The Syme Papers (13 page)
Authors: Benjamin Markovits
PETITION
Light gives light to light discover
– ad infinitum.
Pactaw, Virginia, North America
November 10,
A.D.
1821
To the United States Congress
I declare, after the courageous demonstration of Mr Seaborn, lately published, that the Earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentric Spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the Poles twelve or sixteen degrees. I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the Hollow, if the Congress of this great Republic will support and aid me in the undertaking.
Sam Highgate Syme,
Of Virginia, late Lieutenant of Infantry
N.B. – I have ready for the Press a Treatise on the principles of Matter, wherein I show proofs of the above positions, and account for various phenomena.
My terms are the patronage of THIS and the NEW WORLDS, for my issue and my issue’s issue.
I select Dr Abraham Gottlob Werner, Sir H. Davy, and Baron Alexander Von Humboldt as my protectors.
–
On March 7th,
1822,
the above petition was presented to
the Senate by Colonel Richard M. Johnson, from Virginia.
After a heated discussion on both sides, the petition, owing to
its purely scientific nature, was laid on the table.
Oh Sam, I thought, in some wonder; you press the joke too far. You lack respect for the common yet powerful men in whose hands your future lies. You are careless of … you are careless of … and at last the answer came to me.
You are careless of your pos
terity.
You sow the tares and the wheat side by side, secure that you can distinguish your best from your worst and indifferent to the fact that someone else must gather the harvest. You had the courage, the very great courage, of
obscurity;
for you had no wish to be sifted, content, as you were, in your own variety. And such a task you have left behind for me,
who mean well by you now;
such a burden you offered those
who meant well by you then.
And yet, in its way, the petition had its effect. It drew the attention of a young newspaperman, Thomas Jenkyns, who, from motives of the purest ignorance, allied himself to your cause; and such prosperity as you enjoyed in life, you owed to him. This was your
curious
conclusion to
Symmesonia
(I will no longer dare to apply the word ‘touching’ to any among the protean shifts of your sincerity):
And now, kind Reader, having transcribed thus much of my Journal, in a manner which, I hope, will not be thought
too derogatory
to the Importance and Dignity of the Subject, I submit it to your Inspection, with an intimation
that I am
ready to undertake a second voyage
to Seaborn’s Land, at the edge of the great Gulf; or to war-like Belzubia and the Place of Exile; or, by chance and fortune, to gentle Symmesonia, the pleasantest of Pastures,
by a different route;
and greatly daring, by an aerial excursion thence to the Inner Spheres, even of my own Mind – as soon as I am furnished with the Funds necessary to my Escape from my present uncomfortable situation on the
Liberties,
in the garret of that lofty House, where, it being about the middle of dog-days, the Sun exerts its utmost power upon the roof, within eighteen inches of my Head.
A curious conclusion, I say again; and one that played its part, disturbing the next in the series of dominoes, and overtoppling it at last on their great chain through the years to Wegener and to me.
The great courage of obscurity
I attributed to you; and yet, to see your name beside Wegener’s, I am reminded of a very different and, yes, still greater courage – not of conviction, but of
half-con
viction
– the courage that demands proof
of itself.
For Wegener, too, has left behind him the journal of a ‘Voyage of Discovery’, his attempt to prove beyond doubt the shift of Greenland in its ocean bed: a much slimmer volume, recording a heavier purpose, and a humourless, unironized adventure, as he attempted to set up an observation outpost in the teeth of the polar ice. I offer the following selection, shining against the foil of Syme’s ironic reserve:
l. April 1930. This morning, at ten o’clock, we set off … Departure, an entry in the journal, and then – well, yes, the thread has been cut. NOW the expedition begins. I have somehow the feeling, of having outrun a swarm of bees … into another nest, I have no doubt.
4. May. The difficulties begin. In the course of the night we sailed into a line of ice, that lies between us and Umanak, our goal. So far south already! Our first attempt at breaking into the bay has failed. Already we must stray from the plan …
And then, after a series of breakthroughs and delays, adventures and misadventures, Wegener continues:
9. August. Catastrophe. We have only twenty days of hay left! Enough only for five or ten days of
power
feeding … Juelg is sick – it seems to be his nerves, a bad sign, for someone who hopes to survive a winter such as the one ahead. Vigfus suffers from rheumatism. Jon is trying to break his coffee habit, since we’re running low, and the Icelanders are mad for it. Even Weike suffers; his muscles bruised by weeks in the sled, till he can barely walk. Every day delays our setting off; and the days themselves getting shorter. I worry only that, without any real obstacle, my comrades have drifted into a muddled sense of
time.
Yes, the clouds are growing on the horizon of this expedition. I think I can manage
myself
but I cannot manage
by
myself.
How will it all end? That question now is hot as coals.
Another night. We’ve dried perhaps a few more days of grass for the horses – like drops of water on a hot rock, but vital nonetheless. My mood is still troubled; I hope it’s only the lice infecting my disposition. Simple discomfort can make a mountain out of the slightest inconvenience. Those damn lice! That is my hope – that we’re better off than I think we are, because of the cold and filth. I need a good sleep, a thorough sleep. If hard follows hard, we’ll show our teeth yet.
l. September. Another foot of fresh snow, and not a sigh of wind. That is just what we need, to stick, like a fly in honey. And the petrol running low … and the propeller sleds failing; even when they work, the petrol lasts only half the distance we hoped for – a stupid mess of arithmetic, in which to blunder.
We must, regardless of cost, fit out a dog-sled journey of such dimensions that the sled can supply everything we need on its own! Regardless of cost; that is easily said. This is the greatest crisis of our expedition. That we get through with honour seems doubtful; everything depends on the crew of dogs we can put together. God, what sort of fix have we stumbled into! And yet, last night, tucked in the seat of the motor sled, sliding over the waste of snow-dust, in the twilit sky, how wonderful!
And then, in a final letter to his comrade Weike, his last words:
6. October 1930 …
We manage OK; nothing frozen yet, and we hope for a prosperous outcome. In the other event, let me enjoin you: never stray from the path of knowledge. Improve the road signs at least, stick in a few flags on your way!
Best wishes,
Alfred Wegener
He died that winter, on his way west. His comrades found him much later buried in snow, between his upright skis. A courage of a different order altogether from Samuel Syme’s, so it seemed to me; for I had found no evidence of such faith, or, rather, such a profound sense of the
obligations of faith,
in my subject. The wit of Syme’s ironies rang somewhat hollow now, though they mocked the very certainty that led scientists to such fates. This, from
Symmesonia:
Mr Slim, the third mate, expressed some Apprehension, that great Danger might be encountered in high latitudes; that if we found land, the Ice might close upon us and prevent our return to our Country, as it once served a colony in Greenland. I was not much pleased with this. I have no Patience with an officer who suggests Doubt and Difficulties when I have a
Grand Project
in view. I marked him, but at the same time pretended to listen to his observations, as Objections of great Weight, and then proceeded to
remove
them
from the minds of the officers and people, by advancing a Tide of Reasons for my belief that the supposition of extreme Gold at the Pole was
altogether gratuitous.
A good joke, perhaps, at the expense of
scientific certainties,
and prescient, too, given the fate of Wegener; but a rather easy target (I thought at the time) for a scientist who seemed to risk so little on his theories, who scarcely ventured any of them without a ballast of irony to support them. I learned in time, however, that there is more than one way to risk a life. (I, of all people, should have known that.)
I had resurrected Syme, that much at least: brought him to life again, supplied father and mother, childhood, and even the occasion of his death. I had tasted something of his theories, a great deal of his wit; but of that
lightning flash
of insight (those ‘segments of the earth’s crust which float on the revolving core’) that ignited the mind of Alfred Wegener a hundred years on – not a trace, not the least rumour of its distant thunder. I
knew
that notion had come to Syme, split the small night of a man’s thought with a wonderful burst of light. But I needed more than
hunches, for Dr Bunyon, for my wife, for the approval of the tenure committee at the University of Texas. For Syme himself.
Now, I confess to you that I never
did
find that elusive journal, the
New Platonist,
the Holy Grail of my researches, printed privately, I believe, and discovered, posthumously as it were (after death by fire and water) in a catalogue of the library of Wegener’s father. And I exhort all Americans, all owners of attics and forgotten basements, of chests and old wallpaper, to search up and down for that vital missing link between the hollow world and our own. Knock against the plaster of your walls; tap into the hollows of your floors; explore the gloomy reaches of your attics, stooped in the stifling heat, for a slim volume, I suppose, whose cover bears some portion of the following:
The New Platonist
A journal establishing the Revolutionary American Science
Edited by
Professor Samuel Syme
Then, having lifted your prize from the family papers, from beneath the wallpaper, from the lining of an old chest, open the first delicate page, and I believe you may discover a table of these contents:
I. Aristotle and the New Science, by Prof. Syme
II. Inventions: The Fluvia and its Uses, by Prof. Syme
III. The Inverted Cosmos: A Primer, by Prof. Syme
IV. What It Means to Pactaw County: Local Predictions, by Prof. Syme
V. The New Medicine: Wax!, by Dr Friedrich Müller
VI. Speculations: a curious coincidence
Our special Appreciation to Mr Harcourt, Esq. of Richmond, Virginia, who may properly be termed the Medici of the New Science, our Prince and Patron.
Clasp this precious treasure to your bosom; insure it as a ‘national heirloom’; then contact at once myself, Dr Douglas Pitt, at the Department of the History of Science, University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
I place all my faith in that sixth item, those ‘speculations on a curious coincidence’; surely,
there,
if anywhere, lies the inspiration of Wegener, the seed of thought, buried in a century of neglect, that grew into such a flower. But I find that I have overreached myself; step back, Pitt, before you step forward! And I must explain my knowledge of the cover and the table of contents; above all, the history of that curious character, the doctor of wax,
mein
Herr
Friedrich Müller, Syme’s sole company in the revolutionary American journal – and, by the sounds of him, as ‘foreign as a Frankfurter’ at that.
There is scant need to describe the countless false trails I followed and the gloomy woods into which they led me. I suffered a most particular frustration over that
Humboldt
clue; for Syme had listed among his mock protectors, in that grand petition to the United States Congress, the same Alexander von Humboldt with whom Alfred Wegener’s great-grandfather had attended the University of Frankfurt. But after a lengthy beating of my brows and a still fiercer beating of my books; after stumbling through a dozen blind alleys, head first, into the brick walls of history; after a most painful exhumation of my college
German,
which demanded a tortuous
reconfiguration
of the language wires in my brain, from which, to this day, I have only partly recovered (a fact to which the reader, no doubt, will testify in court, suffering, as it were,
vicariously
from the inflammation of my sentences); after all that, I say, I was forced to conclude, that Alexander von Humboldt was
not guilty
of a connection to Syme, owing only to the insufficiency of the evidence against him. Perhaps the list of Syme’s protectors – from Werner, dead as Syme wrote, to H. Davy, a chemist at heart, to the Baron Humboldt,
an explorer – was meant to serve as some kind of coda to the satire of
Symmesonia.
In any case, it did not serve
me,
nor connect Syme to Wegener in the end, though it pointed me, at least, in the right direction – towards Germany at last.
I need hardly describe, I say, the countless red herrings and the stench of them; nor, indeed, the battles with Miss Pitt, my tender wife (whose faith in her husband’s
sagacity
had long diminished; whose faith in her husband’s
assiduity
was beginning to fade). Nor relate the circumstances of my financial embarrassment; my assurances, my
guarantees,
of being ‘hot on the trail’, the begging to which I was at last reduced, and the
whimsy of despair
that persuaded my wife to dip into her own private funds (secured by the religious suspicion of her father from the depredations of his goyish new son-in-law, so often indeed does the unity of the flesh between man and wife stop short at the unity of the bank account) in order to finance the extension of my researches, and one crucial, final flight.