MDDM Ch. 75 A Need for High Heat

Sun Sep 8 12:17:38 CDT 2002

   "'So Dad came to an agreement,' Jeremiah press'd,
'with Mr. Bird.'
   "'Dear knaahs, Jeremiah.'
   "'How could he repay Mr. Bird,' Dixon asks of
Mason, years later.  'Thah's what I can't see.'
   "Of course it matters to him.  Mason has his own
mysteries in this regard,-- what could the Miller of
Wherr have done for the Director-to-be of the
Honorable E.I.C.?  Bread?  'Coal?' he speculates.
   "'A few pence off upon the Chaldron,-- 'twould add
up.  Yet in that Quantity,-- '
   "'Suggests a need for high heat, sustain'd over
time.  Glass?  Iron?'" (M&D, Ch. 75, p. 734)

Miller of Wherr

>From Edwin Danson, Drawing the Line (New York: John
Wiley & Sons, 2001), Ch. 5, "The Transit of Venus,"
pp. 40-59 ...

"Charles Mason ... was born at Wherr (now Weir) Farm
in  the Gloucester village of Oakridge Lynch in April
1728." (p. 51)

And from Charles Clerc, Masdon & Dixon & Pynchon
(Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2000), Ch. IV, "Fact," pp.
39-51 ...

"One of four children of Charles Mason, Sr., a
baker-miller from Bisley, and Anne Damsel of
Dallingsworth, Charles was born in Wherr-Sapperton,
Gloucetser, England, probably in March of 1728.  His
listed birthdate is actually the date of his baptism
on May 1." (p. 41)

Mr. Bird

>From H.W. Robinson, "Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779)--A
Biographical Note," Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society, Vol. 93, No. 3 (June 1950):
272-4 ...

   "In all probability John Bird, who was an active
Fellow of the Royal Society, recommended Dixon as a
suitable companion to accompany Mason.  According to
records existing in the family, Dixon was examined at
the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich before he wa
appointed.  A search of the minute books of the
Ordinance Board (a body which among other activities
governed the Academy) has been made, but no mention of
any such examination has been found.  It is quite
likely that the interview was a personal one in order
to satisfy the Royal Society that Dixon was a suitable
man for the work." (pp. 272-3
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=59824&sort=date

Dixon, Jeremiah 1733-1779, surveyor and astronomer,
was born in Bishop Auckland, county Durham, 27 July
1733, the fifth of the seven children of George Dixon,
a well-to-do Quaker coalmine owner, and his wife Mary
Hunter of Newcastle. He was educated at John Kipling's
School in Barnard Castle, where he acquired an
interest in mathematics and astronomy. While still a
young man in south Durham, he made the acquaintance of
the mathematician William Emerson, the
instrument-maker John Bird, and the natural
philosopher Thomas Wright [q.v.].

In 1760 the Royal Society chose Charles Mason [q.v.]
to go to Sumatra to observe the 1761 transit of Venus,
and, probably on Bird's recommendation, Mason
suggested Dixon should go as his assistant....

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/mason-dixon/extra/dixon_bio.html

And see as well ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=59889&sort=date

The Director-to-be

"... have there been others, who...have taken an
Interest in him?  Who can they be,-- and what may they
expect?'

   "'Well.  It can't be the Honorable E.I.C., can it? 
Or you'd know.  Wouldn't you.'

   "'As much as you.  There being the fitful Rumor
that your Mr. Peach will be nam'd a Director.'" (M&D,
Ch. 13, p. 139)

   "Had Susannah been but a means of getting those Obs
into the Peach family, and the eager Mittens of Sam
Peach, Sr.?  Were they the Price of a Directorship in
the East India Company?" (M&D, Ch. 18, p. 189)

"In 1780, among East India Company directors were ...
Samuel Peach"

http://whatson.northnet.net.au/users/blackheath/thebc20.htm

The Honorable E.I.C.

http://65.107.211.206/history/empire/eic.html

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/11.htm

"Coal?"

>From Charles Hollander, "Pynchon's Inferno," Cornell
Alumni News (Nov. 1978): 24-30 ...

"For Pynchon, World War II was a monstrous holocaust,
a cataclysm of 40 million souls, resulting from a
competition among technologies. The old dynasty, the
J. P. Morgan dynasty, was built on the technologies of
coal, steel, and railroads; the newer Rockefeller
dynasty on the technologies of oil (petrochemicals,
plastics), aluminum, and aircraft. Pynchon says that
World War II was a corporate war reflecting those
technologies, that for many their 'first loyalty,
legal and moral, is to the estate [corporation] she
represents. Not to our boys in uniform [the
nation-state], however gallant, whenever they died'
(Lot 49, 53). 

[...]

"Pynchon, by having Slothrop as Rocketfellow
disintegrate, implies the oil dynasty will go the
parabolic way of all history’s dynasties, and by
arguing for Return suggests that maybe the coal and
steel boys, the Morgans and the Rothschilds, might be
there at the end to pick up the pieces. In the
meantime, 'Their entire emphasis is now toward
silence, impersonation, opposition masquerading as
allegiance.'
   "In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon has to bring up the
long ago relationship between Standard Oil and the
I.G. Farbenindustrie. Standard Oil and I.G. Farben did
arrange to share world markets in 1936, and as an act
of good faith, they exchanged some 2,000 patents just
prior to World War II. Their multinational character
forced them to make arrangements for the contingencies
of war.
   "When World War II erupted, their loyalties were so
strongly with each other that the US government had to
bring legal action against both the Standard Oil Co.
(NJ) and I.G. Farbenindustrie (see Pynchon’s list,
Rainbow 538) for illegal monopolistic practices
involving gasoline, toluene, and synthetic rubber
patents....
   "By referring to this multinational liaison as 'the
century’s master cabal,' Pynchon is suggesting more
than corporate cooperation. He is suggesting that
World War II was part of the 'Plot Which Has No Name,'
the concerted effort by the new dynasty to bring down
the old dynasty. This is hinted at again and again in
the book...." 

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm

Chaldron

Chal"dron (?), n. [OF. chaldron, F. chaudron kettle.
The same word as caldron.] An English dry measure,
being, at London, 36 bushels heaped up, or its
equivalent weight, and more than twice as much at
Newcastle. Now used exlusively for coal and coke.
&hand; In the United States the chaldron is ordinarily
2,940 lbs, but at New York it is 2,500 lbs.

http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.page.sh?PAGE=237

CHALDRON. — The Newcastle chaldron is a measure
containing 53 cwts. of coal. The content of the
chaldron waggon (custom-house measurement) is 217,989
cubic inches; and that of the boll being 9676.8 cubic
inches, the chaidron is equal to 22.526 bolls, and not
as usually, but erroneously stated, to 24 bolls. The
weight of the boll of coals is therefore 53/22.526 =
2.35284 cwts. The statute London chaldron is to
consist of 36 bushels heaped up; each bushel to
contain a Winchester bushel and one quart, and to be
19½ inches in diameter externally; and as it has been
found, by repeated trials, that 15 London pool
chaldrons are equal to 8 Newcastle chaldrons (Rees's
Cyclopedia), the London chaldron must be equal to
28.266 cwts. The content of a London chaldron has been
variously estimated, viz. — 
[...]

 Coal is at present, and has for some years been sold
by weight only. By the Coal Mines Inspection Act,
1872, it was enacted that the amount of wages should,
after August 1st, 1873, where it depends on the amount
of mineral gotten, unless the mine is exempted by a
Secretary of State, be paid for by the true weight of
the mineral gotten. 

http://www.dmm.org.uk/books/terms_c.htm

And cf. not only ...

"'Willy doesn't remember me, Doc is too little,...and
what has Hestser been telling them about their
Father?'
   "'That you'd be home soon,' says Anne.  'That you
were away, upon a Mission for the King, but that soon,
you would be with them again.'
   "'Whilst she's selling them to their Grand-Dad.'"
(M&D, Ch. 20, p. 203)

But also ...

   "Nice way to find out your father made a deal 20
years ago with someone to spring for your
education.[...]  Well, now, what was the deal between
his father and Bland?  I've been sold, Jesus Christ
I've been sold to I.G. Farben like a side of beef."
(GR, Pt. II, p. 286)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9807&msg=28585&sort=date

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