their bosoms; wherewith I was much disgusted; because to say the truth a very offensive odor came from their skins."

Pre-Darwinian moment: a monkey at the Castle mistakes Gulliver for "a young one of his own species," runs off with him and rocks him like a baby while feeding him from his own provender.

The king interrogates Gulliver on the affairs of England. Gulliver provides a panygeric, but after close questioning the King states: "from the answers I have with much pains wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth."

Attempting again to assert superiority of English society, Gulliver describes his world's munitions and offers to construct such devices for Brobdingnag. The king is horrified that such murderous, inhuman machines could be viewed as a sign of a nation's greatness and finds Gulliver's offer repellent, calling him an "impotent and groveling insect."

Regarding such denunciation, Gulliver opines to his reader that the King has "narrow principles and short views" in his rejection of a technology which would make him "absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people."

The Brobdingnag King's political philosophy: "he gave it for his opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together."

Gulliver reads a work of Brobdingnag philosophy that suggests humans must have once been of greater stature. A devolution from Brobdingnagians (x10)through Europeans to Lilliputians (-10)?

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Gulliver in Lilliput

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels: Reading Notes, Part I

True title of this first volume of work now popularly known as "Gulliver's Travels" is: "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World: Part 1, A Voyage to Lilliput."

Lilliput situated by Gulliver and by map in first edition as near Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land).

Gulliver a common man brought into Court. The "foreigness" of his Lilliputian sojurn as much a matter of contact with Princes and ministers as experience of the 1/10th scale world.

Indication of gulf in manners between the sailor Gulliver and his noble patrons in his act of successfully extinguishing an uncontrollable blaze in the royal palace by urinating on it.

Gulliver's name among the Lilliputians is Quinbus Flestrin (the Man Mountain).

Lilliput on first glance seems harmonious, but is soon revealed as riven by faction -- the high-heeled Tramecksans vs. the low-heeled Slamecksans -- and, more bitterly still, by the heresy of those who eat soft-boiled eggs from the larger end (Big-endians) rather than the small-end.

Lillupitians and Blefuscuans separated by language and by sect (Small-endian Lilliputians vs. Big-endian Blefuscuans). As with Europeans prior to Age of Discovery, scepticism among learned men that other lands and peoples can exist despite overwhelming evidence, in Gulliver's testimony that they must.

Though Gulliver rises to nobility by aiding the Lillupitian Emperor in foiling the invasion plans of the Blefuscuans -- in gratitude, he is made a "Nardac" -- he earns the enmity of that monarch by not participating in the proposed eradication of the Big-endian heretics. From which, Gulliver draws lesson that: "Of so little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into balance with a refusal to gratify their passions."

Matter of factness of ministerial accusations and factional plots against Gulliver, from secret poisonings to legal sentences of blinding or starvation. Ministerial denunciations of Gulliver are military (threat of his strength), economic (burden of his feeding), political (suspicion he is a crypto- Big-endian) and moral (his act of urinating on the Royal residence, even if to save it from the flames).

Gulliver's experience as a courtier in Lilliput of the vagaries of princely favor causes him to resolve "never more to put any confidence in Princes or Ministers, where I could possibly avoid it."

Gulliver takes refuge in Blefuscu and arranges for his departure in the salvaged longboat. He nurtures a small herd of Lillupitian livestock as testmony of his adventure, though one of the sheep is eaten by a rat on the English ship that rescues him.

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"Micah Clarke" Concludes: Honorable mercenaries and thieves

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Ten

Just as Micah saved Decimus from the Dutch slaver at the book's opening, so Decimus appears on the scene to free Micah from his bondage and to set him up as a soldier-of-fortune in Europe -- welcoming him to the brotherhood of "the old and honorable guild." Thus, Decimus becomes yet another of Micah's several father figures.

Decimus further establishes the honorable highwayman Hector Marot on board the slaver with the plan that he will incite a mutiny among the Barbadoes-bound enslaved Puritans.

"If I were captain," chortles Decimus, "I would rather have the Devil himself, horns, hoof, and tail, for my first mate than have that man aboard my ship."

For his own part, Decimus has blackmailed Beaufort into arranging for him a commission to fight Indians in the New England colony of Virginia.

Micah relates that Decimus "did so out-ambush their ambushes and out-trick their most cunning warriors," that the Indians gave him a name meaning "the long-legged wily one with the eye of a rat."

At night, Micah still has visions of Decimus' face with its "shifting, blinky eyes turned toward me in his sidelong fashion."

He was, Micah concludes, "a bad man in many ways . . . cunning and wily, with little scruple of conscience; and yet so strange a thing is human nature, and so difficult it is to control our feelings, that my heart warms when I think of him, and that fifty years have increased rather than weakened the kindliness which I bear to him."



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The Taunton Assizes: The work of legal slaughter

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Nine

Micah betrayed and arrested. He is warned by soldiers that his fate will be determined by civil rather than military law. "They have a lawyer coming from London whose wig is more to be feared than our helmets. He will slay more men in a day than a troop in a ten mile chase."

The Taunton Assizes: trials merely formalities where prisoners were "hauled before a judge and insulted before being dragged to the gibbet."

Chief Justice Jeffreys: "he raved like a demoniac and his black eyes shown with a vivid vindictive brightness that was scarce human. The jury shrank from him as from a venomous thing when be turned his baleful glance upon them. At times, as I have been told, his sternness have way to an even more terrible merriment, and he would lean back in his seat of justice until the tears hopped down upon his ermine. Nearly a hundred were either executed or condemned to death on that opening day."

The streets of Taunton lined with the rotting corpses of rebels. Micah sees "the limbs of former companions dangling in the wind, and their heads grinning at us from the tops of poles and pikes."

Use of kettledrums at military executions "to drown out any last words that would fall from the sufferers and bear fruit in the breasts of those who heard them."

Rather than facing execution, Micah and fifty other prisoners sold as slaves for overseas Plantations as James' way of rewarding his loyalists.

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The Battle of Sedgemoor: The work of military slaughter

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Eight

Eve of the battle of Sedgemoor: "nothing less than a miracle could preserve us from defeat, and most of us were of the opinion that the days of miracles were past. Others, however, thought otherwise. I believe that many of our Puritans, had they seen the heavens open that night, and the armies of the Seraphim and the Cherubim descending to our aid, would have looked upon it as by no means a wonderful or unexpected occurance."

"The whole town was loud with the preaching. Every troop or company had its own chosen orator and sometimes more than one . . . Men were drunk with religion as with wine. Their faces were flush, their speech thick, their gestures wild."

The somber Micah: "win who will, English blood must soak the soil of England this night."

The devil-may-care Sir Gervas: "The more room for those who are left."

Micah: "The chances are that few of us will ever see tomorrow's sun-rise."

Sir Gervas: "I have no great curiosity to see it. It will be much as yesterday's."

When it becomes apparent that the battle is lost, Monmouth rides off with his entourage: "There, far away, showing up against the dark peat-colored soil, rode a gaily-dressed cavalier, followed by a knot of attendants, galloping as fast as his horse would carry him from the field of battle. There was no mistaking the fugitive. It was the recreant Monmouth."

Sir Gervas, who dies bravely among his men, initially mistaken by Royal troops for Monmouth. Clear that Monmouth can only act the part of nobility and bravery.

Of the carnage, Micah reflects: "men must either give up war or they must confess that the words of the Redeemer are too lofty for them, and that there is no longer any use in pretending that His teaching can be reduced to practice."

While escaping after the rout, Micah prevents Decimus from finishing off a helpless Royal officer, earning the dangerous enmity of the soldier-of-fortune.



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Fickle leaders, barbarous soldiers, and noble highwaymen

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Seven


As the military tide turns against him, Monmouth's failings become manifest: "Swinging from the heights of confidence to the depths of despair, choosing his future council of state one day and proposing to fly from his army the next, he appeared from the start to be possessed by the very spirit of fickleness."

The vain but generous and brave dandy Sir Gervas is inspired by his sojurn among the "clodhoppers" and rural tradesmen: "Truth to tell, I have lived more and learned more during these few weeks that we have been sliding about in the rain with our ragged lads than ever I did [at court]. It is a sorry thing for a man's mind to have nothing higher to dwell upon than the turning of a compliment or the dancing of a corranto."

Royal troops portrayed as given to plunder and torture, the latter a set of skills learned in service in North Africa and Russia -- a byproduct of Imperial activity and, so, not native to England. Smugglers and highwaymen, such as Captain Murgatroyd and Hector Marrot, are possessed with a sense of English due process and fair play.

The highwayman Hector Marrot on his trade: "there is no road that is not familiar to me, nor as much as a break of the hedge I could not find in blackest midnight. It is my calling. But the trade is not what it was [with the introduction of paper bills of exchange]. If I had a son, I would not bring him up in it."

Marrot's story of retired highwayman who becomes a great landlord and sits in judgement of others -- "condemning some poor devil for stealing a dozen eggs" -- reminiscent of Defoe.

Marrot characterizes thieving as "hunting, save that your quarry may at any time turn round upon you, and become in turn the hunter. It is, as you say, a dangerous game, but two can play at it, and each has an equal chance."


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"The voices of preachers rose up like the drone of insects"

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Six

Beaufort publicly imprisons and condemns Micah as a traitor but then privately and secretly releases him.

During Micah's public condemnation by Beaufort -- before his covert release by the same noble -- debate over whether he should be tortured to reveal details of Monmouth's forces. Again recalling Scott's "Old Mortality" mention is made of placing "a lighted match between the fingers."

When Micah reports on his experiences and Beaufort's divided loyalty, Monmouth muses: "He would fain stand upon both sides of the hedge at once . . . Such a man is very like to find himself on neither side, but in the very heart of the briars."

In the meantime, Monmouth's camp has become religiously divided: "the voices of preachers rose up like the drone of insects" with "every wagon or barrel or chance provision case converted into a pulpit, each with its own orator and little knot of eager hearkeners."

As the courtiers and professional military men worry about the lack or ordinance, the zealots rail that the Lord will provide as he did at the walls of Jerico.

Decimus pleased at this outbreak of dissention and fervor: "the leaven is working. Something will come of all this ferment."

Monmouth's sympathy with these rough-clad zealots a dubious one. When military events begin to turn against him, he is described as "moodily tapping his jeweled riding-whip against his high boots."

Then, the "leaven" truly begins to boil over as one of the extreme sectarian preachers urges his followers to (Taliban like) demolish Wells cathedral in order to regain God's favor. Cathedrals "altars of Baal . . . built for man-worship rather than God-worship . . . the old dish of Popery served under a new cover."

The sectaries literally commence to tear-down religion. Shouts the Cathedral verger: "they have pulled down Saint Peter and will have Paul down too unless help comes. There will not be an Apostle left."

Soon the zealots are joined by looters and drunken rioters taking advantage of the disarray and destruction. Micah, Sexton et al. try to calm the affray and soon "a Civil War within a Civil War breaks out."

Micah, speaking now as an old man, concludes that he never saw a more brutal battle than the religious fight within the cathedral.


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"I see the threads that are used in the weaving of you"

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Five

Foreshadowing of Decimus' ambitions: "from this time onward, the cunning man framed his whole life and actions in such a way to make friends of the sectaries and to cause them to look upon him as their leader. For he had a firm belief that in all such outbreaks as that in which we were engaged, the most extreme party is sure in the end to gain the upper hand. 'Fanatics,' he said to me one day, 'mean fervor, and fervor means hard work, and hard work means power.' That was the center point of all his plotting and scheming."

Seeing only blacks and whites -- "This England of ours is divided into two camps, that of God and that of the Antichrist" -- the Puritans are unable to evaluate as subtle a character as Decimus.

Decimus describes quite directly the changing loyalties of his career as a soldier of fortune and, in response, the Puritan mayor of Taunton states how clear it is that Decimus has unswerving principles.

Monmouth arrives, bringing with him another soldier of fortune, a Brandenburger, whom Decimus has often fought against and sometimes with.

Decimus verbally fences with a member of Monmouth's retinue: "'I studied sword-play under Signor Contarini of Paris' said Lord Grey, 'Who was your master?'" Decimus replies: "'I have studied, my lord, under Signor Stern Necessity of Europe.'"

Micah volunteers for a solo mission to try to recruit Lord Beaufort to Monmouth's banner. On eve of departure he shares letters from home -- from the philosophical carpenter, the amorous sailor, and his stern father -- with Sir Gervas, who has become his confidant.

Hearing the seemingly irreconcilable advice contained in the three letters, Sir Gervas says fondly: "I now begin to understand your manufacture Clarke. I see the threads that are used in the weaving of you."

The carpenter, Zachariah Palmer, urges Micah to hold to "the beautiful, often professed, and seldom practiced doctrine" of love for one's fellow man, but seeing fervor of both parties concludes: "Church and Dissent are at each other's throats as ever. Truly, the stern law of Moses is more enduring than the sweet words of Christ."

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"How closely the Evil One can imitate the workings of the Spirit"

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Four

Micah, Reuben, and Decimus encounter the bibilous roue Sir Gervas Jerome who, speaking of his thirst, claims to be "as dry as a concordance" and states he would welcome arrest as a dissenter and even imprisonment as a welcome change of pace.

Micah thinks Sir Gervas is jesting when he offers his services as a valet; he is so slow to realize that the aristocrat is ruined that Sir Gervas addresses him as "oh most astute and yet most slow-witted master."

Speaking of the Jewish moneylenders who have a hold on his Estate, Sir Gervas moans "the ten tribes have been upon me and I have been harried and wasted, bound, ravished, and despoiled . . . They have hewed into pieces mine estate rather than myself."

Sir Gervas on the dispersal of his retinue in the wake of his bankruptcy: "when the honey-pot is broken it is farewell to the flies."

With Sir Gervas now in their company, Micah's party falls in with a group of puritans heading for rendevous with Monmouth. Decimus adjusts his behavior to match them, singing hymns and expounding faith in the almighty.

Soon, the puritan band is confronted by horse troopers. Decimus, in command, slays an officer (a cornet) under a white flag when he haughtily tries to incite desertion among the dissenters (interestingly similar to action of Balfour of Burley in "Old Mortality"; the same section makes reference to Wappinenschaws and popinjays as in opening chapters of that Scott novel).

After the puritan victory, the minister, Pettigrue, bridles at Decimus' comparison of the bravery of the dissenters to that of Turks he has seen in battle.

"'I trust sir,' said the minister gravely, 'that you do not intend . . . to infer that there is any similarity between the devil-inspired fury of the infidel Saracens and the Christian fortitude of the struggling faithful!'"

"'By no means,' Saxon answered, grinning at me over the minister's head. 'I was but showing how closely the Evil One can imitate the workings of the Spirit.'"

Micah reacts as Decimus, now a hero to the puritans, continues to play the role of the extreme sectary: "I could not but marvel at the depths and completeness of the hypocrisy which had cast so complete a cloak over his rapacious self."

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Plunder and Alchemy

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Three

Traveling cross-country to Monmouth's camp, Decimus immediately commences looking for opportunities for plunder: "What would war be without plunder! A bottle without wine -- a shell without the oyster."

Of Micah's increasingly strong and angry moral remonstrances, he jests: "Od's mercy! I see you will start carving me anon and take me to Monmouth's camp in sections."

In one village, Micah and Decimus encounter two Royal officers strangely conversant in the latest theories of chemistry.

Later (they have now been joined by Micah's loyal friend Reuben) the adventurers arrive at the secluded cabin of a dispossessed noble, Sir Jacob Clancing of Snellaby, who has turned to alchemy.

In service to Charles I, Sir Jacob had experienced a different kind of transmutation as he converted his wealth and property into military resources for the doomed King: "My silver chargers and candlesticks were thrown into the melting-pot . . . they went in metal and came out as troopers and pikemen."

With Cromwell's success, Sir Jacob's estate goes to a baser kind of alchemist: a soapmaker.

Upon the Stuart Restoration, Sir Jacob seeks restitution from Charles II, but is offered instead a commission as a "lottery cavalier," a licensed keeper of a gambling house "allowed to have a den in the piazza of Covent Garden, and there to decoy the young sparks of the town and fleece them at ombre."

Incensed to see the dissolute Stuarts waste on their revels money they deny to those nobles seeking restitution, Sir Jacob retires from court in order to painstakingly rebuild his fortune through his alchemical knowledge.

The doubtful and greedy Decimus: "Perhaps you have found out how to convert pots and pans into gold in the way you have spoken of. But that cannot be, for I see iron and brass in this room which would hardly remain there could you convert it to gold."

Sir Jacob: "Gold has its uses and iron has its uses . . . It can indeed be done, but only slowly and in order, small pieces at a time, and with much expenditure of work and patience."

Observing a locked chest, Decimus determines to rob Sir Jacob of his gold. Answering Micah's objections: "he can make more as easily as your good mother maketh cranberry dumplings."

Micah stays awake to protect his host's possessions from his plundering companion.

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Decimus Saxon, the "strange fish"

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Two

Sailing in the harbor, Micah and his friend Reuben rescue a man who jumped in the sea to escape an altercation on board a Dutch ship.

The braggart and soldier of fortune Decimus Saxon, "tenth child of a worthy father," had been in a violent dispute with two of his brothers: Nonus and Quartus. Becomes apparent that all three brothers had been engaged in the slave trade.

Saxon has with him letters for several of the Independent sect, including Micah's father.

A change into dry clothing at Micah's home also seems to change Decimus' identity: "it seemed as if he had cast off his manner with his rainments," no more the flippant "bedraggled castaway who had crawled like a conger eel into our fishing-boat" but rather a demure and pious warrior for the faith.

Micah's father, utterly taken in by Decimus' manner -- "a man of parts and piety" -- outfits him as his son's companion in sending the youth off to war as part of Monmouth's forces.

As they prepare to travel across country to join Monmouth, Micah objects to the cover story Decimus proposes as dishonorable and a lie: "I should rather be hanged as a rebel than speak a falsehood."

Decimus counters that all warfare is a manner of lying: "For what are all strategems, ambuscades, and outfalls but lying on a large scale? What is an adroit commander but one who has a facility for disguising the truth?"

The freebooter casts off his piety once out of range of Micah's father: "Master Decimus Saxon had flung to the winds the precise demeanor which he had assumed in the presence of my father, and rattled away with many a jest and scrap of rhyme of song ad we galloped through the darkness."

"'Gadzooks!,' said he frankly, 'it is good to be able to speak freely without being expected to tag every sentence with a hallelujah or amen.'"

Further making his opportunism apparent, Decimus relates to the increasingly scandalized Micah the story of how, captured by the Turk, he escaped death and slavery by taking on the identity of a devout Muslim.

Micah: "'What,' I cried in horror, 'you did pretend to be a Musselman?'"

Decimus: "Nay, there was no pretence. I became a Musselman."



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"Micah Clarke": The Rising of the "Old Leaven"

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part One

Set at time of Monmouth's Rebellion, the events in Arthur Conan Doyle's "Micah Clarke" occur just a few years before those in Scott's "Old Mortality."

Framed as story told by an old man -- Micah Clarke -- to his grandchildren, relating experience of his own youth.

He speaks as among the last survivors: "it is not likely that in the whole county of Hampshire, or even perhaps in all England, there is another left alive who is so well able to speak from his own knowledge of these events."

Micah's father a Dissenter and veteran of Cromwell's army; generally mild, but can be subject to fits of "the old leaven" what "his enemies would call fanaticism and his friends piety." Micah's mother is a churched Protestant -- a believer in the Church hierarchy -- and so his religious heritage is divided between extremes.

The adult friends of Micah's youth include a bookish carpenter, Zachary Palmer, who shares with the boy works of serious drama and poetry as well as Classics and treatises of contemporary political philosophy. His other "father" is Solomon Sprent, a retired seaman, tattooed with the Old and New Testaments (Creation upon his neck and the Ascension upon his left ankle) and full of romantic stories of faraway lands and adventure, his talk "a library in itself." Micah's intellectual heritage is thus also divided between extremes.

Rumors abound that there will be a rising of the "Independents" under the illegitimate Duke of Monmouth against the Catholic James II.

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