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By Root 371 0

’s a reference to demons it’s code for the creatures of the reader’s own psyche, terrible things one can see if exposing oneself to too many poisonous vapours. In fact, there’s a sense in which the Doctor’s journey reads like a hallucinatory experience, at least partly brought on by the smoke. And it’s an indication of the Doctor’s somewhat erratic style that this warning to travellers is placed in the Ruminations between a series of predictions on the subject of America, and a passage which at first sight seems to be a description of a terrible multi-eyed many-limbed monster but which on closer inspection is revealed to be an elaborate recipe for bread-and‐butter pudding. (Interestingly, given that the Doctor was said to have a special interest in history, the predictions of America’s future are all utterly wrong. By contrast, the American predictions of the Marquis de Sade – the legendary ‘Monsieur le 6’ – are all accurate. Believers in the Doctor’s powers might like to think that this was all a complicated joke.)

The other thing to note is that this passage sees the first mention of the ‘black eyeball’, observing the realm of the babewyns like some form of primitive god. This would be a recurring feature in later accounts.

Although the Doctor describes the dangers posed by the apes, it seems that he himself wasn’t immediately attacked by them. It’s perhaps significant that in the Ruminations the Doctor makes mention of buildings like ‘the boulevards of, say, Paris’, because the account that comes via of Sabbath holds that as soon as the Doctor arrived – or as soon as he accustomed himself to this bleak, black-sunned nightmare-place – he realised he wasn’t alone.

Tula Lui was also in the place of beasts. Cutting through the romanticisation in the account, it nonetheless seems to be the case that a confrontation followed. Tula Lui was also off-balance, even bewildered, on her arrival. It may have taken her a while to find her bearings. When she did, she ‘posed herself like a coiled animal about to strike and growl’d like a panther’. The Doctor merely raised his hands, in an attempt to placate this amazonian warrior.

If this encounter truly took place, then the Doctor must have been wary of the girl, who had already attacked and defeated him once before. Then, as now, she’d been dressed in the prim dark robes which Sabbath used to hide what must have been a highly-trained body. The Doctor did his best to reason with her, to speak to her in English, then in sign language. He, even tried to indicate the world around them, in the hope that she’d understand he wasn’t the threat. But he must have known that Tula Lui would suspect him of diverting her into this nightmare. Worse, there was a ‘most loud scratching’ nearby, the sound of claws scraping across cracked, grey pavements. Perhaps it was this noise which broke the tension of the moment, and which spurred the young warrior to finally lash out at him.

The story of the encounter ends in a typically melodramatic fashion. The Doctor falls, a pained look on his face. In the distance, the apes begin to howl. The last thing the Doctor sees as he hits the ground and loses consciousness (and there’s no way the author could possibly have known this for sure) is Tula Lui, turning her back, shedding her cloak and bounding away across the rubble of the city like a wild deer. The story also makes much drama out of the fact that even as the Doctor was collapsing on to his back, with the black eye of the sun staring down at him from on high, the apes were picking their way through the devastated streets. Eyes shining, claws dragging, drool spilling from their lips. It’s all terribly gothic.

A Death in the Family

The French judicial system was regarded as barbaric even by the most loyal of the King’s subjects. Before the Revolution, all justice was a matter of personal satisfaction between the monarch and the common man: he who broke the law broke Louis XVI’s law, and had to be punished in a manner fit for the entertainment of a King, even if the King himself didn’t have the stomach