The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [7]
As Matthew Allen stood diagnosing his guest, Tennyson now reached out and picked up a mineral sample. He brought it close to his monocle, saw its many metallic facets. It was a glittering tumble of right angles, little walls and roofs jutting out from each other like a town destroyed by an earthquake.
‘Iron pyrites,’ Allen explained. ‘I’ve many other samples you’ll see ranged around the room. My intention was, is still, to collect samples of every mineral to be found in the British Isles, but I have quite a few more to go. Chemistry was for a while a subject of mine. Here,’ Allen paced quickly across the rug to a shelf, ran a finger across spines until he found five slender identical volumes. He pulled one out. ‘My lectures on chemistry. I gave them in Scotland some years ago. Carlyle - do you know Carlyle? - Thomas Carlyle, he attended, as I recall. I knew him even back then in our Edinburgh days. Perhaps I could take you to Chelsea and introduce you.’
‘I’ve had the pleasure of making his acquaintance, and Jane’s, already.’
‘Oh, very good. Well then, perhaps we should visit together. It really is very straightforward now with the train at Woodford.’
Tennyson opened the volume that Allen handed to him. He read a line or two about the flow of the caloric from heated objects. He knew something of the theories from his own reading in the library at Somersby, shut away from the clamour of family and pets, with nothing to do but continue his education with as much self-discipline as he could muster. But he wouldn’t have dared pronounce on the subject. Evidently the doctor was a man of scope and capacity. And they had friends in common.
‘Caloric flow,’ he murmured as he surfaced from the book.
‘Indeed, indeed,’ the doctor enthused.‘My contention in this work, as elsewhere, is that there is behind the phenomenon of the caloric, behind all phenomena, a principal cause I nominate The Grand Agent.’
‘The Grand Agent.’
‘Yes. A common cause, a unitary force. There is a union through all things. Heat and light are manifestations, as are living organisms and their animal spirits.’
‘Energy. Thoughts.’
‘Yes, thoughts as well. Their energy - the flow of them.’
‘I see. A Spinozism, of sorts.’ And Tennyson did see: a white fabric, candescent, pure, flowing through itself, surging, charged, unlimited. And in the world the flourishing of forms, their convulsions: upward thrive of trees, sea waves, the mathematical toys of sea shells, the flight of dragonflies. It all changed constantly. ‘All the metamorphoses of living beings,’ Tennyson said, gesturing at the window with his pipe.
‘Precisely,’Allen said, beaming.‘The forest is a perfect example.’
The forest died into itself, growing, shapes fading, eaten, lengthening anew. Yes, yes. And thought, the unbreaking wave, constantly changing—colours, shapes, sinuously pouring towards the world, pulsing with language.
‘And unliving things, inorganic things have their energy also.’
‘My philosophical speculations tend to the same view,’ Tennyson went on.
‘Oh, that’s interesting. As a poet, you feel . . .’
‘As a boy,’Tennyson began, catching the enthusiasm, feeling released now beyond the polite chatter of acquaintances into the deep, the frictionless element of real thought. ‘As a boy I could put myself into a trance by repeating my name over and