The Syme Papers Read online

  In the event, the levity of Reverend Jenkyns’s tone – whose sermons had grown increasingly famous for that quality, and the almost complete absence of religious faith it seemed to suggest – prepared me in some part for the shocking nonsense of that amusing and instructive book, The Remarkable journeys of Mr Seaborn, Syme’s first and only novel.

  *

  I strode on a bright, clear morning in July through the clutter of construction and traffic at King’s Cross – the sunshine catching the dust beaten up in its very fine net – full, I confess, of a pleasant, almost overpowering sense of anticipation. The New Platonist, the Holy Grail of my quest, still lay beyond my reach; but a novel, a scientific novel, hundreds of pages of Syme’s thought, unmediated, the breath of his mind caught on the page, the very scent of his imagination folded in the flower of a book. The buses came thundering past me from Euston, great red canvases for advertisement – declaring the virtues of Beers and Movies and Shampoos – the heads on the second tier peering out on their way to work, tiny beside the great flat faces slapped on the side of the bus, seen sipping or showering or shouting and beginning to peel. I thought again of the brittleness of bone and paper; the virtue of paper lying in its almost endless powers of rejuvenation, reprinting, translation, rediscovery – for I am, in a sense, a doctor of books, who breathes life in dead ones and mends them as I go, setting bones and patching scars and allowing the fractures to knit, with a freedom and power impossible to practise on the human body. Perhaps, I thought, today, I shall discover the root of Wegener’s insight, tiny as the curled thread at the end of a carrot’s nose; perhaps, I thought, today, I shall make my name.

  The book itself had been easily discovered, under its title, of course, and not the name of its author. The phrase ‘remarkable journeys’ produced a number of … hits, I believe, is the term commonly used to count the doses of the biblio addict – but none of them belonged to Mr Syme, nor anything like him. Mr ‘Seaborn’ proved luckier, and there, fifth in the column, humming in the delicate green jargon of the computer screen, stood Syme himself, misspelled, the ‘m’ mirrored, the word pluralized, following a curiously compounded word in the title of his book: Symmesonia, or the Voyage of Discovery, by Samuel Highgate Symmes (sic). The word, I believe, to be pronounced ‘Sym’ (after its author) – ‘meso’ (after Mesopotamia, an original kingdom) – ‘nia’, a common enough suffix to give a sonorous round to the edge of a word. I called the book in for the following morning, which I have already described, the sun shining, beating up the dust, my own steps brisk, regular, metronomic, the kind of stride instinctively sidestepped by the passer-by, and avoided even by the rags of paper blown from the rush of air under the rumbling buses.

  Under the vaulted roof of the Rare Books & Music Room of the British Library, among my fellow moles (the old men in ties and sneakers, the ladies draped in yellow cardigans, occasional students sniffling beside me, all looking forward to their packed lunches, their week-old bananas and pots of yoghurt, their brown-bread sandwiches locked in tiny Tupperware, their cartons of Ribena, their Thermoses of sweet tea), I carried the precious volume to my desk. The book itself, a slim brown volume, left nothing to be desired. The title almost obscured by time, leather roughened at the spine to the colour of split wood, a fringe of gold leaf lining the edges and bursting into delicate flower at the rim. The pages – marbled in green and pink, a peacock’s tale, dormant – fluttered into life as I opened the book, tumbling in rainbow array. I pressed the stippled leather to my square nose, and breathed in the wonderful odour of books: the sweetness of leather; the must of old paper slightly damp with time; a slight edge, almost sharp, as of tobacco. And turned the cover.

  After the marbled inside and a few blank pages (smudged at one edge by a thumb overfamiliar with the tip of a pencil), I came upon the title: Symmesonia, or the Voyage of Discovery, by (so the pseudonym ran) Captain Adam Seaborn, New York: printed by J. Seymour, 49 John Street; 1820. On the following page, the Southern District of New York approved the copyright and admitted the tome into its office – sealed accordingly by a red crown, stamped by the clerk, a certain, or rather an uncertain, Gilbert Livingston Thompson (thus briefly recalled from the shades of death by his connection to the great man). And then, at the delicate turn of a page, proudly displayed – in pale black lines of ink, stained by the red of old Gilbert’s stamp seeping through – appeared a ‘Sectional View of the Earth’, a map of the interior planet, the Holy Grail of my investigation, Syme’s world itself.

  Let me describe it. A succession of circles, widening from the centre, interrupted by irregular gaps that allowed free passage from the core to the crust, according to their rotation; two such caesuras conspicuous at the Poles, to which the diagram directed our particular attention by dotted lines. Inside each Pole stood a series of numbers, indicating various stops along the interior of the crust. Just inside the Northern Pole lay a ‘place of exile’. Working westward along the interior globe, one ‘sailed’ upon the ‘supposed place of Belzubia’; and thence, to the Southern Pole, the site of Token Island within the globe, and Seaborn’s Land without. It took me perhaps a full minute, counted slowly, breath after hushed breath, to realize that I had stumbled upon the work of a madman.

  This realization was only confirmed by the ADVERTISEMENT that followed, a piece of such bravura insanity that almost rekindled, even as it doused, the ashes of my respect for this ‘forgotten genius’:

  The Author of this Work, and of the Earthly Revolution which it relates, leaves it to his readers to decide whether he excels most as a Navigator or a Writer, and whether he amuses as much as he instructs. If he has any professional vanity, arising from his enterprises upon the Sea, it does not tempt him to conceal that, in the achievements here recorded, he availed himself of all the lights and facilities afforded by the sublime Theory of an Internal World, published by Lt Samuel Highgate Syme, and by the application of Steam to the navigation of vessels, for which the world is indebted to FULTON. Far from coveting what does not belong to himself, he feels, after having discovered and explored a world before unknown, in the very fertile Bowel of our mother Earth, that he can well afford to bestow on others the praise to which they are entitled. He has one consolation, in which he is confident of the Sympathy of those who wish him well; namely, that if the book is not bought and read, it will not be because it is not an American book, nor an exposition of the practical Branch of the noble science of Geognosy. He gives notice that he has no intention to relinquish his Right to the invention of oblique paddles for Steam Ships, though the circumstances narrated at the close of the volume hinder him from taking out a Patent at present. Adam Seaborn

  A wonderful piece, no doubt, of practical lunacy, of humility and arrogance intermixed, but hardly a testimony to the scientific genius of the man who inspired the great Alfred Wegener – a connection whose existence I had greatly begun to doubt.

  Have you ever stood in the dust of a dead man’s house, opened creaking the closet of his clothes – racked neatly still, the jackets settled loosely over the thin shoulders of the wire hangers, the trousers pressed and dangling in even rows; explored the larder, the tins of uneaten soup, the packets of spaghetti, the undrunk wine; and then, slipped on the jacket, and eaten the soup, and drunk the wine, alone, in the quiet of his absence? Have you ever tracked a dead man’s thought down the gloomy corridors of the mind, your comprehension lit by the same shower of synapses that illuminated the passages of his brain almost two centuries before, spark for spark? Have you ever done all this, and then tidied up what you found?

  Our gods have been replaced by our interpreters, our critics, our biographers, our computer records, the caretakers of our posterity. We trust not in fifteen minutes of fame, but in the possibility that the mass of our recorded lives might be re-edited, rebound, reissued, and some sense made of it all. If only a patient eye could sift through the endless stream of our life, the ore would glitter free, slighter, no doubt, but simpler and shining. And
in this faith, we live by quantities – quantities of thought and talk, of actions and reactions, of meals eaten and jobs finished and loves exchanged and anger vented and kindness done; and lies told, and hunches followed, and lust pursued, and laziness tolerated, collecting and spreading like pools of rain. All in the faith that a good sieve will sort out the best of it, the shimmer of gold from the mess of grit; all in the hope that if you live long and large enough, the gold will be there. All in the hope of a good editor.

  And in this faith I had pursued Syme. But what was I to make of this nonsense! Where was the gold in this grit?

  The madness of it all, best forgotten! A stench of shame rose up from the grave of Syme’s ideas, rotten at birth and festering from two centuries of neglect. Such natural gifts abused over these laboured fantasies, which, like a bad lie, stretched on and on, growing where they could not persuade, as though, by overbearing all interruption, they might stimulate, if not belief, then the silence that usually attends it. This was the thirteenth chime of the clock, as an old professor once said to me – not only ridiculous in itself, but calling into question the validity of the other twelve. A selection of the chapter summaries alone gives a taste of the nonsense I had stumbled upon.

  CHAPTER I

  The Author’s reasons for undertaking a Voyage of Discovery. – He builds a vessel for his purpose upon a new Plan. – His departure from the United States …

  CHAPTER II

  The Author passes South Georgia, and proceeds in search of Sandwich Island. – States to his officers and men his reasons for believing in the existence of Great Bodies of Land within the antarctic circle, and for the opinion that the Polar Region is subject to great heat in summer. – Crew mutiny at the instigation of Mr Slim, third mate. – Happy discovery of a southern Continent, which, at the unanimous and earnest solicitation of officers and men, he names Seaborn’s Land …

  CHAPTER V

  The Author discovers the south extremity of Seaborn’s Land, which he names Cape Worldsend. – The compass becomes useless. – He states the manner in which he obviated the difficulty occasioned thereby. – He enters the internal world: describes the phenomena which occur. Discovers Token Island. – Occurrences at that Island.

  CHAPTER VI

  The Author departs from Token Island, in search of an internal continent – Wind, weather, and other phenomena of the internal seas. – Great alarm of the crew. – Discovery of an inhabited country.

  CHAPTER VII

  Description of the first view of the coast. – The Author names the discovered country Symmesonia, after the great, illustrious, sublime Mr Samuel Syme. – Enters the harbour. – His first interview with the Symmesonians. – Sketch of their appearance. – He commences the study of the Symmesonian language. – Wonderful powers of mind displayed by the natives. – Account of an aeriel vessel.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Author leaves the ship to visit the seat of government. – Description of the country. – Account of the polity of the Symmesonians, as stated by his conductor. – Comparison of the industry, its objects and ends in the two worlds, and of the necessities and habits of the Internals and Externals. – Expulsion of the unworthy from Symmesonia, to a Place of Exile near the North Pole. – External world supposed to have been peopled by outcasts.

  CHAPTER IX

  The Author arrives at the seat of government … He is admitted to an audience by the Best Man. – Account of the interview, and of his unfortunate efforts to exalt the character of the externals by describing some of their splendid follies.

  CHAPTER X

  Containing some account of the strange rationality of the Symmesonians. – Their simplicity of dress. – Manner of making cloth. – Circulating medium. – Taxes …

  CHAPTER XII

  Wonderful faculties of the Symmesonians. – Translation of my books into their language. – Proposition of a Wise man to make slaves of the Author and his people. – The Author’s remonstrance. – The Wise man disgraced.

  CHAPTER XV

  The Author is ordered to depart from Symmesonia. – The Best Man’s reasons for sending him away …

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The Author arrives at Canton. – Transactions in China. – Sails for the United States. – Loss of manuscripts. – Difficulties for Mr Slim.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Hurricane off the Isle of France. – Its consequences. – Death of Mr Slim.

  CHAPTER XX

  The Author arrives in the United States. – Consigns his cargo to Mr Slippery. – Is reduced to poverty by the failure of Mr Slippery. – His great distress. – Inducement to publish this brief account of his discoveries. – Conclusion.

  All this from a man who had never been to sea; and never further south than Savannah. Oh, Pitt, Pitt, I thought, what hole have you dug yourself now? What mad fool have you chased to his lair? I closed the book before me with a sudden sense of the inevitability of posterity. What is good will survive, Pitt, I thought; no use tinkering with memory; this man has been forgotten for a reason. The horror of that line struck me, like a sharp knock against the bone. We are all forgotten for a reason. The passage of time alone does not obscure us, cover our gravestones, hide us away in old chests and preservation trusts and the vagaries of libraries – but some internal flaw widens with the years, splits us and we burn like cracked wood. We are forgotten because there is no virtue in us to survive the fire of time, no hard truth incorruptible by age and heat; except in the best of us, the ones that count, who shine in history, like a diamond polished by a flame, growing clearer and sharper with the years. Wegener had such stuff in him; death revealed him, tore away the clutter of false life till the rock gleamed through. Syme did not; death left no virtue in him, no matter how I pecked and sniffed at his ashes.

  And I had no virtue left in me. The summer was half-done; the days shortening – how I hate that inexorable door of day closing into winter! The fellowship had had a dying fall; not a word written, not a fact proved. Wegener still defied all precedent; the New Platonist had burned in the fire of his father’s house and no one now could regret its loss; Syme himself was burning up. The last fragments of his life caught fire briefly and sparkled in my eyes, until they too puffed away in smoke. Another year of teaching loomed; the question of tenure loomed; and I had nothing to show for myself. Some grinding streak in me demanded failure, pushed me to the ground, like a boat whose sail is drawn too tight and drives it to a standstill. I had the wind behind me and I fought it, like Syme, and failed.

  I turned a final time to Syme’s little book and read the almost touching introduction.

  In the year 1817, I projected a voyage of discovery, in the hope of finding a Passage to a new and untried World. I flattered myself that I should open the way to new Fields for the enterprise of my Fellow-citizens, supply new sources of Wealth, fresh Food for curiosity, and additional means of Enjoyment; objects of vast importance, since the resources of the known World have been exhausted by research, its wealth monopolized, its Wonders of Curiosity explored, its every Thing investigated and understood!

  In the year 2000 (I ruminated) I won a Fulbright for a voyage of recovery, in the hope of finding a passage to an old and neglected genius. I flattered myself that I should open a new way to an old field, and present another frontier for the enterprise of my fellow academics, supply new sources of footnotes, fresh food for lectures and symposia, and additional means of employment; objects of vast importance, since, as I have come to believe, the resources of the known world have been exhausted by research, its wealth used up, its wonders of curiosity expired, its every thing investigated and understood! And so I shut the book, returned it patiently to the young lady in a sari and boot-cut jeans at the desk, and walked out (ignorant, at the time, that the seeds of fresh hope had already blown into my thoughts and wriggled in the earth of my subconscious).

  All nature seemed in symphony against me – I could almost feel the beat of the conductor’s baton. For that aftern
oon the flying ants descended on King’s Cross, ugly brutes like fistfuls of raisins, scattering and dropping down trousers and crawling up sleeves. I could smack them only with the full fist of my strapped hand, which left the bones tingling like struck tuning-forks, up the cords of my wrist into my elbow.

  I could only laugh, therefore, when the cash point, as this whimsical nation insists on calling ATMs, refused not my card but my credit. My account had run dry, or nearly so. Five pounds and sixty-seven pence still trickled through the system, accumulating approximately eleven pence ha’penny interest a year, at which rate I could buy a decent pizza for my supper by the year 2023. In fact, as I soon discovered, I could not even buy one then, as the cash point, owing to some laziness of its mechanical spirit, refused to dispense sums under ten pounds. It felt, somehow, that it had not reached its elevated station in life only to dole pennies to paupers; and though I knew, knew in my heart of hearts, that somewhere in its electric bowels it contained a ‘fiver’ and could have coughed it up, had it chosen to, the blinking machine insisted again and again that it preferred not to. I had fifteen pence in my pockets.