Authors: Martha Lea
The Specimen (29 page)
Fergus Harris was very deferential towards me, though it soon became clear that his personality would have fit inside a body as large as Abalone Wilson Tench’s. And so he became my eyes
and ears in your house. When you finally became aware of his talents you sent him on his way to Carrick House. You were able to persuade him with a bigger purse and the promise of cleaner air; an
easier life but a more demanding role. He took the challenge, he took it to his heart because he had something to prove and because he enjoyed the irony. He has proven his weight, Isobel, but do
not forget that his loyalties will change with the prospect of better weather. His ambition is no brother to duty and the rewards for his endeavours cannot be measured in guineas.
Observations.
Pará, Brazil. 1861/1862.
Underneath, she was floating.
Her eyes followed the things around her before her brain had a chance to catch up. She managed, in ways which were not too strange, to look after her baby.
I didn’t come all this way, she heard herself thinking over and over, just to be his unkissed mistress, to have a child, hidden away in the jungle under lies, swaddled in deceit. To think
about Gus Pemberton was too painful and so she tried not to.
On the surface, she was still.
She watched her baby, whose name was Augusta—yes, she remembered that, though other facts were difficult to retain. She watched Augusta watching her with unfocused eyes.
First, the baby was like a grub; pale, and startlingly basic in her needs. Gwen learned how to anticipate the bodily functions of the grub, the baby, Augusta. There were no mountains of soiled
napkins to launder or send away for laundering. Maria taught her things; and there was a small dog which came to live in the house and which removed mishaps from the floor.
But this creature was not interesting to Gwen. She never called the dog by its name or petted it in any way. Sometimes, Gwen saw Edward going through her things. He would stand for an hour,
perhaps more, unaware that she was watching him read the notes she had made alongside the work she’d so far put into her sketchbooks. Occasionally, Edward would shuffle into his own room with
her sketchbook in his hand and then write things down in his own notebooks while referring to hers. She didn’t know whether he was transcribing or what he was doing; it was curious behaviour
to her and only mildly interesting.
Gwen was aware that she did not speak. When he was out of the house, Edward couldn’t hear her whispering to Maria.
The grub learned to roll over. The baby smiled. The baby became mobile. Augusta rolled and rolled across surfaces until she came to an obstacle and then looked about her, unable to roll back the
other way.
By the time Baby Augusta had learned to crawl, and dribbled and began to eat plain things, like bananas and rice, Gwen had read the book six times.
There must be a hidden message, she thought, and I have to find that message, and understand it. But all there was to understand was that she could not understand him.
There are certain books,
Gwen wrote feverishly,
which are all well and good for the lay-person vaguely interested, one rainy afternoon, in finding out about the secrets a microscope
might offer. But they do not illustrate properly, or investigate fully, or show such possible investigations that they might, and which I think that they ought. By which I mean that the secrets of
the microscope will remain secrets largely to the entire population of the civilised world, other than those with the time, means and inclination to investigate for themselves. This cannot be
right. I do not feel that it is proper . . .
My own purpose, then, is to create a kind of Atlas of the Insect World.
How frustrating, it is, as I know through my own experience, to see, “a fly leg” illustrated, for example, in amongst other, unrelated bits taken from other creatures and laid
out
prettily
, without being able to ascertain from which fly the leg came and which leg it was which happened to be illustrated in isolation.
It is my opinion, which I am free to expound in the privacy of this journal, that there should be available to any adult person or intelligent and inquisitive child, the kind of Atlas that I
mean to create. Moreover, in creating such an Atlas it should, in part, remove the need for the intelligent and inquisitive child (or adult) to
plunder
nature so
unnecesarily
, and
with such
careless
attitude in the pursuit of elementary scientific enquiry and knowledge.
Of course, I could never speak of this to anyone. On the surface, my idea is to produce something which is instructive, as well as being a work of Art. I wish to make my work appealing to
both the scientist and the art lover.
I think this Atlas might take up the rest of my days here. I cannot continue to make lovely representations of insects set in their ranks and be satisfied.
We cannot understand the truth of a creature and its place in nature, through the singular fact of its carcass.
And so I wish to say: let us be done with this obsession for collecting variations in a specimen to the last available insect, to be pored over by but a few and left forevermore to the
darkness of the cabinet. (Is this Science? No, it is Vanity.) Let us try to understand Nature in a way that does not deplete Her, or ravage Her, or decimate Her. Because I think that this attitude
which leads a man to take as much as he can, without thinking with due care for the result of his actions, will lead that man to no good purpose, and ultimately waste his whole life in the pursuit
of false knowledge. I do not mean that Darwin’s idea is false; I mean that for others to pursue what he has already proved is stupid. We do not need to replicate his work; we need to find
other ways if we are to progress.
I cannot condone wholesale capture in the name of vanity.
I have thought very much on the ways of the ants here. They are everywhere and there are many different species. We have had to protect our equipment and our food against the attentions of
these enterprising insects from the outset, and must always be vigilant against their ingenuity.
Recently, I have been trying out an experiment involving the enticing of a small colony into a large specimen jar which I had prepared. After a frustrating start, I discovered that the ants
will only begin anew where there is a Queen to serve, and that the colony is not merely a collection of individuals, but a collective; an organism made up of other organisms, with their beating
heart, their Queen, at the centre. I now have a system of cords leading in and out of the jar, which are suspended by treated cords from the ceiling. I have taken the extra precaution of standing
the specimen jar in a large bowl of water.
The most marvellous thing that I have found is that these leaf-cutting ants, which we had both assumed were consuming the leaves, are not. A kind of midden heap is prepared by the ants, and
it is the resulting flungus growing there on the leaf cuttings which the ants eat.
I have not read anywhere of other observers of these creatures having come to the same conclusion. Of course, I would not claim to be the first to discover the true nature of their floraging
habits and their purpose, however, I am still excited by this idea
—
of the ants’ apparent knowledge of, or at least their harnessing of, the basics of horticulture.
I am still much given to spending long hours of thought on the subject of Mr Frome. His remarks, and his wildness, and his claims, and his final deed, seem, on the one hand, to mark him out
as a singularly disturbed individual who perhaps spent too much time with his theories and not enough in the common pursuit of friendship and good humour. (Of course, I am an expert on this.) On
the other hand, I wonder if, in his madness, there was some kind of logical reasoning. I have gone over it so many times.
Gwen stopped writing, remembering Edward’s reaction to her experiment with the ants. He had stomped into her room, and she had listened to him quietly. The quieter she was, the more
infuriated he seemed to become.
“There is not the room here, Gwen, for your school-room antics with these pests. Whatever you think you may have observed in these jars is irrelevant and highly likely to be wrong. Just
stick to what you came here to do, namely, illustrate
my
findings. And clear up this dreadful mess. We’ll have the blasted things in our food.”
Who did this man think he was, to instruct her, to try to remove the one thing which allowed her to reconcile herself to this situation? Gwen did not clear away her ants in jars. She did not
stop writing; her efforts were redoubled in the face of his attempts to obstruct her observations.
She began to keep her notes locked up in her trunk.
THE TIMES
, Thursday, October 4, 1866.
MURDER TRIAL AT THE OLD BAILEY.
M
R PROBART for the Prosecution called as witness a Mr Harpe, who said, “I am a bookseller in this city and I am well
acquainted with Mrs Pemberton, the prisoner in this trial. She has come to my shop on many occasions, asking for a certain title.”
Q: “What is the title, Mr Harpe?”
A: “The prisoner has always asked for
Eternal Blazon
, sir, and when I have told her that no such title has come my way, the prisoner has always spent a deal of time lingering
over other titles on display. Sometimes, she has bought a copy of obscurity, and most other times, nothing.”
Q: “Curious, would you not say, for a lady to be perusing the shelves of an establishment such as your own, Mr Harpe?”
A: “Perhaps, at first; I wouldn’t often get a customer such as the prisoner, but I came to expect her, sir, after a while. You never can tell what kind of reading matter a person
will have in their house, sir, from appearances alone.”
Q: “Please tell the court, Mr Harpe, exactly what kind of reading matter it is which lines the shelves of your shop.”
A: “Everything I sell is absolutely legal and above board, sir, in my bookshop. Titles are of a mainly scientific interest, a specialist interest, not novels or any such
matter.”
Q: “And yet, Mr Harpe, the volume which the prisoner, by your account, was so keen to obtain, it does in fact fit loosely the description of ‘novel’, does it not?”
A: “I believe it does, sir.”
Q: “And yet you do not have any such ‘novels’ on display in your shop?”
A: “No, sir.”
Q: “But if I were to pay you a large sum, perhaps to obtain a certain title, then you might be able to oblige?”
A: “There is no doubt that just about anything is obtainable in this city if the seeker is determined enough, sir.”
Q: “Please tell me, Mr Harpe, what is the title of the last volume you sold to the prisoner?”
A: “That’s easy enough, it was called
The Book of Phobias
, and I sold it to the prisoner on the 4th of August, the Saturday before the murder.”
Q: “A novel, Mr Harpe?”
A: “A scientific book, sir. By Dr Charles Jeffreye. It is about certain maladies of the nerves and so forth.”
Q: “Maladies of the nerves. Thank you, Mr Harpe.”
The unfortunate fate of Dr Jeffreye, who was crippled by a fall from his horse and later died, was briefly discussed. More witnesses were questioned—all booksellers—all of whom
said that Mrs Pemberton was a regular patron who always asked for a particular title. Mrs Pemberton had visited the establishments of each on Monday, 6th August.
Mr Shanks for the Defence then addressed the court in respect of the evidence given by the various booksellers: “Mrs Pemberton does not deny having been a regular customer at many
bookshops in the city. Nor does she deny having sought a particular volume mentioned earlier. Her motives, however, for having devoted so much time and effort in her search were entirely
honourable. The volume mentioned, was, some of you will be aware, of ill-repute. What you may not be fully aware of is the fact that within that novel lay certain unsavoury accusations against Mr
Scales. Mrs Pemberton’s brief was simple: to locate any surviving copies of that title and to destroy them. Why? Because she wished to eradicate foulness, however false, against her former
companion. Why? Because she had forgiven him his falseness against her, and wished to do him well, not ill. This determined effort, sirs, is not the kind of sustained action of a murderess.
Furthermore, the other volume, entitled
The Book of Phobias
, was obtained for the same reason. Spurious and lewd claims were made by its author against Mr Scales’ reputation. No
one, who had travailed so long, in such a manner, would then murder the very person whose name she desired to clear.”
Pará, Brazil. May, 1863.
Gwen, hunched over a pot she had just taken from the fire, was utterly absorbed in her task. The stench coming from the pot stung Edward’s eyes. Augusta, unwatched by her
mother, poked a stick into the fire—in and out—and then jabbed it inexpertly into the ground and tried to make a hole, immersed in the serious business of finding out what was possible
with a stick. Gwen sat with her feet planted apart in a squat as though about to defecate. She stirred the foul brew, which Edward now realised was a broth containing fish skin and bones.