MDDM Ch. 21 Summary, Notes

[jbor]

The chapter begins with an exposition on the greed and jealousy of the
inhabitants of the villages around Sapperton. (Who or what is the narrative
source for this opening paragraph?) The "village bickering" seems to be the
primary reason Chas has decided to leave, and why he left his home town as a
lad in the first place. With no-one else to confide in he complains to
Rebekah's ghost (or is it a memory of an earlier conversation with the
living Rebekah?) about the meanness of his family and fellows. Then the
scene and mood shifts.

Fragments of the courtship, proposal of marriage (more of a Freudian slip on
Chas's part than any sort of formal proposal, it seems) and honeymoon (?)
are recalled: picknicking near the London docks, looking forward to the
mooted trip to Sumatra; a visit to Stonehenge, where Chas teases Rebekah for
having "Druid" ancestors; moving in together at the Observatory ...

Then, abruptly, the dream sours, and Mason's reminiscence breaks off just at
the point where he might have to admit the possibility of Rebekah's
complicity in a scheme to marry him off, the possibility that her love had
been bought. (This might go to Mason's obsessive concern "to avoid betraying
her" at 166.2 -- he will not even allow these possibilities to cloud his own
memories, let alone speak them aloud to Dixon.) He is returned to the
present, to his own melancholy, as he tries to subtract the features of his
own physiognomy from the boys' faces so that the visage of Rebekah might
materialise. But, it is to no avail. The boys have their claim on his
conscience too it seems.

Back in London Mason meets up with Maskelyne again at Maskelyne's brother's
rooms. The young French astronomer, Lalande, joins them there, much to
Mason's chagrin, soon followed by "Mun" Maskelyne, a right fop. Mun drags
Mason off into London, but Chas is soon lost and is, or is soon to be,
through the Magick of Literary Narrative, "not so much transported as
translated, to a congruent Street somewhere in America."

***

207.1 "Golden Valley" ? (Is it a wheat belt?)

208.20 "All subjunctive, of course,-- *had* the young Mason gone to his
father, this *might have been* the conversation likely to result."

209.22 "Pelhamites" Pelham. The name of an English land-owning family. Sir
Thomas Pelham was made a Baron in 1706. His son, Thomas Pelham Holles, a
Whig and supporter of Walpole, was secretary of state from 1724 to 1754 and
twice premier thereafter. Henry Pelham, the latter's younger brother, was
made secretary of war in 1724, and had been premier when the Calendar Act
was passed. In English politics, the Pelham dynasty was more or less
succeeded by the Pitt dynasty.

209.23 "Place-jobbery" ? (a slang term for nepotism?)

209.23 "as much as any Nincompoop at Court" A reference to George II?

209.27 "the Newcastle Special" ?

209.36 " ... he tells Dixon of how ... " So, these last few chapters are
supposedly still part of Mason's recount to Dixon from pp. 180-2 (except
that most of the events, such as Bradley's death, for example, have happened
*after* that reunion), or from when they arrived in London (183), or is it
from sometime later on? Or, is this perhaps an error? (Gasp!)

Whichever, it seems that in these seemingly muddled chapters - with the
recounted events shifting backwards and forwards in time in an almost random
manner, mingling in and out of one another - that the narrative is under
sway of Mason's melancholia and regretfulness. It's almost (but not quite)
stream-of-consciousness.

211.5 " ... one of these sinister Castles, oh I've read about them ... " It
appears that Rebekah's taste for the Gothic style of fiction is what got
Charles interested in it after her death.

211.11 "Flamsteed" John Flamsteed (1646-1719) the first Astronomer Royal.
(Greenwich Observatory was built in 1676.)

211.18 "When does Rebekah begin to suspect that she is there to guarantee
her husband's behaviour?" So, was it Sam Peach who was responsible for
manipulating the marriage between Rebekah and Charles?? Is this the
unfinished business Chas has, or had, with Bradley, the reason behind
Susannah Peach's betrothal to the more esteemed scientist of the pair??

212.18 "Mason has pimp'd for Maskelyne" ? Does Mason suspect that everyone
else is suspecting that it is he who lobbied for and secured Maskelyne's
appointment as Astronomer Royal, succeeding Bradley?

212.14 "the Soprano within ... the comickal Basso at the Door" ? From an
opera?

212-13 The paragraph is evocative (Mason is "not ... to be pushed into
someone else's Notion of Futurity ... ", and mention of "the outer Suburbs
that ring the Earthly city" and "the Capital at the Heart of his Time") but
very obscure. I think it's setting up Mason's apprehension, or paranoia,
about what other people in London are thinking of him, and the consequent
forces which are propelling him towards America. Mason styles it as
"Penance". (213.6) But, penance for what?

213.31 "Lemonnier" Pierre Charles Lemonnier (1715-99) French astronomer,
born in Paris, was a member of the Academy of Sciences at the age of 20
because of his lunar map. He greatly advanced astronomical measurement in
France, and made twelve observations of Uranus before it was recognised as a
planet.

213.5 "Met this Herschel fella at the Octagon Chapel" Herschel, as we know,
was the one who officially discovered Uranus. He visited England in 1755 as
oboist in the Hanoverian Guards band; in 1766 he became an organist and
music teacher at Bath.

It's interesting how the themes and topics (Uranus, the Orrery, the Gothic
novel, Drury Lane operas ... America) of Pynchon's narrative are now winding
backwards towards the opening of the section. The structure of the narrative
is like a hinged mirror: MDDM.

214.10 "*Florizel and Perdita*" A light opera by David Garrick, adapted from
Shakespeare's _The Winter's Tale_, first performed in 1758.

http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~fayeng/floriz1.html

http://shakespeare.eb.com/shakespeare/micro/227/51.html

214.16 "the Mobility's Grip ... a congruent Street" This fascination with
crowds and streets - the "hothouse and the Street" - is ongoing in Pynchon's
work, most notably in _V._

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