16. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 491-524

Two: America; 51-53

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Dixon begins wearing a coonskin cap and surprising Mason, who has "a lower order of Snakes-and-Bears Jumpiness," by showing up in the tent with the cap on backward. "Mason's reactions are all he is hoping for, and more." But both are unnerved when "From the Forest now proceed Sounds, real ones, that neither Surveyor has heard before, and that each is too embarrass'd to mention to the other." Dixon thinks it's Indian drums, while Mason thinks it's a dog -- "A particular Dog, with a syncopated Bark.... Oh yes, a Dog well known and much fear'd in this Region." The overseer agrees with Mason: It's the Black Dog, an infamous British incarnation of the devil. Finally, Dixon goes to investigate and returns with the information that it was the Glowing Indian of South Mountain, "Walking down toward Antietam, last I saw. Seem'd a pleasant enough Lad. Not much to say. Too tall, of course...."

On September 1 they hear of a "remarkable Cavern beneath the Earth, about six miles south of the line. In the winter, English Church services are held in it." They go to investigate and Mason records his impressions in his journal, that it strikes "its Visitants with a strong and melancholy reflection: that such is the abodes of the Dead: thy inevitable doom, O stranger; soon to be numbered as one of them." But Dixon's impression is different: "where Mason saw a Gothick Interior, Dixon saw 'pon ev'ry Surface, ancient Inscriptions, Glyphs undreadable, -- Ogham, possibly."

They cross Conococheague Creek and at North Mountain they leave their instruments with Capt. Evan Shelby and begin their return eastward for the winter. "Not till they turn and head east again, do they find any time for rememb'ring anything. Going west has been against all Futurity. Now, moving against the Sun, they may take up again the past." Dixon, trudging into a chill wind, recalls Emerson, who wore his coat backward because "won't half the walking I'm to do in my Life, be into the wind?" He argued,

"The Modern Coat, as we know it, ... is bas'd upon the attire of the Nobility and Gentry and other assorted Thieves, who could ever afford Servants to put their clothes on for them. At such intimate moments, 'twas believ'd more prudent to keep a Servant in front of one, than allow him behind."

Mason, meanwhile, is flashing back to the suppression of the weavers of Stroud: "Some aspir'd to be master-weavers, most would have settl'd for a living wage, but their desires how betray'd, when in 'fifty-six the Justice of the Peace, upon easily imagin'd arrangements with the Clothiers, reduced by half the Wages set by law, and the troubles came to a head." He surprises Dixon by revealing that "Rebekah's people were weavers." And he recalls that the conflict between the weavers and the soldiers was what finally persuaded his father to encourage him to leave for Greenwich and his work as an astronomer.

Mason and Dixon have a common fear of open spaces. Mason recalls "Bisley Common, haunted by wild men and murderers, and its Wind never ceasing, -- a source of limitless Fear." Dixon's was Cockfield Fell: "Ev'ryone put in great effort to avoid crossing it." But Emerson assured his students that they could "get above it" -- i.e., by flying, "but before they learn'd to fly, they had to learn about Maps, for Maps are the Aides-mémoires of flight.... one can apprehend all at once the entire plexity of possible journeys, set as one is above Distance, above Time itself." The students, however, worried about witches such as "the Old Hell-Cat of Raby with her black Coach and six? She can rise above the Land-scape too, -- how does an innocent Cartographer deal with that?" Emerson's answer: "Professional courtesy." But Emerson chided Dixon for "squandering [his] precious Skepticism, over at Raby, upon this Gothickal Clap-trap."

Dixon admits his fascination with "the Old Hell-Cat of Raby, ... Elizabeth, Lady Barnard, who'd died back in '42 after a life of embitter'd family warfare over who was to inherit the Castle, whose Battlements she continued to walk, with a pair of brass knitting-nedles, whilst awaiting her Coach." One night when he was young, Dixon decided to get a closer look at the lady, scaling the castle roof to hear her mutter about the lateness of her coach. When it arrives, the coachman complains of traffic: the swarms of Emerson's flying students. She leaps into the coach and "leans then to stare back out, unmistakably and directly at Dixon, and calls, 'Perhaps another time, Jeremiah.'" That was the first he heard of Emerson, and his motive to study with him so "that 'another Time' [might] happen some Evening when he and Lady Barnard were both aloft."

While still in the mountains, Mason and Dixon "take to sledding in the Year's early snow-Falls, upon folded pieces  of Tent-Canvas" and nearly come to grief when the snow grows so thick that they can't see ahead of themselves. Mason bails out, but Dixon glides uncontrollably on until he collides with the mattresses that are used to cushion the instruments. They spend Christmas at the Harlands' before going their separate ways.

And now the narrative shifts to the story of a woman -- unnamed at least for now -- who is kidnapped by Indians. "The further they took her through the Forest, away from her home and name, the safer she began to feel." They reach the Susquehanna and take to boats, "not Indian Canoes but French-built Battoes, fram'd in Timbers, she was later to learn, that grown only in the far Illinois." They travel northward. "They did not bind, or abuse, or, unless they must, speak to her. They were her Express, -- she was their Message." The snow begins to fall, and they reach "the Shore of some vast body of water that vanishes at the Horizon" where she gets into a bark canoe. "When they arrive at last in Quebec, the Winter is well upon them." She is taken to the Jesuit College, and then, "barefoot, still in Indian Dress, into a room fill'd with books. Père de la Tube, a Jesuit in a violet cassock, speaks to her with a thick French accent, and will not look at her face. Nearby, in smoothly kept Silence, sits a colleague whose relentless Smile and brightness of eye only the Mad may know." De la Tube tells her that the man is a Spanish philosopher who takes an interest in "heretick Women who turn to Holy Mother the Church." Another man enters, and she is told that he is Chinese.
The College in Quebec is head-quarters for all operations in North America. Kite-wires and Balloon-cables rise into clouds, recede into aerial distances, as, somewhere invisible, the Jesuit Telegraphy goes ahead, unabated.... Whenever the Northern Aurora may appear in the Sky, rooftops in an instant are a-swarm with figures in black.... Rumors suggest that the Priests are using the Boreal Phenomenon to send Messages over the top of the World, to receiving-stations in the opposite Hemisphere."

There is some bargaining among the Jesuits, and finally it is determined that she is to become "A novice in Las Viudas de Cristo" -- which is the convent from which Capt. Dasp purchased the slavewoman Mason and Dixon encountered at Lepton Castle whom they took to be Austra. In the convent, she meets Sisters Blondelle, Grincheuse, and Crosier. She tells them that the Indians didn't mistreat her, but she "star'd often at the many ways they had inscrib'd their own Skins, some of the Pictures being most beautiful, others arousing in me strange flashes of fear, mix'd with ... it perplexes me to say ... with feelings of Desire." Thereupon they decide she needs "the Las Viudas Cilice ... a device suggested by Jesuit practice, worn secretly, impossible, once secur'd, to remove, producing what some call Discomfort, -- enough to keep thoughts from straying far from God." It is

the Hothouse Rose, deep red, nearly black, whose supple, long Stem is expertly twisted into a Breech-clout, to pass between the Labia as well as 'round the Waist, with the Blossom, preferably one just about to open, resting behind, in that charming Cusp of mostness and heat, where odors of the Body and the Rose may mingle with a few drops of Blood from the tiny green Thorns, and Flashes of Pain whose true painfulness must be left for the Penitent to assess.

Her hair is shorn and she is promised a wig someday if she's good. "Having already seen other Sisters going about in elaborate Wigs that she imagines must be quite in the current Parisian Mode, she is soon wondering how she might look in one of those powder'd Confections." She sneaks into the wig-room and tries one on, but is caught. And when she replaces the wig on its stand, she realizes that the wig-stand is a skull.

We shift to a scene in which a Jesuit known as "the Wolf of Jesus" is talking to "a roomful of students" about matters such as the Jesuit quarrel with feng shui: "'Why prevent the Chinese from practicing Feng Shui? Because it works,' the Wolf of Jesus is explaining.... "It carries the mark of the Adversary, -- It is too easy. Not earn'd. Too little of the Load is borne by the Practicioner, too much by some Force Invisible, and the unknown Price it must exact."

10. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 289-326

Two: America; 29-32

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We meet the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who make beeswax effigies to be hanged and burned at political rallies -- sometimes, if the effigies are to be decapitated, using spare parts from the neighborhood abattoir. They're so lifelike, Damian says, that "you'd enter any darken'd Room our lads and lasses happen'd to be in, only upon ill advice indeed." Mason and Dixon have discovered that the back rooms of taverns in Philadelphia tend to be reserved for members of various secret societies, and in one of them he finds some of the Veery brothers' creations: heads of the commissioners for the boundary line. So he's creeped out when he attends a meeting of the commissioners. "Those waxen Faces that gaz'd at him with such a midnight Intent, -- here are their daytime counterparts to greet him, with the same, O God in thy Mercy, the same look ... as if deliberately to recall the other night."

Mason finds it hard to sleep in Philadelphia, what with the street noises and the bedbugs, though Dixon has no problem doing so. One insomniac night he goes to the Orchid Tavern, where he has the complexities of Pennsylvania politics -- the reason the Veery brothers can make a living off of effigies -- explained to him. "Religious bodies here cannot be distinguished from Political Factions. These are Quaker, Anglican, Presbyterian, German Pietist. Each prevails in its own area of the Province." The Penns, he is told "tho' Quaker by ancestry are Anglican in Praxis, -- some even say, Tools of Rome." But the political lesson is interrupted by the appearance of Franklin, who gives a demonstration of electricity with the help of volunteers from the audience.

Mason and Dixon's work on their eponymous line begins with the establishment of the southernmost boundary of Philadelphia. The boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland is to be drawn fifteen miles south of this. The commissioners have chosen the northern wall of a house to be the southernmost boundary, because the south wall is in private property. Nearby, "Mr. Benjamin Loxley and his Crew have been busily erecting an Observatory." Dixon, who is in charge of the compass, visits a coffee house, the Flower-de-Luce, which is "frequented by those with an interest in the Magnetick." There he meets "Dr. Franklin's friend Dolly," who turns out to be interested in compasses and maps. She tells him that the Calverts are interested in him and that Cecilius Calvert "believes you a Wizard, a Dowser of Iron.... They imagine, that you and your Instrument will make of them Nabobs, like Lord Lepton, to whose ill-reputed Plantation you must be drawn, upon your way West, resistlessly as the Needle. Then, Sailor among the Iron Isles, -- Circumferentor Swab, -- Beware."

Late in December they awaken to silence outside, which they find eerie, so they set out to find out what has happened to everyone. At the Restless Bee, a coffee house, they learn that the vigilantes known as the Paxton Boys have massacred a group of peaceful Indians and are now marching on Philadelphia. "Mason and Dixon look at each other bleakly. 'Well. If I'd known 'twould be like this in America....' Mason did note as peculiar, that the first mortal acts of savagery in America after their Arrival should have been committed by Whites against Indians." They also worry about the kind of people they will encounter as they move west. "What must we look like? A sizable Band of Arm'd Pioneers, working for the Proprietors? ... mystical Machinery they've never seen ...? Up far too late at night, gazin' at the Heavens...?"

They also recall the Second Jacobite Rising of 1745, although Mason, who was seventeen at the time, while Dixon was twelve, claims to recall it better. Which leads them into a quarrel about the difference of their backgrounds, with Mason asserting, "You, simple Geordie, inhabit a part of England where ancient creatures may yet move in the Dusk, and the animals fly, and the dead pop in now and then for coffee and a chat. Upon my home soil, the Ground for growing any such Wonders has been cruelly poison'd, with the coming of the hydraulick Looms.... My home's no more."

Pitt and Pliny are excited by the notion that Mason and Dixon might have come to blows over their differences, but Cherrycoke doesn't give them that satisfaction, assuring them that they remained friends "till something ... something occurr'd between them, in 'sixty-seven or 'sixty-eight, that divided their Destinies irremediably...." Tenebrae announces that it's bedtime for the boys, but Cherrycoke promises them "Indians tomorrow." After they depart, he tells the remaining audience about the watch that Emerson presented to Dixon before he sailed, telling him to "be vigilant, to the point of Folly, if Folly it takes, in your care of this Watch, for within it lies a secret mechanism, that will revolutionize the world of Horology." In short, it's a perpetual motion machine, which Emerson has always told Dixon is impossible. But when Dixon goes to wind it, he can't find a way of doing so.

Mason is skeptical about this impossible watch, even though Dixon assures him that he never has to wind it. "You might be winding it while I'm asleep, or when screen'd, as we so often are one from the other, by Trees." Then one night Dixon has a dream in which Emerson appears to him and charges him with breaking his contract and threatens terrible consequences. After he awakes, "Tho' sworn to guarantee the Watch's safety, he soon finds his only thoughts are of ways to rid himself of it." As it happens, a land-surveyor named R.C., who is working with them, has been shown the watch and wants it, thinking it might be worth something to the men who are trying to solve the problem of determining longitude. So one night R.C. swallows the watch.

In the months, and then the years, after he swallows the Watch, as the days of ceaseless pulsation pass one by one, R.C. learns that a small volume within him is, and shall be, immortal. His wife moves to another Bed, and soon into another room altogether, after persuading him first to build it onto the House. "Snoring's one thing, R.C., I can always do something about that," brandishing her Elbow, "-- but that Ticking..."

Dixon reluctantly reports the loss of the watch to Emerson, who is surprisingly jubilant at the news. He has to dictate his reply to Dixon's letter because he injures himself celebrating the news of the lost watch, but Mrs. Emerson writes that her husband "wishes me to say, 'Felicitations, Fool, for it hath work'd to Pefection.'" But the only explanation of that remark from Emerson comes in a postscript: "Time is the Space that may not be seen, --"

8. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 215-253

One: Latitudes and Departures; 22-25

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Dixon meets a Jesuit priest, Christopher Maire, at William Emerson's home. Maire has worked with the celebrated Croatian Jesuit astronomer Ruggiero Boscovich (or Ruđer Bošković) in Italy. Emerson is a noted English mathematician who has a reputation in Hurworth as a wizard, from his willingness to cast horoscopes and his knowledge of hypnotism -- or Mesmerism.

This information causes Cousin DePugh to interrupt Cherrycoke's narrative to reveal that he has been Mesmerized, and even taught the technique by Mesmer himself.

Returning to his story, Cherrycoke tells them that some in Hurworth believe that Emerson can fly, and that he teaches this art to his students, of which Dixon has been one. But Emerson is really a student of ley lines, ancient lines of demarcation that are best glimpsed at sundown, when the light strikes the land at a low angle and "ev'ry least Ruffle in the Nap of the Terrain is magnified as Shadow," revealing "traces of Roman and earlier ruins." They are purported to have magnetic power, or "Tellurick Energies," as Mason calls them when Dixon talks about them later. Emerson tells his students,

"The Romans ... were preoccupied with conveying Force, be it hydraulic, or military, or architectural, -- along straight Lines. The Leys are at least that old, -- perhaps Druidic, tho' others say Mithraic, in origin. Whichever Cult shall gain the honor, Right Lines beyond a certain Magnitude become of less use or instruction to those who must dwell among them, than intelligible, by their immense regularity, to more distant Onlookers, as giving a clear sign of Human Presence upon the Planet."

But when Dixon announced his plans to become a maker of straight lines, i.e., a surveyor, Emerson denounced his lack of ambition.

Maire tells them that Boscovich wants to "measure a Degree, in America," but Emerson protests that the "King will never allow Jesuit philosophers into British North America" and suspects that the plan is to establish "a great number of Jesuit Observatories, flung as a Web, all over the World." And when he suggests that the Jesuits have designs on China, Maire doesn't disagree. He even goes so far as to suggest that Dixon might want to join the order: "Why, if Authority and Battle be your Meat, lad, or Out-Fit can supply as much as you like." But Dixon balks at the idea of chastity. Maire tells Dixon that he's a perfect candidate for the job of surveying the disputed boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland: "a working Land-Surveyor with astronomical experience. I can assure you of Calvert approval, -- that you come of a Quaker Family must appeal to at least one major faction in Pennsylvania." He even suggests that Dixon's Northern origins would appeal to Jacobites in America.

Emerson proposes that they "'repair to my Local, The Cudgel and Throck.' A moment Dixon has been dreading, for those who drink at this Ale-Grotto of terrible Reputation, do so out of a Melancholy advanc'd beyond his understanding." First they disguise Maire with a wig as "Mr. Emerson's distant Cousin Ambrose, of Godless London." The pub "is even more depressing than I remember it," Dixon says when they get there. Maire continues to try to persuade Dixon to take the American surveying job, assuring him that he won't have to spy for the Jesuits.


They are joined by a Mr. Whike, who has overheard talk of Jesuits. Whike and Dixon are old foes, and their quarrel begins to heat up again until Lud Oafery and his mother enter the pub. Lud is a large man with a curious speech impediment that has to be translated by Whike. Ma Oafery says that she's heard that Dixon is going to America. There is conversation about whether the Earth is round or flat -- the latter being Lud's opinion. Maire humors the opinion, saying that it is "flat as a Funnel-Cake, flat as a Pizza." The word puzzles his audience until he explains that pizza is "a Delicacy of Cheese, Bread, and Fish ubiquitous in the region 'round Mount Vesuvius," and he proceeds to show them how to cook one. The landlady, Mrs. Brain, produces the dough. In the absence of tomatoes, Dixon produces from his "Surveyor's Kit ... the Bottle of Ketjap, that he takes with him ev'rywhere." Mrs. Brain also provides anchovies and some Stilton. And so "what is arguably the first British Pizza" is produced.


But Mrs. Oafery begins to get nervous that it's growing dark and there's a full moon. Lud begins to grow agitated. Emerson says, "Lord's sake, Betsy, what're you saying, that our Ludowick's a werewolf?" Sure enough, "Lud has seen the Full Moon, and now pursues it out into the Street, Whike at his Heels." White calls out to them that Lud is changing.

In trips this shaven, somewhat narrow Youth, a Durham Dandy in Silver Brocade, Chinese Fastenings ev'rywhere in bright Gold, for Contrast, -- and as a Finial, a curiously cock'd Hat with a long Parrot Plume extending from it further than anyone present has even known a Feather to go. "Mother!" pipes the 'morphos'd Lud. "When will you do something about your Hair?" ... "Two, call it three nights," groans Ma Oafery, ev'ry Month, no worse than the Flux, really, -- he has memoriz'd several current Theatrickal Music-Pieces, and sings them to me thro' the Day. He tells Joaks I do not understand. He quizzes with me in Foreign Tongues. Yet I am a Mum, -- I can tolerate it."

We now get a bit of Dixon's parentage. His father, George Dixon Sr., married Mary Hunter, with whom he already had a connection in "the Durham Quaker Web." After Mary's mother died, her father, Thomas Hunter, married again twice. After his death, his third wife married again, to Ralph Dixon, George's father. Mary was almost eighteen when her father died, so she became the ward of her uncle, Jeremiah Hunter, for whom Dixon, the youngest, was named. Jeremiah Dixon was twenty-two and a journeyman surveyor when his father died.

He arranges to meet Mason in London to sign up for the surveying job in America, and sails there on a collier named Mary and Meg that gets lost in the fog before finally reaching the city. Safely arrived, Dixon expresses his condolences to Mason on Bradley's death. In a pub, Mason worries about America and "Savages. Wilderness. No one even knows what's out there. And we have just, do you appreciate, contracted, to place a Line directly thro' it?  Doesn't it strike you as a little unreasonable?" Dixon adds to his concern "the Americans," which Mason downplays: "They are at least all British there, -- aren't they? The Place is but a Patch of England, at a three-thousand-Mile Off-set. Isn't it?" Dixon disillusions him: "No more than the Cape Dutch are Dutch...? 'Tis said these people keep Slaves, as did our late Hosts, -- that they are likewise inclin'd to kill the People already living where they wish to settle." This leaves Mason hoping that "There may be redeeming Qualities to the place."

They also talk about the politics of the Royal Society. It seems that they are in bad repute for not having done the sighting in Turkey, which might have opened up a good silk trade route for Peach. Maskelyne explained this to Mason, who replied, "Ah. Let me see if I'm following this. The Royal Society send Dixon and me to the Cape, thus incurring a Debt ow'd to Dutchmen, rather than to Jews, which any Stationing of Astronomers at Scanderoon would imply." Dixon realizes that "ev'ry Observation site propos'd by the Royal Society prov'd to be a Factory, or Consulate, or other Agency of some royally Charter'd Company."

"Good Christ. Dixon. What are we about?"