MDDM Ch. 32 Summary, Notes

[jbor]

Pitt and Pliny notice the aggressive turn in Mason and Dixon's conversation
at the end of the previous chapter, and crave its devolution into fisticuffs
and bloodshed. Bedtime for the two boys, but both Ethelmer and DePugh have
their eyes set on Tenebrae.

Wicks analyses and contrasts the purposes of the foregoing "Tales", which he
appears now to be ascribing to either Mason or Dixon. He then relates a tale
seemingly told directly to him by Dixon, about the perpetual motion watch
that Emerson gave his protege as a memento before the latter's departure for
America. At the time, Emerson had made some cryptic remarks which may or may
not have had something to do with the paradox of Time, Derridean différance,
or speculative investment practices. Dixon is unnerved by the gift,
recognising it as an affront to Newtonian physics, and suspects Jesuit
involvement. Mason thinks it's a practical joke, and makes fun of the watch
with a merry song. Dixon is not amused.

Sloshing through a bog one day it occurs to Dixon that Emerson, in
presenting him with the watch, was cursing him in retribution for some
unremembered slight. He confronts his mentor in a dream, but this plan is
foiled, and thereafter the watch begins to assume sentient vegetable form in
his imagination, and he begins to wish himself rid of the cursèd mechanism.
The camp naturalist, a Professor Voam, advises him to seek out R.C., "a
local land-surveyor" who "enjoys puzzles", and who soon begins to covet the
watch as a proxy for John Harrison's famed chronometer. One night R.C.
swallows the watch, but is exonerated from the crime of its theft on a
technicality, in yet another Pynchonian setpiece swiping at the legal
fraternity. There follows a narrative excursus regarding "the Wedge" or
"Delaware Triangle", which is like the Bermuda Triangle except it is the
vehicles of lawyers rather than aliens into which all property and wealth
seems to vanish, "yea unto the year 1900, and beyond". And then a brief
biographical recount of R.C. prolongs this anti-lawyer theme still further,
followed by a description of R.C.'s domestic life after the expedition
(which, of course, neither Dixon, nor Wicks, could know of).

Dixon sends a letter to Emerson telling of the watch's loss. Mrs Emerson
replies: apparently Emerson was so delighted when he heard the details he
fell over a scooter of some sort in his workroom and was confined to bed.

Emerson's moral, that "Time is the Space that may not be seen", is
mistakenly characterised by Wicks as a statement about human faith.

The whole episode has a surrealistic, Salvador Dali-esque feel to it.
(Perhaps Dixon had had too much laudanum [or Wicks too much brandy, {or
Pynchon too much .... }]) Or perhaps it's just a comic interlude, somebody
pulling somebody else's leg.

*

314.5 "pass-bank Bully" some sort of bookmaker (?)

314.6 "narrow scraps of Elephant"  elephant 2. (chiefly British), a size of
writing paper, 23 by 28 inches.

314.13 "my barking Fire-Dogs"  A "firedog", also known as an andiron, is one
of a pair of short, horizontal iron bars, with legs or a supporting stand,
for holding the ends of logs in an open fireplace.

317.23 "the design of the Remontoire"  remontoir or remontoire n. any of
various devices used in watches, clocks, etc, to compensate for errors
arising from the changes in the force driving the escapement [19th C. from
French, winding mechanism, from *remonter* to wind]

317.27 "Prandium gratis non est"  = "There's no such thing as a free lunch."
Colloquial axiom in US economics from the 1960s, much associated with Milton
Friedman; first found in printed form in Chapter 11 of Robert Heinlein's
_The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ (1966).

319.17 "the *Principia*  Isaac Newton's *Philosphiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica* (1687), in which is detailed his theory of gravitation.

319.21  "the Friendly Isles"  another name for Tonga. (?) It seems that
Mason also fantasises - playfully - about native girls.

321.35 "*Mens Rea*"  n. Law. a criminal intention or knowledge that an act
is wrong. It is assumed to be an ingredient of all criminal offences
although some minor statutory offences are punishable irrespective of it
[Latin, literally: guilty mind]

322.1 "Mr Harrison"  John Harrison (1693-1776) English inventor of the
chronometer, was born at Foulby, near Pontefract. By 1726 he had constructed
a timekeeper with compensating apparatus for correcting errors due to
variations of climate. In 1713 the government had offered three prizes for
the discovery of a method to determine longitude accurately. After long
perseverance Harrison made a chronometer which, in a voyage to Jamaica
(1761-2), determined the longitude within 18 geographical miles. After
further trials, he was awarded first prize (1765-1773). He also invented the
gridiron pendulum, the going fusee, and the remontoir escapement. He wrote
five works on his chronometer, &c. [See also Dava Sobel's _Longitude_: I
believe her miniseries adaptation of the book is available on video.]

323.6  "Sir Cloudsley Shovell"  Shovel, Sir Cloudsley (1650-1707), English
sailor, served against the Dutch and in the Mediterranean, burned four
corsair galleys at Tripoli, commanded a ship at the Battle of Bantry Bay
(1689), and was knighted. In 1690 he took part in the battle off Beachy
Head; in 1692 he supported Russell at La Hogue, and burned twenty of the
enemy's ships. He served under Rooke in the Mediterranean, and with him took
Gibraltar in 1704. In 1705 he was made rear-admiral of England. That year he
took part with Peterborough in the capture of Barcelona, but failed in his
attack on Toulon in 1707. On the voyage home his ship (and others) struck a
rock off the Scilly Isles on the foggy night of October 22, 1707, and went
down. His body was washed up, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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