Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [23]
What are we to make of this? Or of the Doctor’s claim, again recorded by Emily, that ‘the animals possessed none [organs] other than those that were expected’? The belief the Doctor seems to have reached, unscientific as it sounds, is that in some way the babewyns weren’t actual animals as such: as if they stayed alive by sheer will, and their physiognomy was designed just to satisfy the investigator. This kind of mystical biology was quite common in the eighteenth century (q.v. the commonly-held belief that entire toads could thrive inside the human intestinal tract), and it’s not surprising that an eccentric like the Doctor should have subscribed to it.
Emily didn’t just record the study. Her letters also record her opinions of many of Scarlette’s acquaintances and ‘employees’, and her opinion of Lisa-Beth wasn’t high. According to Emily, during her first month at the House Lisa-Beth loudly sneered at Scarlette’s running of things, considering the Mistress of the House to be poor at handling money (probably a fair point, given Scarlette’s other interests). Lisa-Beth was known to have unfortunate connections in high society, clients whom even Scarlette’s women wouldn’t have deigned to do business with.
Indeed, it’s likely that it was only through the Doctor’s insistence that Lisa-Beth’s presence was tolerated in the House at all. Although he wasn’t as close to her as he was to Juliette, he must have seen something in Lisa-Beth he recognised.
Once again, it’s wise to consider the books which Lisa-Beth brought to the House. Her most recent acquisition was Johan Wessel’s Anno 7603, first published in 1781, a story in which a faerie transports a pair of lovers (the hero and heroine) to a society nearly six thousand years in the future, where men are cast in the roles of women and vice versa. To the modern reader, this might seem a twee fairy tale, but its significance can’t be underestimated. Quite simply, Anno 7603 was the first work ever published in the western world which related directly to travel through time. In the past, there’d been numerous myths and legends about characters falling asleep for a hundred years, or finding themselves stuck in a world where time froze and eternal day or night fell upon the world: but here, for the first time, was a fable in which time was something one could move through.
Is it really coincidence that such a book should have been owned by someone like Lisa-Beth? However ruthless she might have liked to be, she must surely have been fascinated by such an overt suggestion of her own practices. The Doctor must have felt they had something in common.
In fact, he had more reason to be wary of Lisa-Beth than he knew at the time.
In March and April, Lisa-Beth was still frequenting the Shakespeare’s Head in Covent Garden. The tavern was a known centre for prostitutes and libertines of all classes and descriptions. Those who could avoid the frequent and vicious drunken brawls were encouraged (for a certain price) to ogle the bare-breasted women who danced on the tables or squirmed half-naked on the floor. More importantly, though, it was a major stalking-ground for agents from the British secret service. The Service had no real name in this era, and in its covert practices there was a streak of darkness that’s hard to accurately describe. The occult interests of the British spymasters were well-known, even at the time. After all, the Service had been founded in the Elizabethan era by John Dee, who was not only a master of espionage but also a man who used bizarre cryptographic codes to communicate with what he believed to be angels and demons (and this great spy-magician’s own personal code-number was 007, such a ludicrous historical fact that modern researchers often assume it has to be some kind of latter-day joke). When the Service was expanded and restructured at the start of George II’s reign – so that, by the time of the American war, it