Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

I nodded to thank Miss Wolf on behalf of the other four Dinglians in the room, as well as our accomplished brothers and sisters, over 25,000 in number, both the quick and the dead. Then I interposed, “So this then is the reason why nothing that could not be obtained by a citizen of the 1880s was ever brought for barter by your tradesmen.”

Miss Wolf nodded whilst taking a sip of her brown drink. “A task which, I might add, became more and more difficult with the years, for so many of the objects that fitted and graced the everyday lives of citizens in the 1880s ceased to be manufactured over time. An entire clandestine industry therefore sprang up with the singular purpose of providing you Dinglians with such items as would have been used a good many decades ago: bear grease for the hair, for example; and macassar oil; outmoded, even currently illicit pharmaceuticals, largely of the opiate family; gas-light fixtures and steam engine fixtures and engine pumps; and oysters — tons and tons of oysters that must be brought at some expense from the Atlantic coast to feed the conceit that the superfluity of these shell creatures which existed in Dickens’ day continues still. (It does not, by the bye. They’re quite a delicacy nowadays.) What else? Hmm. Steel knitting needles — for you could never make them here the way they were once made in London. All manner of tobacco except for the ready-made cigarette, which didn’t hit its stride until after your quarantine began. Obtaining significant quantities of dry snuff has been especially difficult, I understand, because hardly anyone in the Outland takes snuff anymore.”

“Then what do they take?” sought Muntle, who occasionally turned to the snuffbox when his pipe was unavailable.

“They dip it. They dip a mash of it and apply it to the gums.”

“Revolting,” commented Antonia Bocker. “Disgusting and revolting.”

“What else?” mused Miss Wolf aloud. “Ah, yes. Exotic and now largely extinct perfumes and men’s scents.”

“Bouquet du Roi?” asked the vicar.

“Gone with the ages.”

“Bay rum?” sought Graham the librarian.

“Will always be with us.”

Mr. Graham released a sigh of relief that was shared by Muntle and myself.

“You’ve grown so successfully self-sufficient with your printing presses and your glass-blowing factory and your iron foundry and all your other mills and manufactories that it is only the more esoteric items, as you know, that generally find their way into the tradesmen’s waggons.”

“Not including,” I interrupted, “those modern conveniences — a few of which have accidentally come to our attention — items that we must assume were never meant for common Dinglian consumption.”

Miss Wolf nodded as all of our thoughts descended into Pupker’s subcellar.

“It’s quite fascinating,” said Antonia, “this attempt to keep us married to the 1880s. Though in a good many cases we proceeded along entirely different lines from that fusty decade. You will note that the corset is rarely worn these days. The shelf bustle, in fact, disappeared back in the 1920s.”

“And the wearing of layers and layers of petticoats, I note, has also gone out of fashion,” said Miss Wolf. “Much to the delight, I am sure, of every woman in the Dell.”

Antonia nodded as Ruth Wolf grinned. “At all events,” continued the nurse, “everything went quite according to plan for the organisation, which early on acquired the name ‘The Tiadaghton Project.’ That plan included first and foremost the eventual prescribed exit of all of the orphans’ vocational instructors. Indeed, every adult in the valley.”

“Their departure being facilitated by that most deceitful of all deceptions — a worldwide pandemic,” said Antonia. “Mr. Traddles figured this out for himself, though few others could make such a leap with certainty.”

“It was the only pretext by which the children could be left to their own wits and industry. But things hardly ever go as planned. Miss Johnson and her illicit pupil Miss Henrietta Weatherfield were the first flies to befoul the ointment. How dare that kind lady teach her little sewing pupil how to read when the experiment expressly forbade the acquisition of any written language not of the subjects’ own creation? It was at that moment that Tiadaghton was well nigh abandoned, for it was the development of a unique written form of language that the philological members of that original scientific cadre most sought to study and analyse. Things were upended further when that renegade cache of books was inconveniently discovered in the fruit cellar.”

“How did they come to be there?” asked Muntle. “Generations of Dinglians have wondered.”

Miss Wolf looked to Miss Bocker. “Does your Mr. Traddles have a theory?”

“He has none. It could have been accidental divestment, or the books could have been left behind quite deliberately. Do you know, Miss Wolf?”

Ruth Wolf smiled mischievously. “I do happen to know. Or at least I know the legend that was passed down to us over the years. But I’ll not tell you now.”

A collective groan rose up and then receded. We had reverted to schoolchildren. It was quite an amazing thing to behold.

“But rather than jettison the experiment and ship all the children off to various and sundry orphanages, and then fall into desponding wistful musing over what might have been, the conductors of this unprecedented sociological and anthropological experiment chose, instead, to adapt themselves to modified circumstances and to entirely recalibrate their objectives. Ultimately they decided to sit back, clipboards still in hand, and observe the effect that David Copperfield and Great Expectations and the

Encyclopædia Britannica (Ninth Edition) and the Holy Bible (King James Version) might have upon their subjects. Could it be possible for those subjects to inadvertently replicate Victorian/Dickensian England here in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania? With access to the Christian Bible, would they become a Christian society? How much value would they put on education? Would the voluminous Ensyke make them intellectually inquisitive? The overarching answer to all of the above, as you all well know, was yes in capital letters.”

“What is ‘Tiadaghton’?” This from the ever-enquiring Uriah Graham. “The name of a forest nearby. Shall I freshen your drink?” Graham shook his head. No doubt the sharp mind within that

thoughtful man’s head was reeling to the same degree as was my own. It was difficult to hear of the sheer nerve and audacity that characterised the actions of those who in their pre-murderous incarnation had nonetheless criminally uprooted our ancestors from their childhood homelands and deposited them in this orographically anomalous test tube to try out “theories” upon them and upon their every descendent.

I essayed to steady myself and suppress my outrage. I knew that my anger would only grow in intensity as the baneful perpetrations being detailed and expounded upon by the informative Miss Wolf began, themselves, to intensify in perniciousness — as by little and little that picture of abominable, villainous exploitation began to take form and shape.“So they observe us?” I asked, attempting to compose myself.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Observe us, Miss Wolf. Have the administrators of the Tiadaghton Project always been about the business of observing and studying the residents of this valley whose ancestors they intentionally placed here?”

“Yes, in one way or another. What began as a scientific endeavour transformed itself in short order into quite a commercial one. You see, Dingley Dell became, to put it bluntly, big business.”