The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Man (54 page)

“
When a man’s knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has, the greater his confusion.
”

“
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
”

“
The republican form of government is the highest form of government, but, because of this, it requires the highest type of human nature—a type nowhere at present existing.”

ISABELLA
MARY
MAYSON
(1836–1865)

In 1856, Isabella Mayson married Samuel Orchart Beeton. As Mrs. Beeton, she became famous as the author of
Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management
, and was arguably the very first celebrity chef. She died from puerperal fever, aged just twenty-eight.

OSCAR
WILDE
(1854–1900)

As an adult, Oscar Wilde, who in his childhood was neither a refugee nor a paperboy, said:

“
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
”

“
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
”

“
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.
”

“
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.
”

—From Lady Windermere’s Fan

“
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
”

“We
have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
”

“
The fact is that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
”

DOCTOR
EDWARD
VAUGHAN
HYDE
KENEALY
(1819–1880)

Most famous for his role as counsel for the Tichborne Claimant, Kenealy’s scandalous conduct during the trial earned him widespread notoriety. In the aftermath, he published a newspaper through which to harangue the judges and jury. He was subsequently disbenched and disbarred. Entering politics, he sought to employ his position in parliament to further the Tichborne cause. He failed, and though always a controversial and extremely eccentric figure, he gradually faded from the public arena.

ANDREW
BOGLE
(
APPROX
. 1801–1877)

Formerly a slave, Bogle was taken from Jamaica to England by Edward Tichborne (who became Sir Edward Doughty) to work as his valet. In 1830, he married the family’s household nurse and they had two sons.

In 1853, after Sir Edward’s death, Bogle, whose first wife had died, retired with a small pension, married a teacher, and moved to Australia where, in 1866, Arthur Orton approached him. Convinced that Orton was the long-lost Sir Roger Tichborne, Bogle travelled with him to England and supported him through the course of the two trials. Afterward, though the Tichborne family restored his pension, the old Jamaican lived in near poverty until his death.

MARIE
JOSEPH
FRANCOIS
GARNIER
(1839–1873)

Garnier was a French military officer and explorer who became famous for his exploration of the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. He did not discover any black diamonds in Cambodia.

RICHARD
SPRUCE
(1817–1893)

One of the foremost botanists of the Victorian era, Spruce was the first man to successfully cultivate bitter bark quinine, making its antimalarial qualities widely available. During his wide-ranging, fifteen-year-long exploration of the Amazon, he visited many places hitherto unseen by Europeans, and returned with many thousands of specimens. A quiet, solitary, and studious man, he was loyal to the British Empire and was involved with neither Eugenicists nor Germans.

He was elected a member of the Royal Geographical Society in 1866.

Spruce never said: “I see a tremendously bright future …”

THE
TRENT
AFFAIR

Also known as the Mason and Slidell Affair, this was a major diplomatic incident that, in 1861, came close to pulling Great Britain into the American Civil War. Fortunately, President Lincoln was able to calm Lord Palmerston down somewhat, and the prime minister resisted the temptation to align his country with the Confederate forces.

CHARLES
ALTAMONT
DOYLE
(1832–1893)

The father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles suffered from severe alcoholism and was also a depressive. Overshadowed by his more successful brother, Richard, he earned a pittance as a book illustrator and became best known for his increasingly macabre paintings of fairies. He was eventually committed to an asylum, and remained incarcerated until the end of his life.

Sir Arthur also became obsessed with fairies, most famously those supposedly photographed at Cottingley. It almost ruined his reputation.

HELENA
BLAVATSKY
(1831–1891)

A psychic medium and occultist, Madam Blavatsky rode a wave of interest in spiritualism and became one of its foremost proponents, founding Theosophy and the Theosophical Society. She claimed to have many psychic abilities, such as the power of levitation, clairvoyance, astral projection, and telepathy. For much of her life, she toured the world to promote her beliefs. Unsurprisingly, her work attracted a great deal of criticism, and she was accused of fraud, racism, and even of being a Russian spy. She died in England, aged sixty.

Madam Blavatsky said:

“Therefore, the Esotericists maintain that there is no inorganic or dead matter in nature, the distinction between the two made by Science being as unfounded as it is arbitrary and devoid of reason.
”

“
If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fail to leave their impress behind them.”

It is not known whether she ever used the Russian proverb:
“Bare derutsya—u kholopov chuby treshchat,”
which translates as, “When masters are fighting, their servants’ forelocks are creaking,” suggesting that the common people suffer when powerful people fight.

SIR
DANIEL
GOOCH
(1816–1889)

Sir Daniel Gooch was a railway engineer who worked with such luminaries as Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He was the first chief mechanical engineer of the Great Western Railway and was later its chairman. Gooch was also involved in the laying of the first successful Transatlantic telegraph cable and became the chairman of the Telegraph Construction Company. Later in life he was elected to office as a parliamentary minister. He was knighted in 1866.

WILLIAM
HOLMAN
HUNT
(1827–1910)

Holman Hunt, one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, did not say: “The Technologists tell us not to worry about the machines …”

WILLIAM
GLADSTONE
(1809–1898)

One of Britain’s longest serving politicians, Gladstone, a Liberal, was four times prime minister and four times chancellor of the Exchequer. He served under Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, and Lord Palmerston. He is credited with the creation of many modern political campaigning techniques. One of the most famous quirks of his personality was his dedication to the rehabilitation of prostitutes. Even while prime minister, he used to walk the streets late at night, approaching “fallen women” to try to persuade them to mend their ways. This, obviously, led to rumours. In 1927, long after his death, claims that he’d had improper relationships with these women led to a court case during which the jury, upon examining the evidence, vindicated Gladstone, confirming his high moral character.

HENRY
MORTON
STANLEY
(1841–1904)

Stanley said:

“An insuperable obstacle to rapid transit in Africa is the want of carriers, and as speed was the main object of the Expedition under my command, my duty was to lessen this difficulty as much as possible.”

He did not add:

“Rotorchairs were the obvious solution.”

BATTERSEA
POWER
STATION

Battersea Power Station was not built until the 1920s.

… and the Eyes of Nāga, if they exist, remain undiscovered.

MARK
HODDER
is descended from John Angell, a pirate who sailed with Captain Kidd. According to family legend, Angell invested most of his ill-gotten gains in land, particularly in Angell Town near Brixton in London. Anyone who can provide irrefutable legal evidence that they are descended from Angell will inherit the land, which is estimated to be worth at least £64,000,000. Over the course of generations, members of the family have lost a fortune trying to prove the link, and many people who have no connection with the family at all have adopted the name in order to make a claim. As a result, the family tree is extremely tangled and a legal connection to the pirate’s treasure is almost certainly impossible to establish.

Mark’s great-grandfather was Doctor Albert Leigh, who went to medical school with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The two men were great friends—they joined the Freemasons together—and Sir Arthur presented Albert with a complete set of Sherlock Holmes first editions, all inscribed:
To dear Leigh, from your friend Doyle.
They would fetch a fortune at auction today. Unfortunately, upon Leigh’s death in 1944, his housekeeper, an actress, made off with the volumes.

Thus it is that two great fortunes have eluded Mark Hodder.

Denied money-for-nothing and the luxury, idleness, and indulgences it would bring, Mark lives in Spain, teaches English as a foreign language, and writes novels. His first Burton & Swinburne adventure—
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
—was published in 2010.