The Poisoned Island (24 page)

Perhaps Sir Joseph is seeking safety in numbers. The two men have never met before, but Harriott knows full well the capacities of Sir Joseph to manipulate events. He knows how he and Horton were used by Sir Joseph during the Ratcliffe Highway investigation. Now that unspoken knowledge sits behind this invitation, just as it had stood lurking behind his luncheon with Graham. Sir Joseph does not want a one-to-one encounter with the old magistrate. Perhaps he just wishes to avoid a row.

Well then, Harriott thinks. I will play the politician for another evening.

*  *  *

Just before seven, Harriott’s carriage pulls up by the Cheshire Cheese. A well-dressed doorman helps him down and escorts him, with no little ceremony, into the tavern and through to a dining room at the back of the building. There he finds the Philosophers already assembled. Aaron Graham is already among them. Robert Brown is also there, and Graham goes across to speak in his ear before greeting Harriott. This rather confirms the magistrate’s suspicion that the two of them have engineered tonight’s invitation between them.

“My dear Harriott! A joy to see you. Brown said he had arranged an invitation.”

“A delight to see you too, Graham, as ever. I had no idea you would be here tonight.”

“Oh, I try not to miss these. They’re always particularly good fun. Now, let me introduce you to some people.”

There are perhaps forty men in the room. Banks is already in his position as the presiding member, seated in gouty magnificence at the head of one of three long tables that have been squeezed into the little dining room. Graham maneuvers Harriott skillfully through the room, chattering to various personalities as they go—“John Harriott, magistrate, this is of course Edward Jenner, whose great work in vaccinations is so well-known . . . John Harriott, Thomas Young, who has broken new ground in the study of Light itself . . . the Right Honorable Charles Abbot, of course, the long-standing Speaker of the House of Commons, may I present John Harriott, magistrate . . . Robert Brown you already know, of course, and I do not need to list his many achievements . . . John Harriott, magistrate, this is of course John Abernethy, the renowned surgeon . . .”—the names a whirl of honors
and prestige, some of them recognizable to Harriott, many of them heard for the first time and then forgotten. All the time they are making their way towards the President, Graham whispering in his ear betimes about Sir Joseph’s personality and idiosyncrasies, in between presenting this surgeon or that baron or this discoverer of worlds. Harriott feels almost smothered beneath a blanket of Achievement, as if the successes and discoveries and inventions of the men in this room were some kind of heavenly score card against which his own struggles through life—Navy, East India Company, farmer, magistrate, inventor, bankrupt, magistrate, husband, father—look like a paltry harvest indeed.

Finally, they reach the head of the table, where the President sits silently, his wig of the old style (as indeed is Harriott’s), his enormous belly encircled by the blue coat, the red sash and the one bright golden star so beloved by London’s caricaturists. He is both surprisingly old and surprisingly formidable, and he is staring with enormous gloom into a large pewter tankard of porter. Various Fellows have edged towards him and then edged away again as his mood became apparent to them. But even in this gloomy state Banks is, without any doubt, seated in the very center of the fray. There are other
significant
men in the room, perhaps a dozen by Harriott’s reckoning; natural philosophers and nobles both. But these men only create their own little whirlpools of attention and deference. Banks is the still, brooding heart of the entire place, the sun around which the planets and moons revolve.

As they reach the head of the table, Graham leans in and whispers into the ear of the President, and Banks looks up and directly into the eyes of John Harriott. He glowers but now he also sparkles, the eyes filled with intelligence and
the vestiges of what must once have been an extraordinary energy. Charm springs out of him like pollen from a zesty flock of Dutch flowers, the gloom lifted and blown away like steam disappearing from a great machine. He makes as if to stand but gives up almost immediately, grasping Harriott’s hand and apologizing for “this blasted gout,” and Harriott points out that he, too, is virtually lame and there is no shame in sitting, at which Banks positively glows with fellow feeling and indicates that Harriott should sit to his left, much to the visible annoyance of some of the other Fellows, who have had their own seating scheme in mind. Harriott does so, and Graham takes his own seat to Harriott’s left.

“My dear Harriott,” says Banks. “It is a great pleasure and honor to meet with you, sir.”

Harriott has rehearsed this meeting many times before. Sir Joseph Banks has been a persistent shadowy presence in his life these last months, a man of great power who seems to be able to craft circumstances to his own will. Harriott’s resentment towards him is enormous and has, at times, almost overflowed. And yet here he is, being charmed by the old man (and yet, no older than he), resentment ebbing away like a receding tide.

“Sir Joseph. Your kindness and warmth towards me this evening is as welcome as it is unexpected.”

“Not at all. Graham here tells me much of the work you and he do in maintaining civic peace upon the hurrying currents of the river. I know of the sacrifices you have made in the service of the commerce, of the country, and, if I may say so, of myself and this society. You are a precious resource in our modern metropolis, my dear man.”

Harriott begins to see how Banks has risen so very high, and how he did it so very young. The man’s charm is almost
smothering, as if the air was being filled with it at the expense of oxygen. He cannot but help compare the events of his own life—with its adventures and shocking reverses—with the legendary dramas of the man’s next to him. Both men have served Britain—and humanity—in their own way. But has Banks struggled like Harriott has? Has he had to scrabble around with the same financial helplessness? For there is the difference. It was money that made Banks so high, it was money that taught him this bountiful charm, and it is money that still keeps Harriott low. It is a sour thought amidst so much sweetness.

“We are of course dedicated in our work, Sir Joseph,” he says. “But I make no comparison. You have discovered and catalogued entire worlds, sir. London may feel the benefit of my work. Mankind feels the benefit of yours.”

“Well, that is excellently put, Harriott, but I condemn it for its surfeit of praise. I have only lived to serve England.”

“Yes, sir. She is the mistress we all live for.”

“Indeed. And in these dark warlike days, it behoves us to remember her.”

“Indeed, Sir Joseph. Indeed.”

The food begins to arrive. One of the Fellows rises, a man Harriott does not recognize and to whom he was not introduced, but clearly a clergyman. He says a short prayer and blesses the food. Beef in steaks and cutlets is set on the table, along with mutton, potatoes, and vegetables. A tankard appears at Harriott’s arm, full to the brim, and in keeping with the general practice he downs the full pint with enthusiasm, at which point a replacement appears almost instantaneously. Graham encourages him to eat, and soon a plate piled high with meat, potatoes, and vegetables is in front of him, along with a selection of sauces in bottles.

Banks eats little, but stares hungrily at the other diners. “Curse this affliction,” he says, partly to himself, partly to Harriott. “I have to eat like a young girl and drink like a governess. I would down this honeyed beer as you all do, but it would now kill me. Ah, me. Still. I have lived well, and fully.”

“We are indeed fortunate,” says Harriott.

“How so, sir?”

“We eat and dine well in this tavern, Sir Joseph. Many others do not. There are a great many poor and desperate men—and women—in Wapping, Sir Joseph, for whom this meal would represent a month’s dining.”

“You are suggesting we are inconsiderate in our habits.”

“Not by any means. Your enjoyment has been well earned by a life of dedicated service and, if I may say so, great personal courage. I merely point out that many men who may have very similar qualities have not risen so far.”

Graham chokes somewhat at this, and Banks looks at Harriott quizzically.

“Harriott, you seem to imply that I have been fortunate, while others have not.”

“Indeed, sir. That is not saying fortune is ill-deserved. But it is fortune nonetheless.”

“Do we not make our own destiny?”

“To a certain extent. But are we really able to say, Sir Joseph, that we are thus more deserving of any fame we achieve? I for one see Fortune as a fickle mistress. She has made me lame, she once washed away my farm in the waters of an Essex river, and yet she has also made me a magistrate.”

Banks considers this, and continues.

“I wonder, Harriott, to what extent this applies to countries as well as men.”

“Sir?”

“Take this country, this England. Its situation, for one: a temperate climate, well suited to horticulture and agriculture. Surrounded by sea, a natural defense against predators. A surfeit of natural resources, chiefly coal, which is even now driving huge changes in our wealth and our power. In historical times, forest covered the land, and we used the wood from that forest to build ships. In those ships we traveled the world, we discovered countries and we claimed them, we named them, and we controlled them. We emerged onto foreign shores, and the natives saw us and were amazed, and we learned their languages and their habits. Some of them ate us. Some of them pleasured us. Some of them ran away. But the English took hold of the world. We sent them our prisoners, and we brought back their seeds and their bulbs and their plants and created little paradises of our own. Did you know, Harriott, that the word
paradise
comes from the Persian word for
garden
? We built paradises here on our damp and lucky little island, but we left behind our European diseases in those paradises we discovered. Diseases of the body, but diseases of the spirit, too: dissipation, greed, violence. All this, you say—and I agree, Harriott—depended partly on the Fortune of our situation. And if Fortune does indeed weigh everything and distribute her riches according to the weighing, I am caused to wonder what she makes of those foreign peoples. Were they lucky? Or were they quite as unlucky as they could be?”

He stops. There is a watchful expectancy around the table. Harriott realizes that the whole group has been listening to this little homily. Some of the Fellows—the more ostentatiously attired ones, whom Harriott takes for Nobility rather than Philosophers—look mortally offended. Graham smiles impassively, presumably waiting to see how the room has taken Banks’s speech before framing his own response.

“But surely, Sir Joseph, these other places have benefited from our knowledge of them,” says Harriott, carefully, but with patriotic feelings stirring in his breast.

“Perhaps so, Harriott, perhaps so. In what forms, would you say, do those benefits appear?”

“Well, sir, in Religion. Our missionaries have brought them the fruits of Salvation.”

Banks says nothing for a while, pondering a fork.

“I do wonder,” he says, after a moment, “whether the Lord needed our missionaries to make himself known.”

The clergyman who had blessed the meal makes a small noise, as if he were swallowing a puppy.

“You see, Harriott, we found these peoples in a primitive state. Many of their practices were barbaric, and continue to be so. But they also existed in a state of innocence. The people of Otaheite, for example—we must remember with what wonder we first encountered them. They seemed both primitive but also, dare I say it,
blessed
.”

“But can we really say that of them, Sir Joseph? They sacrificed men, women, and children.”

“They did indeed, and no doubt they still do, and you go right to the heart of the matter, Harriott. They were well fed and they were healthy and yet they were implicated in the most profound evils. They fought and killed each other and in the recent past they may have eaten each other. We saw those things and they disgusted us, such that we were able, I think, to ignore their other qualities. Their innocence. Their happiness. The extraordinarily blessed circumstances in which they lived. That Island is so fertile, Harriott, that it feeds an empire.”

“How so, Sir Joseph?”

“Its breadfruit, Harriott. The breadfruit which Bligh took
to Jamaica—in a ship called, mind you this,
Providence
—and which feeds the workers there and across the West Indies. The workers who harvest the sugar which fills the coffers of the banks in this great city we sit in tonight. That breadfruit we took from Otaheite, and in return we gave them missionaries, yes. But we also gave them disease. We poisoned their island with the flux and the pox. I do wonder what Milton would have made of such a transaction.”

The room has fallen quite silent. The clergyman looks like he may pass out. Aaron Graham has a fixed smile on his face, but it is the kind of smile he would make if a duchess’s dog had appeared and starting bouncing its loins up and down on his leg. Robert Brown’s face would look carefully blank were it not for one slightly raised eyebrow.

Banks looks around at them and suddenly laughs—an explosive bark of a laugh which punctures the sudden tension in the room like a musket shot through a hot-air balloon, and the glee in his face is a miracle.

“Look at them, my dear Harriott! Look at their shocked faces! The President of the Royal Society has just questioned the beneficence of England’s gifts! Look at Abbot! My dear sir, fear not. I am no apostate. We are English, gentlemen. We are members of the finest and longest-standing group of natural philosophers on God’s earth. We wake every day and we advance human understanding. All God’s people, from my Lord Liverpool to the meanest aboriginal savage in New South Wales, benefit from that work. Be proud, gentlemen! Be ecstatic! We are doing God’s work!”