fact have been as important as the caliber of her song masters.
In 1897 Munyon assigned Crippen his biggest responsibility yet, to take over management of the company’s London office. Munyon proposed to pay him $10,000 a year, an astonishing sum equivalent to about $220,000 in twenty-first-century dollars, and paid in an era when federal income tax did not exist. Crippen told Cora the news, expecting that she would find a move to London an irresistible prospect.
He was wrong. She complained that she could not give up her lessons and told him he would have to go alone, that she would join him later. On the question of when, she was disconcertingly vague.
As always he assented, though now an ocean would separate them and her freedom would be complete.
Full of sorrow and unease, the little doctor sailed to England. It was April 1897. Intent on establishing permanent residence, he brought all his belongings, including supplies of his favored poisons.
He arrived without challenge.
I N L ONDON, C RIPPEN AND M ARCONI both entered a realm of unaccustomed anxiety. Outwardly the stones of empire remained in place, snug and solid and suitably grimed, but there existed in certain quarters a perception that the world was growing unruly and that Britain and her increasingly frail queen had seen their best days.
London was still the biggest, most powerful city in the world. Its four and a half million people inhabited 8,000 streets, many only a block long, and did their drinking in 7,500 public houses and rode in 11,000 cabs pulled by 20,000 horses, the cab population divided among four-wheeled “growlers” and two-wheeled hansoms, named not for their appearance, which was indeed handsome, but rather for their inventor, Joseph Hansom. Crippen joined an estimated 15,000 of his countrymen already living in London, which number by coincidence equaled the total of known lunatics residing within the city’s five asylums. Most important, London formed the seat of an empire that controlled one-quarter of the world’s population and one-quarter of its land.
Cab whistles screamed for attention, one blast to summon a growler, two for a hansom. Horse-drawn omnibuses clotted the streets. The buses had two levels, with open-air “garden seating” on top, reached by a stairwell spiraling in a manner that allowed ladies to ascend without concern. Motorcars, or simply “motors,” added a fresh layer of noise and stench and danger. In 1896 their increasing use forced repeal of a law that had limited speed to a maximum of two miles per hour and required a footman to walk ahead carrying a red flag. The new Locomotives (on Highways) Act raised the speed limit to fourteen and, wisely, did away with the footmen. Underneath the city there was hell in motion. Passengers descending to the subterranean railways encountered a seismic roar produced by too much smoke, too much steam, and too much noise packed into too small an enclosure, the Tube, into which the trains fit as snugly as pistons in a cylinder.
There was fog, yes, often days of it on end, and with a depth so profound as to classify it as a species distinct from the fogs of elsewhere. Londoners nicknamed these fits of opacity “London particulars.” The fog came thick and sulfurous and squeezed the flare of gas lamps to cats’ eyes of amber that left the streets so dark and sinister that children of the poor hired themselves out as torchbearers to light the way for men and women bent on walking the city’s darker passages. The light formed around the walkers a shifting wall of gauze, through which other pedestrians appeared with the suddenness of ghosts. On some nights the eeriness was particularly acute, especially after an evening of engaging in what had become a common pastime, the holding of séances. The walk home afterward could be a long one, suffused with sorrow and grief and marked by the occasional glance behind.
This turn toward the veil was largely Darwin’s fault. By
In 1897 Munyon assigned Crippen his biggest responsibility yet, to take over management of the company’s London office. Munyon proposed to pay him $10,000 a year, an astonishing sum equivalent to about $220,000 in twenty-first-century dollars, and paid in an era when federal income tax did not exist. Crippen told Cora the news, expecting that she would find a move to London an irresistible prospect.
He was wrong. She complained that she could not give up her lessons and told him he would have to go alone, that she would join him later. On the question of when, she was disconcertingly vague.
As always he assented, though now an ocean would separate them and her freedom would be complete.
Full of sorrow and unease, the little doctor sailed to England. It was April 1897. Intent on establishing permanent residence, he brought all his belongings, including supplies of his favored poisons.
He arrived without challenge.
I N L ONDON, C RIPPEN AND M ARCONI both entered a realm of unaccustomed anxiety. Outwardly the stones of empire remained in place, snug and solid and suitably grimed, but there existed in certain quarters a perception that the world was growing unruly and that Britain and her increasingly frail queen had seen their best days.
London was still the biggest, most powerful city in the world. Its four and a half million people inhabited 8,000 streets, many only a block long, and did their drinking in 7,500 public houses and rode in 11,000 cabs pulled by 20,000 horses, the cab population divided among four-wheeled “growlers” and two-wheeled hansoms, named not for their appearance, which was indeed handsome, but rather for their inventor, Joseph Hansom. Crippen joined an estimated 15,000 of his countrymen already living in London, which number by coincidence equaled the total of known lunatics residing within the city’s five asylums. Most important, London formed the seat of an empire that controlled one-quarter of the world’s population and one-quarter of its land.
Cab whistles screamed for attention, one blast to summon a growler, two for a hansom. Horse-drawn omnibuses clotted the streets. The buses had two levels, with open-air “garden seating” on top, reached by a stairwell spiraling in a manner that allowed ladies to ascend without concern. Motorcars, or simply “motors,” added a fresh layer of noise and stench and danger. In 1896 their increasing use forced repeal of a law that had limited speed to a maximum of two miles per hour and required a footman to walk ahead carrying a red flag. The new Locomotives (on Highways) Act raised the speed limit to fourteen and, wisely, did away with the footmen. Underneath the city there was hell in motion. Passengers descending to the subterranean railways encountered a seismic roar produced by too much smoke, too much steam, and too much noise packed into too small an enclosure, the Tube, into which the trains fit as snugly as pistons in a cylinder.
There was fog, yes, often days of it on end, and with a depth so profound as to classify it as a species distinct from the fogs of elsewhere. Londoners nicknamed these fits of opacity “London particulars.” The fog came thick and sulfurous and squeezed the flare of gas lamps to cats’ eyes of amber that left the streets so dark and sinister that children of the poor hired themselves out as torchbearers to light the way for men and women bent on walking the city’s darker passages. The light formed around the walkers a shifting wall of gauze, through which other pedestrians appeared with the suddenness of ghosts. On some nights the eeriness was particularly acute, especially after an evening of engaging in what had become a common pastime, the holding of séances. The walk home afterward could be a long one, suffused with sorrow and grief and marked by the occasional glance behind.
This turn toward the veil was largely Darwin’s fault. By
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