MDDM Ch. 25 Summary, Notes
jbor
jbor at bigpond.com
Thu Dec 20 04:03:44 CST 2001
Mason and Dixon meet up in London after 18 months apart and sign the
agreement to do the surveying job in America. In the weeks leading up to
their departure, and in both London and Falmouth, they drink and chat, as
previously. They conjecture about the ostensible political and other
intrigues behind their being contracted, about what awaits them in America,
about their reputation in London, and, again, about their respective
demeanour when attacked by the French frigate on the first ill-fated voyage
and the subsequent show of defiance towards the R.S. once safely ashore. The
stern letter from Bradley commanding them to resail to the Cape is still a
sore point, though Mason suspects - or wishes - that an unspoken apology
passed between the two at their last meeting prior to Bradley's death. Mason
recalls a conversation with Maskelyne - where the latter expounded upon the
diplomatic and political necessity that the Cape, rather than Scanderoon, be
their destination for the Transit Obs ("thus incurring a Debt ow'd to
Dutchmen, rather than to Jews") - and mopingly concludes that the World is
becoming more and more like a "Charter'd Company":
"The Business of the World is Trade and Death. ... " (247.29)
***
246.2 "This case ... languish'd in court for eighty years." The border
dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland?
246.16 "the Sketch-Artists having dash'd in a few last Details and crept
away ... " Another reflexive touch on Pynchon's part, though there is
perhaps a literal context as well in that a group portrait - the two
surveyors with the landowners, ship captain, R.S. members etc - might have
been drawn prior to the signing of the contract.
247.1 "Gin's *Hogarthian society*"
http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/beer_and_gin.html
251.11 "Oh, not I, as Chauncey said when the Bums came in ... " ?
252.5 "Feluccas" felucca. a narrow lateen-rigged vessel of the
Mediterranean [17th c. from Italian 'felucca', probably from obsolete
Spanish 'faluca', probably from Arabic 'fuluk' ships, from Greek 'epholkion'
small boat, from 'ephelkein' to tow]
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