The Warlow Experiment Read online

  He feels dizzy from peering. From strangeness. Sits in the chair by the fire, high-backed, more comfortable than any he’s ever sat in in his life. Stares into the fire. Wide-eyed, rigid.

  * * *

  —

  IN FACT the last thing Powyss had in mind when the experiment took root was hermits. Hermits were men who chose to live away from others for a spiritual purpose, often with extreme privations. From a sense of such sinfulness that mortification of the flesh became the only path.

  Powyss had long stopped believing in God. His boyhood prayers were never answered. He knew that events happened in the world, in Moreham, in his garden, in the hothouse, that had nothing to do with any deity. And he didn’t see this view as a lack; didn’t think about it except when pushed into argument by Fox, when he usually took an agnostic position, though occasionally, for the sake of the fight, an atheist one. But he was not intolerant. If someone chose an emaciated life of repentance then let him. He wouldn’t spend any time thinking about it.

  No, this experiment of his had nothing to do with the spirit. Nor was there anything ornamental about it. He’d heard of estates with hermit’s caves, others where the owner had huts built specially out of tree trunks, even roots, to some poetic design. Of pebble floors, walls craftily half ruined. Of bearded old men employed to mutter and scurry away from grinning visitors. He loathed the Gothic manner, its darkness of thought, its tedious novels stuffed with castles, monks, madmen, passions. There were no false battlements, minstrel galleries, sham ruined chapels at Moreham House. No castellated follies clad in ivy.

  There was a real and fascinating thesis to test: that a man could survive alone, without others.

  The trigger had been a brief newspaper report of a man released from confinement alone in Dorchester Castle. No information was given about why he’d been imprisoned in a cell on his own for four years, but what had delighted Powyss was the moment of the man’s release. After all that time without company he’d turned to the gaoler and spouted Virgil. (Annoying that the report hadn’t given the actual words: perhaps they’d been Non equidem invideo, if he truly bore his gaoler no grudge. On the other hand Nunc frondent silvae, nunc formosissimus annus would be my choice, he thought, assuming it was spring and trees blossoming.) But the point was that the man had retained a sprightly mind despite removal from the world.

  Of course Powyss had read about Alexander Selkirk, the model for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. It was an irresistible story, as was Crusoe itself. Selkirk’s story was true, Crusoe’s fiction. Their trials were great: thrust onto unknown lands, they had to construct shelters, make clothes, shoes, hunt for food. The details fascinated him as they did all readers who lived in houses with fires laid and lit for them and regular meals cooked by others. But as one who shunned his fellows, had avoided them even from earliest childhood, Powyss saw in Robinson Crusoe the supreme solitary. The book had haunted him all his life.

  How could such resilience be tested? Selkirk had been abandoned, Crusoe survived shipwreck. What if physical danger were removed? What if there were none of the self-imposed privations of the ascetic, none of the guilt or remorse of the prisoner? What if all emotional burdens were removed, no spiritual regimes of prayer and penitence demanded? The human mind was capable of infinite journeying within itself. It needed a body in which to live, a body in health. But what need had it of other minds? How long could it survive solus, in solitude, feeding on its own riches? One year? Seven years? A lifetime? Could a man survive in comfort with the company of himself alone?

  * * *

  —

  WAITS. WAITS.

  Nothing happens.

  What will I…? Him said. Him said what?

  He stands up. Walks round the table. Twice. Round the other way, slowly. Hands hang down, heavy like sacks.

  Not goin in them other rooms.

  He sits. Stares at the flames. Closes his eyes but there’s yellow dots from the flames.

  He listens to his breaths.

  Tries breathing faster. Tries stopping. Gasps for air. Yawns till his jaw seems to crack.

  No sound. Nothing. Nobody.

  John! He’s glad to hear his own voice. John Warlow. I be here. Down here.

  What else can he say?

  He thumps the table, bang, a good sound. And whack again with both hands. Whack, whack.

  Quiet, terrible quiet.

  He strains to hear. Somethin. Must be somebody.

  Them be gone home then.

  No! Them’s sittin outside waitin to hear me move about! That’s it!

  He clears his throat heavily. To let them know. Spits the gob from his throat into the fire with a good fizzle.

  No sound. Them’s not hearin. Moves over to the door, stands next to it. Gives it a push. What if it be open all the time!

  Coughs loudly, very loudly.

  Nothing. Nothing except ticks, damned clock. Do I wind im? Niver did have a clock.

  What will I…?

  Quiet. Like a weight on his head, back of his neck.

  Day must be gone. Be night then. Must be. Why there’s nothing to do. He turns out the lamp, snuffs the candles to see if it’s night.

  Dark!

  But it weren’t nearly night afore, when I come down. Or were it?

  His heart begins to thump. Be it night? Were it? He doesn’t know, can’t remember. His mind buzzes like flies on a dead dog.

  Lights a candle at the fire and it’s day again.

  Sits in the armchair once more. Thumping slows.

  Silence pounds in his ears instead.

  He pulls at his fingers, kneads swollen knuckles.

  Pokes up flames. Stares till the yellow dots.

  * * *

  —

  POWYSS’S EXPERIMENT would be entitled Investigation into the Resilience of the Human Mind Without Society. Of course it was strictly limited: there was neither classification nor system-making. He’d not be remembered among the greatest natural philosophers.

  In his run of Royal Society Transactions from 1768 he’d absorbed accounts of numerous experiments and minutely reported observations. On his shelves were various more recent, important books such as Joseph Priestley’s Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air. This he’d read and enjoyed despite the man’s political tendency, and so he was familiar with Priestley’s ‘dephlogisticated air’, now unfortunately overtaken and renamed ‘oxygen’ by Lavoisier. He owned the second, admirably full edition of Keir’s translation of Macquer’s Dictionnaire de Chymie. Was still undecided about Buffon’s and Erasmus Darwin’s opposition to Linnaeus’s classification system, even though as a horticulturalist he really ought to make up his mind. As to the constant public demonstrations of electricity, it was enough to read about Galvani’s dead frog twitching and jerking its legs to decide against watching anybody else’s experiments with a portable electricity machine.

  So, while he’d not wanted actually to mess with metals, mercury, vitriol or inflammable air, let alone the multitudes of mice employed by Dr Priestley, the rigour of testing, the disinterest, the neutrality in all these experiments drew him passionately. Here was reason, here were the actions of rational men that caused science to grow like a colossal tree.

  Inspired, Powyss evolved the details of his investigation. The subject would live with all his needs answered: clean clothes, good food, mind nourished by music and books – bona librorum et frugis copia. But on his own; without even the sight of another human face. What effect would seven years of such existence have upon him?

  (Why seven? Fox quizzed him. How biblical you are, Powyss, despite your lack of religion!

  Neither too long, nor too short, Powyss replied. Besides, it takes me neatly into the new century.)

  He contemplated it without difficulty. Thought of his own life. He was not sociable, never entertained,
had no family, his one friendship conducted on paper. It was true that whenever he bought plants in London he would also visit a certain house in Jermyn Street. He accepted that this was necessary for the maintenance of good health in the human male, but believed that he could stop if he wanted to. Here in the Marches, he refused to serve on worthy local committees, abhorred balls, plays, hunting, never went near the races. He paid dues to the Hereford Philosophical Society without attending a single meeting. Weeks passed when he spoke to no one except the butler, Jenkins, then only to issue orders. Or he had a word or two with Price, the master gardener. He felt closer to his newly arrived, carmine-flowered Penstemon barbatus, whose growth he was recording in his firm hand, whose seeds he would collect himself, than to any person he knew. With books, music, pictures to contemplate, resources of the mind, one could certainly exist alone. Perhaps, he accused himself, the experiment was about himself? That it was the first he’d ever conducted on a human being rather than a plant or tree, excited him immensely. His ambition rose like a sudden change on the barometer.

  Once he’d articulated the thesis, he worked out the conditions and how evidence would be collected. It would need to take place underground in order to ensure no human contact. At the centre would be someone who freely decided to take part, who would keep a diary of his actions, which Powyss would collate with information he himself recorded. After seven years a full interview would be conducted. He was certain it would end as a tribute to the human mind. And for himself he was sure it would answer Fox’s questioning of his life, rebuff his sociable friend’s implicit criticism of his solitude.

  He set about preparing the ‘apartments’. Moreham House was much older than it looked. In the thirteenth century it had been moated, probably as defence against marauding Welsh, though perhaps also as a demonstration of status. Five centuries later, Powyss’s father, a successful man of mercantile origins, elevated himself into the gentry through purchase of the house and expensive architects. Changes were begun, but it was the son who’d really imposed reason: the façade of symmetry, raised ceilings, great swathes of light. Windows were crucial to the task of enlightening: small casements were enlarged, equalled in size and shape on each floor. Doorways were increased in height and width as though rational plans would perforce create larger men to walk through them. And windows framed external order: foreground of carefully arranged gardens, middle ground of cow-browsed meadows, distant haze of hills. Nor did he neglect the unseen region: kitchen and pantries below ground were modernised and equipped with the latest devices.

  But beneath them a second set of cellars remained much as before: thick stone walls built into a hollow space gouged out of the undermost earth, even lower than the moat, from which dampness continued to seep despite its draining. Their purpose was yet a mystery: had the owners hidden there during the Welsh rebellions of the fifteenth century? Used them to imprison their enemies? Hoarded stores of some rare commodity illegally obtained? Powyss’s father kept them locked, preferring to forget their existence.

  The cellars extended beneath the ballroom, which was shuttered, untouched since his father had had it decorated with overmuch gold leaf, to just below the far end of Powyss’s library. There were several unused rooms and Powyss had them thoroughly cleaned out, some of the walls brick-lined and plastered, some even papered. How pleasing to bring order to these last, most remote parts of the house! He bought all the furniture he could imagine needing were he to live there himself, chose pieces that pleased him, bought the chamber organ after a delightful morning at Longman & Broderip in Cheapside, trying out one after another. He picked engravings, mezzotints of classical scenes, a couple of English landscapes, a small Dutch still life, a newly painted seascape; took some harmless biblical illustrations from his mother’s bedroom. It was his own chalk-and-pencil sketch of Crusoe that hung over the fireplace.

  He spent days thinking about books – bona librorum. Picked his favourite Voltaire and Defoe; thought King Lear not suitable; held back Paradise Lost until asked for. Apart from the Bible and Annual Register for 1789, he chose Candide, Robinson Crusoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, The Tempest, Thomson’s Seasons and Ferguson’s Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles and made easy to those who have not studied Mathematics.

  Once he knew Warlow was to be the occupier he thoughtfully reduced the number of volumes so as not to intimidate him, though the man had said he could read. At the last moment, he added his new copy of Bewick’s A General History of Quadrupeds. There, surely, was a book suitable for someone with only elementary education.

  As to long hair and nails, he wasn’t being fanciful. Nobody would see Warlow. He wasn’t showing off a paid hermit, didn’t need him to look unkempt. But he wouldn’t risk leaving scissors or knives should Warlow become melancholic as Crusoe and Selkirk had; he didn’t want blood on his conscience and the experiment must run smoothly. A degree of melancholia was possible, he supposed, and could be tolerated. Yet the man’s life would be considerably eased without the heavy toil he’d been used to for years; the drudgery, cold and squalor. Of course, despite what Warlow had assured him, he might grow to miss his wife and companions. But with books he could surely find consolation. He resolved to send down further volumes in due course. With so much time on his hands the man would have to read.

  Shortly before Warlow was due, Powyss spent a week in the apartments, amused by the lift, charmed by his choice of furnishings. Pleased once more with the quality of the Oldovini organ. Delighted with the concentration brought about by lack of outside diversion. By the wonderful silence.

  * * *

  —

  SOMETHING BREAKS THE STUPOR. Has he slept? Is it night? Was it? Creaking. Coming nearer. Behind the door in the wall: smell of meat.

  Fully awake. Hungry, yes, he opens the door, expects to see the footman, Samuel, standing there with a pie oozing gravy. Finds a tray of heavy silver domes. Carries it to the table. Covers are too hot to take off! He hoists up his arm within its sleeve to use the cuff. Sees a neatly folded cloth for the purpose.

  Three big pieces of boiled mutton, plate of potatoes, plate of green vegetables. Another dish with something white hidden under sauce. He sniffs it. Fish. Ach! Must he eat it? Must he eat all together? No. Which first? Begins with mutton but there’s no knife! Only spoons and forks. He digs at the meat with the spoon, looks about him, grabs it with his hands, bites heartily. Can he leave the fish? Better not. Scoops it up. Pap. Fishy pap. Swallows it down with porter from a jug. Porter’s good, very good.

  Full, he wipes his mouth with his hand. Sits back, stretches his legs.

  Tries to imagine Powyss at his table eating the same food. With a jug of porter? Doubt it. Wine more like. Is him thinkin of me?

  Replaces the dishes, rings the bell, hauls on the cord. Up it goes! Distant door bangs.

  He sits again at the fire, pokes it, pulls over a chair on which to rest his feet. He needs a pipe now. The others’ll have their pipes. He thinks of them toasting John Warlow. Puffing, staring into the flames.

  What he could tell them in the Dog! About all this.

  The creaking again! This time he hears it at the start. Way up it is. Slowly, slowly descending. Stops. Judders. He opens the door, takes a new tray to the table. A sweet tart, bowl of orange jelly, dish of walnuts and raisins. Piece of cheese and roll of bread. Doesn’t want it now. Full of meat. Later. But them’ll expect the plates, sure to. Heaps the food onto the table. Eats the jelly with increasing queasiness. Hauls up a tray of empty dishes.

  He needs a pipe. Needs a pipe.

  * * *

  —

  EACH ENTRY had to be carefully noted with date and time. Already there was a full description of the apartments with neatly drawn plans of both rooms and the listening tube, and an inventory that omitted nothing. There were full details of Warlow himself of course: his appearance, height, weight, age, occupation,
family circumstances. Powyss intended to record each meal sent down, the state of the dishes returned: what was eaten, what rejected. It was Jenkins who’d suggested Warlow might prefer beer to wine. He would record each consignment of fuel, kindling, lamp oil, each batch of new linen, and in due course he’d note every request, though there were none as yet. Eventually this information would be matched to Warlow’s daily journal entries.

  He’d written down his very first conversation with Warlow, when he answered the advertisement, as he had his last when he took him below. At the end of seven years, upon emerging, his answers to questions would be compared with these. Not that the man had said much. Reflecting on it later, he’d been annoyed at Warlow’s gloomy reaction to the chamber organ, the books, the journal. If only the man had had more education. What a fascinating account some other candidate might have produced! But there’d been no choice: no one else had come forward.

  Of great importance, he thought, was what he could learn directly of Warlow’s solitary life, without it being reported by Warlow himself, who in any case didn’t have the vocabulary to express much. What he might say he did or thought for Powyss’s benefit would very likely be different from what he actually did or thought. Powyss had puzzled at length over how to know what took place down there. If only there were a way to observe; but short of placing an observation window in impossibly thick walls, there was no hope of doing it.

  However, he might listen. Hear whereabouts Warlow was in the apartments, possibly even hear him speak. People much on their own did speak to themselves; he himself did it occasionally, it wasn’t madness. So, using the room plans that he’d sketched when he’d begun the project, he took measurements, had Samuel drill three-inch holes in the floorboard at the far end of his library and at a parallel place in the ceiling of the main room of the underground apartments. It had already been quite a task constructing the mechanical lift to rise up from the cellar to the kitchen. Finding space without stone wall between himself and the cellar that would also not go through the kitchen was difficult. For he didn’t want the servants to know about this part of the experiment. He’d paid Samuel well for his work and sworn him to secrecy. He was a handy young man whom Powyss had agreed to employ a while back as a favour to his neighbour, Valentine Tharpe. Loyal, willing, Samuel was more trustworthy than Jenkins, even though only a footman.