Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

A few weeks ago, my old friend Dick Lower sent me this huge pile of paper, saying that, as I am a voracious collector of curios and suchlike, perhaps I should have it. For himself, he was tempted to throw it all away, such were the lies and sad contradictions it contained. He said (in a letter, for he has now retired to Dorset, where he lives in considerable ease) that he found the manuscripts wearisome. Two men, it seems, can see the same event, yet both remember it falsely. How, he went on, will we ever reach certainty on anything, even when of good will? He pointed out several instances in which he was a direct participant and said they had occurred in an entirely different fashion. Naturally, one is the extraordinary attempt to decant new blood into Widow Blundy through a goose quill, which Signer Cola claims as his own. Lower (whom I know to be a very honest man) disputes this account entirely.

He mentions two men, you note, Cola and Wallis, though there be three manuscripts. Naturally, he omits entirely that of Jack Prestcott, as he is bound to do. The law cannot punish and indeed takes no note of a man who is insane; if his current actions are beyond reason, how can his memories be trusted? They are merely the babblings of disorder, filtered through the distortions of disease. Prestcott’s sad mind has thus transformed Bedlam into his great house; his head is not shaved for his wig as he says, but to allow the application of vinegar to his frenzy; those poor wretches who restrain the lunatics become his servants, and the many visitors he complains of are those characters who pay their penny every Saturday to peer through the iron bars of the cages, and laugh at the madmen in their distress. I have done it myself, on the occasion recently when I went to talk to Prestcott on the matter, but I found no diversion or satisfaction in it.

But several of Prestcott’s statements are true. I know it and admit it, even though I have no cause to love him. He went mad, Lower tells me, when he was confronted with proof that his own malice had frustrated all his hopes and efforts, and that the warnings he had received from that Irishman were true after all. Perhaps so; my point is that, up to then, he was more or less sane and so perhaps his recollections are as well, even if the meaning he drags from them is entirely false. It requires intelligence, after all, to present a case as he does—had he kept his wits he might have been a fine advocate after all. Every single person he talked to told him that his father was guilty, and he was. With the greatest of skill he points to evidence of innocence, and ignores all that which suggests the true depths of his father’s turpitude. At the end, I almost believed him, even though I knew better than most that it was a tissue of nonsense.

But is the poor soul’s account any the less trustworthy than the others, which are also twisted and distorted, albeit by different passions? Prestcott may be mad, but Cola is a liar. Perhaps there is but one lie of commission, in contrast to all the omissions and evasions which might otherwise be discounted. He lies nonetheless, for as Ammian says, Veritas vel silentio consumpitur vel mendacio; truth is violated by silence and by falsehood. The falsity is contained in such an innocuous sentence it is not surprising that even Wallis overlooked it. But it distorts every other thing in the manuscript and makes truthful words false because, like a schoolman’s argument, it draws conclusions with impeccable logic from a false premise. “Marco da Cola, gentleman of Venice, respectfully presents his greetings.” So he begins, and from there on every word must be considered carefully. Even the manuscript’s existence must be considered, for why did he write it at all after so many years? On the other hand, to say he is mendacious does not mean that the motives and deeds attributed to him by Wallis are correct. The Venetian was not at all what he seemed, nor what he claims now to be, but he certainly never had designs on the safety of the kingdom or the life of Lord Clarendon. And Wallis himself was so used to living in the dark and sinister world of his own devising that he could no longer tell truth from invention, or honesty from falsehood.

But how can I tell which assertion to believe, and which to reject? I cannot repeat the same events time and again with subtle variations as Stahl did with his chemicals to demonstrate how Dr. Grove had died. Even if I could, the infallible philosophical method seems inadequate when it comes to problems in which motion derives from people rather than dead matter. I once attended a class on chemistry given by Mr. Stahl and must say I emerged none the wiser. Lower’s own experiments on blood transfusion first produced the belief that this was the greatest cure for all ills, and later (when many people in France had died) the savants decided that no, on the contrary, this was a fatal and inadmissible procedure. It cannot be both, gentlemen of philosophy. If you are right now, how were you so wrong before? How is it that when a man of God shifts his opinion it proves the weakness of his views, and when a man of science does so it demonstrates the value of his method? How is a mere chronicler such as myself to transmute the lead of inaccuracy in these papers into the gold of truth?

My main qualification for commenting on these bundles is the disinterested state which is (we are told) the primum mobile of a balanced understanding—little of this has anything to do with me. Second, I think I can with justice claim a certain knowledge—I have lived my entire life in Oxford and know the city (as even my detractors admit) better than anyone else has ever done. Finally, of course, I knew all the actors in this drama; Lower was then my constant companion, as we ate together at least once a week at Mother Jean’s; through him I met all the men of philosophy, including Signor Cola. I worked with Dr. Wallis for many years when he was the keeper of the university archives and I was their most assiduous frequenter. I even had the honor of discoursing with Mr. Boyle and once attended a levee in the presence of my Lord Arlington although, I regret to say, I did not have the opportunity of making my addresses to him. More than this, I knew Sarah Blundy before her misfortune and (not being a man given to puzzles and conundrums) I will reveal my secret immediately. For I knew her after it as well, hanged, dissected and burned though she was. More, I think I am the only person who can give a proper accounting of those days, and show all the goodness which prompted such cruelty, and the providential grace that brought out such malice. On certain matters, I can appeal to Lower, for we share many secrets; but the crucial knowledge is mine alone, and I must convince on my own authority and by the dexterity of my words. Curiously, the less I am believed, the more certain I will be that I am correct. Mr. Milton set out in his great poem to justify the ways of God to men, as he says. He has not considered one question, however—perhaps God has forbidden men to know His ways, for if they did know the full extent of His goodness, and the magnitude of our rejection of it, they would be so disheartened they would abandon all hope of redemption, and die of grief.

I am an historian, and to this title I adhere despite critics who make out that I am what they term an antiquarian. I believe truth can come only from a solid foundation of fact, and I set myself from an early age to begin the task of building such a basis. I intend no grandiose schemes for the history of the world, mind; you cannot build a palace before you have leveled the ground. Rather, just as Mr. Plot has written (very finely) the natural history of our county, so I am engaged in its civil history. And what a deal there is! I thought it would take a few years of my life; now I see I will die an old man and the task will still be unfinished. I began (once an early intention of the priesthood had left me) by wishing to write about our late troubles during the siege, when the Parliament men first took the town, then cleansed the university of those less than perfectly in agreement with them. But I rapidly perceived that there was a nobler task awaiting me, and that the entire history of the university might vanish forever were it not safeguarded. So I abandoned my original work and began the greater one, even though I had amassed considerable material by that stage and publication would, undoubtedly, have gained me both the fame in the world and the patronage of the mighty which have forever eluded my grasp. However, I care not for this—animus hominis dives, non arca appellari solet; and if it be considered one of Tully’s paradoxes to say that it is a man’s mind, not his coffers, which confers richness, then that shows that the age of Rome was just as blind and corrupt as our own.