FIFTH ITERATION The All-Seeing Eye
An afternoon in Horseferry Road, twelfth of November, 1855, image recorded by A. G. S. Hullcoop of the Department of Criminal Anthropometry. The shutter of Hullcoop’s Talbot “Excelsior” has captured eleven men descending the broad steps from the entrance of the Central Statistics Bureau. Triangulation locates Hullcoop, with his powerful lens, concealed atop the roof of a publishers’ offices in Holywell Street. Foremost among the eleven is Laurence Oliphant. His gaze, beneath the black brim of his top-hat, is mild and ironical. The tall, dull-surfaced hats create a repeated vertical motif common to images of the period. Like the others, Oliphant wears a dark frock-coat above narrow trousers of a lighter hue. His neck is wrapped in a high choker of dark silk. The effect is dignified and columnar, though something in Oliphant’s manner manages to suggest the sportsman’s lounging stroll. The other men are barristers, Bureau functionaries, a senior representative of the Colgate Works. Behind them, above Horseferry Road, swoop the tarred copper cables of the Bureau’s telegraphs. Processes of resolution reveal the pale blurs dotting these lines to be pigeons. Though the afternoon is unseasonably bright, Oliphant, a frequent visitor to the Bureau, is opening an umbrella. The top-hat of the Colgate’s representative displays an elongated comma of white pigeon-dung.
Oliphant sat alone in a small waiting-room, which communicated by a glazed door with a surgery. The buff-colored walls were hung with colored diagrams depicting the ravages of hideous diseases. A bookcase was crammed with dingy medical volumes. There were carved wooden pews that might have come from a wrecked church, and a coal-dyed woolen drugget in the middle of the floor. He looked at a mahogany instrument-case and a huge roll of lint occupying places of their own on the bookcase. Someone called his name. He saw a face through the panes of the surgery door. Pallid, the bulging forehead plastered with drenched strands of dark hair. “Collins,” he said. ” ‘Captain Swing.’ ” And other faces, legion, the faces of the vanished, names suppressed from memory. “Mr. Oliphant?” Dr. McNeile regarded him from the doorway. Vaguely embarrassed, Oliphant rose from his pew, automatically straightening his coat. “Are you entirely well, Mr. Oliphant? Your expression was most extraordinary, just then.” McNeile was slender and neatly bearded, with dark brown hair, his grey eyes so pale as to suggest transparency. “Yes, thank you, Dr. McNeile. And yourself?” “Very well, thank you. Some remarkable symptoms are emerging, Mr. Oliphant, in the wake of recent events. I’ve one gentleman who was seated atop an omnibus, Regent Street, when that vehicle was struck broadside by a steam-gurney traveling at an estimated twenty miles per hour!” “Really? How dreadful . . .” To Oliphant’s horror, McNeile actually rubbed his long white hands together. “There was no evident physical trauma as a result of the collision. None. None whatever.” He fixed Oliphant with that bright, nearly colorless gaze. “Subsequently, we have observed insomnia, incipient melancholia, minor amnesiac episodes — numerous symptoms customarily associated with latent hysteria.” McNeile smiled, a quick rictus of triumph. “We have observed, Mr. Oliphant, a remarkably pure, that is to say, a clinical progression of railway spine!” McNeile bowed Oliphant through the doorway, into a handsomely paneled room, which was sparsely furnished with ominous electro-magnetic appliances. Oliphant removed his coat and waistcoat, arranging them upon a mahogany valet-stand. “And your . . . ‘spells,’ Mr. Oliphant?” “None, thank you, since the last treatment.” Was this true? It was difficult to say, really. “And your sleep has been undisturbed?” “I should say so. Yes.” “Any dreams of note? Waking visions?” “No.” McNeile stared with his pale eyes. “Very well.” Oliphant, feeling utterly foolish in his braces and starched shirt-front, climbed upon McNeile’s “manipulation table,” a curiously articulated piece of furniture that in equal parts resembled a chaise-lounge and a torturer’s rack. The thing’s various segments were upholstered in a stiff. Engine-patterned brocade, smooth and cold to the touch. Oliphant attempted to find a comfortable position; McNeile made this impossible, spinning one or another of several brass wheels. “Do be still,” McNeile said. Oliphant closed his eyes. “This fellow Pocklington,” McNeile said. “I beg your pardon?” Oliphant opened his eyes. McNeile stood above him, positioning a coil of iron on an adjustable armature. “Pocklington. He’s attempting to take credit for the cessation of the Limehouse cholera.” “The name isn’t familiar A medical man?” “Hardly. The fellow’s a works-engineer. He claims to have ended the cholera by the simple expedient of removing the handle from a municipal water-pump!” McNeile was screwing a braided copper cable in place. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.” “Little wonder, sir! The man’s either a fool or the worst sort of charlatan. He’s written in the Times that the cholera is nothing more than the result of contaminated water.” “Is that entirely unreasonable, do you think?” “Utterly counter to enlightened medical theory.” McNeile set to work with a second length of copper. “This Pocklington, you see, is something of a favorite of Lord Babbage’s. He was employed to remedy the ventilation troubles of the pneumatic trains.” Oliphant, detecting the envy in McNeile’s tone, felt a slight and spiteful satisfaction. Babbage, speaking at Byron’s state funeral, had regretted the fact that modern medicine remained more an art than a science. The speech, naturally, had been most widely published. “Do close your eyes, please, in the event of a spark being discharged.” McNeile was pulling on a pair of great, stiff, leather gauntlets. McNeile connected the copper cables to a massive voltaic cell. The room filled with the faint eerie odor of electricity. “Please try to relax, Mr. Oliphant, so as to facilitate the polar reversal!”