M&D - Chapter 18 - The Fearful Isle Where No Flower Grows

[Johnny Marr]

Mason reminisces on the peculiar friendship Rebekah struck up with
Bradley's wraith-like daughter (Princess Sukie), which led to them talking
throughout the night whilst he worked in the Observatory. At one point
Mason arrived to heard Miss Bradley ask how they came to meet and marry.

Rebekah replied that "My marriageable years had ebb'd away ... so slowly
that I never knew the moment I was beach'd upon the Fearful Isle where no
Flower grows" - which may be TRP's allusion to St Helena, where her ghost
first began to appear to Mason.

Rebekah continues, "And then, against Hope,- lo, a Sail. There at the
Horizon,- no idea how far,- a faint Promise of Rescue...a sort of Indiaman
as it prov'd". She then claims that a pair of men from the boat approached
her with a Sepia-cated sketch of Charles and told her "Here is the one you
must marry". She had no further idea as to the identity of the advisory
pair - "They were turn'd out in that flash way of Naboblets, all morning
Tussah [a scion of the Peace family would presumably be familiar with
silkworm terminology] and braided Hats ... yet they might have been
Buzz-men as easily" ...

This is a particularly shaggy dog story, and you have to question whether
Rebekah was winding Princess Sukie up. On the other hand, Mason's
remembrance of the story suggests we should take it at face value, and he
offers no challenge to Rebekah's account of their wedding day - we jump
past any mention of their courting, save that Mason compared unfavourably
to sketch the mystery men presented to her.

Their nuptials took place in 'Clive Chapel' in the East India docks - in
delicious Pynchonian irony, the chapel was the most ostentatious
celebration possible of the wedding of Mason's unwitting nemesis, Lord
Clive to Miss Maskelyne;

"a Nabob's Day-Dream, made to seem a Treasure-Cave of the East, with Walls
of Crystal, Chandeliers of Lenses Prismatick, that could make the light of
but a single Candle brighter thatn a Beacon, Prie-Dieux of Gold, Windows
all of precious Gems instead of color'd Glass ... her Gown entirely of
Pearl, his Uniform Jacket of Burmese Ruby, their Eyes painstakingly
a-sparkle with tiny Sapphires and Zircons"

Little wonder Rebekah confesses she found herself lost in the splendour of
the spectacle. Not her groom though - "He got lost among the Stars. Years
before he met me".
"Papa is just like that". Princess Sukie sympathises. "They just
drift...off, don't they".

Mason does indeed drift off into thinking about Bradley and comets, as if
we needed any further evidence of the obsessive male's capacity to get lost
in their own dreams, however closely related to the corporeal world their
phantasmagories may seem. A shame his dream drifts away from the really
pressing issue for this individual reader - what to make of Rebekah's
claims about the mysterious men and her claims of a predetermined marriage
to Mason?
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