Mason & Dixon - Part 1 - Chapter 13.1: Skin Deep Scrutiny
Analysis of Mason & Dixon, Part 1 - Chapter 13.1: Conversations with Maskelyne, Mason's Naivité, Maskelyne's Hypersensitivity, Men on the Moon
Mason and Dixon have just said their good-byes. Dixon is out at sea yet again. On the beach, staring out at the water, stands Maskelyne, possibly waiting for Mason to walk back in from seeing off his friend. When Maskelyne asks if he and Mason should “enter again the Atlantick Whore-House, find Breakfast, and get to work,” (125) Mason realizes the similarities and differences between the Dutch colonies versus the English colonies. He says, “It certainly isn’t Cape Town,” (125) realizing that the structure of this colony is far more freeform than that of where he had just come. Visitors and residents wander, the setting of the sun does not send people home, work is done either lackadaisically or without the same precision. Thus, with a perfunctory glimpse at the John Company’s1 colony, one would assume things function entirely different here.
But is the skin-deep procession of life for the colonizers really the signifying tenet of what defines the purpose and function of a place? It seems not, for still here do the slaves toil away, though to Mason it appears that their song may signify a bit more freedom and happiness. It should be obvious to the reader that this is not so. They are here for their forced labor, as at Cape Town, working for whichever ‘Company’ has laid claim on that land. Allowing for song, free time, shelter, or better food, is of no significance for anything other than the basest level of freedom. The EIC is no different, no better, than the VOC. Their territories are the embodiment of a world bent on furthering the reign of the Elite at the expense of the oppressed. But Mason, at this moment, truly believes there is a difference in the land which he comes from and the land which he just left. This initial Atlantic voyage is not enough for him to see the similarity, but maybe another in his future will serve that purpose. Does the average American also fail at this insight? Do they see the differing way of life and governance in the country of another continent to which they’ve never been and thus make immediate conclusions on the difference and disfunction of said country, failing to see the similarities to their own? — failing to see that one’s own land may not be as free as it is asserted to be? Not even as free as the places we are all told are the least free of all. To find those answers, do not look at the amblings of the average citizen. Look among the lowliest lives. Not even among the Preterite, but the Peasantry. How they are treated, what they are forced to do to survive. That is where a society’s true function lays.
Mason asks Maskelyne if it would be possible to hide away from any powerful forces upon this island. It does, on the surface, appear to be an ideal place to do so. It is an island that few people likely travel to; it is relatively lawless in nature; its inhabitants stumble around drunkenly or in a daze. However, Mason fails to realize (see a trend here?) that surface level appearances do not provide full answers. For if Mason (or whoever he may be asking about, or even if the question is purely theoretical) were to be trying to escape the all-knowing gaze of the Elite, there would be reason enough for them to put forth the full effort to find him. Yes, certain lands may be more amenable to hiding, and certain lands may be able to hide you for a much longer period of time than others. However, if They are looking, you better put your best effort forth. Even in the future, Biebel states that many like Byron the Bulb (Gravity’s Rainbow, 4.3) attempted to hide away from these powerful entities, leading to “multiple corporate departments seeking out a perceived threat to the order of the day” (Biebel, 66). And Byron is eventually caught, though due to his persistence does manage to escape again. Maskelyne warns Mason that he better know exactly what he’s getting into if this was something he ever intended to do. One must know the lay of the land, exactly who their friends and enemies are, and which friends may turn out to be anything but.
This conversation leads to Maskelyne’s complaint that Waddington left the island immediately after the Transit of Venus, stating that his contract said nothing about staying behind for extra work. Maskelyne, because of this abandonment, tries to convince Mason of two things. Firstly, that despite all appearances, he is not only here to overindulge in the easy access to acute pleasure. Instead, he is here to complete the research which he was tasked to do by the Royal Society. (Though, in reality, it is most definitely a combination of the two). Secondly, to convince Mason, or at least guilt trip him, into assisting in this research since he was now abandoned entirely. The irony of this second fact is that Mason would have been here in the first place if positions weren’t switched up due to the grasp of nepotism. Mason is therefore a far more reliable partner (given he agrees to help Maskelyne) and yet he was tossed aside in the earlier planning of this journey because Waddington and Maskelyne had friends in higher places.
Maskelyne is aware of the island’s more nefarious symbolism. It represents more than meets the eye. As we have seen (1.11 & 1.12), the island represents the coming world — one that not only serves the rich and powerful, but that fully embodies commodification, capitalism, and consumerism. Since this societal progression has not fully awakened in the world in this time period, Maskelyne views Saint Helena as
a conscious Creature, animated by power drawn from beneath the Earth, assembl’d in secret, by the Company,— entirely theirs […] [And as] a Slumbering Creature, compar’d to whose Size, we figure not quite as Lice,— that keeps us uniquely attentive to Life so precarious, and what Civility is truly necessary, to carry it on. Hence, no Curfew. To live, we must be up at all hours. Every moment of our Waking, pass’d in fear, with the possibility ceaseless of sliding into licentiousness and squalor,—
(128)
Maskelyne is stating that this ‘sleeping beast’ is something that is fully conscious and ready to emerge. Those who walk upon it tread carefully, for they understand that when it awakes, it will wreak havoc on all who are not a part of ‘the Company’ that built it. But upon it lies those exact things which will warp the people’s minds into accepting it as our only option for happiness, those pleasures that we can no longer live without: commodities that we never had access to, endless food and drink, the illusion of freedom. And when this beast awakes, we will appear to it as no more than ‘Lice.’ A nuisance rather than a threat. It will still hold those menial pleasures, but life will be rendered completely precarious due to our willingness to remain upon this beast rather than jumping into the ocean and whatever mysterious alternative lies within its deeps.
As Mason believes, Maskelyne very well may be insane with these contemplations. His constant paranoia, his awkwardness at The Moon (1.12), his odd analogies and beliefs, do not portend well if one were to just to observe him, again, from the surface. Yet every single thing he says whether with good intentions or not, whether he is a proponent of the ‘System’ or not, has validity. Maskelyne’s isolation and insanity (an insanity far more real than that of Captain Grant) stems from an overcomprehension of every single phenomenon around him. Like Dixon predicted in the previous chapter at The Moon (1.12), all of these University students go crazy for one reason or another, and a hyperawareness of the inner workings of every minute aspect of the world is certain to lead to some madness. However, viewing it from the surface and the surface alone may allow one to keep their sanity, though it will only ever keep that person ignorant of how the world really works.
Alas, Maskelyne does not really help himself in regard to how people view him. Thus begins Maskelyne’s paranoid ramblings. He realizes that Mason, and the rest of those whom he interacts with, view him as insane. So, despite being more in touch with the purpose of the system that they are all a part of, the fact that he is quite mad renders any belief of the truth he speaks to be ignored. He states, “All that is not thus in Fragments, is Invisible” (129). In other words, just as how calculus breaks down the parabola into a series of smaller and smaller calculable fragments in order to make the parabola comprehensible to the person observing it, we attempt to do the same thing with the inner machinations of the world and the system controlling it. There is so much complexity in how this system works that viewing it from that previously stated surface-level makes it as impossible to calculate as the parabola without calculus. Breaking it down into fragment after fragment allows the viewer to take apart the ‘system’ and put it back together like a puzzle. It is with this form of mathematics or philosophical observations of the world that allow us to gain some grasp upon what is being done to us and our world. However, the parabola itself, and thus the ‘system’ itself, remains invisible. We can grasp its fragments, but many lack the mathematical or philosophical prowess to see how these fragments coalesce into a single body. It is just as those “Maidens down by the Bridge, who are said to possess Rouge-Boxes with miniature mirrors set inside the Covers, that allow them to View their Features, tho’ one at a Time” (129). If all we possess is a mirror that allows us to view one aspect of our world at a time, if we reject any form of deeper philosophical thought or if we refuse to question the massive implications of the world’s inner workings, we will fail to see the full picture, and thus fail to free ourselves from whatever chains we may have.
And again, Maskelyne’s presentation of these ideas renders him to be like many a modern-day conspiracy theorist who understands what is wrong at heart, and yet their absolute insanity in the presentation of this material and the extremes they are willing to contemplate thus make any true ‘conspiracy’ less believable to the masses.
Maskelyne’s rambling ends as he wonders if Mason has been sent here to ‘regulate’ him. To reduce these potentially harmful beliefs before they get out. Mason is not here for that reason, as we know, but how could someone as paranoid as Maskelyne think anything but?
While the two continue on their way back to town, they pass by some girls who are here “taking up one novelty upon the next, discarding each as lightly as they choose another” (129). Each inhabitant of this island is consciously or ignorantly participatory in the coming world of hyperconsumption. And speaking of consumption, Mason and Maskelyne end up right back where they first met (1.12), The Moon — the bar, that is. As the song states, “we need / Men in The Moon,” (130) foreshadowing that this insatiable desire for consumption and progress will take us on a journey beyond what scientists of the 18th-century could ever possibly have believed. And, as we know from Gravity’s Rainbow (3.11, 3.15, and 4.9), this desire for progress to land on the Moon will only be a lie told to the innocent to distract them from the real goal. While these future scientists do actually have the desire to reach the Moon, it is also a byproduct of the coming Rocket Age — the Raketen Stadt. For progress in science could serve the purpose of curiosity, discovery, and exploration, but as decades moved on, those who fund this progress would not do so unless something else was in it for them.
Back in The Moon, Mr. Blackner, the landlord who served them the last time we saw the group here (1.12), welcomes them in. Blackner is known as the town gossip, letting the whole town know about the relationship between Maskelyne and Clive of India.2 Every time Maskelyne made an appearance, Blackner made a scene, hoping or believing that everyone who was near would think better of Blackner for knowing these famous men, connecting his character to ‘celebrity culture’ where people like him get “a thrill from being near someone who knows someone famous” (Biebel, 68). Given that Saint Helena is an analog for a coming world of hyperconsumerism and imperialism and that The Moon is an epicenter for, Blackner is a figure representing the obsession with people of immense wealth (those who capitalize on this consumer culture). He, being a literal part of this coming world (being the landlord of it), shows how someone as comparatively lowly as a bar owner will come to idolize the people who keep him in the lowly position that he is in, upon an island that should not be inhabitable, surrounded by rising darkness and dying light. He props up these powerful figures without even realizing or benefitting from this act. And honestly, even if he did, he would likely think that they still deserved their status.
Sometime later, Mason goes back up to the observatory to see where Maskelyne and Waddington attempted to track the four contacts3 during the Transit of Venus. He observes the Plumb-Line which malfunctioned enough to also make the calculations of the parallax of Sirius and the Moon inaccurate, meaning again that other than refining the techniques using Hadley’s Quadrant and furthering the use of clocks at sea to determine longitude, every single major task that Maskelyne and Waddington were set out to complete was mostly a failure, and even one that was not a total failure was a partial one (the use of clocks at sea, that is)4. Funnily enough, that one also is one that Maskelyne did not fully give credence too anyway. So again, while Masklyne’s nepotism allowed him the possibility to garner immense acclaim with these numerous scientific breakthroughs, karma seemed to be working against him on Saint Helena. Because of this, Maskelyne, attempting to praise and glorify Mason and Dixon’s findings at the Cape of Good Hope, really does have some apparent animosity. He uses language that switches the hierarchical positions of Mason and himself, raising Mason to an ‘Elect’ by calling him ‘blessed’ and lowering himself to a ‘Preterite’ by calling himself a ‘poor Boobie.’
In order to appease Maskelyne’s growing insanity (for what else can the Preterite do when confined with the Elite in such close quarters?), he comments upon how lucky Maskelyne was to at least be upon such a beautiful island. And given Maskelyne is a part of the Elite class bound to rise to even higher ranks within it, he should be happy to be stationed upon the symbol of a future Imperialist world. Maskelyne, however, sees below the surface once again. While, yes, this world is in fact destined to transform from one of standard feudalism and bare-bones capitalism to what Saint Helena helps symbolize, the precariousness of a State such as that is as if it were built “upon the Summit of a living Volcanoe whose History includes violent Explosion” (132). These new eras of economic rulings, styles of governance, and philosophical progressions, are not sustainable unless they could truly sustain the people who live under their purveyance. The eruption will not be seen coming, for it is entirely unpredictable when the pressure in the chambers beneath the world’s surface would build enough — where the suffering and oppression of the Preterite would rise to levels where the only possible option is to erupt, plaster the surface of the world with something entirely new, destroying that which laid upon the land beforehand. The volcano is ancient; it has not erupted in the memory of any person alive or from many generations past, but that does not mean that the pressure is not building and that it cannot erupt again.
But while here, before the eruption occurs whether it be during his lifetime or not until centuries later, Maskelyne will be sure to indulge in the pleasures afforded him while he can. So, when the Darkness takes the island’s light once again, and as rain and storm makes landfall, Maskelyne sends Mason “cursing outside to make secure the sliding Roof, whilst Maskelyne occupies himself inside with a fresh Pipe, snug as Punch in his Booth” (133). His madness has allowed him to see the grim nature beneath the surface of this island — beneath that of the world as well. And that same insanity has revealed the eventual outcome that this evil would lead to. But to him, just as with Blackner the bartender, as with the Vrooms, and with J. Wade LeSpark, this revelation of evil is not enough to slow their plan or reduce their power in the slightest. Instead, if anything, it incentivizes them to accelerate their goal.
Up Next: Part 1, Chapter 13.2 (finishing the rest of Chapter 13)
A nickname for the British East India Company (EIC) as noted by Biebel (Biebel, 66).
Biebel, Brett. A Mason & Dixon Companion. The University of Georgia Press, 2024.
Nevil Maskelyne’s sister, Margaret (‘Peggy’) Maskelyne, is married to Clive of India, thus making Nevil Maskelyne Clive’s brother-in-law.
That is, when Venus first contacts the edge of the Sun, when it was first fully ‘within’ the Sun, when it reached the other internal edge of the Sun, and finally, when it fully passed its transit across the Sun.
Again, thanks Brett for clarifying all the confusion regarding the Plumb-line and the Sirius parallax, the clocks at sea used to calculate longitude, the mishaps during the Transit of Venus, etc.