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

[jochen stremmel]

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" -

I think Rebekah is speaking metaphorically here – no allusion to Saint
Helena as far as I see.

2015-03-26 5:34 GMT+01:00 Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com>:

> 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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