Guns of the Rad Lords' Era: Part One - The Pepperbox

In her last post Allana mentioned looking up the Ballester-Molina handgun, which led me back to the book looking for a reference to it. The Ballester-Molina was an Argentine handgun first produced in 1938, making it an odd anachronism for this book. (Unlike Allana, I am still wired, and am weakly dependent on Wikipedia and flagrant unsubstantiated rumor.)

Maybe it's odd to nitpick anachronisms in a book the very premise of which is the effects mechanical computing would have had on the Victorian Era had it been as widely adopted as electronic computing was in the 1990s. But in every other respect this book has been so meticulously researched that it would really bother me if this handgun, decades out of place, somehow worked it's way in.

A quick thumb through of the novel again tonight did not turn up a reference to this gun. Allana, did you find a mention of it in there? I see it is in the Difference Dictionary, so it must be in there somewhere.

At any rate, the thumb through led me to this post, which, although it first must contain an apology for being so long in coming, also contains a the first of a list of guns used by people in the novel, which will make everything better, as guns notoriously do.

Pepperbox - Mick Radley's little pocket gun, looted from his corpse by the mysterious Ranger who then used it to shoot Sam Houston in the early pages of the book:

This image of a 1837 pepperbox revolver comes from Jimmy Smith's photostream.

The pepperbox was widely available in Victorian England and commonly used for self defense. It was cheap to make, much less complex than a single barreled revolver. Mick's was delicately made enough that the Ranger breaks the trigger accidentally after three shots. It is first described when Sybil mistakenly pulls it our of Mick's coat pocket:

Her left hand gripped a lump of hard, cold metal. She drew out a nasty little pepperbox derringer. Ivory handle, intricate gleam of steel hammers and brass cartridges, small as her hand but heavy.
(The Difference Engine, Page 7)

Given that description, it probably looked something like this:



Instead of the wooden handle, imagine ivory, and imagine the rotating barrels to be brass, and you'll basically have it.

Howerver, given that Mick is a self conscious Dandy and a bit of a Victorian Gadget Geek, I like to imagine he carried this version instead:



Even in its less ridiculous straightforward model, it was not easy to aim, the hammer often obscuring a good sight down the barrel, and so was usually shot unaimed at close range. Although this gun existed in some form as far back as the 1400s, the version of it that Mick would have owned was designed in the 1830s and had a long, respectable life. In addition to being cheap, it was also a little safer than a single barreled revolver, in that should a discharge accidentally light the powder charges in the other barrels, all the slugs had their own barrels to exit from. In a single barreled revolver, the there could be an injurious backfire. In the pepperbox, you'd just end up blasting your target with all barrels at once.

The Ranger gets off three shots with Mick's pepperbox before breaking the delicate trigger in his beefy Texian hands. The first one is aimed, the book tells us, but at very close range as Houston is standing right in front of him. Houston doesn't try to dodge, but challenges the Ranger to shoot him directly in the chest, which he does. But what happens next is telling. The Ranger leaps on Houston and presses the rotating barrel directly against Houston's body, firing two more times with the gun actually pushed physically into Houston's chest. This would be the surest way of insuring that you hit your target with such an iffy gun.

I really appreciate it when writers research details like this well enough to describe their characters using period items in likely ways.

There are several more guns in the book, and now I'm interested to find out if they are all treated as faithfully!

Terminology Rock, or, A concise apology to the Internet.

A rare archival photo of Allana at her summer job?

I spend my summers doing manual labour, living in a tent. It's not glamorous, but it is good for the skin. (Until I get cancer.) Since I've been back, I've lived in a house on a dirt road, kilometres from the nearest convenience store. I don't have internet access at home. Thus, a six-month delay in both finishing book and blog and removing the word "failure" from my self-description.

I will, however, let you in on a choice upside to my current hermitage in the wilderness: my house contains a respectable library to which I have unfettered access. (I fancy myself a bit of a caretaker, actually.) What this means for you, dear reader, is that whenever I look something up in the Oxford Universal, the Chambers Biographical, or Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (so good), you now have the assurance that I haven't just copy-pasted some quasi-reliable Wiki, or even done a lackadaisical search on the Difference Dictionary. I'm doing it the old-fashioned way for the first time in my short, technology-addled life. And it's embarrassing to note how weak my short-term memory can be, and how desperately I wish these books were illustrated.

For example, the Leyden-jar mentioned on page 245, according to the OUD, is an electrical apparatus conducting charge from a tinfoil-coated glass bulb via a brass rod running through its corked lid. It uses the phrase "communicating with the internal armature." Now you know. (Sort of.)



Then I asked the CBD about a "Ballester-Molina" handgun, only to find a golfer and a Jesuit, which, though unhelpful, led me on a fascinating referential journey on the concept of original sin. (From 1449: "The sect of Pelagianys, which helden that a man bi his fre wil mai deserue heuen withoute grace.")

A phalanstery, circa 1850, refers to the Rousseauian and Fourierist (that's Charles, the social theorist, not Jean Baptiste, the mathematician that hung out with Napoleon) conception of small, socially integrated communities, self-sustaining and familiar. Rooted from "phalanx." Related to Panty-suckers. Err, Pantisocrats, who simply think all men are equal.

(And did you know that there is a Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, not just a Samuel Taylor Coleridge? The former being the composer of Hiawatha, I feel it would be especially unfortunate to confuse the two.)

Disaster! - Iterations Third and Fourth.

What I got out of these sections were a few ice floes of clever awash in an Arctic Ocean of dumb.

The passage about the windup girl seems the most gratuitous, though I said that about Rudwick, and Keats, both of whom have resurfaced multiple times since, if only in passing mention. But I'd hate to come up with some sort of exciting twist involving a Japanese drink-pouring automaton, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that it was just a pointless aside. I'm actually hoping for some of these plotlines to go unfinished, else it's going to be a slugger of an ending.

The extended sex scene in Sybil Jones's old room comes in a close second. No revelations there, unless you consider filthy gossip about the royal family useful. Maybe the authors felt the passage was needed to paint Mallory in a human light -- troubled, lonely. Mostly it just reminded me how easy it is to make sex lurid and decadent, even in print.

I will tell you what I loved about these two iterations: J. J. Tobias, Esq. What a satisfying little character he was -- everything from the great haircut to the cunning quip about everything taking twice as long as you think. (I really thought there was a natural law about this, but the name eludes me.) He had just the right touches of bashfulness and pride, eagerness to please and anxiety about breaking the law. And I could hear his cockney accent pouring through -- somehow they nailed his dialogue.

Basically I think these two iterations were a mess -- a lot of flashy plot movement all to say "Hey, Mallory's in trouble." I've gathered from reading other reviews that this was the main plot section, that the bulk of the sociopolitical hypothesizing was here -- part of me is disappointed, thinking that everything else will just be cleaning up the plotlines we've left open, but I'm partially relieved for the same reason. Maybe without that big save-the-world relevance they felt their book needed to contain, they can let loose with a bit more humour and ... well ... I'm not really sure what I'd want them to do. Surprise me, I guess.

A Railway to Heaven.

From toothpaw's flickr photostream.

I'm not even joking. Gibson and Sterling throw down this grimace-worthy gem on the 150th page, attributing it to some wholesome, granola-munching Victorian hippies:

"A group of Quakers, men and women, stood on the pavement outside the Palace. They were droning another of their intolerable sermonizing ditties, something about a 'railway to Heaven,' by the sound of it. The song did not seem to have much to do with Evolution, or blasphemy, or fossils; but perhaps the sheer monotony of their bootless protests had exhausted even the Quakers."

I always find these sorts of cultural snapshots interesting, but this one in particular because it reminded me of a George Orwell quote: "Socialism [draws toward it] with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England." (from The Road to Wigan Pier, 1936)

Now, I could easily veer this post towards an analysis of the appearances of socialism in The Difference Engine. But I want to dally on the topic of middle-class cranks a bit more. They're all over the place, taking such diverse forms as the exiled Luddite movement and Florence Bartlett's cultish speech about "universal free love." It obviously doesn't take socialism to espouse these sort of contingent theories -- Bartlett also rants about eugenics and selective breeding, and is staunchly anti-drug-use. These ideas veer widely from those of the Pilates-practicing, probiotic-scarfing and antioxidant-guzzling cranks we see today, though they might all share toxin-free living with the Quakers. I find it funny that the one thing such radically different idealists could agree on is a body pure of chemicals and intoxicants. Of course, most agree to the idea without adhering to the lifestyle -- or they mix their fruit-juice drinking with smoking weed and having acid trips.

Faced with my most sensible friends going vegan and gluten-free, and staring into the headlights of an intoxicant-free life myself (I'm getting old, you know), I find that the idea of "body as temple" seems to be attacking me from all angles. An Anglican minister friend recently gave a short sermon about Jesus throwing merchants out of the temple, and likened it to treating your own body as a temple, keeping it pure, and respecting it as holy ground. Her main point was that the Jews forced the Gentiles out of the temple proper, and made them worship on "less holy" ground -- so of course they reacted with disrespect for the church and turned it into a marketplace.

This lesson is interesting to me -- even if something (Gentiles, drugs) seems unhealthy to you, you should let it into your temple/body anyways, but treat it with respect and it will respect you back. I've always been a firm believer in moderation: too much of anything is never healthy, but just the right amount will make you appreciate it all the more. Besides the feel-good moral of "expose yourself to new things, even if you don't think you'll like them," and ignoring the tempting rant about fad diets and incomprehensibly scientific-sounding bodily cures, I want to point out another tired theme: that everything is based on context. Eugenics-happy fascists and free-loving hippies both think drinking is bad, in their own special ways. Why? Are these both the types of people that can't muster up enough self-control to moderate their own behaviour, so they have to eradicate all dangerous substances and experiences entirely? Are these both the types of people to hop on board any trend that comes their way, and do it to excess, even if that excess will kill?

To be honest, I never had any idea what "Stairway to Heaven" was even remotely about. Anyone care to fill me in?

Fancy Optical Goods.

"They were behind Chelsea Park now, in a place called Camera Square, where the shops offered fancy optical goods: talbotypes, magic-lanterns, phenakistoscopes, telescopes for the amateur star-gazer." (pp. 211-212)

The phenakistoscope, invented in 1832, was a precursor of the zoetrope, an item most of us got to play with in third-grade science class. A phenakistoscope involved two spinning discs and a mirror, which is why it fell out of favour when the mirror-free (and multi-user-friendly) zoetrope came into greater use in the 1860s. I have a hard time imagining what kind of "market" might exist for things like this past a children's toy or a clever handmade gift (if you've enough artistic skill to make one) -- then again, huge audiences would gather to view Dioramas in the 1800s, which involve about as much storyline as zoetropes and their kind, so what do I know?

Image of a phenakistoscope animation from Wikipedia. (There's also this great little page, which includes some sample disc animations.)

The inventor of the Diorama, of course, was Monsieur Louis Daguerre, famous for a little thing known as photography. William Henry Fox Talbot, inventor of the aforementioned talbotype (or calotype, as he named it), was technically the first to get it right, but because the daguerreotype was more popular, Daguerre (along with his sidekick Nicephore Niepce) tends to get the recognition. The rough of it is that the daguerreotype was faster and clearer, but Talbot's process involved the negative/positive process we use today, which makes it much easier to copy a photograph. (FYI, the photographs I've used as examples here are not nearly as clear and precise as later ones, when the methods were perfected.)

Widely acclaimed as the first photograph, Niepce captured this in 1826 and titled it View from the Window at Le Gras.

I'm not entirely certain what these camera shops are selling: finished photographs, negatives, or unexposed papers soaked in silver iodide? The book is set so soon after daguerreotypes and talbotypes were announced that I have a hard time seeing either of those methods assuming the state of curios and being deemed fit for child's play. The processes were still expensive enough to maintain a higher-class dignity. I also find it strange that most business cards and posters in the book use an illustrated portrait method that fits the pointillist style of the Difference Engine's printers, one that I assume would require a human artist, rather than a photographic portrait modified into pointillist form. That's the sort of expensive work I'd expect people to clamour after.

A talbotype of a latticed window in Lacock Abbey, taken by Talbot in 1835.

Typogram II.III - You Surely Can Unweave Rainbows

Allana: Well, at least we've pinned down our respective characters.

Bill: Yes, it helps me greatly to understand your approach to the book. Most of the experience of fiction, to me, takes place below the level of style -- mostly I react to it like I'm getting a glimpse into the way the author thinks: do they have clever, surprising thoughts? Do they think about things in ways I haven't? I tend to like authors that do that, authors with whom I feel like I'm in a surprising conversation, as I work my way through their books.

Allana: See? This is what I was talking about in one of my first Known Issues, about criticizing music -- you have to figure out whether you identify with the writer, and if you don't, then just know to do the opposite of what they recommend. Now our readers can just pick whichever one of us they agree with more. Simple!

Bill: Yes, we'll need to design warning icons to signal to casual readers which approach each of us are taking. Sort of like those triangular caution signs Warren Ellis has been playing with in Doktor Sleepless.

Allana: There's nothing so different between us as far as "think[ing] about things in ways I haven't." But what I get off on is having people describe things I've never thought to describe, in words I wish I would've used had I done so. I like being blown away by the mundanity of human experience, but also the beauty that can be created in acknowledging it. That sounds pretentious, doesn't it?

Bill: Any talk about the experience of art sounds pretentious. I think you just have to dive in and sound pretentious, and not care. Pretentiousness is more a problem of the listener/reader who doesn't want to understand what you mean than it is yours.

Allana: This is true, but I have the critic's naive hope of being universally understood.

Bill: It doesn't hurt to strive for clarity, but I don't think you should tread too cautiously in doing that. And I get what you mean about being blown away by minutiae, and creating beauty in the description of that experience. That's exactly the beauty of "Unweaving the Rainbow" that Richard Dawkins was getting at, in answering the romantic charge that science reduces mysteries to the mundane. It doesn't -- it elevates the mundane into the mysterious. You surely can unweave rainbows, but the structure underneath is more astonishing than the colors. FOR SCIENCE!

Allana: Oh right -- art link.

They're all from the same blog - here's one related to your last sentence:

Bill: Those covers are brilliant!

Allana: And another that made me think "Why didn't I think of that? Why can't I do that?" -- without wasting too much time looking for perfect examples.

Allana: They're geometrical, biological -- that stuff's easy! It's in my brain all the time! Why can't I just see the stuff in front of me in the way that would make beautiful art, think about it in words that would make beautiful writing?

Bill: I know exactly that feeling. Have you been watching the remake/remodel threads on Whitechapel? Lately they've got into a lot of art-design styling, and I'm constantly floored, wishing I could intuitively arrange shapes in that way.

Allana: Oh, yeah. Don't even get me started on Lance Sells's sketches in the Dr Sketchy thread. He seems clinically insane, which means I have to meet him.

Bill: I know exactly the sketches you're talking about. Yes, my jaw drops every time he posts one.

Allana: Artists! Guh!

Bill: The thing is, I do enough writing and drawing to at least get where the ability to observe in that way comes from, and to think that maybe, if I could just concentrate on one pursuit long enough, I could approach a similar unique creativity... but still...

Allana: Yeah, precisely. It's the development of one trademark stylistic move that baffles me. I still find the temptation to write in multiple styles, and I just can't outweigh the benefits of being multiversed and adaptable to having that one really finely honed skill.

Bill: And in the realm of music I'm just lost. I can be transported -- I've had what I'd define as out-of-body experiences listening to music, triggered by a certin sound happening at a certain time, and am left in awe, you know? How do they know to put the sounds together that way? How can they feel it? That's a realm of art I stand in abject terror of!

Allana: It's still nice, in the midst of this whole exclusive-subjective-experiences thing the western world is going through, to think that people are so easily united by one powerful artistic experience. Even if we get sick of it a week later. I want to get over that weakness, the art-unites-us-all ideal. But it's hard.

Bill: It's probably fundamentally true. It's coming out of the under-conscious, from weird brainmeat we probably all share.

Allana: So when do we start telling people this is a philosophy blog instead of a literary criticism blog? I guess when we start saying new and controversial things.

Bill: Ha! Yes. If we keep trying, we might get there. Next chat we'll have to start off on non-fiction reading experiences, and see where that takes us.

Allana: That one'll be rough, for me. But I'm willing to give it a shot.

Typogram II Transmission Finis