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Authors: Peter Ackroyd
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Oxford. I told them separately that I needed the creature to catch the mice and rats in my lodging, and they parted with it willingly enough. It was easy to sedate the animal with nitrous oxide, and I calculated that the heart would beat for thirty minutes before it relapsed into a painless death. In those few minutes I began the process of dissection, turning the floor of my experimental theatre into a pool of blood. But I persevered in my course. I wished to prove that the organs of the creature were not distinct entities, butdepended for their efficacy upon the interdependence of them all. Thus if I hindered the workings of one, then the others would be harmed or damaged in some fashion. And so it proved. I was making such strides in my experimental philosophy that I could see all difficulties falling away.
IN THE WEEK BEFORE THE END of that term I received a letter from my father in Geneva, informing me that my sister had become gravely ill. Elizabeth was my twin in all but name. We had grown up in each other’s company. We had played together from infancy and, although we had not studied together, I had acquainted her with the import of my schoolbooks. We were said to resemble each other in features, too, and both possessed the same nervous and restless temperament.
I made plans to return home immediately. There was a packet boat leaving for Le Havre from London Bridge on the Monday following, and I travelled to London two nights before to arrange my ticket. I had hoped to see Bysshe, of course. He had not communicated with me since my departure from the city, and I was eager to learn of his adventures in my absence. I walked into Poland Street soon after my arrival, but there was no light at his window. I called up to him, but no answer came.
I had hired a small cabin on the boat to Le Havre, but it smelled so strongly of brandy and camphor that I was happy to spend much of the voyage on the open deck. The journey downriver was uneventful enough, apart from the sight of the great number of vessels that seemed like a forest of masts slowly moving past, but I was much struck by the flat marshes of the estuary near the mouth of the Thames. The isolation andloneliness of this region (which, as a passenger told me, was shunned because of the ague), stirred my spirit. I think that even then I had some faint intimations of my future labours, and of the necessity for secret and silent work far beyond the haunts of men. Had I not begun that course in the fields outside Oxford? Yet as I sailed away from England, I did not foresee that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings.
My journey took me overland by coach from Le Havre to Paris; from there I travelled on to Dijon, and so to Geneva. I was impatient to see my sister, but was obliged to change horses and rest overnight in Paris. I arrived in the early evening at an inn along the Rue St. Sulpice and, after the recent interdiction of travel between France and England, the proprietor was delighted to receive my English companions. He called together a small number of musicians, who played in the courtyard, while his wife and daughters danced a Polish mazurka before us. Such is the warmth of Gallic hospitality, about which so many libels are spread in neighbouring countries. I was to share my chamber with an Englishman travelling on business, Mr. Armitage. He was selling spectacles, lenses and such like. He was the one who had warned me of the ague upon the estuary, and he had already regaled me with several stories concerning the trade in optical goods before I decided to take the air.
I walked outside where my attention was drawn at once to a line of Parisians standing and shuffling their feet outside a pair of folding gates. Some were obviously poor, some affluent, and some of that mixed nature known to the English as shabby genteel. But their variety interested me. They stood nervously and uncertainly before the gates, speaking not at all andkeeping
IN THE WEEK BEFORE THE END of that term I received a letter from my father in Geneva, informing me that my sister had become gravely ill. Elizabeth was my twin in all but name. We had grown up in each other’s company. We had played together from infancy and, although we had not studied together, I had acquainted her with the import of my schoolbooks. We were said to resemble each other in features, too, and both possessed the same nervous and restless temperament.
I made plans to return home immediately. There was a packet boat leaving for Le Havre from London Bridge on the Monday following, and I travelled to London two nights before to arrange my ticket. I had hoped to see Bysshe, of course. He had not communicated with me since my departure from the city, and I was eager to learn of his adventures in my absence. I walked into Poland Street soon after my arrival, but there was no light at his window. I called up to him, but no answer came.
I had hired a small cabin on the boat to Le Havre, but it smelled so strongly of brandy and camphor that I was happy to spend much of the voyage on the open deck. The journey downriver was uneventful enough, apart from the sight of the great number of vessels that seemed like a forest of masts slowly moving past, but I was much struck by the flat marshes of the estuary near the mouth of the Thames. The isolation andloneliness of this region (which, as a passenger told me, was shunned because of the ague), stirred my spirit. I think that even then I had some faint intimations of my future labours, and of the necessity for secret and silent work far beyond the haunts of men. Had I not begun that course in the fields outside Oxford? Yet as I sailed away from England, I did not foresee that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings.
My journey took me overland by coach from Le Havre to Paris; from there I travelled on to Dijon, and so to Geneva. I was impatient to see my sister, but was obliged to change horses and rest overnight in Paris. I arrived in the early evening at an inn along the Rue St. Sulpice and, after the recent interdiction of travel between France and England, the proprietor was delighted to receive my English companions. He called together a small number of musicians, who played in the courtyard, while his wife and daughters danced a Polish mazurka before us. Such is the warmth of Gallic hospitality, about which so many libels are spread in neighbouring countries. I was to share my chamber with an Englishman travelling on business, Mr. Armitage. He was selling spectacles, lenses and such like. He was the one who had warned me of the ague upon the estuary, and he had already regaled me with several stories concerning the trade in optical goods before I decided to take the air.
I walked outside where my attention was drawn at once to a line of Parisians standing and shuffling their feet outside a pair of folding gates. Some were obviously poor, some affluent, and some of that mixed nature known to the English as shabby genteel. But their variety interested me. They stood nervously and uncertainly before the gates, speaking not at all andkeeping
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