Mason & Dixon - Part 1 - Chapter 18: Derealization

Analysis of Mason & Dixon, Part 1 - Chapter 18: Back in England, Mason at Home, Bradley's Death, Remembering Rebekah and Susannah, Stealing Observations

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Mason and Dixon have ‘escaped’ the winds of Saint Helena and returned to England. While everything they saw there and at Cape Town could at best be described as hell, upon reporting to the Royal Society, they “find they have nothing but good to say of all they have met at St. Helena and the Cape” (183). It is obviously a lie in the same manner that workers are often expected to do: specialists being sent abroad to countries being heavily exploited, raising questions of ethics, only to return and report to their superiors that everything looks a-okay. Reporting otherwise (the truth, that is) would raise suspicion for a number of reasons. Firstly, loyalty to the company would come to question: if you see issues with what is happening abroad, does that imply you have issues with what our purpose is? Will your loyalty remain if things, inevitably, get worse? Secondly, questioning loyalty to an entity as powerful as the Royal Society is tantamount to questioning loyalty to the Empire as a whole. So better to just shrug it off and tell them what they want to hear in instances such as this. For, what good would the truth be anyway? If there is truth to be told, let it be told to those willing to do something about it, not to those who will punish you for speaking its name.

Just as quickly as they were reunited in Saint Helena, they are now separated again when Dixon departs up north and Mason remains in London. Like Bonk predicted in Cape Town, Mason is questioned by “them at the Desk” (1.10, pg. 102), the unnamed bureaucratic figures which Mason did not believe would actually question him. At that time, he attempted to differentiate the English practices from that of the Dutch, not believing various organizations like the “Agents of the Navy, the East India Company, the Royal Society, and the Parliamentary Curious, from King’s Men to Rockingham Whigs,” (183) would begin gathering intelligence such as what other nations were doing abroad, how their slaves may be reacting to their oppression, how trade was faring, or exactly what the civilians thought about all of these practices. That is an obviously naive thing to believe, but remember: we are viewing the formation of a mind critical about the practices of society, and even now we are still in its budding stage.¹

After this questioning, which likely included a few lies similar to what he initially told the Royal Society, he was released back into the city, dutiless at last. Mason’s obligations now only lie back at home with his two sons, but in order to avoid this reunion, decides upon the bars instead. Tipsy and walking through the streets, he yearns for Rebekah’s ghost to return to him. As usual, she acts as his guiding light, reminding him without even being present of what really matters — his family and the people, not only himself or his work.

Mason listens yet again. He returns home to where his sisters have been caring for his two sons William, five years old, and Doctor Isaac, three years old. A person who has given themselves over to their work has removed themselves from their family — their life. Endless travel. Hours, days, and months at sea. Coming years, gone. The adolescent years of your children go unseen, your awareness of all that they’ve learned is nonexistent; their faces fade away. And the same happens to them. Your presence, once common, is now just emptiness. Whatever return that you make brings discomfort. It brings a translucent forgotten face back, reminding them of times forgotten, of a happiness they knew that was left behind. It brings back the agony of remembering better times — nostalgia at its root of pain and home.² You can placate them with toys from faraway lands to begin your journey in regaining their trust, but it is certainly not the answer. The answer is time, presence, and love.

Shortly after Mason’s return home, James Bradley, the current Astronomer Royale, “falls ill, and gets steadily worse. On the thirteenth, in Chalford, he dies” (184). When Mason rides over to his funeral, of which he is promptly turned away from, he moves through a series of flashbacks where he remembers the relationship between him, Rebekah, Bradley, and Susannah Peach. As we had learned of in Mason’s story to Dixon (1.16), Mason lusted after Susannah before he had even met Rebekah. And after meeting Rebekah, Bradley’s courting of Susannah just next door removed any possibility that his lust would ever be fulfilled. Instead, it would be a ‘four-door Farce.’ All Mason really knows is that, as usual, and as he will come to know far better when time goes on, he is being denied the possibility of ascending the political and economic ladder. No matter how much he loves Rebekah and no matter how much he will come to miss her, Mason has been conditioned to be unhappy unless he was able to achieve wealth and power as well. It seems though that Bradley too had jealousy for Mason’s relationship, seeing that his own “must be ever fiduciary” (186) whereas Mason’s, to Bradley’s eye at least, was born out of mutual love. There is always this disparity in a world built on precepts such as it is — do we see marriage out of love, out of mutual beneficence, out of individual gain, or to rise in the ranks? The fact that this question must even be asked is enough evidence to show that those precepts serve only an overall detriment to our society’s functioning.

Mason then imagines a conversation between Rebekah and Susannah that Mason could never truly have heard, meaning this is purely from his imagination or purely from the imagination of whoever is currently telling this portion of the tale (likely Cherrycoke). Here, Rebekah gives an alternate story to how she and Mason met. Instead of having ‘saved’ Mason from his sin (1.16), their marriage was arranged by entities whom she was not aware of. As with many women of that time, marriage was an obligation that needed to be fulfilled independent of the coming bride’s desire, attraction, or aspiration. Therefore, it is possible that Mason, since he is likely the one fabricating this conversation between Rebekah and Susannah, has an immense anxiety that his ‘saving’ came at the cost of Rebekah’s freedom. Or perhaps Cherrycoke desires to pose a question to Tenebræ: must woman always sacrifice herself for the benefit of man? And not even man as a homograph for humanity, because if that were the case, then individual sacrifice would be admirable and deserving of honor. But no, not man as in humanity: man as in the masculine individual. Tenebræ, daily, sees her mother as the silent and abiding housewife making the life of her arms-dealer-of-a-husband all the easier and more bearable while getting very little in return. Cherrycoke may therefore be telling her, do not accept such circumstances; if you are going to give up your life or freedom for something, let it be something that changes the world, not merely the happiness of one.

Of course, all of these musings are hypothetical. Rebekah very well could have loved Mason dearly and felt that she lost nothing in their marriage. But the point remains that Mason’s awareness of this possibility shows he is more socially astute than we may give him credit for, and/or that Cherrycoke’s telling of this story is to urge Tenebræ on to better things.

Halley’s Comet passed twice during the stint when the ‘four-door Farce’ took place, portending something great on its first passing and something tragic on its second. The first pass came in tandem with Bradley and Susannah’s marriage; the second came with both her death and the death of Rebekah. If the stars, or any astronomical body for that matter, had the power to foretell such events, then it is no surprise that both Mason and Bradley sought answers in the cosmos. They witnessed the spiritual world merging with the material for a brief moment, seeing how cosmic phenomena could influence our life on Earth.

Mason always believed that others were taking positions he should have been given (such as Bradley becoming entwined with the EIC via Sam Peach, or Maskelyne being given a more lucrative job during the Transit of Venus). While this belief is true, we now see the possibility that even these men who take positions that were due to Mason are likely being used as well. Maybe all of these coincidences and meetings were meant to pair Bradley and Susannah together so that Samuel Peach and thus the EIC would be given the rights to Bradley’s observations after his imminent death. He and Maskelyne are similar to Ned Pointsman in Gravity’s Rainbow — men who lust for power so much that they are unaware that powers even greater than them³ are using them for information and labor. These all-powerful entities exploit the knowledge that man desires power and thus bestows a limited power on them knowing that it will come back to benefit the higher-ups in the long run. So, those like Bradley are simply middlemen but believe themselves to be at the top. And likewise, the blame is often put on them and them alone. Mason scorns Bradley for taking all of his observations, taking credit for them, and only saying, “Thank you, Mr. Mason, and well done” (189). But what Mason does not see is that all of this was set up by entities he could not even fathom — entities who paired Bradley with the woman Mason thought would be his so that they could then take his observations without even the least bit of thanks and use them for reasons Mason would only begin to comprehend in America.

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Up Next: Part 1, Chapter 19

1. This should heavily remind you of Slothrop, though almost the opposite version of him in the sense that Slothrop’s revelation as an American occurred by traveling to Europe and Mason’s revelation as a European occurred by traveling (though he hasn’t gone there yet) to America.

2. See Gravity’s Rainbow (3.10; specifically paragraphs 9 and 13) for a full explanation of the etymological roots of the word ‘nostalgia’ (nostos: to return home, and algia: pain).

3. Such as the EIC in Mason & Dixon or Them in Gravity’s Rainbow.