The Syme Papers Read online

  All is past now and over, thank God. Bubbles discovered him at last, sound asleep at the foot of the stream that runs along the bottom of the field in wet months; indeed, if anything, the boy was cross and perplexed to be shaken from a very soothing dream, occasioned no doubt by the babble of water, and though Bubbles wept to find him safe, he proceeded to recompose himself and attempt a second slumber, despite the glow of sunrise then piercing through the trees. But Bubbles, brave girl, would not have it, and pulled the poor truant to his distressed mother, who now writes to assure her sister that all is well …

  There was another curious account in Annie’s hand, addressed to a Mr Thomas Jenkyns, of the Southern Courier, many years later (we shall meet this Mr Jenkyns again). He appeared to have requested information regarding her son’s ‘sports and curiosities and other youthful presages of geologic genius’, to which Annie made the following reply:

  Dear Mr Jenkyns – I have never had a great head for my son’s pursuits, and as far as ‘youthful sports’ and such and presages of ‘geologic genius’ are concerned, I cannot deny he was a very muddy child and forever falling into things and requiring a great scrub. More than that is perhaps beyond me to say. Our house sits square on the slope of a field, and Sam used to wriggle out of the window above his bed when work wanted doing, and me clamouring up and down the house for help. As far as that went, I consider he displayed a love of nature, and would sneak past us and into the woods at the bottom. Once I recall we found him sleeping at the foot of a low stream which used to spring up now and then when the rains came. He spent all night wriggling under the stars – it was a thick, close evening – and he woke in a perfectly vicious temper at the interruption of a dream, but the sun coming up already, he was forced to retire to his bed; and, recollecting properly, that affair had less to do with presages and more with an untimely matter that doesn’t pertain. I never recall in him a great affection for schooling; but again, that could lie in the awkward circumstance for a young boy, of learning under the eyes of his father and grandfather; enough, I believe, to turn any child from his books, and set him loose among the trees. If a mother may have her say, I always reckoned my son more than anything distinguished for a brave heart. That, Mr Jenkyns, is my son.

  A curious account from a curious mother. Anne seemed a jealous creature, close with her son and husband – the two often blent in her accounts, a single example of masculine pig-headedness and vital force, indifferent to circumstance and particularity, though Sam occasionally distinguished himself for his faith and attachment to her. Perhaps she envied Edward’s power over their son; for the father directed Sam’s schooling from an early age and appears to have impressed the young boy with considerable awe – at least at first. A handful of brisk notes fluttered to the desk and stuck in the thick, close summer air, unrelieved by the window opened over the garden.

  I read over these old school reports, surprised into a familiar tingle of apprehension, as if I myself, at the age of eight or ten, stood open to my father’s evaluation – so closely had I identified my task of discovery with Samuel himself and his fortunes. “The boy possesses’, I read, in Edward’s quaint, left-handed script, the letters sloping against the grain, ‘a keen memory, and the capacity to Improve, upon Application. I believe that much of the haste and Confusion in his work, lies not [only] in a native indolence – a restless Desire to turn his thoughts to everything BUT the task at hand, an Eye drawn to the slightest sign of life without the window, from blue-jay to Maid, a Temper as happy to destroy as to construct – but also in a natural lightness of the Intellect, which steps as easily from First Causes to Conclusions, where a more muddling Mind might plod over the intervening Arguments. Yet for all that he is a careless child and often o’erleaps himself.’

  In a later report, Edward offers a more particular account of his son’s studies.

  Acquaintance with the Grammar, including prosody, of both the Greek & Latin tongues: middling to indifferent. Knowledge of Caesar’s commentaries, Sallust, selected parts of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: extensive, owing to a natural inclination. Interest in and facility for Virgil, Horace, Catullus: dull and dull and dull, the boy shies from Poetry like a kitten from the Bath. Aptitude for the Orations of Cicero (contained in the volume in Usum delphini): considerable; he takes naturally to Speeches, and from an early age has always cast about him for an Audience; most of these he has gotten by heart and will recite ’em to all and any who dare approach him in the Vein. In general, the boy takes well to what strikes him, and not at all to what don’t; but moreover, I discern a kind of Pernicious Element in him, which, even where his interest lies, seeks to up-end and Disfigure the very Learning on which he has set his Thoughts. The boy knows that two and two make four – and will prove it too if required – but if by any sort of process he can convert 2 & 2 into five it gives him much greater pleasure.

  Edward maintained to the end of his days a great respect for the arts and culture he had neglected at university and a stubborn indifference to the advancing sciences. His American father-in-law, though a stiff-hearted, pious Puritan, was a great believer in the manly and American application of hand and head to any task. He disliked ‘literary affectations’. The Agropolis, the visionary scheme that brought his future son-in-law to Virginia, had he known of it, must have aroused in him the deepest contempt. And the old farmer and schoolmaster took a keen interest in the new geological work being done in the young country. In the end, the grandfather seems to have won the contest over the direction of the young man’s genius.

  Besides which, 1809 saw the publication of William Maclure’s Observations on the Geology of the United States. Maclure, a Scotsman and disciple via Jameson of the theories of Werner, had come to America on business and never left, choosing instead to pursue Wernerian theories across the new continent, ‘hammer in hand’ (Fulton and Thompson). His book proved a sensation, and young Sam, then fifteen years old, was caught in its spell. (It is perhaps worthy of note that Syme’s introduction to the new science was Neptunist in origin.) Exercising a connection to the Silliman family, Willard Barnes secured his grandson a place on the new course in Geology at Yale College, being taught by ‘Sober Ben’.

  Accordingly, Samuel set off by coach for New Haven, Connecticut, at the age of seventeen, with a ‘chest of clothes, chemical devices, etc. a writing box, and his portmanteau filled to bursting with my own Shortbread’, as Anne described his departure in a letter to her sister.

  He seemed quite affected by the Separation – more than myself, in fact, to our great amusement – though he recovered his spirits in the efforts to shake Bubbles from his leg, who clung there, like a dog with its teeth around a precious bone, it would not part with for its life. Only that evening was I struck for the first time by the great path rolling out before my Son, and the lengths to which his Prospects might remove him from his Home. Our house seemed lonelier than before, less for his Absence than the echoes of his Presence. Bubbles would speak to no one, burying her red eyes in a novel; and even Edward seemed strangely affected and cast-down. No doubt apple-dumplings will cheer them both – I have never known a soul unaffected by apple-dumplings …

  A strange mother, loving no doubt, but curiously removed, by the miseries of her family, from her own reflections. She could not guess then how quickly her son would return, nor how much of Sam’s career would be spent within a day’s journey of Baltimore.

  I’d wager Barnes had not accounted for the ‘visionary’ purposes to which Sam would eventually put his education (in the manner of his father, after all), nor how brief that education would be. Yet in his own volcanic fashion, Sam deployed his new learning to instant and profitable use. America had just caught the craze for ‘natural waters’ that swept Europe at the turn of the century. Priestley had demonstrated as early as 1772 that the ‘blinking bubbles’ in a spring’s gush were nothing other than ‘fixed air’, and manufacturers had struggled to duplicate the effects of mineral water, which had become a fashi
onable addition to many drinks. Syme perfected his own process, and by the end of his first semester marketed the results in a private way. We find this early letter to his father.

  Sir, – I recall that you and Grandfather were in the habit of retaining the bottles, jars, etc. consumed at the schoolhouse; and wondered if I might avail myself of a portion of them. I seem to have acquired a little business in the manufacture of soda water, much sought-after by thirsty scholars, and cannot procure any glass bottles which will not burst, nor any stone ones impervious to the fixed air. After succeeding perfectly in the construction of a complicated, difficult and delicate apparatus for the production of mineral gases, I have been thus far completely foiled by the very defective bottles supplied by the potters hitherto. They will not hold the fluid under such a pressure but weep copiously – and I am bound to join them, in competing Streams. Recollecting however the store of excellent vessels in the backroom of the school, and reflecting on the superiority of Southern manufacture, I resolved to apply to you, as I do now, for a Shipment of them.

  Your faithful, etc. son,

  Sam

  His studies, as a rule, were more ‘“honoured in the breach than the observance”; he was forever pursuing some fresh impossible scheme, which, impossibly, came off – and his nights he spent sleeping crooked in the hall-way at the foot of the stairs in a kind of divan he had erected for the purpose, ready on all occasions, to satisfy any sleepless desire for a game at Cards, at which he lost greatly and consistently and with great good Humour, determined, by some faith in the “Mathematics of Fortune”, that his luck would turn …’

  Edward Syme also retained his own strange letter to his son at college, which may give another indication of how Sam’s time was spent, if we are to believe the insinuations of a father.

  We are all anticipating your return – Bubbles particularly clamours for her brother. I am afraid your Mother and I offer dreary company to a lively girl and I myself have been much occupied of late, by the Schoolhouse & sundry considerations. We expect you to instruct us all this Summer on the composition of the ‘philosopher’s stone’ &c. or rather, where it might he found. For my own part, I am so grossly ignorant respecting Chemistry and such like, that I hardly know what it cannot effect, and should not be surprised to find you Descend upon us from the Moon, after a relatively simple Operation involving no doubt a great many Explanations …

  As for this business, of Analysing, I hear it sometimes makes Bad Work. If you confine yourself to the laboratory at College, you will do well, avoiding at all cost the Laboratories of some Connecticut ladies. But I fear the particles of which you are composed, and those of some fine Lasses there, are sufficiently homogeneous to possess in a great degree the attraction of affinity. (Is that how you speak it?) If so, I am convinced that on near approach they would cause such a Fermentation as would produce a Composition … ‘Conception is a fine thing no doubt, but as their daughters may conceive, look to it …’

  Your loving Father, Sam, who misses you,

  E.

  If only the physician had healed himself.

  But I could not guess at the time what revolution in his circumstances drew Sam home, for a far greater term than a single summer, and prevented his return. The next mention of his name, in official records, occurs not at the college induction in the fall of 1813, in the allied courses of Geology, Chemistry, Mineralogy, etc. There Sam is conspicuous by his absence; but he appears again, in the spring of 1814, enlisted in the 53rd Infantry, stationed in Richmond, under the sponsorship of one Benedict Smythe. He had turned with his customary short-lived explosion of enthusiasm to a new task entirely.

  His regiment was promptly called north to prosecute the war with Britain; and Sam, after only three months in the service, found himself at the heart of the battle of Lundy’s Lane on 25 July, where he conducted himself ‘with great honour’. On 17 September Syme volunteered for a sortie against one of the British batteries surrounding Fort Erie and not only led the charge over the entrenchments, but with his own hand ‘spiked the first cannon’, in a raid that took the British completely by surprise, and effected their eventual retreat. On the recommendation of Captain Miller, Syme was forthwith promoted to lieutenant, for ‘his almost total disregard for personal well-being in his Deprivation of the enemy and attentions to his Comrades in the field’. He had been a soldier less than a year – his courage smacked somewhat of the recklessness of a young man not unwilling to die.

  That recklessness was undiminished by peacetime. On his return to Richmond, Syme immediately became entangled in a duel with the chief surgeon of the company, ‘Dr John Fowles, who’, as Sam informed his mother, ‘insinuated that I had acted dishonourably in giving him a furlough, claiming that I had myself assumed the emoluments of his office while caring for the sick he left behind him. I immediately declared his allegation false, demanding satisfaction on the field of honour – trusting that his skill with the pistol could not improve much on his infelicity with the surgeon’s knife. (In which faith, I was completely vindicated.)’

  Sam had of course tailored this account to appease the palpitations of his mother. His messmate, Tippy Adams, recalls a clumsier and messier affair, more miserable on the whole and touched with despair.

  That day I mounted guard with him, and Sam informed me, in the tedium of our watch, that he planned to fall in with Dr Fowles and ‘wring his nose’. I laughed at the time, for Sam jested often in such fashion, being full of a kind of vengeful humour, neither entirely angry nor at ease, but a something in between, restless, and disposed to ranting. He personified, as he himself declared to me, the ‘mock-heroic, as my father would say’. Accordingly, after our watch, I turned to a brief sleep, believing his boasts to be nothing more than the savageness of an idle hour.

  I was awakened shortly after by a commotion, and, dressing quickly, discovered a small gathering in the street outside our barracks. Sam paraded grandly, puffing his chest, and aping the air of the doctor – who, to speak plainly, was a foolish fellow, delighting greatly in a false erudition Sam constantly put to shame. At length, stirred by some remark I could not hear to a livelier anger, Sam, taking a step backward, cried involuntarily, ‘Draw, and defend yourself’. The doctor did not answer the challenge directly, but strode toward him, hoping no doubt to grapple his adversary, being a much larger fellow than the lieutenant, and strong as a bear. Sam interrupted his intentions by holding his sword between them, until the Doctor retreated and demanded the affair be prosecuted in an orderly fashion, convening at the Gallery as soon as possible in the presence of seconds.

  To this Sam assented at once, and glided – I can use no better word – to his quarters to prepare, like a man intoxicated with some pleasurable passion. In feet, I asked him if he had taken wine, and when he assured me that he had not, I consented to be his second.

  We met at the appointed time, and, at a distance of ten paces, standing sideways, the duellists awaited the word. I called out, Are you ready? and they, at the same instant, answered yes. I then said, Fire? and they raised their arms together deliberately, from a hanging position. Sam appeared to aim at the Doctor’s hip, and consequently fired first, striking him squarely in the leg and upsetting the motion of the Doctor’s hand, who directed his shot at Sam’s breast. The bullet whistled by, piercing only the corner of his shirt tail and pantaloons. Sam, unhurt, asked if the Doctor desired a second shot, and being informed in the negative, retired to his room – with the air of a man, I thought, whose blood had soared, more at the prospect of his own death than that of his adversary.

  This affair seemed to have doused the fire in him. At least, Sam spent the rest of his time at the 53rd peacefully enough, rising no further in the ranks, and engaging, as much as possible, in the fieldwork and cartography that exercised a portion of the peacetime army. He grew in the meantime from an angry young man into an ambitious one; but, like most internal revolutions of our spirit, the transformation left no indication of itself until
it was complete.

  In 1818, Syme entered upon the career that would occupy him for the rest of his life, and published his first geological essay, in the journal of his old professor, Sober Ben Silliman, the founder and editor of the American Journal of Science. This success convinced him to quit the army and pursue full time the theories he had thereby announced to the world. I was getting warmer.

  The essay itself, entitled ‘A Theory of Concentric Spheres’, took up the suggestions of Loomis’s catalogue of magnetic variation in the state of Virginia and offered an ingenious if somewhat improbable explanation:

  The Fact of a moving magnetic First Cause is difficult, if not impossible, to be reconciled with a solid Globe. Yet that the magnetic needle does vary, not only with latitude but the passage of Time, and according to a regular and predictable pattern, is confirmed beyond all doubt by Loomis’ excellent Map of magnetic Readings in Virginia. Still, no one, I believe (certainly not Loomis himself), has urged the variableness of the magnetic Cause against the possibility of a solid globe; neither the Neptunists nor the Plutonists address this fundamental Evidence of the consistency of the Earth’s core. We have been given a keyhole to the inner Chamber, but we avert our eyes, and refuse to look.

  According to the doctrine of Hollow Spheres this whole Mystery of the variation of the compass can be satisfactorily explained …

  There follows an intricate model of the internal globe, an onion of concentred metallic spheres, whose revolutions combine with astonishing complexity to produce the readings Loomis recorded in Virginia. At this stage in his thinking, Syme seems to have converted from his early Neptunism into the adoption of some at least of the tenets of Plutonism, the doctrine of Hutton – who argues the existence of a molten core and an endlessly evolving geological process, sans beginning, sans end, an eternal fire. Syme’s great innovation is to posit a conclusion of the Plutonist process, in which the molten core cooled and separated according to the composition of its metals. As the metals hardened, the rotation of the globe spun them into distinct spheres, compressing a socket (Syme’s word) of gaseous fluid between each one. These sockets allowed the spheres themselves to rotate freely in the whirl of the world, accounting, in their variations, for the movement of a compass needle over time and space.