Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

Following Mister Lowndes’s forefinger upon the ledger, Newton observed the written entry for a moment and then read aloud the title and author to which the bookseller did refer. “Polygraphia , by Trithemius. I know your Latin is good, Mister Ellis. But how is your Greek, sir?”

“Polygraphia? I think that would mean ‘much writing,’” said I, whose Greek was never much good at all.

“Quite so,” agreed Mister Lowndes. “Although the book itself was written in Latin.”

“And yet Macey had no Latin,” objected Newton. “The elementary character of the Latin primer he bought from Mister Lowndes would seem to confirm as much.” Newton paused and tapped his bony finger upon the page of the ledger. “Did he explain why he wanted this particular book?”

“I seem to recall that he intended it to be a gift for someone. But who I cannot say.”

“Could you perhaps find me another copy of this book, Mister Lowndes?”

“Not for several weeks,” admitted Mister Lowndes. “I had to send off to Germany to obtain the copy that Mister Macey ordered. You might, of course, search around St. Paul’s. The Latin coffee house near there often holds auctions of rare and expensive books such as the one for which you search.”

Newton grunted without much enthusiasm at such a laborious prospect.

“But I believe I know where you might have sight of a copy, at least, for I ordered a copy of this same book once before.”

Mister Lowndes turned back the pages of his ledger until he found what he was looking for.

“Here we are, Doctor. That other customer was Doctor Wallis. I ordered the same book for him.”

“Doctor John Wallis?” repeated Newton. “Do you mean he that is the Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University, sir?”

“Aye sir, the very same. I believe I said as much myself to Mister Macey. He seemed most interested by the news.”

“So am I, sir,” admitted Newton. “So am I.”

Early the next morning we took the flying coach to Oxford, which was a most vexatious journey, with much dangerous water on the road because of recent heavy rain, and there was almost some mischance to the coach, but no time lost, so that we arrived at our destination about thirteen hours after leaving London.

Newton had many friends at Oxford. Chief among these was David Gregory, a young Scotsman who held the Savilian Chair of Astronomy and who, at very short notice, dined us very well at Merton, which is a very pretty place, and was my own college, which made me feel mighty peculiar, my being back there.

I believe Gregory must have been about thirty-eight years of age when first I met him. He was a typical Scot, being small and whey-faced, and very fond of his bottle and his pipe, so that his rooms stank of tobacco like the most fumigated London coffee house; indeed his body seemed incapable of supporting life by any other breath than the smoke of some sweet-scented Virginia. It was to Newton’s influence that the younger Gregory owed his current eminence at Oxford. Over dinner they began to talk of Doctor Wallis.

“But you have not met Wallis before?” asked Gregory. “He was at Cambridge, was he not?”

“We have met, yes. More often we have corresponded. He has been most persistent that I should publish something — nay, anything — in his Opera Mathematica . No doubt he is currently reading the letter I wrote to him yesterday, and my arrival here in Oxford, as a sign that I have changed my mind upon the matter.”

“So why do you wish to see him?”

“It is the business of the Mint that brings me to Oxford. I was hoping that Wallis might help me with some enquiries. Yet more I cannot say, for it is a delicate matter and most secret.”

“Of course,” said Gregory, puffing away like a Dutch boatswain. “But I don’t think that Doctor Wallis is any stranger to secrecy himself. I have heard it said that he does confidential work for milord Sunderland. I think it is something to do with the war, although I wonder how an eighty-year-old man can help to defeat the French. Perhaps he sets them calculations and bids to bore them into submission.”

“Is he still so fond of mathematics?” exclaimed Newton.

“Indeed he is, sir. He is a scholar of real worth, for I have seen him extracting square roots without pen or paper, to seven places.”

“I have seen a horse clap its hoof upon the ground seven times,” Newton remarked. “But I do not think it was a mathematician.”

“He is not your peer,” said Gregory. “You have developed mathematics quite astonishingly.”

“For my own part,” answered Newton, “I think I have barely skimmed the surface of the great ocean of knowledge. Marvellous secrets still remain to be uncovered. It is the challenge of our age to demonstrate the frame of the system of the world. And so long as we continue to distinguish between the formal reason of nature and the act of divine will, I do not see why we should not believe that God himself does not directly inform nature so that the world necessarily emanates from it.”

Here Newton did look at me most directly, so that when he spoke again I formed the impression that perhaps Miss Barton had reported our conversation after all.

After breakfast the next day, we received a note from Wallis inviting us to call on him at eleven of the clock, and at the appointed hour we did go to Exeter College to see him. I did not like Exeter as much as Merton, Magdalen, or Christchurch, it being disfigured by large and unsightly chimneys, not to mention much building work being done in the front quadrangle, so that I wondered how Wallis could study there. But this was soon explained when we entered the Professor’s rooms and met Wallis himself, since it was quickly evident that Doctor Wallis was a little deaf, which was no great wonder in a man of his age. He was of medium height, with a small head and slightly infirm of gait, and leaned upon a stick and a boy of about fourteen years old, whom he introduced to us as his grandson William.

“There, William,” said his doting grandfather. “One day you will be able to say that you once met the great Isaac Newton, whose notions of mathematics are received with great applause.”

Newton bowed deeply. “Doctor Wallis,” he said, “I was not able to find anything general in quadratures, until I had understood your own work on infinitesimals.”

Wallis acknowledged the compliment with a nod, and then told the boy to run along before inviting us to sit and declaring himself mighty honoured that Newton should think fit to visit an old scholar like himself.

“Pray tell me, sir,” he asked. “Does this mean that you have reconsidered your decision not to publish your Opticks in my book? Is that why you have come?”

“No sir,” Newton said firmly. “I have not changed my mind. I am here on the business of His Majesty’s Mint.”

“It’s not too late, you know. Even now Mister Flamsteed sends me an account of his observations, which shall be included. Will you not reconsider, Doctor Newton?”

“No sir, for I fear that disputes and controversies may be raised against me by some confounded ignoramus.”

“But perhaps some other may get scraps of your notion and publish it as his own,” said Wallis. “Then it will be his, not yours, though he may perhaps never attain a tenth part of what you are already the master of. Consider that it is now almost thirty years since you were master of those notions about fluxions—”

“I think,” said Newton, interrupting, “that you have already written me a letter to this same effect.”

Wallis grunted loudly. “I own that modesty is a virtue,” he said. “I merely wished to point out that too much diffidence is a fault. How should this, or the next age, know of your discoveries if you do not publish, sir?”