The Rings of Saturn (23 page)

trunks are still standing, while others lie broken and bleached in the grass. Finally, in the autumn of 1987, a hurricane such as no one had ever experienced before passed over the land. According to official estimates over fourteen million mature hard-leaf trees fell victim to it, not to mention the damage to conifer plantations and bushes. That was on the night of the 16th of October. Without warning, the storm came up out of the Bay of Biscay, moved along the French west coast, crossed the English Channel and swept over the south-east part of the island out into the North Sea. I woke at
about three in the morning, less as a result of the thunderous roar than because of the curious warmth and the increasing air pressure in my bedroom. In contrast with other equinoctial gales which I have experienced here, this one came not in driving gusts but with an unrelenting and, it seemed, ever more powerful force. I stood at the window and looked through the glass, which was strained almost to breaking point, down towards the end of the garden, where the crowns of the large trees in the neighbouring bishop's park were bent and streaming like aquatic plants in a deep current. White clouds raced across in the darkness, and again and again the sky was lit up by a terrible flickering which, I later discovered, was caused by power lines touching each other. At some point I must have turned away for a while. At all events, I still remember that I did not believe my eyes when I looked out again and saw that where the current of air had shortly beforehand been pouring through the black mass of trees, there was now just the paleness of the empty horizon. It seemed as if someone had pulled a curtain to one side to reveal a formless scene that bordered upon the underworld. And at the very moment that I registered the unaccustomed brightness of the night over the park, I knew that everything down there had been destroyed. And yet I hoped that the ghastly emptiness could be explained by some other means, for in the mounting din of the storm I had heard none of the crashing sounds that go with the felling of timber. It was not until later that I realized that the trees, held to the last by their root systems, toppled only gradually, and because they were forced down so slowly their crowns, which were entangled with each other, did not shatter but remained virtually undamaged. In this way, entire tracts
of woodland were pressed down flat as if they had been cornfields. In the first light of dawn, when the storm had begun to abate, I ventured out into the garden. For a long time I stood choked with emotion amidst the devastation. It was like being in a kind of wind tunnel, so strong was the suction created by the onrushing air, which was far too warm for the time of year. The ancient trees on either side of the path leading along the edge of the park were all lying on the ground as if in a swoon, and beneath the huge oaks, ash and plane trees, beeches and limes lay the torn and mangled shrubs that had grown in their shade, thujas and yews, hazel and laurel bushes, holly and rhododendrons. With pulsating radiance the sun rose over the horizon. The gusts continued for a while, and then it was suddenly quiet. Nothing moved, apart from the birds which had lived in the bushes and trees and which were now flitting about amongst the branches that had remained green well into the autumn that year. I do not know how I got through the first day after the storm, but do recall that during the night, doubting what I had seen with my own eyes, I walked once more through the park. As there were power cuts throughout the whole region, everything was in deep darkness. There was no glare from streetlights or houses to dull the sky. But the stars had come out, in a display so resplendent as I had seen only over the Alps when I was a child, or over the desert in my dreams. From the extreme north right down to the south where the view had before been blocked by trees, the sparkling constellations were spread out, the Plough, the tail of Draco, the triangle of Taurus, the Pleiades, Pegasus, the Swan and the Dolphin. Unchanged and, it seemed to me, more magnificent than ever before, they revolved above me.
The silence of that brilliant night after the storm was followed by the revving of chainsaws during the winter months. It took four or five labourers until March to cut up the branches, burn the rubbish, and haul away the trunks. An excavator dug large holes in which stumps and roots, some of them the size of a small house, were buried. Now, in the truest sense of the word, everything was turned upside down. The forest floor, which in the spring of last year had still been carpeted with snowdrops, violets and wood anemones, ferns and cushions of moss, was now covered by a layer of barren clay. All that grew in the hard-baked earth were tufts of swamp grass, the seeds of which had lain in the depths for goodness knew how long. The rays of the sun, with nothing left to impede them, destroyed all the shade-loving plants so that it seemed as if we were living on the edge of an infertile plain. Where a short while ago the dawn chorus had at times reached such a pitch that we had to close the bedroom windows, where larks had risen on the morning air above the fields and where, in the evenings, we occasionally even heard a nightingale in the thicket, its pure and penetrating song punctuated by theatrical silences, there was now not a living sound.

X

A
mongst the miscellaneous papers left by Sir Thomas Browne treating such diverse subjects as practical and ornamental horticulture, the urns found at Brampton in Norfolk, the making of artificial hills and burrows, the several plants mentioned in Scripture, the Saxon tongue, the pronouncements of the Oracle at Delphos, the fishes eaten by our Saviour, the behaviour of insects, hawks and falconry, and a case of boulimia centenaria which occurred in Yarmouth, amongst these and various other tracts, there is also to be found a catalogue of remarkable books,

MUSÆUM CLAUSUM

or

Bibliotheca Abscondita

listing pictures, antiquities and sundry singular items that may have formed part of a collection put together by Browne but were more likely products of his imagination, the inventory of a treasure house that existed purely in his head and to which there is no access except through the letters on the page. In a short prefatory note to an
unknown reader, Browne compares this “Musæum Clausum” with the Musæum Aldrovandi, the Musæum Calceolarianum; the Casa Abbellita at Loretto, and the repositories of the Emperor Rudolf at Prague and Vienna, all of them famed collections of his day. Among the rare books and documents in Browne's “Musæum” are King Solomon's treatise on the shadow cast by our thoughts,
de Umbris Idæarum,
previously reported to have been in the library of the Duke of Bavaria; a collection of Hebrew epistles, which passed between the two most learned women of the seventeenth century, Molinea of Sedan and Maria Schurman of Utrecht; and “a Sub Marine Herbal” describing in exhaustive detail all that grows on the mountain ranges and in the valleys under the sea, the many kinds of algae, corals and waterferns never seen by man, sargassum borne along by tropical currents, as well as whole islands of plants drifting from continent to continent in the path of the trade winds. Browne's imaginary library further includes a fragment of an account by the ancient traveller Pytheas of Marseilles, referred to in Strabo, according to which all the air beyond Thule is thick, condensed and gellied, looking just like sea lungs, and moreover a poem by Ovidius Naso, hitherto supposed lost, written in the Getick language during his exile at Tomi and found wrapt up in wax at Sabaria, on the frontiers of Hungary, where there remains a tradition that he died in his return towards Rome from Tomi, either after his pardon or the death of Augustus. Apart from all manner of other curiosities, Browne's museum has in it a drawing in chalk of the great fair of Almachara in Arabia, which is held at night to avoid the great heat of the sun; a painting of the famous battle fought between the Romans and the Jaziges on the frozen Danube; a dream
image showing a prairie or sea meadow at the bottom of the Mediterranean, off the coast of Provence; Solyman the Magnificent on horseback at the siege of Vienna, and behind him a whole city of snow-white tents extending as far as the horizon; a seascape with floating icebergs upon which sit walruses, bears, foxes and a variety of rare fowls; and a number of pieces delineating the worst inhumanities in tortures for the benefit of the observer: the scaphismus of the Persians, the living truncation of the Turks, the hanging sport at the feasts of the Thracians, the exact method of flaying men alive, beginning between the shoulders, according to the meticulous description of Thomas Minadoi. Occupying some undefined position between the natural and the unnatural is also a fair English lady drawn al negro, or in the Æthiopian hue excelling the original white beauty, with the motto: “Sed quandam volo nocte nigriorem”. In addition to such astonishing writings and artworks, the Musæum Clausum also contains medals and coins; a precious stone from a vulture's head; a neat crucifix made out of the crossbone of a frog's head; ostrich and humming-bird eggs; bright-hued parakeet feathers; spirits and salt of Sargasso excellent against the scurvy; extract of cachundè or liberans employed in the East Indies against melancholy; and a glass of spirits made of æthereal salt, hermetically sealed up, of so volatile a nature that it will not endure daylight, and therefore shown only in winter, or by the light of a carbuncle, or Bononian stone. All of these things are recorded by Browne the doctor and naturalist in his register of marvels, all of these and many more that I do not propose to list in this place, excepting perhaps the bamboo cane in which, at the time of the Byzantine Emperor Justinianus, two Persian friars who had long been in China
to discover the secrets of sericulture had brought the first eggs of the silkworm over the Empire's borders into the Western world.

The silkworm moth,
Bombyx mori,
which lives in white-fruited mulberry trees is a member of the
Bombycidae
or spinners, a subspecies of the
Lepidoptera
which, together with the
Saturnidae,
includes some of the most beautiful of all moths – the Kentish Glory,
Endromis versilcolor,
the Great Peacock,
Bombyx atlas,
the Large Ermine,
Harpyia vinula
and the Emperor moth,
Saturnia pavonia.
The fully developed silkworm moth, however, is an unprepossessing creature measuring a mere one and a half

inches across and an inch lengthways. Its wings are ashen white with pale brown stripes and a crescent-shaped, often barely perceptible mark. The only purpose it has is to propagate. The male dies soon after mating. The female lays three to five hundred eggs over the course of several days, and then also dies. The silk-worms that hatch from the eggs, an encyclopaedia dating from 1844 informs me, are enrobed in a black, velvety fur when they enter this world. During their short lives, which last only six or seven weeks, they are overcome by sleep on four occasions and, after shedding their old skin, emerge from each one re-made, always whiter, smoother and larger, becoming more beautiful, and finally almost completely transparent. A few days after the last sloughing one can notice a redness on the throat, which heralds the onset of metamorphosis. The caterpillar now stops eating, runs about restlessly, and, seeking to leave the low earth behind, strives to gain greater heights, until it has found the right place and can start to weave its cell from the resinous juices produced in its insides. If one slits open a caterpillar that has been killed with ethyl alcohol along the length of its back, one sees a cluster of intertwined small tubes that resemble intestines. They end by the mouth, in two very fine orifices, through which the juices pour forth. During its first day of work, the caterpillar spins an extensive, disorderly, fragmented web which is used to secure the cocoon. And then, constantly moving its head back and forth and reeling out an uninterrupted thread almost a thousand yards long, it constructs the actual egg-shaped casing around itself. In this shell, which admits neither air nor moisture, the caterpillar changes into a nymph by sloughing
off its skin for one last time. It remains in this state for two to three weeks in all, until the butterfly described above emerges. – The silkworm's native habitat seems to include all those Asian countries where the white mulberry trees grow in the wild. There it lived in the open, left to its own devices, until man, having discovered its usefulness, was prompted to foster it. Chinese history notes that, two thousand and seven hundred years before the beginning of the Christian calendar, Huang Ti, the Emperor of the Earth who reigned for more than a century and taught his subjects how to build wagons, ships and grain mills, persuaded his first wife, Hsi-ling-shi, to attend to the silkworms, to devise trials for their employment, and increase, by means of this her especial task, the happiness of the people. Hsi-ling-shi thereupon took the worms from the trees in the palace garden and into her own care, in the imperial apartments, where, protected from their natural enemies and the unpredictable and often inclement spring weather, they thrived so well that this marked the beginning of what was later to be developed into domestic silkworm culture. Together with the unravelling of the cocoons and the weaving and embroidering of the materials, this was to become the principal occupation of all the succeeding empresses, and passed from their hands into those of the entire female sex. Promoted in every conceivable way by those in authority, the rearing of silkworms and the production of silk had, in the course of a few generations, taken such an upturn that the name of China came to be synonymous with an inexhaustible wealth of silk. Chinese merchants traversed the length and breadth of Asia with their silk-laden caravans, taking some two hundred and forty days
to travel from the Chinese sea to the coast of the Mediterranean. Because of this enormous distance, and also because of the horrific punishments awaiting those who disseminated the knowledge of sericulture beyond the borders of the Empire, the fabrication of silk was restricted to China for thousands of years, until the two aforementioned friars with their hollowed-out walking staffs arrived in Byzantium. After the raising of silkworms had become established at the Greek court and on the Aegean islands, it took a further millennium for this elaborate form of husbandry to pass via Sicily and Naples to Piedmont, Savoy and Lombardy, where Genoa and Milan soon flourished as the European centres of silk cultivation. Within half a century, the art of silk-making had reached France from northern Italy, thanks to Olivier de Serres, who is still considered the father of French agriculture. His manual for landowners, published in 1600 under the title
Théatre d'agriculture et mesnage de Champs,
which went through thirteen printings in a very short pace of time, made such a deep impression on Henry IV that he summoned him to Paris, offering him copious honours and favours, to be his first counsellor, on a par with Sully, his prime minister and minister of finance. De Serres, who was reluctant to surrender the management of his own estates to someone else, demanded one favour as a condition for accepting the office he had been offered: that the cultivation of silk should be introduced in France, and that to that end the native trees in the royal gardens throughout the country be uprooted and mulberry trees planted in their stead. The king was enthralled by de Serres' plan, but before it could be put into practice he had to overcome the resistance of Sully, whom he normally held in high
esteem and who opposed the idea of producing silk, either because he genuinely considered it the height of folly or because he saw in de Serres a rival in the ascendant.

The arguments which Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully, brought to bear with his sovereign are summed up in the sixteenth volume of his memoirs, a fine edition of which, printed in 1788 by

F. J. Desoer in Liège, à la Croix d'or, I acquired for a few shillings many years ago at an auction in the small country town of Aylsham, north of Norwich. Sully opened his case by maintaining that the French climate was unsuited to producing silk. The spring, so Sully asserted, began too late, and even when it did arrive, humidity, rising out of the fields or descending on them,
tended to be too high. This unfavourable circumstance alone, which nothing could countervail, was extremely detrimental both to the silkworms, which could only with great difficulty be persuaded to hatch, and to the mulberry trees, which needed mild air above all else, especially at that time of year when they were coming into leaf, if they were to flourish. Quite apart from this basic consideration, Sully continued, one had to bear in mind that rural life in France allowed nobody any superfluous leisure, with the possible exception of the habitually idle; and therefore, if one really were to introduce silk cultivation on a large scale, one would have to prevent rural labourers from going about their accustomed daily work and employ them in what was in every respect a dubious enterprise. Sully conceded that country folk would in all likelihood be easily persuaded to make such a change in their basic way of life, for who would not give up labouring on the land for a venture like silk cultivation, which required no real effort at all? And therein lay the most compelling reason against a general adoption of sericulture in France, urged Sully in a deft turn of phrase directed at the soldier king: the danger that the rural population, from whom the best musketeers and cavalrymen had always been recruited, would lose their innate vigour by being employed on work more fitting for women's and children's hands. As a result, it would soon no longer be possible to ensure that among the next generations there would be sufficient numbers of men capable of practising the martial arts. And not only would the manufacturing of silk lead to degeneration among the country folk, Sully continued, but it would also promote the insidious
corruption of the urban classes through luxurious living and all that went with it – laziness, effeminacy, lechery and extravagance. Far too much was already being lavished in France on ornamental gardens and ostentatious palaces, on the most extravagant furnishings and décor, gold ornaments and porcelain, carriages and cabriolets, galas and festivities, liqueurs and perfumes, and even, Sully noted, on public offices sold at exorbitant price, and marriageable ladies from the upper classes, who were auctioned off to the highest bidder. Further to encourage the general decline in moral standards by introducing silk cultivation throughout the kingdom was something Sully must advise his King against, and, par contre, he wished to suggest that one might now like to remember the virtues of those who sustained themselves in the most modest and frugal way. However, the prime minister's objections were ignored, and silk cultivation became established in France within a decade, not least because the Edict of Nantes, which was proclaimed in 1598, safeguarded at least a degree of tolerance to the Huguenots, who until that time had been subject to severe persecution, thereby making it possible for the very people who had played a prominent part in introducing silk cultivation to remain in their French fatherland. – Inspired by the French example, the adoption of silk cultivation by royal patronage occurred at almost the same time in England. On the site where Buckingham Palace now stands, James I had a mulberry garden of several acres laid out, and at Theobald's, his favourite country seat in Essex, he maintained his own silk house for the rearing of silkworms. James was so greatly
interested in these industrious creatures that he would spend hour after hour studying their habits and needs, and whenever he undertook journeys about his kingdom he always had with him a large casket full of royal silkworms, the keeping of which was entrusted to a specially appointed groom of the chamber. James had well over a hundred thousand mulberry trees planted in the drier counties of eastern England, and in this and other ways he laid the foundation for an important branch of industry which entered its heyday at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, more than fifty thousand Huguenots fled to England, many of whom, experienced in breeding silkworms and in the fabrication of silk stuffs – craftsmen and merchant families such as the Lefèvres and the Tillettes, the De Hagues, the Martineaus and the Columbines – settled in Norwich, at that time the second largest city in England, where since the early sixteenth century there had been a colony of about five thousand immigrant Flemish and Walloon weavers. By 1750, a bare two generations later, the Huguenot master weavers of Norwich had risen to become the wealthiest, most influential and cultivated class of entrepreneurs in the entire kingdom. In their factories and those of their suppliers there was the greatest imaginable commotion, day in, day out, and it is said in a history of silk manufacture in England that a traveller approaching Norwich under the black sky of a winter night would be amazed by the glare over the city, caused by light coming from the windows of the workshops, still busy at this late hour. Increase of light and increase
of labour have always gone hand in hand. If today, when our gaze is no longer able to penetrate the pale reflected glow over the city and its environs, we think back to the eighteenth century, it hardly seems possible that even then, before the Industrial Age, a great number of people, at least in some places, spent their lives with their wretched bodies strapped to looms made of wooden frames and rails, hung with weights, and reminiscent of instruments of torture or cages. It was a