14. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 422-459

Two: America; 42-46

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Unfortunately, the gambling didn't go well for Mason. Not only did he lose twenty pounds, but he also suffered the indignity of seeing Lord Lepton, "this runny-nos'd, titl'd Savage, tossing their Expeditionary Funds as airy Gratuities to the Slaves." Dixon proposes that they "take something worth twenty pounds" and decides on "a giant Bathing-tub with Feet, Bear Feet in fact, cast at the Lepton Foundry from local Iron." When Mason protests that the thing must weigh half a ton, Dixon reveals that "William Emerson taught things no one else in England knows. Secret techniques of mechanickal Art, rescued from the Library at Alexandria, circa 390 A.D." And to Mason's astonishment, "Dixon seems scarcely to touch the pond'rous Fixture" before one end levitates and the tub is standing "precariously balanced upon a sort of lip or Flange at its other end."

Dixon leaves Mason with the tub while he goes to "reconnoitre," but  soon Mason hears Dixon talking to Lady Lepton in the corridor. "Sighs. Fabric tearing. A merry Squeal." And then music, Handel's "O Ruddier than the Cherry," issuing from "the infamous Musickal Bodice, devis'd by an instrument-maker of London, wherein Quills sewn into its fastening, when this is pull'd apart," play a tune. Mason stands there fuming with the tub while Dixon and the Lady proceed with their dalliance.

But soon someone else appears, fascinated by the tub, which he says is a "quite astonishing Magnet" and "damn' nearly Earth's third Pole." He introduces himself as "Professor Voam, Philosophical Operator, just at present scampering from the King's Authorities." Voam is in possession of a "Torpedo" -- an electric eel, which electrocuted a man in Philadelphia who disregarded warnings not to touch it. Mason is irritated when Voam recognizes him as one of "The Astronomers! Dixon and Mason!" He tries to correct the order of billing, but Voam talks on, pointing out that the tub would be "just the Article to keep Felípe in," Felípe being the Torpedo.

Dixon returns, "emerging coprophagously a-grin from some false Panel in a Wall," and the three of them exit with the tub. In a corridor, Mason is confronted by the slave woman whom Dixon encountered the night before. He recognizes her, but can't believe his eyes. She tells him she was abducted by Malays and sold to the Jesuits, who sent her to a nunnery. "Whence, after my Novitiate, kind Captain D. and I came to our Rapprochement." He admits that he knows who she is -- although the name Austra is not yet mentioned -- but she disappears around a corner.

They enter a room where they find a rifle suspended over the fireplace, and where Wade LeSpark has been resting on a couch. They talk about the rifle, which has an inverted silver five-pointed star on its stock that Mason has seen before, in Lancaster, "upon the Sign of the Dutch Rifle," a tavern. Dixon says they could have taken the rifle instead of the tub, but Mason protests that the silver pentacle means the rifle is cursed. And LeSpark counsels that "taking the Rifle will be far more dangerous, than taking the Tub."

Finally they get the tub outside "where they transfer Tub and Torpedo to a Conestoga Waggon but lately unloaded, with fresh Horses hitch'd up." Only then does Mason ask Dixon, "Did it seem like Austra to you?" And they agree that it couldn't have been. And Voam begins to tell them about the Torpedo, which he says is not an eel but a ray or a skate, native to Surinam, and is also known as "El Peligroso." The professor has been doing a traveling show with the Torpedo, and when they stop at an inn for one, he quickly attracts an audience. He demonstrates the eel's electrical powers by lighting a cigar from the giant spark it produces, but it has a peculiar effect on Mason, who looks directly into the spark and sees "at the heart of the Electrick Fire, beyond color, beyond even Shape, an Aperture into another Dispensation of Space, yea and Time, than what Astronomers and Surveyors are us'd to working with.... Throughout, the Creature in the Tank regarded me with a personal stare, as of a Stranger claiming to know me from some distant, no longer accessible Shore."

Abandoning the Tub, the Professor builds a larger circular Tank, and mounts it upon wheels, so that daily it may be situated directly upon the Line. Felípe then slowly rotates until his head is pointing north. Presently, he has become the camp Compass, as often consulted as the Thermometer or the Clock.

At the end of February they are in Newark when word comes that Maskelyne has been made Astronomer Royal. Mason tries to put on a good face at the news, though for Dixon, "Mason attempting to be chirpy is less easy to bear than Mason in blackest Melancholy." He soon admits that Maskelyne "is unworthy, damn him! to succeed James Bradley." Mason's own aspirations for the post become obvious, and Dixon suggests, "Were I thee, I should make him feel guilty ev'ry change I got. Perhaps he doubts his own Worthiness." Which amuses Mason: "Why bless me, Sir, -- you are a Jesuit, after all. Sinister Alfonso, move aside, -- sheathe that Stiletto, wicked Giuseppe, -- here is the true Italian Art."

In April they begin the West Line and bid farewell to the Harland farm that has been their base of operations. Before they leave, they encounter a stranger named Jonas Everybeet who is fascinated by "the chunk of Rose Quartz where cross the Latitude of the south Edge of Philadelphia, and the Longitude of the Post Mark'd West, -- the single Point to which all work upon the West Line (and its eastward Protraction to the Delaware Short) will finally refer." Everybeet gazes into the crystal and when Mason looks into it he sees a face with "Huge, dark Eyes." Everybeet joins the party as a specialist in magnetic fields, anomalies in which he can discover.

Mason and Dixon are also dogged by a "Body-jobber" named O'Rooty, who specializes in finding workers for the crew, including some Swedish axmen, and a "'Developer,' or Projector of Land-Schemes," whom Dixon suggests they kill. The first day of surveying the West Line is April 5, and in less than a week they have found that the line runs through the house of a Rhys Price, who is away but whose wife has them survey right through the house while she marks the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland within it. When her husband shows up, she announces to him that they were married in Pennsylvania, "So from now on, when I am upon this side of the House, I am in Maryland, legally not ;your wife, and no longer subject to your Authority." Advised that he will have to pay taxes to both Pennsylvania and Maryland, Price decides to put; the house on rollers and move it into one state or the other. And since Maryland is downhill and they will no longer be married there, he chooses Maryland.

Now the mechanical duck makes a return, showing up when Mason makes a disparaging remark about it as a "French toy." The duck steals his hat and is persuaded to return it only when Allègre, who seems to have joined the expedition, persuades it. We also have a glimpse of the crew, including Moses Barnes, the overseer of the axmen, and Nathanael McClean, a handsome young man working during his summer break from college in Williamsburg.

13. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 382-421

Two: America; 38-41

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Mr. Dimdown had been a passenger in the coach -- a foppish young man (a "macaroni" in the contemporary argot) who enjoyed flashing his "hanger" -- a cutlass. He "had been drinking steadily whatever Spirits came to hand, for the three days previous, attempting, as he explains, 'to get the Time to pass differently, that's all.'" His sudden attack on Allègre could have been fatal, but "Immediately, Inches short of its target, the Weapon, from no cause visible to anyone, leaves Dimdown's Grasp and sails across the Room in a slow, some might say insolent Arc, directly in among the blazing Logs of the Hearth, where none may reach."

The duck, it seems, has found Allègre, having developed the ability to fly "ever longer Distances." He explains that he had awakened "to find her perch'd at the end of the Bed, quacking merrily as a Milk-maid." He likens the duck to an angel, which reminds Frau Redzinger of her husband, Peter. But he is grateful after all that he left Europe for America, which he regards as a land of plenty: "the tomatoes, terrapins, peaches, rockfish, crabs, Indian Corn, Venison! Bear! Beaver! To create the Beaver Bourguignon, -- who knows, perhaps even the ... the Beaver soufflé, non?" And when Frau Redzinger reveals that she knows how to cook beaver, he falls in love. It is the making of a triangle: "the incorruptible Pietist, the exil'd Chef, and the infatuated Duck."

They are snowbound in the inn, and Mitzi is flirting with "the stable-hands and Scullery-Boys" as well as helping Allègre in the kitchen. And eventually she flirts with Dimdown, having rescued his sword from the ashes and sharpened it for him. She reports that Allègre "has forsworn Violence in the Kitchen, -- not only toward Meat, but the Vegetables as well, for as little now can he bring himself to chop and Onion, as to slice a Turnip, or even scrub a Mushroom. She also engineers an apology by Dimdown to Allègre

Meanwhile, Mason and Dixon are quarreling again, about Mason's melancholy and Dixon's expanding waistline. So when the snow stops, they decide to go about their mission separately, flipping a coin that sends Mason north and Dixon south. Dixon journeys as far as Williamsburg, where he discovers the colonials in an uproar over the Stamp Act. In "Raleigh's Tavern, Virginians young and old are standing to toast the King's Confoundment." When his turn comes to propose a toast, Dixon comes up with, "To the pursuit of Happiness." This attracts the notice of "a tall red-headed youth" who asks if he might use the phrase sometime. Discovering that Dixon is a surveyor, the young man asks, "are you Mason, or Dixon?" "'Tom takes a Relative interest in West Lines," quips the Landlord, "his father having help'd run the one that forms our own southern border." And so Dixon falls into conversation with Jefferson (though not identified as such in the novel).

Mason travels to New York, where he meets a young woman named Amelia, "a Milk-Maid of Brooklyn, somehow alone in New-York without funds." She "is dress'd from Boots to Bonnet all in different Articles of black, a curious choice for a milkmaid, it seems to Mason, tho', as he has been instructed ever to remind himself, this is New-York, where other Customs prevail." He feeds her  and accompanies her back to Brooklyn, where he finds himself among "an assortment of Rogues weirder than any Mason has yet seen, be it at Portsmouth, or the Cape, or even Lancaster Town." When he reveals that he's an astronomer and that he knows how to repair a telescope, he's asked to repair theirs, which Mason is perplexed to find has been trained on the horizon and not on the stars. The real problem with the instrument, however, is that the lenses have been knocked out of alignment. He agrees to repair it, and "Feeling not quite a Prisoner, Mason works thro' the Day."

Like Dixon, Mason is surrounded by angry talk about the Stamp Act. When someone says, "the Stamp Act is simple Tyranny, and our duty's to resist it,"

Mason expects shock'd murmurs at this, -- that there are none shocks him even more gravely, allowing him a brief, careening glimpse at how far and fast all this may be moving, -- something styling itself  'America,' coming into being, ripening, like a Tree-ful of Cherries in a good summer, almost as one stands and watches, -- something no one in London, however plac'd in the Web of Privilege, however up-to-the-minute, seems to know much about. What is happening? 

More shocking is the suggestion that he is a serf, "As they call it here, a Slave." He resists the idea, but when he tells them he's from Stroud, he's reminded of how then-Col. James Wolfe put down an effort by weavers in Stroud to bring about an increase in their wages:

Mason recalls well enough that autumn of '56, when the celebrated future Martyr of Quebec, with six companies of Infantry, occupied that unhappy town after wages were all cut in half ... and a weaver was lucky to earn tuppence for eight hours' work. Mason in those same Weeks was preparing to leave the Golden Valley, to begin his job as Bradley's assistant, even as Soldiers were beating citizens and slaughtering sheep for their pleasure, fouling and making sick Streams once holy, -- his father meantimes cursing his Son for a Coward.... Mason, seeing the Choices, had chosen Bradley, and Bradley's world, when he should instead have stood by his father, and their small doom'd Paradise. 

Having repaired the telescope, Mason is accompanied to New Jersey by a member of the group, Patsy, who bid him farewell with, "We could be at War, in another Year. What a Thought, hey?"

At this point, LeSpark reveals that he met Mason and Dixon at a "ridotto" at Lepton Castle on the "well-guarded, and in the estimate of some, iniquitous, Iron-Plantation of Lord and Lady Lepton." Mason and Dixon stumble upon the castle by accident, taking shelter one night in a cabin that, like the coach they rode in earlier, turns out to be larger inside than outside. They walk through corridors, hearing "new music, advanced music," and finally reach a grand hall where they are announced to the gathering as "Mr. Mason, and Mr. Dixon, Astronomers of London." Dixon's promotion to astronomer annoys Mason, but they proceed "into what, in London, is term'd an 'Hurricanoe,' -- a thick humidity of Intrigue and Masks realiz'd in locally obtained Fur and Plumage, clamorous with Chatter and what seems now more to resemble Dancing-Music."

Among the crowd Mason "belatedly recognizes the notorious Calvert agent Captain Dasp." Meeting Lady Lepton, Dixon recalls that he had seen her when they were both much younger, at Raby Castle. "Dixon ... is finding all this, to his delight, dangerously interesting."

Somehow this fearlessly independent Girl had then gone on to marry the ill-famed, the drooling and sneering, multiply-bepoxed Lord Lepton, an insatiate Gamester who failed to pay his losses, forever a-twittering, even as he tumbled to ruin in one of the period's more extravagant Stock-Bubbles, summarily ejected from Clubs high and low, advised by friend and enemy that his only decent course would be to step off the Edge of the World. 

Lepton took this to mean "go to America," where he made his fortune in iron. He is also rumored to be a member of the Hellfire Club.

The servants in the hall are black slaves in white wigs -- "black Major-domos and black Soubrettes. One of the latter passes by with a tray of drinks." She looks at Dixon as if she knows him. "For a frightening moment, he seems to know her." And Mason has recognized that Captain Dasp is a French spy. But "no one at the moment has anything but Gaming of one sort or another in mind."

2. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 30-57

One: Latitudes and Departures;4-6

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We have a glimpse of Cherrycoke's audience before he returns to the story. It includes a Cousin Ethelmer, recently "return'd from College in the Jerseys." And we learn of Mr. LeSpark that he "made his Fortune years before the War, selling weapons to French and British, Settlers and Indians alike."

Mason and Dixon have had a little disagreement with Capt. Smith of the Seahorse, who wants them to chip in a hundred guineas each for the privilege of dining at his table, with the result that they end up dining in the Lieutenant's Mess. Moreover, there has been a communication that their destination in Sumatra, Bencoolen (now Bengkulu), has fallen into the hands of the French.

On board the ship, Mason and Dixon make their acquaintance with Cherrycoke, who tells them that Capt. Smith "wishes to be taken as a man of Science," and that he "does not consider his best game to be war." Which is unfortunate because they are soon under attack from the French ship l'Grand. Mason, Dixon and Cherrycoke are sent below where they do what they can with the casualties of the battle, which ends when the French captain learns that the mission of the Seahorse is to ferry a scientific expedition to its destination. "France is not at war with the sciences," proclaims the French captain, adding, "You are leetluh meenow, -- I throw you back. Perhaps someday we meet when you are biggair Feesh, like me. Meanwhile, I sail away, Poohpooh! Adieu!" Capt. Smith feels compelled to give chase when the French sail away, but he has to give it up because of the damage to the ship, which returns to Plymouth for repairs.

Mason and Dixon have a drunken conversation in which Dixon explains that he's been expelled from the Quakers, so he has no compunctions against war. Mason writes to the Royal Society explaining about Bencoolen's fall to the French and asking if another station would do as well, but the Society "wrote back in the most overbearing way, on about loss of honor, strongly threatening legal action if Mason and Dixon were to break their contract."

Another member of Cherrycoke's audience reveals himself. Uncle Lomax is a manufacturer of soap, but "'Philadelphia Soap' is a Byword, throughout the American Provinces, of low Quality. At the touch of water, nay, damp Air, it becomes a vile Mucus that refuses to be held in any sort of grip, gentle or firm, and often leaves things dirtier than they were before its application, -- making it, more properly, an Anti-Soap."

Cherrycoke tells them that they set sail again in a convoy with a larger frigate, the Brilliant. Cherrycoke is quarter'd with Lieutenant Unchleigh, a rattle-head," who protested when he found Cherrycoke reading a book. Cherrycoke explained that it was the Bible, but Unchleigh replies, "No matter, 'tis Print, -- Print causes Civil Unrest." Capt. Smith has been replaced by Capt. Grant, who has been ordered to follow the Brilliant until further orders, which he has been given and told to open at Tenerife. Grant protests that Smith had been ordered to sail to Bencoolen even though the Admiralty knew it was in the hands of the French, so "what if my orders are to some equally impossible Destination?"

We learn a bit about the crew. The ship's band consists of Slowcombe, "a single Fifer, to whom it fell, the noontide the Frenchman appear'd, to inspire the Lads ito battle with his one silver Pipe." There is Jack "Fingers" Soames, "a viperish Lad whose eponymous Gesture, made in answer to all Overtures, however ritual or ev'ryday, strangely lacks any hostile Intent, being exressive rather of a deep-held wish, so far as may be possible within the Perimeter of a Sixth-Rate, to be left alone." And there is Veevle, "legendary thro'out the Royal N. for being impossible to wake to stand Watch," but who if he is caught while awake and tricked into taking the watch for someone else, "becomes the smartest and most estimable of Seamen."

Boredom (and horniness) aboard ship makes the anticipation of crossing the Equator more intense. The "Pollywogs" crossing the line for the first time -- Mason, Dixon and Cherrycoke -- will undergo a hazing ceremony by the crew.

1. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 1-29

One: Latitudes and Departures; 1-3

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The narrative begins in a large house in or near Philadelphia at Christmastime (or a "snowy Advent") in 1786. It's not clear yet who the narrator is at this point in the novel, but he (or she) will relinquish it to another voice after the scene is set.

It has become an afternoon habit for the Twins and their Sister, and what Friends old and young may find their way here, to gather for another Tale from their far-travel'd Uncle, the Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, who arriv'd here back in October for the funeral of a Friend of years ago, -- too late for the Burial, as it prov'd, -- and has linger'd as a Guest in the Home of his sister Elizabeth, the Wife, for many years, of Mr. J. Wade LeSpark, a respected Merchant in Town Affairs, whilst in his home yet Sultan enough to convey to the Revd, tho' without ever so stipulating, that, for as long as he can keep the children amus'd, he may remain, -- too much evidence of Juvenile Rampage at the wrong moment, however, and Boppo! 'twill be Out the Door with him, where waits the Winter's Block and Blade. 

So Cherrycoke yields to the entreaties of the twins, Pitt and Pliny, so named "that each might be term'd 'the Elder' or 'the Younger,' as might day-to-day please one, or annoy his Brother." He begins a story about the surveying expedition of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, on which he says he took part. 

Mason is dead, and Cherrycoke, who arrived too late for the funeral, every day makes a visit to his grave. Cherrycoke himself is a rather dubious parson, and Pitt observes that his mother calls him "the Family outcast," and Pliny that "They pay you money to keep away." Cherrycoke claims that back in England he was once almost hanged for posting bills listing the names of perpetrators "of certain Crimes I had observ'd, committed by the Stronger against the Weaker." Judged to be insane, he was sent to sea on the Seahorse. 

We cut to a letter from Dixon to Mason, who is Assistant to the Astronomer Royal, in which Dixon announces himself as Mason's "Second upon the propos'd Expedition to Sumatra, to observe the Transit of Venus." 

Cherrycoke returns to the story, admitting that he wasn't there when Mason met Dixon, but that he had heard the story from them. Dixon was from Durham, in the northeast of England, and something of a bumpkin in the city. He's surprised when Mason mocks his accent, but manages to get even with a joke, which embarrasses the rather too serious Mason. Dixon is taller and "the first to catch the average Eye, often causing future strangers to remember them as Dixon and Mason." He was also raised a Quaker. 

Mason, having expected some shambling wild Country Fool, remains amiably puzzl'd before the tidied Dixon here presented, -- who, for his own part, having ... expected but another over-dress'd London climber, is amus'd  at Mason's nearly invisible Turn-out, all in Snuffs and Buffs and Grays.

They are in Portsmouth, awaiting the embarkation, and decide it's their "last chance for civiliz'd Drink." In a tavern they encounter "a somewhat dishevel'd Norfolk Terrier, with a raffish Gleam in its eye." The dog then sings a song, announcing himself as "the Learnéd English Dog," willing to answer any question. Dixon observes Mason's fascination with the dog, but when Mason starts to ask a rambling question, the dog "sighs deeply" and says, "See me later, out in back." Outside, they meet Fender-Belly Bodine, who is captain of the foretop of the Seahorse, their ship, who notes their interest in the dog. 

Mason's question of the dog is "Have you a soul, -- that is, are you a human Spirit, re-incarnate as a Dog?" The dog replies that he is not there to provide "religious Comfort":  "I may be praeternatural, but I am not supernatural." He tells them that dogs used to be kept by humans for food, so dogs, noting that cannibalism was taboo, "learn'd to act as human as possible." He is "but an extreme Expression of this Process." Bodine expresses interest in buying the dog, but his "Exhibitor," Mr. and Mrs. Jellow, say that he's not for sale. 

Dixon, "who for some while has been growing increasingly desperate for a drink," notices that they are near the Pearl of Sumatra, and Bodine invites the dog, who says, "Pray you, call me Fang," to join them. In the saloon, a vast hive of multiple vices including cock-fighting and other forms of gambling, Fang points out Dark Hepsie, the Pythoness of the Point," and tells Mason that she's the one he should consult for prophecy. Dixon quickly spots that Hepsie is actually an attractive young woman in disguise. When Hepsie notes that they plan to sail on Friday, a day of ill omen, being the day of the crucifixion, Mason suggests that they should sail on another day. 

"Mason, pray You, -- 'tis the Age of Reason," Dixon reminds him, "we're Men of Science. To huz must all days run alike, the same number of identical Seconds, each proceeding in but one Direction, irreclaimable....? If we would have Omens, why, let us recall that the Astronomer's Symbol for Friday is also that of the planet Venus herself, -- a good enough Omen, surely ...?" 

So they take their leave of Hepsie and Fang, though Mason wants to ask them more, and in the morning he can't find anyone who knows anything about them. "He will continue search, even unto scanning the short as the Seahorse gets under way at last, on Friday, 9 January 1761."