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Q: Zero-Diagonal Matrix and Positive Definitness? Can a $n \times n$ symmetric matrix $A$ with diagonal entries that are all equal to zero, be positive definite (or negative definite)?
Thanks in advance!
A: The answer is negative and actually even more is true: the matrix cannot be positive definite if there is at least one diagonal element which is equal to $0$.
By definition, an $n\times n$ symmetric real matrix $A$ is positive definite if
$$
x^TAx>0
$$
for all non-zero $x\in\mathbb R$.
Suppose that $a_{ii}=0$ for some $i=1,\ldots,n$, where $a_{ii}$ denotes the $i$-th element on the diagonal of $A$. Suppose that all entries of $x\in\mathbb R^n$ are equal to $0$ except the $i$-th entry which is not equal to $0$. Such an $x$ is hence a non-zero vector since there is one entry which is not equal to $0$. We have that
$$
x^TAx=a_{ii}x_i^2=0
$$
for all non-zero $x_i\in\mathbb R$ since $a_{ii}=0$. If follows that the matrix $A$ is not positive definite.
Of course a matrix with a diagonal entry equal to $0$ can still be positive semi-definite.
I hope this helps.
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Q: Clarification on _INTEGER I have read this 'Pixel Transfer' page of the wiki but have an issues that remains annoying to me. Given the following statement:
Adding "_INTEGER" to any of the color formats represent transferring
data to/from integral image formats
Given that _integer only effects what happens to the pixel data when it is transfered to/from the internalFormat does pixel-type of data effect whether _integer can be used?
Can gl_red_integer, gl_rg_integer, gl_rgb_integer, gl_bgr_integer, gl_rgba_integer, gl_bgra_integer formats be used with any pixel type as long as their component counts match?
A: From the same page
If the format parameter specifies "_INTEGER", but the type is of a
floating-point type (GL_FLOAT, GL_HALF_FLOAT, or similar), then an
error results and the pixel transfer fails
Guess that answers my question. I'm still not 100% sure how _integer interacts with packed types (like 10F_11F_11F_REV) but it looks like I need to read the wiki harder anyway so I expect that it is in there!
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\section{Introduction}
The source IGR\,J17200--3116\ \citep{revnivtsev04short,walter04short} was discovered in 2003 during a survey of the Galactic Centre region with \emph{INTEGRAL}. The hard X-ray (18--60~keV) flux of IGR\,J17200--3116\ was $\sim$1.6~mCrab, roughly corresponding to $1.4\times10^{-11}$~\mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$}. \citet{revnivtsev04short} and \citet{stephen05short} pointed out that this new \emph{INTEGRAL}\ source was the counterpart of the soft X-ray \emph{ROSAT}\ point source 1RXS\,J172006.1--311702. \citet{masetti06short} proposed an optical counterpart
with a narrow H$\alpha$ line and reddened continuum, suggesting a high-mass X-ray binary (HMXB) system. The association was fortified by \citet{tomsick08}, who obtained a refined \emph{Chandra}\ X-ray position.
More recently, our team reported on the discovery of a coherent modulation of the X-ray emission of IGR\,J17200--3116\ at a period of $\sim$326~s \citep{nichelli11}. The signal was detected in a run of the \emph{Swift}\ Automatic Timing ANAlysis of Serendipitous Sources at Brera And Roma astronomical observatories (SATANASS\,@\,BAR) project. SATANASS\,@\,BAR consists in a systematic Fourier-based search for new pulsators in the \emph{Swift}\ X-ray data.\footnote{For our analogous \emph{Chandra}\ project, the \emph{Chandra}\ ACIS Timing Survey at Brera And Rome astronomical observatories (CATS\,@\,BAR), see \citet{eis13,eisrc13,eism13}.} So far, about 4000 X-ray Telescope (XRT) light curves of point sources with a sufficiently high number of photons ($\ga$150) were analysed and the effort yielded six previously unknown X-ray pulsators (including IGR\,J17200--3116, two other new pulsators were reported in \citealt{nichelli09}).
The original detection of the period of IGR\,J17200--3116\ occurred in a couple of \emph{Swift}\ consecutive observations performed in 2005 October 26--27. After that, more \emph{Swift}\ observations were carried out between 2010 October and 2011 May to characterize better IGR\,J17200--3116. The period measured during the new \emph{Swift}\ campaign was slightly longer ($\sim$328~s; \citealt{nichelli11}, see also Section\,\ref{timingan}), indicating that the modulation reflects almost certainly the spin of a neutron star.
Here we give more details on the \emph{Swift}\ observations and we report on a 20-ks long \emph{XMM--Newton}\ observation of IGR\,J17200--3116\ performed on 2013 September 19, where we discovered an evident dip (a flux drop). While in low mass X-ray binaries these features are usually due to obscuring matter located in the outer accretion disc (see e.g. \citealt{diaztrigo06} for a review), in HMXBs they are probably produced by a transition to a different accretion regime (see \citealt{drave13} and references therein). In Sections \ref{observations} and \ref{analysis}, we describe the X-ray observations used and present the results of our timing and spectral analysis. Discussion follows in Section\,\ref{discussion}, where we concentrate on the origin of a peculiar short off-state observed in IGR\,J17200--3116\ with \emph{XMM--Newton}.
\section{Observations}\label{observations}
\begin{table*}
\begin{minipage}{10.2cm}
\centering \caption{Summary of the \emph{Swift}\ and \emph{XMM--Newton}\ observations used in this work.} \label{logs}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lcccc}
\hline
Mission~/~Obs.\,ID & Instrument & Date & Exposure & Net counts$^{a}$ \\
& & & (ks) & \\
\hline
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088001 & XRT & 2005 Oct 26 & 6.3 & $2312\pm48$\\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088002 & XRT & 2005 Oct 27 & 5.1 & $1350\pm37$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088003 & XRT & 2010 Oct 22--23 & 10.5 & $2910\pm54$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088004 & XRT & 2010 Oct 24 & 4.6 & $1105\pm33$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088005 & XRT & 2010 Oct 27 & 5.3 & $886\pm30$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088006 & XRT & 2011 Feb 03 & 10.1 & $2108\pm46$\\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088007 & XRT & 2011 Feb 05 & 3.7 & $771\pm28$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088008 & XRT & 2011 Feb 08 & 4.6 & $558\pm24$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088009 & XRT & 2011 Feb 13 & 3.1 & $466\pm22$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088010 & XRT & 2011 Feb 15 & 1.7 & $202\pm14$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088011 & XRT & 2011 Feb 20 & 3.8 & $689\pm26$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088012 & XRT & 2011 Feb 27--28 & 4.9 & $941\pm31$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088013 & XRT & 2011 Mar 27--28 & 6.9 & $1413\pm38$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088014 & XRT & 2011 Apr 28 & 4.0 & $639\pm25$ \\
\emph{Swift}~/~00035088015 & XRT & 2011 May 16 & 5.2 & $534\pm23$ \\
& EPIC-pn & & 20.0 & $50600\pm227$\\
\emph{XMM}~/~0723570201 & EPIC-MOS\,1 & 2013 Sep 19 & 21.8 & $13085\pm116$\\
& EPIC-MOS\,2 & & 21.7 & $5220\pm74$ \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\begin{list}{}{}
\item[$^{a}$] Net source counts considering the source and background extraction regions described in the text. The counts are in the 0.3--10~keV band for the \emph{Swift}\ XRT, in the 0.3--12~keV for the \emph{XMM--Newton}\ MOS cameras, and in the 1.5--12~keV for the \emph{XMM--Newton}\ pn camera.
\end{list}
\end{minipage}
\end{table*}
\subsection{\emph{Swift}}
IGR\,J17200--3116\ was observed by \emph{Swift}\ 15 times between 2005 October and 2011 May, for a total net exposure of $\sim$80.8~ks (see Table\,\ref{logs}). The \emph{Swift}\ XRT \citep{burrows05short} data were collected in imaging photon counting (PC) mode, with a CCD readout time of 2.507~s. The data were processed and reduced using standard software tools and procedures (\textsc{heasoft} v.~6.14~/~\textsc{caldb}~20130313). The source photons were selected within a 20-pixel radius (1 XRT pixel $\simeq$ 2.36 arcsec), while the background counts were accumulated from an annular region with radii of 50 and 80 pixels.
\subsection{\emph{XMM--Newton}}\label{xmmdata}
\emph{XMM--Newton}\ observed IGR\,J17200--3116\ on 2013 September 19 for about 21~ks. The pn CCD camera \citep{struder01short} was set to operate in fast-timing mode (which achieves a time resolution of 0.03~ms by preserving only one-dimensional positional information), while the MOS\,1 and MOS\,2 CCD cameras \citep{turner01short} were run in small-window mode (time resolution: 0.3~s) and in full-frame mode (time resolution: 2.6~s), respectively. The data were processed and reduced using the \emph{XMM--Newton}\ \textsc{sas} v.~13.5 and the \textsc{ccf-rel-307} calibration release. The observation was affected by a few soft proton flares. The corresponding periods of high particle background were filtered out of the data using intensity filters and following the method described in \citet{deluca04}.
To extract the pn source counts, we used a thin strip ($\sim$10 pixels) centred on the source and with the length covering the entire readout streak. The background spectrum was extracted from two symmetric 5-pixel-wide strips aside the source. The pn data suffered from the recurrence of instrumental noise bursts, which are characteristic of the fast-timing mode \citep{burwitz04}. These noise bursts are short ($\la$0.1~s) and have a very distinctive spectrum \citep{burwitz04}, with a peak around 0.20--0.25 keV, few counts above 0.3~keV, and essentially no counts above 1.5~keV. Given this, we preferred not to apply another good time-interval filter to the pn data to exclude these events, since this would have severely reduced the counting statistics and degraded the quality of the pn light curves. Instead, we limited the pn analysis to photons with energy above 0.5~keV for the timing analysis and above 1.5~keV for the spectral analysis.\footnote{In the pn light curves the peaks produced by the noise flares disappear above $\sim$0.3--0.4~keV, and we checked that residual spurious counts do not impact the timing analysis or alter the folded profiles. Indeed, this is not to be expected, since the noise bursts have typical duration ($\la$0.1~s) much shorter than the period of IGR\,J17200--3116\ and are aperiodic. For the spectral analysis we adopted a more conservative selection, since residual spurious counts, being concentrated in a narrow energy range, might build up features in the spectra (especially when integrated over long exposures), and the flares cannot be properly subtracted from a nearby background region, since they are spatially inhomogeneous in the CCD chip.}
For the MOS\,1, we accumulated the source counts from a circular region with radius of 40~arcsec. Owing to the small field of the central CCD (CCD~\#1) in small-window mode, the background was estimated from a circular region in CCD~\#7, at a distance of about 6.7~arcmin from IGR\,J17200--3116. The MOS\,2 data are affected by pileup. For this reason, we extracted the source photons from an annulus around IGR\,J17200--3116, thus excluding the inner (piled-up) point spread function (PSF) core. We used 40~arcsec for the outer radius and $\sim$10~arcsec for the inner radius. The latter value was selected by fitting the PSF with a King function and using the \textsc{sas} task \textsc{epatplot}. The background was extracted from a circular region on the same chip as the source.
\section{Analysis and results}\label{analysis}
\begin{figure*}
\centering
\resizebox{\hsize}{!}{\includegraphics[angle=-90]{lc.ps}}
\caption{\label{lc} Top panel: \emph{XMM--Newton}\ EPIC 0.5--10 keV light curve of IGR\,J17200--3116\ (bintime $=50$~s). We show only the time interval ($\sim$18.7~ks) with simultaneous pn, MOS\,1, and MOS\,2 coverage. The origin of time ($t_0$) is taken at 2013 September 19 03:41:12.8 (UTC). The red line is a sinusoidal fit to the average pulse profile and includes a Gaussian component to model the $\sim$400-s-long dip occurred during the observation (marked by arrow `A'). The arrows `B' and `C' indicate two other possible shorter dips. The background is negligible ($<$1\% of the total counts). Second panel: EPIC light curve in the soft (S) band 0.5--4~keV (bintime $=100$~s). Third panel: EPIC light curve in the hard (H) band 4--10~keV (bintime $=100$~s). Bottom panel: ratio between the hard (H) and soft (S) counts (errors were propagated by adding in quadrature). The vertical red lines in the last three panels indicate the time intervals used for the spectral analysis of the dip.}
\end{figure*}
\subsection{Light curves and timing analysis}\label{timingan}
As already mentioned, the periodic modulation in the X-ray emission of IGR\,J17200--3116\ was detected during a run of the SATANASS\,@\,BAR project. Taking into account the whole sample of light curves analysed in the project ($\sim$4000), the peak at about 326.3~s in the Fourier power spectrum (which was computed from the first two \emph{Swift}\ observations, collected in 2005 October 25--26) was significant at a 3.6$\sigma$ confidence level. Two harmonics were present in the power spectrum and the pulsed fraction of the signal was approximately 30\%. After the discovery of the periodicity, a \emph{Swift}\ campaign was carried out to confirm the modulation and study the source. In Table\,\ref{timing}, we report the periods measured in the \emph{Swift}\ data (note that few adjoining observations were combined) by means of a $Z^2_2$ analysis, together with the root-mean-square (rms) pulsed fractions.
The combined EPIC pn and MOS light curves from the 2013 \emph{XMM--Newton}\ observation are shown in Fig.\,\ref{lc} in the total (0.5--10~keV), soft (0.5--4~keV), and hard (0.5--4~keV) bands. The 328-s modulation is evident even without a folding analysis and the individual pulses have very variable amplitude. A dip, marked with the letter `A', is apparent in the light curve roughly 6~ks after the observation start [$(t-t_0)\approx6$~ks, where $t_0$ is fixed at 2013 September 19 03:41:12.8 (UTC)]. By a Gaussian fit, we estimated its full width at half-maximum (FWHM) length to be $402\pm16$~s (here and in the following, uncertainties are at 1$\sigma$ confidence level).
Two `missing pulses' can be seen in the light curve around $(t-t_0)\approx 8.3$ and 14.5~ks (they are marked with the letters `B' and `C' in Fig.\,\ref{lc}). A similar feature is also present in the \emph{Swift}\ observation 00035088002. While their short duration hinder a detailed analysis, they might be dips shorter than the `A' one, but of similar origin.
The hardness ratio of IGR\,J17200--3116\ as function of the time (Fig.\,\ref{lc}, bottom panel) shows significant variations during the observation, as it is common in HMXBs (note that substantial hardness-ratio variations are observed also across the spin phase, see below). It is interesting to note that a sudden variation in the hardness ratio of IGR\,J17200--3116\ occurred in coincidence of the dip `A'. On the other hand, other large variations, such as that observed around $(t-t_0)\approx 5$~ks, do not find correspondence in clear lacks of pulsations.
In the EPIC data, we measured a period of $P=327.878\pm0.024$~s in the $Z^2_2$ periodogram. The folded pulse profile is shown in Fig.\,\ref{xmmfold} in three energy bands. It is evident that the profile changes as a function of energy. The rms pulsed fraction measured in the total band is $32.9\pm0.2$~\%, $29.2\pm0.3$~\% in the soft band, and $37.2\pm0.3$~\% in the hard band. For completeness, we computed the rms pulsed fractions also in finer energy bands: $28.8\pm0.8$~\% in 0.5--2~keV; $29.7\pm1.1$~\% in 2--3~keV; $34.5\pm1.2$~\% in 3--4~keV; $36.2\pm1.6$~\% in 4--5~keV; $37.1\pm1.7$~\% in 5--6~keV; $39.5\pm2.0$~\% in 6--7~keV; $38.7\pm2.7$~\% in 7--8~keV; $44.9\pm3.9$~\% in 8--9~keV; and $38.0\pm4.0$~\% in 9--10~keV.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\resizebox{\hsize}{!}{\includegraphics[angle=0]{xmmfold.eps}}
\caption{\label{xmmfold} The first three panels show the \emph{XMM--Newton}\ EPIC pulse profile of IGR\,J17200--3116\ in the total, soft, and hard energy bands (as indicated in the panels). The total profile is displayed with 32 phase bins, the others with 20 phase bins. Bottom panel: ratio between the hard (H) and soft (S) profiles (errors were propagated by adding in quadrature). The red vertical lines indicate the phase intervals used for the phase-resolved spectroscopy.}
\end{figure}
\begin{table}
\centering \caption{Timing results.} \label{timing}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lcc}
\hline
Segment$^{a}$ & Period$^{b}$ & rms pulsed fraction$^{b}$ \\
& (s) & (\%) \\
\hline
2005 Oct 26--27 & $326.276\pm0.016$ & $28.3\pm0.8$ \\
2010 Oct 22--27 & $328.178\pm0.005$ & $31.1\pm0.7$ \\
2011 Feb 03--28 & $328.1782\pm0.0009$ & $30.9\pm0.7$ \\
2011 Mar 27--28 & $328.16\pm0.05$ & $36.6\pm1.7$ \\
2011 Apr 28 & $327.65\pm0.54$ & $35.0\pm2.6$ \\
2011 May 16 & $327.96\pm0.28$ & $38.1\pm2.5$ \\
2013 Sep 19 & $327.878\pm0.024$ & $32.9\pm0.2$ \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\begin{list}{}{}
\item[$^{a}$] See Table\,\ref{logs}.
\item[$^{b}$] Periods were derived from a $Z^2_2$ test. Uncertainties were determined from Monte Carlo simulations.
\end{list}
\end{table}
\subsubsection{Other recent X-ray observations}
As mentioned before, IGR\,J17200--3116\ was observed also by \emph{Chandra}\ between 2007~September~30 and October~01 (obs.\,ID~7532, exposure time: 4.7~ks; \citealt{tomsick08}). The unabsorbed flux of IGR\,J17200--3116\ was $\approx$$3\times10^{-11}$~\mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$}, causing significant pile-up in the \emph{Chandra}\ ACIS-S instrument, which was operated in full-frame mode (frametime: 3.2~s). We searched the source data, considering a 2-arcsec radius region centred on IGR\,J17200--3116, for the $\sim$327~s signal in the 0.3--8~keV energy band, but no significant pulsations were found (see also \citealt{nichelli11}).
After discarding the piled-up events from the core of the \emph{Chandra}\ PSF, a signal at $327.1\pm0.4$~s could be recovered (with significance of $\sim$4$\sigma$) by a folding analysis carried out in a $\pm$10~s interval centred at 327~s. Because of the poor counting statistics (about 200 source photons), the pulsed fraction cannot be constrained.
In 2003--2004, IGR\,J17200--3116\ was serendipitously observed several times by \emph{RXTE}\ in a campaign devoted to the black hole X-ray transient XTE\,J1720--318 (see \citealt{brocksopp05}). In these observations, IGR\,J17200--3116\ was always $\sim$$0\fdg5$ from the \emph{RXTE}\ pointing direction. A signal around 325~s is detected by a folding analysis (in the interval $327\pm10$~s) of the data of the longest observations with the \emph{RXTE}/PCA, which is a collimated instrument with a FWHM field of view of about 1$^\circ$. For instance, a period of $324.71\pm0.07$~s is observed on 2003~January~15 (obs.\,ID~70116-03-02-01, net exposure: 16.6~ks, $\sim$6$\sigma$ significance) and a period of $324.38\pm0.05$~s on 2003~February~20 (obs.\,ID~70123-01-03-07, net exposure: 9.8~ks, $\sim$5$\sigma$ significance). Considering the period variability observed in the \emph{Swift}\ and \emph{XMM--Newton}\ data (Table\,\ref{timing}), these signals are likely due to IGR\,J17200--3116, but the non-imaging nature of the \emph{RXTE}\ instruments preclude any definitive conclusions.
\subsection{Spectral analysis}
\subsubsection{Phase-averaged and phase-resolved spectral analysis}
For the phase-averaged spectral analysis, we first concentrate on the high counting statistics \emph{XMM--Newton}\ spectra. For the MOS spectra, we considered the energy range 0.3--12~keV, for the pn spectrum the band 1.5--12~keV (see Section\,\ref{xmmdata}). We fit to the EPIC spectra a set of models typically used for accreting pulsars (power law, power law plus blackbody, and cutoff power law, all modified for the photoelectric absorption). The summary of the spectral fits is given in Table\,\ref{specs}. All models indicate a rather hard spectrum, an observed 1--10~keV flux of $\sim$$2.75\times10^{-11}$~\mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$}, and an absorbing column of $(1$--$3)\times10^{22}$~cm$^{-2}$ (which is higher than the column density through the Galaxy along the line of sight, $\sim$$5\times10^{21}$~cm$^{-2}$ from \citealt{kalberla05}).
Apart from the power law, all the models tested fit reasonably well the \emph{XMM--Newton}\ data, but the blackbody plus power-law is the one that provides the best fit. Two variants of this model are consistent with the data: a relatively cool blackbody with $kT \sim0.15$~keV plus a power law with $\Gamma\sim1.2$, or a hotter blackbody with temperature corresponding to $\sim$1.2~keV and a harder power with photon index $\sim$0.8. In the following, we adopt the latter model (see Fig.\,\ref{xmm_spec}), which is better consistent with an HMXB interpretation of IGR\,J17200--3116\ (see Section\,\ref{discussion}).
\begin{figure}
\centering
\resizebox{\hsize}{!}{\includegraphics[angle=-90]{xmm_spec.ps}}
\caption{Fit of the \emph{XMM--Newton}\ spectra with the power law plus hot blackbody model. Bottom panel: residuals of the fit in units of standard deviations with error bars of size one.\label{xmm_spec}}
\end{figure}
As shown in Fig.\,\ref{xmmfold}, where the pulse profiles in two energy bands (0.5--4 and 4--10~keV) and their ratio are displayed, the spectrum of IGR\,J17200--3116\ is strongly variable with phase. In particular, the phase intervals marked with B and D in Fig.\,\ref{xmmfold} show the hardest X-ray emission, while the phase minimum (interval C) appears to be significantly softer. The pn and MOS spectra of the six phase intervals selected with the hardness ratio were extracted using the same procedure as for the average spectrum and fit with an absorbed power-law plus blackbody model (the one with $kT\simeq1.2$~keV in Table\,\ref{specs}). Forcing all the parameters to assume the same values for all the spectra, except for an overall normalization factor, a rather poor fit is obtained ($\chi^2_{\nu}=1.33$ for 2016 dof), with large residuals at low energies. An acceptable fit ($\chi^2_{\nu}=1.07$ for 2011 dof) is instead obtained by letting the absorption free to vary in each spectrum (even though this is not the only possible choice). The best-fitting $N_{\rm H}$\ values (in units of $10^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$ and assuming the abundances from \citealt*{wilms00}) for each phase interval are the following: $1.61\pm0.09$, $3.4\pm0.2$, $1.12\pm0.08$, $2.89\pm0.12$, $1.66\pm0.09$, and $1.16\pm0.08$ for phase A, B, C, D, E, and F, respectively.
\subsubsection{Spectral analysis of the dip}
An indication of spectral variability of the source during the main dip (`A') clearly emerges from the hardness ratio curve shown in Fig.\,\ref{lc}. In particular, in the first part of the dip the source hardness reaches its minimum value. To better study this peculiar source state, we extracted the pn and MOS spectra from the full time interval of the dip (from about $t_0+5660$~s to $t_0+6160$~s), its first and second half, and fit them with the best-fitting power law plus blackbody model (with $kT\simeq1.2$~keV, see Table\,\ref{specs}), rescaled by a normalization factor.\footnote{We note that a meaningful spectral analysis of the other possible dips (including the \emph{Swift}\ one) is prevented by the very low number of counts.}
Despite the limited counting statistics (202 background-subtracted counts), the initial spectrum cannot be satisfactorily fit by this simple model ($\chi^2_{\nu}=3.07$ for 7 dof). Acceptable fits to the initial spectra are instead obtained with a variable absorption ($N_{\rm H}< 1.1\times10^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$ at 3$\sigma$; $\chi^2_{\nu}=1.67$ for 6 dof) or changing the parameters of either the power law ($\Gamma=2.4^{+1.7}_{-0.8}$; $\chi^2_{\nu}=0.78$ for 5 dof) or blackbody component ($kT=0.8\pm0.1$ keV; $\chi^2_{\nu}=0.55$ for 5 dof). The 1--10~keV unabsorbed fluxes are $6.0^{+0.5}_{-0.4}\times10^{-12}$~\mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$}\ for the fit with free $N_{\rm H}$, $5.5^{+0.8}_{-0.5}\times10^{-12}$~\mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$}\ for the fit with free power-law component, and $5.3^{+1.2}_{-1.1}\times10^{-12}$~\mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$}\ in the case of free blackbody component.
In contrast, the spectrum of the second part of the dip (260 background-subtracted counts) and that extracted from the entire dip are adequately fit by the model of the phase-averaged spectrum with fixed parameters ($\chi^2_{\nu}=0.81$ for 9 dof and $\chi^2_{\nu}=1.36$ for 23 dof, respectively). The unabsorbed 1--10~keV flux is $(8.18\pm0.35)\times10^{-12}$~\mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$}\ when averaged along the whole dip length, and $(9.56\pm0.61)\times10^{-12}$~\mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$}\ in the second part of the dip.
We also tested the possibility of a complete suppression of the power-law component during the dip by fitting the corresponding spectrum with an absorbed blackbody model with $N_{\rm H}$\ and temperature fixed at the best-fitting values of the power law plus (hot) blackbody fit to the average spectrum (Table\,\ref{specs}). This fit is not acceptable ($\chi^2_{\nu}=1.84$ for 23 dof) and shows systematic residuals at high energies, indicating the presence of a harder spectral component.
The \emph{Swift}\ spectra of the individual observations, collected over $\sim$6 years (see Table\,\ref{logs}), can be all described by a simple power law modified for the interstellar absorption.\footnote{Although models more complicated than a photoelectrically absorbed power law are necessary to properly fit the high-counting-statistics \emph{XMM--Newton}\ data, the addition of extra components did not improve the goodness of fit significantly for any of the \emph{Swift}\ observations. Also considered that the emission of IGR\,J17200--3116\ is variable, we opted to stick to this simple model to compare the spectral properties from \emph{Swift}\ data set to data set.} They show, however, substantial variability in both flux and spectral shape (see Fig.\,\ref{xrtspec}). In order to investigate whether changes in the absorbing column might account for part of the variations, we performed a simultaneous fit of the 15 \emph{Swift}\ spectra with free $N_{\rm H}$\ and normalizations, and the photon index tied between all the data sets. Indeed, they can be fit by a simple power law ($\chi^2_\nu=0.96$ for 763 dof) with photon index $\Gamma=1.03\pm0.03$ and $N_{\rm H}$\ varying from $\sim$1.9 to $7\times10^{22}$~cm$^{-2}$ (see Fig.\,\ref{xrtlc}). We note that an almost as good fit is obtained when the hydrogen column value is tied between all observations and the other parameters are left free to vary ($\chi^2_\nu=1.04$ for 763 dof); in this case, the derived $N_{\rm H}$\ is $(2.07\pm0.08)\times10^{22}$~cm$^{-2}$ and the photon index ranges from $\sim$0 to 1.2.
\begin{table*}
\begin{minipage}{17cm}
\centering \caption{\emph{XMM--Newton}\ spectral results. Errors are at a 1$\sigma$ confidence level for a single parameter of interest.} \label{specs}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lcccccccc}
\hline
Model$^a$ & $N_{\rm H}$$^b$ & $\Gamma$ & $kT~/~E_\mathrm{c}$$^c$ & $E_\mathrm{f}$$^c$ & $R_{\mathrm{BB}}$$^d$ & Flux$^e$ & Unabs. flux$^e$ & $\chi^2_\nu$ (dof) \\
& ($10^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$) & & (keV) & (keV) & (km) & \multicolumn{2}{c}{($10^{-11}$ \mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$})} & \\
\hline
\textsc{phabs\,(pl)} & $1.85\pm0.04$ & $1.08\pm0.01$ & -- & -- & -- & $2.75\pm0.02$ & $3.23\pm0.02$ & 1.29 (509) \\
\textsc{phabs\,(cutoffpl)} & $1.51\pm0.06$ & $0.67\pm0.06$ & -- & $13\pm2$ & -- & $2.74\pm0.02$ & $3.10\pm0.02$ & 1.19 (508) \\
\textsc{phabs\,(highecut\,*\,pl)} & $1.46\pm0.05$ & $0.80\pm0.04$ & $3.5\pm0.2$ & $16^{+3}_{-1}$ & -- & $2.74\pm0.02$ & $3.09\pm0.02$ & 1.14 (507) \\
\textsc{phabs\,(bb\,+\,pl)} & $1.31\pm0.07$ & $0.81\pm0.06$ & $1.18\pm0.05$& -- & $0.27\pm0.03$ & $2.74\pm0.02$ & $3.04\pm0.02$ & 1.12 (507) \\
\textsc{phabs\,(bb\,+\,pl)} & $2.84\pm0.13$ & $1.22\pm0.02$ & $0.15\pm0.01$& -- & $88^{+17}_{-14}$ & $2.74\pm0.02$ & $3.95\pm0.10$ & 1.12 (507) \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\begin{list}{}{}
\item[$^{a}$] \textsc{xspec} models; \textsc{bb = bbodyrad, pl = powerlaw}.
\item[$^{b}$] We used the abundances of \citet*{wilms00} and the photoelectric absorption cross-sections from \citet{balucinska92}.
\item[$^{c}$] $E_\mathrm{c}$: cutoff energy; $E_\mathrm{f}$: $e$-folding energy.
\item[$^{d}$] The blackbody radius is calculated at infinity and for an arbitrary distance of 5~kpc.
\item[$^{e}$] In the 1--10 keV energy band.
\end{list}
\end{minipage}
\end{table*}
\section{Discussion}\label{discussion}
We reported on an in-depth characterization at X-rays of the source IGR\,J17200--3116, both from the temporal and the spectral point of view. Pulsations, originally discovered by our group in \emph{Swift}\ data and reported by \citet{nichelli11}, have been recovered in an archival \emph{Chandra}\ observation, and clearly observed in the new \emph{XMM--Newton}/EPIC data analysed in detail here, with a periodicity of $327.878\pm0.024$~s. Such a long pulse period is typical of a neutron star in an HMXB. In fact, an early-type companion is also indicated by optical studies \citep{masetti06short} and by the precise \emph{Chandra}\ position \citep{tomsick08}.
Both a Be (main sequence or giant) star and a blue supergiant are viable possibilities for the companion star of IGR\,J17200--3116. Unfortunately, for \citet{masetti06short} it was not possible to derive significant information about the optical counterpart (spectral type, absorption and source distance), since a reliable photometry was missing. From the Corbet diagram of X-ray-pulsar spin period versus orbital period \citep{corbet86}, the observed pulse period suggests an orbital period of either $\sim$3--30~d or $\sim$100--200~d for an HMXB hosting either a supergiant donor or a Be, respectively. Strong pulse to pulse variations (usually produced by fluctuations in the wind accreted by the neutron star) and a pulse profile energy dependence are evident in IGR\,J17200--3116, as it is often observed in accreting pulsars with massive donors.
The hard \emph{XMM--Newton}\ spectrum (power-law photon index in the range 0.8--1.2) is in line with an HMXB origin for the X-ray emission. The presence of a soft component is indicated by the X-ray spectroscopy. The spectrum is well fit by a blackbody emission together with a hard power law. While both a colder ($kT\sim0.15$~keV) and a hotter ($kT\sim1.18$~keV) blackbody are valid deconvolution of the spectrum, we favour the hot solution, which is consistent in temperature and size ($R_{\mathrm{BB}}\approx0.3\,d_5$~km, where $d_5$ is the distance in units of 5~kpc) with an HMXB interpretation of the hot blackbody as produced in the polar cap region of the neutron star accretion column \citep{becker07}.
The strong variability of the spin-phase-selected spectra (Fig.\,\ref{xmmfold}, bottom panel) can be accounted for by a variable absorbing column density along the spin cycle, probably mapping a different density of the local matter illuminated by the X-ray beam pattern. Significant variations (up to a factor of 4) in the absorbing column density are also present in the long-term X-ray light curve (Fig.\,\ref{xrtlc}). Variations in the local absorption are usual in HMXBs because the compact object is constantly embedded in an intense structured and clumpy wind. Moreover, in a few cases, large-scale structures have been observed in HMXBs (gas streams) and interpreted as the result of the disruption of the wind by the neutron star passage, which produce density perturbations that modulate the observed $N_{\rm H}$\ along the orbital cycle \citep{blondin90,manousakis11}.
We observed a remarkable feature in the EPIC light curve, a dip or a so-called off-state, characterized by a reduction in the source intensity down to $\sim$20--30\% of its normal level, and lasting for about one neutron star spin cycle. Similar features have been seen so far only in a few HMXB pulsars with supergiant companions and are potentially important to derive information on the accretion regime and the neutron star properties: \mbox{Vela\,X--1} (orbital period $P_{\mathrm{orb}}\simeq9$~d and spin period $P_{\mathrm{spin}}\simeq283$~s; \citealt{inoue84,kreykenbohm99,kreykenbohm08short}), 4U\,1907+09 ($P_{\mathrm{orb}}\simeq8.4$~d and $P_{\mathrm{spin}}\simeq437.5$~s; \citealt{dsdk12}), GX\,301--2 ($P_{\mathrm{orb}}\simeq41.5$~d and $P_{\mathrm{spin}}\simeq686$~s; \citealt*{gkb11}), and in the Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients IGR\,J16418--4532 ($P_{\mathrm{orb}}\simeq3.7$~d and $P_{\mathrm{spin}}\simeq1212$~s; \citealt{drave13}), and IGR\,J17544--2619 ($P_{\mathrm{orb}}\simeq4.9$~d and candidate $P_{\mathrm{spin}}\simeq71.5$~s; \citealt{drave14}). During these off-states, X-ray pulsations sometimes appear to be suppressed \citep{kreykenbohm99}, sometimes are still detected \citep*{doroshenko11}, and the X-ray spectrum softens. This implies that these dips are not caused by the obscuration by a dense wind clump passing our line of sight to the pulsar, but are due to a real flux drop. \citet{gkb11} suggested that softer X-rays during these dips are likely due to the suppression of the harder X-ray emission produced in the accretion column, leaving visible the soft X-rays coming from the underlying thermal mound at the bottom of the accretion column \citep{becker07}. The reason for a suppression (or cessation) of the hard X-rays produced in the accretion column is unclear.
Aside from temporarily enhanced absorption along the line of sight, three main explanations for off-states have been proposed: a temporary transition to a centrifugal inhibition of the accretion (see e.g. \citealt{kreykenbohm08short} for Vela\,X--1), a Kelvin--Helmholtz (KH) instability \citep{dsdk12}, or an accretion regime change from a Compton cooling regime (producing a higher luminosity) to a radiative cooling regime (lower luminosity) in the equatorial plane of the neutron star magnetosphere, due to a switch from fan beam to pencil beam emission pattern \citep{shakura13}.
Also in IGR\,J17200--3116, the significantly softer spectrum during the off-state leads us to exclude the possibility of an obscuration of the central source by a wind structure (or clump), which would cause instead a spectral hardening. The small duration of the dip (a little more than a spin cycle) does not allow us to establish if the remaining fainter emission is pulsating, so a centrifugal barrier temporarily halting accretion, could be a possibility, although the short duration of the off-state makes it unlikely \citep{gkb11}. In IGR\,J17200--3116, the spectrum during the dip cannot be completely accounted for {\em only} by an unvarying blackbody emission (this is ruled out by the marked spectral variability), and significant (power-law-like) hard X-ray emission is present, suggesting that in our case accretion is not suppressed in contrast, again, to what is expected with the onset of a propeller regime.
\begin{figure}
\centering
\resizebox{\hsize}{!}{\includegraphics[angle=-90]{xrtspec.ps}}
\caption{\label{xrtspec} Comparison of the \emph{Swift}\ spectrum from observation 8003 with that obtained from the observations 8005, 8009, and 8010, which are very similar to each other, combined (red triangles). The solid lines show the best-fitting power-law models (same photon index, but different $N_{\rm H}$\ and normalization). Bottom panel: residuals of the fit in units of standard deviations with error bars of size one.}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\resizebox{\hsize}{!}{\includegraphics[angle=-90]{part1.ps}\hspace{-2.5cm}\includegraphics[angle=-90]{part2.ps}}
\caption{\label{xrtlc} Top panels: \emph{Swift}\ long-term light curve (the flux is in the 1--10 keV energy range and not corrected for the absorption). Note the time gap and the different time-scales. Bottom panels: corresponding absorption column as inferred from the spectral analysis.}
\end{figure}
A transition to accretion via KH instability is discussed by \citet{dsdk12} as a possible explanation of dips in the transient source 4U\,1907+09, following the theory of wind accretion in HMXBs surveyed by \citet*{bozzo08}. In the framework of the different accretion regimes discussed by \citet{bozzo08}, the magnetospheric boundary at the Alfv\'en radius, $R_{\mathrm A}$, can be KH unstable in two regimes: in the sub-Keplerian magnetic inhibition regime (where $R_{\mathrm{acc}} < R_{\mathrm{A}} < R_{\mathrm{cor}}$, where $R_{\mathrm{acc}}$ is the accretion radius, $R_{\mathrm{cor}}$ is the corotation radius, where the neutron star angular velocity is equal to the Keplerian angular velocity), and in the subsonic propeller regime (where $R_{\mathrm{A}} < R_{\mathrm{acc}} < R_{\mathrm{cor}}$). The spin period of $\sim$328~s implies a corotation radius, $R_{\mathrm{cor}}$, of $8\times 10^{9}$~cm. Thus, in both regimes, $R_{\mathrm{cor}}$ represents an upper limit to the value of the other two important radii involved. The relation $R_{\mathrm{acc}} < R_{\mathrm{cor}}$ ($R_{\mathrm{acc}}=2GM/v_{\mathrm{rel}}^2$, where $M$ is the neutron star mass, and $v_{\mathrm{rel}}$ is the relative velocity of the neutron star and the companion wind) translates into a lower limit for $v_{\mathrm{rel}}$ of $\sim$2200~km~s$^{-1}$, which is, on average, quite high in comparison with usual HMXBs, but it cannot be excluded, given the large variability expected in inhomogeneous winds of massive stars \citep*{oskinova12}.
Adopting equation~21 in \citet{bozzo08} for the X-ray luminosity $L_{\rm KH}$ produced by matter entering the magnetosphere through KH instability in the subsonic propeller regime, all the parameters involved in this formula are basically unknown for IGR\,J17200--3116, except for the neutron star spin period. However, we can derive an upper limit to $L_{\rm KH}$ by assuming the following: $R_{\mathrm{acc}} = R_{\mathrm{A}} = R_{\mathrm{cor}}$, an orbital period of 5~d (which is reasonable for an accreting pulsar with a supergiant companion and the observed spin period; \citealt{corbet86}) and a total mass for the binary system of 30~M$_{\odot}$ (implying $a_{\mathrm{10d}}=0.63$ in equation~21 in \citealt{bozzo08}), a relative velocity of 2200~km~s$^{-1}$ ($v_8=2.2$ in equation~21 in \citealt{bozzo08}), a wind mass-loss rate of $10^{-6}$~M$_{\odot}$~yr$^{-1}$, a density ratio $\rho_{\mathrm{i}}/\rho_{\mathrm{e}} = 1$ [where $\rho_{\mathrm{i}}$ and $\rho_{\mathrm{e}}$ are the internal (below $R_{\mathrm{A}}$) and the external densities (above $R_{\mathrm{A}}$)], and $\eta_{\rm KH}\sim0.1$ for the efficiency factor.
This translates into $L_{\rm KH} < 1.5\times10^{35}$~\mbox{erg s$^{-1}$}, which can easily be accounted for if one assumes a reasonable distance to the source (see below). Note that the upper limit to the Alfv\'en radius, $R_{\mathrm{A}} < R_{\mathrm{cor}}$, results in an upper limit to the dipolar magnetic field of $B<1.2\times10^{14}$~G ($\mu<6\times 10^{31}$~G~cm$^{3}$; equation~19 in \citealt{bozzo08}). Again, we caution that all these estimates rely on particular (though reasonable) assumptions on all other parameters involved in the system geometry and wind properties.
Even larger uncertainties are involved in the estimate of the KH instability mass accretion rate across the magnetosphere in the sub-Keplerian magnetic inhibition regime, where also the shear velocity is involved. Assuming the same values as above for the parameters in equation~10 in \citet{bozzo08}, we derive $L_{\rm KH}\sim10^{34}$~\mbox{erg s$^{-1}$}.
A third possible explanation for off-states involves the application of the \citet{shakura12} model of subsonic quasi-spherical accretion on to moderately low luminosity ($<$$4\times10^{36}$~\mbox{erg s$^{-1}$}) and slowly rotating neutron stars. Here, off-states are explained by transitions to an ineffective accretion regime, rather than with a cessation of the accretion. In this scenario, an off-state is the signature of a transition from a regime where the cooling of the gravitationally captured plasma entering the neutron star magnetosphere is dominated by Compton processes to a less efficient radiative cooling regime \citep*{shakura13}.
This transition might be triggered by a change in the X-ray beam pattern, from a fan beam to a pencil beam, produced by a reduced optical depth in the accretion flow. Since matter enters the neutron star magnetosphere more easily from the equatorial region, a high lateral X-ray luminosity by a fan beam directly illuminating the equator, allows a more efficient Compton cooling, facilitating accretion and thus resulting in a higher luminosity. So, a transition from a fan to a pencil X-ray beam pattern increases the Compton cooling time, triggering a lower luminosity state (an off-state). The transition back to the normal X-ray luminosity can be triggered by an enhanced density above the magnetosphere, increasing the accretion rate.
The transition to an off-state occurs at an X-ray luminosity of about $3\times 10^{35} \mu_{30}^{-3/10}$~\mbox{erg s$^{-1}$}, where $\mu_{30}=\mu/[10^{30}$~G~cm$^3]$ is the neutron star dipole magnetic moment. The luminosity level in the off-state is about $10^{35} \mu_{30}^{7/33}$~\mbox{erg s$^{-1}$}\ in the radiation cooling regime \citep{shakura13}.
The average unabsorbed 1--10~keV flux of IGR\,J17200--3116\ during the \emph{XMM--Newton}\ observation varies, depending on the adopted model (see Table\,\ref{specs}), from $\sim$$3\times10^{-11}$ to $\sim$$4\times10^{-11}$~\mbox{erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$}. Nothing is known about the distance of IGR\,J17200--3116, which could be anywhere towards the edge of the Galaxy. At 5~kpc, the former flux translates into a luminosity of $9\times10^{34}d^2_5$~\mbox{erg s$^{-1}$}, the latter into $1.2\times10^{35}d^2_5$~\mbox{erg s$^{-1}$}\ (where $d_5$ is the distance in units of 5~kpc). Above $\approx$$4\times10^{36}$~\mbox{erg s$^{-1}$}, the quasi-spherical shell cannot exist and supersonic (Bondi) accretion is more likely, but this would require a distance $d>28$~kpc. This implies that, for reasonable source distances in the range 5--10 kpc, the X-ray emission easily matches the X-ray luminosity needed to trigger the switch to an off-state, assuming a standard neutron star magnetic field of $\sim$$10^{12}$~G.
To conclude, the observed spectral softening during the dip (which is common in similar off-states observed in other HMXBs) is more naturally explained by a transition to an ineffective accretion regime, instead of an obscuring dense clump in front of the X-ray source (which would have implied an hardening). However, given the unknown distance, the different possibilities for the transition to an inefficient accretion regime discussed above cannot be clearly disentangled.
\section*{Acknowledgements}
Based on observations obtained with \emph{Swift}\ and \emph{XMM--Newton}. \emph{Swift}\ is a NASA mission with participation of the Italian Space Agency and the UK Space Agency. \emph{XMM--Newton}\ is an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA. This research has also made use of data collected with the \emph{Chandra}\ and \emph{RXTE}\ satellites, which were obtained from the NASA's HEASARC archive.
\bibliographystyle{mn2e}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 50 |
\section{Introduction}\label{s.intro}
The study of large deviations for random walks goes back to Cram\'{e}r's work in 1938. A general version of Cram\'{e}r's theorem says that, given an i.i.d.~sequence of random variables $Y_1, Y_{2}, \dots$ taking values in a Polish space, under suitable conditions on the tail distribution of the random variable $Y_i$, the partial sums $\frac1n\sum_{i=1}^nY_i$ satisfy a Large Deviations Principle (LDP) with a good rate function.
Due to its generality Cram\'{e}r's theorem later became a starting point of various classical LDP results on path spaces (see for instance \cite{DeuschelStroockBook1989, DemboZeitouniBook2010}). However, few results are known addressing the question of how such results depend on the underlying topological space, such as for a random walk on a Riemannian or a sub-Riemannian manifold. Recently Kraaij-Redig-Versendaal in \cite{KraaijRedigVersendaal2019} and Versendaal \cite{Versendaal2019a, Versendaal2019b} obtained a Cram\'{e}r-type LDP for geodesic random walks on Riemannian manifolds that were first introduced by E.~Jorgensen in \cite{JorgensenE1975}. These authors were also able to obtain related Moguslkii's theorem results in this setting.
Our goal is to study Cram\'{e}r-type theorems in a sub-Riemannian setting, more precisely on Carnot groups. For such groups the Lie algebras have a stratified structure that ensures H\"ormander's condition is satisfied. Thus Carnot groups have a natural sub-Riemannian manifold structure. There are several ways to construct random walks on such curved spaces equipped with a sub-Riemannian metric. For example, in \cite{Pap1993, Pap1997a, Pap1999} et al.~random walks have been constructed on nilpotent groups, while in \cite{GordinaLaetsch2017, AgrachevBoscainNeelRizzi2018, BoscainNeelRizzi2017} a very different construction has been introduced on more general sub-Riemannian manifolds. In this paper we will work with the random walk that relies on the Lie group structure of the underlying manifold, which was first considered by Pap in \cite{Pap1993} to prove a central limit theorem on nilpotent Lie groups.
Suppose $G$ is a Carnot group with Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$, that is, $G$ is a connected, simply connected Lie group whose Lie algebra may be written as $\mathfrak{g}=\mathcal H\oplus\mathcal{V}$ such that any basis $\{\mathcal X_1,\ldots,\mathcal X_d\}$ of $\mathcal H$ satisfies H\"ormander's condition: for some $r\in\mathbb{N}$
\[
\mathrm{span}\{\mathcal X_{i_1},[\mathcal X_{i_1},\mathcal X_{i_{2}}],\ldots,[\mathcal X_{i_1},[\mathcal X_{i_{2}},[\cdots,\mathcal X_{i_r}]\cdots]]: i_{k}\in\{1,\ldots,d\}\} = \mathfrak{g}.
\]
We assume that $\mathcal H$ is equipped with an inner product $\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle_\mathcal H$, therefore the Carnot group has a natural sub-Riemannian structure. Namely, one may use left translation to define a \emph{horizontal distribution} $\mathcal{D}$, a sub-bundle of the tangent bundle $TG$, and a metric on $\mathcal{D}$ as follows. First, we identify the space $\mathcal{H} \subset \mathfrak{g}$ with $\mathcal{D}_{e}\subset T_eG$. Then for $g\in G$ let $L_g$ denote the left translation $L_gh :=gh$, and define $\mathcal{D}_{g}:=(L_g)_{\ast}\mathcal{D}_{e}$ for any $g \in G$. A metric on $\mathcal{D}$ may then be defined by
\begin{align*}
\langle u, v\rangle_{\mathcal{D}_g} &:= \langle (L_{g^{-1}})_{\ast} u,(L_{g^{-1}})_{\ast} v\rangle_{\mathcal{D}_e} \\
&= \langle (L_{g^{-1}})_{\ast} u,(L_{g^{-1}})_{\ast} v\rangle_{\mathcal H} \text{ for all } u, v\in\mathcal{D}_g.
\end{align*}
We will sometimes identify the horizontal distribution $\mathcal{D}$ with $\mathcal{H}$. Vectors in $\mathcal{D}$ are called \emph{horizontal}, and we say that a path $\gamma:[0,1]\to G$ is \emph{horizontal} if $\gamma$ is absolutely continuous and $\gamma^{\prime}(t)\in \mathcal{D}_{\gamma(t)}$ for a.e.~$t$. Equivalently, $\gamma$ is horizontal if the Maurer-Cartan form $c_{\gamma}\left( t \right):=( L_{\gamma\left( t \right)^{-1}})_{\ast} \gamma^{\prime} \left( t \right)\in \mathcal{H}$ for a.e. $t$.
Suppose $\left\{ X_{n} \right\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ is a sequence of i.i.d.~random variables with mean $0$ taking values in $\mathcal{H}$. We consider a \emph{sub-Riemannian random walk}
on $G$ defined by
\begin{align*}
& S_0=e,
\\
& S_{n}:=\exp(X_1)\cdots \exp(X_{n}),\quad n \in \mathbb{N}.
\end{align*}
One of the features of Carnot groups is a dilation which can be used to scale the random walk appropriately. We give more details in Section~\ref{s.carnot}, in particular, \eqref{e.Dilations} lists their main properties. For $a>0$, we denote by $D_{a}: G \longrightarrow G$ the dilation homomorphism on $G$ adapted to its stratified structure. If $\{X_n\} \subset \mathcal H$ are i.i.d.~with mean $0$, the law of large numbers says that
\[
\lim_{n\to \infty}D_{\frac{1}{n}} S_{n}=e;
\]
see for example \cite{Gaveau1977a}, or \cite{Neuenschwander1997} for the step 2 case.
We denote
\[
\Lambda(\lambda):= \Lambda_X(\lambda) :=\log \mathbb E[\exp(\langle\lambda,X_{k}\rangle_\mathcal H)]
\]
and let $\Lambda^*$ be the Legendre transform of $\Lambda$ defined by \eqref{e.FL}.
Let $\mu_n$ be the distribution of $D_{\frac{1}{n}} S_{n}$. Our main result is the following Cram\'{e}r-type large deviations principle for $\{\mu_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$.
\begin{theorem}\label{t.main}
Suppose $\{X_{k}\}_{k=1}^\infty$ are i.i.d. with mean $0$ random variables in $\mathcal H$ such that $ \Lambda_X(\lambda) $
exists for all $\lambda\in\mathcal H$. Further assume that one of the following assumptions is satisfied.
\begin{enumerate}[(i)]
\item $G$ is of step $2$ and the distribution of each $X_{k}$ is sub-Gaussian on $\mathcal H$;
\item $G$ is of step $\geqslant 3$ and the distribution of each $X_{k}$ is bounded on $\mathcal H$.
\end{enumerate}
Then for
\[
S_n:=\exp(X_1)\cdots\exp(X_n),
\]
the measures $\{\mu_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ satisfy a large deviation principle with rate function
\begin{equation}\label{e.1.1}
J(g) : = \inf\left\{\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\gamma}\left( t \right))\,dt : \gamma:[0,1]\to G \text{ horizontal, } \gamma(0)=e, \gamma(1)=g\right\}.
\end{equation}
\end{theorem}
\begin{remark}
As usual, there exists a modification of the above statement to accomodate non-centered distributions. But for simplicity we will keep the mean $0$ assumption.
\end{remark}
In particular, when $G$ has step $2$ and $\{X_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ are i.i.d.~normally distributed samples, the rate function \eqref{e.1.1} has the following explicit expression
\begin{align}\label{eq-rate-normal}
J_{\mathcal{N}}(g) &= \inf\left\{\frac{1}{2}\int_0^1 |\gamma^{\prime}(t)|_{\gamma(t)}^2\,dt: \gamma \text{ horizontal, } \gamma(0)=e, \gamma(1)=g\right\} \\
&= \inf\left\{\frac{1}{2}E(\gamma): \gamma \text{ horizontal, } \gamma(0)=e, \gamma(1)=x\right\} \nonumber
\end{align}
which gives the exact minimum energy to reach $x$ from $e$ at time $1$.
Moreover, the rate function in \eqref{eq-rate-normal} can be described in terms of the natural geometry on the group $G$. As we recall in Section~\ref{s.carnot}, H\"ormander's condition implies that any two points in $G$ can be connected by a horizontal path by Chow--Rashevskii's theorem. One may define the (finite) Carnot-Carath\'{e}odory distance $\rho_{cc}(x, y)$ between two points $x, y\in G$ to be the length of the shortest horizontal path between $x$ and $y$. As we show in Corollary~\ref{c.3.13}, the rate function is also given by
\[
J_{\mathcal{N}}(g)=\frac{1}{2}\rho_{cc}^2(e, g).
\]
Note that the rate function in \eqref{eq-rate-normal} is in line with the classical LDP on path space for Brownian motion and other continuous-time diffusion processes on $\mathbb R^n$ such as Schilder's Theorem in \cite[Theorem 5.2.3]{DemboZeitouniBook2010}. Note that a natural generalization to It\^{o}'s diffusions such as the Freidlin-Wentzell's Theorem in \cite{FreidlinWentzellBook} often requires ellipticity of the infinitesimal generator and sometimes a Girsanov-type result. While some results are available for hypoelliptic diffusions, for example, \cite{Azencott1980, BenArousDeuschel1994}, in the current work we consider random walks.
\begin{comment}\tai{I'm a bit confused about \cite{BenArousDeuschel1994}. This paper gives an LDP for a measure-valued empirical process associated to the hypoelliptic diffusion (on a compact manifold). Does this translate to a Freidlin-Wentzell type theorem?}
\jing{I thought the major difference here is that we don't have a SDE. Otherwise Azencott has worked out the LDP for subelliptic diffusions in $\mathbb R^n$.} \masha{I tried to reformulate, though I thought that Azencott's results are not directly applicable to Carnot groups. But I am less familiar with his results, in part because my French is limited. We can refer to several results for hypoelliptic diffusions and say that we are not considering diffusions. Maybe I misinterpreted to comments below. I decided not to mention the significance of Varadhan's small-time asymptotics of the heat kernel or Bony's setting etc.}
(for instance see works of Schilder, Varadhan, Stroock?) \tai{I'm not sure which references are relevant here.}
\end{comment}
Let us compare our results to the Cram\'{e}r-type LDP studied in \cite{Versendaal2019b} for Lie groups equipped with a Riemannian structure. While the main results in our paper and in \cite{Versendaal2019b} might appear similar, the LDPs are fundamentally different both in the way the random walks are constructed and the geometric structures of the underlying spaces.
In addition, in the step 2 case we are able to prove an LDP for a more general class of samples $\left\{ X_n \right\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ than the bounded samples considered in \cite{Versendaal2019b}. This allows us to include the very natural case of standard normal sampling, the one and only case that leads to the LDP with the rate function in the energy form given by \eqref{eq-rate-normal}. We rely on concentration inequalities for quadratic forms of random vectors. The paper \cite{BaldiCaramellino1999} contains similarly looking results in the context of nilpotent Lie groups, but again the random walks considered there are not restricted to increments in horizontal directions and thus correspond to a different geometric structure on these spaces.
In Section~\ref{s.background} we provide the terminology needed to state and prove Theorem~\ref{t.main} precisely, and in Section~\ref{s.LDP} we prove Theorem~\ref{t.main}. Note that it is only in the arguments of Section~\ref{ss.approx}, where we show we have exponentially good approximations of the walk, that we require the additional assumptions (sub-Gaussian or bounded) on the distribution.
\section{Background and setup}
\label{s.background}
\subsection{Large deviations principle on metric spaces}
We first recall some basic definitions for large deviations principles. These can be found for example in \cite[Section 1.2]{DemboZeitouniBook2010}. Suppose $\mathcal{M}$ is a Hausdorff topological space.
\begin{definition} A function $I: \mathcal{M} \longrightarrow [0, \infty]$ is called a \emph{rate function} if $I$ is not identically $\infty$ and it is lower semi-continuous, that is, the set $\left\{x \in \mathcal{M}: I\left( x \right) \leqslant a \right\}$ is closed for every $a \geqslant 0$. $I$ is called a \emph{good rate function} if in addition $\left\{x \in \mathcal{M}: I\left( x \right) \leqslant a \right\}$ is compact for every $a \geqslant 0$.
\end{definition}
In our setting $\mathcal{M}=\left(\mathcal{M}, \rho \right)$ is a metric space, and therefore one can verify lower semi-continuity on sequences, that is, $I$ is lower semi-continuous if and only if
\[
\liminf_{x_{n} \to x} I\left( x_{n} \right) \geqslant I\left( x \right)
\]
for all $x \in \mathcal{M}$. This means that a good rate function on $\mathcal{M}$ is a rate function that achieves its infimum over closed sets. We denote by $\mathcal{B}$ the (complete) Borel $\sigma$-algebra over the metric space $\mathcal{M}$.
\begin{definition} A sequence of probability measures $\left\{ \mu_{n} \right\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ on $\left( \mathcal{M}, \mathcal{B} \right)$ satisfies the \emph{large deviation principle} (LDP) with the rate function $I:\mathcal{M} \longrightarrow [0, \infty]$ if the function on $\mathcal{B}$ defined as $\frac{1}{n} \log \mu_{n}\left( B \right)$, $B \in \mathcal{B}$, converges weakly to the function $-\inf_{x \in B} I\left( x \right)$, that is, if for any open set $O\subset \mathcal{M}$ and any closed set $F \subset \mathcal{M}$
\begin{align}
& \liminf_{n \to \infty}\frac{1}{n} \log \mu_{n}\left( O \right) \geqslant - \inf_{O} I,
\notag
\\
& \limsup_{n \to \infty}\frac{1}{n} \log \mu_{n}\left( F \right) \leqslant - \inf_{F} I.\label{e.full}
\end{align}
We say that $\left\{ \mu_{n} \right\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ satisfies the \emph{weak LDP} if \eqref{e.full} holds for all compact sets $F\subset\mathcal{M}$.
Similarly, for a sequence of $\mathcal{M}$-valued random variables $\{Z_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ defined on probability spaces $(\Omega,\mathcal{B}_n,P_n)$, we say $\{Z_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ satisfies \emph{the (weak) LDP} with the rate function $I$ if the sequence of measures $\{P_n\circ Z_n^{-1}\}_{n=1}^\infty$ satisfies the (weak) LDP with the rate function $I$.
\end{definition}
We will also need the following standard fact known as the contraction principle (see for example \cite[Theorem 4.2.1]{DemboZeitouniBook2010}).
\begin{theorem}[Contraction principle]\label{thm-contract}
Suppose $\mathcal{M}$ and $\mathcal{N}$ are Hausdorff topological spaces and $f:\mathcal{M}\to\mathcal{N}$ is a continuous map. Let $I:\mathcal{M}\to[0,\infty]$ be a good rate function.
\begin{itemize}
\item[(i)] For any $y\in \mathcal{N}$, define
\[
J(y):=\inf\{I(x): x\in\mathcal{M} \text{ and } y=f(x) \},
\]
then $J:\mathcal{N}\to[0,\infty]$ is a good rate function on $\mathcal{N}$, where as usual the infimum over empty set is taken as $\infty$.
\item[(ii)] If $I$ controls the LDP associated with a family of probability measures $\{\mu_n\}_{n\ge1}$ on $\mathcal{M}$, then $J$ controls the LDP associated with $\{\mu_n\circ f^{-1}\}_{n\ge1}$ on $\mathcal{N}$.
\end{itemize}
\end{theorem}
Also important in the theory of LDP is the notion of exponential approximation; see for example \cite[Definition 4.2.14]{DemboZeitouniBook2010}).
\begin{definition}\label{d.exp-approx}
For $n, m \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}$, let $\left( \Omega,\mathcal{B}_n, P_{n} \right)$ be probability spaces, and $\tilde{Z}_n$ and $Z_{n,m}$ be $\mathcal{M}$-valued random variables. Then $\{Z_{n,m}\}$ are called \emph{exponentially good approximations} of $\{\tilde{Z}_n\}$ if for every $\delta > 0$ and $\Gamma_\delta:= \{(x,y):\rho(x,y)>\delta\}\subset\mathcal{M}\times\mathcal{M}$, the set $\{(\tilde{Z}_{n}, Z_{n, m})\in\Gamma_\delta\}\in\mathcal{B}_n$ and
\[
\lim_{m\to\infty} \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n} \log P_{n}((\tilde{Z}_{n},Z_{n,m})\in\Gamma_\delta) = -\infty.
\]
\end{definition}
The following theorem records the known relationship between the LDPs of exponentially good approximations; see for example \cite[Theorem 4.2.16]{DemboZeitouniBook2010}.
\begin{theorem}\label{t.exp-approx} Suppose that for every $m$, the family of random variables $\{Z_{n,m}\}_{n=1}^\infty$ satisfies the LDP with the rate function $I_m$ and that $\{Z_{n,m}\}$ are exponentially good approximations of $\{\tilde{Z}_n\}$.
\begin{enumerate}[(i)]
\item Then $\{\tilde{Z}_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ satisfies a weak LDP with the rate function
\[ I(y) := \sup_{\delta>0}\liminf_{m\to\infty}\inf_{z\in B_{y,\delta}} I_m(z) \]
where $B_{y,\delta}$ denotes the ball $\{z:\rho(y,z)<\delta\}$.
\item If $I$ is a good rate function and for every closed set $F$
\[ \inf_{y\in F} I(y) \leqslant \limsup_{m\to\infty}\inf_{y\in F} I_m(y) \]
then the full LDP holds for $\{\tilde{Z}_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ with the rate function $I$.
\end{enumerate}
\end{theorem}
\subsection{Carnot groups}\label{s.carnot} In this paper we concentrate on a particular class of metric spaces, namely, Carnot groups equipped with the Carnot-Carath\'{e}odory metric. We begin by recalling basic facts about Carnot (stratified) groups that we require for the sequel. A more detailed description of these spaces can be found in a number of references, see for example \cite{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook, VaropoulosBook1992} et al.
We say that $G$ is a Carnot group of step $r$ if $G$ is a connected and simply connected Lie group whose Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ is \emph{stratified}, that is, it can be written as
\[
\mathfrak{g}=V_{1}\oplus\cdots\oplus V_{r},
\]
where
\begin{align}\label{e.Stratification}
& \left[V_{1}, V_{i-1}\right]=V_{i}, \hskip0.1in 2 \leqslant i \leqslant r,
\notag
\\
& [ V_{1}, V_{r} ]=\left\{ 0 \right\}.
\end{align}
To avoid degenerate cases we assume that the dimension of $\mathfrak{g}$ is at least $3$. In addition we will use a stratification such that the center of $\mathfrak{g}$ is contained in $V_{r}$. In particular, Carnot groups are nilpotent. For $\mathcal{X}\in\mathfrak{g}$ we will write
\[ \mathcal{X} = \mathcal{X}^{(1)}+\cdots+\mathcal{X}^{(r)} \in V_1\oplus\cdots\oplus V_r. \]
\begin{notation}\label{n.startification} By $\mathcal{H}:=V_{1}$ we denote the space of \emph{horizontal} vectors that generate the rest of the Lie algebra with $V_{2}=[\mathcal H,\mathcal H], \ldots, V_r = \mathcal H^{(r)}$.
\end{notation}
As usual, we let
\begin{align*}
\exp&: \mathfrak{g} \longrightarrow G,
\\
\log&: G \longrightarrow \mathfrak{g}
\end{align*}
denote the exponential and logarithmic maps, which are global diffeomorphisms for connected nilpotent groups, see for example \cite[Theorem 1.2.1]{CorwinGreenleafBook}. Also, for $\mathcal X\in\mathfrak{g}$, we let $\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X:\mathfrak{g}\to\mathfrak{g}$ denote the \emph{adjoint map} defined by $\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X\mathcal Y:=[\mathcal X,\mathcal Y], \mathcal Y \in \mathfrak{g}$.
By \cite[Proposition 2.2.17, Proposition 2.2.18]{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook}, we can assume without loss of generality that the group $G$ is a \emph{homogeneous Carnot group}. For $i=1, \ldots, r$, let $d_{i}:=\operatorname{dim} V_{i}$ and for later notational convenience take $d_0:=0$. The Euclidean space underlying $G$ has dimension
\begin{align*}
N:=\sum_{i=1}^{r} d_{i}.
\end{align*}
and the homogeneous dimension of $G$ is $\sum_{i=1}^{r} i d_{i}$, which describes for example the degree of polynomial growth of volume of metric balls in the Lie group.
The identification of $\mathfrak{g}$ with $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ allows us to define exponential coordinates as follows.
\begin{definition} A set $\left\{ \mathcal X_{1}, \ldots , \mathcal X_{N} \right\}\subset\mathfrak{g}$ is a \emph{basis for $\mathfrak{g}$ adapted to the stratification} if the subset $\left\{ \mathcal X_{ d_0+d_1+\cdots+d_{i-1}+j} \right\}_{j=1}^{d_i}$ is a basis of $V_{i}$ for each $i=1,\ldots,r$.
\end{definition}
The fact that $\exp$ is a global diffeomorphism can be used to parameterize $G$ by its Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$. First we recall the Baker-Campbell-Dynkin-Hausdorff formula. For the following version, see for example \cite[p.~585, Equation(4.12)]{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook} or \cite[p.~11]{CorwinGreenleafBook}.
\begin{notation}\label{n.BCDH}
For any $\mathcal X, \mathcal Y \in \mathfrak{g}$, the \emph{Baker-Campbell-Dynkin-Hausdorff formula} is given by
\begin{equation}\label{e.BCDH}\begin{split}
BCDH(\mathcal X,\mathcal Y)&:= \log(e^\mathcal X e^\mathcal Y)
\\
& = \mathcal X+\mathcal Y+\sum_{k=1}^{r-1} \sum_{(n,m)\in\mathcal{I}_{k}}
a_{n, m}^k\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n_1} \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal Y^{m_1} \cdots
\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n_{k}} \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal Y^{m_{k}} \mathcal X,
\end{split}\end{equation}
where
\begin{equation}
\label{e.ak}
a_{n,m}^k := \frac{(-1)^k}{(k+1)m!n!(|n|+1)},
\end{equation}
$\mathcal{I}_{k} := \{(n,m)\in\mathbb{Z}_+^k\times\mathbb{Z}_+^k :
n_i+m_i>0 \text{ for all } 1\leqslant i\leqslant k \}$, and for each multi-index
$n\in\mathbb{Z}_+^k$,
\[ n!= n_1!\cdots n_{k}! \quad \text{ and } \quad |n|=n_1+\cdots+n_{k}. \]
\end{notation}
Since $\mathfrak{g}$ is nilpotent of step $r$ we have
\[
\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n_1} \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal Y^{m_1} \cdots
\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n_{k}} \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal Y^{m_{k}} \mathcal X = 0 \quad
\text{if } |n|+|m|\geqslant r
\]
for $\mathcal X,\mathcal Y\in\mathfrak{g}$.
\begin{definition}\label{d.ExpCoord} A system of \emph{exponential coordinates of the first kind} relative to a basis $\left\{ \mathcal X_{1}, \dots, \mathcal X_{N} \right\}$ of $\mathfrak{g}$ adapted to the stratification is a map from $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ to $G$ defined by
\[
x \longmapsto \exp\left( \sum_{i=1}^{N} x_{i}\mathcal X_{i} \right), \text{ where } x=\left( x_{1}, \dots, x_{N} \right) \in \mathbb{R}^{N}.
\]
We equip $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ with the group operation pulled back from $G$ by
\begin{align*}
z&:=x \star y,
\\
\sum_{i=1}^{N} z_{i}\mathcal X_{i}&=\operatorname{BCDH}\left( \sum_{i=1}^{N} x_{i}\mathcal X_{i}, \sum_{i=1}^{N} y_{j}\mathcal X_{j} \right).
\end{align*}
\end{definition}
In particular, in this identification $x^{-1}=-x$. Note that $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ with this group law is a Lie group whose Lie algebra is isomorphic to $\mathfrak{g}$. Both $G$ and $\left( \mathbb{R}^{N}, \star \right)$ are nilpotent, connected and simply connected, therefore the exponential coordinates give a diffeomorphism between $G$ and $\mathbb{R}^{N}$. Thus we identify both $G$ and $\mathfrak{g}$ with $\mathbb{R}^{N}$. For $x=\exp(\mathcal{X})\in G$ with $\mathcal{X}=\sum_{i=1}^Nx_i\mathcal{X}_i$, we will write
\[
x=(x^{(1)},\ldots,x^{(r)}) \in \mathbb R^{d_1}\times\cdots\times\mathbb R^{d_r},
\]
where $x^{(j)}=(x_{d_1+\cdots+d_{j-1}+1},\ldots,x_{d_1+\cdots+d_{j}})$. We refer to \cite[Section 1.3]{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook} for more details on homogeneous Carnot groups.
A stratified Lie algebra is equipped with a natural family of \emph{dilations} defined for any $a>0$ by
\[
\delta_{a}\left( \mathcal X \right):=a^i \mathcal X, \text{ for } \mathcal X \in V_{i}.
\]
For each $a>0$, $\delta_a$ is a Lie algebra isomorphism, and the family of all dilations $\{\delta_a\}_{a>0}$ forms a one-parameter group of Lie algebra isomorphisms. We again can use the fact that $\exp$ is a global diffeomorphism to define the automorphisms $D_{a}$ on $G$. The maps $D_{a}:=\exp \circ \, \delta_{a} \circ \log: G \longrightarrow G$ satisfy the following properties.
\begin{equation} \label{e.Dilations}
\begin{split}
& D_{a}\circ \exp=\exp \circ\, \delta_{a} \quad\text{ for any } a >0,
\\
& D_{a_{1}}\circ D_{a_{2}}=D_{a_{1}a_{2}}, D_{1}=I \quad\text{ for any } a_{1}, a_{2}>0,
\\
& D_{a}\left( g_{1} \right)D_{a}\left( g_{2} \right)=D_{a}\left( g_{1}g_{2} \right) \quad\text{ for any } a>0 \text{ and } g_{1}, g_{2} \in G,
\\
& dD_{a}=\delta_{a}.
\end{split}\end{equation}
That is, the group $G$ has a family of dilations which is adapted to its stratified structure. Actually $D_{a}$ is the unique Lie group automorphism corresponding to $\delta_a$.
On a homogeneous Carnot group $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ the dilation $D_{a}$ can be described explicitly by
\begin{equation*
D_{a}\left( x_{1}, \dots, x_{N} \right):=\left( a^{\sigma_{1}}x_{1}, \dots, a^{\sigma_{N}}x_{N}\right),
\end{equation*}
where $\sigma_{j} \in\{1,\ldots,r\}$ is called the \emph{homogeneity} of $x_{j}$, with
\[
\sigma_{j}= i, \qquad\text{ for } d_0+d_1+\cdots+d_{i-1}< j \leqslant d_1+\cdots+d_{i},
\]
with $i=1,\ldots,r$ and recalling that $d_0=0$.
That is, $\sigma_{1}=\dots= \sigma_{d_{1}}=1, \sigma_{d_{1}+1}=\cdots=\sigma_{d_1+d_{2}}=2$, and so on.
The group operation of a homogeneous Carnot group $G=\left( \mathbb{R}^{N}, \star \right)$ can be expressed component-wise as polynomials. For example, by \cite[Proposition 2.1]{FranchiSerapioniSerra_Cassano2003a} we have
\begin{align}\label{e.3.3}
x \star y = x + y + Q\left( x, y \right) \text{ for } x, y \in \mathbb{R}^{N},
\end{align}
where $Q =(Q^{(1)},\ldots,Q^{(r)}): \mathbb{R}^{N}\times \mathbb{R}^{N} \longrightarrow \mathbb{R}^{N}$ where $Q^{(i)}=\left( Q_{d_1+\cdots+d_{i-1}+1}, \dots, Q_{d_1+\cdots+d_i} \right):\mathbb{R}^{N}\times \mathbb{R}^{N} \longrightarrow \mathbb R^{d_i}$ and each $Q_{j}$ is a homogeneous polynomial of degree $\sigma_{j}$ with respect to the dilations $D_{a}$ of $G$, that is,
\[
Q_{j}\left( D_{a} x, D_{a} y \right)=a^{\sigma_{j}} Q_{j}\left( x, y \right), \qquad \text{ for } x, y \in \mathbb R^N.
\]
Moreover, for any $x, y \in G$ we have
\begin{align*}
& Q_{1}\left( x, y \right)=\dots=Q_{d_{1}}\left( x, y \right)=0,
\\
& Q_{j}\left( x, 0 \right)=Q_{j}\left( 0, y \right)=0, Q_{j}\left( x, x \right)=Q_{j}\left( x, -x \right)=0, \quad \text{ for } d_{1}< j \leqslant N,
\end{align*}
and for $d_{1}+\dots+d_{i}< j \leqslant d_{1}+\dots+d_{i+1}$
\begin{align*}
Q_{j}\left( x, y \right)=Q_{j}\left( (x^{(1)},\ldots,x^{(i)}), (y^{(1)},\ldots,y^{(i)})\right)
=-Q_{j}\left( -y, -x \right).
\end{align*}
\begin{comment}
\begin{align*}
Q_{j}\left( x, y \right)=Q_{j}\left( x_{1}, \dots, x_{d_{1}+\dots+d_{i-1}}, y_{1}, \dots, y_{d_{1}+\dots+d_{i-1}}\right)=-Q_{j}\left( -y, -x \right)
\end{align*}
\end{comment}
In particular, \eqref{e.3.3} gives a direct argument to see that group operations on homogeneous Carnot groups are differentiable. Note that \cite{FranchiSerapioniSerra_Cassano2003a} uses a slightly different notation $h_{i}:= d_{1}+\dots+d_{i}$.
In addition by \cite[Proposition 2.2.22 (4)]{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook} we have for $j=d_{1}+1, \dots, N$
\begin{equation}\label{e.SymplForm}
Q_{j}\left( x, y \right)=\sum_{(k, \ell)\in I_j} \left( x_{k}y_{\ell}-x_{\ell}y_{k} \right) R_{j}^{k, \ell}\left( x, y \right),
\end{equation}
where $I_j:=\{(k,\ell):k<\ell, \sigma_{k}+\sigma_{\ell} \leqslant \sigma_{j}\}$ (as described in \cite[p.\,1951]{FranchiSerapioni2016}) and $R_{j}^{k, \ell}$ are homogeneous polynomials of degree $\sigma_{j}-\sigma_{k}-\sigma_{\ell}$ with respect to the group dilations.
\begin{notation}[Symplectic form] For any $m$ and vectors $x=\left( x_{1}, \ldots , x_{m} \right), y=\left( y_{1}, \ldots , y_{m} \right)\in\mathbb{R}^m$ define
\[
\omega_{k, \ell}\left( x, y \right):=x_{k}y_{\ell}-x_{\ell}y_{k},
\]
for $1 \leqslant k, \ell \leqslant m$.
\end{notation}
Note that $\omega_{k, \ell}\left( x, y \right)=-\omega_{\ell, k}\left( x, y \right)=-\omega_{k, \ell}\left( -y, -x \right)$, and using this notation we can write \eqref{e.SymplForm} as
\begin{equation}\label{e.2.7}
Q_{j}\left( x, y \right)=\sum_{(k, \ell)\in I_j} \omega_{k, \ell}\left( x, y \right) R_{j}^{k, \ell}\left( x, y \right),
\end{equation}
for $j=d_{1}+1, \dots, N$, where $R_{j}^{k, \ell}\left( x, y \right)= R_{j}^{k, \ell}\left( -y, -x\right)$.
\begin{example}[Step $2$]\label{ex.step2}
Suppose $G\cong \mathbb{R}^{d_{1}+d_{2}}$ is a homogeneous Carnot group of step $2$. That is, $\mathfrak{g}=\mathcal{H}\oplus \mathcal{V}$ with $\operatorname{dim}\mathcal{H}=d_1$, $\operatorname{dim}\mathcal{V}=d_{2}$, and homogeneity $\sigma_{j}=1$ if $1 \leqslant j \leqslant d_1$ and $\sigma_{j}=2$ if $d_1+1 \leqslant j \leqslant d_1+d_{2}$. Then
\begin{align*}
x \star y &= x + y + \left(
\mathbf{0}_{d_1}, Q^{(2)}\left( x, y \right)\right) \\
&= x + y + \left(
\mathbf{0}_{d_1}, Q_{d_1+1}\left( x, y \right), \dots, Q_{d_1+d_{2}}\left( x, y \right)\right).
\end{align*}
Note that, for $j=d_1+1, \dots, d_1+d_{2}$, \eqref{e.SymplForm} becomes
\[
Q_{j}\left( x, y \right)=\sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell\leqslant d_1}
\omega_{k, \ell}\left( x, y \right) R_{j}^{k, \ell}\left( x, y \right),
\]
where the polynomials $R_{j}^{k, \ell}$ are necessarily constant, since in this case $r=2$ and $\sigma_{k}=\sigma_{\ell}=1$, and therefore $\sigma_{j}-\sigma_{k}-\sigma_{\ell}=0$ for $j=d_1+1, \dots, d_1+d_{2}$.
Thus the components $Q_{j}$ are skew-symmetric bilinear forms on $\mathbb{R}^{d_1}$, that is,
\begin{equation}\label{e.2.6-1}
Q_{j}\left( x, y \right)=\sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell\leqslant d_1}
\alpha_{j}^{k, \ell}\omega_{k, \ell}\left( x^{(1)}, y^{(1)} \right)
\end{equation}
for some constants $\alpha_{j}^{k, \ell}$ and $d_1+1 \leqslant j \leqslant d_1+d_{2}$.
To make it more transparent, we can write $x_{1}=\left( h_{1}, v_{1} \right)$, $x_{2}=\left( h_{2}, v_{2} \right)$, where $h_{1}, h_{2} \in \mathbb{R}^{d_{1}}$ and $v_{1}, v_{2} \in \mathbb{R}^{d_{2}}$, so that
each $Q_{j}$ can be expressed in a matrix form as
\begin{align*}
Q_{j}\left( x_{1}, x_{2} \right)= Q_j((h_1,v_1),(h_{2},v_{2}))
=h_{1}^{T}A_{j} h_{2}, \end{align*}
with
\[ A_{j}:=\left( \alpha_{j}^{k, \ell} \right)_{k,\ell=1}^{d_{1}}, \quad \alpha_{j}^{k, \ell}=-\alpha_{j}^{\ell, k}.
\]
We can use this representation of the group multiplication to write the product of $n$ elements $x_{1}, \ldots , x_{n} \in G$, where $x_{i}=\left( h_{i}, v_{i} \right)$ with $h_{i} \in \mathbb{R}^{d_{1}}$ and $v_{i}=\left( v_{i}^{d_{1}+1}, \ldots, v_{i}^{d_{1}+d_{2}}\right) \in \mathbb{R}^{d_{2}}$, as follows.
\begin{align*}
\prod_{i=1}^{n}& \star\, x_{i}
:= x_1\star\cdots\star x_n \\
&=\left( \sum_{i=1}^{n} h_{i},
\sum_{i=1}^{n}v_{i}^{d_{1}+1}+\sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell\leqslant d_1} h_{k}^{T}A_{d_{1}+1} h_{\ell}, \ldots, \sum_{i=1}^{n} v_{i}^{d_{1}+d_{2}}+\sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell\leqslant d_1} h_{k}^{T}A_{d_{1}+d_{2}} h_{\ell} \right).
\end{align*}
In particular, when $v_i=\mathbf{0}_{d_{2}}$ for all $i$
\begin{equation}\label{e.2.5}
\prod_{i=1}^{n}\star \left( h_{i}, \mathbf{0}_{d_{2}} \right)=
\left( \sum_{i=1}^{n} h_{i},
\sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell\leqslant d_1} h_{k}^{T}A_{d_{1}+1} h_{\ell}, \ldots , \sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell\leqslant d_1} h_{k}^{T}A_{d_{1}+d_{2}} h_{\ell} \right),
\end{equation}
and in the case $d_{2}=1$ we have
\begin{equation*
\prod_{i=1}^{n} \star \left( h_{i}, 0 \right)=
\left( \sum_{i=1}^{n} h_{i},
\sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell\leqslant d_1} h_{k}^{T}A h_{\ell}\right)
\end{equation*}
for a skew-symmetric matrix $A$.
\end{example}
\begin{example}[Engel group] This is a group of step $3$ that can be modeled on $\mathbb{R}^{4}$, with $\mathcal{H}=\mathbb{R}^{2} \times \left\{ 0 \right\}$. The multiplication is given by
\begin{align*}
& x \star y= x+y+\left( 0, 0, \frac{1}{2}\omega_{1,2}\left( x, y \right), \frac{1}{2}\omega_{1, 3}\left( x, y \right)+\frac{1}{12} \omega_{1, 2}\left( x, y\right)\left( x_{1}-y_{1} \right) \right),
\end{align*}
so that
\begin{align*}
& \left( x_{1}, x_{2}, 0, 0 \right) \star \left( y_{1}, y_{2}, 0, 0 \right) = \left( x_{1}+y_{1}, x_{2}+y_{2}, \frac{1}{2}\omega_{1,2}\left( x, y \right), \frac{1}{12} \omega_{1, 2}\left( x, y\right)\left( x_{1}-y_{1} \right) \right)
\end{align*}
and
\begin{align*}
& \left( x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3}, x_{4} \right) \star \left( -x_{1}, -x_{2}, 0, 0 \right)= \left( 0, 0, x_{3}, x_{4}+\frac{1}{2}x_{1}x_{3} \right).
\end{align*}
\end{example}
\begin{comment}
\tai{
For $\mathcal X=x_1\mathcal X_1+\cdots+x_N\mathcal X_N$ and $\mathcal Y=y_1\mathcal X_1+\cdots+y_N\mathcal X_N$, where $\{\mathcal X_{k}\}_{k=1}^N$ is a basis of $\mathfrak{g}$ adapted to the stratification, and $x=e^\mathcal X$ and $y=e^\mathcal Y$ we will write
\[ x\star y = x+y+\sum_{k=1}^{r-1}
\sum_{(n,m)\in\mathcal{I}_{k}}
a_{n,m}^k\operatorname{ad}_x^{n_1} \operatorname{ad}_y^{m_1} \cdots
\operatorname{ad}_x^{n_{k}} \operatorname{ad}_y^{m_{k}} x\]
where, for example, since
\begin{align*}
\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X \mathcal Y = [\mathcal X,\mathcal Y] &= \left[\sum_{i=1}^N x_i\mathcal X_i,\sum_{j=1}^N y_j\mathcal X_j\right] \\
&= \sum_{1\leqslant i< j \leqslant N} (x_iy_j-x_jy_i) [\mathcal X_i,\mathcal X_j]
= \sum_{1\leqslant i< j \leqslant N} \sum_{k=1}^N c_{ij}^k(x_iy_j-x_jy_i) \mathcal X_{k},
\end{align*}
we mean that
\[ \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X \mathcal Y := \left(\sum_{1\leqslant i< j \leqslant N} c_{ij}^1(x_iy_j-x_jy_i),\ldots,
\sum_{1\leqslant i< j \leqslant N} c_{ij}^N(x_iy_j-x_jy_i)\right).\]
We see that as a mapping on $\mathbb R^N\times\mathbb R^N\to\mathbb R^N$
\[ \|\ad_\mathcal X\mathcal Y\|_{\mathbb R^N} \leqslant C\|x\|_{\mathbb R^N}\|x\|_{\mathbb R^N} \]
where $C$ is a constant depending on the group structure. By Proposition \ref{p.NormEquiv} we may then also say that, for $x,y$ in some compact subset $K$ of $G$,
\[ \|\ad_\mathcal X\mathcal Y\|_{\mathbb R^N} \leqslant C_K d_{cc}(x)d_{cc}(y). \]
}
\end{comment}
The following observation will be useful in the sequel and is a straightforward consequence of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff-Dynkin formula.
\begin{lemma}\label{l.Il} Suppose $G$ is a homogeneous Carnot group of step $r$ and $\mathcal X_1,\ldots,\mathcal X_{k}$ are any elements of $\mathcal H$. Then for $\ell=2,\ldots,r$ \[ (e^{\mathcal X_1}\star\cdots\star e^{\mathcal X_n})^{(\ell)}
= \sum_{i=(i_1,\ldots,i_\ell)\in \mathcal{J}_\ell} c_i \operatorname{ad}_{\mathcal X_{i_1}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{\mathcal X_{i_{\ell-1}}}
\mathcal X_{i_\ell} \]
for some coefficients $|c_i|<1$, where $\mathcal{J}_\ell$ is some strict subset of $\{1,\ldots,n\}^\ell$ and thus $\#\mathcal{J}_\ell\leqslant n^\ell$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{comment}
\iffalse
\begin{proof}
The form of $S_n^\ell$ follows from the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff-Dynkin formula, so we need only prove the bound on the cardinality of $\mathcal{J}_\ell$.
We proceed by induction on $\ell$. We know that for $\ell=2$
\[
S_n^2
=\frac{1}{2}\sum_{i=1}^{n} \sum_{j=i+1}^{n} \ad_{X_i}X_j,
\]
and we have that $\#\mathcal{J}_{2} ={n\choose 2} \leqslant n^2$. Now assume that $\#\mathcal{J}_\ell\leqslant C(\ell)n^\ell$. Necessarily, the terms in the sum for $S_n^{\ell+1}$ are of the form
\[ \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_1}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{k}}}\operatorname{ad}_{X_{j}}\operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{k+1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}} X_{i_\ell}\]
or
\[ \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_1}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}} \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_\ell}} X_j\]
for some $j\in1,\ldots, n$ and $i\in \mathcal{I}_\ell$. For each $i\in \mathcal{J}_\ell$ there are at most $n\cdot(\ell+1)$ of these terms. Thus, $\#\mathcal{J}_{\ell+1}\leqslant \#\mathcal{J}'_\ell\cdot n(\ell+1) \leqslant C(\ell)(\ell+1)n^{\ell+1}$ by the induction hypothesis. \tai{something may have gotten messed up here with the notation when correcting index notation}
\end{proof}
\fi
\end{comment}
\begin{notation}
We will continue to use $\mathcal X$ to denote elements of the Lie algebra which are being mapped to elements of the group $x=e^\mathcal X$, but we will also begin at this point to use more traditional vector notation $u,v$, etc.\,to denote elements of the Lie algebra and more generally in the tangent space of $G$.
\end{notation}
\begin{notation}\label{n.2.11} For $x\in G$, we denote by $L_{x}: G \longrightarrow G$ the \emph{left multiplication}
\[
L_{x} y:=x \star y, \text{ for } y \in G,
\]
and the corresponding pushforward (differential) $(L_x)_{\ast}:TG \to TG$ by
\begin{align*}
\left( L_{x} \right)_{\ast}: T_{y}G &\rightarrow T_{xy}G
\\
v &\mapsto (L_x)_{\ast}v.
\end{align*}
The \emph{Maurer-Cartan form} $\omega$ is the $\mathfrak{g}$-valued one-form on $G$ defined by
\begin{align*}
& \omega: T_{x}G \longrightarrow T_{e}G \cong \mathfrak{g}, v \in T_{x}G,
\\
& \omega\left( v \right):=(L_{x^{-1}})_{\ast}v \in \mathfrak{g}.
\end{align*}
\end{notation}
The next statement describes the pushforward of left multiplication on elements of the Lie algebra. It is a corollary of \cite[Proposition 3.15]{Melcher2009a}, but we include a proof here for convenience.
\begin{prop}\label{p.tt} Let $\mathcal{X}\in \mathfrak{g}$, $x:=e^\mathcal X\in G$, and $v\in \mathfrak{g}$. Then
\begin{equation*
(L_x)_{\ast}v = \sum_{n=0}^{r-1} A_n \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n} v
\end{equation*}
where $A_0=1$ and for $n=1,\ldots,r-1$
\[ A_n = -\sum_{k=1}^{r-1}\sum_{(n,m)} a_{n,m}^k \]
where the second sum is over $(n,m)\in\mathcal{I}_{k}$ so that $m_1=\cdots=m_{k-1}=0$, $m_{k}=1$, and $|n|+|m|<r$ and $a_{n,m}^k$ are as in \eqref{e.ak}. Equivalently,
there exist polynomials $C_{j}^{k,\ell}$ in $x$ so that
\[(L_x)_{\ast}v = v + \left( \mathbf{0}_{d_1}, \sum_{(k,\ell)\in {I}_{d_1+1}} C_{d_1+1}^{k,\ell}(x)\omega_{k,\ell}(x,v),\ldots, \sum_{(k,\ell)\in {I}_N} C_N^{k,\ell}(x)\omega_{k,\ell}(x,v) \right) \]
where again $I_j:=\{(k,\ell):k<\ell, \sigma_{k}+\sigma_{\ell} \leqslant \sigma_{j}\}$.
In particular, when $G$ is step 2, these polynomials are constants and
\[(L_x)_{\ast}v = v + \left( \mathbf{0}_{d_1}, \sum_{1\leqslant k<\ell\leqslant d_1} \alpha_{d_1+1}^{k,\ell}\omega_{k,\ell}(x^{(1)},v^{(1)}),\ldots, \sum_{1\leqslant k<\ell\leqslant d_1} \alpha_N^{k,\ell}\omega_{k,\ell}(x^{(1)},v^{(1)}) \right). \]
\end{prop}
\begin{proof}
Let $\gamma(t):=e^{tv}$, so that $\displaystyle(L_x)_{\ast}v =\frac{d}{dt}\bigg|_0 x\star \gamma(t)$.
Using \eqref{e.BCDH} we may write
\[
x\star \gamma(t)
=
\left(\mathcal X+ tv + \sum_{k=1}^{r-1}\sum_{(n,m)\in\mathcal{I}_{k}}
a_{n,m}^k \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n_1} \operatorname{ad}_{tv}^{m_1} \cdots
\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n_{k}} \operatorname{ad}_{tv}^{m_{k}} \mathcal X\right).
\]
Then the first expression follows from noting that, for each term in the sum,
\begin{multline*}
\frac{d}{dt}\bigg|_0 \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n_1} \operatorname{ad}_{tv}^{m_1} \cdots
\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n_{k}} \operatorname{ad}_{tv}^{m_{k}} \mathcal X
\\=\left\{\begin{array}{cl} \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{|n|}\operatorname{ad}_v \mathcal X & \text{if } m_{k}=1 \text{ and }
m_1=\cdots=m_{k-1}=0\\
0 & \text{otherwise }
\end{array}\right. .
\end{multline*}
Alternatively, following \eqref{e.3.3} we may write
\begin{align*}
\left.\frac{d}{dt}\right|_{0}x \star \gamma\left( t \right)
&=\left.\frac{d}{dt}\right|_{0} \left(x + \gamma\left( t \right) + Q\left( x, \gamma\left( t \right) \right)\right)
\\
& = v+\left.\frac{d}{dt}\right|_{0}Q\left( x,\gamma\left( t \right) \right),
\end{align*}
and using \eqref{e.2.7} note that the only non-zero terms in the second summand are
\[
\left.\frac{d}{dt}\right|_{0}Q_{j}\left( x, \gamma\left( t \right) \right)
=\sum_{(k, \ell)\in I_j}\omega_{k,\ell}\left( x, v \right) R_{j}^{k, \ell}\left( x, 0 \right),
\]
where $R_{j}^{k, \ell}\left( x, 0 \right)$ is a polynomial in $x$ depending only on the structure of $G$. The step 2 case follows from \eqref{e.2.6-1}.
\end{proof}
As discussed in the introduction, the inner product $\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle_\mathcal H$ induces a natural sub-Riemannian structure on $G$. We identify the horizontal space $\mathcal{H} \subset \mathfrak{g}$ with $\mathcal{D}_{e}\subset T_{e}G$, and then define $\mathcal{D}_{x}:=(L_x)_{\ast}\mathcal{D}_{e}$ for any $x \in G$. Vectors in $\mathcal{D}$ are called \emph{horizontal}. Recall that we introduced the $\mathfrak{g}$-valued Maurer-Cartan form in Notation~\ref{n.2.11}.
\begin{definition}\label{d.HorizontalPath}
A path $\gamma:[0,1]\to G$ is said to be \emph{horizontal} if $\gamma$ is absolutely continuous and $\gamma^{\prime}(t)\in D_{\gamma(t)}$ for a.e.~$t$, that is, the tangent vector to $\gamma\left(t\right)$ at a.e. point of $\gamma \left(t\right)$ is horizontal. Equivalently, $\gamma$ is horizontal if the (left) \emph{Maurer-Cartan form}
\begin{equation}\label{e.MaurerCartan}
c_{\gamma}\left( t \right):=( L_{\gamma\left( t \right)^{-1}})_{\ast} \gamma^{\prime} \left( t \right)
\end{equation}
is in $\mathcal{H}$ for a.e.~$t$.
\end{definition}
The metric on $\mathcal{D}$ is defined by
\begin{align*}
\langle u, v\rangle_x &:= \langle (L_{x^{-1}})_{\ast}u,(L_{x^{-1}})_{\ast}v\rangle_{\mathcal H} \qquad \text{for all } u,v\in\mathcal{D}_x.
\end{align*}
The length of a horizontal path $\gamma$ may be computed as
\begin{equation}\label{eq-length}
\ell(\gamma) := \int_0^{1} \sqrt{\langle \gamma^{\prime}(t), \gamma^{\prime}(t)\rangle_{\gamma(t)}}\,dt
= \int_0^1 \sqrt{\langle c_\gamma(t), c_\gamma(t)\rangle_{\mathcal H}}\,dt
:= \int_0^1 | c_\gamma \left( t \right)|_{\mathcal{H}}\,dt
\end{equation}
\begin{example} For a Carnot group of step $2$ we can describe horizontal paths as follows. Suppose $\gamma(t)=(A(t), a(t))$ is an absolutely continuous path in $G$ with $A\left( t \right) \in \mathbb{R}^{d_{1}} \times \left\{ 0 \right\}$ and $a\left( t \right) \in \left\{ 0 \right\} \times \mathbb{R}^{d_{2}}$. By Proposition~\ref{p.tt}
\begin{align*}
& (L_{\gamma(t)^{-1}})_{\ast}\gamma^{\prime}(t) = \gamma^{\prime}(t)
\\
& + \left(\mathbf{0}_{d_1},
-\sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell \leqslant d_1}
\alpha_{d_1+1}^{k, \ell}\omega_{k, \ell}\left( \gamma\left( t \right), \gamma^{\prime}\left( t \right) \right),\ldots,
-\sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell \leqslant d_1}
\alpha_{d_1+d_{2}}^{k, \ell}\omega_{k, \ell}\left( \gamma\left( t \right), \gamma^{\prime}\left( t \right) \right) \right)
\end{align*}
Recall that the path $\gamma$ is horizontal if $(L_{\gamma(t)^{-1}})_{\ast}\gamma^{\prime}(t)\in\mathcal H\times\{0\}$, and thus we have
\begin{align*}
& a(t)=(a_{d_{1}+1}(t), \ldots, a_{d_{1}+d_{2}}(t)),
\\
& a_{j}^{\prime}\left( t \right) =\sum_{1\leqslant k< \ell \leqslant d_1}
\alpha_{j}^{k, \ell}\omega_{k, \ell}\left( A\left( t \right), A^{\prime}\left( t \right) \right), j=d_{1}+1, ..., d_{1}+d_{2},
\end{align*}
for a.e.~$t \in [0, 1]$. That is, a path $\gamma$ with $\gamma(0)=e$ is horizontal in a stratified group $G$ of step $2$ if it is of the form
\begin{equation}\label{e.horiz2}
\gamma (t) = \left(A(t), \int_0^t Q^{(2)}(A(s), A^{\prime}(s))\,ds\right)
\end{equation}
where $A(0)=0$, $Q^{(2)} = (Q_{d_1+1},\ldots,Q_{d_1+d_{2}})$ and
\[
Q_{j}\left( x, y \right)=\sum_{1\leqslant k<\ell\leqslant d_1}
\alpha_{j}^{k, \ell}\omega_{k, \ell}\left( x^{(1)}, y^{(1)} \right).
\]
The length of $\gamma$ is then given by
\begin{align*}
\ell(\gamma)
= \int_0^1 |\gamma^{\prime}(s)|_{\gamma(s)}\,ds
= \int_0^1 | c_\gamma \left( t \right)|_{\mathcal{H}}\,dt
= \int_0^1 |A^{\prime}(s)|_\mathcal H\,ds .
\end{align*}
\end{example}
The group $G$ as a sub-Riemannian manifold may then be equipped with a natural left-invariant Carnot-Carath\'{e}odory distance.
\begin{definition}\label{d.CCdistance}
For any $x_{1}, x_{2} \in G$ the \emph{Carnot-Carath\'{e}odory distance} is defined as
\begin{align*}
\rho_{cc} (x_{1}, x_{2}):= &\inf \left\{ \ell\left( \gamma \right):\,\, \gamma : [0,1] \longrightarrow G \text{ is horizontal}, \gamma(0)=x_{1}, \gamma(1)=x_{2} \right\}.
\end{align*}
We denote by
\[
d_{cc} \left( x \right):= \rho_{cc} \left( e, x\right)
\]
the corresponding norm.
\end{definition}
The assumption that $\mathcal H$ generates the Lie algebra in \eqref{e.Stratification} means that any basis of $\mathcal H$ will satisfy H\"{o}rmander's condition. Therefore any two points in $G$ can be connected by a horizontal path by the Chow--Rashevskii theorem, and the Carnot-Carath\'{e}odory distance is finite on $G$. By \cite[Theorem 5.15]{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook} the Carnot-Carath\'{e}odory distance is realized, that is, for any two points in $G$ there is a horizontal path connecting those points which is a geodesic, so the infimum in Definition \ref{d.CCdistance} is actually a minimum.
The Carnot-Carath\'{e}odory distance is just one of the distances on $G$ which is left-invariant and homogeneous with respect to dilations.
\begin{definition}[Homogeneous distances and norms]
A \emph{homogeneous distance} on $G$ is a continuous, left-invariant distance $\rho: G \times G \longrightarrow [0,\infty)$ such that
\begin{align*
& \rho\left( D_{a} x, D_{a} y \right)=a\rho\left( x, y \right)
\end{align*}
for any $a>0$ and $x, y \in G$.
The corresponding \emph{homogeneous norm} will be denoted by $d\left( x \right):=\rho\left( e, x \right)$.
\end{definition}
\begin{comment}
For a homogeneous Carnot group $\left( \mathbb{R}^{N}, \star \right)$ in addition to the Carnot-Carath\'{e}odory distance $\rho_{cc}$, we can use a different homogeneous distance such as
\begin{align*
\rho_{\infty}\left( x, y \right):= \max\left\{ \varepsilon_{i}\vert x_{i}-y_{i} \vert_{\mathbb{R}^{d_{i}}}^{1/i} : i=1, \dots, r \right\}
\end{align*}
for $x=\left( x_{1}, \dots, x_{r} \right), y=\left( y_{1}, \dots, y_{r} \right)\in \mathbb{R}^{d_{1}} \times \dots \times \mathbb{R}^{d_{r}}$, for some choice of positive constants $\varepsilon_1,\ldots,\varepsilon_r$ so that $\rho_\infty$ is in fact a distance (see for example \cite[Theorem 5.1]{FranchiSerapioniSerra_Cassano2003a}).
\end{comment}
It may be shown that all homogeneous norms on $G$ are equivalent.
\begin{prop}\label{p.5.1.4}\cite[Proposition 5.1.4]{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook}
Let $d$ be any homogeneous norm on $G$. Then there exists a constant $c>0$ so that
\[ c^{-1}|x|_G \leqslant d(x)\leqslant c|x|_G \]
where
\[ |x|_G := \left(\sum_{j=1}^r \|x^{(j)}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_j}}^{2r!/j}\right)^{1/2r!}. \]
\end{prop}
Similarly, all homogeneous distances satisfy the following.
\begin{prop}\label{p.NormEquiv} \cite[Proposition 5.15.1]{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook}
Let $\rho$ be any left-invariant homogeneous distance on $G$. Then, for any compact set $K \subset G$, there exists a constant $c_{K}>0$ such that
\begin{align*
c_{K}^{-1} \Vert x-y \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}} \leqslant \rho\left( x, y \right) \leqslant c_{K} \Vert x-y \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}^{1/r}
\end{align*}
where $r$ is the step of $G$.
\end{prop}
Therefore the topology of a homogeneous Carnot group $\left( \mathbb{R}^{N}, \star \right)$ with respect to the Carnot-Carath\'{e}odory distance (or any other homogeneous distance) coincides with the Euclidean topology of $\mathbb{R}^{N}$. More precisely, the categories of open, closed, bounded, or compact sets coincide in these two topologies \cite[Proposition 5.15.4]{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook}. There is a huge literature on the subject, starting with Chow and Rashevsky. More details on homogeneous
distances
can be found in \cite[Sections 5.1 and 5.2]{BonfiglioliLanconelliUguzzoniBook}, and many references can be found in the bibliography of that text.
Recall that if $G$ is a general Lie group with a Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ equipped with an inner product $\langle \cdot, \cdot \rangle$, we can define the corresponding left-invariant Riemannian distance on $G$. Then the map $(L_x)_{\ast}v=dL_{x}\left( v \right): G \times \mathfrak{g} \longrightarrow TG$ as introduced in Notation~\ref{n.2.11}
\begin{align*
dL_{\cdot} \left( \cdot \right): G \times \mathfrak{g} &\longrightarrow TG,
\\
\left( x, v \right) &\longmapsto \left( L_{x} \right)_{\ast} v \in T_{x} G
\end{align*}
is smooth, and thus $(L_{x})_{\ast} v$ is locally Lipschitz as a mapping in $(x,v)$ with respect to the product topology on $TG$.
For the present paper, we assume that only $\mathcal H$ is equipped with an inner product $\langle\cdot, \cdot\rangle_\mathcal H$ with $|\cdot|_\mathcal H$ being the associated norm on $\mathcal H\cong\mathbb R^{d_1}$. We will need an analogous Lipschitz property in this setting. We use Proposition \ref{p.tt} to prove the following statement.
\begin{comment}
\begin{prop}
For $v,u\in \mathcal H$ and $x,y\in G$
\begin{equation}\label{tt2}
\|(L_x)_{\ast}v -(L_x)_{\ast}u\|_{\mathbb R^N} \leqslant
C(\|x\|_{\mathbb R^N}^{r-1}\vee1)|v-u|_{\mathcal H}
\end{equation}
and
\begin{equation}\label{tt3}
\|(L_x)_{\ast}v - (L_y)_{\ast}v\|_{\mathbb R^N}
\leqslant C (\max\{\|x\|_{\mathbb R^N},\|y\|_{\mathbb R^N},1\})^{r-1}\|x-y\|_{\mathbb R^N}|v|_\mathcal H,
\end{equation}
where the constants depend on the group structure and the choice of inner product $\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle_\mathcal H$.
\end{prop}
\end{comment}
\begin{prop}
For any compact domain $D\subset G\times \mathcal{H}$, there exists a constant $C_D>0$ such that for any $(x,v), (y,u)\in D$,
\begin{equation}\label{eq-cont-L}
\Vert(L_x)_{\ast}u-(L_y)_{\ast}v\Vert_{\mathbb R^N} \leqslant C_D\left(\vert u-v\vert_{\mathcal{H}}+\rho(x,y)\right),
\end{equation}
where $\rho$ can be the Euclidean norm on $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ or any left-invariant homogeneous distance, and the constant $C_D$ depends only on $D$ and the choice of $\rho$. Moreover, for any $x, y\in K$, a compact subset of $G$, and $v\in \mathcal H$
\begin{equation}\label{lemma-transla-lips}
\|(L_x)_{\ast} v-(L_y)_{\ast} v \|_{\mathbb R^N}\leqslant C_K |v|_\mathcal H \|x-y\|_{\mathbb R^N}.
\end{equation}
\end{prop}
\begin{proof}
By Proposition \ref{p.tt}
\begin{align*}
( L_x )_{\ast}\left( u \right)&-\left( L_y \right)_{\ast}\left( v \right)
=u-v\\
&+\left( \mathbf{0}_{d_{1}}, \sum_{(k, \ell)\in I_{d_1+1}}C_{d_{1}+1}^{k, \ell}\left( x \right) \omega_{k, \ell}\left( x, u \right), \ldots, \sum_{(k, \ell)\in I_N}C_{N}^{k, \ell}\left( x \right) \omega_{k, \ell}\left( x, u \right) \right)
\\
&
-\left( \mathbf{0}_{d_{1}}, \sum_{(k, \ell)\in I_{d_1+1}}C_{d_{1}+1}^{k, \ell} \left( y \right)\omega_{k, \ell}\left( y, v \right), \ldots, \sum_{(k, \ell)\in I_N}C_{N}^{k, \ell} \left( y \right)\omega_{k, \ell}\left( y, v \right) \right).
\end{align*}
We have that
\[
\vert \omega_{k, \ell}\left( x, u \right)-\omega_{k, \ell}\left( y, v \right) \vert \leqslant \Vert v \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}\Vert x-y \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}+\Vert x \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}\Vert u-v \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
\]
and so
\begin{multline*
\Vert(L_x)_{\ast}\left( u \right)-(L_y)_{\ast}\left( v \right) \Vert_{\mathbb R^N}
\\
\leqslant\Vert u-v \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}+\max_{j, k, \ell}\{\vert C_{j}^{k, \ell}\left( x \right)\vert,|C_j^{k,\ell}(y)|\} \left(\Vert v \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}\Vert x-y \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}+\Vert x \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}\Vert u-v \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}\right).
\end{multline*}
For $u, v \in \mathcal{H}$ we have $\Vert u-v \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}=\Vert u-v \Vert_{\mathbb R^{d_1}}\leqslant C|u-v|_\mathcal H$, and so \eqref{eq-cont-L} (with $\rho=\|\cdot\|_{\mathbb R^N}$) and \eqref{lemma-transla-lips} follow. Inequality \eqref{eq-cont-L} for a general left-invariant homogeneous distance $\rho$ follows from Proposition \ref{p.NormEquiv}.
\end{proof}
\begin{comment}
\begin{proof}
Let $\mathcal X,\mathcal Y \in \mathfrak{g}$ be such that $x=e^\mathcal X$ and $y=e^\mathcal Y$. The inequality \eqref{tt2} clearly follows from \eqref{tt} combined with the fact that $\|v\|_{\mathbb R^N}=\|v\|_{\mathbb R^{d_1}}$ for $v\in\mathcal H$, and the equivalence of norms on $\|v\|_{\mathbb R^{d_1}}$.
To see \eqref{tt3}, we write
\[ (L_x)_{\ast}v - (L_y)_{\ast}v
= \sum_{n=0}^{r-1} A_n (\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n} v - \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal Y^{n} v);
\]
we may bound each term as follows
\[\|\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n} v - \operatorname{ad}_\mathcal Y^{n} v\|_{\mathbb R^N}
\leqslant (\max\{\|x\|_{\mathbb R^N},\|y\|_{\mathbb R^N},1\})^n\|x-y\|_{\mathbb R^N}|v|_\mathcal H \]
by induction on $n$. The estimate is clearly true for $n=0$ and $n=1$ and for larger $n$
\begin{align*}
\|\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n+1} v& - \operatorname{ad}_Y^{n+1} v\|_{\mathbb R^N}
= \|[\mathcal X-\mathcal Y,\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n} v] + [\mathcal Y,\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n} v-\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal Y^{n} v]\|_{\mathbb R^N} \\
&\leqslant \|x-y\|_{\mathbb R^N}\|x\|_{\mathbb R^N}^n|v|_\mathcal H + \|y\|_{\mathbb R^N}\|\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal X^{n} v-\operatorname{ad}_\mathcal Y^{n} v\|_{\mathbb R^N} \\
&\leqslant \|x-y\|_{\mathbb R^N}\|x\|_{\mathbb R^N}^n|v|_\mathcal H + C\|y\|_{\mathbb R^N}
(\max\{\|x\|_{\mathbb R^N},\|y\|_{\mathbb R^N},1\})^n\|x-y\|_{\mathbb R^N}|v|_\mathcal H
\end{align*}
where the second inequality follows by the induction hypothesis.
\end{proof}
\end{comment}
The next lemma is a version of Gr\"{o}nwall's lemma in the sub-Riemannian setting, which says that if $\sigma$ and $\gamma$ are horizontal paths starting at the origin whose Maurer-Cartan forms $c_{\sigma}$ and $c_{\gamma}$ are close in $L^1$, then the paths cannot get too far away from each other.
\begin{comment}
\iffalse
\begin{lemma}\label{lemma-transla-lips}
Let $G$ be a homogeneous Carnot group modeled on $\mathbb R^N$. For each $x\in G$, let $(L_x)_{\ast}$ be the differential of the left translation map on $\mathfrak{g}$ given by \eqref{eq-L-ast}. For any compact domain $K\subset G$ that contains $e$, there exists a $C>0$ depending only on $K$ such that for any $x, y\in K$ and $v\in\mathcal{H}$,
we have
\[
\|(L_x)_{\ast} v-(L_y)_{\ast} v \|_{\mathbb R^N}\leqslant C |v|_\mathcal H\cdot \|x-y\|_{\mathbb R^N}.
\]
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
By \eqref{eq-cont-L} and Proposition \ref{p.NormEquiv}, we know that for any $x, y\in K$ and $v\in \mathcal{H}$ such that $|v|_\mathcal H= 1$, there exists $C_1=C_1(K)>0$ such that
\begin{equation}\label{eq-L-x-L-y}
\|(L_x)_{\ast} v-(L_y)_{\ast} v \|_{\mathbb R^N}\leqslant C_1 \|x-y\|_{\mathbb R^N}.
\end{equation}
Now for any non-zero $v \in \mathcal{H}$, take $\lambda=|v|_\mathcal H$ and consider a unit vector $v_0=\frac{v}{\lambda}$. We can write
\[
(L_x)_{\ast} v=(L_x)_{\ast} (\lambda v_0)
= \frac{d}{d \varepsilon}\bigg\vert_{\varepsilon=0} x\star\exp\left(\varepsilon (\lambda v_0) \right).
\]
By the change of variables $\delta:=\varepsilon \lambda$, we obtain that
\[
\frac{d}{d \varepsilon}\bigg\vert_{\varepsilon=0} x\star \exp\left(\varepsilon (\lambda v_0) \right)=
\lambda\left( \frac{d}{d \delta}\bigg\vert_{\delta=0} x\star \exp\left( \delta v_0 \right)\right).
\]
It then holds that
\[
(L_x)_{\ast} v=|v|_\mathcal H \left( \frac{d}{d \delta}\bigg\vert_{\delta=0} x\star \exp\left( \delta v_0 \right)\right)=|v|_\mathcal H\cdot(L_x)_{\ast} v_0.
\]
Hence by \eqref{eq-L-x-L-y}
\begin{align*}
\|(L_x)_{\ast} v-(L_y)_{\ast} v \|_{\mathbb R^N}
&=|v|_\mathcal H \left\| \left(L_{x}\right)_{\ast} v_0- \left(L_{y}\right)_{\ast} v_0 \right\|_{\mathbb R^N}\\
&\leqslant C_1\,|v|_\mathcal H \cdot\|x-y\|_{\mathbb R^N}.
\end{align*}
\end{proof}
\fi
\end{comment}
\begin{lemma}[Gr\"{o}nwall's lemma]\label{l.Gronwall2}
Let $G$ be a homogeneous Carnot group modeled on $\mathbb{R}^{N}$. Suppose $\varepsilon >0$, and $\sigma, \gamma:[0,1] \to G$ are horizontal paths such that $\sigma(0)=\gamma(0)=e$,
\begin{equation*}
\int_0^1|c_ \sigma(t)|_\mathcal H dt <\infty,
\end{equation*}
and
\[ \int_0^1 |c_{\sigma}\left( t \right)-c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)|_{\mathcal H}\, dt < \varepsilon.
\]
Then there exists a constant $C=C(\|c_\sigma\|_{L^1})<\infty$ such that
\begin{equation}\label{eq-gronwall-conclu}
\rho_{cc}\left( \sigma(1),\gamma(1) \right) < C\varepsilon.
\end{equation}
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof} First note that from the assumptions there exists a compact set $K$ that contains both paths $\gamma\left([0, 1]\right)$ and $\sigma\left([0, 1]\right)$ entirely. By Proposition \ref{p.NormEquiv}, it then suffices to prove that $\|\sigma(1)-\gamma(1)\|_{\mathbb R^N}\leqslant C^{\prime}\varepsilon$ for some constant $C^{\prime}<\infty$. In the following estimates $C$ will be a constant that depends only on $K$, which in turn depends on $\|c_\sigma\|_{L^1}$ but may vary from line to line.
To begin, taking the derivative of $\gamma$ and $\sigma$ in the ambient Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^{N}$, we have that
\begin{align*}
\gamma^{\prime}\left( t \right)-\sigma^{\prime}\left( t \right)
&
=\left(L_{\gamma\left( t \right)}\right)_{\ast}c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)
-\left(L_{\sigma\left( t \right)}\right)_{\ast}c_{\sigma}\left( t \right)
\\
&=\left(L_{\gamma\left( t \right)}\right)_{\ast}\left(c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \right)
+\left(L_{\gamma\left( t \right)}-L_{\sigma\left( t \right)}\right)_{\ast}c_{\sigma}\left( t \right).
\notag
\end{align*}
Hence
\begin{align*}
\Vert \gamma^{\prime}\left( t \right)-\sigma^{\prime}\left( t \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
&\leqslant
\Vert \left(L_{\gamma\left( t \right)}\right)_{\ast}\left(c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
+ \Vert \left(L_{\gamma\left( t \right)}-L_{\sigma\left( t \right)}\right)_{\ast}c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
\\
& \leqslant
C\left(|c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) |_{\mathcal{H}}
+ |c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) |_\mathcal H \|{\sigma}\left( t \right)- {\gamma}\left( t \right)\|_{\mathbb R^N}\right),
\end{align*}
where in the second inequality we have applied \eqref{eq-cont-L} and \eqref{lemma-transla-lips}.
Now let
\[
F\left( t \right):=\Vert\gamma\left( t \right)- \sigma\left( t \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}^{2}.
\]
Then for a.e.~$t$
\begin{align*}
\frac{dF}{dt}
&= 2\langle \gamma^{\prime}\left( t \right)-\sigma^{\prime}\left( t \right), \gamma\left( t \right)- \sigma\left( t \right)\rangle_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
\leqslant 2 \Vert \gamma^{\prime}\left( t \right)-\sigma^{\prime}\left( t \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
\Vert \gamma\left( t \right)- \sigma\left( t \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
\\
&\leqslant 2C\left(\vert c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \vert_\mathcal H + |c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) |_\mathcal H\|\gamma(t)-\sigma(t)\|_{\mathbb R^N}\right)
\Vert \gamma\left( t \right)- \sigma\left( t \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}.
\end{align*}
\begin{comment}
\tai{This should be
\begin{align*}
\frac{dF}{dt}
&= 2\langle \dot{\gamma}\left( t \right)-\dot{\sigma}\left( t \right), \gamma\left( t \right)- \sigma\left( t \right)\rangle_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
\leqslant 2 \Vert \dot{\gamma}\left( t \right)-\dot{\sigma}\left( t \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
\Vert \gamma\left( t \right)- \sigma\left( t \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
\\
&\leqslant 2\bigg( \vert c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \vert_\mathcal H + c_K\|\gamma(t)-\sigma(t)\|_{\mathbb R^N}^{1/r}\bigg)
\Vert \gamma\left( t \right)- \sigma\left( t \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
\end{align*}
}
\end{comment}
Let $t_0:=\sup_{t\in[0,1]}\{\sigma(t)=\gamma(t)\}$. If $t_0=1$, then we have that $\sigma(1)=\gamma(1)$ and \eqref{eq-gronwall-conclu} holds automatically. If $t_0\in [0,1)$, we can consider new paths $\sigma[t_0, 1]$ and $\gamma[t_0, 1]$ starting at $\sigma(t_0)=\gamma(t_0)$ and show that their endpoints are close. With this argument we can then assume that $F(t)\not=0$ for all $t\in (0, 1)$.
Consider $G(t):= \|\gamma(t)-\sigma(t)\|_{\mathbb R^N} =\sqrt{F(t)}$, then
\begin{align*}
\frac{dG}{dt}
&=\frac{1}{2G(t)}F'(t)\leqslant C\vert c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \vert_\mathcal H + C\, |c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) |_\mathcal H G(t)
\end{align*}
\begin{comment}
\tai{Could try more generally $G(t)=F(t)^\alpha$
\begin{align*}
\frac{dG}{dt}
&=\alpha F(t)^{\alpha-1} \left|F'(t)\right| \\
&\leqslant \alpha F(t)^{\alpha-1} \cdot 2\left(\vert c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \vert_\mathcal H + c_{k}F(t)^{1/r}\right) F(t)^{1/2} \\
&= 2\alpha F(t)^{\alpha-1/2}
\vert c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \vert_\mathcal H
+ \alpha c_{k} F(t)^{\alpha-1/2+1/r}.
\end{align*}
Masha pointed out Bihari/Bihari-Lasalle as a non-linear generalization of Gronwall, but I'm not sure we're in the right form for this? BL may at least require that the secondary term be constant (or at least the Wikipedia version of the theorem, which may not be state of the art :/):
Obviously $\vert c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \vert_\mathcal H$ can't be the constant term, so maybe the only option is taking $\alpha = \frac{1}{2}-\frac{1}{r}$, which gives
\[ G'(t) \leqslant \frac{r-2}{r} F(t)^{-1/r}\vert c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \vert_\mathcal H + \frac{c_K(r-2)}{2r}\]
and we need a function $f$ so that $F(t)^{-1/r}=f(G(t))= f(F(t)^{\frac{1}{2}-\frac{1}{r}})$? A google search indicates there might be further generalizations of Bihari around, but I haven't looked much and don't know if there's one that will help us.
}
\end{comment}
We have
\begin{equation}\label{eq-Gronwall-a}
\frac{dG}{dt} \leqslant A(t)+B(t)G\left( t \right),
\end{equation}
where $A(t)=C\vert c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)-c_{\sigma}\left( t \right) \vert_\mathcal H$ and $B(t)=C |c_\sigma(t)|_\mathcal H$.
Let $b(t)=\int_0^t B(s)ds={C}\int_0^t |c_\sigma(s)|_\mathcal H\, ds$. Then \eqref{eq-Gronwall-a} can be written as
\[
\frac{d}{dt}\left( e^{-b(t)}G\left( t \right) \right) \leqslant A(t) e^{-b(t)}.
\]
Clearly $G(0)=0$. It follows that
\[
e^{-b(t)}G\left( t \right)\leqslant \int_0^t A(s)e^{-b(s)}\,ds.
\]
In particular for $t=1$ we have that
\begin{align*}
G\left( 1 \right)=\Vert\gamma\left( 1 \right)- \sigma\left( 1 \right)\Vert_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}
&\leqslant e^{b(1)}
\int_0^1 |c_\gamma(t)-c_\sigma(t)|_\mathcal{H}e^{-b(t)} \,dt \\
&\leqslant e^{C\|\sigma\|_{L^1}}\int_0^1 |c_\gamma(t)-c_\sigma(t)|_\mathcal{H} \,dt
< C\varepsilon.
\end{align*}
\begin{comment}
We then obtain \eqref{eq-gronwall-conclu} by using the equivalence between $\|\cdot-\cdot\|_{\mathbb R^N}$ and $\rho_{cc}(\cdot, \cdot)$.
\end{comment}
\end{proof}
\begin{remark}
We consider the specific homogeneous distance $\rho_{cc}$ in this version of Lemma \ref{l.Gronwall2}, but in light of its proof and Proposition \ref{p.NormEquiv}, it is clear that this result could be stated with $\rho_{cc}$ replaced by any left-invariant homogeneous distance on $G$.
\end{remark}
\begin{remark}
This estimate appears in various places in the literature (see for example \cite[Lemma 6.7]{Breuillard2014} or \cite[Lemma 4.2.5]{LeDonneNotes2018}) for general Lie groups. However, in the general Lie group setting, it is difficult to make sense of comparing vectors in different tangent spaces in the absence of the unifying context of the ambient space $\mathbb R^N$.
That being said, the same proof as the one given here works for matrix Lie groups equipped with a left-invariant Riemannian distance $\rho$ under the (standard) assumption that the Lie bracket satisfies the continuity assumption
\begin{equation*
\vert [ A, B ]\vert_{\mathfrak{g}} \leqslant M \vert A \vert_{\mathfrak{g}}\vert B\vert_{\mathfrak{g}}
\end{equation*}
for any $A, B \in \mathfrak{g}$.
\end{remark}
\begin{prop}\label{prop-L} Given a Carnot group $G$, define
\begin{align*}
L: G &\longrightarrow \mathcal{H}:=\mathcal{V}_{1},
\\
x &\longmapsto \int_{0}^{1} c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)dt,
\end{align*}
where $\gamma$ is any horizontal path such that $\gamma\left(0\right)=e$ and $\gamma \left(1\right)=x$. Then
\[
L\left( x \right)= P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( x\right) \right),
\]
where $P_{\mathcal{H}}$ is the projection onto $\mathcal{H}$, and in particular $L$ is well-defined independent of the choice of $\gamma$. Additionally, $L$ is continuous as a map from $\left( G, \rho_{cc} \right)$ to $\left( \mathcal{H}, \langle \cdot, \cdot \rangle_{\mathcal{H}} \right)$.
\end{prop}
\begin{proof} First recall that $\log$ and $\exp$ are global diffeomorphisms in this setting. Therefore we can use the Baker-Campbell-Dynkin-Hausdorff formula \eqref{e.BCDH} to see that for any $x_{1}, x_{2} \in G$ we can find $X_{1}, X_{2} \in \mathfrak{g}$ such that $x_1=e^{X_{1}}$ and $x_{2}=e^{X_{2}}$, and thus
\begin{align*}
P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( x_{1}x_{2} \right)\right)
&=P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( e^{X_{1}} e^{X_{2}} \right)\right)
=P_{\mathcal{H}}\left(X_{1}\right)+P_{\mathcal{H}}\left(X_{2}\right)\\
&=P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( e^{X_{1}} \right)\right)+P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( e^{X_{2}} \right)\right)
=P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( x_{1} \right)\right)+P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( x_{2} \right)\right).
\end{align*}
In particular, this implies that
\[
P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( x_{1} x_{2} \right)\right)=P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( x_{2} x_{1} \right)\right).
\]
Additionally,
\[
P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( x^{-1} \right)\right)=P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log\left( e^{-X} \right)\right)=-P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( X \right)=-P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log x \right).
\]
Now let $\gamma$ be any horizontal path such that $\gamma\left(0\right)=e$ and $\gamma \left(1\right)=x$. Using the above observations for $x_{1}=\gamma\left( t \right)$ and $x_{2}=\gamma\left( t+\varepsilon \right)$, we see that
\begin{multline*}
P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( \gamma \left(t+\varepsilon \right) \right) \right)-P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( \gamma \left(t \right) \right) \right)
=
P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( \gamma \left(t \right)^{-1} \right) \right)+P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( \gamma \left(t+\varepsilon \right) \right) \right)
\\
=P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( \gamma \left(t \right)^{-1} \gamma \left(t+\varepsilon \right) \right) \right)-P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( \gamma \left(t \right)^{-1} \gamma \left(t \right) \right) \right),
\end{multline*}
since $P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( e \right) \right)=0$. Therefore
\begin{align*}
\frac{d}{dt}P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( \gamma \left(t \right) \right) \right)
&= \frac{d}{d\varepsilon}\bigg|_0
P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( \gamma \left(t+\varepsilon \right) \right) \right) \\
&=\left( P_{\mathcal{H}} \circ \log \right)_{\ast} \left( \left( L_{\gamma\left( t \right)}\right)_{\ast}^{-1} \gamma^{\prime}\left( t \right) \right)
\\
& =\left( P_{\mathcal{H}} \circ \log \right)_{\ast} \left( c_{\gamma}\left( t \right) \right)=c_{\gamma}\left( t \right),
\end{align*}
for a.e.\,$t$ in $[ 0, 1]$, since $P_{\mathcal{H}} \circ \log: G \longrightarrow \mathcal{H}$, and its differential (pushforward) $d\left( P_{\mathcal{H}} \circ \log \right): \mathfrak{g} \longrightarrow \mathcal{H}$ is the identity on the horizontal space $\mathcal{H}$. In particular,
\begin{align*}
& P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( x \right) \right)=\int_{0}^{1} \frac{d}{dt}P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( \gamma \left(t \right) \right) \right) dt=\int_{0}^{1}c_{\gamma}\left( t \right) dt \in \mathcal{H}
\end{align*}
for any horizontal path $\gamma$ connecting $e$ and $x$.
Similarly, if we have $x_{1}, x_{2} \in G$ and any horizontal path $\gamma$ connecting $x_{1}$ and $x_{2}$, we see that
\begin{align*}
& P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( x_{1} \right) \right)-P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( x_{2} \right) \right)=\int_{0}^{1}c_{\gamma}\left( t \right) dt.
\end{align*}
Thus,
\begin{align*}
& \vert P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( x_{1} \right) \right)-P_{\mathcal{H}}\left( \log \left( x_{2} \right) \right)\vert_{\mathcal{H}}=\left\vert \int_{0}^{1}c_{\gamma}\left( t \right) dt \right\vert_\mathcal H
\leqslant \int_{0}^{1}\vert c_{\gamma}\left( t \right)\vert_\mathcal H dt=\ell\left( \gamma \right),
\end{align*}
and taking the infimum over all such horizontal paths $\gamma$ gives
\[
\left\vert L\left( x_{1} \right)-L\left( x_{2} \right) \right\vert_{\mathcal{H}}\leqslant \rho_{cc}\left( x_{1}, x_{2} \right),
\]
which implies continuity. \end{proof}
The significance of the map $L$ is that unlike in the case of Lie groups equipped with a Riemannian metric, we only have metric on the horizontal space $\mathcal{H}$, but $\log$ does not respect the horizontal structure. This is a fundamental difference from the techniques used in \cite[Proposition 5.2]{Versendaal2019b}, and one can think of the map $L$ as a horizontal logarithmic map.
\section{Large deviations}\label{s.LDP}
Now we return to our main result, Theorem~\ref{t.main}. Suppose $\left\{ X_{i} \right\}_{i=1}^{\infty}$ is a sequence of i.i.d.~random variables in $\mathcal{H}$ and define
\[
S_{n}:=\exp(X_{1})\star\cdots\star \exp(X_{n}).
\]
Note that for a dilation $D_{a}: G \longrightarrow G$ by \eqref{e.Dilations} we have
\[
D_{a}S_{n}=\prod_{i=1}^{n}\star D_{a} \exp(X_{i}) =\prod_{i=1}^{n}\star \exp( \delta_{a}X_{i}).
\]
The proof consists of several steps. First in Section~\ref{ss.vector-ldp} we consider an $m$-piece partition of $D_{\frac{1}{n}} S_{n}$ for a fixed $m$ and prove a large deviations principle for a sequence of random variables in $\mathcal{H}^m$ associated to this partition, where $\mathcal{H}^{m}$ denotes the product space equipped with the product topology. In Section~\ref{ss.approx} we find a family of exponentially good approximations to $\{D_{\frac{1}{n}} S_{n}\}$. Then in Section~\ref{ss.group-ldp} we combine these results with the contraction principle, Theorem~\ref{thm-contract}, to prove Theorem~\ref{t.main}.
\subsection{Vector space LDP}
\label{ss.vector-ldp}
For a fixed $m\in\{1,\ldots,n\}$, we partition $D_{\frac{1}{n}} S_{n}$ into $m$ pieces as follows. For $k=0,\ldots,m-1$, let $n_{k}=k\lfloor\frac{n}{m}\rfloor$ and $n_m=n$, and for $k=1, \ldots, m$ we define
\[
S^{m,k}_n:=\prod_{i=n_{k-1}+1}^{n_{k}}\star \exp( \delta_{\frac1n}X_{i}).
\]
Now let
\begin{align*}
Y_n^{m,k}:=L(S_n^{m,k})
&=L\left(\exp(\delta_{\frac1n}X_{n_{k-1}+1})\star\cdots\star\exp(\delta_{\frac1n}X_{n_{k}}) \right)\\
&=\frac{1}{n}\left(X_{n_{k-1}+1}+\cdots + X_{n_{k}}\right)
\in \mathcal{H},
\end{align*}
where $L$ is the map defined in Proposition \ref{prop-L}, and take
\[
Y_{n}^m:=(Y_n^{m,1},\dots, Y_n^{m,m} )\in \mathcal{H}^m.
\]
It will be useful later to note that, taking $d=\lfloor\frac{n}{m}\rfloor$ so that $n=dm+r$ for some $r\in\{0,1\ldots,m-1\}$, we have that for $k=1,\ldots, m-1$, each $Y^{m,k}_n$ consists of $d$ steps, and $Y^{m,m}_n$ consists of $d+r$ steps. Now we prove the following large deviation principle for $\{Y_{n}^m\}\in\mathcal H^m$.
\begin{prop}\label{p.Hldp}
Suppose $\{X_i\}_{i=1}^\infty $ are i.i.d.~mean 0 random variables in $\mathcal H$ such that
\[
\Lambda(\lambda) := \Lambda_X(\lambda)
:= \log \mathbb E \left[\exp\left(\langle \lambda, X_{1} \rangle_{\mathcal{H}}\right)\right]
\]
exists for all $\lambda\in\mathcal H$. Fix $m\in\mathbb{N}$. Then for any closed $F\subset \mathcal H^m$ and open $O\subset \mathcal H^m$ we have that
\[
\limsup_{n \to \infty}\frac1n \log\partial \left(Y_n^{m}\in F \right)
\leqslant - \inf_{u\in F} I_m(u)
\]
and
\[
\liminf_{n \to \infty}\frac1n \log\partial \left(Y_n^m\in O\right)
\geqslant -\inf_{u\in O} I_m(O),
\]
where for $u=(u_{1},\ldots,u_m)\in\mathcal H^m$
\begin{equation}\label{eq-I_m}
I_m(u):= \frac{1}{m}\sum_{k=1}^m \Lambda^{\ast}(mu_{k})
\end{equation}
with
\begin{equation}\label{e.FL} \Lambda^{\ast}(u) = \sup_{v\in\mathcal H} \,\left(\langle v,u\rangle_\mathcal H - \Lambda(v)\right).
\end{equation}
\end{prop}
\begin{proof}
To prove the upper bound, we first note that by following the proof of the upper bound in the classical Cram\'{e}r's theorem (see for example \cite[p. 37]{DemboZeitouniBook2010}, or Proposition \ref{prop-ldp-hm} in the appendix) one may show that for any closed set $F\subset \mathcal H^m$
\begin{align}
& \limsup_{n \to \infty}\frac{1}{n} \log\partial \left(Y_n^{m}\in F \right) \label{e.prop-ldp-hm}
\\
& \leqslant -\inf_{u\in F} \sup_{\lambda\in \mathcal{H}^m} \left\{ \langle \lambda, u\rangle_{\mathcal{H}^m} -\limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac1n \log \mathbb E \left[\exp\left(n\langle \lambda, Y_n^{m}\rangle_{\mathcal{H}^m} \right)\right] \right\}.
\notag
\end{align}
Now for $\lambda=(\lambda_{1},\ldots,\lambda_m)\in\mathcal H^m$
\begin{align*}
\mathbb E \left[\exp\left(n\langle \lambda, Y_n^{m}\rangle_{\mathcal{H}^m} \right)\right]
&= \prod_{k=1}^{m}\mathbb E \left[\exp\left(n\langle \lambda_{k}, Y_n^{m,k}\rangle_{\mathcal{H}} \right)\right] \\
&= \prod_{k=1}^{m} \prod_{i=n_{k-1}+1}^{n_{k}}
\mathbb E \left[\exp\left(\langle \lambda_{k}, X_i\rangle_{\mathcal{H}} \right)\right]
= \prod_{k=1}^{m}\exp( \Lambda(\lambda_{k}))^{n_{k}-n_{k-1}}.
\end{align*}
Again letting $d=\lfloor\frac{n}{m}\rfloor$ so that $n=dm+r$ for some $r\in\{0,1\ldots,m-1\}$, we have that $n_{k}-n_{k-1}=d$ for all $k=1,\ldots,m-1$ and $n_m-n_{m-1}=n-(m-1)d=n-md+d = d+r$. Thus we may write
\[
\mathbb E \left[\exp\left(n\langle \lambda, Y_n^{m}\rangle_{\mathcal{H}^m} \right)\right]
= \left(\prod_{k=1}^{m}\exp(\Lambda(\lambda_{k}))\right)^{d}
\exp(\Lambda(\lambda_m))^r
\]
and so
\begin{align*}
\limsup_{n\to\infty} \frac1n \log \mathbb E \left[\exp\left(n\langle \lambda, Y_n^{m}\rangle_{\mathcal{H}^m} \right)\right]
&= \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac{\lfloor n/m\rfloor}{n}\sum_{k=1}^m \Lambda(\lambda_{k})
+ \frac{r}{2n} \Lambda(\lambda_m) \\
&= \frac{1}{m}\sum_{k=1}^m \Lambda(\lambda_{k}).
\end{align*}
So for all $u=(u_{1},\ldots,u_m)\in\mathcal H^m$ we have
\begin{align*}
& \sup_{\lambda\in \mathcal{H}^m} \left\{ \langle \lambda, u\rangle_{\mathcal{H}^m} - \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac1n \log \mathbb E \left[\exp\left(n\langle \lambda, Y_n^{m}\rangle_{\mathcal{H}^m} \right)\right] \right\} \\
&= \sup_{\lambda\in \mathcal{H}^m} \left\{ \sum_{k=1}^m \langle \lambda_{k}, u_{k}\rangle_{\mathcal{H}} -
\frac{1}{m}\sum_{k=1}^m \Lambda(\lambda_{k}) \right\} \\
&= \frac{1}{m} \sup_{\lambda\in \mathcal{H}^m} \left\{ \sum_{k=1}^m \langle \lambda_{k}, mu_{k}\rangle_{\mathcal{H}} -
\sum_{k=1}^m \Lambda(\lambda_{k}) \right\} \\
&\leqslant \frac{1}{m} \sum_{k=1}^m \sup_{\lambda_{k}\in \mathcal{H}} \left\{\langle \lambda_{k}, mu_{k}\rangle_{\mathcal{H}} - \Lambda(\lambda_{k}) \right\}
= \frac{1}{m} \sum_{k=1}^m \Lambda^{\ast}(mu_{k}).
\end{align*}
For the lower bound, as usual it suffices to prove that for any $u=(u_{1},\ldots,u_m)\in\mathcal H^m$ and $\varepsilon>0$ we have
\[
\liminf_{n \to \infty}\frac1n \log\partial \left(Y_n^m\in B(u,\varepsilon)\right)
\geqslant - \frac{1}{m}\sum_{k=1}^m \Lambda^{\ast}(mu_{k}).
\]
Choose $\delta>0$ sufficiently small so that
\[
B(u_{1},\delta)\times\cdots\times B(u_m,\delta)\subset B(u,\varepsilon).
\]
Then
\begin{align*}
\log\partial \left(Y_n^m\in B(u,\varepsilon)\right)
&\geqslant \log\partial\left(Y_n^{m,1}\in B(u_{1},\delta),\ldots,Y_n^{m,m}\in B(u_m,\delta)\right) \\
&= \log \prod_{k=1}^m \partial\left(Y_n^{m,k}\in B(u_{k},\delta)\right) \\
&= \sum_{k=1}^m \log\partial\left(Y_n^{m,k}\in B(u_{k},\delta)\right).
\end{align*}
Recall that for each $k=1,\ldots,m-1$, $Y_n^{m,k}= \frac{1}{n}(X_{n_{k-1}+1}+\cdots + X_{n_{k-1}+\lfloor n/m\rfloor})$, and so again by the classical Cram\'{e}r's theorem
\[ \liminf_{n \to \infty}\frac1n \log\partial\left(Y_n^{m,k}\in B(u_{k},\delta)\right)
\geqslant \frac{1}{m}\Lambda^{\ast}(mu_{k}),\]
and the $k=m$ case can be dealt with similarly as was done in the upper bound case, yielding the desired result.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Exponentially good approximations}\label{ss.approx}
For a fixed $m \in \mathbb{N}$, define the map $\Psi_m:\mathcal{H}^m\to G$ by
\begin{equation}\label{e.Psim}
\Psi_m(u_{1}, \ldots, u_{m}) := \exp(u_{1})\star\cdots \star\exp(u_{m}).
\end{equation}
In this section we show that $\{\Psi_m(Y_n^m)\}_{m \in \mathbb{N}}$ are exponentially good approximations of $\{D_{\frac{1}{n}} S_{n}\}$, as in Definition \ref{d.exp-approx}.
We will consider two cases: homogeneous Carnot groups of step $2$ with random vectors $X_i$ having a sub-Gaussian distribution on $\mathcal H$, and higher step homogeneous Carnot groups with random vectors $X_i$ having a bounded distribution on $\mathcal H$. Both results use the standard argument that if
\begin{equation}\label{e.standard1}
\mathbb E[ e^{\pm\lambda Z}] \leqslant C(|\lambda|),
\end{equation}
for some $\lambda\in\mathbb{R}$, then for any $t>0$
\begin{align}
\notag \partial(|Z|\geqslant t ) &= \partial(Z\geqslant t) + \partial(-Z\geqslant t) \\
&\label{e.standard}= \partial(e^{\lambda Z} \geqslant e^{\lambda t}) + \partial(e^{-\lambda Z} \geqslant e^{\lambda t})
\leqslant 2e^{-\lambda t}C(|\lambda|)
\end{align}
by Markov's inequality.
\subsubsection{Step $2$ with sub-Gaussian distributions}
Recall that a mean zero random variable $X$ is \emph{sub-Gaussian} if there is a $k>0$ such that
\[
\mathbb E[e^{\lambda X}] \leqslant e^{k\lambda^2} \qquad \text{ for all } \lambda\in\mathbb{R}.
\]
It is also useful to recall that we say $X$ is \emph{sub-exponential} with parameters $\nu^2$ and $\alpha$ if
\[ \mathbb E[e^{\lambda X}]\leqslant e^{\nu^2\lambda^2/2}, \qquad \text{ for any } |\lambda|<\frac{1}{\alpha}. \]
We will write $X\in SE(\nu^2,\alpha)$.
For convenience we record the following basic result.
\begin{lemma}\label{l.subexp}
If $Z_i$ are sub-exponential random variables with parameters $\nu_i^2$ and $\alpha_i$, then the random variable $Z:= \sum_{i=1}^n Z_i$ is also sub-exponential with parameters $\alpha = \max_{1\leqslant i\leqslant n} \alpha_i$ and
\begin{enumerate}
\item[(i)] $\nu^2=\sum_{i=1}^n \nu_i^2$ if the $Z_i$s are independent.
\item[(ii)] $\nu^2=\left(\sum_{i=1}^n \nu_i\right)^2$ if the $Z_i$s are dependent.
\end{enumerate}
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
The first statement is obvious since $X$ and $Y$ independent implies that
\[
\mathbb E[e^{\lambda(X+Y)}]=\mathbb E[e^{\lambda X}]\mathbb E[e^{\lambda Y}].
\]
The second statement follows from an application of H\"older's inequality
\[
\mathbb E[e^{\lambda(X+Y)}]\leqslant(\mathbb E[e^{p\lambda X}])^{1/p}\left(\mathbb E\left[e^{p\lambda Y/(p-1)}\right]\right)^{(p-1)/p}\leqslant e^{\nu_X^2p\lambda^2/2}e^{\nu_Y^2p\lambda^2/2(p-1)}
\]
followed by optimization over $p$.
\end{proof}
\begin{prop}\label{p.exp-approx}
Suppose $G$ is step 2 and that $\left\{ X_{i} \right\}_{i=1}^{\infty}$ are $\mathcal{H}$-valued i.i.d. sub-Gaussian random vectors with mean $0$. Then for all $\delta>0$
\[
\lim_{m\to\infty} \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n} \log
\partial(\rho_{cc}(\Psi_m(Y_n^m), D_{1/n}S_n))>\delta) = -\infty.
\]
\end{prop}
\begin{proof}
Fix $\delta>0$. Recall that by the left invariance of the distance
\[
\rho_{cc}(\Psi_m(Y_n^m),D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n) =
\rho_{cc}(e,(\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{-1}D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n)
= d_{cc}((\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{-1}D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n).
\]
Consider first the case $d_{2}=\mathrm{dim}[\mathcal{H},\mathcal{H}]=1$. Then by \eqref{e.2.5}
\[
D_{\frac{1}{n}} S_{n} = e^{X_{1}}\star\cdots\star e^{X_n} = \left(\frac{1}{n}\sum_{k=1}^nX_{k},
\frac{1}{n^2}\sum_{1\leqslant i<j\leqslant n} X_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+1} X_{j}\right)
\]
and
\begin{align*}
\Psi_m(Y_n^m) &=e^{Y_n^{m,1}}\star\cdots\star e^{Y_n^{m,m}}
\\
&= \left(\frac{1}{n}\sum_{k=1}^nX_{k}, \frac{1}{n^2} \sum_{k=1}^m \sum_{\ell=k+1}^m
\sum_{i=n_{k-1}+1}^{n_{k}} \sum_{j=n_{\ell-1}+1}^{n_\ell} X_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+1}X_j\right). \end{align*}
Thus
\begin{comment}
\[
e^{h_{1}}\star\cdots\star e^{h_{\ell}}=
\left( \sum_{i=1}^{\ell} h_{i},
\sum_{i=1}^{\ell} \sum_{j=i+1}^{\ell}h_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+1} h_{j}, \ldots , \sum_{i=1}^{m} \sum_{j=i+1}^{m} h_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+d_{2}} h_{j} \right)
\]
for any $h_{1}, \ldots , h_{\ell} \in \mathcal{H}$. Then
\[
e^{h_{1}}\star\cdots\star e^{h_{\ell}} \star\left(e^{h_{1}+ \cdots + h_{\ell}}\right)^{-1}
=\left( 0,
\sum_{i=1}^{\ell} \sum_{j=i+1}^{\ell}h_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+1} h_{j}, \ldots , \sum_{i=1}^{\ell} \sum_{j=i+1}^{\ell} h_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+d_{2}} h_{j} \right).
\]
Note that the right hand side commutes with all elements in $G$. Applying this formula to $Y_{n}^{m, k}=\frac{1}{n}\left( X_{n_{k-1}+1}+\ldots +X_{n_{k}}\right)$, we take $h_{i}=\frac{1}{n}X_{i}$, then for $i=n_{k-1}+1, \ldots , n_{k}$ and $j=i+1, \ldots , n_{k}$
\begin{multline*}
e^{\frac{1}{n}X_{n_{k-1}+1}}\star\cdots\star e^{\frac{1}{n}X_{n_{k}}} \left( \exp\left(\frac{1}{n}\left( X_{n_{k-1}}+ \ldots +X_{n_{k}}\right)\right)\right)^{-1}
\\
=\left( 0,
\frac{1}{n^{2}}\sum_{i=n_{k-1}+1}^{n_{k}} \sum_{j=i+1}^{n_{k}}X_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+1} X_{j}, \ldots , \frac{1}{n^{2}}\sum_{i=n_{k-1}+1}^{n_{k}} \sum_{j=i+1}^{n_{k}} X_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+d_{2}} X_{j} \right).
\end{multline*}
\end{comment}
\begin{equation*
(\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{-1}\star D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n
=\left(0, \frac{1}{n^2}\sum_{k=1}^m \sum_{n_{k-1}<i<j\leqslant n_{k}}
X_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+1} X_{j}\right).
\end{equation*}
So in light of Proposition \ref{p.5.1.4} it is sufficient to show that
\begin{align*}
\lim_{m\to\infty} \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n} \log \partial\left(\frac{1}{n^2}
\left|\sum_{k=1}^m \sum_{n_{k-1}<i<j\leqslant n_{k}}
X_{i}^{T}A_{d_{1}+1} X_{j}\right|>\delta\right)
= -\infty.
\end{align*}
Now, by the comparison lemma \cite[Lemma 6.2.3]{VershyninBook2018}, for independent mean zero sub-Gaussian random vectors $X$ and $X'$ in $\mathbb{R}^{d_{1}}$ with $\Vert X \Vert_{\psi_{2}} ,\Vert X' \Vert_{\psi_{2}}\leqslant K$, and any $\lambda \in \mathbb{R}$ and $d_{1}\times d_{1}$ matrix $A$
\[
\mathbb{E}[\exp\left( \lambda X^{T} A X' \right)]
\leqslant \mathbb{E}[\exp\left( C_{1}K^{2}\lambda G^{T} A G' \right)]
\]
where $G$ and $G'$ are independent $\mathcal{N}\left( 0, I_{d_{1}} \right)$ random
vectors and $C_{1}$ is an absolute constant. (Here, $\|\cdot\|_{\psi_{2}}$ is the sub-Gaussian norm, which is necessarily finite when $X$ is sub-Gaussian.)
Furthermore, by \cite[Lemma 6.2.2]{VershyninBook2018} there are absolute constants $C_{2}$ and $c$
\[
\mathbb{E}[\exp\left( C_{1}K^{2} \lambda G^{T} A G' \right)] \leqslant \exp\left( C_{2}C_{1} ^2 K^{4} \lambda^2 \Vert A \Vert^2_{HS}\right)
\]
for all $\lambda$ satisfying $\vert \lambda \vert \leqslant c/ C_{1}K^{2} \Vert A \Vert_{op}$.
\begin{comment}
Thus
\[
\mathbb{E}[\exp\left( \lambda X^{T} A X' \right)]
\leqslant \exp\left( C_{2}C_{1}^{2} K^{4} \lambda^{2} \Vert A \Vert_{HS}^{2}\right)
\]
for all $\lambda$ satisfying $\vert \lambda \vert \leqslant \frac{c}{C_{1}K^{2} \Vert A \Vert_{op}}$. From this point we will d
\end{comment}
We denote by $C$ and $c$ constants that do not depend on the structure of the group or distribution, but might change from one bound to another. Putting the above together we see that for $X$ and $X'$ as given
\[
\mathbb{E}[\exp\left( \lambda X^{T} A X' \right)
\leqslant \exp\left( C K^{4} \Vert A \Vert_{HS}^{2}\lambda^{2} \right)],
\quad \text{ for any } \vert \lambda \vert \leqslant \frac{c}{K^{2} \Vert A \Vert_{op}}.
\]
This means that $X^{T} A X'$ is sub-exponential with parameters
$\nu^{2}:=2C K^{4} \Vert A \Vert_{HS}^{2}$ and $\alpha:=\frac{K^{2} \Vert A \Vert_{op}}{c}$.
In particular, the above is true for $X=X_i$ and $X'=X_j$ for any $i\ne j$ with $A=A_{d_{1}+1}$. Now for any $\ell\geqslant 2$ consider
\begin{align*}
Z &:= \sum_{1\leqslant i<j\leqslant \ell} X_{i}^{T} A X_{j}
= \sum_{a=3}^{2\ell-1}\sum_{\substack{1\leqslant i<j\leqslant\ell\\i+j=a}} X_{i}^{T} A X_{j}
=: \sum_{a=3}^{2\ell-1} Z(a),
\end{align*}
where the second double summation is the same as summing along the \emph{antidiagonals} of the array $(X_{i}^{T} A X_{j})_{1\leqslant i<j\leqslant\ell}$. We will apply Lemma \ref{l.subexp} to recognize this sum as having a sub-exponential distribution and to bound its parameters.
Note in particular that each $Z(a)$
is a sum of \emph{independent} sub-exponential random variables $X_{i}^{T} A X_{j}$ all with common parameters $\nu_{ij}^2=\nu^2$ and $\alpha_{ij}=\alpha$, where $\nu^2$ and $\alpha$ are as given above. Thus, $Z(a)$ is sub-exponential with parameters $\alpha_a=\alpha$ and
\[
\nu_a^2 = \sum_{\substack{1\leqslant i<j\leqslant\ell\\i+j=a}} \nu^2 \leqslant \frac{\ell}{2}\nu^2. \]
Therefore, as a sum of \emph{dependent} sub-exponential random variables, $Z=\sum_{a=3}^{2\ell-1} Z(a)$ is sub-exponential with parameters $\alpha_Z=K^2\|A\|_{op}/c$, and we may make the following (rough) estimate
\[
\nu_Z^2 = \left(\sum_{a=3}^{2\ell-1}\nu_a\right)^2
\leqslant (2\ell-3)^2\frac{\ell}{2}\nu^2
\leqslant \ell^3C K^{4} \Vert A \Vert_{HS}^{2}.
\]
Applying this now to
\[
Z_{k}:=\sum_{n_{k-1}<i<j\leqslant n_{k}} X_{i}^{T} A X_{j},
\]
for any $k=1, \ldots ,m$, we have $Z_{k} \in SE(d^3C K^{4} \Vert A \Vert_{HS}^{2},K^2\|A\|_{op}/c)$, where again $d=\lfloor n/m\rfloor$ (and $n_{k}-n_{k-1}=d$ for $k=1,\ldots, m-1$ and $n_m-n_{m-1}=d+r$ for some $r=1, \ldots, m-1$). Since $Z_{k}$ and $Z_{k'}$ for $k\not= k'$ are sums over non-overlapping subsets of indices, we have that the $Z_{k}$'s are also independent, so
\[
\sum_{k=1}^{m}Z_{k}\in SE\left(md^{3}CK^{4} \Vert A \Vert_{HS}^{2},\frac{K^{2} \Vert A \Vert_{op}}{c}\right).
\]
Thus by \eqref{e.standard} for any $\delta>0$ and $0< \lambda\leqslant \frac{c}{K^{2} \Vert A \Vert_{op}}$
\begin{align*}
& \mathbb{P}\left(\frac{1}{n^{2}} \left\vert \sum_{k=1}^{m}Z_{k}\right\vert > \delta \right)
\leqslant
2e^{- \lambda \delta n^{2}}e^{ md^{3}CK^{4} \Vert A \Vert_{HS}^{2}\lambda^{2}}.
\end{align*}
In particular, this is true for any $\lambda= 1/d=1/\lfloor n/m\rfloor$ for sufficiently large $n$ and thus
\begin{align*}
\lim_{m\to\infty} \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n} \log \mathbb{P}&\left(\frac{1}{n^{2}} \left\vert \sum_{k=1}^{m}\sum_{n_{k-1}<i<j\leqslant n_{k}} X_{i}^{T} A X_{j}\right\vert > \delta \right)
\\
&= \lim_{m\to\infty} \limsup_{n\to\infty} \frac{1}{n} \log \mathbb{P}\left(\frac{1}{n^{2}} \left\vert \sum_{k=1}^{m}Z_{k}\right\vert > \delta \right) \\
&\leqslant \lim_{m\to\infty} \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n} \log \left(2e^{- m\delta n}
e^{ mdCK^{4} \Vert A \Vert_{HS}^{2}}\right) \\
&=\lim_{m\to\infty}\limsup_{n\to\infty}
\left( - \delta m+CK^{4} \Vert A \Vert_{HS}^{2}\right)
=-\infty.
\end{align*}
This essentially completes the proof, since in the case that ${d_{2}}= \mathrm{dim}[\mathcal{H},\mathcal{H}]>1$ and $(\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{-1}\star D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n = (0,Z_n^1,\ldots,Z_n^{d_{2}})$ with
\[
Z_n^\ell = \frac{1}{n^2}\sum_{k=1}^m \sum_{n_{k-1}< i<j\leqslant n_{k}} X_{i}^{T} A_{d_{1}+\ell} X_{j},
\]
we have that
\begin{align*}
\partial\left(\left\|(Z_n^1,\ldots,Z_n^{d_{2}})\right\|_{\mathbb R^{d_{2}}}>\delta\right)
&= \partial\left(\sum_{\ell=1}^{d_{2}} (Z_n^\ell)^2>\delta^2\right) \\
&\leqslant \sum_{\ell=1}^{d_{2}} \partial\left( (Z_n^\ell)^2>\frac{\delta^2}{{d_{2}}}\right)
= \sum_{\ell=1}^{d_{2}} \partial\left( |Z_n^\ell|>\frac{\delta}{\sqrt{{d_{2}}}}\right)
\end{align*}
and the result follows by applying the previous estimates to each term.
\end{proof}
Note that Appendix~\ref{a.RSymplF} describes properties of random quadratic forms. Note that if $G$ is of step $3$ or higher, we need to rely on concentration inequalities for polynomials of random vectors of higher order which are not easily available.
\subsubsection{Higher step groups with bounded distributions}
Suppose $G$ is a homogeneous Carnot group of step $r$ as described in Section~\ref{s.carnot}.
In particular, as before we identify both the Lie group $G$ and its Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ with $\mathbb{R}^{N}$.
First we will need the next simple lemma for our estimates.
\begin{lemma}\label{l.Jl} For $\ell=2,\ldots,r$
\[ (D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n-\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{(\ell)}
= \frac{1}{n^\ell}\sum_{i=(i_{1},\ldots,i_\ell)\in \mathcal{J}'_\ell} c_i \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}}
X_{i_\ell} \]
for some coefficients $|c_i|<1$, where $\mathcal{J}'_\ell$ is some strict subset of $\{1,\ldots,n\}^\ell$ such that $\#\mathcal{J}'_\ell\leqslant C \frac{n^\ell}{m}$ where $C$ is a constant that only depends on $\ell$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
As with Lemma \ref{l.Il}, the form of $(D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n-\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{(\ell)}$ follows from the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff-Dynkin formula \eqref{e.BCDH} along with the definition of the dilation. So we only need to prove the bound on $\#\mathcal{J}'_\ell$.
\begin{comment}
*difference in $\mathcal{J}'_\ell$ versus $\mathcal{J}_\ell$ in this comment.
We proceed by induction on $\ell$.
As we have already seen in (\ref{step2diff})
\begin{align*}
(D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n-\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{(2)} &= ((\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{-1}D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n)^2\\
&=\frac{1}{n^2}\sum_{k=1}^m \sum_{i=n_{k-1}+1}^{n_{k}} \sum_{j=i+1}^{n_{k}} \ad_{X_i}X_j,
\end{align*}
and thus for $\ell=2$ we have that $\#\mathcal{J}_{2}\leqslant C\frac{n^2}{m}$. Now assume that $\#\mathcal{J}_\ell\leqslant C(\ell)\frac{n^\ell}{m}$. Necessarily, the terms in the sum for $((D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n)(\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{-1})^{(\ell+1)}$ are of the form
\[ \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{k}}}\operatorname{ad}_{X_{j}}\operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{k+1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}} X_{i_\ell}\]
or
\[ \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}} \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_\ell}} X_j\]
for some $j\in1,\ldots, n$ and $i\in \mathcal{J}_\ell$. \tai{I'm waffling on this a bit. There could be some other terms here, but the number of them would still be order $\leqslant n^{\ell+1}/m$. I'll wait a bit and look back at this.} For each $i\in \mathcal{J}_\ell$ there are at most $n(\ell+1)$ of these terms. Thus, $\#\mathcal{J}_{\ell+1}\leqslant \#\mathcal{J}_\ell\cdot n(\ell+1) \leqslant C(\ell)(\ell+1)\frac{n^{\ell+1}}{m}$ by the induction hypothesis.
\tai{Or maybe this approach? which may be more right\ldots }
Note that
\[ (\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{(\ell)} = \frac{1}{n^\ell}\sum_{i=(i_{1},\ldots,i_\ell)\in \mathcal{I}'_\ell}
c_i \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}} X_{i_\ell} \]
where $\mathcal{I}'_\ell\subset\mathcal{I}_\ell$, so $\mathcal{J}_\ell=\mathcal{I}_\ell\setminus\mathcal{I}'_\ell$. In particular, $\mathcal{I}'_\ell$ is missing all the multi-indices $i=(i_{1},\ldots,i_\ell)$ where all $i_{1},\ldots,i_\ell\in\{n_{k-1}+1,\ldots, n_{k}\}$ for some $k$. Thus, for example, we may say that
\[\mathcal{J}_\ell\subset\{(i_{1},\ldots,i_\ell)\in \{1,\ldots,n\}: n_{k-1}<i_{\ell-1},i_\ell\leqslant n_{k} \text{ for some } k=1,\ldots,m\}\]
and thus $\#\mathcal{J}_\ell\leqslant C n^{\ell-2}\cdot m \cdot {\lfloor \frac{n}{m}\rfloor\choose 2}\leqslant C'n^\ell/m$ as desired.
\tai{or maybe it's really this}
\end{comment}
However, we may note that
\[ \mathcal{J}'_\ell\subseteq\{i=(i_{1},\ldots,i_\ell): i_{1},\ldots,i_\ell\in\{n_{k-1}+1,\ldots, n_{k}\} \text{ for some } k=1,\ldots,m\}, \] and so $\#\mathcal{J}'_\ell\leqslant m\cdot C(n/m)^\ell \leqslant C \frac{n^\ell}{m} $.
\end{proof}
Clearly the estimate in the lemma above on the number of terms appearing in the sum is rough, but it is sufficient for our purposes. We are now able to prove that under these conditions $\{\Psi_m(Y_n^m)\}$ are exponentially good approximations to $\{D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n\}$.
\begin{prop}\label{p.exp-approx-higher}
Suppose that $\left\{ X_{i} \right\}_{i=1}^{\infty}$ are i.i.d.~mean 0 bounded random vectors in $\mathcal{H}$. Then for all $\delta>0$
\[
\lim_{m\to\infty} \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n} \log \partial(\rho_{cc}(\Psi_m(Y_n^m),D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n)>\delta) = -\infty.
\]
\end{prop}
\begin{proof}
First, note that by Lemma \ref{l.Il}
\begin{align*}
\|D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n\|_{\mathbb{R}^N} &\leqslant \sum_{\ell=1}^r \frac{1}{n^\ell} \|S_n^{(\ell)}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}
\leqslant \sum_{\ell=1}^r \frac{1}{n^\ell}\sum_{i\in \mathcal{I}_\ell} |c_i| \|\operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}}
X_{i_\ell}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}} \\
&\leqslant \sum_{\ell=1}^r \frac{1}{n^\ell} n^\ell M^\ell
\leqslant rM^r.
\end{align*}
Thus for all $n$, $D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n$ is in some compact subset of $\mathbb{R}^N$ with diameter depending only on $M$ and $r$, and similarly for $\Psi_m(Y_n^m)$. Thus, by Proposition \ref{p.NormEquiv}, it suffices to prove that
\[
\lim_{m\to\infty} \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n} \log \partial(\|D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n-\Psi_m(Y_n^m)\|_{\mathbb{R}^N}>\delta) = -\infty,
\]
or rather that, for each $\ell=2,\ldots, r$,
\[
\lim_{m\to\infty} \limsup_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n} \log \partial(\|(D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n-\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{(\ell)}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}>\delta) = -\infty.
\]
So fix $\ell=2,\ldots,r$. By Lemma \ref{l.Jl} we have that
\begin{align*}
\partial(\|(D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n-\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{(\ell)}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}>\delta)
&= \partial\left(\frac{1}{n^\ell}\left\|\sum_{i\in \mathcal{J}'_\ell} c_i \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}} X_{i_\ell}\right\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}>\delta\right) \\
&\leqslant \partial\left(\frac{1}{n^\ell} \sum_{i\in \mathcal{J}'_\ell}
\left\| \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}}
X_{i_\ell}\right\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}>\delta\right) \\
&\leqslant \sum_{i\in \mathcal{J}'_\ell} \partial\left(\frac{1}{n^\ell} \left\| \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}}
X_{i_\ell}\right\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}>\frac{\delta m}{Cn^\ell}\right)
\end{align*}
\begin{comment}\tai{Don't use iid because depending on the number of repeats for a certain multi-index $i$, might not be same joint distribution. But estimates should still work because all bdd.}
\end{comment}
Since the distribution of the $X_i$s is bounded in $\mathcal H$, there exists an $M$ such that $\partial(|X_i|_\mathcal H\geqslant M)=0$ and so for any multi-index $i\in \mathcal{J}'_\ell$
\[
\partial\left( \| \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}}
X_{i_\ell}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}\geqslant M^\ell\right) =0.
\]
Thus $\| \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}}
X_{i_\ell}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}$ satisfies \eqref{e.standard1} with $C(\lambda) = e^{M^\ell\lambda}$ for any $\lambda>0$ for each $i\in \mathcal{J}'_\ell$, and it follows by
\eqref{e.standard} that
\begin{align*}
\sum_{i\in \mathcal{J}'_\ell} \partial\left( \| \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{1}}}\cdots \operatorname{ad}_{X_{i_{\ell-1}}}
X_{i_\ell}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}>\frac{\delta m}{C}\right)
&\leqslant C\frac{n^\ell}{m} \cdot 2 \exp\left(-\lambda \frac{\delta m}{C}\right)\exp(M^\ell\lambda).
\end{align*}
In particular, this is true for $\lambda =n$ for any $n$. Thus,
\[
\frac{1}{n}\log \partial(\|(D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n-\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{(\ell)}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}>\delta)
\leqslant \frac{1}{n}\log \left(2C \,\frac{n^\ell}{m}
\exp\left(- n\frac{\delta m}{C}\right)\exp(M^\ell n)\right).
\]
Putting this all together gives
\begin{align*}
\limsup_{n\to\infty} \frac{1}{n}\log \partial(\|(D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n-\Psi_m(Y_n^m))^{(\ell)}\|_{\mathbb R^{d_\ell}}>\delta)
&\leqslant \limsup_{n\to\infty} \frac{1}{n}\left( - n\frac{\delta m}{C} + M^\ell n\right) \\
&= - \frac{\delta m}{C} + M^\ell
\end{align*}
and taking $m\to\infty$ completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\subsection{LDP for the random walk}
\label{ss.group-ldp}
Before proceeding to the proof of Theorem~\ref{t.main}, we introduce the following notation for some particular piecewise linear paths in $G$.
\begin{notation}\label{n.path}
Fix $m\in\mathbb{N}$, and let $u\in\mathcal H^m$. We let $\sigma_{m,u}:[0,1]\to G$ denote the horizontal path such that $\sigma_{m,u}(0)=e$ and
\[
c_{\sigma_{m,u}}(t) = \left(L_{\sigma_{m,u}(t)^{-1}}\right)_{\ast}\sigma^{\prime}_{m,u}(t)=mu_{k} \qquad \text{for } \frac{k-1}{m}< t< \frac{k}{m}
\]
for $k=1,\dots, m$.
\end{notation}
\begin{example}
\begin{comment}\masha{can we just use \eqref{e.horiz2} to get the result?} \tai{I'm pretty sure that's what I was doing. But if you want to write it up in a different way, you're welcome to. Maybe you just wanted it shorter (restrict to the last part)? This is fine with me, too. I think I was just writing it out for myself at some point but we don't need to keep all of it in the final version.}
\end{comment}
It is a useful exercise to write these paths explicitly, at least in the step 2 case. We follow the notation in Example \ref{ex.step2}. For a given $m$ and $u=(u_1,\dots, u_m)\in\mathcal H^m$, we may use the expression for horizontal paths given by \eqref{e.horiz2} to explicitly describe the path $\sigma=\sigma_{m,u}$. For $0< t < \frac{1}{m}$,
\[
\sigma(t) = \left(tmu_{1},\int_0^t Q^{(2)}(smu_{1},mu_{1})\,ds \right) = (tmu_{1},0),
\]
for $\frac{1}{m}< t < \frac{2}{m}$, writing $\sigma(t)=(A(t),a(t))$,
\begin{align*}
A(t) &= u_{1}+\left(t-\frac{1}{m}\right)mu_{2} \\
a(t) &= \left(\int_0^{1/m} Q^{(2)}(smu_{1},mu_{1})\,ds
+ \int_{1/m}^t Q^{(2)}\left(u_{1}+\left(s-\frac{1}{m}\right)mu_{2},mu_{2}\right)\,ds \right) \\
&= \left(t-\frac{1}{m}\right)Q^{(2)}(u_{1},mu_{2}),
\end{align*}
\begin{comment}
for $\frac{2}{m}< t < \frac{3}{m}$,
\begin{align*}
A(t) &= u_{1}+u_{2}+\left(t-\frac{2}{m}\right)mu_3\\
a(t) &= \bigg(\int_0^{1/m} Q^{(2)}(smu_{1},mu_{1})\,ds
+ \int_{1/m}^{2/m} Q^{(2)}\left(u_{1}+\left(s-\frac{1}{m}\right)mu_{2},mu_{2}\right)\,ds \\
&\qquad + \int_{2/m}^t Q^{(2)}\left(u_{1}+u_{2}+\left(s-\frac{2}{m}\right)mu_3,mu_3\right)\,ds\bigg) \\
&= \left(Q^{(2)}(u_{1},u_{2})+\left(t-\frac{2}{m}\right)Q^{(2)}(u_{1}+u_{2},mu_3)\right),
\end{align*}
for $\frac{3}{m}<t < \frac{4}{m}$
\begin{align*}
A(t) &= u_{1}+u_{2}+u_3+\left(t-\frac{3}{m}\right)mu_4\\
a(t) &= \bigg(\int_0^{1/m} Q^{(2)}(smu_{1},mu_{1})\,ds
+ \int_{1/m}^{2/m} Q^{(2)}\left(u_{1}+\left(s-\frac{1}{m}\right)mu_{2},mu_{2}\right)\,ds \\
&\qquad + \int_{2/m}^{3/m} Q^{(2)}\left(u_{1}+u_{2}+\left(s-\frac{2}{m}\right)mu_3,mu_3\right)\,ds \\
&\qquad + \int_{3/m}^t Q^{(2)}\left(u_{1}+u_{2}+u_3+\left(s-\frac{3}{m}\right)mu_4,mu_4\right)\,ds\bigg)\\
&= \left(\omega(u_{1},u_{2})+Q^{(2)}(u_{1}+u_{2},u_3)
+\left(t-\frac{3}{m}\right)Q^{(2)}(u_{1}+u_{2}+u_3,mu_4)\right)
\end{align*}
\end{comment}
and generally for $\frac{k-1}{m}<t < \frac{k}{m}$, $k=1,\ldots,m$,
\begin{align*}
A(t) &= \sum_{j=1}^{k-1} u_j +\left(t-\frac{k-1}{m}\right)mu_{k}\\
a(t) &= \sum_{\ell=2}^{k-1} \int_{(\ell-1)/m}^{\ell/m} Q^{(2)}\left(\sum_{j=1}^{\ell-1} u_j +\left(s-\frac{\ell-1}{m}\right)mu_\ell,mu_\ell\right)\,ds \\
&\qquad + \int_{(k-1)/m}^t Q^{(2)}\left(\sum_{j=1}^{k-1} u_j +\left(s-\frac{k-1}{m}\right)mu_{k},mu_{k}\right)\,ds \\
&= \sum_{\ell=2}^{k-1}\sum_{j=1}^{\ell-1}Q^{(2)}(u_j,u_\ell)+\left(t-\frac{k-1}{m}\right)\sum_{j=1}^{k-1}\omega(u_j,mu_{k}).
\end{align*}
Note in particular that, for $\sigma(1)=(A(1),a(1))$, we have $A(1)=u_{1}+\cdots+u_m$ and
\[ a(1)
= \sum_{\ell=2}^m\sum_{j=1}^{\ell-1} Q^{(2)}\left( u_j,u_\ell\right)
= \sum_{j=1}^m\sum_{\ell=j+1}^{m}Q^{(2)}\left( u_j,u_\ell\right),\]
and thus $\sigma(1) = \exp(u_1)\star\cdots\star\exp(u_m)$.
\end{example}
We are now ready to prove Theorem~\ref{t.main}. We first take this opportunity to restate the theorem using the notation established in Section~\ref{s.background}.
\begin{theorem*}[Theorem~\ref{t.main}]
Suppose $\{X_{k}\}_{k=1}^\infty$ are i.i.d.~mean 0 random variables in $\mathcal H$, and let
\[
\Lambda(\lambda):= \Lambda_X(\lambda) :=\log \mathbb E[\exp(\langle\lambda, X_{k}\rangle_\mathcal H)].
\]
\begin{enumerate}[(i)]
\item $G$ is of step $2$ and the distribution of each $X_{k}$ is sub-Gaussian on $\mathcal H$;
\item $G$ is of step $\geqslant 3$ and the distribution of each $X_{k}$ is bounded on $\mathcal H$.
\end{enumerate}
Then for
\[
S_n:=\exp(X_{1})\star\cdots\star\exp(X_n)
\]
the measures $\{\mu_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ satisfy a large deviations principle with the rate function given by
\begin{comment}
for any closed set $F\subset G$ and open set $O\subset G$
\[
\limsup_{n \to \infty}\frac1n \log\partial \left(D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n\in F\right) \\
\leqslant -\inf_{x\in F} J(x) \]
and
\[ \limsup_{n \to \infty}\frac1n \log\partial \left(D_{\frac{1}{n}}S_n\in O\right) \\
\geqslant -\inf_{x\in O} J(x) \]
\end{comment}
\[
J(x) : = \inf\left\{\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}\left(c_\sigma(t)\right)\,dt : \sigma \text{ horizontal with } \sigma(0)=e \text{ and } \sigma(1)=x\right\},
\]
where $\Lambda^{\ast}$ is given by \eqref{e.FL}.
\end{theorem*}
\begin{proof}
For a fixed $m\in\mathbb{N}$, recall the map $\Psi_m:\mathcal{H}^m \to G$ defined by \eqref{e.Psim}.
\begin{comment}
\[
\Psi_m(u_{1},\ldots,u_m) := \exp(u_{1})\star\cdots \star\exp(u_m).
\]
\end{comment}
Note that, as the composition of group products with the exponential map, $\Psi_m$ is continuous. Thus, by Theorem~\ref{thm-contract} (the contraction principle) and Proposition \ref{p.Hldp}, for each $m\in\mathbb{N}$, an LDP holds for $\Psi_m(Y_n^m)=S^{m,1}_n\star\cdots \star S^{m,m}_n$ with the rate function
\begin{equation*
J_m(x):= I_m(\Psi_m^{-1}(\{x\}))
:= \inf\{I_m(u): u\in \mathcal H^m \text{ and } \Psi_m(u)=x\}
\end{equation*}
where $I_m$ is as given in \eqref{eq-I_m}. Note that for each $m$ and $u\in\mathcal H^m$
\[
I_m(u) = \int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\sigma_{m,x}}(t))\,dt,
\]
where $\sigma_{m,u}:[0,1]\to G$ is the particular horizontal path introduced in Notation \ref{n.path}. Note also that $\Psi_m(u)=\sigma_{m,u}(1)$. Thus we may write
\[
J_m(x)= \inf\left\{\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\sigma_{m,u}}(t))\,dt : u\in\mathcal H^m \text{ and } \sigma_{m,u}(1)=x\right\}.
\]
For $x \in G$, let
\[
\Sigma_x := \left\{\sigma: \sigma \text{ horizontal with } \sigma(0)=e \text{ and } \sigma(1)=x\right\}
\]
and
\[ \Sigma^m_x : = \left\{\sigma_{m,u}: u\in\mathcal H^m \text{ with } \sigma_{m,u}(1)=x\right\}. \]
With this notation
\begin{align*}
J_m(x)&= \inf\left\{\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\sigma}(t))\,dt : \sigma\in \Sigma_x^m\right\}
\end{align*}
and
\[
J(x) = \inf\left\{\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\sigma}(t))\,dt : \sigma\in \Sigma_x\right\}.
\]
In Propositions \ref{p.exp-approx} and \ref{p.exp-approx-higher}, we showed that under the assumed conditions $\{\Psi_m(Y_n^m)\}$ are exponentially good approximations to $\{D_{\frac1n}S_n\}$. Thus by Theorem~\ref{t.exp-approx}, we know that a weak LDP holds for $D_{\frac1n}S_n$ with the rate function
\[
\sup_{\varepsilon>0} \liminf_{m\to\infty} \inf_{x^{\prime}\in B(x,\varepsilon)} J_m(x^{\prime}).
\]
Thus, we wish to show that this expression is exactly $J(x)$.
Moreover, noting that $J$ is a good rate function, if we further show that for every closed set $F$
\[
\inf_{x\in F} J(x) \leqslant \limsup_{m\to\infty} \inf_{x\in F} J_m(x),
\]
then the full LDP holds for $D_{\frac1n}S_n$ with the rate function $J$. But we get the latter estimate essentially for free, since for all $m$ and $x\in G$, $J(x)\leqslant J_m(x)$
since $\Sigma_x\supset\Sigma^m_x$ for all $m$.
So now note that, since $\varepsilon<\varepsilon^{\prime}$ implies that
\[ \inf_{x^{\prime}\in B(x,\varepsilon)} J_m(x^{\prime})
\geqslant \inf_{x^{\prime}\in B(x, \varepsilon^{\prime})} J_m(x^{\prime}), \]
we have
\begin{align*}
\sup_{\varepsilon>0} \liminf_{m\to\infty} \inf_{x^{\prime}\in B(x,\varepsilon)} J_m(x^{\prime})
&= \,\uparrow\lim_{\varepsilon\downarrow0} \liminf_{m\to\infty}
\inf_{x^{\prime}\in B(x,\varepsilon)} J_m(x^{\prime}).
\end{align*}
Since $J_m(x^{\prime})\geqslant J(x^{\prime})$ for all $m$ and $x^{\prime}$,
\begin{align*}
\lim_{\varepsilon\downarrow0} \lim_{\ell\to \infty} \inf_{m\geqslant \ell}
\inf_{x'\in B(x,\varepsilon)} J_m(x')
&\geqslant \lim_{\varepsilon\downarrow0} \lim_{\ell\to \infty} \inf_{m\geqslant \ell} \inf_{x'\in B(x,\varepsilon)} J(x') \\
&= \lim_{\varepsilon\downarrow0} \inf_{x'\in B(x,\varepsilon)} J(x')
= J(x).
\end{align*}
Thus, if $J(x)=\infty$ then we are done.
So assume that $J(x)<\infty$. Then, given any $\delta>0$, there exists $\gamma\in \Sigma_x$ such that
\begin{equation*
\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\gamma}(t))\,dt < J(x) + \delta/2.
\end{equation*}
Combining Lemma \ref{l.lip} and Proposition \ref{p.rb} below implies that for all $\varepsilon>0$ and $\ell\in\mathbb{N}$, there exists $m\geqslant\ell$, $x'\in B(x,(C+1)\varepsilon)$ (where $C<\infty$ is the constant in Lemma \ref{l.Gronwall2}), and $\gamma_m\in\Sigma_{x'}^m$ such that
\begin{equation*
\left|\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\gamma}(t))\,dt
- \int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\gamma_m}(t))\,dt \right|<\varepsilon.
\end{equation*}
This then implies that
\[ \lim_{\varepsilon\downarrow0} \lim_{\ell\to \infty} \inf_{m\geqslant \ell} \inf_{x'\in B(x,\varepsilon)} J_m(x')
\leqslant J(x)
\]
and completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\begin{lemma}\label{l.lip}
Suppose $c_\gamma\in L^1([0,1],\mathcal H)$ and $\Lambda^{\ast}(c_\gamma)\in L^1([0,1],[0,\infty))$. Then given $\varepsilon>0$ there exists a horizontal Lipschitz path $\sigma:[0,1]\to G$ so that $\rho_{cc}(\gamma(1),\sigma(1))< C\varepsilon$, where $C<\infty$ is a constant depending on $\gamma$ as in Lemma \ref{l.Gronwall2}, and
\[
\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_\gamma(t))\, dt -\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\sigma}(t))\,dt<\varepsilon.
\]
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
Since $c_\gamma\in L^1([0,1],\mathcal H)$ and $\Lambda^{\ast}(c_\gamma)\in L^1([0,1],[0,\infty))$, there exists $\delta>0$ such that if $E\subset[0,1]$ is a measurable set with Lebesgue measure $|E|<\delta$, then
\[ \int_0^1 |c_\gamma(t)|_\mathcal H 1_E(t)\,dt < \varepsilon \]
and
\[ \int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_\gamma(t))1_E(t)\,dt < \varepsilon. \]
Also, $c_\gamma\in L^1([0,1],\mathcal H)$ implies that there exists $R<\infty$ such that $|\{t\in[0,1]: |c_\gamma(t)|_\mathcal H>R\}|<\delta$ by Markov's inequality.
Let $\sigma:=\gamma_R$ be the continuous path such that $\gamma_R(0)=e$ and
\[ c_{\gamma_R}(t) = c_\gamma(t)1_{\{|c_\gamma(t)|_\mathcal H\leqslant R\}}.\]
Then $\sigma=\gamma_R$ is a horizontal path and
\begin{align*}
\int_0^1 |c_\gamma(t)- c_{\gamma_R}(t)|_\mathcal H\, dt
= \int_0^1 |c_\gamma(t)| 1_{\{|c_\gamma(t)|_\mathcal H>R\}}\,dt < \varepsilon.
\end{align*}
Thus by Gr\"{o}nwall's Lemma~ \ref{l.Gronwall2}), $\rho(\gamma(1),\gamma_R(1))<C\varepsilon$. We also have that
\begin{align*}
\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_\gamma(t))\, dt -\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\gamma_R}(t))\,dt
&= \int_0^1 (\Lambda^{\ast}(c_\gamma(t))-\Lambda^{\ast}(0))1_{\{|c_\gamma(t)|_\mathcal H>R\}}\,dt\\
&\leqslant \int_0^1 2\Lambda^{\ast}(c_\gamma(t))1_{\{|c_\gamma(t)|_\mathcal H>R\}}\,dt < \varepsilon
\end{align*}
for sufficiently large $R$, since $\Lambda^{\ast}$ is a convex non-negative function and thus for $R$ sufficiently large, $|v|\geqslant R$ implies that $\Lambda^{\ast}(v)\geqslant \Lambda^{\ast}(u)$ for any $|u|\leqslant |v|$.
\end{proof}
\begin{lemma}\label{l.au}
Suppose $a:[0,T]\to\mathbb R^N$ is a bounded measurable function and $\{\pi_m\}$ is a sequence of partitions $\pi_m=\{0=\pi_m^0\leqslant \pi_m^1\leqslant\cdots\leqslant \pi_m^m=T\}$ such that $\operatorname{mesh}\,\pi_m\to0$. Given any $\varepsilon>0$, there exists $m$ sufficiently large, a simple function $a_m: [0,T] \to \mathbb R^N$ defined on $\pi_m$, and a measurable subset $E_m\subseteq[0,T]$ such that $|E_m^c|<\varepsilon$, where $|\cdot|$ denotes the Lebesgue measure, and $|a_m- a|<\varepsilon$ on $E_m$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
Without loss of generality we may assume $T=1$ and $|a|\leqslant 1$. It suffices to consider the case where $N=1$ and $a\geqslant0$. To deal with $a$ taking values in $\mathbb R$, we would simply construct the same approximations to the positive and negative parts of $a$, and similarly for $N>1$ we would consider $a$ componentwise.
Fix $k\in\mathbb{N}$ sufficiently large that $\frac{1}{2^k}<\varepsilon$. Let $T^j_k:=a^{-1}\left(\left(\frac{j}{2^k},\frac{j+1}{2^k}\right])\right)$ for $j=0,\ldots,2^k-1$.
\begin{comment}
Let $b_k:[0,1]\to [0,1]$ be defined as
\[
b_k(t):=\sum_{j=0}^{2^k-1} \frac{j}{2^k}\mathbbm{1}_{T^k_j}(t)
\]
so that for all $t\in[0,1]$
\begin{equation}\label{e.bbb}
|b_k(t)-a(t)|\leqslant \frac{1}{2^k}
\end{equation}
Now we construct an approximation to $a$ on the desired partition which is uniformly close to $a$ on a set $E$ such that $|E^c|<\varepsilon$.
\end{comment}
Let $U_m^\ell := \left[\pi_m^\ell,\pi_m^{\ell+1}\right)$ for $\ell=0,\ldots,m-1$.
Since the $T^k_j$'s are measurable, we may find sufficiently large $m=m(k)$ so that for $j=0,1,\ldots,2^k-1$ there exist disjoint subsets $I^k_j\subset\{1,\ldots, m\}$ which partition $\{1,\ldots, m\}$ such that, for each $j$,
\[
\Delta^j_k:=T_k^j\,\Delta\,\left(\cup_{\ell\in I_k^j} U_m^\ell\right)
\]
has Lebesgue measure as small as one wants, for example, $|\Delta^j_k|<\frac{1}{4^k}$. These can be chosen so that $\ell\in I^j_k$ implies that $U_m^\ell\cap T^j_k\ne\emptyset$. Taking $\Delta_k:=\cup_{j=0}^{2^k-1} \Delta^j_k$, we have that $|\Delta_k| < 2^k\cdot \frac{1}{4^k} =\frac{1}{2^k}$. Take $E_m:=(\Delta_k)^c$.
For each $\ell=0,\ldots,m-1$, we have $\ell\in I^j_k$ for some $j$ and we can fix some $t_\ell^*\in U_m^\ell\cap T_k^j$, and define
\[ a_m(t) := \sum_{\ell=0}^{m-1} a(t_\ell^*) \mathbbm{1}_{U_m^\ell}(t). \]
Recalling that $\left|a(t)- \frac{j}{2^k}\right| < \frac{1}{2^k}$ for all $t\in T_j^k$ including $t_\ell^*$,
we have that, for $t\in T^j_k\cap U_m^\ell$,
\begin{align*}
|a_m(t)-a(t)| &\leqslant \left|a_m(t)-\frac{j}{2^k}\right| + \left|\frac{j}{2^k}-a(t)\right|
< \left|a(t_\ell^*) - \frac{j}{2^k}\right| + \frac{1}{2^k}
< 2\cdot\frac{1}{2^k}.
\end{align*}
Thus
\[ |a_m-a| < 2\varepsilon \qquad \text{ on } E_m = \bigcup_{j=0}^{2^k-1} \left(T^j_k\cap \left(\cup_{\ell\in I^j_k} U_m^\ell\right)\right). \]
\end{proof}
\begin{prop}\label{p.rb}
Suppose $\gamma$ is a horizontal path such that $\gamma$ is Lipschitz, and the Legendre transform satisfies $\Lambda^{\ast}\left( c_{\gamma})\in L^1([0, 1], [0, \infty) \right)$. Given $\varepsilon>0$, there exist $m \in \mathbb{N}$, $x^{\prime}\in B(x,\varepsilon)$, and $\gamma_m\in\Sigma_{x^{\prime}}^m$ such that
\begin{equation*
\left|\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\gamma}(t))\,dt
- \int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\gamma_m}(t))\,dt \right|<\varepsilon.
\end{equation*}
\end{prop}
\begin{proof}
Since $\gamma$ is Lipschitz, there exists $R<\infty$ such that $|c_{\gamma}(t)|_\mathcal H\leqslant R$ for a.e.~$t$. Since $\Lambda^{\ast}$ is convex on $\mathcal H$, $\Lambda^{\ast}$ is Lipschitz continuous on compact subsets. Fix $K\subset\mathcal H$ to be the closed ball of radius $2R$ centered at 0, and let $C'=C'_{\Lambda^{\ast}}(R)$ denote the Lipschitz coefficient of $\Lambda^{\ast}$ on $K$.
By Lemma \ref{l.au}, we may define a sequence of simple functions $\varphi_m$ on the partitions $\pi_m=\{0<\frac{1}{m}<\cdots<\frac{m-1}{m}<1\}$ such that $\varphi_m\to c_\gamma$ in $L^1([0,1],\mathcal H)$. Thus we may choose $m$ sufficiently large that $|c_\gamma-\varphi_m|_{L^1([0,1],\mathcal H)}<\delta$, where $\delta<\min\{\varepsilon/C',\varepsilon/C\}$ where $C$ is the constant appearing in the statement of Lemma \ref{l.Gronwall2}. Define $\gamma_m:[0,1]\to G$ to be the horizontal piecewise linear path so that $\gamma_m(0)=e$ and $c_{\gamma_m}(t) =\varphi_m(t)$ for all $t\in[0,1]$ where $\varphi_m$ is continuous. Note that $\gamma_m=\sigma_{m,u}$ where $u=(u_{1},\ldots,u_m)$ is given by $u_{k}=\varphi_m(t)$ for $\frac{k-1}{m}<t<\frac{k}{m}$. By Lemma \ref{l.Gronwall2}, $\gamma_m(1)\in B(x,\varepsilon)$, and
\begin{align*}
\left|\int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_\gamma(t))\,dt - \int_0^1 \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\gamma_m}(t))\,dt\right|
&\leqslant \int_0^1 |\Lambda^{\ast}(c_\gamma(t))- \Lambda^{\ast}(c_{\gamma_m}(t))|\,dt \\
&\leqslant C' \int_0^1 |c_\gamma(t)- c_{\gamma_m}(t)|_\mathcal H \,dt < C'\delta< \varepsilon.
\end{align*}
\end{proof}
\begin{remark}
Thus we see that, for the rate function $J$ the infimum is attained over Lipschitz paths.
It is also standard that the horizontal distance is defined taking the infimum over Lipschitz horizontal paths, rather than just over horizontal paths. As in the case of the rate function, these definitions are equivalent which we may see as follows.
As before, we have
\[ d_{cc}(x) = \inf\{\ell(\gamma):\gamma:[0,1]\to G \text{ horizontal and } \gamma(0)=e, \gamma(1)=x\}, \]
and also take
\[d_L(x) := \inf\{\ell(\gamma):\gamma:[0,1]\to G \text{ horizontal, Lipschitz, and } \gamma(0)=e, \gamma(1)=x\}. \]
Clearly one has $d_L\geqslant d_{cc}$. Now, any horizontal curve of positive length is an absolutely continuous reparameterization of an arclength parameterized horizontal curve, that is, for any horizontal $\gamma:[0,1]\to G$ with $\ell(\gamma)>0$, there exists a (Lipschitz) $\tilde{\gamma}:[0,\ell(\gamma)]\to G$ with $|c_{\tilde{\gamma}}|_\mathcal H=1$ so that $\gamma=\tilde{\gamma}\circ\varphi$ for $\varphi:[0,1]\to[0,\ell(\gamma)]$ given by $\varphi(t) =\int_0^t |c_\gamma(s)|\,ds$; see for example Lemma 3.71 of \cite{AgrachevBarilariBoscainBook2019}. So for any horizontal path $\gamma$ with $\ell(\gamma)<\infty$, we have the Lipschitz horizontal path $\hat{\gamma}:[0,1]\to G$ given by $\hat{\gamma}(t):=\tilde{\gamma}(\ell(\gamma) t)$ which satisfies $\hat{\gamma}(0)=e$, $\hat{\gamma}(1)=x$. Finally, the length of an absolutely continuous curve is invariant under an absolutely continuous reparameterization (this is just a change of variables in the integral, or see for example Lemma 3.70 of \cite{AgrachevBarilariBoscainBook2019}), and so $\ell(\hat{\gamma})=\ell(\gamma)$. Thus $d_L\leqslant d_{cc}$.
\end{remark}
We now consider the implications of Theorem~\ref{t.main} in the step two case when $X_n$ are i.i.d.~$\mathcal{N}(0,Id_{d_{1}})$ random variables on $\mathcal H$. We have that $\Lambda(\lambda)=\frac{1}{2}|\lambda|_\mathcal H^2$, $\Lambda^{\ast}(u)=\frac{1}{2}|u|_\mathcal H^2$. Theorem~\ref{t.main} gives an LDP for the associated sub-Riemannian random walk with the rate function
\begin{align*
J_{\mathcal{N}}(x) &:= \inf\left\{\frac{1}{2}\int_0^1 |c_\gamma(t)|_\mathcal H^2\,dt: \gamma \text{ horizontal, } \gamma(0)=e, \gamma(1)=x\right\} \\
&\notag= \inf\left\{\frac{1}{2}E(\gamma): \gamma \text{ horizontal, } \gamma(0)=e, \gamma(1)=x\right\},
\end{align*}
where $E(\gamma)$ is the energy of the path $\gamma$. Recall the length of a horizontal path is given by \eqref{eq-length}. Using an argument similar to \cite[Lemma 3.64]{AgrachevBarilariBoscainBook2019} we have the following lemma.
\begin{lemma}\label{l.3.12}
A horizontal curve $\gamma:[0,1]\to G$ is a minimizer of $\int_0^1 |c_\gamma(t)|_\mathcal H^2\,dt$ among the set of horizontal curves joining $e$ and $x$ if and only if it is a minimizer of the length functional $\ell(\gamma)$ among the horizontal curves joining $e$ and $x$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
We know that
\[
\left(\int_0^1 | c_\gamma \left( t \right)|_{\mathcal{H}}dt\right)^2\leqslant\int_0^1 | c_\gamma \left( t \right)|^2_{\mathcal{H}}dt,
\]
where equality holds if and only if $ | c_\gamma \left( t \right)|_{\mathcal{H}}$ is constant for all $t\in[0,1]$. The result follows since any horizontal curve is an absolutely continuous reparametrization of an arc length-parameterized horizontal path \cite[Lemma 3.71]{AgrachevBarilariBoscainBook2019} and $\ell(\gamma)$ is invariant under absolutely continuous reparameterizations \cite[Lemma 3.70]{AgrachevBarilariBoscainBook2019}.
\end{proof}
Thus, we can conclude that the (nontrivial) minimizer of $J_\mathcal{N}(x)$ is indeed a minimizer of $d_{cc}(x)$. As a nice consequence we have the following LDP for the normal sampling random walk on step two Carnot group $G$.
\begin{corollary}\label{c.3.13}
Suppose $G$ is step two and $X_n$ are i.i.d.~$\mathcal{N}(0, Id_{d_{1}})$ random variables on $\mathcal H$. Then Theorem~\ref{t.main} holds for the associated random walk with the rate function
\begin{align*}
J_{\mathcal{N}}(x) =\frac12d^2_{cc}(x).
\end{align*}
\end{corollary}
\begin{proof}
This is a direct consequence of Chow-Rashevskii's Theorem and Lemma~\ref{l.3.12}.
\end{proof}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 6,580 |
Scooby Snacks Fun Lovin Criminals
Blossoms share music video for 'There's A Reason Why (I Never Returned Your Calls)'
Blossoms have shared the music video for their latest offering 'There's A Reason Why'.
The video, directed by Masashi Muto, was filmed in Tokyo ahead of the Stockport band's album release.
'There's A Reason Why (I Never Returned Your Calls)' is the second single off 'Cool Like You', the follow up to Blossoms' 2016 self-titled debut album.
NEW VIDEO // Very excited to unveil the brand new video for our single 'There's A Reason Why (I Never Returned Your Calls)' as shot in Tokyo & directed by the brilliant Masashi Muto. Watch the full video at the following link now https://t.co/y7Q0R4ZqMH pic.twitter.com/4WRGaWZ7KY
— B L O S S O M S (@BlossomsBand) April 27, 2018
The band return to the UK with sold out live dates following their support tour with Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds.
Blossoms will kick off their tour with homecoming gigs in Stockport, before playing in Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, London and Norwich.
'Cool Like You' track list:
1 There's A Reason Why (I Never Returned Your Calls)
2 I Can't Stand It
3 Cool Like You
4 Unfaithful
5 Stranger Still
6 How Long Will This Last?
7 Between The Eyes
8 I Just Imagined You
9 Giving Up The Ghost
10 Lying Again
11 Love Talk | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 7,148 |
\section{Introduction}
An important tool in the study of the group $GL(n,{\mathbb{Z}})$ is provided by the geometric realization of the partially ordered set (poset) of proper direct summands of ${\mathbb{Z}}^n$. The natural inclusion ${\mathbb{Z}}^n\to {\mathbb{Q}}^n$ gives a one-to-one correspondence between proper direct summands of ${\mathbb{Z}}^n$ and proper subspaces of ${\mathbb{Q}}^n$, so that this poset is isomorphic to the spherical building $X_n$ for $GL(n,{\mathbb{Q}})$. The term ``spherical" comes from the Solomon-Tits theorem \cite{Sol}, which says that $X_n$ has the homotopy type of a bouquet of spheres:
\begin{theorem*} [Solomon-Tits Theorem] {\sl The geometric realization of the poset of proper subspaces of an $n$-dimensional vector space has the homotopy type of a bouquet of spheres of dimension $n-2$. }
\end{theorem*}
The building $X_n$ encodes the structure of parabolic subgroups of $GL(n,{\mathbb{Q}})$: they are the stabilizers of simplices. $X_n$ also parametrizes the Borel-Serre boundary of the homogeneous space for $GL(n,{\mathbb{R}})$. The top-dimensional homology $H_{n-2}(X_n)$ is the Steinberg module $I_n$ for $GL(n,{\mathbb{Q}})$, and is a dualizing module for the homology of $GL(n,{\mathbb{Z}})$, i.e. for all coefficient modules $M$ there are isomorphisms
$$H^i(GL(n,{\mathbb{Z}});M)\to H_{d-i}(GL(n,{\mathbb{Z}});M\otimes I_n),$$
where $d=n(n-1)/2$ is the virtual cohomological dimension of $GL(n,{\mathbb{Z}})$.
If one replaces $GL(n,{\mathbb{Z}})$ by the group $Aut(F_n)$ of automorphisms of the free group of rank $n$, the natural analog $FC_n$ of $X_n$ is the geometric realization of the poset of proper free factors of $F_n$. The abelianization map $F_n\to {\bf {\mathbb{Z}}}^n$ induces a map from $FC_n$ to the poset of summands of ${\mathbb{Z}}^n$. In this paper we prove the analog of the Solomon-Tits theorem for $FC_n$:
\begin{theorem} The geometric realization of the poset of proper free factors of $F_n$
has the homotopy type of a bouquet of spheres of dimension $n-2$.
\end{theorem}
By analogy, we call the top homology $H_{n-2}(FC_n)$ the {\it Steinberg module} for $Aut(F_n)$. This leaves open some intriguing questions. It has recently been shown that $Aut(F_n)$ is a virtual duality group~\cite{BF}; does the Steinberg module act as a dualizing module? [This is answered in the negative for $n=5$ in the preprint \cite{HMNP} posted in 2022.] There is an analog, called Autre space, of the homogeneous space for $GL(n,{\mathbb{Z}})$ and the Borel-Serre boundary; what is the relation between this and the ``building" of free factors?
In \cite{Qui}, Quillen developed tools for studying the homotopy type of the geometric realization $|X|$ of a poset $X$. Given an order-preserving map $f\colon X\to Y$ (a ``poset map"), there is a spectral sequence relating the homology of $|X|$, the homology of $|Y|$, and the homology of the ``fibers" $|f/y|$, where
$$f/y=\{x\in X|f(x)\leq y\}$$
with the induced poset structure.
To understand $FC_n$ then, one might try to apply Quillen's theory using the poset map $FC_n\to X_n$. However, it seems to be difficult to understand the fibers of this map. Instead, we proceed by modeling the poset of free factors topologically, as the poset $B_n$ of simplices of a certain subcomplex of the ``sphere complex" $S(M)$ studied in \cite{Hat}. There is a natural poset map from $B_n$ to $FC_n$; we compute the homotopy type of $B_n$ and of the Quillen fibers of the poset map, and apply Quillen's spectral sequence to obtain the result.
\section{Sphere systems}
Let $M$ be the compact 3-manifold obtained by taking a connected sum of $n$ copies of $S^1\times S^2$ and removing the interior of a closed ball. A {\it sphere system} in $M$ is a non-empty finite set of disjointly embedded 2-spheres in the interior of $M$, no two of which are isotopic, and none of which bounds a ball or is isotopic to the boundary sphere of $M$. The complex $S(M)$ of sphere systems in $M$ is defined to be the simplicial complex whose $k$-simplices are isotopy classes of sphere systems with $k+1$ spheres.
Fix a basepoint $p$ on $\partial M$. The fundamental group $\pi_1(M,p)$ is isomorphic to $F_n$. Any automorphism of $F_n$ can be realized by a homeomorphism of $M$ fixing $\partial M$. A theorem of Laudenbach \cite{Lau} implies that such a homeomorphism inducing the identity on $\pi_1(M,p)$ acts trivially on isotopy classes of sphere systems, so that in fact $Aut(F_n)$ acts on $S(M)$.
For $H$ a subset of $\pi_1(M,p)$, define $S_H$ to be the subcomplex of $S(M)$ consisting of isotopy classes of sphere systems $S$ such that $\pi_1(M-S,p)\supseteq H$. When $H$ is trivial, $S_H$ is $S(M)$, and in this case the following result was proved in \cite{Hat}.
\begin{theorem}\label{SH} The complex $S_H$ is contractible for each $n\geq 1$.
\end{theorem}
The proof will be a variant of the proof in \cite{Hat}, using the following fact.
\begin{lemma}\label{disjoint} Any two simplices in $S_H$ can be represented by sphere systems $\Sigma$ and $S$ such that every element of $H$ is representable by a loop disjoint from both $\Sigma$ and $S$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof} Enlarge $\Sigma$ to a maximal
sphere system $\Sigma'$, so the components of $M - \Sigma'$ are three-punctured spheres. By Proposition~1.1 of \cite{Hat} we may isotope $S$ to be in normal form with respect to $\Sigma'$. This means that $S$ intersects each component of $M - \Sigma'$ in a collection of surfaces, each having at most one boundary circle on each of the three punctures; and if one of these surfaces is a disk then it separates the two punctures not containing its boundary.
We can represent a given element of $H$ by a loop $\gamma_0$ based at $p$, such that $\gamma_0$ is disjoint from $S$ and transverse to $\Sigma'$. The points of intersection of $\gamma_0$ with $\Sigma^\prime$ divide $\gamma_0$ into a finite set of arcs, each entirely contained in one component of $M-\Sigma^\prime$. Suppose one of these arcs $\alpha$, in a component $P$ of $M-\Sigma^\prime$, has both endpoints on the same boundary sphere $\sigma$ of $P$. Since the map $\pi_0(\sigma - (S\cap \sigma)) \to \pi_0(P -(S\cap P))$ is injective (an easy consequence of normal form), there is an arc $\alpha'$ in $\sigma - (S\cap \sigma)$ with $\partial \alpha' = \partial\alpha$. Since $P$ is simply-connected, $\alpha$ is homotopic to $\alpha'$ fixing endpoints. This homotopy gives a homotopy of $\gamma_0$ eliminating the two points of $\partial\alpha$ from $\gamma_0 \cap \Sigma'$, without introducing any intersection points with $S$. After repeating this operation a finite number of times, we may assume there are no remaining arcs of $\gamma_0-(\gamma_0\cap\Sigma^\prime)$ of the specified sort.
Now consider a homotopy $F \colon I \times I \to M$ of $\gamma_0$ to a loop $\gamma_1$ disjoint from $\Sigma$. Make $F$ transverse to $\Sigma^\prime$ and look at $F^{-1}(\Sigma')$. This consists of a collection of disjoint arcs and circles. These do not meet the left and right edges of $I\times I$ since these edges map to the basepoint $p$.
We claim that every arc component of $F^{-1}(\Sigma^\prime)$ with one endpoint on $I\times\{0\}$ must have its other endpoint on $I\times\{1\}$. If not, choose an ``edgemost" arc with both endpoints on $I\times \{0\}$, i.e. an arc such that the interval of $I\times\{0\}$ bounded by the endpoints contains no other point of $F^{-1}(\Sigma^\prime)$. Then $\gamma_0$ maps this interval to an arc $\alpha$ in $M-S$ which is entirely contained in one component $P$ of $M-\Sigma^\prime$ and has both endpoints on the same boundary sphere of $P$, contradicting our
assumption that all such arcs have been eliminated.
Since the loop $\gamma_1$ is disjoint from $\Sigma$, it follows that $\gamma_0$ must be disjoint from $\Sigma$, and by construction $\gamma_0$ was disjoint from $S$.
\end{proof}
\begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem \ref{SH}]
Following the method in \cite{Hat}, a contraction of $S_H$ can be constructed by performing a sequence of surgeries on an arbitrary system $S$ in $S_H$ to eliminate its intersections with a fixed system $\Sigma$ in $S_H$, after first putting $S$ into normal form with respect to a maximal system $\Sigma'$ containing $\Sigma$. In \cite{Hat} the system $\Sigma$ itself was maximal but for the present proof $\Sigma$ must be in $S_H$ so it cannot be maximal if $H$ is nontrivial. We can choose $\Sigma$ to be a single sphere defining a vertex of $S_H$ for example. Once $S$ has been surgered to be disjoint from $\Sigma$ it will lie in the star of $S$ which is contractible so this will finish the proof. (Alternatively, we could use the simpler contraction technique of \cite{HaVo}, which reverses the roles of $S$ and $\Sigma$.)
Each surgery on $S$ is obtained by taking a circle of intersection of $S$ and $\Sigma$ which is innermost on $\Sigma$ among the remaining circles of $S\cap \Sigma$, bounding a disk $D$ in $\Sigma$ with $D\cap S=\partial D$, then taking the two spheres obtained by attaching parallel copies of $D$ to parallel copies of the two disks of $S-\partial D$. By the lemma, elements of $H$ are representable by loops disjoint from $\Sigma$ and $S$, so these loops remain disjoint from sphere systems obtained by surgering $S$ along $\Sigma$ because such surgery produces spheres lying in a neighborhood of $S\cup\Sigma$.
In order to ensure a continuous retraction the surgery process is made canonical by performing surgery on all innermost spheres at once. As a result, surgery can produce trivial spheres bounding balls in $M$ or balls punctured by the sphere $\partial M$. At the end of the surgery process we discard all trivial spheres in the resulting sphere system, and it must be checked that at least one nontrivial sphere remains. To check this we note that the end result could be achieved by doing a single surgery at a time and then renormalizing, so it suffices to show that a single surgery cannot produce two trivial spheres.
Suppose, to the contrary, that a nontrivial sphere $s$ is surgered to produced two trivial spheres $s'$ and $s''$. The spheres $s\cup s'\cup s''$ form the boundary of a three-punctured sphere $P$ in $M$. If $s'$ or $s''$, say $s'$, bounds a ball or punctured ball on the same side of $s'$ as $P$ then $P$ will be contained in this ball or punctured ball, hence so will $s$, contradicting the nontriviality of $s$. Thus $s'$ and $s''$ both bound balls or punctured balls on the opposite side from $P$. They cannot both bound punctured balls since $M$ has only one puncture, so one of them bounds a ball. This forces the other one to be isotopic to $s$, but this is not possible since $s$ is nontrivial while $s'$ and $s''$ are trivial.
\end{proof}
For an inductive argument in the next theorem we will need a generalization of the preceding theorem to manifolds with more than one boundary sphere. Let $M_k$ be the manifold obtained from the connected sum of $n$ copies of $S^1 \times S^2$ by deleting the interiors of $k$ disjoint closed balls rather than just a single ball. Choose the basepoint $p$ on one of the spheres in $\partial M$. For $H\subseteq \pi_1(M_k,p)$, define $S_H(M_k)$ to be the complex of isotopy classes of sphere systems $S$ in $M_k$ no two of which are isotopic and none of which bounds a ball or is isotopic to a sphere of $\partial M_k$, and such that $\pi_1(M-S,p)\supseteq H$.
\begin{lemma}\label{SkH}
For $n\geq 1$ and $k\geq 1$ the complex $S_H(M_{k+1})$ deformation retracts onto a subcomplex isomorphic to $S_H(M_k)$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
When $H$ is trivial this is Lemma 2.2 in \cite{Hat} and the
following proof extends the proof there to the general case after one small refinement to take $H$ into account. Let the spheres of $\partial M_{k+1}$ be $\partial_0, \cdots,\partial_k$ with $p\in \partial_0$. Call a vertex of $S_H(M_{k+1})$ {\it special\/} if it splits off a three-punctured sphere from $M_{k+1}$ having $\partial_k$ as one of its boundary components. Let $S'_H(M_{k+1})$ be the subcomplex of $S_H(M_{k+1})$ consisting of simplices with no special vertices. Then $S_H(M_{k+1})$ is obtained from $S'_H(M_{k+1})$ by attaching the stars of the special vertices to $S'_H(M_{k+1})$ along the links of the special vertices. These links can be identified with copies of $S_H(M_k)$ so they are contractible by induction on $k$. The interiors of the stars are disjoint since there are no edges joining special vertices. Hence $S_H(M_{k+1})$ deformation retracts to $S'_H(M_{k+1})$ since it is obtained by attaching contractible complexes along contractible subcomplexes.
The proof will be completed by showing that $S'_H(M_{k+1})$ deformation retracts onto a subcomplex isomorphic to $S_H(M_k)$. Let $\Sigma$ be a sphere in $M_{k+1}$ splitting off a three-punctured sphere $P$ having $\partial_0$ and $\partial_k$ as its other two boundary components. After putting a system $S$ in $S'_H(M_{k+1})$ into normal form with respect to a maximal system containing $\Sigma$, $S$ will intersect $P$ in a set of parallel disks separating $\partial_0$ from $\partial_k$. We can eliminate these disks from $S\cap P$ by pushing them across $\partial_k$ one by one and then outside $P$. This can also be described as surgering $S$ along the circles of $S\cap \Sigma$ using the disks they bound in $\Sigma$ on the side of $\partial_k$. Such a surgery on a sphere $s$ of $S$ produces a pair of sphere $s'$ and $s''$ with $s'$ the sphere we have pushed across $\partial_k$ and $s''$ a trivial sphere parallel to $\partial_k$ which is then discarded.
\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=.7]
\tikzset{partial ellipse/.style args={#1:#2:#3}{insert path={+ (#1:#3) arc (#1:#2:#3)} }}
\draw [thick] (0,0) ellipse (4cm and 2cm);
\draw [thick] (4,0) ellipse (4cm and 2cm);
\draw [thick] (0,0) [partial ellipse=-58:58:3.75cm and 1.75cm];
\draw [thick] (4,0) [partial ellipse=122:238:3.75cm and 1.75cm];
\draw [thick] (0,0) [partial ellipse=-48:48:4.25cm and 2.25cm];
\draw [thick] (4,0) [partial ellipse=-108:108:3.75cm and 1.75cm];
\draw[thick] (-2,0) circle(.5);\node (b0) at (-2,0) {$\partial_0$};
\fill (-2,-.5) circle(.075); \node (p) at (-2,-.9 ) {$p$};
\draw[thick] (2,0) circle(.5);\node (b1) at ( 2,0) {$\partial_k$};
\node (sigma) at (-3,-2) {$\Sigma$};
\node (sigma) at (2.5,-2.25) {$s$};
\node (sigma) at ( 3.9,-1.3 ) {$s'$};
\node (sigma) at ( 2,-1) {$s''$};
\node (P) at (-1,1) {$P$};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{center}
We claim that $s'$ is neither trivial nor special.
If it were either of these, it would separate $M_{k+1}$ into two components, hence $s$ would also separate. The effect of replacing $s$ by $s'$ is to move the puncture $\partial_k$ from one side of $s$ to the other side. It is then not hard to check that $s$ being neither trivial nor special implies the same is true for $s'$.
The surgery defines a path in $S(M_{k+1})$ from $S$ to $S\cup s'$ and then to $(S\cup s')-s$. The fundamental group of the component of $M_{k+1}-S$ containing $p$ is unchanged during this process so the path lies in $S'_H(M_{k+1})$. By eliminating all the disks of $S\cap P$ by surgeries in this way we see that $S'_H(M_{k+1})$ deformation retracts onto its subcomplex of the systems disjoint from $\Sigma$. This subcomplex can be identified with $S_H(M_k)$ by identifying $M_{k+1}-P$ with $M_k$ and choosing a new basepoint $p$ in $\Sigma$.
\end{proof}
For the proof of the main theorem in the paper we will work with certain subcomplexes of $S(M_k)$ and $S_H(M_k)$, the subcomplexes $Y(M_k)\subset S(M_k)$ and $Y_H(M_k)\subset S_H(M_k)$ consisting of sphere systems $S$ with $M_k - S$ connected. Eventually only the case $k=1$ will be needed, but to prove the key property that $Y(M_1)$ and $Y_H(M_1)$ are highly connected we will need to consider larger values of $k$. It will be convenient to extend the definition of $Y(M_k)$ and $Y_H(M_k)$ to allow $n=0$, with $M_k$ the sphere $S^3$ with $k$ punctures. In this case $Y(M_k)$ and $Y_H(M_k)$ are empty since all spheres in $M_k$ are separating.
\begin{definition} A simplicial complex $K$ is {\it $m$-spherical} if it is $m$-dimensional and $(m-1)$-connected. A complex is {\it spherical\/} if it is $m$-spherical for some $m$.
\end{definition}
\begin{theorem}\label{YH} Let $H$ be a free factor of $F_n=\pi_1(M_k,p)$. Then
$Y_H(M_k)$ is $(n-rk(H)-1)$-spherical, where $rk(H)$ is the rank of $H$.
\end{theorem}
In particular, when $H$ is trivial $Y(M_k)$ is $(n-1)$-spherical. This special case is part of Proposition~3.1 of \cite{Hat} whose proof contained the same error that is corrected below. A corrected proof of the special case already appeared in Proposition~3.2 of \cite{HW}.
\begin{proof}
$Y_H(M_k)$ has dimension $n-rk(H)-1$ since a maximal simplex of $Y_H(M_k)$ has $n-rk(H)$ spheres. This follows because all free factors of $F_n$ of the same rank are equivalent under automorphisms of $F_n$, and all sphere systems with connected complement and the same number of spheres are equivalent under orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of $M_k$. Thus it suffices to prove $Y_H(M_k)$ is $(n-rk(H)-2)$-connected.
Let $i\leq n-rk(H)-2$. Any map $g\colon S^i\to Y_H(M_k)$ can be extended to a map $\widehat g\colon D^{i+1}\to S_H(M_k)$ since $S_H(M_k)$ is contractible. We can assume $\widehat g$ is a simplicial map with respect to some triangulation of $D^{i+1}$ compatible with its standard piecewise linear structure. We will repeatedly redefine $\widehat g$ on the stars of certain simplices in the interior of $D^{i+1}$ until eventually the image of $\widehat g$ lies in $Y_H(M_k)$.
To each sphere system $S$ we associate a dual graph $\Gamma(S)$, with one vertex for each component of $M-S$ and one edge for each sphere in $S$. The endpoints of the edge corresponding to $s\in S$ are the vertices corresponding to the component or components adjacent to $s$. We say a sphere system $S$ is {\it purely separating\/} if $\Gamma(S)$ has no edges which begin and end at the same vertex. Each sphere system $S$ has a {\it purely separating core}, consisting of those spheres in $S$ which correspond to the core of $\Gamma(S)$, i.e., the subgraph spanned by edges with distinct vertices. The purely separating core of $S\in S_H(M_k)$ is empty if and only if $S$ is in $Y_H(M_k)$.
Let $\sigma$ be a simplex of $D^{i+1}$ of maximal dimension among the simplices $\tau$ with $\widehat g(\tau)$ purely separating. Note that all such simplices $\tau$ lie in the interior of $D^{i+1}$ since the boundary of $D^{i+1}$ maps to $Y_H$.
Let $S = \widehat g(\sigma)$, and let $N_0,\cdots,N_r$ ($r\geq 1$) be the connected components of $M-S$, with $p\in N_0$. A simplex $\tau$ in the link $lk(\sigma)$ maps to a system $T$ in the link of $S$, so that each $T_j=T\cap N_j$ is a sphere system in $N_j$ and $H\leq \pi_1(N_0-T_0,p)$. Furthermore $N_j-T_j$ must be connected for all $j$ since otherwise the core of $\Gamma(S\cup T)$ would have more edges than $\Gamma(S)$, contradicting the maximality of $\sigma$. Thus $\widehat g$ maps $lk(\sigma)$ into a subcomplex of $S_H(M_k)$ which can be identified with $Y_H(N_0)*Y(N_1)*\cdots *Y(N_r)$. Some of the factors $Y_H(N_0)$ and $Y(N_j)$ can be empty if $rk(H)=rk(\pi_1(N_0))$ or $rk(\pi_1(N_j))=0$. Such factors are $(-1)$-spherical and contribute nothing to the join.
Since $\sigma$ is a simplex in the interior of $D^{i+1}$, $lk(\sigma)$ is a sphere of dimension $i-dim(\sigma)$. Each $N_j$ has fundamental group of rank $n_j\leq n$ with equality only if $N_j$ has fewer than $k$ boundary components, so by
induction on the lexicographically ordered pair $(n,k)$, $Y_H(N_0)$ is $(n_0 - rk(H) - 1)$-spherical and, for $j\geq 1$, $Y(N_j)$ is $(n_j-1)$-spherical. The induction can start with the cases $(n,k)=(0,k)$ when the theorem is obvious.
For the join $Y_H(N_0)*Y(N_1)*\cdots *Y(N_r)$ it then follows that this is spherical of dimension $(\sum_{i=0}^r n_j) -rk(H)-1$.
Now $ n=(\sum_j n_j) + rk(\pi_1(\Gamma(S))) = (\sum_j n_j) + m - r$ where $m$ is the number of spheres in $S$, i.e., edges in $\Gamma(S)$. Since a simplicial map cannot increase dimension, we have $\dim(\sigma) \ge m-1$. Therefore
\vskip-22pt
\begin{align*}
i-\dim(\sigma)&\leq n-rk(H)-2-\dim(\sigma) \\
&\le n-rk(H)-m-1 \\
&=\Bigl(\sum_j n_j\Bigr)-rk(H)-1-r \\
& <\Bigl(\sum_j n_j\Bigr)-rk(H)-1.
\end{align*}
\vskip-8pt
Hence the map $\widehat g\colon lk(\sigma)\to Y_H(N_0)*Y(N_1)*\cdots *Y(N_r)$ can be extended to a map of a disk $D^k$ into $Y_H(N_0)*Y(N_1)*\cdots *Y(N_r)$, where $k=i+1-dim(\sigma)$. The system $S$ is compatible with every system in the image of $D^k$, so this map can be extended to a map $\sigma*D^k\to S_H$. We replace the star of $\sigma$ in $D^{i+1}$ by the disk $\partial(\sigma)*D^k$, and define $\widehat g$ on $\partial(\sigma)*D^k$ using this map.
What have we improved? The new simplices in the disk $\partial(\sigma)*D^k$ are of the form $\sigma^\prime*\tau$, where $\sigma^\prime$ is a face of $\sigma$ and $\widehat g(\tau)\subset Y_H(N_0)*Y(N_1)*\cdots *Y(N_r)$. The image of such a simplex $\sigma^\prime*\tau$ is a system $S^\prime\cup T$ such that in $\Gamma(S^\prime\cup T)$ the edges corresponding to $T$ are all loops. Therefore any simplex in the disk $\partial(\sigma)*D^k$ with purely separating image must lie in the boundary of this disk, where we have not modified $\widehat g$.
We continue this process, eliminating purely separating simplices until there are none in the image of $\widehat g$. Since every system in $S_H(M_k)-Y_H(M_k)$ has a non-trivial purely separating core, in fact the whole disk maps into $Y_H(M_k)$, and we are done.
\end{proof}
\section{Free factors}
We now turn to the poset $FC_n$ of proper
free factors of the free group $F_n$, partially ordered by inclusion. A $k$-simplex in the geometric realization $|FC_n|$ is a flag $H_0<H_1<\cdots< H_k$ of proper free factors of $F_n$, each properly included in the next. Each $H_i$ is also a free factor of $H_{i+1}$ (see ~\cite{MKS}, p. 117]), so that a maximal simplex of $|FC_n|$ has dimension
$n-2$.
We want to model free factors of $F_n$ by sphere systems in $Y=Y(M)$, by taking the fundamental group of the (connected) complement. Here $M$ is the manifold obtained from the connected sum of $n$ copies of $S^1\times S^2$ by removing the interior of a closed ball. A sphere system with $n$ spheres and connected complement, corresponding to an $(n-1)$-dimensional simplex of $Y$, in fact has simply-connected
complement. But we only want to consider proper free factors, so instead we consider the $(n-2)$-skeleton $Y^{(n-2)}$. Since $Y$ is $(n-2)$-connected by Theorem~\ref{YH}, $Y^{(n-2)}$ is $(n-2)$-spherical.
In order to relate $Y^{(n-2)}$ to $FC_n$, we take the barycentric subdivision $B_n$ of $Y^{(n-2)}$. Then $B_n$ is the geometric realization of a poset of isotopy classes of sphere systems, partially ordered by inclusion. If $S\subseteq S^\prime$ are sphere systems, we have
$\pi_1(M-S,p)\geq \pi_1(M-S^\prime,p)$, reversing the partial ordering. Taking fundamental group of the complement thus gives a poset map $f\colon B_n\to (FC_n)^{op}$, where $(FC_n)^{op}$ denotes $FC_n$ with the opposite partial ordering.
\begin{proposition}\label{lift} $f\colon B_n\to (FC_n)^{op}$ is
surjective.
\end{proposition}
\begin{proof} Every simplex of $FC_n$ is contained in a simplex of dimension $n-2$ so it suffices to show $f$ maps onto all $(n-2)$-simplices. The group $Aut(F_n)$ acts transitively on $(n-2)$-simplices of $FC_n$, and all elements of $Aut(F_n)$ are realized by homeomorphisms of $M$, so $f$ will be surjective if its image contains a single $(n-2)$-simplex, which it obviously does.
\end{proof}
\begin{corollary}\label{connected} $FC_n$ is connected if $n\geq 3$.
\end{corollary}
\begin{proof} Theorem~\ref{YH} implies that $B_n$ is connected for $n\geq 3$. So, given any two vertices of $FC_n$, lift them to vertices of $B_n$ by Proposition~\ref{lift}, connect the lifted vertices by a path, then project the path back down to $FC_n$.
\end{proof}
For any proper free factor $H$, let $B_{\geq H}$ denote the fiber $f/H$, consisting of isotopy classes of sphere systems $S$ in $B_n$ with $\pi_1(M-S,p)\geq H$.
\begin{proposition}\label{fiber}
Let $H$ be a proper free factor of $F_n$. Then $B_{\geq H}$ is $(n-rk(H)-1)$-spherical. If $rk(H)=n-1$ then $B_{\geq H}$ is a single point.
\end{proposition}
\begin{proof} The fiber
$B_{\geq H}$ is the barycentric subdivision of $Y_H$, so is $(n-rk(H)-1)$-spherical by Theorem~\ref{YH}.
Suppose $rk(H)=n-1$, so that $\pi_1(M,p)=H*\langle x\rangle$ for some $x$. An element of $B_{\geq H}$ is represented by a sphere system containing exactly one sphere $s$, which is non-separating with $\pi_1(M-s,p)=H$. Suppose $s$ and $s^\prime$ are two such spheres. Since $s$ and $s^\prime$ are both non-separating, there is a homeomorphism $h$ of $M$ taking $s$ to $s^\prime$. Since automorphisms of $H$ can be realized by homeomorphisms of $M$ fixing $s$, we may assume that the induced map on $\pi_1(M,p)$ is the identity on $H$.
\begin{claim} The induced map $h_*\colon \pi_1(M,p)\to\pi_1(M,p)$ must send $x$ to an element of
the form
$Ux^{\pm 1} V$, with $U,V\in H$.
\end{claim}
\begin{proof} Let $\{x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1}\}$ be a basis for $H$, and let $W$ be the reduced word representing $h_*(x)$ in the basis $\{x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1},x\}$ for
$\pi_1(M,p)$. By looking at the map induced by $h$ on homology, we see that the exponent sum of $x$ in $W$ must be $\pm 1$. Since $h_*$ fixes $H$, $\{x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1},W\}$ is a basis for $\pi_1(M,p)$. If $W$ contained both $x$ and $x^{-1}$, we could apply Nielsen automorphisms to the set $\{x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1},W\}$ until $W$ was of the form $x^{\pm 1}W_0x^{\pm 1}$. But $\{x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1},x^{\pm 1}W_0x^{\pm 1}\}$ is not a basis, since it is Nielsen reduced and not of the form $\{x_1^{\pm 1},\cdots,x_{n-1}^{\pm 1},x^{\pm 1}\}$ (see \cite{LySc}, Prop. 2.8)).
\end{proof}
The automorphism fixing $H$ and sending $x\mapsto Ux^{\pm 1} V$ can be realized by a homeomorphism $h^\prime$ of $M$ which takes $s$ to itself (see \cite{Lau}, Lemme 4.3.1). The composition $h^\prime h^{-1}$ sends $s^\prime$ to $s$ and induces the identity on $\pi_1$, hence acts trivially on the sphere complex. Thus $s$ and $s^\prime$ are isotopic.
\end{proof}
\begin{corollary}\label{oneconn} $FC_n$ is simply connected for $n\geq 4$.
\end{corollary}
\begin{proof} Let $e_0,e_1,\cdots,e_k$ be the edges of an edge-path loop in $FC_n$, and choose lifts $\tilde e_i$ of these edges to $B_n$. Let $e_{i-1}e_{i}$ or $e_ke_0$ be two adjacent edges of the path, meeting at the vertex $H$. The lifts $\tilde e_{i-1}$ and $\tilde e_{i}$ may not be connected, i.e. $\tilde e_{i-1 }$ may terminate at a sphere system $S^\prime$ and $\tilde e_i$ may begin at a different sphere system $S$. However, both $S$ and $S^\prime$ are in the fiber $B_{\geq H}$, which is connected by Proposition~\ref{fiber}, so we may connect $S$ and $S^\prime$ by a path in $B_{\geq H}$. Connecting the endpoints of each lifted edge in this way, we obtain a loop in $B_n$, which may be filled in by a disk if $n\geq 4$, by Proposition~\ref{fiber}. The projection of this loop to $FC_n$ is homotopic to the original loop, since each extra edge-path segment we added projects to a loop in the star of some vertex $H$, which is contractible. Therefore the projection of the disk kills our original loop in the fundamental
group.
\end{proof}
\begin{remark} It is possible to describe the complex $Y_H$ purely in terms of $F_n$. Suppose first that $H$ is trivial. Define a simplicial complex $Z$ to have vertices the rank $n-1$ free factors of $F_n$, with a set of $k$ such factors spanning a simplex in $Z$ if there is an automorphism of $F_n$ taking them to the $k$ factors obtained by deleting
the standard basis elements $x_1, \cdots, x_k$ of $F_n$ one at a time. There is a simplicial map $f\colon Y \to Z$ sending a system of $k$ spheres to the set of $k$ fundamental groups of the complements of these spheres. These fundamental groups are equivalent to the standard set of $k$ rank $n-1$ factors under an automorphism of $F_n$ since the homeomorphism group of $M$ acts transitively on simplices of $Y$ of a given
dimension, and the standard $k$ factors are the fundamental groups of the complements of the spheres in a standard system in $Y$. The last statement of Proposition~\ref{fiber} says that $f$ is a bijection on vertices, so $f$ embeds $Y$ as a subcomplex of $Z$. The maximal simplices in $Y$ and $Z$ have dimension $n-1$ and the groups $Homeo(M)$ and
$Aut(F_n)$ act transitively on these simplices, so $f$ must be surjective, hence an isomorphism. When $H$ is nontrivial, $f$ restricts to an isomorphism from $Y_H$ onto the
subcomplex $Z_H$ spanned by the vertices which are free factors containing $H$.
\end{remark}
We are now ready to apply Quillen's spectral sequence to compute the homology of $B_n$ and thus prove the main theorem.
\begin{theorem}\label{spherical} $FC_n$ is $(n-2)$-spherical.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof} We prove the theorem by induction on $n$. If $n\leq 4$, the theorem follows from Corollaries~\ref{connected} and \ref{oneconn}.
Quillen's spectral sequence (\cite{Qui}, 7.7) applied to $f\colon B_n\to (FC_n)^{op}$ becomes
$$E^2_{p,q}=H_p(FC_n;H\mapsto H_q(B_{\geq H}))\Rightarrow H_{p+q}(B_n),$$
where the $E^2$-term is computed using homology with coefficients in the functor $H\mapsto H_q(B_{\geq H})$.
For $q=0$, Corollary~\ref{connected} gives $H_0(B_{\geq H})= {\mathbb{Z}}$ for all $H$, so $E^2_{p,0}=H_p(FC_n,{\mathbb{Z}})$.
For $q>0$, we have $E^2_{p,q}=H_p(FC_n;H\mapsto \widetilde H_q(B_{\geq H}))$, and we follow Quillen (\cite{Qui}, proof of Theorem 9.1) to compute this.
For a subposet $A$ of $FC_n$, let $L_A$ denote the functor sending $H$ to a fixed abelian group $L$ if $H\in A$ and to $0$ otherwise. Set $U=FC_{\leq H}=\{H^\prime\in FC_n| H^\prime\leq H\}$ and $V=FC_{<H}=\{H^\prime\in FC_n| H^\prime< H\}$. Then
\begin{align*}
H_i(FC_n;L_V)&=H_i(V;L), \hbox{ and}\\
H_i(FC_n;L_U)&=H_i(U;L)=\begin{cases}L &\hbox{ if } $i=0$ \hbox{ and }\\ 0 &\hbox {otherwise},\end{cases}
\end{align*}
since $|U|$ is contractible. The short exact sequence of functors
$$
1\to L_V\to L_U\to L_{\{H\}}\to 1
$$
gives a long exact homology sequence, from which we compute
$$
H_i(FC_n;L_{\{H\}})=\widetilde H_{i-1}(FC_{<H};L).
$$
Now, $H\mapsto \widetilde H_q(B_{\geq H})$ is equal to the functor
$$
\bigoplus_{rk(H)=n-q-1} \widetilde H_q(B_{\geq H})_{\{H\}}
$$
since $B_{\geq H}$ is $(n-rk(H)-1)$-spherical by Proposition~\ref{fiber}. Thus
\begin{align*}
E^2_{p,q}&=H_p(FC_n;H\mapsto\widetilde H_q(B_{\geq H}))\\
&=\bigoplus_{rk(H)=n-q-1} H_p(FC_n;\widetilde H_q(B_{\geq H})_{\{H\}})\\
&=\bigoplus_{rk(H)=n-q-1} \widetilde H_{p-1}(FC_{<H};\widetilde H_q(B_{\geq H}))
\end{align*}
Free factors of $F_n$ contained in $H$ are also free factors of $H$. Since $H$ has rank $<n$. $FC_{<H}$ is $(rk(H)-2)$-spherical by induction. Therefore $E^2_{p,q}=0$ unless $p-1=(n-q-1)-2$, i.e. $p+q=n-2.$ Since all terms in the $E^2$-term of the spectral sequence are zero except the bottom row for $p\leq n-2$ and the diagonal $p+q=n-2$, all differentials are zero and we have $E^2=E^\infty$ as in the following diagram:
\begin{center}\begin{tikzpicture}
\matrix (m) [matrix of math nodes,
nodes in empty cells,
nodes={minimum width=2ex, minimum height=2ex,
text depth=1ex,
inner sep=0pt, outer sep=0pt,
anchor=base},
column sep=1.5ex, row sep=1ex]%
{
n-2 & E^2_{0,n-2} &0 &0 & 0 & \cdots \\
n-3 &0& E^2_{1,n-3} & 0 & 0 & \cdots \\
n-4 &0& 0 & E^2_{2,n-4} & 0 & \cdots \\
\vdots & \vdots & \vdots & \vdots & \ddots &0\\
1 & 0 & 0& 0 & \cdots &E^2_{n-3,1}& 0\\
0 & H_0(FC_n) & H_1(FC_n) & H_2(FC_n) & \cdots &H_{n-3}(FC_n)&H_{n-2}(FC_n)& 0\\
& 0 & 1 & 2 & \cdots & n-3&n-2 & \strut \\
};
\draw[thick] (-6,-1.65) to (6 ,-1.65);
\draw[thick] (-5,2.5) to (-5,-2.25);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{center}
\vskip-6pt
Since $FC_n$ is connected and the spectral sequence converges to $H_*(B_n)$, which is $(n-3)$-connected, we
must have $\tilde H_i(FC_n)=0$ for $i\neq n-2$. Since $FC_n$ is simply-connected by Corollary~\ref{oneconn}, this implies that $FC_n$ is $(n-3)$-connected by the Hurewicz theorem. The theorem follows since $FC_n$ is $(n-2)$-dimensional.\end{proof}
\section{The Cohen-Macaulay Property}
In a PL triangulation of an $n$-dimensional sphere, the link of every $k$-simplex is an $(n-k-1)$-sphere. A poset is said to be {\it Cohen-Macaulay} of dimension $n$ if its geometric realization is $n$-spherical and the link of every $k$-simplex is
$(n-k-1)$-spherical (see \cite{Qui}). Spherical buildings are Cohen-Macaulay, and we remark that $FC_n$ also has this nice local property.
To see this, let $\sigma=\{H_0<H_1<\cdots<H_k\}$ be a $k$-simplex of $FC_n$. The link of $\sigma$ is the join of subcomplexes $FC_{H_i,H_{i+1}}$ of $FC_n $ spanned by free factors $H$ with $H_i<H<H_{i+1}$ ($-1\leq i\leq k$, with the conventions $H_{-1}=1$ and $H_{k+1}=F_n$). Counting dimensions, we see that it suffices to show that for each $r$ and $s$ with $0\leq s <r$, the poset $FC_{r,s}$ of proper free factors $H$ of $F_r$ which properly contain $F_s$ is $(r-s-2)$-spherical. The proof of this is identical to the proof that $FC_n$ is $(n-2)$-spherical, after setting $n=r$ and replacing the complex $Y$ by $Y_{F_s}$.
\section{The map to the building}
As mentioned in the introduction,
the abelianization map $F_n\to {\mathbb{Z}}^n$ induces a map from the free factor complex $FC_n$ to the building $X_n$, since summands of ${\mathbb{Z}}^n$ correspond to subspaces of ${\mathbb{Q}}^n$. Since the map $Aut(F_n)\to GL(n,{\mathbb{Z}})$ is surjective, every basis for ${\mathbb{Z}}^n$ lifts to a basis for $F_n$, and hence every flag of summands of ${\mathbb{Z}}^n$ lifts to a flag of free factors of $F_n$, i.e. the map $FC_n\to X_n$ is surjective.
Given a basis $\{v_1,\cdots,v_n\}$ for ${\mathbb{Q}}^n$, consider the subcomplex of $X_n$ consisting of all flags of subspaces of the form $\langle v_{i_1}\rangle\subset \langle v_{i_1},v_{i_2}\rangle\subset\cdots\subset\langle v_{i_1},\cdots,v_{i_{n-1}}\rangle$. This subcomplex can be identified with the barycentric subdivision of the boundary of an $(n-1)$-dimensional simplex, so forms an $(n-2)$-dimensional sphere in $X_n$, called an {\it apartment}.
The construction above applied to a basis of $F_n$ instead of ${\mathbb{Q}}^n$ yields an $(n-2)$-dimensional sphere in $FC_n$.
In particular, $H_{n-2}(FC_n)$ is non-trivial. This sphere maps to an apartment in $X_n$ showing that the induced map $H_{n-2}(FC_n)\to H_{n-2}(X_n)$ is also non-trivial.
The property of buildings which is missing in $FC_n$ is that given any two maximal simplices there is an apartment which contains both of them. For example, for $n=3$ and $F_3$ free on $\{x,y,z\}$ there is no ``apartment" which contains both the one-cells corresponding to $\langle x \rangle\subset \langle x,y\rangle$ and
$\langle yxy^{-1}\rangle\subset \langle x,y \rangle$,
since $x$ and $yxy^{-1}$ do not form part of a basis of $F_3$.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 4,371 |
\section{Introduction}
\noindent The class of all topological groups is far too general to admit many useful general theorems. For that reason, a few simplifying assumptions are almost always made in the literature when studying them, so that the groups are ``nice'' enough. The assumptions come in two broad classes: separability assumptions, which assure that the topology is ``rich enough,'' as well as compactness and countability assumptions, which assure that the group is not ``too big.'' For instance, topological groups are nearly always assumed to be Hausdorff.
However, the most important assumption commonly made,
especially for the purpose of harmonic analysis, is local compactness. Locally compact groups (and \textit{only} locally compact groups) admit Borel measures invariant under the group action. This, in turn, provides the existence of a group $C^*$-algebra that carries all of the information from the representation theory of the group.
Most of the literature on representation theory and harmonic analysis is written from the point of view of separable locally compact groups, even in places where it may not be necessary to make that requirement. Unfortunately, infinite-dimensional Lie groups are never locally compact. Hence there is no Haar measure and no hope of a Plancherel formula. The standard tools of harmonic analysis, such as convolutions and group $C^*$-algebras, appear to break down completely.
While harmonic analysis may appear at first glance to be at a dead end for infinite-dimensional groups, a surprising amount of progress has been made on their representation theory. For instance, all separable unitary representations of the full unitary group $U(\mathcal{H})$ of a separable Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ have been classified (\cite{PickrellUnitary}). For direct limits of classical Lie groups, there have been several important results (see, for instance,~\cite{Ol1990}).
More recently, there has also been some progress in finding a good context for studying harmonic analysis on direct-limit groups. For instance, \cite{Grundling} constructed a suitable group $C^*$-algebra for certain direct-limit groups. See also \cite{LL}. A very natural construction has also been used by Olshanski, Borodin, Kerov, and Vershik to prove a sort of Plancherel theorem for certain direct-limit groups (\cite{BO, KOV}). The basic ideas of the construction of the regular representation seem to originate from a paper by Pickrell (\cite{PickrellGrassmann}).
We briefly summarize the construction here for the purposes of comparison with the ideas discussed in this paper. One begins with an increasing chain $\{G_k\}_{k\in\mathbb{N}}$ of compact groups and considers the direct-limit group $G\equiv \varinjlim G_k = \cup_{k\in \mathbb{N}} G_k$. Denote the inclusion maps by $i_n:G_n\rightarrow G_{n+1}$. Next, one attempts to construct projections $p_n:G_{n+1}\rightarrow G_n$ for each $n$ such that $p_n$ is $G_n$-equivariant and $p_n\circ i_n = \mathrm{Id}$. It may not be possible to construct such a collection of projections that are continuous, but they should at least be measurable. These projections determine a projective limit space $\overline{G} = \varprojlim G_n$, in which $G$ is a nowhere-dense subset.
Next, one considers the normalized Haar measure $\mu_n$ on $G_n$ for each $n$. Because each projection $p_n$ is $G_n$-equivariant and the normalized Haar measure on a compact group is unique, one sees that $p_n^*(\mu_{n+1}) = \mu_n$ for each $n\in\mathbb{N}$. This in turn produces a $G_n$-equivariant isometric embedding $L^2(G_n)\rightarrow L^2(G_{n+1})$. Under the right technical conditions, the projective family of probability measures $\{\mu_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ induces a limit measure $\mu$ on $\overline{G} = \varinjlim G_k$ by Kolmogorov's theorem in such a way that $L^2(\overline{G}) = \varinjlim L^2(G_n)$, where the latter injective limit is taken in the category of Hilbert spaces.
Finally, one notes that $G$ acts by translations on $L^2(\overline{G})$, producing a unitary representation which may then be decomposed. This representation is in a natural way a generalization for the regular representation defined in terms of the Haar measure for a locally compact group. This program has been carried out for the infinite unitary group $\mathrm{U}(\infty) = \cup_{n\in\mathbb{N}} \mathrm{U}(n)$ (see \cite{BO}) and the infinite symmetric group $S_\infty = \cup_{n\in\mathbb{N}} S_n$ (see \cite{KOV}).
The disadvantage of this approach, however, is that it gives information about functions on $\overline{G}$, which is a very different space from $G$ (in particular, the set $G$ considered as a subset of $\overline{G}$ has measure $0$).
An alternate path towards harmonic analysis on direct limits of compact groups is provided by the theory of invariant means and amenability. Amenability theory is actually a very old subject within mathematics. Unfortunately, many of the most interesting results are true only for locally compact groups. Nevertheless, we will see that it is possible to define unitary ``regular representations'' for direct limits of compact groups which provide a certain decomposition theory for functions defined on the group $G$ itself (see also~\cite{Bel}). Amenability theory has also been used to develop a generalization of the construction of induced representations (see \cite{OW,W}).
This paper aims to collect in one place some of the most relevant results from amenability theory as applied to direct-limit groups. We begin in Section 2 with a review of the basic functional-analytic and topological properties of means. Section 3 discusses some of the basic properties of amenable groups, including fixed-point theorems. In Section 4 we use amenability to explore the question of which Hilbert space representations of a group are unitarizable. In Section 5 we construct a generalization of the regular representation using invariant means and explore some properties of these representations. Section 6 reviews the theory of almost-periodic functions. Section 7 shows the resulting ``Plancherel Theorem'' for direct limits of locally compact abelian groups. Finally, in Section 8 we discuss the application of invariant means to spherical analysis on direct limits of Gelfand pairs. In particular, we show how several well-known results about such pairs can be motivated by invariant means.
For treatments of the classical theory of invariant means on locally compact groups, we refer the reader to \cite{ATP,JPP}. Brief overviews of amenability theory may also be found in \cite{BHV,Bel,Fremlin}. For more functional-analytic approaches to studying functions on a (not-necessarily locally compact) topological group, see \cite{Bel,Grundling, LL}.
\section{Means on Topological Groups}
\label{meansSection}
\noindent Consider the space $l^\infty(G)$ of all bounded functions $f:G\rightarrow\mathbb{C}$, with norm $||f|| = \sup_{g\in G} f(g)$ and involution given by $f^*(g) = \overline{f(g)}$ for all $g\in G$. Then $l^\infty(G)$ is a commutative $C^*$-algebra. In fact, $l^\infty(G)$ is a representation of $G$ under the $L$ given by $L_g f(h) = f(g^{-1}h)$ for $g\in G$ and $f\in l^\infty(G)$. One can also consider the action $R$ given by $R_gf(h) = f(hg)$.
Because we are interested in continuous representations of $G$, it is natural to consider the space $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$ of functions $f\in l^\infty(G)$ such that the map $G\mapsto l^\infty(G)$, $g\mapsto L_g(f)$ is continuous. These functions are precisely the bounded uniformly continuous functions on $G$ for the right-uniformity (see \cite{Kelley} for more on uniform spaces). Similarly, one defines $\mathrm{LUC}_b(G)$ to be the space of functions $f\in l^\infty(G)$ such that $G\mapsto l^\infty(G)$, $g\mapsto R_g(f)$ is continuous. Finally, we define the space of bi-uniformly continuous functions to be $\mathrm{UC}_b(G)=\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)\cap \mathrm{LUC}_b(G)$. One has that $L$ provides a continuous representation of $G$ on $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$, that $R$ is a continuous representation of $G$ on $\mathrm{LUC}_b(G)$.
Now suppose that $\mathcal{A}$ is a closed $C^*$-subalgebra of the space $l^\infty(G)$ of all bounded functions on $G$ which contains the constant functions. A \textbf{mean} on $\mathcal{A}$ is a continuous linear functional $\mu\in \mathcal{A}^*$ such that
\begin{enumerate}
\item $\mu(\mathbf{1}) = 1$
\item $\mu(f)\geq 0$ if $f\in \mathcal{A}$ and $f\geq 0$.
\end{enumerate}
In other words, $\mu$ is a state for the $C^*$-algebra $\mathcal{A}$. It immediately follows that if $f\in \mathcal{A}$ with $m\leq f(g) \leq M$ for all $g\in G$, then
\[
m\leq \mu(f) \leq M.
\]
We write $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ for the space of all all means on $\mathcal{A}$. Note that $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ is contained in the closed unit ball of the dual space $\mathcal{A}^*$ of all continuous linear functionals on $A$. Furthermore, it is clear that $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ is a weak-$*$ closed, convex subset of $B_1(\mathcal{A}^*)$. From the Banach-Alauglu Theorem, it follows that $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ is weak-$*$ compact, convex subset of $\mathcal{A}^*$. We warn the reader, however, that unless $\mathcal{A}$ is separable, it is not true in general that $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ is sequentially compact. This subtlety has some important consequences, as we will later see.
For each $g\in G$, we may define a mean $\delta_g\in \mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ by $\delta_g(f) = f(g)$ for each $f\in \mathcal{A}$. We refer to these means as \textbf{point evaluations}. We will soon see that these point evaluations generate, in a certain sense all means on $\mathcal{A}$. We begin with a lemma about means on $l^\infty(G)$.
\begin{lemma}
\label{extremalPoints}
The means $\delta_g\in \mathfrak{M}(l^\infty(G))$ for $g\in G$ are precisely the extremal points of $\mathfrak{M}(l^\infty(G))$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
Suppose that $\mu\in\mathfrak{M}(l^\infty(G))$ is an extremal point. Suppose that $A\subset G$, and define $\mu_A(f)=\mu(1_A f)$. If $\mu_A(\textbf{1})\neq 0$, then we see that $\widetilde{\mu}_A = \frac{1}{\mu_A(\textbf{1})} \mu_A$ is a mean in $\mathfrak{M}(l^\infty(G))$. We define the zero set of $\mu$ to be the set
\[
Z_\mu = \bigcup_{A\subseteq G \text{ s.t.} \mu_A(\textbf{1}) = 0} A.
\]
We can then define the support of $\mu$ to be the set
\[
\supp \mu = G\backslash Z_\mu.
\]
Note that $\mu_B(\textbf{1})\neq 0$ for all non-empty $B\subseteq \supp \mu$ and that $\mu(f) = \mu(1_{\supp\mu} f)$ for all $f\in \mathcal{A}$.
It is clear that $\supp \mu \neq \emptyset$; in fact, if $\supp \mu = \emptyset$, then $\mu(\textbf{1}) =0$, which contradicts the assumption that $\mu(\textbf{1})=1$.
Now suppose that $\supp \mu \neq \emptyset$ contains at least two elements. Then we can write $\supp \mu = A \mathbin{\dot{\cup}} B$, where $A,B\neq \emptyset$. It follows that
\begin{equation}
\label{extremalContradiction}
\mu = \mu_{A} + \mu_{B}= \mu_A(\textbf{1}) \widetilde{\mu}_A + \mu_B(\textbf{1})\widetilde{\mu}_B
\end{equation}
Then $\widetilde{\mu}_A(1) + \widetilde{\mu}_B(1) = \mu(1_{\supp\mu}1) = 1$. Furthermore, $\mu_A\neq \mu_B$ (for instance, $\mu_A(1_A) = 1$ but $\mu_B(1_A) = 0$). Thus \ref{extremalContradiction} contradicts the assumption that $\mu$ is an extremal point. It follows that $\supp\mu = \{g\}$ for some $g\in G$, and hence $\mu = \delta_g$.
\end{proof}
\begin{theorem}
\label{deltaDensity}
The convex hull of the point evaluations are weak-$*$ dense in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Because $\mathfrak{M}(l^\infty(G))$ is a compact, convex subset of $l^\infty(G)^*$ under the weak-$*$ topology, the result follows for the case $\mathcal{A}=l^\infty(G)$ by Lemma~\ref{extremalPoints} and the Krein-Milman theorem.
For each $f\in l^\infty(G)$, we see that $f = (f+||f||_\infty\textbf{1}) - ||f||_\infty\textbf{1}$, where $f+||f||_\infty\textbf{1} \geq 0$ and $||f||_\infty\textbf{1}\in \mathcal{A}$. Thus, the hypotheses of the M.\ Riesz Extension Theorem are satisfied, and it follows that every positive functional on $\mathcal{A}$ may be extended to a positive functional on $l^\infty(G)$. In particular, every mean on $\mathcal{A}$ may be extended to a mean on $l^\infty(G)$. Because the convex hull of point evaluations is weak-$*$ dense in $l^\infty(G)$, the theorem follows.
\end{proof}
We warn the reader that despite Theorem~\ref{deltaDensity}, one can not in general say that an arbitrary mean in $\mathfrak{M}(A)$ is a weak-$*$ limit of convex combinations of point evaluations unless $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ is first-countable.
Means may be thought of as a generalization of the notion of probability measures on $G$. In fact, it possible to view means on $\mathcal{A}$ as legitimate probability measures on a certain compactification of $G$.
Denote by $\widehat{A}$ the space of all characters on $G$ under the weak-$*$ topology on $\mathcal{A}^*$. Then $\widehat{A}$ is a compact Hausdorff space. Recall that the Gelfand Transform provides an isomorphism $\verb!^!:\mathcal{A}\rightarrow C(\widehat{A})$, given by $\widehat{f}(\lambda) = \lambda(f)$ for each $f\in\mathcal{A}$ and $\lambda\in\widehat{A}$. It follows that there is a linear isomorphism between the states (that is, means) of $\mathcal{A}$ and the states of $C(\widehat{A})$. But the states of $C(\widehat{A})$ are precisely the Radon measures on $\widehat{A}$ by the Riesz Representation Theorem.
Thus, the means on $\mathcal{A}$ correspond bijectively to \textit{measures} on $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$. For a given mean $\mu$ on $\mathcal{A}$, we will denote the corresponding measure on $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$ by $\widehat{\mu}$. Due to the fact that
\[
\mu(f) = \int_{\widehat{\mathcal{A}}} \widehat{f}(x) d\widehat{\mu}(x),
\]
we will occasionally use the notation
\[
\mu(f) \equiv \int_G f(x) d\mu(x)
\]
for $\mu\in\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ and $f\in\mathcal{A}$. This notation is slightly misleading because $\mu$ is not, in fact, a measure on $G$. Nevertheless, we note that $\mu$ does share some properties with integrals; namely, it is linear and satisfies the inequality $|\mu(f)| \leq \mu(|f|)\leq ||f||_\infty$.
Each point-evaluation functional $\delta_g: f\mapsto f(g)$ for $g\in G$ defines a mean in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$. We write $i_\mathcal{A}:G\rightarrow \mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ for the map $g\mapsto \delta_g$ and denote its image by $G_\mathcal{A}=\{\delta_g| g\in G\}$.
\begin{lemma}
\label{characterDensity}
The set $G_\mathcal{A}$ is dense in $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
We denote the point evaluation $\delta_g$ by $\widehat{g}$ when we wish to consider it as an element of $\widehat{A}$. Note that, when considered as a mean in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$, the point evaluation $\delta_g$ corresponds under the Gelfand transform to the point measure $\delta_{\widehat{g}}$ on $\widehat{A}$; in fact, if $f\in \mathcal{A}$, then
$\delta_g(f)=f(g) = \widehat{f}(\widehat{g})$. It follows from Theorem~\ref{deltaDensity} that the convex hull of the point measures $\delta_{\widehat{g}}$ is dense in the space of probability measures on $\widehat{A}$. In particular, every point measure $\delta_x$ on $\widehat{A}$, where $x\in\widehat{A}$, is in the closed convex hull of the point measures $\delta_{\widehat{g}}$.
Suppose that $x\in\widehat{A}$ is not in the closure of $G_\mathcal{A}$. Then Urysohn's Lemma implies the existence of a continuous function $h\in C(\widehat{A})$ such that $h=0$ on the restriction to the closure of $G_\mathcal{A}$ but $h(x)=1$. Hence $\delta_x(h) = 1$ but $\mu(h) = 0$ for every measure $\mu$ in the closed convex hull of the point measures $\delta_{\widehat{g}}$, which contradicts the weak-$*$ density noted above.
\end{proof}
It is clear that $i_\mathcal{A}$ is injective if and only if $\mathcal{A}$ separates points on $G$. We will later see some examples for which $i_\mathcal{A}$ is far from being injective.
We end this section with three topological results about the compactification $i_\mathcal{A}:G\rightarrow \widehat{\mathcal{A}}$.
\begin{lemma}
If $\mathcal{A}\subseteq C(G)$, then $i_\mathcal{A}$ is continuous.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
A basis for the weak-$*$ topology on $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$ is given by the neighborhoods
\[
B_{f_1,\ldots f_k}^\epsilon(\delta_h) = \left\{\left.x\in \widehat{\mathcal{A}} \right| |x(f_i)-\delta_h(f_i))|<\epsilon \text{ for all } 1\leq i\leq k \right\},
\]
where $f_i,\ldots f_k \in \mathcal{A}$, $h\in G$, and $\epsilon > 0$, provide a basis for the weak-$*$ topology on $\mathcal{A}$ (here we use that $G_{\mathcal{A}}$ is dense in $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$). Pick $g\in i_\mathcal{A}^{-1}(B_{f_1,\ldots f_k}^\epsilon(\delta_h))$. Then $|f_i(g)-f_i(h)|<\epsilon$ for $1\leq i\leq k$. Since $f_1,\ldots f_k\in C(G)$, it follows that there is an open neighborhood $V$ of $g$ such that $|f_i(a)-f_i(h)|<\epsilon$ for all $a\in V$. It is clear that $V\subseteq i_\mathcal{A}^{-1}(B_{f_1,\ldots f_k}^\epsilon(h))$ and we are done.
\end{proof}
\begin{theorem}
Suppose that $\mathcal{A}$ separates closed subsets of $G$ (for instance, if $\mathcal{A}=l^\infty(G)$ or if $G$ has a normal topology and $C(G)\subseteq \mathcal{A}$). If $U$ and $V$ are disjoint closed subsets of $G$, then $i_\mathcal{A}(U)$ and $i_\mathcal{A}(V)$ have disjoint closures in~$\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Suppose that $U$ and $V$ are disjoint closed subsets of $G$ and that $f:G\rightarrow [0,1]$ is an element of $\mathcal{A}$ such that $f|_U=0$ and $f|_V = 1$. Thus, for any $g\in U$ and $h\in V$, one has that $\delta_g(f) = 0$ and $\delta_h(f)=1$. It immediately follows that $x(f) = 0$ for each $x\in \overline{i_\mathcal{A}(U)}$ and that $y(f) = 1$ for any $y \in \overline{i_\mathcal{A}(V)}$. The result then follows.
\end{proof}
\begin{theorem}
\label{homeomorphismTheorem}
Suppose that for each closed set $F\subseteq G$ and each point $g\in G\backslash F$ there is a function $f\in\mathcal{A}$ such that $f|_F=0$ but $f(g)=1$. Then $i_\mathcal{A}$ is a homeomorphism onto its image.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Pick a closed set $F\subseteq G$, a point $g\notin F$ and a function $f\in\mathcal{A}$ such that $f|_F=0$ but $f(g)=1$. Then $\delta_g(f) = 1$ and $x(f) = 0$ for all $x$ in the closure $\overline{i_\mathcal{A}(F)}$. Then $\delta_g\notin \overline{i_\mathcal{A}(F)}$ for all $g\in G\backslash F$. In particular, $i_\mathcal{A}(F)$ is closed in the relative topology of $G_\mathcal{A}$. Thus, $i_\mathcal{A}$ is a closed map onto its image. Since $\mathcal{A}$ separates points on $G$, we have that $i_\mathcal{A}$ is a continuous injection. The result follows.
\end{proof}
\begin{corollary}
The map $i_{\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)}: G\rightarrow \widehat{\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)}$ is a homeomorphism onto its image.
\end{corollary}
\begin{proof}
Because $G$ is a topological group, it is also a uniform space using the left action of the group on itself. Its topology is thus given by a family of semimetrics. It follows that there are sufficient right-uniformly continuous functions on $G$ to separate closed sets from points. The result then follows from Theorem~\ref{homeomorphismTheorem}.
\end{proof}
\section{Amenable Groups}
\noindent For the rest of this article, we assume that $\mathcal{A}\subseteq \mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$. One can then define a continuous left-action of $G$ on $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ by setting $g\cdot \mu(f) = \mu(L_{g^{-1}} f)$. We say that a mean $\mu\in\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ is an \textbf{invariant mean on $\mathcal{A}$} if $g\cdot \mu = \mu$ for all $g\in G$ (that is, if $\mu(L_g f) = \mu(f)$ for all $g\in G$). One says that $G$ is an \textbf{amenable group} if there is a nontrivial invariant mean in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(G))$.
It is not difficult to show that every character in $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$ is a positive functional on $\mathcal{A}$ and that, in fact, $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$ is a closed subset of $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ in the weak-$*$ topology. Furthermore, the $G$-action on $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ restricts to a continuous left-action of $G$ on $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$, and so it is possible to ask whether there are any $G$-invariant characters in $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$.
Recalling from Section~\ref{meansSection} the correspondence between Radon measures on $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$ and means on $\mathcal{A}$, we see that there is a one-to-one correspondence between $G$-invariant means in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$ and $G$-invariant measures on $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$.
If there is a nontrivial invariant mean in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(G))$, then we say that $G$ is \textbf{amenable}. The term ``amenable'' is due to M. M. Day, who discovered a very powerful alternate characterization of amenablility in terms of the affine actions of a group on compact convex sets. (An \textbf{affine action} of a group $G$ on a convex subset of $K$ of a vector space $V$ is an action $G\times K\rightarrow K$, $(g,v)\mapsto g\cdot v$ such that $g\cdot (tv + (1-t) w) = t(g\cdot v) + (1-t)(g\cdot w)$ for all $v,w\in K$, $g\in G$, and $t\in [0,1]$.)
\begin{theorem}[Day's Fixed Point Theorem \cite{Day2}]
Let $G$ be a topological group. The following are equivalent:
\begin{enumerate}
\item $G$ is amenable.
\item Every compact Hausdorff space on which $G$ acts continuously admits a $G$-invariant Radon probability measure.
\item Every continuous affine action of $G$ on a compact convex subset $K$ of a locally convex vector $V$ space has a fixed point.
\end{enumerate}
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
We closely follow the proof in \cite[Theorem G.1.7]{BHV}.
We begin with $(1)\implies (2)$. Let $K$ be a compact Hausdorff space with a continuous $G$-action, and let $\mu\in \mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(G))$ be a $G$-invariant mean. Fix a point $v\in K$ and consider the continuous map $p:G\rightarrow K$ by $p(g)= g\cdot v$. We define a measure $\mu_K$ on $K$ by setting
\[
\mu_K(\phi) = \mu(\phi\circ p)
\]
for each $\phi\in C(X)$. One shows that $\phi\circ p\in \mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$. It is clear that $\mu_K$ defines a continuous positive functional on $C(X)$ with total mass $||\mu_K||=\mu_K(\textbf{1})=1$. Thus $\mu_K$ defines a $G$-invariant probability measure on $K$ by the Riesz representation theorem.
To prove $(2)\implies (3)$, let $K$ be a compact convex subset of a locally convex vector space $V$, and suppose that $G$ acts affinely on $K$. In particular, by $(2)$ there is a $G$-invariant probability measure $\mu_K$.
Now let $\mu$ be a Radon measure on $K$. By \cite{Rudin}, there is $b_\mu\in K$ such that
\[
\langle b_\mu,\lambda \rangle = \int_K \langle v,\lambda \rangle d\mu_K(v)
\]
for each $\lambda\in V^*$. One refers to $b_\mu$ as the \textbf{barycenter} of $\mu$.
Note that the space of all Radon measures on $K$ is identical to the space of all means on $C(K)$. Suppose that $\mu = c_1 \delta_{v_1}+ \cdots +c_k\delta_{v_k}$, where $c_1,\ldots c_k\geq 0$ with $c_1+\cdots +c_k = 1$, and where $v_1,\ldots, v_k\in K$. $ \sum_{i=1}^k c_i v_i$. If $g\in G$, then $g\cdot \mu = c_1 \delta_{g\cdot v_1} + \cdots c_k\delta_{g\cdot v_k}$. Thus $b_{g\cdot \mu} = g\cdot b_\mu$. Since the convex hull of point measures on $K$ is weak-$*$ dense in the space of all measures on $K$, it follows that $b_{g\cdot\mu} = g\cdot b_\mu$ for all $g\in G$ and all Radon measures $\mu$ on $K$.
In particular, for the $G$-invariant measure $\mu_K$ on $K$, we see that $g\cdot b_{\mu_K} = b_{g\cdot \mu_K} = b_{\mu_K}$. Hence $b_{\mu_K}$ is a $G$-fixed point in $K$.
Finally, to see that $(3)\implies (1)$, we need only note that $G$ acts continuously on the compact convex subset $\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(G))$ of the vector space $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)^*$. Thus, $(3)$ immediately implies the existence of a $G$-invariant mean in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$.
\end{proof}
We immediately arrive at the following corollary:
\begin{corollary}
Suppose that $G$ is an amenable group. Then there is a right-$G$-invariant mean on $\mathrm{LUC}_b(G)$. Furthermore, there is a mean in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{UC}_b(G))$ which is both right- and left-$G$-invariant and invariant under the transformation $f\mapsto f^\vee$ given by $f^\vee(x) = f(x^{-1})$.
\end{corollary}
The following theorem collects many of the most important lemmas for constructing amenable groups.
\begin{theorem}(\cite[Proposition G.2.2]{BHV}, \cite[Theorem 449C, Corollary 449F]{Fremlin})
Let $G$ be a topological group. Then
\begin{enumerate}
\item If $G$ is compact, then $G$ is amenable.
\item If $G$ abelian, then $G$ is amenable.
\item If $G$ is amenable and $H$ is a closed normal subgroup of $G$, then $G/H$ is amenable.
\item If $G$ is amenable and $H$ is an open subgroup of $G$, then $H$ is amenable.
\item If $G$ is amenable and $H$ is a dense subgroup of $G$, then $H$ is amenable.
\item If $H$ is a closed normal subgroup of $G$ such that $H$ and $G/H$ are amenable, then $G$ is amenable.
\end{enumerate}
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
To prove (1), we note that if $G$ is compact, then $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)=C(G)$. Thus Haar measure provides an invariant mean on $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$.
Statement (2) is the Markov-Kakutani fixed-point theorem. See \cite[Theorem G.2.1]{BHV} for a proof.
To prove (3), we suppose that $G$ is amenable and $H$ is a closed normal subgroup. Write $p:G\rightarrow G/H$ for the canonical quotient map. We claim that if $f\in \mathrm{RUC}_b(G/H)$, then $f\circ p\in \mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$. In fact, if $||L_{gH} f-f||_\infty <\epsilon$ for all $gH$ in some neighborhood $V$ of $eH$, then $||L_g (f\circ p)-f\circ p||_\infty <\epsilon$ for all $g\in p^{-1}(V)$, and the claim follows. Furthermore, $||f\circ p||_\infty = ||f||_\infty$. Now let $\mu_G$ be an invariant mean on $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$. Then we may define a mean $\mu_{G/H}$ on $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G/H)$ by setting $\mu_{G/H}(f) = \mu_G(f\circ p)$ for all $f\in \mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$. It is clear that $\mu_{G/H}$ is $G/H$-invariant. Thus $G/H$ is amenable.
See \cite[Corollary 449F]{Fremlin} for the proofs of $(4)$ and $(5)$.
To prove (6), we suppose that $H$ is a closed normal subgroup of $G$ such that $H$ and $G/H$ are amenable. Let $G$ act continuously and affinely on a compact convex subset $K$ of a locally-convex vector space $V$. We denote by $K^H$ the set of all $H$-fixed points in $K$. Because $H$ is amenable, Day's theorem shows that $K^H$ is nonempty. It is not difficult to show that $K^H$ is a closed, convex subset of $V$. Furthermore, the action of $G$ on $K^H$ factors through to a well-defined, continuous action of $G/H$ on $K^H$ defined by $gH\cdot v = g \cdot v$ for all $v\in K$ and $gH\in G/H$. Finally, $K^H$ must possess a $G/H$-fixed point $x$ because $G/H$ by Day's Theorem because $G/H$ is amenable. Thus $x$ is a $G$-fixed in $K$. Hence $G$ is amenable.
\end{proof}
It is well-known that every closed subgroup of an amenable \textit{locally compact} group is amenable. We caution the reader, however, that this result is not true for groups which are not locally-compact (see \cite[p. 457] {BHV}).
There is one more well-known method of constructing amenable groups which is of particular interest to us here: any direct limit of amenable groups is again amenable.
\begin{theorem}(\cite[Proposition 13.6]{JPP}).
\label{directLimitsAmenable}
Suppose that $I$ is a linearly-ordered index set and that $\{G_n\}_{n\in I}$ is an increasing chain of amenable subgroups (that is, $G_n\leq G_m$ if $n\leq m$). Then $G_\infty \equiv \varinjlim G_n = \cup_{n\in I} G_n$ is amenable.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
For each $n\in I$, choose an invariant mean $m_n$ for $G_n$. We then define a functional $\mu_n\in\mathrm{\mathrm{RUC}_b}(G_\infty)^*$ by
\[
\mu_n(f) = m_n(f|_{G_n})
\]
for each $f\in\mathrm{\mathrm{RUC}_b}(G_\infty)$. Because $f|_{G_n}\in \mathrm{RUC}_b(G_n)$ for all $f\in \mathrm{RUC}_b(G_\infty)$, it is clear that each $\mu_n$ is a mean on $G_\infty$. Furthermore, we see that $\mu_n(L_g f) = \mu_n(f)$ whenever $g\in G_n\leq G_\infty$. Thus, any weak-$*$ cluster point of the set $\{\mu_n\}_{n\in I}\subseteq \mathrm{\mathrm{RUC}_b}(G_\infty)^*$ would be invariant under $G_\infty = \cup_{n\in I} G_n$. Furthermore, by the Banach Alaoglu theorem, the unit ball in $\mathrm{\mathrm{RUC}_b}(G_\infty)^*$ is weak-$*$ compact and thus our sequence must possess a cluster point.
\end{proof}
Because $\mathrm{\mathrm{RUC}_b}(G_\infty)$ is not separable when $G_\infty$ is not compact, the unit ball in $\mathrm{\mathrm{RUC}_b}(G_\infty)^*$ is not guaranteed to be weak-$*$ \textit{sequentially} compact. Thus there is no reason to expect that $\{\mu_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}\subseteq \mathrm{\mathrm{RUC}_b}(G_\infty)^*$ will possess a convergent sequence. In fact, an application of the Axiom of Choice is required to construct an invariant mean on $G_\infty$.
An immediate corollary of Theorem~\ref{directLimitsAmenable} is that every group formed as a direct limit of compact groups is amenable.
\section{Unitarizability}
\label{unitarySection}
\noindent In this section we look at some applications of invariant means to the theory of unitary representations for topological groups. For a given topological group, it is often very difficult to determine which representations of the group on a Hilbert space are in fact equivalent to unitary representations. For amenable groups, however, there is a very succinct solution to this question:
\begin{theorem}(\cite[Proposition 17.5]{JPP}).
Suppose that $G$ is an amenable group and that $\pi$ is a continuous representation of $G$ on a separable Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$. Then $\pi$ is equivalent to a unitary representation if and only if it is uniformly bounded (that is, $ \sup_{g\in U_\infty} ||\pi(g)|| <\infty$).
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Suppose that $\pi$ is equivalent to a unitary representation. Then there is an invertible bounded intertwining operator $T\in\mathrm{GL}(\mathcal{H})$ unitarizes $\pi$. It follows that $T\pi(g)T^{-1}$ is unitary and thus $||\pi(g)||\leq ||T||||T^{-1}||$ for all $g\in U_\infty$, and thus $\pi$ is uniformly bounded.
To prove the converse, let $M = \sup_{g\in U_\infty} ||\pi(g)||$. Note that one also has that $M = \sup_{g\in\mathrm{U}_\infty} ||\pi(g)^{-1}||$. It follows that
\[
M^{-1} ||u|| \leq ||\pi(g)u|| \leq M ||u||
\]
for all $g\in U_\infty$.
Now let $\mu$ be a bi-invariant mean on $G$. We denote the inner product on $\mathcal{H}$ by $\du{\cdot\,}{\cdot}_\mathcal{H}$. Note that $g\mapsto \langle\pi(g)u,\pi(g)v\rangle_\mathcal{H}$ is a uniformly continuous, bounded function on $G$ (since $\pi$ is strongly continuous and uniformly bounded). We may thus define a new inner product $\du{\cdot\,}{\cdot}_\mu$ on $\mathcal{H}$ by
\[\langle u,v\rangle_\mu = \int_G \langle \pi(g)u,\pi(g)v \rangle_\mathcal{H} d\mu(g)\]
for all $u,v\in\mathcal{H}$, where for clarity we have used the ``integral'' notation for means that was introduced in Section~\ref{meansSection}. It is clear that $\du{\cdot\,}{\cdot}_\mu$ provides a positive semi-definite Hermitian form on $\mathcal{H}$.
Note that for $u\in\mathcal{H}\backslash\{0\}$ one has that
\[
0 < M^{-2}||u||_\mathcal{H}^2 \leq ||u||_\mu^2 = \int_G ||\pi(g)u||_\mathcal{H}^2 d\mu(g) \leq M^2||u||_\mathcal{H}^2.
\]
Thus $\du{\cdot\,}{\cdot}_\mu$ is strictly positive-definite and continuous with respect to $\du{\cdot\,}{\cdot}_\mathcal{H}$.
\end{proof}
For a compact group $G$, every continuous representation is uniformly bounded, and hence the above theorem amounts to the fact that \textit{every} continuous representation of $G$ on a Hilbert space is equivalent to a unitary representation. Unfortunately, the same does not hold true for direct limits of compact groups, as we now briefly demonstrate.
Consider the group $U_\infty = \mathrm{SU}(\infty) = \varinjlim \mathrm{SU}(2n)$. For each $n\in\mathbb{N}$, consider the standard representation $\pi_n$ of $\mathrm{SU}(2n)$ on $\mathcal{H}_n = \mathbb{C}^{2n}$ (that is, $\pi_n(g)v = g\cdot v$ for all $g\in\mathrm{SU}(2n)$). By taking the direct limit, we may form a unitary representation $\pi = \varinjlim \pi_n$ of $\mathrm{SU}(\infty)$ on the Hilbert space $\mathcal{H} = \ell^2(\mathbb{C}) = \overline{\varinjlim \mathbb{C}^{2n}}$ of square-summable sequences of complex numbers. Note that $\mathrm{SU}(2n)$ acts trivially on the orthogonal complement of $\mathcal{H}_n$. It follows that $\pi|_{\mathrm{SU}(2n)}$ decomposes into a direct sum of the standard representation $\pi_n$ and infinitely many copies of the trivial irreducible representation. That is,
\[
\pi|_{\mathrm{SU}(2n)} = \pi_n \oplus \infty\cdot 1_{\mathrm{SU}(2n)},
\]
where $1_{\mathrm{SU}(2n)}$ denotes the trivial irreducible representation of $\mathrm{SU}(2n)$ on $\mathbb{C}$.
Now let $V_1 = \mathcal{H}_1$ and define $V_n = \mathcal{H}_n\ominus \mathcal{H}_{n-1}$ for each $n>1$.
Note that $\dim V_n = 2$ for each $n\in\mathbb{N}$.
We now completely discard unitarity and choose some new inner product $\langle,\rangle_{V_n}$ on $V_n$ under which $||\pi(g)|_{V_n}||\geq n$ for some $g\in \mathrm{SU}(2n)$. For instance, if $\pi(g)v = w$, where $v,w\in V_n$ are linearly independent, then we can choose any inner product $\langle,\rangle_{V_n}$ on $V_n$ such that $||v||_{V_n}=1$ and $||w||_{V_n} = n$.
Next we define for each $n\in\mathbb{N}$ the finite-dimensional Hilbert space
\[
\mathcal{K}_n = \bigoplus_{i=1}^n V_i,
\]
where each $V_i$ is given the new inner product we just defined. As vector spaces, $\mathcal{K}_n = \mathcal{H}_n$, but they possess different inner products. Now $\{(\pi_n,\mathcal{K}_n)\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ forms a direct system of continuous Hilbert representations. We consider the representation $(\widetilde{\pi}_\infty,\mathcal{K}_\infty) = (\varinjlim \pi_n,\overline{\varinjlim \mathcal{K}_n})$. Note that $\pi|_{\mathrm{SU}(2n)}$ and $\widetilde{\pi}|_{\mathrm{SU}(2n)}$ possess the same irreducible subrepresentations for each $n\in\mathbb{N}$.
Finally, it is clear that $\widetilde{\pi}$ is not uniformly bounded (since $\sup_{g\in \mathrm{SU}(2n)} ||\pi(g)||\geq n$ for each $n\in\mathbb{N}$), and is therefore not unitarizable.
\section{Invariant Means and Regular Representations}
\noindent Unitary representations for locally compact groups are, of course, closely related to harmonic analysis. For instance, if $G$ is a locally compact group, then decomposing the unitary regular representation of $G$ on $L^2(G)$ is one of the foundational problems in harmonic analysis. While groups which are not locally compact do not possess Haar measures, one can develop an $L^2$-theory using invariant means (these definitions may also be found in, for instance, \cite{Bel}).
In particular, suppose that $G$ is a topological group and $\mathcal{A}$ is a closed $C^*$-subalgebra of $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$. For each invariant mean $\mu\in \mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$, one can construct a Hilbert space $L^2_\mu(G)$ as follows. Define a pre-Hilbert seminorm on $\mathcal{A}$ by \[\langle f,g \rangle_\mu = \mu(f\bar{g}),\]
and set $\mathcal{K}_\mu=\{f\in \mathcal{A} | \langle f,f\rangle_\mu = 0\}$. Then $L^2_\mu(G)$ is defined to be the Hilbert-space completion of $\mathcal{A}/\mathcal{K}_\mu$.
\begin{lemma}
$\mathcal{K}_\mu$ is a closed subspace of $\mathcal{A}$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
Suppose that $\{f_k\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ is a sequence in $\mathcal{K}_\mu$ which converges to $f$ in $\mathcal{A}$. Fix $\epsilon > 0$, and choose $N$ such that $||f_k - f||_\infty< \epsilon$ for $n\geq N$. Then
\[
\begin{array}{ll}
\langle f, f \rangle_\mu & = \langle f_k + (f_k - f), f_k + (f_k - f)\rangle_\mu \\
& = \langle f_k, f_k \rangle_\mu + \langle f_k - f, f_k - f \rangle_\mu + 2 \Re \langle f_k, f_k - f \rangle_\mu \\
& \leq 0 + \epsilon^2 + 2(||f||_\infty+\epsilon)\epsilon, \\
\end{array}
\]
where we use the fact that $\langle g,h \rangle_\mu = \mu(g\bar{h}) \leq ||g||_\infty ||h||_\infty$ for all $g,h\in \mathcal{A}$. Because $\epsilon > 0$ was arbitrary, it follows that $f\in \mathcal{K}_\mu$.
\end{proof}
Because $\mathcal{A}\subseteq \mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$, one sees that the left-regular representation of $G$ on $\mathcal{A}$ defined by $L_gf(h) = f(g^{-1}h)$ is continuous.
\begin{theorem}
The regular representation $L$ of $G$ on $\mathcal{A}$ descends to a continuous unitary representation on $L^2_\mu(G)$.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Because $\mu$ is an invariant mean, it follows that $\mathcal{K}_\mu$ is a closed invariant subspace of $\mathcal{A}$. Hence, $L$ descends to a continuous representation of $G_\infty$ on $UCB(G_\infty)/\mathcal{K}_\mu$.
Since $\langle f, f \rangle_\mu \leq ||f||_\infty^2$ for all $f\in \mathcal{A}$, we see that $L$ is a continuous representation in the pre-Hilbert space topology on $\mathcal{A}$ and descends to a continuous representation in the pre-Hilbert space topology on $\mathcal{A}/\mathcal{K}_\mu$. Furthermore, $L$ acts by isometries in those pre-Hilbert space topologies due to the fact that $\mu$ is an invariant mean on $G$. Thus $L$ extends to a continuous unitary representation on the Hilbert-space completion $L^2_\mu(G)$ of $\mathcal{A}/\mathcal{K}_\mu$.
\end{proof}
One nice aspect of this approach is that it allows the consideration of an $L^2$-theory of harmonic analysis that is intrinsic to the group, in the sense that it actually provides a decomposition of functions on the group $G$ and not on a larger $G$-space, such as with the projective-limit construction mentioned earlier. The disadvantage is that it depends heavily on the choice of invariant mean $\mu$ and $C^*$-algebra $\mathcal{A}$, as we shall see. Furthermore, the fact that the axiom of choice is necessary in many cases to construct invariant means implies that it may not be possible to construct an explicit decomposition of $L^2_\mu(G)$.
It is also possible that $L^2_\mu(G)$ gives the trivial representation of $G$, in which case very little information may be obtained about the functions on $G$. In general, as the next theorem demonstrates, one can gain information on the size of $L^2_\mu(G)$ (and therefore gauge how much information may be gleaned about functions on $G$) by determining the support of the corresponding measure $\widehat{\mu}$ on $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$.
\begin{theorem}
For a $G$-invariant mean $\mu$ on $\mathcal{A}$, on has the equivalance of unitary representations
\[
L^2_\mu(G)\cong_G L^2(\widehat{A},\widehat{\mu}),
\]
where $L^2(\widehat{A},\widehat{\mu})$ denotes the unitary representation of $G$ corresponding to the action of $G$ on $\widehat{A}$ under the $G$-invariant measure $\widehat{\mu}$ on $\widehat{A}$.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
The map $\mathcal{A}\rightarrow C(\widehat{\mathcal{A}})$, $f\mapsto \widehat{f}$ is clearly a $G$-intertwining operator. The fact that it extends to the required unitary intertwining operator follows from the fact that $\mu(f) = \int_{\widehat{\mathcal{A}}} \widehat{f}(x)d\widehat{\mu}(x)$ for all $f\in \mathcal{A}$.
\end{proof}
\begin{corollary}(\cite[Remark 3.11]{Bel})
One has $\dim L^2_\mu(G) = 1$ if and only if there is a $G$-invariant character $x\in\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$ such that $\widehat{\mu} = \delta_x$. In that case, one has the decomposition
\[
\mathcal{A} = \mathbb{C} \text{\textbf{1}} \oplus \mathcal{K}_\mu,
\]
where $\mathbb{C}\textbf{1}$ denotes the space of constant functions on $G$.
\end{corollary}
A group $G$ is said to be \textbf{extremely amenable} if there is a $G$-invariant character in $\widehat{\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)}$. While it is known that no locally-compact groups are extremely amenable, it has been shown (see \cite{GP,GM}) that $\mathrm{SO}(\infty) = \cup_{n\in\mathbb{N}} \mathrm{SO}(n)$, $\mathrm{SU}(\infty) = \cup_{n\in\mathbb{N}} \mathrm{SU}(n)$, and the infinite symmetric group $S_\infty = \cup_{n\in\mathbb{N}} S_n$ are extremely amenable. One can also show that direct products of extremely amenable groups are again extremely amenable (see \cite[Theorem 449C]{Fremlin}).
It is evident that if $G$ is an amenable group, then by Day's theorem, the closure of each $G$-orbit in $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$ gives rise to an invariant mean in $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to study such orbits because of the unavoidable use of the axiom of choice in the construction of $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}$. In the next section we look at a special case in which one may determine all of the invariant means on $\mathcal{A}$ and say something about the decomposition of the representation $L^2_\mu(G)$.
\section{Almost Periodic Functions}
\noindent In general, there is no uniqueness property for invariant means similar to the uniqueness of Haar measures. In fact, for many groups $G$ it has been shown that the set of all invariant means on $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$ has cardinality $2^{2^{|G|}}$ (see \cite{JPP}). However, one might hope for the existence of subalgebras $\mathcal{A}$ of $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$ which possess a unique invariant mean $\mu \in \mathfrak{M}(\mathcal{A})$. In particular, the algebra of weakly almost periodic functions on a group always satisfies this property. In some cases it is even possible to explicitly determine the value of this mean and write down an explicit decomposition of the unitary regular representation $L^2_\mu(G)$.
\begin{definition}
A continuous function $f\in C(G)$ is said to be \textbf{almost periodic} if the set $\{L_g f\}_{g\in G}$ is relatively compact in the norm topology of $C(G)$.
We denote by $\mathrm{AP}(G)$ the space of almost periodic functions on $G$.
\end{definition}
Von Neumann proved the following result about almost periodic functions:
\begin{theorem}(Von Neumann \cite{vN})
\label{vonNeumannTheorem}
If $f\in \mathrm{AP}(G)$, then the closed convex hull $\overline{\mathrm{co}}(\{L_g f\}_{g\in G})$ of the set of $G$-translates contains exactly one constant function. We denote value of this constant function by $M(f)$. Furthermore, $M$ is a $G$-invariant mean on $\mathrm{AP}(G)$.
\end{theorem}
By continuity arguments, one sees that any invariant mean on $\mathrm{AP}(G)$ must take the same value for every function in $\overline{\mathrm{co}}(\{L_g f\}_{g\in G})$. Because this set contains a unique constant function, one sees that for any invariant mean $\mu\in\mathfrak{M}(f)$, one has $\mu(f) = M(f)$. In fact, it is also not difficult to see that every invariant mean $\lambda$ on $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$ must have the property that $\lambda|_{\mathrm{AP}(G)} = M$.
In fact, it is possible to put a topological group structure on $\widehat{\mathrm{AP}(G)}$ so that $i_{\mathrm{AP}(G)}:G\rightarrow \widehat{\mathrm{AP}(G)}$ is a continuous homomorphism:
\begin{theorem}(\cite[p. 166, 168]{Loomis})
$\mathrm{AP}(G)$ is a $G$-invariant closed $C^*$-subalge\-bra of $\mathrm{RUC}_b(G)$. Furthermore, the product defined by $\delta_{g}\cdot \delta_{h} = \delta_{gh}$ on $i_\mathrm{AP} (G)$ extends to a compact topological group structure on $\widehat{\mathrm{AP}(G)}$.
\end{theorem}
For the sake of clarity, we introduce the notation $G_c \equiv \widehat{\mathrm{AP}(G)}$.
Note that the Gelfand isomorphism $\verb!^!: \mathrm{AP}(G)\rightarrow C(G_c)$ sets up a correspondence between almost periodic functions on $G$ and continuous functions on $G_c$. Furthermore, one sees that the invariant mean on $\mathrm{AP}(G)$ corresponds to the Haar measure on $G_c$. That is, $M(f) = \int_{G_c} \widehat{f}(x) dx$ for all $f\in \mathrm{AP}(G)$.
In the notation of Section~\ref{unitarySection}, we see that $\mathcal{K}_M =0$ because $\int_{G_c}\widehat{f}(x) dx>0$ whenever $f\in \mathrm{AP}(G)$ and $f>0$. In particular, the Gelfand transform extends to a unitary $G$-intertwining operator $\verb!^!: L^2_M(G) \rightarrow L^2(G_c)$, where $L^2(G_c)$ is defined using the Haar measure on $G_c$. Finally, because $G_{\mathrm{AP}(G)}$ is a dense subgroup of $G_c=\widehat{\mathrm{AP}(G)}$, it follows that a subspace of $L^2(G_c)$ is $G$-invariant if and only if it is $G_c$-invariant.
The following result now follows immediately from the Peter-Weyl theorem:
\begin{theorem}
The representation $L^2(G_c)$ decomposes into a direct sum of finite-dimensional representations of $G$.
\end{theorem}
\begin{corollary}
If $G$ possesses no nontrivial finite-dimensional unitary representations, then $\mathrm{AP}(G)$ contains only constant functions on $G$.
\end{corollary}
For instance, it follows that $SL(n,\mathbb{R})$ and $\mathrm{SU}(\infty) = \cup_{n\in\mathbb{N}} \mathrm{SU}(n)$ have no nontrivial almost-periodic functions, so the decomposition theory for almost periodic functions provides no information for such groups.
The situation is much more interesting if $G$ is abelian. Denote by $\widehat{G}$ the group of all continuous characters of $G$. Note that any character $\chi\in\widehat{G}$ is almost periodic; in fact, $L_g\chi = \chi(g^{-1})\chi$, so that $\{L_g \chi\}_g\in G$ is a compact subset of a one-dimensional vector space. Thus, every character $\chi\in \widehat{G}$ corresponds to a continuous function $\widehat{\chi}$ on $G_c = \widehat{\mathrm{AP}(G)}$. Because $\widehat{\chi}$ is a character on the dense subgroup $G_{\mathrm{AP}(G)}$, it follows that $\widehat{\chi}$ is in fact a continuous character of $G_c$. In other words, we have shown that:
\begin{theorem}
The Gelfand transform restricts to an continuous surjective group homomorphism $\verb!^!:\widehat{G} \rightarrow \widehat{G}_c$.
\end{theorem}
In fact, one has that $\verb!^!$ is also an isomorphism of abstract groups as long as the characters of $G$ separate points on $G$. This is true for locally compact abelian groups and, as we shall see in the next section, for direct or inverse limits of locally compact abelian groups.
\section{Direct Limits of Abelian Groups}
\noindent The famous Pontryagin Duality Theorem asserts that for any locally compact abelian group $G$, there is a canonical topological group isomorphism between $G$ and $\widehat{\widehat{G}}$ given by identifying $g\in G$ with the character $\widehat{g}$ given by $\widehat{g}(\chi) = \chi(g)$ for all $\chi\in \widehat{G}$. In fact, it is possible to extend this result to the case of direct limits as we now show.
Suppose that $G=\varinjlim G_n = \cup_{n\in\mathbb{N}} G_n$ is a strict direct limit of locally compact abelian groups. There are natural continuous projections $p_n:\widehat{G}_{n+1} \rightarrow \widehat{G}_n$ given by $p_n(\chi) = \chi|_{G_n}$ for each character $\chi\in \widehat{G}_n$. In fact, it is clear that $p_n$ is a homomorphism, and one can show that it is surjective. We may thus construct a projective-limit group $\varprojlim \widehat{G}_n$. One then proves the following theorem:
\begin{theorem}(\cite[p. 45]{Sa})
\label{PontryaginDuality}
The group $G=\varinjlim G_n$ satisfies the Pontryagin duality. In fact, $ \widehat{\varinjlim G_n} = \varprojlim \widehat{G}_n$ and $\widehat{\varprojlim \widehat{G}_n} = \varinjlim G_n$.
\end{theorem}
In particular, we see that $\widehat{G}$ separates points on the direct-limit group $G=\varinjlim G_n$ and thus that the groups $\widehat{G}$ and $\widehat{G}_c$ are isomorphic as abstract groups. Thus $L^2_M(G)$ decomposes into a direct sum of irreducible representations as follows:
\[
L^2_M(G) \cong \bigoplus_{\chi\in \widehat{G}} \mathbb{C} \chi,
\]
where $\mathbb{C}\chi$ is the one-dimensional subspace of $L^2_M(G)$ generated by the character $\chi\in\widehat{G}$. Note that $\widehat{G}$ may contain an uncountable number of characters on $G$, in which case $L^2_M(G)$ is an nonseparable Hilbert space.
We end this section with an example. Consider the Torus group $\mathbb{T}=S^1$. For each $n$, consider $n^\text{th}$ Cartesian power $\mathbb{T}^n$. By using the embedding $\mathbb{T}^n\rightarrow \mathbb{T}^{n+1}$ given by $z\mapsto (z,1)$, one can construct the direct-limit group $\mathbb{T}^\infty = \varinjlim \mathbb{T}^n$. We recall that $\widehat{T} = \mathbb{Z}$ and that $\widehat{\mathbb{T}^n} = \mathbb{Z}^n$. Hence, Theorem~\ref{PontryaginDuality} implies that $\widehat{T^\infty} = \varprojlim \mathbb{Z}^n$, where the projections $\mathbb{Z}^{n+1}\rightarrow \mathbb{Z}^n$ are the canonical projections given by $(z,m)\mapsto z$ for all $m\in\mathbb{Z}$ and $z\in \mathbb{Z}^n$. Thus $\widehat{\mathbb{T}^\infty}$ is isomorphic to the the group $\mathbb{Z}^\mathbb{N}$ of all sequences of integers. Thus,
\[
L^2_M(\mathbb{T}^\infty) \cong \bigoplus_{\sigma\in \mathbb{Z}^\mathbb{N}} \mathbb{C}\chi_\sigma,
\]
where $\chi_\sigma \in \widehat{\mathbb{T}^\infty}$ is the character corresponding to $\sigma\in\mathbb{Z}^n$. In particular, $L^2_M(\mathbb{T}^\infty)$ is far from being separable.
Because $\mathbb{T}^\infty$ is abelian, there exist invariant means on $\mathrm{RUC}_b(\mathbb{T}^\infty)$. For any such invariant mean $\mu$, one can construct the corresponding regular representation $L^2_\mu(\mathbb{T}^\infty)$. One has that $L^2_M(\mathbb{T}^\infty)$ is a subrepresentation of $L^2_\mu(\mathbb{T}^\infty)$ for any mean $\mu$. However, due to the necessity of applying the axiom of choice to construct such an invariant mean, it is not clear whether or not it is possible to say much about the orthogonal complement $L^2_\mu(\mathbb{T}^\infty)\ominus L^2_M(\mathbb{T}^\infty)$ for a mean $\mu$.
\section{Spherical Functions and Direct Limits}
\noindent
In this section we see how invariant means may be used to describe the behavior of spherical functions on direct limits of Gelfand pairs. In the classical theory, spherical functions are critically important in studying harmonic analysis on Gelfand pairs.
We remind the reader that a \textbf{Gelfand pair} is a pair $(G,K)$ of groups, where $G$ is locally compact and $K$ is compact, such that the convolution algebra on the space $L^1(K\backslash G /K)$ of Haar-integrable bi-$K$-invariant functions on $G$ is abelian. Riemannian symmetric pairs provide the most important examples of Gelfand spaces. A \textbf{spherical function} on $G$ is function $\phi\in C(G)$ such that
\begin{equation}
\label{sphericalDefinition}
\int_K \phi(xky)dk = \phi(x)\phi(y)
\end{equation}
for all $x,y\in G$, where again integration over the compact group $K$ is with the normalized Haar measure. An irreducible unitary representation $(\pi,\mathcal{H})$ of $G$ is said to be a \textbf{spherical representation} if $\mathcal{H}^K\neq \{0\}$, where $\mathcal{H}^K$ is the space of all vectors $v\in \mathcal{H}$ such that $\pi(k)v=v$ for all $k\in K$. In fact, for a Gelfand pair $(G,K)$, one can show that $\dim \mathcal{H}^K= 1$ for every irreducible unitary spherical representation $(\pi,\mathcal{H})$ of $G$.
One can show that the positive-definite spherical functions on $G$ are precisely the matrix coefficients
\[
\phi_\pi(g) = \langle \pi(g)v,v\rangle,
\]
where $\pi$ is an irreducible unitary spherical representation of $G$ and $v$ is a unit vector in $\mathcal{H}^K\backslash\{0\}$. This connection between spherical functions and spherical representations allows one to determine the Plancherel decomposition of the quasiregular representation of $G$ on $L^2(G/K)$. Proofs of these classical theorems may be found, for instance, in \cite{vanDijk}.
Suppose one has an increasing family of locally compact groups $\{G_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ and an increasing family of compact groups $\{K_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ such that $K_n\leq G_n$ for each $n\in\mathbb{N}$ and $(G_n,K_n)$ is a Gelfand pair. Let $G_\infty = \varinjlim G_n$ and $K_\infty = \varinjlim K_n$. If we make the additional assumption that $G_n\cap K_{n+1} = K_n$ for all $n\in\mathbb{N}$, then there is a well-defined $G_n$-equivariant inclusion $G_n/K_n \rightarrow G_{n+1}/K_{n+1}$ given by $gK_n\mapsto gK_{n+1}$ for all $g\in G_n$, and we can write $G_\infty/K_\infty = \varinjlim G_n/K_n$. In this case we say that $(G_\infty,K_\infty)$ is a \textbf{direct-limit spherical pair}. This definition provides a natural infinite-dimensional generalization of the notion of a Gelfand pair.
It is natural to say that an irreducible unitary representation $(\pi,\mathcal{H})$ of $G_\infty$ is a \textbf{spherical representation} if the space $\mathcal{H}^{K_\infty}$ of $K_\infty$-fixed vectors in $\mathcal{H}$ is nontrivial. It is possible to show (see \cite[Theorem 23.6]{Ol1990}) that, just as for finite-dimensional Gelfand pairs, $\dim \mathcal{H}^{K_\infty} = 1$ for every irreducible unitary spherical representation $(\pi,\mathcal{H})$.
The proper definition of a spherical function is slightly more subtle, because there is no Haar measure on $K_\infty$ over which to integrate. However, because $K_\infty$ is a direct limit of compact groups, it is amenable, and we may generalize (\ref{sphericalDefinition}) by replacing the Haar measure on $K$ with an invariant mean $\mu$ on $K_\infty$. That is, we say that a continuous function $\phi\in G_\infty$ is a \textbf{spherical function with respect to $\mu$} if
\begin{equation}
\label{sphericalDefinitionInfinite}
\int_{K_\infty} \phi(xky) d\mu(k) = \phi(x)\phi(y)
\end{equation}
for all $x,y\in G$.
At this point, we remind the reader that, if we define for each $n\in \mathbb{N}$ a mean $\mu_n\in\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty))$ by $\mu_n(f) = \int_{K_n} (f|_{K_n})(k) dk$, then any weak-$*$ cluster point of $\{\mu_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ is an invariant mean on $K_\infty$. While this sequence has many cluster points, none of which may be constructed as functionals on all of $\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty)$ without recourse to the Axiom of Choice, what we can say is that any such $K_\infty$-invariant mean $\mu$ that is a weak-$*$ cluster point of $\{\mu_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ must have the property that
\[
\mu(f) = \lim_{n\rightarrow \infty} \int_{K_n} (f|_{K_n})(k) dk
\]
for all functions $f\in\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty)$ such that the limit on the right-hand side of the equation exists. We now fix such invariant mean $\mu$ in the closure of $\{\mu_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$. For any spherical function $\varphi\in C(G_\infty)$, it follows that if $\varphi$ satisfies
\begin{equation}
\label{limitSpherical}
\lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\int_{K_n} \varphi(xky) dk = \varphi(x)\varphi(y),
\end{equation}
then $\varphi$ is spherical for $\mu$.
In fact, Olshanski defines a function $f\in C(G_\infty)$ to be spherical if it satisfies (\ref{limitSpherical}). Note that this condition is stronger than requiring $f$ to be spherical for every invariant mean in the closure of $\{\mu_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$. However, we will show in Theorem~\ref{sphericalEquivalence} that these two conditions are in fact equivalent.
First we need a lemma about projection operators. If $G$ is a topological group, $K$ is a compact subgroup, and $(\pi,\mathcal{H})$ is any unitary representation of $G$, then the orthogonal projection operator $P:\mathcal{H}\rightarrow \mathcal{H}^K$ may be written as
\[
P(v)=\int_K \pi(k)v dk
\]
for all $v\in \mathcal{H}$. In fact, using invariant means it is possible to describe the projection operator $P:\mathcal{H}\rightarrow \mathcal{H}^{K_\infty}$ for a unitary representation $(\pi,\mathcal{H})$ of $G_\infty$ in a completely analogous fashion, as the next lemma shows. The proof is extremely similar to the proof in the finite-dimensional context, although some care must be taken due to the fact that means do not satisfy the same properties as integrals.
\begin{lemma}
\label{operatorValuedMean}
Suppose that $(\pi,\mathcal{H})$ is a unitary representation of a group $G$ and that $K$ is a subgroup of $G$ that is amenable. Let $\mu$ be an invariant mean in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty))$. Then there is a bounded operator $P\in \mathrm{B}(\mathcal{H})$ such that
\[
\langle w, Pv \rangle = \int_K \langle w, \pi(k)v\rangle d\mu(k)
\]
for all $v,w\in \mathcal{H}$. Furthermore, $P$ is a projection from $\mathcal{H}$ onto $\mathcal{H}^K$. Finally, $P$ is the orthogonal projection if $\mu$ is an inversion-invariant mean.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
Recall that the matrix coefficient function $k\mapsto \langle w,\pi(k)v\rangle$ is uniformly continuous for all $v,w\in \mathcal{H}$. Now fix $v\in \mathcal{H}$. Because $\pi$ is unitary, we have that $ |\langle w, \pi(k)v\rangle|\leq ||w|| ||v||$ for all $k\in K$ and $w\in \mathcal{H}$. Hence
\begin{equation}
\label{boundedness}
\left| \int_K \langle w, \pi(k)v\rangle d\mu(k) \right| \leq ||w|||v||
\end{equation}
because $\mu$ is a mean. Thus the map $w\mapsto \int_K \langle w, \pi(k)v\rangle d\mu(k)$ defines a bounded linear functional on $\mathcal{H}$ and by the Riesz representation theorem there is a unique vector $Pv\in \mathcal{H}$ such that
\[
\langle w, Pv \rangle = \int_K \langle w, \pi(k)v\rangle d\mu(k)
\]
for all $w\in \mathcal{H}$. It is clear that $v\mapsto Pv$ is linear. Furthermore, $P\in\mathrm{B}(\mathcal{H})$ by (\ref{boundedness}).
Next we see that $Pv\in \mathcal{H}^K$ for all $v\in\mathcal{H}$. In fact, for all $h\in K$, we have that
\begin{align*}
\langle w, \pi(h)Pv\rangle &= \langle \pi(h^{-1})w,Pv \rangle \\
&= \int_K \langle \pi(h^{-1})w, \pi(k)v \rangle d\mu(k) \\
&= \int_K \langle w, \pi(hk)v \rangle d\mu(k)\\
&= \int_K \langle w, \pi(k)v \rangle d\mu(k)
= \langle w, Pv\rangle,
\end{align*}
and thus $\pi(h)Pv= Pv$ for all $h\in K$. Similarly, $Pv = v$ for all $v\in \mathcal{H}^K$. In fact,
\begin{align*}
\langle w, Pv\rangle &= \int_K \langle w, \pi(k)v \rangle d\mu(k) \\
&= \int_K \langle w, v \rangle d\mu(k) = \langle w,v\rangle
\end{align*}
for all $w\in \mathcal{H}$ and $v\in \mathcal{H}^K$. Thus $P$ is a projection onto $\mathcal{H}^K$.
It only remains to be shown that $P$ is self-adjoint if $\mu$ is inversion-invariant. For any $v,w\in \mathcal{H}$, we have
\begin{align*}
\langle w, Pv \rangle &= \int_K \langle w, \pi(k)v\rangle d\mu(k) \\
&= \int_K \langle \pi(k^{-1})w, v\rangle d\mu(k) \\
&= \int_K \langle \pi(k)w, v\rangle d\mu(k) \\
&= \int_K \langle \overline{ v, \pi(k)w}\rangle d\mu(k) \\
&=\overline{ \int_K \langle v, \pi(k)w\rangle d\mu(k)} = \overline{\langle v, Pw\rangle},
\end{align*}
where we have used the fact that $\mu$ is inversion-invariant and that $\mu(\overline{f}) = \overline{\mu(f)}$ for all $f\in \mathrm{RUC}_b(K)$.
\end{proof}
We are now ready to show that the condition (\ref{sphericalDefinitionInfinite}) is independent of the choice of mean. Again, the proof is almost entirely analogous to the proof in the finite-dimensional context. We remark that Olshanski showed in \cite[Theorem 23.6]{Ol1990} that conditions (3) and (4) in the following theorem are equivalent using a different method.
\begin{theorem}
\label{sphericalEquivalence}
Suppose that $(G_\infty,K_\infty)$ is a direct-limit Gelfand pair, and let $\varphi:G\rightarrow\mathbb{C}$ be a positive-definite function such that $\varphi(e) =1$. Then the following are equivalent:
\begin{enumerate}
\item $\varphi$ is spherical for every invariant mean $\mu\in\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty))$.
\item There exists an invariant mean $\mu\in\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty))$ with respect to which $\varphi$ is spherical.
\item There exists an irreducible unitary spherical representation $(\pi,\mathcal{H})$ of $G_\infty$ such that
\[
\varphi(g) = \langle \pi(g)v, v\rangle,
\]
where $v\in \mathcal{H}^{K_\infty}$ is a unit vector.
\item $\varphi$ satisfies
\[ \lim_{n\rightarrow \infty} \int_{K_n} \phi(xky) dk = \phi(x)\phi(y).\]
\end{enumerate}
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Because $\varphi$ is a positive-definite function with $\varphi(e) = 1$, we can use the Gelfand-Naimark-Segal construction to construct a unitary representation $(\pi,\mathcal{H})$ of $G_\infty$ and a cyclic unit vector $v\in \mathcal{H}$ such that $\varphi(g) = \langle \pi(g)v,v\rangle$.
That (1)$\implies$(2) is clear. To prove that (2)$\implies$(3), suppose that $\varphi$ is spherical for an invariant mean $\mu$. Then we claim that $\varphi$ is right-$K_\infty$-invariant. In fact, we have that
\begin{align*}
\varphi(xh
&= \int_{K_\infty} \varphi(xhk)d\mu(k) \\
&= \int_{K_\infty} \varphi(xh)d\mu(k)
= \varphi(x)
\end{align*}
for any $h\in K_\infty$, where we use that $\varphi(e)=1$.
The proof that $\varphi$ is right-$K_\infty$-invariant is identical. It follows that
\begin{align*}
\langle \pi(k)v,\pi(g)v\rangle &= \langle \pi(g^{-1}k)v, v\rangle \\
&= \langle \pi(g^{-1})v, v\rangle = \langle v, \pi(g)v\rangle
\end{align*}
for all $g\in G$ and $k\in K$. Because $v$ is a cyclic vector in $\mathcal{H}$, we see that $\pi(k)v=v$ for all $k\in K$.
It remains to be shown that $\dim \mathcal{H}^{K_\infty} = 1$ and thus that $\pi$ is irreducible. But
\begin{align*}
\left\langle P(\pi(y)v),\pi( x^{-1})v\right\rangle
& = \int_K \langle \pi(k)\pi(y)v, \pi(x^{-1})v \rangle d\mu(k) \\
& = \int_K \phi(xky) d\mu(k) \\
& = \varphi(x)\varphi(y) \\
& = \langle \varphi(y)v, \pi(x^{-1})v \rangle
\end{align*}
for all $x,y\in G$, where $P:\mathcal{H}\rightarrow\mathcal{H}^{K_\infty}$ is the projection operator defined in Lemma~\ref{operatorValuedMean}. Because $v$ is cyclic, it follows that $P(\pi(y)v) = \varphi(y)v$ for all $y\in G$. Using again the fact that $v$ is cyclic, we see that $\dim (\text{range } P) = 1$. In other words, $\dim \mathcal{H}^{K_\infty} = 1$, and thus $\mathcal{H}$ is irreducible.
Finally we prove (3)$\implies$(1). Suppose that $\pi$ is an irreducible spherical representation with $v\in\mathcal{H}^{K_\infty}$ and that $\mu$ is an invariant mean in $\mathfrak{M}(\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty))$. We need to show that $\langle \varphi(g)v, v\rangle$ is spherical with respect to $\mu$.
As before, we consider the projection $P:\mathcal{H}\rightarrow \mathcal{H}^{K_\infty}$ defined in Lemma~\ref{operatorValuedMean}. Since $P(\pi(y)v)\in \mathcal{H}^K$ and $\mathrm{dim} \mathcal{H}^K = 1$, it follows that $P(\pi(y)v) = cv$ for some nonzero $c\in\mathbb{C}$. But then
\begin{align*}
c & = \langle P(\pi(y)v), v \rangle \\
& = \int_{K_\infty} \langle \pi(ky)v, v\rangle d\mu(k)\\
& = \langle \pi(y)v,\pi(k^{-1})v\rangle = \langle \pi(y)v,v\rangle,
\end{align*}
since $v$ is $K_\infty$-invariant.
Hence
\begin{align*}
\int_{K_\infty} \varphi(xky) dk & = \int_{K_\infty} \langle \pi(xky) v,v\rangle d\mu(k)\\
& = \left\langle \int \pi(k) \pi(y)v, \pi(x^{-1})v\ d\mu(k) \right\rangle\\
& = \left\langle P(\pi(y)v), \pi(x^{-1})v \right\rangle\\
& = \left\langle \langle \pi(y)v,v\rangle v, \pi(x^{-1})v \right\rangle\\
& = \left\langle \pi(x)v, v\right\rangle \left\langle \pi(y)v, v\right\rangle\\
& = \varphi(x)\varphi(y).
\end{align*}
Thus $\phi$ is spherical for $\mu$.
We have already seen that (4)$\implies$(2) (see the discussion surrounding (\ref{limitSpherical})).
Finally, we demonstrate that (3)$\implies$(4). Suppose that $\varphi(g) = \langle \pi(g)v,v\rangle$, where $\pi$ is an irreducible spherical representation with $v\in\mathcal{H}^{K_\infty}$. We know from the preceding paragraph that $\phi$ is a spherical function with respect to every invariant mean on $\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty)$.
For each $n\in\mathbb{N}$, we consider the orthogonal projection operator $P_n:\mathcal{H}\rightarrow \mathcal{H}^{K_n}$, which may be written as
\[
P_n(v) = \int_{K_n} \pi(k)v dk
\]
for all $v\in\mathcal{H}$.
Note also that $\mathcal{H}^{K_\infty} = \cap_{n\in\mathbb{N}} \mathcal{H}^{K_n}$. Consider the orthogonal projection $P:\mathcal{H}\rightarrow \mathcal{H}^{K_\infty}$. Then $P_n\rightarrow P$ in the strong operator topology on $\mathcal{H}$. In other words, we have that
\[
P(v) = \lim_{n\rightarrow\infty} \int_{K_n} \pi(k)v dk
\]
for all $v\in\mathcal{H}$.
Now let $\mu$ be a $K_\infty$-invariant mean on $\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty)$ which is also inversion invariant. Then from Lemma~\ref{operatorValuedMean} we have that the orthogonal projection $P:\mathcal{H}\rightarrow \mathcal{H}^{K_\infty}$ satisfies
\[
\langle Pv,w\rangle = \int_{K_\infty} \langle \pi(k)v,w\rangle d\mu(k).
\]
Hence, because $\phi$ is spherical for $\mu$, we see that
\begin{align*}
\phi(x)\phi(y) &= \int_{K_\infty}\phi(xky)d\mu(k) \\
& = \left\langle P(\pi(y)v), \pi(x^{-1})v \right\rangle\\
& = \lim_{n\rightarrow\infty} \int_{K_n} \langle \pi(ky)v,\pi(x^{-1})v \rangle \\
& = \lim_{n\rightarrow\infty} \int_{K_n} \varphi(xky) d\mu(k),
\end{align*}
and we are done.
\end{proof}
It should be mentioned that for many direct-limit Gelfand pairs, there is a rich collection of spherical functions which have already been classified (see, for instance, \cite{DOW,Ol1990}). However, some peculiar behaviors arise in this infinite-dimensional context that do not occur in the finite-dimensional theory. Olshanski (\cite[Corollary 23.9]{Ol1990}) has shown that for the classical direct limits of symmetric spaces (that is, those formed by direct limits of classical matrix groups with embeddings of the form $A\mapsto\left( \begin{array}{ll} A & 0 \\ 0 & 1\end{array}\right)$), the product of two spherical functions is again spherical. See also \cite{Voicu1, Voicu2} for a different proof in a special case. We recall that the classical direct-limit groups $\mathrm{SO}(\infty)$, $\mathrm{SU}(\infty)$, and their direct products are extremely amenable. In fact, the following corollary of Theorem~\ref{sphericalEquivalence} shows how this surprising multiplicative property of spherical functions on $G_\infty$ is related to extreme amenability of $K_\infty$.
\begin{corollary}
If $(G_\infty,K_\infty)$ is a direct-limit Gelfand pair such that $K_\infty$ is extremely amenable, then the product of two spherical functions is again a spherical function.
\end{corollary}
\begin{proof}
Suppose that $\varphi$ and $\psi$ are spherical functions on $G_\infty$. Because $K_\infty$ is extremely amenable, there is a $K_\infty$-invariant character $\mu$ on the $C^*$-algebra $\mathrm{RUC}_b(K_\infty)$. Then
\begin{align*}
\int_{K_\infty} (\varphi \psi)(xky) d\mu(k) &= \int_{K_\infty} \varphi(xky) d\mu(k) \int_{K_\infty} \psi(xky) d\mu(k) \\
& = \varphi(x)\varphi(y)\psi(x)\psi(y) \\
& = (\varphi\psi)(x)(\varphi\psi)(y)
\end{align*}
Thus $\varphi\psi$ is spherical.
\end{proof}
We end by remarking that the natural way in which invariant means may be used as a replacement for integration in the context of spherical functions suggests to the authors that there may be other opportunities to apply amenability theory to the study of representations and harmonic analysis on direct-limit groups.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 9,554 |
Q: VSTS API : create bug in current iteration I am able to successfully create a bug in VSTS using REST API via powershell. See this question for some back story.
But how do I specify it to create the bug in the current iteration ? Do I have to find out what is the current iteration prior to providing the path ? Is there no way to just directly create it in the current iteration ?
Please note that this question is about Create Work Item API, whereas the question mentioned here is about the Iteration API.
A: There isn't such feature in VSTS build, the workaround is that you can update the related work item through web hook.
*
*Build a api project (e.g. ASP.NET web api) to update work item per to build id (Get build's work item through Get Build Work Items Refs rest api)
*Create a web hooks with build completed event, set Failed status in Filters
*Specify that url of your API app.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 4,350 |
{"url":"https:\/\/blog.csdn.net\/u012737193\/article\/details\/79665984","text":"# \u6d59\u5927pat | \u6d59\u5927pat \u725b\u5ba2\u7f51\u7532\u7ea71061 Insert or Merge (25)\u5224\u65ad\u662f\u63d2\u5165\u6392\u5e8f\u8fd8\u662f\u5f52\u5e76\u6392\u5e8f\n\nAccording to Wikipedia:\n\nInsertion sort iterates, consuming one input element each repetition, andgrowing a sorted output list. Each iteration,\n\ninsertion sort removes one element from the input data, finds the location itbelongs within the sorted list, and inserts\n\nit there. It repeats until no input elements remain.\n\nMerge sort works as follows: Divide the unsorted list into N sublists, each containing1 element (a list of 1 element is\n\nconsidered sorted). Then repeatedly merge two adjacent sublists to produce newsorted sublists until there is only 1\n\nsublist remaining.\n\nNow given the initial sequence of integers, together with a sequence which is aresult of several iterations of some\n\nsorting method, can you tell which sorting method we are using?\n\nEach input file contains one test case. For each case, the firstline gives a positive integer N (<=100). Then in the next line, N integersare\n\ngiven as the initial sequence. The last line contains the partially sortedsequence of the N numbers. It is assumed that the target\n\nsequence is always ascending. All the numbers in a line are separated by a space.\n\nFor each test case, print in the first line either\"Insertion Sort\" or \"Merge Sort\" to indicate the methodused to obtain the partial result.\n\nThen run this method for one more iteration and output in the second line theresulting sequence. It is guaranteed that the answer is\n\nunique for each test case. All the numbers in a line must be separated by aspace, and there must be no extra space at the end of the\n\nline.\n\n10\n\n3 1 2 8 7 5 9 4 6 0\n\n1 2 3 7 8 5 9 4 6 0\n\nInsertion Sort\n\n1 2 3 5 7 8 9 4 6 0\n\n#include <iostream>\n#include <string>\n#include<algorithm>\nusing namespace std;\n\nint theOther[103];\nint num[103];\nint main()\n{\nint N;\ncin >> N;\nstring whatSide;\nint tmp;\nfor (int i = 0; i < N; i++)\n{\ncin >> theOther[i];\n}\nfor (int i = 0; i < N; i++)\n{\ncin >> num[i];\n}\n\nfor (int i = 1; i < N; i++)\n{\nif (num[i] < num[i - 1])\n{\nint j = i;\ntmp = i;\nfor (; j < N; j++)\nif (theOther[j] == num[j]) continue;\nelse break;\n\nif (j == N) whatSide = \"Insertion Sort\";\nelse whatSide = \"Merge Sort\";\nbreak;\n}\n}\nif (whatSide == \"Insertion Sort\")\n{\nfor (int i = tmp; i >= 0; i--)\n{\nif (num[i] < num[i - 1])\n{\nswap(num[i], num[i - 1]);\n}\nelse\n{\nbreak;\n}\n}\n}\nelse\n{\nint length = 2;\nint start = 0;\nint index = start+1;\nfor (; length < N * 2; length *= 2)\n{\nstart = 0;\nindex = start + 1;\nbool theFind = false;\nwhile (1)\n{\nwhile (index < start + length&&index < N)\n{\nif (num[index] >= num[index - 1]) { index++; continue; }\nelse\n{\ntheFind = true;\nbreak;\n}\n}\nif (theFind)\n{\nfor(int i=start;i<N;i+=length)\nsort(num + i, num +min(i+length,N));\ngoto allEnd;\n}\nif (index >= N) break;\nstart += length; index = start + 1;\n}\n}\nallEnd:;\n}\ncout << whatSide << endl;\nfor (int i = 0; i < N; i++)\n{\ncout << num[i];\nif (i != N - 1) cout << \" \";\n}\nreturn 0;\n}","date":"2019-06-17 17:07:33","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.19201651215553284, \"perplexity\": 4722.912839483593}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2019-26\/segments\/1560627998513.14\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20190617163111-20190617185111-00465.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Q: How to close async client connection in ASIO? I'm trying to create a client for the C++ 20 server example, the one that uses coroutines.
I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to close the client connection. As far as I'm aware, there are two ways:
#1
This one seems to be closing it once it's ready/there is nothing else to do like read/write operations.
asio::signal_set signals(io_context, SIGINT, SIGTERM);
signals.async_wait([&](auto, auto) { io_context.stop(); });
#2
Force close?
asio::post(io_context_, [this]() { socket_.close(); });
Which one should I use?
Client code (unfinished)
#include <cstdlib>
#include <deque>
#include <iostream>
#include <thread>
#include <string>
#include <asio.hpp>
using asio::ip::tcp;
using asio::awaitable;
using asio::co_spawn;
using asio::detached;
using asio::redirect_error;
using asio::use_awaitable;
awaitable<void> connect(tcp::socket socket, const tcp::endpoint& endpoint)
{
co_await socket.async_connect(endpoint, use_awaitable);
}
int main()
{
try
{
asio::io_context io_context;
tcp::endpoint endpoint(asio::ip::make_address("127.0.0.1"), 666);
tcp::socket socket(io_context);
co_spawn(io_context, connect(std::move(socket), endpoint), detached);
io_context.run();
}
catch (std::exception& e)
{
std::cerr << "Exception: " << e.what() << "\n";
}
return 0;
}
Server code
#include <cstdlib>
#include <deque>
#include <iostream>
#include <list>
#include <memory>
#include <set>
#include <string>
#include <utility>
#include <asio/awaitable.hpp>
#include <asio/detached.hpp>
#include <asio/co_spawn.hpp>
#include <asio/io_context.hpp>
#include <asio/ip/tcp.hpp>
#include <asio/read_until.hpp>
#include <asio/redirect_error.hpp>
#include <asio/signal_set.hpp>
#include <asio/steady_timer.hpp>
#include <asio/use_awaitable.hpp>
#include <asio/write.hpp>
using asio::ip::tcp;
using asio::awaitable;
using asio::co_spawn;
using asio::detached;
using asio::redirect_error;
using asio::use_awaitable;
//----------------------------------------------------------------------
class chat_participant
{
public:
virtual ~chat_participant() = default;
virtual void deliver(const std::string& msg) = 0;
};
typedef std::shared_ptr<chat_participant> chat_participant_ptr;
//----------------------------------------------------------------------
class chat_room
{
public:
void join(chat_participant_ptr participant)
{
participants_.insert(participant);
for (const auto &msg : recent_msgs_)
participant->deliver(msg);
}
void leave(chat_participant_ptr participant)
{
participants_.erase(participant);
}
void deliver(const std::string& msg)
{
recent_msgs_.push_back(msg);
while (recent_msgs_.size() > max_recent_msgs)
recent_msgs_.pop_front();
for (const auto &participant : participants_)
participant->deliver(msg);
}
private:
std::set<chat_participant_ptr> participants_;
enum { max_recent_msgs = 100 };
std::deque<std::string> recent_msgs_;
};
//----------------------------------------------------------------------
class chat_session
: public chat_participant,
public std::enable_shared_from_this<chat_session>
{
public:
chat_session(tcp::socket socket, chat_room& room)
: socket_(std::move(socket)),
timer_(socket_.get_executor()),
room_(room)
{
timer_.expires_at(std::chrono::steady_clock::time_point::max());
}
void start()
{
room_.join(shared_from_this());
co_spawn(socket_.get_executor(),
[self = shared_from_this()]{ return self->reader(); },
detached);
co_spawn(socket_.get_executor(),
[self = shared_from_this()]{ return self->writer(); },
detached);
}
void deliver(const std::string& msg) override
{
write_msgs_.push_back(msg);
timer_.cancel_one();
}
private:
awaitable<void> reader()
{
try
{
for (std::string read_msg;;)
{
std::size_t n = co_await asio::async_read_until(socket_,
asio::dynamic_buffer(read_msg, 1024), "\n", use_awaitable);
room_.deliver(read_msg.substr(0, n));
read_msg.erase(0, n);
}
}
catch (std::exception&)
{
stop();
}
}
awaitable<void> writer()
{
try
{
while (socket_.is_open())
{
if (write_msgs_.empty())
{
asio::error_code ec;
co_await timer_.async_wait(redirect_error(use_awaitable, ec));
}
else
{
co_await asio::async_write(socket_,
asio::buffer(write_msgs_.front()), use_awaitable);
write_msgs_.pop_front();
}
}
}
catch (std::exception&)
{
stop();
}
}
void stop()
{
room_.leave(shared_from_this());
socket_.close();
timer_.cancel();
}
tcp::socket socket_;
asio::steady_timer timer_;
chat_room& room_;
std::deque<std::string> write_msgs_;
};
//----------------------------------------------------------------------
awaitable<void> listener(tcp::acceptor acceptor)
{
chat_room room;
for (;;)
{
std::make_shared<chat_session>(co_await acceptor.async_accept(use_awaitable), room)->start();
}
}
//----------------------------------------------------------------------
int main()
{
try
{
unsigned short port = 666;
asio::io_context io_context(1);
co_spawn(io_context,
listener(tcp::acceptor(io_context, { tcp::v4(), port })),
detached);
asio::signal_set signals(io_context, SIGINT, SIGTERM);
signals.async_wait([&](auto, auto) { io_context.stop(); });
io_context.run();
}
catch (std::exception& e)
{
std::cerr << "Exception: " << e.what() << "\n";
}
return 0;
}
A: In the example provided by asio, the listener runs within the io_context thread/thread-pool, which is started by run() and given a thread-pool size when constructing the io_context(1 /* pool of 1 */).
The listener will use an acceptor to listen for new connections from within the io_context. The acceptor will create a new chat_session for each new socket connection and will hand it over to the chat_room.
Thus, to safely close a connection, you need to post a lambda to asio. The asio::post will queue the lambda to be done from within the io_context thread(s).
You need to provided the correct io_context and the socket owned by the chat_session. The connection MUST be closed from within the io_context as follows:
// Where "this" is the current chat_session owning the socket
asio::post(io_context_, [this]() { socket_.close(); });
The io_context wil then close the connection and also call any active registered async_read / async_write methods of the chat_session such as in the c++11 example:
void do_read()
{
asio::async_read(socket_,
asio::buffer(read_msg_.data(), chat_message::header_length),
/* You can provide a lambda to be called on a read / error */
[this](std::error_code ec, std::size_t /*length read*/)
{
if (!ec)
{
do_read(); // No error -> Keep on reading
}
else
{
// You'll reach this point if an active async_read was stopped
// due to an error or if you called socket_.close()
// Error -> You can close the socket here as well,
// because it is called from within the io_context
socket_.close();
}
});
}
Your first option will actually stop the entire io_context. This should be used to gracefully exit your program or stop the asio io_context as a whole.
You should thus use the second option to "close an async client connection in ASIO".
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 7,912 |
Q: Maven Modules assembly/shade build I have the following module structure:
powercontrol
powercontrol-core
pom.xml
powercontrol-data
pom.xml
powercontrol-gui
pom.xml
powercontrol-ui
pom.xml
pom.xml
Now I want that the GUI (Graphical User Interface) and UI (Command Line User Interface) can be executed by the client.
I tried to use the maven shade plugin inside the GUI and UI, but this makes it really a mess.
I prefer:
*
*A jar file with all the third party dependencies (log4j etc).
*A jar file (or maybe lib folder?) with all the project modules.
*A'n executor for the GUI and UI.
Example:
powercontrol/
bin/
gui
ui
lib/
third-party.jar
powercontrol-core.jar
powercontrol-data.jar
powercontrol-gui.jar
powercontrol-ui.jar
I'm a bit stuck with getting a good structure now, where should I start?
All feedback, suggestions etc are welcome. Thank you in advance!
UPDATE 8/28/2015
I made a new module named: powercontrol-dist that will be executed as last in the Maven lifecycle. This module will generate a lib folder and copy all the dependencies from the powercontrol-gui and powercontrol-cli to this folder.
Now I have 2 questions!
Question 1
Is this a good way to go? Or is there a better way?
powercontrol-dist/pom.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<parent>
<groupId>nl.nberlijn.powercontrol</groupId>
<artifactId>powercontrol</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
</parent>
<artifactId>powercontrol-dist</artifactId>
<packaging>pom</packaging>
<name>PowerControl Dist</name>
<description>Dist</description>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
<artifactId>powercontrol-gui</artifactId>
<version>${project.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
<artifactId>powercontrol-cli</artifactId>
<version>${project.version}</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.10</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>copy</id>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/lib</outputDirectory>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
Output:
powercontrol/
bin/
gui.exe
ui.exe
lib/
third-party-lib.....jar
third-party-lib.....jar
third-party-lib.....jar
powercontrol-core.jar
powercontrol-data.jar
powercontrol-gui.jar
powercontrol-cli.jar
Question 2
Also I want to make two .exe files "gui.exe and cli.exe" referencing to the powercontrol-gui.jar and the powercontrol-cli.jar.
Is adding a mainclass to the manifest inside the pom.xml in the powercontrol-gui and powercontrol-cli module enough?
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<archive>
<manifest>
<mainClass>${main.class}</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
A: If you want two executable JARs (gui.jar, ui.jar), you should add the shade plugin to those two modules, so that as part of each module, a standalone executable JAR is built. Both of the JARs will contain all the third-party stuff as well. You cannot create a standalone executable JAR where parts of the dependencies are in an external JAR (unless you do you own classloader magic or unless you also have to specify the external JAR on the command line).
If you are stuck with the maven shade plugin, you should tell us what problem exactly you have. Typically these can be resolved. A common problem is that certain files need to be "merged" when a shaded JAR is created, in particular files in META-INF e.g. used by Spring or by the Java Service Locator mechanism. The shade plugin offers support for such merging, but it needs to be configured for the case at hand.
Btw. I'd recommend calling the command line version "cli.jar" - "ui" sounds like "gui".
Ok, since you updated your question and now seem to be asking for a "native launcher" (exe file) instead of an executable JAR file - those are completely different things.
Launching an exe file from the command line:
C:\> gui
Launching an executable JAR file from the command line
C:\ java -jar gui.jar
To get the first, you need to create a native launcher that internally invokes Java. A project that might support you in that task could be launch4j - they also seem to provide a Maven plugin.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 1,897 |
\section{Introduction} \label{sec:Introduction}
Network slicing is a crucial enabler to support the composition and deployment of virtual network infrastructures required by the dynamic behavior of networks like 5G/6G mobile networks, IoT-aware networks, e-health systems, and industry verticals like the internet of vehicles (IoV) and industry 4.0 \cite{wijethilaka_survey_2021} \cite{barakabitze_5g_2020} \cite{yousaf_network_2017}. In general, the slicing process results from the need to share resources among existing infrastructures to improve performance, provide cost-efficient solutions, and optimize operation \cite{thiruvasagam_resilient_2021}.
This technology is already used in the context of 5G networks \cite{wijethilaka_survey_2021} \cite{chahbar_comprehensive_2021} and provided as a service (slice-as-a-Service: SlaaS) by network operators. This allows customs to create their private virtual networks (slices) tailored to their specific application domains and to develop their own business models. Network slicing is expanding its use in other scenarios of telecommunication networks, content provider networks (ISPs), experimental networks, and IoT systems, among others \cite{kovacevic_multi-domain_2020}.
Network slice instance life cycle process such as commissioning, operating, and decommissioning \cite{wijethilaka_survey_2021} requires appropriate network communication resources. A communication slice \footnote{A specialized slice that provides communication services among network slicing entities} eventually represents a set of communication resources that can be used in the slicing process. It holds resources like links, optical slots, virtual private networks (VPNs), and other communication facilities necessary to provide the exchange of information among logical slices, and architectural slicing entities and for supporting the slicing process functionalities.
The communication slice resources significantly impact the performance of the resulting sliced virtual network (SVN) or virtual network operator (VNO). Among the most common network characteristics that impact the network slicing process, we can mention delay-aware network slicing like in 5G deployments \cite{prados-garzon_asynchronous_2021}, quality of service (QoS) aware network slicing \cite{yousaf_network_2017}, energy-aware network slicing \cite{xiao_dynamic_2018}, and, in general, application-dependent and multi-domain network slicing \cite{samdanis_network_2016}.
The objective of this paper is therefore to propose a conceptual model of slice communication and formulate analytically some of its aspects. The model should be able to capture the set of communication resources to support the optimization of the allocation of communication resources to the different slices on top of various underlying technologies (e.g. Elastic Optical Networks - EON \cite{duraes_evaluating_2017}, MultiProtocol Label Switching - MPLS \cite{de_ghein_mpls_2007}, others)
This paper is organized as follows. Section \ref{sec:RelatedWork} presents the related work and Section \ref{sec:SVN} introduces the concept of multidomain sliced virtual networks. Section \ref{sec:Model} presents a conceptual and analytical model for a communication slice used in the network slicing process. Section \ref{sec:ProofOfConcept} presents a proof of concept of using the models with a SARSA agent optimizing the allocation of bandwidth resources for a communication slice. Finally, Section \ref{sec:Conclusion} presents the final considerations.
\section{Related Work} \label{sec:RelatedWork}
There have been a very significant number of state-of-art research projects launched in the area during the last decade such as SFI2 (Slicing Future Internet Infrastructures) \cite{dias_sfi2_2019} \cite{martins_sfi2_2022}, NECOS (Novel Enablers for Cloud Slicing) \cite{clayman_necos_2021}, SELFNET \cite{DBLP:journals/ijdsn/NightingaleWCCU16} and MATILDA \cite{gouvas_design_2017}, standardization initiatives launched by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) \cite{ietf_framework_2021}, 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) \cite{3gpp_5g-evolution-3gpp_2020}, ITU (ITU-T - Telecommunication Standardization) \cite{itu-t_framework_2012}, ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) \cite{etsi_mobile_2015} and ONF (Open Networking Foundation) \cite{onf_-_open_networking_foundations_applying_2016} and published surveys \cite{barakabitze_5g_2020} \cite{zhang_overview_2019} \cite{foukas_network_2017} \cite{kaloxylos_survey_2018} \cite{afolabi_network_2018}. These different initiatives have focused on different technical aspects, architectures, and slicing strategies, and all require communication slices to operate and manage the provided functionalities.
However, these slicing architectures, projects, and initiatives did only address the conceptual and analytical modeling of the basic structures and functionalities that compose the slicing process in a preliminary way or did only indicate them as future challenges to solve. To the best of our knowledge, the conceptual and analytical modeling of communication slices is a new contribution to the network slicing domain.
\section{Resources, Slice and Sliced Virtual Network (SVN)} \label{sec:SVN}
A multi-domain Sliced Virtual Network (SVN) as viewed in Figure \ref{fig:SVNResources} is a multi-domain or a multi-tenant\footnote{For the scope of this paper, a tenant can be a network domain, a service provider, a business unit, or a specific multi-tier or single-application tier providing resources for network slicing.} infrastructure that is dynamically configured and deployed by requesting and orchestrating resources from a pool of providers on domains.
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.45]{SVNResources}
\caption{A Multi-Domain Sliced Virtual Network (SVN) and its Resources}
\label{fig:SVNResources}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
\subsection{The Slice}
For the scope of this paper aiming at the slicing model and deployment understanding, it is essential to conceptualize the vision of a \textit{slice} as a component of the sliced virtual network.
We define a slice as a specific resource, service, function, or set of resources, services, and functions virtualized, shared, and grouped using any software or hardware facility. The slice with its resources, services, and functions physically resides in nodes or other physical deployments in domains.
As such, slice resource examples are virtual machines, virtual switches with hosts deployed with OpenFlow, chunks of bandwidth belonging to a physical link, slots of a fiber EON deployment, LSP MPLS connections, shared spectrum in 5G radio access networks (RAN), and others. Slice function and service examples are virtual network functions (VNFs) deployed over a network providing specific services or facilities to the user.
Considering this slice basic concept, an SVN encompasses resources, services, and functions with the necessary communication resources to interconnect them inside domains and between domains as illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:SLICE}.
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.45]{SLICE}
\caption{A Generic SVN with Slices View}
\label{fig:SLICE}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
In general, resources belonging to the same SVN reside in different domains and are physically or virtually attached to nodes in their respective domains (Figure \ref{fig:SLICE}).
The network slicing architecture functionalities (resource marketplace, resource broker, resource orchestrator, slice instantiation, slice monitoring, and others) are distributed in terms of the domains participating in the SVN deployment and certainly, depend on the proposed architecture and the deployed functional blocks of the network slicing architecture (SELFNET, NECOS, SFI2, MATILDA, other).
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.4]{CommunicationSlices}
\caption{Intradomain and Interdomain Communication Slices}
\label{fig:CommunicationSlices}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Communication Resources and Communication Slice}
In order to allow the execution of the network slicing process and functionalities in any deployed slicing architecture, it is necessary to allocate communication resources allowing communication among the entities involved in the slicing process. Furthermore, once the SVN is deployed, communication resources are also necessary to support the communication requirements of the applications running (slice operation).
The generic view of communication resources used by a network slicing infrastructure to enable resource orchestration, deployment, and slice operation is illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:CommunicationSlices}.
We assume that the slicing process to create a sliced virtual network (SVN) involves single or multiple domains ($D_x, ..., D_z$). Each domain is generically configured by a single or a set of nodes ($n_i, ... n_j$) hosting resources and domains that are interconnected by communication resources.
A \textit{communication slice} is then defined as a set of communication resources orchestrated and allocated between slices, nodes, network-slicing entities, and domains. As such, the domain nodes ($n_i, ... n_j$) hosting resources and domains are interconnected by communication slices ($C_x, ... C_y$).
We identify two types of communication slices that are orchestrated and deployed with distinct configurations and characteristics:
\begin{itemize}
\item Intradomain communication slices; and
\item Interdomain communication slices.
\end{itemize}
In infrastructures composed of network domains, the modeling assumes that a gateway concentrates all communications between different domains.
We focus in this paper specifically on interdomain communications and how to model it in terms of communication slices.
\section{Network Slicing Interdomain Communications} \label{sec:Model}
The objective of a network slicing interdomain communication model is to formally structure and capture the needs in terms of communications for the slicing process. It also allows the identification of parameters leading to the optimization of the resource allocation process.
\subsection{Network Slicing Assumptions}
We first introduce the following assumptions in the context of network-slicing interdomain communications that are necessary for our modeling and problem formulation:
\begin{itemize}
\item Each network domain is SDN-compatible;
\item Each network domain gateway $GW\_D_i$ (Figure \ref{fig:CommunicationSlices}) is an SDN-enabled switch whose programmed behavior is to route packets between domains;
\item Each network domain implements monitoring mechanisms to collect performance monitoring parameters;
\item All intradomain and interdomain links are configurable in terms of allocated resources; and
\item All network domains support network resource identification and has capabilities for resource allocation.
\end{itemize}
\subsection{Network Slicing Model}
Based on these assumptions, we can now specify an analytical model of multi-domain SVN considering a set of network domains federating together their resources and infrastructures to the slicing process:
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:PredictNextQ2}
\aleph = <D_i^{l_i}, D_j^{l_j},D_k^{l_k},...,D_z^{l_z}>
\end{eqnarray}
Where:
\begin{itemize}
\item $D_i^{l_i}$ is a network infrastructure domain located at site $l_i$.
\end{itemize}
\begin{table}[]
\begin{tabular}{ll}
\hline
Notation & Description \\ \hline
$D_i^{l_i}$ & The domain $i$ located in physical location $l_i$ \\
$RD_i^{l_i}$ & Domain's set of shareable resources at a physical location \\
$R_i^{{D_i^{l_i}}}$ & A shareable resource at domain $D_i^{l_i}$ \\
$R\_IS_{D_i}^{l_i}$ & The infrastructure and service resources \\
$R\_C_{D_i}^{l_i}$ & The network communication resources \\
$B_{D_i,D_j}$ & Bandwidth between domains \\
$L_{D_i,D_j}$ & Packet loss between domains \\
$Dl_{D_i,D_j}$ & Delay between domains \\
$B_{n_i,n_j}$ & Bandwidth between nodes \\
$L_{n_i,n_j}$ & Packet loss between nodes \\
$Dl_{n_i,n_j}$ & Delay between nodes \\
$P\_RC_{D_k,D_j}^{l_i}$ & Set of communication's link parameters between domains \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Notation and variables}
\label{tab:parameters}
\end{table}
Each network infrastructure domain $D_i^{l_i}$ has a set of shareable resources such as:
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:PredictNextQ2}
RD_i^{l_i} = <R_i^{{D_i^{l_i}}}, R_j^{{D_i^{l_i}}},R_k^{D_i^{l_i}},...,R_z^{D_i^{l_i}}>
\end{eqnarray}
Where:
\begin{itemize}
\item $RD_i^{l_i}$ is the set of shareable resources provided by $D_i$ and located at site $l_i$;
\item $R_i^{{D_i^{l_i}}}$ is one particular shareable resource.
\end{itemize}
There are different types of resources at each network infrastructure domain location $D_i^{l_i}$:
\begin{itemize}
\item Infrastructure appliance like virtual machines, access points, and IoT devices;
\item Computing services like virtual network functions (VNF), storage and computing services; and
\item Communications services like physical links, LSPs (MPLS Link Switched Paths), fiber lambdas, and 5G connections.
\end{itemize}
For the purpose of the SVN model, we distinguish between two types of resources:
\begin{itemize}
\item Infrastructure and service resources - $R\_IS_{D_i}^{l_i}$; and
\item Communications resources - $R\_C_{D_i}^{l_i}$.
\end{itemize}
Users (clients) request infrastructure, service, and communication resources that are orchestrated by a network slicing software (NECOS, MATILDA, other) to create their sliced virtual network (SVN) as illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:SVNResources}.
The communication resources $R\_C_{D_i}^{l_i}$ provide the interconnection of infrastructure and service resources $R\_IS_{D_i}^{l_i}$ for intradomain and inter-domain connections. As such, for the SVN modeling there are two distinct communication resources or communication slices (Figure \ref{fig:CommunicationSlices}):
\begin{itemize}
\item Intradomain communication slices used between internal nodes of the domain: $R\_C_{D_i[n_j, n_k]}^{l_i}$; and
\item Interndomain communication slices used between domains: $R\_C_{D_i,D_k}^{l_i}$
\end{itemize}
The communication slices are characterized by as set of parameters related to interdomain (Equation \ref{inter-domain}) and intradomain (Equation \ref{intra-domain}) communications:
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:PredictNextQ2} \label{inter-domain}
P\_RC_{D_i,D_j} = <B_{D_i,D_j}, L_{D_i,D_j}, Dl_{D_i,D_j}>
\end{eqnarray}
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:PredictNextQ2} \label{intra-domain}
P\_RC_{n_i,n_j} = <B_{n_i,n_j}, L_{n_i,n_j}, Dl_{n_i,n_j}>
\end{eqnarray}
Where:
\begin{itemize}
\item $B_{D_i,D_j}$ is the available bandwidth between domains $D_i$ and $D_j$;
\item $L_{D_i,D_j}$ is the packet loss between domains $D_i$ and $D_j$;
\item $Dl_{D_i,D_j}$ is the delay between domains $D_i$ and $D_j$.
\item $B_{n_i,n_j}$ is the available bandwidth between nodes $n_i$ and $n_j$ in a domain;
\item $L_{n_i,n_j}$ is the packet loss between nodes $n_i$ and $n_j$ at a domain; and
\item $Dl_{n_i,n_j}$ is the packet delay between nodes $n_i$ and $n_j$ at a domain.
\end{itemize}
Figures \ref{fig:SVNResources} and \ref{fig:CommunicationSlices} illustrate a generic view of the slicing process and related interdomain communications. The network slicing infrastructure setup from the point of view of communication resources is as follows:
\begin{itemize}
\item A set of domains ($D_i$);
\item A single communication slice (configurable link or another communication resource) between domains; and
\item A SDN switch (gateway) programmed to handling the interdomain packet routing among domains.
\end{itemize}
The interdomain slice communication parameters $P\_RC_{D_k,D_j}^{l_i}$ are configured during the slicing commissioning phase, as proposed in the 3GPP network slicing reference architecture and model \cite{3gpp_3rd_2019}.
An SVN will require resources of distinct domains to be allocated end-to-end:
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:PredictNextQ2} \label{inter-domain}
SL_k^{D_i} = <R_i^{{D_i^{l_i}}}, R_j^{{D_i^{l_i}}},R_k^{D_y^{l_i}},...,R_z^{D_y^{l_i}}>
\end{eqnarray}
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{SwitchTrafficSlices}
\caption{Openflow Switch Handling Operation and Management Slicing Generated Packets}
\label{fig:SwitchSlicePackets}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
The communication slice modeling assumes that each domain contributes to a set of different resources that are located in various physical sites (domains).
\begin{figure*}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.55]{InterDomainCommunications}
\caption{Interdomain Communication Slice and Gateway at Domain i}
\label{fig:InterdomainCommunicationSlice}
\end{center}
\end{figure*}
The model is agnostic to the issue of traffic distinction between packets generated with the slices already instantiated (slice operation) and packets generated by the network slicing management software installed (orchestrator, resource marketplace, monitoring, others).
The slicing-related interdomain traffic between domains is handled by
an SDN switch as illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:SwitchSlicePackets}.
In summary, the interdomain traffic at the gateway is composed of the packets generated (operation and management) by all resources belonging to the domain $D_i$ having as destination the domain $D_j$.
The slicing communication model assumes that domains have only one network connection together. In other words, the domains do not act as intermediate domains switching packets in the path to a destination domain.
For the interdomain packets at the gateway, the following definitions hold (Figure \ref{fig:SwitchSlicePackets}):
\begin{itemize}
\item All packets belonging to a set of resources $R_i^{{D_i^{l_i}}}$ at domain $D_i$ with the same performance parameters constraint use a specific queue $Q_n$;
\item $N$ switch queues handle the packet generated by the shareable resources at domain $D_i$;
\item The switch queues have SDN resources control capabilities controlled by SDN Controllers \cite{torres_sdnopenflow_2020} for resource control;
\item A priority is assigned to each output queue; and
\item Each queue has a threshold level control parameter $P_{Q_n}$.
\end{itemize}
The priority and threshold level assigned to the queues are used to support for optimization (e.g. optimization controller as shown in the following section).
In summary, the model assumes that packets generated from any sliced resource with similar performance constraints are grouped in the same controlled queue in the gateway.
The following hypotheses are considered for the control of the intradomain packets and the gateway queues as highlighted in Figures \ref{fig:CommunicationSlices} and \ref{fig:InterdomainCommunicationSlice}):
\begin{itemize}
\item Intradomain communications will be based on existing underlying communication technologies (MPLS LSPs connections, EON fiber slots, other);
\item A gateway handles all the inbound and outbound interdomain traffics,
\item In a domain, each node hosting sharing resources for the slicing creates a path to the gateway,
\item Each path associated with a resource provided by a node is associated with a particular queue in the gateway.
\end{itemize}
The intradomain slice communication analytical model is not the focus of this paper, and these premises make clear its interrelation with the interdomain modeling and allows the independent modeling of it.
The optimization problem to solve here is the sharing of the communication resources between the different slices taking into account the QoS requirement of each slice. This means scheduling the packet originating from the different slices towards the different available queues in the gateway. This a complex engineering problem that is difficult to solve in an analytical way considering all the parameters that need to be taken into account. For that, we propose to investigate the use of a Reinforcement Learning SARSA agent which is explained in the following section.
\color{black}
\section{SARSA Agent to Optimize Resources Sharing} \label{sec:ProofOfConcept}
The interdomain communication slice model is now applied to the network slicing deployment setup illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:InterdomainCommunicationSlice} in which we have:
\begin{itemize}
\item A multidomain slicing infrastructure with $n$ domains;
\item A single communication slice between domains; and
\item A SDN-capable switch (gateway) handling bidirectional interdomain packets between the domains.
\end{itemize}
In terms of the proof of concept, each interdomain communication slice has a reinforcement learning SARSA agent aiming to optimize the allocation of communication resources. The RL-SARSA agent acts during slice operation to dynamically keep performance parameters accordingly to management-defined objectives.
The interdomain slice communication parameters ($P\_RC_{D_k,D_j}^{l_i}$) are configured during the slicing commissioning phase and are dynamically adjusted by the SARSA agent during the slice operation phase.
\subsection{SARSA Agent Model and Configuration} \label{sec:SARSAConfig}
The objective of the SARSA agent is to control the queue flushing transmission rates to preserve the performance parameters defined by the manager while sharing unused resources.
The slice communication queues ($Q_i$) are configured as follows:
\begin{itemize}
\item Three queues corresponding to three performance parameters controlled by the agent;
\item Each configured queue threshold ($Th_i$) corresponds to the performance parameter assigned to the queue and served to packets generated by sliced resources with this requirement, and
\item Each queue $Q_i$ has two states: below threshold (BT) and above threshold (AT).
\end{itemize}
The actions defined for the queues in the $AT$ state are to increase the transmission rate, reduce the transmission rate, and do nothing. Each executed state/action has a defined reward.
The SARSA agent and communication slice parameters and initial conditions for running are as follows:
\begin{itemize}
\item Agent configuration parameters:
\begin{itemize}
\item Epsilon-greedy policy $\epsilon$ = 8$\%$;
\item Learning rate $\alpha$ = 20$\%$; and
\item Discount factor $\gamma$ = 80$\%$
\end{itemize}
\item Threshold limit (triggers agent action) = 50\%
\item Agent actions: bandwidth increased or reduced by 10\%
\item Maximum number of attempts = 500
\item Queue priorities are: $p1$, $p2$ and $p3$ with $p1>p2>p3$.
\end{itemize}
SARSA Q-values are therefore updated based on the Equations \ref{eq:SARSA}:
\begin{eqnarray}\label{eq:SARSA}
\begin{split}
Q(x_t,a_t) \leftarrow Q(x_t,a_t) + \alpha[r_{t+1} + \gamma Q(x_{t+1},a_{t+1}) \\ - Q(x_t, a_t)]
\end{split}
\end{eqnarray}
\subsection{Implementation and tests} \label{sec:SARSAConfig}
The simulation environment was configured on a Linux (Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS) Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz desktop. The Visual Studio Code v.1.73.0 and Python v3.10.6 are used to execute the tests and the statistical analysis.
Each test run scenario has a minimum process cycle of $10^4$ packet production for each queue with a Poisson distribution.
The SARSA agent is called each time any queue reaches its configured threshold. The SARSA agent processes up to 500 episodes in search of a new configuration of the flushing bandwidth distribution among queues to keep buffer occupation in the configured threshold limit.
\subsection{The Slice Communication Evaluation Results} \label{sec:SliceCommunication}
A series of tests have been undertaken. It aims to overload the queues to evaluate the behavior of the agent. The three defined scenarios are the following:
\begin{itemize}
\item Scenario 1 - One of the queues is overloaded;
\item Scenario 2 - Two queues are overloaded; and
\item Scenario 3 - All queues are overloaded.
\end{itemize}
The dynamics of the overloaded queues are configured as follows:
\begin{itemize}
\item First set traffic 30\% above the queue defined limit for 10 minutes;
\item Increase to 50\% above its defined limit for additional 10 minutes;
\item Increase to 80\% above its defined limit for additional 10 minutes; and
\item Increase to 100\% above its defined limit for additional 10 minutes.
\end{itemize}
Figures \ref{fig:TestScenario1a} and \ref{fig:TestScenario1b} illustrate the SARSA agent's behavior for scenario one. Figure \ref{fig:TestScenario1a} plots the state of the queues while they are being saturated with overload traffic of packets. The queue transmission rate (flushing rate) configured by the SARSA agent is illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:TestScenario1b}. We observe that the total available bandwidth for the link is distributed and reconfigured among the queues according to the dynamic need to flush packets from a specific queue and keep queue occupation below the defined threshold.
\begin{figure*}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.45]{TestScenario1-QueueSize}
\caption{Test Scenario 1 - One Gateway Queue Overloaded - Queue Size}
\label{fig:TestScenario1a}
\end{center}
\end{figure*}
\begin{figure*}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.45]{TestScenario1-QueueBandwidth}
\caption{Test Scenario 1 - One Gateway Queue Overloaded - Queue Flushing Rate}
\label{fig:TestScenario1b}
\end{center}
\end{figure*}
For scenario two, the behavior of the SARSA agent is illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:TestScenario2}. In this scenario, two queues may overload, and, as observed in scenario one, the SARSA agent reconfigures the queue's transmission rate to keep buffer occupation below the defined threshold. The agent can deal with simultaneous overload for the simulation-defined parameters by keeping queue occupation as required.
\begin{figure*}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.4]{TestScenario2}
\caption{Test Scenario 2 - Two Gateway Queues Overloaded - Queue Size}
\label{fig:TestScenario2}
\end{center}
\end{figure*}
Finally, the behavior of the SARSA agent for scenario 3 is illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:TestScenario3} and is equivalent to its behavior on scenario two.
\begin{figure*}[htbp]
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[scale=0.4]{TestScenario3}
\caption{Test Scenario 3 - Three Gateway Queues Overloaded - Queues Size}
\label{fig:TestScenario3}
\end{center}
\end{figure*}
\section{Final Considerations} \label{sec:Conclusion}
This paper presents a conceptual model of network slicing and present an analytical model to allocate communication resources between slide process. The conceptual model is along with a SARSA agent that optimize the allocation of communication resources among slices. The SARSA agent uses the conceptual model to formulate the required communication ressources of each slice. A proof of concept implementation of the SARSA agent aims to demonstrate that the SARSA agent contributes to dynamically adjusting and controlling the slice communication parameters between domains. The proposed conceptual model demonstrates the feasibility and ease of handling different types of communication resources for optimizing the communication slice. Future work includes the leverage of the conceptual model with the integration of intradomain and interdomain models and the new formulation of the distributed optimization problem to solve by a federation of SARSA agents.
\printbibliography
\end{document}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 251 |
Petitie #255: Acknowledgement and reparation.
i feb 10th w Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Petitie #255: Acknowledgement and reparation. x by Jan Freeke
The Hague, 9 February 2016
Subject: Acknowledgement and reparation
It is a joy to see and hear the reaction from the former Dutch civil servants and Dutch military, who served on behalf of the Dutch East Indies government during the Japanese occupation of Dutch East Indies. The present Dutch Government acknowledged their sufferings and unjust treatment after the war ended. The formal apology and reinstatement of respect in addition to a substantial lump sum payment does wonders to these individuals. How sad is it that the so called deal between your Government and the Government of the Republic of Korea regarding Comfort Women does not enjoy the same enthusiasm by the surviving victims as these were not included in the discussions and do not accept the arrangements.
In the written answer to questions by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) the Japanese Government claimed that there was no evidence to prove that sex slavery was coerced. Forgetting that during World War II the system of comfort women was widespread in the by the Japanese military occupied territories. Based on overwhelming evidence the Dutch Military Batavia Tribunal concluded in 1947 without any doubt that Japanese officers and civilians recruited from concentration camps in the Dutch East Indies Dutch women and girls and forced them into prostitution for the pleasure of Japanese military and civilians. The evidence of coercion was then and is now still very clear and well documented. The accused were severely punished including the death penalty!
Regardless the San Francisco Peace Treaty the global opinion is that Japan committed war crimes and ultimately will have to admit these. The present "deal" between your government and the government of the Republic of Korea will not change that. The state of Japan has to acknowledge the facts that during the occupation of territories during World War II its military violated the The Hague convention of 1907 and is thus liable to apologize and pay reparation to the individual victims. The Human Rights principles of the United Nations and the international laws will be upheld!
We are looking forward to Japan's acknowledgement and reparation.
On behalf of the Foundation of Japanese Honorary Debts. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 6,247 |
Maria moved from the Cape Verde islands in 1979, and now resides in Boston with her husband and two daughters. She graduated from the Dimock Dental Assistant Program in Boston in 1990 and became an employee at Boston University's Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, where she works until this day.
Maria is very passionate about her career as a dental assistant and has been part of Kappa Dental Group for 14 years. Maria is proficient in all areas of dentistry, but enjoys assisting restorative dentistry the most. Maria is fluent in Cape Verdean Portuguese, Spanish and English. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 265 |
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Madang is a Metropolitan Archdiocese in Papua New Guinea with suffragan dioceses of Aitape, Lae, Vanimo and Wewak.
The Archdiocese was created in 1966 when it was elevated from a predecessor see.
The Metropolitan Archbishop of Madang, appointed by Pope Francis on 26 July 2019, is the former Bishop of Kundiawa, Papua New Guinea, Anton Bal. He succeeded Archbishop Stephen Joseph Reichert, O.F.M. Cap., whose resignation was accepted after he reached the age limit.
Coat of arms
The proposed coat of arms was created by Marek Sobola, a heraldic specialist from Slovakia, who also made a redesign of coat of arms for the archbishop Stephen Joseph Reichert, O.F.M. Cap.
Bishops
Archbishops of Madang (and Ordinaries of predecessor sees)
Everardo Limbrock, S.V.D. (1896-1914)
Francesco Wolf, S.V.D. (1922-1944)
Stephen A. Appelhans, S.V.D. (1948-1951)
Adolph Alexander Noser, S.V.D. (1953-1975)
Leo Clement Andrew Arkfeld, S.V.D. (1975-1987)
Benedict To Varpin (1987-2001)
William Joseph Kurtz, S.V.D. (2001-2010) - presently Archbishop Emeritus
Stephen Joseph Reichert, O.F.M. Cap. (2010-2019), a Capuchin - presently Archbishop Emeritus
Anton Bal (2019-present); former Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kundiawa, Papua New Guinea
Coadjutor archbishops
Benedict To Varpin (1987)
William Joseph Kurtz, S.V.D. (1999-2001)
References
External links
A
1896 establishments in Oceania
1896 establishments in the German colonial empire | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 5,816 |
package com.upt.cti.bloodnetwork.service.core;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional;
import com.upt.cti.bloodnetwork.persistence.domain.converter.EntityConverter;
import com.upt.cti.bloodnetwork.persistence.domain.dto.DonationPlaceDTO;
import com.upt.cti.bloodnetwork.persistence.domain.entity.DonationPlace;
import com.upt.cti.bloodnetwork.persistence.domain.exception.MissingRequiredEntity;
import com.upt.cti.bloodnetwork.persistence.repository.DonationPlaceRepository;
import com.upt.cti.bloodnetwork.service.api.DonationPlaceService;
@Service("donationPlaceService")
public class DefaultDonationPlaceService implements DonationPlaceService {
private final DonationPlaceRepository donationPlaceRepository;
private final EntityConverter<DonationPlace, DonationPlaceDTO> donationPlaceConverter;
@Autowired
public DefaultDonationPlaceService(DonationPlaceRepository donationPlaceRepository,
EntityConverter<DonationPlace, DonationPlaceDTO> donationPlaceConverter) {
this.donationPlaceRepository = donationPlaceRepository;
this.donationPlaceConverter = donationPlaceConverter;
}
@Override
@Transactional
public void createOne(DonationPlaceDTO form) {
donationPlaceRepository.saveOne(donationPlaceConverter.unmarshall(form));
}
@Override
public DonationPlaceDTO findOne(Long pk) {
return donationPlaceRepository
.findOne(pk)
.map(donationPlaceConverter::marshall)
.orElseThrow(() -> new MissingRequiredEntity("Unable to find donation place with id:: " + pk));
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 7,847 |
Aspiration International is one of Oxfam Australia's oldest trading partners, and assists many artisan groups throughout India to ensure the survival of their unique craft traditions. Founded in 1993, Aspiration International has achieved global recognition as an exporter of premium-grade fair trade products. Due to the organisation's high commitment to quality and willingness to expand and create customized products, Aspiration International has developed a huge export client base around the World.
Padam Kapoor founded Aspiration International after previously working for the government in the handicraft development area. With a vision of improving the lives of economically disadvantaged Indian artisans, Kapoor established an independent fair trade company that purchased and exported the artisan's products equitably. Working alongside approximately 30 producer partners, Aspiration International encourages their artisans to become self-sufficient through allowing them to set up their own workshops and employ other artisans.
Aspiration International also works with women who are working from home to assist them in gaining financial empowerment, while still being able to care for their children. Paying their workers above the minimum wage, Aspiration International treats their workers with respect and offers them a chance to lead independent and stable lives.
Along with their fair-trade mission, Aspiration International aim to give new life to the ancient crafts of India. Undertaking in-depth research into traditional Indian designs, Aspiration International strives to provide its customers with products which maintain contemporary aesthetics whilst incorporating designs from the ancient culture of India. Aspiration International's dedication to quality and customer satisfaction remains clear as they employ expert quality control analysts to supervise the production process.
Products which Aspiration International market includes costume jewelry, kasmiri paper-mâché products, copper and stainless steel kitchen ware, Christmas decorations and Sheesham wood homewares such as decorative boxes and photo frames. As a conscientious business which believes in sustainability, Aspiration International asks each of their producer partners to plant 2 trees a year and nurture their growth.
Aspiration International also aims to work with groups who make intricate carved wooden products, including local Jalicut and Jaipur techniques, as the continuous production of these crafts is essential in the preservation of India's cultural identity.
Aspiration International pride itself on the fine workmanship which goes into their products, the attentive and timely delivery of their exports, and their customised shipment packages which conform to varying clients' needs. Aspiration International remains distinguishable for the subtle blend of contemporary design and ethnic taste encompassed within their products, and its ability to maintain reasonable prices with fair trade standards. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 8,168 |
<?php
defined('BASEPATH') OR exit('No direct script access allowed');
class Member extends CI_Controller {
public function __construct() {
parent::__construct();
}
public function login() {
$this->load->model("Member_model");
$member_model = new Member_Model();
$member = $member_model->login(
$this->input->post("username"),
md5($this->input->post("password"))
);
if(count($member) > 0) {
$item = $member[0];
$this->session->set_userdata(array(
"nama_depan" => $item['nama_depan'],
"username" => $item['username']
));
redirect(site_url());
}
}
}
?>
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 8,215 |
{"url":"http:\/\/blog.csdn.net\/bmicnj\/article\/details\/51558193","text":"\uff08\u4e8c\uff09S - S Lightoj 1008 \u3010\u89c4\u5f8b\u3011\n\nS -\u00a0S\nTime Limit:500MS\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Memory Limit:32768KB\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a064bit IO Format:%lld & %llu\n\nDescription\n\nFibsieve had a fantabulous (yes, it's an actual word) birthday party this year. He had so many gifts that he was actually thinking of not having a party next year.\n\nAmong these gifts there was an\u00a0N x N\u00a0glass chessboard that had a light in each of its cells. When the board was turned on a distinct cell would light up every second, and then go dark.\n\nThe cells would light up in the sequence shown in the diagram. Each cell is marked with the second in which it would light up.\n\n(The numbers in the grids stand for the time when the corresponding cell lights up)\n\nIn the first second the light at cell (1, 1) would be on. And in the 5th second the cell (3, 1) would be on. Now, Fibsieve is trying to predict which cell will light up at a certain time (given in seconds). Assume that\u00a0N\u00a0is large enough.\n\nInput\n\nInput starts with an integer\u00a0T (\u2264 200), denoting the number of test cases.\n\nEach case will contain an integer\u00a0S (1 \u2264 S \u2264 1015)\u00a0which stands for the time.\n\nOutput\n\nFor each case you have to print the case number and two numbers\u00a0(x, y), the column and the row number.\n\nSample Input\n\n3\n\n8\n\n20\n\n25\n\nSample Output\n\nCase 1: 2 3\n\nCase 2: 5 4\n\nCase 3: 1 5\n\n#include <cstdio>\n#include <cmath>\nint main()\n{\nint t,x,y,k=1;\nlong long s,n,m;\nscanf(\"%d\",&t);\nwhile(t--)\n{\nscanf(\"%lld\",&s);\nn=sqrt(s);\/\/\u7ec4\u6570\nif(s-n*n>0)\nn+=1;\nm=n*n-(n-1);\/\/\u5bf9\u89d2\u7ebf\u6570\nif(n%2==1)\/\/\u7ec4\u6570\u4e3a\u5947\u6570\n{\nif(s>m)\/\/\u5927\u4e8e\u5bf9\u89d2\u7ebf\u6570\n{\nx=n-(s-m);\ny=n;\n}\nelse\/\/\u5c0f\u4e8e\u7b49\u4e8e\u5bf9\u89d2\u7ebf\u6570\n{\ny=n-(m-s);\nx=n;\n}\n}\nelse\/\/\u7ec4\u6570\u4e3a\u5076\u6570\n{\nif(s>m)\n{\ny=n-(s-m);\nx=n;\n}\nelse\n{\nx=n-(m-s);\ny=n;\n}\n}\nprintf(\"Case %d: %d %d\\n\",k++,x,y);\n}\nreturn 0;\n}\n\n\n\u2022 \u672c\u6587\u5df2\u6536\u5f55\u4e8e\u4ee5\u4e0b\u4e13\u680f\uff1a\n\nLightOJ1008---Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday (\u89c4\u5f8b)\n\nFibsieve had a fantabulous (yes, it\u2019s an actual word) birthday party this year. He had so many gifts...\n\nlightoj 1008 - Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday\n\nFibsieve had a fantabulous (yes, it's an actual word)birthday party this year. He had so many gifts ...\n\nLightOJ 1008 - Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday\n\nFibsieve had a fantabulous (yes, it's an actual word)birthday party this year. He had so many gifts ...\n\nLight oj:1008 - Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday\u3010\u89c4\u5f8b\u3011\n\n1008 - Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday PDF (English) Statistics Forum ...\n\nLight OJ 1008 Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday\u3010\u89c4\u5f8b\u3011\n\n1008 - Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday PDF (English) Statistics Forum Time Limit:\u00a00.5 s...\n\nLIGHTOJ-10081008 - Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday(\u89c4\u5f8b)\n\n1008 - Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday PDF (English) Statistics Forum ...\n\nLight OJ 1008 Fibsieves Fantabulous Birthday(\u627e\u51fa\u6570\u5b57\u4f4d\u7f6e\uff09\n\nFibsieve had a fantabulous (yes, it's an actual word) birthday party this year. He had so many gifts...\n\nLightOJ - 1429-Assassin`s Creed (II)\uff08tarjan\u627e\u73af\u7f29\u70b9+bfs+\u6700\u5c0f\u8def\u5f84\u8986\u76d6\uff09\n\n\u4e3e\u62a5\u539f\u56e0\uff1a \u60a8\u4e3e\u62a5\u6587\u7ae0\uff1a\u6df1\u5ea6\u5b66\u4e60\uff1a\u795e\u7ecf\u7f51\u7edc\u4e2d\u7684\u524d\u5411\u4f20\u64ad\u548c\u53cd\u5411\u4f20\u64ad\u7b97\u6cd5\u63a8\u5bfc \u8272\u60c5 \u653f\u6cbb \u6284\u88ad \u5e7f\u544a \u62db\u8058 \u9a82\u4eba \u5176\u4ed6 (\u6700\u591a\u53ea\u5141\u8bb8\u8f93\u516530\u4e2a\u5b57)","date":"2017-09-25 17:09:19","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.2618424594402313, \"perplexity\": 11244.539309057778}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": false, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 20, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2017-39\/segments\/1505818692236.58\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20170925164022-20170925184022-00696.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Xunit;
namespace Equalizer.Routers.Tests
{
public class RoundRobinRouterShould
{
[Fact]
public void WrapAround()
{
string first = "1";
string second = "2";
string third = "3";
var instances = new List<string> { first, second, third };
var router = new RoundRobinRouter<string>();
// choose first
string next = router.Choose(instances);
Assert.NotNull(next);
Assert.Equal("1", next);
// choose next
next = router.Choose(instances);
Assert.NotNull(next);
Assert.Equal("2", next);
// choose next
next = router.Choose(instances);
Assert.NotNull(next);
Assert.Equal("3", next);
// choose first
next = router.Choose(instances);
Assert.NotNull(next);
Assert.Equal("1", next);
}
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 4,720 |
De San Giovanni Maria Vianney is een kerk in Rome, gelegen aan de via Lentini in de zona Borghesiana. De kerk is gewijd aan de heilige Johannes Maria Vianney.
De kerk werd in de jaren tachtig van de twintigste eeuw gebouwd op de plaats waar sinds 1952 een tijdelijk bouwwerk had gestaan dat dienstdeed als kerkgebouw voor de eveneens aan de heilige Pastoor van Ars gewijde parochie. De kerk werd in 1990 gewijd door kardinaal Ugo Poletti. De bediening van de kerk was in handen van de priesters van het Istituto del Prado, een gemeenschap van apostolisch leven gebaseerd op het gedachtegoed van de patroon van parochie en kerk. Tegenwoordig wordt de kerk bediend door priesters van het bisdom Rome. In 1983 bracht paus Johannes Paulus II een bezoek aan de parochie, toen nog in het oude gebouw. De kerk maakt deel uit van het parochieverband Borghesiana.
Titelkerk
De kerk werd in 2012 door paus Benedictus XVI verheven tot titelkerk. Hij schonk de titel aan de Berlijnse aartsbisschop Rainer Maria Woelki.
Giovanni Maria Vianney | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 8,760 |
\section{Introduction}
\hspace{0cm} In this paper we will note by $W_{T}^{1,2}$ the Sobolev spaces
of the $u\in L^{2}\left[ T_{0},R^{n}\right] $ functions, which have the weak
derivative $\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\in L^{2}\left[
T_{0},R^{n}\right] $, $T_{0}=\left[ 0,T^{1}\right] \times ...\times \left[
0,T^{p}\right] \subset R^{p}.$ The weak derivatives are defined using the
space $C_{T}^{\infty }$\ of all indefinitely differentiable multiple $T$%
-periodic function from $R^{p}$ into $R^{n}$. We consider $H_{T}^{1}$ \ the
Hilbert space of the $W_{T}^{1,2.}$. The geometry on $H_{T}^{1}$ is realized
by the scalar product
\[
\left\langle u,v\right\rangle =\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left( \delta
_{ij}u^{i}\left( t\right) v^{j}\left( t\right) +\delta _{ij}\delta ^{\alpha
\beta }\displaystyle\frac{\partial u^{i}}{\partial t^{\alpha }}\left(
t\right) \displaystyle\frac{\partial v^{j}}{\partial t^{\beta }}\left(
t\right) \right) dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p},
\]
and the associated Euclidean norm $\left\| .\right\| .$ These are induced by
the scalar product (Riemannian metric)
\[
G=\left(
\begin{array}{cc}
\delta _{ij} & 0 \\
0 & \delta ^{\alpha \beta }\delta _{ij}
\end{array}
\right)
\]
on $R^{n+np}$ (see the jet space $J^{1}\left( T_{0},R^{n}\right) $).
Let $t=\left( t^{1},...,t^{p}\right) $ be a generic point in $R^{p}$. Then
the opposite faces of the parallelepiped $T_{0}$ can be described by the
equations
\[
S_{i}^{-}:t^{i}=0,S_{i}^{+}:t^{i}=T^{i}
\]
for each $i=1,...,p.$ We denote
\[
\left\| u\right\| _{L^{2}}=\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\delta _{ij}u^{i}\left(
t\right) v^{j}\left( t\right) dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p},
\]
\[
\left\| \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}=\displaystyle%
\int_{T_{0}}\delta _{ij}\delta ^{\alpha \beta }\displaystyle\frac{\partial
u^{i}}{\partial t^{\alpha }}\left( t\right) \displaystyle\frac{\partial v^{j}%
}{\partial t^{\beta }}\left( t\right) dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p},
\]
\[
\left( u,v\right) =\delta _{ij}u^{i}v^{j},\left| u\right| =\sqrt{\delta
_{ij}u^{i}u^{j}}.
\]
We study the extremals of the action
\[
\varphi \left( u\right) =\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \displaystyle\frac{1%
}{2}\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right| ^{2}+F\left(
t,u\left( t\right) \right) \right] dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
on $H_{T}^{1}$ in the case when the potential $F$ function has spatial
periodicity. So, we consider that there exist $P_{1},....P_{n}\in R$ so that
$F\left( t,x+P_{i}e_{i}\right) =F\left( t,x\right) $, for any $t\in T_{0}$, $%
x\in R^{n}$ and any $i\in \{1,...n\}$. The vectors $e_{1},...,e_{n}$ create
a canonical base\ in the Euclidian space $R^{n}.$ The extremals of the
action $\varphi $ are being determined with the minimizing sequences method.
For the existence of the minimizing bounded sequence we need to introduce
the spatial periodicity condition of the potential function $F$. The
function that realizes the minimum of the action $\varphi $ verifies the
Euler-Lagrange equations, which in the case of the Lagrangian
\[
L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}%
\right) =\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{%
\partial t}\right| ^{2}+F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right)
\]
defined on $H_{T}^{1}$, reduces to a Poisson-gradient $PDE_{S}$, $\Delta
u\left( t\right) =\nabla F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right) ,$
\[
u\mid _{S_{i}^{-}}=u\mid _{S_{i}^{+}},\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\mid
_{S_{i}^{-}}=\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\mid _{S_{i}^{+}},i=1,...,p.
\]
\section{The action that produces Poisson-gradient \newline
systems}
\subsection{Multi-time Euler-Lagrange equations}
We consider the multi-time variable $t=\left( t^{1},...,t^{p}\right) \in
R^{p}$, the functions $x^{i}:R^{p}\rightarrow R,\left(
t^{1},...,t^{p}\right) \rightarrow $ $x^{i}\left( t^{1},...,t^{p}\right) $, $%
i=1,...n,$ and we denote $x_{\alpha }^{i}=\displaystyle\frac{\partial x^{i}}{%
\partial t^{\alpha }},\alpha =1,...,p$. The Lagrange function
\[
L:R^{p+n+np}\rightarrow R,\left( t^{\alpha },x^{i},x_{\alpha }^{i}\right)
\rightarrow L\left( t^{\alpha },x^{i},x_{\alpha }^{i}\right)
\]
gives the Euler-Lagrange equations
\[
\displaystyle\frac{\partial }{\partial t^{\alpha }}\displaystyle\frac{%
\partial L}{\partial x_{\alpha }^{i}}=\displaystyle\frac{\partial L}{%
\partial x^{i}},\;i=1,...,n,\;\alpha =1,...p
\]
(second order $PDEs$ system on the n-dimensional space).
The multi-time Lagrangian and Hamiltonian dynamics is based on the concept
of multisymplecticity (polysymplecticity) [3], [5]-[12]. Our task is to
develope some ideas from [1]-[2], [12]-[14] having in mind the single-time
theory in [4].
\subsection{Continuous action}
We consider the Lagrange function $L:T_{0}\times R^{n}\times
R^{np}\rightarrow R,\left( t^{\alpha },u^{i},u_{\alpha }^{i}\right)
\rightarrow L\left( t^{\alpha },u^{i},u_{\alpha }^{i}\right) ,$ $u_{\alpha
}^{i}=\displaystyle\frac{\partial u^{i}}{\partial t^{\alpha }},\alpha
=1,...,p,i=1,...,n,$ $u^{i}:T_{0}\rightarrow R,\left( t^{1},...,t^{p}\right)
\rightarrow u^{i}\left( t^{1},...,t^{p}\right) ,$
\[
L\left(t^{\alpha },u^{i},u_{\alpha }^{i}\right) =\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}%
\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right| ^{2}+F\left(
t,u\left( t\right) \right) .
\]
In the following result we will establish the conditions in which the action
\[
\varphi \left( u\right) =\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}L\left( t,u\left( t\right)
,\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right)
dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
is continuous.
{\bf Theorem 1}. {\it Let $F:T_{0}\times R^{n}\rightarrow R$}${\it ,}${\it \
$\left( t,u\right) \rightarrow F\left( t,u\right) $\ be a measurable
function in $t$ for any $u\in R^{n}$ and continuously differentiable in $u$
for any $t$ $\in T_{0}$}${\it ,}${\it \ $T_{0}=\left[ 0,T^{1}\right] \times
...\times \left[ 0,T^{p}\right] \subset R^{p}$}${\it .}${\it \ If exists $%
M\geq 0$ and $g\in C\left( T_{0},R\right) $ such that $\left| \nabla
_{u}F\left( t,u\right) \right| \leq M\left| u\right| +g\left( t\right) $ for
any $t$ $\in T_{0}$ and any $u\in R$}${\it ,}${\it \ then $\varphi \left(
u\right) =\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \displaystyle\frac{1}{2}\left| %
\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right| ^{2}+F\left( t,u\left(
t\right) \right) \right] dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}$ is continuous in $%
H_{T}^{1}$}${\it .}$
{\bf Proof}. We consider the $\left( u_{k}\right) _{k\in N}$ sequence which
is convergent in $H_{T}^{1}$ and we will note by $u$ his limit. This leads
us to the fact that
\[
\left\| u_{k}-u\right\| ^{2}=\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \left|
u_{k}\left( t\right) -u\left( t\right) \right| ^{2}+\left| \displaystyle%
\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}\left( t\right) -\displaystyle\frac{%
\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right| ^{2}\right] dt^{1}\wedge
...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
\[
=\left\| u_{k}-u\right\| _{L^{2}}^{2}+\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial
u_{k}}{\partial t}-\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\|
_{L^{2}}^{2}\rightarrow 0
\]
when $k\rightarrow \infty $. The convergence of $u_{k}$ to $u$ in $H_{T}^{1}$
is equivalent to the convergence of $u_{k}$ to $u$ and to the convergence of
$\displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}$ to $\displaystyle\frac{%
\partial u}{\partial t}$ in $L^{2}$. By consequence $\left\| u_{k}\right\|
_{L^{2}}$ and $\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}%
\right\| _{L^{2}}$ are bounded in $R$. In order to show the continuity of $%
\varphi $, we will prove that $\left| \varphi \left( u_{k}\right) -\varphi
\left( u\right) \right| \rightarrow 0$ when $u_{k}\rightarrow u$ in $%
H_{T}^{1}$. In the evaluations that we will do for $\left| \varphi \left(
u_{k}\right) -\varphi \left( u\right) \right| $ we will utilize the \
following inequality $\left| \left\| u\right\| ^{2}-\left\| v\right\|
^{2}\right| \leq \left\| u\right\| \left\| u-v\right\| +\left\| v\right\|
\left\| u-v\right\| $ which is true in any vectorial space with an scalar
product. So, we obtain:
\[
\begin{array}{l}
\left| \varphi \left( u_{k}\right) -\varphi \left( u\right) \right| \leq %
\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}\left| \displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| \displaystyle%
\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}\right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}-%
\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}%
\right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}\right| \\
\noalign{\medskip}+\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| F\left( t,u_{k}\left(
t\right) \right) -F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right) \right| dt^{1}\wedge
...\wedge dt^{p}=\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}\left| \left\| \displaystyle\frac{%
\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}^{2}-\left\| \displaystyle\frac{%
\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}^{2}\right| \\
\displaystyle+\int_{T_{0}}\left| \displaystyle\int_{0}^{1}\left( \nabla
_{u}F\left( t,u_{k}\left( t\right) +s\left( u\left( t\right) -u_{k}\left(
t\right) \right) \right) ,u\left( t\right) -u_{k}\left( t\right) \right)
ds\right| dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\end{array}
\]
\[
\begin{array}{l}
\displaystyle\leq \frac{1}{2}\left[ \left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}%
}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{%
\partial t}-\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\|
_{L^{2}}+\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\|
_{L^{2}}\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}-\displaystyle%
\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}\right] \\
\displaystyle+\int_{T_{0}}\left( \displaystyle\int_{0}^{1}\left| \nabla
_{u}F\left( t,u_{k}\left( t\right) +s\left( u\left( t\right) -u_{k}\left(
t\right) \right) \right) \right| \left| u\left( t\right) -u_{k}\left(
t\right) \right| ds\right) \\
dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p} \\
\displaystyle\leq \frac{1}{2}\left[ \left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}%
}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{%
\partial t}-\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\|
_{L^{2}}+\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\|
_{L^{2}}\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}-\displaystyle%
\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}\right] \\
\displaystyle+\int_{T_{0}}\left( \displaystyle\int_{0}^{1}\left( M\left|
u_{k}\left( t\right) +s\left( u\left( t\right) -u_{k}\left( t\right) \right)
\right| +g\left( t\right) \right) \left| u\left( t\right) -u_{k}\left(
t\right) \right| ds\right) \\
dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p} \\
\displaystyle\leq \frac{1}{2}\left[ \left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}%
}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{%
\partial t}-\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\|
_{L^{2}}+\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\|
_{L^{2}}\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}-\displaystyle%
\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}\right] \\
\displaystyle+\int_{T_{0}}\left( \displaystyle\int_{0}^{1}\left( M\left|
su\left( t\right) +\left( 1-s\right) \left( u_{k}\left( t\right) -u\left(
t\right) \right) \right| +g\left( t\right) \right) u\left( t\right) \right.
\left. \left| -u_{k}\left( t\right) \right| ds\right) \\
dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}.
\end{array}
\]
Because the sequence $\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}%
\right\| _{L^{2}}$ is bounded, it exists $C_{1}$ such that $\left\| %
\displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}\leq C_{1}$ \
for any $k\in N$. In the following, we will note by $C_{2}=\displaystyle%
\max_{t\in T_{0}}g\left( t\right) $ and we have
\[
\begin{array}{l}
\left| \varphi \left( u_{k}\right) -\varphi \left( u\right) \right| \leq %
\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}C_{1}\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{%
\partial t}-\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}+%
\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}%
\right\| _{L^{2}}\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}-%
\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}} \\
\noalign{\medskip}+M\left\| u\right\| _{L^{2}}\left( \displaystyle%
\int_{T_{0}}\left| u\left( t\right) -u_{k}\left( t\right) \right|
^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}\right) ^{\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}}
\end{array}
\]
\[
\begin{array}{l}
\noalign{\medskip}+M\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| u_{k}\left( t\right)
-u\left( t\right) \right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}+C_{2}%
\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| u\left( t\right) -u_{k}\left( t\right)
\right| dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p} \\
\noalign{\medskip}\displaystyle\leq \frac{1}{2}\left( C_{1}+\left\| %
\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}\right) \left\| %
\displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}-\displaystyle\frac{\partial u%
}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}} \\
\noalign{\medskip}+\left( M\left\| u\right\| _{L^{2}}+C_{2}\left(
T^{1}...T^{p}\right) ^{\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}}\right) \ \left( %
\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| u\left( t\right) -u_{k}\left( t\right)
\right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}\right) ^{\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}}
\end{array}
\]
\[
\begin{array}{l}
\noalign{\medskip}+M\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| u_{k}\left( t\right)
-u\left( t\right) \right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}=\displaystyle%
\frac{1}{2}\left( C_{1}+\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}%
\right\| _{L^{2}}\right) \left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial
t}-\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}} \\
\noalign{\medskip}+\left( M\left\| u\right\| _{L^{2}}+C_{2}\left( T^{1}\cdot
\cdot \cdot T^{p}\right) ^{\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}}\right) \left\|
u-u_{k}\right\| _{L^{2}}+M\left\| u_{k}-u\right\| _{L^{2}}^{2}.
\end{array}
\]
Because $\left\| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}-\displaystyle%
\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right\| _{L^{2}}\rightarrow 0$ and $\left\|
u_{k}-u\right\| _{L^{2}}\rightarrow 0$, when $k\rightarrow \infty $ it
results that $\varphi \left( u_{k}\right) \rightarrow \varphi \left(
u\right) $; from here we obtain the continuity of $\varphi $ in $H_{T}^{1}$.
\subsection{Continuously differentiable action}
In order to obtain a more general result then the one found in the previous
theorem , we define the action
\[
\varphi :W_{T}^{1,2}\rightarrow R,\varphi \left( u\right) =\displaystyle%
\int_{T_{0}}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{%
\partial t}\left( t\right) \right) dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p},\;
\]
\[
T_{0}=\left[ 0,T^{1}\right] \times ...\times \left[ 0,T^{p}\right] \subset
R^{p}.
\]
Concerning this action we have the following Theorem which extends the
particular case $p=1$ from [4].
\bigskip {\bf Theorem 2}. {\it We consider $L:T_{0}\times R^{n}\times
R^{np}\rightarrow R,\left( t,x,y\right) \rightarrow L\left( t,x,y\right) $,
a measurable function in $t$ for any $\left( x,y\right) \in R^{n}\times
R^{np}$ and with the continuous partial derivatives in x and y for any $t\in
T_{0}$. If here exist $a\in C^{1}\left( R^{+},R^{+}\right) $ with the
derivative $a^{\prime }$\ bounded from above, $b\in C\left(
T_{0},R^{n}\right) $ such that for any $t\in T_{0}$ and any $\left(
x,y\right) \in R^{n}\times R^{np}$ to have }
$$
\begin{array}{l}
\left| L\left( t,x,y\right) \right| \leq a\left( \left| x\right| +\left|
y\right| ^{2}\right) b\left( t\right) , \\
\noalign{\medskip}\left| \nabla _{x}L\left( t,x,y\right) \right| \leq
a\left( \left| x\right| \right) b\left( t\right) , \\
\noalign{\medskip}\left| \nabla _{y}L\left( t,x,y\right) \right| \leq
a\left( \left| y\right| \right) b\left( t\right) ,
\end{array}
\eqno(1)
$$
{\it then, the functional $\varphi $ has continuous partial derivatives in $%
W_{T}^{1,2}$ and his gradient derives from the formula }
$$
\begin{array}{lcl}
{\it \left( \nabla \varphi \left( u\right) ,v\right) } & {\it =} & {\it %
\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \left( \nabla _{x}L\left( t,u\left( t\right)
,\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right) ,v\left( t\right) \right)
\right. } \\
\noalign{\medskip} & {\it +} & {\it \left. \left( \nabla _{y}L\left(
t,u\left( t\right) ,\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\left(
t\right) \right) ,\displaystyle\frac{\partial v}{\partial t}\left( t\right)
\right) \right] dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}.}
\end{array}
\eqno(2)
$$
{\bf Proof}. It is enough to prove that $\varphi $ has the derivative $%
\varphi ^{\prime }\left( u\right) \in \left( W_{T}^{1,2}\right) ^{\ast }$
given by the relation $\left( 2\right) $ and the function $\varphi ^{\prime
}:W_{T}^{1,2}\rightarrow \left( W_{T}^{1,2}\right) ^{\ast }$, $u\rightarrow
\varphi ^{\prime }\left( u\right) $ is continuous. We consider $u,v\in
W_{T}^{1,2}$, $t\in T_{0}$, $\lambda \in \left[ -1,1\right] $. We build the
functions
\[
F\left( \lambda ,t\right) =L\left( t,u\left( t\right) +\lambda v\left(
t\right) ,\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) +\lambda \frac{%
\partial v}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right)
\]
and
\[
\Psi \left( \lambda \right) =\int_{T_{0}}F\left( \lambda ,t\right)
dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}.
\]
Because the derivative $a^{\prime }$ is bounded from above, exist\ $M>0$
such that $\displaystyle\frac{a\left( \left| u\right| \right) -a\left(
0\right) }{\left| u\right| }=a^{\prime }\left( c\right) \leq M.$ This means
that $a\left( \left| u\right| \right) \leq M\left| u\right| +a\left(
0\right) .$ On the other side
\[
\frac{\partial F}{\partial \lambda }\left( \lambda ,t\right) =\left( \nabla
_{x}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) +\lambda v\left( t\right) ,\frac{\partial u}{%
\partial t}\left( t\right) +\lambda \frac{\partial v}{\partial t}\left(
t\right) \right) ,v\left( t\right) \right)
\]
\[
+\left( \nabla _{y}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) +\lambda v\left( t\right) ,%
\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) +\lambda \frac{\partial v}{%
\partial t}\left( t\right) \right) ,\frac{\partial v}{\partial t}\left(
t\right) \right) \leq a\left( \left| u\left( t\right) +\lambda v\left(
t\right) \right| \right)
\]
\[
b\left( t\right) \left| v\left( t\right) \right| +a\left( \left| \frac{%
\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) +\lambda \frac{\partial v}{\partial t}%
\left( t\right) \right| \right) b\left( t\right) \left| \frac{\partial v}{%
\partial t}\left( t\right) \right|
\]
\[
\leq b_{0}\left( M\left( \left| u\left( t\right) \right| +\left| v\left(
t\right) \right| \right) +a\left( 0\right) \right) \left| v\left( t\right)
\right|
\]
\[
+b_{0}\left( M\left( \left| \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right)
\right| +\left| \frac{\partial v}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right| \right)
+a\left( 0\right) \right) \left| \frac{\partial v}{\partial t}\left(
t\right) \right| ,
\]
where
\[
b_{0}=\displaystyle\max_{t\in T_{0}}b\left( t\right) .
\]
Then, we have $\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial F}{\partial \lambda }%
\left( \lambda ,t\right) \right| \leq d\left( t\right) \in L^{1}\left(
T_{0},R^{+}\right) $. Then Leibniz formula of differentiation under integral
sign is applicable and
\[
\frac{\partial \Psi }{\partial \lambda }\left( 0\right) =\int_{T_{0}}\frac{%
\partial F}{\partial \lambda }\left( 0,t\right) dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge
dt^{p}=\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \left( \nabla _{x}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,%
\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right) ,v\left( t\right)
\right) \right.
\]
\[
\left. +\left( \nabla _{y}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,\frac{\partial u}{%
\partial t}\left( t\right) \right) ,\frac{\partial v}{\partial t}\left(
t\right) \right) \right] dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}.
\]
Moreover,
\[
\left| \nabla _{x}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}%
\left( t\right) \right) \right| \leq b_{0}\left( M\left| u\left( t\right)
\right| +\left| a\left( 0\right) \right| \right) \in L^{1}\left(
T_{0},R^{+}\right)
\]
and
\[
\left| \nabla _{y}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}%
\left( t\right) \right) \right| \leq b_{0}\left( M\left| \frac{\partial u}{%
\partial t}\left( t\right) \right| +\left| a\left( 0\right) \right| \right)
\in L^{2}\left( T_{0},R^{+}\right) .
\]
That is why
\[
\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \left( \nabla _{x}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,\frac{%
\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right) ,v\left( t\right) \right)
\right.
\]
\[
\left. +\left( \nabla _{y}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,\frac{\partial u}{%
\partial t}\left( t\right) \right) ,\frac{\partial v}{\partial t}\left(
t\right) \right) \right] dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
\[
\leq \int_{T_{0}}\left| \nabla _{x}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,\frac{%
\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right) \right| \left| v\left(
t\right) \right| dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
\[
+\int_{T_{0}}\left| \nabla _{y}L\left( t,u\left( t\right) ,\frac{\partial u}{%
\partial t}\left( t\right) \right) \right| \left| \frac{\partial v}{\partial
t}\left( t\right) \right| dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
\[
\leq b_{0}\int_{T_{0}}\left( M\left| u\left( t\right) \right| +\left|
a\left( 0\right) \right| \right) \left| v\left( t\right) \right|
dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
\[
+b_{0}\int_{T_{0}}\left( M\left| \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\left(
t\right) \right| +\left| a\left( 0\right) \right| \right) \left| \frac{%
\partial v}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right| dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
By using the inequality Cauchy-Schwartz we find
\[
\begin{array}{l}
\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial \Psi }{\partial \lambda }\left( 0\right)
\right| \leq b_{0}\left( \displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left( M\left| u\left(
t\right) \right| +\left| a\left( 0\right) \right| \right) ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge
...\wedge dt^{p}\right) ^{\frac{1}{2}} \\
\noalign{\medskip}\cdot \left( \displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| v\left(
t\right) \right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}\right) ^{\frac{1}{2}} \\
\noalign{\medskip}+b_{0}\left( \displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left( M\left| %
\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right| +\left|
a\left( 0\right) \right| \right) ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}\right) ^{%
\frac{1}{2}}\left( \displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| \displaystyle\frac{%
\partial v}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge
dt^{p}\right) ^{\frac{1}{2}} \\
\noalign{\medskip}\leq C_{1}\left( \displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| v\left(
t\right) \right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}\right) ^{\frac{1}{2}%
}+C_{2}\left( \displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial v}{%
\partial t}\left( t\right) \right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}\right)
^{\frac{1}{2}} \\
\noalign{\medskip}\leq \max \left\{ C_{1},C_{2}\right\} 2^{\frac{1}{2}%
}\left( \displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left( \left| v\left( t\right) \right|
^{2}+\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial v}{\partial t}\left( t\right)
\right| ^{2}\right) dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}\right) ^{\frac{1}{2}%
}=C\left\| v\right\| .
\end{array}
\]
By consequence, the action $\varphi $ has the derivative $\varphi ^{\prime
}\in \left( W_{T}^{1,2}\right) ^{\ast }$ given by $\left( 2\right) $. The
Krasnoselski theorem and the hypothesis $\left( 1\right) $ imply the fact
that the application $u\rightarrow \left( \nabla _{x}L\left( \cdot ,u,%
\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right) ,\nabla _{y}L\left( \cdot
,u,\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right) \right) ,$ from $%
W_{T}^{1,2}$ to $L^{1}\times L^{2},$ is continuous, so $\varphi ^{\prime }$
is continuous from $W_{T}^{1,2}$ to $\left( W_{T}^{1,2}\right) ^{\ast }$ and
the proof is complete.
\bigskip {\bf Theorem 3.} {\it If the action
\[
\varphi \left( u\right) =\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \displaystyle\frac{1%
}{2}\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\right| ^{2}+F\left(
t,u\left( t\right) \right) \right] dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
is continuously differentiable on} ${\it H}_{{\it T}}^{{\it 1}}$ {\it and} $%
{\it u\in H}_{{\it T}}^{{\it 1}}${\it \ is a solution of the equation }${\it %
\varphi }^{{\it \prime }}{\it (u)=0}${\it \ (critical point), then the
function }${\it u}${\it \ has a weak Laplacian }${\it \bigtriangleup u}${\it %
\ (or the Jacobian matrix} ${\it \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}}$
{\it has a weak divergence) and }
\[
{\it \bigtriangleup u=\nabla F(t,u(t))}
\]
{\it a.e. on }${\it T}_{{\it 0}}${\it \ and }
\[
{\it u\mid }_{{\it S}_{{\it i}}^{{\it -}}}{\it =u\mid }_{{\it S}_{{\it i}}^{%
{\it +}}}{\it ,\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\mid }_{{\it S}_{{\it i}}^{{\it -%
}}}{\it =\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\mid }_{{\it S}_{{\it i}}^{{\it +}}}%
{\it .}
\]
{\bf Proof.} We build the function
\[
\Phi :[-1,1]\rightarrow R,
\]
\[
\Phi \left( \lambda \right) =\varphi \left( u+\lambda v\right) =
\]
\[
\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \frac{1}{2}\left| \frac{\partial }{\partial t}\left(
u\left( t\right) +\lambda v\left( t\right) \right) \right| ^{2}+F\left(
t,u\left( t\right) +\lambda v\left( t\right) \right) \right] dt^{1}\wedge
...\wedge dt^{p},
\]
where $v\in C_{T}^{\infty }\left( T_{0},R^{n}\right) .$ The point $\lambda
=0 $ is a critical point of $\Phi $ if and only if the point $u$ is a
critical point of $\varphi $. Consequently
\[
0=\left\langle \varphi ^{\prime }\left( u\right) ,v\right\rangle
=\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \delta ^{\alpha \beta }\delta _{ij}\frac{\partial u^{i}}{%
\partial t^{\alpha }}\frac{\partial v^{j}}{\partial t^{\beta }}+\delta
_{ij}\nabla ^{i}F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right) v^{j}\left( t\right) %
\right] dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p},
\]
for all $v\in H_{T}^{1}$ and hence for all $v\in C_{T}^{\infty }.$ The
definition of the weak divergence,
\[
\int_{T_{0}}\delta ^{\alpha \beta }\delta _{ij}\frac{\partial u^{i}}{%
\partial t^{\alpha }}\frac{\partial v^{j}}{\partial t^{\beta }}dt^{1}\wedge
...\wedge dt^{p} =-\int_{T_{0}}\delta ^{\alpha \beta }\delta _{ij}\frac{%
\partial ^{2}u^{i}}{\partial t^{\alpha }\partial t^{\beta }}%
v^{j}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p},
\]
shows that the Jacobian matrix $\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}$
has weak divergence (the function $u$ has a weak Laplacian) and
\[
\bigtriangleup u\left( t\right) =\nabla F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right)
\]
a.e. on $T_{0}$. Also, the existence of weak derivatives $\displaystyle\frac{%
\partial u}{\partial t}$ and weak divergence $\bigtriangleup u$ implies that
\[
u\mid _{S_{i}^{-}}=u\mid _{S_{i}^{+}},\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\mid
_{S_{i}^{-}}=\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\mid _{S_{i}^{+}}.
\]
\section{Poisson-gradient dynamical systems with periodical potential}
{\bf Theorem 4}. {\it If $F:T_{0}\times R^{n}\rightarrow R,$ $\left(
t,x\right) \rightarrow F\left( t,x\right) $ functions have the properties: }
{\it 1) $F\left( t,x\right) $ is measurable in $t$ for any $x\in R^{n}$ and
continuously differentiable in $x$ for any $t\in T_{0}$}${\it ,}${\it \ and
there exist the functions $a\in C^{1}\left( R^{+},R^{+}\right) $ with the
derivative $a^{\prime }$\ bounded from above and $b\in C\left(
T_{0},R^{+}\right) $ such that for any $t\in T_{0}$ and any $u\in R^{n}$ to
have $\left| F\left( t,u\right) \right| \leq a\left( \left| u\right| \right)
b\left( t\right) $ and $\left| \nabla _{u}F\left( t,u\right) \right| \leq
a\left( \left| u\right| \right) b\left( t\right) $}${\it ,}${\it \ }
{\it 2) $F\left( t,x\right) >0,$ for any $t\in T_{0}$ and any $x\in R^{n},$ }
{\it 3) For any $i\in \{1,...,n\}$ it exists $P_{i}\in R$ such that $F\left(
t,x+P_{i}e_{i}\right) =F\left( t,x\right) ,$ for any $t\in T_{0}$ and any $%
x\in R^{n},$ }
4) {\it The action} {\it $\varphi _{1}\left( u\right) =\displaystyle%
\int_{T_{0}}F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right) dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}$
is weakly lower semi-continous on }${\it H}_{{\it T}}^{{\it 1}}{\it .}$
\bigskip {\it If $\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}F\left( t,u\right) dt^{1}\wedge
...\wedge dt^{p}\rightarrow \infty $ when $\left| u\right| \rightarrow
\infty $}${\it ,}${\it \ then, the problem $\Delta u\left( t\right) =\nabla
F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right) $ with the boundary condition\ } {\it \
\[
u\mid _{S_{i}^{-}}=u\mid _{S_{i}^{+}},\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{%
\partial t}\mid _{S_{i}^{-}}=\displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\mid
_{S_{i}^{+}}
\]
} {\it has at least solution which minimizes the action
\[
\varphi \left( u\right) =\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\left[ \displaystyle\frac{1%
}{2}\left| \displaystyle\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\left( t\right) \right|
^{2}+F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right) \right] dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge
dt^{p}
\]
in }${\it H}_{{\it T}}^{{\it 1}}${\it .}
{\it \noindent }{\bf Proof}. From Theorem 2, the action $\varphi $ is
continuously differentiable. From the periodicity and the continuity of $F,$
it results that exists the function $d\in $\ $L^{1}\left( T_{0},R\right) $
such that $F\left( t,x\right) \geq d\left( t\right) \geq 0$, for any $t\in
T_{0}$ and any $x\in R^{n}$. By consequence $\displaystyle%
\int_{T_{0}}F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right) dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge
dt^{p}=C_{1}\geq 0$. It results the inequality $\varphi \left( u\right) \geq %
\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}\left| \displaystyle\frac{%
\partial u}{\partial t}\right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}-C_{1}$ for
any $u\in H_{T}^{1}$. As result $\displaystyle\inf_{u\in H_{T}^{1}}\varphi
\left( u\right) <\infty $. Because $\varphi \left( u\right) +C_{1}\geq %
\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}\left| \displaystyle\frac{%
\partial u}{\partial t}\right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}$, for any $%
u\in H_{T}^{1}$, we have the same inequality and for any $u=u_{k}$ where $%
\left( u_{k}\right) $ it is a minimizing sequence for $\varphi $ in $%
H_{T}^{1}$. So, we obtain
$$
\displaystyle\int_{T_{0}}\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}\left| \displaystyle\frac{%
\partial u_{k}}{\partial t}\right| ^{2}dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}\leq
C_{2},\quad \hbox{for any}\quad k\in N.\eqno(3)
$$
\ We consider $u_{k}=\overline{u}_{k}+\widetilde{u}_{k}$, where $\overline{u}%
_{k}=\displaystyle\frac{1}{T^{1}...T^{p}}\int_{T_{0}}u_{k}\left( t\right)
dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}$. From the relation $\left( 3\right) $ and the
Wirtinger inequality we have
$$
\left\| \widetilde{u}_{k}\right\| \leq C_{3},\quad k\in N,\quad C_{3}\geq 0.%
\eqno(4)
$$
On the other side, from the periodicity of $F$ we find that $\varphi \left(
u+P_{i}e_{i}\right) =\varphi \left( u\right) $, for any $i\in \{1,...n\}$
and any $u\in H_{T}^{1}.$ If the sequence $\left( u_{k}\right) $ is a
minimizing one for the action $\varphi $, then the sequence $\left(
u_{k}^{\ast }\right) ,$
\[
u_{k}^{\ast }=\left( \overline{u}_{k}^{1}+\widetilde{u}%
_{k}^{1}+k_{1}P_{1},...,\overline{u}_{k}^{n}+\widetilde{u}%
_{k}^{n}+k_{n}P_{n}\right)
\]
is also a minimizing sequence, for any $k_{1},...,k_{n}\in Z$. Obviously, we
may choose $k_{i}\in Z,i=1,...,n$ such that
\[
0\leq \quad \overline{u}_{k}^{i}+k_{i}P_{i}\leq P_{i},i=1,...,n.
\]
From the relations $\left( 3\right) $ and $\left( 4\right) $ it results that
the sequence $\left( u_{k}^{\ast }\right) $ is bounded, so the action $%
\varphi $ has a minimizing bounded sequence. By eventually passing to a
subsequence, we may consider that the $\left( u_{k}^{\ast }\right) $
sequence is weakly convergent with the limit $u$.
The Hilbert space $H_{T}^{1}$ is reflexive. By consequence, the sequence $%
\left( u_{k}^{\ast }\right) $ (or one of his subsequence) is weakly
convergent in $H_{T}^{1}$ with the limit $u$. Because
\[
\varphi _{2}\left( u\right) =\int_{T_{0}}\delta _{ij}\delta ^{\alpha \beta }%
\frac{\partial u^{i}}{\partial t^{\alpha }}\left( t\right) \frac{\partial
v^{j}}{\partial t^{\beta }}\left( t\right) dt^{1}\wedge ...\wedge dt^{p}
\]
is convex it results that $\varphi _{2}$ is weakly lower semi-continuous, so
\[
\varphi \left( u\right) =\varphi _{1}\left( u\right) +\varphi _{2}\left(
u\right)
\]
is weakly lower semi-continuous and $\varphi \left( u\right) \leq \underline{%
\lim }\varphi \left( u_{k}\right) .$ This means that $u$ is minimum point of
$\varphi .$ From the Theorem 3 this means that $u$ is solution of boundary
value problem
\[
\bigtriangleup u\left( t\right) =\nabla F\left( t,u\left( t\right) \right) ,
\]
\[
u\mid _{S_{i}^{-}}=u\mid _{S_{i}^{+}},\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\mid
_{S_{i}^{-}}=\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}\mid _{S_{i}^{+}}.
\]
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[10] C. Udri\c{s}te, M. Postolache: {\it Atlas of Magnetic Geometric Dynamics%
}, Geometry Balkan Press, Bucharest, 2001.
[11] C. Udri\c{s}te: {\it From integral manifolds and metrics to potential
maps}, Atti del Academia Peloritana dei Pericolanti, Classe 1 di Science
Fis. Mat. e Nat., 81-82, A 01006 (2003-2004), 1-14.
[12] C. Udri\c{s}te, A-M. Teleman: {\it Hamilton Approaches of Fields Theory}%
, IJMMS, 57 (2004), 3045-3056; ICM Satelite Conference in Algebra and
Related Topics, University of Hong-Kong, 13-18.08.02.
[13] C. Udri\c{s}te, I. Duca: {\it Periodical Solutions of Multi-Time
Hamilton Equations,} Analele Universita\c{t}ii Bucure\c{s}ti, 55, 1 (2005),
179-188.
[14] C. Udri\c{s}te, I. Duca: \ {\it Poisson-gradient \ Dynamical \ Systems
with Bounded Non-linearity}, manuscript, 2005.
\bigskip
University Politehnica of Bucharest
Department of Mathematics
Splaiul Independentei 313
060042 Bucharest, Romania
email: udriste@mathem.pub.ro
\end{document}
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Q: Parse through HTML response from getUrl() I am trying create a Bixby capsule that can retrieve values from a website. The getUrl() response will be in HTML. Is there a way to parse through the HTML response for values or somehow converting it to JSON?
A: You can do that through Bixby using regular expressions, but you would need to parse everything through some regex processing in your code when you get a response from getUrl(). There isn't a way to automatically convert an html response to json. Here are some references to parsing html responses with regex.
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Q: How can I create a pre-render input window in MFC? I have modified Nehe's terrain tutorial so that it generates a terrain using Perlin noise instead of loading the static .raw file that comes with the tutorial. I want to specify the parameters for perlin noise (frequency, amplitude, number of octaves) before rendering the terrain. In fact, I just want to create a window that takes those 3 parameters and then dies, I don't need anything else, I do my interfaces on GLUT, I just want this particular app to run this way.
How can I do that? What should be modified in the Nehe project? I understand MFC doesn't have a built-in input box?
A: I am not familiary with the tutorial but if you want the input box to not be seen but to precess parameters could you just create the window as invisible?
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{"url":"https:\/\/www.zbmath.org\/?q=an%3A1040.35033","text":"## Real analyticity and non-degeneracy.(English)Zbl\u00a01040.35033\n\nThe following theorem is proved: Let $$U$$ be a real Banach space and $$F: U\\times \\mathbb{R}\\to U$$ an analytic Fredholm map of index one with $$F(u_0,0)= 0$$, let $$\\partial_uF(u_0,0)$$ be invertible, and let the set $$\\{(u,t)\\in U\\times [0,1]: F(u,t)= 0\\}$$ be compact. Then there exists a subset $$T$$ of $$[0,1)$$ consisting of isolated points such that for all $$t\\in [0,1)\\setminus T$$ the equation $$F(u,t)= 0$$ has an odd number of non-degenerated solutions. Note that this theorem is false for $$C^\\infty$$ maps.\nApplications are given to positive solutions of elliptic PDEs of the type $$-\\Delta u= u^p$$ on bounded domains $$\\Omega\\subset \\mathbb{R}^N$$, on strips $$S\\subset \\mathbb{R}^N$$ and on the whole space $$\\mathbb{R}^N$$. For that the following surprising result is shown: The superposition operator $$u\\mapsto u^p$$ is analytic on certain open sets in certain subspaces of the space of continuous functions $$u:\\Omega\\to \\mathbb{R}$$ with $$u= 0$$ on $$\\partial\\Omega$$, even if $$p$$ is non-integer.\n\n### MSC:\n\n 35J65 Nonlinear boundary value problems for linear elliptic equations 58C10 Holomorphic maps on manifolds 46T25 Holomorphic maps in nonlinear functional analysis 47H30 Particular nonlinear operators (superposition, Hammerstein, Nemytski\u012d, Uryson, etc.)\nFull Text:","date":"2022-07-05 11:15:12","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8494601249694824, \"perplexity\": 192.91110675098153}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2022-27\/segments\/1656104542759.82\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20220705083545-20220705113545-00600.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Home > Chorley
Rivington Terraced Gardens
Rivington Terrace Gardens are one of the main attractions in Rivington. They were conceived and financed by soap magnate William Hesketh Lever (Lord Leverhulme), one of Bolton's most famous sons and founder of Lever Brothers (now Unilever).
Walk to Rivington Pike via Rivington Terraced Gardens
In 2014 they were named as one of Britain's Best Lost Gardens by Countryfile, the popular BBC TV programme.
Roynton Lane – Rivington Terraced Gardens
Known to locals as the Chinese Gardens, they occupy 45 acres of the hillside between Rivington Pike and Rivington Hall Barn. A myriad of woodland paths crisscross the site, linking a number of stone buildings, structures and other features. Work on the gardens started in 1905 and continued until Lever's death in 1925. The main designer was landscape architect Thomas Mawson.
Since Lever's death many of structures fell into disrepair. In recent years the Rivington Heritage Trust (RHT) has overseen a multi-million pound plan to repair and conserve many of the buildings and features. The woodland and vegetation is now managed and information boards have been erected.
Exploring the gardens fully could easily take the best part of a day. Some of the most interesting features are listed below.
Pigeon Tower
The top floor of this four-storey building was Lady Leverhulme's sewing and music room. The second and third floors housed dovecotes. It is situated at the north-eastern corner of the gardens.
The Japanese Garden was inspired by a trip Lever took to Japan. Originally it consisted of a lake fed by two waterfalls and surrounded by Japanese tea houses, lanterns, and exotic plants. Of the original features, only the lake and stone bases of the tea houses remain.
Lever Bridge
This stone bridge lies at the northern end of Rivington Terraced Gardens and crosses Roynton Lane, the main pathway through the gardens. The design is based on a bridge that Lever had seen on a trip to Nigeria. Also known as Seven Arch Bridge, it has one large arch crossed by six smaller ones.
The gardens are owned by United Utilities but are open to the public free of charge. Their Great House Information Centre is a fantastic place to learn more about them and pick up maps and walking guides.
Rivington Terraced Gardens are situated immediately east of Lever Park and Rivington Hall Barn. The easiest way to get to the gardens is to drive to Rivington Hall Barn and walk from there. Rivington Hall Barn is situated on Rivington Lane (postcode BL6 7SB). There's plenty of free parking at the barn.
The route to the gardens from Rivington Hall Barn forms part of our walk to Rivington Pike.
Tourist attractions and things to do near Rivington Terraced Gardens include:
Rivington Hall Barn (0.4 miles) - Historic barn. Now a popular wedding and event venue.
Rivington Pike (0.4 miles) - High spot in Rivington, between Bolton and Chorley. Offers great views.
Great House Barn (0.6 miles) - Historic barn in Rivington, near Bolton. Now a popular cafe.
Lever Park (0.6 miles) - Country park between Bolton and Chorley.
Go Ape – Rivington (0.7 miles) - Tree top adventure course in Rivington.
Lower Rivington Reservoir (0.8 miles) - Reservoir between Chorley and Bolton.
Liverpool Castle (0.9 miles) - Scaled replica of Merseyside's thirteenth century castle.
Map showing location of Rivington Terraced Gardens.
Rivington
Reviews and Additional Information
Kate Emerson
We are over from Australia and went to Rivington two days ago to view the pike and the Japanese Gardens. What happened to the road sign? We have a Sat Nav and despite the rain we could not see a single sign to the Gardens we passed the sign for Rivington Barn and that was it. We could see the cairn but we could not get anywhere near it, neither could we find the Japanese Gardens.
We were so disappointed and turned round and came back having seen nothing at all!!! Not good enough!!
Kinda funny.. you obviously have to walk to it & surely it would have been common sense to park up at the barn.. & then in the absence of signs, you could have always asked someone.. or the barn even has maps ??♀️
Rebecca Fish
It looks fabulous with all the restoration work I've been going for years not been since early summer before the wild fires & its a beautiful transformation me and my son spent mothers day therr today memories made and the cost absolutely free of charge perfect
We visited Rivington Pike today. It has been a few months since we were up there. The transformation of the paths and walkways is amazing. Clearly a massive effort has been made to restore the gardens and surrounding area. A massive 'well done' to all involved.
Map of Chorley
Interactive map of Chorley showing the precise locations of hotels, tourist attractions, and other points of interest.
Chorley Weather
5-day weather forecast for Chorley. View temperature, wind speed and chance of rain.
Comprehensive guide to Rivington.
Rivington Hall Barn
Popular wedding/event venue, and starting point for countryside walks.
Rivington Pike
High spot in Rivington, between Bolton and Chorley. Offers great views.
Rivington Pike Walk
Walk to Rivington Pike via Rivington Terraced Gardens.
Anglezarke Reservoir
The largest of the reservoirs in Lancashire's 'Lake District'.
Lower Rivington Reservoir
Reservoir between Chorley and Bolton.
Anglezarke Walk
Walk around Anglezarke Reservoir at Rivington. | {
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class SGMapHandler:public SGResponserExecutor::Handler
{
public:
SGMapHandler(GPPtr<GPKeyIteratorFactory> factory);
virtual ~ SGMapHandler();
virtual bool vRun(GPPieces* output, GPPieces** inputs, int inputNumber, const std::map<ProtobufC_RPC_Client*, uint64_t>& slaveMagicMap) const override;
typedef enum {
START,
RUNNING,
FINISH
} STATUS;
void START_(GPPieces* output, GPPieces** inputs, int inputNumber, const std::map<ProtobufC_RPC_Client*, uint64_t>& slaveMagicMap) const;
void RUNNING_(GPPieces* output, GPPieces** inputs, int inputNumber, const std::map<ProtobufC_RPC_Client*, uint64_t>& slaveMagicMap) const;
void FINISH_(GPPieces* output, GPPieces** inputs, int inputNumber, const std::map<ProtobufC_RPC_Client*, uint64_t>& slaveMagicMap) const;
private:
mutable STATUS mStaus = START;
mutable void* mWorkContent = NULL;
mutable void* mMessage = NULL;
GPPtr<GPKeyIteratorFactory> mFactory;
};
//class SGReduceHandler:public SGResponserExecutor::Handler
//{
//public:
// SGReduceHandler(GPPtr<GPKeyIteratorFactory> factory);
// virtual ~ SGReduceHandler();
// virtual bool vRun(GPPieces* output, GPPieces** inputs, int inputNumber, const std::map<ProtobufC_RPC_Client*, uint64_t>& slaveMagicMap) const override;
//
// typedef enum {
// START,
// RUNNING,
// FINISH
// } STATUS;
//
// void START_(GPPieces* output, GPPieces** inputs, int inputNumber, const std::map<ProtobufC_RPC_Client*, uint64_t>& slaveMagicMap) const;
// void RUNNING_(GPPieces* output, GPPieces** inputs, int inputNumber, const std::map<ProtobufC_RPC_Client*, uint64_t>& slaveMagicMap) const;
// void FINISH_(GPPieces* output, GPPieces** inputs, int inputNumber, const std::map<ProtobufC_RPC_Client*, uint64_t>& slaveMagicMap) const;
//private:
// mutable STATUS mStaus = START;
// mutable void* mWorkContent = NULL;
// mutable void* mMessage = NULL;
//
//
// GPPtr<GPKeyIteratorFactory> mFactory;
//};
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Q: Wrong window focus behaviour in Unity, but not GNOME Shell I just upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10, and I'm noticing a strange window behaviour that I can't seem to fix. Basically it seems like all windows have focus, as shown in this screenshot:
It happens almost all the time, but sometimes windows appear as out of focus, and when they are clicked, they stay like that. I tried using GNOME Shell and the problem doesn't exist, so it seems it has something to do with Unity.
Let me know if you need any more info to help me solve this problem. Thanks!
A: Update:
According to Launchpad bug #770283, this is now fixed in Ubuntu 12.04 with the latest updates. I've not personally tested it, as I'm now using the open-source drivers, but from what I've read, it fixes the problem.
Original answer:
Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a fix yet. There is a bug report for Compiz (the window manager running Unity), but no developers have responded. See Launchpad Bug #856138
I suggest logging in or registering on Launchpad and marking the bug as "Affects me too" (you can also do it by clicking this link)
Do you have an ATI graphics card? My laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500 Series graphics card has this same issue on 11.10 and 11.04. However, my NVidia desktop did not experience this glitch, so I'm thinking ATI's driver may be part of the problem.
A: Seems to be a driver problem (fglrx). A temporary solution might be revert back to the radeon driver. I was able to solve it that way.
A: I have same problems with fglrx and 11.10, and solved enabling again the unity switcher functionality (in compiz>unity). I disabled unity switcher to use classic compiz switcher and it started to fail.
A: This may be a conflict between Compiz' Viewport Switcher and Unity's default switcher... I disabled the Viewport Switcher in CompizConfig and the problem was resolved.
| {
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\section{Introduction}
The main goal of this work is to give an as much rigorous as possible explanation of the theory behind the main models used nowadays for image generation. We talk about ``generative'' models because they are able, once opportunely set and trained, to generate new and realistic visual contents (meaning that they could look ``real'' images to an average observer). The common idea behind these models is: since we are able to corrupt gradually any real image up to a completely noisy one, then we should be able to do the reverse process of ``denoising'' a totally random noisy image. Hence, this process of generating new images can be intended as the reverse of the process that is used to corrupt the real images. In some way, the models that we are going to present, given a lot of sequences of images that are gradually corrupted, become able to recover, from a randomly sampled input corresponding to a completely corrupted image, a new realistic one (which is none of the original images used for training). The reference these models do to the concept of ``diffusion'' comes from the process used to corrupt the images as well as - we will see - from the one used to recover them. Indeed, in most of the literature about generative models the real images used for training are corrupted adding gradually, and for a really large number of steps, infinitesimal Gaussian noise to their initial representation. ``Noising'' processes built in this way are examples of diffusion processes.
More in detail, any image is represented by a precise sequence of numbers corresponding to the pixel values from which it can be rendered, and this sequence is corrupted, adding Gaussian noise, until it becomes a totally random sequence belonging to some probability distribution. This process is repeated many times and used to train the model in such a way that it will be also usable to compute the reverse process. The idea is then to take a random sample from the resulting probability distribution and use this model to obtain a new sequence of numbers corresponding to a new ``real'' image. These processes are intuitively represented in Figure \ref{fig:fig}.
\begin{figure}
\begin{subfigure}{\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth, trim={1cm 1cm 0cm 0cm}]{for.png}
\caption{Forward ``noising'' process.}
\label{fig:sfig1}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}{\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth, trim={1cm 1cm 0cm 0cm}]{rev.png}
\caption{Backward ``denoising'' process.}
\label{fig:int}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{Intuitive representation of the process adding noise starting from a given image (a) and the one denoising a completely noisy image to get to a new one. In blue we represented the set composed by all the real images starting point of the noising process and the limit point of the denosing process. Notice that this is just an intuitive representation of these processes, since they actually take place in much higher dimensions and we do not know anything about the properties of the spaces involved.}
\label{fig:fig}
\end{figure}
In other words these models are able to sample new elements from the probability distribution of the sequences of pixel values representing real images, without explicit knowledge of this distribution. Elements of this distribution are the limit points of the reverse process described above, starting from any completely noisy image belonging to the limit distribution of the ``noising'' process.
This approach is completely different from the one trying to describe that distribution as a mixture of known probability distributions (for example Gaussian Misture Models) in order to be able to sample from that later. Indeed, even if this last approach is perfectly working in theory (\cite{book}), it came out that the goal distribution is too complex to be obtained as a combination of a reasonable number of known probability distributions. A good reference for these attempts is the paper \cite{GMM} where some solutions are also proposed.
As anticipated, we decided to focus rather on the mathematical theory behind all the models that we are going to present than on the way in which they are being practically developed. Our goal is indeed to make understandable more the ``why'' this kind of model work than the ``how''.
Nevertheless, we hope that after reading this paper the interested reader can have a fresh look at the original papers and recognize in each of the proposed structures the theoretical foundation here described.
This work is structured as follows. In Section \ref{diffusion_paper} we considered the Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DPM), for which we focused particularly on the references \cite{termo, denoising}, the seminal works where the possibility to get a totally new image from a noisy image through modeling the reverse Guassian process (``denoising'' ) was firstly introduced. This model and the theory on which it is based are the key also to understand the models that later improved its performance, as the ones presented in \cite{denoising2, improved, bilateral, nongaussian} and many others.
Then, in Section \ref{stable_sec} we briefly state the differences between DPM and the Stable Diffusion (DS) models introduced in \cite{stable}. This new (state of the art) kind of models improves the results and decreases the computational cost of DPM by using the same idea except for changing the space in which it works, namely a space of latent representations of images. Moreover, it also allows to condition the generation process through the insertion of a prompt influencing the kind of image we want to generate.
Lastly, in Section \ref{cold_sec}, we talk about the recent proposals for Cold Diffusion models (developed in \cite{cold}), that use the same idea behind DPM but proving that it is not actually necessary to use random elements to corrupt and then restore the images. Indeed the authors showed that using arbitrary corrupting processes (including deterministic ones) it is possible to build a model that can generate new images starting from a totally corrupted one.
\subsection{Similar works}
Because of the novelty introduced by these kind of processes during the last months, many works similar to this one have been published with the aim to explain the theory behind generative models and in particular behind DPM. \cite{google} surely deserves a particular mention, since indeed in that work the whole mathematical basics behind DPM are treated in details similarly as we did here. Other surveys (like \cite{survey, survey2}) and many web blogs also tried to make these kind of models more understandable to the occasional reader. We decided anyway to complete this work because we believe that it contains some small novelties and some additional comments that can be useful to anyone interested in understanding better the underlying theory.
\section{Diffusion Probabilistic Models}\label{diffusion_paper}
In this section we present the DPM introduced in \cite{denoising, termo}. The main idea behind this model, as we mentioned in the Introduction, is that, given the stochastic process adding noise to real images up to a completely noisy image, it is possible to reverse this process, i.e., starting from a completely noisy image, to denoise it, step by step, up to an image belonging to the distribution of realistic images and - as such - that looks totally realistic. This idea implies that the built model, in some way, ``compiles'' the stochastic relation between the parts (pixels) of the noisy image and uses this compiled knowledge to recover (in a stochastic sense) some combination of pixels representing a realistic image. Furthermore, we can say that the resulting image is (with some abuse of notation, see Remark \ref{prob1}) a totally new image with probability 1. Intuitively, this conjecture is based on the observation that because the space of all possible realistic images is (almost) infinite - and since the reverse process starting from a random pattern goes back to an image belonging to the distribution of real images in a random way -, the limiting point is ``almost surely'' different from each one that actually already ``exists'' (obviously including the image set used in the training process).
\begin{remark}\label{prob1}
We said that the images generated by these models are ``new'' with probability 1 but, even if this is true in practice, it is not true theoretically. In fact, since the images that we consider are composed by a finite number of pixel values combinations, they are not infinite. Therefore, theoretically, any of the real images (even what you are seeing right now) could be reproduced by these models, the limit being just in the amount and diversity of the training data. However, in practice the set of known realistic images that each of us observes (let alone remembers) during its whole life is so limited compared to the set of all possible realistic images that this never happens.
\end{remark}
\subsection{Mathematical background}\label{background}
The idea of the forward process involved here is to add Gaussian noise to a real image $x_0$ at each step up to a completely noised image. In particular this process is a Markov process $\{x_t\}_{t \in \{0,\dots,T\}}$ (defined on some probability space $(\Omega, \mathcal{F},\mathbb{P})$) taking values in the set of all possible images, meant as matrices containing the values composing the image\footnote{Hitherto and for the remainder of the paper we consider images, also in order to give the reader a concrete reference with which to follow the tractation, but notice that the whole theory does not depend on the space in which $\{x_t\}_{t \in \{0,\dots,T\}}$ is in, as it comes out from Section \ref{stable_sec}.}. Given the starting image $x_0$, the forward ``noising'' process is built iterating the following step in which we add Gaussian noise for any $t \in \{1,\dots, T\}$:
\begin{equation}\label{process}
x_t=\sqrt{1-\beta_t}x_{t-1}+\sqrt{\beta_t}z_{t},
\end{equation}
where $z_{t} \sim \mathcal{N}(0,I)$ and $\{\beta_t\}_{t=1}^T$ are arbitrary positive parameters.
So, the distribution of $x_t$ given $x_{t-1}$, that we denote by $p(x_t|x_{t-1})$ is the same of a random variable $\mathcal{N}(\sqrt{1-\beta_t}x_{t-1}; \beta_t I)$, for any $t \in \{1,\dots, T\}$.
Moreover, being the process Markovian, with these conditional distributions we can explicitly evaluate the distribution of the whole process, i.e.
\begin{equation}\label{markov1}
p(x_0,x_1, \dots, x_T)=p(x_0)p(x_1, \dots, x_T|x_0)=p(x_0)\prod_{t=1}^T p(x_t|x_{t-1}).
\end{equation}
Another interesting and useful property of this kind of process is that, given $x_0$ it is possible to evaluate the distribution of $x_t$, for any $t \in \{1,\dots, T\}$, as follows
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
x_t&=\sqrt{1-\beta_t}x_{t-1}+\sqrt{\beta_t}z_t=\sqrt{1-\beta_t}(\sqrt{1-\beta_{t-1}}x_{t-2}+\sqrt{\beta_{t-1}}z_{t-1})+\sqrt{\beta_t}z_t\\
&=x_0\prod_{s=1}^{t}\sqrt{1-\beta_t}+\sum_{s=1}^{t}\sqrt{\beta_s}z_s\prod_{u=s+1}^t \sqrt{1-\beta_{u}}.
\end{split}
\end{equation}
Hence, introducing the notation $\alpha_t=1-\beta_t$ and $\overline \alpha_t=\prod_{s=1}^t \alpha_s$, we have $p(x_t|x_0)=\mathcal{N}(x_0\sqrt{\overline \alpha_t};(1-\overline \alpha_t)I)$ (see Remark \ref{variance} for details about it). Then let us observe two very important features that this process has if we opportunely choose the values of the $\{\beta_t\}_{t=1}^T$.
\begin{itemize}
\item if $\overline \alpha_t \rightarrow 0$ as $t \rightarrow \infty$, the limit distribution of $x_t$ is a $\mathcal{N}(0;I)$. This means that, under this hypothesis, if we take sufficiently big $T$ , we can say that $x_T \sim \mathcal{N}(0;I)$, independently from the starting point $x_0$. Note that $\overline \alpha_t \rightarrow 0$ as $t \rightarrow \infty$, if, for example, $\beta_s<1$ for any $s$. This property is clear from the simulation results resumed in Figure \ref{fig:example}.
\item if $\beta_t <<1$ for any $t \in \{1,\dots,T\}$, as pointed out in \cite{termo} and in Remark \ref{diffusion}, the process $\{x_t\}_{t=0}^T$ admits a reverse process $\{x_t\}_{t=T}^0$ such that the conditional distributions $p(x_{t-1}|x_t)$ have the same functional form of the forward ones $p(x_t|x_{t-1})$, for any $t \in \{1,\dots, T\}$. This is really the key feature of this process in order to characterize the reverse process in the following sections.
\end{itemize}
\begin{remark}
Notice that if we take all values of $\{\beta_{t}\}_{t=1}^T$ close to $1$ the process $x_t$ converges really fast to the limit distribution $\mathcal{N}(0,I)$. However, in this case we can not assume that there exists a reverse diffusion process with the same functional form (see Remark \ref{diffusion}) and so that the model presented would be able to recover the reverse process.
\end{remark}
\begin{figure}[ht]
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth, trim={0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm}]{forward2.png}
\caption{Distribution in time of the values of $x_t$ in one dimension, obtained starting from a given distribution $x_0$ (in the top left plot) after 2000 simulations of trajectories. The parameters $\beta_t$ were chosen growing linearly in time from $0.0004$ to $0.06$. It is clear the convergence to some distribution close to a Gaussian random variable after a sufficient big number of steps, as we proved analytically. Doing the same simulation with higher values of
$\{\beta_t\}_{t \in \{1,\dots,T\}}$ the convergence to the Gaussian distribution would be much faster (immediate in the case $\beta_t=1$ for any $t \in \{1,\dots,T\}$). The notebook containing the simulations related to this toy model and other interesting remarks can be found at \url{https://github.com/stefanoscotta/1-d-generative-diffusion-model}.}
\label{fig:example}
\end{figure}
\begin{remark}\label{variance}
It can easily be proved by induction that the random variable $\sum_{s=1}^{t}\sqrt{\beta_s}z_s\prod_{u=s+1}^t\sqrt{1-\beta_{u}} \sim \mathcal{N}(0, (1-\prod_{s=1}^t(1-\beta_{s})I)= \mathcal{N}(0, (1-\overline \alpha_t)I)$. Indeed the sum of independent Gaussian random variable still a Gaussian r.v. with mean equal to the sum of the means and variance equal to the sum of the variances. Moreover, the variance of $\sqrt{\beta_s}z_s\prod_{u=s+1}^t\sqrt{1-\beta_{u}}$ is equal to $\beta_s\prod_{u=s+1}^t(1-\beta_{u})$ for any $s \in \{1,\dots, t\}$. Let us then show that the base case of the induction proof holds: for $t=2$, the variance of $\sum_{s=1}^{2}\sqrt{\beta_s}z_s\prod_{u=s+1}^2\sqrt{1-\beta_{u}}$ is equal to $\beta_1(1-\beta_2)+\beta_2=1-(1-\beta_1)(1-\beta_2)=1-\overline\alpha_2$. Therefore it remains only to show the inductive step to concludes the proof, let assume that for $t=t'$ it holds that the variance of $\sum_{s=1}^{t'}\sqrt{\beta_s}z_s\prod_{u=s+1}^{t'}\sqrt{1-\beta_{u}}$ is $(1-\overline \alpha_{t'})$, then the variance of $\sum_{s=1}^{t'+1}\sqrt{\beta_s}z_s\prod_{u=s+1}^{t'+1}\sqrt{1-\beta_{u}}$ is equal to
\begin{equation*}
\begin{split}
\beta_{t'+1}+&\sum_{s=1}^{t'}\beta_s\prod_{u=s+1}^{t'}(1-\beta_u)(1-\beta_{t'+1})=\beta_{t'+1}+(1-\overline\alpha_{t'})(1-\beta_{t'+1})\\&=\beta_{t'+1}+1-\beta_{t'+1}-\overline\alpha_{t'}(1-\beta_{t'+1})=1-\overline\alpha_{t'+1}.
\end{split}
\end{equation*}
\end{remark}
\begin{remark}\label{diffusion}
We want to find the continuous version of \eqref{process} in order to use some important properties of this kind of processes. To do this we follow the computations made in Appendix B of \cite{score}.
Under the condition $\beta_t <<1$, for any $t \in \{1,\dots, T\}$, we are able to show that we can approximate \eqref{process} as
\begin{equation}\label{diff1}
x_{t+1}=\sqrt{1-\beta_{t+1}}x_{t}+\sqrt{\beta_{t+1}}z_{t+1} \approx \Big(1-\frac{\beta_{t+1}}{2}\Big)x_{t}+\sqrt{\beta_{t+1}}z_{t+1}.
\end{equation}
Indeed, developing the Taylor series of $\sqrt{1-\beta_{t+1}}$ around $0$ we get that it is equal to $1-\frac{\beta_{t+1}}{2}$ plus a term of order $\beta_{t+1}^2$ that can be ignored.
Let us now introduce a new set of scaling parameters $\{\tilde \beta_t=T\beta_t\}_{t=1}^T$ with which we can rewrite \eqref{diff1} as
$$
x_{t+1}-x_t\approx-\frac{\tilde \beta_{t+1}}{2T}x_{t}+\sqrt{\frac{\tilde \beta_{t+1}}{T}}z_{t+1}.
$$
Then we rescale the time by a factor $1/T$, defining $t'=t/T$. With this we introduce $x(t')=x(t/T)=x_t$, $\beta(t')=\beta(t/T)=\tilde \beta_t$, $z(t')=z(t/T)=z_t$ and we denote $1/T$ by $\Delta t'$.
Under these assumption we have that
$$x(t'+\Delta t')-x(t')=-\frac{1}{2}\beta(t'+\Delta t')\Delta t' x(t') + \sqrt{\beta(t'+\Delta t')\Delta t'}z(t'+\Delta t').$$
For a big enough $T$, denoting $\Delta t'$ by $dt'$, we can heuristically say that the previous equation could be approximated as follows
\begin{equation}\label{stocdif}
\begin{split}
x(t'+\Delta t')-x(t')=dx(t')\approx -\frac{1}{2}\beta(t')x(t')dt' + \sqrt{\beta(t')}dw(t')
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $dw(t)$ is the standard white noise and where we used the following approximations holding for $T$ big enough: since $\beta(t')<<1$, we can say that $\beta(t'+dt)\approx \beta(t')$; $z(t'+ dt')\sqrt{dt'}\approx dw(t')$. The intuitive reason of the last approximation is that $z(t'+ \Delta t') \sim \mathcal{N}(0,I)$ and, with some abuse of notation, $dw_t \sim \mathcal{N}(0,dt)$.
The formulation \eqref{stocdif} for the dynamics of our model, thanks to the main theorem stated in \cite{reverse}, grants us that a reverse process exists and that it is a diffusion, as the forward process.
\end{remark}
Now, that we have stated and proved the main properties of the forward process, we would like to find the best way to build the diffusion model which represents the reverse process starting from $x_T \sim \mathcal{N}(0,I)$ and going to some $x_0$ satisfying the properties of the starting real images used for the forward process. Let us denote by $p_{\theta}(\cdot)$ the functions denoting the distributions (or conditional distributions) of the backward process depending on some set of unknown parameters $\theta$. The goal is finding the latent variables describing the limiting probability $p_{\theta}(x_0)=\int p_{\theta}(x_T,x_{T-1}, \dots, x_1, x_0) dx_{T}\dots dx_{1}$. Now, since the reverse of a Markov process still a Markov process (see \cite{Chung} for a detailed analysis of that), it is true that
\begin{equation}\label{markov2}
p_{\theta}(x_T,x_{T-1}, \dots, x_1, x_0)=p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^Tp_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t),
\end{equation}
which is the analogous of \eqref{markov1} but reverse in time. We already know that $p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_{t})$ are Gaussian distributed (see Remark \ref{diffusion}) so, we can conclude that any of them is distributed like $\mathcal{N}(\mu_{\theta}(x_t), \Sigma_{\theta}(x_t))$ for some unknown $\mu_{\theta}(x_t)$ and $\Sigma_{\theta}(x_t)$. To evaluate \eqref{markov2} is then necessary to estimate $\mu_{\theta}(x_t)$ and $\Sigma_{\theta}(x_t)$ for each time $t \in \{1, \dots, T\}$.
As pointed out in \cite{termo}, these optimal parameters are the ones that maximize the log likelihood averaged on the data that we have, which are given according to the distribution $p(x_0)$, being real images. This means that we have to find the $\mu_{\theta}(x_t)$ and $\Sigma_{\theta}(x_t)$ that maximize
\begin{equation}\label{loglike}
\mathcal{L}=\int \log(p_{\theta}(x_0)) p(x_0)dx_0.
\end{equation}
First, let us rewrite $p_{\theta}(x_0)$ as follows
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
p_{\theta}(x_0)&=\int p_{\theta}(x_T,x_{T-1}, \dots, x_1, x_0) dx_{T}\dots dx_{1}\\&=\int \frac{p(x_0,\dots,x_T|x_0)}{p(x_0,\dots,x_T|x_0)}p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^Tp_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)dx_{T}\dots dx_{1}\\&=\int p(x_1,\dots,x_T|x_0)p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)} dx_{T}\dots dx_{1}\\&=\mathbb{E}_{p(x_1,\dots,x_T|x_0)}\bigg[p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)}\bigg],
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where the second and third equality comes respectively from \eqref{markov2} and \eqref{markov1} plus the fact that $p(x_0,\dots,x_T|x_0)=p(x_1,\dots,x_T|x_0)$. Hence, by logarithm properties and Jensen's inequality, \eqref{loglike} can be bounded as follows
\begin{equation}\label{like}
\begin{split}
\mathcal{L}&=\int \log(p_{\theta}(x_0)) p(x_0)dx_0\\&=\int \log\Bigg(\mathbb{E}_{p(x_1,\dots,x_T|x_0)}\bigg[p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)}\bigg]\Bigg) p(x_0)dx_0\\
&
=\int \log\Bigg( \int p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)}p(x_1,\dots,x_T|x_0)dx_1\dots dx_T\Bigg) p(x_0)dx_0
\\
&
=\int \log\Bigg( \int p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)}d\tilde p(x_1,\dots,x_T|x_0)\Bigg) p(x_0)dx_0
\\
& \geq\int \Bigg(\int \log\Big( p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)} \Big)d\tilde p(x_1,\dots,x_T)\Bigg)p(x_0)dx_0 \\
& = \int \log\Big( p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)} \Big) p(x_1,\dots,x_T|x_0)p(x_0)dx_0dx_1\dots dx_T\\
& = \int \log\Big( p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)} \Big) p(x_0,x_1,\dots,x_T)dx_0dx_1\dots dx_T\\
& = \mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,\dots,x_T)}\bigg[ \log\Big( p_{\theta}(x_T)\prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)} \Big) \bigg]\\
& = \mathbb{E}_{p(x_T)}\big[\log(p_{\theta}(x_T))\big]+\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,\dots,x_T)}\bigg[ \log\Big( \prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)} \Big) \bigg],
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where used the notation $d\tilde p(x_1,\dots,x_T|x_0)$ to denote the random probability measure of density $p(x_1,\dots,x_T|x_0)$.
Observe that the first term of the last bound above does not depend on the parameters $\theta$ since we showed that $x_T$ is distributed as a $\mathcal{N}(0,I)$.
Then the parameters that maximize $\mathcal{L}$ are the same that maximize
$$
\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,\dots,x_T)}\bigg[ \log\Big( \prod_{t=1}^T\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)} \Big) \bigg].
$$
Moreover, let us observe that the first factor of this term ($t=1$) is equal to
\begin{equation}\label{marginal0}
\begin{split}
\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,x_1)}\bigg[ \log\Big(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{0}|x_1)}{p(x_1| x_0)} \Big) \bigg]&=\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,x_1)}\big[ \log(p_{\theta}(x_{0}|x_1)) \big]-\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,x_1)}\big[ \log(p(x_{1}|x_0)) \big].
\end{split}
\end{equation}
Now, thanks to Bayes Theorem we can write $$p(x_t|x_{t-1},x_0)=\frac{p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)p(x_t|x_0)}{p(x_{t-1}|x_0)}$$ and, with this in mind, we rewrite all the factors of $\tilde{\mathcal{L}}$ but the first (so all the ones involving $t\geq 2$) as
\begin{equation}\label{center}
\begin{split}
\sum_{t=2}^T&\int \log\bigg(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_t|x_{t-1}, x_0)} \bigg)p(x_0,\dots,x_T)dx_0,\dots dx_T \\ &= \sum_{t=2}^T\int \log\bigg(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)}\frac{p(x_{t-1}|x_0)}{p(x_t|x_0)} \bigg)p(x_0,\dots,x_T)dx_0,\dots dx_T \\&=\sum_{t=2}^T\int \log\bigg(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)} \bigg)p(x_0,\dots,x_T)dx_0,\dots dx_T\\& \qquad \qquad +\sum_{t=2}^T\int \log\bigg(\frac{p(x_{t-1}|x_0)}{p(x_t|x_0)} \bigg)p(x_0,\dots,x_T)dx_0,\dots dx_T.
\end{split}
\end{equation}
Let us focus first on the first term on the right hand-side of the last equality obtained above. Observe that, since each $\log\bigg(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)} \bigg)$ depends only on $x_0,x_{t-1}, x_t$, we can rewrite
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\sum_{t=2}^T&\int \log\bigg(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)} \bigg)p(x_0,\dots,x_T)dx_0,\dots dx_T
\\& =\sum_{t=2}^T\int \log\bigg(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)} \bigg)p(x_0,x_{t-1},x_t)dx_0,dx_{t-1}, dx_t
\\& =\sum_{t=2}^T\int \log\bigg(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)}{p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)} \bigg)p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)p(x_t,x_0)dx_0 dx_{t-1}dx_t\\&=-\sum_{t=2}^T\int \log\bigg(\frac{p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)}{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)} \bigg)p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)p(x_t,x_0)dx_0 dx_{t-1}dx_t\\&=-\sum_{t=2}^T\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,x_t)}\Big[D_{KL}\big(p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0) \;||\; p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)\big)\Big];
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $D_{KL}$ denotes the Kullback–Leibler divergence (which is a function of $x_t$ and $x_0$ in this case), i.e. for any $x_t,x_0$,
$$D_{KL}\big(p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0) \;||\; p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)\big):= \int \log\bigg(\frac{p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)}{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)} \bigg)p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0) dx_{t-1}.$$
Now, we analyze the second term on the right hand-side of the last equality in \eqref{center}. Using the properties of logarithm it can be written as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\sum_{t=2}^T&\int \Big( \log(p(x_{t-1}|x_0))-\log({p(x_t|x_0)} )\Big)p(x_0,x_{t-1},x_t)dx_0, dx_{t-1}, dx_t\\
&=\sum_{t=2}^T\Big( \mathbb{E}_{p(x_{t-1}, x_0)}\big[\log(p(x_{t-1}|x_0))\big]-\mathbb{E}_{p(x_{t}, x_0)}\big[\log(p(x_{t}|x_0))\big]\Big)\\
&=\mathbb{E}_{p(x_{1}, x_0)}\big[\log(p(x_{1}|x_0))\big]-\mathbb{E}_{p(x_{T}, x_0)}\big[\log(p(x_{T}|x_0))\big],
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where the last equality is due to the telescopic property of the sum obtained before. Observe now that the first term on the right hand-side of the last equality above cancels with the second on the right hand-side of \eqref{marginal0}. At the same time we can write the sum of the second term on the right hand-side of the last equality above plus the first on the right hand-side of the last equality in \eqref{like} as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\mathbb{E}_{p(x_T)}&\big[\log(p_{\theta}(x_T))\big]-\mathbb{E}_{p(x_{T}, x_0)}\big[\log(p(x_{T}|x_0))\big]\\&=\int \log \bigg(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_T))}{p(x_{T}|x_0)}\Big) p(x_0,x_T)dx_0dx_T\\&=\int \log \bigg(\frac{p_{\theta}(x_T))}{p(x_{T}|x_0)}\Big) p(x_T|x_0)p(x_0)dx_0dx_T\\&=-\int \log \bigg(\frac{p(x_{T}|x_0)}{p_{\theta}(x_T))}\Big) p(x_T|x_0)p(x_0)dx_0dx_T\\&=-\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0)}\Big[D_{KL}\big(p(x_{T}|x_0)\;||\; p_{\theta}(x_T) \big) \Big].
\end{split}
\end{equation}
Finally, summing all the term remained, we can conclude that
\begin{equation}\label{tomax1}
\begin{split}
\mathcal{L}=\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,x_1)}\big[\log(p_{\theta}(x_{0}|x_1))\big]-&\sum_{t=2}^T\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,x_t)}\Big[D_{KL}\big(p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0) \;||\; p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)\big)\Big]\\&-\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0)}\Big[D_{KL}\big(p(x_{T}|x_0)\;||\; p_{\theta}(x_T) \big)\Big].
\end{split}
\end{equation}
Since we proved that $p_{\theta}(x_T)$ under the opportune conditions on the parameters $\{\beta_t\}_{t=1}^T$ is a $\mathcal{N}(0,I)$, it does not depends on the parameters $\theta$. So, maximising \eqref{tomax1} is equivalent to maximise
\begin{equation}\label{tomax}
\begin{split}
\tilde{\mathcal{L}}:=\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,x_1)}\big[\log(p_{\theta}(x_{0}|x_1))\big]-\sum_{t=2}^T\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,x_t)}\Big[D_{KL}\big(p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0) \;||\; p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)\big)\Big],
\end{split}
\end{equation}
Hence, the model is given by the solutions of the problem $\hat p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_{t})=\argmax_{p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_{t})} \tilde{\mathcal{L}}$.
\begin{remark}
It is possible to evaluate explicitly the value of $p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)$ as it is mentioned in \cite{denoising} and explained in detail in the next Section.
\end{remark}
\subsubsection{Analytic computation of $p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)$}
We know that $p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)$ is Gaussian distributed as a $\mathcal{N}(\tilde{\mu}(x_t,x_0), \tilde{\Sigma}(x_t,x_0))$. In \cite{denoising} the values of $\tilde \mu(x_t,x_0)$ and $\tilde \Sigma(x_t,x_0))$ are given and they are useful for the estimate procedure. In this brief Section we give a strategy of evaluating these values using the results of \cite{bishop}, Chapter 2.3.3 plus some computations.
For that purpose we use the same notation used in Chapter 2.3.3 of \cite{bishop}, i.e. we denote $p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0)$ by $p(x|y)$, $p(x_{t}|x_{t-1},x_0)=p(x_{t}|x_{t-1})$ by $p(y|x)$ and $p(x_{t-1}|x_0)$ by $p(x)$. By our previous computations we already know that $p(y|x)$ and $p(x)$ are respectively distributed like two Gaussian variables $\mathcal{N}(\sqrt{1-\beta_t}x_{t-1}, \beta_t I)$ and $\mathcal{N}(\sqrt{\overline \alpha_{t-1}}x_0, (1-\overline{\alpha}_{t-1})I)$. Now, for simplify the notation, let us consider the unidimensional case, the general case is totally analogous being the covariance matrices diagonal.
So, keeping in mind the relation $
(1-\beta_t)(1-\overline \alpha_{t-1})=1-\beta_t-\overline\alpha_t
$ and applying (2.116) of \cite{bishop} to our setting we get that:
\begin{equation}\label{var}
\begin{split}
\tilde{\Sigma}(x_t,x_0)=\tilde{\Sigma}_t=\bigg(\frac{1}{1-\overline \alpha_{t-1}}+(1-\beta_t)\frac{1}{\beta_t}\bigg)^{-1}&=\bigg(\frac{\beta_t+(1-\beta_t)(1-\overline \alpha_{t-1})}{\beta_t(1-\overline \alpha_{t-1})}\bigg)^{-1}\\&=\beta_t \frac{(1-\overline \alpha_{t-1})}{(1-\overline \alpha_{t})}
\end{split}
\end{equation}
and
\begin{equation}\label{mean}
\begin{split}
\tilde{\mu}(x_t,x_0)&=\tilde{\Sigma}_t\bigg(\sqrt{1-\beta_t}\frac{1}{\beta_t}x_t+\frac{1}{1-\overline \alpha_{t-1}}\sqrt{\overline \alpha_{t-1}}x_0 \bigg)\\&=\frac{\sqrt{\alpha_t}(1-\overline\alpha_{t-1})}{1-\overline\alpha_t}x_t+\frac{\beta_t \sqrt{\overline\alpha_{t-1}}}{1-\overline \alpha_{t}}x_0,
\end{split}
\end{equation}
as stated in \cite{denoising}.
\subsection{Estimate procedure}
In this section we want to analyze further the problem of maximization of \eqref{tomax}, making assumptions on the distributions $p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)$.
We already saw that $p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)$ is distributed like a $\mathcal{N}(\mu_{\theta}(x_t), \Sigma_{\theta}(x_t))$. Proceeding as it is done in \cite{denoising}, we assume that, for any $t \in \{1, \dots, T \}$, $\Sigma_{\theta}(x_t)=\sigma^2_t I$ for some experimentally established value of $\sigma_t^2$ and so, it does not depend on the process itself nor on the parameters $\theta$ (this is fundamental for the derivation of \eqref{KLprop}). In \cite{denoising} the authors suggested two possibilities: $\sigma^2_t=\beta_t$ or $\sigma^2=\beta_t\frac{1-\overline{\alpha}_{t-1}}{1-\overline{\alpha}_{t}}$ .
Under these assumptions, thanks to the properties of Kullback–Leibler divergence of two multivariate normal distribution it is true that
\begin{equation}\label{KLprop}
D_{KL}\big(p(x_{t-1}|x_t,x_0) \;||\; p_{\theta}(x_{t-1}|x_t)\big)=\frac{1}{2\sigma^2_t}||\tilde \mu(x_t,x_0)-\mu_{\theta}(x_t)||^2 + C,
\end{equation}
where $C$ is some constant not depending on $\theta$ and $||\cdot||$ is the standard $L^2$ norm. Moreover, recalling that we can express $x_t$ as a function of $x_0$ as
\begin{equation}\label{17}
x_t(x_0)=\sqrt{\overline \alpha_t} x_0 + \sqrt{1-\overline \alpha_t}z_t
\end{equation}
for some $z_t \sim \mathcal{N}(0,I)$, we can rewrite the second term on the right had-side of \eqref{tomax} as
\begin{equation}\label{exp1}
\begin{split}
\sum_{t=2}^T&\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0)}\Big[\frac{1}{2\sigma^2_t}||\tilde \mu(x_t(x_0),x_0)-\mu_{\theta}(x_t(x_0))||^2\Big]+C'\\ &=\sum_{t=2}^T\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0), z_t}\Big[\frac{1}{2\sigma^2_t}\Big|\Big|\tilde \mu\Big(x_t(x_0),\frac{1}{\sqrt{\overline\alpha_t}}(x_t(x_0)-\sqrt{1-\overline \alpha_t}z_t)\Big)-\mu_{\theta}(x_t(x_0))\Big|\Big|^2\Big]+C',
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $C'$ is a constant not depending on $\theta$ and the $z_t$ at pedix of the second expectation means that we have to average also on the different possible values that $z_t \sim \mathcal{N}(0,1)$ takes at any time step. Now, thanks to \eqref{mean} we can rewrite the argument of the expectation in the last term above as
\begin{equation}\label{exp}
\begin{split}
&\frac{1}{2\sigma^2_t}\Big|\Big|\frac{\sqrt{\alpha_t}(1-\overline{\alpha}_{t-1})}{1-\overline\alpha_t}x_t(x_0)+\frac{\beta_t\sqrt{\overline{\alpha}_{t-1}}}{1-\overline\alpha_t}\frac{1}{\sqrt{\overline{\alpha}_t}}(x_t(x_0)-\sqrt{1-\overline{\alpha}_t}z_t)-\mu_{\theta}(x_t(x_0))\Big|\Big|^2\\
&=\frac{1}{2\sigma^2_t}\Big|\Big|\frac{{\alpha_t}(1-\overline{\alpha}_{t-1})+(1-\alpha_t)}{\sqrt{\alpha_t}(1-\overline\alpha_t)}x_t(x_0)-\frac{\beta_t}{\sqrt{1-\overline{\alpha}_t}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{{\alpha}_t}}z_t-\mu_{\theta}(x_t(x_0))\Big|\Big|^2\\
&=\frac{1}{2\sigma^2_t}\Big|\Big|\frac{1}{\sqrt{\alpha_t}}\Big(x_t(x_0)-\frac{\beta_t}{\sqrt{1-\overline{\alpha}_t}}z_t\Big)-\mu_{\theta}(x_t(x_0))\Big|\Big|^2.
\end{split}
\end{equation}
From these computation it becomes clear that the best $\mu_{\theta}(x_t(x_0))$ is the one which predicts $\frac{1}{\sqrt{\alpha_t}}\big(x_t(x_0)-\frac{\beta_t}{\sqrt{1-\overline{\alpha}_t}}z_t\big)$. Moreover, observe that $x_t$ is actually an input of the model and so we could take (as suggested in \cite{denoising}):
\begin{equation}\label{ztheta}
\begin{split}
\mu_{\theta}(x_t(x_0))&=\tilde \mu\big(x_t(x_0),\frac{1}{\sqrt{\overline\alpha_t}}(x_t(x_0)-\sqrt{1-\overline \alpha_t}z_{\theta}(x_t))\big)\\&=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\alpha_t}}\Big(x_t(x_0)-\frac{\beta_t}{\sqrt{1-\overline{\alpha}_t}}z_{\theta}(x_t)\Big),
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $z_{\theta}(x_t)$ is the function predicting $z_t$ from the value of the input $x_t$ and the equality comes from \eqref{mean} plus some simple computations.
Hence, thanks to \eqref{exp} and \eqref{ztheta}, we get that the expectation in \eqref{exp1} is equal to
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0), z_t}\Big[&\frac{\beta_t^2}{2\sigma^2_t\alpha_t(1-\overline \alpha_t)}\big|\big|z_t-z_{\theta}(x_t)\big|\big|^2\Big]\\
&=\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0), z_t}\Big[\frac{\beta_t^2}{2\sigma^2_t\alpha_t(1-\overline \alpha_t)}\big|\big|z_t-z_{\theta}(\sqrt{\overline \alpha_t} x_0 + \sqrt{1-\overline \alpha_t}z_t)\big|\big|^2\Big],
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where the equality comes from \eqref{17}. The function that we are looking for is therefore the $z_{\theta}(\cdot)$ that minimize the quantity
\begin{equation}\label{likelihoodmax}
\sum_{t=2}^T\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0), z}\Big[\frac{\beta_t^2}{2\sigma^2_t\alpha_t(1-\overline \alpha_t)}\big|\big|z_t-z_{\theta}(\sqrt{\overline \alpha_t} x_0 + \sqrt{1-\overline \alpha_t}z_t)\big|\big|^2\Big].
\end{equation}
\begin{remark}
In \cite{denoising} the authors empirically showed that in order to get the function $z_{\theta}$ it is possible to minimize the following quantity instead of \eqref{likelihoodmax} and what we define in Section \ref{t=1}:
\begin{equation}
\sum_{t=2}^T\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0), z_t}\Big[\big|\big|z_t-z_{\theta}(\sqrt{\overline \alpha_t} x_0 + \sqrt{1-\overline \alpha_t}z_t)\big|\big|^2\Big].
\end{equation}
Actually they showed that minimizes this unweighted functional gives even better performance.
\end{remark}
Notice that, thanks to the assumption that we made at the beginning of this Section, once we have estimated the function $z_{\theta}(\cdot)$ we ``have'' the reverse process. Indeed, since $p(x_{t-1}|x_t)=\mathcal{N}\bigg(\frac{1}{\sqrt{\alpha_t}}\Big(x_t(x_0)-\frac{\beta_t}{\sqrt{1-\overline{\alpha}_t}}z_{\theta}\Big),\sigma^2_t I\bigg)$, we have that
\begin{equation}\label{rev_eq}
x_{t-1}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\alpha_t}}\Big(x_t-\frac{\beta_t}{\sqrt{1-\overline{\alpha}_t}}z_{\theta}(x_t)\Big)+\sigma_t z_t.
\end{equation}
\begin{remark}
The last computations (after \eqref{KLprop}) are important to make comprehensible that what we are doing in the whole estimation process is, in some way, to estimate the noise to remove at each step in the reverse process. More in practice they are not necessary, in principle it is indeed possible simply to build some model able to find directly $\mu_{\theta}$ maximizing the left hand-side of \eqref{exp1}. Then the estimated reverse process would simply be given by
\begin{equation}\label{rev_eq2}
x_{t-1}=\mu_{\theta}(x_t)+\sigma_t z_t,
\end{equation}
equivalent to \eqref{rev_eq} before all the computations showed.
\end{remark}
\begin{figure}[ht]
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth, trim={0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm}]{backward2.png}
\caption{Distributions obtained with the reverse process obtained with \eqref{rev_eq} starting from $2000$ samples from a normal distribution $\mathcal{N}(0,1)$. For the training of the model were used the trajectories simulated for getting the distributions in Figure \ref{fig:example}, indeed it is clear as the limiting distribution of the reverse process in this picture is close to the initial distribution of data there.}
\label{fig:example}
\end{figure}
\subsubsection{Analysis of $\mathbb{E}_{p(x_0,x_1)}\big[\log(p_{\theta}(x_{0}|x_1))\big]$}\label{t=1}
The last step of the reverse process determined by $p_{\theta}(x_{0}|x_1)$ is treated in section 3.3 of \cite{denoising} in a particular way. Indeed, the authors proposed to work through the model with images which are combinations of pixel values (usually in the set $\{0,1,\dots,255\}$) rescaled to combinations of element in the interval $[-1,1]$. Then within the forward process Gaussian noise is added to the ``scaled'' images up to the limit distributions which, theoretically, lives in the space of combination of elements in $[-\infty, +\infty]$. In particular, starting from a normal distributed noisy image $x_T$, in principle the reverse process built goes up to an image $x_0$ which still lives in the space of combination of elements in $[-\infty, +\infty]$. For this reason the authors, in order of having as an output of the reverse process an image in the original pixel space (which can be deducted from the space of combination of elements in $[-1.1]$), define the last step $p_{\theta}(x_0|x_1)$ to be a discrete decoder depending on $\mu_{\theta}(x_1(x_0))$ in such a way that, receiving in input an image $x_1$ in the unlimited space, it returns as output an image in the scaled space $x_0$ which can then be converted to the pixel space.
This is a technicality necessary for the application of this kind of model but does not change the mathematical theory behind DPM which we presented in the previous sections. So, we refer the interested reader to the aforementioned section of \cite{denoising} in which it is also pointed out that the solution proposed is not unique and neither optimal.
\section{DPM on latent space - Stable Diffusion}\label{stable_sec}
The most important mathematical theory for DPM is the one presented in Section \ref{diffusion_paper} which was developed first in \cite{termo} and which is behind the outstanding results of \cite{denoising}. This kind of model is built in the pixel space. Indeed, for any $t \in \{0,\dots, T\}$ the values taken by the forward and backward process $x_{t}$ are $H \times W \times 3$ matrices, where $H$ and $W$ are respectively the height and the width of the images in pixels and $3$ are the RGB values for each pixel (eventually rescaled, see Section \ref{t=1}). This feature translates in the fact that training, using and optimizing such models is computationally really expansive and therefore, slow.
In \cite{stable} the authors proposed some important changes to the DPM that, using the same mathematical background that we explained in Section \ref{background}, reduce the dimension of the space in which the model is built, improving its performance. The main idea is to create a model which is not working anymore on the pixel space but on the space of some kind of compressed images. So, intuitively they do not train a model that is able to denoise images, but they train a model that is able to denoise compressed representations of them. In such a way, when the trained model generates a new compressed image, starting from the compressed representation of noise, it is possible to retrieve with some decoder the image corresponding to that representation. This leads to an huge advantage in term of computation complexity. This kind of model is usually called stable diffusion (DS hereinafter).
In the next sections we present the principal ideas behind DS, without entering in the detail of the neural architecture used to implement it. It is indeed well explained in the original paper \cite{stable} and it goes beyond the goal of this work that aims meanly to give an intuitive idea of the theory behind generative diffusion models.
\subsection{From pixel to latent space}
As we anticipated, in the model presented in \cite{stable} the authors propose to change the space in which the diffusion model is built, passing from the images described pixel per pixel, so in the space $\Gamma=C^{H\times W\times 3}$ where $C$ depends on the number of color considered (usually it is the space $\{0,\dots, 255\}$), to representations of these images in some other smaller space $\tilde \Gamma=C^{h\times w\times 3}$, with $h$ and $w$ such that $H/h=W/w=2^m$ for some $m \in \mathbb{N}$. In their paper this is done using a perceptrual compression model based on the work \cite{decoder} that, given an image $x \in \Gamma$, performs the transformation $y=\mathcal{E}(x) \in \tilde \Gamma$, where $\mathcal{E}$ represents the encoder. We denote by $\mathcal{D}$ the decoder which is able to transform any element of the latent space $\tilde y \in \tilde \Gamma$ back to an image in the pixel space, i.e. $x' = \mathcal{D}(\tilde y)= \mathcal{D}(\mathcal{E}(\tilde x)) \in \Gamma$ for some $\tilde x \in \Gamma$.
The basic idea behind this kind of image compression is that it permits to get the ``essence'' of an image in a smaller representation, in such a way that all the important features of the original image are, in some way, preserved and represented in a smaller space. This does not only give an important advantage in terms of computational cost but also permits to train the model only on the parts that really ``mean something'' of the images simply minimizing the function (equivalent to \eqref{likelihoodmax} for the DPM)
\begin{equation}
\sum_{t=2}^T\mathbb{E}_{y_t=\mathcal{E}(x_t), \tilde z_t}\Big[\big|\big|\tilde z_t-\tilde z_{\theta}(y_t)\big|\big|^2\Big],
\end{equation}
where the $x_t$ are distributed according to $p(x_t)$ for any $t \in \{0,\dots, T\}$, $\tilde z_t$ is the noise in the latent space and $\tilde z_{\theta}$ is the estimate for the noise $\tilde z_t$ in the latent space. So, the whole model moved in the latent space, but it is not a problem, indeed when we recover the limit for the reverse process in this space it can also be transformed back in the pixel space. Indeed, when the model is trained it is able to recover, from a latent variable $y_T=\mathcal{E}(x_T)$ for some $x_T \sim \mathcal{N}(0,I)$, a limit distribution $y_0$ which is the representation of some realistic image $x_0=\mathcal{D}(y_0)$ in the pixel space $\Gamma$.
\subsection{Conditioning}\label{condit}
Working on a latent abstract space not only makes the model lighter to train and use, but, as pointed out in \cite{stable} it also allows to add the possibility of conditioning the image generation process on some additional input given by the user via a prompt. It is indeed possible to train the model conditioned on some (a lot of) inputs given by the user, training it on a larger set of possible images but associated to some representation of the user input.
It is easier to understand making a toy example: we can train the model passing a lot of images representing cats and dogs associated, respectively, to the user input ``cat'' and ``dog''. All of these, images and inputs, encoded in some latent variable space. Once it is trained on the representation of images (to which noise is added) and inputs, the model will generate outputs depending on the prompt inserted. So that, if we ask for a ``cat'' the whole reverse process will be conditioned to converge to some latent representation of realistic image of a cat. If the model is trained on a lot of possible users inputs and a lot of images for each of them, it will translate any input received in a combination of the ones on which it is trained and then condition the reverse process to converge to some representation of an image which is associated to this combination of inputs.
Hence, these inputs have to be seen as additional variables on which the function $\tilde z_{\theta}$ depends, i.e. before this function was only dependent on time and the latent variable $y_t$, now we have to add the dependence on some encoded input $\iota$. So, the new function to minimize is
\begin{equation}
\sum_{t=2}^T\mathbb{E}_{y_t=\mathcal{E}(x_t), \tilde z, \iota}\Big[\big|\big|\tilde z-\tilde z_{\theta}(y_t, \iota)\big|\big|^2\Big],
\end{equation}
where $\iota$ is taken on the space of all the encoded inputs for which the model is trained.
\begin{figure}[ht]
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth, trim={0cm 8cm 14cm 0.5cm}]{cond.png}
\caption{Scheme of what we described in Section \ref{condit}. On the left is represented the process in which a pixel image $x_0$ is encoded to a vector $y_0$ in the latent space. This vector is then transformed, adding noise at each step (diffusion process), in a noised vector $y_T$. The reverse process starts synthetizing the conditioning input to the noised image and then passing everything to the principal neural architecture which gives back a denoised $\tilde y_0$ (conditioned on $\iota$) that is finally decoded to a (new) pixel image $\tilde x_0$.}
\label{fig:stable_scheme}
\end{figure}
The equation before is not exactly what the neural architecture does, it is much more complex because it is necessary to include, in some way, any possible input $\iota$. The authors in \cite{stable} to reach that, defined a projection $\tau$ from the space of all possible $\iota$ to a latent space which can be integrated in to the model being (in some sense) a combination of the inputs that the model received during training.
\begin{remark}
It is clear that a model such that need to be trained on a huge set of combinations of images and user inputs, bigger than the one used for DPM that is usually focused on some specific type of images (for example celebrities, cats, churches...). It is possible indeed to see the DS as a combination of many DPM, each of them associated to some kind of input given by the user. Then, once the user ask for some specific kind of image, the DS model conditions itself to generate that kind of image, that could be generated also by a DPM trained on a set of images corresponding to that specific input.
\end{remark}
\section{Cold Diffusion: a deterministic generative model}\label{cold_sec}
In the recent paper \cite{cold} the authors found out that all the complex theory behind DPM and DS can be noticeably simplified without considering the forward process (that add noise) as a random process, but taking a completely deterministc one.
Indeed, they show empirically that similar models can be built using arbitrary degradation processes and not only the one used for the DPM that add Gaussian noise at each step. Below we formalize this concept as it is done in \cite{cold}.
Let us define the following degradation operator:
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
D:\Gamma\times\{0,\dots, T\} &\longrightarrow \Gamma\\
(x,t) &\longmapsto D(x,t),
\end{split}
\end{equation}
that at each image $x \in \Gamma$ associate its degradation $D(x,t)$ after $t$ degradation steps. So, given a starting image $x_0$, $x_t=D(x_0, t)$ is the analogous of \eqref{17} in the DPM, but with an arbitrary degradation transformation $D$.
\begin{remark}
Considering the (random) operator $D$ defined on any $(x_0,t)\in\Gamma\times\{0,\dots, T\}$ by $D(x_0, t)=\sqrt{\overline \alpha_t} x_0 + \sqrt{1-\overline \alpha_t}z_t$ we retrieve exactly the DPM.
\end{remark}
Now, it is necessary to define the equivalent of the reverse process in DPM and DS. In \cite{cold} it is done defining an operator that restores the corrupted images, which plays the role of the denoising process developed in the case of the DPM. This operator is defined as
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
R:\Gamma\times\{0,\dots, T\} &\longrightarrow \Gamma\\
(x,t) &\longmapsto R(x,t),
\end{split}
\end{equation}
such that, given a forward process $x_0, x_1, \dots, x_t$, $R(x_t,t)$ is an approximation of $x_0$.
The operator $R$ depends on some unknown parameters $\theta$ and so we denote it by $R=R_{\theta}$. The goal of the neural model is to estimate in some way this operator, so that it could be able to restore, from some corrupted image $x_T$, a realistic (and new) image $\tilde x_0$, which as we said is an approximation (but not the same) of the image $x_0$ such that $x_T=D(x_0,t)$. This is the analogous of estimating the function $z_{\theta}$ in order to denoise the image $x_T\sim \mathcal{N}(0,I)$ in the DPM.
The loss function to be minimized in order to find the operator $R_{\theta}$ proposed in \cite{cold} is simply
\begin{equation}
\mathbb{E}_{x \sim \mathcal{X}, t}\big[||R_{\theta}(D(x,t),t)-x||\big]
\end{equation}
where $\mathcal{X}$ is the set of (not corrupted) images that we use in training and $||\cdot||$ is the $\ell_1$ norm, i.e. for any $N$ and $a=(a_{1},\dots, a_N) \in \mathbb{R}^N$, $||a||=\sum_{i=1}^N|a_i|$.
\begin{remark}
Notice an important difference between this kind of model and the DPM: in this case indeed the output of the model is an operator which, in some sense, restores the image in one step, i.e. if we have $x_t$ which was corrupted $t$ times via the operator $D$, we can recover immediately $x_0=R(x_t,t)$; while in DPM this was done denoising at each step the noise image, going from $x_T$ to $x_{T-1}$, then to $x_{T-2}$ and so on up to get to an $x_0$ corresponding to a real image. In \cite{cold} the authors proved empirically that restoring the image in one step as $x_0=R(x_t,t)$ performed badly compared to combine $R$ in sequence with $D$ to get some sort of step by step restoration as it is done in Algorithm \ref{alg}. Actually in \cite{cold} the authors also presented a better algorithm to restoring images, but it goes beyond the goal of this paper and so we refer the interested reader to Section 3.2 and 3.3 of that paper.
\end{remark}
\begin{algorithm}
\caption{Restoring images algorithm}\label{alg}
\begin{algorithmic}
\Require Corrupted image $x_T$
\For{$t=T, T-1, \dots, 1$}
\State $\tilde x_0= R(x_t,t)$
\State $x_{t-1}=D(\tilde x_0, t-1)$
\EndFor\\
\Return Restored (new) image $\tilde x_0$
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
In \cite{cold} the authors showed that this approach works, generating new images, for many different types of deterministic (and random) degradation process such as:
\begin{itemize}
\item adding deterministic Gaussian noise, which is equivalent to the DPM but the Gaussian noise is fixed, i.e. in \eqref{process} $z_t=z$ established just once and then used at any time step;
\item blurring images;
\item animorphis, where human images are transformed in animals pictures;
\item ...
\end{itemize}
It is interesting, not only the fact that it shows that some similar results to the one in DPM and DS can be obtained with deterministic processes, but also the importance of the limit distribution of the degradated images $x_T$. Indeed, as it is clear from \cite{cold}, one thing that it is in common in all the three models that we presented here is that to generate a new image it is necessary to start from a sample of the limit distribution obtained with the forward processes. In the DPM and DS this limit distribution is simply a $\mathcal{N}(0,I)$ but it is only because the forward processes are Gaussian diffusions. For example in \cite{cold} the limit distribution of animorphis transformations are completely different and are obtained empirically. Then from this empirical distribution is sampled some element and it is restored with the operator $R_{\theta}$ (which is strongly dependent on $D$) built as we described above.
\begin{remark}
This importance of the limit distribution is addressed really well and precisely in \cite{nongaussian} where the authors proposed different kind of (random) noising process all of them leading to a different limit distribution. The inference algorithm starting point is then always sample an element from one of the limit distribution (obtained empirically or analytically) and ``restore'' it.
\end{remark}
\section{Assessing models' novelty and realism}\label{last}
In the context of DPM it is quite an interesting research question to define ways to assess what levels of realism and novelty they are able to achieve. We observe that this aspect is normally underestimated and we try here to give a very first hint at how this problem could be approached.
In order to make these sorts of considerations more rigorous, but avoiding at the same time to enter into too philosophical questions - we should obviously start from defining what do we mean by ``existence of an image''. For the sake of simplicity, we can say that an image exists if there exist(ed) an observation event (to be intended in the most general sense, including dreams, imaginations, hallucinations... etc) performed by some observer for that image {\bf{and}} the observer remembers about the event to an extent that it is possible for him/her to recognise the same image. Notice that yet in this simple conceptualisation, we can identify several critical elements which should be further explored and formalised as:
\begin{itemize}
\item{The properties of the set of realistic images $I$, the set of observers $O$ and the set of observation events $E$}
\item{The definition and properties of the image recognition/matching function $M_o: I\times I\rightarrow [0,1]$ used by an observer $o \in O$ to match two images\footnote{This function is particularly critical since it heavily depends on the specific observer and that includes many features like: the time in which the images are observed, the quantity of times he observed them, etc.}, where, given $i,j \in I$, $M_o(i,j)$ is a measure of similarity of $i$ and $j$ for the observer $o$ (so that for $i=j$, $M_o(i,j)=1$). }
\end{itemize}
Therefore, we can say with a certain level of rigorousness that a certain image $x \in I$ is ``new'' if the following condition holds:
\begin{equation}\label{cond}
\nu_O(x):=\sum_{o \in O}\sum_{i\in I_o}M_o(x,i) = 0
\end{equation}
where $I_o \subseteq I$ is the set of images for which observer $o$ recalls an observation event. With \eqref{cond} in mind, we define the set of new realistic images as $J_O:=\{x \in I: \nu_O(x)=0\} \subset I$. Hence, given a randomly chose image $x \in I$, the probability that it is new, in the sense defined above, is equal to $N_{I,O}=|J_O|/|I|$. This quantity gives account of the intrinsic novelty of $I$ for the community of observers $O$.
A model $M$ is able to produce a certain set of images $I_M=\hat I_M \cup \tilde I_M$ where $\tilde I_M := I \cap I_M$ and $\hat I_M:= I^C\cap I_M$. Indeed, notice that $I_M \nsubseteq I$ in general: some image generated by $M$ could not be ``realistic''. So, the problem of assessing the probability that a generative model $M$ has to generate new images for observers of $O$ boils down to the estimation of how big is the set $I_N\subseteq \tilde I_M \subseteq I$ of new images that can be generated by the model in theory and to evaluate $N_{M,O}=|I_N|/|J_O|$. This quantity gives account of the absolute novelty that images generated by the model show to observers in $O$. If we define $C_M=|\tilde I_M|/|I|$ the completeness of the model, then we have the following fundamental relation:
\begin{equation}\label{novelty}
N_{M,O}:=C_M\frac{N_M}{N_{I,O}}
\end{equation}
where $N_M=|I_N|/|\tilde I_M|$ is the model's relative novelty rate.
It is becoming clearer how the above definitions make sense only if we are really able to characterise the set $I$. In fact, in practice, when using DPM implementations like \cite{stable} we cannot be sure whether the set $I_M$ is actually a subset of $I$ until we do not characterise $I$. A way to do this is to provide an intensive (synthetic) characterisation $c$, like ``the images of all horses'', and considering then $I_c \subset I$, where $I_c$ is the set of realistic images corresponding to the characterization $c$, instead of the whole $I$. To train $M$, we will then have to provide a sufficient amount of horses pictures and then challenge the model to generate new ones. However, many generated images would probably not resemble horses at all. Therefore to measure the goodness of the model we should establish when an image $x \in I_M$ is in $I_c$. We say that it holds if, at least an observer $o \in O$ would classify it as ``realistic'' and belonging to the intensive concept $c$ that generated $I_c$. Then, defining the boolean classification function $C_{c,o}: I_M\rightarrow \{0,1\}$ as $$C_{c,o}(x):=\begin{cases}
1 & \text{if } o \text{ recognizes that } x \text{ is realistic and corresponding to } c \,; \\
0 & \text{otherwise}
\end{cases},$$ an image $x \in I_c$ only if
\begin{equation}\label{realism}
\rho(x):=\frac{1}{|O|}\sum_{o\in O} C_{I,o}(x) > 0.
\end{equation}
We can naturally define the overall model realism by:
\begin{equation}\label{modelrealism}
R_M:=\frac{1}{|I_M|}\sum_{x \in I_M} \rho(x).
\end{equation}
Working with too generic/generalist concepts like ``all images'', as systems like \cite{stable} do, introduce further complexity to the problem. An approximating approach at this would be started by assuming that for these generalist systems $I$ is composed by the union of a very high number of subsets, each defined by some intensive concept derived by induction from a huge observation process of available data, i.e. $I=\bigcup_{c \in C} I_c$, where $C$ is the set of these classes. Correspondingly, all quantities defined in \eqref{novelty}, \eqref{realism} and \eqref{modelrealism} should be appropriately extended to cover this case (e.g. by weighting the contributions of all classes).
\subsection{Relation to reinforcement learning}
What argued above can be seen as correlated with reinforcement learning whereas we consider realism, novelty or whatsoever other measurable property of generative models as rewards that a system may get from the community of observers. Works have been already started into this direction, e.g. \cite{rlsd}, where authors propose a general framework that automatically adapts original user input to model-preferred prompts through reinforcement learning based on relevance and aesthetically pleasentness feedback.
\section{Conclusions}
We wrote these notes trying to answer our self the following questions:
\begin{itemize}
\item How is it possible that these models generate ``real''/``realistic'' images?
\item What does it mean for a ``real''/``realistic'' image to be ``new'' and how to measure these concepts in practice?
\end{itemize}
Regarding the first question we hope that this work is a good answer, helping the reader understand better why these models work and on which kind of theory they are based. In particular, we think that these notes present a complete analysis of the mathematical background of the DPM and contextualise the improvements brought by popular tools like Stable Diffusion. As such, they could help (as other similar work, see \cite{google} for example) understand the way these systems work and the fundamental properties on which they rely: the unique limit distribution (not its form, only its existence and uniqueness) for the forward process and the functional form of the backward process. This is even more clear from the analysis of Cold Diffusion in Section \ref{cold_sec}). We therefore hope to have explained and made more understandable to the interested reader the state of the art models for image generation.
Regarding the second question we do not have yet a complete answer and we think that this can be seen as the main question that generative models are supposed to tackle. We made some interesting considerations about this topic in Section \ref{last} that we resume below.
We can in fact interpret the space of the $x_0$ such that $p_{\theta}(x_0)>0$ as a subspace of the set of all realistic images $I$ which is - by construction - far bigger than the set on which these models are trained. It is intuitively clear that this characterization of the models' output includes more images than all the ones observed in a lifetime by any existing observer too. Under this respect, images generated by DPM can be considered really ``generated'' by them and really ``new''. With this paper we believe to have given a small hint for a step in the direction of characterizing the space of ``real''/``new'' images, something which is still completely not understood. Our starting point is that we - as observers - are not able to say what defines an image as ``real'' even if we are immediately able to understand if it is such or not by comparing the image through the criteria we formed in our previous experience of observers. This is also the basis by which we are able to asses ``novelty'', i.e., through comparing whether the presented images are resembling anything already experienced in the past. Maybe understanding and developing these model further will help in the future to understand more in detail this quite complex domain and fully characterize it too. We finally like to leave the reader with what may seem a paradox: according to the above interpretation, once an observer has seen an image generated by a DPM, this image instantly loses the status of ``new'' (recalling the criteria defined in \eqref{cond}). Thus, if we make a big enough number of observers watch the results of a big enough run of image generations could we eventually run out of ``new'' images, downscaling what now seems an almost magical property of these systems to generate novelty to a bare capability of representing a distribution of ``existing'' data?
\nocite{*}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 4,906 |
from iree import runtime as ireert
from iree.compiler import tf as tfc
from iree.compiler import compile_str
import sys
from absl import app
import numpy as np
import os
import tempfile
import tensorflow as tf
import time
from transformers import BertModel, BertTokenizer, TFBertModel
MAX_SEQUENCE_LENGTH = 512
BATCH_SIZE = 1
# Create a set of 2-dimensional inputs
bert_input = [tf.TensorSpec(shape=[BATCH_SIZE,MAX_SEQUENCE_LENGTH],dtype=tf.int32),
tf.TensorSpec(shape=[BATCH_SIZE,MAX_SEQUENCE_LENGTH], dtype=tf.int32),
tf.TensorSpec(shape=[BATCH_SIZE,MAX_SEQUENCE_LENGTH], dtype=tf.int32)]
class BertModule(tf.Module):
def __init__(self):
super(BertModule, self).__init__()
# Create a BERT trainer with the created network.
self.m = TFBertModel.from_pretrained("microsoft/MiniLM-L12-H384-uncased", from_pt=True)
# Invoke the trainer model on the inputs. This causes the layer to be built.
self.m.predict = lambda x,y,z: self.m.call(input_ids=x, attention_mask=y, token_type_ids=z, training=False)
@tf.function(input_signature=bert_input)
def predict(self, input_ids, attention_mask, token_type_ids):
return self.m.predict(input_ids, attention_mask, token_type_ids)
if __name__ == "__main__":
# Prepping Data
tokenizer = BertTokenizer.from_pretrained("microsoft/MiniLM-L12-H384-uncased")
text = "Replace me by any text you'd like."
encoded_input = tokenizer(text, padding='max_length', truncation=True, max_length=MAX_SEQUENCE_LENGTH)
for key in encoded_input:
encoded_input[key] = tf.expand_dims(tf.convert_to_tensor(encoded_input[key]),0)
# Compile the model using IREE
compiler_module = tfc.compile_module(BertModule(), exported_names = ["predict"], import_only=True)
# Compile the model using IREE
backend = "llvm-cpu"
args = ["--iree-llvm-target-cpu-features=host", "--iree-mhlo-demote-i64-to-i32=false", "--iree-flow-demote-i64-to-i32"]
backend_config = "local-task"
#backend = "cuda"
#backend_config = "cuda"
#args = ["--iree-cuda-llvm-target-arch=sm_80", "--iree-hal-cuda-disable-loop-nounroll-wa", "--iree-enable-fusion-with-reduction-ops"]
flatbuffer_blob = compile_str(compiler_module, target_backends=[backend], extra_args=args, input_type="mhlo")
#flatbuffer_blob = compile_str(compiler_module, target_backends=["llvm-cpu"])
# Save module as MLIR file in a directory
vm_module = ireert.VmModule.from_flatbuffer(flatbuffer_blob)
tracer = ireert.Tracer(os.getcwd())
config = ireert.Config("dylib",tracer)
ctx = ireert.SystemContext(config=config)
ctx.add_vm_module(vm_module)
BertCompiled = ctx.modules.module
result = BertCompiled.predict(encoded_input["input_ids"], encoded_input["attention_mask"], encoded_input["token_type_ids"])
print(result)
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 7,336 |
Nov 8, 2021, 11:06am EST
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Armenia – A Study In Dead Country Stamps
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U.S. MoneyStamps: 50 Best Buys
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Under Armour's 2017 In Review
Trefis Team
Great Speculations
Contributor Group
Correction: A previous version of this article referred to Under Armour closing its golf and tennis business and downsizing the connected fitness business, as well as the Curry 4 being "plagued with delays." These references were inaccurate and have been removed.
Over the last few years, Under Armour has gone from a rising star in the sports apparel space to a struggling company looking for a turnaround. The company continues to struggle with a slowing U.S. apparel market and changing consumer trends, which have significantly hurt its top and bottom lines over the last few quarters. In order to offset these pressures going forward, CEO Kevin Plank has decided to initiate a restructuring strategy ("a pivot") that will require the termination of about 2% of the company's global workforce. It remains to be seen the impact that will have on the company's results. Below we take a look at some of the most important developments for Under Armour in 2017 and our outlook going forward.
Our price estimate for Under Armour's stock is now significantly ahead of the current market price following the stock's recent declines.
Key Highlights From The Year
Probably the most important development coming out of the year for Under Armour was management's strategy to "pivot." Plank divulged many ideas in this respect, which include increasing the product offerings for women and children, focusing more on international markets, offering more lifestyle than performance apparel, and concentrating on increasing its direct-to-consumer channels. This is basically the opposite of everything the company vied for in the past. While it's too early to speculate much about this strategy, it seems as though Under Armour understands the urgency to show its investors something positive. 2018 will probably see most of the benefits, if any, of what's to come.
Footwear Headwinds, International Growth
Under Armour's Footwear business - a division that was seeing unprecedented growth over most of 2016, threatening the likes of Nike and Adidas - took a heavy hit this year. After recording several quarters of strong growth thanks to the success of its Curry line of shoes, Under Armour saw the segment suffer a notable decline in sales as the newer Curry 3 failed to impress consumers. The company ultimately let the head of the footwear segment go. Going forward, Under Armour is hoping for a turnaround, but it may be hard to claw its way out of this hole quickly.
On the positive side, while the North American business continued to suffer during the year, Under Armour made significant progress across its international businesses. In Q3 2017 alone, the company recorded a mammoth 35% increase in revenues from outside the U.S. in comparison to the same period last year. While the EMEA market continues to grow at a steady pace, Asia - and particularly China and India - is driving the bulk of this overall growth. We expect Under Armour to gain heavily from the region in the upcoming year.
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\section{Introduction}
\label{intro}
\blfootnote{
%
%
%
%
%
\hspace{-0.65cm}
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.
License details:
\url{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/}.
}
Communication holds a central position in our daily lives and social interactions. Yet, in a predominantly aural society, sign language users are often deprived of effective communication. Deaf people face daily issues of social isolation and miscommunication to this day \cite{SOUZA2017}. This paper is motivated to provide assistive technology that allow Deaf people to communicate in their own language.
In general, sign languages developed independently of spoken language and do not share the grammar of their spoken counterparts \cite{stokoe}. For this, Sign Language Recognition (SLR) systems on their own cannot capture the underlying grammar and complexities of sign language, and Sign Language Translation (SLT) faces the additional challenge of taking into account the unique linguistic features during translation.
\begin{center}
\center
\includegraphics[width=.8\linewidth]{slt.png}
\captionof{figure}{Sign language translation pipeline\footnotemark.}
\label{fig:slt}
\end{center}
\footnotetext{Gloss annotation from \url{https://www.handspeak.com/translate/index.php?id=288}}
As shown in Figure \ref{fig:slt}, current SLT approaches involve two steps. First, a tokenization system generates glosses from sign language videos. Then, a translation system translates the recognized glosses into spoken language. Recent work \cite{Orbay2020NeuralSL,stmc} has addressed the first step, but there has been none improving the translation system. This paper aims to fill this research gap by leveraging recent success in Neural Machine Translation (NMT), namely Transformers.
Another limit to current SLT models is that they use glosses as an intermediate representation of sign language. We show that having a perfect continuous SLR system will not necessarily improve SLT results. We introduce the STMC-Transformer model performing video-to-text translation that surpasses translation of ground truth glosses, which reveals that glosses are a flawed representation of sign language.
The contributions of this paper can be summarized as:
\begin{enumerate}
\item A novel STMC-Transformer model for video-to-text translation surpassing GT glosses translation contrary to previous assumptions
\item The first successful application of Transformers to SLT achieving state-of-the-art results in both gloss to text and video to text translation on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T and ASLG-PC12 datasets
\item The first usage of weight tying, transfer learning, and ensemble learning in SLT and a comprehensive series of baseline results with Transformers to underpin future research
\end{enumerate}
\section{Methods}
Despite considerable advancements made in machine translation (MT) between spoken languages, sign language processing falls behind for many reasons. Unlike spoken language, sign language is a multidimensional form of communication that relies on both manual and non-manual cues which presents additional computer vision challenges \cite{nonmanual}. These cues may occur simultaneously whereas spoken language follows a linear pattern where words are processed one at a time. Signs also vary in both space and time and the number of video frames associated to a single sign is not fixed either.
\subsection{Sign Language Glossing}
Glossing corresponds to transcribing sign language word-for-word by means of another written language. Glosses differ from translation as they merely indicate what each part in a sign language sentence mean, but do not form an appropriate sentence in the spoken language. While various sign language corpus projects have provided different guidelines for gloss annotation \cite{sign1,sign2}, there is no universal standard which hinders the easy exchange of data between projects and consistency between different sign language corpora. Gloss annotations are also an imprecise representation of sign language and can lead to an information bottleneck when representing the multi-channel sign language by a single-dimensional stream of glosses.
\subsection{Sign Language Recognition}
SLR consists of identifying isolated single signs from videos. Continuous sign language recognition (CSLR) is a relatively more challenging task that identifies a sequence of running glosses from a running video. Works
in SLR and CSLR, however, only perform visual recognition and ignore the underlying linguistic features of sign language.
\subsection{Sign Language Translation}
As illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:slt}, the SLT system takes CSLR as a first step to tokenize the input video into glosses. Then, an additional step translates the glosses into a valid sentence in the target language. SLT is novel and difficult compared to other translation problems because it involves two steps: extract meaningful features from a video of a multi-cue language accurately then generate translations from an intermediate gloss representation, instead of translation from the source language directly.
\section{Related Work}
\label{sec:headings}
\subsection{Sign Language Recognition}
Early approaches for SLR rely on hand-crafted features \cite{sift,chinese} and use Hidden Markov Models \cite{hmm1} or Dynamic Time Warping \cite{dtw} to model sequential dependencies. More recently, 2D convolutional neural networks (2D-CNN) and 3D convolutional neural networks (3D-CNN) effectively model spatio-temporal representations from sign language videos \cite{rcnn,rcnn3d}.
Most existing work on CSLR divides the task into three sub-tasks: alignment learning, single-gloss SLR, and sequence construction \cite{resign,hmmdtw} while others perform the task in an end-to-end fashion using deep learning \cite{3Dcnn,subunet}.
\subsection{Sign Language Translation}
SLT was formalized in \newcite{camgozslt} where they introduce the PHOENIX-Weather 2014T dataset and jointly use a 2D-CNN model to extract gloss-level features from video frames, and a seq2seq model to perform German sign language translation. Subsequent works on this dataset \cite{Orbay2020NeuralSL,stmc} all focus on improving the CSLR component in SLT. A contemporaneous paper \cite{camgoz2020sign} also obtains encouraging results with multi-task Transformers for both tokenization and translation, however their CSLR performance is sub-optimal, with a higher Word Error Rate than baseline models.
Similar work has been done on Korean sign language by \newcite{keti} where they estimate human keypoints to extract glosses, then use seq2seq models for translation. \newcite{aslseq} use seq2seq models to translate ASL glosses of the ASLG-PC12 dataset \cite{asl}.
\subsection{Neural Machine Translation}
Neural Machine Translation (NMT) employs neural networks to carry out automated text translation. Recent methods typically use an encoder-decoder architecture, also known as seq2seq models.
Earlier approaches use recurrent \cite{rnn1,rnn2} and convolutional networks \cite{cnn1,cnn2} for the encoder and the decoder. However, standard seq2seq networks are unable to model long-term dependencies in large input sentences without causing an information bottleneck. To address this issue, recent works use attention mechanisms \cite{bahdanau,luong} that calculates context-dependent alignment scores between encoder and decoder hidden states. \newcite{transformer} introduces the Transformer, a seq2seq model relying on self-attention that obtains state-of-the-art results in NMT.
\begin{figure*}
\center
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{stmctransformer.png}
\caption{STMC-Transformer network for SLT. PE: Positional Encoding, MHA: Multihead Attention, FF: Feed Forward.}
\label{fig:stmc}
\end{figure*}
\section{Model architecture}
For translation from videos to text, we propose the STMC-Transformer network illustrated in Figure \ref{fig:stmc}.
\subsection{Spatial-Temporal Multi-Cue (STMC) Network}
Our work is the first to use STMC networks \cite{stmc} for SLT. A spatial multi-cue (SMC) module with a self-contained pose estimation branch decomposes the input video into spatial features of multiple visual cues (face, hand, full-frame and pose). Then, a temporal multi-cue (TMC) module with stacked TMC blocks and temporal pooling (TP) layers calculates temporal correlations within (inter-cue) and between cues (intra-cue) at different time steps, which preserves each unique cue while exploring their relation at the same time. The inter-cue and intra-cue features are each analyzed by Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) \cite{rnn2} and Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) \cite{ctc} units for sequence learning and inference.
This architecture efficiently processes multiple visual cues from sign language video in collaboration with each other, and achieves state-of-the-art performance on three SLR benchmarks. On the PHOENIX-Weather 2014T dataset, it achieves a Word Error Rate of 21.0 for the SLR task.
\subsection{Transformer}
For translation, we train a two-layered Transformer to maximize the log-likelihood $$\sum_{(x_i, y_i) \in D} \log P(y_i | x_i, \theta)$$
where $D$ contains gloss-text pairs $(x_i, y_i)$.
Two layers, compared to six in most spoken language translation, is empirically shown to be optimal in Section \ref{sec:layers}, likely because our datasets are limited in size. We refer to the original Transformer paper \cite{transformer} for more architecture details.
\section{Datasets}
\begin{center}
\resizebox{\textwidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{lllllllllllllll}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{3}{c}{German Sign Gloss} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{German} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{American Sign Gloss} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{English} \\
\cmidrule(l){2-4}\cmidrule(l){5-7}\cmidrule(l){8-10}\cmidrule(l){11-13}
& {Train} & {Dev} & {Test} & {Train} & {Dev} & {Test}& {Train} & {Dev} & {Test}& {Train} & {Dev} & {Test}\\
\midrule
Phrases & 7,096 & 519 & 642 & 7,096 & 519 & 642 & 82,709 & 4,000 & 1,000 & 82,709 & 4,000 & 1,000\\
Vocab. & 1,066 & 393 & 411 & 2,887 & 951 & 1,001 & 15782 & 4,323 & 2,150 & 21,600 & 5,634 & 2,609 \\
tot. words & 67,781 & 3,745 & 4,257 & 99,081 & 6,820 & 7,816 & 862,046 & 41,030 & 10,503 & 975,942 & 46,637 & 11,953\\
tot. OOVs & \textendash & 19 & 22 & \textendash & 57 & 60 & \textendash & 255 & 83 & \textendash & 369 & 99 \\
singletons & 337 & \textendash & \textendash & 1,077 & \textendash & \textendash & 6,133 & \textendash & \textendash & 8,542 & \textendash & \textendash \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\captionof{table}{Statistics of the RWTH-PHOENIX-Weather 2014T and ASLG-PC12 datasets. Out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words are those that appear in the development and testing sets, but not in the training set. Singletons are words that appear only once during training.}
\label{table:datasets}
\end{center}
\subsection*{PHOENIX-Weather 2014T \cite{camgozslt}} This dataset is extracted from weather forecast airings of the German tv station PHOENIX. This dataset consists of a parallel corpus of German sign language videos from 9 different signers, gloss-level annotations with a vocabulary of 1,066 different signs and translations into German spoken language with a vocabulary of 2,887 different words. It contains 7,096 training pairs, 519 development and 642 test pairs.
\subsection*{ASLG-PC12 \cite{asl}} This dataset is constructed from English data of Project Gutenberg that has been transformed into ASL glosses following a rule-based approach. This corpus with 87,709 training pairs allows us to evaluate Transformers on a larger dataset, where deep learning models usually require lots of data. It also allows us to compare performance across different sign languages. However, the data is limited since it does not contain sign language videos, and is less complex due to being created semi-automatically. We make our data and code publicly available\footnote{\url{https://github.com/kayoyin/transformer-slt}}.
\section{Experiments and Discussions}
Our models are built using PyTorch \cite{pytorch} and Open-NMT \cite{opennmt}. We configure Transformers with word embedding size 512, gloss level tokenization, sinusoidal positional encoding, 2,048 hidden units and 8 heads. For optimization, we use Adam \cite{adam} with $\beta_1 = 0.9, \beta_2 = 0.998$, Noam learning rate schedule, 0.1 dropout, and 0.1 label smoothing.
We evaluate on the dev set each half-epoch and employ early stopping with patience 5. During decoding, generated $\langle unk \rangle$ tokens are replaced by the source token having the highest attention weight. This is useful when $\langle unk \rangle$ symbols correspond to proper nouns that can be directly transposed between languages \cite{opennmt}. We perform a series of experiments to find the optimal setup for this novel application. We equally experiment with various techniques often used in classic NMT to SLT such as transfer learning, weight tying and ensembling to improve model performance.
For evaluation we use BLEU \cite{bleu}, ROUGE \cite{rouge} and METEOR \cite{meteor}. For BLEU, we report BLEU-1,2,3,4 scores and as ROUGE score we report the ROUGE-L F1 score. These metrics allow us to directly compare directly with previous works. METEOR is calculated in addition as it demonstrates higher correlation with human evaluation than BLEU on several MT tasks. All reported results unless otherwise specified are averaged over 10 runs with different random seeds.
We organize our experiments into two groups:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Gloss2Text (G2T) in which we translate GT gloss annotations to simulate perfect tokenization on both PHOENIX-Weather 2014T and ASLG-PC12
\item Sign2Gloss2Text (S2G2T) where we perform video-to-text translation on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T with the STMC-Transformer
\end{enumerate}
\subsection{Gloss2Text (G2T)}
\label{sec:layers}
G2T is a text-to-text translation task that is novel and challenging compared to classic translation tasks between spoken languages because of the high linguistic variance between source and target sentences, scarcity of resources, and information loss or imprecision in the source sentence itself.
For ASLG-PC12, many ASL glosses are English words with an added prefix so during data pre-processing we remove all such prefixes. We also set all glosses that appear less than 5 times during training as $\langle unk \rangle$ to reduce vocabulary size.
\begin{center}
\resizebox{0.8\textwidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{ccccccccccccc}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{6}{c}{Raw data} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{Preprocessed data} \\
\cmidrule(l){2-7}\cmidrule(l){8-13}
& \multicolumn{2}{c}{Train} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Dev} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Test} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Train} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Dev} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Test} \\
& {ASL} & {en} & {ASL} & {en} &{ASL} & {en} &{ASL} & {en} &{ASL} & {en} &{ASL} & {en} \\
\midrule
Vocab. & 15,782 & 21,600 & 4,323 & 5,634 & 2,150 & 2,609 & 5,906 & 7,712 & 1,163 & 1,254 & 394 & 379\\
Shared vocab. & \multicolumn{2}{c}{10,048} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{2,652} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{1,296} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{4,941} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{899} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{287} \\
BLEU-4 & \multicolumn{2}{c}{20.97} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{21.16} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{20.63} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{38.87} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{38.74} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{38.37} \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\captionof{table}{Statistics of the ASLG-PC12 dataset before and after preprocessing.}
\label{table:asl}
\end{center}
Table \ref{table:asl} shows that the source and target corpora in ASLG-PC12 are more similar to each other with many shared vocabulary and a relatively high BLEU-4 score on raw data. This allows us to compare Transformer performance on a larger and less challenging dataset.
\subsubsection*{Model size}
The original Transformer in \cite{transformer} uses 6 layers for the encoder and decoder for NMT. However, our task differs from a standard MT task between two spoken languages so we first train Transformers with 1, 2, 4 and 6 encoder-decoder layers. Networks are trained with batch size 2,048 and initial learning rate 1.
\begin{center}
\resizebox{\linewidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{lcccccccccccc}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{6}{c}{Dev Set} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{Test Set} \\
\cmidrule(l){2-7}\cmidrule(l){8-13}
{Layers} & {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}& {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}\\
\midrule
1 & 43.39 & 32.47 & 24.27 & 20.26 & 44.66 & 42.64 & 43.26 & 32.23 & 25.59 & 21.31 & 45.28 & 42.56 \\
2 & \textbf{45.31} & 33.65 & \textbf{26.73} & \textbf{22.23} & 45.74 & \textbf{43.92} & \textbf{44.57} & \textbf{33.08} & \textbf{26.14} & \textbf{21.65} & 40.47 & \textbf{42.97} \\
4 & 44.32 & \textbf{32.87} & 26.15 & 21.78 & \textbf{45.86} & 43.31 & 44.10 & 32.82 & 25.99 & 21.57 & \textbf{45.44} & 42.92 \\
6 & 44.04 & 32.46 & 25.67 & 21.34 & 44.09 & 42.32 & 43.74 & 32.44 & 25.67 & 21.32 & 41.69 & 42.58\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\captionof{table}{G2T performance comparison of Transformers on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T with different number of enc-dec layers.}
\label{table:layers}
\end{center}
To choose the best model, we mainly take into account BLEU-4 as it is currently the most widely used metric in MT. We do find that our final model outperforms the other models across all metrics. Table \ref{table:layers} shows that on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T, using 2 layers obtains the highest BLEU-4. Because our dataset is much smaller than spoken language datasets, larger networks may be disadvantaged. Moreover, a smaller model has the advantage of taking up less memory and computation time. Repeating the same experiment on ASLG-PC12, we also find 2 layers to be the optimal model size. ASLG-PC12 is larger but less complex which may also explain why smaller networks are more suitable. We carry out the rest of our experiments using 2 enc-dec layers.
\subsubsection*{Embedding schemes}
\newcite{weighttie} shows that tying the input and output embeddings while training language models may provide better performance. Our decoder is in fact a language model conditioned on the encoding of the source sentence and previous outputs, we can tie the decoder embeddings by using a shared weight matrix for the input and output word embeddings.
In addition, models are often initialized with pre-trained embeddings for transfer learning. These embeddings are typically trained in an unsupervised manner on a large corpus of text in the desired language. We perform experiments on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T using two popular word embeddings: GloVe\footnote{\url{https://deepset.ai/german-word-embeddings}} \cite{glove}, and fastText \cite{fasttext}. To the best of our knowledge, weight-tying or pre-trained embeddings have never been employed in SLT.
\begin{center}
\resizebox{.5\linewidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{lllll}
\toprule
& {GloVe (de)} & {fastText (de)} & {GloVe (en)} & {fastText (en)}\\
\midrule
{Dimension} & 300 & 300 & 300 & 300 \\
{Source match} & 0.08\% & 0.08\% & 96.23\% & 94.64\%\\
{Target match} & 90.53\% & 94.57\% & 97.71\% & 96.32\% \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\captionof{table}{German and English pre-trained embeddings statistics}
\label{table:emb}
\end{center}
Table \ref{table:emb} shows there is only one matching token between German glosses and the pre-trained embeddings, while over 90\% of the words in the German text appear in both pre-trained embeddings. We therefore initialize pre-trained embeddings on the decoder only, and keep random initialization for the encoder. The embedding layers are fine-tuned during training.
\begin{center}
\resizebox{\linewidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{lcccccccccccc}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{6}{c}{Dev Set} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{Test Set} \\
\cmidrule(l){2-7}\cmidrule(l){8-13}
{WE} & {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}& {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}\\
\midrule
Vanilla embedding & 45.81 & 34.06 & \textbf{27.05} & \textbf{22.49} & \textbf{46.68} & \textbf{44.35} & \textbf{45.29} & \textbf{33.74} & \textbf{26.70} & \textbf{22.22} & \textbf{46.08} & 43.75 \\
Tied decoder & \bfseries 45.90 & \bfseries 34.10 & 26.98 & 22.31 & 46.76 & 44.51 & 45.05 & 33.38 & 26.31 & 21.74 & 45.83 & 43.45\\
GloVe & 44.37 & 32.65 & 26.00 & 21.41 & 45.03 & 42.38 & 44.69 & 32.93 & 25.73 & 21.04 & 42.70 & \textbf{44.61} \\
fastText & 44.91 & 33.23 & 26.60 & 22.04 & 46.17 & 43.70 & 44.21 & 32.90 & 25.94 & 21.64 & 45.55 & 42.95\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\label{table:deemb}
\captionof{table}{G2T performance comparison using different embedding schemes on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T.}
\end{center}
Table 5 shows that the new embedding schemes do not improve performance on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T. It may be because pre-trained embeddings are shown to be more effective when used on the encoding layer \cite{pretrain}. Another possible reason is the difference between the domain of our dataset and of the corpus the embeddings were trained on. We therefore keep random initialization of word embeddings for experiments on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T. Using this setting, we run a parameter search over the learning rate and warm-up steps, and we use initial learning rate 0.5 with 3,000 warm-up steps for the remaining experiments. Details of the parameter search are included in Appendix A.1.
Both GloVe and fastText English vectors have a reasonable overlap with the vocabulary of ASL glosses as well as the English targets (Table \ref{table:emb}). Therefore on ASLG-PC12 we load pre-trained embeddings on only the decoder, as well as on both the encoder and decoder.
\begin{center}
\resizebox{\linewidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{lcccccccccccc}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{6}{c}{Dev Set} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{Test Set} \\
\cmidrule(l){2-7}\cmidrule(l){8-13}
{Model} & {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}& {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}\\
\midrule
Vanilla embedding & 90.15 & 84.92 & 80.27 & 75.94 & 94.72 & 94.58 & 90.49 & 85.64 & 81.31 & 77.33 & 94.75 & 95.16 \\
Tied dec & \bfseries 91.00 & \bfseries 86.26 & \bfseries 82.00 &\bfseries 78.02 & \bfseries 95.24 & \bfseries 95.12 & \bfseries 91.25 & \bfseries 86.76 & \bfseries 82.76 &\bfseries 79.02 & \bfseries 95.32 & \bfseries 95.75 \\
GloVe dec & 90.13 & 85.14 & 80.67 & 76.49 & 94.16 & 94.69 & 90.51 & 85.83 & 81.65 & 77.74 & 94.80 & 95.27 \\
GloVe enc-dec & 89.65 & 84.33 & 79.72 & 75.48 & 93.02 & 93.62 &90.01 & 85.15 & 80.88 & 76.95 & 93.00 & 94.14\\
fastText dec &90.64 & 85.63 & 81.14 & 76.94 & 94.75 & 95.02 & 91.20 & 86.62 & 82.53 & 78.72 & 94.73 & 95.57 \\
fastText enc-dec & 90.02 & 85.01 & 80.56 & 76.41 & 93.68 & 94.10 & 90.94 & 86.58 & 82.01 & 76.23 & 93.61 & 94.42 \\
fastText tied dec & 90.16 & 85.26 & 80.85 & 76.72 & 95.03 & 94.60 & 90.44 & 85.25 & 81.69 & 77.28 & 95.11 & 95.04 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\label{table:aslemb}
\captionof{table}{G2T performance comparison using different embedding schemes on ASLG-PC12.}
\end{center}
Table 6 shows that fastText pre-trained embeddings for the decoder improves performance, and tied decoder embeddings with random initialization gives the best performance. Weight tying is more suited on this dataset likely because it acts as regularization and combats overfitting, while the previous dataset is more complex and therefore less prone to overfitting. For the remaining experiments, we use tied decoder embeddings, initial learning rate 0.2 and 8,000 warm-up steps.
\subsubsection*{Beam width}
\begin{center}
\tiny
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
xlabel={Beam width},
ylabel={BLEU-4},
width = 12cm,
height = 3.5cm,
ymajorgrids,
xmin=0, xmax=160,
ymin=22, ymax=24,
xtick={0,10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, 150, 160},
xticklabels={1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 75, 100},
ytick={22,22.5,23,23.5,24},
legend pos=north east,
]
\addplot[
color=blue,
mark=square,
]
coordinates {
(0, 23.14)(10,23.10)(20,23.16)(30,23.04)(40,23.22)(50,23.20)(60,23.19)(70,23.19)(80,23.15)(90,23.11)(100,23.10)(110,22.98)(120,22.88)(130,22.78)(140,22.45)(150,22.50)(160,22.12)
};
\addplot[
color=red,
mark=o,
]
coordinates {
(0, 22.40)(10,23.01)(20,23.25)(30,23.32)(40,23.25)(50,23.19)(60,23.17)(70,23.17)(80,23.01)(90,22.93)(100,22.85)(110,22.67)(120,22.70)(130,22.56)(140,22.53)(150,22.27)(160,22.12)
};
\legend{Dev set, Test set}
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\captionof{figure}{G2T decoding on RWTH-PHEONIX-WEATHER 2014T using different beam width.}
\label{fig:beam}
\end{center}
A naive method for decoding is greedy search, where the model simply chooses the word with the highest probability at each time step. However, this approach may become sub-optimal in the context of the entire sequence. Beam search addresses this by expanding all possible candidates at each time step and keeping a number of most likely sequences, or the beam width. Large beam widths do not always result in better performance and take more space in memory and decoding time. We search and find the optimal beam width value to be 4 on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T and 5 on ASLG-PC12.
\subsubsection*{Ensemble decoding}
Ensemble methods combine multiple models to improve performance. We propose ensemble decoding, where we combine the output of different models by averaging their prediction distributions. We chose 9 models from our experiments that gave the highest BLEU-4 during testing on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T. The number of models is chosen empirically, as using fewer models will lead to less ensembling but too many weaker models may lessen the quality of the ensemble model. These models are of the same architecture, but are initialized with different seeds and trained using different batch sizes and/or learning rates. These models give a BLEU-4 on testing between 22.92 and 23.41 individually.
\begin{center}
\resizebox{\textwidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{lllllllllllll}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{6}{c}{Dev Set} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{Test Set} \\
\cmidrule(l){2-7}\cmidrule(l){8-13}
{Model} & {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}& {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}\\
\midrule
Raw data & 13.01 & 6.23 & 3.03 & 1.71 & 24.23 & 13.69 & 11.88 & 5.05 & 2.41 & 1.36 & 22.81 & 12.12 \\
RNN Seq2seq \cite{camgozslt} & 44.40 & 31.93 & 24.61 & 20.16 & 46.02 & \textendash & 44.13 & 31.47 & 23.89 & 19.26 & 45.45 & \textendash\\
Transformer \cite{camgoz2020sign} & \bfseries 50.69 & \bfseries 38.16& \bfseries 30.53 &\bfseries 25.35 & \textendash & \textendash & \bfseries 48.90 & 36.88 &29.45 &24.54 &\textendash & \textendash\\
Transformer & 49.05 & 36.20 & 28.53 & 23.52 & 47.36 & 46.09 & 47.69 & 35.52 & 28.17 & 23.32 & 46.58 & 44.85 \\
Transformer Ens. & 48.85 & 36.62 & 29.23 & 24.38 & \bfseries 49.01 & \bfseries 46.96 & 48.40 & \bfseries 36.90 & \bfseries 29.70 & \bfseries 24.90 & \bfseries 48.51 & \bfseries 46.24 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\captionof{table}{G2T on PHEONIX-WEATHER 2014T final results. \label{table:ensemble}
}
\end{center}
Table \ref{table:ensemble} gives a performance comparison on PHOENIX-Weather 2014T of the recurrent seq2seq model by \newcite{camgozslt}, Transformer trained concurrently by \newcite{camgoz2020sign}, our single model, and ensemble model. We also provide the scores on the gloss annotations to illustrate the difficulty of this task.
Without any additional training, ensembling improves testing performance by over 1 BLEU-4. Also, we report an improvement of over 5 BLEU-4 on the state-of-the-art. A single Transformer also gives an improvement of over 4 BLEU-4 more than the state-of-the-art, which shows the advantage of Transformers for SLT, as shown also in \newcite{camgoz2020sign}.
\begin{center}
\resizebox{\textwidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{lllllllllllll}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{6}{c}{Dev Set} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{Test Set} \\
\cmidrule(l){2-7}\cmidrule(l){8-13}
{Model} & {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}& {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}\\
\midrule
Raw data & 54.60 & 39.67 & 28.92 & 21.16 & 76.11 & 61.25 & 54.19 & 39.26 & 28.44 & 20.63 & 75.59 & 61.65 \\
Preprocessed data & 69.25 & 56.83 & 46.94 & 38.74 & 83.80 & 78.75 & 68.82 & 56.36 & 46.53 & 38.37 & 83.28 & 79.06 \\
Seq2seq \cite{aslseq} & \textendash & \textendash & \textendash & \textendash & \textendash & \textendash & 86.7 & 79.5 & 73.2 & 65.9 & \textendash & \textendash\\
Transformer & \bfseries 92.98 & \bfseries 89.09 & 83.55 & \bfseries 85.63 & 82.41 & 95.93 & 92.98 &\bfseries 89.09 & 85.63 & 82.41 & 95.87 & \bfseries96.46 \\
Transformer Ens. & 92.67 & 88.72 & \bfseries 85.22 & 81.93 & \bfseries 96.18 & \bfseries 95.95 & \bfseries 92.88 & 89.22 & \bfseries85.95 & \bfseries 82.87 & \bfseries 96.22 & 96.60 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\captionof{table}{G2T on ASLG-PC12 final results}
\label{table:aslens}
\end{center}
We also use 5 of the best models from our experiments on ASLG-PC12 in an ensemble. Individually, these models obtain between 81.72 and 82.41 BLEU-4 on testing. Table \ref{table:aslens} shows that the performance of our single Transformer surpasses the recurrent seq2seq model by \newcite{aslseq} by over 16 BLEU-4. The ensemble model reports an improvement of 0.46 BLEU-4 over the single model. There is relatively less increase from ensembling possibly because there is less variance across different models.
\subsection{German Sign2Gloss2Text (S2G2T)}
In S2G2T, both gloss recognition from videos and its translation to text are performed automatically. \newcite{camgozslt} claims the previous G2T setup to be an upper bound for translation performance, since it simulates having a perfect recognition system. However, this claim assumes that the ground truth gloss annotations give a full understanding of sign language, which ignores the information bottleneck in glosses. \newcite{camgoz2020sign} hypothesizes that it is therefore possible to surpass G2T performance without using GT glosses, which we confirm in this section.
We perform experiments on the PHOENIX-Weather 2014T dataset as it contains parallel video, gloss and text data. On the other hand, the ASLG-PC12 corpus does not have sign language video information.
\begin{center}
\resizebox{\textwidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{lcccccccccccc}
\toprule
& \multicolumn{6}{c}{Dev Set} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{Test Set} \\
\cmidrule(l){2-7}\cmidrule(l){8-13}
{Model} & {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}& {BLEU-1} & {BLEU-2} & {BLEU-3} & {BLEU-4} & {ROUGE-L} & {METEOR}\\
\midrule
G2T \cite{camgozslt} & 44.40 & 31.93 & 24.61 & 20.16 & 46.02 & \textendash & 44.13 & 31.47 & 23.89 & 19.26 & 45.45 & \textendash\\
S2G $\rightarrow $ G2T \cite{camgozslt} & 41.08 & 29.10 & 22.16 & 17.86 & 43.76 & \textendash & 41.54 & 29.52 & 22.24 & 17.79 & 43.45 & \textendash \\
S2G2T \cite{camgozslt} & 42.88 & 30.30 & 23.03 & 18.40 & 44.14 & \textendash & 43.29 & 30.39 & 22.82 & 18.13 & 43.80 & \textendash \\
Sign2(Gloss+Text) \cite{camgoz2020sign} & 47.26 & 34.40 & 27.05& 22.38 & \textendash & \textendash & 46.61 & 33.73& 26.19 &21.32 & \textendash & \textendash \\
\midrule
S2G $\rightarrow $ G2T & 46.75 & 34.99 & 27.79 & 23.06 & 47.29 & 45.23 & 47.49 & 35.89 & 28.62 & 23.77 & 47.32 & 45.54 \\
\midrule
Bahdanau & 45.89 & 32.24 & 24.93 & 20.52 & 44.46 & 43.48 & 47.53 & 33.82 & 26.07 & 21.54 & 45.50 & 44.87 \\
Luong & 45.61 & 32.54 & 26.33 & 21.00 & 46.19 & 44.93 & 47.08 & 33.93 & 26.31 &21.75& 45.66 & 44.84 \\
\midrule
Transformer & 48.27 & 35.20 & 27.47 & 22.47 & 46.31 & 44.95 & 48.73 & 36.53 & 29.03 & 24.00 & 46.77 & 45.78 \\
Transformer Ens. & \bfseries50.31 & \bfseries 37.60 & \bfseries 29.81 & \bfseries 24.68 & \bfseries 48.70 &\bfseries 47.45 & \bfseries 50.63 & \bfseries 38.36 & \bfseries 30.58 & \bfseries 25.40 & \bfseries 48.78 & \bfseries 47.60 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\label{table:stmc}
\captionof{table}{SLT performance using STMC for CSLR. The first set of rows correspond to the current state-of-the-arts included for comparison. }
\end{center}
\subsubsection*{ S2G $\rightarrow $G2T}
To begin, we use the best performing model for German G2T to translate glosses predicted by a trained STMC network. In Table 9 we can see that despite no additional training for translation, this model already obtains a relatively high score that beats the current state-of-the-art by over 5 BLEU-4.
\subsubsection*{Recurrent seq2seq networks}
For comparison, we also train and evaluate STMC used with recurrent seq2seq networks for translation. The translation models are composed of four stacked layers of Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) \cite{gru}, with either Luong \cite{luong} or Bahdanau \cite{bahdanau} attention.
In Table 9, recurrent seq2seq models obtain slightly better performance with Luong attention. Surprisingly, these models outperform previous models of similar architecture that translate GT glosses.
\subsubsection*{Transformer}
For the STMC-Transformer, we train Transformer models with the same architecture as in G2T. Parameter search yields an initial learning rate 1 with 3,000 warm-up steps and beam size 4. We empirically find using the 8 best models in ensemble decoding to be optimal. These models individually obtain between 23.51 and 24.00 BLEU-4.
Again, we observe that STMC-Transformer outperforms the previous system with ground truth glosses and Transformer. While STMC performs imperfect CSLR, its gloss predictions may be more useful than ground-truth annotations during SLT and are more readily analyzed by the Transformer. Again, the ground truth glosses represent merely a simplified intermediate representation of the actual sign language, so it is not entirely unexpected that translating ground truth glosses does not give the best performance.
STMC-Transformer also outperforms Transformers that translate GT glosses. While STMC performs imperfect CSLR, its gloss predictions may be better processed by the Transformer. Glosses are merely a simplified intermediate representation of the actual sign language so they may not be optimal. This result also reveals, training the recognition model to output more accurate glosses will not necessarily improve translation.
Both our STMC-Transformer and STMC-RNN also outperform \newcite{camgoz2020sign}'s model. Their best model jointly train Transformers for recognition and translation, however it obtains 24.49 WER on recognition whereas STMC obtains a better WER of 21.0, which suggests their model may be weaker in processing the videos.
Moreover, Transformers outperform recurrent networks in this setup as well and STMC-Transformer improves the state-of-the-art for video-to-text translation by 7 BLEU-4.
\section{Qualitative comparison}
Example outputs of the G2T and S2G2T models (Table 10) show that the translations are of generally good quality, even with low BLEU scores. Most translations may have slight differences in word choice that do not change the overall meaning of the sentence or make grammatical errors, which suggests BLEU is not a good representative of human useful features for SLT. As for the comparison between the G2T and S2G2T networks, there does not seem to be a clear pattern between cases where S2G2T outperforms G2T and vice versa. One thing to note, though, is that the PHOENIX-Weather 2014T is restricted to the weather forecast domain, and a SLT dataset with a wider domain would be required to fully assess the performance of our model in more general real-life settings.
We also provide sample G2T outputs on the ASLG-PC12 corpus in Appendix A.2.
\section{Conclusions and Future Work}
In this paper, we proposed Transformers for SLT, notably the STMC-Transformer. Our experiments demonstrate how Transformers obtain better SLT performance than previous RNN-based networks. We also achieve new state-of-the-art results on different translation tasks on the PHOENIX-Weather 2014T and ASLG-PC12 datasets.
A key finding is we obtain better performance by using a STMC network for tokenization instead of translating GT glosses. This calls into question current methods that use glosses as an intermediate representation, since reference glosses themselves are suboptimal.
End-to-end training without gloss supervision is one promising step, though \newcite{camgoz2020sign}'s end-to-end model does not yet surpass their joint training model. As future work, we suggest continuing work on end-to-end training of the recognition and translation models, so the recognition model learns an intermediate representation that optimizes translation, or using a different sign language annotation scheme that has less information loss.
\begin{center}
\resizebox{.92\textwidth}{!}{\begin{tabular}{ll|c}
\toprule
& & BLEU-4 \\
\midrule
REF: & ähnliches wetter auch am donnerstag . & \\
&\footnotesize (similar weather on thursday .) & \\
G2T: & GLEICH WETTER AUCH DONNERSTAG & \\
& \footnotesize (SAME WEATHER ON THURSDAY) & \\
& ähnliches wetter auch am donnerstag . & 100.00 \\
& \footnotesize (similar weather on thursday .)& \\
S2G2T: & GLEICH WETTER DONNERSTAG & \\
& \footnotesize (SAME WEATHER THURSDAY) & \\
& ähnliches wetter dann auch am donnerstag . & 48.89 \\
& \footnotesize (similar weather then on thursday .)& \\
\midrule
REF: & der wind weht meist schwach aus unterschiedlichen richtungen . & \\
&\footnotesize (the wind usually blows weakly from different directions .) \\
G2T: & WIND SCHWACH UNTERSCHIED KOMMEN & \\
& \footnotesize (WIND WEAK DIFFERENCE COME) & \\
& der wind weht meist nur schwach aus unterschiedlichen richtungen . & 65.80 \\
& \footnotesize (the wind usually blows only weakly from different directions .)& \\
S2G2T: & WIND SCHWACH UNTERSCHIED & \\
& \footnotesize (WIND WEAK DIFFERENCE) & \\
& der wind weht schwach aus unterschiedlichen richtungen . & 61.02\\
& \footnotesize (the wind is blowing weakly from different directions .)& \\
\midrule
REF: & sonnig geht es auch ins wochenende samstag ein herrlicher tag mit temperaturen bis siebzehn grad hier im westen . & \\
&\footnotesize (the weekend is also sunny and saturday is a wonderful day with temperatures up to seventeen degrees here in the west .) \\
G2T: & WOCHENENDE SONNE SAMSTAG SCHOEN TEMPERATUR BIS SIEBZEHN GRAD REGION &\\
& \footnotesize (WEEKEND SUN SATURDAY NICE TEMPERATURE UNTIL SEVENTEEN DEGREE REGION) & \\
& und am wochenende da scheint die sonne bei temperaturen bis siebzehn grad . & 13.49 \\
& \footnotesize (and on the weekend the sun shines at temperatures up to seventeen degrees .)& \\
S2G2T: & WOCHENENDE SONNE SAMSTAG TEMPERATUR BIS SIEBZEHN GRAD REGION & \\
& \footnotesize (WEEKEND SUN SATURDAY TEMPERATURE UNTIL SEVENTEEN DEGREE REGION) & \\
& am wochenende scheint die sonne bei temperaturen bis siebzehn grad . & 12.55 \\
& \footnotesize (on the weekend sun shines at temperatures up to seventeen degrees .)& \\
\midrule
REF: & es gelten entsprechende warnungen des deutschen wetterdienstes . & \\
&\footnotesize (appropriate warnings from the german weather service apply .) \\
G2T: & IX SCHON WARNUNG DEUTSCH WETTER DIENST STURM KOENNEN &\\
& \footnotesize (IX ALREADY WARNING GERMAN WEATHER SERVICE STORM CAN) & \\
& es bestehen entsprechende unwetterwarnungen des deutschen wetterdienstes . & 38.26 \\
& \footnotesize (severe weather warnings from the german weather service exist .)& \\
S2G2T: & DANN IX SCHON WARNUNG DEUTSCH WETTER STURM KOENNEN &\\
& es gelten entsprechende warnungen des deutschen wetterdienstes . & 100.00 \\
& \footnotesize (THEN IX ALREADY WARNING GERMAN WEATHER STORM CAN) & \\
& \footnotesize (appropriate warnings from the german weather service apply .)& \\
\midrule
REF: & richtung osten ist es meist sonnig . & \\
&\footnotesize (it is mostly sunny towards the east .) \\
G2T: & OST MEISTENS SONNE &\\
& \footnotesize (MOST EAST SUN) & \\
& im osten bleibt es meist sonnig . & 43.47 \\
& \footnotesize (in the east it mostly stays sunny .)& \\
S2G2T: & OST REGION MEISTENS SONNE & \\
& im osten ist es meist sonnig . & 80.91 \\
& \footnotesize (MOST REGION EAST SUN) &\\
& \footnotesize (in the east it is mostly sunny .)& \\
\midrule
REF: & am tag elf grad im vogtland und einundzwanzig grad am oberrhein . & \\
&\footnotesize (during the day eleven degrees in vogtland and twenty one degrees in upper rhine .) \\
G2T: & AM-TAG ELF VOGEL LAND & \\
& \footnotesize (IN-THE-DAY ELEVEN BIRD LAND) & \\
& elf grad am oberrhein . & 18.74 \\
& \footnotesize (eleven degrees in upper rhine .)& \\
S2G2T: & ELF VOGEL ZWANZIG & \\
& \footnotesize (ELEVEN BIRD TWENTY) &\\
& am tag elf grad im vogtland und zwanzig grad im vogtland . & 54.91 \\
& \footnotesize (during the day eleven degrees in vogtland and twenty degrees in vogtland .)& \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\label{table:compare}
\captionof{table}{Qualitative comparison of G2T and S2G2T on RWTH-PHEONIX-WEATHER 2014T. Glosses are capitalized. REF refers to the reference German translation.}
\end{center}
\section*{Acknowledgements}
The Titan X Pascal used for this research was donated by the NVIDIA Corporation. The authors would also like to thank Jean-Baptiste Rémy for the helpful discussions and feedback with various aspects of this work, and Hao Zhou for sharing the details of her previous work.
\bibliographystyle{coling}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
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Cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT)
RESPOND TO WK 5 DISCUSSION NRNP 6645
Cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT) have long been recognized as having great benefit and efficacy for the treatment of a variety of patient issues ranging from chronic pain, to anxiety and depression, and in fact CBT has been shown to generally produce at least a minor positive effect on all patients treated no matter what their initial baseline symptoms may be (Turner et al., 2007). CBT, especially group based, has been found to be a cost-effective way to encourage social behaviors and skills, and also provide often immediate feedback from multiple sources that relate to the patient, and thus reduce isolation and stigma for the engaged patient (PsychExamReview, 2019). CBT, while generally found to be advantageous for most, if not all, patients who are engaged in treatment, has been found to have a different impact depending if it is performed in a group setting versus individual setting.
While individual CBT has long been shown to be able to produce positive changes in patient's cognitive and behavioral symptoms, its benefits are largely limited by the patient's own inherent self-efficacy (Turner et al., 2007). The same has not been found to be true, however, with group-based CBT. In fact, it has been shown that in a direct comparison of results between group and individual CBT, group therapy was found to be more effective than individual CBT in producing long lasting and effective positive changes in the recipients/patients (Dogaheh et al., 2011). This may be due, at least in part, to the added sense of support and validation offered by the group setting members who can help in identifying with the patient's experiences, lending the patient more of a sense of inclusion and safety and hope in the context that if another person can work through these issues, so might they themselves (Marziali & Munroe-Blum, 1995).
Indeed, in individual CBT therapy, the focus is often on the therapist attempting to help the patient to reframe or challenge their own assumptions, behaviors, shame, and guilt, which can be difficult to do in a supportive and nonconfrontational way at times, so that the patient in essence learns to be their own therapists and better cope with their difficulties (Gilbert, 2010). In group CBT, however, there is a greater focus on the structure and interplay of the group as a supportive, safe, and healing environment that works together for mutual benefit, healing, and positive change (Marziali & Munroe-Blum, 1995).
The group setting, while generally found to be more advantageous for positive patient outcomes, is also prone to more problems as there are multiple patients, personalities, and problems to integrate into the therapeutic environment by the therapist. Problems that can arise in the group setting are often placed into two subgroups of issues, with the first being disruptiveness, and the second being hesitancy or member reluctance to engage with others or the therapist in the group setting (Gladding & Binkley, 2007).
With the first group, the disruptive patients, often the therapist must expend extra time and effort to reemphasize the group rules and to build trust not only between the therapist and the disruptive member, but also between that patient and the other group members so as to foster a sense of belonging and support which would negate the problematic patient's need to cause disruptions as a way to deflect attention from their actual issues/needs/guilt (Gladding & Binkley, 2007). With the second group, much the same approach is used, as the therapist must take extra time and effort, and occasionally meet individually with the hesitant member so as to build enough trust and rapport so that they (the patient) feel empowered and safe enough to actively and productively engage with the group (Gladding & Binkley, 2007). The attached articles and references are deemed to be scholarly by virtue of being published and peer reviewed articles written and developed by experts in the related fields described therein.
ACAPCD-11.pdfAn_Interpersonal_Approach_to_G.pdfAPTFinal.pdfcomparison of group and individual cbt.pdfmediators moderators and predictors.pdf
ar, 20th Century Fox's chime, Tarzan's yell, Intel's jingle, default ring-tone of a Nokia mobile phone and many more. In India the first ever sound mark was granted to Yahoo! Inc. in 2008 for a man's voice yodelling yahoo. ICICI Bank was the first Indian entity to obtain sound track registration with the Indian Trade Mark Registry. Colour Mark Colour marks are those marks where a distinct colour or combination of colours is associated with a product or brand and takes us to the original source. Although graphical representation may not be a hurdle for colour marks, they are not easily granted. Section 10 of Trade Marks Act, 1999 talks about registration of a colour combination but only when such colour combination is present in an otherwise traditional logo or mark so that the colour is secondary and the design of the mark is the primary thing to get registered as a trade mark. Essentially the Act can protect a certain mark in a certain colour combination but not the colour itself. However, the Act doesn't exclude colours and colour combinations from the purview of the definition of trade mark either. Another obstacle faced is the Functionality Doctrine. Its says that a colour cannot be a trademark if the colour is functional in nature. Under this 'functionality doctrine', if the feature of the product for which protection is sought is useful or affects the cost or the quality of the article, such that granting trademark protection to the feature would put competitors at a significant disadvantage, the feature is not entitled to trademark protection. For example, a court held that the colour black when used on outboard boat motors serves a functional purpose, since the colour black is compatible with all other boat colours and also because the colour black makes the motor appear smaller. The first successful case of colour trademark was in the US. In Qualitex Co. v Jacobson Products Company, Inc. the petitioner company had been using a special shade of green-gold for their dry cleaning press pads since the 1950s. In 1989, Jacobson Products Co. started using a very similar shade of green-gold on its own press pads. Qualitex Co. got it's shade of green-gold trademarked and also sued Jacobson for infringement. Another issue faced by colour marks is the possibility of there being litigation over shades of the same colour. A solution to this problem is designation of a colour using an internationally recognised identification code like Pantone as such codes are deemed to be precise and stable. The Pantone is a commercial system that designates specific shades numerically and categorises over thousand such shades by unique codes. Tiffany and Co.'s unique shade of blue 'Tiffany Blue' has been a registered trademark since 1998 and also has its own custom Pantone number – 1837, the year the company was founded. T-Mobile's colour 'Magenta', Mattel's 'Barbie Pink', UPS's 'Pullman Brown' are some more examples of colour marks. India is yet to set precedence as far as colour marks are concerned. Smell Mark> | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 4,031 |
Q: How do you host a multi-player survival game in Minecraft? I've downloaded all the required files in order to host an on-line multi-player Minecraft game on my computer, and successfully made a server. However, it seems that I can only make games in free build mode, where you have unlimited resources to build with. I prefer the survival mode where you have limited hp, there's a day/night cycle, mobs spawn, etc (the registered user version, not the classic free version).
Is it possible to host a survival multi-player game, whether on-line or local?
EDIT: Given Minecraft is undergoing huge changes please update your answers as appropriate.
A: You can now host a local multiplayer server without any additional software.
Start or continue your map in Single Player, press esc and select
"Open to Lan".
Other players can then join your game from the Multiplayer menu. The LAN game should be automatically detected.
A: You need to download the multiplayer survival server. It can be found at https://minecraft.net/download at the bottom of the page.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 4,371 |
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Q: Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Create Base Activity In Windows Workflow Foundation 3.x, you used to be able to create a BaseWorkflow class where you could define some properties in that workflow.
And then when you create a workflow you can say it derives from BaseWorkflow class so it inherits all the properties from the base workflow.
Can we achieve the same thing in Windows Workflow Foundation 4 (WF 4)? Like defining InArgument and OutArgument on a BaseActivity then create another Activity that derives from the BaseActivity.
I tried by modify the XAML from let's say <Activity></Activity> to like <BaseActivity></BaseActivity> ... that was the way we did it in WF 3.x.
It doesn't seem to work in WF 4.
A: Found a solution to this. It's actually quite easy. The class generated by the XAML declaration is marked as partial so you can create a class (also marked partial) for your activity (workflow) base. Then in XAML, just change the class attribute on your activity to the full namespace of the class you just created.
Base Activity Example:
public partial class OurBaseWorkflow : Activity
{
public InArgument<string> StandardInput { get;set; }
}
XAML example:
<p:Activity x:Class="MyNamespace.OurBaseWorkflow"
xmlns:s="clr-namespace:System;assembly=mscorlib"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
...
</p:Activity>
With this method, you can define both in and out arguments on the base class and they show up for your derived activities as well.
A: Yes, you can create a BaseActivity and define its InArguments and OutArguments. You can then create a new class, say Activity1:BaseActivity and it still has BaseActivity's InArguments and OutArguments
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 6,247 |
La seconda stagione della serie televisiva Cherif è stata trasmessa sul canale francese France 2 dal 2 al 30 gennaio 2015.
In Italia è andata in onda dal 1º al 29 febbraio 2016 su Giallo con un ordine di messa in onda differente rispetto a quello originale.
Appuntamenti mortali
Titolo originale: Rendez-vous mortels
Diretto da: Julien Zidi
Scritto da: Alexandra Julhiet e Lionel Olenga
Trama
Dalla fontana di place des Terreaux viene ripescato il cadavere di Philippe Cassini, direttore di un'azienda di prodotti omeopatici. Le scarpe da ballo indossate dalla vittima conducono ad una vicina scuola di Milonga che nasconde una seconda attività. L'indagine diventa ben presto una sfida tra i due capitani e i loro metodi d'indagine.
Pressioni
Titolo originale: Pressions
Diretto da: Julien Zidi
Scritto da: Dominique Golfier e Lionel Olenga
Trama
La moglie del proprietario di un ristorante di Corbas viene trovata morta, seduta ad un tavolino fuori dal locale con la bocca tappata dal nastro adesivo. Cherif nota che Sarah si vede con un agente. Scopre che la natura dei loro incontri non è sentimentale come lui temeva, ma legata alla figura del misterioso nonno Cherif.
A cuore aperto
Titolo originale: A cœur ouvert
Diretto da: Vincent Giovanni
Scritto da: Akima Seghir e Lionel Olenga
Trama
In un campo del golf club di Lione viene trovato il cadavere di Frederic N'Guyen, un promettente cardiologo di origine vietnamita. L'arrivo al commissariato del comandante Inès Dutertre (ex collega ed ex fiamma di Cherif) porta trambusto nella vita sentimentale di Kader.
Codice d'onore
Titolo originale: Code d'honneur
Diretto da: Vincent Giovanni
Scritto da: Stéphane Carrie, Robin Barataud e Lionel Olenga
Trama
Dietro una macchina nel parcheggio della discoteca Le Pacha un ladro trova il cadavere di un soldato con il viso pesantemente truccato. Ultimo erede di una famiglia di valorosi membri dell'esercito, Maxime De Roquebrune avrebbe dovuto partire per il Mali di lì a poco, ma una diversa verità si nasconde dietro i racconti dei militari. Kader sente Sarah raccontare alle amiche che suo nonno sarebbe un attore.
Forti disaccordi
Titolo originale: Désaccords majeurs
Diretto da: Pierric Gantelmi D'Ille
Scritto da: Olivier Dujols, Akima Seghir e Lionel Olenga
Trama
Al laboratorio di liuteria Delayrac un ufficiale giudiziario trova il cadavere dell'apprendista Valentin, mentre il contitolare Marc giace ferito vicino a lui. Il famoso e prezioso violino rosso del fratello Antoine non si trova più. La vittima, intenzionata a mettersi in proprio in un quartiere dagli affitti molto alti, risulta non essere la persona che tutti credevano. Quando Kader scopre che Sarah ha un ragazzo, lo convoca in commissariato per un interrogatorio.
Felicità in vendita
Titolo originale: Bonheur à vendre
Diretto da: Hervé Brami
Scritto da: Pierre-Yves Mora, Robin Barataud e Lionel Olenga
Trama
All Hotel Simplon in una stanza libera da giorni viene trovato il cadavere di una donna chiuso all'interno di un armadio. La sua identità si rivela essere un rebus. Sarah assiste ad uno scippo. Il fatto che sia l'unica testimone in grado di identificare il responsabile preoccupa molto Kader.
Trasmissioni pericolose
Titolo originale: Au suivant
Diretto da: Pierric Gantelmi D'Ille
Scritto da: Jean-Marie Chavent e Lionel Olenga
Trama
Al parcheggio della Cité Internationale un'impiegata di Radio Scoop trova il cadavere del noto conduttore radiofonico Julien Lamarre nascosto dietro alla sua auto vandalizzata. La minacciosa scritta lasciata sull'asfalto "Avanti un altro" fa riferimento ad una frase ripetuta dalla vittima e dal suo collega Cédric Leroy nel corso della loro trasmissione Cash, durante la quale i due maltrattavano i loro ospiti. Cherif si preoccupa dell'uso dei social network da parte di Sarah.
A mia figlia
Titolo originale: A ma fille
Diretto da: Hervé Brami
Scritto da: Nathalie Hugon, Vincent Robert e Lionel Olenga
Trama
Durante una retata antidroga in una comunità di recupero, per errore la polizia fa irruzione nell'appartamento sbagliato, trovandoci l'ex trafficante di droga Hamed Saadi ucciso a coltellate e Patrick Ariège con una pistola in mano che si dichiara colpevole e chiede di vedere Doucet. Dodici anni prima la vittima aveva ucciso la figlia del reo confesso dopo essere stato condannato per un furto commesso nell'azienda della loro famiglia. Deborah informa Kader di aver ricevuto un'offerta di lavoro negli Stati Uniti. Temendo che Sarah possa seguirla, Cherif comincia a viziarla.
Relazioni di fuoco
Titolo originale: Au feu
Diretto da: Vincent Giovanni
Scritto da: Francis Nief, Robin Barataud e Lionel Olenga
Trama
L'apparente suicidio del pompiere Luc Hervieu porta i due capitani ad indagare sull'affiatata squadra del sergente Morel e Adeline a rivedere una vecchia conoscenza parigina. Un problema idraulico costringe intanto la Briard a dormire in ufficio. Sarah allora spinge per ospitarla a casa loro, ma le complicazioni del caso si riflettono sull'offerta dei Cherif.
Cherif & Associati
Titolo originale: & Associés
Diretto da: Vincent Giovanni
Scritto da: Marie Roussin, Clélia Constantine e Lionel Olenga
Trama
Sulla panchina di un giardino pubblico è seduto un cadavere senza documenti. Si tratta dell'avvocato Francis Gence e di lì a poco anche un'avvocatessa viene ritrovata in circostanze simili. Kader viene invitato dal preside della scuola di Sarah a parlare alla classe della sua professione.
Note | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
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{"url":"https:\/\/www.physicsforums.com\/threads\/calculating-acceleration-on-different-gears-in-vehicle.717421\/#post-4543766","text":"# Calculating acceleration on different gears in vehicle\n\nAcceleration is not Force\/mass, mechanical advantage (?)\n\nI have a vehicle with wheels and electric motor that drives that wheels.\nThose are characteristics of engine\n\nResultant torque and velocity at wheel will depend on radius of that wheel, as wheel work as gearing.\nLet's say i will try with wheel A of 1m radius and wheel B of 2m radius.\nOn same engine speed vehicle with wheel A will have bigger torque&force at wheel but with lower wheel velocity, opposite will be on wheel B.\nBut the acceleration force will be same, as it depends on power from engine.\n\nThis guy called newton said that acceleration is force\/mass. But he is liar as its not possible.\nBecause in my example on wheel A force is two times bigger than in Wheel B, but both vehicles have same acceleration at same engine revs.\n\nAlso look here:\n\nthis picture is from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mechanical_advantage article\n\nOn Both bikes same force and power is applied on pedal,\nthe difference is gearing of the bikes. Bike on the left is making twice force\/torque bike on right but on two times shorter distance which means two times smaller wheel speed.\nBoth bicycles encounter same acceleration. If i was using newton's incorrect calculating of acceleration bike on left would have bigger acceleration. Also, i could have infinite acceleration with proper gearing...\n\nHow to calculate real acceleration? I can't just multiple force with distance or wheel velocity. What when the bike is stopped and i start to apply force on pedal? the wheel's speed and distance is 0 so would be the acceleration\n\nI know now that wheel and gearing are machines that use Mechanical Advantage\nAnd wheel size and gearing is just converting between more\/less torque and more\/less velocity of wheel (distance)\nThe power is the same, and actually acceleration is same too\n\nbut how to calculate acceleration if i know engine torque, revs, gearing, wheel diameter, wheel velocity\ntake in mind that the wheel velocity can be 0 (when vehicle is stopped)\nalso, engine can also be stopped as its electrical dc engine that is able to produce torque at 0 rpm\n\nlook at this too:\n\nthose are torques on wheel and rpm on wheels on different gears\nwe all know that its the power that actually accelerates vehicle\nbut stupid Newton tells me that its the force\/torque\nif he was right i could use such gearing that would make 1000000 torque on wheel from engine that generates 1 Watt and i would have unreal acceleration\n\nas i told, can't just multiply torque with distance\/velocity as vehicle and engine can be stopped\n\nLast edited:\n\nmeBigGuy\nGold Member\ntorque is not force. Unit of force is Newton. Unit of torque is Newton-Meter. Torque is force times distance. So your leverage needs to be part of your acceleration calculation.\n\n@meBigGuy\nforce times distance? the distance is wheel diameter,\nWHAT if i use same wheel size but i attach differential\/gear to my engine\nspeed torque engine_rpm wheel_rpm\nvehicle A 10 100 200 50\nvehicle B 20 100 400 100\n\ntorque is same but vehicle B is applying DOUBLE the power of A\nand the acceleration is double\nbut forces are same\n\nalso\nimagine same cars\nthey generate 300 torque but the second car is at double rotational speed than the first\nthe torque and force at wheel are same, but the second car is having double speed\n\nif we ignore friction\/air\/drivetrain deceleration, what we get:\nthe second one is accelerating two times faster even that torque is same\n\nwhat is gear doing? it can half the torque but double rotational speed\nor opposite, double torque but half rotational speed\n\nin each case power and resulting ACCELERATION is same\nbut forces on wheels is different\nand the distance that force is applying on\nand wheel velocity\n\nbut stupid newton theory is not saying anything about it\nit just says force\/mass is acceleration which is ********\n\nif that was true i would make a gearing that would generate 500000 torque and force from 1 Watt engine and it would accelerate as hell even if it weights 1000 kg\n\nalso, even on same gear\nimagine an engine that generate same torque on all rotational speeds\nso i could drive 2000 rpm with 1000 torque and then 4000 rpm with 1000 torque\nFORCE ON WHEEL AND WHEELSPIN RISK would be SAME in both situations\nbut at 4000rpm power would be double and so the acceleration\n\nbut can't just multiple torque times rotational speed\nbecause engine and vehicle can be stalled\nand now i generate torque\npower is 0\nbut the vehicle has to move\n\ncan't just multiple torque with gearing. because gearing is same when 1000 rpm and 2000 rpm on same gear, but on 2000rpm power is double\n\nmaybe i should do somethin like this\ntorque * (1.0+distance_in_metres_travelled_by_wheel) = acceleration\nbut i need scientific basics to calculate acceleration\n\nalso imagine this:\nyou are on bicycle with eletrical motor\nthis motor generates constant 100 Watts of power\nso the acceleration is same on all rpms, 100, 1000, 10000\nbut the torque is diminishing, SO IS THE CHANCE TO WHEELSPIN\nyou can easily wheelspin when starting or raise front wheel\nbut can't when big speed\n\nalso, HOW IS THE ACCELERATION SAME when force is diminishing with speed\n\nLook at this picture\n\ncompare first and fourth pulley\nthe fourth have only 25N applied but its generating same force and acceleration as 100N in first pulley\nI KNOW WORK and energy are same\n\nbut the fact is first and fourth pulley have different forces applied but same acceleration and power\nbut stupid newton says that acceleration is DIRECTLY proportionally to force and inversely to mass\nhe havent said a word about force over distance\n\ni can't just multiple force with distance\nbecause what if there is no distance at all?\nfor example imagine this pulley, lets say this weight on bottom is heavy and it stays on floor\nnow i apply force but this force is too small to overcome gravity\nso there is no movement\nBUT THE FORCE IS THERE\n\nbut stupid newton says that acceleration is DIRECTLY proportionally to force and inversely to mass\nhe havent said a word about force over distance\nThis guy called newton said that acceleration is force\/mass. But he is liar as its not possible.\nI'm dying of laughter right now. :rofl:\n\nForce and torque are not the same thing.\n\nI'm dying of laughter right now. :rofl:\n\nForce and torque are not the same thing.\n\nThe force on wheels is torque on wheel divided by wheel radius\n\nDon't even try to suggest that car on higher gears generate same force on wheels (assuming same engine rpm and power is present). The higher gear the less force -> its very easy to wheel spin at first gear if you press pedal to floor but its very hard to wheel spin at 3rd gear when pedal pressed to floor\nand if we ignore deceleration forces like air\/rolling\/drivetrain losses\nthat car would accelerate SAME FAST on 1st and 5th gear\nbut on 1st it is easy to wheelspin and on 5th very unlikely\n\nALSO, car when driving at 1000 rpm of engine with torque 100 on wheels will accelerate two times slower than same car at 2000 rpm of engine (and double rpm of wheels) with same torque (100)\n(the power will be double)\n\nbut don't even try to tell me that force on wheel is torque on wheel mutiplied by wheel speed\nwhy? because at 0 rpm (car & engine stopped) car would never be able to move as force would always be 0\nand electric engines are capable of generating torque at 0 rpm\n\nCWatters\nHomework Helper\nGold Member\nthe fact is first and fourth pulley have different forces applied but same acceleration and power but stupid newton says that acceleration is DIRECTLY proportionally to force and inversely to mass\n\nNewton actually says...\n\nhttp:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Newton's_laws_of_motion\n\nSecond law: The acceleration of a body is directly proportional to, and in the same direction as, the net force acting on the body, and inversely proportional to its mass..\n\nThe force you refer to is not \"acting on the body\" being accelerated. In each case the force acting on the body is the same = 100N.\n\nrcgldr\nHomework Helper\nWith an electric motor, torque decreases linearly as rpm increases. For the graph, torque = 3.2 (1 - rpm\/600). As shown in the graph, power = torque x rpm x 2 x pi \/ 60. Power also equals force x speed, so force = power \/ speed = (torque x rpm x 2 x pi \/ 60) \/ v, where v is velocity. Assume bike's velocity is 2 m\/s, then driven wheel force at 2 m\/s versus rpm looks like:\n\nCode:\n rpm torque power force\n\n0 3.200 0.000 0.000\n50 2.933 15.359 7.679\n100 2.667 27.925 13.963\n150 2.400 37.699 18.850\n200 2.133 44.680 22.340\n250 1.867 48.869 24.435\n300 1.600 50.265 25.133\n350 1.333 48.869 24.435\n400 1.067 44.680 22.340\n450 0.800 37.699 18.850\n500 0.533 27.925 13.963\n550 0.267 15.359 7.679\n600 0.000 0.000 0.000\n\nNote that the maximum force occurs at the rpm corresponding to peak power. To optimize the gearing, you'd want the center point between shifts to be near the power peak. With a continously variable transmission, you'd want the motor rpm to be kept constant at 300 rpm regardless of the bikes speed.\n\nLast edited:\nNote that the maximum force occurs at the rpm corresponding to peak power. To optimize the gearing, you'd want the center point between shifts to be near the power peak. With a continously variable transmission, you'd want the motor rpm to be kept constant at 300 rpm regardless of the bikes speed.\n\nI agree that best power and ACCELERATION will be at 300 rpm.\nBut you can't equal force with power.\nIn your posted forces, at 0 rpm force is 0. So the car\/bike would NEVER START MOVING. Which is not true.\n\nAlso, look:\nimagine a sports car that has peak 400HP at 6000 rpm.\nI put first gear, accelerate slowly until i reach 5700 rpm at engine. Now i press acceleration pedal to the floor, what will happen? Rear (driven) wheels will start to spin.\nNow i put in 6th gear and accelerate so i have 5700 rpm. Which could be like 280km\/h vehicle speed. At this moment i put acceleration pedal to the floor (actually for sure it was already at floor or near). What happens? NO WHEELSPIN, just acceleration.\n\nWhy is that? because 5th gear provide times lower torque that in first gear. And force on wheel is: torque on wheel * wheel diameter.\nSo the higher gear the force has to be lower.\nLook at this picture i posted earlier:\n\nthose are torques and rotations of engine and wheel at each gear.\n\nNow look back at bicycle:\n\nThe \"engine\" power is same in both bikes. Because of gearing, the bike on right is travelling 2 times faster that bike on left. But you see that force on wheel is different, and if you put both bikes on slippery surface, left one would wheelspin\/crash when right one could still drive safely.\nWe can see that bike on right is \"applying\" force over 2 times distance left bike, whatever \"applying force\" means. Newton say that force is a force, dosen't matter distance\/speed its making.\n\nWheel with axle is kind of machine with mechanical advantage https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wheel_and_axle\nso gearing convert between more\/less torque and more\/less speed\nbut what with acceleration? how to calculate it?\nCan't multiple torque * rotational speed because at 0rpm bike would never move. Also why does wheelspin not occur on sportscar in 6th gear at full power and occurs at 1st gear? the force has to be lower at 6th gear than 1, but acceleration force is same.\n\nrcgldr\nHomework Helper\nBut you can't equal force with power.\npower = force x speed.\nforce = power \/ speed.\n\nIn your posted forces, at 0 rpm force is 0.\nNote the assumption is that the bike is moving a 2 meters \/ second. This would require an infinitely tall gear to convert 0 rpm into 2 meters \/ second speed, so the driven wheel force would be zero.\n\nAssume the driven wheel has a radius of 1 meter, then here is the previous table showing the gear ratio corresponding to 2 meters \/ second.\n\nwheel rpm = motor rpm \/ gear\nwheel torque = motor torque * gear\nwheel force = wheel torque \/ (1 meter)\n\nCode:\n rpm torque power force gear\n\n0 3.200 0.000 0.000 0.000\n50 2.933 15.359 7.679 2.618\n100 2.667 27.925 13.963 5.236\n150 2.400 37.699 18.850 7.854\n200 2.133 44.680 22.340 10.472\n250 1.867 48.869 24.435 13.090\n300 1.600 50.265 25.133 15.708\n350 1.333 48.869 24.435 18.326\n400 1.067 44.680 22.340 20.944\n450 0.800 37.699 18.850 23.562\n500 0.533 27.925 13.963 26.180\n550 0.267 15.359 7.679 28.798\n600 0.000 0.000 0.000 31.416\n\nLast edited:\nNote the assumption is that the bike is moving a 2 meters \/ second. This would require an infinitely tall gear to convert 0 rpm into 2 meters \/ second speed, so the driven wheel force would be zero.\nBut i don't want to have 0 rpm of engine at bike 2 m\/s speed. I want to have my bike stopped and engine stopped. Now i apply eletrical power to engine so it starts generating torque at 0rpm. What force will be applied on wheels\/on bike? Will it start to move? If i use your calculations the bike will never start.\n\nwheel torque = motor torque * gear\nwheel force = wheel torque \/ (1 meter)\nI understand that. And that means that the smaller gear will generate smaller torque and FORCE at wheels.\nnow imagine i have engine attached to my car. and that engine is generating constant 50HP from 0 to 20000 rpm (that means torque is diminishing with revs).\nAnd i have gearbox taken from passanger car. I achieved my top speed of 100 km\/h at full power on 3rd gear. NOW I CHANGE GEAR to 5 and apply full power. the power of engine is same, but the toque on wheel is smaller so is the force (!!). does that mean my car will start to decelerate to ~60-70km\/h ?!! its not possible. power is a power. energy can't be lost.\n\nI don't understand what is the difference when i apply force 100N over 10 metres vs over 1 metre vs without movement. A force is a force. And acceleration is F\/m.\n\nLast edited:\nAnd i have gearbox taken from passanger car. I achieved my top speed of 100 km\/h at full power on 3rd gear. NOW I CHANGE GEAR to 5 and apply full power. the power of engine is same, but the toque on wheel is smaller so is the force (!!). does that mean my car will start to decelerate to ~60-70km\/h ?!! its not possible. power is a power. energy can't be lost.\n\nIf you really achieve a top speed of only 100 km\/h at full power in 3rd gear, then you will indeed find that if you switch to larger gear, that the car will slow down. (unless the engine was really far to the right on the downslope of the torque\/rev curve, and the engine can produce much more torque in a higher gear).\n\nThere will be no power disappearing, but the engine simply can't produce full power at the lower revs. There's only so much gasoline that can go in an explosion, and there's only so much explosions. (2 per revolution for a 4 cylinder car), and if there aren't enough explosions, the engine can't produce full power.\n\nEDIT: this goes for electric motors too, and even for human cyclists. There's a maximum torque that can be produced, so at low revs, you can't get the maximum power of the engine\n\nLast edited:\n@willem2\nif you read my full post:\n\nnow imagine i have engine attached to my car. and that engine is generating constant 50HP from 0 to 20000 rpm (that means torque is diminishing with revs).\n\nthis engine's power is constant 50HP no matter revolutions\n\n@willem2\nif you read my full post:\n\nthis engine's power is constant 50HP no matter revolutions\n\nWhat you described in your last post was an engine that had to slow down in fifth, because it would produce less force in fifth than in 3rd gear. That's not compatible with constant power, no matter what the revolutions are. Such an engine is impossible anyway, because there's always a maximum torque, and therefore a minimum number of revolutions needed to get full power.\n\nWhat you described in your last post was an engine that had to slow down in fifth, because it would produce less force in fifth than in 3rd gear. That's not compatible with constant power, no matter what the revolutions are. Such an engine is impossible anyway, because there's always a maximum torque, and therefore a minimum number of revolutions needed to get full power.\n\nThe engine is electrical and its maximum torque is at 0 rpm, on bigger rpm it has lower torque so power remains constant. Full power is on any rpm on that engine.\n\nAnd seems we misunderstood. In my car i was driving full power at 3rd gear and switched to a fifth gear. Vehicle speed was same, speed of engine dropped but power remained the same.\nThen i asked a question, if on 5th gear power is same but force on wheel is lower, will the car slow down or keep the speed, if keep, why?\n\ncjl\nThe engine is electrical and its maximum torque is at 0 rpm, on bigger rpm it has lower torque so power remains constant. Full power is on any rpm on that engine.\n\nAnd seems we misunderstood. In my car i was driving full power at 3rd gear and switched to a fifth gear. Vehicle speed was same, speed of engine dropped but power remained the same.\nThen i asked a question, if on 5th gear power is same but force on wheel is lower, will the car slow down or keep the speed, if keep, why?\n\nIf the power is the same, and the speed is the same, the wheel force is the same. Power and wheel torque are not independent of each other.\n\n(That having been said, power is not constant for an electric motor - it hits its peak at about half the motor's maximum RPM, and falls off on either side of that value, which can be seen in your very first graph in this thread)\n\nmeBigGuy\nGold Member\nI really find it difficult to help people who act like they know more than centuries of science as opposed to people who want to try to understand where their understanding is flawed. If they are not looking for the flaws in their understanding they will continue to make the same mistaken assumptions over and over.\n\nI may be wrong, but I don't think you understand the relationship between torque and force, and how gearing changes the effective distances in converting torque to force. There also seems to be some misunderstanding of the nature\/limitations of the power supplied through pedaling.\n\nAgain, I may be misunderstanding your misunderstanding.\n\nTake a tiny wheel powered by a chain supplying torque. The torque is acting through a small distance, so the force is large (torque = force X distance, so force = torque\/distance). That means rapid acceleration. If the wheel is large, the force is less for the same torque, so there is smaller acceleration. With the small wheel, if you could maintain the torque at all rotational speeds you would continue to accellerate at the same high rate forever.\n\nIf the power is the same, and the speed is the same, the wheel force is the same. Power and wheel torque are not independent of each other.\n\nReally? then what if my car and engine is stopped. And now i apply electric power to motor. This motor can generate torque at 0 rpm. So there is also force on wheel. But the power is 0 because rpm is 0.\n\nrcgldr\nHomework Helper\nThe engine is electrical and its maximum torque is at 0 rpm, on bigger rpm it has lower torque so power remains constant.\nLook at the graph in the first post. The torque decreases linearly, and the power is at a maximum at 300 rpm, so the power versus rpm is not constant.\n\nLook at the graph in the first post. The torque decreases linearly, and the power is at a maximum at 300 rpm, so the power versus rpm is not constant.\n\nOk, but then how the car will start moving when its stalled and engine is stalled? if power is 0 at 0 rpm.\n\nNugatory\nMentor\nOk, but then how the car will start moving when its stalled and engine is stalled? if power is 0 at 0 rpm.\n\nThat's why there has to be a clutch somewhere in the drivetrain. If you have an automatic transmission you can hold the car with the brakes while the motor is turning at low revs, generating torques that is opposed by the torque from the brakes. If you have a manual transmission, when the clutch is in the motor can turn, generating non-zero torque, while the car isn't moving.\n\nThat's why there has to be a clutch somewhere in the drivetrain. If you have an automatic transmission you can hold the car with the brakes while the motor is turning at low revs, generating torques that is opposed by the torque from the brakes. If you have a manual transmission, when the clutch is in the motor can turn, generating non-zero torque, while the car isn't moving.\n\nYes, but clutch is for combustion engines. When they stall they don't generate any torque and they need electric starters to accelerate revs until it rotates on its own.\nIf you have electrical engine you don't need a clutch, even had a radio controlled toy?\nOr have you ride bicycle? when its stopped and you press pedal it starts moving, even that on start it has 0 power.\n\nLast edited:\nNugatory\nMentor\nYes, but clutch is for combustion engines. When they stall they don't generate any torque and they need electric starters to accelerate revs until it rotates on its own.\nIf you have electrical engine you don't need a clutch, even had a radio controlled toy?\nOr have you ride bicycle? when its stopped and you press pedal it starts moving, even that on start it has 0 power.\n\nAh - I think I see what you're asking: how can something that is at rest start moving if the power delivered while it's at rest is zero no matter how great the torque? The heuristic answer is that changes in speed are produced by forces (straight-line motion) and torques (rotary motion) so if there is net torque or force, there will be a change in speed; if the speed was zero before the force\/torque was applied, it won't be zero afterwards. Power only comes into it when you start to calculate the distance covered by the force in a given amount of time.\n\nAh - I think I see what you're asking: how can something that is at rest start moving if the power delivered while it's at rest is zero no matter how great the torque? The heuristic answer is that changes in speed are produced by forces (straight-line motion) and torques (rotary motion) so if there is net torque or force, there will be a change in speed; if the speed was zero before the force\/torque was applied, it won't be zero afterwards.\nBut its not so simple. Take in mind i can change torque to anything i want using gears. I could apply a gearing that would make from 100 Nm of torque at engine a 50000 Nm of torque at wheels. That can't mean i could accelerate fast as hell, there is no free energy\n\nPower only comes into it when you start to calculate the distance covered by the force in a given amount of time.\nBut what is \"distance covered by the force\",\nand what is difference when force of 100N apply on 70kg milf over distance of one metre in one second than when force of 100N apply on 70kg milf over distance of two metres in one second ?\nif first milf had velocity of 1 m\/s and second milf had velocity of 2 m\/s, what will be resultant velocities after those forces applied in one second?\nOr if its easier for you we can assume both milf's had 1 m\/s of velocity (just write what speed did you choose)\n\nrcgldr\nHomework Helper\nPower = force x speed. If speed is zero, then force can be non-zero even though power is zero. This only lasts for an infinitesimal moment. No clutch is needed for electric motor, and no clutch is used in diesel electric locomotive, the engine drives a generator that in turn drives electric motors connected to the driven wheels.","date":"2021-10-25 11:39:27","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.6182689070701599, \"perplexity\": 1700.345806895071}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-43\/segments\/1634323587659.72\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20211025092203-20211025122203-00470.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
Q: How to dualize norm-constrained optimization problem? Consider the following optimization problem:
\begin{equation*}
\begin{aligned}
& \underset{x\in\mathbb{R}^{+}}{\text{min}}
& & c^{T}x \\
& \text{s.t.}
& & ||x-\hat{x}||_{q} \leq \delta,\\
\end{aligned}
\end{equation*}
where $q$ could be 1, 2 or "inf".
Could anybody give some suggestions on how to dualize the norm-constrained problem like this?
Thanks!
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{"url":"http:\/\/www.site-179821.clicksold.com\/86ox3\/page.php?500db5=disconnected-graph-adjacency-matrix","text":"80s Sci-fi Anime Series, Best Primary School In Ladysmith, Ubc Dental Hygiene Admission Average Reddit, Social Media Content Creation Checklist, Catholic Primary Schools In Singapore, Yakima Skybox 16 Vs 18, Inkscape Won't Trace Bitmap, Thermometer Probe Covers Target, Small Dogs That Don't Shed, \" \/> 80s Sci-fi Anime Series, Best Primary School In Ladysmith, Ubc Dental Hygiene Admission Average Reddit, Social Media Content Creation Checklist, Catholic Primary Schools In Singapore, Yakima Skybox 16 Vs 18, Inkscape Won't Trace Bitmap, Thermometer Probe Covers Target, Small Dogs That Don't Shed, \" \/>\n\nDepth first search is $O(|E|)$. The graph has a Hamilton Cycle. This representation requires space for n2 elements for a graph with n vertices. I realize this is an old question, but since it's still getting visits, I have a small addition. An adjacency matrix is a matrix where both dimensions equal the number of nodes in our graph and each cell can either have the value 0 or 1. Also Read : : C Program for Creation of Adjacency Matrix. We can traverse these nodes using the edges. say adjacency matrix) given one fundamental cut-set matrix. How is the adjacency matrix of a directed graph normalized? Note that the 0-adjacency matrix A(0) is the identity matrix. Why do electrons jump back after absorbing energy and moving to a higher energy level? The adjacency matrix is a good way to represent a weighted graph. We also consider the problem of computing connected components and conclude with related problems and applications. A simple undirected graph G = (V,E) consists of a non-empty set V of vertices and a set E of unordered pairs of distinct elements of V, called edges. GraphPlot[am, VertexCoordinateRules -> vcr, SelfLoopStyle -> All] As you can see, if you specify an adjacency matrix, Mathematica will display the unconnected nodes. They will make you \u2665 Physics. Constrained Minimization Problem derived from a Directed Graph. On to $C_3$, the same procedure gets us $C_3 = \\{v_4,v_7,v_8\\}$. I'll write out an answer. Save Graph Image. For undirected graphs, the adjacency matrix is symmetric. In order to achieve \/***** * Compilation: javac AdjMatrixGraph.java * Execution: java AdjMatrixGraph V E * Dependencies: StdOut.java * * A graph, implemented using an adjacency matrix. From the given directed graph, \u00a0the adjacency matrix\u00a0is written as, The adjacency matrix = $$\\begin{bmatrix} 0 & 1 & 0 & 1 & 1 \\\\ 1 & 0 & 1 & 1 & 0\\\\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 & 1\\\\ 1 & 0 & 1 & 0 & 1\\\\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\end{bmatrix}$$. graph family given with Figure 1. Below is the source code for C Program to implement BFS Algorithm for Disconnected Graph which is successfully compiled and run on Windows System to produce desired output as shown below : Use the Queue. if __name__ == ... Add and Remove Edge in Adjacency Matrix representation of a Graph. Returns the adjacency matrix of a graph as a SciPy CSR matrix. These edges might be weighted or non-weighted. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. \\mathbf{x}_2 &=& \\left[0,0,0,\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}},0,0,\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}},\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}},0\\right]^T,\\\\ I use it as the backend in my nodevectors library, and many other library writers use the Scipy CSR Matrix, you can see graph algorithms implemented on it here. Below is the syntax highlighted version of AdjMatrixGraph.java from \u00a74.1 Undirected Graphs. 3, pp. Easiest way to determine all disconnected sets from a graph? Assume that, A be the connection matrix of a k-regular graph and v be the all-ones column vector in Rn. b. In my case I'm also given the weights of each edge. help. For the Love of Physics - Walter Lewin - May 16, 2011 - Duration: 1:01:26. . \\mathbf{x}_2 &=& \\left[0,0,0,\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}},0,0,\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}},\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{3}},0\\right]^T,\\\\ Thus, using this practice, we can find the degree of a vertex easily just by taking the sum of the values in either its respective row or column in the adjacency matrix. That means each edge (i.e., line) adds 1 to the appropriate cell in the matrix, and each loop adds 2. Some of the properties of the graph correspond to the properties of the adjacency matrix, and vice versa. So we can save half the space when representing an undirected graph using adjacency matrix. Cancel. fix matrix. Or does it not matter? The nonzero value indicates the number of distinct paths present. In previous post, BFS only with a particular vertex is performed i.e. To check whether a graph is connected based on its adjacency matrix A, use Then G and H are said to be isomorphic if and only if there is an occurrence of permutation matrix P such that B=PAP-1. One solution is to find all bridges in given graph and then check if given edge is a bridge or not.. A simpler solution is to remove the edge, check if graph remains connect after removal or not, finally add the edge back. it is assumed that all vertices are reachable from the starting vertex.But in the case of disconnected graph or any vertex that is unreachable from all vertex, the previous implementation will not give the desired output, so in this post, a modification is done in BFS. Up to v2 edges if fully connected. The first one will be vertex $v_1$: Initialize the connected component $C_1 = \\{v_1\\}$ and then move across $v_1$'s row in the adjacency matrix. In the case of directed graphs, either the indegree or outdegree might be used, depending on the application. Let us consider a graph in which there are N vertices numbered from 0 to N-1 and E number of edges in the form (i,j).Where (i,j) represent an edge originating from i th vertex and terminating on j th vertex. Can save half the space when representing an undirected graph with vertex set { v1, v2 v3. Not have the same procedure gets us $C_3 = \\ { v_4, v_7, v_8\\$! With a particular vertex is performed i.e and B, a be the connection matrix of a k-regular and... In your question the claw graph, cycle graph, and trees policy and cookie policy the indegree outdegree... Or look for a graph is always a symmetric matrix that is diagnoalizable given one cut-set! No edge is visited twice in a row made from coconut flour to not stick together in.. Maximum cost path in an undirected graph API and consider the adjacency-matrix and representations! 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Has secured a majority, write us at taking a node and using depth first search is$ O |E|. Graph\u2014Depth-First search and breadth-first search using depth first search is $O ( |E| )$ represent:... To get add and Remove edge in adjacency List how to create a graph \u2019 s in! K-Adjacency matrix associated with value aij equals the number of edges then n2 \u2013 e elements in the ith of. Nodes and edges and repeat with a particular vertex is performed i.e the illustration below shows matrices! At any level and professionals in related fields what I wish I said nodes and edges, only 1s. Equals the number of vertices are adjacent or not by finding all reachable vertices any... List and ( ii ) adjacency List and ( ii ) adjacency matrix graph therefore has infinite radius ( 2000... The disconnected graph O a directed graph think about this one be defined in the matrix give information about in! It a memory hog components and conclude with related problems and applications will extend solution!, both methods are equivalent labelling of the solutions of the adjacency matrix has 0 along... Also Read:: C Program for Creation of adjacency matrix of a graph is clearly defined in spectral theory. Tree or is disconnected but contains a cycle 1\ufe0f\u20e3 graphs: a graph G n! It my fitness level or my single-speed bicycle feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS.. Cutout like this risk my visa application for re entering a [ x+3 ] [ y+5 ) an! Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers graphs in my case 'm! Write down the diagonal, returns the ordinary adjacency matrix for disconnected graph adjacency matrix graph. Efficient were you trying to get professionals in related fields and B this is an introduction the! Jump back after absorbing energy and the quantum harmonic oscillator define an undirected graph and digraph classes have a symmetric. 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It is a concrete example to help you picture what I 'm also the... Visited twice in a component yet a real symmetric matrix that is diagnoalizable the protocol will. Write us at our graph is clearly defined in spectral graph theory, an adjacency matrix makes it memory... Good way to represent the information about paths in the graph has e number of edges then n2 e. The Candidate chosen for 1927, and vice versa I wish I said a. Like this will depend on the diagonal Implementation of graphs using the adjacency matrix of a graph (.! ) is the syntax disconnected graph adjacency matrix version of AdjMatrixGraph.java from \u00a74.1 undirected graphs graphs using matrix... The disconnected graph O a directed graph, cycle graph, only contains 1s or 0s its... Walks from vertex I to j in graph theory vertices ), then the vertex I j. More rigid 0 s on the application up should a node be deleted edges in.! Node and using depth first search to find all nodes connected to it having two graphs in adjacency. Cycle or look for a connected graph.In this article, we will learn about undirected graph, intend. Sets Sand Ssuch that jE ( s ; s ) j= 0 the number of edges n2! Related fields terms of service, privacy policy disconnected graph adjacency matrix cookie policy value in the graph a majority,... A connected graph.In this article, we can always find if an undirected graph is made by... Is necessary, to extend any path to obtain a path created, clarification, or responding to answers! And only if there is a good way to represent the information about paths in the face a yet! Which are making rectangular frame more rigid of memory space labelings of the is... A connected graph.In this article discusses the Implementation of graphs do electrons back. Me state that I do not know what algorithms people use to deal with this.! Send us a comment, write us at have a real symmetric matrix, which below. ( j, I have a real symmetric matrix, and complete graph it evidence... Files with all these licenses, tree and graph data structures we use to deal this. Same procedure gets us $C_3$, the adjacency matrix representation of graphs using adjacency. Extend the solution for the disconnected graph therefore has infinite radius ( 2000... K-Adjacency matrix associated with them into your RSS reader article, we will extend the solution the. The end, it 's not crucial # Driver code graph correspond to the properties the! Operations like inEdges and outEdges are expensive when using the adjacency matrix is symmetric of each edge ( )... Either the indegree or outdegree might be used, depending on the representation of a a path created non-linear structure. To j math at any level and professionals in related fields matrix has 0 s the! If it is a path created we introduce two classic algorithms for searching a search. Or adjacency List ; adjacency matrix for the disconnected graph is clearly defined in spectral graph.... Path of length exactly $|V|$ all-ones column vector in Rn Ssuch that jE ( ;... N is given by their representation using adjacency List representation of a graph wastes lot memory. More connected components 's right notation for an undirected graph using adjacency matrix mark the \u2026 which the... By taking a node be deleted your answer \u201d, you agree to our terms service. Graph ( i.e to obtain a path created exit record from the labels how to store them inside computer... The diagonal but since it 's still getting visits, I have a real symmetric matrix is. A disconnected graph adjacency matrix chance of visiting all nodes in this article, we introduced the concept of graphs using List! Only contains 1s or 0s and its diagonal elements are all 0s 's! Its diagonal elements are all 0s you have n't placed in a row List representation of a k-regular graph repeat! $C_3 = \\ { v_4, v_7, v_8\\ }$ a higher energy?!","date":"2021-04-19 15:29:05","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.43904682993888855, \"perplexity\": 929.7525628526141}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.3, \"absolute_threshold\": 20, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-17\/segments\/1618038887646.69\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210419142428-20210419172428-00051.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
For the past few weeks every time I walk past my daughter working on her computer I see her watching the cutest doll videos made by some pretty creative young ladies! There are so many YouTube channels that have been created and videos made not only as slideshows of doll items, but actual scenes, music videos and mini-plays being acted out. What a great way to mix the technology we have today with using your imagination!! Mom approved!
I was really impressed by the YouTube channel "girloftheyearstudios" – she has seriously got an eye for this! In celebration of her 10,000th subscriber to her channel, she created a super sweet music video to the new song "1000 Ships" by Rachel Platten using her dolls and featuring a boy doll, too. Very sweet!
The girl behind this very popular channel is Ali and she also has a blog called, girloftheyearstudios blog (makes sense!), and I am awarding Ali the Doll Diaries Spotlight award for her excellent video skills!
Congrats Ali! Feel free to grab your badge using the code below.
Do you have a favorite YouTube channel that is doll related (and appropriate for all ages!!)? If so, feel free to add it to the linky below by clicking on the frog.
Thirdie! If it isn't a bother, could any of you take a peek at my YouTube channel? It's mlettera.
OMG!!!! I watch her videos all time did anyone watch Ask Asha?
I was wondering when the Doll Halloween parade is, Do you know yet?
Plus how do I enter photos? I'm sort of new here! 🙂 Sorry!
That was a very well done video.
I went to youtube.com and typed in ask asha and i watched the begining of one of the videos.
Zoe – I will be announcing the details of the Doll Halloween Parade by October 1st so stay tuned.
I follow her as well. She has some really nice series. In her videos its as if the dolls are alive themselves. She also is very professional with her writing, and has some really nice scripts, she plans everything out and takes her time on it. Not that you shouldn't have fun with your dolls at home, but when you put someone on youtube, to get those subcribers it has to look like the dolls are coming alive.
Pretty Irish AG- IKR! I <3 that song!
I acually just found this site, don't have a youtube but I have a website (click my name!) PLEASE leave a comment and all that cool stuff! Thank you girloftheyearstudios for being a huge inspiration to me, you make my day every time I watch you! I now love Doll Diaries!
You are welcome Ali! We love your videos and had to recognize you for all your great work.
OMG I can not believe that Ali is on here I love your vedios and your imagination! My favorite series has to be " Behind the Palace Walls" I love it ! Can not wait for a new one! I also hope you can help with the launch of my company American Boy ( The American Boys Collection.) in November – bye Ali and thank you for reading my comment!
Im on youtube and i make doll videos! im djmom70!
Has anyone heard anything about a American girl store in Louisiana ?
I haven't heard anything and just did a search and found nothing. If anyone can confirm this, send me a link.
WATCH. STEPHENSWODADANCER. VIDEOS!!!!!!! SHE IS ONE OF THE MOST AWESOMEST YOUTUBERS EVEEEERRRR! GIRLOFTHEYEARSTUDIOS IS AWESOME, TOO, BUT WATCH SARAH'S VIDEOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NikkiBear – add Stepheswodadancer to the list of awesome video channels in the section at the bottom of the post so we can find it easily.
I LOVE this video so much!!! Ali is so talented at what she does!
How did you turn the "I like you" note being crumpled and the paper boat being folded into stopmotion? wouldn't that be really hard?? | {
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\section{Introduction}
In the 1970s, 't Hooft proposed that QCD has a nontrivial vacuum structure and solved the $U(1)_A$ problem~\cite{Hooft1976,Hooft1976a}. The nontrivial vacuum structure suggests that there is an additional topological term which violates $CP$ symmetry in the QCD Lagrangian. The $CP$ violating term brings a free parameter denoted as $\theta$. Due to the axial anomaly, a chiral rotation of quarks changes $\theta$ and the argument of Yukawa couplings of quarks, while the sum of them is invariant. Thus, the observable strong $CP$ phase in the Standard Model (SM) is
\begin{equation} \label{eq: SM_theta}
\overline{\theta}=\theta+\arg \det (Y_{u} Y_{d}) ,
\end{equation}
where $u,d$ represent up and down type quarks respectively. The measurement of neutron electric dipole moment (EDM) suggests that $|\bar\theta| < 10^{-10}$~\cite{Baker2006}. How to understand the extreme smallness of $\overline{\theta}$ is the well-known strong $CP$ problem.
There are several ways to solve the strong $CP$ problem. One solution is the Nelson-Barr mechanism~\cite{Nelson1984NWCV,Barr1984StSwtPQS}, which assumes $CP$ to be conserved at high energy scale, i.e. the $CP$-violating phases of the CKM matrix and $\overline{\theta}$ are both zero at the high energy scale. While at the low energy scale the $CP$-violating phase $\delta$ of the CKM matrix is reproduced and $\overline{\theta}$ is still fixed to be zero.
An alternative way is utilizing the chiral rotation of fermions to absorb $\overline{\theta}$, when a massless quark or an additional global chiral $U(1)$ symmetry exists. However, the solution with massless quark has been disfavored by the results of Lattice QCD with $m_u= 2.2 ^{+0.5}_{-0.4}~MeV$~\cite{Gasser1982}. The additional global chiral $U(1)$ solution was first proposed by Peccei and Quinn~\cite{Peccei1977,Peccei1977a}. Later, Weinberg~\cite{Weinberg1978ANLB} and Wilczek~\cite{Wilczek1978PoSitPoI} predicted a pseudoscalar as the Goldstone boson called axion from the spontaneous breaking of this additional $U(1)_{PQ}$ symmetry. Although the original Weinberg-Wilczek axion model has been ruled out by experiments~\cite{Bardeen1987}, derived models still survive. The KSVZ~\cite{Kim1979a,Shifman1980a} and the DFSZ~\cite{Dine1981a,zhitnitskii1980possible} are the most typical models among them.
Although the KSVZ and the DFSZ survive from experimental constrains, there exists an additional theoretical issue, the quality problem. Constraints from Astrophysics give the lower bound of the decay constant of axion to be $f_{a}\gtrsim 10^{8} \mathrm{GeV}$~\cite{RaffeltAAB}. There is a general consensus that gravitational effects generate operators suppressed by the Planck scale $M_{\mathrm{Pl}}$, which explicitly break global symmetries. As for the axion model, the explicit breaking effect is estimated by the operators~\cite{Barr1992,Kamionkowski1992}
\begin{equation}\label{eq: gravitational violate}
V(\phi)=g\frac{|\phi|^{2 m} \phi^{n}}{M_{\mathrm{Pl}}^{2 m+n-4}}+h . c . .
\end{equation}
Although these operators are suppressed by the Planck scale, the smallness of strong $CP$ phase and high scale of $\langle\phi\rangle\sim f_{a}$ cause non-negligible effects from the lower dimension operators. Consequentially, the minimum of the scalar potential is shifted and the $CP$ phase $\overline{\theta}$ reappears.
In order to solve this problem, one can impose a discrete symmetry $Z_N$ with large $N$ on $\phi$ so that operators with dimension less than $N$ are forbidden. For $f_a=10^{12}$ $\mathrm{GeV}$, a scale that the axion can serve as dark matter, operators with dimension $2m+n < 14$ are forbidden~\cite{Hook2018TLotSCPaA}. Another idea is to reduce the VEV $\langle\phi\rangle$ while preserving a large $f_a$. The implementation is accomplished in the multiple axion models using the alignment mechanism ~\cite{Kim2005,Choi2014a,Higaki2016} or the Clockwork mechanism~\cite{Bonnefoy2018}. On the other hand, very heavy aixon with $m_{a} \gtrsim O(100) \mathrm{MeV}$ evades the astrophysical constraints~\cite{Fukuda2015AMoVQA}, thus a small $f_a$ is allowed to relax the quality problem. Furthermore, in some composite axion models, gauge invariance forbids operators of high dimension by arranging fermions suitably ~\cite{Randall1992CAMaPSP}.
Additional non-Abelian gauge group is often introduced in various new physics, such as Hidden Valley~\cite{Strassler2006EoaHVaHC}, Vectorlike Confinement~\cite{Kilic2009VCatL} and Twin Higgs~\cite{Chacko2006NEBfaMS}. These extensions of the SM are usually motivated by the Hierarchy problem or dark matter. Furthermore, the $U(1)$ global symmetry to solve the strong $CP$ problem could be the remnant of multi-$U(1)$ symmetry from the hidden strong dynamics. We call this kind of non-Abelian gauge groups as ``hidden QCD" in this paper.
Similar to the SM QCD, the hidden QCD may also contain the $CP$ violation source from the $\theta'G'\tilde{G'}$ term and the relevant fermion Yukawa couplings, though it may or may not influcence the observed neutron EDM. Besides the QCD theta term, there are three types of effective operators directly contributing to the neutron EDM, including the quark EDM, the quark chromo EDM and the three-gluon Weinberg operator~\cite{Weinberg1989LHBETitNEDM,Pospelov2005EDMAPoNP}:
\begin{equation}\begin{aligned}
O_d&=-\frac{i}{2} d \bar{q} \sigma^{\mu \nu} \gamma_{5} q F_{\mu \nu}, \\
O_{\tilde{d}}&=-\frac{i}{2} \tilde{d} \bar{q} \sigma^{\mu \nu} t^{a} \gamma_{5} q G_{\mu \nu}^{a}, \\
O_w&=\frac{1}{3} w f^{a b c} G_{\mu \nu}^{a} \widetilde{G}_{\nu \beta}^{b} G_{\beta \mu}^{c},
\end{aligned}\end{equation}
where $d$ denotes EDM, $\tilde{d}$ denotes chromo EDM, $t^a$ is the generator of the QCD group and $f^{abc}$ denotes the QCD structure constant. The $\theta'G'\tilde{G'}$ term in hidden QCD is not directly related to these operators. However, two typical scenarios will result in the sensitivity of the neutorn EDM to the CP violation in the hidden sector:
\begin{itemize}
\item Two strong $CP$ angels can be associated with each other by introducing a pseudo-scalar. The interaction between the pseudo-scalar and gauged fermions and the chiral rotation of the pseudo-scalar are
\begin{equation}\label{first way}
\begin{aligned}
\mathcal{L}&\sim y_q e^{ina/f_a} q\bar{q} + y_Q e^{ima/f_a} Q\bar{Q}+h.c. , \\
a/f_a&\rightarrow a/f_a+\alpha,
\qquad \theta \rightarrow \theta-n\alpha,
\qquad \theta' \rightarrow \theta'-m\alpha,
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where $q$ and $Q$ notate fermions charged under QCD and hidden QCD respectively. $a$ is the pseudo-scalar. $n$ and $m$ are constants.
\item Fermions charged under both QCD and hidden QCD can link these two $CP$ phases. The chiral rotation of these fermions can change both two phases as
\begin{equation}\label{second way}
\psi_{L}(N_c,N_h)\rightarrow \psi_{L}(N_c,N_h) e^{i\beta} , \qquad \theta \rightarrow \theta-N_h\beta ,
\qquad \theta' \rightarrow \theta'-N_c\beta,
\end{equation}
where $N_c$ and $N_h$ are representation of fermions in QCD and hidden QCD respectively.
\end{itemize}
Under such circumstance, these two angles are needed to be small simultaneously to explain the strong $CP$ problem. An additional global chiral $U(1)$ symmetries is not enough.
Therefore, two global chiral $U(1)$ symmetries are needed, or there is one chiral $U(1)$ symmetry with a $Z_2$ among the two sectors. In this work, we will focus on the first scenario, while the later one is discussed in Ref.~\cite{Rubakov1997,Berezhiani2001a,Albaid2015SCaS,Fukuda2015AMoVQA,Hook2014ASttSCP,Chiang2016}.
Chiral $U(1)$ symmetries are classified into two kinds, according to whether the corresponding axion is elementary or composite.
We refer to the one generating the elementary axion as the $U(1)_{PQ}$ arinsing from the phase of a complex scalar and the one generating composite axion as (also called dynamical axion ~\cite{Choi1985DA}) the $U(1)_A$ arising when massless fermions of the hidden QCD condensate at the high energy scale.
In both scenarios, axions are the Goldstones of these chiral $U(1)$ symmetries. Instanton effects explicitly break these symmetries and determine the properties of axion such as mass and axion-photon coupling. Therefore, new instanton effects of the hidden QCD could enlarge axion mass in some models with $Z_2$ symmetry~\cite{Rubakov1997,Fukuda2015AMoVQA,Gherghetta2016a}
and it could also enhance axion-photon coupling in~\cite{Agrawal2017ETfPCotQA}. Moreover, an additional strong dynamics also provides solutions to quality problem and domain wall problem~\cite{Sikivie1982ADWatEU}.
With hidden QCD introduced, we find new mixed $U(1)$ solutions which contain two sorts of chiral $U(1)$ symmetries. In these cases, spontaneous symmetry breaking of $U(1)_{PQ}$ could be triggered by the dynamical symmetry breaking in the hidden sector, besides the conventional Ginzburg-Landau potential method. The cancellation of $CP$ phases is always viable, except alignment situation. The cancellation of $CP$ phases in the QCD and the hidden QCD sector is shown in section~\ref{section3}. The lightest axion in these models are similar to the QCD axion. Some phenomena of these models are discussed in section~\ref{section4}.
In addition to the new mixed $U(1)$ solution mentinoed above, we also propose a ``moose-like'' diagram method to visualize the cumbersome relations among gauge groups, new fields and CP phases in multi-axion models, from which the $U(1)$ charges for the fields and the potential of the relevant axions and CP phases can be easily read. Moreover, the diagram method helps to construct models containing more $U(1)$ and gauge groups.
This paper is organized as follows. In section~\ref{section2}, we discuss two typical patterns to realize Chiral $U(1)$. Next, in section~\ref{section3}, we give solutions of the strong $CP$ problem, and propose a diagram method to present these solutions.
In section~\ref{section4}, we study the axion mass, axion-photon coupling and axion deacy constant of one-axion solutions and two typical mixed two-axion solutions.
Finally, we summarize the result in section~\ref{section5}.
\section{Pecci-Quinn or Dynamical Solution}
\label{section2}
A large class of models solve the strong $CP$ problem by adding additional global $U(1)$ symmetries. There are mainly two kinds of $U(1)$s: the one in the Pecci-Quinn mechanism~\cite{Peccei1977,Peccei1977a}, denoted as $U(1)_{PQ}$, is associated with a elementary scalar $\phi$; the other is the axial $U(1)_A$ of some massless fermions charged under gauge groups, which induces the dynamical solution~\cite{Choi1985DA}.
Although $U(1)_{PQ}$ and $U(1)_A$ symmetries are different, they solve the strong $CP$ problem with the same philosophy: to make the $CP$ phase dynamically cancelled by introducing a $U(1)$ pseudo-Goldstone boson (PGB) with an anomaly-induced potential. For both scenarios, there are fermions axially charged under the global $U(1)$,
\begin{equation}\label{anormalous transformation}
f_L \rightarrow e^{i\alpha}f_L, \qquad f_R \rightarrow e^{-i\alpha}f_R.
\end{equation}
However, the $U(1)$ is broken in different ways: for Pecci-Quinn mechanism, it is broken by the scalar potential $V(\phi)$, and the PGB turns out to be $a \sim\arg\phi$, the axion; in the dynamical solution, it is broken by condensation of the fermions, and the PGB is a composite of the fermion, also known as the dynamical axion. The common infrared behavior is that both PGB correspond to some axial currents, whose conservation is broken only by anomaly. It inspires a general description of these models, as presented in the following.
In this section, we propose a ``moose-like'' diagram method to uniformly illustrate the structures of the models solving the strong $CP$ problem. The notation of all possible additional fermions introduced are listed in TABLE~\ref{tab: fermion classify}. As an example, we show the structure of the aligned axion model(left)~\cite{Kim2005} and the dynamical axion model(right)~\cite{Choi1985DA} in Fig.~\ref{fig:figure1}. At the left end, we list all the axions, each representing a global $U(1)$, normalized as their proper contributions to the CP phase. Dashed lines link the axions to the fermions, and the numbers on them indicate the corresponding $U(1)$ charges of the fermions. The solid lines with tags show the non-trivial representations of the fermions under the linked gauge groups at the right end, like the color $SU(3)_c$ and the hidden $SU(3)_h$. Circles ($\circ$) on the vertices represent massive fermions; Crosses ($\times$) on the vertexes represent massless fermions.
\begin{table}[htbp]
\caption{Fermion charge and representation}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{c|ccc}
\hline
& {$SU(3)_c$} & {$SU(3)_h$} & $U(1)_{PQ}$ \\
\hline
\hline
$\psi$ & 3 & 3 & 0 \\
$\chi$ & 1 & 3 & 0 \\
\hline
\hline
$Q$ & 3 & 1 & m \\
$Q'$ & 1 & 3 & n \\
\hline
\end{tabular}%
\label{tab: fermion classify}%
\end{table}%
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=1\linewidth]{fig/figure1}
\caption{ In diagram (a), the solid line between Q and $SU(3)_c$ shows that Q is under representation 3 of QCD and the solid line between $Q^\prime$ and $SU(3)_h$ shows that Q is under representation 3 of hidden QCD. The red dashed line between $a_1$ and Q($Q^\prime$) shows that the charge of Q($Q^\prime$) under $U(1)_{PQ}$ is $m_1$($n_1$). Similarly, blue dashed line shows that the charge of Q($Q^\prime$) under $U(1)_{PQ^\prime}$ is $m_2$($n_2$). $1/f_{a_1}$ and $1/f_{a_2}$ are scale factors for two $U(1)$s. In diagram (b), solid lines show that $\psi$ is under representation 3 for both QCD and hidden QCD, and $\chi$ is a singlet for QCD but under representation 3 for hidden QCD. Red dashed lines show that the ratio of $\psi$ and $\chi$ in $\eta_h^\prime$ current is 1:1, which is similar to $U(1)$ charge in the left one at infrared region. The only difference is one more normalization factor $\sqrt{2}/2$ in front of the scale factor $1 / f_{\pi_h}$. Similarly, blue lines show that the ratio of $\psi$ and $\chi$ in $\pi_h$ current is 1:-3. The normalization factor is $\sqrt{6}/6$ and the scale factor is $1 / f_{\pi_h}$.}
\label{fig:figure1}
\end{figure}
The alignment axion model has been widely discussed in the literature~\cite{Kim2005,Choi2014a,Kappl2014a}. $SU(3)_h$ is introduced with a new free parameter of $CP$-violation $\theta'$. As shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:figure1}(a), massive fermions $Q(3,1)$ and $Q'(1,3)$ are charged under both $U(1)_{PQ}$ symmetry and $U(1)_{PQ'}$ symmetry. When $U(1)_{PQ}$ is broken, axion is left as a pseudo-Goldstone boson. The corresponding current is
\begin{equation}\label{eq: Q current}
\begin{aligned}
J^\mu_{PQ}&=f_{a_1} \partial_{\mu}a_1+m_1\overline{Q}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5Q+n_1\overline{Q'}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5Q', \\
J^\mu_{PQ'}&=f_{a_2} \partial_{\mu}a_2+m_2\overline{Q}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5Q+n_2\overline{Q'}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5Q', \\
\partial_{\mu}J^\mu_{PQ}&=\frac{m_1g^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} G_{a}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G}_{a \mu \nu}+\frac{n_1{g'}^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} {G'}_{A}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G'}_{A \mu \nu}, \\
\partial_{\mu}J^\mu_{PQ'}&=\frac{m_2g^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} G_{a}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G}_{a \mu \nu}+\frac{n_2{g'}^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} {G'}_{A}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G'}_{A \mu \nu}.
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where $G_{a}^{\mu \nu}$ and ${G'}_{A}^{\mu \nu}$ are strength tensors of gauge fields for QCD and hidden QCD respectively. $g$ and $g'$ are couplings of gauge interactions. In some papers, the hidden sector is extended to a ``mirrored SM'' with massive fermions $u'$ and $d'$ that do not carry $U(1)_{PQ}$ charge like u and d in the SM~\cite{Gherghetta2016a,Hook2014ASttSCP}.
The main structure of the dynamical solution~\cite{Choi1985DA} is shown in Fig~\ref{fig:figure1}(b). Similar to the aligned axion model, $SU(3)_h$ is introduced with a new $CP$ parameter $\theta'$. Two massless fermions $\psi$ and $\chi$ are introduced to absorb $CP$-violating phases $\theta$ and $\theta'$ through a $U(1)_A$ transformation. It's common to assume that $SU(3)_h$ will confine just like QCD at a scale $f_{\pi_h}$ which is much higher than QCD confining scale $f_\pi$. The related currents are
\begin{equation}\label{eq: anomalous current1}
\begin{aligned}
J^\mu_{A}(\psi)&=\overline{\psi}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5\psi, \quad J^\mu_{A}(\chi)=\overline{\chi}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5\chi \\
\partial_{\mu}J^\mu_{A}(\psi)&=\frac{3g^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} F_{a}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{F}_{a \mu \nu}+\frac{3g'^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} G_{A}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G}_{A \mu \nu}, \\
\partial_{\mu}J^\mu_{A}(\chi)&=\frac{g'^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} G_{A}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G}_{A \mu \nu},
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
Below the scale $f_{\pi_h}$, we assume the hidden sector has a dynamical chiral symmetry breaking caused by the fermion condensate with
\begin{equation}\label{condensate}
\langle\bar{\psi} \psi\rangle \approx - c_\psi f_{\pi_h}^{3}, \qquad \langle\bar{\chi} \chi\rangle \approx - c_\chi f_{\pi_h}^{3},
\end{equation}
where $c_\psi$,$c_\chi$ are constants and $f_{\pi_h} \gg f_\pi$. Considering QCD as an additional ``flavor symmetry'', there is a $SU(4)_L\times SU(4)_R$ symmetry between $\psi$ and $\chi$. After the condensate of hidden QCD, $\pi_h^a$ are Goldstones corresponding to coset generators of $SU(4)_L\times SU(4)_R/SU(4)_V$. The decomposition of $\pi_h^a$ into $SU(3)_c$ is
\begin{equation}
15=8+3+\overline{3}+1.
\end{equation}
The QCD color-singlet scalar is denoted as $\pi_h\equiv \pi_h^{15}$ for short. And the rest 14 colored scalars are supposed to be heavy because of QCD condensate. However, there is one more color-singlet scalar $\eta_{h}^{\prime}$ related to the $U(1)_A$ symmetry. The corresponding currents related to these two fields are
\begin{equation}\label{current 12}
\begin{aligned}
J_\mu(\pi_h)&=\dfrac{1}{\sqrt{6}}(\overline{\psi}^c \gamma_\mu\gamma_{5} \psi_c-3\overline{\chi} \gamma_\mu\gamma_{5}\chi), \\
J_\mu(\eta_{h}^{\prime})&=\dfrac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(\overline{\psi}^c \gamma_\mu\gamma_{5} \psi_c+\overline{\chi} \gamma_\mu\gamma_{5}\chi),
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where `c' is the color index for $\psi$. These currents have been normalized and we have chosen $tr(T^aT^b)=2\delta^{ab}$ as normalization of $SU(4)$ generators. The specific matrices of $SU(4)$ generators and details of derivation are shown in Appendix~\ref{A1}. As a result of condensate, we can use $\pi_h$ and $\eta_{h}^{\prime}$ standing for the $U(1)_A$ symmetry at low energy scale. $\theta$ and $\theta'$ can be offseted when $\pi_h$ and $\eta_{h}^{\prime}$ take VEVs.
\section{Cancellation of the Strong $CP$ Phase}
\label{section3}
When considering the extension of the SM, new contributions to the strong $CP$ violation are introduced. Therefore, the strong $CP$ phase $\overline{\theta}$ needs to be modified. For distinction, the modified strong $CP$ phase is notated as $\theta_{phy}$. In this section, we discuss these new contributions and methods to solve the strong $CP$ problem. The difficulty is that $\overline{\theta}$ is at order $ 1$ but $\theta_{phy}$ is at order $ 10^{-10}$. Axion models and dynamic solutions both solve this difficulty by canceling $\theta_{phy}$ at the minimal point of goldstone potential, which links $\theta_{phy}$ with $\overline{\theta}$.
To calculate $\theta_{phy}$ which describes $CP$ violation effects at the scale lower than $\Lambda_{QCD}$, Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) is used to match fields of quarks with fields of hadrons. Indeed, it is sufficient to consider ChPT with two light quarks $u$ and $d$. The Lagrangian for QCD with an axion at hadron level is~\cite{Kuster2008A}
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{L}_2=\dfrac{f_\pi^2}{4} \mathrm{Tr} \left( \partial_{\mu}U\partial^\mu U^\dagger\right) +A f_\pi^3 \mathrm{Tr} \left(MU^\dagger+UM^\dagger \right)+B f_\pi^4\left(\theta+ \frac{a}{f_a}+\frac{i}{2} \mathrm{Tr}\left(\log U-\log U^{\dagger}\right)\right)^2 ,
\end{equation}
with
\begin{equation}
U=\exp\left[ \dfrac{ i\left( \pi^a\tau^a+I \eta \right) }{f_\pi} \right], \qquad M=
\begin{pmatrix}
m_u & 0 \\
0 & m_d
\end{pmatrix} ,
\end{equation}
where $\pi^a$, $\eta$ are mesons and $a$ is the aixon. $A$ and $B$ are dimensionless parameters matched by meson masses. Here $\tau^a$ are Pauli matrices and $I$ is the identity matrix. For convenience, we set the matrix of quark mass to be real in the rest of this paper, leading to $\theta=\overline{\theta}$. The potential part is shown as
\begin{equation}\label{eq: QCD potential}
V = -2Af_\pi^3 \left[ m_u\cos(\frac{\pi^0+\eta}{f_\pi})+m_d\cos(\frac{\pi^0-\eta}{f_\pi})\right] +Bf_\pi ^4\left( \frac{2\eta}{f_\pi}+\theta+ \frac{a}{f_a}\right) ^2.
\end{equation}
For convenience, $\left\langle\pi^0\right\rangle/f_\pi$, $\left\langle\eta\right\rangle/f_\pi$ and $\left\langle a\right\rangle/f_a$ are defined as phases $\phi_1$, $\phi_2$ and $\phi_a$ respectively.
Considering $CP$ transformation, $\pi^0$, $\eta$ and $a$ are changed into $-\pi^0$, $-\eta$ and $-a$. Once $CP$ is conserved in eq.~\eqref{eq: QCD potential}, these phases need to meet
\begin{equation}\label{$CP$ conserved1}
\phi_1+\phi_2=0, \qquad \phi_1-\phi_2=0, \qquad 2\phi_2+\theta+\phi_a=0,
\end{equation}
which is equivalent to
\begin{equation}\label{$CP$ conserved2}
\phi_1=\phi_2=0, \qquad \theta+\phi_a=0.
\end{equation}
Considering the derivative of the effective potential in eq.~\eqref{eq: QCD potential} with respect to $\pi^0$, $\eta$ and $a$, eq.~\eqref{$CP$ conserved2} is exactly the solution at the minimal point of the potential. New contributions from $U(1)$ symmetries are described by phase $\phi_a$. Finally, the $CP$-violating observable $\theta_{phy}$ is gotten as
\begin{equation}\label{eq:theta}
\theta_{phy}=\theta+\phi_a=\theta+\frac{\left\langle a \right\rangle}{f_a}.
\end{equation}
The strong $CP$ problem is solved by the offset of axion VEV and the phase $\theta$ to ensure $\theta_{phy}=0$. Axion mass can also be derived from eq.~\eqref{eq: QCD potential} as
\begin{equation}\label{axion mass}
m_{a}^2 =m_{\pi}^2 \frac{f_\pi^2}{f_a^2}\frac{m_u m_d}{(m_u+m_d)^2}.
\end{equation}
From this QCD axion model, it can be found that $\theta_{phy}$ needs to be modified due to the new contribution from axion. Similar absorption happens in other axion models and dynamical solutions.
For a general hidden QCD model with new fermions added, two UV free parameters, $ \theta$ and $ \theta'$, have to be introduced. In general cases, the potential term induced by the instanton effect is
\begin{equation}\label{eq: theta_thetaprime potential}
V_\theta = B_1f_\pi ^4\left( \sum_{i=1}^2 m_i \frac{a^i}{f_{a_i}}+\theta\right) ^2+B_2f_{\pi_h} ^4\left( \sum_{i=1}^2 n_i \frac{a^i}{f_{a_i}}+\theta' \right) ^2,
\end{equation}
where $m$ and $n$ stand for different anomalous charges.
$\footnote {It's more complex for dynamical solutions, because normalization factor also has to be included in this $m$ and $n$.}$
Strong $CP$ problems for both QCD and hidden QCD can be solved only satisfying
\begin{equation}\label{eq: theta_hid_QCD}
\begin{aligned}
\theta_{phy}&=\theta+ \frac{\left\langle \eta ' \right\rangle}{f_\pi} + \theta_{U(1)} =0,\\
\theta'_{phy}&=\theta'+\theta'_{U(1)} =0.
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
In the preceding equation, $ \left\langle \eta ' \right\rangle$ means the contribution from VEV of $\eta'$, which can be absorbed by redefinition of $\theta$. We are not interested in it, so we will absorb it with $\theta$ in the following discussion. $ \theta_{U(1)}$ and $ \theta'_{U(1)}$ come from axion VEVs.
In following subsections, we discuss the $\theta$ cancellation of eq.~\eqref{eq: theta_hid_QCD} in some specific models with different $U(1)$ symmetries.
\subsection{One U(1)}
As shown in eq.~\eqref{eq: theta_hid_QCD}, there are two degrees of freedom needed to absorb both $\theta$ and $ \theta'$. When only one $U(1)$ is introduced, there is only one new degree of freedom. That means $\theta$ and $ \theta'$ cannot be absorbed simultaneously and the strong $CP$ problem cannot be solved.
To solve this problem, a mirrored $Z_2$ symmetry has to be introduced between $SU(3)_{c}$ in the SM and $SU(3)_h$ in the hidden sector.
In UV theories, some models can achieve this by embedding these two $SU(3)$ into a larger gauge symmetry group $SU(6)$~\cite{Gherghetta2016a}. Consequently, two $CP$ phases are forced to be identical, which means
\begin{equation}\label{Z_2}
\theta= \theta' .
\end{equation}
As shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:oneu1}, the additional $U(1)$ could be achieved by two methods. One method introduces an axion with $U(1)_{PQ}$(left) and the other uses massless $\psi(3,3)$ with $U(1)_{A}$(right). There are detailed discussions about both two methods in literature~\cite{Rubakov1997,Berezhiani2001a,Hook2014ASttSCP,Fukuda2015AMoVQA,Albaid2015SCaS,Chiang2016}. For the left one, cancellation eq.~\eqref{eq: theta_hid_QCD} becomes
\begin{equation}
\theta_{phy}^{\prime}= \theta_{phy}=\theta+\frac{\left\langle a\right\rangle}{f_a}=0 .
\end{equation}
For the right one, as shown in Appendix~\ref{A1}, the cancellation eq.~\eqref{eq: theta_hid_QCD} is deduced to
\begin{equation}
\theta_{phy}^{\prime}= \theta_{phy}= \theta+\sqrt{6}\dfrac{\left\langle \eta'_{h} \right\rangle }{f_{\pi_h}} =0 .
\end{equation}
In both cases, the strong $CP$ problem will be solved by only one $U(1)$ symmetry. And the $CP$-violating effects from $\theta$ and $\theta'$ will be counteracted by $ \left\langle a\right\rangle$ or $ \left\langle \eta'_{h} \right\rangle $.
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=1\linewidth]{fig/figure2}
\caption{(a): Structure of $U(1)_{PQ}$ models with mirror symmetry. (b): Structure of $U(1)_{A}$ dynamic solutions with mirror symmetry.}
\label{fig:oneu1}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Two Similar U(1)s}
As in the previous subsection, models with two $U(1)$ freedoms can also be sorted by the different mechanism of $U(1)$ symmetries. As shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:figure1}, models could contain two $U(1)_{PQ}$ or two $U(1)_{A}$ symmetries. For these kinds of models, axial currents are determined by representations of fermions in $SU(3)_c$ and $SU(3)_h$. The cancellation equation of $\theta$ and $\theta'$ will be determined by these currents and different $U(1)$ charge for fermions.
Here shows another advantage of our diagram method that the cancellation equation can be read easily. Fig.~\ref{fig:figure1}(a) shows models with two $U(1)_{PQ}$ symmetries. Choosing $SU(3)_c$ as the starting point responsible for $\theta$, we can find all possible links end at left side. Notice these links can only go from right to left. The cancelling phase of each link is the product of the charge number on the dashed line and the scale factor at the end point on the left. Finally we can sum all offset terms from different links together. For $\theta'$, the starting point will be changed into $SU(3)_h$, then repeat these steps. The cancellation equations from our diagram read
\begin{equation}\label{eq: theta_axion_}
\begin{aligned}
\theta_{phy}&=\theta+ m_1\dfrac{\left\langle a_1\right\rangle }{f_{a_1}} +m_2\dfrac{\left\langle a_2\right\rangle }{f_{a_2}}=0, \\
\theta_{phy}^{\prime}&=\theta'+ n_1\dfrac{\left\langle a_1\right\rangle }{f_{a_1}}+n_2\dfrac{\left\langle a_2\right\rangle }{f_{a_2}}=0 .
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
This two-axion model is widely discussed. When the angle between vectors $(m_1,m_2)$ and $(n_1,n_2)$ is near zero (but not zero) on the contrast to the large m and n, it is exactly the `alignment axion' model~\cite{Kim2005,Choi2014a}.
Models with two $U(1)_A$ symmetries provided by massless fermions have similar expressions for $CP$-violating angles. In Fig.~\ref{fig:figure1}(b), $M_\psi=0$ and $M\chi=0$ are supposed. The corresponding currents has been given in eq.~\eqref{current 12}. It's a little more complex to read cancellation equations for this model from the figure. There will be two more things to notice. First, the normalization factor has been already written together with scale factor. Second, the degeneracy should be multiplied for each link, which comes from the color index of the other $SU(3)$ outside the link. The degeneracy can be read from the number for representation on other solid lines attached to the fermion field in the link. For example, the degeneracy of the link, ``$SU(3)_c \rightarrow \psi \rightarrow \pi_h$", will be the number `3' on the solid line attached $\psi$ and $SU(3)_h$. When sum all links together, this link should be multiplied by 3. The final cancellation equations are
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
\theta_{phy}&=\theta+ \frac{\sqrt{6}}{2}\dfrac{\left\langle \pi_h\right\rangle }{f_{h}} +\frac{3\sqrt{2}}{2}\dfrac{\left\langle \eta'_{h}\right\rangle }{f_{h}}=0, \\
\theta_{phy}^{\prime}&=\theta'+ 2\sqrt{2}\dfrac{\left\langle \eta'_{h}\right\rangle }{f_{h}}=0 .
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
The cancellation equations of other figures can also be read in this way.
\subsection{Two Different U(1)s}
In these two-$U(1)$ solutions, $U(1)$s need not to be the same, which means models of one $U(1)_{PQ}$ and one $U(1)_A$ is possible. Here we show two simple examples of that new kind of models in Fig.~\ref{fig: two U_1}.
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=1\linewidth]{fig/figure3}
\caption{Structure of models with mixed $U(1)$s. (a) Model A: the spontaneous breaking of $U(1)_{PQ}$ is independent with hidden QCD. (b) Model B: the dynamical symmetry breaking of hidden QCD induces $U(1)_{PQ}$ breaking.}
\label{fig: two U_1}
\end{figure}
The mixed solution of $U(1)_{PQ}$ and $U(1)_A$ would be more complex, for the reason that two independent scales, $f_{h}$ and $f_a$, are simultaneously involved. $f_{h}$ is the condensate scale of hidden QCD fermions, while $f_a$ is the spontaneously breaking scale of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry. Fig.~\ref{fig: two U_1}(a) shows model A in which $U(1)_{PQ}$ is spontaneous broken independently with the hidden QCD. The result of cancellation equations in this model is
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
\theta_{phy}&=\theta+\sqrt{6}\dfrac{\left\langle \eta'_{h} \right\rangle }{f_{h}}+ m\dfrac{\left\langle a\right\rangle }{f_a}=0, \\
\theta_{phy}^{\prime}&=\theta'+\sqrt{6}\dfrac{\left\langle \eta'_{h} \right\rangle }{f_{h}}+ n\dfrac{\left\langle a\right\rangle }{f_a}=0 .
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
Fig.~\ref{fig: two U_1}(b) shows model B in which the spontaneous breaking of $U(1)_{PQ}$ is induced by the hidden QCD . The cancellation equations are
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
\theta_{phy}&=\theta+\dfrac{3}{\sqrt{2}}\dfrac{\left\langle \eta'_{h} \right\rangle }{f_{h}}+\dfrac{3}{\sqrt{6}}\dfrac{\left\langle \pi_h \right\rangle }{f_{h}}=0, \\
\theta_{phy}^{\prime}&=\theta'+2\sqrt{2}\dfrac{\left\langle \eta'_{h} \right\rangle }{f_{h}}+ n\dfrac{\left\langle a\right\rangle }{f_a}=0 .
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
It seems that redundancy exists in these equations, as there are three VEVs to absorb two $\theta$ parameters. However, there is an additional equation constraining these three VEVs from the Yukawa term of $Q'$, as shown in~\eqref{L_mass} in the next section.
\section{Phenomenology}
\label{section4}
In this section, we study phenomena in the one-axion solution and the mixed two-axion solution, which can not directly be acquired from diagrams in the last section. We compare the axion masses in these two kinds of solutions. We also discuss the relation between the physical axion decay constant $F_a$ and the axion-photon coupling $g_{a\gamma\gamma}$ in the mixed two-axion solution.
\subsection{One-axion Solution}
The one axion solution is exactly the implementation of the visible axion model in which axion mass is enhanced by the condensate scale of the hidden QCD. We illustrate this with a specific model shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:oneu1}(a). In this model, there is only one $U(1)_{PQ}$ chiral symmetry. The corresponding current and its divergence are
\begin{equation}
J^\mu_{PQ}=f_a \partial_{\mu}a+m\overline{Q}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5Q+m\overline{Q'}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5Q', \qquad
\partial_{\mu}J^\mu_{PQ}=\frac{mg^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} F_{a}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{F}_{a \mu \nu}+\frac{mg'^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} G_{A}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G}_{A \mu \nu}.
\end{equation}
At the low energy scale, the axion mass term stems from the instanton effects of QCD and the hidden QCD. Therefore, the mass terms are
\begin{equation}
-\mathcal{L}_{\text{mass}}=\cdots + \Lambda_c^4 \left(\frac{ma}{f_{a}}\right)^2+\Lambda_h^4 \left(\frac{ma}{f_{a}}\right)^{2},
\end{equation}
where $\Lambda_c$ and $\Lambda_h$ denote the confinement scale of QCD and the hidden QCD respectively. Due to the contribution from the high energy scale $\Lambda_h$, the axion mass could be much heavier than KSVZ or DFSZ axion. Different phenomena of the heavy axion may appear in collider experiments or rare decay of mesons~\cite{Gherghetta2016a}.
\subsection{Two-axion Solution}
In two-axion solutions with extra hidden QCD, the light mass eigenstate always exists and can be treated as an invisible axion, even if $\Lambda_h$ is much higher than QCD scale $\Lambda_c$. We illustrate this with the mass matrix of axions by a perturbative method. The Lagrangian of the mass part can be expressed as
\begin{equation}\label{L_two_axions_mass}
-\mathcal{L}_{\text{mass}}=\cdots + \Lambda_c^4 \left(\frac{m_1a_1}{f_{a_1}}+\frac{m_2a_2}{f_{a_2}}\right)^2+\Lambda_h^4 \left(\frac{n_1a_1}{f_{a_1}}+\frac{n_2a_2}{f_{a_2}}\right)^{2},
\end{equation}
where $f_{a_1}$ and $ f_{a_2}$ are scale factors. Anomaly coefficients of axions are denoted as $m_1,\ m_2,\ n_1$ and $n_2$. The corresponding mass matrix can be expressed as
\begin{equation}
\Lambda_c^4\begin{pmatrix}
m_1^2\frac{1}{f_{a_1}^2} &m_1m_2\frac{1}{f_{a_1}f_{a_2}} \\
m_1m_2\frac{1}{f_{a_1}f_{a_2}} & m_1^2\frac{1}{f_{a_2}^2}
\end{pmatrix}
+
\Lambda_h^4\begin{pmatrix}
n_1^2\frac{1}{f_{a_1}^2} &n_1n_2\frac{1}{f_{a_1}f_{a_2}} \\
n_1n_2\frac{1}{f_{a_1}f_{a_2}} & n_1^2\frac{1}{f_{a_2}^2}
\end{pmatrix} .
\end{equation}
Since $\Lambda_h \gg \Lambda_c$, the first matrix with respect to $\Lambda_c $ can be treated as perturbation. Considering zero order approximation, the heavy degree of freedom is denoted as
\begin{equation}\label{A}
A \propto \frac{n_1a_1}{f_{a_1}}+\frac{n_2a_2}{f_{a_2}},
\end{equation}
while the massless one is in the orthogonal direction with $A$ in field space, which is
\begin{equation}\label{a}
a \propto \frac{n_2a_1}{f_{a_2}}-\frac{n_1a_2}{f_{a_1}}.
\end{equation}
Replacing $(a_1,\ a_2)$ with $(A,\ a)$, eq.~\eqref{L_two_axions_mass} becomes
\begin{equation}\label{diagonalized}
-\mathcal{L}_{\text{mass}}=\cdots + \Lambda_c^4 \left(\cos\alpha\frac{a}{F_a}+\sin\alpha\frac{A}{F_A}\right)^2+\Lambda_h^4 \left(\frac{A}{F_A}\right)^{2},
\end{equation}
where $F_A$ ($F_a$) is the decay constant of heavy axion ( light axion) after diagonalization and normalization. $\alpha$ is the mixing angle. In general, $F_a$ and $F_A$ are comparable. Therefore, the heavier one has a mass of $m_A^2 \sim \Lambda_h^4/F_A^2$ and the lighter one has a mass of $m_a \sim \Lambda_c^4/F_a^2$.
The lighter axion is exactly the invisible QCD axion.
In the following part, we discuss two specific models of different breaking mechanisms in mixed two-axion solutions. The model with two independently breaking $U(1)$ symmetries (model A) is shown in Fig.~\ref{fig: two U_1}(a) and the model with one breaking $U(1)$ symmetry induced by the other (model B) is shown in Fig.~\ref{fig: two U_1}(b). The main difference between these two models is whether the symmetry breaking of $U(1)_{PQ}$ is induced by the breaking of $U(1)_A$.
Chiral symmetries are same in both cases. The corresponding currents and its divergence of these models are
\begin{equation}\label{eq: anomalous current}
\begin{aligned}
J^\mu_{A}&=\dfrac{\sqrt{6}}{3}\overline{\psi}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5\psi, \qquad J^\mu_{PQ}=f_a \partial_{\mu}a+(m\overline{Q}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5Q)+n\overline{Q'}\gamma^\mu\gamma_5Q', \\
\partial_{\mu}J^\mu_{A}&=\frac{\sqrt{6}g^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} G_{a}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G}_{a \mu \nu}+\frac{\sqrt{6}g'^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} {G'}_{A}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G'}_{A \mu \nu}, \\
\partial_{\mu}J^\mu_{PQ}&=\frac{mg^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} G_{a}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G}_{a \mu \nu}+\frac{ng'^{2}}{16 \pi^{2}} {G'}_{A}^{\mu \nu} \tilde{G'}_{A \mu \nu},
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where we set the anomaly coefficient $m=0$ in the second model for simplicity.
\subsubsection{Model A}
\label{indenpent}
In model A, the spontaneous breaking of two chiral $U(1)$ symmetries comes from different mechanisms. The $U(1)_{PQ}$ symmetry is broken by the effective potential of the complex scalar $\phi$, while $U(1)_{A}$ is broken by the condensate of massless fermion $\psi$. Therefore, these two scales are independent. The only source of explicit breaking comes from the instanton effects contributing to masses of both axions. The mass-relevant Lagrangian is
\begin{equation}\label{eq:L_mass}
-\mathcal{L}_{\text{mass}}=\cdots + bf_\pi^4 \left(\frac{\sqrt{6}\eta^{\prime}_h}{f_{\pi_h}}+\frac{ma}{f_{a}}\right)^2+b'f_{\pi_h}^4 \left(\frac{\sqrt{6}\eta^{\prime}_h}{f_{\pi_h}}+\frac{na}{f_{a}}\right)^{2},
\end{equation}
where the first(second) term stems from QCD(hidden QCD) instanton effects with $f_{\pi_h} \gg f_\pi$. After diagonalizing the mass matrix, we find the lighter mass eigenstate $a_{phy}$ to be
\begin{equation}\label{axion mass 1}
a_{\text{phy}}=\dfrac{nf_{\pi_h} \eta^{\prime}_h-\sqrt{6} f_{a} a}{\sqrt{{6f^2_a+n^2}f_{\pi_h}^2}},
\end{equation}
with its mass and decay constant are
\begin{equation}\label{F_a}
m_{a_\text{phy}}^2F_{a_\text{phy}}^2 =m_{\pi}^2 f_\pi^2\frac{m_u m_d}{(m_u+m_d)^2}, \qquad F_{a_\text{phy}}=\dfrac{\sqrt{{6f^2_a+n^2}f_{\pi_h}^2}}{\sqrt{6}|m-n|}.
\end{equation}
Furthermore, the axion-photon coupling $g_{{a_{phy}} \gamma \gamma}$ can be defined as
\begin{equation}\label{eq:L_arr}
\begin{aligned}
\mathcal{L}_{{a_{phy}} \gamma \gamma}=\frac{1}{4}g_{{a_\text{phy}} \gamma \gamma}a F_{\mu \nu} \tilde{F}^{\mu \nu}=\frac{1}{4} (g_{{a_\text{phy}} \gamma \gamma}^\text{IR}+g_{{a_\text{phy}} \gamma \gamma}^\text{UV})a F_{\mu \nu} \tilde{F}^{\mu \nu} ,
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where $g_{{a_\text{phy}}\gamma \gamma}^\text{IR}$ comes from the mixing between axion and $\pi^0$, The latest result is accurate to NLO~\cite{Cortona2015}, which is
\begin{equation}
g_{{a_\text{phy}} \gamma \gamma}^\text{IR}=-1.92(4) \frac{\alpha_{\mathrm{em}}}{2 \pi F_{a_\text{phy}}}.
\end{equation}
The UV part is model-dependent. In this model, $g_{a \gamma \gamma}^\text{UV}$ has contribution from the mixing of $\eta'_h$ and $a$. the interactions by anomaly effect between $\eta'_h$, $a$ and photon can be written as
\begin{equation}\label{garr1}
\mathcal{L}_{a\gamma \gamma}=\left(\sqrt 6q^2_\psi \frac{\eta^{\prime}_h}{f_{\pi_h}}+6(q_Q^2+q_{Q'}^2)\frac{a}{f_{a}} \right) \frac{\alpha_{\mathrm{em}}}{4\pi}F_{\mu \nu} \tilde{F}^{\mu \nu},
\end{equation}
where $q_\psi$, $q_Q$ and $q_{Q'}$ denote the electric charge of each particles. Therefore,
\begin{equation}\label{coupling}
g_{{a_\text{phy}}\gamma\gamma}^\text{UV}=\dfrac{nq^2_\psi-6(q_Q^2+q_{Q'}^2)}{2|m-n|}\frac{\alpha_{\mathrm{em}}}{2 \pi F_{a_\text{phy}}}.
\end{equation}
When setting $n\gg|m-n|$, the UV contribution of the axion-photon coupling is enlarged. Meanwhile the physical axion decay constant meets the condition $F_{a_\text{phy}} \gg f_a $ as shown in eq.~\eqref{F_a}. This result is actually a special case of `alignment axion' models~\cite{Kim2005,Choi2014a}.
\subsubsection{Model B}
\label{induced}
In model B, the spontaneous breaking of $U(1)_{PQ}$ is triggered by the condensate of the light fermion $Q'$ in the hidden sector. Thus two breaking scales are related. We assume the potential of the complex scalar $\phi$ containing only a quadratic term with $\mu^2 > 0$. The Yukawa term of $Q'$ will induce a tadpole term of $\phi$ after the chiral symmetry breaking in the hidden sector. The Lagrangian after the chiral symmery breaking is
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}\label{Lag}
\mathcal{L}_\text{CSB}&=\partial_{\mu}\phi\partial^{\mu}\phi^*-\mu^2\phi^2
+\dfrac{f_{\pi_h}^{2}}{4} \text{Tr} \partial_{\mu} \Sigma \partial^{\mu} \Sigma^{\dagger}+a' f_{\pi_h}^{3} \text{Tr}\left(H\Sigma^{\dagger}+H^{\dagger} \Sigma\right)+\cdots, \\
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where
\begin{equation}
\Sigma=\exp\left[ \dfrac{ i\left( \pi_h^aT^a+\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}I_{4\times 4} \eta'_h \right) }{f_\pi} \right] ,
\qquad
H=
\begin{pmatrix}
0 & & & \\
& 0 & & \\
& & 0 & \\
& & & y\phi
\end{pmatrix} .
\end{equation}
Here $T^a$ are generators of the $SU(4)$ group meeting the trace condition $\text{Tr}(T^aT^b)=2\delta^{ab} $. The anomalous term is omitted in eq.~\eqref{Lag}. Matrix $H$, the Yukawa terms of $\psi$ and $Q'$, is treated as a spurion field transforming as an adjoint representation under the $SU(4)_V$. The third term in eq.~\eqref{Lag} is the linear term of $\phi$ which triggers $U(1)_{PQ}$ breaking. Specifically, the complex scalar $\phi$ is parameterized as $\phi=\rho e^{i\left( na/{f_a} \right)} $. The effective potential of $\rho$ and $a$ is
\begin{equation}\label{potential phi}
V(\rho,a)=\mu^{2} \rho^{2}-2a' y\rho f_{\pi_h}^{3} \cos \left(n\frac{a}{f_a}+\cdots \right),
\end{equation}
where $``\cdots"$ omits contributions from other composite scalars. Then we can estimate the VEV of $\rho$ to be $\left\langle \rho \right\rangle=f_a/\sqrt{2} \sim 2y\dfrac{a'f_{\pi_h}^3}{\mu^2} $. Utilizing the anomalous currents in eq.~\eqref{eq: anomalous current} and currents of $\pi_h$ and $\eta'_{h}$ in eq.~\eqref{current 12}, the mass terms of scalars in Lagrangian eq.~\eqref{Lag} becomes
\begin{equation}\label{L_mass}
-\mathcal{L}_{\text{mass}}=bf_\pi^4\left[ \sqrt{6}\left(\dfrac{1}{2}\dfrac{\pi_h}{f_{\pi_h}}
+\dfrac{\sqrt{3}}{2}\dfrac{\eta^{\prime}_h}{f_{\pi_h}}\right)\right]^2+
a'y\dfrac{f_af_{\pi_h}^{3}}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\dfrac{na}{f_a}-\dfrac{3}{\sqrt{6}}\frac{\pi_h}{f_{\pi_h}}+\dfrac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \frac{\eta_{h}^{\prime}}{f_{\pi_h}} \right)^2
+
b'f_{\pi_h}^4 \left(\frac{2\sqrt{2}\eta^{\prime}_h}{f_{\pi_h}}\right)^{2},
\end{equation}
where the second term stems from the Yukawa term of $Q'$.
The $na/f_a$ in second term could move to the third term by a chiral rotation $\theta' \rightarrow \theta'+na/f_a $ and generates additional differential interaction of $a$.
By means of the same steps in the former subsection, the lightest mass eigenstate is
\begin{equation}\label{axion mass 2}
a_{phy}=\dfrac{nf_{\pi_h} \pi_h+3/\sqrt{6} f_{a} a}{\sqrt{{3/2f^2_a+n^2}f_{\pi_h}^2}}, \qquad F_{a_\text{phy}}=\dfrac{2\sqrt{3/2f^2_a+n^2f_{\pi_h}^2}}{\sqrt{6}|n|}.
\end{equation}
The $g_{a\gamma\gamma}^{\text{UV}}$ coming from $\pi_h$ to $\gamma\gamma$ is
\begin{equation}\label{garr2}
\mathcal{L}_{\pi_h\gamma\gamma}=\dfrac{\sqrt{6}}{2}(q^2_\psi-q^2_{Q^{\prime}}) \frac{\pi_h}{f_{\pi_h}} \frac{\alpha_{\mathrm{em}}}{4\pi}F^{\mu \nu} \tilde{F}_{\mu \nu}.
\end{equation}
Therefore, the UV part contribution of light axion is
\begin{equation}\label{coupling2}
g_{{a_\text{phy}}\gamma\gamma}^\text{UV}=2(q^2_\psi-q^2_{Q^{\prime}})\frac{\alpha_{\mathrm{em}}}{2 \pi F_{a_\text{phy}}}.
\end{equation}
In this model, the axion-photon coupling $g_{{a_\text{phy}} \gamma \gamma}$ is independent of the anomaly coefficient $n$, while $F_{a_\text{phy}}$ is inversely proportional to $|n|$. Furthermore, there is another colorless scalar $\pi_h$ with $m^2_{\pi_h} \sim f_af_{\pi_h}$.
\section{Conclusion and Discussion}
\label{section5}
We investigate all possible solutions to the strong $CP$ problem with anomalous $U(1)$ global symmetries when the hidden QCD is introduced, which include both the Peccei-Quinn mechanism and dynamical solutions. We find these two mechanisms can exist together, and a new class of solutions for the strong CP problem are proposed. Thus we classify two $U(1)$ models in an unified way, and discuss both one-$U(1)$ and two-$U(1)$ solutions in this work.
A ``moose-like'' diagram method is used to illustrate how the strong CP problem is solved via cancellation between CP phases, which could be read directly. When the gauge interaction and new particles are given, a diagram can be determined with a breaking mode of $U(1)$ symmetries. From these diagrams, cancellation between $CP$ phases can be easily read without detailed analysis of the model. The information is important for solving the strong $CP$ problem. This method could be used to find new types of solutions and easily extended to cases of multi-$U(1)$ and multi-gauge interaction.
In one-axion solutions, additional $Z_2$ symmetry keeps $\theta=\theta'$ to solve the strong $CP$ problem.
In two-axion solutions, two chiral $U(1)$s (either $U(1)_{PQ}$ or $U(1)_A$) have to be introduced. As a consequence, there always exists an invisible light axion and a heavy axion.
Using the diagram method, we find two new mixed solutions. In Model A, the spontaneous breaking of $U(1)_{PQ}$ symmetry is triggered by the scalar potential, independent of the confinement of the hidden QCD, and the axion-photon couplings $g_{{a_\text{phy}}\gamma\gamma}^{UV}$ and the light axion decay constant $F_{a_\text{phy}}$ are both inversely proportional to the difference of anomalous charges $|m-n|$. In Model B, the $U(1)_{PQ}$ is induced by the confinement of the hidden QCD, and $g_{{a_\text{phy}}\gamma\gamma}^{UV}$ is independent of the anomaly coefficient $n$ of $Q'$ while $F_{a_\text{phy}}$ is inversely proportional to $|n|$. At low energy scales, it is hard to distinguish this light axion from the QCD axion, even extending to multi-$U(1)$ symmetries and multi-gauge interactions. However, this kind of solutions could be probed by detecting particles at the hidden QCD scale. Those heavy particles may leave some hints in cosmology and at the colliders.
\acknowledgments
We would like to thank Qing-Hong Cao and Shou-hua Zhu for valuable discussions and their support.
D.H. is supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under Grants No. 11635001, 11875072.
H.R.J is supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 11725520, 11675002, 11635001.
H.L.L and J.H.Y. are supported by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grants No. 11875003.
M.L.X. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant No.2019M650856 and the 2019 International Postdoctoral Exchange Fellowship Program.
J.H.Y. is also supported by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grants No. 11947302.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 1,087 |
Q: Unix permissions issue An executable file has permissions -rwxrwxr-x and owner is root. When a non-root user tries to execute the file, I get a permission denied error. What am I not understanding?
A: Where is the location of the file? Is the file in a readable directory?
EDIT: As well what does the file do? Inside does it execute something else that could have a permission issue?
A: Check the filesystem isn't mounted with the noexec option, which will override the permissions on the file. Can root execute the file?
A: In order to execute you must also be able to read (except for root, who can do anything on plain unix systems)
A: If it is a script (i.e. uses #! on the first line to tell the OS how to run it) check the permissions of the interpreter named there.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 2,492 |
[i]A Pill to purge State-Melancholy:[/i] | OR, A | COLLECTION | OF | Excellent New Ballads. | [rule] | [epigraph] | [rule] | [ornament] | [rule] | [i]LONDON[/i], | Printed in the Year M. DCC. XV.
[i]A Ballad to their Merit may | Most justly then belong; | For why, they've given all away | To Lewis for a Song. | Vid.[/i] Collection, [i]p[/i].127.
Portrait of Thomas D'Urfey pasted onto verso of the title page of Bod copy (perhaps by Harding?). MS note on flyleaf attributes volume to D'Urfey.
A Song in Praise of our Three Fam'd Generals.
A New Health to the Duke of Marlborough, with a Stanza in honour of the Prince of Hannover and Prince Eugene; on occasion of the Victory at Audenarde.
An Historical Account of the Battel of Audenarde.
A Song on the Victory gain'd over the French by the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and also the taking of Mons.
A Song occasion'd by the taking of Lisle.
The Words by Mr. D'Urfey.
A Song on the taking of Doway and Aire.
A Song on the ensuing Campaign, 1709.
A New Song, to the Tune of Lilliburlero.
A New Ballad, to the Tune of Packington's Pound.
The Tories Triumph on the News of the Pretender's Expedition to Switzerland, alias England. Being a new Song to a merry old Tune, made in the Year 1641. reviv'd in 1683. and lately perform'd at the Bell-Tavern in W---------r.
A Health to the Present Constitution.
A New Ballad. To the Tune of Fair Rosamond.
A Ballad to the Tune of the Dame of Honour.
To the Tune of Fair Rosamond.
To the Tune of the Windsor Minuet.
An Excellent New Song, call'd, Credit Restor'd, in the Year 1711. To the Tune of, Come prithee, Horace, hold up thy Head.
An Excellent New Song, call'd, An End to our Sorrows. To the Tune of, I laugh at the Pope's Devices.
A New Ballad, to the Old Tune of Chevy-Chase.
The Age of Wonders. To the Tune of Chevy Chase.
A New Song. Being a Second Part to the same Tune of Lilliburlero, &c.
The French Preliminaries. A New Ballad to the Old Tune of Packington's Pound.
An Excellent New Song, call'd, Mat's Peace, or the Downfal of Trade. To the good old Tune of Green Sleeves.
The French King's Lamentation for the Miscarriage of Monsieur Guiscard. Being a new Song, to an Excellent new Tune. Sung at the Opera Theatre in Covent-Garden.
The Truth at last. To the Tune of, Which no-body can deny.
The Soldiers Lamentation for the Loss of their General. In a Letter from the Recruiters in London, to their Friends in Flanders. To the Tune of, To you, fair Ladies, &c.
A Choice New Song, call'd, She-Land, and Robinocracy. To all sorts of Tunes.
Queen Elizabeth's Day: or the Downfall of the Devil, Pope, and Pretender. To the Tune of Bonny Dundee.
The Thanksgiving: A New Protestant Ballad. To an Excellent Italian Tune.
The South-Sea Whim. To the Tune of, To you, fair Ladies, now at Land, &c.
On the Jewel in the Tower.
A Welcome to the Medal: or, an Excellent New Song, call'd, The Constitution Restor'd, in 1711. To the Tune of Mortimer's Hole.
A Song for King William's Birthday. To the Tune of Lillibullero.
The Royal Health. To the Tune of, All Joy to Great Caesar.
An Excellent New Song. To the Memorable Tune of Lillibullero.
Plot upon Plot. To the Tune of, Hey Boys up go we.
The Merchant A-la-mode. To the Tune of Which no body can deny.
The Pedlar. To the Tune of, The Abbot of Canterbury.
A New Ballad, to the Old Tune of, Which no body can deny, &c.
To the Tune of, There's rare Doings at Bath.
To the Tune of Chivy-Chace.
An Excellent New Ballad, call'd, Illustrious George shall come. To the Tune of, The King shall enjoy his own again.
The Country Squire's Ditty. A Ballad. To the Tune of, To you, fair Ladies, &c.
A New Song. To the Tune of, Marlborough push 'em again.
First Part. To the Tune of, Over the Hills and far away.
King Edward's Ghost: or, The King and the Cobler.
An Excellent New Ballad, giving a full and true Relation how a Noble Lord was robb'd of his Birth-Day Clothes; and how the same afterwards appear'd, and were burn'd on the Pretender's own Back at Charing-Cross, February 6. 1713. To the Tune of, To you, fair Ladies, now at Land, &c.
To the Tune of, Old Sir Simon the King.
Nothing but Truth. A Ballad. To the Tune of, A Beggar of all Trades is the best.
Upon the Stabbing of the Earl of Oxford by Guiscard.
An Excellent New Song, call'd, The full Tryal and Condemnation of John Duke of Marlborough. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 7,807 |
Q: dc.js/d3.js - min/max value from group per category I hate creating a new post to ask this, but since I'm still new, I cannot comment on posts yet.
I basically have the same question as dc.js - min value from group per day
But since the jsfiddle isn't up anymore, I cannot see how they resolved the question.
var data = [
{category: 'A', ..., amount: '13', categoryCount: 1},
{category: 'A', ..., amount: '13', categoryCount: 0},
{category: 'B', ..., amount: '10', categoryCount: 1},
{category: 'A', ..., amount: '3', categoryCount: 1},
{category: 'C', ..., amount: '27', categoryCount: 1},
{category: 'A', ..., amount: '11', categoryCount: 1},
{category: 'B', ..., amount: '18', categoryCount: 2},
{category: 'C', ..., amount: '19', categoryCount: 1},
{category: 'C', ..., amount: ' ', categoryCount: 1},
{category: 'C', ..., amount: '22', categoryCount: 1}
];
I would like to have an area graph containing the minimum (and maximum) values for each category.
I now have
var bar_graph = dc.barChart("#bar_chart");
var bar_graphDim = ndx.dimension(function(d) {return d.category;});
var bar_graphGroup = bar_graphDim.group().reduceSum(d.categoryCount);
var dateDimGroup = reductio().min(function (d) { return +d.amount; })(bar_graphDim.group());
var dateDimFGroup = remove_empty_bins(dateDimGroup);
bar_graph
.width(150).height(60)
.dimension(bar_graphDim)
.group(dateDimFGroup)
.valueAccessor(function(d) {return d.value.min;}) //added a solution
.renderHorizontalGridLines(true)
.gap(2)
.x(d3.scale.ordinal())
.xUnits(dc.units.ordinal)
.elasticY(true)
.elasticX(true)
.yAxisLabel("counts");
var bar_graphGroupMax = bar_graphDim.group().reduceSum(d.categoryCount);
var dateDimGroupMax = reductio().min(function (d) { return +d.amount; })(bar_graphDim.group());
var dateDimFGroupMax = remove_empty_bins(dateDimGroupMax);
bar_graphMax
.width(150).height(60)
.dimension(bar_graphDim)
.group(dateDimFGroupMax)
.valueAccessor(function(d) {return d.value.max;})
.renderHorizontalGridLines(true)
.gap(2)
.x(d3.scale.ordinal())
.xUnits(dc.units.ordinal)
.elasticY(true)
.elasticX(true)
.yAxisLabel("counts");
A: You have
var dateDimGroup = reductio().min(function (d) { return d.amount; }(dateDim.group());
I don't think that even executes, does it? I'd want you to have:
var dateDimGroup = reductio().min(function (d) { return +d.amount; })(dateDim.group());
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 8,216 |
import json
import logging
import logging.handlers
import pytest
from ethereum import slogging
@pytest.mark.parametrize('level_name', ['critical', 'error', 'warning', 'info', 'debug', 'trace'])
def test_basic(caplog, level_name):
slogging.configure(":trace")
log = slogging.get_logger()
with caplog.atLevel('TRACE'):
getattr(log, level_name)(level_name)
assert len(caplog.records()) == 1
assert caplog.records()[0].levelname == level_name.upper()
assert level_name in caplog.records()[0].msg
def test_initial_config():
slogging.getLogger().handlers = []
slogging.configure()
assert len(slogging.getLogger().handlers) == 1
assert isinstance(slogging.getLogger().handlers[0], logging.StreamHandler)
def test_is_active():
slogging.configure()
tester = slogging.get_logger('tester')
assert tester.is_active(level_name='info')
assert not tester.is_active(level_name='trace')
def test_jsonconfig(caplog):
slogging.configure(log_json=True)
log = slogging.get_logger('prefix')
log.warn('abc', a=1)
assert json.loads(caplog.records()[0].msg) == dict(event='prefix.abc', a=1)
def test_configuration():
config_string = ':inFO,a:trace,a.b:debug'
slogging.configure(config_string=config_string)
log = slogging.get_logger()
log_a = slogging.get_logger('a')
log_a_b = slogging.get_logger('a.b')
assert log.is_active('info')
assert not log.is_active('debug')
assert log_a.is_active('trace')
assert log_a_b.is_active('debug')
assert not log_a_b.is_active('trace')
def test_tracebacks(caplog):
slogging.configure()
log = slogging.get_logger()
def div(a, b):
try:
_ = a / b
log.error('heres the stack', stack_info=True)
except Exception as e:
log.error('an Exception trace should preceed this msg', exc_info=True)
div(1, 0)
assert 'an Exception trace' in caplog.text()
assert 'Traceback' in caplog.text()
div(1, 1)
assert 'the stack' in caplog.text()
def test_listeners(caplog):
slogging.configure()
log = slogging.get_logger()
called = []
def log_cb(event_dict):
called.append(event_dict)
# activate listener
slogging.log_listeners.append(log_cb) # Add handlers
log.error('test listener', abc='thislistener')
assert 'thislistener' in caplog.text()
r = called.pop()
assert r == dict(event='test listener', abc='thislistener')
log.trace('trace is usually filtered', abc='thislistener') # this handler for function log_cb does not work
assert "trace is usually filtered" not in caplog.text()
# deactivate listener
slogging.log_listeners.remove(log_cb)
log.error('test listener', abc='nolistener')
assert 'nolistener' in caplog.text()
assert not called
def test_logger_names():
slogging.configure()
names = {'a', 'b', 'c'}
for n in names:
slogging.get_logger(n)
assert names.issubset(set(slogging.get_logger_names()))
def test_lazy_log():
"""
test lacy evaluation of json log data
e.g.
class LogState
class LogMemory
"""
called_print = []
class Expensive(object):
def __repr__(self):
called_print.append(1)
return 'expensive data preparation'
slogging.configure(log_json=True)
log = slogging.get_logger()
log.trace('no', data=Expensive())
assert not called_print
log.info('yes', data=Expensive()) # !!!!!!!!!!!!!
assert called_print.pop()
def test_get_configuration():
root_logger = slogging.getLogger()
root_logger.manager.loggerDict = {} # clear old loggers
config_string = ':INFO,a:TRACE,a.b:DEBUG'
log_json = False
slogging.configure(config_string=config_string, log_json=log_json)
config = slogging.get_configuration()
assert config['log_json'] == log_json
assert set(config['config_string'].split(',')) == set(config_string.split(','))
log_json = True
slogging.configure(config_string=config_string, log_json=log_json)
config = slogging.get_configuration()
assert config['log_json'] == log_json
assert set(config['config_string'].split(',')) == set(config_string.split(','))
# set config differntly
slogging.configure(config_string=':TRACE', log_json=False)
config2 = slogging.get_configuration()
# test whether we get original config
slogging.configure(**config)
config = slogging.get_configuration()
assert config['log_json'] == log_json
assert set(config['config_string'].split(',')) == set(config_string.split(','))
def test_recorder(caplog):
slogging.configure(log_json=True)
log = slogging.get_logger()
# test info
recorder = slogging.LogRecorder()
assert len(slogging.log_listeners) == 1
log.info('a', v=1)
assert "a" in caplog.text()
r = recorder.pop_records()
assert r[0] == dict(event='a', v=1)
assert len(slogging.log_listeners) == 0
# test trace
log.setLevel(logging.TRACE)
recorder = slogging.LogRecorder()
assert len(slogging.log_listeners) == 1
log.trace('a', v=2)
assert '"v": 2' in caplog.text()
r = recorder.pop_records()
assert r[0] == dict(event='a', v=2)
assert len(slogging.log_listeners) == 0
def test_howto_use_in_tests():
# select what you want to see.
# e.g. TRACE from vm except for pre_state :DEBUG otherwise
slogging.configure(':DEBUG,eth.vm:TRACE,vm.pre_state:INFO')
log = slogging.get_logger('tests.logging')
log.info('test starts')
def test_how_to_use_as_vm_logger():
"""
don't log until there was an error
"""
slogging.configure(':DEBUG,eth.vm:INFO')
log = slogging.get_logger('eth.vm')
# record all logs
def run_vm(raise_error=False):
log.trace('op', pc=1)
log.trace('op', pc=2)
if raise_error:
raise Exception
recorder = slogging.LogRecorder()
try:
run_vm(raise_error=True)
except:
log = slogging.get_logger('eth.vm')
for x in recorder.pop_records():
log.info(x.pop('event'), **x)
@pytest.mark.parametrize(
('logger_name', 'filter', 'should_log'),
[
('a', None, True),
('a.a', 'a', True),
('a.a', 'a.a', True),
('a.a', 'b', False),
])
def test_logger_filter(caplog, logger_name, filter, should_log):
slogging.configure()
log = slogging.get_logger(logger_name)
if filter:
log.addFilter(logging.Filter(filter))
log.info("testlogmessage", v=1)
if should_log:
assert "testlogmessage" in caplog.text()
else:
assert "testlogmessage" not in caplog.text()
def test_bound_logger(caplog):
slogging.configure(config_string=':trace')
real_log = slogging.getLogger()
bound_log_1 = real_log.bind(key1="value1")
with caplog.atLevel(slogging.TRACE):
bound_log_1.info("test1")
assert "test1" in caplog.text()
assert "key1=value1" in caplog.text()
bound_log_2 = bound_log_1.bind(key2="value2")
with caplog.atLevel(slogging.TRACE):
bound_log_2.info("test2")
assert "test2" in caplog.text()
assert "key1=value1" in caplog.text()
assert "key2=value2" in caplog.text()
def test_bound_logger_isolation(caplog):
"""
Ensure bound loggers don't "contaminate" their parent
"""
slogging.configure(config_string=':trace')
real_log = slogging.getLogger()
bound_log_1 = real_log.bind(key1="value1")
with caplog.atLevel(slogging.TRACE):
bound_log_1.info("test1")
records = caplog.records()
assert len(records) == 1
assert "test1" in records[0].msg
assert "key1=value1" in records[0].msg
with caplog.atLevel(slogging.TRACE):
real_log.info("test2")
records = caplog.records()
assert len(records) == 2
assert "test2" in records[1].msg
assert "key1=value1" not in records[1].msg
def test_highlight(caplog):
slogging.configure()
log = slogging.getLogger()
log.DEV('testmessage')
assert "\033[91mtestmessage \033[0m" in caplog.records()[0].msg
def test_shortcut_dev_logger(capsys):
slogging.DEBUG('testmessage')
out, err = capsys.readouterr()
assert "\033[91mtestmessage \033[0m" in err
def test_logging_reconfigure():
config_string = ':WARNING'
config_string1 = ':DEBUG,eth:INFO'
config_string2 = ':DEBUG,eth.vm:INFO'
main_logger = slogging.getLogger()
slogging.configure(config_string)
assert len(main_logger.handlers) == 2 # pytest-capturelog adds it's own handler
slogging.configure(config_string)
assert len(main_logger.handlers) == 2 # pytest-capturelog adds it's own handler
eth_logger = slogging.getLogger('eth')
slogging.configure(config_string1)
assert len(eth_logger.handlers) == 0
slogging.configure(config_string1)
assert len(eth_logger.handlers) == 0
eth_vm_logger = slogging.getLogger('eth.vm')
slogging.configure(config_string2)
assert len(eth_vm_logger.handlers) == 0
slogging.configure(config_string2)
assert len(eth_vm_logger.handlers) == 0
def test_set_level():
slogging.set_level('test', 'CRITICAL')
assert slogging.getLogger('test').level == logging.CRITICAL
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 8,199 |
Q: Picking Unique Combination of records between columns SOURCE_DATA
Hi,
I am getting source data like above. Basically the 2 tables are describing relationships(actual) between two individuals.
TABLE_1 lists all INDV on application.
TABLE_2 has record for each indv and relation with each member on application.
I need to find unique combination between ID and ID2 fields starting with SEQ_NBR at top. Eldest to youngest.
The data is just for one record. SEQ_NBR 999 can have father there as well and aunt, grandma, etc...
A:
I just need unique combination of all vlaues for 1st and 2nd column.
If you want all combination of the values in the two columns, then use cross join:
select *
from (select distinct RCPT_NBR from t) x1 cross join
(select distinct REL_RCPT_NBR from t) x2
A: Your data are highly denormalized.
Simple decide which relationship you will use and ignore the other.
Example - limiting only to mother relationship shows all three persons involved (IDs are simplified)
select * from tab
where relationship = 'MOTHR';
PERSON_1 PERSON_2 RELAT
---------- ---------- -----
224 218 MOTHR
224 217 MOTHR
If you want to order the output from eldest to youngest usi a hierarchical query (I added two new persons to the data)
WITH t1(person_1, person_2, lvl) AS (
SELECT person_1,
person_2,
1 lvl
FROM tab
WHERE person_1 In (select person_1 from tab where relationship = 'MOTHR'
minus
select person_2 from tab where relationship = 'MOTHR')
and relationship = 'MOTHR'
UNION ALL
SELECT t2.person_1,
t2.person_2,
t1.lvl + 1 lvl
FROM tab t2, t1
WHERE t2.person_1 = t1.person_2 and relationship = 'MOTHR'
)
SEARCH DEPTH FIRST BY person_1 SET order1
SELECT person_1,
person_2,
lvl
FROM t1
order by order1;
PERSON_1 PERSON_2 LVL
---------- ---------- ----------
224 217 1
224 218 1
218 222 2
222 223 3
The column LVL shows the generation i.e. grandmother (1), mother(2) and daugther (3).
To get the mother on a highest level you use the MINUS query in the anchor part:
(select person_1 from tab where relationship = 'MOTHR'
minus
select person_2 from tab where relationship = 'MOTHR')
This selects all mothers that are not daughters, which is what you need.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 7,874 |
An Architect's Holiday House That's Part Refuge, Part Shrine
By Kurt Soller
Art & Design /19 March 2020
Ricardo Labougle
A view of the simple clay-and-gravel-covered courtyard separating Casa M's main house from the garage and pool house, with Mediterranean pines in the distance.
VIEWED FROM THE end of a long, dry dirt driveway on an October morning, the house looks like nothing special: a decommissioned military bunker, maybe, though barely recognisable as that, a pair of one-story, sand-coloured rectangle structures nestled against a 45-degree dune like a set of dresser drawers. But once you get closer, you see that their ordinariness is an illusion. Here, in Melides, Portugal, a half-hour drive down the coast from the stylish resort town of Comporta, the 57-year-old Belgian architect Vincent Van Duysen and Mateo Bou Bahler, his 30-year-old boyfriend, a model, sit in the shade of the umbrella-shaped Mediterranean pines on the grounds of Casa M, a deceptively high-concept vacation compound built over three years by Van Duysen's 30-person Antwerp studio.
The 14-acre, 7,104-square-foot complex — which includes the main U-shaped house, a detached garage with a rooftop pool and a guest cabana — is, for the man who conceived it, both a disappearing act and the purest expression of the texture-obsessed, materials-driven strain of modernism that has defined his work for more than three decades. Though Van Duysen's sparsely furnished, whitewashed, raw-wood-hewn residences and commercial projects throughout Europe, including the August hotel in Antwerp and the Aesop store in Hamburg, have established him as one of design's leading minimalists, he detests the label; he's always felt his work is softer, richer and more livable than the movement with which he's often associated. "You could call this minimal, but it's not minimalist," he says of Casa M. He prefers the term "warm Brutalist" instead, suggesting an approachable, even sumptuous take on the concrete-driven construction that in the mid-20th century challenged the steel-and-glass orthodoxy of the International Style. With an exterior of exposed aggregate (a type of concrete left unsealed to reveal its craggy components) tinted a bone hue that Van Duysen tested a dozen times to ensure it would vanish, mirage-like, into its sandy surroundings, the compound achieves the opposite effect of its Brutalist forebears, which overpowered cityscapes.
This recessiveness is especially apparent in the 4,520-square-foot main house, with its nine-foot-tall sliding wooden barn doors of caramel-coloured Brazilian ipe, invulnerable to the elements, and wall-size expanses of glass that fold like accordions to transform the three-bedroom residence into an open-air pavilion, complete with an unadorned colonnade that references clean-lined Greco-Roman classicism. Looking out in every direction, you realise the lot is entirely void of greenery beyond a few errant cork trees and dozens of native pines that throw feathery shadows on the concrete as the sun shifts throughout the day. Van Duysen considered adding plants along the walls but decided their natural shapes and verdant hues clashed with the property's lunar-like severity; when wild grasses sprout, he pulls them up and rakes the terrain smooth. "I wanted to build something that's embedded in the landscape, almost hedonistically," he says. "I wanted to literally have the dunes rolling into my house."
Left: In the kitchen, counters of sandstone and ipe wood cabinets. The faucet is by Cea Design, and the bowls are by Van Duysen from When Objects Work. The terra-cotta tiles match those on the exterior. Right: In the living room, from left, a chair by José Zanine Caldas in macanaiba wood, a pair of 1958 chairs by Lina Bo Bardi in tropical hardwood, a table by Atelier Carlos Motta in peroba rosa wood and a custom sofa designed by Van Duysen with cushions and fabric by Catherine Huyghe.
An Isamu Noguchi lantern hangs over a square ipe table and chairs designed by Van Duysen and fabricated by local craftspeople. The fireplace floats between the living and dining areas.
IN ADDITION TO the emotional appeal of a home that seems to crouch in its surroundings, there was a practical reason as well for his muted approach: Van Duysen wasn't originally permitted to create something so large here. He first traveled to the region more than a decade ago to visit his friend, the Portuguese architect Manuel Aires Mateus, known for his blocky white stucco homes in and around Melides, a serene town in a region that has, of late, welcomed residents such as the French shoe designer Christian Louboutin and the German painter Anselm Kiefer. While on vacation in 2014, Van Duysen toured the plot, which is a few miles from the coast, and knew it was the only place he could imagine building a refuge: "It gave me a sense of protection and well-being, and it was close to the sea — without seeing the sea," he says. "The ocean is very restless. Facing it would also make me restless."
But when he tried to buy the land, Van Duysen was told that zoning laws required any new construction be limited to around 2,000 square feet and be related "to agriculture or agrotourism." The architect considered creating a cluster of cabins that referenced the country's vernacular fishing shacks, with their dried-reed walls and roofs, a popular typology among Comporta's luxury-hotel developers. But that felt clichéd. Instead, over the next few years, Van Duysen (citing the 7,265-square-foot dwelling that once stood on the site) won clearance by village authorities to build something larger and more architecturally relevant.
What he envisioned was a monument that might outlive him, one that, paradoxically, could enshrine the career from which he was seeking reprieve. Though he doesn't usually work with concrete, he chose the material in part because it alludes to one of his first major commissions two decades ago: the corporate campus of Concordia Textiles in Waregem, Belgium, a 19,375-square-foot row of boxes made from concrete, glass and steel. He also studied some of the world's most enduring examples of residential design, including the Italian architect Adalberto Libera's 1942 Casa Malaparte, which retreats into Capri's rocky hillside; the American artist Georgia O'Keeffe's 1940s-era Ghost Ranch home in New Mexico, known for its colossal yet humble adobe structures; the 1968 Cuadra San Cristóbal estate designed by the Mexican architect Luis Barragán north of Mexico City, with its courtyard and abundance of right angles; and the Danish architect Jorn Utzon's 1972 family home near Portopetro in Majorca, rimmed like a fortress by several pale pillars. "I wanted the house to become an icon," he says. "It's hard-core but with soft content."
The same could be said of Van Duysen. After graduating with an architecture degree in 1985, he got his start in Milan's postmodern scene, notably under the designer Aldo Cibic, a member of the Memphis group whom Van Duysen credits with encouraging him to concentrate on the elemental shapes that still dominate his work. After he returned to Antwerp to establish his practice in the early '90s, the British designer Ilse Crawford, then the editor of Elle Decoration, praised his novel use of pale poplar and off-white linen, which heralded the now much-copied Belgian aesthetic. Throughout his career, he has been among the few architects of his generation to create everything from tableware to entire apartment towers — he currently oversees the Italian furniture conglomerate Molteni&C Dada and collaborates on the creative team behind the German textile brand Sahco. Throughout his firm's residential commissions, he has given equal consideration to objects and buildings, interiors and exteriors, landscapes and structures, rooms and their décor, eschewing the traditional divisions between architects, makers and interior decorators: "We never build anything without envisioning everything inside it."
An alternate view of the living room.
Left: The stairway leads to a roof covered in custom terra-cotta tiles. Right: The glass doors from the living room open entirely onto a central columned space. The colour of the exterior blends in with the surrounding sand.
In the guest bedroom, which has its own adjacent courtyard, a lamp designed by Van Duysen from FLOS and a chair, also designed by Van Duysen, made by a local carpenter.
CASA M'S RIGOROUS planning is especially clear in the late afternoon sun, when the 20-foot concrete staircase that slashes perpendicularly from one side of the house casts stark diagonal shadows across the pebbled courtyard below. These steps lead to a balustrade-free rooftop deck, its terra-cotta floor tiles hand-painted a burnished red and installed without grout to add dimension and enhance their symmetry. The same eight-inch-square tiles cover the roof's two chimneys — one for the kitchen's oven hood, another for the fireplace — and downstairs, they serve as a grid for the home's entire floor plan, with the rugs, walls, tables and toilets all lined up against their edges.
Despite the neutral palette and uncompromising austerity, the house manages to feel comfortable, thanks to its nubby textiles throughout and the fact that the rooms offer only the necessities: The two guest bedrooms include little more than ipe side tables and matching beds designed by Van Duysen and built by local craftspeople; the master suite on the opposite side is slightly more opulent, with a free-standing stone bathtub in front of a floor-to-ceiling window that frames the undulating hills. The central 14-foot-long sitting area is similarly streamlined, with a Van Duysen-designed sofa in beige Belgian linen against the back wall, a pair of low chairs carved in tropical hardwood by the Italian-born Brazilian Modernist Lina Bo Bardi in 1958 — an allusion to Portugal's colonialist history — and, in black linen, two of the high-backed English reading chairs that Van Duysen has had custom-made for many of his projects. Though he collects contemporary art, particularly photographs by the likes of Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe and Wolfgang Tillmans, which he displays in his Antwerp home, Van Duysen plans to leave Casa M's walls blank, fearing that anything decorative — beyond the Isamu Noguchi lantern that hangs over his bespoke ipe dining table — will cloud the visual clarity. "Here," he says, "the nature is a living painting."
Nowhere is that more evident than the pool deck. This 15-by-52-foot plaza is engineered so precisely atop the car park that, despite the slope of the terrain, the narrow cerulean-tiled pool and the small parcel of man-made beach that fronts it seem to sit level with the roof of the main house. While reclining in one of the ipe-and-cotton-fabric daybeds of his design, Van Duysen can gaze out over the horizon, the sun melting into the rice paddies in the distance, all but forgetting the concrete sanctuary beneath him and, too, the ambition that spurred it. "It's a shelter where I can escape from all of those demands," he says. "Where I can disconnect from what people expect — yet in a way that still feels architecturally significant." This is where he and Bahler spend most afternoons at Casa M, swimming laps, listening to Brazilian jazz and awaiting the usual early evening arrival of a muster of squawking storks. They have taken shelter in his pines, never seeming to notice that Van Duysen has carved his indelible mark into the dunes, changing them, and himself, forever.
Art & Design, Made in Singapore A Collection of Porcelain Inspired by Singapore's Heritage
Art & Design, Gourmet, Trending T Suggests: An Exhibition Curated by the Community, an Unlikely Fashion Collaboration, and New Menus to Celebrate 'Veganuary'
Art & Design A Home That Makes Time Travellers of Its Inhabitants
Jewellery Winter Blooms
Beauty Chinese New Year-Themed Beauty Treats
Street Style Rick Owens's Reconciliation
How to Care for Sensitive Skin
A Chicken Biryani Recipe That Brings People Together
On Set | Kris Grikaite | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 5,873 |
Sir Horace Owen Compton Beasley OBE (2 July 1877 – 1 January 1960) was the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court from 1929 to 1937.
Biography
The son of Ammon Beasley, general manager of the Taff Vale Railway Company, Owen Beasley was born at Chiswick, and educated at Westminster and Jesus College, Cambridge (B.A. 1899). He was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple in 1902, and worked on the South Western Circuit.
He was a puisne judge of the High Court of Burma from 1923 to 1924, then at Madras from 1924 to 1929; he was appointed Chief Justice of the Madras High Court in 1929, serving in that capacity until 1937.
It was said of him that "the Madras bar never lost faith in his sense of justice and honesty of purpose..." and that he had an "uncompromising sense of duty and utter disregard for personal distinction between lawyers", observing also his "imperial attitude of benevolent despotism".
Beasley served in World War I, first as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, then as a Captain in the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), and as a Major in the Labour Corps. He was appointed OBE in 1919, and knighted in 1930. He was married with children, and lived at Bullingham Mansions, Pitt Street, London.
References
1877 births
1960 deaths
Knights Bachelor
Judges of the Madras High Court
Chief Justices of the Madras High Court
Members of the Inner Temple
British India judges
English barristers
English cricketers
Glamorgan cricketers
British Army personnel of World War I
Royal Welch Fusiliers officers
Cameronians officers
Royal Pioneer Corps officers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 4,484 |
Escalonilla es una localidad y anejo del municipio de Tolbaños, en la provincia de Ávila, comunidad autónoma de Castilla y León, en España.
Situada en una zona de penillanura a 1000 metros de altura sobre el nivel del mar, cercana al ferrocarril que une Ávila con Medina del Campo, muestra un paisaje llano, sin apenas vegetación y un caserío de casi una cincuentena de viviendas. No contó con una iglesia propia hasta los años sesenta del pasado siglo en que se construyó un edificio de pequeño tamaño y tipología convencional. Una carretera asfaltada une la población con la carretera que discurre entre Mingorría y Tolbaños mientras un camino sin asfaltar la comunica con la vecina Saornil de Voltoya. Es una población habitada.
Referencias
Bibliografía
Sanchidrián Gallego, Jesús María. Rutas Mágicas del Adaja. Piedra Caballera. Mingorría, 2006.
Localidades de la provincia de Ávila | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 8,724 |
An easy dinner with a nice pan sauce. Doing this sous vide makes it almost impossible to overcook the pork. It will be nice and juicy, but also a little pink. If that scares you (it really shouldn't) then you can crank up the sous vide temp, but i really wouldn't go past 145.
One tenderloin will serve 2-3 people.
Leftovers can be made in to cubans. Yum. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 9,517 |
Cardiocrinum giganteum – The largest species of any of the lily plants, growing up to 3.5m high. This stately giant produces 5cm thick stems , with leaves the size of dinner plates above which 20cm long greenish white, waxy, very fragrant trumpets appear in summer. Huge, toothed seeds pods follow. These bulbs are fully hardy and thrive in light shade, humidity and rich leafy soils. 2.4 –3.5m x 90cm.
Sow cardiocrinun giganteum seeds in good quality compost or seed raising mix at any time. Cover with fine river sand or compost to 5mm deep. Keep seed in a cool well lit spot outdoors. Protect from Mice. Heat is not needed and prevents germination . Be patient , germination can be slow, the seeds often need two periods of cold moist conditions with warm growing season between. The seeds should germinate in spring but may germinate in their second year. Do not discard. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 335 |
import sys
import os
import subprocess
from pathlib import Path
import strictyaml
from vantage import utils
from vantage.exceptions import VantageException
def execute_task_cmd(env, path, *args):
utils.loquacious(f"Running task in {path}", env)
utils.loquacious(f" PATH is: {os.environ.get('PATH')}", env)
utils.loquacious(f" With args: {args}", env)
meta = load_meta(env, path)
env = update_env(env, meta)
if meta.get("image"):
utils.loquacious(" Spinning up docker image", env)
image = meta.get("image")
docker = utils.find_executable("docker")
if docker is None:
raise VantageException(f"Couldn't find docker in PATH")
run_args = [
docker,
"run",
"--volume",
f"{str(path)}:/vg-task",
"--label",
"vantage",
"--label",
"vantage-task",
"--rm",
"--interactive",
]
if sys.stdin.isatty():
run_args.append("--tty")
if isinstance(image, dict):
tag = insert_env_vals(image.pop("tag"), env, args)
for k, v in image.items():
if isinstance(v, list):
for w in v:
run_args += [
f"--{k}",
insert_env_vals(w, env, args),
]
elif v == "true":
run_args += [f"--{k}"]
else:
run_args += [f"--{k}", insert_env_vals(v, env, args)]
if "VG_DOCKER_NETWORK" in env and "network" not in image:
network = env["VG_DOCKER_NETWORK"]
run_args += ["--network", network]
else:
tag = image
for e in env.keys():
run_args += ["--env", e]
run_args += [tag, "/vg-task", *args]
return run_subprocess(*run_args, env=env)
utils.loquacious(" Passing task over to subprocess", env)
env["PATH"] = os.environ.get("PATH", "")
return run_subprocess(str(path), *args, env=env)
def run_subprocess(*args, env):
utils.loquacious(f"Running command {args[0]} with args {args[1:]}", env)
completed = subprocess.run(
list(args),
env=env,
stdin=sys.stdin,
stdout=sys.stdout,
stderr=sys.stderr,
)
utils.loquacious(f" Exited with code {completed.returncode}", env)
return completed.returncode
def insert_env_vals(haystack, env=None, args=None):
if env:
for k, v in env.items():
needle = f"${k}"
if needle in haystack:
haystack = haystack.replace(needle, str(v))
if args:
for i, v in enumerate(args):
needle = f"${i}"
if needle in haystack:
haystack = haystack.replace(needle, str(v))
return haystack
def load_meta(env, path):
utils.loquacious(" Loading meta from task file", env)
with path.open() as f:
content = f.read()
sep = None
for line in content.splitlines():
if "---" in line:
sep = line
break
if sep is None:
utils.loquacious(" No meta found", env)
return {}
else:
_, meta, script = content.split(sep, 2)
comment_marker = sep.replace("---", "")
utils.loquacious(f" Meta commented out using '{comment_marker}'", env)
meta = meta.replace(f"\n{comment_marker}", "\n")
return strictyaml.load(meta).data
def update_env(env, meta):
defaults = meta.get("environment")
if defaults is not None:
utils.loquacious(" Updating env with default environment in task meta", env)
defaults = utils.get_env_from_key_val_list(defaults)
for key, val in defaults:
if key not in env:
val = insert_env_vals(val, env)
env[key] = val
utils.loquacious(f" {key}={val}", env)
return env
def load_env(name_or_path, current):
new_env = None
path = Path(name_or_path)
if path.is_file():
new_env = utils.load_env_from_file(path)
else:
env_dir = current.get("VG_ENV_DIR")
if env_dir:
path = Path(env_dir) / name_or_path
if path.is_file():
new_env = utils.load_env_from_file(path)
if new_env is None:
raise VantageException(f"The env file '{name_or_path}' does not exist")
for k, v in current.items():
if k.startswith("VG_") and k not in new_env:
new_env[k] = v
return new_env
def get_flag(env, yml, default):
if env is None:
if yml is None:
return default
return yml
return env
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 1,156 |
\section{\label{intro} Introduction}
There is a current interest in small fluctuating systems in contact
with heat reservoirs driven by external forces. This focus is driven
by the recent possibilities of direct manipulation of nano systems
and bio molecules. These techniques also permit direct experimental
access to the probability distributions for the work or heat exchanged
with the environment \cite{Trepagnier04,Collin05,Seifert06a,Seifert06b,
Imparato07,Ciliberto06,Ciliberto07, Ciliberto08}. These single molecule techniques
have, moreover, also yielded access to the so-called fluctuation theorems,
which relate the probability of observing entropy-generated trajectories,
with that of observing entropy-consuming trajectories
\cite{Jarzynski97,Kurchan98,Gallavotti96,Crooks99,Crooks00,
Seifert05a,Seifert05b,Evans93,Evans94,Gallavotti95,
Lebowitz99,Gaspard04,Imparato06,
vanZon03,vanZon04,vanZon03a,vanZon04a,Seifert05c}.
A fundamental issue is the validity and microscopic underpinning of Fourier's law \cite{Bonetto00,Jackson78}.
Here an important problem is the dependence of the heat current $J$ on the system size $N$
and dimensionality. Fourier's law based on energy conservation and a phenomenological transport equation
assumes local equilibrium and therefore a current $J\sim 1/N$, yielding a constant heat conductivity
$\kappa\propto JN$. However, many studies of one dimensional systems indicate that $J\sim 1/N^\alpha$,
where $\alpha$ in general is different from one, signalling the breakdown of Fourier's law,
see \cite{Dhar08a,Lepri03,Dhar16}. Regarding ongoing studies of the dependence of $J(N)$ as function of boundary conditions and the spectral properties of the heat baths, see e.g. \cite{Ajanki11,Ash20,Ong14,Yamada18,Amir18,Herrera10,Herrera15,Herrera19,Zhou16,Kundu10a}.
A one dimensional system which has been studied extensively is the linear harmonic chain subject to disorder or
nonlinearity. In the case of a linear harmonic chain the heat is transmitted ballistically by phonons and the heat
current is independent of the system size, corresponding to $\alpha=0$ \cite{Saito11,Kundu11,Fogedby12}.
In the particular case where the effective interaction is provided by mass disorder, this issue has been studied
in several papers
\cite{Casher71,Dhar08a,Dhar08b,Dhar11,Kundu10,Chauduri10,Lee05,Lepri03,Oconnor74,Roy08a,Roy08b}.
For more recent papers on the disordered chain, see also
\cite{Herrera10,Herrera19,Ash20,Amir18,Ong14,Ajanki11,Kundu10a,Yamada18}.
The status regarding the mass-disordered chain has been summarised by Dhar \cite{Dhar08a},
see also Lepri \cite{Lepri03}. Unlike the electronic case, where disorder gives rise to Anderson localisation
\cite{Anderson58} of the carriers and thus a vanishing contribution to the current, the case of phonons subject
to disorder is different. Translational invariance implies that the low frequency phonon modes are extended and
thus contribute to the current \cite{Matsuda62,Matsuda70,Ishii73}. Moreover, unlike the electronic
case where only electrons at the Fermi surface contribute, the phonon contributions originate from the full phonon
band. At larger frequencies corresponding to larger wave numbers, i.e., smaller wavelengths, the disorder becomes
effective and traps the phonons in localised states. As a result the high frequency localised phonons
mode do not contribute to the heat current.
For an ordered linear chain, where the heat is carried ballistically across the system by extended phonon
modes, the heat current and more generally the large deviation function monitoring the heat
fluctuations are easily evaluated explicitly by means of standard techniques \cite{Saito07,Kundu11,Fogedby12}.
On the other hand, for a disordered system standard techniques using plane wave representations fail and one
must resort to transfer matrix methods in order to monitor and analyse the propagation of lattice site vibrations
\cite{Matsuda70,Ishii73,Dhar01}.
In the mass-disordered case detailed analysis by Matsuda et al. \cite{Matsuda70,Ishii73} based on the
Furstenberg's theorem for the product of random matrices \cite{Furstenberg63,O'Connor75} yield
a Liapunov exponent $\gamma(\omega)$ depending on the phonon frequency $\omega$. Regarding the
definition of the Liapunov exponent, consider the two-by-two random matrix $T_n(\omega)$ relating the pair of
displacements $u_n,u_{n-1}$ to the displacements $u_{n+1}, u_n$. Here the Liapunov exponent
basically characterises the growth of an ordered product of statistically independent random matrices
according to $\prod_{n=1}^N T_n\sim\exp(\gamma(\omega)N)$, or more precisely
$(|u_N|^2+|u_{N-1}|^2)^{1/2}\sim\exp(\gamma(\omega) N)$. From the analysis of Matsuda et al. it follows
that $\gamma(\omega)\propto\omega^2$ for small $\omega$ and we infer a localisation length $l_c(\omega)=1/\gamma(\omega)$ and in particular a cross-over
frequency $\omega_c=\text{A}N^{-1/2}$, where $A$ depends on the disorder; for an ordered chain $A=0$.
Consequently, the high frequency phonons for $\omega>\omega_c$, corresponding to small wavelengths, are
trapped and do not contribute to the transport, whereas low frequency phonons with $\omega<\omega_c$ carry
the heat across the chain. The dependence of $\omega_c$ on the system size $N$ implies a dependence of the
scaling exponent $\alpha$ in $J\sim 1/N^\alpha$. Moreover, boundary conditions and spectral properties of
the heat reservoirs also influence $\alpha$ \cite{Dhar01}. Assuming that the real part of the frequency dependent
damping, $\Gamma'(\omega)\sim |\omega|^s$, one finds $\alpha=3/2+s/2$, the case of an unstructured reservoir,
$\Gamma=\text{const.}$, $s=0$ , yields $\alpha=3/2$; note that $s=-1$ results in $\alpha=1$, i.e., Fourier's law.
In the present paper we consider a harmonic chain with fixed boundary conditions subject
to weak coupling strength disorder. To our knowledge this case has not been discussed previously.
Although the techniques used by Matsuda et al. in their pioneering work in the case of mass disorder
\cite{Matsuda70,Ishii73} presumably can be applied to the case of coupling strength disorder, we have
found the approach in the mass-disordered case by Lepri et al. \cite{Lepri03} using dynamical system theory
in conjunction with statistical physics more accessible and transparent. The main part of the paper
is thus devoted to the evaluation and discussion of the Liapunov exponent, a central quantity, in the case of
coupling strength disorder. We have, moreover, briefly discussed the heat current and the heat fluctuations
characterised by the large deviation function. In order to render the paper self-contained for the uninitiated reader,
we have presented a review of the methods employed including a series of explicit calculations. These calculations
are deferred to a series of appendices.
The paper is organised as follows. In Sec.~\ref{model} we introduce the disordered harmonic chain
in the presence of both mass disorder and coupling strength disorder, driven at the end points by heat
reservoirs, the equations of motion describing the dynamics together with expressions for the heat rates.
In Sec.~\ref{green} we present the Green's functions describing the propagation of phonons for the ordered
and disordered chain with derivations deferred to Appendix \ref{greensfunction}. In Sec.~\ref{liapunov} we
introduce the Liapunov exponent characterising the asymptotics of the transfer matrices.
Sec.~\ref{disorder}, which is the central part of the paper, is devoted to a derivation of the Liapunov exponent
in the case of weak coupling strength disorder with a technical issue deferred to Appendix \ref{liapunovapp}.
In Sec.~\ref{heatldf} we briefly discuss the heat current and the large deviation function with derivations in
Appendices \ref{current} and \ref{cgf}. In Sec.~\ref{conclusion}
we present a conclusion.
\section{\label{model} Model}
Here we introduce the model which is the subject of the present study.
The disordered harmonic chain of length $N$ is characterised by the Hamiltonian
\begin{eqnarray}
H=\sum_{n=1}^N\frac{\dot u_n^2}{2m_n}+\frac{1}{2}\sum_{n=1}^{N-1}\kappa_n(u_n-u_{n+1})^2
+\frac{1}{2}\kappa_0 u_1^2+\frac{1}{2}\kappa_Nu_N^2,
\label{ham}
\end{eqnarray}
where $u_n$ is the position of the n-th particle and $\dot u_n$ its velocity, $\dot u_n=du_n/dt$.
We consider fixed boundary conditions, i.e., the chain is attached to walls at the endpoints, yielding the
on-site potentials $(1/2)\kappa_0u_1^2$ and $(1/2)\kappa_Nu_N^2$. For later purposes we impose both mass
disorder and coupling strength disorder, i.e., $m_n$ and $\kappa_n$ are determined by the independent distributions
$\pi_1(m_n)$ and $\pi_2(\kappa_n)$.
The chain is driven by two reservoirs at temperatures $T_1$ and $T_2$, respectively, acting on the first and
last particle in the chain. This configuration is depicted in Fig.~\ref{fig1}.
The equations of motion in bulk for $1<n<N$ and the Langevin equations for the endpoints
for $n=1$ and $n=N$ are given by
\begin{eqnarray}
&&m_n\ddot u_n(t)=\kappa_nu_{n+1}(t)+\kappa_{n-1}u_{n-1}(t)-(\kappa_n+\kappa_{n-1})u_n(t),
~~1<n<N,
\label{eqmo1}
\\
&&m_1\ddot u_1(t)=\kappa_1u_2(t)-(\kappa_1+\kappa_0)u_1(t)-\Gamma\dot u_1(t)+\xi_1(t),
\label{lan1}
\\
&&m_N\ddot u_N(t)=\kappa_{N-1}u_{N-1}(t)-(\kappa_N+\kappa_{N-1})u_N(t)-\Gamma\dot u_N(t)+\xi_2(t).
\label{lan2}
\end{eqnarray}
The heat reservoirs at the endpoints are characterised by
the white noise correlations
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\langle\xi_1(t)\xi_1(t')\rangle=2\Gamma T_1\delta(t-t'),
\label{noi1}
\\
&&\langle\xi_2(t)\xi_2(t')\rangle= 2\Gamma T_2\delta(t-t');
\label{noi2}
\end{eqnarray}
note that the fluctuation-dissipation theorem \cite{Reichl98} implies that the damping $\Gamma$
in the Langevin equations is balanced by the damping $\Gamma$ also appearing in the white noise correlations.
We, moreover, consider structureless reservoirs characterised by a single damping constant $\Gamma$.
The case of memory effects characterised by a frequency dependent damping $\Gamma(\omega)$ has
also been discussed, see e.g. \cite{Dhar01,Casher71}. For later purposes we also note that according
to (\ref{lan1}) and (\ref{lan2}) the thermal forces arising from the reservoirs are given by
$F_1(t)=-\Gamma\dot u_1(t)+\xi_1(t)$ and $F_2(t)=-\Gamma\dot u_N(t)+\xi_2(t)$, yielding the heat rates
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\dot Q_1(t)=F_1(t)\dot u_1(t),
\label{qr1}
\\
&&\dot Q_2(t)=F_2(t)\dot u_N(t).
\label{qr2}
\end{eqnarray}
\section{\label{green} Green's functions}
The Green's function plays an important role in the discussion of heat transport and heat fluctuations. Introducing
the Fourier transforms
\begin{eqnarray}
&&u_n(t)=\int\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}\exp(-i\omega t)\tilde u_n(\omega),
\label{fou1}
\\
&&\xi_{1,2}(t)=\int\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}\exp(-i\omega t)\tilde\xi_{1,2}(\omega),
\label{fou2}
\end{eqnarray}
we can express the equations of motion (\ref{eqmo1}) to (\ref{lan2}) in the form
\begin{eqnarray}
\sum_{m=1}^NG_{nm}^{-1}(\omega)\tilde u_m(\omega)=\delta_{n1}{\tilde\xi}_1(\omega)+\delta_{nN}{\tilde\xi}_2(\omega),
\label{eqmo2}
\end{eqnarray}
with solutions
\begin{eqnarray}
\tilde u_n(\omega)=G_{n1}(\omega)\tilde\xi_1(\omega)+G_{nN}(\omega)\tilde\xi_2(\omega),
\label{sol}
\end{eqnarray}
where the Green's function $G_{n1}(\omega)$ and $G_{nN}(\omega)$ describe the influence of the coupling to the
reservoirs at the endpoints on the particle at site $n$. Here the end-to-end-point Green's function $G_{1N}(\omega)$
is relevant in the context of heat transfer.
\subsubsection{The ordered chain}
For the ordered chain with masses $m_n=m$ and coupling strengths $\kappa_n=\kappa$ the derivation
of $G_{1N}(\omega)$ is straightforward in a plane wave basis using an equation of motion approach
\cite{Fogedby12} or a determinantal approach \cite{Saito07,Kundu11}. For a chain composed of $N$ particles
one finds the expression
\begin{eqnarray}
&&G_{1N}(\omega)=
\frac{\kappa\sin p}
{\kappa^2\sin p(N+1)-2i\kappa\Gamma\omega\sin pN-(\Gamma\omega)^2\sin p(N-1)},
\label{green1}
\\
&&\omega^2=\frac{4\kappa}{m}\sin^2(p/2),~~-\pi<p<\pi.
\label{disp}
\end{eqnarray}
The denominator in (\ref{green1}) shows the resonance structure in the chain. We note that $G_{1N}(\omega)$ is
bounded and describes the propagation of ballistic phonons across the chain. The frequency $\omega$ is related
to the wavenumber $p$ by the phonon dispersion law (\ref{disp}). The derivation of (\ref{green1}) is presented in
Appendix \ref{greensfunction}.
\subsubsection{The disordered chain}
The mass-disordered chain has been discussed by Dhar \cite{Dhar01,Dhar08a}, see also
\cite{Matsuda68,Matsuda70,Ishii73}. In this context the corresponding end-to-end Greens function $G_{1N}(\omega)$
has been derived. Here we extend this analysis to also include coupling strength disorder. For the disordered chain
the plane wave assumption used in obtaining (\ref{green1}) is not applicable owing to the random masses and coupling
strengths and one must resort to a transfer matrix method \cite{Matsuda70,Ishii73,Dhar01}.
The transfer matrix $T_n(\omega)$ connects the pair of sites $(\tilde u_n(\omega),\tilde u_{n-1}(\omega))$ to the pair
of sites $(\tilde u_{n+1}(\omega),\tilde u_n(\omega))$ and thus depends on the local disorder. From the bulk equations
of motion (\ref{eqmo1}) in Fourier space we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_{n+1}(\omega)\\\tilde u_n(\omega)\end{array}\right)=
T_n(\omega)\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_n(\omega)\\\tilde u_{n-1}(\omega)\end{array}\right),
\label{eqmo3}
\end{eqnarray}
where the transfer matrix is given by
\begin{eqnarray}
T_n(\omega)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\Omega_n(\omega)/\kappa_n &-\kappa_{n-1}/\kappa_n\\1 & 0\end{array}\right);
\label{trans1}
\end{eqnarray}
we have introduced
\begin{eqnarray}
\Omega_n(\omega)=\kappa_n+\kappa_{n-1}-m_n\omega^2.
\label{om}
\end{eqnarray}
The pair of sites $(\tilde u_N(\omega),\tilde u_{N-1}(\omega))$ are thus related to the pair of sites
$(\tilde u_2(\omega),\tilde u_1(\omega))$ by a product of random transfer matrices according to
\begin{eqnarray}
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_N(\omega)\\\tilde u_{N-1}(\omega)\end{array}\right)=
T_{N-1}(\omega)T_{N-2}(\omega)\cdots T_2(\omega)\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_2(\omega)\\\tilde u_1(\omega)\end{array}\right).
\label{eqmo4}
\end{eqnarray}
Incorporating the coupling to the heat baths at sites $n=1$ and $n=N$ the Green's function
$G_{1N}(\omega)$ takes the form
\begin{eqnarray}
G_{1N}(\omega)=\frac{\kappa_0}
{\kappa_0\kappa_NB_{11}(\omega)+i\Gamma\omega(\kappa_NB_{12}
(\omega)-\kappa_0B_{21}(\omega))+(\Gamma\omega)^2B_{22}(\omega)}.
\label{green2}
\end{eqnarray}
Here $B(\omega)$ is given by the matrix product
\begin{eqnarray}
B(\omega)=T_N(\omega)T_{N-1}(\omega)\cdots T_1(\omega);
\label{bom}
\end{eqnarray}
note that in the ordered chain, $m_n=m$ and $\kappa_n=\kappa$, and we have $T_n(\omega)=T(\omega)$,
i.e., $B(\omega)=T^N(\omega)$. By insertion of $T^N(\omega)$ given by (\ref{a35}) we readily obtain (\ref{green1}).
The derivation of (\ref{green2}) is given in Appendix \ref{greensfunction}.
\section{\label{liapunov}The Liapunov exponent}
The Liapunov exponent is of importance in determining the properties of the disordered chain.
For large $N$ the behaviour of $G_{1N}(\omega)$ in (\ref{green2}) is determined by the asymptotic properties of the
matrix product $B(\omega)$ in (\ref{bom}) . This issue has been discussed extensively in seminal papers by
Matsuda and Ishii \cite{Matsuda68,Matsuda70,Ishii73} on the basis of the Furstenberg theorem
\cite{Furstenberg63,O'Connor75}. A central result is that
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim_{N\rightarrow\infty}\frac{1}{N}\log(|\tilde u_N(\omega)|^2+|\tilde u_{N-1}(\omega)|^2)=2\gamma(\omega)
\label{liap1}
\end{eqnarray}
with probability one; this is basically an expression of the law of large numbers applied to non commuting
independent random matrices.
Here $\gamma(\omega)$ is a positive Liapunov exponent depending on the phonon frequency
$\omega$ and the disorder. For the norm we infer the scaling behaviour
\begin{eqnarray}
|\tilde u_N(\omega)|\propto\exp(\gamma(\omega)N),
\label{un}
\end{eqnarray}
and since the matrix $T_N^{-1}(\omega)B(\omega)T_1^{-1}(\omega)$ according to (\ref{eqmo4})
connects the pair of site $(\tilde u_{N}(\omega),\tilde u_{N-1}(\omega))$ to the pair of sites
$(\tilde u_{2}(\omega),\tilde u_{1}(\omega))$, the matrix elements $B_{nm}(\omega)$, likewise, scale like
\begin{eqnarray}
|B_{nm}(\omega)|\propto\exp(\gamma(\omega)N)
\label{bom2}
\end{eqnarray}
for large $N$. For vanishing disorder $\gamma(\omega)=0$ and $B(\omega)$ is
bounded, i.e., not growing with $N$. It then follows from (\ref{green2}) that $G_{1N}(\omega)$, likewise,
is bounded.
Introducing the ratio $z_n(\omega)=\tilde u_n(\omega)/\tilde u_{n-1}(\omega)$ and inserting (\ref{om}), it follows
from the bulk equations of motion (\ref{eqmo1}) that $z_n(\omega)$ obeys the non linear stochastic discrete map
\begin{eqnarray}
z_{n+1}(\omega)=
\frac{\kappa_n+\kappa_{n-1}-m_n\omega^2}{\kappa_n}-\frac{\kappa_{n-1}}{\kappa_n}\frac{1}{z_n(\omega)}.
\label{map1}
\end{eqnarray}
We also note from (\ref{un}) that for large $N$ we have
$|z_N(\omega)|=|\tilde u_N(\omega)|/|\tilde u_{N-1}(\omega)|\propto\exp(\gamma(\omega))$ or
\begin{eqnarray}
\gamma(\omega)=\lim_{N\rightarrow\infty}\log| z_N(\omega)|.
\label{liap2}
\end{eqnarray}
Consequently, the Liapunov exponent $\gamma(\omega)$ is determined by the asymptotic properties of the map
(\ref{map1}) for large $N$.
More precisely, in general the map (\ref{map1}) is stochastic due to the randomness of $m_n$ and $\kappa_n$.
However, just as a white Gaussian noise $\xi(t)$ with correlations $\langle\xi(t)\xi(t')\rangle=2\Delta\delta(t-t')$ in a
Langevin equation of the form $dx(t)/dt=-dV(x)/dx+\xi(t)$ for a stochastic variable $x(t)$ can drive $x$ into a stationary
distribution $P_0(x)\propto\exp(-V/\Delta)$ \cite{Reichl98}, we anticipate that the 'noise' due to the randomness of $m$
and $\kappa$ will drive $z_n$ into a stationary distribution $P_0(z)$. Consequently, according to (\ref{liap2}) we infer
\begin{eqnarray}
\gamma(\omega)=\int dzP_0(z)\log| z(\omega)|.
\label{liap3}
\end{eqnarray}
The task is thus to determine $P_0(z)$ on the basis of the map (\ref{map1}) and evaluate $\gamma(\omega)$.
\section{\label{disorder}Coupling strength disorder}
For general values of the frequency the Liapunov exponent $\gamma(\omega)$ is not available
in explicit analytical form. However, Matsuda et al. \cite{Matsuda68,Matsuda70}
have determined $\gamma(\omega)$ in the low frequency limit in the case of mass disorder. They find
\begin{eqnarray}
\gamma(\omega)\simeq\frac{1}{8}\frac{\omega^2}{\kappa\langle m\rangle}\langle\delta m^2\rangle,
\label{liap4}
\end{eqnarray}
where the mean mass and the mean square mass deviations are given by $\langle m\rangle$ and
$\langle\delta m^2\rangle=\langle(m-\langle m\rangle)^2\rangle$; the averages $\langle\cdots\rangle$
determined by the mass distribution $\pi_1(m_n)$.
Here we consider the evaluation of the Liapunov exponent in the case of coupling strength disorder.
Rather than attempting to apply the techniques by Matsuda et al. we here use an approach
advanced by Lepri et al. \cite{Lepri03} using dynamical system theory \cite{Jackson90} and
statistical physics \cite{Reichl98}. From a theoretical physics point a view we believe this method
is simpler and more straightforward.
\subsection{The case: $\omega=0$, $m_n=m$, $\kappa_n=\kappa$}
For $\omega=0$ and vanishing disorder, i.e., $\kappa_n=\kappa$ and $m_n=m$ the map (\ref{map1})
takes the form
\begin{eqnarray}
z_{n+1}=f(z_n)=2-\frac{1}{z_n},
\label{map2}
\end{eqnarray}
where we have omitted the $\omega$ dependence. In a plot of $z_{n+1}$ versus $z_n$ the map
is composed of two hyperbolic branches. For $|z_n|\rightarrow\infty$ we have $z_{n+1}\rightarrow 2$, for
$z_n\rightarrow\pm 0$ we note that $z_{n+1}\rightarrow\mp\infty$. The map has a fixed point $z^\ast$ determined
by $f(z^\ast)=z^\ast$, yielding $z^\ast=1$. The evolution of the iterates as a function of $n$ is analysed
by considering the increment $z_{n+1}-z_n=-(z_n-1)^2/z_n$. We find that $z_{n+1}-z_n<0$ for $z_n>0$, whereas for
$z_n<0$ the increment $z_{n+1}-z_n>0$. At the fixed point $z^\ast=1$ the increment
vanishes, i.e, $z_{n+1}-z_n=0$. In other words, as we approach the fixed point through
iterates $z_n>1$ the iterates converge to the fixed point; on the other hand, choosing
an initial iterate $z_n\lesssim 1$ the iterates move away from the fixed point, corresponding
to a marginally stable fixed point. Further inspection of the map in a plot of $z_{n+1}$
versus $z_n$ shows that choosing an initial value $z_n<1$ the iterates eventually make a
single excursion to the hyperbola $2-1/z_n$ for $z_n<0$ before returning to the hyperbola
for $z_n>0$ and approaching the fixed point. In Fig.~\ref{fig2} we have plotted $z_{n+1}$ versus $z_n$ with the
fixed point indicated at $z_{n+1}=z_n=1$; the solid line depicts the map (\ref{map2}).
In Fig.~\ref{fig3} we have in a) plotted $z_{n+1}$ versus $z_n$ demonstrating the convergence towards
the fixed point at $z^\ast=1$; in b) we have plotted the decreasing increments $z_{n+1}-z_n$ versus $n$.
\subsection{The case: $\omega\gtrsim 0$, $m_n=m$, $\kappa_n=\kappa$ }
We next consider the case of small $\omega$ and vanishing disorder. From (\ref{map1}) we infer the map
\begin{eqnarray}
z_{n+1}=2-\frac{m}{\kappa}\omega^2-\frac{1}{z_n},
\label{map3}
\end{eqnarray}
depicted by a dotted line in Fig.~\ref{fig2}. In this case the map does not have a (real) fixed point. However, analysing the increment $z_{n+1}-z_n=2-(m/\kappa)\omega^2-z_n-1/z_n$
in the vicinity of the value $z=1$ (the position of the fixed point for $\omega=0$) we obtain $z_{n+1}-z_n\approx -(m/\kappa)\omega^2$ and the increment
vanishes for small $\omega$. We note that the increment is negative corresponding to a flux of iterates close to the
point $z=1$ from the region $z_n>1$ to $z_n<1$. In Fig.~\ref{fig4} we have in a) plotted $z_{n+1}$ versus $z_n$ demonstrating the
flux of iterates past the point $z=1$; in b) we have shown that the increments $z_{n+1}-z_n$ as function
of $n$ decrease in the vicinity of the point $z=1$.
\subsection{The case: $\omega\gtrsim 0$, $m_n=m$, $\delta\kappa_n\approx0$}
Finally, we consider the case of small $\omega$ and small coupling strength disorder. Setting
$\kappa_n=\langle\kappa\rangle+\delta\kappa_n$, where $\langle\kappa\rangle$ is determined by the coupling strength distribution $\pi_2(\kappa_n)$,
and assuming $\delta\kappa_n\ll\langle\kappa\rangle$, we obtain to leading order expanding the map (\ref{map1})
\begin{eqnarray}
z_{n+1}=
2-\frac{m}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\bigg(1-\frac{\delta\kappa_n}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\bigg)\omega^2
+\frac{\delta\kappa_{n-1}-\delta\kappa_n}{\langle\kappa\rangle}-
\bigg(1+\frac{\delta\kappa_{n-1}-\delta\kappa_n}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\bigg)\frac{1}{z_n}.
\label{map4}
\end{eqnarray}
Furthermore, expanding about the point $z=1$ by setting $z_n=1+\epsilon_n$ we note
that the terms $(\delta\kappa_{n-1}-\delta\kappa_n)/\langle\kappa\rangle$ cancels out and we obtain
for small $\epsilon_n$
\begin{eqnarray}
\epsilon_{n+1}-\epsilon_n\simeq -\epsilon_n^2-\frac{m}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\omega^2
+\frac{m\omega^2}{\langle\kappa\rangle^2}\delta\kappa_n.
\label{map5}
\end{eqnarray}
For large $n$ the iterates compress and constitute a flow near the point $z=1$
in the sense that $\epsilon_n-\epsilon_{n+1}\rightarrow 0$ for small $\omega$.
As a consequence we can introduce the continuum limit and make the assumption $\epsilon_n\approx\epsilon(n)$
and $\delta\kappa_n\approx\delta\kappa(n)$, where $n$ is a continuous variable. From (\ref{map5}) we thus obtain
the effective Langevin equation
\begin{eqnarray}
\frac{d\epsilon(n)}{dn}&=&-\epsilon(n)^2-\frac{m}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\omega^2+\eta(n)
\label{lan3},
\\
\eta(n)&=&\frac{m\omega^2}{\langle\kappa\rangle^2}\delta\kappa(n),
\label{noi3}
\end{eqnarray}
where we have introduced the 'noise variable' $\eta(n)$ with correlations
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\langle\eta(n)\eta(n')\rangle=\Delta\delta(n-n'),
\label{corkap}
\\
&&\Delta=\bigg(\frac{m\omega^2}{\langle\kappa\rangle^2}\bigg)^2\langle\delta\kappa^2\rangle.
\end{eqnarray}
Expressing the Langevin equation in (\ref{lan3}) in the form $d\epsilon/dn=-dV/d\epsilon+\eta$ the 'potential'
has the form $V=(m/\langle\kappa\rangle)\omega^2\epsilon+\epsilon^3/3$ with a linear slope
for small $\epsilon$. Since there is no minimum the 'position' $\epsilon$ 'falls down' the slope and
escapes for negative $\epsilon$. This is
consistent with the behaviour of the iterates near the the point $z=1$ where there is a flow from right to left
implying that the stochastic map generates a probability current $J_0$ near $z=1$.
In order to proceed we assume that the coupling strength distribution $\pi_2(\kappa)$ has a Gaussian form, implying
that the 'noise' driving the Langevin equation (\ref{lan3}) has the structure of Gaussian white noise \cite{Reichl98}.
This implies that the probability density $P(\epsilon,n)$ is governed by the Fokker-Planck equation
\cite{Risken89}
\begin{eqnarray}
\frac{\partial P(\epsilon,n)}{\partial n}=
\frac{\partial}{\partial\epsilon}\Big(\epsilon^2+\frac{m}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\omega^2\Big)P(\epsilon,n)
+\frac{1}{2}\Delta\frac{\partial^2P(\epsilon,n)}{\partial\epsilon^2}.
\label{fp}
\end{eqnarray}
From the continuity equation $\partial P/\partial n=-\partial J_0/\partial\epsilon$ we identify
the probability current
\begin{eqnarray}
J_0=-\Big(\epsilon^2+\frac{m}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\omega^2\Big)P(\epsilon,n)
-\frac{1}{2}\Delta\frac{\partial P(\epsilon,n)}{\partial\epsilon}.
\label{pc}
\end{eqnarray}
For small $\omega$ the stationary distribution to leading asymptotic order in $\Delta$ has the form
\begin{eqnarray}
P_0(\epsilon)\propto\frac{1}{\epsilon^2+(m/\langle\kappa\rangle)\omega^2}+
\Delta\frac{\epsilon}{(\epsilon^2+(m/\langle\kappa\rangle)\omega^2)^3},
\label{stat}
\end{eqnarray}
for a technical detail see Appendix \ref{liapunovapp}.
Finally, from (\ref{liap2}), expanding $\log(|z(\omega)|)\sim 1+\epsilon(\omega)$, we have
\begin{eqnarray}
\gamma(\omega)=\frac{\int d\epsilon \epsilon P_0(\epsilon)}{\int d\epsilon P_0(\epsilon)}.
\label{liap5}
\end{eqnarray}
Inserting $P_0(\epsilon)$ we note that the first term in (\ref{stat}) for symmetry reasons does not contribute and
we obtain by quadrature to order $\Delta$ the Liapunov exponent for small $\omega$ for a coupling strength-disordered chain
\begin{eqnarray}
\gamma(\omega)\simeq
\frac{1}{8}\frac{\omega^2}{\langle\kappa\rangle m}
\bigg(\frac{m}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\bigg)^2\langle\delta\kappa^2\rangle.
\label{liap6}
\end{eqnarray}
\subsection{Combining coupling strength disorder and mass disorder}
Here we consider as a corollary the case of both coupling strength disorder and mass disorder.
In the map (\ref{map1}) we note that in the absence of coupling strength disorder the random mass
$m_n$ multiplies $\omega$ and is quenched in the low frequency limit. In the analysis by Matsuda et al.
\cite{Matsuda68,Matsuda70} the Liapunov exponent in (\ref{liap4}) only depends on the first and second
moment of the mass distribution, i.e., $\langle m\rangle$ and $\langle\delta m^2\rangle$.
In other words, the calculation of (\ref{liap4}) does not presuppose a narrow mass distribution.
Including mass disorder in the Langevin equation in (\ref{lan3}) by setting $m(n)=\langle m\rangle+\delta m(n)$
we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
\frac{d\epsilon(n)}{dn}&=&-\epsilon(n)^2-\frac{\langle m\rangle}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\omega^2+\tilde\eta(n)
\label{lan4},
\\
\tilde\eta(n)&=&\frac{\langle m\rangle\omega^2}{\langle\kappa\rangle^2}
\delta\kappa(n)-\frac{\omega^2}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\delta m(n)
\label{noi4}.
\end{eqnarray}
Ignoring terms of order $\delta m\delta\kappa$ we obtain the noise correlations
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\langle\tilde\eta(n)\tilde\eta(n')\rangle=\tilde\Delta\delta(n-n'),
\label{corkapr}
\\
&&\tilde\Delta=\bigg(\frac{\omega^2}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\bigg)^2
\bigg[\langle\delta m^2\rangle+\bigg(\frac{\langle m\rangle}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\bigg)^2\langle\delta\kappa^2\rangle\bigg],
\label{newdel}
\end{eqnarray}
and correspondingly the Liapunov exponent
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\tilde\gamma(\omega)\simeq
\frac{1}{8}\frac{\omega^2}{\langle\kappa\rangle\langle m\rangle}\langle\delta\tilde m^2\rangle,
\label{liap7}
\\
&&\langle\delta\tilde m^2\rangle=
\langle\delta m^2\rangle+\bigg(\frac{\langle m\rangle}{\langle\kappa\rangle}\bigg)^2\langle\delta\kappa^2\rangle.
\label{r-rmqn}
\end{eqnarray}
For $\delta\kappa =0$ we recover the Liapunov exponent in the mass-disordered case in (\ref{liap4})
first derived by Matsuda et al. \cite{Matsuda68,Matsuda70}, see also \cite{Lepri03}. The presence of weak coupling strength disorder
can be incororated by introducing the renormalised mean square mass deviation $\langle\delta\tilde m^2\rangle$
given by (\ref{r-rmqn}). The expressions in (\ref{liap6}) and (\ref{liap7}-\ref{r-rmqn}) constitute the main results of
the present analysis.
\subsection{Connection to 1D quantum mechanical disorder}
The Langevin equations in (\ref{lan3}) and (\ref{lan4}) have the form of a Ricatti equation of the form
$\epsilon'=-\epsilon^2-E+V$, where $V=\tilde\eta$ and $E=\omega^2\langle m\rangle/\langle\kappa\rangle$,
the prime denoting a derivative. By means of the substitution $\epsilon=\psi'/\psi$ the Ricatti equation is
reduced to the 1D stationary Schr\"{o}dinger equation, $-\psi''+V\psi=E\psi$, describing the quantum motion in a random
potential $V$ with zero mean and "white noise"correlations
$\langle\tilde\eta(n)\tilde\eta(n')\rangle=\tilde\Delta\delta(n-n')$. This problem, relating to Anderson localisation
\cite{Anderson58}, has been studied extensively, see e.g. \cite{Nieuwenhuizen83,Lifshits88,Luck04,Grabsch14}.
In 1D in the presence of even weak disorder the wave function is localised, characterised by the localisation or
correlation length $l_c$. The corresponding Liapunov exponent is thus given by $\gamma=1/l_c$. According to
the analysis by Luck \cite{Luck04} one finds in the case of weak disorder $\gamma=\tilde\Delta/8E$ and by insertion
the result in (\ref{liap7}).
\section{\label{heatldf}Heat Current and heat fluctuations}
Here we briefly discuss the implication of a Liapunov exponent for the heat current and heat fluctuations.
\subsection{Heat Current}
Regarding the heat current we summarise the analysis by Dhar \cite{Dhar01,Dhar08a,Dhar16} below.
According to (\ref{qr1}) the fluctuating heat rate from reservoir 1 is given by
$\dot Q(t)=(-\Gamma\dot u_1(t)+\xi_1(t))\dot u_1(t)$ and the integrated heat flux by $Q(t)=\int^tdt'\dot Q(t')$.
Averaged over the heat reservoirs the mean value $\langle Q(t)\rangle\propto t$ and we obtain the mean
heat current $J(N)=\langle Q(t)\rangle/t$, $\langle\cdots\rangle$ denoting a thermal average.
For an ordered chain the mean heat current is given by the expression
\cite{Casher71,Rubin71,Dhar06,Dhar08a,Fogedby12}
\begin{eqnarray}
J(N)=\frac{1}{2}(T_1-T_2)\int\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}T(\omega),
\label{heat1}
\end{eqnarray}
where the transmission matrix $T(\omega)$ is expressed in terms of the end-to-end Green's function in (\ref{green1}),
\begin{eqnarray}
T(\omega)=4(\omega\Gamma)^2|G_{1N}(\omega)|^2.
\label{trans2}
\end{eqnarray}
Since $T(\omega)$ is bounded and the range of $\omega$ is determined by the phonon dispersion law (\ref{disp})
it follows that the heat current $J\propto (T_1-T_2)$, yielding a conductivity $\kappa\propto N$; this behaviour
is characteristic of ballistic heat transport.
In Appendix \ref{current} we have derived the expression (\ref{heat1}), see also \cite{Fogedby12},
and find that it also holds for the
disordered chain with the Green's function (\ref{green2}) for a particular disorder realisation
$\{m_n\}$ and $\{\kappa_n\}$. The issue of averaging the current $J(N)$ with respect to the disorder
is, however, quite complex and we review the analysis by Dhar \cite{Dhar01,Dhar08a,Dhar16} here.
For a system of size $N$ the matrix elements $B_{ij}(\omega)$ in $G_{1N}(\omega)$ scale according
to (\ref{bom2}) like $\exp(\tilde\gamma(\omega)N)$, where $\tilde\gamma(\omega)$
for small $\omega$ and both mass disorder and weak coupling strength disorder is given by (\ref{liap7})
and (\ref{r-rmqn}) .
Consequently, for $\tilde\gamma(\omega) N\gg 1$ the denominator in $G_{1N}(\omega)$ diverges and the
heat current vanishes; this is due to the localised modes which do not carry energy and thus do not contribute
to the heat transport. On the other hand, for $\tilde\gamma(\omega) N\ll 1$, corresponding to the extended modes,
the Green's function $G_{1N}(\omega)$ is bounded and contributes to the heat current.
The limiting case for $\tilde\gamma(\omega) N\approx 1$ defines the correlation or cross-over frequency
\begin{eqnarray}
\omega_c=(8\langle\kappa\rangle\langle m\rangle)^{1/2}(\langle\delta\tilde m^2\rangle N)^{-1/2}.
\label{cross}
\end{eqnarray}
Consequently, the integration over frequencies in (\ref{heat1}) is cut-off at $\omega=\omega_c$.
An approximate expression for the disorder-averaged heat current, characterised by a bar, is thus
given by
\begin{eqnarray}
\overline{J(N)}\simeq\frac{1}{2}(T_1-T_2)\int_{-\omega_c}^{\omega_c}\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}T(\omega).
\label{heat2}
\end{eqnarray}
Owing to the $N$-dependence of the cut-off frequency $\omega_c$ the heat current $\overline{J(N)}$ acquires an explicit $N$ dependence. In the range $|\omega|<\omega_c$ of extended modes Dhar \cite{Dhar01,Dhar08a} uses for $G_{1N}(\omega)$ the unperturbed result given by (\ref{green1}). This is an excellent approximation supported by numerical estimates \cite{Dhar08a}.
Since $T(\omega)\sim\omega^2$ for small $\omega$ a simple scaling argument yields $\overline{J(N)}\sim \omega_c^3\sim(\langle\delta\tilde m^2\rangle N)^{-3/2} $, corresponding to the exponent $\alpha=3/2$;
note that in the ballistic case $\alpha=0$. We also find that the heat current for large fixed $N$ scales with the mean square
renormalised mass according to $\overline{J(N)}\sim\langle\delta\tilde m^2\rangle^{-3/2}$.
\subsection{\label{cumulant} Large deviation function}
The distribution of heat fluctuations is described by the moment generating characteristic function \cite{Reichl98}
\begin{eqnarray}
C(\lambda,t)=\langle\exp(\lambda Q(t))\rangle.
\label{char1}
\end{eqnarray}
Correspondingly, the cumulant generating function is given by $\log C(\lambda,t)$. The long
time behaviour is characterised by the associated large deviation function $\mu(\lambda)$
according to
\begin{eqnarray}
C(\lambda,t)=\exp(\mu(\lambda) t).
\label{char2}
\end{eqnarray}
It follows from general principles \cite{Touchette09,Hollander00,Fogedby11a,Fogedby12,Fogedby14b} that the cumulant generating function $\mu(\lambda)$ is downward convex and owing to normalisation passes through the origin, i.e., $\mu(0)=0$.
For an ordered chain the large deviation function has been derived by Saito and Dhar \cite{Saito07,Saito11},
see also \cite{Kundu11}. Here we present a derivation in Appendix \ref{cgf}, see also \cite{Fogedby12}.
The large deviation function has the form
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\mu(\lambda)=-\frac{1}{2}\int\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}\log[1+T(\omega)f(\lambda)],
\label{ldf}
\\
&&T(\omega)=4(\omega\Gamma)^2|G_{1N}(\omega)|^2,
\\
&&f(\lambda)=T_1T_2\lambda(1/T_1-1/T_2-\lambda).
\label{f}
\end{eqnarray}
Here the structure of $f(\lambda)$ ensures that $\mu(\lambda)$ satisfies the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation theorem \cite{Gallavotti95,Lebowitz99,Fogedby12} valid for driven non equilibrium systems,
\begin{eqnarray}
\mu(\lambda)=\mu(1/T_1-1/T_2-\lambda).
\label{ft}
\end{eqnarray}
From the structure of (\ref{ldf}) it follows that $\mu(\lambda)$ has branch points determined by the condition
$1+T(\omega)f(\lambda)>0$. Since by inspection $0\le T(\omega)\le 1$, see \cite{Fogedby12}, it follows that
$f(\lambda)>-1$ yielding the branch points $\lambda_1= 1/T_1$ and $\lambda_2= -1/T_2$. We also note that
the fluctuation theorem in (\ref{ft}) implies that $\mu(1/T_1-1/T_2)=0$. In conclusion, the large deviation function
is downward convex, crossing the axis at $\lambda=0$ and $\lambda =1/T_1-1/T_2$ and having branch points at
$\lambda_1$ and $\lambda_2$. At equal temperature $T_1=T_2$ the large deviation function is positive in the
whole range as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig6}.
The expression for $\mu(\lambda)$ in (\ref{ldf}) is for a concrete realisation of the quenched mass and coupling
strength disorder $\{m_n\}$ and $\{\kappa_n\}$ through the dependence on the Green's function
$G_{1N}(\omega)$ in (\ref{green2}). We note, however, that due to the form of $f(\lambda)$ the large deviation function
$\mu(\lambda)$ satisfies the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation theorem for each disorder realisation and we conclude
that the disorder-averaged large deviation function $\overline{\mu(\lambda)}$, likewise, obeys the fluctuation
theorem.
A further clarification also follows from the Fokker-Planck equation for the joint
distribution $P(Q_1,Q_2, \{u_n\}, \{\dot u_n\},t)$ for the heat transfer \cite{Imparato07,Fogedby12,Risken89}
\begin{eqnarray}
\frac{\partial P}{\partial t} = &&(L_0+L_Q)P,
\label{fp1}
\\
L_0 P=&&\{P,H\},
\label{fp2}
\\
L_QP=&&\Gamma\Bigg(T_1\dot u_1^2\frac{\partial^2P}{\partial Q_1^2}+
2T_1\dot u_1\frac{\partial^2P}{\partial Q_1\partial\dot u_1}+(\dot u_1^2+T_1)\frac{\partial P}{\partial Q_1}\Bigg)
\nonumber
\\
+&&\Gamma\Bigg(T_2\dot u_N^2\frac{\partial^2P}{\partial Q_2^2}+
2T_2\dot u_N\frac{\partial^2P}{\partial Q_2\partial\dot u_N}+(\dot u_N^2+T_2)\frac{\partial P}{\partial Q_2}\Bigg).
\label{fp3}
\end{eqnarray}
As shown in \cite{Fogedby12} the fluctuation theorem here follows from the structure of the operator $L_Q$
and does not depend on the Hamiltonian part $L_0 P$. Since the disorder only enters in the Hamiltonian $H$
in (\ref{ham}) we again infer the validity of the fluctuation theorem.
The disorder enters in the transmission matrix $T(\omega)$ given by (\ref{trans2}).
In Fig.~\ref{fig5} we have in a) depicted the transmission matrix for $N=10$, $m=1$, $\kappa=1$, and
$\Gamma=2$. The blue curve refers to the ordered case for $\langle\delta\tilde m^2\rangle=0$,
showing the resonance structure of $G_{1N}(\omega)$. The black curve corresponds to the disordered
case for $\sqrt{\langle\delta\tilde m^2\rangle}=0.5$ averaged over 5000 samples. With this choice of parameters
the cross-over frequency in (\ref{cross}) is $\omega_c\sim 1.8$ in accordance with Fig.~\ref{fig5}, showing
the onset of localised states for $\omega>\omega_c$, yielding a decreasing transmission matrix;
in Fig.~\ref{fig5} we have in b) depicted $T(\omega)$ for $N=100$ and $500$ samples showing the same features.
Finally, implementing the same approximation as for the heat current in (\ref{heat2}),
we express the disorder-averaged large deviation function in the form
\begin{eqnarray}
\overline{\mu(\lambda)}\simeq-
\frac{1}{2}\int_{-\omega_c}^{\omega_c}\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}\log[1+T(\omega)f(\lambda)],
\label{ldfav}
\end{eqnarray}
where $T(\omega)=4(\omega\Gamma)^2|G_{1N}(\omega)|^2$ is expressed in terms of the
Green's function $G_{1N}(\omega)$ for the ordered case in (\ref{green1}). We have not investigated
the expression in (\ref{ldfav}) further but have determined $\overline{\mu(\lambda)}$ numerically.
In Fig.~\ref{fig6} we have depicted the large deviation function for $N=100$ both in the absence of disorder
for $\delta\tilde m=0$ and in the presence of disorder choosing $\delta\tilde m=0.5$.
Since $T(\omega)$ is reduced in the upper $\omega$ range the large deviation function sampling
all frequencies is overall reduced. However, since $f(\lambda)$ has the form of an inverted parabola,
the reduction of $\overline{\mu(\lambda)}$ is most pronounced for $\lambda$ close to the edges,
as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig6}.
\section{\label{conclusion} Conclusion}
In this paper we have discussed the disordered harmonic chain subject to coupling strength disorder.
A case which to our knowledge has not been studied previously. Using a dynamical system theory approach
we have evaluated the Liapunov exponent at low frequency and for weak coupling strength disorder.
Including mass disorder we have obtained an expression for the Liapunov exponent which interpolates between
coupling strength disorder and mass disorder. In the absence of coupling strength disorder we recover the
well-known result by Matsuda et al., see also Lepri. In the general case coupling strength disorder can be
incorporated by introducing a renormalised mass disorder. Finally, we have discussed the heat current and
the large deviation function and commented on the validity of the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation
theorem for the disordered chain.
\section{\label{appendix}Appendix}
\subsection{\label{greensfunction}Greens function}
Inserting (\ref{om}) we have in Fourier space the Langevin equations
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\Omega_1(\omega)\tilde u_1(\omega)=i\omega\Gamma\tilde u_1(\omega)+
\kappa_1\tilde u_2(\omega)+\tilde\xi_1(\omega),
\label{a1}
\\
&&\Omega_N(\omega)\tilde u_N(\omega)=i\omega\Gamma\tilde u_N(\omega)+
\kappa_{N-1}\tilde u_{N-1}(\omega)+\tilde \xi_2(\omega),
\label{a2}
\end{eqnarray}
and we infer that the inverse Green's function in (\ref{eqmo2}) has the form
\begin{eqnarray}
G^{-1}(\omega)=
\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}
\tilde\Omega_1(\omega) &-\kappa_1 & & &
\\
-\kappa_1 & \Omega_2(\omega) &-\kappa_2 & &
\\
& -\kappa_2 &\cdots & &
\\
& & & \Omega_{N-1}(\omega) & -\kappa_{N-1}
\\
& & &-\kappa_{N-1} & \tilde\Omega_N(\omega)
\end{array}\right),
\label{a3}
\end{eqnarray}
where $\tilde\Omega_1(\omega)=\Omega_1(\omega)-i\Gamma\omega$ and
$\tilde\Omega_N(\omega)=\Omega_N(\omega)-i\Gamma\omega$.
We note that $G^{-1}(\omega)$ is a symmetric tridiagonal matrix. For the matrix elements we thus have
$G_{nm}^{-1}(\omega)=G_{mn}^{-1}(\omega)$ implying $G_{nm}(\omega)=G_{mn}(\omega)$.
The symmetry and structure also allows us to derive the useful Schwinger identity \cite{Wang45}.
From (\ref{a3}) we have, the $\ast$ indicting a complex conjugate,
\begin{eqnarray}
G_{nm}^{-1}(\omega)-G_{nm}^{-1\ast}(\omega)=
((\tilde\Omega_1(\omega)-\tilde\Omega_1^\ast(\omega))\delta_{n1}+
(\tilde\Omega_N(\omega)-\tilde\Omega_N^\ast(\omega))\delta_{nN})\delta_{nm},
\label{a4}
\end{eqnarray}
or
\begin{eqnarray}
G_{nm}^{-1}(\omega)-G_{nm}^{-1\ast}(\omega)=-2i\omega\Gamma(\delta_{n1}+\delta_{nN})\delta_{nm}.
\label{a5}
\end{eqnarray}
Multiplying by $G(\omega)$ on the left and $G^\ast(\omega)$ on the right and using the symmetry of
$G_{nm}(\omega)$ we obtain the Schwinger identity \cite{Wang45}
\begin{eqnarray}
G_{nm}(\omega)-G_{nm}^\ast(\omega)=2i\omega\Gamma
(G_{n1}(\omega)G_{1m}^\ast(\omega)+G_{nN}(\omega)G_{Nm}^\ast(\omega));
\label{a6}
\end{eqnarray}
the Schwinger identity in (\ref{a6}) is used later in Appendices \ref{current} and \ref{cgf} in deriving the
heat current and the cumulant generating function.
\subsubsection{Ordered chain - equation of motion method}
In the ordered case for $m_n=m$ and $\kappa_n=\kappa$ the Green's functions
$G_{n1}(\omega)$ and $G_{nN}(\omega)$ are easily determined by an equation of motion method. Alternatively,
one can employ a determinantal scheme noting that the determinant of $G^{-1}(\omega)$ for
$\tilde\Omega_1=\tilde\Omega_N=\Omega$ is given by $\kappa^NU_N(\Omega/2\kappa)$,
where $U_N(x)$ is the Chebychev polynomial of the second kind;
$U_N(\Omega/2\kappa)=\sin p(N+1)/\sin p, \Omega=2\kappa \cos p$ \cite{Lebedev72}.
Addressing the equations of motion, which are of the linear difference form,
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\Omega\tilde u_n(\omega)=\kappa(\tilde u_{n+1}(\omega)+\tilde u_{n-1}(\omega)),
\label{a7}
\\
&&\Omega\tilde u_1(\omega)=i\Gamma\omega\tilde u_1(\omega)+\kappa\tilde u_2(\omega)+\tilde\xi_1(\omega),
\label{a8}
\\
&&\Omega\tilde u_N(\omega)=i\Gamma\omega\tilde u_N(\omega)+\kappa\tilde u_{N-1}(\omega)+\tilde\xi_2(\omega),
\label{a9}
\end{eqnarray}
and using the plane wave ansatz $\tilde u_n=A\exp(ipn)+B\exp(-ipn)$ equation (\ref{a7}) yields
$\Omega=2\kappa\cos p=\kappa(\exp(ip)+\exp(-ip))$. Inserting $\Omega$ in (\ref{a8}) and
(\ref{a9}) we obtain for the determination of $A$ and $B$ the matrix equation
\begin{eqnarray}
\left(\begin{array}{cc}
\kappa-i\Gamma\omega e^{ip} & \kappa-i\Gamma\omega e^{-ip}\\(\kappa e^{ip}-i\Gamma\omega)e^{ipN}
&(\kappa e^{-ip}-i\Gamma\omega)e^{-ipN}\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}A\\B\end{array}\right)=
\left(\begin{array}{c}\xi_1 \\\xi_2\end{array}\right),
\label{a10}
\end{eqnarray}
which readily yields $A$ and $B$ and thus $\tilde u_n(\omega)$ as a function of $\tilde\xi_1(\omega)$
and $\tilde\xi_2(\omega)$. From (\ref{sol}) in Sec. \ref{model} we obtain the Green's functions
\begin{eqnarray}
&&G_{n1}(\omega)=\frac{\kappa\sin p(N+1-n)-i\Gamma\omega\sin p(N-n)}
{\kappa^2\sin p(N+1)-2i\kappa\Gamma\omega\sin pN-(\Gamma\omega)^2\sin p(N-1)},\label{g1}\\
&&G_{nN}(\omega)=\frac{\kappa\sin pn-i\Gamma\omega\sin p(n-1)}{\kappa^2\sin p(N+1)-2i\kappa\Gamma\omega\sin pN
-(\Gamma\omega)^2\sin p(N-1)},
\label{a11}
\end{eqnarray}
and in particular the end-to-end Green's function
\begin{eqnarray}
G_{1N}(\omega)=\frac{\kappa\sin p}{\kappa^2\sin p(N+1)-2i\kappa\Gamma\omega\sin pN-
(\Gamma\omega)^2\sin p(N-1)},
\label{a12}
\end{eqnarray}
i.e., the expression (\ref{green1}).
\subsubsection{Disordered chain - in terms of the transfer matrix}
In the disordered case we consider the equations of motion
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\Omega_n\tilde u_n(\omega)=\kappa_n\tilde u_{n+1}(\omega)+\kappa_{n-1}\tilde u_{n-1}(\omega),
\label{a13}
\\
&&\Omega_1\tilde u_1(\omega)=i\Gamma\omega\tilde u_1(\omega)+\kappa_1\tilde u_2(\omega)+\tilde\xi_1(\omega),
\label{a14}
\\
&&\Omega_N\tilde u_N(\omega)=i\Gamma\omega\tilde u_N(\omega)+\kappa_{N-1}\tilde u_{N-1}(\omega)+\tilde\xi_2(\omega).
\label{a15}
\end{eqnarray}
The bulk equation of motion (\ref{a13}) can be expressed in terms of a transfer matrix $T_n$
according to
\begin{eqnarray}
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_{n+1}\\\tilde u_n\end{array}\right)=
\left(\begin{array}{cc}\Omega_n/\kappa_n &-\kappa_{n-1}/\kappa_n\\1 & 0\end{array}\right)
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_n\\\tilde u_{n-1}\end{array}\right)=T_n
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_n\\\tilde u_{n-1}\end{array}\right),
\label{a16}
\end{eqnarray}
and we have by successive applications
\begin{eqnarray}
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_N\\\tilde u_{N-1}\end{array}\right)=T_{N-1}T_{N-2}\cdots T_2
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_2\\\tilde u_1\end{array}\right).
\label{a17}
\end{eqnarray}
Likewise, from (\ref{a14}) and (\ref{a15}) we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_2 \\\tilde u_1\end{array}\right)&=&
\left(\begin{array}{cc}(\Omega_1-i\omega\Gamma)/\kappa_1 & -1/\kappa_1 \\1 & 0\end{array}\right)
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_1 \\\tilde \xi_1\end{array}\right),
\label{a18}
\\
\nonumber
\\
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_N \\\tilde u_{N-1}\end{array}\right)&=&
\left(\begin{array}{cc}1 & 0 \\
(\Omega_N-i\omega\Gamma)/\kappa_{N-1} & -1/\kappa_{N-1}\end{array}\right)
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_N \\\tilde \xi_2\end{array}\right).
\label{a19}
\end{eqnarray}
Inserting (\ref{a18}) and (\ref{a19}) in (\ref{a17}) and using $B$ in (\ref{bom}) we have
\begin{eqnarray}
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_N \\\tilde \xi_2\end{array}\right)=
\tilde T\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_1 \\\tilde \xi_1\end{array}\right),
\label{a20}
\end{eqnarray}
where
\begin{eqnarray}
\tilde T=\frac{1}{\kappa_0}\left(\begin{array}{cc}0 &1 \\\kappa_N & -i\Gamma\omega\end{array}\right)
B\left(\begin{array}{cc}\kappa_0 & 0 \\i\Gamma\omega & 1\end{array}\right).
\label{a21}
\end{eqnarray}
Expanding (\ref{a21}), using $\det\tilde T=-1$, and comparing with (\ref{sol}) for $n=1$ and $n=N$, i.e.,
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\tilde u_1=G_{11}\tilde \xi_1+G_{1N}\tilde \xi_2,\label{u1}\\&&\tilde u_N=G_{N1}\tilde\xi_1+G_{NN}\tilde\xi_2,
\label{a22}
\end{eqnarray}
we infer the end-to-end Green's function
\begin{eqnarray}
&&G_{1N}=G_{N1}=1/\tilde T_{21}.
\label{a24}
\end{eqnarray}
From (\ref{a21}) we have
\begin{eqnarray}
\tilde T_{21}=\frac{1}{\kappa_0}(\kappa_0\kappa_NB_{11}
+i\Gamma\omega(\kappa_NB_{12}-\kappa_0B_{21})+(\Gamma\omega)^2B_{22}).
\label{a29}
\end{eqnarray}
Finally, from (\ref{a24}) and (\ref{a29}) we obtain (\ref{green2}), i.e.,
\begin{eqnarray}
G_{1N}(\omega)=\frac{\kappa_0}{\kappa_0\kappa_NB_{11}(\omega)+i\Gamma\omega
(\kappa_NB_{12}(\omega)-\kappa_0B_{21}(\omega))+(\Gamma\omega)^2B_{22}(\omega)}.
\label{a31}
\end{eqnarray}
\subsubsection{Ordered chain - special case of disordered chain}
In the ordered case for $m_n=m$ and $\kappa_n=\kappa$ the transfer matrix $T_n=T$ is independent
of the site index $n$. We have
\begin{eqnarray}
T=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\Omega/\kappa & -1 \\1 & 0\end{array}\right).
\label{a32}
\end{eqnarray}
Setting $\Omega=2\kappa\cos p$ the matrix $T$ has the eigenvalues $\exp(\pm ip)$ forming the diagonal
matrix $D$ with matrix elements $\exp(\pm ip)$. Denoting the similarity transformation by $S$ we have $T=SDS^{-1}$ and thus
$T^n=SD^nS^{-1}$, where $D^n$ has the diagonal elements $\exp(\pm ipn)$. Finally, the similarity transformation $S$
has to be determined. However, a more direct way is again to apply the plane wave ansazt
$\tilde u_n=A\exp(ipn)+B\exp(-ipn)$ to $\tilde u_1$ and $\tilde u_2$
and subsequently determine $A$ and $B$. We obtain in matrix form
\begin{eqnarray}
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_{n+1} \\\tilde u_n\end{array}\right)=\frac{1}{\sin p}
\left(\begin{array}{cc}\sin pn & -\sin p(n-1) \\\sin p(n-1) & -\sin p(n-2)\end{array}\right)
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde u_2 \\\tilde u_1\end{array}\right),
\label{a34}
\end{eqnarray}
and we infer from (\ref{eqmo3}) the matrix product
\begin{eqnarray}
T^q=\frac{1}{\sin p}\left(\begin{array}{cc}\sin p(q+1) & -\sin pq \\\sin pq & -\sin p(q-1)\end{array}\right).
\label{a35}
\end{eqnarray}
We note that $T$ is in accordance with (\ref{trans1}) and that we have the group property $T^nT^m=T^{n+m}$.
\subsection{\label{liapunovapp}Liapunov exponent}
The evaluation of the Liapunov exponent is given by
$\gamma=\langle\epsilon\rangle=\int d\epsilon \epsilon P_0(\epsilon)/\int d\epsilon P_0(\epsilon)$ where
$P_0(\epsilon)$ is the solution of the Fokker-Planck equation (\ref{fp}) and (\ref{pc}), i.e.,
\begin{eqnarray}
\Delta P_0'+a'P_0=C.
\label{b1}
\end{eqnarray}
Here a prime denotes a derivative with respect to $\epsilon$ and we have introduced the notation
$\Delta=(m\omega^2/\langle\kappa\rangle^2)^2\langle\delta\tilde\kappa^2\rangle$ and
$a'(\epsilon)=2(\epsilon^2+(m/\langle\kappa\rangle)\omega^2)$; $C$ is an integration constant.
Assuming regularity in $\Delta$ and setting $P_0=P_0^{(1)}+\Delta P_0^{(2)}$ we obtain to leading order
\begin{eqnarray}
P_0=C\Bigg[\frac{1}{a'}+\Delta\frac{a''}{(a')^3}\Bigg].
\label{b2}
\end{eqnarray}
This result can be justified by a steepest descent analysis. A particular solution of (\ref{b1}) has the form
\begin{eqnarray}
P_0(\epsilon)=\frac{C}{\Delta}\int_0^\epsilon d\epsilon'\exp(-(a(\epsilon)-a(\epsilon'))/\Delta).
\label{b3}
\end{eqnarray}
In the exponent $a(\epsilon)=2(\epsilon^3/3+(m/\langle\kappa\rangle)\omega^2\epsilon)$ is a monotonically increasing function
passing through the origin. A plot of $\exp(-(a(\epsilon)-a(\epsilon'))/\Delta)$ is schematically
depicted in Fig.~\ref{fig7}. For small $\Delta$ the exponential function rises steeply and the main
contribution to $P(\epsilon)$ arises from the region $\epsilon'\le\epsilon$. To leading order a steepest descent
argument yields $P_0^{(1)}=C/a'$. The next term in the asymptotic expansion is obtained by expanding
$a(\epsilon')$, i.e., $a(\epsilon')=a(\epsilon)+a'(\epsilon)(\epsilon'-\epsilon)+(1/2)a''(\epsilon)(\epsilon'-\epsilon)^2$.
A straightforward calculation then yields $P_0^{(2)}=Ca''/a'^3$. In conclusion, the expansion
in (\ref{stat}) is an asymptotic expansion in $\Delta$, i.e., the leading correction to the steepest descent term.
\subsection{\label{current}Heat current}
Focussing on the heat reservoir at temperature $T_1$ at the site $n=1$, the integrated heat flux is obtained from
(\ref{qr1}), i.e.,
\begin{eqnarray}
Q(t)=\int^t dt'F_1(t')\dot u_1(t').
\label{c1}
\end{eqnarray}
Inserting $F_1=-\Gamma\dot u_1+\xi_1$ and $u_1$ from (\ref{sol}) we obtain in Fourier space
\begin{eqnarray}
Q(t)=\int\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}\frac{d\omega'}{2\pi}F(\omega-\omega',t)
\left(\begin{array}{cc}\tilde\xi_1(\omega) & \tilde\xi_2(\omega)\end{array}\right)M(\omega,\omega')
\left(\begin{array}{c}\tilde\xi_1(\omega') \\\tilde\xi_2(\omega')\end{array}\right),
\label{c2}
\end{eqnarray}
where the matrix elements of $M$ are given by
\begin{eqnarray}
&&M_{11}(\omega,\omega')=-\omega\omega'\Gamma G_{11}(\omega)G_{11}(-\omega')
+\frac{1}{2}\bigg(-i\omega G_{11}(\omega)+i\omega' G_{11}(-\omega')\bigg),
\label{c3}
\\
&&M_{22}(\omega,\omega')=-\omega\omega'\Gamma G_{1N}(\omega)G_{1N}(-\omega'),
\label{c4}
\\
&&M_{12}(\omega,\omega')=-\omega\omega'\Gamma G_{11}(\omega)G_{1N}(-\omega')
+\frac{1}{2}i\omega' G_{1N}(-\omega'),
\label{c5}
\\
&&M_{21}(\omega,\omega')=-\omega\omega'\Gamma
G_{1N}(\omega)G_{11}(-\omega')-\frac{1}{2}i\omega G_{1N}(\omega).
\label{c6}
\end{eqnarray}
The function $F(\omega,t)=2\sin(\omega t/2)\exp(-i\omega t/2)/\omega$. Moreover,
$F(0,t)=t$ and $|F(\omega,t|^2=2\pi t\delta(\omega)$ for large $t$.
Finally, using the noise correlations (\ref{noi1}) and (\ref{noi2}) and the Schwinger identity (\ref{a6}),
we obtain the mean heat flux $J=\langle Q(t)\rangle/t$ in (\ref{heat1}), i.e.,
\begin{eqnarray}
J=2(T_1-T_2)\int\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}(\omega\Gamma)^2|G_{1N}(\omega)|^2.
\label{c7}
\end{eqnarray}
\subsection{\label{cgf}Large deviation function}
The large deviation function function is defined according to
\begin{eqnarray}
\mu(\lambda)=\lim_{t\rightarrow\infty}\frac{1}{t}\ln\langle\exp(\lambda Q(t))\rangle,
\label{d1}
\end{eqnarray}
where $Q(t)$ is given by (\ref{c2}). Inserting $Q(t)$, using the noise distribution
\begin{eqnarray}
P(\xi_1,\xi_2)\propto\exp\Bigg[-\frac{1}{2}\int\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}\frac{d\omega'}{2\pi}
\left(\begin{array}{cc}\xi_1(\omega)&\xi_2(\omega)\end{array}\right)\Delta^{-1}(\omega-\omega')
\left(\begin{array}{c}\xi_1(\omega')\\ \xi_2(\omega')\end{array}\right)\Bigg],
\label{d2}
\end{eqnarray}
where the inverse noise matrix is
\begin{eqnarray}
\Delta^{-1}(\omega-\omega')=
\left(\begin{array}{cc}\Delta^{-1}_1 & 0 \\0 & \Delta^{-1}_2\end{array}
\right)\delta(\omega-\omega'),
\label{d3}
\end{eqnarray}
with $\Delta_1=2\Gamma T_1$ and $\Delta_2=2\Gamma T_2$,
and using the matrix identity \cite{Zinn-Justin89}
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\exp(-(1/2\tilde\xi B\xi)\rangle=\exp(\rm{Tr}\ln(I+\Delta B)),
\label{d4}
\end{eqnarray}
we obtain formally
\begin{eqnarray}
\mu(\lambda)=-\frac{1}{2t}\rm{Tr}\ln(I+2\lambda F\Delta M);
\label{d5}
\end{eqnarray}
we note that formula (\ref{d4}) follows from (1.5) in Ref. \cite{Zinn-Justin89}
setting $b_i=0$ and using $\text{det} A=\exp(\text{Tr} \log A)$.
Using the properties of $F$, the limits for $\omega=\omega'$
\begin{eqnarray}
&&M_{11}(\omega,\omega)=-M_{22}(\omega,\omega)=\omega^2\Gamma |G_{1N}(\omega)|^2,
\label{d6}
\\
&&M_{12}(\omega,\omega)=M_{21}(\omega,\omega)^\ast=-\omega^2\Gamma G_{11}(\omega)
G_{1N}(\omega)^\ast+(1/2)i\omega G_{1N}(\omega)^\ast,
\label{d7}
\end{eqnarray}
the Schwinger identity (\ref{a6}), and diagonalising $\Delta M$, we obtain the eigenvalue equation
for the eigenvalues $\alpha_1(\omega)$ and $\alpha_2(\omega)$
\begin{eqnarray}
\alpha^2-2\Gamma\alpha(T_1M_{11}+T_2M_{22})+4\Gamma^2 T_1T_2(M_{11}M_{22}-M_{12}M_{21})=0.
\label{d8}
\end{eqnarray}
For $\mu$ we then obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
\mu(\lambda)=-\frac{1}{2}\int\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}\ln(1-2\lambda(\alpha_1+\alpha_2)+4\lambda^2\alpha_1\alpha_2),
\label{d9}
\end{eqnarray}
or reduced further the final result
\begin{eqnarray}
\mu(\lambda)=-\frac{1}{2}\int\frac{d\omega}{2\pi}\ln(1+4\omega^2\Gamma^2|G_{1N}(\omega)|^2f(\lambda)),
\label{d10}
\end{eqnarray}
where
\begin{eqnarray}
f(\lambda)=T_1T_2\lambda(1/T_1-1/T_2-\lambda).
\label{d11}
\end{eqnarray}
\newpage
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 8,390 |
\section*{Appendix}
\section{Algorithms}
\label{sec:algo}
\begin{algorithm}[ht!]
\caption{Symbolic Reward Learner}
\label{alg:learner}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\Procedure {Initialize}{}
\State Initialize actor $\pi$ and critic $\mathcal{Q}$ with weights $\theta^\pi$ and $\theta^\mathcal{Q}$, respectively.
\State Initialize target actor $\pi'$ and critic $\mathcal{Q}'$ with weights $\theta^{\pi'}$ and $\theta^{\mathcal{Q}'}$, respectively.
\State Initialize the symbolic tree $\mathcal{ST}$ for reward generation
\EndProcedure
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
\begin{algorithm}
\caption{Function Evaluate}
\label{alg:episode}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\Procedure {Evaluate}{$\pi$, R}
\State $fitness = 0$
\State Reset environment and get initial state $s_0$
\While{env is not done}
\State Select action $a_t = \pi(s_t|\theta^\pi)$
\State Execute action $a_t$ and observe reward $r_t$ and new state $s_{t+1}$
\State Append transition $(s_t, a_t, r_t, s_{t+1})$ to $R$
\State $fitness \leftarrow fitness + r_t$ and $s = s_{t+1}$
\EndWhile
\State Return $fitness$, R
\EndProcedure
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
\begin{algorithm}
\caption{Function Mutate}
\label{alg:mutate}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\Procedure {Mutate}{$\theta^\pi$}
\For{Weight Matrix $\mathcal{M} \in \theta^\pi$}
\For{iteration = 1, $mut_{frac} * |\mathcal{M}|$}
\State Randomly sample indices $i$ and $j$ from $\mathcal{M}'s$ first and second axis, respectively
\If{$r() < supermut_{prob}$}
\State $\mathcal{M}[i,j]$ = $\mathcal{M}[i,j]$ * $\mathcal{N}(0,\,100 * mut_{strength})$
\ElsIf{$r() < reset_{prob}$}
\State $\mathcal{M}[i,j]$ = $\mathcal{N}(0,\,1)$
\Else
\State $\mathcal{M}[i,j]$ = $\mathcal{M}[i,j]$ * $\mathcal{N}(0,\,mut_{strength})$
\EndIf
\EndFor
\EndFor
\EndProcedure
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
\section{Symbolic Tree Details}
\label{subsec:operator_list}
The complete list of operators used for symbolic tree generation is shown below.
\begin{minted}{python}
def add(left, right):
return left + right
def subtract(left, right):
return left - right
def multiply(left, right):
return left*right
def cos(left):
return np.cos(left)
def sin(left):
return np.sin(left)
def tan(left):
return np.tan(left)
def max(nums):
return np.maxmimum(nums)
def min(nums):
return np.minimum(nums)
def pass_greater(left, right):
if left > right: return left
return right
def pass_smaller(left, right):
if left < right: return left
return right
def equal_to(left, right):
return float(left == right)
def gate(left, right, condtion):
if condtion <= 0:
return left
else:
return right
def square(left):
return left*left
def is_negative(left):
if left < 0: return 1.0
return 0.0
def div_by_100(left):
return left/100.0
def div_by_10(left):
return left/10.0
def protected_div(left, right):
with np.errstate(divide='ignore',invalid='ignore'):
x = np.divide(left, right)
if isinstance(x, np.ndarray):
x[np.isinf(x)] = 1
x[np.isnan(x)] = 1
elif np.isinf(x) or np.isnan(x):
x = 1
return x
\end{minted}
\clearpage
\section{Implementation Details}
\label{sec:hyperparameters}
The complete list of hyperparameters used for LISR experiments are given below. For football experiments, we used the same hyperparameters that we used in discrete control tasks.
\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\caption{Hyperparameters for LISR for continuous control tasks}
\begin{tabular}{|c||c|}
\hline
Hyperparameter & Value\\
\hline \hline
Population Size $k$ & 50 \\
Target Weight $\tau$ & $1e^{-3}$ \\
Actor Learning Rate & $[1e^{-3}, 1e^{-4}, 3e^{-5}]$ \\
Critic Learning Rate & $[1e^{-3}, 1e^{-4}, 3e^{-5}]$\\
Replay Buffer & $1e^{6}$\\
Batch Size & $[256, 1024]$ \\
Exploration Steps & 5000 \\
Optimizer & Adam \\
Hidden Layer Size & 256 \\
Mutation Probability $mut_{prob}$ & $0.9$ \\
Mutation Fraction $mut_{frac}$ & $0.1$\\
Mutation Strength $mut_{strength}$ & $0.1$ \\
Super Mutation Probability $supermut_{prob}$ & $0.05$ \\
Reset Mutation Probability $resetmut_{prob}$ & $0.05$ \\
Number of elites $e$ & $7\%$ \\
\hline \hline
\end{tabular}
\label{varied}
\vspace{2em}
\end{table}
\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\caption{Hyperparameters for LISR for discrete control tasks}
\begin{tabular}{|c||c|}
\hline
Hyperparameter & Value\\
\hline \hline
Population Size $k$ & 50 \\
Target Weight $\tau$ & $1e^{-3}$ \\
Actor Learning Rate & $[1e^{-3}, 1e^{-4}]$ \\
Maxmin DQN Heads & 2 \\
Regularization Weight & $1e^{-8}$ \\
Replay Buffer & $1e^{6}$\\
Batch Size & $[64, 256]$ \\
Exploration Steps & 5000 \\
Optimizer & Adam \\
Hidden Layer Size & 256 \\
Mutation Probability $mut_{prob}$ & $0.9$ \\
Mutation Fraction $mut_{frac}$ & $0.1$\\
Mutation Strength $mut_{strength}$ & $0.1$ \\
Super Mutation Probability $supermut_{prob}$ & $0.05$ \\
Reset Mutation Probability $resetmut_{prob}$ & $0.05$ \\
Number of elites $e$ & $7\%$ \\
\hline \hline
\end{tabular}
\label{varied}
\vspace{2em}
\end{table}
\section{Conclusion}
In this paper, we presented LISR - a framework that combines ideas from symbolic, rule-based machine learning with modern gradient-based learning. We showed that it is possible to discover intrinsic rewards completely from observational data and train an RL policy. LISR outperformed other approaches that rely on neural network based reward estimators.
Our work is an effort to bridge the interpretability gap in Deep RL. While we cannot claim that the discovered reward functions are \textit{interpretable}, they are relatively easier to parse - comprising of tens of symbolic operations compared to thousands of operations common in a neural network estimator. At the very least, this structure lends itself being more ``human readable'' compared to black box solutions. For example, as shown in our example tree, LISR required only 22 operations to compute a reward in PixelCopter - including simple trigonometric transforms on positional variables and one \textit{if-then-else} gating condition. In a scenario where a policy is unstable, it could be feasible to trace the cause of instability to a subset of those operations. This kind of ``limited explainability'' could be important for safety-critical applications like autonomous driving scenarios. Future work will focus on building on the level of interpretability of the discovered functions.
One important drawback of LISR is the lack of sample-efficiency compared to established methods like SAC. This is somewhat expected as LISR operates with the key disadvantage of not having a pre-defined dense reward signal. The primary bottleneck involves the search for an optimal reward function. In this work, we implemented EA as the search mechanism. Future work will explore other alternatives like Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) as well as explore ways to turn off search when a reasonably good reward function has been discovered.
\section{Experiments}
\label{sec:experiments}
Our main objective is to demonstrate that LISR can be applied to problems involving continuous and discrete action spaces. To this end, we evaluated LISR on Mujoco~\citep{todorov2012mujoco} for continuous control tasks and on Pygame~\citep{gym-games} and OpenAI-Gym Atari games~\citep{gym} for discrete control tasks. We evaluated LISR's performance against three baselines: policies trained using a standard EA implementation, policies trained using only intrinsic symbolic rewards and {\em Curiosity } where agents learn on a combination of intrinsic rewards and environment-provided dense rewards.
For the continuous control tasks, we used \textbf{Soft Actor-Critic (SAC)}~\citep{haarnoja2017soft} as our PG algorithm as it is the state-of-the-art on a number of benchmarks. SAC is an off-policy actor-critic method based on the maximum entropy RL framework~\citep{ziebart_2010}. The goal of SAC is to learn an optimal policy while behaving as randomly as possible. This behavior encourages efficient exploration and robustness to noise and is achieved by maximizing the policy entropy and the reward.
For the discrete environments we adopt \textbf{Maxmin DQN}~\citep{Lan-2020-ICLR} which extends DQN~\citep{Mnih-2015-Nature} to addresses the overestimation bias problem in {Q}-learning by using an ensemble of neural networks to estimate unbiased {Q}-values.
\textbf{Continuous control tasks:} We evaluated on four environments from the Mujoco benchmark - HalfCheetah, Ant, Hopper and Swimmer. We trained each environment with five random seeds for 150 million frames. We fixed the total population size (EA and SR learners) to 50 for all experiments. For LISR experiments, we kept the ratio between EA learners and SR learners equal to 0.5. For the {\em Curiosity } experiments, we integrated the {\em Intrinsic Curiosity Module (ICM)} to work with SAC. We performed a grid search for multiple learning rates for LISR, SR and {\em Curiosity } and report results corresponding to the best performing hyperparameters.
\begin{figure*}[h!]
\centering
\captionsetup[subfigure]{labelformat=empty}
\subfloat[HalfCheetah-v2]{
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{images/halfcheetah/half_cheetah_final.pdf}}\hspace{0.1\textwidth}
\subfloat[Ant-v2]{
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{images/ant/ant_results_final.pdf}} \\
\subfloat[Hopper-v2]{
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{images/hopper/hopper_results_final.pdf}}\hspace{0.1\textwidth}
\subfloat[Swimmer-v2]{
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{images/swimmer/swimmer_final_results.pdf}}
\caption{Results on continuous control tasks in Mujoco. LISR outperforms all baselines except on the low-dimensional problem in Swimmer. {\em Curiosity}, with access to explicit as well as implicit rewards, is unable to learn an effective policy on any environment. SR on its own, with access only to intrinsic rewards, is also unable to scale but slightly outperforms {\em Curiosity }. }
\label{fig:lisr_continuous_results}
\end{figure*}
Our results on the continuous control baselines are shown in~\Cref{fig:lisr_continuous_results}. We see that {\em Curiosity } fails to learn an effective policy on all environments - even though it has access to the dense rewards in addition to its own intrinsic rewards. SR on its own is also non-performant - however, it slightly outperforms {\em Curiosity } in 3 out of 4 environments. EA and LISR are both able to find effective policies. Notably, LISR outperforms EA substantially in 3 out of 4 environments. On Swimmer, EA slightly improves on sample efficiency - although both EA and LISR find the optimal solution quickly. This finding is consistent with \citet{khadka2019collaborative} that also showed that EA outperformed reinforcement learning on the relatively low dimensional problem in Swimmer. Since the key difference between EA and LISR is the presence of SR learners, these results demonstrate the incremental importance of the discovered symbolic rewards in solving the tasks.
\textbf{Discrete control tasks:} We evaluated LISR on four different discrete environments: LunarLander and Amidar, two high dimensional environments from Atari games and PixelCopter and Catcher, two low dimensional environments from Pygames. We trained a multi-headed Maxmin DQN as our policy gradient learner and used the MeanVector regularizer~\citep{sheikh2020reducing} to ensure diversity in the Q-values. Similar to the baselines in the continuous control experiments, we evaluated the performance of LISR against the performance of only EA, only SR learners and {\em Curiosity }. We trained PixelCopter, LunarLander and Amidar for 50 million frames and Catcher for 30 million frames and show the results in~\Cref{fig:lisr_discrete_results}. We observe that similar to the continuous control tasks, LISR outperforms all the baselines except {\em Curiosity } in the Catcher environment where the performance of both LISR and {\em Curiosity } are similar. Notably, in the PixelCopter and Catcher environments, the SR learners alone were able to achieve the maximum performance - thus relying purely on discovered symbolic rewards. {\em Curiosity } significantly underperforms all baselines in all except the Catcher environment. The complete list of hyperparameters is shown in~\Cref{sec:hyperparameters}.
\begin{figure*}[htp]
\centering
\captionsetup[subfigure]{labelformat=empty}
\subfloat[Catcher]{
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{images/catcher/catcher_final_results.pdf}}\hspace{0.1\textwidth}
\subfloat[PixelCopter]{
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{images/copter/pixelCopter_final_results.pdf}}\\
\subfloat[Amidar]{
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{images/amidar/amidar_final_results.pdf}}\hspace{0.1\textwidth}
\subfloat[LunarLander]{
\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{images/lunar/lunar_final_results.pdf}}
\caption{Results on discrete control tasks in Atari (top) and Pygames (bottom). LISR outperforms all baselines in all environments. {\em Curiosity }'s performance is overall significantly better on these tasks compared to continuous control. SR on its own, with no access to environment provided dense rewards, is able to completely solve the Atari environments. SR on its own also outperforms {\em Curiosity } on all but the Catcher environment.}
\label{fig:lisr_discrete_results}
\end{figure*}
\textbf{Multiplayer football}: We also applied LISR to Google Research Football~\citep{kurach2020google}, a physics-based, multiplayer 3D environment with discrete action spaces where multiagent teams aim to score goals and maximize their margin of victory. The environment provides a \textit{Scoring} reward based on goals scored and a denser \textit{Checkpoint} reward based on the distance of the ball to the goal.
\begin{figure}[ht]
\captionsetup[subfigure]{labelformat=empty}
\begin{center}
\subfloat[Run to Score]{
\includegraphics[width=0.32\textwidth,trim={2px 2px 2px 35px},clip]{images/football/picture_academy_empty_goal.png}}
\subfloat[Empty Goal]{
\includegraphics[width=0.32\textwidth,trim={2px 2px 2px 35px},clip]{images/football/picture_academy_run_to_score.png}}
\subfloat[3 vs 1 Keeper]{
\includegraphics[width=0.32\textwidth,trim={2px 2px 2px 35px},clip]{images/football/picture_academy_3_vs_1.png}}
\end{center}
\caption{Google Research Football environments used in the experiments}
\label{fig:google_env}
\end{figure}
We test LISR on 3 environment in the \textit{Football Academy} set of environments - which describe specific game scenarios of varying difficulty. Specifically, we consider the following scenarios.
\begin{itemize}
\item \textit{Run to Score}: Our player starts in the middle of the field with the ball, and needs to score against an empty goal. Five opponent players chase ours from behind.
\item \textit{Empty Goal}: Our player starts in the middle of the field with the ball, and needs to score against an empty goal.
\item \textit{3 vs 1 with Keeper}: Three of our players try to score from the edge of the box, one on each side, and the other at the center. Initially, the player at the center has the ball, and is facing the defender. There is an opponent keeper.
\end{itemize}
In the first two scenarios, we only control one player. In the last scenario, we consider variations where we control only one of our players and two of our players. In all cases, any player that we do not control utilizes the strategy of a built-in \textit{AI bot}. The scenarios are shown in ~\Cref{fig:google_env}.
We benchmark LISR against EA and their published results with IMPALA~\citep{espeholt2018impala} - a popular distributed RL framework that was shown to outperform other popular algorithms like PPO~\citep{schulman2017ppo} and variations of DQN~\citep{horgan2018distributed} on this benchmark. For LISR, we only use the aggregated sum of rewards in an episode as a sparse fitness function. IMPALA, on the other hand, utilizes a standard RL setup that exploits the dense rewards to learn a policy. Our goal was to investigate if LISR can be competitive with IMPALA with no access to the dense rewards.
\begin{figure}[h!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{images/football/bar.png}
\caption{Experiments on Google Research Football environments. Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of players controlled by LISR}
\label{fig:football_bar2}
\end{figure}
Figure \ref{fig:football_bar2} shows the performance on the four scenarios we evaluated. On the simpler environments involving an empty goal, all three algorithms were able to find performant solutions in less than 5M time steps. For the more difficult scenarios in involving 3 players vs 1, IMPALA does outperform LISR. However, LISR is able to find competitive strategies compared to IMPALA in both scenarios. This is significant as it shows that even in relatively complex, non-stationary multiagent scenarios, LISR is able to discover intrinsic symbolic rewards and be competitive with well-established algorithms that exploit dense rewards.
\textbf{Discovered Rewards}: A key motivation to design LISR is the discovery of \textbf{symbolic} reward functions that are involve many fewer operations than a typical neural network based reward estimator. In all our experiments, we restricted the depth of the symbolic trees to $3$ operational layers in order to impose these constraints.
\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{0.2\textwidth}
\centering
\vspace{-15pt}
\includegraphics[width=0.2\columnwidth]{images/algo/pixelcopter.png}
\caption{PixelCopter environment}
\label{fig:env_pixelcopter}
\vspace{-15pt}
\end{wrapfigure}
Consider the PixelCopter environment shown in Figure \ref{fig:env_pixelcopter}. It provides $8$ state variables which are: $s_0$: position; $s_1$: velocity; $s_2$: distance to floor; $s_3$: distance to ceiling; $s_4$: next block's x distance to player; $s_5$: next block's top y location and $s_6$: next block's bottom y location and $s_7$: agent's action.
\Cref{fig:sr_tree_pixelcopter} shows an example of such a tree at the end of training. For better parsability, we unroll the tree into Python code.
While we cannot claim that the particular reward function is interpretable, it is similar in structure to a classical symbolic rule and appears to rely on trigonometric transformations of positional variables. In this instance, it only utilizes 22 operations - thus making it relatively easier to analyze compared to neural network reward estimators. In contrast, {\em Curiosity }'s ICM module that generates an intrinsic reward is implemented as three neural networks with $5634$ parameters.
\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
\noindent\hspace{0.05\linewidth}\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
\begin{minted}[fontsize=\scriptsize]{python}
def get_intrinsic_reward(s_0, s_1, s_2, s_3, s_4, s_5, s_6, s_7):
p_1 = tan(cos(s_4)); p_2 = cos(s_3); p_3 = pass_smaller(p_1, p_2)
x_1 = multiply(-1, abs(subtract(s_7, p_3)))
q_1 = multiply(-1, abs(subtract(1, s_4)))
q_2 = max([s_2, 1, s_7, q_1, 0])
q_3 = max([q_2, s_7, cos(0), multiply(s_0, s_6), multiply(s_5, subtract(s_6, 1))])
y_1 = div_by_10(q_3)
y_2 = square(s_7)
y_3 = protected_div(1, div_by_100(s_0))
x_2 = gate(y_1, y_2, y_3)
z = equal_to(x_2, x_1)
reward = add(0, pass_smaller(div_by_10(s_7), z))
return reward
\end{minted}
\end{minipage}
\captionof{figure}{An example of a discovered symbolic reward on PixelCopter. We unroll the corresponding symbolic tree into Python-like code that can be parsed and debugged. $\{s_i\}$ represent state observations.}
\label{fig:sr_tree_pixelcopter}
\end{minipage}
\vspace{-3pt}
\section{Introduction}
\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{0.6\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{images/algo/LISR_overview.png}
\caption{LISR: agents discover latent rewards as symbolic functions and use it to train using standard Deep RL methods}
\label{fig:lisr_overview}
\end{wrapfigure}
RL algorithms aim to learn a target task by maximizing the rewards provided by the underlying environment. Only in a few limited scenarios are the rewards provided by the environment dense and continuously supplied to the learning agent, e.g. a running score in Atari games~\citep{Mnih-2015-Nature}, or the distance between the robot arm and the object in a picking task~\citep{Lillicrap-2015-ICLR}. In many real world scenarios, these dense extrinsic rewards are sparse or altogether absent.
In these environments, it is common approach to hand-engineer a dense reward and combine with the sparse objective to construct a surrogate reward. While the additional density leads to faster convergence of a policy, creating a surrogate reward fundamentally changes the underlying Markov Decision Process (MDP) formulation central to many Deep RL solutions. Thus, the learned policy may differ significantly from the optimal policy ~\citep{Rajeswaran-2017-NIPS, Ng-1999-ICML}. Moreover, the achieved task performance depends on the heuristics used to construct the dense reward, and the specific function used to mix the sparse and dense rewards.
Recent works ~\citep{pathak2017curiosity, zheng2018learning, Du-2019-NeurIPS} have also explored training a neural network to generate dense local rewards automatically from data. While, these approaches have sometimes outperformed Deep RL algorithms that rely on hand-designed dense rewards, they have only been tested in a limited number of settings. Further, the resulting reward function estimators are black-box neural networks with several thousand parameters - thus rendering them intractable to parse. A symbolic reward function lends itself better applications such as formal verification in AI and in ensuring fairness and removal of bias in the polices that are deployed.
In this paper, we present a method that discovers dense rewards in the form of low-dimensional symbolic trees rather than as high-dimensional neural networks. The trees use simple functional operators to map an agent's observations to a scalar reward, which then supervises the policy gradient learning of a neural network policy. We refer to our proposed method as Learned Intrinsic Symbolic Rewards (LISR). The high level concept of LISR is shown in~\Cref{fig:lisr_overview}.
To summarize, our contributions in this paper are:
\begin{itemize}
\item We conceptualize intrinsic reward functions as low-dimensional, learned symbolic trees constructed entirely of arithmetic and logical operators. This makes the discovered reward functions relatively easier to parse compared to neural network based representations.
\item We deploy gradient-free symbolic regression to discover reward functions. To the best of our knowledge, symbolic regression has not previously been used to estimate optimal reward functions for deep RL.
\end{itemize}
\section{LISR: Learning Intrinsic Symbolic Rewards}\label{sec:lisr}
The principal idea behind LISR is to discover symbolic reward functions that then guide the learning of a policy using standard policy gradient methods. A general flow of the algorithm is shown in \Cref{fig:lisr}.
Two populations, comprising EA and SR learners respectively, are initialized. The EA population evolves using standard EA processes using a fitness function. In the SR population, each SR learner has a corresponding symbolic tree that maps state observations to a scalar reward. The nodes of the tree represent simple mathematical or logical operators sampled from a pre-defined dictionary of operators or \textit{basis functions}. The complete list of basis functions that are utilized by the symbolic trees is described in~\Cref{subsec:operator_list}. The symbolic trees evolve using crossover and mutation based on a fitness function - leading to the discovery of novel reward functions.~\Cref{fig:sr_evolution} depicts these operations on symbolic trees.
Each SR learner uses its reward to update its weights via policy gradient (PG) methods. We adopt Soft Actor-Critic \citep{haarnoja2017soft} for the continuous control tasks and Maxmin DQN \citep{Lan-2020-ICLR} for the discrete control tasks as the algorithms of choice since they are both state-of-the-art methods in those respective environments. In either case, the reward used to compute policy gradients is always an intrinsic, symbolic rewards and not any explicit dense reward provided by the environment.
\begin{wrapfigure}{r}{0.6\textwidth}
\centering
\vspace{-12pt}
\includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{images/algo/LISR_framework.png}
\caption{LISR: EA (bottom) and SR (top) learners share a common replay buffer. A set of symbolic trees sample observations from this buffer and map them into scalar rewards. SR learners also sample the same observations and the corresponding reward to train using policy gradients. The champion policy (circled) is selected by ranking all policies, EA and SR, based on a fitness function.}
\label{fig:lisr}
\vspace{-10pt}
\end{wrapfigure}
The fitness function for any policy (SR or EA) is computed as the undiscounted sum of rewards received from the environment, which is given only at the completion of an episode. Thus, any dense reward provided by the environment is seen by any agent (SR or EA) only as a sparse, aggregated fitness function. At the end of each generation, all policies, EA and SR, are combined, ranked and a champion policy is selected.
The \textbf{shared replay buffer} is the principal mechanism enabling sharing of information across the EA and the SR learners in the population. Unlike, traditional EA where the data is discarded after calculating the fitness, LISR pools the experience for all learners (EA and SR) in the shared replay buffer - identical to standard off-policy deep reinforcement learning algorithms. All SR learners are then able to sample experiences from this collective buffer and use it to generate symbolic intrinsic rewards from their respective symbolic trees and update the policy parameters parameters using gradient descent. This mechanism maximizes the information extracted from each individual experiences.
This architecture is motivated by CERL \citep{khadka2019collaborative} where a common replay buffer between evolutionary and policy gradient learners was shown to significantly accelerate learning. In our experiments, we vary the proportion of EA and SR policies in order to distil the incremental importance of each to the final performance. For completeness, the LISR is shown in~\Cref{alg:lisralgo}.
\begin{figure*}[h]
\centering
\subfloat{
\includegraphics[width=0.33\textwidth]{images/algo/mutation.png}}\hspace{0.12\textwidth}
\subfloat{
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{images/algo/crossover_horizontal.png}}
\caption{Evolution of symbolic trees. The colored polygons represent basic mathematical operators. For mutation (left), a random sub-tree is replaced using another random sub-tree (gene). For crossover (right), two parent trees swap sub-trees to form a child tree.
\label{fig:sr_evolution}}
\end{figure*}
\begin{algorithm}[h!]
\caption{LISR Algorithm}
\label{alg:lisralgo}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\State Initialize portfolio $\mathcal{P}$ with SR learners$~\rightarrow$ ~(\Cref{alg:learner})
\State Initialize a population of $k$ EA actors $pop_{\pi}$
\State Initialize an empty cyclic replay buffer $\mathcal{R}$
\State Define a random number generator $r()$ $\in$ $[0,1)$
\For{generation = 1, $\infty$}
\For{actor $\pi$ $\in$ $pop_{\pi}$}
\State fitness, R = Evaluate($\pi$, R)$~\rightarrow$ ~(\Cref{alg:episode} in Appendix)
\EndFor
\State Rank the population based on fitness scores
\State Select the first $e$ actors $\pi$ $\in$ $pop_{\pi}$ as elites
\State Select $(k-e)$ actors $\pi$ from $pop_{\pi}$, to form Set $S$ using tournament selection with replacement
\While{$|S|$ $<$ $(k-e)$}
\State Use single-point crossover between a random $\pi \in e$ and $\pi \in S$ and append to $S$
\EndWhile
\For{Actor $\pi$ $\in$ Set $S$}
\If{$r() < mut_{prob}$}
\State Mutate($\theta^\pi$)$~\rightarrow$ ~(\Cref{alg:mutate} in Appendix)
\EndIf
\EndFor
\For{Learner $L$ $\in$ $\mathcal{P}$ }
\State Sample a random minibatch of T transitions $(s_i, a_i, s_{i+1})$ from $\mathcal{R}$
\State Compute reward $\hat{r}_i=L_\mathcal{{ST}}\left(s_i, a_i, s_{i+1}\right)$
\State Compute $y_i = \hat{r}_i + \gamma \displaystyle \min_{j=1,2} L_{\mathcal{Q}_{j}'}(s_{i+1},\tilde a|\theta^{L_{\mathcal{Q}_{j}'}})$
\State Update $L_\mathcal{Q}$ by minimizing the loss: $\mathcal{L}_i = \frac{1}{T} \sum_{i} (y_i - L_{\mathcal{Q}_{i}}(s_i, a_i|\theta^{L_\mathcal{Q}}) )^2$
\State Update $L_\pi$ using the sampled policy actions
\State Soft update target networks:
\State $L_{\theta^{\pi^\prime}} \Leftarrow \tau L_{\theta^\pi} + (1 - \tau) L_{\theta^{\pi^\prime}}$ and
\State $L_{\theta^{\mathcal{Q}^\prime}} \Leftarrow \tau L_{\theta^\mathcal{Q}} + (1 - \tau)L_{\theta^{\mathcal{Q}^\prime}}$
\EndFor
\For{Learner ${L} \in \mathcal{P}$ }
\State $score,$ R = Evaluate$(L_{\pi}, $R$)$
\EndFor
\State Rank the learners $\mathcal{P}$ based on $scores$
\State Select the first $j$ learners $L\in \mathcal{P}$ as elites
\State Select $(m-j)$ symbolic trees $\mathcal{ST}$ from $\mathcal{P_{ST}}$, to form Set $N$ using tournament selection.
\While{$|N|$ $<$ $(m-j)$}
\State Use single-point crossover between a random $\mathcal{ST} \in j$ and $\mathcal{ST} \in N$ and append to $N$
\State Use mutation between a random $\mathcal{ST} \in j$ and $\mathcal{ST} \in N$ and append to $N$
\EndWhile
\EndFor
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
\section{Related Work}
\label{sec:related_work}
The LISR architecture relies on the following key elements:
\begin{itemize}
\item Symbolic Regression on a population of symbolic trees to learn intrinsic rewards
\item Off-policy RL to train neural networks using the discovered rewards
\item Evolutionary algorithms (EA) on a population of neural network policies search for an optimal policy
\end{itemize}
\textbf{Learning Intrinsic Rewards:}
Some prior works ~\citep{Liu-TAMD-2014, kulkarni2016hierarchical, Dilokthanakul-2019-NNLS, zheng2018learning} have used heuristically designed intrinsic rewards in RL settings leading to interesting formulations such as surprise-based metrics \citep{s2019learning}. In this work, we benchmark against \citet{pathak2017curiosity} where a {\em Curiosity } metric was successfully used to outperform A3C on relatively complex environments like VizDoom and Super Mario Bros. LISR differs from these works in that the reward functions discovered are low-dimensional symbolic trees instead of high-dimensional neural networks. Further, unlike LISR, we are not aware other works that benchmark a single intrinsic reward approach on both discrete and continuous control tasks as well as single and multiagent settings.
\textbf{Symbolic Regression in DL} is a well known search technique in the space of symbolic functions. A few works have applied symbolic regression to estimate activation functions \citep{sahoo2018learning}, value functions \citep{kubalik2019symbolic} and to directly learn interpretable RL policies in model based RL \citep{hein2018interpretable}. To the best of our knowledge, symbolic regression has not previously been used to optimize for the reward function of an RL algorithm. For simplicity of design, we adopt a classic implementation where a population of symbolic trees undergo mutation and crossover to generate new trees.
\textbf{Evolutionary Algorithms} (EAs) are a class of gradient-free search algorithms ~\citep{fogel_1995,spears1993overview} where a population of possible solutions undergo mutate and crossover to discover novel solutions in every generation. Selection from this population involves a ranking operation based on a fitness function.
Recent works have successfully combined EA and Deep RL to accelerate learning. Evolved Policy Gradients (EPG)~\citep{houthooft2018evolved} utilized EA to evolve a differentiable loss function parameterized as a convolutional neural network. CERL~\citep{khadka2019collaborative} combined policy gradients (PG) and EA to find the champion policy based on a fitness score. Our work takes motivation from both. Like EPG, we also search in the space of loss functions - albeit in the form of low-dimensional symbolic trees. Like CERL, we allow EA and PG learners to share a replay buffer to accelerate exploration. However, unlike LISR, CERL relies on access to an environment-provided dense reward function for the PG learners.
| {
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Veblenův efekt je případ tržního chování, kdy je spotřebitel ochoten platit vyšší ceny za funkčně ekvivalentní zboží či službu. Tato ochota vychází ze snahy poukázat na své bohatství a tím získat lepší postavení ve společnosti.
Původ
Poprvé se tímto problémem zabýval americký ekonom a sociolog Thorstein Veblen ve svém díle Teorie zahálčivé třídy (1899, The Theory of the Leisure Class), proto také nese jeho jméno. Veblen označuje zahálčivou třídu jako vyšší třídu lidí, kteří neproduktivně plýtvají svým časem, neboť to podle nich je známka bohatství a vznešenosti. Příčinu vzniku této zahálčivé třídy vidí Veblen v utváření soukromého vlastnictví. Dosažení určitého stupně bohatství a následné vystavování svého majetku na obdiv ostatním je předpokladem pro zařazení se do vyšší třídy ve společnosti, získání dobrého jména a mínění ostatních a s tím i úctu k sobě samému. Nabývání majetku se tedy stalo důležitějším než schopnosti pracovat. V dnešní době je zahálka spíše chápána jako okázalá spotřeba, tedy konzumace komodit a služeb za účelem předvádění svého bohatství a majetku. Postupem času se ve společnosti zakořenil názor, že dražší zboží s sebou přináší nutně i jeho vyšší kvalitu, a tak se stalo terčem zahálčivé třídy (dnes však už i příslušníků nižší třídy, kteří se snaží zastínit svou chudobu) a často ho nakupují, aniž by si racionálně obhájili, zda toto zboží či služba je doopravdy kvalitnější než jeho levnější substitut. Konzumují pak i statky produkované společnostmi, jež mají dobré jméno a postavení mezi svými konkurenty. Lidé si za účelem demonstrace svého bohatství tedy pořizují zboží s trendy obchodní značkou, ačkoli mají možnost si vybrat stejně kvalitní zboží za cenu nižší.
Motivy
Thorstein Veblen ve své práci Teorie zahálčivé třídy rozlišuje dva motivy pro okázalou spotřebu luxusního zboží. První je spojen s příslušníkem vyšší společenské třídy, který se tímto chováním snaží dostatečně odlišit od příslušníků nižší společenské třídy. Druhý motiv, finanční napodobování, náleží příslušníkovi nižší společenské třídy, kdy chce docílit toho, aby byl společností přijímán jako člen vyšší třídy, ačkoli na základě sociálního postavení (např. dosaženým vzděláním, příjmem, vlastnictvím, sociálním a s tím spojeným finančním oceněním vykonávané profese) což má negativní dopad na příslušníky vyšší třídy, jež si toto postavení zasluhují svým bohatstvím. Členové vyšší třídy jsou pak ochotni platit tak vysoké ceny za luxusní zboží, aby tuto imitaci zamezili.
Veblenův statek
V ekonomii se jako Veblenův statek označuje zboží či služby, které jsou funkčně zastupitelné levnějším substitutem, avšak přináší konzumentovi vyšší sociální užitek (postavení ve společnosti). Jedná se tedy o statky, kde s rostoucí cenou roste i poptávané množství, což je v rozporu s klasickým zákonem klesající poptávky. Naopak v případě, kdy cena Veblenova statku klesá, se zároveň snižuje i výjimečnost tohoto zboží a tím pádem i poptávka. Nejčastěji jsou Veblenovy statky spojeny s luxusním zbožím, příkladem můžou být luxusní automobily, šperky, elektronika či některé druhy jídla. V posledních letech se firmy jako Harley-Davidson často v reklamě zaměřují na důraz spojitosti jejich luxusního zboží a postavení ve společnosti.
Související efekty
Veblenův efekt není jedinou popsanou odchylkou v teorii zabývající se zákonem poptávky, u níž velikost poptávky závisí na jiném faktoru než na kvalitách přímo spojených s danou komoditou.
Bandwagon efekt: týká se míry zvyšování poptávky po dané komoditě v důsledku toho, že daná komodita je konzumována i ostatními; představuje touhu lidí kupovat zboží za účelem být ve středu dění, přizpůsobení se lidem, s nimiž chtějí být v kontaktu, být módní a trendy či aby byli akceptování jako součást určité sociální skupiny.
Efekt snobské spotřeby: týká se míry snižování poptávky po dané komoditě v důsledku toho, že daná komodita je konzumována ostatními (nebo že ostatní zvyšují konzumaci dané komodity); představuje touhu lidí být exkluzivní, odlišný, distancovat se od "běžné populace".
Spekulativní poptávka: vliv na poptávkovou křivku v důsledku faktu, že lidé mívají tendence nakupovat zboží do zásoby kvůli očekávání zvyšování cen.
Iracionální poptávka: jedná se o široký pojem týkající se toho, že konzumace určité komodity není plánována či promyšlena, ale vychází z náhlé potřeby, rozmaru apod. a neslouží k racionálnímu účelu, nýbrž k uspokojení nenadálých rozmarům a touhám.
Rozdíl mezi snobským efektem a Veblenovým efektem spočívá v tom, že snobský efekt je funkcí konzumace ostatních a Veblenův efekt je funkcí ceny komodity. V reálné situaci není obvyklé, že by se na určitém trhu vyskytoval čistě jen jeden efekt nebo dokonce žádný efekt. Jedná se vždy o mix různých efektů dohromady (i jiných než výše zmíněných efektů) a rozhodující pro analýzu poptávkové křivky je převládající vliv jednoho z efektů. Je-li nejvíce signifikantní Bandwagon efekt, poptávková křivka je více elastická než v případě, kdyby se žádný vnější efekt nevyskytoval. Převažuje-li efekt snobské spotřeby, poptávková křivka bude naopak méně elastická. V případě dominance Veblenova efektu, poptávková křivka bude též méně elastická a může se stát, že nějaké její části budou dokonce rostoucí. Bez přítomnosti Veblenova efektu je poptávková křivka vždy klesající, bez ohledu na významnost efektu snobské spotřeby na trhu.
Efekt, u něhož rostoucí cena implikuje rostoucí poptávku, souvisí s Giffenovým statkem. Setkáváme se s ním u chudší části populace, kdy zdražení určité běžné komodity (např. chléb) znemožní kupovat si dražší alternativu (např. maso) a v důsledku toho jsou nuceni nakoupit více té běžné komodity jako náhradu za tu dražší alternativu, na kterou cenově již nedosáhnou.
Velikost slevy
Veblenův efekt souvisí také s relativní velikostí slevy. Relativní velikost slevy by měla být pouze tak velká, aby ji zákazník nevnímal jako podezřelou. Důvod a velikost slevy by měly být zákazníkovi věrohodně a srozumitelně vysvětleny. Prodejce může dokonce poškodit celkový dojem z luxusního zboží, bude-li ho prodávat příliš lacině.
Související články
Demonstrativní spotřeba
Reference
VEBLEN, Thorstein. Teorie zahálčivé třídy. Praha: Sociologické nakladatelství, 1999. Klas (Sociologické nakladatelství). .
Mikroekonomie | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 2,771 |
#include <string.h>
#include <re_types.h>
#include <re_mem.h>
#include <re_fmt.h>
#include <re_aes.h>
#include <CommonCrypto/CommonCryptor.h>
struct aes {
CCCryptorRef cryptor;
uint8_t key[64];
size_t key_bytes;
};
static void destructor(void *arg)
{
struct aes *st = arg;
if (st->cryptor)
CCCryptorRelease(st->cryptor);
}
int aes_alloc(struct aes **stp, enum aes_mode mode,
const uint8_t *key, size_t key_bits,
const uint8_t iv[AES_BLOCK_SIZE])
{
struct aes *st;
size_t key_bytes = key_bits / 8;
CCCryptorStatus status;
int err = 0;
if (!stp || !key)
return EINVAL;
if (mode != AES_MODE_CTR)
return ENOTSUP;
st = mem_zalloc(sizeof(*st), destructor);
if (!st)
return ENOMEM;
if (key_bytes > sizeof(st->key)) {
err = EINVAL;
goto out;
}
st->key_bytes = key_bytes;
memcpy(st->key, key, st->key_bytes);
/* used for both encryption and decryption because CTR is symmetric */
status = CCCryptorCreateWithMode(kCCEncrypt, kCCModeCTR,
kCCAlgorithmAES, ccNoPadding,
iv, key, key_bytes, NULL, 0, 0,
kCCModeOptionCTR_BE, &st->cryptor);
if (status != kCCSuccess) {
err = EPROTO;
goto out;
}
out:
if (err)
mem_deref(st);
else
*stp = st;
return err;
}
void aes_set_iv(struct aes *st, const uint8_t iv[AES_BLOCK_SIZE])
{
CCCryptorStatus status;
if (!st)
return;
/* we must reset the state when updating IV */
if (st->cryptor) {
CCCryptorRelease(st->cryptor);
st->cryptor = NULL;
}
status = CCCryptorCreateWithMode(kCCEncrypt, kCCModeCTR,
kCCAlgorithmAES, ccNoPadding,
iv, st->key, st->key_bytes,
NULL, 0, 0, kCCModeOptionCTR_BE,
&st->cryptor);
if (status != kCCSuccess) {
re_fprintf(stderr, "aes: CCCryptorCreateWithMode error (%d)\n",
status);
}
}
int aes_encr(struct aes *st, uint8_t *out, const uint8_t *in, size_t len)
{
CCCryptorStatus status;
size_t moved;
if (!st || !out || !in)
return EINVAL;
status = CCCryptorUpdate(st->cryptor, in, len, out, len, &moved);
if (status != kCCSuccess) {
re_fprintf(stderr, "aes: CCCryptorUpdate error (%d)\n",
status);
return EPROTO;
}
return 0;
}
int aes_decr(struct aes *st, uint8_t *out, const uint8_t *in, size_t len)
{
return aes_encr(st, out, in, len);
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 8,671 |
{"url":"https:\/\/4gravitons.com\/tag\/amplitudes\/","text":"# Why You Might Want to\u00a0Bootstrap\n\nA few weeks back, Quanta Magazine had an article about attempts to \u201cbootstrap\u201d the laws of physics, starting from simple physical principles and pulling out a full theory \u201cby its own bootstraps\u201d. This kind of work is a cornerstone of my field, a shared philosophy that motivates a lot of what we do. Building on deep older results, people in my field have found that just a few simple principles are enough to pick out specific physical theories.\n\nThere are limits to this. These principles pick out broad traits of theories: gravity versus the strong force versus the Higgs boson. As far as we know they don\u2019t separate more closely related forces, like the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. (Originally, the Quanta article accidentally made it sound like we know why there are four fundamental forces: we don\u2019t, and the article\u2019s phrasing was corrected.) More generally, a bootstrap method isn\u2019t going to tell you which principles are the right ones. For any set of principles, you can always ask \u201cwhy?\u201d\n\nWith that in mind, why would you want to bootstrap?\n\nFirst, it can make your life simpler. Those simple physical principles may be clear at the end, but they aren\u2019t always obvious at the start of a calculation. If you don\u2019t make good use of them, you might find you\u2019re calculating many things that violate those principles, things that in the end all add up to zero. Bootstrapping can let you skip that part of the calculation, and sometimes go straight to the answer.\n\nSecond, it can suggest possibilities you hadn\u2019t considered. Sometimes, your simple physical principles don\u2019t select a unique theory. Some of the options will be theories you\u2019ve heard of, but some might be theories that never would have come up, or even theories that are entirely new. Trying to understand the new theories, to see whether they make sense and are useful, can lead to discovering new principles as well.\n\nFinally, even if you don\u2019t know which principles are the right ones, some principles are better than others. If there is an ultimate theory that describes the real world, it can\u2019t be logically inconsistent. That\u2019s a start, but it\u2019s quite a weak requirement. There are principles that aren\u2019t required by logic itself, but that still seem important in making the world \u201cmake sense\u201d. Often, we appreciate these principles only after we\u2019ve seen them at work in the real world. The best example I can think of is relativity: while Newtonian mechanics is logically consistent, it requires a preferred reference frame, a fixed notion for which things are moving and which things are still. This seemed reasonable for a long time, but now that we understand relativity the idea of a preferred reference frame seems like it should have been obviously wrong. It introduces something arbitrary into the laws of the universe, a \u201cwhy is it that way?\u201d question that doesn\u2019t have an answer. That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s logically inconsistent, or impossible, but it does make it suspect in a way other ideas aren\u2019t. Part of the hope of these kinds of bootstrap methods is that they uncover principles like that, principles that aren\u2019t mandatory but that are still in some sense \u201cobvious\u201d. Hopefully, enough principles like that really do specify the laws of physics. And if they don\u2019t, we\u2019ll at least have learned how to calculate better.\n\n# Calculating the Hard Way, for\u00a0Science!\n\nI had a new paper out last week, with Jacob Bourjaily and Matthias Volk. We\u2019re calculating the probability that particles bounce off each other in our favorite toy model, N=4 super Yang-Mills. And this time, we\u2019re doing it the hard way.\n\nThe \u201ceasy way\u201d we didn\u2019t take is one I have a lot of experience with. Almost as long as I\u2019ve been writing this blog, I\u2019ve been calculating these particle probabilities by \u201cguesswork\u201d: starting with a plausible answer, then honing it down until I can be confident it\u2019s right. This might sound reckless, but it works remarkably well, letting us calculate things we could never have hoped for with other methods. The catch is that \u201cguessing\u201d is much easier when we know what we\u2019re looking for: in particular, it works much better in toy models than in the real world.\n\nOver the last few years, though, I\u2019ve been using a much more \u201cnormal\u201d method, one that so far has a better track record in the real world. This method, too, works better than you would expect, and we\u2019ve managed some quite complicated calculations.\n\nSo we have an \u201ceasy way\u201d, and a \u201chard way\u201d. Which one is better? Is the hard way actually harder?\n\nTo test that, you need to do the same calculation both ways, and see which is easier. You want it to be a fair test: if \u201cguessing\u201d only works in the toy model, then you should do the \u201chard\u201d version in the toy model as well. And you don\u2019t want to give \u201cguessing\u201d any unfair advantages. In particular, the \u201cguess\u201d method works best when we know a lot about the result we\u2019re looking for: what it\u2019s made of, what symmetries it has. In order to do a fair test, we must use that knowledge to its fullest to improve the \u201chard way\u201d as well.\n\nWe picked an example in the middle: not too easy, and not too hard, a calculation that was done a few years back \u201cthe easy way\u201d but not yet done \u201cthe hard way\u201d. We plugged in all the modern tricks we could, trying to use as much of what we knew as possible. We trained a grad student: Matthias Volk, who did the lion\u2019s share of the calculation and learned a lot in the process. We worked through the calculation, and did it properly the hard way.\n\nWhich method won?\n\nIn the end, the hard way was indeed harder\u2026but not by that much! Most of the calculation went quite smoothly, with only a few difficulties at the end. Just five years ago, when the calculation was done \u201cthe easy way\u201d, I doubt anyone would have expected the hard way to be viable. But with modern tricks it wasn\u2019t actually that hard.\n\nThis is encouraging. It tells us that the \u201chard way\u201d has potential, that it\u2019s almost good enough to compete at this kind of calculation. It tells us that the \u201ceasy way\u201d is still quite powerful. And it reminds us that the more we know, and the more we apply our knowledge, the more we can do.\n\n# QCD Meets Gravity\u00a02019\n\nI\u2019m at UCLA this week for QCD Meets Gravity, a conference about the surprising ways that gravity is \u201cQCD squared\u201d.\n\nWhen I attended this conference two years ago, the community was branching out into a new direction: using tools from particle physics to understand the gravitational waves observed at LIGO.\n\nAt this year\u2019s conference, gravitational waves have grown from a promising new direction to a large fraction of the talks. While there were still the usual talks about quantum field theory and string theory (everything from bootstrap methods to a surprising application of double field theory), gravitational waves have clearly become a major focus of this community.\n\nThis was highlighted before the first talk, when Zvi Bern brought up a recent paper by Thibault Damour. Bern and collaborators had recently used particle physics methods to push beyond the state of the art in gravitational wave calculations. Damour, an expert in the older methods, claims that Bern et al\u2019s result is wrong, and in doing so also questions an earlier result by Amati, Ciafaloni, and Veneziano. More than that, Damour argued that the whole approach of using these kinds of particle physics tools for gravitational waves is misguided.\n\nThere was a lot of good-natured ribbing of Damour in the rest of the conference, as well as some serious attempts to confront his points. Damour\u2019s argument so far is somewhat indirect, so there is hope that a more direct calculation (which Damour is currently pursuing) will resolve the matter. In the meantime, Julio Parra-Martinez described a reproduction of the older Amati\/Ciafaloni\/Veneziano result with more Damour-approved techniques, as well as additional indirect arguments that Bern et al got things right.\n\nBefore the QCD Meets Gravity community worked on gravitational waves, other groups had already built a strong track record in the area. One encouraging thing about this conference was how much the two communities are talking to each other. Several speakers came from the older community, and there were a lot of references in both groups\u2019 talks to the other group\u2019s work. This, more than even the content of the talks, felt like the strongest sign that something productive is happening here.\n\nMany talks began by trying to motivate these gravitational calculations, usually to address the mysteries of astrophysics. Two talks were more direct, with Ramy Brustein and Pierre Vanhove speculating about new fundamental physics that could be uncovered by these calculations. I\u2019m not the kind of physicist who does this kind of speculation, and I confess both talks struck me as rather strange. Vanhove in particular explicitly rejects the popular criterion of \u201cnaturalness\u201d, making me wonder if his work is the kind of thing critics of naturalness have in mind.\n\n# Rooting out the\u00a0Answer\n\nI have a new paper out today, with Jacob Bourjaily, Andrew McLeod, Matthias Wilhelm, Cristian Vergu and Matthias Volk.\n\nThere\u2019s a story I\u2019ve told before on this blog, about a kind of \u201calphabet\u201d for particle physics predictions. When we try to make a prediction in particle physics, we need to do complicated integrals. Sometimes, these integrals simplify dramatically, in unexpected ways. It turns out we can understand these simplifications by writing the integrals in a sort of \u201calphabet\u201d, breaking complicated mathematical \u201cperiods\u201d into familiar logarithms. If we want to simplify an integral, we can use relations between logarithms like these:\n\n$\\log(a b)=\\log(a)+\\log(b),\\quad \\log(a^n)=n\\log(a)$\n\nto factor our \u201calphabet\u201d into pieces as simple as possible.\n\nThe simpler the alphabet, the more progress you can make. And in the nice toy model theory we\u2019re working with, the alphabets so far have been simple in one key way. Expressed in the right variables, they\u2019re rational. For example, they contain no square roots.\n\nWould that keep going? Would we keep finding rational alphabets? Or might the alphabets, instead, have square roots?\n\nAfter some searching, we found a clean test case. There was a calculation we could do with just two Feynman diagrams. All we had to do was subtract one from the other. If they still had square roots in their alphabet, we\u2019d have proven that the nice, rational alphabets eventually had to stop.\n\nSo we calculated these diagrams, doing the complicated integrals. And we found they did indeed have square roots in their alphabet, in fact many more than expected. They even had square roots of square roots!\n\nYou\u2019d think that would be the end of the story. But square roots are trickier than you\u2019d expect.\n\nRemember that to simplify these integrals, we break them up into an alphabet, and factor the alphabet. What happens when we try to do that with an alphabet that has square roots?\n\nSuppose we have letters in our alphabet with $\\sqrt{-5}$. Suppose another letter is the number 9. You might want to factor it like this:\n\n$9=3\\times 3$\n\nSimple, right? But what if instead you did this:\n\n$9=(2+ \\sqrt{-5} )\\times(2- \\sqrt{-5} )$\n\nOnce you allow $\\sqrt{-5}$ in the game, you can factor 9 in two different ways. The central assumption, that you can always just factor your alphabet, breaks down. In mathematical terms, you no longer have a unique factorization domain.\n\nInstead, we had to get a lot more mathematically sophisticated, factoring into something called prime ideals. We got that working and started crunching through the square roots in our alphabet. Things simplified beautifully: we started with a result that was ten million terms long, and reduced it to just five thousand. And at the end of the day, after subtracting one integral from the other\u2026\n\nWe found no square roots!\n\nAfter all of our simplifications, all the letters we found were rational. Our nice test case turned out much, much simpler than we expected.\n\nIt\u2019s been a long road on this calculation, with a lot of false starts. We were kind of hoping to be the first to find square root letters in these alphabets; instead it looks like another group will beat us to the punch. But we developed a lot of interesting tricks along the way, and we thought it would be good to publish our \u201cnull result\u201d. As always in our field, sometimes surprising simplifications are just around the corner.\n\n# Calabi-Yaus in Feynman Diagrams: Harder and Easier Than\u00a0Expected\n\nI\u2019ve got a new paper up, about the weird geometrical spaces we keep finding in Feynman diagrams.\n\nWith Jacob Bourjaily, Andrew McLeod, and Matthias Wilhelm, and most recently Cristian Vergu and Matthias Volk, I\u2019ve been digging up odd mathematics in particle physics calculations. In several calculations, we\u2019ve found that we need a type of space called a Calabi-Yau manifold. These spaces are often studied by string theorists, who hope they represent how \u201cextra\u201d dimensions of space are curled up. String theorists have found an absurdly large number of Calabi-Yau manifolds, so many that some are trying to sift through them with machine learning. We wanted to know if our situation was quite that ridiculous: how many Calabi-Yaus do we really need?\n\nSo we started asking around, trying to figure out how to classify our catch of Calabi-Yaus. And mostly, we just got confused.\n\nIt turns out there are a lot of different tools out there for understanding Calabi-Yaus, and most of them aren\u2019t all that useful for what we\u2019re doing. We went in circles for a while trying to understand how to desingularize toric varieties, and other things that will sound like gibberish to most of you. In the end, though, we noticed one small thing that made our lives a whole lot simpler.\n\nIt turns out that all of the Calabi-Yaus we\u2019ve found are, in some sense, the same. While the details of the physics varies, the overall \u201cspace\u201d is the same in each case. It\u2019s a space we kept finding for our \u201cCalabi-Yau bestiary\u201d, but it turns out one of the \u201ctraintrack\u201d diagrams we found earlier can be written in the same way. We found another example too, a \u201cwheel\u201d that seems to be the same type of Calabi-Yau.\n\nWe also found many examples that we don\u2019t understand. Add another rung to our \u201ctraintrack\u201d and we suddenly can\u2019t write it in the same space. (Personally, I\u2019m quite confused about this one.) Add another spoke to our wheel and we confuse ourselves in a different way.\n\nSo while our calculation turned out simpler than expected, we don\u2019t think this is the full story. Our Calabi-Yaus might live in \u201cthe same space\u201d, but there are also physics-related differences between them, and these we still don\u2019t understand.\n\nAt some point, our abstract included the phrase \u201cthis paper raises more questions than it answers\u201d. It doesn\u2019t say that now, but it\u2019s still true. We wrote this paper because, after getting very confused, we ended up able to say a few new things that hadn\u2019t been said before. But the questions we raise are if anything more important. We want to inspire new interest in this field, toss out new examples, and get people thinking harder about the geometry of Feynman integrals.\n\n# Congratulations to Simon Caron-Huot and Pedro Vieira for the New Horizons\u00a0Prize!\n\nThe 2020 Breakthrough Prizes were announced last week, awards in physics, mathematics, and life sciences. The physics prize was awarded to the Event Horizon Telescope, with the $3 million award to be split among the 347 members of the collaboration. The Breakthrough Prize Foundation also announced this year\u2019s New Horizons prizes, six smaller awards of$100,000 each to younger researchers in physics and math. One of those awards went to two people I know, Simon Caron-Huot and Pedro Vieira. Extremely specialized as I am, I hope no-one minds if I ignore all the other awards and talk about them.\n\nThe award for Caron-Huot and Vieira is \u201cFor profound contributions to the understanding of quantum field theory.\u201d Indeed, both Simon and Pedro have built their reputations as explorers of quantum field theories, the kind of theories we use in particle physics. Both have found surprising behavior in these theories, where a theory people thought they understood did something quite unexpected. Both also developed new calculation methods, using these theories to compute things that were thought to be out of reach. But this is all rather vague, so let me be a bit more specific about each of them:\n\nSimon Caron-Huot is known for his penetrating and mysterious insight. He has the ability to take a problem and think about it in a totally original way, coming up with a solution that no-one else could have thought of. When I first worked with him, he took a calculation that the rest of us would have taken a month to do and did it by himself in a week. His insight seems to come in part from familiarity with the physics literature, forgotten papers from the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s that turn out surprisingly useful today. Largely, though, his insight is his own, an inimitable style that few can anticipate. His interests are broad, from exotic toy models to well-tested theories that describe the real world, covering a wide range of methods and approaches. Physicists tend to describe each other in terms of standard \u201cvirtues\u201d: depth and breadth, knowledge and originality. Simon somehow seems to embody all of them.\n\nPedro Vieira is mostly known for his work with integrable theories. These are theories where if one knows the right trick one can \u201csolve\u201d the theory exactly, rather than using the approximations that physicists often rely on. Pedro was a mentor to me when I was a postdoc at the Perimeter Institute, and one thing he taught me was to always expect more. When calculating with computer code I would wait hours for a result, while Pedro would ask \u201cwhy should it take hours?\u201d, and if we couldn\u2019t propose a reason would insist we find a quicker way. This attitude paid off in his research, where he has used integrable theories to calculate things others would have thought out of reach. His Pentagon Operator Product Expansion, or \u201cPOPE\u201d, uses these tricks to calculate probabilities that particles collide, and more recently he pushed further to other calculations with a hexagon-based approach (which one might call the \u201cHOPE\u201d). Now he\u2019s working on \u201cbootstrapping\u201d up complicated theories from simple physical principles, once again asking \u201cwhy should this be hard?\u201d\n\n# At Aspen\n\nI\u2019m at the Aspen Center for Physics this week, for a workshop on Scattering Amplitudes and the Conformal Bootstrap.\n\nAspen is part of a long and illustrious tradition of physics conference sites located next to ski resorts. It\u2019s ten years younger than its closest European counterpart Les Houches School of Physics, but if anything its traditions are stricter: all blackboard talks, and a minimum two-week visit. Instead of the summer schools of Les Houches, Aspen\u2019s goal is to inspire collaboration: to get physicists to spend time working and hiking around each other until inspiration strikes.\n\nThis workshop is a meeting between two communities: people who study the Conformal Bootstrap (nice popular description here) and my own field of Scattering Amplitudes. The Conformal Boostrap is one of our closest sister-fields, so there may be a lot of potential for collaboration. This week\u2019s talks have been amplitudes-focused, I\u2019m looking forward to the talks next week that will highlight connections between the two fields.","date":"2020-01-29 08:37:56","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 5, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.5290006995201111, \"perplexity\": 747.8903092432179}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": false, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.3, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2020-05\/segments\/1579251789055.93\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20200129071944-20200129101944-00227.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
{"url":"http:\/\/mathhelpforum.com\/algebra\/197124-my-math-textbook-wrong-integer-problem-just-me-print.html","text":"# Is my Math Textbook wrong on this Integer Problem or is it just me?\n\n\u2022 April 11th 2012, 05:48 PM\nmedlinemd\nIs my Math Textbook wrong on this Integer Problem or is it just me?\nCan you guys help me with this problem with a little explanation on how you came to solve it and I will share the answer that was provided in the book. Thanks in Advance\nAttachment 23575\n\u2022 April 11th 2012, 06:41 PM\nskeeter\nRe: Is my Math Textbook wrong on this Integer Problem or is it just me?\nnote ... $-2^2 = -1 \\cdot 2^2 = -1 \\cdot 4 = -4$,\n\nand ... $(-2)^2 = (-1 \\cdot 2)^2 = (-1)^2 \\cdot 2^2 = 1 \\cdot 4 = 4$\n\ntherefore ...\n\n$-2^2 - (-2)^2 = -4 - 4 = -8$\n\u2022 April 12th 2012, 08:50 PM\nmedlinemd\nRe: Is my Math Textbook wrong on this Integer Problem or is it just me?\nAttachment 23586\nYou got the same answer as the book. I see where I went wrong thank you for answering my question. I thought -2^2 was the same as (-2)^2\n\nHow I did it the first time:\n-2^2-(-2)^2=\n=\n-2^2-4\n=4-4\n= 0","date":"2015-01-26 18:26:28","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 3, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.6648672819137573, \"perplexity\": 595.0660551222327}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 20, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2015-06\/segments\/1422115862015.5\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20150124161102-00125-ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First published in 2017 by September Publishing
Collection copyright © English Heritage 2017
'They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek' ©Sarah Perry 2017
'Mr Lanyard's Last Case' ©Andrew Michael Hurley 2017
'The Bunker' ©Mark Haddon 2017
'Foreboding' ©Kamila Shamsie 2017
'Never Departed More' ©Stuart Evers 2017
'The Wall' ©Kate Clanchy 2017
'As Strong as Death' ©Jeanette Winterson 2017
'Mrs Charbury at Eltham' ©Max Porter 2017
The right of English Heritage and the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.
Project concept: Michael Murray-Fennell and Bronwen Riley
Gazetteer: Katherine Davey
Press and publicity: Alexandra Carson
Cover and title page design: Anna Morrison
Typesetter: Ed Pickford
ISBN 978-1-910463-73-4
eISBN: 978-1-910463-74-1
Kindle ISBN: 978-1-910463-75-8
September Publishing
www.septemberpublishing.org
## CONTENTS
**They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek** SARAH PERRY
[**Mr Lanyard's Last Case**
ANDREW MICHAEL HURLEY](chapter02.html)
**The Bunker** MARK HADDON
**Foreboding** KAMILA SHAMSIE
**Never Departed More** STUART EVERS
**The Wall** KATE CLANCHY
**As Strong as Death** JEANETTE WINTERSON
**Mrs Charbury at Eltham** MAX PORTER
**Afterwords**
_Within These Walls_ ANDREW MARTIN
_A Gazetteer of English Heritage Hauntings_
_Biographical Notes_
'The future is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view: the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of unfading interest.'
From 'On the Past and Future' in _Table-Talk; or, Original Essays_ by William Hazlitt, 1821
##
'Did I ever tell you,' said Salma, 'about my friend Elizabeth?'
We sat in the café at Audley End, where we'd come to wheel her mercifully sleeping infant through shaded rooms, and to gaze with due respect at pendant plaster ceilings and extinct waterfowl wading nowhere behind panes of glass.
'Not that I recall.'
'I say friend . . .' Salma paused, and with her right hand rocked the pushchair back and forth. Her face, which habitually had a merry, benevolent look, altered; I saw there, very briefly, an expression of contempt. 'We were never close.'
'You've never mentioned her,' I said.
There was again that contemptuous look, which had in it also a kind of disgust. It troubled me, so that I looked away, and up to where the lawn gave rise to a distant folly.
'She worked here, last year, or perhaps the year before. She's dead now.' This was said with so little expression I had no idea how to respond. 'Look, fetch me coffee, and perhaps some cake, and I'll tell you a story.'
I could hardly complain at the prospect of one of Salma's tales, since she had the gift of contriving an hour's anecdote out of a minute's incident. Dutifully I brought her a steaming pot, and a plate of something sweet. Her child had woken, and was hungry, and she nursed him contentedly; meanwhile the café had begun to fill, so that what she told me then was lost to anyone but me. This was all ten years ago or more: I've not seen Salma since, but the tale has remained with me, like something told to frighten me when I was very young.
Elizabeth (she said) had been one of those charmed and charming folk one would dislike if one could, but never can. She wore old and shabby clothes as though they were velvet and silk; she was a beauty; she had many friends, and her parents seemed to have done her no harm. She'd been a gifted artist as a child, and became a gifted conservator. She'd lived in Paris, restoring a set of opera curtains damaged in a fire, and had once uncovered an art nouveau wall painting concealed behind the plaster of a Norfolk house. Late in the last summer of the last century she was summoned to Audley End. Being an Essex native she was familiar with the house – with its long approach beside a sunny lawn, and its famous yew hedge cut to resemble storm clouds. She was married by then, and if a week's work in her home county lacked the glamour of a Bohemian wall hanging in Prague, it allowed her to stay with her husband in the house where she'd grown up, and with parents to whom she was devoted.
The task for which she was hired was unlike any she'd undertaken before. Wool and silks were her stock-in-trade, and the pads of her fingers were rough with needle-pricks – but at Audley End, she was one of three hired to restore a great Jacobean screen to its former glory. It was carved from oak, and the polish had lost its lustre.
Arriving early at the house – cheerful as ever, if a little nervous – she was greeted at the door.
'Ah! Come along in. Elizabeth, yes? I don't like to contract names. I, for example, am Nicholas, and never Nick – here we are: all is prepared.'
They stood then in the great hall. Banners suspended overhead bore Latin inscriptions; the blinds were lowered. A pair of outlandishly large boots hung above a pale stone staircase that led to a pale stone gallery, and a wasp's nest was concealed in a glass case on a pedestal. It was a warm morning, with a high white haze that promised a scorching day, but nonetheless Elizabeth shivered as she shook the hands of her companions, since a chill rose from the stone floor.
'Morning,' she said, greeting the young men brought bustling forward by Nicholas. 'Ade,' said the first, smiling and shaking her hand. 'And this is Peter, who doesn't speak much.' Peter smiled also, and that smile had in it a kind of wry pleasure that made conversation redundant. Elizabeth felt at once the warm companionship that comes with common purpose.
'Well then,' said Nicholas, proudly, as if he'd carved the screen himself: 'What d'you make of it?'
In truth, Elizabeth's first response was one of distaste. The dark and massy screen ran the breadth of the great hall. At its centre, an arched door was covered in red velvet and flanked by four vast busts that resembled the kings and queens in a deck of cards. It was festooned with carved wreaths, and with wooden bunches of peach, grape and pear, all of which seemed overripe: her eye rested on a pomegranate splitting open to reveal its store of seeds, and she almost thought she caught the scent of rotting fruit. Here and there were other faces: grinning green men and limbless women with hard bulbous breasts. It was all in the Jacobean style, and admirable in its way; but nonetheless she found herself unwilling to meet its many unblinking eyes.
Watching her, Nicholas grinned. 'Odd, isn't it?' he said. Then he drew near, confidingly; it seemed for a moment as if he were about to reveal some secret, but evidently he changed his mind. He clapped his hands together, and briskly rubbed them. 'Not what one would choose for the living room, but well worth a spit and polish. Now then,' he gestured to a trestle table on which cloths, brushes, pots of wax and bottles of solvent were laid out on a white sheet, 'Ade is the expert, I believe? Splendid, splendid. I'll leave you to it, and can be found in the café at lunch.' Departing through the scarlet door he bid a general farewell, though it seemed to Elizabeth he gave her a conspiratorial look as he passed.
The morning went swiftly, with rituals of preparation undertaken in a companionable silence broken only by cautions from Ade, who was an expert in woodwork and had the splinters to prove it. Elizabeth was given charge of a royal pair to the left of the great door, and the pedestals on which they stood. Even from behind the lowered blinds it was possible to feel the heat of the day, which by noon had banished the last of the chill. Her first task was to remove the dust that had settled in the empty eyes of the carved figures, and in the splitting fruit. Her distaste for the screen dissolved as she grew rapt by the grain of the wood and by the skill of the hands that had cut it.
Shortly after noon, by common consent, they left their work. Ade and Peter, having some other appointment, departed in a van, promising to return by close of day. Left alone in the hall it seemed to Elizabeth that the chill had returned: with hands pressed to her aching back she regarded the screen, and the screen regarded her. Then she laughed, and went in search of Nicholas.
It seemed he'd been waiting for her, since the moment she opened the door to the deserted café he beckoned her over.
'How fares it?' he said.
'Well, I think. Although the dust makes me sneeze.'
'I'm sorry you have been abandoned for the afternoon. Will you mind?'
'Not in the least.'
'Splendid! And what do you make of it?'
'Of the screen? It's not to my taste, but it's very fine, isn't it? I found myself thinking: they must have bled over this.'
Her companion did not laugh again, but looked almost comically grave.
'It has a curious history,' he said.
'I should think it does.'
'No, no . . .' He began to fiddle with a button on his cuff. 'Not in the ordinary way. They say it's cursed. Ah, of course you will laugh. Quite right, quite proper.'
'Then you must tell me how, and by whom!'
Seeming both reluctant and delighted, he leaned forward over clasped hands. 'Of course you know the house is built on consecrated land. The first owner had made a pretty penny out of the dissolution of the m onasteries, and having turfed out the monks made the abbey his home for a time.'
'The rogue!'
'As it was, so shall it ever be. The abbey already had the very faintest of whiffs about it: one of the monks had hanged himself in the cloister, a sin which is of course unforgivable. It was said he'd been so despised by his brothers that by the end nobody would even meet his eye and Christian forbearance be damned. The loathing simply got too much, I suppose. Wait a moment: aren't you dreadfully hot? – let me bring water.'
He returned with a glass, which she gratefully drank, and resumed his tale. 'The abbey fell into ruin, and the land was passed on; fresh plans were made, new foundations laid; always more wealth, a bigger fireplace, costlier paintings on the walls. The carved screen was a crowning glory of the time: on trend, you might say. Shortly after it was completed one of the workmen killed himself by driving an iron implement into his eye. They say there were other wounds all over his face, as if it had taken several attempts. Nobody attended his funeral.' He looked at her, and there was in his eyes an expression of delight in her discomfort.
'Time passed. Fashion changed, and the screen was painted white – but one of the workmen drank paint and died in agonies fifteen days later, corroded from within. It's said that neither his wife, nor his children, nor any of his fellow workers, visited him as he lay dying. Again, the fashion changed, and men were hired to scrape the paint from the screen, and restore it to its original form. On the final day one man was missing; they searched, and found him hanging by his belt in the folly up the hill. There was pipe ash scattered about, and the core of an apple: it seemed others had stood by smoking or idly eating, and simply watched him do it.'
Elizabeth was appalled, but didn't like to show it. 'It wouldn't be a proper country house,' she said, 'without a ghost attached.'
'It wouldn't do to say "ghost" precisely: no white sheets here, no grey ladies. The screen does not, I would say, reveal a cowled monk at midnight! It is more – a sensation, if you like. One of desolation, of abandonment – the fear that secretly one is an object of disgust and pity, even to one's family. Haven't we all feared so, in dead of night?'
Elizabeth had always been loved, and always known it; but she nodded, and smiled. 'And it is the screen, they say, that brings about this sensation?'
'So it seems. There have been other incidents – a local woman who came to photograph it was savaged by a gentle dog she'd bottle-fed since birth – but nothing to trouble the makers of vulgar documentaries.'
'Then I'll keep my wits about me!'
'Do so, do so. Well: you'll be hungry, I should think. Don't let me keep you from your cheese-and-tomato.' Straightening his collar in the manner of a man who'd done a good day's work, he left.
A little troubled, Elizabeth gazed for a time at a framed photograph of a Victorian family which hung on the wall. It reflected the summer light, but the glass was uneven, so that it seemed for a moment the wrinkled stockings of a tall girl moved on her bony ankles.
When she had eaten, Elizabeth returned to the great hall. That it had once been so cold as to make her shiver seemed now impossible: particles of dust rose in the hot air. The wax had begun to melt in its pots: there was a sweetish, acrid scent that made her feel drowsy. Left to her own devices she paced the hall: here was the wasps' nest in its case and there the shell of a tortoise emptied of its warm, soft body and hanging hollow on the wall. She imagined it blindly paddling against the wood in a stupid longing to find its living self.
Cursing Nicholas cheerfully for having put her in an eerie frame of mind, she took up her tools and returned to the task. Her head ached, from the heat and from the scent of wax and solvents in the air, and she felt a pulse set up painfully strong in her ears. She thought for a moment of the abbey it once had been – thought of a pale stone cloister, and godly men pacing the paving stones, quietly singing. It called to mind the image of a hanging man, and she wondered vaguely if he'd used his knotted belt, and if perhaps he'd placed the knot against his throat, and that had made things quicker. Out on the lawn a crow croaked; then there was silence, and if it hoped for an answer, there was none.
Seated now beside the screen, Elizabeth felt an irresistible drowsiness come over her. The hollowed tortoise on the wall was still – the wasps in their case were motionless behind the glass – even the dust in the beams of light had ceased to move. Drearily her hand moved across the grinning face of a limbless woman, and it seemed she ought to apologise for so intimate a touch. 'I'm sorry,' said Elizabeth, removing dust from its hollowed eye: 'I'm so sorry.' The pain in her head grew worse, and she leaned for a while upon the screen. The wood was hard, and cool; there came again the croaking crow, and from some distant place a stranger speaking. The heavy air pressed against her and she fell into a doze.
In her sleep it seemed that the screen softened like wax in the heat, and had taken on the pliant soft warmth of skin – seemed she felt it move against her cheek. The air grew still more acrid and more sweet – it was surely the fruit breaking open, the pomegranate blooming mouldy at the split – it was the scent also of flesh, sweating in the evening heat; yes: certainly it was not oak against which she rested but living things, or things not long dead. The limbless woman's torso rose and fell – her grin grew wider – her mouth was not dark but rather crimson, and wet from a passing tongue. 'I am so sorry,' said Elizabeth, suspended between sleeping and waking, uncertain what apology she made, only that it was demanded. Sleepily she reached for the woman, and the woman reached for her – and in the moment before waking she felt against her own mouth the press of another – very soft, very hot; a tender kiss, but one which, with a sensation of abhorrence, woke her at once.
Hours had passed as she dozed – her knees ached from pressure against the stone floor, and the heat had dissipated, leaving behind the old damp chill. For a long moment she could not move: could not bear to look up at the carved woman, with her hard breasts and her smile; and find, perhaps, that there lay now on her lip the tip of a wet tongue. She shook herself from her stupor with laughter at her own absurdity, but all the same could not quite leave the great hall as quickly as she might have liked. It delighted her, then, to see a white van approach as she stood on the threshold of the house: Ade and Peter, returned from their business elsewhere.
'Evening all,' she said, tugging ironically at a forelock. It seemed they didn't recognise her, since there was no return of her cheerful greeting. 'It's me,' she said: 'Elizabeth!'
Ade, at the wheel, would not turn his head; beside him silent Peter looked at her impassively. Then suddenly his face altered, as if a foul smell had reached him: it was faint, but unmistakable – the sneer of a disgusted man. Then the van moved on, and she was left alone. Bewildered, Elizabeth watched them go; and for all the tales she'd been told it merely seemed to her they'd had some business that had gone bad, and put them in a temper. All the same, in the minutes left before her husband came to drive her home, she longed for a moment of something kind and ordinary. She took out her phone, and called her mother.
'Mum?' she said. 'Oh, what a day: what's for dinner, and how have you been?' She waited, but there was no answer. 'Mum?' she said; and then, childish in her anxiety, 'Mummy? Are you there?'
Again, silence; then her mother's voice, but not as she'd ever heard it. It had hardened and acquired edges; it had in it a kind of cool disinterested rage. 'Don't call here,' she said. 'Don't ever call here again.' There was the click of a phone put in its cradle, and in Elizabeth's stomach a moment's roiling terror – then the thought that of course something lay behind it: a bad line, and exasperation with insistent salesmen. Then in the distance – over the bridge and up the pale drive – there came a small car: red, noisy and familiar. Gratefully she ran down the gravel drive, towards the car, picturing everything that was dear about her husband: the hair thinning faintly at the crown, the capable hands on the wheel. Thank God! she thought: thank God!
The car stopped some distance away, and laughing she went on running: how like him, to tease and play – at any moment he'd step out, and run towards her with outstretched arms. But he did not. The sun obscured the windscreen: she could not see his face. Impossible, now, not to forget Nicholas and his tales – the hanging men, the iron-pierced eye – it was all, perhaps, some elaborate unkind joke. She reached the car and rapped against the window, half fond and half impatient. The window did not move. All her cheerful disposition rinsed away, and in its place she felt a kind of panicked dread. She said her husband's name three times; three times he did not reply. At last she knelt, supplicating, beside the car, resting her hands against the door, her face level with the glass: 'Darling?' she said. 'My love?'
He was turned away from her, looking up to the white folly on its low hill. There was the familiar pale brown hair growing over the familiar collar; but something, she knew, had altered. 'Darling?' she said; and slowly – very slowly, as if with the greatest reluctance – he turned. His face, when she saw it, was utterly changed. Gone was the intelligent shy smile, the sudden beam of kindness; in its place was a fixed mask of implacable loathing – very hard, very fixed, as if cut from an unyielding substance. Then it moved, and there was one final flare of hope – that it was all a game; that he would smile, as he'd always smiled. But what came then was a grimace, as if he were looking at some transgression against which every natural human instinct violently rebelled. His hand moved on the wheel – the idling engine stirred – and very quickly, and without looking back, he was gone.
'As I say,' said Salma, lightly stroking her sleeping baby's downy cheek, 'she's dead now. Opened her veins in a warm bath, only not lengthways, as you're supposed to, and it didn't work. In the end she had to break her own head open on the sink. It was a long time before they found her.' The child opened its dusk-blue eyes. He gazed at his mother; she gazed back. It ought to have been delightful to see, but it struck me that Salma was not as lovely looking as I'd always thought: that her eyes were small, and their shine like that of wet stones. 'A very long time,' she said, and I caught a cool, hard note in her voice, which I disliked. 'Nobody looked for her, you see. Nobody wanted her. She wasn't missed.'
##
I'for one, am thankful of the unwritten statute of decency that compels us not to speak ill of the dead. But perhaps such compassion is driven by a stronger desire to see a man's afflictions and troubles die with him. That way, our own, we hope, might do the same when the time comes.
And so, there was no mention in James Lanyard's obituary this morning of the true circumstances that had led to his withdrawal from public and professional life these past ten years, simply a brief sentence regretting the nervous illness that had overcome him at the Jacobite trials and brought to an end what had been a long and formidable career at the Bar. Some might recall the rumours about what had happened at Carlisle Castle, but only those of us who had been there would know how to separate those rumours from the truth. There was talk of ghosts and spirits (and that Mr Lanyard had in fact been haunted until the day he died in his house on the edge of the Heath) but those are words for a fireside story and inadequate for the real world.
Like most clerks of the Inns, I had heard of James Lanyard well before I met him, and when I began my employment at his chambers his reputation was made flesh exactly. He was commanding in court, with a knowledge of the law that often put his opponent to shame and a noose around the defendant's neck. When there was even the slimmest chance of securing a conviction, he would pursue it with a hound's nose and a terrier's teeth. And even when there wasn't, he forced the gentleman for the defence to work hard for the acquittal.
After the victory at Culloden, it came as no surprise to me that he was selected to represent the Crown when the rebels were tried. He sent nine men to be hanged, drawn and quartered on Kennington Common, and a few weeks later the Earl of Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino were beheaded at Tower Hill.
There was a desire, that unsettled summer of 1746, for justice to be served quickly in order to stamp down any remaining shoots of rebellion and so, when his duty had been done in London, Mr Lanyard was sent north to prepare for the hearings in Carlisle.
Word had reached us in Lincoln's Inn some weeks earlier that there were already very few lodgings to be had in the city and so I had made arrangements in advance for us to room with Doctor McEwan, an acquaintance of Mr Lanyard's brother, who was a surgeon with the Thirty-Fourth Regiment of Foot. But I had not expected the place to be quite so overrun.
In addition to the rebels captured when the castle fell to the Duke of Cumberland, more prisoners were being sent here from towns on both sides of the border where there was no means of holding them in great numbers or keeping them safe from retribution. And with all these prisoners would come a long procession of lawyers, clerks, underwriters, physicians, men called to the Grand Jury and the Petty Jury, witnesses, families of the accused, bailiffs and a great many other servants and necessaries further down the chain.
The overcrowding was made worse still by the fact that the castle buildings were generally so unfit for use that the soldiers had been garrisoned in the town, together with the French, who, being prisoners of war rather than traitors, were only confined to the city walls. Now and then we'd catch sight of them standing on street corners, bandaged and begging. Some of them looked barely alive.
Even so, said Doctor McEwan that evening at supper, they could count themselves lucky that they were not locked in the dungeons of the keep.
Remembering childhood tales of knights and castles, Perrin, one of Mr Lanyard's junior clerks, imagined that there were chains on the walls and bones in the corners. To which Mr Lanyard bristled and McEwan smiled and cut up bacon rind for his capuchin monkey; payment, he had told us, for once curing a sailor of pox. It was a wrinkled, emaciated creature and clattered about in a small cage with its withered right hand dangling like a bracelet. As soon as we had come into the dining chamber it had started to shriek, and McEwan tried to appease it with scraps off his plate.
The poor animal had been unsettled for months, he said, ever since he had been coming and going from the castle to attend to the prisoners.
'It's the smell of the place, he doesn't like, perhaps,' McEwan suggested. 'I must bring something of the dungeon home with me, I think.'
Then there was the constant noise on the street outside, and it didn't like it when folk came to the door to plead for food. Nor did it tolerate being stared at by strange faces. Or familiar ones, it seemed. For whenever a servant came in, it jumped about as if the cage were being heated from below, and the other junior clerk, Willis, spent the meal looking over his shoulder, half expecting it to break free and leap at him.
'I shouldn't be surprised,' said McEwan, running his thumb over the monkey's forehead as it chewed the nugget of fat in its paw, 'if there were soon no men left in the gaol to try at all.'
'Is it so bad as that?' I said.
'Three hundred men in a room you could pace out in less than two dozen steps, Mr Gregory,' he said, 'I would call it worse than bad.'
'You think traitors deserve better accommodation, doctor?' said Mr Lanyard. 'You think they should be free to wander the streets like the French?'
'Not every man in there will be guilty, Mr Lanyard,' said McEwan. 'You must know that.'
'Not every man in there will be found guilty, I grant you,' Mr Lanyard replied. 'But that's not to say that those who walk free in the end will be innocent.'
'True enough,' said McEwan, 'but all the same, innocent or guilty, I wouldn't have a man die from filth.'
'The brigadier tells me that it has been no more than a dozen,' said Mr Lanyard, nodding when the servant offered him more wine. 'And all of them from injuries sustained in the siege. They are casualties of battle, doctor, not uncleanliness.'
'The brigadier is referring to the dozen that I've been shown,' said McEwan.
'I don't follow your meaning, sir,' said Willis.
'They only want to have the deaths of officers confirmed for their records,' said McEwan. 'The names of the others aren't worth a thing, politically speaking, at least. I don't suppose there's much profit to be made from spreading word that auld Jimmy from the bothy in the glen has expired, is there, Mr Lanyard?'
The capuchin screamed and put its good hand through the bars of the cage, wanting more to eat.
'I am not a politician,' Mr Lanyard replied. 'What use is made of men's names is not my concern. Nor is the condition of the cell from which a man comes to the courtroom. My only responsibility is to try to send him back there.'
'Well, I hope that you never have cause to see the place,' said McEwan, dicing another piece of meat. 'We don't do so well when we're locked up in the dark. Men, I mean. We stumble backwards.'
'They were savages long before they were shut away in the castle,' said Mr Lanyard, and Perrin agreed.
'Savages,' he said.
'Still, I'm sure that they will be glad you've finally come to try them, Mr Lanyard,' said McEwan. 'Then at least, one way or the other, they will be set free.'
He fed some more offcuts through the bars of the cage, but even though the monkey had a handful of food, it chittered and screeched, and Willis knocked his wine across the table.
Doctor McEwan's house was of a modest size and not used to receiving four guests at once. And so while Mr Lanyard had a room of his own, myself, Perrin and Willis were installed in the parlour next to the dining chamber on palliasses. It was cold and cramped and not so tucked away that we couldn't hear the endless clamour from the street outside. But there were plenty of people coming into Carlisle without accommodation at all, and Willis, at least, was simply glad to have a solid door between himself and the doctor's pet, especially when it began to make its noise again in the early hours. It cried and clucked and set the ring grating against the hook of the stand as it flung itself about the cage. It had been disturbed, I assumed, by servants either retiring for the night or starting their morning duties. But if the creature was so prone to making a fuss about being woken, then I thought McEwan would surely have forbidden any of his staff from taking short cuts through the dining chamber after hours. Only, it screamed for much longer than it would have taken someone merely to pass by. It seemed to me that someone was standing there and watching it and having fun stoking its temper.
The days that followed were all spent at the castle, sifting through the many volumes of evidence for the Grand Jury to decide which of the three hundred or so prisoners would be put before the judges. Some were too sick to be tried, some died before a decision was made about them and others were clearly simpletons with little understanding of what they had been fighting for in the first place. Mr Lanyard was reluctant to agree to the scheme, but to reduce the numbers further the judges ordered that prisoners from the common ranks draw lots in order to determine which of them would be put on trial and which would be transported.
Now and then, I saw men being brought out of the keep in chains to be loaded onto wagons. Men of a kind at least. Hair and bones. As decrepit as the buildings of the courtyard.
During the siege the previous winter, Cumberland had called the castle an old hen coop, and even though it might have been a means of making the task in hand seem less daunting to his men, it wasn't so far off the mark. His artillery had ruptured walls that had been falling apart for a long time.
The dreariness of the place was made worse by the weather too. It was only the beginning of August, but the autumn had come early to this part of the country and the drizzle that swept over the castle seemed to loosen all colour from the walls. The sandstone dripped in various reds and browns, like a paint palette up-ended and left to ooze itself clean.
In the old palace where we, the prosecution, had been given a room to work, the windows ran with condensation even though the fires were lit, and I expected Mr Lanyard's health to suffer. In the courtroom he always presented himself as a man with a physical strength to match that of his intellect, but privately – his robes on the peg and his wig on the stand – he complained of a number of ailments. Cold, damp weather exacerbated his lumbago and for years he had smarted from an ulcerated stomach.
Which may be the reason – I console myself – that I did not think too much of his hunched appearance during those weeks he spent at the table poring over the masses of paper. It simply wasn't uncommon to see him in discomfort and, despite McEwan's offers of salts and liniments, he relieved the aches in his usual way, with a half bottle of claret at supper. He did not speak very much either, but then, like myself, Perrin and Willis, he was tasked with reading reports and witness statements and letters and petitions that were so numerous and complex that it was several weeks before their contents had been examined to any kind of satisfaction.
No, it wasn't until the trials began in the second week of September that I noticed anything odd about his behaviour at all.
The first two days of hearings were successful and he managed to suppress his pains well enough to secure a good number of convictions. He was eloquent and shrewd in his questioning, and the judges commended him on his preparations. But during adjournments he was on edge and developed the habit of brushing the back of his hand, as though a spider had crawled across it. He was nauseous too and frequently called the servants to bring more water. It was the smell of the courtroom, perhaps, that affected him.
The prisoners were given a cursory sousing in the yard outside before they were presented to the judges, but this only served to make them seem more wretched in a way. Their beards dripped like the matted tails of hill-sheep, they bled from sores that would not heal, and despite the bucket of water that the soldiers had thrown at each of them, they were still soiled to the knees as if they had emerged from a sewer. The odour became so strong in the afternoons that one of the judges, Mr Clark, ordered that after every third hearing the floor be swept. With fresh straw laid down and the benches strewn with rosemary, the air was improved considerably, and yet it seemed to make no difference to Mr Lanyard. He sweated and swallowed and could hardly get through his questions without his voice deteriorating into a coughing fit.
Twice Mr Clark asked if he wished to adjourn, but Mr Lanyard insisted on continuing until the end of the session, by which time half of the twenty-two men on trial that day had been convicted. Though, I have to say that it was due to the overwhelming evidence against them more than any skill of examination or discovery on Mr Lanyard's part. All afternoon, he had struggled to speak and when he was seated to hear the defence he settled and resettled his bulk on the chair and pressed his handkerchief to his nose so often that it began to seem like some tactic of distraction.
Even when we returned to Doctor McEwan's house in the evening he was no better and would not eat for fear that he would see his supper on his shoes. McEwan advised him to take some mint leaves from the garden but the mere thought of letting anything past his lips made Mr Lanyard pale and he complained again about the smell of the men in the courtroom. How it lingered on his clothes.
'The capuchin smells it too,' he said as the animal rattled its cage.
Perhaps it could. It seemed to have taken a particular dislike to Mr Lanyard and bared its pin teeth and hissed in its throat until McEwan finally ordered it to be taken out of the dining chamber.
The next two days passed in much the same way and Mr Lanyard slept poorly and barely ate. In court, when he was waiting for the defence to finish, I saw him inspecting his reflection in the water jug, peering at his left shoulder and then as discreetly as possible turning to look behind him as if there were someone there.
The sixth day of the trials proved to be Mr Lanyard's last. After that he could do no more and did not set foot in a courtroom again.
His final case was that of a man called Fraser, captured when the castle fell. Like many of the Scottish prisoners, he spoke little English, and so the procedure was doubled in length while questions and answers were passed back and forth through the translator.
His case was like so many others that we'd heard day after day. Being a clansman, his chief had ordered him to fight and because he had been ordered to fight he could not refuse. If he had, then his cattle would have been taken from him and his house torn down. It was a claim corroborated by the witness for the Defence, who had seen Mr Fraser pressed into service in the most brutal manner, but refuted by two other men captured after the siege and turned King's evidence.
The first, from the Cameron clan, said that he knew Fraser well and that he had seen the man leading troops at the Battle of Falkirk. The second, of the clan Gordon, matched the statement and added that he had been garrisoned with Fraser at Carlisle to hold up Cumberland as he pursued the Young Pretender's army north. He swore on the life of King George that what he said was true and when Mr Lanyard, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief, put this to him, the prisoner answered, ' _Tha e coma mu Rìgh Deòrsa_.'
'He says that the witness cares nothing for King George,' the translator said.
'No?' said Mr Lanyard, coughing into his fist. 'Then why does he give evidence against you?'
The translator asked Fraser the question, who replied, ' _B' fhearr leis gu robh mi marbh_.'
'He says that Mr Gordon wants him dead, sir,' the translator explained.
'Then Mr Gordon must be assured of your guilt,' said Mr Lanyard.
'Pardon me, sir,' the translator said, 'the defendant says that Mr Gordon wants him dead, but not for treason.'
'You have committed some other crime?' said Mr Lanyard.
Fraser said that he had not, but that Mr Gordon thought so.
Mr Lanyard frowned and said, 'He thinks so? What crime does he accuse you of?' and as the question was being put to Fraser by the translator, Mr Lanyard jerked his hand as though he had been touched. He looked behind him, looked down, in fact.
'Is there something troubling you, Mr Lanyard?' asked Mr Clark.
Mr Lanyard touched his fingers and stared at the bare floorboards.
'No, my lord,' he said.
'Do you have anything else to ask the defendant?' said Mr Clark.
Mr Lanyard wiped his brow with the sleeve of his robe. 'Might I request that the floor is cleared, my lord?' he said. 'The smell is stifling.'
'The floor will be swept at the end of the session, Mr Lanyard,' said Mr Clark. 'If you are unwell, then I shall adjourn.'
'A moment, my lord,' said Mr Lanyard and sat down heavily in his chair and drank the cup of water I poured for him. But he had taken no more than a mouthful before he jerked his arm as if he had been squeezed on the elbow and soaked the papers in front of him.
'What is it, Mr Lanyard?' I asked, but he was looking behind his chair.
Voices began to murmur around the room and Mr Clark struck his gavel on the block.
'Mr Lanyard,' he said. 'I ask again. Are you unwell, sir?'
'Who is it?' said Mr Lanyard. 'There is someone here. My hand.'
He held it at arm's length, as though it did not belong to him. His palm and his fingers dripped with the same slurry that coated Fraser's shins.
The defendant and the witnesses looked at one another and the noise in the courtroom increased enough for Mr Clark to sound his gavel a second time.
Mr Lanyard twitched again and now his other hand was soiled.
'What is this trickery?' he said and started from his chair as quickly as his body would allow, his eyes moving as though he was watching the progress of a wasp around the courtroom. He let out a cry and crouched by one of the windows with his hands over his ears as if some loud, piercing noise had suddenly erupted.
Every man in the courtroom was on his feet now, Mr Clark's demands for silence having no effect. Fraser, Cameron and Gordon argued as the bailiffs kept them separated. And through it all Mr Lanyard sobbed like a child, and was still curled up, mired in his robes, when the courtroom had been cleared and Doctor McEwan arrived.
Back at McEwan's house, Mr Lanyard still seemed agitated, and even with his clothes taken off to be washed and in a clean nightshirt he insisted that he could still smell the dungeon. And blood too. As if it were a vapour in the room.
McEwan called the servants to fill the copper bath and urged Mr Lanyard to try and scrub the stench from his skin. Though it was doubtful he was listening. His mind was as unsettled as his eyes, which roved from one corner to the next.
'There is someone here,' he said, 'as there was in the courtroom.'
'It is only Mr Gregory and I,' said McEwan. 'No one else.'
'There is another,' said Mr Lanyard.
'Try to sleep, sir,' said McEwan. 'And in the morning you will find yourself much relieved of these thoughts, I'm sure.'
We left him to rest and went down to eat, although none of us were hungry. Perrin and Willis barely touched their food and went out into the garden for some air.
'He will be well again,' McEwan said. 'I'm sure he will regain his vigour.'
But I knew that they were words of reassurance only and that he could not imagine Mr Lanyard being able to continue. The man was utterly exhausted in his body and in his mind.
McEwan was turning in for the night and halfway up the stairs when we heard Mr Lanyard calling for us and the capuchin screeching. It had got loose from its cage.
The doctor was first to reach the room and I and the two servants followed, finding the animal clinging to Mr Lanyard's back. Each time we tried to get hold of its arm or leg or tail, it would dart out of reach and fix its claws in a different bit of flesh, causing Mr Lanyard to cry out in pain. His nightshirt was already torn and spotted with blood and his unwigged scalp raked with scratches.
I suppose it was the noise of Perrin and Willis coming into the room that finally drove the creature to leap down onto the floor and make for the open door. But before it could escape, Perrin threw a blanket over it and then he and Willis and the servants stamped until it was dead.
While the bundle was removed, McEwan attended to Mr Lanyard's wounds, making all efforts to keep his hands steady. When he had finished, I took him down into the dining chamber and sent a servant to fetch him some brandy. McEwan looked overcome with remorse but I assured him that he was not at fault. Animals were animals. They knew no better. He replied that he could not blame the two clerks for wishing to defend their master, and that the creature could not have been allowed to run wild in the house, but the capuchin had not meant to attack Mr Lanyard as he slept. It had been drawn there to see off someone else.
'An intruder?' I said.
'You may call it that,' replied McEwan and drank his brandy and said no more.
It wasn't until some months later, when the trials were over and Mr Lanyard's replacement had sent dozens more men to swing on the forthcoming market days, that Doctor McEwan wrote to properly express his regret, not only about what had happened but for the lurid rumours that had begun to attach themselves to my old employer. Time had allowed his thoughts to settle and, on the proviso that I shared it with no one else, he offered his account of what he had seen in Mr Lanyard's room, what he suspected the capuchin had been frightened of that night and for many months before. He had only seen it for a moment before the sheets were disturbed by the frenzy of the animal's assault, but there had been someone lying next to Mr Lanyard. He could swear to that, even if he could not be sure who it was.
It at least looked like the boy he'd seen pulled out of the dungeon one night in the winter. A pale sheaf of bones. No more than eleven or twelve. Recruited with his father, who had been killed in the siege.
McEwan said that the soldier who had called him into the keep knew that he ought to have disposed of the child, but compassion had got the better of him and he wanted the doctor to at least confirm that he was dead. And he was, McEwan wrote. He had been for days. But not from some sickness brought on by the noxious air in the dungeon or the fetid pool that was knee deep with what the men had excreted day after day.
The guard had told him that at the very back of the cell there was some opening through which rainwater trickled, and that the men would take it in turns to lick the stones. It seemed that this boy had spent too long at the wall and in the dark the others had broken his skull, and then drowned him.
##
Nadine was returning from a day shift at the hospital when it happened for the first time. A fug of sweat and cigarettes and damp coats on the top deck of a No. 23, then a windy walk high over the river on that fine white rainbow of cast iron, stopping at the central point, as she always did, to lean over the railings and pretend for a few moments that she was airborne like the ravens that played out there in the updraught.
Past the laundrette, the bookies and The Trawlerman, then dipping into the Co-operative for a _Telegraph_ and the pint of milk her mother-in-law would almost certainly have forgotten to buy.
She crossed the cool, tiled hall of The Mansions and stepped into the lift. A ring of light appeared around her fingertip as she pressed the button for the fifth floor. The doors closed, the slack in the cable was taken up and she rose through the building.
Halfway between the second and third floors she tasted something bitter at the back of her throat. Her legs became unsteady and she had to grip the metal rail to hold herself upright. The brushed steel of the lift's wall, the emergency sign, her own hands, none of them seemed real. There was a loud, sparking crackle and the world shrank to a single bright point, like a television screen being turned off. She floated briefly in absolute darkness, then light and noise flooded back and she was standing, not in the lift, but at the side of a busy road looking at a row of dirty red-brick houses in the rain. The street was full of people, running, shouting, crying. One woman simply stood and stared into the distance, one dropped bags of shopping at her feet, a tin of Ambrosia creamed rice rolling into the gutter through spilt flour turning milky on the wet pavement.
A white and sky-blue panda car screeched to a halt at the kerb beside her and a policeman got out. 'Nadine Pullman?'
She was too shocked to reply, shocked that she was visible, shocked that someone knew her name, that she was not just looking at this scene but a part of it.
'Get in.' She didn't move. 'I'm serving you with a B 47 notice, now sodding get into the car or I swear by Almighty God . . .'
She got into the car. The policeman jumped back into the driving seat and gunned the engine. A woman in an olive gaberdine grabbed the wing mirror and screamed for help. They roared away from the kerb and she tumbled backwards, holding the ripped-off mirror in her hands.
The car tilted and squealed round the corners. A zigzagging Bedford truck came close to hitting them.
'What's happening?' It was her voice but it wasn't her voice.
'What the bloody hell do you think is happening?'
They crested a hill and skidded into a small lane. 'Out!' He left the key in the ignition. Three men were running up a concrete staircase built into a high grass bank. One of them was wearing a butcher's apron. She could hear sirens. 'Move!' She tripped and lost a shoe. The policeman grabbed her arm and dragged her up the steps, scraping her ankles and ripping her stockings. He pulled her through a thick double door into a crowded entryway then let her drop. A man and a woman ran up the steps behind them waving cream certificates with red seals.
A bald man in spectacles barked, 'Last two!' and as they crossed the threshold he swung the heavy door shut and it rang like a gong. He locked it with quarter-turns of the levers at its four corners.
There was another sparking crackle, everything shrank to a similar bright point, and after a few seconds of darkness Nadine found herself lying on the floor of the lift. How long had she been away? Seconds? Minutes? The door was open and Mr Kentridge, from flat seventeen was staring down at her. 'Are you unwell, Mrs Pullman?'
She got slowly to her feet, explaining that it was her time of the month and that this sometimes made her sick and light-headed. 'I need to go and sit down.'
He held up his hands, not wanting to continue a conversation on this subject. She walked to the door of the flat, steadying herself against the wall then turned to make sure that he had entered the lift and descended.
Martin's mother was asleep on the yellow sofa, eyes closed, head resting against the antimacassar. Bennie was dozing in her lap, thumb in his mouth. She wanted a cup of tea but didn't trust her shaking hands with the kettle, the matches and the gas. Instead she opened the window and lit a Kensitas. The sun was starting to go down and lights were coming on, the dark buildings turning slowly into advent calendars.
The panic in the streets, the green metal door, the airlock. There was no doubt about it. Mr Kentridge suspected nothing, that was some consolation. She massaged her forehead as if the problem were nothing more than a headache. From miles away she heard the sad song of a ferry clearing the harbour. That unforgettable vision of her uncle's final minutes, so clear she forgot sometimes that she had not witnessed them with her own eyes, the neighbours dragging him out of the cottage and into the little strip of woodland beside the railway. She had seen him a couple of days before the end, raving about sinks and fire orders and black holes. Her aunt's desperate desire to save him warring with the knowledge that the fight was already lost. 'There's nothing more that we can do, Nadine. Please. We need to get away from here.' Hoping that the doctors would reach him first. Though who knew which fate was worse.
'Mummy . . .?' Bennie was waking.
They said that if you'd been there once then you were lost. Though who would be foolish enough to broadcast their good luck if they had visited the other world and come back merely scorched?
'Mummy . . .?'
She cooked a lamb and carrot stew. She remembered and forgot and remembered, every occasion a jug of iced water down her spine. Edith complained about her hip. She heard herself being sympathetic and was surprised at the skill with which she dissembled. Bennie was teething. She rubbed clove oil on his gums. What would happen to him? Not just the absence of a mother but the taint of having had this mother in particular.
Martin returned just after seven. Nadine hoped he would sense her distress but he was preoccupied with some difficulty at the workshop involving a three-piece suite and an unpaid bill. After supper he played cribbage with his mother and piggybacks with Bennie then put him to bed. The three of them listened to Joan Sutherland on the radio.
She lay under the covers unable to sleep, Martin dead to the world beside her. So gentle for such a big man. She'd seen him lift a car so that the wheel could be changed. They'd met at a coffee concert in the Wellesley Room, Martin absurd in his undersized suit. Haydn's 'Sunrise' before the interval, Beethoven's _Grosse Fuge_ after. Two brilliant violins poorly served. He could protect her. She had thought it before they'd even spoken.
She had two fathers. One was sober, one was drunk. The first became the second when the sun went down. The beatings weren't the worst. It was the waiting in between which ate away at her. She brought Martin home for tea and Martin held her father's eye for the most uncomfortable ten seconds of her life and her father never touched her again. But now? This wasn't a drunken father. This wasn't a flat tyre and a missing jack.
Above her in the gloom the plaster cornices turned slowly monstrous.
Three uneventful days encouraged the hope that she'd had a very narrow escape, the burden of her terrible secret growing slowly lighter as she changed dressings and emptied bedpans. The man who had fallen from the scaffolding two months earlier took his first steps and they threw a party.
On the fourth day she was sitting on one of the benches outside the staff canteen, next to the blackthorn hedge which half-hid the boiler plant. She was eating the mustard and potted meat sandwich she had made that morning and wrapped in greaseproof paper so that she could carry it in her handbag. Again, the bitter taste, the sparking crackle, the darkness and suddenly she was holding an exercise book bearing a black crown and the words 'AWDREY LOG: Supplied for the Public Service HMSO Code 28-616'. She could smell sweat and human excrement. Mounted on the wall to her right was a grid of tiny wooden boxes, the kind a school librarian might use for storing index cards. One was labelled 'DEAD', another 'CONFIRMED'.
Three men in pigeon-blue military jackets were leaning over a broad table. Behind them was a wall of Perspex on which a big map of the country had been gridded and subdivided. She was in a room not much larger than a squash court. It had no windows. One of the men looked up. His stubble and his red eyes suggested that he had neither slept nor shaved for several days. 'Well . . .?'
'Two new blasts. Blast one: 50 miles, bearing 152 degrees.' The words were coming out of her mouth but she had no idea what they meant. '6 to 8 megatons. RAF Scampton.'
'Dear God,' said the man. 'And the second blast . . .?'
'The second . . .' Her mind was blank.
'For Christ's sake, we do not have all day.'
His colleague turned to him, a gangly man with a wizard's beard who was clearly not used to wearing a uniform. 'I fear that we have all the time in the world.'
'Miss Pullman.' The red-eyed man turned back to Nadine.
'A little kindness would not go amiss,' said the bearded man.
'Miss Pullman,' the red-eyed man ignored his colleague, 'there is limited air. There is limited water. You have a job to do and that is the only reason you are here. Illness is not an option. Mental collapse is not an option.'
The sparking crackle sounded again and after a short period of darkness she was lying on her back staring up at a blue sky, the blackthorn bush and two worried people gazing down at her. Dr Cairns offered a hand to ease her to her feet. Sister Collins guided her to the bench. Cold sweat and a deep churn in her guts. 'Nurse Catterick, fetch Nurse Pullman a glass of cold water.'
It was simply a matter of time now. Her friends and colleagues wouldn't turn her in, but gossip spread and it only took one person who valued their safety above your life. Dr Peterson had been taken away in a black van, Nurse Nimitz had been taken away, the handsome Trinidadian man with sickle cell had been taken away . . .
She went home early, bright autumn sun falling on a world to which she no longer belonged. There was a fair in Queen's Gardens, a chained baby elephant in a nest of straw, painted horses turning, a jaunty pipe organ and the smell of burnt sugar.
She had no idea what to expect from this point on. They had wiped her uncle from the family record, as if ignorance were a form of protection, and what she heard elsewhere was a tangle of gossip, half-truth and scaremongering. Some said that it was contagious insanity, others that these were echoes of past events, others that they were premonitions of events still to come. The end of the world, some whispered.
There were no articles in the papers. It was not discussed on the radio or the television. Her lack of interest seemed shameful in retrospect. Not once had she put herself in these shoes. So much suffering and her only thought had been relief that it was happening to someone else.
She had Bennie on her knee when it happened for a third time. _This is the way the ladies ride. Clip-clop, clip-clop . . ._ Edith had retreated to her room with _The Grand Sophy_ and a mug of cocoa which might or might not have contained a shot of Bowmore, and Bennie was hungry for some of the riotousness that Edith's age and hip were making increasingly impossible. _This is the way the gentlemen ride . . ._
It was quicker this time, more like a doorway than a journey. No bitter taste, just a rapid crackle, Bennie falling backwards out of her grasp, then she was waking from a shallow sleep in a cramped dormitory of eight bunks. Half-submarine, half-boarding school. Her skin was sticky, her hair lank. A woman in uniform was waiting to take her place under the dirty sheet and khaki blanket. The words 'Royal Observer Corps' curved over a red aeroplane on her shoulder. Nadine looked down and saw that she had been sleeping in an identical grey-blue uniform. Fifteen other women were climbing out of bed. Fifteen different women were waiting to take their places.
Someone was singing. 'I never knew I'd miss you . . . Now I know what I must do . . . Walking back to happiness . . . I shared with you.'
'For God's sake, Rita. Can it, will you.'
'Girls, girls . . .'
The women crossed the corridor and entered the room she recognised from the last time. The strip lights, the Perspex wall-maps. She was the tail of the crocodile. The red-eyed man stepped in front of her and closed the door so that they were alone in the corridor. The chug of machinery somewhere and the faint odour of diesel fumes. She could see now that there was a triangle of waxy flesh on his chin where no stubble grew. He had been burnt as a child, perhaps.
'I need to know one thing and one thing only.'
'What's that?'
'Can you do your job?'
She closed her eyes and looked into her mind and saw fragments of something which had broken or fallen apart . . . a boiler suit made of white cotton . . . the EM wave and the optical wave . . . the sound of someone weeping at the end of a phone line . . .
'Miss Pullman . . .?'
She felt a rising panic and a painful yearning to be somewhere safe with no responsibilities. She began to sob.
'I think that's a fairly conclusive "no".'
Martin sat in the rocking chair beside the bed. She had been away for longer this time.
'Where's Bennie . . .?'
'He bumped his head. My mother has taken him to the fair. Toffee apple and candy floss. Then he can go on the merry-go-round and be royally sick.'
'I should have told you, earlier.'
He cupped her cheek in his hands and shook his head. Was he saying goodbye? Were the doctors drumming their fingers in the living room, giving the two of them a final few moments' grace? Under the fear was a relief she had not expected.
'We're going to see an exorcist.'
Were it not for the steady confidence of his gaze she might have questioned his sanity. She had heard about exorcists only in third- and fourth-hand stories. She had always assumed that they were figments of desperate imaginations.
'There are things I have never told you.' He got to his feet. 'Things you were safer not knowing.' He handed her the black duffel coat he had laid over the arm of the chair. 'Put this on. We have a long, cold walk ahead of us.'
They slipped into an alleyway off Weaver's Lane. They cut across the graveyard of St Saviour's. Martin was a big man who attracted attention but the few people who passed them in the darkened streets took little notice. Only a dog was disturbed by their presence, growling at the end of its chain, hackles up and head down. It was the strangeness of the evening perhaps, or her growing detachment from her own life, but she felt as if she were traversing a city which was almost but not quite identical to the one in which she lived.
He said, 'I told you sometimes that I would be working late. It was not always true.' He said, 'I've never talked about my sister. We lost her. I promised I would never lose anyone again.' He said, 'I've done this for nineteen other people. I hoped I'd never have to do it for you.'
They were heading downhill towards the docks. Fish and marine oil on the wind. The lights of The Raleigh still blazed, its patrons blurry behind dripping, foggy glass. They walked through a mazy canyon of warehouses. A big rat trotted casually past like a tiny insurance clerk late for the office. A precise half-moon lit their way.
They turned a corner and the moon was swallowed by a double-funnelled steamer in red and cream, roped to the quayside and port-holed on three decks from stem to stern.
Martin led her to the foot of a cast-iron fire escape which rose steeply to a door between two dirty, lit windows which might have been the eyes of a harbourmaster's office were it not for the lack of signage. They mounted the ringing steps.
The exorcist was a plump, forgettable woman whose ivy-green cardigan was fastened by walnut-brown toggles. She greeted Martin with the wordless nod one gave to a colleague. 'So this is Nadine.'
There was a Rolodex. There was a vase of dying irises. There was a framed reproduction of Bruegel's _Fall of Icarus_ , cracked at the corner. A bagatelle board leaning against a wall would have seemed bizarre on any other day. Nadine took the empty armchair.
'I'm afraid we have no time for pleasantries.' The woman was steelier than she appeared. 'You have to trust me completely and you must do exactly as I say. There is no alternative.' Nadine glanced round and Martin nodded his assent. 'The next time you cross over I will be waiting for you on the other side. We will not mention this meeting. We will not talk of Martin or your son. We will not talk of this world. Do you understand?' The woman leant forwards and Nadine saw a charm bracelet slip from the cuff of her cardigan, a silver chain from which hung a little silver crow, a little silver moon and a little silver hammer.
'I understand.'
'I will try hard to find you a way home. I cannot tell you in advance what it will be. I can only tell you that I have not failed yet.' Somewhere nearby the bell of a mariner's chapel tolled twice. 'I must go. I have difficult work to do.' The exorcist stood slowly. She seemed to be in some pain. 'When you next see me I will be changed.'
She took a macramé shoulder bag and a dark blue cagoule from the back of the chair. 'Get some rest.' Then she was gone.
Martin sat on the arm of the chair and held Nadine. She had many questions, but to ask any of them would open the door of the aircraft mid-flight. Better not to see how far she had to fall. She wanted more than anything to be with Bennie.
'Remember that first long walk we took?' Martin sandwiched her tiny hand between his great paws. 'Near Minehead?' A thundercloud had risen over Selworthy Beacon and the sunshine was replaced suddenly by a slate sky and hail like conkers. They ran hand in hand for a pillbox where they startled the sleeping, ownerless spaniel who would later accompany them for the remainder of the walk. 'Let's take it again . . .'
She leant her head against the dependable mass of him. 'OK.'
'So . . . I picked you up from your parents' house. It was half-past nine in the morning. You were wearing the orange skirt with the yellow circles . . .'
An hour, two hours . . . She slept and woke and did not recognise her surroundings and was briefly terrified until she saw Martin, only to succumb to a different fear when she remembered why she was here with the dying irises and the bagatelle board. She slept again and woke and drank a glass of tepid water from the pitcher on the desk and was standing at the window watching faint smudges of peach light pick out the cranes and the hulks at anchor when she left the world for the final time.
No taste, no noise, no darkness. Instantly she was sitting at a Formica-topped table in a canteen. On the far side of the table was the gangly, bearded man. Behind him sat a uniformed woman Nadine did not recognise. She had a lazy eye and black, black hair. There was a serving hatch and the rank perfume of boiled vegetables. She looked around for the exorcist but there was no one else in the room. The Formica had unglued itself from the chipboard at the table's corner.
'I apologise for Major Pine's graceless behaviour. He is correct, but there are many different ways of being correct.' She could hear now that the man's accent was a soft, lowland Scots. 'In better times you would have been cared for.' He sighed. 'But in better times our lives would not depend on a man like Major Pine.'
His female colleague sat back and said nothing, as if she were supervising the man's training.
He cleared his throat and read from the sheaf of stapled papers. 'You signed documents during your training to the effect that if, on active service with ROC No. 20 Group, you became incapacitated either physically or mentally . . .' He dropped the paper '. . . and some more turgid bureaucratic nonsense I won't bore you with.' He rubbed his eyes. 'They want you to sign a form. Can you believe that? Because the last man in the world will be some prig from Whitehall trudging across the scorched wasteland checking paperwork.' The woman seemed neither surprised nor affronted by the diatribe. He pushed a pamphlet across the table. 'Predictably, they provide a helpful guide to the situation.'
_Expulsion: Instructions for Short Term Survival_. She flipped through the pages. 'Root vegetables from allotments and gardens may provide another source of relatively uncontaminated food . . .' There was a diagram showing how to kill a poorly drawn dog, though whether for protection or consumption it was not immediately clear. She was transfixed by the backs of the hands that were and weren't hers, the dirt under the nails, the faint blue of returning blood. They were so real. She had never heard anyone speak about how utterly convincing it all was.
'You know as much as anyone.' The man shrugged. 'Leeds has gone. Manchester has gone. The destruction is widespread from Holy Loch south. In other circumstances I would pray for God to go with you, but my faith in the old chap has been somewhat undermined of late.' He stood up and pushed his chair back under the table, the legs screeching on the lino. 'I wish you a strong wind off the North Sea and a cache of tinned beans.' He gestured towards the door. 'Let's get this ghastly business over with.'
The woman followed them into the corridor. Where was the exorcist? Nadine was increasingly certain that something had gone wrong. The man stood aside so that she could take the stairs first. Nadine felt sick. None of this was real. She had to remember that.
The man waited for a few seconds then said, 'I would much rather that this passed off without any unpleasantness.'
She climbed to the concrete landing where she had entered the building that first time. A big cream hatch stood open revealing an airlock not much larger than a toilet cubicle. Rubber seals, pressure gauges and a red warning light in a sturdy wire cage. The far wall was a sealed, identical hatch. And beyond that?
'It will be cold outside.' The black-haired woman held out a black duffel coat, identical to the one Nadine had worn for the long walk earlier that evening, but older and dirtier with a skirl of torn lining dangling below the hem. Worlds slid over one another, like a cathedral in a café window, like the beach and the christening on the same photograph.
And then she saw them, in the shadow of the woman's military cuff, a crow, a moon, a hammer. 'Thank you.'
The man stared hard at the wall over Nadine's shoulder, unwilling to meet her eye. She stepped into the airlock. She was not going to turn round. She was not going to treat him like a real person. She focused instead on a long cream-coloured drip where a painter had over-loaded his brush. Were these the echoes of some vanished world? Was this the future? It seemed inconceivable that her own mind could conjure a universe so rich in detail.
The man said, 'I wish you luck,' the hinges squeaked and, with a soft kiss, seal met seal. There were four muffled clangs as the locks were turned on the landing then nothing, only the sound of her breathing in the steel chamber.
She closed her eyes and pictured herself unconscious in the armchair in that little room, Martin at the window waiting for her to be returned to him. Outside, dockers yelled and busy tugboats worked at the jigsaw puzzle of the big freighters. Bananas and coal and coffee. Bennie would surely be awake now, wanting to know where she was.
Nadine opened her eyes. There was a dirty grille at waist height. There was an abandoned pair of black wellington boots. There was a waste bin bearing the label 'Contaminated Overalls Only'. In what way was a duffel coat meant to help? Had she deceived herself? Had she seen what she wanted to see in the glitter of some other jewellery?
The red light came on and began to turn. Then the alarm went off, stupidly loud for such a small space. She covered her ears. Five, six seconds? The alarm stopped and the light went out. She took her hands from her ears and heard the dull hiss of air pressures equalising. The big door unlocked itself and let in a thin slice of grey light and a sweet, charred smell which raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She put the duffel coat on for the small comfort it offered and carefully opened the door.
The panda car was burnt out, the paint black and blistered. Orange rust was already eating away at the unprotected metal, the tyres were gone, the glass was gone. There were no windows in any of the buildings. Many walls had fallen. Roofs were shipwrecks of black timbers. A thick, unwashed fog hid the far side of the park across the road. Every patch of grass was dead. She walked down the steps. Two silhouettes on a nearby wall looked like the shadows of children if children could leave shadows behind. The airlock bumped softly shut behind her. She listened. It was the kind of silence she had only ever heard on a still day in the mountains.
A burnt dog lay beside the burnt car.
There was movement in the corner of her eye. She turned and saw a tramp standing at the lane's dead end, holding the hand of a girl of seven or eight. Their faces were soiled. He wore three dirty coats and carried a crowbar. There was an open wound on the girl's cheek.
'Oi! Lady!'
The woman had been right. The air was bitterly cold. She slipped her hands into the pockets of the duffel coat. There was something hard and heavy in the right-hand side. She lifted out a tarnished, snub-nosed pistol. The words 'Webley & Scott Ltd, London & Birmingham' were stamped into the side of a fat, square stock. The trigger guard was a primitive hoop and the hammer looked like a sardine key. A gentle squeeze of the trigger showed that the machinery was oiled and ready.
'You were in that bloody bunker, weren't you!' The man was limping towards her, dragging the girl behind him. 'You did this!' He swung the crowbar around, indicating the fallen walls, the dead grass. 'You people did this!'
Suddenly she understood. _You have to trust me completely_. Nothing had gone wrong. The exorcist had found her a way home.
'Are you listening to me, lady?'
She put the barrel of the gun into her mouth and bit the metal hard to hold it steady.
##
'Idon't believe in ghosts,' Khalid said, his first day on the job as a security guard at Kenilworth Castle.
'Neither do I,' said the gardener, who had stopped at the staff kitchen for a cup of tea. 'But when something funny happens that you can't explain, just remember the ghosts here aren't malicious. The boys on the top floor are mischievous – forever moving things around. And him along the corridor doesn't like people in his space but he only gets a bit shouty. Or so I've heard from those who can actually see him. But there's no harm involved.'
'I'd stay away from the mere at night though,' said the property supervisor, handing around a packet of digestives. 'There was that siege in 1266; bodies catapulted over the walls, starvation, disease. If there really are ghosts of soldiers in the mere, they won't be happy.'
'What do ghosts do when they're unhappy?' Khalid asked, trying not to let any of what he was thinking enter his tone of voice. _When you've lived through wars you don't need to invent stories to scare you. Memory is more frightening than imagination_.
'I don't know. I stay away from the mere at night,' the property supervisor said, with a big laugh that made it acceptable to believe or not believe, just so long as you did it in good humour.
Later that day, when everyone else had gone, Khalid took his torch and walked out of the gatehouse, where the staff offices were located, to wander through the Elizabethan garden and up the stairs to the keep. Keep what? he wondered, shining a beam on the signboard that identified the building – but that didn't clarify the matter. Keep in? Keep out?
Some days it still struck him as miraculous that the English language, once a series of unbeautiful left to right squiggles on a page, was now a friend, opening one door after another for him in this country far from home. But in moments such as this – encountering a word that should mean something but obviously meant something else, and feeling inadequate for not being able to work it out – he remembered that the language would never be to him what it was to his sister. For her it was a great love, rich in riddles and double-meanings and ambiguities. She had delighted in it almost as soon as they started to learn it at the school set up in the early days of war, back when 'liberation' seemed a possible consequence of 'occupation'. _War backwards is raw! A group of crows is a murder! Where does the president keep his armies? Up his sleevies!_ Some days he thought the reason she'd really been so angry when he left home to come here was because she was jealous that he would live in English, as she could never do. Switching off his torch, he turned and faced the garden. The moon was full, illuminating the marble fountain and the statues of the muzzled bears that felt like something from his old life. But his old life was far behind. Nothing told him this like these ruins formed by time, not bombs.
He switched the torch back on. He was a security guard without a gun, his presence enough to scare away any intruders – young lovers, teenagers in search of a dare. Here, even the ghosts were benign. He laughed softly, rapped his knuckles against the stone wall of the keep. 'Any ghosts here?' he called out, his voice echoing. No response, not even the wind through branches.
When midnight approached he was sitting on a low stone wall on the other side of the keep, finishing his careful reading of the guidebook. The moon had gone now and when he switched off his torch the structures all around him transformed from stone to concentrated darkness. A chill sliced through his bones.
Of course, the chill was brought on by the lateness of the hour, seeping even through his heavy jacket. He stood up, shook the pins and needles out of his hands and feet – he'd never sat in one place long enough to have pins and needles in both hands and both feet before – and approached the darkness, switching the torch back on just in time to see a single word rising up to meet his sight: 'FOREBODING'. He spun in a circle, the torchlight skittering over stone and grass and stone and when it came to rest on the signboard once more he saw that really it read 'FOREBUILDING', followed by a dense explanatory text.
'Idiot,' he said to himself, grinning. He wished he could call his sister to tell her about his mis-reading, but she hadn't spoken to him since he'd left – or, in her words, 'deserted' – their homeland. And there was no one else to whom he could comfortably reveal his fear who had enough English to appreciate the humour of the moment. He missed her, sharply, in that instant, but at least it was possible now to think of her without pain or guilt; she benefitted, along with the rest of his family, from the money he sent home, which would increase with this new job – his salary made magnificent by the currency exchange rates. His steps were confident, his tread light, as he set off, exploring.
Now that he knew their history, the ruins were transformed. He walked slowly through all the broken rooms where queens had danced and plots had been laid and kings had been insulted and marriage proposals that would have changed history were rejected and great feasts were prepared by those whose lives went unrecorded. How beautifully the star-filled sky took the place of stained-glass in the vast windows of the great hall.
Through the centuries, the men who owned this castle had in common their love of light. This was something he'd understood while reading through the guidebook. First a reference to the twelfth-century remarkably sized windows of the keep, then a mention of the fourteenth-century exceptionally high windows of the great hall, and following that a detailed description of the sixteenth-century light-flooding windows of Elizabeth I's private accommodation. Let in the light, and then let in more light.
A voice in Khalid's head – not his own voice, a woman's voice – said: _Did they love the light or was there something in the darkness they were trying to keep at bay?_
He shivered – it was the cold, nothing more, of course it was – and started back to the gatehouse, steps quickening.
The alarm woke him up at eleven the next morning, in the attic room above the pub where he worked the afternoon shift. He sat up in bed, trying to ignore the protestations of his body to getting up so soon after lying down. The protestations of his mind were more insistent. What kind of idiot is scared by ghost voices that he knows aren't there, and what kind of idiot sits outdoors reading on an October night in England. No wonder he'd woken up with a sore throat.
Despite gargling with salt water and sucking lemon-flavoured lozenges, the soreness hadn't receded by the evening and it was for that reason that he kept his perimeter walks to a minimum. He spent most of the night shift in the spacious staff kitchen of the gatehouse. He was at the kitchen table, reading one of the romance novels that were his guilty pleasure, when he smelled something he couldn't quite place, familiar but with a wrong note, like a flower just beginning to rot. He looked up at the window across from him, the one that rattled in its frame and was the likeliest way for a new scent to enter the room, but the smell was coming from behind him. It was both pleasant and unpleasant. He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears to try and isolate it, and that's when he sensed it move. Not drift, not waft – move. The smell was coming towards him, attached to something – someone – that was now standing at his back. Khalid felt that old familiar weakness of his limbs – the one that said 'bomb' or 'someone breaking down the door' or 'why is my uncle lying down in his orchard away from the shade of a tree'. But this was England. He was in England, and the kitchen door must have opened without him hearing and someone had walked in, and was standing behind him, politely, waiting to be noticed. But the kitchen door creaked on its hinges; he would have heard it. And the presence behind him was so close. No one in England stood so close.
Turn around, he told himself, and a voice in his head – not his voice, a woman's voice – echoed, _Turn around_.
He would not turn around. Whatever happened, he must not turn around. He knew it the way you know a certain dog that you've always been on good terms with mustn't be approached – something about it was different. The word came to him again – _wrong_. He gripped the edges of his paperback. He would not turn around.
The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. It was going too slowly, two heartbeats of his between each second. _Tick dhu-dhug dhudhug Tick. Tick dhu-dhug dhu-dhug dhu-Tick_. He picked up his paperback and hurled it at the clock, knocked it onto the flagstones. Now there was only his heart and his breath disrupting the silence. The scent coming from behind him was so familiar – he tried to trace his way back through memory to find it – but the wrongness of it was a mask, irremovable.
'Whatever you are, whatever in this world you can possibly be, I've faced worse,' he said out loud. Saying it made him brave – no, more usefully, made him angry. He pressed the palms of his hands against the wooden table, felt the strength of an old oak tree enter him, and in one swift assured movement he stood up and turned around.
And the room turned with him. He was still facing the oak table and the rattling window. The scent still behind him. The thing, watching, still at his back.
He sat. Waited. This, also, he knew how to do. Wait through terror. Wait through your own impotence in the face of terror. Wait and hope it will be enough for terror to terrify you. On some days, the good days, that was all it needed.
Much later – an hour? two hours? three? – he was still sitting tensed at the table, the thing so close he dared not lean back in his chair for fear of brushing against it. And then, abruptly, he was alone again. The presence simply lifted and vanished. He sniffed at the air. No trace remained of whatever had been there an instant ago. He inhaled deeply through his nose. Nothing had ever smelt sweeter than the stale coffee from his half-full mug and the dishwashing liquid from the uncapped bottle on the sink. His muscles untensed, his body allowing itself to feel its exhaustion. A short time later, Khalid fell asleep at the kitchen table.
When he woke he didn't know which memories of the previous night had been dreams and which had been brought on by the sickness he was incubating. His throat was sorer this morning – a bright star of pain behind his Adam's apple. He stood, swept up the broken pieces of the clock and waited for the property supervisor, who liked to arrive long before the rest of the staff, so he could apologise for the clock and ask where he might buy a replacement.
'No need for that,' she said, when he explained without explaining. 'It was a cheap old thing and anyway I have a spare one at home that'll just need a battery. Was it you that knocked it down or one of the ghosts?' She was smiling as she said it, but something in his expression made her come up to him and put a hand on his arm. 'It can be strange here at night,' she said. 'You know the gatehouse is where you'll find the most ghosts, not the castle.'
It was because the castle had so little left of its original doors and furnishing, she explained. Ghosts attached themselves to these things. Here in the gatehouse there were pieces brought from all over the property as well as original fittings. Leicester's fireplace, the Elizabethan staircase, bits of furniture. She walked him round, pointing out all the places where staff and visitors had met ghosts – the scent of tobacco so often in this room, the feeling of being watched on that landing, the stairs which creaked under the tread of something invisible. And that old wooden door – no one knew where it originally came from – behind which a group of visitors had once heard voices speaking in Spanish.
'Couldn't there have been Spanish speakers on the other side?'
'The door's always locked. I have the only key, but it hasn't been used since I started here fourteen years ago. I peeked inside just the once to see there was nothing in there worth seeing – just a storage room full of dust.'
He knew she was trying to reassure him and on another day perhaps he would have understood that it wasn't unusual to be carried away by your imagination in here – or encounter the inexplicable-but-harmless – but his throat ached terribly, exhaustion was deep in his bones, and the feeling of wrongness was still with him. What he wanted, needed, was familiarity. _Familialarity_. His sister had invented that term.
He excused himself from the company of the property supervisor and made his way upstairs to the oak-panelled room which was filled with early morning light, and allowed better mobile reception.
This wasn't the time he usually called home, and it was possible that everyone would be out – his father and cousins in their orchards, his mother and aunt cooking outdoors, his sister teaching at their old school. But his father answered on the second ring.
'Son?' his father said, in response to his respectful greeting. 'You're calling? You know already?'
'Know what?'
His sister was dead. A bomb had detonated in the school building. Perhaps attached to a human, perhaps not, did it matter? The windows had shattered and a piece of glass, like a spear, had cut right through her. They took her to the hospital but she had lost too much blood. This was yesterday – they were going to tell Khalid when he made his weekly call home tomorrow.
'Was she conscious in hospital?'
'Yes, at first.'
'You should have called me. We could have spoken.'
'The glass went through her neck, it severed the place that makes speaking possible.'
'Voice box,' Khalid said, in English, touching three fingers to his throat.
A few minutes later he was back on the ground floor again, looking for the property supervisor to tell her he was sorry, she would have to find someone else for tonight, he had to go. Go where, he didn't know. Go to the airport, with the papers he now had that made returning here legal? Go to the city where he had cousins who could mourn with him? Go – away from here. That was all. Away from another night in this place with its silence so complete it made you hear voices in your head.
The property supervisor wasn't in the room with Leicester's fireplace where he'd left her; she wasn't in the staff kitchen. But as he went towards the stairs again, he saw the old wooden door was ajar. She must have decided to have another look in the storage room full of dust. He pushed the door open, and stepped inside. Something soft – cloying – caressed his head, the side of his face. He jumped back out into the hallway. Cobwebs, just cobwebs. He stepped in again, brushed them aside, called the property supervisor's name. No, she wasn't here. But how cold it was. He stepped forward, wanting to prove to himself that he wasn't afraid. It was an entirely unremarkable coldness in a stone-walled room without windows.
The door slammed shut behind him. No gap between door and doorframe to allow in even a sliver of daylight. That smell, previously out of memory's reach, bloomed in the darkness. He knew it now. It was ink and lemon and musky underarms; his sister's scent. And the mask pulled over it was blood, metallic and sharp.
The smell entered his nose and his mouth and the pores of his skin. It was almost a taste, almost a texture. His skin tightened on his bones, his tongue curled back on itself. _Turn around_ , she dared him. But if he did that, the room would turn with him, the doorway forever at his back. He had never fallen for any of her tricks twice, not even when they were benign, before she blamed him for leaving, before he said _a man's job is to provide_ and she replied _no, it's to protect; you're only leaving because it's safer and because you can_.
He glanced down at the phone in his hand. Of course, no signal. But on the other side of the door the property supervisor was calling his name. All he had to do was shout out a response, and she would find the key to the door, and let in the light and the living.
_You can't keep me where I don't want to be whether you're alive or dead_ , he mentally addressed his sister. _I'm sorry_.
The property supervisor had come closer to the door. She called his name again. Pain lanced his throat as he yelled out to her. No sound emerged.
A voice in his head – not his voice, but one inflected just like it – said, _the doorway to this room, can you guess where it came from?_ A giggle, then, all malignancy and triumph, _Well, I never could resist a word game, could I?_
The keep.
##
In youth she imagined castles: far-away, fantastical, cold-stoned, improbably built castles. Turrets and battlements, mile-high keeps and bottomless moats, the standards of imaginary dynasties flagging in the wind, the sky always on the break of storm. In dark chambers her boot heels tapped the polished flags, her hands traced legends on wall-length tapestries, her swords slew ogres and giants and dragons. In grand halls she ate chicken legs and threw their bones to rascal dogs and pink-tailed rats; in cellars and oubliettes she rescued kings and queens, assisted by chain-mailed knights and white-smocked maidens. She felt the chill even at home in New Mexico's heat; the darkness even in its blind, persistent light.
In her early twenties now, a woman now, but one who had never seen a castle in any kind of proximity. The producer had given her the final say on the location. He wanted her to be comfortable. He wanted her to feel that the castle was _her_ Elsinore. He had given her two choices: one in Serbia, the other in England. He provided photographs, spread them across the coffee table in his office. He pointed to the Serbian castle throughout; repeatedly said its name. She looked diligently at the photographs. It was in the English castle she saw herself; saw herself as a little girl, running the battlements, opening its doors, slaying the evil within. The producer asked if she was sure she was up to it. If she was really sure. He reminded her that this was her last chance. He reminded her that there was only so much he could do. He reminded her he was there to help, they were all there to help, should she ever need it.
A month before principal shooting on _Ophelia_ was to begin, she asked for his help. She wanted to go on a week ahead. To get an understanding. To feel the aura. To immerse herself.
'In my madness will be method,' she said and waited for laughter that did not come. The producer didn't even smile: he looked genuinely alarmed.
'But you are doing so well here,' he said. 'Why not stay?'
'I will do just as well there. Don't you worry.'
He looked unconvinced, but she had been doing well, and so she deserved reward. He made some calls and booked her a cottage in the castle grounds. He insisted she take her assistant. To that she agreed. Her assistant was easily and often bought.
'We know what we are, but know not what we may be,' Maya said as she handed her assistant the cash and details of the London hotel. 'At the castle I will know what I may be. But not with you beside me. Thank you for understanding.'
The young woman nodded and got into her taxi. Maya watched it drive away. She felt already changed. In the back of the car she kept her eyes on the windows, looking for castles, those she had believed populated England just as drive-thrus and strip-malls had in New Mexico. She saw them too, just as she had imagined them, on hills looking down on the world below.
It was dusking when they arrived, the castle illuminated in greens and pinks, like it was lit for her, a personal beacon. At the gate, vast doors were pushed open by two uniformed men. The car followed a winding track, skirting the Great Tower, just inside the perimeter wall. Her driver said nothing, but she could not stop talking. 'Look at it,' she said, 'look on't!'
From the kitchen window of her cottage she could see the castle. She gazed at it for some time; the temerity of it, the very realness of it. She blew it a kiss. She investigated the welcome hamper and found a bottle of wine. She took it and a glass and let herself out of the cottage, crossed the pathway and leant on the perimeter wall, looked out over Dover. The sea was calm, boats in the distance. She glanced back to the castle, up at its vainglory and cuboid pomp. She saw the Union flag atop the battlements and imposed her own coat of arms on its unfurled stitching. She drank the wine and sang Ophelia's songs to the castle walls and her new-found Elsinore, sang until there was no more wine and the wind had chilled her enough to sleep.
The next day, in headscarf and dark glasses, she took tours of the Great Tower and tunnels, followed an injured World War II airman's progress through the underground hospital. She heard the legends and history and saw the shots, the scenes, the moments that would be filmed, that would capture her at an exact moment in time. She would be forever Ophelia, forever caught in that moment of inhabiting her, of bringing her vigorously to life. It was her. She was her. She felt herself slide into Ophelia, into the role, the familiar sensation of breaking down into something other.
Her assistant called after her nap, a quick, business-like exchange, confirming Maya's continued existence. Maya put down her phone and saw a van pull up outside the cottage, her grocery shopping for the week. She put on her dark glasses and let the driver unpack the wine and other items. He did not seem to know who she was.
'I'm having guests over tonight,' she said.
The man smiled and carried the empty crates back to the van.
She woke after ten. She ran the shower, but turned it off without getting inside. Ophelia would not shower. Ophelia would smell of herself, not coconut and shea butter. She walked from the bathroom back to the master bedroom. From the wardrobe she took her costume. She had helped design it: a white shift, brocaded at the neck, brilliant blue and red flowers curling around her sternum, lace at the hem. She took the daisies she'd picked earlier in the day and arranged them in a crown on her twisted topknot.
'We know what we are, but know not what we may be,' she said, looking at herself in the mirror. She took a bottle from the fridge and let herself out the back door.
For over an hour, she circled the Great Tower, avoiding the more modern outposts of cafés and ice-cream parlours at the edge of the grounds. She ran through her lines. They'd lodged, these lines and scenes, in a way lines had not for many years. She needed no prompt, her voice was loud in the air; her theatre voice, an already effortless English accent, reached from deep in her abdomen. Spit flecked the cool air, her arms and hands animated and wild, even while holding the bottle. She stood at the entrance to the castle, under the coats of arms, looking up at the Great Tower, and in a tempest of words found Ophelia.
'He took me by the wrist and held me hard,' she shouted.
Again: 'He took me by the wrist and held me hard.' This time better. More spite, less bewilderment.
Again: 'He took me by the wrist.'
In the words she found an ire, a fury that broiled. She danced around in the night, frenzied in performance, and at the last, threw the empty wine bottle at the ground. It smashed loudly, shatteringly, and with delight she spat on its shards.
'I did repel his letters and denied his access to me,' she shouted, and left Maya behind for good, left her drunk and alone in the empty cottage.
She was on her knees, close, so close to the glass. She panted, exhausted by her efforts, and saw boots coming towards her, boots but no sound upon the gravel. She heard a voice, American, a shimmer to his words. Southern perhaps, a touch of the confederate about it.
'Is everything all right, ma'am?'
He stood there, concerned, rocking on shined boots. An airman's uniform, slick oiled hair, a face like a matinee idol, the kind of face men no longer possessed. She pushed herself up, dusted off her hands.
Were she Maya, she would have raged. She would have threatened. 'I was told there was no one here,' she would have said. 'They signed a piece of paper. They signed an NDA. Heads will roll for this. I tell you heads will roll!'
She would have said that, but the words, the very idea of the words, did not come. He walked towards her. She instinctively retreated, but didn't appear to move any further from him.
'Nothing to be frightened of, ma'am. I'm US Airforce. We're here to protect.'
'I'm not frightened, sir,' she said. 'There's nothing in you that could cause me fear. Surprise, perhaps, yes, but nothing else. You lack the height.'
He laughed, something almost see-through about the sound, as though, like a duck's quack, it would not echo.
She looked down at her dress. It was dirty, her knees were pitted with gravel, her fingers filthy. She straightened her back, brought her hands to her hips.
'Does the gentleman not introduce himself?'
'My apologies, ma'am. They call me Edward.'
She put her head to one side, an askance look.
'They call you Edward? Is that not your name, sir?'
'That's what they call me,' he said. 'And you, ma'am? How am I to address you?'
'You can call me Ophelia.'
His eyes narrowed; he put his head on one side.
'And is that not _your_ name, ma'am?'
He took a few paces closer. He smelled of sandalwood and brier. He held out his hand. She looked at it. She took it and he kissed it. The touch was light but present, evident on her skin, a slight warmth from his lips.
'You sound American. Are you American, Ophelia?'
'I am not,' she said. 'Or if so, I am not aware of it.'
He looked downcast for a moment, lonesome, then looked back at her.
'I thought I detected a trace, but perhaps I am mistaken. I miss the sound of American women.'
He offered the crook of his arm.
'The view from the castle is so beautiful on a clear night. You can see France, the lights on the mainland shining. Would you like to see the lights, Ophelia?'
'There is melancholy in lights glimpsed from a distance,' she said. 'A party to which one has not been invited.'
He laughed.
'Is that a yes?'
She paused, but soon slipped her hand into his arm. They walked towards the castle. They saw France, its pin lights and glow. She leant her head on his shoulder and listened to him talk of how he had wished for company, real company, as the night wicked away and the sun blanched the crest of the tor.
She woke in darkness, the whole of the day gone, dressed still in her Ophelia shift. It had not been uncommon, and she did not censure herself too much for it. She made coffee and ate a slice of mango. Her phone was in a cupboard; full immersion, no distractions. She read the script from start to finish, the words familiar as song. She ate another slice of mango and took a bottle of wine from the fridge, went out to see if she could find Edward again.
He was sitting on the wall, long legs dangling. She did not fall for men. They fell for her. Ophelia, though, different. A different age. A different time. Ophelia felt safe with him; saw refuge and safety in his arms. She did not question it. There was nothing to question. He held out his hand.
'My lady,' he said in gentle mockery. 'Woulds't thou walk with me a time?'
He jumped down from the wall. She laughed as he stumbled.
'I would be honoured, sir.'
'Well, to the castle we shall walk, and the elders there we will meet.'
'There are others, sir?'
'None as dear as you, ma'am, but more than you can imagine.'
With her arm in his they walked the incline, round the back of the Great Tower, entering it through a small door. It was chill, like the castles of her youth, but loud and flickering with torchlight. There was music playing, the sound of laughter and scuffles of feet. He led her impatiently through the chambers to the source, the heat rising with every corridor they traversed. Before the Great Hall, five men were playing cards and drinking whiskey, smoking filterless cigarettes, dressed like Edward. The men ignored them as they passed.
The Great Hall was sweltering, smoke-filled, men-and-women choked, the whole chamber at feast. Children scampered under tables, women pleasured men, a fight broke out and then rescinded. Red and blue and gold gleamed in the guttering light, food piled on tables was eaten or discarded to the straw beneath. The costumes were inconsistent. An airman danced with a girl in a wimple; two of Wellington's men were embroiled in a drinking competition with a medieval friar; a king talked sagely with a fat man dressed in Bermuda shorts and a t-shirt which read: 'I know I'm old, but at least I saw all the good bands'. Edward took her to a table and called to a young lad who brought them goblets and a jug of wine.
'The finest wine you'll ever taste,' he said.
She sipped from the goblet and it was like drinking for the very first time. A shiver of taste, damson and plum, then a hint of liquorice, of cinnamon and spice, then tobacco and chocolate. Men blew kisses towards her, but she demurred. Edward laughed his unechoing laugh and pointed out those he knew, their stories gruesome and tragic. He poured more wine and leant in closer to her. He smelled different tonight. Something smoky to him, something like diesel.
'And so how did _you_ get here?' he said.
'I followed you, sir,' she said.
He wagged a finger.
'A fine answer. Now. Let's dance!'
Some of the airmen were playing trumpets, the assembled crowd dancing to toneless jazz. Edward held her close and she fell into those arms in a way she would never before have considered. His shirt was dirtier than the previous night. There were smudges on his skin. They danced and drank until, exhausted, they sat back at their table. He put his hand on hers and looked into her eyes; swimming, his eyes, fluid. They kissed. And oh, the collapsing world. A kiss, like the wine, that felt like the very first of its kind. When they broke their embrace, it felt as though she had been plucked from the sea, just at the moment of drowning.
He poured them more wine and was about to say something, but became distracted. She looked to where his eyes had flitted. A woman in a long red dress was walking through the hall. Ophelia watched her pick up a goblet, drain it and make her way towards the back of the room. As she reached the staircase, she turned and fixed Edward with a pale gaze. Then she disappeared into the darkness.
'Who, pray, is the lady?' she asked. 'Her face could make a tyrant weep.'
He looked down at his goblet, put his fist around the stem, shook his head.
'It is a sad story, hers,' he said. 'She loved a man of privilege and position, but she was not of a high birth. They met in secrecy, lived as man and wife as much as was possible. He was sent to war, a war from which he did not come back. To join him, she threw herself from the castle walls. And now she is cursed to walk the Great Tower every night, waiting for some thing to set her free. The cruelty is, she doesn't know what that thing might be. We can all leave' – he extended his arm to the whole room – 'whenever we like. But not her. Or so the story goes. She's yoked to the place. Trapped. Imagine that.'
He looked down at his wine and finished it. He put his hand back on hers. His face changed from sadness to levity.
'So, Ophelia,' he said, 'how do you like our little house of debauchery?'
She poured more wine.
'I like it well enough, sir. Well enough indeed.'
She dreamt she was banging on the doors of the castle, demanding entry, shouting for admittance. She woke to the same sound. At the door to the cottage was her assistant in a state of some alarm.
'What's the emergency?' Maya asked, her assistant pushing past her, looking in each room. She stopped in the kitchen. Maya followed. There were ants on the mango. Bottles on the floor, coffee spilled on the table.
'I've tried for two days to get hold of you,' she said.
'I've been here,' Maya said. 'Preparing. Getting into character.'
Her assistant passed her a phone. On it was a video of her smashing a wine bottle, shouting into the wind, talking animat edly to herself, trying to force her way into the castle, collaps ing in a heap by its door and then hauling herself back up.
'You're lucky,' her assistant said, 'they didn't post it anywhere.'
Maya watched herself in the night, her hair untamed and wild; her dress almost black in places.
'I told you,' she said. 'This is preparation. And you've ruined it. Ruined it. The whole thing.'
Maya swept the debris from the table to the floor. Her assistant shook her head.
'You need help, Maya.'
'I need no such thing. I need you to leave and I need to prepare.'
The assistant picked up her phone.
'I'm going to have to tell the producer. You know that. You know what that means, don't you?'
'You must do whatever is in your heart and in your conscience,' Maya said, 'but now, leave. Out! Out!'
The assistant left. Maya went back to her bed. She slept until darkness fell.
Ophelia took a bottle of wine and opened the door. 'Oh my lord. Edward!' she said.
Edward was standing by the wall, his tunic on fire, his face blackened with soot and ash, his hair smoking. He put his hand to his face.
'You see flames?' he said.
She ran to him, shook the wine over the flames, but they remained ablaze. He shook his head. A single tear cleaned a trough down his cheek.
'I'd hoped it would not happen this time. That our love would dim your eyes,' he said. 'But no.'
He walked towards her, put his hand on her shoulder.
'Our world is cruel, Ophelia. The few that can see us, see us as we would like to be seen. In our pomp and grandeur. As we ourselves see each other. But it never lasts for long. The veil always lifts, and you see us as we really are. As we were at the moment of death. It's why we do not seek communion with the living. The disappointment is all too livid.'
He wiped his hand across his cheek. Some skin shed, scattered to the ground.
'We don't have much time,' he said coming to her, 'so let's go. The boys have promised something special tonight. Some new number they've been working on. It will be brilliant or terrible. Either way, it will be something to behold!'
He laughed but it came only from one side of his mouth. It sounded pained.
He crooked his arm. She put her hand through the flames. They were warm, like a child's breath, but did not burn or catch. They walked and they talked as though nothing had changed.
In the antechamber before the Great Hall, his fellow airmen were missing limbs. All were charred black. She could see one of their jawbones beneath scorched skin. At their usual table, the boy who brought the goblets and the wine was missing most of his skull. Wellington's men were open-gutted, the girl with the wimple riddled with pox. They seemed not to notice; their din and dancing as loud and as spirited as before. The woman in red walked past their table again; battered and bruised, bones broken and misshapen under her skin. Ophelia watched her pass. Suddenly, the woman turned and hissed at Ophelia, her face as red as her dress, her teeth smashed like old rock.
Edward was now entirely in flames, his skin blistered and cracked. He leant his hand across the table and she took it; she took his hand and was not afraid. Not afraid at all. And then was.
Ophelia began to cry. Cry with heave and weight in the stomach. To have lost him. To have had this time, and now to lose it so utterly, so damnably. She could not look at his face. Could not look at those around her, their deathly forms, their pain and suffering. She cried and she felt his hand on hers.
'Ophelia,' he said. 'We have loved, have we not?'
'Oh yes, Edward,' she said. 'We have loved. Oh we have loved, sir. And I am broken. I will die without you. I know that in my heart. Without you I will die.'
'You do not fear death?' he said. 'Not at all?'
'I have been nearer to death than anyone,' she said. 'Death has been a silent companion my whole life. One cannot fear such a close and constant kin.'
He sipped his wine. He leant in to her.
'Let me tell you what I can see. I see three men dressed in robes eating chicken legs. A soldier kissing a serving wench. A child stroking a kitten. Tell me, what do you see?'
She looked around the Great Hall. She saw three corpses gnawing at bones. A man with a chest wound bleeding on a slit-wristed woman, a boy with an umbilical cord around his neck holding a rat. She smiled.
'Oh, Edward,' she said. 'I can see it.'
'See what?' he said.
'I see the possibility,' she said, suddenly light. 'I see what needs to be done.'
'Oh, Ophelia,' he said, his face creasing. 'Oh, my love, no. I forbid it. I absolutely forbid it.'
She smiled and drank the last of her drink. She kissed him passionately on the mouth, her eyes closed and in remembrance of that first kiss, and ran to the staircase; Edward following behind, limping on his broken legs, dragging himself slowly after her.
A top the battlements she could see to France. She decided to head in that direction.
'Let in the maid, that out a maid, never departed more,' she said.
Oh the lightness of that rush! Oh the joy of that descent! Oh the sweet swell of love in amongst the breeze!
She woke in the dark. There was distant, melancholy light. She shifted and looked around. She was in a bedchamber, one she'd seen before in the Great Tower. Rough stone walls and tapestries, a fire dying in the grate. She heard movement outside and then Edward was there, as he had been before: spruce and neat, a matinee idol in his airman's uniform, his hair oiled and perfectly parted, skin smooth and white. He sat down on the bed. He shifted a strand of hair from her eyes.
'Thank you,' he said. 'Thank you for this gift. This wonder. This salvation.'
She tried to kiss him, to push herself up. He placed his hand on her chest.
'You must rest,' he said. 'Stay there awhile.'
He got up and walked back towards the door as a woman wearing a white dress came through it. The woman placed her arm around Edward's waist.
'Thank you,' she said, in the direction of the bed. 'The years I have waited. The years I have waited for this moment.'
Edward put his arm around the woman's shoulder. He smiled. From the bed, she pushed herself up to standing.
'Edward?' she said. 'Edward?'
'Shhh,' he said. 'It's late.'
'Yes, it's late,' the woman said. 'It's late and it's time to walk.'
Their hands in each other's hands, they smiled at her and thanked her one last time. And then they left. They left her alone and aching. Alone, aching and wearing a long red dress.
##
T _he family therapist recommended a break_ , I write on the school's stern Term-time Absence Form.
I don't write: _since the fire I can no longer face the family home and even my daughter is desperate to leave it_. I don't need to: the school already knows about the fire. The firemen came to the school the day the kitchen went up, looking for Alison and her key. And afterwards, there were many more officials at school because arson is a crime and social workers and teachers have to be made aware. Though I think that arson is a big word for a fire in a bin; even if school books were the tinder.
Before the books were burnt, the teachers marked them, so they also think they know Alison. They know the Alison of the past six months, the pierced, pink-haired girl called 'Ali'. They know her books: the large, illiterate scrawl and the satirically wrong answers and the fantastical diary entries in the margins apparently written by an extra on _Home and Away_ , 'Can't stay single any longer . . . Angie lent me her push-up bra'. Ali, who scrawls the word _Life_ in Gothic letters in red then scribbles out in big circles. Ali, who writes 'Ha! Ha!' under the teacher's bad marks, and then sets fire to the book.
I do not write, on the Term-time Absence Form, _I feel the need to drive away from this version of my daughter_ , because the school believes the pink-haired girl is the real Alison, not a version. The school doesn't know the girl she was before, just eighteen months ago, the girl with plaits and a checked summer dress and arms full of library books; the girl with top marks and perfect spelling and round, careful, much-commended handwriting. That Alison has never appeared in this school, or at least, did not appear for more than a few months at the very beginning. I think that Alison's nice little friends from before – Oh, Eleanor, Martha, Nicola, of the skipping rope and gold stars, how I miss you! – do not believe in that Alison either, any more, so violent have the new Ali's verbal assaults been upon them, so far from arson and push-up bras are they.
What I have written on the form is not even true. When I said we were going away, and going to the Wall because we had been there before as a family, the therapist did not affirm us. Instead, she leaked out careful phrases: _the acceptance of routine and a new reality_ , and _looking forwards not backwards_ , and _accepting life as it is with all its mess_. But we did not listen: this is the kind of talk to make Simon shudder, and even I, who wanted to go to therapy, am sick of it now. The therapist herself is very tidy, with shiny reading glasses and small, wine-coloured cashmere cardigans, and so is her beige sofa and her carefully neutral room, and I don't believe that her life contains anything as messy as Alison, who spends most of the sessions hunkered forward on her new boots, picking her pink fringe, picking her painful, pierced nose, sighing like a Border collie kept too long inside.
I tried to tell the therapist about taking Alison to the Rollright Stones when she was six, carsick and whingey, how Simon brought two coat hangers with him. He paced Alison across the scrubby ground between the small mossy stones. He was tall as a druid in his old anorak, she was tiny as a toadstool in her red coat, and sure enough the magic worked: the unfolded coat hangers twitched and crossed in her small fat hands each time she crossed the ley line. They walked across the stones a hundred times and she budded out of her dark mood like a snowdrop from the earth and believed she was a good witch for a year.
'But Alison is a different girl, now,' said the therapist. And she is, but that smaller snowdrop girl is somewhere inside her, I believe, and I am sure Simon believes too. I think our beliefs are important and with all that is going on, arson and social workers and therapy-speak, they have been too much overlooked. Simon and I may not believe in God, but we do believe in History. As Simon says, the past is not an escape, it is a world full of lessons; where else can we learn? Simon believes the past heals. He has a particular feeling for the past embodied in a landscape, like the Rollright Stones. He says: landscape has its own mysteries and cures. There are places whose mere names make him push up his glasses and run his fingers through his hair and it makes me happy, correspondingly happy, to see him do this. We say the names together: Malmesbury; Caerleon; Glastonbury Tor.
Simon says: 'Hadrian's Wall is better than China. It's as good as the pyramids.' And I agree. So we are going, and I write on the form: _This is an educational destination_ , which is true, and, _I will supervise homework_ , which is a lie, and I sign. Probably none of this is necessary, neither the lies nor the truths. Probably, the form will go through on the nod. Probably, the school will be pleased to be rid of Alison for a day or two, in the same way that Alison will accept even this trip to get away from school, and this thought, that someone does not want my daughter, cuts to the core of me.
So we go to the Wall. We drive, and it is a long way and a lonely way, with Simon silent for all of it and Alison plugged into her headphones and peering at her phone with her hood over her head, even when we stop to eat at the service stations. And I have forgotten how, when it rains in the North East, it rains like television, a broken one, the windscreen nothing but dark with flashes. There is no stopping on the way at the Temple of Mithras, as I'd hoped. We get to the hostel at Once Brewed in the dark, run for the door with our coats over our heads.
I've forgotten about hostels too, about the women's dormitory where Alison and I must sleep, sharing the room with two hearty German girls who were going to walk St Oswald's Way. Alison is still young enough to sleep anywhere, but I lie awake all night under the bulge of her body in the bunk above and think how unfair it is to be so lonely. I am so angry to be stuck in the women's dorm when I so very much dislike womanish things – periods, piercings, push-up bras – myself. I do not see why it should be me, and not Simon, who has to help her with all this now.
The next day it's not raining but there is a cloud sitting on the long valley where, according to my memory and the map, we are. Outside the hostel is a perfect whiteout: we can scarcely see the road, and the pub next door looms at us unexpectedly like an untethered mystical castle. It is early, though, only eight o'clock, and in the lost time of our family Simon would have said, 'It'll soon clear up, Ali. Tell me when you can see enough blue to make a pair of sailor's trousers,' and Alison would have smiled. Then we would have sat and played Go Fish at the varnished pine table, the three of us, with extra cups of coffee and hot chocolate for Alison, waiting till the cloud lifted, or Simon would have played chess with his daughter, with the little portable chess set we kept for such outings, the one with pieces so small he had to put his reading glasses on to distinguish knight from pawn, but Alison doesn't play games any more, and doesn't smile and doesn't believe in sailor's trousers, and within five minutes of breakfast I find I am unable to sit with her and the tinny scratching of her earphones and I bundle us into the car.
I drive very slowly at first with all my lights on. But the fog starts to lift almost at once, the worn gold hills revealing themselves on either side. 'Of course, it is a Roman road,' Simon says, in my ear. 'You can tell, it is so very straight.' I smile to hear him, and by the time we get to the turn-off to Housesteads, the weather is fine, really fine, a marvellous day for so early in the spring, the sky blowing itself high and clear, the long valley clearing east and west. We can see the fort written in grey on the ridge of the hill above the car park, the mist just lifting from it.
I remember the Wall from here, because we all three walked it during our very best summer, the summer Alison was nine. Just along from the fort is a milecastle with an arched entrance missing only its capstone, and most of the way the Wall is higher than your shoulder, and neatly faced with square cut stones. Suddenly, I'm desperate to be up there in the sun and wind, desperate to be with Simon, out walking. I can see us, both of us in our light expensive walking boots and neoprene jackets, him outlining the place where buildings sleep under a blanket of turf with his long brown hands and the walking pole we bought in Austria.
But Alison won't come. Alison has changed her mind about the holiday, and the Wall, and seeing anything, and will not put on her walking boots. She won't even move from the back seat where she is doubled up over her phone to shut out the light. 'I'm watching a video,' she shouts, 'a video.' And when I pull her she knots herself tight as an embryo, a conch, and is too heavy to lift. When you are with a teenager you become a teenager, just as when you are with a two year old you have tantrums. I hear myself yell: 'I'll go on my own, my own.' And I do, I run up the track in my boots, gasping at the turns, flighting the birds.
And so I am here alone in the fort. There is a fine high sound of larks, and a thin cool wind, and no one here at all: too early in the day and the season for even the museum to be open, to even buy a ticket. I like the museum. There are models of the fort in its different incarnations, and a few small artefacts including a carving of three hooded figures wearing what look like anoraks, and a sign explaining that the coats are good quality woven wool, a very British product.
I decide not to care about Alison for a while. I will calm down and take myself on a tour. I don't have my guidebook, but I remember. I walk up through the outlines of the town outside the boundary wall of the fort, remembering. In one of these houses they found the bones of a woman and a man, the man with a dagger between his ribs, both hidden beneath the clay of the floor like the body under the patio in _Brookside_.
I go into the fort through the south gate, past the worn cart tracks and postern hole, and clamber on past the outline of the commanding officer's house to the hospital. This is my favourite spot. It is so easy to imagine the clean, small, tiled courtyard with its deep-set drainage, its cold larder of medicines and its neat, offset latrine. I can feel what it would have been like to have been brought in here, broken or damaged from fighting, into a cool, lime-washed cell, and lie under a woollen blanket until you healed, or not. The Romans knew about bone setting, and cauterising and stitching wounds: so many things we forgot afterwards.
I sit on a stone. And the view from here is magnificent: the Wall thrusting itself east up the backbone of the hill, purposeful and unflinching as a great scaled snake. In the other direction, down in the valley, I see that Simon has finally taken action, and is walking Alison up the track from the car park. He has even induced her to put her coat on and push her hood back, though not, I see, to put her boots on. He'll take her round to the east gate, I know, insist that she enter the fort from the 'proper' side, through the double-arched gateway the Romans planned; the gate that leads you in to face the headquarters with its pillars and offices and gods; the gate built to impress the people and be exactly Roman. Later, they blocked up one of its arches and built a coal store in the passageway; people started to use the south gate more because it was easier, and out of the wind, nearer the _vicus_ , the town, the way people always untidily will.
I like the town, myself: its irregular, un-Roman buildings built into the folds of the hill; its murder victims; its loaded dice and counterfeit coins; all the untidy compromises of it. I like all the evidence of the later, unplanned, inner fort too; everything that happened as the empire decayed: the grim barrack dormitories made over into wooden huts to hold a family each, the chilly open porticos in headquarters closed off against the sea winds and turned into warm little offices for probably corrupt officials. It's like a family wearing in a home, or a religion settling on some comfortable hypocrisies; or a marriage finding its own perverse, beloved shape.
The bathhouse was built late on, I remember, inside the fort because it was getting too dangerous to go outside for a bath. It is also very small. It takes me five minutes to even find it: it can't have fitted more than two or three people at a time. But it is so complete that you can still see the stains on the underfloor heating and the place where the boiler fitted. The scorch marks bring them very near: the anxious Romans desperate to remember what warmth felt like; the servant trained to stoke the boiler; the cart loaded with coal bouncing along the military road all the way from Newcastle; the man who drove the cart, whose precious business it was.
Now Alison has come inside the bounds of the fort. She is only a hundred yards from me now, in the latrines in the far corner, but I don't call out or try to join her: I want to watch her. She's actually smiling. It's because her father is there, smiling too, the wind feathering his soft brown hair, the sun wrinkling his soft brown skin, leaning back on the stones, explaining it all to his Ali. How it all works. The cistern of rainwater above the latrine, with its smooth-worn washing stone and still-functional channel, there to power the flush. The latrine itself, with its wash basins and water channel to wash out your sponge, its deep, solid, sloping drain.
The loss of it all, when you think about it, is inconceivable. How can it be that the latrine was allowed to fill up with gravel and mud, and that people simply forgot how to beat copper and set bones and dry corn and make hypocausts? How can it be that in the year 400 there was a coal-fired sauna here, with a copper boiler, and a granary with underfloor heating, and the infrastructure to serve all of it, and then it was all smashed and fell down and nothing was built for a thousand years till some starving Scots made a messy fort from the stone of the south gate, a primitive tower without chimney or internal stair? It must be as Simon always says, the weather must have changed, the climate. Something fundamental must have happened. A death.
Anyway. I walk down to Alison. She is sitting on a wall, softly kicking her trainers on it, holding up her face to the bit of sun. Her eyes are shut, but when I come over she opens them.
'Mum,' she says, 'Dad was here.'
'I know,' I say. 'I saw him.'
'I miss him,' said Alison. 'I miss my dad. Do you miss him? What do you feel? I don't know what you feel.'
What do I feel? In all the months since Simon's death, she has not once asked me that.
I tell her I feel like a body stabbed and buried under the clay of a ruined house, or like a postern hole worn in a stone, empty, or like a young soldier shivering in the lime-washed cell of the hospital, or like a wool cloak with a stiff hood, hung up on a peg, empty, empty.
'Sorry, Ali,' I say. 'I'm really sorry he died.'
'I didn't set fire to the bin on purpose,' she says. 'I was actually trying to put the fire out.'
But I knew that already. It is still early, so after a while my daughter and I walk out on the west side of the fort and start following the Wall to Steel Rigg. On the way we can see the milecastle with its nearly perfect arch, and the sycamore that grows in Sycamore Gap, and the beautiful wild country stretching out to Kielder that in Roman times teemed with game. The wild Picts are gone now, and the wolves, and the beaver and the otter, and the deer flying through the woods from the huntsman like seeds blown from a palm, and now Simon, my husband, Ali's father, is gone too; but the cliffs, and the high sky and white clouds, and the land and the water and the Wall thrusting through it; all of that is still there.
##
T _he town of Falmouth . . . is no great ways from the sea. It is defended on the sea-side by tway castles, St Maws and Pendennis, extremely well calculated for annoying every body except an enemy . . . The town contains many Quakers and salt fish – the oysters have a taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country – the women . . . are flogged at the cart's tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and damned the mayor. (Lord Byron, Falmouth, 1809)_
I put down the book to visit the bathroom.
I was alone that night. For the three nights of our wedding party, Tamara and I had decided to follow the custom of sleeping separately until the night of the wedding. It was her idea – to create a space where we longed to be, and then to find it.
I'd been drinking with our friends. I'd gone to bed late. I couldn't sleep, so I was sitting propped up on my pillows, reading about the history of the place.
As I opened the heavy square-panelled door to the bathroom, I heard a voice say, 'Go through and don't come back.'
I turned on the bathroom light. Stood still. No sound.
It was an old-fashioned bathroom with a tall sash window pushed up a little at the bottom. I pushed it up further, feeling its weight, and leaned out into the night. The night was blustery and restless. The wind like a conversation you can't hear. No stars. A little way off, towards the castle itself, I saw a wavering light, dim and unsteady.
I smiled – it must have been a couple of our guests zigzagging home from drinking. I must have heard them through the window. It's so quiet here. That's why the voice seemed so close, even though the light seems far away.
But the sea and the night make things mysterious, don't they?
My wife was born in Falmouth. That is why we chose to marry at Pendennis Castle. The castle and its pair at St Mawes face each other across the mouth of the River Fal, like stone giants guarding a hoard.
Henry VIII built a blockhouse either side of the estuary to cross-fire any enemy ships slinking through the water. Henry worried about the war-ish Spanish and his daughter Elizabeth saw off the Armada, but it was Bonaparte, with his eyes on the prize of a coastal landing, who galvanised the British into building up their bullish garrison here, the booming guns aiming their cannonballs at history. The seafloor of the bay is thick-deep with them. Pendennis was defended by twenty-two 24-pounders and fourteen 18-pounders.
'It's a castle not a burger-chain.'
'Tamara, that's what they call them – pounders.'
'I like to think of all those tin soldiers eating mayo and fries with their 24-pounders.'
'Are you making fun of history or making fun of me?'
'You. That's why we're getting married – so that I can laugh at you for the rest of my life.'
Morning. Drinking tea in her room. She's sitting up in bed and I am in a chair by the window.
'There's nothing you can tell me about Pendennis Castle that I don't know. My dad was a tour guide here for years.'
'I'm sorry he can't be here today.'
'He'll be here in spirit.'
'Maybe he will. It's Hallowe'en.'
'You don't believe in ghosts, do you?'
She came and sat on my knee, kissing me. Her eyes are grey, like the sky over the sea today, and behind them, not always visible, but always there, is the sun.
'Someone came into my room last night.'
'It wasn't me.'
She said – 'The rain was heavy and it woke me – or I think it was the rain. I knew that someone was sitting on the edge of the bed looking at me.'
'How did you know that?'
'We all know when we're being looked at.'
'You were dreaming.'
'I wasn't dreaming. It was Dad.'
'How do you know?'
'Who else would it be?'
I'm thinking, This is ridiculous. She doesn't really believe in ghosts and neither do I. Yet what harm can it do if she believes her father came last night to wish her well? And the fact is that none of us has the slightest knowledge of what happens after we die.
Materialists are no better informed than mediums.
'Shall we go for a walk? While everyone else is asleep?'
She goes to wash and dress. I know her routine, her sounds, her movements, so well. But today I'm listening like she's new to me. I don't want to get used to her. I don't want to lose her to habit.
She comes out of the bathroom, hair tied back, smiling. She takes my hand. She's warm.
We walked under the gun-metal sky towards the oldest part of the estate. The Tudor fort is so small. Like a toy fort for toy soldiers. Time set in stone. So much time has happened here – not only months and years, not only time passing, but time happening.
Prince Charles hid here in 1646 during the English Civil War, on his way to safety in the Scilly Isles. He had his own door put into the castle. It's blocked up now, but the outline is there. Is the door blocked up when we're dead? Our own personal space–time door, that opens when we're born, and opens for us once more when we die?
Go through. Don't come back.
'What did you say?'
'I was thinking about the door.'
'Go through. Don't come back . . . that's what you said.'
'Did I? Oh. Someone was wandering round outside my room last night – something about a door.'
Tamara looked at me strangely. 'I'm cold.'
'Me too. It's this wind. Let's go into the castle.'
We walked through the rooms still panelled out the Georgian way, where an officer in white breeches and a cut-away coat could stand with his back towards the wood-burning fireplace and study a map of the French positions.
When Nelson was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, the news was sent by ship to Falmouth, and a rider horsed up in a gale and set off for London to tell the King.
Life and death. You feel it here. I'm not superstitious but you feel it here.
On the wall of the modest sitting room there's a portrait of Captain Philip Melvill, governor of Pendennis Castle from 1797 until his death in 1811.
Something happened to him in India, they say, when he was imprisoned for four years in Bangalore. He suffered from extremes of emotion, so they say, a man as volatile as the weather here; a man of scudding clouds and flashes of lightning. The fog so thick on him sometimes he didn't know his own face.
He sat in the window in a comb-back Windsor chair watching the weather and the water. The tour guides have all heard him scraping the chair across the floor.
And some say that if you move the chair away from the window at night, by morning it will have returned to its place.
You've gone ahead, out of the castle into the wind, your slight frame struggling to stay upright. I'm following you. We won't live forever. We'll both disappear back into time, through our separate doors, and if you go first I won't be able to find you. I'll run my hands over and over the wall where the door used to be; you coming home, you coming in, the door you opened for me, so unexpected and welcome. The door into the sun.
Now is all we have. Stay in sight of me.
TAMARA!
JAMIE!
She's gone through the tunnel towards Half-Moon Battery. We scared ourselves silly last night with our friends, imagining we heard the sound of boots marching past in step. In a place like this, layered like a fossil record through seams of time, it's easy to believe that time is simultaneous.
If haunting is anything, perhaps that's what it is; time in the wrong place.
The clock was striking. You turned to me, your face soft and serious. You said, 'I want to marry you, Jamie.'
'You are marrying me.'
'I woke up feeling – I don't know – uneasy.'
'It's just nerves. I hardly slept.'
'Really?'
She put her arms round me and rested her head on my shoulder.
And then I felt it distinctly; a lowering weight, a sinking motion, something pressing behind me in between my shoulder blades, exactly as if someone were leaning their forehead against me.
Tamara said, 'I like it when you put your hands on my hipbones.'
My hands were by my sides. I didn't tell her that, or that the space between my shoulder blades was cold and wet.
'Shall we go?'
My arm round her now, we set off walking back to our quarters. Soon it would be the beginning of our life together. We had been together a while but this felt different. We're both nervous, I thought. We're both imagining things.
As we went past the Battery Observation Post, closed to visitors today, and deserted in the early morning rain, the phone started ringing. I jumped sideways. Tamara laughed, opened the door, and pulled me inside, kissing me, suddenly, passionately, under the low roof, against the long horizontal windscreen window, while the Bakelite phone shrilled on the desk. 'It's part of the tour,' she said, 'a sound installation.'
The room had been re-made to look as it would have done during the Second World War; tin hats and mugs, flashlights, kitbags, charts, radio equipment. Crackling voices barked orders through hidden speakers.
The Morse code machine beeped into life. 'That's new,' you said.
DOT DASH DOT DASH DASH . . .
The staccato, urgent, high-pitched monotone coming from the metal box was producing a ticker-tape roll with the dots and dashes written on it. We both watched it, mesmerised and unsure. The beeping stopped as suddenly as it had started. Impulsively I tore off the roll. 'Can you read it?'
'No, but Uncle Alec will be at the party. He was in the Navy and he's about a hundred years old. Show it to him, he'll love it. Probably says "Welcome to Pendennis Castle".'
We ran back through the wind and rain towards breakfast and friends and laughter and the pleasure of the unfolding day. I went upstairs to dump my wet jacket, and decided on a warmer sweater. As I pulled off what I had on, I felt the cold dampness of where the head had rested on me. But it wasn't a head, was it? A head needs a body, and there was no-body-there.
A sudden gust of wind slammed the bathroom door.
'Oh, the Killigrews – yes, they were all pirates. The women as well as the men. Roaring girls, the lot of them. Line died out in the seventeenth century. No men left. Not that that would be a problem for you, my dear, eh? Ha ha ha.'
Tamara's Uncle Alec. That's what happens at weddings. He's trying to be friendly, I tell myself. It's not easy that his niece is marrying a woman.
'Kitty Killigrew dressed herself as a boy and went to sea, she did. That was just about all right, she was tall enough and flat enough to get away with it – figure more like an ironing board than an hourglass, if you get my meaning, but then, damn it if she didn't come home and start carrying on with a girl from the village, one of the oyster pickers. Well, that wouldn't do for a start and it certainly wouldn't do for a finish. Times were different then, y'know.'
'What happened to her?'
'Oh, terrible, terrible. Make your blood run cold. Not the thing for a wedding party. Not at all . . .'
'Why are you telling it to me then?'
The uncle looked surprised, like a man who has got on the wrong train. 'Am I? Well, perhaps I am. No truth in it at all, besides. A silly story.'
'Can you read Morse code?' I said, trying to change the subject. But Uncle Alec was deaf.
'Couldn't be happier for you, y'know, I had a friend just the same, oh, years ago; it's always gone on, of course, 'course it has, men and men, women and women, but marriage is a bit of a surprise, don't y'think? I mean, where does it end? If you don't draw a line somewhere? I daresay I'll be able to marry my dog.'
'Poor dog,' I said.
'Y'what?'
I got up. I didn't want to pick a fight with one of my new relatives.
The rest of the day passed happily. More friends were arriving. Tonight we were having the party, and the next morning, on All Hallows' Eve, we were to be married.
We had agreed that we would spend some quiet time together before the party. The celebrant wanted to speak to us about our commitment, and it felt right to take a couple of hours to think about our marriage together. I'd been out for lunch with my best woman and I was late.
As I was running towards the hall, I saw Tamara, up ahead of me, walking with someone; a tall young man in boots, buff trousers and a red coat.
They had rounded the corner before I caught up with them.
'TAMARA!'
She turned. She was alone.
'Who was that?'
She looked puzzled. 'Who?'
'You were with someone.'
'No, I wasn't. I was with Sara earlier but . . .'
'A man . . .'
'Jamie – this was meant to be a serious time – first, you're late, and second, don't play jokes on me. I'm going upstairs.'
'Tamara!'
I followed her. She went into her room without looking at me. I decided to give her a minute to cool off. My own room was just down the corridor.
Might as well unpack my wedding outfit.
I opened my wedding bag, everything pressed and folded, and separate to my other clothes. Neatly on the top of the plastic cover lay a chipped brass button – a uniform button. I picked it up and took it to the window. There was an inscription written round the edge: 'PUER SEMPER SEMPER PUELLA'.
I went straight back to Tamara's room. She was standing at the window looking out.
'There's the boy in the red coat,' she said.
'I can't see anyone.'
'He must have gone into the keep. I have no idea who he is.'
She was ignoring me, staring intently out into the grounds as though the empty space could yield something. I put the button in her hand.
'What does this mean?' She turned it between her fingers, frowning. 'Where did you get it?'
'It was in my luggage!'
'It means "Forever a Boy Always a Girl".'
'What does that mean?'
She laughed. 'Someone's playing a joke on us. Well, you are a girl who's a boy who's a boy who's a girl, or whatever happens in all those Shakespeare plays.'
She kissed me on my nose. 'It's probably Uncle Alec. He's doing his best but he's struggling.'
We were close again. She was in my arms.
The party was a success. Tamara had booked a seven-piece band called The Deloreans. Something about going back to our future.
'I feel like I've always known you,' she said.
'You never told me you believed in reincarnation as well as ghosts.'
'I don't,' she said. 'But I know you.'
Uncle Alec was drunk when I bumped into him later. He pulled me down into a chair. 'They shot her, y'know, bad business.'
'Shot who?'
'Kitty. The girl who's a boy . . .'
'Who's a boy who's a girl . . .'
'Count yourself lucky.'
'I do . . . for marrying Tamara.'
'The other one drowned herself. Dredged off the bottom of the sea. Told you it wasn't a wedding story.'
Whether the story put a dampener on my spirits or whether I was just tired, I kissed Tamara goodnight and went to bed. I fell asleep at once; a deep and dreamless sleep.
I awoke somewhere in the dead of night. The back of my neck was clammy. I must have been sweating but the room felt so cold. I half sat up on my elbows. The air in the room was heavy with moisture. I wiped a hand over my head – why was my hair clinging to my scalp? And what was that smell? The smell of seaweed . . .
I turned sideways into the middle of the bed and that's when I felt it: an arm. A body. A wet arm. A wet body. In spite of myself I ran my hand over the still form that lay beside me. The body I felt was soaked with water, pulpy, like something that has lain too long in water. And then I felt its face and the hollow sockets of its eyes.
I didn't scream. I couldn't. Whimpering, like something whipped, I managed to get out of bed and over to the window. I opened the curtains. The moon was bright. Looking back towards the bed, I saw it was empty. Empty.
But as I looked out of the window I saw Tamara, like a sleep-walker, making her way towards the castle.
'TAMARA!'
By the time I caught up with her she was inside the castle gateway. The castle was dimly lit. There were flares on the walls.
Tamara looked at me, as if waking.
'Where are we?'
Before I could answer her the tall young man in the red coat came behind us. He was carrying a cocked hat and wearing a pistol at his belt. He seemed not to see us. I went towards him, and he brushed his hand in front of his face, as though he felt my movement but not myself.
There was a sound from behind and a young woman, hidden entirely in a cloak, ran into the room and threw off her hood. Even in the dim light of the flares I could see how beautiful she was, but her face was afraid.
She threw her arms round the young man. He took out a ring and put it on her finger. Then together they kneeled down, facing each other, and began to recite their wedding vows . . . with this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship . . .
'Death will not part us,' she said. 'Love is . . .'
She did not finish what she had to say. A posse of men stormed the room. The boy – he was hardly more than a boy – reached for his pistol but he was speedily overpowered.
'Run!' he shouted.
She ran – they seemed not to care – it was him they wanted. Hands behind his back, they shoved him forwards, up the stairs. I followed. I knew they could not see me.
Upstairs, the door. The door that opens into time. They pushed him out, through, I heard a shot and smelled powder, acrid and raw. And these words:
'Go through, and don't come back.'
And then it was done. The castle was dark.
Holding each other tightly, we stepped out of the castle. A voice said – 'Saw them, damn it, did you?'
It was Uncle Alec.
We were drinking whisky all three of us, long into that night. The spirits of murdered Kitty and her girl were known to walk abroad and to act again the terrible night of their parting.
'I can see them all, y'know, ghosts,' said Uncle Alec. 'Have done since I was a boy.'
'What should we do?' said Tamara.
Uncle Alec thought a while, and then he said, 'Invite them to the wedding.'
'How do we do that?' I said. 'They're dead.'
'Death never stopped anyone,' said Uncle Alec.
The morning of our wedding.
I had not slept at all, but lain wide-awake with Tamara sleeping in my arms. Is there a door between life and death? Are life and death as separated as we believe?
The morning of the wedding.
I bathed and dressed. On my table lay the button and the ticker tape of Morse code. I picked up the button, rubbed it between my fingers. 'Come with us,' I said. 'Into a time that is not death.' Then I left the button on the table, put the paper in my pocket, and went downstairs, where our guests were waiting in the hall.
The morning of our wedding.
I stood next to Tamara, holding her hand while we made our vows. As we turned to face each other, we each looked over the other's shoulder, and we both saw, one behind her, one behind me, the young man in the red coat and the beautiful woman whose hair spread out like the sea.
It was afterwards, though, that I gave the ticker tape of Morse code to Uncle Alec. 'Where'd y'get this?' he said.
'What does it say?'
'Love is as strong as death.'
##
'W _ho is the man in a brown cloak standing at the foot of my bed every night?'_ my sister asked, aged six or seven.
I said _'A ghost'_ and Mother said _'Bad dreams'_ and Papa said _'Absolute nonsense. Nobody cares for your made-up terrors.'_
Papa died and we were a house of women. We grew accustomed, but not sympathetic, to Delia's unnerving claims.
She sometimes said _'That's him!'_ in a gallery, or in a busy street, and she would be referring to her man in brown robes. Once we rushed upstairs upon hearing her scream and she was pointing to the chair beside her bed.
_'He was sitting in my chair!'_
Iam standing on the gravel driveway of Eltham Palace. Someone called Rory Kippax from English Heritage has agreed to show me around, but he is late. My taxi has gone and it's drizzling. I am very elderly and I do not like rain, or waiting. I cannot tolerate lateness.
I shall give them until midday. Perhaps I shall cancel my membership.
Delia was fussing.
_'Something is wrong with Eltham Palace'_ she said _'nothing good will come of me going there. I'd like to stay home and work on my paintings.'_
_'Oh, fortify yourself Delia. Mummy is ill, and we have been invited, and the Courtaulds expect us, so we are going. You can't idle your life away, scuffing away at your naïve little pictures.'_
Almost noon and still nobody here. I notice the huge wooden doors are ajar.
I bang on the door with my walking stick. I poke my head through.
'Hello?'
I wander in. It's freezing cold.
'Hello? Mrs Charbury here, I have a visit booked!'
I peer into the lavatories.
Oh yes, I remember these ghastly silver taps. _Moderne_ design, sharp and angled, no doubt hugely fashionable back then, but one couldn't fit one's hand under to get any water. Typical of those people.
I did love the heated towel rails though.
_'I don't like it'_ said Delia.
_'Oh do shut up.'_
And there we were, drying our hands and prettying ourselves, when we heard Virginia say to someone or other _'Yes, and I've just seen the Bush Sisters arrive. Ye-e-e-es, exactly. One beautiful and silly, one strange and ugly. One Flaming June berry, one burnt brûlée berry.'_
And I know Delia heard, because she blushed and hastened her efforts with the handwashing. Poor peculiar Delia. Dumpy and glum.
I step through into the domed room with its fly's eye roof; the pride and joy of New Eltham.
'Hello? Is anybody here?'
Back then I called it the Temple of Questionable Taste. I was jealous, I suppose.
'Hello?' I call. The building hums.
I think I can hear footsteps approaching so I peer expectantly down each corridor but nobody comes.
'Hello?'
There was champagne, so much champagne. Chatter and shrieks of laughter. Cigar smoke. Jazz. Silk.
_'I don't like it here'_ Delia said to me. _'I have a very bad feeling.'_
I flounced off to flirt and dance and get sloshed.
I was terribly drunk all the time back then. We all were. I smoked until I couldn't swallow. At Eltham they topped you up all the time. There was nowhere you could go where people wouldn't pop up from behind some door, a grinning servant with more drinks, more options for intoxication.
_'Dubonnet Cassis Madame?'_
_'Too bloody right, yes please.'_
I was young and comely and we were invited to parties where very famous people gathered and got drunk. I loved getting sozzled with the well-to-do.
_'Welcome to HMS Vulgar Italiano'_ someone said.
_'Haha!'_
There is no champagne today. Just the huge circular rug, browns and beiges and cruise-ship lines. I wonder why on earth Rory Kippax isn't here.
I wander down the corridor to the medieval great hall. It's deserted. I call out as I go through 'Hello?'
I said _'Virginia and Stephen!'_ and she said _'Ginie, please!'_ and my pitiful socialite spirit soared into the hammer beams above us.
I don't remember the hall being this big. I remember it being crammed with sticky bodies. Always so fiendishly hot. I remember people whispering _'Rab Butler is here!'_
Delia was next to me, stiff as a board. _'There is something wrong with Eltham. I don't feel well. There's something wrong.'_ Someone said _'Quickstep!'_ and I shrieked and whooped and ran away from Delia.
Someone said _'Edith Sitwell's dreadful poems'_ and I said _'Oh spare me!'_
Someone said _'Taste does not come by chance: it is a long and laborious task to acquire it'_ and all us slender dreadful ladies cackled.
They had a fetish for electricity and for warmth. A beautiful woman in green velvet slippers said to me _'The floor is warmer than a granite boulder in midsummer sun. Underfloor heating, no expense spared!'_
The floor today is ice cold. There are bits of old confetti stuck to the flagstones. This place is a party venue for hire. Was it ever thus.
I call out into the medieval emptiness 'Hello?'
I picture Delia crossing the huge floor to tell me she's scared, or worried. I imagine Edward IV spying on me from behind a curtain. Sinister history here. I feel a ripple of fear, all alone in this hall of memories, so I shout 'Hello!' and my sudden nervousness is embarrassing so I shut it off with noise, yelling 'HELLO!' yelling 'Is there anybody here? I have an appointment.'
I feel suddenly very self-aware. I wish I hadn't made noise.
I feel perhaps I've woken the house up and that wasn't wise.
A man in a jester's costume said _'Refill, saucy Mixy?'_
I was rather too hot and dizzy and I was in something of a clinch I think, with a racing driver, a friend of the famous Italian nephews, and suddenly Delia was there, and she was cold. She was shaking like a river-dipper.
_'The man is here'_ she said _'the robed man in brown, the man I've always seen.'_
_'What tosh, can't you ever relax? Can't you enjoy yourself_?'
_'He won't leave me alone. He . . . he knows me. Please, I'm frightened and I want to go home.'_
Delia was quivering and pale and her skin was mottled with goose bumps. She looked really quite dramatically the less pretty sister, more than usual.
_'Stop being so odd, Delia. It makes you very difficult to love_.'
I was dancing and sweating, then I was canoodling with the racing driver.
_'Plug one in for me old boy!'_ said a famous actor, and we all roared with laughter.
I wander back up to the domed entrance hall in case the man from English Heritage is waiting, but there's nobody. The door is closed. Did I close the door?
'Hello?'
I sit down in an armchair in the drawing room that says 'Please do not sit'. I've paid my membership fees for years and I've been rudely stood up, so I shall jolly well sit down. I swear I can hear music somewhere. It is my mind playing tricks on me. I call out feebly 'Is there someone here?'
There is a scratching noise in the walls but it's the same with any old house, heaving and adjusting. Creaking. Hundreds of years of history leaking out. Perfectly normal.
I remember we all went and saw the infamous pet lemur, which was not biting people or cuddling its mistress as the legends have it, but snoozing in a fetid heap.
_'Well bugger that, Mah-Jongg you party pooper'_ said a shiny Frenchman in plus fours, and we all roared with laughter.
Then Delia was with me again, pulling at my sleeve, and I followed her.
We crept into Virginia's boudoir. I was terribly drunk. There were people lounging on the floor, on cushions, smoking. We both gazed at the leather map. It buzzed. Hidden machinery behind the walls. Eltham the electric toy.
_'I told you this place was haunted'_ she said.
_'Did you?'_
_'Are you drunk?'_
_'Absomagnificat'_ I said, and giggled.
She whispered.
_'He knows me! He said he used to watch over me as a child, while I was sleeping. He described the inside of my bedroom. He said he liked my paintings, he said I have to paint my pictures for him.'_ She pointed to the curtain in the corner of the boudoir. _'Through there in the map room, but it's terribly secret. He's very angry with me.'_
I remember she was multiplying in front of my eyes.
Two Delias, each a babbling frenzy about the blasted man and his paintings.
Three Delias, frightened, pale and dim.
I did my best impression of our poor departed father.
I looked at Delia and, swaying, said _'Nobody cares for your made-up terrors.'_
And then I was whooping, riding on my pilot's shoulders across the lawn to the glasshouses to see Stephen Courtauld's world-famous orchids.
Sometime in the very early morning Delia was on the lawn and she looked luminously white and I wrapped her in someone's shawl.
_'I don't know what to do'_ she said. _'He's come for me. I have to go with him.'_
She gazed into my eyes and she said to me, _'Will you come and find me? Please come and find me.'_
I was so sloshed. I don't know what I said to her.
I suppose I was unkind.
I suppose I said _'Absolute nonsense.'_
Eltham loomed out of the dark, sparkling and noisy, like a huge electric ship made of jewels and I watched my strange little sister step back inside it.
Ishift uncomfortably on the chair in the drawing room. I do not feel safe in this house. It's the memories. All the people I was here with are presumably dead and gone. It's just me in Eltham Palace with my memories. Nasty me, in 1937, surrounded by glitz. Nasty me, now, all alone.
Sometime in the early morning I was wrapped in the pilot's jacket and there was a man playing the clarinet, and someone gave me a shot of herbal liqueur out of a tiny crystal glass and we all bundled into cars and someone said my sister had left, and then she wasn't at home, and then sometime later we phoned the exchange and got through to Eltham and they told us that no guests were left at the house, and then in a shambolic and slightly embarrassed manner we phoned the police.
They searched for her, and I was asked a million times about the party, and I couldn't remember much, and my head hurt so terribly for those first days that I simply sobbed and repeated that it had been awfully noisy and my sister had met a chap in a brown costume.
They dredged the moat and searched the Tudor sewers. They stopped a fellow in a field who was in some kind of monk's robe, Eric Gill get-up, but he turned out to be a genuine eccentric who had never set foot in the palace. Delia was simply gone.
_Society Daughter Disappears at Eltham_.
Mother never got well. On the evening after the party, before we really understood Delia was properly missing, she had a nightmare about Eltham. She said she dreamed that Delia was trapped between the old bits and the new bits of the palace. Lost. She saw her face in a painting. She raved and shrieked about her daughter being imprisoned in Eltham. On her deathbed she said _'Find your sister'_ and I never even tried. I never bloody tried.
I never came back to Eltham until today.
I heave myself off the armchair and wander back through the entrance hall, swiping at the fusty air with my stick.
I can smell some kind of chemical or medical odour. Girlhood smells. Particles of the young me. Nostalgia.
I go through into the green servants' corridor and turn left down into the basement. I'm very frail these days. One step at a time. Descending past the shadow of the younger me on these same stairs.
I never went to another party at Eltham. I married a Scot and fled the flat Home Counties. I became a dull, wealthy, landowning wife of a laird. I've got dozens of grandchildren who sometimes phone and thank me for money.
My husband said I was a fragile flower. I said he was an ox. Flowers outlive oxen you know.
The Courtaulds ditched Eltham when one too many bombs landed on the great hall which they had so tirelessly faked back into authenticity. They eventually settled in Southern Rhodesia and presumably lived out their days reminiscing about the razzle-dazzle of this place.
The basement is painted red like animal innards. I swear I can hear music.
'Oh! Bloody hell!' I yelp, because there is a mannequin dressed up as an air-raid warden. I whack it crossly with my stick. 'Piss off' I say to it, in passing.
My poor ancient heart jangles in its cage. I detest shocks.
I tiptoe through to the billiards room. My pulse is plunking in my ears, making me nervous.
It's warm down here and I feel agitated.
There it is, the Italianate mural. As incongruous now as it was then. Pastiche. An Umbrian soap advert clinging to the wall for dear life.
Is this what my mother dreamed of? She must've seen this mural at a party.
I peer at the painting. There are two girls, carrying bowls on their heads.
I'm suddenly desperately disconcerted and confused. This place is making me ill.
There are tears in my eyes. 'Delia?' I speak to the servant girl. For heaven's sake, it doesn't look a thing like Delia.
I feel terribly, abjectly alone. I want my husband. I want Delia. I was a terrible sister. Sniffling, I lean my head against the mural and whisper,
'I'm sorry I was so relentlessly cruel. Forgive me, Delia.'
A hand claps down on my shoulder.
I scream.
I flail, spin around, waggle my stick and topple back against the mural.
There is a little man in a brown suit.
'There, there ma'am' he says 'it's just a pretty picture.'
The shock has rendered me completely speechless. I am close to losing control of my antique bladder. I am trying to catch my breath.
He simply stares at me and says it again in his strange vinegary voice; 'Just a pretty picture.'
My hands are shaking quite ridiculously. I brandish my stick at him.
'You're late!' I snap.
'Well, you seem to know your way around. Welcome back.'
'Welcome back?'
He has peculiar round eyes, the little English Heritage man. Eyes like little electric light bulbs, glowing gold. His face puts me in mind of the bloody awful lemur. I glance at the portrait of the pet in the mural beside me. Yes, he has a look of Mah-Jongg, this little man. That's probably why they hired him.
'Yes, I assume you've been to Eltham before, since you know your way around?'
'I have, many years ago, yes. Anyway, I was rather hoping to see the leather map, in Virginia's boudoir.'
'Follow me, ma'am.'
He goes in front and I follow him slowly up. My pulse rate is still preposterously high and the thought crosses my mind that a shock like that, at my age, might have killed me. I think to myself that not only will I be cancelling my membership but I shall be writing a strongly worded letter of complaint to English Heritage. I despise being given a fright.
I am about to voice my upset when I realise the little man is mumbling something.
He is issuing forth a peculiar stream of unrelated and half-formed titbits of Eltham trivia, some of which strike me as complete nonsense.
'They say the ghost of Thomas Wolsey appears, sometimes, and you can actually hear the marble bust of Virginia Courtauld cry out in shock, some say she's alive at night, and up here in the servant quarter is where Erasmus might have sat in deep conversation with the courtiers of . . .' 'Well, thank you, but I think I'll be fine without the folklore and hearsay.'
We walk across the entrance hall and down towards Virginia's boudoir. The little man fidgets with his pockets. He squirms and judders as if there are fleas in his suit. He smells strongly of iodine and the smell makes me feel . . . vulnerable. I haven't smelt iodine in years.
'Here we are, ma'am.'
I don't feel well. The fright he caused me in the basement has given me a tightness in the chest. My breaths are shallow.
There's jazz music playing and I feel hot and stifled. My bones are aching and I don't like this peculiar little man. 'Where is that music coming from?'
'Music, ma'am?'
And he's right, there isn't any music playing.
I'm flustered, that's all.
'Here on the wall you see the famous leather map, complete with the—'
'How long have you worked at Eltham?' I interrupt him. 'Oh, a long time. I've always been here really. Now ma'am, I see your gaze drifts to the velvet curtain there in the corner. Would you like to see the map room?'
He says 'map room' softly and with an especially repellent twist of his little simian face.
'Don't worry, I think I shall leave now, actually, I have a taxi b—'
'YOU CAN'T' he shrieks and squirms his hands around in his pockets. 'I mean, you must see the map room, there are paintings on the wall, only recently discovered, dating from the 1930s. It's one of the most remarkable rooms at Eltham Palace.'
My stomach wobbles.
'Paintings?'
'Come, come, ma'am' he says and holds back the curtain. 'You're going to enjoy this.'
I step through.
It's a small room with stained and torn maps on all the walls. Around the maps there are little painted motifs. A funny Irish man in a green suit. Coral, jewels, some faint airplanes, palm trees, camels and a thorny green dragon. My mouth is atrociously dry and I feel perhaps I am about to vomit. I realise with abject surety as I gaze upon them that these are my sister's paintings. That is Delia's sweet signature Britannia with a shield, the same Britannia she did on letterheads. I would know her curious style anywhere. My sister did these paintings, but how? And when? The night of the party? My brain skitters and leaps. I don't know what to think. I fear I must be having some kind of emotion-induced hallucination. I am about to ask the guide when I notice something. Above the European map there are two young women depicted, together, in frocks. One is slender and beautiful, with flowing red hair, she is flushed and grinning. The other is shorter, and plumper, less pretty, and she looks terrified. She is grimacing and pointing across the top of the map. 'You're going to be joining Delia' says the little man, behind me.
'What did you just say?' I spin about and face him.
'I said, "You're going to enjoy the detail there."'
I am so lightheaded I don't really understand what is happening. I turn back to look at the paintings and I support myself with one shaking hand on the wall.
What is that? On the wall. Bloody hell what in god's name . . .
I can scarcely believe my eyes, but the taller girl is paler than she was just seconds ago. She looks less confident. The painting is changing. I am unwell, surely. I keep on looking. The other less pretty lady is open-mouthed, blazing with intent, pointing along the top of the map. I follow her outstretched arm and there, perched on the end of the map, is a little man in brown robes, with a face like a lemur.
_SCREEEEAAACHH!_ ; from behind me a vicious explosion of noise.
I turn around brandishing my pathetic stick and the man leaps and he _is_ the lemur, the hideous Mah-Jongg, orange eyes glazed with rage, swivelling and spinning in their sockets, rows of sharp teeth all the way back into his black throat, and I start to scream and he leaps at me and knocks me back against the wall, punching me hard in the chest with two paw-like fists. I struggle against him, lashing out, and he bites my hand, like a dozen pins driven into my skin, and the pain is simply unbelievable. I howl. The shock of being attacked is atrocious, but the sheer surprise of the violence merges with appalling incredulity because as I have met the wall I have not stopped. The wall is soft. It seems to be absorbing me. I feel a gradual tug, then a stronger pull and I can't get my weight forward, I am shouting quite insanely now, yelping, gasping 'Oh GOD' terrified spitting gasps of panic 'HELP ME!' dribbling bursts of sobs, I am not strong enough, I am going to drown, the wall seems to be pulling me in, the lemur man has gone, and something is snarling and tugging at me from behind now, hissing, growling, pulling me into the wall, I kick and scramble and claw at the air, but all is liquid and the room is dark and I can't hold on and then all of a sudden through my wailing there is a familiar voice, a young woman's voice and she is saying 'No', she is angry and determined and she is saying 'No NO!' and I join her frantic calls and I start yelling 'No. Please, No!' and I feel two hands on my shoulders pushing me forward, strong but small hands, pushing me back out of the wall, out into the room and I call out in pain and confusion 'Delia? DELIA?!' and there is a hard two-handed thump of a final shove on my shoulders and I spill out onto the floor in a heap and pass beyond the nightmare into total dreadful collapse.
Dear Mr Porter,
Thank you for your letter.
I no longer work for English Heritage but yes I do remember Mrs Charbury.
This was 2012. I was meant to show her around. I found her on the front drive, in a terrible state. She said her sister Delia was trapped in some paintings in the map room and had been since 1937. She said the lemur had attacked her. I admit to you I thought it was nonsense. I thought she was crackers. For starters the palace was locked and alarmed.
I opened up after Mrs Charbury had left in the ambulance. There was nobody there. I called out the name Delia several times, because I had promised Mrs Charbury I would. I was embarrassed, and a little unnerved, alone in there calling out for someone. The map room was closed with no sign of any disturbance.
I searched the premises thoroughly. You ask about a bad feeling in there. Yes, I did have a bad feeling in there, that day. The only noteworthy thing was that one of the WW2 educational costumes from the basement, a brown woollen suit, had been left upstairs in the Mah-Jongg Suite, presumably by one of the half-term school parties. And that was that.
In 2014 when the restorers uncovered the paintings in the map room I admit I was highly perturbed and remembered Mrs Charbury's terrified ramblings about her sister. I attempted to make contact, but she had cancelled her English Heritage membership. I found her with a bit of googling and saw that she passed away back in 2012, after her visit to Eltham. Poor old dear, she died of an infected animal bite to her hand. Nasty business.
Anyway, strange old place, Eltham.
Good luck with your story,
Rory Kippax.
##
### WITHIN THESE WALLS
How the Castles, Abbeys and Houses of England Inspired the Ghost Story
_Andrew Martin_
The ruins of Minster Lovell Hall – an elegant Oxfordshire manor house of the fifteenth century – are promisingly located for the ghost fancier, lying between the graveyard of St Kenelm's church and a lonely stretch of the River Windrush. The English Heritage noticeboard announces that the site is open at 'any reasonable daylight hour', which possibly does not include dusk on a day of heavy rain. But those were the conditions as I stood alone before the manor, thinking of the rumoured discovery of a skeleton in the basement in 1718, supposedly the body of Francis Lovell who had hidden there after the Battle of Stoke in 1487, at the end of the Wars of the Roses, and died of starvation. All around me were sounds, some explicable (the cooing of doves roosting in the remains of the tower, the rushing of the Windrush), some less so. Suddenly, there was a great, grey shape over my head. I looked up and saw a bird – a heron, I think – coasting to land on the adjacent pond.
If I had run away without looking up, I would have had a ghost story. As I walked back to the house in which I was staying, I contemplated developing one anyway, just to see the effect of saying to my hostess, 'I saw a ghost just now at Minster Lovell Hall . . .' I would have felt the lie justified by the entertainment value, and it is possible that I would have forgotten that I was lying the moment I began the story. If I had told it well enough, my story might have been passed on by my hostess. She might have embellished it – consciously or unconsciously – in her turn, and each of these retellings would have been a tribute to the lure of the Minster Lovell ruins.
The dissemination of my tale would have been rather folkloric, in that it would have been communicated by word of mouth, with no undue fussiness about the facts. Since the late eighteenth century, we have kept our works of fiction and non-fiction on separate shelves, but a ghost story should always _seem to be_ non-fiction or – to use the word favoured by the late Victorian investigators of the Society for Psychical Research – 'veridical'.
Often, a tale's truthfulness is insisted on at the outset. Here is the title of what has been called, because of its forensic tone, the first modern ghost story: 'A true Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Veal the next day after her death to one Mrs Bargrave, at Canterbury, the eight of September, 1705'. The story, by Daniel Defoe, begins:
This thing is so rare in all its circumstances, and on so good authority, that my reading and conversation has not given me anything like it. It is fit to gratify the most ingenious and serious inquirer. Mrs Bargrave is the person to whom Mrs Veal appeared after her death; she is my intimate friend, and I can avouch for her reputation these past fifteen or sixteen years . . .
This presentation of credentials would become a familiar device and is used by Oscar Wilde in his parody 'The Canterville Ghost' (1887). As Lord Canterville says: 'I feel bound to tell you, Mr Otis, that the ghost has been seen by several living members of my family, as well as by the rector of the parish, the Reverend Augustus Dampier, who is a fellow of King's College, Cambridge.'
Whether nominally factual or fictional, ghosts tend to fit standard templates. By the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens could write that they are 'reducible to a very few general types and classes; for, ghosts have little originality and "walk" in a beaten track'. These words come from the mouth of the elderly and irritatingly sagacious narrator of 'A Christmas Tree' (1850), a minor Dickens' ghost story. Such ghost world-weariness doesn't belong to Dickens himself, who stated, 'I have always had a strong interest in the subject and never knowingly lose an opportunity of pursuing it.' But most ghosts _are_ conventional in their appearance and behaviour, either because that is just what they are like, or because that is what most people who talk about them are like.
The female ghosts of castles or big houses, for example, tend to be 'ladies' and they tend to be white. White ladies have been spotted at (among others) Beeston Castle in Cheshire, Rochester Castle, Kent and Goodrich Castle, Herefordshire. Wistful aristocratic ladies are also available in green (Helmsley Castle, Yorkshire) and blue (Berry Pomeroy Castle in Devon, commonly regarded as English Heritage's most haunted site, and also in possession of a white one).
Headlessness is another common complaint among ghosts. That icon of decapitation, Sir Walter Raleigh, appears at Sherborne Old Castle in Dorset and a headless drummer drums at Dover Castle. In the vicinity of Okehampton Castle in Devon, Lady Mary Howard (b. 1596) rides in a coach made from the bones of her four dead husbands, daintily decorated with a skull on every corner, and driven by a headless coachman. At dawn on old Christmas Day (about 6 January), a coach pulled by headless horses races through the ruins of Whitby Abbey and over the cliff edge – which makes me appreciate my computer's point when it keeps changing 'headless' into 'heedless'.
We cannot leave the stock spirits without mentioning ghostly monks. There is one or more at Waverley Abbey in Surrey, at Bayham Abbey and Reculver Towers in Kent, at Thetford and Binham Priories in Norfolk, at Hardwick Old Hall in Derbyshire, Rufford Abbey in Nottinghamshire, Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire, at Roche Abbey and Conisbrough Castle, both in South Yorkshire, and Whalley Abbey in Lancashire.
A historical digression is required here, in order to note that monks – as the principal chroniclers of medieval life – were also among the first ghost story writers. In about 1400, for example, a monk at the great Cistercian abbey of Byland in North Yorkshire transcribed twelve ghost stories in the spare pages at the end of a popular encyclopaedia, the _Elucidarium_ (so called because it shed light on points of theology and folk belief). The anonymous ghost story collector had the concern with provenance that we have already noted. He was careful in his scene setting – mentioning many places in the locality – and he gives the name of the protagonists in over half of the stories. The second tale, for example, concerns 'a miraculous struggle between a spirit and a man who lived in the time of Richard II' – a tailor called Snowball who encountered the ghost on his way home to Ampleforth, which is very near to Byland.
One ghost took the form of a disembodied voice shouting 'How, how, how' at midnight near a crossroads. It then turned into a pale horse, and when the percipient (William de Bradeforth) charged 'the spirit in the name of the Lord and by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ to depart', it withdrew 'like a piece of canvas unfurling its four corners and billowing away'. In other stories, the spirit is more corporeal, a revenant of the kind associated with Scandinavian folklore: a lumbering animated corpse. In the third story, the revenant – the spirit of a man called Robert from nearby Kilburn, who has been frightening the locals and making the dogs bark loudly – is captured in a graveyard and pinioned on the church stile, whereupon it, or he, begins to speak 'not with his tongue but from deep within his innards, as if from an empty barrel'. The story ends, as do most of the Byland ghost stories, and many others chronicled by monks throughout the Middle Ages, with the victim/protagonist confessing his sins and being given absolution. The monks did tend to conclude their stories in this way, stressing the efficacy of prayer in releasing souls from purgatory.
Even after the suppression of the monasteries, Catholics continued to believe in this pre-Reformation type of ghost: a soul returning and requesting prayers. Given that Protestantism had dispensed with the notion of purgatory, anyone holding such beliefs began to seem primitive and superstitious. Hence the sinister monks populating Gothic fiction, the genre that directly preceded the modern ghost story.
Gothic fiction (a romantic backlash against a dominant neo-classicism) had its lurid heyday in the late eighteenth century. It promoted the antique, the violent and the macabre. The spectral monks (as well as the white ladies and ranks of the headless) associated with so many English Heritage properties were probably instituted during this Gothic phase, monastics seeming to epitomise the decadence and hypocrisy of the medieval world that had brought their monasteries to ruin. Matthew Gregory Lewis set the template with _The Monk_ (1796), closely followed by such sensational works as _The Italian or the Confessional of the Black Penitents_ (1797) by Ann Radcliffe, _Gondez the Monk_ (1805) by William Henry Ireland and _Melmoth the Wanderer_ (1820) by Charles Maturin.
This anti-Catholic strain can perhaps still be detected in the work of the distinguished antiquarian and ghost story writer M.R. James, especially in the diabolism of the eponymous 'Count Magnus' (1904). (It was James, incidentally, who first transcribed and published the Byland stories – _transcribed_ , not translated; he enjoyed the 'very refreshing' Latin in which they were written.)
The Gothic writers were drawn towards monks not only because of their exotic theology, but also because they were so picturesquely accommodated. Gothic literature got its name, after all – from its association with medieval 'Gothic' buildings and ruins, from the monasteries and castles with their underground passages, brooding battlements and crumbling staircases. Its level of hysteria was unsustainable, however, and its energy was channelled, and the sinister backdrops tamed, in the more decorous historical romances of Walter Scott. The new sensationalism resided in ghost stories, whose authors tried to throw off the materialism implied by Darwinism, just as the Gothic writers rebelled against eighteenth-century rationalism.
It is arguable that ghost stories were the first form of 'genre fiction', and for a while scientific advances complemented, rather than negated, ghostliness. There is an analogy to be drawn, for example, between telegraphy and telepathy. These new ghosts went at large into the world, and the familiar stage sets – ruined castles or monasteries – were no longer required . . .
Ghosts migrated to residential areas, where captive audiences awaited. The dining room of almost any Victorian house might have accommodated a séance, whose genteel sitters were not expecting a galumphing Frankenstein-ian revenant of medieval ghost stories to pitch up. There was not sufficient faith to animate such a creature. It was accepted that the afterlife would be proved obliquely, by a disembodied voice, a drop in temperature, a movement of the planchette. If the sitters did manage to conjure up a manifestation, it would be fleeting and transparent.
Ghost hunting became increasingly domesticated, concerned with faces at the window, slamming doors, creaking floorboards, and scufflings behind the skirting board. (In Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories, the naive principals would at first attribute these noises to rats, but rats were not so lightly invoked after they had played their role in the horrors of the First World War trenches.) A classic of the haunted house genre is Sheridan Le Fanu's story of 1851, 'An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street'. In this story – the brilliance of which is suggested by the title alone (the gloominess of 'Aungier') – two Dublin students rent a house that had belonged to a hanging judge. Lying in bed one night, one of the young men becomes aware of 'a sort of horrid but undefined preparation going forward in some unknown quarter . . .' Le Fanu himself would be kept awake at night with horrible imaginings. He had a persistent nightmare of a large house collapsing on him as he slept, and when he died in bed – of a heart attack and with a shocked expression on his face – his doctor observed, 'That house fell at last!'
A bed is also the focal point of one of the best M.R. James ghost stories, 'Oh Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' (1904). The ghostliness starts out of doors. A very rationalist academic called Parkins is walking along a bleak, grey beach in Suffolk. He comes to the site of a Templar preceptory, where he unearths a bone whistle. He takes it back to the inn where he is lodging, and into his bedroom, where he rashly blows it, causing a wind to stir beyond the windows. It is in the bedroom that the manifestation finally occurs, in the form of crumpled bed linen – never to be forgotten by anyone who has seen Jonathan Miller's short film of the story, broadcast in 1968. My reading of this denouement is that the 'sincere and humourless' Parkins suffers a twofold comeuppance. First, there is the manifestation. Secondly, he is reduced to trembling fear by such a bathetic object as a bedsheet.
The most famous of all domestic hauntings was chronicled by the celebrated ghost hunter and charlatan, Harry Price, in his book of 1940, _The Most Haunted House in England_ – namely Borley Rectory in Essex. When he repaired to Borley, which he did regularly over ten years, Price carried his 'ghost hunter's kit', which included a flask of brandy (in case anybody fainted), and a pair of 'felt overshoes used for creeping unheard about the house in order that neither human beings nor paranormal "entities" shall be disturbed when producing "phenomena".' Here, you feel, is the ghost hunter as lounge lizard.
Any sort of house might be haunted. Dickens spoke of the 'avoided house', the neglected and mysterious property that is put to shame by (or possibly shames) the primness of the conventional dwellings on either side. In literature, haunted houses do tend to be at the upper end of the market. In Walter de la Mare's story, 'Out of the Deep' (1923), the protagonist, Jimmie, inherits his uncle's 'horrible old London mansion'. In 'Moonlight Sonata' (1931) by Alexander Woollcott one of the two principals inhabits 'the collapsing family manor house to which he had indignantly fallen heir'. Then again, poltergeists do not need a large, grand house. They will turn up anywhere there is furniture to throw about.
'Haunted Houses', a poem of 1858 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, begins:
All houses in which men have lived and died
Are haunted houses . . .
And the more deaths the better, frankly, which is why I went to Minster Lovell Hall at dusk. It is what takes me to any English Heritage property: as the more studious visitors are in the next room hearing about the dentilled cornice and door surrounds, I am lingering in the previous room, and staring into the clouded mirror, daring any face from the past to appear alongside my own.
I am hoping, in short, for the sight of a ghost, and the sense of wonderment that would – I am confident – accompany the jolt of pure fear.
### A GAZETTEER OF ENGLISH HERITAGE HAUNTINGS
Ghosts have been seen – or felt – at English Heritage sites the length and breadth of the country. Here is a nationwide selection – by no means exhaustive – of properties which are said to be haunted and the shuddering histories behind them, including the eight locations which inspired the stories in this book.
### **London**
### **Eltham Palace and Gardens**
This opulent palace, which at its peak far exceeded the size of Hampton Court, began life as the manor of Bishop Odo of Bayeux, half-brother of William the Conqueror. In 1296 Bishop Antony Bek of Durham built a manor house, parts of which have been excavated, and in the early fourteenth century Edward II gave this moated manor to his wife. It became a favourite royal residence and was greatly enlarged. The great hall seen today was built by Edward IV in the 1470s, a magnificent space for the king to entertain up to 2,000 guests, as he did in 1482. Henry VIII spent much of his boyhood at Eltham, but under Elizabeth I the palace began to fall into ruin. It wasn't until 1933 that it was returned to a state of splendour, when the fashionable couple Stephen and Virginia (Ginie) Courtauld leased the estate from the Crown. Stephen was enormously rich – having inherited wealth enough from his family's textile business to live at leisure, pursuing cultural and philanthropic interests. While preserving the medieval hall, he and Ginie employed the architects Sealy and Paget to build a new home, fitted with every technological convenience: a glamorous, ultra-modern setting for their collections of art and furniture, and their regular parties.
Ginie had a much-adored pet lemur named Mah-Jongg who was infamous for biting people he did not like. Mah-Jongg had his own heated and designer-decorated sleeping quarters at Eltham which can be seen today. The leather map of the estate mentioned in Max Porter's story was created for the Courtaulds and remains above the fireplace in the boudoir. The vignettes he describes are in the neighbouring map room, where conservators have recently uncovered (beneath later wallpaper) large maps of areas to which the Courtaulds travelled pasted to the walls. The vignettes were painted onto the walls adjacent the maps, depicting scenes and characters from around the world.
But the most famous ghost of Eltham is reputedly one of the palace tour guides, who was deeply attached to the place and died only a week after retiring. He has been seen subsequently, conducting tours when the house is meant to be shut. Staff report numerous other incidents, so frequent that, when asked, one laughed at the suggestion that this must be disturbing and declared that they get used to it: the low voices and footsteps heard when locking up the house at night, and the mysterious locking or unlocking of doors. This happens regularly on the minstrels' gallery above the great hall and in one of the adjoining bedrooms used by Ginie's nephews.
Another intriguing report is that of a woman in medieval dress who has been seen a few times by security guards at night. She has been observed walking through the arches of the passage at the end of the great hall, through the cupboards that now conceal the arches and the modern electrics which are installed there.
### **Chiswick House and Gardens**
Chiswick House is one of the most significant – and enchanting – examples of eighteenth-century British architecture. It was designed and built by the 3rd Earl of Burlington in the 1720s, a pioneer work of neo-classical architecture inspired by the sixteenth-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio and by the villas, temples and palaces of ancient Rome. The ornate interiors and formal gardens were created by Burlington and the architect, painter and garden designer William Kent.
The gardens were restored during a major project in 2010. Earlier conservation work, in 1958, seems to have restored something rather different – the cook. Workmen began to smell frying bacon in an area that once housed the kitchens. The men put it down to a ghostly cook – apparently still bent on duties at the kitchen range.
**Jewel Tower**
Nestling discreetly between the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, the tower is a precious survivor of the medieval Palace of Westminster. The Jewel Tower was built in 1365 by Edward III at the south-west corner of his palace, beside his private apartments and garden. It was intended to house his personal collection of jewels, gold and silver.
In the 1950s excavation of the moat turned up various objects, among them, most curiously, two heads: one of a man and one of a cat. The cat was of especial interest as her skull had been skinned and painted green. Superstition? A witch's familiar? But it is neither man nor cat that seems to haunt the tower, although the cat's skull is on display. A woman has been seen to walk through the wall into the tower courtyard, dressed in the fashion of the seventeenth century – at which time there had indeed been a door in the wall to the courtyard.
**Kenwood**
This magnificent house, triumphantly restored, stands on the edge of Hampstead Heath in parkland landscaped by Humphry Repton. Kenwood was remodelled by Robert Adam between 1764 and 1779 for William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and contains some of Adam's finest surviving interiors. In 1925 Kenwood was bought by Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, and subsequently left by him to the nation, together with an outstanding collection of Old Master and British paintings, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Turner, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Constable and Romney.
In the upper hall, off the great stair, are the dazzling full-length portraits from the Suffolk Collection. Here, with no one but a room attendant present, the door has been known to slam shut with some violence. Some suggest it could be the ghost of one of Kenwood's most famous residents, Dido Elizabeth Belle, the mixed-race great-niece of Lord Mansfield.
### **The South East**
### **Dover Castle, Kent**
Dover Castle stands high on the White Cliffs above the English Channel at the narrowest crossing point between England and France. It has seen unbroken active service from its first building under William the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 until the Cold War. In 1216 it withstood one of the most terrible medieval English sieges, after which a remarkable series of new defences was built, linked together by underground tunnels, and enlarged and extended in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In 1797, during the Napoleonic Wars, a new series of tunnels was excavated within the famous white cliffs themselves to accommodate the large number of troops needed to man the defences. During the Second World War these tunnels housed the command centre that controlled naval operations in the Channel, and it was from here that in May 1940 the 'miracle' of Dunkirk was planned and coordinated – resulting in the evacuation of 338,000 Allied troops from the coast of France.
Dover has sheltered many thousands of lives within its walls over its long history. It is no wonder ghost stories abound. In the great tower, the lower half of a man's body was seen by two members of staff in the doorway to the King's chamber. Another staff member, while cleaning the basement, saw the figure of a Cavalier, and another has seen the figure of a woman in a red dress on the stairs and along the mural gallery. There are no stories attached to any of the ghosts at Dover, except for that of a drummer boy: it is said that the boy was carrying a sum of money on an errand to the castle and was attacked and decapitated. There have been numerous reports of the beat of his drum near the castle battlements.
Although there are no recorded reports of an American airman, such as in Stuart Evers' story, the ghosts of naval officers have been seen in the castle's wartime tunnels. Here, too, there are regular reports by staff and visitors of slamming doors, footsteps and voices, as well as one curious sighting of a seventeenth-century pikeman. An American couple commented to staff on the very realistic cries and moans of the audio recreation within the tunnels, but there was no such recreation then in place.
Intrigued by the frequency of all these phenomena, in 1991 a team of investigators visited Dover Castle, recording various events, the most remarkable being a pair of shaking doors in the great tower's stairwell, which was caught on video tape – the footage was later shown on the television series _Strange but True?_. There is another oddity. During the filming of this episode a psychic was called in. He was 'given the name Helen' while standing in the wartime tunnels' repeater room – reportedly the most haunted of the castle. A few days later an Australian tourist said she had seen a man in the tunnels who seemed distressed, and asked her 'where Helen was'. Years later, during an exercise in the tunnels on a school trip, a boy drew a figure with a speech bubble: 'Where is Helen?' – the question asked him, he told staff, by a man he had met in the tunnels.
### **Medieval Merchant's House, Southampton, Hampshire**
This house was built in about 1290 for a wine merchant, one John Fortin, and stands on what was one of the busiest streets of medieval Southampton near the town wall. Southampton had developed into a large and prosperous port, grown rich on Continental trade. Fortin's house included a cellar where he could store his wine, a shop at the front of the ground floor, and a bed chamber which was jettied out over the street below.
The house has been restored to its appearance in the mid-fourteenth century, including the cellar. Some years ago, staff raked over the cellar floor, which was then covered with gravel, before leaving and locking up for the day. The following morning they were astonished to see a set a footprints clearly visible in the gravel. The footprints started in the middle of the room and disappeared into a wall – the last one only partly visible, as if the ghostly tread had walked on through the stones.
### **Netley Abbey, Hampshire**
The ruins of Netley Abbey form the most complete survival of a Cistercian monastery in southern England. The abbey was founded in 1238 by the powerful Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, and after the Suppression was granted by Henry VIII to Sir William Paulet, his treasurer, who converted the abbey into a mansion house. But in 1704 the house was sold for building materials. The remainder gradually fell into ruin, its state of romantic neglect by the end of the eighteenth century inspiring many a Gothic writer and Romantic spirit.
One of the many ghosts reported at Netley is said to be the man to whom the house was sold for building materials in 1704 – a Southampton builder named Walter Taylor. Having signed the contract, Taylor dreamed that a stone from one of the church windows fell upon his head and killed him. He consulted a friend about the dream, afraid that it was a warning, but in the end decided to go ahead with the demolition. While at work at the east end of the abandoned church a stone from a window arch fell on his head, fractured his skull and killed him.
### **Portchester Castle, Hampshire**
Portchester Castle, at the north end of Portsmouth Harbour, is set within the imposing walls of a Roman 'Saxon shore' fort – the most complete example in northern Europe. During Norman rule a keep was built, turning the shore fort into a castle, which was expanded and modernised throughout the Middle Ages. It remained a residence into the seventeenth century and was used to house prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars. The last of these prisoners left in 1819.
Given its long and varied history, it is not surprising that Portchester's ghosts are similarly varied – a monk who wanders the bank along the outer wall (an Augustinian priory was founded here in the twelfth century), a Roman centurion who stands guard at the gatehouse and a Victorian woman in white. On one occasion a member of staff and a visitor witnessed a horse gallop across the inner bailey ward. It might have been mistaken for a living creature, had not the horse emerged from the castle walls and simply disappeared across the bailey.
### **Upnor Castle, Kent**
Upnor Castle was built by order of Elizabeth I in 1559 on the bank of the River Medway to defend the royal fleet and new dockyard developing near the village of Chatham, just a little upstream. It was enlarged at the end of the sixteenth century and in 1667 the brave efforts of its garrison helped prevent Dutch warships from reaching and destroying Chatham during their otherwise victorious raid on the Medway. The castle then became a powder magazine to supply the Navy and a series of new defences being built along the river. By 1691 Upnor had become its largest gunpowder store. To protect this cache of explosives a small company of soldiers was employed and soon after 1718 was housed in the new barracks – one of the earliest in the country.
'Ghost truths, not ghost stories' is how one present-day member of staff describes the situation at Upnor. There is a list of usual occurences. This staff member, sweeping up before closing time, saw a boy in Georgian clothes standing outside the barracks, holding out his hand as if passing a message at the door. He vanished after a minute or so. More disturbingly, a face appeared over another member of staff's shoulder in the gatehouse – a man with straggly, shoulder length hair, about forty years old. But it is the shop in the barracks that causes the most trouble. Here staff have seen handfuls of leaflets thrown to the floor in front of their eyes, and found, on opening up in the morning, boxes of merchandise hurled across the room, their contents scattered. Once – less petulantly, it seems – a basket of toy rings, with the pirate's skull and crossbones, had been turned upside down on the shop counter, the basket placed neatly over the top.
### **Tilbury Fort, Essex**
This coastal fort on the Thames estuary is the finest example of a seventeenth-century bastioned fortress in England, with its complete circuit of moats and outworks still substantially surviving. It was begun in 1670, under Charles II, on the site of an earlier fort built by Henry VIII, and was designed to stop warships sailing upriver and its garrison equipped to prevent land attack. In 1716 two powder magazines were built to store vast quantities of gunpowder destined for the government forces of the emerging Empire. Scottish prisoners were held here after the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and much later the fort's modern guns helped shoot down a raiding Zeppelin during the First World War.
A diary is held at the fort that belonged to one James Bowley who joined the army in 1838. In it he describes an event on the Thames after the Royal Engineers were sent to clear a brig, _The William_ , that had been hit by a paddle steamer and caught in the shipping lanes of the Thames. The Engineers sank a chest of explosives beneath it to blow it up into removable pieces but one of the men, Corporal Henry Mitchell, became caught during the operation. He was wearing the heavy, cumbersome diving gear of the time and his oxygen pipe became entangled. He did not surface in time and the brig blew, people unknowingly cheering on the riverside. Mitchell was found among the debris and brought to the surgeon at the fort, but nothing could be done. The figure of this unfortunate young man is said to haunt the fort where he died.
A man's mumbling voice and his footsteps are also sometimes heard in the chapel – believed to be the ghost of a former chaplain. Redcoat soldiers have been reported marching by the blast walls as well as other sundry voices of both men and women.
### **The South West**
### **Pendennis Castle, Cornwall**
This Tudor fortress, together with its twin, St Mawes, stands near Falmouth, at the entrance to the Carrick Roads, the huge natural harbour at the mouth of the River Fal. The two castles face each other across a mile of sea, where for more than 400 years their guns pointed south to the open Channel, and inwards, barring access to the river. They were built in the 1540s as part of Henry VIII's sweeping programme of defence, amid the national fear of invasion from the Catholic powers of Europe. The danger passed, but the fortresses remained armed until 1956, playing an active role in the English Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars and both the First and the Second World Wars.
Pendennis was prepared as a winter quarters for Prince Charles, the future Charles II, from October 1645, and he spent several weeks there early in 1646, leaving in early March for safety on the Isles of Scilly. (His mother Queen Henrietta Maria had also stayed briefly in July 1644 before escaping to France.)
The Killigrews were an ancient and prominent Cornish family who lived at the manor of Arwenack in the lee of Pendennis. In the 1540s John Killigrew (d. 1567) was made the first governor of Pendennis Castle. His eldest son, also called John, succeeded as governor of the castle and, like his father and many other gentlemen seafarers of the day, colluded with the very pirates he was employed to challenge. His wife, Mary, seems to have taken part in her husband's activities. The Killigrews rebuilt their home, Arwenack, in 1567, incorporating defensive features such as gun ports.
When it comes to ghosts at Pendennis, there are many: a child visiting with his grandparents gave a detailed description of a soldier in the shell store of Half-Moon Battery; a former head custodian regularly saw a young woman on the stairs of the keep when he unlocked it in the mornings; but it seems that the one-time lieutenant governor of the castle, Captain Philip Melvill, puts in some of the most regular appearances. He was appointed in 1797 and remained at Pendennis until his death in 1811. At the age of nineteen he had been sent with his regiment to India where he was severely wounded, taken prisoner, and kept in brutal conditions for four years. His injuries, which were left untreated, never healed, and he was invalided out of active service. He liked to sit in his chair at the window of his rooms at Pendennis, watching the boats in the bay. Staff report that they frequently find a chair moved to this window in his old rooms on the first floor of the castle forebuilding. They also hear the sound of it being dragged there. And, as a member of staff points out – why dragged? Would Melvill not have lifted it? Melvill's old wounds from India meant that he had the use of only one arm; his left he wore in a sling.
### **Berry Pomeroy Castle, Devon**
Tucked away in Devon woodland, Berry Pomeroy Castle must be counted among the most picturesque and romantic ruins in England. It has also built up a reputation as one of the most haunted. Built by the Pomeroy family in the fifteenth century during the Wars of the Roses, it was later acquired in the mid-sixteenth century by Edward Seymour, 'Protector Somerset' – the most powerful man in the realm – and was developed by the Seymour family into a great mansion, so ambitious and grandiose in scale that the money eventually ran out, and the site was abandoned by 1700.
While many of the ghost stories about the castle may be attributed to the imagination of the Victorians, there does seem to be something that troubles this place. It manifests itself chiefly in malfunctioning technology: failing cameras and smart phones, and inexplicable footage taken by a professional cameraman filming on site. He discovered the film to be entirely blank, though the audio track was intact, if disturbed by 'occasional screeches and other odd noises'. One visitor recalled driving here with his friends one night in his youth. They saw something white in the woods and ran back to their cars in terror – but none of their cars would start. They fled on foot and returned the next morning only to find that their cars started perfectly. It took twenty years before one of the men dared to return to the spot with his partner, but she ended up visiting the castle alone. There was no way, he said, he was going 'in there'.
### **Farleigh Hungerford Castle, Somerset**
Sir Thomas Hungerford began this fortified mansion in the 1370s. It was extended by his son and remained in the Hungerford family until the late seventeenth century, when the notorious spendthrift Sir Edward Hungerford sold it. In the vault of the family chapel there is a unique collection of human-shaped lead coffins, the resting place of this somewhat scandal-plagued family. Two were executed during the Wars of the Roses. Another, who imprisoned his own wife at the castle for four years, half-starving her and attempting to poison her, was later beheaded beside Thomas Cromwell by Henry VIII, accused of treason, witchcraft and homosexuality. By this time he was considered by his contemporaries so 'unquiet' as to be mad.
But none of these Hungerford men are said to haunt the buildings, rather it is Lady Agnes Hungerford who is sometimes seen in the chapel – perhaps repenting her deeds. Agnes was convicted of inciting and abetting two of her servants to murder her first husband, after which his body was disposed of in the castle kitchen's oven and she promptly married Sir Edward Hungerford. After her second husband's death she and the servants were hanged at Tyburn.
### **Old Wardour Castle, Wiltshire**
This remarkable castle in a remote valley was built by John, 5th Lord Lovell, one of the richest barons in England, in the 1390s. It was at the time as sophisticated as any building in Europe, its hexagonal design pioneering in its arrangement of luxurious self-contained suites for guests and its whole a symbol of Lovell's closeness to the opulent court of Richard II – a cousin of his wife. In 1578 the new owner, Sir Matthew Arundell, decided to modernise this exquisite castle, adapting it for Elizabethan living. But during the Civil War in the 1640s it was besieged, partially blown up, and afterwards left to fall into ruin.
The usual ghost at Old Wardour is said to be that of Sir Thomas Arundell's wife, the indomitable Lady Blanche, who in her husband's absence during the Civil War mustered twenty-five men and servants, and withstood a siege against 1,300 Parliamentarians for six days before surrendering. But what visitors report encountering on the spiral staircase is not the figure of brave Blanche but a light, as if of a lantern, and the sound of a deep groan.
### **Portland Castle, Dorset**
This squat, compact coastal artillery fortress was built for Henry VIII in 1540 to protect the important anchorage known as the Portland Roads. It was one of a chain of such forts built along the southern coast at a period of threatened invasion from Catholic Europe. It remained armed and garrisoned into the nineteenth century, was then converted into a private house, but returned to military use at the end of the century and remained in service until after the Second World War. During the Civil War, the island of Portland was a Royalist stronghold, while the nearby merchant town of Weymouth backed Cromwell. The castle was much fought over, and taken and retaken several times by both Parliamentarian and Royalist forces.
Richard Wiseman, a Royalist surgeon, and later surgeon to Charles II, recalled attending to one of the soldiers of the Portland Garrison in 1645. The man was haemorrhaging, and Wiseman cauterised the wound, using a heated poker. As well as pushes and pinches in otherwise empty rooms, when in the castle kitchen, where this surgery is said to have taken place, visitors have reported the smell of burning flesh.
### **Yorkshire and the Humber**
### **York Cold War Bunker, York**
The Cold War Bunker in York, headquarters of the Royal Observer Corps, No. 20 Group, was opened in 1961 at the height of the Cold War. In 1949, the unstable relationship between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies following the Second World War deteriorated when the Soviets detonated a test nuclear bomb. In response Britain intensified its nuclear arms development and began to research and plan for possible nuclear attack. In 1956, the Ministry of Works began designs for nuclear-resistant bunkers. York Cold War Bunker was one of twenty-nine such bunkers built to form a network of semi-secret posts to observe and monitor nuclear attack. It was built underground of reinforced concrete, three storeys deep, 'tanked' in three layers of asphalt protected by brickwork, and then covered with earth. Here, after the world outside had been devastated and contaminated, a body of service men and women would seal themselves off behind the airlock doors and attempt, from the operations room at the heart of this sunken asylum, to make contact with the surviving outer world. The bunker remained manned and ready until it was decommissioned in 1991.
Perhaps due to its short and mercifully uneventful life – only thirty years, and witness only to peacetime activities – there are no known accounts of ghosts here. Instead this chilling underground stronghold seems to be haunted by its own once-dreaded fate.
### **Scarborough Castle, North Yorkshire**
Scarborough Castle stands on a dramatic promontory with sweeping panoramic views over the North Sea and surrounding coastline. The Romans built a signal station here in the fourth century ad and Henry II's massive twelfth-century great tower still dominates the site. The castle was besieged several times, notably by rebel barons in 1312, and twice during the Civil War. It was shelled and badly damaged by German warships during the First World War.
It was during the siege of 1312 that the favourite of Edward II, Piers Gaveston, who had taken refuge in the castle, was captured. Although promised safe conduct on his surrender, he was seized on the return south by his great enemy the Earl of Warwick – whom Gaveston had disparagingly named the 'Black Dog' – and summarily beheaded. Visitors have reported being pushed and shoved in empty rooms, and, according to local legend, the ghost of Gaveston tries to lure people to their death over the edge of the castle cliff.
### **Whitby Abbey, North Yorkshire**
The great ruins of the abbey can be seen from many miles away, dominating the headland above picturesque Whitby. The first abbey was founded here in 657 by King Oswiu of Northumbria, and its first abbess was the formidable Anglo-Saxon Princess Hild. It was here that the cowherd Caedmon was miraculously inspired to become a poet and the great synod of Whitby was held in 664 to determine the future direction of the Church in England. This abbey was abandoned in the ninth century, probably after Viking raids. The ruins seen today are not of this abbey but of the one founded in the eleventh century by a Benedictine monk, Reinfrid. The new abbey grew to be one of the most powerful monasteries in Yorkshire, but was suppressed in 1539. Part of it was converted into a handsome mansion, a section of which remains today. The Gothic ruins provide the unforgettable backdrop to the arrival of Dracula in England in Bram Stoker's novel. In his book, Lucy Westenra is curious about the ghost of a 'white lady' said to have been seen at one of the abbey's windows, though a sceptical local tells her bluntly that such stories are 'all very well for comers and trippers an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you.'
### **Byland Abbey, North Yorkshire**
The Cistercian abbey of Byland was regarded in its heyday as one of the three great abbeys of Yorkshire, alongside Rievaulx and Fountains. The enormous late twelfth-century church was bigger than most cathedrals of the time. Its west front, which dominates the ruins with the remains of a great circular rose window above three tall pointed lancet windows, proclaims Byland as an outstanding example of early Gothic architecture, a pioneer of the style in northern England. At the Suppression, Byland passed into private ownership, and fell into ruin. But one of the most remarkable survivals from the abbey is the medieval collection of ghost stories written in Latin by one of the monks at Byland in about 1400. One of the strangest tales clearly troubled the writer so much that he expresses the hope that he may not come to any harm for having written it down. It relates how, in days gone by, Jacob Tankerlay, a former rector of a nearby parish, who had been buried in front of the monks' chapter house at Byland, would rise from his grave at night to visit his former mistress. One night he 'breathed out into her eye'. It is not clear exactly what this means but the verb _exsufflare_ (literally, 'to blow out') is used in the context of exorcism at baptism and also associated with magic rites. Whatever happened, the consequence was that the abbot and chapter took the drastic step of excavating the coffin and having it thrown into a lake. The monk concludes by praying that God should have mercy on Jacob if he is among the souls to receive salvation.
### **Helmsley Castle, North Yorkshire**
The ruins of Helmsley Castle stand on a rocky outcrop above the River Rye. It was first built in the early twelfth century by Walter Espec, a Norman baron of 'gigantic stature' with a voice 'like a trumpet', known for his soldiering and his piety – he founded nearby Rievaulx Abbey and Kirkham Priory. Helmsley passed to his sister's husband, Peter de Ros, and he and his descendants raised most of the massive stonework defences seen today. In 1508, Helmsley came into the hands of Thomas Manners, who remodelled part of the castle into a luxurious mansion. The castle's only – but significant – military trial was a siege in 1644 during the Civil War. It was held by a small garrison for the king for three months before surrendering, during which time four men were killed. Later in the Civil War, Royalist prisoners were held in the basement of the west tower. It is one of these unhappy soldiers, killed by cannon fire or simply returning to the place of a wretched imprisonment, who is said to be seen sitting among the castle ruins.
### **The East of England**
### **Audley End, Essex**
This magnificent Jacobean house was built on the site of Walden Abbey, a twelfth-century Benedictine monastery that was suppressed on 22 March 1538. Five days later Henry VIII gave it to his Chancellor, Thomas, Lord Audley, to adapt for his own use. Audley converted the ranges around the monks' cloister into a courtyard house. He demolished the east end of the church, which extended from the north side of the cloister into what is now the parterre, or formal garden. Its foundations, as well as burials in what would have been the monks' cemetery, were discovered during work on this garden. Audley's grandson, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, rebuilt the house between 1605 and 1614 on a palatial scale. Charles II bought this ready-made palace from the 3rd Earl in 1667; then Audley End was returned to the Howards in 1701. Later in the century the Countess of Portsmouth began remodelling the house and gardens. She bequeathed it to her nephew in 1762, who commissioned Lancelot 'Capability' Brown to transform the gardens and Robert Adam to add a fashionable suite of reception rooms. In the 1820s, the 3rd Baron Braybrooke, a scholar and antiquarian, redecorated many of its rooms in the Jacobean style.
The massive oak screen in the great hall, with its carved busts and festoons of fruit, was probably originally brightly painted. In the eighteenth century it was painted white to represent the then fashionable stucco. The 3rd Baron stripped the screen back to the wood, as it remains today, and bought Jacobean furniture and an eclectic collection of arms to display in the house. His son, the 4th Baron, had a passion for natural history and his collection of stuffed and mounted animals is to be seen in the house.
There is no known curse attached to the screen, as in Sarah Perry's story, nor a monk who hanged himself here, but staff have experienced various peculiar happenings. A couple of years ago after closing time two members of staff doing a final check in the great hall smelt violets before the portrait of Margaret Audley. They summoned a colleague, who smelt the same thing. The scent moved about the hall and then simply vanished. On another occasion, a staff member was standing at the window outside the chapel when she felt the presence of someone behind her. She turned to see a tall aristocratic-looking man in dark clothing who then walked into the chapel. She followed him, but he had vanished. A black and white dog was seen in the butler's pantry by a new member of staff showing visitors round. She assumed it was a guide dog only to discover there were no dogs in the building. Oddly, Lord Howard de Walden and his wife, who rented Audley from 1904, left in 1912 after becoming convinced the place was haunted: while playing billiards he had seen a dog 'rush in through the wall'.
### **Bury St Edmunds Abbey, Suffolk**
The abbey, founded in 1020, became one of the richest and most powerful Benedictine monasteries in England. The surviving structures are extensive and include the impressive Great Gate and remains of the immense church and monastic complex. The site became home to the remains of Edmund, king of the East Angles (d. 869), in 903 and the acquisition of such a notable relic made the monastery a place of pilgrimage as well as the recipient of numerous royal grants. It was here in 1214 that King John's discontented barons assembled to discuss their grievances against him – which led to Runnymede and the sealing of Magna Carta the following year. Although after the Suppression the abbey precinct was soon stripped of valuable building material, the abbot's lodging survived as a house until 1720.
Bury's monks must have been deeply attached to the abbey. Sightings of monastic ghosts are numerous and wide ranging. In the 1960s Enid Crossley, who lived in a cottage built in the medieval remains of the abbey, claimed that a monk regularly crossed her bedroom. Another has been seen disappearing through the wall of a butcher's shop and hanging around the basement of a local pub. He may be the lover of the spectral nun in grey, said to have been involved with one of the monks of Bury, and often seen around the place – occasionally in the pub.
### **Castle Rising Castle, Norfolk**
This spectacular keep, one of the best preserved and most lavishly decorated in England, stands with its associated buildings surrounded by massive earthworks on a broad spur above the village of Castle Rising. Norman lord William d'Albini began work on the castle in 1138 for his new wife, the widow of Henry I. In the fourteenth century it became the luxurious residence of Queen Isabella, widow of Edward II, and the suite of buildings to the south of the keep was probably built for her. After her death it was held by the Black Prince, who ordered and authorised various building works here. In 1544 it was granted by Henry VIII to the Howard family in whose hands it remains today; the current owner is also a descendant of d'Albini, the castle's founder.
It is the presence of the formidable Isabella which is felt most strongly at Castle Rising, where visitors believe they have heard the skirts of her dress rustling on the stairs and in the white room, one of the upper chambers of the castle. In 2015, during an investigation, a photograph was taken in this room that revealed an unexpected shape: the shadowy figure of a woman in medieval dress.
### **Framlingham Castle, Suffolk**
Framlingham is a magnificent late twelfth-century castle, its striking outline reflected in its glassy mere. The castle was built by Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, one of the most influential courtiers under the Plantagenet kings. It remained the home to the earls and dukes of Norfolk for over 400 years, after which it was briefly owned by Mary Tudor, where she mustered her supporters in 1553 after the death of her brother, Edward VI. At the end of the sixteenth century, by now partly ruinous, the castle was used as a prison to hold Catholic priests and recusants. In about 1600 it held forty prisoners. The following century a poorhouse was built within its walls. It was occupied until 1839.
As to ghosts, staff at Framlingham report footsteps in the upper room of the medieval hall that now forms the Lanman Museum, as well as 'constant muttering' on the back stairs. One winter evening while alone in the castle, a member of staff heard a bell ring right beside her – the sort of hand bell that might have been used in the poorhouse to summon the inmates. On another occasion, one of the stewards arrived at the castle one morning and, as she went to turn on the lights, she saw a man standing dressed all in black wearing a Puritan-style hat and long cloak. She has never seen him again – fortunately – as she vows she would no longer be working at the castle if she had.
### **The Midlands**
### **Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire**
Situated in the heart of England, Kenilworth was one of the mightiest fortresses in the country, a vast castle which withstood a famous medieval siege and is renowned for its association with Elizabeth I and her favourite, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, to whom the queen granted the castle in 1563. A castle was first established here in the 1120s. Later in the century Henry II took it under his control and it was his building work and that of his son, King John, that extended the castle to much the form it retains today. In 1244 this strategic and magnificent stronghold was granted by Henry III to Simon de Montfort – then a great royal favourite who strengthened the castle further and installed 'unheard of . . . machines' – probably the trebuchets (huge counterweighted catapults) that would soon to be used here in the longest medieval siege on English soil.
After the death of de Montfort during the Second Barons' War, his followers withdrew inside the castle. The king sent a messenger to demand their surrender. Instead, they sent him back to his master with a severed hand. The resultant great siege lasted six months. Disease and starvation finally forced the surrender of the rebels.
Kenilworth was subsequently developed as a palace by John of Gaunt, and became a favoured residence of the Lancastrian kings before passing to the Dudley family under Henry VIII. The last great works at the castle were carried out by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who built what is now known as Leicester's Building, a four-storey tower block erected in 1571 specifically to provide private accommodation for Elizabeth I. The queen visited four times, the last time in 1575, and the current Elizabethan gardens are a recreation of those Leicester created for that visit as part of his extensive efforts to impress the queen and win her hand in marriage.
The three-storey gatehouse in Kamila Shamsie's story was built by Leicester between 1570 and 1575. In 1650 it was converted into a house and an extension created at the back, where the staff office and kitchen now are. Staff have reported peculiar happenings in the gatehouse – things missing or moved once the castle has been closed to visitors, and the antique cot in the adjoining room rocking by itself. A night watchman reported that, while patrolling the grounds one evening, he witnessed a ghostly figure walk through his colleague, who went cold as it happened. Certainly, staff are used to various unexplained happenings. Some say ghostly chickens have even been seen pecking about the stables.
### **Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire**
This extraordinary seventeenth-century aristocratic retreat stands on the site of a medieval castle perched high on a ridge above the Vale of Scarsdale. The medieval ruins were used as the setting for the exquisite Little Castle, built by Charles Cavendish from 1612 as an escape from his principal seat nearby. His son, William, added the terrace and the riding house, which remains the earliest complete survival in England. Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria were entertained at Bolsover by Cavendish in 1634 with a lavish feast and entertainment. This was its heyday. By the end of the century the castle began to decline, though Cavendish descendants used it as a retreat until the early nineteenth century. Indeed, it remains occupied today, permanently it would seem.
Bolsover is one of the most widely reported haunted sites in the care of English Heritage. Members of staff and visitors often report being pushed, having doors slammed on them and finding objects inexplicably moved. Night security guards have been alarmed by unexplained lights and movement in the empty property, and two workmen were terrified when they saw a woman disappear through a wall. A little boy has been seen holding the hands of women or children as they walk about the site, his living companions unaware that he is at their side.
### **Hardwick Old Hall, Derbyshire**
Hardwick Old Hall was built between 1587 and 1596 by Bess of Hardwick, who was among the richest and best-connected women of the Elizabethan age. The design was for the time radically modern, drawing on the latest Italian domestic innovations. Although now only a romantic shell, it suggests the magnificence of Bess's status and aspirations. When her fourth and final marriage, to George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, broke down acrimoniously, Bess retreated to Hardwick, where she enlarged and remodelled the medieval manor into the house now known as Hardwick Old Hall. When her husband died, leaving Bess staggeringly rich, she began work on a new hall immediately beside the old: the two intended to function like two wings of one building. Bess's descendants came to prefer Chatsworth to Hardwick, however, and in the eighteenth century the old hall was dismantled.
Staff and visitors alike have heard voices and nonexistent doors opening and closing. It is said that the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who enjoyed the patronage of the Cavendish family and died at Hardwick Hall in 1679, haunts the grounds. Here he is joined by Bess, who people claim still glides through her once magnificent creation.
### **Peveril Castle, Derbyshire**
The 'Castle of the Peak', as Peveril was known in the Middle Ages, was founded soon after the Norman Conquest by the same powerful knight, William Peveril, who built Bolsover Castle. Its dramatic hilltop location high above what is now the Derbyshire town of Castleton was a clear position of dominance over the surrounding lands and it played an important role in guarding the Peak Forest lead-mining area. In 1155 it was taken into possession of the Crown, its defences strengthened and the keep built. The only real action that the castle saw occurred in 1216, at the end of the reign of King John. Despite the sealing of Magna Carter the year before, many of John's most powerful barons were still in rebellion, and Peveril was held for them by the constable of the Peak, Brian de Lisle. He was repeatedly ordered by the king to hand it over, refused, and was eventually ousted by force. How many of his or the king's men were killed at the time, if any, is not known, but reportedly a knight in a white surcoat has been seen standing beside the keep and on the ramparts, and a riderless horse and a black dog in the castle grounds – perhaps his? Visitors report banging and clanking, suggesting the iron-clad limbs of this same lonely knight still patrolling the castle walls.
After the death of John of Gaunt, who held the castle at the end of the fourteenth century, the castle fell into a decline from which it never recovered. Today it is one of the most romantic sites in this spectacular stretch of England.
### **Goodrich Castle, Herefordshire**
Magnificent Goodrich stands in woodland on a rocky crag, commanding the valley of the River Wye. Goodrich led a largely peaceful existence until 1646, when Parliamentary forces under their commander Colonel John Birch bombarded and brought down the north-west tower before storming the castle and its Royalist garrison.
The keep was built in about 1150, probably by Richard 'Strongbow' de Clare and Goodrich subsequently passed to one of the greatest soldiers of that era, William Marshall, 'the best knight in all the world' according even to an enemy. But it was probably under William's granddaughter and her husband that the splendid castle whose remains dominate the site today was built. After its partial destruction in the Civil War the castle fell into ruin, a magnet for visitors in search of the Romantic and the Picturesque.
During the violent siege of Goodrich, so the story goes, Colonel Birch's niece, Alice, took refuge in the castle with her Royalist lover, Charles Clifford. As the battering of the castle by her uncle's men grew in violence, the lovers took fright and ran, trying to escape across the River Wye under cover of darkness. But the waters were high and they were swept away by the currents and drowned. They are said to be seen standing on the ramparts looking out across the valley.
### **The North West**
### **Carlisle Castle, Cumbria**
Carlisle Castle was built in 1092 by William II, in his efforts to secure the border between Scotland and England. His brother, Henry I, set about fortifying the castle in stone, but during the national crisis over the succession, David, king of the Scots, seized Carlisle, and shifted the Scottish border south again. He probably completed the works begun by Henry I at the castle and died there in 1135. But David's successor was no match for the next English king, Henry II, who regained and strengthened the castle, which was as well – twice the Scots attacked with large forces, and twice Carlisle withstood the sieges.
Under King John, Carlisle was again besieged by the Scots, who 'cracked from top to bottom' the walls of the outer gatehouse, and then surged inside and similarly bombarded the inner gatehouse. To the north of this inner gatehouse was the 'palace' – royal apartments where a bath was later installed for Edward I's queen, Margaret, who stayed at the castle while her husband was attempting to conquer Scotland.
In 1315 the Scots again attacked the castle, this time under Robert the Bruce, but the castle was staunchly defended under the command of Andrew Harclay, a then-favoured subject of Edward II. Some years later, however, Harclay attempted to negotiate a Scottish truce without the king's permission. The unfortunate man was surprised inside the castle, arrested for treason, and hanged, drawn and quartered outside the city walls. One of his quarters was displayed on Carlisle keep, where it remained for five years.
Carlisle was repeatedly strengthened during the rule of the Wardens of the March, the king's officers in charge of keeping the peace on the borders, but became neglected in the sixteenth century. But when Henry VIII's split with the Roman Catholic Church led to fears that the Scots, siding with Europe, would invade, Carlisle's importance was again recognised. Bulwarks were built to the east, the half-moon battery to the west, and the walls and roofs were strengthened to bear heavy guns. Carlisle gained some forty years' respite following the union of the crowns of England and Scotland in 1603, but when Civil War broke out those Scots who supported Parliament besieged the whole city, aiming to starve Carlisle into submission. Every horse was eaten, then the dogs, and finally the rats – and after nine months a desperate Carlisle surrendered.
During the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745, captured rebels were imprisoned in the city, including the castle. The prisoners taken after the defeat of the '45 uprising – during which Carlisle was once again besieged, this time by the Duke of Cumberland on his way north to victory at Culloden – did not fare as well as their fellows of '15. Then, two had escaped from the castle and the rest had been pardoned. But after the '45, although most were transported, thirty-one were hanged at Carlisle. Andrew Hurley refers to the drawing of lots by the prisoners to choose who would stand trial. This did indeed happen – the prisoners passing round a beaver hat in which were placed nineteen slips of white paper, and one of black. Nine unfortunate prisoners were executed at Carlisle on 18 October 1746. The event drew a large crowd but afterwards, 'many returned home with full resolution to see no more of the kind, it was so shocking'.
Carlisle remained a military base until 1959, during which time various works were done to extend and update the castle, including extensive new accommodation for troops. It seems to be one of these newer buildings, where the King's Own Border Regiment Museum is now housed, that has given rise to the most recent reports of oddities by staff, including alarms being set off, footsteps, banging doors and lights that have been turned off at night being on again in the morning.
### **Birdoswald Roman Fort, Cumbria**
Lying within a meander of the River Irthing with a view into the gorge that was once compared to that of Troy, Birdoswald was one of the forts built by the Romans as part of the Hadrian's Wall frontier system. Its defences are the best preserved of any along the Wall. By the sixteenth century, Birdoswald was a fortified farm subject to raids by reivers from Liddesdale, now in Scotland. Birdoswald was farmed until 1984. Although there are rumours of a grey lady, the farmer's family who lived here between 1956 and 1984 never saw her – although that didn't prevent them from teasing the new hired hands, not to mention one or two archaeologists. One man was so scared after a picture fell off the wall one night that he left the next morning. The ghost was evidently more restless in earlier times, for the people who had lived at the farm previously heard chairs falling over in the night. They thought it was something to do with the statue of the goddess Fortuna, from the Roman bathhouse, that was once kept in a passageway. It is now in Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle.
### **The North East**
### **Housesteads Roman Fort, Northumberland**
Housesteads falls roughly midway along Hadrian's Wall, which was begun in about ad 122 and stretches for seventy-three miles, spanning the narrowest stretch of northern England. Housesteads was garrisoned for most of its active life by the first cohort of Tungrians, a body of about 800 soldiers brought from the part of the Empire that is now eastern Belgium.
After the withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Britain in ad 410, the fort was largely abandoned until the sixteenth century, when a lawless community of thieving 'moss troopers' based themselves here, thriving in this dangerous borderland between Scotland and England.
The milecastle referred to in Kate Clanchy's story is known as milecastle 37. These small gated forts were built, as their name suggests, roughly every Roman mile along the length of the Wall. Between each were two towers, or turrets, from which soldiers patrolling the Wall could look out over the deep ditch north of the Wall and into barbarian territory. The forts were built to a roughly standard design – a large rectangle with rounded corners, the ramparts built of stone or turf, with a gate on each of the four sides and regular towers along the perimeter. At the centre of the fort was the headquarters building, which contained a strongroom, shrine, administrative buildings and assembly hall. Flanking the headquarters were the commanding officer's quarters and granaries, while the rest of the fort contained the barracks, workshops and storehouses.
At Housesteads, a town grew up outside the fort to the south. Many finds from this part of the site are housed in the museum. This was built in 1936 to the same footprint as one of the Roman town buildings, thought to have been an inn or shop, excavated earlier that decade. But the inn revealed something rather more than dropped dice and coins when excavated. Buried under the clay floor of the back room were two skeletons. One was that of a man, with the tip of a knife still in his ribs. The other, more fragmentary, was probably a woman. As Romans buried their dead outside the town, there is no doubt this was a murder. But it is not the ghosts of this unfortunate couple that have been seen along the Wall. Instead it seems the soldiers chose to return. Sceptics might imagine Roman re-enactors have been mistaken by imaginative visitors, but apparently not. One of the most common sightings is of a soldier in Roman armour at milecastle 42, some five miles west of Housesteads. The man is seen several metres up in the air, at the original level of the Wall.
### **Tynemouth Priory and Castle, Tyne and Wear**
Commanding a superb defensive position on a headland overlooking the River Tyne, the ruins of Tynemouth Priory and Castle are now surrounded only by gravestones and seagulls. But for most of its 2,000-year history, the headland was inhabited by communities of monks and soldiers. A monastic community was established here in the eighth century but its buildings were destroyed during the Viking invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries. The medieval ruins visible today belong to Tynemouth Priory, founded in the late eleventh century and dedicated to St Oswine (d. 651) whose body was preserved here in a rich shrine. Although the monastery was suppressed in 1539 it seems that one monk never left the place and still wanders through the graveyard.
Because of its strategic value in protecting the mouth of the Tyne, the headland was fortified until the 1950s. It is not within the remains of the medieval gatehouse nor the gun batteries where the latest oddity occurred but in the disused coastal station, not normally open to the public. A theatre company at Tynemouth which put on a show one recent Hallowe'en discovered that a projector, which had been carefully set up and left in a locked room, had been turned on its side.
### **Prudhoe Castle, Northumberland**
Mighty Prudhoe was built in the early twelfth century, on the site of an earlier Norman fortress, to defend a strategic crossing of the River Tyne against Scottish invaders. It was continuously occupied for over nine centuries. Prudhoe was originally the home of the Umfravilles, and withstood two sieges, before passing to the Percy family in 1398. In the early nineteenth century they built a Regency style manor house for their land agent within its walls.
While local legend talks of a grey lady who haunts the former moat and surrounding woods and a white horse that drifts silently round the courtyard, one former resident of Prudhoe, who lived with her mother in the east tower (without electricity or running water) in the 1950s, witnessed other more disturbing phenomena. First, there was the sound of chanting from the chapel and, more unexpectedly, of someone bouncing a ball rhythmically up and down the steps outside. There had been a young boy, they were told, who later became a priest and used to spend hours practising bouncing a ball up and down the steps . . . Another resident and her husband were often awakened by the sound of water being hurled with great force at the door – although there was no trace of it on investigation.
In the hallway was an enormous oak table. One night an incredible noise woke everyone up, as if there had been an explosion. The massive top lid of the table lay on the floor. It could not possibly just have slipped or been pushed – it took three men to put it back in place.
### BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
**Kate Clanchy** was born in Glasgow and is the author of _Meeting the English_ , shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and the much acclaimed memoir _Antigona and Me_. Her poetry has won her a wide audience as well as three Forward Prizes and a Somerset Maugham Award, among others. The title story from _The Not-Dead and The Saved_ won the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award.
**Stuart Evers** ' first book, _Ten Stories About Smoking_ , won the London Book Award in 2011 and his highly acclaimed novel, _If This is Home_ , followed in 2012. His most recent collection, _Your Father Sends His Love_ , was shortlisted for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in three editions of the _Best British Short Stories_ as well as _Granta, The White Review, Prospect_ and on BBC Radio 4. Originally from the North West, he lives in London.
**Mark Haddon** is a writer and artist who has written fifteen books for children and won two BAFTAs. His bestselling novel, _The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time_ , was published simultaneously by Jonathan Cape and David Fickling in 2003. It won seventeen literary prizes, including the Whitbread Award. His poetry collection, _The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea_ , was published by Picador in 2005, his play _Polar Bears_ was performed at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007 and his last novel, _The Red House_ , was published by Jonathan Cape in 2012. His latest full-length book is _The Pier Falls_ , a collection of stories. He lives in Oxford.
**Andrew Michael Hurley** has lived in Manchester and London, and is now based in Lancashire. His first novel, _The Loney_ , was originally published by Tartarus Press, a tiny independent publisher based in Yorkshire, as a 300-copy limited-edition, before being republished by John Murray and going on to win the Costa Best First Novel Award and Book of the Year at the British Book Industry Awards in 2016. He is currently working on _Devil's Day_ , to be published by John Murray in 2017.
**Andrew Martin** is the author of a dozen novels, including a series of nine thrillers set on the railways of Edwardian Britain, one of which, _The Somme Stations_ , won the Crime Writers' Association Award for Historical Fiction in 2011. His latest novel, _Soot_ , is set in York in 1799 and concerns the murder of a silhouette painter. He also writes and presents TV documentaries.
**Sarah Perry** was born in Essex. She has been the writer in residence at Gladstone's Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Residence in Prague. Her first novel, _After Me Comes the Flood_ , was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. _The Essex Serpent_ was the Waterstones Book of the Year in 2016 and won the British Book Awards Fiction Book of the Year and Overall Book of the Year in 2017. It was also shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and longlisted for the Walter Scott, Baileys and Wellcome Book Prizes. She lives in Norwich.
**Max Porter** is the author of the bestselling _Grief is the Thing with Feathers_ (Faber & Faber, 2015), which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Sunday Times PFD Young Writer of the Year Award and the Books Are My Bag Readers Award, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and The Goldsmith's Prize. It has been translated into twenty-eight languages. Max lives in south London with his wife and three children.
**Kamila Shamsie** is the author of seven novels, most recently _Home Fire. Burnt Shadows_ has been translated into more than twenty languages and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and _A God in Every Stone_ was shortlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction. Three of her other novels ( _In the City by the Sea, Kartography, Broken Verses_ ) have received awards from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and one of _Granta_ 's 'Best of Young British Novelists', she grew up in Karachi, and now lives in London.
**Jeanette Winterson** OBE was born in Manchester. Adopted by Pentecostal parents, she was raised to be a missionary. This did and didn't work out. Discovering early the power of books, she left home at sixteen to live in a Mini and get on with her education. After graduating from Oxford University she worked for a while in the theatre and published her first novel at twenty-five. _Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit_ is based on her own upbringing but using herself as a fictional character. She scripted the novel into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. Twenty-seven years later she revisited that material in the bestselling memoir _Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?_ She has written ten novels for adults, as well as children's books, non-fiction and screenplays. She writes regularly for the _Guardian_. She lives in the Cotswolds in a wood and in London. She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.
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J.J. Abrams Returns To Write And Direct 'Star Wars: Episode IX'
09/12/2017 11:11 am ET Updated Sep 12, 2017
The return of the J.J.
By Bill Bradley
UPDATE: 4:00 p.m. ET — In addition to the director news, "Star Wars" announced that the premiere date for "Episode IX" will be Dec. 20, 2019.
Star Wars: Episode IX is scheduled for release on December 20, 2019. pic.twitter.com/rDBqmuHX89
— Star Wars (@starwars) September 12, 2017
The Force was with J.J. Abrams when he launched the new set of "Star Wars" films with "The Force Awakens," so now Disney is bringing him back.
As Deadline reported on Tuesday, and according to a press release on StarWars.com, Abrams will return to write and direct "Star Wars: Episode IX." The statement reads:
A post shared by Star Wars (@starwars) on Sep 12, 2017 at 7:28am PDT
After Disney unexpectedly parted ways with former "Episode IX" director Colin Trevorrow earlier this month, rumors that Rian Johnson, who is directing "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," would take over surfaced. But Deadline reports that Johnson decided not to take the offer to direct.
On Abrams' hiring, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said, "With 'The Force Awakens,' J.J. delivered everything we could have possibly hoped for, and I am so excited that he is coming back to close out this trilogy."
After what we saw in "Force Awakens," we're pretty excited about it, too. We just hope they call it "The Return of the J.J."
There Were 2 Royal Moments You Might Have Missed At Biden's Inauguration Joe Biden Removed Trump's Diet Coke Button, Twitter Bubbled Up With Jokes Princess Charlene Defends New Buzzcut Hairstyle: 'It Was My Decision' Katy Perry Closes Out Biden's Inauguration Celebration With A Literal Bang
'Star Wars' Postage Stamps
Entertainment Editor, HuffPost
Movies Star Wars J.J. Abrams | {
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Q: How to show label on top when circular image is changing in circular wheel? I am implementing circular animation .I am facing two issues .
*
*I want to scrolling anticlockwise (which is not working).It is working only clockwise.
Explain more: I want to scroll images when user touch his finger circularly on browser we use touch mouse on device we use touchstart .But it is not working on anticlockwise direction.
*I want to change lable value (depend which image is on top).I take ("a","b"."c"...etc) images name so it show names which is on top ?
http://jsfiddle.net/naveennsit/sFcCU/6/
<lable>Title</lable>
<div id='container'>
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/66ip1iz8cm3wf2l/dial.png" style="position:absolute;top:=;left:;" id="dial1"></img>
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/siqq3e8kdaefqn8/icon_0.png" style="position:absolute;top:60px;left:190px;" id="dial2"></img>
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/zikxwpakha2ei1v/icon_1.png" style="position:absolute;top:100px;left:100px;" id="dial3"></img>
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/dn5n76r6yr1tzpd/icon_2.png" style="position:absolute;top:180px;left:70px;" id="dial4"></img>
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/vu9uckyoo7k8wcc/icon_3.png" style="position:absolute;top:270px;left:70px;" id="1"></img>
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/lnb9h4hazcd619u/icon_4.png" style="position:absolute;top:370px;left:110px;" id="dial5"></img>
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/pt0q3zbdxt3843d/icon_5.png" style="position:absolute;top:420px;left:230px;" id="dial6"></img>
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/j9ybktafm0v08ff/icon_6.png" style="position:absolute;top:350px;left:340px;" id="dial7"></img>
<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/nuh0njoeczd94gm/icon_7.png" style="position:absolute;top:250px;left:390px;" id="dial8"></img>
<div>
Thanks
A: The first issue is a syntax error.
Arrays are defined with [] and not {} so you need to change it to
var arry =["a","b","c","d","e","f","g" ,"h"];
To invert the rotation increase the currentAngle instead of decreasing it..
boxes[idx].currentAngle++;
To check which one is the top one just check their angle (90 degrees is the top)
Demo at http://jsfiddle.net/sFcCU/8/
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**MEN AT WORK**
_The Craft of Baseball_
**G EORGE F. WILL**
TO GEOFFREY MARION WILL
"... and here's the pitch. There's a sharply hit ground
ball to second... Geoffrey Will's got it..."
"There's a lot of stuff goes on."
—TONY LA RUSSA
# CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION TO THE 1990 EDITION: The Hard Blue Glow
1. THE MANAGER: Tony La Russa, On Edge
2. THE PITCHER: Orel Hershiser, In the Future Perfect Tense
3. THE BATTER: Tony Gwynn's Muscle Memory
4. THE DEFENSE: Cal Ripken's Information
CONCLUSION: "Maybe the Players Are Livelier."
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Copyright
About the Publisher
# INTRODUCTION
As they were making their involuntary departure from the Garden of Eden, Adam remarked to Eve (or so it is said), "Darling, we live in an age of transition." Of course, everyone everywhere always lives in such an age because change is life's only constant. That has certainly been true of the nice slice of American life that is Major League Baseball (MLB).
In the twenty years since the first publication of this book, baseball has experienced many exhilarating improvements and some disorienting and dispiriting turbulence. Through it all, however, baseball has remained a gift that keeps on giving because it never stops surprising, intriguing and challenging its attentive fans. Its steadily thickening sediment of statistics and other layers of history invite fresh comparisons of contemporary players and their achievements with those of previous generations. And for baseball fans, who must be the most argumentative Americans, comparisons entail controversies, which are integral to the vibrant life of the game off the field and around the calendar. Furthermore, baseball retains its remarkable capacity for evolving new subtleties pertinent to the related skills of assembling a team and playing the game. And even in baseball's third century, it has a beguiling ability to generate enchanting new quirks. Consider this actual event from a minor-league game: a team hit into a triple play without the ball ever being touched by a fielder. How? Think about it. But while thinking, read on. You will find the answer at the end of this introduction.
The continuing interest in this book twenty years after it was published is a tribute to baseball's rich traditions and fascinating craftsmanship, and to the literacy—and numeracy—of baseball fans, who have an unslakable thirst for writings about the game. I am one of those fans, and in 1987 I wanted to read a book that, I discovered, had not been written.
As a columnist preoccupied with politics and cultural matters, my purpose in writing, more often than not, is less to say what I think about a particular subject than it is to find out what I think about that subject. As an amateur student of baseball, I wrote this book during the 1988 and 1989 seasons, not to say what I knew about baseball—which, I soon discovered, was not much—but rather because no one had written it for me. I knew that, in the words of Tony La Russa that serve as this book's epigraph, "There's a lot of stuff goes on" out there, during a game. I, however, could not see it.
Baseball, with the largest field of play of any sport other than polo, is the most observable of team games. The players—at most thirteen at any moment (and there are that many only when the bases are loaded)—are dispersed across a large and visually soothing green field. One can, however, observe something, be it politics or art or opera or baseball, without comprehending it. Like a novice visitor to a museum or cathedral, I needed a baseball docent.
Actually, I decided I needed four of them. Hitting, pitching, fielding and managing are the four basic elements of baseball competition. So in the winter months after the 1987 season, I set about deciding which four people would best serve to illuminate the four crafts and finding out if they would have the time and patience to do so.
Luck is an inexpugnable element of athletic competition; it was also a large factor in the creation of this book. It was my great good fortune that, as the 1988 season approached, baseball boasted four young, able, thoughtful, articulate and cooperative practitioners. Three were players still early in what then seemed to be promising careers. The fourth was a manager early in what has turned out to be a prodigious career.
Before 1988, Tony Gwynn, having completed the sixth of what would be his twenty seasons, had appeared in only 769 of the 2,440 games he would play. In 1984 and 1987 he had won two of what would be his eight National League batting titles. Cal Ripken had played 992 games, less than a third of his career total of 3,001, but of those 992, he already was in—here was a harbinger of something big—a consecutive-games streak of 927. In the winter of 1987–1988 Orel Hershiser was preparing for the sixth of what would be eighteen major-league seasons. His record with the 1987 Dodgers was 16–16, but the Dodgers' owner, Peter O'Malley strongly recommended that I make Hershiser my subject. How right he was.
Gwynn and Ripken entered the Hall of Fame together in 2007. On induction day, the village of Cooperstown (population 2,300) had 75,000 visitors. At 4 p.m., immediately after the ceremony, I started my car, intending to drive back to Washington. Silly me. After sitting for two hours in congealed traffic a few yards from the Cooperstown Inn, where I had spent the previous two nights, I checked back into the Inn for another night. Six years into their retirements as players, Gwynn and Ripken could still draw a crowd. It was a satisfying inconvenience.
Today, Gwynn is head baseball coach at San Diego State University, where he was a basketball as well as baseball star. SDSU is a few miles from PETCO Park, the Padres' new ballpark. He never played there, but another Tony Gwynn, his son, now is, as his father was, a Padres outfielder. Ripken has become a baseball entrepreneur. His many youth-baseball enterprises are countering the recent tendency of other sports, such as soccer and lacrosse, to poach young talent that belongs, or so I think, in baseball. Gwynn and Ripken, who gave fans so many imperishable memories, are now transmitting the culture of the game to a rising generation of players.
Hershiser had an excellent career, with 204 wins, 150 losses and an earned run average (ERA) of 3.48. His record was not luminous enough to earn him a place in the Hall of Fame, but it did include many good years and one of transcendent greatness. As luck would have it, that year was 1988, when he won the National League Cy Young Award with a 23–8 record and a 2.26 ERA. He set a record that still stands of fifty-nine consecutive scoreless innings and was the MVP of the World Series as he led the Dodgers to defeat Tony La Russa's Oakland A's. From this grateful author's point of view, Hershiser saved his best for exactly the right season. Today, ESPN viewers get the benefit of Hershiser's always-acute and often-acerbic baseball analysis. His is sports commentary for grown-ups.
My book's fourth subject is still a man at work. After the 1987 season, La Russa's ninth in a major-league dugout, he was a manager who, at forty-three, was still young relative to many of his peers. Nineteen of the other twenty-six managers were older. La Russa then ranked sixty-fourth all-time in games managed (1,276) and sixty-first in wins (648). By the end of the 2009 season, he ranked third in games managed (4,772), third in games won (2,552), and second in games lost (2,217). It is certain that La Russa will, in due time, have a bronze plaque in Cooperstown. By then, if he chooses, he will have surpassed John McGraw's total of 2,763 wins as a manager.
He might choose not to. Chatting in the bowels of Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., on a late July afternoon in 2009, La Russa told me that he did not care about surpassing McGraw. Perhaps he meant that. He may well have meant it that day because it was a tiresome Monday. The Cardinals, then in the thick of a hotly contested National League Central Division race, were in town for only one game, a makeup of a regularly scheduled game that had been rained out a few weeks earlier. It was going to be a miserably humid—when it was not soggy—Washington night of more rain and rain delays. Under baseball's unbalanced schedules, teams from one division are supposed to make only one visit to teams in other divisions, so umpires are reluctant to allow rain to cancel any interdivision games. Umpires would be especially reluctant to allow rain to cancel a one-game visit by a team trying to make up a previously rained-out game. La Russa knew that after rain delays and long after midnight the Cardinals would board a train for Philadelphia, where they would take the field not many hours after getting to bed early Tuesday morning.
Which is to say, that night in Washington, when La Russa talked about walking away from the game, was the sort of night that can concentrate a manager's mind on the attractions of getting off the major-league merry-go-round and doing something else. La Russa mentioned that he might like to run a bookstore. I will believe it when I see it.
I do not think that, when push comes to shove, someone with La Russa's competitive fire will bank his inner furnace before he ranks second only to Connie Mack, who holds the record for managerial wins with 3,731. That is, of course, one of baseball's unbreakable records, as is Mack's total of 3,948 losses. For fifty years, Mack managed the Philadelphia A's—precursor of the Oakland A's, who arrived on the West Coast after a thirteen-year sojourn in Kansas City. He was able to do that only because he owned the team.
Besides, although La Russa certainly could become a Hall of Fame-caliber bookseller, serving lattes and literature to discerning customers, he is a baseball connoisseur and everyday he comes to work he gets to watch Albert Pujols, who, before his career ends, will rank among the dozen or so best position players, ever. La Russa may not choose to manage all the way to the end of Pujols's career, but not many people ever left a Frank Sinatra concert early.
We shall see. And speaking of seeing, since 1990 most baseball fans have been seeing their sport in better, more congenial, venues.
The three most important developments in baseball since the Second World War were social, legal and architectural, respectively. They were the coming of Jackie Robinson in 1947, the arrival of free agency after the 1975 season and the 1992 opening of Baltimore's Camden Yards, construction of which began in 1989, the year the writing of this book was completed. The consequences of Camden Yards were important in the Will household: In August 1990, during construction, I proposed to Mari where home plate would eventually be. The place was marked by a cinder-block. Mari wore a construction worker's hardhat. Very fetching. My wedding ring, which I designed, features the MLB logo. Romantic that I am, I wanted Mari to know that in my heart she ranked right up there close to baseball. I shall have more to say in a moment about romanticism.
The beneficent reverberations from Camden Yards are still being felt in the twenty-one cities where new ballparks have opened since it did.
Forward-looking scolds are constantly telling us that we cannot turn back the clock. Fiddlesticks. Camden Yards is testimony to the truth that we can and sometimes should do exactly that. With red brick and green-painted structural steel, Camden Yards made a retro look seem fresh. Since 1992, demolition has done the constructive work of scrubbing from the surface of America the blight of "dual-use" stadiums in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis. "Dual use" is a euphemism that describes concrete piles that were lousy places to watch both baseball and football.
It is a truism that we shape our buildings and then they shape us. The new ballparks are made for fans, and they make fans by bringing them closer to the action. I came to understand the importance of this in 2003, when I was a member of The Commissioner's Initiative: Major League Baseball in the Twenty-first Century. Our panel's assignment was to gather pertinent data about baseball's fans—their preferences and complaints—and to recommend ways of making the fans' experiences more satisfying. Our concerns ranged from the pace of play to new techniques and technologies for enriching television broadcasts of games. To me, the most illuminating datum we unearthed concerned another sport: whereas more than half of self-described baseball fans have attended a game in a major-league ballpark, 98 percent of NFL fans have never attended an NFL game. Granted, baseball fans have eighty-one chances a year to root, root, root for the home team, where NFL fans have just eight. Still, the fact that only 2 percent of NFL fans have felt impelled to set aside the bowl of Fritos, and get off their couches and out to the stadium, suggests that television makes NFL fans. Baseball fans are made by going to games, then television sustains their interest. This fact confirmed my longstanding belief that, whereas football is a spectacle, baseball is a habit.
It is a habit that, in the last twenty years, has become easier to acquire, as is attested by soaring attendance. In 1990, MLB's twenty-six teams drew 54,823,768 fans, for an average of 26,046 per game. In 2009, in spite of a severe economic contraction, the thirty teams drew 73,418,528, for a per-game average of 30,311. One reason for this is improved competitive balance, as indicated by the fact that eight different teams won the first nine World Series in this century.
This improvement in competitive balance is partly a result of institutional changes in MLB. These include a "competitive-balance tax" on a few teams with payrolls above a high threshold, increased revenue sharing among the teams and a dramatic surge to MLB's central fund revenues from advanced media, such as hundreds of thousands of fans watching games on their computers.
I played a small part in some of these advances, which were among the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics. Its four members were Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell; Yale University President Richard Levin; and me. The panel was created by Commissioner Bud Selig in 1998. Its report influenced the owners' agenda in the 2002 negotiations on a new collective-bargaining agreement with the MLB Players Association.
It is likely, however, that even more important contributions to the competitive balance have been made by fresh thinking about some obvious—or so it now seems—truths about the game that have always been true but have not always been acknowledged or acted on by managers or general managers. Fresh thinking in dugouts about how the game should be played has led to fresh thinking in front offices about how to evaluate, price and assemble the fundamental asset of the baseball business—players.
The years since this book first appeared can be called, with some forgivable exaggeration, the years when baseball slapped its palm to its forehead and exclaimed, "Come to think about it, baseball actually does have a clock—sort of." The clock has twenty-seven ticks. They are called outs. One object of the game is to slow down the ticking. Husband your outs because, as Earl Weaver has often said, "If you don't make the last out of the game, you never lose."
Weaver was the short, Napoleonic, often-irascible, sometimes-dyspeptic manager of the Baltimore Orioles. He was a scourge of American League umpires, one of whom said: "When the bastard dies, they'll have to hire pallbearers." Not true. His players may have fought him, but they also fought for him. He arrived at the Hall of Fame by getting them to October four times. He won 1,480 games—58 percent of all that he managed. He did so by practicing what he tirelessly preached: be stingy with your allotted outs because when you make three of them, you have to start all over again.
Today we know with marvelous precision—because baseball's best and brightest have crunched the numbers—what Weaver learned by the osmosis that occurs when a smart man pays close attention to his craft. For example, we know that bunting is usually a bad idea because a team is 27 percent more likely to score a run when it has a runner on first and no one out than when it has a runner on second and one out.
Another example: When I was a bad-fielding and worse-hitting Little Leaguer, playing for the Mittendorf Funeral Home Panthers in Champaign, Illinois, in 1952, my coach reiterated that a walk is as good as a hit. He told me that because I had a much better chance of getting a walk than a hit. The last twenty years have seen a sharp devaluation of batting average as a gauge of player value and increased interest in on-base percentage and on-base percentage plus slugging percentage (OPS). This revision of standards makes sense because a walk is a result of a constructive at bat and because not all hits are equally valuable. The difference between a 0.275 hitter and a 0.300 hitter is, essentially, one hit every two weeks. The difference between a single and a home run is 270 feet—three bases. There is a reason why Henry Aaron, who when he retired held the record for setting the most records, is proudest of having the most total bases (6,856). Advancing runners, including oneself, is pretty much the point of baseball offense.
Some fans (and a lot more nonfans) complain that games have become slower. These critics have a point. The _pace_ of the game would be improved if batters did not constantly step out of the batters box between pitches to take practice swings—good grief, they have been playing this game since T-Ball—and adjust their uniforms and tighten their batting gloves. (Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Hornsby, and everyone else who played before 1963 never wore those accessories.) It is, however, important to distinguish between the _pace_ of a game and the _length_ of a game. One reason games have become longer is that at bats have become longer—for good baseball reasons.
Hitters have become more selective, in part because they are more willing to walk to first base. Furthermore, the more pitches a starting pitcher throws, the sooner his team is apt to be forced to resort to its relief pitchers. Middle relievers—the bridges between starters and closers—often are middle relievers because they are not good enough to be starters or closers. Teams whose hitters consistently take pitchers deep into counts, and which push the opposing starter's pitch count close to one hundred by the seventh inning, are the teams most likely to run their season win total close to one hundred.
Permutations of one word permeate players' conversations when they talk about their sport of the 162-game season. The word—as both noun and verb—is "grind." Players speak of the season as a grind. They praise players who are grinders—who bear down pitch by pitch, inning by inning, game by game. Grinding out stubborn at bats, grinding down starting pitchers, and walking to first—these achievements strike some people as unheroic and hence unworthy of admiration. Which brings me to the essence of this book.
When I publish a book— _Men at Work_ was the sixth of my (so far) thirteen—the title usually is the last thing I consider. With this book, however, I had the title before anything else. I embarked upon this writing project with one certainty: baseball has had quite enough books of romance, nostalgia and gush.
Ballparks are not, in fact, "cathedrals;" they are places where work—demanding and dangerous work—gets done. The workers are not "boys of summer" because they are not boys; they are men—hard and disciplined by a profession that punishes laxity and is unforgiving of mistakes. My determinedly unromantic and unsentimental—but unfailingly appreciative and enthusiastic—way of thinking about baseball drew a good-natured but deeply serious rebuke from a learned friend. In an article written for the sober and intellectually formidable quarterly the _Public Interest_ , Donald Kagan, a professor of classics at Yale, had the temerity to come at me from the right. Ouch.
The gravamen of Kagan's elegant "George Will's baseball—a conservative critique," (Fall 1990) was that my title, _Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball_ , was "ominous." His forebodings were confirmed when he reached my judgment that "games are won by a combination of informed aggression and prudence based on information." Kagan charged that I said "as little as possible" about "physical ability and natural talent," stressing instead the role of mind in the competition. "This," he wrote, "is the fantasy of a smart, skinny kid who desperately wants to believe that brains count more than the speed, power and reckless courage of the big guys who can play." Well...
I may be puny, but my argument, which Kagan misstated, is not. I do not deny that extraordinary (literally: not ordinary) physical ability and natural talent are prerequisites for playing baseball at the major-league level. But neither do I believe that those gifts are sufficient. The history of baseball is littered with stories of failures by players who thought that their natural physical endowments would be sufficient.
There are seven hundred and fifty players on the thirty Major League teams' twenty-five-man rosters. There are a lot more than seven hundred and fifty physically gifted "natural" athletes. I nowhere argue, and do not believe, that brains count "more" than speed, power and courage. I do, however, believe that brains matter too.
Kagan wrote that today's game is "much more boring" than "the lost grandeur of baseball in the 1950s," when the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers challenged the supremacy of the New York Yankees, who ruled the baseball world "as the Olympian gods ruled theirs." Gosh, yes: in 1951, all three New York teams finished first, as the Giants and Dodgers ended the regular season tied. But for those fans who did not live in New York—bulletin for Kagan: the vast majority of baseball fans have always lived elsewhere—New York's dominance of the game was not so swell.
Kagan's roseate reveries about baseball in the 1950s were, apparently, undisturbed by the fact that in 1958 the Dodgers and Giants decamped to California because New York fans, oblivious to the grandeur of it all, were not making the turnstiles hum. In 1955, when a wonderful Dodger team defeated the Yankees for the franchise's first World Series win, attendance at Ebbets Field during the season averaged a paltry 13,423 a game, a lower average than the team with the worst attendance in 2009 (Oakland Athletics, 17,392). And in 1958, when the Yankees at last had the city to themselves, their attendance declined. The baseball that enthralled Kagan was driving fans away by the millions, even in New York.
But what made Kagan most cross was his judgment that, in the choice of my four subjects, and especially in my selection of Tony Gwynn as my hitter, I was celebrating the "antihero" at the expense of demigods. An antihero, Kagan argued, is someone "who knows his limitations and accepts them, who shuns the burden of leadership, who goes his own way and 'does his own thing.'" But acknowledging limits is, surely, the essence of conservatism (and of realism, which conservatives consider much the same thing). And is facing facts, such as the reality of limits, incompatible, as Kagan suggests, with leadership?
Besides, what _is_ leadership in baseball? It is real, but it is limited by the nature of the game. Unlike in football, where the quarterback starts almost every play with the ball in his hands, in baseball the defense (the pitcher) initiates the action on every play. Furthermore, in football you can give the ball to the same running back one down after another. In baseball, a hitter, no matter how heroic, gets only one of every nine of his team's at bats. A Tom Brady or LaDainian Tomlinson can "take over" a football game; a Kobe Bryant or LeBron James can "dominate" a basketball game. No one except a pitcher can take over or dominate a baseball game.
Kagan was particularly displeased by my saying (see pages 168–169), '"Stay within yourself is baseball's first commandment.'... A player's reach should not exceed his grasp." Kagan wrote, "If Mighty Casey came to bat at a crucial moment today, George Will would want him to punch a grounder through the right side to move the runner to third and leave things up to the next batter." Speaking for George Will, on whose thinking I am world's foremost authority, I say: not necessarily. The heavy hitters do have heavy responsibilities. Nevertheless, they have a responsibility to stay within themselves. If Mighty Casey, instead of swinging for the fences and striking out (stranding two runners, not the one Kagan indicates), had hit a scratch single, he would have earned no praise from Kagan, but there might have been, at the end of the game, joy in Mudville.
It is—and I mean this—a pleasure to be taken to task by a reader with Kagan's intellectual weight and wit. My intellectual spanking, although undeserved, felt like a compliment. It is also an honor to baseball that it can engage the mind and passions of such an admirable man. However, this too must be said: Kagan says his idea of a hero is Roy Hobbs, who performed what Kagan calls "magical" feats as the protagonist of Bernard Malamud's novel _The Natural_. But Hobbs is fictional. Gwynn is real, which is a virtue when there is work to be done.
Alas, let us get back to the fact that the enjoyment of any sport is enhanced by knowledge of its nuances. This is especially true of baseball. The pleasure a baseball fan derives from following the sport is, to an unusual degree, a function of the engagement of the fan's mind as well as of his or her eyes. The barely controlled—and sometimes uncontrolled—violence of the NFL, the kinetic energy of the collisions between cat-quick 300-pound linemen and running backs who are as big as linemen were a generation ago is spectacular. Football fans can relish it while understanding next to nothing about the complexities of the thinking—and there is a lot of it—that, on every play, sets twenty-two men in choreographed motion. The beauty of the astonishing balletic grace of the NBAs big men—and almost all the supposedly small players are much bigger than almost all NBA fans—pleases the eye even if the mind does not understand the plays and game plans that the players are executing. And there is another way in which baseball is different: statistics enhance the fans' enjoyment. Most baseball fans who are more than merely lukewarm in their interest will recognize these numbers:
511
0.406
56
60
61
1.12
130
1,406
Such fans will know that those statistics represent, respectively,
The number of games Cy Young won
Ted Williams's batting average in 1941, when he became (so far) the last .400 hitter
The number of consecutive games in which Joe DiMaggio got hits in 1941
The number of home runs Babe Ruth hit in 1927
The number of home runs Roger Maris hit in 1961
Bob Gibsons ERA in 1968
Rickey Henderson's single-season (1982) and career stolen-base records
Now, present the following numbers to even an intense NFL fan:
18,355
2,105
69,329
5,084
497
50
208
31
2,544
186
I would wager dollars against doughnuts that not many self-described NFL fanatics will know that those numbers represent
Emmitt Smith's career record for the most yards gained rushing
Eric Dickerson's single-season rushing record
Brett Favre's record for career passing yards
Dan Marino's record for single-season passing yards
Brett Favre's record for most touchdown passes in a career
Tom Brady's record for most touchdown passes in a season
Jerry Rice's record for most career touchdowns
LaDainian Tomlinson's record for most touchdowns in a season
Morten Andersen's record (he was a kicker) for most points scored in career
LaDainian Tomlinson's record for most points scored in a season
There is a reason why baseball fans are more likely than football fans to be acquainted with the most important records in their favorite sport. The reason is not that baseball fans are, in general, more intelligent and thoughtful, although I suspect that they are. Rather, the most important reason that statistics generally mean more to baseball fans than to their football counterparts is that baseball is a cornucopia of especially revealing data. It is so because it has uniquely measurable conditions of competition. It has a symmetry that baseball writer Alan Schwarz calls in his book _The Numbers Game_ a "double-entry personality." Every hitting event is, as Schwarz says, "part of a pitcher's record and every pitching event part of a hitter's record." Which is why no other team sport leaves such a satisfying statistical residue of coherence. "A ten-yard run by a halfback or a point guard's breakaway layup cannot," Schwarz acutely notes, "be assigned against any particular defensive player.... Baseball, however, is the most individual of team sports: in perfectly discernible packets the game reduces to one batter versus one pitcher, with each assuming responsibility for the other."
I dwell here upon statistics, and their special importance in the savoring of baseball, because about a dozen years ago—1998 stands out as the year when numbers suddenly became garish and, strictly speaking, incredible—it became clear that chemistry was disrupting the game's treasured arithmetic. The twenty years since the publication of this book will be remembered as two decades tarnished by steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). It is to be hoped that, from today forward, this era will be remembered as the steroid parenthesis in baseball's history—a closed episode.
Until the PED epidemic, fans had the relatively uncomplicated pleasure of making meaningful comparisons between players from different decades. This was possible because modern baseball, meaning the game since 1900, had only had two distinct eras, the dead-ball era, which ended around 1920, and the lively ball era since then. Now fans must make another calibration when comparing players' achievements: is a particular achievement suspect because it occurred during the last decade of the twentieth century or the first decade of the twenty-first?
Some people say that baseball's record book should be flecked with asterisks denoting suspect numbers. That is not necessary. The only people who care deeply about baseball statistics are baseball fans, and they know how to read the record book. They know, for example, that something odd happened—probably to the ball—in 1930 (see page 134) and they turn a jaundiced eye on the gaudy batting numbers of that aberrant year. They will do the same for the parenthesis period.
Because baseball is held to higher standards than other sports—for which compliment, baseball should be proud—the problem of PEDs is thought to be primarily a problem in baseball. This is not true. Perhaps no sports have been as perversely affected as bicycle racing and track and field, where many recent achievements have been tainted. It was, after all, a track coach who blew the whistle that announced the arrival of the BALCO scandal that soon ensnared Barry Bonds. And only the incorrigibly innocent can believe that some remarkable recent changes in football are unrelated to chemistry.
In 1966, coach Bear Bryant's University of Alabama football team went 11–0 and won the Sugar Bowl. Only nineteen of the ninety-two players on this powerhouse weighed more than 200 pounds. The two heaviest players weighed 221 and 223, respectively. The quarterback weighed 177 pounds. Today, it is not unusual for the linemen on a good high school team to average 250 pounds or more. Today, a 213-pound running back in a big-time college-football program would be considered cute and plucky. Today, a 175-pound quarterback would have to be thin as a blade of grass : most quarterbacks now are well over six feet tall because they must be able see over linemen who are often at least six feet five inches tall.
In 1980, only one NFL player weighed more than 300 pounds. By 1994, 155 did. By 2004, there were 370 players over 300 pounds—and ten over 350 pounds. By 2005, thirty of the thirty-two teams had offensive lines whose members averaged at least 300 pounds. One line averaged 323 pounds.
For a number of reasons, the most important of which is better nutrition, the human race has been becoming bigger for a long time. You know this if you have visited the Tower of London and seen there the suits of armor, which seem to have been made for children but in fact were worn by adult warriors. Surely, however, the rapid increase in the size of football players cannot be entirely explained as a result of smarter eating and better training.
It is more than merely possible to hope, it is reasonable to believe, that baseball has now closed the PED parenthesis that has blighted the game. That judgment must, however, be—if you will pardon the expression—asterisked for this reason: The financial rewards that accrue to athletic excellence are already enormous, and as our increasingly affluent society increases its leisure time and discretionary income, those rewards will increase. As they do, so will the incentives to cheat. This means that baseball probably is condemned to an unending competition between the bad and good chemists—those who concoct new PEDs that cannot be detected and those who devise tests to detect them.
Still, as the financial rewards for athletic excellence increase, so do the financial costs of being caught cheating and being suspended without pay or permanently banished. And the shame that attaches to cheating, at least in baseball, can be a powerful deterrent—can be. That depends on baseball fans caring about more than winning. It depends on them caring about winning the right way.
The moral price of PEDs is that performance is devalued _by_ being enhanced. The conditions of competition change, stealthily and unequally. Lifting weights and eating spinach enhance the body's normal functioning. But many chemical infusions cause the body (and the mind) to behave abnormally, while jeopardizing the user's physical and mental health.
Chemical cheating will be decisively routed when fans become properly repelled by it. They will recoil in disgust when they understand that athletes who are chemically propelled to victory do not merely overvalue winning, they misunderstand why winning is properly valued. Professional athletes stand at apexes of achievement, but their achievements are admirable primarily because they are the products of a lonely submission to sustained discipline of exertion. Such submission is a manifestation of good character. An athlete's proper goal is to perform unusually well, not unnaturally well. Drugs that make sport exotic by making it weird drain sport of its exemplary power. That power draws people to be spectators of excellence. Drugs that make sport a display of chemistry rather than character degrade sport into a display of some chemists' virtuosities and some athletes' degenerate characters.
As I said above, I began writing _Men at Work_ as a guidebook to the craft of baseball. It was not until I was done writing that I realized that the book had acquired, for me at least, a moral dimension. It had become an illustration of two of my most deeply held convictions: Character is destiny. And people of good character demonstrate in their daily lives the fact that, by being attentive to the small details of their vocations, big problems can be largely banished.
I am not conflating craftsmanship and character; a craftsman can be an unsavory person. I am, however, emphatically saying that there is an ethic of craftsmanship. G. K. Chesterton, with his penchant for paradoxes, had a point when he said that anything worth doing is worthy doing badly. He meant that anything worth doing is worth trying to do, even if you cannot get the hang of it right away. (Brain surgery? Financial counseling? Piloting airplanes? There are exceptions to Chesterton's axiom.) But there is an ethic of craftsmanship—the moral imperative to respect standards. It is said that being moral is doing the right thing when no one is watching. The categorical imperative of the ethic of baseball is playing conscientiously, even on a muggy August night in front of a small crowd when neither your team nor the one you are competing against is going to place in October. Sport is play, but play has a serious side. It can elevate both competitors and spectators. PEDs divide a sport in two ways. They separate the cheaters from the honorable and admirable competitors. And cold, covert and unfair alterations to the conditions of competition divide the competitors from the spectators, draining sport of its value as a shared activity for a community.
If I could wave a wand and wish one thing for each fan it would be that he or she could just once stand in a batter's box and see—and hear the sizzle of—a major-league fastball passing close by. Or have a major leaguer's ground ball hit sharply to their right at shortstop and then have to make the long throw to first. _Everything_ is more difficult than it looks. There is no greater testimony to major leaguers' skills than how easy they make things seem.
As an introduction to such excellence, this book is, of course, no substitute for standing in a batters box, sixty feet six inches from Tim Lincecum. Still, if this book has enhanced some fans' enjoyment of the great game, it has served a purpose beyond the original one, of enhancing the author's enjoyment. It certainly has found a large readership: It was on the _New York Times_ bestseller list for twenty-seven weeks, nineteen at the top of the list. It has been in print ever since and now may be the best-selling baseball book ever. But the writing of _Men at Work_ was not done by a man at work. Nothing that was so much fun should count as work.
I am often asked which four players I would choose as my subjects were I going to write _Men at Work_ today. My answers are as follows:
Hitter: Albert Pujols. He gets on base so many ways and then further distinguishes himself from almost everyone else by running the bases with a rare brilliance. Because he is willing to walk to first base, he needs only to swing at the one hittable pitch—at most—he sees in an at bat. And he usually hits it hard. A ferocious competitor, even in early spring intrasquad games, he is a study in fidelity to baseball's uniquely demanding ethic of maintaining intensity for six months.
Pitcher: the Giants' Tim Lincecum. He stands five foot eleven and weighs 170 pounds. Which is to say, he is about the size of Whitey Ford, the Yankee Hall of Famer (five foot ten). Before Lincecum came along, it had become conventional baseball wisdom that, were Ford a high school senior today, no team would draft him because he would be considered too small. Lincecum vindicates Bill Veeck's judgment that baseball's appeal is bound up with the fact that it is a game you can play even if you are not seven feet tall or seven feet wide.
Fielder: Phillies' second baseman Chase Utley. Like Cal Ripken, he is such a potent hitter that his defense does not get the attention it deserves. But as was the case with Ripken, when you combine the runs Utley's defense prevents with the runs his offense produces, you have a remarkable baseball force.
Manager: the Angels' Mike Scioscia. As a catcher during his playing days, he had the game in front of him. He still does. It was another catcher, Branch Rickey, who, long after he stopped catching, said that "luck is the residue of design." Scioscia, like all good managers, understands that, and this truth: the harder you work, the luckier you become. Turn to page 158 for a glimpse of Scioscia as a Dodger and as a manager in waiting.
There is so much talent on the field and in the dugouts these days that knowledgeable people could reasonably pick four or more other players or managers for a _Men at Work 2.0_. And it is a wonderful certainty that twenty years from now, in 2030, when I am in the bleachers resting my eighty-nine-year-old chin on the crook of my cane and watching players who in 2010 were in grade school, some of those players will be worthy of the kind of admiring attention I was privileged to give to the four subjects of this book.
Answer to the triple-play puzzle: With runners on first and second and no one out, the batter hit an infield pop-up. The umpires invoked the infield-fly rule, so the batter was out. The oblivious runner on first roared past the runner who had been on second and was called out. The falling pop-up hit the runner who had been on second, so he was out. You see? It was as simple as one, two, three. Baseball often is that simple. But not always.
GEORGE F. WILL
_December 2009_
# INTRODUCTION TO THE 1990 EDITION
The Hard Blue Glow
A few years ago, in the Speaker's Dining Room in the U.S. Capitol, a balding, hawk-nosed Oklahoma cattleman rose from the luncheon table and addressed his host, Tip O'Neill. The man who rose was Warren Spahn, the winningest left-hander in the history of baseball. Spahn was one of a group of former All-Stars who were in Washington to play in an old-timers' game. Spahn said: "Mr. Speaker, baseball is a game of failure. Even the best batters fail about 65 percent of the time. The two Hall of Fame pitchers here today [Spahn, 363 wins, 245 losses; Bob Gibson, 251 wins, 174 losses] lost more games than a team plays in a full season. I just hope you fellows in Congress have more success than baseball players have."
The fellows in Congress don't, and they know it. There are no .400 hitters in Washington. And players in the game of government are spared the sort of remorselessly objective measurement of their performance that ball players see in box scores every day. But Washington does have lots of baseball fans. In October, 1973, Potter Stewart, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and avid Cincinnati Reds fan, was scheduled to hear oral arguments at the time of the Reds-Mets play-off game. He asked his clerks to pass him batter-by-batter bulletins. One read: "Kranepool flies to right. Agnew resigns." (Baseball also holds the attention of people at the other end of the system of justice. When Richard T. Cooper, a murderer, was on the threshold of California's death chamber, his final remarks included: "I'm very unhappy about the Giants.")
Because baseball is a game of failure, and hence a constantly humbling experience, it is good that the national government is well stocked with students of the national pastime. There also is a civic interest served by having the population at large leavened by millions of fans. They are spectators of a game that rewards, and thus elicits, a remarkable level of intelligence from those who compete. To be an intelligent fan is to participate in something. It is an activity, a form of appreciating that is good for the individual's soul, and hence for society.
Proof of the genius of ancient Greece is that it understood baseball's future importance. Greek philosophers considered sport a religious and civic—in a word, moral—undertaking. Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage. By witnessing physical grace, the soul comes to understand and love beauty. Seeing people compete courageously and fairly helps emancipate the individual by educating his passions.
Being a serious baseball fan, meaning an informed and attentive and observant fan, is more like carving than whittling. It is doing something that makes demands on the mind of the doer. Is there any other sport in which the fans say they "take in" a game? As in, "Let's take in a game tomorrow night." I think not. That is a baseball locution because there is a lot to ingest and there is time—although by no means too much time—to take it in.
Of all the silly and sentimental things said about baseball, none is sillier than the description of the game as "unhurried" or "leisurely." Or (this from folks at the serious quarterlies) that baseball has "the pace of America's pastoral past." This is nonsense on stilts. Any late-twentieth-century academic who thinks that a nineteenth-century farmer's day was a leisurely, unhurried stroll from sunup to sundown needs a reality transplant. And the reality of baseball is that the action involves blazing speeds and fractions of seconds. Furthermore, baseball is as much a mental contest as a physical one. The pace of the action is relentless: There is barely enough time between pitches for all the thinking that is required, and that the best players do, in processing the changing information about the crucial variables.
In a sense, sports are not complicated. Even the infield fly rule can be mastered, in time, without a master's degree from MIT. The object of a sport can be put simply. You put a ball in an end zone or through a hoop, or you put a puck in a net, and prevent the other fellows from doing so. Sports are not complicated in their objectives, but in execution they have layers of complexities and nuances. There is a lot of thought involved, however much many players deny or disguise that fact. When Dizzy Dean heard, before the 1934 World Series, that the Tigers' manager, Mickey Cochrane, was conducting a series of team meetings, Dean said, "If them guys are thinking, they're as good as licked right now." (The Cardinals beat the Tigers in seven games.) But even in his era Dean was one of baseball's cartoon characters, a caricature sent up from central casting, a Ring Lardner creation come to life. And certainly Dean bore no resemblance to most of the men who rise to the top of today's baseball and stay there for a while.
It has been said that the problem with many modern athletes is that they take themselves seriously and their sport lightly. That can not be said of the men discussed in this book. This book treats the elements of the game by examining four men in terms of functions dictated by the order of the game. A manager assembles a team, trains it, devises a lineup for a particular game and controls his team's conduct during the game. A pitcher throws the ball, a batter hits it, a fielder handles it. During the time I was writing this book I attended games and conducted interviews in 11 major league cities, from Canada to Southern California. I liken the experience to being guided through an art gallery by a group of patient docents who were fine painters and critics. Such tutors teach the skill of seeing. To see, to really _see_ what a painter has put on canvas requires learning to think the way the painter thought. My baseball guides have been players, managers, coaches, front office personnel, writers, broadcasters and others of the small community of baseball.
Many players do not practice what they preach. They preach a simplicity sharply at odds with their real attention to the fine points. A pitcher will say, "I just try to move the ball around and throw strikes." A hitter will describe himself as of the "see ball, hit ball" school. But when players are prompted to talk about what they do, the complexity emerges. Baseball is an exacting profession with a technical vocabulary and a distinctive mode of reasoning. It involves constant attention to the law of cumulation, which is: A lot of little things add up, through 162 games, 1,458 innings, to big differences. A 162-game season is, like life, an exercise in cumulation.
It was an architect who said that God is in the details. It could have been a professional athlete, particularly a baseball player, most likely a catcher. Catchers, who have the game arrayed in front of them and are in on every pitch, not only work harder than other everyday players, they are required to think more. Ten of the 26 major league managers on Opening Day, 1989, had done some catching in their playing careers. It was, naturally, a catcher (Wes Westrum of the New York Giants) who said that baseball is like church: "Many attend but few understand."
Rick Dempsey, a catcher, is the sort of player whose natural skills were never such that he looked like a candidate for longevity in the major leagues. Yet 1989 was his twenty-first season. He is the sort of player often called a journeyman, and he certainly has journeyed, from Minnesota to the Yankees to the Orioles to the Indians, and in the spring of 1988 he talked his way into a tryout with the Dodgers. In the autumn he was in the World Series. It was his third Series. He played in all seven games of the Orioles' loss to the Pirates in 1979 and was the MVP of the 1983 Series in which the Orioles beat the Phillies in five games. Talking to Roger Angell of _The New Yorker_ at the 1988 Series, Dempsey made clear the mental makeup that makes for survival in baseball:
You have to play this game right. You have to think right. You're not trying to pull the ball all the time. You're not thinking, Hey, we're going to kill them tomorrow—because that may not happen. You're not looking to do something all on your own. You've got to take it one game at a time, one hitter-at a time. You've got to go on doing the things you've talked about and agreed about beforehand. You can't get three outs at a time or five runs at a time. You've got to concentrate on each play, each hitter, each pitch. All this makes the game much slower and much clearer. It breaks it down to its smallest part. If you take the game like that—one pitch, one hitter, one inning at a time, and then one _game_ at a time—the next thing you know, you look up and you've won.
Winning is not everything. Baseball—its beauty, its craftsmanship, its exactingness—is an _activity_ to be loved, as much as ballet or fishing or politics, and loving it is a form of participation. But this book is not about romance. Indeed, it is an antiromantic look at a game that brings out the romantic in the best of its fans.
A. Bartlett Giamatti was to the Commissioner's office what Sandy Koufax was to the pitcher's mound: Giamatti's career had the highest ratio of excellence to longevity. If his heart had been as healthy as his soul—if his heart had been as strong as it was warm—Giamatti would one day have been ranked among commissioners the way Walter Johnson is ranked (by correct thinkers) among pitchers: as the best, period. Baseball's seventh commissioner, who was the first to have taught Renaissance literature at Yale, was fond of noting the etymological fact that the root of the word "paradise" is an ancient Persian word meaning "enclosed park or green." Ballparks exist, he said, because there is in humanity "a vestigial memory of an enclosed green space as a place of freedom or play." Perhaps. Certainly ballparks are pleasant places for the multitudes. But for the men who work there, ballparks are for hard, sometimes dangerous, invariably exacting business. Physically strong and fiercely competitive men make their living in those arenas. Most of these men have achieved, at least intermittently, the happy condition of the fusion of work and play. They get physical pleasure and emotional release and fulfillment from their vocation. However, Roy Campanella's celebrated aphorism—that there has to be a lot of little boy in a man who plays baseball—needs a corollary. There has to be a lot of hardness in a man who plays—who works at—this boys' game.
Success in life has been described as the maintained ecstasy of burning with a hard, gemlike flame. The image recurs. In his famous essay on Ted Williams's final game, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," John Updike wrote of Williams radiating "the hard blue glow of high purpose." Updike said, "For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill." Baseball, played on a field thinly populated with men rhythmically shifting from languor to tension, is, to Updike's eyes, an essentially lonely game. The cool mathematics of individual performances are the pigments coloring the long season of averaging out. Baseball heroism comes not from flashes of brilliance but rather, Updike says, from "the players who always _care,"_ about themselves and their craft.
The connection between character and achievement is one of the fundamental fascinations of sport. Some say that sport builds character. Others say that sport reveals character. But baseball at its best puts good character on display in a context of cheerfulness. Willie Stargell, the heart of the order during the Pirates' salad days in the 1970s, insisted that baseball is, or at any rate ought to be, fun. Walking wearily through the Montreal airport after a night game, he said, "I ain't complaining. I asked to be a ball player." Indeed, it is likely that a higher percentage of ball players than of plumbers or lawyers or dentists or almost any other group are doing what they passionately enjoy doing. On another occasion Stargell said, "The umpire says 'Play ball,' not 'Work ball.'" (Actually, the rule book requires the umpire to call out only the word "play.") But professional baseball is work.
Happiness has been called "the sweet exaltation of work." What follows are the stories of four men who are happy in their work. From an appreciation of that work, many millions of people derive a happiness worth pursuing. This book is intended to help that pursuit. It also is a deep bow, not just to the particular players about whom I have written, but to all the baseball people who transmit the game, remarkably intact, through the whirl of American change. This book is a thank-you note. There is a book with the wonderful title _Baseball, I Gave You the Best Years of My Life_. What do we spectators give baseball besides the price of a seat and the respect implicit in paying attention? Baseball's best practitioners give in return the gift of virtues made vivid. This gift is a thing of beauty and joy forever, or at least until the next game, which is much the same thing as forever because the seasons stretch into forever. Yes, I know, I know. Even the continents drift. Nothing lasts. But baseball does renew itself constantly as youth comes knocking at the door, and in renewal it becomes better. To see why this is so, come along and see some baseball men at work.
#
THE MANAGER
Tony La Russa, On Edge
On August 13, 1910, there was a baseball game of perfect symmetry. The Pirates and Dodgers played to an 8–8 tie. Each team had 38 at bats. Each had 13 hits. Each had 12 assists. Each had 5 strikeouts, 3 walks, 2 errors, 1 hit batsman and 1 passed ball.
Still, dissect any game, even that one, deeply enough and you will reveal layers of asymmetries. In most games these asymmetries cancel each other out. In most games victory is within reach of each team in the middle innings. Most games are won by small things executed in a professional manner.
It is a manager's job to prepare his team to play in such a manner. He is responsible for wringing the last drop of advantage from the situations that will occur in each game. To do this he must know the abilities his players have revealed in their past performances and he must have similar knowledge of the players in the opposite dugout. Every player has a past that reveals his skills, limitations, tendencies. You can look it up, especially if you have been disciplined about writing it down. And teams, too, have tendencies.
Ray Miller, whom we shall meet again, is the Pittsburgh Pirates' pitching coach. He is also a philosopher and scientist, or philosophical scientist. He says that baseball managers today are "very tendency-prone." Right, Ray. The most important and recurring word in the language of thoughtful baseball people is "tendency." In the sport of the long season, of thousands of innings and scores of thousands of pitches, tendencies tell. There is ample scope for the useful calculation of probabilities. As Bill James, the baseball writer from Winchester, Kansas, notes, you don't see anyone keeping score at a football game. Baseball fans filling out a scorecard are not really noting the score. Rather, they are recording everything that produces or fails to produce a score. They can do this because, as James says, baseball is the game in which the players take turns. The action stops as players pause at particular points. This is the exacting orderliness that makes possible baseball's rich, thick statistical data base. And the data base must be constantly kept up to date by contemporary observation. Many years ago a baseball writer, puzzled by the positioning of a Mets infielder when Henry Aaron was at bat, asked Mets manager Wes Westrum, "Doesn't Aaron hit to right and right-center?" Westrum tersely replied, "Not this year."
At 1:30 in the afternoon on a muggy Monday in Boston the Oakland Athletics are working on their data base. Tony La Russa and three aides are working in the small, spartan, dull beige office used by the visiting team's manager, just off the larger but still cramped room where the team dresses. There will be a game tonight at Fenway Park and the pulse of the park is quickening. For the men in La Russa's office the atmosphere is like that inside a cramped bunker during a day of desultory shelling at Verdun. The booming cannons echoing in the concrete cubicle are actually beer kegs being unloaded, none too gently, off trucks and onto Fenway's concrete floors on the other side of the cubicle's wall. The only soft sound is the splat of tobacco juice into paper cups. (Red Man and Skoal Bandits are the preferred "smokeless tobaccos." David sunflower seeds and Bazooka bubble gum—not at the same time, please—are preferred by the younger generation.)
That is not a sound often heard in the management suites of major corporations. However, it is important to remember that a baseball manager is management. True, he also is in the ranks with the players—labor, if you will—in the sense that he is an active participant in a competition for two to three hours on game days. But all day, every day, in season or out, he is management. If a baseball club were to develop the corporate culture comparable to that of, say, IBM—and the Athletics are the most likely to do that—it would, in the best business school manner, draw up a job description for the office of manager. It would find in that function five component parts.
First, the manager participates in the formation of the 24-man roster (usually 10 pitchers and 14 players) and the farm system that develops talent, and the scouting and drafting of young players for that system. The club's general manager and his associates can not do this without close consultation with the manager. They must consider his preferred style of play. And the manager must, in turn, be prepared to modify his preferences to fit available personnel.
The manager's second function is to prepare the 24 players to play. That involves giving them the relevant information about opponents. It also involves taking care that all 24 players are used often enough to maintain high morale and to have role players ready to replace injured regulars. Third, the manager must provide himself and his coaches with data useful for decisions during the game. Fourth, the manager must manage the players in game situations. The fifth function is far more important than it was even just a few years ago. It is to represent the team to the public, in countless press and broadcast interviews before each game and in a general debriefing and assessment immediately after each game. These interviews, which require equal and huge amounts of patience and delicacy, do much to define the team to its public. And they reverberate back into the clubhouse and affect morale.
This day, in Boston, the manager is seated at a metal desk dreary enough to be government-issue. He is wearing socks but no shoes, jeans but no shirt and a frown of concentration. On the desk is _The Elias Baseball Analyst_. With La Russa are Lach, Dunc and Schu. Frenchy will filter in and out.
Rene Lachemann, former manager of the Mariners and Brewers, is the 1988 Athletics' first-base coach. He is halfway dressed in his uniform—pants and undershirt—and on his feet are shower clogs. He chews tobacco and swears constantly, almost musically, using the strongest language to express or embellish even the mildest thoughts and feelings. Dave Duncan, a former catcher, is the Athletics' pitching coach. Tall, quiet and reserved, he speaks almost always in a tone high school teachers use to sedate unruly classes. Duncan has the demeanor of a deacon. He is in full uniform. So is Ron Schueler, whose official title is Special Assistant to the Vice President, Baseball Operations. Schueler is a jack of many trades and a master of one of baseball's modern trades, that of advance scout. He has been in Boston watching the Boston Red Sox play the Mariners. Jim Lefebvre, a.k.a. Frenchy, is the third-base coach and hitting instructor. He was National League Rookie of the Year in 1965 with the Dodgers, and was named to the National League All-Star team in 1966. By 1973 he was playing in Japan. He is a man of overflowing ebullience. It sometimes seems that he can not negotiate a sentence without laughing somewhere in the course of it. Of course that is subject to change because during the 1988–89 off-season he was sentenced to serve as manager of the Seattle Mariners.
As the beer kegs bounce and rumble on the other side of the wall, the sound in the room is the soft murmur of men swapping information. Duncan does most of the talking. La Russa listens, occasionally questioning or commenting, constantly writing notes in a tiny, meticulous shorthand. This meeting amounts to panning for gold, sifting mountains of mere gravel, one panful at a time, looking for glittering flakes. And finding them. "We threw him 20 first-pitch strikes last year and he swung at one of them," says Duncan about one Red Sox hitter. "I have him with one ground ball to the left side and that was right down the third-base line." "The three fastball hits he got last year were all up, two up in the middle, one on the inside part. He got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight outs on fastballs." "Bankhead [a Seattle Mariners pitcher] struck him out yesterday with curves." "He's a good middle-breaking-pitch hitter—that's his bat speed." "Last year he was trying to go the other way—inside out—with runners on base." "In for effect, out away." "Mac's [Red Sox manager John McNamara] been pitching out." "In sacrifice situations, they tell me, bunt the ball to Dewey [Red Sox first baseman Dwight Evans] because he can't make that throw [back to first base]." "He's showed bunt but doesn't bunt." "In any kind of RBI situation, first pitch he's hacking." The Athletics think they have the sign second baseman Marty Barrett uses to put on a pickoff play. "And [catcher Rick] Cerone and [third baseman Wade] Boggs have a [pickoff] play. They just throw a fastball away and Cerone comes up throwing. They got a guy at third the other day." "He was trying to hit Bankhead to right-center." "Book him." (That means, pitch him "by The Book," which is high and in with fastballs and low and away with breaking balls.)
The meeting is relaxed, quiet, low-key and with little nonsense. It is a steady compilation of small decisions about defensive positioning ("... second base two strikes to pull... shortstop in the hole... right fielder toward the line... third baseman straight...") that will be dispensed to the team in a meeting on defense in about three hours. This is what that meeting sounded like:
DUNCAN: "Walter [Weiss]. The Hriniak approach to hitting. You see consistencies in that, right? The guys that practice his method of hitting, basically, are looking down and out over the plate. Most of those guys are vulnerable to down and in, more so than guys with a conventional approach to hitting.* Another thing about this club is that they are aggressive, swinging early in the count."
LACHEMANN: "With the exception of Boggs."
DUNCAN: "A lot of their young guys are up there hacking, so make quality pitches early in the count. If you make good pitches early in the count you can get them out without throwing a lot of pitches to them and getting them to hit your pitches. Burks. He's a bad breaking-ball hitter. He's a dead high fastball hitter. You can jam him, get in on him good with fastballs, you can go down and away with fastballs. Keep it down, throw him a lot of off-speed pitches."
RON HASSEY, formerly of the White Sox, who is the Athletics' catcher tonight: "I remember him going deep [hitting a home run] when I was with Chicago, with a fastball."
DUNCAN : "The fastball to him is basically a purpose pitch [that is, not meant to be hit but rather to set up another pitch]."
On and on and on it goes. Barrett, says Duncan, is a "guess hitter" so change the pattern of pitches. Lachemann warns Hassey, "Don't let him peek on you," meaning that Lachemann thinks Barrett likes to sneak looks back at the catcher giving the signs, or at least location. Lachemann says, "Schu says he's hot." So jam him inside, but the only pitch he can hit off The Wall (the Green Monster, Fenway Park's left-field wall) is an inside pitch that misses a bit out over the plate. Hassey says, yes, when Barrett closes his stance it means he wants to shoot the ball the other way. But Barrett knows teams are pitching him inside so he's opening up and hitting down the left-field line. With Boggs, take it for granted until late in the game or an RBI situation that he will take the first strike. So get the first strike with a fastball down the middle. Evans is a Hriniak protégé, looking for thigh-high out and away. Go by The Book: hard stuff up and in, keep the breaking stuff down and use them early in the count. On Greenwell, anything you do inside has got to be off the plate or it is going to be out of the park. Hassey says, let's get the first strike with a breaking ball, then use the fork ball and mix the fastball in and out. When he starts diving for the outside pitch, bust him inside. Cerone is hot, swinging at a lot of first pitches. But his bat speed right now is slow, so he might not be able to get around on fastballs.
Jim Lefebvre, talking to the hitters about Red Sox pitchers, says Jeff Sellers has not pitched for ten days and has been erratic even when pitching regularly. He will give up walks "so be a professional hitter—make him throw strikes." Lefebvre asks Don Baylor, formerly with the Red Sox, if he can add anything. He can: "He's [Sellers] 3-and-2 on every hitter who goes up there. One night he was 3-and-2 on nine hitters. His fastball sails, almost like a cutter. He doesn't know why, whether he's holding the ball cross-seams or whatever." (A cut fastball is not, as the name might seem to suggest, a scuffed ball. Rather, it is a semi-slider, a fastball that runs because the pitcher "cuts" his delivery, turning his wrist a bit to pull down through the ball when releasing it.) And, Baylor adds, reliever Dennis Lamp's slider is not quite up to the name. It is a "slurve." He is throwing a lot of four-seam fastballs. (A four-seamer is gripped in such a way that it comes out of the hand rotating so that four seams instead of just two are spinning into the air that piles up in front of the ball. This gives maximum motion to the ball.) Baylor continues on Lamp. "He's been called for four balks. Run on him."
Lefebvre mentions that Red Sox reliever Bob Stanley is still living down the wild pitch he threw in the sixth game of the 1986 World Series. "He faced one hitter yesterday and 33,000 people booed him." Anyone know pitcher John Trautwein? Walt Weiss says he faced him last year in Triple-A ball. Watch his backdoor slider (that is a slider that starts outside and slices in over the outside corner of the plate). Lefebvre warns the team to be "alive when on third. Cerone has a new pickoff move with Boggs." Duncan reminds his relief pitchers that Brady Anderson, like most Hriniak-influenced hitters, likes to dive out for the down-and-away pitch, so he is vulnerable to the down-and-in pitch. Barrett flashes the pitch signs—fastball or breaking ball—to the Red Sox outfielders and it is possible for someone in the Athletics' bull pen to read Barrett's signs and relay them—by, say, crossing or uncrossing his arms—to the bench or batter.
There is more, much more, but you get the picture. It is a pointillist painting, lots of dots of information resulting in a filled canvas, a portrait of the Red Sox. The proper way to view a pointillist painting is to stand back far enough to permit your eyes to see the points of color blend into forms with sharp lines and clear shades and shadings. Standing back is what the manager and his coaches do before they step onto the field.
Usually the Athletics' bus leaves the hotel heading for the park at 5:00 P.M., but this is the first game of the first series of the season with the Red Sox, so the middle infielders and center fielders have come to the park early for a series of meetings. The first meeting is about what La Russa considers the first order of business: "How to get guys out." Does that mean how to pitch to them? Not really. It means, primarily, defensive positioning. (As we shall see when it is Cal Ripken's turn to speak, pitching and defensive positioning are parts of a single piece of music written as a duet. No soloist can play baseball properly.) With players seated on a tatty couch, folding chairs and the floor, Duncan calls the meeting to order.
DUNCAN: "Burks. Right-handed hitter. Third base, we play him straight. Shortstop, we play him to pull. Second baseman will be up the middle until there's two strikes on him and then we'll move back to straightaway. [With two strikes, Burks will be more tentative, more defensive, less free-swinging, with a more compact stroke.] First base will be slightly off the line. Shortstop, stay in the hole with two strikes. Left field, we play him straight. Center field, we play him to the left-field side, right fielder plays him straight."
LEFEBVRE INTERRUPTS: "He's a stolen base threat."
A PLAYER: "Does he steal third?" The answer is yes. ANOTHER PLAYER ASKS: "Will he bunt?" The consensus is "both ways," meaning first- and third-base lines.
DUNCAN: "Barrett, straight at third. Shortstop is going to play Barrett a couple of steps up the middle. Second base is going to play him straight. First base about a step off the line."
LACHEMANN INTERRUPTS: "Second base be alive with a runner on first base and less than two outs."
DUNCAN ELABORATES: "He'll try to shoot the ball that way. Be ready to go into the hole."
A PLAYER: "Doesn't he hit most of the balls in the air that way?"
DUNCAN: "He does. Outfield. We're going to shade the left fielder toward left-center. Center fielder is going to be on the right-field side of straightaway. The right fielder is going to be straight."
LA RUSSA: "He's a hit-and-run threat but you have a tough call playing second because of Burks and the stolen base threat. Who is covering and how quickly do you leave?" (Barrett is a right-hander, and normally in a stealing situation with a right-hander up the second baseman would cover. But Barrett likes to "shoot the ball" through the hole between second and first with the first baseman holding the runner on, so the second baseman should not leave his station too soon.)
DUNCAN: "Boggs: Third base is off the line. Shortstop and second base both, we're going to pinch the middle [that is, move the shortstop to his left and the second baseman to his right, each closer to the imaginary line that bisects the diamond]. First baseman straight. In the outfield, left fielder straight, center fielder to the left-field side. Right fielder is going to play slightly toward center field. Evans: Straight all the way around the infield. Straight in left. Center, barely off straightaway to the left-field side. The right fielder will shade just a little to right-center. Greenwell: Left-handed hitter. Straight at third. To the middle strong at shortstop on Greenwell. Not a shift but a strong to the middle. Second base play him a step to pull. First base is going to be straight on him. So Walter [Weiss, shortstop], you just have to get strong to the middle on him. And a slight pull at second base. Horn: Left-handed hitter. All right, we're going to shift on him. Third base off the line. Walter, you get directly behind second base. Second base will be playing normal pull. First base straight pull."
A PLAYER: "What position does he play?"
LACHEMANN: "He's a fucking DH. He don't have no fucking position. Big guy."
DUNCAN: "In the outfield we're going to give him the left-field line. The center fielder is going to be about five steps over into right-center. And the right fielder will play a straight pull. Is that right, Hendu? [Dave Henderson, who played with the Red Sox for several seasons, nods.] Rice: We're off the line at third and first. And we're straightaway at the middle infield positions. We're just kind of crimping the hole a little bit on him. Anderson: Left-handed hitter. Third baseman is going to play off the line, just a little bit, even with the bag. Shortstop will play a step up the middle, second base straight, first baseman straight. In the outfield we're straight, on the right-field side."
A PLAYER: "Will he bunt?"
ANOTHER PLAYER: "Yeah. He was their leadoff man when Burks was down."
A THIRD PLAYER: "Who do they like to hit-and-run with?"
LACHEMANN: "Last year I got Barrett on tape—I don't know if he's still doing the same thing—put on his own hit-and-run. He'd rub the end of the bat, that tells the runner on first."
HENDERSON: "That's what I had with him."
A PLAYER: "He won't count on you [Henderson] remembering." (General laughter.)
DUNCAN: "Benzinger: Switch-hitter, hitting left-handed. Off the line at third. How strong in the middle do you think we ought to play him? Fairly strong up the middle?"
HENDERSON: "Up the middle to pull. Not like a Greenwell."
DUNCAN: "Two or three steps to the middle. Slight pull at second base. Straight at first. Bunch the outfield and play him on the right-field side. Play him just the opposite of hitting right-handed."
LACHEMANN: "You guys out there in center field, you gotta be backing up hits off the fucking Wall all the fucking time. If you go back to the fucking Wall, the other guy's gotta come over and help you."
HENDERSON: "You've got to make a decision early. If you're going for the ball, go for it so the other guy can tail off [that is, play a carom off The Wall if the ball is not caught]."
Some bits of information tossed about in these meetings this day concerned how the Red Sox played the previous few days against the Mariners. These bits came from Ron Schueler. As the team's advance scout, he sees the team that the Athletics will play next, or a team the Athletics will play soon. An advance scout reports back to the manager by telephone or in writing or, as in this case, in person. His subject is the upcoming opponent's tendencies. Advance scouts are paid to be tendency-prone. Such a scout is a sort of spy, but he is quite open about it. In fact, there is a nice camaraderie among such intelligence agents as they sit behind the screen behind home plate in every major league park. They are armed with stopwatches to time pitchers' and catchers' release times (we shall deal with this shortly) and batters' times running to first base. They also have charts and, sometimes, radar guns to time the velocity of pitches. The lap-top computer, the fax machine and Federal Express might all have been invented for advance scouts. All these modern marvels are used by them.
Sitting in Montreal, later in the summer, thinking about the Giants' next series, against Houston in San Francisco, Roger Craig, the Giants' manager, said he was most interested in what his advance scout could tell him about the other team's manager. "When we get home we'll have a report by Federal Express. I'll look at whether Astros manager Hal Lanier runs Gerald Young on the first pitch a lot, or if he'll hit-and-run Bill Doran with the count 2–1, or if he'll put Billy Hatcher on his own to run even when he's at second base." This interest in the other manager is related to the fact that Craig calls more pitchouts than any other major league manager. This use that Craig makes of advance scouts illustrates why the Athletics scout themselves, in this sense: They keep track of what they tend to do in particular situations. For example, runner on third, no one out. How many times has the situation occurred recently? What did the Athletics do? What worked? Tracking such situations is La Russa's way of scouting La Russa. He detects his own tendencies before he becomes so predictable that other managers notice and adjust. "If I always hit-and-run on 1–0, they are going to pitch out on 1–0."
Tony Kubek, the shortstop-turned-broadcaster, credits Casey Stengel with inventing the advance scout. Stengel introduced the pioneer in a Baltimore hotel meeting room. The Yankees were going to face Connie Johnson, a black pitcher. Stengel had sent to Baltimore, in advance of the team, Rudy York, the former slugger for the Tigers. York was famous for his ability to read pitchers. "I'll try," says Kubek with becoming embarrassment, "to make it seem not as racist as it was right then. We had only two black players, Elston Howard and Suitcase Simpson, and Mickey [Mantle] and Whitey [Ford] made it all seem funny. Anyway, York says that when Johnson throws his breaking ball, when he goes above his head with his glove, you see a lot of white. 'You know how those Negroes'—he used another term—'are. They have those white palms.'"
From such a humble beginning (if it really was the beginning; let's assume it was, because baseball likes to nail down details about origins) the advance scout has grown into an important institution. Indeed, after the 1988 World Series we had, briefly, a remarkable phenomenon, the Advance Scout Superstar. A story made the rounds that Kirk Gibson had been able to hit his ninth-inning game-winning home run in game one off Dennis Eckersley because the Dodgers' advance scout had reported this: With a 3–2 count on a left-handed hitter Eckersley always throws backdoor sliders. (Again, that is a slider that looks as though it will be outside but at the last instant bends in over the outside corner.) Gibson is left-handed, the count was 3–2.
Kubek scoffs at this story. Suppose, he says, that in 1988 the advance scout saw Eckersley pitch 15 games, which is probably a lot more than he actually did see. Even in 15 games, how many times did he see Eckersley go 3–2 on a left-handed hitter? (Eckersley's strength in 1988 was throwing strikes, and not getting behind in the count. He walked only 11 batters all season in 72⅔ innings. In 1989 he did even better, giving up just three walks in 57⅔ innings.) Eckersley probably didn't have three occasions all year to throw a 3–2 backdoor slider to a left-hander. Maybe the advance scout saw one of those? Kubek said something like this to that scout during Spring Training, 1989, and the response he got was something between a shrug and a wink.
Kubek, who is a liberal and therefore is as warmhearted as all get out, thinks advance scouts have a right to do a bit of bragging because they are a neglected underclass. They do important work in baseball's shadows. La Russa is understandably less disposed toward sentimentalism about that advance scout or anything else related to Gibson's hit. Speaking even more tersely than usual, La Russa says simply, "Gibson had two strikes on him and was in his emergency stance, shortened up. The only pitch he could hit for power would be something off-speed. Shouldn't have thrown a slider."
That was then. This is now. This is Boston. It is time to be prepared for gathering a different kind of intelligence. In military parlance it is "real time" intelligence, meaning information that can quickly affect the course of an ongoing action. This night one of La Russa's coaches, Bob Watson, will be watching Bill Fischer, the Red Sox pitching coach, who, Watson thinks, handles pitchout signs for the Red Sox.
In 1988 Bob Watson watched the manager or whoever else in the opposing team's dugout was giving the throw-over and pitchout signs. So Rene Lachemann, coaching at first with a runner on first, stood in a position to watch Watson and La Russa in the dugout and warn the runner if a throw-over or pitchout was coming. On the day before this game in Boston, the Athletics had played the Orioles in Baltimore and Watson's watchfulness had been rewarded. Frank Robinson, the Orioles' manager, had called two pitchouts on consecutive pitches, and Watson had decided he had deciphered Robinson's pitchout sign. That may have saved the game by preventing the Athletics from putting on a hit-and-run play and running into an out on a pitchout.
In the eighth inning, with Carney Lansford the runner on first, and an 0–1 count on batter Stan Javier, La Russa put on a hit-and-run play. Javier, getting the sign from the third-base coach, stepped out of the batter's box and asked (by staring down toward third) the coach to give the sign again. That was a dead giveaway to the Orioles that the Athletics were putting on some sort of play. At that point La Russa and Watson saw Robinson make the sign that Watson was now sure was the Orioles' pitchout sign. So La Russa waved across from the first-base dugout to get the attention of his third-base coach, Lefebvre. La Russa took off the hit-and-run and put on the bunt sign. (La Russa has, on occasion, given a hit-and-run sign to his third-base coach, then called time and conspicuously swept a hand across his chest, as though sweeping off the sign, and then given a second sign to disregard the "takeoff" sign and leave the original play on.) The Orioles did not, in fact, pitch out on the next pitch, probably because Robinson saw La Russa waving and assumed La Russa had broken the code. Javier bunted the runner to second, Canseco drove the run in with a home run. So much for subtlety. But if Lansford had been thrown out by a pitchout on a hit-and-run play, and Javier had made an out, the game might have gone another way.
All that started because Javier was not casual enough while picking up a sign. Some players have a terrible time mastering the art of acting nonchalant when getting a sign to do something demanding—to steal or participate in a hit-and-run play. A few days earlier, in Montreal, Roger Craig had had the same problem with a player. With a Giants runner on third and the pitcher coming to the plate, Craig put on a squeeze play. But the batter, seeing the sign from the third-base coach, did such a double take that Expos manager Buck Rodgers must have known that the Giants were plotting some knavish trick. And Rodgers knows Craig well enough to suspect a squeeze play. So Craig jumped up and made a highly theatrical charade of changing signs—and at the end of that process he put the squeeze play back on.
The Yankees had a nonchalance problem with the young Yogi Berra who, when on first base, was as talkative as a magpie. At least he was talkative until he got the sign that a hit-and-run play was on. Then he would clam up and concentrate. Before long the Yankees noticed that Berra was being thrown out on pitchouts. Opposing teams had noticed his pattern. The Yankees told Yogi to keep quiet all the time when on base. Then the Yankees, realizing the absurdity of that idea, told him to keep talking even after he had had a sign.
"Here is something that has just started," La Russa says, his voice taking on the energy that comes to him when he is describing a new miniwrinkle on an old wrinkle. "The first person I saw use it was Roger Craig against us in Spring Training last year. The second time I saw it was from Tommy Lasorda in the World Series. I don't think anybody in the American League does it, so the A's are going to be the first ones. The third-base coach puts on a sign. Or he doesn't. In any case, he goes through a series of stuff. The hitter reads it. Now the pitcher looks in for the sign from the catcher. The catcher looks in to his manager in the dugout. The manager signals 'throw-over.' The pitcher comes set, throws over. Now, every time you throw over or step off, Roger Craig starts having his third-base coach go through another set of signs. Slows the game down a bit, but it puts an element of doubt in the other manager's mind. Suppose the runner tipped off that he was going and you were in a throw-over or a step-off move. Now the manager who called the throw-over or step-off move says, 'sonofagun, he's going.' And that manager wants to pitch out. But the other manager has just put on another set of signs. So now the pitcher's manager thinks, 'He [the other manager] saw his runner tip off that he's going. He thinks, maybe I'll pitch out. Did he take it [the runner going] off? Or put it on?' Another element of doubt. Anytime you can get the other side uncertain in its thinking..."
In the third-base coach's box in Boston this night Lefebvre will be thinking, when the Athletics have runners on base, about the positioning of the other team's second baseman, first baseman and right fielder. If the right fielder is lined up directly between those two infielders, Lefebvre knows that any ball hit hard enough to get between them is going straight at the right fielder. But if the right fielder is shifted, he would field a hard-hit ball while running at an angle that would make it difficult for him to make a hard, accurate throw to third or home. Therefore it would be a good gamble going for an extra base.
"In baseball," says Lefebvre, "you take nothing for granted. You look after all the little details, or suddenly this game will kick you right in the butt." He remembers the eighth inning of a tied game against the Yankees, when the Athletics had large, lumbering Dave Parker on second with no one out and the right-handed Mark McGwire at bat. The Yankees' right fielder, Dave Winfield, was shaded toward center, playing McGwire deep and to pull. From La Russa came the signal for McGwire to try to hit to the right side. If McGwire put the ball in play to the right he would either move Parker to third on an infield out and Parker could then be scored on a hit or a sacrifice fly, or McGwire could drive the ball through for a hit, in which case the ball would be behind Parker, who would be watching Lefebvre for a sign. Lefebvre, coaching third, would have a decision to make. Parker would be watching Lefebvre for a sign to hold up at third or to try to score. "Now," says Lefebvre, "when McGwire hits to the right side, it's not just a nice little ground ball. It's a line shot." In that game, McGwire drove the ball into right field. Lefebvre weighed Winfield's strong arm against Winfield's difficult task of fielding the ball running back to his left, toward the right-field line, then throwing accurately to the plate. Lefebvre waved Parker around third. Parker scored what turned out to be the winning run.
When coaching third Lefebvre watches the depth of the opposing team's outfielders and watches the opposing team's dugout, looking for the "no doubles" sign, which often is a hand on the back of the coach's head and means the outfielders should play especially deep. He also tries to spot the other team's sign telling the outfielders to throw in to second on any single. That sign means a guaranteed run in a situation like this: One night in Texas the Rangers were leading, 3–2, the Athletics had a runner on second and two outs. Lefebvre saw the throw-to-second sign, so he knew to wave in the runner on any single. The Rangers were acting sensibly: The hitter was the potential lead run. If the Rangers tried and failed to throw out the runner heading home from second, the game would be tied and the lead run would have gone to second on the unavailing throw home.
Generally half an hour before a game, Duncan takes his two catchers, Ron Hassey and Terry Steinbach, into La Russa's office to chat about this and that. In one such meeting in Oakland, Hassey noted that in an at bat the previous night Dwight Evans adjusted well to a particular pitch. Remember, Duncan said, every hitter has a distinctive stance but teams heavily influenced by the theories of the late Charlie Lau almost have a team stance, or at least a team tendency. So there is a general truth about pitching to them: Pitch inside for effect, and away to get them out—that is, inside to discourage them from diving across the plate. A television set overhead was showing a Mets-Padres game in which Benito Santiago, the Padres' cannon-armed catcher, yet again threw from his knees and nailed a runner trying to steal second. "I can't get the ball to third from my knees," said Steinbach with the severe self-judgment that seems to come easily to most athletes at the highest level of this sport.
When Duncan goes to his office he brings a lot of paperwork. His office is the dugout. The paperwork La Russa takes to the dugout is simply a card noting the record of each Red Sox batter against each of the Athletics' relief pitchers. Duncan's paperwork, on the other hand, is in thick three-ring binders that contain his charts.
Duncan's charts on a hitter show what kind of pitches he has hit, where they have been thrown (for example, "mh"—middle of the plate, high), what the counts were, and where the balls were put in play. If a pitch was not put in play the notation might be "kc" (strikeout, called) and where that third strike was ("mi"—middle of the strike zone, inside). A rectangular box represents the strike zone for pitches that have been thrown for strikes and not put into play. These charts record pitches that seem to make the particular hitter uncomfortable; that is probably why the particular hitters have let a lot of these pitches go by.
Duncan also gathers data on "first-pitch tendencies." For example, he has noted that out of 15 first-pitch strikes thrown to one American League outfielder, he swung at 10 of them, and that any pitch on the outside part of the plate is the best way to throw a first-pitch strike to him without him getting a hit. Another chart reveals a player with a strong tendency to take a first pitch if it is a breaking ball, so any curve in the strike zone is apt to start an Athletics pitcher off ahead of this hitter. Duncan's charts are so complete that in Spring Training he can tell his pitchers that the previous season they threw, say, 62 percent of all their first pitches for strikes (he considers 60 to 65 percent good) and he can tell them what percentage of those first-pitch strikes were put into play.
With these charts handy in the dugout, Duncan can, at a glance, see, for example, that a hitter got eight hits off the Athletics last season, seven of them fastballs, all of them in the middle of the plate or inside. On the chart that displays pitches this player has put into play for outs or swung at for strikeouts, Duncan sees a cluster of fastballs and one breaking ball, all down and in, and another smaller cluster of four fastballs and two sliders on the outside corner, belt-high. When he looks at these two charts together he sees that most of the balls this batter is putting into play are down and in, and three out of ten are for hits. If he is a .300 hitter on down and in pitches, pitch him elsewhere. He is putting the ball in play on high and outside pitches, but a low percentage are for hits. Duncan prepares two such sets of charts on each hitter, one for the hitter against left-handers, one against right-handers.
Duncan starts the season with charts on the last 40 at bats of opposing players against the Athletics in the previous season. These charts are slowly retired as the new season generates sufficient fresh data. The charts are produced in a two-step process. A sort of first rough draft of the batter's profile is done during each game by someone sitting in the stands behind home plate. This person measures velocity with a radar gun and notes the location of each pitch. After the game, Duncan fine-tunes this record by watching a tape of the game. He can whiz through a taped game quickly because he is looking only at the other team batting, and he is interested only in pitches that are strikes or that are swung at whether or not they are in the strike zone. In the dugout during the game, when someone gets a hit off the Athletics, Duncan makes a pencil mark on the chart of the playing field, noting where the ball went, and noting also his guess of the kind of pitch (fastball, breaking ball, change-up) and location. These are guesses because the dugout does not provide the best vantage point. The next day, after using tapes of the game to confirm or modify his impressions, Duncan puts the information on the chart in ink.
Duncan has charts for all balls put in play by particular players off Athletics pitching, a chart for those balls put in play to the infield, a chart for those to the outfield. The charts show the kinds of pitches hit and the locations—where they were in the strike zone. Duncan's charts of the strike zone are the clearest possible proof that the _de facto_ strike zone no longer bears much resemblance to the _de jure_ strike zone spelled out in such precise irrelevance in the rule book. Duncan's chart of the strike zone is divided into three segments. The top of the top segment is at the hitter's belt. A pitch referred to as "up in the strike zone" is a pitch mid-thigh to belt-high.
Duncan's charts are especially accurate at identifying a hitter in decline. A chart on such a hitter will show that most of the pitches he hits safely are pitches thrown in the middle of the plate. That is, he is hitting only the pitchers' mistakes.
"I don't trust my memory," Duncan says. "That is the main reason I started doing all this. When I was trusting my memory, what I was doing, primarily, was remembering the hits that hurt us. The guy gets a double to right-center field to beat you and it sticks out in your mind. But you forget about those ten balls that he made outs on to left-center field. I wanted to make sure I had in front of me _every_ ball he'd hit, not just the ones I remember."
Lefebvre, too, is an ardent believer in La Russa's information-intensive approach to each series in the season. "The aim," he says, "is to make our hitters a little more calculating. Not to tell them how to hit, but to get them thinking about particular pitchers."
Aggressiveness by batters can be devastating for a pitcher whose preferred pattern is to get ahead in the count and then nibble at the strike zone. A team that comes to the plate hacking on first pitches will prevent him from getting comfortable. He will have to start nibbling with the first pitch; he will fall behind in a lot of counts. And suddenly the batting average of the Athletics will be, in effect, 50 points higher. Roger Craig, a former pitcher and now manager of the San Francisco Giants, puts Lefebvre's point this way: "The most important pitch in baseball is strike one. If you're hitting .350 and I get a strike on you, now you've become a .250 hitter if I do my job."
Lefebvre wants to know the sort of information an advance scout can provide. How does a particular pitcher start off particular kinds of hitters? If he misses with his first pitch, is there a pattern to his next pitches? "A lot of pitchers," Lefebvre says, "are what we call 'two-lane' pitchers—sinker in, slider away." One chart on Boggs shows that he took 38 consecutive first pitches from right-handed pitchers. So two things are certain. One is that the pitcher should lay the first pitch to Boggs in, not bothering to nibble or be fancy. The other is that doing so will help only a bit with the best two-strike hitter in baseball. But every little bit helps with a Boggs.
Lefebvre remembers a little nugget of information that was unearthed in a hitters' meeting on a day the Athletics were to face the slow, nibbling "junk" thrown by the Yankees' Tommy John. "Tommy John did not make his living throwing strikes. He threw mostly borderline pitches and balls. He pitched most guys low-and-away, low-and-away, so for years we told everybody to move up on him. But he only moved his pitches a little farther away. However, Don Baylor had some success by backing up. It forced John to adapt to Baylor, pitch more up, partly because it changed the umpire's perspective of where the ball is [relative to Baylor's strike zone]." The day Baylor told this to the hitters' meeting the Athletics pounded John.
La Russa and Lefebvre say there are six ways a pitcher becomes vulnerable. Three of them are at specific points in the game. The first is when he is facing the first batter in the first inning. The pitcher has felt sharp in the pregame warm-up in the bull pen, but there he faced no batter, no pressure, no umpire. Also, he is not as loose as he was in the pregame warm-ups—not as sure which pitches will be working—and he is working from a different mound. So you want to make the first inning particularly tough, beginning with the leadoff man. He should plant doubts in the pitcher's mind by working the count. If he makes an out he should at least hit the ball hard. That will get the pitcher thinking that he doesn't have all the stuff he thought he had. When La Russa managed the 1989 American League All-Star team, he decided, at the suggestion of Dave Duncan, to bat Bo Jackson in the leadoff spot. La Russa's aim was to make the National League's starting pitcher, Rick Reuschel, as "uncomfortable" as possible as quickly as possible. Jackson hit the second pitch of the game 450 feet for a home run.
The second specific point in the game when the pitcher is vulnerable is whenever he gets two quick outs in an inning and then lets up. "We always think about a 'closer' as someone who finishes a game," says Lefebvre. "A good starting pitcher closes nine times—once an inning." The third time a pitcher is vulnerable is in the fifth inning. "That's decision time," says Lefebvre. "He knows that if he can get through the fifth he can get a decision because he has a bull pen to save him. You see guys start to aim the ball, their velocity goes down, their breaking ball is not as sharp, they get out of that groove."
The fourth and fifth vulnerabilities of pitchers concern unpreparedness, physical and mental. A pitcher who is not in good condition is susceptible to a sudden loss of mastery—a decline in the velocity of his pitches and an inability to control their location. And a pitcher is vulnerable who has not looked at the kind of charts that Duncan keeps. "A guy comes out of the bull pen and sees a batter standing up there and he doesn't know who he is and then throws him a fastball and he hits it nine miles," Lefebvre says. "The pitcher goes into the dugout and says, 'By the way, what does that guy hit?' and the pitching coach tells him, 'The pitch you just threw.'"
The sixth point of vulnerability is, Lefebvre says (somewhat murkily), "when adversity goes against you." Adversity has a way of doing that. He explains what he means: "Bases loaded. Count is 2-and-2. Boom! He throws his best pitch. Umpire says 'ball.' Or the pitcher makes the hitter hit a double-play ball and an infielder boots it. The pitcher loses his concentration. We talk about these things in meetings. We say, 'stay close to this guy because if something goes wrong, he falls apart.' There are several guys in this league—I mean _stars_ —who have their routines. As soon as you break their routines, they get uncomfortable. So we try to figure ways to do that. For example, we get a runner on first base and get very edgy and aggressive."
Of course there are other pitchers you go out of your way not to annoy. Several times during the research for this volume Lefebvre expressed a keen interest in not saying anything that might make Roger Clemens angry. In their pursuit of an edge, teams can overreach. La Russa is a lot like Clemens—short fuse, large charge—and he knows not to make matters worse by making a competitor like Clemens cross. Even smart managers can do foolish things, and that is one.
Managers can do memorable things. On the day in 1944 when the Cubs' Bill Nicholson hit four home runs in a doubleheader against the Giants, Mel Ott, the Giants' manager, ordered Nicholson walked intentionally—with the bases loaded and two outs. Paul Richards (White Sox, 1951–54, 1976; Baltimore, 1955–61) occasionally ordered the pitcher intentionally walked with two outs so the leadoff man would not begin the next inning. But most of the things that managers do that matter do not involve anything particularly noticeable, let alone exotic. For example, writer Leonard Koppett, author of _A Thinking Man's Guide to Baseball_ , remembers a routine game in 1965 when, with the score tied with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees had a runner on first and the Yankee batter had a 3–1 count. The pitcher had to get the next pitch over the plate, yet Yankee manager Johnny Keane ordered the batter—to his consternation—to take the pitch. It was, not surprisingly, a strike, producing a full count. However, a full count was exactly what Keane wanted. On a full count with two outs, the runner on first would be running with the pitch, so he would be sure to score on a double. And that is exactly what happened. Had the same hit occurred on a 3–1 count, the runner would not have scored. Besides, the pitcher still wanted to get the 3–2 pitch in the strike zone because a walk would have moved the runner into position to score the winning run on a single.
Obviously managers matter. What is not obvious is how much. It is sometimes said that because players' talents are so thoroughly revealed and rewarded over the course of the long season, managers do not win games other than by assembling the team. But that is a _non sequitur_. Talent is the ability to do some things, not all things. So the right player must be in the right place in the right situation. That is very much the result of good managing.
La Russa played professional baseball until he was 32. He says he should have quit when he was 24 because he kept getting worse. He is exaggerating, but not a lot. He was a mediocre player. A lot of excellent managers were marginal players. Which is to say, they made playing careers out of the margin that mind could give them. There have, of course, been great players who were successful managers, even player-managers. Lou Boudreau was one, Joe Cronin another. In 1926 Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins and George Sisler, all future Hall of Famers, were player-managers. But in modern times, mediocre playing careers have been the preludes to some of the most distinguished managerial careers.
Earl Weaver, who won 1,480 games and had a .583 winning percentage through 17 seasons, never made it to the major leagues as a player. Sparky Anderson, the only manager to win 800 games in each league (863 with the Reds and 895 with the Tigers through the 1989 season), was a .218 hitter in his only year in the major leagues (1959, with the Phillies).
Whitey ("Baseball has been good to me since I quit trying to play it") Herzog, the Cardinals' manager, is now regarded as the National League's Spinoza. In his playing career he drifted through four teams in eight years, compiling a batting average of .257. Gene Mauch managed 3,941 games (the fourth-highest total in major league history) after playing for six teams in nine years and batting .239.
La Russa was born and raised in Tampa. What the Chesapeake Bay is to crabs, Tampa is to baseball talent: a rich breeding ground, known for both quantity and quality. Wade Boggs and Dwight Gooden are just two who were boys in Tampa and now are prospering in the major leagues. La Russa's mother, though born in Tampa, was of Spanish descent, and his father spoke Spanish. La Russa spoke Spanish before he spoke English. Being bilingual is a considerable advantage for a manager in an era when nearly 20 percent of all the players under contract in professional baseball are from Latin America. Managing was far from La Russa's mind when, the night he graduated from high school in 1962, he signed with the Athletics. The team was then in Kansas City and was the toy of Charlie Finley. La Russa got $50,000 for a signing bonus. He was 17 and the world was his oyster. The next year he was in the major leagues for 34 games, 44 at bats, 11 hits. He did not know it at the time, but when the season ended he had already appeared in a quarter of all the major league games of his playing career.
Back in Tampa after the 1963 season, he arrived late for a slow-pitch softball game with some friends from high school. Youth is impetuous; even La Russa was then. At that softball game he went straight to shortstop without warming up. It was filthy luck that in the first inning a ball was hit in the hole. He fielded it, fired to first and tore a tendon in his arm near the shoulder. He played with a sore arm for 15 more years. Along the way he collected two shoulder separations, a knee injury and chips in his elbow (probably from throwing awkwardly with a sore arm). In 16 years as a professional player, he had a total of 176 at bats in 132 major league games for the Athletics, Braves and Cubs. His career batting average was .199. He never hit a home run.
His best season convinced him that his best was not going to be good enough. In 1972 he hit .308 for the Braves' Triple-A Richmond club, but he was not called up to the parent team. Convinced that his playing career had a low ceiling, he turned toward another career. After five off-seasons at Florida State University Law School he had a degree. He was admitted to the bar in 1979. However, by then he was headed for managing.
It is said that the study of law sharpens the mind by narrowing it. But, then, the study of anything narrows the mind in the sense of concentrating attention and excluding much from the field of focus Besides, a sharp mind, like a straight razor, becomes sharper by being stopped. Tony La Russa is the sixth major league manager to possess a law degree. The five other lawyer-managers are Branch Rickey, Miller Huggins, Hughie Jennings, Monte Ward, and Muddy Ruel.
La Russa was 34 when, with 54 games remaining in the 1979 season, he became manager of the White Sox. There have been younger managers. Roger Peckinpaugh became the Yankees' manager at 23, and in 1942 the Indians' shortstop, Lou Boudreau, then 24, became the youngest manager to start a season. But by 1989 La Russa was managing in his eleventh season, three more than the 8 Peckinpaugh managed and just 5 behind Boudreau's 16. If La Russa stays in a major league dugout—and he can if he wants to—until he is 65, he will have managed 31 seasons, more than Walter Alston (23), more than Leo Durocher and Joe McCarthy (24), more than Casey Stengel and Bill McKechnie (25), Gene Mauch (26) and Bucky Harris (29): in fact, more than any other manager except John McGraw (33) and Connie Mack (53).
The rearing elephant sewn on the sleeve of the Oakland Athletics' uniforms has a pedigree involving two of baseball's larger-than-life managers. John McGraw was manager of the Baltimore Orioles in 1901, the American League's first year. McGraw, whose dislikes were many and fierce, disliked the league's president, Ban Johnson, and objected to the admission to the league of the Philadelphia Athletics, a franchise owned and managed by Cornelius McGili-cuddy—Connie Mack. McGraw derided the Athletics as the "white elephants" and Mack, to taunt McGraw, adopted the white elephant as his team's symbol. The Athletics promptly won the pennant in 1902, the year McGraw jumped to the New York Giants. The elephant logo came and went several times during the fluctuating fortunes of the Athletics' franchise. It returned in 1988 for the first time since the Athletics' 13-year sojourn in Kansas City. And in 1989 the two franchises of McGraw and Mack, having followed the course of empire westward, were back at each other, in the World Series.
Connie Mack was born the year after Fort Sumter was fired upon and died the year before Sputnik was launched. He holds one of baseball's most secure records: most seasons as a manager. Mack also holds an unenviable record: most consecutive seasons managing in the same league without a championship (19). Between Mack and La Russa no one managed the Athletics for more than three consecutive years. Longevity isn't as long as it once was.
Today, and in the future, long managerial careers may not occur as easily as they once did. Until relatively recently there was a side of baseball that was not very meritocratic. Baseball served as a haven for some managers and coaches who were not particularly good. This haven existed because baseball people were kind to their pals.
To the familiar classifications of social systems, now add a new category to cover the peculiar governance of baseball. To aristocracy, plutocracy and democracy add baseball's contribution to government: "palocracy," government by old pals. Baseball has traditionally been run by men whose lives have been intersecting and entwined for decades. They have known one another from the rocky playing fields and spartan offices of the low minor leagues all the way up to the manicured playing fields and well-appointed suites of the major leagues. You do not talk long with a baseball person before you hear the phrase "baseball person." Often it is accompanied by a negative: So-and-so is "not a baseball person." No adjective is required, thank you very much. A baseball person is a good baseball person. A palocracy can make for kinder, gentler governance, but it also can make the world safe for mediocrity. (The prince of managerial mediocrity was Wilbert Robinson. Uncle Robbie of the Dodgers managed for 19 years and produced this record: 1,397 wins, 1,395 losses. It is a shame one of those wins was not a loss.)
Closed systems, such as tenured university faculties or diplomatic corps or military services, are vulnerable to systemic mediocrity. People who have gone to the same schools, climbed the same career ladders, absorbed the same values and assumptions and expectations, become intellectually insular and professionally self-protective. They forgive one another their mistakes, and mediocrity becomes cozy.
As baseball becomes more meritocratic in every aspect it does not need to become bland and (in a gray-flannel sense) managerial. Colorfulness is not incompatible with quality. The most vivid image of a manager in modern times is that of Casey Stengel, who said things like, "What about the shortstop Rizzuto who got nothing but daughters but throws out the left-handed batters in the double play?" Dumb, right? Stengel was dumb like a fox. Few managers are intellectuals but all managers talk a lot. Managing, like politics, is mostly talk, and some smart managers say strange things. Detroit's Sparky Anderson says that Jose Canseco has the body of a "Greek goddess," but you know what Sparky means. Some of the brightest managers—Leo Durocher for one, Earl Weaver for another—had tempers that sometimes made them seem less intelligent than they were. (Weaver was once ejected from a game during the exchange of lineup cards.) Youth is hot and when La Russa became manager at age 34 he had a temper that was too easily detonated. But the best balm is a steady diet of winning. He had only three losing seasons in his first 11 seasons (1979–89) as a major league manager.
La Russa was just 41 when he had the fundamental experience of managing: He was fired. The White Sox fired him in 1986. The Chicago experience "toughened me up pretty well." He certainly is tough enough now. Once when Jose Canseco was a rookie and did not hustle on a play, he returned to the dugout to find La Russa furious. La Russa told him, "Do that again, I'll knock you on your ass."
La Russa never became one of the hard-core unemployed. On July 1, 1986, less than a month after being fired, he was hired by Oakland. The Athletics were in last place, 21 games below .500, which is not easy to be before the All-Star break. The rest of the year they were 45–34. In 1987 they played only .500 ball but in the American League West that was good enough for third place. The 1988 Athletics were the first American League West team to lead the league in wins since the 1983 White Sox, who were managed by La Russa. In 1987 and 1988 the Athletics were 105–63 against the American League East—a thumping 57–27 in 1988.
Situations are shaped in innumerable ways by managers, by what they do to prepare for a game and what they do during the game. La Russa says, with a fine sense of semantic tidiness, that what are called baseball "instincts" really involve much more than instinctual behavior. These "instincts" are actually the result of "an accumulation of baseball information. They are uses of that information as the basis of decision-making as game situations develop- Your instincts may say 'pitch out now' and later you may say, 'Why did I do that?' When you trust your gut you are trusting a lot of stuff that is there from the past." "A manager's job," said Earl Weaver, "is to select the best players for what he wants done. They're not all great players, but they can all do something." The style of managing must be suited to the kind of team you have. But a team does not fall unbidden from the sky. It is built. And to some extent—limited by the nature of the talent rising from the farm system and the talent available from trades—you build a team suited to the style of managing you prefer.
You also build a team to suit where you will play—and not just your home field. In 1968 there were only two fields with artificial turf. In 1989 there were ten. Because each team now plays a good number of games on artificial turf—on a plastic carpet put down on concrete—speed is more essential than it used to be. Or, to be more precise, speed is more widely recognized as valuable than it used to be. Artificial turf has reminded some people of how valuable speed always has been in baseball, anywhere, at any time. For example, a slow runner on first often allows the defense to "play soft," not holding the runner on. This allows the pitcher to throw off-speed pitches to left-handed hitters who may get around on those pitches and pull them but will not have a huge hole in the right side to pull them through. This is true on a natural or artificial field.
Today's increased emphasis on speed is one reason why many fans feel as Bill James does. "I do not like artificial turf," writes James. "I like the game that artificial turf creates." It is a game in which in 1987, the year the Cardinals won the pennant, Vince Coleman, the Cardinals' speedster, scored 23 percent of his 121 runs with no hit coming from his teammates after he reached base. A runner is neither undignified nor unaesthetic when he gobbles up 270 feet by, for example, stealing second, going to third on an infield grounder to the right side and scoring on a sacrifice fly. If you are fast, the sacrifice fly does not even need to be very deep. Things get exciting.
Runs that come one at a time matter. Most runs come that way. By concentrating more baseball minds on the myriad ways of moving 90 feet, and on how to score one run at a time, artificial turf has had the partially—I say partially—redeeming effect of restoring balance to baseball. The balance was lost when home runs became too important to too many teams and fans.
After the 1916 season, in which the National League's home-run leader had 12, the league was alarmed about the degradation of baseball by this epidemic of vulgar power. So the league ruled that all outfield fences had to be at least 270 feet from home plate. (Actually, only two parks were affected, the Polo Grounds in New York and what would come to be called Baker Bowl in Philadelphia.) At that time sports pages listed stolen bases and sacrifices in addition to batting averages, but did not list home runs.
The future, however, was in the process of being born in Boston. In 1915 a Red Sox pitcher in his first full season had 4 home runs. These 4 by Babe Ruth were almost a third of the Red Sox total of 14. In September, 1919, when Ruth was about to set the single-season home-run record with 29, Edward G. Barrow, Ruth's manager on the Red Sox, said:
After Babe has satisfied himself by hanging up a record for home runs that will never be touched, he will become a .400 hitter. He wants to establish a record of 30 or 35 home runs this year, and when he has done that he will start getting a lot of base hits that will win us more games than his home runs. He will just meet the ball and hit it to left field as well as Ty Cobb. He will not be trying to knock the ball out of the lot after this season. He will be content with his record because it will be far and away out of the reach of any other player the game is likely to develop.
Ruth was a wonder, but he was more a harbinger than an aberration. The home run was here to stay, which was fine. What was not fine was that home runs began to drive out other forms of offense. When home runs became the center of baseball's mental universe, the emphasis shifted away from advancing runners. The new emphasis was on just getting runners on base to wait for lightning to strike. The major league teams of the 1950s were like American automobiles of the 1950s: There was not much variety or subtlety. In the era of automotive megachrome and tail fins baseball was played (I am exaggerating slightly) like a board game: Move here, then wait; move there, then wait again. The stolen base was like the foreign car: It was considered cute and fun and not quite serious, and was not often seen. In the first seven years of that decade no _team_ stole 100 bases in a season. Think about that. Not a single one of the 16 teams stole as many bases as Maury Wills was to steal in 1962 (104).
The 1959 World Series between the Dodgers and the White Sox foreshadowed the transformation of baseball back to a game emphasizing speed. The "Go-Go Sox" attack, if such it could be called, consisted largely of Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox, two small middle infielders who could hit-and-run and steal. And the 1959 Dodgers were a far cry from the last Dodgers team that had appeared in a Series, the 1956 slugging team of Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella and Carl Furillo. The 1959 Dodgers led the league in fielding, strikeouts, bull pen saves and stolen bases. Those sufficed.
The wonder is that baseball took such a wrong turn into the cul-de-sac of the 1950s. Yes, that was a conservative decade. The Eisenhower years have been characterized as "the bland leading the bland." Bland was fine in politics, especially after the overstimulation of the Depression and the Second World War. But baseball is entertainment and bland entertainment is not fun. True, the decade of Mantle, Mays and Snider—one city's center fielders—can not really be called dull. But when baseball became monochrome, it was not as entertaining as it should have been, even though some color came from home runs. It was insufficiently entertaining because it was not sufficiently intelligent.
Furthermore, a lot of teams—those with power shortages relative to the big bruising teams—were at more of a competitive disadvantage in the 1950s than they needed to be. They would have done better if, instead of swinging from their heels, they had got up on their toes and run. Again, I concede the point that baseball boomed in the 1950s. But it did not boom as it was to do in the 1980s.
The 1947 season had provided what should have been sobering evidence of the competitive weakness of counting on home runs to power a team to a pennant, and the evidence would accumulate over the next two decades. The first team to hit more than 200 home runs in a season was the 1947 Giants. They hit 221. They finished fourth. Of the 22 teams that have hit 200 or more home runs in a season, only 5 won pennants: the 1953 and 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, the 1961 New York Yankees, the 1962 San Francisco Giants and the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers. Only 2 of those 5 (the 1955 Dodgers and the 1961 Yankees) also won the World Series.
The Cubs of 1971 had three players with 300 or more career home runs (Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo) and finished in a tie for third place with a record of 83–79. The 1987 Cubs hit 209 home runs, more than any National League team in a decade, and they gave up just 159, but they were outscored by 81 runs, 801 to 720, and crashed into the cellar. Only 70 other teams had hit at least 50 more home runs than their opponents and only one of those 70 had been outscored. The 1987 Cubs' opponents had 179 more men reach base by hits, walks and hit batters. The 1986 Mets won the National League East by 21½ games, the largest margin in the history of divisional play and second in major league history to the 27½ -game margin of the 1902 Pirates. The Mets managed their feat with the relatively modest total of 148 home runs.
The 1987 Orioles became the twenty-second team in history to hit 200 or more home runs in a season, and the first team in history to give up 200 home runs while hitting 200. They were next to last in runs scored. Nearly half (45.6 percent) of their runs were scored by batters who had hit home runs or by runners who were on base when home runs were hit. For the Orioles it was feast or famine, and the home-run feasts, although unusually frequent, were not frequent enough. The 1987 Orioles got fewer runners into scoring position than any other team and they finished sixth. The 1988 Athletics hit only 156 home runs but finished first.
Because baseball is a game of normal human proportions and abnormally small margins, people tend to make too much of sheer bulk when a lot of it is assembled on one team. Before the 1927 World Series, in which the Yankees were to sweep the Pirates, the Pirates' Lloyd "Little Poison" Waner (150 pounds) watched Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel and the rest take batting practice, then he turned to his brother Paul and said, "Jesus, they're big." They were indeed. And one of baseball's durable myths is that the Yankees' batting practice that day so demoralized the Pirates that they rolled over and died. Actually, although the Yankees swept the Pirates in four games, the Yankees won games one and four by one run and got only three more extra-base hits than the Pirates (ten to seven). But bigness can be mesmerizing in baseball.
It was perhaps inevitable, given the physical bulk of the middle of their lineup, that the 1988 Athletics would be a much misunderstood team. They were, to the end, underestimated. Fans did not appreciate their versatility, which was illustrated when Jose Canseco stole second base for his fortieth stolen base. He had reached first base on a bunt. That was his only bunt hit of the season, but he and other Athletics sluggers had, as players say, "showed bunt" occasionally during the season. That is, they had shortened up on the bat as if preparing to bunt. By doing this they had achieved some hits because the opposing third basemen had been drawn in a step or two or three, thereby making it easier to get a sharply hit ball past them. Otherwise, third basemen against the powerful Athletics would have played unusually deep. It is hazardous enough playing third base in the big leagues; it is doubly so against the Athletics' right-handed power hitters like Canseco and McGwire. But it becomes especially worrisome when these line-drive hitters can credibly shorten up and threaten to drop a bunt down the third-base line for a hit. A line drive reaches a third baseman faster than the fastest pitch travels to the plate. By "showing bunt" the Athletics' batters pull their opponents' third basemen in, make them nervous and add a few points to the Athletics' team batting average. "Watch where the third baseman plays against us," says La Russa. "Even to the bag, a step beyond it or a couple of steps in. Do you know what that means? There are balls in the hole and balls down the line that he doesn't get to. Why would you want to let the third baseman play all the way back on the grass and take away all those hits, without showing the bunt and drawing him in?"
The 1988 Athletics had plenty of power:
| HR | RBI
---|---|---
Jose Canseco | 42 | 124
Mark McGwire | 32 | 99
Dave Henderson | 24 | 94
Dave Parker | 12 | 55
Terry Steinbach | 9 | 51
TOTAL | 119 | 423
However, the 1987 Athletics had more power:
Mark McGwire | 49 | 118
---|---|---
Jose Canseco | 31 | 113
Mike Davis | 22 | 72
Carney Lansford | 19 | 76
Terry Steinbach | 16 | 56
TOTAL | 137 | 435
But not even the 1987 Athletics measured up to the 1961 or 1927 Yankees:
1961 YANKEES
| HR | RBI
---|---|---
Roger Maris | 61 | 142
Mickey Mantle | 54 | 128
Bill Skowron | 28 | 89
Elston Howard | 21 | 77
Yogi Berra | 22 | 61
TOTAL | 186 | 497
1927 YANKEES
| HR | RBI
---|---|---
Lou Gehrig | 47 | 175
Babe Ruth | 60 | 164
Bob Meusel | 8 | 103
Tony Lazzeri | 18 | 102
Earl Combs | 6 | 64
TOTAL | 139 | 608
The 1988 Athletics won 18 of 19 in late April and early May and had only one minislump after that. When it occurred, cutting their lead to three in mid-July, they reeled off 22 wins in the next 28 games. They wound up with winning records against all clubs but the Royals (5–8), had the best record in the major leagues on the road (50–31) and demolished the once haughty American League East (57–27). They were 30–16 in one-run games, 14–5 in extra innings and won 24 games in their last at bat. They were a moderately dominating team, but only moderately. Consider a comparison.
The 1986 Mets outscored their opponents by 205 runs. Mildly impressive, but only mildly. It was the best differential since the 224 of the 1976 Big Red Machine. But since 1900, 65 teams have done better than the Mets' 205. The run differential has narrowed over time as the differences in the capabilities of the teams have narrowed. This narrowing has occurred for the same reason the .400 hitter has disappeared. As baseball knowledge has become deeper and more broadly disseminated, wide disparities in individual and team performances have become rarer. To put all this in perspective, the 1927 Yankees had a run differential of 376, and even that is not the record. It is not close to the 1939 Yankees' record of 411. The 1988 Athletics' run differential of 180 was just 44 percent of 411.
The 1988 Athletics had a per-game margin over opponents of 1.3 runs. Note well, even a very good team like the 1988 Athletics has only a slim advantage. But it has it often.
To get that edge often, a manager must fret constantly. On a sunny May morning in Baltimore, La Russa is breakfasting abstemiously, as is his wont, on fruit and cereal and nothing else. He is thinking—worrying, naturally; for him, the distinction between thinking and worrying is a distinction without a difference—aloud.
"Parker is struggling. I'm going to hit him second against Boddicker tonight." Parker is a large, slow slugger who is past his prime. He is hardly the prototype of a number-two hitter. But he is in a slump and is swinging at a lot of bad pitches. Boddicker is an off-speed finesse pitcher. The key to La Russa's thinking is his leadoff hitter, Carney Lansford, who always has hit Boddicker well and who, at the moment, is white hot, hitting everyone. If Parker comes up with no one on base, Boddicker will tantalize him to the point of distraction, frustration and futility. Parker will chase everything. "But suppose Lansford, a legitimate base-stealing threat, is on first. The pitcher is caught. The catcher is caught. You have to go one way or the other, but you can't have it both ways. One way is to try to pitch to Parker with off-speed, off-the-plate junk. But that way you give up second base to a Lansford steal. Or you try to take away the steal by coming at Parker with a pitch he might hit for extra bases. That is why if I have a legitimate stolen-base guy, I don't like to have a little slap-type hitter hitting next. A power hitter puts the pitcher in the problem."
In 1988 the Athletics ranked sixth in the American League in sacrifice bunts. (The Chicago White Sox led with 67 sacrifice bunts; the A's had a total of 54.) If a leadoff man singles in the first inning, will La Russa ever bunt? "Very rarely." Even if the number-two batter has almost no chance to get a hit, La Russa prefers to try something more aggressive than a bunt, such as a hit-and-run to get the ball in play. This is a consideration when deciding whether to bunch or scatter the best hitters through the lineup. La Russa is often a scatterer. "Suppose you don't have much thump in your lineup. You try to space out your hitters a bit. If you have four good hitters, bat one first, one third, one fourth, one seventh. If you bunch them all together you are grouping your best shot to score in just three innings. The other six you're going out with no firepower. Instead, take one of your guys who may not be an outstanding hitter but who can handle the bat, and bat him second because if the first guy gets on base, you can do something with the batter to advance the runner." Something like hit-and-run. Hitting-and-running is safer than bunting if your batter is someone who almost always makes contact. Bunting is a difficult art. It is devilishly easy to bunt the ball foul twice and then have to swing away defensively because you are behind in the count. And especially on artificial turf it is devilishly hard not to bunt the ball so far that a fielder can pounce on it and throw the runner out at second. Also, when the runner is breaking for second with the pitch and the bunt is popped up, the runner can be doubled off first. If the batter is a good contact hitter he probably will not swing and miss and leave the runner exposed to being thrown out at second. So in a hit-and-run situation the only risk would be a line drive to an infielder that gets the breaking runner doubled up at first.
In both cases, bunting or hitting-and-running, you start the runner, so he is at risk. Granted, if the batter hits a line drive at an infielder, the runner who started with the pitch probably will be doubled up. But if the ball is hit on the ground, the runner probably can not be forced at second. And if the ball goes through the infield—ideally, through the hole opened by the movement of the shortstop or second baseman toward second as the runner breaks from first—the runner winds up at third.
It is an old baseball joke that big-inning baseball is affirmed in the Bible, in Genesis: "In the big inning, God created...."La Russa knows the key to creating big innings. "First and third, nobody out. You're talking about a big inning. To me, the secret of scoring a lot of runs is, as many times as you can get a guy into scoring position, do it." But when considering a hit-and-run, there are three variables. They are the pitcher's control, the batter's ability to make contact and the runner's speed. La Russa wants to have at least two in his favor. "Suppose the other team has a guy on the mound who throws real hard and is wild. Suppose you have a real free swinger at the plate and a slow runner on first. That's about as bad a situation as you could pick for a hit-and-run, no matter what the score or game situation is. You want to hit-and-run when you know the pitch is going to be close enough to the strike zone that the batter can put it in play. Your free swinger may swing through even a good pitch, and the slow runner breaking from first base will be dead."
Again and again and again La Russa returns to baseball's fundamental trade-off, the purchase of opportunity by the coin of risk. The crucial concept in baseball is the creation of opportunities. That means putting people on base. Fans are fascinated by each hitter's average with runners in scoring position. But the difference between an average of .275 and .250 is of little importance compared with the more important matter of how many runners the team gets into scoring position. Consider a team loaded with power hitters but short on hitters with high on-base averages. Such a team may have more trouble scoring runs in bunches than does a team short on power hitters but capable of getting lots of men to first base and willing to take risks by running.
Thinking aloud about the risks in this game that has risks on every hand, La Russa plays Ping-Pong in his mind with alternatives. Ping: "If the pitcher against us is Frank Viola, someone we hardly ever hit, or Dave Stieb, well, push it. Why sit back and get beat? So what if you have a play that has a poor chance of being successful? Your chances that day are poor anyway. So, for example, if you have a slow runner on first, a power hitter at the plate and a 2–0 count, it is a good time to start the runner because the other side will be surprised." Pong: "But it may also be a bad time because the power hitter may not be reliable about putting the ball in play to prevent the slow runner from being thrown out at second."
La Russa believes in taking risks precisely because baseball, the game of failure, is all risks, the odds being what they are: against. Against almost anything you try. "If we get a man to second with no one out, we may have three guys coming up who can hit home runs, but why stand around and wait for that? Let's have the next guy get the runner to third and pick up one run. It's not correct to sit and wait for extra-base hits."
La Russa does not tailor the Athletics' game to the park they are playing in on a given day. "The game tells you what to do," he says, "not the park." A good pitcher can turn a bandbox park into the Grand Canyon. La Russa is more apt to play for one run at a time, with a lot of hitting and running, when, as in a League Championship Series and World Series, television dictates a starting time around 5:30 P.M. Pacific Time. Pitchers have an enormous advantage throwing through slanting sunlight and twilight. And the weather—the temperature, the humidity, the winds—can also influence La Russa's approach to a game. "If it's hot and the ball is carrying, maybe you don't bunt, don't play for one run." But meteorology has precious little to do with managing. What will prevail is the manager's fundamental style, which is another name for tendency.
"We wanted to establish an A's style of play," says La Russa, "a lot of effort and playing with an idea." La Russa's idea is to find a way to find an edge in every situation. Earl Weaver's credo was: Make all your outs at home plate, not on the bases. That is not La Russa's style. As soon as some managers fall behind by even a run they become less aggressive about starting runners or otherwise risking outs on a steal or a hit-and-run. La Russa thinks such restraint is often unreasonable. Suppose, he says, you are down by three runs going into your at bat in the third inning. Suppose your eighth-place hitter gets on first with one out, your ninth-place hitter is, to begin with, a ninth-place hitter and he is struggling. Assume, for good measure, that he is facing a sinker-ball pitcher, so a ground ball is probable. La Russa says: Start the runner. The ninth-place hitter probably will not get a hit, but if he grounds out you will have a man at second and two outs and your leadoff man up. The fact that you are behind does not make it more likely that the ninth-place hitter will score the runner by getting an extra-base hit.
Even with a home-run hitter like Canseco in the middle of his order, La Russa says, "You've got your best chance to win when you've got good sharp line drives all over the park. Canseco stays in control, with discipline, trying to just hit the ball hard. He can hit .290, even in the .300s, he's got that good a stroke. And he's so strong that every once in a while, there goes one." Even in a year when there are 40 or more every-once-in-a-whiles from Canseco, he gets a lot more singles than home runs—more singles than extra-base hits. What is true of Canseco is true of baseball generally. In 1988 there were more than twice as many doubles (6,386) as home runs (3,180), but there were 25,838 singles. Baseball is still what it always has been and always will be, basically a 90-feet-at-a-time game.
Baseball people love numbers, but there are limits to what can be quantified, even in baseball. Part of baseball's charm is the illusion it offers that all aspects of it can be completely reduced to numerical expressions and printed in agate type in the sports section. La Russa, who when younger was considered the archetype of the numbers-crunching modern manager, has no such illusions. He constantly recurs to one intangible: intensity. One way to build it is to keep pushing for small achievements. Remember the law of cumulation: The result of many little things is not little. Playing "little ball," scrambling to manufacture runs—"looking for just 90 feet, every once in a while," La Russa calls it—energizes a team. It puts a team up on the balls of its feet, ready to run. And the intensity carries over into defense.
"When a team comes in to play the A's, their dugout should not be comfortable. They should be thinking, 'Uh oh, they steal third, they hit-and-run, they bunt for a base hit, they try to hit the hole, they knock the pivot man down.' I remember when I was playing second base against a team like that, you're worn out when the day is over. A station-to-station club is easy to play against because you just play the ball." A station-to-station team, meaning a team that puts runners on base and waits for _the batter alone_ to make something happen, simply has fewer ways to score runs. You do not often string together three singles in an inning. True, if you take risks you can run yourself out of a big inning, and as La Russa says, "You don't want to shoot down your chance for a crooked number [more than one run]." But if you are aggressive in ways other than by blasting extra-base hits, you can put together big innings that are built in part out of the other team's anxieties. La Russa wants the other team to look out from its dugout "and get real bad vibes" about his team's physical and mental aggressiveness. He wants them to be saying, or at least thinking, "Oh, man, do you see those A's, with all that talent, they're not just out here letting the numbers fall into place. Did you see that slide into second base? He just knocked our pivot man into left field. Did you see the way Jose handled that two-strike situation, the way he spread it out, put the ball in play? See what McGwire did? They're down by three runs so he took the 2-and-0 pitch. See McGwire take the ball to right field with a runner on second base?" La Russa says, "That's what happened last year [1988]. I had managers tell me, 'I hate to say it, but your club is fun to watch.'"
The Athletics' aggressiveness was not fun for the Toronto Blue Jays to watch in the sixth inning of the first game of the American League Championship Series of 1989. With the score tied 3–3, the Athletics had the bases loaded with one out. Carney Lansford hit what could have been an inning-ending double-play ball to the Blue Jays' shortstop, Tony Fernandez. He fielded the ball a tad too casually and tossed the ball so that it arrived a fraction of a tenth of a second later than it should have in the glove of second baseman Nelson Liriano. Unfortunately for Liriano, the runner arriving from first was fast and was not feeling friendly. It was Rickey Henderson, who had reached first base by being hit on the wrist by a pitch. He hit Liriano, whose throw went down the right-field line allowing two runs, including the winning run, to score. "Rickey," said La Russa later, "had just been hit by a pitch and he's out there with a lot of adrenaline pumping. You see that pivot man pay the price. That's our style."
Many fans think that the maximum aggression in baseball is the big swing that drives the ball 400 feet. However, leaving aside the fact that a lot of balls driven 400 feet are just loud outs, there is also the fact that a 30-foot bunt can be more aggressive. "The most aggressive thing in baseball," says La Russa, "is guys on base running around and sliding, raising dust." In 1988 only 3 percent of all batted balls put in play in the major leagues were bunts. But that is hardly the whole story of the role of bunting. Again, the ability to bunt, and the threat to do it, pulls in the infield and creates better angles through which to hit the ball for singles. Get enough of those 90-foot advances, you win.
The foremost recent practitioner of "little ball" was Gene Mauch, who managed for 26 years for the Phillies, Expos, Twins and Angels. He retired shortly before Opening Day, 1988. The fact that Mauch never managed a team to the World Series and won only two divisional titles is cited as evidence that "little ball" leads to little glory. Well, now. Leave aside the fact that Mauch's Angels came within one strike of getting past the Red Sox and into the 1986 World Series. Note instead how hard it is to prove that "little ball" tactics actually mean a low-scoring team. The Elias Bureau, which specializes in slaying theories with facts, calculates that in the three seasons 1985, 1986 and 1987 Mauch's Angels executed 260 sacrifice bunts, more than twice the average of the rest of the league (128). But these bunt-crazed Angels also scored approximately the same number of runs as the rest of the league's teams averaged. In fact, slightly more: 2,288 to 2,276. One-run innings accounted for 29.9 percent of the Angels' scoring, 29.7 percent of the rest of the league's. And the Angels had more three-run innings than the other teams averaged (162 to 141).
Besides, the difference between "little ball" and big-inning baseball is not usually as big as you might think. "Little ball" may mean a lot of one-run innings, but even "big bang" teams will have more one-run innings than innings with "crooked numbers." And most of their big innings (more than two runs) will be three-run innings. Four-run innings will be much rarer. An Elias study of a recent season found that even in the American League, where the DH increases the number of big innings, only one half inning in every 110 produced five or more runs. It was one in every 135 in the National League.
Whitey Herzog's Cardinals of the 1980s have been track teams built to scamper across the carpet of cavernous Busch Stadium. They are rightly considered the archetype of teams built to avoid reliance on the long ball. In the 1982 World Series the Cardinals, who had hit 67 home runs during the season, met—and beat—the Milwaukee Brewers, who had hit 216. And in 1987 the Cardinals scored four or more runs in 16 consecutive games. That was the longest such streak since 1950.
Advocates of big-inning baseball have an axiom by which they dismiss one-run-at-a-time baseball. The axiom is: If you play for one you get one—only one. But to that axiom the appropriate response is: Perhaps, but you get that one. And it matters. The 1986 _Elias Analyst_ reported that scoring the first run gave the typical American League team, in 1985, a 2-to-l edge on its opponents. In addition, the worst team in the league, after scoring first, had a better record than the best team in the league when its opponents scored first. The Elias study of the 1986 season showed that 65 percent of all American League games were won by the teams that scored the first runs. And in 84 percent of those wins the team that scored first never fell behind. In the National League, where the parks are generally larger and there is no DH, scoring is a bit lower and the value of early runs is a bit higher. In 1986 National League teams scoring first won 67 percent of the time, never trailing in 86 percent of those wins. This is a reason why La Russa toils so hard at getting the Athletics ready to play from the instant of the first pitch.
Compare conditions in baseball with those in another emblematic American industry. In the automobile industry from the 1920s through the 1950s competition was not nearly as fierce as (thanks to industrious foreigners—and I do mean _thanks)_ it has become. Back then, if the door seal let the rain in, or a door handle fell off, the industry just shrugged. Those were little things, common to all brands, and were not taken very seriously. But in recent decades increased competition has raised standards. Something similar has happened in baseball.
The man who feels the increased pressure most is the manager. His players prepare for a game by doing what they have done all their lives—throwing, fielding, swinging a bat. The manager must prepare for his several roles, and he must also superintend all the roles of all the players. He must not take it for granted that his players will be properly motivated day in and day out. La Russa motivates by giving everyone work. He uses role players enough to make them feel needed and appreciated—and to make the regulars feel some bracing competition from the bench. Over the course of a 162-game season, a group of young men, some of them quite young—younger than major leaguers used to be—are going to be together a lot. They are going to be away from home half the time, spending hours hanging around hotels and playing cards in clubhouses. Over the course of such a season, intensity and concentration must be constantly cultivated. "Every player on our club, without exception, is so much better off [financially] than he was two years ago," La Russa says. "So now there is not the survival motivation."
When you play every day, 162 times, it becomes difficult to be ready to play with proper intensity from the first pitch of the first inning. Most teams start most games at less than full energy. But 162 first innings are one-ninth of a season, or the equivalent of 18 games. And La Russa believes they are even more important than that. "The best two ways to win are to play real well early or real well late. The middle innings take care of themselves. The first inning may be the only inning in which your leadoff man leads off. And every year the same statistic comes out showing that clubs that score first, their winning percentage in those games is anywhere from .550 to .650."
Earl Weaver was a strong proponent of baseball megatonnage. A manager's best friend, he said, is the three-run home run. He considered it irrational to bunt a runner over from second to third with no outs, counting on a sacrifice fly to drive him in. Weaver reasoned that a successful sacrifice bunt is by no means a lead-pipe cinch, and that a sacrifice fly is harder to come by than people think. So leave the runner at second and hope for a single to bring him in rather than counting on two contingencies (the bunt, the sacrifice fly). La Russa disagrees.
"Advancing guys in run-scoring situations is the key to consistent offense. A man leads off with a double. If we don't score with a runner on second and no one out, the other side is going to get a lift. It is difficult to get a sacrifice fly, but it is not easy to get a base hit either. You get more fly balls than singles. So you look at who you have at bat. Hopefully, you have someone who can hit the ball hard to the right side, so you don't have to give up the out automatically with the bunt. One of our best at that is McGwire. We keep those stats, a running month-by-month total of about six, seven, eight situations. One of them is runner on second, no outs. How many times you need to get the runner over, to hit it or bunt it. McGwire has been asked to do it six times this season [1988]. Five times he has gone to the right side _for hits."_
La Russa offers the following scenario. The Athletics' leadoff man, Carney Lansford, doubles in the first inning. The second batter is Stan Javier, a switch-hitter who does not pull often and who this day is batting left-handed against a pitcher throwing fastballs on the outside edge of the plate. Javier can not pull him, can not hit the ground ball to the right side, so he is going to bunt. That way, Lansford will be at third when the third hitter, Jose Canseco, comes up. On the other hand, suppose you have someone like Don Baylor, a right-hander, at the plate. He is a dead pull hitter and not a good bunter. With a runner on second and no one out, you are not going to ask him to push the ball to the first-base side or to bunt. Just let him swing. "I always want at least to get the guy to third. Because there is another statistic. When we score first, our winning percentage is very high.
"Here is another fact Jim Lefebvre pulled out, something I had never seen before. He took last year's club [the 1987 Athletics], a pretty good offensive club, and looked for the stat of how many innings were scoring innings in a game. It didn't matter how many runs we scored. When we scored at least three different times in a game, our winning percentage was at least .600, even if the scoring was just a one and a one and a one. This year around the All-Star break Jim did that stat for this year's team. When we scored four times we were something like 15–1."
There is, he says, a psychological advantage in getting the lead and then increasing it. That builds an expectation of defeat in the other team, especially if you have a bull pen that can hold leads. So La Russa thinks scoring runs one at a time is important because scoring frequently is important. This is so despite the fact, frequently cited by proponents of big-inning baseball, that in 75 percent of all games the winning team scores more runs in one inning than the losing team scores in the whole game. It is generally true that the more scoring there is, the more the cream among baseball's teams will rise to the top. The ideal of "may the best team win" is most apt to be fulfilled in lopsided games. The better of two teams is most apt to win blowouts because close games are more apt to turn on luck—bad bounces, broken-bat singles, line shots—rockets—hit right at some fielder.
But, again, reliance on extra-base hits is not the only, or even the most reliable, way to score runs in bunches. One of baseball's few recent dynasties, the Athletics of 1972–74, won three consecutive world championships with a team batting average below that of the league over the three seasons. The Athletics did get a lot of long hits. And a lot of those long hits were preceded by walks. Furthermore, the Athletics had a high level of successful steals and (partly for that reason) a high rate of success at avoiding hitting into double plays.
One problem with building a team that relies heavily on home runs is that the number of home runs can vary considerably from one season to the next. In 1987 both leagues and nine teams (six American League, three National League) set records for most home runs in a season. This was the continuation of a trend. The American League had set a home-run record in 1986. The trend ended, as trends tend to do, but not before the scandal known as Rawlingsgate or (depending on your point of view; I tend to skepticism) the great sound and fury about next to nothing. Here is what happened.
In 1984, the last year of Commissioner Bowie Kuhn's reign, there were 3,258 home runs. In 1987 there were 37 percent more than that, 4,458. That led—especially among pitchers, who are prone to dark suspicions—to dark suspicions. Had the ball been "juiced" to pump up offense and gate receipts?
Certainly the ball has changed over time. The earliest balls were leaden—literally. They were homemade, using little lumps of lead wrapped with twine and covered with animal hide, sometimes chamois or sheepskin. When rubber replaced the lead at the core, some balls weighed as little as 3 ounces. But since 1876 the ball has had a constant size (9 to 9¼ inches in circumference) and weight (5 to 5¼ ounces). The only certain change in the ball in more than half a century was the 1975 change of covering from horsehide to cowhide.
The crucial matter is "co-efficient of restitution," which is what folks in the bleachers mean by the propensity of the ball to get to the bleachers—"liveliness." The COR is measured by firing balls from an air cannon at a velocity of 85 feet per second directly at a slab of wood 8 feet away. Major league baseball requires a rebound rate of 54.6 percent of the original velocity, with a permitted deviation of no more than plus or minus 3.2 percent.
COR is not the whole story. Smoothness could be as important as liveliness, according to Tony Kubek. He believes the seams on the ball were flatter in 1987 than in 1988. The smoother surface of the ball flattened out many breaking balls and caused the ball, once hit, to have less wind resistance and thus travel farther. Okay, you say, but why were the seams flatter? I am glad you asked. One explanation is the "Happy Haitian Theory." The balls are made by Rawlings in Haiti. Perhaps the thread in the seams was pulled tighter, and the seams were flatter, because Haitians were full of pep and vim after the overthrow of the dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier. Maybe the yarn inside was wound tighter for the same reason, making the balls both livelier and smoother.
In any case, in 1988 home runs dropped by 1,278, or 29 percent below the 1987 level. But there was a continuation in the upward trend in the production of theories. The Elias authors noted that after August 6, 1987, when the bat of the Mets' Howard Johnson was seized on the suspicion that it had been "corked," home-run production went down. The authors suggested that the bats, not the balls, were juiced, and the illegal bats were quickly taken out of service. (Drilling out the end of a bat and filling the core with cork makes the bat lighter and increases "bat speed." Think of it as a way of giving Tony Gwynn's wrists to a normal hitter.) The problem with this explanation of the home-run barrage is that the only evidence is an inference, and one that probably was an example of the _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ fallacy. (The rooster crows and then the sun rises, so the crowing caused the sunrise.) Did the deterrent effect of one seized bat cause a lot of cheaters to mend their ways? Not likely. Besides, there may not be a lot of cheats. Johnson's bat turned out to be perfectly legal.
In 1989 home runs were down 30.8 percent below the 1987 total. The two-year decline coincided with bad times in Haiti, but almost everything always coincides with bad times there. The truth about the great 1987 home-run surge may never be known. Life is like that. And life goes on. But baseball managers can derive from this episode a lesson for sensible living: Always remember that the home run is a fickle servant.
What is true from season to season is even more true from day to day. Frank Robinson can hardly be accused of disdain for home runs. He hit 586 of them, more than all but three other players (Aaron, Ruth, Mays). The speed he combined with power enabled him to steal 204 bases. Robinson is now a manager, and he has to manage players a lot less talented than he was. He says, "Speed comes to the park every day. The three-run home run doesn't. Speed is the most consistent thing you have."
The Athletics' 1988 season ended with a power outage. In the World Series, Canseco and McGwire hit .053 and .059, respectively. Each had one hit, a dramatic home run. Perhaps too dramatic. Canseco's was a grand slam that bounced off the center-field television camera in Dodger Stadium in the first game. McGwire's was a ninth-inning game winner in Oakland in the third game. It was only the eighth game-ending home run in Series history, the seventh having come off Kirk Gibson's bat two games earlier. La Russa believes the Athletics began losing the 1988 World Series six innings before Gibson hit that game-winning home run. They began losing when Canseco erased a 2–0 Dodgers lead with his grand-slam home run. Any team, says La Russa, plays better when "edgy." After Canseco's slam, La Russa could sense in the dugout the confidence that whatever they might need they would get. It seemed too certain, too easy.
"Playing the game right, pitching the game right. We want to be an aggressive, come-after-you club, throw strike one, make them put the ball in play, know how to finish a hitter off if you're ahead of him. There's a lot of ways to play this game right. That's how the Dodgers beat the A's in the World Series. They played the game right. That is one of the beauties of baseball. I don't care how much talent you have or don't have. If you play the game intelligently, if you execute the fundamentals, you can win."
In game four, which the Dodgers won, 4–3, they got two of the four runs by the perfect execution of what La Russa calls "pushing." With runners on first and third and one out, the runner on first stole second, thereby eliminating the double-play possibility. The next Dodgers batter hit what would have been a double-play grounder to second. The Athletics threw out the runner at first while the runner on third scored. The second time there was one out, a runner on third and Steve Sax was on first. Sax was running when a ground ball was hit. If he had not been running, the Athletics would have gotten a double play and been out of the inning. Instead they had to settle for one out and the (it turned out) winning run came home from third.
"Technically," says La Russa, "a successful hit-and-run is one where you just put the ball in play and advance the runner to second base. But if you get a base hit on the play, that's golden. The Dodgers got base hits on 11 of their 15 hit-and-runs. _Nobody's_ success rate is 11 of 15, not even close to that. I give Tommy Lasorda a ton of credit."
In the 1950s Lasorda was a pitcher with a lousy arm and a record to prove it: He had a major league career of 58⅓ innings, no wins, 4 losses. So Lasorda learned to use his head. La Russa likes that.
La Russa's mantra comes from Bill Rigney, one of baseball's sages. Today Rigney is a sort of utility infielder of baseball's executive suites, working in the Athletics' front office. He is a former infielder for the Giants and former manager of the Giants, Angels and Twins. He played in the 1951 play-off game when Bobby Thomson hit the home run that broke Brooklyn's heart. He has seen a lot and talks enchantingly about it. Rigney's baseball talk is nonstop, inexhaustibly interesting and laced with lovely anachronisms, such as his references to teams as "the Baltimores" or "the Houstons." His distilled wisdom, and La Russa's mantra, is that the four important things in baseball, in order of importance, are: play hard, win, make money and have fun. The problems start when the third and fourth take precedence over the first and second.
"Baseball," says Tom Trebelhorn, manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, "has got to be fun, because if it is not fun, it's a long time to be in agony." La Russa agrees but adds: Time flies when you are having fun and what is fun is winning. So back to the first point: play hard. The manager sets the tone and the example. A manager is a player in the sense that his attention and what he does during the game helps to determine the outcome. What he does most is purposeful watching.
When La Russa is concentrating on the action his lips are thin and straight as a mail slot. He looks like an angry man, but he is not. He is, however, serious—about everything. His two young daughters—budding ballerinas—are being educated at home so they can see more of their father and can experience some educational travel during the off-season. A wit once said that it was not true that Gladstone lacked a sense of humor—Gladstone just was not often in a mood to be amused. La Russa is no stranger to laughter, but he does not often laugh when he is within a fly ball's distance of a ballpark. With his ample dark hair and thick eyebrows, and the bill of his cap pulled low, keeping his eyes in perpetual shadow, his watchfulness has an aspect of brooding. He spends the hours of each game giving signs in response to what he sees on the field in front of him, and in response to what he sees—or thinks he sees, or thinks he would be seeing if he could decipher the evidence—in the dugout across the field.
As a voracious gatherer of information, he begins looking for an edge even when away from the ballpark. He thumbs through other teams' media guides to find out if, say, Team A is having more success getting out a particular batter on Team ? than Oakland is. If so, he may call a friend with Team A—if he has one—to solicit information. He is more likely to do this if Team A is in the American League East. At the ballpark his watchfulness begins long before the game does. La Russa watches the other teams' batting practice as often as possible to see what particular hitters are working on. In Boston in May, 1988, when Jim Rice was off to a slow start, La Russa watched intently to see whether Rice was trying to pull the ball. (He was.)
"I think the manager has to keep control of every piece of the game, including the running game." He means the baserunning by, and against, the Athletics. He has never given a player a season-long "green light"—permission to run whenever he wants to. When Canseco became the first 40–40 man, hitting 42 home runs and stealing 40 bases, he had, La Russa estimates, a green light to run at his discretion on, at most, 27 of those steals. One player who has a green light, unless La Russa takes it off, is Carney Lansford. Canseco is a lot faster; Lansford is a lot more experienced. In most other cases, if the Athletics' first-base coach tells the runner nothing, the runner has a red light. He can not go unless he gets a sign to steal. Or the coach may tell him he has a green light in this inning or this game. Otherwise they go "pitch to pitch," using a flash sign that may come from the bench or the third-base coach or the first-base coach. The sign is never "go." It is "you may go." It means everything is in favor of trying to go, so if you get anything from a decent to a good jump, go.
La Russa assigns to himself the lion's share of responsibility for slowing down the other team's running game. "The single most important thing the pitcher and catcher can do is make the right pitch, so they should concentrate on that. Let me handle the running game. I keep the records, I pay attention to the opposing manager, and I've watched the runner more closely than they can." So whoever is catching for the Athletics is constantly in danger of getting a crick in his neck. Catching is hazardous enough, but a sore neck is an occupational hazard for the Athletics' catcher who, when runners are on base, is constantly looking over to La Russa.
La Russa has four signs he can give when his catcher looks over to him in the dugout: throw over to first base, hold the ball, pitch out and make "a bad-ball pitchout." The last is used when you are fairly sure you have decided on the other team's signs and are reasonably sure the runner has been given the steal sign. A simple pitchout would cause the other side to wonder, did they guess right or do they have our signs? The Athletics' pitchers are taught to throw the bad-ball pitchout head high but not far outside. The catcher rising to receive the pitch is in a good position to throw to second. The bad-ball pitchout is not a bad enough pitch that it can be used in a hit-and-run situation because a good contact hitter might be able to put it in play.
Dave Duncan is right: We remember best the things that hurt us. So La Russa will long remember the pitchout he did not call during the 1988 World Series.
"In game two, Hershiser got three hits. The second hit he got, there was one out, a runner, Alfredo Griffin, on first. Hershiser tried to bunt once and fouled it off. Then they let him swing and he fouled it off. Then a ball. A 1–2 count. You could tell by the runner's lead that it looked like he was going. And the Dodgers put some signs on. A lot of times with a two-strike count you don't bother about signs. So I said, 'I think something is on. They wouldn't hit-and-run on a 1–2 count with the pitcher up.' If I had trusted what I was _seeing_ I would have put on a pitchout. It was screaming at me to pitch out. But I didn't. We threw a ball down and away, Hershiser threw the bat at it and punched a little hit down the right-field line, _with the runner going_. They knew he could put the ball in play." Griffin would have made it to third in any case. However, right fielder Canseco missed the cutoff man throwing back to the infield and Griffin scored. "It was great baseball," says La Russa.
Most good managers are as watchful as La Russa. Although Roger Craig sometimes delegates to a coach the duty of watching one or more of the key people on the other side of the field, he generally wants to watch the opposing team's manager, third- and first-base coaches and base runner before every pitch. He uses pitchouts and hit-and-runs more than most managers. (Evidence of the latter: The Giants start so many runners the team hits into fewer double plays than might be expected.) Many managers delegate to coaches various decisions that La Russa himself makes—whether to play the infield in or back, whether to throw through or hold the ball on a first-and-third steal situation, when to pitch out.
The king of pitchouts was Nick Altrock, who pitched in the dead-ball era. He had such a deadly pickoff move that he was said to have walked some batters because he thought picking them off first was the most expeditious way of getting them out. "A pitchout," says La Russa, "is an important part of defense. If I go against a team that doesn't pitch out on us, it's just like getting a free pass—run anytime you want. If you run two games in a row on a 2–0 count, in the third game we will pitch out on you." To avoid the cost of a pitchout (a setback in the count), pitchers try to inhibit the other teams' running game with convincing pickoff moves. But throwing over to first base also has a cost, drawn against the pitcher's stamina. "The best shot—really airing it out—takes a lot out of a pitcher. So we have a play in which instead of putting a sign on twice, we throw over twice, the first one is your average throw, the next is your killer."
Baseball is a game of quick episodes; it is also a game of anticipation. Therefore, advance information can be invaluable. That is why so much attention is given to stealing signs. "At least three clubs in our league—Milwaukee, Cleveland, Toronto—work hard to steal signs when they have a runner on second base. And that really irritates me. Okay, if it's an edge and the other team lets you take it, you go ahead. But if I were a pitcher, and I had to deal with all the changes of signs that the other team makes necessary by stealing signs, I would not put up with the disruption of my concentration. I'd do what Clemens did last year. He was going against Cleveland or some other team notorious for stealing signs. They give the batter location, in or away"—La Russa shows how, standing like a base runner, bent over at the waist, legs apart, patting one thigh or the other—"or they'll actually signal the pitch. As Clemens came to the stretch, he looked back and saw that the runner at second was giving the location. Clemens stepped off the mound, walked back there and said to the runner, 'If I ever see that again from you or anybody on your team I'm going to bury the guy at the plate.'" La Russa says the runner at second gave Clemens some back chat so Clemens returned to the mound and on the next pitch sent the batter sprawling.
Another way of combating such communication is to give the communicator at second base a credibility problem. "I was talking with Whitey Herzog about that," La Russa says. "He said that if he were a pitcher and saw a guy giving signs from second base, he'd call for the ball away and hit the guy in the ribs. The guy got a signal [from the runner on second] saying away. Pretty soon they don't talk."
The ancient practice of stealing catchers' signs from second base has been made easier by the satellite dish. This has vastly expanded access to telecasts of other teams. Center-field cameras give perfect pictures of catchers giving signs, so when runners get to second base they often do not need to decode the other teams' signs. A coach has done that already by watching tapes before the game. The runner may even know the "switch" sign, the one the catcher uses to switch the real sign from the first to, say, the third one given. Some teams have started relying less on advance scouts and more on people whose jobs are to tape games off satellites and cull information from the tapes, including the other teams' signs.
Jim Frey, who is in his fifth decade in organized baseball, has managed the Royals to a pennant and the Cubs to their first moment of postwar glory, the 1984 division title. Frey, now the Cubs' executive vice president for baseball operations, says the 1984 Cubs stole signs by television. When the Cubs were playing at Wrigley Field, Frey would send right fielder Keith Moreland or catcher Jody Davis into the clubhouse in the bottom of innings when they were not due to hit. These two veteran players were skillful at deciphering the opposing catcher's signs, which could be seen on the clubhouse television because the center-field camera was covering home plate on each pitch. Of course even when such deciphering occurs, the use of the intelligence depends on having runners get to second base—and having players who, when they get there, can concentrate on communicating to the batter what the catcher is signaling. You also need hitters who want to use the information.
One way to avoid having a catcher's signs stolen is to have the catcher stop giving signs. When Whitey Ford thought his catcher's signs were being stolen, he called the pitches himself, shaking his head specified times for particular pitches while his catcher ran through meaningless signs. Similarly, during the 1988 World Series, as catchers Terry Steinbach and Ron Hassey were constantly turning toward La Russa in the dugout, a television camera was frequently focusing on La Russa as he gave a variety of pitchout or throw-over or similar signs by touching various parts of his face and head. Except he was not giving any signs. They were being given by someone sitting next to him. Billy Martin used to give steal signs before some batters reached first base. When a count reached 3–0 on a batter who, if walked, Martin wanted to steal, Martin would flash the steal sign to his third-base coach. If the man walked and the other team turned its attention to Martin, looking for him to reveal his intentions, it was too late to steal the sign.
(At this point there was to have been a paragraph giving a particularly fascinating detail about La Russa's use of another kind of pilfered information. However, as a condition of being given access to team meetings—a reasonable condition—and in order to allow La Russa to speak without inhibition in our many meetings, I had agreed to excise any detail that he might decide he did not want to see published. There were very few of these. But on the morning of October 27, 1989, the day the World Series resumed in San Francisco, he asked that I remove the paragraph that had been here. Because the detail being removed was such a telling illustration of his meticulousness, I put up a small, brief argument for keeping it in. It was a feeble argument and, considering the man I was trying to persuade, it was singularly dumb. "That detail makes you look good," I said foolishly. He replied frostily, "The way a manager looks good is by winning games. That detail might cost me a run." Case closed, as lawyers like La Russa say.)
It is best that managers not expect too much precision in a high-energy game with layers-within-layers of complexity. Tom Trebelhorn remembers learning the limits of managing when he was managing Rickey Henderson in Boise, Idaho. "I had Rickey when he was 17 years old. Of course I had him running on his own. All I had was a 'stop' sign for when I didn't want him to go. But Rickey wanted the signs like everyone else. I said, 'Rickey, that's silly. We've worked on breaks and leads. What if you get on first and you want to run and I don't give you the steal sign. What are you going to do?' He said, 'I'll probably run.' I said, 'Well, okay, what if you get on first and I give you the steal sign and you don't think it's right and you don't want to run, what's that going to do? You probably won't get a good jump and you'll probably get thrown out and you should _never_ be thrown out. I want you to feel it, I want you to taste it, smell it, get a good lead, get a good break, relax and go.' But Rickey said no, everyone else gets on base, they get the signs, I think it's neat, I want signs, too. I said okay, so we go over the signs: We've got take, bunt, hit-and-run, steal. And we've got a 'takeoff' sign, the one that erases—takes off—all signs. So Rickey gets on first, he looks over, I go through some signs, I finish with the takeoff. He steals second. Looks over for another sign. I go through most of the signs again, I don't even come close to the steal sign. I finish by wiping everything off with the takeoff sign. He steals third. Later I say, 'Rickey, this is ridiculous. You want the signs but you don't know them.' He says, 'I know the signs. You gave me the takeoff sign and I took off to second and I took off to third.'"
Trebelhorn, who will be 42 on Opening Day, 1990, is a manager like La Russa. A former high school teacher, he had a professional career batting average of .241 in five seasons, all in the minor leagues in places like Bend, Oregon; Walla Walla, Washington; Burlington, Iowa; Birmingham, Alabama; Lewiston, Idaho. He is an advocate of edgy baseball. "I'll tell you what I like," says Trebelhorn. "A Paul Molitor bunting for a base hit. A steal of second. A Jimmy Gantner take-it-with-you [a drag bunt for a base hit] to the right side getting Molitor over to third. A Robin Yount hard ground ball to the backhand side of the second baseman whose only play is to first, Paulie scores. I love that." So, he says, do the fans. "Our fans have changed." In 1982 the pennant-winning Brewers of Harvey Kuenn were called "Harvey's Wall-bangers," pounding out home runs, and fans flocked to see them. Today, Trebelhorn says, the fans write asking him to bunt more.
"Every club is a lot more active in trying to take the extra 90 feet," Trebelhorn says. "Not necessarily by bunting but by good flow on the bases—being able to go first to third, second to home, with runners on base being able to read a pitch in the dirt." Trebelhorn says that one of his slower players, Joey Meyer, "clogs up" the base paths. "One hundred and eighty feet, please—at least. If he hits a lot of singles and gets a lot of walks, he can't be our DH because that causes problems. What do you do if he leads off the seventh inning of a tight game with a single? You've got to run for him. So you tie up the game and you've got his spot coming up again in the tenth. It sure would be nice to have a possible home run, but I've had to run for him."
When Trebelhorn was managing in the minor leagues, even when his team was far behind he would have his team running, to create learning opportunities. And that policy won games. "If we were way behind and they played behind our runners, we ran. If you don't want us to run, then hold us on. And we're still going to run. In Fresno [California], when I was managing Modesto, we were behind 9–3 and they didn't hold us on first. We stole second. They didn't hold us close at second, we stole third. Hit a sacrifice fly, it's 9–4. We get another guy on, they hold him on, we still steal second. Now the catcher is fuming. We steal third, he throws the ball into left field, it's 9–5. We lose 9–5. After the game, the catcher says, 'That's really horseshit.' I said, 'If you're catching tomorrow night, I'm going to show you what horseshit really is.' The next night we went 15 for 15 stealing. Rickey Henderson stole 7 bases in the game. And we barely won the game, 11–9."
In 1988 National League teams attempted an average of 2.49 steals per game. American League teams averaged 2.10 steals per game. National League teams averaged 1.85 steals, American League teams averaged 1.34. American League runners had a slightly higher success rate, 68 percent to 67.2 percent. In 1989 National League teams attempted 2.31, American League teams 2.04. National League teams stole 1.57, American League teams 1.40. Again the American League success rate was slightly better, 68.6 to 68.1. These numbers give only negligible support to the standard knock against the American League, which is that the league plays stand-around baseball—stand around and wait for big things to happen, things like three-run home runs. National League teams, so the argument goes, try harder to make things happen by hitting and running, stealing and generally using their legs. National League partisans insist that a team that uses its legs is also using its head. So-called "little-ball," playing for one run at a time, and hence 90 feet at a time, requires a higher ratio of mind to muscle.
Ray Miller, who has coached in both leagues, says he has been at Wrigley Field when the wind was blowing out and the balls were flying out, and he has been there when the wind was blowing in and the balls that batters crushed died before reaching the wall. But in the American League there is Seattle's Kingdome, Minnesota's Metrodome, Fenway Park, Tiger Stadium, Arlington Stadium. "They're all Wrigley Fields," says Miller. He believes the bigger ballparks make for better baseball because there is less emphasis on "getting Godzilla to the plate" to hit a home run. There is, accordingly, more emphasis on getting one run at a time. Rick Dempsey, who now has caught in both leagues, believes that National League teams are more inclined to play for one run at a time. This is either a cause or an effect, or both, of there being more base-stealing talent in the National League. And that has something to do with there being more fields with artificial turf. "You can get a better jump and run faster on that stuff," says Dempsey, the word "stuff" expressing his distaste for the stuff. And he believes National League catchers will, when facing a running situation, call for more fastballs than they otherwise would call.
One reason people think this is so about the National League is that they think it ought to be so. Six of 12 National League fields have artificial turf and only 4 of 14 American League fields do. Another reason why many people think there are pronounced differences between the brand of baseball played in the two leagues is that there used to be such differences. There were when Maury Wills and other Dodgers in the early and mid-1960s were winning by manufacturing a few runs and counting on Drysdale and Koufax to make do with a few. A third reason why the leagues are thought to have different personalities is that this disparages the American League as the dumb league. National League partisans say the American League asked for disparagement when it adopted the designated hitter rule, which allegedly diminishes the strategic decisions a manager can make.
La Russa has managed only in the American League and therefore only with the DH. He does not feel it cramps his style or denies him scope for his talents. He is right.
The reason the American League has the DH can be stated simply. By 1972 American League attendance had fallen to 74 percent of National League attendance. Fans like offense. In 1973 the American League adopted the DH. One reason for retaining the DH is that it contributes to the public stock of harmless pleasure in the form of constant controversy.
I have tried to think through the DH controversy in the light of political philosophy, the queen of moral disciplines and the profoundest guide to the right way to live. I have gotten nowhere. Or to be more precise, I have gotten two places—to opposite conclusions. Let us at least try to bring orderliness to this controversy that is so disordered by passion. Let us begin by setting a scene that puts it in context. Consider the case of the laughing umpire.
The DH almost always bats for a pitcher. Because the National League did not adopt the rule, the designated hitter was permitted in the World Series only every other year. In 1986 Peter Ueberroth, baseball's commissioner, made a Solomonic decision. The DH would be permitted in games played in the American League team's park. The first game of the 1986 Series was played in the National League team's park, Shea Stadium, so the Red Sox pitcher, Bruce Hurst, had to bat. It was his first at bat in eons. The spectacle was so ludicrous that the umpire laughed.
Think about that. Umpires are carved from granite and stuffed with microchips. They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice, icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be natural Republicans—dead to human feelings. Hurst struck out his first two trips to the plate. On his way to his third strikeout, Hurst said defiantly: "I'm serious!" And the umpire cracked up. Can something that causes such a collapse of decorum be in the national interest?
The three arguments against the DH are: Tradition opposes it, logic forbids it, and it is anti-intellectual because it diminishes strategy. All three arguments fail.
Tradition? The National League, which fancies itself too highfalutinly traditionalist for the DH, plays an awful lot of pinball "baseball" on plastic rugs spread on concrete in cavernous antiseptic new stadiums in Houston, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Montreal and St. Louis. Besides, by now the DH has a lengthening tradition. If longevity sanctifies, the DH is semi-sanctified.
The logic-chopping argument against the DH is given by Dwight Gooden, pitcher and logician: "The DH is a tenth player. Softball has ten players. Baseball has nine players." This attempt to win the argument by semantic fiat fails because... well, if the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, baseball is whatever the rules say it is. This argument makes me queasy, so I will tiptoe off the thin ice and go back to the accusation that the DH diminishes strategy.
The theory that the DH is a war against intellect, and makes baseball safe for slow-witted managers, is a weak reed on which to lean for support. The theory is that when pitchers must bat, managers must be Aristotles, deciding when to remove pitchers for pinch hitters or when to have pitchers bunt. But it is disproportionate to preserve such choices, which are usually obvious, at the cost of having pitchers—one-ninth of the batting order—cause umpires to laugh.
National League chauvinists make much of the fact that in their league, if the fifth hitter gets on base, the sixth hitter must move him over so the seventh hitter will have a chance to drive him in. Otherwise the opposing team will pitch around the eighth hitter to get to the pitcher. So there is more emphasis on scoring one run at a time. But in fact, National League baseball may be more uniform and routinized because the so-called strategy regarding when to pinch-hit for the pitcher, or have him bunt, is so banal. More nonpitchers bunt in the American League than in the National League. And American League teams differ more than National League teams in their use of sacrifices. In some ways the DH makes managing more difficult. Again, most pinch-hitting situations are obvious. What often is far from obvious is when to remove pitchers who never need to be removed to increase offense. That is an American League manager's problem.
To the argument that the DH takes a lot of strategy out of managing, La Russa responds brusquely, "It definitely does not. The National League is a great propaganda league. 'We're the hard-throwing, running, let's-go-get-'em league and the American League is...' It's not true." Warming to his defense of the DH, he says that handling a pitching staff—perhaps a manager's most important task—is tougher in the American League. "Every decision you make in the American League regarding your pitching staff is based solely on who you think should pitch to the next hitter, or in the next inning. In the National League you get certain times when the decision is taken right out of your hands."
The best case _for_ the DH is this: It represents that rarest of things, the triumph of evidence over ideology. The anti-DH ideology is that there should be no specialization in baseball, no division of labor: Everyone should play "the whole game." That theory is obliterated by this fact: Specialization is a fact with or without the DH. Most pitchers only go through the motions at bat.
Bruce Hurst may be baseball's worst batter, but few pitchers are even adequate batters and many are, strictly speaking, laughable. So without the DH, every ninth batter is unserious. A pitcher hitting is like a shortstop pitching. Baseball does not expect an unserious pitcher—say, the shortstop—to pitch to one of every nine batters on the opposing team.
National League managers occasionally put a pitcher at another position—right field, for example—for an out or two to enable that pitcher to stay in the game while another pitcher copes with a few batters. And a National League manager can dazzle us with a "double switch." That is a lineup shuffle usually used late in a game with the pitcher due up in the next inning. The manager changes the pitcher and a position player at the same time. He puts the position player in the pitcher's spot in the batting order so that player can bat in the next inning, and he puts the new pitcher in the batting order in the spot occupied by the player who has been replaced by the new position player.
The "double switch" is nifty, but it is not frequently used. And it is not sufficiently nifty to be a powerful argument against the DH. As Tom Boswell says, "Watching pitchers hit 50 times a week for the sake of two moments of strategy _isn't enough fun."_ The obvious solution to the DH conundrum is to expunge pitchers from the batting order but not replace them with a DH. Just have an eight-man batting order. A compromise solution would include what can be called the Carman Codicil. When Phillies pitcher Don Carman got his second major league hit after about 80 at bats, he was promptly picked off second. "I had never been to second," he said by way of extenuation. The compromise: Only witty pitchers should bat.
At precisely 8.00 A.M. on Wednesday, August 31, 1988, Tony La Russa strides into the coffee shop of a motel hard by the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. That is where the Athletics play and where La Russa spent the night. Nine hours earlier his team had beaten the Boston Red Sox and they will do so again in four hours. La Russa is wearing running shoes, blue sweat pants and a T-shirt the distinctive orange of a Wheaties cereal box. The front of the shirt is emblazoned with the Wheaties logo. When a fan who recognizes him compliments him on the shirt, La Russa replies, tersely, "Read the back." The back says: "Commitment to Excellence."
Last night the mighty Athletics, who play "bashball" and after hitting home runs bump forearms rather than merely swap high fives, beat the Red Sox, 1–0. The Red Sox pitcher was Roger Clemens, who struck out 9 in 6⅓ innings. When you are facing Clemens, you come to the park knowing you are going to scratch for runs. The Athletics scratched. The runner who scored, Carney Lansford, reached first on a single to left, stole second and went to third on a wild pitch. He scored on a ball that traveled 30 feet. It was a suicide squeeze bunt laid down by Glenn Hubbard, who stands 5 feet 7. Funny business, baseball. Why is La Russa not laughing?
Laughing? He is not even eating. All he has ordered is a wedge of melon, and he is barely picking at it. His stomach is, he says, not exactly upset, but he is still too tense, too drained to eat. The squeeze was only the third attempted by the Athletics that season. It was the first that had worked. Going into the ninth, Dave Stewart had thrown 120 pitches. He struck out Ellis Burks on three pitches. He did the same to Todd Benzinger. He got an 0–2 count on Jim Rice, then missed with a borderline ball. Rice fouled off two, then struck out. It was, La Russa says, one of the most draining games of his career.
Today's game starts at noon. No one will have had enough sleep. It is the last day in August. Tomorrow begins the month when, for the best baseball teams, life is real, life is earnest. Emotions are high, as are the stakes. Nerves are often raw and tempers are short. Last night one player on each team was hit by a pitch. It is time to think about the ethical and prudential problems of batters being thrown at, and of retaliating when it happens to your batters. La Russa's policy is the result of much reflection. He has thought often and hard about his reputation as a man with a hard side.
"If a guy is hitting well against our club, I have never, _ever_ told a pitcher, 'Let's go ahead and hit him.' Some guys do that." In 1987, when McGwire was setting a record for rookies with 49 home runs, he hit 2 home runs on a Saturday against the Red Sox and got hit on Sunday. Hit on the head. La Russa's normally muted tone changes as disgust fills his voice when he speaks about the practice some teams have of saying, "This guy's wearing us out—knock him on his ass." Gary Gaetti, the Twins' third baseman, embodies everything La Russa likes in a player—intelligence, intensity, hustle. Once when an Athletics pitcher deliberately hit Gaetti, at a time when Gaetti was blistering Athletics pitching, La Russa called the pitcher on the carpet and told him, "You'll never pitch for me again if you do that again." La Russa explains, "We can make him [a hot hitter] uncomfortable pitching in on his hands. But that is it."
Regarding retaliation, La Russa has a doctrine of measured response. "It's a 2–1 game and your big guy gets bopped in the bottom of the eighth inning. Now you've got to go out in the top of the ninth with a one-run lead and you need three outs. Who should make the decision whether you retaliate? It's got to be the manager. Sometimes you walk up to your player who got hit and say, 'I really believe this guy took a shot at you. We'll get somebody in the first inning tomorrow.'" La Russa is a stickler for proportionality in punishment. "You try to match, as best you can. If they take a shot at your big producer, then you take a shot at their big producer. If they've just cold-cocked McGwire and their first batter in the inning is their light-hitting second baseman, that's not the guy. If someone takes a shot at Walter Weiss, then you look for their promising rookie or their second-year player who is a big star."
In game three of the 1983 American League Championship Series between La Russa's White Sox and the Orioles, the Orioles' pitcher, Mike Flanagan, hit Ron Kittle with a slider. A slider is a good pitch to hit someone with because it is two to three miles per hour slower than a fastball and it is more apt to look like an accident. La Russa knew that Kittle was Flanagan's biggest problem. So in the next inning someone comparable to Kittle—a young power hitter named Cal Ripken—got hit. "We will never, ever retaliate above the shoulder. So the guy will get stung but he will play again," La Russa stresses.
"Once you establish that you'll protect your players, that is a part of the game you shouldn't have to worry about. Then the only things left are those natural, unavoidable confrontations between two competitive teams trying to beat each other. If someone throws a fastball outside and Jose hits a home run to right field, they may try to throw a fastball inside to get him out. If they miss they might hit him. You'll never avoid those. We are a very aggressive, pitching inside-off-the-plate club."
Two changes, one in equipment and one in teaching, have complicated the problem of deciding what is and what is not fair in the war between pitchers and batters for control of the inside and outside edges of the strike zone. Batting helmets, which were not made mandatory until 1971, increased batters' aggressiveness by decreasing fear. And the batting style taught by the late Charlie Lau has made many hitters seem (to pitchers) excessively, provocatively aggressive. Lau, whose most famous work of art is George Brett, was the White Sox batting instructor when La Russa was the White Sox manager.
The gospel according to Lau is: Shift your weight to your back foot as the pitcher winds up, then stride in toward the plate, shifting your weight to provide the power at the moment of contact. Striding in is dangerous to the hitter—and to the pitcher's career if he lets it occur without any resistance. It gives the batter too much control of the outside corner.
"You want to hit?" La Russa asks. "First you have to see the ball, and you have to stay on it. Second, you need a positive move toward the pitcher. You can't wait to see whether the ball is coming at you. You can't be on your heels. If you are, you flinch when a guy throws a breaking ball, you take too many pitches because you're a little leery. If you have a whole club like that, you can't hit. They won't step into the ball and take their chances. If you don't protect yourself, it's just one of those edges that people will take away. It's a little bit scary to go up there and face that ball being thrown hard. If you know your club isn't going to protect you, you're going to lose a big edge at the plate. Everyone is going to go up there a little timid, a little farther from the plate.
"Some umpires get a little ticked off when somebody takes a cheap shot, messes with their game. They'll hold off on a warning until you retaliate. But sometimes the minute your guy gets hit, they'll put the warning in and tie your hands. Then you tell the umpires between innings—I've never lied to them about this—'I understand the warning. We've got six innings to play and we're not going to take a shot at anybody. But our basic pitching philosophy against this club is that they crowd the plate. I don't want to lose this game because our pitchers stayed out over the plate. So I'm telling you we're going to be pitching inside to get guys out. If at any time in this game or this series I want to take a shot, I'll come and tell you it's coming.' Otherwise an umpire puts in a warning, and your pitcher is afraid to throw inside. He might get thrown out of the game. So he moves out over the plate and starts getting creamed."
All this theorizing at the breakfast table will become intensely practical on the field in a few hours. The Red Sox pitcher, Mike Smithson, will get hit hard right from the start. He will get exasperated and will throw at the Athletics' third baseman, Carney Lansford, who has done some of this early damage to Smithson. Lansford will duck the pitch, but the fact that Smithson deliberately threw at him was obvious to everyone, including the person who mattered most, the home plate umpire, Richie Garcia. His response illustrated one of the nuances of governance inside the game.
Garcia came to umpiring from the Marine Corps, which is good training for a vocation that an umpire once summed up in seven words: "Call 'em fast and walk away tough." Toughness is not enough, but it is necessary. Once when Babe Pinelli called Babe Ruth out on strikes, Ruth made a populist argument. Ruth reasoned fallaciously (as populists do) from raw numbers to moral weight: "There's 40,000 people here who know that last one was a ball, tomato head." Pinelli replied with the measured stateliness of John Marshall: "Maybe so, but mine is the only opinion that counts." Or, as Garcia tells young umpires (and every parent should tell every child): "Just because they are yelling at you doesn't mean you are wrong." Long ago the ethic of umpiring was expressed with great dignity by Bill Guthrie: "Der ain't no close plays, me lad. Dey is either dis or dat." That is true, _de jure_. De fact is, however, that, _de facto_ , things are different.
When Smithson threw at Lansford, Garcia took off his mask, looked out to the mound and for a moment seemed about to issue a warning. That would have required both teams to behave. Anyone henceforth convicted (by the home plate umpire's instant and of course unappealable judgment) of throwing at anyone would be ejected. Garcia's brief pregnant pause ended not with a warning but with a brisk brushing off of home plate with his whisk broom. His message was muted but clear: The Athletics would get to retaliate. They did, in strict accordance with La Russa's principle of proportionality. In the next inning Lansford's counterpart, Wade Boggs, the Red Sox third baseman, got thrown at. He was not hit but he had to bail out of the batter's box. The game continued. The Athletics won.
They had played 134 games and were in first place by nine. Their manager was, in his fashion, almost content as he looked ahead to a trip to Texas.
A few days later, La Russa is not pleased. A plate of pasta, his preferred postgame fare, is cooling on the desk in the visiting manager's office in Arlington, Texas. La Russa is pleased enough with the pasta. The man who runs the visiting team clubhouse at Arlington Stadium has a four-star rating among players. But La Russa is cooling off from a particularly grating loss to the Rangers on September 6, 1988.
The Athletics came close, but came up short. In the ninth they got the potential tieing runs to third and second with a power hitter at the plate. La Russa worked all the pedals on the organ, even putting a pinch runner in for a pinch runner. To no avail. The Athletics lost, 3–1.
The near-miss in the ninth inning was the final frustration in an evening that La Russa had gloomily expected to be frustrating. The Rangers were pitching Charlie Hough, who had already beaten the Athletics five consecutive times. Hough, 40, looks like Lyndon Johnson with a secret sorrow. His meandering, maddening knuckleball comes to the plate slower than the throws he makes to first to hold runners close. This night La Russa tried a midget—well, sort of; these things are relative—in place of muscle. He pulled mighty Mark McGwire from the starting lineup because sometimes the torment of trying to hit Hough has sent McGwire into two- or three-game minislumps. And this night La Russa put Mike Gallego in the lineup at second base. He's just 5 feet 8. Confronted with that small strike zone, Hough might have to abandon his knuckleball and throw Gallego his fastball, such as it is, which is not much.
Before the game Lefebvre took Canseco aside for a slight stroke alteration, using a batting tee. Generally Lefebvre had three jobs with Athletics hitters. The first was physical: getting them ready to swing. As anyone knows who has greeted the spring with too much enthusiastic swinging of a bat, swinging uses a lot of muscles in a special symphony. For the untrained, 15 minutes of hitting fungoes can make it hard to get out of bed the next morning. Lefebvre's second job concerned mechanics: getting the hitters' hands, hips, heads and other parts working together. The third task concerned the mental part of hitting: deciding how to handle particular pitchers. This, he says, is 90 percent of hitting.
In 1988 Lefebvre had a batting coach's dream. It was Jose Canseco having what players call a "career year," meaning a year as good as the particular player can expect to have. Of the 42 home runs Canseco hit in the regular season, 16 came with 2 strikes on him. He hit 3 more in the League Championship Series and a grand slam in the World Series. Of his 46, 31 either tied a game or gave the Athletics the lead. Lefebvre jokes that coaching a talent like Jose Canseco is simple: "My number-one chore was to see that his bats weren't cracked. 'They all right? Okay, then go up and hit.'" But Lefebvre was not doing himself justice. Before the game against Hough, Lefebvre took Canseco to a batting tee in front of the backstop to practice swinging up through the ball a bit more than normal. Hough's knuckler was going to come bobbing and weaving toward the plate and Lefebvre thought Canseco, who normally swings up slightly, would do best if he increased that a bit, with the bat coming up as the ball fluttered down. For about 15 minutes Lefebvre, facing Canseco, traced a rising arc with his extended arm while Canseco ripped balls off the tee into the net. In the game Canseco would get three hits.
Fat lot of good they did. Hough bewildered the Athletics for the sixth consecutive time. But he needed help in the ninth inning.
In the ninth, with the Athletics down by two runs, with two outs and a runner on first, McGwire pinch-hit and singled. Now there were runners on first and third and the plot suddenly thickened. Tony Phillips was put in the game as a pinch runner for McGwire on first. But before the batter after McGwire, Dave Henderson, stepped into the batter's box, Hough was pulled from the game, replaced by Cecilio Guante. If Hough had stayed in the game, with his deceptive little semi-balk move to first, the Athletics would not have contemplated getting the potential tieing run into scoring position by stealing second. But with Guante in, the running game was given back to La Russa. Luis Polonia is a better base stealer than Tony Phillips so Polonia was sent in as a pinch runner for pinch runner Phillips.
Any pitcher who has a release time of 1.4 seconds is, La Russa says, "runnable." Polonia running on a pitcher who is 1.4 to the plate is going to be safe almost every time. Guante, when he is not worried about a stolen base, has a big delivery and a time of 1.6. "So," La Russa says, "what he does instead of the big delivery is this. Instead of lifting his front leg toward the plate, he simply slides his leg toward the plate. Now he has a time of 1.2." La Russa knew Guante could do this, but La Russa felt that by putting Polonia on first base he had Guante "between a rock and a hard place." If Guante stayed with his big delivery, Polonia would get to second. If Guante went to the slide step, Henderson at the plate would be a happy fellow.
"You try to get more leverage with the pitcher," La Russa explains. "Dave Henderson is a three-run home run standing at the plate. Does the pitcher want to throw Henderson a short [lacking some velocity] fastball? The slide step costs Guante velocity. It's a tough time for a pitcher to go to a slide step because you're going to lose a little of your stuff and the guy at the plate may go for extra bases." So Polonia helped the Athletics' offense just by being at first. And he did not have to stay there. He could steal if La Russa could anticipate when Guante would, and when he would not, use the slide step with Henderson at the plate. "It's a guessing game," La Russa says. "I know he's not going to slide step Henderson five pitches. It's just too risky for him." Guante did not slide step in his first pitch, but neither did he use his big, slow delivery. He split the difference. The pitch was a ball. "I didn't think he'd slide step 1–0." La Russa ordered a steal. He guessed wrong but got away with it. Guante used the slide step but Polonia beat the throw to second. Now the tieing run could score on a single. But the Athletics were down to their last out and with Polonia at second, with no one on first, Guante went back to his big delivery and got back the foot he had lost off his fastball. The tricky stuff was over. Now it was the pitcher against the hitter. The pitcher won. Henderson hit a fly caught by the left fielder. Texas won.
As the pasta congealed, La Russa took out his briefcase and started poring over paperwork, looking ahead to Kansas City. The Royals are 6–0 against the Athletics. Four games on Kansas City's artificial turf mean that some players need to be rested. He must decide which ones. Good. He has something to worry about.
On a cold rainy February day in 1989 in Oakland, where February is concentrated grayness, the Athletics' offices in the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum are a warm swarm of green and gold and anticipation. A truck is being loaded with bats and balls bound for Phoenix. The manager is thinking of Spring Training, and beyond, to Opening Day, and beyond that deep into April, to a series with the White Sox. Rummaging through his briefcase, La Russa extracts one of the tools of his trade, a three-by-five index card. Over the course of a season he fills hundreds of these with notations in his small, precise print. The card he has just fished from the briefcase lists every playing date in April from Opening Day, April 3, on. Next to each day there is a number—1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5—for the starting pitchers and where they rank in the rotation. Opening Day is still 53 days away but La Russa has his starting pitchers selected for every game up to May 1. Because of an open date, his number-one starter, Dave Stewart, would be rested enough to pitch in place of the fifth starter in the third game of a three-game series in Chicago at the end of the second week of April, but La Russa's charts show that the fifth starter, Mike Moore, eats up the White Sox. Stewart will be saved.
Now, as the rain falls and his spirits rise, La Russa, semi-formal in blue jeans and a tan sport jacket, begins to talk about "situation baseball," particularly the double-steal possibilities with runners on first and third. The double steal is difficult to execute. La Russa estimates that anytime you try a trick play against major league talent, the odds are 40–60 or 30–70 against. "But, if you have a guy at the plate who is not a very good RBI man, who doesn't have a good chance of driving them in, well, go ahead and take a shot."
Because baseball skills are so difficult, and because the difference between success and failure is usually so slight, aggressive managing often involves putting one's batters and runners in harm's way. Aggressive managing means making moves that will fail if the other team executes its response perfectly. But if the running team is going to force an imperfect response, it must be perfect in executing its own aggressive move. Over the course of a season, the best teams will, more often than not, force failure—which is anything less than perfection—from opponents.
La Russa talks the way he manages and the way he wants his team to play, controlled but intense. The pace of his conversation is brisk, the words crisp, the sentences clipped at the end so as to leave no loose ends. His is a style, a personality, of carefully moderated but constantly maintained edginess. Those are qualities needed for plays in the first-and-third situation—eight of such plays. There is a straight steal in which the runner at third bluffs a dash toward home as the runner on first tries to steal second. The hope is that the bluff by the runner on third will cause a hesitation on the part of the catcher of a sufficient fraction of a second to make the steal of second successful. And there are seven other permutations of the first-and-third situation.
One is the regular double steal. The runner on first breaks for second. If the catcher comes up to throw through to second, then the instant the catcher's arm starts forward the runner on third breaks for home. The second play is especially suited for first-and-third with two outs. The man on first breaks toward second, then stops. If the catcher throws through to second, the runner on third breaks for home the instant the catcher's arm starts forward.
The third play is a delayed double steal. As soon as the pitcher is committed to deliver the ball to the plate, the runner on first takes, La Russa says, "about three hops toward second. Slower runners do this in a way that suggests getting ready to run on a hit, not to steal. The second baseman or shortstop—whoever is supposed to cover second—sees this runner stop and relaxes regarding a steal. But on the third hop, just as the ball gets to the plate and while everyone's attention is focused there, he takes off for second. He probably will be out if the infielders are paying attention and cover second. But the infielder may be late in breaking for the bag and the catcher may therefore hesitate before throwing. Now, the advantage of doing this with a runner on third is that the infielder is normally late in getting to second to cover a delayed steal. He takes the throw on the run, then he has to adjust himself and throw the ball back to the plate. In 1984, early in the season, we [the White Sox] were playing in Yankee Stadium. We were losing, 1–0, in the seventh or eighth inning. Greg Luzinski ["The Bull," who was as large and slow as a tank] was on third with two outs and a runner on first. We put on the delayed double steal. The runner on first took off. The catcher hesitated, then fired to second. The moment he threw, Luzinski broke for the plate. Willie Randolph [the Yankees' second baseman] was playing back to cut off a base hit. He caught the throw on the dead run, made a great off-balance throw, made it a close play at home. Safe."
The fourth play is used against a left-handed pitcher. As soon as the pitcher comes to a set position, the runner on third initiates the play by breaking for home. The instant he takes off, the runner on first, who is watching him, breaks for second. The left-handed pitcher is facing the runner on first. The runner racing for second may draw a throw. If he does, even if he is out, the runner on third will score. Or a split second of indecision on the part of the pitcher may allow the runner from first to reach second and the runner from third to score.
"Now," says La Russa, mentally moving to the defensive team's dugout, "here is how to defeat it. If, when the pitcher sees the guy breaking for second, he steps off [the rubber] and checks the runner on third, he just throws home and the runner is out." If the runner has not broken from third and the pitcher throws to second, that runner should get in a rundown and the runner on third may score. But if the pitcher raises his arm and takes even one step toward the runner going to second, and only then throws home, it will be too late.
The fifth play is a version of the fourth, but against a right-handed pitcher. The runner on first breaks for second. The runner on third, with the pitcher facing him, edges down the line toward home and breaks for the plate when the pitcher turns and commits to throw to second. If the pitcher does his job right, he hears his infielders shout that the runner behind him is going for second, he steps off the rubber, freezes the runner on third and throws to second.
The sixth play is the "stumble start." It is a tactic for freezing the catcher. The runner on first takes a few quick steps toward second and then pretends to fall. (La Russa demonstrates, sprawling on the carpet. His conversation could spoil the creases in his jeans if they had creases.) The catcher sees this stumble out of the corner of his eye. As soon as the catcher commits to throw to first to nail the floundering runner, the man on third, who has a long lead, breaks for home.
The seventh play was a favorite of Billy Martin. It is used against a left-handed pitcher who has a slow move to first base. The runner on third takes a long lead. The runner on first takes enough of a lead to tempt the pitcher, who is facing him, to try to pick him off. As soon as the pitcher starts his pickoff, the runner on third breaks for home. If the runner on third has misread the pitcher's intention and the ball goes to the plate, the runner usually can get back to third.
The eighth play depends on getting the runner on first picked off and hung up with the ball in the first baseman's hand. The runner heads for second and the instant the first baseman throws to second, the runner on third breaks for home.
Other than as the front end of a double steal, the steal of home is a vanishing thrill. It never was common. Ty Cobb stole home more than anyone else, 46 times, but that was over a span of 24 seasons. Yet in olden times, even big men did it. Lou Gehrig stole home 15 times, Babe Ruth 10 times. In the postwar era, things have been different. Lou Brock, the all-time base-stealing leader (until Rickey Henderson breaks his record), stole 938 bases but never stole home. Through 1988 Henderson had stolen home only four times, and never since 1982. The man who may have helped kill the thrill was one of its most artful practitioners, Rod Carew. He holds the single-season record with seven steals of home. He was one reason why more pitchers began pitching from a stretch instead of a windup with runners on third.
The increased willingness of even popular hitters to "show bunt" has caused third basemen to play closer to the bag, limiting the lead a runner can get. Furthermore, in this age of long careers and large salaries, runners do not relish the risks involved in slamming full tilt into catchers, who tend to be on the large side.
Still, the first-and-third double-steal possibilities are so sweet that they once were a reason for stealing first base. In 1908 Germany Schaefer of the Tigers found himself on second with a teammate on third. To set up the double steal, the inventive Schaefer ran back to first, making it safely to the base, perhaps because of the element of surprise. On the next pitch he broke for second. The catcher threw to second. On the throw, the runner on third scored. Oh, yes: Schaefer was safe at second.
Second base is the base most stolen. La Russa thinks that stealing third base is a neglected offensive weapon. "I get criticized for stealing third 'meaninglessly.' Usually that means there are two outs. But it can be a high-percentage steal. And I guarantee that if you do that 15 times over the course of a season, you will score 3 or 4 extra times." One of the iron axioms in "The Book" (that unwritten code of baseball tenets that "everyone knows" are true) is that you never want to make the third out at third base. That axiom means, in practice, conservatism on the base paths with two outs. It means not trying to stretch a double into a triple, not trying to steal third. The theory is that second base is scoring position and third is not much better. The theory is wrong.
If you get to third with less then two outs you have many more ways to score than you had at second: soft outfield single, infield hit, sacrifice fly, infield out, safety squeeze, suicide squeeze, error, balk, wild pitch, passed ball, steal of home. And you score on most of those with two outs. Furthermore, just the knowledge that your team sometimes steals third—that knowledge, plus convincing behavior by runners on second—improves your hitting. "Watch clubs play the A's. You know what their shortstops and second basemen do? Jockey, jockey, jockey. Because they know we steal third. With our powerful hitters most infielders want to play back. But what we want to do as an offensive team is not let them have it both ways. If they worry about us stealing third and jockey to hold us on second, it's going to cost them some range.
"We were playing somebody—I forget who—and their pitcher was slow to the plate, so our guys started saying 'We can go, we can steal third, can't we, skipper?' I said, remember there are two things necessary for a steal. One is the pitcher being slow to the plate. The other is the infielders forgetting the runner. In that game the shortstop came over, we couldn't steal third because he was right behind our runner, so he's not able to take a lead big enough to take advantage of the pitcher's slow delivery. Later in the game, one of our slower runners, someone like [catcher Terry] Steinbach, was on second. They were so conscious of their pitcher being vulnerable to stealing and of us likely to steal third, that while they were busy bluffing him back to second, a little grounder, about a 15-foot hopper, was hit in the vacated hole between short and third and Stein-bach scored a big run."
Stealing third can be, and usually should be, easier than stealing second. It is, of course, true that the catcher's throw is shorter to third. (The throw from home to second is 127 feet 3⅜ inches, or more than 37 feet longer than the throw to third.) However, the runner's lead off second should be longer than his lead off first. The two important variables are the pitcher's release time and the infielders' awareness. "If these are going for you," La Russa says, "then your slowest runner can steal third. Greg Luzinski could steal third."
La Russa managed Luzinski on the White Sox and explains how to make a Luzinski into, if not Mercury, or Maury Wills, at least a legitimate threat to steal third. Second is too hard. A left-handed pitcher is facing a runner on first base. Even a right-hander can, with reasonable peripheral vision, keep an eye on a runner at first longer than a pitcher can watch a runner on second. At some point a pitcher has to be done looking at second base and must look in the opposite direction, toward the plate. Most pitchers will have a pattern. They will look toward second once, or twice. In any case, it is generally possible to know when a particular pitcher is done looking. Regarding infielders' awareness, usually either the shortstop or second baseman has responsibility for primary coverage of second base, keeping the runner close to the bag. If the hitter at the plate is right-handed, the second baseman will generally be keeping the runner close; if the hitter is left-handed, the shortstop is responsible.
Now, says La Russa, suppose the batter is right-handed. That is the best situation for stealing third because the catcher will have to throw past the batter to get the ball to third. Suppose Luzinski is on second and Carlton Fisk, the Sox catcher, is up. Fisk is a powerful right-handed hitter. The shortstop will want to play over in the hole. He is not going to pay attention to Luzinski. The second baseman is supposed to, but he wants to play as deep as possible against the big, powerful and slow Fisk. Now, suppose the pitcher is a "one-looker." Luzinski can start with a ten-step lead. Stealing third is easier than stealing second even if you have only one of the two variables (pitcher's release, infielders' awareness) on your side. Of course, a third variable is the ability to pick the right pitch to run on. By learning opposing pitchers' patterns, you can guess, with reasonable confidence, a breaking ball or change-up.
There are techniques that can be called semi-steals that can get a runner from third to home or from second to third. In one play, there is a runner at third. The batter lays down a base-hit bunt—that is, a bunt not anticipated and not intended as a sacrifice—toward third. The third baseman fields the bunt with the runner on third creeping in right behind him. If the third baseman tries to throw the runner out at first, the runner can stroll the rest of the way home from third. If the third baseman stops to drive the runner back toward third, the bunter will get a base hit out of it. The only danger to the team at bat is a rare one—a shortstop who can instantly diagnose the play and sprint to third in time to trap the runner from getting back to the base.
The second variation begins with a runner at second and the batter faking a base-hit bunt. As soon as he shortens up on the bat, the third baseman charges in and the runner breaks toward third, which is momentarily unprotected. The batter takes the pitch and proceeds with his at bat with the runner 90 feet closer to home. "We've done that—accidentally," La Russa remembers. The runner on second decided to steal, the batter decided to bunt, the batter shortened up on the bat to do so but did not like the pitch, and everyone marveled at the serendipitous result—a runner on third.
Baseball history has many examples of what can be done by combining foresight, guile, brass and speed. Back at the beginning of the 1980s, when Billy Martin brought "Billyball" to Oakland as the Athletics' manager, he used a play in which Rickey Henderson, as a runner on first, would set out to steal second while Dwayne Murphy, a left-handed hitter, would drop a base-hit bunt toward third. When Henderson broke toward second, the shortstop would race to cover second and the third baseman would charge the bunt. Henderson would turn second at full throttle and wind up at the unprotected third base. Murphy would either get a hit or, if he was out, his bunt was, in effect, a two-base sacrifice.
That play is a cousin of one that Ty Cobb and his teammate Sam Crawford occasionally used when Cobb was on third and Crawford walked. Crawford would stroll toward first and then suddenly sprint around the base and tear toward second as Cobb was creeping down the line from third. If the startled team in the field threw to second, Cobb scored easily. Otherwise Crawford arrived at second with a two-base walk.
What all such plays have in common is the constant push for a very slight edge. That push makes for edginess in both dugouts. La Russa's base runners are taught to develop "antsy leads." Most teams, when the other team has a runner on first, have a pitcher step off the rubber and hold the ball or throw over—all to give whoever is responsible, the manager or the coach, time to watch the runner to see if he tips off whether he is going. The "antsy lead" is a way of convincing the pitcher's team that you are, indeed, going. The point of convincing them is to "work the count" by drawing a pitchout. If you draw it, you gain in the count and you may take the pitchout weapon away from the other team, at least for that runner. "But it's important to take an antsy lead all the time, even if you are stealing," says La Russa. "If you don't, those guys [in the other dugout] will see the difference and say 'He's not trying to decoy us—he's going.' They're smart over there." He leans back in his chair, sighs contentedly and says, "There's a lot of stuff goes on."
It will be going on again soon, come spring. Come on, spring.
Spring Training is delightful everywhere but it is best in Arizona. The aridness of the region gives the green of the grass a particularly blazing brilliance. Some players complain that they can not sweat in Arizona's dry climate but they are mistaken. They are sweating but the evaporation is virtually instantaneous. Others complain that because there is no humidity, the air is so thin that breaking balls do not have enough movement. There is a grain of truth to that complaint. However, aesthetics have their claim and the yellow cast of the sandy soil and the gleaming green make Cactus League baseball as pleasing to the eye as the Athletics' green and gold uniforms.
Mornings at the Athletics' Spring Training camp begin with the team assembled in right field under the direction of a lean, limber man who places a boom box on the ground and fills the air with music. Under his guidance the team bends and stretches and generally works on baseball's most recent fetish—flexibility. It is a sensible fetish. Baseball is a game of torque on the body's trunk—swinging a bat, throwing, reaching to pick up the ground balls.
This, then, is how to begin again, by getting the body ready for baseball's suddenness. Baseball is not, like basketball or hockey or soccer, a game of steady flows. Rather, it is an episodic game of explosive exertions. They take a toll on muscles and can tear them and tendons and ligaments that are not patiently prepared for the ordeal. Hence this languorous 10:00 A.M. spring session with music, men slowly preparing for thousands of bursts of effort in the hard, hot summer.
What La Russa has liked most about his recent Athletics teams was their "daily pushing, grinding." Now it is March and the Athletics are tied with the Seattle Mariners and everyone else in the American League West. It begins again. Grinding can have different effects on different materials. It can dull some material by grinding it down; it can give other material a sharp edge.
"Baseball," says La Russa, "is the all-time humbler."
* In 1988 Walt Hriniak was the Red Sox batting coach. In 1989 he became the White Sox batting coach. The "Hriniak approach," which will be discussed later, has a pedigree that traces to the late Charlie Lau. Lau's name will crop up several times in these pages, as it continually does in baseball conversations. When La Russa managed the White Sox he hired Lau as a coach. La Russa has enormous respect for Hriniak as a teacher and he believes that the Lau-Hriniak style of hitting makes batters less vulnerable to pitchers' wiles than any other style. It produces the best coverage of the plate by the bat. Also, it leaves pitchers with only a few ways to attack the batter, and those ways are difficult to execute.
#
THE PITCHER
Orel Hershiser, In the Future Perfect Tense
Minutes after Orel Hershiser won the fifth and final game of the 1988 World Series, Tony La Russa was asked to explain the defeat of his Athletics. In five games the Dodgers' pitchers had held the Athletics to 2 home runs, 5 extra-base hits, 11 runs and a team batting average of .177. La Russa answered: "It's been going on in baseball for 100 years. When pitchers make quality pitches, batters do not make good contact." Not far from where La Russa spoke an Oakland fan spotted Hershiser walking through the bowels of the stadium. The fan shouted: "You were lucky, Hershiser." Hershiser, without breaking stride, replied: "Oh, yeah? Grab a bat, kid." Then, after a pause, he smiled.
Hershiser had a lot of luck in 1988. One reason he had it is that he paid for it. He bought it with finely focused intelligence. "During the second game of the World Series," La Russa recalls, "I was standing next to Dunc [Dave Duncan]. It was the first time I had been against Hershiser. About the fourth or fifth inning I said to Dunc, 'We've got a problem. This guy reminds me of someone we both know. Watch him.' Dunc said, 'I think I know who you're talking about.' Just the way he was going about his business, competing, paying attention, his sense of what the situation was. He reminded me of Tom Seaver, the smartest pitcher I have ever been around." When Hershiser entered professional baseball he began hearing a refrain from older baseball people. It was: "I wish I knew what I know now back when I could still do it." He decided to know it in time. For six weeks at the end of the 1988 season he seemed to know everything. The six weeks began immediately after August 24. And he knew a lot that night, too.
On the evening of August 24 he lost a 2–1 decision to the Mets in Los Angeles. That was all the losing he would do for the rest of 1988. Midway through his next start, in Montreal, he would begin one of the most remarkable pitching performances in major league history. And he might have won on August 24 if the Mets' Mookie Wilson had hit a home run rather than just a triple. Funny business, baseball. Sometimes less is more.
With the Dodgers leading 1–0, Wilson hit a towering drive to the right-field fence, about two feet short of a home run. The Dodgers' right fielder, Mike Marshall, got to the ball but could not catch it. Should have, but didn't. He wrestled it to the ground and Wilson stood on third. If it had been a home run the score would have been tied but the Mets would not have had a rally going. The bases would have been empty; the pitching and defensive dynamics—they are interlocked—would have been different.
In the clubhouse after the game Hershiser, his elbow in a tub of ice, told a cluster of writers and broadcasters, "If that ball is caught they probably don't score any runs. I probably don't walk [the next batter, Wally] Backman—I was pitching carefully to him to save the run. Then Hernandez hits a three-hopper to first, through the hole because we're holding Backman on." With Wilson on third, Hershiser walked Backman on a 3–2 pitch, a fastball away. Then Keith Hernandez hit a 1–0 slider, dribbling a dinky grounder past the first baseman, Tracy Woodson, who was holding Backman on. Even so, Woodson would have got to the ball if he had not slipped when moving for it to his right. If he had got to the ball he could have thrown the runner out at home or started a 3–6–3 double play.
But "could haves" do not count. After the hit by Hernandez it was first-and-third again, still no outs. Hershiser struck out Darryl Strawberry. The next batter, Kevin McReynolds, hit the first pitch, a fastball, to center for a sacrifice fly. The score was 2–1, and it would remain so.
The next morning a United Airlines charter lifts out of LAX, through the smog clogging the Los Angeles basin. The flight is carrying the Dodgers to Philadelphia to begin a road trip the next night. Hershiser is wearing glasses and carrying a briefcase. He jokes that when he retires he may "bulk up" and become a professional wrestler using the name "The Mad Librarian." He settles in for the five-hour flight and some morning-after reflections.
Aside from the fact that he lost, it was a typical night for him. He pitched well. He had to. The Dodgers' hitters are in a dry spell. In fact, it has been an arid season. Last night's game was the seventh 2–1 loss for the Dodgers so far in a season in which they would lose ten 2–1 games. So Hershiser had to scratch for every edge he could find. For example, in the first inning, after the first Mets batter grounded out to second baseman Steve Sax, Hershiser walked over to first baseman Woodson and said something. When asked what he said, Hershiser laughs, pauses to weigh candor against the politeness owed a teammate and says: "Oh, boy. I know exactly what I said but I don't know if I should say it in public." Candor wins: "Woodson doesn't play first for us very often. I said, 'Just remember, with Sax throwing you don't stretch too early.'" Meaning what? "Saxy has some errant throws at times"—that was the understatement of the 1988 season—"and if you stretch too early you won't be able to catch the ball. If you stretch straight at him early and the throw is to one side, you can't move, you're stuck."
The previous night the Mets got their first hit in the fourth inning, a single to center. The ball came back to the infield, was thrown to Hershiser, and he promptly threw it to the umpire to have it replaced, which it was. Why did he want that? "The particular ball I had was okay for throwing fastballs but it wasn't a very good ball for throwing curves." The 108 stitches sewn on every baseball by Haitian hands are not quite as uniform as they would be if machines did the work. "The ball that I throw for a curve, I look for a high seam on the ball to pull on. If the ball doesn't have a high seam, if it has just two equal seams, or seams that are a little bit on the large size, it's okay for my sinker because I really don't need a high seam for my sinker. Even though I like a high seam for it, I can throw it without a high seam and I don't go out of my way to find the perfect ball every time. But in a key situation like last night, after they got a hit and they have a chance to score a run or start a big inning, I make sure I have the right ball in my hand. I change balls a lot out there and I think the umpires know that, and I don't want them to get tired of me throwing the balls in." He has had the experience that Jim Palmer, another notorious perfectionist, occasionally had. The intensity of Palmer's attention to detail was about equal to Hershiser's intensity cubed. Palmer would throw a ball to the umpire, who would throw Palmer a new ball but would put the one Palmer rejected back into the pouch on his belt. Later in the game the umpire would throw it back to Palmer, to see if Palmer would notice. Usually Palmer rejected it again.
In a later inning of the Mets' game, with the Mets' pitcher up and a runner on second—a clear bunt situation—the Dodgers' shortstop broke over toward the runner on second just as Hershiser went into his motion. The shortstop looked badly out of position, but appearances can be deceiving, especially when they are supposed to deceive. That was a play the Dodgers put on in just that sort of situation. "We break the shortstop to the bag," Hershiser explains, "which makes the runner think we're throwing to second, so he's going back to the bag. I throw home and throw a strike to _get_ the guy to bunt. If he does, the runner on second has got a terrible jump." And that substantially increases the chances of throwing the runner out at third. Because this maneuver opens such a huge hole at short, it can not be used when the batter is skillful enough to abandon the bunt and try to shoot the ball through the yawning hole on the left side, into left field. "We can only do that with a pitcher who can't swing the bat. He doesn't have good bat control, so we'll give him the hole. And even with a good bunt we might throw out the guy at third."
But it is usually wise to have the third baseman charging on a bunt, which he can not do if the shortstop has been jockeying far to his left. "The third baseman is more used to handling the ball [than a pitcher] and we're charging at three areas instead of two. With only one charging the third base-pitcher's mound area, the only bunt we're going to get a double play on is the one directly to me. If two of us charge, there are more bunts we can get two on."
The Dodgers, like all teams, have a play in which the shortstop sprints to third ahead of the runner coming from second on a bunt. But going for the lead runner is risky and in the game with the Mets the Dodgers wanted to be sure to get one out. Better to have a runner on third with one out than to risk having first-and-third and no outs and a big inning brewing. Furthermore, with the Mets' pitcher having just bunted, the top of the Mets' order was coming up. Hershiser got past that patch of trouble. He had only one bad time, beginning with Mookie Wilson's triple, but it was bad enough to beat him.
Asked how many pitches he threw last night, he guesses 115 to 120 and calls up to pitching coach Ron Perranoski sitting a few rows ahead. Perranoski knows: 127. Hershiser's recall of components of last night's game is complete. He knows, for example, that he threw nine pitches to the first batter in the game, Mookie Wilson. "I threw five pitches to get to 3–2, he fouled three off, I finally got him out. The next guy was out on two pitches, and Hernandez was out on three. So the first inning I threw 14 pitches."
In Hershiser's next start, against the Montreal Expos, he will face the Expos' first baseman, Andres Galarraga, who is having a wonderful year. How good does Hershiser think he is? "He's _very_ good. He's patient. He waits for your mistake." How many mistakes does Hershiser make in a game? "A mistake is a pitch I didn't execute well, one I left in an area where they could hit it. You don't call a ball a mistake because you miss the strike zone. That's not a mistake. A mistake, to me, is a ball I leave in the middle of the plate. I probably threw about five of those last night." Five mistakes out of 127 pitches. And not all of those were hit safely. Not all were even put into play. He struck out Strawberry on a mistake. "The count was 1–2 and I threw a curveball in the strike zone that he swung at and missed. Bad pitch. One-and-2, I've got three pitches to get him out. I might throw him three balls that are close to the plate. He'll probably chase one of them. But on my very first pitch at 1–2, I threw a curveball for a strike. It was an unbelievable curveball—don't get me wrong. It was a hard, hard breaking curveball—star wars—but it was still in the hitting area." Hershiser also got away with a mistake to Dave Magadan. "When I got Magadan to line out to third and got out of the inning, I was mad at myself because I had made a stupid pitch. But I was fortunate. It was a ball right in the area he likes to hit. It was up and away, and my strength is low and away. And I threw the ball too hard, so the ball straightened out. I allowed the intensity of the situation to overcome what is best for my ability, which is to be a little more relaxed."
Relaxation is, paradoxically, a form of baseball concentration. Relaxation must be _willed_. It is the necessary unclenching of the mind. It is a form of discipline. The Dodgers were flying into the final leg of a pennant race that would allow neither time nor energy for might-have-beens. They can drive players 'round the bend at any time.
A case in point: In the bottom of the seventh, right before the Mets went ahead, 2–1, the Dodgers got two hits and runners on first and third, no one out. The next batter, Dave Anderson, bounced the ball back to the pitcher and the runner on third, Tracy Woodson, was thrown out trying to score. After Woodson was thrown out, Hershiser was up. He bunted the runners over to second and third but made the second out. Steve Sax was up next. He popped out to end the inning. Woodson might have made a mistake in heading home as soon as the ball was hit. The reason for breaking from third is to prevent a double play, and if there had been one out there would be no questioning the decision to head for home. But in this case the runner might better have waited until the pitcher turned and threw to second, and then headed home. If he had made it, the Dodgers would have led, 2–0. Anderson had swung at the first pitch. If he had not swung and if the pitch had been a ball, Lasorda might have put on a squeeze play because, with the count 1–0, the pitcher probably would have put a buntable pitch in the strike zone.
But let the dead past bury its dead. "You get into close games, you've got to execute. Suppose you lose a game, 4–2, and they beat you on a two-run home run in the ninth after it had been 2–2 the whole way. You say, 'Oh, if the guy hadn't hit that home run, we would've won.' But you go back to the first inning when you couldn't bunt the guy over. Maybe in the fifth inning there was a man on third with less than two outs and you didn't get him in. Another inning you were first-and-third, no outs, and you didn't score."
Hershiser believes he did his duty last night. "After I threw the three perfect innings I said, all right, just two more sets like that. Last night the first set we were tied. The second set I won, 1–0. The third set they won, 2–0. They won, 2–1. If I can just go two sets I've done my job as a starting pitcher. That third set is all above and beyond the call of duty." He adds, "If I can go out and throw nine innings and give up two runs for the rest of my career, I'm going to pitch a long time and make a lot of money and get a lot of wins."
In the first-class section of the plane sit the manager, coaches and other dignitaries. They include a broadcaster who once was a pitcher and now is in the Hall of Fame, partly because of a record that will, during the next six weeks, be broken by the pitcher sitting about 15 rows to the rear.
The plane landed in Philadelphia. Five nights later, in Montreal, Hershiser took off. The Expos scored two runs off him in the fifth inning. That was it for the National League against him in 1988. Beginning in the sixth inning he pitched 59 consecutive scoreless innings, eclipsing along the way the achievements of four Hall of Famers: Carl Hubbell (45 Va), Bob Gibson (47), Walter Johnson (55⅔) and Don Drysdale (58⅔), the broadcaster who had been seated in first class. And the streak was just part of Hershiser's achievement. In his last nine starts of 1988 he racked up a record of 7–0 with seven shutouts. As icing on the cake there was a twelfth-inning relief appearance to nail down victory in the fourth game of the play-off against the Mets. And all that was before he beat the Athletics twice and became World Series MVP. He became the first pitcher to achieve shutouts in both the League Championship Series and World Series in the same season. Between September 5 and the last game of the World Series Hershiser pitched eight shutouts. He yielded 5 earned runs in 101⅔ innings, and one of those scored after he had left the game. Counting (as the official record does not) the first game of the play-offs, he pitched 67 consecutive scoreless innings. He figures that even a very good pitcher who is pitching well should expect to give up an average of a hit an inning. In his final 13 appearances he gave up hits at about half that rate, 55 in 101⅔ innings.
In his last 101⅔ innings in 1988 his ERA was 0.44. That was bettered only by Bob Gibson's 0.19 over 96⅔ innings. However, Gibson did that in 1968, which, as will be demonstrated, was a peculiar season that brought about some changes that make Hershiser's achievement even more impressive. In the game in San Diego in which he broke Drysdale's record, Tony Gwynn, the hitter Hershiser most respects, grounded four times to the second baseman. As we shall see, Gwynn should never hit four consecutive balls to the right side of the infield.
Suppose Hershiser had shut out the Mets on August 24. (If Mike Marshall had caught Mookie Wilson's fly ball, a shutout could easily have been the result.) That would have been Hershiser's second shutout in a row. Now, suppose he had not been scored on in the middle of that next game, in Montreal, when he began his record-breaking shutout streak. The streak would have been more than 82 scoreless innings in the regular season, and 90⅓ counting the first 8⅓ innings of game one of the play-offs.
On the other hand, suppose there had been a single run somewhere in the middle of Hershiser's streak. That would not have diminished the quality of his season. A run, earned or unearned, could have scored on a bloop hit off a great pitch, on a bad bounce of what should have been an easily fielded ball, or on an error. Happens all the time. But it did not happen for 59 innings.
If Dave Stieb of the Blue Jays had not given up a bad-hop single with two out in the ninth of one game in September, 1988, and had not given up a broken-bat single with two out in the ninth in the next game, Hershiser would have had to share the headlines with Stieb's back-to-back no-hitters for the Blue Jays. (Stieb was only the sixth pitcher in history to pitch two consecutive one-hitters. In his second start in 1989 he pitched another one-hitter, becoming the first pitcher to throw three one-hitters in four starts and coming tantalizingly close to the dizzying achievement of three no-hitters in four starts.)
Was Hershiser lucky? Obviously. So what? Some sports achievements are all luck. Usually these are single instances, such as Don Liddle's good luck in having baseball's greatest center fielder playing behind him one day in October, 1954.
With the score tied in the first game of the 1954 World Series between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians, the Giants brought in Don Liddle to pitch to Vic Wertz with two runners on. The Indians' batter crushed a Liddle pitch 460 feet to the deepest part of the deepest center field in baseball, where only Superman could catch it. Superman did. Willie Mays made his famous over-the-shoulder catch and, even more remarkably, threw to hold the runner on third base. Liddle was immediately yanked. He strode into the dugout, put down his glove and said, "Well, I got my man." Liddle was lucky. Hershiser was more than lucky. You have to be good, very good, to get 177 men out without anyone scoring.
Some of baseball's most memorable achievements were helped along by repeated instances of luck. In Don Larsen's perfect game for the Yankees against the Dodgers in the 1956 World Series, the Dodgers' Sandy Amoros missed a home run by about a foot; Mickey Mantle made a sparkling running catch at his knees of a sinking line drive off the bat of Gil Hodges; and Jackie Robinson ripped a line drive off Andy Carey, the Yankees' third baseman, but the ball bounced straight to shortstop Gil McDougald, who threw out Robinson. (After the game, manager Casey Stengel was asked the dumbest question in the history of journalism: Was that the best game he had ever seen Larsen pitch? Stengel said: "So far.") Some of the hits that kept Joe DiMaggio's 56-game streak going in 1941 were lucky. Twice DiMaggio benefited from close calls by official scorers on hits that could have been called errors. Twice he got dinky hits—a catch-able fly ball fell untouched, and a full swing produced a slow roller that dribbled into an infield that was pulled back.
However, Professor Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard—paleontologist, polymath and serious student of baseball—argues that long streaks necessarily are products of, are compounds of, skill and luck. Great athletes have a higher probability of success than normal athletes have in any instance—any at bat, any inning pitched. A streak is a series of discrete events occurring with the probability that is characteristic for a particular player at a particular point in his career. Frederick the Great, when asked what kind of generals he preferred, answered: "Lucky ones." He was, as was his wont, being serious. His point was that luck is unpredictable but talent takes advantage of it. Thus the talented have, in effect, more of it. It magnifies the tendencies of the talented. In the future, just over the horizon, in the next game, the next inning, the next at bat, there lurks something that can never be wholly subdued by talent or eliminated by training and preparation. That recurring thing is luck. Baseball, with its long, leveling season, is the severest meritocracy in sports. There is ample time for talent to tell. The ratio of talent to luck is high. But luck is part of the equation.
How good was Hershiser's season? Very. In 1988 the league batted .213 against him, but right-handers did not do much worse .206). His record (23–8,2.26 ERA, 178 strikeouts in 267 innings) fell short of Ron Guidry's 1978 season (25–3, 1.74 ERA, 248 strikeouts in 273⅔ innings). A streak, a season. How good has Hershiser's career been? Very good. That is all, but that is a lot. Few people appreciate how hard it is to be a consistently successful pitcher. Ted Williams was, of course, right. Hitting a baseball is the hardest task in sport. But baseball would be unbalanced and uninteresting if it were not almost as hard consistently to pitch baseballs so skillfully that they can not be hit safely often enough to score runs constantly.
Only one pitcher in either league—Dave Stewart of the Athletics—won 20 games in 1987 and 1988 and 1989. Jack Morris of the Detroit Tigers was the only major league pitcher with at least 15 wins in each of the seven years from 1982 through 1988. His streak ended in 1989. Only two pitchers, Morris and John Tudor, had winning seasons every year of the 1980s, through 1988. Their streaks ended in 1989. In 1988 Frank Viola won the Cy Young Award with a 24–7 season for the Twins. In 1989 with the Twins and Mets, he was 13–17. Of the 56 Cy Young winners through 1988, 19—slightly more than a third—had losing records the year after they won the award. Why is it so rare that individuals have high levels of performance over more than a few seasons? Because pitching is hard. A difference of a few miles per hour in the delivery, or a few inches in the location, of a few pitches thrown to major league hitters can make a decisive difference in wins and losses. Through 1989 Hershiser had winning records in three of his first six seasons (not counting 1983 when he pitched just eight innings). If losing as many as he wins makes a pitcher rank as mediocre, for two consecutive seasons, 1986 (14–14) and 1987 (16–16), Hershiser was mediocre.
That is a big "if" because won-lost records are not very revealing, as 1989 showed. In 1989 Hershiser was 15–15. He only climbed to .500 by winning his last start, 3–1. It was a twelve-inning game. He pitched eleven innings. His ERA was 2.31, comparable to his 2.26 in 1988. He pitched approximately the same number of innings (256⅔ to 267) and got exactly the same number of strikeouts (178). In 1988 his ratio of hits plus walks to innings pitched was a sparkling 1.052. In 1989 it was 1.181, a difference of about 1 hit or walk every 8 innings. In 1989 he lost four times, 1–0, and in four other losses the Dodgers did not score while he was in the game. In his last nine starts the Dodgers drove in just 7 runs. At one point he found himself in the midst of another kind of scoreless innings streak: The Dodgers went 34 consecutive innings without scoring while he was pitching. In his 15 losses the Dodgers scored a total of 17 runs. He allowed only 41 runs in those 15 losses. If the Dodgers had scored just 19 more runs for him in his last eight losses, his record would have been 23–7. In 1988, 23–8 won him the Cy Young Award and a contract that for the next three seasons would pay him about $600 per pitch.
The 1984 season was the first full season for both Hershiser and Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets. Through 1989 their records were: Gooden, 100–39; Hershiser, 98–64. Over that span Frank Viola won more games than either (106–73). During those six seasons Hershiser had three more victories than Jack Morris (95–68) and Roger Clemens (95–45) and just eight more victories than the fifth winningest pitcher, Charlie Hough (90–82). Hough is hardly a byword for glamour, or even a household word, even in the homes of baseball fans.
The famous "Class of '84" included these seven rookie pitchers: Dwight Gooden, Roger Clemens, Mark Langsten, Jimmy Key, Mark Gubicza, Ron Darling and Hershiser. Gooden is the class of that class, so far. In 1984 the 19-year-old Gooden set a National League record with a total of 32 strikeouts in two consecutive games. In those 17 innings he walked none and in one game he did not go to three balls on any batter. In that game he threw only 28 balls in 120 pitches. In 1985 Gooden became the youngest pitcher ever to win 20 games, the youngest to win the Cy Young Award, and the first since Sandy Koufax in 1965 and 1966 and Steve Carlton in 1972 to win the pitcher's triple crown, leading the league in wins, strikeouts and ERA. In fact, Gooden, like Koufax in 1965 and 1966, led the major leagues in those three categories. At the end of the 1989 season he was in the select circle of starting pitchers with a winning percentage of .700 or better over six seasons.
On June 19, 1989, when Gooden won his one-hundredth game at age 24 years and 7 months, he was the third-youngest pitcher (behind Bob Feller, who was 22 in 1941, and Frank "Noodles" Hahn, who was 24 years and 2 months in 1903) to win 100 games. Gooden's record was 100–37, a .730 percentage. On that day Hershiser, then 30, had a record of 91–55, .623. However, Hershiser is doing something that neither Gooden nor Roger Clemens is certain to do. It is something that one can not assume that any young pitcher will go on to do. Hershiser is pitching with steady success in his thirties. He may be one of those pitchers who are markedly better after 30. This is more an achievement of mind than of muscle. Or, more precisely, it testifies to the use of mind to conserve muscle.
Anyway, a .623 winning percentage is very good, particularly for a man who began life as a spina bifida baby. "Clark Kent at least had a good body," Hershiser says. "I'm Jimmy Olsen." Not true. When Nature designed Hershiser, it had a pitcher in mind. Hershiser has a pitcher's body and mind. He may look slight; when he is standing next to Kirk Gibson, the Dodgers' unshaven and untamed former football player, he may even look frail. But at 6 feet 3 and 192 pounds Hershiser is very much the modern player. Long ago pitchers used to be the biggest, strongest men on the field. They were intimidators. And pitchers have not been getting smaller. (In 1988 Nolan Ryan, at 6 feet 2 and 210 pounds, was only the fifth-largest Astros' pitcher.) But other players have been getting bigger faster. So there is a sense in which Tom Boswell is right when he says "hitters are mesomorphs, pitchers are ectomorphs." Rendering that thought into the vulgate, Boswell says that in the locker room pitchers look like the guys the other players beat up. Indeed, the most dominating pitcher over a full season in the Seventies and Eighties weighed about 160 pounds. That was Ron Guidry's weight in 1977.
Actually, Hershiser is one of baseball's best all-around athletes. "I'm an everyday player in the guise of a pitcher." He was a terrific schoolboy hockey player, but he always had his eye on the ball, not a puck. When he was eight years old the Personna razor blade company sponsored a nationwide throw, hit and run contest. Hershiser finished third in the nation and got to go to Yankee Stadium for the finals. "But," he says, "from there my career went downhill." His coaches at Cherry Hill High School in New Jersey and at Bowling Green State University in Ohio must have been surprised when he went on to serious success. He was cut from his high school varsity team in his freshman and sophomore years. He was cut from his college team in his freshman and sophomore years even though he was on a baseball scholarship. His 6–2 record as a junior was just good enough to get him drafted by the Dodgers in the seventeenth round, "more as a suspect than a prospect," he says.
There is no shame in being selected deep in the draft. Baseball is so difficult, and its particular skills require so much honing, and the honing requires so much character, that the baseball draft is a highly unscientific, uncertain plunge. Other players picked in late rounds who turned out to be good investments include Andre Dawson (11th round), Roger Clemens (12), Jack Clark (13), Dave Parker (14), Jose Canseco (15), Mark Langston (15), Frank Viola (16), Kent Hrbek (17), Bret Saberhagen (19), Don Mattingly (19), Ryne Sandberg (20), Bob Boone (20), Paul Molitor (28) and Keith Hernandez (42).
"Ever since I was eight years old I wanted to come back to a big-league stadium, and I never doubted that I would." Almost never. He says that once when playing Double-? ball in San Antonio he gave up 23 earned runs in three appearances and began to wonder whether he would get "back to" a big-league stadium. Ever since he was eight he had felt as though he had been there.
Born in September, Hershiser's parents had a choice about when he would start school. They took the early option, so he grew up competing with boys a bit older. He thinks it helped him. "I was always battling uphill. It gave me good work habits, made me work hard." Hershiser is a German name. It descends from one of the Hessian mercenaries that George Washington routed at Trenton after he crossed the Delaware—which he did after pitching a dollar (à sinker?) across the river, or so 'tis said. Hershiser got his nickname, "Bulldog," from that fountain of folk wisdom and applied philosophy, his manager, Tommy Lasorda. Early in Hershiser's career, when he was struggling, Lasorda called him into his office for a pep talk. Lasorda is nothing if not long on pep. In the course of what you may be sure was a soliloquy, Lasorda said he was going to start calling Hershiser "Bulldog." Why? asked the pitcher. Lasorda explained: "Suppose the game is tied in the ninth against Atlanta, the bases are loaded, Dale Murphy is up and I bring you in to pitch. If the public address announcer says someone called Orel Hershiser is coming in, Murphy is eager. But if the announcer announces Bulldog Hershiser, Murphy may be worried."
Or as Ron Perranoski puts it, with the pith one would expect of a former relief pitcher, "We nicknamed him Bulldog for the very aggressive face he doesn't have." Perranoski remembers Hershiser from Single-? ball in Clinton, Iowa, and before that in the Arizona instructional league. "The first impression of him is of a librarian. But when he was in the instructional league I knew he liked to play golf and I wanted to test what kind of competitor he was, how aggressive he was. We had a little wager." Pause. "He showed me he was a great competitor."
Two kinds of people are particularly important to a pitcher, those who catch him, and his pitching coaches. Perranoski, the Dodgers' pitching coach, was in the 1960s one of the developers of the speciality of relief pitching. It is a vocation for the professionally aggressive. He pitched for 4 teams over 13 seasons, compiling 179 saves and a 2.79 career ERA. Because he made his living primarily by putting out fires other people had lit, and preventing late-inning disasters, he is a connoisseur of pressure. He has iron-gray hair—one understands why—and a solid, stolid mien.
When warming up starting pitchers in the bull pen before games, Perranoski has them work on their various "release points"—the different arm positions at which the fastballs, breaking balls and change-ups are released. When Hershiser is pitching, Perranoski's job is to watch for mechanical problems, particularly a tendency for Hershiser to "open up" his shoulder—to turn it too much toward third base—which causes his fastball to come up in the strike zone. Perranoski's experience is that "you lose the snap on your curveball before you lose the velocity on your fastball. Then the curveball, instead of snapping, it just sort of rolls."
Perranoski recalls that when Hershiser first came up to the major leagues, "I really had to calm him down a little bit as far as his actions on the field were concerned. If he was going good, striking batters out, he had a little bit of hot dog in him. He might get the ball back from the catcher and snap it with his glove. He wasn't trying to show anyone up but they might not understand that. I'd say, 'Don't wake up a sleeping dog over there.'" Rick Dempsey understands that, but adds, "How a pitcher conducts himself on the mound is very important to the rest of the guys out there." Dempsey is convinced that the confidence of a Hershiser or a Roger Clemens is contagious. When they take the mound confident they can handle the other team, their own team relaxes. Their teammates are apt to score more than they would if they were pressing because they were worried about needing to get runs in bunches. "It's funny," says Dempsey. "When you think you aren't going to have to score a lot of runs, you are apt to score a lot. And when a new young pitcher comes up the team is apt to think, 'We've got to bear down and score some runs for this guy,' and they wind up not getting many." If relaxation is something that can be willed, a pitcher—central to his team's emotional as well as physical geometry—can will it for his team.
One evening in August, 1988, Dempsey was relaxing in the dugout in Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium. It was the beginning of the road trip that would take them next to Montreal, where Hershiser's scoreless innings streak would begin. Hershiser, said Dempsey that evening, is like Jim Palmer, who was easy to catch precisely because he was so opinionated about pitching. A trace of wonder still comes into Dempsey's voice when he remembers Palmer's extraordinary recall of crucial experiences. Standing on the mound, Palmer could inform Dempsey that he was not going to throw a particular pitch to a particular batter in a particular situation because the batter had hit such a pitch hard in a similar situation two years earlier. "I called a game for Palmer once against the White Sox when I _never_ dropped down two fingers. He never threw anything but fastballs. He changed speeds a lot, but never threw any other pitch. Every batter was waiting for him to throw his curve. Everyone was baffled. And he beat them, 5–1."
Hershiser, like Palmer, has a confidence easily mistaken for arrogance. But confidence is necessary, especially in the National League. In that league a pitcher who lacks confidence may be constantly tempted to try to tailor his style to the team he is facing or the park he is in. For example, says Dempsey, some pitchers make the mistake of making fundamental changes in their approach when they are facing the Cardinals, a team some players think of as a track team that has been taught to play baseball. Some pitchers want to throw the Cardinals more fastballs than they normally would throw. "But if you do that you are falling right into their hands as far as hitting-and-running goes." If a running team can be confident of an unusually high ratio of fastballs, it can be more confident of hitters making contact, and hitting-and-running becomes safer. Dempsey says an opponent's running game is not a big factor "if your team is hitting the ball well. If you're not and you're playing a lot of one-and two-run games, you've really got to slow the other team's running game down a bit." On the other hand.... There is always another hand. "In the case of the Cardinals, who don't have a lot of power, and are counting on getting a lot of singles, you can call a lot of fastballs." Because few are going to be hit into the seats.
Dempsey, who has caught in both leagues, believes there are more "low-ball umpires" in the National League, umpires who call as strikes some pitches that in the American League would generally be called low balls. The higher strike zone in the American League could be a lingering effect of the umpires' equipment. Until 1980 American League umpires behind the plate did not wear, as they now do, the sort of chest protectors that National League umpires have long worn, the small wraparound kind under their shirts or jackets. They wore "mattress"-style protectors over their clothing. These cumbersome protectors made it difficult for them to bend over and look along the catcher's sight line. As a result, while National League umpires crouched low, on the inside corner, American League umpires called pitches from directly behind the plate, over the catcher's head. And National League umpires saw more low strikes, or so it is said.
According to Mike Scioscia, who has caught most of Hershiser's games, Hershiser's four-seam fastball (a ball held across, rather than with, the four seams) "gives the illusion of rising but all it does is probably stay a little straighter than the sinker." When Scioscia is catching Hershiser he has two signs for location (inside and outside) and four for pitches (sinker, breaking ball, change-up, four-seam fastball). If Scioscia wants the ball up in the strike zone, it is such an odd call for a sinker-ball pitcher that he usually goes to the mound to ask for it. Hershiser's sinker requires Scioscia to resist temptation and exercise diplomacy, lest he have trouble with the man in blue standing behind him. Scioscia says a lot of catchers try to "steal" strikes for their pitchers by not turning their mitts palm-upward on a low pitch. This, they think, will not make the pitch seem so low. But catching a low pitch with the fingers up requires the catcher to, in Scioscia's words, "jerk the pitch." Once the umpire sees that, he assumes the pitch was low.
One way Scioscia can be helpful to Hershiser is by being watchful, and thoughtful. Talking to _Sports Illustrated's_ Peter Gammons about the 1988 World Series, Scioscia said, "I watched the A's hit in batting practice before the first two games to look for little tendencies. For instance, when I heard the hitter ask the batting practice pitcher for a curveball, I watched to see if the hitter made any adjustment with his feet. If he did he would probably move his feet similarly in a game, and that would indicate to me that he was sitting on [waiting to pounce on] the breaking ball." (Mike Flanagan of the Blue Jays says "stance-reading" has attained such subtlety that some batters try to mislead those doing the reading: "Chet Lemon will move way up in the box like he was looking for a curve so that you'll throw him a fastball.")
A pitcher sets his own pace but the catcher calls the game, so he can influence the pace. Scioscia says, "You pace a pitcher with pitch selection. It's not cutting down on the number of fastballs you call because actually it takes more effort to throw a curveball. The key is the number of pitches you'll waste in a game. You're not going to pitch around as many hitters as you might earlier in the game." By "pitch around" he does not mean giving the hitter first base by not throwing strikes. Rather, he means trying to get an undisciplined free swinger out on pitches that are not strikes. "Pitching around" a batter requires more pitches than otherwise might be thrown. It is a defensive weapon that may have to be used late in a game. In every election, American democracy gives the government essentially the same instructions: Maintain our services, cut the deficit and do not raise taxes. Pitchers, too, are forever being given unhelpful directives: "Don't give this guy anything good to hit—but don't walk him." That is what is meant by pitching around a batter.
With a runner on first when Hershiser is pitching against a team managed by someone who likes to bunt, Hershiser, according to Scioscia, does a few unorthodox things. First, he's not afraid to throw breaking balls, thereby breaking the rule that in such a situation you throw high fastballs because they are hard to bunt. Hershiser's theory is that a bunter is like any other hitter, so the first priority is to upset his timing. However, Scioscia says, Hershiser's approach is the luxury of someone who knows he can throw his breaking pitches for strikes.
Sometimes the best thing a pitcher can do about a runner on first is to forget about him. Mike Scott of the Astros is a severe realist. He is not the only National League pitcher who believes that the only way to cope with Vince Coleman as a base runner is to prevent him from becoming one. Scott's approach is: If you can't keep him off first, at least keep him off your mind. He can outrun the ball, so there is no point in fretting. You only make matters worse by losing your concentration on the next hitter. Scioscia says he has been taught not to change pitch selection to subsequent batters just because a base-stealing threat, even the likes of Coleman, has reached first. "If you change your pitch selection you're apt to get a hit and have first-and-third or, worse, a double with a run in. What I've got to do is first check the runner's lead and then control his jump. You control it by varying your timing to home plate, throwing over to first, stepping off the mound. Don't let him time your movement. Now, once you start you've got to keep a short leg kick, which Orel has, to give the catcher a chance to get the runner if he goes."
Hershiser has reacted to the likes of Coleman (and Tim Raines and Gerald Young) by adopting a new delivery from the stretch position. He used to come to a set position with his feet close together. This allowed him to get power behind his pitches from a full stride. Now he begins his motion from a set position with his "plant leg"—his left leg, which he plants as he comes forward toward the plate—almost as far toward the plate as it will be when he plants it and follows through. This costs him velocity—about three miles per hour off his fastball—but he thinks the sacrifice is well worth it because "no matter how good a jump the runner gets, it's almost impossible for him to steal." Scioscia says, "Orel has a quick release but, more important, he has good stuff with men on base. Some pitchers will sacrifice their good stuff to try to hold a runner on first. It's not just that they may go too much to fastballs. It's that if you call a curveball you might get one that will roll a little bit because a guy is so wrapped up in his quick delivery to the plate that he is not making his best pitches. Orel has the ability to give me a quick release and still give me his best stuff. It all has to do with pressure and command out there. Orel knows that if he takes a long time throwing the ball to the plate, then any walk he gives up is going to be a double."
Hershiser rarely shakes off Scioscia's signs more than a couple of times an inning. "Let's say he throws me a bad curveball. I'm thinking we'd better go to a sinker because if he gets that sloppy curve in the strike zone the batter is going to hit it. But Orel is out there thinking, 'I threw a sloppy curveball but I know what I have to do to throw a good one.'" In the seventh inning of the second game of the 1988 World Series, Hershiser, facing Carney Lansford, shook off Scioscia's sign twice just to get Lansford, a thoughtful veteran, thinking too much. (Not all shake-offs of signs involve such cunning. The young Lefty Gomez, facing a scary slugger, once shook off his catcher so many times that the catcher came to the mound for an explanation. "Let's wait a while," explained Gomez. "Maybe he'll get a phone call.") Pitchers work in different and constantly changing contexts. What they try to do depends on the score, the risk of a run scoring immediately and the stage of the game. (The importance of two runners on base in the second inning may not be the same as the importance of two runners on in the ninth.) And the controlling conditions include the condition of the pitcher himself: How does he feel?
"The season takes a big toll on you," says Scioscia, who makes a living squatting, being hit by batted balls and colliding with base runners. "I think a pitcher probably has his really good stuff 60, 70 percent of the time. You are usually going to be a little short on your fastball or some other pitch." Sometimes a pitcher will not have a clue as to how he is going to do until he does it—or fails to. Mike Scott remembers the night in St. Louis when he felt the best he has ever felt when warming up. He felt as though he was throwing 100 miles per hour to the exact spots he wanted to throw to. "I thought, 'There's no way they can hit me.' I didn't get out of the first inning. The first guy—Brock or Templeton—got a hit. Then I walked somebody. Then Hernandez hit a home run. Then Ted Simmons hit a line drive by my ear that was caught against the center-field wall for an out. Then someone hit a home run off the stadium restaurant and I was out of the game."
Scioscia knows how baseball goes when things are not going smoothly. He once was knocked cold by Jack Clark in a collision at the plate, but he held on to the ball and made the putout. Pitching, he says, requires making do when you can't make the ball do what it does on your best days. "Anyone can win when they're pitching well. But guys like Orel and Fernando [Valenzuela] can win when they don't have great stuff. They know that you don't have to throw strikes to get a guy out." A pitcher once said: "Control without stuff is far better than stuff without control. Whenever you hear it said that such and such a pitcher didn't have a thing, you can bet he had control if he didn't have anything else." (That was said by Yankees pitcher Carl Mays the year before he threw the only pitch to kill a batter.) Scioscia says that if he had to select the most valuable of the three virtues—velocity, movement, location—that pitchers cultivate, "I'd pick location because of the 'holes' in every batter's swing. Willie Mays had holes, they were just smaller than anyone else's." That is Scioscia's answer to the perennial question about who is easier to pitch to, a power hitter or a contact hitter. Scioscia says it is easier to pitch to a hitter with a lot of "holes" in his swing, and that is usually a power hitter. But if you make a mistake with a power hitter, it hurts a lot more than a mistake to a contact, singles hitter. So Scioscia says that Hershiser, who has good control, matches up well against a power hitter with more "holes" to pitch to. Hershiser agrees but still does not enjoy it. When asked for an example of a hitter who bothers him, Hershiser says, "Any power hitter. I don't want to see [Atlanta's Dale] Murphy coming up with the score tied or a one-run game." What makes Murphy so tough? "You make a mistake, he hits it." What is enough of a mistake? "A curveball in the middle and a little high, compared with a curveball low and away." What is the difference in inches? "Six inches each way."
Baseball is indeed a game of inches and the most important 17 of them form the width of the five-sided slab of rubber called home plate. The last really good news for pitchers came nine decades ago, in 1900, when the plate was changed from a 12-inch square to a five-sided object 17 inches wide. But that did not settle things. Life is a battle and baseball life is an endless series of skirmishes about who will control the periphery of the plate, batters or pitchers. The stakes are high. A 90-mile-per-hour fastball in on the fists is hard to hit and nearly impossible to hit with power. If that fastball is 6 horizontal inches farther out over the plate, all the 90-mile-per-hour speed is doing is generating energy for the impact with the bat. "You throw the ball on the outside corner," Hershiser says, "you have a perfect pitch and you have either an out or a strike. You make a mistake, you miss for a ball, you get four of those. You pitch inside, you can have a strike on the inside corner, but if you miss over the middle of the plate, you don't have either a strike or a ball, you have a double or a home run. So you pitch away. But you have to come inside to protect the outside of the plate." That is, if you do not pitch inside the hitter will crowd the plate, even dive across it, and suddenly the outside corner will be, in effect, the middle of the plate and there will be nowhere to throw the ball.
Ron Perranoski says, "If you have 8 inches inside and 4 inches outside, you have quite a lot of area that they [batters] have to adjust to." To be precise, 29 inches for the pitcher to work in rather than just the 17-inch plate. However, says Hershiser, just as it is risky not to pitch inside, it is also risky to pitch there. "You can't make a living pitching in all the time because your mistake either hits the batter or gets hit hard. So the odds are better away."
Still, the pitcher's principal problem today is to get away with pitching inside as often as he needs to. There is too much litigious-ness by batters who, like all other Americans, are very sensitive about their rights, real and imagined. Tim McCarver grudgingly credits hitters (McCarver was a catcher and is on the pitchers' side) with "successful lobbying efforts to push the ball out over the plate." This lobbying has consisted of aggressive responses to brushback pitches, responses ranging from baleful glares to bench-clearing brawls. Scioscia agrees that umpires have, for whatever reason, become less tolerant of pitches that come inside. "Let's say a fastball is called inside and the count is 0–2. A pitcher who has pitched long enough, and has been in our meetings and knows what we are trying to do, knows that in that situation he's got to throw the ball off the plate between the hitter and the plate, maybe 8 inches inside. Now, let's say the pitch gets away and comes up and in. Here is where we're running into trouble with umpires saying you're throwing at a guy. But actually you're not going to hit a guy or knock him down or even take a chance of hitting him when you're 0–2."
During the 1988 League Championship Series, Hershiser says, "The Mets crowded the plate, trying to take my sinker away from me. They knew I like to throw it low and away. I adjusted back, throwing a lot of fastballs in." Such an adjustment is not optional if the pitcher wants to make his living in the major leagues. "You can't let the outside part of the plate become the middle or the inside. That's when you have to pitch in to get them off the plate. You have to pitch in often enough that the outside corner is still the outside corner. You have to keep the definition: That's the outside corner, fellas.'" Mike Scott is equally emphatic: "There isn't a successful pitcher who just throws on the plate and away, on the plate and away. Because if you do that, they'll just sit there and drill you. You've got to make them uncomfortable. You've got to put a little fear in there."
Fear can be instilled unintentionally, or at least by wildness that seems unintentional. Six times Nolan Ryan has led his league in both strikeouts and walks. Bob Feller did that four times. Wildness makes hitters nervous and nervousness makes them vulnerable. Wildness makes it easier to make them flinch.
Aluminum bats (a bane we shall deal with in the next chapter) have taken away one of the educational processes essential for pitchers, the process of learning to pitch inside. "You can't do that in high school or college," Hershiser says, "because you can't break any bats." When a pitcher jams a batter who is using an aluminum bat, the batter is often able to fight off the pitch and dump a hit over the infield. So until pitchers enter professional baseball, they tend to pitch away, away, away. As a result, they do not get practice pitching in, and when they start pitching in they hit batters unintentionally.
Intentionally throwing at batters is a punitive measure justified, Hershiser indicates, by, among other things, naughty behavior by batters, such as peeking. The catcher can help prevent peeking back at the catcher by moving at the last instant. Hershiser has begun to come forward in his delivery before Scioscia shifts toward the zone where the ball is coming. And every once in a while, especially with a runner on second, Hershiser will throw inside without even telling his catcher the pitch is coming there. He will let the catcher set up outside, then throw inside, just to make sure the batter is not peeking at the catcher's location and to convince the other team that he is a little wild. "My strength is location, not blowing people away with high gas." If the batter peeks, or if the runner on second signals pitch locations, that makes Hershiser a book easy for batters to read. If the runner signals to the batter that the pitch will be inside, that tells the batter the kind of pitch, too. It is almost certainly a fastball. If the runner signals a pitch away, the batter moves up on the plate and takes away the outside corner, where Hershiser's sinker is effective.
Hershiser remembers the way Willie Stargell of the Pirates used to stand in the batter's box cranking the bat around rapidly in a big circle until the pitcher was in motion. Hershiser suspects that Stargell did that partly to disguise his head movements that enabled him to peek and see where the catcher was setting up. Remember the way Joe Morgan of the Reds used to flap his left elbow while at bat, just before each pitch, darting his eyes back at his elbow? Hershiser suspects that Morgan was peeking. Notice, says Hershiser, the way Keith Hernandez of the Mets wiggles his fingers on the bat handle. "Hernandez is always looking at his fingers? He's not looking at his fingers."
Hershiser watches to see that his catcher does not move into position too soon during day games because the catcher's shadow is so easy for the batter to see. But there are shadows at night, too. When the Padres came from behind to beat the Cubs in the final game of the 1984 League Championship Series, their comeback was capped by hits by Tony Gwynn and Steve Garvey. Gwynn got his hit because he glanced down and saw the shadow cast by the Cubs' catcher, Jody Davis, who had moved to take an outside pitch. When told of this episode, Hershiser laughs his boyish laugh but speaks words from the man's world in which he works: "When a pitcher sees that, or a catcher suspects that, you can guarantee that the batter is going down—in a hurry. He's stealing meal money." In 1987 Hershiser hit nine batters (one every 29 innings), which suggests he is not nice beyond the point of prudence.
Drysdale hit a batter every 22.2 innings. Koufax hit a batter every 129 innings. In 1966 Koufax pitched 323 innings and hit no one. The difference between Drysdale and Koufax was not control, it was a matter of temperament. Pitchers like Don Drysdale and Early Wynn (who said he would throw at his grandmother "only if she was digging in") could not pitch today the way they did 25 years ago. Neither could Sal "The Barber" Maglie, who once said this about throwing at batters: "It's not the first one. It's the second one that makes the hitter know I meant the first one." The last of the no-damned-nonsense-about-niceness pitchers may have been Bob Gibson. Never mind in games, you were not safe during batting practice. One day when Gibson was the Atlanta Braves' pitching coach he was pitching batting practice and called to a young hitter waiting near the cage, "Eddie, you're in there." The young hitter did not like to be called Eddie and replied, in a less than respectful tone, "The name is Ed." Gibson quietly said, "All right, _Ed_ , get in there." Then with the first pitch he drilled Ed in the ribs.
In Eric Rolfe Greenberg's _The Celebrant_ , one of the best baseball novels, the protagonist muses, "To be a pitcher! I thought. A pitcher standing at the axis of event." That is indeed where the pitcher works, at the point from which all action begins. But the protagonist does not understand everything. He adds, "And to live in a world without grays, where all decisions were final: ball or strike...." Wrong. There is much gray in a pitcher's world. Pitching inside, moving batters off the plate, punishing their bad manners (if that is what peeking is), retaliating for teammates who have been hit—these are aspects of baseball's gray area. Cheating is different. It is a matter of black and white.
Once when Earl Weaver visited Ross Grimsley on the mound in a crisis Weaver said, "If you know how to cheat, start now." Hershiser figures that 15 to 20 percent of all National League pitchers scuff balls or throw spitballs or otherwise cheat. A scuffed ball is an otherwise pristine ball with a small, strategically placed nick or scratch. In the hands of a pitcher who knows how to hold and throw it, such a ball has just enough aerodynamic irregularities to have extremely effective movement. Hershiser says he will not scuff a ball but has thrown scuffed balls that were waiting for him on the mound when he returned after the Dodgers had batted. He says it is hard to overestimate the potency of a skillfully scuffed ball as a weapon. The scuffed balls he has thrown have either produced strikeouts or, if the batters made contact, balls that stayed in the infield. "It is unbelievable. I have such a natural sinker already and I can double the break with a scuffed ball."
Cheating is, of course, nothing new. Whitey Ford has written about his rich repertoire of techniques for cheating. He had a ring with a sharpened edge for scuffing. When the ring was banned, his cooperative catcher, Elston Howard, would scuff the ball on a sharpened rivet on his shin guards. Ford used spit, sometimes applied by, or helpfully wiped away by, his infielders as the ball was whipped around the infield after an out. Ford even caused a rule to be written. At the 1957 World Series between the Yankees and the Milwaukee Braves the guild loyalty of pitchers took precedence over mere team considerations: Braves pitchers Lew Burdette and Warren Spahn showed Ford how to throw a mudball. That is—was—a pitch with an exaggerated break because of a bit of dirt stuck to one side of the ball. Ford would wet the ball with saliva located in the pocket of his glove, then hold the ball with the wet spot down and reach for the resin bag with the ball in his hand, brushing the wet spot in the dirt. Unfortunately for Ford, baseball's crime-busters soon made it a criminal offense for a pitcher to pick up the resin bag with a hand in which he is holding a ball.
Gaylord Perry, pitcher and author _(Me and the Spitter)_ , won 314 games and probably would be in the Hall of Fame by now (he will be eventually) were it not for the fact that, as he more or less cheerfully admits, he cheated. The "foreign substances" he applied to the ball included saliva, Vaseline, K-Y jelly and fishing line wax. (A Cubs pitcher accused of applying foreign substances to the ball hotly protested that everything he applied "was made in the good ol' USA.") Dave Duncan was Perry's catcher on the 1974 Indians when Perry had a 21–13 record. According to Duncan, Perry threw only one spitball all year. Duncan says Perry adopted odd, furtive mannerisms on the mound to make batters wary and angry. They concentrated on finding him out rather than knocking him out of the game.
An axiom sometimes spoken and often thought is: An amateur who cheats to win is a cheat; a professional who cheats to feed his family is a competitor. The axiom is pernicious, permissive and plain wrong because it suggests that something done for money is, for that reason, legitimized. That is obviously untrue. A deceitful action is especially contemptible when done in cold premeditation, and sneakily. Which brings us to the distinction that Bart Giamatti had occasion to draw between two kinds of violations of rules.
Giamatti was the designated metaphysician of American sport. In 1987, when he was president of the National League, he flexed his mental muscles regarding disciplinary action against a pitcher who was caught using sandpaper to scuff balls. Giamatti noted that most disciplinary cases involve impulsive violence, which is less morally grave than cheating. Such acts of violence, although intolerable, spring from the nature of physical contests between aggressive competitors. Such violence is a reprehensible extension of the physical exertion that is integral to the contest. Rules try to contain, not expunge, violent effort. But cheating derives not from excessive, impulsive zeal in the heat of competition. Rather, it is a cold, covert attempt to alter conditions of competition. As Giamatti put it, cheating has no organic origin in the act of playing and devalues any contest designed to declare a winner among participants playing under identical rules and conditions. Toward cheating, the proper policy is zero tolerance.
Fear of the wrath of a stern commissioner may suffice to deter some pitchers from cheating. Hershiser invokes a yet higher authority. "I feel that if I would scuff the ball or cheat, God would not honor my ability and my trying and all of a sudden my record would start going down. He would punish my witness. I don't know if God is like that. I read in the Bible that He will correct us. I know I could be better, better at a human level, but I don't know if, at the spiritual level, I could live with myself. I just can't do it." He pauses, thinking. "Maybe when I'm forty and I gotta do it to do it, I'll see it differently. Spiritually, I'll figure out a way. 'Lord, let me make this money and I'll give it to the church.'" And he laughs the carefree laugh of someone for whom 40 is still only a rumor.
Later Hershiser returns, unbidden, to the subject of cheating. "The guys that do it are actually stealing money out of the honest guys' pockets." His suspicion is that the scuffers who are successful draw fans to the ballparks, make money for everyone and so are left alone. Baseball's enforcers might come down on a scuffer who is the tenth man on a pitching staff, but he is probably not effective and is probably being hit hard or he would not be the tenth man, so why bother? "I don't know. If they make it an unwritten rule that you can do it, if they are not going to go after guys, I think I will spiritually say it's okay. Just like a shortstop or second baseman says I don't need to actually touch second base when turning a double play."
In late July, 1989, when Mike Scott of the Astros drove the Dodgers deeper into fifth place with his sixteenth win, Hershiser dropped his diplomatic reticence: "[Scott] cheats up a storm. It's not too much fun to sit there and watch him cheat. It's unbelievable. It's not just speculation. It's fact. I know guys that have played with him. [Astros first-base coach] Phil Garner played with us, he said [Scott] did it. Other guys have, too. Even umpires say he does it. But they say the league won't back them up after Don Sutton tried to sue Doug Harvey for charging him with scuffing." Scott replied that no pitcher is more closely watched (because more constantly accused) than he is. He has, he said, been checked and rechecked and not found guilty. Scott also said he did not care what Hershiser thinks and added, "I would be ticked, too, if I was 15 games out of first place."
Pitchers tend to be conspiracy theorists. Pitchers tend to be correct. Pitchers believe that owners, pandering to the unwashed mob that does not appreciate the artistry of pitching, are constantly plotting to handicap pitchers and increase offense. The pitchers are mistaken only in thinking this is a conspiracy. A conspiracy is supposed to be secret. The plot against pitchers is about as secret as a steam calliope. However that may be, Hershiser, like most pitchers, believes baseball is forever finding ways to be beastly to pitchers. "There never," he states categorically, "has been a rule change favorable to the pitcher." He exaggerates, but only a bit. The last time pitchers benefitted much from a rules change was more than a century ago. (What will some people want to change next, to the detriment of pitchers? The bats, as we shall see in the next chapter.)
It is hard to say where, back in the mists of history, the origins of baseball are. However, it is reasonable to say that baseball as we know it began in the 1880s. Pitching is the heart of the game and by 1887 the rules had been changed enough to allow pitching as we know it. In their exhaustive treatise, _The Pitcher_ , John Thorn and John B. Holway note that baseball's first codified rules, written in 1846 by Alexander Cartwright, said this: "The ball must be pitched, not thrown, for the bat." Note the preposition "for." The distinction between pitching and throwing was that a pitch must be delivered underhand and with a stiff wrist. A pitcher was an unglamorous functionary obligated to help the batter put the ball in play. Until 1887 the batter was even allowed to tell the menial pitcher to serve up the ball high or low.
Law follows culture and mores and in 1872 baseball's rules surrendered to the fact that by then most pitchers were snapping their wrists as they released the ball, although they still had to release it from below the waist. In 1872 the rules changed to legalize this and pitchers became what Cartwright had called, disapprovingly, throwers. In 1887 another failed prohibition ended and pitchers were allowed to throw overhand. Today the distinction in baseball talk between pitching and throwing is reversed. It's the distinction between artifice and mere power. Pitching is the science of systematically confusing batters. Throwing is reliance on raw strength. A pitcher is what a thrower becomes when he gets serious (or older, which is much the same thing).
When restrictions were removed from the pitcher's use of his own arm and wrist, the anti-pitching forces fell back to fight on another front. In 1879 the rules stipulated nine balls before a walk was awarded. Then the plotting against pitchers got into high gear. The number of balls for a walk was lowered to eight, then seven, then six, back up to seven for one season, then five, then four in 1889. (For one season, 1887, a strikeout required four strikes, but this was going too far even for dedicated persecutors of pitchers.)
While the rules were becoming less permissive about how many times a pitcher could miss the strike zone, pitchers were developing ways of making the ball behave oddly en route to, and while passing through, the strike zone. The patron saint of modern pitchers might be William Arthur "Candy" Cummings, a 120-pound lad who, in the summer of 1863, while other young men were crossing the wheat field at Gettysburg and completing the siege of Vicksburg, was tossing clamshells, making them "turn now to the right, now to the left." The first curveball was a clamshell. By 1867 Cummings was curving balls around Harvard's bats for the New York Excelsior Club. Batters have not really been happy since then. But batters have been having most of the rules changes go their way. The pitcher's location has changed from a boxlike area (hence the phrase "knocked out of the box") to a slab of rubber on an elevation. At one point early on, the pitcher was allowed a run-up in the area of the box, like a bowler in cricket, before uncorking a pitch. But the pitcher's mound was moved from 45 feet away from home to 50 feet in 1881, and in 1893 it was moved to its current distance of 60 feet 6 inches. The arrival of Wilt Chamberlain and other dominant centers caused changes in the rules of basketball concerning the dimensions of the lane in front of the basket. Similarly, the final change in the location of the pitcher's mound was provoked (or so it is said) by the fastball of Amos Wilson "The Hoosier Thunderbolt" Rusie. Connie Mack, who saw every great pitcher from Cy Young to Bob Feller, said Rusie threw hardest. His fastball must have been a scorcher if it drove the pitcher's rubber back 10 feet. In any case, the change did not bother Rusie, who was 29–18 in 1893. However, the major league batting average soared from .245 to .280. That is not surprising, considering that putting the pitcher farther away increased the time the batter had to see the pitch, and had the effect of taking 10 miles per hour off a fastball.
It is bad enough (from the pitcher's point of view; let's take that point of view because no one else does) that the place pitchers throw from has been shoved so far back. But look, too, at what they are throwing at, and what they are throwing. Consider what has happened to the strike zone and the ball.
Baseball knows on which side its bread is buttered—the side of offense. That is the people's choice. As soon as snap-wrist and overhand pitching were permitted, hitting declined. So, in the fullness of time (and not much time was wasted), the ball was "juiced." By 1894 the league ERA was a giddy 5.32. But the ball was still not very lively, and not many balls were used in any game, so they lost a lot of life along the way to the ninth inning.
In 1872 the rules stipulated that in even innings a team captain could request replacement of an "injured" ball. Until 1886 a ball lost was not considered really lost until after players had used an allotted five minutes to try to find it, if the umpire so ordered. By 1897 a new moralism was abroad in baseball and a $5 fine could be levied on any player guilty of injuring a ball. But normal play did plenty of injuring. It was not unusual for a game to be played with one or two or three balls. By the end of the game the ball was as resilient as a dumpling. Or a tomato. "We often played five or six innings with one ball," Napoleon Lajoie recalled. "And after two or three innings you thought you were hitting a rotten tomato." There is a certain amount of hitters' self-pity in that account. Compassion should be tempered by the knowledge that Lajoie hit the tomato for .422 in 1901 and .339 over 21 seasons. Some offense was possible.
As recently as June 29, 1929, the Cubs and Reds played a full nine-inning game and used just one ball. That was an oddity. In 1919, the season that ended with the White Sox-Reds World Series, the National League used 22,095 baseballs. Then the "Black Sox" scandal broke. Just five seasons later, baseball had revived. The revival was related to the fact that, in 1925, the National League used 54,030 baseballs. More balls were being hit over fences, in part because more dirty gray balls were being taken out of play and replaced by clean white ones. Not until 1934 were both leagues required to use the same ball. However, the crucial change had occurred in 1920 when both leagues began using balls made with the same kind of yarn, from Australia. It does not seem proper, this foreign yarn inside the great American artifact, but we must not flinch from the truth. The Australian yarn was stronger than American yarn and could be wound tighter, giving the balls more bounce. During World War II the ball was not exactly dead, but it was deader than it had been immediately before or has been since. This was because war shortages forced manufacturers to use an inferior wool for the yarn wrapped around the cork center. Luckily, all wars end, and the ball bounced back. Peace was hell, for pitchers.
However, nothing lasts, not even hell. Two decades after the end of World War II the batters were again losing their 100-year war with pitchers. It is an old axiom that "good pitching will stop good hitting—and vice versa." What good pitching does is produce a year like 1968, which in turn produces countermeasures by the people who write the rules. (The real powers behind the rule book are the people who balance baseball's financial books.)
In 1968 the major league batting average was .237, the lowest ever. The 1968 Yankees batted .214, far worse than the .240 of the 120-loss Mets of 1962. Carl Yastrzemski led the American League with .301. The average number of runs per game (6.84) fell almost to the record low (6.77) set in 1908, when the ball was dead. Willie McCovey led the National League in RBIs with 105 and was the only man in the league to top 100. Twenty-one percent of all games were shutouts. Denny McLain became the first pitcher since Dizzy Dean in 1934 to win 30 games (McLain was 31–6). He pitched 28 complete games and had a 1.96 ERA, but he did not have the best year among major league pitchers. Neither did Juan Marichal, although he was 26–9 and pitched 30 complete games. Don Drysdale set what was wrongly thought to be one of baseball's unassailable records by pitching 58⅔ consecutive scoreless innings, but not even that was the most remarkable performance by a pitcher in 1968.
The most remarkable pitcher was Bob Gibson. He set a National League record with a 1.12 ERA. Gibson's Cy Young and MVP award-winning season probably was the greatest season any pitcher ever had. The astonishing thing about his 22–9 record is that he managed to lose nine times. He says he should have been 30–1, and he would have been if the Cardinals had scored even four runs in each of his starts. In those nine losses he allowed just 27 runs. He lost 1–0 twice and 2–0 once. In his 34 starts he pitched 28 complete games, including 13 shutouts. In nine other games he allowed opponents just one run. In his 34 starts he was removed six times for pinch hitters. He was never removed during an inning, from the mound—never knocked out of the box.
Numbers like these proved that something had to be done. Something was done, and it worked, immediately. In 1968 there had been six .300 hitters in all of baseball. In 1969 there were three times that many. The number of 100 RBI men rose from 3 to 14, the number of 40 or more home-run hitters rose from 1 to 7. (Frank Howard's total of 44 in 1968 is one of baseball's great aberrations.) What resuscitated offense was some creative fiddling with the game.
Casting about for ways to pump more pop back into offense, the owners, being good Americans, thought of a technological fix. So in 1969, during Spring Training, they experimented with a new ball. The results included ludicrously long home runs hit by pitchers and other people who had no business hitting for power, and line drives dangerous to the physical well-being of pitchers. That ball was quickly thrown away.
More seriously, after 1968 five teams moved their fences in. Center field in Philadelphia's Connie Mack Stadium came in from 447 to 410 feet. The most serious attack on pitching supremacy, however, lay in the rule book. The 1969 solution (if such there can ever be) to the problem (if such it is) of the dominance of pitching involved shaving the mound and shrinking the strike zone. The mound was lowered by one-third, from 15 inches to 10 inches. And the strike zone became the subject of a remarkably futile episode of rule writing.
In the momentous year of 1887 (the centennial of the Constitutional Convention and the year when throwing overhand became an inalienable right of pitchers) the strike zone was defined as extending from the top of the batter's shoulders to the bottom of his knees. That was good enough to get this great land of ours through two world wars, but in 1950 the rule makers succumbed to the fidgets and said: Henceforth the strike zone shall be from the armpits to the top of the knees. In 1963 it was redefined yet again, back to the 1887 dimensions. Then after the trauma of 1968, the "armpits to the top of the knees" strike zone was restored. Bart Giamatti said people look to games for "stable artifice," an island of clear rules, of predictable governance in a world of flux. If that is what fans are looking for, they should not look too closely at the strike zone.
Or at the rule book. All those words on paper are fine, but the game is not played on paper, and out on the field the strike zone has wandered south. It is bad enough that the zone has been redefined promiscuously. Much more important is the fact that, as we saw in Dave Duncan's charts, the _de jure_ zone bears no resemblance to the _de facto_ zone—the one the umpires are enforcing. Again, if the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, then the strike zone is what the umpires say it is, and the strike zone today runs from the belt down to as far below the knees as the particular umpire behind the plate likes to call strikes.
Before the 1988 season the rule makers, with their touching faith in the magic of words to control the men in blue, tried to restore the sovereignty of written law. They tried to do this with a small surrender. They tried to expand the strike zone by shrinking it. They redefined the top of the zone as being at the letters on the uniforms. (They blushed and fainted dead away at the thought of desecrating the sacred rule book with the scarlet word "nipples.") Their theory, or hope, was that umpires would bring up the top of the strike zone at least slightly if the official top of the zone was defined down, a little more to their liking. The change made not a particle of difference in umpires' behavior.
Thorn and Holway say "the steady onslaught" of pitching is so powerful that unless it is periodically countered it will produce the extinction of the .300 hitter. The reasons, they say, are that pitchers are becoming bigger and stronger and they are replaced more often by big, strong relief pitchers. Meanwhile, hitting proficiency is limited by the human limits of reaction time and hand-eye coordination. However, bear in mind the fact that baseball has not yet suffered a really traumatic imbalance, one that could not be corrected by minor modifications of the terms of competition.
Perhaps—we shall never know—baseball came close to such a trauma in the 1950s. It had a glimpse of what could have been a really discombobulating force. In the 1950s the Orioles had a pitching prospect who became a baseball legend without ever becoming a big leaguer. Steve Dalkowski came out of a Connecticut high school with throwing mechanics that were terrible and, it turned out, impervious to all attempts to improve them. But in spite of his flaws he probably threw harder than anyone who ever pitched in the major leagues. Harder and wilder. He was never properly timed under suitable conditions. There was no mound at the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground where he was timed by a radar gun. But the consensus was that he threw approximately 115 miles per hour. Two of the hardest throwers of modern times, Nolan Ryan and Goose Gossage, were timed at 103 miles per hour at the 1985 Ail-Star Game in Minneapolis. A Dalkowski fastball once hit an umpire in the mask, breaking the mask and putting the umpire in the hospital for three days. Dalkowski with even adequate control might have been intolerable for baseball. He might have been the almost unhittable pitcher. If so, he would have been boring.
A few years ago George Plimpton wrote a whimsical novel that made a point both serious and lovely. _The Curious Case of Sidd_ _Finch_ was the story of a mystic whose Buddhist discipline, learned in Tibet, enabled him, when his concentration was undisturbed, to throw a ball 160 miles per hour with perfect control. The Mets prepared a catcher by having him catch balls dropped from the Goodyear blimp. (A ball dropped from 1,000 feet reaches the ground traveling 170 miles per hour.) Plimpton's novel is a playful exploration of this truth: All sport, but especially baseball, depends on a fragile equilibrium. The equilibrium depends on both a high level of performance by many participants and on the maintenance of imperfection. Plimpton has Davey Johnson, Finch's manager on the Mets, say, "What he does doesn't really belong in baseball." True. Anything like it would ruin the game.
There is no danger of that. The tension between pitcher and batter will maintain baseball's most fundamental equipoise. What pitchers continue to do in self-defense against the Forces of Darkness (offense) is to use their heads about how they use the great freedom they received for their arms in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1887. Mankind has moved a far piece from Cummings and his curving clamshells but mankind has not exhausted novelty. There always seem to be new ways to make a thrown and revolving sphere deviate in deceptive ways from a straight path.
One winter early in this decade Roger Craig, a former pitcher and at the time the Detroit Tigers' pitching coach, was working with youngsters at the San Diego School of Baseball. He was interested in finding a breaking pitch that young boys could throw without jeopardizing their undeveloped arms and shoulders. It had to be a pitch that did not depend on the torque of a snapped wrist. Unlike a fastball, which has a natural backward rotation, a curveball is given an unnatural spin by twisting the arm or wrist or both. (A curveball is harder on the arm than a fastball because the pitcher spins the ball while generating high arm speed.) Craig tinkered with the grip used by the few pitchers who threw a fork ball. The result of Craig's experimenting was, within a few years, something like a revolution. Rarely, if ever, has a pitching innovation had so much impact so quickly.
The split-finger is a fastball with a difference. The difference is not in the arm speed, or in the motion with which it is thrown, but in the action of the ball as a result of the way the pitcher grips it. He grips the ball with his first two fingers spread wide along the seams. Pitchers speak of the ball "tumbling" out from between their fingers. This has the effect of slowing the ball's velocity without altering the pitcher's fastball arm speed or motion, the two factors by which most batters orient their calculations. The ball tumbles out of the pitcher's hand with a fastball rotation but less speed. When it works well, the pitch plunges as it reaches the plate. Pitchers say the pitch is like sex: When it is good it is terrific and when it is bad it is still pretty good. Meaning: When it works it sinks fast, often falling out of the strike zone, resulting in missed swings or ground balls. And even when it does not sink as it is supposed to, its reduced velocity makes it a useful change-up. At its best it behaves somewhat like a spitball—another pitch without backspin.
Some baseball curmudgeons insist that there is nothing new under the sun and that the split-finger is just a fork ball with a fancy name. Do not try to tell that to hitters. Or to Mike Scott. As late as 1984 Scott was a marginal (5–11, 4.68 ERA) pitcher. Then he learned the split-finger and in 1986 was the Cy Young winner who won the division-clinching game for the Astros with a no-hitter. Scott says it took him less than a week to learn the split-finger. What did he stop throwing when he started throwing it? "Everything else." He explains: "A year or so later I still had a sign for a slider because I had been a fastball-change-slider pitcher. One day [Astros catcher Alan] Ashby comes out to the mound and I said, 'Why do we even have a three [three fingers down as a sign for a slider]? There's no situation in which I'd rather throw the slider than a split-finger.'" Scott says that only about 30 percent of the split-finger fastballs he throws "really dive." "If it's 0–2 and there is no one on base, I'll throw it really hard. It may bounce. It's either going to be a great pitch or a ball."
Before the arrival of the split-finger the slider was the most recent significant addition to the pitcher's arsenal. Some baseball people think the slider, like the split-finger, is yet another sign of national decadence. They say it was made necessary because of the decline of a fundamentally important American skill, the ability to throw a serious curveball. Roger Craig, of course, does not subscribe to the decadence theory of the slider or split-finger, but he does admit, "You don't see the big curveball like you used to with Erskine, Podres, Koufax. Today's pitchers have shortened it up into a slider. But Hershiser has the big curve." The big curve, which Hershiser has and Craig had, is indeed seen less now than in the 1950s. There is more reliance on the slider because it is easier to control and throw for strikes, and you can throw it almost as hard as a fastball. Craig says that a big curve that a catcher is going to catch low and away is going to go almost through the middle of the strike zone. "A slider," says Roger Craig, "is easier to control, you can throw it harder. A good pitcher can throw it almost as hard as a fastball, and it is easier than a curve to throw for a strike." Craig, who talks slowly and does not smile promiscuously, has the demeanor of a man who has had some searing experiences. For sure he did in those two seasons (1962 and 1963) pitching for the Mets when his record was 15–46. In 11 of those losses the Mets were shut out, so his manager, Casey Stengel, was, as usual, talking scrambled sense when he said, "You've gotta be good to lose that many." Still, he did lose them, so if he does not like batters, he should be forgiven. Whether they will forgive him for the fork ball is another matter.
Craig is one of the Thomas Edisons of the pitching profession. He is more inventive than most people, but necessity is the mother of pitching inventiveness. As Hershiser says, the batters keep learning. So pitchers keep improvising. Pitching is a vocation with multiplying variations. And as one team looks at another, pitching is a multiple problem. A batter thinks not just of facing a particular pitcher but of coping with a pitching staff—different starters in a series and several pitchers in a game. To a batter, a pitching staff is a monster with 10 or 11 pitching arms. The composition of a staff can cause problems for opponents. The 1989 Texas Rangers could send heat-throwing Nolan Ryan to the mound one night and knuckleballer Charlie Hough the next night (or the other way around). The Rangers' opponents had difficult adjustments to make.
Because pitching is such a many-faceted profession, let us leave Orel Hershiser for a moment and consider two other members of the pitchers' guild, Greg Swindell and Jim Gott. For a while they worked not far from one another, about 120 miles apart, in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
Long ago, when mankind was young and wit was fresh, if someone in an audience called out, "Say something funny," Mort Sahl, the comic, would say: "John Foster Dulles." Today's last-gasp laugh-getter for desperate comics is some reference to Cleveland. Cleveland has indeed had all the problems of an old industrial city. And yes, the Cuyahoga River did catch fire once. But such problems do not obscure the city's fascinating dimension, which may be what some of Cleveland's detractors despise: The city embodies the American middle—Midwestern middle-class civilization. Ohioans were, in a sense, the first thoroughly American Americans. Ohio's northern part was once "New Connecticut;" the southern part was the Virginia Military District. "Ohio," said a nineteenth-century writer, "is at once North and South; it is also—by the grace of its longitude and its social temper—both East and West. It has boxed the American compass." Ohio was the first defined wilderness area made into a state, and the names of its communities include London, Dublin, Berlin, Geneva, Moscow, Holland, Poland, Smyrna, Cadiz, Lisbon, Antwerp, New Paris and New Vienna. One historian suggests that Ohio has produced eight presidents because an Ohio candidate could not seem alien to any other part of the nation. In 1784 George Washington examined a map of the wilderness and predicted that "where the Cuyahoga River flows into Lake Erie shall arise a community of vast commercial importance." A century later, a Clevelander explained his city to an Easterner whose eyes were irritated by the air: "Smoke means business, and business means money and money is the principal thing." Ohio's largest city has always been bound up with America's basic commodities. Edison was born 60 miles west of Cleveland, which became the first city in the world with electric lighting in a public place, and the first to unite electricity and steel in transportation (in streetcars). One of Cleveland's thoroughfares, Superior Street, is a reminder of the link between Cleveland and Lake Superior, which is surrounded by iron ore deposits. For years those deposits were shipped to Cleveland's mills and turned into rails and locomotives. Oil was needed before transportation could move from steel wheels to rubber tires (tires are a giant industry in the state bisected by the National Pike, U.S. 40). The world's first producing oil well was 100 miles east of Cleveland, and oil's potential was first understood by a product of Cleveland's Central High School, John Davison Rockefeller. Cleveland is the only major American city where the original city center is still the city's hub. Public Square is the site of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial, which a guidebook gently describes as an example of "the literalness of Victorian art." It is a stupendous pile, a granite-and-bronze clutter of guns and warriors. But an even more stupendous pile is a five-minute walk away. It is the Mistake on the Lake, Memorial Stadium, home of the Cleveland Indians.
Spring comes late to the shores of Lake Erie and it comes last to the cavernous stadium. Greg Swindell thinks that is swell. He thinks Cleveland's spring climate, which often is like March well into May, is an advantage to him. As a pitcher he is either moving around throwing the ball and keeping warm or he is bundled up on the bench. And hitters, who hate to be pitched inside in the best of times, especially hate it in cold weather because making contact down on the handle produces painful stinging in cold hands.
Cleveland has generally been on the receiving end of baseball pain. The Cleveland Spiders of 1899, then in the National League, set a major league record for the most regular-season losses and worst percentage: 20–134, .130. They finished eighth, 84 games out of first and 35 games out of seventh. Of the first 88 American League pennants, the Yankees, among the original eight franchises, have won the most (33). The Indians have won the least (3). Entering 1990 the Indians had gone 29 seasons (not counting strike-shortened 1981) without finishing within 10 games of a division or league title. If the pain ends soon, Swindell's left arm will be one reason for the relief. But it is never wise to make predictions about pitchers.
In 1988, after Swindell had started the season with a spectacular 10–1 streak, a reporter asked him what he expected for the rest of the year. No way, said Swindell, I'm not going to make a prediction. Why, I could go out and lose eight in a row. Which he promptly did. From May 30 to July 19 his record went from 10–1 to 10–9. Still, he finished 18–14. It is a rare pitcher who wins 18 in his first full season. Paul Hoynes, who covers the Indians for the _Cleveland Plain Dealer_ , made this list of the top left-handers in the American League in the late 1980s and the number of games each won in his first full season: Frank Viola (7), Jimmy Key (4, and 10 saves), Ted Higuera (15), Mark Langsten (17), Charlie Leibrandt (10), Frank Tanana (14).
Looking at tapes of Swindell's losing streak, Mark Wiley, the Indians' pitching coach, found the flaw. It was perfection. Swindell was finishing his delivery too well. That is, he was too well positioned, too perfectly poised facing the batter. He was letting up at the end of his motion, not driving through toward the plate with the driving force from his thick lower body. When he is pitching best, that force causes him to fall away a bit toward the third-base side.
However, there is a problem with that. It can be dangerous, leaving the pitcher unprepared to defend himself against line drives. Swindell says that does not worry him: "I don't think you think about it." But then indicates that he thinks about it. "It has to worry you, but we're pretty good athletes. Canseco has hit one right at me knee-high and I jumped over it. I'd rather give him a single than get hurt." People do get hurt in baseball, by the ball. By the ball coming in from the mound and by the ball going out toward the mound. Cleveland knows. The most serious injury in the history of baseball involved a batter hit by a pitch, and one of the most serious injuries happened to a pitcher hit by a batted ball. In both cases the victims were Indians. On August 16, 1920, Carl Mays, pitching for the Yankees, hit Ray Chapman, Cleveland's shortstop, in the head. Chapman died the next day. Chapman was the best-hitting shortstop in the American League at the time. Bill James believes he probably was destined for the Hall of Fame. He was the first and, so far, only fatality in major league baseball. Clevelanders wore black crepe and 24 priests presided at Chapman's funeral. The death had a consequence. It was generally believed that Mays was not trying to hit Chapman, that a pitch—perhaps a spitball—got away from Mays. And it was believed that Chapman had trouble picking up the flight of the pitch because the ball was dark with dirt and grass stains—among other things. Baseball officials decided that henceforth more of an effort would be made to keep a clean ball in play. That is why today, in the glamorous world of the big leagues, you usually can find in the bowels of the ballpark, 90 minutes before game time, a middle-aged man sitting in long underwear, his hands covered with mud from the Delaware River. The man with the mud will be umpiring home plate that day. Before every game 60 baseballs are rubbed with mud—only the Delaware stuff will do—to remove the ball's slickness. (The long underwear spares umpires the discomfort of itchy dust and the inelegance of sweat-stained trousers. Umpires understand, as Charles de Gaulle did, that dignity sustains authority.)
In the 1930s Lena "Slats" Blackburne, a coach for the Philadelphia Athletics, was bothered by the fact that when umpires rubbed new balls with dirt from the playing field to remove the slickness from the (at that time) horsehide, the ball became scratched. There must, he thought in the American way, be a better way. He found some nearby mud, from a river in southern New Jersey, and in 1938 helped found the Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud Company. To be strictly accurate, the river is _rumored_ to be the Delaware. The actual location is a secret as closely held as the recipe for Coca-Cola. The rubbing is baseball's way of remembering Ray Chapman.
Another of baseball's serious injuries occurred 37 years later in Cleveland, again in an Indians-Yankees game. On the night of May 8, 1957, Herb Score, then 23, was on the mound for the Indians, throwing what was then probably the best fastball in baseball. Gil McDougald, the Yankees' shortstop, ripped a screaming line drive through the middle. It struck Score in the face, breaking his nose and nearly blinding him in his right eye. He never really recovered as a pitcher. In 1955, his first year, he had been 16–10 with a 2.85 ERA and a league-leading 245 strikeouts in just 227 Vb innings pitched. In 1956 he was 20–9, 2.53, and again led the league with 263 strikeouts in 249 V⅓ innings. After the accident, he pitched for the Indians and White Sox for five more years but won only 17 more games. Was he destined for the Hall of Fame? Perhaps. Pitchers are subject to burnout, so it is hard to say where he would have wound up. Where he did wind up is in the broadcasting booth, where in 1989 he spent his twenty-sixth season doing radio and television.
Score insists that the problem after 1957 was with his arm, not his psyche, and had nothing to do with the accident. "I came back and pitched as well as I ever did the next year but I tore a tendon in my elbow that year." And he recalls that getting hit by batted balls was nothing new to him. "I got hit a lot, on the shins. I didn't see half the pitches. I had to look at the scoreboard to see if they were balls or strikes. When I was a young pitcher, in my first or second year here, I didn't cover first base on a ground ball that the first baseman fielded. I didn't see where the ball went. [Manager] Al Lopez chewed me out and made me take extra fielding practice. I couldn't tell him that I didn't see the ball. It would have seemed like I was making excuses."
In 1988 Doc Edwards, then the Indians' manager, was glad to see Swindell falling away toward third again. But he thinks that the flaw in Swindell's follow-through was a weak excuse for losing those eight in a row. The real reason, says Edwards, was simpler and more serious. Edwards, a man of exemplary concision, says: "He quit pitching." He means Swindell went back to being a mere thrower. "Instead of mixing pitches, he reverted to the style that gets big strong boys through Little League, high school and even college. They just rear back and throw hard and set three guys down and go over and sit on the bench. You can't do that up here. We had to convince Swindell that he's not this overpowering pitcher that everybody was writing about."
Power pitching has been a Cleveland tradition since the arrival in 1936 of a 17-year-old prodigy from Van Meter, Iowa—Bob Feller. The 1954 Indians' staff, which won a record 111 games, included Bob Lemon (23–7), Early Wynn (23–11), Mike Garcia (19–8) and Feller (13–3). The 1968 Indians' pitching staff, which included "Sudden Sam" McDowell and Luis Tiant, became the only staff in major league history to have more strikeouts than hits allowed. Swindell rocketed up to the major leagues from Texas in the wake of, and wearing the same number as, The Rocket Man, Roger Clemens. On May 10, 1987, Swindell struck out 15 Royals, becoming the first Indian since McDowell to fan 15 in a game. That solidified the misunderstanding about Swindell. He was portrayed as a power pitcher pumping out what Hershiser calls "high gas." He was supposed to pile up impressive numbers of strikeouts.
Swindell knew better. He knows that high velocity is nice but it is no substitute for _pitching_. High velocity is especially necessary if you are not a real pitcher, because you can get away with a lot more mistakes when the ball is going 94 miles per hour than you can when it's going 84 miles per hour. And high velocity can propel you into the record books, even all the way to Cooperstown.
In 1973, the first year of the DH, Nolan Ryan, then with the Angels, struck out 383. That is the major league record. It could have been much higher. If pitchers had still been batting, Ryan might easily have run up 425 strikeouts. (The National League record is Koufax's 382 in 1965.) In 1987, at age 40, Nolan Ryan, then with the Astros, set a major league record by striking out 11.48 batters for every nine innings pitched. His average was more than three-quarters of a strikeout per game higher than all but one pitcher's season record in baseball history (Dwight Gooden's 11.39 in 1984). The Elias Bureau calculated that Ryan's record was "the statistical equivalent of batting nearly .400 in today's environment, or of hitting 65 home runs." In 1988 Ryan, then with the Astros, was 41 and for the second time since turning 40 he had a league-leading number of strikeouts. In 1989 Ryan, at age 42, led the league in strikeouts again. He had 11.319 strikeouts for every nine innings pitched, the third-best season record of all time. But at the major league level, throwing hard is not enough. "If it was," says Ray Miller, pitching coach and logician, "Nolan Ryan would be 500 and 2. Nobody in the history of the game has thrown longer or harder than he has and he's only about 20 games over 500." (At the end of the 1989 season Ryan's career record was 289–263.) Miller notes that no Orioles pitching staff, not even in the salad days of Cy Young awards and 20-game winners, has ever led the league in strikeouts.
Every power pitcher should have burned into his memory the date September 15, 1969. That night Steve Carlton broke the Cardinal team record of 17 strikeouts, set by Dizzy Dean. And he broke the then major league record of 18 held by Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax and Don Wilson. Carlton struck out 19, which is still the National League record, jointly held with Tom Seaver, who fanned 19 in 1970. But Carlton lost the game, 4–3. He threw 152 pitches but two of them were hit for two-run home runs by Ron Swoboda (who also struck out twice). Even Carlton, who should be elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, had days when it would have been better for him to throw fewer pitches, get fewer strikeouts, settle for banal ground balls and get the win. Piling up strikeouts is not smart. Dwight Gooden is smart. The following are Good-en's year-by-year totals of games in which he recorded 10 or more strikeouts:
1984 | 15
---|---
1985 | 11
1986 | 5
1987 | 5
1988 | 1
By the All-Star break in 1989 he had had two such games. (And he had a sore arm that sidelined him for most of the rest of the season.) The decline in the number of games in which Gooden was overpowering was said, by some people, to show that he, at age 24, was in decline. But not so fast. It might also show that he is wise beyond his years, that he understands what Sandy Koufax came to understand. Koufax said he became a good pitcher when he quit trying to keep batters from hitting the ball and started making them hit the pitches he wanted them to hit. Actually, try as he might to get them to hit it, poor Koufax kept striking them out. It must have been frustrating for him.
Swindell is, in baseball parlance, "not afraid of the bat." He is less determined than Hershiser is to get batters to swing at pitches out of the strike zone. Doc Edwards, a former catcher, says, "All the good pitchers I ever caught"—they were as different as the elegant Whitey Ford and the intimidating Sudden Sam McDowell—"were not afraid of coming into the strike zone. The ones who were not good major league pitchers had that fear of coming into the strike zone, so they were always 1–0, 2–0, 2–1, 3–1, 3–2 and they eventually got to the point where they had to throw it over the middle of the plate."
"When Greg throws a good game," says Mark Wiley, pitching coach, "there will be at least three or four bullets— _bullets_ —hit right at [center fielder Joe] Carter." Just as Swindell is not afraid of the bat, he is not afraid to use the large park in which he plays half his games. The configuration of a park matters. So do winds and other factors.
The most important changes in parks have been in the National League. Most of that league's parks are relatively new. (Other than Wrigley Field, which opened in 1914, the oldest National League park is San Francisco's Candlestick Park, which did not open until the Giants' third season on the San Andreas fault, 1960.) And most of the new ones are relatively big. That is good for pitchers, and for the teams that play there. (Question: When you hear the phrase "hitters' park," which parks—one in each league—come to mind? Right. Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. Question: Which two teams have not won a World Series since 1908 and 1918, respectively? Right again. Moral: It is bad to play in a park that is beastly to your pitchers.) In the 13 seasons from 1977 through 1989, there were only five 1–0 games at Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium. From 1977 through 1989 there were forty-six 1–0 games in the Astrodome. If Swindell were pitching in his hometown, Houston, he could have a lot of eight-pitch innings, letting batters launch long outs into the large Astrodome outfield.
Some pitchers adjust to parks, but only up to a point. Because Hershiser is a sinker-ball pitcher who forces batters to hit a lot of ground balls, he (and his infielders) have a harder time on artificial turf: The balls get through so fast. Pitching in St. Louis against what he calls "the rabbits"—the running Redbirds whose speed takes advantage of a large park with artificial turf—Hershiser adjusts by pitching higher. He is content to let the Cardinals hit fly balls into Busch Stadium's capacious outfields. But a pitcher's mechanics are different when pitching up, so by doing that a pitcher risks upsetting his rhythm. It can take several starts to get it back.
The danger of allowing the conditions in a particular park to control your thinking about how to pitch is, according to Mike Scott, apparent at Wrigley Field. "You get to where you say, 'I can't give this guy a fat pitch.' So it's ball one. Now he's looking fastball so you go breaking ball and miss and it's ball two. Now you're at his mercy. So you just have to attack them, and if they get seven runs, you get eight." Scott says that if the wind is blowing out at Wrigley Field, he will not watch batting practice. It is too demoralizing. But when the wind is blowing in, Wrigley, with its high infield grass, is a pitcher's park. If the wind is blowing strongly straight out at Wrigley Field, Scott holds his fingers a little closer together when throwing the split-finger. This means the ball has a little less than the usual movement, but when thrown into the wind the normal split-finger can have too much movement and be hard to throw for strikes. A knuckleball pitcher throwing into the wind often can not control his pitches well enough to throw strikes.
Baseball people, with cheerful indifference to the facts of physics, talk about pitchers in puzzling ways. They say things like "his fastball takes off as it reaches the plate," or "it gets a final burst." Both things are said about Swindell. (Cliff Gustafson, Swindell's coach at the University of Texas, says that two of Swindell's strengths are that he "hides" the ball well in his delivery and his fastball "explodes" or "jumps" in the last six or eight feet.) Both are probably nutty, but there is a kernel of truth inside the nuttiness. Tom House, pitching coach of the Rangers, says, "We made a motion study of pitchers who are considered sneaky-fast, and we found that they gained their extra 'speed' by delaying the hitters' recognition of the release point, often by throwing up their front elbows as they came forward. Or you can change the delivery—come up top once, then three-quarters, sidearm, all over the place." Many hitters "overswing" on Swindell because they think he is throwing harder than he is. Edwards explains, "He has great deception because he hides the ball well." Deception can be, and with Swindell is, partly in the throwing motion, particularly a motion that brings the ball across the body so that the ball is coming out of the white of the uniform. Some pitchers, and Swindell is one, toss their heads before releasing the ball and some batters focus on the pitcher's head when gauging the rhythm of the pitcher's delivery.
Many things that seem like handicaps can help pitchers. Mordecai Centennial "Three Finger" Brown (he was born in 1876) found that his handicap wasn't—a handicap, that is. His terrific curveball was the result of the odd way he was forced to grip the ball. Ewell "The Whip" Blackwell, the sidearming Cincinnati right-hander, was said to look less like a pitcher than like a man falling out of a tree. The Giants' Juan Marichal, he of the extraordinary high kick, looked to Roger Angell "like some enormous and highly dangerous farm implement." Doc Edwards remembers Stu Miller, the soft-throwing journeyman with a 16-season record of 105–103. "He would fling his glove at you, flop his head, and you'd swing, and then in would come the rabbit [Miller's hippity-hopping knuckleball]. You had to swing at the third thing thrown at you. But with the ball coming out of all that deception, you couldn't pick up the ball." Some baseball people believe that a left-hander who throws 87 miles per hour is as effective as a right-hander who throws 92 miles per hour. Mark Wiley explains the 5-mile-per-hour advantage this way: "A right-handed hitter has longer to see a left-handed pitcher. Greg throws his slider so hard and at such a low trajectory that the batter gets a good long look at it and says, 'Fastball.' Then just when he starts his swing, it buries itself out of the strike zone toward the hitter's back knee. Not many hitters can stop their swings in time."
Andy Allanson is the Indians' catcher who has received most of Swindell's pitches. Like a lot of catchers, Allanson talks as though he pitches as well as catches. ("I've had some success against Mattingly. He's had some 0-for-4s and 0-for-5s with me.") In a sense, he does. He is part of the thinking and rhythm of the pitcher's game. "The secret of this game," says Allanson, "is to get hitters 'in between'—a little bit ahead of the curve, a little bit behind the fastball." Allanson uses throw-overs to first base to make the base runner a disadvantage to the hitter. "It takes rhythm to hit. When the pitcher throws over, it breaks the hitter's concentration and focus." The same is true with pitchers shaking off signs. Allanson sometimes gives the pitcher a sign to shake his head as though he is shaking off the sign.
A perennial argument among pitchers and their coaches is: What matters most in a pitch—velocity, movement or location? Obviously the ideal is to have them all, to be able to put a breaking ball, or a fastball with a hop, where you want it. Allanson has no doubts about what matters most. "I rank location first. It tells the hitter you have command. Then movement. Only third comes velocity." Allanson says Swindell has command of two pitches, his fastball and curve. That, Allanson says, is one more than most pitchers have. By "command" he means the ability to throw the pitch for a strike to get ahead in the count or keep from walking someone. Allanson estimates that 60 percent of American League pitchers do not throw breaking balls for strikes more than 60 percent of the time. (The Mets' Davey Johnson, a severe mathematician who does not grade on the curve, has a lower opinion of National League pitchers. Johnson believes that those who are real pitchers, rather than mere throwers, are those who can make a hitter hit a particular pitch thrown to a particular place. He thinks that at any given time real pitchers are about 5 to 7 percent of the people employed as pitchers.)
Swindell is one of the best in the business at the most important ingredient in pitching—throwing strikes. In 1988 he produced this pretty number: just 45 walks in 242 innings. It was, therefore, newsworthy when, in late April, 1989, Swindell walked two Rangers in a row. It was just the second time in 442 major league innings that he had walked two consecutive batters. Those bases on balls will kill you. Not always, of course. In 1941 the Yankees' Lefty Gomez shut out the Browns, 9–0, in spite of the fact that he gave up 11 walks. But, then, Lefty was a lefty, so strange events were bound to follow him around. Doc Edwards, marveling at Swindell's control, says, "That's an oddity in a young left-hander." Asked why a left-hander should be different, Edwards says cheerfully, "I don't know."
Swindell works the top, and just over the top, of the strike zone as it is actually called by umpires—a bit above the belt. He gets a lot of outs on pitches that would not be called strikes. ("You have to have the prestige of a Jim Palmer," says Edwards, "to get that borderline high pitch called a strike.") But they are pitches that a lot of batters can not lay off. The problem with getting people out with pitches mid-thigh to belt-high is that you get a lot of foul balls, so you can get a lot of eight-, nine- and ten-pitch outs. Swindell prefers to face power hitters rather than contact hitters like Wade Boggs. The latter kind foul off too many pitches, which is tiresome. Besides, Swindell can not be blamed for suffering from a bad case of Boggs-ophobia. In one outing in Boston in 1987, Boggs, leading off, hit a Swindell fastball for a double off The Wall. The second time up he ripped a slider and Cleveland's left fielder had to make a spectacular diving catch. The third time up he hit a change-up for a double. The fourth time he hit a line drive that hit the outside of Swindell's glove and broke his middle finger.
For Swindell and Allanson, not being afraid of the bat is a matter of simple thrift, economizing the supply of pitches in Swindell's left arm. Against an aggressive team that comes to the plate eager to hack, Allanson tries to have a lot of 11-pitch innings, and few 8- and 7- and even 6-pitch innings, and he tries to have only one 15-pitch inning. That is why Swindell has pitched complete games of just 2 hours and 3 minutes and 2 hours and 9 minutes.
So far, Swindell has survived three modern developments that pose a danger for pitchers. One is the practice of hurrying young pitchers to the major leagues too fast. "They're not serving their apprenticeship," says Don Drysdale. "Years ago, 25 was a good age to come to the major leagues. Now the pitchers are younger." Another development is the designated hitter. The result of these two developments is that young pitchers whose arms are still maturing find themselves pitching into the eighth and ninth innings more often than is healthy. The third modern development that causes problems for pitchers and skews the development of strong arms is the increased importance of college baseball in the development of players. The most important, and for pitchers the most problematic, aspect of college baseball is the aluminum bat.
Every manager has the sad story of The Bird in the back of his mind. The Tigers' Mark "The Bird" Fidrych pitched 24 complete games in his 28 decisions (19–9) in 1976. That was his first season. It was his last good season. He won only 10 more games over his next, and final, four seasons. "If I were pitching today," says manager Tom Trebelhorn of the Brewers, "I would most assuredly want to pitch in the National League. In the American League I throw extra pitches, extra innings, and I face nine bona fide outs. In the National League, if I am Orel Hershiser pitching at the top of my game, and I face 32 batters in a given game, I don't even face 32 batters. I face the pitcher—if he pitches a good game—maybe three times. Then I face the eighth-place hitter who, some of those times, isn't approaching me as an offensive player. He's approaching me as a defensive hitter trying to work me for a walk or do something else just to get the pitcher up so he will not lead off the next inning. I've had a pretty good night. On another night, when I've not pitched too well, I've given up four runs in four innings, in the American League I might finish that game and get beaten 4–2. In the National League, if you're down 4–1 and you're not pitching too well, see you later. You don't have those tough innings piled on those tough starts."
If the DH makes the American League permanently prone to overworking pitchers, then Swindell's career has involved double jeopardy. He came to the American League from big-time college baseball. Swindell won 18 in 1988 with his second-best pitch, his slider, severely rationed. It was rationed because of the injury that prevented 1987 from being his first full season. A ligament separated from a bone in his left elbow and he did not pitch after June 30. That injury intensified the suspicions and fueled the prejudices that some baseball people "of the old school" have concerning college baseball programs for pitchers. The complaint concerns two things, the increased pressure to win and the use of metal bats.
Even the most high-powered college baseball programs are nowhere near as big time as many college football programs, and sensible people hope they never will be. But in some conferences, such as the Southwest, where Texas plays, baseball is a serious business, and now that ESPN is bringing college baseball by cable to a national audience, college baseball is going to be modestly big business. It will never be as lucrative as football, but it will bring in some revenue for university athletic departments, and prestige. Therefore winning is taken seriously. A manager with an overpowering pitcher will be tempted to use him a lot, perhaps more than is in the player's long-term interest. Swindell pitched 440 innings in three college seasons. And he was pitching to people swinging metal bats.
Did Swindell pitch too much too soon? He certainly pitched a lot while young. Swindell has been a pitcher since he was old enough to know better (if age seven really is, as the Jesuits say, the age of reason). He was a pitcher in Little League, in junior and senior high school, and for three years at the University of Texas, the mother of power pitchers. As a high school junior Swindell was 14–0 and pitched Sharpstown to the Texas state championship. The next season he lost only one game, and the score of that game was 1–0. However, he was not picked by any major league team in the amateur draft, for two reasons. Major league scouts had doubts about his physique and his velocity. His high school coach, who probably is a better coach than diplomat, remembers Swindell as "plump" and "short and squatty, a Porky Pig type." When he first came to Cleveland sportswriters referred to his "butterball physique." His teammates hung on him a nickname he hated—"Flounder," the name of the fat pledge in the movie _Animal House_.
As a Texas freshman, Swindell asked for and was given uniform number 21, which had belonged to a pitcher who had just left Texas, Roger Clemens. And Swindell became a pupil of a proven teacher, Coach Cliff Gustafson. The 1989 season was Gustafson's thirty-sixth as a college coach and his twenty-third at Texas. He has a mesquite-seasoned voice and an accent as Texas as can be. Good college baseball is, he says, equivalent to "good Single-? ball." Only the best players can step from their junior year in college into the Double-A level.
Gustafson believes that by age 19 a pitcher will be within two or three miles per hour of the best velocity he is ever going to achieve. Swindell was an exception to this rule. Gustafson did not at first regard Swindell as a professional prospect, partly because Swindell was, in Gustafson's words, "kind of pudgy" and partly because Swindell's fastball was not very fast. It was "80, 81 tops." But Gustafson was impressed that Swindell had "excellent control for a lefthander." Gustafson is one of those baseball people who hold to the unshakeable (and unsupported) belief that "most young left-handers have trouble throwing strikes." Why is this? Gustafson is an empiricist, not a theorist: "That's an oddity of baseball. You have a lot of wild left-handers." Or as Ring Lardner wrote, "Shut up, he explained."
Swindell's first outing in his freshman year was against Texas Lutheran College. That team was not a powerhouse, but it was powerful enough. It knocked Swindell around, and out of the game. He pitched next against a genuine powerhouse, Arizona State University, which had two future major leaguers, Barry Bonds and Oddibe McDowell. Texas was down by two runs when Gustafson put Swindell in "for a little more baptism." Suddenly Swindell made what Gustafson laconically calls "quite an adjustment." His fastball zoomed into the high 80s.
Adrenaline can work wonders. But the more of it you have, the more you need prudence. Undergraduates are not long on that. Most undergraduates think they are immortal. Most undergraduate pitchers think their arms are indestructible. "When I got to college I almost never had time to ice it because I was always pitching. There are a lot of big rivals in college. I remember one time when we were playing Houston in Houston. College fans can get real rowdy and I just didn't want to hear them. I wanted them to shut up, so I went down and started warming up on my own. Coach Gus looked down there and I said I was ready and he sent me in." At Texas he occasionally pitched in relief the day after pitching a complete game. Once he pitched a complete game on Friday and the next day relieved in both ends of a doubleheader.
And he was pitching to aluminum bats, which do not break. That fact is even more important than the fact that they put a few extra feet on fly balls and a few more miles per hour on line drives. Because aluminum bats do not break, pitching inside becomes problematic, even futile. Jam a batter on his fists with a pitch that would shatter a wooden bat and he still may be able to put it in play or even over the infield for a hit. That is why college baseball games last so long and why college batting averages are so high—and why professional scouts have such a hard time judging college talent. Because of aluminum bats, college pitchers throw fewer fastballs than they otherwise would. They throw curves, sliders, split-fingers and other breaking balls, and they throw them away from the hitters. This has three pernicious consequences: They do not develop the arm strength that comes from throwing fastballs; they jeopardize their arms with all the torque involved in throwing breaking balls; they do not learn to pitch inside.
Gustafson says he is not sacrificing Texas wins when he encourages his pitchers to put the ball where they will need to put it in professional baseball—inside. Far from costing Texas games, he says, pitching inside makes his pitchers more effective. This is because so few other college pitchers are doing it and so many hitters are, therefore, leaning out over the plate. They find Texas's pitching unsettling. Almost all the players Gustafson recruits "have a burning ambition to be professional players." So "we teach how to pitch in professional baseball," which means "throwing fastballs inside." College pitchers, he acknowledges, "don't like to do it, but they've got to learn."
Swindell learned. He was an all-American selection all three years at Texas, with a 43–8 record and a 1.92 ERA. In 1985, his sophomore year, he won 18 in a row while going 19–1. He is third on the NCAA career strikeout list (behind two pitchers who played four seasons). As the amateur draft approached in June, 1986, Swindell found out which teams had the first three picks. They were Pittsburgh, Cleveland and San Francisco. Then he looked to see which of them could give him number 21. Pittsburgh could not because that number was retired in honor of the late Roberto Clemente. A San Francisco player was using 21. So Swindell hoped to be chosen second. He was.
On the night of August 20, 1986, Swindell was in a Waterbury, Connecticut, hotel sleeping the deep sleep of someone strong, happy and unaware of how fast things can happen in life. Things had happened fast enough already, and would accelerate on the morrow. Less than three months earlier he had been pitching to college boys for the Texas Longhorns. Drafted by the Indians, by August 20 he had pitched the grand total of 18 innings of professional baseball, all of them in Single-? ball, at Waterloo, Iowa. On August 20 he was in Waterbury because he was scheduled to make his Double-A debut the next day. Instead, a telephone call summoned him to make his major league debut—on two hours sleep—in Boston.
His baptism of fire was full of fire, from the Red Sox side. "It was like Vietnam out there," he says. "I'm glad I got out alive." He got out in the fourth inning with the Indians on their way to a 24–5 shellacking. But there was a bright spot. In the second inning he picked Bill Buckner off first. Buckner was then in his eighteenth season in the major leagues. In the midst of a disaster, Swindell had shown some poise and finesse. There was an especially interested onlooker in the Red Sox dugout: Roger Clemens.
Clemens and Swindell, two large, strong Texans, are about as strong as pitchers are these days. But these days are different. What has happened since August 7, 1908, when Walter Johnson shut out the Yankees for the third time in four days? For that matter, what has happened since that day in 1963 when 25-year-old Juan Manchal of the Giants and 42-year-old Warren Spahn of the Braves hooked up in the sort of game that had not been seen for many years and almost certainly will never be seen again. The Giants won, 1–0, on a Willie Mays home run in the bottom of the sixteenth inning. Marichal pitched all the way, throwing 227 pitches. Spahn had thrown 200 pitches when the Giants came to bat in the bottom of the sixteenth.
Twenty-five years later baseball looks a lot different. Roger Clemens stands 6 feet 4, weighs 215 pounds and trains like a demon. He is one of the strongest and most competitive pitchers of this or any other day. In two consecutive starts in July, 1988, he threw 161 and 149 pitches. In his next five starts he lasted just 27 innings. He was 0–5 and 7.33 in those starts. He then went 0-for-August. And by the All-Star break in 1989 (which he spent at home, not with the All-Star team) he was struggling.
The Tigers' Jack Morris, the winningest pitcher of the 1980s, is one of baseball's workhorses, but the most pitches he remembers throwing in a game are 140. Morris is a fierce competitor who feels that when a relief pitcher comes in for him, he has failed to do his job properly. Tony La Russa calls that attitude "beautiful." He also calls it a mistake. La Russa says he wants all his pitchers to go to the mound thinking they are going to pitch a complete game, but he says he never thinks that way. La Russa's rule is that anytime a pitcher has thrown 120 pitches, he's vulnerable. La Russa remembers a game in which Mark Langston, then with the Mariners, struck out 16 Athletics, but threw 153 pitches doing so. It was a good performance but also a good way to get hurt. "If you have a pitcher who is going to make 30-plus starts for you in a season," La Russa says, "if he is going to be effective for the year and for several seasons, there are going to be a bunch of games in which you can save him 10, 15, 20, 25 pitches, games in which it is not necessary for him to throw those pitches." It is possible to save a pitcher 300 pitches, or the equivalent of three extra starts in which he goes seven or eight innings.
"Back in my day," says Edwards, "everyone told a kid to throw fastballs and change-ups, building his arm strength throwing fastballs. Nowadays you hear somebody say, 'Wow! Johnny is 12–1 in high school' and you go out to see Johnny throw and he throws 100 pitches and 70 of them are curveballs, and the 30 fastballs are about 75 miles per hour. Of course I came from an era when 200 innings was the fifth man on the staff." The fifth man, that is, on a staff built around a four-man rotation.
When Roger Clemens first came up, Gene Mauch told Roger Angell that 25 years earlier every team had three pitchers who could throw as hard as Clemens. Doc Edwards recalls that after the 1964 season the Indians traded Tommy John to the White Sox because he threw only 88 miles per hour. The Indians at the time had Sonny Siebert, Luis Tiant, Steve Hargan, Sam McDowell and Gary Bell, all of whom, Edwards insists, threw in the 90s, as did eight to ten pitchers in the Indians' farm system. Of course John went on to pitch for a quarter of a century more and in most of those seasons he rarely approached even 88 miles per hour.
Leave aside fast pitches and long games. What about long careers? There are a few records that we can confidently say will never be broken. One is Cy Young's 511 victories. Bert Blyleven had 271 victories by the end of the 1989 season, when he was 38. If he wins 300, he may be the last 300-game winner for a long time—at least until Dwight Gooden grows old. Mickey Welch, a Hall of Famer who was the third pitcher to win 300 games, _completed_ his first 105 major league starts. Christy Mathewson had 561 decisions (373 wins, 188 losses) and 435 complete games. Over a 14-year span he _averaged_ 26 wins a year. Twenty-one times in this century pitchers have won 30 or more games in a season. But that has been done only three times since 1920: 1931 (Lefty Grove, 31–4); 1934 (Dizzy Dean, 30–7); and in the famous, or infamous, year of the pitcher, 1968 (Denny McLain, 31–6). Johnny Sain was a good pitcher and a great pitching coach. (And he is the answer to a magnificent trivia question: He threw the last pitch to Babe Ruth and the first pitch to Jackie Robinson. Okay, it is a trick question. Sain pitched to Ruth in an exhibition game in May, 1943. Ruth walked.) In 1948, the year the Braves won the pennant on a pitching refrain of "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain," he started 9 games in 29 days. He won 7 of them and lost 2—by scores of 2–1 and 1–0. Since Steve Carlton pitched 304 innings in 1980 no one has pitched 300 innings in a season. It was considered at least mildly marvelous when Roger Clemens put together three consecutive seasons with more than 250 innings pitched and an ERA under 3.00. But Christy Mathewson had 13 consecutive seasons like that and Walter Johnson had 12.
Now, to be fair to today's pitchers, it should be noted that some of these statistics that seem to establish the superior durability of earlier generations of pitchers must be partially discounted, for reasons given by Craig R. Wright. Wright, a statistician and co-author (with Tom House, the Rangers' pitching coach) of _The Diamond Appraised_ , notes that in the dead-ball era, before the home-run threat became pervasive, pitchers faced fewer crucial situations, so there was less nibbling at the strike zone and more coasting by pitchers. Wright recalls reading something written by an old-time pitcher—Christy Mathewson, he thinks—arguing that stamina is important because a pitcher must be able to throw as many as 100 pitches in a game. Today more pitches are thrown per batter and 130 to 140 per game is normal. Also, more home runs mean more careful pitching, more deep counts, more walks. More base runners mean more pitching from the stretch, which increases the burden on the arm by decreasing the involvement of the rest of the body. And more base runners also mean more throws from the mound to first.
Big Ed Walsh pitched 464 innings while winning 40 games in 1908. But using an estimate of 2.8 pitches per batter then, and a conservative estimate of 3.5 pitches per batter in 1971 when Detroit's Mickey Lolich pitched 376 innings, Lolich threw about 500 more pitches than Walsh did. Grover Cleveland Alexander's total of 38 complete games in 1916 is impressive, but less so than it would be if we did not know that he threw about 40 fewer pitches per game than are thrown in a normal complete game today. And many of the pitches he threw were fat and slow, allowing weak hitters to dribble the dead (and gray and battered) ball at fielders.
Nevertheless, there is a broad consensus in baseball that there are not as many strong arms as there used to be. That, says Ray Miller, is not a hypothesis, it is a fact, and he thinks he knows why: America is going to hell in a handcart.
Ray Miller, a.k.a. The Rabbit, will be 44 on Opening Day, 1990. He has been the Pirates' pitching coach since October, 1986. Before that he was the Twins' manager for parts of two years and before that he was the Orioles' pitching coach. In Baltimore he coached two Cy Young Award winners (Mike Flanagan and Steve Stone) and five 20-game winners (Flanagan, Stone, Jim Palmer, Scott McGregor and Mike Boddicker). During his tenure the Orioles went to two World Series, 1979 and 1983. Before that Miller was a good Triple-A pitcher who never made it to the major leagues even for, as they say, a cup of coffee. He is a man of many convictions, all of them firm and some of them odd. For example: "There isn't a left-hander in the world that can run a straight line. It's the gravitational pull on the axis of the earth that gets 'em." And he believes in the unity of theory and practice. Tom Boswell reports that when Miller was a roving pitching coach for the Orioles' minor league clubs he had an odd way of organizing wind sprints. He would line up left-handers all on the right side, or on a hill, to balance their gravitational field. "If you don't," Miller patiently explains, "they'll whip out your whole line." Miller believes that left-handers, a persecuted minority, acquire, as a stigma of their servitude, a slight "body lean," the indelible mark of growing up groaning beneath the burdens of life in a right-handed world. (Miller is right-handed.) Miller's physics and sociology may be hard to follow but his thoughts about pitching are as straightforward as a fastball.
The reasons young men do not have arms as strong as young men used to have, according to Miller's doleful analysis, is that there is too damned much going on. The winningest pitcher ever, Cy Young, was also something of an aphorist: "Pitchers, like poets, are born, not made." Actually, pitchers are made from a youth of throwing baseballs. Young people who are headed for professional baseball are not spending the time earlier generations of young people did playing baseball—or even playing catch with their fathers, for that matter. They are playing soccer or competing on swimming teams, or sitting in front of a television set or... at any rate, they are not throwing, not developing strong arms. Miller says that back in the better days, when men were men and the world was rational, the biggest kid was made into a pitcher and baseball was the center of his life. Today that kid is apt to be a four-sport athlete. Many baseball people think there are also fewer strong arms than there used to be among outfielders. That, too, indicates that other sports, particularly football and basketball, are taking more of the strongest athletes than they used to. Certainly other sports, including soccer, swimming and tennis are taking the time of even very young children. In eras when childhood was less organized, such children might have been throwing baseballs out in the pasture, when pastures were just a step from many American back stoops. Or the city children would be throwing in vacant lots, when there were more vacant lots.
Jack McKeon, the crusty manager of the Padres, believes that the scarcity of outfielders with strong arms is a result of coaching that is too good, or at least too sophisticated. Coaches, he says, are teaching young outfielders to hit cutoff men too well, so they are not developing the strength for long throws. Ray Miller, education theorist, says that the recent decline of major league pitching is partially a result of "overcoaching" at the Little League level. He says boys are being taught to throw curveballs, knuckleballs, split-fingers. The emphasis, he says, should be on throwing hard and throwing often. And Miller, like most baseball people over 40, tends to see national decline in the rise of the breaking pitch and the fall of the fastball among the nation's young. "It's a statement on society. Everybody is looking for the easy way out. You can't find a big, strong kid who wants to throw year-round, who will stand out in the yard and throw rocks and knock cans down, just making himself bigger and stronger, and throw better."
The first year Miller coached in Baltimore the Orioles' pitchers had 65 complete games. Miller, the sociologist, blames the decline in the number of complete games at least in part on "affluence and the medical profession." He means that there is so much money invested in each player that the teams have doctors— _doctors_ , for Pete's sake—in the clubhouses monitoring aches and pains. Talk about Babylonian decadence.
Ray Miller, wearing blue jeans and a day's growth of beard, delivered these remarks in a really stupid setting, which is not his fault. He is a baseball person's baseball person and not responsible for the fact that the Pittsburgh Pirates play in a stadium that contains a restaurant that is about as big—bigger, maybe—than the park they used to play in. (What would Honus say?)
Through the restaurant's huge windows people eating lunch can look down to the bottom of the great concrete saucer, down at the artificial turf that is so green in the 1:00 P.M. sunlight it bites your eyes. It is symmetrical and immaculate—the turf, the concrete, the restaurant. It makes you want to mess it up a bit. Fortunately, an unruly force will be here soon. In a few hours a large man of the sort Miller thinks America needs more of will be out there. By about 5:00 P.M. he will be running the stadium steps, Walkman headphones clamped onto his large head, Van Halen hard rock pounding in his ears. Jim Gott, relief pitcher, will be getting himself worked up, getting ready to go to work.
As Earl Weaver says about baseball, "You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the goddamn plate and give the other man a chance." Baseball has roots far back in this young nation's antiquity. The absence of a clock in baseball is a product of the preindustrial sensibility. Before time was chopped up into units (as production was chopped into units, each timed for industrial efficiency), life was governed by just two things, daylight and its absence. And that (I am needlessly complicating and also recklessly simplifying) is why there are relief pitchers, and especially those large, powerful specimens called "closers." The closer is crucial because of one of the fundamental facts of baseball life: There being no clock, someone has to get the last outs. And they are the hardest to get.
One of baseball's impenetrable mysteries is the origin of the term "bull pen." Some historians believe it comes from the fact that around the turn of the century relief pitchers (to the extent that there were any) often warmed up in front of Bull Durham tobacco signs that were painted on many outfield fences. But as early as 1877 the _Cincinnati Enquirer_ used the term "bull pen" to denote a roped-in area in foul territory where late-arriving fans were herded like bulls. Bill James says he has solved another mystery. He knows who invented relief pitching:
Napoleon. No joke. Napoleon believed that every battle tended, for reasons of its own, to resolve itself into immobile, equal positions; he believed, in essence, in the law of Competitive Balance as applied to a battle. So on the day of a battle he would take two or three regiments of crack troops, and sequester them a distance from the shooting, eating and sleeping and trying to stay comfortable. Over the course of a day or several days, the troops in the field would take positions and lose them and retake and relose them, growing ever more and more weary, their provisions in shorter and shorter supply, and their positions ever more and more inflexible. Finally, at a key moment in the battle, with everyone else in the field barely able to stand, he would release into the fray a few hundred fresh and alert troops, riding fresh horses and with every piece of their equipment in good repair, attacking the enemy at his most vulnerable spot. He did this many times and with devastating effect—and if that's not relief pitching, I don't know what is.
Right. And Wellington won at Waterloo because he had what every team needs, a closer. His closer was Blucher's Prussians.
The relief pitcher originally was a rarity. He was called the "change" because before 1891 substitutions from the bench were permitted only in cases of injuries. When a new pitcher was needed, he came to the mound (actually, the "pitcher's box" as it then was) from another position, and the tuckered-out pitcher went somewhere else on the field. In 1904 the Red Sox played 154 games and Red Sox pitchers had 148 complete games. The bull pen had a six-game season, which means there really was no bull pen. In 1905 the Chicago Cubs' pitchers had 133 complete games. However, early in the century other clubs began to follow John McGraw's example by pressing starting pitchers into service as relievers. The Cubs, whose complete games plunged from 133 in 1905 to 99 in 1910, used Hall of Famer Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown in relief 44 times between 1908 and 1910, years in which he was averaging 32 starts.
The practice of using starters, including stars, as relievers was common for many decades. In 1930 and 1931 Lefty Grove relieved in 29 games. While Dizzy Dean won 30 games in 1934 he also relieved in 17. On the last day of the 1949 season George Kell of the Tigers edged out Ted Williams for the batting title, finishing at .342911 to Williams's .342756. Kell had to get his last two hits off a Cleveland pitcher working in relief: Bob Feller. In fact, 86 of Feller's 570 career appearances were in relief. Early Wynn relieved 79 times, Whitey Ford relieved 60 times.
The first real reliever, meaning the first man who came to the park expecting to make his living by entering late into many games, was the euphoniously named Firpo Marberry of the Senators. As Walter Johnson's career came to a close, Marberry came in to close many of the great man's games. In 1926 Marberry became the first pitcher to get 20 saves. (In 1965 the Cubs' Ted Abernathy became the first reliever to record 30 or more saves in a season. Three pitchers did that in the 1960s. In the 1970s there were fifteen 30-save seasons; in the 1980s, fifty-four.) But Marberry was a starter as well as a reliever. In 1924 he started 15 games but relieved in 35 as the Senators won their first pennant. In 1925, when they won again, he appeared in 55 games. In 1926 he appeared in 64. However, his career was a false dawn for relief pitching as a career. Relievers had to wait more than two decades for the flowering of the craft.
The first modern "closer" was Joe Page of the Yankees, who appeared in 278 games for the Yankees from 1944 through 1950. In 1950 Jim Konstanty appeared in 74 games for the pennant-winning "Whiz Kids" Phillies. In the 1950s, with Elroy Face, Lindy McDaniel and Hoyt Wilhelm, relief pitching became a recognized vocation. Relief pitchers have only recently begun receiving proper recognition. When Whitey Ford rose at the New York Baseball Writers banquet to receive the Cy Young Award for the 1961 season, he said he had a nine-minute speech but would deliver only seven minutes of it. He would let Luis Arroyo, who had saved so many of Ford's wins, do the final two minutes. Through 1989 seven relief pitchers had won Cy Young awards: Willie (now Guillermo) Hernandez, Sparky Lyle and Rollie Fingers in the American League; and Mike Marshall, Bruce Sutter, Steve Bedrosian and Mark Davis in the National League. All these awards were won since 1974. Fingers and Hernandez also were MVPs. So was Jim Konstanty in 1950. Hoyt Wilhelm is the only relief pitcher in the Hall of Fame. He set a major league record by appearing in 1,070 games for 8 teams in 21 seasons from 1952 through 1972. (Kent Tekulve, who retired during the 1989 season, appeared in 1,050 games in 16 seasons.)
Whitey Herzog, the Missouri Valley epigrammatist, says, "A manager is as smart as his bull pen." Expanding that thought, he says, "When I managed Kansas City I wasn't too smart because I didn't have a closer. I got smarter in St. Louis because I've had Bruce Sutter, Todd Worrell and Ken Dayley. Today managers start with their bull pens and work forward." La Russa says that if he were putting together a pitching staff from scratch, his first priority would be a hard-throwing closer. It is, he says, easier to get to the fifth inning in good shape than it is to get the last six outs of a game. In 1988 La Russa's Athletics set a major league record with 64 saves. In 1989 Oakland's bull pen made a 19-game winner out of Storm Davis, who usually is out of gas, and the game, around the sixth inning. He won 19 games while pitching just 169 Va innings, probably the fewest ever by a pitcher who won so many. The star of the Athletics' late-inning show has been Dennis Eckersley, the only pitcher to have both a 20-win season and a 45-save season. His 1988 numbers, though overshadowed by Hershiser's, were almost as remarkable. In the 45 games in which he earned saves his ERA was 0.17, one earned run in 53.1 innings. (Baseball's rule makers have tinkered with the definition of a "save" almost as much as the Supreme Court has tinkered with the meaning of "equal protection" of the laws. What should constitute a save is an inherently subjective judgment. For now the rule is this: To get credit for a save a relief pitcher must finish a game and satisfy one of the following three criteria. He must enter the game with the potential tieing run on base, or at bat, or on deck; or he must pitch one inning with a lead of not more than three runs; or he must pitch effectively, in the judgment of the official scorer, for at least three innings.)
When Sparky Anderson managed the Reds in the 1970s he became known as Captain Hook because of his frequent recourse to four relief pitchers to supplement his shaky starters. "What we were doing," he remembers, "was reducing each game to six or seven innings. If I have the bull pen and you don't, you have six or seven innings to beat me." In 1977 the Padres set a major league record with 382 appearances by relievers. In 1987 two teams broke that record (Reds, 392; Phillies, 389). In 1981 some careless person said the Yankees had an "incredible" record of 51–3 in games in which they led going into the eighth inning. But Bill James found that the average record for American League teams leading after seven innings was 49–5. The Cleveland Indians, part of baseball's Third World, were 42–3. And James found that the Yankees' record was 0–41 when they were behind after seven. Again, most teams win about 90 percent of the games in which they are ahead going into the eighth inning. Teams with good bull pens win 95 percent.
Batters are given to complaining that no one ever had it so hard. Actually, today's batters do not have some of the problems earlier batters had. For example, before there were lights for night baseball, back in the days when games took less time than they do now, many games started at 3:00 P.M. In the slanting light and shadows of the late innings, Lefty Grove's fastball probably did indeed look, as one batter said, "like a flash of white sewing thread coming up at you." However, the coming of the division of labor to the pitcher's mound has made hitting harder. Speaking about the role of hard-throwing relief pitchers, Pete Rose, who can not stop picking on Ty Cobb, says, "If Ty Cobb had to hit off those guys, he might have batted .315." Pete has a point. Consider 1930, which was 1968 turned inside out. In 1930 baseball finally did it. It went too far in favor of offense, even for the tastes of the most vulgar offense fanatics. In 1930 the National League—that is right, the _league_ —hit .303 and 43 National League players hit .300 or better. Thirty-two American Leaguers and three American League teams hit .300 or better. Was the ball juiced? Probably. And yet there were 1,099 complete games pitched during all that year of cannonading. Both leagues probably hit something like .340 in the fourth and fifth at bats against shell-shocked starters. Today most starters have their pitching arms in ice when relief pitchers put the game on ice.
Since it was first done in 1973, 33 relief pitchers have earned credits (wins or saves) in 50 percent or more of their teams' wins. Peter Gammons notes that, leaving aside the strike-shortened 1981 season, only one team reached the World Series in the 1980s without having a reliever with at least 19 saves. That one team was the 1986 Red Sox, who lost games six and seven of the Series largely because of their bull pen. In 1986 the Twins lost 91 games and finished sixth in baseball's weakest division. They hit .261 with 196 home runs. In 1987 they again hit .261, again with 196 home runs. Were they in a rut? No, in 1987 they were in the World Series, which they won. And some baseball people were prepared to say that the most important difference between the 1986 and 1987 Twins was the addition of one relief pitcher, Jeff Reardon, who came to the Twins in a trade and had 31 saves.
In 1901,87.3 percent of all games were completed by the starting pitcher. In 1988 only 14.8 were. In 1989 only 11.4 percent were. In the four seasons 1985–88, the Dodgers led the National League in complete games with 133. But by the time you got down the list to the fifth-highest total you were down to the Phillies' 75. The top five National League teams had a four-year total of 478 complete games, an average of just under 24 a season. The difference the DH makes is apparent in the total for the top five American League teams: 643. In the decade from 1978 through 1987 the number of complete games declined 46 percent. In 1978 there were 22 pitchers who worked 250 or more innings. By 1987 the number was 13. In 1988 it was 11. In 1989 it was 7. The major league leader was Bret Saberhagen (262 **Va)**.
The primary reason for this decline is the rise of relief pitching as a respected role in the day-by-day running of a team. And one reason for that rise is the memorable example of the 1980 Athletics. Manager Billy Martin took a talented staff of starters and ruined it with too much work. They had 94 complete games that year, almost twice the number of any other team in the league. By 1983 four of the five starters had sore arms and were out of the rotation.
However, by now there is something of a tradition of wearing out relievers instead of starters. Through 1988 only three relief pitchers had recorded at least 30 saves in four consecutive seasons. (Lee Smith, with the Cubs, 1984–87; Dan Quisenberry with the Royals, 1982–85; Jeff Reardon with the Expos and Twins, 1985–88. In 1989 Reardon became the first to save 30 or more five seasons in a row.) There are several reasons why it is not uncommon for a relief pitcher to go from hotshot to has-been, from (as one player put it) "Cy Young to _sayonara."_ One reason is the mental strain of relief pitching, most of which is done in high-pressure situations with the game on the line. Another reason is the physical wear and tear. The better a relief pitcher is, the more often a manager, living for the moment, is apt to use, and eventually abuse, him. Third, a relief pitcher, more than a starter, can get by relying on a particular pitch, such as Bruce Sutter's fork ball, or even a quirky delivery, such as Dan Quisenberry's severe sidearm. But when batters are given a second look in a game, the batters master the timing and motion of the pitch and pitcher. So managers tend to use such pitchers briefly but, and for that reason, often.
Jim Leyland was Gott's manager. The pipe-smoking Leyland is a lean, fine-featured man with salt-and-pepper hair and mustache. When strong sunlight causes him to squint, the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes crinkle like those of a captain who has just stepped onto the conning tower of a submarine. The Pirates are on the low side in terms of complete games because, Leyland says, "We've got two real horses down there." By "down there" he means the bull pen. The horses snorting and pawing the dirt were then Jeff Robinson and Jim Gott. "Sometimes—and I don't mean this negatively—your real good short relievers, after they've established themselves, they save games on their reputations alone." That is just one of the hard-to-quantify benefits. "There's not enough said about the impact a short reliever has on the entire ball club. If you've got a guy down there who's a stopper, it's a big mental edge. When you bring him in your whole team picks up because they know the game is pretty much over. It makes them more on their toes defensively. They make plays they normally might not make because they know he's going to be around the plate and save the game. There are so many edges when you've got that guy down there." One of them is that a strong reliever also produces a ripple effect through a pitching staff, making the rest of the staff, and the rest of the team, better. The starters need not husband their energies quite as much as they might otherwise do. The batters feel less pressure to pile up big innings early.
One of the men whose task it was to control Gott was catcher Mike LaValliere, known as Spanky. LaValliere is built to be a catcher. The Pirates' 1989 media guide says he stands 5 feet 10 inches. The media guide is fibbing. He is about 5 feet 7 and weighs 200 pounds. This human fire hydrant won a Gold Glove in 1987 when he had a .992 fielding percentage with just two passed balls in 867.1 innings and led the league in throwing out base runners (49 of 115 for a .426 percentage). In 1988 he was named to the _Sporting News_ postseason all-star team. He has one of baseball's drier wits. When asked if he tells Leyland when he thinks the starting pitcher is running out of gas, he responds, "More often than not the opposing hitters let us know. If we see the names on the backs of our outfielders too much, that's a pretty good indication." LaValliere adds, "With Jeff [Robinson] and Jim in the bull pen, I get more aggressive with the starting pitchers. I don't go into a game thinking that I've got to throw some off-speed stuff so they'll still have a little bit of a fastball in the eighth and ninth innings. With us, it's basically to get 'em to the sixth."
"My time," says Gott, "is the eighth and ninth." It sure is. In his first two full seasons as a closer (1987–88) he never pitched a three-inning stint. Short stints are not for artistry. The canvas is too small. Pitching at its most elegant is (in words Roger Angell used to salute Catfish Hunter) "a tapestry of deceit and experience and efficiency." But that is not the way Gott does it. "Basically," says LaValliere, "what Jim is going to do is throw his 95-mile-per-hour fastball and his 89-mile-per-hour slider. We're not going to get tricky or try to fool anybody." And LaValliere doesn't worry about location. "As long as I can catch it and the hitter can reach it, that's what we're looking for. If Jim starts worrying about location, he's not going to be effective."
Still, Gott is not as, well, _random_ as the relief pitcher of whom a teammate said, "He doesn't throw to spots, he throws to continents." But Gott's "spot" is the strike zone. Gott says the hitters he least likes to face are "the Tony Gwynns of the world, the Tim Raineses, the contact hitters. With me coming straight at them, it's just a matter of timing. The big guys, the power hitters, have bigger holes in their swings." Gott is one power pitcher who has no trouble pitching inside. "They know that I like to pitch inside and that I'm not in a situation to throw at somebody because the last thing I want in short relief in a close game is to hit someone and put him on first." Gott also throws what is being called "the pitch of the Eighties." Baseball is a bit like New York society, which produces a "hostess of the decade" every year or so. The first "pitch of the Eighties" was the split-finger fastball. But the stately march of progress is ever onward, as is the struggle of pitchers against the fire-breathing dragon of offense. So the second "pitch of the Eighties" became—drumroll—the circle change. It is thrown with the arm motion of a fastball but is significantly slower. Furthermore, it tumbles out of the circle formed by thumb and forefinger, acquiring a rotation that causes it to run down and in (when thrown by a right-handed pitcher to a right-handed hitter). What Roger Craig has been to the split-finger fastball, Ray Miller is to the circle change.
Miller and Gott go together well, and they suit the city they found themselves in 1989, although each took a while in baseball to get there. Both Miller and Gott are no-frills people. They subscribe to the straight-ahead approach to their business. Like the Pirates, they are hard-core baseball.
The Pirates originally were called the Alleghenys. Imagine, a team named after some mountains that are, as mountains go, not much. (Could have been worse. The Brooklyn Dodgers once were the Bridegrooms.) Some franchises are strongly associated with particular parts of the game. When you think of the Dodgers you think of a tradition of pitching, particularly Koufax and Drysdale. When you think of the Pirates you think of hitting, from Willie Stargell and Roberto demente back through Ralph Kiner and the Waner brothers (Paul and Lloyd, Big Poison and Little Poison), Pie Traynor and Arky Vaughan and, most of all, the man Branch Rickey and some others say was the best player ever, Honus Wagner.
Pittsburgh's hard-core baseball tradition is best seen far from Pittsburgh, in the Florida town where the Pirates train. A sign on the left-field fence says Bradenton is "the friendly city" and, for good measure, "a little bit of paradise." Perhaps. But the best part of Spring Training in Bradenton is that it still has some of the scruffiness associated with life in what used to be baseball's slow lane. More and more communities have cottoned on to the fact that Spring Training can be big business and have lured teams with posh training "complexes." Crowds are so big in some places that there are ticket scalpers. Oh, well. All this is probably progress, but Bradenton's McKechnie Field, located in the midst of the hum of ordinary commerce and living, should be preserved for the flavor of Spring Training before it became upscale.
Alas, Pittsburgh, like so many other cities, suffered terribly at the hands of baseball vandals in the late 1960s and 1970s. Not since Cromwell's troops, their puritan sensibilities offended by beauty, went around smashing decorative art in churches has there been an act of folly comparable to the abandonment and destruction of Forbes Field, the Pirates' home for generations. The outrage was made worse by the replacement of Forbes Field by Three Rivers Stadium. Forgive my intensity, but a fan remembers with special fondness the ballpark where he saw his first major league game. My first was in Forbes Field in 1950. The loudspeakers were pouring forth the pop song of the moment ("Good Night, Irene") as the 9-year-old from central Illinois entered. He left after the Pirates rang up a thumping victory over the Cardinals, one of only 57 Pirate wins that year. Forbes Field was one of those old parks that combined a sense of spaciousness with a feeling of intimacy.
Three Rivers Stadium was opened in 1970, which means it was dreamed up in the 1960s, which is no excuse but explains a lot. Almost everything about the 1960s, from politics to popular music to neckties, was marked by wretched excess. It was, of course, a decade in love with professional football. It is to baseball's credit that when the times were out of joint, baseball was out of step. As Bill Veeck said, "The Sixties was a time for grunts and screams.... The sports that fitted the time were football, hockey and mugging." Three Rivers Stadium was built to accommodate both football and baseball. Big mistake. And speaking of mistakes (there are so many to speak of), there were those Pirates uniforms. From 1977 through 1979 the Pirates pioneered new forms of gaucherie in their three uniforms (one yellow, one black, one white with pinstripes) and two styles of hats. Could there be a more complete contrast with the sedate, unchanging vestments of the Dodgers? In many ways Gott offers a complete contrast with Hershiser. Hershiser is intergalactically famous. Gott is not. No Bob Hope specials for him. Hershiser works in one of the nation's two biggest media markets. Gott worked in one of the smallest of the 26 major league markets. Los Angeles is synonymous with glitter. It should not be. It is as much the home of gang war as of Hollywood. (Gott, by the way, was born in Hollywood.) Pittsburgh is synonymous with sweat and soot. It should not be. The image of Pittsburgh as the Steel City is more than a generation out of date. No steel is made within the city limits. There is only one producing steel mill in the metropolitan area. The city's largest employer is the University of Pittsburgh. But the biggest contrast between Hershiser and Gott is in what they do. Hershiser has a star's job: starting pitcher. Gott's job is to prevent disasters and sometimes tidy up messes that other pitchers have made. Hershiser has the glamour of a surgeon. Gott is one of those harried doctors you see—and are mighty glad to see—coping with crises in busy emergency rooms. When major league managers reach for the dugout phone to call the bull pen they should dial 911. The Book of Job—the relief pitcher's handbook—got it right: Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.
You do not have to be a bit touched in the head to want to earn a living as a reliever, but many relievers seem to be. There is a tendency for relief pitchers to seem a bit mad—mad meaning angry (Goose Gossage), mad meaning crazed (Sparky Lyle), or both angry and crazed (Al Hrabosky). Moe Drabowsky collected the phone numbers of bull pens all over the major leagues and enjoyed lightening the burden of boredom by calling bull pens in other cities. Imitating the voices of various coaches, he would order relievers hundreds of miles away to start warming up.
Gott, too, tends toward the manic, another complete contrast with cool-hand Hershiser. "My father was a very hard worker, came from nothing and made a lot of money. You don't listen to parents when you are growing up, so my dad found other people for us to listen to." Gott's brother went to golf camps and twice won the California state high school golf championship. Gott went to baseball camps. As a junior in high school he went out for football for the first time. He did it on a dare. Someone challenged him to prove that he was tough enough to play. He could play. As a senior he was all-conference. UCLA recruited him as a defensive end and middle linebacker. But his father had been a baseball prospect who injured his arm just at the time he was about to make the transition from amateur to professional ball and he wanted one of his children to be a ball player. "My brother," says Gott, "is an introvert and went into golf." Gott is not an introvert. For a while during his, shall we say, vigorously lived youth, which extended well into his twenties, Gott was, he admits, "the classic million-dollar arm with the ten-cent brain." He will be 30 on Opening Day, 1990, and he is still not your typical sight when he arrives at the mound.
It is one of the oldest sayings in baseball. It is what innumerable coaches and managers have said (or are said to have said) to innumerable pitchers having problems: "Babe Ruth is dead—throw strikes." It is said that Art Fowler, Billy Martin's Sancho Panza and pitching coach at various stops in Martin's career, was once approached before a game by a young pitcher who said: "In the late innings I seem to lose my control. I'm doing something wrong—opening my shoulder or otherwise developing a flaw in my mechanics. Watch me closely tonight and see if you can spot the problem." Around the seventh inning the young pitcher did indeed lose his control and walked three people. Fowler came to the mound and the young pitcher asked anxiously, "What am I doing wrong?" Fowler, drawing upon years of experience, said, "You're walking people and Billy's pissed."
Fans are forever wondering what gets said to a relief pitcher when he comes to the mound in a difficult situation. With Gott, says LaValliere, "I just try to stop him from snorting. He comes in like a horse, running in from the bull pen. He's huffing and puffing, so the first thing I want to do before I go back to warm him up is let him catch his breath a little bit." Doesn't that surge of adrenaline make it hard for him to keep his mechanics stable? "That is one reason why he has to throw from a stretch even when he is starting an inning. He gets so excited he really couldn't keep all the body parts going in the same direction enough to throw strikes." Steve Carlton used to go into a semi-trance of concentration before a game. But Carlton was a silent, solitary, withdrawn man most of the time. Gott is the soul of sociability, up to a point. "You can talk to him in the bull pen until up around the seventh inning," says LaValliere. "Then he goes into a kind of trance. When he finally gets the phone call, he works himself up. He has to be in fourth gear when he comes in." Gott says, "We're little kids playing a little kid's game. Why shouldn't we show emotion?"
There is an answer to that question. Showing emotion is just _not done_ because baseball is such a humbling game. The exultation of success is going to be followed in short order by the cold slap of failure. Any team's success. Anyone's success. So why get high when a low is just around the corner? Baseball is a life best lived in an emotionally temperate zone. Still, relief pitchers and especially closers can be forgiven for being different. Gott sure is. The highlight of his 1989 season may have been painting the horse's testicles silver. And even that, although worth doing, did not go right. Wrong color. No one got gold paint.
When visiting teams leave their hotel in downtown Chicago, heading for Wrigley Field, their bus takes Lake Shore Drive, getting off at the Belmont exit, where there is a statue of General Philip Sheridan on a horse—an anatomically correct horse. A few years ago a tradition got started involving the horse. It was said that things would go better for a team that season, and that the team's rookies would have long careers, if during the team's first visit of the season to Chicago, the rookies painted the horse's testicles the team colors. The rookies would go out to perform this rite, the veterans would alert the police, the rookies would get hauled into the station house where they would sign the baseball celebrity prisoner book, and that would be that. A good time was had by all. In 1989 Gott, who is not a rookie, went along with a rookie to do the job. But the visiting clubhouse man got silver paint. The Pirates' colors are black and gold.
Gott had flown back from Pittsburgh to Chicago to do the daring deed. He had originally left the team in Chicago and flown to Pittsburgh to see a doctor, who promptly put Gott on the 15-day disabled list. He had tenderness in his elbow and the doctor hoped that all it would require would be a short rest. But Gott flew on from Chicago to Los Angeles to see a specialist in pitchers' problems. The specialist saw the need for a simple, 45-minute operation. However, when the specialist got into the elbow he saw a lot of debris (bone chips) and loose ends and frayed things. The operation took four hours and Gott went home with his arm in a cast, his season a shambles and his career on hold.
Gott is a grown-up. He knows the risks of what he does. Pitchers get hurt. They break. They wear out. A 30-year-old pitcher probably has an arm a great deal older than that.
Ron Fairly, a broadcaster of Giants games, once said, "Bruce Sutter has been around a while and he's pretty old. He's 35 years old. That will give you an idea of how old he is." Even with modern conditioning techniques and nutrition plans, even with the care players take to prolong today's lucrative careers, 35 is the sear, the yellow leaf. This is especially true for a pitcher, who lives by abusing his throwing arm. "Your arm is your best friend," says Tom Seaver, "but in the end you've got to treat it as if it was your worst enemy." That is, taking up pitching as a career is deciding to injure yourself every four or five days. Throwing a baseball is a highly unnatural act. As the arm accelerates past the ear, it gains terrific speed and then changes direction, turning down and decelerating sharply. Muscles stretch and tear and bleed. And that is when everything is going well. Lots of blood and other stuff must then be given time to go away—time, and encouragement. Ice and heat and exercise and massage and sound waves and other things are used to help the healing process.
Roger Angell reports that when, during the 1978 season, the Yankee team physician put Catfish Hunter under anesthesia to manipulate his damaged pitching arm, the physician was so startled by the popping noise when he broke the old adhesions in Hunter's shoulder that he thought he had broken one of Hunter's bones. And muscles are not the only things that suffer wear and tear. Sandy Koufax retired at age 30 at the end of a season when he won the pitcher's triple crown. Never mind the numbers, he knew his arm was worn out. By October, 1966, his left elbow had suffered so much traumatic arthritis that his arm had begun to turn inward and he had to shorten the left sleeves of his coats. There was nothing Koufax could do about his elbow except take too many cortisone shots, which could have crippled him. He refused to run that risk.
Nowadays much more is known about the mechanics of pitching, how to minimize physical stresses and how to recover from their ravages. "Back in the old days," Roger Craig remembers, "the pitching coaches didn't really care about your delivery or your stretch position. They would just run you to keep you in shape. They didn't worry about mechanics." Another change in pitching concerns medicine. Roger Craig pitched for 12 years with six National League teams. He pitched and lost the last game the Brooklyn Dodgers played in Philadelphia. "About the third or fourth inning," he recalls, "I snapped something in my shoulder that I now know was a rotator cuff. In those days you never heard of that. If that had happened now they would have gone in and 'scoped' [arthroscopic surgery] it. I pitched the last seven, eight years I was in the major leagues with a sore arm."
It is remarkable how recently ice and weights became part of pitchers' regimens. Until recently baseball has been backward about exercises. Unlike in football, where exercise programs have been devised to enhance performance, baseball has regarded exercise as primarily corrective, something you do when something has gone wrong. After a game, Hershiser, like most pitchers, ices his shoulder with a huge pack taped to his upper torso and he ices his elbow in a tub on a table. This cuts down the swelling and begins the healing, a practice begun on the Dodgers remarkably recently, in the 1960s, by Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. The day after pitching is the off-day on which Hershiser works hardest: He has the most time to recuperate before his next start. He no longer is sore the day after a game, which he attributes to the work he has done with free weights and Nautilus equipment. The work develops strength and flexibility and long, lean muscles. Before he began weight training he was so stiff on mornings after games he could barely get out of bed. He does a free-weight program for his shoulder and rotator cuff, another for the elbow and ulnar nerve. For pitchers, that cuff and that nerve are the parts that are most apt to suffer incapacitating or even career-ending injuries. For cardiovascular conditioning Hershiser uses a Versiclimber, a sort of treadmill in the form of a ladder. He calls it "a way of climbing a mountain without going anywhere." He also uses a stationary bicycle.
Gott also does all that stuff, and more. In the spring he thought a cortisone shot would put the pain away and let him pitch as though everything inside his arm was all right. He prepared for an appearance against the Texas Rangers by wearing, strapped to his forearm, a gadget that sent healing sound waves into his arm. At the Rangers' posh Spring Training complex at Port Charlotte, Florida, Gott came in for an inning of work in the eighth with the Rangers leading, 6–4. He got two quick outs, then surrendered a solid single, balked the runner to second, gave up a run-scoring single, then a run-scoring double. Two runs on three hits. After the game in the clubhouse Ray Miller said, "I'm not worried about Jimmy. What he needs is 50,000 in there." Miller means that Gott needs the presence of a crowd—the more the merrier; 50,000 if possible—to get himself pumped up. But Miller should have been worried.
After Gott went on the disabled list, Jim Leyland said he was not surprised: "I was suspicious because of his control. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that when a guy starts his motion and then pulls his arm in because it hurts him to leave it out, or he leaves his arm extended because he doesn't want to pull through, something hurts and it makes him wild. Being wild is very uncharacteristic of Jim Gott. If there is one thing he can do it is throw strikes." Gott will be back, running the Dodger Stadium steps with Van Halen reverberating in his head, and throwing strikes, abusing his arm for a living, and loving it.
The way to minimize arm abuse is to pay attention to the way the arm bone is connected to the shoulder bone, and the way all the bones go together, right down to the leg bones. As Shea Stadium's loudspeakers blare Jan and Dean's "Surf City" into the fetid air of Flushing—the surf city by Flushing Bay—Hershiser raises his voice to make himself heard, explaining pitching mechanics with reference to "the law of the flail." A pitcher's body works, he says, like a catapult or whip. The reason a whip snaps is that the tip of the whip accelerates when the handle stops. A pitcher's planted front leg is the handle; the arm is the end of the whip. "That's why they say a pitcher is only as good as his legs."
Be that as it may, Ray Miller believes that the key to velocity is arm speed. "Willie Mays used a 32-ounce bat. Mickey Mantle used a 34- or 32-ounce bat and hit the ball as far as anyone who ever lived. So what's the size of the bat got to do with it? R's the speed of the bat at contact. And it's the speed of the arm as the ball leaves your hand." Miller is a man worth listening to. He says a pitching coach contributes to a 20-win season this way. Assume 35 starts a year for a strong pitcher. If he is lucky he will have his best stuff perhaps 15 times. If the pitcher is working for a good team, he may win 10 of those. On the other 5, says Miller, you may pitch reasonably well but may pitch against Hershiser and lose. On the other 20 starts, that's where the pitching coach comes in.
Miller comes into any relationship with a pitching pupil with a simple credo: "Throw strikes, change speeds, work fast." That's it. End of science. No philosophy.
Throw strikes, starting with the first pitch. In 1988, 43 percent of all first pitches were balls. But 25 percent were called strikes, 6 percent were swinging strikes and 12 percent were fouled. So 43 percent of first pitches resulted in 0–1 counts. The other 14 percent of first pitches were put in play. In the fifth game of the World Series, Hershiser worked on short rest, after an exhausting September and the draining seven-game League Championship Series. The Athletics came out trying to "run the count," to take a lot of pitches and make him work. But that strategy would work only if Hershiser could not get the first pitch in. He got it in.
In a nine-inning game, Hershiser usually throws 110 to 115 pitches. That is on the low side for complete games by major league pitchers. It is low because, although he consistently ranks among the league leaders in strikeouts, he does not consider himself a strikeout pitcher. "Batters know I come after them with first pitches so they are swinging and I get a lot of first-pitch outs." If a pitcher gets the first strike on a batter, he can miss with the next three before he is in dire straits. If he gets one more strike the batter is in dire straits. A pitcher ahead 0–2 should rarely fail to retire the batter. Probably the stiffest fine in the history of baseball was levied by Giants manager Mel Ott on pitcher Bill Voiselle, who gave up a home run to a Cardinals batter on an 0–2 pitch. The fine was only $500 but it concentrated Voiselle's mind wonderfully. He was making $3,500 that season. Ray Miller probably approves of Ott's criminal-justice system. Miller is a first-pitch fanatic. "It's 90 percent of the game—strike one. If you throw strike one you've got five possible pitches left to throw for two strikes." And "there are always about 12 million guys in baseball who are first-pitch fastball hitters. If you don't throw them a fastball on the first pitch you eliminate about 75 percent of their game plan."
But what if personal experience, or information from the advance scout, indicates that a particular batter is jumping on first pitches? "There are two theories of pitching," Hershiser says. "One is that you try to convince the batter that a particular pitch is coming and you throw something different. The other theory, that you don't hear as much but that I use, is that if the batter expects a particular pitch, you throw it, but you throw it in a place where he can't hit it." That is: Know what a batter wants or expects and throw the ball _almost_ there. If he is a high-ball hitter, throw it a bit too high. His eagerness will prevent him from laying off it, but it will be hard to hit well. Davey Johnson, the Mets' manager, says the same thing in baseballspeak: "If a guy is a first-ball, fastball, high-ball hitter, and you are a fastball pitcher, give him a first-ball fastball a little higher than he likes it and see if he'll bite on it rather than hook [curve] him and miss, hook him and miss, and then give a cherry [unconvincing] fastball."
Hershiser wants to learn what a batter is thinking during _this at bat_. "If a guy is a good first-pitch fastball hitter, I know it and he knows it, and I throw a fastball right down the middle and he takes it, that tells me his thinking is different this at bat. He thought I was going to throw him a curve because he knows that I know he's a first-pitch fastball hitter and he was sitting on a curve—he took a pitch he normally swings at. He's looking for something else and that gives you a clue to his thinking." Unlike a lot of pitchers—and batters—Hershiser can not call up from memory at any time a sequence of pitches, or remember the nature of a particular pitch that got an out, or got hammered. But he can do that when he is on the mound. "It just comes to me. The situation has been re-created and it just all clicks in." Any pitcher must draw upon memory, he says, and continues, "In the big leagues, no one has enough talent to overcome slumps just by kicking it in and overpowering people."
There are various ways of learning what a hitter is looking for. Jim Lefebvre says that a really observant pitcher can tell by the way a hitter takes a pitch what the hitter is looking for that day. Hershiser has talked to hitting coaches to learn about pitching and has learned to watch a batter's check swing. The batter has been fooled; he did not understand where the ball was going. But where his bat was going tells you where he wanted the ball to be. It tells you if he is looking for a high or low pitch. When a left-handed hitter lines a fastball foul into the stands on the third-base side, either he did not get his bat up to the speed required for the fastball or he was looking for an off-speed pitch. It does not matter which is the explanation. The lesson is: more fastballs, and keep them outside, where a slow bat will never catch up with them.
"I lockered next to Sal Maglie in Brooklyn," Don Drysdale remembers, "and he had a theory that stuck in my mind. He said that if you're ever in doubt about what the hitter is looking for, always watch his feet. Take your first pitch and go low and away for a ball and watch the hitter's feet. If he's moving into the pitch so he can cover the outside corner, he's told you that he's looking for a pitch that is going to be out over the plate or down and away. He's going out to cover that zone. If he's coming straight at you, you learn nothing. If he's pulling out [a right-hander striding slightly toward third; if a left-hander, toward first], he's looking for you to crowd him."
A first-pitch strike to the leadoff batter in an inning is a big first step toward the out that makes life a lot easier. Hershiser says that one of the keys to pitching is to get the first batter in each inning out. "Never walk a leadoff batter because he scores about 80 percent of the time. Even a good pitcher gives up an average of about a hit an inning. You give a guy a free pass and they advance him one base with an out, now where is your hit-an-inning going to come? It's going to come and you're going to give up a run."
As the strike zone has become smaller and hitters have become stronger, and less fearful at the plate, pitchers have had to pitch more carefully, nibbling at the strike zone (what is left of it). So they have more frequently fallen behind in the count to more confident hitters. However, a pitcher with good control can often influence the size of the strike zone, at least for part of a game. Once a pitcher has shown a batter and the plate umpire that he wants to get the first strike in, and that he will continue to throw strikes, he is apt to influence their decisions about pitches at the edges of the strike zone. He can, in effect, enlarge the strike zone. "If you're consistent in an area," says Hershiser, "that part of the strike zone will become bigger because you have proven that you can hit that area, so the umpire gives you the benefit of the doubt. When you are all over the place, you're less apt to get strikes called on close pitches. You get more close pitches called strikes the more consistent you are in hitting the glove."
There may be nothing a pitcher can do to make some umpires expand the strike zone. However, when the pitcher gets ahead of the batter in the count, the batter will expand the strike zone on his own—he will swing at borderline pitches that are too close to risk taking. Every hitter goes to the plate determined to do what dozens of coaches, from Little League to the big leagues, have urged: "Be selective." But that is devilishly hard to do with two strikes on you. Mike Scott recalls one umpire, the late Lee Weyer, who had an enormous strike zone. The pitchers knew it, the hitters knew it, and the games went fast because anything around the plate was a strike, so the hitters were always swinging.
Throw strikes? Piece of cake, said Satchel Paige, because "home plate don't move." In a reasonably good game, Hershiser will face 35 batters and will be ahead in the count to at least 25 of them. Paige probably did even better. He would warm up by pitching over a matchbook. Whitey Herzog tells the following story about something Paige did when he, Herzog, was playing for the Miami Marlins:
The Marlins once had a distance-throwing contest before a night game. [Don] Landrum and I had the best arms of any of the outfielders. We were out by the center-field fence, throwing two-hoppers to the plate. Ol' Satch came out, didn't even warm up, and kind of flipped the ball sidearm. It went 400 feet on a dead line and hit the plate. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it.
We were on the road in Rochester one night, screwing around in the outfield. They had a hole in the outfield fence just barely big enough for a baseball to go through, and the deal was that any player who hit a ball through there on the fly would win $10,000. I started trying to throw the ball through the hole, just to see if I could. I bet I tried 150 or 200 times, but I couldn't do it, so I went back to the dugout.
When Satch got to the park, I said, "Satch, I bet you can't throw the ball through that hole out there."
He looked out at it and said, "Wild Child, do the ball fit in the hole?"
"Yeah, Satch," I said. "But not by much. I'll bet you a fifth of Old Forester that you can't throw it through there."
"Wild Child," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow night."
So the next night Satch showed up for batting practice—first time in his life he'd ever been that early. I took a few baseballs, went out to the outfield, and stepped off about 60 feet 6 inches, the distance from the mound to home. Satch ambled out, took the ball, brought it up to his eye like he was aiming it, and let fire.
I couldn't believe it. The ball hit the hole, rattled around, and dropped back out. He'd come that close, but I figured it was his best shot.
Satch took another ball and drilled the hole dead center. The ball went right through, and I haven't seen it since.
"Thank you, Wild Child," Satch said, and then went back into the clubhouse.
Control isn't what it used to be. But to repeat, the strike zone (smaller) and the batters (larger, less fearful) aren't what they used to be either. So there are more walks. But come to think of it, that may not mean worse control. It may mean more nibbling—more well-controlled pitches near but not too near the corners. In any case, some of the records of the past masters of control are amazing.
In two seasons, 1913 and 1914, when his records were 25–11 and 24–13, Christy Mathewson walked fewer men than he had victories (21 in 1913 and 23 in 1914). In 1913 Mathewson allowed just 0.62 walks per 9 innings pitched, a single-season record. Only 22 pitchers in this century have allowed less than 1 walk per 9 innings over a season. Only 3 of those 22 have done it since 1920, the dawn of the age of offense. The great achievements of control include the 7 innings Stan Coveleski pitched without a single pitch called a ball. Babe Adams in 1920 and Cy Young in 1905 pitched 21 and 20 innings, respectively, without a walk. And in 1933 Carl Hubbell pitched an 18-inning shutout without a walk. The modern era does have one hero of control: Ferguson Jenkins is the only pitcher in history to have more than 3,000 strikeouts and fewer (just three fewer) than 1,000 walks.
For most mortals, control is a sometime thing. It comes and goes. Tom Seaver said that when he had his best control, he could pitch within a quarter of an inch of a spot nine times out of ten. Hershiser illustrates his best control by holding his palm forward, as a catcher holds a mitt, and rotating his wrist without moving his forearm. He says that when his catcher has given him a target with the mitt, the catcher should be able to receive eight out of ten pitches with no more movement than twisting the wrist, leaving his forearm immobile and moving the mitt about an inch.
When a pitcher does not have good control—when home plate seems to be moving—it may or may not be nice to have an infielder like Davey Johnson. Johnson was second baseman for the Orioles in some of their salad seasons (1965–72). He also was a math major at Texas A&M. Imagine the puzzlement of Dave McNally, an Orioles pitcher, the day he was having control trouble and Johnson trotted in to the mound to suggest that McNally give a thought to the theory of "unfavorable chance deviation." No jury would have convicted McNally, who had other things on his mind, if he had murdered Johnson right there on the mound. But Johnson had a point. "A pitcher," says Johnson, "is in an 'unfavorable chance deviation' if he's aiming at a particular area and he's missing by _X_ on each side. If he's trying to go on the inside corner, he either is missing six to eight inches inside or right over the heart of the plate. So if he aims over the heart of the plate, he'll hit the corners. So I told McNally he was in an 'unfavorable chance deviation,' to just throw it down the middle. He said, 'Get back to second base.'"
Control does not mean always throwing strikes. Rather, it means throwing enough strikes to get hitters to swing at balls. To do that, change speeds.
Warren Spahn pitched for 21 seasons and won 363 games. If he had not missed three seasons because of military service during World War II, he would have far surpassed Christy Mathewson and Grover Cleveland Alexander's 373 wins as the National League's winningest pitchers. Spahn's craft was subtle. His explanation of it is concise: "Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing." Sandy Koufax says, "Every pitcher's best pitch is his fastball. It's the fastball that makes the other pitches effective. Hitters must look for it and try to adjust for a breaking pitch. While they are looking for the breaking pitch, the fastball is by them before they can adjust." Ray Miller produced a compilation of every pitch thrown by all the Orioles' 20-game winners. He learned, with the delight that any theorist feels when facts confirm his beliefs, that all of them threw at least 60 percent fastballs in those seasons of maximum success. Changing speeds can mean mixing up the kinds of pitches you throw, or changing the speed at which you throw one kind of pitch.
Miller believes that "offensive" pitching is not coming at the batter with hard stuff. Rather, it is coming at the batter with all sorts of stuff. And "defensive" hitting is not a batter biding his time waiting for the pitch he wants. Rather, defensive hitting is nervous, uncertain swinging at pitches anywhere near what the batter prefers. Jim Palmer estimates that half of all swinging third strikes are defensive swings at pitches outside the strike zone. "When pitchers are offensive," says Miller, "the batters become defensive. When you change speeds, batters swing more."
Most baseball people say a good starting pitcher needs only three pitches. Hershiser has four: the two fastballs (the hard one that sinks and the "cutter" that sort of slides), the curve and the change-up. However, his curve is really several pitches because he can "tighten" the break. "If the hitter is the kind who reacts early to the ball when it leaves your hand, I'll throw more of a sweeping large curveball. If it's a good disciplined hitter who reads that pitch very well, like a [Keith] Hernandez or [Kevin] McReynolds, or a Punch-and-Judy-type hitter who really stays in there and fights you off, I shorten the break to get the ball to look like it's really going to be a strike the whole way and then quickly break at the end." Because Hershiser changes the trajectory and velocity, "there might be ten different curveballs in my arm."
Hershiser, says Drysdale, is in "the low end of the power-pitcher category," but batters know that what they face when they face him is "not a comfortable 0-for-4 but a bastard 0-for-4." That is, they are going to be jammed, struck out, they will swing at curveballs in the dirt, they will break their bats, they will be made to look foolish.
Fiddling around with a radar gun one day, Hershiser concluded that a ball must be thrown 40 miles per hour to get from the mound to the plate in the air. He says that there is about a 10-mile-per-hour difference between his fastball and his curve. There are always some pitchers of whom it is said: If you are going to get them you have to get them early in the game. Often these are pitchers who throw too hard when they come in from their pregame pitching in the bull pen, pumped up and rarin' to go. They may throw their curves so hard that those pitches straighten out, or their sinker so hard it doesn't sink. The serious use of the radar gun is less to measure the velocity of a pitcher's fastest pitch than it is to measure the difference between a pitcher's fastball and his change-up, or between his fastball and his curve. Some differences are too small and others are too large to be of maximum effectiveness in upsetting a hitter's timing. A radar gun can pick up the fact that a pumped-up pitcher is throwing too hard.
The new high-tech aspect of baseball is, in Tony La Russa's view, just "backing up observation with numbers." Many experienced baseball people can watch a pitcher for a few minutes and estimate his velocity within one or two miles per hour. They can watch a pitcher's release and tell if he is quick or slow, if he can be run on or not. The backup by technology becomes most effective when, during a game, the manager, with much on his mind, can be told that between the seventh and eighth innings his tiring starter lost three miles per hour off his fastball, or that the opposing pitcher did. Clever pitchers, especially now that pitchers work constantly with radar guns pointed at them, complicate things by masking fatigue. Tom Seaver, generally regarded as the most thoughtful pitcher of the modern era, would save in his arm a few full-power pitches for late in the game, when batters were adjusting to any loss of velocity that the radar gun had recorded. Hershiser throws his fastball at maximum velocity (around 94 miles per hour) only about five times a game. Usually he throws it at 85 percent of maximum velocity because he wants the option of going up in speed late in the game, when it will be, in effect, a new pitch. Jim Palmer would do something like that during an entire game. On days when he did not have a good fastball he would slow his other pitches down proportionately and still pitch effectively.
Hershiser thinks of a game as a tennis match, with three "sets," each consisting of three innings. He tries to save one pitch to introduce into the second "set" and another to introduce into the third. By varying his repertoire within a game, he makes himself his own relief pitcher in the sense that the second, third and fourth times through the lineup the opposing hitters still do not quite have the advantage of a second, third and fourth look at his complete repertoire.
The pitcher's most formidable new weapon in the postwar era has been the slider, a fastball with a tight spin that can break six inches horizontally and vertically. Hershiser does not throw it. The second most important new pitch has been the split-finger fastball. Hershiser does not throw it either. Why this unilateral non-armament? The answer is: Why take risks when there is no need—not yet, at least. The risk Hershiser sees with a slider is the need to alter his mechanics, and the additional strain put on the arm and elbow by the act of imparting spin to the ball. The split-finger, Hershiser says, dangerously tightens the arm from wrist to elbow when the ball is wedged between the index and middle fingers. (Try it; it does.) When will he throw one or the other or both of those pitches? "When I start getting hit around. You know what I said about having a repertoire within a game, and when to show it? You should have a repertoire within a career. All the guys who pitch 15, 20 years make adjustments on a 3-to-5-year basis. They come up with a new pitch, new angle, new style. There's no way I can get [Keith] Hernandez out for 10 years pitching the same way. There's no way we can play in the same league because all the information is not coming to my favor. It's coming to his favor. So I've got to create some new information. He's the one learning. I'm not learning. Batters don't change. That's why knuckleball pitchers, screwball pitchers and speciality-pitch pitchers do so well. Because batters won't change that one day and risk ruining the other four. Charlie Hough goes out and throws that floater and everybody says to himself, 'Come on, just stay back, maybe change your swing, maybe crouch a little, move up on the plate.' But the batter gets up and thinks, 'I've never been in this part of the batter's box before!'"
Work fast.
Work fast for many reasons, not the least of which is that a pitcher is only as good as his defense. Good defense is a matter of concentration and anticipation. A pitcher who dawdles puts his defense to sleep. A pitcher working fast sets a tempo that keeps people on their toes. Miller says an average major league game has 13V2 pitches per half inning, or around 120 in nine innings. So 120 times the seven players behind the pitcher "set up" on the balls of their feet. Working fast also helps a pitcher maintain his mechanics once they are in tune. Hershiser says he is "mechanically conscious" when on the mound. He puts on his computer disks his postgame recollections of successful adjustments he has made in his delivery during games. "When I'm not in a groove I make adjustments on every pitch. 'You didn't stay on top of that pitch, so the next time you throw a curveball make sure you get your arm up. And the way you get your arm up is not by just thinking it. This is what you need to do: Stay back, allow your hip to move out first, don't put your shoulder in front of your hip. You have to feel the weight on the inside part of your foot. That allows your hip to slide out.' There are différent keys I have learned that will bring me back in sync on a certain pitch. If my sinker is just going sideways instead of down, I know I need to get more on top of the ball, not with arm angle but with hand discipline."
There are people who believe that the plodding pace of games set by White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk works, like a basketball coach calling time out when the other team is on a roll, to make it difficult for opponents to generate momentum for a big inning. But Hershiser is a man after Ray Miller's heart. According to Dempsey (who was the catcher in Baltimore when Miller was coaching there), Hershiser "wants the ball and to get right back up on the mound."
On the mound Hershiser seems to be all business. Seems to be. Actually, he has fun there. Often when he steps on the rubber, he drops his head, which suggests solemnity. Actually, he is avoiding the distraction in front of him—the umpire standing up, the catcher getting set, the batter digging in and the television and other cameras and radar guns and equipment and activity that are often behind the screen directly behind home plate. "When I lift my head, they are waiting for me." Off the field, Hershiser is a formidable businessman. And because of his religiosity, an aroma of incense and an aura of sanctity cloak his public persona. This is unfortunate. He has a dry wit that surfaces constantly in conversations. Once on a team flight, when some of the players were flirting with the flight attendants (or perhaps it was the other way around in the friendly skies that day), Hershiser said, "You're writing about men at work? How about men at play?" Hershiser's wife, Jamie, comes from Mattoon, Illinois. A sign on the interstate highway that passes near Mattoon notifies drivers that the town has "Food, Gas, Lodging." "All three," says Hershiser with a tone of mock wonderment.
On Friday morning, July 21, 1989, the Dodgers awake in the Gateway Hilton, just a ten-minute walk across a bridge from Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium. They are to play a doubleheader that night and another on Sunday as part of an unusual six-game series, the result of rainouts. The Dodgers' pitching staff is toiling with little support from Dodgers hitters, which is why the Dodgers are in fifth place, 13 Va games behind the division-leading Giants and only 3 Mi games ahead of the last-place Braves.
However, this morning Hershiser is going to have fun. He is going to watch a tape he has not watched before, a tape of the seventh game of the 1988 Dodgers-Mets League Championship Series. He pitched that game. On the screen the tape shows Tommy Lasorda pacing and fidgeting nervously before the first pitch. Hershiser, watching with quickly mounting interest the events of nine months ago, says to the Lasorda on the television screen, "Don't worry. We win, 6–0."
"Before the game they [the Mets] came out with quotes that 'we're not worried because we've got Hershiser figured out.' I took it to mean that they were going to try to take my sinker away from me by the left-handers crowding the plate—Strawberry and Backman and Dykstra and Hernandez and Jefferies and Mookie Wilson." Also, Mets manager Davey Johnson had said that Hershiser must be tired. That, Hershiser thought, meant that the Mets would assume that he would rely entirely on his sinker away. So he decided to disabuse them of this idea by pitching inside more than he normally would early in the game.
"I wasn't tired," he says. "I was going on adrenaline. In fact, early in the game I wasn't throwing the ball really well because my adrenaline was so high. My ball wasn't sinking, it was going sideways. I was throwing too hard, and when I throw too hard my mechanics can move sideways, so the ball goes more sideways." His shoulders were tilting down toward first base instead of staying close to parallel with the ground. "When your mechanics are slowed down and you stay within yourself"—the phrase "stay within yourself" recurs constantly in players' talk, as we shall see with Tony Gwynn—"you can create the proper angle. But if I start to rush and overthrow, most of my motion becomes lateral. Just as my arm is starting to come forward, my left shoulder is already flying open [turning to Hershiser's left]. I am firing too early and killing my whole left side. I'm not going to have any left side to throw against." That is, because his left shoulder has turned too far too soon, his torso is out in front of his arm, leaving the arm to do too much of the work, unassisted by the position of his frame. When that happens, everything he throws—the curve, the sinking fastball—is harder and, for that reason, flatter than it should be. Against the Mets his curveball was rolling out of his hand and drifting high and inside to right-handed hitters. He can not quite remember but he thinks he went into the Dodger Stadium tape room between innings early in the game to watch what he was doing wrong. However, he says, there are limits to what you can do to iron out imperfections. "Sometimes you're human and just don't do it. No matter how much thinking and practicing you do, no matter how ready you are, you just don't do it."
Hershiser was not the only player who was feeling the heat of that winner-take-all seventh game. "See, that's uncharacteristic for Keith [Hernandez]. You can tell it's the adrenaline of a big situation. I've thrown three pitches at a 3-and-2 count and he swung at [and fouled off] all of them, and two of three or maybe three of three have been balls. In the regular season he'd just be flipping his bat and taking his walk—he's got a great eye. He's swinging before he's decided it's a strike. He's just pumped up—game seven."
The Mets did not score in the top of the first. The Dodgers scored one run in the bottom of the first. The Mets did not score in the top of the second. In the bottom of the inning the wheels came off the Mets. There was an error, a defensive mix-up that turned a sacrifice bunt into a hit, and the Dodgers scored five runs. On the bunt the batter, Alfredo Griffin, should have been called out without the Mets doing anything right. Griffin did something very wrong. When he squared around to bunt his left foot was a foot out of the batter's box, directly in front of the catcher. If the umpire had noticed, Griffin would have been called out. But when you are hot you are lucky and the Dodgers (remember, there will be those 11 hits in 15 hit-and-run attempts in the World Series) are very lucky-hot.
When the second inning ends the score is 6–0, as it will be at the end of the game. But pitching with a five-run lead is, says Hershiser, its own kind of burden. The pitcher's basic job is to keep the game close, keeping his team in the game until its batters produce some runs. In the 169th game of the Dodgers' season, it was no longer up to the hitters to win the game, it was up to him not to lose it. "A lot of pitchers," says Hershiser, "when they get a big lead, they say, 'Let's just go with the odds of baseball. Throw the ball hard down the middle and let them hit it. Let them swing the bats and make outs. If they don't make outs, we'll go back to pitching.' A lot of times they go directly to their fastballs and throw a lot of strikes right over the plate, and then, later, when they get into a jam, they don't have their other pitches with them anymore and the other team gets a chance to catch up. So when we get ahead I do the opposite. I go to every pitch possible. I go to my fourth- and fifth-best pitches, just to keep the repertoire ready. They are pitches I normally don't use in key situations, but the lead has given me a chance to not worry about getting beat on my fourth or fifth pitch, or about giving up a one-run home run on my slowest of slow curveballs. Then I'm prepared for the jam, and the batters have seen a lot of different pitches in at bats before the jam and they have doubts in their minds. 'Boy, he has never thrown me that before.' 'I've never seen him throw a curveball that slow.' 'He's never thrown me back-to-back change-ups.'"
On this morning in Pittsburgh Hershiser watches the videotape as the Mets' Gregg Jefferies hits a long fly to right field off a change-up. Jefferies was out in front of the pitch. It was the second consecutive change-up Hershiser had thrown to him. Jefferies was not expecting two off-speed pitches in a row. Expecting something faster, he had the head of his bat about four inches too far out over the plate. It was in the hitting zone before the ball was. Hitting is timing. Hershiser upset Jefferies's timing.
On a 3–2 pitch with two outs, Kevin Elster got a single off a fastball right down the middle. "Three-and-2, two out, nobody on, I'm not going to show him a pitch I might need to get him out in a jam. If it's runners on second and third and two out and I need to get him out, he'll get a breaking ball or a real my-pitch sinker low and away." Husbanding his better pitches, anticipating the possibility of trouble later, was pure Hershiser.
Later in the game, with Darryl Strawberry up with a 3–1 count, catcher Mike Scioscia called for a sinker away. Hershiser preferred to throw a change-up, and did, without telling Scioscia. Scioscia, annoyed, stepped out in front of the plate and fired the ball back at Hershiser faster than Hershiser had thrown the change-up. Watching this scene on tape, Hershiser laughs merrily: "Wham! He airs it back at me as if to say, 'What are you doing out there?' With men on base it [throwing a pitch Scioscia had not called for] doesn't matter because I'm not screwing him up as far as his rhythm to throw someone out. I'm screwing up the infielders a little bit because they might be shading the opposite way instead of to pull with the change-up. But I do it because when I get a rhythm I don't want to stand there and shake my head because I might lose that feeling—the flow." The change-up that he threw was a strike. The next pitch was a curveball for a called third strike, the pitch of a pitcher at the peak of his performance. "A 3–2 curveball with a 6–0 lead!" He laughs delightedly, as though seeing all this for the first time.
With two outs and one on in the top of the ninth, with the Mets' Lee Mazzilli up with an 0–2 count, with the crowd on its feet and the Mets one strike away from winter, Hershiser hits Mazzilli. That happened because before the pitch "I decide Til let my game face off and I walk around the mound and take in the whole situation, the standing ovation, with our team going nuts and their team all depressed. I almost started to cry, and that's when I stopped it and put my game face back on. And then I get back on the mound and throw the pitch. It's a fastball inside. Scioc [Scioscia's nickname; pronounced Sosh, rhymes with gauche] calls the sinker inside but I threw the cutter [cut fastball]. Scioc comes halfway to the mound and I walk out to meet him. He says, 'I wanted the sinker inside!' I say, 'Well, I threw the cutter—I wanted to make sure I got it in.' He says, 'But you might hit him if you do that.' I say, 'I _did_ hit him.' It was hilarious." In Spring Training Hershiser told Mazzilli what happened and apologized. Mazzilli thanked Hershiser for sparing him the indignity of being the last out of the Mets' season.
It was a movie with a happy ending, in the Hollywood tradition. But now, back in real time, it is time to get his contact lenses, put his wire-rim glasses aside and go across the river to Three Rivers Stadium, to work.
Looking out across the Three Rivers diamond, Ray Miller says, a trifle wistfully, "I've got this little spiel when a guy comes up from the minors. When I'm walking him in from the bull pen, right before the game starts, I say, 'You know, I never got to do this, what you're doing today. But don't be nervous. You're working on a perfect mound. You have the best defense you've ever had behind you.' Then I go to the dugout and smoke fourteen cigarettes." Don't be nervous? Hard not to be. The pitcher's mound is where the pressure is constant.
The pressure of the 1988 season produced sufficient heat to temper the steel in Hershiser. "I know about myself that I can perform under any pressure. I found out I loved it. And the thing about the game I love even more is competition. I want to be in there. In the eighth inning in game five [the final game of the Series] when Canseco and Parker were coming up, runners on first and second, in a hole I'd put myself in, I wanted to be out there. I wasn't looking to Tommy and saying, 'This is scary, I don't want to be out here.'" A year ago, would he have looked and said that? He pauses to consider, then says softly, "I wouldn't have complained about losing the ball." He adds, "I am at the point in my career now that I will complain when they take me out. They come out to the mound and I make sure they see in my face and in my actions that I want to stay there, no matter how I feel. I have no fear of failure now. You get to a point in your career when you know you are going to be a big leaguer, you know you are going to have a job. So where is the fear of failure? The fun is competing, so why get out?"
The 1989 season was bound to be a special kind of challenge, the challenge of pursuing excellence while knowing that he had hit a peak he would not reach again. "I got all that after 1985 when I was 19–3, 2.03. People came to me and said, 'What is it like to have the best year of your career in your second year? It's all downhill from here.' And I said, well, you never know." Indeed, no one in 1985 could have imagined what was coming in 1988. In December, 1988, Hershiser was in Washington, D.C., to attend Ronald Reagan's last State Dinner, which was for Margaret Thatcher. He said, "Someone asked me at a speaking engagement two nights ago what are my goals now after accomplishing so much. I said I want to be the best Orel Hershiser I can be."
There is a Jewish parable about Moshe, a humble shoemaker who, after dying, finds himself about to meet his Maker. He begins to utter self-deprecating laments and excuses for his failure to have made more of himself in life. Whereupon he is warned: "When you are in His presence He will not ask you why you were not Moses or King David or one of the Prophets. He will ask you why you were not Moshe the shoemaker." The point is that the point of life is not to be great but to be all that you can be. That is hard work. And as is well known, the harder one works, the luckier one becomes. "Whatever you do, do it well. Everyone says, 'This is a big game' or 'This is not a big game.' I say to myself, 'It's a big game because it's the only game—it's the only game we can win today.'"
Pitching, like politics and marriage and other difficult undertakings, illustrates the axiom that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Which means: In the real world, be ready to settle for something short of everything. "There are pitchers," Rick Dempsey says, "who, when you score a run off them, you can see you've ruined their perfect day and they lose their competitive edge. Then the dam breaks and they give up six, seven runs." Does Hershiser go to the mound in the first inning planning to pitch a complete game? "A perfect game," Hershiser replies. "If they get a hit, then I am throwing a one-hitter. If they get a walk, it's my last walk. I deal with perfection to the point that it is logical to conceive it. History is history, the future is perfect."
#
THE BATTER
Tony Gwynn's Muscle Memory
Early in the 1989 season Tony Gwynn hit home runs in consecutive games and was even more displeased with his hitting than he generally is. The second home run came after an afternoon spent toiling to remove the flaws in the way he had swung the bat in the game in which he hit the first one. He knew the flaws were there. In fact, the home run was evidence that he was not hitting the pitches he wanted to hit in the way he wanted to hit them. So the afternoon before the night when he hit the second home run, he went to work early, several hours before game time.
The previous night he had hit two balls hard. One pleased him, the other distressed him. The pleasing one was an out, the distressing one was a home run. When he hit the ball hard for an out, as he started his stride forward his hands moved in the opposite direction. They came back so he could keep the bat back long enough to "inside out" the ball to left field, lashing a line drive that was caught by the left fielder. To "inside out" is to sweep the bat through the strike zone at a slight angle, from the back inside portion of the plate toward the outside front portion. When a left-handed hitter does that, he has power to the left side of the diamond.
On the home-run swing his hands came forward too soon. That is what he means by being "out in front." He drove the ball to right field. Sure, it went over the fence, but he knows that over the course of the long season, hitting the ball that way is a recipe for the sort of frustration he experienced in 1988. "When my hands don't go back I have this kind of loop in my swing." Call it a flawed 1980s swing or a satisfactory 1950s swing. In the 1950s, when parks were smaller and home runs were emphasized, uppercutting the ball was not considered such a vice. Be that as it may, Gwynn will not stand for it. Besides, he is mired in a .360 slump. (Ball players are never just in slumps; they are always "mired" in them.) So he came to the stadium this day shortly after noon. There was work to do before the playing began.
"Hitting," says Jim Lefebvre, "is a summation of internal forces. It's everything. It's not just hands or wrists. You have to get the whole body into it." Lefebvre says hitting is the most overcoached and undertrained facet of baseball. He means there is too much theory and too little hard, humdrum repetition, the blister-causing tedium that builds up muscle memory. He may be right, but not about Gwynn, who is baseball's Mr. Humdrum. Gwynn's repertoire of repetition begins beneath the stands at San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium.
A modern major league stadium, such as Jack Murphy, is a complex edifice containing many surprises in its nooks and crannies. On Opening Day, 1989, 19 skunks were evicted from it. It is a very Nineties place. Sushi is served at one of the food stands and there are diapering tables in the men's as well as women's rest rooms. Deep beneath the stands there is a clean, well-lit room that was prepared by the Padres to satisfy Gwynn, who asked for it for several seasons. It is a long, narrow batting room, big enough for a pitcher's mound at regulation distance from a plate, and an "Iron Mike" pitching machine with a capacity for about 250 baseballs. The room is lit at 300 candle feet, exactly as the Jack Murphy field is lit, so a player expecting to pinch-hit can come to the room during a game to take practice swings. This afternoon Gwynn is trying to wear it out—the machine and the netting that captures the batted balls. He also is wearing out several Padres relief pitchers who have not been used much in recent games and do not mind satisfying—well, trying to satisfy—Gwynn's voracious appetite for pitches to hit.
The Padres did Gwynn's family a favor by building the batting cage. Gwynn has been known to show up at a social event with a batting glove hanging out of his hip pocket, having stopped somewhere on the way for some swings. Around midnight after a San Diego game a few years ago, one of Gwynn's associates at the San Diego School of Baseball was driving by the building where the school's pitching machines are and was annoyed to see the lights on. Assuming that some kids had neglected to turn them off, he stopped to do so. Inside he found Gwynn standing in his street clothes, with a paper cup between his feet so he could swing and spit at the same time without making tobacco stains on the floor, taking some swings before heading home. With the new batting room at the Stadium, the Padres and Mrs. Gwynn and his son and daughter at least know where he is when he is not at home.
During the first days of the 1989 season, Gwynn spent so much time using the new batting room (he went there for extra hitting after the opening night game) that a teammate said, "He wants the hits to land and spin a certain way." The room is not a restful place to be. The pitching machine, with its cranking, clanking arm, is noisy. The crack of the bat on the ball, so pleasant in the open air, is a jarring concussion in the concrete enclosure. Baseball's violence—the slash of the ball on a tight arc toward the plate, the ricochet of the ball off the bat—is intensified in the glare and confinement of the room. But a teammate who is waiting to hit provides a softening musical background.
John Kruk is, like Gwynn, compact, only more so. He is 5 feet 10 and about 200 pounds. In the clubhouse, where politeness is not mandatory, it is said that he not only has his number but also his picture on the back of his uniform. His number is 8. In a few weeks there will be a new name on the front of his uniform—Phillies—but this day, with no trade or much of anything else on his mind, Kruky, as his teammates call him when not calling him Snack Bar, is waiting his turn with the machine and passing the time singing country music in a soft falsetto: "She looks great in her tight jeans.... Everything I buy has a foreign name."
Gwynn hits off the machine until a relief pitcher, Mark Grant, arrives to throw to him. Grant is a large, amiable young man with the kind of flat-top haircut that was fashionable in his hometown of Joliet, Illinois, before he was born. In his locker he displays prominently his favorite book, Dr. Seuss's _Green Eggs and Ham_. As he pitches, Gwynn reads Grant's pitching motion. Gwynn identifies and calls out, in the middle of Grant's deliveries, the kinds of pitches Grant is in the process of throwing. Grant is distressed (well, as distressed as a Dr. Seuss fan can be, which is not very) by this evidence that he is tipping off his pitches, but he is pleased to receive a clinic from Gwynn. While Grant pitches, Gwynn explains what he is seeing: Grant's arm is less extended than usual when throwing one kind of pitch, his grip on the ball is too visible on another.
Gwynn also enlivens the batting session, with the machine and with Grant, by calling out different game situations as the balls come flying at him. "Man on second, no one out... man on third, one out... infield in, man on first, nobody out... man on third, two outs... first and third, one out... man on first, two outs..." He can tailor his swing to the situation.
A matter of minutes after he began in the batting room he was drenched with sweat. By the time he left the room he had taken more than 200 swings, for the fifth time in as many days. Those 1,000 swings were taken before and after full workdays. When he left the room it was 2:45 P.M., 4 hours and 15 minutes before game time. Still ahead was outfield practice. Oh, yes, and batting practice.
"I remember," says Gwynn, "when they asked Pete Rose what do you think about Gwynn taking batting practice every day. He said, 'He'll learn, the more he plays the more he'll realize he doesn't need batting practice every day.' Pete's got more hits than anybody but I just don't feel I'm prepared unless I'm doing what I can to be a little bit smarter, a little bit better, a little bit more prepared. I have been brought up in the game to do every little extra thing, get every bit of extra knowledge that can help you get a base hit in a key situation." As the twig is bent. He was brought up at home like that. "I think my parents gave it to me. I remember when my mom started to work. She used to be at home, then she got a job in the post office. When she went to the post office she wanted to be _prepared_. She'd give me the test she had to take and I'd read off the streets and she'd tell me where they connect or whatever. I think it rubbed off."
According to Professor Carl Ojala of Eastern Michigan University, in the 1950s California replaced Pennsylvania as the richest source of players. Since 1876 the top 10 states are: California, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, Texas, Missouri, Michigan, New Jersey. Today California, with 12 percent of the nation's population, produces more than 20 percent of the major league players and Southern California produces most of those. Two are from the same home in Long Beach. Because Tony Gwynn's father was away from the house from 7:30 A.M. until 5:00 P.M., and his mother worked from 5:30 P.M. until 3:00 A.M., he and his brother Chris, now with the Dodgers, had a lot of time to fill playing. What Tony played most was basketball, which turned out to be a good apprenticeship for baseball. As a point guard in basketball he developed strong wrists from a lot of dribbling. Because of his wrists he has never suffered from what he calls "slow bat syndrome." And the quickness required of a point guard became the basis of Gwynn's baserunning skills. He was a good enough basketball player to be drafted by both the Padres and the San Diego (as they then were) Clippers.
You would not know by looking at him that he is such a superb all-around athlete. It is a bit much to say, as has been said, that his is "a body by Betty Crocker." His 200 pounds are packed on a 5-foot-11 frame. He is thick around the middle and in the thighs—not Kirby Puckett thick, but thick nonetheless. However, a batter hits with his whole body, with hips and legs as well as wrists and arms and shoulders, so no one in San Diego has any reason to complain about how Gwynn is put together.
Emotionally, he is perfect. Gwynn is an almost unfailingly cheerful man who is almost always trying to be morose. Trying but failing. He may be the most liked player in baseball. That is because of the radical difference between his amiableness toward others and his severity toward himself. His ability to combine intense competitiveness and agreeableness makes him the antithesis of the best player in history to combine, as Gwynn does, a high batting average and a lot of stolen bases. Ty Cobb was so detested that in 1910, when Napoleon Lajoie was in a close race with Cobb for the batting title, the St. Louis Browns' third baseman played extraordinarily deep on the last day of the season so Lajoie could drop seven consecutive bunt singles. They were not quite enough. Lajoie finished at .384, Cobb at .385, but only because the president of the American League, Ban Johnson, was bothered by what the Browns had done. Johnson credited Cobb with a couple of extra hits, enough to put him a point ahead. But before Johnson did that, when it looked as if Lajoie had won, Lajoie received a congratulatory telegram signed by eight of Cobb's Tiger teammates. They were not amused by Cobb's habit—so they said—of not swinging on hit-and-run plays when the pitch was not to his liking, and they resented his decision to sit out the last two games of the season in an attempt to protect his batting lead.
It is inconceivable that Gwynn would ever do either of those things. In September, 1989, at a point when Gwynn was in a nip-and-tuck race for the batting title, he was hurting. His right leg was sore from two foul balls, one off his ankle bone, the other off his toe. The one off his toe made it hard for him to get his shoe on. An even more serious problem was that his left Achilles tendon was so sore he could not push off properly when swinging. This injury was driving down his batting average but he refused to miss a game until his manager insisted. Then he sat out only two games before limping back into the lineup. He won the batting title anyway, catching and passing Will Clark with two 3-for-4 games on the last weekend of the season. Clark said, "I lost to the best."
There are some wonderful high-average hitters today. Through 1989 Wade Boggs had the fourth-highest career average (.352) in baseball history. In 1989 he became the first player in the modern era (since 1900) to get 200 or more hits in seven straight seasons. Kirby Puckett's .356 average, in 1988, was the highest for a right-handed batter since DiMaggio's .357 in 1941 (when he lost the batting title to a left-hander, Ted Williams, by 49 points). By May 7, 1989, Puckett had played in five full major league seasons. By then he had 1,062 hits. Only one player, Joe Medwick, ever got more hits (two more) in his first five years.
According to Roger Craig, Tony Gwynn is "the best pure hitter in this league." Actually, Gwynn may be the best pure hitter in baseball today, and with his baserunning, he may be the best offensive player. Consider his luminous 1987 season, when he became the first National League player ever to hit as high as .370 while stealing 50 bases (56, actually). Gwynn's .370 in 1987 was the highest National League average since Stan Musial's .376 in 1948. Gwynn's .370 was the second-highest single-season average in the decade, second to George Brett's .390 in 1980. Gwynn became only the seventh player in history to win two batting titles by 30 or more points. In 1987 it was not until the third week of July that the Padres had a team winning percentage higher than Gwynn's batting average, .366 to .362. Characteristically, Gwynn used the Padres' bad record as a way to make light of his achievement. "I think it's easier to concentrate when you're getting smoked every night than it is when you're right in the heat of a pennant race. You can just be relaxed and swing the bat. When I hit .370 it was easy to relax and play the game and have fun."
It is sometimes said that a batter can expect to have three slumps a season. In 1987 Gwynn did not have any, unless going 0-for-8 counts as a slump. He hit safely in 82 percent of the 155 games he batted in. He never went more than 8 at bats without a hit. He ranked second in the league in stolen bases (56), triples (13) and on-base percentage (.447); he ranked fourth in runs scored (119), tied for eighth in doubles (36) and tenth in walks (82). He struck out only 35 times in 589 at bats, once every 17 times up. Those last two numbers—the large number of walks and small number of strikeouts—go a long way toward explaining all the preceding numbers.
Walking is part of a batter's duty. Steve Garvey, who was Gwynn's teammate for five years, collected 2,599 hits and had six 200-hit seasons, but he would have been a more valuable asset to his team if he had walked more. He walked only once per 18.44 at bats. Ted Williams's average was once per 3.82. "[Stan] Musial," says Earl Weaver, "was the best at adjusting once the ball left the pitcher's hand. He'd hit the pitcher's pitch. Williams was the best at making them throw his pitch. He didn't believe in adjusting. If it wasn't the pitch he wanted, he knew enough to walk to first base. That's why he hit .406."
Baseball needs more walks and fewer strikeouts. Forty-four times hitters have slugged 20 or more home runs in a season while having fewer strikeouts than home runs. But aside from the Royals' George Brett in his sensational 1980 season (.390, 24 home runs, 22 strikeouts), no one had done it since 1956, when both Yogi Berra and Ted Kluszewski did it. Clearly many of today's home-run hitters are conceding less with two strikes on them; they are more determined to hit home runs, regardless of the cost, than sluggers used to be. Only five players—DiMaggio, Gehrig, Kluszewski, Johnny Mize, Mel Ott—have hit 40 or more home runs while striking out 40 or fewer times. Kluszewski did it three times. The last time he did it was in President Eisenhower's first term—1955. The trend is against that kind of 40–40 season. In 1987 Andre Dawson with 49 home runs and George Bell with 47 became the fifth and sixth players in major league history to have more home runs than walks. That is a sign of indiscipline, but they were rewarded with MVP awards.
Baseball needs subtle standards by which to judge players' seasons and Tom Boswell has provided one. He has devised the statistic "total average" (TA). Boswell reasons that baseball's two basic units of measurement are the base achieved and the out made. Each base is a step closer to a run scored, each out is a step closer to an inning ended. Total average is simply the individual's ratio of bases accumulated for his team to the outs he costs his team. Walks, stolen bases, even being hit by pitches increases your base total average, as Boswell calculates it; but being caught stealing adds an out and grounding into a double play adds two outs. Total average is well suited to the era of artificial turf because it gives special weight to speed, both in terms of bases stolen and double plays avoided. (Being caught stealing not only creates a total average out, it erases a base runner, so getting caught hurts total average by simultaneously adding an out and subtracting a base.) Boswell believes that any player with a TA over .900 is producing at a Hall of Fame level. An .800 TA is All-Star level. Year in and year out the major league average is about .666. Only 17 players in history have compiled career TAs over 1.000. In 1987 Gwynn's TA was 1.086.
In his career through 1989, Gwynn had a better than .300 average against every National League team. By winning the 1989 batting title he became the first National League player since Musial in 1950–52 to win three consecutive titles. (That is good company. Carl Erskine, the Dodgers' pitcher, said, "I've had pretty good success with Stan—by throwing him my best pitch and backing up third.") And what has all this earned Gwynn? He is called "the West Coast Wade Boggs." That is because Gwynn practices his craft at the wrong edge of the continent.
In America news still travels east to west. It is hard for Gwynn to get proper attention for his craftsmanship when he plays in a city with a desert to the east, Japan to the west, Mexico to the south and two other major league teams in the urban sprawl to the north.
After Lee Smith, the big relief pitcher who had many successful seasons with the Cubs, won his first game for the Red Sox, he gave credit to a little boy in the bleachers. Smith said that as he was leaving the bull pen a boy about seven years old leaned over the rail and shouted, "Lee, stay within yourself." Smith said that was the secret of his success that day. Does that seem implausible? Not to me it doesn't. Any properly raised American child would have said the same thing. "Stay within yourself" is baseball's first commandment. It means: Do not try to do things that strain your capacities and distort the smooth working of your parts—what players call "mechanics." Polonius could have been a baseball coach. Of all his bromides, "To thine own self be true" is the most memorable. It means what baseball players mean when they mutter to themselves "stay within yourself." Players, at least at the major league level, are severe realists about themselves. They have been playing this difficult game for so long—even the 22-year-olds have—that they know there are players better than they are. Or, to be precise, they know there are many players who can do many things better than they can. Baseball has many roles, plays, skills and situations. Major league players know that they have mastered enough of them, often barely enough of them, to be in the major leagues for a while. They know what they can do and what they can not. To "stay within yourself" is to keep your balance. A player's reach should not exceed his grasp.
But at one point in his career Gwynn was tempted to overreach. When after his sensational 1987 season he finished only eighth in the National League MVP voting, he succumbed, if only briefly, to bitter thoughts. He began to think that in order to get the respect that any artist worth his salt craves, he would have to truckle to contemporary prejudices and vulgar tastes—he would have to start hitting home runs. (It was either that or tow San Diego around the Cape of Good Hope and tether it to Manhattan, where the media might notice him.) In fact, he could become much more of a power hitter by changing his stroke. He has the strength to hit for distance, and other players have made mid-career changes in the way they swing.
When Kirk Gibson went from the Tigers to the Dodgers in 1988, he shortened his swing slightly, making it more compact and quicker. He knew he was going to see more fastballs in his new league. This is in part because it is a league with parks that reward a running game, and the quicker the pitcher gets the ball to the catcher, the quicker the catcher can get it on its way to second base. But the large number of fastballs in the National League also has something to do with the fact that by 1988 that league's umpires had produced a strike zone even smaller than the one in the American League. Pitchers presented with this shrunken target were increasingly reluctant to try to throw curveballs into it.
Carlton Fisk was the Red Sox catcher for nine seasons. He had a compact, chopping swing perfect for Fenway Park, perfect for chipping fly balls off or over The Wall. Then in 1981 he went to the White Sox, to a spacious park. (The Sox career records for home runs was Harold Baines' 186 until Fisk broke it in 1990.) After a few games at Comiskey Park Fisk saw that his stroke was a harmless fly ball stroke in his new home. He soon put himself in the hands of Charlie Lau, the White Sox batting coach. Lau's fame rested primarily on his ability to coach players who are willing to sacrifice some power for higher batting averages, but in this case Lau's aim was to help Fisk power the ball out of his new park. Together they reconstructed his swing. Tony La Russa, then manager of the White Sox, remembers returning to the Sox Spring Training camp at Sarasota from a game in Fort Myers when Lau and Fisk had stayed in Sarasota. The Sox bus pulled in at about 6:30 P.M. and, recalls La Russa, "that day it was almost Eliza Doolittle. It worked. That was it." Fisk would become a slugger and would go on to break the career record for home runs by a catcher.
During the winter of 1987–88 Gwynn decided to leave superb alone. He would settle for being the best Tony Gwynn in baseball. He knew that hitting home runs was not his natural bent. In 1984 only 36 of his 213 hits were for extra bases. (Only 11 players in history have had 36 or fewer extra-base hits in a 200-hit season.) And he knew that hitting a dozen, maybe even two dozen more home runs might not help him much in his quest for recognition. In 1987 Wade Boggs won his fourth batting title in five years, batted .363 with 24 home runs, and he finished ninth in the MVP voting. Gwynn also knew that home runs in quantity are not necessary for his team to do what he hungers to do—win. When the Padres won their only pennant, in 1984, they had fewer home runs than the last-place Giants. And in 1987 all of baseball had seen how far a team could go powered by players who were not power hitters. The 1987 Cardinals came within one game (game seven of the World Series) of proving themselves to be baseball's best team. Yet they were last—yes, twenty-sixth—in home runs. They hit only 94, and one man—Jack Clark—hit 35 of them.
A hitter's job is to contribute to run creation. Hitting safely does that, so batting average is a good measurement of a hitter's value. It is a good measurement but it is insufficient, for two reasons. First, not all hits are equal. Second, not all failures to hit are equal. Not all hits are equal, for two reasons. Some hits carry the hitter to more bases, closer to a run. And not all hits occur when they would be most productive—particularly, when runners are in scoring position. Baltimore's Jim Gentile was hardly a household word in his day and today his name certainly does not spring to mind when thoughts turn to remarkable hitting records. But in 1961, when better hitters were making bigger headlines, Gentile set an interesting record—the best ratio of RBIs to hits, an astonishing .959. He drove in 141 runs while getting just 147 hits.
Not all "failures" are really failures. Some of them contribute to run creation. Official scoring reflects this by not charging an at bat when the hitter delivers a sacrifice or sacrifice fly. But a hitter who, with no outs and a runner on second, gives himself up by grounding to the right side of the infield, thereby enabling the runner to advance to third, has "failed" to get a hit but has succeeded at the team project of advancing the process of run creation. One night in 1989 in a 5–1 Padres win over the Reds Gwynn had this batting line: 4 at bats, 0 hits, 0 runs, 3 RBIs. He drove in runs with two infield groundouts and a sacrifice fly. That batting line shows why the only certain failure for a batter is the failure to put the ball in play. By the way, the night before Gwynn's 4–0–0–3 night, Darren Daulton of the Phillies went 5-for-5 but neither drove in nor scored a run.
Gwynn became one of the National League's premier players in 1984 at age 24. In the six seasons 1984–89 he hit just 43 home runs, 7 per season. He had 362 RBIs, an average of about 60 a season, a respectable total. He scored 550 runs, or 91 per season, an excellent total.
Batters who, like Gwynn, bat near the top of the order, want to combine power and speed and a discriminating eye that enables them to receive a lot of walks, thereby further fattening their on-base percentage. Davey Johnson remembers playing in Atlanta with Ralph Garr, a leadoff hitter, who in 1974 hit .353. But Garr was not as good a leadoff man as he should have been that year because he walked only 28 times and he struck out 52 times. He should have been batting lower in the order, a better place for someone who can not resist hacking at anything thrown near him. The best leadoff man Johnson ever saw was the Giants' Bobby Bonds in 1973, the season Bonds almost became what Canseco became 15 years later, baseball's first 40–40 (home runs and stolen bases) man. Bonds hit .283 but that is only part of the story. Pitchers did not want to pitch to him because he had enough power to hit 39 home runs that year. So they walked him 87 times. But they hated doing that because he had enough speed to steal 43 bases that year.
Any batter would like to make pitchers as anxious as power hitters do. Hear Hershiser on that subject: "Power hitters, in general, if you make your pitch, you get them out. If you make a mistake it will hurt you bad. When I make a mistake to a singles hitter, he hits it for a single. When I make a good pitch to the next singles hitter, he hits it on the ground and I get a double play and it erases the hit. I make a mistake to a power hitter, he hits it out of the park or for a double and I have no way of getting a double play to erase the hit. With singles hitters the odds are in my favor. If they keep hitting the ball on the ground, sooner or later they are going to hit one at somebody for a double play. Or I'll get the lead runner. But as soon as power hitters hit the ball in the air and they get a double or triple, there is no force play anymore, they can advance with an out and score a run." Ah, but what if that singles hitter steals second, turning that single into a two-stage, delayed-action double? Then there goes the force play, there goes the double play.
Gwynn has what is called "gap power," the power to drive hits between outfielders. It is often less spectacular but is almost always more productive than mere "warning-track power," the power to make noisy outs. Through 1989 Gwynn had 192 doubles and 51 triples. Harmon Killebrew, who hit more home runs than anyone else in the 1960s, is a suitable symbol of big bang baseball: 8,147 at bats, zero sacrifices. Gwynn, with his high average and large number of stolen bases, is a suitable symbol of the direction in which baseball has moved.
Eight decades ago (or so the story is) an extremely fat baseball fan, finding his seat at the park confining, heaved himself to his feet to stretch. It was the seventh inning. Because the 300-pound fellow was the President of the United States, everyone around him stood up respectfully. William Howard Taft thereby started a useful tradition, which is more than can be said for many presidents.
One should not tamper with traditions, but it has been suggested that the seventh-inning stretch should be moved to the fifth inning because games today are, on average, about 45 minutes longer than they were in Taft's time. Games have been becoming longer partly because fewer hitters are swinging at first and second pitches. Information is one reason more batters are waiting longer before they start swinging. They know, or think they know, pitchers' patterns, so they sometimes think they gain an advantage on the pitcher by going deeper into the count. Because batters are going deeper into the count, there are more walks and strikeouts, both of which take time. And the increased emphasis on base stealing has pitchers throwing over to first more frequently to hold runners on. Furthermore, Keith Hernandez says that because of advance scouts "the first game of a series becomes a feeling-out process. You might take more pitches to see what they're thinking."
The man standing behind the batter and facing the pitcher—the umpire—may be thinking, or at least acting, in a way that both the batter and the pitcher need to be aware of.
"Baseball," said Bill Veeck, team owner (Indians, Browns, White Sox) and innovator, "is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off." Yes, but like the law, the rules of baseball are not as neat in practice as they are on paper. And the rules, like the law, are not, alas, the same for all people. The mighty have things better. As we have seen already, the history of the strike zone is another episode in the struggle to use written law to define and confine elusive reality. But law can be shaped by the discretion of judges (umpires, in this case). The formal definition of the strike zone has not meant much. When the _de jure_ zone extended from the top of the batter's shoulders to the bottom of his knees it was nearly twice the size of today's _de facto_ strike zone. One way umpires have contracted the zone is by using the elasticity inherent in the need to define where the shoulders are relative to the knees when the batter is in his natural stance, or the stance as it is when the batter is in the act of swinging.
Culture follows the law and so today most pitchers are low-ball pitchers. The great pitch of the 1980s was the split-finger fastball, which sinks. Most hitters are low-ball hitters. Otherwise they would not be in the major leagues. To see how much has changed in a short time, look at Ted Williams's book _The Science of Hitting_ , published in 1970. In it Williams produced a famous picture of the strike zone filled with baseballs. The zone was divided into different colored sections to show the various percentages he would hit if he swung at pitches delivered there. His strike zone is 11 rows high. The top four rows, filled with balls marked with averages from .300 to .400, are out of the strike zone as umpires call it today, just two decades after Williams wrote that book. Williams had to cope with a larger strike zone than exists today but that was not a handicap because he liked to hit high pitches. The strike zone, he wrote, "is approximately the width of seven baseballs, allowing for pitches on 'the black' being called strikes. When a batter starts swinging at pitches just two inches out of that zone, he has increased the pitcher's target from approximately 4.2 square feet to about 5.8 square feet—an increase of 38 percent. Allow a pitcher that much of an advantage and you will be a .250 hitter."
There is evidence that umpires give the best batters a smaller strike zone than other batters must cope with, and give the best pitchers bigger strike zones to throw to. Once a flustered rookie pitcher was facing Rogers Hornsby and threw three consecutive pitches that were close to the plate but were called balls. The rookie complained and the umpire responded, "Young man, when you pitch a strike, Mr. Hornsby will let you know." Fine pitchers, too, get some deference from umpires. The Tigers' Jack Morris says he gets, in general, a bigger strike zone as an established veteran than he had as a rookie "and it should be that way." He says, "Early in the game you establish yourself. I'll throw two balls right on the corner. They might be balls. But I throw a third one there, it might become a strike because I have shown the umpire that I can put the same pitch in the same location three times." Morris, therefore, does not complain when the practice of umpires deferring to established stars works to the advantage of some hitters. "My first two years," Morris remembers, "when Carl Yastrzemski was up, if Carl didn't swing, it was not a strike. And I mean to tell you I threw balls right down the middle of the plate, belt-high, and you could not doubt it, but if Carl didn't swing, it was not a strike."
There once was a judge who liked to say, "In my youth, when matched against a more experienced attorney, I lost many cases I should have won. But later, when I became an experienced attorney and was matched against attorneys fresh from law school, I won many cases I should have lost. Thus justice was served." Over a long career, things even out.
Strike zones vary, over time and with different umpires. Batting conditions vary in other ways, too. Referring to differences between batting conditions in ballparks, Bill James says what Ping Bodie said when Walter Johnson struck him out: "You can't hit what you can't see." Visibility varies significantly from the best parks (Royals Stadium) to the worst (Shea Stadium). The huge foul territory in Oakland's Coliseum probably knocks 5 to 7 points off batting averages because of pop fouls that would land in the seats in many other parks. The narrow foul territory in Fenway Park probably adds as much. Since World War II the Red Sox have had 18 batting champions (through 1989), although Ted Williams and Wade Boggs would have prospered anywhere. Five to 7 points are a lot, given that there may be only a 15- or 20-point spread between a good hitting team and a poor hitting team.
The ball carries better at higher altitudes (Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium is baseball's highest, 1,000 feet above sea level). Yankee Stadium's deep power alleys clearly hurt Joe DiMaggio, who hit 213 home runs on the road and only 148 at home. Bill James notes that when Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams played in neutral parks (that is, excluding Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium), DiMaggio outhit Williams .333 to .328. With Fenway as his home park, DiMaggio might have hit more than 600 home runs. A tragic automobile accident may have prevented the most freakish playing field of modern times from making a mockery of one of baseball's most revered records, the record for most home runs in a season. The year the Dodgers moved from Ebbets Field to the Los Angeles Coliseum, with its ludicrous 250-foot left-field line, Don Drysdale's ERA soared to 4.17 from 2.69 the previous year. If Roy Campanella, master of high-arc home runs, had not been paralyzed in an automobile accident the winter before that first Coliseum season, he might well have beaten Roger Maris in the race to break Babe Ruth's single-season home-run record.
The era of exotic park effects is over. Fenway is the last park with a dominating peculiarity—The Wall, 315 feet down the left-field line—that influences batters and pitchers and managers in many ways. All parks built after 1958 have been required to have foul lines at least 325 feet long and a center-field fence at least 400 feet from home plate. Today the most important variable is the playing surface: grass or plastic. In the National League the player who hits the most doubles is almost always someone who plays his home games on artificial turf. In fact, since 1970 only Bill Buckner with the 1981 and 1983 Cubs has been an exception to that rule. The parks with artificial turf are generally more spacious than those with grass, so the running game is apt to be emphasized on offense. And turf teams need speed to cover the large outfields. Thus turf teams are generally quicker, so their hitters get from home to second quickly while batted balls are rattling around on the large carpeted outfields.
Such parks may offend purists, but they may also be conducive to virtue. Bill James, who is a ballpark determinist, believes that parks can even shape the souls of players, and hence the morales of teams:
I have speculated before that the historical tendency of the Boston Red Sox to split into civil camps of stars and scrubs might be related to the park in which they play. Whereas the Houston Astros play in a park in which an offense consists by necessity of one man who gets on base, one who moves him along, and one who brings him around, Fenway Park rewards and thus encourages players who act as individuals, since they can create runs by their individual acts.
That may be, but Gwynn's preference for particular parks is less esoteric. His favorite parks away from home are Atlanta and Cincinnati. "They have big gaps and I'm a gap hitter. Any park that has a 385-foot alley, you've got to love." The crucial variable is not the playing surface—Atlanta is grass, Cincinnati is plastic—but the configuration of the park. That matters most in turning singles into doubles and doubles into triples. Regarding Gwynn's bread and butter, the humble but useful single, he is one of those batters who is amazingly indifferent to the differences between batting conditions in his home park and all the rest. Stan Musial may have been baseball's most consistent hitter, at least as measured by this stunning statistic: He had 3,630 hits, 1,815 at home and 1,815 on the road. Pete Rose's 4,256 hits were divided between 2,123 at home and 2,133 on the road. Al Kaline's 3,007 included 1,508 at home, 1,499 away. Through 1989 Gwynn's hits were distributed 674 at home and 680 away.
A batter's experience at the plate can be unpleasant. The first chapter of Leonard Koppett's _A Thinking Man's Guide to Baseball_ , published in 1967, opens with a one-word paragraph: "Fear." Koppett continues, "Fear is the fundamental factor in hitting." The fear is instinctive and reasonable. A baseball is hard and is thrown hard. If it hits you it always hurts, it sometimes injures and it can kill. Tony Kubek says that although almost all players deny it, the "fear factor" is large in baseball. It is more important in baseball than in any other sport. Kubek says, "I remember, years and years ago, when I was first breaking in, Mantle telling me that at least once a year and maybe more 'I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, sweating a cold sweat, with the ball coming right at my head.'"
Even the most gentlemanly pitchers can be provoked to use fear. Kubek says that Sandy Koufax, "who could throw a baseball maybe better than anybody in history," once threatened Lou Brock just because Brock stole a base in a crucial situation. As Brock was dusting himself off at second, Koufax turned to him and, according to Kubek, said, "Next time you do that I'm going to hit you right in the head." Brock stole another base against Koufax. He then became the only man Koufax ever hit in the head. Brock stole no more bases off Koufax.
Of course it is batting, not baserunning, that usually brings what used to be called "bean balls" and now is referred to as "chin music." As was mentioned earlier, there is a particular style of batting that pitchers find especially problematic, and provoking. It is that Charlie Lau style, in which batters dive in over the plate to enhance bat coverage of the outside corner. A batter diving in causes a pitcher to come inside to drive the batter back. Close observers of the game detected a pattern: Teams coached by Lau had an unusual number of hit batters and bench-clearing dust-ups. Andre Dawson of the Cubs is a "diving" batter. It was in a game against the Padres at Wrigley Field that Dawson, diving in against the pitches of Eric Show, was hit in the face by a slider. Gwynn remembers that day clearly because the Cubs' pitcher, Scott Sanderson, tried to retaliate. Sanderson's principle of proportionality identified Gwynn as the Padre of Dawson's stature. "Sanderson was taking potshots at me the day Dawson got hit. He was buzzing me. I got in my same stance. I was still diving over the plate. I took a couple of fastballs running in right at my chin. I got out of the way. If I get hit, I'm not going to get it in the head."
Is there ever a trace of fear in Gwynn when he goes to bat? "Not at all," he says with a firmness convincingly free of bravado. "I just feel I'm quick enough to get out of the way." The most he will concede is this small caveat: There is a certain, well, not fear but perhaps anxiety "when you go up to the plate against a left-hander you've never seen before and he's got a funky delivery and you see a curveball coming right at you and you flinch and it comes over for a strike." But flinching is not fear.
A batter's experience at the plate can be considerably influenced by who bats before him and who bats immediately after him. As Tony La Russa says, the ideal place to hit is behind Rickey Henderson and in front of Don Mattingly: Henderson gets on base and bothers the pitchers, who have trouble concentrating on the hitter and are reluctant to throw breaking balls lest Henderson steal second standing up. So they are going to throw the next batter a lot of fastballs and will throw them in the strike zone lest they walk the batter and bring up Mattingly with two runners on. In the second half of the 1989 season, after Henderson was traded from the Yankees to the Athletics and after the injured Canseco returned to the lineup, the happiest man in America was Carney Lansford, who found himself batting just behind Henderson and just in front of Canseco. Lansford finished three points behind Puckett in the batting race; just two more hits in the same number of at bats and he would have won.
Baseball often is subject to a domino effect, for better or for worse. This was demonstrated, at the Cardinals' expense, in the 1985 World Series. During the League Championship Series Vince Coleman collided with a tarpaulin (or it with him) and he was injured. When the tarpaulin ate Coleman, it also ate Willie McGee. Batting without Coleman on base, McGee saw fewer of the fastballs he had devoured during that MVP season. And because Coleman was not on first with a first baseman holding him, McGee did not have a hole to hit through on the right side. And the pitcher was not a nervous wreck. The "tarpaulin effect" trickled down to the third (Tommy Herr) and fourth (Jack Clark) hitters. The Royals should have voted the tarpaulin a share of the Series take.
For Gwynn the ideal situation is to bat right after someone who has a high on-base percentage and is a base-stealing threat—someone like Alan Wiggins in 1984. In that pennant-winning season Wiggins stole 70 bases and scored 106 runs. The effect of someone like Wiggins batting in front of Gwynn is reinforced by having a power hitter batting behind him, someone like Jack Clark, if Clark is having a good year. (Whether Clark has a good year depends in part on whether the man batting behind him is enough of a threat to cause pitchers to throw strikes to Clark rather than walk him.) Having a power hitter behind Gwynn would make pitchers more wary of walking Gwynn, even if Wiggins, by stealing second, had opened up first base. (In 1961 Roger Maris hit 61 home runs but never received an intentional walk. That is one advantage of batting with Mickey Mantle leaning on one knee in the on-deck circle.)
If there is a runner on first when Gwynn comes to the plate, the pitcher has a problem. "Usually with a runner on first and no outs, or one out, they're going to pitch to a left-hander away," Gwynn says. "They want him to hit the other way." Away, that is, from the hole created by the first baseman holding the runner on first. But that puts the pitcher in the position of serving up Gwynn's preference—the outside pitch he can drive to left with his inside-out swing. The pitcher's position is made worse if the runner on base is a base-stealing threat of the sort Alan Wiggins was in 1984. "We haven't had a guy like Wiggy since he left. Having a guy like that in front of you can open up some things for a hitter." That is putting it mildly. If the runner on first is as fast as Wiggins was, the pitcher's problem is compounded because Gwynn can guess—actually, he is not guessing, he knows—what array of pitches will be coming his way. He is going to see a high ratio of fastballs to breaking balls. (Unless, of course, the pitcher has an exceptionally quick release time to the plate and can stay with breaking pitches.)
Having Wiggins on base was, on balance, very good for Gwynn, but it was not an unmixed blessing. Gwynn's first thought when he came to the plate with Wiggins on base was to take at least one pitch so Wiggins could have a chance to steal. Pitchers—they are not dummies—knew this. They would put the first pitch over the plate so he often found himself batting behind in the count before he buckled down to the main business of putting the ball in play. "At times in 1984 I'd see out of the corner of my eye that Wiggins had got a great jump, so I'd take the pitch even if I already had a strike on me." Then, with the runner on second and no one out, Gwynn's job was to get the runner over to third. Gwynn would have two strikes on him, but felt that in such a situation hitting with two strikes was not much different than hitting with no strikes because "all you had to do was put your bat on the ball. Wiggins was so fast, no one was going to throw him out at third."
When Wiggins went from the Padres to the Orioles in the middle of the 1985 season, Gwynn had to become a better hitter. Suddenly, hitting was a more complicated business because he no longer got the steady diet of fastballs that pitchers threw to him when Wiggins was on base. How soon did he notice the difference that Wiggins's departure was going to make? Gwynn snaps his fingers by way of saying: instantly. "As soon as he was gone, the fastballs ceased coming. When he was here I knew I could go up there with him on base, take a fastball, take another fastball, 2-and-0, take another one, 2-and-l, and know I was still going to get another fastball. Knowing that I'd get all fastballs outweighed the disadvantage of not being able to swing early in the count. I'd take until I had a strike on me. If I never got a strike, I'd walk on four pitches because I wasn't going to hack until I gave him a chance to steal or I had got a strike. If Wiggins stole second and I didn't have a strike on me, I'd take another pitch so he could steal third."
Gwynn's control of the bat makes him a good hit-and-run player. The most important thing in a hit-and-run situation is not what you do but what you avoid doing. You avoid swinging and missing and you avoid hitting the ball hard in the air to the infield. A swing and a miss or a line drive to the infield is trouble for a runner in motion. The Padres experimented briefly with having Gwynn give his own hit-and-run sign to a runner on first. But the first time he tried it, the runner missed the sign—fortunately, as it turned out. Gwynn hit a ball through the middle. If the runner had got the sign and started for second with the pitch, the second baseman would have been moving toward the middle to cover second base and would have fielded Gwynn's ground ball, perhaps for a double play. But the runner was not moving, so neither was the second baseman, and the ball went through for a hit.
Gwynn reads the other team's pitching intentions toward him by watching the middle infielders. "If they play me up the middle they are planning to start me inside and get me out away. If they are playing me in the holes they will pitch me inside, thinking that if I pull it, it will go into the hole on the right side, and if I go inside-out I'll hit it in the hole on the other side." When Gwynn comes up with a man on first in a running situation, the other team's shortstop usually doesn't plan to cover second. "Usually they're going to pitch me away and have the second baseman cover." Often Gwynn will try to go to right field, through the hole created by the first baseman holding the runner on first and the second baseman breaking over to cover second. Often Gwynn will take a few pitches to give the runner a chance to steal. "But once I get a strike on me I can't do that anymore"—at least, not with Alan Wiggins gone. Then he has to see several things, almost simultaneously, that are not in a single field of vision. "Out of the corner of my eye I can see the runner going and I can shift my vision quickly to the pitcher again, and try to see who is moving, who is covering [second]. Sometimes, like in 1984,1 guessed right and hit to the hole. But since Wiggy has been gone, I haven't done that too much."
La Russa in the dugout: A modern manager's paperwork is never done. (Michael Zagaris)
_Above:_ The man and the man-child: La Russa talks, Jose Canseco listens. (V. J. _hovero/Sports Illustrated_ )
_Right:_ La Russa: With his ample dark hair and thick eyebrows, and the bill of his cap pulled low, keeping his eyes in perpetual shadow, his watchfulness has an aspect of brooding. (Courtesy of the Oakland Athletics)
_Top:_ Rene Lachemann, coach, and Terry Steinbach, catcher, prepare for a game. (Michael Zagaris)
_Right:_ "You know how you pitch Mike Schmidt?" asks Jim Lefebvre rhetorically. "Hard fastballs inside, sliders down and away. You know how you pitch Henry Aaron? Willie Mays? Hard stuff inside, soft away. You know how you pitch Willie Stargell? Hard stuff inside, soft away. You know how you pitch God? Hard stuff inside, then down and away, and if you get it there you'll get Him out. Even though He'll know it's coming. Or at least they say He knows." (Courtesy of the Oakland Athletics)
_Bottom:_ Dave Duncan, the Athletics' pitching coach, with his best pupil, Dave Stewart, the 1989 World Series MVP. (John McDonough/Sports _Illustrated)_
_Above:_ Coach, catcher and pupil: Ron Perranoski and Rick Dempsey with pitcher William Brennan. "You've got to concentrate on each play, each hitter, each pitch," says Dempsey. "All this makes the game much slower and much clearer. It breaks it down to its smallest part. If you take the game like that—one pitch, one hitter, one inning at a time, and then one _game_ at a time—the next thing you know, you look up and you've won." (Tom DiPace)
_Right:_ Hershiser pitching: Pitching, like politics and marriage and other difficult undertakings, illustrates the axiom that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Which means: In the real world, be ready to settle for something short of everything. But Hershiser is reluctant to settle. Does he go to the mound in the first inning planning to pitch a complete game? "A perfect game," Hershiser replies. "If they get a hit, then I am throwing a one-hitter. If they get a walk, it's my last walk. I deal with perfection to the point that it's logical to conceive it. History is history, the future is perfect." (Paul Richards/UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos)
_Top:_ Davey Johnson, the Mets' manager, and Dwight Gooden, a pitcher to whom Johnson does not need to recommend the theory of unfavorable chance deviation. (Adam J. Stoltman/Duomo)
_Bottom:_ Roger Craig is manager of the Giants and Edison of the pitchers' guild. He was pioneer and proselyte of the split-finger fastball. (Robert Beck/All sport USA)
_Top:_ Swindell knows that high velocity is nice but it is no substitute for _pitching_. (Charles Bernhardt/Allsport USA)
_Bottom:_ "We're little kids playing a little kid's game," says Jim Gott, relief pitcher. "Why shouldn't we show emotion?" There is an answer to that question. Showing emotion is just _not done_ because baseball is such a humbling game. Gott earned 34 saves in 1988. In 1989 he pitched two-thirds of an inning. After the 1989 season he became a Dodger. (Peter Diana)
_Top:_ Tony Gwynn is congratulated by Will Clark after beating Clark for the 1989 National League batting title in his last at bat of the season. The first-base coach is Greg Riddoch. An opposing catcher says of Tony Gwynn: "Out of 650 at bats in a season you will fool him maybe ten times." Ten times is less than twice a month. (Kirk Schlea/Allsport USA)
_Bottom:_ Tony Gwynn at work on the base paths. Baseball connoisseurs consider baserunning the purest baseball achievement because it is the facet of the game in which luck matters least. (Walt Frerck/UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos)
Tony Gwynn awaiting his two-tenths of a second: A 90-mile-per-hour fastball that leaves a pitcher's hand 55 feet from the plate is traveling 132 feet per second and will reach the plate in .4167 second. A change-up or slow breaking ball loitering along at 80 miles per hour travels 117.3 feet per second and will arrive in .4688 second. The difference is .052 of a second and is crucial. Having decided to hit the pitch, the batter has about two-tenths of a second to make his body do it. The ball can be touched by the bat in about 2 feet of the pitch's path, or for about fifteen-thousandths of a second. (Robert Beck/Allsport USA)
_Top:_ Cal lunges to his right: His is a deceptively bland countenance. The blandness is actually a quiet force, a kind of confidence that comes only to athletes and other performers, and only to a few of them. It is confidence in _being able to do it_. (Jerry Wachter/Baltimore Orioles)
_Bottom:_ Two Ripkens (Bill left, Cal right), two outs. (Jerry Wachter/Baltimore Orioles)
Assuming an average of 130 pitches per game over a 162-game season, Ripken tenses, rocks forward on the balls of his feet and begins to lean or move in toward the infield grass, or to one side or the other, 21,000 times each season. Ripken has rocked forward on the balls of his feet more often than any other player since May 30, 1982—the day his consecutive-game streak began. (Tom DiPace)
Top: Ray Miller, a.k.a. The Rabbit, is a philosopher, scientist, social scientist, education theorist and pitching coach. "I don't understand how anyone hits a baseball," says Miller. "You play golf and the damn thing is sitting there and all you've got to do is hit it and that's hard enough." (Peter Diana)
_Right:_ Milwaukee's manager Tom Trebelhorn. Before the Brewers there was Boise, and teaching Rickey Henderson the takeoff sign. "Baseball has got to be fun, because if it is not fun, it's a long time to be in agony." (Tom DiPace)
_Bottom:_ Cal Ripken, Sr., is a former minor league catcher who looks like something whittled from an old fungo bat. When tanned, his skin is the color of a new baseball glove, but it has the wrinkles and creases of one that's seen a lot of hard use. Any reader of John Tunis's boys' books knows that a short, scrappy former catcher should be "bandy-legged." Cal, Sr., is. (Jerry Wachter/Sports _Illustrated)_
Tony Kubek: "The game lends itself to sitting around." (Courtesy of NBC Sports)
Is there much guessing? Doesn't the second baseman generally cover, because of Gwynn's preference for going to left? "Usually—unless they're going to throw me a breaking ball, especially one inside. Then the shortstop is going to cover." Gwynn has time to change his plan because his plan includes anticipating the need to adjust. "I'm going to go up there and look for a fastball and adjust on anything else. If I can pick it up early enough, then I can adjust and try to hit the hole of whoever is covering." But usually he does not recognize the rotation of the ball. And he insists that the pitcher's arm speed is not the clue. What tells him? "The ball. Not his arm, not his motion, just the ball. You see it out there when he lets it go. You see something that tips you off." He can not say what it is or what he then does. "I see it and I react. You recognize what it is and your hands and body take over." He has then entered the realm of muscle memory. "I'm going to take my stride and my hands are going to go up, and then I recognize the pitch, then I'm just going to stay there until it's time to swing the bat." He is talking about staying there poised to swing, letting time pass, for a fraction of a tenth of a second.
Suppose Gwynn is on first and a left-hander is pitching to a fastball hitter with power, and the count is 0–2. The chances are the pitcher will not throw a fastball. He might go to a breaking ball, changing his release time from 1.3 to 1.32 seconds. Even that minute difference makes that a better pitch to run on. Except—there is always a complication—the situation as described is a good one for the other team to pitch out because the pitcher, being ahead in the count, can afford to waste a pitch.
In the _Official Baseball Rules_ , section 2.00 deals with definitions of terms, including these two:
A BATTER is an offensive player who takes his position in the batter's box.
BATTER-RUNNER is a term that identifies the offensive player who has just finished his time at bat until he is put out or until the play on which he became a runner ends.
A good batter spends a good deal of time as a batter-runner. Baserunning is as much a Gwynn speciality as getting on base. It has been said that baseball connoisseurs consider baserunning the purest baseball achievement because it is the facet of the game in which luck matters least. Leonard Koppett is correct: Maury Wills breaking Ty Cobb's record by stealing 104 bases in 1962 was a more spectacular achievement than Maris breaking Ruth's record the year before. Today baserunning, and especially base stealing, is a more important part of baseball than ever. This is so for several reasons, the first of which is the increased emphasis on speed generally.
Two tennis terms can usefully be applied to baseball—"forced errors" and "unforced errors." Speed on offense, at bat and on the bases, can force errors on the defense by spreading general anxiety and forcing defenders to make perfect executions in particular cases. Reggie Jackson, who can not be accused of underemphasizing the importance of power, is mightily impressed by the sort of speed possessed by Vince Coleman. Jackson notes that in 1988, 34 of Coleman's 160 hits never left the infield—they were infield hits and hits on bunts. Take those away and Coleman would have hit .205 instead of .260. "So he ran .55 points. He's got to hit .200 and run .100 to bat .300."
Houston's Mike Scott says, "Coleman can outrun the ball." In 1987 Coleman stole successfully 19 consecutive times _on pitchouts_. Coleman has led the league in stolen bases every year he has been in the league. He reached 400 stolen bases (407, actually) in four seasons. In 1988 he would have been the leading base stealer on two major league teams just with his 24 steals of third. And he wasted no time in April, 1989, picking up where he had left off six months earlier. In the first inning of the first game of the 1989 season he stole second and third. It was the fiftieth time in his short career (he was just beginning his fifth season) he had done that. As he dusted himself off at third his career record against the Mets was 40 steals in 41 attempts. By midway in the 1989 season he was breaking a record—his own record—every time he stole a base. It was the record for consecutive successful steals. On July 28 the streak ended at 50. A player like Coleman (Rickey Henderson of the Athletics is another, Tim Raines of the Expos is a third, Gerald Young of the Astros is a fourth, and there are others) is a physical phenomenon new to baseball. He is a player so fast, and so technically accomplished at getting a jump, that he changes—shatters, almost—the magical balance struck by Alexander Cartwright when he put the bases 90 feet apart.
Tom Boswell believes that this has gone too far. He proposes eliminating the balk rule. That would, he believes, put mediocre base stealers out of business and restore the equilibrium of 90 feet. However, there are less drastic measures that can, and have in the past, been taken. The balk rule is as elastic as umpires want it to be. The National League, in effect, recently altered the rule by different enforcement. The league began enforcing tougher balk rules to give base runners more of a break. They were trying to reacquire the reputation they got from the legs of Jackie Robinson, Lou Brock and Maury Wills—the reputation as a league of dash and daring-do. Kubek also believes (perhaps this is an old American Leaguer's bias) that the National League panicked when Rickey Henderson burst on the scene as a base stealer. National Leaguers thought: Good grief! The American League, with its smaller parks, is the home-run league and now it is stealing our glory by stealing bases.
Catchers probably would, to a man, rally to Boswell's proposal for eliminating the balk rule. Not long ago a competent catcher was expected to throw out 50 percent of runners attempting to steal. In 1989 the major league's best was the Royals' Bob Boone at 42.3 percent. American League catchers averaged 29.2 percent, National League catchers 31.9 percent. Those numbers are produced in part by the decline in the quality of catching, as will be noted in the next chapter. But the numbers also reflect the fact that runners are faster and, more important, that they have more information. For both reasons, expectations and standards have changed.
When Jose Canseco, the model of the modern sprinter-slugger, had his 40–40 season, Mickey Mantle mused—he was serious—that if he had known folks would make such a fuss about that achievement, he would have done it a few times. He certainly could have. The fact that Mickey Mantle, one of the finest players ever and certainly the swiftest slugger, stole only 153 bases in 18 seasons is partly explained by the fact that he had bad legs. A bone disease made every step painful and his managers wanted to avoid injuries that would make matters worse. But more than mere fear of injury (although that played a part) explains the fact that Joe DiMaggio, universally regarded as a brilliant base runner, stole a total of just 30 bases in his 13 seasons. In three seasons he stole none. In three others he stole only one. Ralph Kiner is second only to Babe Ruth on his ratio of home runs to at bats. Five times he hit 40 or more in a season, including 51 in 1947 and 54 in 1949. His career high in stolen bases also came in 1949. It was just 6. Not even accomplished base stealers stole many by today's standards. Jackie Robinson's best season total was 37. Willie Mays led the league four times with 40, 38, 31 and 27—a total of 136 bases, just six more than Rickey Henderson stole in 1982.
One reason expectations have changed is that the talent pool has changed. In 1947 Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier and was the National League's stolen base leader. In the next 42 seasons, through 1988, the two leagues awarded 84 stolen base titles. Seventy-seven of them went to black or Latin players. No one knows why, for example, blacks are America's best sprinters, but no one doubts that they are.
Another reason why more is now expected in the way of stolen bases is that we now know that more is possible. And more is possible because more is known. There is more information about what particular pitchers and catchers can and can not do.
Information is one reason why, after the 1989 season, Gwynn was the second player in half a century (Rod Carew was the other, though he finished his career at "only" .328) to have a career average of .330 and 200 stolen bases. Gwynn, says McKeon, "is on his own. He can go anytime." His decision to go depends, in part, on the game situation. However, if Gwynn is a runner on first base and there is no one on second, he will be somewhat inhibited about stealing if there is a power hitter coming up next. He does not want to get caught stealing when the batter is someone who can drive him in from first base. And he certainly does not want to get caught stealing with two outs. So having Clark come to the plate right after him does inhibit Gwynn's baserunning a bit. "I don't want to take the bat out of his hands." But he is not very inhibited. He is now so confident of his ability to read pitchers' movements on the mound that he is not going to get thrown out often. "In a first-and-third situation, if I'm on first, if I steal early in the count, and they're behind in the count, they're just going to walk Clark. So I wait until it gets to be two strikes. If they're ahead 0–2 and I take off and the pitch is a ball, I don't think they'll walk him 1–2."
Gwynn continues: "I usually don't like running on a l-and-0 count. The pitcher might throw the batter a good pitch to hit and the fact of me going might take the hitter's concentration off hitting that pitch. One-and-1 is a good pitch to go on. They might pitch out, sure. But with a guy like Kruky [John Kruk] hitting they're not going to come right down Broadway with it. They're going to try to throw a breaking ball."
Gwynn's decision to try to steal also depends on what he knows about the pitcher's and catcher's "release times." That means it depends on what he and Greg Riddoch, first-base coach and then manager, have seen on the field and on tape.
Let us here deal with the basic data. While the runner on first who is thinking about stealing is thinking about 90 feet, the catcher is thinking about 127 feet 3% inches—the distance from home plate to second base. And the catcher is hoping that his pitcher will _hurry up_. Hurry, that is, in getting the ball to the plate. That does not mean abandoning breaking balls and just throwing fastballs with a runner on first. Rather, what is meant by "quickness to the plate" is a good "release time," the time that elapses from the instant the pitcher, in the stretch position, begins his move to the plate—the instant the "discernible stop" at the belt ends—to the moment the ball hits the catcher's mitt. The runner on first wants to know that time. A time of 1.2 seconds is good, 1.3 is average and anything higher is an invitation to run. The runner also wants to know the catcher's release time, "pop to pop"—that is, from the time the ball hits the catcher's mitt to the instant his throw pops into the glove of the shortstop or second baseman covering second. That should be two seconds flat, or less. For this reason you may see a coach standing on the mound at Spring Training with a basketful of baseballs, pitching to a catcher. There is no batter; another coach stands next to the catcher, a stopwatch in hand; and an infielder stands at second base. The coach with the watch is measuring the "pop-to-pop" time. It is a measurement not only of the power of the catcher's arm, but also, and at least as important, of the quickness of his "release." What goes into a "release" includes three things.
First, how quickly he grabs the ball from his glove. This is especially important in the second decade P.B.—Post Bench. Johnny Bench, probably the greatest catcher ever and certainly the best of the postwar era, popularized the practice of catching the ball one-handed, with the "meat hand" (that phrase is not one of baseball's lovelier locutions) held back at the catcher's side, out of harm's way. Now, catching is for those who, like John Paul Jones, want to make a vocation of going in harm's way. The commonest harm to catchers comes from foul tips. They can break fingers, tear fingernails and do lots of other damage to the unprotected hand. That happens less now, thanks to Bench. But his style of catching requires special speed in plucking the ball from the pocket of the mitt. The second factor determining a catcher's "release time" is how fast he rises and turns as much as he needs to before throwing. The third factor is the swiftness and compactness of his arm motion in sending the ball on its way. So the coach with the stopwatch will tell the catcher, "1.94, not bad... 2.12, you'll not nail many people with that... 2.04, not good enough... good: 1.85..." The difference between "not bad" (1.94) and good is nine one-hundredths of a second.
Pitchers' and catchers' release times are relatively new considerations in baseball. When Roger Craig was pitching in the 1950s, did anyone ever tell him his release time? "No, they didn't know what that was." One of the first people to time pitchers' moves to the plate was Lou Brock, who would do it while in the dugout during the years when he was setting stolen base records. Roger Craig, a former pitcher, and a censorious one at that, says you too often see the following sequence of events: The pitcher is slow to the plate, the catcher has to hurry his throw, the ball sails or skips into center field, the runner goes to third and scores on a sacrifice fly. "People then say the catcher lost the game. Actually, the pitcher did." A catcher with a lightning release time and a cannon arm can at least partially make up for a pitcher's deficiencies. By mid-August, 1988, Benito Santiago, the Padres' catcher, had picked off eight runners—five of them at second. The eighth was the Mets' Wally Backman, nailed by a throw Santiago had gunned to second from his knees. In the same game Santiago threw out Howard Johnson trying to steal. Later in the game Johnson said to Santiago, "I'm never running on you again." And Backman said, "I had a stopwatch on [Padres pitcher] Andy Hawkins. It was taking him 1.5 seconds to come to the plate. Now, 1.3 is borderline and 1.5 you should steal standing up. Santiago throws out Hojo [Howard Johnson] easily. The guy is unbelievable." The guy's pop-to-pop time compensated for Hawkins's sluggish move to the plate.
According to Craig, "The average pitcher's release time today is 1.35 seconds. Rick Reuschel's is the greatest. He gets rid of the ball quicker than any pitcher I've ever seen, around 1.1 to 1.2. The average is 1.35 to 1.4. We find a guy in the 1.5s and we're going to run on him." Some pitchers have two release times, say, 1.3 if they think the runner is a threat to steal, 1.5 if not. Others are 1.3 with a runner on first but are a more relaxed 1.5 with a runner on second. An observant advance scout can tell his manager that although particular players probably can not steal second off a particular pitcher, they probably can steal third.
"Let's take Coleman," says Greg Riddoch, referring to Vince Coleman, lead sprinter on the Cardinals' track team. "From his stealing lead he is 2.9 seconds to second base. Tim Raines [of the Expos, the last man to lead the National League in stolen bases in the era B.c.—Before Coleman] is 3-flat to 3.2. Knowing those facts, I can predict, with the pitcher's and catcher's release times, whether we have a chance to get him. So now let's say our pitcher is 1.2 to the plate and our catcher is 2-flat. Cumulatively that's 3.2 seconds. Now, you take Tim Raines, who's 3.2 to second at his slowest. You have to be perfect to get him. That tells me what I have to do to try to hold Raines on first. I don't want to show him the same move twice in a row. Most base runners, give them the same move twice in a row, they're gone. So before the first pitch I just hold the ball. The second pitch I throw over to first base. The third pitch maybe I throw to first again. The fourth pitch maybe I quick-pitch to the plate. By mixing his moves the pitcher makes it difficult for the runner to narrow the calculation of when to go." And it tells the pitcher's manager when it might be best to call a pitchout.
Riddoch is an example of those baseball people who matter at the margins of a sport where marginal differences matter a lot. He was born and still lives in Greeley, Colorado. After graduating from the University of Northern Colorado he signed with the Cincinnati Reds organization. He never made it to, or even close to, the major leagues. However, in baseball there is no sting to the adage that "those who can, do; those who can't, teach." In baseball, those who never could do it with major league proficiency, no matter how hard they tried, often are the ones who can teach it well. They can because for them striving was largely a matter of the mind.
It is a small, cozy world, this community of baseball. Riddoch, who worked for the Reds for 18 years, managed in their minor league system for 9 years, with stops in Seattle, Washington, and Billings, Montana, and Eugene, Oregon. In Eugene he managed against Walla Walla when Gwynn was in his rookie year in professional baseball. Riddoch talks in the quiet, flat tone of someone trained to be orderly, which he has been. He has a B.A. degree in business administration and a master's degree from Colorado State in education administration. He taught psychology and coached for 13 years at the high school level. "I'm a detail person," he says. Gwynn says Riddoch's eye for details helped him steal 56 bases in 1987, Riddoch's first season as a Padres coach.
On a warm May morning in the visiting team's locker room at Wrigley Field, Riddoch was an island of soft-spoken calm as the younger men arrived to dress for the day game. Some of the early arrivals played cards and others played fast-and-loose with the rules of nutrition, washing down jelly donuts with sodas. Looking around him, Riddoch said that people in every industry, every business are looking around at one another and wondering why some are successful and others are not. The answer, he said, is that we are all creatures of habit, but successful people make a habit of attention to detail. "In our industry, when a pitcher is going to try to pick a runner off first base, he's going to try to set up that runner with something so that he can make his best move at the right time." So Riddoch videotapes all opposing pitchers' moves to the plate and to first base. There is always a tiny telltale tip-off. "We communicate 90 percent of what we do nonverbally. We communicate with body language or voice language—tone of voice." Pitchers communicate more than they want to. A right-handed pitcher, with his back to the runner on first base, may betray his intentions because today's uniforms are so much tighter than the old-fashioned flannels. Yogi Berra says, "If a pitcher's uniform fits too good, the base runner can see his buttocks tighten up just before a pickoff attempt." A pitcher's smallest mannerisms can reveal various intentions. Enough becomes predictable to narrow the odds against—in baseball the odds are almost always against—success. If Riddoch slows down the tape of a pitcher's motion he is always going to find a fingerprint of intention.
In 1987 and 1988, his first years of on-field duties with the Padres, Riddoch often spent several hours a day studying videotapes in slow motion. Pat Dobson, a former pitcher who is now the Padres' pitching coach, sometimes watched with him. Riddoch was content to pick up one clue in four hours. One pitcher might bring his hands to a slightly different stop position—slightly higher or lower—when he is going to throw to first rather than to the plate. Or the clue might be a slight tilt to the pitcher's shoulders, or where he puts his foot on the rubber, or even how his toe is pointing when he lifts his front leg. (That last is, he says, a dead giveaway for one particular "left-hander who is extraordinarily successful in this league." He will not say who it is. Loose lips sink ships.) "There are always some players," Riddoch acknowledges, "who think this is 'Joe college' stuff." But more and more players have, like Gwynn, gone to college. Since 1973 a majority of the players signed from the amateur draft have had some college experience. In the 1980s the average has been around 80 percent.
A lot of people in baseball know many of the things that can be learned from what Riddoch does with the videotape but, he says, they fail at the discipline of "staying on task." They do not do the detail work day in and day out, every inning. That is a habit he developed by being, as he puts it, "a limited-tool player. In order for me to compete, I had to have an edge. I wasn't fast but I could steal 15, 20 bases just knowing pitchers' moves." Riddoch coaches first base, so he is in a position to shout what he sees to his runners. "Some pitchers do a jump, a spin move to first. In order to do that, the back heel has to raise to step off the rubber." The raising of a heel brings a shout from Riddoch, calling the runner back to first.
When Gwynn gets to first, Riddoch may say, "Watch the back heel." If, when watching the heel, Gwynn sees any motion other than the significant lift of the heel, he knows that the ball is not coming to first, so he can lean toward, or go toward, second. There are more clues to pick up from right-handed pitchers because they have a more complicated task in throwing to first. They begin with their backs toward first. Riddoch says the left-hander's move is more troublesome because a left-hander is facing the runner and (here you hear the aggrieved voice of the First Base Coaches' Guild) umpires rarely call balks on left-handers.
Two months after I talked with Riddoch in Chicago, Gwynn talked to him in San Diego, on the diamond, in a game. Gwynn was on base; Nolan Ryan was pitching for the Astros. Riddoch, said Gwynn, sometimes takes a stopwatch out to the first-base coaching box to measure release times. "I'll bounce back to the bag and he'll go"—here Gwynn simulated silently mouthing the words "one-five-four"—"so I know that if I can get to second in three-flat, I can beat it." In fact, Riddoch had timed Ryan at 1.54 and Gwynn stole second. Pitching is a matter of rhythm and if a pitcher is intending to break his rhythm and throw to first, he will reveal his intentions with some small detail. Always? "Always," says Gwynn, with serene, smiling finality. "A lot of people can't believe that, but if you look at the tape, every time there is something he does to tip it off. There's guys like, well, a pitcher for Houston, who when he comes to first his toes point in a particular way—down. When he goes to home you see the bottom of his shoe." Who is this fellow? Another Gwynn laugh. "I can't say because he might read this."
Pitchers complain, with reason, that the world is plotting against them. (Remember: Paranoiacs can have real enemies.) But batters, too, have had some setbacks. If hitters repine for what really was their golden age, they repine for the years between 1870 and 1887, that paradisiacal era when the batter was entitled to tell the pitcher where in the strike zone—high or low—he wanted the ball thrown. And even until 1901 batters had better conditions than today. Not until 1901 (in the National League; 1903 in the American League) were the first two foul balls counted as strikes. This rule change was made in response to the perverse genius of a few players such as Roy Thomas, a Phillies outfielder who once fouled off 22 pitches before walking.
Furthermore (since we are giving batters their turn at baseball's wailing wall), batters are always on the defensive. Baseball's fundamental act of offense—swinging at a thrown ball—is essentially reactive. Lou Brock said that there are only three things involved in hitting—the pitcher, the ball and the batter—and once the ball is released from the pitcher's hand there are only two, and the question becomes who is better, you or the ball. Usually, the ball is. The major league average for batting failure is about 74 out of 100 times. About 7,000 men have come to bat in the major leagues. Eight of them managed to bat .400 over a full season. As Reggie Jackson says, if you play for 10 years and have 7,000 at bats and 2,000 hits you have had a pretty fair career but "you've gone 0-for-5,000." Never mind getting hits. How about putting the ball in play? Mickey Mantle once said, "During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ball player will average about 500 at bats a year. That means I played seven years in the major leagues without even hitting the ball." Once, after striking out swinging at three bad pitches, Yogi Berra had the brass to ask indignantly, "How can a pitcher that wild stay in the league?" Berra was so gifted at hitting pitches that were out of the strike zone that Mel Ott swore Berra got hits on pitches that, if they had not collided with his bat, would have been wild pitches, colliding with the backstop. But the answer to Berra's question is: Such pitchers stay in the major leagues because there are a lot of hitters who, like Berra, do not discipline themselves to swing only at what is in or near the strike zone and who, unlike Berra, do not have the talent to compensate for their indiscipline. Catcher Terry Kennedy, who was Gwynn's teammate before moving to Baltimore and then San Francisco, has now seen Wade Boggs up close and offers this comparison: "Gwynn is so aggressive, sometimes you can get him to swing at a bad pitch. Wade Boggs _never_ swings at a bad pitch." Boggs's discipline is apparent in the way he "works the count." This, like almost everything else about Boggs, has been noted by Chuck Waseleski, known to readers of the _Boston Globe's_ sports pages as "the maniacal one." He lives in Millers Falls, Massachusetts, and is the business manager of an engineering firm. In his spare time, which he seems to have a lot of, he crunches numbers in ways they have rarely been crunched before. For example: In 1989, in 742 plate appearances, Boggs swung at the first pitch just 50 times. He put the first pitch in play just 29 times. Kirby Puckett put the first pitch in play 176 times. Puckett's impatience, if that is what it was, did not prevent him from batting .339 and becoming the first right-hander to win the American League batting title since Carney Lansford in the strike-shortened 1981 season, and the first in a full season since Alex Johnson in 1970. It makes you wonder how high his average might have soared if he had been more patient. Patience is an important part of Boggs's style. In 1989 Boggs demonstrated the importance, at least to him, of being ahead in the count. Here, compiled by Waseleski, is Boggs's batting average by count:
Note the difference between the counts 1–2 and 2–1. Boggs can be patient at the plate because he is a fine contact hitter. In 1989 he swung and missed just 58 times in 1,191 swings. And yet he failed to get hits 67 percent of the time. Why? Because hitting is hard.
In the section of the rule book devoted to instructions for umpires there is this unequivocal and unexceptionable advice: "Keep your eye everlastingly on the ball." Easier said than done. Easier for umpires, who are looking directly at the pitcher, than for batters. Following the flight of the ball is much more difficult for a batter. He is standing sideways, looking to his left or right, and, when swinging, trying to make an educated guess, and read the pitcher's motion and release point, and then the rotation of the ball (for example, the small red dot made by the seams on the tight rotation of a well-thrown slider), and then striding and holding his hands just right just long enough and turning his hips and then his upper body in the precise flow of energy while keeping his head down and keeping his eyes everlastingly on the ball. All the batter usually knows for sure is that the pitcher is trying to trick him, and occasionally to frighten him, and every once in a while to hit him with a hard, swiftly moving object.
The distance from the front edge of the slab of rubber on the pitcher's mound to the back of home plate is 60 feet 6 inches. Suppose a pitcher throws directly over the top, fully overhand, and releases the ball at least 7 feet above the level of the plate (counting the 10-inch height of the mound) and about 55 feet from the plate. The belt-level top of today's strike zone is about _3½_ feet above the plate. That means the ball moves _3½_ feet vertically while traveling 55 feet horizontally. And that does not include the irregular motion imparted to a slider, a curve, a split-finger or even a plain fastball by its velocity.
In the major leagues, what makes all the difference is the movement the ball makes—or fails to make—as it passes over the plate. In 1951 Warren Spahn was pitching for the Boston Braves at the Polo Grounds when the Giants sent to the plate a rookie who was 0-for-12. Spahn threw the ball and the rookie crushed it. Willie Mays's first hit was a home run off a Hall of Famer. Spahn later said, "For the first 60 feet it was a hell of a pitch." (Later, remembering that Mays was hitless in his young career when he came to the plate, Spahn said, "I'll never forgive myself. We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if Td only struck him out.") A 90-mile-per-hour fastball that leaves a pitcher's hand 55 feet from the plate is traveling 132 feet per second and will reach the plate in .4167 second. A change-up or slow breaking ball loitering along at just 80 miles per hour travels 117.3 feet per second and will arrive in .4688 second. The difference is .052 of a second and is crucial. Having decided to try to hit the pitch, the batter has about two-tenths of a second to make his body do it. The ball can be touched by the bat in about 2 feet of the pitch's path, or for about fifteen-thousandths of a second. So anyone who hits a ball thrown by a major league pitcher—who even just puts the ball in play—is doing something remarkable. The consistently good hitters are astonishing.
Musial once told a rookie, "If I want to hit a grounder, I hit the top third of the ball. If I want to hit a line drive, I hit the middle third. If I want to hit a fly ball, I hit the bottom third." You can imagine how helpful Musial's advice was to a mere mortal. Gwynn picks up the rotation of the pitch only about 20 percent of the time. Usually he just tries to follow the flight of the ball. "If Gooden's curveball starts out pretty high, chances are it's going to finish down somewhere. So it's either a big mistake or a good curveball." What Gwynn's opponents respect most about him is how rarely he is fooled by such a pitch, or any pitch.
Jim Lefebvre recalls what he calls the expression of "ultimate respect" in a team meeting. In 1965, his rookie year with the Dodgers, the team would discuss how to pitch and defense each team the first time the Dodgers met them. "So we are going through the league. 'Willie Mays. Hard stuff way inside. If you miss you'd better miss in, so he can't get his arms out. You get the ball out over the plate, it will take you a five-dollar cab ride to find it.' And I'm thinking, 'Wow! Willie Mays.' And we go through the other guys—McCovey, Banks—as the other teams come through. The last team to come through is the Braves. 'Eddie Mathews. Great high fastball hitter, you gotta do this and this and this.' So all of a sudden Henry Aaron's name comes up. Bad Henry. Here we are with all those great pitchers—Koufax, Drysdale, others—and the room went dead silent. Nobody said a word. Then someone said, 'When he hits one, make sure nobody's on. Next.'"
When asked how he pitched to Mickey Mantle, Frank Sullivan of the Red Sox said, "With tears in my eyes." When Davey Johnson, the Mets' manager, was asked how to pitch to Gwynn, he laughed and said, "Throw it down the middle and hope it confuses him." Johnson says he has seen the likes of Gwynn before, in Tony Oliva of the Twins and Rod Carew of the Twins and Angels. He recalls that in pitching against them the sensible theory was: "Let's not get cute. Throw it right down the middle because that will confuse them. They're not going to know what field to hit it to. If you threw Oliva the up-and-in pitch, he'd hit it to left field, like Gwynn does. Oliva used to pull low-and-away breaking balls. There was no way to defense them. They had great hand-eye coordination and what I call 'barrel control,' putting the barrel of the bat right on the ball. That's why I say with guys like Gwynn, throw it down the middle and hope they hit it at someone."
Mike LaValliere, the Pirates' catcher, says of Gwynn, "He's one of the few guys in the league there is no 'book' on. He's like Keith Hernandez. He's going to get his hits and you just hope no one's on base. He has such a short, compact swing and such a good idea of the strike zone that you are not going to fool him often. Out of 650 at bats in a season you will fool him maybe ten times." Ten times is less than twice a month.
There are similarities between Gwynn and George Brett. Brett was the last man to flirt with a .400 season by being over .400 at one point in September. A pitcher once said of Brett, "The only way to pitch him is inside, so you force him to pull the ball. That way the line drives won't hit you." Jim Frey, who managed Brett for a while with the Royals, was asked what advice he gave Brett about hitting. Frey said, "I tell him, 'Attaway to hit, George.'" He has more power than Gwynn but they are similar in keeping their hands back, even when fooled by a pitch. Even if, when they are fooled, they are far out in front, with their weight shifting toward their front foot, their hands are still back. Thus they still have a chance to compensate and slap the ball by snapping their wrists. Batters who bring their hands forward too fast are finished with a pitch when they are fooled by it.
Gwynn, like Brett and Boggs, has one important natural advantage. He is left-handed. That is not always an advantage in baseball. Indeed, it can be argued that baseball has a built-in bias against left-handers. This bias is glaring, for example, in the fact that the bases are run counterclockwise. This custom reflects the convenience of right-handers who want to be infielders. Almost all infielders other than first basemen are right-handed because on most plays they can throw to first without turning their bodies as far as left-handers would have to. The consolation, such as it is, for lefthanders playing defense is that they are suited to first base because their glove hand is on the side the throws come from, and they can throw more easily than right-handed first basemen could to start the 3–6–3 (or 3–4–3) double play.
However, left-handers get their revenge as batters. At the plate they stand a step closer to first and the momentum of their swing causes them to uncoil moving toward first. As a result, the average left-hander among today's major leaguers gets there a full tenth of a second faster than the average right-hander (4.05 versus 4.15). Until 1870 the left-handers' advantage in the sprint to first did not matter so much because running to first was not the headlong dash it now is. Until 1870 a batter could not overrun first base without being tagged out.
Another advantage for today's left-handed hitter is that he faces right-handed pitching about two-thirds of the time, so most of the breaking pitches he sees are moving in toward his power. These facts help explain why in the postwar (1946–89) era 55 of the 88 league batting championships have been won by left-handers. Kevin Kerrane, professor of English at the University of Delaware and baseball scholar, notes that 34 of the 55 were won by long-range strategic thinkers like Ted Williams, George Brett and Wade Boggs, who, although they throw right-handed, had the wisdom as children to become left-handed hitters. (There have been few "reverse crossovers," players perverse enough to throw left but insist on batting right. Rickey Henderson is one. Another was a thin fellow who played first base for Yale, George Bush.)
About one thing Karl Marx, a lefty, was right. Change the modes of production and you will change the nature of work, and consciousness. Baseball's two fundamental tools are the ball and the bat. Neither is what it used to be. Although baseball adopted a cork-centered ball in 1910, aggregate major league averages did not jump until 1919. Remember, we have agreed to credit (or blame) Australian yarn. In any case, the advent of the lively ball changed almost everything in the game. Bats, too, have changed, but not, as the ball did, suddenly. So it is difficult to determine exactly when and how the changes began making differences.
Let us begin at the beginning, and I mean the Beginning. The Big Bang got the universe rolling and produced, among the flying debris, the planet Earth. It (and here we may have evidence of a kindly Mind superintending things) is enveloped in a thin membrane of atmosphere. The membrane is not too thick to keep out necessary energy and not too thin to let in lethal rays. And it is just right to cause raindrops to patter on Pennsylvania ridges where ash trees grow. They grow surrounded by other trees that protect the ash from winds that might twist and weaken them. In this protection they grow straight toward the sunlight. The result is wood wonderfully suited to being made into baseball bats. I think that I shall never see a tree as lovely as these things made from them.
The bats in use at any time, unlike the balls, have important differences. This is so because players are keenly interested in, and occasionally neurotic about, these instruments by which they pursue an acceptable rate of failure at the plate. Shoeless Joe Jackson believed that his bats had to winter in South Carolina to stay warm. (Don't snicker unless you, too, have a .356 career average.) Richie Ashburn slept with his bats, but only, he says chastely, on the road. Orlando Cepeda used to discard a bat after getting a hit. His reasoning (in which I find no flaw) was that there are only so many hits in a bat; you can not know how many; so why risk using a bat from which all the hits may have been wrung? Ted Williams is said to have shipped some bats back to Louisville because the lathe operator had made a mistake of five-thousandths of an inch when turning the bat handles.
Gwynn has a more relaxed relationship with his bats. One day at San Diego State, just after basketball season, he wandered into the storeroom looking for a bat and picked up a little aluminum thing with a heavyweight name. The "Tennessee Thumper" weighed 31 ounces and was 32 inches long. Thus began a happy relationship between a young man and a piece of metal. When he became a professional and had to switch to wood he picked a bat of the same length and weight. He still wants his bat light but with a big barrel. So instead of achieving lightness by having the barrels of his bats shaved, as many hitters do, he has them "cupped," with a portion of the end of the barrel hollowed out like the bottom of a wine bottle. The only change he has made he made in 1984, when he decided his bat was "too quick" on his swing. He changed to a bat that, like the old one, weighed 31 ounces but was half an inch longer. It is, by the standards of olden times, a twig. The young Babe Ruth supposedly used a 52-ounce bat. Later he used bats "only" 44 to 48 ounces.
But mighty records can from little bats spring. Wee Willie Keeler used a 30½-inch bat, but he was just 5 feet 4½ and weighed only 140 pounds. And his bat was big enough for eight 200-hit seasons. Joe Morgan, the career home-run leader among second basemen, used an even lighter bat—30 ounces. Ernie Banks's 32-ounce bat propelled 512 home runs. In the 1950s Banks and Henry Aaron exemplified a new kind of power hitter. They used thin-handled bats that they whipped with their quick, strong wrists.
Thin-handled bats break—often. But all bats are breakable. On July 15, 1887, Pete Browning, an outfielder for the Louisville club, broke his bat. A fan who also was a wood-turner made Browning a new one. The fan's name was John Andrew (Bud) Hillerich. Browning went 3-for-3 in his first game with the new bat and he soon became known as "The Louisville Slugger." So did his bat. A company, and one of America's most famous trademarks, was born.
For many years bats did not break nearly as often as they do now. Lefty Gomez, the Hall of Fame wit and pitcher, said he broke only one bat: "I ran over it backing out of the garage." There have been people who, unlike Gomez, were good at bringing their bats into contact with pitched balls and broke remarkably few bats. Bill Terry used only two bats in 1930 while hitting .401 with 254 hits. Ira Berkow, sports columnist for _The New York Times_ , reports that Joe Sewell, the last living member of the 1920 Indians' team that beat the Dodgers in a seven-game (5–2) World Series, still has in a glass case at his home in Mobile, Alabama, the one bat he used throughout his 14-year career. It is long (35 inches) and hefty (40 ounces) and must be enjoying retirement because it had a hard working life: Not only did it bang out 2,226 hits but it was constantly making contact. Sewell struck out only 114 times in 7,132 at bats, the fewest strikeouts recorded in any extended career. The fact that Jim Rice several times snapped bats on checked swings may reveal as much about the nature of today's bats as about Rice's wrists, powerful though they undoubtedly are. Bo Jackson is an impressive specimen, but when he breaks bats over his knee, and even over his head (wearing a batting helmet), one does wonder about the wood, or whether today's batters have gone a bit too far in favoring thin handles. Whatever the reason for so many bats breaking (some baseball people say that wood isn't what it used to be), the fact that so many are breaking has an interesting consequence. A college player's baseball education begins when he leaves school—and it begins immediately.
"I learned the day after I was signed, in Walla Walla," Gwynn says. "The first hack I took in batting practice I got jammed, tried to fight it off, shattered my bat, stung my hands. I took that one swing and that was it. You realize you're not going to make a living swinging a bat like that. You've got to get the barrel of the bat on the ball. In college I hit the ball the other way but didn't get to use the barrel of the bat often. With aluminum you can get jammed and fight it off and still loop one over the third baseman's ear. The pitcher makes a great pitch and you get a hit."
Greg Swindell had the same sort of startling experience, but from the pitcher's point of view, so it was a pleasant surprise. Before he became a professional, Swindell had pitched against wooden bats only in University of Texas alumni games. In his first game at Waterloo, Iowa, he hummed a fastball in on the fist of the first batter he faced as a professional. A fragment of the man's bat flew over Swindell's head. "I got four or five bats that day," he says, savoring the memory. And he is still at it, and still counting. In one 1988 game in Minnesota he counted 12 bats he cracked or shattered. Ben McDonald, the 6-foot-7 pitcher from Louisiana State University, the first pick in the 1989 draft (the Orioles picked him), said he frequently talks with his friend Andy Benes, the first pick in the 1988 draft (the Padres picked him). "When I talk to Andy, that's all he talks about. He says he's breaking four or five bats every time out. I want to throw to some wood, saw some off in somebody's hands."
There are people—let us hope they are not prophets—who say pitchers had better hurry up and have the pleasure while it is here to be had.
In July, 1989, civilization was rocked by Peter Gammons's report in _Sports Illustrated_ that aluminum bats are advancing on the gates of professional baseball. Gammons said that some minor leagues are flirting with the idea of abandoning wood bats in favor of aluminum, and that within a generation the major leagues may ring with the ping of metal on horsehide (so to speak: remember balls have been wrapped in cowhide for years). Aluminum bats are used everywhere outside of professional baseball, from Little League through college. Hillerich & Bradsby, makers of the Louisville Sluggers (which, by the way, are no longer made in Louisville but across the Ohio River in Indiana), used to make 7 million wood bats a year. Now it makes 1.5 million, of which 185,000 go to the major leagues. The company makes aluminum bats by the millions but makes them far from the American heartland, in Southern California, land of novelties and regrets. The reason for the popularity of aluminum bats is that they do not break, and so they cut costs. But a switch in professional baseball from wood to aluminum would make a bad and deteriorating situation worse. It would sacrifice much on the altar of parsimony—and at a time when baseball is rolling in money.
Allowing aluminum bats into the major leagues would constitute a serious degradation of the game, and not just for aesthetic reasons. But let us begin with them. Aesthetic reasons are not trivial. Baseball's ambiance is a complex, subtle and fragile creation. Baseball's sounds are important aspects of the game, and no sound is more evocative than that of the thwack of wood on a ball. It is particularly so when it is heard against the background sizzle of crowd noise on a radio broadcast, radio being the basic and arguably the best way to experience baseball if you can not be at the park. To a person of refined sensibilities, aluminum hitting a ball makes a sound as distressing as that of fingernails scraping a blackboard.
The other reasons for resisting any attempt to introduce metallurgy into the major leagues concern the safety of the players and the artistry of the game. An aluminum bat is lighter than a wood bat of the same length by two to four ounces. That makes for greater bat speed, which is the key to power. Also, the "sweet spot"—the impact point for maximum power—is larger on aluminum than on wood bats. You might think that major league batters would welcome the change. But hear them.
Scott Bradley of the Mariners, who played baseball at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Gammons, "If you hit a ball right with a wood bat, it'll go about the same distance as a ball hit with aluminum. But with wood you have to hit it right. You have to use your hands to get the bat head out and hit it on the sweet spot.... With aluminum, you can make contact almost anywhere on the bat and get the ball through or over the infield. Watch a college game and see how many hitters get jammed and still hit flares into the opposite field." Watch a college game? Better cancel some appointments. College games are, not surprisingly, longer than major league games. However, aluminum bats might speed up the games in one way: There would be fewer walks. Why walk when the metal bat raises the odds that merely making contact will result in a hit?
Bradley is dead right: With a wood bat you have to do things right. Aluminum bats reduce the importance of craftsmanship. Tom Grieve, general manager of the Rangers, told Gammons that an aluminum bat's sweet spot is so big, "with an aluminum bat most kids can take the same swing at every pitch. When they see that they have to hit the ball on a certain spot on a wood bat, they find out they have to swing differently, according to the pitch." The Yankees' Don Mattingly, one of the game's artists, said simply, "It takes all the art out of the game." The difference between hitting with wood and aluminum is comparable to the difference between a real pitcher and a mere thrower. You say Pete Incaviglia breaks nearly 40 dozen bats in a season? That will not break any bank and should not break any hearts. A glance at his strikeout totals shows the way he breaks bats: He is an undisciplined hitter who never properly learned his craft in the minor leagues. He went straight from Oklahoma State University and aluminum bats to the big leagues.
Put aluminum bats in the hands of major league hitters and you may have many tragedies of the sort that felled Herb Score. The pitcher's rubber is still 60 feet 6 inches from home plate, but batters are bigger and stronger than ever. Ken Griffey, Jr., of the Mariners says, "You'd better move the mound back 10 feet. And give everybody life insurance because somebody will get killed." Joe Carter of the Indians, who the week Gammons's article appeared hit 5 home runs in 6 at bats, says, "You'd have a lot of dead pitchers and third basemen. Imagine Bo Jackson with an aluminum bat. You're talking 600-foot home runs." Dave Parker, now with the Milwaukee Brewers, remembers taking batting practice in Pittsburgh with aluminum bats. In 20 swings he hit 13 balls into the seats, 7 of them into the third tier at Three Rivers Stadium. "If they let them in," he says, "I'd have notches in my bat. I'd kill someone." ("But," said Merv Rettenmund, the Athletics' hitting coach, "it's [the victim's] a pitcher. They deserve it.") Tim Flannery, a Padres third baseman who thinks that the hot corner is hot enough, thank you, says, "They better get softer baseballs." Greg Minton, an Angels relief pitcher who thinks he already has enough to repent of, says, "I've already killed enough first and third basemen with hanging sinkers. I don't want to see my infielders playing short left and short right."
We already see what aluminum bats do to pitching. They produce pitchers with inferior fastballs and arms often prematurely worn out from the torque of throwing too many breaking balls. We already know what this, combined with variants of the Charlie Lau style of hitting, produces: batters diving in to hit pitches in the outside part of the strike zone, and diving batters getting hit by inside pitches that are not much out of the strike zone, and brawls and warnings from umpires, and the migration of the strike zone. Mike Boddicker of the Red Sox says the strike zone has moved horizontally as well as vertically. Not only is the top of the zone at the belt, the inside edge of the zone is, for most umpires, at least two inches out over the plate. "A majority of umpires won't call strikes on the inner few inches of the plate." Hershiser's opinion about umpires' practices is more tempered. "My theory on the inside-outside corner is that on the inside part of the plate you need to have the whole ball on the plate. On the outside corner the ball only needs to touch the plate." Still, Hershiser, like Boddicker, believes that even some inside pitches that are strikes are now problematic. One source of this problem, starting a long way below the big leagues, is the aluminum bat, which prevents too many pitchers from learning how to shade the inside slice of the plate. Playing college baseball, Incaviglia remembers fondly, "You never had to worry about getting jammed. You never worried because it never happened." It never happened because of what he held in his hand.
Baseball is like a mobile: Jiggle something here and things move over there. Everything is related to everything else. So, naturally, aluminum bats change fielding as well as batting and pitching. Infielders facing aluminum bats rarely need to charge balls because balls get to them so quickly. Major league infielders on artificial turf already play deeper than on grass. Add aluminum bats and you will, in effect, subtract a couple of infielders and add a couple of outfielders.
Aluminum bats have made it difficult for major league scouts to evaluate high school and college talent. In fact, major league baseball subsidizes the Cape Cod League and seven other leagues where outstanding prospects can play in the summer without losing their college eligibility. Those leagues use wood bats. Now that major league baseball is feeling flush (and if it isn't, it should be) it should work out some way to subsidize a comeback by wood bats. Surely major league baseball could help colleges put the aluminum bats back into the bat racks for good.
Why is anyone even considering the cockamamie idea of aluminum bats in professional baseball, all the way up to the major leagues? The reasons given are remarkably unconvincing.
It is said that the world is running out of suitable wood for bats. But wood is a renewable resource. Need more trees? Plant some, for goodness' sake. If the price is right for a product (we are not talking about platinum, we are talking about wood), people will produce it. Hillerich & Bradsby says it could continue making wood bats for the major leagues if it charged $40 rather than just $16.50. So? Charge it. Millionaire utility infielders playing for franchises that have sextupled in value in one decade can come up with the extra $23.50. A major college baseball program that includes a fall and spring schedule (most colleges do not play in the fall) might go through 50 dozen $14 bats (college bats are cheaper than the ones the major leagues use) for an annual cost of $8,400. But that cost is small beer for a major college athletic department. And what is big-time football for if not to subsidize more civilized sports? _USA Today_ reported that the California Angels, for example, expected to use 172 dozen bats during the 1989 season, at a cost of about $35,000, but would need only a few dozen $60 aluminum bats and would save $33,500. Big deal. The sum that would be saved is a lot less than is earned in one season by the hot cinnamon bun concession stand (or the baked potato stand) at Anaheim Stadium. America's real (adjusted for inflation) GNP has doubled in the last 30 years, leisure dollars flowing toward sports have increased even more than that, major league baseball's attendance has increased for four consecutive seasons, revenues from licensing of major league products are soaring, television revenues will double between 1989 and 1990 (we are talking about numbers with three commas—billions) and yet baseball can not afford proper bats? Be serious.
There is a consensus that in the late 1970s aluminum bats were made significantly more lively than they had been. (Can a bat be "juiced"? What is the world coming to when we have to wonder about that?) Manufacturers of aluminum bats, who have an incentive to say soothing things, say they can make bats with a wide variety of characteristics, including those of wooden bats. But would batters in pursuit of their own interests (and offense-crazed owners in pursuit of even higher attendance) want anything less than the maximum potency from bats? Would major league baseball really do with bats what it has done with the ball—write narrow tolerances for what is permissible? And in the unlikely event that major league baseball was inclined to do that, how exactly would it work? Players come in different sizes and strengths and tendencies and inclinations. Therefore, bats must come in a wide variety of lengths and weights and handle widths.
Do we want major league teams that have, as some college teams do these days, _team_ batting averages above .340? (In 1979 the Wichita State Shockers had a team average of .384.) Aluminum bats would rewrite the record books and, more important, would make records less interesting because they would be less instructive. Advocates of aluminum bats say that differences in the parks—say, between Fenway and the Astrodome—already make comparisons of records difficult. True, but that has always been so. Mel Ott hit 511 home runs playing half his games in the Polo Grounds with its short foul lines. Across the Harlem River, Joe DiMaggio had hundreds of potential home runs swallowed up as fly outs in the vast power alleys of Yankee Stadium. But at least Ott and DiMaggio used essentially the same equipment. And although parks have changed a lot over the years, they have changed gradually. There was not a stark demarcation between one era of parks and another. Only once since 1900 has there been an abrupt change in conditions, a change that divided all that happened before from all that has happened since: the introduction of the lively ball. So modern baseball has had just two eras. Aluminum bats would be another radical rupture. They would add a third disorienting disjunction to baseball's story. They would dilute baseball's intensely satisfying continuity and thereby would render much less interesting the comparison of players' performances. Those comparisons nourish interest in the game as it passes down from generation to generation and they sustain fans in the fallow months of the off-season.
So where are we headed? To a future of batters diving across the plate toward the outer edge of a moving strike zone, taking long looping swings and spraying hits—ping! ping! ping!—off a series of weak-armed breaking-ball pitchers? Wade Boggs believes that if aluminum bats come to the big leagues "there will be another .400 hitter." Sure, but will anybody really care?
What is Gwynn's weakness? He says that through his first five years the hardest pitcher for him to hit—hardest to hit for reasons other than velocity (meaning the hardest for him to hit other than Nolan Ryan)—was John Tudor. Speaking in 1988, Gwynn said: "He's the only pitcher who has a pitch I can not hit. It's his curveball. I have fouled it off but I don't think I have ever put it in play." Fortunately for Gwynn, Tudor does not seem to have taken proper notice. "The last time we faced him in St. Louis [shortly before Tudor was traded to the Dodgers] we had runners on second and third with two outs and he threw me the curveball for a strike, then a fastball that ran in on my hands. I tried unsuccessfully to bunt it and was 0-and-2. So I was looking breaking ball because I have never hit it. Instead, he threw me a fastball in on my hands, I fought it off, it went in the hole, off Ozzie's [Smith] glove, and we got two runs." Gwynn's complete recall is tinged with disbelief and disapproval of Tudor's failure to remember Gwynn's weakness. "Any pitcher who has pitched that long and been that successful, you would think has got to realize I can't hit that breaking ball."
Is there a Gwynn strength? "Anything hanging," he says laughing. Well, yes, of course: a pitcher's mistake. But what else? He likes fastballs up in the strike zone. "I hit the other way best. It's easy for me to take that fastball that's thigh-high and fight it off and go to left field."
A basic pitching strategy is to use off-speed curveballs and change-ups to get a batter shifted onto his front foot to slow his bat down. The batter wants to stay back as long as possible so his bat will be accelerating on contact. For every good hitter, batting is a matter of patience. It is especially so for Gwynn. Every good hitter must wait as long as possible for his pitch, or for the pitcher to make a mistake. He must wait for particular counts or circumstances that shift, however slightly, the balance of the competition toward the hitter. But Gwynn must be patient in another sense. Even after he has locked his eyes on a pitch that he has decided he wants to hit, he still must wait longer than most batters before swinging. In Ted Williams's four-word formulation, one key to hitting is: hips ahead of hands. But when a left-handed hitter is "going the other way," to left field, he prefers an outside pitch, and Gwynn says, "On an outside pitch you want your hands to lead and the barrel of the bat to trail." The barrel of Gwynn's bat trails his hands by about ten inches. When trying to hit to left, Gwynn is, in effect, pushing back the pitching rubber, perhaps half a foot farther from the plate. He is using his quick bat—those basketball dribbler's wrists again—to allow him to wait on a pitch and hit it when it has passed over most of the plate.
The late Charlie Lau would take a .250 right-handed pull hitter and teach him to hit to right. Lau would tell the right-hander that every time he does that with a runner on first the result will be first-and-third, whereas if he pulled the ball through the infield on the left side, the result would be just first-and-second because of the short throw from left field to third. And in the process of learning to "go the other way" the .250 hitter becomes a .280 hitter. A pitcher who knows he is facing such a hitter will throw him sliders breaking down and in. Perhaps the hitter can "inside-out" a fastball to right, but not a slider that is down and in.
Gwynn says, "I stand in the middle of the batter's box. You see a lot of guys dig that white line out and stand in the back to give them more time. I thought about doing that, but I'm so used to hitting up closer that if I change it's going to throw my timing off. I would have to wait that much longer and as you can see from some of these tapes I have a tough enough time waiting. Also, I've got a little bat, so I've got to be able to cover both sides of the plate." When his swing is mechanically sound, his front leg is stiff, or solid, and he's deriving power from the drive of his back leg. Furthermore, the barrel of the bat is behind his hands. The instinct in hitting is "hurry up because the ball is hurrying." Every fiber of a hitter's being urges him not to hesitate. In this regard Gwynn's batting style is true to Ted Williams's formula: "Wait-wait-wait and then quick-quick-quick." Gwynn will "turn" on a ball inside—that is, he will try to pull it. But he prefers to get his hands out and "go the other way," to left. He has so much power, even going to the opposite field, that opponents play him deep. And most of the hits he gets are line drives, over the infield or through the hole between short and third. So if the other team plays the outfield shallow on him, he can hit over their heads for at least a double. Late in a close game, especially, Gwynn must be played deep. So he has three different tendencies: Pitch him inside and he can pull; down the middle and he can go up the middle; pitch him away and he will go the other way. Three tendencies almost amount to no tendency. So a team can pitch him away and play him away, letting him do what he wants and counting on defensive positioning to contain him.
In theory, everyone can be contained. "You know how you pitch Mike Schmidt?" asks Jim Lefebvre rhetorically. "Hard fastballs inside, sliders down and away. You know how you pitch Henry Aaron? Willie. Mays? Hard stuff inside, soft away. You know how you pitch [Willie] Stargell? Hard stuff inside, soft away. You know how you pitch God? Hard stuff inside, then down and away, and if you get it there you'll get Him out. Even though He'll know it's coming. Or at least they say He knows." Lefebvre's point is practical, not theological. It is that hitting is so hard that when a major league pitcher is doing what he wants to do, he is probably going to get you out. So hitting is usually a matter of being prepared to pounce on pitchers' mistakes. "Why worry about that high fastball up and in or that nasty slider low and away? Look for a zone you can handle. Be ready and patient and wait for a better pitch—a mistake. Until there are two strikes. Then it's survival."
Almost every hitter has what baseball people call "a hole in his swing." Often a hitter's strength and his weakness are inches apart. Dr. Robert William Brown, cardiologist (after he was the Yankees' third baseman and before he was president of the American League), once said, "The art of hitting is getting your pitch to hit." Lew Burdette, the Milwaukee Braves' pitcher, said, "I make my living from the hungriness of hitters." He meant that hitters are vulnerable when they will not wait—will not wait for the pitch they can hit.
All pitchers know that most batters look for the fastball and adjust down. Most mortals, that is. Henry Aaron once said, "I never worried about the fastball. They couldn't throw it past me. None of them." That was true, but that was Aaron, he of the phenomenally quick wrists and whippy, thin-handled bat. The strength of those wrists was the serendipitous result of a mistake that could not be repeated with today's coaching of kids from an early age. When Aaron first began playing, and until he signed a professional contract, he did not know how to hold the bat. His mistake was not a matter of mere nuance. _He did not know which hand went above the other_. That is right: He was a right-handed hitter who put his left hand over his right hand on the bat handle. Try it, but try it carefully. You can wrench your wrists swinging that way. You can also develop extra strong wrists by trying to overcome the handicap of swinging that way.
Getting a fastball past Aaron was, as folks said, like sneaking the sun past a rooster. Again, let us be clear about what a fastball is. A 96-mile-per-hour fastball goes from the pitcher to the plate in 0.42 second. The batter has approximately 0.17 second (give or take, say, two one-hundredths of a second) to decide to pull the trigger. Then he has perhaps 0.2 second to bring the bat around. "It's easier to hit a breaking ball than a fastball," says Gwynn with laconic matter-of-factness, "because you get more time to look at it." What exactly is he talking about, "more time"? Even a slow 80-mile-per-hour curveball gets from the pitcher's hand to the plate faster than you can say "curveball." And because hitting is timing and pitching is upsetting timing, a pitcher needs high velocity less than he needs a variety of velocities.
A pitcher with such a variety may be unimpressive—to everyone but batters. Casey Stengel said his slow-throwing Eddie Lopat made it look so easy ("Looks like he's throwing wads of tissue paper") that "every time he wins a game, fans come down out of the stands asking for contracts." However, Lopat was a master at changing speeds and locations. Ray Miller cites Tommy John as an example of what can be done with just two pitches, a little slider and a little sinker, neither of them overpowering. "He'll throw his sinker from 65 miles per hour to 80. One hard, one slow, one in between, so you are saying to yourself, 'Don't get out too soon or your hit is on the ground.' So you stay back and wait and he puts a little bit more on and you wait too long and pop it up." Look, says Lefebvre, drawing his lesson in the dust with a bat handle behind the batting cage one day at the Oakland Coliseum, Tommy John is going to rely on slow sinkers, slow curves and sliders. It would be silly to be looking for fastballs. John wants you to swing at those around the knees, but the ones that start at the knees wind up around the ankles. So look for pitches around the middle of the plate, out and up. But with a Roger Clemens, a power pitcher, look for the middle of the plate, down. If the ball is up, take it.
"The toughest thing to judge," says Miller, "is velocity. Good hitters see the ball right out of your hand. They recognize a breaking ball or fastball immediately." That is why a change-up is effective. As soon as the batter recognizes a fastball he still has a second order of uncertainty: What kind of fastball? What is important in a change-up, says Miller, is "the speed of your arm after the ball leaves your hand. That's what convinces the batter." Before a pitcher gets to the major leagues he tries to throw what the batter is not looking for. Once in the major leagues no pitcher can be said to know his craft unless he knows how to get a hitter in a situation in which the pitcher knows what the hitter is looking for and can give it to him—with something taken off or added. Miller gives the example of using a "BP fastball," meaning a slow, batting practice fastball. You have a two-run lead but there is a runner on second, Canseco is up. A mixture of 90-plus-mile-per-hour fastballs and breaking balls brings the count to 3–1. Canseco knows he's the potential tieing run and that the pitcher does not want to risk walking him with a breaking ball. That would bring up McGwire, who is as menacing as Canseco. "Now, with the same delivery that you've been throwing a 91- or 92-mile-per-hour fastball, you throw an 80-mile-per-hour fastball on the outside part of the plate. The same motion but you just don't 'finish' the pitch, you just kind of kill it. Canseco starts for the hard one, he reaches for it but has to slow down a bit. He hits a fly ball and yells at you, 'Throw the damn ball!' That's what pitching is all about, the deception of speed."
Remember, that is why good hitters like Gwynn are prepared to take a few pitches to gauge velocity, even at the cost of finding themselves behind in the count. They have such confidence in their skills that they think the information they gain more than makes up for their reduced margin of error.
"Early in the game," says Gwynn, "I want to see a few pitches. I want to see what kind of velocity he's got on his curveball. But later in the game I go up hacking." Because deciphering the velocity, and hence the probable movement, of a pitch is so important in batting, it can be extremely useful for a batter to know in advance—before the ball is released—what kind of pitch is coming. Give a Ruth or a Mantle that kind of information and the batter-pitcher confrontation becomes a mismatch. There is a famous story of Babe Ruth noting that a particular pitcher bit his tongue when throwing a curve. Mickey Mantle, who was an extraordinarily acute observer of pitchers' mannerisms, saw that Camilo Pascual had two different mannerisms with his mouth when throwing two different pitches.
Kubek remembers that in 1961 Bob Turley hurt his arm and was going to go home and have surgery, but manager Ralph Houk told him to stay with the team and continue doing what he did so well. Turley was a master at reading the movements of opposing pitchers and calling the pitches that were coming. He called the pitch that Roger Maris hit for his 61st home run. That is, he signaled to Frank Crosetti, the Yankees' third-base coach, who passed a sign to Maris, who, as a left-handed hitter, was facing Crosetti. "Turley said, and I believe him," Kubek recalls, "that he could watch any pitcher in baseball—this was before we used tapes much—and pick up his pitches. He would watch the way the pitcher held the ball in one way and then another, moving from one spot on the rubber to another, the way the catcher moved, always something. Maris didn't like it until Turley proved that he was 99.9 percent accurate. Turley claims he called the pitch on 100 of Mantle's home runs." Turley would whistle when a fastball was coming. Silence meant a breaking ball.
It may seem odd but it is the case that Gwynn does not want the sort of help that Turley provided the Yankee hitters, or that runners on second stealing signs provide to hitters on many teams. Gwynn's explanation for not wanting advance information is not convincing: "You're not going to hit with runners on base all the time. You're going to have to go up there sometimes on your own." True, but one does not normally spurn occasional help merely because one can not have constant help. Some hitters, Gwynn says, watch how a pitcher grips the ball and then watch to see if he moves his hand in a way that indicates he is changing his grip when the ball is hidden in the pocket of his glove. Gwynn pays no attention to that either. The real reason he does not want such information about what is coming at him from the pitcher's hand is that he has an interesting intuition about the delicate mental equipoise that is needed for hitting. He has so much confidence in his muscle memory, he believes that his best chance of hitting the ball is when he sees it leave the pitcher's hand and reacts. His ability to see it depends on work done—with batting machines, with videotape—before he gets to the plate. His reaction depends on his analysis of what this particular pitcher does. That is enough. If he does his work well prior to coming to the plate, he does not need what he can not always rely on—information about the particular pitch that is coming.
"I don't understand how anyone hits a baseball," says Ray Miller. "You play golf and the damn thing is sitting there and all you've got to do is hit it and that's hard enough." It is amazing that batters have as much confidence as they do. Confidence is a sometime thing; it comes and goes. A batter who has it probably has it because, as batters say, he is "seeing the ball well" at the moment. As Red Schoendienst was in July, 1950. The 1950 All-Star Game in Chicago's Comiskey Park was won, 4–3, by the National League when the Cardinals' Schoendienst hit a home run on the first pitch of the fourteenth inning. Late in the game Schoendienst, sitting in the dugout next to Duke Snider, said, "See that guy in the red sweater in the third row of the upper deck in left field? If I have to hit right-handed, that's where I'm going to put it." His home run landed two feet away from the red sweater.
When batters are hot they say they are "in a groove." Again, listen to the common, natural language of a craft. It tells what it feels like on the rare occasions when everything feels right. A groove is something especially smooth, a path that guides movement effortlessly. To be in a groove is to have all one's "mechanics" flowing together. "Mechanics" that flow? No, to be in a groove is not to be mechanical, it is to be animal, with the grace that only something living can have.
Batters become obsessive about good "grooves" once they get into them. In 1961, when Roger Maris was chasing Ruth's record, he batted behind Tony Kubek and generally put his back (left) foot in the same spot in the batter's box that Kubek dug with his foot. If Kubek changed his position even slightly, Maris would come back to the dugout after batting and ask why. It is obvious—the evidence is in the box scores—when a batter is in a groove. Some opponents will try to dislodge him from his groove. "There are," says Cal Ripken, Jr., "a lot of mind games involved in baseball, for example against a batter who is hot. I learned this the hard way. In 1987 I was hot as anything for a while, hitting home runs and with a high average, driving in runs. So in one game in California Ruppert Jones of the Angels hits a double, gets to second and says to me, 'Gosh, you're swinging the bat great. You're not taking any bad swings, your hands are out front, away from your body—you look great, keep it up.' Now, I'm someone who diagnoses every bit of information. I say to myself, 'That must be it. My hands are out away from my body.' So the next time up the first thing I think about is 'Where are my hands?' I went into a slump."
Gwynn reduces the mystery of hitting to five words: "See the ball and react." However, reacting correctly is the result of constant preparation—and of thought, before the batter comes to the plate and while he is there. Now, it may seem absurd to say that thinking has much to do with an action involving episodes measured in hundredths of seconds. Branch Rickey, who had as full a head as has ever been put in the service of baseball, said: "Full head, empty bat." He had a point. There are limits to how much cerebration can go into hitting. And some entire teams are more free-swinging and less thoughtful than others in their approach to hitting. Lefebvre says that Dave Parker, who spent his glory years in the late 1970s with the Pirates, "had the old Pirates' philosophy of hitting: Anything white and moving, swing at it—that includes paper wrappers blowing across the infield." But over time, and a season is a long time, it pays to pay attention. Bill "Spaceman" Lee, the Red Sox pitcher from 1969 to 1978, once said, "When cerebral processes enter into sports, you start screwing up. It's like the Constitution, which says separate church and state. You have to separate mind and body." In the seventh game of the 1975 World Series, Lee served up an off-speed pitch to Tony Perez, a deadly off-speed hitter. Lee practiced what he preached. Perez's team won the Series.
In 1988 Gwynn won his second consecutive batting title and was thoroughly disgusted with himself. His average fell 57 points from the 1987 high. His .313 in 1988 was the lowest average to win the National League title in history, below the .320 of the Giants' Larry Doyle in 1915. In the previous 112 years of the National League, only 9 batting leaders fell below .330. The average winning average over 113 years was .357, and for the 25 years ending in 1988 the average average was .343. But in 1988 Gwynn batted 119 points higher with runners on base (.382) than he did with the bases empty (.263), the largest differential in the National League. His season average was hardly bad and was, of course (we should not lose sight of this just because he does), better than anyone else's in the National League. It was especially impressive, and a tribute to the use he makes of his mind, because in 1988 his body was a problem.
Better men than I have tried and failed, with persistence and wheedling, to wrest from Gwynn an admission that his 1988 injuries hurt his hitting. He is adamant in insisting that they did not, that his problems were bad "mechanics" and, in fact, some sort of moral failure on his part, a failure to just do his job right. I believe that he believes what he says, and that he is mistaken. Even during the last three months of 1987 he had a finger that would lock when he closed his hand around the handle of the bat. It would come open just enough to allow the bat to slide out of his grip. This, remember, was while he was hitting .370. In 1988 his physical problems were much worse.
After Spring Training started he had surgery on his left hand. He was back in the batter's box a week before Spring Training ended but began the season slumping, with (for him) appalling 0-for-9 and 0-for-ll episodes. After 13 games he was hitting .243 and was so beside himself that he once complained so vigorously about a called third strike that he was ejected from a game, his first ejection in 781 games. Next, he tripped rounding first base on the Pittsburgh carpet, severely sprained his thumb and had to sit (well, squirm) on the disabled list for 21 days. On June 13 he was hitting .237. Then the Padres' new manager, Jack McKeon, who had replaced Larry Bowa in May, took Gwynn's mind off his troubles by giving him a new one. He shifted Gwynn from right field, where he had won two Gold Gloves, to center field. Five minutes after McKeon asked Gwynn to make the shift Gwynn was taking fly balls in center, but he was not a happy camper. Not happy, but well married. His wife, Alicia, gave him a talking-to.
Remember George C. Scott at the beginning of the movie _Patton?_ As Patton, Scott tells his troops that you do not win wars by dying for your country, you win by making your enemies die for their country. Alicia suggested that instead of feeling sorry for himself he should concentrate on making pitchers feel sorry for themselves. Good idea. In July he hit .406. He hit .367 in the last 73 games of the season. He tied Pedro Guerrero for the league's highest average with runners in scoring position, .382. In spite of the pain (he had a sign "The finger is fine" in his locker to move the media on to another—any other—subject) and missed games of 1988, his career has been a model of consistency, the virtue he values most. Over the seasons 1984–89 he ranked among the top five hitters in all of baseball in hits, average, on-base percentage and fewest strikeouts.
In this game of fractions of inches and tenths of seconds, it is amazing what players can do while in pain from injuries—or from excesses. One fact is often forgotten: Playing baseball often hurts. In 1964, at age 22, Tim McCarver won a World Series ring. After he retired in 1980 he had a jeweler build a nodule inside the ring, on the bottom, to make the ring, in effect, a few sizes smaller. This was necessary because his hand had shrunk when it stopped taking the constant trauma of stopping major league pitches. And that trauma was just the result of normal playing. Consider some abnormal physical problems.
Gerald Astor of the Hall of Fame library notes that Ty Cobb "one morning had his tonsils removed in a Toledo hotel room (by a doctor who shortly took up residence in an insane asylum) and that afternoon played in an exhibition game, although his throat bled for three weeks." When Mickey Mantle, star running back for Commerce (Oklahoma) High School, was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, a doctor predicted eventual amputation of a leg. Tony Kubek recalls that in 1961 Mantle, who that year hit .317 with 54 home runs and 128 RBIs, frequently had to be pulled from cabs by companions, so stiff were his legs. Once when Johnny Bench sustained a foot injury so serious that even he was willing to notice it, the doctor administering the X-ray discovered three healed bones that had been broken without Bench noticing. He played 1,744 games at catcher. Assume 120 pitches a game, plus warm-ups before each inning plus Spring Training. That is a lot of squatting. His knees became so stiff it would take him 15 minutes to become fully ambulatory after the team plane had landed. He quit after 17 years because "I want to be able to walk when I'm fifty."
Late in Carl Yastrzemski's 23-year career his Achilles tendons became so damaged that he had to tape his calves and ankles so tightly that his feet became numb. At that time he told Tom Boswell, "I actually have to look down to see where my feet are in the batter's box." When Lou Brock was getting up in age for a baseball player—he was 35—he stole 118 bases, the record until Rickey Henderson topped it by 12. Brock says, "You brace your slide—if you slide feet first—with your hand. Pretty soon the pain is terrible. At one point in 19741 could hardly hold a glass of water." But he could hold a bat well enough to hit .306.
Ed Linn, the sportswriter who helped Sandy Koufax write his autobiography, recalls the condition of the index finger on Koufax's pitching hand in May, 1962. The finger became numb, then white and lifeless, then a deep reddish-blue, and swelled like a grape, with gangrene about to set in. "In the 8 games he pitched with his finger rotting under him, he allowed 4 earned runs in 67⅓ innings for an ERA of 0.53, struck out 77, walked 20." In this wounded condition he beat Warren Spahn, 2–1 (and hit his first home run). He beat Bob Gibson, 1–0, walking no one. He pitched his first no-hitter, with 13 strikeouts. After winning a 16–1 laugher against the Phillies, he faced the Giants. Linn writes, "When he took the mound he found that the formerly lifeless finger had become so sensitive that when he tried to rest the ball against it, in order to throw his curve, it felt as if a knife were cutting into it. With the Giants fully aware that he couldn't throw anything except fastballs, he had a no-hitter until the seventh inning. He still had a three-hit shutout until the ninth inning when the whole hand went so numb that he could no longer hold the ball." Four days later, in New York, he had a three-hit shutout through seven innings when again he lost his ability even to feel the ball, and had to leave the game. Four days later he started in Cincinnati. Linn writes, "Before the first inning was over, the finger split wide open. No blood. Just a deep cleave in the dead meat." Finally, he was sent home.
Players playing well while injured are admirable. Players playing well while suffering the effects of excesses can be no less astonishing. Paul "Big Poison" Waner, brother of "Little Poison" Lloyd (they are both in the Hall of Fame), said he often played hung over or even drunk. In fact he sometimes found intoxication an advantage when hitting because the ball looked blurry, so there was "more of it to hit." Waner, said an admiring Casey Stengel, "had to be a very graceful player because he could slide without breaking the bottle on his hip." And he slid in some strange places. Bill Veeck recalled seeing him take a wide turn at second and go "sliding into the bull pen mound in the left-field foul ground." Waner's drinking did not prevent him from playing 20 seasons, winding up, at age 41, at Yankee Stadium. There a fan yelled, "Hey, Paul, how come you're in the outfield for the Yankees?" Waner, a realist to the end, replied, "Because Joe DiMaggio's in the army."
Big Julie Isaacson, then president of the Novelty Workers Union, was a city slicker who became the boon companion of Roger Maris, the young man from Fargo, North Dakota. Isaacson told Tony Kubek about the time in 1962 when Mantle talked Maris into relieving the tensions with a night on the bricks. A night and a dawn, it turned out. The two sluggers showed up at Isaacson's apartment in the morning very much the worse for wear. In fact, they were still reeling—literally reeling—from their all-night bender. Maris at least could walk. Mantle could barely stand. Coffee was funneled into both, with little effect, and they had to be helped into the Yankee Stadium clubhouse to dress for that afternoon's game. Manager Ralph Houk, who was called "The Major" because of his role in chasing the Nazis across the Rhine at Remagen Bridge, put them both in the starting lineup as punishment. During the national anthem Roger had his head down and Mantle was swaying. In the top of the first, the other team hit three infield grounders, thereby depriving baseball of what might have been memorable episodes in the outfield. In the bottom of the first inning the first two Yankee batters got on. Maris, batting third, took a called third strike. Then Mantle stood in the batter's box, swaying ominously. "The pitch," Isaacson remembers, "was a change-up and Mickey started to swing and then stopped. Then he swung again and hit it into the center-field bleachers 460 feet away. Mickey started trotting around the bases. He hit first base and looked like he was going to keep running down the right-field line. The umpire was Ed Runge and he said something to Mickey and sort of pointed to second. Mickey finally made the turn and got around the bases."
Such stories of achievements by players in pain, including self-inflicted pain, may lend some credence to Gwynn's insistence that his injuries had nothing to do with the drop in his batting average between 1987 and 1988. When asked point-blank how much of his trouble in 1988 was related to his hurting hand he flatly declares, "None of it," and will not budge from that position. You judge. But before you make up your mind try hitting—not necessarily a pitch, a fungo will do—while you have, say, a slightly infected finger or a mildly sprained thumb. Then try to imagine getting the bat on an inside fastball from Dwight Gooden.
"Hi, Dwight." Gwynn's high-pitched voice pierced the thick gauze of noise that filled Shea Stadium like the strong 4:00 **P.M**. sunlight. Dwight Gooden, taking batting practice with other Mets pitchers, waved a greeting toward the visiting team's dugout. It was late May, 1988, and the light late-spring air was clogged with noise, noise compounded. It was the noise of unreasonably amplified rock music that is the preferred background music for batting practice, and the eardrum-shattering roar of planes taking off from nearby La Guardia Airport and landing, it sometimes seems, in the right-field bull pen. Shea Stadium is like New York City itself—all the hard unloveliness of an urban environment and no softening graces. The baseball experience has never been less pastoral, less conducive to serenity, than it is at Shea.
Gwynn was not serene. He was two days away from coming off the disabled list, where he had landed after he landed on his thumb in Pittsburgh. "I'm kind of anxious to get out there and see what's going to happen." He may have been anxious; he usually is. His team certainly was eager for him to return. At that point the Padres had won just two games, and were averaging only 1.2 runs per game, on the road. While unable to play, Gwynn had not even wanted to be on the bench amid the flying sunflower seeds, getting slapped in the neck with tongue depressors and having a "flying W" put in his cap (the bill bent into the shape of a W). "These guys are kind of loose," he said. Perhaps they knew that their tantrum-throwing, tension-producing manager, Larry Bowa, was about to be fired while the team was in New York and replaced by the more avuncular Jack McKeon. Looking across the diamond at the Mets and anticipating his return to the lineup, Gwynn speculated, "I wonder what Ojeda will throw me. A couple of years ago he was throwing a lot of off-speed stuff. He'd throw you a change-up 0-and-2 or 2-and-0. But because I've been out three weeks they're going to bust me inside to see if I can turn on a fastball inside." That day Gwynn had done 20 "liners" (running on the warning track from one foul line to another). Then he went into the clubhouse "to do my dumbbells," which he uses for curls to strengthen his wrists and forearms. Then he took some fly balls and batting practice. Then he got back to his avocation: worrying. "The pitch Gooden always gets me out on is a straight-over-the-top hard curveball. He'll set it up with a sequence of pitches, fastball in, fastball out, then he'll come back with something hard inside, perhaps a slider." Gwynn was worried that when he got back to swinging at real pitching he would not be able to "stay back," keeping his hands behind his stride. Standing up in the dugout to demonstrate, Gwynn said, "If I take my stride and my hands come with me, I'm not going to hit it, at least not hard. I have nothing left. That's what it means to 'get out in front.' You wind up hitting on your front foot, hitting with your arms. If I take my stride and push my hands back, I'm all right."
He does not often feel he is doing things right. When, early in the 1989 season, Gwynn was among the league leaders in hitting and, in his view, hitting poorly, he said, "The biggest problem I'm having right now is much like the problem I had last year. It's that I'm not staying back. Even though the results are there, I'm not swinging the bat the way I want to swing it. I've hit one ball hard to left field out of the 27 at bats I've had." When was the last time he did not think he had problems? "About the middle of July last year." Early summer 1988, about the time he was at Shea Stadium fidgeting through the last days of idleness, was the low point of Gwynn's major league career. He had been injured. He had had surgery on his hand. He had been on the disabled list, and anyone who had to be around him during this time probably was ready to go on such a list. He does not take to idleness. But, then, he had not really been idle. "I had a lot of time to look at a lot of tapes." What he saw on tape was himself hitting well. But what he was living through was a slump of serious proportions for a hitter of his stature. He says he was so embarrassed that if he had not signed a contract with McDonald's (the Padres are owned by Joan Kroc, widow of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's) he would have backed out of his endorsement agreement. "I was hitting .240 and was introducing what they [McDonald's] called a triple play: a big sandwich, a super order of fries and a super Coke. So I'd go up to the on-deck circle and people would yell, 'Hey, Tony, how about a triple play?'" At one point he was hitting .237 and was, he says, going to the plate "thinking like a .230 hitter." By that he means "not having an idea of what I wanted to do." Now, what does thinking and knowing what you want to do have to do with the defensive, reactive task of hitting a baseball?
Steve Carlton was famous for going into a trance before pitching. Some batters do a similar thing. They are in something like a trance while hitting. Actually, "trance" is not quite the right word for the kind of concentration involved in batting; that word suggests mental blankness. That is not what Al Rosen, the San Francisco Giants' general manager, means when he explains why he thinks Will Clark, the Giants' first baseman, is someday going "to shoot the lights out"—have a monster season. "When he's at the plate," Rosen says, "the house could burn down and he would still only see one thing—the pitcher." Red Schoendienst, Stan Musial's roommate on the road, said Musial "started to concentrate when he was tieing his shoelaces in the clubhouse."
"Concentration," said a dugout Spinoza (actually, Ray Knight, 1986 World Series MVP for the Mets), "is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary." Concentration, defined as complete mental blankness, is (to put the point politely) quite easily achieved by some players. Gwynn is not one of them.
When Gwynn was struggling ("struggling" is _the_ indispensable word in the baseball players' lexicon) in 1988, and denying all the while that his aches and pains had anything to do with his problems, he said that the problem was "just an attitude." A baseball broadcaster once defended a player accused of having "an attitude problem." The player, said the broadcaster warmly, did not have any attitude. Gwynn's attitude problem was too much self-consciousness. "I was going up there thinking about everything—my mechanics, who was pitching, what he threw, where he liked to pitch. I had never done that before. You should have an idea of what guys try to do to you, but when you get up to the plate, all you are thinking about is seeing the ball come out of his hand and reacting to it. Instead, I was thinking, are my hands right, am I striding too long, are my hips opening up too soon?"
This is a lament as old as baseball. Bobby Murcer of the Yankees once explained what it is like being in a slump: "You decide you'll wait for your pitch. Then, as the ball starts toward the plate, you think about your stance; and then you think about your swing; and then you realize that the ball that went past you for a strike was your pitch." Gwynn knows exactly what Murcer meant. "When you're going good, you don't worry about anything mechanical at the plate. You just go up there and see the ball and react to it. As soon as you start to struggle you start worrying about the mechanical part of it, your hands, your stride." And then, particularly if you are a highly driven person, as Gwynn is, you run the risk of becoming paralyzingly aware of your every movement at the plate. Then, says Gwynn, "instead of just concentrating on seeing the ball out of the pitcher's hand, you go up there and start worrying about am I striding right, are my hands... whatever. I've talked to Tim Raines, Keith Hernandez—a lot of hitters—and the guys who are struggling say they're out in front and are trying to stay back. The guys who are swinging the bat good say, 'I'm just seeing the ball right now and putting it in play.'"
When batters are hot they are often peculiar. Gwynn's teammate Tim Flannery once had a hitting streak of 14 games that he was glad to have end: "I'm superstitious. I was eating Chinese food and drinking tequila after every game. The streak had to end or I was going to die." Of course, not all batters are peculiar when they are hot. Henry Aaron was more or less hot for a generation and his pulse never seemed to vary. Nothing else varied either. When Lew Burdette and Warren Spahn were Aaron's teammates on the Milwaukee Braves they once examined a bat he had used for half a season. They found that all the dents were clustered on the "sweet" part of the barrel of the bat. Remember the story about Maris in 1961 worrying because Kubek's rear foot was not in precisely the right spot in the batter's box? Maris understandably wanted nothing to change that might change the groove he was in when he hit 24 home runs in 38 games. Imagine the groove Frank Howard was in when, in a span of just 20 at bats in The Year of the Pitcher, 1968, he hit 10 of his 44 home runs.
When batters are slumping they try to be stoical. Baseball encourages a kind of stoicism that would have caused Marcus Aurelius to say (if he had had Catfish Hunter's flair for colorful summation) that "the sun don't shine on the same dog's ass all the time." But in 1988 Gwynn was not consoled by that philosophy, or by repeated assurances from all sides that he would "come around" because he was "overdue" for a hot spell. Those words seemed to suggest that slumps are things beyond anyone's control, to be endured. That is not Gwynn's attitude toward life. He does not like the optimistic fatalism of the word "overdue," and neither do I.
I grew up in downstate Illinois listening to the Cubs on the radio and listening to my father, a professor of philosophy, across the dinner table. I learned a lot from both. When I first fell for the Cubs, in the early 1950s, they were not much. Only a team named after baby bears would have a shortstop named Smalley. Roy Smalley was a right-handed hitter, if that is the word for a man who in his best year (1953) hit .249. From Smalley I learned the truth about the word "overdue." A portrait of this author as a child would show him with an ear pressed against a radio, listening to an announcer saying: "The Cubs have the bases loaded. If Smalley gets on, the tieing run will be on deck. And Smalley is overdue for a hit." That was the most consoling word in the language: "overdue." It meant: In the long run, everything is going to be all right. No one is really a .222 hitter. We are all good hitters, all winners. It is just that some of us are, well, "overdue" for a hit, or whatever. Unfortunately, my father is a right-handed logician who knows more than it is nice to know about the theory of probability. With a lot of help from Smalley he convinced me that Smalley was not "overdue." Stan Musial batting .249 was overdue for a hot streak. Smalley batting .249 was doing his best. Smalley retired after 11 seasons with a lifetime average of .227. He was still overdue.
By early summer, 1988, the great Gwynn slump had made him tentative and unaggressive. "When you're going bad, you don't want to be fooled. You want to see the ball first and then react, instead of kind of reacting to the ball before it is thrown. I was sitting at the plate waiting for the ball to be released before I even made any movement at all. I was starting my stride after the ball was released, which is too late. Normally I start it right before they release the ball—I pick my hands up and get into a hitting position."
In 1988, "No one was throwing me a change-up early in the count. They worked the count to their favor and then tried to fool me with a change-up or a slow curveball to get me out in front [with his weight shifted to his front leg]. Last year I saw a variety of everything early in the count. This year I'm just seeing fastballs in on my hands, then as the count gets in their favor they start taking a little bit off with the change-up or curve away from me." Why were they pitching him differently? His answer implies that the questioner is dim: "Because they were getting me out." Communication throughout baseball is quick and pervasive, so quick adjustments by batters are vital. "They've got scouts everywhere," says Gwynn, trying not to sound persecuted. He was seeing an unusual number of fastballs. "In the major leagues, when they get you out in a certain way, they stick with it. Everyone has a scout watching, and they said, 'They're getting him out with inside pitches, fastballs in. Get ahead of him, then away....'" He sought help from tapes of the 1984 season because that year, with speedy Alan Wiggins on base so often in front of him, he was seeing a steady diet of fastballs. What he saw in the tapes was that in 1984 he had no trouble hitting inside fastballs to left.
"After about a month and a half I said maybe I'm looking for the ball inside too much. They were trying to bust me inside but were getting me out away. I was looking for the ball in. If you are looking for the ball away, you can still react on the ball in. But if you are looking for the ball in and they throw you away, you can't react to it." Your bat can cover the outside and then come in, but it can not start inside and get back out for a pitch away. By the end of the first six weeks he had struck out, he estimates, 25 times and a dozen of those were on called strikes on the outside corner. "I would just freeze on them. Then one day in early July I came out early and had our left-handed batting practice pitcher throw to me. I had just finished watching tapes from 1984 and I got an idea: Look for the ball away and hit it away. I wanted to work on it against a left-handed pitcher because if you look for the ball away on a right-handed pitcher and it comes in on you, it's easier to react on. But off a left-handed pitcher, if you're looking for the ball away and it comes in, it's more difficult to read. I had him throw for about 25 minutes. After about 10 minutes I started picking the ball up and reacting to it."
That night he was 2-for-4 with two singles to left and two ground balls up the middle, balls that, if the defense had not been playing him up the middle, would have gone through for base hits. The middle infielders might not have been playing him up the middle if the scouts' network had not spread the word that he had been trying to pull the ball more than usual. Next, the Pirates came to San Diego and played him like a left-handed pull hitter because they were going to pitch him inside. They, too, had heard the word. They were to see that the word was out of date. "I had six hits against them and five were to left field." Next came the Cubs, also playing him to pull to right. He got seven hits in that series, five of them straight up the middle. "Then came the All-Star break. I did not go down to the cage and hit. I knew I'd found it." In his first at bat after the break he stroked a clean, sharp single to left.
The slump that ended was a normal baseball phenomenon, the result of a delicate maladjustment in a sport very unforgiving of those. The way Gwynn went about ending it was an unusual combination of sweat and high tech. It involved a form of minute and reiterated scrutiny of baseball's component actions that was not possible until recently.
The biggest difference between Triple-A ball and the big leagues, according to Gwynn, is that big-league pitchers are so consistently "around the plate." Of course they throw harder and their breaking balls have better movement, but the most important difference is that "in Triple-A you didn't know whether they were going to throw a fastball on the black [the edge of the plate] or a fastball behind your back. It was easier to hit up here than in Triple-A because the guys are around the plate and you're playing the same guys over and over. So when I came up I made it a point to _watch_ —watch guys throw in the bull pen, on TV, everywhere." Gwynn, perhaps more than any other player, has made a full-time job of baseball's watchfulness.
He has a large, sprawling Southern California-style house. Outside is a satellite dish proportional to the house. What would you like to see? he asks. I answer, the Home Team Sports telecast out of Baltimore of the Orioles-Indians game in Cleveland. Click. Whir. And there is Cal Ripken scooping up a grounder at shortstop on the shore of Lake Erie. Rogers Hornsby (his .424 in 1924 is the highest average of the century) not only refused to go to movies, he would not look out train windows, lest the looking strain his eyes. Gwynn will look at tapes for hours. He has one tape of each team. Each tape has all his at bats against that team in the season. He has a tape that should be called "Tony Gwynn, the Movie," featuring all his at bats in the previous season.
Gwynn is, of course, not the only player making use of such technology. Some players even use it during a game. When Lee Smith, the relief pitcher, was with the Cubs he would watch games from the dugout for a few innings and then go to a videotape room. Drawing upon a file of film, he would study the hitters he might face later that day, checking such things as their tendency to swing at first pitches. But that is information that can be contained in a statistical chart. Video machines are more important for batters who are trying to imprint on their mental retinas a pitcher's motions and the movements of his pitches.
Gwynn records on small vidéocassettes about the size of audiocassettes. They can be played back in an automatic frame-by-frame staccato sequence. To know if he is swinging correctly, he counts the frames from when the pitcher lets go of the ball until his, Gwynn's, front shoulder "opens up"—turns to the right. Gwynn watches as the Cubs' Rick Sutcliffe releases the ball toward the Gwynn on the screen, and as the tape ticks along from frame to frame, Gwynn counts, "There's one... two... three... four... five... six... seven... eight... nine... ten.... There," he says with satisfaction at the high count, "ten frames. That means I'm staying on the ball. I'm keeping my front shoulder in and staying back. If I open it up before then, I'm through, I'm out in front." On the swing he has just watched on tape, he drove the ball for a hit. On the next swing, in the next at bat on the tape, he counts "... seven... eight... nine—I'm gone." At frame nine he was too far forward. "See," he says, "instead of going into the ball, I went like"—here he jumps to his feet to demonstrate how his front shoulder turned too soon toward the right side of the infield. That made it impossible for him to attack the pitch, which was a slider running away from him on the outside of the plate. "That's what I was doing for the first two and a half months, all the time." Could he see the problem on film at that time? Yes, but "I didn't need to see it. I _knew_. Because when you start your swing and your front shoulder goes [opens up—turns out], your plate coverage goes." When he was "opening up" too soon, he was losing coverage of the outside of the plate, which is where he finds his bread and butter—the pitches he can drive to left. "When you open your front shoulder you are telling the pitcher that the only pitch you are going to be able to hit is the inside pitch." The inside pitch, which he does not prefer, became the only pitch he could hit, the only pitch in the zone covered by his swing. Pitchers were then pitching him on the inside edge of the plate until he was behind in the count and had to bat defensively, swinging at anything in or on the edge of the strike zone. Then they were getting him out "away." That is, they were getting him out with pitches on the outside part of the plate where his bat, because of his prematurely turned shoulder, could not reach with authority. His small mechanical flaw had restricted him to the kind of pitches he preferred to let pass. Also, by pulling off the ball, his weight had shifted so his swing had no power to drive the ball. He was hitting too much with his arms. For power he wants to be "closed"—his shoulder not yet turned—at the instant the bat meets the ball.
As the tape ticks along through various Gwynn at bats, he occasionally— _very_ occasionally—murmurs to himself, "That's a good swing." Asked how many of his swings are good ones, his laughter wells up and he says, "Not many." He means it. "If you get fooled you're not going to have a good swing. If you swing at a bad pitch you're not going to have a good swing." Such miscalculations happen because—and here we are back to the basic fact of baseball life—the pitcher knows what he is trying to do, and the batter is guessing. Gwynn says that happens to him often. Remember, Mike LaValliere says it happens to Gwynn ten times a season.
Fast-forwarding the tape, he comes to an at bat when there was a runner on first, no outs and a 3–1 count, one of McKeon's favorite hit-and-run counts. The Gwynn on tape looked toward the third-base coach and was pleased to see the hit-and-run sign. "It gives me another hole to shoot at," explains Gwynn watching Gwynn. Yes, but a hit-and-run sign may require him to swing at a pitch he would otherwise let pass. Is it worth the trade-off? "It's a _great_ trade-off," he says, "because I want to go the other way. If the second baseman is covering [covering second as the runner breaks from first with the pitch], then that's another matter, because I really don't want to pull the ball unless I have to." But what if the runner starts and the pitch is four inches out of the strike zone? "On which half," he asks, "inner half or outer half? If it's four inches off the outer half, it's still going to work to my advantage—I can still reach out and poke it. On the inside half, it's another matter, it's tough to handle. You can't hit that ball in the hole." During the at bat Gwynn is watching on tape, before he gets a chance to act on the hit-and-run sign, the pitcher balks, the runner on first advances to second. Now Gwynn might be required to do what he does not like to do: pull the ball to the right side (to allow the runner to advance to third). But because Gwynn is hot again, McKeon "is going to let me hack." On the next pitch he is fooled by a split-finger fastball. His weight shifts too soon and his front leg is slightly bent. He beats the ball into the ground, toward a spot to the left of the second baseman. However, he was being pitched inside (remember, the word was out, spread by the scouts), and the opposing team assumed he would pull, so the second baseman was shaded to the right. The badly hit ball made it through the infield for a hit and an RBI.
Wearing a loose-fitting white sport shirt, faded denim slacks and Nike running shoes (he has a contract with Nike; all God's children got shoes but Gwynn's children are particularly well provided for), Gwynn sits on the floor of his den in front of a television set from which pours the unmistakable voice of Harry Caray, who broadcasts Cubs games for WGN, a cable superstation. Gwynn is watching a tape of himself at bat in San Diego, but taped from WGN cable out of Chicago. The Gwynn on screen backs out of the box after each pitch and talks to himself, swings his right arm on a flat plane through an imaginary strike zone. (He should watch what he says when talking to himself. Mel Stottlemyre, once a Yankee pitcher, now the Mets' pitching coach, says he used to read Carl Yastrzemski's lips when Yaz was talking to himself between pitches. "If I saw his lips saying 'Be quick, be quick,' I'd throw him a change-up. If he was saying 'stay back, weight back,' I'd throw him a fastball.")
Gwynn's slump is ending. As the tape rolls through his VCR, the scene on the screen changes to Wrigley Field. There is a crack of a bat on a ball. "There's another hit for Gwynn," exclaims the husky voice of Harry Caray. "Holy cow. That's his seventh hit of the series." The tape resumes with Gwynn's next at bat. "There's another hit for Gwynn. Holy cow." The tape rolls. Another park, another broadcaster. Another Gwynn hit—an RBI double. "Wow," says the broadcaster. "All I can say is wow." The 1987 batting champion is back in the hunt for the 1988 title.
Major league clubhouses vary in their ambiance. Some are relatively (these things are _very_ relative) sedate, others give a visitor the sense of having been swallowed by MTV. San Diego's clubhouse in late July, 1988, was on the lively side, and well it should have been. By then the lark was on the wing, the snail was on the thorn, God was in Heaven and all was right with the world because Tony Gwynn was hitting again. His mood was as bouncy as the beat of the music being pumped through the clubhouse. To be precise his mood was as upbeat as it could be within the circle of self-reproach he had drawn around his performance. He had climbed back to .300, but when asked about the possibility of another batting title, he said: "If I win it, it will be nice, but it isn't going to be worth a hill of beans to me. I pride myself on consistency. You might be consistent for three months and win the title but that is not going to make up for those first three months, for me."
He could pinpoint the hinge of the season. "One at bat turned it around for me. It was against Pittsburgh. Bob Walk was pitching. He threw a running fastball away, I stayed on it, drove it to left field, and from that point on I hit the ball well. After that I hit in nine straight games. Eight of them were multiple-hit games. I went from .237 to .277 in eight games, and I knew my thinking had changed because I was going up to the plate and trying to hit the ball the other way. I had been going to the plate knowing they were going to pitch me inside and I'd try to pull it. Before, I'd know they were going to pitch me inside but I'd just wait a bit and inside-out it." In an 18-game streak he had 15 multihit games, batted .513 (39-for-76) and raised his average more than 60 points to .309. During this period the Padres, too, were recovering—from their horrendous start of the season (16–31)—but they were not really pennant contenders. Was it hard for Gwynn to maintain the intensity necessary to pull himself back into contention for the batting title (that he eventually won at .313)? Gwynn's instant answer indicated distaste for the question.
"No," he said with a quiet emphasis. "Last year, when I was going through bankruptcy and the team was in last place, people used to say, 'How did you do it, hit .370?' I said, playing was easy. That is how I got my relief, where I came to have fun. This year has been in some ways more difficult because I have never swung the bat this poorly before. I mean, I had to grow up, too. You get to the point where you feel like you're better than you really are. You go out and have some success, and then you succeed again and again, and then you start to believe that this is what's 'supposed' to happen."
In society, virtue is supposed to be crowned with success. Hard work should produce accomplishments and accomplishments should bring recognition and respect. It does not always work out that way. A sport is a circumscribed area of controlled striving and, in a limited sense, is a model of a good society, where rules are respected and excellence is rewarded. Part of the pleasure of sport is in savoring this sense of a small, well-ordered universe. Of course, sport includes some young men and some not-so-young men who have never grown up, who are self-absorbed, willful, vain and arrogant, as headlong in satisfying their appetites as in their athletic competition. But precisely because competition at the pinnacle of American sport offers many temptations, and because physical abilities can carry an athlete far without a commensurate portion of good character, the achievements of the genuine grown-ups, of whom Gwynn is one, are all the more to be admired.
Once when Vincent Van Gogh's brother asked him how he painted, Van Gogh answered, "I see things that I have conjured in my imagination and in my memory and mind over a long period of time. Then it all just pours out." As we have seen, that is how Gwynn hits. For him, baseball is (to put the point playfully) a combination of muscle memory and cultural literacy. Until coaxed into elaboration, Gwynn takes a severely minimalist approach to explaining his craft. "I just try to see the ball well and hit it." But what he actually does in preparing to play is strikingly at odds with that downbeat description. And it is a refutation—one would hope that by now it is a redundant refutation—of a myth.
There is a myth of the "natural athlete" whose effortless excellence is a kind of spontaneous blooming. That myth is false and pernicious. It dilutes the emulative value of superior performers. It does so by discounting the extent to which character counts in sport. The myth is especially damaging to blacks. Sport has become an especially important arena of excellence—and a realm of upward mobility—for blacks. However, their successes have sometimes been tainted by a residue of racism, the notion that blacks are somehow especially "suited" to physical endeavors. The problem is not only, or even primarily, ideas as half-baked as Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder's ideas about why blacks have been "bred" for sports. Rather, the primary problem is the idea—itself not necessarily connected with any malevolent theory or motive—that nature has been especially bountiful to particular classes of people. The idea that blacks are "natural" basketball players is akin to the idea, now gathering dust in the museum of antique superstitions, that the Irish are natural fighters. (Actually, the Irish so dominated baseball in the early years of this century that writers of the time speculated on their inbred advantages.) The fundamental fact is this: For an athlete to fulfill his or her potential, particularly in a sport as demanding as baseball, a remarkable degree of mental and moral discipline is required.
A great black player received a lot of semi-disparaging praise as a "natural." Willie Mays had just turned 20 when he made his major league debut. His ebullience—his high-pitched laughter, the postgame stickball games in the streets of Harlem—occasioned frequent references to the "childlike" enthusiasm and "instinctive" play of this "natural." Often the condescension was unconscious, but it was nonetheless corrosive. The truth is that Mays was, from the first, a superb craftsman.
Bill Rigney, whose career as a Giants infielder was ending as Mays's career was beginning, unhesitatingly calls Mays the best player he ever saw. Rigney calls Mays the "complete" player and illustrates Mays's total concentration and mastery of the game with this detail: As a rookie, Mays would reach second base and peer in at the opposing catcher flashing the finger signs to the pitcher for one or two batters. When Mays returned to the dugout he would have decoded the signs, reporting, for example, that the second (or first, or third, or fourth) is the real sign, the others are chaff. Mays received much praise for his baserunning "instincts." But again, such praise often is veiled—and not very well veiled—condescension. Mays's "instincts" were actually the result of meticulous work. For example, almost every day of his career he took "second infield"—that is, he took infield practice before the game, after the starting infielders had practiced. While other players were in the clubhouse changing their shirts and relaxing, he was working out at first base. He did it partly to limber up, but primarily to remind himself of where the infielders play on cutoffs of throws from the outfield. Then when he got a hit he could see out of the corner of his eye whether the other team's infielders were where they should be and whether he could take an extra base.
Mays would have had more doubles if he had had less baseball sense: He would have had more doubles if he had not sometimes stopped at first base rather than advance to second when he could have. By advancing he would have left first base empty and tempted the other team to walk the man batting behind him. (That man often was Willie McCovey, who was pitched to often enough to hit more home runs—521—than any other left-hander in National League history.) Mays was so disciplined and confident that sometimes he would not just take a pitch he wanted to hit, he would swing at and intentionally miss a pitch he could have easily hit. By doing so in an early inning he might cause the pitcher to serve it up again in a later inning when it might be especially needed.
Mays was so intense that he periodically came to the edge of physical collapse. Bill Russell, who revolutionized the role of the center, and hence the nature of basketball, once said of the notion that blacks are "natural" basketball players: Then why did I spend ten hours a day practicing on San Francisco playgrounds? Good question. Gwynn is a "natural" who early on chose a hero because of the hero's work habits.
When Gwynn was a boy in the 1960s he would go to Dodger Stadium. He would go early to get a good look at his hero, Willie Davis. Davis exemplified the difference between 1950s and 1960s baseball. He was an outfielder who got twice as many stolen bases as home runs (398 SB, 182 HR). The 1960 White Sox outfield (Al Smith, Jim Landis, Minnie Minoso) had more stolen bases than home runs (48 to 42). In 1980 five teams' outfields had more stolen bases than home runs. In fact, in 1980 American League outfielders (with the Athletics' trio of Rickey Henderson, Tony Armas and Dwayne Murphy stealing 131 bases and hitting 57 home runs) averaged more stolen bases (13.3) than home runs (13.1).
Davis was Gwynn's hero because Davis was black, left-handed and "aggressive but under control." He admired the way Davis took infield practice. Unlike many established stars whose actions during practices were perfunctory, during infield practice Davis "always went all-out, he'd charge the ball, he'd come straight over the top [with throws], but"—and here comes the key phrase again—"he was always under control. Being aggressive at the plate means attacking the ball. Doing it under control means not going out to get the ball, letting the ball get to you, not trying to hit the ball out in front of the plate." Gwynn admired Davis's work habits. "It was the way he did his business every day." There it is again, the recurring sense of baseball's everydayness, which drives Gwynn in his pursuit of consistency.
There is a fine and sometimes fuzzy line between admirable intensity and disfiguring obsession. Once when the Cincinnati Reds' plane hit severe turbulence Pete Rose turned to a teammate and said, "We're going down. We're going down and I have a .300 lifetime average to take with me. Do you?" No jury would have convicted the teammate if he had strangled Rose, but if he had, the world would have lost a striking specimen of a man utterly defined by his vocation—perhaps too much so. The melancholy example of Rose shows that people with particularly narrow tunnel vision have no peripheral vision for adult responsibilities. However, the grand example of Gwynn is a refreshing reminder that a passion for excellence need not be disfiguring. Gwynn, who had the example of Willie Davis, is in turn an example to his peers, and to the rising generation of players.
In 1989 there were approximately 22 million American boys aged 6 to 18. Approximately 600,000 young Americans played on organized baseball teams. In addition, there were 40,000 college players and 6,000 in the minor leagues. Fewer than 1,000 men played in major league games. Only one-fourth of them had at least five years of major league experience. It has been calculated that the odds of a boy becoming a major league player are more than 100,000 to 1. The odds of the boy becoming an established (five years or more) major league player are about 500,000 to 1. Only about 2 percent of all the players who sign professional contracts ever see the inside of a major league clubhouse.
Only a fortunate few have the gifts necessary to become great athletes. However, no "gift" is sufficient for greatness. Greatness is never given. It must be wrested by athletes from the fleeting days of their physical primes. What nature gives, nurture must refine, hone and tune. We speak of such people as "driven." It would be better to say they are pulled, because what moves them is in front of them. A great athlete has an image graven on his or her imagination, a picture of an approach to perfection.
Stanley Coveleski, who played for the Indians in the 1920s, once said, "The pressure never lets up. Don't matter what you did yesterday. That's history. It's tomorrow that counts. So you worry all the time. It never ends. Lord, baseball is a worrying thing." And Coveleski was a pitcher. Most tomorrows were days off. For Gwynn, the pressure, which comes from within him, is an everyday experience.
Rolling north out of San Diego toward Gwynn's suburban home in a development on a mesa rising above the city, Gwynn inserts the BMW into the flow of freeway traffic and gives himself over to dissecting and deploring his 0-for-4 afternoon against the Astros. "The first couple of times up I opened up too soon. I knew it as soon as I did it. Knepper [the Astros' pitcher] isn't overpowering but he's crafty. He'll throw you a slow breaking ball and then he'll take a little bit off it and throw it again a little bit slower." That is an effective tactic for tantalizing a batter into opening up too soon, turning his shoulders and hips ahead of the arrival of the pitch in the hitting zone. One time up that afternoon, Gwynn bunted. There were runners on first and third, no outs, and the Padres were two runs behind. "Facing Knepper, you can almost bet you're going to get a ground ball. So I figured, why not just bunt the ball, get the run in, move the other runner up, stay out of the double play, and we've still got two cracks to tie it. I thought he'd start me off fastball in, but he started breaking ball in. So when I squared to bunt it, I was trying to bunt it past the pitcher toward second base but I bunted it right to first. All the first baseman had to do was come off the bag and throw to the plate. So I came back to the dugout and Jack McKeon sat me down and said, 'I know you were trying to move up the runners but in that situation go ahead and swing the bat. If you hit into a double play, we get a run in anyway.'"
Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow Cincinnati will be in town. Gwynn has no tape of the pitcher the Reds will start, but he faced him in Cincinnati and was l-for-3, a home run. Speaking as though reading a file to himself, Gwynn says, "Right-hander, pretty good fastball, straight over-the-top curveball and straight change—like what I hit out in Cincinnati. Two of the last three home runs I've hit have been on changes." Most of his home runs go to right. "I haven't hit one to left since"—pause—" 'eighty-six." He has a good memory but most of what he remembers are problems, such as home runs hit the wrong way.
#
THE DEFENSE
Cal Ripken's Information
On the night of July 5, 1989, the Orioles surged to a 5–0 lead midway through the third inning in Toronto. They hung on to win, 5–4. The next morning the box scores in the newspapers included this line in agate type, directly below the inning-by-inning line score: "DP: Baltimore 3, Toronto 1." One of those double plays may have saved the game. It certainly symbolized the Orioles' season.
With Toronto trailing, 5–3, the Blue Jays' Kelly Gruber and George Bell opened the sixth inning with back-to-back singles off the Orioles' starting pitcher, Bob Milacki. Out to the mound went Orioles manager Frank Robinson, out of the game came Milacki, in came relief pitcher Mark Thurmond, up to the plate came Fred McGriff, who, in an earlier at bat, had smashed his nineteenth home run. This time he hit a hard, fast ground ball on the quick new carpet of the Skydome. The ball was headed for right field, far to the first-base side of the infield. Second baseman Billy Ripken, ranging far to his left, fielded the ball, spun counterclockwise and fired the ball to his brother, who arrived at second as the ball and George Bell arrived almost simultaneously. _Almost_ simultaneously. The ball beat Bell, shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr., hung in against Bell's hard slide (Bell is big, 6 feet 1 and 202 pounds,- Ripken is bigger, nearly 6 feet 5 and 220 pounds) and fired to first to double-up McGriff. Rally killed.
After the third out the two Ripkens ran off the field, same pace, arms held in the same position, forearms cocked slightly above parallel to the ground, eyes straight ahead, looking into the dugout. They ran past their father, the third-base coach. It was just another night on the factory floor for the Ripken men, but it brought the Orioles to the halfway point of the season with a record of 47–34 and a 6½ Va-game lead in the American League East, a lead 4½ games larger than that of any of the three other division leaders.
What else were the Orioles leading in? Not much. Not batting average, not hits, not extra-base hits—not exciting stuff like that. Rather, they were leading in two crucial but, to most fans, boring categories: fewest errors (40), fewest unearned runs allowed. (They also were leading in fewest walks allowed, most intentional walks received, most sacrifice hits, fewest hit batsmen, most triple plays executed [one].) Pat Gillick, general manager of the Blue Jays, said, "Watching the Orioles is like watching a basketball team that's playing well together. Defense is a rhythm, team thing, and everyone's hustling and trying to outdo one another. It's great to watch." No one expected anyone to say anything like that about the 1989 Orioles. The 1988 Orioles had been comprehensively awful in a way that few teams ever have been. The 1989 Orioles were about 400 percent better, and about 80 percent of the difference was defense.
Tom Boswell is right. The 1989 season was baseball's saddest season in seventy years, since 1919, the year of the Black Sox scandal. Wade Boggs was tarnished and Pete Rose was disgraced. Donnie Moore, a relief pitcher, committed suicide, and some friends said he had never gotten over giving up an important home run in the 1986 American League Championship Series. Dave Dravecky of the Giants broke his arm on the mound while trying to make a comeback from cancer—then broke it again in the on-field celebration after the Giants won the pennant. Commissioner Giamatti died. An earthquake shoved the World Series to the periphery of the nation's attention.
However, beginning in the spring, on Opening Day when the Orioles beat Roger Clemens and the Boston Red Sox, and throughout the summer and into the autumn, the Orioles' ups and downs—the unexpected ups, and the downs that never lasted as long as expected—were the sweetest story line in the season. They were in the pennant race entering the last weekend of the season. They were leading the league in not a single major pitching category and their only boasts about their offense were that they were second in walks and third in sacrifice bunts. Yet they finished two games out of first with an offense that outscored their opponents by just 22 runs over 162 games. Why? Defense. The 1989 Orioles made just 87 errors, the fewest in the major leagues. (The 1989 Athletics made 127.) They were the second team in history to make fewer than 90 errors. The Orioles' fielding percentage of .98602 was the highest ever. Good defense—just 38 errors in their first 82 games—propelled the Orioles to the top of their division. Then when the wheels fell off the Orioles' wagon in mid-season, the principal problem was bad defense: 24 errors in 25 games. (The Orioles' slump after the All-Star Game gave rise to one of those What-kind-of-lunatic-thinks-these up? statistics: The Orioles' 5–17 patch tied the 1975 Pirates for the worst streak of 20 or more games by a team in first place the entire time.) Over the last 71 games the Orioles batted an anemic .238 and averaged just 3.8 runs per game. Defense kept them in the race. But over the 162 games it was defense more than anything else that enabled the 1989 Orioles to match the 1967 Cubs for the most victories by a team that lost 100 games the previous year.
On the final day of the 1989 season—the day after the Orioles had been eliminated from the race by Toronto—shortstop Tony Fernandez of the Blue Jays played one inning, then left the game. It was his 140th game, the minimum necessary for him to be credited with the record for fewest errors (6) by a shortstop in a season. (The previous record was 7, set by Eddie Brinkman of the Tigers in 1972.) Fernandez plays all his home games, and thus most of his games, on plastic. In 1989 Ripken played 162 games, most of them on grass and dirt, and made just 8 errors. His final error of the season ended a 47-game errorless streak, the longest of his career. It was only his second throwing error of the season. He led all major league shortstops in putouts (276), assists (531), total chances (815) and double plays (119). In 1989, even more than in his 1983 MVP season, Ripken set the tone of the team, and he did it on defense.
"I was raised to play for the team, not for yourself," Cal Ripken, Jr., says. "When you're not in the race, it makes the last month awful hard." Imagine, then, how hard it is to "play for the team, not for yourself" when the team is like the 1988 Orioles, who were out of the race at the end of the third week of April. No team ever started a season more miserably than the 1988 Orioles. They lost their first 21 games. It is difficult to pick the lowest point in the streak, but it probably came early, in game eight in Kansas City, when the Royals set a club record with seven consecutive hits while scoring nine runs in the first inning. In 1988 the Royals became the first club in 35 years to sweep an entire season series against the Orioles. At the 40-game mark, the Orioles' record was 6–34, the worst record any club ever had that late in a season. The Orioles' record in 1988 was 54–107, the worst record of any major league team in the 1980s. The Orioles had two potential Hall of Famers hitting third and fourth (Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray), and still lost 107 games, the tenth most losses in American League history. The Orioles were 20–61 on the road, the fewest road wins since the 162-game schedule began in 1961. (The 1952 Tigers won just 18 on the road.) The Orioles won fewer games (54) than the Mets won at home (56). The Orioles finished 23 V2 games out—out of sixth place. By the time the Orioles left the field in Toronto on closing day, 1988, they had compiled progressively worse records for five straight years. Only three other teams have done that, the 1901–1905 Dodgers, the 1932–36 Athletics and the 1938–42 Cubs.
So why, five months later, was that large man skipping—literally skipping, in high bounds—across the Sarasota outfield grass in March, 1989? Because when you have lost 200 games in two years you will try almost anything, even if it makes you look silly. A flexibility and conditioning expert was hired by the Orioles (tell that to an old-time baseball person and stand far back from the explosion) to see if he could help. The skipping person was the shortstop. By Spring Training of 1989, Cal Ripken, Jr., was the only member of the 1983 World Champion Orioles still with the team. By then the Orioles had just two players (both pitchers) over 30 years of age on their 40-man roster and Ripken, then 28, was the team's ranking member in terms of seniority. The 1989 Orioles entered the season with six rookies and twelve players with less than two years' experience. The 1989 Orioles became the first team to get 25 wins and 25 saves from rookie pitchers since saves became an official statistic in 1969. In 1989 the Dodgers had baseball's largest payroll, with a per player average of $850,000. The Orioles had the smallest, averaging about $275,000. (The payroll included Ripken's salary of $2.47 million.) It may have been a bargain basement team, but it was a bargain. Approximately one-third of the way through the 1988 season the Orioles had been 14–42 and 22Va games out of first place. One-third of the way through the 1989 season they were 31–23 and leading the American League East. At that point the Orioles had made just 23 errors, putting them on a pace to break the major league record, set in 1988 by the Twins (playing indoors and on a carpet), for the fewest errors by a team in a season. Orioles infielders had made just 3 errors in May. The catchers and first basemen had made no errors all season. The team had allowed just 6 unearned runs all season. (The Yankees had allowed the Orioles 11 unearned runs in the first three innings of a game the week the season reached the one-third mark.) In 1988 the Orioles were in last place every day of the season. In 1989 they were never in last place and were in first place for 116 days, 98 of them consecutively. By August 1, after 103 games, Orioles pitchers had just 6 complete games. The truth was that the pitching was barely adequate. But the defense made it satisfactory. What made the defense special was the speed of the new players, supplemented by adrenaline. "When you've been around seven or eight years," said Ripken in 1989, his eighth season, "you might think twice about making a diving catch on gravel and sliding into the wall. But at this stage of our young players' development, they don't think about it." Ripken, who will be 29 on Opening Day, 1990, is hardly elderly, even by baseball's standards. But in a sense, he has about 29 years of baseball seniority.
Talk about the fruit not falling far from the tree. Cal Ripken, Jr., was raised in Aberdeen, Maryland, site of the U.S. Army Proving Ground, where tanks and other large things are tested for toughness. But in another sense he was born into baseball, into the Baltimore Orioles' organization.
Cal Ripken, Sr., smokes Lucky Strikes and drinks Schlitz beer. The Luckies are not filtered and the Schlitz is not light. He is a former minor league catcher who looks like something whittled from an old fungo bat. When tanned, his skin is the color of a new baseball glove, but it has the wrinkles and creases of one that's seen a lot of hard use. Any reader of John Tunis's boys' books knows that a short, scrappy former catcher should be "bandy-legged." Cal, Sr., is. He played in Phoenix, Arizona; Wilson, North Carolina; Pensacola, Florida; Amarillo, Texas; Fox Cities, Wisconsin; Little Rock, Arkansas; Leesburg, Virginia; Rochester, New York; Aberdeen, South Dakota. He played in 9 towns in 8 years. He managed in 9 towns in 14 years: Leesburg, Virginia; Appleton, Wisconsin; Aberdeen, South Dakota; Tri-City, Washington; Miami, Florida; Elmira, New York; Rochester, New York; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Asheville, North Carolina.
When Willie Mays was six months old his father taught him to walk by enticing him with a rolling baseball. Cal, Jr.'s, childhood was like that, only more so. He was always around ballparks. Jim Palmer, who at the end of his career was playing with Ripken, remembers the three-year-old Ripken gamboling at the Aberdeen, South Dakota, ballpark in 1964. Ripken remembers, "I had the luxury of taking ground balls with Belanger when I was 14 years old, and asking him all kinds of questions."
"The game," says Tony Kubek, "lends itself to sitting around." Kubek played near the end of the railroad era, when the Yankees still took 30-hour train trips from New York to Kansas City. Thirty hours in close confinement with Casey Stengel was a learning experience. So was learning baseball at the side of the likes of Mark Belanger. Belanger's confidence in his fielding was such that (so says Tony Kubek, a less confident shortstop) he did not wear a protective cup. So the teenaged Ripken was taking tutorials from a master.
Belanger taught him, for example, that on an attempted steal, when you are straddling second base waiting to receive the throw from the catcher, don't reach out for the ball. Let it come to you because you can't pull your glove back to you as fast—say, 80 miles per hour—as the thrown ball is moving. Anyway, says Ripken, because Belanger was so quick with the tag, he got a lot of calls from umpires who could not tell on a bang-bang play whether he actually tagged the runner. "When I was 17, Belanger told me some things I was too young to absorb. For example, when you have a lead, and one out is enough, you can play a deeper double-play depth. Perhaps you will miss a double play you might have had playing at the regular depth, but you will get to some balls you might not have reached at regular double-play depth. And you cut the trailing team from nine down to eight outs remaining. Similarly, when you absolutely must have a double play—say, tie game, eighth inning, one out, runners on first and second, fast runner at the plate—there is a shallower-than-usual double-play depth."
There never has been more of a baseball boyhood than Ripken's. And there are few, if any, better baseball towns than Baltimore. It is a blue-collar town with a tradition of making steel and sausages and baseball teams from scraps. Good teams, too. Several of them. It is arguable that Baltimore deserves to be thought of as America's emblematic baseball city. To begin at the beginning, there is a bit of Baltimore (Francis Scott Key's song) at the beginning of every baseball game. And back at the beginning of big-league baseball, Baltimore was a nursery of greatness.
In the early 1890s the Orioles of John McGraw, Wilbert Robinson and Willie Keeler were one of baseball's best teams. After the 1902 season, $18,000 was enough to cause the Orioles to move to New York and become the Highlanders. In 1906 the name was changed to the Yankees. But the Yankees did not really become the Yankees, the Yankees as they are remembered, until 1920. Then they acquired Baltimore's greatest gift to baseball, by far the largest figure in the history of American sport, George Herman Ruth.
He was the product of a Catholic institution for orphans and other needy children (its second most famous alumnus was a Jewish singer, Al Jolson). He was brought into organized baseball by Jack Dunn, owner of the Orioles franchise in the International League, at a time when the difference in the caliber of baseball played in the major leagues and the high minor leagues was not as great as it is today. (Dunn once built a fence for a West Virginia club as payment for the contract of a young pitcher named Lefty Grove.) In Ruth's first appearance in Baltimore as an Oriole he pitched in an exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. In his first at bat he hit a long fly that was run down by the Dodgers' right fielder, Casey Stengel. In Ruth's second at bat Stengel played deeper, and Ruth tripled over his head.
Even after Ruth was sold to the Red Sox, the Orioles won seven consecutive International League pennants, from 1919 through 1925. Nearly thirty years later major league baseball came back to Baltimore with the first move of an American League franchise since 1902. The franchise that moved in 1954 was the one that had moved in 1902. Before that season, after just one season in the league, the Milwaukee franchise moved to St. Louis and became the Browns, baseball's most consistently awful team.
Through 52 seasons (1902–53) they finished in the second division 40 times. They were more than 1,000 games under .500 (3,416–4,465, .433). They finished second in their first season in St. Louis, and again in 1922. They did not finish that high again until they won their only pennant, in 1944, when most of America's able-bodied athletes were fighting the Axis. After George Sisler's 12 seasons hitting .344 for the Browns, their most famous players were a one-armed outfielder, Pete Gray, who hit .218 in 77 games in 1945, and a 3-foot-7, 65-pound midget, Eddie Gaedel, who batted once, in 1951.
In Baltimore the franchise that had been a jalopy became a Rolls-Royce. The Orioles' record from 1954 through 1988 was 2,972–2,557, .538, with winning records against all but three teams (Red Sox, Indians, Yankees). In their first 35 years at Thirty-third Street, through 1988, the Orioles finished first 8 times and won 6 pennants and 3 World Series. They were runners-up 8 times and finished in the first division 21 times. In their first 32 years in Baltimore, until 1986, the Orioles never finished last. From 1960 through 1985 they had only two losing seasons, and were 625 games over .500, an average of 24 games over .500 for 26 seasons. The Orioles' 18 consecutive winning seasons from 1968 through 1985 was the second-longest winning streak in history, surpassed only by the Yankees' 39-year run from 1926 through 1964. (In professional baseball, football and hockey, the franchises with the most consecutive winning seasons are the Yankees, 39 [1926–64]; Canadiens, 32 [1951–83]; Bruins, 22 [1967–89]; Cowboys, 20 [1966–85]; and Orioles, 18 [1968–85].) In the 18 seasons from 1966, when they swept the Dodgers in the World Series, through 1983, when they beat the Phillies in 5 games, the Orioles had a .590 winning percentage and won 6 pennants. It was one of the best long-run performances by any franchise. In the 6 seasons from 1966 through 1971 the Orioles won 4 pennants. In the 9 seasons from 1966 to 1974 they finished first 6 times. In 1969, 1970 and 1971 they became the third major league team in history to win 100 or more games in three consecutive seasons. They won division titles by 19, then 15, then 12 games and swept the first three American League Championship Series (which, at the time, were best-of-5 events) in 3 games each time, twice over the Twins and once over the Athletics.
The Orioles of 1969–71 rank with the best teams in history: with the 1927 Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig; with the 1929–31 Athletics of Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane and Lefty Grove; with the 1976 Reds of Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan; with the 1952 Dodgers of Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Pee Wee Reese; and the 1961 Yankees of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Elston Howard and Tony Kubek. The Orioles had three Hall of Famers, Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson, and Jim Palmer. Paul Blair was one of the best defensive center fielders since Tris Speaker. The right side of the infield had Boog Powell and Davey Johnson. The Orioles had three 20-game winners (Palmer, Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar). The 1971 team became the second team in history to have four, with Pat Dobson joining the list.
Over a span of 31 seasons, 1957–87, the Orioles had the best record in the major leagues. In the 24 seasons from 1960 (the year Cal Ripken, Jr., was born into the Orioles organization and the year they almost won their first pennant) through 1983 (Ripken's second season and the year they won their third World Series) the Orioles dominated baseball as it has rarely been dominated. They were 612 games over .500 (2,206–1,594, .581). They had a 99y2-game edge over the second-best team during that span, the Yankees. The Orioles won 100 games in 1980 but finished 3 games behind the Yankees. That year 249,605 attended a 5-game series with the Yankees at Memorial Stadium, the largest attendance for a single series in major league history. (In 1935 the Browns drew 80,922 for the whole season.) Even in the 5 years of decline, 1984–88, the Orioles' annual attendance averaged 1.93 million. In 1988, in spite of the stumbling start, in spite of the staggering finish, in spite of a season-long trough between those two troughs, in spite of losing 7 home dates to rain, the most in the major leagues, the Orioles drew 1,660,738, more than 7 other major league clubs. It was the fourth-highest attendance for a team losing 100 games, surpassed only by two early seasons of Mets mania (1965 and 1967) and the Toronto Blue Jays in 1977, the first year of that franchise.
In 1992 the Orioles will begin playing in a new ballpark in downtown Baltimore, hard by the B&O railroad tracks. (A Hall of Famer who went from Baltimore amateur leagues directly to the Tigers—Al Kaline—developed his strong right fielder's arm by throwing rocks at the "O" on the passing B&O freight cars.) Center field in the new park will be located approximately where, from 1906 to 1912, there was a saloon operated by George Ruth. He lived there, on the second floor, with his wife, Katherine, and their son, George Herman. The son probably played ball in the street—in what will be center field. That was one of five locations for the senior Ruth's businesses between 1902 and 1916. After 1912 he ran the Columbia Harness Company at a location where, in 1992, there will be crowds sitting in the new stadium's seats along the third-base line. Father Ruth's partner was listed as "Ruth, George Herman, junior, ball player." That is the first known reference to Babe as a ball player.
Babe Ruth, who was as rambunctious an individualist as ever caroused across America, represented baseball's individualist side. His speciality was baseball's supreme act of solitary achievement, the go-it-alone blow, the home run: Do it quickly, with one swing of the bat. Defense is baseball's collective, team side. The individualism of baseball has been called (by the _Chicago American_ in 1906) the source of American military success. The paper editorialized that base ball (the name was two words until well into this century) "is one of the reasons why American soldiers are the best in the world... capable of going into action without officers."
It has been said that baseball exemplifies a tension in the American mind, the constant pull between our atomistic individualism and our yearning for community. Baseball is a team game in which the episodic action begins by repeated confrontations between two individuals standing alone, the pitcher and the batter. The spatial separation of the players—every player's action is clearly visible to every spectator—underscores the individualism of baseball. The very fact that there is a "lineup" suggests the one-thing-at-a-time aspect of the game. But baseball is really always a one-against-nine game, and if the batter has one or more teammates on base, there are two (or three, or four) against the nine. Batters and base runners affect and help one another. And to understand defensive play is to recognize that there is no simple batter-against-pitcher confrontation. The batter is working against a pitcher who is thinking and acting with eight other players.
Bart Giamatti characterized baseball as "an individual sport that you play as a team member." It is not a team sport in the sense that football is. In football, 11 men move in an assigned pattern on a prearranged signal. Baseball, however, is most like a team sport on defense, when a full team is on the field. Then it is more of a team sport than most fans realize. If a team on defense is doing its job correctly, all nine men are playing as a team on every pitch. This playing as a team may not involve nine discernible movements. Indeed, it should not. Playing together should not reveal too much. Some, even most, of the playing together can only be inferred. But imagine taut elastic bands connecting every player behind the pitcher. As the pitcher begins his delivery, every player should impart some slight change in the tension of the band, a change that would radiate through the team. Most of the change would be a slight movement, or leaning, denoting the essence of defensive play—anticipation.
There is in baseball an ugly synergism and a lovely synergism and it sometimes seems that there is not much in between. When some aspect of a team's play goes sour, the sourness is contagious, making other aspects sick. And when something goes well it makes ailing things get well. Bad hitting, for example, makes pitchers press, lose concentration and confidence, aim the ball, bollix up their mechanics. All this happens because they go to the mound gloomily convinced that their team will not score many runs so they must pitch nearly perfectly to win. Bad pitching makes the hitters unable to "stay within themselves." They go to the plate thinking they must score a lot of runs just to stay close. On the other hand, good pitching makes good defense—and, as we shall shortly see, vice versa. The Orioles of 1988 and 1989 demonstrated, perhaps in each case more dramatically than ever before, both synergisms, the ugly in 1988 and the lovely in 1989.
The 1988 Orioles hit bottom on Opening Day and stayed there all the way. They were in last place every day. In 1989 the Orioles were the only American League East team that was never in last place for even a day. Still, 1989 was a roller-coaster year. Immediately after the All-Star break the Orioles lost eight in a row, one short of the American League record (held by the 1953 Yankees and 1970 Twins) for consecutive losses by a team in first place. That is the way things go when you have gone as far as defense and adrenaline can carry an otherwise marginal team.
When the Orioles management recognized the extent of the 1988 collapse, they decided to rebuild around defense and pitching. They decided to do so because, as Roland Hemond, their general manager, said, "That's the fastest way to improve." It is fastest because of the particularly powerful synergism between the two. And of the two, defense is primary.
In 1973 Nolan Ryan pitched 326 innings and piled up 383 strikeouts. That means that Ryan himself retired nearly 40 percent of all the batters who made outs while he pitched. If the likes of Ryan were not so rare, sound defense would not be so important. On April 29, 1986, Roger Clemens struck out 20 Mariners. If every pitcher in every game left just 7 outs to be made by the 7 men who play behind the pitcher, a manager could worry almost entirely about what his players do with wood in their hands. It is a mistake to think that the ideal pitching accomplishment would be an 81-pitch game of 27 three-pitch strikeouts. Rather, the ideal would be a 27-pitch game with 27 first pitches put in the strike zone and put in play for outs by the defenders who are paid to make putouts. In 1944 Red Barrett of the Boston Braves pitched a complete game with just 58 pitches—about 2 per out. The people behind him were kept busy. They are supposed to be busy. Ray Miller's credo—"throw strikes, change speeds, work fast"—has, in its unabridged version, seven more words: "Throw strikes, change speeds, work fast _and let everybody else do the work."_
The pitcher's primary task is to make batters put the ball in play where fielders can reach it. As John Tudor said after he went on a 20–1 tear in 1985, "If I can't throw strikes and let Ozzie [Smith] and Willie [McGee] catch 'em, then I'm beating myself." As Davey Johnson of the Mets says, "We believe _totally_ that you pitch in front. Get the first one over. Statistics show that the guys don't hit for much of an average if you are pitching in front. I have told pitchers, I don't care if it is right down the middle. Down the middle for the first two pitches, then move to the corners, and if the count gets even, go back to the middle." Doesn't Johnson worry that the other teams will notice that his teams do that? "Doesn't matter. Your defense is more ready if you're pitching in front. All good staffs are 'strike one, strike two, then go to work.' And if they hit the ball early in the count they haven't had a lot of pitches they could time." That is why Wade Boggs believes he is a better hitter deep in the count. In 1986 the Indians led the American League in errors, in part, Andy Allanson believes, because the pitchers were running so deep in the count with so many hitters that the infielders were losing the edge that a brisk tempo hones. Furthermore, the errors made the pitchers nervous and drained away their aggressiveness, and they began to pitch too carefully. They were afraid to let the batters hit the ball, so they nibbled around the plate, thereby producing more deep counts.
The late Lefty Gomez was making a serious point when he joked that he owed his success to "clean living and a fast outfield." Pitchers, like other players, are paid on the basis of the numbers they put up. The number, other than wins and losses, they care most about is earned run average. It supposedly is the number that comes closest to reflecting the pitcher's pure value—what he does on his own. But a pitcher's ERA is going to rise if, in first-and-third situations with no outs or one out, he gets batters to hit ground balls but his infielders do not turn the double plays. Although Hershiser showed in 1985 that he had special talent (19–3,2.03 ERA), he was just a .500 pitcher in the two seasons before 1988, splitting 60 decisions (14–14, 3.85 ERA in 1986; and 16–16, 3.06 ERA in 1987). This was in part-in large part—because the Dodger infield was too porous.
In olden times, before the strike zone sagged to the belt, pitchers were praised for being able to throw "the high hard one." A scout once reported to Branch Rickey on an unpromising rookie, "This boy is wild low. He doesn't have enough stuff to be wild high." Today, with the increased emphasis on defense, a sinker-ball pitcher like Hershiser is especially valuable because he pitches down where the strike zone has gone, and in doing so he produces a lot of ground balls. The ideal Hershiser game would closely resemble the 10 major league games in which infielders have made 25 putouts in nine innings. Mike Flanagan, who before going to the Blue Jays pitched for the Orioles when they won two pennants and one World Series, says defense "makes all the difference." The 1979 American League Cy Young Award winner says, "It's the difference between hoping and knowing." When a ball is hit that a good infield would turn into a double play, but the ball gets through for a hit, that "is a momentum-turning play. One or two major plays can make a game. An 11–2 game can come down to one pitch, one play." Or, as Casey Stengel said, "When a fielder gets the pitcher into trouble, the pitcher has to pitch himself out of a slump he isn't in."
Bob Gibson said that the plate's 17 inches includes two dominions: "The middle 12 belong to the hitter. The inside and outside 2½ are mine. If I pitch to spots properly, there's no way the batter is going to hit the ball hard consistently." Listen to Gibson's language carefully. He spoke about pitching the way he practiced it—with precision. So note the words "hard" and "consistently." Gibson was saying that no matter how well you pitch to spots, many pitches are going to be hit, some of them hard. Cal Ripken, Sr., remembers the 1971 Orioles' pitching staff with its four 20-game winners. The pitching was great. The defense was sensational. The four pitchers, Cal, Sr., says, made a lot of mistakes. "If they didn't make mistakes, how did Brooks Robinson get to make all those great plays at third base? They made mistakes that the defense got them out of." From 1968 through 1984 Orioles pitchers had twenty-three 20-win seasons and won six Cy Young awards. It is not a coincidence that the Orioles' pitchers had a lot of Gold Gloves playing behind them. Between 1957, when the Gold Glove awards were begun, and 1988, Orioles won 48, more than any other American League team and second only to the Cardinals' 48½. (How do you win only half an award? By trading a Gold Glove player—in this case, first baseman Keith Hernandez, to the Mets—in the middle of the season.) Brooks Robinson shares with pitcher Jim Kaat the record for the number of Gold Gloves won: 16. Belanger holds the American League record for the highest career fielding average among shortstops who have played 1,000 or more games (.977). Cal Ripken, Jr., considers the truth self-evident: "Defense and pitching go hand in hand. Good defense helps pitching and good pitching helps defense."
Jeff Ballard was emblematic of the Orioles' 1989 season. In 1985 this son of a Montana oil man had left Stanford with a degree in geophysics and a clutch of Stanford baseball records (37 victories, 428 innings, 316 strikeouts). However, he had been only a seventh-round draft choice and his career soon sagged. Bouncing between Rochester and Baltimore his major league record was dismal. It was 2–8 and 6.59 in 1987 and in Baltimore's Plague Year of 1988 his record was 8–12 and 4.40. But in 1989 his record was 18–8 and 3.43, both totals being the best of any Orioles starting pitcher. In fact, his 18 wins were more than any other pitcher in the American League East.
What was the difference? His best fastball was still about 85 miles per hour. In 1989 he came to Spring Training slimmed down and with more stamina, but that was not the difference. The Orioles' new pitching coach, Al Jackson, helped him make two mechanical changes, but they were only part of the difference. Jackson got Ballard, a left-hander, to pitch from the right side of the rubber. That meant that his fastball, which runs away from right-handed hitters, would not run out of the strike zone so often. In 1988 Ballard had been behind in too many counts and had issued too many walks (42 in 153 Va innings). In 1989 batters would have to hit the ball to get on base. The second mechanical change was to influence where they hit it. Jackson got Ballard to "turn over" his fastball. Now as Ballard released it he turned his wrist, pulling down through the pitch and causing it to stay low in the strike zone. Together, the two changes meant putting the ball where batters would be more apt to hit it, and hit it on the ground. Ballard was a better pitcher in 1989 because he could be more aggressive, coming at the batters, throwing fewer pitches. He was "not afraid of the bat." He was able to let—get, really—the ball be put in play to the Orioles' defense. That was the story of the Orioles' pitching staff in 1989. The staff achieved only 676 strikeouts, the fewest by any major league pitching staff in six years. When you have people who can catch the ball, do not waste pitches and energy on strikeouts. Make the other team put the ball in play.
In June, 1989, sitting in one of the large orange chairs that make the Orioles' clubhouse a strain on the eyes but a testimony to team identity, Cal Ripken, Jr., marveled at the effect the improved Orioles defense was having on Orioles pitching. "It makes them more aggressive. I have been much more busy because of the aggressiveness of the pitching staff. The pitchers say, 'I've got all those people behind me. I'm going to make these guys hit it.' They are not going to think they have to strike out this guy or that guy. It allows the pitcher to focus on the batter's weakness and not worry about defensive weaknesses. Mike Boddicker would try to make the hitter hit a ground ball, or not hit to a certain part of the field because our defense wasn't good in that part. A pitcher shouldn't have to do that."
Ripken says that when Mike Flanagan was traded to Toronto in 1987, he had some mildly embarrassing moments adjusting to life with a good defensive team. "He would give up a line drive or a long fly ball to the gap, and he would run to back up third because he was sure it was a hit. Then he would look up and the ball was being thrown around the horn. Flanagan became much more aggressive, not worrying about where they hit the ball. When he was here [Baltimore], he felt he couldn't make a mistake up [up in the strike zone], because the sluggish Baltimore outfield could not chase down enough fly balls."
Do not try to sell Flanagan or any other pitcher on Bill James's distinction. James says: "Offense is making things happen. Defense is keeping things from happening. People would much rather watch things happen." Actually, James is right, about offense and defense, and, alas, about people. But perhaps people can be convinced that prevention, properly understood, should count as something happening—something interesting, too. Watch Ripken. What's that you say? You would rather watch the pitcher? Watch them both, they are working together.
Every defensive play begins from an act that looks like offense—not to say aggression. It begins when a member of the team playing defense—the pitcher—throws a very hard ball very fast and often close to the batter who is standing not far away. Roger Angell, writing about the pitcher-versus-hitter struggle, says that only boxing has as much hard one-on-one confrontation as baseball. Angell has a point. However, in another sense, it is always nine against the batter. It is commonly said that the pitcher acts and everyone else reacts. That is not quite right. The game does indeed revolve around a 20-foot circle, the pitcher's mound. But Earl Weaver was exaggerating a trifle when he said, "The only thing that matters is what happens on that little lump out in the middle of the field." What is done on that lump depends in large measure on the confidence the pitcher has in his defense, and the reciprocal confidence the defense has in the pitcher's ability to think clearly and execute the correct intentions.
"I like to learn their hitters and our pitchers and cheat a little bit, and cut down the area I have to cover," Ripken says. "I'm not blessed with the kind of range a lot of shortstops have. The way I have success is, I guess, by thinking." Even the quickest player must think ahead because it is too late to think when a hard-hit ball is in play. In 1987 more than 200 players, managers, coaches and general managers were polled on a variety of subjects, including "smartest defensive player." The winner was Ripken. Branch Rickey, the lawyer who was a catcher before he became a savant, was the author of baseball's most elegant aphorism: "Luck is the residue of design." There is design in Ripken's defensive play, and it begins by knowing how his pitchers will try to pitch to particular batters in particular situations.
In La Russa's pithy formulations, defense strategy is "how to pitch them and how to play them." Defense positioning is harder than it used to be. Ray Miller says that as recently as the mid-1960s, 80 percent of all hitters were pull hitters. Today only half a dozen hitters in each league are dead pull hitters. The rest hit the ball to all fields. They may be trying to pull the ball and their bats are slow, but they are so strong they hit into the opposite field. Not all hitters pull the ball, and as the count goes against a hitter, a hitter is less apt to pull. On a 3–1 pitch the hitter can take a full cut. On a 1–2 pitch he has to swing more defensively, protecting the plate.
Tony Kubek says, "You always hear it said, 'Play the hitter.' That's actually about the third thing on the list, or maybe fourth. You play your pitcher, because everyone throws differently. You play the situation in the game. You play the count. For example, 2–0, guys are apt to pull the ball a little more because they're a little more aggressive. The batter gets behind 0–2, he may hit the ball a little late. Every hitter isn't that way. According to [Cardinals manager] Whitey [Herzog], Willie McGee doesn't know if the count is 0–2 or 3–0. Some guys just go up there hacking. You have to know who _they_ are."
To illustrate "playing the count," Ripken says that if a runner breaks from first on a 2–0 pitch, the probability is that a hit-and-run has been called, not a steal. Why steal on what may be ball 3? On a 2–0 count the pitcher will be trying hard to be in the strike zone, so the hitter should be able to make contact. Thus when a runner breaks on a 2—0 count the second baseman (if the hitter is left-handed) or the shortstop (if the hitter is right-handed) should not immediately break over to take the throw at second. Instead, he should move in toward the batter so that if the ball is hit he will still be filling what the batter hoped would be an empty hole in the infield. By moving in he will get the ball quicker and still have a chance to force at second the runner who has a running start on the play.
Someday Ripken might not report to work in the middle of the infield. He might go to the corners, to first base or, more likely, to third base, from whence he came to shortstop. On May 30, 1982, Ripken came to Memorial Stadium, got dressed and then glanced at the lineup card to see where he was in the batting order. He noticed a "6" next to his name, indicating his fielding position, shortstop. He thought manager Earl Weaver had made a mistake, had meant to put a "5," third base. But the "6" was no mistake. From that day through 1989 he started every game at shortstop and missed just 31 defensive innings.
Now, there were then, and still are, people—dogmatists impervious to evidence—who say that the "6" was a mistake, that Ripken is too big to be a shortstop. By now they have been shown to be wrong, but they had history on their side.
The position of shortstop was an afterthought and an improvisation. It was not created until about 1845. Prior to that baseball was, like the British game "rounders," an eight-man game. Then D. C. Adams of the New York Knickerbockers put himself in the lineup as the ninth man and the innovation was adopted. The name "shortstop" may come from the cricket term "short fielder." In fact, the first shortstops were more outfielders than infielders. They were, among other things, roving cutoff men helping to get the very light (3-ounce) ball back to the infield. When in 1856 the ball was made heavier (5 to 5 Vi ounces), most shortstops became infielders. When the heavier ball resulted in an extra infielder, the extra was, more often than not, a light infielder. Until about 1982 the conventional wisdom was that a shortstop should not, could not be constructed along Ripken's lines.
Luis Aparicio is the most recent of those rarities, a shortstop elected to the Hall of Fame. At 5 feet 9 and 160 pounds, Aparicio resembled Pee Wee Reese (5 feet 10, 160), who is in the Hall of Fame, and Phil Rizzuto (5 feet 6,150), who arguably should be. (The Yankees' Vic Raschi said, "My best pitch is anything the batter grounds, lines or pops in the direction of Rizzuto.") Reese's nickname was "The Little Colonel," Rizzuto's was "Scooter." The prototypical shortstop is Hall of Famer Walter James Vincent Maranville (5 feet 5, 155), known, of course, only as "Rabbit." When great shortstops have not been short they have been skinny, like Marty "Slats" Marion (6 feet 2,170) and Mark "The Blade" Belanger (6 feet 1, 170). Marion's career batting average was .263 and he hit only 36 home runs in 13 years. Belanger 's career batting average was .228 and he hit 20 home runs in 18 seasons. No one built like Ripken has ever played shortstop for long, much less with distinction. Of course the stereotypical shortstop often was not what the stereotype suggested. Rabbit Maranville is regarded as the paradigm of the good fielding, but weak hitting, little shortstop. But he batted clean-up and made 65 errors for the 1914 "Miracle Braves." (Their miracle was winning the pennant after being in last place in July. They won 61 of their last 77 games and then swept the mighty Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series.)
Two changes in the nature of major league shortstops were foreshadowed in the 1950s by two men in Chicago. In 1950 the White Sox gave baseball a glimpse of the future with Chico Carrasquel, a Venezuelan, the first of a long line of Latin shortstops, the greatest of whom was his countryman who followed him to the White Sox—Luis Aparicio. Across town, the Cubs had another kind of shortstop. On Monday, September 21, 1953, the _Chicago Tribune_ sports page reported on the previous day's game in St. Louis, which the Cardinals won, 11–6. The second paragraph of the story said: "Ernie Banks, one of several rookies who will challenge Roy Smalley next year for his shaky shortstop job, knocked his first major league homer. The Negro from the Kansas City Monarchs also hit a triple and a single in driving in three runs." He would hit 511 more home runs. There had been many fine-hitting shortstops over the years. One, Honus Wagner, is arguably (Branch Rickey and others have so argued) the finest player ever. (Poor Pittsburgh. Once the home of the greatest-hitting shortstop, in 1988 the Pirates' shortstops got just 16 RBIs, one less than the Pirates' pitchers.) Joe Cronin, Lou Boudreau, Luke Appling and Vern Stephens all were potent offensive shortstops. But until Banks, it had been conventional wisdom that a shortstop, more than any other player, would earn his pay with leather rather than wood. A slugging shortstop like Banks was considered highly unlikely. A slugger would have to be too big to be quick in the field.
However, at 6 feet 1 and 180 pounds, Banks was built like a shortstop, lean and light and nimble. The largest person ever to play shortstop was Parson "Beacon" Nicholson. He was 6 feet 6. But he played only 10 games at short for Washington's 1895 National League team. Before Ripken there were several shortstops who were 6 feet 4, but none played the position regularly. Ripken is the biggest real shortstop baseball has ever seen. However, he rightly insists that he is not slow. Perhaps as a base runner he is on the slow side, but he has baseball quickness. Ripken was an All-State selection in soccer and baseball. His secret love, just behind baseball, is basketball, which he plays all through the winter. "I'm about 6 feet 5, 220 pounds, but sometimes I wind up guarding some of the quickest players on the floor."
He is correct that in the infield it is quickness, not speed, that matters most. Brooks Robinson was painfully slow covering the 90 feet from home to first. But the crucial distance when playing third base is less than 30 feet, and Robinson's catlike quickness made him spectacular at third.
Shortstop is the most important defensive position. (Or, to stop some arguments before they start, let us say it is the most important defensive position in fair territory.) One reason it is so important is that most batters are right-handed and right-handers more often than not hit to the left side of the infield. Another reason is that the shortstop must cover more ground than the second baseman, and must have a stronger arm for throwing to first base from deep in the hole near third. In 1988 the percentage of batted balls put in play to each position was:
catcher | 1
---|---
pitcher | 6
first base | 10
second base | 13
third base | 12
shortstop | 15
left field | 13
center field | 18
right field | 12
When baseball people talk about sound defense "up the middle" they mean primarily the middle infielders (shortstop and second basemen) and the center fielder. In 1988 they handled 46 percent of all balls put in play.
Consider the three tables on page 251. The first shows Ripken's defensive numbers for his first six full seasons as shortstop, in all of which he was the starting shortstop in the All-Star Game. The second and third tables give the defensive numbers of the American and National League Gold Glove shortstops in those seasons. The numbers for chances, putouts and assists (his 1984 assist total is the American League record) do not suggest that Ripken has trouble reaching enough balls. What he lacks in range he makes up for in two ways. One is his cannon of an arm that enables him to play deep. On a throw from deep short, Ripken's throws often call to mind Rocky Marciano 's knockout punches that traveled about eight inches with devastating effect. Ripken snaps off a throw with a short flick of the arm and the result resembles a line drive. The other way he makes up for having less range than some smaller men might have is by using his head to supplement his legs: anticipation.
Sandy Alderson, the Harvard lawyer who is the Athletics' general manager, says, "The beauty of the game is that there are no absolutes. It's all nuances and anticipation, not like football, which is all about vectors and forces." (You expect that sort of talk from this new breed of baseball executive. Alderson said the Athletics signed the aging veteran Don Baylor because of "the talisman factor." Casey Stengel, call your office. Baseballese isn't what it once was.) Anticipation, to be helpful, requires the predictable execution by pitchers of their intentions.
When Ripken began playing shortstop every day for the Orioles in 1982, Orioles pitchers were so clever and inventive they sometimes made playing middle infield a bit difficult. Mike Flanagan developed a "BP [batting practice, meaning slow] fastball," taking a little off his fastball on his own, with no communication with the catcher. Ripken recalls, "Flanagan would play on the hitter's over aggressiveness. Say it was a 2–0 or 3–1 count. The hitter knows you've got to throw him a strike and assumes it will be a fastball. Flanagan would throw a slightly slower pitch than the batter was looking for. The batter's timing would be off a little bit, which might be the difference between a home run and a pop out. But that made it difficult defensively because you had to put that variable into your thinking. The catcher would put down the fastball [sign] and you would have to decipher from the pattern of pitches—Flanagan did not give anything away in his windup or motion. You could just tell by what he had done in the past."
CAL RIPKEN
GOLD GLOVE AWARD WINNERS—AMERICAN LEAGUE
GOLD GLOVE AWARD WINNERS—NATIONAL LEAGUE
Ripken had other sorts of problems with many of the pitchers the Orioles had during the grim years before 1989. "Now with young pitchers," said the grizzled 28-year-old at the start of the 1989 season, "they will incorporate the BP fastball into their arsenal before they learn how to pitch. Before they learn how it is useful in the scheme of things, they'll throw it in odd situations, such as with two strikes. That's the worst time to throw it because the batter is more defensive. You're giving him an opportunity to get the bat on the ball when that may be all he's trying to do. You're letting up and he's already defensive. That's the best time to throw your best fastball. But there's no way I can guess with young pitchers. That's when defense is frustrating—when there is a young pitcher with control problems who doesn't know how to pitch."
Kubek remembers the first time he played behind Whitey Ford against the Tigers in Yankee Stadium. "Whitey would turn around and with his eyes would move me toward the center of the diamond when Kaline came up." Ford was going to throw the right-handed Kaline fastballs away and was confident Kaline could not pull those pitches. And Kubek could be sure that the pitch would be put where Ford intended. When Connie Mack had Athletics pitching staffs adorned with the likes of Rube Waddell, Chief Bender, Herb Pennock and Eddie Plank—four Hall of Famers—he became famous for positioning his fielders by waving his scorecard. He knew that his pitchers knew where the ball should be pitched, and that they had the skill to execute their intentions. But there were many seasons when Mack did not bother. Why bother when the pitchers can not execute?
On an evening in May, 1989, the Indians were at Baltimore and had base runners on second and third when there occurred one of those meetings at the mound where cogent thoughts are exchanged and momentous decisions are made. In attendance were pitcher Mark Williamson, manager Frank Robinson, catcher Mickey Tettleton and Ripken. He joined the meeting to learn what was being decided about pitching to the Indians' Pete O'Brien. "I wanted to know if we were going to pitch to him with first base open or try to walk him unintentionally-intentionally. If we were going to throw the ball outside, outside, outside, that would indicate where I would want to play. They said they were going to pitch to him so I asked, 'Going to try to get him out?' [Ripken meant, and was perfectly understood on the mound: Are you going to pitch O'Brien outside but close enough to the outside corner to tempt him to put the ball in play?] That's all I wanted to know." Ripken, remembering his laconic question, laughs. What a difference a year makes. In May, 1988, there was no laughter in the Orioles' clubhouse. And although in 1988 Ripken wanted to know what the Orioles' pitchers were planning, there was such a gap between their intentions and their execution that the information was useless. It was useful in 1989 because the Orioles' pitchers were better. But, again, they were better in part because they had confidence in their defense.
During a game in Baltimore when Oakland had a runner in scoring position, a batter hit a grounder toward Ripken at short. Someone on the Athletics' bench muttered, "Kick it, kick it." Dave Duncan, standing in the dugout, said quietly, "Think what you're saying." It was a nice tribute from a pitching coach to a shortstop who plays in tandem with pitchers.
Of course a problem inseparable from intelligent baseball is this: If intelligent behavior on the field is understood by the other team, that behavior becomes valuable information for them. The trick is to behave intelligently but not obviously, or too soon. Roland Hemond became the Orioles' general manager just as I was deciding to write about Ripken. This worried Hemond, for reasons that confirmed the wisdom of the decision. "Cal," Hemond said, "plays the infield like a manager." By that he meant that Ripken is a cerebral player, constantly moving in response to the changing situation, from pitch to pitch, in anticipation of what his pitcher will do, which depends on what the pitcher expects the batter to expect (which depends on what the batter thinks the pitcher expects him to expect). Hemond's worry was that by revealing Ripken's thought processes I would enable opponents to decode Ripken's behavior and make useful inferences about what Orioles pitchers are doing. Before long the book-reading ball clubs (and it is not clear how large that class is) would, in effect, be stealing signals not from the catcher but from the behavior of the large man on the left side of the infield.
Thinking infielders who want to cheat must do so at the last minute, lest they telegraph to the hitter the kind of pitch that is coming. Kubek recalls that Rick Burleson of the Red Sox lacked quickness, so he moved two steps to his right on off-speed pitches to right-handed hitters, and two steps to his left on fastballs—and he moved too soon. He moved as soon as the catcher gave the sign to the pitcher, before the pitcher started his motion. Kubek says that Mickey Mantle feasted on Red Sox pitching during the seasons when Jimmy Piersall was the Red Sox center fielder. Piersall was a fine outfielder but he, too, moved too soon. The Red Sox shortstop would signal with his glove behind his back indicating a fastball (no glove meant a breaking ball). Piersall would move and Mantle would sit on whatever pitch was coming.
Of course an intelligent outfielder can use disinformation against an observant batter. When Tony Gwynn briefly became a center fielder after five seasons (and two Gold Gloves) in right field, he discovered a way to mislead hitters. From center field he could see the catcher's signs, so he would shift "wrong" before the pitcher started his motion, then he would quickly move back to where he really wanted to be. His hope was that the batter would make a mistaken inference from his first move.
Hershiser believes that each player, when his team is at bat, should watch the opponent playing his position—the second baseman watch the second baseman, and so on. "You're the second baseman and you may see that the other second baseman is giving away pitches—maybe he's moving a step on a curveball. Then you let everyone else know. Then the coaching staff doesn't have to do it. Alfredo [Griffin, the Dodgers' shortstop] does this. All of a sudden you'll hear him murmur, 'curveball.' Next pitch, 'slider.' All of a sudden he's got it all right." Gene ("Baseball and malaria keep coming back") Mauch managed the Expos in Montreal's tiny Jarry Park. Mauch stole information by watching the vein in a particular shortstop's neck. Mauch knew that the man used a common, simple signal: Using his glove to shield his mouth so that only his partner playing second could see it, he would either keep his mouth closed, meaning that he would cover second on an attempted steal, or he would open his mouth wide, meaning that the other fellow would cover. If the man's vein stood out, it meant his mouth was open. Tim McCarver played for Mauch there one season and got half a dozen hits by stroking the ball toward the spot that Mauch indicated—always correctly—would be vacated.
The 1920 World Series between Brooklyn and Cleveland is remembered only for the fact that Cleveland's second baseman, Bill Wambsganss, pulled off an unassisted triple play. But something else notable happened involving the other second baseman. Brooklyn's Pete Kilduff scooped up a few too many handfuls of infield dirt. When Burleigh Grimes, the future Hall of Famer, was pitching and the Dodgers' catcher called for Grimes's famous spitball, Kilduff scooped up some dirt to absorb the moisture on the ball that might be hit to him. Eventually the Indians deciphered Kilduff's quirk. Grimes lost games five and seven as the Indians took the Series, 5–2.
The infielders least likely to move in ways that give away valuable information to batters are infielders quick enough to move late. "Quick feet and soft hands." That is Ryne Sandberg's terse summation of the prerequisites for a good infielder. He should know. Sandberg's seventy-second game in 1989 was his one-thousandth game at second base and qualified him to be recorded as the all-time leader in fielding percentage at that position, .989. Through 1989 he had made just 64 errors in 5,889 chances. Between June 10, 1987, and April 29, 1989, he did not make a throwing error, a span of 248 games. He ended the 1989 season on a 90-game errorless streak, having hit 20 home runs since his last error.
Dressing at Wrigley Field prior to playing the Pirates in 1989, while teammates were being put through stretching exercises on the carpeted floor of the clubhouse, Sandberg said something that indicated why he is the standard by which contemporary second basemen are judged. He said he anticipates, but does not begin cheating or even leaning in a particular direction as the pitcher begins his delivery. "I take two steps forward and get into a bent-knees position, balanced on the balls of my feet, ready to go, on every pitch. I believe it's important to anticipate that the ball is going to be hit my way on every pitch." But he leans or moves only after the pitch is on the way to the plate. This is because he has the quickness to wait and watch the flight of the ball to see if it is going where it has been called for. "If I see a fastball and watch the flight of the ball and see that it is high and away to a left-hander, I know he's probably not going to pull the ball." Sandberg often warns the Cubs' first baseman when an off-speed pitch is coming to a lefthander who might pull it. "With Mark Grace playing first, for example, I'll try not to be too obvious, but I'll say, 'Come on, Gracie,' something like that. He will know either a change-up is coming or a slow breaking ball."
Ripken lacks Sandberg's range and has more territory to cover than a second baseman, so he has to be especially careful lest his anticipations become visible, and decipherable. "It's good to get to know a catcher so you can anticipate your movements. If your movements are too extreme, you tell the batter what pitch is coming. Say a pull hitter is up and we're trying to get him out on slow breaking balls, and all of a sudden with two strikes the catcher calls for a fastball away. Suppose there are two strikes on the hitter and we've been giving him a steady diet of off-speed pitches. You know that he's got to wait longer on those pitches, and he's going to look for another off-speed pitch. You know that even a good pull hitter is not going to pull this fastball into the hole [between short and third]. So you want to cheat to your left as far as you can. Now, if you get a good feel for the catcher and you know there's a possibility that he might try to sneak the fastball by on the outside corner, you're not going to be playing as though the hitter is going to pull. But if you've been playing all the way over toward the hole, anticipating the hitter pulling the off-speed pitch, and suddenly you see the catcher call for a fastball on the outside corner, you have to cheat an enormous amount—you have to dead sprint up the middle, and a lot of times you will give away the pitch to the hitter. The farther you have to go, the earlier you have to cheat. If your cheating is not so dramatic, you can go late enough that the hitters can't tell anything from your movement in time to help themselves. A lot of hitters try to look at you but their concentration has to be on the pitcher releasing the ball."
The pace and texture of a baseball game rarely require, and usually will not permit, intense concentration that ties players into knots for two and a half hours. An Orioles coach once said, "In this game it's never going to be third-down-and-one. You don't hit off tackle in baseball and you can't play the game with your teeth gritted. Muscles are fine, but this is a game of relaxation, conditioned reflex and mental alertness." The trick is to be alert while relaxed, or while feigning relaxation, as Ripken does when fraternizing with the enemy.
Ripken is a chatty shortstop, stirring up conversations with runners who arrive in his precinct at second base. But often he is working while chatting. "When they get on base I try to find out what kind of stuff they think our pitcher has. Does it seem to be a hard fork ball, a slow fork ball? Sometimes our pitcher has such a good disguising motion on it, it's difficult for me to tell." Ripken may want to know what the pitches of a particular new Orioles pitcher look like to hitters. "He hasn't pitched enough for me to know whether, with two strikes, batters pull his fork ball or hit it the other way. Right when you start feeling comfortable with a young pitcher he may throw three fork balls to a right-handed hitter and the guy will be out in front of all of them. The hitter misses the first two and fouls off the third and suddenly the catcher calls for a fastball away. You know that this hitter is thinking, 'I've got to wait longer on this fork ball.' So when the catcher calls fastball away, and I know the hitter, I think, 'Okay, I can cheat up the middle.' I know that if he throws a fastball on the outside half of the plate there's no way in the world the batter can pull it. I know he's not going to hit to my right, so I'm going to move to my left." But such anticipation by Ripken is worse than useless, it is injurious if the pitcher can not deliver the particular pitch to the particular spot. "Right when I start thinking this way, and I have confidence that he's going to throw it on the outside half, he'll throw the fastball on the inside part of the plate and the batter will jam it to my right and foil all the plans. Then the next time you just can't cheat."
When base runners arrive at second base Ripken may want to know something other than what the runner thinks about the Orioles' pitcher. "You try to get information, as much as you can. Just to see what they're thinking. If a right-hander hits a ball between first and second, and normally he's a pull hitter, you ask him, 'Did you try to do that?' It gives you an edge if you know he's trying to use the whole field instead of just going up there and seeing the ball and hitting it. If you know he tried to do that, then the next time the situation arises, you remember. Of course you have to decide if you can believe him. A lot of times people won't tell you the truth."
He illustrates this sad commentary on human nature with a story involving White Sox shortstop Ozzie Guillen and Carlton Fisk, the Sox catcher. "Mike Boddicker was pitching and Guillen always pulls Boddicker. Boddicker was trying to slop him, throwing a lot of off-speed pitches because Ozzie has a lot of movement in his swing. He's a fidgety hitter and sometimes he has a lot of trouble waiting for the ball to get to the plate. He wants to charge out and get it. Now the slower you throw it, the farther he has to go out to get it. So Boddicker has the luxury of throwing his real slow, big breaking ball. When Guillen, a left-hander, gets out so far, the only thing he can do with it is pull it to the first-base side. So I see the breaking ball called and I'm playing him straight up [not to pull] because he hits a lot of balls to left field. I started slowly trying to cheat and right when Boddicker gets into his windup I start running [to my left] up the middle because I'm 100 percent certain that he's going to pull the ball. So what he does is wait and slaps a little weak ground ball to my right and it lazily rolls into left field. You don't feel too good when you get burned. It didn't look good. It made me wonder: Did he try to do that?"
There are ways of finding out. "Players have a way of seeing things and speaking in the dugout. If you can't believe the guy who hit it, you ask someone you can believe. So when Carlton Fisk was at second base I went up and casually said, 'Ozzie really messed me up on that last hook [curve].' Carlton was laughing and chirping. He said Guillen tried to do that, he was watching me all the way and saw me break toward second and he tried to hit it to the left side. It worked and he was so happy he was screaming and singing in the dugout. So the next time Guillen was up I purposely started to cheat toward second early. I ran a couple of steps, then stopped, and he hit the same weak ground ball right to me. If I hadn't talked to Carlton I wouldn't have known that Ozzie was trying to hit behind me, to the side I was cheating away from. I would have been running back up the middle a second time and he would have had two hits."
Why, you may well wonder, would a wise veteran like Fisk give away useful information? "When you play every day," Ripken explains, "and you go through so many at bats and so many situations, it doesn't seem too harmful to tell certain things. I know I tell things to a catcher, for example, and sometimes I think, 'Maybe I shouldn't have said that.' Suppose they're pitching me inside real hard. I just say something like, 'Aren't you tired of pitching me inside?' Then I'll walk away and think that I shouldn't have let them know I was so aware that they are pitching me a particular way."
Besides, Ripken says, "Baseball is not an 'enemy' sport. You do have certain rivals and certain people you do not like. But for the most part it's not a contact sport, it's a pitcher-hitter confrontation more than anything else. The people who come into second base, you have so many things in common with them. It's a friendly sport, I guess." But Ripken rarely stops working. Not long after the incident just described, Guillen arrived at second base in a game against the Orioles. Ripken asked, "Do you know where I'm playing you?" Guillen said no, so Ripken said, "I'm playing you to pull." But the next time Guillen came up Ripken did not play him to pull. As Casey Stengel would have put it, a lot of times people don't always tell the truth.
What is baseball truth? Red Smith knew, and revealed it in a column celebrating the genius of The Genius, Alexander Cartwright, who revealed the truth, or had it revealed to him, in that wonderful epiphany of June 19, 1846, when he, then 25, joined some friends in a meadow beside a Manhattan pond. He had a chart in hand. The dimensions of the baseball field Cartwright laid out that day may have been determined by the size of the meadow, or perhaps Cartwright just stepped off 30 paces and said, "This seems about right." In any case, Red Smith wrote, "Ninety feet between bases represents man's closest approach to absolute truth. The world's fastest man can not run to first base ahead of a sharply hit ball that is cleanly handled by an infielder; he will get there only half a step too late. Let the fielder juggle the ball for one moment or delay his throw an instant and the runner will be safe. Ninety feet demands perfection. It accurately measures the cunning, speed and finesse of the base stealer against the velocity of a thrown ball. It dictates the placement of infielders. That single dimension makes baseball a fine art—and nobody knows for sure how it came to be."
There it is, the basis of the 90-foot-at-a-time game. The aim of the team at bat, as set forth with the admirable simplicity of the rule book, is "to have its batters become runners, and its runners advance." The aim of defense is to prevent that. Bad defensive habits are good news for opponents' base runners.
In Spring Training, 1989, when New York Mets right fielder Darryl Strawberry and first baseman Keith Hernandez got into a scuffle during the taking of the team picture, a wit said that it was the first time in years Strawberry had hit his cutoff man. Some of today's outfielders seem to think that hitting a cutoff man with a throw from the outfield is an unintelligible, trivial and optional ritual. Actually, it is an essential skill. It enables a play to be redirected, away from trying to cut down the lead runner to trying to cut down a trailing runner, or at least prevent him from advancing. He might advance if a throw comes in from the outfield too late to get the lead runner and too high or off-line to be cut off by the appropriate infielders properly positioned. As Tommy Henrich of the Yankees said, "Catching a fly ball is a pleasure, but knowing what to do with it after you catch it is a business."
Done correctly, defense should almost always succeed in frustrating the first-and-third double-steal plays of the sort Tony La Russa likes. Kubek recalls that when Casey Stengel drilled the Yankees on defending against first-and-third double-steal situations, he would put the team's two fastest runners on the bases just to show that if everyone—pitcher, catcher, infielders—did exactly what they were supposed to do, not even the fastest runners could make the double steal work.
The Orioles have three basic defenses for first-and-third steal situations. On one the catcher comes up throwing to third—that is, he does not even consider trying to throw out the runner going from first to second. This is apt to be the option decided upon if the runner on first is fast and the chance of throwing him out is slight. The second play is for the middle infielder, whose job it is to cover second on a steal, to see the runner breaking from third toward home, cut in front of second, take the catcher's throw on the run and fire the ball right back to the catcher. The third is for the middle infielder responsible for covering second to get to second, straddle the bag, ready to receive the throw, and listen for the other middle infielder to shout "tag him" if the runner on third is not going home.
"Most first-and-third baserunning plays," Ripken believes, "rely on a mistake by an infielder in order for the runner on third to score. I think mistakes are at a minimum at this high level of baseball, so these plays are not worth the risk." For example, if the opposing team has runners on first and third and the runner on first does the "stumble start" to get caught in a rundown, there is no way the runner on third can score if the Orioles' infielders do their jobs right. Doing it right means they must make no more than one throw to nail the runner in the rundown between first and second. The first baseman receives the pickoff throw from the pitcher and starts chasing the runner toward second, hard. The object is to get the runner going as fast as he can run as quickly as possible. "I'm inching up," says Ripken, "and when I see him at full speed I take off toward second and yell 'Now!'" Once the runner is in high gear, Ripken charges directly at him. No runner in baseball—"I can chase down Rickey Henderson at that speed"—is fast enough to come to a screeching halt, reverse direction and force Ripken to make a second throw, back to first—the second throw on which the runner from third could score.
The Orioles have three bunt defenses for situations with a runner on second. On one play the first baseman charges. He or the pitcher must field the ball. The second baseman and shortstop rotate to their left—the second baseman covering first, the shortstop covering second. The third baseman stays at third in the hope that it is a bad bunt, meaning one pushed hard enough that either the pitcher or first baseman can pounce on the ball and get it to third before the runner gets there.
On the second play the first baseman stays back, the pitcher covers the first base side, the third baseman charges the ball, the second baseman covers second and the shortstop covers third. It is sometimes said, mistakenly, that the shortstop "races the runner to third." Actually, it is a timing play, with the shortstop breaking for third well before the hitter puts his bat on the ball, and thus well before the runner breaks full speed for third. The timing works this way: The Orioles' pitcher looks back toward the runner, and when the pitcher turns his head back to the plate, Ripken runs toward third. The pitcher must deliver the ball as soon as he turns back to the plate or the batter might have time to adjust to what he sees and hit the ball through the huge hole vacated at short. "In recent years," Ripken says, "people have become more aggressive. They will square around to bunt and if there is no place to bunt it, they will pull back and try to hit the ball through."
The third play is exactly the opposite. It is a pickoff play. It begins like the second play: The pitcher looks back at the runner, then turns back to the plate. As he turns his head, the third baseman charges in and Ripken runs toward third. But when the catcher gives a hand sign—say, opening his hand between his thighs—the pitcher turns and throws to the second baseman who has sprinted to second base, behind the runner who has focused his attention on the problem of beating Ripken to third.
"There is so much information out there," Ripken says, "you ought to use it." Information in the form of knowledge of an opposing manager once enabled Ripken to make a 6–3 assist on a bunt. It was a two-out squeeze play. Ripken was playing alongside one of the many immobile third basemen the Orioles used in the 1980s. The runner broke from third, Ripken knew it would be safe for him to spring in toward the middle of the diamond because the batter would not be swinging with the runner coming. Ripken fielded the ball and nipped the batter at first. The play was made by anticipation, which meant guessing right about the opposing manager. Ripken thinks (he is not sure) it was Billy Martin, who liked first-pitch squeeze plays.
Martin was "tendency-prone," but he had so many tendencies it was hard to predict what he would do next. The proliferation of plays on a Martin-managed team showed how well he understood that the key to offense is multiplying scoring opportunities. The key to that is multiplying base runners. Good defense reduces base runners three ways: by reducing hits, reducing errors and increasing double plays. Today there are about 60 percent more double plays per base runner than there were in the dead-ball era. This is the result of quicker fielders and quicker movement of the live ball on smooth (and often carpeted) infields. And there is another difference: gloves.
In the 1880s about half the runs scored were unearned. In the 1980s about one-ninth were unearned. True, for a few years in the 1880s an error was charged to the pitcher for a walk, balk, wild pitch or hit batter. Still, the decline in the number of errors, and the improvement of defense generally, constituted as radical a change in the game as the increase in the number of long hits. And by far the most important reason for the change—more important than the improvement of playing fields—was the introduction of, and then the revolutionary improvement of, gloves.
The first gloves were flesh-colored because the wearers were embarrassed by the unmanliness of seeking protection from stinging hits and throws. But catching the ball in a glove was more artistic than catching balls in caps, a practice that faded out as fielders' gloves came in. They came in quickly. The path of progress was blazed by a pioneer who weighed physical pain against moral opprobrium and chose to endure the latter. In 1875 Charles Waite, a Boston (or perhaps St. Louis—this is ancient history) first baseman, braved a wave of derision from fans and competitors when he wore a small glove. It looked almost like one of today's batters' gloves, minus the fingers. The trail up the mountain of improvement is steep and strewn with scoffers, but Waite was the wave of the future. He began the transformation of defensive baseball from a two-handed to an essentially one-handed skill. All fielders have worn gloves since the retirement in 1894 of Jerry Denny of Louisville. (Bill James calls Denny "the last real man.") The tiny padded gloves of the 1890–1920 era, which weighed about 10 ounces, were large enough to be the main reason why errors per game declined from 6.66 to 2.83. The year 1920 is a notable demarcation because it saw the introduction of the Bill Doak glove featuring webbing between the thumb and fingers. By the end of the 1950s, improvement of gloves was not over but innovations had done about as much as could be done to cut the rate of errors. Then artificial turf helped a little, but only a little because by then groundskeeping of dirt and real grass was good almost everywhere. The improvement in defense is the main reason scoring has declined an average of .14 run per decade for 11 decades (even though scoring has increased since The Revolution Against the Pitcher after the 1968 season, and the introduction of the DH in 1973).
Until 1954 players were not even required to take their gloves back to the bench with them when they came to bat. They would just toss their gloves on the grass, which gives you a good idea of how little regard the players had for this tool. And in fact, as late as the early 1950s many gloves still were remarkably small and premodern. Charlie Gehringer, who played second base for the Tigers from 1924 through 1942, lived to see the difference modern gloves could make. "In our day you didn't see the plays you do today. I can't remember anyone catching one like jumping over the fence and it would stick in the big glove, 'cause it wouldn't. Maybe I dove for a ball once or twice, but you'd only hurt yourself probably and still wouldn't do more than knock it down. Today [balls] stick and you can get up and throw them out if they're hit hard. Nobody seemed to think fielding was that important... hitting made all the difference."
Technologies do indeed condition crafts. In the 1960s Randy Hundley abandoned the traditional stiff catcher's mitt in favor of a flexible hinged model. This made it possible for him to squeeze the ball without using his unprotected right hand. Soon two young future Hall of Famers, Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk (Bench is in the Hall, Fisk is heading there), perfected one-handed catching. But what is fine for geniuses like those two is less than fine for lesser talents. Some old-time catchers such as Birdie Tebbetts, and the not-at-all-old Tim McCarver, believe one-handed catching has led to laziness and a decline of the catcher's craft. "Too much reaching," says Tebbetts. "Too much blocking of balls with their gloves instead of shifting their bodies. Too much backhanding." Tebbetts also believes that base stealers are benefiting from the catchers' practice of keeping their throwing hands away from their gloves. This, he says, adds to the time it takes to wing the ball on its way toward second base. McCarver is equally disapproving: "The fundamental purpose of a catcher never gets taught to most kids. If a catcher can't block a tough pitch in the dirt with a runner on third in a one-run game, the pitcher can't let his best curveball or split-finger go for fear it will end up at the screen. You'd be surprised how many times during the season a pitcher gets blamed for hanging a curveball or split-finger, and the reason he hung it is because he's afraid his catcher won't catch the tough one."
It takes Ripken about two weeks to break in a glove and he usually uses two a year. He changes gloves during the year because he wants a glove that is still somewhat stiff, because he does not want it to close too easily. "At third base you catch more balls one-handed. You have to lunge more to your left and right so you break your glove in 'longer,' more like a lacrosse stick. At shortstop your glove is flatter because a lot of the balls you catch are not actually _caught_. You do not squeeze the ball, you _almost_ catch it, with a flat hand. The ball almost ricochets into your [throwing] hand. Some Latin players actually do deflect the ball to show how quick their hands are. It looks good but it's too risky for me." Some middle infielders want gloves with tight "basket weave" webbing between the thumb and fingers because they are afraid they may get a finger caught in the hole of an "?-weave" web while trying to grab the ball and turn a double play. Ripken, who prefers the H-weave, says that if you catch the ball properly it is not in the webbing. Furthermore, the holes in the H-weave are useful when you are trying to catch popups in day games when the sun is blinding—in Oakland, for example. You can shield your eyes by holding the glove high, but you can follow the flight of the ball by looking through the webbing. Needless to say, the Japanese have seen a commercial possibility in this. They have put tinted plastic—in effect, sunglasses—in the webbing of some gloves.
The dramatic improvement in baseball defense—the skills, information and equipment—is one reason why it has become riskier for a team to rely heavily on winning by having big innings. Such innings are harder to come by when good defense cuts down on base runners, increases double plays and reduces the number of "four-out innings." The big-inning approach to baseball in the 1950s produced a predictable response from pitchers; it produced a generation of pitchers skilled at throwing hard sliders at the bottom of the lowered strike zone. Then along came artificial turf and teams tailored to it. Such teams were stocked with swift hitters who liked low, hard pitches. Those pitches were perfect to drive down onto the hard, fast surfaces. While baseball was frozen in the Fifties' big-inning frame of mind, baseball architecture was changing in a way that would, in time, change minds. It has been said that we make our buildings and then they make us. That has been true in baseball. Architecture has been called frozen music. The new music of baseball has often been monotonous. Richie Hebner, who played for the Pirates, Phillies, Mets, Tigers and Cubs, blurted out the melancholy truth: "I stand at the plate in Philadelphia and I don't honestly know whether I'm in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis or Philly. They all look alike." Fourteen of the parks currently in use were opened between 1953 and 1971. Eleven of them are congenial to pitchers. In a remarkably few years baseball abandoned such hitters' havens as Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, Crosley Field in Cincinnati (Robin Roberts, the Phillies' Hall of Fame pitcher, on his great thrill in All-Star competition: "When Mickey Mantle bunted with the wind blowing out at Crosley Field"), Forbes Field in Pittsburgh and Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.
The second wave of material changes that altered baseball thinking began in the late 1960s. In 1968 there were only two fields—one and a half actually—with artificial turf. They were the Astrodome and the Comiskey Park infield. Today there are ten. (Comiskey Park has since gone back to grass.) It is easier for artificial turf teams to adapt to playing on grass than for grass teams to adapt to turf. This is the fielders' version of the hitters' axiom, "Look for the fastball and adjust to everything else." Fielders get used to fast surfaces and adjust to those that are less fast. And other adjustments are required. Ray Miller says that on turf, when one person shifts, everyone shifts, because if you leave a big gap you are risking a triple. One statistic suggests that artificial turf is probably more favorable to hitters (the ball scoots through the infield faster) than to infielders (the ball gets deep quicker so infielders with strong arms can play deeper and sweep more territory). The statistic is this: Artificial turf stadiums tend to reduce double plays and grass fields tend to increase them. An Elias Bureau study of double-play groundouts indicates that some teams have a significant difference in the number of double plays they make at home and on the road. This suggests a new "park factor." The crucial variables affecting double plays include the amount of foul territory for pop fouls to be caught in, the size and contours of the outfield, and the likelihood that teams will play for big innings. If they play for big innings, and disdain plays such as sacrifice bunts and stolen bases, that will increase the number of double plays (more runners loitering on first).
As a catcher, Tim McCarver liked artificial turf because throws from the outfield to home plate got there quicker on a bounce on the hard surface. The fraction-of-a-second difference could be enough to enable him to tag the runner with the ball in his hand rather than in his glove. A catcher, says McCarver, will die before dropping a ball held in his hand. Ray Miller believes that improved defense has done more than artificial turf has done to take away the bunt. Good bunters can kill the ball on artificial grass, but today's better athletes play more shallow in the infield and spring to the ball more quickly. Plastic has made defense easier in many ways. Ripken thinks lights have, too. He prefers to play at night because defense is more difficult during day games, especially in high summer, and particularly in older parks. Then it is harder for infielders to see the ball coming off the bat because fans are apt to be wearing white or other light colors, and in most older parks the seats come down to field level.
Players serious about defense pay attention to their surroundings. When Keith Hernandez was with the Mets he played 81 games a year in a stadium located beneath the flight paths into La Guardia Airport. He studied takeoff and landing patterns as indicators of wind direction because, he said, the fluttering of flags and pennants was not an accurate indicator. In Fenway Park Ripken generally prepares to back up the left fielder in case the left fielder, having failed in an attempt to catch a ball up against The Wall, is not in a position to play the carom.
"As a third baseman," says Ripken, "every time you go to a new park you should roll a ball down the line to see if it rolls foul or fair." If the groundskeeper is earning his keep, the ball will roll one way or the other. A determined groundskeeper for a bunting team should be able to build an inward slope on the foul lines, a decline of as much as two inches in the two feet from the foul line to the infield grass. Such a slope radically improves the odds on a bunt staying fair. The groundskeeper at Comiskey Park provided such a slope in the late 1950s for the benefit of Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox. The swift, spray-hitting Dodgers of the early 1960s were helped by a huge roller that was used not only to compress the hard infield but also to mash the outfield grass, making it a faster surface on which more balls could zip past outfielders to the fence. A grounds-keeper is the servant of the manager, who may use him the way a president uses the CIA: stealthily. When the Cincinnati Reds had Frank Robinson, Gus Bell and other sluggers, the groundskeeper dug a hole in the front of the mound where some visiting pitchers would plant their feet when delivering the ball to the plate. This increased the odds on some pitches floating high in the strike zone. Ripken says, gratefully, that for years—before the Orioles discovered the joy of running—the Memorial Stadium groundskeeper "would doctor the infield when Rickey Henderson came in, watering down the baselines from first to second. Make it muddy, a slow track. We didn't have anyone who stole bases."
The 1962 pennant race may have been decided by a grounds-keeper. In August the Dodgers, leading the league and the Giants by 5 Vi games, were coming to Candlestick Park for a three-game series. That was the year Maury Wills stole 104 bases and won the MVP Award. Alvin Dark, the Giants' manager, directed his grounds-keeper, Matty Schwab, to do something about Wills and other Dodgers base runners. Schwab did, with a vengeance. Many years later Noel Hynd, author of _The Giants of the Polo Grounds_ , told, in _Sports Illustrated_ , the story of the creation of "Lake Candlestick." At dawn on the day of the first game of the series Schwab was at work building what he jovially called a "speed trap." He and his partners in crime dug up topsoil from an area 5 feet by 15 feet that covered the area where Wills would stand when poised to spring toward second. Where the topsoil had been, Schwab put a spongy mixture of peat moss and sand, and watered it well. Then he covered it—barely—with an inch of topsoil. Umpire Tom Gorman, noticing Dodgers first baseman Ron Fairly building a sand castle near the bag, ordered the grounds crew to correct the mess. The crew saluted smartly and went to work. They carted away wheelbarrows full of Schwab's concoction. Then they replaced it with wheelbarrows full of the same stuff. The Dodgers lost the first game, 11–2, stealing no bases. They lost the next two, 5–4 and 5–1. The season ended with the Giants and Dodgers tied for first. The first game of the three-game play-off was at Candlestick. Umpire Jocko Conlan dashed to San Francisco to prevent any secret mischief, so Schwab did it openly, sanding and watering the base paths into a swampy mess and blaming the mess on a mistake by "a new man." The Giants won game one, 8–0. Down in Los Angeles the Dodgers won the second game, 8–7, thanks in part to Wills's four stolen bases. The wildness of the Dodgers' pitchers cost them the third game and the pennant, 6–4. The Giants lost the World Series to the Yankees in seven games but they did not lose their sense of justice. They voted Schwab a full Series share.
Maury Wills did not forget that groundskeepers can be lethal weapons. In April, 1981, Wills, then the Seattle Mariners' manager, had his groundskeeper lengthen the batter's box, extending the front a foot toward the mound to allow Seattle hitters to move up and swing at the curveballs of Oakland's Rick Langford before they curved. Alas, the Oakland manager, Billy Martin, was no fool—and he was just the sort to try such a thing himself. He demanded that the umpires measure the box.
Most of what a good groundskeeper can do to serve the home team is well within the range of permissible modifications. The most common ploy—one obviously not available to a team playing on artificial turf—is to let the grass grow high. "It slows the ball down," says Ripken. "With the faster hitters you know the ball is not going to get to you so fast. Consequently you have to move in a little bit." He prefers to play back in order to get a better angle for cutting off a wider range of ground balls. That is one reason why he likes playing on artificial turf. "Turf is quick but the ball bounces high enough that more of the ball's quick movement is up and down rather than toward the outfield." On the other hand, hitters run faster on turf because the traction is better. "You don't slip as much getting out of the batter's box, you don't have uneven baselines." However, a hard surface in front of home plate means that many batted balls will head toward, and perhaps past, infielders more quickly. It also means that they will bounce higher, consuming more fractions of a second getting to infielders and perhaps enabling fast hitters to beat the ball to first.
The beauty of a ballpark is in the eye of the beholder, and a future Hall of Fame pitcher and a future Hall of Fame shortstop may see the same park quite differently. Musing about the people who made Tiger Stadium, Jim Palmer says, "It is almost as though they asked themselves, 'What can we do to make it as hard as possible on pitchers?'" It is, Ripken says, the kind of park "where good pitches are hit for home runs.
"In Detroit," says Ripken, "you know Sparky is going to make the infield as slow as he can, for pitching and defense. If you have a club of singles hitters, a club suited to artificial turf, you will emphasize speed. You want your infield hard and the ground in front of home plate like corduroy so your hitters can chop down and make the ball bounce in odd directions. But if you've built your team like our team [Ripken was speaking in 1988, before the transformation of the Orioles] or Earl's [Earl Weaver's] teams of the past—pitching, defense and three-run homers—you don't have a high-average-hitting ball club. You hit home runs. Sparky's teams have always been that way. When the Kansas City Royals, a team tailored to a spacious park with artificial turf, come to Baltimore they have to play Orioles baseball. In Detroit they make sure they dig a quicksand pit in front of home plate. If you hit it right down it doesn't bounce at all. And they have great infielders [shortstop Alan Trammell, second baseman Lou Whitaker] with a lot of range, and good pitching. Is Walt Terrell's record better at home than on the road? He's a good sinker-ball pitcher, keeps the ball down and away. If you hit the ball on the ground in Detroit, you have little chance for a hit. In Texas they made the infield extremely fast. The grass is about this fast"—he holds two fingers about half an inch apart—"like a putting green. And it's very true and always hard because the weather is so hot." The infield at Arlington Stadium has peculiar properties, and not just because the sun bakes the ground so hard and the grass is cut so short. There is something about the way the grass is mowed, according to many baseball people. They say it causes ground balls to "snake" across the infield. Jim Lefebvre says he has seen some infielders, who are not used to the Texas grass, shift their gaze to check a runner and look back just in time to see the ball weave through their legs. Ripken says Anaheim Stadium's grass is similar. Ryne Sandberg says the way the grass is mowed in San Diego and San Francisco causes grounders to snake. Sandberg says the Shea Stadium infield is cut shallow (that is, the outfield grass is closer to the infield grass than in most other parks) so he can not play as deep as he prefers. If he did, the "lip" of the outfield grass would be in front of him, a potential cause of bad bounces.
Clearly there is some home-field advantage in baseball. In only five seasons in this century has a league recorded more road wins than home wins. The norm is for the home team to win between .535 and .555, which means more than 5 out of 10 but fewer than 6 out of 10. And when the pressure is on, the advantage does not change. Through 1989 home teams won only 54 percent of all World Series games and 47 percent of all Series have been clinched on the road. Only once—in 1987, when four games were played in Minnesota's high-decibel Metrodome—has there been a Series in which every game was won by the home team. The home-field advantage is remarkably small considering that the home team is enjoying home cooking and other comforts, has the services of a compliant groundskeeper, is used to the hitting background, and knows how to play the fences and the caroms in the corners and foul territory.
Such details about different parks are known to watchful players on visiting teams. "I watch different shortstops in their home ballparks," Ripken says. "For example, Tony Fernandez in Toronto because their turf [Ripken was referring to Toronto's old stadium] is bad. They have an underground drainage system. Water got in it during the off-season, froze and pushed the concrete up. They never corrected it. They laid the carpet right over the bumps. If you are walking normally you can trip over them. So Tony, who likes to play deep, played shallower at home, to play in front of the bumps. His angles on his backhands were a lot different. He would be going straight across instead of back. So I played in and gave up some range but didn't have to worry about the bumps as a variable." Ripken pauses, then adds, "I talked to Tony and he said he does play deeper with a runner on second if the run means a lot." This sharing of information is the socialism of shortstops.
Perhaps middle infielders feel—they certainly should feel—class solidarity. They have a unifying grievance. Their speciality is not properly appreciated. One reason for this is, of course, that the prevention of offense is not usually considered glamorous. Until Ozzie Smith began earning a salary with two commas in the number —$2 million—defense was not well remunerated. To paraphrase Ralph Kiner's celebrated aphorism, defense is not where the Cadillacs are. (Today Kiner would say Mercedes. Much has changed in America since the late 1940s.) Another reason defense is not properly appreciated is that defensive excellence is difficult to express in the language baseball aficionados like to speak: statistics.
Baseball may be in some ways a product of nineteenth-century sensibilities, but baseball's fascination with quantification makes it very much attuned to the twentieth century. The development of certain familiar technologies (adding machines, calculators, computers), and the related development of research skills and data-gathering agencies and bureaucracies, have produced in this century a surge in the quantity of social information available. This has led, in turn, to the growth of the social sciences, and to the growth of hubris, even intellectual triumphalism. The ability to measure and quantify patterns of behavior has produced misplaced confidence in the diagnostic, predictive, evaluative and therapeutic capabilities of the "behavioral" sciences. Baseball analysts (players, managers, writers, fans) often have a similarly misplaced confidence in their ability to reduce reality to numerical expression.
Baseball has many statistics, all of which can be interesting. However, one category matters more than all the rest: runs. Every other statistic is subordinate. All other statistics, from walks to assists, concern categories of actions that are important as contributions to the creation or prevention of runs. The art, and increasingly the science, of run-prevention is elusive in a way that is frustrating to typical baseball fans. They want achievements quantified in ways that will enable a cool appraisal to result in definitive discriminations between players.
Baseball is a game of visible, discrete actions. Much can be seen and counted. Much, but not everything. Because baseball lends itself to quantification, it is an amazingly, relentlessly, even obsessively and oppressively self-conscious activity. And baseball breeds its own kinds of statistical confusions. Statistics must be read with an eye out for factors that skew numbers.
Many such factors are obvious. A pitcher who wins 20 games for a good team might be pressed to win 12 for a weak team. Indeed, a different bull pen can make almost that much difference. A hitter batting .300 in Wrigley Field might hit .270 in Montreal's poor visibility. A batter who hits 15 home runs in St. Louis might hit 30 in Tiger Stadium. A player who steals 40 bases on the kind of teams Whitey Herzog has built for the Kansas City and St. Louis stadiums might steal just 15 for a team playing the stand-around-and-wait-for-a-three-run-home-run style of baseball. Any pitcher's ERA is subject to four "biases" (Bill James's word): the caliber of the league he is in, the park in which he pitches half his games, the bull pen that tries to stop whatever trouble he gets into, and the defense arrayed around him. Some of the influences that must be inferred behind the statistics are less obvious, and this is especially true with fielding statistics. Consider the matter of double plays.
The more double plays a team makes, the better its middle infielders, right? Not necessarily. A high number of double plays may be mostly evidence of a shaky pitching staff that is putting too many runners on base. In 1948 the Browns had a miserable 59–94 season but turned a major league record number of double plays. The reason was suggested by their team ERA: a horrendous 5.01. So many runners were getting on that there were abundant opportunities for double plays. In 1949 the Athletics had a mediocre 81–73 year but broke the Browns' short-lived double-play record. Again, shaky pitching (a 4.23 ERA) provided the prerequisite for double plays: base runners. In dismal 1988 Cal and brother Bill at second base led all other American League combinations in double plays and total chances. Only 17 middle-infield combinations in American League history have made more double plays in a season than Ripken and Ripken made in 1988, an achievement that testifies about equally to the good gloves of the Ripkens and the bad pitching that put so many runners on base. Only seven teams in the last 40 years have led the league in ERA and double plays.
When a player goes through a nine-inning game and gets no assists, his defensive statistics change, if only slightly, in a way that might at first blush suggest that he is not doing his job on defense as well as he should. His ratio of assists to innings played goes down. But that may not mean anything important. Consider how an entire team can have its defensive statistics shifted slightly in that direction by a quite successful evening. On June 25, 1989, for only the second time in history, a team played a nine-inning game and got no assists. Here is a list of the putouts by the Mets as they beat the Phillies, 5–1, at Shea Stadium:
HOW PUTOUTS WERE ACHIEVED
METS VS. PHILLIES
June 25, 1989
at Shea Stadium
Left fielder Kevin McReynolds | 1 | Fly out
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Right fielder Mark Carreon | 3 | Fly outs
Center fielder Mookie Wilson | 2 | Fly outs
First baseman Dave Magadan | 2 | Grounders
Second baseman Gregg Jefferies | 1 | Pop-up
Shortstop Kevin Elster | 2 | Pop-ups
Third baseman Howard Johnson | 0 |
Catcher Barry Lyons | 13 | Strikeouts
| 3 | Pop-ups
Pitcher Sid Fernandez | 0 |
Pitcher Rick Aguilera | 0 |
Some formulas for measuring a defensive player's "range factor" are attempts to put an artificial precision into a subject that will not hold still for such precision. It is an attempt to attach a numerical value to an activity in which the explanatory value of the number is largely vitiated by the number of variables involved. Determining range factor involves measuring a player's chances (putouts plus assists plus errors) per game. But an infielder playing behind, say, a sinker-ball pitcher such as Hershiser, may field many more ground balls than a better infielder playing behind a pitcher who throws a lot of fly outs. A staff full of ground-ball pitchers could produce a pretty nifty range factor for an infielder not much more mobile than a stump. An infielder playing behind a power pitcher like Roger Clemens or Nolan Ryan may have the range of a cheetah but that virtue will not be statistically apparent because the catcher will be getting so many putouts from the pitcher's strikeouts. A second baseman on a team loaded with left-handed pitchers is apt to generate statistics that "prove" that he has less range than a second baseman on a team that relies on right-handed pitchers and therefore is a team that fields more balls off the bats of left-handed hitters. There are kinds of preoccupations with defensive statistics that can produce bad baseball as well as bogus achievements. Kubek says there are outfielders who, in order to run up their number of assists, will play 30 feet too shallow early in games. Playing that way allows some unnecessary doubles and triples to go over their heads but at the end of the year they do have a lot of assists and a lot of people are saying they must have great arms, and they may even win Gold Gloves.
"Because of salary structures and incentive clauses," Kubek says, "we are so locked in on offensive statistics. That is what arbitration is about—offensive statistics. Defense is hard to measure." Hard, indeed. That is one reason why defense does not get its due from the people who parcel out baseball's laurels.
In 1987 Ozzie Smith batted .303, scored 104 runs and drove in 75, an astonishing total considering he did not hit a single home run. He did hit 40 doubles and 4 triples. He walked 89 times and, to pass the time while waiting to get back to shortstop, he stole 43 bases. At shortstop he did about what you would expect from the most elegant shortstop of his era, and perhaps the finest fielder ever. He led the league in assists and fielding average. So he prevented no one knows how many runs that would have been scored if a lesser shortstop had been out there. His team won the pennant. And who was the National League MVP? Andre Dawson of the last-place Cubs. Why? Power. Dawson hit 49 home runs. The Cardinals could not have finished first without Smith. The Cubs could have finished last without Dawson. Defense got slighted yet again.
Defense, says Tom Boswell, is "the cognoscenti corner of baseball, the poorly lighted room in the gallery." It is that, and it is also the virtually vacant room at the Hall of Fame. Now, in a sense a Hall of Famer is any player of the type elected to the Hall of Fame. But the correct question is: Does the composition of the Hall of Fame reflect reasonable criteria? The answer is: Not yet. Defensive skills have not yet been given their due recognition. This is apparent in the under-representation of middle infielders. Of the 157 persons elected to the Hall of Fame through 1989 (counting those elected primarily for their playing as opposed to managerial, umpiring or other abilities, and not counting players whose careers were in the Negro leagues), only 10 were second basemen, and they included hitting giants such as Napoleon Lajoie and Rogers Hornsby. Joe Morgan is the 11th second baseman voted into the Hall. He, too, was an offensive star with 2,518 hits, 268 home runs and 689 stolen bases. Only 6 short-stops who entered the major leagues since the 1920s are in the Hall of Fame (Luis Aparicio, Luke Appling, Ernie Banks, Lou Boudreau, Pee Wee Reese, Arky Vaughan).
Respect for defense got a boost in 1982 with the election of Aparicio. He had a career batting average of only .262 and hit only 83 home runs in 18 seasons. But he holds the major league record for the most games played at the most demanding defensive position. Aparicio also holds the major league record for career assists (8,016), consecutive years leading a league in assists (6), most chances accepted (12,564), most years leading a league in chances accepted (7), most double plays (1,553). He holds the American League record for career putouts (4,548). He shares the major league record for most years leading a league in fielding (8) and the American League record for most years leading the league in putouts (4). While the election of Aparicio was welcome, it hardly balanced the books. Consider the case of two men who have not yet been admitted. Their cases indicate the continuing underestimation of the importance of defense.
There are two reasons—each of them sufficient—why Bill Mazeroski should be in the Hall of Fame. One reason is that as he was leaving the church on his wedding day, with his bride on his arm, he put a plug of tobacco in his cheek. The other sufficient reason is his defensive play. Many men are in the Hall only because of their hitting. This group includes some players who were at best mediocre on defense and were far from being among baseball's best batters (another Pirate, Ralph Kiner, comes to mind). But Mazeroski was no slouch as a hitter. His career average was .260 over 17 seasons. And he hit the most dramatic home run in World Series history, the ninth-inning shot over the left-field wall in Forbes Field that beat the Yankees in the seventh game of the 1960 World Series. It is the only home run that ended a Series.
Jim Kaplan, author of _Playing the Field_ and poet laureate of the defensive dimension of baseball, thinks that the glitter of that moment has distracted people from Mazeroski's true greatness. Kaplan believes it is demonstrable that Mazeroski was the greatest defensive second baseman ever and that it is arguable that he was the greatest defensive player of _any_ position. Kaplan notes that when Mazeroski took infield practice at the 1958 All-Star Game, "stars from both leagues stopped to watch him—the fielding equivalent of watching Ted Williams hit." Mazeroski led National League second basemen in putouts 5 times, total chances 8 times, assists 9 times (a record) and range factor (putouts and assists divided by games) 10 times. His major league records include double plays by a second baseman in a season (161), in a career (1,706) and the number of years leading the league in double plays (8). His lifetime fielding average of .983 was achieved in spite of the notoriously bad infield at Forbes Field.
The exclusion of Mazeroski from Cooperstown is a case of simple discrimination against defensive skills. The exclusion of Richie Ashburn is harder to fathom. Ashburn was much more than merely adequate at bat. He had a .308 lifetime average, with two batting titles. He batted over .300 in 9 of his 15 seasons. Mays and Mantle batted better than .300 ten times each, in 22 and 18 seasons, respectively. Mantle's career on-base average was .422, Mays's was .384, Ashburn's was .394. Doubles? Mays averaged 24 a year, Ashburn 21, Mantle 19. Mays scored an average of 94 runs, Mantle 93, Ashburn 88 while hitting just 29 home runs in his career—an average of fewer than two a year. That is a big part of his problem: He did too much without home runs. Another part of his problem is that he did it 90 miles too far west. If he had put up most of his numbers in New York City, under the media microscope, he would already be enshrined at Cooperstown.
Now we come to what should be the clincher, the fact that Ashburn holds six of the ten most important records for single-season putouts in the outfield, five of the top nine for total chances.
Ashburn retired after the 1962 season, which he played with the Mets. It was the Mets' slapstick (40 wins, 120 losses) first season. He was named the Mets' MVP, and said, "Most valuable player on the worst team ever? Just how did they mean that?" He is fifth in career putouts and chances behind four Hall of Famers (Mays, Tris Speaker, Max Carey, Ty Cobb), all of whom played at least 288 more games than Ashburn played. Many balls he caught, which less swift and less intelligent outfielders would not have, were snared at the end of long sprints. He caught them because the play started with him well positioned and intelligently anticipating. A substantial number of those balls were doubles denied. Why is a double denied on defense so much less admirable than a double delivered on offense?
"The typical American male," wrote James Thurber, "strikes out the Yankees side before going to sleep at night." But there are many red-blooded Americans (of both sexes; this is the Nineties, for Pete's sake) who, when on the edge of sleep, dash deep into the hole between short and third to spear a hot grounder and then throw Rickey Henderson out at first. These sensitive, caring, learned Americans demand that the Hall of Fame shape up and fill out its ranks with the likes of Mazeroski and Ashburn. Those two may not rank with Dreyfus on the list of history's great victims, but the undervaluing of defense does say much about the standard measures of baseball excellence. And it says much about the misunderstanding of how games are won.
ALL-TIME SINGLE-SEASON LEADERS:
PUTOUTS BY AN OUTFIELDER
Taylor Douthit | 1928 | 547
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Richie Ashburn | 1951 | 538
Richie Ashburn | 1949 | 514
Chet Lemon | 1977 | 512
Dwayne Murphy | 1980 | 507
Richie Ashburn | 1956 | 503
Dom DiMaggio | 1948 | 503
Richie Ashburn | 1957 | 502
Richie Ashburn | 1953 | 496
Richie Ashburn | 1958 | 495
ALL-TIME SINGLE-SEASON LEADERS:
CHANCES BY AN OUTFIELDER
Taylor Douthit | 1928 | 566
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Richie Ashburn | 1951 | 560
Richie Ashburn | 1949 | 538
Chet Lemon | 1977 | 536
Richie Ashburn | 1957 | 527
Dom DiMaggio | 1948 | 526
Dwayne Murphy | 1980 | 525
Richie Ashburn | 1956 | 523
Richie Ashburn | 1953 | 519
Lloyd Waner | 1931 | 515
Games are won by a combination of informed aggression and prudence based on information. La Russa says, "Be aggressive offensively—when in doubt, push. But defensively, it's the opposite. Be very basic, take the outs that are there, don't gamble in a way that will open up a big inning for the other team." There are sometimes more outs within reach than seem possible. One night in 1987 the Giants, playing at home, had hit 5 home runs and were still losing, 6–5. Then they tied the score in the ninth and had the bases loaded with one out. The Reds brought their outfield in. The Giants' Will Clark singled sharply up the middle. The Giants won, right? Right, but they might not have. The Reds' center fielder, Eric Davis, charged the ball, scooped it up and sprinted across second base for a force-out on the runner coming from first. It was such a bang-bang play he still would have had time to throw on to first and get the batter for an inning-ending, and perhaps game-saving, double play. He had time, but there was no first baseman to throw to. When the Reds' first baseman, Dave Parker, saw Clark's hit go past the infield, he decided the game was over and left the base. The moral of the story is: It isn't over until it's over. As has been said.
But it is over when one team, the one with the fewest runs, runs out of outs. You can win a game even if you have terrible pitching that gives up runs in bunches. Just be sure to score one more run than the sum of the bunches. (On August 25, 1922, the Cubs were pounded by the Phillies for 23 runs. The Cubs won, 26–23. As Bob Prince, the Pirates' broadcaster, used to say at the end of a cliff-hanger victory, "Had 'em all the way!") You can score only one run and win. Happens all the time. You can win getting only one hit. It is possible to win getting no hits. But to win a nine-inning game you must get 27 outs.
It is exceedingly rare that a team wins even a division title while leading the league in errors. The porous Dodgers of 1985 led the major leagues with 166 errors. Before that, the last time a team led the league in errors and won the division was 1971. The Giants of that year had stone hands but they had large muscles. If you are going to be sloppy in the field you had better be able to bring Bobby Bonds, Willie Mays and Willie McCovey to the plate.
Casey Stengel was right: "I don't like them fellas who drive in two runs and let in three." "You can't win," says La Russa, "unless you catch the ball behind good pitching and don't give the other team extra outs." "That was Earl's philosophy," says Ripken. "Let's not give them any more outs than they're entitled to." For six months—Spring Training and the first five months of the season—baseball conversation, even among baseball people, is about pitching and hitting, and especially power hitters. In the seventh month, September, the question is always Who is going to win? And invariably the answer, at least the answer given by baseball people, is "the team that gets the best pitching _and defense."_ One of the elements in Earl Weaver's equation for winning a pennant was to make fewer than 100 errors in a season. Think of 100 errors as 100 times in which the other teams enjoyed four-out innings. Bill Rigney says that when he is asked to evaluate a team, the first question he wants answered is, How well do they catch the ball? Add up all the hits, bases on balls and stolen bases you get on offense, Rigney says. In how many games does the total top 27? That is how many outs your defense must produce.
To understand the primacy of defense, try this. Imagine that the rules of baseball were amended to require four outs to retire a side. What would happen? Scores would soar, games would go on and on and on. A 33 percent increase in the number of outs almost certainly would result in much more than a 33 percent increase in runs. But mediocre defense does just that: It gives the other team four-out innings. A ground ball just beyond the reach of an infielder who was improperly positioned, a double play just missed because a flawed flip from the shortstop caused the second baseman to deliver the ball to first a fraction of a second too late—such lapses do not show up in a box score. But when an excellent defensive team plays a mediocre defensive team, the two teams might as well be playing under different rules. The team playing against the mediocre defensive team is, in effect, getting four or more outs in, perhaps, four or more innings.
"Positioning the defense," says Whitey Herzog, "can be worth five or ten games a year." A pitcher worth ten games a year may have a million-dollar salary. So why do some clubs not bother with defensive charts? Sloth. "The premium," says La Russa, "is on getting guys out. The stuff we do offensively, talking about how to hit the guy, talking about how we are going to do things in particular situations—bunts, whatever—all that is well and good. There's a place for it. But the premium is on the stuff you do to get guys out—positioning, and how you are going to pitch particular players. I want to be able to have a comfortable feeling, sitting in the dugout, that whoever comes to bat, I have a general idea where the ball is supposed to go, and a pretty specific idea of how you're going to go after him. So when you're watching the game you can compare what you think going in with what you are seeing. A lot of times the key at bats come late in the game. You want to be able to adjust if a hitter has been doing things you have not anticipated."
The wonder is that, given how much information there is floating around, there are not more unusual adjustments made. Tom Trebelhorn, manager of the Brewers, says, "When we play Sparky and the Tigers, I love to do goofy stuff." Then he tells a story that demonstrates that the stuff is not so goofy. In 1987 he used a six-man infield with one outfielder. With a Tiger runner on third and no one out, Trebelhorn played a five-man infield. He brought in his center fielder, Robin Yount, a former shortstop, to play slightly to the right of second base. The pitcher was responsible for any ball hit up the middle and there were three infielders between second and third. The Tiger batter was Chet Lemon, a right-handed pull hitter. The Brewers' pitcher threw Lemon off-speed pitches down, he pulled a ground ball into the packed left side of the infield for the first out. Immediately there was a rain delay. In the clubhouse Trebelhorn told his team that when they went back out on the field they would play a six-man infield. The next Tiger batter was to be Pat Sheridan, a left-hander. In 24 at bats against the Brewers he had hit 17 ground balls. The only balls he had hit in the air had all gone to a certain small area of right-center field, where Trebelhorn planned to play his single outfielder. Trebelhorn told his pitcher to go to the mound, pick up the resin bag and throw it down as a signal for two outfielders to run into the infield. Trebelhorn told the pitcher to keep the ball down. Alas, the best laid plans... The pitcher got the ball up in the strike zone and Sheridan hit it to the one outfielder, but deep enough for a sacrifice fly, scoring the runner from third. "In this particular game," Trebelhorn says, "we were down about 5–0; we were dying on the vine. I got my guys excited. We ended up losing about 8–5, but the maneuver took the focus off the negative and put it on something positive. And there was some commonsense statistical information to back it up."
Information is everywhere. Late one afternoon before a night game in Boston, Tony La Russa was standing behind the batting cage watching Doug Jennings take batting practice. La Russa said, "Watch. You'll see why I had to bunt yesterday in Baltimore." In Baltimore Jennings was up and Luis Polonia was at second with no one out. As La Russa watched from behind the Fenway cage, Jennings, a left-hander, hit one BP fastball—about 58 miles per hour—after another toward short. "That's his stroke," La Russa said. "There is no way he is going to advance the runner by pulling an 85-mile-per-hour fastball to the right side." That is the sort of information the big man on the left side—the shortstop—likes to know. He can get it from advance scouts who facilitate anticipation.
William Ashley Sunday, who later became famous as just plain Billy, the evangelist, was playing center field for the White Stockings, as they were then known, when a Detroit batter belted a long fly. Sunday dashed after it with, he later said, a prayer on his lips. Perhaps he would have run faster and made the catch with less fuss if he had not been praying, but never mind. He made the catch and came to a momentous conclusion: "I am sure the Lord helped me to catch that ball and it was my first experience in prayer." Gosh. A career of saving souls might not have happened if back then the White Stockings had used advance scouts to tell Sunday where to play, thereby making his long run, and Divine Intervention, unnecessary.
An advance scout's reports, other than those about players new to the league, are less important for information on the player's general tendencies than on how he is hitting _right now_ , meaning in the last three or four games. Ripken says this was important, for example, when trying to decide how to play defense against Reggie Jackson, a left-hander. "When Reggie was hitting the ball well, he waited a long time and hit the ball to my right. But when he was struggling, he would swing harder and get out earlier and he would pull more balls. He would get over the top of balls—'top' them. So if I knew Reggie was struggling I could play him more to pull. When he was hot he hit a lot of homers to left-center field. He would hit hard ground balls—rockets—to my right. When everyone's hitting the ball well, they see the ball longer and they wait to see what it's going to do. When they're hot they're quick."
Quickness is the quality most rewarded in baseball. Quick moves by the pitcher to the plate, by the catcher to second. Remember Ted Williams on hitting: "Wait-wait-wait and then quick-quick-quick." Defensive quickness decides games because the difference between baseball success and failure is measured in tenths, sometimes hundredths, of seconds. Quickness has constant synergism on defense. Around the infield, and the outfield, too, it radiates. Keith Hernandez has, by the aggressive mobility and artistry of his play, made more of a change in the playing of first base than anyone since Charles Comiskey, who was the first first baseman to play off the bag with no runners on base. No one any longer thinks of first base as a safe place to park an arthritic and immobile elder. In his prime Hernandez showed the baseball world the ripple effect of an infielder 's range. Because he could move so well to his right, all the holes in the Mets' infield were squeezed just a bit narrower than they otherwise would have been as the rest of the infield edged to its right. No one can say for sure how many potential hits were thereby turned into outs in the course of a season, but it is certain that the ERA of the Mets' pitching staff reflected the Hernandez Factor.
Such a ripple effect can originate anywhere in the infield, and dramatically from center field. Tris Speaker played such a shallow center field that several times—once in the 1912 World Series—he completed an unassisted double play at second base. Shortstop Mark Belanger had such range going back on pop-ups that he was virtually a fourth outfielder, enabling the left fielder and center fielder to play a bit deeper than they otherwise would have. When first and third basemen have good range, shortstops and second basemen are able to squeeze the biggest hole on the diamond, the one exploited by Wade Boggs and others who hit back up the middle. The better a third baseman is at going to his left, especially on slow grounders, the deeper the shortstop can play. The concept of third-base play was altered suddenly in five games in October, 1970. The World Series that year between the Orioles and Reds was the first Series involving a park (Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium) with artificial turf. The Reds had four right-handed power hitters (Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Lee May, Hal McRae). They spent five days pulling the ball at the best glove ever stationed at third base, Brooks Robinson, and they spent the winter regretting it.
In October, 1987, almost four years to the day after he made the final putout of the World Series (catching a soft semi-line drive off the bat of the Phillies' Gary Maddox), Ripken was watching the Cardinals-Twins Series at home on television and marveling at something he saw, something that proved the importance of a third baseman with good range. "A left-hander was pitching for the Cardinals with a runner on first and a 2-and-0 count on Gary Gaetti, a strong right-handed pull hitter. And Ozzie [Smith] is playing him up the middle. [Terry] Pendleton has tremendous range for a third baseman, but no one can throw hard enough to throw the ball by Gaetti. [By "throw the ball by" Ripken means _almost_ by—preventing Gaetti from pulling the pitch.] So I think: 'Maybe the situation dictates that the pitcher will pitch around Gaetti, not give him a pitch to hit.' But the pitcher throws the ball inside and Gaetti hits a sharp one-hopper to straightaway short, where Ozzie isn't. Pendleton is playing so far off the line that he almost catches it. Ozzie dives for it and catches it at straightaway short and forces the runner at second. I am sitting there thinking, 'How in the world can Ozzie think he can play that far up the middle?' The answer was in the fact that Pendleton nearly caught the ball and he had no business even being close to it."
Ripken's house suffers from no shortage of television sets of all shapes and sizes. He takes busman's holidays, watching the competition. And he has lodged in his capacious memory another episode involving Gaetti, another that proves the point about the advantage of a third baseman with good range to his left. The Tigers were playing the Twins. Alan Trammell was the Tigers' shortstop, as he has been since he was 19 in 1977. Tom Brookens was playing third. Frank Tanana, a left-hander, was pitching for the Tigers. Gaetti was up and Trammell was not playing him to pull, "because Brookens has good range," explains Ripken, with the wistfulness of someone who has played next to 28 third basemen (and 16 second basemen) since 1982. "Outfield range is just as important. If you have a center fielder like Gary Pettis [of the Rangers] or Devon White [of the Angels] who can catch the ball from bull pen to bull pen, it wouldn't make a lot of sense, if you were the right fielder or left fielder, to play in the area where he can catch the ball." A swift center fielder takes away some of the other team's extra-base speed because he allows his fellow outfielders to play close to the foul lines, where doubles often fall. This, says Ripken, is especially important in an outfield configured like that of Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. The left- and right-field foul lines are 309 feet. But the fence curves quickly out to 360 feet and is 385 in the power alleys. Most teams visiting Memorial Stadium squeeze those alleys—that is, they play their left and right fielders a lot more toward center than they do in other parks, assuming that hits down the line will be doubles and that squeezing the alleys can prevent triples. "But," says Ripken, "teams that have great center fielders put their right and left fielders on the lines and the center fielder runs rampant and they cover all the territory and catch everything."
Watch outfielders in the outfield when their team is taking pregame batting and infield practice. Most do not do what Tony Gwynn does. He, like Ripken, believes that the way to prepare to play baseball is to play baseball. So during Padres pregame sessions, when Gwynn's group is not hitting, he will be in the outfield taking fly balls "off the bat," meaning flies hit off batting practice pitches rather than off fungo bats. He will play one ball as though there is a man on second base, another as though there is nobody on, a third he will play "do-or-die"—a potential winning run on second. He will even practice climbing the fence on batting practice home runs that barely make it over the fence. Tony La Russa requires the Athletics' outfielders to take balls off the bats of hitters taking batting practice 20 minutes a day in Spring Training, 5 minutes before each game during the season. "You can take 1,000 fungoes a day and it won't be as good as 10 minutes pretending you are in a game, taking balls off the bat during batting practice." "Pete Rose says that everyone practices their strengths," says Ripken. "You like to do what you are good at. But Pete also said he practiced what he believed to be his weaknesses. That is what I do. That is why you may see me practicing my backhand." There is another reason for practicing his backhand, particularly on the road. The visiting team takes infield practice after the home team has practiced. When an infield has been chewed up—or when an infield is simply bad, as Cleveland's was when Ripken first came to the major leagues—practicing your backhand is safer than fielding balls coming directly at you. If they take bad bounces they are apt to bounce off you. Ripken has not missed infield practice before even one game while in the major leagues. There is, he says, a big difference between being in shape and being "in baseball shape." The latter means, for example, being able to throw repeatedly across an infield.
Repetition is inseparable from craftsmanship, but it also is the source of the strain of baseball's everydayness. It takes a special toll on infielders who are especially in the grip of the game's one-pitch-at-a-time rhythm. At one point in his career, Mickey Mantle was moved from center field to first base to rest his constantly aching legs for a few games. Soon he wanted to return to the outfield, where he could relax. When Rod Carew moved from second to first he discovered that a first baseman, far from being immobile, must always be doing something. Watch an excellent first baseman such as Don Mattingly, hold runners on first base. The instant the pitcher is committed to deliver the ball to the plate, the first baseman should make a strenuous move, one comparable to that made by a base runner when stealing or participating in a hit-and-run play. "It's like stealing a base," says Keith Hernandez. "Take two explosive steps at the last possible moment. The point is to get into position to cover the hole. You get hurt more in the hole than down the line. Nowadays there are so few dead-pull left-handed hitters. There used to be Willie McCovey or John Milner. But there aren't any more. Still, you'll see so many first basemen sitting on the line. Because they're lazy. It gets boring over the season to come off the bag. You're tired and don't feel like getting out there." That is a true test of professionalism, this ability to do the small and boring and cumulatively stressful and draining things that must be done during the half of the game when you are at your defensive position.
Mark Belanger used to say there is no such thing as a fielding slump. Ripken disagrees. "There are slumps in fielding as well as in hitting. In hitting your timing gets off, and you get out front of pitches—too soon, or behind. Similarly, you become anxious as shortstop, you are leaning too far—so far ahead of the pitch that it is impossible to correct" if the ball is pitched somewhere it is not supposed to go and is hit in an unanticipated direction. Assuming an average of 130 pitches per game over a 162-game season, Ripken tenses, rocks forward on the balls of his feet and begins to lean or move in toward the infield grass, or to one side or the other, 21,000 times each season. Ripken has rocked forward on the balls of his feet more often than any other player since May 30, 1982—the day his consecutive-game streak began. Barring injury, in June, 1990, he will move into second place on the consecutive-games list, passing Everett Scott's 1,307. And if Ripken's career goes as it has gone since 1982, the eyes of the baseball world will be on him in June, 1995. One day that month he will, if playing at home, trot out to take his position in the infield prior to the top of the first inning. Or if playing on the road he may come to bat, perhaps still hitting third, in the top of the first inning. When he does, another of baseball's "unbreakable" records will be broken. Ripken will have surpassed Lou Gehrig's streak of 2,130 consecutive games played.
The authors of _The Elias Baseball Analyst_ are sparkling diamonds in the diadem of American letters. But on one subject they are grumps, and are mistaken. They dismiss a streak such as Ripken's as "a record of will, not skill." But that misses a subtle and profoundly important point about the relationship of baseball skill to intense discipline of will. The Elias authors said in their 1988 edition that there is one baseball question they can not answer: "Lou Gehrig played in 2,130 consecutive games. Why?" They can not answer it because their distinction between records that reflect skill and records that "merely" reflect will is too stark. Natural gifts, however great, and skills, however sharply honed, still must be summoned to application by strength of will. The summoning is not easy on a muggy August mid-week night in Cleveland when neither team is in the hunt for a pennant. Skills must be willed into action by an intensity that does not well up spontaneously. Such intensity must be cultivated. For some players, such as Ripken, playing every day is part of an ongoing mental preparation not only for the long season and a long career, but also for tonight's game.
To the argument that "everyone needs a day off," Ripken says, placidly, that he gets lots of days off, between October and April. He insists, reasonably, that his is not a 1,000-game streak, it is a series of 162-game streaks. Were anyone to ask, Is 162 consecutive games too many for a large, young, healthy, well-conditioned athlete?, the obvious answer would be, of course not. Also, there is that positive argument for continuing the streak. Ripken's streak is his way of maintaining the mixture of relaxation and intensity necessary for high performance over a long season. Barring injury, Ripken will break Lou Gehrig's record when he is 35, in the 71st game of the 1995 season. And he will play in the 72nd game, and the 73rd, and...
Playing every day is something Ripken learned by osmosis, early. The boy is indeed father to the man, and Ripken's baseball boyhood bred in him a respect for the game's relentlessness. When Ripken was younger his game face was not always, as it is now, calm and almost blank. "I used to throw bats and things until I saw myself do it on TV." He has a soft, almost high voice and shy half-smile that seems a halfway measure to prevent unseemly mirth from making it to the surface. He is a difficult man to see depths in, but they are there. His passions are submerged beneath his public self, which is steadiness personified. But with Ripken it is possible, as Duncan (not Dave the pitching coach, but the fellow in _Macbeth_ , Act I, Scene IV) said, "to find the mind's construction in the face." His is a deceptively bland countenance. The blandness is actually a quiet force, a kind of confidence that comes only to athletes and other performers, and only to a few of them. It is confidence in _being able to do it_.
Ripken is one of 14 players who have won both Rookie of the Year and MVP awards, and he is the only player to have won them in consecutive years. (Fred Lynn won both in the same year, 1975.) He is the only shortstop other than Ernie Banks to hit 20 or more home runs in 8 consecutive seasons. Through 1989 Ripken had led all major league shortstops in home runs and RBIs for 6 of the last 7 seasons. He had hit 196 home runs as a shortstop, third behind Ernie Banks (293) and Vern Stephens (213). He was one of only 4 major leaguers with 20 or more home runs in each of the last 8 seasons. His total of 204 home runs ranked him eighth in the major leagues during those 8 years. Through the 1989 season Ripken was the only active American League player who had hit 20 or more home runs in each of his first 8 seasons. Dale Murphy was the only other player to hit 20 or more in those 8 seasons. Entering 1990 Ripken was second only to Boston's Dwight Evans in the number of extra-base hits by an American Leaguer over the previous 8 seasons. (Ripken had 494, Evans 500. Dale Murphy led the major leagues over that span with 508.) Through 1989 his career slugging average was .461, comparable to the averages of such Hall of Fame shortstops as Honus Wagner (.469), Joe Cronin (.468) and Arky Vaughan (.453). But when asked which gives him greatest satisfaction, hitting or defense, Ripken does not hesitate:
"When you do things right defensively you feel the greatest gratification. When I had all those chances [906, while setting an American League record for assists, 583] in 1984 and the pitching was tremendous, you could rely on them, there was no better feeling than to know that the guy was going to throw _this_ pitch, he was going to throw it where he said he was going to throw it, and the hitter was going to hit it—if he hit it—at _this_ place. Having guessed—no, having figured it out—and done it, and moved the right way, and taken a ball up the middle, and having somebody scream in the dugout back at you, 'How can you play me there?' Say he's a right-handed pull hitter and so the shortstop normally would play a right-handed pull hitter in the hole. But then the sequence of the count, and the pitcher on the mound who has a 90-mile-per-hour fastball, and the fact that he's got two strikes on him, _told_ me that I can actually _know_ that _this_ guy's not going to pull _this_ pitch, so I can run up the middle and he'll hit a line drive or a one-hopper right by the pitcher's glove and I can catch it up the middle and make the play. Then you hear somebody screaming in the dugout 'How can you play me there?'—to me, that's more gratifying than getting a bases-loaded hit. That's the game within the game."
The game within the game, in the mind, is elegant. But the game itself, on the field, has a rough side. It is sometimes said that baseball is not a contact sport. This idea is encouraged by baseball's gentle terminology of "touching" a base or "tagging" a runner. But baseball has a constant undercurrent of dust-raising episodes—episodes that certainly seem to the participants to amount to contact. For example, try telling Tim McCarver that there was not serious contact involved on the two occasions when runners slid into him at home plate hard enough to lodge their spikes in his shin guards. Professional baseball is, as Heywood Broun wrote, "agreeably free of chivalry." No chivalry, but there is a code of acceptable behavior. At home plate the code is, as we have seen, a subject of constant and semi-violent negotiations among batters, pitchers and umpires. The code is clearer at second base, where the first outs of most double plays are made while arriving runners are trying to prevent the ball from being fired to first in time to make the second out.
"Everybody understands the extent of the contact and even if you get hit hard, if it's within certain guidelines, you think it's all right," says Ripken. Middle infielders making double plays usually receive the ball from the other middle infielder who has fielded it. He touches second and flings the ball on its way to first base while avoiding, or absorbing the impact of, the runner who is sliding, or even rolling, in from first. Many middle infielders, when receiving the throw as pivotman in a double play, throw the relay to first sidearm because the low trajectory of the throw forces the incoming runner to get down into his slide a stride or so earlier. This gives the pivotman some protection from collision. One reason for this practice is that middle infielders generally have been smaller than many of the base runners who come barreling into second. Ripken often sidearms the ball to first even when not turning the double play, even from fairly deep short, because the release is quicker that way than it is when throwing fully overhand. His arm is so powerful he can gun the ball without the whipping motion of an overhand throw. Furthermore, when making the pivot, Ripken has a big man's confidence about collisions. He remembers Darrell Miller, a 200-pounder playing for the Angels, attempting to take him out with a hard slide at second and then lying on the ground holding his side and gasping up at Ripken, "Are... you... all... right?"
Fear of collisions is the principal reason for the "phantom tag," whereby the pivotman glides past the bag a split second before getting the ball. But Ripken wants to earn the reputation with umpires of always touching second base, so that in a situation in which he may have to miss the bag—for example, when a flip from the second baseman pulls him away from the bag—the umpire may give him the benefit of the doubt. Commenting on the way Walt Weiss of the Athletics turns a double play—rocketing right across the bag, directly at the on-charging runner, while throwing to first—Ripken explains, "You want to catch the ball and continue your momentum toward first without regard for the guy coming in. Your luxury, as a shortstop, is that you can see where he is. You can be the aggressor."
When asked if he was glad that Kirk Gibson, the former tight end from Michigan State University, had left the American League, going from the Tigers to the Dodgers, Ripken replies with a flash of the competitiveness that sleeps, when it sleeps, lightly within him: "He never got me." And he adds, "I always thought I had the advantage because he was in front of me. If I was a second baseman I'd be a little more concerned, because you can't see him, you don't know when he's going to hit you. Don Baylor, who had the speed and power combined, used to slide in and say, 'I could have really got you.' I'd say, 'I bet you could've.'" Ripken laughs. "Baylor ended someone's career in a collision at second. He always said—I've known him since I was eleven—'I'm not going to get you. But I'll let you know when I could've.'"
Bo Jackson of the Royals is one of the biggest men in baseball and may be the fastest in a 90-foot sprint. His blend of hard bulk and explosive speed has brought to baseball a kind of kinetic energy not seen before, not even in the man to whom he is frequently compared, Mickey Mantle. Tony Kubek, broadcasting for the Blue Jays, saw Jackson early in 1989 and knew he had seen something so remarkable it might rewrite whole chapters of "The Book," that compilation of baseball's received wisdom. In the Royals' opening game against the Blue Jays, Jackson hit a solid single up the middle, directly across the carpet to Toronto's center fielder, Lloyd Moseby, who fielded the ball cleanly and fired it back to the infield—but not before Jackson had slid into second. In another game in that series Jackson went from second to third on a grounder hit to the Blue Jays' shortstop, Tony Fernandez. "The Book" decrees that you do not try to advance on a ball hit to the left side, least of all when your team is behind, as the Royals were at the time. But Jackson was almost at third by the time the ball got to Fernandez. Then, with Jackson on third, Frank White bunted. The ball trickled foul. But before the Blue Jays' catcher, Ernie Whitt, had fully risen from his crouch to pounce on the ball, Jackson ran across the plate. "There are," says Kubek, "different kinds of fears. I know darn well there was fear when Jackson was running the bases yesterday. Tony Fernandez taking the throw from Moseby, knowing that Bo's coming, missed the ball. There was fear on Ernie Whitt's part when Frank White bunted."
Many baseball players saw—and those who didn't see it have heard about it—the NFL game in which the Seattle Seahawks' linebacker, Brian Bosworth, was the only obstacle between Bo Jackson and the end zone. Bosworth was not, it turned out, much of an obstacle. Jackson ran right over him. Most baseball players have seen the tape of Jackson smashing into Rick Dempsey, then the Indians' catcher, hitting him so hard that Dempsey was knocked far from the plate and all the way on to the disabled list. Tony Gwynn certainly remembers it: "Jackson just jumped up. Didn't faze him." Ripken has seen many strong, fast players. And standing at shortstop he has seen Jackson taking a lead off first. Ripken knows Jackson and likes him, but Ripken will worry more about him when he has learned more about baseball.
When asked how big a problem Jackson is when he is on first base, Ripken replies with the pure baseball man's sense of superiority to someone who is less than completely committed to his craft: "Oh, Bo has many fundamental strengths. He could be just like Rickey [Henderson], but it seems that when some people have that much speed they don't take the trouble to get a good jump. Their speed takes care of their jump. But think how fast they could get to second base if they did all the little things everybody else has to do. Bo's not yet a great base stealer, as great as he can be, because he has not learned the fundamentals—how to get a good jump, how to time the pitchers. He hasn't stolen that many bases and he's faster than Willie Wilson in a dead sprint. But I'll bet he's not as fast as Willie first-to-home because he [Bo] doesn't 'cut' the bases as well." (Through 1989 Wilson had stolen 588 bases, placing him eighth on the all-time list.) "Because Bo's physical tools are superior to those of everyone else, he can run faster, throw harder, hit the ball farther than anyone else. But he doesn't yet get up well with the pitch. He doesn't read the ball off the bat as well as he could if he had had more baseball experience." (By "getting up with the pitch" Ripken means that a runner on first, while facing the catcher, should begin to glide sideways toward second and then be able to turn smoothly and sprint off the glide if the ball is put in play. A runner on first "reads the ball off the bat" well if he instantly knows whether it will be a ground ball, a routine fly or a long drive.)
Now the baseball purist in Ripken is speaking with undisguised disapproval: "The same is true on the double play. Bo doesn't get there [to second] as fast as some other people, even though he is faster than everybody. I'm not as worried about Bo as I someday will be. Don Baylor used to be fast and he got so he could get there quicker than anybody because he did things the right way." In those words—"the right way"—the Ripken blood, and that of baseball, speaks.
# CONCLUSION
"Maybe the Players Are Livelier."
A baseball elder gazed upon the game and was not pleased by what he saw:
Baseball today is not what it should be. The players do not try to learn all the fine points of the game as in the days of old, but simply try to get by... [sic] It makes me weep to think of the men of the old days who played the game and the boys of today. It's positively a shame, and they are getting big money for it, too.
So wrote a former player and manager years after retiring. He wrote it for the _Spalding Base Ball Guide_ of 1916.
It is an old baseball tradition, complaining about the character and quality of contemporary players. However, baseball is both intensely traditional and interestingly progressive. By progressive I mean steadily improving. The traditional side is obvious in baseball's absorption with its past and its continuities. Charles Finley, who as owner of the Oakland Athletics fielded some of the finest teams of the 1970s, suffered from incurable fidgets and tried to inflict upon baseball various innovations, such as designated runners and orange baseballs. But he did acknowledge the game's remarkable continuity. He liked to say, "The day Custer lost at Little Bighorn, the Chicago White Sox beat the Cincinnati Red Legs, 3–2. Both teams wore knickers. And they are still wearing them today." There is an aura of changelessness to sport. There is the flux of competition, but it occurs within the ordering confinement of clear rules. Yet like any human contrivance, sport is an organic institution, evolving with changes in the forces that play upon it. Baseball's seasons, coming one after another and comprising a nearly seamless web, are deeply satisfying to one's sense of social transmission. It is the sense of society always changing somewhat but having as its primary business the passing along of slowly accumulated customs, mores and techniques. Memory, says Tom Boswell of the _Washington Post_ , is baseball's fourth dimension. For the fan, freezing and savoring images is an important part of the pleasure. No sport matches baseball's passion for its past. And there is a second sense in which memory is always central to baseball's present. Many of those who play and manage have ravenous appetites for remembrance. It is how they, and their craft, become better.
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal. The Grand Canyon is the work of the Colorado River. Where did baseball come from? Lots of places, including (it seems so natural) Valley Forge. Baseball was evolving from lower forms of activity at about the time the colonies were evolving into a nation, and baseball became a mode of work—as distinct from a mere pastime—remarkably soon after the nation got going.
This is a nation that knows precisely when it got going. Unlike most nations, this one had a clear founding moment, in Philadelphia, presided over by the Founding Fathers. It is, therefore, natural, and tolerable as amiable nonsense, that the national pastime claims to have had a founding moment and a Founding Father. Part of the agreeable nonsense about baseball being an echo of our pastoral past is the myth that Abner Doubleday invented the sport one fine day in 1839 in the farmer Phinney's pasture at Cooperstown. Actually, the thing Doubleday helped begin was the Civil War. (He was stationed at Fort Sumter when the first shots were fired.) _The New York Times_ obituary of Doubleday did not even mention baseball. The untidy truth is that the sport evolved from two similar, but interestingly different, games based in two cities, New York and Boston.
The New York version won the evolutionary contest, partly because New York had one of the essential ingredients of social success, a great lawgiver. The United States had a population of about 20 million and New York City about 700,000 the day (June 19, 1846) Alexander Joy (his parents certainly knew how to name baseball's constitutionalist) Cartwright went to a meadow on the slopes of Murray Hill near Third Avenue in Manhattan and laid out a diamond-shaped playing area with bases 90 feet apart. Puritan values made many early American communities inhospitable to play. Play is, after all, a "pastime," and to some stern Americans back then it seemed impious to think of the Creator's precious gift of time as something to be whiled away. Play was then considered a form of idleness, and an idle brain was the Devil's playground. But baseball, which began as play, quickly became a form of work. As pure play it was a spontaneous, improvised adaptation of games with English roots. The diary of George Ewing, a soldier in the Continental Army thawing out at Valley Forge in 1778, records that on April 17 there was a game of "base." It was, no doubt, a cousin of the game of "baste ball" that a Princeton student described in 1786.
Baseball's adolescence was the era between 1876, the founding of the National League, and 1902, the formalization of relations between the National and American leagues. In 1876 the nation celebrated its centennial, puffed out its chest, and went rollicking toward industrialism and urbanization. By 1902 America was a world power, as full of energy and confidence as the Rough Rider in the White House. Between 1876 and 1902 there were five or six (it is a matter of opinion) major leagues. This was an era of healing wounds from the Civil War (visored baseball caps were inspired by soldiers' caps worn during the Civil War—and perhaps partly by jockeys' caps) and creating the commonalities that would build a nation of immigrants. Baseball was part of that healing and building. This rambunctious age saw the democratization of literacy, and that brought the dawn of the age of newspapers. The price of a ton of newsprint plummeted from $40 in 1860 to $2 in the 1890s and editors, eager for a regular supply of noncontroversial news, launched sports sections where advertisers could sell to male readers.
Today baseball is big business, part of the vast entertainment industry that has grown in response to the growth of leisure time and disposable income. In 1989, 55,174,603 spectators, a number equal to approximately one-fifth of the combined populations of the United States and Canada, paid to get into the 26 major league ballparks. What spectators pay to see is a realm of excellence, in which character, work habits and intelligence—mind—make the difference between mere adequacy and excellence. The work is long, hard, exacting and sometimes dangerous. The work is a game that men play but they do not play at it. That is why they, and their craft, are becoming better.
Baseball has been called the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America. No topic of baseball conversation is more interesting and instructive than this question: Is the caliber of play as good as it used to be? I believe it is better. Sandy Alderson, the Athletics' general manager, says that judging a baseball team is a lot like surfing in the sense that waves come in, break and go back out, but you can not tell from one or two or even a dozen whether the tide is coming in or going out. Telling that takes more time. Gauging the trajectory of a baseball team takes more than a few games. Judging the trajectory of baseball itself is inherently problematic. But baseball has a trajectory; nothing stands still. John Thorn, a baseball historian and analyst, may be right that baseball "has changed less than any other American institution of comparable antiquity." Thirty years ago historian Bruce Catton wrote that if someone from President McKinley 's era were brought back to earth and seated in a baseball park "he would see nothing that was not completely familiar." "Dugout to dugout," said Bill Veeck, "the game happily remains unchanged in our changing world." Well, as we say in Washington, yes and no. Yes, the structure of the game is essentially what it has been since the turn of the century. But for many reasons noted earlier, hitting and pitching and fielding and managing have changed enough over the years that it is not easy to make comparisons between the achievements of today and yesterday.
For many reasons, including dumb luck and other mysteries, extraordinary constellations of talent can come together in one short era, in any field of endeavor. Consider that thirteen thinly populated colonies produced the fifty-five men who went to Philadelphia to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. There are similar clusters of extraordinary talents and achievements in baseball. Ten of baseball's thirteen .400 batting averages occurred in a 15-year period, 1911 through 1925, when baseball was an adolescent and, after 1920, the lively ball era was in its infancy. Twenty-eight times American League hitters have had 150 or more RBIs in a season. But all 28 occurred in the 29 seasons between 1921 and 1949. And 19 of the 28 seasons were by 4 sluggers: 7 by Gehrig, 5 by Ruth, 4 by Jimmie Foxx, 3 by Hank Greenberg. Note that 14 of those were by first basemen who were contemporaries. In 1935 Greenberg had 100 RBIs _before the All-Star break_. And he did not make the All-Star team, even as a backup. His misfortune was to be playing first base at the same time as Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx. As if putting an exclamation point to punctuate an era, two men from the same team, Ted Williams and Vern Stephens of the Red Sox, both got 159 RBIs in 1949. In the National League there have been only 7 seasons of 150 or more RBIs. Six of the 7 were within 16 years (1922–37). (The seventh was by the Dodgers' Tommy Davis in 1962.) Only 7 players have compiled 100 or more extra-base hits in a season. Consider the list of the 9 times it has been done:
100 OR MORE EXTRA-BASE HITS IN ONE SEASON
It has been 4 decades since anyone has done it and 4 of these achievements were in a 3-year span, 1930–32. Only 6 players have had seasons in which they hit at least .350, had at least 150 RBIs and hit 40 or more home runs.
Note that this has been done 13 times, all in a span of 16 seasons (1921–36). More than half of these super seasons occurred in a 4-year burst (1930–33).
There are almost as many ways to play with baseball numbers as there are ways to play with a baseball. Taken together, the many meanings that can be given to, or extracted from, the numbers compel this conclusion: There is an irreducible indeterminacy in baseball judgments. This is so in spite of, or perhaps because of, the abundance of data. About pitching, the records are clear but their meanings are not. Cy Young once told a reporter, "I won more games than you ever saw." He won 511. John Thorn and John B. Holway note that although Bob Feller won only 266 games, he lost 4 years to World War II. He had won 107 before Pearl Harbor and had just turned 23. At 23 Walter Johnson had 57 wins; Cy Young and Grover Cleveland Alexander had none. Alexander finished with 373, tied with Christy Mathewson. But Alexander did not get to the major leagues until he was 24 and lost most of a season to World War I. But for the war he probably would have won 400 games, something no one is apt to do again. The 5 best pitchers of the postwar period have been (I will brook no argument) Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Jim Palmer and Tom Seaver. Seaver won 311 and lost 205 in a 20-year career, often with weak teams. His winning percentage of .603 is almost identical to that of Walter Johnson (.599), who toiled most of the time for weak teams. Seaver's career ERA was 2.86. But Walter Johnson won 416 games, the second-highest total, even though his Senators were shut out in 65 of his starts and got only one run in 38 others. True, Johnson played in baseball's truest "pitcher's park," Washington's Griffith Stadium. (When Johnson was pitching there the left-field line was 407 feet, center 421, right 328.) Johnson could (in a hoary old baseball saying) "throw a blueberry through a battleship." Someone has calculated that if Christy Mathewson had played for the Senators when Johnson did, when the Senators were often weak, instead of for the Giants when they were usually a powerhouse, Mathewson would have won 276 games instead of 373, and if Johnson had played for those Giants he would have won 567 rather than "only" 416. Such calculations have a spurious precision. Still, they can make points by pointing to broad general conclusions, one of which is that Johnson was the best pitcher, ever. Period. (By the way, he hit .433 in 1925, a record for a pitcher, and in 1913 fielded 1.000 with 103 chances, another record.)
Christy Mathewson pitched 3 shutouts in the 1905 World Series. Walter Johnson pitched 11 shutouts in one season. Carl Hubbell won 24 consecutive regular-season games (16 at the end of 1936 and 8 at the beginning of 1937). Seven times in the modern dead-ball era (1900 to 1919) pitchers pitched 300 innings without yielding a single home run. Detroit's Ed Killian pitched 1,001 innings from 1903 through 1907 without a home run. Pitchers used to pitch more—more innings, more games, more complete games, more shutouts. But, then, as has been noted, they often threw fewer pitches per inning than are thrown today. The nature of the ball, the role of the relief pitcher, the five-man rotation, the need today to pitch warily through lineups well stocked with power hitters—all these and other differences make it difficult to make definitive comparisons. Furthermore, modern-day strikeout records are more impressive than those of the first six decades of the century. In 1988 Roger Clemens struck out 291 batters in 264 innings for an average of 9.92 strikeouts per 9 innings. That tied him for fourteenth on the list (fifteenth after 1989) of best single-season strikeout ratios. The year before, Nolan Ryan, then 40, recorded the best ratio ever. Here is a list of the top 20 seasons:
PITCHERS WITH MOST STRIKEOUTS PER 9 INNINGS, ONE SEASON
(Since 1900, Minimum Innings: 175)
Of those 20 seasons, one is from the 1950s, 5 are from the 1960s, and the other 14 are from the 1970s and 1980s.
The lesson to be learned here is that any baseball numbers must be considered in a complex baseball context. Nolan Ryan's career strikeout record, which rose to 5,076 in 1989, is not to be sneezed at, but he is pitching in an era when striking out has lost its stigma for batters. It is an era in which free swingers hold the bat at the knob and hack, not caring very much if they often do not make contact. When Ryan joined the Rangers in 1989 he had as a teammate Pete Incaviglia, who went directly from college to the major leagues. As was noted earlier, whatever else he learned at Oklahoma State, he did not learn the strike zone or the iniquity of striking out. Incaviglia is an egregious case, but an instructive one. In 1986 he led the league in strikeouts with 185. He tied for the lead in 1988 with 153. His total from those two seasons was 338, just 19 short of Ty Cobb's total strikeouts (357) over 24 seasons. Bo Jackson, another man who took a fast track to the major leagues, struck out 318 times in the 1988–89 seasons. In the magic year of 1941 (it was my bad luck to have been born on May 4 of that year, so I missed a full month of the season), Ted Williams struck out just 27 times while hitting .406 and belting 37 home runs. That year DiMaggio hit in 56 consecutive games and struck out just 13 times. Bo Jackson accumulates more strikeouts in two months than those _two_ hitters accumulated—40—in a full season.
The modern power pitcher whose strikeout numbers most resemble those of Ryan is Steve Carlton. In 1971 Carlton was 20–9 with the Cardinals. Before the 1972 season he was traded from the Cardinals to the Phillies. In 1972 the Phillies finished last and had a team batting average 24 points worse than the Cardinals. Yet Carlton won 27 games. It makes you wonder how many he might have won if he had not been traded.
Some baseball people believe that pitching is especially subject to wide fluctuations in quality because the talent pool is always shallow and expansion of the number of teams can drain it to the muddy bottom. In 1960 one American Leaguer (Mickey Mantle) hit 40 or more home runs. In 1961 two new teams were added—only about 20 new pitchers—and the American League suddenly had 6 hitters with 40 or more home runs. Some people say expansion is the reason Roger Maris broke Ruth's record in 1961. However, Kubek notes that since 1961 the American League has gone from 10 to 14 teams and the National League has expanded from 8 to 12 teams and no one has come close to Maris's record. Anyway, in 1927 Ruth hit 7 of his 60 home runs off rookie pitchers.
Craig Wright says, "This is the first time in baseball history that speed and power have flourished at the same time." This is partly because the prevalence of power hitters makes pitchers want to put maximum body force into more pitches, even when they are throwing from a stretch position. That makes them somewhat slower to the plate, and thus makes speed on the base paths more valuable. Today, says Tom Trebelhorn, "there are people you can not throw out unless they make a mistake. It's physics—it's time and motion. By the time you can get the ball from here to here, they can run from there to there." One reason games are longer is that players are quicker. As base stealing has become more important, pitchers have had to throw to first more frequently. A good base runner takes a lead long enough to require him to dive to get safely back to first on a good throw-over, so then he must dust himself off. It takes time. The baseball consensus is that catching is not as good as it once was. The scarcity of talented catchers makes the quality worse. "Since the shortest way to the big leagues is as a catcher," observes Jack McKeon, "it means that in the position where a kid needs the most experience he is getting the least." Baseball people who think the work ethic is weakening point to the paucity of good catchers. Catching, it seems, is déclassé and, more to the point, difficult. This is an era when good catchers are scarce and several of the best are methuselahn (Bob Boone and Carlton Fisk will both be 42 on Opening Day, 1990). But help is on the way in a familiar form. It is an American tradition that immigrants do the hard work, the dirty work, the heavy lifting. Two of the best young catchers are the Padres' Benito Santiago and the Indians' Sandy Alomar, Jr., both from Puerto Rico.
"Absolutely true," says La Russa about the notion that more and more players are getting to the major leagues before they know the fine points of the game. Or the not-really-terribly-fine points, such as how to hit a cutoff man on a throw from the outfield. In the decade 1979 through 1988, 47 percent of baseball's 6,476 draft picks came from college programs. Seven of the top ten picks in 1988 were from colleges. College programs must do the work done not so long ago by the minor leagues. Tim McCarver remembers that when he signed with the Cardinals in 1959 they had 5 Class-D teams and 7 in higher classifications. Today the Cardinals have just 8 minor league teams. Some clubs have only 5. Is three years in a serious college baseball program—at, say, Southern California or Miami or Arizona State—comparable to three years in the minor leagues? "Absolutely not," insists Al Rosen. He says the inculcation of the basics of baseball is stronger and the competition is tougher in the minor leagues. As proof, Rosen cites the number of players who have outstanding college careers but who struggle and even fail in the professional rookie leagues.
Jim Lefebvre says that because young players are "force-fed" so quickly into the major leagues, it is common to see mistakes of a sort that once were rare. For example, in a 1988 game against Texas the Athletics had runners on first and third with one out when a ground ball was hit right over third base. The third baseman fielded the ball and, hoping to start a double play, looked at the runner on third to freeze him, then threw to second. When he threw, the runner on third made a mistake: He broke for home. He would have been out by 20 feet if the Rangers had not obligingly made their own mistake. The second baseman did his job: He fired the ball toward home. But the pitcher inexplicably—reflexively, but where did he get _that_ reflex?—cut off the throw. In fact, the throw was gunned so hard it knocked his glove off. "There are," says Lefebvre, "a lot of instinctive-type things young players don't do right. When I came up the Dodgers had 16 farm teams—3 Triple-A teams. The players that made it to the majors were _survivors_. They knew their trade. They played, they played, they played."
Doug Melvin, director of the Orioles' farm system, says professional experience is bound to be more intense than any college program: "Look at the number of games they play. In three seasons a good college team may play 140 games. A kid would get perhaps 400 games with us." Immersion in baseball is more complete in a professional setting. The best way to study "situation baseball" is to be in the situations, often. For a second baseman, for example, there are 20 or so possible permutations of his duties, as cutoff man or in some other role, depending on where the ball is hit (fly ball? down the line? between the right fielder and center fielder?), whether there are runners on base (runner on third? first and third? second and third?) and what the score is.
Coaches' salaries are going up because more teaching must be done at the major league level. In 1988 Mark Grant, the large and slightly wacky Padres relief pitcher, was 24 and in his second full season. One morning at Wrigley Field he was lolling around the clubhouse listening to the wisdom of Pat Dobson, the Padres' pitching coach, about the importance of making a quality pitch to a particular spot with a runner on first and a left-handed hitter up. Keep the ball away, said Dobson, so the batter can not pull it. If he gets a hit to left, at least the fielder has a shorter throw to third from left field than from right, so there is a better chance of having runners at first and second rather than first and third. So a righthander like Grant should throw a left-hander something like a slider, hard and away, rather than a curve that would come in on the left-hander and would have the effect of speeding up his bat. Grant was fascinated by, and grateful for, this lesson. It was the sort of lesson that a young pitcher should learn long before he breaks into the big leagues.
I can give a personal example of a well-coached young player. During the seventh game of the 1987 World Series between the Twins and the Cardinals, Geoffrey Will, then 13, was sprawled on a sofa, in the invertebrate way of an adolescent, watching the telecast. In the sixth inning the Twins' pitcher threw over to first baseman Kent Hrbek just as the Cardinals' base runner, Tommy Herr, broke for second. Getting Herr out in a two-toss _(at most_ two-toss) rundown should have been as close to automatic as anything in baseball can be. But Hrbek turned, fired the ball to second—and then stood where he was, in the baseline. Laconically, but instantly, the 13-year-old on the sofa said: "Interference." He had seen in a flash what Hrbek was doing wrong and anticipated what Herr would do right. Hrbek should have gotten out of the baseline, either retreating quickly to first base or trusting the pitcher to get over and cover first. Standing in the baseline he was an invitation to Herr, who took it. Herr reversed himself and ran smack into Hrbek in an awful tangle of limbs as Hrbek belatedly tried to get back to first. The umpire should have called interference on Hrbek and awarded Herr second base. Instead, the umpire blew the call twice, first by not calling interference and second by calling Herr out (television clearly showed that he was safe). However, Geoffrey had demonstrated the result of good coaching at the junior high school level, coaching of a caliber that remarkably few players get even at much higher levels of baseball.
Mayo Smith, who managed the Phillies, Reds and Tigers until 1970, once said, "Open up a ball player's head and you know what you'd find? A lot of little broads and a jazz band." Not true. Maybe once upon a time, but I doubt even that. Obviously baseball, like banking and medicine and journalism, has its share of lowlifes and scatterbrains, but there are remarkably few. They can not last. The competition is too intense. Baseball's modern-day drug problems have never been as serious as the old problem with alcohol. (When Clyde Sukeforth was managing the Dodgers' Triple-A club in Montreal in the 1930s he once called a club meeting to say, "We're going to play a baseball game today. I want nine sober volunteers.") Today's athletes, looking for long careers with lucrative final years, are better educated than players used to be about healthy living. They use less alcohol than earlier generations of players. La Russa says that ten years ago, when he started managing, he would try to build team cohesion by occasionally having parties on road trips. But the success of such parties generally depended on moderate use of alcohol. He estimates that half his current team does not drink—at all. He does not drink. Before the 1989 World Series resumed after the earthquake there was some sensible worrying about how the eventual winner should behave. Would popping champagne corks be appropriate? "I don't care anything about champagne," said La Russa. "I tasted some once because Dave Parker wanted me to know what Dom Pérignon tasted like. I'm not even comfortable with Budweiser being advertised in our ballpark."
Today's players are physically more impressive than players were even in the early postwar era. Al Rosen remembers that when he was Cleveland's third baseman in the 1950s (in 1953 he hit 43 home runs and drove in 145 runs) he was considered a physically imposing slugger. He was 5 feet 10½ and 180 pounds. In 1989 the average height of major league players was a shade under 6 feet 3. But what about refinement, the essence of craftsmanship? Tony Kubek, whose father and three uncles played professional baseball, believes that "the greatest teacher is visualization—seeing others do it and aspiring to their level." Before he died in 1988, Carl Hubbell mentioned the advantages young players have today just because they are able to watch major league players on television: "I was raised on a cotton farm in Meeker, Oklahoma. Didn't even get a newspaper. Never saw so much as a picture of a real major league pitcher in his windup."
There is less rawness in today's baseball than there was long ago. I am not thinking about peccadillos. Yogi Berra was not the first and may not have been the last catcher to toss pebbles into batters' shoes. But no one plays the game with the high-spikes savagery of Ty Cobb. And although Cobb may have set the major league record for concentrated meanness, he was hardly the only player for whom viciousness was a normal part of the game. John McGraw merrily recalled the time when
the other team had a runner on first who started to steal second, but... spiked our first baseman on the foot. Our man retaliated by trying to trip him. He got away, but at second Heinie Reitz tried to block him off while Hughie... covered the bag to take the throw and tag him. The runner evaded Reitz and jumped feet first at Jennings to drive him away from the bag. Jennings dodged the flying spikes and threw himself bodily at the runner, knocking him flat. In the meantime the batter hit our catcher over the hands with his bat so he couldn't throw, and our catcher trod on the umpire's feet with his spikes and shoved his big mitt in his face so he couldn't see the play.
As a manager McGraw was a cauldron of hectoring fury. According to a Chicago sportswriter, McGraw was "the incarnation of rowdyism, the personification of meanness and howling blatancy." But his was meanness with a purpose. He reckoned that relentless bullying of umpires could get his team 50 extra runs a season, or one every three days. Bill James says the coaches' box was invented to confine the vituperative energies of the great St. Louis teams of the 1880s, which were managed by Charles Comiskey. Until the box was invented, players acting as coaches ran up and down the foul lines spouting obscenities at opposing pitchers. There are today no rivalries comparable to the last fierce rivalry, that between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Bill Rigney remembers a day in 1951 when the Dodgers completed a sweep of a three-game series with the Giants at Ebbets Field, enlarging their big lead over the Giants. The two clubhouses were separated by a thin, locked door. In the minutes after the final out, Jackie Robinson was pounding on the door with a bat, taunting Giants' (and former Dodgers') manager Leo Durocher, "Leo, I can smell Laraine's perfume," referring to Durocher's wife, actress Laraine Day. Eddie Stanky, the Giants' fiercely combative second baseman from Alabama, shouted through the door a blistering racial insult. Hank Thompson, the Giants' third baseman, a black man, was seated near Stanky, who is white. Thompson told Stanky he approved of Stanky's words. As Cal Ripken says, baseball is not an "enemy sport." But that was not always true.
There is not only less unruly behavior on the field, there is less mischief with the field and other elements of the game. Baseball is more rigorously policed by the leagues than it used to be, so grounds-keepers are less likely to try such chicanery as moving second base slightly (as much as a foot, which is a lot in the race between the runner and the ball) toward or away from first. Some teams may still make the pitcher's mound in the visiting team's bull pen higher or lower and with a different slope than the mound on the field in the hope that this will cause a relief pitcher (or the starting pitcher in the first inning) to have trouble controlling his first pitches. But no one today will do what Bill Veeck reportedly did. It is said that Veeck's Cleveland Indians used to move the outfield fences as much as 20 feet, depending on the opponent of the day. Eddie Stanky, who lacked Lord Chesterfield's interest in gentlemanliness, tampered with the balls. When he managed the light-hitting 1967 White Sox he would store game balls for a week or more in a room with a humidifier running full blast. This made the air, and the balls, soggy with moisture. Removed from the room a few hours before a game, the surface of the balls would be dry but there would be two ounces of moisture inside, enough to take a dozen feet off the flight of a fly ball.
It has been said that baseball in the pre-Civil War era taught a puritanical America the virtues of play. But industrialists of the Gilded Age would approve of the way baseball has become a big business. Fifty years ago baseball was a comparatively mom-and-pop operation. Sunday play was not permitted in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia until 1934. In 1922 the U.S. Supreme Court held, for purposes of antitrust regulations, that baseball is not a business. Today sports columnist Jim Murray says, "If it isn't, General Motors is a sport." General Motors would like to have baseball's recent rate of revenue growth.
To gauge baseball's current popularity, consider the way things were not so very long ago. One of the most exciting games ever played was the exclamation mark at the end of one of the most exciting seasons baseball has known. It was the third game of the three-game play-off between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951. The game, which was won by the Giants on Bobby Thomson's three-run home run in the bottom of the ninth, capped "The Miracle of Coogan's Bluff" in which the Giants stormed back into the pennant race by erasing a huge Dodger lead after August 11. The game was played at the Polo Grounds, which had a capacity of more than 55,000. The attendance that day was only 34,320.
The 1989 season demonstrated a dynamic of success: The better things get, the more they get better. In 1989 major league baseball drew 55,174,603 fans, breaking by 2,175,699 the record set in 1988. It was the fifth year in which a new record was set. The Toronto Blue Jays drew 3,375,573, an American League record. Eight other teams also set attendance records: the Cardinals (3,082,000), Athletics (2,667,225), Orioles (2,534,875), Red Sox (2,510,014), Cubs (2,491,942), Royals (2,477,700), Giants (2,059,829) and Rangers (2,043,993). One reason so many people went to see baseball played is that it has never been played so well. And because so many people want to see it, in ballparks and in their living rooms, the caliber of play should continue to rise. Money matters; money attracts talent. After the 1988 season baseball struck a bonanza. As a result, the level of the game should be even higher in the 1990s and beyond. This is so even if there is expansion of up to six more teams, which there probably will, and should, be. Indeed, expansion, which means more careers open to talents, should in time make baseball even better.
Peter Ueberroth's final services to baseball were two new television contracts. CBS will pay $1.08 billion for exclusive over-the-air (noncable) coverage of major league baseball in the four seasons 1990 through 1993. In 1989 NBC and ABC were paying about $100 million apiece for baseball. CBS will pay $270 million a season. This will buy 16 regular-season games, the All-Star Game, both League Championship Series and the World Series. Even if both LCSs and the Series go to 7 games, CBS would be televising just 38 games, paying $7.1 million per game, or $790,000 per inning, $132,000 per out. That is a lot of six packs of beer. Also, ESPN made a four-season $400 million deal to telecast 6 games a week, 175 per season. In 1990 each team will get about $14 million—$10.38 million from CBS and $3.8 million from ESPN. In 1989 twelve teams had payrolls of less than $14 million. Then there are revenues from network radio. Ticket sales bring about $7.17 per ticket—more than $350 million annually. There also are substantial revenues from local radio, television, food and souvenir concessions and parking. (Of course all this must go to support the crushing costs of wood bats.)
Baseball's general health is served by making baseball a more lucrative life. It is a matter of supply and demand. The more dollar demand there is for talent, the more talent is apt to be supplied. The pool of money is growing. When, in the mid-1990s, expansion comes, the number of jobs will grow, too. When the relative longevity of baseball careers is considered, the balance tips increasingly toward baseball in the competition with other sports for the services of young athletes. For those who become established major league players (playing at least two years), the average career now lasts about ten years. That may not seem long to you and me, but remember what Robert Frost said: "Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."
Ray Miller, moralist and social scientist, says "baseball is losing top athletes because baseball is not the easy way." A young football or basketball star can go into a college program, get an education and go straight to the top professional level. A college baseball player goes out to play in minor league parks, most of which are a lot less spiffy than the ones he played in as an undergraduate. Furthermore, baseball is not the easy way because its skills are harder to master than those of other sports. Consider, says Al Rosen, football. A wide receiver or defensive end needs serious skills. The receiver has to learn his routes, the defensive end his zones, or man-to-man coverage. But these skills do not compare in difficulty with the skills required to hit a baseball. Rosen notes that two superb athletes who are NFL quarterbacks, John Elway of the Broncos and Jay Schroeder of the Raiders, both played college baseball and both had major league teams interested in them—but not very interested. Both, says Rosen, would have risen at most to Single-? ball. The highest degree of difficulty is in hitting. It is the reason why baseball is a business in which most beginners, even those destined for the top, begin in the mail room—deep in the minors. And most will not make it to the top.
Baseball demands extraordinary talent, and baseball talent is difficult to judge. Ron Fraser, baseball coach of the University of Miami Hurricanes, says that only 5 percent of all drafted players make it to the major leagues. Of the 258 _first-round_ picks in the ten years through 1986, just 55 percent made it to the major leagues. The picks most likely to be well-picked were pitchers, because their talents can be more reliably judged than those of batters using aluminum bats. (However, when the young Sandy Koufax was given a tryout by the Giants at the Polo Grounds the catcher told him, "Make sure you get a good college education, kid, because you won't make it in the majors.")
Today there are choruses of people lamenting the large salaries earned by players. This moralizing makes no economic sense. The salaries are earned: The players make more for the owners than the owners pay in salaries. But the belief that large amounts of money must be bad for players is nothing new. A 1914 editorial in a baseball magazine advised players to ponder the terrible swiftness with which players become men in the crowd: "It is, as a rule, a man's own business how he spends his money. But nevertheless we wish to call attention to the fact that many men do so in a very unwise manner. A very glaring instance of this among baseball players is the recent evil tendency to purchase and maintain automobiles. Put the money away, boys, where it will be safe. You don't need these automobiles. The money will look mighty good later on in life. Think it over, boys."
Baseball has come a long way since the days when, on road trips, players slept two to a bed. (Rube Waddell's roommate made manager Connie Mack put a clause in Waddell's contract to prevent him from eating crackers in bed.) In 1988 a Honus Wagner baseball card issued in 1910 sold for $110,000. It was issued by a cigarette company and Wagner, a passionate foe of smoking, demanded that the company stop issuing it, and thus few of the cards ever existed. The 1988 value of $110,000, adjusted for inflation, was approximately equal in value to the $10,000 Wagner earned in 1910. In 1929 Lefty O'Doul hit .398 with 254 hits—a National League record never surpassed. It earned him a $500 raise. In 1932 he hit "only" .368 and his salary was cut $1,000. A player in the Pacific Coast League in the late 1940s was summoned to the St. Louis Browns but refused to report because his salary in the major leagues would have been less than half of what he was making in the minors. In 1976 the average salary was $52,380. In 1989 the major league minimum salary was $68,000, more than 100 players earned at least $1 million, 20 earned at least $2 million and the average salary was about $513,730. In 1990 several will earn more than $3 million. Hershiser worries that today's stratospheric salaries will have the effect of making it harder than it used to be to keep players around baseball after their playing days. "Baseball will lose a lot of knowledge because players will make enough money that they will not have to stay in baseball. In the past a lot of players stayed in baseball because it was their only asset." Maybe, but many of them would have stayed in the game anyway because the game was in their blood, as it is in Hershiser's. He was baseball's best-paid player in 1989 and I will wager that he will be in baseball, perhaps as a general manager, long after he retires.
Many Cassandras said that money, combined with the sudden arrival of a substantially free market in talent, was going to make a shambles of competitive balance. There still are grounds for anxiety. The fresh infusions of broadcasting money could become important to baseball's competitive balance because of the inherent inequalities among teams regarding the value of local broadcasting rights. Around the time Ueberroth was finalizing the national agreements, the Yankees were finalizing a local cable agreement giving them $41 million a year for 12 years. The Milwaukee Brewers, who compete against the Yankees in the American League East, will get about $3 million a year from local television revenues. The $38 million differential is worrisome. But as the Yankees (and Atlanta Braves) have recently shown, the absence of baseball acumen in the front office can be a great leveler, regardless of financial assets.
So far, the Cassandras have been wrong. The end of the reserve clause did not bring on an era of _Sturm und Drang_ and ruinous imbalance. All the talent did not wind up on the two coasts, in the New York and Los Angeles markets, leaving a wasteland of mediocrity in the middle. A few crazed owners, like Ted Turner of the Braves, did not ruin competitive balance by building checkbook dynasties. There was some _Sturm und Drang;_ there was no competitive imbalance. In fact, the coming of free agency coincided with the demise of the last of the dynasties, the Oakland Athletics and Cincinnati Reds of the early and mid-1970s. In the first decade of free agency, all 12 National League teams and 11 of the 14 American League teams (all except Cleveland, Seattle and Texas) won division championships.
Pennant races are more riveting than ever because there are so many fresh faces in the races in any five-year span. In the great National League pennant race of 1964, when in late September the front-running Phillies lost 10 in a row and the pennant, the Giants were not eliminated until the next to last day of the season—and finished fourth. But that was before divisional play, so six teams finished below the Giants. Today it is possible to have four races for first places. Those races are remarkably open these days. We live in an era of baseball equality. Not perfect equality, of course, but the thrill of victory has been spread around.
Of the original 16 major league franchises, the Phillies were the last to win a World Series. That was in 1980, by which time there were 26 franchises. The St. Louis Browns only got to the World Series by dashing through the yawning gaps that World War II had made in baseball by 1944. The Browns lost the Series. The Browns had gone to Baltimore and become the Orioles when the franchise won its first Series, in 1966. In 1988 the Cubs broke the St. Louis Browns' record of 43 consecutive seasons without winning a league championship. (After 1989 their record was 44.) But nowadays any team can hope to win, if not right now, then soon. Through 1989 there have been 221 division or league champions in modern major league history. Only 30 of them won after a losing season the year before. But nowadays the mighty are not mighty for long and the losers can reasonably expect to rise through the falling debris of one-shot winners.
On an August afternoon in 1984, when the Cubs were sweeping a doubleheader against the Mets in Wrigley Field en route to their first divisional championship, Salty Saltwell of the Cubs' front office was asked why the Cubs were doing so well. He replied, without hesitation, with the explanation that comes naturally to baseball people: "We're playing way over our heads." Indeed they were. The 1984 Cubs were 96–65. The 1983 Cubs had been 71–91, finishing fifth. The 1985 Cubs finished fourth, 77–84. Saltwell's assessment was as much a deduction as an inference; it was as much the application of a general principle as a judgment of the particular players. It is axiomatic nowadays that teams win division titles, pennants and World Series because a number of their key players have what are called "career years."
It was not always that way. For many years a few teams dominated baseball year in and year out. From 1926 through 1964 the Yankees had 39 consecutive winning seasons, including 26 first-place finishes. The closest any clubs have come to that achievement is not even close. The 1968–85 Orioles had 18 consecutive winning seasons. The 1951–67 White Sox had 17. Through 1989 the team with the longest such streak was the Toronto Blue Jays with 7 seasons. Between 1903 and 1964 there were 61 World Series and a team from New York appeared in 39 of them. In 13 of those Series both teams were from New York. In 1951 all three New York teams finished first. (That year the city had six 20-game winners.) From 1949 through 1953 the Yankees won 5 consecutive pennants. If the Dodgers had won two particular games—the last game of the 1950 season against the Phillies and the third and final game of the 1951 play-off (the game won by the Giants' Bobby Thomson's home run)—the Dodgers, too, would have won 5 pennants in those 5 years, and for half a decade all World Series games would have been played in New York. The Dodgers and Yankees also won pennants in 1947, 1955 and 1956. In the decade 1947–56 the Yankees won 8 pennants, the Dodgers 6. In the 11 seasons from 1946 through 1956 the Yankees won 90 games 10 times, the Dodgers 9 times. The Yankees won 1,061 games, the Dodgers won just 20 fewer. The Yankees finished second in 1954 although they won 103 games. (The Indians set an American League record that year with 111 wins.) If 103 wins had sufficed, as it usually does, to win the pennant, the Yankees would have been in 10 consecutive World Series.
More recently there has been wholesome turmoil. The 1977–78 Yankees were the last World Series winners to repeat. From the 1979 Yankees through the 1989 Dodgers (and excluding the 1981 strike season) defending champions have averaged 12.7 fewer wins the next season. For most teams in major league history, life has been a mild roller-coaster ride. Most teams that improve their record from one season to the next suffer, in the third season, a decline of about one-third of what they gained in the second season. Only one team in history, the 1937–42 Dodgers, has increased its winning percentage in 6 consecutive seasons—an achievement that almost presupposes starting from a deep hole. (The 1937 Dodgers were 62–91.) Today, when there are no dominating teams, everyone is riding the roller coaster. Since the Yankees and Dodgers met in the 1977 and 1978 World Series, only La Russa's Athletics of 1988 and 1989 have played in two consecutive Series. In 1987 the Twins became the tenth team in 10 years to win the World Series. In the 1970s the Reds and Pirates each won 6 division titles. But the Reds and Pirates were the only National League teams _not to_ win division titles in the 1980s. In the 11 seasons from 1979 through 1989, 4 divisional championship teams won 100 or more games in a season and then failed to repeat as division winners the next year. In the 1980s only 3 of 40 division winners (8 percent) have won their division the next year. (They were all in the American League: the 1980–81 Yankees, the 1984–85 Royals, the 1988–89 Athletics.) Forty-two percent of the division winners had losing records the next year. On the other hand, 13 teams in the 1980s won division titles a year after finishing in the second division or below .500. The participants in the 1982 World Series, the Cardinals and the Brewers, each finished 11 games behind in 1983. In 1986 the teams that were in the 1985 World Series (the Royals and the Cardinals) finished a total of 44 Vi games out of first. Three of the 1986 division winners tumbled in 1987 to below .500. These days a world champion one year can win more games the next year and do worse. Because of the 1988 Athletics, the Twins became the first team in history to win the World Series (1987), then win more games the next year but not finish first. By the end of the 1988 season the Mets, who did not even make it to the World Series, were the closest any team could come to claiming to be a "dynasty." They had won 90 or more games 5 seasons in a row. No other team had won 90 games in both 1987 and 1988. But in 1989 they won just 87 and finished 6 games behind. So much for the Mets' dynastic pretensions. The Athletics won 203 times in the 1988 and 1989 seasons. By the time the dust had settled from the Athletics' 1989 post-season performance—the dismantling of the Blue Jays, 4–1, in the LCS and the sweep of the Giants in the World Series—it was arguable that the Athletics were just one more World Series season away from being rightly denoted a dynasty. La Russa said flatly that neither the 1927 Yankees nor the Big Red Machines of 1975 and 1976 were better than the 1989 Athletics. Two retired Reds, Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan, thought their teams were better. For the record, here are some of the offensive records:
The 1989 Athletics had much better pitching, starters and relievers, than those Reds teams had. At least regarding the 1989 Athletics and the 1975–76 Reds, I think La Russa is right.
However good today's best teams are, there are no really awful teams today. The original Mets of 1962 were awful. They won 40 while losing 120, finishing tenth, 18 games out of ninth. But they were a lot better off than the 1916 Athletics. Victimized by Connie Mack's fire sale of talent after the team lost the 1914 World Series to the manifestly inferior Braves, the 1916 team sagged to eighth, 54 Vi games out of first, with a 36–117 record. But the 1916 Athletics were better than those 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who were 20–134. If the season had not ended when it did, there is no telling to what depths of sorrow the Spiders could have sunk. They lost 40 of their last 41 games. Through 1989 only the Seattle Mariners had failed to reach .500 for a season in the 1980s. But they are special: By 1990 they were two short of the record of 15 consecutive losing seasons set by the 1919–33 Red Sox (right after they sold you-know-who) and the 1953–67 Philadelphia and Kansas City Athletics. But if there are no terrible teams, neither are there any great teams. The Elias Bureau has produced a table that expresses today's volatility numerically. In the 1980s division winners had winning percentages of just .529. Furthermore, in the seasons immediately before those in which they won their division titles, these teams finished, on average, nearly 8.7 games out of first. This is not the way it used to be. This Elias table lists, by decades, the average winning percentages of division and league champions, and the average number of games they finished out of first place in the seasons immediately prior to winning their titles.
YEARS | PCT. | MARGIN
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1900–09 | .624 | \+ 1.81
1910–19 | .580 | -8.30
1920–29 | .584 | -4.05
1930–39 | .593 | -3.17
1940–49 | .583 | -6.15
1950–59 | .595 | -2.68
1960–69 | .548 | -8.14
1970–79 | .575 | +0.55
1980–89 | .529 | -8.69
The "0.55" for 1970–79 reflects the existence of that vanished species, the dynasty, which roamed the land then in the form of the Oakland Athletics and then Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine."
There has not been so much volatility since the 1940s, when a world war siphoned off most of the talent. The fact that there is no dominant team today causes some people to conclude that baseball has less talent. But equality does not mean mediocrity. The fact that there is no great team does not prove that baseball is not as good as it was when there was a dynasty such as the Yankees once were. On the contrary, the volatility is evidence of the wide dispersal of excellence.
Most track and field records have been improving rapidly for decades. The size and balletic skills of players have made today's basketball a game that would be virtually unrecognizable to a Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep 40 years ago watching a basketball game in the late 1940s. (Falling asleep was easy to do at a 1940s basketball game.) The best college teams of the 1940s would not survive—or even get to—the first round of today's NCAA basketball tournament. Football, too, has been transformed. In fact, the kinetic energy involved in 6-foot-8 linemen who have a sprinter's speed in 20-yard bursts has made football too dangerous for creatures constructed with human knees and necks. Given the general improvement, often constituting radical change, in so many sports, it does seem reasonable to conclude that baseball, too, must be much better than ever.
However, the fact that extraordinary improvement has characterized sport generally does not itself compel us to conclude that the same _must_ be true of baseball. The difference is that baseball is more difficult. Or, to put the point in a way perhaps slightly less annoying to partisans of other sports, baseball is difficult in peculiarly demanding ways. Baseball involves so many situations that must be mastered mentally, and so many skills involving that mental mastery, and so much anticipation, and so much execution within extraordinarily fine tolerances. Thus the fact that there is abundant and obvious improvement in the performances in other sports does not demonstrate that baseball, too, is better.
It is better. However, many fans are reluctant to receive this good news. Baseball fans are generally a cheerful lot, at least between late February and late October. (Literary critic Jonathan Yardley says there are only two seasons: baseball season and The Void.) However, human beings seem to take morose pleasure from believing that once there was a Golden Age, some lost Eden or Camelot or superior ancient civilization, peopled by heroes and demigods, an age of greatness long lost and irrecoverable. Piffle. Things are better than ever, at least in baseball, which is what matters most. And the reason for the improvement says something heartening about life. Stephen Jay Gould teaches biology, geology and the history of science at Harvard. His special interest is evolutionary processes. As a student of life's long-term trends, he has pondered the extinction of the .400 hitter (none since 1941) and he concludes that the cause is not, as you had feared, "entropie homogeneity." Rather, the reason is that systems equilibrate as they improve. While the highest averages have declined, the average batting average has remained remarkably stable over time. It was around .260 in the 1870s and is about that today. (It was .255 in 1989.) But the highest averages have declined because narrowing variation is a general property of systems undergoing refinement. Variations in batting averages—the gap between the highest averages and the leagues' averages—shrink as improvements in play eliminate many inadequacies of the majority of pitchers and fielders. Today's "just average" player is better than yesterday's. Gould says major league players meet today in competition "too finely honed toward perfection to permit the extremes of achievement that characterized a more casual age." As baseball has been sharpened—every pitch, swing and hit is charted—its range of tolerance has narrowed, its boundaries have been drawn in and its rough edges smoothed. As Gould says, Wee Willie Keeler could "hit 'em where they ain't" (to the tune of .432 in 1897) partly because "they"—the fielders—were not where they should have been. They did not know better. Today's players play as hard as the old-timers did, and know much more. Try the following experiment in filling up nine positions. A team assembled just from players who entered baseball since 1945 (which would exclude, for example, Williams, DiMaggio and Musial) would not be demonstrably inferior to a team drawn from all the players who played during the first half of the century.
Catcher | Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra
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First base | Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell
Second base | Rod Carew, Joe Morgan
Third base | Mike Schmidt, Brooks Robinson
Shortstop | Ernie Banks, Ozzie Smith
Outfield | Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Henry Aaron, Frank
| Robinson, Roberto demente, Carl Yastrzemski
Left-handed pitcher | Sandy Koufax
Right-handed pitcher | Bob Gibson
Furthermore, although the first black players did not make it to the major leagues until 1947 and baseball was not really fully open to blacks until the mid-1950s, it is possible to select an all-black team that could hold its own with a team drawn from all the other players during the first nine decades of this century.
Catcher | Roy Campanella
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First base | Willie McCovey
Second base | Rod Carew
Third base | Jackie Robinson (he played 256 games at third)
Shortstop | Ernie Banks
Outfield | Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Frank Robinson
Pitcher | Bob Gibson
Tony Gwynn hit "only" .332 in the 1980s because average play has improved so much that there are fewer opportunities for geniuses like Gwynn to exploit (in Gould's phrase) "suboptimality in others." The "play" in playing professional baseball is, Gould says, gone. Baseball has become a science in the sense that it emphasizes repetitious precision in the execution of its component actions. That is why variation decreases at both ends, with the highest and lowest averages edging toward the league average. Standard deviations (take a deep breath: the square root of the sum of the squares of all individual averages minus the major league average divided by the total number of players) are narrowed by progress. The extinction of the .400 hitter, like the rareness of the dynastic team, is evidence of progress, not regression.
It is inconceivable that a protean figure like Babe Ruth could burst upon baseball today. Remember how disproportionate his achievements were to those of his contemporaries. In 1919 the Yankees led the major leagues in home runs with 45. But up in Boston, Ruth hit 29. And in 1920, as a Yankee, he hit 54. The American League's second-best slugger in 1920 was George Sisler. He hit only 19. The National League champion had 15. Only one American League team other than the Yankees had more than 44. Ruth's biographer, Robert W. Creamer, notes that when Ruth was sold to the Yankees after the 1919 season he was already recognized as the greatest home-run hitter in baseball history—and he had hit just 49 (the number Mark McGwire hit in his 1987 rookie season). The career leader at the time was Roger Connor with 136. Ruth became baseball's career home-run hitter in 1921, which was just his third season as a full-time (nonpitching) player. He proceeded to break his own record 577 times. When in 1934 he hit his 700th home run, only two other players had more than 300. When he retired his total of 714 was nearly twice the total of the man in second place (Gehrig, then at 378). Over a 6-season span (1926–31) Ruth averaged 50 home runs, 154 RBIs, 147 runs and a .354 average.
Suppose Ruth had more frequently gone to bed early and with Mrs. Ruth. Suppose he had not downed a couple of hot dogs (and a glass of bicarbonate soda) before most games. Suppose he had not had the habits that caused him to balloon one winter to a gargantuan 49%-inch waist—larger than his chest. (Perhaps the Yankees would not be wearing pinstripes today, an innovation ordered by their owner, the elegant Jacob Ruppert, who hoped the stripes would make Ruth look less obese.) If Ruth had lived sensibly and trained as we now know how to train, he would loom even larger over his era, like an Everest in Kansas.
But he could not so loom today. Once when Mickey Mantle was weary of hearing the batting achievements of his era dismissively discussed as mere products of a livelier ball, he said, "Maybe the players are livelier now." Certainly they are generally bigger and stronger and faster, and they know more about a game that rewards _knowing_. Baseball is an intensely emulative industry. What works gets noticed almost immediately and is communicated quickly among baseball people, who are great talkers. As the Elias people write, "There are no copyrights on strategy." That is why baseball is a game of watchfulness. Success goes to those who are paying attention, day by day, from April to October.
A baseball season is a surefire quality detector. By late October one team is certified the best. Five months later 26 teams start all over again. And nowadays, more often than not, the team that proved itself to be the best the previous year goes on to be proven, over the next six months, to be no longer the best. Competition has intensified, not just because talent has been emancipated and become mobile, but also, and even more, because of the progressive nature of the game. Knowledge matters, knowledge is cumulative, knowledge travels. The margin between baseball success and failure has been shrinking. It never has been large.
A team that plays only .500 ball is considered barely respectable. But a team that wins 11 of every 20 games wins 89 games and probably is a pennant contender. The best five-year team record is that of the 1906–10 Cubs: .693. So baseball's best sustained performance still did not quite amount to winning seven out of ten, consistently. In recent decades it has become increasingly rare for a team (the 1961 Yankees, 1969–70 Orioles, 1975 Reds, 1986 Mets) to win twice as many games as it loses. Since divisional play began in 1969, 60 percent of the titles have been won by six or fewer games, 50 percent by five or fewer. More than a fifth (22.5 percent) have been won by two or fewer games. Many games turn on a single play, a single pitch, so championships can be—and frequently are—decided by a half dozen plays or pitches.
"Don't you know how hard this all is?" said Ted Williams, talking about baseball. Actually, very few people, even among the most attentive fans, know. But Henry Heitmann knew. _The Baseball Encyclopedia_ contains this entry, surely one of the most melancholy career totals:
On July 27, 1918, the Dodgers gave the ball to pitcher Heitmann and sent him out to cope with the Cardinals. This he did not do. He gave up four hits and four runs. He got one Cardinal out. That was the beginning of his major league career, and the end of it. (Hence his career ERA of 108.) His career is a complete contrast with that of Warren Spahn. Spahn was not only the winningest left-hander, he also came within six losses of being the losingest. That is what longevity means in baseball: a lot of both winning and losing. Spahn won more games after turning 35 than Sandy Koufax won in his career, which ended when Koufax was 30. Careers in sports have different spans and paces, but they all have one thing in common. They end, going downhill. The photographer Margaret Bourke-White once described her work as "a trusted friend, who never deserts you." Every baseball player is deserted. The natural attrition of skills spares no one. So there is an inevitable poignancy inherent in the careers of even the best professional athletes. They compress the natural trajectory of human experience—striving, attaining, declining—into such a short span. Their hopes for fulfillment are hostage to their bodies, to attributes that are short-lived and subject to decay. The decay occurs in public, in front of large audiences. The decay is chronicled and monitored by millions of people who study the unsparing statistics that are the mathematics of baseball accomplishment. But poignancy is not the same thing as sadness. Baseball is a remarkably cheerful business.
Baseball is, of course, hardly immune to the ills of the society of which it is an expression. Thus, being a fan is not unalloyed fun. For one famous fan, baseball was heartbreaking. One of the costs of the 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal was that baseball lost one of its best writers, Ring Lardner, whose disillusionment drove him away from the game. Shortly after Lardner died in 1933, his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a summation of Lardner's life. It was affectionate and generally approving, but it contained Fitzgerald's conclusion that Lardner had invested too much of his talent in writing about something that Fitzgerald considered unworthy of such attention: baseball. "A boy's game," wrote Fitzgerald, "with no more possibilities in it than a boy could master, a game bounded by walls which kept out novelty or danger, change or adventure. This material, the observation of it under such circumstances, was the text of Ring's schooling, during the most formative period of the mind.... However deeply Ring might cut into it, his cake had the diameter of Frank Chance's diamond." Actually, the diamond of the mind can be larger than Fitzgerald thought.
There is, of course, a sense in which sport is the toy department of life. But professional sport, and especially baseball, has serious resonances in society. A nation's preferred forms of recreation are not of trivial importance. They are tone-setting facets of the nation's life. Scores of millions of Americans spend billions of hours a year watching baseball, listening to broadcasts of it, talking and reading and thinking about it. This pleasurable preoccupation is, at its best, an appreciation of grace, self-control and the steady application of an elegant craft.
"Knowin' all about baseball," said humorist Kin Hubbard, "is just about as profitable as bein' a good whittler." Wrong. Knowing a lot (no one knows all) about baseball confers not only the profit of an elevating pleasure, but also that of instruction. It teaches a general truth about excellence. However, if we must talk about profits, permit me this concluding unscientific postscript.
I am a layman who has spent some time trespassing—respectfully—on the turf of specialists, the men and women who write about baseball full time. I am by vocation a commentator on social events, trends and problems. People who do what I do in periodic journalism often seem to be professional scolds. My interest in writing this book has been to have fun exploring the spirit and practice and ethic of something fun, a sport. But I can not forbear from drawing a lesson.
The national pastime is better than ever in almost every way and is getting even better every year. The same can not be said about the nation. America consumes too much and saves too little. Indeed the nation's savings rate, the worst among industrial nations, is a scandal because it is a choice: Public policies contribute to it. Small savings and huge government deficits cause underinvestment, which causes slow growth of productivity, which produces economic anemia and uncompetitiveness. Increasingly we are being outperformed by—and even owned by—our competitors. We should be chagrined, but not surprised. They are studying harder and longer, and working harder and longer and better than we are. From a population approximately one-half the size of ours, Japan is producing an equal number of engineers. In 1985,55 percent of U.S. doctoral degrees in engineering were awarded to foreign nationals, many of whom went home. In the late 1980s about half the Ph.D.s being hired in the high-tech electronics industry were foreign born. We produce 35,000 lawyers a year. Japan muddles through with only a fraction of that depressing total. American children spend 180 days in school, Japanese children spend 240 days and the school days are longer. Japanese students outperform American students in math, science and engineering. American children outperform Japanese in English. For now.
Such facts have given rise to a spate of analyses, the theme of which is that America's problems are the result of "imperial overstretch," a national impulse to try to do too much abroad. I believe America's real problem is individual understretch, a tendency of Americans to demand too little of themselves, at their lathes, their desks, their computer terminals. The baseball men I have spent time with while preparing this book demonstrate an admirable seriousness about their capabilities. They also demonstrate the compatibility of seriousness and fun. In fact, what makes baseball especially fun is seeing the way its best players apply their seriousness.
A generation ago a wit said that Americans most wanted to read books about animals or the Civil War, so the ideal book would be _/ Was Lincoln's Vet_. Nowadays it sometimes seems that Americans are most interested in "how-to" books, especially those that teach one how to attain thin thighs quickly or sexual ecstasy slowly. Today the shelves in bookstores groan beneath the weight of books purporting to explain how to attain excellence in business, and especially how to beat the Japanese in commercial competition. I will not belabor the point but I do assert it: If Americans made goods and services the way Ripken makes double plays, Gwynn makes hits, Hershiser makes pitches and La Russa makes decisions, you would hear no more about the nation's trajectory having passed its apogee.
America, the first modern nation, has led the world in what historian Daniel Boorstin calls "mass producing the moment." We do this with photographs, movies, tapes, records, compact disks and copying machines. Modern manufacturing is the mass production of identical products. In merchandising, the development of franchising (McDonald's, Holiday Inns) has made it possible to go from coast to coast having identical experiences eating and sleeping. You can go all the way on the interstate highway system and never really see the particularities of a town. A sport like baseball, although a small universe of rule-regulated behavior, is actually a refreshing realm of diversity. The games are like snowflakes. They are perishable and no one is exactly like any other. But to see the diversities of snowflakes you must look closely and carefully. Baseball, more than any other sport, is enjoyed by the knowledgeable. The pleasures it gives to fans are proportional to the fans' sense of history. Its beauties are visible to the trained eye, which is the result of a long apprenticeship in appreciation. The more such apprenticeships we have, the more we will be able to drive away one of the retrograde features of today's baseball experience, the multiplication of irrelevant sights and sounds in ballparks.
When Roger Angell of _The New Yorker_ first decorously expressed his disapproval of Houston's Astrodome, he said that the most common complaint about the place is valid but incidental. The most common complaint is that going to a game there amounts to exchanging your living room for a larger one. But what matters most, Angell said, is the violence done by the entire ambiance of the Astrodome. It is violence done to "the quality of baseball time." A person absorbed in a baseball game should be "in a green place of removal" where tension is intensified slowly, pitch by pitch. The contest has its own continuum and that continuum is degraded by attempts to "use up" time with planned distractions such as entertaining scoreboards, dancing ball girls, costumed mascots and the like. The attempt to attract fans by planned distractions is worse than gilding the lily. It attacks the lily by disregarding its virtue. Baseball's foremost virtue as a spectator sport is that, as Angell says, it "is perhaps the most perfectly visible sport ever devised." That is why it is the sport that most rewards the fan's attention to details and nuances. Nuances should matter to the observer because they matter so much to the participants—managers and players—who determine who wins.
Bart Giamatti, speaking with Roger Angell, deplored "the NFLIZATION of baseball." He meant the infestation of ballparks by clownish mascots (the bastard children of the San Diego Chicken) and the pollution of the parks' atmospheres by "dot races," rock music trivia quizzes and other distractions. Some franchises, said Giamatti, "are like theatrical companies who only want to do Shakespeare in motorcycle boots and leather jackets. They've given up on the beautiful language." The language should suffice. Perhaps NFLization is a concession to the "television babies," those Americans under 40 who find rock videos pleasurable and even, in some sense, intelligible. Baseball is a sport for the literate, and not merely in the sense that it involves, for the aficionado, a lot of reading and has frequently been the subject of literature. It is also a mode of expression more suited to a literary than a pictorial culture. A baseball game is an orderly experience—perhaps too orderly for the episodic mentalities of television babies. A baseball game is, like a sentence, a linear sequence; like a paragraph, it proceeds sequentially. But to enjoy it you have to be able to read it. Baseball requires baseball literacy.
"This ain't a football game," said Orioles manager Earl Weaver. "We do this every day." That is why baseball is a game you can not play with your teeth clenched. But neither can you play it with your mind idling in neutral. Baseball is a game where you have to do more than one thing very well, but one thing at a time. The best baseball people are (although you do not hear this description bandied about in dugouts) Cartesians. That is, they apply Descartes's methods to their craft, breaking it down into bite-size components, mastering them and then building the craft up, bit by bit. Descartes, whose vocation was to think about thinking, said (I am paraphrasing somewhat): The problem is that we make mistakes. The solution is to strip our thought processes down to basics and begin with a rock-solid foundation, some certainty from which we can reason carefully to other certainties. His bedrock certainty was _Cogito ergo sum_ —"I think, therefore I am." His theory was that by assembling small certainties, one could build an unassailable edifice of truths. As any infielder could have told Descartes, errors will happen, no matter how careful you are. But Descartes's method is not a bad model of how best to get on with things in life: Master enough little problems and you will have few big problems.
Dizzy Dean once said after a 1–0 game, "The game was closer than the score indicated." In a sense it may well have been. Games are often decided by marginal moves and episodes less stark and noticeable than a run. They are won, and championship seasons are achieved, by the attention to small matters, and the law of cumulation. In the 1952 musical _Pajama Game_ there is a song about a wage increase:
Seven and a half cents doesn't mean a hell of a lot,
Seven and a half cents doesn't mean a thing,
But give it to me every hour, forty hours every week,
And that's enough for me to be living like a king,
I figured it out.
Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, figured it out. Sell enough 15-cent hamburgers (which is what they cost in the 1950s) and you are a billionaire. Do enough 15-cent things right in baseball—"It breaks down to its smallest parts," Rick Dempsey said—and you may win. Let those parts slide and try to rely on $100 achievements—spectacular events—and you will lose. The best players pay the most attention to baseball's parts. Frank Crosetti, a Yankee coach, saw every game DiMaggio played and never saw him thrown out going from first to third. When DiMaggio was asked why he placed such a high value on excellence he said, "There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time. I owe him my best."
DiMaggio's dignity was bound up with his brand of excellence. "People said, 'You're so relaxed on the ball field.' I'd say, 'But I knew what I was doing.'" There is also dignity in honest mediocrity, even in the unforgiving meritocracy of professional sports. And there is our obligation for special discipline on the part of the especially gifted. This was the theme of one of the spate of baseball movies in the late 1980s, _Bull Durham_.
In olden days, most baseball movies went like this. Boy meets baseball and falls in love. Then boy meets girl and inexplicably (one grand passion should suffice) falls in love again. The girl's role is to sit in the bleachers beneath a broad-brimmed hat and look anxious in his adversity and adoring in his inevitable triumph over it. _Bull Durham_ is different in two particulars, one of which is the girl, who is decidedly no girl. The other is the ball player, who is no Lou Gehrig. He is not the Pride of the Yankees, or even of the Durham Bulls.
Annie is more than 30 summers old but is a fetching sight wearing a short off-the-shoulder dress and, as exquisite accessories, batting gloves. She pitches Whitman and Blake to students of English at a community college and also at one ball player each season. "A guy will listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay," she says from considerable experience. Annie, the thinking person's theist ("I believe in the church of Baseball"), takes one player as her lover each season but is not, by her lights, promiscuous: "I am, within the framework of a baseball season, monogamous." Furthermore, "I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250 unless he had a lot of RBIs or was a great glove man up the middle. A woman's got to have standards."
But when it comes to keeping standards, which is the movie's moral theme, the hero is Crash Davis, a journeyman catcher. He once made it to the major leagues, but only for a cup of coffee. Now in his twelfth minor league season, he is brought to Durham to teach baseball's craftsmanship to a promising but unpolished pitcher, Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh. When Annie asks Crash, in effect, to compete with Nuke for the privilege of being her lover for a season, he walks away, saying: "I'm not interested in a woman who is interested in that boy." In terms of physical skills, Crash is not much. But in terms of character, he is the real keeper of the flame of craftsmanship. While Annie teaches Nuke about, well, life, Crash teaches him that his million-dollar arm does not mean he can get by with a five-cent brain. In baseball, concentration is required of everyone. Alas, Nuke is a male bimbo, an airhead who has to be tutored by Crash even about the clichés that comprise the basic interview. ("We gotta play 'em one day at a time.... I just wanna give it my best shot.") When Nuke asks why Crash dislikes him, Crash goes to the heart of the matter: " 'Cause you don't respect yourself, which is your problem, but you don't respect the game—and that's my problem."
Nuke has no idea how much hard work is required to achieve excellence, even when nature has given great talent. It has been said that the difference between the major and minor leagues is just a matter of "inches and consistency." That is essentially true of the difference between excellence and mere adequacy in poetry or surgery or anything else.
When Nuke bounces into the dugout after one good inning, there's this exchange:
NUKE: "I was good, eh?"
CRASH: "Your fastball was up and your curveball was hanging. In the Show [major leagues], they woulda ripped you."
NUKE: "Can't you let me enjoy the moment?"
CRASH: "The moment's over."
Crash has learned the essential lesson of life. Nothing lasts. The past is past. Everything must be achieved anew—on the next pitch, the next at bat, in the next game, the next season.
Past performance gives rise to averages, on which managers calculate probabilities about performances to come. The more you study, the less surprised you are. But no matter how hard you study, you are still surprised agreeably often. And the surprises that come to the studious are especially delicious. One reason for surprises is that no one puts batteries in the players: They are not robots. They are people whose personalities and characters vary under pressure, including the most important pressure, that which they put on themselves. William James knew what baseball people know: "There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is is very important." All players who make it to the major leagues are superior athletes. The different degrees of superiority in terms of natural physical skills are less marked and less important than another difference. It is the difference in the intensity of the application to the craftsmanship of baseball. Some people work harder than others, a lot harder.
Standing in the manager's office in Baltimore's Memorial Stadium late on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of June, 1989, and in the dishevelment of a man eager to get out of uniform and out of town, Tony La Russa, manager of the Oakland Athletics, was being asked why the Orioles, recently such lowly wretches, were playing so well. They had just beaten the Athletics three times in three days. What was the secret? Was it pitching? Defense? Neither, said La Russa, his natural curtness now compounded with impatience at journalistic obtuseness. The secret, he said, clipping every word like a fuse, is no secret. It is at the core of all baseball success. It is intensity: "They are playing hard."
Intensity in athletics has many manifestations. As a youngster, Pete Maravich dribbled a basketball wherever he walked, and sometimes while sitting. At movies he selected aisle seats so he could bounce the ball during the show. The young Ted Williams walked around San Diego squeezing a rubber ball to develop his forearms. After the Yankees lost the 1960 World Series on Bill Mazeroski's ninth-inning home run over the left-field wall in Forbes Field, Mickey Mantle wept during the entire flight back to New York. It sometimes seems odd, or even perverse, that intensity—the engagement of the passions—should matter in professional athletics. To some people this seems inexplicable now that players are pulling down such princely sums. Tommy Lasorda, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is known as a good baseball mind and an extraordinary motivator. He is often asked if it is really necessary to motivate someone making a million dollars. Damn right, says Lasorda. To most people, the word "motivate," when used in an athletic context, means to inflame players the way Knute Rockne is said to have aroused his teams at Notre Dame. Lasorda is quite capable of that. He can be an exquisitely profane Pericles (if that is not too oxymoronic). But that is not the heart of the matter. In a baseball context, to motivate is to maintain the cool concentration and discipline necessary for maximum performance during six months of competition in a game especially unforgiving of minor mistakes.
It is the everydayness of baseball that demands of the player a peculiar equilibrium, a balance of relaxation and concentration. One afternoon, during Andre Dawson's 1987 MVP season, he was in right field in Wrigley Field and the Cubs were clobbering the Astros, 11–1. In the top of the sixth inning Dawson ran down a foul fly, banging into the brick wall that is right next to the foul line. In the seventh inning he charged and made a sliding catch on a low line drive that otherwise would have been an unimportant single. When asked after the game why he would risk injuries in those situations when the outcome of the game was not in doubt, Dawson replied laconically, "Because the ball was in play." Dawson probably found the question unintelligible. The words and syntax were clear enough but the questioner obviously was oblivious to the mental (and moral) world of a competitor like Dawson. At the beginning of this book I said that baseball heroism is not a matter of flashes of brilliance; rather, it is the quality of (in John Updike's words) "the players who always _care,"_ about themselves and their craft.
This book is a study of that sort of heroism. It is not an exercise in hero worship. Rather, more soberly, it is an act of hero appreciation. I use the word "hero" advisedly, cognizant of the derision it invites. We live in a relentlessly antiheroic age. Perhaps in a democratic culture there always is a leveling impulse, a desire to cut down those who rise. Today, however, there also seems to be a small-minded, mean-spirited resentment of those who rise, a reluctance to give credit where it is due, a flinching from unstinting admiration, a desire to disbelieve in the rewarded virtue of the few. We have a swamp of journalism suited to such an age, a journalism infused with a corrosive, leveling spirit.
Yet it has been said that no man is a hero to his valet, not because no man is a hero but because all valets are valets. It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry. A society in which the capacity for warm appreciation of excellence atrophies will find that its capacity for excellence diminishes. Happiness, too, diminishes as the appreciation of excellence diminishes. That is no small loss, least of all to a nation in which the pursuit of happiness was endorsed in the founding moment.
America has been called the only nation founded on a good idea. That idea has been given many and elaborate explanations, but the most concise and familiar formulation is the pursuit of happiness. For a fortunate few people, happiness is the pursuit of excellence in a vocation. The vocation can be a profession or a craft, elite or common, poetry or carpentry. What matters most is an idea of excellence against which to measure achievement. The men whose careers are considered here exemplify the pursuit of happiness through excellence in a vocation. Fortunate people have a talent for happiness. Possession of any talent can help a person toward happiness. As Aristotle said, happiness is not a condition that is produced or stands on its own; rather, it is a frame of mind that accompanies an activity. But another frame of mind comes first. It is a steely determination to do well.
When Ted Williams, the last .400 hitter, arrived in Boston for his first season he said, with the openness of a Westerner and the innocence of a 20-year-old, "All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street folks will say, 'There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.'" Today, if you see Williams walking down the street and you say, "There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived," you may get an argument but you will not get derision. He won 6 batting titles and lost another by one hit. (In 1949 George Kell batted .3429, Williams .3427.) He batted .406 in 1941 and .388 in 1957, when his 38-year-old legs surely cost him at least the 5 hits that would have given him his second .400 season.
The hard blue glow from people like Williams lights the path of progress in any field. I said at the outset that this was to be an antiromantic look at baseball. I meant that baseball is work. Baseball is hard and demands much drudgery. But it is neither romantic nor sentimental to say that those who pay the price of excellence in any demanding discipline are heroes. Cool realism recognizes that they are necessary. As a character says in Bernard Malamud's baseball novel _The Natural_ , when we are without heroes we "don't know how far we can go."
# INDEX
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Aaron, Henry ("Hank"), 8, 38, 193, 196–97, 206, 218, 317, 318
ABC television, 308
Abernathy, Ted, 132
Adams, Babe, 149
Adams, D. C, 247
Advance scouts, 15–17, 23, 173, 186, 220, 281
Agnew, Spiro, 1
Alcohol use, 214, 304–305
Alderson, Sandy, 250, 296
Alexander, Grover Cleveland, 128, 150, 298
Allanson, Andy, 119–21, 242
All-Star Games, 250, 265, 308
1935, 297
1950, 209
1958, 275
1966, 9
1985, 107
1989, 24
Alomar, Sandy, Jr., 304
Alston, Walter, 28
Aluminum bats, 97, 121–23, 196, 198–203, 309
American League, 19, 21, 28, 30, 36, 37, 46, 50, 105, 112, 190, 206, 234–35, 241, 287, 293, 311–13
attendance figures of, 307
base-stealing in, 182–83, 228
batting averages in, 134–35, 165
batting title in, 191
Championship Series, 41–42, 62, 65, 232, 238
designated hitter in, 43, 57–60
expansion of, 301
Gold Glove awards in, 243, 250, 251
home runs in, 318
1989 All-Star team, 24
pitchers in, 112, 120–22, 132–34, 137
RBIs in, 296–97
shortstops in, 274
steals per game in, 56
umpires in, 91, 169
Amoros, Sandy, 84
Anaheim Stadium, 202, 269
Anderson, Brady, 12, 14
Anderson, Dave, 82
Anderson, Sparky, 26, 30, 133, 269, 280
Angell, Roger, 4, 119, 126, 137, 142, 245, 323–24
Aparicio, Luis, 32–33, 248, 267, 275
Appling, Luke, 249, 275
Arizona State Univ., 123
Arlington Stadium, 57, 269
Armas, Tony, 228
Arroyo, Luis, 132
Arthroscopic surgery, 143
Artificial turf, 31, 67, 168, 175
bunting on, 38
defense and, 263, 265–66, 268–70, 282
pitching and, 117
Ashburn, Richie, 196, 276–77
Ashby, Alan, 109
Assists, 233, 262, 272–76, 287
ratio to innings played of, 272
records for, 275, 276
Astor, Gerald, 212
Astrodome, 117, 203, 265, 323
Atlanta Braves, 27, 98, 154, 171, 311
Atrock, Nick, 52
Attendance records, 239, 307
Automobile industry, 43–44
Backman, Wally, 78, 155, 186
"Bad-ball pitchouts," 51
Baines, Harold, 169
Baker Bowl, 32
Balk rule, 183, 189
Ballard, Jeff, 244
Ballparks, 5, 56–57, 138–39, 162
ambiance of, 323–24
batting conditions of, 169–70, 174–76, 203
defense and, 265–70
managers and, 31, 39
minor league, 309
outfield fences in, 31–32, 106
paid admissions to, 295
pitchers and, 117–18
Balls
irregularities of, 79
liveliness of, 47, 104–105, 195
scuffed, 99–101
tampering with, 307
Baltimore Orioles, 170, 179, 191, 221, 231–39, 241, 243–44, 250–54, 256–59, 281, 283–84, 312, 319, 327–28
advance scouting by Yankees of, 16
attendance record of, 307
bunt defenses of, 261–62
draft picks of, 198
farm system of, 303
fielding percentage of, 233
Gold Gloves won by, 243
groundskeeper for, 267
history of, 236–39
home runs hit by, 34
in League Championship Series, 58
managers of, 17–18, 25, 28, 231, 253, 324
payroll of, 234
pitching staff of, 107, 116, 128, 130, 150, 243, 257
in World Series, 4, 128, 218, 239, 243, 282, 311
Bankhead, Scott, 10
Banks, Ernie, 33, 193, 196–97, 248–49, 287, 317, 318
Barrett, Marty, 10–15
Barrett, Red, 241–42
Barrow, Edward, 32
Baseball cards, 310
The Baseball Encyclopedia, 320
Baserunning, 181–82, 195, 227, 301–302
coaches and, 19–20
collisions during, 288–90
defense and, 257, 259–60, 265
managers and, 37–40, 44–45, 55–56, 66–67
and opportunities for double plays, 272
pitchers and, 91, 127–28
See also Stolen bases
Basketball, 103, 129, 154, 165, 228, 249, 316
Bats, 194–203
aluminum, 97, 121–24, 196, 198–203
corked, 47
Batters, 3, 161–230
advance scouting of, 15
aggressiveness of, 62–63, 96, 121, 191, 228
and aluminum bats, 197–203
analysis of opposing pitchers by, 12, 23–24, 208–209, 215–16
analysis of opposing team of, 10–15, 20–23, 50, 193
arm speed of, 145
bad pitches to, 81
ballpark conditions and, 169–70, 174–76
on base. See Baserunning; Stolen bases and broken bats, 197
bunting by. See Bunting coaching of, 65–66
in cold weather, 112
concentration of, 217
defense and, 241–46, 249, 252–59, 278, 280
defensive, 151
discipline of, 226–27
diving into plate by, 177
drinking by, 214
fear factor and, 176–77
first pitches and, 145–47
going deeper into count by, 172–73
"grooves" of, 209–10, 218
high-average, 166–68
in hit-and-run situations, 180
"holes" in swings of, 95, 206
injuries of, 165–66, 211–13, 215, 216
leadoff, 147
left-handed, 194–95
number faced, 121
and number of pitches thrown, 127–28
peeking at catchers by, 97–99
physiques of, 165
relief pitchers and, 134, 137
rule changes and, 102–107, 190
run creation by, 170–71
with runners on first, 177–80
signs and, 18, 54
slumps of, 162, 166–67, 210, 211, 216–21
streaks of, 85
strike zone and, 173–74
temperaments of, 165
thrown at by pitchers, 53, 61–62, 97, 98, 176–77
total average of, 167–68
video machines used by, 211–24
and weight of bats, 196–97
working the count by, 191
See also Contact hitters; Power hitters
Batting averages, 165–68, 170, 190, 191, 197, 211–15, 219, 221, 225, 296–98, 301, 316–18, 330
aluminum bats and, 202, 203
ballparks and, 272
baserunning and, 182, 184
of best defensive players, 274–76
college, 124
conditions affecting, 174–75
home runs and, 170
league, 134, 195
of pitchers, 299
rule changes and, 103, 105
with runners in scoring position, 212
salaries and, 310
of shortstops, 248
stability over time of, 316–18
stolen bases and, 184
Batting helmets, 62
Batting practice, 164
Baylor, Don, 12, 24, 45, 250, 289, 291
Bean balls, 177
Bedrosian, Steve, 132
Belanger, Mark ("The Blade"), 236, 244, 248, 282, 285
Bell, Gary, 126
Bell, George, 167, 215
Bell, Gus, 267
Bench, Johnny, 185, 212–13, 238, 264, 282, 314, 317
Bender, Chief, 252
Benes, Andy, 198
Benzinger, Todd, 15, 61
Berkow, Ira, 197
Berra, Yogi, 18–19, 167, 188, 190–91, 305, 317
Big-inning baseball, 42–43, 45–46, 265
Blackburne, Lena ("Slats"), 113
Black players, 16, 184, 317–18
and myth of "natural athlete," 226–27
Black Sox scandal, 104, 232, 320
Blackwell, Ewell ("The Whip"), 119
Blair, Paul, 238
Blyleven, Bert, 127
Boddicker, Mike, 37, 128, 200, 201, 245, 257–58
Bodie, Ping, 174
Boggs, Wade, 11, 13, 23, 27, 64, 120, 175, 194, 232, 242, 282
on aluminum bats, 203
batting average of, 166, 170, 191
pickoff play of, 10, 12
Bonds, Barry, 123
Bonds, Bobby, 171, 278
Boone, Bob, 88, 183, 302
Boorstin, Daniel, 299
Boston Braves, 192, 241, 248, 314
Boston Globe, 191
Boston Red Sox, 8–15, 17, 19, 20, 50, 125, 232, 287, 297, 291
attendance record of, 307
batting champions on, 175, 329–30
designated hitter and, 58
home runs hit by, 32, 169
pitching staff of, 61, 63–64, 125, 132, 168, 179, 185, 210, 254
Ruth with, 32, 237, 318
in World Series, 42, 58, 134, 210–11
Boswell, Tom, 60, 87–88, 128, 167, 182–83, 213, 232, 274, 294
Bosworth, Brian, 290
Boudreau, Lou, 26, 28, 249, 274
Bourke-White, Margaret, 320
Bowa, Larry, 215
Bowling Green State Univ., 88
"BP fastballs," 207, 251, 252, 281
Bradley, Scott, 199
Breaking balls, 91–93, 119–20, 124, 195, 206
Brett, George, 63, 166, 167, 194
Brinkman, Eddie, 233
Brock, Lou, 70, 94, 177, 183, 186, 190, 213
Brookens, Tom, 283
Brooklyn Dodgers, 7, 49, 138, 143, 175, 234, 237, 238
farm system of, 304
home runs hit by, 33
managers of, 29
pitching staff of, 168, 320
rivalry of Giants and, 306, 307
in World Series, 33, 84, 197, 312
Broun, Heywood, 288
Brown, Mordecai Centennial
("Three Finger"), 118, 131–32
Brown, Robert William, 206
Browning, Pete, 197
Brush-back pitches, 96
Buckner, Bill, 125, 175
Bull Durham (movie), 325–27
Bull pen, 131, 134, 140, 141, 158, 271
Bunting, 14–15, 37–38, 42–45, 55, 80, 92–93, 230
defense and, 261–62, 266, 281
stolen bases and, 73–74
Burdette, Lew, 99, 206, 218
Burks, Ellis, 11, 13–15, 61
Burleson, Rick, 254
Busch Stadium, 117
Bush, George, 195
Cactus League, 74–75
California Angels, 42, 49, 115, 193, 200, 202, 210, 283, 289
Campanella, Roy, 5, 33, 175, 238, 317
Candlestick Park, 117, 267–68
Canseco, Jose, 30, 35, 41, 45, 65, 66, 113, 178, 207–208
base-stealing by, 34, 50, 171, 183
in draft, 88
home runs hit by, 18, 40, 50, 62, 65, 171, 183
in League Championship Series, 65
in World Series, 48, 52, 65, 158
Cape Cod League, 201
Caray, Harry, 227
Carew, Rod, 71, 184, 193, 285, 317
Carey, Andy, 84
Carey, Max, 276
Carlton, Steve, 87, 116, 127, 141, 217, 301
Carman, Don, 60
Carrasquel, Chico, 248
Carter, Joe, 117, 200
Cartwright, Alexander, 102, 182, 259, 295
Catchers, 4, 90–95, 136
advance scouting of, 15
batters peeking at, 97
Collisions with, 290
defense and, 256, 261
managers and, 51
mitts used by, 263–64
at pregame meetings, 20–21
release times of, 15, 185–87
scarcity of, 302
signs and, 19
stealing signs from, 53–54
and stolen bases, 68–70, 72, 183
Catton, Bruce, 296
CBS television, 308
The Celebrant (Greenberg), 99
Cepeda, Orlando, 196
Cerone, Rick, 10–12
Chamberlain, Wilt, 103
Change-ups, 91, 126, 151, 207
Chapman, Ray, 113, 114
Cheating by pitchers, 99–101
Chicago American, 240
Chicago Bruins, 238
Chicago Cubs, 98, 104, 175, 177, 217–19, 221, 224, 255–56, 265, 278, 311, 319, 328
attendance record of, 307
home runs hit by, 24, 33–34, 274
La Russa with, 27
pitching staff of, 100, 131, 132, 135, 168, 177, 221
shortstops with, 248
stealing of signs by, 53
Chicago Tribune, 248
Chicago White Sox, 11, 67–69, 90, 154, 173, 293, 307
home runs hit by, 169–70
in League Championship Series, 62
managers of, lln, 25, 28, 30, 67, 170, 228
pitching staff of, 114, 126
sacrifice bunts by, 37
shortstops with, 248, 257–58
stolen bases by, 228
in World Series, 32, 104
Chicago White Stockings, 281
"Chin music," 177
Cincinnati Enquirer, 131
Cincinnati Reds, 1, 98, 104, 171, 187, 213, 228, 230, 238, 278, 293, 313–15, 319
run differential of, 36
groundskeeper for, 267
managers of, 26, 133, 304
pitching staff of, 119, 133–34
in World Series, 282
"Circle change," 137
Civil War, 294, 295
Clark, Jack, 88, 94, 170, 178, 184
Clark, Will, 166, 217, 278
Clemens, Roger, 25, 87, 90, 115, 123, 125–27, 207, 232
in draft, 88
and stealing signs, 52–53
strikeouts by, 61, 241, 273, 299
Clemente, Roberto, 125, 138, 317
Cleveland Indians, 4, 110–15, 134, 173, 221, 238, 252, 284, 286, 290, 307, 311
draft picks of, 124–25
errors committed by, 242
history of, 112
home runs hit by, 200, 305
pitching staff of, 100, 112–15, 119, 122, 125, 126, 132
stealing of signs by, 52
in World Series, 84, 197, 255, 312
Cleveland Spiders, 112, 314
"Closers," 130–33, 137
Coaches, 9, 17, 306
advance scouts and, 23
baserunning and, 19–20
College, 123–24
delegation of responsibility to, 52
first-base, 187–89
hitting, 9, 65–66, 162, 200
pitching, 7, 9, 89–90, 108, 118, 127–30, 140, 145, 188, 244, 303
at pregame meetings, 9–15
salaries of, 303
signs and, 18–20
third-base, 231
Cobb, Ty, 26, 32, 70, 74, 134, 165, 182, 212, 276, 300–301, 305
Cochrane, Mickey, 3
"Co-efficient of restitution" (COR), 47
Coleman, Vince, 31, 93, 178, 182, 187
College baseball, 188–59, 229, 244, 300, 302, 303, 309
aluminum bats in, 196–99, 201
pitchers in, 88, 97, 114, 122–25
Collins, Eddie, 26
Comiskey, Charles, 282, 306
Comiskey Park, 169–70, 265, 267
Complete games, 105, 126–28, 130, 131, 134, 135, 235, 299
Congress, U.S., 1
Conlan, Jocko, 268
Connie Mack Stadium, 106, 265
Connor, Roger, 318
Consecutive games, record for, 285–86
Constitutional Convention, 296
Contact hitters, 120, 191
Cooper, Richard T., 1
Coveleski, Stan, 149, 229
Craig, Roger, 16, 18, 19, 23, 52, 108–10, 137, 143, 166, 186
Crawford, Sam, 74
Creamer, Robert W., 318
Cronin, Joe, 26, 249, 287
Crosetti, Frank, 208, 325
Crosley Field, 265
Cuellar, Mike, 238
Cummings, William Arthur ("Candy"), 103, 108
The Curious Case of Sidd Finch (Plimpton), 107–108
Curveballs, 92, 94, 108–10, 126, 129, 151, 206
Cy Young Awards, 86, 87, 105, 109, 116, 128, 132, 243
Dalkowski, Steve, 107
Dallas Cowboys, 238
Dark, Alvin, 267
Darling, Ron, 87
Daulton, Darren, 171
Davis, Eric, 278
Davis, Jody, 53, 98
Davis, Mark, 132
Davis, Storm, 133
Davis, Tommy, 297
Davis, Willie, 228
Dawson, Andre, 88, 167, 177, 274, 328
Day, Laraine, 306
Dayley, Ken, 133
Dean, Dizzy, 3, 105, 116, 127, 132, 324–25
Defense, 231–91
advance scouts and, 281
aluminum bats and, 201
analysis by opposing team of, 10, 19–20
anticipation by, 254–56, 258
ballpark conditions and, 265–70
baserunning and, 236, 247, 257, 259–62, 265, 290–91
batter's reading of, 180–81
bunt, 80, 261–62, 266, 281
errors and, 232–35, 255, 278–79
fielding percentage and, 233, 255
gloves used by, 262–65
lack of recognition of, 274–77
left-handers and, 194
pitchers and, 13, 79, 84, 150, 153, 235, 240–47, 252–53, 257–58, 271–73, 279–80, 282, 283, 287–88
positioning of, 205, 220, 246, 252, 279–81
practicing, 284
and pregame meetings, 13–15, 193
quickness of, 281–82
range and, 282–83
shortstop's role in, 247–50
"showing bunt" and, 34–35
slumps in, 285
statistics on, 271–74
team aspect of, 240
Deficit spending, 322
Dempsey, Rick, 4, 90–91, 154, 159, 290, 325
Denny, Jerry, 263
Denver Broncos, 309
Descartes, 324
Designated hitters (DH), 43, 56–60, 115, 122, 135, 263
Detroit Tigers, 16, 169, 239, 252, 263, 265, 269, 280, 281, 283, 289
batting champions on, 132, 153
managers of, 3, 26, 30, 269, 304
pitching staff of, 85, 108, 121, 126, 128, 174, 277
shortstops with, 233
stolen bases by, 71
in World Series, 3
_The Diamond Appraised_ (Wright and House), 127
DiMaggio, Dom, 277
DiMaggio, Joe, 85, 166, 167, 175, 183, 203, 214, 301, 325
Doak, Bill, 263
Dobson, Pat, 188, 238, 303
Doran, Bill, 16
Doubleday, Abner, 294
Double plays, 168, 230, 231, 233, 242, 262, 265, 266, 275, 276, 288, 289, 291
depth for, 236
statistics on, 272
records for, 275, 276
singles hitters and, 172
unassisted, 282
Double steal, 68–71, 260
"Double switch," 60
Douthit, Taylor, 277
Doyle, Larry, 211
Drabowsky, Moe, 140
Draft, 8, 88, 122, 124–25, 189, 198, 244, 302
first-round picks, 309
Dravecky, Dave, 232
Drinking, 214, 304–305
Dr. Seuss, 163
Drysdale, Don, 83, 98, 105, 121, 138, 143, 147, 151, 175, 193
Duncan, Dave, 9–15, 20–24, 51, 77, 100, 106, 253
Dunn, Jack, 237
Durocher, Leo, 28, 30, 306
Duvalier, Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc"), 47
Dykstra, Len, 155
Dynasties, 314–15
Earned run averages (ERAs), 83, 85–87, 104, 105, 109, 127, 133, 159, 298
ballparks and, 175
in college baseball, 124
defense and, 242, 272, 282
Ebbets Field, 175, 265, 306
Eckersley, Dennis, 16–17, 133
Economic competition, 322, 323
Edison, Thomas, 111
Edwards, Doc, 114, 117, 119, 120, 126
Eisenhower, Dwight, 33
_The Elias Baseball Analyst_ , 9, 43, 286
Elias Bureau, 42, 47, 115, 266, 315, 319
Elster, Kevin, 157
Elway, John, 309
Errors, 182, 233, 235, 242, 255, 262, 278
Erskine, Carl, 168
ESPN television, 122, 308
Evans, Dwight ("Dewey"), 10, 14, 20, 287
Ewing, George, 295
Expansion of leagues, 301
Extra-base hits, 170, 287, 297
batting conditions and, 175, 176
Face, Elroy, 132
Fairly, Ron, 142, 267–68
Farm systems, 8, 31, 126, 303
Fastballs, 90, 95, 103, 108, 120, 150, 151, 206, 219–20
batting practice (BP), 207, 251, 252, 281
bunting and, 93
"cut," 12
defense and, 244
"four-seam," 12, 91
with runners on first, 178–81
running teams and, 91, 169
"split-finger," 108–109, 129, 137, 152–53, 173
velocity of, 93, 107, 115, 119, 123, 126, 145, 152
Fear factor, 176–78
Feller, Bob, 87, 97, 103, 115, 116, 132, 298
Fenway Park, 11, 57, 117, 169, 175, 203, 266
Fernandez, Tony, 41, 233, 251, 270, 290
Fidrych, Mark ("The Bird"), 121
Fielders. See Defense
Fielding averages, 136, 233, 244, 255, 274, 276
of pitchers, 299
Fingers, Rollie, 132
Finley, Charlie, 27, 293
First-pitch tendencies, 21
Fischer, Bill, 17
Fisk, Carlton, 73, 154, 169–70, 257–58, 264, 302
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 321
Flanagan, Mike, 62, 92, 128, 243, 245, 251–52
Flannery, Tim, 200, 218
Florida State Univ. Law School, 27
Football, 129, 139, 140, 143, 238, 290, 309, 316
Forbes Field, 138–39, 265, 276
Ford, Whitey, 16, 54, 99, 117, 132, 252
"Fork ball," 108–10, 135
Foul territory, 174–75
Founding Fathers, 294
Fowler, Art, 140
Fox, Nellie, 32, 267
Foxx, Jimmie, 296–98
Fraser, Ron, 309
Frederick the Great, 85
Free agency, 311
Frey, Jim, 53, 194
Fulton County Stadium, 117, 175
Furillo, Carl, 33
Gaedel, Eddie, 237
Gaetti, Gary, 61, 283
Galarraga, Andres, 81
Gallego, Mike, 65
"Gap power," 172, 176
Garner, Phil, 101
Gammons, Peter, 92, 134, 198–200
Gantner, Jimmy, 55
Garcia, Mike, 115
Garcia, Richie, 64
Garr, Ralph, 171
Garvey, Steve, 98, 167
Gehrig, Lou, 34, 70, 167, 238, 286, 296–98, 318
Gehringer, Charlie, 263
Gentile, Jim, 170–71
Giamatti, A. Bartlett, 4–5, 100, 106, 232, 240, 323–24
Gibson, Bob, 1, 83, 98, 105, 213, 243, 298, 317, 318
Gibson, Kirk, 16–17, 48, 87, 169, 289
Gillick, Pat, 232
Gloves, 262–65
Gold Glove awards, 136, 212, 243, 250, 251, 254, 274
Gomez, Lefty, 94, 120, 197, 242
Gooden, Dwight, 27, 58, 86, 87, 115, 116, 127, 193, 215, 216, 299
Gorman, Tom, 267–68
Gossage, Goose, 107, 140
Gott, Jim, 110, 130, 136–42, 144
Gould, Stephen Jay, 85, 316–18
Grace, Mark, 256
Grant, Mark, 163–64, 303
Gray, Pete, 237
Greece, ancient, 2
Greenberg, Eric Rolfe, 99
Greenberg, Hank, 297
Greenwell, Mike, 14, 15
Grieve, Tom, 199
Griffey, Ken, Jr., 200
Griffin, Alfredo, 51–52, 156, 251, 254
Griffith Stadium, 298
Grimes, Burleigh, 255
Grimsley, Ross, 99
Groundskeepers, 267–69, 306
Grove, Lefty, 127, 132, 134, 237
Gruber, Kelly, 231
Guante, Cecilio, 66–67
Gubicza, Mark, 87
Guidry, Ron, 85, 88
Guillen, Ozzie, 257–59
Gustafson, Cliff, 118, 123–24
Guthrie, Bill, 64
Gwynn, Alicia, 212
Gwynn, Chris, 164–65
Gwynn, Tony, 47, 83, 98, 137, 155, 161–72, 176–81, 191, 193–94, 215–30, 254, 290, 318, 323
baserunning by, 181
base-stealing by, 184–85, 188
bats used by, 196–98
and batting order, 178
fielding of, 284
in hit-and-run plays, 180
injuries of, 211–12, 215–16
in Padres' batting room, 162–64
slump of, 216–21, 224
strengths and weaknesses of, 203–11
technology used by, 221–24
Hahn, Frank ("Noodles"), 87
Hall of Fame, 28, 82, 116, 127, 132, 133, 197, 212, 238, 248, 252, 255, 264, 269, 274–77, 287
Hargan, Steve, 126
Harris, Bucky, 28
Hassey, Ron, 11–12, 20, 54
Hatcher, Billy, 16
Hawkins, Andy, 186
Hebner, Richie, 265
Heitmann, Henry, 320
Hemond, Roland, 241, 253–54
Henderson, Dave, 14, 66–67
Henderson, Rickey, 42, 195, 277, 290
base-stealing by, 54–56, 70, 73–74, 177–78, 182, 184, 213, 228, 261
Henrich, Tommy, 260
Hernandez, Guillermo ("Willie"), 132
Hernandez, Keith, 78, 81, 98, 151, 153, 193, 218, 259, 266, 285
on advance scouting, 173
in draft, 88
Gold Glove awarded to, 243
home runs hit by, 94
in League Championship Series, 155, 156
range of, 282
Herr, Tommy, 178, 304
Hershiser, Jamie, 154
Hershiser, Orel, 51, 77–101, 110, 115, 121, 133, 139–40, 144–59, 201, 323
and artificial turf, 117
batters hit by, 97, 98
catchers and, 91–95
on cheating, 101
defense and, 242, 254, 273
and mechanics of pitching, 144–54
on salaries, 310
streak of scoreless innings pitched by, 83–84
training program of, 143–44
won-lost record of, 86
Herzog, Whitey, 26, 43, 53, 133, 148–49, 246, 279
High school baseball, 88, 114, 122, 126, 198, 201
Higuera, Ted, 112
Hillerich, John Andrew ("Bud"), 197
Hillerich & Bradsby (baseball bat manufacturer), 198, 202
Hit-and-run plays, 15, 18, 19, 33, 37–40, 49, 51, 91, 165, 180, 223
defense and, 247
Hitting. See Batters
Hockey, 238
Hodges, Gil, 33, 84, 238
Holway, John B., 102, 107, 298
Home-field advantage, 270
Home runs, 31–36, 40, 44, 46–49, 161, 162, 169–72, 218, 227, 228, 271, 275, 276, 297–98, 301, 318
and aluminum bats, 200
and liveliness of ball, 46–47
ratio of at bats to, 183
by shortstops, 248, 287
single-season record for, 32, 175, 208, 210
strikeouts vs., 116, 167
and weight of bats, 196
in World Series, 16–17, 48, 65, 77, 275, 328
Home Team Sports, 221
Horn, Sam, 14
Hornsby, Rogers, 26, 174, 221, 274, 297, 298
Hough, Charlie, 65, 66, 86, 110, 153
Houk, Ralph, 208, 214
House, Tom, 118, 127
Houston Astros, 16, 87, 93, 101, 109, 115, 182, 189, 229, 328
Howard, Elston, 16, 99, 238
Howard, Frank, 105, 218
Hoynes, Paul, 112
Hrabosky, Al, 140
Hrbek, Kent, 88, 304
Hriniak, Walt, 10–12, 21
Hubbard, Glenn, 61
Hubbard, Kin, 321
Hubbell, Carl, 83, 149, 299, 305
Huggins, Miller, 28
Hundley, Randy, 263
Hunter, Catfish, 137, 142, 218
Hurst, Bruce, 58, 59
Hynd, Noel, 267
Incaviglia, Pete, 200, 201, 300
Infield fly rule, 2
Injuries, 113, 114, 165–66, 211–15
rotator cuff, 143–44
Instructional league, 89
Intensity, 41, 327, 328
motivation and, 44
Interference, 304
International League, 237
Isaacson, Big Julie, 214
Jack Murphy Stadium, 162–63
Jackson, Al, 244
Jackson, Bo, 24, 197, 289–91, 301
Jackson, Reggie, 182, 190, 281
Jackson, Shoeless Joe, 196
James, Bill, 7–8, 31, 113, 131, 134, 175–76, 245, 263, 272, 306
James, William, 327
Japan, 322
Javier, Stan, 18, 45
Jefferies, Gregg, 155, 157
Jenkins, Ferguson, 149
Jennings, Doug, 281
Jennings, Hughie, 28, 305
John, Tommy, 23–24, 126, 207
Johnson, Alex, 191
Johnson, Ban, 28, 165
Johnson, Connie, 16
Johnson, Davey, 120, 146, 150, 155, 171, 193, 238, 242
Johnson, Howard, 186
Johnson, Walter, 5, 83, 125, 127, 132, 298–99
Jolson, Al, 237
Jones, Ruppert, 210
Kaat, Jim, 243
Kaline, Al, 176, 239, 252
Kansas City Athletics, 27, 28, 315
Kansas City Monarchs, 248
Kansas City Royals, 36, 115, 183, 233, 289–90, 313
artificial turf of, 67, 269
attendance record of, 307
home runs hit by, 167
managers of, 55, 133
pitching staff of, 135
in World Series, 178
Kaplan, Jim, 275
Keane, Johnny, 26
Keeler, Wee Willie, 196, 237, 317
Kell, George, 132, 329
Kennedy, Terry, 191
Kerrane, Kevin, 195
Key, Francis Scott, 236
Key, Jimmy, 87, 112
Kilduff, Pete, 255
Killebrew, Harmon, 172
Killian, Ed, 299
Kiner, Ralph, 138, 183, 271, 275
Kingdome, 57
Kittle, Ron, 62
Klein, Chuck, 297, 298
Kluszewski, Ted, 167
Knepper, Bob, 229–30
Knight, Ray, 217
Knuckleballs, 65, 66, 118, 129, 153
Konstanty, Jim, 132
Koppett, Leonard, 25, 176, 182
Koufax, Sandy, 4–5, 138, 150, 193, 298, 309, 317
batters hit by, 98, 177
injury of, 213
retirement of, 142–43, 320
strikeouts by, 115, 116, 300
triple crown won by, 87, 143
Kranepool, Ed, 1
Kroc, Joan, 216
Kroc, Ray, 216, 325
Kruk, John, 163, 184
Kubek, Tony, 44, 183, 192–93, 212, 214, 236, 238, 254, 290, 305
on advance scouting, 16, 17
on defense, 246, 252, 260, 274
Maris and, 210, 218
Kuenn, Harvey, 55
Kuhn, Bowie, 46
Lachemann, Rene, 9, 11, 14–15, 17
Lajoie, Napoleon, 104, 165, 274
Lamp, Dennis, 12
Landis, Jim, 228
Landrum, Don, 148
Langford, Rick, 268
Langston, Mark, 87, 88, 112, 126
Lanier, Hal, 16
Lansford, Carney, 18, 37, 41, 45, 50, 61, 64, 94, 178, 191
Lardner, Ring, 123, 321
Larsen, Don, 84
La Russa, Tony, 8, 13–21, 23, 26–30, 35, 37–45, 48–55, 60–75, 152, 177, 302, 304–305, 323, 327–28
on aggressiveness, 41, 278
and base-stealing, 66–74, 260
on defense, 278–81, 284
and designated hitter, 57, 59–60
hired by Oakland, 30
law degree of, 27–28
motivation of players by, 44
and 1989 American League All-Star team, 24
paperwork of, 21
and pitchers, 126, 133
playing career of, 26–27
at pregame meetings, 10, 13, 14
on risk-taking, 29
and scouting, 16, 17
and signs, 17–18, 51, 53
and throwing at batters, 61–62
White Sox managed by, 28, 30, 170
in World Series, 48–49, 51, 77, 313–14
Lasorda, Tommy, 19, 49, 82, 89, 155, 158, 328
Lau, Charlie, lln, 21, 63, 170, 177, 200, 204
LaValliere, Mike ("Spanky"), 136–37, 141, 194, 223
League Championship Series, 39, 41, 232, 238, 308
1983, 62
1984, 98
1988, 65, 83, 96, 145, 154–58
1989, 41–42, 314
Lee, Bill ("Spaceman"), 210–11
Lefebvre, Jim ("Frenchy"), 9–10, 19–20, 23, 45, 269, 302–303
Canseco coached by, 65–66
on hitting, 162, 205–206, 210
on pitchers, 23–25, 146, 207
playing career of, 9, 193
at pregame meetings, 9, 12–13
signs used by, 18
Leibrandt, Charlie, 112
Lemon, Bob, 115
Lemon, Chet, 92, 277, 280
Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud Co., 113
Leyland, Jim, 136, 144
Liddle, Don, 84
Lineups, 3, 240
shuffling, 60
Linn, Ed, 213
Liriano, Nelson, 42
"Little ball," 42–43, 56
Little League, 114, 122, 129, 148, 198
Lolich, Mickey, 128
Lopat, Eddie, 207
Lopez, Al, 114
Los Angeles Coliseum, 175
Los Angeles Dodgers, 9, 71–82, 86, 87, 99, 101, 139, 165, 169, 193, 242, 289, 297, 328
draft picks of, 88
errors by, 278
farm system of, 303
home runs hit by, 175
in League Championship Series, 83, 96, 154–58
payroll of, 234
pitching staff of, 89, 135, 138, 143, 154, 203. See also Orel
Hershiser
shortstops with, 254
stolen bases by, 228, 267–68
in World Series, 4, 32–33, 48, 51–52, 77, 83, 238, 312–13
Los Angeles Raiders, 309
Louisiana State Univ., 198
Louisville Sluggers, 197, 198
Luzinski, Greg ("The Bull"), 69,72–73
Lyle, Sparky, 132, 140
Lynn, Fred, 287
McCarthy, Joe, 28
McCarver, Tim, 96, 212, 255, 264, 266, 288, 302
McCovey, Willie, 105, 193, 227, 278, 285, 317
McDaniel, Lindy, 132
McDonald, Ben, 198
McDonald's, 216, 325
McDougald, Gil, 84, 114
McDowell, Oddibe, 123
McDowell, Sudden Sam, 115, 117, 126, 300
McGee, Willie, 178, 242, 246
McGraw, John, 28, 132, 236, 305–306
McGregor, Scott, 128
McGriff, Fred, 231
McGwire, Mark, 20, 35, 41, 45, 48, 62, 65, 66, 207, 318
McKechnie, Bill, 28
McKeon, Jack, 129, 184, 211–12, 215, 223, 230
McLain, Denny, 105, 127
McNally, Dave, 150, 238
McNamara, John, 10
McRae, Hal, 282
McReynolds, Kevin, 78, 151
Mack, Connie, 28–29, 103, 252, 310, 314
Magadan, Dave, 81
Maglie, Sal ("The Barber"), 98, 147
Malamud, Bernard, 330
Managers, 3, 7–75, 304
advance scouts and, 15–17
artificial turf and, 31
batters and, 194, 211–12
defense and, 51–52, 241, 242, 252, 279–81
delegation of responsibility to coaches by, 52
designated hitters and, 57–60
firing of, 30, 215
former catchers as, 4
functions of, 8–9
fundamental style of, 40
groundskeepers and, 267
hectoring of umpires by, 305–306
intensity of, 41–42
with law degrees, 27–28
"little ball," 42–43
longevity of, 28–29
Minor league, 56, 187, 235
motivation of players by, 44, 328
"palocracy" and, 29
pitchers and, 24–25, 84, 89, 133, 136–37, 140
playing careers of, 26–27, 49, 55
at pregame meetings, 9–15
run-scoring tactics of, 37–40, 44–46, 48–49, 55–56, 66–74
signs and, 17–20, 51
and Spring Training, 67, 74–75
stealing signs by, 52–54
stolen bases and, 50–51
tempers of, 30
tendency-prone, 262
and throwing at batters, 61–64
youngest, 28
Mantle, Mickey, 16, 33, 178, 190, 193, 208, 238, 254, 276, 289, 317, 319
in All-Star Games, 265
base-stealing by, 183
bone disease of, 183, 212, 264
home runs hit by, 208, 214, 301
weight of bat used by, 145
in World Series, 84, 327
Maranville, Rabbit, 248
Maravich, Pete, 327
Marberry, Firpo, 132
Marciano, Rocky, 250
Marichal, Juan, 105, 119, 125
Marion, Marty ("Slats"), 248
Maris, Roger, 175, 178, 182, 208, 210, 214, 218, 238, 301
Marshall, Mike, 78, 83, 132
Martin, Billy, 54, 70, 73, 135, 140, 262, 268
Marx, Karl, 195
Mathewson, Christy, 127, 149, 150, 298, 299
Mattingly, Don, 88, 119, 177, 178, 200, 285
Mauch, Gene, 26–28, 42, 126, 254–55
May, Lee, 282
Mays, Carl, 95, 113
Mays, Willie, 33, 95, 193, 205, 227–28, 235, 276, 278, 317, 318
base-stealing by, 184
home runs hit by, 48, 125, 192
putouts by, 276
weight of bat used by, 145
in World Series, 84
Mazeroski, Bill, 275–77, 327
Mazzilli, Lee, 157–58
Media guides, 50
Medwick, Joe, 166
Melvin, Doug, 303
Memorial Stadium (Baltimore), 239, 247, 267, 283, 327
Memorial Stadium (Cleveland), 111
Metrodome, 57, 270
Meusel, Bob, 34
Meyer, Joey, 55–56
Miami, Univ. of, Hurricanes, 309
Miami Marlins, 148
Michigan State Univ., 289
Milacki, Bob, 231
Miller, Darrell, 289
Miller, Ray, 7, 115–16, 128–30, 145, 150–51, 153, 154, 158, 242, 308–309
and "circle change," 137–38
on defense, 266
on hitters, 207, 209, 246
Miller, Stu, 119
Milner, John, 285
Milwaukee Braves, 99, 125, 127, 193, 206, 218
Milwaukee Brewers, 9, 33, 43, 49, 52, 55, 121, 260, 311, 313
Minnesota Twins, 4, 30, 61, 193, 198, 241
in League Championship Series, 238
managers of, 42, 49, 128
pitching staff of, 86, 135
in World Series, 134–35, 270, 282–83, 304, 313
Minor leagues, 12, 55, 221, 229, 309
aluminum bats in, 198
college baseball and, 123
managers in, 56, 187, 235
pitchers in, 88, 89, 125, 128
See also Farm system
Minoso, Minnie, 228
Minton, Greg, 200
Mize, Johnny, 167
Molitor, Paul, 55, 88
Montreal Canadiens, 238
Montreal Expos, 16, 18, 42, 78, 81–83, 90, 135, 182, 187, 254
Moore, Donnie, 232
Moore, Mike, 68
Moreland, Keith, 53
Morgan, Joe, 98, 196, 238, 274, 282, 314, 317
Morris, Jack, 85, 86, 126, 174
Moseby, Lloyd, 290
Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards, 105, 133, 169, 170, 178, 233, 267, 274, 276, 287, 328
of World Series, 4, 83
Motivation of players, 44, 327–28
Movies, baseball, 325–27
Murcer, Bobby, 217–18
Murphy, Dale, 89, 95, 287
Murphy, Dwayne, 73, 228, 277
Murray, Eddie, 234
Murray, Jim, 307
Musial, Stan, 166, 168, 176, 193, 217, 219, 297, 317
National Football League (NFL), 290, 309
National League, 26, 31, 33–34, 43, 46, 83, 87, 100, 104, 112, 171, 190, 227, 249, 275, 310, 311, 313
All-Star teams of, 9, 209
ballparks in, 117
base-stealing in, 183, 184, 187
batting averages in, 134, 166, 168, 211
Championship Series, 83, 96, 98, 145, 154–58
designated hitter in, 58–60
expansion of, 301
founding of, 295
Gold Glove awards in, 250, 251
home runs in, 318
Most Valuable Player award in, 169, 255
pitchers in, 91, 93, 99, 105, 115, 116, 120, 121, 132, 135, 143, 150
RBIs in, 297
steals per game in, 56
umpires in, 91, 169
_The Natural_ (Malamud), 330
"Natural athlete," myth of, 226–27
NBC television, 308
NCAA, 124, 316
_The New Yorker_ , 323
New York Giants, 3, 227
batting champions on, 211
home runs hit by, 33, 192
managers of, 25, 28, 49, 145
pitching staff of, 299, 309
rivalry of Dodgers and, 306, 307
in World Series, 84, 312
New York Knickerbockers, 247
New York Mets, 1, 8, 21, 78–83, 182, 234, 243, 259, 265, 266, 312–14, 319
attendance record of, 239
batting average of, 105
home runs hit by, 34, 47
in League Championship Series, 83, 154–58
managers of, 110, 120, 146, 155, 193, 242
pitching staff of, 110, 215, 224, 282
putouts by, 272–73, 276
run differential of, 36
stolen bases by, 186
in World Series, 217
_The New York Times_ , 197, 294
New York Yankees, 4, 16, 20, 69, 112, 114, 125, 134, 178, 206, 217, 235–38, 241, 252, 260, 276, 312, 315, 325
batting average of, 105
cable agreement of, 310–11
home runs hit by, 33, 36, 208, 214, 318
managers of, 28
pinstripes worn by, 319
pitching staff of, 23–24, 95, 99, 113, 120, 132, 142, 224, 248
run differential of, 36–37
signs used by, 18–19
in World Series, 33, 34, 84, 99, 268, 275, 312–13, 328
Nicholson, Bill, 25
Nicholson, Parson ("Beacon"), 249
Night baseball, 134
No-hitters, 84, 213
North Carolina, Univ. of, 199
Northern Colorado, Univ. of, 187
Notre Dame Univ., 328
Oakland Athletics, 17–25, 34–42, 45, 60–61, 64–67, 126, 178, 200, 210, 250, 253, 264, 293, 296, 302–303, 311, 315, 327
attendance record of, 307
defense of, 284, 289
errors by, 233
history of, 28–29
home runs hit by, 35, 40, 46, 48, 61, 65, 228
in League Championship Series, 41–42, 238
managers of, 29, 73, 135, 268. See also Tony La Russa
pitching staff of, 85, 133, 135, 268, 314
pregame meetings of, 8–15
"showing bunt" by, 34–35
Spring Training camp of, 75
stolen bases by, 34, 73–74, 182, 228
style of play of, 40
in World Series, 28, 48–49, 51–52, 54, 92, 145, 313, 314
Oakland Coliseum, 174
O'Brien, Pete, 253
O'Doul, Lefty, 310
Offense. See Batters
Ojala, Carl, 164
Ojeda, Bob, 215–16
Oklahoma State Univ., 200, 201, 300
Oliva, Tony, 193
On-base percentages, 171, 178, 212, 276
O'Neill, Tip, 1
Ott, Mel, 25, 145, 167, 190, 203
Pacific Coast League, 310
Page, Joe, 132
Paige, Satchel, 148–49
Pajama Game (musical), 325
Palmer, Jim, 79–80, 90, 120, 128, 151, 152, 235–36, 238, 269, 298
"Palocracy," 29
Parker, Dave, 20, 37, 88, 158, 200, 210, 278, 305
Pascual, Camilo, 208
Passed balls, 136
Patton (movie), 212
Payrolls, 234, 308
Peckinpaugh, Roger, 28
Pendleton, Terry, 283
Pennock, Herb, 252
Perez, Tony, 211, 238, 282
"Perfect game," 84
Perranoski, Ron, 81, 89–90, 96
Perry, Gaylord, 100
Pettis, Gary, 283
Philadelphia Athletics, 28, 113, 234, 248, 272, 315
Philadelphia Phillies, 26, 90, 143, 163, 171, 190, 213, 265, 272–73, 278, 312
batting average of, 301
managers of, 42, 304
Pitching staff of, 132, 134, 135
in World Series, 4, 238, 282, 311
Phillips, Tony, 66
Pickoff plays, 10, 12, 188, 261
Piersall, Jimmy, 254
Pinch hitters, 59
Pinch runners, 65
Pinelli, Babe, 64
_The Pitcher_ (Thorn and Holway), 102
Pitchers, 3, 77–159, 298–301
advance scouting of, 15
and aluminum bats, 198, 200
analysis by opposing team of, 10, 12, 23–24, 37
assessment of batters by, 193–94
and "bad-ball pitchout," 51
ballparks and, 117–18, 265, 269
catchers and, 90–95
cheating by, 99–101
coaching of, 89–90
in college, 122–24
control of, 148–50
defense and, 13, 79, 84, 150, 153, 235, 240–47, 252–53, 257–58, 271–73, 279–80, 282, 283, 287–88
designated hitter and, 58–60, 122
drafting of, 309
fear used by, 176–77
first-pitch tendencies of, 21
and liveliness of balls, 46
low-ball, 173
mannerisms of, 208–209
Pickoff moves of, 52
Power, 115–16
Power hitters and, 171–72
release times of, 15, 66, 179, 185–87, 189
relief, 12, 89, 130–42, 299, 303
rule changes and, 101–107
selection of, 67–68
signs and, 18, 19, 54
statistics of, 271
and stolen bases, 69–74, 178–79, 183–90
streaks of, 83–86
strength of, 125–29
strike zone and, 169, 173–74
throwing at batters by, 53, 61–62, 97, 98, 176–77
types of pitches, 108–10
variety of deliveries of, 206–207
vulnerabilities of, 24–25
wildness of, 97
won-lost records of, 1, 85–87
Pitchouts, 17–19, 51–52, 182, 187
"bad-ball," 51
Pittsburgh Pirates, 5–7, 34, 97–98, 125, 154, 194, 210, 220, 233, 255, 265, 275, 278, 313
managers of, 136
Pitching staff of, 7, 102, 128–30, 136–42, 225
shortstops of, 249
in World Series, 4, 34
Plank, Eddie, 252
Player-managers, 26–27
_Playing the Field_ (Kaplan), 275
Plimpton, George, 107–108
Polo Grounds, 32, 203, 265, 307
Polonia, Luis, 66, 281
Powell, Boog, 238
Power hitters, 169, 171–72, 301
bats used by, 196–97
batting order and, 178
Pitchers and, 95, 120
See also Home runs
Prince, Bob, 278
Public policy, 322
Puckett, Kirby, 165–66, 178, 191
Putouts, 241, 272–73
assists and, 273
by catchers, 94
records for, 275–77
by shortstops, 233
Quickness, 249, 255, 281
Quisenberry, Dan, 136
Radio, revenues from, 308
Raines, Tim, 93, 137, 182, 187, 218
Randolph, Willie, 69
Range factor, 273, 276
Raschi, Vic, 248
Rawlings (baseball manufacturer), 47
Reagan, Ronald, 159
Reardon, Jeff, 135
Reese, Pee Wee, 238, 248, 275
Reitz, Heinie, 305–306
Release times, 15, 66, 179, 185–87, 189
Relief pitchers, 12, 89, 130–42, 299, 303
Reserve clause, 311
Rettenmund, Merv, 200
Reuschel, Rick, 24, 186
Richard, J. R., 300
Richards, Paul, 25
Rice, Jim, 14, 50, 61, 197
Rickey, Branch, 28, 138, 210, 243, 246, 248–49
Riddoch, Greg, 185, 187–89
Rigney, Bill, 49, 227, 279, 306
Ripken, Billy, 231–32, 272
Ripken, Cal, Jr., 13, 62, 210, 221, 231–32, 233–36, 239, 245–54, 256–59, 279, 281–91, 306, 323
advance scouts and, 281
on All-Star teams, 250
and base-stealing, 260–61
and bunting, 262
consecutive games played by, 285–86
double plays by, 231, 272
gloves used by, 264
and park conditions, 266–70
pitchers and, 244–47
quickness of, 249
Ripken, Cal, Sr., 231, 235, 243
Rizzuto, Phil, 29, 248
Roberts, Robin, 265
Robinson, Brooks, 238, 243, 249, 283, 317
Robinson, Frank, 17–18, 48, 231, 238, 253, 267, 317, 318
Robinson, Jackie, 84, 127, 183, 184, 238, 306, 318
Robinson, Jeff, 136, 137
Robinson, Wilbert, 29, 236
Rockefeller, John D., I ll
Rockne, Knute, 328
Rodgers, Buck, 18
Rookie of the Year awards, 287
Rose, Pete, 134, 164, 176, 228, 232, 238, 284
Rosen, Al, 217, 302, 305, 309
Roster, formation of, 8
Rotator cuff injuries, 143–44
Royals Stadium, 174
Rule changes, 102–107, 190
Run creation, 170–71
Run differentials, 36–37
Runge, Ed, 214
Runs batted in (RBIs), 35–36, 105, 171, 224, 296–98
by shortstops, 249, 287
Ruppert, Jacob, 319
Rusie, Amos Wilson ("The Hoosier Thunderbolt"), 103
Russell, Bill, 228
Ruth, Babe, 64, 127, 208, 238, 239, 296, 297, 318–19
base-stealing by, 70
home runs hit by, 32, 48, 175, 182, 183, 210, 297, 301, 318
as pitcher, 32, 237
weight of bat used by, 196
in World Series, 34
Ryan, Nolan, 87, 97, 107, 110, 115–16, 189, 241, 273, 299–301
Saberhagen, Bret, 88, 135
Sacrifices, 10, 37, 42, 44, 171, 172, 232
Sahl, Mort, 110
Sain, Johnny, 127
St. Louis Browns, 120, 165, 173, 237, 239, 272, 310, 311
St. Louis Cardinals, 91, 94, 248, 306, 320
attendance record of, 307
farm system of, 302
Gold Gloves won by, 243
home runs hit by, 170, 209
managers of, 26, 123, 246
pitching staff of, 105, 116, 117, 133, 203, 301
Shortstops with, 274, 283
stolen bases by, 187
in World Series, 3, 43, 170, 178, 304, 313
Salaries
coaches', 303
players', 309–11
San Diego State Univ., 196
Saltwell, Salty, 312
Sandberg, Ryne, 88, 255–56, 269–70
Sanderson, Scott, 177
San Diego Clippers, 165
San Diego Padres, 21, 83, 162, 166, 169–71, 177–79, 200, 215, 220, 224, 225, 230, 284, 302
draft picks of, 198
groundskeeper for, 269–70
in League Championship Series, 98
managers of, 129, 211–12
pitching staff of, 133, 186, 303–304
Stolen bases by, 187, 189
San Diego School of Baseball, 108, 162
San Francisco Giants, 1, 117, 154, 191, 213, 217, 278, 311
attendance record of, 307
draft picks of, 124–25
groundskeeper for, 267–68, 270
home runs hit by, 33, 170, 171, 278
managers of, 16, 18, 23, 49, 52
pitching staff of, 119, 125, 142, 232
stolen bases by, 171
in World Series, 54, 314
Santiago, Benito, 21, 186, 302
Santo, Ron, 33
Saves, 112, 133–37
Sax, Steve, 49, 79, 82
Schaefer, Germany, 71
Schmidt, Mike, 205, 317
Schoendienst, Red, 209, 217
Schroeder, Jay, 309
Schueler, Ron, 9, 11, 15
Schwab, Matty, 267–68
_The Science of Hitting_ (Williams), 173
Scioscia, Mike, 91–97, 157, 158
Score, Herb, 114, 200, 300
Scott, Everett, 285
Scott, George C, 212
Scott, Mike, 93, 94, 97, 101, 109, 118, 148, 182, 300
Scouting of potential players, 8
See also Advance scouting
Scuffed balls, 99–101
Seattle Mariners, 9, 10, 15, 75, 126, 199, 200, 241, 268, 311, 314–15
Seattle Seahawks, 290
Seaver, Tom, 77, 116, 142, 149–50, 152, 298
Sellers, Jeff, 12
Seventh-inning stretch, 172
Sewell, Joe, 197
Shea Stadium, 174, 215, 216, 266, 270
Sheridan, Pat, 280
Shortstops, 13, 113, 233, 244, 246–57, 261, 270, 274, 281–91
bunts and, 80
in Hall of Fame, 275
stolen bases and, 73
Show, Eric, 177
"Showing bunt," 10, 35, 71
Shutouts, 83, 105, 110, 125, 149, 298, 299
Siebert, Sonny, 126
Signs, 10–12, 17–20, 50–51, 52–54, 91, 94, 209, 227
for base-stealing, 54–55
defense and, 254
Shaking off, 94, 119
Simmons, Ted, 94
Simpson, Suitcase, 16
Sinkers, 91, 96, 117, 207
Sisler, George, 26, 237, 318
"Situation baseball," 68, 303
Sliders, 12, 109–10, 122, 152–53, 205, 207
batters hit by, 62
Slumps, 162, 166–67
Smalley, Roy, 219, 248
Smith, Al, 228
Smith, Lee, 135, 168, 221–22
Smith, Mayo, 304
Smith, Ozzie, 204, 242, 251, 270, 274, 283, 317
Smith, Red, 259
Smithson, Mike, 63–64
Snider, Duke, 33, 209, 238
Snyder, Jimmy ("The Greek"), 226
Soccer, 129
Spahn, Warren, 1, 99, 125, 127, 150, 192, 213, 218, 298, 320
_Spalding Base Ball Guide_ , 293
Speaker, Tris, 26, 238, 276, 282
Speed, 32, 48
artificial turf and, 31, 117
defense and, 235
errors and, 182
power and, 301
quickness vs., 249
Spitballs, 99
"Split-finger" fastball, 108–109, 129, 137, 152–53, 173
_Sporting News_ , 136
_Sports Illustrated_ , 92, 198, 267
Sportsman's Park, 265
Spring Training, 17, 67, 74–75, 106, 138, 144, 170, 185, 211, 234, 244, 259
Squeeze plays, 18, 61, 82, 262
Stanford Univ., 244
Stanley, Bob, 12
Stanky, Eddie, 306, 307
Stargell, Willie, 5–6, 98, 138, 205, 317
Station-to-station teams, 41
Statistics
defense, 271–74
pitching, 127
Steinbach, Terry, 20, 21, 54, 72
Stengel, Casey, 28, 29, 207, 214, 237, 243, 250, 259, 278
Mets managed by, 110
Yankees managed by, 16, 84, 236, 260
Stephens, Vern, 249, 297
Step-off moves, 19
Stewart, Dave, 61, 68, 85
Stewart, Potter, 1
Stieb, Dave, 39, 84
Stolen bases, 32–34, 37, 48, 50–51, 54, 56, 66–74, 165–68, 171–73, 178–89, 228, 274, 301–302
defense and, 236, 247, 260–61, 264, 290–91
groundskeepers and, 267–68
pitching and, 69–74, 93
signs for, 54–55
single-season record for, 213
statistics and, 272
Stone, Steve, 128
Stottlemyre, Mel, 224
Strawberry, Darryl, 78, 81, 155, 157, 259
Streaks, 78, 82–86, 90, 218, 233
Strikeouts, 61, 85, 115–16, 126, 145, 190
batters with fewest, 197, 212
broken bats and, 200
defense vs., 241, 244
records for, 87, 115, 299–301
rules changes and, 103
walks vs., 149, 167
Strike zone, 91, 92, 106–107, 147–49, 169, 173–74, 242–43
aluminum bats and, 200–201
charts of, 22–23
Sukeforth, Clyde, 304
Sullivan, Frank, 193
Sunday, Billy, 281
Supreme Court, U.S., 1, 106, 133, 307
Sutcliffe, Rick, 222
Sutter, Bruce, 133, 135, 142
Swimming, competitive, 129
Swindell, Greg, 110–25, 198
Swoboda, Ron, 116
Taft, William Howard, 172
Tanana, Frank, 112, 283
Tebbetts, Birdie, 264
Tekulve, Kent, 133
Television, 224, 305
revenues from, 308, 310–11
and stealing signs, 53
Templeton, Garry, 94
Terrell, Walt, 269
Terry, Bill, 197
Tettleton, Mickey, 253
Texas, Univ. of, 118, 122–24, 198
Texas Lutheran Coll., 123
Texas Rangers, 20, 65–67, 110, 118, 120, 127, 144, 199, 269, 300, 302–303, 307, 311
Thatcher, Margaret, 159
_A Thinking Man's Guide to Baseball_ (Koppett), 25, 176
Thorn, John, 102, 107, 298
Thomas, Roy, 190
Thompson, Hank, 306
Thomson, Bobby, 49, 307, 312
Three Rivers Stadium, 138–39, 158, 200
Throw-overs, 17, 19, 54, 119, 136
Thurber, James, 276
Thurmond, Mark, 231
Tiant, Luis, 115, 126
Tiger Stadium, 57, 269, 272
Toronto Blue Jays, 41, 52, 84, 92, 231–34, 239, 243, 245, 270, 289, 307, 312, 314
Total average (TA), 167–68
Trades, 31, 163, 178
Trammell, Alan, 251, 269, 283
Trautwein, John, 12
Traynor, Pie, 138
Trebelhorn, Tom, 49, 54–56, 121, 280, 301
Triple-A ball, 12, 221, 304
Triple plays, 232
unassisted, 255
Tudor, John, 85, 203–204, 242
Tunis, John, 235
Turley, Bob, 208
Turner, Ted, 311
Ueberroth, Peter, 58, 308, 310
Umpires, 6, 173, 288
balk rule and, 183, 189
hectoring of, 306
and inside pitches, 96
strike zones of, 91, 92, 106–107, 148, 169, 173–74, 200–201
warnings from, 63–64
Unearned runs, 232, 235, 262
Updike, John, 5, 328
_USA Today_ , 202
Valenzuela, Fernando, 95
Van Gogh, 226
Vaughan, Arky, 138, 275, 287
Veeck, Bill, 139, 173, 214, 296, 306–307
Viola, Frank, 39, 86–88, 112
Violence, impulsive, 100
Voiselle, Bill, 145
Waddell, Rube, 252, 310
Wagner, Honus, 138, 248–49, 287, 310
Waite, Charles, 262–63
Walk, Bob, 225
Walks, 120, 140, 149, 190, 274
aluminum bats and, 199
intentional, 232, 253
on-base percentage and, 171
rule changes on, 102–103
strikeouts vs., 149, 167
Walsh, Big Ed, 128
Wambsganss, Bill, 255
Waner, Lloyd ("Little Poison"), 34, 138, 214, 277
Waner, Paul ("Big Poison"), 34, 138, 214
Ward, Monte, 28
"Warning-track power," 172
Waseleski, Chuck, 191
Washington, George, 111
_Washington Post_ , 294
Washington Senators, 132, 298–99
Watson, Bob, 17–18
Weaver, Earl, 26, 30–31, 40, 44, 99, 130, 167, 246, 247, 269, 279, 324
Weiss, Walter, 14, 62, 289
Welch, Mickey, 127
Wertz, Vic, 84
Westrum, Wes, 4, 8
Weyer, Lee, 148
Whitaker, Lou, 269
White, Devon, 283
White, Frank, 290
Whitt, Ernie, 290
Wichita State Univ., 202
Wiggins, Alan, 178–80, 220
Wiley, Mark, 112, 117, 119
Wilhelm, Hoyt, 132–33
Will, Geoffrey, 304
Williams, Billy, 33
Williams, Ted, 5, 85, 175, 196, 205, 275, 281, 301, 317, 320, 327–30
batting average of, 132, 166, 330
home runs hit by, 301
RBIs of, 297
on strike zone, 173–74
Williamson, Mark, 253
Wills, Maury, 32, 72, 182, 183, 267, 268
Wilson, Don, 116
Wilson, Hack, 298
Wilson, Mookie, 78, 80, 81, 83, 155
Wilson, Willie, 291
Winfield, Dave, 20
Won-lost records, 86, 103, 105, 109, 112, 115, 119, 127, 134, 149, 159, 314
Woodson, Tracy, 78, 79, 82
World Series, 39, 42, 270, 308, 311–13
designated hitter in, 58
1905, 299
1908, 117
1912, 282
1914, 248, 314
1918, 117
1919, 104
1920, 197, 255
1927, 34
1934, 3
1954, 84
1955, 33
1956, 33, 84
1957, 99
1959, 32–33
1960, 275
1961, 33
1962, 268
1964, 212
1966, 238
1970, 282
1975, 210–11
1979, 4, 128
1980, 311
1982, 43, 313
1983, 128, 238, 239, 282
1985, 178, 313
1986, 12, 42, 58, 134, 207
1987, 134–35, 170, 282–83, 304, 313
1988, 4, 16–17, 19, 48–49, 51–52, 54, 65, 77, 83, 92, 94, 145, 156, 158, 313
1989, 28, 54, 232, 305, 314
World War I, 298
World War II, 150, 214, 298, 311
Worrell, Todd, 133
Wright, Craig R., 127, 301
Wrigley Field, 56, 117, 118, 272
Wynn, Early, 98, 115, 132
Yale Univ., 5, 195
Yankee Stadium, 175, 214
Yardley, Jonathan, 316
Yastrzemski, Carl, 105, 174, 213, 224, 317
York, Rudy, 16
Young, Cy, 103, 127, 129, 149, 298
Young, Gerald, 16, 93, 182
Yount, Robin, 55, 280
# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Bill Rosen of Macmillan is a splendid rarity, an editor who knows more than the writer does about the writer's subject but who is too gracious to prove it too often.
Michael Erlinger and Russ Jaeger are currently students at Georgetown University and tomorrow can be anything they want to be if they apply to their vocations the diligence that they applied to checking the numbers in this volume. Their diligence was supplemented by David Hallstrom's. Not since Tinker, Evers and Chance has such an awesome trio teamed up to stamp out errors. Mary Moschler fields line drives all day long in my office with the aplomb of a Cal Ripken, thereby making it possible for me to pay attention to him. Again, as always, I owe much (time, for example, and efficiency) to my assistant, Dusa Gyllensvard. She organized the complicated itineraries and many interviews that made this book possible. I believe that if today I said, "Dusa, I must speak with Honus Wagner," she would say "You shall," and I would. Come to think of it...
Gail Thorin was the closer on this project, coming in from the bull pen and getting a save. As her reward, she learned the meaning of "closer" and "save." She already knew the meaning of "bull pen," I think.
Seymour Siwoff and the other encyclopedic minds at the Elias Bureau answered every question I threw at them. Any errors remaining in this book are evidence that I did not throw enough. Concerning three subjects—the designated hitter rule, the mysterious matter of a ball player being "overdue" and the movie _Bull Durham_ —I have drawn upon a few paragraphs of my writings that have appeared elsewhere.
Finally, thanks to all the baseball people—players, managers, front office personnel, writers and broadcasters—who were so generous with their time and teaching. They gave me a wide window on their world. I thank them all for admission to their society, for the benefit of their instruction and, most of all, for the pleasure of their company.
# ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George F. Will's column appears in more than four hundred newspapers nationwide. His work also appears biweekly in _Newsweek_. Will is a commentator for ABC News and the author of twelve books in addition to _Men at Work_. He was educated at Trinity College in Connecticut, Oxford University, and Princeton University. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
# _Acclaim for_ Men at Work _by George F. Will_
**_"Men at Work_** **goes up on my short shelf of essential texts**.... It's a hit—a triple off the center-field wall, perhaps—and there's not much for me to do here except join the standing O.... Will is a talented listener, but the best voice in this book is his own.... Baseball rewards the stayer, and I am delighted to have stayed around long enough to receive this fresh gift from the game."
—Roger Angell, _The New Yorker_
**"There is something to learn on every page. The sweep and range is without precedent.** Will himself is a craftsman of considerable magnitude, an angel at the typewriter."
— _Chicago Tribune_
**"Will has well honored this fragile, elegant, rough, exacting sport**. [The players and managers] talked with full and fine intelligence about their artful labors to a man who knew what questions to ask."
_—New York Times Book Review_
**"Gets my vote as this season's baseball book of choice."**
—Frederick C. Klein, _Wall Street Journal_
**"Terrific**.... [Will got] himself invited to sessions that a mere sports-writer wouldn't have been allowed near. And clearly he did a lot of interviewing, extracting information that even the best-informed baseball fan will find illuminating."
—Joseph Nocera, _New Republic_
**"Will defends the game as eloquently as anyone who ever collected a bubblegum card or caught a foul ball**. _Men at Work_ is not an ivory tower book. Will crisscrossed America's locker rooms in search of baseball 's secrets."
_—Los Angeles Times_
**"Hardcore baseball presented in a fluent style.** Sure to instill in readers a greater appreciation of what is required to master the sport at the major league level, therefore providing a deeper understanding of the foundation of the game."
— _Library Journal_
**"An amazing book**...[with] a quantity of detailed knowledge that is absolutely astounding. One wonders when George Will has the time to pay attention to politics."
— _National Review_
**"Endlessly fascinating and revealing**.... Will tells you much about each of these men that you are unlikely to have read in the daily sports pages, even if you are an avid fan who reads a good sports section every day."
— _Los Angeles Times Book Review_
**"An intelligent book by one of America's most intelligent writers**. Will's love for baseball shines through in this witty, insightful look at four of the game's skilled artisans.... Will is terrific at getting inside the heads of his subjects and taking the reader there."
_—Cleveland Plain Dealer_
**"Absorbing**.... [Will] combines an incisive writing style with his great love of baseball to offer a gritty look at the skills involved and a greater perspective on the game."
— _San Francisco Chronicle_
**"A delight**. Will has done his homework and even well-informed fans can gain things from him."
— _Boston Globe_
**"A fascinating book which should challenge the most avid fan."**
_—Los Angeles Daily News_
**_"Men at Work_** **might stand among the best books written on the mechanics of the game**. Will has done a masterful job of reporting, not just in speaking with living masters of the game but in probing the musty depths of baseball history."
— _Richmond Times-Dispatch_
**"A rock solid look at the game**. Will accomplishes what he no doubt has wanted to do for a long time: write a baseball book with style and authority. He definitely succeeds."
— _Booklist_
**"A fascinating book** about the serious business of baseball. [Will's] got the intelligence to ask the right questions and the patience to really listen to the answers.... A fine piece of work that doesn't take anything for granted."
— _Trenton Times_
**"Impressive**.... Even the most sophisticated of baseball fans is likely to find something new in here. Will has patiently and skillfully plumbed the minds and hearts of his four principal subjects and dozens of others, exacting insights the sources themselves may not have even realized."
_—Christian Science Monitor_
**_"Men at Work_** **has all the sweep of the outfield at the old Polo Grounds**. Will's subjects talk shop the way a stonecutter talks marble. Will sees a statue where others see a slab.... Like the game itself, Will's book is a team effort and he has managed extremely well."
_—San Diego Tribune_
**"Will shows himself to be a master** at enticing players into particularly enlightening discussions. The reader is left with a vivid understanding of how the game is played and the extraordinary talent and dedication required."
— _Publishers Weekly_
# Copyright
HARPER
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following:
_The Crack-Up_ by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Copyright © 1945 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. "The Sporting Scene—Hard Times (The Movie)" by Roger Angell from _The New Yorker_. Copyright © 1988. Reprinted by special permission. All rights reserved. "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" from _Assorted Prose_ by John Updike. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
_The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract_ by Bill James. Reprinted by permission of Villard Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
"Seven and a Half Cents" from _The Pajama Came_. Reprinted by permission of Richard Adler Music and J. and J. Roth Company. Administered by the Songwriters Guild of America.
The _Bill Durham_ screenplay by Ron Shelton. Reprinted courtesy of Orion Pictures Corporation.
A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 1990 by Macmillan Publishing Company. It is reprinted here by arrangement with Macmillan Publishing Company.
MEN AT WORK. Copyright © 1990, 2010 by George F. Will.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITON PUBLISHED 1991.
FIRST HARPER PAPERBACK PUBISHED 2010.
EPub Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780062007759
The Library of Congress catalogued the previous edition as follows:
Will, George F.
Men at work: the craft of baseball / George F. Will.—1st Harper Perennial ed.
p. cm,
Originally published: New York : MacMillan : London : Collier MacMillian, cl990.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-06-097372-2 (pbk.)
1. Baseball—United States—History I. Title.
GV863.A1W53 1991b
796.357′0973—dc20 90-55518
ISBN 0-06-097372-2
ISBN 978-0-06-199981-9 (pbk.)
10 11 12 13 14 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
# About the Publisher
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} | 3,078 |
Der Jeffries Point ist eine Landspitze von Cook Island im Archipel der Südlichen Sandwichinseln. Sie liegt westsüdwestlich des Longton Point an der Südküste der Insel.
Wissenschaftler der britischen Discovery Investigations kartierten sie 1930 und benannten sie nach Margaret Elsa Deacon (geborene Jeffries, 1903–1966), die in den 1930er Jahren dem Stab der britischen Discovery Investigations angehörte.
Weblinks
(englisch)
Jeffries Point auf geographic.org (englisch)
Kap (Südgeorgien und die Südlichen Sandwichinseln)
Südliche Sandwichinseln | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 7,670 |
SHOOTING VICTORIA
MADNESS, MAYHEM,
_and the_ REBIRTH _of the_
BRITISH MONARCHY
PAUL THOMAS MURPHY
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK LONDON
_To Walter and Olive Murphy_
PREFACE
_S hooting Victoria_ is the narrative history of the seven boys and men who, driven by a variety of inner demons, attacked Queen Victoria on eight separate occasions between 1840 and 1882. And as all but one of her seven would-be assassins attacked her publicly with pistols, _shooting_ Victoria—in the most obvious sense of that action—befits the title of this book.
Actually, however, I had a very different notion of "shooting" as I came up with this title, as well as the overall range and shape of this book. I was, rather, inspired by the title and contents of a frantic and fiery mid-Victorian essay written by the great sage and prophet of the era, Thomas Carlyle. In 1867 Carlyle was alone, his wife Jane having died the year before. He was in the twilight of his career, his greatest works behind him. And he was steeped in despair, certain that his society had erred greatly from the true path. He had become a voice—a strident and powerful one—in the Victorian wilderness. In August 1867, Carlyle responded with horror and loathing to the great national event of that year, if not of the entire era: the passage of the Second Reform Act, which in a stroke doubled the British electorate and greatly increased the voting power of the urban working class—the great "leap in the dark," as Prime Minister Lord Derby put it. Carlyle, who despised democracy as an ideology that rendered any man equal to another—"Judas Iscariot to Jesus Christ... and Bedlam and Gehenna equal to the New Jerusalem"—could only see out-and-out disaster as the immediate consequence of the Act's passage, a national smash-up that he likened to being carried in a boat through the rapids and over a mighty waterfall. The title of his essay is "Shooting Niagara: And After?"—a title that balances nicely Carlyle's dual concern with the disaster itself, and with the consequences of that disaster.
And after? Carlyle could see light after the coming darkness, restoration after the imminent collapse. His faith in his fellow human beings to do right may have diminished over the years. But his belief in an order-loving, chaos-abhorring divinity remained unshaken, and Carlyle proclaimed with certainty that a new and greater social order lay ahead—a new order that would come that much more quickly because of his own society's foolhardy and impetuous actions.
_Shooting_ Victoria, as one would shoot rapids and plunge over the falls: taking on the Queen with a single, desperate, life-changing and world-changing action, leaping into the chaos with no way of knowing or telling what the consequences might be— _shooting_ in this sense more precisely sums up the shape and movement of this narrative, with its dual focus on the disasters themselves, and the consequences of those disasters. For the consequences of the eight attempts unite seven separate stories into one grand epic. As each epic has a hero, so does _Shooting Victoria_ : the Queen herself. For it was the Queen who repeatedly wrestled out of the chaos forced upon her by her would-be assassins a new and a greater order. Victoria, with unerring instinct and sheer gutsiness, converted each episode of near-tragedy into one of triumphant renewal for her monarchy, each time managing to strengthen the bond between herself and her subjects. _Shooting Victoria_ thus documents the important if unwitting parts the Queen's seven assailants played in the great love story between Victoria and the Victorians. Their seven stories have, until now, never been brought together in one book. Victoria's story, on the other hand, has been told innumerable times; no woman of modern times has been more written about. And yet I believe that _Shooting Victoria_ , in presenting Victoria's life for the first time in the context of the attempts upon her life, does contribute something new to our understanding of this truly great queen: Victoria, it becomes clear, was a canny politician who inherited a tainted monarchy and made it her life's work to create anew the stable, modern monarchy that endures to this day. _Shooting Victoria_ traces that course to its triumphant conclusion: a turbulent ride down the rapids—and, I hope, an exhilarating one.
Victoria's seven would-be assassins were all shooting stars: they came from nowhere, burst into the light of public attention for a short time following their attempts, and disappeared back into obscurity, all of them living on, anonymously, for years after their attempts. Penetrating the obscurity of their lives before and after their attempts, therefore, presented quite a challenge and involved a great deal of digging through records in England, Australia, and in the United States. Without a great deal of help with these, I could not have written this book. Much of my research I conducted in Colorado, and I am greatly indebted to the staff at Norlin Library, University of Colorado—and especially Norlin's Interlibrary Loan department—for bringing the world of the seven to me in Boulder. I am grateful as well to the amazingly efficient staffs of the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, and the Public Record Office at Kew. Thanks to Colin Gale at the Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum, and Mark Stevens at the Berkshire Record Office, who enthusiastically provided insight about the Bethlem and Broadmoor Hospital records for Edward Oxford and Roderick Maclean. Thank you to Ruth Roberts, who provided valuable information on Robert Pate, and to Beatrice Behlen, archivist at the Museum of London, who allowed me the wonderful opportunity to hold and examine Victoria's curious chain-mail parasol.
I'm grateful as well to Pam Clark and the diligent and efficient archival staff at Windsor, and for the kind permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to quote material from the Royal Archives. I cannot let this acknowledgement pass, by the way, without noting that Queen Elizabeth showed a great deal of her great-great-grandmother's pluck, and her own instinctive faith in the goodwill of her subjects, when on 13 June 1981 seventeen-year-old Marcus Sergeant fired six blanks at her while she was Trooping the Colour on the Mall, not far from Buckingham Palace. The Queen stopped to calm her horse, and, as Victoria would have done, rode on, refusing absolutely to seek safety or curtail her participation in the ceremony.
I owe thanks as well to those in Australia who assisted me in fleshing out the antipodean afterlives of the five of the seven who were transported—or transported themselves—to Australia in the wake of their attempts. Jenny Sinclair freely shared her abundant knowledge of Edward Oxford's fascinating later life in Melbourne under the alias of John Freeman—knowledge that she is putting to good use in a forthcoming book on the subject. And Carole Riley did a truly amazing job at uncovering the story of Arthur O'Connor's decades in Sydney asylums under the alias George Morton.
I cannot adequately express my gratitude to my good friends in London, who made each research journey to England a joy, and who have been the strongest supporters of this project from the very start. Thanks to Peter Burgess, Tracy Ward, Steve Terrey, Michael Guilfoyle, Nana Anto-Awuakye, John Watts, and—especially—Steve and Nina Button and Linda Gough. Thanks to Charlie Olsen, my agent at Inkwell; his unflagging enthusiasm sustained mine. Claiborne Hancock and the folks at Pegasus have been a pleasure to work with. Thank you Paul Levitt and Elissa Guralnick for giving me whatever ability to write I now have. And thank you Lawrence Goldman for teaching me to think about history. Finally, I am infinitely grateful to my wife Tory Tuttle, who read and commented upon every page of this book before anyone else did, and who for years now has patiently put up with my freeform articulations of the undigested results of my research—enduring all of that chaos before it was wrestled into some kind of order. Thank you. Love you.
" _It is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved_ "
—Queen Victoria, 1882
" _Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it_ "
—John Lydon, 1976
_Part One_
YOUNG ENGLAND
_one_
WEDDING PORTRAIT
On the morning of 4 May 1840, Edward Oxford stepped out of his lodgings in West Place, West Square, at the Lambeth border of Southwark, and set off eastwards into the heart of that densely populated, proletarian district south of the Thames. He was eighteen, though his diminutive stature and baby face made him look much younger. He was—unusually for him—suddenly prosperous, with £5 in his pocket. And, for the first time in ages, he was free: unemployed by choice, and finally able to pursue the ambition that had been driving him for some time. He set off into what Charles Dickens called the "ganglion" of Southwark's twisted streets, his destination a small general goods store on Blackfriars Road.
Behind him lay one of the very rare green expanses within the gritty boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. West Square, where Oxford, quitting his job in the West End, had moved four days before to be with his mother, his sister, and her husband, was one of the very few gardened squares on that side of the river. The square was meticulously maintained and gave this neighborhood an unusual air of gentility. And directly to the west of the square, a stone's throw away, a bucolic English-style garden relieved the area from the surrounding urban sprawl. This greenery, however, was not part of a public park—no such thing existed in Southwark at the time—but rather the connected grounds of two institutions. Directly adjacent to West Square stood the Bridewell House of Occupation, a home and school to indigent children. And behind this rose the cupola of an immense neoclassical building: Bethlem Hospital for the Insane.
Southwark had been for the last twenty-five years the latest location of Bedlam, or Bethlem Hospital, which had held many of London's insane since the fourteenth century. Behind Bethlem's walls operated a carefully structured world within a world designed to deal with different degrees and classifications of insanity. And, at the extremities of the hospital, segregated from the rest of the hospital and, with high walls, from the world outside, lay the feature that made Bethlem unique: it housed England's only purpose-built facility for the criminally insane. Communication between the worlds inside and outside the asylum was largely restricted to sound: the occasional shrieks of the patients might have carried as far as West Square; the clanking and clattering of industrial South London must have intruded upon the disturbed thoughts of the patients.
But on this day, if Edward Oxford was even aware of Bethlem's world within a world, he was headed away from it, literally and figuratively. He had his entire life largely kept himself—his dreams and his plans—to himself. Today, however, that would change. Today, Oxford would take a major step toward recognition by all of London—by the world. Today, he would buy his guns.
Back in his room at West Square, Oxford kept a locked box. When, five weeks later, the police smashed its lock and opened it, they found the cache of a secret society: a uniform of sorts—a crepe cap tied off with two red bows—and, neatly written on two sheets of foolscap, a document listing the rules and regulations of an organization optimistically named "Young England."* The documents revealed Young England to be a highly disciplined insurrectionary body. All members were expected to adopt an alias and to be well armed and prepared for covert military action: "every member shall be provided with a brace of pistols, a sword, a rifle, and a dagger; the two latter to be kept at the committee room." Every member, as well, was expected when necessary to be a master of disguise—ready to play "the labourer, the mechanic, and the gentleman." And, apparently for mutual recognition on the day of the insurrection, every member was to keep "a black crape cap, to cover his face, with the marks of distinction outside." These marks of distinction denoted rank in the organization, and the two red bows on Oxford's cap made him a captain, a position of true command, as captains were members "who can procure an hundred men." Oxford had chosen the rather transparent alias of "Oxonian," one of the four captains named in this document.
It was, on paper, an organization of over four hundred armed members. And when this document became public, many believed Oxford to be a part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to overthrow the Queen's government. But Young England was entirely Oxford's own creation, and this manifesto, though signed by a fictitious secretary Smith, was in Oxford's own handwriting. His hundred troops and the generals existed only in his own mind. This fantasy was to Oxford a compelling—now, controlling—one, for that fantasy gave him a stature wholly denied him in everyday life, as well as a profound sense of self-worth and purpose in a life that heretofore lacked both.
He was in the process of creating and collecting the props with which to support this fantasy. He had the cap. The sword would come. Today he would buy what he needed most to perform fully the role of a Captain of Young England: a matching brace of pistols. The shop selling the pistols was a short walk through Southwark, up the London Road, past the obelisk at St. George's Circle and the philanthropic institutions for the blind and for repentant prostitutes. Oxford likely knew nothing of what went on inside these places, but he did know the streets and the shops of Southwark well. Although he had just moved in with his family, he had lived here as a child, attending school in Lambeth; and, until the age of fourteen, he assisted his mother with a coffee shop she had run on the Waterloo Road. Oxford slipped into the human press traveling up Blackfriars Road, the bustling thoroughfare leading to Blackfriars Bridge and to the City, and ducked into Hayes's general goods store.
He wanted guns that would make an impression, that befit the important plans of Captain Oxford. Style was everything to Oxford, accuracy secondary. Hayes had exactly what he needed: a pair of dueling pistols with handsomely carved stocks. These pistols incorporated the very latest advance in firearms—the percussive cap. For the past two hundred years, most firearms had been flintlocks, on which a snapping, grinding flint would ignite loose powder, which ignited the powder in the barrel of the gun, firing the ball. By the 1830s, and because of refinements in percussive gunpowder—that is, gunpowder that would explode not upon ignition, but upon impact—flintlocks became increasingly obsolete, more and more likely to be found in pawnshops. Newer, flintless pistols fired when a cocked hammer engaged and struck a percussive cap. Like flintlocks, however, these percussive pistols were muzzle-loaded. The pistols Oxford was buying could each be fired only once; to fire again, he would have to reload powder, wadding, and ball through the front of the gun, and replace the percussive cap.
Although dueling was technically illegal, the practice was carried on, Wimbledon Common being a favorite venue. Indeed, just two months before, Prince Louis Napoleon, then in exile in London, was involved in a duel there with his cousin, the Comte Léon—a contest broken up before it started by Inspector Pearce of the Metropolitan Police (whom Oxford would soon meet). Dueling pistols, then, were still available for purchase. But these particular pistols hardly suited the purpose of the duelist, unless that purpose was to miss: they were not weapons of quality. They were priced at two guineas, or 42 shillings—overpriced, according to one gunmaker, who later valued them at less than 30 shillings. Certainly, there were cheaper pistols to be had, but a guinea apiece hardly suggested fine workmanship. Experts would later describe them as "coarsely and roughly finished," designed more for show than effect. They were manufactured in Birmingham, the center of the British firearms industry at the time, but they bore no maker's mark—an obvious sign of their shoddiness. When Charles Dickens later described Oxford's pistols as "Brummagem firearms," he intended to emphasize their utter worthlessness as weapons, virtually guaranteed to miss their targets. Oxford was certainly no expert on firearms, but he must have had some sense of the limitations of these pistols when he asked the young clerk assisting him how far a bullet would carry from them: twenty or thirty yards, he was told.
That was enough for his purpose. What was important was that he look the part: Captain Oxonian, standing steadily as he took one shot, and then another; like a duelist, a highwayman, a bravo—a dashing, handsome, romantic figure, a gentleman worthy of the world's attention. The guns were perfect for that effect. And they were guns that he could afford. With typical Victorian haggling, he bargained down the price of the pistols from 2 guineas (or £2 and 2 shillings) to £2. With the two shillings he saved, he bought a powder-flask and two bags for the pistols. The clerk took Oxford's money and entered the transaction on a slate, which his employer, Mr. Hayes, logged into his account book the next day.
Oxford made his way back past the obelisk and through the warren of side streets, to 6 West Square. Though the lodgings, kept by Mrs. Packman, were new to Oxford, his mother, his sister, and his brother-in-law had been living there for some time. Their choice of residence suggests a position of some comfort in the upper ranks of the working class, at least. A clergyman lived there, as did some of the professionals who staffed Bethlem. Oxford's mother, Hannah, had attempted a number of businesses of her own—a public house, a coffee shop—but all had eventually failed. Others in her family were more successful, however, and helpful to her: she apparently supported herself with a legacy. Oxford's brother-in-law, William Phelps, husband of his older sister, Susannah, was a baker who worked at a local soda-water factory but was on the verge of a major career change: he was days away from joining the Metropolitan Police. Oxford's family, then, fit the upscale proletarian precincts of West Street. Oxford himself, however, was far less comfortably situated. He had engaged with Mrs. Packman for a separate room, and for a separate rent. Oxford had no legacy, and no employment. The rent would quickly prove too much for him to pay, and he would very soon fall into arrears.
Oxford found his mother Hannah at home and lost no time showing her his pistols. While she knew nothing of his locked box of secrets, she did know of his childhood obsession with gunpowder and weaponry, remembering his fascination with toy cannons and remembering the arm injury he suffered as a boy, nearly blowing himself up while playing with fire and gunpowder, burning his eyebrows off and keeping him up for two nights screaming with pain. She knew, as well, that her child ached to be somebody. He had often spun out for her grandiose plans to rise in the world. A favorite dream of his came straight out of Captain Marryat's then-popular novels—the very sort of fiction Oxford loved to read. He would join the Royal Navy and move quickly up the ranks. "He said he would allow me half his pay," Hannah would later say in court, "and how proud I should be of my son when I saw his name in the papers, Admiral Sir Edward Oxford!" All he needed to realize that ambition, he told her, would be a midshipman's place, which he could obtain for £50. He had begged her to return to her family in Birmingham to get it for him. On this day, he proudly showed her his pistols as a sign of his higher stature and a promise of his coming renown.
She was not pleased. Her son had just given up his job as a barman at the Hog in the Pound, a popular public house on Oxford Street across the river. Hannah had been exhorting him to find a job since he moved in, but he made it clear to her that he was in no hurry to do that: "He said nothing was stirring, and he should rather wait till a good place offered itself than answer advertisements." And now he had wasted a huge portion of his £5—a full quarter's pay for a barman—on these pistols. "How could you think of laying your money out in such folly!" she cried out, exasperated. Oxford, humiliated, lied to her. He had not paid for these new pistols, he explained; he was simply holding them for a friend.
And then, as often happened, the shame and inadequacy he felt turned to a blind rage, the sort of rage that had previously manifested itself in his breaking anything that he could grab hold of. His mother simply could not understand how important these pistols were to him, could not understand that he was not just a barman and was not destined to live a barman's life. He was not a servant; he was _Oxonian_ , Captain of Young England!
He raised one of the pistols and pointed it, cocked, at his mother's face.
That same day—4 May 1840—a diminutive young woman sat quietly a mile and a half across the River Thames in her home in the very greenest part of London, while an artist sketched her face. Queen Victoria was only two years older than Edward Oxford, a few weeks away from her twenty-first birthday. For the last three years she had sat on the British throne. The artist was her current favorite, George Hayter, who, as her official portrait painter, had depicted many of the important events in her short life. He had, at the request of her Uncle Leopold, painted her when she was a thirteen-year-old princess and heir apparent. He had painted her with her court in full pomp at her 1838 coronation. And, most famously, he had in 1838 depicted her as every inch a queen, yet very much an innocent, in her state portrait: she sits, enthroned and crowned, in a flowing, virginal white dress bedecked with the heavy robes of state, gazing to the side and upwards beyond her scepter with a hint of a wide-eyed surprise interrupting her placidity, as if she contemplated the many coming years of her reign with wonder and confidence.
And now, Hayter was sketching her for another commemoration of an important event in her reign—indeed, a turning point: Victoria's marriage to Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which had taken place just three months before. Hayter was this time intent on capturing a very different Victoria than he had in the state portrait. In the finished wedding portrait, Victoria and Albert stand together, surrounded by and yet apart from the crowd. Victoria is dressed in white satin, a circlet of white flowers in her hair; Albert is dressed in the brilliant red uniform of a British field marshal. To Victoria's other side stands her beaming uncle, the Duke of Sussex, who gave her away, and to Albert's side stands Victoria's mother (and his aunt), the Duchess of Kent, staring intently forward. The rest of the guests form a semicircle around the wedding party, the men generally in red uniforms and the women in white, imperfectly reflecting the colors of the royal couple: Victoria and Albert literally shine in the spotlight created by the rays of the sun as they pour through an upper window of the Chapel Royal of the Palace of St. James. Victoria's expression is very much as it was in the state portrait, gazing upward in surprise and wonder. But the object of her gaze has changed completely: instead of contemplating an unseen and solitary future, it is Albert alone who is the object of her attention.
Victoria was in love with Albert, deeply and wholly, and she had no doubt whatsoever that the marriage to him was good, and right, not only for herself but for the nation as well, elevating her and it into something greater. The day after her wedding, she wrote from Windsor to her (and Albert's) Uncle Leopold, to proclaim as much:
I write to you from here the happiest, happiest Being that ever existed. Really, I do not think it possible for any one in the world to be happier, or as happy as I am. He is an Angel, and his kindness and affection for me is really touching. To look in those dear eyes, and that dear sunny face, is enough to make me adore him. What I can do to make him happy will be my greatest delight. Independent of my great personal happiness, the reception we both met with yesterday was the most gratifying and enthusiastic I ever experienced; there was no end of the crowds in London, and all along the road.
Her new attachment, however, did not come without its confusions and potential problems. Albert was her husband and, by the domestic ideals of the time, her master, but she was Queen, with a powerful and jealous sense of her royal prerogative, as well as the firm resolve of her royal uncles and her grandfather, George III. Albert, too, could be inflexible about principle. How much authority would he have over her? What authority would he bring to the monarchy? Could he rule the household while she ruled the nation? These were questions that the young couple was to wrestle with, at times with great tension, over the coming years.
On this day, Albert was away, at the Royal Dockyard at Woolwich, reviewing the Royal Artillery, leaving Victoria alone with Hayter. The subject for which she was posing offered the perfect occasion to consider how much things had changed over the past three years—and how much she had changed since she became Queen. Now, Albert was everything to her; but on the day she came to the throne, Victoria finally knew what it was to be _alone_ , and she relished the feeling. Victoria's childhood had been an unceasing struggle for personal autonomy and, with the death of her uncle King William IV, she had finally achieved it. Her childhood experience had instilled within her a hardened resolve that she would keep the monarchy entirely to herself.
She had been locked in that bitter battle for autonomy since before she could remember, and it had rendered her privileged childhood utterly miserable. Her father, the Duke of Kent, had died when she was eight months old, leaving her in a direct line of succession to the throne. If her three uncles George IV, Frederick Duke of York, and William Duke of Clarence did not bear any legitimate children, she would become Queen. Victoria's widowed mother, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, Duchess of Kent, inherited her husband's debts along with the general disdain her royal brothers-in-law had shown him: she was a foreigner and an outsider, and very much wished to return to Saxe-Coburg. Her brother Leopold persuaded her not to for her daughter's sake. She stayed, and found much needed support in the man the Duke of Kent called "my very intelligent factotum," Sir John Conroy, late captain of His Majesty's army. Before long, Conroy, wildly ambitious, deeply unscrupulous, and with the tongue of an Iago, had rendered the Duchess wholly dependent upon him. As time passed, the likelihood of Victoria's becoming queen grew. George IV would never have another child with his estranged wife, Caroline, and was unlikely to remarry. The Duke of York resolved to remain unmarried and, in any case, died in 1828. The Duke of Clarence—who had ten illegitimate children—rested all of his hopes of an heir in his wife, Adelaide, who seemed unable to produce anything but stillbirths or sickly infants who soon died. George and William were by now old men, quite likely to die before Victoria had attained her majority. To Conroy, then, a glittering political prospect became more and more likely: he could rule Britain through the Duchess, who would almost certainly become Regent. That prospect became even more likely when, soon after the Duke of Clarence became King William IV in 1830, the Duchess of Kent was legally designated Regent in the event that William died before Victoria's majority.
In order to realize his dream of power, however, Conroy needed to monitor, manipulate, and control Victoria, rendering her wholly dependent upon her mother. He created, to this end, a carefully-thought-out plan for the sensitive child's upbringing that was nothing less than an oppressive internment. The Duchess would have complete control over Victoria's acquaintances, her finances, her whereabouts, and her course of study. Moreover, Victoria would be presented to the public as a complete contrast to her royal uncles: as young and virtuous in comparison to them, who with their mistresses and their excesses epitomized aging vice, the moral darkness of an earlier age. The contrast was a political as well as a moral one: Victoria's uncles were, for the most part, uncompromising Tories, while the Duchess sympathized with the Whigs. Conroy devised to present Victoria as the embodiment of a new hope and a new age.
This system under which Victoria suffered became known as the "Kensington System." Conroy and the Duchess hand-picked Victoria's teachers, companions, and observers. Their choice for Victoria's governess turned out to be a grievous disappointment to them: the Hanoverian Baroness Lehzen. As Victoria grew, she and Lehzen formed an emotional bond that triumphed over Conroy's colder manipulation: Lehzen became totally devoted to the child—at times, it seemed to Victoria, her sole ally in her struggle against her mother and Conroy. For companions, Conroy imposed his two daughters upon her; Victoria despised them. A later companion forced upon her was the Duchess's Lady-in-Waiting, Lady Flora Hastings, thirteen years older than the Princess. Victoria was never allowed to be alone; she slept in a small bed in her mother's room, and could not walk down a flight of stairs without taking the hand of another. Victoria would have no money of her own; when, as Victoria approached her eighteenth birthday, the King attempted to put £10,000 a year "entirely in her power and disposal," the Duchess responded with rage, on Conroy's advice drafting a letter rejecting the offer, which she forced Victoria to copy and send to the king. ("Victoria has not written that letter," William realized.)
When Victoria was thirteen, Conroy began to build Victoria's image—in part, at the expense of her uncles'—in a new way: he sent her out on a number of "journeys" throughout the country. Conroy proposed to have her interact with the British public on all levels. Victoria visited towns and traveled throughout England, with all the trappings of royal visits—crowds of well-wishers, welcoming bands, floral decorations, addresses to and from the Princess and the Duchess—and in one case a royal salute by cannon, a practice King William quickly put a stop to. Conroy hoped to provide a connection between Victoria and the people—a connection between public and monarch that had largely been severed over the past few decades, with the madness and isolation of George III and the notorious disdain to the public shown by George IV as Regent and as King. Her predecessor, William IV, began his reign by resisting this seclusion, habitually strolling through the streets of London and mingling with passersby. The tension between monarch and public over the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, however, encouraged William, too, to isolate himself from the public for the rest of his reign.
These journeys taught Victoria much more about her country and its people than she could learn in the isolation of her Kensington Palace classroom. She was able to experience first-hand the wide social range of the 1830s, from the foxhunting and country-house world of the gentry in whose homes she stayed, to the middle-class ceremonial of the towns, to the hard social reality of the poor tossed in the tempest of industrial upheaval. Victoria began her lifelong journaling during the first of these journeys, and, in one of her earliest entries, she writes of the mining district outside of Birmingham:
We just passed through a town where all coal mines are and you see the fire glimmer at a distance in the engines in many places. The men, women, children, country and houses are all black.... The country is very desolate every where; there are coals about, and the grass is quite blasted and black. I just now see an extraordinary building flaming with fire. The country continues black, engines flaming, coals, in abundance, every where, smoking and burning coal heaps, intermingled with wretched huts and carts and little ragged children.
A perceptive observer, Victoria as Queen always demonstrated her greatest empathy for her subjects when she could be among them.
Victoria did not like the journeys; she suffered from bad health for much of these years, and found them extremely fatiguing. Though she was affectionate and inquisitive, her sensitivity and shyness rendered the progressions painful. It certainly did not help that Conroy maintained an oppressive control over her every movement. However selfish and despicable Conroy was in thrusting the young girl before the public, however, he taught her the key lesson for creating and preserving popularity for the tainted monarchy she would inherit: a regular, open, and completely trusting interaction with every level of her public. Encouraging her daughter to embark on a tour in 1835, the Duchess of Kent revealed more, perhaps, than she realized: "it is of the greatest consequence that you should be seen, that you should know your country, and be acquainted with, and be known by all classes."
Victoria's uncle William resented the journeys immensely, knowing very well that their object was to separate in the public eye the young child from the old man. He resented as well Conroy's and the Duchess's removing the child from Court whenever possible: William and his wife Adelaide had a great deal of affection for Victoria (and she for them), but Conroy intended his Kensington System to strain the relationship between present and future monarch—and it did. Matters came to a head at the King's seventy-fifth birthday party, at which the seventeen-year-old Victoria and her mother were guests, along with Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence, one of William's many bastard sons, who recorded the scene. William turned venomously upon the Duchess, chastising her publicly for isolating the Princess from him—and vowing to ruin the Duchess's and Conroy's plans:
I trust in God that my life may be spared for nine months longer, after which period, in the event of my death, no Regency would take place. I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the royal authority to the personal exercise of that Young Lady (pointing to the P[rince]ss), the Heiress presumptive of the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which She would be placed.
The King was as good as his word: he lived for a month after Victoria's eighteenth birthday. As it became clear to Conroy that there would be no regency, he attempted desperately to maintain his hold over the Princess beyond her majority by forcing her to take him on as her confidential private secretary. Both Conroy and the Duchess browbeat Victoria, their efforts growing in intensity as William grew more and more ill in the weeks after Victoria's birthday. Victoria, supported by her staunch ally Lehzen, as well as by another supporter sent her by her uncle Leopold—Baron Stockmar—stood her ground.
On 20 June 1837, William died, and with him died the oppressive Kensington System. When, that morning, the Lord Chamberlain and Archbishop of Canterbury came to Victoria with the announcement of her accession—when, soon after, she met the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne—when she then saw the Privy Council, she did all, as she pointedly notes in her journal, " _alone_." By the end of her first day as Queen, she had removed her bed from her mother's room and had dismissed Conroy from her household.
With her mother (and her mother's comptroller) relegated to a distant suite in Buckingham Palace, the young Victoria reigned according to her own will and her own whims. Her beloved Lehzen, whose loyalty to the Queen's interests was beyond question, now occupied her mother's former position: Lehzen and the Queen had adjoining bedrooms. And in political and social matters, the Queen very quickly developed a very close bond with her prime minister, Lord Melbourne, who succeeded where Conroy failed because his personality was antithetical to Conroy's: warm and affectionate, rather than cold and overbearing; a considerate and thoughtful adviser, not an impulsive tyrant. When Victoria took the throne, Melbourne was everything the politically inexperienced Queen could want in her most trusted advisor: a canny political operative with a wealth of political wisdom, able to guide her through the confusions of political etiquette and party strife. She depended upon him from the first day, when, meeting with the Privy Council for the first time, she looked over to him for cues about her behavior. Her dependence grew in the first years of her monarchy, and her affection for him grew apace—as did his for her. Melbourne spent much of his time over the next few years as a fixture of her domestic world: dining regularly at the Palace, playing chess and cards with the Queen's ladies during the evenings; riding with the Queen in Hyde Park in the afternoons. All this time, he contributed to her political education and, as their friendship developed, so Victoria developed a political outlook that reflected her mentor's: Melbourne was a Whig, of course. Victoria, the daughter of one of the few Whigs among the royal Dukes, and who grew up in a Whig atmosphere—the Duchess of Kent being at the center of the Whig opposition of the past few years—had always seen herself a Whig. But Melbourne's Whiggism was a distinct variety: Melbourne was hardly a reformer, and his government sought no major changes, indeed seeing resistance to change, and to any parliamentary struggle, as a positive end in itself. Moreover, Melbourne demonstrated to the Queen an innate cynicism in their everyday conversation that she found charming, recording in her journal with approval his cutting comments about women, about the poor, about the Irish. She drank in his adherence to _laissez-faire_ economics, any violation of which—say, to improve the dire lot of the overworked factory child—was anathema. Surrounded by her Whig ladies in waiting, and in constant communication with her Prime Minister, Victoria became a thorough political partisan in her first years: a Whig, or more accurately a Melbournian.
Her first year, from ascension to coronation, had been a giddy one, in which the nation seemed to share her joy in emerging into a new world—free of the old uncles, the unsullied reign of a young woman. Her eldest surviving uncle, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, had left Britain to take up the throne of Hanover, which, as a woman, Victoria was denied by Salic Law. Good riddance to him; he was the most reactionary of all her uncles: one of his first acts at Hanover was to abolish its constitution. The fact that he was Victoria's heir only served to cause the overwhelming majority of her subjects to wish her a long life, and a fruitful one in every respect. Her popularity during this time was unparalleled, and Parliament testified in its own way to this royal excitement by voting the Queen £200,000 for her coronation, fully four times what had been spent on the coronation of William IV. It was very much a public affair, designed to represent her physical contact with her people, foregoing a closed coronation banquet (as had been the tradition before William IV) for a state procession through the streets of London. The procession echoed Princess Victoria's journeys on a much larger scale, and once again brought home to Victoria the fundamental role that simply being among her subjects would play in the success of her reign:
It was a fine day, and the crowds of people exceeded what I have ever seen; many as there were on the day I went to the City, it was nothing, nothing to the multitudes, the millions of my loyal subjects, who were assembled in every spot to witness the Procession. Their good humour and excessive loyalty was beyond everything, and I really cannot say how proud I feel to be the Queen of such a Nation.
That idyllic relationship could not last forever, of course; and in 1839, in the second year of Victoria's reign, she was personally and politically disturbed by two interrelated scandals at court, as her adamant partisanship and her innate stubbornness together worked to diminish her popularity.
From the start, Victoria preferred to surround herself with sympathetic and loyal ladies—which, in her mind, meant Whig ladies. With Melbourne's encouragement and in the face of Tory protests, she kept her household free of Tories. One exception to this—one that Victoria had little control over—was the Duchess of Kent's Tory lady-in-waiting, the now 32-year-old Lady Flora Hastings, whom Conroy had attempted to impose upon the Princess as a companion years before. Though the Duchess was relegated to a distant part of the Palace, and Conroy effectively banished from the royal presence, Lady Flora Hastings was by her position a part of Court life—and therefore a living reminder to the Queen of the despised Kensington System. Moreover, there were rumors at court that Hastings and Conroy were romantically involved. In January 1839, Lady Flora returned to Court from home (sharing a carriage on the way with Conroy) with a protuberance of her stomach that clearly suggested to Victoria, Lehzen, and the ladies of the bedchamber that she was pregnant. Who exactly started this rumor is unknown, but Victoria was certainly one of the first to think so, recording in her journal her (and Lehzen's) certainty not only that Hastings was " _with child!_!" but that "the horrid cause of all this is the Monster & Demon Incarnate"—Conroy.
Lady Flora was not pregnant. She was ill, with a growth on her liver that would, in a few months, kill her. She had the Duchess of Kent's (and the Queen's) physician, Sir James Clark, examine her, fully clothed; he prescribed rhubarb pills and a liniment, and was himself suspicious that she was pregnant. As suspicions grew, and as the moral welfare of the younger ladies in waiting was apparently being challenged in such a brazen fashion, the senior ladies in waiting—with the encouragement of Baroness Lehzen—took steps to force Lady Flora to prove her innocence, informing the Duchess that Lady Flora was no longer welcome at court unless she did so. The next day, Lady Flora consented to be examined under her clothes by Sir James Clark and another physician, Sir Charles Clark. The Doctors Clark examined her and issued a vindication: Lady Flora, they declared, was a virgin. Victoria immediately wrote her a note of apology.
The matter, however, did not end there. Both Doctors Clark still had their suspicions, and the day after the examination they brought them to Melbourne. Yes, they were sure that Lady Flora was a virgin. Nevertheless, they thought, she still might be pregnant—such a thing had been known to happen. Melbourne clung to this cynical theory of virgin pregnancy, and so did Victoria, writing to her mother that Sir Charles Clark "had said that though she is a virgin still that it might be possible and one could not tell if such things could not happen. There was an enlargement in the womb like a child." The poisonous atmosphere only grew, and so did the rumors; soon, the press was involved, generally very unsympathetic to the Queen. Flora Hastings wrote frank accounts of her plight to her influential Tory relatives, who relayed details to the press. Soon there was a call for an investigation: Who had started this insidious rumor? Lehzen was the primary suspect, and Victoria could not help but think herself the victim of a campaign to remove her closest companion from her Court. (Her fears were only strengthened by the suspicion that Conroy was behind much of the press's clamor.) At the end of March, one of Lady Flora's letters, blaming "a foreign lady"—Lehzen, obviously—appeared in the _Examiner_ : the entire affair, according to Lady Flora, was a Whig plot to discredit herself and the Duchess of Kent.
By May, Lady Flora was gravely ill, but forced herself to go out into public, to dispel any rumors about her immorality. She was cheered, while Victoria found herself and Melbourne were hissed when in public—riding in Hyde Park, and at Ascot, where she was additionally mortified by cries of "Mrs. Melbourne." Melbourne and Victoria held to their suspicions until very close to the end, laughing in early June at the excuse that illness was keeping Lady Flora from Court. When Victoria visited her in person at the end of the month, however, her suspicions were gone: Lady Flora was obviously dying. She died on 5 July 1839. A post-mortem revealed that she had of course never been pregnant. With Lady Flora's death, the newspaper attacks on the Queen redoubled, and her public image was seriously compromised. In accord with the tradition of the time, she sent her empty carriage to Lady Flora's funeral: some threw rocks at it.
In the midst of the Flora Hastings affair came another crisis, of shorter duration in itself, but of longer-lasting consequence. Melbourne's government existed by virtue of a tiny majority; it was sure to fall at any time. In early May 1839, it did, when radicals and Tories combined to defeat the government's motion to impose Parliamentary control over Jamaica. Victoria was thrown into a "state of agony, grief and despair," both at the prospect at losing her Melbourne—whom she would obviously prefer to have as her minister forever—and at the unpleasant prospect of working with his successor. Sir Robert Peel was "stiff" and "close," according to Melbourne. In her first interview with Peel, Victoria found him a complete contrast to Melbourne: he was cold and inflexible—someone, apparently, cut from the Conroy cloth.
Melbourne advised her fully during the negotiations for a new government, and did her a great disservice by appealing to her fierce Whig partisanship, encouraging her to make no changes whatsoever in her household, "except those who are engaged in Politics," by which he meant those male members of her household who were also members of Parliament. Conroy had imposed her companions on her; she should not let Peel do the same. And Melbourne had assured her that by precedent, queens had the power of choice over their ladies. Peel disagreed, holding that precedent—the constitution of the households of earlier queens—did not apply in this case for the simple reason that Victoria was a reigning queen, and for the monarch to surround herself completely with Whig ladies—who, after all, amounted in a sense to her most intimate advisors—during a time of Tory government would signify to the world that the Queen had no confidence whatsoever in that government. Victoria and Peel reached an impasse: unless she replaced the Mistress of the Robes, and some senior Ladies of the Bedchamber, with Tories, he simply could not form a government. Victoria was adamant: as she wrote in her Journal,
Sir Robert said, "Now, about the Ladies," upon which I said I could not give up any of my Ladies, and never had imagined such a thing. He asked if I meant to retain all. "All," I said. "The Mistress of the Robes and the Ladies of the Bedchamber?" I replied, "All."
Melbourne met with Whig leaders and—encouraged by the Queen's stalwart accounts to Melbourne of her interviews with Peel—agreed to form another ministry. The Queen, then, held her ground and kept her Ladies and her beloved Melbourne—for another two years, as it turned out; Melbourne was still her Prime Minister as she sat for Mr. Hayden on this day in May. She would later admit that her partisanship was a mistake, but for now she was happy at the outcome, even though what became known as the Bedchamber Crisis further tarnished her public image and perpetuated a weak, unpopular, do-nothing Parliament.
Criticism of the Queen from the Flora Hastings scandal continued into the fall of 1839. But by that time, Victoria found a complete distraction from the scandal: her cousin Albert came to England.
During the first two years of her reign, Victoria, freed from Conroy's oppression and intoxicated with the autonomy that came with the throne, buttressed with the affectionate support of Lehzen and by "dear" Lord Melbourne, was cool to the idea of marriage, and indeed had made up her mind to delay marriage by two or three years. Her sentiments shifted in an instant, however, when she stood at the top of the staircase on the evening of 10 October 1839 to welcome her cousin from Coburg. She had met him three years before, as Princess, when a number of her cousins had been brought before her for her consideration. He had been shorter, stockier—a boy, then: now, he was tall, very handsome—a man, and in an instant, he was the paragon of men to her. "It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert—who is _beautiful_ ," she wrote; she was in love with an intensity far greater than she would ever feel for any other mortal. She was, she felt from the start, unworthy of his greatness, and her new object in life was, as she put it, to "strive to make him feel as little as possible the great sacrifice he has made." Over the next three days, she sent encouraging messages to him, via Lehzen; on the 15th, she proposed to him. _(Her_ proposing to _him_ was a bit awkward, of course, but, as she was monarch and he was not, she realized it had to be that way: though overwhelmed by love for him, she could never, and would never, forget the prerogatives and responsibilities of her position.)
Albert accepted, the more enthusiastically as he too had very quickly developed a genuine affection for his cousin. His own emotions aside, he was eager to accept her hand; since the time he was an infant, he had been groomed by his family to be consort to Victoria. His cosmopolitan and rigorous education, coupled with his innate and powerful sense of duty, prepared him for this, and for nothing besides this. Indeed, he had caught wind of the Queen's plan to delay the marriage, and had come to England with the intention of putting an end to that notion, one way or another. The simple sight of him convinced Victoria that her marriage to Albert—and marriage quickly—was her destiny.
He was a happy choice, in almost every respect. He grew up in a bitter, broken home—a place of mutual adultery, separation, and divorce—and he was at a very young age separated from his mother. His father was the ugly, dissipated, indebted Duke of Coburg, and his brother Ernest promised in every way to follow in the footsteps of his father. Albert hardly seemed to be related to them: he was fair (while they were dark), he was sober, studious, with a zealous sense of duty and a deeply held belief that a good life was one of good works. He was, in short, more a Victorian than Victoria was. And he was _hers_ , Victoria felt, with the sense that this was too good to be true. Life at court quickly shifted so that now Albert and Victoria shared the spot at the center: he prominently rode beside her in her cavalcades and at a military review. They lunched several times a week with the Duchess. Albert, of course, was the Duchess's nephew, and the engagement itself began to lift Victoria's relation with her mother out of the depths into which it had dropped. Both Victoria and Albert, however, had decided that the Duchess would have to move out of the Palace when they married, and this—very much contrary to the Duchess's own expectation and desire—would create new tensions between Victoria and her mother. (The Duchess did indeed move out of the Palace two months after the wedding, and moved into a private residence in Belgrave Square.) For the most part, Victoria and Albert spent the first few days of their betrothal surprising one another, becoming familiar with one another's bodies: holding hands, embracing, kissing. Albert quickly took upon himself what had been Lehzen's task of warming the Queen's tiny hands with his own. He also found his place beside her while she worked, but in a way that made it clear to both that the political responsibilities were very much Victoria's: "I signed some papers and warrants etc.," she wrote in her Journal, "and he was so kind as to dry them with blotting paper for me."
By the time Albert left the Court, on 14 November, in order to spend two months in Germany before the wedding, the two were very much one.
The ambiguous nature of Albert's role in national affairs, however, placed public and private strains on the relationship. There was, first of all, the question of the Prince's allowance. Traditionally, male or female spouses of the reigning monarch were awarded £50,000 a year; Queen Anne's, George II's, and George III's spouses got that amount, as did Uncle Leopold when he married Charlotte, daughter and Heir Apparent of George IV. Leopold, however, hardly helped the Prince's cause: after Charlotte died in childbirth in 1817, Leopold continued to receive his allowance, until he gave it up in 1831 to become King of the Belgians: a huge public expenditure in return for no public duty. The British public knew very little about Albert at the end of 1839, but it did tend to see him as a penniless German princeling who had surely made an excellent financial move by this betrothal. A broadsheet of the time expressed the following unflattering and cynical sentiments:
Here comes the bridegroom of Victoria's choice,
The nominee of Lehzen's vulgar voice;
He comes to take "for better or worse"
England's fat Queen and England's fatter purse.
Melbourne had promised the Queen an allowance of £50,000 for Albert, but he was of course the head of a weak government, existing during a time of economic and political difficulty; Tories and Radicals turned down that sum, and instead awarded an allowance of £30,000. Victoria raged against the "vile, confounded, infernal Tories," and particularly against that "nasty wretch" Peel, who had spoken in favor of the bill. Albert was far more complacent with the vote, regretting only that it would lessen his ability to do good to poor artists and intellectuals.
Then, there was the question of Albert's precedence: a serious question, given the many official appearances that Albert would be expected to make, with and without the Queen, over the next decades. Victoria felt deeply that her husband should take precedence over all except for herself, as monarch: take precedence, in particular, over her living royal uncles. While her uncles Cambridge and Sussex at first agreed with her, her wicked uncle Cumberland would have none of it—and he bullied his royal brothers into taking his side. The Tories, and particularly the Duke of Wellington, also objected—holding that the consort had precedence over all except the monarch and princes of the Royal Blood. Victoria responded with partisan, Jacobean rage: "this wicked old foolish Duke, these confounded Tories, oh! May they be well punished for this outrageous insult! I cried with rage.... Poor dear Albert, how cruelly are they ill-using that dearest Angel! Monsters! You Tories shall be punished. Revenge! Revenge!"
That Victoria fumed about Albert's rank might suggest that she foresaw that Albert, after the marriage, would be her political equal. But nothing could be further from the truth. Two disagreements that the two had, in making arrangements for the wedding and their life together, demonstrate clearly that Victoria saw the business of ruling as belonging to her alone. When Albert suggested that the two spend at least a week after the wedding away from business, on a true honeymoon, Victoria responded patronizingly to him, in a way that made it clear that there were strict political limits to their shared life: "You forget, my dearest Love, that I am the Sovereign, and that business can stop and wait for nothing. Parliament is sitting, and something occurs almost every day, for which I may be required, and it is quite impossible for me to be absent from London; therefore, two or three days is already a long time to be absent. I am never easy a moment, if I am not on the spot, and see and hear what is going on...."
Just as serious was the question of the composition of Albert's household. Victoria, with the support of Lord Melbourne, believed that Albert's household staff should, in composition, politically reflect her own staff; anything less would suggest a political difference among the couple—and could even suggest a political opposition within the Court. That meant a fully Whig household, of course; Melbourne attempted to soften the effect by appointing "non-political" Whigs—that is, Whigs not currently serving in Parliament. And he suggested as Albert's private secretary his own secretary, George Anson. Albert disagreed with Melbourne completely. He already saw himself as a stranger in a fairly strange land, and would very much have preferred to surround himself with a number of old (and of course German) acquaintances. Moreover, he disagreed vehemently with his betrothed and her prime minister on principle: he had already seen the reputation-damaging effect of the Bedchamber Crisis, and held as a bedrock belief that the monarch and the monarchy must remain above party. It would be a principle that would eventually triumph and reshape Victoria's reign and every reign that followed hers. But now, Albert was powerless: "As to your wish about your gentlemen, my dear Albert, I must tell you quite honestly that it will not do," Victoria wrote him. Anson became Albert's secretary, and Victoria made it clear that her political autonomy in the marriage was to be total.
Albert returned to England on the 8th of February, after a horrendous sea crossing—and to enthusiastic crowds from Dover to Buckingham Palace. Cheering crowds were always to be a barometer indication of the health of the relationship between monarch and public, and she was well aware of the crowds during and after her wedding, as promising a marriage and a reign that was blessed. "I never saw such crowds of people," Victoria wrote, as she had seen in the park between Buckingham Palace and the Chapel Royal at St. James. And then the glorious ceremony, less glorious to Victoria because of the red, gold, and white trappings of the ceremony (with which Hayter was faithfully festooning his state painting) than because of the perfect man with whom she was exchanging solemn vows. Victoria was in ecstasy about the match in every respect, including the physical. Victoria was neither a prude, as traditionalists have it, or an erotic firecracker, as the revisionists do. But she was an extremely affectionate and physical being, and she was a woman extremely attracted to male beauty, truly believing Albert to be the most beautiful man, physically, she had ever seen. Her joyful journal entries after her marriage express repeated awe at Albert's body. The morning after the wedding, she waxed ecstatic about Albert's—throat: "He does look so beautiful in his shirt only, with his beautiful throat seen... He had a black velvet jacket on, without any neckcloth on, and looked more beautiful than it is possible for me to say."
After their marriage, unanswered questions about Albert's role in the monarchy continued to strain their relationship. Socially, he and the Queen were one: riding together in the afternoons, cheered at the theatre or dancing together in the evenings. But for someone raised for duty, eager to take on the responsibilities of government, Albert was thwarted at every turn. He still helped the Queen with the blotting paper when she signed official documents, but that was as close as he got to them. He was not allowed to see the contents of the state boxes. When Victoria saw her ministers, she saw them alone—as she had, on principle, from the first day of her reign. Even the running of the household was closed to him: all of Victoria's personal expenses were handled not by the Prince, but by Lehzen. Indeed, Lehzen's deep personal loyalty to Victoria now acted as a gall to the Prince: something that he saw as standing between the two of them. By May, he was writing complainingly to a friend that he was "the husband, not the master of the house."
He did find ways to take on a greater role in the monarchy. For one thing, there were the personal appearances as Victoria's representative; this was the reason he was in Woolwich now. He would soon be involved in non-partisan, charitable organizations: he had accepted the presidency of the Anti-Slavery Society; he was slated to give his first public speech in England for that organization on the first of June. And, of course, there was the coming event that would change the nation and reform his relationship with Victoria: within weeks of the wedding, Victoria knew she was pregnant; now, at three months, her "interesting condition" was becoming more obvious to the world, and certainly to the perceptive artist who sketched her.
At six that evening, Albert returned to her. Before she married, Victoria had regularly exercised on horseback, but soon after her marriage—and perhaps because of her pregnancy—she stopped, preferring to take her airings with her husband, in an open carriage. While in residence in London, the two regularly rode out in the late afternoons; their rides regularly reported in the Court Circular, published in every newspaper. Their rides were regular enough so that crowds outside the Palace gathered to cheer them. This evening was no exception: soon after Albert's return, the two emerged, accompanied by their equerries, for their regular airing up Constitution Hill and in Hyde Park.
* "Young England" happens to be the same name that young Benjamin Disraeli and his companions would choose for their quasi-feudalistic movement within the Tory party, two years after this. The correspondence is almost certainly a complete coincidence, unless one of the Tory Young Englanders recalled news accounts of Oxford's society when formulating his own.
_two_
BRAVOS
Hannah Oxford did not know, and would never know, whether the pistol her son had thrust into her face was loaded or not. But she had seen this sort of violent and irrational behavior many times before—from Edward, and from Edward's father (also named Edward) before him. The elder Edward Oxford's behavior suggested what we would diagnose today as extreme bipolarity: he cycled regularly between episodes of frantic mania, followed by tremendous bouts of depression. More than once, neighbors discovered him riding indoors on horseback, and at another time throwing his entire dinner ("both meat and vegetables") out the window. When Edward was an infant, he sold every stick of furniture in his house without telling his wife, and decamped to Dublin to spend the money. He repeatedly threatened to harm himself, and at least twice attempted to kill himself with an overdose of laudanum.
His marriage to Hannah was a nightmare. As their son was to do, he threatened her with pistols. He abused her mentally, threw things at her, regularly beat her. The two had met when they were both twenty, in the Birmingham public-house that Hannah's father owned. From the start, the elder Oxford intimidated her. Their six-week courtship—if courtship is the proper term for the torment Hannah experienced—consisted of his beating down her will: he repeatedly and unsuccessfully pressed her to marry him, and "on those occasions," according to Hannah, "he would pull a razor out of his side pocket, and bare his throat, saying he would cut his throat in my presence if I refused him." Eventually, he showed her a double-barreled pistol and threatened to blow her and then his brains out if she refused him. She accepted.
Oxford's father was, by profession, a gold-chaser, or engraver—a highly skilled and remunerative craft, one that earned him £20 for a good week—the same amount his son later earned in a year. According to his wife, he was skillful and quick, "the best workman in Birmingham." He was, however, an outsider. He was reportedly ethnically distinct: the son or grandson of a black father.* (Hannah Oxford, however, denied this.) Moreover, the man's inner demons destroyed any hope of worldly success, and any hope of a successful marriage. On the day before their wedding, Hannah confronted him with a letter she had received, detailing his bad character. He responded by pulling a large roll of banknotes from his pocket and setting them afire. Intimidated again, Hannah married him.
Her husband's abuse only increased with time. He tormented his wife when she was pregnant with Edward's older brother: starving her, throwing things at her, making faces at her: "jumping about like a baboon, and imitating their grimaces." This sort of behavior to a pregnant woman would strike most Victorians as particularly ominous, as many at the time believed that a woman's extreme emotional shock during pregnancy could physically and mentally imprint itself upon the child. The superstition is perhaps best remembered today in the celebrated case of Joseph Merrick, popularly and cruelly known as the Elephant Man, whose deformities, his mother believed, were a direct result of her stumbling into the path of a parading elephant while she was pregnant.
Oxford's brother was born, in the terminology of the day, an idiot, and died at two. When Hannah was pregnant with Edward, his father repeated his abusive behavior: the grimaces, the threats—and the physical abuse: he knocked Hannah unconscious with a quart pot, and a local surgeon treated her frequently at this time for head injuries. Hannah herself believed her husband's abuse the cause of her son Edward's eccentricity, claiming that his torment "had an effect upon her then situation by means of that species of secret sympathy of which there are many instances, and communicated to the unborn child the insanity with which the father was afflicted."
Edward was born on 9 April 1822, and, whether because of upbringing, or genetics, or even "secret sympathy," his behavior eerily reflected his father's. Edward for the first years of his life was a witness to his father's excesses—though, by all accounts, father and son got on very well. After years of abuse, when Edward was five or six, Hannah finally separated from her husband. Oxford Senior died in 1829, on the 10th of June—a date that his son knew about and remembered: a date, perhaps, very much on his mind when he was living at West Place.
From an early age, Edward had fits of unprovoked, maniacal laughter. Hannah later admitted that she attempted to cure him of this by beating him. Edward's fits were extremely disruptive; Hannah supported herself in her widowhood first with a pastry shop, and then with a coffee-and-tea shop, both of which failed—because of young Edward, according to Hannah: "my customers complained of his conduct" of "crying out and bawling aloud," she claimed, "and I lost my business." Edward would have episodes of near-catatonia, and episodes of motiveless, violent rage, in which he would "knock and destroy anything he might have in his hand." His fits were often directed against strangers, as when he positioned himself in the upper room of his house and rained household goods on the heads of passersby. "He was once taken to the station house for this," said his mother, "and he did not seem conscious of having done wrong." Another time, he was brought to the station house for leaping onto the back of the carriage of a woman he did not know, simply to torment her. Edward proved to be too much for his mother to handle, and she left much of his upbringing to others: he lived with his uncle Edward Marklew, Hannah's brother, and with his maternal grandfather for some time; he stayed with a neighbor, George Sandon, for about a year; he boarded at schools in Birmingham and South London. His odd behavior continued at all of these places. Sandon recalled that he constantly beat other children, "very severely." Sandon also remembered his "habit of throwing things out of the up-stairs upon children below." And there were his laughing and crying fits. "When I asked him why he did so," according to Sandon, "he gave me no straightforward answer, but ran out, which I thought was very singular for a boy of eight years of age." Not surprisingly, as a boy, Oxford had very few friends.
Coming from a family of publicans on his mother's side, Edward was "brought up to the bar," as he later joked, at the age of fourteen, working for his aunt Clarinda Powell at the King's Head, in Hounslow, southwest of the metropolis. He proved to be a generally capable (though at times scatterbrained) employee. Still, he continued to attract trouble. He was arrested after a scuffle with a neighbor—he struck the man on the head with a chisel, was brought before a magistrate, and found guilty of assault. At the time, his aunt Clarinda defended him. But she certainly had serious doubts about the boy's sanity. He seemed incapable of empathy. When, for example, Oxford overheard a customer at the King's Head speak to his aunt Clarinda about the vicious assault he had suffered the night before, he could only laugh and "jeer" at the injuries the man had received. As he had done when he assisted his mother, Oxford tended to unnerve customers and cost his aunt business: his aunt remembered one time, when she was ill, leaving Edward to run a busy bar. At ten o'clock, hours before closing time, he methodically shut off every gas jet in the house, plunging the crowded pub into complete darkness. "He could not account why he did so," she claimed. "I was obligated to come down from a sick bed, at the risk of my life, to soothe him." The King's Head closed eleven months after Oxford's arrival.
Oxford then—without his aunt's reference, she later made clear—sought employment in London, and worked for the next three years in three public houses, located ever closer to the heart of the metropolis: first, the Shepherd and Flock, on Marylebone High Street, then the Hat and Feathers, in Camberwell, and finally at the Hog in the Pound, at the intersection of Oxford and Bond Streets. He held the position of barman at these pubs, and, not surprisingly for someone who created the rank-obsessive organization of Young England, he was obsessive about his place in the public house hierarchy: as he would later protest, not a lowly potboy, but the man who drew pints, poured spirits, and oversaw the till. As a barman, he earned something around £20 a year, or approximately eight shillings a week. That pay would put him on a level with the poorest of the poor as described by social investigator Henry Mayhew in his revelatory _London Labour and the London Poor_. But of course Oxford had one great advantage over the street-folk described in that work: free room and board. His wages, then, were not terrible—but would never give him the wealth or independence that befitted a Captain of Young England.
Edward Oxford's London employers generally considered him a capable and efficient worker, though they, as well as their employees and customers, could not help but be baffled and disconcerted by his eccentric behavior. The inexplicable, maniacal laughter continued. He would fall into deep self-absorbed trances, spells of heated internal dialogue, activity visible to onlookers only in the resultant bursts of heightened emotion. A reporter at the _Morning Chronicle_ described one such episode, at the Shepherd and Flock:
When not engaged in his business and while sitting down in front of the bar he has been observed by Mr. Minton and the barmaid, a respectable young woman named Evans, to be for a few minutes absorbed in deep thought, and, then, without any apparent cause he would burst into tears, and conceal his face with his hands, when on being spoken to and asked what had affected him, he would stare at the inquirer, and, suddenly starting up, give way to a fit of laughter, and proceed with his employment as usual.
Mary Ann Forman, a barwoman at the Shepherd and Flock, recalled his "strange ways": "laughing and crying when he made a mistake, and then he hardly knew what he was about." John Tedman, an Inspector with the Metropolitan Police and a regular at the Shepherd and Flock, often came upon the boy crying, laughing hysterically for no reason, or sullenly silent, and noted as well his propensity for violence. He concluded quite simply that Oxford was an idiot and persuaded Mr. Minton, landlord of the Shepherd and Flock, to turn him away. Oxford moved on from the Shepherd and Flock to another pub, the Hat and Feathers, taking one great prize with him: to his fortune, Mrs. Minton had died while he was there, and in accordance with the custom of the day, Mr. Minton purchased full mourning dress for all of his employees; Oxford thus had a suit of clothing that suggested a respectability above his station.
Trouble seemed to follow him; he tended to work for a few months at each place, impressing upon customers and co-workers alike his oddities. His employment at the Hat and Feathers lasted six months. From there, Oxford moved to the Hog in the Pound on Oxford Street. Mr. Robinson, the landlord there, had to let him go after a single quarter. "I gave him warning because he was always laughing," Robinson claimed. "When I reprimanded him for it he still kept laughing. This often took place, and I suffered inconvenience from his conduct. Some of my customers were offended with it." Robinson must have been particularly mortified when his wife's falling down a flight of stairs provided Oxford with another occasion for an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
When Robinson sacked him, on April 30th, 1840, he provided him with a quarter's wages—the £5 with which he bought his pistols, four days later.
Oxford now had £3, no job, and time: five weeks, to think, to read, and consciously to transform himself into a marksman and a gentleman of affairs: someone with mysterious connections with illustrious figures, caught up in a complicated political conspiracy. He aimed to make Young England credible to the nation. He settled into a routine at West Place. Oxford's mother Hannah had stayed with Oxford for only a week after he had threatened her, at which point she decamped for Birmingham and an extended stay with her relatives there. Whether she had planned on this trip before Oxford's arrival, or whether his own behavior motivated her to leave is not known—but certainly, he could not have been easy to live with: he is known to have threatened her with a pistol again, and struck her in the face, during their few days together. With Hannah gone, Oxford's sister Susannah Phelps became the primary witness to his behavior and the primary object of his torment; as he had done with his mother, he often thrust his pistols into her face, once waking her in this way. Despite this, she later claimed that his regular and virtuous routine demonstrated his innocence of conspiracy: he spent his days at home, took his meals with his remaining family, abstained from drinking, and though he did leave the house regularly—setting out in the late afternoon—he was always home by ten or eleven at the latest: regular hours, she thought, that would not be conducive to membership of Young England, which she was sure must be a society whose meetings were conducted in hidden places in the depths of the night.
Despite later public opinion which held Oxford to be an idiot, he was actually an avid reader and spent much of his time this month intent upon his books, flying into a rage if his sister interrupted him. His favorite novels were sea tales, tales that would certainly feed his ambition to become Admiral Sir Edward Oxford: he read James Fenimore Cooper's _The Pilot_ , and the far less-known and much more lurid _Black Pirate_ , a book that suggests Oxford's love of pedestrian sentiment and high melodrama: of the stuff in other words that popular publishers of penny dreadfuls would be churning out _en masse_ within the next few years to the general disapproval of polite society.
Two other books that Oxford read were recently published, highly popular, and highly controversial: Charles Dickens's _Oliver Twist_ and William Harrison Ainsworth's _Jack Sheppard_. Both novels after their initial success attracted criticism amounting to opprobrium from a number of critics, who lumped them together as "Newgate novels," and held that by glorifying criminals, they would lead impressionable young readers into lives of vice: Dickens, by rendering the criminal entertaining, and Ainsworth, even worse, by rendering it heroic. Oxford was exactly the sort of impressionable youth critics thought these books would corrupt.
Oxford clearly found true inspiration in the other book he read while at West Place. _The Bravo of Venice_ , a German novella written nearly fifty years before, anticipates Newgate novels in its obsession with criminals. The protagonist begins as a nobody and rises to become one of the "two greatest men in Venice"—the other being the Doge. He rises by becoming King of Assassins—though at the end of the story we learn he has actually killed no one. _The Bravo of Venice_ , in other words, valorizes the fake assassin. At the heart of the novel is a scene eerily similar to the one that Edward Oxford would publicly enact in a few weeks, when the Bravo presents a gun loaded with powder, but without bullets, to the face of his ruler. The novel features a secret society of assassins which has its secret meeting place, its own weaponry, its disguises, and its regalia, similar to that which Oxford delineates in his rules for Young England.
Oxford spent his time at home writing, as well. Indulging, perhaps, a quickly developing millennial obsession, he copied, according to his sister, passages from the Bible. And at some point three letters addressed to Edward Oxford became a part of his secret collection of documents, regalia, and weapons. The letters are dated and signed, each one appearing to have been sent to Oxford at his three previous places of employment during the past year. None of the letters appears to have been sent, however: none is postmarked. And each of the letters, though signed by "A. W. Smith," the fictitious secretary to the fictitious Young England, is almost certainly written in Oxford's own hand. He could have written them at any time over the past year—could even have written them on or around the dates written on each one. It is, on the other hand, quite possible that he composed them, as he composed his rules and regulations for Young England during his five weeks of leisure, as a part of his endeavor to recreate himself and to present himself to the world, when the time came, as a man with a history of covert political involvement, with a _bona fide_ political motive for assassination.
The first letter is dated from a year before, May 16th, 1839, addressed to Oxford at Mr. Minton's Shepherd and Flock public house in Marylebone. It depicts Oxford as a new but promising member of the organization, beginning to learn the ropes:
Young England—Sir,—Our commander-in-chief was very glad to find that you answered his questions in such a straight-forward manner. You will be wanted to attend on the 21st of this month, as we expect one of the country agents to town on business of importance. Be sure and attend. A. W. Smith, Secretary. P.S.—You must not take any notice of the boy, nor ask him any questions.
The detail about the boy is a nice poetic touch, stressing the cloak-and-dagger nature of Young England, and suggesting an intersection between Oxford's mundane, cover existence as a barman, and his secret existence as a Captain (or soon-to-be Captain) in Young England.
The second letter, addressed to Oxford at Mr. Parr's Hat and Feathers, and dated 14 November, suggests Oxford, through his great talents, is rising to stardom in his secret society. It also demonstrates Oxford's literary side, as he—with a novelist's touch—invents a melodramatic scene in an attempt to root his imaginary organization in the real world:
Young England—Sir, I am very glad to hear that you improve so much in your speeches. Your speech the last time you were here was beautiful. There was another one introduced last night, by Lieutenant Mars, a fine, tall, gentlemanly-looking fellow, and it is said that he is a military officer; but his name has not yet transpired. Soon after he was introduced, we were alarmed by a violent knocking at the door. In an instant our faces were covered, we cocked our pistols, and with drawn swords stood waiting to receive the enemy. While one stood over the fire with the papers, another stood with lighted torch to fire the house. We then sent the old woman to open the door, and it proved to be some little boys who knocked at the door and ran away. You must attend on Wednesday next. A. W. Smith, Secretary.
Oxford's third letter connected his virtual secret society with actual political currents of 1840, and with actual political fears. This is the letter that Oxford surely expected would strike terror into millions of hearts once it became public. Dated a month before (3 April 1840) and addressed to Mr. Robinson's Hog in the Pound, it makes clear that things are quickly building to a climax among the conspirators, to the point that Oxford would have to risk his position as barman to play the role of conspirator:
Young England—Sir,—You are requested to attend to night, as there is an extraordinary meeting to be holden, in consequence of having received some communications of an important nature from Hanover. You must attend; and if your master will not give you leave, you must come in defiance of him. A. W. Smith, Secretary.
It is the reference to Hanover that would have been chilling to any British reader in the spring of 1840. Hanover suggested Queen Victoria's Uncle Ernest, without question the most wicked, the most feared, and the most reviled of George III's sons. He was, in the minds of many, a murderer, thought to have slit the throat in 1810 of his servant. (In reality the servant attacked Cumberland before killing himself.) In politics, he was an ultra-Tory reactionary, the enemy, in a progressive age, to every progressive cause, and a particularly virulent enemy to the Reform Bill of 1832. In religion he was an extremist as well: the Grand Master of the ultra-protestant Orange Lodges, the fiercely anti-Catholic Protestant fraternal organizations. He had a following—of the distinctly conspiratorial kind—and in the minds of many he had ambition and an agenda that could not be contained by the lesser throne of Hanover. And now only the young Queen and her unborn child stood between him and the throne. Upon the death of William IV in 1837, many feared that Ernest and his Orange supporters would rise up and declare for him rather than his niece. That did not happen. But what didn't happen in 1837 could happen in 1840, with an assassin's bullet.
While Oxford spent much of his time over these few weeks in quiet seclusion, his explosive side frequently needed an outlet as well. Thus his aggression toward his mother and sister. Besides this, Susannah was a frequent witness to his habit of firing his pistols—loaded with powder, but most likely without ball—into the garden from out of the back windows of his lodgings. His family later claimed that he never fired out his own windows in the front of the house, into the Square—but Oxford himself later claimed that he fired to scare old women on the street. (Apparently, his landlady, Mrs. Packman, being extremely hard of hearing, was not disturbed by the shooting.) The explosive crack of his pistols certainly startled the inhabitants of number 6, and many others in the environs of West Square, and quite likely carried beyond the square, beyond the home for Indigent Children, past the grounds of Bethlem Hospital, and into the various airing yards of the asylum's inmates. It is an intriguing possibility, then, that the echoes of Oxford's shots might have further disturbed the thoughts of one of Bethlem's oldest and longest-detained residents, and might have reminded that man of two shots that he had fired from his own pistols, forty years before.
James Hadfield was, as a young man, a soldier in King George III's army, who in 1793 had fought in the war against France that erupted after the execution of Louis XVI. At the battle of Lincelles* that year while serving in the bodyguard of the George III's second son, the Duke of York, Hadfield suffered severe saber-wounds to the head. The damage was apparently psychological as well as physical, and Hadfield was soon discharged from the army because of insanity. He moved to London, became a maker of silver spoons, and brooded about the special role he felt destined to play in what he knew was an imminent cosmic struggle. His apocalyptic beliefs intensified when he by chance fell in with a messianic shoemaker and religious ranter, Bannister Truelock, who convinced Hadfield that the assassination of George III would bring about the end of kings and the end of time. Hadfield by this time considered himself a latter-day messiah who must sacrifice himself to save mankind. He bought a brace of pistols in May 1800 and wandered through London, wondering whether to kill himself to hasten the apocalypse, but held back, fearing eternal damnation. He then hit upon a plan that would bring about the end of kings and bring about the self-sacrifice he needed: he would shoot George III in a public place, and would then happily be torn apart by the crowd. On 15 May, then, Hadfield bought a second-row seat for a performance of Colley Cibber's _She Would and She Would Not_ , a performance at Drury Lane Theatre which he knew the Royal Family would be attending. When the King entered and came to the front of the box to acknowledge the cheering of the audience, Hadfield stood upon his seat, leveled one of his pistols at the King, and fired. The pistol's two slugs missed the King's head by inches, lodging in a pillar near the ceiling of the box. George reacted with notable calm, displaying, according to the _Times_ , "that serenity and firmness of character which belong to a virtuous mind"; he put his family at ease, and they stayed to watch the entire performance. Hadfield, meanwhile, was seized and taken to a music room adjoining the stage, where he was questioned by the police, by the proprietor of the theatre (and the great dramatist) Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and—in an emotional reunion, on Hadfield's part—by his former commanding officer, the Duke of York. He claimed that he had missed the King on purpose, wanting only to be torn apart himself, and darkly hinted at the coming chaos: "it was not over yet—there was a great deal more and worse to be done."
Hadfield was tried a month later. He was charged with High Treason, and by the law of the time that meant that he was entitled to the best counsel in the land, at the expense of the state. And he got just that in Thomas Erskine. Erskine mounted an insanity defense, in the face of the contemporary legal concept of that defense which held insanity to be complete derangement, and an insane man thus unable to plan a criminal act or understand its consequences. Hadfield had planned his attempt carefully—buying the gun, manufacturing his own slugs, choosing a seat at the theatre with an ideal vantage from which to shoot the King. And he arguably knew very well the consequences of his action; he hoped he could cause enough of an uproar in order to bring about his own death. Erskine argued that a man suffering from a powerful delusion might appear sane in most ways, and yet still commit an insane act. He brought forth a number of witnesses to testify to the eccentricity of Hadfield's behavior—behavior that included an attempt to kill his infant son days before the attempt on the King. And he brought forth medical witnesses to testify both to the severity of Hadfield's head wounds, and to the obvious insanity he demonstrated in his behavior. Chief Justice Kenyon, long before Erskine called all of his witnesses, stopped the trial, persuaded the Attorney-General, John Mitford, to agree that Hadfield was obviously deranged, and directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty on the grounds of insanity, which they dutifully did.
Hadfield, however, was not free. The Chief Justice, the Attorney General, and Hadfield's own counsel agreed that Hadfield must be further confined, Erskine stating "most undoubtedly the safety of the community, and of all mankind, requires that this unfortunate man should be taken care of." He was returned to Newgate. Four days after his trial, Mitford introduced a bill in Parliament to deal with Hadfield and those like him. The Safe Custody of Insane Persons Charged with Offences Bill empowered courts to detain those acquitted of a crime on the grounds of insanity at the pleasure of the monarch. The act was retroactive; Hadfield's legal acquittal resulted in a lifetime of mental confinement. He was conveyed to Bethlem Hospital, which in 1800 was located not in Southwark, but in Moorfields, north of the river. He escaped in 1802, but was quickly caught in Dover, attempting to flee to France, and sent not back to Bethlem but to Newgate Prison for fourteen years. When arrangements were being made to move Bethlem from Moorfields to Southwark, the government requested that Bethlem establish special sections for female and male criminal lunatics; the governors of the Hospital agreed, and Hadfield was one of the first sent to the new building, in 1816. There he grew old, "grumbling and discontented," clearly chafing under a lifetime of imprisonment, and petitioning repeatedly for release. He had renewed hopes for his freedom when Victoria came to the throne, and he asked her to recognize his sanity and his service to the nation and make him a Chelsea Pensioner. But it was Victoria's pleasure, as it had been her grandfather's and her uncles', to detain him.
By the time, then, that Oxford was disturbing the neighborhood and the lunatics, both criminal and non-criminal, with his pistol-shots, Hadfield was old, hopeless, and ill of tuberculosis, having "no desire to again mix with the world."
Within weeks, Oxford would meet the old man.
For more than a month after buying his pistols, Oxford invariably spent the early part of his days at home, leaving the house in mid- or late afternoons, returning in the evening. His first destination was usually Lovett's coffee shop on the London Road, two blocks away from West Square, between the obelisk at St. George's Circus and the snarl of streets leading from Elephant and Castle. At Lovett's, Oxford had access to London's newspapers. He scanned the employment columns of the _Morning Advertiser_ , apparently having not given up the possibility of seeking employment in yet another public house. He could follow the movements of the Queen, set out in the Court Circular, published in a number of newspapers. He also was able to follow the latest news, and therefore, with the rest of the nation, he must have been captivated by the breaking news of one of the most sensational murders to occur during Victoria's reign.
In the very early morning of 6 May 1840 (two days after Oxford bought his pistols), sounds of alarm burst out in the aristocratic neighborhood of 14 Norfolk Street, tucked between Park Lane and Park Street, within sight of the northeast corner of Hyde Park. It was the home of 72-year-old Lord William Russell, great-uncle of Lord John Russell, who was at the time the Colonial Secretary in Her Majesty's government. Upon rising that morning, Lord Russell's housemaid had discovered signs of disorder throughout the house. In the drawing room, Lord William's writing desk had been smashed open. By the street door, several of his possessions were found wrapped in cloth. In the kitchen, drawers were forced open and plate was missing. The housemaid hurried to the attic to wake the cook, who, in turn, sent her to wake the valet, in the next room; she did so, oddly finding the man almost fully dressed. Housemaid and valet—a man by the name of François Benjamin Courvoisier—surveyed the kitchen, concluded that a burglary had occurred, and rushed upstairs to check upon their master. They discovered Russell's corpse, his throat slit from ear to ear: his carotid artery and jugular vein severed. Russell's right thumb, as well, was nearly cut away from the rest of his hand. Though his blood had not spurted widely, as might be expected with a wound of this kind, he had bled copiously: blood was pooled deeply around his head, and had dripped through in a puddle under the bed. The servants sent immediately for the police.
While the scene pointed at first to a botched and somehow interrupted burglary, the police quickly began to doubt that this was the case. No one had seen or heard any intruders the night before (though a neighbor did claim to hear groans emanating from Lord Williams's room, during the night). Marks on the back door suggested that it had been violently forced open. But it became clear to the police that the door had been forced from the inside, where several bolts had already been drawn. Moreover, any intruders exiting from this door would have to scale a high wall to escape the property, a wall thoroughly whitewashed, which would have shown marks of intrusion; it did not. A careful search showed no marks of forced entry whatsoever outside the back door. It was highly unlikely that anyone had used this door for entry or escape, and much more likely that someone had doctored the door to create the appearance of a burglary. By the time of the inquest, the police had concluded that this was an inside job, with particular suspicion falling on Cour-voisier, a native of Switzerland who had only been in service with Russell for five weeks. Courvoisier's odd behavior had attracted attention: besides the fact that he was inexplicably nearly dressed upon being woken, he displayed a great deal of anxiety during the search, and continually "kept running and drinking water." His reaction to the crime, as well, demonstrated a shocking lack of empathy for the victim. One of the police on the case, Inspector John Tedman—the same John Tedman, incidentally, who had witnessed Oxford's odd behavior at the Shepherd and Flock—was from the start suspicious of the valet, noting Courvoisier's self-centered reaction to the crime: "this is a shocking job; I shall lose my place and lose my character." And then there was Courvoisier's suspicious wealth: he had in his room a banknote and change amounting to six sovereigns; asked where he obtained the note, he claimed he got it in making change for his master. Most damning at all, a chisel had been found among Courvoisier's possessions, and the chisel exactly fit marks left when the kitchen drawers had been forced.
The police hoped that the murderer had not yet removed the stolen items from the house. The items actually stolen were few, and were small—larger items of far greater value in Russell's room were, surprisingly, left alone. Besides the plate from which Russell had eaten the night of his death, and various items of cutlery, there were banknotes, coins, and rings taken from the fingers of the dead man. The police tore up floorboards and baseboards. On Friday, they made the discovery that led to Courvoisier's arrest: behind the skirting-board in the butler's pantry, a room that was for Courvoisier's use alone, workmen found two banknotes—for £5 and £10—and much of Russell's stolen jewelry. Courvoisier was held in his room under close observation until Sunday, when he was conveyed to Tothill Fields prison. After repeated examination of the crime at Bow Street, he was at the end of May committed to Newgate, to be tried at the Old Bailey on the 18th of June.
This news of the murder electrified Mayfair—the _Times_ reported that the carriages of the fashionable clogged the area for days. While murder and burglary were far from uncommon in London in 1840, this particular murder trumped others in terms of public fascination, playing on a host of British fears. For one thing, the crime took place in the most fashionable neighborhood in the metropolis, and the victim was an aristocrat, the brother of the fifth Duke of Bedford, and the uncle of a leading Whig politician of the day, Sir John Russell, the future prime minister. Then there was the terrifying thrill that accompanied the growing realization that Russell had been slaughtered by his own servant. The _Times_ noticed the growing fear, not that the criminal could strike again—he couldn't, of course—but that this type of crime could happen again, anywhere: that all masters and mistresses were vulnerable to their servants. As the _Times_ noted, "the excitement produced in high life by the dreadful event is almost unprecedented, and the feeling of apprehension for personal safety increases every hour, particularly among those of the nobility and gentry who live in comparative seclusion." For a middle and upper class already threatened in 1840 with the specter of mass insurrection demonstrated by reports of increasingly militant activity by the working-class radicals of the Chartist movement, this reminder that the potentially dangerous working class inhabited their very homes turned an individual tragedy into general cause for alarm. More than this, the realization that the murderer was a foreigner added to the general sense of terror. Courvoisier's Swiss ethnicity and the fact that he was only five weeks in Russell's service were mentioned repeatedly in reports: both facts clearly worked against him.
On the day that Inspector Tedman arrested Courvoisier, another officer of the Metropolitan Police, Sergeant Charles Otway, was in Gravesend, hoping to arrest another criminal, one who had captured the attention of the British public two months before. On 17 March, the body of John Templeman was discovered in his home in Islington. Templeman was an old man who made a modest living from renting a couple of properties; he was generally known to be a miser and was rumored to have hidden a large amount of money in his house. His hands and his eyes had been bound; his head had been beaten severely, and several of his teeth had been forcibly extracted. Obviously, he had been the victim of a burglary, his attacker or attackers apparently attempting to torture out of him the hiding place of his fortune. Three people were quickly under suspicion and quickly arrested for the crime: a married couple, John and Mary Ann Jarvis, who were neighbors to Templeton, and their close acquaintance, Richard Gould, who as it happens was (unlike Oxford) actually a potboy, though at that moment out of work. The Jarvises were aware that Templeton had taken in some cash soon before the crime, and Gould had boasted to others that he was about to free himself from poverty by robbing an old man who was known to wave a £50 note about. He had also asked two comrades if they could provide him with a "screw" and a "darkey"—a lock-pick and a bull's-eye lantern (one that could be covered and thus darkened). The Jarvises, who may have been complicit with Gould in other ways—Mary Ann was Richard Gould's lover—were soon cleared in this case. But Gould was caught in possession of bloody clothing, and several pounds in coin were found at his premises, secured in one of his stockings and hidden in the privy. He was brought to trial on 14 April. His attorney was able to suggest that those testifying against Gould were not credible and indeed more suspicious than he was, and he established that no physical evidence connected Gould with the crime scene. The jury very quickly returned a verdict of not guilty, and Gould was freed.
The police, however, were convinced that they had found their man. Learning in May that Gould was about to sail for Sydney, the Superintendent of A Division sent Sergeant Otway to Gravesend with a warrant for Gould's arrest: he could not be tried again for murder, but the warrant was for burglary. Otway confronted Gould not with the warrant, but with an offer: the Home Office, he told Gould, was offering £200 to anyone who could give information on the case. Thinking that his acquittal protected him from any prosecution, Gould told Otway that he and the Jarvises committed the crime together: Mrs. Jarvis acting as a lookout, and Mr. Jarvis murdering Templeman before Gould's eyes. Quite simply, Otway entrapped Gould, and he was later censured for his action by the courts and by the police. More than this, Gould's testimony appeared to the police self-serving and inaccurate; the Jarvises had nothing to do with the murder, and had already been cleared after repeated examination. Among his lies, however, Gould revealed a number of details that the police were able to corroborate: in particular, that he had thrown the "darkey" or dark lantern that he had used in committing the crime into a pond behind the house in which he was living. The police searched the pond, and were able to find not only the lantern, but a chisel which corresponded exactly to marks made on drawers forced in Templeman's house. If, because of entrapment, his confession to Otway could not be admitted in trial, this hard evidence could: Gould was rearrested, and sent to Newgate for trial at the Old Bailey on the charge of burglary.
Oxford would soon meet Courvoisier, and Gould as well.
As Oxford sipped his coffee and perused the newspapers at Lovett's, other customers must surely have noticed the handles of his two pistols, bursting out from his bulging pockets. They were hard to miss: a servant at West Place noticed them, and so did the landlady, who commented to Mrs. Oxford on her son's want of economy: what use had he of _two_ guns, after all? The locks of the pistols—carefully protected with rags between hammer and percussive caps, to prevent Oxford from shooting himself in the foot—rubbed so relentlessly against the Gambroon fabric of his trousers as to create a noticeably worn patch within a few weeks. Oxford's life in public centered upon his guns; he haunted London's shooting galleries for hours each day. He shot regularly at a local one, attached to the baths on Westminster Bridge, and frequented as well William Green's "pistol-repository and shooting gallery" in Leicester Square. He also reportedly shot at a gallery elsewhere in the West End, as well as one in the Strand. He might have spent some of his time at these places flourishing the scimitar-shaped sword he had obtained during these weeks—but he certainly spent most of his time practicing marksmanship, with his own pistols and with the gallery's rifles. His habit, it seems, was to spend a shilling each visit, for a few shots with pistol and with rifle. He claimed that he was a better shot with rifle than with pistol, but apparently was a fairly miserable shot with either: at one point he bet that he could hit within six inches of his target—and he lost. "He was more fit to shoot at a haystack than at the target," noted one companion. Oxford apparently did not mind the terrible shooting; more important to him, his restless perambulations to a number of galleries suggest, was to be _seen_ shooting, to mingle with all varieties of men: "he associated," as the _Morning Chronicle_ put it, "alternatively with the higher and lower classes of society."
As May became June, Oxford began to vary his trips to the shooting galleries with trips to his old haunts, looking up his few old friends and hobnobbing with his former workmates. His only friend from childhood—the only person who visited him in his home, according to Oxford's sister—was a butcher's son, John Lenton. The two spent a great deal of time together at this time, Oxford sharing his obsession with his pistols with the boy: coaxing him into accompanying him to the Lambeth shooting gallery to see him take six shots at a target, and later boasting to him that he had since been to a "much better" gallery across the river. He looked up his old places of employment as well, bringing another well-dressed acquaintance (very likely Lenton) to the Shepherd and Flock, and at another time returning to the Hog in the Pound to seek out a more recent friend he had made, a boy by the name of Thomas Lawrence, a Bond Street perfumer's assistant and a regular at that pub.
With another motive than friendship in mind, Oxford sought out an old schoolmate and neighbor. J. J. Gray worked in the shop of his father, an oilman (or grocer) at 10 Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth, a few houses down from lodgings that Edward had lived in with his mother eight or nine years before. The shop stood close to the south bank of the Thames, in the shadows of Astley's equestrian theatre. On the 3rd of June, Oxford went there to make a final necessary purchase. Gray recognized Oxford the moment he entered the shop, but had no interest whatsoever in renewing whatever relationship once existed between them, and pretended not to know him. Oxford was persistent, asking him if he had ever heard of anyone named Oxford—and revealing himself as the Oxford with whom Gray had attended school. The conversation then turned to guns. Oxford needed more percussion caps and gunpowder for his pistols. Gray had both; Oxford drew one of his ubiquitous pistols from his pocket, and the two tested the fit of the cap. It did, and Oxford bought fifty. Gray's shop only sold gunpowder in a large canister, too large for Oxford, who only wanted a quarter-pound. Gray recommended a gunsmith just across the river.
Leaving Gray's shop, Oxford crossed Westminster Bridge, passed the newly rising Houses of Parliament,* and to Parliament Street, where he waited while the proprietor molded him two dozen bullets, and sold him a quarter-pound of gunpowder.
He was ready.
* "The prisoner's father was a mulatto, and his grandfather was a black." _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 7; "Oxford's great grandfather was a black man, but how he came to England none of the family can tell, which is no doubt extraordinary...." _Caledonian Mercury_ , 18 June 1840, 4.
* Roubaix, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Eigen).
* The Houses of Parliament had burned down six years before; rebuilding had just commenced.
_three_
IF IT PLEASE PROVIDENCE, I SHALL ESCAPE
Wednesday the 10th of June 1840 was fine and bright: perfect weather for an outing in Hyde Park. Edward Oxford dined with his sister early in the afternoon. His mother was still with her family in Birmingham; his brother-in-law was at work at the soda manufacturer. Perhaps Edward and Susannah talked about their father; it was his birthday that day. When they were done, Edward geared himself up just as he had over the past few weeks: he carefully placed his two pistols, loaded with powder and wadding, in his gray Gambroon trousers, and carefully placed red rags between hammer and cap. He also equipped himself with a knife. He was off to the shooting gallery, he told his sister—and on the way he would buy some linen for shirts, and some tea from Mr. Twining's shop in the Strand.
He stopped first at Lovett's, to take coffee and glance at the newspapers, as usual. If he followed habit and looked over the employment advertisements, he did so ironically; he knew now that pulling pints of ale was not in his future. He might have glanced at the Court Circular, to reassure himself that the Queen was in residence and following the usual routine. She was. Yesterday, she had met with her aunt Adelaide, the Queen Dowager; she had gone for an airing with Albert late in the afternoon; in the evening, she and Albert had attended the opera—Rossini's _Barber of Seville_ —with her half-brother, the Prince of Leiningen. Lovett, the proprietor, saw Oxford sitting there, but didn't see the pistols bulging in his pockets: Oxford's coat hid them. Oxford left, abruptly, without paying. He would never be coming back.
Oxford doubled back past his home and past Bethlem, up Westminster Bridge Road, across the river and past Parliament and Whitehall, into the green heart of the metropolis: St. James's Park, Pall Mall, and the Gates of Buckingham Palace, with Green Park and Constitution Hill in the distance. He joined the crowd milling about the Marble Arch—then in its original position as the front gate to Buckingham Palace*—everyone there hoping to catch a glimpse of the Queen or her Consort. Albert had left the Palace in the morning, visiting, as he had a month before, Woolwich Dockyard. The Queen was scheduled to go with him, and a royal salute had been planned, but on this morning she felt ill—quite possibly from morning sickness—so she stayed, and Albert went as her representative.
Albert was taking his first steps into public life. He had chaired, and given his brief speech to, the Anti-Slavery Society nine days before; writing it in German, translating it with Victoria's help, and practicing it repeatedly and nervously before her. In the end, Exeter Hall was filled beyond its capacity of four thousand, and Albert's slightly accented words were received with "tremendous applause." Albert made a great success of his trip to Woolwich, as well: three thousand inhabitants of the town were on hand to cheer his coming. With his genuine interest in industry and manufacture—an interest that only grew with time, and would lead to the enormously successful Great Exhibition, in 1851—Albert was fascinated by the construction of a new warship, the 120-gun HMS _Trafalgar_ , speaking with laborers and watching them at work. After an "elegant _dejeuné_ " with the supervisor of the yard, he left to the "three hearty cheers" of the workmen, and was now riding in a carriage back to the Palace. The Queen had spent a quiet day in the Palace, her only engagement seeing Lord Melbourne in the morning; she awaited Albert's return so that the two could go for their daily airing in Hyde Park. Oxford was there to see Albert's carriage sweep up the Mall and through the palace gates. He knew who was in the carriage, and knew from whence it had come.
At around four o'clock, Oxford walked around to the north side of the Palace, a couple hundred yards up Constitution Hill. Invariably, when they took their regular airing, Victoria and Albert left the front gates of the Palace, turned sharply left, and traveled up the Hill, with the walls to the Palace gardens on their left, and the palings to Green Park on their right, in order to reach Hyde Park. The crowd was not as numerous on the hill as it was at the gate. Oxford paced back and forth beside the road, his hands inside his jacket, each gripping a pistol up under his armpits, giving him a bulging breast and a Napoleonic stoop. A number of bystanders saw him in this curious pose, but apparently thought little of it; they, like he, were focused on the gate down the Hill, from which they expected the little Queen and her Consort would soon emerge.
At six, the gates opened and the procession emerged: two outriders, the Prince and the Queen in a droshky, a very low carriage that rendered the royal couple sitting alone fully visible to all. Two pair of horses pulled the carriage; riders sat upon the horses on the left side, responsive to Albert's commands. Two equerries followed behind. The procession trotted out of the front gate of the Palace and up Constitution Hill, joined by many of the crowd at the gate, who were eager to lengthen their view of the royal couple. Few saw Oxford as the carriage approached—although one witness watched the odd, pacing figure, and watched Oxford stare at the carriage and "give a nod with his head sneeringly." Among those on the path that day was the young artist-to-be John Everett Millais, then just eleven, and only months away from being the youngest student ever accepted to the Royal Academy Schools. He was there with his father and his older brother, John. The boys doffed their caps to the royal couple, and were delighted to see the Queen bow to them in response.
At that moment, Albert saw a "little mean looking man" six paces away from him, holding something that the Prince couldn't quite make out: it was Oxford, pointing his pistol at the two, and in a dueler's stance, firing a shot with a thunderous report that riveted the attention of all. Victoria, according to the Prince, was looking the other way at a horse and was stunned, with no idea why her ears were ringing. (She later told Lehzen that she thought someone was shooting birds in the park.) "I seized Victoria's hands," Albert wrote later, "and asked if the fright had not shaken her, but she laughed at the thing. I then looked again at the man, who was still standing in the same place, his arms crossed, and a pistol in each hand." The carriage moved on several yards, and then stopped. Oxford looked around him to see the impression he was making and then turned back to the Queen and the Prince. He drew the pistol in his left hand from his coat, and adopted the highwayman's pose he had been practicing for weeks, steadying his left hand on his right forearm, and taking careful aim at the Queen.
If he had expected the royal reaction to be sublime terror, he was mistaken. Victoria had not yet realized what the noise was, and Albert, writing to his (and Victoria's) grandmother after the shooting, claimed that Oxford's "attitude was so affected and theatrical it quite amused me." Oxford later declared that he was equally amused with Albert, stating "when I fired the first pistol, Albert was about to jump from the carriage and put his foot out, but when he saw me present the second pistol, he immediately drew back." Oxford cried out, "I have another here." Now, the Queen saw Oxford and crouched, pulling Albert down with her, thinking to herself "if it please Providence, I shall escape." Oxford fired a second time.
For an instant, silence; the carriage had stopped, and the crowd and the royal couple took a moment to register what had just happened. Then, shouts and screams. Oxford's position made obvious by the smoke of the exploding percussion cap, the crowd converged upon him, some crying "Kill him!" The equerries and postilions stopped, and awaited a command. The Queen spoke to Albert, who called out to the postilions to drive on, and they did.
Victoria's whispered command turned near-tragedy into overwhelming personal triumph. The decision to move forward—on to Hyde Park and the completion of their ride—and not to follow the instinctive impulse to go back and seek safety in the palace, was entirely Victoria's, with her husband's full agreement. The royal couple was surrounded by an escort of equerries, and the Metropolitan Police had stationed a number of officers at and around the Palace, three of whom ran immediately to Oxford at the sound of the first shot. But the royal couple had nothing like the police protection offered the monarch and other heads of state today, in which at the first inkling of an assassination attempt the protectors take charge and take steps to isolate their charges.
On the contrary, Victoria and Albert chose, for the next hour and then for the next few days, to expose themselves fully to her public. In doing so, she and Albert signified that absolute trust existed between them and their subjects, and demonstrated their belief that no would-be assassin could come between them. As Albert told his grandmother, he and Victoria decided to ride on in public "to show her public that we had not, on account of what happened, lost all confidence in them." In return, they were showered with an immense and spontaneous outpouring of loyalty and affection, and enjoyed several days of national thanksgiving for the preservation of the monarchy—and the preservation of _this_ monarch, and her husband and unborn child. In an instant, Lady Flora Hastings and the Bedchamber Crisis, and all suspicions about her German husband, were forgotten. Victoria's personal courage and her unerring sense of her relationship with her people were responsible for it all.
As she and Albert rushed toward Hyde Park, Victoria decided to alter her route. The news of the shooting, she knew, would travel with electric speed. Since very soon the Duchess of Kent in her mansion in Belgrave Square would hear the story, Victoria decided that she would personally tell her mother what had happened. Before they had reached the top of the hill, then, she again spoke to Albert; he directed the postilions to proceed at the usual pace through the Wellington Arch at the entrance of Hyde Park, and then veer south down Grosvenor Place to the Duchess's residence, Ingestre House. They remained there until seven, and then set out to complete their turn around the Park.
By this time, Oxford's attempt was the single topic of conversation throughout London, and the Park had filled with Londoners of all social classes, the elite on horseback, all others on foot. The Queen's aunt, the Duchess of Cambridge, was there with her children, as was Prince Louis Napoleon. All hoped to get a glimpse of the Prince and the Queen; all were by now aware of her "interesting condition," and all (including, initially, Albert) were concerned that the shock of the attempt had had an effect upon the child; all yearned to demonstrate their loyalty and sympathy. The _Times_ describes the joyous and spontaneous ceremony that followed:
... the apprehensions of the bystanders were in some degree relieved by seeing the Royal carriage containing the Queen and Prince Albert return along the drive towards the palace at about 7 o'clock. The carriage was attended by a great crowd of noblemen and gentlemen on horseback who had heard of the atrocious attempt in Hyde Park, and on seeing the carriage return accompanied it to the Palace gates, and testified their delight and satisfaction at the escape of her majesty and the prince by taking off their hats and cheering the Royal couple as they passed along. The joy of the populace was also expressed by long and loud huzzahs, and indeed the enthusiastic reception of her Majesty and the Prince by the assembled crowd must have been highly gratifying to them both. Her Majesty, as might well be supposed, appeared extremely pale from the effects of the alarm she had experienced, but, notwithstanding the state of her feelings, she seemed fully sensible of the attachment evinced to her Royal consort and herself by repeatedly smiling and bowing to the crowd in acknowledgement of their loyalty and affection.
In everyone's mind—all, that is, except for Oxford's—both the Queen and the Prince had shown an amazing amount of courage under fire. Once inside the Palace and in private, Victoria and Albert were able give in to the powerful emotions they had been experiencing during the shooting. By one account, Victoria burst into tears; by another, Albert held her and kissed her repeatedly, "praising her courage and self-possession." Before long, they gathered themselves for their next audience: Victoria's royal relatives and London's leading politicians—Melbourne, Peel, John Russell, the Home Secretary Lord Normanby, on hearing of the shooting, had rushed to the Palace to see them. Victoria quickly rallied, and soon went to dinner "perfectly recovered."
While Victoria and Albert moved forward to their triumphant procession, Oxford experienced his own procession—a hostile and derisory one. Bystanders began rushing toward Oxford before his second shot, and the first to reach him were Joshua Lowe, a spectacle-maker, and his nephew Albert, who had been running beside the royal carriage as it made its way up Constitution Hill. Joshua seized Oxford, while Albert disarmed him. Now holding both pistols, Albert Lowe appeared to be the shooter, and William Clayton, a cabinetmaker, fell upon him, calling him a "confounded rascal" while struggling for the pistols, succeeding in wrestling one of them away. This annoyed Oxford; it took attention away from himself. "I am the man who fired; it was me," he cried out. Then, it seemed to Oxford, everyone who could grabbed hold of him: "in an instant several persons seized me by the skirts of the coat, some took hold of my trousers, others twisted their hand into my handkerchief, and all within reach of me had me by the collar. Some could not get to my coat, and being resolved to have some share in the apprehension, seized me by the shirt-collar." The restraint, Oxford later claimed, was completely unnecessary, "as I had no intention to run away."
Three policemen from A Division—the police administrative district that covered Buckingham Palace and provided protection to the royal family—came running: George Brown and Charles Smith, who had been on duty at the Palace, and William Smith, patrolling Green Park, who jumped the palings separating the park from the road, cutting his hand in the process. They came upon a growing and quite angry crowd—an "immense assemblage," according to the _Times_ , which could only with "the greatest difficulty" be prevented from executing summary judgment upon Oxford. The police, Oxford, and the crowd, with a great deal of "hooting and execration," proceeded to the A Division station house, which stood at the other end of St. James's Park on Gardiner Street, between Parliament and Whitehall.
_En route_ , Oxford took the opportunity to drop a hint that he was part of a larger conspiracy. The Lowes were suspicious of William Clayton, who still held one of Oxford's pistols, and who appeared to them to be protecting Oxford by challenging Albert Lowe. Joshua warned his nephew: "Look out, Albert. I dare say he has some friends." Oxford, obviously thinking not of Clayton but of Young England, agreed: "You are right, I have." The police took note of this remark.
Halfway to the station house, someone in the crowd articulated the question that would become a central one in Oxford's trial: Were there bullets in his pistols? To this Oxford answered, according to P.C. Brown, "if the ball had come in contact with your head you would have known it." Despite the fact that the conditional nature of his remark disqualifies it as any sort of confession, the police clearly understood him to mean that his pistols were loaded. And that is likely the impression Oxford wanted to give. Indeed, at the station Oxford was asked, before a number of witnesses, whether the guns were loaded, and Oxford admitted that they were.
When they reached the station house, P.C. William Smith, not quite sure whether Clayton was a hero or an accomplice, took him as well as Oxford into custody; he was searched and locked in a cell before he was released. Oxford was searched: in his pocket were his knife, the key to his box at home, and half a crown—two shillings and sixpence—in change. The police also took note of the wear above his trouser pockets, obviously caused by the constant friction of the pistols against the fabric. Oxford was questioned by the constable on duty, James Partridge, and freely revealed his name, his age, his address, and his occupation: "a servant out of place."
All accounts of Oxford's behavior at A Division station house suggest he was having the time of his life. Everyone around him was paying the most careful attention to his every utterance: he had suddenly become a person of great importance. The _Times_ noted one interchange at the station house that captures Oxford's giddy mood. When asked his profession, he joked "I have been brought up to the bar." A lawyer, then? "No, to the bar, to draw porter." When asking what that meant, exactly, his questioner struck a nerve: "Are you a potboy?" "No," Oxford replied. "I'm above that."
His elaborate plan to represent himself as a Captain of Young England seemed to be working. In the evening, the Superintendent of A Division dispatched officers to search his room at West Place; soon they would find his box of secrets. Important people from the government and the Queen's Household were gathering to interview him. Lord Uxbridge, the Lord Chamberlain, hurried over from the Palace to learn about Oxford. Oxford was apparently delighted to see him, and asked whether the Queen was hurt. Uxbridge rebuked him for his effrontery in asking. Oxford, nonplussed, chatted amicably with him, hoping again to promote his tale of conspiracy: he had been practicing his shooting for over a month, he told Uxbridge, ever since someone had given him the pistols on the third of May, and had given him more besides: money—with the promise of much more, "as much more as he pleased." Uxbridge, understanding Oxford's implication, told him "you have now filled your engagement." "No, I have not," Oxford replied. "You have, as far as the attempt goes," Uxbridge said.
As it happens, Oxford had shot at the Queen and had been arrested in A Division of the Metropolitan Police, the division operating out of the buildings at the edge of Whitehall abutting Scotland Yard. While Scotland Yard is now associated with the detective branch of the Metropolitan Police, in 1840 the Metropolitan Police technically had no detective branch. In forming the Metropolitan Police in 1829, Home Secretary Robert Peel had deliberately established that force as fully preventative, and not as investigative or detective: government spies in plain clothes were seen as something unpleasantly European—particularly French—and certainly un-British; Peel sensed that the British public was not yet ready for such a force. Moreover, there was an effective detective service in 1829: the Bow Street Runners, serving not the Commissioners of the Police, but of the London magistrates. Reforms of the year before—1839—under Home Secretary John Russell, had led to the elimination of that group, and no official detective force now existed in the metropolis. By 1840, however, the two commissioners of the Metropolitan Police had come to look upon A Division as the special division of the force, and used its officers to reinforce other divisions, when necessary, to serve special functions outside of London—90 officers and Superintendent May traveling to Birmingham, for example, to battle militant Chartists in the Bull Ring Riots a year before. Moreover, the commissioners looked upon the higher officers of A Division as their eyes and ears, and asked them—Inspector Nicholas Pearce, a former Bow Street Runner, in particular—to undertake investigative duties across London and beyond. Thus, Pearce (with the assistance of Sergeant Otway) raced across London to prevent the duel between Louis Napoleon and the Comte Léon. Thus, Pearce took charge of several murder investigations outside A District—including the Courvoisier case—and one outside London completely. Thus, Sergeant Otway traveled to Gravesend to rearrest Gould. The station house at Gardiner Lane was, then, the location of London's unofficial detective branch, and several officers jumped into detective action soon after Oxford's arrival at the station.
Inspector Hughes and Sergeant Otway were the ones dispatched to West Place, and they arrived so quickly that the news of the shooting had not yet crossed the river to that part of Southwark. They found the landlady, Mrs. Packman, there with her sister. They broke the news to the women with great delicacy, Sgt. Otway first making sure Mrs. Packman was not Oxford's mother before telling her that Oxford had shot at the Queen. Mrs. Packman immediately told Oxford's sister Susannah, who, devastated by the news, immediately ran to her husband at the soda factory. The two policemen made a search of Oxford's room and quickly came upon his locked box. Not finding the key, they obtained a hammer and chisel from Mrs. Packman and smashed the lock. There, they found all Oxford's evidence of Young England—sword and scabbard, crepe cap with two red bows, bullet mold, some loose bullets, gunpowder—and a red pocket book, "which contained a memorandum," as well as other papers—Oxford's created letters, as well as the rules and regulations of the organization. Hughes and Otway clearly understood the documents to be important evidence.
They brought the evidence back to the station house, and Inspector Hughes described his findings to Lord Uxbridge and other members of the Royal Household. They tried one of the confiscated bullets in Oxford's pistols; it fitted perfectly. Inspector Hughes spoke of the rules and regulations of Young England, and there was no doubt in his mind that Oxford was indeed a member of a larger conspiracy. Then Oxford was brought from his cell and confronted with this evidence. He had meant to destroy the papers, he claimed. He did not deny that all that they had found was his, or that he was a member of Young England. He would not, however, tell them where the society met, or give the names of any other members.
Although reporters now clamoring at the station house for news weren't given full details about Young England from Oxford's documents, they were told enough to have a good idea about the size of Oxford's imagined conspiracy, about its structure, and about its political loyalties: the information from the third letter that news had arrived from Hanover was released to a reporter, and was in the newspapers the next morning. Victoria's wicked uncle was thus quickly connected to Oxford's crime.
Some time after Hughes returned to the station, Fox Maule, Undersecretary at the Home Office, arrived to coordinate Oxford's government examination. With Superintendent May he interviewed Oxford in his cell for some time: Oxford after this interview would greet Maule as a particularly close acquaintance. Maule likely imparted to Oxford the delightful news that he would be examined at the Home Office to ascertain whether there was enough evidence to try him for High Treason. Oxford spoke glibly to these two, as well as to the officers of A Division and his many visitors that night—expressing republican sentiments to some; suggesting at one time that he thought it wrong that England was ruled by a woman.
While Oxford regaled his audience with dark hints of reactionary conspiracy, at all gatherings throughout the metropolis—at dances and dinners, the theatre and the Opera—the attempt was on everyone's tongue. At Almack's Assembly Rooms, a venue traditionally limited to the elite of London society, a sense of melancholy prevailed: first, Lord William Russell murdered in his bedroom, and now the Queen and Prince Consort shot at: who among the aristocracy was safe? Elsewhere, the mood was more celebratory: rousing versions of "God Save the Queen" were sung; improvised speeches of horror at the attempt and joy at its failure were given. "Our theatres begin the thanksgiving," one reporter wrote, "to be completed in our churches."
By all accounts, Oxford slept very soundly that night, and the next morning complimented the police on the comfort of their accommodation.
* The Marble Arch would be moved to its present location outside Hyde Park in 1851, when its openings were deemed simply too small to allow the passage of the state coach.
_four_
THIS IS ALL I SHALL SAY AT PRESENT
Whether Oxford's pistols had been loaded with ball or not quickly became the central question to those investigating the crime. A successful prosecution for High Treason depended upon proof that Oxford had done more than startle the Queen with smoke and noise—that he had aimed and fired a bullet at her. Oxford was asked whether his guns had been loaded so many times in the hours after his arrest that he eventually refused to answer.
Immediately after Victoria and Albert drove from the scene of the shooting, all bystanders not mobbing Oxford and hauling him to the station house hastened to scrutinize the wall to the Palace gardens, hoping to find Oxford's bullets themselves or any marks they left. The Millais family was among them, and, years later, William Millais (John's brother) claimed that two bullet marks were clearly visible, marks that disappeared over the next few days, as gawkers poked new marks into the walls with their walking-sticks and umbrellas.* No bullets were found, however. Soon after Oxford's arrest, a large detail of officers was dispatched to the wall with birch brooms and barrows, to sweep up all the dirt beneath the walls and convey it to the station house for careful sifting. They toiled until eleven that night and for much of the next day, finding nothing. The next evening, two boys claimed to have found a ball in a place the police had already carefully scrutinized—but the police soon discovered the ball was too large for Oxford's pistol; someone, it seems, was attempting to assist the police by planting evidence against Oxford. By Friday, police attention shifted from the wall to the gardens on the other side, on the theory that Oxford had shot high and over the wall. No balls were ever found there, either.
There was never any question in the minds of Victoria and Albert, however: they had been shot at, at dangerously close range—from six paces away, according to Albert—and it was a miracle that the Queen had not been hit. "It seems the pistols were loaded," Victoria wrote in her journal, "so our escape is indeed providential." Albert was too surprised to notice the trajectory of Oxford's first shot, but claimed that he saw that of the second—with a certainty that transcended the actual evidence: "The ball must have passed just above [the Queen's] head," he wrote to his grandmother, "to judge from the place where it was found sticking in an opposite wall." The royal couple were as certain about the shooter as they were about the lethality of his shots: he was not mad, certainly, but "quiet and composed"—a villain who deserved punishment.
On Thursday morning, two angry and curious crowds gathered, one outside of the A Division station house on Gardiner Street, and the other, a short distance away, in front of the Home Office, at Whitehall, where Oxford was to be examined. To avoid a confrontation with the crowd, the police decided to hustle Oxford out the back door. As he emerged from his cell between Inspectors Hughes and Pearce, he saw, for the first time since he had left West Place after dinner the day before, his sister Susannah, accompanied by their uncle, Edward Marklew. Susannah had been desperately applying to see him since his arrest, but his family's requests to see him were denied. Upon seeing her brother, Susannah shrieked "there he is!" and nearly fainted. After learning of the shooting, and after fetching her husband William from the soda factory, Susannah had written her mother in Birmingham with the news and then she sought her Uncle Edward's assistance. Edward Marklew, as Hannah's brother, was naturally a publican, landlord of the Ship, in the City. His assistance so far had been tireless and wholly ineffective. He had tried to obtain legal counsel for his nephew, but the solicitor he contacted refused, claiming to be too busy with the prosecution of the two sensational legal cases of the day: Courvoisier's and Gould's. Marklew had then applied at the Home Office for Oxford to have some sort of an adviser during the coming examination: if not a solicitor, then he himself asked to attend. He was turned down flat; Oxford, at this stage, would have to represent himself.
Susannah's letter to her mother in Birmingham would arrive later that day, but the police were faster; Sergeant Otway had taken the seven o'clock train from Euston Station to Birmingham, one of the first intercity train routes in Britain. He found Hannah among her relatives. Hannah received the news badly, responding with a hysterical fit, by one account, and fainting, by another. She would take the afternoon train to London and be there by the evening.
Inspectors Pearce and Hughes bundled Oxford past his sister and uncle, out the back of the station, where the three jogged through the Horse Guards' parade ground and into the back entrance to the Home Office, at Whitehall. Oxford ran, without handcuffs, and in a jocular mood. He was clearly enormously excited at the prospect of his examination by all the leading Whig politicians: Melbourne, Russell, Palmerston, and the rest would be giving him their focused attention: he had wanted to make a noise—and the examination proved to him that he had done exactly that. If he had known of his uncle Marklew's attempts to find him counsel, he would certainly have disapproved. He had, at that moment, no desire to let anyone speak for him, and no desire to be found innocent. If his pistols had indeed been empty, he preferred everyone not to know that, seeing him instead as a dangerous conspirator with high if mysterious political connections. He was placed to wait in a room adjoining the room where depositions were to be taken, and a reporter, seeing him there, noted his self-centered pleasure: "he paced up and down the room with perfect self-possession, and an air of consequence and satisfaction, as if he felt pleased to find himself an object of so much interest."
At eleven, Oxford was examined first by the Home Secretary and his undersecretaries, Phillipps and Maule; Normanby then decided upon a fuller examination by a larger body, at two o'clock. The ministers discussed the constitution of that larger body. Precedent was unclear as to whether the Privy Council or the Cabinet should examine the evidence. In the end, they decided upon the Cabinet. One of that body, John Cam Hobhouse, recorded his less than impressed opinion of Oxford in his diary. "He was young," Hobhouse wrote,
... and under the middle size, neatly made, with a darkish olive complexion.* He had black eyes and eyebrows, dark chestnut hair. He had not a bad expression, but with a curl on his lips, as if suppressing a smile or sneer. He was dressed as became his condition, which, we were told, was that of a barman at a pothouse. There was nothing displeasing in his look or manner, until he spoke, when his pert audacity and his insolent carelessness gave him the air of a ruffian.
Maule orchestrated the examination to convince those assembled that Oxford was the shooter, and his pistols were loaded. Establishing the first point was simple: several witnesses stated that, without any doubt, they had seen Oxford shoot; three of these testified as to Oxford's incriminating statement, upon his capture, that he had done the shooting. Establishing that the pistols had been loaded was more difficult, as no ball had been found despite an intensive search. One witness, however, claimed that the ball "passed directly before my face," with a whizzing sound, and another that he had seen a mark left by one of the balls on the wall.
Oxford was given the opportunity to question each of the witnesses, and his questions—punctuated by his uncanny bursts of laughter—did little to further his case, and nothing in particular to challenge the flimsy evidence that his pistols had been loaded. Rather, he quibbled about details: some witnesses claimed that he had shot his two pistols with his two hands, some that he shot both using one hand; one witness claimed that he was between five and eight yards away from the royal carriage when he shot the second time, another that he was thirty yards away. Allowed to make a final statement, Oxford reiterated these discrepancies, and couldn't resist impugning Albert's reported courage, claiming that he jumped up at the sound of the first pistol and shrank back at the sight of the second. "Then," Oxford said, "I fired the second pistol. This is all I shall say at present."
Nothing Oxford did or said affected the cabinet's decision, and he was bound over for trial on the charge of High Treason. Home Secretary Normanby drew up a warrant for Governor William Wadham Cope of Newgate Prison to take in Oxford as soon as he could be transferred from the Home Office. Oxford was removed, still apparently in good spirits. If he had considered the government's line of questioning more closely, however, he might have been more concerned. Although Inspector Hughes did tell the Cabinet about Oxford's box of secrets, that was as far as any reference to Young England went. The police still took the conspiracy theory very seriously: they had gotten it into their heads that the handwriting on all of Oxford's documents was not actually Oxford's, and considered it possible, at the very least, that another person might have encouraged Oxford to shoot the Queen—a Truelock to Oxford's Hadfield. But the government was not interested in establishing Oxford as a conspirator. Already, the image that Oxford had worked so hard to create—the myth of the valiant Bravo—was on the decline. The caricature of the foolish potboy was on the ascent.
Outside of the examination room, Oxford once again saw his family: Susannah, flanked by her husband William and uncle Edward. This time, Oxford was able to embrace his sister. Her distress was palpable and infectious, and Oxford began to cry. The police separated the two forcibly. Oxford did however manage to recover his highwayman's mien for one act of gallantry before leaving for Newgate, laughing and flourishing his hat to some girls in the building's lobby. At a few minutes before six, Hughes and Pearce clapped a cap on Oxford's head to disguise him, and put him in a coach for the journey up the Strand, Fleet Street, and Ludgate Hill, up Old Bailey to the door of Newgate Prison, where he was taken into custody by Governor Cope.
With the shooter safely shut away in the decaying bowels of Newgate Prison, Oxford's motive became the focus of discussion, and rumors connecting others with the crime began to fly. One of these held that the letters E R were stamped on Oxford's pistols or his pistol case—suggesting Oxford was acting on the orders of _Ernestus Rex_ , the King of Hanover. And while many (Baron Stockmar and Albert's personal secretary George Anson among them) could not believe that Hanover was directly involved, many took seriously the possibility that "Young England" was real: a reactionary, ultra-Tory movement bent on destroying the British constitution (as Uncle Ernest had abolished the Hanoverian one) and bringing absolutist government to Britain. Daniel O'Connell, the defender of Irish Catholics, was not alone in holding this view, but was its strongest articulator, seeing in the threat of Victoria's death a particular danger to her Irish subjects. Ten days after the shooting, in a letter addressed to the people of Ireland, O'Connell railed against the "underlings of that Orange-Tory faction which naturally detests the virtues of our beloved Queen." If Victoria had died, O'Connell thundered,
I shudder even to think of the scenes that would have followed. I have no doubt that the Tory party in England would submit to be converted into another Hanover. They would sacrifice to the last remnant all constitutional liberty for the sake of enjoying irresponsible power. The gratification of trampling upon Ireland and the Irish would amply repay that worthless faction for the loss of any vain boast of ancient freedom.
O'Connell was convinced that Oxford had had assistance: how else, he argued, could this potboy obtain respectable clothing, serviceable pistols, and the training to use them? One persistent rumor in support of this theory held that a respectable, older man had stood near Oxford as the Queen's carriage approached, and gave him the signal to fire.
Other rumors held Oxford to be a creature of the left, not the right. After all, in the years leading up to 1840, the greatest threat to the constitution through political violence came from the working-class Chartist movement, a movement that had only grown stronger with the weakened economy of the early 1840s, a movement whose agitation had burst into violence in July of the year before, when the national convention of Chartists in Birmingham devolved into riots, violence that culminated in an attempted insurrection in Newport in November. Oxford's Birmingham working-class origins helped fuel this theory. The _Northern Star_ , the leading Chartist newspaper, attempted energetically to dispel the rumor that "the diabolical deed was a premeditated act of a band of Chartists"—floating the counter-rumor that Oxford had acted in collusion with the police.
Most concluded that Oxford was a pathetic madman, and that shooting at the young and innocent Queen offered on the face of it solid evidence for his insanity. Even then, however, he may not have acted alone: rumors persisted (helped by reports of police investigations) that the Young England documents were not written in his hand, and that he was the "tool" of a "designing villain"—one either taking political advantage of Oxford's insanity, or perhaps someone equally deranged. Oxford's own mother for a time believed that some malefactor must have goaded her son into this act.
Victoria however, simply could not accept the idea that Oxford was a part of conspiracy of any stripe, for in accepting such a belief, she would have to acknowledge a life-threatening opposition to her among a portion of the British public, and thus relinquish the trust she had in her people, and lose the absolute trust she was certain they had in her. Trust in her subjects was instinct to her, and that instinct ruled her actions after Oxford's attempt, though she would be shaken, after every attempt to follow. Oxford was an aberration, apart from and antithetical to her public, and she refused to allow him to change her relationship with them. In shooting at her, Oxford forced the nation to contemplate what might have been. The _Morning Chronicle_ stated that had Oxford succeeded, "We should have been at this moment the vassals of a now foreign potentate. We should have been breathing in the dominions of King ERNEST of Hanover!... The oppressor would soon have been abroad, and close on his track the insurgent whom the oppressor makes and infuriates." Victoria, in response to Oxford's threat, over the next few days provided the public with every opportunity to celebrate what was. After the worst had almost happened, she demonstrated to the nation that _nothing_ had happened. She refused to hide or allow any visible sign of heightened security. She and Albert repeatedly exposed themselves to danger, to show that no such danger existed. In this way Victoria successfully (and virtually singlehandedly) converted an act of public discord into a new concord.
And the public responded enthusiastically, realizing that it had dodged a bullet just as its monarch had: if she labored to demonstrate her trust for them, they demonstrated their trust in her and their personal joy in her preservation. Throughout the country, organizations submitted addresses to the Queen protesting their loyalty and deploring Oxford's act. Theatres altered their programs to honor the Queen. At Her Majesty's Theatre, the night after the attempt, the entire troupe assembled for the opening curtain. "The effect was electrical; and the 'God Save the Queen' that broke forth was responded to by enthusiastic shouts of approbation from her Majesty's lieges." At Drury Lane Theatre, a lead singer, "to the warmest welcome and applause," sang a revised version that reflected the recent event: "God _Saved_ the Queen." And at dinner at the Middle Temple on Thursday, when the usually "unostentatious" toast to the Queen was made, "one simultaneous burst of cheering arose, and then the members... gave a round of nine times nine in loyal testimony of their heartfelt pleasure for the escape of the Queen from the shot of the assassin." A similar scene occurred at Gray's Inn, the enthusiasm there helped along by a much larger allowance of wine than usual.
And Londoners, in huge numbers, gathered about the Palace over the next few days, both to see the scene of the crime and to have "oracular demonstration of the well-being of their Sovereign." Constitution Hill was of course thronged, as all there exchanged the latest news and rumors, and all gathered around to hear the accounts of several witnesses (and, surely, several pretend witnesses) to Oxford's attempt. The wall to the Palace gardens was a particular focus of attention, as everyone (including the Dukes of Cambridge and Wellington) squeezed in between the police officers, still busy seeking, in vain, balls from Oxford's pistols.
On the day after the shooting, at about ten o'clock, much of the crowd shifted to the gates of the Palace, where a new show was beginning. The appropriate time for visiting the Palace had arrived, and a seemingly unceasing stream of carriages drove up throughout the morning and afternoon, filled with aristocracy and gentry who came to leave their cards, to sign the Palace register, and to inquire after the health of the Queen. (They were invariably and reassuringly told that she suffered from no ill effects whatsoever.) It was an unprecedented show of loyalty to the Queen by the social elite. Among these carriages were those of Victoria's family, of members of the Queen's government, of a number of foreign ministers and high church officials; throughout the day Victoria and Albert met personally with these.
By the afternoon, Victoria somehow made it clear to the masses outside that she and Albert would take their usual airing by carriage.
The Queen and the Prince were careful to give this ride the appearance of all their other rides: they would have the same number of attendants they had had the day before—two outriders ahead, two equerries behind—in the same low, very exposed carriage, and without any discernible increase in police presence (although most certainly the officers of A Division were on their guard). Soon after six, the outriders trotted through the gates and Victoria and Albert emerged into a deafening sea of humanity that "all but impeded the progress of the royal party." The Queen bowed repeatedly, and Albert doffed his hat. A spontaneous procession of riders formed behind the royal carriage and followed in a parade up Constitution Hill and to Hyde Park. A reporter from the _Times_ was waiting there, and described the scene:
The loyalty of the English was never more finely exhibited than it was during the afternoon of yesterday.... About 6 o'clock it was evident that the Royal party were approaching, and upon one of the Royal outriders appearing through the gateway leading from Constitution-hill to Piccadilly, the cheers within the park were plainly heard. In an instant after an open carriage and four was driven through the archway containing Her Majesty and her Royal Consort, followed by a numerous cavalcade of ladies and gentlemen. The cheers of a vast assemblage of British subjects instantly burst forth with an animation and sincerity we have seldom witnessed—every hat was waved, and every heart seemed gladly to beat on seeing their Sovereign apparently in good health and spirits still among them. From the highest to the lowest there seemed to be but one feeling, and we can hardly imagine a much greater punishment of the wretch whose attempt was so providentially frustrated than to have seen how joyous the multitude were that his effort was not successful. Both the Queen and Prince looked exceedingly well. They drove twice round the Park—on the first occasion being loudly cheered all the way round, and on the second having every hat raised to them. The scene was one of deep and affecting interest.
On the next day, Friday, the Queen and Albert were prevented from riding as both Houses of Parliament paraded from Westminster to the Palace to present a congratulatory address. Three to four thousand spectators gathered before the Palace gates, and a substantial detachment of police from A Division was needed to clear a space before the Marble Arch. The Members set out from Parliament in a parade of 190 carriages, the first of which reached the Palace gates before the last had left Westminster. The Commons arrived formally dressed: in court clothing, or, if they had them, full regimentals, red and blue Windsor uniforms, or uniforms of deputy lord-lieutenants; members of the bar wore wigs and gowns. The Speaker, who led the procession, wore the state robes. "Never on any previous occasion in our recollection," stated the _Times_ , "has such a brilliant array of the Commons of England attended the presentation of an address to the throne." The Lords—in their various formal uniforms—followed behind the Commons, in order of ascending hierarchy: barons first, then bishops, earls, marquises, dukes—and finally Victoria's uncles Cambridge and Sussex, and the Lord Chancellor in his state carriage. It was a formal display of Parliamentary unanimity and a complete repudiation of the partisanship the Queen had herself shown months before in wishing to exclude the Tories from her wedding. The crowd outside the Palace, on the other hand, displayed a strong sense of party spirit, showing its hostility to the beleaguered Whig government: Lord Melbourne, on leaving the Palace, was hissed "loud and deep," while the Duke of Wellington was cheered, and Robert Peel's carriage was followed and "cheered until out of sight." That the crowds could hiss the Queen's ministry while cheering the monarch reveals a sea change in attitude toward the Queen: she was no longer "Mrs. Melbourne," a Whig Queen: she had turned away from the partisanship she, and her uncles and grandfather before her, had always exhibited. Victoria was anticipating Albert's ideal of a neutral monarchy—before Albert had had a chance to promote it.
Saturday and Sunday were quieter days, though the crowds continued to assemble, and the royal couple continued to ride in public. On Monday, however, Westminster once again burst into celebration, as Victoria and Albert departed Buckingham Palace by carriage for Windsor. Inhabitants of every suburb and village on the route—Kensington, Hammersmith, Brentford, Hounslow, Colnbrook, and Windsor itself—set out flags, pealed church bells, and assembled along the route to cheer the Queen's cortege. She and Albert set out with Albert's brother Ernest in one carriage, followed by three others. The crowds assembled on Constitution Hill were said to match in number those who had assembled for the Queen's coronation; they made the route nearly impassable. And the crush of well-wishers was equally great at Kensington. Victoria ordered her postilions to drive slowly through it all, as she and Albert, as exposed as ever, bowed from the Marble Arch to Windsor. "The reception of the royal party from the assembled thousands was," according to one reporter, "the most enthusiastic we have ever witnessed."
* The Millais' brush with Edward Oxford obviously became an important part of their family mythology, and, as family myths will do, this one inflated with time: In his later account of the attempt, William Millais claimed that his father had personally seized Oxford and held him until the police came. No contemporary account of the shooting supports this story.
* Oxford's darkness—and his sister's, as grandchildren or great-grandchildren of a black man, was noted by the newspapers of the day, but only incidentally. When, however, the American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, arriving late on a ship for the Anti-Slavery Conference that Prince Albert chaired, read an account of the shooting to his fellow passengers, he claimed his British auditors went wild when they learned Oxford was a man of color: "they yelled like so many fiends broke loose from the bottomless pit... swore that Oxford 'ought to be strung up, without judge or jury, and cut in pieces,' in true Lynch-law style—the whole 'nigger race' made to suffer for so foul an act, ay, and all those who are disposed to act as their advocates! I have seldom seen so horrid an exhibition of fiendish exultation and murderous malignity" (Garrison 2:364).
_five_
GOING TO SEE A MAN HANGED
The abuse she had received at the hands of her husband, as well as years of difficult parenting, and more than one failed business, had rendered Hannah Oxford a fragile, highly-strung woman; her family doctor, James Fernandez Clarke, went so far as to claim she was "most eccentric, if not insane." After recovering from the initial shock of her son's arrest, however, she developed an iron and indefatigable resolve to save him from the death penalty at any cost; it was she more than any other who laid the groundwork for Edward's legal defense. Arriving in London from Birmingham on the day after his arrest and not knowing that her son had been transferred to Newgate, Hannah rushed from Euston Station to the A Division police station. She had at this time heard enough about Young England to believe that her son must have been a pawn serving the interests of others, as he could not have come up with the plan to assassinate the Queen on his own. She was certain that if she could speak with him—alone—he would reveal his accomplices to her. At A Division, she learned that since Oxford was to face trial for High Treason, she could not visit him at Newgate without first obtaining an order from the Home Office. The next day, Friday, accompanied by her daughter and her brother Edward Marklew, Hannah spoke with the permanent undersecretary there, Samuel March Phillipps, and received qualified permission to see her son: of the family, only she could speak with him, and would have to do so in the presence of Newgate's governor. From Whitehall, the family rushed to Newgate, and arrived at six in the evening—to find the governor gone, and the jailer on duty refusing them admittance until the next morning.
Before returning to the prison on Saturday, Hannah and Edward Marklew retained a solicitor for Edward. William Corne Humphreys agreed to take on the case, and accompanied the family to Newgate to consult with him.
Oxford was cheerful when he entered Newgate on Thursday evening. He might be shut away in London's most notorious lockup, but he was still an object of public fascination, and like his celebrated predecessor, Jack Sheppard, if he could not see the world, the world could see him, and they came: the undersecretaries at the Home Office, Maule and Phillipps, visited him there, and a number of London aldermen, some of whom were magistrates at the Central Criminal Court, spent a great deal of time with him—at least as much out of sheer curiosity as in any official capacity. With these aldermen—James Harmer, Sir Peter Laurie, and Sir George Carroll among them—Oxford showed signs of his former giddy volubility, proudly recounting the story of his attempt—an account that was changing: when Alderman Laurie asked him whether he had balls in his pistols, Oxford denied it outright, and laughed derisively. Oxford's openness about his actions, as well as his complete unconcern for their consequences, led the aldermen to conclude him insane.
When his illustrious visitors departed, however, Oxford was left alone with guards who were strictly ordered to discuss nothing with him beyond his immediate needs, and he began to show signs of depression and anxiety; reverting to fits of crying, and developing the odd habit of whistling to mask his distress. To Governor Cope and the prison chaplain, James Carver, he revealed his depression, acknowledging he cared little that he had thrown his own life away, but that he was terrified that he had "sacrificed" his mother's life as well.
Oxford had announced to the aldermen that he had decided to act as his own counsel during the trial, a fact that they had reported to Governor Cope, so that Cope issued an order prohibiting any interview with a lawyer. When William Corne Humphreys accompanied the Oxfords to Newgate, then, on Saturday 13 June, he never saw Edward. Humphreys was livid, concluding that the aldermen—Alderman Harmer, in particular—had encouraged Oxford to refuse legal assistance. Because of this "extraordinary interference," he refused to have anything further to do with Oxford's case. With Governor Cope as a witness, but otherwise alone, Hannah had a "heart-rending" conversation with her son, during which he made a last-gasp attempt to promote his conspiracy theory: "there are others in it," he told her.
That was the last time Oxford endeavored to implicate others, and the last time his mother gave any credence to the notion: neither mentioned the idea again. His sister Susannah, who had more closely than anyone else watched Oxford's movements over the past month, was certain that there was no Young England, and apparently was able to convince her mother. The police on the other hand continued to take the possibility of a conspiracy seriously, and busily collected writing samples from the residents of West Place. By the time of Oxford's trial, however, the police too had given up their theory of a conspiracy, and could offer no evidence of one.
Indeed, Oxford's defense at trial largely took shape in the days after the shooting, and Oxford's mother contributed greatly not simply to the formulation of that defense but to its promulgation. She spoke to anyone who would listen about the family madness, and the newspapers eagerly reiterated her stories to a public hungry to know everything about the boy. Her words helped shift public opinion about Oxford from sinister desperado to pitiful victim of hereditary mental illness. Speaking two days after the shooting to the _Morning Chronicle_ , she promoted just this image:
The unhappy parent of Oxford states that her husband died about twelve years since, and that during his lifetime he evinced great irritability which left little doubt of the occasional unsoundness of his mind. Upon one occasion, in a fit of excitement, he cut the bedclothes up into shreds, and on another he rode into the sitting-room on horseback. She says that at times she is afflicted with nervous delusions, and she describes her son as an inoffensive and affectionate child, and declares her belief that he committed the act in a boyish frolic, and that there were no balls in the pistols at the time. The pistols, [s]he says, he brought home about a month ago, and one morning he held one of them (empty) to her head, and threatened her in a joke, which exceedingly alarmed her.
And at Newgate the next day, Hannah spoke with the aldermen who surrounded her son, telling them of her deceased husband's insanity and abuse: offering to show Sir Peter Laurie the scar where Edward Senior had fractured her skull; Laurie declined to look, concluding that Hannah was "decidedly mad"; he had no doubt that her son was mad as well.
To create a defense for her son, then, Hannah had not only to engage a solicitor, but a medical specialist to organize a case for the boy's insanity. She and her brother found a solicitor in the East End. Jabez Pelham, who had a practice off of Ratcliffe Highway, was at first hesitant to take on the case, having heard that Humphreys was already engaged, but after consulting with that solicitor, agreed to do so. Edward Marklew and a number of his acquaintances agreed to pay his fees.* Upon being engaged on Tuesday the 16th, Pelham attempted to interview Oxford at Newgate, but as Oxford still refused counsel, Governor Cope prevented any meeting. Overnight, however, Oxford changed his mind, and Pelham was able to see him the next morning. Oxford proposed to Pelham that they defend his action as a foolish lark. Pelham, on the other hand, quickly resolved that the defense would prove a case "if not of positive insanity, at least of monomania, which will entitle him to the merciful consideration of the Court and jury."
For a medical specialist, Hannah consulted the family doctor who deemed her "eccentric, if not insane." She could not have made a better choice. James Fernandez Clarke had treated her for years, knew Edward, and had for some time been concerned about his mental state; indeed, the instant he had learned that Oxford had been arrested, he exclaimed "the boy is mad. I am not surprised." Clarke was, moreover, an editor of the _Lancet_ , the leading medical magazine of the day, and thus was personally acquainted with England's greatest medical minds. He agreed to assist with the case, and met with Pelham to work out the specifics. Pelham had, in the meantime, engaged an attorney to argue Oxford's defense at trial: J. Sydney Taylor, a highly reputable barrister and well-known journalist, adamant in his opposition to the death penalty and willing to pursue any legal remedy to keep Oxford from the noose. Consulting with Taylor, Clarke suggested three eminent doctors besides himself who might be willing to testify to Oxford's insanity.
In 1840, psychological science was still largely anatomical science, and the psychologist, or in the terminology of the day the mad-doctor, was at best a specialized physician. General physicians were usually considered competent, and often called upon, to treat the mental illnesses of their patients. Clarke, himself no mad-doctor, certainly considered himself well qualified to make an expert diagnosis of Oxford's psychological state. And of the three doctors he recommended to Oxford's defense, two—Drs. Hodgkin and Chowne, of Charing Cross Hospital—were pathologists and anatomists, specialists in physical disorder. Only one of those he recommended was truly a specialist in mental illness. This was Dr. John Conolly, at the time the most popular psychologist in Britain. Conolly had become superintendent of Hanwell Asylum in Middlesex the year before, and had quickly enforced a program of treatment that prohibited any restraint of patients: a revolutionary treatment, but one that, within a few years, would become the norm. Conolly's fame rested upon this system, and upon the side career he was beginning to adopt as an expert psychological witness. Critics claimed that he was able to testify to madness in any situation. Conolly's reputation made him, to Clarke, the "most important" of the witnesses. All agreed to testify, and Hannah added two more to the list: John Birt Davis and William Henry Partridge, Birmingham doctors who could testify as to the insanity of Oxford's father and grandfather.
Pelham decided to supplement this medical testimony with a barrage of witnesses—as many as 110 people, from Birmingham and elsewhere—who had witnessed three generations of Oxford family madness. And he commissioned Hannah to subpoena many of them. A week after she had arrived in London, then, Hannah Oxford took the four o'clock train to Birmingham on this mission. And on the same day—just a day after he first met with his solicitor—Oxford demonstrated that he, too, was willing to support an insanity plea. He sent Pelham a letter:
Newgate, June 18, 1840.
My dear Sir,—Have the goodness to write to Lord Normanby and ask him to let me have some books to read—such as "Jack the Giant Killer," "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Jack and his Eleven Wives," "My little Tom Thumb," "The Arabian Nights' entertainments," and all such books from such celebrated authors. And ask him, as a prisoner of war, whether I may not be allowed on a parole of _honour_ , and on what grounds, ask him, dar (sic) he detain one of her Majesty's subjects.
I remain respectfully,
Edward Oxford
To Mr. Pelham, solicitor, Gravel-lane, London.
Oxford was far more literate, and much more cognizant of British legal process, than he made himself out to be here. He was, to put it in Victorian terms, shamming, trying too hard to appear insane: he almost certainly realized that this letter would find its way into the newspapers—as it did—and reinforce the public perception that he was an idiot. Benjamin Disraeli, reading this letter in the newspapers, saw not idiocy but canniness in Oxford's words, writing to his wife that the letter suggests "that P[rince] Albt is an ogre and the Q[uee]n an ogress"—and by implication, that Oxford is Jack, the humble but heroic fairy-tale slayer of giants. This may have not been what Oxford intended, but it is an interpretation that surely would have pleased him immensely.
Oxford likely had another motive in writing this letter: he almost certainly felt he was fading from the spotlight he so craved. Victoria's intensified love affair with her public continued: two days before, she and Albert had attended the races at Ascot to immense crowds (many who had come to see her more than the races) and "deafening cheers from every part of the course." The hissing she had experienced there a year before, in the midst of the Flora Hastings scandal, was forgotten. But Oxford was shut away, and he had been, since his arrest, sharing prison space and newspaper columns with other criminal celebrities. On this particular day, one of his criminal colleagues was stealing public attention. As Disraeli put it, "all the world is talking about Courvoisier, and very little of the quasi Regicide." This day, 18 June, was the first day of Courvoisier's trial for murder.
For his first couple of days in Newgate, Oxford inhabited an ordinary cell among the general population. (Within a couple of days, however, because the elevated charge of High Treason demanded a more careful monitoring, Oxford was moved into a condemned cell, a larger cell created a few years before by knocking down the wall dividing two smaller cells. These cells were furnished with a bench and table so that jailers could comfortably observe, and if necessary prevent the suicide of, condemned prisoners.) From the start, then, Oxford was in contact with François Benjamin Courvoisier. Whether he mingled at first with Newgate's other notorious inmate, Richard Gould, is another question. Gould, with another inmate who had achieved some amount of public attention at the time—Samuel Bailey, a seaman who had attempted to murder his captain with an axe—had, two weeks before, attempted to break out of the prison. The two removed the bars of a window to Gould's cell and descended an improvised rope into a courtyard. At that point, they realized they had no way of ascending to the roof and escaping and, after a frustrated night in the open, they clambered back into their cells. Evidence of their attempt was discovered, and they were locked up more securely. If Gould was at first removed from Oxford's presence, though, joint appearances at the Central Criminal Court would soon bring them together.*
On the first day of his trial, Courvoisier had genuine and warranted hopes of acquittal. The evidence against him was circumstantial and incomplete: prosecutors, for one thing, were unable to account for all of the goods stolen from Sir William Russell, despite keeping Courvoisier under close watch from the morning the body was discovered. His lead attorney, Charles Phillips, intended to suggest to the jury that Russell's other servants could just as easily have committed the murder, and intended to suggest as well—with strong evidence—that the police had botched the case, tampering and planting evidence. Phillips's aggressive cross-examination on the first day of trial of Courvoisier's fellow servant Sarah Manser indicated this intention.
On the second day of the trial, however, Phillips's strategy collapsed. The evening before, a witness, Charlotte Piolaine, came forward with new evidence. Piolaine was the wife of the proprietor of a rundown French hotel in Leicester Square at which Courvoisier had worked four years previously. He had come to her some time before the murder with a package that he asked her to hold for a few days. When she read in a French-language newspaper of the murder and of police interest in the missing loot, she gathered a few witnesses, engaged a solicitor, and opened the package. It contained, among other items, silverware stamped with the Bedford crest. Piolaine was brought to Newgate, and was able to pick out Courvoisier from a number of prisoners in the yard as the one who had given her the package. The prosecution thus had compelling proof that Courvoisier had stolen from Lord William—though not proof that he had killed the man.
Courvoisier, aware of this new evidence, called his two attorneys to the dock the next morning. As Phillips remembers it, the following stunning exchange took place:
Up to this morning I believed most firmly in his innocence, and so did many others as well as myself. "I have sent for you, gentlemen," he said, "to tell you that I committed the murder!" When I could speak, which was not immediately, I said, "Of course, then you are going to plead guilty?" "No, sir," was the reply, "I expect you to defend me to the utmost." We returned to our seats. My position at this moment was, I believe, without parallel in the annals of the profession.
Phillips's first instinct was to drop the case altogether. He consulted, however, with the associate judge for the trial, who recommended that he continue to defend Courvoisier, "and to use all fair arguments arising on the evidence." Phillips's plan to throw suspicion on the other servants, then, was now off limits; he would have to limit his defense to throwing doubt on the evidence implicating his client: in particular, he questioned Inspector Tedman's finding of a pair of bloody gloves in a trunk the police had thoroughly examined days before, finding nothing. He also attempted to discredit Mme. Piolaine's evidence by suggesting that her hotel was nothing but a sordid gaming-den. In the end, the circumstantial evidence was too strong.* Courvoisier was found guilty and sentenced to hang on the 6th of July, outside Newgate's debtor's door, and then to be buried within the precincts of the prison. He was removed from the courtroom by a passageway to the prison and placed in the condemned cell neighboring Oxford's. There, he immediately attempted to kill himself by forcing a towel down his throat.
For Edward Oxford, whose level of happiness correlated exactly with the amount of attention he received, the morning of 22 June was a time of pure joy, as he and a more doleful Richard Gould stood in the dock of the Old Bailey, in the place that Courvoisier had been sentenced to death two days before. Oxford could hardly contain himself, and grinned "and with difficulty restrained his propensity to laughter" to see a courtroom packed full with an audience eager to witness his and Gould's trials. Gould chose to act as his own counsel; he pleaded not guilty and sat to await his trial. Oxford pled not guilty, and sat with his solicitor, Pelham, while his barrister, Sydney Taylor, presented an affidavit from Pelham and Hannah Oxford requesting a delay until the next sessions. They gave a number of reasons for their request—a delay would give the public time to cool down, for one thing, and would allow the defense reasonable time to formulate their response to prosecution witnesses. Their primary need for delay, however, was to allow Hannah to complete her mission and subpoena witnesses to Oxford and his forebears' insanity. The Attorney General, Sir John Campbell, who would lead the prosecution, attacked every point in the affidavit save one—the most important one: he would agree to a delay so that Oxford's defense could adequately prepare a case for insanity. Campbell "should be extremely sorry, when the case came before the jury, that it should be charged against the Attorney-General of the day by any future historian that he had followed the example of a former Attorney-General, who had hurried on the trial of Bellingham for shooting Mr. Perceval, although it was stated on affidavit that evidence would be brought forward to prove that he was insane."
Campbell was referring to the only assassination of a British prime minister in history. On 11 May 1812, John Bellingham, who some years before had suffered abysmal treatment in Russian prisons for crimes he was certain he did not commit, and who had been repeatedly denied help or redress from the British government during and after his time in Russia, decided that his only recourse was to kill the head of government, Spencer Perceval. He obtained a pair of pocket pistols and had a tailor alter his coat lining so that he could conceal them. He waited for Perceval to appear in the lobby of the House of Commons and shot him through the heart. Perceval died within minutes. Bellingham was tried for murder four days later. His attorney pleaded energetically for a delay; he could, given time, offer testimony from several persons outside of London that Bellingham had been insane for years. The application was denied outright.
Bellingham in his defense gave a touching narrative of his travails in Russia, and a convincing account of the insensitivity of his own government toward him. And his attorney brought up three witnesses from London who testified to his eccentricities, though all agreed, on cross-examination, that he had never been to their knowledge restrained for insanity, and that he was always in command of his business affairs. The judge, in summing up, pointed out that no personal injury could warrant taking the law into one's own hands. Bellingham was found guilty and hanged on the next Monday morning—a week to the day after he shot Spencer Perceval.
Lord Chief Justice Tindal agreed to avoid such an appearance of undue haste in Oxford's case, and set his trial for the next sessions, on 9 July. The hearing was brief, but for as long as it lasted Oxford had the time of his life. He exclaimed to Pelham, "did you see how I was noticed!—what a noise my case seems to make." Pelham attempted to distract him from reveling in his celebrity, but to no avail; Oxford insisted that his solicitor identify all of the "lords and gentlemen" who had come to see him. He asked in particular about a gentleman with black whiskers who was watching him: it was, Pelham told him, the Duke of Brunswick, who, deposed in a public uprising and exiled, had plenty of time on his hands to view British criminal trials. "What, a Duke come to see me?" said Oxford. "I am glad of that. Will there be any more dukes present at the trial?" (Pelham predicted that it would not be likely.) Oxford also nodded to Fox Maule as to a friend. "He was very anxious to know if he was 'cried out' in the streets; if his likeness was taken, and what was said of him by the French newspapers... he frequently rubbed his hands and exclaimed, with great self-satisfaction, 'nothing else will be talked of but me for a long time. What a great character I shall be!'"
Many of his supposed friends the aldermen were in court as well, but it was just as well for them that his trial was delayed, for later the same day, they proceeded with pomp and solemnity, in the company of over 150 London officials, to Buckingham Palace and to Ingestre House, to present their addresses of congratulations to the Queen and Prince, and then to the Duchess of Kent.
Oxford would have been disappointed to know that the Duke of Brunswick might have been more interested in Richard Gould's impending trial than Oxford's, having attended Gould's earlier examination for burglary. But Gould was likely much less impressed by his august presence; he was focused instead upon mounting his own defense. His attorney in his previous trial—for murder, and not for burglary, the charge in this trial—had done an excellent job of attacking the credibility of many of the witnesses and much of the evidence against his client. Gould endeavored this time to do the same thing, without success: his attempts only earned the laughter of the court. The prosecution refrained from introducing the tainted confession Sergeant Otway had elicited from Gould, but Gould introduced it anyway, hoping to elicit sympathy from the jury that a policeman would thus entrap a drunken man into falsely implicating others. The prosecution did, however, introduce as compelling evidence the fruit of that confession—the bull's-eye lantern, fished out of the pond behind the house where Gould was staying. The couple with whom Gould was living both identified the lantern as having been taken from them, and connected Gould with its disappearance. The two also established that Gould, impoverished before the burglary, was now flush with cash: he had used some to buy new shoes, and the bulk of the money was found bound up in one of Gould's stockings.
The jury returned after fifteen minutes and pronounced Gould guilty of burglary. Baron James Parke, the presiding judge, noted his and the Lord Chief Justice's full agreement with the verdict, and told Gould that no one was fooled by his earlier acquittal: he was a murderer as well as a burglar. Parke threw the book at Gould: transportation for life to a penal colony, "there to pass the remainder of his existence in hopeless slavery, poverty and misery of the worst description." Delighted spectators applauded the verdict as Gould, emotionless, was led from the courtroom. Two weeks later, Gould was, in a sense, back where he had started before Sergeant Otway entrapped him: on a ship bound for Sydney, New South Wales. Now, though, he sat in chains on the convict ship _Eden_ and faced a far different future.
As Oxford awaited his trial, Courvoisier in the neighboring condemned cell offered him ample opportunity for diversion. Courvoisier had developed, since his condemnation, a pressing need to confess, and he did so repeatedly and fervently, apparently to anyone who would listen to him or would act as witness to his written statements. He wrote at least four confessions. The first of these, written on the same day Oxford and Gould appeared in court, set out in very specific detail events surrounding the murder. Courvoisier's attorney and Governor Cope witnessed the confession, and sent it on to the Home Office (from where it soon found its way into the newspapers). Very many of the details of this confession, it quickly became clear, were false; Courvoisier lied, for one thing, in claiming that Lord William Russell had surprised him in his burglary of the house, and that was what convinced him on the spur of the moment to murder the old man. The evidence of the case made it clear that his murder was premeditated, not impulsive. Why did he lie? He could have done so to reduce his culpability. Courvoisier was most certainly aware that the overwhelming majority of death sentences—over 95% of them—were commuted to lesser sentences in his day; a well-publicized confession that somehow mitigated his guilt might do the trick.
In later confessions, he continued to provide careful (and sometimes contradictory) details, all suggest a variety of mitigating factors. In his third confession—a spiritual biography of sorts, written in French—he claimed that he had been influenced to the deed by bad reading:
I read a book containing the history of thieves and murderers, being under the dominion of Satan I read it with pleasure, I did not think that it would be a great sin to place myself among them. On the contrary, I admired their skill and their valour. I was particularly struck with the history of a young man who was born of very respectable parents, and who had spent his property in gaming and debauchery, and afterwards went from place to place stealing all he could. I admired his cunning, instead of feeling horrified at it; and now I reap but too well the fruit of those papers and books which I had too long suffered to supplant devotional works.
Courvoisier's suggestion that low literature can create thieves and murderers was the popular theory at the heart of the criticism of the Newgate novel, and indeed, the story got about that Ains-worth's _Jack Sheppard_ had turned Courvoisier evil, compelling Ainsworth to write to the newspapers contradicting "this false and injurious statement." The connection between Courvoisier and the Newgate novel and the resulting furor, was enough to kill the subgenre.
There was another culprit in this confession—Satan, whose hold on Courvoisier became even stronger in his fourth confession, in which Courvoisier represented the murder of Russell as a cosmic battle. As he stood above the sleeping man:
... the evil disposition of my heart did not allow me to repent. I turned up my coat and shirt-sleeve, and came near to the bed on the side of the window. There I heard a cry of my conscience, telling me, "Thou art doing wrong"; but I hardened myself against this voice, and threw myself on my victim, and murdered him with the knife I was holding in my right hand.
If Courvoisier expected his sentence to be commuted by the Queen's government, however, he was disappointed: a servant slaughtering his master in such a cold-blooded manner was beyond their ability to forgive. (The fact that he was a foreigner killing a member of one of the best-known aristocratic families in England certainly didn't help.) Courvoisier's zealous religiosity during his last days, however, had all the signs of a genuine religious conversion, and the genuine hope that faith would save him in the next life, if not in this one. Courvoisier spent most of his last days in fervent prayer, often in the company of James Carver, Newgate's chaplain, and M. Baup, the Swiss minister of a nearby French church.
In the sermon traditionally spoken before a condemned man, given the day before Courvoisier's execution, Reverend Carver promised him the "pardon and peace" that God offered to every repentant sinner. The chapel at Newgate was filled to overflowing. The sheriffs, besieged by applications, gave out tickets and opened a gallery that had been closed for the past fifteen years. Courvoisier—his coffin placed in front of him—attended to the sermon with "sorrow and contrition," and demonstrated great agitation at every reference to his crime. Edward Oxford sat directly behind him, flanked by two jailers. He, too, appeared to enter into the solemnity of the occasion, showing a "decent seriousness." But, just for a moment, his vainglory got the better of him. When the chaplain offered up a prayer for the Queen, Oxford couldn't help it: he looked up, and around the chapel, with a foolish grin on his face.
Though resigned to die, Courvoisier had not completely resigned himself to strangle on a rope before the eyes of thousands, and plotted to take his own life by binding up an arm with a strip of cloth and cutting a vein with a sharpened fragment of wood that he had secreted in his mattress. His plan was discovered and foiled when he was forced to strip completely before going to sleep.
He was to be hanged at the customary time of 8:00 the next day. He was woken at four the next morning, as he had requested, and for two hours he quietly wrote final letters to his family. At six, the ritual of execution began, as Courvoisier was joined by a sheriff, by Carver, and by his Swiss minister Baup; they prayed until 7:30, and Courvoisier "fervently" took the sacrament of communion.
If Oxford was not awoken early that morning by the clankings of cell doors or the fervency of prayer, then his sleep would certainly have been disrupted by the growing activity outside the prison. Crowds had been assembling since the night before, to reserve the best vantage point to see Courvoisier hanged: these were a celebratory bunch, mostly rowdy youths, and the local gin shops remained open all night to cater to them. In the early hours of the morning, the scaffold was wheeled into place outside Newgate's debtor's door and hammered into place. The bulk of the crowd began arriving after dawn. Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, apart from one another, were among this crowd. Both were, in 1840, staunch opponents of the death penalty, and both were to find their views strengthened considerably by what they were about to witness. Thackeray, recording his impressions of the event in his essay "Going to See a Man Hanged," noted the great social and moral diversity of the spectators: from the immoral—the young blackguards and their prostitute girlfriends at the front of the crowd, as well as the upper-class dandies and "Mohawks" who had retained window seats above the mass and who entertained themselves by spraying those below with brandy-and-water—to the respectable: the tradesmen and tradesmen's families, and the bulk of the working-class spectators, whom Thackeray, standing squeezed among them, deemed "extraordinarily gentle and good-humoured." Pickpockets were at work, as were broadsheet-sellers: Courvoisier was a popular subject for these; as many as 1.6 million would be sold. The crowds, as the hour of execution approached, filled Old Bailey and Giltspur streets and overflowed to Ludgate Hill to the south and Smithfield to the north. The _Times_ conservatively estimated 20,000 were there; Thackeray reported 40,000. Places in the windows of the houses surrounding the scaffold were going for three guineas, and for two sovereigns one could obtain treacherous places on the house-roofs: places for those "with less money to spare, but more nerve."
After Courvoisier had taken communion, William Calcraft entered the cell. Calcraft had been Newgate's executioner since 1829, and was to continue in that position until 1874: a long if not illustrious career. Calcraft was well aware that this was bound to be a highly profitable day for him. For his earliest hangings he was paid a guinea per hanging; in time, he would earn £10 a body. He would also be given Courvoisier's hanging-rope and his effects, including his clothing. He could sell the former, cut into little pieces, as souvenirs—and Courvoisier's notoriety would guarantee a high selling price for these. He could also sell the clothes to Madame Tussaud's waxworks; Courvoisier would soon be a star attraction in Madame's Chamber of Horrors.
Calcraft drew from a black bag a rope with which he pinioned Courvoisier's arms before him. At a few minutes before eight, the procession left the condemned cell, Carver in front, reading the burial service.
The procession stopped in Newgate's press yard—so-called not because of any journalistic connection, but because this was the area in which, until as late as 1772, prisoners who refused to plead were crushed with stones until they spoke or died. On this day, a number of esteemed guests had assembled in the yard; they had paid for the privilege of watching Courvoisier in his last moments, as his leg-irons were stricken off and he was led to the scaffold. (Afterwards, they would have a hearty breakfast with Governor Cope.) Among this group was the celebrated actor Charles Kean. Kean's father Edmund, the even more celebrated actor, had come to Newgate twenty years before to witness the ultimate moments of Arthur Thistlewood and his fellow conspirators, sentenced to hanging and decapitation for plotting to assassinate the cabinet: Kean wished to broaden his education as an actor. His son, one assumes, was at Newgate on this day for the same reason.
At 7:55, the prison bell tolled; with an "immense sway and movement," the entire crowd uncovered their heads, and, according to Thackeray, "a great murmur arose, more awful, _bizarre_ , and indescribable than any sound I had ever before heard." After a suspenseful pause, Courvoisier emerged, with the sheriffs and the hangman. He showed, by all accounts, a preternatural calmness; his only agitation, beyond an imploring look around at the immense crowd, was a clasping and unclasping of his bound hands. The crowd replied in kind to him: after a few yells of execration, they remained silent. He strode to the middle of the platform, under the beam, where Calcraft quickly slipped a hood over his head, adjusted the noose, stepped back, and pulled the lever that shot back the bolt. Courvoisier dropped.
William Calcraft was renowned as a bungler famous for his "short drops," in which the hanged man, only dropping a few inches, would not suffer a broken neck and would thus slowly strangle to death, Calcraft often helping with this process by racing under the scaffolding and pulling on the legs of the dangling man. To be fair to Calcraft, however, the short drop was the norm in 1840. Long drops of several feet, designed to break the neck—drops which could go horribly wrong in their own way—were not a feature of Newgate hangings until the 1880s; and broken necks and quick, painless deaths were not considered by all at the time to be good hangings. According to the _Times_ , however, Courvoisier's death—perhaps with Calcraft's help under the scaffolding—was relatively benign: "He died without any violent struggle. In two minutes after he had fallen, his legs were twice slightly convulsed, but no further motion was observable, excepting that his raised arms, gradually losing their vitality, sank down from their own lifeless weight."
Both Dickens and Thackeray were sickened by the scene. Dickens saw the only the lowest form of humanity: "nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness, and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes. I should have deemed it impossible that I could have ever felt any large assemblage of my fellow-creatures to be so odious." Thackeray couldn't watch. For weeks after the hanging, however, he suffered, and he wrote eloquently upon the human degradation effected by public hanging, not the degradation of the masses, as Dickens saw it, but the degradation of himself:
I fully confess that I came away down Snow Hill that morning with a disgust for murder, but it was for _the murder I saw done_.... I feel myself ashamed and degraded at the brutal curiosity which took me to that brutal sight; and I pray to Almighty God to cause this disgraceful sin to pass from among us, and to cleanse our land of blood.
After hanging for an hour, Courvoisier's body was placed in the coffin, and brought back into the prison. A medical officer examined the body and proclaimed it lifeless. A death mask was taken of his face. One cast from that mask remained at the Governor's office; another was exhibited at Madame Tussaud's: a hauntingly angelic-looking 23-year-old, displayed until well into the twentieth century.
In the afternoon, Courvoisier's body was buried in a passageway to the Old Bailey.
Of Courvoisier, Gould, and Oxford, only Oxford remained, and in the relative silence of his condemned cell he must, on this day, have given some thought to his own possible fate: a guilty verdict for High Treason entailed hanging, decapitation, and quartering. If there was any vainglory left in the boy, after his committal to Newgate, the events of this day must have eradicated it.
Not long before his trial, Oxford was visited by an Italian artist from Manchester; he had come to take a plaster cast of his head and face. The operation was conducted as quietly as possible; Governor Cope later denied knowing about it, as did the aldermen, who found the situation disgraceful. Nor was his family consulted: Hannah, on learning of this visit, became hysterical. Knowing that Newgate made and kept plaster casts of condemned felons like Courvoisier after their deaths, she assumed that the Home Secretary had ordered the cast of her son, and that his execution was thus inevitable.
It was not Normanby's power at work here, but Madame Tussaud's, and by September she was able to advertise proudly in the newspapers:
The LUNATIC EDWARD OXFORD.—Madame TUSSAUD and SONS respectfully announce that they have added a full-length model of OXFORD (taken from life) to their Exhibition, representing him in the act of attempting the life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Likewise the Models of Gould and Courvoisier.
Madame Tussaud was not the only one fascinated by Oxford's head. At one o'clock the afternoon before the trial, James Fernandez Clarke and two of his hand-picked team of medical experts—Chowne and Conolly, accompanied by Oxford's solicitor, Pelham—took a carriage to Newgate with an order from the Home Secretary in hand, to examine Oxford and decide whether he was insane. Actually, they all had for the most part made up their minds. From their later testimony, it is clear that the newspaper reports had convinced them that his motiveless act, his inviting capture, and his statements after the fact all pointed to insanity. When Clarke went to Hanwell to speak with Conolly, Conolly said "I cannot believe that the prisoner is responsible for his actions. There is an entire want of motive, and, from what I have heard of his conduct since his committal, I feel convinced that a plea of insanity can be maintained." "Of course," he added, "I can only satisfy myself on this point by seeing and carefully examining him." Conolly came to Newgate to reinforce his conclusion, not to draw one.
At the prison, Governor Cope, still taking his position of gatekeeper very seriously, at first refused the doctors admittance. George Maule,* who as Solicitor of the Treasury was responsible for putting together the prosecution's case in the trial, was with Cope when the doctors arrived, and it was likely Maule who ordered Cope not to admit the medical experts for the defense unless they were accompanied by the prosecution's expert. That expert, Charles Aston Key, a highly reputed surgeon at Guy's Hospital, was not called as a witness at Oxford's trial, but he attended, and advised the prosecution in cross-examining the defense's expert witnesses. Cope immediately sent a messenger to Key's house, but he was out, and no one knew when he would return. After nearly two hours in the governor's office, Clarke pointed out the obvious to Cope: the doctors had a government order to see Oxford; the trial was the next day; if Cope continued to deny them access, he would be denying Oxford a fair trial. Cope and Maule relented, Maule accompanying the doctors in Key's place.
Oxford exhibited to his guests the same clear and straightforward method of answering questions he had shown to the police when he was captured. While this manner had then impressed the police with a firm sense of his sanity, the doctors drew the opposite conclusion. To them, Oxford's demonstration of cool, rational behavior, when he was caught apparently red-handed, imprisoned for High Treason, and faced a possible death sentence, was in itself a sure sign of the deepest insanity. Showing no agitation whatsoever convinced at least Dr. Chowne that the boy was missing normal brain function: was, in a word, an imbecile.
John Conolly was a true believer in what was, at the time, considered by many to be the reputable study of phrenology—the sub-science which held to the oversimple premise that brain size and brain shape determined human behavior, and that the skull, conforming to the size and shape of the brain, could thus be examined to provide clues to an individual's psychological makeup. After Clarke introduced Conolly to Oxford, then, he was soon probing the boy's skull and, not surprisingly, he quickly found the evidence he needed to support his diagnosis: a sunken spot at the upper part of Oxford's forehead that suggested to him a missing part of the brain: a sure sign of idiocy. "This youth," Conolly told Clarke, "cannot with such a configuration be entirely right."
While Oxford seemed eager to answer the doctors' questions, Conolly and the others found his answers unsound in more than one respect. For one thing, Oxford consistently demonstrated a lack of affect. When they reminded him that his family would suffer if he were convicted, he seemed not to care. When told he had committed a great crime, in shooting at the Queen, he seemed not to understand, replying "that he might as well shoot her as any one else." Moreover, in some of his answers he demonstrated illogic. It is hard, though, not to get a sense that he was trying too hard to appear insane with some of his replies. For instance, when Chowne, obviously hoping for an agitated reaction, reminded Oxford that he'd be decapitated if found guilty, Oxford, perhaps with Courvoisier's execution fresh in his mind, and certainly remembering the Italian artist from Manchester, replied calmly that "he had been decapitated in fact a week before, for he had a cast taken of his head." The doctors, concerned that Oxford might be faking madness, sought evidence besides his speech for insanity. For Conolly, it was the abnormal shape of his skull. For Chowne, it was his walk: "I told him to get up and walk about the room, and the brisk manner in which he walked proved to me he was not acting a part, for I think if he had been he would not have walked so much at his ease."
One question that Oxford did answer clearly directly demonstrates that he was aware of what his defense was to be, and that he fully intended to cooperate: there had been no bullets in his pistols, he stubbornly maintained, even when the doctors suggested to him that there had been.
The doctors walked away resolved to testify that he was insane. "We held a consultation after the interview," Clarke states, "and we all felt convinced that we could justly uphold the plea of insanity, notwithstanding the opposition we contemplated from the Government." They expected a fight.
They got one.
* It was a promise that Edward Marklew apparently reneged upon; in January 1841, Jabez Pelham appeared in court as an insolvent debtor, citing, among other debts owed him, £510 due from Hannah Oxford for the defense of her son _(Times_ 29 Jan. 1841, 7).
* Oxford, Courvoisier, Gould, and Bailey formed such a notorious quartet at Newgate that a request was made to Sir Peter Laurie, alderman and official of the prison, to take plaster casts of the heads of the four. He refused, arguing that this sort of thing was done only _after_ criminals were tried and found guilty _(Morning Chronicle 17_ June 1840, 3).
* Later, when news of Courvoisier's confession came out, Phillips was savaged in the press for defending a man he knew to be guilty, especially by attempting to place blame for the murder on others. He was forced to defend himself from this charge for years after the trial (Costigan 324).
* Not to be confused with the Undersecretary for the Home Department, Fox Maule.
_six_
GUILTY, HE BEING AT THE TIME INSANE
The courtroom was packed on the first day of Oxford's trial. The sheriffs, however, had just had good practice with handling the crowds at the Courvoisier trial, and they adopted the same procedure with this one: they gave out a limited number of tickets and restricted access to all avenues leading to the courtroom.
At a quarter to ten, Oxford was called to appear, and every eye in the courtroom turned to the dock. He emerged after a few seconds, at first dejected: but he looked out over a sea of bewigged magistrates and barristers, and at the roomful of notables, and was heartened. His solicitor Jabez Pelham's prediction to him at his arraignment turned out to be true: there were no more Dukes present than there had been then. But the Duke of Brunswick was again a spectator, as were the Earls of Errol, Colchester, and Uxbridge, as well as a Baron and a Count, and a scattering of Lords and Honorables. The Lady Mayoress of London and a retinue of "elegantly-dressed ladies" occupied a box usually reserved for the county magistracy. Undersecretary Fox Maule, Oxford's seeming friend, and his wife were among the first to arrive. Oxford's expression of dejection changed to a silly-looking smile of bafflement, excitement, and curiosity. He would for most of the trial exhibit a _nonchalance_ that, for many, confirmed his lack of reason. Rather than pay attention to the proceedings, he was captivated much more by the herbs strewn before him, "picking, rubbing, and smelling" them for the next two days. These herbs, particularly malodorous rue, had been placed before the dock at every Old Bailey session for ninety years, ever since a prisoner suffering from gaol-fever—the various contagions consequent to the seriously overcrowded prison—had infected and killed a judge, an alderman, and a number of jurymen and witnesses. They had been strewn thereafter not simply to mask the stink of prisoners, but in an attempt to sanitize the noxious miasma that inmates at Newgate were considered to be emitting. Oxford likely had no idea that the herbs stigmatized him. But they did provide him with a welcome distraction.
To defend Oxford, Pelham had engaged John Sydney Taylor and William Bodkin, both highly respectable advocates and philanthropists, both strongly committed to a number of reformist causes. Taylor, who led the defense, was a founding member of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, and fought passionately for that cause in the columns of the _Morning Herald_. At the time of this trial, however, Taylor's poor health seriously undermined his energetic advocacy; he had for some time been battling against a mysterious and malignant disease. At age forty-four he was dying, and would be dead in a year.
In terms of legal reputation, however, Bodkin and Taylor could not hold a candle to their opposition. Leading the prosecution were the attorney general, John Campbell, and the solicitor general, Thomas Wilde. Campbell, who would handle opening arguments, had a reputation for aggressive advocacy in his writing, his politics, and in the courtroom. His assertiveness and ambition had made him a number of enemies, including, as it happened, the presiding judge in this case, Lord Denman. His superb analytical mind, however, was obvious to all. Thomas Wilde, who would handle the prosecution's closing, had admitted liabilities in his presentation of a case—he had a flat voice and a monotonous delivery—but he made up for these with an astute command of legal niceties and tactics. Both Campbell and Wilde would one day sit on the woolsack as Lords Chancellor. The two had four attorneys assisting them. Foremost among these was Sir Frederick Pollock, the conservative predecessor to Campbell as attorney general, whose presence on the prosecution made clear that Whig government and Tory opposition were united in desiring a guilty verdict.
There were three judges presiding over the case. At their head was Baron Denman, who, as Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, was the second-ranking judge in the country, after the Lord Chancellor. Denman was thought not to have one of the greatest legal minds of his day, but was renowned for his impartiality and courtesy—as the "personification of judicial dignity." Joining him on the bench were Sir Edward Hall Alderson and Sir John Patteson. The trial was to raise a number of puzzling legal questions, and—as Denman himself was to make clear—was to create a number of important precedents. These three judges would show themselves very much aware of the important issues, if not always clear on how to deal with them.
At ten, the judges entered, and the clerk read the charge of High Treason against Oxford: he "did compass, imagine, and intend to bring and put our said lady the Queen to death." And to do it, he "maliciously and traitorously did shoot off and discharge a certain pistol... being loaded with gunpowder and a certain bullet... with intent thereby and therewith maliciously and traitorously to shoot, assassinate, kill, and put to death our said lady the Queen." In order to prove Oxford guilty, then, the prosecution had to convince a jury that there were bullets in Oxford's pistols, even though no bullets were ever found.
Oxford pleaded not guilty to the charge, in a "distinct and firm tone." The jury was then sworn in with no challenges on either side.
In his opening, the Attorney General anticipated and countered the defense's two-pronged defense, first that the guns were not loaded; and second, if that didn't work, that Oxford was insane. Oxford's pistols _were_ loaded, Campbell insisted, and a great deal of evidence supported that claim. Oxford had, in the days before the shooting, sought to buy bullets. He had used bullets in shooting galleries across London. He had, on the night before the shooting, showed off his loaded pistol. On the day of the shooting, eyewitnesses had heard the whizzing of bullets. And while the prosecution was to bring forward two witnesses who would testify that certain marks on the palace wall were likely caused by bullets, Campbell was less certain about the validity of that evidence: he was sure that the bullets passed over the wall, and were lost there. Moreover, Oxford's words proved that he had fired live ammunition. When, after the shooting, one bystander, William Clayton, accused another bystander, Joshua Lowe, of shooting, Oxford stated "It was I"—admitting, according to Campbell, to the act of firing bullets. In custody, he had asked "Is the Queen hurt?"—an absurd question, if Oxford had done nothing to hurt her. And when at the station house he was asked if his guns were loaded, he had answered that they were.
As to Oxford's supposed insanity, Campbell delved into legal precedence, citing a number of legal views on insanity and citing four previous criminal cases—including Hadfield's—to argue for a very high bar in proving insanity. Legal minds agreed, he claimed, that in order for an insanity defense to succeed, one must establish that the defendant was wholly insane at the time; partial insanity was not enough. Only "total alienation of the mind, or total madness, excuses the guilt of felony or treason." And legally, total madness involves a complete inability to distinguish between right and wrong: to acquit a defendant on the grounds of insanity, "it must be shown that at the very time, the particular time, when the offence charged was committed, he was not an accountable being; that he was then labouring under some delusion, that he could not distinguish right from wrong, and that he was unconscious of committing any offence." In all of the four legal cases Campbell cited, the defendants demonstrated mental aberration; in one of them, there was a clear history of insanity in the family. But in three of the four, the defendants were found guilty because it could not be shown that they were totally deranged and incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong at the time of their criminal act. Only Hadfield was acquitted. But, Campbell claimed, Oxford was no Hadfield. Hadfield suffered a head wound that discernibly affected his sanity. He suffered delusions, and his behavior became increasingly irrational to the point that, soon before his attack on King George, he attempted to murder the son he loved: thus, his insanity was manifest to all at the time of the shooting.
Campbell claimed that Oxford was _not_ manifestly deranged—not even partially insane—at the moment of the shooting. Anticipating the defense's many witnesses, Campbell questioned their relevance: while Oxford may have exhibited bizarre behavior throughout his life—while he might be the son and grandson of unbalanced men—that evidence could not establish his total derangement on 10 June. No one ever sought his committal for madness then, or before; rather, he was a capable employee. In support of this line of argument, Campbell pointed out that Oxford was not a "potboy," as was popularly thought, but a "publican"—rare recognition of his superior stature that must have pleased Oxford. Moreover, his signed statement after his examination before the Cabinet, coolly admitting to the shooting, demonstrated conclusively that Oxford was very much aware of what he had done.
The prosecution's witnesses both placed Oxford at the scene and testified that his pistols were loaded. The defense conceded the first point, but argued that his guns were not loaded at all. That Oxford often shot live ammunition at targets before the attempt hardly proved the pistols were loaded on the day of the shooting. Oxford's own claims after his arrest that his pistols were loaded, given his manifestly vainglorious attempt to promote himself as an adherent of Young England, were dubious. The testimony by two witnesses that bullets had made marks on the wall of the Palace gardens was undercut by the Attorney General's opinion that Oxford's bullets had carried over that wall. And the two witnesses who swore that they heard the whizzing of a bullet seemed quite confused in their testimony. The defense, in cross-examination, let pass the fact that it would be virtually impossible to hear the whizzing of a ball immediately after a gun's violent explosion. There was hardly any need to bring this up: both witnesses seemed hopelessly confused about the difference between seeing and hearing a shot. Thus Samuel Perks's (or Parkes's) testimony: "the report of the pistol attracted my attention, and I had a distinct whizzing or buzzing before my eyes, between my face and the carriage." The other witness to the shot, Elizabeth Stockeley, was even more confused about what she saw and what she heard:
... it was the second flash which appeared to come over the Queen's head, and it came close past me; the flash did—it seemed something that whizzed past my ear, as I stood; it seemed like something quick passing my ear, but what I could not say...
_Q_. What do you mean by the flash? _A_. The light and the smoke—I cannot explain what it was that whizzed by my ear—it was my right ear.
As for testimony that Oxford was sane at the time of the shooting, the prosecution refrained from presenting a single witness to counter the many witnesses the defense planned to call to demonstrate Oxford's insanity. They had such a witness available to them: Charles Aston Key, the surgeon who had declined to examine Oxford with the defense's medical witnesses, was present and offering advice to the prosecution. But the prosecution had no intention of having anyone testify to Oxford's sanity. They certainly preferred to prove the boy guilty of High Treason: the formidable prosecutorial team demonstrated that. Executing Oxford would have a highly desirable value in deterring future would-be Oxfords from threatening the Queen. But they surely knew that their evidence that Oxford's pistols were loaded was weak, and thus they could lose the case. Moreover, asking the jury to convict him of a capital crime—one for which the penalty was hanging, drawing, and quartering—was always a risky proposition. The public's perception of Oxford by the time of the trial had shifted: while he was once the desperate and malevolent bravo, he had become a rather pathetic boy who craved attention. The jury might acquit Oxford just to save him from the excessive punishment of an excruciating death.
Oxford's insanity defense offered the government a third option. While each defense strategy—proving unloaded guns, or proving insanity—would result in Oxford's acquittal, the consequence of acquittal for unloaded guns differed dramatically from the consequence of an acquittal for insanity. If Taylor and Bodkin succeeded in proving that Oxford had no balls in his pistols, he would walk from the Old Bailey a free man. If, on the other hand, he was acquitted on the ground of insanity, he would be subject to confinement at the Queen's pleasure—confinement that could last for decades, if not a lifetime, as happened in the case of James Hadfield.
The prosecution recognized that Oxford's defense attorneys could be _too successful_ : they could earn Oxford an acquittal and see him in effect confined for life. That fact shaped Oxford's prosecution. Campbell, Wilde, and the other prosecutors promoted, as energetically as they could, the case that the pistols were loaded. But they offered next to nothing to prove that he was sane. Indeed, they actually helped promote the notion that he might be insane. In his opening, Campbell read Oxford's Young England papers to the jury in full: all the rules and regulations, as well as Oxford's three letters. Moreover, during testimony the prosecution asked Samuel Hughes, the policeman who discovered and broke open Oxford's box of secrets, to read all of the documents in full a second time. Campbell offered no explanation for these documents. He had no intention of suggesting that Young England was real; both prosecution and defense agreed that the organization was a figment of Oxford's imagination. The prosecution, in other words, introduced the very evidence that Oxford's defense would claim to make the strongest case for his insanity.
When Sydney Taylor rose to address the jury, he had good reason to be confident in his client's acquittal, given the weakness of the government's claim that the guns were loaded. If Taylor had simply reviewed the evidence and rested the defense's case, it is more than likely that the jury could not conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Oxford shot at the Queen, and Oxford would be free. Oxford, however, had without question disturbed the Queen's peace, and a jury might just convict him, bullets or no bullets. Taylor and Bodkin, then, hoping for absolute acquittal, but wishing in any case to save Oxford's life, divided the defense into two completely distinct parts: _first_ , he had not committed High Treason at all—but _second_ , only if the jury decided that the act was High Treason, then Oxford was insane and not responsible for that act. And in his opening, Taylor carefully instructed the jury to keep their decisions separate: if they found that Oxford had never shot bullets at the Queen, then the question of his sanity or insanity was not relevant to the case at all.
Taylor then reviewed the weaknesses of the government's case. The evidence, he claimed, actually worked to prove that the guns were not loaded: "the suggestion of the ball having passed over the wall was negatived by the witnesses; but the evidence which tended to show that it had struck against the walls was perfectly inconclusive." Oxford's alleged boast after his arrest that his pistols were loaded counted for little—simply an extension of the vainglory he exhibited in foolishly but harmlessly pointed a bullet-less pistol at the Queen. And in asking whether the Queen was hurt, Oxford might have been wondering whether he had caused her mental alarm. Taylor then turned to the evidence for Oxford's insanity, and questioned the Attorney General's conception that insanity must be total, without motive, premeditation, or plan, in order to acquit. All of George III's assailants, he argued, were deemed to be insane and yet showed some signs of rational thought. Margaret Nicholson, who in 1786 attempted to stab the King when he reached out to take a petition from her, showed premeditation in drawing up a blank petition for the King and inscribing it in the accepted form. Moreover, she was able to speak coherently at her examination.* A second, seemingly coherent assailant who threw a stone at the King's carriage was similarly committed. And Had-field most certainly had motivation for his shooting: he was deeply dissatisfied to be discharged from the army on the pension of 4d. a day. Moreover, he showed "premeditation and contrivance" in concealing his weapon upon entering the Drury Lane Theatre.
Oxford, Taylor pointed out, was born into a family with a long history of mental illness; his grandfather, John Oxford, was once restrained in a strait-waistcoat, and died in a lunatic asylum. And if his father was not confined for his bizarre acts—well, he should have been. Oxford was of an age, Taylor claimed, when latent mental illness generally manifested itself, and it certainly had done so in Oxford's case: the Young England papers, written in Oxford's hand, and the "creations of his own foolish fancy," "furnished the strongest evidence against the prisoner in proof of his insanity." He showed, moreover, no rational motive in shooting at the Queen, and, having shot at her, he made no attempt whatsoever to flee. Obviously he was mad. The jury would delight the Queen by finding him so: "the mind of Her Majesty would be relieved from the unpleasant impression that any one of her subjects could be found guilty of imagining and compassing her death."
Having thus demolished the image of bravado that Oxford had so carefully constructed for himself, Taylor and Bodkin called to the stand twenty-eight witnesses, twenty-six of whom provided evidence as to the derangement of three generations of Oxfords. Notable among these witnesses were several long-suffering Oxford women: his grandmother and her cousin, his mother, sister, and two aunts spoke of enduring the abuse of Oxford men for more than forty years. Uncles Edward and Charles (the latter a Birmingham publican), landlords and a landlady, teachers, employers, workmates, and Inspector Tedman, all confirmed these women's claims, and contributed a host of their own. Witnesses testified that Oxford's grandfather often thought he was St. Paul or the Pope, and testified to his capacity for "indecent behavior" and his proclivity to violent rages when he would smash everything in sight, and which resulted in episodes of restraint and confinement: with cords, in a strait-waistcoat, at Petworth Bridewell. Oxford's father, they testified, inherited his father's manic propensity to destroy. The jury learned of his inappropriate behavior—burning money, riding horses in the parlor—and learned of his horrible abuse, most of it directed at his wife Hannah. Hannah Oxford, testifying during the evening of the first day of the trial, offered up a particularly lengthy litany of sorrows imposed upon her first by her husband, and then by her son. Oxford's father "delighted in annoying and teasing me," she claimed, and told of his bullying her into marriage, his starving her, and his relentlessly beating her: kicking her, once fracturing her skull and nearly killing her, and at another time, when she was pregnant with Edward, smashing a quart-pot over her head, and after he was born, plunging a file into her breast while he was suckling. He abandoned her, only to return and further abuse her. He dramatically threatened suicide before her, and at least twice made the attempt. And through it all, he was utterly indifferent to her and to her suffering.
Her son, she claimed, shared his father's "fractious" nature, and showed the same violent rages, and showed, as well, a disturbing habit from infancy of maniacal motiveless laughter, mixed in with inconsolable crying—behavior she had tried to control with beatings, with locking Edward in the cellar—but which she could not control, behavior that lost her customers, ruined her businesses, and forced her to send him away. Hannah then brought the abuse up to date, telling the jury of his rages at West Place two months before, culminating in his punching her violently in the face and bloodying her nose the day before she left for Birmingham.
Hannah finished her testimony at eight o'clock in the evening, and when Taylor called another witness, Campbell interrupted: did they intend to call many more witnesses? Taylor and Bodkin said that they were. The Chief Justice then adjourned the trial for the night; Oxford was removed from the bar and brought back to his cell, and the jurors sequestered.
The trial resumed promptly at nine the next morning, with a multitude of witnesses to bolster the insanity defense. Every oddity, it seemed, of Oxford's life was presented to the jury: his assaults on strangers and schoolfellows; his scrapes with the police as he harassed a woman in her carriage, or as he assaulted a neighbor; his frightening the customers in his aunt Clarinda's public house by shutting off the gas—and his pleasure in the suffering of others. At times, witnesses seemed to stretch to find anything that would support the notion that Oxford was, in the word nearly all of them used, "unsound." Thus Emily Chittenden, a nursemaid who worked with Oxford at the Hog in the Pound, and for whom he obviously had some sort of affection, testified about a letter that Oxford sent her at the end of May. The contents she apparently considered unimportant, but the address she thought "extraordinary":
Fly, postman, with this letter bound,
To a place they call the Pig in the Pound;
To Miss Chittenden there convey it,
And with "speedility" obey it.
Remember, my blade,
The postage is paid.
And if bad verse could be offered as a sign of insanity, so could bad reading: and as the controversy about the Newgate novel reached its zenith outside the courtroom, Oxford's sister Susannah connected him with that apparently degrading literature, revealing that he had recently read, among other books, _Oliver Twist_ and—worse— _Jack Sheppard_. Oxford's eerie lifelong habit of uncontrollable laughing ran through almost all of the eyewitness accounts: hilarity often leading to fits of sobbing, all generally without discernible motive.
Oxford was thus for hours enlightened as to how all who knew him viewed him. No one saw him as gallant Oxonian, a bravo, or even as a respectable barman: to all—family, friends, Emily Chittenden—he was unsound, annoying, ill. Confronting this horror was enough to shake him from his silly smile, and when he heard his last employer, Newman Robinson, speak of his laughing uncontrollably—to the point where his customers were offended, to the point that Robinson had to give Oxford notice—Oxford broke, bursting into tears and weeping bitterly.
To pull together the mass of anecdotal evidence with an expert diagnosis of insanity, Taylor and Bodkin brought forward the three doctors who had examined Oxford two days before, as well as three more. The very notion of an expert medical witness at the time was highly controversial. Passing judgment on the moral aberration of a defendant was, in the minds of most legal authorities of the time, the province of the jury, not of any witness: judging good or evil behavior was a legal and not a medical issue. To be sure, several medical witnesses had testified in Hadfield's case forty years before, leading to a directed verdict of not guilty on the ground of insanity. But Hadfield had a discernible head injury, while Oxford did not: the doctors in Hadfield's case offered physiological testimony, while the doctors in Oxford's case offered abstract psychological judgments. Taylor had attempted in his opening statement to justify the need for such expert judgments: there was such a thing as a partial insanity, he pointed out, something that could be at times invisible to the world (and to a jury), but could be clear to the trained mind of the physician. In seeking the professional opinion of six doctors, only one of whom had known Oxford for some time, the defense was challenging legal precedent—and the judges would not let new precedent be established without a struggle.
It was the first doctor to testify who bore the brunt of the judges' attack. John Birt Davis, one of the many witnesses called to London from Birmingham, was actually called to the stand as an eyewitness, not an expert witness. He was in 1840 a leading citizen of Birmingham: magistrate and coroner, as well as a highly respected physician. In 1824, however, he was at the start of his career, and had been called to treat Edward's father after he attempted suicide by drinking laudanum. As an eyewitness, Davis had little to offer: he claimed he did not know enough to form any opinion about Oxford's father's state of mind, and that he had not ever seen Edward after the boy had turned two. Bodkin therefore shifted the questioning to his professional opinion of the state of Oxford's mind: "Assuming the facts which have been given in evidence to be true—I mean the facts with respect to insanity affecting the prisoner—looking to the manner in which the crime was committed, and the whole circumstances of the transaction, what is your opinion to the state of the prisoner's mind?"
The Attorney General objected vociferously to this question, and the judges supported him. Lord Chief Justice Denman was adamant: judging the state of the prisoner's mind must be left to the jury. Taylor disputed this: insanity was a medical question, and he had every right to "take the opinion of a medical man upon that evidence." No, Denman responded: that would be like "asking the witness to pronounce a verdict for the jury." Bodkin then altered and re-altered his question, trying to find a way to admit Davis's opinion that Oxford was insane. The judges thwarted his every attempt. In the end, Bodkin was forced to render his question completely hypothetical:
Mr. BODKIN...—Supposing a person in the middle of the day, and without any suggested motive, was to fire a loaded pistol at Her Majesty passing along the road in a carriage, and that such person afterwards remained on the spot, declaring that he was the person who had fired—nay, even took pains to have it known, and that afterwards he entered freely into discussion, and answered questions put to him on the subject, would you refer such conduct to a sound or unsound state of mind?
Sir F. POLLOCK asked the Court if it thought this was a medical question. He did not object.
Lord DENMAN.—It may be put...
Witness.—If I heard these facts stated, I should conclude that the party must be mad....
Mr. BODKIN.—Supposing, if in addition to the facts and circumstances already mentioned, it was shown that immediately before the transaction, the party had written papers such as those found in the prisoner's box, and which you heard read yesterday, would they serve to strengthen or otherwise the inference you have drawn[?]
Witness.—It would greatly strengthen it.
The doctors who followed Davis found that he had made their path easier. The second doctor to testify, William Henry Partridge, also from Birmingham, had apparently no personal knowledge of Oxford, and only testified briefly about treating his mother's head injuries. The next doctor was Thomas Hodgkin, the Quaker social activist and specialist in morbid anatomy (and incidentally, the one who first studied the symptoms of the disease that bears his name). There is nothing in Hodgkin's testimony that suggests he had personally known or examined Oxford before the trial. Sydney Taylor began his questioning guardedly, asking Hodgkin a hypothetical question similar to that asked Davis. Hodgkin quickly connected the hypotheticals with the boy in the dock, and proceeded to diagnose his illness: "If all the appearances described were exhibited by the prisoner, and coexisted in him, I should conclude that he was insane, because such a form of insanity has been recognized. It is called by Le Marc, a French writer, _lesion de la volonté_ , or morbid propensity." Such an illness would likely not be apparent to the layman, and would necessitate an expert medical witness to consider the evidence and guide the jury to an accurate conclusion about sanity or insanity. This was exactly the breach of precedent that the Judges had attacked in their curtailing of Davis's testimony, and the Chief Justice was not going to let Hodgkin's assumption of authority pass without question:
Lord DENMAN.—Do you consider that a medical man has more means of judging with respect to such a subject than other persons?
Witness.—I do; because I think that medical men have better opportunities for judging with respect to the disease of insanity than others.
Hodgkin's testimony stood.
Testifying immediately after Hodgkin, John Conolly—the only one of the doctors testifying who was renowned for his work with the insane—offered a diagnosis of Oxford which made clear his opinion that specialists have a superior ability to judge moral and mental aberration: "I am a physician to the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, and have at present 850 patients under my care, and I have considerable experience in disorders of the mind. I had some conversation with the prisoner at the bar, and, in my opinion, he is a person of unsound mind." Neither the prosecution nor the bench, in their questions to him, suggested any reservations about his authority.
Dr. Chowne, next to testify, further created precedent for the physician's authority by combining the specific knowledge of the case exhibited by Conolly with the technical knowledge of mental illness shown by Hodgkin. The facts of the crime convinced Chowne that Oxford was insane, and his short interview with the boy confirmed him in his opinion. He diagnosed a "lesion of the will," or moral insanity, combined with imbecility. According to Chowne, lesion of the will is often a partial insanity, in the sense that sufferers can "perform the duties of life with accuracy." He thus challenged Campbell's claim that an insanity defense depended upon proof of complete derangement.
Oxford family doctor James Fernandez Clarke was the defense's last witness. He had nothing to say about lesion of the will; Oxford, he claimed, based upon his longstanding experience with the family, was an imbecile, the son of an unsound father. Oxford's madness manifested itself most apparently in his "involuntary laughter, which is seldom found in sane persons," and, as is typical of hereditary insanity, "which breaks out in open acts of violence and disease generally exhibits itself at the period of puberty, between fourteen and twenty years of age, according to the French writer Esquirol."
The prosecution sought to chip away at the claims of the defense witnesses, attempting to establish that Oxford's grandfather and father were not as demented as Taylor and Bodkin tried to make them out to be, that Oxford had occupied a number of positions of responsibility, and that no one had ever as much as considered restraining or committing him for insanity. Solicitor General Sir Thomas Wilde, summing up the prosecution's case, reiterated these claims, and attempted again to define insanity in a case of High Treason as entailing total derangement—something that Oxford simply did not suffer. Indeed, Wilde alone argued that Oxford was actually quite intelligent. Oxford was not at all insane, according to Wilde—he was driven instead by the quite rational desire to be someone: to attain notoriety. His actions culminating in the shooting demonstrated a concerted and clever effort to attain that desire. Considered in this light, the Young England papers demonstrate not Oxford's delusion, but the products of his canny and methodical plot to delude the nation: "There was nothing of imbecility about them; they were written probably, he might say certainly, to produce deception, not that the writer himself was deceived, but that he wished to deceive others."
Wilde questioned the doctors' conclusions, claiming that the grounds for their pronouncements that the boy was insane were thin, based on a hasty examination which gave them nothing that allowed them a solid conclusion of insanity. The doctors, he claimed—quite correctly, at least in the cases of Clarke and Conolly—"went to Newgate with minds prepared to see a madman, with the previous statements of the prisoner's mother and friends incorporated in their minds, and racking their brains to find some rash or inconsistent act in the prisoner's conduct during a period of eighteen years." Significantly, however, Wilde did not question the doctors' sense of special expertise in testifying directly upon Oxford's mental state.
After Wilde spoke, Lord Chief Justice Denman instructed the jury, emphatically reiterating Sydney Taylor's point about the specific sequence of decisions they had to make: first, decide whether the pistols were loaded—and then, _only if they were_ , decide whether Oxford was responsible for his actions: "These questions," he told the jury, "are perfectly separate in themselves." In speaking of the testimony of the doctors, he made it clear that the expert medical witness occupied a legitimate place in English jurisprudence. Dr. Conolly, he said, "a gentleman who it must be presumed was familiar with the treatment in cases of insanity, and must be an extremely good judge, has given his opinion, and the jury would give that weight they think due to it." He similarly commended the testimony of Chowne and Clarke.
When he finished, it was evening: Oxford had endured two days of depressing testimony from both sides. As far as his drive for notoriety went, he must have realized that no matter what the verdict, he had lost: after this trial, if he were to be remembered at all, it would be as a pitiful, unsound potboy. A sentence of death might redeem him somewhat. But he was terrified at the prospect of a guilty verdict and Courvoisier's fate. He nervously turned to Governor Cope, who stood beside the dock, watching over him, and said, of the jury, "they are against me, all of them... I didn't like that Solicitor General's speech at all; he pitched it very strong against me, and I think they'll hang me."
The jury retired, and in their deliberations obviously made little attempt to separate the two major questions of the trial. When an hour later they returned to the court, their verdict was a hopeless muddle: "We find the prisoner, Edward Oxford, guilty of discharging the contents of the two pistols, but whether or not they were loaded with ball has not been satisfactorily proved to us, he being of unsound state of mind at the time."
There was an immediate uproar. Attorney General Campbell recognized immediately that the jury had in essence acquitted Oxford twice—by not actually committing the crime, _and_ by reason of insanity; it was very much in the government's interest to have Oxford adjudged acquitted for the second reason. He therefore jumped up "with prompt dexterity" and shouted that as the jury had declared Oxford insane, he was subject to the provisions of the Safe Custody of Insane Persons Act*—passed after the Hadfield trial, and responsible for Hadfield's forty years' confinement. Oxford was, in other words, to be detained at the Queen's pleasure.
Taylor objected to this. The jury had clearly decided that reasonable doubt existed that the guns were loaded; therefore, Oxford was acquitted outright—on lack of evidence, not because of insanity—and was a free man.
But, Campbell rejoined, Oxford _was_ found guilty of discharging his pistols, and that, compounded with his insanity, was enough for the government to detain him.
This Taylor "strenuously denied." The indictment clearly held that Oxford had fired "leaden bullets." The jury declared that this fact was not proved. Oxford was therefore free.
Not quite, claimed Campbell. The jury showed confusion about the first part of the verdict; but they were perfectly clear about the second: Oxford was insane. Moreover, the jury had been called upon to answer two questions, and surely their answer to the second was germane to the sentence.
Taylor angrily accused Campbell of rewording an act of Parliament in order to suit the purposes of the Crown. The jury had not found Oxford guilty of any offense, "and in a prosecution of this kind, where the prisoner's life was at stake, it was not fitting on the part of the Attorney-general to stand up and endeavour to visit the prisoner with perpetual imprisonment when the jury found him not guilty."
At this point, Taylor and Bodkin were the ones legally on solid ground: no matter what else the jury claimed, it was clear that they were not convinced that Oxford's guns had been loaded. Dr. Clarke, commenting on the trial, considered that if Taylor had pressed the issue, he could have won a full acquittal for his client. But, claimed Clarke, Taylor was a sick man, and, at this crucial moment of the trial, lacked the stamina to defend Oxford adequately.*
Chief Justice Denman intervened. "The jury," he said, "were in a mistake." They had muddled the verdict: they did not state clearly whether the guns were loaded at the time of the crime. Apparently Denman made a liberal interpretation of the very first part of the jury's verdict, seeing in the fact that Oxford "was guilty of discharging the contents of two pistols" the conclusion that he had fired bullets, a conclusion contradicted by the subsequent words of the verdict. They hadn't made up their minds, and the only thing to be done was for the jury to return to deliberation and decide that point.
But they _had_ made up their minds. They could not say whether Oxford fired ammunition, claimed the jury's foreman, "because there was no satisfactory evidence produced before them to show that the pistols were loaded with bullets."
A spirited discussion followed, the specifics of which are lost to history because not one of the stenographers in court (and there were several) recorded it. One imagines Taylor and Bodkin passionately arguing that the jury could not say with certainty that the guns were loaded—a clear verdict of "not guilty" in an English courtroom; Campbell and Wilde, equally strenuously noting that the jury had made its verdict of insanity clear; and Denman and the other justices maintaining that the jury simply had not returned a clear verdict, and therefore needed to go back and get it right. In the end, of course, the justices prevailed, and the jury again left the courtroom.
In their absence, the defense, the prosecution, and the bench argued about what would happen to Oxford if the jury acquitted him on the evidence, as it seemed to be doing. Campbell thought the prospect "monstrous" that Oxford might be "let loose upon society to endanger the life of Her Majesty or her subjects," and asked that Oxford's insanity be taken into consideration regardless of the rest of the verdict; he wanted, in other words, the state to have power over him even if he didn't actually shoot bullets at the Queen. Taylor and Bodkin were of course dead set against this, and found support from all three justices, Baron Alderson pointing out the obvious flaw to Campbell's argument—"The construction you contend for would lead to this, that if a man were charged with an offence, and the jury thought that no offence had been committed at all, yet he must be handed over to the mercy of the Crown perhaps for his life." Campbell persevered: "If no evidence of insanity had been given, then the prisoner would have been entitled to his discharge; but if a prisoner sets up the defence of insanity he does it at the peril of the finding of the jury." In other words, Taylor and Bodkin had indeed argued their case too well: their case for insanity was too successful to be ignored.
The jury returned after an hour with a verdict at least as muddled as their first one: "Guilty, he being at the time insane." But by law no one could be simultaneously found insane and guilty of a crime. This time, however, the judges did not send the jury back, but asked them to revise their verdict on the spot:
Mr. Baron ALDERSON.—Then, you find the prisoner guilty but for his insanity.
The Foreman.—We do, my Lord.
Lord DENMAN.—The Court asked you this question—"Do you acquit the prisoner on the ground of insanity?
The Foreman.—Yes, my Lord, that is our intention.
Lord DENMAN.—Then the verdict will stand thus—"Not guilty on the ground of insanity."
By this verdict, Oxford was liable to a lifetime of confinement. Campbell quickly proclaimed that Oxford should "be confined in strict custody during Her Majesty's pleasure." Lord Denman agreed—"That is a matter of course." Taylor and Bodkin said nothing.
As his fate was being decided—and relieved of any fear of execution—Oxford returned to a state of complacent vacancy. He likely did not care whether he was freed or sent to Bethlem. But he was very likely unaware of one detail of the Safe Custody of Insane Persons Act: it made no provision whatsoever for a release in the event of a cure. Oxford was to be held at the Queen's pleasure, and if all the mad-doctors in the world were to claim the boy perfectly sane, it just might please the Queen and her government to keep him confined—forever. Time, Oxford was soon to discover, had become his enemy.
* Nicholson spent 42 years in Bethlem, first in its Moorfield location, where she was a star attraction when Bethlem was itself a major tourist destination, and then, more secluded, in the women's criminal wing of the Southwark location. She died on 14 May 1828 (Andrews _et al_. 390-91;Eigen).
* 40 Geo. 3. c. 94.
* Clarke says nothing about Bodkin's efforts, and indeed seems to have forgotten Bodkin's existence in the trial.
_seven_
BEDLAM
Oxford remained in custody at Newgate for a week, until an order arrived from the Home Office for his transfer to Bethlem. Now that the threat of death was removed, he was visibly more cheerful. Keeping watch over him now was a single jailer, who had been released from the order to limit his conversation; both he and Oxford lost their reserve, and talked. Oxford's mother, his sister, and his uncles Edward and Charles visited him, and he now spoke at length about his attempt, regaling his hearers with the details of the shooting as if it were a great adventure story, a bravo's exploit.
On 18 July, Governor Cope received the order from the Home Office for an immediate transfer. He personally went to Oxford's cell and told him to get ready; the two would go to Bethlem together. Oxford "did not betray the slightest emotion" upon hearing that the time had come, apparently accepting the possibility of a lifetime of confinement at the asylum, even if he hadn't accepted the possibility of his own insanity.
Cope and Oxford climbed into a hackney-coach for the trip south of the Thames. The coach traveled toward Ludgate Hill, away from the looming walls of Newgate, and then down to the Thames on Bridge Street, and over Blackfriars Bridge, leaving behind the London of the Queen—of Whitehall and St. James, Buckingham Palace and the expansive parks—as Oxford returned to the neighborhoods of his childhood: gritty Southwark and Lambeth. He would never again cross the river. As he passed down bustling Blackfriars Road, if he wasn't too absorbed in friendly chatter with Governor Cope, he might have noticed in passing Hayes's general goods store, where he had bought his "Brummagem" pistols. (The pistols were now the property of the state. Albert would show them to the Queen, and for decades it was thought that one of them ended up in Scotland Yard's Crime Museum.*) The coach continued to St. George's Fields, past the ornate charitable institutions there, and down Lambeth Road. If Oxford had any sense of nostalgia about the few last weeks he spent with his family, he very likely craned his neck there, looking back as the coach passed St. George's Road; he could just catch a glimpse of West Square. The carriage then pulled up before Bethlem.
Governor and prisoner ascended the stairs and passed the tall Ionic columns of the portico, topped by a small cupola. (The distinctive towering dome of the hospital, still visible today in the truncated building's present incarnation as the Imperial War Museum, was added four years after this.) Inside, Cope relinquished authority over Oxford to those at the hospital. No record was made of his admittance, but certainly he was examined as to the nature of his illness, and then likely bathed. Though during his trial the medical witnesses had diagnosed Oxford with everything from congenital imbecility to "moral insanity" and "lesion of the will," the doctor at Bethlem very likely concluded none of these things, but rather concluded he was about to send a sane man into indefinite confinement in the male criminal lunatics' wing. A medical record from 1864 when Oxford was transferred from Bethlem to Broadmoor notes that the medical staff "had always considered him sane."
Oxford was taken into the wards, escorted down a long corridor to the right—the male patients' wing—and further escorted down another corridor, a darker one, in which signs of confinement—cells and heavily barred windows—were much more evident: he was now in the ward for male criminal lunatics. He was shown his cell. He would be locked in there at eight o'clock every night, until eight the next morning. He would spend the coming years largely cut off from the outside world. Visitation with relatives was allowed once a month, and his mother could only see him behind bars, several yards away from her, so far away she could hardly hear him. And for the first years of his confinement, he was prohibited from reading newspapers. Oxford's social world, then, was almost entirely restricted to his fellow lunatics, and during the day, he could interact with them as much as he liked. For a time, he chose not to, at all: Sir Peter Laurie, an alderman as well as a governor of Bethlem, informed his mother that he had a "repugnance to mingle" with them and refused to leave his room. Later accounts of his commitment, however, note his gregariousness. One other inmate was notorious for his aloofness, one who had no friends, and "could not be prevailed upon for some years to walk about with or join the other patients": an old man with a very discernible wound to the head. James Hadfield, whose own shooting resulted in the Act of Parliament that led to Oxford's own indefinite detainment at Bethlem, was now sixty-eight or sixty-nine years old. He had, according to a witness seventeen years before, long since stopped showing any symptoms of insanity. He was sick with tuberculosis, and he was desperately tired of his confinement for the last forty years at the pleasure of three kings and a queen: "the loss of liberty," he claimed, "was worse than death."
For six months, the two would inhabit the criminal lunatics ward together. It is not known if Oxford's natural glibness returned to him in time, and triumphed over Hadfield's world-weariness. But it is tempting to think that the two looked into each other's eyes, and spoke, driven by professional curiosity, perhaps—or because they were the only living members of that most exclusive group: would-be British regicides: Oxford with the fresher memory, and yet relating it in a way that made him out to be the hero, and Had-field, more bewildered, haltingly remembering that violent night in the Drury Lane Theatre, forty years before.
Hadfield died on 23 January 1841. Oxford lived on, a resident of the criminal lunatics' wing for over two decades, until that wing closed down upon the opening of Broadmoor Asylum, an entire hospital devoted to the confinement and care of the criminally insane. Oxford happened to be one of the very last male patients to make the trip, by train, from London to Crowthorne (and Broadmoor). Soon after, Bethlem's criminal buildings were demolished. Between them, then, Hadfield and Oxford witnessed the entire history of Bethlem's criminal lunatics' wing.
Confined to Bethlem, Oxford was soon largely forgotten as a living being, remaining forever the pitiful potboy, recalled to public consciousness every time one of Oxford's six successors made his attempt at the Queen. Nevertheless, the _tableau vivant_ he had burned into the British consciousness, of a young man shooting point-blank at the young, pregnant Queen and her even younger husband—the incident Oxford had instigated with his startling action, and the royal couple had completed with their sublime reaction—had long-lasting consequences for the British monarchy. In that instant, the Queen was, politically, born again, the embarrassing and partisan fits and starts of her early reign suddenly forgotten. Mrs. Melbourne, the royal Whig, was a creature of the past. Now Victoria was Queen of all, and Albert's wife. Albert became, with the shooting, more than the adventurer with the foreign accent, but a hero worthy of his cousin's hand. By seeking their safety among their people, and not within the safety of Buckingham Palace, the royal couple had demonstrated to the nation the Queen's fitness to rule, and the Prince's fitness to assist. The House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha gained, after Oxford's shooting, a permanent ascendancy over the House of Hanover. That bugbear King Ernest, and Victoria's other uncles Suffolk and Cambridge, were suddenly just a part of the extended royal family, peripheral in the public eye to the Queen, her Consort, and their children to come. Oxford had unwittingly ushered in the Victorian age.
A week before Oxford's trial, Melbourne approached the Queen with the delicate issue that had been on the minds of everyone since the shooting: it was quite possible that the Queen could die, leaving an infant child as her heir. A Regency Bill was in order, such as the one created ten years before, when Victoria became heir apparent, and which held her mother, the Duchess of Kent, sole regent in the event of her King William's death. In the present situation, the only question was whether Albert would be sole regent if Victoria died, or whether he would serve in a Council of Regency with others—Victoria's royal uncles. Baron Stockmar was convinced that Albert as sole Regent would be by far the superior arrangement. Seeking to ensure that a Regency bill to that effect would pass with overwhelming bipartisan support, he set out to negotiate with Tory leaders. He feared that Albert would face great obstacles: "I don't hide from myself that there will be all manner of objections, such as his youth, his want of acquaintance with the country and its institutions, &c., and that the Dukes of Cumberland, Cambridge, and Sussex, not wishing to be passed over, will endeavour to put a spoke in the wheel, the former by means of the ultra-Tories, the latter by means of the ultra-Liberals."
Stockmar needn't have worried. He was able to ensure that the Tory opposition would side with Melbourne's government in overwhelmingly supporting the Bill, but Albert had already laid the groundwork, making it clear from before the marriage that he preferred that the monarch (and her Consort) be above party, and culture positive relationships with both sides. He had done his best since the marriage to do exactly that. Stockmar and Melbourne had no problems convincing both Peel and Wellington that Albert should be sole Regent; both claimed that this was their position exactly. In the end, there was only a single dissenter in all of Parliament to the Bill—Victoria's Uncle Augustus, the Duke of Sussex. Sussex stood before the House of Lords on 21 July, proclaiming himself to be personally disinterested in the Bill, but to have questions about it: it did not, for one thing, make provision for the possible incapacity of the Regent. Moreover, it did not impose any restriction upon the possible alienation of the regent from the best interests of Britain: Albert could marry again, and might marry a foreigner! Indeed, Albert was a foreigner himself, and not as bound to the nation's interests as a native would be. Sussex suggested Parliament make provision for a successor-regent in the contingency of Albert's incapacity or inadequacy. He was not, he proclaimed, attempting to elevate himself in any way: the country was well aware of his complete lack of self-interest or ambition. But he was very careful to point out to the Peers that he was the closest heir to the throne actually residing in England.
His self-interest and ambition were palpable to all. Baron Cottenham, the Lord Chancellor, in responding to his speech, reassured him that he had every right to be concerned about the Regency, as a member of the royal family; then, he quickly demolished his concerns. Provision for a successor to Albert as Regent could easily be made once Albert became Regent. And the fear of Albert's marrying a foreigner who could unduly influence the monarchy was simply not justified, as it had been with the Duchess of Kent (which was why in the 1830 Regency Bill, she had been forbidden from marrying a foreign prince without the consent of Parliament): Albert would be a _male_ regent and was thus—an irony, given his current situation—above the undue influence of a spouse. The bill quickly sailed through both houses without further objection and became law before Oxford was three weeks in Bethlem. Lord Melbourne attributed the great success of the bill to Albert alone, and certainly Albert's endearing himself to the Tories had everything to do with the Bill's easy passage. "Three months ago," Melbourne told Victoria, "they would not have done it for him. It is entirely his own character."
Albert was jubilant, seeing the bill as "an affair of the greatest importance to me" and writing to his brother Ernest "I am to be Regent— _alone_ —Regent, without a Council." As designated Regent, Albert had not gained a whit of actual power: all was Victoria's, until her death. But symbolically, everything had changed. As King Leopold wrote to Albert's private secretary, George Anson, the bill "had helped the Prince immensely, the country thereby demonstrating the great confidence they placed in the uprightness of his character." While in the public eye he ranked second only to Victoria, he still faced a battle with Victoria's uncles and aunts for precedence within the Kingdom. And he still faced a long wrangle with Baroness Lehzen and her cabal for political and domestic influence with his wife. But now, time was entirely on his side.
Charles Dickens took an obvious interest in the Oxford case. He was in 1840 mulling over what became his 1841 novel _Barnaby Rudge_ , a novel centered upon three troubled young men, at least one of which—the vainglorious apprentice Sim Tappertit—bears more than a slight resemblance to Oxford. Within two days of Oxford's attempt, Dickens realized that the mischief that the boy had caused would not end with his sentencing. He wrote to his friend John Forster "It's a great pity they couldn't suffocate that boy, master Oxford, and say no more about it. To have put him quietly between two featherbeds would have stopped his heroic speeches, and dulled the sound of his glory very much. As it is, she will have to run the gauntlet of many a fool and madman, some of whom may perchance be better shots and use other than Brummagem firearms."
The fools and madmen would not be long in coming.
* But it did not. An inquiry to the curator of the Museum by the author, listing specific descriptive details about the pistols Oxford used, resulted in the hasty removal of a pistol exhibited for decades as Oxford's, since that pistol clearly did not resemble either of Oxford's.
_Part Two_
THE GAUNTLET
_eight_
MOST DESPERATE OFFENDERS
Well over twenty thousand Londoners had gathered outside Newgate on Monday morning, 23 May 1842, again to see a man hanged. Eager to get a view, the crowd began forming on Sunday night; as usual, the best seats in the windows and rooftops surrounding houses had been snapped up by the wealthy: the _Times_ reported one nobleman, a true connoisseur of hangings, who had attended the last four or five of them (including Courvoisier's) and who paid a high premium of £14 for a window seat this time. At six in the morning, this nobleman would have seen seething below him the largest crowd to gather outside of Newgate for decades—larger than the crowd that had seen Courvoisier die two years before—a solid mass stretching out of sight down the four streets that formed a cross, with the scaffold at the crux. Somewhere among that mass stood a swarthy, good-looking, twenty-year-old man by the name of John Francis.
The police, well aware that this hanging would attract crowds, were taking no chances: two hundred City and Metropolitan police were stationed between scaffold and spectators. If they were concerned that the audience might rush the scaffold out of sympathy with the condemned man, they need not have worried. Crowds at public executions could be fickle, capable of awe-stricken silence in the face of imminent death, as they were with Courvoisier, or, when they considered the death sentence unfair, hostile to the state—or to the state's most visible representative, the executioner. But John Francis and the suffocating mass all around him were of one mind about this monster: they were ready to welcome his death with howls of execration, or with grim satisfaction and genuine relief. For Daniel Good had, for the last six weeks, captivated and affronted them, both by committing one of the goriest murders of the nineteenth century, and by escaping for ten days the detection of an increasingly anxious metropolis and of an increasingly embarrassed Metropolitan Police force. Lord Chief Justice Denman anticipated the mood of this crowd when in sentencing Good to death, ten days before, he had told him "you will leave the world unrespected and unpitied by any one." This crowd had come to see, in Denman's words, "a good deed done."
It was a pair of trousers that had done Good in. He was a coachman when he wasn't engaging in his dual passions of larceny and bigamy. He worked at the southwestern edge of the metropolis, in Putney, near Richmond, out of the stables of the expansive estate of Queely (or Quelaz) Shiell, who had made his fortune as the largest slaveholder on the West Indian island of Montserrat. On the evening of a fine day, 6 April 1842, Good and his ten-year-old son, Daniel, were returning to Putney on Shiell's pony-chaise from Woolwich, where Good had been courting Susan Butcher, his latest romantic interest. An hour after sunset, father and son pulled up to Collingbourne's pawnshop on Wandsworth High Street. There, Good bought on credit a pair of breeches, and there, on exiting, according to vigilant shopboy Samuel Dagnall, Good snatched up a pair of trousers, secreted them beneath the flaps of his greatcoat, hurried to the carriage, and slipped both breeches and trousers beneath the chaise-seat upon which his son sat. When Collingbourne, alerted to the theft, confronted Good, Good denied the charge indignantly and drove off. Collingbourne quickly fetched a local policeman, PC William Gardiner, who enlisted the aid of Dagnall and a boy from the shop next door, Robert Speed, and proceeded to Shiell's stables. There, they found Good more conciliatory; he was more than willing to return to Wandsworth to pay Collingbourne for the breeches—but the trousers, he would not admit to taking. Gardiner insisted upon searching the chaise. Good had no objection. Gardiner found nothing there, and extended his search to the chaise-house and its stables and harness room. When Gardiner moved to search another stable, Good planted his back against the door and refused entry: he would, he said, rather return to Wandsworth and settle the matter.
The commotion attracted Thomas Houghton, Shiell's bailiff and head gardener, who had an antipathy for Good (which Good heartily returned) and authority over him: Houghton agreed to the search. The six (Gardiner, Houghton, Dagnall, Speed, Good, and Good's son) entered the stables. Gardiner asked Speed to keep a close watch on Good, and asked Dagnall to hold a lantern while he scrutinized every stall, hayrick, and cornbin. Good's anxiety grew as the search continued, and he pleaded that they return to Wandsworth. As Gardiner searched a cornbin, he saw Good enter the fourth stall and begin to move hay. Snarling that he did not need Good's assistance, Gardiner shooed him away to the doorway of the stable and the scrutiny of Speed, while he, and Dagnall with the lantern, entered the stall. Gardiner moved two hay-bales and some loose straw underneath, when he saw what he thought was a plucked goose and cried out "My God, what's this?"
Speed, across the room, turned away from Good to see what Gardiner saw—and Daniel Good bolted, slamming the stable door to, locking it, throwing the key and a lantern into a hedge, and lighting out across the fields, trapping Gardiner, Houghton, the shopboys, and his own son. Robert Speed picked up a two-pronged hayfork and attempted unsuccessfully to force the door. The group then went back to the fourth stable, to see exactly what they had found. It was flesh—a human being, Gardiner cried.
Robert Speed denied this, reached out, and turned the thing over. It was the trunk of a woman, head and limbs partially sliced and partially hacked off. It had been gutted—sliced in a ghastly cross vertically from sternum to pubes, and horizontally around the top of the pelvis, in a single cut from one side of the backbone around to the other. All of the lower organs were removed, including the uterus, which made it impossible for surgeons later examining the body to say for certain whether this woman had been pregnant—though they speculated that she had been, from the size and condition of her breasts.
With an energy redoubled by horror, the party made another attempt to force the door, and succeeded. Good was now fifteen minutes gone. Gardiner sent Samuel Dagnall to the station house in Wandsworth to fetch help, give a description of Good, and raise the alarm, sending him any policemen he met along the way. A policeman arrived in twenty minutes; Gardiner sent him to Putney to fetch more police. Another arrived in half an hour; Gardiner sent him, as well, to Wandsworth, to fetch the Superintendent of V Division, Thomas Bicknell. When Bicknell arrived to take command, it was past 11:30, the stable was filled with police, and Good was two and a half hours away from Putney Park Lane. The police made little attempt to pursue him beyond the neighborhood, focusing instead upon the crime scene. There, they found an abundance of evidence. One officer, Sergeant Palmer, opened the door to the adjoining harness room and was nearly knocked over by the overpowering stench: in the fireplace, beneath an abundance of coal and wood set to create an intense fire, he and others after him found a number of charred, and recognizably human, bone fragments. Others found a bloody knife and axe, and two bloody fragments of a woman's petticoat, "violently torn asunder."
In a very short time, the police had all the evidence they needed to convict Good. Within two days, they had identified the victim. They had connected Good—and only Good—to the murder. They had recovered the woman's many belongings—including the clothing she had been wearing on the day she disappeared—and were able to trace all of it to Good. They had a solid case—but they had let their man slip away.
What the police did not realize this night is that they had with them on Shiell's estate the key to apprehending Good quickly. Ten-year-old Daniel Good had been with his father for the last three days, and before that had lived for over two years with Jane Jones—known to all as Jane Good—in a basement kitchen on South Street, Manchester Square, in Marylebone. At his father's wishes—and from genuine affection—the boy faithfully called this woman "mother," while his father referred to the woman as the boy's aunt. The Sunday before, on Good's orders, an anxious Jane Jones had left the boy to sleep with a neighbor while she went to visit Good in Putney. She never returned. The next day, Good fetched the boy out of his school and told him that his aunt had found employment in the country—the boy wouldn't see her for another six months. He then took the boy to Putney, and gave him over to the supervision of others while he disappeared for long hours, night and day. On the day of the discovery in the stables, the boy had traveled with his father in Shiell's chaise across the south of London to Woolwich, where he met the woman his father had recently proposed to, Susan Butcher. He saw his father make a gift to the young woman: a gown, a shawl, a fur tippet, a pair of gloves, a pair of boots, and, in a hatbox, a blue bonnet. The boy recognized the clothing: it was what "mother" had been wearing on the day she disappeared. The Goods then took Susan Butcher for a ride in the chaise through Greenwich to a public house in New Cross: at his father's request, Butcher wore mother's bonnet. Aunt was gone, his father told him at that time. He was now to call Susan Butcher "mother." The boy waited outside the pub while father and Susan drank gin and water. Leaving Susan Butcher to catch a train, father and son and drove across southern London in the growing darkness to the pawnshop on Wandsworth High Street. From there they returned to Shiell's stables, and to the search for the trousers—which were never found, and which the boy swore his father never took. Young Daniel Good then witnessed his father's flight, and the discovery of the trunk—which he first thought was the body of a pig. Knowing all that he knew, young Daniel Good's confusion must have been short-lived—he must have come, before anyone else, to the horrifying conclusion that this body was mother's. Moreover, he knew the address where his father was most likely to be found.
Young Daniel apparently disclosed that address to one of the policemen investigating the stables. And the police discovered that Good was headed in the direction of the city: Sergeant Palmer, investigating the fields around the stable, found a broken paling on a fence, and beyond this, footsteps headed northeast. The Metropolitan Police were adept, through an established system of "route-papers," at communicating information about breaking crimes and fleeing criminals to all metropolitan station houses and to all active officers in a matter of hours. And Superintendent Bicknell indeed ordered a description of Good sent to every division: "V division, April 6,1842.—Absconded, about half-past 9 o'clock, from Mr. Shiell's, Putney-park-lane, Daniel Good, the coachman, an Irishman, about 40 years of age, 5 feet 6 inches high, very dark complexion, dressed in a dark frock-coat, drab breeches and gaiters, and a black hat. He is suspected of having murdered a female, the body having been found in the stable." If Bicknell had heard of the South Street address from young Daniel Good, he did not think it fit to include it.
If Bicknell had broadcasted Jane Jones's address, Good would certainly have been caught, for it was indeed to 18 South Street that the murderer fled that night, dashing through the toll gate at Putney Bridge (according to local legend, he tossed the gatekeeper his coachman's coat as he flew by), running most of the seven miles before taking a cab to Marylebone, arriving around midnight without a key, breaking into the room with a screwdriver he borrowed from a nearby pub. He remained there, unbothered by the police until morning, not sleeping but bundling up all of Jane Jones's possessions. In the meantime, at 3 A.M., Inspector Bicknell's route paper had arrived at the station house of D Division, which covered Manchester Square. There, the officer on duty, Inspector Tedman—the very same John Tedman who had observed Edward Oxford so carefully at the Shepherd and Flock three years before—erred greatly by neglecting to convey Good's description to patrolling officers until the next patrol arrived for duty at 6 A.M. Had he conveyed Bicknell's information earlier, a policeman who had at 5 A.M. witnessed Good hailing a cab, filling it with bundles and a box, and clapping a bed onto the roof, would certainly have arrested him on the spot. (Tedman was suspended from the force for several weeks because of this mistake.) Good escaped and made his way east to Spitalfields, where he sought out his actual wife, Molly Good, whom he had abandoned a good two decades before. God had directed him back to her, he told the delighted woman. Together, Daniel and Molly pawned and sold most of Jane Jones's worldly goods.
The police, and the press, were able to trace Good's movements to this point. But they were always a step behind him, and the trail went cold at Spitalfields. The newspapers soon excoriated the police for their lack of diligence in catching the murderer. After Good disappeared, the _Times_ reported the public sense of "unmitigated indignation" against the police, and thundered "Nine days have now elapsed since the discovery of the above most inhuman murder, and the perpetrator of the horrid deed is still, we regret to state, at large. Surely the public had a right to expect better things from the metropolitan police—a force so great in numerical strength, and maintained at so heavy a cost to the country." The problem was a systemic one: "The conduct of the metropolitan police in the present case... is marked with a looseness and want of decision which proves that unless a decided change is made in the present system, it is idle to expect that it can be an efficient detective police, and that the most desperate offender may escape with impunity." Without a detective branch—in other words, without a set of officers trained and experienced in the ways of the criminal mind, in an intimate knowledge of the criminal underworld, and with the authority to coordinate action across divisional lines in order to _investigate_ crimes, rather than simply prevent them—the police would continue to suffer embarrassments. Typical of the problem was Inspector Tedman, as well as Inspector M'Gill of the Holborn division. M'Gill successfully tracked Good to Spitalfields, and rather than enlist the local police in apprehending Good, he confronted Molly directly, broadcasting to the neighborhood that Good was wanted. Believing Molly's lie that she hadn't seen Good, M'Gill returned to Holborn to write up his report. "Thus," the _Times_ blasted, "the circumstance soon got circulation through the neighbourhood, and thus the chances of detection were considerably lessened, as there are unfortunately in that particular locality a class of persons who would do their utmost to protect an offender, no matter what the enormity of his crime may be, and prevent his being brought to justice."
The _Times_ was right. There was, at the time, no formal detective branch of the Metropolitan Police. There were, however, the special "active officers" of A Division, particularly Nicholas Pearce, whom commissioners Rowan and Mayne quickly assigned to the case—but not quickly enough; Pearce knew that the best lead to capturing Good had been his wife Molly, and he was enraged by M'Gill's hamfisted intrusion, which stymied his investigation. This tiny and unofficial detective force, therefore, was neither known to the public nor adequate to capture Good. The popular anxiety caused by a monster at large, and the subsequent call by the newspapers for immediate reform, made it clear to the Commissioners that, in the public mind, the fear of violent crime now outweighed the fear of continental-style espionage. It was time to create a detective branch.
Ten days after the discovery of Jane Jones's body, Good was captured. He had bought himself a laborer's fustian outfit and a bricklayer's hod, and escaped south to Tonbridge, in Kent. There he found work building houses springing up beside the new railway. Thomas Rose, a fellow laborer, recognized him. By a remarkable coincidence, Rose had been a constable in V Division—the division covering Roehampton—where Rose knew Good well. Rose reported his suspicions to the railway police; Good was, in quick succession, arrested, transferred to Bow Street, examined, clapped into Newgate, tried, and sentenced to death.
If the Commissioners needed further evidence that London was in need of a formal detective branch, they soon had it; while Good sulked in Newgate, awaiting trial, a petty criminal in the northern outskirts of the metropolis demonstrated to all the weakness of a wholly uniformed and largely unarmed police force.
Thomas Cooper, a morose 23-year-old who had an obsession with guns, a pathological hatred of the police, and a powerful suicidal urge, had launched a personal crime wave north of Highbury. Equipped with a couple of formidable flintlock horse pistols—but no horse—Cooper fancied himself a highwayman and had taken to brutally mugging passersby on the semi-rural roads of Hornsey. The superintendent of this police division—N division—had assigned extra officers to patrol the area. On the afternoon of 5 May, one of these officers, Charles Moss, was watching carefully a gentleman who ostentatiously exhibited a heavily ornamented watch chain, expecting that this man might encourage his own mugging. Moss then spotted Cooper lurking behind the gentleman. Cooper, perceiving Moss in his police uniform, ducked behind a hedge, where Moss found him, his two pistols lying on the ground beside him. When Moss attempted to take Cooper into custody, Cooper sprang up and pointed one of the pistols at Moss's head. Moss defensively stooped and raised his left arm as Cooper fired a bullet point-blank through that limb. He then shifted his pistols and pulled the trigger again: the hammer clicked—a misfire. Moss then grappled with Cooper with his one good arm as long as he could; Cooper pushed him away, retreated a few steps, and growled at him: if Moss tried to follow him, or raise an alarm, he would shoot him dead. Moss of course raised an alarm, crying out "Murder!" Cooper then pulled a carving-knife from his coat, menaced the officer, turned, and fled across the fields. Moss followed him as far as he was able, but soon collapsed from loss of blood. But he had raised the hue and cry; a waiter from a nearby inn and another policeman soon ran up to him, and continued the chase. Had Cooper run north, he would have found cover in nearby woods, but he headed south, toward the city, making himself visible to all at some distance, while the alarm traveled faster than Cooper did. A number of men joined in a surreal chase, during which Cooper was always visible, but always out of reach: he outmatched his pursuers in leaping hedges and fences, and thus found time to pause, both to reload his pistols (using grass instead of wadding to hold his bullets in place), and apparently to gulp down a vial of poison—a mixture of arsenic and laudanum that he had been holding for some time. (This slow-acting poison did not kill him, but in time, and for the rest of his short life, it debilitated him.) As he lost some pursuers, he gained even more. After zig-zagging for a couple miles and reaching Highbury, Cooper managed to run into one of the few cul-de-sacs in the area, with a dozen or more men on his heels, including a journeyman baker, Charles Mott, and yet another police constable, Timothy Daly. One pursuer took up a brick, and another—probably Mott—a stick, but Cooper was the only one with pistols, and he used them to keep his pursuers at bay for some time. Daly challenged him—"I don't think those pistols are loaded," he called out, to which Cooper promised to shoot the first man who tried to take him. While Cooper glanced from side to side at those grouped around him, the baker, Mott, lunged toward him; he tripped while doing so, and Cooper fired his left pistol, wounding him in the shoulder. Cooper then turned, took deliberate aim at Daly with his right hand, and shot him through the stomach; Daly reeled half a circle and fell dead. The crowd then seized and bound Cooper.
Cooper was well known to the police of N Division, having appeared repeatedly at police court both for assault and for robbery. He was once taken up with his mother for stealing a gown; this charge was unfounded, but he was so angry at the treatment of his mother by the arresting officer, Inspector Penny, that Cooper assaulted Penny brutally, earning himself a month's imprisonment. Ever since, he had harbored a special enmity toward Penny, and, in custody, he only regretted killing Daly instead of Penny. Nonetheless, he seemed pleased to have killed a policeman: it served him right. Witnesses testified that he'd several times stated "I shall never be happy until I am the death of one of them."
The result of this pursuit was messy: one policeman was dead, and another policeman, as well as a civilian, seriously wounded. Cooper was a sociopath, well known to the police; detectives on the case, in plain clothes—and perhaps armed—would likely have brought about a happier outcome. Commissioners Rowan and Mayne had a second impetus for formally instituting a detective branch.
They would soon have a third, occasioned by the swarthy and good-looking young man standing outside Newgate waiting for Good to be hanged.
Thomas Cooper, occasionally sullen and occasionally violent in custody, was remanded to Newgate to be tried for the murder of Timothy Daly. He would have been tried in the same session as Good, except that his lawyer had successfully pleaded for more time to track down witnesses who could testify to his insanity. When Daniel Good was led to his execution, then, Cooper listened to the sounds of another man's execution from his Newgate cell, as Edward Oxford had heard Courvoisier's two years before.
For days, all of those surrounding the condemned man—the sheriffs, prison ordinary Carver, Governor Cope—persistently exhorted Good to confess to his crimes. They failed: unlike Cour-voisier, who couldn't confess enough, Good went to his death denying he had committed any crime. He stuck to the same story he had blurted out the moment his sentence of death was spoken. Susan Butcher, he claimed, was the cause of all his troubles. Jane Jones, on discovering Good's relationship with Butcher, despaired and killed herself. Good decided the body needed to be disposed of, and so he enlisted the help of an itinerant match-seller from the neighborhood of Brompton, a man whom no one else ever saw: this helpful gentleman, for a guinea, chopped up the body and burned up the limbs since they were too heavy to carry away; he was supposed to return to Roehampton to finish the job, but never did. According to this story, Good was guilty neither of murder nor of dismemberment: "I never touched the body of the woman, alive or dead! So help me God!" he cried to anyone who would listen. No one believed him, but Good stuck to this story with a religious intensity, dividing his moments before his walk to the scaffold between protesting his innocence vehemently and bestowing passionate blessings on all around him.
The hangman Calcraft stood apart from the rest; he was not concerned with Good's soul—only with his body; in the minute before Good's final walk, he removed his neckerchief and turned down his collar. The party then set out, Good with a firm step, loudly begging God to save his soul. He climbed, unassisted, the steps of the scaffold to the thunderous noise of an enraged mob, with their "hideous yells" and "long-continued execrations." Calcraft slipped the noose around his neck and prepared to slip a black hood over his head. "Stop! Stop!" Good cried, wanting to address the crowd. It was not in a mood to listen. Calcraft told him he'd be better off listening to Reverend Carver's prayers, slipped on the hood, and drew the bolt. It was one of Calcraft's short drops, and Good struggled violently before dying.
It was, as Denman predicted, a good deed done: so the now-dispersing crowd thought, anyway, including the good-looking, swarthy young man named John Francis. When the pressing humanity lessened to the point that Francis could move, he set out with a feeling of moral edification up Skinner Street and Holborn Hill, toward the neighborhood in Marylebone, where he shared a room with his good friend William Elam. He made his way to the Caledonian Coffee House, on Mortimer Street, where he spent hours every day, where he had first met Elam, and where he had become well acquainted with many others. A number of his friends were here this morning, some, certainly, returning from Good's execution. Francis was in a gregarious mood: he joked about the hanging over his coffee. It was a damned good job that Good was executed, he told his friends. Hanging "was much too good for such a fellow."
Francis had every reason to be high-spirited and morally complacent; the contrast between that monster Good and himself must have seemed absolute. Good had rendered himself a pariah in the eyes of all Englishmen. Francis had been for weeks following in the newspapers Good's downward trajectory, and had witnessed his last step into well-deserved oblivion. Good was nothing, while his own moral and economic stock was rising. He was poised to rise above the social status of a craftsman that his father, a stage carpenter at Covent Garden Theatre, had occupied for decades, a life that his father had attempted to force upon him by apprenticing him to the theatre. He had left that all behind, and yearned for middle-class respectability, as the owner of well-appointed tobacconist's business. Later this day he was to take a lease on a shop and parlor at 63 Mortimer Street. He had already engaged for his name to be painted on the door, for business cards to be printed, and for delivery of tobacconists' supplies; these would arrive on Wednesday. Good had fallen. Francis was confident that he would ascend.
Young John Francis had grown up in the heart of the teeming metropolis, with his family at the busy intersection of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. His parents still lived there with his sisters Mary and Jane. Though he lived in the center of the civilized world, Francis's own existence was strictly circumscribed. When he first began work, he traveled each day to Covent Garden, a few streets southeast, closer to the river. Then, just a few months before Good's execution, he had a violent altercation with his father, and he fled his home. He moved into a nearby room on Great Titchfield Street, James Foster, a tailor, as his landlord and Elam as his roommate. He attempted—feebly, it seems—to survive as a journeyman carpenter in the adjoining neighborhood of Paddington, around the fairly newly built terminus for the Great Western Railway. Since then, he had lived within shouting distance of his family but could have been an ocean away, for all they knew about his life. He might have dropped in on them occasionally—his father mentioned that he came for Sunday dinner—but he was a cipher to them: they did not know where he lived, what he did, what company he kept. He was too proud to tell them that he was finding few jobs and was almost out of money, having been too poor for the last three months to pay rent for his room.
A few months before, it seemed certain that he would follow in his father's footsteps. John Francis Senior was a fixture at Covent Garden, working as carpenter and machinist there for a quarter-century. He was a close and long-standing friend of the head machinist, Henry Sloman, who had been a witness to the marriage of John Francis Sr. and Elizabeth, Francis's mother, in 1817. John Francis Jr. had been born in November 1822, and likely experienced his father's theatrical world at close hand, from backstage—perhaps witnessing as a child the slapstick antics of Grimaldi, the sublime acting of Kean, the dazzling virtuosity of Paganini, or, more recently, the seductive dancing of young Lola Montez. The census of 1841 lists John Francis Sr. as a carpenter, and his son as an apprentice carpenter—an apprentice, in other words, at Covent Garden. John Jr. showed talent. And in 1841, there were few places in the world where a talented young stage carpenter would be able to culture his talents better than Covent Garden Theatre.
Covent Garden in the early 1840s was one of London's three patent theatres, all under royal license with exclusive rights to perform serious drama. Because of the patent, John Francis Senior saw himself as, in a sense, a servant to the Queen: when, in coming weeks, he had occasion to write to Victoria, he presented himself as "one of the Artisans of Your Majesty's Theatre Royal Covent Garden... for more than 23 years." The idea was not completely absurd: the Queen was a true lover of drama, and a frequent playgoer in the early years of her reign, and thus a frequent witness to the work of the Francises and their colleagues. Covent Garden's stage crew was expected to perform miracles daily. The theatre was immense, seating upwards of three thousand playgoers, and for years the various proprietors of the theatre faced a losing battle to fill those seats. Their strategy, invariably, was to provide everything for everyone, presenting variety, quality, and quantity, night after night. The plays of Shakespeare were, of course, staples, but the theatre provided the gamut of performance: contemporary drama, melodrama, farce, opera, dance, pantomime, "extravaganzas," and musical and animal acts. A ticket for an evening's performance would buy admission to not one show, but two or more: Congreve's _School for Scandal_ might be followed by the pantomime _Guy Earl of Warwick or Harlequin and the Dun Cow_ , Douglas Jerrold's comedy _Bubbles of the Day_ by an elaborated version of Milton's masque _Comus_ , Mozart's _Marriage of Figaro_ by Planché's fairy tale _White Cat_. Victoria and Albert had seen all these shows in the early months of 1842.
Covent Garden Theatre had been for the last few years conducted by a series of renowned actor-managers. Francis and son worked under the most famous actor of the day, William Charles Mac-ready, who in his two seasons at Covent Garden—1837 through 1839—introduced a number of productions of Shakespeare which were extremely well received, but which did not turn a profit. He left to manage Drury Lane, and was succeeded by the celebrated comic couple, Madame Lucia Vestris and Charles James Mathews. Vestris and Mathews kept the theatre going, with more success than their predecessors, for three seasons. The key to their relative success was spectacle. They employed well over a hundred men (including twenty-six carpenters) to deal with creating props and machinery—and to shift scenery and to deploy special effects during performances. The results could be stunning. In honor of the marriage of Victoria and Albert, for example, Vestris and Mathews produced J. R. Planché's _The Fortunate Isles_ , a sumptuous masque with breathtaking transformations to represent all of English history, culminating, according to a review, in the rising of a hymeneal altar, heraldic cupids flying about the air, and a "Star of Brunswick" rising out of the ocean, "which opens as it enlarges, and discovers the word 'Victoria' in brilliant letters, surrounded by smaller revolving stars." Then there was their production of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ : the first performance in London in which Mendelssohn's famous music was employed, and the first in which an actress played the role of Oberon, King of the Fairies: Madame Vestris, renowned for her beautiful legs and for displaying them in breeches roles, was responsible for that innovation. The play was a hit largely because of its showstopping finale, in which fairies as blue and yellow lights burst from the stage and filled the theatre—floating among the galleries, flying through the air.
Not surprisingly, it is with pantomime that the stage crew at Covent Garden showed off its most amazing effects, and where an aspiring stage carpenter and machinist could best demonstrate his talent. Indeed, young John Francis was specifically noted for his cleverness in the construction of pantomime tricks. The one Christmas pantomime at Covent Garden with which Francis was certainly involved, _The Castle of Otranto or, Harlequin and the Giant Helmet_ , was arguably the most mechanically laden pantomime of all time—a "machinist's Sabbath," according to one historian, a pantomime possibly even _written_ by a Covent Garden machinist to show off his crew's talents. The pantomime essentially ditched the frenetic human interaction which, when the clown Joseph Grimaldi ruled the pantomime stage two decades before, was crucial to the genre. Instead, in this production, machinery took the starring role. _The Castle of Otranto_ , a burlesque of Horace Walpole's gothic novel, brought to life a monstrous, robotic giant, of a size too immense to completely fit in the playhouse's sizeable stage, and thus appearing in parts: in one scene, a giant head rolls its eyes, smiles, and thumbs its nose; in another, immense arms converged from the wings upon human actors, clutching, lifting, shaking, and then dropping them; or, in the climactic scene, a gigantic arm rose from the stage, drew a sword, and hacked down a life-sized castle tower.
One can imagine young John Francis, not only helping to design this immense and complicated machinery, but also, lithe and quickwitted, clambering into the stage machinery in order to operate it. On a February night in 1841 he performed before the Queen, who stayed to watch the pantomime after viewing all of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. For all the effort of Francis and his fellow machinists, the Queen very likely was not amused; she was truly eclectic in her love of performance, but of all forms of entertainment, she liked pantomime least—noting in her journal after one that it was "noisy and nonsensical as usual."
Francis seemed to have the skill to continue in the theatre for as long as his father had. But after his quarrel with his father at the end of 1841, he turned his back on Covent Garden and on his family. Francis's move, as it happens, was a prescient one, for, a few months after he left, the Vestris-Mathews management had collapsed, and the pair had finished their third season in serious arrears. Charles James Mathews was arrested for debt and had spent the two weeks before Good's execution at Queen's Bench Prison. Covent Garden never completely survived as a full-fledged theatre after this season; successive managers experienced even greater losses, and after extensive renovations, the theatre finally found success opening in 1847 as an opera house—which it is today.
Why did Francis quit? Perhaps he suffered under the oppression of too many employers—his own father, Sloman the head machinist, George Bartley the stage manager, Vestris and Mathews—and perhaps, in Francis's mind, the Queen. Perhaps the demands on his time—hours of preparation every day, followed by five hours of frantic scene-shifting—were simply too great for someone of Francis's character: Robert Gibbs, the proprietor of the Caledonian Coffee House, who had endless opportunities to observe him, considered him "idle and reckless." Perhaps, despite his talent at carpentry, his interests lay elsewhere: he wrote poetry, for one thing, and preferred musing over coffee to seeking work. Perhaps he simply considered that carpentry would never provide him with the wealth he dreamed of.
His actions a year before had demonstrated his discontent with the life he was living. On 14 July 1841, between Covent Garden seasons, Francis was arrested on suspicion of stealing more than thirty-two sovereigns from an 85-year-old man he had met at a coffee house. While visiting the man in his lodgings, Francis excused himself to wash his hands; the old man later discovered the money gone from a box in his bedroom. Francis was jailed for three days, until the charge was dismissed for lack of evidence. The officer who arrested him, Inspector Maclean of the City police, was certain that he had committed the robbery, but a search of his room at his family's home turned up nothing.
The episode could not have improved relations with his family; now, on this day—23 May 1842—as he prepared to open his tobacconist's shop to make his fortune, he knew he could not look to them for support. Charles Johns, an outfitter of chemists and tobacconists, would in two days, on Wednesday, be delivering a full inventory to Francis's shop, and he would be expecting full payment on delivery. Francis thus needed hundreds of pounds, but he had nothing; he would need to sell much of the stock before he could hope to pay for it. To fill his shop, then, he had lied to Johns outright, presenting himself as a young man with great expectations. He told Johns that his grandmother had recently died, and that once the executors to her will signed off on the necessary documents, he would be in possession of several thousand pounds. Johns, amazingly, believed Francis, and drew up the agreement. The goods would arrive on Wednesday—when Francis would have to come up with a further excuse to delay payment.
On Wednesday morning, Johns's men drew up in a cab to 63 Mortimer Street and unloaded into the shop all that Francis needed to commence business: bundles of Havana cigars (and imitation Havanas), bales of loose Virginia and Middle Eastern tobacco, packages of snuff; clay and meerschaum pipes—perhaps even a hookah or two—and very likely canisters of a patent medicinal snuff popular in 1842: "Grimstone's Eye Snuff," promising "cataract, inflammations, and all other diseases of the eye and head completely eradicated, glasses left off after using them 20 years, and the breath rendered impervious to contagion." With the stock laid in and his name on the door, Francis commenced selling—or, at least, commenced waiting for custom. Few, if anyone, came in on that day. Francis's friends at the coffee house, and the youth he slept next to, William Elam, were startled by Francis's sudden foray into keeping shop, and dubious about his prospects; but until this moment, it must have seemed so simple to Francis: take in stock, sell it at a profit, replenish the stock, sell that—and in time make his fortune. Now, he realized that success would take time—time that he did not have.
Charles Johns was the one certain visitor to Francis's shop on this day; he came for his payment. Francis fended him off: the executors of his grandmother's will were being difficult, delaying on signing off on his inheritance. They had promised, however, to call on him at the shop at noon tomorrow—Thursday; they would then comply the terms of the will, and give him his thousands, after which Francis could pay Johns immediately.
Again, remarkably, Johns agreed to wait. When he returned to Francis's lonely shop at noon Thursday, however, he returned with a companion, ready to confiscate all of the shop's contents. Francis had another excuse ready. The executors were creating problems; he now knew that his grandmother's thousands would not be soon forthcoming, and that he could not hope to discharge his debt completely. He proposed instead a renegotiation of the deal: by the next day—Friday—he would borrow £10 from "the old man" and with that, make a payment on the whole; he would pay the rest in installments.
And Johns agreed one more time to wait a day—or, quite possibly, he walked out of the shop on Thursday fully intending to bring a larger crew to clean it out on Friday.
Francis knew that he could no longer stall with excuses. He had to come up the cash overnight. He also knew that coming up with £10 honestly was impossible. The proceeds of the shop so far had amounted to a few coppers. The "old man" might have enough money, but Francis could not—would not—go to him now. And he must have been aware of the skepticism about his project shown by his friends and his roommate. He could not hope to borrow £10 from them for this. He felt cornered and desperate. To gain his future of respectability and riches, he would have to commit one—just one—despicable act of robbery.
Francis was, according to those who knew him, "good-tempered" and "inoffensive," a sober lad, patron of coffee houses—not public houses or gin palaces—who came to his meals regularly and did not stay out late at night. On this Thursday night, then, he likely dined with the Fosters at the usual time and climbed early into bed next to William Elam, ready for a full day's work on Friday. And he must have done his best to appear untroubled, even cheerful, for he would not want anyone at the house on Great Titchfield Street to know of his desperate resolve.
_nine_
ROYAL THEATRE
On that same Thursday night, 26 May 1842, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their household set out from Buckingham Palace in six carriages for the short drive down the Mall, past St. James's and the gentlemen's clubs on Pall Mall to the Queen's favorite theatre: Her Majesty's, Haymarket. Usually, that theatre housed the Italian Opera, just reaching the peak of its season with performances of Donizetti's _Lucia di Lammermoor_ and _Lucrezia Borgia_. Tonight, however, the royal couple had not come to hear the soprano Persiani or the celebrated tenor Mario sing. Tonight, Victoria and Albert were themselves to be the star attractions, performing before a packed house.
Just before 10:30, the carriages drew up to the entrance on Charles Street reserved exclusively for the Queen's use. Victoria and Albert, with their visiting uncle Count Mensdorff-Pouilly, descended from the last carriage to meet the Count's four sons, who had emerged from the carriage in front of them. Together they entered the theatre and waited a few moments for the Duchess of Kent and her suite to arrive. They ascended to the royal box, which had on this night been converted into an antechamber that opened through a scarlet curtain to a magnificent, white and gold Corinthian-pillared royal pavilion—draped with crimson damask, lined with glowing velvet, trimmed with gold lace—extending into the center of the theatre. As they came into view, the sounds of a thousand humming voices and one of two full orchestras suddenly hushed, and a "simultaneous sensation of delight" thrilled the audience. Victoria looked down and around to see Her Majesty's Theatre magically transformed. The pit was covered over and raised to the level of the stage, forming an enormous ballroom floor. The walls around the boxes and the stage were festooned with the richest of fabrics—silks, satins, and velvets—in a rainbow of colors. Suits of armor and displays of weaponry brought in from the Tower of London by royal command ranged the stage and bedecked the walls. Extra gas chandeliers had been rigged up inside and outside the pavilion to illuminate the house and the royal party in particular. Gazing from floor below to boxes above, Victoria saw a "perfect crush": 2,300 of her subjects, the men in their nattiest suits and uniforms, the women in brilliant new dresses of the finest silk.
For a few moments, there was a quiet confusion; no one quite knew whether the etiquette of the situation called for acknowledging the royal presence. Then both orchestras struck up the National Anthem, and all doubt was removed; the crowd burst into cheers.
It was the beginning of a triumphant evening for Victoria, the second ball she had thrown this month, in which she demanded that her wealthiest subjects display shameless, highly conspicuous consumption. Admission to this ball had been pricey: a guinea to join the crowd on the ballroom floor; five guineas to let the best boxes; five shillings apiece to observe the finery from the upper gallery. Anyone able to afford tickets and appropriate _couture_ was welcome. The draw, of course, was the spectacle of the splendidly dressed royal couple, appearing as it were both in state and on stage, greeting notables and condescending to observe the festivities from their elevated state and station.
Two weeks before this ball, the British nobility had had their chance to display their wealth when the Queen threw at Buckingham Palace a glorious, invitation-only _masque_ or costume ball, an event which the papers of the day unanimously deemed the social event of the century. The theme was medieval. Albert came elaborately dressed and bejeweled as Edward III, the hero-king of the Hundred Years' War, and Victoria came as his faithful (and fertile) queen, Philippa. Others masqueraded as monarchs and courtiers of all of Europe, and beyond: elaborately attired as French, Germans, and Spaniards, _Cosaques_ and Saracens, Highlanders, Knights Templars, and Hungarians. The elite among the guests were organized into various _quadrilles_ representing each foreign court. They assembled in the Palace's lower rooms and were led by heralds up the throne room, where they passed before Victoria and Albert, made obeisance to the couple, sitting above them on elaborate gothic-revival thrones, and danced in accordance with the nations they represented. The latest in Victorian technology—530 jets of naphthalized gas—spotlit the thrones and drew all eyes to the royal couple.
The aristocracy had strained to outdo one another in preparing for this ball. They bought up the metropolis's supply of the finest embroidered silk, the prescribed fabric for the occasion, as well as the costliest furs—miniver, ermine, sable—to create outrageously expensive costumes, which they embellished with their family jewels. The gold lace of Albert's tunic was edged with 1,200 pearls, and Victoria wore a pendant stomacher valued at 60,000 pounds, but the Duchess of Sutherland outdid them both, wearing jewels valued at an astronomical hundred thousand pounds. Those who did not own, rented, emptying the shelves of London's finest jewelers, paying hundreds of pounds for one night's security.
The newspapers played to the public's wild anticipation and ensured that they were able to savor every detail, dwelling for weeks with awe and careful calculation on the lavish specifics of the royal and aristocratic outfits. As it happens, the balls coincided with a startling innovation in the press: on 14 May 1842, the _Illustrated London News_ —the first fully illustrated newsmagazine—published its very first issue, and its first full layout covered the _bal masque_. In a sense, Britain experienced its first multimedia event—and hailed its first media monarch.
The contrast between these highly publicized, opulent _haute monde_ fantasies and the hard reality of life in Britain during this year could not but strike everyone forcefully. This was _1842_ , after all, the hungriest year of the "Hungry Forties": the year of the worst industrial recession of the nineteenth century. A series of bad harvests, dating back to the thirties, had raised food prices and the overall cost of living. The Corn Laws, which guaranteed high tariffs on foreign grain, helped keep those prices up. A nationwide economic slowdown hit everywhere, but hit the northern industrial towns particularly hard, leading there to massive unemployment and depressed wages for those who could still find work. Crime rates and pauperism skyrocketed.
Chartism, the working-class political movement which had come to life in the first year of Victoria's reign, reached a peak in membership and agitation in this year. On 2 May, just ten days before the _bal masque_ , the Chartists had, with banners and bands and great hope, trundled an immense petition through the crowd-lined streets of London to Parliament. The petition, signed by 3,317,752—well over a tenth of the entire population of Britain—was too large to fit through the members' entrance, and so was brought in pieces into the chamber, where it lay in a massive 671-pound pile on the floor. In their petition, the Chartists claimed that the current misery facing working people was the direct consequence of a corrupt Parliament that acted solely in the interest of the upper classes, a corruption they claimed could only end with working-class participation in government. The petition lashed out at the (to the Chartists) obscene gap in income between rich and poor, targeting the Queen in particular: "whilst your petitioners have learned that her Majesty receives daily for her private use the sum of 164 _l_. 17 _s_. 10 _d_., they have also ascertained that many thousands of the families of labourers are only in receipt of 3¾ _d_. per head per day." A motion to have six Chartists speak at the bar of the Commons about the sufferings of the poor was soundly defeated, and the petition itself was never considered. This crushing of hopes, coupled with sheer hunger, bore bitter fruit: by the time the Queen attended the ball at Her Majesty's, riots were already erupting in the Midlands and the North. The Queen's government was about to confront a long, hot summer of violent agitation.
Also during this month of May 1842, Parliament released its first report on the employment of children, over two thousand pages with illustrations, spelling out in sickening detail the dire physical and moral conditions that children as young as six faced in Britain's mines: half or fully naked creatures laboring as many as sixteen hours a day, often in utter darkness, chained with "dog-belts" to coal carts, crawling up and down two-foot-high passages for hours, subject to the physical and at times sexual abuse of adult miners. The newspapers culled the reports and presented to their readers the darkest, most painful details, in articles in the same newspapers that detailed the luxurious ball-costumes of the rich. The "Condition of England Question," in the parlance of the day, was never more apparent, and never more pressing.
The popular satirical magazine _Punch_ bitterly contrasted the "purple dress" of the reveling rich with the "cere-cloth" or shroud of the destitute. And the Chartist newspaper _Northern Star_ scathingly compared Victoria to Rome's most vicious emperor: "The most detested tyrant whose deeds history hands down to posterity, set fire to Rome that he might enjoy the sight of a city in conflagration, and while the flames were raging, he amused himself by playing on the violin. We know of no nearer approximation to the unmatched cruelty of the monster Nero, than the conduct of the British Court and aristocracy, in thus reveling amidst the most superfluous waste, while the more humble of their countrymen are doomed to starve for bread, by the laws these same Nobility have framed for their own advantage."
Victoria, however, did not plan these balls simply to escape the hard reality her subjects faced. Rather, she was attempting to confront the Condition of England Question directly, attempting to aid the most miserable of the poor by encouraging luxurious consumption, to reawaken dormant industry by creating need.
She wished to assist one particular industry with these balls. For years—long before the present recession—the silk-weaving trade of Spitalfields had become synonymous with London's most grinding poverty. The weavers had once been among the aristocracy of labor, but the economic forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution had strangled their trade nearly to the point of extinction. Competition, for one thing, was killing the weavers: they had once enjoyed protection in the form of a tariff against foreign goods, but this had been revoked in the 1820s, and imports of cheaper French silks, generally acknowledged to be the finest in Europe, cut into their trade, as did rougher silks woven on the handlooms of northern England, cheaper because weavers there could survive upon a lower wage. And mechanized looms were beginning to match in quality the work of Spitalfields handlooms. The present recession, and the subsequent drop in demand for the weavers' luxury product, had simply made a bad situation worse. Charles Dickens a few years later described the under- and unemployed weavers of Spitalfields as "sallow" and "unshorn," living a miserable existence in London's most densely populated neighborhood, suffering from the highest mortality rate: Spitalfields, he claimed, "is now the grave of modern Manufacturing London."
The Queen hoped to set the Spitalfields handlooms clacking away again by requiring that the costumes, the dresses, and the waistcoats for the ball be spun exclusively from Spitalfields silk. It was a plan that speaks volumes about the Queen's—and Prince Albert's—political and social sensibilities. They both genuinely cared about the sufferings of the poor: for Albert, in particular, improving the lot of the poor was becoming a mission. But they were hardly egalitarians; their ideal society depended on strict social demarcation. The pleasure of the rich would enable the content—and busy—life of the laborer.
In the short term, the Queen's plan worked. In April and May of this year, the Spitalfields weavers had as much work as they could handle. But in the long term, nothing could halt the decline of that pre-modern industry. Dickens knew that the effect was as a drop in a bucket: "the weavers dine for a day or two, and, the ball over, they relapse into prowling about the streets, leaning against posts, and brooding on door-steps." The organizers of the ball at Her Majesty's Theatre hoped for a more lasting support for the weavers: a school of design for their children built on the ball's proceeds—but the school was to fail. Improving the dismal economy of 1842 depended on more than a party or two, however extravagant.
Despite the limited economic impact of the balls, Victoria scored a symbolic _coup_ with them, demonstrating with an enormous amount of publicity that her own interests were completely intertwined with the interests of her people. As the _Times_ put it, the ball at the theatre was an occasion in which the Queen associated "publicly and personally with her subjects in promoting a common object." And Victoria was fortunate in having a government and prime minister to aid her in achieving her object. Robert Peel had taken office the previous August, and, since then, Victoria was slowly warming to the man she had found so "insufferably cold and officious" during the bedchamber crisis. Albert was very largely responsible for the change; it was Albert, fearing a repeat of the crisis, who had, with the help of his secretary, George Anson, smoothed Peel's path to power, negotiating an amicable solution to the problem of the Queen's ladies: Peel would make his suggestions, but the Queen would make the appointments.
Albert found a kindred spirit in Peel. Both men were generally perceived as haughty and aloof in public, but both were actually deeply shy, their shyness born of the unshakable sense that they were outsiders in British society. Albert was a foreigner in a society ever conscious of its own national superiority, and Peel was the son of a manufacturer amongst a class-conscious elite. Albert discovered in Peel a guide and mentor; indeed, in Peel he discovered one of the two Britons he could honestly call a friend. (Anson was the other.) Peel offered Albert an entry into public affairs: as one of his first acts as Prime Minister, Peel appointed Albert president of the Fine Arts Commission. Victoria later said that Albert found a "second father" in Peel—and, she might have added, a better one. Peel in return found in Albert a path to the good graces of the Queen. And as Victoria began more and more to adopt Albert's political perspective, her respect for Peel would grow—would, indeed, grow considerably with the events of the coming weeks.
There was a world of difference between Victoria's old prime minister and her new one. Her beloved Lord Melbourne, for all his avuncular warmth and charm, was a complete cynic who believed poverty an inescapable reality in society, and therefore impossible to manage effectively through legislation. He practiced a negative _laissez-faire_ in his government, rarely concerning himself with the political affairs of his ministers, and putting off dealing with problems whenever he could. He once told Victoria "all depends on the urgency of a thing. If a thing is very urgent, you can always find time for it; but if a thing can be put off, well then you put it off." Melbourne was the last Georgian prime minister, yearning for a country and a way of life that was quickly passing. Peel, on the other hand, was the first modern PM, always looking forward, fully aware that the momentous material developments of his time forced equally momentous social change; he came into office committed to reform. Certainly, the leader of the Tories was no radical: he was a social conservative and a true believer in the class hierarchy, dead set against the Reform Bill of 1832, for example, which extended the franchise to the middle class. He certainly had no objection to the privilege and luxury of the rich; he attended the _bal masque_ , dressed as a figure from a van Dyck painting. Nevertheless—and despite his perpetually icy demeanor—he was an empathetic humanist and a committed social activist. That commitment drove him while in the Home Office in the 1820s to simplify the criminal codes and to form the Metropolitan Police. And now he was seeking to legislate social change through a budget that was nothing short of revolutionary. He proposed the introduction of the first-ever income tax in peacetime—a tax of seven percent, to be levied on all incomes over 150 pounds. Moreover, he proposed massive overall tariff reduction. Together, these changes would have the effect of limiting indirect taxation, which burdened all including the poor, and making up for the loss of revenues by taxing the middle and wealthier classes. It was a budget informed by his growing belief in free trade, calculated not simply to redistribute wealth—but to _create_ wealth.
On this Thursday night at Her Majesty's Theatre, positioned directly above the pit, Victoria had the best view in the house of the energetic dancers below. A barrier had been erected beyond the pavilion's base to allow space for a chosen few to trip out waltzes and quadrilles before their monarch. The crowd, however, watched not the dancers but the royal pavilion, as with "mute up-gazing curiosity" they observed Victoria perform the rituals of state, alternating between observing her subjects with greeting their special guests: the Queen's uncle Cambridge and his family, the Lady Patronesses of the ball, and the Duke of Wellington.
All of it—the court ceremony, the omnipresent silk and satin, the crush of spectators in this very theatre—all of it must have seemed familiar to Victoria. It had all happened five years before, at the beginning of June 1837—a week after her eighteenth birthday. This place was the King's Theatre, then, for William IV was suffering through the last month of his reign. The Spitalfields weavers were then as now experiencing horrible destitution, and to aid them William and his queen Adelaide had come up with the idea of a ball, everyone attending in Spitalfields silk. Then, too, the pit was covered over, the walls were festooned with multicolored, shiny Spitalfields fabric, decorated with arms and armor. Adelaide and William were expected to be the guests of honor, but William was dying (and would die in three weeks), so Victoria took his place, arriving amid "deafening plaudits" to play the same role that she played on this night. But if the similarities between that night and this were striking to Victoria, so were the differences. Five years before, she was accompanied by her mother and attended to by John Conroy and Lady Flora Hastings; her uncle the Duke of Cumberland was seen to be "very constant in his attention" to his Royal niece. Cumberland was now king in Hanover, his despotic ways finding much greater favor among the Hanoverians than among the British. Flora Hastings was of course dead, and Conroy—an exile in Berkshire—as good as dead to Victoria. Her mother of course was still at her side—but the tenor of their relationship had changed beyond recognition: now, Victoria was in control. And Victoria's world had changed absolutely, because of the man who was _not_ there five years before, but who stood beside her now, towering over her in his Field Marshal's uniform dripping with five orders of knighthood, his power implicit in the enormous jackboots he wore (attire that the more proper of the ladies in attendance considered not quite _de rigueur_ for the ballroom): Victoria's all-in-all, her Albert.
From the moment she beheld him from the steps of Buckingham Palace in 1839, Victoria's love for Albert was a fact, and she would never stop loving him until the day of her death. Nevertheless, Albert had suffered greatly during the first two years of their marriage, struggling to establish himself socially and politically in the face of Victoria's tenacious conviction that she would rule _alone_ : that Albert would be her lover and husband, but never be the master of the Royal Household and never play a role in politics. He had scored a victory with the Regency Bill—but it was a victory more symbolic than actual, where gaining power depended upon Victoria's death. To become powerful in the Royal Household and in affairs of state, Albert had to change Victoria's mind about her own self-sufficiency. And to do that, he faced two obstacles, two people who jealously guarded their own influence over Victoria and promoted Albert's exclusion from power: Victoria's political mentor and chief political adviser, Lord Melbourne, and her chief confidante, with full sway over household affairs, Baroness Lehzen.
Of the two, Melbourne had been the easier to deal with. His genial hegemony over her political affairs was necessary to Victoria when, throwing off Conroy's and her mother's oppressive influence, she first became queen. Melbourne's influence over her weakened considerably when she fell in love with Albert, and weakened further as she learned of, and fell in love with, his mind and his ways. During the first months of their marriage, Victoria, to Albert's great frustration, preferred to meet with her ministers alone, keep to herself the key to the government dispatches, and spend her evenings with Albert, wishing to talk about anything but politics. Albert refused to humor her in this way. By the end of 1841, she regularly used the term "we" in setting out her opinions—not a haughty royal we, but rather a simple acknowledgment that she and Albert were politically of one mind. When their daughter Victoria, the Princess Royal, was born on 22 November 1840 (with Albert—unusual for the time—in the room), the Prince hurried from Victoria's side to lead the Privy Council in her stead. Victoria found him indispensable in dealing with government business during her confinement and recovery, and, soon after Vicky's birth, she entrusted Albert with the keys to the boxes containing Cabinet and confidential documents. He became, according to his own secretary Anson, "in fact, tho' not in name, Her Majesty's Private Secretary." At both Buckingham Palace and Windsor by this time, their desks were joined so that they could work as one.
Party politics completed the process of Melbourne's removal. In June 1841, the Whig government lost a vote of no confidence by a single vote and Melbourne called for elections. The results were a disaster for the Whigs: the Tories gained fifty seats, and Peel took Melbourne's place. With Peel's coming, Albert and Victoria became full political partners. He attended all ministerial meetings, read his wife's correspondence, and conducted an extensive political correspondence of his own.
Lehzen might have been a far less significant opponent on a national scale, but she proved to be a much trickier and tenacious one. For two years, she and Albert warred with one another, covertly and overtly, with ferocious intensity. If Lehzen at first welcomed a Coburg consort for Victoria, she quickly and accurately saw him as an enormous threat to her privileged position in Victoria's court. In the dark days of the Kensington regime, Lehzen was Victoria's sole ally, and the grateful Queen repaid her loyalty by giving to her complete control over her daily affairs—writing Victoria's correspondence, holding the keys and the Privy Purse, acting as go-between in dealings with the Queen's household officers. And when Princess Vicky was born, Victoria naturally gave Lehzen—once her own governess—oversight of the nursery. Lehzen fiercely resisted every attempt by Albert to take control of his household as an attack on her own prerogatives. Less than two weeks after Oxford's attempt, for example, Albert confronted Lehzen, through Anson, about not reporting to him that a certain Captain Childers was stalking the Queen with "mad professions of love." Lehzen resisted Albert's intrusion, telling Anson that Albert had once told her to leave the Palace, but "he had no power to turn her out of the Queen's house." Albert, to her mind, had no power whatsoever over palace affairs: "the Queen would brook no interference with the exercise of her powers of which she was _most jealous._ " Albert responded to Lehzen's opposition with an obsessive bitterness and loathing. She was to him " _die Blaste_ "—the hag, the "Yellow Lady" (a reference to her jaundice), "a crazy, stupid intriguer, obsessed with the lust of power, who regards herself as a demi-God." Albert considered her the single cause of every dysfunction in the royal household, including all tension between him and Victoria. Certainly, she took advantage of her position as _confidante_ to pour poison in Victoria's ear about Albert; Anson noted her "pointing out and exaggerating every little fault of the Prince, constantly misrepresenting him, constantly trying to undermine him in the Queen's affections and making herself appear a martyr."
Once again, time—and biology—were Albert's allies as Victoria's dependency upon Albert as husband and father grew. During her first pregnancy, Albert attended upon her constantly and arranged for her obstetrician. After Vicky was born, he read to Victoria and wrote for her—and carried her from bed to sofa, and back. Lehzen found herself increasingly shut out.
An assault of sorts upon the Queen, occurring less than two weeks after Vicky's birth, resulted in a considerable jump in Albert's influence over the household. On the evening of 3 December 1840, palace servants were startled to discover an unkempt young man hiding under a sofa in the Queen's dressing room—a sofa upon which just hours before the Queen had been sitting. The boy—Edward Jones—had been roaming the palace for two days, from kitchens to royal apartments. He claimed that he "sat upon the throne, saw the Queen, and heard the Princess Royal... squall." Jones had broken into the Palace two years before, but then the Queen was at Windsor. This time, the breach in security—literally trespassing under the Queen's nose—caused a public sensation, and Jones—dubbed "the Boy Jones" (or "In-I-go Jones")—became a nine-day's comic wonder in the Sunday papers and in _Punch_ : the epitome of enormous if inappropriate ambition.
In the palace, though, no one was laughing. Baron Stockmar, in a memorandum he wrote for Albert on the deplorable state of the Royal Household, attributed Jones's intrusion to "the absence of system, which leaves the palace without any responsible authority." And indeed the Palaces were in a state of sometimes quaint but more usually maddening dysfunction—working according to an archaic structure that would have been familiar to Henry VIII. Servants worked under one of three masters—the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, and the Master of the Horse—who rarely supervised directly or coordinated their servants' duties with one another. The results were predictably chaotic. The Lord Chamberlain's servants, for instance, were in charge of cleaning windows inside the palace, while the Master of the Horse's servants cleaned the outside—and palace windows were consequently never quite clean. The Lord Steward's servants laid fuel in fireplaces; the Lord Chamberlain's servants actually lit fires—and rooms thus remained cold. Repairs were subject to a byzantine process of signature and countersignature—and thus many palace fixtures, once broken, remained broken. Servants, largely unsupervised, were often less than diligent. Moreover, archaic expenses drained money from the royal purse; servants, for example, regularly sold off the day's unused candles for their own profit. Albert, in going over Palace expenditures, discovered a weekly charge of 35 shillings for guards at Windsor who hadn't actually served since George III's day—and now going into the pocket of a half-pay officer who did nothing. Jones's intrusion gave Albert the excuse that he needed to commence the long process of Palace reform, centralizing authority in the position of a single Master of the Household. Lehzen's influence over the household faded further.
Albert's genuine fears about the health of his children led to the final explosion. The royal couple's second child, Bertie—the future Edward VII—was born on 9 November 1841, the first Prince of Wales born in eighty years. The public was jubilant, not least because the specter of that reactionary, constitution-busting bogeyman, Victoria's uncle Cumberland, ever taking the British throne now faded into near-nothingness. Victoria herself, however, slipped into a serious post-partum depression, of which Lehzen attempted to take advantage: she "lets no opportunity of creating mischief and difficulty escape her," Anson wrote. Attempting to raise her spirits, Albert took Victoria away to Claremont in the countryside, leaving the children at Windsor. Within four days, Stockmar called them back; the Princess Royal was seriously ill—thin, pale, and feverish.
Albert was livid. All connected with the children—their nurse Mrs. Southey, Dr. Clark, the Queen herself—he considered responsible, but that meddling _Blaste_ was at the bottom it all: "All the disagreeableness I suffer," he wrote, "comes from one and the same person." He and Victoria had the worst argument of their married lives, the Queen accusing Albert of wishing to kill their children, and screaming that she wished they had never married. Albert stormed off, and the couple continued their argument through missives sent to Stockmar. In one of these, Albert enclosed a ferocious note to Victoria: "Dr. Clark has mismanaged the child and poisoned her with calomel and you have starved her. I shall have nothing more to do with it; take the child away and do as you like and if she dies you will have it on her conscience." He had reached the breaking point; as he told Stockmar "the welfare of my children and Victoria's existence as sovereign are too sacred for me not to die fighting rather than yield them as prey to Lehzen."
The Queen gave way. Albert was to have total control of the nursery and their children's upbringing. He quickly replaced Mrs. Southey with Lady Lyttelton, the Queen's Lady of the Bedchamber, who adored the Prince. Lehzen was now in an internal exile, inhabiting a room in the Palace but removed from Victoria's daily life. Significantly, she did not attend the _bal masque_ , or this ball at Her Majesty's. By the end of the coming summer, realizing that the Queen had no need for her anymore, she would retire to a small house in Hanover. Albert had successfully become everything a man could be to Victoria. Her esteem for him could only grow if he could become superhuman—godlike—in her eyes.
For two hours that night at Her Majesty's Theatre, the Queen and Albert performed on their pavilion stage. One reporter empathized with the fatigue Victoria must feel, when she and her court had to rise, turn, and curtsey with the arrival of every one of her many honored guests. Soon after midnight she rose and curtseyed to the crowd. The two bands struck up the national anthem, and "amidst loud cheering and clapping of hands" the royal party returned to their carriages and to the Palace. Once the royal couple left, the crowd thinned, giving room to all on the floor to dance, which they did until the early hours, caring for the destitute weavers by forgetting about them. Those last to leave could not have gotten to bed before dawn, not long before respectable shopkeepers like John Francis woke to the new day.
Francis continued to play the charade that it was just another day of business, setting out early to open his shop. He waited in the aromatic stillness until he knew William Elam had risen and set out for his own place of work. Then, he shut up shop and returned to Titchfield Street, crept up the two flights to his room, and broke open a locked box containing all of his roommate's possessions. If he expected to find the full ten pounds there, he was disappointed: Elam's box contained less than half of that, four pounds and ten shillings in gold. It would have to do—or it wouldn't. He returned to his shop to wait for Johns.
When the door with his name on it opened, however, he looked up not to see Johns, but instead his landlord, Mr. Foster, angrily bearing down upon him. William Elam had returned to his room at Great Titchfield Street, discovered that his box had been rifled, and reported the theft immediately to Foster, who had seen Francis's return and suspected him immediately. Francis knew why Foster had come, though he attempted to appear unconcerned.
"What have you been about?" Foster asked him. "I suppose you know what I have come here for?"
"Oh," said Francis, "I suppose you want the money." He pulled the gold from his pocket and gave it to Foster. Foster had always had a good opinion of Francis, but in an instant that was destroyed. He told Francis never to return to his home again. Francis, however, had boxes containing all his possessions at Foster's: what about those? he asked. Foster refused to hand them over, thinking that they might contain evidence of other crimes Francis had committed. He left Francis alone to contemplate the impending ruination of his business.
Johns, again accompanied, came later that day. Francis gave up, telling him at last that he could not pay a penny. Johns and his men then emptied the shop: trundling cigars, tobacco, snuff, pipes, Grimstone's Eye Snuff into a cab, leaving Francis with nothing but the lingering odor of tobacco, a few coppers, and his name on the door to a room he had almost certainly not paid for. His great project had ended, and he had lost everything—all his clothes (besides those on his back), his carpentry tools, his poetry, his room, and his friends, gone. In the afternoon, he closed up shop, and walked out and away from this neighborhood forever.
He set out south, down past Buckingham Palace, Green Park, and St. James's, to Tothill Street, to the pawn shop of a Mr. Ravenor. There, he told the clerk he wanted to buy a pistol—a cheap one. The clerk, James Street, found two for him to look at. Both were old—older and in far worse shape than the pistols Oxford had bought: flintlocks missing flints, and with rusted screw barrels, which, when new, could be removed with a key for more effective loading. Each was missing its key, however, and could only be loaded through the barrel. Francis chose the smaller of the two, one seven inches long. Well aware of its low value, he offered three shillings for it. Street wanted more, but quickly agreed to Francis's price. Francis paid with his small change: three fourpenny pieces, a sixpence, and the rest in pennies, halfpennies, and farthings. "It appeared to be all he had in the world," Street later told police.
Not quite. Francis still had two purchases to make. He struck out north, toward Whitehall, and within minutes entered a small oilman's shop on Charles Street. He needed a flint. The clerk told him they rarely sold flints, but he looked anyway, and found one among some old stock. Francis showed him the pistol; the clerk noticed it had no leather to tie a flint on, rooted around his shop until he found a strip, and with it tied the flint to the pistol. He also noticed that the pistol seemed to have no trigger, but Francis pulled back the cock, and the trigger sprang out. Francis paid for the flint with two halfpennies.
He made one more purchase later that night; the police later found a shopkeeper across town who thought—but could not swear—that Francis bought gunpowder from him. The location of his shop, deep in Marylebone, makes this unlikely, but Francis clearly did buy gunpowder someplace—a small quantity, but enough to load the pistol through its muzzle. While the police learned about all of these purchases, however, they could never prove that Francis bought a bullet for his pistol, although they made an exhaustive attempt to do just that.
To sleep, and to hide away until Sunday, Francis found shelter at yet another coffee house: St. Ann's, at the very end of Oxford Street. Since this place was just doors away from his parents' home, he likely knew the owner, Mr. Goodman, and possibly was able to defer his payment for a little time. A little time was all he needed. This was one Sunday when he would not be returning home for dinner; his family never knew how close Francis was to them as he lay low and awaited his opportunity.
_ten_
A THOROUGH SCAMP
It was easy, in 1842, to catch sight of the Queen on Sundays while she was in residence at Buckingham Palace, since she regularly attended service at the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace. It was of course the shortest of walks from Buckingham Palace to St. James's—less than a quarter-mile—but the Queen rode from palace to palace with her household, in a series of carriages. On either side of the Mall, under the shade of the magnificent elm trees, bystanders watched the short parade come, and, after the service, return. While Victoria and Albert attended the sermon of the Bishop of Norwich at the Chapel Royal during the early afternoon of Sunday 29 May, a crowd outside awaited their return to Buckingham Palace. Among that crowd, standing on the Mall directly across from the southeastern entrance to Green Park, stood a sixteen-year-old boy by the name of George Pearson. Pearson had only recently arrived in London from Suffolk to work at his brother's printing business as a wood engraver. This Sunday he was exploring the wonders of the metropolis and had come to St. James's to see the greatest wonder of all, the Queen.
Pearson was a shy boy and betrayed that shyness with an acute stammer, one that amounted to verbal paralysis when he felt fear or stress. It was two in the afternoon when the crowd stirred upon seeing the activity on Stable Yard Road. The train of closed carriages emerged from there, turned right for the Palace, and approached the boy. The crowd cheered, all eyes fixed on the last carriage, the one carrying the royal couple. Albert sat to the right, Pearson's side, with his equerry Colonel Wylde riding beside him; Victoria's equerry Colonel Arbuthnot rode apace on the Queen's side. Victoria bowed to those on her side of the Mall while Albert acknowledged those around Pearson. They passed Pearson and trotted on. He turned to watch the backs of the footmen standing on the back of the Queen's carriage.
He froze. Three or four yards in front of his eyes, a dark-complexioned youth, his back against the rails of St. James's Park, stood with arm extended, clutching a small pistol and pointing it toward the carriage. The youth didn't fire, Pearson thought.* He seemed confused and angry with himself as he returned the pistol to the breast of his black surtout coat. Pearson heard him mutter "They may take me if they like, I don't care—I was a fool not to shoot." For some moments—as long as a minute or two—the two young men stood still, indecisively. Then John Francis crossed the Mall and disappeared through the gate and into Green Park.
Pearson, immobilized by agitation, watched him go, wondering whether what he had seen was a joke, and wondering if he had really seen what he thought he had: no one else in the now-dispersing crowd seemed to. But then he saw next to him a tall, white-whiskered old man, whose startled face showed he had obviously witnessed what Pearson had. "What a remarkable thing it was!" he said to Pearson: he "never knew such a thing in his life!" Then, he turned and slowly walked away, toward Piccadilly. Pearson quietly followed him: perhaps the man was on his way to report the attempt to the police, in which case Pearson too should come forward as a witness. The old man walked on, Pearson following, to St. James's Street, where he stopped and turned to the boy, again commenting on the remarkable scene the two had just witnessed. He then asked the boy for his name and address; Pearson haltingly articulated them, and the old man carefully wrote them down. The two then walked together down Piccadilly. The man turned and left Pearson on the corner of Duke Street. Pearson watched him amble slowly away—and never saw him again. In the coming days, the police (with Pearson's help) exerted an enormous amount of energy attempting to find the old gentleman—to no avail. The gentleman, whoever he was, must have had the questionable pleasure of reading about himself in the newspapers a few days later, when he was excoriated for not raising an alarm or reporting the crime.
Pearson continued on east, to his brother's home in Holborn. He assumed that the old man was reporting the attempt to the police, and supposed that the police might come to him soon. They never came. When he spoke with his brother, he was calmer, able to tell him what he had witnessed without his stammer defeating him.
George's brother, Matthew Flinders Pearson, was a good fifteen years older than he, and a respectable businessman in Holborn. He was genuinely alarmed by his brother's account, and knew that they could not leave reporting the crime to the old gentleman, or wait for the police to come. Indeed, he mistrusted the very idea of reporting to the police, considering it unlikely that they would give the tale of a semi-articulate country boy much credence, and fearing the consequences of public alarm: he considered that the attempt should be kept as secret as possible. That need for secrecy was the opinion shared by everyone who learned of the attempt in the next twenty-four hours. Matthew decided therefore to report the attempt to a political authority, and the brothers Pearson set off on an odyssey that would bring them overnight to the presence of the highest powers in the kingdom.
Matthew brought George to a Holborn friend he knew to be politically inclined. Thomas Dousbery, a boot and shoe retailer, dabbled in radical thought and was the secretary of the Cordwainer's benevolent fund; he was acquainted with a number of political figures, and he would surely know what to do. With Matthew translating, George haltingly told Dousbery his story. Dousbery believed George's account demanded serious attention, and recommended the three speak with the most highly placed city official he knew: Alderman Sir Peter Laurie—the same Sir Peter who had taken such an interest in Oxford's case, and, incidentally, was still taking an interest in his official capacity as President of Bethlem Hospital. Dousbery was sure that Laurie trusted in him, and would not see Pearson's account as a "trumped up tale."
At six that evening, then, Dousbery and the Pearsons were received by Laurie at his ornate mansion on aristocratic Park Square: surroundings guaranteed to overawe young Pearson and hopelessly tie his tongue: He stammered so badly, Laurie wrote in his diary, "that his brother who was with him had to repeat a statement he had made to him when he was not excited or afraid." Laurie considered that Pearson should take his account straight to Buckingham Palace. He doubted the discretion of the police and the Tory Home Secretary, James Graham, believing that if Pearson went there his account was likely to make "noise" and to become public. Best to speak with a royal official. Laurie therefore wrote them a letter of introduction to Charles Augustus Murray, the Master of the Queen's Household—a letter which Laurie, a man well known for his egotism, later claimed saved the Queen's life.
From Laurie's mansion adjacent to Regent's Park, the three hurried south to Buckingham Palace to find themselves stymied by royal protocol. Upon presenting their letter at the door, they were curtly informed that Murray had just sat down to dinner at the Queen's table, and could not—"on any pretence"—be spoken with until bed time. Rather than wait until then, and rather than argue that the matter was of sufficient importance to interrupt Murray, they decided to bring the letter to Murray in the morning, and returned to Holborn. The Queen, they thought, would have to wait to hear about her assailant.
Victoria, however, already knew. For besides George Pearson and the mysterious old man, there was one other witness to Francis's attempt: Prince Albert. Albert, watching the crowd from his carriage, had seen the "little swarthy ill-looking rascal" aim the flintlock at his face, and had spent the entire afternoon certain that he had nearly been killed. He wrote about the assault to his father the next day:
... when we were nearly opposite Stafford House, I saw a man step out from the crowd and present a pistol full at me. He was some two paces from us. I heard the trigger snap, but it must have missed fire. I turned to Victoria, who was seated on my right, and asked her, "Did you hear that?" She had been bowing to the people on the right, and had observed nothing. I said, "I may be mistaken, but I am sure I saw some one take aim at us."
As far as Albert was concerned, the swarthy ill-looking rascal was aiming directly at him and not at the Queen; Victoria later wrote to her Uncle Leopold "Thank God, my angel is also well; but he says that had the man fired on Sunday, he must have been hit in the head."
Albert was deeply distressed after this attempt—distressed at the attempt itself, and at the amazing fact that no one around him had seen what he had. He asked his footmen if they had noticed anyone stretch a hand toward the carriage. (He didn't mention the pistol, thinking that best be kept secret.) They had seen nothing. He then ran out onto the palace balcony to see if there was a commotion on the Mall: surely, if anyone else had seen the assailant, there would be an outcry, and hundreds would have converged on the perpetrator. But all was quiet; the crowd had dispersed, "satisfied with having seen the Queen." Albert then spoke with the Queen's equerry, Colonel Arbuthnot—who, riding on the Queen's side of the carriage, also saw nothing. Albert, wishing Arbuthnot to maintain "profound secrecy," asked him to communicate what had happened to four people only: the two Commissioners of the police; the Home Secretary, James Graham; and the Prime Minister, Robert Peel.
Upon hearing of the attempt, Peel rushed to the Palace and listened to Albert's tale as the two walked in the palace gardens. With a member of the police, Peel took down Albert's statement in writing, taking special note of Albert's description of Francis. He then acquainted the Home Secretary with the situation. Sir James Graham walked to Scotland Yard to call on the elder and the more military of the two police commissioners, Colonel Charles Rowan: from the start, Graham envisioned something like a military operation to catch the would-be assassin. Rowan was out, but he returned between five and six and hurried around the building to the Home Office, where Graham showed him Albert's statement. Both men then reported to the Palace. Peel was there, and the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary left Rowan to confer with the Prince. The three agreed that they should limit the knowledge of the assault to a very few—the Prince, Peel, Graham, Rowan, the two equerries, and the two police inspectors attached to the Palace—while at the same time launching a major police operation to catch the assailant. The Queen in the meantime would not present herself as a target by going out in her carriage until she absolutely had to—that is, not for three days, until Wednesday, when she was to attend a royal levee at the Throne Room at St. James's. That was the plan that Rowan took from the Palace, anyway. Whether Peel, Graham, and particularly Albert were fully aware of the same plan, agreed upon in two separate conversations, is unclear. And the Queen herself had not agreed to anything. The subsequent confusion put Victoria in grave danger.
Rowan left Buckingham Palace at 7:30, quite possibly crossing paths obliviously with the Pearsons and Dousbery on their way in. At Scotland Yard, Rowan established a plan to capture the assailant. Rowan believed that, failing in his first attempt, the assailant would likely soon show up in the neighborhood of the palace hoping for another opportunity to shoot at the Queen. He thought he had three days to work with. Rowan thus ordered his detective (in all but name) Inspector Pearce to join the inspectors assigned to the Palace and patrol Green and St. James's parks in plain clothes, watching for anyone who fit the description Albert had given.
The next morning at nine, the Pearsons and Dousbery came to Buckingham Palace to call on the Master of the Household. This time Murray saw them, and patiently listened to the boy's excruciatingly drawn-out tale. Murray, with less of a sense of imminent danger than Laurie had shown, or perhaps an awareness of Sir James's work schedule at the Home Office, wrote the three a letter for Graham and told them to call on the Home Secretary that afternoon between two and three. He then brought the Prince the welcome news that his story was corroborated: "There was no longer any doubt," Albert wrote with relief to his father.
At two on Monday afternoon, then, a good twenty-four hours after the attempt, George Pearson was finally able to tell his story to the police, the Home Secretary calling in Colonel Rowan to take the boy's statement. George Pearson's tale did not come more easily with the retelling, his stammer if anything worse in the magisterial precincts of Whitehall. "I was present," Rowan wrote with exasperation, "during a very long Examination of the Lad who saw the pistol presented made tediously long by the impediment in his speech."
Rowan too must have been relieved to have corroboration for Albert's story. But the fact that it was a sixteen-year-old from Holborn who witnessed the attempt, and that the story had already been told a number of times, to a number of people, concerned him. Surely it would not be long until the story got out and spread through the metropolis like wildfire. If the attempted assassin learned that he had been spotted, he would likely run for cover and might never be caught. Rowan, then, decided to intensify the search. He ordered his clerks to write up "as many written descriptions of the offender to be made out as there are entrances with St. James Park"—seventeen in all. Seventeen plain-clothed officers, each equipped with a bulletin, would stand, one at each gate, ready to seize anyone meeting the assailant's description. Rowan and Graham agreed that it was not necessary to tell these officers—or any of the other officers on patrol in the parks— _why_ this man was wanted; besides the four inspectors, no police officer was told about the attempt on the Queen, or that her life was now in danger. For almost all of the police in the parks on this day, therefore, the mission was to protect St. James's Park, not to protect their monarch.
It then struck Rowan that George Pearson—who had stammered out his story and returned to Holborn—would be, as an eyewitness, of immeasurable help to the police. He sent Inspector Pearce to fetch him and accompany him around the parks.
Rowan operated under two assumptions in setting out his orders. First, he considered that the assassin would return to the exact scene of his first attempt, hoping to find the Queen there. In other words, Rowan thought it more likely that Francis would return to St. James's Park than that he would look for his opportunity in Green Park. True, he had directed officers on patrol to search both parks—but the dragnet he had established at St. James's had no counterpart at Green Park. Second, he had left the Palace the night before certain that Victoria would refrain from her afternoon ride for two days. He had not heard Victoria's own opinion, assuming that her husband and ministers would of course know what she wanted to do.
Rowan was wrong, utterly wrong, in both assumptions.
Victoria was unnerved by the attempt of the day before, and especially by the thought that one of her subjects, still at large, apparently sought to kill her. But she knew instinctively that hiding in the Palace and letting one misfit intrude between her and her subjects, for days or longer, was not an option. Better to take on the threat directly than live under its shadow. She told Albert's secretary, George Anson, that she had had for some time a premonition that such a "mad attempt" would be made. It would be a relief to scotch the problem, by flushing out the shooter. Albert noted that, upon confirmation of Sunday's attempt, "we were naturally very much agitated, Victoria very nervous and unwell." He indeed claims that a doctor recommended she deal with her agitation by going out. But that doctor (likely Dr. Clark) had no knowledge of the attempt, and it is not at all likely he recommended the Queen deal with her nerves by placing herself in the line of fire. It was Victoria who made the decision. She simply refused, under any circumstances, to jeopardize her well-cultured relationship with the public—one that depended upon her regularly going among her subjects. She had inherited a tarnished monarchy, her predecessors—through illness, disdain, or reclusiveness—secluding themselves from the public, inviting at best the apathy, and at worst the active dislike of the people. Victoria, as Princess and as Queen, had actively resisted seclusion, and had enhanced the reputation of the monarchy simply by demonstrating an absolute trust of her good relationship with her people. She refused to let any ill- or good-looking boy challenge that. Her openness signified a sea change in royal style—a sense of daily responsibility to the public that defines the British monarchy today. The public _expected_ her to ride among them. She would not disappoint them. As for Albert, if he had known of the plan to keep the Queen at home, he now forgot or ignored it, and concurred with his wife's decision. They were determined to go out, he wrote to his father, "for we should have to _shut_ ourselves up for months, had we settled not to go out, so long as the miscreant was at large." Victoria rode out, she informed her Uncle Leopold, because she honestly felt she had no other option.
She would, however, take precautions. While continuing to keep yesterday's attempt from the household, she made it clear that her ladies in waiting would not be needed or welcomed on this ride. "I must expose the lives of my gentlemen," she wrote to her uncle, "but I will not those of my ladies." Her lady in waiting, Lady Portman, and her maids of honor, Matilda Paget and Geor-giana Liddell, waited in vain that afternoon to be called; Liddell, thus shunned, stalked off to grumble in the palace gardens. The gentlemen whose lives Victoria exposed were her and Albert's equerries, Colonels Arbuthnot and Wylde, whom she instructed to ride as close to the open carriage as possible, in order to shield them from any bullets. She also ordered her postilion to drive the horses faster. Moreover, she and Albert possessed a touching faith in the police whom they had unknowingly misled: they knew that there were plenty of police in plain clothes in the parks: they were on the lookout for the assailant, and, as Albert thought, "would seize him on the least imprudence or carelessness on his part."
Albert—who knew from his experience on Sunday that he was in as much danger as his wife—was the first to leave the Palace. He had an appointment at Somerset House, in one of his first official positions: as Lord Warden of the Stannaries. It was just the sort of involvement in political affairs that Albert craved; he wouldn't miss it for anything. At 3:00, he set out from the Palace. He returned before six—surely scrutinizing the assembling crowds more carefully than usual.
The weather was superb that evening, the sun still fairly high in the late May sky, when the carriage, preceded by outriders, followed by grooms, clattered out of the Palace gates. Racing up Constitution Hill, Victoria and Albert must have remembered Oxford's attempt, two years before, at this very spot. As they sped by, their equerries crowding so closely to them as to almost touch the sides of the carriage, the royal couple refrained from their usual greetings to the public, instead glancing around anxiously, watching for a pistol, straining to hear a shot. (Later, Victoria's visiting Uncle Mensdorff helpfully told her "one is sure not to have been hit when one hears the report, as one never hears it when one is hit.") "Looking out for such a man was not _des plus agreables_ ," Victoria wrote. Albert concurred: "You may imagine that our minds were not very easy. We looked behind every tree, and I cast my eyes round in search of the rascal's face." They sped up the hill and into Hyde Park without incident, and began to relax, finding comfort in the stunning weather and the appreciative "hosts of people on foot." They rode into the suburbs as far north as Hampstead before turning back for the Palace.
Meanwhile back at Green Park on Constitution Hill, standing near a pump directly across the road from where Edward Oxford had fired his pistols, William Trounce, one of the many plainclothes constables patrolling the parks from A Division, thought he had found his man. He had been observing the youth for some time. The youth matched the description of the assailant. He stood alone. And he had been behaving strangely—pacing agitatedly about the pump. He realized Trounce was watching him, and resented it: "I had seen the prisoner half an hour before this," Trounce later told authorities, "and when I looked at him he appeared to go behind the tree, as if to conceal himself"—peering out furtively, hoping in vain that the constable would lose interest in him. He only succeeded in increasing Trounce's suspicion. Trounce was right: he _was_ observing John Francis, who, his pistol concealed in the breast of his coat, was waiting for the return of the royal couple. But Trounce, curiously, did nothing to detain Francis; he simply continued to observe him. True, Francis had done nothing wrong—yet. And while Trounce had been given a description of Francis, he had absolutely no idea that Francis had made an attempt on the Queen the day before, and thus had no idea that Francis posed a threat today to the royal couple, whose carriage was now rushing through the gate at Hyde Park and racing down Constitution Hill.
The carriage had been proceeding at the fast clip of eleven miles an hour, according to Victoria's equerry Arbuthnot. But Arbuthnot, feeling in his gut that something was wrong as they approached Constitution Hill, rode up to the postilion and demanded he ride even faster until they reached the Palace gates. Trounce turned away from Francis, who now stood a yard downhill and behind him, in order to catch sight of the quickly approaching carriage, rushing up to a point six feet away from him. (He was later to speculate that the speed of the carriage saved the Queen's life.) Trounce now faced a dilemma. He had been a policeman for two years, but had only been with A Division for a month, and was unfamiliar with royal protection and etiquette. How was a police officer observing a suspect supposed to respond to the royal presence?
Trounce in that instant opted for loyalty over security. He stood at attention and smartly saluted the Queen as she passed.
The explosion in Trounce's ear completely disconcerted him for a moment. Then, turning, he saw to his horror Francis, his left hand resting on the pump, his right hand steady on his left, still pointing the discharged flintlock at where the Queen had been: a "theatrical attitude," according to one of many witnesses who now focused absolutely upon him. Colonel Arbuthnot cried out "secure him!" but Trounce already had Francis by the collar with one hand, and had Francis's pistol in the other. The policeman was mortified by the fact that he had allowed Francis to get off a shot: "I did not intend to make any delay in seizing the Prisoner.... It was not as if I had seen him fire the Pistol—I could have then laid hold of him sooner, or if I had known he was going to fire it...." he later sputtered guiltily in a police report.
The carriage moved on, Arbuthnot pulling up for a moment to see Francis captured before rejoining the Queen. Wylde meanwhile galloped from Albert's side toward Francis. Albert and Victoria, looking behind them, glimpsed a number of bystanders converging on Francis, before they turned and galloped through the Marble Arch and into the Palace yard.
A private in the Scots Fusilier Guards, Henry Allen, was the first to join Trounce in securing Francis. Allen had seen the flash from the pistol and heard the shot: there was a sharpness to the sound that convinced him that the pistol had indeed been loaded. Other witnesses—Colonel Arbuthnot in particular—agreed that the pistol's report was sharp and loud, the sign "of a pistol well loaded and rammed." Victoria, on the other hand, was certain that the shot was not loud at all—certainly, less loud than when Oxford had shot at her. She would not even have noticed it, she claimed, if she hadn't actually been expecting to hear it at some point during the ride. The _sound_ of the shot became a central question at Francis's trial, sound suggesting substance—a loaded weapon. Another important question was where the bullet—if there was one—went. Albert was sure Francis aimed low, the bullet going under the carriage; others claimed it went above; one of the Queen's grooms, riding behind her, thought Francis actually aimed not at the Queen, but at the hind wheel of her carriage. In any case, a bullet was never found.
Inspector James Russell—who, as one of the inspectors assigned to palace duty, was one of the very few in the park that day who had actually known the Queen's life was in danger—ran up to Trounce and the others securing Francis. Trounce handed Russell the pistol; it was warm, suggesting recent discharge. The group marched Francis to the Porter's Lodge of the palace. There, he was searched: a little notebook, a key or two, a penny—and a small amount of gunpowder, screwed up in a piece of paper: enough to recharge his pistol. But he did not have any bullets. Wylde attempted to question him, but Francis remained sullen, silent and frightened—Wylde observed the quiver in his lips. Within minutes, they led Francis across the palace to the equerries' entrance, bundled him into a cab, drove him to the Gardiner Lane station, and shut him in the cell Oxford had occupied two years before. Meanwhile, two more carriages sped from the Palace—to inform the House of Commons and the House of Lords about the attempt.
At Gardiner Lane, Francis lost his anonymity. Two ex-colleagues from Covent Garden had coincidentally come to Green Park that evening and had witnessed the shooting. The two compared notes. One of these two, Mark Russell, nearly sure that the young man he had seen was John Francis Senior's son, hurried to Gardiner Lane, where he identified Francis positively and provided police with the whereabouts of Francis's father. Inspector Pearce was quickly dispatched to fetch him. Francis admitted his identity.
Word of Francis's capture was sent around the building to Colonel Rowan, still in the process of giving orders to find the assailant of the day before; he was shocked to learn that the Queen had gone out at all, let alone that she was shot at.
The news quickly crossed the street and disrupted Parliament. In the Lords, the news was brought to the Duke of Wellington, then Leader of the House of Lords in Peel's government. Without a word, Wellington started up and rushed from the chamber, followed by the Lord Chancellor and a number of other peers; business was immediately suspended. In the Commons, the news could not have come at a more dramatic moment: the third (and final) reading of Peel's income-tax bill had just been proposed. The Home Secretary, hearing the news, called Peel from the house to tell him. Although Peel of course knew that an assailant was at large, he, like Rowan, thought that the Queen would be safe in the Palace all day and was shocked by the news. He returned to the House, which now, catching wind of the attempt, was in a state of "much inattention and confusion." Peel interrupted a hapless M.P. attempting to continue the debate, and, in a voice in which his "excitement well nigh overpowered his utterance," he informed the House of the attempt, the Queen's providential escape, and the capture of the would-be assassin, calling for immediate adjournment. Lord John Russell seconded, the motion passed, and Peel rushed from the House.
He crossed over to Whitehall and to the Home Office, where a number of Privy Councilors—most, but not all, with the Government—were assembling for an immediate examination of Francis. Francis, like Oxford, would have his moment when the highest of the land focused their attention upon him exclusively. Besides the Prime Minister himself, the Duke of Wellington was there, as well as the Home, Foreign, and Colonial Secretaries and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Also in attendance was Prince Albert (who had been made a member of the Privy Council just before his marriage to Victoria), who thus was able to take a closer and longer look at the youth who aimed a pistol at his head. He was not impressed: "He is not out of his mind, but a thorough scamp. His answers are coarse and witty. He tries to make fun of his judges... a wretched creature. I hope his trial will be conducted with the greatest strictness."
Francis was examined from eight to ten that evening; witnesses quickly established that he had indeed pointed a gun at the royal carriage on two occasions. As Albert observed, Francis acted during his examination to some extent as Oxford had—with a braggadocio borne of the sense of importance the Privy Council gave him simply by paying attention to him: a coolness, calmness, and firmness that astonished the Council. But in another way, he acted very differently than Oxford: there was little madness, and much method, in the questions he was allowed to make in cross-examining the witnesses. He was already looking forward to his trial and attempting to minimize his actions to something less than High Treason. To Colonel Arbuthnot, he asked "whether he thought he intended to shoot the queen, or whether it was done in a frolic." ("I cannot say," Arbuthnot answered.)
After the examination, Francis was bundled out the back entrance and conveyed to Tothill Fields for the night. At the prison, he divulged his name and address, and grew socially indignant when someone asked whether it was true that his father was a "scene-shifter" at Covent Garden. "Scene-shifter! No, he's a stage carpenter." He was, as policy dictated, stripped naked and bathed.
The next day, he was brought back to Whitehall at noon to finish his examination. There, young, stuttering George Pearson, brought by the police to Tothill Fields to pick Francis out from among a crowd of prisoners, was able to positively identify Francis as the Queen's assailant on Sunday. The Council charged Francis with High Treason and sent him in a hackney cab to Newgate. His night in jail, and the capital charge leveled against him, had apparently had a sobering effect: the crowd assembled outside the Home Office saw him lean back in the vehicle and pull his hat over his brow, seeming to "wish to shrink from public gaze."
The news of Francis's attempt spread quickly to become "the all engrossing topic of conversation amongst all classes"—a "ferment... not to be done justice to in description." As they had two years before, the population of the metropolis erupted into a celebration of the monarchy and of Victoria: a celebration completely spontaneous, and yet now beginning to take on the sanctity of tradition. Victoria did not ride to her mother's home this time, instead sending her Uncle Mensdorff to inform her about the attempt; the Duchess hurried back with her brother-in-law to the Palace, where, bursting into tears, she fell upon Victoria, who calmly caressed and reassured her. Again, her relatives, leading politicians and diplomats, the Archbishop of Canterbury, all rushed to the Palace while the crowds swelled outside. Robert Peel belied his usual coolness in an emotional meeting with the Queen. Many of the gentry, in full evening dress, stopped at the palace on their way to parties and the theatres to sign the registry and tender their congratulations. At all the theatres, patrons and performers alike gave vent to tumultuous cheering and displays of "unmixed joy." At Covent Garden—Francis's theatre—the German Opera was performing; Madame Schodel and the sublimely voiced bass, Herr Staudigl, sang every verse of the national anthem to "loud plaudits"—an excellent rendition, according to a reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_ —"making allowance for the foreign accent of the vocalists."
The next day was an impromptu holiday for Londoners of every class. The crowds began to form anew by 8:00—around the Palace, and at Whitehall, where Francis was to return to complete his examination by the Privy Council. At the more polite hour of ten, the carriages of the elite began arriving at the Palace, in a throng that continued all morning and into the late afternoon. By that time, the crowd lining Constitution Hill and assembled in Hyde Park had grown to a crushing volume, thousands of the Queen's subjects certain that she and Albert would ride and all desiring to be a part of that triumphal procession. That she would ride again was never a question to the Queen. It was inconceivable to her that Francis, like Oxford, was anything but an aberration. "When her Majesty goes abroad among the people for the purpose of taking recreation or exercise," John Russell said in Parliament that afternoon, "there is not one among her subjects who has less reason to fear an enemy in any single individual of the millions who constitute her subjects." That Victoria and Albert agreed with him without reservation was demonstrated by the fact that they had allowed Lady Lyttelton to take the Princess Royal and the infant Prince of Wales on an airing that morning in a coach and four.
And at around 4:30, the gates opened; several outriders in scarlet livery trotted out, and, with their guest the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, followed by the five Counts Mensdorff, Victoria and Albert rode triumphantly into their public. They rode into an increasingly thicker crowd as they approached the Wellington Arch: "the crowd of spectators was so great," wrote one anxious reporter, "that it was miraculous that some serious accidents did not occur." In Hyde Park, they were slowed to a near standstill by the horses and carriages of the nobility. Again, the royal couple witnessed the completely spontaneous and yet entirely ordered jubilation and homage of all classes; the Queen was said to be overcome by the sight.
That evening, the Queen returned to her favorite theatre—the Italian Opera at Her Majesty's—with Albert and the ubiquitous Mensdorffs. They arrived just after the national anthem was sung and the opera had begun. The full house greeted Victoria with thunderous huzzahs, waving hats and handkerchiefs, refusing to let the opera proceed until they had sung the anthem again, bursting into applause at the end of every line, and screaming "deafening acclamations" at the song's command "Scatter her enemies." The crowd, unfortunately, were unable to transfer an iota of their enthusiasm for the Queen to the opera itself, a production of Mercadante's _Elena da Feltre_ , called by a critic an "abortion" and "utterly worthless and common-place." The crowd responded to the opera with apathy, when not actually hissing. Again, the royal couple were the star performers at Her Majesty's.
In the House of Commons earlier that afternoon, Robert Peel, in agreeing to a joint Parliamentary address to the Queen, revealed for the first time news of Francis's first attack on Sunday, and that the Queen—in Peel's words, "relying with confidence in the generous loyalty of her people with a determination not to be confined as a prisoner in her own palace"—had ridden on Monday with a full awareness of the threat against her. Peel also praised the Queen's consideration for her ladies, in refusing to subject them to the danger that she willingly faced. (Lady Portman's brother in the House of Commons, and her husband in the House of Lords, emotionally concurred.) With the dissemination of that news, the spontaneous celebration took on a different tenor. Albert's secretary Anson noted the difference, writing in his journal that "the feeling now was of a deeper cast" than it had been after Oxford's attempt. Over the next days, newspaper editors and speakers at hundreds of congratulatory meetings across the country waxed enthusiastically about Victoria's chivalric heroism: her calmness and resolution; her "kindness... consideration... generosity." A poem in Wednesday's _Times_ held Victoria "A King in courage, though by sex a Queen/Our lion-hearted monarch...." A writer in the _Morning Chronicle_ wrote "we feel sure that it is no flattery to say that a finer instance of mingled heroism and generosity than this would be difficult to find; and it will deepen, if possible, the affection and the admiration so universally felt for her Majesty's character by her subjects."
The Queen, it seemed, could do no wrong. Few considered (publicly, anyway) the Queen's facing the bullet of an assailant with no more than the bodies of her equerry and his horse to protect her to be an astoundingly foolhardy risk. The clearheaded Charles Greville, writing privately in his diary, was one of the few at the time to see it that way: her action he thought "very brave, but imprudent. It would have been better to stay at home, or go to Claremont, and let the police look for the man, or to have taken some precautionary measures."
Commissioner Charles Rowan could not have agreed more with Greville: it was his understanding that the queen _would_ be prudent and stay at home, while the police went about weeding out the shooter. He was well aware of how close a call this attempt had been, and knew that if Francis had succeeded, his police would have suffered the opprobrium of the public and the wrath of the government. Trounce's nearly fatal salute demonstrated the danger of trusting royal protection to officers untrained for the job. But more than this, the miscommunication between the Palace, the Home Office, and Scotland Yard made it clear to Rowan that threats against the Queen could not be dealt with on the spur of the moment. The newspapers were not slow to take to task the police and the government for offering the Queen so little protection. The _Globe_ , for instance, held that "the Queen's bravery is more impressive when contrasted with the ministers' apathy" and thundered in particular at Home Secretary Graham's "unaccountable disregard" for the Queen's safety, given that he knew about the threat the day before she rode on Monday: no precautions seem to have been taken, such as the posting of extra police on the Queen's route. This was not completely fair, but Rowan was well aware that the police should have and could have done better. First Good, then Cooper, and now Francis: three high-profile cases that exposed all the weaknesses of a police force committed to prevention and not detection of crime. The department had to change. For years Rowan's younger and in effect junior co-commissioner Richard Mayne had favored a detective branch, and had quietly been acting unofficially in creating one, setting aside one officer in each division, for example, to trace stolen goods, and creating "special officers" whose duties included plainclothes work and detection. But Waterloo veteran Charles Rowan, the prime mover behind the military structure of the police when the department was formed in 1829, had long resisted any official action. No longer. Rowan now threw his influence and energy behind its official establishment.
Within two weeks of Francis's attempt, on 14 June, the Commissioners forwarded a memorandum to Graham at the Home Office. Their proposal was a modest one, calling for two detective inspectors and eight detective sergeants, all to be stationed at Scotland Yard and to be paid slightly more than their uniformed counterparts. Two days later, Graham replied through his permanent undersecretary. He was interested. But he had some questions. What was the cost to be—and where was the money to come from? And how were the ten detectives (in a city, by the way, of two million) to keep themselves busy when their detective services were not needed?
Rowan and Mayne responded quickly. The cost was to be less than £1,000 a year, to be drawn out of the general police funds. And, when they were not actively pursuing a case, detectives would keep busy by penetrating and exploring the criminal underworld—gaining that omniscient knowledge of crime and criminals that Charles Dickens, who later became the most enthusiastic and vocal fan of the detective branch, declared to be one of their strongest assets.
On the twentieth, Graham agreed to their proposal, but reduced the number of sergeants from eight to six. The commissioners had created a detective branch in all of six days.
Filling the positions was quickly done, as well; Mayne had probably long had a list in mind for this occasion. The experienced Pearce was to take charge as Senior Inspector; his junior colleague was to be John Haynes from P Division. Pearce's aide, Sgt. Thornton, was to take the lead among the six sergeants.
* According to another witness, the youth did pull the trigger, but the pistol misfired; see page 175.
_eleven_
POWDER AND WADDING
John Francis's family was devastated by the news that their son and brother had shot at the Queen. His delicate mother, Elizabeth, "was seized with the most alarming illness" upon hearing the news, her husband fearing for her life. Her precarious state did not prevent the police from searching their Tottenham Court lodgings the night of and day after Francis's capture, searching for evidence of an accomplice. (They found nothing.) It was up to John Francis Senior to follow his son from the Home Office to prison, and to hire a solicitor.
Francis himself attempted in Newgate to project the sense that his act had been little more than a frolic, but the persistence with which he repeatedly claimed "there was no ball in the pistol; it only flashed in the pan" to warders, to the governor, to reporters, belied his anxiety about the enormity of the penalty he faced, if not of the crime itself. Still, he was hopeful: surely, everyone knew he could not have harmed the Queen, since his gun was not loaded?
The fact that this was the second attempt on the Queen's life in as many years made the motivation of these young assailants an urgent question. Many were completely perplexed: Victoria's youth, her virtue, her gender should guarantee her freedom from any attempt on her life. But a consensus was building. The reports of Oxford's comfortable confinement were well known, and appeared to most to be a reward of sorts, as freedom from the hardship of poverty and "the disagreeable condition of perpetually collecting pewter pots." It seemed obvious that Francis wished for what Oxford had—a life of ease at the Queen's pleasure. The crowd that formed outside Buckingham Palace on the night of the attempt agreed, claiming (according to an eavesdropping policeman) that "his only motive could be like Oxford to ensure a situation for life." On hearing of Francis's attempt, Oxford himself claimed that "If they had hanged me, there would have been nothing of the kind again." But there was more to it than this. The instant fame he gained from the attempt was just as important to Oxford as it was to his imitator, Francis. A writer in the _Examiner_ described the thrill that these boys experienced in being charged and tried for High Treason. The procedure "flatters the diseased appetite for _éclat_ and notoriety which prompted Oxford's attempt, and has probably also been one of the motives of Francis—messengers hurrying hither and thither in search of Ministers—the pomp and circumstance of examination before the Privy Council, instead of the quiet undramatic course of an examination in the nearest dingy police-office before the sort of magistrate who is the habitual terror of the sort of prisoner." As long as assailants were treated as the chief players in "State pageants," this sort of crime would happen again; the law as it stood was an encouragement, not a deterrent, to the crime.
But that was the law; the government had no other option than to try Francis for High Treason. His trial was scheduled for Friday 17 June. Thomas Cooper, now in Newgate's infirmary suffering from the effects of the poison he had taken, would face trial the next day, the eighteenth.
Both Francis's defense and his prosecution prepared their cases with Oxford's trial in mind. Francis's barrister William Clarkson, a hardheaded, "rough, bluff, testy personage," had no intention of mounting an insanity defense. Public anger at Oxford's sentence, rekindled by Francis's attempt, made it unlikely that any jury would acquit Francis for that reason, even if the defense could succeed at the difficult task of finding witnesses to testify to mad behavior on Francis's part. Moreover, Oxford's acquittal for insanity had ironically resulted in what amounted to imprisonment for life. If Sydney Taylor had forgone an insanity plea and simply argued that Oxford's pistols were not loaded, Oxford would almost certainly have walked from the Old Bailey a free man. Taylor's two-pronged defense only confused the jury and resulted in a muddled verdict. In Francis's case, there was no substantial evidence that his flintlock was loaded. Clarkson would concede that Francis bought a gun, that he pulled it out on the Mall on Sunday, and that he presented it and fired it, without ball, on Constitution Hill on Monday. He would produce no witnesses to counter these facts; rather, he would oppose the prosecution's attempts to suggest that the gun was loaded. If Francis had no bullets in his gun, Clarkson would argue, he could not have intended to harm the Queen. Therefore, Francis's public disturbance was certainly illegal, and prosecutable as a lesser charge, but it did not amount to High Treason. His entire case, then, would hinge upon the claim that Francis had had only powder and wadding in his pistol.
The prosecution was formidable, composed of Attorney General Frederick Pollock (who had helped prosecute Oxford), Solicitor General William Webb Follett, and three others. They must have been delighted to learn that Clarkson had no intention of arguing insanity. Two years before, an insanity verdict and detention at the Queen's pleasure seemed a victory of sorts for the government. But the general sense that Oxford had improved his life by committal to Bethlem, and the prevailing belief that his committal positively incited malcontents to attack the Queen, would now render that outcome the worst of defeats.
They were well aware that the weak link to their case was a lack of hard proof that Francis's gun had been loaded. Despite their strenuous efforts, the police had not found any shopkeeper in London who had sold Francis bullets. No spent bullet was found after the attempt, and even though Francis had fired at the Queen from seven feet away, no bullet had done damage to her, her equerry, his horse, or her carriage. They planned two strategies to deal with this weak link. First they would introduce evidence that the _sound_ of Francis's shot suggested that his gun was loaded. Second, they would argue that it was not at all necessary to prove that Francis's gun was loaded: even if it wasn't, he was _still_ guilty of High Treason.
To this end, the government very carefully articulated the indictment against Francis, breaking it down into eight counts. Four held that Francis did "compass, imagine, devise, and intend" to kill the Queen; four held that he endangered her life. And each of these charges consisted of four counts—differing in degree, but still amounting to High Treason. Count 1 held that Francis's gun contained gunpowder and a bullet; count 2 held that it contained gunpowder and "certain other destructive materials and substances unknown"; count 3 held that Francis fired a loaded pistol; and count 4 held that Francis simply fired a pistol. Arguably, by that last count, Francis could be found guilty for High Treason simply by firing an unloaded weapon at the Queen. Clarkson's strategy was to argue that the evidence did not reach the high bar set for High Treason. The prosecution's strategy was to lower the bar.
John Francis was placed in the dock of the Old Bailey on the morning of 18 June, well dressed in a black suit, to viewers discernibly handsome—and deeply anxious. Two weeks of jailers' and visitors' disappointingly impassive responses to his claims that his gun was unloaded, and that he had no intention to harm the Queen, had destroyed the "most perfect _sang froid_ " with which he had entered Newgate. And since there was to be no insanity defense, he knew he would not be sharing Oxford's enviable fate, whatever happened. Outside, huge crowds pressed to enter the courtroom. But the sheriffs only admitted those with written orders: the room was full but not uncomfortably so. Francis was far less concerned than Oxford had been at the quality of his audience: his attention from the start was fixed on his own barrister, William Clarkson, on the three judges above him, led by Nicholas Conyngham Tindal, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and upon the five prosecutors who sought his life. He bowed respectfully to the court, and was read the elaborate charges against him. "Not Guilty," he said, in a low voice.
Attorney General Pollock laid out the prosecution's case. After describing the assault and praising the Queen's bravery, he focused on the fact that no bullet was found. Was that really surprising? Any number of materials could substitute for a lead bullet, he argued: "A child's marble—why, gentlemen, the very gravel path he was treading might have furnished him with a stone smooth or angular, quite adequate to the purpose in view." Demanding the proof that a bullet existed to prove an attack, moreover, defied simple common sense. "Why, gentlemen," he said to the jury, "put the case for yourself; make it for a moment your own. If at some distance from a wife or sister of your own you were to perceive a stranger deliberately aim firearms at the object of your regard, and were to see that succeeded by the discharge of a pistol or a gun, and you had to advance to seize the assassin, as you would deem him, and he were to turn round and quietly say, 'Before you take me into custody I beg you will show that I had a bullet in that pistol I have just discharged,' what would you think?" They had the evidence of the act—and the act itself demonstrated his intent to harm the Queen.
Then came the witnesses, who established that Francis bought gun, flint, and powder, and that he was the one on Constitution Hill who fired a pistol at the Queen's carriage as it drove by. None of this evidence was surprising. But one witness was. Young George Pearson, brought forward as the only witness who could testify to Francis's first attempt, astonished all who had heard him stutter badly through his account two weeks before: now he spoke fluidly, unhaltingly: for the last two weeks he had been taken in hand by a creator and purveyor of a treatment for stammering, Thomas Hunt, and apparently cured.*
The defense contested nothing, except for any testimony suggesting that Francis fired directly at the Queen, or that his gun was loaded. In response to two witnesses who claimed the former, Clarkson called a witness from the prosecution's list who maintained Francis had aimed at the hind wheels of the Queen's carriage. When the second witness, Henry Allen of the Coldstream Guards (the soldier who grabbed Francis immediately after Trounce did) pronounced his opinion that the sound of Francis's shot was consistent with a loaded gun ("a piece fired off with ball sounds somewhat sharper than blank cartridge"), Clarkson in cross-examination chipped away at his ballistics expertise: he was a private; he had been in the army for only a year and on drill for three or four months; he was a tailor before he joined the army. When Chief Justice Tindal recalled the first witness, the Queen's Equerry Arbuthnot, to establish that he, too, thought the pistol was loaded, Clarkson pressed him to the point of retraction: it may or may not have been loaded, but in any case the powder was "well rammed down."
At this point, the Chief Justice introduced an idea that essentially destroyed Francis's defense. "Now," he asked Arbuthnot, "what I want to know is, whether a pistol fired from the spot where the prisoner stood, if only loaded with wadding, would cause injury to the Queen?" Arbuthnot's "decided opinion" was that it would. Attorney General Pollock quickly took the hint, and elicited from another military witness—Albert's equerry, Colonel Wylde—the possible fatal properties of paper wadding, fired at very close range: "At seven to nine feet the wadding of the pistol would wound the skin or any exposed part, such as the face, or set fire to the dress." Clarkson must have realized to his growing dismay that his central claim—that the gun was empty _except_ for powder and wadding—would quite possibly not win this case.
Clarkson called no witnesses of his own. He argued that all of the facts established by the prosecution indeed established that a crime had taken place—but not the crime with which he was charged. Edward Oxford's motive was to gratify "morbid feeling and wretched vanity" by attaining notoriety. He became "ten times better off than he was before he committed the act." Isn't it likely that Francis had no intention whatsoever to harm the Queen, but rather "hoped to render himself notorious in the eyes of the people, and to make himself an important personage, and also to better his condition?" Certainly, he deserved punishment for that—but punishment in another court, under another charge: his act did not amount to High Treason. As for the notion of lethal wadding, Clarkson had nothing to say beyond the nebulous, baffled, and baffling "I know that the books state, and so do my learned friends, that you must give evidence of the pistols being loaded beyond powder and wadding."
The Solicitor General, responding to Clarkson's speech, argued that it was impossible to be certain about motives in this case. It was necessary to consider the act itself. And everything about Francis's act suggested an attempt to harm the Queen.
Judge Tindal, in summing up, returned to the wadding, pronouncing that its existence in the pistol alone was enough to establish guilt. " _..._ though there were no ball or destructive materials," he instructed the jury, "yet there might have been powder and wadding, which being fired off so close to the Royal person must have been intended to do bodily harm as the necessary consequence." If the jury believed this to be the case, then they must find Francis guilty on the third count. Twice more before finishing his summation, Tindal brought up the wadding.
He finished at 4:29. The jury conferred for a moment and asked leave to discuss the verdict in private. They withdrew; Francis was removed from the court. Clarkson then objected vociferously to Tindal's instructions to the jury, and his repeated emphasis upon the wadding. The charge against Francis was that he attacked the Queen intending to endanger her life: and the fact that there was a piece of paper to hold the powder in Francis's pistol surely did not suggest that intent.
The jury returned half an hour later, and Francis was brought back, breathing heavily and "very much agitated." They had a verdict—and, like Oxford's verdict, it was muddled. The foreman said "we find the prisoner Guilty on the second and third counts. We think there is a doubt on the first...." The second count suggested (if it didn't explicitly hold) that there was something more than powder and wadding in the pistol. The third did not. The initial verdict, then, pointed to some disagreement or confusion on the part of the jury. Judge Tindal thus pressed the foreman for clarity. Did the jury find the prisoner guilty on the first count? No. On the second? Yes. "You think the pistol was loaded with something more than the wadding—with some other destructive substance?" "Yes, my Lord." The verdict was recorded: guilty of High Treason—specifically of firing a pistol containing "destructive materials and substances" at the Queen. That verdict, according to a court reporter, "rendered Mr. Clarkson's objection immaterial." Not quite. Whether all of the jury agreed on both the second and third counts is unclear. And what the "destructive materials" besides wadding might be, and what evidence led the jury to that conclusion, is hard to imagine. Quite possibly, the paper stuffed in his flintlock ensured Francis's guilt.
The Clerk of the Arraigns spoke. "John Francis, you stand convicted of high treason: what have you to say why the court should not give you judgment to die according to the law?" Pale and quivering, Francis said nothing. He waited in agonized silence for a few minutes while black caps were fetched and placed on the judges' heads. Tindal then pronounced Francis's guilt, and passed sentence: " _..._ that you, John Francis, be taken hence to the place from whence you came, and that you be drawn from thence on a hurdle to the place of execution, and there hanged by the neck until you are dead; that afterwards your head be severed from your body, and your body divided into four quarters, and be disposed of as Her Majesty may think fit, and may the Lord God Almighty have mercy on your soul!"
The usher's "Amen" rang out like a death knell.
Francis sobbed convulsively, fell back in a faint into the arms of his jailers, and was dragged from the court.
The next morning was Thomas Cooper's turn at the bar. This time, there was no clamor to obtain a seat, the public seemingly sated with sensational trials. Or, perhaps, this one did not promise to be quite as sensational as Good's or Francis's. To a reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_ , the relatively empty courtroom presented a clear sign of a jaded population, which "seems to require stimulants of an extraordinary nature to arouse it.... Poor Daly was only shot. _He was not cut up_!"
At ten, Judges Patteson and Gurney, who had assisted Judge Tindal the day before, took their places on the bench. Cooper was immediately brought into the dock. Still suffering the effects of his self-administered arsenic and laudanum, he was allowed to sit in a chair. He appeared at the same time ferocious, brutal, and idiotic: unable or unwilling to follow the events of the next thirteen hours.
His defense attorney, Sidney Calder Horry, held a bad hand, and he knew it. The prosecution—led by Mr. Bodkin*—would be offering up a host of eyewitnesses to the shootings of Moss and Mott and the killing of Daly. As far as he could see, the only way to avoid the death penalty was with a desperate attempt to prove Cooper insane. Hadfield's and Oxford's trials, which Horry was to cite often this day, would provide the model; he would make use of medical witnesses to suggest insanity, and introduce family members, neighbors, and acquaintances to testify to Cooper's lifetime of odd behavior. But Cooper was no Hadfield or Oxford. This trial played out as a ludicrous parody of those two.
The prosecution's witnesses methodically established all of Cooper's actions on the fifth of May, from his confrontation with Moss to his eventual apprehension, bringing forth no fewer than seven eyewitnesses to establish that he wounded Mott and killed Daly. Horry largely refrained from challenging any of this evidence. When, however, Edward Drury, the surgeon who examined Daly's body at the scene of his death, came to the stand, Horry launched into an energetic cross-examination—concerning not the state of Daly's body, but rather the state of his client's mind. Would a person who exhibited continual wakefulness have an affected brain? Or a person who showed no pain when his arm was scalded with boiling water? What about a person with a ravenous appetite, or filthy habits—or who claimed he was King Richard at times, and Dick Turpin at others—or who claimed he "should have his father up out of his grave, as there was no use in his lying there": was such a person mad? Drury resisted stating that any of these symptoms signified insanity, but did concede that all of them together might suggest unsoundness. Nevertheless, his unshakeable opinion was that Cooper was sane.
Having thus used Drury to lay the groundwork for his plea as best he could, Horry sought to establish that everything about Cooper—his actions of shooting policemen and refusing to give up when cornered on the day Daly died, his lack of empathy for his mother, his love of pistols, as well as his insomnia, ravenousness, and filthiness—pointed to his derangement. Cooper's odd behavior had all begun with a bout of "putrid fever" at twenty months old, after which he was never the same. Cooper's mother Isabella was the central witness to her son's insanity: under questioning, she dutifully and suspiciously ticked off every single symptom that Horry had brought out in questioning Drury. Neighbors, and Cooper's two brothers, were brought forward apparently to corroborate Isabella Cooper's testimony. They could do little more than establish that Cooper was pathologically suicidal, and that he had the economically questionable habit of taking apart and putting together clocks and watches—his brother James claiming that "he once bought a silver watch for 14 _s_., and picked it to pieces. He then sold it for 7 _s_., which he gave for a metal one. He picked that to pieces also, put it together again, and sold it for 1 _s._ "
The prosecution was well prepared to respond to the claim of insanity by establishing that Cooper's behavior was simply criminal, not lunatic. They called forth a number of witnesses to establish Cooper's brutal criminal acts, and called a number of policemen, all well acquainted with Cooper, and including the hated Inspector Penny, to vouch for his sanity. The parish beadle, the jailer at Clerkenwell Police Court, and Governor Cope of Newgate did the same. Two medical witnesses who had examined Cooper in Newgate took the stand; both judged him perfectly sane. The first of these witnesses, Mr. Fisher, revealed that he examined Cooper in the presence of two other medical gentlemen, obviously specialists that the defense had asked examine Cooper. They were tellingly absent at this trial, and Horry was left without a specialist to advocate the insanity plea. He was thus forced, in his closing statement, to discredit the medical gentlemen. They did not examine Cooper long enough, he argued. They neglected to speak with members of Cooper's family. Most remarkable of all: the "regimen and restraint" of Newgate had had a deeply therapeutic effect on his client, _restoring_ Cooper's sanity by the time he was examined.
Justice Patteson, summing up, claimed that the facts of the shootings were established beyond dispute, and so restricted his comments to the insanity defense. He reminded the jury that in the case of that plea, the burden of proof lay with the defense: "every person who had arrived at the age of discretion must be considered sane until he was proved to be otherwise." The question in this case was simply whether at the time of the shooting Cooper knew that he was doing wrong. If he did, the jury must find him guilty; if he did not, they must acquit him.
The jury had little to discuss. They huddled for a moment in the jury box and then pronounced Cooper guilty. The two judges put on their black caps (this time, apparently, close at hand). Debilitated or not, Cooper was ordered to stand while Patteson pronounced the sentence, and he rose with a "savage scowl." While Patteson catalogued his crimes, Cooper's mind wandered; he turned to look at his nemesis, Inspector Penny, sitting with other witnesses tantalizingly close to the dock. He suddenly lunged at Penny, and shook his fist at the officer as the jailers on either side pulled him back.
"You had better listen to me. You had better listen to me, prisoner, instead of shaking your fist at any one there," Justice Patteson said. He then exhorted him to use his little time remaining to come to a better state of mind, and pronounced sentence: to be taken to the place of public execution, hung by the neck until dead, and buried, as Courvoisier and Good had been, in the bowels of Newgate. "And may the Lord have mercy on your soul."
With the usher's "Amen," Cooper burst into a frenzied rage and tried to tear an inkwell out of the bar of the dock. Failing in this, he instead again shook his fist and hurled threats of vengeance against all the witnesses; the two turnkeys dragged him toward the underground passage and to his death watch at Newgate.
Francis and Cooper thus faced a similar fate—but in different ways. John Francis was ruined; his grand plans to make something of himself had come to this: absolute disgrace, almost certain death, and the possible mutilation of his corpse, if that was the pleasure of the Queen and her advisers. When returned to his cell after his trial, he collapsed into a seat, moaning and weeping, wailing once again that he had not meant to kill or injure the Queen: he just wanted the notoriety that Oxford had gotten by seeming to shoot at her. James Carver, the prison chaplain, attended to him, helpfully exhorting Francis to prepare for death: the public was "exasperated against him," and the newspapers accurately trumpeted that opinion. As if in concurrence, the _Times_ on the next day ran an editorial that predicted, based on Justice Tindal's "grave and solemn" way of passing verdict, that Francis would indeed be executed. He deserved it, for his "cold-blooded cruelty" in attacking the Queen. Even if his pistol was unloaded, he deserved to die, as an example to others, and for the "shock to all good" in his act.
And yet, reports about Francis and his behavior that trickled out of Newgate over the next few days portrayed a pitiful boy rather than a depraved would-be killer. When—covering his face with shame—he spoke with his father the day after the trial, he claimed he never meant to harm the Queen, that he knew "there could be no pretence for entertaining a single thought to her prejudice or against her sacred person." The reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_ reporting this scene held that Francis was weak-minded and impressionable: the "noise" of Oxford's attempt, the "ridiculous sympathy" many had for Oxford, and the recent reports of his comfortable life at Bethlem were simply too much for Francis to resist.
He reportedly became a model prisoner after the trial, remarkable for his mildness and humility and his attentiveness to Rev. Mr. Carver's ministrations.
Thomas Cooper's behavior, on the other hand, acted as a foil to Francis's. Cooper expected no reprieve; he wished death to come as soon as possible. After all, he had wanted to die many times before this. Like Francis, Cooper was meekly attentive to the chaplain. In his absence, however, Cooper generally reverted to his natural state of rage, sputtering curses and threats of violence against the Metropolitan Police. His only regret was that he could not hurt them or the witnesses against him. He would go to his unmarked grave hating life and hating them. The public, reading reports of the two, were clearly getting the sense that there was a good thief and a bad one in Newgate.
On the Thursday after the trials, the sheriffs announced the date for both executions: 4 July—eleven days away. Francis received the news with "heart-rending despair." His family, in the meantime, worked to save his life. John Francis Senior sent his petition for clemency to the Queen via Home Secretary Graham, protesting his utter devotion and loyalty, noting his years of servitude to Victoria at Covent Garden, hinting that his wife's tenuous hold on life depended completely upon the survival of her son, and arguing—in the face of the verdict in his son's trial—that the pistol was not loaded, and that his son had no intention of hurting the Queen. Francis's sister Jane wrote her own petition, and sought a different avenue to the Queen: poignantly, but with no knowledge of the recent seismic shifts in influence at the Palace, she sent hers through Baroness Lehzen. In it she repeatedly begged the Queen to consider Francis's afflicted family, and humbly submitted that Francis had never intended to harm the Queen. At least three other groups drew up petitions to Graham or the Queen. The Queen sent the ones she received to the Home Office: her government would decide Francis's fate.
Almost certainly against Cooper's wishes, his mother drew up a petition for her son as well, pleading for a delay in the execution to further examine her son for evidence of insanity. Thirty neighbors signed the petition, claiming that they were willing to testify to Cooper's insanity, but were not able to attend the trial. She delivered this to the Home Secretary on Thursday the twenty-third; two days later, she had her answer from the undersecretary: "I am directed to express to you [Graham's] regret that there is no sufficient ground to justify him consistently with his public duty in advising her Majesty to comply with the prayer thereof."
Cooper's fate, then, was sealed, but the fact that there was no response yet to any of the petitions for Francis augured well for him. Still, nothing was decided for another week, and on the last day of June, when Francis met with his family for the last time before the execution date, it might have been the last time ever. It was a scene of "a most distressing character," according to a witness.
Unbeknownst to them, however, his fate had been decided. Two days earlier, the judges in his case had met, made their decision, and sent it on to the cabinet, which made theirs. On Saturday 1 July, Peel reported the decision to Prince Albert: Francis's sentence would be commuted to transportation for life, at hard labor. He was to serve in the colony's harshest penal colony. It was all the Francises could hope for. Others wondered whether the commutation was a mercy at all. The young poet Elizabeth Barrett, for one, thought not. "Norfolk Island is scarcely safety*—prolonged agony it certainly is," she wrote to a friend.
Victoria and Albert had softened their attitude toward Francis in the month since the shooting, coming to the conclusion that his pistols were not loaded: "the feeling that he is to be executed is very painful to me," Victoria wrote in her journal. And when she learned of the commutation she wrote "I of course am glad." But, she added, "Albert & I are of the same opinion, that the law ought to be changed, & more security afforded to me." The death penalty seemed an excessive punishment for Oxford's or Francis's assaults—and transportation for life (or, for that matter, commitment to Bethlem) had dubious deterrent value. What they needed was a new law, specifically designed for Oxford's and Francis's crime—with a penalty befitting the crime, one that would shame the offender, not give him the dubious elevation of national notoriety.
Robert Peel agreed, and set out to create such a law.
Peel and his cabinet resolved to remove Francis from England as quickly as possible. A convict ship, the _Marquis of Hastings_ , had arrived in Portsmouth on 24 June to take on convicts for the voyage around Cape Hope and to Van Diemen's Land. Francis would be on that ship. He remained in Newgate long enough to hear the ominous sermon in the prison chapel on the eve of Cooper's execution. He remained in his cell on Monday 4 July while Cooper was hanged. Two days later, on the sixth, he was clapped in heavy irons and one of Newgate's chief jailers conveyed him by the Southwestern Railway to Gosport. On the eighteenth, he embarked. "The opinion is that he will not long survive the hardships consequent on the fulfillment of his sentence," wrote a writer in the _Examiner_. Francis was to prove that writer wrong.
The authorities had removed him as quickly as they could. But Francis had not even left Newgate before he learned that another had eclipsed his notoriety as the Queen's latest assailant.
* It was perhaps Hunt's most celebrated case, and within a week he was advertising his success in the _Times_ , to drum up business.
* Bodkin had, two years before, helped prosecute Courvoisier and helped defend Oxford.
* Francis actually was transported to Port Arthur, Van Diemen's Land, and not to Norfolk Island.
_twelve_
HUNCHBACKED LITTLE MISCREANT
The young man—the boy—stood under the elms close to where John Francis had stood five weeks before. It was around noontime on the hot sunny Sunday of 3 July 1842, and he had positioned himself behind and apart from the crowd of high-spirited Londoners who had assembled on either side of the Mall, two or three deep, to view the Queen's cortège make its usual Sunday trip from Buckingham Palace to St. James's and the Chapel Royal. He must have looked like a fool in his dark, oversized coat, but he had to keep it on for two reasons: he was homeless, carrying all his possessions on his back; and he needed it to conceal the small flintlock pistol at his breast. He was sweating, he was dirty; he smelled. He hardly saw himself as a human being. John William Bean Junior was seventeen and tired to death of his life.
The world found him repulsive. His vertebrae, devastated by disease—perhaps extrapulmonary tuberculosis—curved in an S and slumped into a conspicuous hump over his right shoulder. His head hung at little more than four feet off the ground—if that. His arms were atrophied sticks, his hands those of a young child. When he walked, his twisted body lurched in the direction of his hump. His eyes sunk into his head. His expression was permanently careworn and weary. As a final indignity, God or happenstance had marred his face with a scar or a blotch about his nose.
It is possible that but for his scoliotic spine, he would not be a dwarf at all.* The world did not make such fine distinctions; to anyone who stared at him, he was a hunchbacked dwarf and a freak. Literary hunchbacks and dwarves were prevalent in the popular culture of the early 1840s, shaping and reflecting popular attitudes toward people like him. First, there was Quasimodo, the pitiful and repulsive Pope of Fools out of Victor Hugo's _Notre-Dame de Paris_ , a book as popular with the British as with the French since its first English translation came out nine years before. Quasimodo's greatest folly was to believe that others could love him in spite of his deformity; he paid with his life for that belief. More recently—just last year, in fact—Charles Dickens had endowed the villain of his _The Old Curiosity Shop_ , the dwarf Daniel Quilp, with every imaginable evil: he is a bitter, wife-beating, pedophiliac sociopath. Quilp's supernatural vitality, crammed into a too-small body, curdles into ceaseless misanthropic rage. He is antithetical in every way besides size to the virtuous, loving and beloved heroine of the book, Little Nell.* And then there was that timeless comic monstrosity, that mixture of clownishness, viciousness, and irrepressible energy—Punch. The hunchbacked puppet had been the king of British street performance for nearly two hundred years, but less than a year before, he had been resurrected and revitalized as the acerbic star of the extremely popular humor magazine _Punch_ , always laughing at British society from his perspective as an outsider. Hunchbacks, dwarves—hunchbacked dwarves: they were laughable, or pitiful, or repulsive as freaks—but in any case they were _other_ , never quite human. John William Bean was physically and mentally debilitated by his differences. "I shall never be otherwise than I am," the seventeen-year-old had said more than once in despair to his father. "I shall resemble no man, and yet I am fast approaching to manhood."
He had lived in the neighborhood of Clerkenwell. His father, John William Bean Senior, was (as Edward Oxford's father had been) a gold-chaser, and he encouraged his son to become his apprentice. John Bean tried and kept trying to succeed at that profession, but the painstaking work was simply too exhausting for his pitiful limbs. He sought easier occupations, but his apprenticeship to a cheesemonger resulted in failure, as did a job as an errand boy at Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Most recently, he had been working Sundays for a news vendor, Mr. Hilton. That job had suited him the best, for, besides the short hours, Hilton allowed him to read in the afternoon the Sunday papers he sold in the morning. Two months before, he had come across in this way several articles on Edward Oxford, exposing his life of ease in Bethlem: a pint of wine to drink a day! A personal tutor to teach him German and French! He had spoken both to Mr. Hilton and his father about these stories. They were nonsense, both men rightly told him. But Bean could not shake the belief that Oxford's catered confinement was a great improvement over his own wearisome freedom.
Life at home was an ever-increasing torment to him. He knew that his parents loved him in spite of his deformity. But he suffered greatly from the insults and disrespect of his younger brothers. Their five healthy bodies alone were a reproach to him. As his own torso continued to collapse into itself, they grew taller and stronger; by now, even nine-year-old Henry likely looked down on him in every way. John Bean's eighteenth birthday was days away. He was sure now that he would not mark that day at home: not in the face of their derision.
And so he had run away from home three weeks before this Sunday, two weeks after Francis's attempt. His mother fell ill with worry; his father frantically took a full description of the boy to Clerkenwell police station and pressed them to find him. They did nothing. Four days later, Bean's employer Mr. Hilton spotted the boy lurking outside his business and persuaded him to return home. He went, knowing that his return was a temporary one, an opportunity to plan more carefully his escape from this miserable life.
The newspapers that came out on the day he returned home were filled with news of Francis's trial and condemnation. Bean then could not but realize that if he followed through with the plan he was now formulating, he might face the gallows rather than a comfortable bed at Bethlem. This did little to deter him. Three days later, he bought his pistol from a neighbor, Mr. Bird. His father was later surprised that he had found the money, but discovered that he had sold off his meager collection of books, including his Bible, to get it. It was an old and rusty pocket flintlock, probably not worth the three shillings he paid. Mr. Bird assumed that the boy had bought it as a toy and was surprised when Bean came back to his shop three times, complaining that it did not work. After fending the boy off twice, Bird charged him a penny to replace the useless flint that Bean had thrown away. Bird noticed Bean's "childish glee" upon seeing the new flint strike sparks, and the flash in the pan when Bird instructed him how to fire it. Bean then brought the pistol to a neighbor to clean it, but he was unable to unscrew the pistol's rusty barrel and returned it to Bean unfixed. Later, when Bean had primed the gun, loaded it with coarse powder he had bought elsewhere, rammed down with wadding and, inexplicably, a few fragments of a clay smoking-pipe, he could not get the pistol to work. He would have to hope for better results when they mattered. The next day, he ran away again.
That had been a week ago. He again lived on the streets, sleeping where he could—in abandoned houses, in fields—on the outskirts of Islington, and spending his days roaming the metropolis, earning a pittance at street errands: a few pennies for holding two horses for one gentleman, and a few more on Hungerford Pier fetching a glass of ale for another. He was as unsuccessful at street work as at any other occupation; he had survived last week on only eight pence. One of those pennies he used, the day after he absconded, to post a letter to his parents:
June 28, 1842
Dear Father and Mother,
Thinking you may feel surprised at my prolonged absence, I write these few lines to acquaint you I am seeking employment, which if I do not obtain I will not be dishonest though I may be desperate. It is useless to seek for me. Please give my love to [my] brothers, though they never used me as such. I have very little more to say, except remember me to my aunt and uncle; thank them for what they have done for me. I should have written sooner, but I did not like. Hoping you will excuse this scribbling, and think no more of me. I am your unhappy, but disobedient son, J. B.
For the last three days he haunted the parks around Buckingham Palace, waiting for his opportunity to present his pistol at the Queen. Somehow, she managed to elude him. She and Albert had not taken an airing in all that time; both were busy entertaining their guests, Victoria's favorite Uncle Leopold and his wife Louise, King and Queen of the Belgians. The four had come and gone from the palace: to visit the Duchess of Gloucester Thursday for an evening of _tableaux vivants_ , to visit Adelaide the Queen Dowager Friday afternoon. And Albert had managed to get out for a ride without his wife on Saturday. All these comings and goings were unpredictable and Bean had missed them. Today would be different.
Given the examples of Oxford and Francis, Bean had a good idea about the possible consequences of his act. He was ready for anything. Death—suicide by Queen—either at the gallows or at the hands of an angry crowd: that would be welcome, as would be confinement at the Queen's pleasure, with Oxford, wine, and tutors. Last night, a new possibility had become apparent when the evening papers reported the commutation of Francis's sentence. Transportation and a lifetime of hard labor would likely have seemed the worst possible outcome to Bean, well aware of his pitiful lack of stamina. Even that did not deter him; anything was better than the life he lived.
The crowd quickened; heads turned left to watch two scarlet-liveried outriders and then three carriages and two equerries clatter out of the gates of the Palace. The carriages were all covered landaus, as was usually the case when Victoria and Albert rode to the Chapel Royal. The Queen and Albert, Bean and everyone else knew, were in the third carriage. Leopold rode with them. (The Queen of the Belgians, a Roman Catholic, remained behind at the Palace, taking visitors.) As the outriders approached, Bean elbowed his way through the crowd to the edge of the Mall, coming up against a boy to his right. If he had looked in that direction, he would have been disgusted. The boy was a year younger than Bean, "genteel-looking," of normal size and stature, and very nattily dressed: a dark frock coat, white trousers with Wellington boots, a blue silk waistcoat and crimson silk neckerchief, his collar, by one account, "turned down _à la Byron"_ : in other words a swell, a toff, everything that John William Bean was not and never would be. His name was Charles Edward Dassett; he was a shopboy in his father's art-supply business. He had come through the parks from his home in Portman Square with his brother and his uncle to see the Queen.
The crowd cheered the passing carriages. Their windows were down because of the heat, allowing just a glimpse of the royal party—some could see the light blue or maybe pale green bonnet of the Queen. As the rear wheels of the last carriage rushed past, John Bean pulled his cocked flintlock from his coat, held it at arm's length, and pulled the trigger.
The hammer snapped down but the explosion did not come, and the royal party rode on, oblivious, toward the stable yard of St. James's. Suddenly Bean felt a pull, felt pain, and lurched right. He turned to see Dassett's large hand clutching his small wrist, and looked up to see the boy's eyes. They displayed an odd combination of shock—and amusement.
While the rest of the crowd had focused only upon the royal carriages, Charles Dassett had watched Bean push his way through the crowd, present his pistol, and pull the trigger. He clearly saw the hammer drop and heard the click. In an instant he grabbed Bean's shooting hand and in the same instant deduced Bean's motivation. He turned to his brother. "Look here, Fred," he exclaimed, "this chap is going to have a pop at the Queen—I think he wants to be provided for for life." He then turned back to Bean and relieved him of his pistol. People began to gather around the boys. Dassett pondered the pistol with amusement, turning it over and over, almost playfully, exhibiting it to the growing group of onlookers. It seemed to them to be some sort of joke; Dassett laughed, and so did they.
Dassett looked around to find a policeman to take charge of Bean and his pistol. There were plenty about. Perhaps in official response to Francis's first attempt while the Queen rode to the chapel, a number of A Division officers were stationed along the route to protect the Queen's _cortège_. Across the Mall and in front of St. James's, Dassett saw two of them. With his brother and uncle and the ever-growing crowd, he crossed over, tugging at a slightly resisting Bean. ("He did not walk so fast as my brother wished," said Frederick Dassett: "he _is_ a cripple.") Dassett "certainly appeared to me," one member of the crowd later said, "to be disposed to excite the mob as he walked for a considerable distance laughing with a Pistol in his hand." And indeed the crowd was amused by it all, thinking that the poor deformed lad had acted in fun—and thinking that the boy Dassett was taking the game too far. It was a hoax, some shouted—the gun wasn't loaded! Others called out to Dassett to give the boy back his pistol, and to let him go. One helpfully suggested that Bean take his pistol back: "put it into your pocket and run away with it."
At the gate leading to the Chapel Royal, Dassett presented pistol and Bean to P.C. Thomas Hearn, explaining what had happened. Hearn—who had been on the force for only three months—laughed out loud: this did not amount to a charge, he said. He walked away. Behind Hearn was another officer, P.C. William Claxton—who also refused to take Bean in charge. "Pooh, pooh, it's all nonsense," he laughed, following Hearn and disappearing.
Meanwhile, up Constitution Hill, P.C. James Partridge, an officer with much more experience on the force and particularly with guarding the Queen,* spotted the growing crowd outside St. James's Palace with alarm—and immediately ran toward it. Dassett was moving in the opposite direction, looking for yet another officer, with Bean still in his grasp. The crowd numbered at least three hundred people and was growing fast; the word that another attempt had been made was spreading, and "large numbers actually clambered the sharp-pointed railings" of St. James's Park to catch a glimpse of the perpetrator. Confusion and hostility grew as well: wasn't the boy holding the gun the assailant? Who was the poor hunchback he was holding? John William Bean, sensing opportunity, politely asked Dassett whether he might have his gun back. Dassett ignored him. The crowd roiled as the curious pushed toward the center and as the angry pushed to separate Dassett and Bean. Dassett was forced to let go of Bean—"otherwise my arm would have been broken." Since he held the gun, the crowd stayed with him. Bean slipped away, past the running P.C. Partridge and into Green Park, heading north—heading homewards.
The mob now had at its gravitational center a confused boy with a gun— _his_ gun, obviously. Bean was quickly forgotten and the crowd turned on Dassett as the Queen's assailant. Partridge forced his way to the center of the now-ugly mass, saw the boy with the gun outside the Chapel, and drew the obvious conclusion. Dassett attempted to explain, but Partridge dismissed Dassett's story of the hunchbacked dwarf as "shamming," relieved him of the pistol (which he wisely slipped into his pocket) and took the boy into custody.
While John William Bean escaped, then, a noisy mass proceeded up the Mall, across the Horse Guards Parade outside Whitehall, and to Gardiner Street station: Partridge (joined by Inspector George Martin, who took custody of the pistol), Charles Dassett, his brother and his uncle, and at least six hundred of the Queen's loyal subjects,* heaping angry execrations upon the perplexed sixteen-year-old.
Robert Peel was out of town on this day, at the estate of his Secretary of War, Henry Hardinge. Home Secretary James Graham, who had learned from Commissioner Rowan of the attempt within minutes of Bean's arrival at the station, headed the government examination of the incident. After the experience of the two previous attempts on the Queen, Graham like Peel was convinced that the elevated process of a Privy Council examination served if anything as an incentive to miscreants like Oxford, Francis, and Bean. But Bean's attempt on the Queen could still be construed as High Treason, and therefore Graham summoned the Privy Council (or at least what there was of it in or near town on this summer Sunday) at 4:30 that afternoon. In the intervening hours, the station house was again besieged by the curious and the concerned. One of the first there was Daniel O'Connell, who, though he led the charge in 1842 to repeal the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain, was second to none in demonstrations of personal loyalty to the Queen. Inside the station, meanwhile, a clearer sense of what had happened on the Mall emerged. A number of witnesses—the Dassetts, their uncle John Janes, and several who had seen Charles Dassett seize Bean, as well as the embarrassed constables Hearn and Claxton—convinced the police that Dassett's tale of a hunchbacked dwarf was not an invention, and that the true perpetrator was at large. By the time that the Council examined witnesses, then, Charles Edward Dassett had become the hero of the day; Graham personally complimented him after his testimony for his meritorious behavior. Hearn and Claxton, on the other hand, were severely reprimanded, and told to consider themselves suspended. (Within a day, they were to be dismissed from the force.)
The inquiry concluded at 8:00, to be resumed upon the capture of the assailant. By this time, the police—suffering yet another public embarrassment, thanks to Hearn and Claxton—were eager to find the culprit quickly. In this, they were assisted greatly by Bean's unusual appearance: a hunchback should be easy to find. A Division quickly broadcast to all the station houses in the metropolis by route paper a description to be read to all officers before they began their shifts, one that more accurately caught Bean's spinal deformity than his limited height:
A Station, Gardener's Lane, Sunday, July 3, Quarter-past 6 P.M.
Description of a boy who presented a pistol at the Queen's carriage in the mall of St. James's park this morning.
He is about 16 or 18 years of age, five feet six inches high, thin made, short neck, and humped back, walks a little on one side, long sickly pale face, light hair, and dressed in a very long surtout coat, of a dark brown or dark colour, which appeared much too large for him, a dark cloth cap, his nose marked with a scar or a black patch, and he has altogether a dirty appearance.
The police will make every exertion to apprehend this boy, and convey him immediately to this station.
William Haining, Inspector.
The description led to one of the most ludicrous episodes in the history of police profiling. Suddenly, it was open season on London's hunchbacks. Constables fanned out across their districts and hauled into their station houses every person who remotely matched the route-paper description, zealously competing with one another for the _coup_ of bringing in the Queen's assailant. One of the first to be taken was a cabman in Somers Town, whom somebody someplace remembered had been outspoken in his admiration for John Francis. This young cabman, a hunchback with a splotch on his face, and the oddly near-familiar name of John Oxman,* was tricked by an officer of S Division to come to that station house; a reporter there who had never seen the suspect but had heard witness descriptions of him identified the "exceedingly agitated and flushed" boy as the assailant. Oxman was bundled off to A Division early enough so that some newspapers the next day were able to report the certain capture of the assailant. At Smithfield, an inspector was particularly enthusiastic, rounding up two brothers with severe spinal deformity, and then an entire afflicted family. In another instance, a hunchbacked man was walking down the road dividing E and F Divisions, when he was spotted simultaneously by two officers on either side of the street; both rushed to grab him, each crying that he had seen the man first. They finally negotiated a settlement, together hauling the man to A Division station house, where he was quickly let go. Scores, at least, of hunchbacks spent that Sunday evening in a police cell. The _Illustrated London News_ noted that "during the twelve hours for which the majesty of British justice was distanced by that crooked piece of malignity... the number of little deformed men 'detained,' to use a mild phrase, was astonishing. Before one station-house, a whole regiment of these unfortunate individuals was paraded." _Punch_ caught the absurdity of the moment with a cartoon depicting a parade of stalwart policemen collaring in both hands a scowling set of hunchbacked dwarves, among them a sorry-looking Punch himself.
It was G Division in Clerkenwell, and Thomas Cooper's nemesis Inspector Penny, who took the prize. When Penny read the route paper to officers just beginning evening duty, one of them, P.C. Henry Webb, lingered after muster and reminded Penny that the description in the route paper matched the description a distraught John William Bean Senior had given the police nearly three weeks before of his son. Penny then sent Webb to 14 St. James's buildings, Rosamon Street, to find out whether Bean's parents had heard any news of the runaway. At ten that evening, Webb knocked on the Beans' door; John Bean Junior, to his surprise, opened the door himself. His state of undress, in Victorian terms—no coat, waistcoat, or cap—suggested he had settled back in some time before. Webb asked him where his father and mother were; he did not know, he said—father might be at the public house. Webb duped Bean into putting on coat and cap and following him, either by asking his help in finding his father, or in telling him he had to come to the station house because he had run away. When Webb touched Bean's shoulder, he realized the boy was trembling uncontrollably. As they left the house, Bean's alarmed mother, Sally, came upon them. Webb allayed her fears by telling her that he was taking her son to the station for a dressing-down by the magistrate for running away from home; a little scare might have a beneficial effect upon the boy's future conduct.
At the station, Bean was questioned by Inspector Penny. Why had he returned home so suspiciously soon after the attempt? He was driven home by hunger, he replied. Penny, convinced that Bean was the assailant, shipped him with Officer Webb in a cab to Gardiner Street. They arrived at midnight. Bean's doppelganger, John Oxman, was still in custody: the resemblance between the two was striking. The Dassetts had to be called in to exonerate Oxman and identify Bean as the one who assaulted the Queen. Charles Dassett and Webb then had the honor of signing the sheet charging Bean with "attempting to shoot at Her Majesty on the Mall in St. James's Park." With an officer to accompany him, then, Bean was placed for the night in the same cell and same bed in which Oxford and Francis had slept.
He awoke Tuesday morning, 4 July, a few minutes after eight, thinking not of his own sorry plight, but of the sorrier one of the neighbor he had seen two or three times around Clerkenwell. "I suppose Cooper is hanging now," he said to his jailer. He was right: William Calcraft had pulled the drop on Thomas Cooper minutes before. Cooper's sullen passivity about his fate had vanished two days before the end, and he quaked as he walked to his death. The last days he had spent in relative privacy, largely freed from the sense of being a public spectacle that his predecessor at the noose, Daniel Good, had endured. The overattended and overexcited last sermon for Good had drawn criticism in both houses of Parliament, so the Court of Aldermen, who had charge of Newgate procedures, had decided to bar outsiders from both Cooper's condemned sermon and his procession to the scaffold. Few inside Newgate, then, were able to witness the helplessness Cooper suffered on the morning of the execution. The poison he had taken on the day of the crime, two months before, had by now paralyzed his hands as well as his feet. Jailers had to dress him; one had to hold a teacup to his lips so that he could drink. His end was quick: he seemed unconscious of the crowd that yelled and groaned at him as he emerged from Newgate, and within a minute he was up the scaffold, hooded and launched, dying, it seems, without pain.
An hour later, while yards away inside Newgate prison John Francis awaited his transportation—and while across town at Gardiner Street John William Bean ate his hearty breakfast—Cooper was cut down, to be buried with Courvoisier and Good inside the prison. At eleven that morning, Bean heard from his cell the patter of one of the many broadsheet sellers hawking the (fictitious) last speech and dying declaration of Thomas Cooper. "So then," Bean observed, "they _have_ hanged Cooper."
Just before two that afternoon, to avoid the curious crowds outside the Home Office, Bean was run at a trot within a phalanx of A Division officers through side streets and into a side entrance of Whitehall for his Privy Council examination. Attendance at this examination was fuller and more formidable than the day before: Peel had returned, and a number of members of the government, including the Duke of Wellington, had been recalled from Cambridge, where the Duke of Northumberland was being installed as Chancellor. While both Oxford and Francis had displayed arrogant cockiness during their Privy Council examinations, their exhilaration yet untempered by the dispiriting experience of prison life, Bean came before his august examiners already defeated: he collapsed with agitation on entering the room; after that, he could only watch his accusers sullenly and silently as they connected him with the pistol and positively identified him as the Queen's assailant. Within two hours, Bean was remanded to Tothill Fields Bridewell, to be brought back two days later to the Home Office to be charged. Peel had consulted with his Home Secretary before the examination, and both absolutely refused to grant Bean the elevated charge of High Treason—which both were now certain was a positive incentive to imitators. They needed some time to decide exactly what to do with the boy. Newgate would have to wait.
He was thus bundled off in a cab with Inspector Hughes to the Bridewell. On the way out, he helpfully told Inspector Martin where he had bought the gun; that evening, Martin, accompanied by Bean's father, confirmed the sale from Mr. Bird. At Tothill Fields, Hughes placed him in the charge of Governor Tracy. He was stripped and bathed, a process open to reporters, who the next day shared with the world the intimate details of the hunchbacked dwarf's twisted body.
While the crowds on the Mall erupted into confusion and hostility, the Queen, Albert, and Leopold heard the service in the Chapel Royal in peace, learning about the attempt only when they returned to the Palace. Victoria was not alarmed or even surprised, writing in her journal "Odd enough to say, only two days ago I remarked to Albert, I felt sure an attempt on us would be shortly repeated." She had basis for this presentiment. She was now certain that the law as it stood would only encourage more attacks. Any desperate and overambitious boy in the kingdom might now attain with a cheap pistol an instant worldwide notoriety granted by the elevated charge of High Treason. Her Prime Minister, she knew, agreed with her. Peel had rushed to London from Kent upon hearing of the attempt, arriving late Sunday night. Early Monday afternoon, he visited Buckingham Palace before Bean's Privy Council examination to consult with Albert about the steps to be taken in the wake of the assault. During this conversation, the Queen entered the room. Peel—according to Albert's first biographer "in public so cold and self-commanding, in reality so full of genuine feeling"—burst into tears. It was a cathartic moment for both Queen and Prime Minister: any sense of a chill between them—a chill that had, three years before, led to a constitutional crisis—was gone, and gone forever.
The public as usual responded to the Queen's preservation with jubilation. Once again, the very thought of losing this monarch drove home to everyone the unprecedented emotional bond between the people and their queen, a bond that seemed to grow stronger with each attempt. "The Queen and People," a commentator in the _Spectator_ declared after the attempt, "were drawn into more intimate communion. Compassion for the woman—young, a mother, present to the view in all the most engaging relations of life—thus exposed to senseless perils, from which no general loyalty, no guards, and scarcely any precautions might be able to shield her... all these considerations prompted a display of popular feeling that had a deeper seat than mere 'loyalty' or attachment to the office of the Sovereign."
On Sunday and on Monday, crowds of Londoners of every social stripe flocked to the Palace, expecting the usual impromptu royal celebration in the parks. This time, however, Victoria disappointed her public. Her staying in on Sunday could hardly be a surprise, given her earlier excursion to the Chapel Royal. On Monday, however, all of London, it seemed, were certain she would come out: thousands filled Hyde Park, and thousands more gathered before and around the Palace and lined Constitution Hill. While they waited, Victoria and Albert walked privately behind the walls of the palace gardens. Many conjectured about her absence. One rumor held that her ministers commanded her to remain while they gathered more information. But Francis's attempts had made clear that Victoria's ministers did not have that power over her; besides, Bean had already been captured and presented no threat to her. Another rumor was that the Queen was "deeply affected" by the news of the attempt. Perhaps. But Victoria had shown before that she simply refused to give in to that fear. While it is true she did not ride this Monday, the Duchess of Kent did, accompanied by her brother Leopold and his wife. Even more tellingly, Victoria and Albert allowed the 1½-year-old Princess Royal and the 8-month-old Prince of Wales to take an airing in the parks in an open carriage with Lady Lyttelton. The royal couple's restraint was much more likely rational than emotional, borne of concern that any attention given to the attacks might encourage copycat assailants—as Francis's attempt, it seemed, only encouraged Bean's. Whatever the reason, the royal couple remained at Buckingham Palace while outside it the public thronged until late Monday evening, when carriages arriving for a royal dinner party finally convinced the crowd that the Queen would not be coming out, and they dispersed.
The newspapers and the public excoriated young John Bean, finding in his physical deformity evidence of moral ugliness. He was a "deformed, decrepit, miserable looking dwarf," "that crooked piece of malignity," a "hunchbacked little miscreant," and a "miserable and contemptible-looking wretch." In a letter to his father, Prince Albert referred to him as a "hunchbacked wretch," Home Secretary Graham described him as "an hump-backed boy of an idiotic appearance," and Peel told the Queen that Bean was "the most miserable object he ever saw."
But while Bean might be unique, his crime was not: three young men had now assailed the Queen, and it would seem that the evidence of three attempts should provide ample material to discern some sense of a motivation. Some commentators remained as baffled as ever. The _Morning Chronicle_ held that "these repeated attempts on the life of our beloved Sovereign are utterly incomprehensible. We do not know what to make of this union of itiotcy [sic], depravity, and crime. Intelligible motive there is none." Others, however, began to make connections.
Victoria had not been alone these last few years in facing would–be assassins. Across the channel, Louis-Philippe, the Citizen King of France, had already faced five attempts since coming to the throne after the revolution of 1830, and would face two more before his deposition in the revolution of 1848. Immediately after Bean's attempt, one French newspaper deplored that "the savage and impotent monomania, which has emigrated from France to England, is one of the gravest symptoms of the profound disorders which agitated modern societies." Elizabeth Barrett, writing to a friend, noted the connection as well, but was perplexed as to cause or cure: "What is this strange mania of queen-shooting? What is the motive? & what end? In the meanwhile the despots of the earth sit safe... & nobody thinks of even smoking a tobacco pipe at them, much less of shooting it. It is only citizen Kings, & liberal queens that their people address themselves to shooting. I am very angry—angry & sorry & ashamed."
The comparison between Victoria's assailants and Louis-Philippe's, however, only went so far. Men, not boys, shot at Louis-Philippe. While all of them, it seems, were, like Oxford, Francis, and Bean, tormented by their own inner demons, they all—unlike those three—were avowedly political, either active in the republican movement that thrived throughout Louis-Philippe's reign, or politically driven lone wolves. There was no question whatsoever that their weapons were loaded, and that they shot to kill, expecting to effect a revolution with a bullet. Many in France believed that the French monarchy would disappear if Louis-Philippe died. The King's most recent assailant, Marius Darmés, might have best articulated the ideological fanaticism of Louis-Philippe's assailants (mixed in his case with more than a _soupçon_ of madness). "If I had killed the tyrant," he maintained after his attempt in 1840, "we would have conquered the universe and all the despots." The King's third assailant, Louis Alibaud, went to his execution in 1836 crying "I die for Liberty!" He meant it. Victoria never was to experience anything like the terror and carnage caused by Louis-Philippe's second would-be assassin,* Giuseppe Fieschi, who on 28 July 1835 unleashed his "infernal machine" on Louis-Philippe as the King was riding through Paris to review the National Guard. The hail of bullets from this primitive machine-gun—twenty-five loaded gun barrels on a wooden frame—instantly created "a void around the King," killing eighteen, seriously wounding twenty-two, and blowing half of Fieschi's own face off. Remarkably, the King and his sons were able to escape this bloodbath safely, the King proving himself Victoria's equal for courage under fire, continuing along the route and reviewing the troops at the Place Vendôme as scheduled.
Fieschi was a republican conspirator who went to the guillotine with two others, all of them believing they would have brought down a king and a political system if one of their twenty-five bullets had found its mark. No sane person in Britain in the early 1840s—and certainly not Oxford, Francis, or Bean—believed the monarchy would collapse if the Queen died. Whatever motives the Queen's assailants had, political fanaticism was not among them. This did not prevent partisan commentators from seeing the attempts as indirectly political, speculating that these boys were unwitting tools of the opposing political faction, imbibing from the newspapers of the other side a disrespect for the Queen that gave them license to shoot at her. The Whigs and the Chartists blamed the Tories; the Tories blamed the Chartists. The essayist and Victorian sage Thomas Carlyle, always one to spy a cosmic significance in any human action, understood the three attempts to be symptoms of an inarticulate working-class discontent with their government, writing to his mother "Are not these strange times? The people are sick of their misgovernment, and the blackguards among them shoot at the poor Queen: as a man that wanted the steeple pulled down might at least fling a stone at the gilt weathercock."
But given what the public learned and was learning about these three boys, these political explanations were drowned out by a growing groundswell of opinion that the attempts had little to do with the Queen's stature and everything to do with the boys' own. Variations on a phrase first coined after Francis's attempt became ubiquitous in press and public after Bean's: they were all driven by a "morbid craving after notoriety." And the law as it stood gave them that notoriety: a quick trip from the streets to Whitehall's corridors of power and a widely reported examination by the great men of the Privy Council, while huge crowds gathered outside, hoping to catch just a glimpse of them; the newspapers scrambling to scoop one another with new details about their lives; a starring role in a state trial for High Treason, and, if it came to that, a glorious execution before thousands.
With a growing awareness of the disease came a new certainty about the cure. These attempts would not stop until their perpetrators were degraded rather than elevated. The charge of High Treason only encouraged them; another charge would have to be created to deal with them. And the incentive of the scaffold had to go as well, to be replaced by a punishment that would appeal to their sense of shame rather than vainglory. Two days after Bean's attempt, the _Times_ led the charge for a new punishment for the miscreants. If "we would make up our minds to flog them in the sight of their companions, as heartily and as often as should be judged appropriate to the gravity of the offence, these coxcombs would leave off their villainous anglings for notoriety." The Queen's assailants were errant children; let them be treated as such.
Robert Peel and his Home Secretary, James Graham, needed no persuading; they had already come to the same conclusion. John William Bean would not be charged with High Treason. On the day after Bean's first Privy Council examination, Graham met with the two commissioners of the police and with George Maule, who as Treasury Solicitor was for the third time responsible for putting together a case for the prosecution against an assailant of the Queen. Bean, Graham made clear, would be charged not with High Treason but with common assault. It would mean that he would, if convicted, face a shorter sentence than Oxford and Francis. And while the government surely concurred with the writer for the _Times_ and a host of other commentators that Bean deserved a good whipping, that was out of the question: the law for assault as it stood did not provide for corporal punishment. A new law would need to be created to humiliate the Queen's assailants. That is the task that Robert Peel immediately took upon himself.
On the next day—6 July—John Bean, discernibly sunk into a depressed torpor, was brought from Tothill Fields for a final examination before Peel and the Privy Council. It would be the last time any of Victoria's assailants came before that body. He was charged with a misdemeanor and sent back to Tothill Fields for the night, to be brought to Newgate the next day to await trial. The lesser charge meant that Bean could return home if he could make bail—but that bail, two sureties of 250 pounds each, was far too much for his family to raise. Only a small crowd had assembled outside the Home Office to see him back to prison, and their "contempt and ridicule," according to a reporter, "was quite enough to act as an effectual antidote against the morbid craving after notoriety to which alone such an insane attempt could be attributed."
Bean's examination took place on the same day that John Francis, having tearfully taken leave of his family forever on Monday the fourth (the day of Cooper's execution), was removed to Gosport outside Portsmouth and to the convict ship _Marquis of Hastings_. The two would-be regicides missed meeting in Newgate by one day.
In less than a week, Peel had created his Act Providing for the Further Security and Protection of Her Majesty's Person. On 12 July, as John William Bean in Newgate observed his eighteenth birthday, the Prime Minister submitted his bill to Commons. Peel had no intention of modifying existing laws of treason, he made clear: rather, he was introducing a new charge altogether to deal with what amounted to a new offense: not attempts to kill the Queen, but attempts to disturb her—and by disturbing her, to disturb the public peace. Any threatening of the Queen, with guns, explosives, or any projectile, was prosecutable as a High Misdemeanor. The charge skirted the nagging issue of both Oxford's and Francis's trials—whether the pistols were loaded or not—by making threatening the monarch with either loaded or unloaded weapons a prosecutable offense.* Offenders under the Act could be sentenced to as much as seven years' transportation, or three years' imprisonment at hard labor. Moreover, they could expect to face repeated humiliation by being "publicly or privately whipped, as often and in such Manner and Form as the said Court shall order and direct, not exceeding Thrice."
It was the promise of a good whipping for the next miscreant who dared assault the Queen that roused the entire House into enthusiastic cheering. Every single member was for this measure and was zealous to demonstrate his absolute loyalty to Victoria. "These are the offences of base and degraded beings," Lord John Russell claimed in assenting to the measure. "It is right that a degrading species of punishment should be applied to them." Daniel O'Connell agreed, holding that the Irish people in particular would be grateful for a law to "brand... with contemptuous execration" any future assailant.
Only one member disturbed the spirit of unanimity. The next day, before the third reading of the Bill, Joseph Hume, radical member for Montrose, decided to use the occasion to contrast the Queen's welfare with the welfare of her poorest subjects. Industrial distress and sheer hunger had only increased as the summer of 1842 progressed; spontaneous disturbances were erupting throughout the countryside north of London. Before Peel presented this bill, debate in Commons had been consumed with the issue of growing popular distress and discontent. And yet, Hume maintained—echoing the complaint of the Chartist petition—while the people's sufferings increased, the Queen and her court lived in comfort: obscene comfort, by contrast. A civil expenditure of £325,000 was wasted on the "useless parade" of court life. "If anything could be more dissatisfactory to the great mass of the people than another," Hume declaimed, "it was to see outside of the palace squalid poverty, misery, and wretchedness, in all their painful variety, and to behold with inside the palace nothing but extravagance, gorgeous grandeur, and expensive finery." Peel, Hume insisted, should without hesitation recommend to the Queen to drop half of her "monstrous expenditure." His speech could not have been more badly timed. Only one other member cheered him—and was berated for it, by a member who lambasted Hume for his obvious slight on the Queen. Peel joked that Hume must be mistaken about the nature of the motion before the House: this was a bill to protect the Queen, not an economic measure. Hume quickly realized his mistake. "There was no individual in that House who had more regard for the Sovereign than himself," he said, chastened, "or would be more happy to see her Majesty protected." The bill passed without a dissenting vote. On Thursday and Friday, Wellington steered it unanimously through the Lords, and on Saturday Victoria gave the bill her royal assent. It was too late to apply the law to John William Bean. Peel wished instead to reach the would-be Beans or Francises or Oxfords contemplating their own turn at having a "pop" at the Queen. "Let it be known to the world," Peel told an enthusiastic House, that "for these contemptible acts they shall receive the degrading punishment of personal chastisement." If the prospect of death or transportation would not deter them, perhaps a healthy dose of shame would.
In spite of the lesser charge, John William Bean was a celebrity in Newgate, visited by the Lord Mayor, the sheriffs, and a number of aldermen. He was placed in a cell near Reverend Carver, and was attended day and night by a turnkey who surely saw part of his task as guarding the unshakably melancholy boy from killing himself. His trial was set for 25 August—seven weeks, and a long time by Central Criminal Court standards—and he spent his time sadly and studiously poring over the religious material provided him: tracts, the Bible, _Pilgrim's Progress_. He repeated the same story to all his visitors: he never intended harm to the Queen, pointing his pistol at the ground and not her carriage; his only intention was to be arrested and free himself from his miserable freedom. He was tired of life.
Outside Newgate, there was a great deal happening to distract public attention from the hunchbacked dwarf. The summer of 1842 saw the most widespread and sustained civil disturbance of the Queen's long reign. To extend Thomas Carlyle's analogy, if Francis and Bean were throwing stones at the gilt weathercocks, it seemed that the masses were attempting to tear the building down. Drastic reductions of wages, and industrial slowdowns, led to a rash of strikes and demonstrations, beginning in June in the collieries of Staffordshire, spreading throughout the Midlands and the North, and intensifying as June became July and July became August. The enlightened Luddism of the strikers—removing the plugs from industrial machines, draining their boilers, and thus disabling without destroying them—gave the disturbances a name: the Plug Plot Riots. By the second week in August, the disturbances reached a crescendo, as strikers and rioters refused to relent until the People's Charter was law. Two policemen were killed in Manchester; two rioters were shot dead by soldiers in Preston. Parliament was prorogued on 12 August, but neither Prime Minister Peel nor Home Secretary Graham were allowed a moment's respite: the next day, Peel called the Privy Council to meet and issue a royal proclamation warning all subjects to avoid any riotous meetings and disruptive acts, and the cabinet agreed to dispatch a battalion of troops north by train that evening. "I have not had a spare moment since the close of the session," Graham wrote four days before Bean's trial. "My time has been occupied with odious business arising from the mad insurrection of the working classes...." Peel worked closely with Graham as the growing disorder began to threaten him personally. His country home in Drayton, Staffordshire, lay in a particularly disturbed area, and his wife readied their home for a siege, writing to him on 21 August "our arrangements were quickly and vigorously made and should have been equal to an attack from two or three hundred till assistance had come. But then we expected three or four thousand. I am confident, however, that no men actually attacking doors and windows here would have left this place alive." A week before, Peel had been able to travel to Drayton for a couple days, only to be terrified by rumors that the violence had reached the Queen at Windsor: he got word that Victoria had been assassinated. He was not disabused of the rumor until the next train came through. He promptly ordered Graham to step up the Queen's security.
In the meantime, Victoria and Albert were planning a state visit to Scotland, the beginning of what would become a great love affair between the royal couple and that country. The prospect of royal travel during this summer of disruption—disruption in Scotland as well as England—did not please Peel, but he did acknowledge to Graham (on the day of Bean's trial) that the Queen would face no more danger there than in England. To avoid traveling through the riotous north, the couple would go by sea on the yacht _Royal George_. In Edinburgh, expectation for the visit had "superseded all other topics of the day," and in London the public scrambled to obtain choice seats on steamers to see the royal party escorted by the navy from Woolwich to the Channel.
Not surprisingly, then, John William Bean's trial on 25 August did not attract the crowds that Oxford's or Francis's had, and the Old Bailey was no busier than usual when Bean was placed in the dock. His head just cleared the bar, and so he could just see the three judges looking sternly upon him: Baron Abinger presiding, with Mr. Justice Williams and Baron Rolfe. Lord Abinger in his younger days (when he was James Scarlett) had been the most successful advocate in England, with a single-minded partisanship that won cases. His greatest strength as an attorney, however, became his greatest weakness as a judge. He was not to take Bean's side.
Bean was charged on four counts: the first, third, and fourth accused him of various forms of assault; the second accused him of attempting to fire a pistol with the intent of harassing and alarming the Queen and terrorizing her subjects. The prosecution team consisted of the same formidable five who had established Francis's guilt two months before, led by Attorney General Pollock and Solicitor General Follett. Their strategy to prove Bean's guilt was diametrically opposed to their strategy to prove Francis's. To convict Francis of High Treason, they took great pains to convince the jury that he intended to kill Victoria, and that the contents of his pistol—even if they consisted only of wadding and powder—were lethal. This time, to establish the lesser charge of assault, they would attempt to demonstrate that the contents of the pistol were _not_ lethal: that Bean intended to annoy and alarm the Queen and the public, not to kill her. Thus they ignored the curious bits of clay pipe that Inspector Martin found in the pistol, maintaining that only a minute amount of coarse gunpowder was in the pistol, with wadding—wadding that this time could not do the Queen serious harm. They brought forward witnesses—including the Dassett brothers and their uncle—to establish Bean's actions on the Sunday, as well as his connection with the pistol, and his apprehension at home that night.
In his cross-examinations, Bean's defense attorney Sidney Calder Horry* attempted to present the incident as benign—a few minutes' harmless amusement, with Charles Dassett playing the clown. "Was not there a good deal of laughing going on?" he asked Charles Dassett. "No," Dassett replied. "The people did not laugh that I remember—some might have laughed, I cannot say—there was a great noise after it happened...." Horry's defense of Bean was two-pronged. First, in a breathtakingly risky maneuver, he argued that if Bean had indeed assaulted the Queen, he was chargeable with High Treason. And since he was not charged with that crime, he risked being tried a second time for the same offense, "contrary to all the principles of English law." The first, third, and fourth counts (which accused Bean of assault) thus could not stand. As for the second count—harassing and alarming the Queen and the public: Horry held that Bean had harassed and alarmed no one. Only Charles Dassett had seen Bean present the pistol, and Charles Dassett was wrong; the defense had two witnesses to testify that Bean had never pointed the gun. Moreover, the Queen experienced no alarm, being completely unaware of Bean's act, and the public were amused, certainly not alarmed, by the situation, their amusement strengthened by Charles Dassett's clowning with the pistol: even the police on the scene had thought the whole thing a joke.
The two witnesses Horry brought forward to contradict Das-sett's testimony that Bean had presented his pistol at the Queen turned out to be of dubious value. The first, Henry Hawkes, testified that if anyone had presented a pistol, "it is probable I must have seen it," but then admitted that he was unaware of the existence of either Bean or Dassett until after the carriages had passed and Dassett was heading across the Mall with Bean in tow. The second witness, Thomas Vosper,* startled the court by claiming that he had stood behind Bean for at least fifteen minutes until the Queen approached, staring at the pistol Bean held by his side—but never lifted. Baron Abinger was mystified by this testimony, asking Vosper several times how he could have simply stood there while Bean waited with a gun for the Queen. Vosper only repeated the same answer: "I wanted to see the result."
Lord Abinger.—If you saw the prisoner for ten minutes, standing amongst the crowd with a pistol in his hand, waiting to see the result, and knowing that Her Majesty was coming, why did you not take him into custody? Now explain that to the jury.
I can only say that I merely waited to watch the result.
In summing up, Abinger pointed out that if Vosper had acted as he said he had, he was guilty of misprision of treason. His testimony indeed contradicted Charles Dassett's—but the jury could decide how much credence to accord a criminal by his own admission.
Horry's other witnesses—Bean's former employers and family acquaintances—testified to his good character. When his father took the stand to plead to his son's "mild, peaceable, and inoffensive" conduct, Bean wept bitterly.
By the time of his summing up, Judge Abinger had greatly assisted the prosecution in puncturing the basis of Horry's defense. As for his claim that any assault on the Queen must be High Treason, he responded that this was not so: persons might insult or behave rudely to her. He cited as evidence the curious case where a man had once been indicted for _grinning_ at George III. And in response to Horry's claim that an assault cannot be said to take place if the victim is unaware of it, he noted "Is it not an assault to point a loaded gun at a man when he is asleep? I think it is, but Mr. Horry contends the contrary."
It was in the end a simple case for the jury. They consulted for a moment, and gave their verdict: guilty on the second count—harassing and alarming the Queen and the public. Bean heard the verdict without emotion.
Abinger found himself in a frustrating position. He wanted to impose a harsh sentence upon the boy—wanted, indeed, to follow the public consensus and humiliate him. But the old law made no provision for whipping. After consulting briefly with his fellow judges, he tore into Bean: "I know of no misdemeanour more affecting the public peace of the kingdom, of greater magnitude or deserving more serious punishment, than that of which you have just been pronounced guilty." He wished that the punishment he could impose was equal to the offense, but he knew it was not. He thus satisfied himself with a warning to any future miscreants: if they aren't convicted of High Treason and thus forfeit their lives, they will "gain another species of notoriety, by being publicly whipped at a cart's tail through any street in the metropolis." As it was, Abinger imposed the harshest sentence he thought he could: eighteen months at hard labor at Millbank Penitentiary.
John William Bean, tired of his life and by now surely tired to death of the scornful scrutiny of the public, was taken from the bar.
* On the other hand, he might have been unnaturally short even without the spinal curvature. Estimates of John Bean's height varied considerably—from 3'6" to 5'6". The most careful estimate may have been by an eyewitness to Bean's naked body, who claimed Bean's scoliosis rendered his height 3'6" when he would otherwise stand at 4'6", making him a hunchback _and_ a dwarf, in the cruel vernacular of the day.
* Interestingly, _The Old Curiosity Shop_ may be the one work of literature to contain a portrait of one of Victoria's would–be assassins: in chapter 28 the illustrator of that novel, Hablôt K. Browne—"Phiz"—anachronistically but unmistakably places a beerpot-and flintlock-toting Edward Oxford among Mrs. Jarley's waxwork figures (Dickens, _Old Curiosity Shop_ 284).
* Partridge was the officer on duty two years before when Edward Oxford was brought to A Division station house.
* Three thousand, according to the _Times_.
* The inclusion in the 1851 census of a 27-year-old cabman by the name of John Oxman suggests that this seeming alias was nothing of the kind.
* Fieschi is usually considered the first of Louis-Philippe's would-be assassins. But three years before, in November 1832, the King was shot at and the shooter never found.
* It was under this Act in 1981 that Marcus Sergeant was prosecuted for firing six blanks at Victoria's great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth.
* Horry was Thomas Cooper's attorney as well.
* "Bospher" in the Proceedings of the Old Bailey.
_thirteen_
TORY SPIES
Four days after John William Bean's trial, on Monday 29 August, the _Royal George_ set out of Woolwich in the pouring rain, towed by two steamships. Victoria and Albert were off to Scotland in spite of—and now in part because of—the disturbances across Britain. Besides a short visit by George IV in 1822, no British monarch had set foot in Scotland since the mid-1600s; indeed, Victoria would be the first reigning Queen of Scotland to be there since Mary Queen of Scots. The royal couple planned to put into practice the lessons John Conroy had taught Princess Victoria, enhancing the Queen's prestige through two grueling weeks of processionals between and within the cities of southern Scotland, mingling with all social classes: with cheering crowds by day, and with the elite by night as they stayed at their castles and estates.
The voyage began inauspiciously as bad weather forced the steamships to tow the yacht most of the way up the coast, the royal couple spending much of the time belowdecks, ill. (The fact that Victoria was unknowingly three weeks pregnant with her third child could not have helped.) They arrived off Edinburgh a day after they were expected, letting down the thousands who had the day before trooped from miles around into the city, cramming the scaffolding along the planned procession route in vain expectation of seeing the Queen. Early the next morning, the royal procession shot through the city on the way to Dalkeith Palace, without sufficient warning to the public and before city dignitaries had assembled. Edinburgh's enthusiasm soured into disappointment. The town council and the royal party quickly improvised another procession through the city the next day. It was a rousing success—the first of many. "Scotland has rarely seen a prouder day—perhaps never," wrote the _Times_. Massive crowds showered adulation upon the royal couple. Robert Peel rode in the carriage behind, fretting about the complete lack of security. "The crowds of persons were beyond description," he wrote to his wife. "The mob was close to the carriage, from the narrowness of the streets, and every window in every house looking down into the carriages." The Chartists who ran hooting and groaning beside him added to his anxiety.
Peel had every reason to worry. Somewhere on this route—or in the crowd for one or more of the next fortnight's processions—a man with an overwhelming urge to kill was watching and awaiting his opportunity. He had been for much of the last two years living in London, but he was a native of Glasgow, and had returned home ahead of the royal visit. At the beginning of August, in Paisley—incidentally one of Britain's worst-suffering towns, that hungry summer—he had bought two mismatched percussion-cap pistols. His target would be prominent within the royal processions. But the first carriage, the open phaeton behind the six mounted Royal Dragoons clearing the path, the one carrying Victoria and Albert, was only a distraction to him. It was a carriage further behind this that he was looking for—one clearly marked with the crest of two lions holding a shield marked "Industria": Robert Peel's carriage. Daniel McNaughtan saw the carriage, saw one man in it—and committed that man's face to memory.
The face, however, did not belong to Robert Peel. During the Edinburgh procession, and on many more during the next fortnight, Peel rode directly behind the royal couple in the carriage of his Foreign Minister, Lord Aberdeen. He left his secretary, Edward Drummond, to ride by himself in the Peel family carriage. Drummond later joked about his being taken for "a great man" in Scotland. He didn't look like Peel, but the two were roughly the same age. Because the illustrated press was in its infancy, images of even highly public figures such as Peel were rare. It was an easy mistake to make. Daniel McNaughtan made it.
Daniel McNaughtan knew that he could find release from his torment only by destroying Peel. The oppressive persecution he suffered had grown for years. It began, he was sure, with the priests of the local Catholic chapel, who tormented him with the assistance of a parcel of Jesuits. But then, he knew, the Tories joined in and soon became his chief tormentors. Their enmity toward him should perhaps not have been surprising, given his enmity toward them. Until 1841, he had been a very successful craftsman, amassing a small fortune as a wood-turner in Glasgow, and politics were a part of his life; as it happens, one of Glasgow's leading Chartists worked as a journeyman in his shop. But at some point—after he voted publicly against them, he claimed—the personal enmity that the Tories of Glasgow bore toward him alone grew to cosmic proportions. Day and night, Tory spies followed him. On the street, they glowered and laughed at him, furiously shaking their fists and their walking sticks in his face. One man repeatedly threw straw at him. His enemies never talked to him, instead communicating with signs. He knew what the straw meant: they intended to reduce him to sleeping on straw in an asylum. They inserted beastly, atrocious libels about him in the _Glasgow Herald_ and the London _Times_ ; they poisoned his food. When he went to bed, they followed him and would not let him sleep. They intended to destroy his peace of mind, drive him to consumption; they would not stop until he was dead.
His enemies were inhabitants of Glasgow, and so he repeatedly sought relief from the authorities of that city. When his father could not help him, he went in turn to the sheriff, the Procurator-Fiscal (or Glasgow's public prosecutor), the Commissioner of Police, the Lord Provost, and even to his Member of Parliament. All of them considered him delusional—and could do nothing to help him. When McNaughtan tracked down his M.P., Alexander Johnson, in London, Johnson fended him off with a curt note sent from the Reform Club: "I can do nothing for you. I fear you are labouring under an aberration of mind." When civil authority failed him, he looked to the divine, begging his father's minister Rev. Mr. Turner for help. The Reverend could do nothing except what the Lord Provost had done—call upon McNaughtan's father and advise him to put his lunatic son in restraints. But Daniel McNaughtan Senior refused, thinking that his son's delusions would pass.
McNaughtan realized that he would have to act for himself. He fled Scotland for London, but to his great dismay his persecutors followed him. He twice fled abroad, but it was no use: the instant he set foot on the quay at Boulogne, he could see one of them scowling at him from behind the custom-house watchbox. Flight was impossible. He would have to stop his tormentors by killing their leader. And so he returned to Scotland and waited for his opportunity to kill the man as he toured the country with the Queen. For some reason, he did not shoot at the man in Peel's carriage. Accordingly, two or three weeks after the Queen's Scottish tour, McNaughtan followed Peel to London, taking the steamship _Fire King_ from Glasgow to Liverpool—where the ubiquitous spies beset him particularly mercilessly. In London, McNaughtan tried for a couple months to find a living in spite of the Tories, seeking work and seeking a partner with whom to invest the £750 he had earned from his wood-turning business. At the beginning of 1843, however, the oppression reached the breaking point; he gave up all else in order to stalk his arch-oppressor, Peel.
He took up his post in the heart of Tory darkness: the streets outside of Whitehall, standing all day for two weeks on the steps leading to the Privy Council office. Two recruiters from the army saw him there and asked if he'd like to enlist. No, he told them: he was simply waiting to see a gentleman. Two policemen from A Division—including P.C. Partridge*—took note of him; one told him that those inside the Privy Council office did not like his loitering there. "Tell them their property is quite safe," he replied.
His obsessive urge to kill was matched by an obsessive need to kill the right man. The Prime Minister's official residence was, then as now, 10 Downing Street, but Robert Peel actually resided in his London mansion, Whitehall Gardens, conveniently located directly across from Downing Street, and observable from McNaughtan's position. Edward Drummond had rooms at 10 Downing Street, and his business took him back and forth between the residences, often several times a day. McNaughtan watched him come and go—the man _had to be_ Peel. To be absolutely sure, he twice pointed Drummond out to a police constable, asking if that man was Robert Peel. Both times, the constable said yes, thinking McNaughtan was pointing to the man then walking _next_ to Drummond: Robert Peel.
On the twentieth of January, McNaughtan, aware of the growing alarm he was causing the Tories and the police around him, came down the steps and shadowed Drummond, who walked from Downing Street to Charing Cross and entered Drummond's bank. (It belonged to his brother.) A few minutes later, Drummond emerged and walked back toward Downing Street. McNaughtan followed. Between the Admiralty and the Horse Guards, McNaughtan walked up to Drummond's back, pulled one of his pistols from the breast of his coat and fired, so close to his victim that Drummond's jacket caught fire. He thrust the pistol back into his coat and reached for the other one. Constable James Silver, standing next to the two, was upon McNaughtan an instant after the first shot. The two struggled violently before Silver knocked up McNaughtan's arm and kicked his legs from beneath him. McNaughtan fired the second pistol into the air.
Drummond, clutching at his back, staggered back into his brother's bank. Although the bullet had nearly traveled through his body, he seemed relatively uninjured; initial reports of his condition were extremely optimistic. An apothecary was sent for and deemed him fit to travel to the family house on Grosvenor Street, where doctors were called in, and the bullet was removed. Drummond lingered for five days, while the best doctors in town finished what the bullet had started, leeching and bleeding him relentlessly as his wound grew more infected. On 25 January, he died.
P.C. Silver marched McNaughtan to the Gardiner Lane station house. On the way there McNaughtan muttered that "he" or "she" (Silver could not tell which) "shall not break my peace of mind any longer." Placed in the same cell that Oxford, Francis, and Bean had occupied before him, he spent several hours certain that he had wounded if not killed Sir Robert Peel. It was not until eight or nine the next morning that Inspector John Tierney, interviewing him, realized that McNaughtan had shot the wrong man. "I suppose you are aware who the gentleman is you shot at?" Tierney asked him. "It is Sir _Robert Peel_ , is it not?" McNaughtan replied, growing agitated. "No," the inspector at first replied, but then, not wanting to force a confession, said "we don't exactly know who the gentleman is yet." Later that day, at his examination at Bow Street, McNaughtan learned the truth: to his great horror, his persecutors had triumphed.
"The evidence of his mental delusion is strong," Peel wrote to Victoria of McNaughtan on the day Drummond died, and it soon became clear that he would plead insanity. The prospect of an acquittal for insanity pleased no one, certainly not the Queen. McNaughtan, like Edward Oxford, had acted with such deliberation: how could he not be held responsible for his act? "There is and should be," she wrote to Peel, "a difference between that madness which is such that a man knows not what he does, and madness which does not prevent a man from purposely buying pistols, and then with determined purpose watching and shooting a person." Deliberation, in other words, demonstrates awareness, and awareness implies guilt.
More than this, an acquittal of any kind would completely remove any deterrent value from the sentence. The connection between the three attempts upon the Queen and the murder of Drummond was by now obvious to all. "Who can doubt but that Bellingham was as insane as Oxford?" exclaimed a writer in the _Times_ , thinking back to the quick execution of Spencer Perceval's assassin in 1812. "But, after the execution of the former, he had no imitators: would that we could say as much after the pardon of the latter!" An insanity acquittal would only perpetuate the outrages and the Queen would remain in danger. Home Secretary Graham, preparing the case against McNaughtan, was adamant that he be convicted. "Every preparation is in progress to meet this vague and dangerous excuse," he wrote Victoria. He had grounds for hope: word had reached him from Scotland that a case could be made that he was a coldhearted, violent Chartist. That lead petered out, however, and no evidence of this kind was presented at McNaughtan's trial.
On the second of February, McNaughtan was brought to the bar of the Old Bailey to enter his plea. His counsel pleaded for more time to set up an insanity defense: McNaughten's attorneys planned to call witnesses from Scotland, and perhaps France. The Attorney General did not object—the government did not want another Bellingham on its hands, found guilty and executed before witnesses to his insanity could be brought forward. The judge, Baron Abinger, gave the defense a month to prepare. Moreover, he granted counsel's request that McNaughtan be allowed access to his bank account: £750 to fund his defense. And if McNaughtan's trial was to prove nothing else, it certainly proved that in 1843, £750 could buy a defense nothing short of magnificent.
It bought the services of Alexander Cockburn, Q.C., for one thing—a highly paid, high-profile attorney (and later Lord Chief Justice). Cockburn was assisted by three other attorneys, including William Clarkson, who had defended Francis, and William Henry Bodkin, who assisted in Oxford's defense. Moreover, McNaughtan's money bought the expertise of no fewer than five medical experts, including Edward Monro, Principal Physician at Bethlem, and two doctors brought down from Glasgow. The three London doctors examined McNaughtan several times in company with two doctors retained by the prosecution. When those last two doctors concluded with the others that McNaughtan was indeed insane, the government knew that their case was in trouble before it began.
At 10:00 on 3 March 1843, an excited Daniel McNaughtan was again brought to the bar of the Old Bailey, before Chief Justice Tindal, Justice Williams, and Justice Coleridge. He pleaded not guilty; a chair was brought for him, and he instantly seemed to doze off, ignoring Solicitor General Follett's opening. (He would perk up when the witnesses testified.) The Solicitor General rather than Attorney General Pollock led the prosecution because Pollock was on this day in Lancaster, conducting the government's case against Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor and fifty-eight others for their roles in the Plug Plot Riots. Follett was assisted by the same attorneys who had prosecuted Francis and Bean. They faced the unenviable task of fighting an insanity acquittal while offering nothing to counter the overwhelming evidence that McNaughtan was delusive. Their strategy was to set the legal bar for an insanity acquittal as high as possible, arguing that while McNaughtan might be partially mad, he was still morally aware and thus criminally responsible.
In his opening, therefore, Follett freely admitted that McNaughtan might be suffering from a "morbid affection of the mind." That should not in itself earn him an acquittal, however: public safety required that "this defense should not be too readily listened to." More than this, few crimes—and certainly few crimes as horrendous as this one—are committed by persons _not_ laboring under some sort of morbid affection. Follett ignored the most recent and British examples of would-be assassins—Oxford, Francis, and Bean—and pointed instead to Louis-Philippe's. "What motive had they? We know of none but that of an ill-regulated mind, worked upon by morbid political feeling." The great seventeenth-century jurist Matthew Hale—the hallowed setter of precedent in the English insanity defense—had noted the connection between criminality and partial insanity, and held that such "melancholy distempers" cannot absolve a man of criminal responsibility. To be acquitted on the grounds of insanity, that insanity must be total, negating any sense of moral awareness. "If there be thought and design," Follett proclaimed, citing a 1760 formulation of Hale's ideas, "a faculty to distinguish the nature of actions, to discern the difference between moral good and evil; then, upon the fact of the offence proved, the judgment of the law must take place." Two hundred years of precedent (which Follett diligently cited) established moral understanding as the key test of criminal responsibility. And everything about Daniel McNaughtan—his conduct, his habits, and his careful management of his financial affairs—suggested rationality: social and moral awareness. The witnesses called by the prosecution, therefore, both established that McNaughtan indeed shot Drummond down, and testified to his overall possession of reason. "I never thought him unsettled in his mind," claimed his London landlady. "I did not have any idea that his mind was disordered," said an acquaintance who knew him both in Glasgow and in London. Several others said much the same, and several documented his financial acumen, his studious reading habits, and his frequent attendance at the Glasgow Mechanics' Institution. With that, the prosecution rested, and the trial was adjourned for the night, the jurors sequestered in a local coffee house.
The next day, Cockburn demolished the prosecution, eloquently dismissing two hundred years of legal precedence as so much superstitious hogwash. What could be more absurd, he argued, than relying on seventeenth-century jurists' pronouncements on insanity, when modern science alone has succeeded in penetrating the mysteries of madness? "It is but as yesterday," he claimed, "that darkness and solitude—cut off from the rest of mankind like the lepers of old—the dismal cell, the bed of straw, the iron chain, and the inhuman scourge, were the fearful lot of those who were best entitled to human pity and to human sympathy, as being the victims of the most dreadful of all mortal calamities." No one could come to rational conclusions about madness when the mad were rendered raving lunatics by horrendous, unenlightened treatment. True insight into madness lies not in the past, but in the present: to contemporary specialists in the science of the mind. To these, and not to Hale, "the greatest deference should be paid." Modern science completely debunked Solicitor General Follett's claim that total insanity was necessary for an acquittal. Any one of a human being's mental faculties—"the perception, the judgment, the reason, the sentiments, the affections, the propensities, the passions"—might become diseased, and render a man a "victim of the most fearful delusions, the slave of uncontrollable impulses": a state lacking "self-control and dominion, without which the knowledge of right and wrong would become vague and useless." Cockburn essentially posited two grounds for acquittal because of insanity. First, if one, at the moment of committing an act, cannot understand the rightness or wrongness of that act, one cannot be criminally responsible for it. This is not the same as Follett's claim of abstract moral awareness: according to Cockburn, one could understand the difference between right and wrong and still not be aware of the morality of one's own action. The question, Cockburn argued, quoting the "profound and scientific" Scottish jurist, Baron Hume, is not whether one understands evil, but "did he at that moment understand the evil of what he did?" Second, one who is impelled to act by an impulse beyond human control cannot be held responsible for that act; in such a case moral knowledge becomes "vague and useless." The defense would suggest that McNaughtan was not liable in both of these ways.
Cockburn then laid out McNaughtan's history, portraying a man whose delusions had grown a frightening degree over the past two years, until he was indeed their slave—in the words of the French doctor Charles Chrétien Henry Marc, a victim of "homicidal monomania." And the defense spent much of McNaughtan's £750 in backing up that claim—transporting a host of witnesses from Glasgow to London to illustrate his derangement. McNaughtan's father, as well as all of the Glasgow officials who for years could not help him, now took the stand to establish that he was a man in serious need of help.
After these witnesses, the defense called an astounding nine medical specialists to the stand—and apparently had more in reserve. The unmistakable effect of their testimony was to suggest that the medical community was unanimous in holding the man in the dock to be hopelessly insane. And, unlike the medical experts in Edward Oxford's trial, their testimony was remarkably uniform. Edward Thomas Monro, the chief physician at Bethlem, had no doubt: there existed in McNaughtan "the presence of insanity sufficient to deprive the prisoner of all self-control." The four other doctors hired by the defense agreed, William Hutcheson, of the Glasgow Royal Lunatic Asylum, holding that "the delusion was so strong that nothing but a physical impediment could have prevented him from committing the act." All of them were rendering judgments about McNaughtan's state of mind, and, remarkably, not once did any judge or any attorney for the prosecution question their right to do that. The tension between science and the law, so palpable during Edward Oxford's trial, did not exist in this trial.
After these five hired specialists testified, Cockburn called to the stand doctors whom the defense had not retained, neutral observers whose testimony dovetailed perfectly. The first of these had examined McNaughtan before the trial, but the last two had not, basing their testimony entirely upon their reading of depositions and hearing the testimony in this trial. Astoundingly, the judges and the prosecution let them testify. When a ninth specialist—B. Philips of Westminster Hospital—took the stand, Judge Tindal stopped the trial and turned to the Solicitor General.
Mr. Solicitor General, are you prepared... with any evidence to combat this testimony?
No, my Lord.
We feel the evidence, especially that of the last two medical gentlemen who have been examined, and who are strangers to both sides and only observers of the case, to be very strong, and sufficient to induce my learned brothers and myself to stop the case.
With that, Follett surrendered. He apologized to the jury for bringing the case before them, citing the need for public safety. But he would not now press for a verdict against the prisoner.
Tindal then gave the case to the jury, but in effect directed their verdict: "I cannot help remarking, in common with my learned brethren, that the whole of the medical evidence is on one side, and that there is no part of it which leaves any doubt on the mind."
The jury immediately pronounced McNaughtan not guilty on the ground of insanity.
McNaughtan was returned to Newgate, to await Home Secretary Graham's order for his removal to Bethlem. It was some time in coming. Nine days later, on 13 March, McNaughtan followed Oxford's path from Newgate to Southwark in a cab with Governor Cope. He would walk the criminal wing with Oxford until 1864, when that wing was razed to the ground and both men were transferred to Broadmoor; there, the next year, he died and was buried in an unmarked grave. McNaughtan thus had twenty-two agitated years to consider his utter defeat and the triumph of his enemies. The tormenting man with the straw had been right: McNaughtan spent the rest of his life in asylums.
The public, already convinced that Oxford's verdict had been a travesty, and certain that the McNaughtan decision offered any degenerate the means to kill with impunity, responded to McNaughtan's acquittal with alarm, outrage—and derision. One bitter wit, writing to the _Times_ , captured all these feelings:
Sir,—I have in contemplation the accomplishment of a certain pet project, which unfortunately involves some degree of violence in its attainment; I mean, however, to retain beforehand some of the most eminent medical men of the day as witnesses in proof of my monomaniacal possession, and in the mean time I hope, through the assistance of your journal, to ascertain when the public (who I understand considers itself rather outraged by the acquittal of my friend Mr. M'Naughten) are sufficiently tranquillized to render it safe and expedient for a British court of justice and a British jury to reward my perseverance with a comfortable and permanent abode in Bethlehem Hospital at the expense of the nation. I confess this latter consideration has much weight with me, as I am at present out of work, and have the much more disagreeable alternative of a union workhouse staring me in the face.
I have the honour to remain,
Your very insane servant (pro hac vice [for the occasion]),
KILLING NO MURDER.
The royal family were in residence at Claremont, Uncle Leopold's Surrey estate, on the day of the verdict. Robert Peel sent Victoria the news with a letter expressing his own disappointment. The three judges in the case, he told her, were certain that the evidence of insanity was too strong to allow anything but an acquittal. Peel had his doubts, however, that anyone who showed as much premeditation as McNaughtan had could be that insane: "It is a lamentable reflection," he wrote her, "that a man may be at the same time so insane as to be reckless of his own life and the lives of others, and to be pronounced free from moral responsibility, and yet capable of preparing for the commission of murder with the utmost caution and deliberation, and of taking every step which shall enable him to commit it with certainty."
Victoria had no doubts whatsoever about the matter: McNaughtan was as guilty as sin, and his verdict was botched. She believed it before the trial, and she believed it now: premeditation signified reason, which proved guilt. The recent trials whose results defied this simple logic were flawed, and Victoria blamed the judges, and their propensity for unorthodox instructions to their juries. "The law may be perfect," she wrote to Peel a week later, but how is that whenever a case for its application arises, it proves to be of no avail? We have seen the trials of Oxford and MacNaghten conducted by the ablest lawyers of the day—Lord Denman, Chief Justice Tindal, and Sir Wm. Follett,—and _they allow_ and _advise_ the Jury to pronounce the verdict of _Not Guilty_ on account of _Insanity_ ,—whilst _everybody_ is morally _convinced_ that both malefactors were perfectly conscious and aware of what they did! It appears from this, that the force of the law is entirely put into the Judge's hands, and that it depends merely upon his charge whether the law is to be applied or not. Could not the Legislature lay down that rule which the Lord Chancellor does in his paper, and which Chief Justice Mansfield did in the case of Bellingham; and why could not the Judges be _bound_ to interpret the law in _this_ and _no other_ sense in their charges to the Juries?
The paper to which she referred contained the notes of the speech that the Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, planned to give at the House of Lords about the current state of the insanity defense. Lyndhurst proposed convening the judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature in order to codify and promulgate a clear rule to apply in insanity cases—and stated that in his mind, the grounds for an insanity acquittal were clear: no one was criminally liable of a crime when he "is under the influence of delusion and insanity, so as not to know right from wrong, so as not to know what he is doing." In wishing that Parliament lay down this rule, she obviously did not realize that her notion of criminal liability did not quite dovetail with Lyndhurst's. Victoria considered simple awareness of the act enough for guilt; Lyndhurst considered _moral_ awareness the standard.
The Lords met the next day and submitted five questions to the Law Lords—the key one being the second: "What are the proper questions to be submitted to the jury when a person, alleged to be afflicted with insane delusion respecting one or more particular subjects or persons, is charged with the commission of a crime... and insanity is set up as a defence?" Eleven of the twelve judges agreed upon their response, as set out six weeks later by Chief Justice Tindal (who had of course presided over the McNaughtan trial). That response became the McNaughtan Rules, which set the standard for the insanity defense in courtrooms across five continents. In Tindal's words, "to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved, that, at the time of committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong."
Tindal's standard did not repudiate the precedent of McNaughtan's trial—but it did not wholly vindicate it, either. McNaughtan's inability to understand the wrongness of his action had indeed been a part of his defense—but moral awareness was a minor matter compared to the aspect of his insanity that every one of the medical witnesses had agreed upon—the fact that he was compelled to kill by an urge he had no control over. This notion of "irresistible impulse," as it was generally called, had no part in the McNaughtan Rules. The Rules were thus controversial at the moment of their birth, and have generated a great deal of controversy—in England, the United States, Australia, and elsewhere—ever since.
The Rules, moreover, were not what Victoria desired—though it would take some time before she realized it. Her letter to Peel made it clear exactly what she wanted in a verdict against _anyone_ who deliberately raised a hand against herself or her servants: sane or insane, that person was guilty. Whether Oxford and McNaughtan would have been found guilty under the McNaughtan Rules is an open question. The assaults upon the Queen to come would raise the question again and again, and in the end, Victoria would find the insanity acquittal wanting. And she would accordingly change it.
Deep in the archives of the Museum of London is perhaps the oddest fashion accessory a British monarch ever owned: a delicate-looking parasol in the style of the early 1840s, of emerald-green silk, with a satin weave pattern at the fringe, and a carved ivory handle and ferrule. Discreetly hidden between layers of silk is a lining of close-linked chain mail.
This curious protection was designed in 1842, likely at the behest of Albert, to protect the Queen from the miscreants plaguing her. As far as ensuring Victoria's comfort during her regular airings, however, the chain-mail parasol could hardly have done the trick: at three and a quarter pounds, it weighs more than a large hammer, and holding it up for the length of an outing would have taken the strength of an Olympian. Much more likely, this chain-mail parasol was custom-made for the unusual occasion when the Queen _expected_ to encounter an assailant during her ride, as she did when John Francis made his second attempt. The manufacture of this parasol almost certainly followed hard upon that event. This gift, if it was indeed Albert's gift, was his material counterpart to Peel's legal gift to Victoria: the Security of the Queen's Person Act.
Victoria is never known to have put the parasol to use. Certainly after Francis she never again flushed out an assailant. Indeed, for a time after Bean the assaults ceased altogether—apparent evidence that the prospect of a shameful public whipping actually stopped would-be Oxfords from confronting Victoria. Seven years would pass before the next assailant struck. And by then, Victoria's delicate-looking green chain-mail parasol was no longer in fashion.
* The same James Partridge who had put Oxford in a cell and had arrested Charles Dassett after Bean's attempt.
_Part Three_
EXHIBITIONS
_fourteen_
BIRTHDAY
The fine weather suited Victoria's spirits and the nation's on this day, 19 May 1849, the official day of celebration of her thirtieth birthday. She had celebrated a dozen birthdays as Queen, and over the years the ceremonies of the day were established: just about all that occurred on this day she had seen and done before. The day began with the pealing of church bells across London, and a ubiquitous raising of the royal standard. In the morning, across the three Kingdoms were military reviews, and first among these was the review of the Household troops on the Horse Guards Parade outside Whitehall, conducted not by Victoria but by Albert, accompanied as he usually was by the Commander-in-Chief of the army, the eighty-year-old Duke of Wellington. Observing the spectacle for the first time was the seven-year-old Prince of Wales, from the prime viewpoint of the back garden of 10 Downing Street, then the residence of Victoria's Prime Minister, Lord John Russell.
At one o'clock the artillery in the park and at the Tower of London boomed a salute that was answered by volleys from Woolwich and from military depots across the United Kingdom. An hour later, Victoria and Albert rode in state to St. James to accept the congratulations of the uppermost 1,700 at the traditional birthday drawing room. The royal couple were resplendently dressed—Albert in his field marshal's uniform, encrusted with the heavily jeweled insignia of the Garter, the Bath, St. Patrick's, the Thistle, and the Golden Fleece; Victoria in "the most beautiful dress at the drawing-room": white satin and a train of green and silver silk, trimmed all over with red roses and violets, with a matching headdress of flowers, diamonds, and feathers. The dress, of course, had been woven in Spitalfields; the Queen required dresses of British manufacture at all her drawing rooms. The royal couple had returned from the drawing room, and now prepared for an outing: an impromptu carriage ride among the many who were milling about Green, Hyde, and Regent's Parks on this holiday.
In the evening, her chief ministers and her household officers would toast her at the full-dress dinners they held in her honor, while the rest of London, it seemed, crowded into the West End in slowly snaking queues to ooh and aah at the elaborate illuminations on the façades of the ministerial residences, the clubs on Pall Mall, and the establishments of the Queen's tradesmen: brilliant, variegated gaslight displays of crowns, stars, mottoes, laurel wreaths, English roses and British lions, portraits of the Queen—and a thousand blinding permutations of VR.
None of it was new to her. But this year, more than any other, the cheers, the well-wishing, the _feux de joie_ and toasts, the bows and curtsies, must have seemed more appropriate to her than ever before. Life simply was different this year—different than it had been just a year before, or during any of the years of this difficult decade—years of poverty and hunger, class conflict and outright rebellion.
Much had changed as the decade progressed, but for Victoria, there was one constant: Albert. And Victoria had developed one belief, the anchor of all her thinking: Albert's perfection in all things. Since the fall of Melbourne and the departure of Lehzen, Albert had been her sole confidant and her private secretary, reading, summarizing, drafting replies to all her official correspondence, and tirelessly composing memoranda on issues he deemed important. _His_ ideas became hers. "It is you who have entirely formed me," she once told him. They met with her ministers together, and spoke as one. When the Whigs returned to political office in 1846, they were amazed at the change since the days of Melbourne: "The Prince is become so identified with the Queen, that they are one person," wrote Charles Greville. "He is King to all intents and purposes."
While never forgetting Victoria was the monarch, and while always subsuming his own interests to hers, Albert embraced the role of a co-ruler, occupying his own throne at openings and closings of Parliament or at the Royal Balls; when the Queen was indisposed—as she was because of pregnancy nine times during the first seventeen years of their marriage—he took her place at government meetings and public functions. Victoria's Hanoverian relatives carped bitterly at his elevation, especially during the early years of their marriage. When Princess Alice was born in 1843 and Albert stood in for his wife at a court levée, the Cambridges absented themselves from the Court in a huff. A month after this, the King of Hanover battled with Albert physically for precedence at Victoria's cousin's wedding. Hanover lost: "I was forced to give him a strong push and drive him down a few steps, where the First Master of Ceremonies led him out of the chapel," Albert wrote his brother. Victoria was livid at any sign of others' blindness to what were in her mind Albert's transcendent merits. Time was on Albert's side in this respect: the original public image of Albert as a penniless foreign interloper had largely shifted to one of selfless public servant—and respectable _paterfamilias_.
Albert repaid Victoria's complete trust in him by giving her the best years of her life. He had convinced her that her true fulfillment was never to be found in the social whirl she had so delighted in during the Melbourne days, and those days were long gone: just a week after Lehzen had left the palace forever, in 1842, Victoria looked upon that time as if it were a strange dream from which she had awoken: "The life I led then was so artificial and superficial and yet I thought I was happy. Thank God! I now know what real happiness means." Albert never overcame his sense of foreignness, and was resistant to the charms of society—notoriously, almost comically resistant in particular to the charms of society women. He—and, before long, Victoria—found pleasure in escaping the aristocratic sparkle of Court life for the bourgeois _gemütlichkeit_ of secluded family life. And over the past few years, he had labored mightily to create that life for his wife and their children.
He gave Victoria babies, for one thing. In 1849, there were six: after Vicky and Bertie came Alice (April 1843), and then Alfred ("Affie," August 1844), Helena ("Lenchen," May 1846) and Louise (March 1848) born just as Europe was erupting into revolution. Albert was a naturally loving and doting father—supervising the royal nursery, to which he kept the keys and constantly checked the locks—concerned, especially in the early days, by intrusions such as the Boy Jones's, and by a number of letters received threatening harm to the royal infants. The Queen was more ambivalent about children: she disliked the discomforts of pregnancy and feared the pains of childbirth, thought infants unpleasantly "frog-like," and confessed that she "only very exceptionally" found conversation with her children "either agreeable or easy." None the less, Victoria learned to find her greatest fulfillment among her family. "I am coming more and more convinced," she would later declare, "that the only true happiness in this world is to be found in the domestic circle." Of course Albert, who always took precedence over her children in her affections, was absolutely necessary to complete that happiness.
Albert's reform of the royal households and his management of the royal estates made his wife rich, and made possible the domestic cocoon he created for her. Once he wrested the management of the royal household from Lehzen, he set to work and replaced the bureaucratic anarchy of the three competing household departments by appointing a single master of the household in each royal residence. Fires were lit without confusion, windows were washed, guests were well attended to—and costs went down. More than this, he took control of the royal estates, and they soon began to pay handsomely. In short order he made the monarchy profitable, removing it forever from the chronic indebtedness that had plagued the Queen's royal uncles.
As the family grew, they spent far less time in London, finding seclusion at first at Windsor and Claremont. (The other royal residence, Brighton, set amid the bustle of the city and away from the ocean, they both disliked; they shut the place up and sold it in 1845, using the money to enlarge Buckingham Palace.) By 1843, they wanted even more seclusion—a residence bought with their own funds, and thus free of government administration. By October they had negotiated the purchase of a thousand-acre estate, Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight. And a little over a year before this birthday—at the end of 1847—they solidified their mutual love for the Highlands by leasing "a pretty little Castle in the old Scotch style": Balmoral. No English monarch before Victoria had ever resided so distantly from the capital before this: such a thing would not have been possible before the 1840s and two great technological developments of the decade. Railways were booming and interconnecting the nation, reducing in particular travel time from London to Osborne House (with the help of a steam-powered yacht) to three hours, and to Aberdeen to less than nine. And the telegraph, which had entered into nationwide operation by the end of the decade, gave the Queen the ability to conduct government business from virtually anywhere in the Kingdom.
Seclusion with Albert and her children, of course, meant that her regular airings from Buckingham Palace decreased dramatically. Indeed, even when she was in residence in London, she and Albert were more likely to walk in the privacy of the palace gardens than ride out together. Would-be Oxfords could no longer assume that Victoria would ride regularly even when she was in residence. The Queen's ever-increasing urge to remove herself and her family from direct public view did nothing to diminish her popularity. She was paradoxically much more in the eyes of her subjects than any of her predecessors, because of the rise of a cheap illustrated press, beginning with the _Illustrated London News_ in 1842. Now the royal couple, the royal children, the royal residences, and every royal event were a part of the shared experience of her subjects of all classes. These illustrations were inexpensive enough to adorn the walls of the poorest. Victoria no longer had to travel among her people to be seen by them. Indeed, it was in the public revelations of her private life that she saw as the key to her ever-growing popularity. "The papers... are most kind and gratifying," she wrote to Uncle Leopold in 1844; "they say no Sovereign was more loved than I am (I am bold enough to say) and that, from our happy domestic home—which gives such a good example." A new and enduring idea of monarchy had emerged: the royal family as the ideal family.
She owed it all to Albert: Albert had opened her eyes to the key to happiness, and then had given it to her. And yet she could not have been blind to the disjunction between her private happiness and the public turbulence of the 1840s.
Life had indeed improved for most after that dark year 1842. Industry grew by leaps and bounds. The population, employment, exports, and gross national product all shot up. The railways were the most visible manifestation of this reality-shaking growth, tearing up the old cities, revolutionizing trade and mobility, soaking up surplus labor, and making and breaking fortunes. In 1847, to be sure, the speculative bubble burst and a subsequent run on the banks led to a financial crisis. Recovery, however, was swift, and Britain was poised for the great boom of the 1850s.
And yet. Amidst all the growth existed pockets of dire poverty and hunger; the Hungry Forties was a decade that well deserved its name. In spite of the fact that, economically, 1842 was a turning point, and the economy grew dramatically after that, there existed all this time pockets of terrible suffering—suffering that was brought to the attention of an often-sympathetic but often-stymied public, leading to finger-pointing, handwringing, the shedding of a few sentimental tears, and usually little in the way of remedy. In 1843, Elizabeth Barrett Browning caused a sensation with her "Cry of the Children," laying bare the soul-crushed existences of boys and girls denied their youth by the harrowing demands of factory labor. Four months later, in a Christmas issue of _Punch_ , Thomas Hood caused an even greater sensation with "The Song of the Shirt," a poem about London's starving piecework seamstresses, living in low-wage slavery so that their employers, London's slop-sellers or cheap clothing dealers, could undercut the competition:
Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!
Oh, men, with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch—stitch—stitch,
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A Shroud as well as a Shirt.
And later in 1849, Henry Mayhew would begin publishing his evocative exploration of the hidden world of London's working poor in the _Morning Chronicle_. The poorer of the "two nations" to which Benjamin Disraeli referred in his 1845 work _Sybil, or the Two Nations_ , had never been more a part of the awareness of the wealthy—but never, at the same time, was poverty more accepted as an unfortunate and unalterable fact of life. Political economy might have been the dismal science, but it was indeed a science in the minds of the best thinkers of the 1840s, its speculations to them dogma. _Laissez-faire_ ruled. Even radical reformers opposed attempts by the government to assist the poor: that, according to the science, would only make things worse.
The worst hunger of all, that decade, struck Ireland with a vengeance—and completely by surprise—in 1845. No one knew exactly where the fungal disease _Phytophthora infestans_ , or potato blight, came from; the disease had spread across northern Europe, and, in mid-September, reached Ireland: in a month, a third of that country's overwhelmingly predominant crop transmogrified into a stinking, inedible goo. Prime Minister Robert Peel quickly understood the enormity of the crisis and tried to meet it, ordering £100,000 worth of Indian corn bought with government funds and sent from the United States. Moreover, he came to a momentous decision about the Corn Laws, which protected British farmers by regulating foreign grain imports—and which, many argued, kept the price of food artificially high. Support for the Corn Laws had been fundamental Tory doctrine. But Peel decided that the Corn Laws must be repealed.
It was a decision that destroyed Peel politically, as the majority of his own party turned on him ferociously. Peel could only hope to pass repeal of the Corn Laws by resigning and letting Lord John Russell and the Whigs handle the problem, or by introducing the bill himself and splitting his own party irreparably. When a majority of his own cabinet would not support repeal, then, he resigned. The Queen called upon Russell to form a cabinet. He was unable to do so, and Victoria, with a sense of relief—for Peel had in his own way grown as close to Victoria as Melbourne had—then recalled Peel, who promptly formed a cabinet committed to repeal. From that moment, more than half his party turned on him, vowing to bring him down at any cost. Lord Derby in the House of Lords led this Protectionist faction, and Benjamin Disraeli and George Bentinck in the House of Commons took upon themselves the roles of Peel's chief tormentors, ferociously and regularly attacking Peel's character as well as his policy. Disraeli "hacked and mangled Peel with the most unsparing severity, and positively tortured his victim," Charles Greville wrote of a speech that nearly brought Peel to tears. Ultimately, Peel won—and lost: on 25 June 1846, the same night that the Corn Law repeal passed in the House of Lords, the Protectionists in Commons voted against their principles to defeat a coercion bill for turbulent Ireland, in order to bring down Peel's government. Four days later, Peel resigned. Though John Russell and his Whigs were in the minority—and, after a general election, remained in the minority—the cataclysmic split of the Tories, and the support Peel's faction, the "Peelites," gave the Whigs, kept Russell's government securely in power. And Russell's government still ruled three years later when his ministers threw dinners for the Queen's thirtieth birthday. Lord Wellington was bitter about the cause of Peel's fall, grumbling "rotten potatoes have done it all; they put Peel in his damned fright."
Peel's downfall was a personal tragedy, and a greater one for starving Ireland. For while the chief architect of relief for Ireland, Charles Trevelyan, permanent undersecretary of the Treasury, worked under Peel as well as Russell, with the Whigs he found kindred spirits and full support for a grim _laissez-faire_ response to Irish hunger. Under the Whigs, Trevelyan insisted that Irish pay for their own relief. He continued importing food, but demanded that local relief committees buy the food at market price. He instituted a program of public works—but insisted that they be paid for locally, with the help of government loans. When it became clear that the blight had utterly destroyed the potato crop of 1846, he allowed public works to continue, but government loans ceased completely. During the unusually bitterly cold winter months of early 1847, as thousands starved and fever ravaged the population, the government decided upon a radical change of policy: they would halt public works altogether, and feed the starving with soup kitchens, paid for largely from private charity. Victoria contributed £2,000 to one of these charities.* In a few months, the soup kitchens closed and charity dried up. The British were by then frankly tired of this interminable famine, and most were certain that the indolent Irish were responsible for their own plight. "The great evil with which we have to contend," declared Trevelyan at the end of 1846, is "not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people." Victoria and Albert, originally deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Irish, concurred with this assessment, Albert writing at around the same time, in a memorandum, "The state of Ireland is most alarming and seems quite hopeless as every attempt on the part of the Government to relieve it, is turned by the Irish themselves to bad account." In June 1847, the British government essentially washed its hands of the problem by reforming the Irish poor law to fix the costs of relieving the poor entirely upon the poor law unions—the workhouses—of Ireland.
And the famine went on. The crop of 1847–8 was healthy but scarce: amid general starvation and destitution, few healthy seed potatoes were to be found, and fewer planted. The crop of 1848–9 was another total failure, and the suffering during the first few months of 1849 was among the worst of all. In the end, one million died: one out of eight of the Irish population. An equal number emigrated: many to the slums of English cities, but most to the United States. Most brought with them undying hatred for the British and a desire for revenge that would in years to come lead to bitter consequences for Britain—would indeed come to threaten Victoria personally.
Indeed, Irish rage had already burst out a year before, in July 1848, in spite of debilitating fever and hunger.
The spark was the February Revolution in Paris, which in two days toppled Louis-Philippe from the throne. (He and his family sought refuge with the Queen; she put him up at Claremont.) The revolutionary fever spread like wildfire; within weeks Prussia had granted a new, liberal constitution, the King of Bavaria abdicated in favor of his son, and in Austria the chancellor Metternich was forced to flee—to England, of course—and the Emperor forced to give concessions. Austria's Italian domains rose up, as did the rest of the country. Victoria's royal palaces became aristocratic refugee camps.
The revolutionary spark took fire in England, where the Chartists, in decline since the hot summer of 1842, burst back to life under the leadership of the movement's fiery and charismatic agitator-in-chief, Feargus O'Connor. Rioting erupted in Glasgow and London in March. That month, the Chartists announced that they planned to march from Kennington Common, south of the river, to present the People's Charter to Parliament for the third time—and planned to accompany the petition with a threatening procession of 200,000 people. The government betrayed the depth of its alarm with the enormity of its response. The troops in the capital were doubled and stationed out of sight at strategic points across the city, concentrating on the bridges over the Thames, upon which artillery was trained. Eighty-five thousand men were sworn in as special constables—a government masterstroke, ensuring that the middle class, unlike the French middle class, would remain squarely with the state. (One of these constables was Louis Napoleon, who had not yet taken advantage of the French revolution to return to his country, get elected president, and then make himself emperor.) On the advice of Russell and the Home Secretary, Victoria and Albert and their family (including 22-day-old Princess Louise) slipped through the pouring rain onto a train at closely guarded Waterloo Station, and decamped to Osborne.
The revolutionary tenth of April turned out to be a complete bust. Though estimates of the crowd differ widely, nowhere near the 400,000 which Feargus O'Connor expected to come actually showed up. O'Connor, alarmed by the military preparations, lost his own fire on this day. Upon his arrival at Kennington Common, he was called into a pub by Commissioner Mayne and told that he could hold his meeting, but that a monster procession to Parliament was out of the question. O'Connor meekly agreed, mounted the rostrum to ask the crowd to disperse, and took the petition to Parliament himself in a cab. The petition itself only earned ridicule as it was found (after a suspiciously quick count) to have less than a third of the six million signatures claimed, and many of those signatures were found to be fraudulent, including the Queen's as "Victoria Rex." Though the movement percolated on through the summer, the threat had passed. "We had our revolution yesterday, and it went up in smoke," Albert wrote to Stockmar.
He added, however, "in Ireland things look still more serious." There, revolution fermented as spring turned to summer. Daniel O'Connell had died in 1847, and his non-violent movement to repeal the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland had been eclipsed by that of Young Ireland, a group who differed from the O'Connellites in their willingness to use physical force to repeal the union. The February revolution in France electrified Young Ireland as it had the Chartists. "The shock awakened mankind," proclaimed the movement's leader, William Smith O'Brien. "Those who believed themselves to be weak now felt themselves to be strong."
Young Ireland began to promote rebellion openly, and formed the Irish Confederation—clubs across the island with the avowed aim of preparing for insurrection. Lord Clarendon, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was deeply alarmed by all this activity, sending Cassandra cries to the government, pleading for a suspension of _habeas corpus_ in Ireland. When Parliament did just that at the end of July, the leaders of Young Ireland were faced with a stark decision: passivity and arrest, or outright rebellion. Smith O'Brien feared the worst, but felt bound by honor to raise an insurrection. Dublin was a British armed camp; the south was more auspicious for rebellion. Smith O'Brien thus tramped through the southern towns and countryside, finding large crowds of poorly armed but ardent adherents at every turn—and demonstrating at every turn his utter inability to lead a revolution, tenaciously holding to his belief in the sanctity of private property before would-be rebels who had none. When an excited crowd of six thousand began to build barricades in the village of Mullinahone, Smith O'Brien forbade them to fell trees without the permission of the owners of the nearby estates. To another crowd, hungry and ready to despoil in order to eat, Smith O'Brien ordered them instead to return home, provide four days' provisions for themselves, and return the next day. "This announcement gave a death-blow to the entire movement," stated a witness. The crowds melted away as fast as they formed.
Having thus gathered up and dispersed several armies of the poor, on 29 July in the town of Ballingarry, Smith O'Brien and a ragtag group of about 120 men and women confronted fifty or so policemen who, fleeing the crowd, commandeered a widow's house on the edge of town. The widow was out, but her five or six children were there, and the police took them hostage. Smith O'Brien attempted to secure the children's release and was nearly shot for his pains when gunfire erupted on both sides and he was caught in the crossfire. The police were better armed, and after the rebels expended all of their bullets and stones on the house, hurting no police but losing two of their own, the crowd scattered before police reinforcements arrived. Smith O'Brien fled alone. The Irish revolution of 1848 ended with an Irish whimper and a British snicker, the _Times_ dismissively immortalizing the event as the "cabbage-patch revolt." Smith O'Brien was arrested within a week, tried, and sentenced with three others to death for Treason. On this day of the Queen's thirtieth birthday, Smith O'Brien was in Richmond Bridewell in Dublin, the sounds of the festivities outside likely echoing through the prison.
The worst of the European revolutionary fervor was over by May 1849. The hemorrhaging of monarchies had stopped with the June 1848 insurrection in France, during which hundreds of radicals died on the barricades and the conservatives took control. After this, the tide in Europe shifted from revolution to reaction. Victoria's aristocratic refugees (save Louis-Philippe and his family) went home. Die-hard Chartists still met and tried to convince each other that they had significance, but their popular support was gone: they certainly would never send the royal family running again. The economy was surging. Ireland was tamed—tamed enough for Victoria and Albert to consider visiting the country, as Ireland's Lord Lieutenant, Lord Clarendon, had been begging them to do for some time.
There was every reason for Victoria to celebrate—every reason to go among her public. She'd taken few rides in London this year. But for the last four days, and with the fine May weather, she'd toured the parks in an open carriage with various combinations of her children, Albert and his equerry riding on horseback beside them. She would ride again today, bringing Alice, Affie, and Lenchen with her.
Outside the Palace gates and up Constitution Hill the crowd grew larger, as the presence of the royal landau at the Palace steps signaled silently and almost supernaturally the Queen's intent to ride. At half past five, nursemaids and footmen helped the children, and then Victoria and her maid of honor Flora MacDonald, into the carriage. Victoria sat at the left rear. Her sergeant-footman, Robert Renwick, clambered up into the rumble seat behind her, and her equerry, Major General William Wemyss, took up his position on horseback, very close to the left side of the carriage. Albert swung onto his horse, and he and his equerry led the carriage out of the gate and into the shouting and cheering public.
* Not £5, as a particularly nasty and long-lived myth would have it (Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 169).
_fifteen_
THE MAN FROM ADARE
As Victoria and Albert held court that afternoon at the Queen's birthday drawing room, William Hamilton sat in a yard at Eccleston Place, Pimlico—a literal stone's throw from the Palace Gardens—manufacturing his own present for the Queen's birthday. He was an Irishman, having left Ireland for London at around the beginning of the famine, one of the first of what became a wave of Irish immigrants who were seen as taking English jobs and ruining good English wages. He was a working man, as his corduroy trousers, fustian jacket, and greasy cap made clear at a glance. He was a working man, that is, when he was employed, but he had seen precious little employment over the last few months and was virtually penniless. His burliness falsely hinted at comfort; only charity had kept him from starvation. He had once been to France, and possibly dabbled with radical politics there. He was deeply discontented, his face a fixed sullen mask.
In short, he epitomized the British fears of the 1840s.
He had been whittling for some time, shaping a chunk of wood into something like the stock of a pistol. He had scavenged the tin spout of a teapot, which—if one ignored the spout's absurd curvature—might look a bit like a pistol barrel. And he had tied the two together with string, creating a primitive dummy of a gun. With some performance on his part, and if the crowd already assembling along Constitution Hill proved to be the right sort of crowd, he might succeed in alarming the Queen and getting himself arrested.
Imprisonment was all he sought: a bed and regular meals at Millbank or Pentonville or Coldbath Fields. That would be better than this dubious life as a free man, owing his life to the kindness of two women. He had actually encouraged his long-suffering landlord, Daniel O'Keefe, upon whom he sponged, to arrest him for debt so that he could "get a billet for the winter season in prison." But O'Keefe refused to do that, millstone around his neck that Hamilton was. Instead, with a touching if misplaced hope, he preferred to farm Hamilton out to work for others, periodically requesting that he repay his debt. It was a strategy that paid poorly, for Hamilton's work was sporadic and consistently awful; O'Keefe had not recouped the bulk of what he was owed.
Daniel O'Keefe would certainly have expelled Hamilton years before—but O'Keefe's wife, Bridget, had influence over him, and she was captivated by Hamilton, who had an odd and compelling charm over women and children. Bridget saw to it that Hamilton had not only shelter but regular nourishment. In this she was assisted by a lodger at Eccleston Place, a woman whose name is lost to history: this woman was in the "milk line," according to Bridget, delivering milk to London's basement kitchens and receiving at times in return "a deal of broken victuals"—leftovers of leftovers that the servants passed on. These she shared with Hamilton. "Between the two of us," said Bridget O'Keefe, "we managed to keep him."
William Hamilton was a stranger in a strange land from the day he was born, and spent his life drifting from one failure to another. He likely never knew his birthday, and never did know his parents, taking from them only his name and his religion when around 1826 they died or simply abandoned the infant to the Protestant Orphan Society at Cork. He was a real-life Irish Oliver Twist, learning rudimentary skills at the orphanage school until he reached the age at which he could be contracted as an apprentice to whoever would pay for him. In Hamilton's case, this was a Protestant farmer outside of Adare, near Limerick, who put the boy to work in the fields and set him to building walls and digging ditches. Hamilton would always claim Adare to be his home, though few from Adare would admit to knowing him.
When Hamilton was about thirteen, he was again abandoned: his employer sold the farm and emigrated to Canada with his family. Hamilton found a place in Adare, as assistant to a shopkeeper named John Barkman. Hamilton was working there in 1840 when Edward Oxford shot at the Queen. Barkman's wife recalled that the boy approved of the attempt: "it was not right to serve under petticoat government," Hamilton told her. Afterwards, she would often tease him that he still lived under Victoria's—and her own—petticoat government. Keeping shop did not last: Hamilton abandoned the Barkmans, or they abandoned him, and perhaps the Great Famine forced the issue: in 1845 Hamilton left Ireland forever, coming to London hoping, on the strength of the walls he had built as a farmboy, to find a future as a bricklayer's assistant. A mutual acquaintance had given him an introduction to Daniel O'Keefe, himself a bricklayer and originally from Adare, and Hamilton settled in at Eccleston Place.
From that moment on, Daniel O'Keefe was Hamilton's reluctant protector, as Hamilton repeatedly tried and failed to make a living as a bricklayer's assistant. In 1846, he did attempt to set out on his own, joining the armies of workingmen who had spread out across the country and across Europe to build the burgeoning railways. He became, in other words, a navvy, one of that hard-drinking, reckless, and depraved clan who spread terror across the countryside while they laid tracks: they were the ubiquitous bogeymen of the railway boom. Hamilton's limited expertise was with the masonry of bridges, tunnels, and cuttings. He somehow found employment in France, arriving there in May 1846—or, as Hamilton later put it to a policeman, the time "of Prince Louis Napoleon's escape from Ham." His curious method of dating, as well as the fact that Hamilton was actually imprisoned in Paris, led some to suspect that he had political proclivities. But his arrest was not political, but for being out too late one night. And Louis Napoleon's escape to England was hardly the signal for any insurrectionary activity in France. Hamilton came to France to make money, not trouble.
But he did not make money, and by November he was back with the O'Keefes. His natural indolence and second-rate skills meant that in spite of Daniel O'Keefe's best efforts, Hamilton was only a drain on his own earnings. By the time of the Queen's birthday, Hamilton hadn't "worked seven weeks since Christmas," according to Bridget. The shoddy facsimile of a pistol he carved on this day might have been the hardest work he'd done for some time.
Bridget O'Keefe came upon him that afternoon in the back garden. She was mystified by the pitiful-looking object, and mystified when Hamilton told her he was making an actual pistol, and planned "to fire a shot or two" with it. She pointed out the folly of his plan, and he seemed suddenly to have a thought. "Why, Dan has got an old pistol," he said to her. "Lend me it."
And without hesitation she did, returning to her bedroom to ferret it out, and handing it to him through the window. It was a pocket-sized, with a three-inch brass screw-barrel—extremely old, rusty from disuse. Hamilton complained about that rust to Bridget. "It is of no account," she told him: the pistol was only a toy to her, and, she thought, to him.
Soon afterwards, Hamilton sought out the O'Keefe's ten-year-old son Edward, a child as charmed by the man as his mother Bridget was. Giving boy one of his few halfpennies, Hamilton asked him to fetch as much powder as that would buy. Edward rushed off to a shop nearby on Elizabeth Street to procure a quantity of what was "not the best sort of powder." In the meantime, Hamilton worried that the pistol might not work at all. When the boy returned, Hamilton asked him if he happened to have any squibs (a sort of hissing explosive) or crackers. Those, Edward told him, could be obtained from a nearby shop. He'd like a ha'p'orth of them as well, Hamilton told the boy: he wanted to have some fun firing them through the trees. Edward never bought these for him; no fireworks were later found among Hamilton's few possessions. He soon found he didn't need them: his landlord's rusty flintlock served his purpose well. With the head broken from a clay pipe Hamilton poured gunpowder into the barrel and onto the pan. He shot once, twice, three times successfully, pretending to take aim at something: practicing his stance. Bridget O'Keefe could hear the loud blasts from inside the house.
Shortly after this, Hamilton left the house, the pistol secreted in the inside breast pocket of his jacket. Young Edward O'Keefe had asked him if he could come too, and play, but Hamilton told him no: "you must stop at home." Hamilton gave—or, rather, sold—the boy another toy to play with: his contraption of rudely carved wood, tea spout, and string. The boy had only the halfpenny that Hamilton had given him, but promised to pay a full penny when he had it. All in all, it had been a productive day for Hamilton: he had a working gun and a decent supply of gunpowder—and was a halfpenny ahead on the deal.
Hamilton disappeared into the city for a couple of hours. By six, he was standing near the bottom of Constitution Hill, not far from the Palace gates, joining a now-swelling crowd, all gazing uphill, waiting for the Queen's carriage to return. He stood slightly downhill from where Oxford had made his attempt, and stood behind the palings separating the park from the road. He paced nervously, his left hand jammed in his trousers pocket, his right at the ready—glancing with the crowd to the top of the hill but seeing nothing—nothing, that is, but the monstrous, bulky, and oddly sedentary statue of the Duke of Wellington, which then topped the triumphal arch through which the Queen's carriage would soon pass.*
At around twenty minutes past six, a cheer rose and rippled down the hill. Albert and his equerry were returning from their ride—alone. The Prince had accompanied Victoria and the children through Hyde and into Regent's Park—but from there he decided to spur on his horse and return ahead of them. The two men quickly disappeared through the Palace gate. Hamilton, confused by seeing the Prince without the Queen, asked a woman beside him if Victoria had yet passed. "No," the woman told him, "she has not come yet; but if you wait a little you will see her."
The royal carriage was not far behind. Cheering recommenced up the road, and the Queen's outriders trotted into view. Then, the carriage. Hamilton strode up to the palings and spoke to both the woman and to a muscular man on the other side of the fence. "Is that the Queen?" Both assented and turned to watch the carriage rush past. "All right," Hamilton muttered. He immediately reached into his coat for the pistol, thrust it through the palings alongside the muscular man's face—and fired with a loud roar and a plume of smoke. The man, deafened, felt something whizz past his ear and realized his face was scorched. He believed Hamilton's gun had been loaded with a bullet.
Sergeant-footman Robert Renwick, sitting in a rumble seat behind the Queen, saw Hamilton point the gun—and immediately called out to the postilions to stop the carriage—giving Hamilton a clearer target. Amazingly, they were obeying just as Hamilton fired. Victoria stood up and gazed in the direction of the shot. "Renwick," she said, "what is that?"
"Your Majesty has been shot at."
Victoria sat down and ordered the carriage to move on. Her equerry Wemyss excitedly did the same thing, and then reeled his horse about and trotted into the Park to supervise Hamilton's arrest. Victoria, seemingly unperturbed, pacified Alfred, Alice, and Helena—who, from their position, had had an excellent view of the shooting. Within seconds, the carriage disappeared through the palace gates. Albert, who had heard the pistol-crack, agitatedly met his family at the steps of the Palace: "Thank God," he said to Victoria, "you are safe."
As it happens, George Moulder, Green Park's head park-keeper, had been standing just twelve yards from Hamilton as the Queen passed; he had seen everything. He instantly fell upon Hamilton, who was frantically trying to return the pistol to his coat pocket. Moulder grabbed him by the right arm and collar, but feared that he had another pistol and cried out for the man on the other side of the fence—the startled, singed, muscular man, whose name was Daniel Lamb—to seize him as well. Lamb seemed to Moulder to do nothing. Lamb's abnormal strength (he had the quaint occupation—considered unusual even then—of a "running huntsman," actually running barefoot along with the hounds during fox hunts) was useless to him in this situation, as Hamilton stood too far away on the other side of the palings. All Lamb could do was clutch at the fringe of Hamilton's coat. A police constable named Topley, and a private in the Life Guards, then vaulted the palings and secured an agitated but unresisting Hamilton.
While everyone in the crowd had heard the booming gunshot, very few had actually seen that the Queen was unharmed, and the great majority jumped to the conclusion that she had been hit—had been grievously wounded—had even been killed. "Secure him," several shouted, "he has murdered the Queen!" A hostile mass quickly converged upon a now-frightened Hamilton, crying "tear him to pieces!" and chanting "kill him at once; kill him at once!" A middle-aged man raised his fist to him, intent upon "inflicting summary punishment"; the Queen's equerry William Wemyss restrained him. The several police on patrol around the palace who had run up to seize Hamilton suddenly found themselves his protectors, fending off a growing lynch mob. One constable ran to fetch a hackney cab while the others herded Hamilton through a wicket and onto the road. A policeman who had wrestled the pistol away from Hamilton gave it to the Queen's equerry. Wemyss by this time was already certain that there had been no bullet in the pistol—if there had been, he was sure he would have been hit. One sniff at the barrel confirmed that this was the gun that had fired. But he was certain that the sound of a loaded pistol would have been different.
The hackney cab wheeled up and Hamilton was quickly bundled inside; William Walker, inspector on duty at the Palace, and other police climbed in. With Wemyss riding by their side, they brought Hamilton to A Division station house. On the way there, Hamilton betrayed none of the exhilaration that Oxford and Francis had had upon their capture; he endured rather than enjoyed public attention.
When they arrived at the station house, the commissioners were summoned, and Hamilton was soon placed in the police dock to be questioned, along with several witnesses to the shooting, by Mayne as well as Superintendent May. The attention only seemed to depress him, as he leaned on the dock with his head in his hands. In response to questioning, he was momentarily uncommunicative, at first refusing to state his name and address. He soon gave in and spoke, with a thick brogue: his name was William Hamilton*, aged twenty-four—an Irishman from Adare, County Limerick; he was an out-of-work bricklayer's laborer. He had acted as he did because he was poor. No one else was involved: he had no friends or relatives in this country.
Park-keeper Moulder and others then identified him as the man who had shot at the Queen. Whether the gun was loaded or not—whether Hamilton was to be tried for High Treason or for the High Misdemeanour of annoying the public and the Queen—would be left for the Home Office to decide. Hamilton was remanded to be examined in Whitehall the next day, with all the witnesses bound over to appear there. He was then brought to the cell previously inhabited by Oxford, Francis, and Bean.
Inspector Charles Otway (the man who had entrapped Gould, and had been a sergeant in A Division when Oxford was arrested) hurried to Eccleston Place and discovered the depth of Hamilton's penury. There was nothing in his room besides two sheets lent him by his landlady and a few scribbled-upon sheets of paper—with nothing in them about shooting the Queen. Finding nothing material to the case, Otway returned to the station and interviewed Hamilton directly. Hamilton told him about his long bout of unemployment; about his journey to France at the time of Louis Napoleon's escape; about his work on the French railways—and about his motive. His pistol contained only powder and he had not had the slightest intention of hurting the Queen. "He said he did it for the purpose of getting into prison, as he was tired of being out of work."
By this time, the ministers' celebratory dinners for the Queen were in full swing, and messengers were sent from the Palace to interrupt the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister with the news. Home Secretary George Grey sent to the Home Office, arranging for an examination there at two the next day, and sending word to the commissioners to be present. This examination would be more subdued than the previous ones: not a spectacular convening of the Cabinet, but largely limited to the Home Office and the police. That Grey did not schedule an examination that night demonstrates that from the start he was unwilling to accord Hamilton the notoriety accorded Hamilton's predecessors. (He did, however, send word to A Division that Hamilton be placed on suicide watch.) Grey then hurried to the Palace—as did Prime Minister John Russell.
The reaction to the attempt was predictable: the elite hastening in their carriages to the Palace to inquire after the Queen's health, the raucous celebration at the operas and the plays, the swelling crowds surrounding the palace—but this time, the public celebrations took on a greater intensity, growing out of the many celebrations already underway. At the clubs, and at ministerial dinners, the Queen's health was drunk with three times three; outside, on Pall Mall, along Regent Street, and on the Great Mall between St. James's and Buckingham Palace, crowds cried out "Long live the Queen" and spontaneously burst into the national anthem. Jubilation at the Queen's escape only intensified the illuminations later that night. "Altogether," the _Times_ reported, "the routine of a Royal birthday received a vast and visible stimulus from the impulse of public sympathy."
The next day, Victoria wrote to her Uncle Leopold that "the indignation, loyalty, and affection this act has called forth is very gratifying and touching"—just as it had been three times before. And yet, the Queen knew, something about Hamilton's attempt was completely different. Hamilton's attempt was, as everyone seemed to realize from the first—not really an attempt at all. His pistol was almost certainly unloaded with any sort of projectile. The police searched the area exhaustively for a bullet and turned up nothing. At the royal stables, the carriage was scrutinized for marks; none were found. The Queen's equerry Wemyss, who was positive that if there had been a bullet, he or his horse would have been hit, was unscathed. And a thorough search of Hamilton produced a small amount of gunpowder, the head of a pipe, and a few halfpence, but no bullet. Much the same had been the case with Oxford, Francis, and Bean. But with the first two there was no question that treason was afoot and the pistols were loaded. Even with Bean those were at first distinct possibilities. In Hamilton's case, on the other hand—after the initial attempt to lynch him by the angry crowd—the idea that he might have intended to injure or kill the queen was universally and repeatedly denied. His was the perfect case to be tried under Robert Peel's Security and Protection of Her Majesty's Person Act, and everyone hoped he'd find his punishment at the wrong end of a whip rather than a rope.
Victoria was certain from the start that Hamilton had had no intention of killing her, writing to Leopold "I hope that you will not have been alarmed by the account of the occurrence which took place on Saturday, and which I can assure you did _not_ alarm _me_ at all. _This_ time it is quite clear that it was a wanton and wicked wish merely to _frighten_ , which is very wrong, and will be tried and punished as a _misdemeanour._ " In the Sunday newspapers the day after the shooting, Hamilton's attempt was designated an "absurdity," "an exasperating piece of folly," not worthy of consideration as a capital crime: "The man who commits such an act in this country should be flogged at the cart's tail, for hanging would be treating him with too much consideration." On Monday, the _Daily News_ , though it acknowledged the wickedness of pointing a pistol at "a person every way so sacred, in domestic as in political life, as that of her Majesty," noted that at least there "will not be found superadded the heinousness of a really murderous motive" to the act. In the House of Commons that same day, Lord John Russell agreed, claiming that "it has been found that there is no reason to accuse the person who discharged the pistol of a treasonable attempt, and that it is a crime more remarkable for its baseness than its atrocity."
Given the extremely turbulent times through which Britain and Europe were passing, the haste at which virtually everyone disregarded Hamilton as a threat seems on the surface surprising. The fact that Hamilton was from Ireland, a country still starving and defeated in May 1849, would appear to provide him with an obvious political motive for striking out against the British government by harming the Queen. But the papers hurried to disabuse readers of this interpretation. "The accident, or the fact, of the man Hamilton's being an Irishman may be made the theme of animadversion, and conclusions may be drawn from it of the international hate or savage vindictiveness of the Celt," wrote the _Daily News_. But "the Irish elements which have contributed to his crime, will probably be found more those of poverty and vanity, than any thing more peculiarly malignant or Celtic."
The Irish newspapers were particularly adamant in asserting that Hamilton had no intention of killing the Queen. One attempted to claim that Hamilton might not be Irish at all. Others scrambled to prove that while he might be Irish, he could not be from _their_ corner of the island. The _Limerick Chronicle_ investigated and found that though Hamilton claimed to be from Adare, he had no relatives there. A further report allowed that he had worked on a farm near Adare and assisted at a shop in town, but that Cork, not Adare, was responsible for him: "Hamilton was a native of Cork, and no relative of any persons at or near Adare." The _Cork Constitution_ quickly responded with a letter from the secretaries of the Cork Orphan Asylum denying that anyone named William Hamilton had passed through there. (They were probably correct, as they were apparently officials of the larger _Catholic_ Orphan Asylum, not the smaller Protestant Asylum from which Hamilton came.) "The Corkonians are most anxious to disclaim having reared the fellow who fired at the Queen," wrote a journalist reporting the squabble. In tossing his origins around like a hot potato, the Irish appeared one and all eager to deny any connection between Hamilton and them—and eager to dissociate him from any Irish cause.
Then, there was a second possibility: that Hamilton might be the last gasp of revolutionary activity in England. This was also vehemently denied by both the press and the politicians. One editorialist, wilfully forgetting the recent past, declared absolutely that "fortunately there are no recent event [sic] which could afford political colour or excitement to a crime of this kind. Never was the country more tranquil or the parliamentary session more dull." At a grand dinner at Mansion House Monday evening, the Lord Mayor, toasting the Queen, deplored Hamilton's act, but denied it could have been political, because such a revolutionary political act was simply impossible in Britain. "At a time when the all the continental nations are struggling in political convulsions," he said, "this country enjoys a complete immunity from any of those dreadful conflicts to which the rest of Europe is subjected."
Hamilton's shooting threatened to resurrect some of the uglier incidents of the recent past. The British collectively refused to let that happen. His was the most quickly forgotten attempt. Before three days had passed, he was already a fading memory to Victoria and Albert as they traveled with the children to their haven at Osborne.
And yet, three-year-old Princess Helena saw it all and knew what must happen next, stating after she witnessed the attempt "Man shot, tried to shoot dear Mamma, must be punished." _How_ he would be punished was the question. The day after the shooting—Sunday the twenty-second—he was examined at the Home Office, brought there between Superintendent May and Inspector Otway. At first he appeared affronted to be there, but within seconds was reduced to trembling before Home Secretary Grey. The Attorney General, John Jervis, examined witnesses for three hours until Grey came to the conclusion that everyone had already reached: Hamilton's pistol was not loaded, and he had meant to annoy the Queen, not to kill her. All of the O'Keefes—Daniel, Bridget, and young Edward—testified, but Hamilton's mysterious young protectress in the milk line was nowhere to be seen. Edward O'Keefe could not let his meeting with Hamilton pass without paying his debt: while testifying he displayed the tea-spout bound to the chunk of wood, and, producing a penny, he turned to the prisoner. "Here, Mr. Hamilton, I can pay you the penny now, for I did not have one on Saturday." The record does not show whether Hamilton took it or not, although he was at that moment given the opportunity to speak—and said nothing.
Hamilton was charged under Peel's Security and Protection of Her Majesty's Person Act—the first person ever so charged. He was conveyed from Whitehall to Newgate in a cab, guarded by three policemen. And in Newgate he remained quietly. Nothing like the sort of celebrity coverage accorded to Oxford, Francis, and to a lesser extent Bean was accorded to Hamilton. Hamilton almost certainly preferred it that way—his perpetual sullenness, his inability to delight in his capture or swell up with self-importance during his few moments in the spotlight suggest he viewed his short burst of notoriety as a grim necessity, a prelude to the steady sustenance that prison or transportation would supply him. Sustenance at the Queen's pleasure at Bethlem, on the other hand, seems never to have occurred to him; the newspapers tended to note his complete sanity, and he never planned an insanity defense.
His trial was set for the next sessions at the Central Criminal Court in three weeks' time. The newspapers speculated as to his possible punishment, most aware that Peel's Act included the humiliation of whipping as a part of the punishment. Less known about the act, however, was that if Hamilton earned the strictest sentence, he could not be whipped at all: 5th and 6th Victoria, c. 31 mandated a sentence of seven years transportation _or_ up to three years' imprisonment with hard labor, with the additional penalty of public or private whippings. _The Illustrated London News_ deplored the discrepancy:
It is, perhaps, to be regretted that the framers of the bill did not provide that transportation _and_ flogging should be the punishment. We have certainly no desire to revive the barbarous punishments of past ages, but we think that a weekly, semi-weekly, or even daily infliction of the cat-o'-nine-tails for three months at the least, preparatory to transportation, would greatly tend to prevent such lunacy as that of the last offender from breaking out into action.... Insane as such offenders may be, they have sanity enough to understand the logic of the cat-o'-nine-tails....
Hamilton's judges would have to decide whether severity or humiliation would best serve prisoner and public.
As Hamilton awaited trial, Victoria and Albert formalized their plans for visiting Ireland, which they both had desired to do as early as summer 1843, when the steam-powered royal yacht _Victoria and Albert_ replaced the obsolete _Royal George_. But the Repeal movement was at its height that year. After that, there was famine and revolt. In 1849, however, all troubles had passed or were passing. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Clarendon was positive that the time was now ripe: "Since Her Majesty came to the throne, there has been no period more politically propitious for her coming here than the present one. Agitation is extinct, Repeal is forgotten—the seditious associations are closed,—the priests are frightened and the people are tranquil. Everything tends to secure for the Queen an enthusiastic reception...." He might have added that the Irish rebels of 1848 were about to become a memory, as well: William Smith O'Brien and his colleagues had been in Richmond Bridewell, Dublin, for nine months after their sentencing to death for treason, hoping to have their convictions overturned on a writ of error. In the week before Hamilton's attempt, the House of Lords had rejected that writ. At the beginning of June, the government commuted their sentences from death to transportation for life. The Irish state prisoners refused to accept the commutation, preferring imprisonment, full pardon, or even martyrdom to exile. Refusing the Queen's mercy was an unprecedented act, and the government had to rush through an Act of Parliament allowing the government to commute a sentence with or without the prisoner's agreement. On the ninth of July, three weeks before the Queen's visit, Smith O'Brien and his comrades shipped out on the _Swift_ for Van Diemen's Land. For the moment, significant organized resistance to British rule had ceased to exist.
The only obstacle the royal couple faced was financial: impoverished Ireland simply could not bear the cost of a state visit. Accordingly, Albert made clear to the Prime Minister that their visit would not be a state visit at all, but "one having more the character of a yachting excursion." It would, nevertheless, be a trip filled with high ceremony: in Dublin there would be a ball, a levee, a drawing room, and at every stop there would be addresses and processions. The Queen planned to put Conroy's methods to use once again, winning over her Irish subjects simply by placing herself among them.
They planned to leave for Ireland at the beginning of August, immediately after Parliament prorogued, or ended its session. Albert, in the meantime, occupied himself deeply in furthering a project he had been contemplating for some time. On the day of Hamilton's trial, Albert was busy presenting prizes at the well-attended exhibition of manufactures held by the Society of Arts—an organization of which Albert had been president since Victoria's uncle, the Earl of Sussex, the previous president, died in 1843. A member of the Society, Henry Cole, a quintessentially Victorian dynamo of a man, had been promoting a scheme of a national exhibition of arts and manufactures, with prizes: an exhibition similar to national exhibitions held in Belgium and France—similar indeed to an exhibition in Paris from which Cole had just returned. In his remarks on this day, Albert alluded to the Paris exhibition and spoke favorably of a British exhibition that Cole was proposing to take place in 1851. Already, Albert had high ambitions for that exhibition.
Two weeks later, he met privately with Henry Cole to discuss a permanent home for the exhibitions, proposed to take place in 1851 and every five years thereafter. Cole had suggested, a year before, Leicester Square as a site: central, accessible, and, if seedy, affordable. But before they chose a site, they needed to agree on the scope of the coming exhibition. "I asked the Prince," Cole later wrote, "if he had considered if the Exhibition should be a National or an International Exhibition."
Albert thought for a moment. "It must embrace foreign productions," he said, adding emphatically "international, certainly."
In that case, any building in Leicester Square would not be large enough, and the two agreed on another site: Hyde Park.
With his decision, Albert transformed the Exhibition into something unique and truly great: "The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations in 1851," as Albert later devised the title, a celebration of free trade and the material benefits of industrialization: the first world's fair. With the opening of the Great Exhibition, Britain would symbolically take its place as the greatest nation of all, host to the world and the main exhibitor of ten thousand modern marvels, all of them housed in a building that itself was the greatest modern marvel of all. After his meeting with Cole, Albert never looked back: he embraced this project as if it were his life's great work, which is exactly what it turned out to be. In Victoria's eyes, this project would complete her husband's apotheosis.
At ten in the morning of 14 June, William Hamilton, still dressed as a bricklayer in the only clothes he owned—white fustian jacket and trousers—was brought before the bar of the Old Bailey before Chief Justice Wilde and Justices Patteson and Rolfe, to suffer his final moments in the public eye. He was without legal representation. Unlike every other one of Victoria's assailants, William Hamilton had no family to support him, no one to obtain counsel for him. And the fact that he was Irish did not help him at all. His nation had disowned him; no one sought clemency for him. Nor would he have wanted the Queen's mercy, which would only give him the impoverished freedom from which he only wished to escape. He needed no encouragement whatsoever to plead guilty. The government, nevertheless, was taking no chances: Attorney General Jervis was accompanied by four other attorneys, more than ready to establish his guilt under Peel's law.
The clerk read the charges, and Hamilton quietly pled guilty. He was then asked whether he could see any reason whether the court should not pass judgment upon him. He did not reply.
Chief Justice Wilde then passed sentence, first reviewing Hamilton's life—noting with disgust the fact that he was fully supported by two women—and then the circumstances of the crime, noting especially that all evidence pointed to the fact that Hamilton's pistol was unloaded: Hamilton had obviously not intended to kill the Queen. His true crime, nevertheless, was heinous: not simply alarming the Queen, or her subjects. Worse than this, in shooting at the Queen in public, Hamilton threatened to damage the relationship between the Queen and her subjects. "The Queen might be perfectly assured of her personal safety," Wilde told Hamilton, "from the feelings entertained by her subjects toward her; but it was necessary that her laudable desire to show herself to her people should not be at all interfered with by such acts of insult as that to which you have pleaded guilty, and that the public should also not be deprived of the wholesome and pleasing enjoyment of seeing their Sovereign in public by such proceedings as these."
He then sentenced Hamilton to seven years' transportation. As if to compensate for the fact that this heavier sentence could not include a public whipping or two, Wilde noted that this sentence involved "a very considerable amount of degradation and suffering." Hamilton was removed from the bar, to embark upon on what could accurately be termed a penal odyssey. He had avowedly shot at the Queen to experience prison life, and he got his wish in spades. Two years before, Colonial Secretary Henry Gray had completely reconsidered and revised the government's policy on transportation. Australia was no longer to be the dumping-ground for felons as much as it was a final destination for the reformed and rehabilitated—the place where criminals, after long, grueling years of confinement and hard labor in England, were shipped, no longer convicts but "exiles," given tickets of leave and dispersed as laborers across the countryside and in the outback. The voyage to Australia, then, became to Hamilton more a reward than a punishment; the punishment he would suffer under the grim discipline and with the backbreaking labour in English prisons, and the hulks of Woolwich. After that—after five years of that—Hamilton was finally shipped aboard the convict ship _Ramillies_ to Fremantle, Western Australia, the shores of which he surely greeted as the promised land.
In the afternoon after Hamilton was tried, his landlord, Daniel O'Keefe, appeared before the judges at the Old Bailey, requesting to be heard. William Hamilton, he claimed, had taken his pistol from him; he wanted it back. It had become a precious commodity: he had been offered £40 for it. The courtroom exploded in laughter. _Punch_ in its next issue ridiculed this profitable trade in criminal artifacts, "this idolatry of the martyrs of crime and saints of the Newgate Calendar": "A bit of Courvoisier's drop would probably fetch more than St. Katherine's own wheel, or one of the veritable arrows that shot St. Sebastian." The court did order O'Keefe's pistol returned to him, and thus O'Keefe had the last laugh; the £40 repaid William Hamilton's debt to him several times over.
On the night of the second of August 1849, the royal yacht _Victoria and Albert_ , accompanied by a flotilla of vessels, steamed into Cove Harbor, the first stop on the Queen's tour of Ireland. Victoria, Albert, and their four eldest children had traveled straight from Osborne the day before without stopping, surprising the town's inhabitants, who expected them to arrive the next day. Nonetheless, they set to welcoming the Queen with zeal, setting off fireworks, firing guns in a _feu de joie_ , lighting bonfires: the servants of one landowner lost control of their bonfire, and the resulting wildfire consumed fourteen acres and set the harbor alight with a bright orange glow. Victoria was delighted with the effect. The warm glow at Cove was emblematic of her entire visit, which was an unqualified, stunning success. For nine days the Irish fell in love with the Queen—and Victoria returned their feelings in equal measure. As Victoria progressed through the country, the cheering, shrieking crowds growing ever larger, ever more vociferous, ever more captivated by the little woman with the tall husband and the beautiful children. Victoria's charming of the people of Ireland was the greatest test of her genius as a political performer—and was her greatest _coup_.
She landed in Cove the next day, and at the request of local officials, she ordered it renamed Queenstown, as her Uncle George IV had renamed Dublin's harbor town Kingstown twenty-eight years before.* That afternoon, after steaming up the River Lee, the royal family made their first procession, a two-hour ride through Cork. Victoria was delighted with the enthusiasm of her reception: "the crowd is a noisy, excitable, but very good humored one, running and pushing about, and laughing, talking, and shrieking." She was particularly struck by the beauty of Irish women: "such beautiful dark eyes and hair, such fine teeth, nearly every 3rd woman was pretty, some remarkably so."
The raucous but good-willed crowds of Cork were only a prelude to the enormous and seemingly ubiquitous crowds of Dublin, attending to every movement of the royal family, masses that formed instantly even on Victoria's and Albert's improvised trips, when, according to the _Illustrated London News_ , "balconies were filled as if by magic—groups were formed instantaneously—and the waving of hats and handkerchiefs, and the loud huzzas that arose ever and anon, testified that at every new point of her progress there was a new burst of feeling." From the moment the Queen, and then the Prince, and then the royal children showed themselves to the roars of the "thousands and thousands" crowding ships and the shores of Kingstown Harbor, the crowds never abated and the excitement of the public grew to a crescendo. The trip was orchestrated carefully so that the Queen could alternatively show herself to the elite, in a levée, a drawing room, a concert, a visit to the Duke of Leinster—and to the masses, in processions, in a review of the troops attended by a hundred thousand people, in her public comings and goings.
Her talent lay not in awing the Irish with regal splendor, but in eliminating the distance between herself and the people, in finding ways to establish a human connection with each and every one who came to see her. Her children were invaluable to her in this respect, never failing to charm the people of Dublin. At Kingstown, an old woman cried out "Ah, Queen dear, make one of them Prince Patrick and Ireland will die for you." Within a year, as it happens, Victoria would comply, naming her next son Arthur William Patrick Albert. She traveled among the crowds without fear, not braving them at all, but enjoying them, with an absolute sense of safety in their honesty and good will. She wrote in her journal, with emphasis, "I never saw more _real_ enthusiasm." When she and Albert went out on private rides, they went without an escort, a gesture that did much to win Dubliners over: of one such ride, a reporter for the _Illustrated London News_ wrote, "no escort of dragoons followed—no troops of any kind were seen—she trusted herself, almost alone, among the people; and this proof of entire confidence was well bestowed, and warmly repaid." When, for example, on one of her tours of the city, a man roared out as loudly as he could "Arrah! Victoria, will you stand up, and let us have a look at you?" She immediately rose and displayed herself. "God bless you for that, my darling," the man cried out. Even Albert, generally more aloof in public, warmed to Irish familiarity, enjoying the calls of a "brawny wag" outside Trinity College, who with "enthusiastic attachment" shouted "Bravo, Albert!"—the crowd then taking up the chant.
The Queen's ease among the Irish crowds appears nothing short of remarkable given the recent rebellion, as well as the fact that an Irishman had shot at her six weeks before. But Hamilton was by now a distant memory, and her enthusiastic reception convinced her that Ireland's troubles were in the past. True, Ireland's poverty was still a fact, and Victoria was too astute an observer not to notice it. "You see more ragged and wretched people here than I ever saw anywhere else," she wrote to Leopold. But to her, the ending of the rebellion and the million evidences of loyalty to the crown were signs of a promising future for the Irish. Her first procession through Dublin was "a never to be forgotten scene, particularly when one reflects on what state the country was in quite lately, in open revolt and under martial law." The one occasion during her visit when the past intruded upon the present hardly marred the sense of amity. While her carriage was driving slowly through the center of town, a workhouse official approached the carriage and respectfully pleaded "Mighty Monarch, pardon Smith O'Brien."*
Amidst the overwhelming and mutual goodwill between Victoria and the Irish, there was apparently a genuine threat to her safety during her stay in Dublin. Members of Dublin secret societies—remnants of the clubs promoted by Young Ireland—came up with a desperate plot to kidnap Victoria, spirit her to a hideout in the Wicklow Mountains, and hold her hostage to the freedom of Smith O'Brien and the State prisoners. One night as the royal family slept in the vice-regal lodge, two hundred men armed with pistols and daggers assembled on the banks of the Grand Canal. They quickly realized that their force was far outnumbered by Dublin's military garrison, and dispersed. Victoria never learned of this feeble attempt, which only highlighted the nadir to which militant Irish nationalism had fallen.
By the time she left on the tenth of August, she had conquered Dublin utterly. Even the shadowy conspirators might have been won over, Lord Lieutenant Clarendon concluding from police reports that "even the ex-Clubbists, who threatened broken heads and windows before the Queen came, are now among the most loyal of her subjects." The nationalist and Tory press, relentlessly hostile to the Queen during the early part of her visit, finally gave in, _Freeman's Journal_ noting "the more the citizens of Dublin see Queen Victoria, the more she wins their affections."
The queen sealed the compact with an astounding act of impromptu theatre in Kingstown Harbor. Everyone, it seemed, had turned out to see her go: every possible surface around the harbor occupied by human beings, right down to the edge of the piers, "swarming around their queen like bees." Victoria was on board the royal yacht, chatting with two ladies in waiting, when she suddenly looked up and gazed upon the immense crowd. She then "ran along the deck with the sprightliness of a young girl, and, with the agility of a sailor, ascended the paddle-box, which... is a tolerably high one, and was almost at its top before she was observed by Prince Albert." Albert joined her there and Victoria, clutching his arm, vigorously waved her hand, and then her handkerchief, to the cheering multitude. To extend her farewell, she ordered the paddlewheels stopped, so that she drifted slowly out of Kingstown harbor to "the pealing of cannon and the loudest concert of human voices that ever ascended from a people in praise of any Monarch." When she was too far away to be seen, she ordered the ship's royal standard lowered and raised in salute, three, four, five times—a completely unprecedented gesture from a monarch to her subjects. The crowd was ecstatic, the effect electric—and deeply personal. John Bright, the radical MP from Birmingham, was there, and was overcome. "There is not an individual in Dublin that does not take as a personal compliment to himself the Queen's having gone upon the paddle-box and order the royal standard to be lowered," noted Lord Clarendon.
Victoria's popularity in Ireland exceeded the wildest expectations, and raised great hopes within the government and the public that she had turned the tide and that the previously unquiet union between Ireland and Britain would henceforth be peaceful and prosperous. The _Times_ declared that the Queen had put an end to Irish faction and civil discord. "It may very safely be predicted," the _Illustrated London News_ trumpeted, "that as long as Queen Victoria lives (may she live to see her great-grandchildren!) there will be no disaffection—no disloyalty in Ireland."
It was not to be. In spite of the wishes of future ministers, Victoria did little to maintain the bond with the Irish that she had so magnificently created on this trip. She did revisit Ireland with Albert in 1853 and 1861, and made the trip alone in 1900. But she never came close to re-establishing the intimacy she felt for them, and they felt for her, during this trip. Moreover, her success, as great as it was, was personal, not national. Victoria did nothing whatsoever to deal with the root causes of Irish resentment against the British. She did little to popularize her government, with its relentless, insensitive practice of treating the Irish like children and responding to Irish anger and agitation with coercion. Irish nationalism, in August 1849 supine with hunger and defeat, would rise again—and would grow, over the next few decades, to a literally explosive intensity.
William Hamilton, the poor, sullen Irishman who lashed out, embodied the spirit of his nation in its defeat. Perhaps Queen and country should not have been so quick to forget the man.
* The statue was placed there with great fanfare in 1846, positioned adjacent to Apsley House so that the Duke of Wellington could have the honor of seeing his gargantuan self outside his own windows. Many (including the Queen) regarded the statue as an eyesore completely out of proportion to its setting, and it was removed in 1883 to the military garrison at Aldershot.
* In the first accounts, he is named as _John_ Hamilton; in time, William was the clear consensus.
* With Ireland's independence, officials far less smitten by the Queen renamed the town _Cobh_.
* Smith O'Brien was at that moment on a convict ship bound for Australia. Before the Queen could reply, Lord Lieutenant Clarendon rode up and pushed the man away.
_sixteen_
CUT AND THRUST
Robert Francis Pate had no need to seek notoriety. He had already found it.
The gentry and aristocracy of London, promenading in the gardens outside Kensington Palace, and riding to see and be seen along Rotten Row, could set their watches by him. The cabmen and tradesmen on the fringe of the Westminster parks, as well as the policemen of A Division, all knew him by sight, though very few knew his name.
At midday, seven days a week, he would leave his well-appointed apartments on the corner of Piccadilly and Duke Street St. James, directly above Fortnum and Mason's emporium, for a circuit around Green Park, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens. He always followed the same path, passing each point on it at exactly the same time. He always wore the same impeccable suit of clothing, regardless of the weather: blue frock coat, always open; white double-breasted waistcoat, buttoned to the throat; blue neckerchief; tweed trousers; buttoned boots; stylish top hat and cane. The bright colors—so different from the conservative grays, blacks, and browns that more and more men were wearing in 1850—marked him as a dandy; Prince Albert described him that way to Baron Stockmar. But it wasn't Pate's natty clothing that drew double-takes and backward stares from everyone he passed. It was his startling, frenetic manner. He marched through the West End as a man possessed: in step with invisible phalanxes, battling invisible demons. His gait seemed to defy gravity: with his back unnaturally arched so that his open coat draped and sailed behind him, and glaring straight ahead or toward the skies with hat impossibly horizontal, he would kick out each heel as high as he could: a goose-step so extreme that "it was astonishing how he preserved his equilibrium." At the same time, he would flail his arms about and, in his right hand, wield his cane as a sword, lunging and slashing forwards and backwards at the air. An inspector from A Division who saw his performances regularly nicknamed him "cut and thrust."
At times he would break off from his marching and act out pantomimes of fear and estrangement: abruptly stopping in his tracks, gazing about him, and then, as if suddenly aware he was being watched, running off as fast as he could. At other times—on those days when the Queen took an airing in a carriage and four in the parks—he would grovel with an exaggerated obeisance. "I meet him often in the parks," Victoria would later tell her Prime Minster, John Russell, "and he makes a point of bowing more frequently and lower to me than any one else."
Most would pretend not to see him. Husbands would caution their wives not to draw his attention, for fear of violent consequences. Those few that acknowledged him earned from him an angry glare and a spasmodic shake of his stick.
For years, obsessive and eccentric routine was essential to Robert Pate's being. Not long after he first moved to London, he began to follow another ritual, which he followed without fail for a year and a half. When the clock in the nearby tower of St. James's Palace chimed quarter past three, Pate stopped whatever he was doing to take up two piles of coins that his manservant had carefully laid out on the mantel. In the first pile were nine shillings, each queen's head up and each one turned so that every queen gazed in exactly the same direction. In the second pile were a sixpence and an older, larger penny: his servant was well aware that a newer, smaller penny, or two halfpence, would never do. Carefully pocketing these coins, Pate stepped outside to meet the same cabman and climb into the same cab, which set off southeastward, through the town, across the Thames at Putney Bridge, to Putney Heath. There, at exactly the same spot, Pate would descend from the cab, jump over a ditch, and disappear through thick gorse bushes. The cabman would drive to a spot further up the road, from where he could see Pate standing still and staring into a pond. Inevitably, Pate would start up and dash madly back to the cab, often dripping wet. He would shout conflicting commands to the driver: gallop quickly!—slow down to a walking pace!—as they made their way two miles northwest up Roehampton Lane to Barnes Common. The cabman, mystified by his daily customer, would spy on Pate through the trap at his feet, and would see him either in catatonic stupor or in frantic motion: hurling his body from one wall of the cab to the other or leaning out the front of the cab, slashing his cane in a frenzy from side to side. "I did not know what performance it was," the cabman would later testify. "He seemed to be thoughtless, or something of that kind. I suppose some sudden thought caused him to jump and start, as if he did not know what he was about." Passers-by would stop the cabman to ask about the strange man inside: was he mad? The cabman certainly thought so. As deeply alarmed as he was by Pate's mysterious behavior, however, he did nothing to stop it: as far as he was concerned, the steady income was well worth the bother. At Barnes Common, Pate would again leap out and shun every path, plunging instead into the deepest undergrowth. When he had finished whatever he was doing there, he would return to the cab and be driven back to St. James via Hammersmith Bridge. The sixpence and penny were for tolls at the bridges; the nine shillings were for the cabman—always given to him, he noticed, with Victoria's heads upward, all gazing toward the same point.
After thus providing this cabman with employment every single day from November 1847 to the summer of 1849, Pate abruptly dispensed with his services. One day the cabman arrived to pick him up and met his manservant instead. "Mr. Pate did not want me," he was told, "and if he wanted me he would send for me." Pate never did. Perhaps the expense had become too great. Perhaps Pate aimed to march among higher society: London's elite, after all, did not go to see and be seen on Putney Heath and Barnes Common. To be among that elite—to come in contact with the Queen herself—he would have to change his route; and so, for the next few months, he brought his obsessions to the parks of Westminster.
In a way, Robert Pate was in his element walking in fashionable London. He was the son of an immensely wealthy and self-made man who had groomed his son to take his place among the upper crust. His father, Robert Francis Pate Senior, made his fortune as a corn factor, or grain dealer, in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire—the breadbasket of England—during those heady days for corn factors when the Corn Laws guaranteed high prices. Growing social recognition accompanied Pate's growing wealth. In 1847 he reached his social zenith, appointed by the Queen and her Privy Council High Sheriff of the counties of Cambridge and Huntingdon. It was an appointment that brought him face to face with Victoria and Albert on a memorable, brilliantly hot and sunny day, 5 July 1847, when Pate Senior looked on as Albert was installed as Chancellor of Cambridge University.
The Chancellorship of Cambridge was a position to which Albert was excellently suited—a position that gave him both public recognition and the opportunity to apply his considerable administrative talents. (He never accepted that the position was supposed to be a ceremonial one.) He accepted nomination eagerly, provided the invitation was "the unanimous desire of the University." He soon found out that it was not. A rival, the Second Earl of Powis, had been proposed, and refused to drop out. Albert thus was in the unusual and uncomfortable position of running for election to the position. He consulted Sir Robert Peel—now out of office, but still Albert's closest political confidant—about withdrawing. Peel persuaded him to stay in. He did, refraining completely from campaigning. He won—but it was close: close enough so that he consulted Peel again, about refusing the office. Peel encouraged him to take it. By July 1847, two months later, when Victoria and Albert traveled to Cambridge for his installation, the sour taste of politicking had passed. Cambridge welcomed the two deliriously. Victoria—never happier than when Albert's virtues and talents were recognized by a larger audience—fought breaking into a smile of mingled joy and embarrassment at the "almost absurd" position she found herself in when Albert, speaking for the university, welcomed her. She replied, assuring the university "of my entire _approbation_ " of Cambridge's choice of Chancellor, laying particular emphasis on that last word. Albert turned out to be the one of the best Chancellors Cambridge ever had, guiding the university's curriculum into the modern age, strengthening its emphasis on science and technology. And Robert Francis Pate Senior was there to see the beginning, and was on that day introduced to both Prince and Queen. Robert Francis Pate _Junior_ , of course, could not make it, having a more pressing engagement that day on Putney Heath and Barnes Common.
Early on, Pate Senior paid so that his son could assume his place in higher society, sending him to be trained as a gentleman at a school in Norwich. When Pate came of age, Pate Senior bought him rank, literally: in 1841, a commission in the British army could be obtained for several hundred pounds, and Pate set his son up in the Queen's service as a cornet in the prestigious 10th Hussars,* then quartered in Ireland. In a little over a year, Pate was promoted to lieutenant. He was odd from the start, but was at first tolerated and even liked by his fellows. A couple years after his promotion, however, Pate's military colleagues agreed that something terrible had happened, something that changed Pate's behavior irrevocably. Pate was a cavalryman, and his father had fitted him out with three handsome horses; he also owned a Newfoundland dog to which he was very much attached. All four were bitten by a fellow officer's rabid dog. After one horse had become ill, Pate threatened to "make a hole in the river" if his favorite horse died. Eventually all four animals had to be destroyed, and after that Pate sank into an abyss of depression. He avoided mess with his fellows and instead took long and solitary walks. In time he developed a fear of the mess: the cook and the messman, he convinced himself, were trying to poison him.
In 1845, while his regiment marched to Dublin, Pate fled instead to London with little more than the clothes he wore. His friends there persuaded him to go home to his father at Wisbech. To his astonished father, he explained that he was a hunted man: his pursuers followed him around the streets of Dublin; they were at the barracks; they even lurked about London's hotels. His father persuaded Pate to return to Ireland. He was arrested upon his return, but his attempts at explaining himself were so incoherent that his commanding officers refused to prosecute him. Pate returned to duty, more morose and paranoid than ever. The 10th Hussars were preparing to ship out to India, and his colonel, certain that Pate was insane, wanted to be rid of him; he wrote to Pate Senior a letter asking "in as delicate a manner as I could" for him to take his son away. At around the same time, in March 1846, he granted Pate a leave of absence, and Pate hastened not to Wisbech but to London, where for £1800 he quickly sold his lieutenant's commission and set himself up in comfortable apartments in Jermyn Street, St. James—the center of London society. His father visited him there soon after his arrival. By this point, however, a strong feeling of estrangement had arisen between the two, and the elder Pate kept himself largely at Wisbech while his son kept to his own confused affairs.
At the beginning of 1848, however, Pate Senior was forced to assist his son. Though all who knew him agreed that the younger Pate was a man of extremely temperate habits, and obsessively regular in paying his bills, he had somehow run up a debt of hundreds of pounds, and creditors began to apply to his father for payment. When his father showed up in London to handle the matter, he was alarmed by the change that had come over his son: he was now wild, haunted—clearly insane, his father thought. He began to consider committing his son to an asylum and sought medical advice. A doctor in Brighton recommended that he see the most celebrated mad-doctor of all at the time: John Conolly. After a year and a half of unease and confusion about his son—a time about which Pate Senior admitted "I had no control over him," the father met with Conolly.
In the meantime, the younger Robert Pate had managed, awkwardly and reluctantly, to enter London society. His younger sister had moved from Wisbech to London to live with a family friend, the eminent surgeon James Startin; while there, she soon became engaged to Startin's brother William. From the first, Robert would visit his sister there, and it did not take long before James Startin realized that the wild man whose eccentricities in the parks he had often witnessed was his future sister-in-law's brother. The Startins were hosts to a lively circle of literary, political, clerical, and medical friends, and during his several visits to their home at Savile Row* Pate attempted to interact with them. He generally failed: he spoke in a "short choking manner," with wild eyes and expression, and then would lapse into sullen silence. One visitor, the Irish nationalist journalist and then M.P., The O'Gorman Mahon, though he understood Pate to be a maniac from their first conversation, was nevertheless quite happy to speak with him several times more, each interaction simply confirming his original opinion. Startin kept the elder Pate apprised about his son's dire condition.
That is when Pate Senior consulted with Conolly. After hearing of Pate's history since joining the army, Conolly acknowledged that the man was certainly mad—but advised his father to do nothing. His sister now exerted a positive influence upon him; surely with her help he would improve. It would be better, Conolly thought, if he were not introduced to Pate at all: that might irritate the man, he thought, causing him to relapse. Pate Senior followed his advice.
And so, although his family, two of London's leading medical men, and virtually everyone whose path he crossed knew Robert Francis Pate to be mentally ill, nothing was done to treat him, and he continued with his daily marches through the West End. By the twenty-seventh of June 1850—the last day that Pate made this walk—it was clear to those who observed him regularly that Conolly's diagnosis that he was improving was entirely wrong: he was getting worse. James Startin began to fear that he would commit a violent act upon himself or his relatives. The keeper of a livery stable where Pate had once rented horses, and by which Pate passed regularly, noticed that he had changed greatly since the previous May—where he was once friendly, he was now growing ever more irritable. "I told my foreman I had great apprehensions that Captain Pate, as I always called him, was losing his senses," he later testified. A colleague from the army saw him at 3:00 on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh; "I had never seen him so excited as on this day," he claimed. Three hours later, a cleric, Charles Driscoll, who had known Pate from the Startins, happened to catch sight of him on that day from an omnibus trundling down Piccadilly. Pate was standing outside a mansion, across from Green Park. For a moment, Pate was still. Then he abruptly spun about and marched down the street. "There was something peculiar in the manner in which he turned about and walked away, that made me look through the window after him, and take particular notice of him." His gestures—particularly his heel-kicking—were even more excited than usual.
Driscoll rode on to a dinner engagement. He did not realize it, but he had witnessed a sudden and complete breakdown in Pate's daily routine. For Pate had been as usual completing his circuit, heading eastwards at 6:00 to Duke Street—to his apartment, to dinner, and to an early bedtime. A gathering crowd outside the mansion on Piccadilly had compelled him to halt, to turn, to walk _westwards_ —and then to spin around, to return excitedly to the crowd, and to push his way to the front. The mansion was Cambridge House, home of Victoria's uncle, the Duke of Cambridge. Just inside the gates was the royal carriage: the Queen was inside, and there would never be a better time to see her, close up, than when her carriage emerged from the gates and made its slow, tight turn onto Piccadilly.
Pate stopped to await her.
It was a time of troubles for the Queen, this last week of June 1850, and she had come to Cambridge House to deal with one of these: her Uncle Aldolphus, the Duke of Cambridge, was dying. The Queen had come accompanied by her Lady in Waiting, Frances Jocelyn, and three of her children—the eight-year-old Prince of Wales, seven-year-old Alice, and five-year-old Alfred. The Duke of Cambridge was seriously ill with "gastric fever"—most likely typhoid. He had little more than a week to live, and his family were already bracing for the worst. Victoria and Albert would feel the loss keenly. The Queen hardly knew Uncle Adolphus as a child, because until she became Queen he had served as Governor-General and Viceroy in Hanover. When he did return (and Uncle Ernest took the throne of Hanover), the relationship between his family and the Queen was at first rocky: there had been, for one thing, the Duke's and Duchess's attempt to foist their son George upon her as a husband—something that neither she nor George desired. And after she married Albert, the Cambridges seemed remarkably reluctant to cede precedence to the young Prince. In 1840 Victoria was mortified to discover that the Duchess had refused to rise at a dinner where a toast to Albert was given, and got her revenge by crossing the entire family off the guest list to her next ball—a very public rebuke. The turbulence passed, however. Adolphus was George III's youngest and mildest son, a true friend to a host of charities. Moreover, unlike his brothers, Cambridge managed to get to the end of his long life without ensnaring himself in party politics and thus without annoying at least some sector of the public. Both Victoria and Albert had come to respect and to love the man.
With his death, only two of George III's fifteen children would remain. Ernest, the most virulently partisan and the least popular of all George's sons, still lived, but lived, fortunately, in faraway Hanover. Time and, more significantly, distance, had dispelled much of his unpopularity. Closer to home and closer to their hearts was Aunt Mary, Duchess of Gloucester, living down the street in Gloucester House. She would be to Victoria a "link with bygone times and generations... we all looked upon her as a sort of grandmother."
The Queen had suffered another wrenching loss six months before, when the Queen Dowager Adelaide, widow of William IV, died after a long and painful illness. Adelaide had around the time of the Victoria's birth done her best to displace her from the throne by producing an heir of her own, but when all of her children were stillborn or died in infancy, she never allowed disappointment to come between herself and her niece. Rather she was always one of Victoria's warmest supporters, especially so during the dark days of the Conroy ascendancy, when the Princess and young Queen was desperate for support, finding so little at home. All of society understood the significance of Victoria's actions at her wedding, in 1840: embracing and kissing Aunt Adelaide—but only shaking hands with her mother. The Duchess of Kent and the Queen Dowager were enemies then, thanks to Conroy, and Victoria remembered his machinations bitterly, writing, soon after Aunt Adelaide died, "Much was done to set Mamma against her, but the dear Queen ever forgave this, ever showed love and affection, and for the last eight years their friendship was as great as ever."
Adelaide thus left her friend the Duchess of Kent as one of the last of her generation. With Conroy exiled, and with the influence of Albert, who was both the Duchess's son-in-law and her nephew, and who had a genuine regard for her, the Duchess had regained her position in the family; she had long before subsumed her ambitions into her daughter's, and found her greatest pleasure in being grandmama to her daughter's growing family.
Ten years before, the term "royal family" would have conjured up in British minds the fat, old, generally vicious and usually penurious children of George III. Now, the term brought to mind Victoria's and Albert's bonny boys and girls, reported every day in the "Court Circular" as taking their usual walking and pony exercises in Buckingham Palace Gardens, or on the Slopes at Windsor, or in the park at Osborne. There were seven now; Victoria had borne her third son—her favorite son, as it turned out—just six weeks ago, on the first of May. That day auspiciously was the birthday of the Duke of Wellington, and so Albert and Victoria gave the boy his name, Arthur, and asked the Iron Duke to stand as his godfather. Last Saturday had been the boy's Christening, the 81-year-old Duke standing alongside the infant, a _tableau vivant_ of the older generation giving way to the younger.
The old Duke of Wellington was dear to Victoria and Albert both. Completely gone was all the animosity that Victoria had felt for him during her fiercely partisan days as a Whig, or rather as a Melbournian, when, to her, Wellington, Peel, and the Tories seemed put on this earth to thwart all her desires. Albert, who quickly developed a strong affinity for the old man, had done much to reconcile him to the Queen. The old Duke, muscular and upright, had retained much of his iron, in spite of the series of strokes he had suffered, and the deafness that had come with age. While he now played a lesser role in the House of Lords, he still served as Commander-in-Chief of the army and still kept up a spirited social life. He, at least, would cheat death a little longer.
One more death during the past year had devastated Victoria and even more so Albert. On 8 October 1849, Albert's secretary, George Anson, thirty-seven years old and apparently completely healthy, complained to his wife of a pain over his eye and immediately collapsed; he died within three hours. When news reached the royal couple at Osborne the next day, they both broke down and were, according to Lady Lyttelton, "in floods of tears, and quite shut up... so warm a _friend_ they can hardly expect to find again." She was absolutely correct, as far as Albert was concerned: he had lost one of his true friends. Their relationship had begun on the worst of footings, with Victoria and Melbourne foisting Anson, then Melbourne's private secretary, upon the Prince in spite of his protests. But Albert quickly found Anson to be an ideal servant, devoted and loyal, just the sort of man he needed in his battle with Lehzen, and in acting behind the scenes to avoid a second bedchamber crisis when Peel came to power in 1841. Trust led to respect, which led to a true friendship, something rare for the Prince, who was still seen as a foreigner, who was still often awkward and aloof in public, and who rarely opened himself up completely to others.
With Anson gone, there were only two men remaining whom Albert could honestly call his friends. There was, first of all, the indispensible Stockmar, still deeply committed to shaping the British monarchy according to his own ideals. Stockmar was, however, back in Germany, where he spent most of his time: liberal enough with advice spooned out in missives and memoranda, but not there to listen, to confide in, to respond to the growing cares of the moment. That left Robert Peel.
Robert Peel was in character and interests much more like the Prince Consort than Albert's father had ever been: he, too, never quite overcame his shyness in public, but was a man of genuine warmth in private life. Moreover, like Albert, he was a man of intellect and wide-ranging cultural interests. Those interests, and a shared political outlook, brought the two together; with Peel, Albert was able to express himself intellectually in a way that he simply could not with Victoria. And Peel was a mentor to the young Prince, providing him with much-appreciated connection to British intellectual figures. Even after Peel's fall from power, Albert turned to him frequently for advice, as he had during his election to the Chancellorship of Cambridge.
Peel lived, thank goodness, for Albert—and Victoria—had much need of his counsel in June 1850; for at that time, for Victoria—and even more so for her husband—things seemed to be falling apart.
For one thing, the political situation was a mess. Their long-troubled relationship with one of the Queen's ministers had suddenly reached a crisis point. Victoria had of course deeply regretted the fall of Peel after the conservatives split in the wake of the repeal of the Corn Laws. But under Albert's influence she had welcomed John Russell's Whig ministry with good grace. Russell quickly proved himself to be a completely different Prime Minister than Peel. Whereas Prime Minister Peel _was_ the government, keeping " _all_ in his own hands," as Victoria put it, Russell held the reins with a far weaker hand. Toleration was one of his greatest virtues, and one of his greatest flaws: he generally took a _laissez-faire_ approach to the doings of his various ministers. Cartoonists in _Punch_ and elsewhere depicted Russell as Master Johnny, an errant little boy, both because of the Prime Minister's diminutive stature, and because he never seemed quite up to the task.
In particular, he was completely unable to control his strong-willed Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston. Palmerston had been giving the Queen and her Consort fits for years. He ruled the foreign office as his fiefdom, invariably acting pragmatically and often neglecting or refusing to consult with the Queen or the rest of her government. While he was loyal to the idea of constitutional monarchy, and personally liked the Queen, he had little time for the intervention of a woman who was born a dozen years after he was first elected to Parliament, or to her husband, a German and thus, he once told Albert to his face, unable to understand British interests. He regularly neglected to send the Queen dispatches until after he had issued them. He glibly agreed to changes that Victoria—or rather, Albert—made on dispatches, and then ignored them. When Victoria remonstrated with him, he would apologize, and then behave exactly as before.
Making everything worse was the fact that Palmerston and the royal couple disagreed utterly on matters of foreign policy. In the ongoing dispute between Prussia and Denmark, they favored Prussia, and Palmerston Denmark. When the states of Italy rose up against their Austrian rulers, they favored Austria, and Palmerston Italy: he had actually helped arm Garibaldi the year before, without consulting the Queen or even his Cabinet colleagues. To the royal couple, the revolutions of 1848 were a chaotic nightmare, threatening to destroy the ruling families of Europe—among them, of course, their own extended family. Palmerston, on the other hand, had no sympathy with the despots of Europe, and welcomed the revolutions as harbingers of an enlightened and liberal new age. He was a chauvinist and a populist; his promotion of Britain above all angered the courts of Europe (and thus, often, his own), but played well in the British press: he was by far the most beloved member of the present government.
Victoria had complained about Palmerston's cavalier and insensitive political style since the last days of Melbourne's ministry, and little changed in the four years since the coming of the Russell government. Tension built; in September 1848 she told Russell "I felt really I could hardly go on with him, that I had no confidence in him, and that it made me seriously anxious and uneasy for the welfare of the country and the peace of Europe in general, and that I felt very uneasy from one day to another as to what might happen." Lord John increasingly found himself in the role of umpire between the Queen and Palmerston, repeatedly playing up the man's strengths to the Queen and conveying her complaints to Palmerston.
In February 1850, a political firestorm broke out that seemed to make Palmerston's removal inevitable. All of Europe was inflamed by the news of Palmerston's heavy-handed intrusion into the affairs of Greece. Two and a half years before, during Easter 1847, a Greek rabble had seized the occasion of annual anti-Semitic demonstrations to ransack the home of the Jewish Don David Pacifico, terrorize his family, and burn the house to the ground. Pacifico claimed that he had lost the enormous sum of £32,000 in the conflagration: £5,000 in property, as well as papers that proved he was owed £27,000. Don Pacifico's parents were—and perhaps he was—born in Gibraltar, making him a British citizen. When the Greek government failed to recompense him, he turned to the British consul, who brought the matter to Palmerston. Palmerston agreed that Greece owed Pacifico the full amount—plus another £500 for his suffering. There matters stood for two years, when in mid-January 1850, the British Mediterranean fleet stormed into Athens's waters with more ships than Nelson had commanded at the Battle of the Nile. The fleet's admiral had instructions to seize Greek shipping and blockade the harbor until Pacifico's claims and some other British demands were met.
It was Palmerston's quintessential act of gunboat diplomacy. Opinion in Britain was divided as to whether Don Pacifico or Greece was the true victim, and as to whether Britain or Greece was the true bully; the Queen and Albert, as well as the conservatives—both the Protectionists and the Peelites—were decidedly opposed to Palmerston's militant intervention. Elsewhere in Europe there was little dispute: foreign governments were enraged. The French proposed arbitration in London overseen by themselves, while in Athens simultaneous negotiations took place between the British ambassador and the government. In London, a settlement was reached, but that news had not reached Athens when the Greek government capitulated to every British demand. The French considered that their deal took precedence. Palmerston disagreed. The French ambassador promptly returned to France for consultations; the Russians contemplated recalling their own ambassador, and the Queen celebrated her thirty-first birthday amidst serious talk of a European war.
In the House of Lords on 17 June, Lord Stanley, the leader of the Protectionist wing of the Conservatives, moved a censure in the House of Lords on the government for their actions in Greece. That motion carried by thirty-seven votes. Before this debate, Victoria and Albert had insisted that Palmerston leave the Foreign Office, Albert writing to Russell "one conviction grows stronger and stronger with the Queen and myself (if it is possible), viz. that Lord Palmerston is bringing the whole of the hatred which is borne to him... by all the Governments of Europe upon England, and that country runs serious danger of having to pay for the consequences." And they had nearly succeeded; as early as March they had negotiated with Russell for his removal. Russell made clear to them that given Palmerston's enormous popularity, dropping him completely from the government was out of the question: if they tried to do that, the government would fall. But Russell was willing to relegate Palmerston to a post in which he could not antagonize the Queen so deeply. He proposed reshuffling the Cabinet completely, moving Palmerston to the Home Office and offering him leadership in the House of Commons. Russell would remain Prime Minister but move to the House of Lords. Albert objected to this, fearing that the strong-willed Palmerston could parlay leadership in Commons into the Prime Ministership. Russell—a poor soothsayer—was sure this would not happen because Palmerston was too old to be Prime Minister. Palmerston, Russell told the royal couple, had agreed to the move—but to avoid any debate, nothing could happen until the end of the current parliamentary session.
Two months later, just as Victoria returned to public life after the birth of Arthur, the royal couple met again with Russell and modified their plans. Russell now agreed with Albert that Palmerston should not be given leadership in Commons. Palmerston would move to the Colonial Office, Lord John would go to the House of Lords, and Sir George Grey—the present Home Secretary—was to become Leader of the House of Commons.
It was the best Victoria and Albert could hope for. But the censure motion in the House of Lords scuttled their plans completely. The government was forced to respond in the House of Commons, or resign. And their response could not simply be about the business in Greece, for the Lords had thrown their entire foreign policy into question. They would have to defend Palmerston's policy—and that amounted to a vote of confidence in Russell's ministry. If the government won, Palmerston would be vindicated, his position stronger than ever: there could be no further talk about shifting him to another office. If the government lost, Russell would be forced to resign, and chaos would likely ensue. What sort of government could be assembled from the hopelessly split Conservatives and the minority Whigs was anybody's guess. "It is impossible to say at this moment what will be the result," Lord John wrote to the Queen days before the debate. He feared the worst, noting that both wings of the Conservative party had united on this issue: "Lord Stanley, Lord Aberdeen, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Disraeli appear to be in close concert." (This was surely one of the very last times anyone made such a claim about the last two men.) "We are in a crisis," Victoria wrote to uncle Leopold. "It is most unfortunate, for whatever way it ends, it must do great harm."
The stage was set for one of the most spectacular debates in British parliamentary history. Palmerston himself later claimed he could hardly remember such a "display of intellect, oratory and high and dignified feeling." For four long nights the fate of the government hung in the balance as the leading political lights of Britain—including no fewer than seven once, present, and future Prime Ministers*—passionately assailed or defended the Foreign Secretary.
On this very day that the Queen visited her dying uncle Adolphus, the debate had reached its midpoint and was the talk of the nation. The previous Monday, radical (and highly nationalist) M.P. John Arthur Roebuck had introduced the motion "that the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty's government has been regulated have been such as were calculated to maintain the honour and dignity of this country." On that night and the next, members dissected into the early hours of the morning Palmer-ston's role in the Greek affair. His opponents called attention to the unfounded or exaggerated claims of that man of dubious character, Don Pacifico, and decried the loss of British prestige that resulted from the incident; his proponents waxed indignant about iniquitous Greece and its atrocities against Don Pacifico and others: Britain had had no choice but to intervene. One supporter raged about the vast right-wing conspiracy combining English conservatives and European despots, bent on bringing Palmerston and liberalism down: a vote against Palmerston was a vote for "Cossack domination." The last speaker on the first night, James Graham—once Home Secretary in Peel's government—analyzed every major Foreign Office decision of the last four years and concluded that Palmerston's heavy-handed tactics had resulted in fiasco throughout Europe; Palmerston's actions had toppled Louis-Philippe from his throne, led to the failed uprisings of 1848, and were responsible for the current tide of reaction across the continent.
At 9:45 on the second night of the debate, Palmerston rose to defend himself. He gave the speech of his life. Speaking for four and a half hours with few notes and no pause for the water or oranges set beside him, he covered himself rhetorically with the British flag, responding to Graham's attacks country by country, demonstrating that he had spread the light of liberal reform throughout Europe. In doing this, he had simply enforced the will of the British people, and attacking him personally made no sense: "It is like shooting a policeman," Palmerston claimed. "As long as England is England, as long as the English people are animated by the feelings and spirit and opinions which they possess, you may knock down twenty Foreign Ministers one after another, but depend upon it, none will keep the place who does not act upon the same principles." His policy had bettered mankind: advancing civilization, promoting peace, and augmenting prosperity. In his peroration, he whipped up the chamber by appealing to the unparalleled power and greatness of the British empire: "... as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he could say _Civis Romanus sum*_; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong."
He finished to thunderous cheers at 2:20 in the morning. Victoria, reading the speech the next day, could not help but be impressed: "a most brilliant speech," she admitted in her journal. Russell was ecstatic about it—"one of the most masterly ever delivered," he wrote—and was now optimistic that the government would win the vote. He was, however, not sure that his ministry would survive, informing the Queen that they needed a sizeable majority—forty votes—if they were to remain in office. After Palmerston spoke, the debate had adjourned, to recommence this evening; indeed, as Victoria prepared to return to Buckingham Palace from Cambridge House, the House of Commons had already been in session for two hours. The Stranger's Gallery was packed more tightly than ever, would-be spectators spilling out of the chamber. Lord John was still to speak, as were Gladstone, Disraeli, and Peel. The Queen was in the eye of the political storm, and her feelings about her own government were decidedly mixed.
Prince Albert, meanwhile, was in the midst of his own tempest, suddenly locked in a battle to keep the most important project of his life alive and to keep his reputation intact. His and Henry Cole's idea a year before of a truly international exhibition had now taken on life, largely thanks to Albert, who was now chair of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition. (This afternoon he had chaired a meeting until six, leaving the Queen to set out to the Cambridges without him.) The project had become to him something of far greater magnitude to him than a simple display of manufactures. Last March he had inspired 136 British mayors and 18 foreign ambassadors with his speech at an elaborate dinner at the Lord Mayor's mansion with his elevated vision of the Exhibition. "We are living at a period of the most wonderful transition," he told them, "which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end to which indeed all history points; _the realization of the Unity of mankind_!" The Exhibition was to be nothing less than the manifestation of this millennial moment: "a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions."
Albert acted as if he carried the world upon his shoulders, devoting an immense amount of time and energy overseeing every aspect of the planning. He "appears to be almost the only person who has considered the subject both as a whole and in its details," wrote Lord Granville, the vice-chair of the Royal Committee. "The whole thing would fall to pieces, if he left it to itself." The strain upon him showed. In January, Victoria wrote to Stockmar "The Prince's sleep is again as bad as ever, and he looks very ill of an evening." And now, at the end of June 1850, opposition had grown to the point that failure seemed imminent.
Nothing about the project seemed to please the public. Funding, for one thing, was not forthcoming: the Exhibition was supposed to be supported by public subscription, and while Albert had given £500 and Victoria £1,000, no one had come along with the truly substantial donation needed to attract others, and the fear arose that the Treasury would have to take up the burden. And then there was the site. Albert had from the first fixed upon Hyde Park for the Exhibition; he had studied the alternatives and was now absolutely committed to that choice: it would be held there or not be held at all. The residents of Knightsbridge adjoining the site raised a stink about the noise, the inevitable invasion of riffraff, the damage to the Park, and the decline in the value of their property. Dismay about the project spread to the rest of the West End, the upper crust bemoaning the certain loss of their favorite airing ground, Rotten Row. When, earlier in the month, the plans of the Exhibition building became public, however, the complainings of the few transformed into a full-throated, universal outcry.
The Building Committee for the Exhibition, in a classic demonstration of the broth-destroying propensity of too many cooks, consisted of three highly celebrated architects (Charles Barry, Charles Robert Cockerell, and Thomas Leverton Donaldson) and three highly celebrated engineers (Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and William Cubitt), as well as two nobles (the Duke of Buccleuch and the Earl of Ellesmere). These eight held a competition for the design of the Exhibition building and netted 245 plans. They scrutinized these, rejected the lot, and produced a plan of their own, for which they "freely"—in both senses of the term—"availed themselves of the most valuable suggestions" of the rejected plans. The committee's design was largely Brunel's, and might have showed his genius as an engineer, but as a work of architecture, it was an ugly mess: a sheet-iron dome 200 feet in diameter and 150 feet high ("a monster balloon in the process of inflation," according to one angry letter-writer) rising above a squat and sprawling warehouse that would take an estimated 19 million bricks to build: a decidedly permanent solution for a building supposed to be temporary.
Attacks upon the site flooded the papers: the building was an eyesore and an impractical and destructive imposition upon Hyde Park. The _Times_ took up the chorus, its attacks reaching a crescendo on this very day, 27 June 1850, when the paper contained not one but two letters railing against the committee's design, as well as an editorial proclaiming the plan an "insanity," and threatening Albert personally that his reputation would suffer irreparably if the Commission went ahead with these plans: he "would become associated in the minds of the people not with a benefit, but with an injury; not with an extension of our industry, but with a curtailment of the recreation and an injury to the health of the metropolis."
The outrage was at its height in Parliament as well, and moves were afoot there to scuttle the Exhibition altogether. In the House of Lords, the quixotic Whig-Radical Lord Brougham had for months railed against the Hyde Park site: any building there would be a "tubercle" on "the lungs of this huge metropolis." Brougham found in the House of Commons an unlikely ally in the arch-reactionary and xenophobic Colonel Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorpe, who warred against anything with the slightest whiff of the modern with such sputtering virulence that he had become _Punch_ magazine's favorite figure of fun. He had opposed the 1832 Reform Bill; he was dead set against the railways; he despised Free Trade: and therefore he was naturally opposed to the Exhibition, which he claimed was "one of the greatest humbugs, one of the greatest frauds, one of the greatest absurdities ever known"—a magnet to attract to London the dregs of foreign lands: Papists, thieves, anarchists, and secret societies bent on assassinating the Queen. Usually a strident voice in the wilderness, Sibthorpe must have been amazed to find himself at the spearhead of a popular movement. Both he and Brougham made clear that they intended to have Parliament reconsider the whole idea of the Exhibition.
Albert was frantic. "The Exhibition is now attacked furiously by _The Times_ ," he wrote to Stockmar, "and the House of Commons is going to drive us out of the Park. There is immense excitement on the subject. If we are driven out of the Park the work is done for!!" He could rely upon only one man to set things right—his one friend in England and his champion in Parliament: Robert Peel.
* The 10th Hussars, known as the "Prince of Wales's Own," was the regiment of Victoria's uncle George, and would be that of her son the Prince of Wales.
* The Startins' Savile Row home became, over a century later, Apple Studios, its rooftop the site of the Beatles' final concert.
* Peel, Russell, Stanley (that is, Lord Derby), Aberdeen, Palmerston, Disraeli, and Gladstone.
* That is, "I am a citizen of Rome."
_seventeen_
THE MOST DISGRACEFUL AND COWARDLY THING THAT HAS EVER BEEN DONE
Robert Pate had jostled his way nearly to the front of the excited crowd awaiting the Queen's departure; only one man stood between him and the gate, and that man had refused to give way, throwing out his arm every time Pate tried to pass him. No matter; Pate was close enough to the gate to see that the courtyard of Cambridge House had sprung to life, and a small parade was forming to convey Victoria back to the Palace. Two footmen assisted the Queen, Fanny Jocelyn, and the three royal children into the open carriage. Victoria sat at the right rear, and Fanny sat directly across from her. The footmen then clambered up to the rumble seat in the back, Victoria's sergeant-footman Robert Renwick taking his seat directly behind the Queen, where he had been when he had witnessed Hamilton's attempt the year before. Two mounted outriders took up their position before the carriage's four horses. Colonel Charles Grey, who would usually position himself by the Queen's side, realizing that the gate was simply too narrow to allow his horse to pass through with the carriage, instead took up the rear.*
Grey could not be comfortable in this position, and he must have viewed the sizeable crowd on the other side of the gate apprehensively. Usually, one or two policemen assigned to Palace duty would be on hand to control the situation: when alerted that the Queen would be going out, they were under orders to get there first and patrol the area. The Queen had not planned this visit to her ailing uncle, however; no one had alerted the police; he, the outriders, and the footmen were the Queen's only security.
The little procession clattered out of the courtyard, the outriders bisecting the crowd into two cheering clusters. They trotted to the edge of the street and then stopped, awaiting their opportunity to make the turn onto busy Piccadilly. Victoria's carriage halted on the pavement side of the gate, trapping Colonel Grey in the courtyard and leaving the Queen unprotected, and close enough to the nearest in the crowd to touch them. Proximity and immobility rendered her instantly nervous: such a situation, she later wrote, "always makes me think more than usually of the possibility of an attempt being made on me." She surveyed those beside her, and recognized a man she had often seen in the parks: fair hair, a military moustache—and a small stick in his hand: the man who was always bowing so deeply to her.
He did not bow this time. Stepping forward a pace or two, he raised his cane and brought it slashing down on the right side of the Queen's head, bending the wire of her light summer bonnet, the metal ferrule at the cane's tip audibly smacking her forehead. Victoria instinctively raised her hand to her bonnet and recoiled away from Pate, falling into the laps of her alarmed children. For a few moments she was completely disoriented.
Robert Renwick leapt up, leaned forward, and seized Pate by the collar. Those around him grabbed hold of him as well. All had seen him strike the Queen, and their outrage was instant. "They have got the man," Fanny Jocelyn told Victoria as she sat up and touched her forehead: the wound was beginning to swell. To the crowd, it seemed as if the Queen was simply adjusting her bonnet. To reassure them, Victoria stood up and announced "I am not hurt."
Her words did nothing to prevent the crowd from manhandling Pate. One man threw a vicious punch at Pate's face and blood gushed from his nose. Lady Jocelyn burst into tears, and the Prince of Wales's face went red. Unlike Bertie, the other two children, Alice and Alfred, had seen their mother attacked a year before. But none of the three had seen anything like this.
The postilions, looking back and seeing Pate in Renwick's grasp, had kept the horses still. The Queen ordered them to move on. Renwick released his hold on Pate, the postilions spurred their horses, and the carriage sped up Piccadilly, to turn down Constitution Hill and into the Palace. When a space had cleared, Colonel Grey galloped to Victoria's side, catching behind him the sight of the crowd to the left rushing upon Pate. Voices began to call for a lynching.
Across Piccadilly, patrolling the edge of Green Park, Sergeant James Silver of A Division—the same James Silver who had tripped up, disarmed, and captured Daniel McNaughtan seven years before—noticed the seething crowd and heard a voice: "The villain has struck the Queen!" He instantly ran to the spot, plunged into the crowd, and, with some difficulty and with the help of other constables drawn by the commotion, rescued him from the chaotic assault.
In crossing Piccadilly, Sergeant Silver had crossed the border between A and C Police Divisions, and so once he relieved the bloody and disoriented Pate of his cane, he and the other constables hustled their prisoner not to Gardiner Lane but to C Division's headquarters on Vine Street, east up Piccadilly. On the way, they passed Messrs. Fortnum and Mason's emporium, and Pate could steal a look at his elegant rooms above them. He would never enter them again.
Back at Buckingham Palace, Victoria directed her visibly mortified equerry Charles Grey to ride through the parks and find Albert, who upon his return from the Royal Commission meeting had set out on horseback with their guest, the Prince of Prussia. She sent Fanny Jocelyn back to Cambridge House to inform the Duchess what had just happened. She sent for her physician, James Clark, to tend to her wound—which was by now throbbing so painfully that she retired upstairs to treat it herself with arnica.
The news of the attack spread quickly, and crowds as usual began to assemble about the Palace while the nobility and gentry began to call to inquire. Although by this time the all-important debate on Palmerston's foreign policy had recommenced in the House of Commons, Lord John Russell rushed away from there to have an audience with Victoria. Home Secretary George Grey, "greatly distressed and in tears," came to her later that evening—and managed to compose himself enough to return to the Commons and make his own contribution to the debate, defending his colleague Palmerston. After a surprising delay, Sir James Clark arrived and examined the Queen: he found a "considerable tumor" on her brow: Pate's cane had drawn blood. He concluded that Pate's blow had been an extremely violent one.
Victoria, Albert, and Prince Wilhelm of Prussia had made plans to attend the opera that night, Meyerbeer's _Le Prophète_ at Covent Garden. As usual, Victoria refused to change her plans in the wake of an attack. When her ladies-in-waiting begged her to stay at home, she told them "Certainly not: if I do not go, it will be thought I am seriously hurt, and people will be distressed and alarmed."
"But you _are_ hurt, ma'am."
"Then everyone shall see how little I mind it."
At 9:20, then, the royal party set out. Victoria was by now familiar with the social afterglow that followed attacks upon her: London united in a spontaneous burst of loyalty and concern for her welfare. She savored the enthusiastically cheering crowds lining the streets between the Palace and Covent Garden. "The feeling of _all_ classes [is] admirable," she wrote that night in her journal, "the lowest of the low being _most_ indignant."
The scene at the opera itself was, according to one reporter, "one of the most magnificent demonstrations of loyalty it has ever been our fortune to witness." The Queen herself had much to do with the depth of the response, playing the crowd with consummate ability. When her party entered the royal box, Albert and the Prince held back and she walked to the front of the box alone and triumphantly acknowledged the deafening cheers, "the mark of the ruffian's violence plainly visible on her forehead." A writer for _Punch_ describes the rapturous reception:
I never heard such shouting. It was the very madness of affection. It was a deafening tumult of love, in which a thousand voices were trying to outvie one another in giving the loudest expression to their sympathy. It was a loyal competition of sound, in which a thousand hearts were thrown, like so many hats, simultaneously into the air, every one of them struggling which could be thrown the highest. Then came _God Save the Queen_ , and soothed the angry waters into something like a calm regularity of flow, until the surging voices rose musically together, and formed one loud swelling wave of devotion and enthusiasm.
Albert, the Prince of Prussia, and Fanny Jocelyn advanced to join Victoria as the company's star mezzo and two star sopranos each sang a verse of the national anthem. When Madame Viardot reached the line "Frustrate their knavish tricks," the crowd roared its approval.
The fact that the Queen could appear in public less than three hours after Pate hit her suggested to press and public that he could not have injured her. While the very first reports of his attack, in papers that evening, claimed Victoria had indeed been injured, those of the next morning "corrected" these reports. "The small stick with which the prisoner struck the blow was not thicker than an ordinary goosequill," noted the _Times;_ "it measured only two feet two inches in length and weighed less than three ounces. Of course such a weapon as this could not under any circumstances occasion very serious injury." The _Times_ was wrong. Pate's cane—a type known as a partridge cane—was longer, heavier, and much thicker than the newspaper claimed, and was stiff, hard, and tipped with a brass or silver ferrule—quite capable of striking a formidable blow. Victoria long remembered the injury Pate had given her: a walnut-sized welt and a scar that lasted ten years. For Victoria, however, the psychological wound was worse than the physical one; she had been deeply insulted, as a woman and as a monarch. "Certainly," she wrote,
... it is very hard and very horrid that I a woman—a defenceless young woman and surrounded by my children—should be exposed to insults of this kind and be unable to go out quietly for a drive. This is by far the most disgraceful and cowardly thing that has ever been done; for a man to strike any woman is most brutal...
Of the many attacks upon her, the Queen until the end of her life considered this one the meanest and most ignoble—"far worse," she wrote, "than an attempt to shoot which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous."* Unlike her previous assailants, Pate had succeeded in breaking through the invisible barrier between Queen and subject, and in actually hurting her. He shook her until-now unshakeable trust in the public. The effect was immediate; she wrote to Uncle Leopold, days after the attack, "I own it makes me nervous out driving, and I start at any person coming near the carriage." In the short term, she absolutely refused to succumb to this fear: indeed, she, Albert, and the Prince of Prussia rode through the parks in an open carriage and four the very next day. But from her childhood—from her Conroy-planned tours of England, as Princess—Victoria had always struggled between her desire for seclusion and her sense of duty, maintaining the prestige of the monarchy with regular forays among her subjects. Pate's attack served to make that duty more onerous and the temptation to seclude herself that much stronger.
At Vine Street station, Pate was searched: nothing found but two keys and a handkerchief. The several witnesses to the assault who came with him to the station were questioned, and Pate was charged with assaulting the Queen. Whether that charge amounted to a High Misdemeanour or to High Treason was for Home Secretary George Grey to decide; an examination before him was scheduled at Whitehall for the next day. Pate, responding to the charge, asserted emphatically "those men cannot prove whether I struck her head or her bonnet," as if a little wire and woven horsehair on the Queen's head somehow prevented him from touching her, and mitigated his offense.
When he learned about Pate, Superintendent Charles Otway must surely have had the uncanny feeling that Victoria's assailants were following him. Ten years before, as Sergeant in A Division and special assistant to Inspector Pearce, he had worked on Oxford's case. As Inspector a year before, he was the one who searched Hamilton's rooms. All of the Queen's assailants had struck in A Division—until now. Otway had just been promoted to Superintendent of C Division, and the offense of queen-attacking seemed to cross Piccadilly just as he did.
Otway obviously took this case very seriously, and he decided to use to the full the resources of the Metropolitan Police. He therefore turned the investigation over not to his own officers in C Division, but rather to Scotland Yard, and to the top officer there: the chief of the Detective Branch, Inspector Charles Frederick Field. Field, already a legend, was very soon to become an even greater one, as his friend and admirer Charles Dickens would make him the most celebrated and recognizable officer of the Metropolitan Police. Within the next year, Dickens would write and publish in his _Household Words_ three adulatory essays about the Detective Branch, especially worshipful of Fields, and in 1852 Dickens would accord Field a literary immortality of sorts as his chief model for Inspector Bucket in _Bleak House_. Field was known for his roving eye, which caught all in a glance. The detective made the short walk from Scotland Yard to St. James's and 27 Duke Street, and up three floors to Pate's lodgings. He made note of Pate's obsessive neatness. He also confiscated a number of Pate's papers, but what these revealed about Pate Field ultimately kept to himself: he brought them to the Home Office examination the next day, but did not bring them forward.
At some point while he was held at C Division, Pate recognized a familiar face: one of the inspectors there had grown up in Wisbech, Pate's home town. The two talked. Pate could offer no motive for striking the Queen besides claiming "felt very low for some time past," but he did show regret.
"I wish to Heaven I had been at your right hand yesterday, and then this should not have happened," the inspector said to Pate.
"I wish to Heaven you had," Pate emphatically replied.
Pate did not sleep that night. Discernibly restless, unnerved by the shattering of his obsessive routine, he sat up and observed the comings and goings at the station house. He conversed with the officers about the cases of the criminals around him, but not about his own. None from his family visited him that night. They were, however, aware of his plight, and Robert Pate Senior was already taking steps on his son's behalf. Before Pate attended his examination, Pate Senior had instructed the family solicitor, Edward Hardisty, to retain a barrister, and instructed both to represent him at the Home Office.
At 12:15 the next day, Superintendent Otway personally escorted Pate out of the station, through a hooting mob, into a cab, and to Whitehall, and, after a few minutes of fretting in an anteroom, into the presence of George Grey. Pate Senior was not there; he would arrive from Wisbech later that afternoon. Both police commissioners were in attendance: Richard Mayne—now senior Chief Commissioner since the retirement of Charles Rowan earlier in the year—was to read the charge; beside him sat Rowan's replacement, Charles Hay. John Jervis, the Attorney General, was there to examine witnesses. As Pate sat and stared vacantly, Edward Hardisty entered the room with the barrister he had hurriedly retained, John Huddleston. Huddleston then applied to the Attorney General to act on Pate's behalf. Pate knew Hardisty well, but refused to show any sign of recognizing him on this day.
Jervis brought forward just enough witnesses—the equerry Grey, Renwick, Sergeant Silver—to connect Pate with the attack and to justify a remand. Pate, given the opportunity to question these witnesses, refused to break his silence. Then, surprisingly, Jervis requested that the examination be broken off for the present and resumed the next Tuesday. He apparently was deferring to Pate's defense lawyers, who were at least considering the possibility of an insanity plea, which meant assembling witnesses from outside London. John Huddleston wanted more time than that, requesting a postponement until Friday 5 July. Jervis agreed, and Grey allowed it; the witnesses were ordered to attend in a week, and an order to commit Pate to Clerkenwell prison was made out and placed in Superintendent Otway's hands. While this was being done, Pate drew up a list of books he wished transferred from his library at home to Clerkenwell. This, too, was allowed. Otway then led Pate out the front door of the Home Office and directly into an unruly mob, hissing, hooting, and shouting "Scoundrel!" and "Rascal!" Commissioner Hay had positioned a number of police before the Home Office to control the crowd, and these now were forced to rush ahead, extricate Pate, and set him in a cab. Otway jumped in, and they set out north for Clerkenwell.
Pate's attack, just like every attack upon the Queen, became, in the words of _The Times_ , the "absorbing topic of conversation" throughout London. But Pate's monopoly on the public attention was short-lived: during this last week of June 1850, all-absorbing topics followed hard upon one another.
There was the continuation of the Don Pacifico debate in the House of Commons: two more nights of engrossing oratory that recommenced even before Pate had struck the Queen. William Gladstone spoke that Thursday evening, attacking Palmerston's brutal nationalism with a visionary appeal to a brotherhood of nations, all holding to principles "consecrated by the universal assent of mankind." He derided Palmerston's analogy between modern Britons and ancient Romans as primitive: the Romans had recognized no civilization besides their own, holding down all other peoples with the "strong arm of power," and according themselves rights that they denied to all others. Gladstone's oration should have been a powerful corrective to Palmerston's self-defense, but the spell Palmerston cast upon the House on Tuesday was strong; Gladstone was interrupted often by Palmerston's enthusiastic supporters, as were all of Palmerston's opponents.
On Friday, the last night of the debate, public excitement reached its peak. Crowds crammed the avenues outside the entrances to the House. Three parliamentary heavyweights were to speak, and John Roebuck noted that "the House and country only wish to hear Peel, Lord John, and Dizzy; all others are only bores." The most exciting and most heartily cheered speech of the night, to the surprise of everyone, was not by any of these three, but by Alexander Cockburn, Queen's Counsel and the successful defender of Daniel McNaughtan seven years before. Cockburn deftly and with legal precision deflected Gladstone's attack, defending item by item Palmerston's actions in Greece and throughout Europe. He sat to vociferous cheers as his colleagues converged to congratulate him. It was the speech of his career. Palmerston himself thought it the best speech he had ever heard. Cockburn's timing could not have been better: the position of Solicitor General had just opened up. If John Russell had been considering Cockburn for the post before this, Cockburn's speech guaranteed he would get it.
Robert Peel, torn between his duty to speak out against Palmerston's reckless aggression and a sincere reluctance to see Russell's government fall, managed to chide Palmerston's policy and yet conciliate the Whig government. Despite his kind words for them, and his praise for Palmerston's speech, he made clear that he had to vote against Roebuck's motion on principle, and thus reiterated the point that he had made so forcefully in abolishing the Corn Laws, four years before: he would always value principle over party.
John Russell, speaking next, had an easy job of it, largely deferring to Palmerston and Cockburn for the factual argument, and pleading with the conservatives to respect his government's foreign policy, as he had always respected theirs in the past. Benjamin Disraeli's speech was the last of the debate. He stood up early Saturday morning, a tired man before an exhausted house—and he failed to impress. In a speech containing little of his trademark wit, he explained why he would vote as Peel did, for the diametrically opposed reason: putting party over principle. He only spoke, he made clear, out of duty to his colleagues the Protectionists; the House of Commons should reject Roebuck's motion approving of the government's foreign policy, he exhorted them, out of respect for the opposing motion in the House of Lords—put forward by Lord Stanley, leader of his party.
After a few words from Roebuck, the House divided: 310 ayes; 264 noes—a majority of 46. Russell's government survived—and Palmerston was more secure in the Foreign Office than ever. He would remain Victoria's and Albert's political _bête noir_ for another year and a half. At a celebratory dinner held a few weeks after the debate, 250 supporters would enthusiastically sing the national anthem and cheer vociferously the lines "Confound their politics, "Frustrate their knavish tricks," the knaves in this case completely different from the knaves in the minds of Covent Garden opera-goers the night of Pate's attack. Palmerston would resist Victoria's and Albert's attempts to remove him. Albert would make the first of these two weeks after the debate, rather foolishly resurrecting for Lord John Russell a sordid episode from Palmerston's past, when during the morally more relaxed time at Windsor around the time of Albert's arrival in 1840, one of the Queen's ladies in waiting found that an enamored Palmerston had crept into her bedroom one night. As Albert melodramatically put it, he "would have consummated his fiendish scheme by violence had not the miraculous efforts of his victim and such assistance attracted by her screams, saved her." An embarrassed Russell could only point out that this had happened ten years before and that at sixty-five years old, Palmerston would not likely behave that way again. Albert and Victoria, with the help of Stockmar, tried again a month later, setting out in a memo for Palmerston the behavior they expected in a foreign minister. Russell thought the memo so humiliating that Palmerston would have to resign rather than accept it, but Palmerston agreed to it, and met with Albert, tearfully promising him he would mend his ways. He then ignored the Queen's instructions completely. In September, he would embarrass the government by insulting General Haynau, a reactionary Austrian guest to the country. A year later, he would similarly embarrass his government by welcoming the Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth to England. He finally went too far in December 1851. When in France Louis Napoleon overthrew the French National Assembly in a coup d'état, and the British government committed itself to strict neutrality in the matter, Palmerston warmly congratulated the French Ambassador for Louis Napoleon's actions. Louis Napoleon was hardly a hero in Britain, and Palmerston's behavior for once would hardly earn him popular acclaim. John Russell, realizing this, demanded Palmerston's resignation—and Palmerston was out.* When the House voted in the early hours of 29 June 1850, however, he was invulnerable, and by far the most popular politician in Britain.
Commons adjourned that morning at four, and as John Roebuck walked out of the House and into the sunrise with his friend Sir David Dundas, he saw Peel ahead of them, making his way home to Whitehall Gardens. "I consider that man to be the happiest in England at this moment," Roebuck told Dundas, "for he has just voted with his party, and yet also in accordance with his own feelings and opinions."
Happy Peel might have been, but also tired and preoccupied: this Saturday morning he would devote to the service of Prince Albert and the Great Exhibition. After a short sleep, he breakfasted alone. His wife Julia was feeling unwell and so she remained in bed, reading a newspaper account of his speech. Impressed, she sent down to Peel a note with her congratulations. Peel then left to consult with Lyon Playfair. Playfair, a noted chemist and Peel's protégé of sorts, had been appointed upon Peel's recommendation Special Commissioner for the Exhibition, to serve as a liaison between the Commission and the provincial committees and as a general workhorse and problem-solver. Peel and Playfair discussed ways to overcome the obstacles that suddenly threatened to halt the project altogether. At around 11:00, Peel rode to the Palace of Westminster for a meeting of the Royal Commission. Prince Albert had arrived ahead of him and was showing the Prince of Prussia the not-yet-completed Houses of Parliament. Albert and Peel then joined Russell, Gladstone, and the other members of the Committee for a short but tense meeting. They discussed the mounting opposition to the Hyde Park site, and resolved that they would hold the Exhibition there or nowhere. Peel agreed to champion the site in Parliament and appeared to relish the prospect of applying pressure to his colleagues. "Depend upon it," he said, "the House of Commons is a timid body."
They discussed as well a dramatic alternative to the Building Committee's plans for a building to house the Exhibition. Several weeks before, as opposition to Brunel's plan grew, Joseph Paxton—head gardener of the Duke of Devonshire, designer of the Duke's spectacular greenhouse at Chatsworth, and a self-made press and railway tycoon—approached Henry Cole with a revolutionary idea for the Exhibition building: an enormous structure of glass set on an iron skeleton. Although the competition for a building was over, Cole suggested that he quickly draw up plans and submit them. Three days later, bored in the middle of a railway director's meeting in Derby, Paxton created the most famous doodle in history: the first sketch of his grand design, on blotting paper. Within a week, he had drawn up full plans. He returned with these to London on the twentieth and threw himself into a self-promotional blitz. On the train from Derby he had run into the engineer Robert Stevenson—of the Building Committee—and quickly gained his support. He met with the vice-chairman of the Commission, Earl Granville, who promised to submit the plan to the Commissioners. He met with Albert, and wrote afterwards "I believe nothing can stand against my plans, _everybody_ likes them." He also forwarded a set of plans to Peel. Peel warmly approved of the plan, and said so at this meeting. Had the Commission approved of Paxton's plans then and there, they would have, in a stroke, done much to ensure the Exhibition's popularity. They agreed instead that the Building Committee should decide the matter, and they referred Paxton's plans to them.
The Commission adjourned at 1:15. Peel returned home to work in his study. At around 5:00 he kissed his wife good-bye and set off with his groom for his customary ride around the Parks. The horse he mounted was new to him—an eight-year-old which a friend had purchased for him two months before, from Tattersall's. It later transpired that the horse had a long history of unruly behavior. Peel's coachman was suspicious about the horse, and had recommended Peel not ride it, but Peel disregarded him: he had ridden the horse for weeks now with no problem.
Peel and his groom passed through St. James's Park and stopped at Buckingham Palace, where Peel signed the visitor book, adding his name to the hundreds congratulating the Queen for weathering Pate's attack. Peel and his groom then remounted and rode to the top of Constitution Hill. Near Hyde Park Corner, next to the Palace garden wall, Peel stopped to greet two young ladies whom he knew. The ladies' groom rode a skittish mount. Peel's horse, unnerved, shied and then began to kick and buck violently. Peel flew forward over the horse's head and slammed face first onto the ground. Although he instantly lost consciousness, his reins remained wrapped around his hands and he yanked his horse toward him and onto him; one of the horse's knees crashed down upon Peel's shoulders and his back, smashing his collarbone, breaking a rib—and driving it into one of his lungs.
Two passersby ran to Peel and sat him up: his face, ashen and abraded, was unrecognizable. One man ran to the adjacent St. George's Hospital for medical assistance as several more came running up, among them two doctors, one of these Sir James Clark, the Queen's physician.
Peel began to come to. One of the men clustering about him, the Reverend Henry Mackenzie, flagged down an open carriage; the two ladies inside instantly offered it up to carry Peel back home. Peel was lifted into the carriage. The two men who had sat him up, as well as the two doctors, now supported Peel as the carriage slowly trundled down Constitution Hill, through St. James's, and to Whitehall Gardens. During the trip Peel suddenly became agitated and tried to stand up; the others in the carriage restrained him. He then sank into a stupor. At home, he revived again, enough to walk into his house, with assistance. Lady Peel was distraught. Overcome by pain, Peel fainted. He was brought into the downstairs dining-room and placed on a sofa; later, his doctors deciding he should not be moved, a patent hydraulic bed was set up in the same room.
Five doctors assembled to treat him. At 7:00 they released a bulletin: "Sir Robert Peel has met with a severe accident by falling from his horse. There is severe injury of one shoulder, with a fracture of the left-collar-bone. There is great reason to hope that there is no internal injury." They suspected a broken rib, but Peel's extreme pain made it impossible for them to investigate thoroughly.
Word of the fall spread quickly and London soon had a new all-absorbing topic of conversation. Albert and the Prince of Prussia rushed to Whitehall Gardens as soon as they heard of his fall. The next day Victoria, writing to Leopold, acknowledged that Peel's dire injury completely eclipsed Pate's assault upon her: "We have, alas! now another cause of much greater anxiety in the person of our excellent Sir Robert Peel, who, as you will see, has had a most serious fall, and though going on well at first, was very ill last night; thank God! he is better again this morning, but I fear still in great danger." "I cannot bear even to think of losing him," she added.
Peel knew the injury was fatal. Although his doctors were optimistic, Peel told them on the day of the accident that his injury was worse than they realized, and that he would not survive it. He lingered in agony for three days. Friends and colleagues called at the house regularly, among them the Duke of Wellington, as well as Prince George of Cambridge—whose own father, all now knew, was dying. Outside, the carriages of the rich clogged the streets, while, even more touchingly, the poor in great numbers showed that they had not forgotten that Peel was their champion, giving them cheap bread with the repeal of the Corn Laws. They took up a quiet vigil in Whitehall Place, "always there," according to the _Illustrated London News_ , "night and day":
That silent, solemn crowd betokened the unknown depth to which love and reverence for the great practical statesman had sunk in the minds of humble English men and women. Unknowing the significance of their own appearance, these poor folk were, in reality, the guard of honour accorded to the last hours of Sir Robert Peel—by the People.
On the morning of 2 July, Peel felt better. He ate a little and even walked around the room with assistance. In the afternoon, however, his condition worsened considerably. He began to drift in and out of consciousness. In the evening, the doctors gave up all hope. An old friend, the Bishop of Gibraltar, administered extreme unction. Weakening but largely past feeling pain, he held each of his children's hands in turn, and whispered his good-byes to them, the words "God bless you!" scarcely audible. His wife Julia, overwhelmed, was led from the room. At nine he slipped into unconsciousness, and never woke again. Two hours later, he died.
Peel's death, in the words of the diarist Charles Greville, "absorbed every other subject of interest," as everyone, it seemed, rich and poor, conservative, liberal, and radical—"on every side and in all quarters"—felt the loss deeply—surprisingly deeply, given that Peel was in life hated by the bulk of the conservatives and disliked by the Whigs; he had few genuine friends and was famous for his coldness. In death, sectarian bitterness evaporated and his limitations of personality were forgotten: he was remembered as the great man who transcended political party, guided only by the best interests of the British people. All suddenly realized they had lost a statesman without equal. "All persons agree that there has never been an instance of such general gloom and regret," wrote Baroness Bunsen.
Albert was devastated by Peel's death. "He has felt, and feels, Sir Robert's loss _dreadfully_ ," Victoria wrote Leopold; "he feels he has lost a second father." And he never needed Peel's advice or advocacy more than at that very moment, as the great project which was now inextricably linked with his name, and upon which his reputation now rested, seemed doomed to failure. The crucial vote was to take place on 4 July—two days after Peel's death: Colonel Sibthorp's motion that the Commission's choice of site be referred to a Parliamentary Committee. If the motion passed, the resulting delay would kill the Exhibition. On the morning of the vote, Albert wrote to his brother in despair:
Now our Exhibition is to be driven from London; the patrons who are afraid, the Radicals who want to show their power over the crown property (the Parks), _The Times_ , whose solicitor bought a house near Hyde Park, are abusing and insulting. This evening the decision is to be made. Peel, who had undertaken the defence, is no more, so we shall probably be defeated and have to give up the whole exhibition.
Colonel Sibthorp was in rare bombastic form during the debate that afternoon; if his energy was any indication, the Exhibition was as good as dead. Sibthorp laid into the greatest trash, fraud, and imposition "palmed upon" the people of Britain. The Exhibition would surely flood the country with "cheap and nasty trash" and attract the nation's criminal element to Hyde Park: "That being the case, he would advise persons residing near the park to keep a sharp look out after their silver forks and spoons and serving maids." But while Sibthorp had heretofore spoken for a growing movement, Robert Peel's death had changed everything. Before the debate began, Sir John Russell, his voice choking with emotion, paid tribute to Peel and to the deep love of country that had informed his every action. And in mid-debate Henry Labouchère, a member of the Royal Commission, reminded the House that assenting to the site was the very last public duty performed by Peel, "that eminent man, who never neglected any duty... which he considered conducive to the public good." Member after member deplored Sibthorp's fanatical opposition to the very idea of an Exhibition, and in the end Sibthorp's motion was crushed, 46 for and 166 against.* "The feeling of the house was completely altered," Lord John wrote to Albert the next day, "and all parties seemed to agree that Hyde Park was the best site. So it is to be hoped that no further interruption is to take place." Peel had won the day for Albert after all.
But Albert and the Royal Commission were not yet out of the woods. Money to guarantee the Exhibition was slow in coming, and the Building Committee's design was as unpopular as ever. Within days, however, Joseph Paxton succeeded in overcoming all obstacles. His iron-and-glass design had received a cold reception from the Exhibition's Building Committee, especially from Isam-bard Kingdom Brunel, who jealously defended his own design. And so on 6 July, Paxton went over their heads, appealing to the public by publishing his plan in the _Illustrated London News_. They loved his design as much as they reviled Brunel's. Still the Building Committee resisted, noting in their meeting of 11 July that Paxton's "peculiar" design would cost 10% more than a variation of their own stripped of Brunel's beloved dome. The next day the matter was all but resolved when Morton Peto, the wealthy building and railway contractor, in a single act put an end to the Exhibition's money troubles by putting up a £50,000 guarantee. That sizeable donation quickly opened the floodgates to others: in days, there was more than enough to guarantee the erection of an exhibition building. As a codicil to his offer, Peto wrote: "Perhaps I might take the liberty of saying that I consider the success of the Exhibition would be considerably increased by the adoption of Mr. Paxton's plan if it is not too costly." His suggestion was too weighty to ignore. On the sixteenth, the Building Committee met with the Royal Commission. Brunel's design was discarded, Paxton's embraced. "In all the matters which I had in hand," Albert was able to write Stockmar four days later from Osborne, "I had triumphant success."
Palmerston's triumph, Peel's death, the squabble about the site of the Exhibition: all had stolen attention from Pate, so that when he returned to complete his Home Office examination on Friday morning, the fifth of July, there was no large crowd outside to hoot or hiss him. Pate came in the company of Otway and Scotland Yard Detective Stephen Thornton. Pate was, as always, well dressed, but looked paler than he had before. His only complaint about his imprisonment—indeed, his only recorded utterance that day—was that his health suffered from lack of walking; cut off from his obsessive perambulations, he had instead spent most of the last week absorbed in his books. For the most part Pate sat with a vacant stare, drawn deeply into himself, largely oblivious to the questioning of the Attorney General or the maneuvers of his own counsel, with whom he hadn't spoken since his arrest.
The examination began at noon, and was largely a reprise of the first examination—several old and new witnesses to reestablish the fact that the Queen was hit, and that Pate was the one hitting her. Only the Queen's physician, James Clark, had anything new to add, speaking to the extent of the Queen's injury: Pate had indeed done damage to the royal forehead, causing swelling and a severe bruise and breaking the skin, causing royal blood to flow. Such an injury was technically enough for a charge of High Treason, but at this point, Attorney General Jervis and the Home Secretary had agreed that Pate would stand trial under Peel's act, for a high misdemeanour. Huddleston, Pate's attorney, said little, remarking that he would reserve his defense for Pate until another time. Given the charge, Pate could have obtained bail—but he did not apply for it. Commitment papers were drawn up, and Otway and Thornton led Pate to a cab bound for Newgate.
Pate's defense was extremely active during this time, setting up—if not quite an insanity defense, then a defense in which insanity would play a role. Hardisty and Huddleston had already procured for expert testimony the two most noted professional witnesses to insanity of the day: Edward Thomas Monro, still chief physician at Bethlem, as he was when he testified at McNaughtan's trial, and John Conolly, who had testified at Oxford's. Monro visited Pate twice at Clerkenwell and three times in Newgate; Conolly likely accompanied him on some of these visits. Both became convinced that Pate was insane.
And during this time it became clear that Robert Pate Senior, had indeed obtained the best legal representation for his son that money could buy: Alexander Cockburn, Q.C., architect of McNaughtan's insanity defense. Cockburn had indeed by this time been offered the position of Solicitor General by a grateful government. As it happens, all three principal attorneys in the Pate case looked forward to impending promotion. Because the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cottenham, had retired, a ladder of legal appointments had opened up; Cockburn was to become Solicitor General, Solicitor General John Romilly was to become Attorney General, and Attorney General John Jervis was to become Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. The promotions all around complicated the timing of Pate's trial: in order for Cockburn to be eligible to defend him, or Jervis to prosecute him, they would need to finish before the promotions took effect. Attorney General Jervis, then, was compelled to hurry the trial along, requesting the presiding judge, Baron Alderson, to schedule Pate's trial for the next morning, 11 July. Pate thus came before the bar less than a week after he was charged.
Expecting Pate's trial to be as overcrowded as those of some of his predecessors, the sheriffs instituted the usual ticket system. They needn't have bothered: the courtroom on that morning was full but not crowded.* At 10:00 Pate entered the dock every bit a gentleman, in dress and in manner. With perfect composure he bowed slightly to the justices Alderson, Patteson, and Talfourd. The charge was read, and Pate loudly pleaded not guilty.
For the prosecution—Attorney General Jervis, Solicitor General Romilly, and three others**—the task was an easy one. That Pate had struck the Queen was hardly in question; the only true question was whether Pate was legally insane at the moment of the attack. But an acquittal on the grounds of insanity would in effect net Pate the virtual life sentence of confinement in Bethlem at the Queen's pleasure, a worse penalty on the face of it than the maximum sentence allowed under Peel's 1842 law, seven years' transportation. While confinement for an insanity acquittal might originally have been intended as therapeutic care, not punishment, neither the judges, nor the defense, nor the prosecution looked at it that way, the Attorney General noting to the jury during the trial that the effect of such an acquittal "would be that he would be imprisoned for the rest of his life." The prosecution's strategy, then, was simply to bring forth a few witnesses to connect Pate with the cane, and the cane with the blow to the Queen's forehead, and to do little to contest any evidence that Pate was insane. They had sent no medical experts to interview Pate or counterbalance Monro's or Conolly's testimony. The defense witnesses and their testimony, therefore, were all familiar from the Home Office examination: the equerry Grey, Sergeant-Footman Renwick, Sgt. Silver, Samuel Cowling (a bystander when Pate attacked), and James Clark.
Alexander Cockburn and John Huddleston for the defense, on the other hand, were in a fiendishly difficult position. Since they could not contest the fact that Pate had struck Victoria, they could not in effect win their case. If Pate were found guilty, they lost. And if he were found not guilty by reason of insanity, they lost, as he would face what amounted to a life sentence in Bethlem. As they could not win, they could only hope to make the loss as slight as possible. Therefore, Cockburn could not hope to recreate his triumph in McNaughtan's case. In 1843 he had secured McNaughtan's acquittal brilliantly, by redefining the legal definition of insanity altogether and then demonstrating that McNaughtan's state of mind fit that definition. Since McNaughtan faced the death penalty, a lifetime in Bethlem was indeed a victory. For Pate's trial, the legal definition of insanity had been set by the Law Lords in the wake of McNaughtan's trial: if Pate was aware that what he did was wrong, he could not be considered legally insane. Cockburn now did nothing to challenge that definition, and little to establish that Pate was unaware of the morality of his action. Indeed, Cockburn in his opening admitted to the jury that he simply could not prove "that there were certain and safe grounds for believing that the prisoner at the bar was not enabled to discriminate between right and wrong"—and that "he did not entertain very sanguine expectations as to the result" of the coming testimony as to Pate's insanity. Cockburn's hesitation must have confused the jury—and indeed would confuse anyone who did not realize that Cockburn and Huddleston had no intention of obtaining an insanity acquittal for Pate. They _wanted_ to lose the case. Cockburn's oratory, the string of witnesses to Pate's bizarre actions, the medical experts—were all for the benefit of the judges and not the jury—not to gain an acquittal, but to gain the lightest sentence possible after a conviction. While the testimony, Cockburn argued,
... might fall short of that degree of proof of insanity which would be necessary to give [Pate] immunity from the penalties of law, still the jury ought to be satisfied and their lordships who tried the case ought to be satisfied of this, that though some degree of intelligence remained to the prisoner, still it was clear that his mind was in a great degree deranged; and that if responsible at all, he was not responsible in the same degree as if he were of perfect sanity.
Under the 1842 law, judges had a great deal of leeway in their sentencing—from a maximum seven years' transportation, to the minimum of the briefest of prison sentences, with or without a whipping. Cockburn and Huddleston attempted to take advantage of this with an extremely risky strategy, appealing to the judges' sense of pity: Pate was not vicious, but "unfortunate," and did not deserve to be visited with the full severity of the law.
The defense presented a host of witnesses to Pate's traumas and idiosyncrasies while in the army: his morbid reaction to the death of his dog and his horses, his growing paranoia about the army cook and messman leagued to poison him, the bricks and stones in his stomach. Several testified as to his obsessive perambulations first at Putney Heath and Barnes Common, and then through the Parks. Pate's valet, Charles Dodman, enumerated what he considered Pate's many personal eccentricities at home: plunging his head into a four-gallon basin of water upon rising; bathing in a mixture of whiskey, camphor, and water; reading nursery rhymes; constantly singing badly and loudly enough to irritate his neighbors (and to amuse their servants). Visitors who met him at Dr. Startin's house testified to his maniacal and antisocial behavior there. Finally, Conolly and Monro agreed that Pate was of unsound mind.
Both the judges and the prosecution responded to this litany of oddity by adhering strictly to the McNaughtan Rules. Any evidence that did not directly address the question of whether Pate could tell right from wrong at the moment of the attack was not relevant to them. When Charles Mahon, better known as the "O'Gorman Mahon," testified that in his opinion Pate was a "maniac... the frequent subject of remark amongst myself and [my] companions," one of the judges asked him "you think he would not do a wrong act, because he would know it to be wrong?" "Certainly," Mahon answered, with that word rendering the rest of his evidence useless.
With the two medical witnesses, the Attorney General took pains to demonstrate that their conception of insanity was not at all the legal conception of insanity—that though much of what was wrong with Pate could be construed as mental illness, as long as Pate was aware of the immorality of his action he was criminally responsible for it. When, for example, Dr. Conolly offered a full diagnosis of his mental debility—"he presents an example of what is not at all uncommon to me, of persons who are very devoid of mental power... who consequently persevere in no pursuit, have no object, and are unfit for all the ordinary duties of life"—Jervis shifted the focus to Pate's legal responsibility, Conolly admitting in response to his question "If you were to speak of an action that was decidedly right or wrong he would very clearly understand it, as clearly as I should myself." After Monro's assertion that Pate suffered delusions in the past, Jervis asked him "Is he, in your judgment, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong?" "In many things, certainly," Monro replied. Both Conolly and Monro attempted to explain that Pate could distinguish between right and wrong but was still not responsible for his action since he was at that moment a slave to an impulse he could not control. He was "subject to sudden impulses of passion," Conolly claimed; Monro maintained that "it frequently happens with persons of diseased mind that they will perversely do what they know to be wrong." The notion that an irresistible impulse negated criminal responsibility was not new; indeed, it was a pillar of Cockburn's defense of McNaughtan. But it was the pillar that the Law Lords ignored when formulating their rules, and it was clear that it meant little to the judges now.
Both Conolly and Monro had made clear that Pate knew exactly what he was doing; given this fact, their personal opinions of his unsoundness was irrelevant and, worse, inappropriate in a court of law. When Monro stated his judgment of Pate's mental illness, Baron Alderson gave him a tongue-lashing that showed that, in Alderson's mind at least, the status of the expert medical testimony had not changed since Oxford's trial ten years before. "Be so good, Dr. Monro," Alderson snapped at him,
... as not to take upon yourself the functions of the judges and the jury. If you can give us the results of your scientific knowledge upon the point we shall be glad to hear you; but while I am sitting upon the bench I will not permit any medical witness to usurp the functions of both the judge and the jury.
In his closing statement, the Attorney General demonstrated that he was well aware of the defense's attempt to soften Pate's sentence, and he attempted to head it off. Telling the jury—and more importantly, the judges—that the defense was seeking a more lenient sentence because of Pate's mental weakness, he exhorted them not to mitigate Pate's sentence in the least—Pate was a dangerous man, and if he were soon free, probably "unwatched and unrestrained," he would "renew his dangerous and violent proceedings." Either convict him with a full punishment, or acquit him by reason of insanity and thus restrain him from further mischief.
Baron Alderson agreed with Jervis, and made that extremely clear in his summation to the jury. That Pate had struck the Queen, he told them, was indisputable, and they were thus left with a single question: Was Pate of sound mind when he hit her? He argued that Pate might well be insane but still punishable if his insanity had no bearing on the crime itself. As examples, he noted that a man who killed a man under the delusion that that man was trying to kill him was not criminally responsible, while a man who killed another man while suffering the delusion that his own head was made of glass was still responsible for his crime. He then rephrased the single question for the jury: "Did this unfortunate gentleman know it was wrong to strike the Queen on the forehead?" The notion of an irresistible impulse he dismissed out of hand as "one which would never be listened to by any sane jury." "A man might say that he picked a pocket from some uncontrollable impulse," Alderson wryly observed, "and in that case the law would have an uncontrollable impulse to punish him for it."
It was now 3:20 in the afternoon. The jury consulted for a few minutes, and then retired to discuss the case further. Their decision should have been an easy one, as not a shred of evidence suggested that Pate had been unaware that what he did was wrong. But the defense's abundance of evidence as to Pate's strange behaviors and mental deficiencies apparently complicated their deliberations: McNaughtan Rules or not, some of the jurors must have wondered if the man deserved an acquittal on the grounds of insanity. The jury deliberated for nearly four hours—a long time in a Victorian court of law—before agreeing on their verdict: guilty.
In passing judgment, Baron Alderson noted Pate's eccentric habits, his "differing from other men," his mental affliction. Indeed, he opined that "you are as insane as it is possible for a person to be who is capable of distinguishing between right and wrong." For all that, he told Pate, "you are to be pitied." But none of this mitigated the seriousness of the crime: a soldier striking a woman, and worse, the Queen—"a lady entitled to the respect of the whole country by her virtues and her exalted position." Cockburn and Huddleston had erred in considering that the judges might lessen the sentence out of pity for their client. Alderson, rather, threw the book at him, imposing the maximum sentence of seven years' transportation—the longest time he could prevent Pate from doing mischief. Pate would not be subject to the "disgraceful punishment of whipping," Alderson told him, because of "the station of your family and your own position." Alderson's turn of phrase here was unfortunate, leading several who read the trial in the newspapers the next day, including an angry member of Parliament, to conclude that the court had given Pate special treatment because of his social status. This was simply not the case, as the law was clear: whipping could not be added to a sentence of transportation; it could only be a humiliating addition to a shorter term of imprisonment. If whipping had been involved, Alexander Cockburn could have considered himself a winner in this his final case as Queen's Counsel. Instead, he had lost, and had lost badly.
Pate heard the sentence without any emotion, turned, and without the usual embellishment or excitement in his gait, he walked down the tunnel and back to Newgate.
Pate was, on the next day, transferred—as were all prisoners sentenced to transportation—across town to Pimlico, by the Thames, to towering and stinking Millbank Prison—"one of the most successful realizations, on a large scale, of the ugly in architecture," Henry Mayhew said of it. Once Pate was there, all similarities to the circumstances of other transportees ended. For them, Mill-bank was the starting point of several years of incarceration—a launching point for Pentonville, Portland, or Portsmouth prisons, or to hard labor in the naval dockyards and to confinement in the dreaded prison ships, the Hulks. William Hamilton had passed through Millbank a year before and was still working his way through the system: his ship to Australia would not sail for another four years. Pate, unlike Hamilton, was the son of a rich man, and though father and son had been estranged, after the attack Robert Pate Senior seemed determined to obtain for his son the best that money could buy. Having failed at obtaining a good verdict, he had better luck at buying a gentler imprisonment and an earlier voyage to Van Diemen's Land.
While Pate, given his history of self-seclusion, might not have minded the usual solitary confinement experienced by prisoners in this, their first stage of what the government euphemistically termed "assisted exile," his weeks at Millbank were rather passed in catered comfort, if an irate letter to the _Daily News_ is accurate. According to this letter, Pate was given an officer's room and an officer to attend upon him, had access to the governor, and had a separate exercise yard. He fed on mutton chops, and, extraordinarily, was allowed to wear his own linen and was measured for a custom-made uniform by the prison's master tailor. It all sounds like more than even Pate Senior could buy, and perhaps some of it was: according to another account, Pate spent his time at Millbank in the infirmary, placed there after the Home Secretary ordered him examined, consequent to the medical testimony during his trial. "Pate, we are informed, is in a very delicate state of health, and he employs his time by writing letters in different languages." In either case, his introduction to a convict's life was cushioned.
He was quietly removed from the prison on Monday the fifth of August to Portsmouth, where his ship, the convict ship _William Jardine_ , awaited him. He sailed on the twelfth. He left behind him a life of delusion, obsession, compulsion, paranoia, disgrace, and heartbreaking loneliness in London. He could only hope for something better in Van Diemen's Land.
And, amazingly enough, he found it.
*The narrow entry and exit gates still exist outside Cambridge House, now 94 Piccadilly. From 1866 until 1999, Cambridge House housed the Naval and Military Club, familiarly known as the "In and Out Club" because of the markings on these two gates.
*Seventeen years later, Victoria told Home Secretary Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, after complaining about Pate's attack, "firearms she had not minded, as if they missed there was nothing to trouble you, and a moving carriage prevented a good aim" (Gathorne-Hardy 1:244).
*Within two months, Palmerston had his revenge on Russell, moving to attach an amendment which the government opposed to a bill; the amendment passed and Russell resigned the next day. "I have had my tit-for-tat with John Russell," Palmerston wrote (St. Aubyn 255).
*An amendment, moving the abandonment of the Hyde Park site altogether, fell nearly as badly: 47 for and 166 against.
*Yet another distraction of attention from Pate had occurred three days before: the Duke of Cambridge had finally died on 8 July, throwing Court and polite society into full mourning.
**Welsby, Bodkin, and Clark.
_eighteen_
GREAT EXHIBITION
It was the happiest day of her life. "I wish you _could_ have witnessed the 1 _st May_ 1851," she gushed to Uncle Leopold—"the _greatest_ day in our history, the _most beautiful_ and _imposing_ and _touching_ spectacle ever seen, and the triumph of my beloved Albert." The day began with a birthday celebration: it was her son Arthur's first. That meant it was the Duke of Wellington's birthday as well—his eighty-second—and in the afternoon the old man came to the infant to exchange presents. But the day was truly Albert's, the day on which by his talent and ingenuity he transcended his foreign origin to achieve a sort of national apotheosis. Today was the opening day of his great project, the Great Exhibition. Finally, the world understood his inestimable value as Victoria always had. "Albert's dearest name is immortalised with this _great_ conception, _his_ own," Victoria wrote; " _his_ own, and my _own_ dear country _showed_ she was _worthy_ of it."
From early in the morning, the crowds began to assemble in numbers simply too great to count, forming a sea of humanity stretching from the east façade of Buckingham Palace, up Constitution Hill, and covering Hyde Park—boats covering the surface of the Serpentine, boys flocking precariously upon the groaning branches of the Park's trees, multitudes crammed into the windows and onto the roofs of Knightsbridge houses. At the center of it all was Paxton's amazing Crystal Palace, 1,851 feet long and 408 feet wide—more than three times the area of the new Houses of Parliament—900,000 shimmering square feet of glass, packed full with treasures from around the world. At nine, the doors opened and twenty-five thousand season ticket holders made a mad scramble for the north transept of the building to vie for space near the great crystal fountain, where a throne and dais had been set up for the opening ceremony. The crowd swept away the barriers there, but a party of Royal Sappers soon restored order, and the thousands more calmly found places throughout the building, the women taking the seats provided for them, the men standing behind; all craning their necks to watch for august arrivals. The Queen and Prince would be arriving, and the ceremony would begin, at noon.
The universal sense of joy and excitement on this day belied the fact that strident criticism of the Exhibition had continued on long after Parliament agreed to the Hyde Park site and Paxton's design had been adopted, a year before. The irrepressible Colonel Sibthorp had been carping at the project ever since, praying for a hailstorm to bring the building down, and raising Cassandra cries about multitudes of foreigners, "thieves and pickpockets and whoremongers" who would, come May, pollute the West End. _John Bull_ magazine agreed that foreigners, less emotionally restrained than the British and less hygienic to boot, would bring moral and physical contagion to London: "We have invited the pestilence into our dwellings, and we shall have to submit to its ravages." Albert in particular suffered from these attacks, and he wrote with exhaustion and exasperation to his grandmother in Coburg, two weeks before the opening,
I am more dead than alive from overwork. The opponents of the Exhibition work with might and main to throw all the old women into panic and drive myself crazy. The strangers, they give out, are certain to commence a thorough revolution here, to murder Victoria and myself and to proclaim the Red Republic in England; the plague is certain to ensue from the confluence of such vast multitudes, and to swallow up those whom the increased price of everything has not already swept away. For all this I am responsible, and against all this I have to make efficient provision.
These fears and rumors flew abroad to the receptive ears of the autocrats of Europe. The Tsar refused to issue passports to the Russian nobility. The King of Prussia hesitated in allowing his brother and heir, the Prince of Prussia, to attend with his family after the King of Hanover wrote him excoriating this "rubbishy" Exhibition. "I am not easily given to panicking," said Hanover, "but I confess to you that I would not like anyone belonging to me exposed to the imminent perils of these times." When the King wrote about these fears to Albert, the Prince replied with annoyed irony, listing all the supposed threats brought on by the Exhibition: the collapse of the building, destroying visitors, a scarcity of food in London, the reappearance of the Black Death, infection by the "scourges of the civilised and uncivilised world," the vengeance of an angry God. "I can give no guarantee against these perils, nor am I in a position to assume responsibility for the possibly menaced lives of your Royal relatives." Frederick William relented; the Prince of Prussia and his family were Victoria's and Albert's special guests at the opening.
Many feared for Victoria's personal safety on this day; the Duchess of Kent was not the only one terrified at the prospect of her daughter going out among the masses. Victoria's government, as well, was nervous. Two weeks before, the Executive Committee of the Exhibition—in consultation with Albert's courtiers—decided that the Queen would open the Exhibition in a small private ceremony; the public would be admitted later in the day. The skittishness of everyone, including the Queen, was understandable, as this sort of intimate contact between public and monarch had never before been tried. This wasn't a levee, drawing room, or court, in which contact was limited to those of high birth. The memory of Pate's attack was still fresh in the minds of the Queen and Albert, as well as their advisers. If the event were to be public, the Queen would be surrounded by those there not by the grace of God but by the price of admission; any man with the 3 guineas (3 pounds, 3 shillings) to buy a season ticket* could take his place quite literally within striking distance of Victoria. The public responded to the plan of a private ceremony with anger. The _Daily News_ blasted that the Commissioners could not have come to "a more impolitic, a more absurd, or a more ludicrous resolution." "Surely," stated the _Times_ , "Queen Victoria is not Tiberius or Louis XI, that she should be smuggled out of a great glass carriage into a great glass building under cover of the truncheons of the police and the broadswords of the Life Guards? Where most Englishmen are gathered together there the Queen of England is most secure!" In the face of overwhelming public pressure, Victoria and Albert changed their minds, and Victoria herself decided to open the ceremony to all season ticket holders.
And so on this May Day 1851, Victoria and Albert, hand in hand with the Princess Royal and the Prince of Wales, stepped into the ninth and last carriage of the royal cortege, and rode out into the largest crowd by far they had ever seen—as Victoria put it, a "densely crowded mass of human beings, in the highest good humor and most enthusiastic." The carriages were closed, perhaps in deference to security, but just as likely because of the falling rain. As they approached the Crystal Palace, however, the dark clouds gave way to the proverbial Queen's weather, and the noonday sun glistened upon the Crystal Palace. They stepped out at Rotten Row and entered the Palace as a sapper on the roof raised the royal standard. "The glimpse of the transept through the iron gates," Victoria wrote, "the waving palms, flowers, statues, myriads of people filling the galleries and seats around, with the flourish of trumpets as we entered, gave us a sensation which I can never forget, and I felt much moved."
When the Queen ascended with her family to the throne, two organs burst into the national anthem, sung by six hundred voices—the massed choirs of the Chapel Royal, St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, among others. Albert then left his wife to join the Commissioners. He approached the dais and presented an address to the Queen. This was unfortunately tedious—to all but Victoria, to whom it was her husband's well-deserved moment in the sun. Victoria made a short reply, and the organ and choir broke into a sublime rendition of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.
And at that moment, in the middle of the happiest day of the Queen's life, she experienced a happy breach of security and a benign assault. From out of the ranks of the diplomats stepped a Chinese man decked out in full native costume. He walked to the base of the throne and bowed, repeatedly and deeply, obeisance that the Queen acknowledged graciously. He had been standing among the dignitaries for hours, and had been seen earlier in the day kowtowing to the Duke of Wellington. But no one knew who he was: the Chinese had not even sent a delegation to the Exhibition. The Lord Chamberlain, perplexed as to what to do with the man, consulted with Victoria and Albert. They recommended that he join the diplomats who were then forming up for the great procession through the Exhibition. And so he amiably marched as the impromptu Chinese ambassador. After the ceremony his identity was revealed: he was He-Sing, the owner of a Chinese junk moored on the Thames—a "Museum of Curiosities" open to the public for a shilling. His intrusion upon the royal presence, one of the most memorable moments of the ceremony, turned out to be an act of self-promotion nearly as effective as Joseph Paxton's had been.
Victoria held Bertie's hand, Albert held Vicky's, and the four proceeded around the nave and transepts of the Exhibition. The plan had been to keep the public well clear of their route, but everyone advanced to the very edge of the red-carpeted path around the building, and so the royal family walked, hemmed in by thousands, many with tears in their eyes, all cheering deafeningly and waving handkerchiefs. In a cartoon, _Punch_ caught the scene of the four royals strolling happily among the joyful public, the cartoon's caption lampooning the groundless fears that the Queen put to rest: "HER MAJESTY, as She Appeared on the FIRST of MAY, Surrounded by 'Horrible Conspirators and Assassins.'"
Besides the multitudes who cheered her, the Queen could see little else: ahead of her the touching sight of the Duke of Wellington and the Marquis of Anglesey, the heroes of Waterloo, walking arm in arm; towering above her, sculptures such as August Kiss's _Amazon_. She would in the months ahead come back repeatedly to view the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the model of Liverpool docks, the eighty-bladed penknife, the massive steam engines, Mr. Colt's newfangled revolver from America, and the Exhibition's thirteen thousand other displays. Today, it was the people she remembered, in this unprecedented mingling—in what could be justly called the first ever royal walkabout. With this procession, Victoria and Albert declared the beginning of a truly modern monarchy, one in which their legitimacy rested upon the goodwill of the people. It was a unique event, Victoria knew, "a thousand times superior" to her coronation.
Half an hour later, the royal family returned to the throne. Albert spoke to the Lord Chamberlain, who in a booming voice declared the Exhibition open, and a hundred cannons roared outside. Albert was visibly emotional, and the Queen noticed her Home Secretary was crying. They then returned through the hundreds of thousands, a ride, the Queen declared, "equally satisfactory,—the crowd enthusiastic, the order perfect." Back at Buckingham Palace, the royal couple inaugurated a new and enduring tradition, walking out for the first time on the royal balcony to greet the shouting masses.*
Victoria knew: she had reached the high point of her co-ruler-ship with Albert. "It was and is a day to live for ever," she wrote in her journal. "God bless my dearest Albert, God bless my dearest country, which has shown itself so great to-day! One felt so grateful to the great God, who seemed to pervade all and to bless all!"
*Or any woman with 2 guineas (2 pounds, 2 shillings).
*The balcony and the entire east façade of Buckingham Palace had been constructed in an expansion just four years before.
_Part Four_
TRIUMPH
_nineteen_
WHAT DOES SHE DO WITH IT?
On 6 November 1871, Charles Wentworth Dilke, second Baronet of that name, then a young Member of Parliament and brimful with confidence, gave a speech to an overflow crowd of working men in a lecture hall in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His controversial words about Victoria and her family both established him for a time as the people's champion and touched off an impassioned national reaction. He began his speech with a subject that failed to stir the crowd: equal representation for all voters. But when he turned from representation to royalty, the excitement began.
Dilke carefully calculated the cost to maintain British royalty—the privy purse, the household expenses, annuities for the Queen and her nine children, servants' pensions, palaces, the cost of royal protection—and the enormous cost of the royal yachts: it all came to a million a year. And for what? "A vast number of totally useless officials," for one thing, whom Dilke listed to howls of laughter: "Chamberlains, Controllers, Masters of Ceremonies, Marshals of the Household, Grooms of the Robes, Lords-in-Waiting, Grooms-in-Waiting, Gentlemen Ushers...." Then there were several court painters, no fewer than thirty-two doctors, a High Almoner, a Sub Almoner, a Hereditary Grand Almoner—even a Hereditary Grand Falconer. And the list went on. In short, for their million, the public subsidized a host of unnecessary sinecures, "made use of for political purposes," and thus guaranteeing political corruption. At one time, of course, all of that money had had a visible result, allowing the maintenance of a splendid Court. But now where does the money go, since the Queen lives in seclusion and "there is no Court at all"? "Has there not been," Dilke asked, "a diversion of pubic moneys amounting to malversation?"
He then questioned a claim that the Queen's former Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, had made in defending the Queen before his Hughenden constituents: the Queen's duties were "multifarious," "weighty," and "unceasing"; her days were filled with reading and signing every single dispatch emanating from the government. But, asked Dilke, of what value was that labor? In signing these dispatches, the Queen might either disagree with her Ministers, subverting the will of government, or she might acquiesce to every dispatch, demonstrating no will whatsoever. "If we adopt the latter alternative, it is one little flattering to the intelligence of the Sovereign whose character Mr. Disraeli has described; and if we adopt the former, it affords us a view of Constitutional Monarchy in which it is impossible to distinguish it from the autocracy that all of us condemn." Moreover, the business of sending dispatches to the Queen had become an enormous waste of time and labor, as every dispatch, as well as a member of government in residence, had to be sent to the Queen at her preferred and distant residences, Osborne and Balmoral—rather than to Windsor and Buckingham Palace, palaces "maintained for her at great cost," but which she avoided.
The huge and unnecessary royal expenditure, Dilke argued, was worse than waste—it was mischief, a relic of the power of birth over the power of merit. Perhaps, he suggested in his rousing closing, it was time to put an end to it all:
... we are told that a limited Monarchy works well. I set aside, in this speech, the question of whether a Republic would work better; but I confess freely that I doubt whether, if the charges to which I have to-night alluded are well founded, the monarchy should not set its house in order. (Loud applause.) There is a widespread belief that a Republic here is only a matter of education and time. (Great cheering.) It is said that some day a Commonwealth will be our Government.... Well, if you can show me a fair chance that a Republic here will be free from the political corruption that hangs about the Monarchy, I say, for my part—and I believe the middle classes in general will say—let it come. (Cheers.)
Within days, newspapers across the nation reported—and for the most part, reviled—Dilke's speech. Victoria herself was furious, both that such deplorable political sentiments could be uttered in public by a Member of Parliament, and that the government itself—a Liberal government in 1871, to whose policies Dilke, the radical member from Chelsea, largely adhered—did little to nothing to contradict or condemn Dilke's words. Two weeks after the speech, she wrote to her Prime Minister, William Gladstone, deploring the recent spate of "Gross misstatements & fabrications injurious to the credit of the Queen & to the Monarchy" and asking "whether he or at least some of his Colleagues shld not take an opportunity of reprobating in very strong terms such language."
Replying solicitously, Gladstone suggested that responding strongly to republican views would lend them a gravity they did not deserve, and would tend "to exasperate and harden such persons as composed the Newcastle Meeting." Nonetheless, he assured the Queen that he considered the matter one of "grave public importance." It certainly was. In 1871, republicanism as an ideology and a movement threatened Victoria's monarchy more than it had at any other time since she took the throne. While it was true that only a minority of her subjects were republicans, "a few years ago," Gladstone reminded the Queen, "that minority (so far as he knows) did not exist," and "the causes... that have brought it into existence may lead to its growth." In 1871, republicanism had become "a distemper," as Gladstone put it, and the "Royalty question" was one of the most vexing problems with which his ministry had to deal.
There were many causes for the unpopularity of the monarchy and the growing sense that it might simply be dispensed with. The economy had slumped since 1866, and unemployment was high, particularly in London where it was exacerbated by an influx of migrants from the countryside. The growing trend toward democracy, demonstrated in the landmark Reform Act of 1867, which nearly doubled eligible voters and dipped eligibility down to a much larger segment of the urban working class, created among many an urge for more. The fall of Emperor Louis Napoleon (now in exile in England) and the establishment of a French Republic led to the spontaneous generation of dozens of republican clubs across the nation: ready-made and enthusiastic audiences for republican speakers such as Charles Bradlaugh and trade union leader George Odger.
But much more than Bradlaugh, Odger, or Napoleon III, it was the royal family, and particularly Victoria herself, who had produced this, the strongest surge of republicanism in the nineteenth century. They themselves had done much to make the monarchy appear useless. "To speak in rude and general terms," Gladstone had put it the year before, "the Queen is invisible, and the Prince of Wales is not respected." By 1871, the relationship with the British public, which Victoria had so carefully cultured in the first part of her reign, had been broken—had indeed shattered a decade before, at the end of Victoria's _annus horribilus_ of 1861.
Victoria's family was complete then, her ninth and last child, Beatrice, having been born in 1857. And Albert in 1861 was still Victoria's all-in-all—still her best friend, closest adviser, and the unrelenting (though increasingly exhausted) champion of her monarchy. The once-hated Lord Palmerston was their Prime Minister then, but their conflict with him had ceased when he took the reigns of government during the Crimean War and conducted business completely in accord with their views. But the happiest decade of Victoria's life, which began with the Exhibition year of 1851, came to an abrupt end on 16 March 1861, when her mother, the Duchess of Kent, died at Frogmore of cancer. Victoria was plunged immediately into a chasm of grief, and then into a long-lasting depression, from which Albert devoted much of the rest of the year weaning her.
In 1861, the oldest of the royal children were reaching maturity. Vicky, Princess Royal, had in 1858 at seventeen married Frederick William of Prussia. Their first son Willie (the future Kaiser) was born a year later. Bertie, the Prince of Wales, nineteen years old in 1861, had been from early childhood a source of great concern for his parents. From his earliest childhood it had become clear, to their mortification, that any Saxe-Coburg traits—that is, his father's manifold and unparalleled virtues—were absent in the boy, and that he was, rather, utterly a Hanoverian, reflecting the worst of his mother's uncles' vices—sensuality, intemperance, and indolence among them. Albert was determined to train the Hanoverian vices out of his son with a rigorous course of study; any attempts by Bertie to rebel were met by his tutors—with Albert's encouragement—with boxed ears or a rap across the knuckles with a stick. More than this, his parents, having forgotten the misery Victoria had gone through under the restrictive Kensington system, set severe limits on Bertie's social contacts. Bertie spent the first part of 1861 in oversupervised study at Christ's College, Oxford, and for the last part of the year he faced more of the same at Trinity College, Cambridge. During the intervening summer break, however, he enjoyed an element of freedom while training with the Grenadier Guards at Curragh Camp in Ireland, having there what was likely his first sexual experience, as one night some boisterous fellow officers smuggled Nellie Clifden, a young actress, into his quarters. A brief affair ensued.
Under the prevailing double standard of the time, such wild oat-sowing on the part of sons would typically be tolerated by most parents as a (perhaps unfortunate) fact of life. But Bertie was in no way typical—he was the heir to the throne, and the son, as far as his mother was concerned, of the paragon among men. Albert considered Bertie's disgusting liaison to be the crowning one of all of Bertie's disappointments, proof positive that Albert's efforts to train his son away from the excesses of his Hanover uncles had failed. More than this, Albert despairingly considered that all of his life's work of restoring the prestige of the monarchy had been undone by his son virtually overnight. The affair, thanks to Nellie's boasting, had been the talk of all London before it reached Windsor Castle. When Albert learned of and confirmed the story at the beginning of November, he wrote his son an anguished letter "upon a subject which has caused me the greatest pain I have yet felt in this life." Albert accused his son of surrendering the entire reputation of the royal family to an actress. What if Clifden was pregnant? If the Prince of Wales denied paternity, she could take him to court, and "she could be able to give before a greedy multitude disgusting details of your profligacy for the sake of convincing the Jury, yourself cross-examined by a railing indecent attorney and hooted and yelled at by a Lawless Mob! Oh, horrible prospect which this person has in her power, any day to realise! and to break your poor parents' hearts!"
Albert's heartsickness conspired with overwork, many sleepless nights, nervous strain, and almost certainly the effects of a long-lasting illness to undermine his health and sap his will to live. On the twenty-second of November, he traveled to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst to inspect buildings in the pouring rain; three days later, with a cold and feverish and confessing to his diary "bin recht elend" ("I am very wretched"), he traveled to Cambridge to confront his son. Bertie was abjectly contrite, and Albert forgave him. But the Prince Consort returned to Windsor exhausted and ill. His symptoms persisted and worsened; by the end of November he was near collapse, and was soon diagnosed with typhoid fever.
Albert was dutiful until nearly the end, rendering on the first of December perhaps his greatest service to the nation. In early November, a ship of the U.S. Navy had intercepted a British ship, the _Trent_ , and forcibly removed two Confederate diplomats and their secretaries from the ship. In response, Palmerston and Foreign Minister John Russell drew up a bellicose communication demanding reparation and an apology—a letter which would virtually guarantee a warlike response from the Americans. Albert revised the letter, softening the accusation and offering Lincoln's government a face-saving way out. In doing so, he quite possibly prevented the American Civil War from flaring up into an Anglo-American war.
The Prince had moments of improvement during the next two weeks, but he knew he was dying. On Friday the thirteenth of December, a telegram brought the Prince of Wales rushing to Windsor from Cambridge. The family gathered around his deathbed, Victoria forcing herself to remain calm in her husband's presence. The next day, he slowly and peacefully faded and died. Victoria immediately collapsed in shock. "I stood up," she wrote, "kissed his dear heavenly forehead & called out in a bitter and agonising cry 'Oh! my dear Darling!' and then dropped on my knees in mute, distracted despair, unable to utter a word or shed a tear!" In that instant, she experienced a soul-crushing grief and the beginning of a nervous breakdown, an affliction from which she never fully recovered during the forty years remaining to her. That unceasing grief became manifest in the state of mourning into which the Court was thrown, mourning that abated with time but never ceased until she herself died. Albert, so intent upon establishing his co-rulership in the early years of his marriage, had succeeded only too well. He had indeed become her all-in-all; without him she had nothing, could do nothing, was in her own mind nothing. She had not realized, she wrote to her daughter Vicky, "how I, who leant on him for all and everything—without whom I did nothing, moved not a finger, arranged not a print or photograph, didn't put on a gown or bonnet if he didn't approve it shall be able to go on, to live, to move, and help myself in difficult moments...." With Albert gone, Victoria's monarchy immediately became a vacuum. Bertie was there for her, of course: telling her, moments after Albert's death, "I will be all I can to you," to which she responded "I am sure, my dear boy, you will," kissing him over and over. But Bertie, she knew, could not hope to be a tenth of the man his father had been. And the Queen was certain that Bertie's behavior had been the cause of his father's illness and death: she admitted to Vicky that she could not look at him without shuddering. She would never allow him the influence or involvement in her government that his father had had.
For the rest of the decade, Victoria became the nation's real-life Miss Havisham, pathologically desiring seclusion from society.* Losing Albert, she told her ministers, had shattered her nerves and destroyed her health, preventing her from public appearances. She adamantly resisted being "dictated to, or teased by public clamour into doing what she physically CANNOT, and she expects Ministers to protect her from such attempts." She was assisted greatly by her physician-extraordinary, William Jenner, who essentially prescribed that Victoria suspend her public duties, and in 1867 warned Prime Minister Lord Derby that "any great departure from her usual"—that is, isolated—"way of life or more than ordinary agitation, might produce insanity." At first, her need for isolation ran so deep that she would not meet face to face with her Privy Council, sitting instead in one room as her councilors stood and shouted their business through the open door of an adjoining room. Her public appearances ceased altogether for a time, and then were rare, usually limited to inspecting or unveiling monuments to dear Albert. London, a place she had once loved, and which Albert had taught her to dislike, she now loathed, with its noises, its crowds, and the relentless demand of the people there that she display herself. She managed to avoid residence at Buckingham Palace altogether for years after 1861, visiting the place only once in the year after Albert's death, in a visit so secret that her own servants did not know she was there. "I saw enough," she wrote to her daughter Vicky, "to feel I never can live there again except for two or three days at a time." And for the next decade she was as good as her word, preferring the briefest of visits to the capital in day trips from Windsor. Her shunning of the metropolis was lost on no one. In 1864, a wry placard was attached to the gates of Buckingham Palace: "These commanding premises to be let or sold, in consequence of the late occupant's declining business."
Whenever she could, Victoria delegated to her older children appearances at State ceremonies, the levées, and drawing rooms. When Bertie married Alix—Alexandra of Denmark—in 1863 (a wedding that the Queen did her best to transform into a funeral), the Princess of Wales substituted for her at presentations at Court. In response to reports in the press in 1864 that she planned again to take up these functions, Victoria took the unprecedented step of writing personally to the _Times_ , protesting that duties "higher than those of mere representation"—that is, her dispatches and meeting with her ministers—were as much as her health and strength could bear. "To call upon her to undergo... the fatigue of those mere State ceremonies which can be equally well performed by other members of the family is to ask her to run the risk of entirely disabling herself...." She rarely consented to open Parliament, generally (and grudgingly) doing so when annuities or dowries for her children were to be voted upon.
What Court there was in the 1860s was provided by the Prince and Princess of Wales, who maintained a busy public presence in London from Marlborough House, their mansion on Pall Mall. As Bertie tartly wrote to his mother in 1868, "we have certain duties to fulfill here, and your absence from London makes it more necessary that we should do all we can for society, trade, and public matters." But the Prince of Wales had done his own part in creating the "royalty question." Though he had taken over much of his father's committee work, Victoria adamantly opposed his playing any important role in government. The dispatches which kept her so busy were closed to him. He thus appeared to the public—with his balls, country-house visits, frequent trips to the racetrack, and rumors of assignations, to be little more than a royal pleasure-seeker, maintained at the government expense. His reputation was particularly tarnished in 1870 when he was subpoenaed in a divorce case by his friend Sir Charles Mordaunt, accused of being one of several lovers of Mordaunt's wife. Sir Charles's petition failed, but the damage had been done. The Queen, who believed unreservedly in her son's innocence, still maintained "the whole remains a painful lowering thing... because his name ought never to have been dragged in the dirt, or mixed up with such people." For months after the case, the Prince and his wife were hissed as they drove in public, in the theatres, at Ascot. Scurrilous stories circulated about Bertie's private life.
Bertie's morals were not the only ones in question as the 1860s progressed. The very lack of knowledge of Victoria's private life encouraged rumor to fill the vacuum, and her, to say the least, unusual relationship with her handsome Highland servant, John Brown, provided perfect grounds for salacious speculation. Brown had served the royal family since 1848, and Albert himself had appointed him Victoria's "particular ghillie." He had ever since been a devoted retainer to the Queen, filling, as she said, "the offices of groom, footman, page and _maid_ , I might almost say, as he is so handy about cloaks and shawls." His forward, abrasive, and often well-oiled ways antagonized servants, ministers, and the royal family alike, but he was indispensable to the Queen. Their relationship was not a sexual one. But it is equally true that Brown filled in part the void that Albert's death left in Victoria's life; he, too, became her protector and in return treated her with an assertive familiarity she would not allow anyone else. Dr. Jenner understood the Queen's dependency upon the man, and essentially prescribed in 1864 that, for the Queen's health, Brown be brought from Balmoral to Osborne. In 1865, Victoria appointed him "Queen's Highland Servant," taking orders from no one but her and attending to her both indoors and out. The relationship between the deeply dependent monarch and her deeply indulged favorite became material for cartoons and insinuations in the press. A portrait by Landseer of the Queen on a horse held by the ghillie shown at the 1866 Royal Exhibition became an object of viewers' titters and outright laughter. Victoria was everywhere jokingly referred to as "Mrs. Brown."
The royalty problem was real, and never more intense than it was in 1871, as complaints about Parliamentary grants to the royal children reached a crescendo, and as outrage grew about the absent monarch. William Gladstone, whose staunch support of the monarchy never wavered during his long political journey from right to left, showed himself more willing to promote and strengthen the monarchy than any other prime minister had. Ironically, however, he was finding that to save the monarchy, he would have to battle the monarch herself.
Gladstone had been Victoria's Prime Minister since 1868, and their relationship had been almost entirely cordial. Gladstone, after all, had been the great Peel's lieutenant; he and Albert had been friendly, and when Albert died, Victoria apparently considered Gladstone the most sympathetic of all her ministers. Though their political sensibilities, as they grew older, shifted in completely opposite directions—Victoria's girlhood Whiggism shifting to Albertian neutrality and then to a distinctly conservative outlook, while Gladstone's Toryism had by 1871 given way to liberalism approaching radicalism, until the middle of 1871 this hardly seemed an impediment to the smooth working of the government. In August, that all changed, and a chill that would never thaw crept into their dealings with each other.
It had been a long and difficult session of Parliament for Gladstone; in the face of growing opposition he had had to defend, first, Princess Louise's dowry of £30,000, and then Prince Arthur's annuity of £15,000. The Parliamentary session drew on, and it became clear that it would not end until late August. The Queen, who had to meet with her Privy Council the day before the end—to approve of the speech proroguing Parliament—had already made plans to leave for Balmoral the week before. Gladstone asked her to stay until the end of the session, certain that this would do much to lessen public criticism of her. Victoria, feeling ill from the heat at Osborne and impatient to be north, resisted. No one, she complained to the Lord Chancellor, understood that there were limits to her powers, and the government's demands upon her were likely to kill her:
What killed her beloved Husband? Overwork & worry—what killed Lord Clarendon? The same. What has broken down Mr. Bright & Mr. Childers & made them retire, but the same; & the Queen, a woman, no longer young is supposed to be proof against all & to be driven & abused till her nerves & health will give way with this worry & agitation and interference in her private life.
She hinted that unless her ministers stopped pressuring her, she would abdicate, self-pityingly imagining that "perhaps then those discontented people may regret that they broke her down when she still might have been of use."
In the end, she left for Balmoral before Parliament prorogued. Then it was Gladstone who lashed out, livid at Victoria's refusal to act in her own interests. "Upon the whole," he wrote to the Queen's secretary, Ponsonby,
I think it has been the most sickening piece of experience which I have had during near forty years of public life.
_Worse_ things may easily be imagined: but smaller and meaner cause for the decay of Thrones cannot be conceived. It is like the worm which bores the bark of a noble oak tree and so breaks the channel of its life.
At Balmoral, the Queen's annoyance at her Prime Minister only grew as it became clear that the illness of which she complained at Osborne—and which he, only too used to the Queen's excuses of bad health, ignored—grew at Balmoral into her worst illness since she had become Queen, a dire combination of prostration, rheumatism, and a nasty abscess on her arm, which the eminent surgeon Joseph Lister was called north to lance. Gladstone's communications with her softened, but the damage had been done. After a week's stay in Balmoral in October, Gladstone wrote to his Foreign Secretary that the Queen's "repellent power which she so well knows how to use has been put in action towards me on this occasion for the first time since the formation of the Government. I have felt myself on a new and different footing with her."
Nonetheless, he was determined to rehabilitate the monarchy. If the Queen was invisible, she would have to _become_ visible, in spite of herself. And if the Prince of Wales was not respected, he would have to gain respect by taking on a more important role in royal affairs. Gladstone had been long contemplating just such a role, spinning out a grand plan: the Prince of Wales would replace the Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, residing and ruling there each winter; summers he would reside in London, taking over many of his mother's duties. Victoria resisted the plan, but Gladstone clung to it tenaciously. In his mind, it was a plan with a double advantage: not only would it go far in resolving the royalty question, but it would, he hoped, do much to accomplish the mission he set for himself when he became Prime Minister—to pacify Ireland. For Ireland, after years of quiescence, had again become inflamed, and had spread terror to England—terror that personally threatened the Queen and her family.
The seething rage that many Irish had nurtured toward Britain during the dark days of the famine had not disappeared; it spread worldwide and smoldered, with the Irish Diaspora. The United States had taken in most of these immigrants, and in the growing American cities, in particular, that hatred and anger festered. In New York in 1857, the society that would soon be known as the Fenians came into being, a group committed from the start to the militant overthrow of British rule and the establishment of an Irish Republic. The next year, the American Fenian leaders exported their society to Dublin, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood—the IRB—was born. In the early 1860s the Fenians grew both in numbers and in military expertise, the American Civil War providing on both sides training for the planned insurrection in Ireland. With the end of the war, expectations soared that an Anglo-Irish war would soon commence: there were thousands of Fenians in Ireland who needed only money, weaponry, and military leadership from the United States in order to rise up. Delay, infiltration by British authorities, betrayal, mass arrests, and lack of military coordination ensured that when the rising did come, in early 1867, it quickly fizzled out. Even so, Irish republican violence in 1867 crossed the Irish Sea in an unprecedented wave of terror.
In February, as a prelude to the general uprising in Ireland, hundreds of Fenians under the command of John McCafferty, an ex-Confederate raider, descended upon Chester, intending to raid the castle, appropriate the weapons in its armory, and ship them to Ireland.* When it became clear that their plans had been betrayed and the Castle was on the alert, the hundreds of young Irish men melted away as quickly as they had come. With the hope of a full-scale military uprising crushed, the Fenians resorted to guerilla operations to free their captured leaders. In September in Manchester, a gang of Fenians waylaid a prison van carrying Captain Thomas Kelly, leader of the IRB, and his aide. The gang quickly routed the police guard and freed Kelly, killing in the process a police sergeant with a bullet in the eye. Kelly and his aide escaped, but several Fenians were arrested for the murder. Of these, five were found guilty, and the three who were hanged immediately joined the pantheon of Irish nationalist heroes as the "Manchester Martyrs." In December, the Fenians struck again, this time in London; they attempted to free another captured leader, Ricard Burke, from Clerkenwell Prison. On Friday the thirteenth, a London Fenian by the name of Jeremiah O'Sullivan wheeled up a barrelful of gunpowder to the wall of the prison, lit a fuse, and ran off. Half a minute later came the deafening explosion, rendering the prison wall a gaping void and obliterating the tenement façades on the other side of the street. Six people lay dead in the ruins; six later died. A hundred and twenty were injured. The plotters only intended to blow a hole in the wall large enough to free Burke, but had completely overestimated the amount of powder needed to do that. The carnage, then, was an accident: the conspirators had no intention of spreading such a shockwave of terror across the nation. But that is exactly what the Clerkenwell bombers did, all Britons concluding after that moment that the Fenians would destroy innocent British lives to achieve their ends. With the mistake of the Clerkenwell outrage, a frightening new form of political terror was born.*
Not surprisingly, rumors flew in 1867 that the Fenians planned to attack Victoria herself. A month after the shooting in Manchester, word from that city arrived in Balmoral that a plot was afoot to waylay the Queen on one of her afternoon drives. The Government dispatched soldiers to the Palace and ordered plain-clothed police to keep a close eye upon passengers boarding trains in Perth and Aberdeen. "Too foolish," the Queen thought about the whole affair. Back at Windsor, she refused to allow anyone but John Brown to protect her on her carriage-rides, and so two guards armed with revolvers were set to shadow her at a discreet distance. And at Osborne in December came the greatest alarm of all: Lord Monck, the governor-general of Canada, sent a telegram that two ships had left New York carrying eighty Fenians "sworn to assassinate the Queen." General Grey, Victoria's private secretary, panicked, begging her "on his knees," as he put it, to flee the vulnerable Isle of Wight for the safer Windsor Castle. "Crimes such as these contemplated," he argued, "cannot easily be perpetrated in crowded thoroughfares, or where there is a large population; and the most unsafe places for your Majesty at this moment, are those where the population is most thin and scattered." Her Prime Minister, Lord Derby, concurred, pleading with her to flee Osborne for London or Windsor. Victoria refused to leave, thinking a show of fear "injudicious as well as unnecessary." More than this, Windsor she did not consider " _at all safe_ ," and as for London—filled, she knew, with an immense population of Irish emigrants—"to London _nothing_ will make her go, _till_ the present state of affairs is _altered._ " And so at Osborne extra police were posted; a pass system put into effect; some warships patrolled offshore while others were sent to intercept the Fenian ships. The Queen was again annoyed by the fuss, considering herself "little better than a State Prisoner." It was all, of course, a false alarm, and the Queen castigated Monck "for ever having credited such an _absurd_ and _mad_ story."
It was not as if Victoria was blind to the danger the Fenians posed. In the wake of the Clerkenwell outrage, she exhorted her government (unsuccessfully) to suspend _Habeas Corpus_ , and when only one of the Clerkenwell bombers was found guilty at trial she wrote her Home Secretary that "one begins to wish that these Fenians should be lynch-lawed and on the spot." She was, however, slow to understand that her position made her a tempting symbolic target to many who might have nothing against her personally. Four months after the Clerkenwell outrage, the lesson was brutally brought home to her. On 25 April, she learned that six weeks before and half-way around the world her son Alfred had been wounded by a would-be assassin. Alfred, a captain in the Royal Navy traveling around the world on the HMS _Galatea_ , had put into Sydney. On 12 March 1868 he was presenting a check at a charity picnic when a man suddenly walked up behind him and at two yards' distance leveled a revolver and shot the prince in the back. The bullet ricocheted off of the rear clip of Alfred's suspenders through his ninth rib, missing his spine by an inch. The shooter, Henry James O'Farrell, cried out "I'm a Fenian. God save Ireland" as he was wrestled to the ground and beaten savagely. O'Farrell's attempt led to a witch hunt to root out the Fenians of New South Wales, but none were found; O'Farrell, with a history of mental problems and an obsession with avenging the Manchester Martyrs, had acted alone. He was found guilty of attempted murder and quickly hanged. Alfred's tour was curtailed while he recovered, attended to by two nurses trained by Florence Nightingale, and he returned home that summer. Victoria was baffled by the attack: "poor dear Affie is so entirely unconnected with anything political or Irish," she wrote in her journal.
Irish disturbances in England abated after 1867, but the prisons of England and Ireland were clogged with Fenians, and a vocal and broad-based movement for their amnesty was in full force at the end of 1871. Gladstone had made amnesty a cornerstone of his Irish pacification policy, and many had been freed—in the face of the stiff opposition of the Queen. Still, many of them—those involved with the Manchester killing, for example—remained in prison, and the government had no intention of freeing them.
As Sir Charles Dilke's republican tour gathered steam, then, Victoria had a host of reasons to seclude herself. If her prime minister was to bring her out again and restore her to public favor, he needed a miracle.
He got two: a bacillus, and an unruly boy.
_Salmonella typhi_ was above class discrimination: it bred in the foul drains of the rich as well as the cesspits of the poor. All agreed that _Salmonella typhi_ had killed the Prince Consort ten years before. Then, the bacillus apparently had its origin in the notorious pools of filth under Windsor Castle. The Prince of Wales, on the other hand, traveled north to drink his contaminated water, to the country estate of Lord Jonesborough near Scarborough, which the Prince and Princess visited in early November 1871. Many besides Bertie became ill, several seriously, including the Earl of Chesterfield and one of the Prince's grooms. It took several weeks before it became clear that the illness was serious: on November 22, the royal doctors announced to the world that the Prince was suffering from typhoid fever. They were at first optimistic. But their regular telegraphed reports from Sandringham—published in every newspaper—became increasingly alarming. The health of the Prince quickly became the national obsession, and as he seemingly neared death, he gained an overwhelming and unprecedented public sympathy.
On 29 November, Victoria hurried from Balmoral to Sandringham. Two days later, the Earl of Chesterfield died; Bertie's groom was to die as well. As his fever worsened, Bertie began to babble deliriously. At thirty, the pleasure-loving prince had already accumulated more than his fair share of royal secrets, and his fevered revelations convinced the doctors that his wife had best be kept from the room. When she did come to him, in the audacity of his illness he accused _her_ of infidelity. At the beginning of December, he seemed to improve, and Victoria returned to Windsor. Within a week, however, he was worse than ever. In tears she returned to what seemed his deathbed. Sandringham became so overfull with royals that two of Bertie's sisters had to share a bed. Messages of support flooded in from all corners of the kingdom, as well as many prescribing "remedies of the most mad kind." The Queen noticed and was grateful, writing in her journal "The feeling shown by the whole nation is quite marvellous and most touching and striking, showing how really sound and truly loyal the people really are."
On the eleventh, the doctors told Victoria to expect the end that night. But the Prince survived that day in a raving delirium: deluded that he was now king, he began barking royal orders; he whistled, sang, shouted; he hurled pillows across the room. Victoria kept watch over him from behind a screen. The thirteenth was the worst day at all; and at one point on that day, Victoria and her daughter Alice agreed that "there can be no hope." Victoria realized with horror that her eldest son would probably die on December 14, ten years to the very day after his father.
But she was wrong. On the fourteenth the fever abated, and Bertie had periods of quiet rest. The next day, he was able to say to his mother calmly and coherently "Oh! Dear Mama, I am so glad to see you. Have you been here all this time?" Not long after this, he asked for a glass of Bass's beer.
The prince's recovery was a renewal on every level. About Bertie himself, according to his mother, "there is something quite different which I can't exactly express. It is like a new life...." The Princess of Wales was never happier; she and the Prince were inseparable as he recovered. And Victoria's own bond with her son intensified; it was as if she needed his near-death to understand his value to her. He was now her "Beloved Child," without qualifications. And outside the walls of Sandringham, the relationship between the public and the royal family had altered utterly: the spirit of loyalty had become far stronger than it had been in a decade. The republican tide was quickly ebbing.
Charles Wentworth Dilke, second Baronet, became the chief victim of this sea change. In mid-November, as the _Salmonella typhi_ bacillus worked quietly upon the Prince, Dilke continued his speaking tour. The great publicity accorded his Newcastle speech guaranteed that he had to deal with hecklers and scuffles during all his subsequent appearances, but in general he was well received. Then the Prince fell seriously ill. A meeting of constituents in Chelsea on 29 November turned into a riotous brawl between supporters and opponents. Two days after that, Dilke's appearance in Bolton precipitated an even worse riot; as he attempted to speak, royalists outside smashed the windows of the hall with bricks and pieces of iron; they soon burst into the hall and laid into the audience with bludgeons. Many were injured, and one man died. After that, Dilke turned down many appearances and made only a few, at which he backpedaled on his republicanism.
If Dilke was blindsided by the Prince's illness and recovery, his prime minister was overjoyed: the Prince had given Gladstone the perfect opportunity to deal with the "royalty question" once and for all. He had heard that the Princess of Wales desired a national day of thanksgiving for her husband's recovery. Gladstone agreed: a grand service at St. Paul's—with, more importantly, a splendid royal procession with Victoria and her son in an open carriage from palace to cathedral and back again—would do more than strengthen the public's newfound affection for Bertie; it would also reintroduce the Queen to her people, and signal the end of her ten-years' seclusion. Armed with a substantial list of precedents—including the Thanksgiving in 1789 when George III recovered from madness—Gladstone visited the Queen at Windsor on 21 December to persuade her to go among her public.
The Queen refused. "Nothing could induce her to be a party to it," Gladstone wrote. Her excuse was that religion should not be mixed with show; "such a display" she considered "false and hollow." She really feared putting _herself_ on display, of course. Gladstone gently argued that the Princess of Wales greatly desired a public thanksgiving. Victoria brushed this off: surely Alix would not insist upon it, given the Queen's reasons for refusal. But Alix _did_ insist, writing to Victoria "the whole nation has taken such a public share in our sorrow, it has been so entirely one with us in our grief, that it may perhaps feel that it has a kind of claim to join with us now in a public and universal thanksgiving." The Queen then agreed, grudgingly, and for the next few weeks she and her prime minister haggled about the details, Victoria at every turn attempting to minimize the ceremony, and Gladstone working to pull out every stop. She was livid when Gladstone planned to insert an announcement of her plans in the Queen's Speech: "it gives _too much_ weight to it," she complained, and ignores the possibility of " _her_ being prevented from going by indisposition." She wanted a half-hour service at St. Paul's; Gladstone wanted nothing less than an hour. The Queen wished to progress in "half-state"—without state carriages, state dress, or detachments of guards. Gladstone accepted this, under the conditions that the carriages remain open and the procession move at walking speed, so that the Queen would be well seen by all along the route. They haggled about the number of tickets for admission to the Cathedral, about the carriage in which the Speaker of the House would ride, about whether the Queen and the Prince of Wales would travel in the same or in different carriages, and about the route of the procession. Five days before what Victoria was calling "this dreadful affair at St. Paul's," her annoyance and anxiety burst out in a letter to Gladstone: "The Queen is looking with much alarm to the Ceremony of the 27th—the fatigue & excitement of wh she fears will be vy great & she has been gty annoyed at the constant new suggestions wh are being made.—It is tho' it was to be _merely a show_!"
But the show went on: the scaffolding and flags and bunting and illuminations and flower-decked triumphal arches went up all along the route. London prepared to welcome the Queen home.
At noon on 27 February, a cold, clear day, Napoleon III, ex-emperor of the French, stood with his wife Eugénie at an eastern window of Buckingham Palace; they were special guests of the Queen, their state of exile preventing their attendance at St. Paul's. The two gazed—wistfully, one assumes—upon the ocean of human beings roiling on the other side of the palace gates and stretching down the Mall. Out of the northeast gate of the Palace, a cortège of ten carriages—the last one carrying the Queen and the Prince of Wales*—was slowly plunging into that cheering, seething, screaming mass. It was the greatest gathering on the streets of London in a generation.
Victoria was ecstatic as she passed through what she estimated to be millions, with their "wonderful enthusiasm and astounding affectionate loyalty." The white detailing of her black dress—miniver on her gown, white flowers on her bonnet—suggested the slightest thaw in her decade of mourning. The cheering seemed never to stop, nor did her enthusiastic response. Bertie, sitting across from her and still pale from his illness, felt it too: the energy of the crowd energized them, their reception "so gratifying that one could not feel tired." At Temple Bar, the traditional entry to the City, they stopped for the Lord Mayor's welcome. Victoria took her son's hand, pressed it, and held it up for the crowd. People cried, the Queen said; Bertie cried. Victoria admitted to a lump in her own throat. The service at St. Paul's, attended by the upper ten thousand,* was far less exciting for the Queen; it was stiflingly hot, and—though Victoria had won the argument with Gladstone and the service was shortened—still too long. Then there was the triumphant return to the palace by a northern route, past Newgate ("very dreary-looking," wrote the Queen), up Holborn, down Oxford Street, through Hyde Park, where men and boys perched perilously on every available tree branch, as they had twenty years before at the opening of the Great Exhibition—down Constitution Hill—"the deafening cheering never ceasing for a minute"—and again through the northeast gate. Bertie, Alix, and their two sons then took their leave, but Victoria, with her youngest daughter Beatrice and her three other sons, climbed the stairs and stepped out onto the balcony for another round of vociferous cheers. "Could think and talk of little else," she wrote in her journal, "but to-day's wonderful demonstration of loyalty and affection, from the very highest to the lowest. Felt tired by all the emotion, but it is a day that can never be forgotten." What she had forgotten completely was her own abhorrence to ride in the first place, and the strenuous efforts of her prime minister to get her to show herself. She did afterwards write him, glowing about her reception and asking him to convey her gratitude to her subjects. But she could manage not a word of gratitude to Gladstone himself.
Victoria's triumph seemed complete. But there was more to come. The bacillus had done its work; now, it was the unruly boy's turn.
*As it happens, Dickens's _Great Expectations_ had just completed its serial publication in August 1861.
*John McCafferty demonstrates that some among the Fenians indeed considered members of the British Royal family to be legitimate targets in achieving political ends: it was he who proposed in 1874 kidnapping the Prince of Wales in order to compel the British government to release all Fenian prisoners (Quinlivan and Rose 24).
*The Metropolitan Police had been warned in detail about the attack the day before, and the then-sole commissioner Richard Mayne, now an old man of seventy-one, did little in response. Mortified by the blast, he offered his resignation. It was refused, but he likely never recovered from the shock and died in 1868. Jeremiah O'Sullivan escaped to the United States, and only one man, Michael Barrett, was found guilty for the explosion. Barrett was hanged outside Newgate on 26 May 1868, the last public execution in England. The elderly William Calcraft was executioner.
*And carrying as well the Princess of Wales, Princess Beatrice, Albert Victor (Bertie's oldest son), and of course, on the rumble seat, John Brown in full highland dress.
*The upper 11,876, to be exact, judging from the number of tickets issued. (Kuhn 155n.)
_twenty_
LEAP DAY
Nine days before the thanksgiving, Arthur O'Connor in a flash of insight realized what he had to do. On that cold mid-February Sunday, the seventeen-year-old was taking his favorite walk in Hyde Park along the banks of the Serpentine—far from his depressing home in the East London slums of Aldgate. His walk skirted that part of the park where the Crystal Palace had once stood—past, in other words, that part of London which had over the past decade become known as Albertopolis—the evergrowing collection of establishments endowed by the proceeds of the Exhibition of 1851, all of them sacred to the memory of the dead Prince Consort. Just south of the boy and visible through the winter trees were the hoardings surrounding what would become the grand, high-neogothic Albert Memorial—scheduled for unveiling in July. Across the road from that was the distinctively elliptical and domed Royal Albert Hall, which Victoria, overwhelmed with emotion, had opened on a bitterly cold day last March. Adjoining the Hall were the gardens of the Horticultural Society, the southern limit of which was laid out for a new museum of natural history. And across from that was the South Kensington Museum, which would one day be known as the Victoria and Albert Museum. Albertopolis was far from the only monument to the memory of the Prince Consort. Since his death, monuments to him had been erected through the length and breadth of the kingdom; even Dublin had its Albert statue. By Victoria's wishes, her husband had achieved something close to deification.
The boy had every reason to be infuriated by this cult: what, after all, had that German prince done to deserve this worship? Little more, it seems, than to sire nine royal burdens upon the state, and to put on a fair on this spot in 1851. Monuments to the great men of the boy's own family were surely better-deserved: where were they? The boy was convinced, as were his father and grandfather before him, that the blood of the great Kings of Connaught flowed through his veins: hadn't his great-grandfather changed his name from Conner to O'Connor to proclaim that lineage to the world? Where were the monuments to them? And where was the monument to his great-great-uncle and his namesake, Arthur, a diehard Irish republican and a leader of the United Irishmen? Arthur O'Connor went to France in 1796 to negotiate the landing in Ireland of a French army of liberation. After that invasion failed, Arthur and his brother, young Arthur's great-grandfather Roger—another United Irishman—were arrested, imprisoned, and then exiled by the British to France, where Arthur O'Connor had been appointed a general of the French army by the great Napoleon himself: surely he deserved his monument? Where, for that matter, was the monument to the young Arthur's great-uncle, Francis Burdett O'Connor, who in 1819 set out with two hundred Irish volunteers to liberate South America from the imperial Spanish yoke? Did he not become General Francisco Burdett O'Connor, the great Simon Bolívar's chief of staff, and engage in battles for freedom from Peru to Panama?
And where was the recognition due the greatest O'Connor of all—his great-uncle Feargus O'Connor, the great champion of the working-man—the man still remembered as the "Lion of Freedom"? By virtue of his fiery oratory, his unstoppable energy, his undying love for the "fustian jackets, the blistered hands, the unshorn chins," Feargus O'Connor became for fifteen years the sole and undisputed popular leader of Chartism, repeatedly braving the rich and powerful in Parliament: three times he brought before them the people's demand for a Charter establishing their political rights. At Feargus O'Connor's funeral in 1855, people showed up at Kensal Green in numbers too great for that cemetery to contain. They carried banners declaring him to be their savior: "He lived and died for us." Never had the English proletariat had a stronger champion. His enemies—and he had many—might say that Feargus O'Connor died a raving lunatic. Young Arthur O'Connor refused to believe it—committing him to Dr. Tuke's asylum was simply a trick to deny him the reputation he deserved. Where then was the "Feargus Memorial"? Where was the "Royal Feargus Hall"?*
How unfair it must have seemed to young Arthur O'Connor that Albert was covered in glory while his own family had sunk into obscurity and squalor. Just fifty years before, his family had owned substantial lands in Ireland, but that fortune had now dissipated completely. Arthur lived with his family—nine in all—on the verge of starvation in a single room of a dilapidated Aldgate tenement, at the edge of Seven-Step Alley, one of the worst Irish rookeries in London. His father made just enough money taking tickets for the London and Waterman's Steamboat Company to provide his family with the thinnest veneer of respectability. Arthur was their third child, but perhaps the one upon whom the parents pinned their greatest hopes. While their eldest son had enlisted in the army and their eldest daughter had trained as a teacher, Arthur, as a clerk, was on the bottom rung of the ladder to middle-class respectability. He had worked for a firm of printers for four years, then for a lawyer. Now, at seventeen, he worked as a junior accountant across the river in Southwark for Livett Franks and Son, a paint manufacturer. He acquitted himself well in all of these positions. But he had since birth been cursed with ill health—a pigeon-breasted, scrofulous rail of a boy; later, a reporter would see in his pitiful body nothing less than evidence of the degeneration of Western civilization: O'Connor was "of the order from whose plentifulness some physiologists forbode a deterioration of the human race in our great towns." Ill health stifled his advancement: raging scrofula had ended his job with the printers', sending him to King's College Hospital, where he had a toe amputated.
His body was a miserable container for what he knew to be a great soul. He could feel within himself the blood and the spirit of the great O'Connors. He was a scholar, a dreamer, a writer—spending night after night in a corner of his crowded room, studying, and composing great works of poetic genius, which he had assured his parents were destined for publication and fame. He was Johnnie Keats and Lord Byron combined: a hypersensitive romantic soul, aching to live and die for a great cause.
And indeed, he had a cause. Though he had lived his entire life in London, he was "passionately Irish," as he later wrote, and devoted to the struggle for Irish freedom. He had likely never even met a Fenian, but his blood and the acts of his forefathers connected him deeply with them. The flower of the movement, he knew, continued to rot in English and Irish jails, and he knew as well that the greatest act of an Irish patriot would be to free those prisoners. And, as he walked the periphery of the Serpentine, Arthur O'Connor understood his destiny in a flash. He would be that man. He would in one act free the Fenian prisoners, restore the reputation of the O'Connors, and join the pantheon of great Irish heroes.
He would kill Queen Victoria.
There would never be a better opportunity to kill the Queen than during the thanksgiving to be held in two weeks, when she would emerge from her long seclusion and show herself at St. Paul's, where England's rich and powerful would all be witnesses to the shooting.
He mulled over the plan for rest of the day. Something about it was not quite right, and he finally acknowledged the flaw. If he killed the Queen, the now-recovering Prince of Wales would replace her: the new king certainly would not free the Fenians. He would have to modify his plan. He would not kill the Queen, but would terrify her: putting a pistol to her head, he would frighten her into signing a declaration freeing the Irish prisoners. If he could succeed in getting close enough to her, he was sure that all around her would be "paralyzed with horror"—powerless to intervene. He knew he would never escape from his assault. He expected he would be bayoneted on the spot; if not, he would certainly be executed for High Treason. So be it: he cared little for his life and knew that with his death would come everlasting fame. But if he was to sacrifice his life for Ireland, he wished to die a hero—not hanged like a common criminal, but shot by a firing squad. He would include a codicil to that effect in his declaration.
During the next fortnight, then, while Victoria bickered with her prime minister about the coming thanksgiving and the minutiae of her role, Arthur O'Connor prepared to play his own. He somehow managed to obtain a clean parchment; carefully lining it with a pencil, he set out the Queen's declaration in his best clerk's hand and best legalese: "I, Victoria, Queen by the grace of God, do make the following declaration...." With an astonishing over-estimation of the power of the monarch, he had Victoria declare that she would "grant a free pardon to each and every one of the said men known and celebrated as the Fenian prisoners," "with the consent of my Parliament"—as if her saying it was so would make it so. He then set out carefully, in four clauses, the conditions of absolute freedom she granted the prisoners. In a fifth clause, he tackled the tricky problem of coercion, attempting to head off any attempt to nullify an Act the Queen had been forced to sign:
... notwithstanding the fact of my agreeing to the above conditions only through fear of my life, I will not attempt to depart from any of them on that account, nor upon any other reason, cause, or pretext whatever will I depart, or attempt to depart, from any of them; neither will I listen to any advice which my Ministers may wish to give toward causing me to depart from my word, or toward the violation of anything above stated, but shall adhere strictly to everything. So help me God.
He left there a space for the Queen's signature and, underneath, inserted the codicil which would, he hoped, guarantee him a hero's execution:
Now I, the said Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, do solemnly pledge my Royal word to the effect that if the said Arthur O'Connor be found guilty of death by my judges, after a just and fair trial, he the said Arthur O'Connor shall not be strangled like a common felon, but shall receive that death which is due to him as a Christian, a Republican, and as one who has never harmed a human being—that is to say, he shall be shot, and after death his body shall be delivered to his friends to be buried wheresoever they may choose.
In order to allay the suspicions of his family or his employers, Arthur O'Connor kept to his daily routine until Monday 26 February, the day before the thanksgiving. On that afternoon, after leaving work in Southwark, he obtained his pistol—the cheapest he could find. He had spotted it in the window of a jeweler's near his workplace—a flintlock, a small, decrepit relic of another age. It was missing its flint, and flints were not easy to come by in 1872; the clerk told him he would have to pick up a piece of flint from the road and cut it to proper shape. (And he did.) O'Connor had never handled a gun in his life, and had to ask how it worked. The clerk told him about powder, bullet, and wad. But there is no evidence that Arthur O'Connor bought any of these things; he paid four shillings for the pistol alone, and left. The pistol was intact when he bought it, but did not remain so for long; the same evening, while practicing his shooting style, he broke off the pan and ruined the lock. At some point a greasy red rag found its way into the barrel; inexplicably, for the next few days it would remain there, broadcasting the worthlessness of the weapon.
That night, O'Connor filled his pockets. He helpfully brought pen and ink, thinking to avoid the awkward wait for one of the ten thousand to produce them while he held his pistol to Victoria's temple. He pocketed the pistol, the petition, and, just in case, a long, thin, open knife of his father's. He slipped out of his house for the short walk due west to St. Paul's. It was 11:00 P.M., and the cathedral was abuzz with activity: workmen were preparing seating; seamstresses were decorating the temporary chambers set aside for the refreshment of the Queen and the Princess of Wales—and police were guarding the entrances. When he attempted to slip in, an officer promptly challenged him and turned him away. Nevertheless, somehow he got in—"by a stratagem," he later claimed. He took cover underneath some benches, hoping to hide until the morning.
He was soon found. He had tracked mud on the otherwise clean carpets to his hiding place; a verger discovered him and turned him out. He then tried to hide in a cold, dark space on the cathedral's porch. A police sergeant caught him there with the glaring spotlight of his bull's-eye lantern and ordered him off the property. O'Connor then wandered the streets of the City until 5:30 the next morning, ruminating upon how he could get close to the Queen. He decided to give up entering the cathedral altogether. Instead, he would confront the Queen somewhere on her procession to or from the service. He returned home, put the pistol, the knife, and the declaration under his pillow, and slept until 8:00, when he rose, rearmed himself, and set out again for St. Paul's and the route of the procession. He quickly realized that he had made a serious mistake. The crowds were already massing along the route in numbers too thick to penetrate. He spent hours wandering the route, looking for a place where he could push his way to the front—but could find none. The Queen had her thanksgiving without him, her subjects—as the newspapers had been saying ever since Oxford's attempt upon her—providing her best protection.
Arthur O'Connor returned home that evening. His mother asked him where he had been. To St. Paul's, he said—but he "had not gained his object." He would not tell her what that object was. He slept until the next morning, and, again arming himself with declaration, pistol, and knife, walked across town to the front of Buckingham Palace, joining the crowd assembled there hoping the Queen would emerge. She did emerge that day—twice, for a ride in the parks and for a visit to a sculptor's studio—but somehow O'Connor missed her. He returned home. His chances, he knew, were running out: the Queen left for Windsor in two days, on the first of March.
That night, O'Connor took a break from stalking Victoria and instead celebrated her; he took his nine-year-old brother out to gaze at the brilliant thanksgiving illuminations that stretched from St. Paul's to the Palace.
The next day, Thursday 29 February—Leap Day—he awoke weary and jaded, according to his father. He complained of having no rest, and pains in his head. Equipping himself with declaration, pistol, and knife, but leaving pen and ink behind, he returned to the Palace in the afternoon, arriving after four to hear the cheering and see the Queen's carriage heading up Constitution Hill. Victoria had that afternoon held Court at the Palace, and, as she had done so many times in the past, she afterwards set out for a ride through the parks. She sat on the right side of the carriage, facing the horses. Next to her sat one of her favorite ladies-in-waiting, Lady Jane Churchill, and across from them were Victoria's two youngest sons: on the Queen's side sat twenty-year-old Arthur and next to him Leopold, who at eighteen was barely older than O'Connor. For Prince Arthur, this was a farewell ride with his mother; he would be returning to army service in Dover that evening. Leopold, on the other hand, had nothing to do with the military. He could not: he was a hemophiliac and had suffered from early childhood his mother's stifling overprotection.
Accompanying her on either side were her equerries—she had two now, since Albert's death—Lord Fitzroy and General Hardinge riding on either side of the carriage. Two outriders rode before, two grooms behind. And John Brown sat at the Queen's back.
O'Connor asked a policeman when she would return. Soon, he was told. He succeeded, this time, in pushing himself to the front of the crowd waiting near the northeast gate of the Palace—the gate though which Victoria had emerged and through which she would return. And he waited, while Victoria circumnavigated Hyde and Regents Parks.
By the time the noise at the top of Constitution Hill signaled the Queen's return, the crowd had grown and had spilled onto the road. The police began to push them back and clear a space for the carriage. At that moment, with the crowd focused upon the Queen, the police focused on the crowd, and the sentry at the gate staring forward, poised to present arms, O'Connor bolted. Running unperceived to the point where the edge of the Palace's eastern fence meets the northern wall, he removed his overcoat and gingerly hung it over a rail. Then, with a litheness and energy that must have surprised him, he scrambled up and over the twelve-foot fence, tumbling into the corner of the Palace forecourt. Somehow, he managed to keep his low-crowned, wide-brimmed wideawake hat on his head. The carriage was approaching now, the gates being opened. O'Connor took cover behind a pillar near the gatekeeper's lodge.
He saw the carriage enter and pass. The gatekeeper, an old man "rather past work," spied him and shouted "what mischief do you want here?" O'Connor simply raced past the sputtering and helpless man and through the gateway the carriage had just entered. It had stopped and the equerries and outriders were dismounting; John Brown had leapt off the rumble and come to the left side to let down the carriage stairs. O'Connor ran around to that side. His presence alarmed no one, but perplexed all who noticed him: they imagined him to be a gardener's boy, not quite in the right place. He ran up to the side of the carriage, brushing against Brown, who pushed him back. One of the equerries, Lord Fitzroy, told him to go away. Instead, he stepped up to the rear panel of the carriage, peered over the edge, raised his pistol, and timidly muttered something about the Fenian prisoners.
Suddenly confused, he fell silent. He was not looking at the Queen but at Lady Jane Churchill. Lady Jane was oblivious to him; the queen sat equally unconscious of him on the other side of the carriage. He ran around the back of the carriage, raised his face over that side—and stared directly into his Queen's eyes. Victoria thought at first that he was a footman come to remove her blanket. O'Connor said something the Queen could not make out; she noticed only the strangeness of his voice. (Arthur heard his words: "Take that from a Fenian.") She then noticed his uplifted hand, but did not see the pistol it held. Leopold and Arthur, however, did see it, Arthur stretching forward to push it away. It clattered to the ground. Victoria then panicked. "Involuntarily, in a terrible fright, I threw myself over Jane C. calling out, 'Save me...!'" she later wrote. At that moment John Brown, who had chased O'Connor around the carriage, with one hand grabbed O'Connor's body and with the other clamped the scruff of his neck. Now everyone was alarmed, and the equerries and outriders converged upon Brown's prize, pushing the boy to the ground. Prince Arthur vaulted over the side of the carriage and joined the scrum. (Leopold, wisely, stayed put.) A vague sense that the boy had actually touched the royal person likely encouraged them all to handle him more roughly than simple capture demanded: they yanked off the boy's necktie and gave him a violent throttling. One of the outriders asked O'Connor if he was hiding anything, and O'Connor admitted to having the knife and the declaration. The two equerries, meanwhile, called out for the police. Police Sergeant Jackson—who had closed the gate with O'Connor inside—and several constables came running. Sergeant Jackson removed knife and declaration from O'Connor's pockets. (He handed the latter to one of the equerries, who soon showed it to Victoria: "an extraordinary document," she called it.)
They stood the boy up. O'Connor was more affronted than shaken. He complained about the damage done to his necktie, and demanded his hat be returned to him before he would answer any questions. He was led off. The Queen, standing up in the carriage for a better view, saw him go, and then suffered another shock. Her attendants asked if she had been hurt: "Not at all," she replied. The equerries and Arthur then told her they thought the boy had dropped something. "We looked," Victoria wrote, "but could find nothing, when Canon, the postilion, called out, 'There it is,' and looking down I then did see shining on the ground a small pistol! This filled us with horror. All were white as sheets, Jane C. almost crying, and Leopold looked as if he were going to faint."
Of all of the attempts upon her, O'Connor's—violating the security of her home as well as her personal space—was the one that frightened her the most. Her worst fears about Fenians, the Irish, and the growing dangers that lurked in the metropolis were all confirmed in the puny boy. At the same time, however, what had just happened confirmed all of her _best_ thoughts about her devoted Highland servant. Once again, she was certain she had been saved by providence from death;* and to her mind, one man alone was responsible for saving her life. "It is entirely owing to good Brown's great presence of mind and quickness that he was seized," she wrote to Vicky; "Brown alone saw him spring round and suspected him." Her hero, she quickly decided, deserved a medal.
Safe in the palace, Victoria quickly took steps to disseminate an accurate account of the attempt, and of her safety, to scotch the wild rumors that were already spreading. She sent her two young sons to take the news to Bertie; the two strolled arm in arm, out of the front gates of the Palace, through the crowd, and to Marlborough House. The Prince of Wales, bedridden with the bad leg that was a byproduct of his typhoid and that had been aggravated by his activity on the thanksgiving, could not rush to the palace, but his wife could, and Princess Alix, showing full trust in the public, rode there in an open carriage. Victoria sent royal officers to the police station and the Home Office, and sent as well her equerry Arthur Hardinge to Parliament, to speak with Gladstone personally. Hardinge was delayed for some reason, and for the better part of an hour rumors flew in the lobby of the House of Commons, consternation growing to panic, the excitement overwhelming the debate on the Ballot then proceeding in the House. Finally, Hardinge arrived and closeted himself with Gladstone, who, emerging, hurried into the House, interrupted the debate, and, to relieved cheering, set out a generally accurate account of the attempt. In one particular, however, he stretched the truth: the Queen, he claimed, "was not in the slightest degree flurried or alarmed."* (Similarly in the House of Lords, Lord Granville announced that "the Queen showed the greatest courage and composure.") Since no one but the Queen, her family, and her household had seen the attempt, there was nothing to prevent the witnesses to the attempt to preserve and promote an idealized image of the Queen. Victoria might admit her all-too-human, terrified reaction to her private journal, but there was little need to share this with her subjects. Every newspaper account of the attempt dutifully noted Victoria's unflinching coolness and bravery.
O'Connor, meanwhile, was hurried out of the Palace gates, pushed into a cab with Sergeant Jackson, and brought to the destination of all his predecessors but one*—A Division headquarters, now remodeled and known as King Street station. On the way, he repeatedly proclaimed to Jackson his willingness to die in his great cause: "I wish to God I had succeeded; then they could have done with me as they pleased." He acknowledged his gun had been broken, and that he only wished to intimidate Victoria, not kill her. At the station he gave the Superintendent, Mott, a full account of his abortive attempts to threaten the Queen two days before at the thanksgiving. He was then placed in a cell, Superintendent Mott ordering that he be allowed absolutely no visitors. A number of curious Members of Parliament who came to interview the boy were thus turned away; only the Commissioner of Police, Richard Mayne's replacement Sir Edmund Henderson, saw him that night.
That evening, London reacted to O'Connor's attempt as it had acted toward the others—the fashionable flocking to enquire about the Queen's health and to sign the visitor's book at the Palace; addresses and toasts to the Queen across town. Arthur O'Connor's timing could not have been better, as far as killing off republican sentiment in the metropolis went. Those who until recently had avidly promoted an English republic now hastened to denounce the attempt and protest their devotion to Victoria. At a crowded meeting of working men in the Surrey Chapel Mission Hall, in Southwark, a resolution was moved to express indignation about the attempt and affection for the Queen's person; prayers were said for Victoria's "long-continued life and happiness." Across town at the White Horse Tavern off Oxford Street, George Odger, working-class leader and heretofore outspoken republican, declared himself sure "that every man in that room... would denounce in the most indignant manner such a dastardly proceeding."
The next morning, A Division's police surgeon and another doctor examined O'Connor in his cell. Both concluded that while he might be a political fanatic with lousy grammar and a shaky hold on current events, he was decidedly sane. Gladstone visited Victoria in the Palace that morning—"dreadfully shocked at what [had] happened"—she noted, and particularly annoyed that the boy had apparently marred the "splendid effect" of the thanksgiving. He reminded her of Peel's 1842 Act, which he thought fit the crime. If it did not, he told her, then the law must be changed. Victoria was not nearly as sure that a misdemeanor charge—and a possible lenient sentence—was appropriate. In any case, she was sure that when O'Connor's sentence had expired, "he ought not to be allowed to remain in the country."
O'Connor's examination, it was decided after some confusion, was to be held not at Whitehall, as all previous such examinations, but in the more down-to-earth setting of the police court at Bow Street. From 11:00, throngs largely composed of the dregs of the nearby slums of St. Giles and Seven Dials besieged the court and packed the tiny courtroom. Soon after 1:00, Arthur O'Connor was brought in and held for an hour in a jailer's room. When he was brought before the bar, hisses ran through the back benches. Harry Bodkin Poland, Solicitor to the Treasury, quickly both established the charge and demolished Arthur O'Connor's fragile ego by demonstrating to the boy that he was a fool and his action an absurdity. Poland read out in full O'Connor's declaration, and the courtroom met his would-be patriotism with howls of laughter, which peaked as Poland read out the codicil giving O'Connor a hero's death: "that death which is due to him as a Christian, a Republican—(laughter), and as one who has never harmed a human being—that is to say, he shall be shot, and after death his body shall be delivered to his friends to be buried wheresoever they may choose (Laughter)." The blood rushed to O'Connor's face, and, according to a reporter, "out of the eye there blazed the light of fanaticism." Poland then twisted the knife: crimes such as O'Connor's hardly deserved death, he proclaimed, but rather imprisonment—accompanied by the degradation of flogging. O'Connor's flush immediately disappeared, he hung his head, his lip trembled, and he began to cry. Poland then called forward witnesses to the assault. Of these, John Brown, with his broad Scottish accent and the "grim jocularity" with which he recounted his easy capture and drubbing of the boy, provided the most entertainment. Prince Leopold also took the stand; Victoria, as protective of him as ever, was loath to let him come at all, and only agreed if he went under the close watch of an equerry and of his tutor. He testified to the important fact that O'Connor had held his pistol less than a foot from the queen's face, and was cheered by the crowd on both arriving and departing. O'Connor was given the opportunity to speak after the witnesses had testified; he could do nothing besides correct them on a couple of trivial details. He was then committed for trial and led through the hissing and hooting multitude into a waiting police van, which set off down Bow Street to the Strand, following the route of Tuesday's procession, and deposited O'Connor at Newgate prison.
At roughly the same time—4:00 in the afternoon—Victoria went forth triumphantly in her carriage amongst the cheering and shouting people of London. This long-planned journey—from Buckingham Palace to Paddington Station, from whence the queen would escape London for the greater privacy of Windsor—was supposed to be routine; O'Connor's attempt guaranteed it was nothing but. A number of MPs and Peers had assembled in the Palace forecourt that O'Connor had penetrated the day before; with the express permission of the Queen, they formed a phalanx of symbolic protection. Victoria stood in her carriage to acknowledge them. In the carriage with her were her children Leopold and Beatrice, and a fresh lady-in-waiting, Fanny Gainsborough.* Outside the gates, the crowds nearly matched those of the thanksgiving day in volume and energy. "Immense enthusiasm," Victoria wrote after she arrived at Windsor Castle. "All along the Serpentine, up to Prince's gate, the carriages were two deep, and we could hardly pass along." She was delighted with the people of London who, with a nudge from O'Connor, had turned a one-day thanksgiving into a delirious four-day celebration of the monarch and her monarchy. Nevertheless, she was relieved to be back in Windsor. And although it seemed as if every obstacle to London's adoration of the Queen had been removed, her own reservations about the people of London remained. "Strange to say my head and health have not suffered from this dreadful fright," she wrote to Vicky, "but I know I shall feel it when I go out as I always have done in London."
Arthur O'Connor had hoped and expected, in thrusting his pistol into the Queen's face, to become an instant hero to the Irish. This of course never happened. From the start, the newspapers presented him as an imbecile, a "crack-brained youth," the mind-boggling absurdity of his plan demonstrating the boy's folly. And despite his stated intention to free the Fenians, no one was fooled that his attempt was a rational political act. The Irish, and in particular Irish nationalists, quickly and vociferously dissociated themselves from O'Connor, claiming his mad act worked against Irish interests. The Dublin _Irishman_ , clearly forgetting about William Hamilton's attack in claiming that Victoria had never been attacked by an Irishman, argued that "nothing could be more repugnant, nothing more odious, nothing more loathsome to the spirit of the Irish people than a cowardly assault on a defenceless lady." This article concluded with the less-than-comforting assertion that "Queen Victoria may rest assured that if she ever fell a victim to unhallowed hate it shall not be by the hand of an Irishman." Besides, Irish newspapers noted, Arthur O'Connor was not Irish at all, but born and bred in London. Nor were his forebears truly Irish: a letter-writer to the Dublin _Freeman's Journal_ pointed out quite accurately that O'Connor's ancestors were Conners, not O'Connors, English settlers in Ireland who changed their name desiring "to become more Irish than the Irish themselves."
Press and the government agreed that the best punishment for this over-imaginative halfwit was the one prescribed under Peel's Act: the "ridiculous and slightly degrading" punishment of a flogging, the shame of which would purge him and any would-be imitators of thoughts of vainglory. Gladstone quickly concluded that O'Connor was more a fool than a Fenian, writing to the Queen the evening of the attempt that "folly seems to have been so mixed with depravity in this attempt that Mr. Gladstone is inclined to hope this young man may perhaps not have been wholly master of his senses"; Peel's Act should suit such a "contemptible" crime. Home Secretary Henry Bruce agreed, writing the Queen that O'Connor's palpable terror on being told he might be flogged demonstrated the "wisdom" of Peel's Act: he had looked forward to a trial as a state prisoner, but "shrunk from a degrading punishment, which would make him ridiculous and contemptible."
Victoria disagreed with every one of these judgments about the boy. She was sure he would have murdered her if his ignorance had not prevented him. He was certainly not mad, and the Queen pointedly sent Gladstone an article from the _Lancet_ which she thought proved his sanity. And while he may never have set foot in Ireland, he was still an Irishman—and worse, a Fenian. As soon as she arrived in Windsor the day after the attack, Victoria delved into her journals, found her account of William Hamilton's attempt—which, she realized, " _no one_ seems to recollect"*—and sent a copy to Gladstone as a reminder of Irish perfidy. Hamilton was bad, she explained to Gladstone, but O'Connor was worse: Hamilton "was also an Irishman but _Fenianism_ did _not exist_ then." O'Connor's assault upon her had been truly threatening, and should be treated seriously, not contemptuously. "He meant to _frighten_ & _this may_ be tried again & again & end badly some day," she told Gladstone. She had lost confidence in the efficacy of Peel's Act. "The Queen feels sure that _too gt leniency_ or treating it as totally contemptible wld not do—& if the Act is _not_ strong enough it had better be amended." Peel's Act, she thought, did not treat the assaults upon her as seriously as she considered them to be. Indeed, over time the Act had become more lenient: since transportation had come to an end five years before, replaced as a penalty with penal servitude in a British prison, exiling O'Connor, as Francis, Hamilton, and Pate had been exiled, was no longer a legal option. If a judge could not remove the boy from the country, Victoria considered that her government could: speaking to Gladstone the day after the attack, she insisted that O'Connor be forced to leave England after serving his sentence, whatever that might be.
The genuine fear the Queen felt during O'Connor's attack had quickly morphed to anger. She was angry at the police, who she thought were neither vigilant or numerous enough to protect her—a conclusion with which the police tacitly agreed by adding three officers to the Palace detail. She was angry as well at her government, which from the start saw O'Connor's crime as the contemptible act of a fool, not the serious attempt of a Fenian to do her harm. From Windsor she telegraphed Gladstone commanding that the result of O'Connor's examination be sent her, as well as "all details respecting this man." She had from the start a premonition that Gladstone and the Liberals were going to fail her, and if they did she would be ready to respond.
The "Boy O'Connor," as the press dubbed him, was reportedly an exemplary prisoner at Newgate, accepting with good grace the many visits of medical examiners, including the near-daily visits of the prison surgeon. His parents, too, visited him as often as they were allowed. Significantly, however, no solicitor attended to him during his first days in prison. He remained cooperative but unrepentant—stating that he was fully justified in his act, though he remained tight-lipped about his motive.
For a week after his arrest, he was the undisputed celebrity criminal of Newgate. On the afternoon of 6 March, however, he was eclipsed completely, when a man instantly recognizable by his enormous size of 26 stone (or 364 pounds)* drove his own brougham up to the door of Newgate, the Superintendent of the Scotland Yard's Detective Branch by his side. A crowd had gathered outside the door of the prison, and he jovially acknowledged their cheers as he passed by them. Some shouted "Wagga Wagga!" after the town in New South Wales from which he had come. Others called out "Arthur Orton!" and still others "Sir Roger!" Upon entering the prison, he gave his name as Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne. The warrant for his arrest named him as Thomas Castro, and he was entered in the prison books under that name. Exactly who the man was had been the basis of a debate that had raged for the past five years: for that long the Tichborne Claimant, as he is known to history, had riveted and riven the nation.
The overwhelming love of a grieving mother had drawn the Claimant from Australia to England. In 1853, Lady Henriette Felicité Tichborne's restless son Roger had fled England for South America; the next year he boarded a ship, the _Bella_ , which sailed out of Rio de Janeiro and was never seen again; all passengers were thought lost. Lady Tichborne could never quite accept that her eldest son had died. When Roger's father died in 1862, Lady Tichborne was free to indulge her fantasy of reuniting with her son and began to search for him, publishing at first advertisements in the _Times_ , and then in 1865 in a number of Australian newspapers, as rumors surfaced that survivors of the _Bella_ might have been picked up and deposited in Melbourne. As the advertisements promised a generous reward for information about Roger's fate, it is surprising that only one claimant came forward, but only one did: a Wagga Wagga butcher who went by the name Thomas Castro, and had been known to boast about his aristocratic connections. An attorney acquaintance of Castro who had seen the advertisement and was certain that the butcher was the baronet, persuaded him to reveal himself. Castro did so, quickly gathering supporters to his claim, including several in Australia who had known Roger Tichborne years before. He brought himself and his claim to England in 1866. Early the next year, he traveled to Paris, his mother's original and present home, to meet Lady Tichborne. She immediately acknowledged him as her son.
The rest of the Tichbornes, with few exceptions, were far less welcoming. They had long doubted the sanity of their French in-law and gave little weight to her acknowledgment. The obese and dour Claimant hardly resembled the scrawny and sensitive Roger they remembered. Roger Tichborne had lived the first sixteen years of his life in France, with French his first language; the Claimant's French was limited to "oui, madame" in an atrocious accent. The Claimant's knowledge of Tichborne's childhood was a mystifying mixture of intimate knowledge and profound gaps. That mystery was perhaps solved by the Claimant himself in a confession he wrote in 1895 and quickly repudiated; in it he claimed that he was a superb listener, able to "suck the brains" of those who knew Sir Roger, collecting the information he used to convince others that he was Tichborne. The Tichbornes, however, would have none of it, fiercely resisting the Claimant's attempt to usurp the present "infant baronet," Roger Titchborne's nephew Henry, the son of Roger's deceased younger brother Alfred. To contest the Claimant, one of the Titchbornes engaged the services of the famous private detective Jonathan Whicher.* Whicher soon uncovered enough evidence to convince him that the Claimant was not Roger Tichborne at all, but Arthur Orton, the youngest son of a poor family from the east London district of Wapping.
The Claimant eventually sued for possession of the Tichborne estates, in what became one of the longest civil trials of the century, lasting with some breaks from May 1871 until March 1872. The trial became a national obsession, the courtroom always packed and readers of all classes avidly poring over newspaper accounts of byzantine evidence gathered from three continents. Public attention was split during November and December, when the bulletins charting the near-demise and recovery of the Prince of Wales similarly enthralled the nation. Sir John Duke Coleridge, a friend of William Gladstone, Solicitor General at the beginning of the trial and Attorney General at its end, became with the Claimant a star of the trial. Coleridge was a passionate orator who used his skills both to catch out the Claimant in cross-examination, and to deliver a month-long opening speech that demolished the Claimant's case. After that opening, Coleridge was prepared to call forward a host of corroborating witnesses. He did not need to; after a few came forward—several of these testifying to a tattoo they had seen on Roger Tichborne's arm, and which did not exist on the Claimant's—the jury announced that they had heard enough. The next day, 6 March 1872, the Claimant's counsel, knowing the case was lost, abandoned it in a non-suit—an automatic decision in favor of the Tichbornes. The Lord Chief Justice immediately ordered that the Claimant be arrested for perjury. The Claimant had not come to court; he was arrested at the Waterloo Hotel on Jermyn Street and allowed to make his semi-triumphal entrance into Newgate. His bail was fixed at £10,000.
The Claimant proved like O'Connor to be a model prisoner, "cheerful and far from reserved," spending most of his time reading books. He was because of his weight specially provided with a bed, rather than the hammock that O'Connor and the rest of those in Newgate slept on. He largely kept apart from the rest of the prisoners, electing as a Roman Catholic to avoid the Anglican services on Sundays—something that O'Connor, a Protestant, could not do—and exercising in solitude in the yard, since authorities decided his weight would make it impossible for him to keep up with others. It is therefore more than possible that O'Connor never met the man. But he was certainly aware of the Claimant's proximity—and he could not help but be jealous. For the Claimant had achieved with his acts something that Arthur O'Connor (and, for that matter, Edward Oxford before him) had yearned for, but never achieved: true popularity. He had become the darling of the masses, who saw in his struggles a reflection of their own: he was a true underdog, courageously standing up to the powerful. First the aristocratic Tichbornes, and now the government itself, exerted their immense resources in order to keep a poor man down. The working classes saw the Claimant as one of them—as one who had chosen the ways of common men over those of the titled snobs. The higher classes sneered at the Claimant's uncouth and ignorant ways; to those that valorized him, they were marks of honor.
The Claimant was to remain in Newgate until the end of April, when he posted bail. His trajectory of popular acclaim was to rise before it fell, as he set out on a triumphant, wildly popular speaking tour. At his criminal trial, which began a year later and was another ten-month legal marathon, the Claimant was found guilty and imprisoned for over ten years. When he emerged from prison in 1884, the popular support he had enjoyed a decade before had passed; he spent the rest of his life in poverty and humiliation, forlornly promoting his claims in music halls, circuses, and pubs. With a single lapse in 1895, he never stopped claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne; when he died in 1898, he was buried with that name inscribed upon his coffin.
When the Claimant's life intersected with O'Connor's, however, he was nearing the height of his fame. Arthur O'Connor, throttled by John Brown, hooted at by the riffraff at Bow Street, despised by the press and denounced by all classes, both in Ireland and in England, could not help but contrast his great unpopularity with the Claimant's great popularity. Something had clearly gone wrong with his grand plan. What could he do to make things right?
Within a week, John Brown had his medal. For the last five months, at least, Victoria had been contemplating instituting a medal for the most faithful and long-serving of her servants, and she had written last October on the subject to her prime minister. Medals are given to Arctic explorers, she told Gladstone; why shouldn't her servants be given them as well? " _What_ in fact can be more important... than the faithfulness & discretion & _independent_ unselfishess of those personal servants...?" Gladstone approved of the idea, but cautioned the Queen against applying on the subject to the House of Commons, which would only interfere with her personal choice of recipients. He was sure the Treasury could afford the small expense. Thus, by Victoria's own design, the silver "Victoria Faithful Service Medal" came into being. By the day John Brown tackled O'Connor, the die was quite literally cast.
As far as the Queen was concerned, however, the Faithful Service Medal was not enough: John Brown's action had, she thought, saved her life, and he deserved recognition above that given any of her other servants. She quickly devised a higher award for him: the "Victoria Devoted Service Medal," struck from the same die as the other medal but in gold rather than silver. On 5 March, she presented Brown with a £25 annuity and the medal "in recognition of his presence of mind and devotion." It was the only Devoted Service Medal she—or any other monarch—was ever to give.*
Not surprisingly, the Prince of Wales, Brown's inveterate enemy, thought the reward excessive, especially since several others had taken a hand in restraining O'Connor, including his brother Prince Arthur. But Bertie held his tongue—for a time. When, a week later, he discovered that for his pains, Arthur had received a paltry tie-pin, however, he could no longer be contained. He wrote a letter to his mother from France—where he was recovering from his illness—blasting her for the discrepancy. Victoria was baffled: obviously, Brown deserved more than her son had. Arthur "could _not_ do, for his very position, what Brown _did_ , who was deservedly rewarded for his presence of mind, and devotion."
No one could tell her that her ghillie was not the paragon among men—living men, that was. Besides, she wrote, "Arthur was _very_ amiable and wore his pin _continuously_ and repeatedly said _how much_ he liked it."
Nineteen days after Arthur O'Connor had pounded the last nail into the coffin of republicanism, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke stood up in the House of Commons to defend its corpse. The public, eager to witness his comeuppance, filled the galleries. Dilke knew very well that he would lose this debate. But he had repeatedly called for a parliamentary investigation into the Queen's expenditures, and he was now bound by honor to do the same in Parliament. He thus approached his task with a wincing desire to get it over with. Speaking for an hour and a half, he offered none of the fireworks he had in Newcastle, seeking instead to take cover in sheer boredom, larding his speech with innumerable and questionable facts and figures; he was, he admitted, "unutterably dull." Gone were the crowd-pleasing lists of comically useless court officers. Gone was the rousing welcome to the coming republic. Instead was an interminable list of precedents for parliamentary oversight of the Queen's finance, and a dispassionate analysis of the growth in the royal fortune, the impropriety of that fortune reverting to the Privy Purse rather than to the nation, and a vague foreboding about the risk of the great accumulation of wealth in the hands of the monarch. It was a speech calculated to change no one's opinion.
William Gladstone then stood to champion the Queen; in the words of _Punch_ , he "went smashingly into the Chelsea baronet as if he had been Chelsea china." Dilke had tried to strip his argument of every vestige of republicanism, presenting the motion as one of economy alone. The stink of his Newcastle speech was still upon him, however, and Gladstone refused to let him forget it. Because of the Newcastle speech, Gladstone angrily charged Dilke, the whole country understood his motion to be both a personal attack on the Queen and a call for a republic. Dilke was in every particular wrong: wrong about the Queen's wealth, wrong that she cost more than her uncles or her grandfather had, wrong that the annuities for her children were unprecedented and improper. Duty toward the Queen "who reigns in the hearts of her people" impelled him to exhort the House to reject Dilke's motion. Gladstone sat down to universal cheering.
The demolition done, the House was ready to vote. But Dilke's courageous if foolhardy colleague, Auberon Herbert, jumped up, seconded Dilke's motion, and prepared to give his own speech in its defense. "A perfect storm," as Gladstone put it, ensued. The House—and particularly the Conservatives—assailed Herbert with cries of "Divide! Divide!" which degenerated into a menagerie of catcalls, cock-crows, and howls. Large groups walked out, hoping to force an adjournment by lack of a quorum. One member only made things worse by demanding that press and strangers in the gallery be expelled, suggesting that the government wished to stifle free discussion. The anarchy continued until Herbert finally surrendered to the bellowing and sat down. After a couple short speeches by Dilke's fellow radicals, explaining why they could not possibly support this motion, the House divided. Two voted for Dilke's motion; 276 voted against it.* All in all, concluded _Punch_ , Dilke's attack on the Queen "was about as contemptible as that by the lad who presented the flintless and empty pistol the other day."
Dilke was mightily relieved his short tenure as republican leader was over for good. It took some time for him to cease to be a social pariah, and in the eyes of the Queen, the damage was permanent; she could not forget the injury he had done her when her popularity was at its nadir. Ten years later, when he was offered a place in Gladstone's ministry, the Queen insisted that he not be given any office that would place him close to her, and that he publicly renounce his "earlier crude opinions." And so he did, leaving no doubt that in the battle of ideologies, Victoria had triumphed completely over him, Odger, Bradlaugh, and O'Connor: republicanism was dead.
* Actually, there were two monuments to Feargus O'Connor: a Gothic spire at his gravesite at Kensal Green, and a statue in Nottingham, the city he served as a Member of Parliament (Read and Glasgow 144).
* The fact that O'Connor's pistol was obviously unloaded made little difference to her; she wrote that day in her journal "The pistol had not been loaded, but it easily might have been!" (Victoria _Letters_ second series 2:218).
* Later, Gladstone ordered O'Connor's pistol brought to the lobby of the House, to show what a harmless relic it was. The swarm of members around the curiosity grew so great that the detective in charge of it had to reclaim the weapon forcibly and flee Parliament _(Glasgow Daily Herald_ 1 March 1872, 5).
* Pate.
* Victoria changed her lady-in-waiting at the beginning of every month. Lady Jane Churchill, however, obviously shaken by the attempt, wished not to leave the Queen the day after, and with the Queen's permission followed her to Windsor, riding with the equerries in the carriage behind.
* She was right. Most press retrospectives of the attempts written in the wake of O'Connor's attempt neglected to mention Hamilton's.
* This was his weight as taken at Newgate upon his admission. Other accounts suggest he was heavier.
* Whicher was one of the first eight officers appointed to the original Detective Branch in 1842.
* On the other hand, well over a hundred silver "Faithful Service Medals" have been awarded by Victoria and her successors; they are still awarded today (Cullen 158-59n.).
* The two who voted for the motion were not Dilke and Herbert, who acted as tellers, or vote-counters, and did not vote.
_twenty–one_
OUT OF THE COUNTRY
According to one of the doctors who examined him in Newgate, Arthur O'Connor's great object was "truth at all times." He was known to quarrel with his siblings because they simply could not understand truth as he did. He absolutely refused to understand his assault upon the Queen as anything less than heroic. His parents visited him as often as they could. His mother Catherine's understanding of his plight differed greatly from his father George's. To Catherine, Arthur was still to her a "good lad" and the "best of boys" who had made a horrible mistake; now he had to endure what he had brought upon himself. Her husband George disagreed; the good lad that he had known was gone. Arthur, he believed, had changed greatly since the day in late 1866 when a cab in Chancery Lane had knocked him down, split his head open, and sent him to the hospital. He had never been the same since—had become increasingly irritable and frequently burst out in fits of irrational passion. George O'Connor began telling his friends that his son's brain was affected. The attack on the Queen simply confirmed his worst fears.
George O'Connor had seen insanity in his family before. Back in 1853, two years before his son Arthur was born, he became deeply involved in the care of his uncle Feargus. Feargus O'Connor's behavior had by then been increasingly eccentric for years. When in June 1852 he struck two members in the House of Commons in as many days, he was arrested and examined by four doctors, all of whom deemed him insane—three of them diagnosing his illness as "general paralysis of the insane"—soon (but not yet) understood to result from syphilis. One of these doctors was the celebrated John Conolly; another was his son-in-law, Thomas Harrington Tuke, who agreed to take O'Connor in at his asylum at Chiswick. When in 1853 George's aunt Harriet petitioned to gain control of her brother Feargus's estate and remove him from Tuke's care, citing ill-treatment, George staunchly defended Tuke, successfully applying to have his uncle placed under the protection of the Lord Chancellor, in order to keep his uncle safe at Chiswick and safe from the designs of his aunt. The commission, examining him, found him frantic and incoherent, but able to sing out all of "The Lion of Freedom," the song written in his honor. Feargus O'Connor lived on for another two years in pitiful physical decline, suffering severe epileptic seizures and losing control of his bodily functions. In August 1855, his sister—in opposition to George's wishes—applied successfully to the Court of Chancery for her brother's removal to her house. He died there in agony ten days later. George O'Connor knew what madness looked like; he knew that madness ran in his family; he was sure that physical injury to his son had brought that madness to the fore. And he trusted Dr. Thomas Harrington Tuke.
Therefore, George O'Connor turned not to a solicitor to help Arthur, but to Tuke. A week after his son's imprisonment, he met Tuke in his consulting room and explained his son's case. Tuke cautioned him: if Arthur were deemed insane at his trial, he would be confined at the Queen's pleasure—in effect a harsher sentence than the seven years' imprisonment and two floggings that he incorrectly thought to be the maximum sentence under Peel's Act. George O'Connor understood that. He still wished that Tuke examine his son.
Five days later, on 12 April, Tuke examined Arthur in the company of J. Rowland Gibson, the surgeon of Newgate. The boy's pupils were dilated; his eyes glistened. His head was asymmetrical, with phrenological indications of insanity. He described his many illnesses—spitting blood, bone disease—all of which indicated to Tuke "a fanciful and hypochondriacal state of mind." O'Connor spoke at length of his abortive attempt at St. Paul's and his attempt at the Palace, his narrative clearly indicating that "an occasion of great national excitement had developed in this poor boy a paroxysm of insanity." Tuke could only confirm Arthur's father's fears. He recommended to George that other doctors examine his son. Four others did; three concurred with Tuke. Tuke then advised the O'Connors that Arthur should indeed plead insanity, reasoning that any number of years of medical care at Broadmoor would serve the boy better than any number of years in prison as a convicted criminal. Besides, he suggested, in the event of the boy's recovery, both his previous good character, and the Queen's well-known propensity to clemency, would surely both work to free the boy.
Tuke offered his services to the penurious O'Connors for free. No solicitor would do the same, but a band of George O'Connor's friends contributed enough to hire the firm of Dickson and Lucas, who in turn engaged J. W. Hume-Williams as defending counsel. All agreed that Arthur would plead not guilty by reason of insanity at the coming sessions.
On Tuesday the ninth of April, the grand jury at the Central Criminal Court briefly heard the testimony of two witnesses—Prince Leopold and John Brown—and quickly returned a true bill against O'Connor, for a misdemeanor under Peel's Act. Later that afternoon, O'Connor was brought before the bar. It was known that he now had legal representation, and his trial was scheduled for Thursday. His attorney was not, however, in the room, nor were his parents. The boy appeared at first sheepish before the trappings of the law, but quickly regained his confidence. The Clerk of Arraigns asked him how he pleaded. O'Connor paused. Earlier that day, he had spoken with his mother in his cell. The scales had been removed from his eyes, he told her: he "saw the effects of what he had done." She understood this to mean that he had been mad when he committed the act—the scales were before his eyes—and now was sane, and contrite. Most likely, neither madness nor contrition had anything to do with it. He knew what he had done; he knew that he had broken the law—and as a devoted adherent to the truth, he knew what he had to do.
He pleaded guilty.
Those in the courtroom were visibly startled by the boy's plea, aware that his family, solicitor, and attorney had for some time been working upon a defense; all were expecting a trial on Thursday. Instead, the verdict was recorded, the Deputy Recorder directed that O'Connor be brought up that day for his sentencing, and he was taken away.
George O'Connor, who had been consulting with Dr. Tuke about his son's defense when his son pleaded, did not learn about the plea until the next day, when he read about it in a newspaper. He, Tuke, and O'Connor's attorney J. W. Hume-Williams agreed that the plea must be withdrawn: O'Connor's insanity prevented him from understanding what he was doing. Hume-Williams thus stood before the presiding judge, Baron Cleasby, on Wednesday, claiming he had a "startling amount of evidence" to support the claim of O'Connor's derangement. Cleasby seemed surprised: he had not heard that there was any hint of madness in the boy when he pleaded. Nevertheless, he allowed Hume-Williams to bring up the matter at O'Connor's sentencing the next day.
O'Connor thus had a trial. The courtroom was crowded, particularly with bewigged barristers expecting the setting of new legal precedents. O'Connor was brought to the dock, now neatly dressed and very much aware of his own importance: "he bowed neither to judge nor jury," noted a reporter, "but posed himself as if sitting for his photograph." His legal position was an odd one, for both his attorney and Attorney General Coleridge, appearing for the Crown, claimed to be his true advocate. Hume-Williams adopted Dr. Tuke's argument that if O'Connor were truly insane, medical care at the Queen's pleasure would better suit him than any number of years in an English prison. Coleridge, on the other hand, argued that an acquittal on the grounds of insanity would in effect ensure a worse punishment—a lifetime of confinement. Though a jury was empaneled to consider the question, it was more limited in scope than a full-blown criminal trial, for—as Baron Cleasby, a judge known to be a niggler on points of law, and never quite comfortable in a criminal courtroom, repeatedly made it clear, the hearing focused upon a single question: was Arthur O'Connor sane at the moment he pled guilty? Whether he was insane when he assaulted the Queen was not relevant. O'Connor's attorney J. W. Hume-Williams argued that O'Connor's state of mind at the time of the assault was indeed relevant and admissible, since it pointed to a long-term mental illness which endured until the moment O'Connor pled. But Cleasby would have none of it, interrupting Hume-Williams after the second sentence of his opening speech, and relentlessly afterwards, cautioning him to keep to the single question at issue.
Braving Cleasby's objections, Hume-Williams laid out the evidence for insanity—the life of unceasing illness, the head injury, the family predisposition to insanity, the growing "paroxysm of insanity," which peaked during the week of the thanksgiving. He crafted his case in the now well-tried pattern of Hadfield's and Oxford's defenses, bringing forward witnesses to O'Connor's eccentricities, and then calling a number of medical witnesses, in the hopes of demonstrating to the jury that the overwhelming medical consensus was that O'Connor was insane. But despite Hume-Williams's promise of a "startling" amount of evidence, his witness list was small: he brought forth only O'Connor's parents and four doctors. And only half of these witnesses actually helped his case. George O'Connor, Thomas Harrington Tuke, and another doctor, James Thompson Sabben, did testify to the boy's insanity. But the third doctor—Henry Smith, who had amputated O'Connor's toe years before—claimed that the boy's intelligence was above average. And J. Rowland Gibson, surgeon of Newgate, stated that after observing the boy daily since the first of March, he was certain that O'Connor was of sound mind.
Catherine O'Connor proved to harm more than help the defense, testifying that her son was not only sane, but perfectly correct, in pleading guilty: "I had always told him to tell the truth, and I believe he has done so." If Hume-Williams had any reason to call O'Connor's mother to the stand, it was because she was the one most familiar with her son's writings—writings she never could make sense of, but which her son assured her would make him famous someday. O'Connor burned his papers before his attempt at St. Paul's, but had missed some, and Hume-Williams, employing the time-honored tactic of connecting bad poetry with a diseased brain, took advantage of Catherine's testimony to read some of her son's "incoherent" work, until Baron Cleasby interrupted, dismissing the evidence as irrelevant.
Attorney General Coleridge, having recently made his name with his bitter cross-examination of the Tichborne Claimant, seemed to carry his rage into this case, genuinely affronted that George O'Connor, Dr. Tuke, and Hume-Williams sought to impose a worse punishment upon the boy in defending him. He cross-examined George O'Connor with caustic fervor. He revealed O'Connor Senior's deep concern about his son's "paroxysm of madness" as a lie—what else would explain the fact that the man allowed Arthur to take his nine-year-old brother out to view the illuminations the next day? More than this, Coleridge showed O'Connor to be a fool unable to understand his son's best interests:
Is it your desire that your son should be imprisoned for life in a lunatic asylum?—Certainly not.
But you wish that he should be found not guilty on the ground of insanity?—Excuse me, but it is rather a difficult question.
I want to know whether you are aware of what you are about. Is that your wish that he should be kept for life in a lunatic asylum?—Certainly not.
Do you know that follows?—Yes.
Is that what you wish?—It is not what I wish.
Fully understanding that, you elect that the question of his sanity should be tried?—Yes; as regards his sanity when he did the act.
Coleridge's most bitter attack, however, he reserved for Dr. Tuke, whom he presented as the prime mover of this idiotic defense, whose intrusion, if successful, would only make things worse for the boy. Arthur O'Connor was deeply amused by Coleridge's brutal cross-examination, bursting into laughter as he ran rings around Tuke in attacking the logic of Tuke's diagnosis of "reasoning insanity." Coleridge reduced Tuke to silence when he asked him how O'Connor's getting shut up in Broadmoor for life because of Tuke's testimony was more sensible than the boy's throwing himself upon the mercy of the court. And he forced Tuke to admit that O'Connor's pleading guilty was actually a sign that O'Connor's sanity had returned. Tuke stepped from the witness box smarting, and later considered himself to be victim of poor timing, suffering more greatly in Coleridge's cross-examination because "I was his first subject since he had showered vituperation upon the Tichborne Claimant."
After Dr. Gibson testified to O'Connor's complete sanity, the jury had had enough. They stopped the trial and announced through their foreman "that the prisoner was a perfectly sane man when he pleaded to the indictment, and that he was perfectly sane now." Baron Cleasby agreed immediately. Coleridge, in asking for a sentence, could not help but snipe one more time at "the unfortunate course which Dr. Tuke had thought fit to take in the case," but did note that some good had come from the trial: Tuke had forced him to present O'Connor's character in a better light than he otherwise would have. He requested that the judge take this into account in his sentencing.
And Baron Cleasby apparently did just that. In sentencing O'Connor, he weighed the aggravating factors—O'Connor's evil intention, the cunning and manner of the crime, and the occasion on which it was committed—against the mitigating ones: his age, his unfortunate "enthusiasm," which got the better of his mind, and the absurdity of the attempt itself, which suggested that he was not fully in his right mind at the time. His sentence: one year's imprisonment at hard labor. And during that time, one whipping: twenty strokes with a birch rod.
The courtroom was rent with a shriek at the mention of whipping: Arthur's mother Catherine cried out, apparently devastated by two equally unbearable thoughts: that of the rod on her son's tender back, and of the lost honor of the great O'Connors.
Queen Victoria was told of the sentence that evening at Windsor, and immediately lashed out at her prime minister, dividing her anger between O'Connor, the judge who sentenced him so leniently, and the government that could allow this to happen:
The Queen's object in writing to Mr. Gladstone today is to express her surprise & annoyance at the _extreme leniency_ of O'Connor's Sentence (wh she has just learnt) especially as regards the length of imprisonment, & to remind Mr. Gladstone of his having said to her that if there was not _sufficient protection_ from the _Law_ , as it _stood at present_ it _must_ be _amended..._.
Her safety & her peace of mind will be in _constant_ danger & constantly _disturbed_ —thereby making it _almost impossible_ for her to go about in public,—or _at all in London_ , if she has _no security_ that such miscreants will NOT be allowed to go _about_ in this country—ready at any moment to alarm & insult her again. And the Queen _does demand_ from the Govt that protection wh as a Queen & as a Woman she feels she has a _right to expect_.—It ought to be in the Power of the law to have such a man sent out of the country & not to allow him to return except _under surveillance_.
The effect of this short imprisonment will be _vy bad_ —both _abroad_ & _at home_.
Gladstone did his best to placate her, agreeing with her in deploring the leniency of Cleasby's sentence, which had astonished his entire Cabinet as well as himself. (Dr. Tuke, he noted, had caused "much mischief" through his "gratuitous intervention," but that offered no excuse for Cleasby's dereliction of duty.) As far as changing the law went—it was the judge and not the law at fault, for the law did allow for the harsher penalties of seven years' penal servitude, or three years' imprisonment with three whippings. Still, he offered to do all he could to create a future for the boy more in accordance with the Queen's wishes. The government, of course, could ensure that after he was released, "the eye of the police should continue to rest upon O'Connor." But he believed the government could do more, and in the convoluted and overcautious style he generally adopted in communicating with the Queen, told her
... it may be found practicable, even under present circumstances, to do what will be far preferable, namely by commutation, and voluntary inducement to get him out of the country for good. This arrangement would probably be the most satisfactory to Your Majesty under the circumstances and Mr. Gladstone feels himself safe in saying that the government will be most desirous to give effect to any wishes which Your Majesty is likely to entertain upon the subject.
In other words, the government hoped, by offering to remove the penalty of whipping from O'Connor's sentence, to induce him to stay out of Britain for the rest of Victoria's life.
The Queen declared herself through her Private Secretary to be placated—almost. She still wished that Judge Cleasby suffer some sort of censure at the hands of the Lord Chancellor. (Gladstone suggested in return that the "animadversions of the press" would more effectively "repress these strange aberrations.") And she begged to differ with Gladstone about the law as it presently stood: it _did_ need changing, for it lacked a provision expatriating offenders. Surely, in the course of time, Gladstone could consider amending the law to do that?
Gladstone suggested that his government might indeed consider that change "should an opportunity occur when it might be obtained with facility." (The opportunity, however, never arrived; Peel's law was never amended to incorporate exile as a penalty.) In the meantime, Gladstone happily reported that he foresaw no problem with getting O'Connor out of the country: Colonel Henderson, the commissioner of police, had told him that "there will probably be little difficulty in arranging for O'Connor's permanent removal from the country." In time, Gladstone would discover that removing O'Connor would not be that easy. And in her premonition that O'Connor's short sentence and proximity to her would continue to cause her trouble, Victoria was absolutely accurate.
Home Secretary Henry Bruce quickly acted to keep the possibility of O'Connor's exile alive. The day after the boy's sentencing he wrote the governor of Newgate to suspend the sentence of whipping there and at any prisons to which he was transferred—Clerkenwell and Coldbath Fields, as it turned out. And there the government left matters until November 1872, when Bruce, who, acting through Governor Colville of Coldbath Fields, gave O'Connor an inkling of the government's plan to substitute exile for whipping, and encouraged O'Connor to petition for a remission of his punishment. O'Connor—without consulting his parents, the governor made clear—duly submitted a clearly written, contrite plea, denying that he had ever intended to harm the Queen, and claiming not only that had never met a Fenian in his life, but that he deeply deplored their actions. He claimed that when he assaulted the Queen, he was in a state between sanity and madness—"I was not mad, nor was I perfectly sensible"—and that he was "laboring under two of the most wasting and irritating diseases to which the human frame is liable"—which in turn drove him "to phrenzy" and "a condition bordering upon imbecility." If he could be freed from the shame and reproach of a whipping, he was fully prepared to leave England for a "distant & warmer climate," free from any police supervision, until "all suspicion and distrust of me will cease to exist."
The petition was rushed to the Home Office, and Bruce quickly conveyed to O'Connor the specific terms of the government's offer: O'Connor would be freed from prison without the whipping if he would agree to exile in the southern African colony of Natal and not return during the life of the Queen. The terms likely came too quickly to the boy, for he began to understand how desperately the government wanted him gone, and that this gave him leverage. And so he balked. He wished to speak with his parents about the deal; and he certainly could not agree to exile from England for the rest of the Queen's life. The Queen, as far as he knew, was perfectly healthy, and might live for twenty or thirty years. "I can never agree to a condition which would condemn me to almost perpetual exile; & which would be rendered a living death by the knowledge that the dearest of my relations might pass from this life while I thousands of miles away could only cry out against that which withheld me from them at such a moment...."
Governor Colville, in passing O'Connor's letter on to Bruce, suggested that the boy might be content with five years' exile. Though the Home Secretary personally had no problem with this, considering that if O'Connor ever returned "it wd be as an altered man," he doubted the Queen would be pleased. In his next letter, written on New Year's Eve 1872, O'Connor proved to be even more recalcitrant. He had completely cottoned on to the government's motives, writing incredulously "I conclude that the Home Office believes me to be possessed of a Royal mania or something of the sort & that for H. Majesty's safety and peace of mind they desire me to leave the country." He was willing to leave the country—but would not do so under any conditions whatsoever, going rather as "an independent and unrestrained individual."
"This is vexatious," Bruce wrote his undersecretary the next day. Understanding now that the boy had the upper hand, Bruce directed that Governor Colville impress upon O'Connor the pain and indignity of flogging, and let him know that if he were willing to go abroad, Bruce would agree to set no conditions as to his returning home, "which," he acknowledged, "in fact we have no power to make." At this point, George O'Connor entered into the negotiations, asking that his son be shipped to Tasmania (where the children of George's uncle Roderic—Feargus's half-brother—were prosperous landowners) rather than Natal, and requesting that the boy be allowed a couple of days at home before he set out. Arthur then repeated his father's demands with a haughtiness that exasperated Governor Colville: "he seems to take a higher tone, and to consider himself a person of some importance." Colville suggested to Bruce that they go ahead and let him be whipped.
That Bruce would not do. By mid-January, he acceded to all of the O'Connors' demands. A suitable passage was obtained on the _Lodore_. O'Connor stayed at his parents' house for a fortnight (for which George O'Connor billed the government £10); and on 12 February 1873 he set sail—for Sydney rather than Tasmania, O'Connor's parents probably deciding their Hobart relatives would want nothing to do with the boy. Bruce contacted the Foreign Office, which in turn contacted the Governor of New South Wales, Hercules Robinson, warning of O'Connor's arrival and asking that the police there keep him under surveillance and find him some sort of employment.
O'Connor arrived at Sydney on 20 May 1873 and reported immediately to Governor Robinson's private secretary. He had adopted the alias "George Morton," which he held religiously while in Australia ("the people being very loyal," he later wrote, "I might suffer some annoyance were I to be known"). While O'Connor impressed favorably all who knew him in Sydney, he was himself less than impressed by the place: Sydney, he claimed, simply did not offer a field for a man of his literary talents. He made clear from the start that he wished to return to England as soon as he could. Life was to get even worse for him, though. Governor Robinson, fearing that if O'Connor's past became known, "the matter would be eagerly seized upon and made the ground for an attack on the Ministry," found him a job in the distant town of Morpeth as a butcher's clerk.
While suffering in Morpeth, O'Connor took what he was sure would be a first step toward gaining the literary fame for which he knew he was destined: he wrote a letter to the Queen. He did so, he told Governor Robinson, because the Queen had asked him to. And so he wrote, passing on the letter to Robinson, who duly sent it on to the Colonial Office, which passed it on to Bruce in the Home Office. The letter detailed O'Connor's depressing passage out, as well as his observations of Sydney and his "distasteful" Morpeth job. It also—at some length and in prose of the deepest purple—waxed glorious about his literary abilities and ambitions. He had a poet's mind, and that mind "stands alone, and lives in a glorious solitude, apart from the world; and to its music, the sounds of trade, are death. It is a heavenly blossom, that would spring up into glory, in a desert, but which would die despairingly, amidst the horrors of the Counting house." "I have not the slightest intention of settling out here," he wrote Victoria. "I shall remain only till my health is restored, then return home and strive for literary eminence." And he expected that Victoria would help him achieve those heights. She would be so deeply impressed by this letter, he was sure, that she would see to its publication. And that would be just the start:
There is a prize toward which I am ever looking. None but a Poet can obtain it, and as yet I think, no Irish poet has held it—Passionately Irish myself, this honor I will bring upon Ireland, poor Ireland, if the highest limit of human striving can obtain success. It comes from the throne, and is now held by a writer yet "not one of the grand old masters"—He is not immortal.
Tennyson be damned: Victoria would one day understand O'Connor's genius and appoint him Poet Laureate.
The letter, of course, made it no further than the Home Office. "The man must be mad," wrote Bruce; "His self-conceit is intolerable. Of course this letter must not go to H. M." This clear proof of O'Connor's insanity sent Home Office officials scurrying to retrieve a record of his terms of exile, in the hopes of doing something to prevent his return. But Bruce remembered: there were no terms, and there was nothing they could do to stop him returning.
And he did return. He threw up his Morpeth job after a few weeks and returned to Sydney, where a more suitable job as a clerk in a firm of solicitors was found for him. The police, realizing his fifteen-shilling-a-week wage, without board, was not enough to live on, supplemented that pay with public funds. Neither that, nor the promise of a substantial raise, could dissuade him from booking passage back to England.
On 25 February 1874, Governor Robinson telegraphed Whitehall: "George Morton sailed for London (derry) today in _Hydaspes_ —Ship may be looked for in ninety days." "I had no legal power to detain the youth," Robinson wrote to Richard Cross, Home Secretary of the newly elected Tory ministry. The authorities in England should feel no uneasiness about O'Connor's return, Robinson added—because all in Sydney were deeply impressed by his intelligence and demeanor.
Cross was hardly reassured and quickly set a police watch on O'Connor when by summer he had returned to his parents' cramped Aldgate home. In July, Chief Inspector George Clarke interviewed O'Connor there. Clarke saw no signs of insanity, except for the fact that "he is of a romantic turn of mind, he has no employment, and spends most of his time at home reading and writing what he calls poetry." Among his writings were more letters to the Queen—letters which almost certainly never reached her. He attributed the worst of motives to her silence, and his letters grew angry, and then threatening. It was likely the last of these letters which proved too dangerous to ignore, and Cross turned for help to the very person whom the Liberals and Attorney General Coleridge considered the most troublesome actor in the O'Connor case, three years before—Dr. Thomas Harrington Tuke. Cross forwarded O'Connor's letters to Tuke and requested that he obtain the assistance of other doctors to ascertain whether O'Connor was insane, and whether he posed a threat to the Queen. He knew, of course, that Tuke already considered O'Connor deeply insane, and knew as well that by the lunacy laws of the time, a certification of insanity by two doctors would safely place O'Connor in an asylum.
Tuke, delighted that the present government, unlike the last one, showed the highest respect for his expertise, was happy to help, and on 4 May he took O'Connor to the consulting room of Dr. William Gull. Tuke could not have chosen a better colleague to evaluate O'Connor. Gull had experience working with the insane, but more importantly he was a royal physician who had attended to the Prince of Wales in his illness, and who immediately after the scare of O'Connor's attempt had been called from Marlborough House to Buckingham Palace to treat Victoria.* Gull's agreement with Tuke would give a royal sanction of sorts to O'Connor's committal.
Realizing that the government's interest in him had escalated greatly, Arthur O'Connor himself brought matters to a head. He knew that on the next day, 5 May, Victoria would make one of her rare appearances in London, holding a drawing room at Buckingham Palace. That afternoon, therefore, O'Connor reappeared outside the northeast gate of the Palace at the same spot he had stood three years before. The police recognized him immediately. They watched him for a time as he oscillated between quiescence and excitement. "I was not excited," O'Connor protested at his subsequent examination; "I was thinking what a wonderful calm reigned in London, and that it was owing to the perfection of government." His intent, he claimed, was not homicide but suicide; he expected the police would kill him before he got near the Queen. He was arrested quietly, and quietly removed; no newspapers that evening or the next day carried any account of his return.
He was brought back to Scotland Yard, where he was examined by another doctor brought into the case by Tuke, Alexander Tweedie. Tweedie agreed with Tuke's and Gull's diagnosis of insanity. O'Connor himself now agreed with the doctors that he should be placed in an asylum, and had assisted Tuke by writing out for him a list of his symptoms:
Thought continually revolving upon religion. Visions at night of Angels hurling men [over] precipices to die for ever because they had not given up all they loved to go and sell Bibles to the unconverted. Sense that unless I gave up the drama, witty and happy society, and the world generally I should be everlastingly damned. In a word, one unceasing mania concerning Jesus Christ the intellect warring with the mania yet unable to crush it. Sense of utter want of constitution and energy, a feeling as if I were half dead.
The next day, O'Connor was again brought to Bow Street, where in the far less crowded courtroom he was not committed to Newgate, but, with Tuke's and Tweedie's testimony and certification, committed to Hanwell Asylum as an "imbecile." The Queen was again safe, and, as far as her Home Secretary was concerned, Thomas Harrington Tuke's involvement had prevented her from harm. Cross wrote Tuke a letter of thanks on behalf of himself and the public. Victoria, "surprised & annoyed" by O'Connor's return, must at least have been more pleased by the Conservatives' handling of him than she had been by the Liberals', three years before. "He is evidentially quite unfit to be at large," Ponsonby wrote to her, "and there is no possibility of his being liberated from the Asylum at present."
Thomas Harrington Tuke, who had never stopped smarting from John Coleridge's brutal cross-examination during O'Connor's trial, was exultant at what he saw to be his complete vindication, and within two weeks of O'Connor's committal he couldn't help but share his triumph and rail at Coleridge's "unfortunate" advocacy of O'Connor. "I freely forgive Lord Coleridge for his personal attack upon myself," he wrote magnanimously in _The British Medical Journal_.
_..._ but he must surely now deeply deplore his share in a proceeding which consigned a sick and insane boy to degrading punishment, and to a prison instead of a hospital, thus, perhaps, rendering him a hopeless lunatic; he may also regret that he treated a medical witness with much discourtesy, and ridiculed scientific evidence that has ultimately proved correct; and he must feel deeply that his unfortunate advocacy very nearly resulted in injury or alarm to the Royal Mistress whom it was his special duty to protect and defend.
With his admission to Hanwell, Arthur O'Connor's involvement in Victoria's life came to an end. He was then twenty-one years old, and still had a long journey ahead of him; he would in a year and a half be freed from Hanwell as cured; another voyage to Australia, and more asylums, were in his future. Victoria in 1875 had not quite lived up to the promise of her great coming-out during the thanksgiving week of 1872. She remained deeply suspicious about London and continued to keep her stays there to a minimum. And she had not involved the Prince of Wales any more deeply in political affairs. Gladstone's plans to make him Viceroy of Ireland, for one thing, had come to naught, for Victoria's jealousy of her own prerogatives was simply too strong, as were her doubts about her son's competence: "If only our dear Bertie was fit to replace me!" she wrote Vicky three months after O'Connor's attack. But though she remained largely invisible, and the Prince of Wales remained unable to gain great respect in politics, Victoria's popularity—and, for that matter, her son's—had grown, and would only continue to grow. British republicanism had passed in 1872 like a bad dream—the distant memory of a clever-looking boy with a rusty flintlock.
* Gull considered that the Queen would suffer no lasting effects from the fright she suffered.
_twenty–two_
BLUE
On the afternoon of 2 March 1882, a slouching and miserable-looking man shuffled down the platform of the Great Western Railway Station at Windsor. He paused furtively in a doorway and then slipped through, out of the cold and into the little paradise of the station's first-class waiting room. Roderick Maclean was filthy, either unwilling or unable to wash off the dust of the many roads upon which he had tramped. Grime and weariness conspired to make him appear older than his twenty-eight years. His chin was black with several days' worth of stubble. He wore shabby shoes, a shabby bowler, and an even shabbier overcoat. He had no train ticket. Anyone seeing him would instantly conclude that he did not belong in this room, with its leather armchairs and sofas, ornate gilded mirrors, writing desks, and luxurious carpet. But the room was empty, and Maclean had a pressing need to sit down and write a letter. He decided to chance it.
Besides, Maclean very well knew that he had every right to sit in this room or in any other. God had told him so, and more: much more. God read his thoughts and spoke to him personally, soothing and directing him as he made his troubled way through a dark and ignorant world. God had given him superhuman abilities—had made him a great poet, artist, and prophet. God had given him eternal life. And Almighty God had assured him that he was the chosen one, born to rule over the greatest empire on earth. He was certain that his own claim to the British throne was at least as great as George IV's had been—and was greater than Victoria's.
To him alone God had revealed the great secrets of the universe. The key to all power, he knew, lay in one number—and one color. The number was four. Earth, air, fire, water; north, south, east, west: four signified the earth and everything on it. More than this, four signified man's dominion over all the earth; chaotic nature drawn up, reconstituted, regularized, and employed to serve human ends. Right angles had little place in nature, but they were the hallmark of human creation and the sign of human power. In the thousand towns and cities through which Maclean had frantically wandered, he saw those four fourths expressed a billion times over: in every brick and cut stone, every intersection of streets, every wall, façade, door and window. And between all of these towns and cities roared the trains, the embodiment of Victorian progress and of the juggernaut of civilization, hurtling over countless rectangles of track and tie into infinity. Four was _his number;_ God had given it and all it promised to him. Any occurrence of that number—as in 4, 14, 40, 104, 400, 404, 440, 444 and so on—was supposed to be auspicious for him. In a beaten-up notebook that he kept in his pocket, Maclean had set down in large letters a title for a work he knew would be one of genius: "The Fourth Path, a novel by Roderick Maclean." And below that, he had written out a recipe for an elixir: "four drops of sweet nitre and half a tumbler of water."*
The color— _his_ color—was blue, the color of the sky, of the ocean—of immensity: of infinity. Blue signified his immortal and superhuman self, and his unique connection to God. And God had decreed blue his color by some sort of cosmic sumptuary law: Maclean knew that wearing blue was forbidden to anyone besides himself alone, and those who wished him well—who could wear his color to signal their affection for, their loyalty toward him.
But despite God's great favor, and all of God's promises, Roderick Maclean knew himself to be the most miserable man on earth, doomed to wander for years without succor or solace among millions of ignorant and petty people who feared him, hated him, and were engaged in a massive conspiracy to torment him and to destroy him if they could. They had appropriated the power of the number four— _his number_ —to themselves: all of the matter of the earth were theirs to command, while he, homeless, without possessions or power over the things of this world, was slowly starving. Occurrences of four were now more likely ominous than auspicious to him. His enemies owned the bricks and stones, the façades and doors and windows, from behind which they sneered at him; they owned the streets upon which they brazenly insulted and attacked him. And his enemies had long been driving him to madness by stealing blue— _his color_ —from him. He was no fool; he could see that more and more of his enemies wore blue dresses and bonnets and ribbons, blue waistcoats and overcoats, blue neckties, kerchiefs, scarves and shawls. They had done it at first to deceive him into thinking they were his friends when they were not. But now they meant him active harm: they wore blue to cause him "perplexity and agony," to "injure, annoy, and vex me on every opportunity."
It hadn't always been this way. His childhood, he would later recall, was "as happy as any youthful days could be." His father Charles Maclean had earned a fortune as master-carver and master-guilder to the gentry and nobility. He had employed—auspiciously—forty people. He specialized in picture frames and mirrors, which filled two luxurious showrooms in London, on Fleet Street and Oxford Street. The Queen herself had seen Charles Maclean's work; a massive console table and mirror that he manufactured had been given pride of place in the nave of the Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Roderick Maclean was born three years after the Exhibition and for his first dozen years lived in luxury in and above his father's wonderful looking-glass worlds, as well as in larger houses in Gloucester Road and then Earl's Court, and at an estate in the suburbs that he remembered as an Eden. He was educated to be a gentleman at a school on Harley Street, and became fluent in French and German. Roderick's father was a literary gentleman of sorts, taking up in 1861 the proprietorship of a new humor magazine, _Fun_ , which became in time a highly successful rival to the great _Punch_. Roderick Maclean remembered his childhood homes as great literary salons, and indeed when he was a boy many up-and-coming writers gathered there. Roderick recalled mingling among George Augustus Sala, Tom Hood (son of the great comic poet), W. S. Gilbert in his pre-Sullivan days, and others. Not surprisingly, he began to contemplate a future as a great writer himself.
But the Macleans—and Roderick most forcibly—were cast out of this paradise in the mid-1860s. Though _Fun_ later found its legs, it was in its infancy a drain on Charles Maclean's business, and he sold it in 1865. In the next year, Charles apparently lost much of his fortune in the spectacular collapse of the banking firm of Overend and Gurney, and he sold off his business by the end of the decade. During that same year, 1866, twelve-year-old Roderick suffered his own fall, literally, slipping in the doorway of his Gloucester Road house, smashing his head and gashing his scalp open. He was under a doctor's care for over a month, and was never quite the same. His head continually gave off the sensation of a "slight shock from a galvanic battery," and he suffered severe and recurrent headaches. More than this, Maclean claimed, the injury rendered him completely unable to perform manual labor. Apparently God began to speak to him around this time. In any case, his behavior changed alarmingly. He developed morbid fears that his siblings, his mother, and especially his father were trying to kill him, and began to sense that the world was leagued against him. He lashed back, threatening to kill his family and at one time vowing to blow up St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey.
Maclean attempted to solve the serious problem his son suddenly presented by sending him away. Twice he booked Roderick passage for America. Each time Roderick was certain that his father had bribed the sailors to throw him overboard; on the first ship he lay awake in his berth all night clutching a knife, ready to kill the first sailor who touched him. The next morning he demanded to disembark at Gravesend. He refused absolutely to board the second ship. In 1874, when Roderick was twenty, Charles Maclean took steps to have him committed to an asylum, and engaged the services of the two physicians required by Victorian lunacy law to issue a certificate of commitment. The first of these doctors, the renowned psychologist Henry Maudsley (yet another son-in-law, incidentally, of the now-deceased psychologist John Conolly) was happy to comply, and declared Roderick insane. The other doctor, Alfred Godrich, found Roderick highly excitable but not a lunatic, and thus refused to commit him. Thus thwarted, Maclean's father instead exiled Roderick as an apprentice on a farm near Dover. Horrified by the prospect of agricultural labor, Maclean fled, and as he did so he attempted to strike his first blow against the millions who oppressed him. Next to the farm lay tracks of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, and there Maclean offered a young boy sixpence to derail a coming train with a beam of wood. The boy, unable to lift the beam, was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Maclean and the boy were caught and tried at Maidstone Assizes. Maclean's attorney argued ingeniously that inciting a person to do what he was unable to do was not an offense. Maclean and the boy were acquitted. This was not the only time that Roderick Maclean struck out at the railways; his father claimed that he attempted to derail trains at least twice more, and £100 was once offered for his apprehension.
For three years after that, he dwelled uneasily with his family. When his father died in 1877 and his mother died around the same time, his brother Charles tried to place him in the home of a family friend, the artist Samuel Stanesby, in what was a harrowing experience for everyone concerned. And after that, Roderick Maclean drifted. His four living siblings worked out a way both to support him and to keep him away from them: every week, one of his sisters would mail him, wherever he was, a postal order for a few shillings. It was never enough. When he could no longer afford the price of a low lodging house, he sought admission to the local workhouse. Once, denied admission to one of these in Somerset, he deliberately smashed a window so that he would spend the night in jail. Occasionally he was able to gain temporary admission to the local lunatic asylum, as he had once done in Dublin.
And at one point in his wanderings Maclean aspired to the patronage of Victoria herself. In 1877, while living at a lodging house in Guildford, Maclean composed a verse for her and sent it to Buckingham Palace. While Maclean may or may not have known that the poem's execrable meter, logic, grammar, and spelling would hardly appeal to the Queen, he must have been sure that its subject would strike a chord, for it was the one closest to her heart: her undying love and lifelong mourning for Albert:
On your thrown you set and rule us all,
By justice you make known
All your power, and the people like
To cheer the Queen they call their own,
When your lamented husband left us,
And went were troubles find no share,
How we felt for you and tried too lessen
The sting of bad fate you had to bare,
But God who knows whats for our best
Sent you comfort in your most trying hour,
And made you bare your troubles as a nobly woman
should, And the people showed their love, and liked your power.
When History tells, of your good reign,
They will think of you and say,
Its the Queen who made her people happy,
By affection and justice thats how she ruled the sway.
Maclean was unable to remain in his Guildford lodging house long enough for a reply, as his landlady, alarmed when Maclean showed her a dagger he carried in his sleeve to "take care of himself," threw him out. Thus he never heard from the Queen, and almost certainly resumed his wanderings with a growing sense that Victoria scorned him as much as everyone else did.*
For more than four years he anxiously walked the length and breadth of Britain, and beyond: to Boulogne, France; throughout Germany: even perhaps to Jamaica, where according to one report he passed as Roderigues Maclean. It did not matter how far away he went, for he endured the same hellish cycle everywhere. He would enter a new town seeking anonymity and peace, but before long a stranger would recognize him and would flaunt some article of blue clothing in his face. The word then quickly spread, and he was recognized, accosted, despised, and insulted by all. He would flee to another town, and the torture would begin again. In 1880, thus beset in the town of Weston-super-Mare, he reached a breaking point, and he spilled out his anguish in a letter to his sister Annie:
Dear Annie,—I have no doubt but that you will be somewhat surprised to receive another letter from me, but as the English people have continued to annoy me, I thought I would write, as you should not be surprised if anything unpleasant occurred, as the people being so antagonistically inclined toward me, makes me raving mad. I can hardly contain myself in fact. I mean, if they don't cease wearing blue, I will commit murder.... The pain and anguish that I passed the other night I could not describe. Perhaps by the time you receive this I shall be in prison. I really think I cannot prevent myself having revenge on the English people. I don't mind a bit if they hanged me, as now I see things in a different light. They only pretend to be friendly to annoy and cause untold misery. I fear it will be just as bad in Boulogne or elsewhere. What chance have I to cope with the millions of people who are against me? Not merely against me, I should not mind that, but at open defiance and publicly annoying me on every possible occasion. What a confounded fool I must have been to say anything about it or wear blue at the time. From your former words I thought the people had a more forgiving nature, but I perceive I was deceived in them all. I intend to carry my determination into effect to-day (Monday), and after it's done, I shall write you a letter. Of course I shall not remove nor give myself up, but doubtless they will take me into custody the next day. If I cannot commit a murder (I really assure you, Annie, I mean what I write) in one way, I will in another way. All I can add is, if there is more difficulty, there may be more victims.
Annie Maclean and her sister Caroline, deeply alarmed by this letter, telegraphed Roderick begging him to desist, and quickly arranged for a local surgeon to examine him, sign a certificate of lunacy, and commit him to the Bath and Somerset Lunatic Asylum.* He remained there for fourteen months, happier to be in an asylum than anywhere else—but even there fearing contact with perfidious attendants and visitors.
In July 1881, Maclean was discharged from the asylum as cured, and immediately resumed his frantic wandering. Apparently avoiding London altogether—the massive population there, he wrote Annie, made things "a thousand times worse"—he tramped through southern England, preferring the coastal towns, moving from Chichester to Brighton to Eastbourne to Croydon, and back to Brighton, where he spent a month in the local workhouse. While there, he wrote a letter to Annie complaining that horrible pains in his head were driving him insane, and asking her again to get him into an asylum. From her he received no answer; instead, he got a deeply disturbing letter from his brother Hector, who told Roderick that he refused to be his brother's keeper any longer: he had his own three children to look after.
When the workhouse authorities at Brighton threatened to transfer Maclean to Kensington, his home parish workhouse, Maclean fled west to Southsea, outside of Portland. There he found a room in the poorer part of town, in the home of Mrs. Sorrell. Mrs. Sorrell remembered him as quiet at first, but desperate to prove his respectability: he claimed to be a writer and poet employed by the _West Sussex Gazette_. It was not long before his landlady concluded he was a man "with a tile loose." Nonetheless, for the dozen or so days he remained in Southsea, Maclean got on amazingly well with her and with his fellow lodger Edward Hucker. By day he wandered the town or paced the cold and windy beach, where across the blue-gray bay he could see the Isle of Wight, see even the shore of Victoria's Osborne estate. By night he entertained Sorrell and Hucker with a little concertina that he had obtained in Brighton, and with a little ventriloquist routine, pretending to speak with an imaginary sweep in the chimney. He also conversed freely with the two, and Sorrell and Hucker both remembered Maclean as being deeply engaged in the politics of the day. He would lecture them on political economy until they could take it no more. He was a great admirer of Prime Minister Gladstone. In spite of—or perhaps because of—his special relationship with God, he declared himself to be a freethinker. And he was a passionate supporter of the ultraradical politician Charles Bradlaugh.
Charles Bradlaugh had been elected MP for Northampton in the general election of 1880, which had swept Gladstone and the Liberals back into power. Because, however, he was an outspoken atheist, he was prohibited either from affirming or taking his oath, and thus from taking his seat. For two years he had repeatedly presented himself in the House of Commons to take the oath, but his atheism, his republicanism, and his scandalous advocacy of birth control ensured that a majority of the Commons supported a measure each time to refuse to let him take the oath or his seat. Twice Bradlaugh was forcibly removed from the House of Commons. Once so far, he had been forced to run for reelection to regain his seat. During Maclean's stay in Southsea—on 21 February 1882—Bradlaugh scandalized the nation by attempting to force the issue: since no one would give him the oath, he decided to take it himself. He strode up to the Table of the House and pulled from his pocket a Bible and a piece of paper from which he read the oath. As the House erupted into an uproar, he kissed the Bible, signed the paper, gave it to the Clerk, and took his seat. The House adjourned in confusion. The next day, Bradlaugh was expelled from the House and his parliamentary seat was vacated. He would have to be re-elected a second time to take his seat in the House. (This by-election was taking place on the very day—2 March 1882—that Roderick Maclean had invaded the first-class waiting room of Windsor railway station.)
Bradlaugh was despised and hated by the millions. He was sneered at regularly by the press. He was forced into a relentless battle to prove his legitimacy, and was continually beaten down by the highest political body in the land. Not surprisingly, Roderick Maclean saw him as a kindred spirit.
In his long talks with Sorrell and Hucker, Roderick Maclean spoke as well, at length, about his deteriorating relationship with his family. While at Southsea he received several letters from them. First, he heard from his sister Annie—his only living sister now, his older sister Caroline having very recently died. Annie wrote to warn him that his family's support of him would soon diminish, if not disappear altogether. She was facing her own poverty—was indeed about to take a position as a governess—and her brothers balked at the idea of continuing to support him without her. A letter from one of his brothers didn't help matters: in it his brother offered no financial support, and instead reminded Roderick of his mental weakness, and recommended he seek restraint. Maclean was enraged at the way his family treated him, he told his landlady and fellow lodger. His brothers were wealthy: one had a good business in London, and the other had married into wealth. Over the years, he felt, he had established his right to be supported by his family: they should be giving him more now, not less. He vowed that he would go to London to enforce his rights.
He also engaged in one other topic of conversation while at Mrs. Sorrell's: Queen Victoria. Did she ever come to Portsmouth? he asked them. She did, of course, passing through every time she came to or went from Osborne on the Isle of Wight. Was Victoria nice? If he happened to be sketching when she passed him and he raised his hat to her, would she stop and talk to him? His odd questions confirmed Sorrell's and Hucker's opinion that Maclean was "soft."
One day he returned to Mrs. Sorrell's, angry because he had been to Gosport, where at midday he had requested to inspect the dockyard, and had been turned away. More than likely, this day was Thursday 16 February, and there was the best of reasons for his exclusion from the dockyard: at about 11:30 that morning, Victoria and her daughter Beatrice disembarked in Gosport from the yacht _Alberta_ , to board a train bound for Victoria Station and from there to ride to Buckingham Palace. If Maclean had wanted to see the Queen on that day, he was thwarted. In any case, he was unprepared for any meeting. And so on that day, he began to prepare. Around midday Maclean walked into a pawnbroker's on Queen Street, Portsmouth. He had seen a revolver for sale in the window and asked the assistant, John Fuller, the price: five shillings and twopence. He had already shopped for a pistol at a gunsmith's near Mrs. Sorrell's, but he could never afford the eleven shillings they asked. Indeed, he hadn't 5s. 2d., but he might be able to get it. He asked if Fuller would lower the price; he would not. But he would agree to hold the pistol for 2s. until Maclean raised the rest. It was a cheap pistol: a six-shooter of Belgian make, with a pinfiring mechanism which fired bullets by striking a tiny peg at the heel of each bullet. It was an inaccurate and clumsy weapon, but it was formidable-looking enough for witnesses later to mistake it for a Colt revolver. Maclean invented a reason for buying the gun: his name was Campbell, he told the shopkeeper, and he needed the pistol because he was about to join the South African Cap Mounted Rifles. Fuller accordingly wrote out a receipt for Maclean in the name of Campbell.
Maclean had originally intended to remain in Southsea for three weeks, but by the end of the first one he gave Mrs. Sorrell notice. He told her that while he was out he had seen someone he didn't like: his enemies were closing in on him again, and Portsmouth suddenly seemed too big for him. More than this, he had to resolve his money problems. He had come up with another idea for dealing with these: one of his brothers had married the sister of Augustus Harris, the lessee of the Drury Lane Theatre. Maclean knew himself to be a brilliant actor. He would leave on Thursday morning, the twenty-third, to go to London and find employment in Harris's troupe.
On the day before he left, he received another letter from his sister Annie. She was responding to a letter he had written her from Brighton—a letter that convinced her that her brother had again reached a breaking point. She sent him another postoffice order, and pleaded with him to stay where he was and take on any job he could—even take up a broom and sweep street-crossings. Mrs. Sorrell and Mr. Hucker agreed with Annie and advised Maclean to stay. But he was adamant: he would go to London. To provide him with some pocket money for his journey, Mrs. Sorrell gave him a couple of shillings in return for his concertina and a scarf he owned. That day, Maclean returned to the pawnbroker's, paid what he owed for the pistol, and took it away wrapped in an old piece of white linen. He returned as well to the gunsmith's and bought as many pin-fire bullets as he could for a shilling—eighteen or nineteen in all. The proprietor, who later claimed "it occurred to me that a beefsteak would do him more good than cartridges," asked him what he wanted them for: he was going abroad, he replied.
At seven the next morning, he set out. Mrs. Sorrell gave him a final gift of a better hat and pair of shoes than his own. He told them he would walk from Petersfield to Guildford, and from there to London. At first he faithfully kept to that course. The next morning, five miles north of Petersfield in Newton Valence, he was spotted by a clergyman, Archibald Maclachlan, who saw a shabbily dressed man clutching a battered carpetbag staggering up the road, apparently in great pain. Maclean collapsed outside of Maclachlan's garden gate in what Maclachlan was certain was an epileptic fit. Maclachlan ran to assist him: he was pale, half-starved, unconscious. With Maclachlan's help Maclean came to, wild-eyed. The clergyman offered to let him stay, but Maclean refused: he had to go on. So Maclachlan fed him some bread and butter, and when Maclean tottered off down the road, Maclachlan sent one of his servants to accompany him part of the way. Maclean made it to Guildford that night. The next morning, Maclean changed course. He did not head to London and dramatic fame, as he had assured Sorrell and Hucker. Instead he struck out due north, and at 3:00 on that afternoon—Saturday 25 February—he arrived in Windsor. The Queen was in residence.
Maclean found accommodation at 84 Victoria Cottages—again, in the poorer part of town. He told his landlord, a man named Knight, that he had just been hired as a grocer's assistant in the neighboring town of Eton and would begin work Monday. He also told him that he received a weekly allowance by mail—and that this should arrive on Wednesday. When Mrs. Knight asked him for a week's rent in advance, Maclean balked, since he did not have enough; could he pay a shilling now and the rest later? Mrs. Knight agreed. He proved to be a quiet lodger, leaving the house after breakfast and returning at teatime. He did by one account have a single eccentricity: he refused to remove his overcoat indoors, even when it was very warm, and he had a constant habit of smoothing down its front. With hindsight, the Knights thought that this might have something to do with his pistol, which they never saw.
On Tuesday, the last day of February, Maclean went to the central railway station, to join the crowds who came to see Queen Victoria off on the royal train for a short visit to London, where she was to hold a drawing room. Maclean was too late and missed her, though he did tell Mr. Knight that he saw "Jock Brown" there. The next day, Wednesday, Maclean asked his landlord if he could remain at home during the day. He had a toothache, he claimed. Also he was waiting for his allowance to arrive in the mail. It never came.
That day of wait was the first of March. The next day—the gloomy wet day of 2 March 1882—Roderick Maclean had made sure that he arrived at Windsor Station long before the Queen did—a good forty-five minutes before, at least. No one took much notice of him as he slipped into the station, came slouching around the platform, and sneaked into the first-class waiting room. He sat at a writing desk, fished out of his pockets a stub of a pencil, tore a scrap of paper out of his little notebook, and wrote his note.
I should not have done this crime had you, as you should have done, paid the 10s. per week instead of offering me the insulting small sum of 6s. per week, and expecting me to live on it. So you perceive the great good a little money would have done, had you not treated me as a fool, and set me more than ever against those bloated aristocrats, led by that old lady Mrs. Vic., who is an accursed robber in all senses.
—Roderick Maclean March 2, 1882,
Waiting-room, Great Western Railway.
Back went the pencil and the note into his pocket. Inside the waiting room it was quiet, but Maclean could hear growing commotion outside; the 4:50 train was loading and about to leave the station. The stationmaster, John George Smythe, was on the platform to signal an all-clear to the engineer. Smythe glanced into the first-class waiting room, and the sight of the seedy black-bewhiskered tramp arrested his steps. He burst in and accosted Maclean: "Did you know this is a first-class waiting room—not the place for you? What are you doing here?"
"I am waiting for a train."
"What train?"
"The next train from London; what time does it arrive?"
"5 5 [5:05]: you had better go into the other room and not here." Roderick Maclean sheepishly complied, walking past Smythe, out the door and back onto the cold platform. He made his way through the bustle and out of the station, skirting on his way the sumptuous little waiting room reserved exclusively for Victoria's use. It was now 4:50 P.M. At 5:25, the Queen's train was scheduled to steam into the station; Victoria would disembark and pass through her little waiting room to the front of the station, where a closed carriage awaited to take her the short drive to the Castle. On the road outside, Maclean turned left and walked to a set of palings marking the station's verge. He stopped there, within a few feet of the road across which Victoria's carriage would pass as it moved out of the station.
He would wait there. In his pocket, readily accessible, was his pistol. While he carried enough cartridges to fill all the pistol's chambers, he had been careful to ensure his good fortune by loading only four of them. One bullet, somewhere, somehow, he had already discharged. That left him with three live rounds for the Queen.
As Maclean waited in the cold, that old lady—that accursed robber Mrs. Vic—sat in the saloon car of her royal train as it gained speed out of Paddington Station, clattered through the northwest suburbs of London and shot into the countryside. By the Queen's side— _always_ by her side, these days—sat her youngest daughter Beatrice. Since Albert's death twenty-one years before, one of her daughters had always served as her companion. First had been Alice, but Alice had married Prince Louis of Hesse and moved away to Darmstadt. (She had since died, the first of Victoria's children to predecease her, of diphtheria in 1878, on 14 December, the terrible anniversary of Albert's death.) Then, Helena became her companion until she too married, in 1866. The daughter next in age, Louise, was far too free a spirit for Victoria to consider as a companion, so the position fell to Beatrice: shy, capable, loyal Beatrice. Beatrice, Victoria expected, would never marry as long as she had her mother to care for.*
Both Victoria and her daughter were tired, and they surely looked forward to their return to Windsor, as well as their upcoming retreat to the French Riviera. London had been, as usual, exhausting, as Victoria again had crammed their schedule in order to be in and out of the metropolis in little more than two days. There had been the upcoming royal wedding to plan for, between her youngest son Leopold and Princess Helen of Waldeck. Princess Helen was in town with her father, and they had to be entertained and introduced to London society; Beatrice had done much of the chaperoning. There had been for the Queen visits to the Duchess of Cambridge and the widowed ex-Empress of France, Eugènie, as well as the obligatory but to Victoria mildly nerve-racking rides in an open carriage through the Parks. And yesterday there had been a Queen's drawing room, where the Queen, with her daughters Helena and Beatrice, as well as her daughters-in-law Alexandra and Maria (Prince Alfred's wife), welcomed the usual enormous queue of young ladies into high society. Victoria dressed for the occasion, as usual, in a black dress trimmed with white. But she wore another color as well, as was also usual on state occasions: the deep blue sash of the Order of the Garter. And she also wore the gem-encrusted star of that Order, with its sapphire-blue garter and its diamond-studded rays—four major ones, and four minor ones. Roderick Maclean, in following the Queen's movements, surely knew that Victoria was tormenting him as everyone else did, appropriating his color and his number.
For two days straight, then, Victoria had performed the role she had learned by 1882 to play to perfection. Her popularity and prestige had never been higher, and would not diminish for the rest of her life. Her annual schedule had changed little over the past decade; she still spent most of the year apart from her people, secluded at Balmoral, Osborne, and Windsor. She still avoided London as much as she possibly could. But the grumbling about her absences, which grew in the 1860s and reached a peak in 1871, no longer existed. London had the grandeur and glitter of a court without her, centered on the Prince and Princess of Wales at Marlborough House. Much had changed in the way the public viewed her: then she was a Queen, subject to public standards of behavior for monarchs. Now she was an institution: an Empress and a ruler unlike and surpassing any previous one. The old rules and expectations no longer applied. Before, the Queen's popularity stemmed from her _doing;_ now, it stemmed from her simply _being_.
Victoria was sixty-two, now—old, or at least growing old. She was however more vital and healthy at sixty-two than she had been at fifty-two or even forty-two, during that dark decade after Albert's death when she continually wished her own death and continually pleaded broken health to avoid appearing in public. In the years after the thanksgiving she had regained a zest for life, and had taken up her duties with renewed energy: "What nerve! What muscle! What energy!" her Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, had said of her in 1880. But while she might have a greater vigor, she had become venerable in the public eye. She had ruled now for forty-five years, and was therefore the only monarch that most of her subjects could remember having. Through time, fertility, and royal precedence, she had become the grandmother of Europe. When Oxford had shot at her four decades before, she was pregnant with her first child; now she was a great-grandmother. Her own children had married into the royal houses of Russia, Denmark, and Germany, and her many grandchildren were now beginning to marry, carrying her and Albert's bloodline across the continent. Foreign policy, to Victoria, was a family matter; wars were family squabbles. And her own seniority over European royalty reflected and signified her nation's precedence as a world superpower.
For her subjects, life without Victoria was unthinkable. Victoria had given their era its name: they were all Victorians. Every part of their lives—the great scientific discoveries and technological innovations, the abundance of objects with which they surrounded themselves and cluttered their homes, the great and growing cities in which they lived, and the constantly expanding empire over which they had domain: all of it was Victorian, all of it was connected with her, embodied by her. Victoria had become a living monument to her age, and in Victoria Britons saw their own greatness. Even her appearance was monumental. She had with age exchanged her earlier defining characteristic—her diminutive stature—with another: stoutness. She used her weight to her advantage in public appearances, in photographs, and in portraits, always presenting herself with solidity and calmness, as the central, placid, and unshakeable image of Britain. Her public face, too—recreated through lithographic and photographic mass production and hung on millions of walls, public and private, across the nation—radiated zen-like calmness, with a quiet pride and forward-looking confidence. Hers was the face of Empire.
Much of the credit for Victoria's immense popularity was due to the man who literally made her an Empress, and more than this had made her fit that role, by making her _feel_ every inch an Empress: Benjamin Disraeli, or the Earl of Beaconsfield, as she elevated him soon after he elevated her. From the moment Disraeli kissed her hand upon taking office in 1874, dropping to one knee and declaring "I plight my troth to the kindest of _Mistresses_ ," the tenor of their relationship was clear: he would be her zealous devotee, best serving his country by serving his Queen. His merits as a prime minister might be open to debate, but he was without doubt the best courtier Victoria ever had. And in the style of a master courtier, he flattered the Queen ceaselessly and shamelessly, laying it on, as he famously observed, "with a trowel." Victoria, no fool, was well aware of his hyperbole, though she preferred to see him as "full of poetry, romance and chivalry," commodities which her previous and present Prime Minister, William Gladstone, completely lacked. And Disraeli backed up his honeyed words with genuine service. He was a master at converting policy triumphs into personal gifts to his monarch. When the government succeeded in buying up a substantial number of shares in the Suez Canal, he presented the news to the Queen as if he were Sir Francis Drake presenting Spanish gold to Elizabeth the First: "You have it, Madam," he declared to her. More than once he favored and sponsored legislation that she wanted and that his Cabinet did not. In a thousand ways he succeeded in rendering himself the paragon of prime ministers in Victoria's eyes—and in reminding her by contrast that his predecessor and successor, Gladstone, was the worst of them. He was assisted greatly in this project because the Queen was politically on his side from the start, for by the 1870s and in complete disregard of the beloved Albert's prime directive that the monarch must remain above party politics, Victoria had become a diehard conservative. Disraeli, according to Victoria, had "right feelings," and " _very large ideas_ , and _very lofty views_ of the position this country should hold." The two agreed that the endless turbulence in Ireland should be met by coercion, not concession. And they believed in the inherent glory of their ever-expanding empire. With Melbourne, Victoria had been a Melbournian; with Peel, she had been a Peelite; with Disraeli she was, and afterwards forever would be, a Disraelite. And with Disraeli's encouragement, Victoria developed the confident sense that her interests were the interests of the nation. She for once experienced the exhilarating sensation of being a ruler who actually ruled, with the assistance of a government that actually served her.
That dream had to have an end, of course; William Gladstone killed it. Victoria's loathing for Gladstone—a sentiment Disraeli did his best to encourage—grew in tandem with her attachment for Disraeli. Disraeli touched on that truth when he noted that Victoria's concern for his own health was dictated "not so much from love of me as dread of somebody else." Victoria had thought when Disraeli became Prime Minister that she had gotten rid of Gladstone for good. After the Liberals were defeated soundly in the 1874 general election, Gladstone retired, ceding leadership to Lord Hartington and retiring to his study of the classics and theology at Hawarden. In two years, however, he was back: a righteous rage against Turkish atrocities in the Balkans reanimated him, forcing him once again into the political spotlight. Disraeli, more concerned with the threat of Russian hegemony over eastern Europe than with the excesses of the weak Ottoman empire, played down the atrocities, and Gladstone's fervent campaign grew into a crusade against "Beaconsfieldism"—against Disraeli, in other words, and all that his government stood for. And in a dramatic departure from tradition, Gladstone made his case against Disraeli not to Parliament, but to the people directly, in rousing orations at mass meetings. Once re-engaged, Gladstone never relented. Fighting for a new Parliamentary seat in Midlothian, he brought unprecedented fire to his campaign, stumping the district in a "pilgrimage of Passion": appearing in his popular appeal to be conducting an American campaign, not a British one. Victoria was disgusted by his attacks on her beloved Prime Minister, and disgusted by Gladstone's destructively democratic behavior: "like an American stumping orator, making most violent speeches." Her anger was mixed with more than a hint of jealousy, for Gladstone gained an immense national popularity by his appeal to the masses, his procession resembling a royal progress: everywhere he went, he was welcomed with addresses and found fireworks, triumphal arches, and eager crowds. He had stolen a play from the Queen's own book.
And worst of all, he won: he converted the election for his own seat into a national campaign, thanks to full newspaper coverage, and the "People's William" sparked a Liberal surge in the polls; he and his party trounced Disraeli and the Conservatives in the 1880 general election. Victoria at first refused outright to have Gladstone back as her prime minister. She would rather abdicate, she wrote her private secretary, "rather than send for or have any _communication_ with that _half-mad_ firebrand who wd soon ruin everything & be a _Dictator_. Others but herself _may submit_ to his democratic rule, but _not the Queen._ " Disraeli recommended that she attempt to form a government under the nominal leader of the Liberals, Lord Hartington. But Hartington could only give Victoria a painful reminder of the constitutional limits of her power: Gladstone, he told her, would refuse to serve under anyone else, and a Liberal government without him would be impossible. With a reluctance that amounted to abhorrence, she called on Gladstone to form a ministry.
And so now in 1882, that horrible Mr. Gladstone was her Prime Minister, and she could only look back wistfully to the days of Disraeli's poetry, romance, and chivalry. Her nostalgia was rendered that much more poignant by the fact that Disraeli had died a year before, on 19 April 1881. Now Victoria could not help but feel both a prisoner and an enemy of her own government. Gladstone was no longer a liberal, as far as she was concerned; he had embraced a democratic radicalism that she was certain would bring ruin upon her nation. She kept him, as he noted, at "arm's length," preferring when possible to work with the other ministers in his Cabinet. And Gladstone, in spite of his immense personal respect for the Queen and the institution of monarchy, generally assumed she would be opposed to his policies and would need to be dealt with as a necessary evil, someone to be handled, not served. He spoke to her, she said, as if she were a public meeting. Victoria had feared that the coming Liberal government would be a "calamity for the country and the peace of Europe," and Gladstone had done little to change her mind. Of all her governments, she told Vicky two years later, this one was "the worst I have ever had to do with." Her political life had become largely a matter of bracing herself: waiting for her own government to mess up, and ready to pounce when they did.
The Queen's insecurity with her own government only heightened the general insecurity she felt in 1882. Life in the 1880s, it seemed, had become that much more difficult for rulers. Not one, but two dramatic assassinations that had occurred a year before had forced her to wonder whether she might be next.
Alexander II, Tsar of the Russians—and incidentally her son Alfred's father-in-law—had been the first to die, the victim of an implacable and highly organized band of Nihilists who called themselves the People's Will and who had dedicated themselves exclusively to killing their Tsar. But even before People's Will, Alexander's life had been threatened—three times, always by men with pistols. The first two attempts—the first in a park in St. Petersburg in 1866, and the second on a state visit to Paris in 1867—were thwarted when bystanders jostled the would-be assassins' arms. Alexander himself thwarted the third would-be assassin, a man named Alexander Soloviev, when in 1879 he got within arm's length of the Tsar and drew on him a high-caliber American pistol nicknamed the "Bear Hunter." Alexander saw the pistol, dodged the first shot, and then turned and fled, serpentining to avoid four more, before Soloviev was captured.
Soon after Soloviev's attempt, People's Will formed, holding as its central belief that destroying the autocrat Alexander would spark a national uprising and thus destroy the Russian autocracy. Their weapon of choice was dynamite—a relatively new technology, more easily transportable, more versatile, and much more powerful than gunpowder. And while People's Will targeted only the Tsar, they were not over-particular about injuring or killing the innocent to achieve their goal. They attempted three times in 1879 to blow up the Tsar's train, succeeding, on the third try, of blowing up the wrong train altogether—the one holding Alexander's baggage and entourage. In 1880, using an agent who had infiltrated the Palace as a servant, they tried to kill the royal family as they ate, secreting a good three hundred pounds of dynamite in a trunk below the dining room of the Winter Palace. The explosion destroyed the room and killed or wounded fifty of the palace guard, but the Tsar and his family arrived at dinner late and were unharmed.
A fourth attempt, to mine a bridge over which the Tsar crossed, failed when the conspirators who were to set off the explosion arrived after the Tsar had come and gone.
Finally, People's Will planned an apocalypse from which Alexander would never escape. Sundays in St. Petersburg, Alexander would usually drive a mile from the Winter Palace and back in order to review his troops, and the group plotted to kill him as he traveled the usual route. They rented out a shop, dug a mine under the road, and filled it with explosives. If this did not kill the Tsar, they equipped five agents to finish the job—four with hand-held dynamite and kerosene bombs, and one with a knife. (In the event, the knife-wielder was arrested before the attempt, and one cold-footed bomber did not show up). On Sunday 1 March 1881,* Alexander unknowingly avoided the mine by choosing to return to the Palace by another route, via the Catherine Canal. Learning of this, the three waiting bombers rushed to the canal. There, the first threw his bomb under the Tsar's carriage, and the street erupted in a deafening explosion. The Tsar was unhurt, but one of his Cossacks as well as a passing boy were killed. Alexander stepped out of his carriage to confront the captured bomber, wagging a finger in his face and berating him: "A fine one!" His aide twice pleaded with Alexander to get back into his carriage and move on, but the Tsar wished to survey the damage at the scene. There, a man suddenly turned, raised his arms, and threw his bomb at the Tsar's feet. When the smoke cleared, twenty people lay wounded on the street. The bomber was dead. And Alexander was a mass of wounds from the head down, his legs virtually blown away. He was carried to an open sleigh. The third bomber realized that the Tsar was dying and his bomb was unnecessary, and so with one arm he helped carry Alexander's body while with the other he held the briefcase containing the explosive.
"Feel quite shaken and stunned by this awful news," Victoria wrote in her journal on the day Alexander died. Soon afterwards, she sent her private secretary, Henry Ponsonby, to the Home Office to discuss increased security for Buckingham Palace. On the face of it, it seemed absurd that the Queen would see in the danger to the Tsar any danger to herself; Alexander was an autocrat who despite liberating the serfs in 1861 met dissent with repression. The nation was a police state where expectations for reform had been raised and crushed, ensuring widespread social discontent. Russia's jails and cities were full of men and women dedicated to killing the Tsar. Surely nothing like People's Will could exist in Britain?
Surely, Victoria knew, something like People's Will _did_ exist in Britain. There was only one other country on earth in which a disciplined organization, using dynamite as its weapon of choice, had in the early 1880s committed itself to terror-bombing, targeting centers of power to effect revolutionary change. And that country was Victoria's own.
The very first true terror-bombing in the modern world—in other words, the first bombing intended to effect political change by destroying for the sake of destruction, thereby spreading terror through the population, rather than a bombing intended to serve another purpose, such as freeing a prisoner or even killing another human being—had taken place the year before, at 5:20 P.M. on 14 January 1881, when a bomb erupted at the army barracks at Salford near Manchester.* The bombers had obviously chosen the site for its symbolic value: Salford was where the Manchester Martyrs had been hanged fourteen years before. While the explosion was intended to destroy property and not people, it nevertheless drew blood: a butcher's shop was destroyed; three adults were injured, and a seven-year-old boy was killed.
That the explosion was a Fenian attack and the manifestation of Irish rage was obvious, but who exactly was culpable was less so. In actuality, the immense majority of Fenians, both in Ireland and the United States, had nothing to do with the attack, nor did any of the Irish Nationalists in Parliament or their leader, Charles Stewart Parnell. Both the motivation and the money for the attack came from one man: Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. Rossa's hatred of the British had been born when his fatherless family was evicted during the worst of the Great Famine and had been hardened by years of rough treatment in British prisons, to which he was sentenced under a treason-felony charge. Exiled to New York, he openly established a "skirmishing fund" for terrorist attacks upon Britain. The British government might protest, but the U.S. government—hungry for Irish votes—did nothing to stop him. Rossa's politics—his refusal in particular to work with Parnell and the parliamentary nationalists—proved too militant for the largest body of the Fenians in the United States, the Clan-na-Gael, and in 1880 Rossa broke with them, formed his own organization, and founded the extremist newspaper _United Irishman_ , which redoubled his calls for a terrorist fund. Though the Clan-na-Gael would also eventually enter the dynamite war against the British, the attacks so far had all been by Rossa's agents.
Two months later, Rossa's bombers targeted London, placing a cruder device—fifteen pounds of blasting powder lit by a fuse—in a niche outside Mansion House, the Lord Mayor's residence. An alert constable discovered the package, snuffed out the fuse, and carried the bomb to Bow Street Station. Mansion House was quiet that night: a planned grand dinner had been called off because Alexander II had been assassinated three days before. (It was this would-be outrage, as well as Alexander's death, that heightened Victoria's concerns about the safety of Buckingham Palace.) In May 1881 the skirmishers hit Liverpool—a badly constructed pipe bomb well-placed at Liverpool's main police station exploded but did little damage. A month later, two bombers were captured lighting the fuse of a far more dangerous dynamite bomb outside Liverpool Town Hall. And the discovery by police, three weeks after this, of eight more "infernal machines"—slabs of dynamite with clockwork detonators, shipped from New York in barrels marked "cement"—made it clear that Irish terror had only just begun.
Since last summer, the bombers had been quiescent. But Ireland itself seethed with unrest. Gladstone's government had passed its own Coercion Act, meeting Irish agitation with repression. And under it, in October, three Irish nationalist leaders—Charles Stewart Parnell, John Dillon, and James J. O'Kelly, had been arrested for their agitation for the Land League; they remained imprisoned in Dublin's Kilmainham prison. It was more than likely that Irish frustration would again re-erupt in a dynamite campaign. So far, the royal family had been clearly placed off limits as a target. But Alexander's death had shown the world the dramatic effect of a dynamite bomb upon a world leader, and Victoria now took greater precautions when traveling than ever before. (On her train journey this day, as on all her train journeys nowadays, a pilot train to guard against derailment of the royal train had been sent ahead of her.) How long would Irish terrorists refrain making a target of her—the living monument to British power, British Empire, and British domination of Ireland?
The second victim of assassination in 1881 could hardly have been further removed from Alexander, in terms both of distance and of ideology. Autocrats, it became clear, weren't the only targets for assassination. On 2 July 1881, President James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau, a man who thought that by killing the President he was saving the Union. Guiteau, a failed lawyer, evangelist preacher, newspaper editor, lecturer, writer, and insurance salesman—but a moderately successful con artist—decided in 1880 that he would make his fortune in politics, supporting Garfield in that year's presidential election. He made himself a fixture at New York Republican Party headquarters, relentlessly buttonholing party leaders and offering to give a speech he had written, and actually giving a part of it once. When Garfield won by a razor-thin popular majority, his winning in New York state proving pivotal in his electoral college victory, Guiteau leapt to the conclusion that his speech alone was responsible for Garfield's election, and that he deserved great reward. He preferred to become Minister to Austria; he would be happy with the consul-generalship in Paris; at the very least, he would accept a consulship in Liverpool. Soon after Garfield's inauguration, Guiteau arrived in Washington, D.C. with a single shirt and $5. Flitting from one upscale boarding house to another as the rent became due, Guiteau joined the many other job-seekers in the capital, haunting the White House and the State Department and barraging Garfield and his Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, with righteous demands for his appointment. He managed once to thrust a copy of his speech into Garfield's hands and once to speak to him; another time he slipped into a White House reception and had a conversation with Mrs. Garfield. When he was finally denied access to the White House altogether, and when Secretary Blaine at the State Department shouted at him "Never speak to me again on the Paris consulship as long as you live," Guiteau understood that his due reward would be denied him. As absurd as his expectations and sense of self were, Guiteau had spent enough time in Republican politics to form an accurate assessment of the state of that party after the election. He realized that the Republicans were split deeply into two factions—the Stalwarts, who supported ex-president Ulysses S. Grant, and the Half-breeds, who did not, and who had been largely responsible for Garfield's election. Those factions, Guiteau knew as he pursued his own appointment, were locked in their own battles over a number of political appointments. As he lay in bed one night, the disappointed office-seeker had a burst of inspiration: if he killed Garfield, all would be well: vice-president Chester Arthur—a true Stalwart—would become president and all party factionalism would come to an end. He would be a hero.
Guiteau's certainty over this course grew quickly. Within two weeks, he realized that his inspiration was divinely inspired. God was speaking to him personally, telling him to kill the president. Suddenly, the entire erratic course of his life made sense: he had been born to perform this patriotic act.
And so Guiteau abruptly shifted from job-seeker to stalker. He borrowed $15 from a distant relative and made his way to a gun shop in downtown Washington, where he found a choice of weapons. He favored a $10 pearl-handled revolver, thinking that it would look best on display in a museum after the shooting. But in the end he opted for economy, choosing a $9 wood-handled, .44-caliber five-shot snub-nosed revolver with a powerful kick, stamped "British Bulldog." A novice with a gun, Guiteau spent time the next day practicing shooting on the banks of the Potomac. He followed the president (who eschewed all security), considered shooting him at church and then outside the White House, and finally decided to shoot him in the Washington terminal of the Baltimore and Potomac Railway. On the morning of 2 July 1881, he wrote one of several letters justifying his conduct. This one was addressed to the White House and began:
The President's tragic death was a sad necessity, but it will unite the Republican Party and save the Republic. Life is a fleeting dream, and it matters little where one goes. A human life is of small value. During the war thousands of brave boys went down without a tear. I presume the President is a Christian, and that he will be happier in Paradise than here.
"I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts," he wrote. At 8:30 that morning, he took up a position in the ladies' waiting room of the station, through which he knew Garfield would have to pass to get to the platform and his private Pullman coach. Just before 9:30, Garfield entered with Secretary of State Blaine. When they were a few steps from the doorway to the main waiting room, Guiteau shot twice, the first bullet grazing Garfield's arm and the second plunging into his back, above his waist and four inches from his spine, shattering a rib and passing through a vertebra, and finally lodging below his pancreas. The wound was serious, but not fatal. The fifteen or so doctors who examined him, however, ensured that he would die, searching in vain for the bullet over the next few days by plunging their unwashed fingers into the wound. Garfield lingered in agony until the nineteenth of September before his body, then a 130-pound mass of putrefaction, succumbed. Victoria, who had sent at least six messages expressing her concern during Garfield's long decline and death, immediately ordered her Court to go into mourning for a week—an unprecedented token of respect for an American president.
Guiteau's trial was a sensation in Washington, and it was widely reported in Britain. He mounted an insanity defense: God had directed him, he claimed; the shooting was a divinely inspired uncontrollable impulse. Insanity in Washington, as in Britain, was defined by the MacNaughtan Rules, and Guiteau's defense (in which he acted as co-counsel) roughly followed Hadfield's, Oxford's, and MacNaughtan's, with a number of lay witnesses to his bizarre behavior and a number of doctors to testify to his insanity. The trial was notable for Guiteau's relentless outbursts against the judge and all the attorneys, including his own. He was found guilty, and awaited execution on 30 June, two days before the first anniversary of his shooting.
Guiteau was obviously insane. His extreme grandiosity, his inability to maintain any grip on reality, and his Maclean-like personal connection with God all made that abundantly clear. But Guiteau's act was undoubtedly political as well. He spent months scheming to elect Garfield. He sought recompense, as thousands of others had done, for his political labors. And he genuinely believed that his shooting Garfield would have positive political consequences, healing a party rift and putting into office a more capable man. Guiteau showed that there can be no clear line drawn between the political and the lunatic assassin.
Nevertheless, after this cold day in March, many Britons would try again to draw that line.
The royal train, having flashed through the station at Slough and turned sharply left to rattle through the playing fields of Eton, slowed to cross Brunel's bowstring bridge over the River Thames and slid to a halt at Windsor Station. It was exactly 5:25. Roderick Maclean heard the train come; he watched the door of the royal waiting room, waiting for Victoria to emerge.
* Sweet spirit of nitre—ethyl nitrite suspended in alcohol—was a common medicine at the time as a diuretic, antispasmodic, and soothing agent; it would indeed thus likely have been beneficial to Maclean.
* Actually, there had been a response, after Maclean left—not from the Queen, who almost certainly did not see the poem, but from the wife of her keeper of the privy purse, who returned the poem with a curt note: "Lady Biddulph is obliged to return to Mr. Maclean his verses. The Queen never accepts manuscript poetry" _(Surrey Advertiser and County Times_ 11 March 1882, 5; Times 6 March 1882, 6).
* Because Maclean was a pauper, only one doctor's signature (and the cooperation of a magistrate) was needed to commit him (Archibold 183).
* Victoria was wrong; Beatrice would marry Prince Henry of Battenberg in 1885. The Queen at first resisted the marriage, and only agreed on the condition that the couple always live with her, and that Beatrice would continue in her role as her companion (Purdue, "Beatrice").
* 13 March 1881 by the Western calendar.
* The Clerkenwell bombing in 1867 had certainly spread terror across Britain. But the bombers' intention was to free Richard O'Sullivan Burke, a Fenian prisoner. The would-be liberators had overfilled their barrel with gunpowder, and the destruction, the maiming and killing, were unintended consequences. The Salford bombers, on the other hand, fully wished to destroy and to wreak havoc.
_twenty–three_
WORTH BEING SHOT AT
From their saloon car behind the Queen's own, the members of the household—Victoria's private secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby, her two equerries James Carstairs McNeill and Viscount Bridport, her current lady-in-waiting Lady Roxburghe, and her maids of honor—emerged to take up their positions in a miniature royal procession behind the Queen and Beatrice. Ponsonby offered the Queen his arm. The stationmaster had put out a red carpet, roped off from the public on either side, leading from the door of the train to the Queen's waiting room. Just outside there, three royal carriages awaited. After a respectable few minutes' wait, the royal party emerged onto the platform and made their way through the cheering crowd. As the royal party entered the waiting room, the crowd hastened toward the exits in order to reassemble in the station yard and cheer the Queen out of the station. To give them time, the Queen waited another respectable minute before emerging from the street side of the waiting room.
The yard through which the royal party would take only a few steps was well patrolled. A number of constables from Westminster's A Division—assigned to royal protection and therefore traveling wherever the Queen did—were there. Also there were a number of officers of the Windsor Borough Police, keeping the road clear for the royal carriages from station to Castle. Their head, Chief Superintendent Hayes, stood at the verge of the yard, ready to signal to his sergeant at the moment the royal carriages set off, to stop the traffic on the busy street out of the station. While Victoria was well protected, then, the science of royal protection was still far from a perfect one. When she emerged from the station onto the road, every officer in the yard stopped surveying the crowd in order to look upon their Queen.
By her carriage, drawn by two gray ponies, Victoria could see her faithful Highland servant John Brown; he had let down the carriage stairs and was ready to hand her warm wraps for the short journey. Brown had aged visibly since he had earned his gold medal tackling Arthur O'Connor; he was stouter and suffered several chronic illnesses, of which the worst were pain and weakness in his legs and a nasty regular swelling of the face. His heavy drinking as well contributed to his debilitation. He had only a year to live. Ponsonby led Victoria to the door of the carriage, and Brown helped first her, and then Beatrice and Lady Roxburghe, inside. Victoria and Beatrice sat facing the horses, the Queen on the far side; Lady Roxburghe sat facing them. The carriage was closed because of the cold, but there was an open window on the door. Ponsonby left them to join the equerries in the second carriage; the maids of honor occupied the third. Brown put up the carriage steps and clambered, with some difficulty, onto the rumble seat.
The carriage set off as Victoria enjoyed the cheers of the crowd, the shouting of the boys from Eton, she thought, drowning out the rest. Beatrice, looking out of her side of the carriage, could see the boys, and past them, apart from them, about forty feet away from her, a shabby-looking man: he stepped forward, raised a revolver that glimmered even in that gloaming, leveled it in their direction, and fired.
Victoria heard the sharp report; she thought it had come from a train engine. Then she saw commotion. All the crowd instantly turned its attention from the Queen's carriage to the shooter, who stood still, his arm outstretched, looking as if he were about to shoot again. One man in the crowd was stunned to recognize the man: he, the Rev. Mr. Archibald MacLachlan, was the good Samaritan who had revived Maclean, fed him, and sent him on his way a week before. As one, the crowd surged toward Maclean. Chief Superintendent Hayes, who was nine feet away from him, was the first to reach him, shouting "scoundrel!" and grabbing him by the neck. A young man named James Burnside, a Windsor photographer, jumped at Maclean from the other direction, grabbed him by the right wrist, and yanked his pistol hand down until it collided with Burnside's own thigh; he pushed at Maclean's fingers until Maclean released the pistol, and it clattered to the ground. Inspector Fraser and several of his officers ran up and held Maclean while the crowd fell angrily upon him. Two of the Eton boys, armed with umbrellas, belaboured Maclean over his head and shoulders with zeal but indiscriminate aim, smacking in the process at least one of Maclean's captors. Victoria, her carriage now rushing out of the station, had no idea what was going on but "saw people rushing about and a man being violently hustled." Beatrice, who had seen it all, remained silent, not wanting to frighten her mother. Lady Roxburghe, whose perspective allowed her to see little, thought the whole thing a joke. The carriage sped up the hill, the other two carriages following: the men of the household in the second carriage and the ladies in the third all knew Maclean had fired a shot, and they rode on to the Castle fearing the worst.
The crowd—and particularly the Eton boys—wanted to lynch Maclean on the spot. The role of the police instantly shifted from restraining Maclean to protecting him. They dragged the Eton boys away from him as Maclean cringed and cried "Don't hurt me—I will go quietly." Followed by a hooting mass, they dragged Maclean up the road to Thames Street, where Superintendent Hayes sent an officer to the nearest cab stand for conveyance to the Borough police station.
Victoria's carriage in the meantime rushed up Castle Hill and into the yard. John Brown hopped off the rumble and ran to pull open the carriage door; with a "greatly perturbed face" and yet a calm voice, he declared "that man fired at your Majesty's carriage." The equerry, McNeill, leapt from the second carriage and ran up "in a great state," hoping that the Queen was untouched. He told her that the assailant had been caught. Victoria immediately ordered McNeill back to the station to see if anyone had been hurt. In spite of the excitement around her, Victoria was not at all affected by this attempt—nor would she be in the days to come. "Was not shaken or frightened," she wrote in her journal that day—"so different to O'Connor's attempt, though [this] was infinitely more dangerous. That time I was terribly alarmed." (Beatrice, on the other hand, was shaken enough in the coming days to delay the royal journey to the French Riviera.) Victoria, as usual, immediately set out to broadcast her own version of events before rumors began to fly. She hurried to tell her one child in the Castle—Arthur—what had happened. She then took tea with Beatrice while her account was telegraphed to the rest of her children and to other relatives. Ponsonby took it upon himself that evening to send two short telegrams and one longer letter about the shooting to the prime minister.
While the queen's carriage traveled on to the royal mews, to be scrutinized for bullet-marks, McNeill hurried back down the hill and offered up his carriage to transport Maclean to the station house. The police didn't need it; they had already obtained a hansom cab. Into this they thrust Maclean; Superintendent Hayes of the Windsor Police and Inspector Fraser of the Royal Household Police squeezed in on either side. The cab took off to the High Street and to the station house on Sheet Street, the Eton boys running beside them hooting, and Maclean demonstrating visible anxiety the whole way. He had been starving, Maclean told his captors; otherwise, he would not have done this.
All the Queen's men—Ponsonby, Bridport, and McNeill—arrived at the police station at around the same time as Maclean, in order to see him charged. The news of the attack spread through the town quickly, and the Mayor of Windsor and a number of magistrates quickly made their way to the station as well. From the group of Eton boys, the two who had pummeled the captured Maclean with their brollies identified themselves to Ponsonby, and he took down their names. They were to become, to the press and the Queen both, the heroes of this day.
Maclean was talkative with the police at the station, freely stating his name and Windsor address and his place of birth, and he gave some idea about his movements over the past few weeks. Fraser and Hayes examined his gun: two chambers loaded; two recently discharged; two empty. He was searched; among the detritus in his pockets were his notebook, the note he had written in the waiting room, one penny and three farthings, and, wrapped in paper, fourteen live pin-fire cartridges, which fit his pistol. No bullet had been found at the station yet, and the examination of the Queen's carriage showed no bullet marks. Most of the newspapers the next day reported that Maclean likely shot a blank. But the police already had enough evidence to know better than that. Superintendent Hayes detained Maclean for shooting the Queen with intent to do her grievous bodily harm. Maclean seemed unimpressed: "Oh, the Queen," he replied to the charge. His examination was set for the next day, before the mayor and magistrates at the Town Hall. Maclean was forced to wash himself—an action that improved his appearance considerably. In his cell, he gratefully and voraciously fell upon a dinner of tea, bread, and butter. He seemed more relieved and content in jail than he had been while on the streets. A local surgeon, William Brown Holderness, was brought in to examine him—and quickly pronounced him sane.
Although this was the first assault upon the Queen that had taken place outside the center of London, thanks to the telegraph, news of this attempt spread quickly, reaching London within minutes. As they had done after every other attempt, the gentry set out in their carriages to offer their congratulations to the Queen. _Where_ to go, exactly, since the Queen was not in residence in London, was the question. Most dealt with the difficulty by clogging the Mall to leave their regards both at Buckingham Palace and at the Prince of Wales's residence. Several diplomats who attempted to offer up personal congratulations at the Palace were directed to call at Marlborough House instead. (Others made their way by train to Windsor Castle the next day.) The House of Commons churned for a time that evening with a growing consternation as vague reports about the shooting arrived before Ponsonby's official word did; Gladstone and several ministers, on hearing the rumor, consulted and then rushed from the House to learn further details. When one of Ponsonby's telegrams was placed in Gladstone's hands, he quickly passed it around to his colleagues and to the speaker, quelling the stir. The government quickly sent a reply to Windsor expressing their "profound gratification" for the Queen's escape. Gladstone wrote to Ponsonby personally that evening, expressing his earnest desire that Maclean would suffer a much harsher penalty than O'Connor had a decade before: "I hope the matter will not receive the same sort of judicial handling which a similar one as I recollect received from Mr. Justice Cleasby." From the start, Gladstone wanted the Queen to understand that her government would do its best this time to deal with the assailant according to her desires.
The news spread quickly beyond the metropolis as well, its broadcasting helped by the fact that many had collected outside newspaper offices throughout Britain to hear the results of Bradlaugh's bid for re-election in Northampton. (To Maclean's gratification and Victoria's dismay, Bradlaugh had won.) And via an efficient world-wide telegraphic system, the news traveled quickly throughout the world as well—so quickly that one awed newsman posited the lightning dispersal as a sign of miraculous times and the harbinger of a wondrous future:
I have before me as I write a copy of an evening paper published in San Francisco on March 2nd, and this paper contains a series of telegrams giving full particulars of the attempt to shoot the Queen, which took place at Windsor at half-past five on the afternoon of the same day. The news, it need scarcely be said, had outstripped by many hours the movement of the daylight, and the people of California were actually reading in their printed newspaper all about Maclean's attempt upon the life of the Queen before the hour at which that attempt took place in England. This fact is of itself sufficiently remarkable, and yet I am not without authority for saying that before long other wonders of science still more marvellous will demand the astonished admiration of the world.
As the news spread, messages of sympathy and congratulations returned in an unprecedented flood, jamming the special telegraph wire to the castle: the Queen herself counted 138 telegrams on the Friday, and 68 on the Saturday. Among these was a telegram from the Tsar of Russia, who had been personally informed about the attempt by his brother-in-law Prince Alfred. She received messages as well as from the King of Spain, the Emperor of Germany, and the legislatures in Spain, Greece, Bucharest, and Ottawa. Before two days had passed, several congratulatory messages arrived from Australia. In the United States, several newspapers responded to the attempt by reminding readers about Victoria's heartfelt sympathy to Lucretia Garfield upon the death of her husband—and Victoria was particularly affected by President Chester Arthur's message to her. And postbags bulging with congratulations soon joined the telegrams. Ironically the Queen, never more secluded from the world in the wake of an attempt, was never more taxed in responding to the world's congratulations. "Telegrams, as well as letters," she wrote in her journal on 3 March, "pouring in to that extent that I literally spent my whole day in opening and reading them." Actually, after four o'clock that day, the Queen managed to break away from her correspondence to walk with Beatrice to the mausoleum at Frogmore, where they knelt by Albert's tomb and offered up prayers of thanksgiving for the Queen's preservation. After that, they rode out in an open carriage, purposefully leaving the usual paths of the Park to ride among the people of Windsor and of Eton where, Victoria wrote, "the boys cheered as we passed... and everyone seemed so pleased." The tonic effect upon the Queen of the spontaneous public acclaim after this attempt had not diminished a bit from every earlier attempt. It was after this one that Victoria finally summed up the curious joy she felt after each of the attempts against her: "anything like the enthusiasm, loyalty, sympathy and affection shown me is not to be described," she wrote to her daughter Vicky. "It is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved."
At around 9:00 the morning after the shooting came a discovery that changed everything: the bullet had been found by Inspector Noble of the Great Western Railway, lying in the mud of the rail yard, about thirty yards from the spot where Maclean had stood. It had obviously struck a truck before falling to the ground, taking on a smudge of white paint. That truck had moved on to Reading, but Inspector Noble found it there that afternoon, and concluded that it had struck the white painted number of the truck at a height of 5' 5"—a level shot, one capable of striking the Queen. These discoveries raised one question—how could Maclean have missed the carriage?—the apparent answer to which was that the bullet passed between the rear of the carriage and the rumble seat—between Victoria and John Brown, in other words. Wherever the bullet went, it was now clear that Maclean had fired live ammunition in the general direction of the Queen. The afternoon of the discovery, John Brown interrupted Victoria's enormous task of correspondence by showing her Maclean's pistol; "it could be fired off in rapid succession with the greatest facility," she noted. That, and the news of the missing bullet, surprisingly brought the Queen relief, "for it proves," she wrote, "that the object was not intimidation, but far worse." In other words, as far as she was concerned, Maclean had tried to murder her. She would not have to worry about any misdemeanor charges this time, which might result in Maclean's being given a paltry one-year sentence, as O'Connor had. Maclean was a traitor and would be tried as one.
At the Borough police station that morning, the discovery of the bullet apparently alarmed Roderick Maclean: after a sleepless but quiet night, soon after the news of the discovery reached the station house, Maclean called Superintendent Hayes to his cell. The realization that he might now face the death penalty concentrated his mind wonderfully. He wished to make a statement, he told Hayes. The Superintendent had pen, ink, and paper brought, and watched as Maclean wrote:
I am not guilty of the charge of shooting with the intention of causing actual bodily harm. My object was by frightening the Queen to alarm the public, with the result of having my grievances respected—viz., such as the pecuniary straits in which I have been situated. All the circumstances tend to prove this statement. Firstly, had I desired to injure the Queen I should have fired at her when she was quitting the railway carriage. Quite on the contrary, I pointed the pistol on a level with the wheels: but as I felt a slight kick, doubtless the contents may have lodged in one of the doors.
If Her Majesty will accept this explanation, and allow the words "with intent to intimidate her," instead of "with intent to cause grievous bodily harm," to be inserted in that count, I will offer all the assistance in my power to bring the charge herein specified to a speedy issue.
I hope Her Majesty will accept the only consolation I can offer—namely, I had no intention whatever of causing her any injury.
Roderick Maclean
With this promise that he would make things easy for Queen and government in return for a lesser charge, Maclean thought he had worked out a deal. That notion he considered confirmed when he asked Hayes, before he handed him the letter, whether he would be charged with a capital offense.
"Certainly not," Hayes told him.
He was thus a confident man when at 1:30 that afternoon, handcuffed to a plain-clothed officer, he was rushed in an open fly from the station house to Windsor Town Hall. Since the town magistrates had cleverly announced publicly that the examination would take place at least two hours after it actually did, Maclean rode happily unbothered by the now-usual Windsor mob. The police and the Home Office had already been busy putting together a case against him, and the Solicitor to the Treasury, Augustus Stephenson, was present at the Town Hall to examine witnesses.
Stephenson quickly disabused Maclean that he had struck any sort of deal, stating at the start that Maclean was charged with shooting at the Queen with intent to murder her. Then he quickly brought forward three witnesses, enough to justify a remand for a week, as the police had already uncovered evidence pointing to Maclean's serious mental illness. At this examination, however, there was no testimony whatever about that, Stephenson instead questioning the three witnesses simply to establish that Maclean had indeed shot at the Queen. Two of the witnesses—Superintendent Hayes and the photographer James Burnside, who had wrestled away Maclean's gun—both claimed that they had seen Maclean pointing his gun at the Queen's carriage. Burnside's recollection in particular was remarkable for its specificity: "I saw the prisoner with a revolver in his hand. The line of fire was straight from my eye to one of the panels of Her Majesty's carriage."
Maclean, however, saw the flaw in their evidence and energetically exploited it, exercising his right to cross-examine witnesses by subjecting all of them to a thorough and—all agreed—highly intelligent cross-examination, to establish that none of the three had actually seen him shoot; the fact that two of them had seen where his pistol was pointing after the shot offered no proof whatsoever of where it had been pointing before. In cross-examining Hayes, Maclean asked him to give him back his revolver so that he could demonstrate how he held it when he shot. "No, thank you," Hayes replied. So Maclean used his shabby hat instead to demonstrate that he had been pointing downwards. "You do me an injustice if you were to condemn me on such a point as that," Maclean said. He then used Hayes's extensive experience with firearms to debunk the idea that he had necessarily shot at the Queen.
Have you fired a pistol in your life?—Some hundreds.
Perhaps you are aware that pistols jump?—Yes, that is so.
The pistol might have been in a very different position after I fired it to what it was before?—That is very possible.
"That is a point in my favor," Maclean claimed triumphantly. It might have been. But it made no difference to the magistrates, who considered that they had evidence enough for a remand of a week charging Maclean with intending to murder the Queen. Maclean protested that he had cooperated on the understanding that his charge would be lowered to intimidation, not murder. "We have nothing to do with that," replied the mayor.
And so Maclean returned to the station house sure that the world had wronged him once again, a conclusion strengthened by his rough treatment along the way: during the examination a hostile crowd had gathered outside the Town Hall, and when police escorted Maclean out and into a carriage ringed with constables, some of the crowd rushed at the carriage and battled the police in order to overturn it; Maclean felt the terror of impending death for a couple of minutes, before the police regained control and hurried him away from the chasing and tormenting mob. The next evening, too, Maclean's paranoid delusions appeared to have become reality, as he was transferred to the county jail at Reading to await the completion of his examination. Superintendent Hayes, attempting to avoid confrontation by avoiding Windsor train station altogether, removed Maclean from the station in a closed fly through Eton and to the railway station at Slough. He was recognized there, and a hostile crowd quickly grew. He was kept out of sight in the station's booking office until the train arrived.
Meanwhile, not a full day had passed after the shooting before Victoria and Gladstone bickered. Touched by the overwhelming public and foreign response to her escape, the Queen fully expected her Parliament to follow suit and present her with a joint congratulatory address: anything less, she thought, would have a " _painful effect._ " The last Parliamentary joint address had taken place a full forty years before, after Francis's attempts. Robert Peel had put an end to these, of course, for practical reasons, doing his best to minimize the pomp following each attempt in order to discourage imitators. Peel's disciple Gladstone agreed with him then, and agreed with him now. So when Victoria requested that her secretary convey her desire to Gladstone, her prime minister quickly attempted in a response to Ponsonby to pour cold water on the idea:
As respects an address, the dominant feeling in my mind has been that the whole of these deplorable attempts on the life of the Queen have proceeded from men of weak and morbid minds: that to such minds notoriety is the very highest reward and inducement that can be offered....the best means of dealing with these cases are to keep from them what feeds the vain imagination and to administer sharp judicial sentences.
Gladstone rejected the idea of an address with the best of intentions, wishing only to protect Victoria as Peel had done. But Victoria's relationship with Peel was nothing like her relationship with Gladstone, and she could not help but understand his thinking to be at best insensitive, and at worst mistaken, and typical of his enmity toward her. The discovery of the bullet on this Friday, however, fortunately put an end to their argument before it escalated. That discovery convinced the Attorney General, Henry James, that Maclean's act was that of a traitor, and that he ought to be tried for attempted murder of the Queen, not for the high misdemeanour of annoying her. Knowing this, and believing that this attempt had become in the eyes of the public more serious than previous ones, Gladstone reversed himself, and the Cabinet, meeting on Saturday, agreed to follow the precedents of 1840 and 1842. On the following Monday, Commons and Lords each overwhelmingly approved of the address, and on Friday, a small Parliamentary delegation took the train to Windsor Castle to present it to her in a small ceremony.
Victoria was satisfied with Parliament, and told Gladstone so. Parliament's was not the first address to be presented, however, and likely not the most satisfying one. On Monday the sixth, before Parliament had even voted for their address, the boys of Eton presented theirs. At 10:30 that morning, the entire school unknowingly appropriated Roderick Maclean's great number: ranked in rows of four, the nearly nine hundred students marched out of the college, across the Thames, and up to Castle Hill, where they formed a ring in the Quadrangle about the Queen's private entrance. At 11:00 they sent up a tremendous cheer as Victoria appeared, flanked by Leopold and Arthur. The address was then read "extremely well," in Victoria's opinion, by the two boys who wrote it—followed by an even louder volley of cheers, one echoed by the public outside of the walls. Victoria, "visibly affected," replied briefly to the address, and then called forth Leslie Robertson and Gordon Chesney Wilson, the two boys who had loyally belabored Maclean with their umbrellas. She shook the hands of her young saviors.
Later that afternoon, Victoria lunched with the beautiful, restless, and peripatetic Empress Elisabeth, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. Elisabeth, a devoted huntress, had been riding to the hounds in Cheshire for the past month, and had come on her way back to the Continent to offer Victoria her congratulations and her farewells. Arthur, Leopold, Helena, and Beatrice met her at the station. The Prince and Princess of Wales came up by train from London to Windsor especially for the occasion, and they with Victoria met Elisabeth at the castle's Sovereign's entrance. The two empresses and the royal family then ate for an hour before the younger children saw Elisabeth to the station and off to Paris. The meeting was by hindsight a poignant one. Victoria had encountered the final attempt upon her life; Elisabeth had yet to encounter hers. Sixteen years later, on 10 September 1898 in Geneva, Elisabeth and a lady-in-waiting were hurrying down the promenade before the lake in order to board a steamer bound for Caux when a burly man suddenly lurched at her, knocking her down. The Empress was helped up, boarded the ship, and collapsed. Her lady-in-waiting cut the very tight stays of her corset and discovered blood on her chemise: she had been stabbed. The man who attacked her, Luigi Lucheni, was an Italian anarchist who when caught admitted that he was out to kill the first royal he could lay his hands upon. The fact that Elisabeth was traveling under a transparent incognito and subsequently lacked any security had given Lucheni his chance, and when he lurched at her he plunged into her body a short file sharpened to stiletto fineness, breaking her rib and piercing her lung, pericardium, and heart. The Empress quickly bled to death. The elderly Victoria, then at Balmoral, telegraphed her condolences to the devastated Austrian Emperor.
During the week between Roderick Maclean's two examinations by the magistrates of Windsor, press and police vied with one another to uncover the man's disturbed past. Every day the papers trumpeted new discoveries, all of them suggesting that Maclean was seriously mentally ill. Before a day had passed after the shooting, Inspector Fraser of the Household Police received a telegram reporting Maclean's lengthy sojourn in Bath and Somerset Asylum; that news was widely reported the next day, along with Maclean's stays in a Dublin asylum as well as Weston-super-Mare infirmary. An attorney from Dover, Wollaston Knocker, recognized Maclean from the first reports of the shooting and quickly telegraphed the Mayor of Windsor to describe his defending Maclean eight years before from the charge of attempting to derail the train at Maidstone, and stating his decided opinion that Maclean was at that time insane. A few days later, Knocker's more detailed account of Maclean's earlier, bizarre behavior appeared in newspapers across the country. Reporters acting upon the discovery of a Southsea address in Maclean's pocket when he was searched tracked down Mrs. Sorrell and Mr. Hucker, who happily revealed to the world Maclean's "soft" behavior there. Maclean's homicidal gestures to his family, his paranoid and frantic letters to his sister Annie, tales—both actual and apocryphal—of his eccentric behavior in the several towns through which he had wandered: all of it poured from the press, an ocean of evidence to prove the man was mad.
The police and the government quickly reached the same conclusion. The Home Secretary, William Vernon Harcourt, did consider the possibility that Maclean was a part of a larger political conspiracy, when within hours after the shooting he received a letter claiming a connection between Maclean and Johann Most. Most was a notorious German anarchist living in London, who in his German-language newspaper _Freiheit_ had welcomed with joy news of Tsar Alexander's assassination, and called for the assassination of another "crowned ragamuffin" every month. For this he was tried and convicted, and was now serving sixteen months in Clerkenwell Prison. Harcourt ordered Howard Vincent, the head of the Metropolitan Police's Criminal Investigations Department, to investigate the possible connection. Within forty eight hours Vincent, having accumulated an abundance of evidence of Maclean's mental instability, dismissed the possibility outright, informing Harcourt: "the present attempt on the life of Her Majesty the Queen was the work of a lunatic, whose antecedents have been fully ascertained, and is in no shape or form traceable to any English or Foreign political society."
William Gladstone agreed: Maclean was a madman acting alone, not a member of a political conspiracy. When he introduced in Commons his motion for a joint address, he proclaimed as much, and more—claiming that _every_ attempt upon the Queen had been one of apolitical madness. The horror one felt at learning the Queen had again been attacked, Gladstone proclaimed, was mitigated by one "remarkable consideration":
—that whereas in other countries similar execrable attempts have at least been made by men of average, or more than average, sense and intelligence, and whereas there the real, or at any rate the supposed, cause has been private grievances or public mischief, in this country, in the case of Her Majesty, they have been wholly dissociated from grievances, wholly dissociated from discontent, and upon no occasion has any man of average sense and average intelligence been found to raise his hand against the life of Her Majesty. On each occasion of the kind morbid minds, combined with the narrowest range of mental gifts, have been the apparent cause by which persons have been tempted to seek a notoriety denied to them in every legitimate walk of life.
His implication was clear: the very thought of harming the Queen was irrational. Other nations with their lesser rulers and lesser systems suffered political. discontent to an extent that the threat of political assassination was a reality. But not in Britain, where such extremities of discontent were simply not possible, and where Victoria's popularity was so solidly established that only the weak-minded could entertain the notion of harming her. Gladstone's conclusion, of course, rested upon the absurd premise that politics—at least British politics—were by definition rational. Given the example of the recent antics in Parliament with Bradlaugh's attempts to get in and with the attempts of the Irish nationalist MPs to bring business to a standstill, let alone the excesses on both sides that Fenianism had engendered—or the example in 1872 of Arthur O'Connor's Fenian-inspired lunacy—that premise could not bear the slightest scrutiny. But no one was in a mood to scrutinize it, at least when it came to the Queen: in 1882 her popularity was so solidly established that any attempt to harm her could only be explained away as madness. No clearer evidence exists as to the enormous growth of the popularity of the Queen and the monarchy since the uneasy life and abrupt death of British republicanism a decade before.
Thus convinced of Maclean's insanity, Gladstone, Harcourt, and Attorney General Henry James had, long before the man's second examination, let alone his trial, decided exactly how they would handle his case. The fact that he actually shot at the Queen mandated that he be tried for treason. But the evidence of his insanity was so overwhelming that an insanity defense was sure to succeed—and that would in effect guarantee Maclean permanent imprisonment at Broadmoor, ensuring that, unlike Arthur O'Connor, he could never bother the Queen again. The government, therefore, had no reason to contest an insanity plea. On 9 March, the day before Maclean's second examination, Gladstone wrote Victoria to justify his government's course. "Your Majesty's Law Officers are sensible how important it is that there should be in this case a power of imprisonment without any limit of time." Therefore,
It is thought by far the most probable... that the friends of Maclean will defend him on the ground of insanity. And the Law Officers seem at present not inclined to resist that plea _à l'outrance_. For, if it be admitted, the man may be imprisoned without limit of time; whereas, if it were overthrown, the parties might be driven to another line of defence, and might try to show that the intent was only to alarm. For, if by any chance a jury were to accept this plea, the term of imprisonment would be limited and comparatively short.
Victoria, writing in her journal the next day, seemed to agree with this strategy. Actually, she betrayed a serious misunderstanding of her prime minister's words: "if there should be any fear of his not being convicted for intent to murder," she wrote, "the plea of insanity will be brought forward; this might be accepted in order to ensure his incarceration for life." While Gladstone attempted to inform Victoria that the Attorney General would abandon altogether any serious attempt to convict Maclean, Victoria thought that they would indeed make their best case that he was guilty of High Treason, and only concede insanity if conviction for treason proved to be impossible. She would certainly prefer that the state establish the man's guilt, for while her subjects might find relief in thinking Maclean mad, she adamantly refused to consider him anything but sane—as she had considered all of her assailants. Maclean might have "a horrid, cruel face." He might be the "utterly worthless" offshoot of "respectable relations." But, as the Queen wrote to her daughter Vicky, "The wretched man is strange and wicked but not mad. He had fourteen bullets on him, and the act was clearly premeditated." As far as she was concerned, if he thought the crime through, he was sane, and thus a traitor, and the Queen expected her government to make every effort to establish his guilt. When five days later, on her way to France, she wrote Gladstone "she is glad to hear of this proposed arrangement for the trial of Maclean wh seems very satisfactory," she only deepened the misunderstanding between them by signaling approval of a course of which she manifestly did not approve. A collision between the two was inevitable.
By his second examination, on 10 March, Roderick Maclean had had a change of heart. Gone was the fire he displayed in his first examination, when he fought to establish a lesser charge. Since then he had resigned himself to an insanity plea and had relinquished the fighting to others. He entered the Town Hall certain he had legal representation, and indeed there were a solicitor and barrister in attendance, engaged by Maclean's brothers. They were not there to defend Maclean, however, but were there to look after Maclean family interests. It was not until after the examination of the first witness that Maclean realized he was unrepresented:
The Mayor (to the prisoner) Have you any question to put to the witness?
Prisoner—I understand I am represented by a solicitor.
The Mayor—You are not represented by a solicitor. He only represents your family.
Prisoner—I leave the case entirely in their hands.
Mr. Haynes [the family solicitor]—You reserve your defence?
Prisoner—I reserve my defence.
He was as good as his word, declining to cross-examine a single witness. His silence guaranteed that he would be tried for treason and not for a high misdemeanor, as he left undisputed the highly disputable evidence that he had fired a bullet at the Queen with intent to injure her. Treasury Solicitor Augustus Stephenson again represented the Crown, examining several witnesses to the attack (including the two umbrella-wielding Etonians) and others who established that Maclean had bought the pistol. Stephenson had little to say about Maclean's state of mind besides noting that, as far as he could tell, there was nothing the matter with the man. Maclean was read the charge: high treason. "I reserve my defence," he said, and was led away.
_twenty-four_
SPECIAL VERDICT
Roderick Maclean's trial was set for the next assizes in Reading—set, specifically, for 19 April, more than five weeks after his second examination. It was to be by Special Commission, so that the Lord Chief Justice, John Coleridge, could preside in company with the judge of the Assize, Baron Huddleston.* In the interim Maclean, the Queen, and the public found their own ways to divert themselves.
Maclean, when his time wasn't occupied by the several alienists that both the Crown and his solicitor sent to interview him, wrote an autobiography, which he titled _Yestern: or The Story of My Life and Reminiscences_. He apparently wished this narrative of his idyllic childhood, his disturbed adulthood, and his special relationship with God to help with his defense, as he argued in it both that he had no intention of whatsoever of shooting the Queen, and that he had long been, and still was, insane. He wished more than this, however, if his overblown prose and his later repeated but unsuccessful attempts to get the manuscript published are any indication: he apparently sought to gain with it the literary fame he knew he so greatly deserved.
Victoria's diversion was her first visit to the French Riviera. She left her subjects with a letter published in the newspapers on 14 March "to express from her heart how very deeply touched she is by the outburst of enthusiastic loyalty, affection, and devotion which the painful event of the 2d. inst. has called forth from all classes and from all parts of her vast Empire." The same morning, she and Beatrice rode to the station under greatly increased security, constables sent from London lining the route, and the station itself closed altogether to the public. Similar precautions were taken at Portsmouth. Two days later, Queen and Princess were in Mentone, where security was lighter, and in which the Queen delighted in riding in an open carriage about the countryside, writing to Vicky of "the bright sunshine and the sea, mountains, vegetation and lightness of the air and the brightness and gaiety of everything." Only John Brown marred the otherwise entirely relaxing journey. Rumors that three Fenian terrorists were on their way from Paris to assassinate Victoria had reached the ears of the police who accompanied her, but they dismissed these rumors as spurious. John Brown did not, and drove everyone to distraction by his frantic attempts to discover the assassins. Victoria attributed his hypervigilance not to any actual threat, but to "his increasing _hatred_ of being 'abroad' which blinds his admiration of the country even." Victoria and Beatrice returned to Windsor amidst the same heightened security, four days before Maclean's trial.
In the meantime, public attention was absolutely captivated by a drama that had been building for some time, which competed for column inches in the newspapers with Maclean's attempt, and which in the days before Maclean's trial grew into London's _cause célèbre_ of 1882: the Jumbo craze. That the simple transfer of an elephant from Regent's Park Zoo to a circus in New York became a sensational international incident should come as no surprise, for Jumbo had a great publicist—the greatest publicist that ever lived: P. T. Barnum. Barnum and his associates, having the year before merged to create a greater "Greatest Show on Earth," had sent agents across America and Europe in search of new, bigger and better exhibits. Their agent in London had negotiated with the Zoological Society of London for a £2,000 sale of the largest living exhibit he found—Jumbo, reputedly the largest African elephant then in captivity. The Zoological Society was relieved to see Jumbo go, for the elephant had reached the age of sexual maturity and had already experienced musth, a condition common to adult male elephants caused by copious hormonal release, and manifesting itself in violently destructive rages; last August, Jumbo had destroyed the zoo's elephant house. A return of that condition—and the possible need to destroy the elephant—was only a matter of time.
Jumbo, however, apparently had his own opinion about leaving the zoo. When in mid-February he was led from his paddock to the crate especially designed to wheel him across London and aboard ship, he balked and refused to enter. When led out the next day to walk the eight miles to Millwall Docks, Jumbo similarly refused, uttering loud cries of distress, sinking to the ground and laying upon his side, grunting. "Shame," onlookers cried out. The press and the public began to take note. At the same time that Roderick Maclean made his way to Windsor and bided his time there, London focused on the elephant's plight, and visits to the zoo skyrocketed. Members of the Society sued to keep Jumbo in London—and many pleaded with Barnum to let Jumbo stay. Barnum did his best to stoke the flames of publicity, on both sides of the Atlantic, making public all of his correspondence, spreading rumors about the elephant, perhaps even manufacturing letters supposedly from British children, pleading with him to relent. The resulting furor both increased revenues at the zoo and created a fever of anticipation in the United States ensuring for Barnum's circus a wildly successful season. In mid-March, Jumbo fever peaked, as on one day 24,007 people packed the zoo—a dozenfold more than had come on the same day the previous year. Finally, on 22 March, Jumbo deigned to enter the box; with difficulty he was chained, crated, slowly trundled across the metropolis to St. Katharine's Dock, where he was set on a barge and two days later hoisted aboard ship. Two days after that he sailed for New York. Once the elephant had left, Jumbo fever subsided quickly, the British sheepishly realizing that they could go on without Jumbo, as Americans began to think they couldn't. By the date of the trial, then, Barnum and his elephant no longer competed for column inches with Roderick Maclean.
When on 19 April two constables conveyed Maclean up from the subterranean passage and into the dock of the small courtroom at Reading, he appeared dirtier and shabbier than ever, wearing his faded green-gray overcoat with its soiled once-velvet collar left open to reveal a ratty shirt and a frayed black tie. His demeanor was equally pathetic, betraying his sense of terror at being surrounded by the enemies who had packed the courtroom. His hands fidgeted ceaselessly; his eyebrows twitched, as his vacant eyes wandered nervously about the courtroom, from judge to jury to counsel, and upwards to the gallery, where on one side a number of fashionably dressed ladies stared back at him, some through opera glasses. "Few who looked upon him," his attorney later wrote, "had any doubt that insanity had marked him for its own." Maclean's brothers could easily have provided him with a respectable suit for the trial: they had otherwise provided for him well, paying for his meals at Reading Gaol and for the services of their solicitor and two barristers, including one of the most capable and renowned—and expensive—criminal attorneys of the day, Montagu Williams. But family, attorneys, and Maclean himself had agreed he would plead insanity. And Maclean's rags, the regalia of his distraction, served his case best: and so they remained.
From early that morning, there had been a crush at all of the courthouse entrances. Those admitted had apparently been selected for their respectable appearances, one reporter comparing the spectators to a Nonconformist congregation. They were notable, as well, for their overt conservatism. This day, as it happens, was the first anniversary of Benjamin Disraeli's death,* and many in the courtroom both honored his memory and signified their adherence to his principles by carrying bouquets of primroses, Disraeli's favorite flower. The Queen had that morning done the same, sending a primrose wreath to be placed on his grave at Hughenden.** Maclean's agitation could not have been lessened by these symbols of allegiance to another cause—the blue ones in particular.
There had been growing public nervousness about Maclean's trial. This was the first time one of Victoria's assailants was being tried for treason since John Francis, forty years before. All of Robert Peel's reservations then about providing an attention-seeking scoundrel with the elevated trappings of a State Trial—and thus encouraging other addle-brained attention-seekers—poured forth from the press in the days leading up to this trial. "We cannot help regretting," proclaimed _The Times_ , "that the accused has been treated so much _au sérieux_ , and that, instead of placing Maclean on a sort of pedestal, he could not have been sent to quarter Sessions to be dealt with in a sharp and summary fashion." It was all too much: the presence of the Lord Chief Justice, as well as a large team of prosecutors headed by the Attorney-and Solicitor-Generals; the very charge of High Treason with its awful sentence—it was "like employing a five ton Nasmyth hammer to crack a walnutshell," according to one newspaper. More than this, there were fears that this trial would repeat the excesses of an insanity trial that had finished just two months before, and thus that was fresh in everyone's minds: Charles Guiteau's trial for the murder of President Garfield, which had been widely reported on both sides of the Atlantic. During the ten-week trial, Guiteau had acted as his own co-counsel, and with his constant interruptions, his badgering and belittling of attorneys on both sides, his vainglorious week-long pontification from the witness stand, and his dogged insistence upon reading long passages from a book he had written, or rather plagiarized, Guiteau had managed to turn the trial into a circus before his guilt was finally established and he was sentenced to hang.
The fears of all were allayed in the course of this day. For both Crown and defense had come to the courtroom believing the trial's outcome to be a foregone conclusion: an acquittal on the basis of insanity. And for weeks both sides had been working toward the common goal of gathering evidence that would support that conclusion. Both sides, for one thing, had instructed medical experts to interview Maclean and ascertain his state of mind. But while ordinarily the prosecution would instruct medical witnesses in an insanity trial in order to rebut an insanity defense, the government from the start expected their witnesses to _confirm_ Maclean's madness. In his diary, Lewis Harcourt, son of the Home Secretary, noted this expectation on the part of his father: "As to Maclean there is no doubt of his insanity and so anxious is the H[ome] S[ecretary] to have it proved that he has given orders for Dr. Sheppard to be instructed by the Solicitor to the Treasury Solicitor to go down to Reading Gaol to examine him." While there had been in the weeks leading up to the trial some dickering about who would pay for which doctor, and how much evidence each side would disclose to each other, there was no question of the verdict, and both sides were committed to counteracting the pomp of the trial with celerity, reaching a verdict as efficiently as possible.
Much therefore had happened in the hour before Maclean stepped into the dock: the two judges in their scarlet robes and full-bottomed wigs had taken their seats, the Grand Jury had been empaneled, Chief Justice Coleridge had presented the charge, and the Grand Jury had left and returned with a true bill for treason against Maclean. Maclean was then brought up and the charge read; in a tremulous voice, he denied his guilt. The jury was then sworn without challenge, and the trial proceeded hastily: before lunch, the prosecution had completed and the defense had called its first three witnesses.
In opening for the prosecution, Attorney General Henry James did not wait for the defense to raise the possibility of Maclean's insanity: the man's state of mind, he proclaimed, was a "matter of grave consideration for the jury." While he noted that it was the job of the defense to prove insanity, he made it clear that the Crown would have no problem whatsoever with that conclusion: indeed, he told the jury, "satisfaction would be felt by every subject of the Queen at the thought that it was not from the ranks of those who were sane that a hand had been raised against our gracious Sovereign." James and his three colleagues then quickly established the facts of the shooting, by examining most of the witnesses who had testified at Maclean's two examinations. Maclean's attorneys, having no reason to question those facts, remained silent.
In opening Maclean's defense, Montagu Williams set out a strategy that was a variation on the defense in Hadfield's, Oxford's, and McNaughtan's trials: the defense would call both eyewitnesses and medical experts to support overwhelmingly the claim that Maclean was insane. Williams was careful to point out that the evidence would prove Maclean _legally_ insane—that is, prove that he was insane according to the McNaughtan Rules. "At the time of committing this act," Williams stated, "he was an irresponsible agent, not knowing the difference between right and wrong." Non-medical evidence to Maclean's eccentricities was to be limited: Maclean's family, who could have provided volumes of evidence concerning their brother's oddities, had, in their desire to detach themselves from their embarrassing relative, successfully requested that they not be called. (Victoria had similarly requested that her household not have to testify.) Therefore, to provide anecdotal evidence of Maclean's insanity, the defense called the Reverend Maclachlan, who had assisted Maclean on his way from Southsea to Windsor (and who now added little to the defense) and a Maclean family friend, Samuel Stanesby, who detailed twenty years of Maclean's eccentric behavior and introduced the paranoid and homicidal letters Maclean had written to his sister Annie—strong evidence of true past insanity to counter any notion that Maclean could be shamming madness in the present.
The defense's most compelling evidence, however, came from the medical experts. Nine doctors appeared in all, six of them brought in by the defense, and the last three originally instructed by the prosecution. While the first doctor simply bore witness to Maclean's debilitating head injury as a child, the other eight testified with impressive unanimity to his madness in the past and in the present, unanimity unmarred since the one doctor who had examined Maclean and declared him sane—Dr. Holderness of Windsor, who had examined him on the evening of the shooting—had been conveniently forgotten about by both sides. Four doctors testified to Maclean's history of insanity, having previously certified his insanity or treated him in an asylum. The other four—including the three doctors brought in by the prosecution, now released by them to testify for the defense—had examined him in jail, and while all testified he was insane, not all presented his illness as within the purview of the McNaughtan Rules. Indeed the defense's own expert, Dr. Henry Manning, superintendent at Laverstock Asylum at Salisbury, turned out to be the worst witness in this respect. For while Manning spelled out in admirable detail Maclean's paranoia, the voices in his head, and his notions about the color blue and the number four, he insisted, in spite of leading questioning by the Lord Chief Justice and the Attorney General, that while Maclean's shooting was "an absolutely irresistible moral impulse, as strong as if it was physical," he could distinguish between right and wrong, and "decidedly he would know at the time he fired the pistol that he was doing a wrong act."
Two of the prosecution's three witnesses testified more clearly and effectively to Maclean's legal insanity. (The third, Oliver Maurice, the surgeon at Reading Gaol, simply and briefly declared Maclean's unsoundness.) Edgar Sheppard, professor at King's College and for twenty years superintendent at Colney Hatch Asylum, was certain: Maclean was an imbecile, liable to homicidal or delusional mania, and "the real question of right or wrong does not present itself to a man in such a state." William Orange, Medical Superintendent at Broadmoor, agreed: "I do not think he was capable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act he committed," he stated.
In closing, Attorney General Sir Henry James did just about everything in his power to direct the jury to an insanity acquittal. He did not concede the case outright—such a verdict should not be lightly arrived at—but he admitted that "Crown authorities had come to the conclusion that the prisoner's mind was not in a healthy state." And he reassured the jury that an acquittal on the grounds of insanity would effectively protect the Queen from any future attempt, since Maclean would remain safely in custody at the Queen's pleasure. Summing up, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge repeated James's reassurance that an insanity acquittal would protect the Queen, and added that it would be merciful for Maclean himself. He also rose above the disagreements between judge and medical expert which were a feature of most insanity trials, praising every one of the doctors as "men of undoubted ability and large experience, and wholly without any bias in this case, having no other desire in the world but to arrive at a just and true conclusion."
The trial went to the jury at 4:40 that afternoon, the only surprise occurring when the jury actually chose to retire rather than give an immediate verdict. They returned after five or ten minutes later with the foregone conclusion: Roderick Maclean was not guilty on the grounds of insanity, and was to be kept in custody at the Queen's pleasure.
Maclean was hustled down the stairs and back to Reading Gaol. A week later, Home Secretary Harcourt ordered a warrant for his transfer; a week after that, Maclean made the short trip from Reading to Crowthorne and entered Broadmoor Asylum. He would never leave. The Queen's pleasure became her son's, and then her grandson's; Maclean died, disturbed until the end, half a lifetime later.
The newspapers the day after the trial displayed unanimous satisfaction with the verdict, which confirmed the public's consensus that Maclean was hopelessly mad, his life "saturated with insanity and its symptoms"; he had been rightly consigned to an asylum rather than the gallows. The _Daily News_ concluded that "the jury took the only course compatible with the medical testimony, which did but itself confirm the impression produced by the bare narrative of the facts" and added "such an end to an affair which has excited so much sympathy and so much indignation will be received with general satisfaction." Satisfying, too, was the brevity and efficiency of the trial, in striking contrast to the painful ordeal Charles Guiteau had inflicted upon the American public. In short, government and prosecution, Maclean's family and his defense, judge and jury were all well pleased with this day's work—and press and public agreed.
Victoria, however, disagreed completely.
"Am greatly surprised & shocked at the verdict on McLean!" she declared, and confided in her journal "it is really too bad." Her initial astonishment at the verdict quickly grew into an imperious, Queen-of-Hearts rage. She had never considered Maclean insane, and the trial had not changed her mind; he did not deserve an acquittal of any kind. And while his confinement in Broadmoor would keep Maclean from her, she did not feel in the least protected by the verdict. On the contrary, Maclean's acquittal signaled to all notoriety-seeking halfwits that they too could shoot at the Queen—and get away with it. "It is Oxford's case over again," she complained to Ponsonby, reminding him that Oxford himself had said that if had been hanged, the attempts that followed his would never have occurred. Now, she thought, it was only a matter of time before new Francises and Beans attacked her. If an assailant such as Maclean "is _not_ to be considered _responsible_ for his actions," she wrote angrily, "then indeed _no one_ is safe any longer!"
She held her own government most responsible for this threat to her safety. "This always happens when a Liberal Government is in!" she told Ponsonby, with greater passion than accuracy. Her Prime Minister, her Home Secretary, her Attorney General—they all should have protected her by exerting themselves to prove Maclean's guilt, but instead they had colluded to disprove it. When the next day her Home Secretary, William Vernon Harcourt, came to Windsor to introduce a congratulatory address to her, she refused to see him privately, claiming to be "much too excited"; she did, however, make her displeasure known to him through Ponsonby: "She was angry at the result of the Maclean trial as she does not understand the verdict of 'Not Guilty' and said to Sir Henry Ponsonby 'I know that Sir William Harcourt and Sir Henry James were determined to make him out mad all along.'" William Gladstone, to whom the Queen fired an incredulous telegram the moment she heard the verdict, was baffled: he was certain that she both knew and approved of the government's strategy. He replied with a ciphered telegram, referring her to the letter he had written her at the beginning of March laying out his reasons for the government's not contesting an insanity plea: "I did not then understand Your Majesty to disapprove," he told her. But it was clear to him that she disapproved now, with a bitter intensity that called for a quick and delicate response. Gladstone, Harcourt, and Foreign Secretary Granville all wrote to her the day after the shooting to placate her and once again to justify the government's course. Maclean's lifetime of confinement was more strongly guaranteed with the insanity verdict than it would have been with a guilty verdict, Harcourt argued. Granville noted the relief of finding Maclean to be a madman, and tried to flatter the Queen, praising her "calm and serene courage, when so highly tried." Gladstone, in his usual maddeningly dispassionate style, both backed away from his government's collusion in bringing about Maclean's insanity verdict and rather weakly attempted to defend the deterrent value of the sentence:
Mr. Gladstone humbly feels with Your Majesty that when an individual, such as Maclean, has probably been sane in respect to the particular act for which he is tried, an acquittal on the ground of insanity is not a satisfactory form under which to attain the end of at least disabling him from further mischief by the total loss of his personal liberty. He hopes indeed that all who understand that this forfeiture is really a forfeiture for life may perceive the gravity of the consequences following the act.
These convoluted concessions to her point of view were not enough for Victoria. Her government had done her a great disservice, and she now wanted action, not words. Gladstone must now do his best to set things right, and just as importantly—more importantly, to a monarch who had, in her eyes, for the past two years been talked down to or ignored, defied, and endangered by her own government—she simply wished for her prime minister to do her bidding, to treat her as the Empress she was—to _serve her_ , as Disraeli had done so well during his ministry.
After O'Connor's attempt a decade before, Gladstone had promised Victoria that if the law under which he was tried was defective, his government would change it. And after O'Connor's paltry one-year sentence had been handed down, Victoria had called upon Gladstone to change that law—Peel's Law—by appending a provision to exile convicted assailants for life. But Gladstone had reneged, blaming weak-willed Judge Cleasby and not the law for the sentence. And when Victoria had insisted that the law was defective, Gladstone had put her off with a vague promise to change the law in the future; and then he had done nothing.* And now Maclean had shot at her, and had been acquitted: obviously, any law that did not acknowledge his guilt must be faulty, and must be changed. Within hours of the verdict, she demanded that Gladstone find a way to remove "not guilty on the grounds of insanity" as a verdict from cases such as Maclean's.
And Gladstone, eager to rehabilitate his ever-more deeply dysfunctional relationship with the Queen, set out quickly to do just that. In his letter to her the day after the shooting, he expressed himself "deeply impressed with the gravity of the subject." While he did say he was unsure whether such a change could be legally made, he promised to consult with the highest legal authorities about the matter. Within the next fortnight he had met with the Attorney General and the Lord Chief Justice. Telling them that he concurred absolutely with Victoria's position that the stigma of guilt would prevent "dangerous misapprehensions in morbid minds," he energetically promoted the change. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge supported altering the law in this way, but only in cases of high treason, and not those of murder. Coleridge would consult with other high court judges; if they agreed, which seemed likely, Gladstone promised Victoria his ministry would see the change through Parliament.
In this way Gladstone and his government built up a little bit of good will with Victoria. But they squandered that good will completely, two weeks after the trial, when Gladstone and his Cabinet made the momentous decision to release Charles Stewart Parnell and the two other Irish nationalist MPs, whom they had ordered arrested the previous October in the face of growing Irish agitation and agrarian violence. Since the time of Parnell's imprisonment without trial, violence in Ireland had only increased. Coercion, it seemed, was not working, and almost to a man Gladstone's Cabinet now favored a course of conciliation. Through intermediaries they had negotiated with Parnell and had reached an informal deal: if the government would continue with its reforms initiated with its Land Act of the year before, Parnell would support them, and would speak out against the violent outrages plaguing Ireland. Only one member of the Cabinet refused to be a party to the release, and resigned—W. E. Forster, the violently coercionist Chief Secretary for Ireland.
Victoria was a hardline coercionist as well, and Gladstone attempted to break the news to her gently, informing her on the first of May of the Cabinet's decision, arguing that "this measure will tend to peace and security in Ireland"; the next day, he sent Granville on a special train for an audience and to obtain her consent for the release. Granville, she noted, was very nervous, and Victoria was not happy. She " _very reluctantly_ " gave her consent, "but said it was a great mistake." She then wrote to voice her reservations to Gladstone: releasing Parnell would have, she thought, the opposite effect to the one Gladstone expected: "The Queen cannot but feel that it will have the effect of a triumph to Home Rule and of great weakness. She trusts she may be mistaken as to the results of this course, but she much dreads they will not be favourable to the maintenance of authority and respect of law and order."
That day, Parnell and his two colleagues were released. W. E. Forster was replaced by Lord Frederick Cavendish, who happened to be the husband of Gladstone's niece Lucy. Two days later, as Cavendish and the newly appointed Viceroy, Earl Spencer, prepared to cross over to Dublin, Victoria learned to her amazement that her government was making a further, and to her a dangerous, conciliatory move. She shot a telegram to Gladstone: "Is it possible that M. Davitt, known as one of the worst of the treasonable agitators, is also to be released? I cannot believe it." Her government had already done enough to convince her that their radical actions were again doing damage to her Empire.
On 6 May, Earl Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish made what was to all appearances a triumphal entry into Dublin—"... certainly the best reception I ever got in Ireland," Earl Spencer wrote to his wife; "The cheering was tremendous at times, and I would see many old friends at windows, etc."
A few hours afterwards, Spencer wrote his wife again: "We are in God's hands. Do not be filled with alarm and fear.... I dare not dwell on the horror for I feel I must be unmanned." Lord Frederick Cavendish had decided that evening to walk from his office at Dublin Castle to his residence in Phoenix Park. In the park, a cab crossed his path and stopped; Thomas Henry Burke—for thirteen years permanent Irish undersecretary, and so now Cavendish's assistant—hopped down to walk with him. As the two proceeded arm in arm, seven men approached them, passed, wheeled around, pulled out long, sharp knives, and fell upon Burke. "Ah, you villain!" cried Cavendish, and smacked one of the attackers in the face with his umbrella. They then turned upon him as well. Slashing and hacking at both men, the attackers inflicted gaping wounds upon Burke's and Cavendish's breasts, backs, necks, and arms. The seven attackers then melted away before passersby ran up to see Burke and Cavendish take their last breaths.
That night, Queen Victoria, who earlier had made her own triumphal procession through London in order to open Epping Forest as a park, learned the horrible news via two telegrams—the first reporting Burke dead but Cavendish alive, the second stating "All is over with Lord Frederick." The murders were all she dreaded, clearly the fruits of Gladstone's destructive policies. She angrily laid out cause and effect in her journal: "How could Mr. Gladstone and his violent Radical advisers proceed with such a policy, which inevitably led to all this? Surely his eyes must be open now." It did not matter to Victoria that Gladstone theorized (incorrectly, as it turned out) that the attackers were Irish-Americans and not Irishmen, that the attackers were, it transpired, attacking Burke and not Cavendish, and that they had originally targeted the coercionist Forster before he left the country, that the murders horrified Parnell and certainly did not serve his interests, and that he both deplored them and quickly sought police protection. The Queen was certain: Phoenix Park proved that Gladstone and his cabinet were not simply aiding the enemy: they _were_ the enemy. While Gladstone of course was devastated personally by the death of his niece's husband, the Queen could hardly restrain herself from launching a general attack on her government. At first, she did so through Granville, declaring to him on the day after the assassinations:
... she _cannot withhold_ from him that _she_ considers _this_ horrible event the _direct result_ of what she has always considered and has stated to Mr. Gladstone and to Lord Spencer as a most fatal and hazardous step.
She _must hold those_ who recommended the release of not only the three Members of Parliament, but of many other suspects, as responsible for the lives of her subjects, and calls on the Government to take such strong measures as may give her and the country security, or at least as much security as possible....
Two days later, and one day after Gladstone, crushed with grief, broke down in tears while speaking in the House of Commons of Cavendish, Victoria turned upon him: "She wishes now to express her _earnest_ hope that he will make _no_ concession to _those_ whose Actions, Speeches & writings, _have produced_ the present state of affairs in Ireland & who would be _encouraged_ by weak and vacillating action to make _further demands._ "
She would find, however, that she could not quite bend her government to her will in this matter. They did introduce and pass a new coercion bill in the wake of the tragedy, but they also continued on the path of conciliation that the Queen deplored. By the end of May the relationship between the Queen and her government had reached such a low point that Victoria took the most unusual step of enlisting her eldest son to intervene to save her and her nation from the government:
Dearest Bertie,—The state of affairs—this dreadfully Radical Government which contains many thinly-veiled _Republicans_ —and the way in which they have truckled to the Home Rulers—as well as the utter disregard of all my opinions which after 45 years of experience ought to be considered, all make me very miserable, and disgust me with the hard, ungrateful task I have to go through and weigh on my health and spirits.... The mischief Mr. Gladstone does is _incalculable;_ instead of _stemming_ the current and downward course of Radicalism, which he could do _perfectly_ , he _heads and encourages it_ and alienates all the true Whigs and moderate Liberals from him. Patriotism is nowhere in their ranks.... You... should _speak_ to _those_ who _might and ought_ , to act _differently_ to what they do!
The Prince of Wales, however, could do little; Victoria and Gladstone would remain locked in their bitter relationship for three more years, until in 1885 another brutal killing—of General Gordon, in the Sudan—crippled the Liberal government and led to its fall. And even that was not the end; to Victoria's great dismay, Gladstone would serve as her prime minister twice more.
In the meantime, Gladstone kept to his promise to change the insanity verdict, though the progress of that change had slowed considerably as judges consulted and wording was agreed upon. By September 1882 this was done. Somehow during that time the scope of the proposed special verdict had grown; the change from the verdict not guilty by reason of insanity to "Guilty, but insane" would now apply to every felony, not just treason. The consequence, of course, would remain exactly the same—detainment at the Queen's pleasure; it was the stigma that was new. The government at first attached this measure to a larger bill consolidating a number of criminal law reforms. That bill, introduced early in 1883, came to nothing. They then detached the measure and introduced it as a special bill. It quietly passed at the end of the session, in August 1883.
Life had become, if anything, less secure for Victoria between Maclean's trial and the passage of the Trial of Lunatics Act. At the beginning of 1883, Irish-American dynamitards had relaunched their bombing campaign, again targeting symbolic sites of British power. And in April John Brown had died, plunging the Queen into grief. "He protected me so, was so powerful and strong—that I felt so safe!" Victoria wrote to Vicky. She would be grateful, then, for any measure that protected her. Therefore, while she pointedly did not thank Gladstone for anything else that he had achieved in the busy parliamentary session of 1883, Victoria thanked him for this: "It will be," she wrote, "a great security."
Perhaps it was. Certainly, Victoria was never shot at or assaulted for the rest of her life, and the special verdict of "Guilty, but insane" never had to be applied in any case concerning her. Instead—and for the next eighty-one years—it applied to every poor insane soul who committed a felony. The first person stigmatized by this verdict was a woman with a history of mental disturbance, Johanna Culverwell, who was brought before the bar of the Old Bailey just three weeks after Victoria gave her royal assent to the change in the law.* Culverwell was charged with the death of her six-week-old son, whom she had placed in a pan of water, walked away, and returned to find drowned. After some confusion as to the existence of the act, and then about the proper way to word the verdict, she was declared guilty, but insane. She, like Maclean, was detained at Victoria's pleasure. But she, unlike Maclean, was considered morally responsible for her action. So was every other mad felon until 1964, when the Trial of Lunatics Act was amended to its original verdict of "not guilty by reason of insanity."
While Maclean's attempt did not lead to any further assaults upon Victoria, as she had feared it would, it certainly did lead to one final act of mayhem: an assault upon the language, perpetrated by the man widely considered to be the worst poet in English, and perhaps all languages: William McGonagall.
McGonagall and Maclean traveled oddly parallel courses in the years leading up to Maclean's attempt. Both heard voices in their heads: for McGonagall, it was his bedraggled and faulty muse, who came to him in a trance and ordered him to "Write! Write!" during the most "startling incident" of his life, in 1877, when he discovered his poetic calling. Both Maclean and McGonagall had grandiose notions about their talents, and both expected the public to marvel at their gifts. The public refused to comply, although McGonagall had the happier nature of the two and generally interpreted public ridicule as acclaim. Soon after his epiphany, McGonagall, like Maclean, submitted some of his verses to Victoria, hoping for patronage, perhaps even expecting to snatch the Poet Laureateship from Lord Tennyson. Like Maclean's, his efforts were rejected—by Keeper of the Privy Purse Lord Biddulph this time, rather than by Lady Biddulph, Maclean's curt correspondent. Biddulph politely thanked McGonagall for his submission, and that was enough to convince McGonagall, with his happier nature, that the Queen loved his work. This was enough in July 1878 to compel him to an epic journey from Dundee to Balmoral to entertain the Queen, who was then in residence. At the gate he was ridiculed and sent on his way, and threatened with arrest if he ever returned. Undismayed, he lived the rest of his life certain of the Queen's patronage; for twenty-five years he played the part of a stealth poet-laureate, outdoing Tennyson in his startlingly prolific output of occasional poetry. He earned an insecure living by badgering patrons for donations and by reciting his poetry in halls, theatres, public houses, and for a time as a circus act, where he read while the audience was permitted to throw eggs, flour, dead fish, and vegetables at him.
Roderick Maclean's attempt provided him with the occasion of one of his best worst poems—and provides us with enough evidence to conclude that McGonagall must by any standard be considered a better bad poet than Maclean himself was.
"Attempted Assassination of the Queen"
God prosper long our noble Queen,
And long may she reign!
Maclean he tried to shoot her,
But it was all in vain.
For God He turned the ball aside
Maclean aimed at her head;
And he felt very angry
Because he didn't shoot her dead.
There's a divinity that hedges a king,
And so it does seem,
And my opinion is, it has hedged
Our most gracious Queen.
Maclean must be a madman,
Which is obvious to be seen,
Or else he wouldn't have tried to shoot
Our most beloved Queen.
Victoria is a good Queen,
Which all her subjects know,
And for that God has protected her
From all her deadly foes.
She is noble and generous,
Her subjects must confess;
There hasn't been her equal
Since the days of good Queen Bess.
Long may she be spared to roam
Among the bonnie Highland floral,
And spend many a happy day
In the palace of Balmoral.
Because she is very kind
To the old women there,
And allows them bread, tea, and sugar,
And each one get a share.
And when they know of her coming,
Their hearts feel overjoy'd,
Because, in general, she finds work
For men that's unemploy'd.
And she also gives the gipsies money
While at Balmoral, I've been told,
And, mind ye, seldom silver,
But very often gold.
I hope God will protect her
By night and by day,
At home and abroad,
When she's far away.
May He be as a hedge around her,
As he's been all along,
And let her live and die in peace
Is the end of my song.*
McGonagall died in 1902, a year after Victoria. He thus lived long enough to see every wish he had for her come true. God indeed hedged her; after Maclean, she lived, and died, in peace.
* Both judges, as attorneys, had had experience with previous assailants: Coleridge, as Attorney General, was the one who browbeat Dr. Tuke and demolished his attempt to establish Arthur O'Connor's insanity; Huddleston had assisted Alexander Cockburn in defending Robert Pate.
* Besides being a year to the day after Disraeli's death, 19 April 1882 also happened to be the day that Charles Darwin died.
** By amazing coincidence, Disraeli's estate at Hughenden had been sold after his death to Samuel Wilson, the father of Victoria's Etonian defender, Gordon Chesney Wilson. Samuel Wilson later ordered a stained-glass window for Hughenden Church commemorating Victoria's escape from Maclean.
* See pp. 454-455, above.
* Culverwell, as it happens, was prosecuted by Roderick Maclean's defense attorney, Montagu Williams.
* Yet another poem connected with Maclean's case, and undoubtedly the best of them, made the rounds of the newspapers in the wake of the verdict:
"Two Pronunciations."
Roderick Maclean
He shot at the Queen.
The jury took "reason"
Out of his treason;
So Rod'rick Maclean
Was pronouncéd insane.
( _Manchester Times_ 29 April 1882, 8.)
_epilogue_
JUBILEE
For the last nineteen years of her life, Victoria never again confronted a would-be assassin.
But because of the lethal power of dynamite and the evergrowing belief among terrorists—Fenian and otherwise—that monarchs and heads of state were legitimate political targets, the threat of assassination only increased during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Victoria's security detail grew; greater and greater precautions were taken when she traveled between her homes or went among her subjects. And in 1887, the year of Victoria's Golden Jubilee, that increased security proved its worth, when the Metropolitan police shut down what could have been the most serious threat against her.
Since their first dynamite campaign in 1881, Irish-American dynamitards had chosen as their targets ever greater symbols of British power. Between 1883 and 1885, they had hit Whitehall and Victoria Railway Station, the London Underground, Scotland Yard, the Tower of London, and the House of Commons. An unexploded bomb had been found in Trafalgar Square next to one of Landseer's lions, at the base of Nelson's Column. One dynamitard was caught with brass cylinder grenades, planning to throw them from the Strangers' Gallery at the full government bench at the House of Commons. But dynamiting ceased altogether in 1885 when some measure of freedom for Ireland seemed achievable by Parliamentary means, and the Clan-na-Gael, now the most popular group of militant Irish nationalists in the United States, agreed to refrain from violence to give Parnell and the nationalist MPs their chance. Hopes soared at the end of the year when William Gladstone converted publicly to the cause of Irish Home Rule. But those hopes were crushed six months later when Gladstone's Home Rule Bill failed and his Liberal party split irrevocably. Those opposed to Home Rule, calling themselves the Liberal Unionists, shifted their allegiance to the Conservatives—permanently, as it turned out. After the general election of July 1886, much to Victoria's delight, Lord Salisbury's conservative government was in—and Gladstone and any possibility of Irish Home Rule were out. A month later, at a conference in Pittsburgh, the extremists of the Clan-na-Gael resolved to recommence terror-bombing with a "display of fireworks" to disrupt the Queen's Jubilee celebrations.
There exists no evidence that Clan-na-Gael leaders specified a target for the renewed campaign. Quite likely they never did. But in that year, one target was feared above all others: Westminster Abbey on 21 June 1887, Jubilee Day, when Victoria, her children and grandchildren, and a critical mass of the royalty of Europe and the world were to gather to give thanks for the Queen's fifty years on the throne. A strategically placed cache of dynamite could destroy them all; no greater blow against monarchy could have been struck anywhere in the world at any time during Victoria's reign.
And yet it all came to nothing. Thanks largely to the efforts of one man—James Monro, Assistant Commissioner and head of the Criminal Investigations Department—the "Jubilee Plot" was the attempt on Victoria's life that never was.
The threat, however, was certainly real. On 11 June 1887, the ship _City of Chester_ steamed out of New York Harbor and past the newly erected Statue of Liberty, bound for Liverpool. On the ship were three men well equipped for a serious sortie in the dynamite war. All carried portmanteaus containing new Smith & Wesson revolvers and fifteen bullets. Also in their bags—or perhaps sewn into their coats—were over a hundred pounds of American-made Atlas A dynamite in slabs, as well as a number of detonators. The three men all traveled under aliases. The dapper and garrulous one of the three—obviously their leader—called himself Joseph Melville. He was actually John J. Moroney, one of the more militant members of the Clan-na-Gael, and a close friend of the Clan's most powerful leader in America, Alexander Sullivan; Sullivan had obviously hand-picked him for this mission. Moroney had himself almost certainly picked the others. Both traveled under the alias of Scott: brothers, supposedly, though they hardly looked it. The youngest, "Harry Scott," was actually Michael Harkins, a sandy-haired thirty-year-old, his broad shoulders muscular from years of labor on the Reading Railroad. He had been a Philadelphia grocer until Moroney enlisted him, and he left behind a pregnant wife and four young children. He had met Moroney when both were loyal members of the Philadelphia branch of the Clan-na-Gael. How Moroney met and recruited the other man for this mission, however, is more of a mystery. For Thomas Callan, who travelled as "Thomas Scott," had little experience of Moroney's usual stomping grounds of New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago; he had lived a quiet life in the factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts, operating stocking-making machinery. He was unmarried, and at forty-seven his hair was already graying. Moroney likely sought him out because of his military skills; when Callan was twenty-two, in 1862, he had enlisted in the Massachusetts 33rd infantry of the Union Army. He had fought at the Civil War battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Lookout Mountain, and marched with General Sherman from Atlanta to the Atlantic. "No better or braver soldier than he served in that noble old regiment," declared one of his officers. Callan, however, like Harkins, was an extremely mild-mannered man; neither fitted the role of a fiery dynamitard. The skills that must have attracted them to Moroney were loyalty and deference: they took orders well. The "Scott brothers" were the foot soldiers in an operation top-heavy with commanders.
All three men had been born in Ireland; all three had brought with them to the United States a hatred of British oppression so deep it was as natural to them as breathing, a hatred created by centuries of Irish subordination and humiliation, amplified by the starvation of the great famine; indeed, Thomas Callan personally experienced the horrors of the famine before emigrating as a child to Lowell. Their hatred was fostered in America by family memories, by nationalist newspapers, and by regular meetings of their Clan-na-Gael camps. And now the three made for London to translate their lifelong hatred into explosive violence. They were supported financially, materially, and morally by thousands of Irish-Americans.
Three conspirators in the Jubilee Plot had preceded Moroney, Harkins, and Callan across the Atlantic. In March, "General" Francis Millen, a twenty-year Fenian veteran, was commissioned by the Clan-na-Gael to sail to France and to take from there overall command of the operation. And in May two other conspirators—one with the now-impenetrable alias of Joseph Cohen, and the other not now known by either alias or actual name—shipped to London, probably with their own supply of dynamite, to settle in and await the coming of their three co-conspirators.
Before the _City of Chester_ docked in Liverpool, however, the Metropolitan police knew that the dynamitards were coming and were already taking steps to scotch the conspiracy. By 1887, the detective force of the Metropolitan Police had grown since 1842 from a force of eight to one of over six hundred and had become much more specialized. Assistant Commissioner James Monro, head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), commanded in 1887 a Special anti-terrorist Branch, formed in 1883 specifically to track down Fenian dynamiters. He commanded as well a separate division called (among other things) Section D: a highly secret national security service established to surveil anarchists and Fenians. Monro, in other words, oversaw both detectives and spies. He used both to destroy the Jubilee Plot.
The secret of the Jubilee Plot was an open one in the United States since at least the beginning of May, when the _New York Times_ reported that Irish nationalists planned to disrupt the Queen's Jubilee. On the first day of June, the London _Times_ warned of "a pyrotechnic display in honour of the Queen's Jubilee or in other words a series of dynamite and incendiary outrages to startle the nation amid the peaceful rejoicings of the month which opens today." As it happens, the then-anonymous writer of that article knew what he was talking about: he was Assistant Commissioner James Monro's second-in-command, Robert Anderson. Anderson controlled the Metropolitan Police's most valuable asset in the war against Irish-American terror—a British spy by the name of Thomas Beach, who, posing as a Frenchman, Henri Le Caron, had for twenty years penetrated the highest ranks of the Fenian Brotherhood and the Clan-na-Gael. Thanks to Beach, Monro and his detectives knew that Alexander Sullivan and his branch of the Clan were behind the campaign. They knew that Millen had been sent to France to command the operation. But they knew nothing about Moroney, Harkins, or Callan. Indeed, for all they knew, the dynamitards were already in London, plotting their attack.
Monro therefore acted to cut the known conspirator, Millen, away from the unknown ones. He sent several detectives across the Channel to shadow Millen's every move and prevent him from crossing to England; he then sent the Chief Superintendent of the CID to confront him and inform him that they knew about the plot and his role in it. Millen, duly intimidated, only acted in one way that seemed to support the plot: he wrote three letters of introduction for Moroney to three Irish Nationalist members of Parliament, thus providing Moroney with an entry into the House of Commons. While those letters seemed to help Moroney, they more than likely actually helped the police. For there was another reason why Millen proved to be a weak link in the plot: for over twenty years, off and on, Millen had been an informer to the British government. As a double-agent, it is more than likely that he never intended to assist the Jubilee plotters. Copies of the letters of introduction had reached Monro before the originals were given to Moroney, suggesting that Millen almost certainly betrayed his fellows. Those letters of introduction proved crucial in discovering the bombers.
But the letters only came into Monro's possession after 21 June, and so he experienced a harrowing Jubilee Day. He knew on that day that the plot was afoot and had little idea how far it had progressed. For all he knew, Fenians might have succeeded in planting a bomb in the bowels of Westminster Abbey, one the police had been unable to discover when they searched the building the day before. Monro and his family had tickets in the Abbey to view the thanksgiving. He left his children at home, but he and his wife attended. While they were there, and just as Victoria and her family began their procession from Buckingham Palace to the Abbey, Monro was handed a message stating that conspirators had indeed succeeded in planting a bomb in the Abbey. "I was never in a more delicate position in my life," he later wrote. To alert the crowd now would precipitate a deadly panic. In the end, Monro did nothing but pray. Meanwhile Victoria, who had been reassured by her Home Secretary Henry Matthews that all was safe, proceeded without fear to the Abbey. As usual, she reveled in the crowds, later writing in her journal "there was such an extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm as I had hardly ever seen in London before." Alighting at the Abbey, Victoria slowly walked up the nave and choir to take her place on the Coronation Chair, far less concerned with the threat of dynamite than with the pleasing fact that she did not see Mr. Gladstone (although he was there). The service began and ended; Victoria's children, children-in-law, and grandchildren approached and kissed her hand; all proceeded back to the Palace. There was no bomb. Millen had been disabled. Cohen and his comrade were not prepared. Moroney, Harkins, and Callan were not even in London, having that very day stepped off the _City of Chester_ in Liverpool.
Monro knew, however, that the threat had not passed. Within a couple days, Moroney, Harkins, and Callan were in London; they took up lodgings all around the metropolis. They all represented themselves as traveling salesmen—a dealer in tea, Thomas Callan told his landlady. Having missed their golden opportunity on Jubilee Day, they began to explore other uses for their dynamite. Thomas Callan was twice sent to Windsor Castle with a stopwatch to time how quickly he could plant a bomb in the State Apartments and escape to the railway station. His timing was bad; the state apartments were closed both times, and Callan never returned for fear he would be recognized. Moroney, using one of the letters of introduction Millen had written for him, with Harkins twice visited the House of Commons, where they were shown around by an Irish member; Callan, too, was observed to lurk about the place. Harkins was later found with a newspaper clipping detailing an upcoming public appearance of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Arthur Balfour. The dynamiters planned, but did not act—and the Jubilee season passed.
Monro, in the meantime, managed progressively to strangle their operation. When Moroney and Harkins appeared at the House of Commons, detectives were waiting; they lost Harkins but followed Moroney to his lodgings. Monro then quickly applied the same pressure upon Moroney that he had on Millen, setting a police guard upon him and sending a detective to his lodgings to question him "closely." Thus exposed and spooked, Moroney soon fled to Paris, taking most of the dynamiters' funds with him; there he took up with a young American woman named Miss Kennedy, and the two proceeded to spend the Clan-na-Gael funds with abandon. Moroney lost contact with his subordinates completely, even though he returned to London twice during the next few weeks. In September he abandoned the mission altogether, decamping with Miss Kennedy to New York.*
He left behind him a money trail which Monro used to shut down the disintegrating plot completely. Soon after arriving in London in June, Moroney had cashed drafts for over £500 into Bank of England £5 notes. The cashier had carefully noted the numbers of all those bills, and when Monro discovered Moroney's complicity in the plot, he placed a watch at all banks for anyone cashing them. At the beginning of September, Joseph Cohen cashed two of the notes, writing his signature and address on them. He thus led police to his lodgings. Moroney, before fleeing, had entrusted Cohen with the dynamite, in two heavy tin boxes. Days after cashing the £5 notes, however, Cohen collapsed with a serious pulmonary illness, and, fearing exposure, Michael Harkins, with the help of a muscular cabman, moved the dynamite out of Cohen's lodgings. One of the boxes ended up under Thomas Callan's bed. The other disappeared. Cohen's illness quickly worsened; police watched Harkins and Callan come and go repeatedly, nursing the dying man.
In mid-October, Monro exerted pressure again, this time upon Michael Harkins: two police descended on his lodgings demanding he give an account of himself, and discovered his loaded Smith & Wesson pistol as well as his newspaper clipping detailing Irish Secretary Balfour's upcoming public engagement. Harkins, shaken, raced to Cohen's lodgings, where he found that his comrade had just died. The police found Harkins there and arrested him. They soon released him for lack of evidence, but Monro established an around-the-clock watch by six officers who moved into his lodgings. Harkins could do nothing but try to run, writing to Philadelphia begging for someone to buy him a passage home.
Harkins's immobilization left at large only Thomas Callan (with his dynamite) and the mysterious fifth plotter. Callan was surprised when, in the days after Harkins's arrest, Harkins did not show up for prearranged meetings. On 26 October, however, all became painfully clear to him when he read in the newspapers accounts of the inquest of Joseph Cohen. Monro appeared personally at the inquest and used the occasion to expose the dynamite plot to the public, revealing all he knew about Millen, Moroney, Cohen, and Harkins to reporters and thus to the world.
Callan panicked. He was holding most of the hard evidence of the plot: he had to dispose of the "tea," as he called it. The detonators he threw into a local pond. But the dynamite was too heavy for that. And so he dragged the slabs to the back garden and into his lodging house's water closet. He flushed away as much as he could, until the pipe was blocked. He dragged the rest to a nearby dustbin, and for some reason threw some of it over the wall, into a neighbor's back garden. (A week later, a boy living there, looking for something with which to line the floor of his pigeon-coop, put some of it in the oven to dry it out: the resulting explosion blew the oven door apart.) Since Moroney had entrusted Callan with none of the funds, Callan was broke, and trapped: he hunkered down in his lodgings, feigning or feeling illness, refusing to leave his bed. He too wrote home, begging for passage back to Massachusetts. And then he waited.
Three weeks later, in mid-November, Callan thought he had found his path to freedom. On the evening of the seventeenth, a stranger came to his lodgings demanding to see him; he was shown up and left ten minutes later. It was almost certainly the mysterious and anonymous fifth conspirator, who handed to Callan four Bank of England £5 notes—some of the money that Moroney had cashed six months before. The man then left the house and vanished from the observation of the police and from history—though for some time he remained in Monro's mind as a potentially dangerous loose end of the Jubilee Plot.
The next day, Callan received even better news: a letter had arrived from Lowell with a draft for more money—and a prepaid passage to Boston on the Cunard Line. Callan emerged from hiding to cash the £5 notes, to buy a new pair of boots, to disguise himself by shaving off his whiskers. Cashing the £5 notes doomed him: his banker noted their numbers and stalled Callan as he summoned an officer of the City Police. That officer shadowed Callan long enough to conclude that he was about to flee, and then arrested him. Monro ordered Harkins arrested as well. Both were at Scotland Yard by evening.
In the end, only Callan and Harkins went to trial; they alone paid the price for the bungling and double-dealing of their commanders. From the back garden of Callan's lodgings, the police were able to collect over twenty-five pounds of sodden dynamite, which police chemists were able to determine to be of American make. Traces of the stuff were found in both their portmanteaus. At trial in February 1888, Harkins and Callan were both found guilty under the Explosive Substances Act of 1883 and sentenced to fifteen years penal servitude each. Never ceasing to maintain his innocence, Harkins was released from prison in 1892, seriously debilitated by tuberculosis, and died the next year in Philadelphia. Callan—according to a chief constable who interviewed him, "the most harmless of all the dynamiters with whom I have been brought into contact"—at first maintained his innocence as well but later confessed, revealing to police among other things his close encounter with the royal residence at Windsor, if not with the royal person. Monro recommended that Callan be given early release, and after he had served five years of his sentence Callan was quickly put aboard ship and returned via New York to Lowell, whose citizens had never stopped believing that "Poor Tommy Callan" had been railroaded by the perfidious British. They greeted him as a hero. Callan did not have long to enjoy his minor celebrity; a year later, he was thrown from a cart, smashed his leg, and died.
The botched plot to disrupt the queen's Golden Jubilee turned out to be the final skirmish in the Irish-American dynamite war. But the threat to the Queen did not disappear. As the danger of Fenian terror bombing receded, that of pan-European anarchism grew. Following Lucheni's assassination of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898, in 1900, Gaetano Bresci killed King Umberto of Italy with four bullets from a .32 revolver. His assassination inspired Leon Czolgosz to kill American President William McKinley a year later.
The anarchist threat hit home on 4 April 1900, when Victoria's son Bertie was for the only time of his life the target of an assassin's bullet. The Boer War was at that time raging, and across Europe British popularity was at a nadir, so low that Bertie and Princess Alexandra chose to forgo their usual trip to Biarritz for a safer place: Alix's native Denmark. They travelled through Belgium, and at the Gare du Nord on the afternoon of the fourth, just as their train was leaving the station, a boy jumped upon the carriage footboard, thrust a pistol through the window, and from six feet away fired two shots at the Prince. He missed. Bertie later enjoyed joking in letters to his friends about the "pauvre fou," and about his relief that anarchists could not shoot straight. Victoria was in Ireland on that day, commencing her final and triumphal carriage rides among the "wildly enthusiastic" crowds of Dublin; Beatrice told her of the attempt. "Was greatly shocked and upset," she wrote in her journal.*
The assailant's name was Jean-Baptiste Sipido. He was only fifteen years old—younger than any of Victoria's assailants. But he was more truly politically inspired than any of them; he was already a fanatical member of an anarchist club. The Prince of Wales asked Belgian authorities not to treat Sipido too severely, but nevertheless he and the British public were surprised and angered two months later when Sipido was, because of his age, found not mentally responsible for his act. He was set free and immediately fled to France. (He was later extradited to Belgium, where he was confined in a penitentiary until he reached the age of twenty-one.)
At the time of this shooting, Bertie was less than a year away from taking the throne himself—not as Albert I, of course, but as Edward VII. His mother, in the last year of her reign, was already suffering the accumulation of ailments and the slow decline of her faculties that would lead to her death at the very commencement of the twentieth century. Her body was giving out; she routinely travelled in a wheelchair, and her eyesight was fading. Her popularity, however, remained undiminished; indeed, if it were possible, it grew with her every appearance. Those appearances continued until nearly the end. As always, these periodic showings of herself were not motivated by any joy she took in them. She _did_ take joy in them, but always after suffering fretting, nervous anticipation: the actual pleasure she felt among her people was perpetually a rediscovery to her, as was the fact that she had become an icon—London's greatest attraction. In 1890, for instance, Victoria was surprised that the public would mass simply to get a moment's view of her when she traveled to London for the interment of one of her beloved ladies, the Marchioness of Ely, at Kensal Green Cemetery. Noting the masses at the cemetery gates, Victoria wrote in her journal "there were crowds out, we could not understand why, and thought something must be going [on], but it turned out it was only to see me." She might have been baffled at the time, but achieving the personal popularity illustrated on that day had of course been Victoria's life's work, and by the end of her reign the very legitimacy of the institution depended absolutely upon that popular desire "only to see me."
And it was during the last two decades of Victoria's reign that British royal ceremonial reached its zenith, with the two great showpieces of the prestige of Victoria's monarchy, the Golden Jubilee of 1887 and the Diamond Jubilee of 1897. The first was a celebration of Victoria's primacy among monarchs as the royalty of Europe gathered to pay homage to her. The second, under the direction of the Queen's imperialist Minister for the Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, celebrated the greatness of the British Empire, a greatness embodied by the small but stout woman who had just surpassed her grandfather George III in having the longest reign of any English monarch. Both occasions entirely depended for their success simply upon Victoria going out among her people in processions. Indeed, the Diamond Jubilee consisted _only_ of a procession, as the Queen, in 1897 no longer able to walk into St. Paul's for the Thanksgiving Service, refused to be carried inside, and instead viewed from her carriage a short _Te Deum_ on the cathedral steps before continuing back to Buckingham Palace.
Before both Jubilees, Victoria underwent the same emotional turbulence she had before the 1872 thanksgiving procession: with an apprehension growing to trepidation at the prospect of plunging into the enormous crowds drew near. And then she experienced them with an ecstatic joy and a great sense of oneness with her people. "A never-to-be-forgotten day," she wrote on Diamond Jubilee Day, 22 June 1897. "No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those six miles of streets.... The crowds were quite undescribable, and their enthusiasm truly marvellous and deeply touching. The cheering was quite deafening, and every face seemed to be filled with real joy."
She was right: no one in London had ever met with such an ovation. Certainly no monarch before her had experienced anything like the sheer popular jubilation of 1851, or 1872, 1887, 1897—and in 1900, the last year of her life, when in March Victoria went forth in her carriage to celebrate the relief of the South African city of Ladysmith. "Everywhere," Victoria wrote, "the same enormous crowds and incessant demonstrations of enthusiasm; if possible, even beyond that of the two Jubilees." That night, she stood before a window in Buckingham Palace with a light placed behind her, so the crowds could see and cheer her. Lord Rosebery, her Prime Minister five years before, was deeply impressed by her actions, writing to her:
I saw your Majesty three times in the streets and in the Park; and my overpowering feeling was "What a glorious privilege to be able to make millions so happy!" No one who saw London then will ever forget it, or will cease to pray for the prolongation of your Majesty's life, and of your Majesty's priceless and unceasing exertions for your Empire.
Victoria lived for eight months after that. In those months, her eldest son was shot at, and her second son, Alfred, died. In December she was able to make the trip by train and royal yacht one more time to Osborne; there, she lived through one more Christmas, made miserable by the death of one of her favorite ladies, Jane Churchill; there she saw in the new century, dictating to a granddaughter one of her last journal entries: "Another year begun, and I am feeling so weak and unwell that I enter upon it sadly." And there she weakened and took to her deathbed, flickering in and out of consciousness, and probably never realizing on 19 January that she had become the oldest as well as the longest-reigning monarch of Britain.* Her family gathered around her, in a tableau similar to Albert's death nearly forty years before. On the evening of 22 January it was clear that the end was coming. Her children each stood before her, identifying themselves and giving their good-byes. She died in the arms of her grandson Kaiser Wil-helm, "a look of radiance on her face." Her oldest son, now King Edward, closed her eyes, and broke down.
She made one more procession—more subdued than any, but also more fully attended: the journey of her body, across the Solent and to London, past a million of her subjects in the metropolis, all of them, for once, eerily silent, to Paddington Station and Windsor and the funeral at St. George's Chapel—and then to Frogmore, and to silence by the side of her husband.
To Victoria's successors, and to the British people of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the popular bond between monarch and public, and the primacy of that popular bond to the legitimacy of the monarchy, seems natural and timeless, a part of the very definition of monarchy, codified and sanctified by royal ceremonies that themselves seem timeless. But these ceremonies are not at all timeless. The royal weddings, the Jubilees, the walkabouts and openings, the triumphal appearances upon the royal balcony, are Victorian creations. And the concept that underlies them, the yoking of royal legitimacy and popular will, is a Victorian concept as well—or, to put it more clearly, is Queen Victoria's concept—a redefinition of monarchy that became her life's work. Though Victoria throughout her life feared public appearances, she steeled herself to make them. Though as she grew older she grew more anxious about the hubbub of London and the shot of the next assailant, she continued to ride out, in open carriages, to accept and to return the goodwill of the people. She was helped in redefining the monarchy by John Conroy, who while hateful to her in every other way, did teach her the valuable lesson: the fundamental importance of popular acclaim. She was helped greatly by her beloved Albert, a foreigner who nevertheless understood instinctively and intellectually the importance of his wife's bond with the people, and devoted his life to promoting it, subsuming himself in her elevation. She was helped by her prime ministers—by Peel and Russell and Disraeli and Salisbury and Gladstone—especially by Gladstone—all of whom did their part to answer "the royalty question" in a way beneficial to the institution. And she was greatly helped—more greatly than they would ever know, and than she would ever admit—by her seven assailants, who in deciding to take a pop at the Queen had no intention whatsoever to strengthen the British monarchy, but who nevertheless gave Victoria seven golden opportunities to do exactly that.
All seven of Victoria's assailants, once they had satisfied their "diseased craving" for notoriety and had their few days in the public spotlight, quickly faded from public attention. Of the seven, only one—Arthur O'Connor—made any sort of attempt to return to it. O'Connor's arrest at Buckingham Palace in 1874, after two years' dissatisfaction in Sydney and obscurity in London, went unnoticed by most, and was less an attempt to regain notoriety and more a successful cry for medical help. With this qualified exception, Victoria's seven assailants shunned public attention; they scattered across England and Australia, or more accurately, were scattered by her Majesty's government, which used every means it could to distance them from their queen. All seven lived on for many years after their attempts. Several lived lives of quiet contentment, suggesting that the harsh psychiatric and penal regimens they endured had a therapeutic and rehabilitative effect. Others, however, suffered until the ends of their lives, in confinement, and in quiet—or not so quiet—desperation.
Edward Oxford, though deemed insane by the court, was considered sane by the doctors at Bethlem from the moment he entered the place, and every medical professional with whom he came in contact over the next twenty-seven years concurred. "Reported sane since his reception," his Bethlem case notes state, that opinion restated emphatically with the same entry repeated through the years: "no change." Contrary to the public perception that Oxford had beat the system and procured himself a life of ease and contentment, Oxford found Bethlem excruciating. He deserved a horse-whipping for his actions, he told a reporter in 1850, not indefinite imprisonment. Nevertheless, no one ever put sane confinement in an insane asylum to better use. Bethlem became his university, and in an obsessive course of study he became fluent in French, German, and Italian. He learned some Spanish, Latin, and Greek as well. He drew; he wrote poetry, his one surviving poem consoling Victoria on the death of the Prince Consort. He outshone his fellow patients in everything he undertook: at knitting gloves, at chess and draughts—and as a painter. He developed in particular great skill in graining, or in simulating wood-grain and marble-lines with paint. When, in 1864, Broadmoor Hospital replaced Bethlem as the national repository for the criminally insane, Oxford was one of the very last to make the trip there. He was from the start "the most orderly, most useful, and most trusted of all the inmates" there; his painting skills were in constant demand and allowed him in time to accumulate £50 or £60. Soon after he arrived at Broadmoor, his doctors attempted to correct the anomaly of a sane man in a lunatic asylum, pleading with the government that he be released. In 1864 the government refused to listen, but in 1867 Home Secretary Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy reviewed Oxford's record and made him a deal: Oxford could go free if he moved to one of her Majesty's colonies and agreed never to return to England. Oxford agreed, knowing exactly where he wanted to go—Melburne, Victoria, Australia. His decision was motivated not because the place yoked together the names of the queen he had shot at and her prime minister at the time, but because the place had over the years become familiar to him. Twenty-four years earlier, George Henry Haydon had come to Bethlem as steward, and Oxford quickly discovered in him a friend. Haydon was Oxford's own age, and as a young man had explored and then published an account of that part of southeast Australia then known as _Australia Felix_ , happy Australia, and later known as the area about Melbourne, Victoria. He often lectured to the patients and spoke to Oxford about the place; _Australia Felix_ became symbolic to Oxford as a place of free men.
In November 1867, then, Oxford, adopting the simple and telling alias of John Freeman,* left Broadmoor in the company of an attendant, took a train to Plymouth, and alone boarded the _Suffolk_ , which the next March landed at Melbourne. "Whatever has occurred in the past," he wrote to Haydon in leaving England, "in the future no man shall say I am unworthy of the name of an Englishman."
He was as good as his word. Oxford took up as a painter and grainer and became fully engaged in Melbourne's literary community. He was amused to discover that people in Melbourne thought him "cosmopolitan" because of his London origins. He joined and became vice president of the West Melbourne Mutual Improvement Society. He undertook investigative forays into the Melbourne underworld—sometimes in disguise—and published his observations in Melbourne's leading newspaper. He joined the congregation of Melbourne's oldest Anglican church and served for several years as its churchwarden. In 1881 he married a well-off widow and became a stepfather. And in 1888, the year of an International Exhibition in Melbourne, he found a publisher in London for his sketches, _Lights and Shadows of Melbourne Life_. He sent a copy of the book to Haydon, hoping with Haydon's help to pursue a full-blown literary career with the publications of stories and his memoirs. "There are many old friends... in England," he wrote to Haydon, "who would be pleased to hear of me again; and I should like a certain illustrious lady to know that one who was a foolish boy half a century ago, is now a respectable, & respected, member of society." Nothing, however, came of his plans, and the true identity of John Freeman remained a secret shared only between Oxford and Haydon. "Even my wife," Oxford told Haydon, "the sharer of my joys, and sorrows, is no wiser than the rest of the world." He took his secret to the grave, dying on 23 April 1900, sixty years after his attempt and seventy-eight years of age.
If Edward Oxford's life demonstrates the rehabilitative effects of Bethlem and Broadmoor, John Francis's later life demonstrates the similar effect of years at the hardest of hard labor in Van Die-men's Land. Francis was sent, soon after his arrival in 1842, to the remote penal colony offering the severest level of punishment on the island: Port Arthur. Convicts there experienced eternal vigilance and unceasing, crushing labor. The place was a "purgatorial grinding mill rather than a torture chamber," in the words of the foremost historian of Australian transportation, a preparation for a higher, less demanding, and more trusted position. Francis emerged after four years from that purgatorial fire a better man. Indeed, he emerged triumphantly, earning a six-month remission of his stay there by raising the alarm when a fire broke out. He was transferred to Launceston, and clearly impressed everyone with whom he came in contact there by his good character. Two years later, in 1848, he fell in love with a free sixteen-year-old girl, Martha Clarke, and married her. While still a convict he fathered several children, eventually fathering ten in all. (Francis's descendants in the antipodes are now numerous.) Eight years into his sentence he obtained his ticket of leave, allowing him to seek private employment; he found it with a Launceston builder who was impressed with his industry and sobriety. After ten years, he sought a conditional pardon—the condition, of course, being his never returning to England. Lord Palmerston, Home Secretary at the time, refused to give it. Three years afterwards, Francis tried again, this time supported by the leading citizens of Tasmania; a petition in his support was signed by the mayors of Hobart and Launceston, Launceston's Catholic bishop, and other notables. Palmerston's successor in the Home Office, George Grey, agreed, and in August 1856 Francis was free to travel about Australia and to operate his own business. During the next decade he moved with wife and some of his children across Bass Strait to Melbourne, where he worked as a contractor. Except for an episode in 1869 in Melbourne's insolvency court—his debts, Francis claimed, caused by an illness in the family—he, like Oxford, apparently lived the life of a well-adjusted, productive, fairly-well-off Melbournian. He died in 1885, aged sixty-three.
John William Bean was the only one of the seven whose attempt did not in the end result in his expulsion from London: he lived there his entire life. He served his eighteen months' imprisonment in Millbank penitentiary, on the bank of the Thames and not too far from Buckingham Palace. Because of his weak constitution, his hard-labor sentence was modified to work at tailoring. During his last month of imprisonment, his father died, and so he returned home as the eldest, if the least respected, male in his family. He attempted to take up his father's profession as a jeweler, and listed that as his profession when in 1846 he married a woman by the name of Esther Martin. That marriage did not last, but lasted long enough to produce a son, Samuel Bean. (Samuel Bean predeceased his father—but before he died produced a son, who in turn had children of his own; Bean and John Francis are the only two assailants who are known to have living descendants.)*
By 1851 John William Bean had given up his father's profession, and taken up the one he had earlier found more fitting for his health and talents: he again became a newsvendor. When Hamilton, Pate, and O'Connor made their attempts, therefore, Bean probably sold newspapers reporting on them. Bean was the only one of the seven who had the opportunity to celebrate with other Londoners the Queen's escape from every one of his successors. Considering his deeply depressed nature, which apparently only worsened with age, it is unlikely that he did so. He did, however, manage to marry again, in 1863. His depression, likely mixed with thoughts of suicide, led to confinement in an asylum sometime around 1876. The entry in the 1881 Census shows that life had not improved; he is listed there as a "newsagent out of work." When in February 1882 Maclean made his attempt, Bean was likely in a depressive torpor. Five months later, he gave up altogether. A snippet in _Lloyd's Weekly_ reveals his state of mind at the end:
OPIUM POISONING AT CAMBERWELL.—On Friday Mr. Carter concluded an inquiry at St. Thomas's hospital, relative to the death of John William Bean, aged 58, a retired newsvendor, lately residing at 3, The Crescent, Southampton-street, Camberwell, who expired from the effects of poison, alleged to have been self-administered, on Wednesday, the 19th July. The deceased was discovered in bed, with a bottle labelled "Poison" near him, on the day mentioned, and died the same evening. A letter was found, in which the deceased, who five years ago was confined in a lunatic asylum, stated that he was an incumbrance _[sic]_ to his wife, and was only too glad to die. To admit of an analysis of the stomach, and an examination of the contents of the bottle, the inquiry was adjourned till Friday. It was now shown by the evidence of Mr. Sutton that the stomach contained a large quantity of opium, and it was to this poison that the death of the deceased was attributable. The jury returned a verdict of "Temporary insanity."
The jury was being merciful, of course; a verdict of insanity rather than suicide allowed Bean a Christian burial.
Of the seven assailants, William Hamilton was the one who most shunned notoriety, wanting only the security of life in prison and the preservation of his anonymity. For better or worse, he got exactly what he wanted. He was sentenced to seven years' transportation just as the concept of that penalty was altering, so that Australia became not the first stage on the road to rehabilitation, as it was for Francis, but the last—freedom in Australia becoming the reward for years of penal servitude and slow rehabilitation elsewhere. Into this new system Hamilton was thrown, and thus experienced the full range of mid-Victorian penal life. He was taken from Newgate to Millbank and then quickly on to Pentonville, the usual first stage for most prisoners sentenced to transportation in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Pentonville was the "model" prison for the many others that practiced the "separate" system—an imprisonment in which prisoners were doomed to unceasing solitude. Each was confined to his own cell and prohibited from speaking with fellow prisoners, or even looking at them: when together, prisoners were compelled to wear caps with masking visors to hide their individuality from one another. This harrowing system—another Victorian purgatory—was intended to cleanse prisoners morally by forcing them to reflect upon their past moral failings; critics, backed by statistics, claimed it was more likely to lead to madness than moral improvement. After six months at Pentonville—a stay shorter than the usual, gestational, nine months—Hamilton moved to the next rehabilitative step, shipping to the public works at the small penal colony at Gibraltar, where prisoners toiled at constructing and strengthening the harborworks and fortifications. In a colony in which unskilled labor was the norm, Hamilton's masonry skills set him apart. He spent four and a half years at Gibraltar, and finally embarked in May 1854 on the _Ramillies_ for Australia. By that year, transportation had been restricted to the point that only one colony—Western Australia—still accepted transported convicts. Accordingly, Hamilton, having served the bulk of his sentence, landed at Fremantle and was placed in prison there. After less than a month, in August 1854, he was granted his ticket of leave. His conditional pardon followed a year and a half later. Hamilton walked out of Fremantle prison and into complete obscurity—a position surely very much to his liking. He might have come to the attention of the authorities one more time, nearly twenty years later, when an ex-convict by his name was up before a magistrate in Perth for neglecting to report his arrival to that city, as conditional pardon-holders were required to do. That might have been William Hamilton, but it might not have been—there were other ex-convict William Hamiltons in Western Australia at the time. Where and when he died remains a mystery.
Robert Pate's effrontery in actually touching Victoria, as well perhaps as his military past and his father's wealth, called for a swifter removal from England than Hamilton experienced. Pate bypassed the revised system altogether, shipping less than a month after his conviction on the _William Jardine_ to Van Diemen's Land, to serve his entire sentence there. Life aboard ship seems to have had a remarkably positive psychological effect upon the man, a reporter at Hobart noting at his arrival there "we understand that he has shown no symptoms of insanity upon the passage." He was quickly shipped down-island to the remote Cascades Punishment Station, scheduled to work a full year at hard labor on a chain gang. He set to the task with the determination of an ex-officer of the 10th Royal Hussars. His hard work earned him an eighty-day remission of his sentence, so that in just over nine months, in June 1881, he returned to Hobart and was employed at the milder task of clerking for John Abbott, the registrar of births, marriages, and deaths for Van Diemen's Land. Pate acquitted himself well enough to earn Abbott's recommendation for a Conditional Pardon. He obtained his ticket of leave in September 1853, leaving him free to seek private employment. But apparently he sought none: his father's money now allowed him to live as a gentleman, and that is exactly how he designated himself when he applied for a conditional pardon. That pardon was granted at the end of 1855, and a year and a half later his sentence expired, leaving him free to return home. He was, however, in no hurry to do so. As if in celebration of his complete freedom, he got married just as his sentence ended. Announcements of the wedding said nothing of his being a convict and much about being an ex-officer of the 10th Royal Hussars. He and his wife Mary Elizabeth resided among the elite of Hobart, in an eleven-room mansion complete with stables, coach house, and a brewery. Clearly Robert Pate Sr. had been generous—or, more likely, his legacy had been, as the old man had died in 1856, leaving the bulk of his £70,000 fortune to his only son. Pate was a jealous guardian of his property, as was demonstrated in 1858 when he and his wife hauled an eleven-year-old girl into police court for stealing a sixpenny flowerpot from the front of their house.*
In April 1865, the Pates, having sold their mansion, embarked on the _Robert Morrison_ for London. Pate traveled to Wisbech to take care of his father's estate and his servants, to whom he was said to be "remarkably kind," setting up each a pension. He then took up life as a country gentleman not in Cambridgeshire but in Croydon, Surrey, in a home ironically not very distant from the building which had been so much in the news at the time of Pate's assault—Paxton's Crystal Palace, dismantled in Hyde Park after the exhibition, remodeled, and rebuilt in Sydenham. Robert Pate lived, apparently happily and free from his previous obsessions, with Mrs. Pate until he died in 1895, leaving his wife over £22,000—a generous amount, but one that suggests that his gentleman's lifestyle chipped away at the bulk of his father's estate.
Four years after Pate's death, and two years before Victoria's, an object reputed to be the cane with which Robert Pate had struck the Queen went up for auction in London. Word of the proposed sale soon reached Osborne, where the queen was staying, and an official communication soon went out from there to the owner of the cane, who immediately withdrew the cane from sale. It was never seen again.
Although Victoria seemed safely protected from Arthur O'Connor after he was arrested in 1875 and committed to Hanwell Asylum, his stay there turned out to be a brief one, and for a time he continued to be a problem to the police and to the government. He was discharged eighteen months after he was committed to Hanwell as fully cured. Because he was not confined at the Queen's pleasure, the government could do nothing to keep him there or keep him from returning to his family in London, which is exactly what he did. For two years he worked as a copying clerk. His father having died, he claimed that his income was the principal support of his entire family. But he lost that job and as his mother slipped deeper into alcoholism, his family sank deeper into penury. By the end of 1880, O'Connor had grown sick of that life; he approached the police to make an offer to the government much like the one he had brokered eight years before: he would be willing to travel to Australia if the government paid his expenses and found him employment. The government agreed. In January, he shipped to Sydney on the _Helenslea_ , disembarking on 20 April, again adopting his Australian alias of George Morton. Henry Parkes, Premier of New South Wales, had taken a personal interest in his case and had procured him a clerkship with a prominent Sydney solicitor. But O'Connor never took the position. Soon after his arrival, the Inspector General of Police reported to Augustus Loftus, the Governor, that O'Connor had been arrested for being drunk, that he had lashed out violently while at the police court—that he was insane and belonged in an asylum. "On his first visit he was a thoughtless youth," Parkes told Loftus; "he has now become an unmitigated ruffian." After assaulting a policeman, O'Connor was restrained, examined, and sent to the lunatic asylum at Callan Park.
He spent the rest of his life in a variety of Sydney asylums, his mind cycling between lucidity and confusion. At times he was considered well enough for short furloughs from his hospitals. At other times he was compelled to escape, only to be returned by the police after a day or two, or to return himself. His psychological state deteriorated; certainly, no doctor ever saw fit to recommend his release. The assigned cause of O'Connor's illness—a diagnosis which never changed as he was transferred from one asylum to another over the years—must surely have galled him, the most ambitious and imaginative of Victoria's would-be assassins. The doctors never considered his illness hereditary—something that may have linked him with his heroic great-uncle Feargus. They never saw poetic, or political, or religious overimagination at the heart of his illness: any of these he would have understood and perhaps would have been proud of. Rather, the doctors all believed his illness was caused by what the Inspector General of the Sydney Police first termed in 1881 "habits of self-indulgence." The Inspector General of the New South Wales Lunacy Department quickly concurred, concluding that Morton was "suffering from considerable mental irritation which is fostered by his debased habits." The Callan Park casebook is blunter: the disorder was melancholia, the cause "masturbation." As late as 1912, when O'Connor was fifty-eight years old and his hair was graying, the cause of his madness was listed as "Onanism."
O'Connor's asylum casebooks record instances of voices in his head, delusions of persecution, and wild hallucinations. Once he refused to drink anything for fear of drowning the Virgin Mary inside him. In 1882, soon after Roderick Maclean's attempt, he hallucinated that he saw his own brother point a pistol at the Queen.* At times he was a quiet and cooperative patient; at others hyper-inflated with self-importance; at others sullen and paranoid. In later years he took to writing persons of importance in New South Wales, pleading for a discharge. No one, of course, listened. O'Connor over the years was shifted from hospital to hospital, from Callan Park, to Parramatta, to Rydalmere, to Morriset, and then back to Rydalmere.
Roderick Maclean lived a similar long life, half a world away. He entered Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane fifteen years after Edward Oxford had left it, and the doctors knew from the start that he was a different patient altogether than Oxford had been. Not one of them considered Maclean sane or requested that the Home Office consider releasing him. Maclean, who had while free been hell-bent on finding a place in an asylum, was quickly discontented with his confinement at Broadmoor, and within twenty months of his committal he sent out the first of many petitions for his release. Lest Victoria think he was asking too soon, he assured her "you, I am sure are aware in questions of presumed insanity, duration of time of incarceration should not be considered." The petitions flowed from his pen for years, and he adopted several strategies to persuade Victoria to let him go. He tried aggressive innocence: "I am _innocent_ of any guilty _intentions toward_ the Queen"—his innocence requiring freedom and recompense, the government supporting him as his family once did: "I should require at least one hundred per annum and I should not accept a farthing less whether from relations or strangers. Any arrangements which did not include such an allowance or more would be entirely useless and would be sternly rejected." He tried abject contrition: "No language could express my sorrow for the past." He attempted the strategy that had worked for Oxford and O'Connor, promising to exile himself to a distant place—to Australia, where a brother lived, or, in one petition, to remote Scotland: "If Her Most Gracious Majesty will allow me to go and reside in the isle of my ancestors Mull on the west coast of Scotland as I intend to live a Christians life in sobriety and in quiet retirement from the Madding crowd and the hurly burly of the World hope to find a balm to my troubles and the troubles of those interested in my affairs." None of this had the slightest effect upon the Queen's pleasure. As the years passed, the petitions slowed. In 1894 Maclean made another attempt to reengage with the world, communicating with the editor of _The Sun_ about publishing his poetry, or his memoirs. As the years passed, the voices in his head and the paranoia never left him. Victoria died and the Queen's pleasure became her son's; Edward VII died in 1910 and his pleasure became that of his son, George V.
Roderick Maclean and, half a world away, Arthur O'Connor lived on discontentedly while the world outside changed beyond recognition. Outside, the First World War came and went, taking with it the major monarchies of Europe—all except for the one that Victoria had done so much to preserve. The Victorian age passed; O'Connor and Maclean lived on into the age of the airplane, of radio—the age of Einstein, Eisenstein, and Gertrude Stein, of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, jazz and _surréalisme_. Mussolini's fascism was ascendant in Italy; Hitler's fascism was slowly ascending in Germany. To both Maclean and O'Connor, the world outside would likely have seemed as mad as the world within. Roderick Maclean died on 9 May 1921, apoplexy stated as the cause. The news was reported as a sort of barely remembered bad dream. Arthur O'Connor—or George Morton, as no one called him Arthur O'Connor for the last forty-two years of his life—outlived Maclean by 4½ years, dying 6 December 1925 at the age of seventy, the cause of death listed as a painful abdominal ailment, tubercular peritonitis. O'Connor was buried in Rook-wood Anglican Cemetery in Sydney, under his false name. There would be no monument to the last of the great O'Connors.
* Moroney later married Miss Kennedy, and within a year he was implicated in what was called "the Crime of the Century" in the United States: the assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin, a Clan-na-Gael rival of his friend Alexander Sullivan.
* The attempt became the occasion for a mythic and mythical moment in the history of swearing. A multitude of sites on the Internet today state as fact that the Prince of Wales, when shot at, cried out "Fuck it, I've taken a bullet!" No contemporary account of the shooting, however, mentions this utterance. And the fact that the Prince of Wales did _not_ take a bullet strongly suggests that this colorful response is apocryphal.
* Victoria lived longer than her grandfather George III by all of five days. Elizabeth II has since exceeded her great-great grandmother's longevity.
* Perhaps his choice of name was simple symbolism; perhaps it was sentimental: the marriage register of a church in Lambeth shows that on 21 May 1833, one Hannah Oxford married a man named Edward Freeman. Oxford might have been commemorating a long-lost and short-lived stepfather by taking his surname.
* Although there is no record of a divorce (which would have been extremely difficult to obtain at the time), the marriage most certainly ended in separation and not with a death: Esther Bean lived on, dying in 1898 in Greenwich Workhouse. When Bean remarried in 1863, then, he likely became a bigamist.
* To be fair to the Pates, Robert did ask the magistrates to be lenient to the girl, and stated he had only brought her in because they had recently experienced a spate of unsolved thefts.
* One of O'Connor's brothers was named Roderick.
_The Marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, 10 February 1840_ , by George Hayter. Three months after the wedding, as Victoria posed for this painting, Edward Oxford bought the pistols with which he shot at the royal couple. Courtesy of The Royal Collection © 2012, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
A portrait of Edward Oxford from _Bell's New Weekly Messenger_ , 12 July 1840. As crude as it is, the illustration well captures Oxford's pretensions to a higher status and his desperate resolve to "make a noise" in the world by whatever means.
Buckingham Palace as it appeared in 1842. The now-familiar east façade had not yet been built, and the Marble Arch, not yet moved to the corner of Hyde Park, still served as the main gate. All but one of the attempts on the Queen took place near Buckingham Palace. From the _Illustrated London News_.
Oxford's attempt, 10 June 1840, on Constitution Hill: Oxford was a "little mean looking man," according to Prince Albert.
The execution of François Benjamin Courvoisier for the murder of Lord William Russell, 6 July 1840. While Courvoisier was hanged outside Newgate Prison, Edward Oxford occupied a cell within, awaiting his trial for treason. The print conveys some idea of the many thousands who came to watch Courvoisier die. Two years later, John Francis would stand in an even larger crowd to witness the execution of Daniel Good. From _Tom Spring's Life in London_.
_Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at the Bal Costumé of 12 May 1842_ , by Edwin Landseer. The royal couple held the ball during that impoverished year in order to ameliorate poverty, but many found their conspicuous display of wealth disturbing. Less than three weeks after the Ball, John Francis made his two attempts. Courtesy of The Royal Collection ©2012, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
John Francis's second attempt and capture, 30 May 1842, from _Illustrated London News_. Grabbing him is P.C. Trounce (wearing the Metropolitan Police uniform of the day). Trounce's decision to salute the Queen allowed Francis the opportunity to get off a shot—although whether he fired a bullet or just wadding became a central question at his trial.
The police roundup of hunchbacked dwarves in the wake of John William Bean's attempt of 3 July 1842, as depicted in _Punch_ magazine, in which Punch himself is among those captured.
Victoria's first Prime Minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, with whom she shared a close bond at the time of Edward Oxford's attempt. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
Robert Peel, Victoria's second Prime Minister. The Queen's initial repulsion to Peel had under Albert's influence changed to respect and affection by 1842, the year of Francis's and Bean's attempts. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
William Ewart Gladstone, the prime minister Victoria most despised, and the one who did the most to strengthen her monarchy. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Lord John Russell, prime minister at the time of Hamilton's and Pate's attempts in 1849 and 1850. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, who as Foreign Secretary drove Victoria and Albert to a state of distraction. Palmerston's stunning speech in the 1850 Don Pacifico debate, given two days before Robert Pate struck the Queen, saved his career and confirmed him as the most popular politician of the day. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
_The Opening of the Great Exhibition by Queen Victoria on 1 May 1851_ , by Henry Courtney Selous. Victoria proclaimed this day the greatest of her life. She stands with Albert and her two eldest children, diplomats and dignitaries arrayed before them. Foremost in the group on the right is He-Sing, owner of a Chinese junk, and Victoria's benign assailant on this day. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
William Hamilton's attempt, 19 May 1849. Hamilton, in his bricklayer's outfit, stood on Constitution Hill close to where Oxford and Francis had stood before him, but on the other side of the Green Park palings. He immediately faced the wrath of crowds on both sides of that fence. From the _Illustrated London News_.
Robert Pate's attempt, 27 June 1850, outside the narrow gates of Cambridge House on Piccadilly, where Victoria had gone to visit her dying uncle, the Duke of Cambridge. From the _Illustrated London News_.
Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Second Baronet: his 1871 speaking tour marked the high-water mark of Victorian British Republicanism. Weeks later, the illness and recovery of the Prince of Wales and the failure of Arthur O'Connor's attempt crushed the movement.
Benjamin Disraeli depicted in _Punch_ in 1876 as a sorcerer offering Victoria the grand gift of the imperial crown. Disraeli's carefully cultured dedication to serving the Queen made him the ideal prime minister in her eyes, and made his rival Gladstone that much more unpalatable to her.
Victoria and her recovering son Bertie during the thanksgiving procession of 27 February 18, 1872, as depicted in the _Illustrated London News_. John Brown sits on the back of the carriage, in full Highland dress. Arthur O'Connor tried and failed to make his attempt on this day; he would have better luck in confronting the Queen two days later.
_Punch_ depicts the death of British republicanism: Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke presented as Arthur O'Connor failing in his attempt, with William Gladstone as a policeman, arresting the progress of Dilke's republican motion.
Portrait of Roderick Maclean, from the _Graphic_ , capturing the man's dazed look if not his dirty and disheveled state on the day of his attack on the Queen.
Roderick Maclean's attempt, 2 March 1882, from the _Graphic_. Chief Superintendent Hayes and James Burnside converge upon him from the left and behind; the Eton boys approach from the right, about to belabor Maclean with their umbrellas. Princess Beatrice is visible in the carriage: Victoria sits invisible to her right. On the back of the carriage is an ailing John Brown.
Victoria, five years after the last attempt on her life, at the time of her Golden Jubilee of 1887: the face of empire. The Jubilee dynamite plot of that year—effectively nipped in the bud by the Metropolitan Police—did little to disturb her equanimity.
CITATIONS
PART 1: YOUNG ENGLAND
_Chapter 1: Wedding Portrait_
3:... the "ganglion" of Southwark's twisted streets: Dickens, _Bleak House_ 438.
4:... gave his neighborhood an unusual air of gentility: Bowers 466.
4:... carefully structured world: Andrews _et al_. 449.
5: The documents showed Young England to be a highly disciplined, insurrectionary organization: Townsend 119.
5: Captain Oxford had chosen the rather transparent alias of "Oxonian": TNA PRO MEPO 3/17.
5:... this manifesto, though signed by a fictitious secretary Smith, was in Oxford's own handwriting: "Edward Oxford."
6: The sword would come: TNA PRO MEPO 3/17.
7: Although dueling was technically illegal, the practice was carried on: Holland 223; Bresler 151; Rawlings 169.
7:... overpriced, according to one gunmaker, who later valued them at less than 30 shillings: _Times_ 18 June 1840, 6.
7:... "coarsely and roughly finished," designed more for show than effect: _Times_ 13 June 1840, 6; _Morning Chronicle_ 11 June 1840, 2.
7:... but they bore no maker's mark—an obvious sign of their shoddiness: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 6.
7: "Brummagem firearms": Dickens, _Letters_ 2:82.
7:... he bargained down the price of the pistols from 2 guineas (or £2 and 2 shillings) to £2: _Morning Chronicle_ 16 June 1840, 3; _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6.
8:... a baker who worked at a local soda-water factory, but was on the verge of a major career change: _Morning Chronicle_ 11 June 1840, 2; 15 June 1840, 3.
8:... he would very soon fall into arrears: _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1840, 3.
8:... the arm injury he suffered as a boy, nearly blowing himself up while playing with fire and gunpowder: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
8: "He said he would allow me half his pay": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 7; Townsend 129.
9: "He said nothing was stirring": _Times_ 10 July 1840, 7.
9: "How could you think of laying your money out in such folly!": Townsend 129.
9: He raised one of the pistols and pointed it, cocked, at his mother's face: Townsend 129.
11: "I write to you from here the happiest, happiest Being that ever existed": Hibbert, ed. 64–5.
11: Albert was away, at the Royal Dockyard at Woolwich: _Times_ 5 May 1840, 5.
12: "... my very intelligent factotum": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 49.
12:... the Duke of York resolved to remain unmarried: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 57.
13: A later companion forced upon her was the Duchess's Lady-inWaiting, Lady Flora Hastings: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 97, 111.
13:... she slept in a small bed in her mother's room, and could not walk down a flight of stairs without taking the hand of another: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 57; Longford 38.
14: "Victoria has not written that letter": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 132–3.
14:... and in one case a royal salute by cannon, a practice King William quickly put a stop to: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 90–1.
14: "We just passed through a town where all coal mines are": Hibbert, ed. 11.
15: "... it is of the greatest consequence that you should be seen": Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 39.
16: William turned venomously upon the Duchess, chastising her publicly for isolating the Princess from him: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 126.
16:... she did all, as she pointedly notes in her journal, " _alone"_ : Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 139; Charlot 81.
16:... she had removed her bed from her mother's room and had dismissed Conroy from her household: Longford 63–4.
17:... she looked over to him for cues about her behavior: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 139
18: She drank in his adherence to _laissez-faire_ economics: Longford 69.
18: Her popularity during this time was unparalleled: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 154.
18: "It was a fine day": Hibbert, ed. 34.
19: "... the horrid cause of all this is the Monster & Demon Incarnate": Longford 97.
20: Sir Charles Clark "had said that though she is a virgin still that it might be possible": Hibbert, ed. 42.
20: At the end of March, one of Lady Flora's letters... appeared in the _Examiner_ : Longford 103.
21: "Mrs. Melbourne": Longford 121.
21:... she sent her empty carriage to Lady Flora's funeral: some threw rocks at it: Longford 122.
21: Victoria was thrown into a "state of agony, grief and despair": Hibbert, ed. 45.
21: Sir Robert Peel was "stiff" and "close," according to Melbourne: Longford 110.
21: Melbourne... did her a great disservice: Longford 109.
22: "Sir Robert said, 'Now, about the Ladies,'": Hibbert, ed. 47.
23: Victoria... was cool to the idea of marriage: Longford 125.
23: "It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert—who is _beautiful"_ : Hibbert, ed. 55.
23:... her new object in life was, as she put it, to "strive to make him feel as little as possible the great sacrifice he has made": Hibbert, ed. 57.
23: Over the next three days, she sent encouraging messages to him: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 183.
24: Albert quickly took upon himself what had been Lehzen's task of warming the Queen's tiny hands with his own: Longford 134.
24: "I signed some papers and warrants etc.": Hibbert, ed. 58.
25: "Here comes the bridegroom of Victoria's choice": James 89.
25: "... vile, confounded, infernal Tories": Hibbert, ed. 62.
25: Albert was far more complacent with the vote: Von Stockmar 2:31.
26:... her uncles Cambridge and Sussex at first agreed with her: Longford 136.
26: "... this wicked old foolish Duke, these confounded Tories, oh!": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 199.
26: "You forget, my dearest Love, that I am the Sovereign, and that usiness can stop and wait for nothing": Hibbert, ed. 62.
27: "As to your wish about your gentlemen, my dear Albert": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 1:254.
27: "I never saw such crowds of people": Hibbert, ed. 63.
28: "He does look so beautiful in his shirt only": Hibbert, ed. 64.
28: "the husband, not the master of the house": James 104.
_Chapter 2: Bravos_
30: The elder Edward Oxford's behavior: _Times_ 17 June 1840, 6; 11 July 1840, 5–6.
31: "the best workman in Birmingham": Townsend 127.
31:... the son or grandson of a black father: _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6; _Morning Chronicle 12 June 1840, 7; Caledonian Mercury_ 18 June 1840, 4.
31: "jumping about like a baboon, and imitating their grimaces": Townsend 127.
32: The superstition is perhaps best remembered today in the celebrated case of Joseph Merrick: Wilson 14.
32: Hannah herself believed her husband's abuse the cause of her son Edward's eccentricity: _Times_ 17 June 1840, 6.
32: "my customers complained of his conduct": _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1840, 3; _Times_ 10 July 1840, 7.
33: "He was once taken to the station house for this": _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 7.
33: Sandon recalled that he constantly beat other children: _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
33: Edward was "brought up to the bar": _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
34:... he could only laugh and "jeer" at the injuries the man had received: _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
34:... his aunt remembered one time, when she was ill, leaving Edward to run a busy bar: _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
35: "When not engaged in his business and while sitting down in front of the bar he has been observed by Mr. Minton and the barmaid...": _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1840, 3.
35: Mary Ann Forman, a barwoman at the Shepherd and Flock, recalled his "strange ways": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
35: Oxford thus had a suit of clothing that suggested a respectability above his station: "Edward Oxford."
36: "I gave him warning because he was always laughing": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
36:... he is known to have threatened her with a pistol again: _Times_ 10 July 1840.
36: Susanna Phelps became the primary witness to his behavior and the primary object of his torment: _Times_ 16 June 1840, 5.
37:... a book that suggests Oxford's love of pedestrian sentiment and high melodrama: Zschokke.
37: The protagonist... rises to become one of one of the "two greatest men in Venice": Zschokke 217.
38:... he copied, according to his sister, passages from the Bible: _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
38:... none is postmarked: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3.
38: "Young England—Sir": for the letters, see "Edward Oxford."
40: Victoria's Uncle Ernest, without question the most wicked, the most feared, and the most reviled of George III's sons: Fulford 230.
41: Mrs. Packman, being extremely hard of hearing, was not disturbed by the shooting: _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1840, 3.
42: He bought a brace of pistols in May 1800... : Poole 122.
42: "that serenity and firmness of character which belong to a virtuous mind": _Times_ 16 May 1800, 2.
42:... "it was not over yet—there was a great deal more and worse to be done": Poole 121.
43: "... the safety of the community, and of all mankind, requires that this unfortunate man should be taken care of": _Times_ 27 June 1800, 3.
44: There he grew old, "grumbling and discontented": "Constant Observer" 161.
44:... he asked her to recognize his sanity and his service to the nation and make him a Chelsea Pensioner: Poole 128.
44:... having "no desire to again mix with the world": _Weekly Chronicle_ 16 December 1838, 8.
45: Upon rising that morning, Lord Russell's housemaid had discovered signs of disorder throughout the house: For the discovery of Russell's body and the initial investigation of the crime, see the _Times 7_ May 1840, 5.
45:... oddly finding the man almost fully dressed: _Times 7_ May 1840, 5; 15 May 1840, 5.
45:... blood was pooled deeply around his head, and had dripped through in a puddle under the bed: _Times_ 8 May 1840, 5; 12 May 1840, 6.
45:... a neighbor did claim to hear groans emanating from Lord Williams's room, during the night: _Times_ 8 May 1840, 5.
45:... the door had been forced from the inside.... Moreover, any intruders exiting from this door would have to scale a high wall: _Times_ 8 May 1840, 5.
46:... he displayed a great deal of anxiety during the search, and continually "kept running and drinking water": _Times 7_ May 1840, 6.
46:... larger items of far greater value in Russell's room were, surprisingly, left alone: _Times_ 8 May 1840, 5.
47:... he was at the end of May committed to Newgate: _Times_ 30 May 1840, 6.
47:... the _Times_ reported that the carriages of the fashionable clogged the area for days: _Times_ 9 May 1840, 5; 11 May 1840, 5; 12 May 1840, 6; 16 May 1840, 7.
47: "the excitement produced in high life by the dreadful event is almost unprecedented": _Times_ 9 May 1840, 5.
48: Gould... as it happens was (unlike Oxford) actually a potboy: _Times_ 19 March 1840, 6.
48: Gould had boasted to others that he was about to free himself from poverty by robbing an old man who was known to wave a £50 note about: _Times_ 23 March 1840, 6.
48: Mary Ann was Richard Gould's lover: _Times_ 21 March 1840, 7; Pelham 558.
48:... brought to trial on 14 April: _Times_ 15 April 1840, 6.
49: Otway confronted Gould not with the warrant, but with an offer: _Times_ 11 May 1840, 5.
49:... he was later censured for his action by the courts and by the police: Fido and Skinner 106.
49:... the landlady... commented to Mrs. Oxford on her son's want of economy: _Times 12_ June 1840, 7.
49: The locks of the pistols... rubbed so relentlessly against the Gambroon fabric of his trousers as to create a noticeably worn patch within a few weeks: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
50: William Green's "pistol-repository and shooting gallery": Altick, _Shows_ 231–2.
50: He might have spent some of his time at these places flourishing the scimitar-shaped sword he had obtained during these weeks: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3.
50: His habit, it seems, was to spend a shilling each visit, for a few shots with pistol and with rifle: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3.
50:... he bet that he could hit within six inches of his target—and he lost: _Morning Chronicle 12_ June 1840, 6.
50: "He was more fit to shoot at a haystack than at the target": _Times_ 10 July 1840.
50:... "he associated... alternatively with the higher and lower classes of society." _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1840, 3.
50: John Lenton: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6.
51: J. J. Gray: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6.
51:... the proprietor molded him two dozen bullets, and sold him a quarter-pound of gunpowder: TNA PRO MEPO 3/17.
_Chapter 3: If It Please Providence, I Shall Escape_
52:... some tea from Mr. Twining's shop: "Edward Oxford."
53: Lovett, the proprietor, saw Oxford sitting there: _Morning Chronicle_ 16 June 1840, 3.
53: Albert had left the Palace in the morning, visiting, as he had a month before, Woolwich Dockyard: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 5.
53: He had chaired, and given his brief speech to, the Anti-Slavery Society nine days before: _Times_ 2 June 1840, 6; Weintraub, _Victoria_ 105.
54: Albert made a great success of his trip to Woolwich, as well: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 5
54: He knew who was in the carriage: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6.
54:... his hands inside his jacket: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4; 18 June 1840, 6.
55:... watched Oxford stare at the carriage and "give a nod with his head sneeringly": _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6.
55:... only months away from being the youngest student ever accepted to the Royal Academy Schools: Warner.
55: The boys doffed their caps to the royal couple, and were delighted to see the Queen bow to them in response: Millais 11.
55: Albert saw a "little mean looking man": James 111–112.
55: She later told Lehzen that she thought someone was shooting birds in the park: Boykin, ed. 259.
55: Oxford's "attitude was so affected and theatrical it quite amused me": James 112. Another witness noted the theatricality of Oxford's stance: _Morning Chronicle_ 11 June 1840, 2.
56: "... when I fired the first pistol, Albert was about to jump from the carriage": _Times 12_ June 1840, 6.
56: "I have another here": _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
56:... thinking to herself "If it please Providence, I shall escape." Boykin, ed. 259.
56: "Kill him!": Longford, 151.
56: The Queen spoke to Albert, who called out to the postilions to drive on, and they did: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
56: "... to show the public that we had not, on account of what happened, lost all confidence in them": James 112.
57: "... the apprehensions of the bystanders were in some degree relieved by seeing the Royal carriage containing the Queen and Prince Albert return along the drive towards the palace at about 7 o'clock": _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
58: Victoria burst into tears: _Times_ 12 June 1840, 6.
58: Albert held her and kissed her repeatedly, "praising her courage and self-possession": Bennett 59.
59:... calling him a "confounded rascal": _Times_ 18 June 1840, 6.
59: "in an instant several persons seized me by the skirts of the coat, some took hold of my trousers, others twisted their hand into my handkerchief, and all within reach of me had me by the collar": Morning Chronicle 12 June 1840.
59: "I had no intention to run away": _Times 12_ June 1840.
59:... an "immense assemblage": _Times 11_ June 1840, 4.
59: "... hooting and execration": _Morning Chronicle 11_ June 1840, 2.
60: "Look out, Albert. I dare say he has some friends": _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6.
60:... at the station Oxford was asked, before a number of witnesses, whether the guns were loaded, and Oxford admitted that they were: _Times_ 10 July 1840.
60: When they reached the station house, P.C. William Smith, not quite sure whether Clayton was a hero or an accomplice, took him as well as Oxford into custody: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6.
60: Oxford was searched: in his pocket were his knife, the key to his box at home, and half a crown: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6.
60: The police also took note of the wear above his trouser pockets: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
60: "I have been brought up to the bar": _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
61: Oxford was apparently delighted to see him, and asked whether the Queen was hurt: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6.
61: Reforms of the year before—1839—under Home Secretary John Russell had led to the elimination of that group: Lock 39.
61: By 1840, however, the two commissioners of the Metropolitan Police had come to look upon A Division as the special division of the force: Browne 114.
62: 90 officers and Superintendent May traveling to Birmingham, for example, to battle militant Chartists in the Bull Ring Riots a year before: Ascoli 114–15.
62: They found the landlady, Mrs. Packman, there with her sister: _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1840, 3.
62: There, they found all Oxford's evidence of Young England: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4; _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1840, 3.
63: They tried one of the confiscated bullets in Oxford's pistols; it fit perfectly: _Morning Chronicle_ 11 June 1840, 2.
63: He had meant to destroy the papers, he claimed: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
63:... the information from the third letter that news had arrived from Hanover was released to a reporter, and was in the newspapers the next morning": _Morning Chronicle_ 11 June 1840, 2.
63: Oxford after this interview would greet Maule as a particularly close acquaintance: _Times_ 8 July 1840, 7.
63:... expressing republican sentiments to some; suggesting at one time that he thought it wrong that England was ruled by a woman: _Times_ 12 June 1840, 7; _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 6.
64: At Almack's Assembly Rooms, a venue traditionally limited to the elite of London society, a sense of melancholy prevailed: _Weekly Chronicle_ 14 June 1840, 2.
64: "Our theatres begin the thanksgiving," one reporter wrote, "to be completed in our churches": _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 5.
64: Oxford slept very soundly that night, and the next morning complimented the police on the comfort of their accommodations: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 6.
_Chapter 4: This Is All I Shall Say at Present_
65: William Millais... claimed that two bullet marks were clearly visible: Millais 11.
66:... a large detail of officers was dispatched to the wall with birch brooms and barrows, to sweep up all the dirt beneath the walls: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 7.
66:... someone, it seems, was attempting to assist the police by planting evidence against Oxford: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 6; _Times_ 13 June 1840, 6.
66:... from six paces away, according to Albert: James 112.
_66:_ "It seems the pistols were loaded": RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1840, 10 June 1840.
_67:_ "... there he is!": _Morning Chronicle 12_ June 1840, 6.
_67:_ Edward Marklew, as Hannah's brother, was naturally a publican, landlord of the Ship, in the City: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3.
_67:_ He had tried to obtain legal counsel for his nephew: _Times 12_ June 1840, 6; _Morning Chronicle 12_ June 1840, 7.
_67:_ Hannah received the news badly: _Morning Chronicle 12_ June 1840, 6; 13 June 1840, 3.
68:... he had wanted to make a noise: _Times_ 8 July 1840, 7.
68: "... he paced up and down the room with perfect self-possession": _Times 12_ June 1840, 6
68:... they decided upon the Cabinet: Greville 1:251.
68: "He was young... and under the middle size"; John Cam Hobhouse 5:272.
69: One witness, however, claimed that the ball "passed directly before my face": _Times_ 18 June 1840, 6.
69:... punctuated by his uncanny bursts of laughter: _Morning Chronicle 12_ June 1840, 6.
69: Allowed to make a final statement, Oxford reiterated these discrepancies: _Times_ 18 June 1840, 6.
69: Home Secretary Normanby drew up a warrant: _Times_ 13 June 1840, 6.
70:... Inspector Hughes did tell the Cabinet about Oxford's box of secrets: _Times_ 18 June 1840, 6.
70:... they had gotten it into their heads that the handwriting on all of Oxford's documents was not actually Oxford's: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3.
70: This time, Oxford was able to embrace his sister: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 6.
70:... laughing and flourishing his hat to some girls in the building's lobby: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3.
70: One of these held that the letters E R were stamped on Oxford's pistols or his pistol case: Holland 186.
71:... many (Baron Stockmar and Albert's personal secretary George Anson among them) could not believe that Hanover was directly involved: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 213.
71:... in a letter addressed to the people of Ireland, O'Connell railed against the "underlings of that Orange-Tory faction which naturally detests the virtues of our beloved Queen": _Morning Chronicle_ 23 June 1840.
71: One persistent rumor in support of this theory held that a respectable, older man had stood near Oxford as the Queen's carriage approached, and gave him the signal to fire: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 6.
72: The _Northern Star_ , the leading Chartist newspaper, attempted energetically to dispel the rumor that "the diabolical deed was a premeditated act of a band of Chartists": _Northern Star_ 13 June 1840,1.
72:... he was the "tool" of a "designing villain": _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 7.
72: "We should have been at this moment the vassals of a now foreign potentate": _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 5.
73: Theatres altered their programs to honor the Queen: _Weekly Chronicle_ 14 June 1840, 2.
73:... to have "oracular demonstration of the well-being of their Sovereign": _Weekly Chronicle_ 14 June 1840, 2.
74: Constitution Hill was of course thronged, as all there exchanged the latest news and rumors: _Times_ 11 June 1840, 4.
74:... as everyone (including the Dukes of Cambridge and Wellington) squeezed in between the police officers, still busy seeking, in vain, balls from Oxford's pistols: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 6; _Times_ 13 June 1840, 6.
74:... Victoria and Albert emerged into a deafening sea of humanity that "all but impeded the progress of the royal party": _Weekly Chronicle_ 14 June 1840, 2.
75: "The loyalty of the English was never more finely exhibited than it was during the afternoon of yesterday": _Times_ 12 June 1840, 6.
75: On the next day, Friday, the Queen and Albert were prevented from riding as both Houses of Parliament paraded from Westminster to the Palace to present a congratulatory address: _Times_ 13 June 1840, 6.
_76:_... partisanship the Queen had herself shown months before in wishing to exclude the Tories from her wedding: Longford 141.
_76_ The crowd outside the Palace, on the other hand, displayed a strong sense of party spirit, showing its hostility to the beleaguered Whig government: _Times_ 13 June 1840, 6.
_76:_ On Monday, however, Westminster once again burst into celebration, as Victoria and Albert departed Buckingham Palace by carriage for Windsor: _Morning Chronicle_ 16 June 1840, 3.
_Chapter 5: Going to See a Man Hanged_
78:... her family doctor... went so far as to claim she was "most eccentric, if not insane": Clarke 196.
79: Hannah spoke with the permanent undersecretary there, Samuel March Phillipps: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3; _Times_ 13 June 1840, 6.
79: Oxford was cheerful when he entered Newgate on Thursday evening: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 June 1840, 6.
79:... when Alderman Laurie asked him whether he had balls in his pistols, Oxford denied it outright: _Morning Chronicle_ 16 June 1840, 3.
79:... Oxford was left alone with guards who were strictly ordered to discuss nothing with him beyond his immediate needs: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3.
80:... reverting to fits of crying, and developing the odd habit of whistling to mask his distress: _Weekly Chronicle_ 14 June 1840, 2.
80:... he cared little that he had thrown his own life away, but that he was terrified that he had "sacrificed" his mother's life as well: _Times_ 13 June 1840, 6.
80: Because of this "extraordinary interference," he refused to have anything to do with Oxford's case: _Times_ 16 June 1840, 5; 17 June 1840, 6.
80:... Hannah had a "heart-rending" conversation with her son: Morning Chronicle 15 June 1840, 3.
80: "... there are others in it": _Morning Chronicle_ 16 June 1840, 3.
80: His sister Susannah, who had more closely than anyone else watched Oxford's movements over the past month, was certain that there was no Young England: _Times_ 16 June 1840, 5.
80: The police... busily collected writing samples from the residents of West Place: _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1840, 3.
81: "The unhappy parent of Oxford states that her husband died about twelve years since": _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3.
81: And at Newgate the next day, Hannah spoke with the aldermen who surrounded her son, telling them of her deceased husband's insanity and abuse: _Morning Chronicle_ 16 June 1840, 3.
82:... as Oxford still refused counsel, governor Cope prevented any meeting: _Times 17_ June 1840, 6.
82: Oxford proposed to Pelham that they defend his action as a foolish lark: _Morning Chronicle_ 19 June 1840, 3.
82: Pelham, on the other hand, quickly resolved that the defense would prove a case "if not of positive insanity, at least of monomania, which will entitle him to the merciful consideration of the Court and jury": _Times_ 17 June 1840, 6.
82: "... the boy is mad. I am not surprised": Clarke 196.
82:... J. Sydney Taylor, a highly reputable barrister and well-known journalist, adamant in his opposition to the death penalty: Clarke 196; Taylor; "John Sydney Taylor, Esq." 220–21.
83: Critics claimed that he was able to testify to madness in any situation: Freemon 364.
83: Conolly's reputation made him, to Clarke, the "most important" of the witnesses: Clarke 199.
83:... as many as 110 people, from Birmingham and elsewhere: _Times_ 8 July 1840, 7.
83: He sent Pelham a letter: _Times_ 18 June 1840, 5.
84:... the letter suggests "that P[rince] Albt is an ogre and the Q[uee]n an ogress": Disraeli 280.
84:... two days before, she and Albert had attended the races at Ascot to immense crowds (many who had come to see her more than the races) and "deafening cheers from every part of the course": _Times_ 17 June 1840, 6.
85:... "all the world is talking about Courvoisier, and very little of the quasi Regicide...." Disraeli 279–80.
85: For his first couple of days in Newgate, Oxford inhabited an ordinary cell among the general population: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1840, 3.
85: These cells were furnished with bench and table so that jailers could comfortably observe, and if necessary prevent the suicide of, condemned prisoners: "Newgate Prison."
85: Gould, with another inmate who had achieved some amount of public attention at the time... had, two weeks before, attempted to break out of the prison: _Times_ 30 May 1840, 6.
86: Phillips's aggressive cross-examination on the first day of trial of Courvoisier's fellow servant Sarah Manser indicated this intention: "Francois Benjamin Courvoisier."
86: The evening before, a witness, Charlotte Piolaine, came forward with new evidence: _Times_ 20 June 1840, _6–7_.
86: "Up to this morning I believed most firmly in his innocence, and so did many others as well as myself": Costigan 325.
87:... he questioned Inspector Tedman's finding of a pair of bloody gloves in a trunk the police had thoroughly examined days before, finding nothing: "Francois Benjamin Courvoisier."
87: He also attempted to discredit Mme. Piolaine's evidence by suggesting that her hotel was nothing but a sordid gaming-den: _Times_ 22 June 1840, 6.
87: There, he immediately attempted to kill himself by forcing a towel down his throat: Burke 473.
87: Oxford could hardly contain himself, and grinned "and with difficulty restrained his propensity to laughter": _Times_ 23 June 1840, 6.
88: John Bellingham: _Times_ 16 May 1812, 2–3; Pelham 527–549.
89: "did you see how I was noticed!": _Times_ 8 July 1840, 7.
89:... they proceeded with pomp and solemnity, in the company of over 150 London officials, to Buckingham Palace and to Ingestre House: _Times_ 23 June 1840, 3.
90:... the Duke of Brunswick might have been more interested in Richard Gould's case than Oxford's, having attended Gould's earlier examination for burglary: _Times_ 14 May 1840, 5.
90: Gould endeavored this time to do the same thing, without success: his attempts only earned the laughter of the court: _Times_ 23 June 1840, 6.
90:... "there to pass the remainder of his existence in hopeless slavery, poverty and misery of the worst description": _Times_ 23 June 1840, 6.
91: Now, though, he sat in chains on the convict ship _Eden: Times_ 30 June 1840, 6; "Convict Transportation Registers Database."
91: The first of these... set out in very specific detail events surrounding the murder: Burke 473–76.
91:... the overwhelming majority of death sentences—over 95% of them—were commuted to lesser sentences in his day: Gatrell 617.
91: In his third confession—a spiritual biography of sorts, written in French—he claimed that he had been influenced to the deed by bad reading: Burke 477–80.
92:... compelling Ainsworth to write to the newspapers contradicting "this false and injurious statement": _Times 7_ July 1840, 7; _Morning Chronicle 7_ July 1840.
92:... the resulting furor[,] was enough to kill the subgenre: Altick, _Victorian Studies in Scarlet 73–74_.
93: Courvoisier spent most of his last days in fervent prayer, often in the company of James Carver, Newgate's chaplain, and M. Baup, the Swiss minister of a nearby French church: Burke 473, 483.
93: The sheriffs, besieged by applications, gave out tickets and opened a gallery that had been closed for the past fifteen years: _Times_ 6 July 1840,10.
93:... his coffin placed in front of him: Gatrell 43.
93:... he looked up, and around the chapel, with a foolish grin on his face: _Times_ 6 July 1840, 10.
93: Courvoisier... plotted to take his own life by binding up an arm with a strip of cloth and cutting a vein with a sharpened fragment of wood: _Times 7_ July 1840, 6.
94:... these were a celebratory bunch, mostly rowdy youths: Gatrell 63.
94: Thackeray, recording his impressions of the event in his essay "Going to See a Man Hanged," noted the great social and moral diversity of the spectators: Thackeray 152–5.
94:... as many as 1.6 million would be sold: Gatrell 159.
94: The _Times_ conservatively estimated 20,000 were there; Thackeray reported 40,000: _Times 7_ July 1840, 6; Thackeray 156.
94: Places in the windows of the houses surrounding the scaffold were going for three guineas, and for two sovereigns one could obtain treacherous places on the house-roofs: Mayhew and Binney 609; _Times_ 6 July 1840, 6.
95: Calcraft had been Newgate's executioner since 1829, and was to continue in that position until 1874: Boase, "Calcraft."
95: He would also be given Courvoisier's hanging-rope and his effects, including his clothing: Boase, "Calcraft."
95:... Courvoisier would soon be a star attraction in Madame's Chamber of Horrors: _Biographical and Descriptive Sketches_ 38.
95: Calcraft drew from a black bag a rope with which he pinioned Courvoisier's arms before him: _Times 7_ July 1840, 7.
95: Afterwards, they would have a hearty breakfast with Governor Cope: Gatrell 65.
95: Among this group was the celebrated actor Charles Kean: _Times 7_ July 1840, 7; Adams 341.
95: "... a great murmur arose, more awful, _bizarre_ , and indescribable than any sound I had ever before heard": Thackeray 156.
96:... his only agitation, beyond an imploring look around at the immense crowd, was a clasping and unclasping of his bound hands: _Times 7_ July 1840, 6.
96: William Calcraft was renowned as a bungler: Boase, "Calcraft."
96: Long drops of several feet, designed to break the neck—drops which could go horribly wrong in their own way—were not a feature of Newgate hangings until the 1880s: Gatrell 54.
96: "He died without any violent struggle": _Times 7_ July 1840, 6.
96:... "nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness, and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes": Collins 226.
97: "I fully confess that I came away down Snow Hill that morning with a disgust for murder, but it was for _the murder I saw done"_ : Thackeray 158.
97: One cast from that mask remained at the Governor's office; another was exhibited at Madame Tussaud's: Gatrell 115.
97: In the afternoon, Courvoisier's body was buried in a passageway to the Old Bailey: Mayhew and Binney 609.
97:... Oxford was visited by an Italian artist from Manchester: _Freeman's Journal_ 20 August 1840, 4.
98: The LUNATIC EDWARD OXFORD: _Morning Chronicle_ 23 September 1840:2.
98:... Clarke and two of his hand-picked team of medical experts... took a carriage to Newgate with an order from the Home Secretary in hand, to examine Oxford and decide whether he was insane: Clarke 200.
98: "I cannot believe that the prisoner is responsible for his actions": Clarke 200.
98: At the prison, Governor Cope, still taking his position of gatekeeper very seriously, at first refused the doctors admittance: Clarke 201.
99: Showing no agitation whatsoever convinced at least Dr. Chowne that the boy was missing normal brain function: was, in a word, an imbecile: "Edward Oxford"; _Morning Chronicle_ 11 July 1840, 6.
100: "This youth," Conolly told Clarke, "cannot with such a configuration be entirely right": Clarke 202.
100: When told he had committed a great crime, in shooting at the Queen, he seemed not to understand, replying "that he might as well shoot her as any one else": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
100:... "he had been decapitated in fact a week before, for he had a cast taken of his head": "Edward Oxford."
100:... "I told him to get up and walk about the room, and the brisk manner in which he walked proved to me he was not acting a part, for I think if he had been he would not have walked so much at his ease": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
100:... there were no bullets in his pistols, he stubbornly maintained, even when the doctors suggested to him that there had been: "Edward Oxford."
101: "We held a consultation after the interview," Clarke states, "and we all felt convinced that we could justly uphold the plea of insanity": Clarke 203.
_Chapter 6: Guilty, He Being at the Time Insane_
102: The sheriffs, however, had just had good practice with handling the crowds: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 5.
102: He emerged after a few seconds, at first dejected: _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 3.
102:... the Duke of Brunswick was again a spectator, as were the Earls of Errol, Colchester, and Uxbridge, as well as a Baron and a Count, and a scattering of Lords and Honorables: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 5; _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 3.
103:... Fox Maule, Oxford's seeming friend, and his wife were among the first to arrive: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 5.
103:... "picking, rubbing, and smelling" them for the next two days: _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 3.
103: These herbs, particularly malodorous rue, had been placed before the dock at every Old Bailey session for ninety years: Lawrence 296.
103:... a founding member of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, and fought passionately for that cause in the columns of the _Morning Herald_ : "John Sydney Taylor Esq."
103:... he had for some time been battling against a mysterious and malignant disease: John Sydney Taylor xlvii.
103: Campbell, who would handle opening arguments, had a reputation for aggressive advocacy in his writing, his politics, and in the courtroom: Jones and Jones, "Campbell, John."
104: Thomas Wilde, who would handle the prosecution's closing, had admitted liabilities in his presentation of a case: Rigg, "Wilde, Thomas."
104: Denman was thought not to have one of the greatest legal minds of his day, but was renowned for his impartiality and courtesy—as the "personification of judicial dignity": Jones and Jones, "Denman, Thomas."
104:... the clerk read the charge of High Treason against Oxford: _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 3.
105: Oxford pleaded not guilty to the charge, in a "distinct and firm tone": _Times_ 10 July 1840, 5.
105: In his opening the Attorney General anticipated and countered the defense's two-pronged defense: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 5–7; _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 3–4.
105:... "total alienation of the mind, or total madness, excuses the guilt of felony or treason": _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 3.
106:... "it must be shown that at the very time, the particular time, when the offence charged was committed, he was not an accountable being": _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 3.
106: "... rather, he was a capable employee: _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 4.
107:... "the report of the pistol attracted my attention, and I had a distinct whizzing or buzzing before my eyes, between my face and the carriage": "Edward Oxford."
107: "... it was the second flash which appeared to come over the Queen's head, and it came close past me; the flash did—it seemed something that whizzed past my ear, as I stood": "Edward Oxford."
108: Charles Aston Key, the surgeon who had declined to examine Oxford with the defense's medical witnesses, was present and offering advice to the prosecution: Clarke 209.
109: In his opening Campbell read Oxford's Young England papers to the jury in full: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6; _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 3.
109: The prosecution, in other words, introduced the very evidence that Oxford's defense would claim to make the strongest case for his insanity: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 7; _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 4.
109:... in his opening, Taylor carefully instructed the jury to keep their decisions separate: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 6; _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 4.
109:... "the suggestion of the ball having passed over the wall was negatived by the witnesses; but the evidence which tended to show that it had struck against the walls was perfectly inconclusive": _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 4.
110:... an extension of the vainglory he exhibited in foolishly but harmlessly pointed a bullet-less pistol at the Queen: _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 4.
110: Taylor then turned to the evidence for Oxford's insanity: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 7; _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 4.
110:... the Young England papers, written in Oxford's hand, and the "creations of his own foolish fancy," "furnished the strongest evidence against the prisoner in proof of his insanity": _Times_ 10 July 1840, 7.
111: "the mind of Her Majesty would be relieved from the unpleasant impression that any one of her subjects could be found guilty of imagining and compassing her death": _Times_ 10 July 1840, 7.
111: Taylor and Bodkin called to the stand twenty-eight witnesses, twenty-six of whom provided evidence as to the derangement of three generations of Oxfords: _Times_ 10 July 1840, 7, 11 July 1840, 5–6; _Morning Chronicle_ 10 July 1840, 4, 11 July 1840, 6; "Edward Oxford."
111: Oxford's father "delighted in annoying and teasing me": "Edward Oxford."
112: Every oddity, it seemed, of Oxford's life was presented to the jury: _Times_ 11 July 1840, 5–6; _Morning Chronicle_ 11 July 1840, 6; "Edward Oxford."
113: Fly, postman, with this letter bound,/To a place they call the Pig in the Pound: _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
113:... Oxford broke, bursting into tears and weeping bitterly: _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
113: Passing judgment on the moral aberration of a defendant was, in the minds of most legal authorities of the time, the province of the jury, not of any witness: judging good or evil behavior was a legal and not a medical issue: Freemon 368, 373.
114: He was in 1840 a leading citizen of Birmingham: magistrate and coroner, as well as a highly respected physician: "Edward Oxford."
114: "Assuming the facts which have been given in evidence to be true": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 5.
115:... he had every right to "take the opinion of a medical man upon that evidence": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 5.
115: "Mr. BODKIN...—Supposing a person in the middle of the day, and without any suggested motive...": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 5.
116: Thomas Hodgkin, the Quaker social activist and specialist in morbid anatomy (and incidentally, the one who first studied the symptoms of the disease that bears his name): Kass.
116: "If all the appearances described were exhibited by the prisoner, and coexisted in him, I should conclude that he was insane": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
116: "Lord DENMAN.—Do you consider that a medical man has more means of judging with respect to such a subject than other persons?": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
116: "I am a physician to the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, and have at present 850 patients under my care": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
117: According to Chowne, lesion of the will is often a partial insanity, in the sense that sufferers can "perform the duties of life with accuracy": "Edward Oxford."
117: Oxford's madness manifested itself most apparently in his "involuntary laughter, which is seldom found in sane persons": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
118: "There was nothing of imbecility about them": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
118: The doctors, he claimed... "went to Newgate with minds prepared to see a madman": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 6.
118: "These questions," he told the jury, "are perfectly separate in themselves": _Morning Chronicle_ 11 July 1840, 7.
118: Dr. Conolly, he said, "a gentleman who it must be presumed was familiar with the treatment in cases of insanity, and must be an extremely good judge, has given his opinion, and the jury would give that weight they think due to it": _Morning Chronicle_ 11 July 1840, 7.
119:... "they are against me, all of them": "Oxford" 4.
119: "We find the prisoner, Edward Oxford, guilty of discharging the contents of the two pistols, but whether or not they were loaded with ball has not been satisfactorily proved to us, he being of unsound state of mind at the time": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 7; _Morning Chronicle_ 11 July 1840, 7; Townsend 149.
119: He therefore jumped up "with prompt dexterity": Townsend 149.
120: This Taylor "strenuously denied": Townsend 149.
120: The jury showed confusion about the first part of the verdict; but they were perfectly clear about the second: _Times_ 11 July 1840, 7.
120: "... and in a prosecution of this kind, where the prisoner's life was at stake, it was not fitting on the part of the Attorney-general to stand up and endeavour to visit the prisoner with perpetual imprisonment when the jury found him not guilty": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 7.
120: Dr. Clarke, commenting on the trial, considered that if Taylor had pressed the issue, he could have won a full acquittal for his client: Clarke 212.
120: Chief Justice Denman intervened. "The jury," he said, "were in a mistake": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 7.
121: Campbell thought the prospect "monstrous" that Oxford might be "let loose upon society to endanger the life of Her Majesty or her subjects": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 7.
121: "The construction you contend for would lead to this, that if a man were charged with an offence, and the jury thought that no offence had been committed at all, yet he must be handed over to the mercy of the Crown perhaps for his life": Carrington and Payne 9:550.
122: "Guilty, he being at the time insane": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 7; Morning _Chronicle_ 11 July 1840, 7; Townsend 150.
122: "Mr. Baron ALDERSON.—Then, you find the prisoner guilty but for his insanity": _Times_ 11 July 1840, 7.
_Chapter 7: Bedlam_
123: Oxford remained in custody at Newgate for a week, until an order arrived from the Home Office for his transfer to Bethlem: _Times_ 27 July 1840, 5.
123: Oxford "did not betray the slightest emotion" upon hearing that the time had come: _Times_ 27 July 1840, 5.
124: Albert would show them to the Queen: Longford 152.
124: The distinctive towering dome of the hospital, still visible today in the truncated building's present incarnation as the Imperial War Museum, was added four years after this: Andrews _et al_. 408.
125: A medical record from 1864 when Oxford was removed from Bethlem to Broadmoor notes that the medical staff "had always considered him sane": Moran, "Punitive" 188. 125:... for the first years of his confinement, he was prohibited from reading newspapers: "Young Oxford in Bethlehem Hospital," _Era_ 26 December 1841:3.
125: Sir Peter Laurie... informed his mother that he had a "repugnance to mingle" with them and refused to leave his room: _Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser_ 20 August 1840, 4.
125: One other inmate was notorious for his aloofness, one who had no friends, and "could not be prevailed upon for some years to walk about with or join the other patients": _Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser_ 20 August 1840, 4.
125: He had, according to a witness seventeen years before, long since stopped showing any symptoms of insanity: Moran, "Origin" 516n.
125:... "the loss of liberty," he claimed, "was worse than death": Moran, "Origin" 516n.
126: Oxford happened to be one of the very last male patients to make the trip, by train, from London to Crowthorne (and Broadmoor). Soon after, Bethlem's criminal buildings were demolished: Andrews _et al_. 503.
127:... Melbourne approached the Queen with the delicate issue that had been on the minds of everyone since the shooting: it was quite possible that the Queen could die, leaving an infant child as her heir: Longford 152.
127: A Regency Bill was in order, such as the one created ten years before, when Victoria became heir apparent, and which held her mother, the Duchess of Kent, sole regent in the event of her King William's death: Longford 35.
127: "I don't hide from myself that there will be all manner of objections, such as his youth, his want of acquaintance with the country and its institutions, &c.": Von Stockmar 2:39.
128: Stockmar and Melbourne had no problems convincing both Peel and Wellington that Albert should be sole Regent; both claimed that this was their position exactly: Von Stockmar 2:40, 42.
128: Sussex stood before the House of Lords on 21 July, proclaiming himself to be personally disinterested in the Bill, but to have questions about it: _Times_ 22 July 1840, 3.
128: "Three months ago," Melbourne told Victoria, "they would not have done it for him. It is entirely his own character": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 216.
128: "I am to be Regent— _alone_ —Regent, without a Council": Duff 178.
128: As King Leopold wrote to Albert's private secretary, George Anson, the bill "had helped the Prince immensely": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 216.
128: "It's a great pity they couldn't suffocate that boy, master Oxford, and say no more about it": Dickens, _Letters_ 2:81–2.
PART 2: THE GAUNTLET
_Chapter 8: Most Desperate Offenders_
133:... the _Times_ reported one nobleman, a true connoisseur of hangings, who had attended the last four or five of them: _Times_ 24 May 1842, 8.
134: two hundred City and Metropolitan police were stationed between scaffold and spectators: _Times_ 24 May 1842, 8.
134: Crowds at public executions could be fickle: Gatrell, _67_ , 98–100.
134: "... you will leave the world unrespected and unpitied by any one": _Times_ 14 May 1842, 8.
134:... "a good deed done": For the details of Good's murder, see _Times_ 8 April 1842, 13, 9 April 1842, 7; _Morning Chronicle_ 9 April 1842, 7.
134: Queely (or Quelaz) Shiell, who had made his fortune as the largest slaveholder on the West Indian island of Montserrat: 1841 _England census_ (incorrectly transcribed as Queeley Thiel); Browne 114; Dodd 64; Shiell and Anderson.
134: There, Good bought on credit a pair of breeches: _Times_ 8 April 1842, 13.
135: Good planted his back against the door and refused entry: _Morning Chronicle_ 9 April 1842, 7; _Times_ 8 April 1842,13.
135: "My God, what's this?": _Times_ 8 April 1842,13.
135: Daniel Good bolted, slamming the stable door to, locking it, throwing the key and a lantern into a hedge, and lighting out across the fields: _Times_ 8 April 1842, 13; 9 April 1842, 7.
136: It had been gutted—sliced in a ghastly cross vertically from sternum to pubes, and horizontally around the top of the pelvis, in a single cut from one side of the backbone around to the other: _Times_ 13 April 1842,14; 22 April 1842, 6.
136: Gardiner sent Samuel Dagnall to the station house in Wandsworth to fetch help, give a description of Good, and raise the alarm: _Times_ 9 April 1842, 7; _Morning Chronicle_ 9 April 1842, 7.
136:... Sergeant Palmer[,] opened the door to the adjoining harness room and was nearly knocked over by the overpowering stench: _Times_ 8 May 1842,13.
137:... two bloody fragments of a woman's petticoat, "violently torn asunder": _Times_ 22 April 1842, 6.
137: The Sunday before, on Good's orders, an anxious Jane Jones had left the boy to sleep with a neighbor while she went to visit Good in Putney: _Times_ 13 April 1842,14.
137: He saw his father make a gift to the young woman: a gown, a shawl, a fur tippet, a pair of gloves, a pair of boots, and, in a hatbox, a blue bonnet: _Times_ 9 April 1842, 7; 13 April 1842,14.
138:... the trousers... which the boy swore his father never took: _Times_ 13 April 1842, 13.
138:... the trunk—which he first thought was the body of a pig: _Times_ 13 April 1842, 13.
138: Young Daniel apparently disclosed that address to one of the policemen investigating the stables: _Times_ 8 April 1842,13; Browne 115.
138: The metropolitan police were adept, through an established system of "route-papers," at communicating information about breaking crimes and fleeing criminals to all metropolitan station houses and to all active officers in a matter of hours: Lock 36; Cobb 102, 188.
138: "V division, April 6, 1842.—Absconded, about half-past 9 o'clock, from Mr. Shiell's": _Times_ 28 April 1842, 6.
139:... according to local legend, he tossed the gatekeeper his coachman's coat as he flew by: Féret 1:65.
139:... a policeman who had at 5 A.M. witnessed Good hailing a cab: _Morning Chronicle_ 22 April 1842, 7.
139: Tedman was suspended from the force for several weeks because of this mistake: Cobb 188.
139:... he sought out his actual wife, Molly Good, whom he had abandoned a good two decades before: _Times_ 11 April 1842, 3.
139: Together, Daniel and Molly pawned and sold most of Jane Jones's worldly goods: _Morning Chronicle_ 26 April 1842, 7.
139: The newspapers soon excoriated the police for their lack of diligence in catching the murderer: _Morning Chronicle_ 15 April 1842, 6.
139:... the _Times_ reported the public sense of "unmitigated indignation" against the police: _Times_ 15 April 1842, 6.
140: "The conduct of the metropolitan police in the present case... is marked with a looseness and want of decision": _Times_ 11 April 1842, 3.
140: Typical of the problem was... Inspector M'Gill of the Holborn division: Cobb 193–94.
140: "Thus... the circumstance soon got circulation through the neighbourhood, and thus the chances of detection were considerably lessened": _Times_ 11 April 1842, 3.
140:... he was enraged by M'Gill's hamfisted intrusion: Cobb 196.
141: By a remarkable coincidence, Rose had been a constable in V Division: _Morning Chronicle_ 18 April 1842, 3.
141: Thomas Cooper, a morose 23-year-old who had an obsession with guns: For details of Cooper's shooting, see _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 6; _Times_ 20 June 1842, 7.
141: The superintendent of this police division... had assigned extra officers to patrol the area: _Era_ 8 May 1842, 7.
141:... Charles Moss, was carefully watching a gentleman ostentatiously exhibiting a heavily ornamented watch chain: _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 6; _Times_ 20 June 1842, 7.
142:... both to reload his pistols (using grass instead of wadding to hold his bullets in place), and apparently to gulp down a vial of poison: _Morning Chronicle 7_ May 1842, 7; 20 June 1842, 7; _Times 7_ May 1842, 7.
142: "I don't think those pistols are loaded," he called out: _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 7.
142: One pursuer took up a brick, and another—probably Mott—a stick: _Times_ 20 June 1842, 7.
143: Daly reeled half a circle and fell dead: _Era_ 19 June 1842, 7.
143:... he was so angry at the treatment of his mother by the arresting officer, Inspector Penny, that Cooper assaulted Penny brutally: _Times 7_ May 1842, 7; 20 May 1842, 8.
143:... he only regretted killing Daly instead of Penny: _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 8.
143:... he seemed pleased to have killed a policeman: it served him right: _Times_ , 6 May 1842, 6.
143: "I shall never be happy until I am the death of one of them": _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 8.
144: He stuck to the same story he had blurted out the moment his sentence of death was spoken: _Times_ 23 May 1842, 6.
144: "I never touched the body of the woman, alive or dead! So help me God!": _Times_ 23 May 1842, 6.
144: He climbed, unassisted, the steps of the scaffold to the thunderous noise of an enraged mob: _Morning Chronicle_ 24 May 1842, 7.
144: "Stop! Stop!" Good cried: _Times_ 24 May 1842, 8.
145: Hanging "was much too good for such a fellow": _Caledonian Mercury_ 4 June 1842, 2.
145: Later this day he was to take a lease on a shop and parlor at 63 Mortimer Street: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 7.
146: His parents still lived there with his sisters Mary and Jane: 1841 _England Census;_ TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
146: He attempted—feebly, it seems—to survive as a journeyman carpenter in the adjoining neighborhood of Paddington: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 7.
146:... his father mentioned that he came for Sunday dinner: _Morning Chronicle_ 2 June 1842, 6.
146: He was too proud to tell them that he was finding few jobs and was almost out of money, having been too poor for the last three months to pay rent for his room: _Caledonian Mercury_ 4 June 1842, 2; _Times_ 30 May 1842, 5; 1 June 1842, 7.
146: He was a close and long-standing friend of the head machinist, Henry Sloman, who had been a witness to the marriage of John Francis Sr. and Elizabeth, Francis's mother, in 1817: _London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754–1921_.
146: John Francis Jr. had been born in November 1822: _Caledonian Mercury_ 4 June 1842, 2
146:... perhaps witnessing as a child the slapstick antics of Grimaldi, the sublime acting of Kean, the dazzling virtuosity of Paganini, or, more recently, the seductive dancing of young Lola Montez: Stott, throughout; Wyndham 47–52, 78, 117–120.
146:... the census of 1841 lists John Francis Sr. as a carpenter, and his son as an apprentice carpenter: 1841 _England Census_.
147:... "one of the Artisans of Your Majesty's Theatre Royal Covent Garden... for more than 23 years": TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
147: Victoria and Albert had seen all these shows in the early months of 1842: Rowell 131.
148: They employed well over a hundred men (including twenty-six carpenters) to deal with creating props and machinery: Wyndham 2.317.
148:... a "Star of Brunswick" rising out of the ocean, "which opens as it enlarges": _Times_ 13 February 1840, 5.
148:... the first performance in London in which Mendelssohn's famous music was employed: Planché, _Recollections_ 2:51.
148: Madame Vestris, renowned for her beautiful legs and for displaying them without shame in breeches roles, was responsible for that innovation: Bratton; Rowell 40.
148: The play was a hit largely because of its showstopping finale: Haugen 99.
148:... John Francis was specifically noted for his cleverness in construction of pantomime tricks: _Caledonian Mercury 4_ June 1842, 2
148: _The Castle of Otranto or, Harlequin and the Giant Helmet_ , was arguably the most mechanically laden pantomime of all time—a "machinist's Sabbath," according to one historian, a pantomime possibly even _written_ by a Covent Garden machinist, to show off his crew's talents: Haugen 103, 107. Other accounts attribute authorship to Vestris's and Mathew's house-writer, J. R. Planché.
149: The pantomime essentially ditched the frenetic human interaction which, when the clown Joseph Grimaldi ruled the pantomime stage two decades before, was crucial to the genre: Planché, _Castle of Otranto;_ Stott.
149:... she liked pantomime least—noting in her journal after one that it was "noisy and nonsensical as usual": Rowell 24.
149:... after his quarrel with his father at the end of 1841, he turned his back on Covent Garden and on his family: _Caledonian Mercury_ 4 June 1842, 2.
149:... a few months after he left, the Vestris-Mathews management had collapsed: Haugen 134. 149: Charles James Mathews was arrested for debt and had spent the two weeks before Good's execution at Queen's Bench Prison: _Times_ 10 May 1842, 5; 23 May 1842, 7.
150:... after extensive renovations, the theatre finally found success opening in 1847 as an opera house: Wyndham 2:179–80.
150: Robert Gibbs, the proprietor of the Caledonian Coffee House, who had endless opportunities to observe him, considered him "idle and reckless": _Times_ 2 June 1842, 5.
150:... he wrote poetry, for one thing, and preferred musing over coffee to seeking work: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 7; _Morning Chronicle_ 2 June 1842, 6.
150: Francis was arrested on suspicion of stealing more than thirty-two sovereigns from an 85-year-old man he had met at a coffee house: _Times_ 3 June 1842, 8.
150: Charles Johns, an outfitter of chemists and tobacconists, would in two days, on Wednesday, be delivering a full inventory to Francis's shop, and he would be expecting full payment on delivery: _Examiner_ 4 June 1842, 360.
151: To fill his shop, then, he lied to Johns outright, presenting himself as a young man with great expectations: _Examiner_ 4 June 1842, 360.
151:... bundles of Havana cigars (and imitation Havanas), bales of loose Virginia and Middle Eastern tobacco, packages of snuff; clay and meerschaum pipes: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 10.
151: Grimstone's Eye Snuff: _Times_ 1 Feb. 1842, 8.
151: Francis's friends at the coffee house, and the youth he slept next to, William Elam, were startled by Francis's sudden foray into keeping shop: _Morning Chronicle_ 2 June 1842, 6.
151: Charles Johns was the one certain visitor to Francis's shop on this day: _Examiner_ 4 June 1842, 360.
151: Francis fended him off: the executors of his grandmother's will were being difficult, delaying on signing off on his inheritance: _Examiner_ 4 June 1842, 360.
152:... he would borrow £10 from "the old man": _Examiner_ 4 June 1842, 360.
152: Francis was, according to those who knew him, "good-tempered" and "inoffensive," a sober lad, patron of coffee houses, not public houses or gin palaces, who came to his meals regularly and did not stay out late at night: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 7.
_Chapter 9: Royal Theatre_
153: Usually, that theatre housed the Italian Opera, just reaching the peak of its season with performances of Donizetti's _Lucia di Lammermoor_ and _Lucrezia Borgia_ : Rowell 130.
153: Just before 10:30, the carriages drew up to the entrance on Charles Street reserved exclusively for the Queen's use: For details of the Spitalfields ball at Her Majesty's Theatre: _Times_ 27 May 1842, 6; _Morning Chronicle_ 27 May 1842, 6; _Illustrated London News_ 28 May 1842, 43.
153:... the Count's four sons, who had emerged from the carriage in front of them: _Caledonian Mercury_ 30 May 1842, 4.
154:... a "simultaneous sensation of delight" thrilled the audience: _Times_ 27 May 1842, 6.
154:... a "perfect crush": _Times_ 27 May 1842, 6.
154: Admission to this ball had been pricey: _Times_ 11 April 1842, 1.
155: Two weeks before this ball, the British nobility had had their own chance to display their wealth when the Queen threw at Buckingham Palace a glorious, invitation-only _bal masque_ or costume ball: For details of the Plantagenet Ball, see the _Times_ 13 May 1842, _6–7;_ 14 May 1842, 6; _Illustrated London News_ 14 May 1842, 7–9.
155: The latest in Victorian technology—530 jets of naphthalized gas—spotlit the thrones: _Caledonian Mercury_ 16 May 1842, 4.
155: The gold lace of Albert's tunic was edged with 1,200 pearls, and Victoria wore a pendant stomacher valued at 60,000 pounds: _Times 9_ May 1842, 6.
156:... on 14 May 1842, the _Illustrated London News_ —the first fully illustrated newsmagazine—published its very first issue: _Illustrated London News_ 14 May 1842, 7–9.
156:... the year of the worst industrial recession of the nineteenth century: Hilton 23.
156: A series of bad harvests, dating back to the thirties, had raised food prices and the overall cost of living: T. A. Jenkins 105; Martin 1:75.
156: Crime rates and pauperism skyrocketed: Dodds 84; Cole and Post-gate 305.
156:... the Chartists had, with banners and bands and great hope, trundled an immense petition through the crowd-lined streets of London to Parliament: Chase 205.
156:... 3,317,752—well over a tenth of the entire population of Britain: Chase 205. The population of Britain and Ireland, according to the petition itself, was around 26 million in 1842, a number that almost matches that of the 1841 Census. "The People's Charter—Petition"; Hilton 6.
156: In their petition, the Chartists claimed that the current misery facing working people was the direct consequence of a corrupt Parliament: For details of the Chartist Petition of 1842, see "The People's Charter—Petition."
157: This crushing of hopes, coupled with sheer hunger, bore bitter fruit: by the time the Queen attended the ball at Her Majesty's, riots were already erupting in the Midlands and the North: _Times_ 5 May 1842, 6; Chase 211.
157:... Parliament released its first report on the employment of children: Children's Employment Commission.
157: The popular satirical magazine _Punch_ bitterly contrasted the "purple dress" of the reveling rich with the "cere-cloth" or shroud of the destitute: _Punch_ 2:209.
157: "The most detested tyrant whose deeds history hands down to posterity, set fire to Rome": _Northern Star_ 4 June 1842, 3.
158:... the economic forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution had strangled their trade nearly to the point of extinction: Veder 266.
158: Charles Dickens a few years later described the under-and unemployed weavers of Spitalfields as "sallow" and "unshorn": Dickens and Willis 25.
159:... "the weavers dine for a day or two": Dickens and Willis 25.
159: The organizers of the ball at Her Majesty's Theatre hoped for a more lasting support: _Times_ 25 May 1842; Kean 44.
159: As the _Times_ put it, the ball at the theatre was an occasion in which the Queen associated "publicly and personally with her subjects in promoting a common object": _Times_ 27 May 1842, 6.
160:... as one of his first acts as Prime Minister, Peel appointed Albert president of the Fine Arts Commission: Bolitho 121; Hurd 236.
160: Victoria later said that Albert found a "second father" in Peel: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 157.
160: He once told Victoria "all depends on the urgency of a thing. If a thing is very urgent, you can always find time for it; but if a thing can be put off, well then you put it off": Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 87.
160:... he attended the _bal masque_ , dressed as a figure from a van Dyck painting: _Caledonian Mercury_ 16 May 1842, 4.
161: It was a budget informed by his growing belief in free trade, calculated not simply to redistribute wealth—but to _create_ wealth: Read 146.
161: The crowd, however, watched not the dancers but the royal pavilion, as with "mute up-gazing curiosity" they observed Victoria perform the rituals of state: _Morning Chronicle_ 27 May 1842, 6.
162: Five years before, she was accompanied by her mother and attended to by John Conroy and Lady Flora Hastings; her uncle the Duke of Cumberland was seen to be "very constant in his attention" to his Royal niece: _Times_ 2 June 1837, 5.
162: Cumberland was now king in Hanover, his despotic ways finding much grater favor among the Hanoverians than among the British: Palmer.
162:... Conroy—an exile in Berkshire: Hudson _176–77_.
162:... his power implicit in the enormous jackboots he wore: _Morning Chronicle_ 27 May 1842, 6.
163: By the end of 1841, she regularly used the term "we" in setting out her opinions: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 151.
163:... the Prince hurried from Victoria's side to lead the Privy Council in her stead: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 152.
163: Victoria found him indispensable in dealing with government business during her confinement and recovery: Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 217–18.
163: He became, according to his own secretary Anson, "in fact, tho' not in name, Her Majesty's Private Secretary": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 218.
163: At both Buckingham Palace and Windsor by this time, their desks were joined so that they could work as one: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 152.
164: He attended all ministerial meetings, read his wife's correspondence, and conducted an extensive political correspondence of his own: Gill 174.
164:... Albert confronted Lehzen, through Anson, about not reporting to him that a certain Captain Childers was stalking the Queen with "mad professions of love": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 215. Such lovelorn lunatics stalking the Queen were legion, particularly in the early years of her reign.
164: She was to him " _die Blaste_ "—the hag, the "Yellow Lady" (a reference to her jaundice), "a crazy, stupid intriguer, obsessed with the lust of power, who regards herself as a demi-God": Charlot 194; St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 168; Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 229.
165: Anson noted her "pointing out and exaggerating every little fault of the Prince, constantly misrepresenting him, constantly trying to undermine him in the Queen's affections and making herself appear a martyr": St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ , 168.
165: On the evening of 3 December 1840, palace servants were startled to discover an unkempt young man hiding under a sofa in the Queen's dressing room—a sofa upon which just hours before the Queen had been sitting: Paul Thomas Murphy. Jones, after breaking into the palace three times, was forced to become a sailor; he served in the Royal Navy for at least six years, and then faded into obscurity.
165: He claimed that he "sat upon the throne, saw the Queen, and heard the Princess Royal... squall": _Times_ 5 December 1840, 4.
165:... "the absence of system, which leaves the palace without any responsible authority": Von Stockmar 2:125. For a detailed memorandum of the household dysfunction, see Von Stockmar 2:118–25.
166:... servants, for example, regularly sold off the day's unused candles for their own profit: Feuchtwanger 65.
166: Albert, in going over Palace expenditures, discovered a weekly charge of 35 shillings for guards at Windsor who hadn't actually served since George III's day: Jerrold, _Married Life_ 221–22.
166:... she "lets no opportunity of creating mischief and difficulty escape her": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 228.
166:... Stockmar called them back; the Princess Royal was seriously ill—thin, pale, and feverish: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 171; Gill 182.
167: "All the disagreeableness I suffer," he wrote, "comes from one and the same person." Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 230.
167: He and Victoria had the worst argument of their married lives, the Queen accusing Albert of wishing to kill their children, and screaming that she wished they had never married: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 171; Gill 183.
167: "Dr. Clark has mismanaged the child and poisoned her with calomel and you have starved her": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 230.
167: "... the welfare of my children and Victoria's existence as sovereign are too sacred for me not to die fighting rather than yield them as prey to Lehzen": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 229.
167: One reporter empathized with the fatigue Victoria must feel, when she and her court had to rise, turn, and curtsey with the arrival of every one of her many honored guests: _Morning Chronicle_ 27 May 1842, 6.
168:... "amidst loud cheering and clapping of hands" the royal party returned to their carriages and to the Palace": _Morning Chronicle_ 27 May 1842.
168:... he shut up shop and returned to Titchfield Street, crept up the two flights to his room, and broke open a locked box containing all of his roommate's possessions: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 7.
168: "What have you been about?" Foster asked him. "I suppose you know what I have come here for?": _Times_ 1 June 1842, 7.
169:... flintlocks missing flints, and with rusted screw barrels: _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7–8.
169: Francis chose the smaller of the two, one seven inches long: _Morning Chronicle_ 31 May 1842, 5.
169: "It appeared to be all he had in the world," Street later told police: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
169: The clerk told him they rarely sold flints: _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7–8.
170: Francis paid for the flint with two halfpennies: _Morning Chronicle_ 18 June 1842, 7.
170: While the police learned about all of these purchases, however, they could never prove that Francis bought a bullet for his pistol: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
170: Francis found shelter at yet another coffee-house: _Times_ 11 June 1842, 6; Post Office London Directory, 1841, 195.
_Chapter 10: A Thorough Scamp_
171:... under the shade of the magnificent elm trees: Heron 443–44.
171:... Victoria and Albert attended the sermon of the Bishop of Norwich at the Chapel Royal: _Times_ 30 May 1842, 5.
171: Pearson had only recently arrived in London from Suffolk to work at his brother's printing business as a wood engraver: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 6.
172: The youth didn't fire: _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7.
172: Then John Francis crossed the Mall and disappeared through the gate and into Green Park: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 7.
172:... wondering whether what he had seen was a joke: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 6.
173: Then, he turned and slowly walked away, toward Piccadilly: _Times_ 11 June 1842, 6.
173: He then asked the boy for his name and address: Martin 1:121; _Times_ 1 June 1842, 6.
173: The gentleman, whoever he was, must have had the questionable pleasure of reading about himself in the newspapers a few days later, when he was excoriated for not raising an alarm or reporting the crime: _Times 2_ June 1842, 5.
173: George's brother, Matthew Flinders Pearson, was a good fifteen years older than he, a respectable businessman in Holborn: _Morning Chronicle_ 28 December 1842, 2.
174: Thomas Dousbery, a boot and shoe retailer, dabbled in radical thought and was the secretary of the Cordwainer's benevolent fund;... he would know what to do: _Morning Chronicle_ 2 June 1842, 6; Dousbery 2:109.
174: Dousbery was sure that Laurie trusted in him, and would not see Pearson's account as a "trumped up tale": _Morning Chronicle 2_ June 1842, 6.
174: He stammered so badly, Laurie wrote in his diary, "that his brother who was with him had to repeat a statement he had made to him when he was not excited or afraid": Laurie 101. Laurie obviously knew Thomas Dousbery less than Dousbery knew him, mistakenly calling him "Dandbury" in his diary.
174: Laurie considered that Pearson should take his account straight to Buckingham Palace: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 6.
174: Laurie, a man well known for his egotism: McConnell.
174:... Murray had just sat down to dinner at the Queen's table, and could not—"on any pretence"—be spoken with until bed time: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 6.
175: He wrote about the assault to his father the next day: Martin 1:121.
175: Victoria later wrote to her Uncle Leopold "Thank God, my angel is also well; but he says that had the man fired on Sunday, he must have been hit in the head": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 1:399.
176:... all was quiet; the crowd had dispersed, "satisfied with having seen the Queen": Martin 1:121.
176: Albert, wishing Arbuthnot to maintain "profound secrecy," asked him to communicate what had happened to four people only: Martin 1:121.
176: Upon hearing of the attempt, Peel rushed to the Palace: Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 162; Martin 1:121; TNA PRO MEPO 3/18. Albert claims the "Head of Police" was the man accompanying Peel, but Col. Rowan, the Commissioner most involved with the case at its early stages, did not meet with Albert directly on this day—and his account suggests that the other Commissioner, Mayne, was not there either.
176: The Queen in the meantime would not present herself as a target by going out in her carriage until she absolutely had to: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
177: Rowan thus ordered his detective (in all but name) Inspector Pearce to join the two inspectors assigned to the Palace and patrol Green and St. James's parks in plain clothes, watching for anyone who fit the description Albert had given: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
177: This time Murray saw them, and patiently listened to the boy's excruciatingly drawn-out tale: Martin 1:121.
177: Murray, with less of a sense imminent danger than Laurie had shown, or perhaps an awareness of Sir James's work schedule at the Home Office, wrote the three a letter for Graham and told them to call on the Home Secretary that afternoon between two and three: _Times_ 2 June 1842, 6.
177: "I was present," Rowan wrote with exasperation, "during a very long Examination of the Lad who saw the pistol presented made tediously long by the impediment in his speech": TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
178: He ordered his clerks to write up "as many written descriptions of the offender to be made out as there are entrances with St. James Park": TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
179: She told Albert's secretary, George Anson, that she had had for some time a premonition that such a "mad attempt" would be made: Martin 1:122n.
179: Albert noted that, upon confirmation of Sunday's attempt, "we were naturally very much agitated, Victoria very nervous and unwell": Martin 1:121.
179: He indeed claims that a doctor recommended she deal with her agitation by going out: Martin 1:121.
179: Victoria rode out, she informed her Uncle Leopold, because she honestly felt she had no other option: Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 1:398.
180: "I must expose the lives of my gentlemen," she wrote to her uncle, "but I will not those of my ladies": Longford 170.
180: Her lady in waiting, Lady Portman, and her maids of honor, Matilda Paget and Georgiana Liddell, waited in vain that afternoon to be called; Liddell, thus shunned, stalked off to grumble in the palace gardens: Bloomfield 44; Longford 170.
180:... they were on the lookout for the assailant, and, as Albert thought, "would seize him on the least imprudence or carelessness on his part": Martin 1:122.
180: The weather was superb that evening: Martin 1:122.
180: Later, Victoria's visiting Uncle Mensdorff helpfully told her "one is sure not to have been hit when one hears the report, as one never hears it when one is hit": Martin 1:122n.
180: "Looking out for such a man was not _des plus agreables"_ : Victoria _Letters_ 1:398.
181: "You may imagine that our minds were not very easy. We looked behind every tree, and I cast my eyes round in search of the rascal's face": Martin 1:122.
181: "I had seen the prisoner half an hour before this," Trounce later told authorities: _Times_ 11 June 1842, 6.
181: But Arbuthnot, feeling in his gut that something was wrong as they approached Constitution Hill, rode up to the postilion and demanded he ride even faster until they reached the Palace Gates: _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7.
182: He was later to speculate that the speed of the carriage saved the Queen's life: _Times_ 18 June 1842, 6.
182: He stood at attention and smartly saluted the Queen as she passed: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
182:... a "theatrical attitude," according to one of many witnesses: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
182: "It was not as if I had seen him fire the Pistol—I could have then laid hold of him sooner, or if I had known he was going to fire it...." he sputtered guiltily in a police report: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
182: Wylde meanwhile galloped from Albert's side toward Francis: _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7.
182: Allen had seen the flash from the pistol and heard the shot: _Times_ 11 June 1842, 6.
183: Other witnesses—Colonel Arbuthnot in particular—agreed that the pistol's report was sharp and loud, the sign "of a pistol well loaded and rammed": TNA PRO TS 11/80.
183: Victoria, on the other hand, was certain that the shot was not loud at all—certainly, less loud than when Oxford had shot at her: Jerrold, _Early Court_ 360.
183: Albert was sure Francis aimed low, the bullet going under the carriage; others claimed it went above; one of the Queen's grooms, riding behind her, thought Francis actually aimed not at the Queen, but at the hind wheel of her carriage: Martin 1:122; _Morning Chronicle_ 31 May 1842, 5; "John Francis."
183: Trounce handed Russell the pistol; it was warm, suggesting recent discharge: _Times_ 11 June 1842, 5.
183: The group marched Francis to the Porter's Lodge of the palace: _Times_ 30 May 1842, 5.
183: There, he was searched: a little notebook, a key or two, a penny—and a small amount of gunpowder, screwed up in a piece of paper: enough to recharge his pistol. But he did not have any bullets: _Morning_ _Chronicle_ 31 May 1842, 5; _Times_ 11 June 1842, 6; 18 June 1842, 7.
183: Wylde observed the quiver in his lips: _Morning Chronicle_ 18 June 1842, 7.
183:... they led Francis across the palace to the equerries' entrance, bundled him into a cab, drove him to the Gardiner Lane station: _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7.
183: Mark Russell... provided police with the whereabouts of Francis's father: Accounts differ as to Francis's father's whereabouts: one account says he was found at home, another at the theatre, and a third, Deptford. _Morning Chronicle_ 31 May 1842, 5; _Times_ 30 May 1842, 5; 1 June 1842, 6; 18 June 1842, 7; _Ipswich Journal_ 4 June 1842,1.
184: Word of Francis's capture was sent around the building to Colonel Rowan, still in the process of giving orders to find the assailant of the day before: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
184: In the Lords, the news was brought to the Duke of Wellington: _Times_ 31 May 1842, 3.
184: In the Commons, the news could not have come at a more dramatic moment: _Times_ 31 May 1842, 4.
184:... in a voice in which his "excitement well nigh overpowered his utterance," he informed the House of the attempt: "Attempt to Assassinate the Queen."
184: Francis's examination was attended by members of both parties: _Times_ 30 May 1842, 5; _Morning Chronicle_ 31 May 1842, 5.
185: "He is not out of his mind, but a thorough scamp": Martin 1:122.
185:... a coolness, calmness, and firmness that astonished the Council: _Freeman's Journal_ 2 June 1842, 2.
185: To Colonel Arbuthnot, he asked "whether he thought he intended to shoot the queen, or whether it was done in a frolic": _Times_ 30 May 1842, 5.
185: After the examination, Francis was bundled out the back entrance and conveyed to Tothill Fields for the night: _Times_ 11 June 1842, 6.
185: "Scene-shifter! No, he's a stage carpenter": _Times_ 11 June 1842, 6.
185: The next day, he was brought back to Whitehall at noon to finish his examination: _Morning Chronicle_ 1 June 1842, 5.
186:... the crowd assembled outside the Home Office saw him lean back in the vehicle: _Morning Chronicle_ 1 June 1842, 5; _Liverpool Mercury_ 3 June 1842,175.
186:... "the all engrossing topic of conversation amongst all classes": _Times_ 1 June 1842, 6.
186:... the Duchess hurried back with her brother-in-law to the Palace, where, bursting into tears, she fell upon Victoria, who calmly caressed and reassured her: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 7; _Ipswich Journal_ 4 June 1842,1.
186: Robert Peel belied his usual coolness in an emotional meeting with the Queen: Bloomfield 44.
186:... an excellent rendition, according to a reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_ : 31 May 1842, 5.
187: "When her Majesty goes abroad among the people for the purpose of taking recreation or exercise," John Russell said in Parliament that afternoon, "there is not one among her subjects who has less reason to fear an enemy in any single individual of the millions who constitute her subjects": "Attack on Her Majesty."
187:... at around 4:30, the gates opened: _Times_ 1 June 1842, 6.
188:... bursting into applause at the end of every line, and screaming "deafening acclamations" at the song's command "Scatter her enemies": _Times_ 1 June 1842, 6.
188:... _Elena da Feltre_ , called by a critic an "abortion" and "utterly worthless and common-place": _Times_ 1 June 1842, 6.
188:... "relying with confidence in the generous loyalty of her people with a determination not to be confined as a prisoner in her own palace": "Attack on Her Majesty."
188:... "the feeling now was of a deeper cast": Martin 1:121n.
188:... speakers at hundreds of congratulatory meetings across the country waxed enthusiastically about Victoria's chivalric heroism: her calmness and resolution; her "kindness... consideration... generosity": Thus the tea-merchant Richard Twining and a colleague, W. S. Jones, at a meeting of the East India Company; _Times_ 4 June 1842, 6.
188:... "we feel sure that it is no flattery to say that a finer instance of mingled heroism and generosity than this would be difficult to find": _Morning Chronicle_ 1 June 1842, 5.
189:... her action he thought "very brave, but imprudent": Greville 2:96.
189:... it was his understanding that the queen _would_ be prudent and stay at home: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
189: The _Globe_ , for instance, held that "the Queen's bravery is more impressive when contrasted with the ministers' apathy": quoted in _Morning Chronicle_ 3 June 1842, 4.
190: For years Rowan's younger and in effect junior co-commissioner Richard Mayne had favored a detective branch: Cobb 95.
190:... Waterloo veteran Charles Rowan, the prime mover behind the military structure of the police when the department was formed in 1829: Gregory.
190:... the Commissioners forwarded a memorandum to Graham at the Home Office: For the fullest information on the formation of the detective branch, see Browne 120–122.
190:... that omniscient knowledge of crime and criminals that Charles Dickens, who later became most enthusiastic and vocal fan of the detective branch, declared to be one of their strongest assets: Dickens, _Amusements_ 265–282; 356–369.
190: Mayne had probably long had a list in mind for this occasion: Cobb 95. 190: Senior Inspector: Ascoli 118–19.
_Chapter 11: Powder and Wadding_
191: Her precarious state did not prevent the police from searching their Tottenham Court lodgings: _Freeman's Journal_ 2 June 1842, 2.
192:... "the disagreeable condition of perpetually collecting pewter pots": _Examiner_ 11 June 1842, 376.
192:... "his only motive could be like Oxford to ensure a situation for life": TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.
192:... Oxford himself claimed that "If they had hanged me, there would have been nothing of the kind again": _Times 4_ June 1842, 6; Morning Chronicle 20 June 1842, 6.
192:... his imitator, Francis: _Morning Chronicle_ 13 June 1842, 3.
192: The procedure "flatters the diseased appetite for _éclat_ and notoriety": _Examiner_ 11 June 1842.
192:... William Clarkson, a hardheaded, "rough, bluff, testy personage": Robinson 75.
194:... the "most perfect _sangfroid": Liverpool Mercury_ 3 June 1842, 175.
195: But the sheriffs only admitted those with written orders: _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7.
195: "A child's marble—why, gentlemen, the very gravel path he was treading might have furnished him with a stone smooth or angular, quite adequate to the purpose in view": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7. For various (and varying) accounts of the trial, see _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7–8; _Morning Chronicle_ 18 June 1842, 7; "John Francis."
196:... for the last two weeks he had been taken in hand by a creator and purveyor of a treatment for stammering, Thomas Hunt": Boase, "Thomas Hunt" 280; _Times_ 25 June 1842, 8.
196:... "a piece fired off with ball sounds somewhat sharper than blank cartridge": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7.
196:... the powder was "well rammed down": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7.
196:... "what I want to know is, whether a pistol fired from the spot where the prisoner stood, if only loaded with wadding, would cause injury to the Queen?": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7.
196: "At seven to nine feet the wadding of the pistol would wound the skin or any exposed part, such as the face, or set fire to the dress": _Morning Chronicle_ 18 June 1842, 7.
197: He became "ten times better off than he was before he committed the act": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 7.
197: "I know that the books state, and so do my learned friends, that you must give evidence of the pistols being loaded beyond powder and wadding": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 8.
197: "... though there were no ball or destructive materials," he instructed the jury, "yet there might have been powder and wadding": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 8.
198:... "we find the prisoner Guilty on the second and third counts": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 8.
198: That verdict, according to a court reporter, "rendered Mr. Clarkson's objection immaterial": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 8.
198: "John Francis, you stand convicted of high treason: what have you to say why the court should not give you judgment to die according to the law?": _Times_ 18 June 1842, 8.
199:... a jaded population, which "seems to require stimulants of an extraordinary nature to arouse it.... Poor Daly was only shot. _He was not cut up!": Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 6.
200: The prosecution's witnesses methodically established all of Cooper's actions on the fifth of May, from his confrontation with Moss to his eventual apprehension: For full (and at times varied) accounts of Cooper's trial, see the _Times_ 20 June 1842, 7–8; _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, _6–7;_ "Thomas Cooper."
200:... he "should have his father up out of his grave, as there was no use in his lying there": _Times_ 20 June 1842, 8.
200: Cooper's odd behavior had all begun with a bout of "putrid fever": _Times_ 20 June 1842, 8.
201:... "he once bought a silver watch for 14s., and picked it to pieces. He then sold it for _7s.": Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 6.
201:... the "regimen and restraint" of Newgate had had a deeply therapeutic effect on his client: _Times_ 20 June 1842, 8.
201:... "every person who had arrived at the age of discretion must be considered sane until he was proved to be otherwise": _Times_ 20 June 1842, 8.
202:... Cooper was ordered to stand: _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 7.
202: "You had better listen to me. You had better listen to me, prisoner, instead of shaking your fist at any one there": _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 7.
202:... Cooper burst into a frenzied rage and tried to tear an inkwell out of the bar of the dock: _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 7.
202:... he instead again shook his fist and hurled threats of vengeance against the all witnesses: _Times_ 20 June 1842, 8.
202: When returned to his cell after his trial, he collapsed into a seat, moaning and weeping: _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 6.
203:... the _Times_ on the next day ran an editorial that predicted, based on Justice Tindal's "grave and solemn" way of passing verdict, that Francis would indeed be executed: _Times_ 18 Jun 1842, 6.
203:... "there could be no pretence for entertaining a single thought to her prejudice or against her sacred person": _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842.
203: The reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_ reporting this scene held that Francis was weak-minded and impressionable: _Morning Chronicle_ 20 June 1842, 6.
203: Cooper expected no reprieve; he wished death to come as soon as possible: _Times_ 1 July 1842, 6.
203:... Cooper generally reverted to his natural state of rage, sputtering curses and threats of violence against the Metropolitan Police: _Times_ 1 July 1842, 6; _Era_ 26 June 1842, 8.
203: His only regret was that he could not hurt them or the witnesses against him: _Era_ 26 June 1842, 8.
203: Francis received the news with "heart-rending despair": _Era_ 26 June 1842.
204: John Francis Senior sent his petition for clemency to the Queen via Home Secretary Graham: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
204: Francis's sister Jane wrote her own petition, and sought a different avenue to the Queen: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
204: At least three other groups drew up petitions to Graham or the Queen: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
204: Almost certainly against Cooper's wishes, his mother drew up a petition for her son as well: _Era_ 26 June 1842, 8.
204: "I am directed to express to you [Graham's] regret that there is no sufficient ground to justify him consistently with his public duty in advising her Majesty to comply with the prayer thereof": _Era_ 26 June 1842,11.
204: It was a scene of "a most distressing character," according to a witness: _Era_ 3 July 1842.
205: On Saturday 1 July, Peel reported the decision to Prince Albert: Charlot 221.
205: "Norfolk Island is scarcely safety—prolonged agony it certainly is": Browning and Browning 6:28.
205:... "the feeling that he is to be executed is very painful to me," Victoria wrote in her journal. And when she learned of the commutation she wrote "I of course am glad": RA VIC/MAIN/ QVJ/1842,1 July 1842.
205: A convict ship, the _Marquis of Hastings_ , had arrived in Portsmouth on 24 June: _Caledonian Mercury_ 30 June 1842, 4.
206: Two days later... he was clapped in heavy irons and one of Newgate's chief jailers conveyed him by the Southwestern Railway to Gosport: _Examiner 9_ July 1842, 445.
206: On the eighteenth, he embarked: "Convicts and Convict Ships sent to Tasmania."
206: "The opinion is that he will not long survive the hardships consequent on the fulfillment of his sentence," wrote a writer in the _Examiner: Examiner 9_ July 1842.
_Chapter 12: Hunchbacked Little Miscreant_
207:... on either side of the Mall, two or three deep... : _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4.
207: He hardly saw himself as a human being: _Ipswich Journal_ 16 July 1842, 1, qtd. from the _Globe_.
207:... [he was] tired to death of his life: _Era_ 10 July 1842, 7.
208: His arms were atrophied sticks: _Ipswich Journal_ 16 July 1842, 1, qtd. from the _Globe_.
208: His eyes sunk into his head. His expression was permanently careworn and weary: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
209: "I shall never be otherwise than I am": _Ipswich Journal_ 16 July 1842, 1, qtd. from the _Globe_. 209:... but the painstaking work was simply too exhausting for his pitiful limbs: _Freeman's Journal 7_ July 1842, 3; qtd. from the _Globe_.
209:... his apprenticeship to a cheesemonger resulted in failure, as did a job as an errand boy at Her Majesty's Stationery Office: _Morning Chronicle 7_ July 1842, 5.
209: Two months before, he had come across in this way several articles on Edward Oxford: TNA MEPO 3/19A; _Morning Chronicle_ 6 July 1842, 5; an example of such an article, appearing a month before, appears in the _Weekly Dispatch_ 5 June 1842, 271.
210: But he suffered greatly from the insults and disrespect of his younger brothers: 1841 _England Census_ (mistranscribed as "John Bonn"); _Examiner_ 9 July 1842, 442.
210: His mother fell ill with worry; his father frantically took a full description of the boy to Clerkenwell police station and pressed them to find him: _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3; 7 July 1842, 5.
210: Four days later, Bean's employer Mr. Hilton spotted him lurking outside his business: _Morning Chronicle 7_ July 1842, 5.
210:... he bought his pistol from a neighbor, Mr. Bird: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5; _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3; 6 July 1842, 5.
210:... he had sold off his meager collection of books, including his Bible, to get it: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
210:... probably not worth the three shillings he paid: _Annual Register_ 84:120; _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
210: Bird noticed Bean's "childish glee": _Annual Register_ 120.
211: Bean then brought the pistol to a neighbor to clean it: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5; _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3.
211:... a few fragments of a clay smoking-pipe: _Morning Chronicle_ 26 August 1842, 4; Martin 1:124.
211: He again lived on the streets, sleeping where he could—in abandoned houses, in fields—on the outskirts of Islington: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
211:... he had survived last week on only eight pence: _Era_ 10 July 1842, 7.
211: "Dear Father and Mother": "John William Bean"; _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5. Several variations of this letter appeared in the newspapers, but this one is a transcription of the actual letter, read aloud at Bean's trial.
212: The four had come and gone from the palace: _Times_ 1 July 1842, 6; 2 July 1842, 6.
212: The carriages were all covered landaus: "John William Bean."
212: Leopold rode with them. _Times_ 4 July 1842, 5; Martin 1:123.
212:... "genteel-looking," of normal size and stature, and very nattily dressed: _Morning Chronicle_ 4 July 1842, 5; TNA PRO MEPO 1/19A.
213:... some could see the light blue or maybe pale green bonnet of the Queen: "John William Bean."
213: He clearly saw the hammer drop and heard the click: _Times 4_ July 1842, 4.
213: "Look here, Fred," he exclaimed, "this chap is going to have a pop at the Queen": _Morning Chronicle_ 4 July 1842, 5.
214: "He did not walk so fast as my brother wished," said Frederick Dassett: "he _is_ a cripple": "John William Bean."
214: Dassett "certainly appeared to me," one member of the crowd later said, "to be disposed to excite the mob": "John William Bean"; TNA PRO MEPO 3/19A.
214: It was a hoax, some shouted—the gun wasn't loaded! Others called out to Dassett to give the boy back his pistol, and to let him go: "John William Bean"; _Morning Chronicle_ 26 August 1842, 4.
214: "put it into your pocket and run away with it": _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4.
214: Dassett presented pistol and Bean to P.C. Thomas Hearn, explaining what had happened: _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4.
214:... an officer with much more experience on the force and particularly with guarding the Queen: _Morning Chronicle_ 26 August 1842, 4; "John William Bean."
214:... "large numbers actually clambered the sharp-pointed railings": _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4.
215:... "otherwise my arm would have been broken": _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4.
215:... Partridge dismissed Dassett's story of the hunchbacked dwarf as "shamming": Martin 1:124.
215:... joined by Inspector George Martin, who took custody of the pistol: _Morning Chronicle_ 26 August 1842, 4.
215:... at least six hundred of the Queen's loyal subjects": _Morning Chronicle_ , 4 July 1842, 5.
215: Three thousand, according to the _Times: Times 4_ July 1842, 4.
216: One of the first there was Daniel O'Connell; _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4.
216: Graham personally complimented him... for his meritorious behavior: _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4.
216: Within a day, they were to be dismissed from the force: _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3.
217: "Description of a boy": _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4.
217:... a reporter... identified the "exceedingly agitated and flushed" boy: _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4.
217:... some newspapers the next day were able to report the certain capture of the assailant: _Times_ 4 July 1842, 4; _Morning Chronicle_ 4 July 1842, 5.
217: At Smithfield, an inspector was particularly enthusiastic: _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3.
218:... a hunchbacked man was walking down the road dividing E and F Divisions, when he was spotted simultaneously by two officers on either side of the street: _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3.
218: "... the number of little deformed men 'detained,' to use a mild phrase, was astonishing": _Illustrated London News_ , qtd. Lock 73.
218: _Punch_ caught the absurdity of the moment: _Punch_ 3 (1842): 23.
218:... P.C. Henry Webb, lingered after muster and reminded Penny that the description in the route paper matched the description a distraught John William Bean Senior had given the police nearly three weeks before of his son: _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3.
218: His state of undress, in Victorian terms—no coat, waistcoat, or cap: Morning Chronicle 5 July 1842, 3.
218: When Webb touched Bean's shoulder, he realized the boy was trembling uncontrollably: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
219: As they left the house, Bean's alarmed mother, Sally, came upon them: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
219:... the resemblance between the two was striking: _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3.
219: The Dassetts had to be called in... to identify Bean as the one who assaulted the Queen: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
219: Charles Dassett and Webb then had the honor of signing the sheet charging Bean with "attempting to shoot at Her Majesty": _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
219: "I suppose Cooper is hanging now": _Freeman's Journal_ 7 July 1842, 3; qtd. from _The Globe_ 5 July 1842.
219: Cooper's sullen passivity about his fate had vanished two days before the end, and he quaked as he walked to his death: For accounts of Cooper's execution, see the _Times_ 5 July 1842, 6, and the _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3.
220:... Bean was run at a trot within a phalanx of A Division officers: _Newcastle Cour ant_ 8 July 1842, 3.
220: Attendance at this examination was fuller and more formidable than the day before: _Era_ 10 July 1842.
220:... he collapsed with agitation on entering the room: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
221:... he helpfully told Inspector Martin where he had bought the gun; that evening, Martin, accompanied by Bean's father, confirmed the sale: _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3; 6 July 1842, 5; _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
221: He was stripped and bathed, a process open to reporters: _Examiner 9_ July 1842, 442.
221: "I remarked to Albert, I felt sure an attempt on us would be shortly repeated": Charlot 222.
221: Peel—according to Albert's first biographer "in public so cold and self-commanding, in reality so full of genuine feeling"—burst into tears: Martin 1:124.
222: "The Queen and People... were drawn into more intimate communion": _Spectator 4_ July 1842, rpt. in Dodds 68.
222:... her ministers commanded her to remain while they gathered more information: _Times_ 5 July 1842, 5.
222: Another rumor was that the Queen was "deeply affected" by the news of the attempt: _Morning Chronicle_ 4 July 1842, 5.
223: He was a "deformed, decrepit, miserable looking dwarf," "that crooked piece of malignity," a "hunchbacked little miscreant," and a "miserable and contemptible-looking wretch": _Newcastle Cou-rant_ 8 July 1842, 3; _Illustrated London News_ 1:130, 1:134; _Liverpool Mercury_ 8 July 1842, 214.
223: Prince Albert referred to him as a "hunchbacked wretch," Home Secretary Graham described him as "an hump-backed boy of an idiotic appearance," and Peel told the Queen that Bean was "the most miserable object he ever saw": Martin 1:123; Gash 342; Charlot 222–23.
223:... "these repeated attempts on the life of our beloved Sovereign are utterly incomprehensible": _Morning Chronicle_ 4 July 1842, 4.
224:... "the savage and impotent monomania, which has emigrated from France to England, is one of the gravest symptoms of the profound disorders which agitated modern societies;" _Messenger_ , qtd. _Illustrated London News_ 1:130.
224: "What is this strange mania of queen-shooting?": Browning and Browning 6:25.
224: Men, not boys, shot at Louis-Philippe: The fullest treatment of Louis-Philippe's assailants is in Jill Harsin's _Barricades_.
224: "If I had killed the tyrant... we would have conquered the universe and all the despots": Harsin 195.
224: "I die for Liberty!": Harsin 172.
225: The hail of bullets from this primitive machine-gun—twenty-five loaded gun barrels on a wooden frame—instantly created "a void around the King": Harsin 147–66.
225: This did not prevent partisan commentators from seeing the attempts as indirectly political: Poole 188–92; _Caledonian Mercury_ 11 July 1842.
225:... "Are not these strange times?": Thomas Carlyle to Margaret A. Carlyle, 4 July 1842: Carlyle.
226:... they were all driven by a "morbid craving after notoriety": Or a "diseased passion for notoriety," or "villainous anglings for notoriety," and so on. _Liverpool Mercury_ 3 June 1842, 180; 8 July 1842, 214; _Examiner_ 11 June 1842, 369; 9 July 1842, 433; _Times_ 5 July 1842, 4; _Morning Chronicle_ 5 July 1842, 3; "Security of the Queen's Person" (in a speech by Lord John Russell).
226: If "we would make up our minds to flog them in the sight of their companions": _Times_ 5 July 1842, 4.
226: On the day after Bean's first Privy Council examination, Graham met with the two commissioners of the police and with George Maule: _Morning Chronicle_ 6 July 1842, 5.
226: Bean... would be charged not with High Treason but with common assault: _Morning Chronicle 7_ July 1842, 5.
227: On the next day... John Bean, discernibly sunk into a depressed torpor, was brought from Tothill Fields for a final examination before Peel and the Privy Council: _Morning Chronicle 7_ July 1842, 5.
227: He was charged with a misdemeanor and sent back to Tothill Fields for the night, to be brought to Newgate the next day to await trial: Morning Chronicle 6 July 1842, qtd. Liverpool Mercury 8 July 1842.
227:... "contempt and ridicule... was quite enough to act as an effectual antidote": _Liverpool Mercury_ 8 July 1842, 214, qtd. from _Morning Chronicle_ 6 July 1842.
227: John Francis, having tearfully taken leave of his family forever on Monday... was removed to Gosport: _Examiner_ 9 July 1842, 445.
227: Peel had no intention of modifying existing laws of treason, he made clear: "Security of the Queen's Person."
227:... "publicly or privately whipped": "Treason Act 1842."
228: "These are the offences of base and degraded beings": "Security of the Queen's Person."
228:... the Irish people in particular would be grateful for a law to "brand... with contemptuous execration" any future assailant: "Security of the Queen's Person."
228: "And yet, Hume maintained—echoing the complaint of the Chartist petition—while the people's sufferings increased, the Queen and her court lived in comfort": "Security of the Queen's Person."
228: "If anything could be more dissatisfactory to the great mass of the people than another": "Security of the Queen's Person."
229:... "for these contemptible acts they shall receive the degrading punishment of personal chastisement": "Security of the Queen's Person."
229: He was placed in a cell near Reverend Carver: _Ipswich Journal_ 16 July 1842, 1.
230:... a rash of strikes and demonstrations, beginning in June in the collieries of Staffordshire: Chase 211.
230: Two policemen were killed in Manchester; two rioters were shot dead by soldiers in Preston: Gash 343; Chase 215.
230: Peel called the Privy Council to meet and issue a royal proclamation: Gash 343.
230: "I have not had a spare moment since the close of the session": Parker 1:323.
231: "... our arrangements were quickly and vigorously made": Gash 345.
231:... he got word that Victoria had been assassinated: Gash 344.
231:... he did acknowledge to Graham... that the Queen would face no more danger there than in England: Gash 346.
231: In Edinburgh, expectation for the visit had "superseded all other topics of the day": _Examiner_ 20 August 1842, 4.
231:... in London the public scrambled to obtain choice seats on steamers to see the royal party: _Caledonian Mercury_ 27 August 1842.
231: Lord Abinger in his younger days (when he was James Scarlett) had been the most successful advocate in England: Barker.
232: Bean was charged on four counts: For accounts of Bean's trial, see _Morning Chronicle_ 26 August 1842, 4; _Times_ 26 August 1842, _6–7;_ "John William Bean."
232: "Was not there a good deal of laughing going on?": "John William Bean."
232:... he risked being tried a second time for the same offense, "contrary to all the principles of English law": _Morning Chronicle_ 26 August 1842, 4.
233:... "it is probable I must have seen it": "John William Bean."
233: "Lord Abinger.—If you saw the prisoner for ten minutes": _Times_ 26 August 1842, 6.
234: When his father took the stand to plead to his son's "mild, peaceable, and inoffensive" conduct, Bean wept bitterly: "John William Bean"; _Freeman's Journal_ 27 August 1842, 4.
234: He cited as evidence the curious case where a man had once been indicted for _grinning_ at George III: _Morning Chronicle_ 26 August 1842, 4.
234: Bean heard the verdict without emotion: _Times_ 26 August 1842, 7.
234: "I know of no misdemeanour more affecting the public peace of the kingdom, of greater magnitude or deserving more serious punishment": _Times_ 26 August 1842, 7.
_Chapter 13: Tory Spies_
236:... bad weather forced the steamships to tow the yacht most of the way up the coast, the royal couple spending much of the time below-decks, ill: Gill 229.
237: Early the next morning, the royal procession shot through the city on the way to Dalkeith Palace, without sufficient warning to the public and before city dignitaries had assembled: _Times_ 5 September 1842, 4.
237: "Scotland has rarely seen a prouder day—perhaps never": _Times_ 6 September 1842, 4.
237: "The crowds of persons were beyond description": Peel, _Private Letters_ 206.
237:... a man with an overwhelming urge to kill was watching and awaiting his opportunity: Daniel McNaughten's movements, and his psychological state, are best set out in the accounts of his trial for murdering Edward Drummond: _Times_ 4 March 1843 5–6; 6 March 1843, 5–7; West and Walk, eds. 12–73.
237:... Paisley—incidentally one of Britain's worst-suffering towns, that hungry summer: Hurd 262.
238: Daniel McNaughtan saw the carriage, saw one man in it—and committed that man's face to memory: Charles Greville, clerk of the Privy Council, diarist, and acquaintance of both Drummond and Peel first made the credible speculation that McNaughtan first mistook Drummond for Peel during the Queen's visit to Scotland: Greville 1:143–4.
238: Drummond later joked about his being taken for "a great man" in Scotland: Greville 1:143–4.
238: Until 1841, he had been a very successful craftsman... a woodturner in Glasgow: Richard Moran, in his study of McNaughtan, _Knowing Right from Wrong_ , makes a compelling case that McNaughtan's delusions of persecution "were lodged firmly in the political reality of the day." His further claim that those "alleged" persecutions were nothing of the kind, but the actual malevolent acts of Glasgow's Tories, is far less compelling. Moran, _Knowing_ 25–59.
238: One man repeatedly threw straw at him: West and Walk, eds. 59, _66_.
239: "I can do nothing for you. I fear you are labouring under an aberration of mind": West and Walk, eds. 64.
239: But Daniel McNaughtan Senior refused, thinking that his son's delusions would pass: West and Walk, eds. 59.
239:... the instant he set foot on the quay at Boulogne, he could see one of them scowling at him from behind the custom-house watch box: West and Walk, eds. 65.
240: He took up his post in the heart of Tory darkness: the streets outside of Whitehall, standing all day for two weeks on the steps leading to the Privy Council office: West and Walk, eds. 25–27.
240: Two policemen from A Division—including P.C. Partridge—took note of him: _Times_ 4 March 1843, 4.
240:... he twice pointed Drummond out to a police constable, asking if that man was Robert Peel: Moran, _Knowing_ 38.
240: McNaughtan... came down the steps and shadowed Drummond: _Times_ 21 January 1843, 5.
240: Drummond's jacket caught fire: _Times_ 27 January 1843, 5.
241: Constable James Silver, standing next to the two, was upon McNaughtan an instant after the first shot: _Times_ 4 March 1843, 4.
241: An apothecary was sent for: _Times_ 4 March 1843, 4.
241:... the best doctors in town finished what the bullet had started, leeching and bleeding him relentlessly: _Times_ 23 January 1843, 5; 24 January 1843, 5; 25 January 1843, 4; Moran, _Knowing_ 7–8.
241:... "he" or "she" (Silver could not tell which) "shall not break my peace of mind any longer": _Times_ 4 March 1843, 5.
241: "I suppose you are aware who the gentleman is you shot at?" Tierney asked him: _Times_ 3 March 1843, 5; West and Walk, eds. 24.
241: "The evidence of his mental delusion is strong": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 1:572.
242: "There is and should be... a difference between that madness which is such that a man knows not what he does": Peel, _Sir Robert Peel_ 2:553.
242: "Who can doubt but that Bellingham was as insane as Oxford?": _Times_ 30 January 1843, 5.
242: "Every preparation is in progress to meet this vague and dangerous excuse": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 1:459.
242: On the second of February, McNaughtan was brought to the bar of the Old Bailey to enter his plea": _Times_ 3 February 1843, 7–8.
242: The judge, Baron Abinger, gave the defense a month to prepare. Moreover, he granted counsel's request that McNaughtan be allowed access to his bank account: _Times_ 3 February 1843, 7–8.
243: At 10:00 on 3 March 1843, an excited Daniel McNaughtan was again brought to the bar of the Old Bailey: For differing accounts of the McNaughtan trial, see the _Times_ 4 March 1843, 5–6: 6 March 1843, 5; West and Walk, eds. 12–73.
243:... Follett freely admitted that McNaughtan might be suffering from a "morbid affection of the mind": West and Walk, eds. 15.
244: "If there be thought and design": The case is that of Lord Ferrers. West and Walk, eds. 16.
244: "I never thought him unsettled in his mind": West and Walk, eds. 27.
244: "I did not have any idea that his mind was disordered": West and Walk, eds. 29.
244:... sequestered in a local coffee house: _Times_ 4 March 1843, 6.
245: "It is but as yesterday": West and Walk, eds. 34.
245:... "the greatest deference should be paid": West and Walk, eds. 33.
245:... "the perception, the judgment, the reason, the sentiments, the affections, the propensities, the passions": West and Walk, eds. 42.
245:... "profound and scientific" Scottish jurist, Baron Hume: West and Walk, eds. 43.
246:... there existed in McNaughtan "the presence of insanity sufficient to deprive the prisoner of all self-control": _Times_ 6 March 1843, 6.
246:... "the delusion was so strong that nothing but a physical impediment could have prevented him from committing the act": _Times_ 6 March 1843, 6.
247: "Mr. Solicitor General, are you prepared... with any evidence to combat this testimony?": West and Walk, eds. 71.
247:... "the whole of the medical evidence is on one side": West and Walk, eds. 72.
247:... McNaughtan followed Oxford's path from Newgate to South wark in a cab with Governor Cope: Moran, _Knowing_ 23–4.
248:... "I have in contemplation the accomplishment of a certain pet project": _Times 7_ March 1843, 5.
249: "It is a lamentable reflection... that a man may be at the same time so insane as to be reckless of his own life and the lives of others": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 1:586.
249: "The law may be perfect": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 1:587.
250:... no one was criminally liable of a crime when he "is under the influence of delusion and insanity": "Insanity and Crime."
250: "What are the proper questions to be submitted to the jury when a person": West and Walk, eds. 74.
250: "... at the time of committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason": West and Walk, eds. 79.
251: This curious protection was designed in 1842: A record in the database of the Museum of London holds that the parasol was "used by Queen Victoria after [an] assassination attempt, possibly 1840 (or 1842)." Logic points to the latter date—and leads one to question whether it was ever used at all.
251:... at three and a quarter pounds: Staniland 144.
PART 3: EXHIBITIONS
_Chapter 14: Birthday_
255: Observing the spectacle for the first time was the seven-year-old Prince of Wales: _Liverpool Mercury_ , 22 May 1849, 325.
256:... "the most beautiful dress at the drawing-room": _Liverpool_ _Mercury_ 22 May 1849, 325.
256:... the Queen required dresses of British manufacture at all her drawing rooms: Weintraub, _Victoria_ 199.
257: Albert had been her sole confidant and her private secretary: Weintraub, _Victoria_ 170.
257: "It is you who have entirely formed me": Weintraub, _Victoria_ 170.
257: "The Prince is become so identified with the Queen": Greville 1:323.
257:... the Cambridges absented themselves from the Court in a huff: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 220.
257: "I was forced to give him a strong push and drive him down a few steps": Gill 208.
258: "The life I led then was so artificial and superficial and yet I thought I was happy": Charlot 215.
258:... he kept the keys and constantly checked the locks: Jerrold, _Married Life_ 85–6.
258: The Queen... thought infants unpleasantly "frog-like": St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 167.
258:... she "only very exceptionally" found conversation with her children "either agreeable or easy": Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 184.
258: "I am coming more and more convinced... that the only true happiness in this world is to be found in the domestic circle": St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 204.
259:... he set to work and replaced the bureaucratic anarchy of the three competing household departments: Gill 197–8.
259:... he made the monarchy profitable, removing it forever from the chronic indebtedness that had plagued the Queen's royal uncles: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 182.
259: By 1843, they wanted even more seclusion—a residence bought with their own funds, and thus free of government administration: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 185.
259: "a pretty little Castle in the old Scotch style": Victoria, _Leaves_ 59.
260: "The papers... are most kind and gratifying": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:27.
260: The population, employment, exports, and gross national product all shot up: Evans 74.
261: "Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!" _Punch_ 5:260 (1843).
262: No one knew exactly where the fungal disease _Phytophthora infes-_ _tans_ , or potato blight, came from: Donnelly 41.
262:... in a month, a third of that country's overwhelmingly predominant crop transmogrified into a stinking, inedible goo: Donnelly 41–3; Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 94–102.
262: Disraeli "hacked and mangled Peel with the most unsparing severity": Greville 2:117.
263: Ultimately, Peel won—and lost: Hilton 511–513.
263:... "rotten potatoes have done it all": Greville 2:350.
263: He continued importing food, but demanded that local relief committees buy the food at market price: Donnelly 49.
263:... he allowed public works to continue, but government loans ceased completely: Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 105.
263:... fever ravaged the population: Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 187–188.
264: "The great evil with which we have to contend," declared Trev-elyan at the end of 1846, is "not the physical evil of the famine": Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 156.
264: "The state of Ireland is most alarming": James Murphy 61.
264:... the suffering during the first few months of 1849 was among the worst of all: Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger 377_.
264: In the end, one million died: Saville 70.
265: Victoria's royal palaces became aristocratic refugee camps: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 222.
265: That month, the Chartists announced that they planned to march: Saville 91.
265: The troops in the capital were doubled and stationed out of sight at strategic points across the city, concentrating on the bridges over the Thames, upon which artillery was trained: Chase 300; Saville 109; St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 223.
265: Eighty-five thousand men were sworn in as special constables—a government masterstroke, ensuring that the middle class, unlike the French middle class, would remain squarely with the state: Saville 109, 112, 227.
265:... 22-day-old Princess Louise: Jerrold, _Married Life_ 205.
265:... estimates of the crowd differ widely: Dorothy Thompson, in _The Chartists_ , guesses 20,000; Malcolm Chase, in his _Chartism: A New History_ , 150,000. Thompson 325, Chase 302.
266:... it was found (after a suspiciously quick count) to have less than a third of the six million signatures claimed: Chase 313.
266: "We had our revolution yesterday, and it went up in smoke": Albert, _Letters_ 135.
266:... Young Ireland, a group who differed from the O'Connellites in their willingness to use physical force repeal the union: Sloan 162.
266: "The shock awakened mankind": Sloan 209.
266: Lord Clarendon, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was deeply alarmed by all this activity: Scherer 172–3.
266:... an excited crowd of six thousand: Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 353.
267: Smith O'Brien forbade them to fell trees without the permission of the owners of the nearby estates: Sloan 258.
267: "This announcement gave a death-blow to the entire movement": Sloan 258.
267:... the _Times_ dismissively immortalizing the event as the "cabbage-patch revolt": Sloan 285.
268: She would ride again today, bringing Alice, Affie, and Lenchen with her: All newspaper accounts of this attempt are wrong about which of Victoria's children actually rode with her that day, most of them stating that Vicky, Bertie, and Helena were in the carriage. Victoria is quite clear on the matter, however, in her letter the next day to uncle Leopold: Alice, Affie, and Lenchen were the ones riding with her. Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:220.
268:... the presence of the royal landau at the Palace steps signaled silently and almost supernaturally the Queen's intent to ride: _Morning Chronicle_ 21 May 1849, 5.
268:... nursemaids and footmen helped the children, and then Victoria and her maid of honor Flora MacDonald, into the carriage: Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:220.
_Chapter 15: The Man from Adare_
269: He was an Irishman, having left Ireland for London at around the beginning of the famine: _Morning Chronicle_ 26 May 1849, 3.
269: He was a working man, as his corduroy trousers, fustian jacket, and greasy cap made clear at a glance: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5; _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1849, 7.
270: He had been whittling for some time, shaping a chunk of wood into something like the stock of a pistol: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
270: He had actually encouraged his long-suffering landlord, Daniel O'Keefe... to arrest him for debt: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5; _Daily_ _News_ 21 May 1849, 5.
270: "Between the two of us," said Bridget O'Keefe, "we managed to keep him": _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
271:... around 1826 they died or simply abandoned the infant to the Protestant Orphan Society at Cork: _Morning Chronicle_ 26 May 1849, 3. Hamilton's age is variously reported, ranging from 22 to 28 on the day of the attack. Trial records from the Old Bailey state him to be 23 on 11 June 1849. _(Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 5; _Morning_ _Chronicle_ 15 June 1849, 7; "William Hamilton"; _Morning Chronicle_ 26 May 1849, 3.
271:... a Protestant farmer outside of Adare, near Limerick: _Morning_ _Chronicle_ 26 May 1849, 3.
271:... his employer sold the farm and emigrated to Canada with his family: The farmer is identified in the _Morning Chronicle_ 26 May 1849, 3 as Phillip Rynard of Graigue, Adare Parish, and as having emigrated to America. Carolyn Heald identifies Philip Raynard, formerly of Graigue, Adare Parish, as an immigrant to Ontario, Canada: Heald 60.
271:... "it was not right to serve under petticoat government": _Morning_ _Chronicle_ 26 May 1849, 3.
272:... the time "of Prince Louis Napoleon's escape from Ham": _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
272:... his arrest was not political, but for being out too late one night: According to a police report the day after his arrest: TNA PRO MEPO 3/19B.
272: Hamilton hadn't "worked seven weeks since Christmas": _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
272: "Why, Dan has got an old pistol": _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
272: It was a pocket-sized, with a three-inch brass screw-barrel: _Trew-_ _man's Exeter Flying Post_ 24 May 1849, 2.
273:... "not the best sort of powder": _Times_ May 1849, 5.
273:... "you must stop at home": _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
273: By six, he was standing near the bottom of Constitution Hill: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
274:... "she has not come yet": _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
274: Hamilton strode up to the palings and spoke to both the woman and to a muscular man on the other side of the fence: _Morning Chronicle_ 21 May 1849, 5; _Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 5.
274: The man, deafened, felt something whizz past his ear and realized his face was scorched: _Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 5.
274: "Renwick," she said, "what is that?": _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
275:... "Thank God," he said to Victoria, "you are safe": _Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 5.
275:... George Moulder, Green Park's head park-keeper, had been standing just twelve yards from Hamilton as the Queen passed: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
275: A police constable named Topley, and a private in the Life Guards, then vaulted the palings: _Morning Chronicle_ 21 May 1849, 5.
275:... the great majority jumped to the conclusion that she had been hit: _Lloyd's Weekly_ 20 May 1849, 7; _Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 5.
276: Wemyss by this time was already certain that there had been no bullet in the pistol: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
276:... his name was William Hamilton, aged twenty-four—an Irishman from Adare, County Limerick: _Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 5.
276:... he had no friends or relatives in this country: _Belfast News-Letter_ 25 May 1849,1.
277: There was nothing in his room besides two sheets lent him by his landlady: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5: two _shirts_ , according to the _Daily_ _News_ 21 May 1849, 5.
277: "He said he did it for the purpose of getting into prison": _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
277: He did, however, send word to A Division that Hamilton be placed on suicide watch: _Morning Chronicle_ 21 May 1849, 5.
278: "... the routine of a Royal birthday received a vast and visible stimulus from the impulse of public sympathy": _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
278:... "the indignation, loyalty, and affection this act has called forth is very gratifying and touching": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:220.
278: The police searched the area exhaustively for a bullet: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
278: The Queen's equerry Wemyss... was unscathed: _Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 5.
278: And a thorough search of Hamilton produced a small amount of gunpowder: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
279: "I hope that you will not have been alarmed by the account of the occurrence which took place on Saturday": Victoria, _Letters_ 2:220.
279: Hamilton's attempt was designated an "absurdity," "an exasperating piece of folly": _Era_ 20 May 1849, 12; _Times_ 21 May 1849, 4.
279: "The man who commits such an act in this country should be flogged at the cart's tail": _Era_ 20 May 1840,12.
279:... the _Daily News..._ acknowledged the wickedness of pointing a pistol at "a person every way so sacred, in domestic as in political life, as that of her Majesty": _Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 4.
279:... "it has been found that there is no reason to accuse the person who discharged the pistol of a treasonable attempt": "Firing at the Queen."
279: "The accident, or the fact, of the man Hamilton's being an Irishman may be made the theme of animadversion": _Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 4.
280: The Irish newspapers were particularly adamant in asserting that Hamilton had no intention of killing the Queen: _Freeman's Journal_ 22 May 1849, 2.
280: One attempted to claim that Hamilton might not be Irish at all: _Belfast News-Letter_ 25 May 1849, 2.
280: The _Limerick Chronicle_ investigated and found that though Hamilton claimed to be from Adare, he had no relatives there. _Limerick Chronicle_ 23 May 1849, rpt. in _Freeman's Journal_ 25 May 1849, 5.
280: "Hamilton was a native of Cork, and no relative of any persons at or near Adare": Limerick Chronicle, rpt. in Morning Chronicle 26 May 1849, 3.
280: The _Cork Constitution_ quickly responded that the secretaries of the Cork Orphan Asylum denied that anyone named William Hamilton had passed through there: _Cork Constitution_ , rpt. in _Daily News 2_ June 1849, 2.
280: "The Corkonians are most anxious to disclaim having reared the fellow who fired at the Queen": _Daily News 2_ June 1849, 2.
280: "... fortunately there are no recent event [sic] which could afford political colour or excitement to a crime of this kind": _Daily News_ 21 May 1849, 4.
281:... "this country enjoys a complete immunity from any of those dreadful conflicts to which the rest of Europe is subjected": _Illustrated London News_ 26 May 1849, 342.
281: "Man shot, tried to shoot dear Mamma, must be punished": Victoria, _Letters_ 2:220.
281: The Attorney General, John Jervis, examined witnesses for three hours: _Belfast News-Letter_ 25 May 1849, 1.
281: All of the O'Keefes—Daniel, Bridget, and young Edward—testified, but Hamilton's mysterious young protectress in the milk line was nowhere to be seen: _Times_ 21 May 1849, 5.
282: "It is, perhaps, to be regretted that the framers of the bill did not provide that transportation _and_ flogging should be the punishment": _Illustrated London News_ 26 May 1849, 335.
282: Victoria and Albert formalized their plans for visiting Ireland, which they both had desired to do as early as summer 1843: James Murphy _77_.
283: "Since Her Majesty came to the throne, there has been no period more politically propitious for her coming here than the present one": Martin 2:192.
284:... their visit would not be a state visit at all, but "one having more the character of a yachting excursion": James Murphy 79.
284:... similar indeed to an exhibition in Paris from which Cole had just returned: James 195.
284: "I asked the Prince... if he had considered if the Exhibition should be a National or an International Exhibition": Henry Cole 1:124–25.
286: Hamilton quietly pled guilty: _Preston Chronicle_ 16 June 1849, 6.
286: "The Queen might be perfectly assured of her personal safety": _Morning Chronicle_ 15 June 1849, 7.
286: Two years before, Colonial Secretary Henry Gray had completely reconsidered and revised the government's policy on transportation: Hughes 552–53.
287: Hamilton was finally shipped aboard the convict ship _Ramillies_ to Fre-mantle, Western Australia: Convict Transportation Register Database.
287:... his landlord, Daniel O'Keefe, appeared before the judges at the Old Bailey: _Examiner_ 16 June 1849, 381.
287:... "this idolatry of the martyrs of crime and saints of the Newgate Calendar": _Punch_ 16:251 (1849).
287:... surprising the town's inhabitants, who expected them to arrive the next day: Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 393.
287:... the servants of one landowner lost control of their bonfire: Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 393.
288: She landed in Cove the next day, and at the request of local officials, she ordered it renamed Queenstown: James Murphy 88.
288: "the crowd is a noisy, excitable, but very good humored one, running and pushing about, and laughing, talking, and shrieking": Victoria, _Leaves_ 161.
288:... "balconies were filled as if by magic": _Illustrated London News_ 11 August 1849, 88.
288: "... thousands and thousands": James Murphy 89.
289: "Ah, Queen dear, make one of them Prince Patrick and Ireland will die for you": Woodham-Smith _Great Hunger_ 397.
289: "... no escort of dragoons followed": _Illustrated London News_ 11 August 1849, 88.
289: "Arrah! Victoria, will you stand up, and let us have a look at you?": _Illustrated London News_ 11 August 1849, 89.
289:... a "brawny wag" outside Trinity College, who with "enthusiastic attachment" shouted "Bravo, Albert!": _Illustrated London News_ 11 August 1849, 87.
290: "You see more ragged and wretched people here than I ever saw anywhere else": Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 397.
290: Her first procession through Dublin was "a never to be forgotten scene": James Murphy 90.
290: "Mighty Monarch, pardon Smith O'Brien": _Illustrated London News_ 11 August 1849, 87.
290: Members of Dublin secret societies—remnants of the clubs promoted by Young Ireland—came up with a desperate plot to kidnap Victoria: Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 387.
290:... "even the ex-Clubbists, who threatened broken heads and windows before the Queen came, are now among the most loyal of her subjects": Maxwell 1:302.
290: The nationalist and Tory press, relentlessly hostile to the Queen during the early part of her visit, finally gave in: Loughlin 504.
291:... "the more the citizens of Dublin see Queen Victoria, the more she wins their affections": Woodham-Smith, _Great Hunger_ 399.
291:... "swarming around their queen like bees": _Illustrated London News_ 18 August 1849,126.
291:... "ran along the deck with the sprightliness of a young girl": _Times_ 13 August 1849, 5.
291: "... the pealing of cannon and the loudest concert of human voices that ever ascended from a people in praise of any Monarch": _Illustrated London News_ 18 August 1849, 126.
291: John Bright, the radical MP from Birmingham, was there, and was overcome: James Murphy 96.
291: "There is not an individual in Dublin that does not take as a personal compliment to himself the Queen's having gone upon the paddle-box and order the royal standard to be lowered": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:226.
291: The _Times_ declared that the Queen had put an end to Irish faction and civil discord": _Times_ 15 August 1849, 4.
291: "... as long as Queen Victoria lives (may she live to see her greatgrandchildren!) there will be no disaffection—no disloyalty in Ireland." _Illustrated London News_ 18 August 1849, 122.
_Chapter 16: Cut and Thrust_
293: The cabmen and tradesmen on the fringe of the Westminster parks, as well as the policemen of A Division, all knew him by sight: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
293:... well-appointed apartments on the corner of Piccadilly and Duke Street St. James: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8; 29 June 1850, 8.
293: He always wore the same impeccable suit of clothing: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8; _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 5.
294: The bright colors... marked him as a dandy; Prince Albert described him that way to Baron Stockmar: Martin 2:285.
294: His gait seemed to defy gravity: "Robert Pate."
294:... "it was astonishing how he preserved his equilibrium": "Robert Pate."
294: An inspector from A Division... nicknamed him "cut and thrust": _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
294:... abruptly stopping in his tracks, gazing about him, and then, as if suddenly aware he was being watched, running off as fast as he could: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
294: "I meet him often in the parks": _Era 7_ July 1850, 9.
294: Husbands would caution their wives not to draw his attention, for fear of violent consequences: "Robert Pate."
294: Those few that acknowledged him earned from him an angry glare and a spasmodic shake of his stick: "Robert Pate."
295: When the clock in the tower of St. James's Palace chimed quarter past three, Pate stopped whatever he was doing: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
295: In the first pile were nine shillings, each queen's head up: "Robert Pate."
295: There, at exactly the same spot, Pate would descend from the cab, jump over a ditch, and disappear through thick gorse bushes: "Robert Pate."
295: He would shout conflicting commands to the driver: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
295: The cabman, mystified by his daily customer, would spy on Pate through the trap at his feet, and would see him either wholly catatonic or in frantic motion: "Robert Pate."
295: "I did not know what performance it was": "Robert Pate."
295: At Barnes Common, Pate would again leap out and shun every path, plunging instead into the deepest undergrowth: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
296: The sixpence and penny were for tolls at the bridges: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7; "Robert Pate." The cabman and Pate's manservant differ as to the exact amount.
296: "Mr. Pate did not want me": "Robert Pate."
296: Robert Francis Pate Senior[,] made his fortune as a corn factor, or grain dealer, in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8.
296: He accepted nomination eagerly, provided the invitation was "the unanimous desire of the University": James 173.
297: Peel persuaded him to stay in: James 173–4.
297: Cambridge welcomed the two deliriously: _Times_ 6 July 1847, 5.
297: Victoria... fought breaking into a smile of mingled joy and embarrassment at the "almost absurd" position she found herself in when Albert... welcomed her: Bolitho 182; Bunsen 2:136; Martin 1:396.
297: She replied, assuring the university "of my entire _approbation_ " of Cambridge's choice of Chancellor, laying particular emphasis on that last word: _Times_ 6 July 1847, 5; Jerrold, _Married Life_ 299.
297: Albert turned out to be the one of the best Chancellors Cambridge ever had, guiding the university's curriculum into the modern age: Gill 244.
297: And Robert Francis Pate Senior... was on that day introduced to both Prince and Queen: Walford 228.
297:... sending him to be trained as a gentleman at a school in Norwich: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
297: Pate set his son up in the Queen's service as a cornet in the prestigious 10th Hussars: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8; 12 July 1850, 7.
298: He was odd from the start, but was at first tolerated and even liked by his fellows: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
298:... Pate threatened to "make a hole in the river": _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
298: He avoided mess with his fellows and instead took long and solitary walks: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
298:... the cook and the messman, he convinced himself, were trying to poison him: _Times 12_ July 1850, 7; "Robert Pate."
298: Pate fled instead London with little more than the clothes he wore: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 5; _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 5.
298: To his astonished father, he explained that he was a hunted man: _Times 12_ July 1850, 5.
298: He was arrested upon his return: _Morning Chronicle 12_ July 1850, 5.
298:... his attempts at explaining himself were so incoherent that his commanding officers refused to prosecute him: _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
298:... he wrote to Pate Senior a letter asking "in as delicate a manner as I could" for him to take his son away: _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
298:... he granted Pate a leave of absence: _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
298:... for £1800 he quickly sold his Lieutenant's commission and set himself up in comfortable apartments in Jermyn Street: _Reynolds's_ _Weekly_ 14 July 1850, 5; "Robert Pate."
299:... the younger Pate was a man of extremely temperate habits, and obsessively regular in paying his bills: _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
299:... creditors began to apply to his father for payment: _Times 12_ July 1850, 7; "Robert Pate"; _Reynolds's Weekly_ 14 July 1850, 5.
299:... he was alarmed by the change that had come over his son: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7; "Robert Pate."
299: A doctor in Brighton recommended that he see the most celebrated mad-doctor of all: "Robert Pate."
299: His younger sister had moved from Wisbech to London to live with a family friend, the eminent surgeon James Startin: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 6.
299:... it did not take long before James Startin realized that the wild man whose eccentricities in the parks he had often witnessed was his future sister-in-law's brother: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7; "Robert Pate."
299:... he spoke in a "short choking manner," with wild eyes and expression, and then would lapse into sullen silence: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 6; "Robert Pate"; _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
299:... The O'Gorman Mahon... understood Pate to be a maniac from their first conversation: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 14 July 1850, 5; _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7; _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 6.
300:... Conolly acknowledged that the man was certainly mad—but advised his father to do nothing: _Times_ 12 July 1850, "Robert Pate."
300: James Startin began to fear that he would commit a violent act upon himself or his relatives: _Times_ 12 July, 7; "Robert Pate."
300: "I told my foreman I had great apprehensions that Captain Pate, as I always called him, was losing his senses": "Robert Pate."
300: "I had never seen him so excited as on this day": _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
300: "There was something peculiar in the manner in which he turned about and walked away": "Robert Pate."
301: The Duke of Cambridge was seriously ill with "gastric fever"—most likely typhoid: Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:257.
302:... Victoria was mortified to discover that the Duchess had refused to rise at a dinner where a toast to Albert was given: Fulford 309–11.
302: She would be to Victoria a "link with bygone times and generations... we all looked upon her as a sort of grandmother": Purdue, "Daughters."
303:... "Much was done to set Mamma against her": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:273.
303:... her third son—her favorite son, as it turned out: Frankland.
304: George Anson, thirty-seven years old and apparently completely healthy, complained to his wife of a pain over his eye and immediately collapsed: Martin 2:230.
304:... they both broke down and were, according to Lady Lyttelton, "in floods of tears, and quite shut up": Lyttelton 393.
305: And Peel was a mentor to the young Prince: James 151.
305:... she had welcomed John Russell's Whig ministry with good grace: Weintraub, _Victoria_ 189.
305: Peel _was_ the government, keeping " _all_ in his own hands": Victoria's Journal 2 July 1846, qtd. in Longford 188.
306:... her husband, a German and thus, he once told Albert to his face, unable to understand British interests: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 245.
306: He regularly neglected to send the Queen dispatches until after he had issued them: Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 204; St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 247.
306: In the ongoing dispute between Prussia and Denmark, they favored Prussia, and Palmerston Denmark. When the states of Italy rose up against their Austrian rulers, they favored Austria, and Palmerston Italy: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 248.
306:... he had actually helped arm Garibaldi the year before, without consulting the Queen or even his Cabinet colleagues: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 249; Longford 200.
306: "I felt really I could hardly go on with him": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:195.
307: Pacifico claimed that he had lost the enormous sum of £32,000 in the conflagration: Ridley 507.
307: Don Pacifico's parents were—and perhaps he was—born in Gibraltar: Derek Taylor 9,17.
307: When the Greek government failed to recompense him, he turned to the British consul, who brought the matter to Palmerston: For details of the Don Pacifico affair, see Ridley 486–528; Derek Taylor throughout.
307: Palmerston agreed that Greece owed Pacifico the full amount—plus another £500 for his suffering: Ridley 508.
307:... in mid-January 1850, when the British Mediterranean fleet stormed into Athens's waters with more ships than Nelson had commanded at the Battle of the Nile: Martin 2:269.
307: Opinion in Britain was divided as to whether Don Pacifico or Greece was the true victim: Ridley 515.
308: The French ambassador promptly returned to France for consultations; the Russians contemplated recalling their own ambassador: Derek Taylor 198.
308: Before this debate, Victoria and Albert had insisted that Palm-erston leave the Foreign Office: Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:235–6.
308: He proposed reshuffling the Cabinet completely: Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:235–37.
309: Two months later... the royal couple met again with Russell and modified their plans: Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:243–4.
309: "It is impossible to say at this moment what will be the result": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:248.
309: "We are in a crisis," Victoria wrote to uncle Leopold: Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:251.
309: Palmerston himself later claimed he could hardly remember such a "display of intellect, oratory and high and dignified feeling": Ashley 2:161.
310: "... the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty's government has been regulated have been such as were calculated to maintain the honour and dignity of this country": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:248; _Times_ 24 June 1850, 3.
310:... a vote against Palmerston was a vote for "Cossack domination": _Times_ 26 June 1850, 2.
310: Speaking for four and a half hours with few notes and no pause for the water or oranges set beside him: Roebuck 242; Ridley 522.
311: "It is like shooting a policeman": _Times_ 26 June 1850, 4.
311: His policy had bettered mankind: _Times_ 26 June 1850, 5.
311: "... as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he could say _Civis Romanus sum"_ : Ridley 524.
311: "... a most brilliant speech," she admitted to her journal: Longford 201.
311: Russell was ecstatic about it—"one of the most masterly ever delivered," he wrote: Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:252.
311: The Stranger's Gallery was packed more tightly than ever: _Times_ 27 June 1850, 2.
312: "We are living at a period of the most wonderful transition": Albert, _Addresses_ 60.
312: He "appears to be almost the only person who has considered the subject both as a whole and in its details": Martin 2:202.
312: "The Prince's sleep is again as bad as ever, and he looks very ill of an evening": Martin 2:243.
312:... Albert had given £500 and Victoria £1,000: ffrench 46.
313:... he had studied the alternatives and was now absolutely committed to that choice: Cole 1:166–7.
313: The residents of Knightsbridge adjoining the site raised a stink: ffrench _77;_ Christopher Hobhouse 18.
313:... a classic demonstration of the broth-destroying propensity of too many cooks: Cole 1:163.
313:... they "freely"—in both senses of the term—"availed themselves of the most valuable suggestions": _Times_ 3 June 1850, 8.
313:... a sheet-iron dome 200 feet in diameter and 150 feet high: Christopher Hobhouse 16.
313:... "a monster balloon in the process of inflation": _Times_ 21 June 1850, 8.
313:... a squat and sprawling warehouse that would take an estimated 19 million bricks to build: Cole 1:164; Leapman 52; ffrench 73. Others claim 15 million: Strutt 9; Christopher Hobhouse 16; Auerbach 42.
314:... he "would become associated in the minds of the people not with a benefit, but with an injury": _Times_ 27 June 1850, 5.
314:... a "tubercle" on "the lungs of this huge metropolis": Auerbach 43; _Times_ 19 March 1850, 3.
314: He had opposed the 1832 Reform Bill; he was dead set against the railways; he despised Free Trade: Auerbach 43.
314: "... one of the greatest humbugs, one of the greatest frauds, one of the greatest absurdities ever known": _Times_ 19 June 1850, 4.
314:... a magnet to attract to London the dregs of foreign lands: Papists, thieves, anarchists, and secret societies bent on assassinating the Queen: Christopher Hobhouse 20.
314: "The Exhibition is now attacked furiously by _The Times"_ : Martin 2:235.
_Chapter 17: The Most Disgraceful and Cowardly Thing That Has Ever Been Done_
315:... that man had refused to give way, throwing out his arm every time Pate tried to pass him: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8; 12 July 1850, 7.
316:... when alerted that the Queen would be going out, they were under orders to get there first and patrol the area: Geraghty 30.
316:... no one had alerted the police: RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1850, 27 June 1850.
316: They trotted to the edge of the street and then stopped, awaiting their opportunity to make the tight turn onto busy Piccadilly: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
316:... such a situation, she later wrote, "always makes me think more than usually of the possibility of an attempt being made on me": Geraghty 30.
316:... brought it slashing down on the right side of the Queen's head, bending the wire of her light summer bonnet, the metal ferrule at the cane's tip audibly smacking her forehead: Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:253; _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8.
317: Victoria instinctively raised her hand to her bonnet and recoiled away from Pate, falling into the laps of her alarmed children: _Times_ 6 July 1850, 8; _Morning Chronicle_ 28 June 1850, 5; Geraghty 30.
317: Robert Renwick leapt up, leaned forward, and seized Pate by the collar: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
317: Those around him grabbed hold of him as well: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8.
317: "They have got the man," Fanny Jocelyn told Victoria: Geraghty 30.
317: To the crowd, it seemed as if the Queen was simply adjusting her bonnet: _Morning Chronicle_ 28 June 1850, 5.
317: One man threw a vicious punch at Pate's face and blood gushed from his nose: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 5.
317: Lady Jocelyn burst into tears, and the Prince of Wales's face went red: Longford 192.
317:... Colonel Grey galloped to Victoria's side, catching behind him the sight of the crowd to the left rushing upon Pate: "Robert Pate."
317: Voices began to call for a lynching: _Daily News_ 28 June 1850, 4.
317: James Silver of A Division... noticed the seething crowd and heard a voice: "The villain has struck the Queen!": _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
317: He instantly ran to the spot, plunged into the crowd, and, with some difficulty and with the help of other constables drawn by the commotion, rescued him from the chaotic assault: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
318:... they passed Messrs. Fortnum and Mason's emporium, and Pate could steal a look at his elegant rooms above them: _Morning Chronicle_ 28 June 1850, 5.
318:... Victoria directed her visibly mortified equerry Charles Grey to ride through the parks and find Albert: Geraghty 31.
318: She sent Fanny Jocelyn back to Cambridge House to inform the Duchess what had just happened: _Leeds Mercury_ 29 June 1850, 5.
318: She sent for her physician, James Clark, to tend to her wound—which was by now throbbing so painfully that she retired upstairs to treat it herself with arnica: _Times_ 6 July 1850, 8; Geraghty 31.
318: Home Secretary George Grey, "greatly distressed and in tears," came to her later that evening—and managed to compose himself enough to return to Commons and make his own contribution to the debate: Rowell 31; _Times_ 28 June 1850, 4.
318: Sir James Clark arrived and examined the Queen: he found a "considerable tumor" on her brow: _Examiner_ 6 July 1850, 428; _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
318: "Certainly not: if I do not go, it will be thought I am seriously hurt, and people will be distressed and alarmed": "The Character of Queen Victoria," 318.
319: "The feeling of _all_ classes [is] admirable," she wrote that night in her journal, "the lowest of the low being _most_ indignant": Rowell 31.
319:... "one of the most magnificent demonstrations of loyalty it has ever been our fortune to witness": _Morning Chronicle_ 28 June 1850, 5.
319:... "the mark of the ruffian's violence plainly visible on her forehead": _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8.
319: "I never heard such shouting": _Punch_ 19:18 (1850).
319: When Madame Viardot reached the line "Frustrate their knavish tricks," the crowd roared: _Morning Chronicle_ 28 June 1850, 5.
320: "The small stick with which the prisoner struck the blow was not thicker than an ordinary goosequill": _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8.
320: Pate's cane—a type known as a partridge cane—was longer, heavier, and much thicker than the newspaper claimed: _Lloyd's Weekly 7_ July 1850, 7; _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
320: Victoria long remembered the injury Pate had given her: a walnut-sized welt and a scar that lasted ten years: _Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper_ 30 June 1850, 12; Gathorne-Hardy 1:244.
320: "... it is very hard and very horrid that I a woman": Geraghty 30.
320:... the Queen until the end of her life considered this one the meanest and most ignoble—"far worse," she wrote, "than an attempt to shoot": Geraghty 31.
321: "I own it makes me nervous out driving, and I start at any person coming near the carriage": Victoria, _Letters_ (first series) 2:253.
321: At Vine Street station, Pate was searched: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8.
321: The several witnesses to the assault who came with him to the station were questioned, and Pate was charged with assaulting the Queen: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8.
321: Pate... asserted emphatically "those men cannot prove whether I struck her head or her bonnet": _Morning Chronicle_ 28 June 1850, 5.
321:... a little wire and woven horsehair: "Robert Pate."
322: Otway had just been promoted to Superintendent of C Division: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8.
322: Field, already a legend, was very soon to become an even greater one: Collins 204, 206–7.
322: Field was known for his roving eye, which caught all in a glance: Dickens, Amusements 357–369.
322: He made note of Pate's obsessive neatness. He also confiscated a number of Pate's papers: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 8.
322:... he brought them to the Home Office examination the next day, but did not bring them forward: _Reynolds's Weekly News_ 30 June 1850,1.
322: Pate could offer no motive for striking the Queen besides claiming "felt very low for some time past": _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
322: "I wish to Heaven I had been at your right hand yesterday, and then this should not have happened": _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
322:... he sat up and observed the comings and goings at the station house: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
323: At 12:15 the next day, Superintendent Otway personally escorted Pate out of the station: _Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper_ 30 June 1850,12.
323: Pate Senior was not there; he would arrive from Wisbech later that afternoon: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
323: Richard Mayne—now senior Chief Commissioner since the retirement of Charles Rowan earlier in the year—was to read the charge: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8; Emsley.
323:... Pate sat and stared vacantly: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 30 June 1850, 1.
323: Jervis brought forward just enough witnesses... to connect Pate with the attack and to justify a remand: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
323: John Huddleston requested more time than that, requesting a postponement until Friday 5 July: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
324: Pate drew up a list of books he wished transferred from his library at home to Clerkenwell: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
324: Otway then led Pate out the front door of the Home Office and directly into an unruly mob: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
324: Commissioner Hay had positioned a number of police before the Home Office to control the crowd: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 30 June 1850,1.
324:... the "absorbing topic of conversation" throughout London: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 8.
324: William Gladstone spoke that Thursday evening, attacking Palmerston's brutal nationalism with a visionary appeal to a brotherhood of nations: _Times_ 28 June 1850, 5.
324: Gladstone was interrupted often by Palmerston's enthusiastic supporters, as were all of Palmerston's opponents: Ridley 524.
325: Crowds crammed the avenues outside the entrances to the House: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 2.
325:... "the House and country only wish to hear Peel, Lord John, and Dizzy; all others are only bores": Roebuck 242.
325: Cockburn deftly and with legal precision deflected Gladstone's attack, defending item by item Palmerston's actions in Greece and throughout Europe: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 2–3.
325: Robert Peel... managed to chide Palmerston's policy and yet conciliate the Whig government: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 4–5.
325: John Russell, speaking next, had an easy job of it: _Times_ 29 June 1850,5.
325: In a speech containing little of his trademark wit, he explained why he would vote as Peel did: _Times_ 29 June 1850, 5–6.
326:... 250 supporters would enthusiastically sing the national anthem and cheer vociferously the lines "Confound their politics,/Frustrate their knavish tricks": Ridley 525.
326:... he "would have consummated his fiendish scheme by violence had not the miraculous efforts of his victim and such assistance attracted by her screams, saved her": Ridley 532.
326: Albert and Victoria, with the help of Stockmar, tried again a month later, setting out in a memo for Palmerston the behavior they expected in a foreign minister: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 250–1.
326: Russell thought the memo so humiliating that Palmerston would have to resign rather than accept it: Ridley 532.
327: "I consider that man to be the happiest in England at this moment": Roebuck 242.
327: His wife Julia was feeling unwell and so she remained in bed, reading a newspaper account of his speech: Gash 697.
327: Playfair... had been appointed upon Peel's recommendation Special Commissioner for the Exhibition: Davis 71; Auerbach 70–1.
328: They discussed the mounting opposition to the Hyde Park site, and resolved that they would hold the Exhibition there or nowhere: RC/8/A, minutes for 29 June 1850, np.
328: "Depend upon it," he said, "the House of Commons is a timid body": Cole Henry 167.
328: Joseph Paxton... approached Henry Cole with a revolutionary idea for the Exhibition building: Davis 81.
328: Three days later, bored in the middle of a railway director's meeting in Derby, Paxton created the most famous doodle in history: Christopher Hobhouse 28; Auerbach 48; ffrench 91.
328: On the train from Derby he had run into the engineer Robert Stevenson—of the Building Committee—and quickly gained his support: Auerbach 49; Christopher Hobhouse 32.
328: He met with the vice-chairman of the Commission, Earl Granville, who promised to submit the plan to the Commissioners: Christopher Hobhouse 34.
328: "I believe nothing can stand against my plans, _everybody_ likes them": Auerbach 49.
328: He also forwarded a set of plans to Peel: ffrench 97.
329:... they referred Paxton's plans to them: Christopher Hobhouse 35.
329: The Commission adjourned at 1:15: according to the "Court Circular": _Times_ 1 July 1850, 4; it adjourned at 3:00, according to Norman Gash: Gash 697.
329:... he kissed his wife good-bye and set off with his groom for his customary ride around the Parks: Gash 697; _Times_ 1 July 1850, 5.
329: The horse he mounted was new to him—an eight-year-old which a friend had purchased for him two months before, from Tattersall's: Gash 697; _Illustrated London News_ 17 (1850): 10.
329: Peel's coachman was suspicious about the horse, and had recommended Peel not ride it: Gash 697.
329: Peel and his groom passed through St. James's Park and stopped at Buckingham Palace: For Peel's ride, see Gash 697–701; _Times_ 1 July 1850, 5; Daily News 1 July 1850, 5; _Illustrated London News_ 17 (1850): 10.
330: The two men who had sat him up, as well as the two doctors, now supported Peel: _Times_ 1 July 1850, 5. According to the _Illustrated London News_ , a doctor from St. George's Hospital accompanied Peel home: 17 (1850): 10.
330:... a patent hydraulic bed was set up in the same room: _Illustrated London News_ 17 (1850): 10.
330: "Sir Robert Peel has met with a severe accident by falling from his horse": Gash 698–99.
330: Albert and the Prince of Prussia rushed to Whitehall Gardens as soon as they heard of his fall: _Times_ 1 July 1850, 5.
330: "We have, alas! now another cause of much greater anxiety in the person of our excellent Sir Robert Peel": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:253.
330: Peel told them on the day of the accident that his injury was worse than they realized, and that he would not survive it: Gash 699.
331: "That silent, solemn crowd betokened the unknown depth to which love and reverence for the great practical statesman had sunk in the minds of humble English men and women": _Illustrated London_ _News_ 17 (1850): 3.
331: He ate a little and even walked around the room with assistance: Gash 701.
331:... he held each of his children's hands in turn, and whispered his good-byes to them, the words "God bless you!" scarcely audible: Illustrated London News 17 (1850): 10.
331: His wife Julia, overwhelmed, was led from the room: Gash 701.
331: Peel's death..."absorbed every other subject of interest": Greville 2:458.
332: "All persons agree that there has never been an instance of such general gloom and regret": Bunsen 2:142.
332: "He has felt, and feels, Sir Robert's loss _dreadfully"_ : Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:256.
332: "Now our Exhibition is to be driven from London": Albert to Ernst, 4 July 1850, qtd. in Auerbach 46.
332: Sibthorp laid into the greatest trash, fraud, and imposition "palmed upon" the people of Britain: _Times_ 5 July 1850, 3.
333:... Peel, "that eminent man, who never neglected any duty... which he considered conducive to the public good": _Times_ 5 July 1850, 4.
333: "The feeling of the house was completely altered": Lord John Russell to Albert, qtd. in Davis 78.
333: His iron-and-glass design had received a cold reception from the Exhibition's Building Committee, especially from Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Auerbach 49.
333:... Paxton's "peculiar" design would cost 10% more than a variation of their own: Davis 83.
334: "Perhaps I might take the liberty of saying that I consider the success of the Exhibition would be considerably increased by the adoption of Mr. Paxton's plan": Cole 1:124–25.
334: On the sixteenth, the Building Committee met with the Royal Commission: _Times_ 16 July 1850, 8.
334: "In all the matters which I had in hand," Albert was able to write Stockmar four days later from Osborne, "I had triumphant success": Martin 2:247.
334:... when he returned to complete his Home Office examination on Friday morning, the fifth of July, there was no large crowd outside to hoot or hiss him: _Examiner_ 6 July 1850, 428. (Other newspapers, however, such as _Lloyd's Weekly_ —on 7 July 1850, 7—note a larger crowd.)
334:... his health suffered from lack of walking: _Times_ 6 July 1850, 8; _Examiner_ 6 July 1850, 428.
334:... he had instead spent most of the last week absorbed in his books: Manchester Examiner 6 July 1850, 4.
334:... his own counsel, with whom he hadn't spoken since his arrest: _Times_ 6 July 1850, 8.
334: Only the Queen's physician, James Clark, had anything new to add: _Times_ 6 July 1850, 8; _Examiner_ 6 July 1850, 428.
335: Huddleston, Pate's attorney, said little: _Times_ 6 July 1850, 8.
335: Monro visited Pate twice at Clerkenwell and three times in Newgate: "Robert Pate."
336: Attorney General Jervis, then, was compelled to hurry the trial along, requesting the presiding judge, Baron Alderson, to schedule Pate's trial for the next morning, 11 July: _Times_ 11 July 1850, 7.
336:... the courtroom on that morning was full but not crowded: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
336: With perfect composure he bowed slightly to the justices: _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
336:... Pate loudly pleaded not guilty: _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
336:... the effect of such an acquittal "would be that he would be imprisoned for the rest of his life": _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
337:... Cockburn in his opening admitted to the jury that he simply could not prove "that there were certain and safe grounds for believing that the prisoner at the bar was not enabled to discriminate between right and wrong": _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 5.
338:... the testimony, Cockburn argued, "might fall short of that degree of proof of insanity which would be necessary to give [Pate] immunity from the penalties of law": _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 5.
338: Pate was not vicious, but "unfortunate," and did not deserve to be visited with the full severity of the law: _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 5.
338: The defense presented a host of witnesses to Pate's traumas and idiosyncrasies while in the army: For varied accounts of the testimony in Pate's trial, see _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7; "Robert Pate"; _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 5; _Reynolds's Weekly_ 14 July 1850, 5.
338: Pate's valet, Charles Dodman, enumerated Pate's many personal eccentricities at home: _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7; "Robert Pate."
339:... Charles Mahon, better known as the "O'Gorman Mahon," testified that in his opinion Pate was a "maniac... the frequent subject of remark amongst myself and [my] companions": _Reynolds's Weekly_ 14 July 1850, 5.
339:... "he presents an example of what is not at all uncommon to me, of persons who are very devoid of mental power... who consequently persevere in no pursuit, have no object, and are unfit for all the ordinary duties of life": "Robert Pate."
339:... "Is he, in your judgment, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong?": "Robert Pate."
339: He was "subject to sudden impulses of passion": _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
340: "Be so good, Dr. Monro," Alderson snapped at him, "as not to take upon yourself the functions of the judges and the jury": _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
340:... if he were soon free, probably "unwatched and unrestrained," he would "renew his dangerous and violent proceedings": _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
341: "Did this unfortunate gentleman know it was wrong to strike the Queen on the forehead?": _Morning Chronicle 12_ July 1850, 6.
341: "A man might say that he picked a pocket from some uncontrollable impulse": _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
341:... Alderson noted Pate's eccentric habits, his "differing from other men," his mental affliction": _Times 12_ July 1850, 7.
341:... "you are as insane as it is possible for a person to be who is capable of distinguishing between right and wrong": _Morning Chronicle_ 12 July 1850, 6.
341: For all that, he told Pate, "you are to be pitied": _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
342: Pate would not be subject to the "disgraceful punishment of whipping": _Times_ 12 July 1850, 7.
342:... leading several who read the trial in the newspapers the next day... to conclude that the court had given Pate special treatment because of his social status: _Times_ 13 July 1850, 3.
342:... "one of the most successful realizations, on a large scale, of the ugly in architecture," Henry Mayhew said of it: Mayhew and Binny 234.
343: According to this letter, Pate was given an officer's room and an officer to attend upon him, had access to the governor, and had a separate exercise yard: _Daily News 9_ August 1850, 4.
343: "Pate, we are informed, is in a very delicate state of health, and he employs his time by writing letters in different languages": _Moreton Bay Courier_ 18 November 1850, 1.
_Chapter 18: Great Exhibition_
344: "I wish you _could_ have witnessed the 1st _May_ 1851": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:317.
344: "Albert's dearest name is immortalised with this _great_ conception... _his_ own": Victoria _Letters_ (first series) 2:318.
345: From early in the morning, the crowds began to assemble in numbers simply too great to count: _Times 2_ May 1851, 4; one estimate of the numbers was 700,000 (Martin 2:369).
345:... a party of Royal Sappers soon restored order: _Times 2_ May 1851, 5.
345: The irrepressible Colonel Sibthorp had been carping at the project ever since: _Times_ 5 February 1851, 4; ffrench 141; James 199.
345: "We have invited the pestilence into our dwellings, and we shall have to submit to its ravages": qtd. Leapman 65.
346: "I am more dead than alive from overwork": Martin 2:359.
346: The Tsar refused to issue passports to the Russian nobility: Longford 223.
346: "I am not easily given to panicking... but I confess to you that I would not like anyone belonging to me exposed to the imminent perils of these times": qtd. in ffrench 147.
346: "I can give no guarantee against these perils": qtd. in James 199–200.
347:... the Commissioners could not have come to "a more impolitic, a more absurd, or a more ludicrous resolution": _Daily News_ 17 April 1851, qtd. in Davis 117.
347:... "Queen Victoria is not Tiberius or Louis XI": _Times 17_ April 1851, 5.
347:... a "densely crowded mass of human beings, in the highest good humor and most enthusiastic": qtd. in Martin 2:365.
348: "The glimpse of the transept through the iron gates... gave us a sensation which I can never forget": qtd. in Martin 2:365.
348: When the Queen ascended with her family to the throne, two organs burst into the national anthem: For details of the opening ceremony see the _Times_ 2 May 1851, 4–6; Davis 126–8.
348:... sung by six hundred voices: Weintraub, _Victoria_ 219.
348: The Lord Chamberlain, perplexed as to what to do with the man, consulted with Victoria and Albert: Playfair 120.
348: They recommended that he join the diplomats who were then forming up for the great procession through the Exhibition: Martin 367n.
349: The plan had been to keep the public well clear of their route: Martin 2:367.
349:... and so they walked, hemmed in by thousands, many with tears in their eyes, all cheering deafeningly and waving handkerchiefs: 2:367.
349: "HER MAJESTY, as She Appeared on the FIRST of MAY, Surrounded by 'Horrible Conspirators and Assassins'": _Punch_ 20 (1851): 194.
349: Besides the multitudes who cheered her, the Queen could see little else: Martin 2:367–8.
349: It was a unique event, Victoria knew, "a thousand times superior" to her coronation: Martin 2:366.
350: Albert was visibly emotional, and the Queen noticed her Home Secretary was crying: _Times_ 2 May 1851, 5; Martin 2:368.
350: "It was and is a day to live for ever": Martin 2:366.
PART 4: TRIUMPH
_Chapter 19: What Does She Do with It?_
353: His controversial words about Victoria and her family both established him for a time as the people's champion: The same report of Dilke's 6 November 1871 speech, "Representation and Royalty," appears in the _Times 9_ November 1871, 6, and the _Daily News_ 10 November 1871, 6. A shorter account appears in the _Newcastle Courant_ 10 November 1871, 5.
355:... she wrote to her Prime Minister, William Gladstone, deploring the recent spate of "Gross misstatements & fabrications injurious to the credit of the Queen & to the Monarchy": Gued-alla 1:309.
355:... asking "whether he or at least some of his Colleagues shld not take an opportunity of reprobating in very strong terms such language": Guedalla 1:308.
356: In 1871, republicanism had become "a distemper," as Gladstone put it, and the "Royalty question" was one of the most vexing problems with which his ministry had to deal: Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 336; Gladstone and Granville 283.
356: The economy had slumped since 1866, and unemployment was high, particularly in London where it was exacerbated by an influx of migrants from the countryside: Nicholls 48.
356:... the landmark Reform Act of 1867... nearly doubled eligible voters and dipped eligibility down to a much larger segment of the urban working class: Rubinstein 111.
356: The fall of Emperor Louis Napoleon... and the establishment of a French Republic led to the spontaneous generation of dozens of republican clubs across the nation: Rumsey 4–8, 100–106.
356:... ready-made and enthusiastic audiences for republican speakers such as Charles Bradlaugh and trade union leader George Odger. Leventhal; Royle.
357: Victoria was plunged immediately into a chasm of grief, and then into a long-lasting depression, from which Albert devoted most of that year weaning her: Hibbert, _Queen Victoria 266–67;_ St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 318–19.
357: Albert was determined to train the Hanoverian vices out of his son with a rigorous course of academic study; any attempts by Bertie to rebel were met... with boxed ears or a rap across the knuckles with a stick: Hibbert, _Royal Victorians_ 16; Magnus 9, 12.
357:... he enjoyed an element of freedom while training with the Grenadier Guards at Curragh Camp in Ireland: Hibbert, _Royal Victorians_ 45–46; St. Aubyn, _Edward VII_ 50–51.
358: The affair, thanks to Nellie's boasting, had been the talk of all London: Magnus 47.
358:... "upon a subject which has caused me the greatest pain I have yet felt in this life": James 268.
358:... "she could be able to give before a greedy multitude disgusting details of your profligacy for the sake of convincing the Jury:" James 268.
358: Albert's heartsickness conspired with overwork, many sleepless nights, nervous strain, and almost certainly the effects of a long-lasting illness to undermine his health and sap his will to live: In his biography of Victoria, Giles St. Aubyn disputes the diagnosis that Albert came down with typhoid fever and speculates that he suffered from cancer of the bowels. St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 328; James 268.
358:... three days later, with a cold and feverish and confessing to his diary "bin recht elend" ("I am very wretched") he traveled to Cambridge to confront his son: James 269–70.
359: Palmerston and Foreign Minister John Russell drew up a bellicose communication demanding reparation and an apology: James 271.
359: On Friday the thirteenth of December, a telegram brought the Prince of Wales rushing to Windsor from Cambridge: James 73.
359: The family gathered around his deathbed, Victoria forcing herself to remain calm in her husband's presence: James 273.
359: "I stood up," she wrote, "kissed his dear heavenly forehead": Woodham-Smith, _Queen Victoria_ 429.
360: "I will be all I can to you": Hibbert, _Royal Victorians_ 56–57.
360: And the Queen was certain that Bertie's behavior had been the cause of his father's illness and death: she admitted to Vicky that she could not look at him without shuddering: Victoria and Victoria, _Dearest Mama_ 30, 40.
360: She adamantly resisted being "dictated to, or teased by public clamour into doing what she physically CANNOT": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:443.
360:... "any great departure from her usual"—that is, isolated—"way of life or more than ordinary agitation, might produce insanity": Derby 313.
360:... she would not meet face to face with her Privy Council, sitting instead in one room as her councilors stood and shouted their business through the open door of an adjoining room: Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 298; St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 331.
361: "I saw enough," she told Vicky, "to feel I never can live there again except for two or three days at a time": Victoria and Victoria, _Dearest Mama_ 145.
361: "These commanding premises to be let or sold, in consequence of the late occupant's declining business": Longford 321. A contemporary report of this incident, however, suggests that the story is an invention intended to attack the Queen: a joke on paper if not actually upon the gates of the palace: Bellows 19.
361:... Victoria took the unprecedented step of writing personally to the _Times: Times_ 6 April 1864, 9.
362:... "we have certain duties to fulfill here": Magnus 99.
362:... "the whole remains a painful lowering thing": St. Aubyn, _Edward VII_ 162.
362: For months after the case, the Prince and his wife were hissed as they drove in public, in the theatres, at Ascot: Hibbert, _King Edward the Seventh_ 109.
362: Brown had served the royal family since 1848, and Albert himself had appointed him Victoria's "particular ghillie": James 183; St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 356.
363: Dr. Jenner understood the Queen's dependency upon the man: Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 324.
363: In 1865, Victoria appointed him "Queen's Highland Servant," taking orders from no one but her and attending to her both indoors and out: Lamont-Brown 73.
363: A portrait by Landseer of the Queen on a horse held by the ghillie shown at the 1866 Royal Exhibition became an object of viewers' titters and outright laughter: Cullen 91.
363:... Victoria apparently considered Gladstone the most sympathetic of all her ministers: Guedalla 1:22.
364: "What killed her beloved Husband? Overwork & worry": Guedalla 1:299–300.
365: "I think it has been the most sickening piece of experience which I have had during near forty years of public life": Guedalla 1:304.
365:... a nasty abscess on her arm, which the eminent surgeon Joseph Lister was called north to lance: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:157.
365:... the Queen's "repellent power which she so well knows how to use has been put in action toward me on this occasion for the first time since the formation of the Government": Roy Jenkins, _Gladstone_ 347.
365: Gladstone had been long contemplating just such a role: Magnus 111; St. Aubyn, _Edward VII_ 206.
366: In New York in 1857, the society that would soon be known as the Fenians came into being: Ó Brion 1; Nowlan 92–93.
366: The next year, the American Fenian leaders exported their society to Dublin: D'Arcy 12.
366: Chester: For the Chester Castle raid, the attack on the Manchester prison-van, and the Clerkenwell outrage, see Quinlivan and Rose throughout.
367: Six people lay dead in the ruins; six later died. A hundred and twenty were injured. _Times_ 22 May 1869, 11.
368: The Government dispatched soldiers to the Palace and ordered plain-clothed police to keep a close eye upon passengers boarding trains in Perth and Aberdeen: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 373.
368: "Too foolish," the Queen thought about the whole affair: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:466.
368:... two guards armed with revolvers were set to shadow her at a discreet distance: Stanley 324.
368: Lord Monck, the governor-general of Canada, sent a telegram that two ships had left New York carrying eighty Fenians "sworn to assassinate the Queen": James Murphy 160.
368: "Crimes such as these contemplated... cannot easily be perpetrated in crowded thoroughfares": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 1:477–78.
368: Victoria refused to leave, thinking a show of fear "injudicious as well as unnecessary": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:479.
369:... at Osborne extra police were posted; a pass system put into effect; some warships patrolled offshore while others were sent to intercept the Fenian ships: Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 425; Longford 361.
369: The Queen was again annoyed by the fuss, considering herself "little better than a State Prisoner": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:484.
369:... "one begins to wish that these Fenians should be lynch-lawed and on the spot": qtd. Quinlivan and Rose 133.
369: The bullet ricocheted off of the rear clip of Alfred's suspenders through his ninth rib, missing his spine by an inch: Tavers 20. Tavers provides a full history of O'Farrell's attempt on Alfred and its aftermath.
369: O'Farrell's attempt led to a witch hunt to root out the Fenians of New South Wales: Tavers 54–79.
369: O'Farrell, with a history of mental problems and an obsession with avenging the Manchester Martyrs, had acted alone: Lyons and Nairn; Tavers 60.
369: Alfred's tour was curtailed while he recovered, attended to by two nurses trained by Florence Nightingale, and he returned home that summer: Kiste; Tavers 117.
370:... "poor dear Affie is so entirely unconnected with anything political or Irish": qtd. James Murphy 168.
370:... many had been freed—in the face of the stiff opposition of the Queen: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 1:628.
370: The Prince of Wales, on the other hand, traveled north to drink his contaminated water: For the Prince of Wales's illness from typhoid fever, see Hibbert, _Royal Victorians_ 127–31; Magnus 113–14; St. Aubyn, _Edward VII_ 214–16.
370: Many besides Bertie became ill: _Times_ 1 December 1871, 5.
371: When she did come to him, in the audacity of his illness he accused _her_ of infidelity: Hibbert, _Royal Victorians_ 128.
371: In tears she returned to what seemed his deathbed: _Times_ 9 December 1871, 9.
371:... "remedies of the most mad kind": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:176.
371:... "The feeling shown by the whole nation is quite marvellous and most touching and striking": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:176.
371: "Oh! Dear Mama, I am so glad to see you. Have you been here all this time?": Hibbert, _Royal Victorians_ 130.
371: About Bertie himself, according to his mother, "there is something quite different": Victoria and Victoria, _Darling Child_ 28.
372:... he had to deal with hecklers and scuffles during all his subsequent appearances: Nicholls 53.
372:... Dilke's appearance in Bolton precipitated an even worse riot: Nicholls 54.
372: He had heard that the Princess of Wales desired a national day of thanksgiving for her husband's recovery: Kuhn 150.
373: "Nothing could induce her to be a party to it": qtd. Herbert John Gladstone 333–34.
373:... "such a display" she considered "false and hollow": qtd. Herbert John Gladstone 333.
373:... "the whole nation has taken such a public share in our sorrow": Lee 323.
373: "... it gives _too much_ weight to it," she complained: qtd. Guedalla 1:330.
373: The Queen wished to progress in "half-state": Kuhn 153.
373: They haggled about the number of tickets for admission to the Cathedral: Kuhn 154.
373:... "this dreadful affair at St. Paul's": Victoria and Victoria, _Darling Child_ 30.
374: "The Queen is looking with much alarm to the Ceremony of the 27th": qtd. Guedalla 1:336.
374:... Napoleon III, ex-emperor of the French, stood with his wife Eugénie at an eastern window of Buckingham Palace: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:194.
374:... their "wonderful enthusiasm and astounding affectionate loyalty": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:194.
374: The white detailing of her black dress: _Daily News_ 28 February 1872, 5.
374:... their reception "so gratifying that one could not feel tired": Victoria and Victoria, _Darling Child_ 31.
375: People cried, the queen said; Bertie cried. Victoria admitted to a lump in her own throat: Victoria and Victoria, _Darling Child_ 31; Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:195.
375: The service at St. Paul's, attended by the upper ten thousand, was far less exciting for the Queen: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:195.
375:... Newgate ("very dreary-looking," wrote the Queen): Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:196.
375: "Could think and talk of little else": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:197.
_Chapter 20: Leap Day_
_376:..._ the distinctively elliptical and domed Royal Albert Hall, which Victoria, overwhelmed with emotion, had opened on a bitterly cold day last March: _Times_ 30 March 1871, 9.
377:... hadn't his great-grandfather changed his name from Conner to O'Connor to proclaim that lineage to the world?: Livesey.
377: Arthur O'Connor went to France in 1796 to negotiate the landing in Ireland of a French army of liberation: Livesey.
377:... Arthur O'Connor had been appointed a general of the French army by the great Napoleon himself: Read and Glasgow 11.
377: Francis Burdett O'Connor... in 1819 set out with two hundred Irish volunteers to liberate South America from the imperial Spanish yoke: Dunkerley.
378:... the "fustian jackets, the blistered hands, the unshorn chins": Read and Glasgow 62.
378: They carried banners declaring him to be their savior: "He lived and died for us": Read and Glasgow 144.
378: Arthur lived with his family—nine in all—on the verge of starvation in a single room of a dilapidated Aldgate tenement, at the edge of Seven-Step Alley, one of the worst Irish rookeries in London: _Daily News_ 1 March 1872, 5.
379: He had worked for a firm of printers for four years: _Daily News_ 1 March 1872, 5.
379:... a pigeon-breasted, scrofulous rail of a boy: _Daily News_ 1 March 1872, 5.
379: O'Connor was "of the order from whose plentifulness some physiologists forbode a deterioration of the human race": _Daily News_ 2 March 1872, 5.
379:... sending him to King's College Hospital, where he had a toe amputated: _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11; _Daily News_ 1 March 1872, 5.
379:... he was "passionately Irish," as he later wrote: Arthur O'Connor, letter to Queen Victoria 11 June 1873, TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
379: He would kill Queen Victoria: _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11. According to Thomas Harrington Tuke, who examined O'Connor in prison, killing Victoria was the original plan. O'Connor himself later denied this (TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963).
380:... he finally acknowledged the flaw: _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11.
380:... he was sure that all around her would be "paralyzed with horror": _Times_ 12 April 1872,11.
380: "I, Victoria, Queen by the grace of God, do make the following declaration": O'Connor's declaration, in full, appears in the _Times_ 2 March 1872, 9–10.
381: He had spotted it in the window of a jeweler's near his workplace—a flintlock: _Times_ 2 March 1872, 10.
382:... the clerk told him he would have to pick up a piece of flint from the road and cut it to proper shape. _Times_ 2 March 1872, 10.
382: At some point a greasy red rag found its way into the barrel: _Times_ 1 March 1872, 9.
382: He helpfully brought pen and ink: _Daily News_ 2 March 1872, 5.
382: He pocketed... a long, thin, open knife of his father's: _Manchester_ _Weekly Times_ 2 March 1872, 5; _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11.
382:... the cathedral was abuzz with activity: _Daily News_ 28 February 1872, 8.
382: Nevertheless, somehow he got in—"by a stratagem": _Times 12_ April 1872,11.
382: He had tracked mud on the otherwise clean carpets to his hiding place; a verger discovered him and turned him out: _Daily News 12_ April 1872, 6; Geary 125.
383: He returned home, put the pistol, the knife, and the declaration under his pillow, and slept until 8:00: For O'Connor's movements between 27 and 29 February, see the _Times_ 12 April 1872,11.
383: His mother asked him where he had been. To St. Paul's, he said—but he "had not gained his object": _Times 12_ April 1872, 11.
383:... he took his nine-year-old brother out to gaze at the brilliant thanksgiving illuminations: _Pall Mall Gazette_ 11 April 1872, 8–9.
383:... he awoke weary and jaded, according to his father: _Times 12_ April 1872, 11.
384:... he was a hemophiliac and had suffered from early childhood his mother's stifling overprotection: Rigg, "Leopold."
384:... the sentry at the gate staring forward, poised to present arms, O'Connor bolted[, r]unnning unperceived to the point where the edge of the Palace's eastern fence meets the northern wall: _Daily_ _News_ 1 March 1872, 6; _Times 2_ March 1872,10.
384: Somehow, he managed to keep his low-crowned, wide-brimmed wideawake hat on his head: _Belfast News-Letter_ 1 March 1872, 3; _Birmingham Daily Post_ 1 March 1872, 5. The wideawake was a style worn by nineteenth-century Quakers, and remembered today as the headgear of the Quaker Oats man.
384: O'Connor took cover behind a pillar near the gatekeeper's lodge: _Leeds Mercury 2_ March 1872, 8, qtd. _Evening Telegraph_.
385: The gatekeeper, an old man "rather past work," spied him and shouted "what mischief do you want here?" Victoria and Victoria, Darling Child 33; Bristol Mercury 2 March 1872, 8; Glasgow Daily _Herald_ 1 March 1872, 5.
385:... they imagined him to be a gardener's boy: _Times 2_ March 1872, 9.
385:... he... timidly muttered something about the Fenian prisoners: According to the _Glasgow Daily Herald_ , 1 March 1872, 5, he said "I demand the release of the Fenian prisoners, or I will..."
385: Victoria thought at first that he was a footman come to remove her blanket: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:197.
385: Arthur heard his words: "Take that from a Fenian": RA VIC/MAIN/ QVJ/1872, 29 February 1872.
385: "Involuntarily, in a terrible fright, I threw myself over Jane C.": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:197.
385:... John Brown, who had chased O'Connor around the carriage, with one hand grabbed O'Connor's body and with the other clamped the scruff of his neck: _Times_ 2 March 1879, 10.
386:... they yanked off the boy's necktie and gave him a violent throttling: _Leeds Mercury_ 2 March 1872, 8.
386: Sergeant Jackson removed knife and declaration from O'Connor's pockets: _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11.
386: "an extraordinary document," she called it: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:198.
386: He complained about the damage done to his necktie, and demanded his hat be returned to him before he would answer any questions: _Leeds Mercury_ 2 March 1872, 8; _Birmingham Daily Post_ 2 March 1872, 5.
386: "Not at all," she replied: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:198.
386: "We looked," Victoria wrote, "but could find nothing": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:198.
387: "... it is entirely owing to good Brown's great presence of mind and quickness that he was seized": Victoria and Victoria, _Darling Child_ 33.
387:... the two strolled arm in arm, out of the front gates of the Palace, through the crowd, and to Marlborough House: _Bristol Mercury_ 2 March 1872, 8.
387:... the Queen, he claimed, "was not in the slightest degree flurried or alarmed": "Outrage on the Queen" (Commons).
387:... "the Queen showed the greatest courage and composure": "Outrage on the Queen" (Lords).
388: Every newspaper account of the attempt dutifully noted Victoria's unflinching coolness and bravery: For example, the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (1 March 1872, 8) calls Victoria "perhaps the calmest person in the thrilling group, who drew herself up at sight of the pistol, and with the greatest presence of mind leaned back within the frame of the carriage."
388: "I wish to God I had succeeded; then they could have done with me as they pleased": _Daily News_ 2 March 1872, 5.
388: At a crowded meeting of working men in the Surrey Chapel Mission Hall, in Southwark, a resolution was moved to express indignation about the attempt and affection for the Queen's person: _Times_ 1 March 1872, 9.
389:... George Odger, working-class leader and heretofore outspoken republican, declared himself sure "that every man in that room... would denounce in the most indignant manner such a dastardly proceeding": _Times_ 1 March 1872, 9.
389: A Division's police surgeon and another medical man examined O'Connor in his cell: _Lancet_ 13 April 1872, 515.
389: Gladstone visited Victoria in the Palace that morning—"dreadfully shocked at what [had] happened": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:199.
389:... throngs largely composed of the dregs of the nearby slums of St. Giles and Seven Dials besieged the court and packed the tiny courtroom: _Pall Mall Gazette_ 1 March 1872, 8.
389: When he was brought to the bar, hisses ran through the back benches: _Daily News_ 2 March 1872, 5.
389: "... that death which is due to him as a Christian, a Republican—(laughter)": _Daily News_ 2 March 1872, 5.
390: The blood rushed to O'Connor's face, and, according to a reporter, "out of the eye there blazed the light of fanaticism": _Daily News_ 2 March 1872, 5.
390:... John Brown, with his broad Scottish accent and the "grim jocularity" with which he recounted the easy capture and drubbing of the boy, provided the most entertainment: _Times_ 2 March 1872,10.
390: Victoria, as protective of him as ever, was loath to let him come at all, and only agreed if he went under the close watch of an equerry and of his tutor: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:199.
390: A number of MPs and Peers had assembled in the Palace forecourt that O'Connor had penetrated the day before: _Times_ 2 March 1872, 9.
391: "Strange to say my head and health have not suffered from this dreadful fright": Victoria and Victoria, _Darling Child_ 33.
391:... the newspapers presented him as an imbecile, a "crack-brained youth": _Times_ 4 March 1872, 8; 2 March 1872, 9.
391: The Dublin _Irishman..._ argued that "nothing could be more repugnant, nothing more odious, nothing more loathsome to the spirit of the Irish people than a cowardly assault on a defenceless lady": qtd. in _Times_ 4 March 1872, 8.
392:... a letter-writer to the Dublin _Freeman's Journal_ pointed out quite accurately that O'Connor's ancestors were Conners, not O'Connors: _Freeman's Journal_ 5 March 1872, 3.
392:... the best punishment for this over-imaginative halfwit was the one prescribed under Peel's Act: the "ridiculous and slightly degrading" punishment of a flogging: _Spectator_ , qtd. in _Pall Mall_ _Gazette_ 2 March 1872, 1.
392: "... folly seems to have been so mixed with depravity in this attempt that Mr. Gladstone is inclined to hope this young man may perhaps not have been wholly master of his senses": Guedalla 1:338–39.
392:... he had looked forward to a trial as a state prisoner, but "shrunk from a degrading punishment": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:201.
392: She was sure he would have murdered her if his ignorance had not prevented him: Victoria and Victoria, _Darling Child_ 33.
392:... the Queen pointedly sent Gladstone an article from the _Lancet_ which she thought proved his sanity: Guedalla 1:340.
393: Hamilton "was also an Irishman but _Fenianism_ did _not exist_ then": Guedalla 1:339.
393: "He meant to _frighten_ & _this may_ be tried again & again & end badly some day": Guedalla 1:339.
393:... transportation had come to an end five years before: Hughes 180.
393:... she insisted that O'Connor be forced to leave England after serving his sentence: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 2:199.
393: She was angry at the police, who she thought were neither vigilant or numerous enough to protect her: Victoria and Victoria, _Darling_ _Child_ 33–34.
394: The "Boy O'Connor," as the press dubbed him, was reportedly an exemplary prisoner at Newgate: _Times_ 8 April 1872, 13.
394:... no solicitor attended to him during his first days in prison: _Daily_ _News_ 12 April 1872, 6; _Birmingham Daily Post_ 11 March 1872, 8.
394:... a man instantly recognizable by his enormous size of 26 stone (or 364 pounds), drove his own brougham up to the door of Newgate: _Times 7_ March 1872, 12.
395:... Lady Tichborne was free to indulge her fantasy of reuniting with her son and began to search for him: Gilbert 33–34.
395:... as rumors surfaced that survivors of the _Bella_ might have been picked up and deposited in Melbourne: Woodruff 32.
395: An attorney acquaintance of Castro who had seen the advertisement and was certain that the butcher was the baronet, persuaded him to reveal himself: Woodruff 40.
395:... the Claimant's French was limited to "oui, madame" in an atrocious accent: Woodruff 80; Atlay 214.
395: That mystery was perhaps solved by the Claimant himself in a confession he wrote in 1895 and quickly repudiated: Orton 31.
396: Whicher soon uncovered enough evidence to convince him that the Claimant was not Roger Tichborne at all, but Arthur Orton: Sum-merscale 264–65.
396: Coleridge was a passionate orator who used his skills both to catch out the Claimant in cross-examination, and to deliver a month-long opening speech that demolished the Claimant's case: Gilbert 153–54, 180.
397: The Claimant proved like O'Connor to be a model prisoner, "cheerful and far from reserved": _Times_ 8 March 1872, 12.
397: He largely kept apart from the rest of the prisoners, electing as a Roman Catholic to avoid the Anglican services on Sundays: _Times_ 11 March 1872, 12.
397:... exercising in solitude in the yard: _Times 9_ March 1872, 11.
397:... he spent the rest of his life in poverty and humiliation, forlornly promoting his claims in music halls, circuses, and pubs: McWilliam.
398:... when he died in 1898, he was buried with that name inscribed upon his coffin: McWilliam.
398: " _What_ in fact can be more important... than the faithfulness & discretion & _independent_ unselfishess of those personal servants...?": Guedalla 1:305.
398: On 5 March, she presented Brown with a £25 annuity and the medal...: _Daily News_ 6 March 1872, 4.
399: Arthur "could _not_ do, for his very position, what Brown _did_ , who was deservedly rewarded for his presence of mind, and devotion": McClintock 148. The Queen wrote these words to Arthur's governor, Howard Elphinstone, hoping that he would contact the Prince of Wales and set him straight about the propriety of Brown's and Arthur's rewards.
399:... "Arthur was _very_ amiable": McClintock 148.
399: The public, eager to witness his comeuppance, filled the galleries: _Punch_ 30 March 1872,130.
400:... he was, he admitted, "unutterably dull": Nicholls 55.
400:... he "went smashingly into the Chelsea baronet as if he had been Chelsea china": _Punch_ 30 March 1872, 130.
400: "A perfect storm," as Gladstone put it, ensued: Guedalla 1:342.
401: Dilke's attack on the Queen "was about as contemptible as that by the lad who presented the flintless and empty pistol the other day": _Punch_ 30 March 1872, 130.
401: It took some time for him to cease to be a social pariah: Roy Jenkins, "Dilke"; Nicholls 59.
401:... the Queen insisted that he not be given any office that would place him close to her, and that he publicly renounce his "earlier crude opinions": Nicholls 111–12.
_Chapter 21: Out of the Country_
402: According to one of the doctors who examined him in Newgate, Arthur O'Connor's great object was "truth at all times": _Times_ 12 April 1872,11.
402: To Catherine, Arthur was still to her a "good lad" and the "best of boys": _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11.
402:... he had to endure what he had brought upon himself: _Daily News_ 12 April 1872, 6.
402: Arthur, he believed, had changed greatly since the day in late 1866 when a cab in Chancery Lane had knocked him down, split his head open, and sent him to the hospital: _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11.
402: He had never been the same since—had become increasingly irritable and frequently burst out in fits of irrational passion: _Lancet_ 27 April 1872.
403: Back in 1853, two years before his son Arthur was born, he became deeply involved in the care of his uncle Feargus: For Feargus O'Connor's insanity, and Thomas Harrington Tuke's and George Roger O'Connor's involvement, see Geary 127–36. In the accounts of 1853, Feargus's son is invariably referred to as Roger, but the accounts of 1872 make clear that _George_ Roger is the nephew connected with Tuke and with his uncle Feargus's last days. In the _Lancet_ 27 April 1872, Tuke identifies George O'Connor as the nephew with which he was acquainted.
403: "... general paralysis of the insane"—soon (but not yet) understood to result from syphilis: Geary 132.
403: The commission, examining him, found him frantic and incoherent: _Times_ 13 April 1853, 8.
403: Feargus O'Connor lived on for another two years in pitiful physical decline, suffering severe epileptic seizures and losing control of his bodily functions: Geary 135.
403: A week after his son's imprisonment, he met Tuke in his consulting room: _Lancet_ 27 April 1872, 571.
404:... all of which indicated to Tuke "a fanciful and hypochondriacal state of mind": _Lancet_ 27 April 1872, 571.
404: He recommended to George that other doctors examine his son. Four others did; three concurred with Tuke: _Lancet_ 27 April 1872, 572.
404: Besides, he suggested, in the event of the boy's recovery, both his previous good character, and the Queen's well-known propensity to clemency, would surely both work to free the boy: Tuke 673.
404: On Tuesday the 9th of April, the grand jury at the Central Criminal Court briefly heard the testimony of two witnesses—Prince Leopold and John Brown—and quickly returned a true bill against O'Connor, for a misdemeanor under Peel's Act: _Daily News_ 10 April 1872, 6; _Times_ 10 April 1872, 11.
405:... he "saw the effects of what he had done": _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11. The _Daily News_ 12 April 1872, 6 reports him as saying that he "saw the _evil_ of what he had done."
405: Those in the courtroom were visibly startled by the boy's plea: _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11.
405: George O'Connor... did not learn about the plea until the next day: _Daily News_ 12 April 1872, 6.
405: The courtroom was crowded, particularly with bewigged barristers expecting the setting of new legal precedents: Transcripts of O'Connor's trial appear in the _Daily News_ 12 April 1872, 5–6, and the _Times_ 12 April 1872, 11.
406:... "he bowed neither to judge nor jury," noted a reporter, "but posed himself as if sitting for his photograph": _Daily News_ 12 April 1872, 5.
406:... Baron Cleasby, a judge known to be a niggler on points of law, and never quite comfortable in a criminal courtroom: Boase, "Cleasby."
406: But Cleasby would have none of it, interrupting Hume-Williams after the second sentence of his opening speech: _Daily News_ 12 April 1872, 5.
407: "I had always told him to tell the truth, and I believe he has done so": _Daily News_ 12 April 1872, 6.
407: "Is it your desire that your son should be imprisoned for life in a lunatic asylum?": _Daily News_ 12 April 1872, 6.
408: Coleridge reduced Tuke to silence: _Times 12_ April 1872, 11.
408: "I was his first subject since he had showered vituperation upon the Tichborne Claimant": Tuke 672.
408: They stopped the trial and announced through their foreman "that the prisoner was a perfectly sane man when he pleaded to the indictment, and that he was perfectly sane now": _Times 12_ April 1872, 11.
409: "The Queen's object in writing to Mr. Gladstone today is to express her surprise & annoyance at the _extreme leniency_ of O'Connor's Sentence": Guedalla 1:344–45.
410:... "the eye of the police should continue to rest upon O'Connor": Guedalla 1:346.
411: Gladstone suggested in return that the "animadversions of the press" would more effectively "repress these strange aberrations": Guedalla 1:348.
411: The day after the boy's sentencing he wrote the governor of Newgate to suspend the sentence of whipping: TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
412: "I was not mad, nor was I perfectly sensible": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
412: "I can never agree to a condition which would condemn me to almost perpetual exile": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
413:... if O'Connor ever returned "it wd be as an altered man": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
413: "This is vexatious": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
413: Tasmania... where the children of George's uncle Roderic—Feargus's half-brother—were prosperous landowners: Hughes 394; Read and Glasgow 14.
413:... "he seems to take a higher tone, and to consider himself a person of some importance": TNA HO 144/3.
414:... "the people being very loyal," he later wrote, "I might suffer some annoyance were I to be known": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
414: He had a poet's mind, and that mind "stands alone, and lives in a glorious solitude, apart from the world": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
415: "The man must be mad": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
415: "I had no legal power to detain the youth": TNA PRO HO 140/3/10963.
416:... "he is of a romantic turn of mind, he has no employment, and spends most of his time at home reading and writing what he calls poetry": TNA PRO HO 140/3/10963.
416: Gull had experience working with the insane: Hervey.
417: "I was thinking what a wonderful calm reigned in London, and that it was owing to the perfection of government": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
417: "Thought continually revolving upon religion": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
418:... committed to Hanwell Asylum as an "imbecile": Tuke 673.
418: "... surprised & annoyed" by O'Connor's return: RA VIC/ MAIN/L/13/191, May 1875.
418: "He is evidentially quite unfit to be at large": RA VIC/MAIN/28/10, 22 May 1875.
418: "... but he must surely now deeply deplore his share in a proceeding which consigned a sick and insane boy to degrading punishment": Tuke 673.
419: "If only our dear Bertie was fit to replace me!": Victoria and Victoria, _Darling Child_ 47.
_Chapter 22: Blue_
420: Roderick Maclean was filthy, either unwilling or unable to wash off the dust of the many roads upon which he had tramped: _Glasgow Daily Herald_ 4 March 1882, 5.
420:... his twenty-eight years: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
421: God read his thoughts: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882, 1 summarizes Maclean's autobiography on this subject; see also the psychological evidence given at his trial, in _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
421: God had given him eternal life: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8.
421: He was certain that his own claim to the British throne was at least as great as George IV's had been: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
421: The number was four: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882,1.
421: "The Fourth Path, a novel by Roderick Maclean": _Daily News 5_ March 1882, 5.
422: The color— _his_ color—was blue: _Times_ 20 April 1882,11; _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 3.
422: Maclean knew that wearing blue was forbidden to anyone besides himself alone: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
422: Occurrences of four were now more likely ominous than auspicious to him: "He had, he said, a mysterious connection with no. 4, and this numeral in any combination of figures was always disastrous to him": testimony of Dr. Sheppard at Maclean's trial, _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
422:... they wore blue to cause him "perplexity and agony," to "injure, annoy, and vex me on every opportunity": From a letter Maclean sent to his sister Annie, _Times_ 20 April 1882,11.
423: His childhood, he would later recall, was "as happy as any youthful days could be": Maclean wrote this in his (now lost) autobiography; rpt. _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882, 1.
423: His father Charles Maclean had earned a fortune as master-carver and master-guilder to the gentry and nobility. He had employed—auspiciously—forty people: 1851 _England Census_ database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: [Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2005.
423:... a massive console table and mirror that he manufactured had been given pride of place in the nave of the Crystal Palace: Auerbach 96–7.
423: Roderick Maclean was born three years after the Exhibition: _Daily News 4_ March 1882, 5, notes "He gave his age as 28, and his birthday occurred during his stay at Southsea"; if this is true, Maclean was born sometime between 9 February and 23 February 1854; the Berkshire Records Office (Broadmoor Hospital) file (BRO D/H14/02/2/1/1095) gives Maclean's exact birth date as 10 February 1854.
423:... an estate in the suburbs that he remembered as an Eden: Maclean's lost autobiography, qtd. Sims 69.
423: He was educated to be a gentleman at a school on Harley Street: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882, 1.
423: Roderick's father was a literary gentleman of sorts, taking up in 1861 the proprietorship of a new humor magazine, _Fun_ : Lauterbach 4.
423: Roderick recalled mingling among George Augustus Sala, Tom Hood (son of the great comic poet), and W. S. Gilbert in his pre-Sullivan days, and others: Lauterbach 5, Sims 69.
423:... he sold it in 1865: Lauterbach 11.
423:... Charles apparently lost much of his fortune in the spectacular collapse of the banking firm of Overend and Gurney: White 66n.; _Leeds Mercury_ 7 March 1882, 8; a classified advertisement in _The Times_ , 23 January 1868, notes "late Charles Maclean" about what had once been his operation, the Commercial Plate Glass Company.
423:... Roderick suffered his own fall, literally, slipping in the doorway of his Gloucester Road house, smashing his head and gashing his scalp open: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882,1; _Times_ 20 April 1882,11.
424: His head continued to give off the sensation of a "slight shock from a galvanic battery": _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882,1.
424: He developed morbid fears that his siblings, his mother, and especially his father were trying to kill him: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8.
424: He lashed back, threatening to kill his family and at one time vowing to blow up St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8.
424: Twice he booked Roderick passage for America: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8.
424: In 1874, when Roderick was twenty, Charles Maclean took steps to have him committed to an asylum: _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 3.
424:... the renowned psychologist Henry Maudsley... was happy to comply, and declared Roderick insane: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
424: The other doctor, Alfred Godrich, found Roderick highly excitable but not a lunatic: _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 3.
424:... Maclean's father instead exiled Roderick as an apprentice on a farm near Dover: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8. According to the dates given by the attorney Wollaston Knocker, Maclean could have been at this farm earlier, at age eighteen (or about 1872). Newspaper reports of his trial make clear that he left the farm in August 1874.
424:... Maclean offered a young boy sixpence to derail a coming train with a beam of wood: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8.
425: Maclean and the boy were acquitted: _Dover, Folkestone, and Deal Guide_.
425:... his father claimed that he attempted to derail trains at least twice more: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8.
425:... his brother Charles tried to place him in the home of a family friend, the artist Samuel Stanesby: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
425:... one of his sisters would mail him, wherever he was, a postal order for a few shillings: _Hampshire Telegraph_ 4 March 1882, 8.
425: Once, denied admission to one of these in Somerset, he deliberately smashed a window so that he would spend the night in jail: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
425: Occasionally he was able to gain temporary admission to the local lunatic asylum, as he had once done in Dublin: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5; _Bristol Mercury_ 4 March 1882, 8.
425: "On your thrown you set and rule us all": _Surrey Advertiser and County Times_ 11 March 1882, 5.
426:... Maclean showed her a dagger he carried in his sleeve to "take care of himself": _Surrey Advertiser and County Times_ 11 March 1882, 5.
426:... to Boulogne, France; throughout Germany: even perhaps to Jamaica, where according to one report he passed as Roderigues Maclean: _Times_ 6 March 1882, 6; 20 April 1882, 11; _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5. A long list of his residences between 1874 and 1882, which Maclean submitted at Broadmoor in an attempt to ascertain which parish should support his stay there, lists Boulogne—but not Germany or Jamaica.
427: "Dear Annie,—I have no doubt but that you will be somewhat surprised to receive another letter from me": The first of two letters to Annie introduced at Maclean's trial: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
428:... quickly arranged for a local surgeon to examine him, sign a certificate of lunacy, and commit him to the Bath and Somerset Lunatic Asylum: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11; _Bristol Mercury_ 6 March 1882, 8; _British Medical Journal_ 11 March 1882, 355.
428: He remained there for fourteen months, happier to be in an asylum than anywhere else—but even there fearing contact with perfidious attendants and visitors: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
428:... the massive population there, he wrote Annie, made things "a thousand times worse": _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11. Some reports did, however, place Maclean in London at this time: for example, _Manchester Times_ 18 March 1882, 6.
428:... Brighton, where he spent a month in the local workhouse: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
428: While there, he wrote a letter to Annie: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882, 1.
428:... he got a deeply disturbing letter from his brother Hector: _Daily News 4_ March 1882, 5, which does not name the brother who sent this letter; that it was Hector Maclean is suggested by the entry for Hector Maclean (with three children) in the 1881 census: _1881 England Census_ database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: [Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2004.
428:... the workhouse authorities at Brighton threatened to transfer Maclean to Kensington, his home parish workhouse: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
428: There he found a room in the poorer part of town, in the home of Mrs. Sorrell: The _Hampshire Telegraph_ 4 March 1882, 8, published in Portsmouth, has the clearest and fullest account of Maclean's stay in Southsea. See also _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10, which like most accounts mistakes Mrs. Sorrell for "Mrs. Hucker."
429:... he claimed to be a writer and poet employed by the _West Sussex Gazette: Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5; _Birmingham Daily Post_ 4 March 1882, 5.
429: It was not long before his landlady concluded he was a man "with a tile loose": _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
429: By night he entertained Sorrell and Hucker with a little concertina that he had obtained in Brighton, and with a little ventriloquist routine: _Hampshire Telegraph_ 4 March 1882, 8; Bayes.
429: He would lecture them on political economy until they could take it no more. He was a great admirer of Prime Minister Gladstone: _Hampshire Telegraph_ 4 March 1882, 8.
429: And he was a passionate supporter of the ultra-radical politician Charles Bradlaugh: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
429:... his atheism, his republicanism, and his scandalous advocacy of birth control ensured that a majority of the Commons supported a measure each time to refuse to let him take the oath or his seat: Royle; Tribe 197, 210.
429:... since no one would give him the oath, he decided to take it himself: Tribe 214–15.
430:... his older sister Caroline having very recently died: _Lloyd's Weekly_ 19 March 1882, 8.
430: Annie wrote to warn him that his family's support of him would soon diminish: _Birmingham Daily Post_ 4 March 1882, 5; _Hampshire Telegraph_ 4 March 1882, 8.
430:... his brother offered no financial support, and instead reminded Roderick of his mental weakness, and recommended he seek restraint: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882,1.
430: His brothers were wealthy: one had a good business in London, and the other had married into wealth: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
430: He vowed that he would go to London to enforce his rights: _Hampshire Telegraph_ 4 March 1882, 8.
430: He also engaged in another topic of conversation while at Mrs. Sorrell's: Queen Victoria: _Hampshire Telegraph_ 4 March 1882, 8.
431: His odd questions confirmed Sorrell's and Hucker's opinion that Maclean was "soft": _Hampshire Telegraph_ 4 March 1882, 8.
431: Around midday, Maclean walked into a pawnbroker's on Queen Street, Portsmouth: For details about Maclean's purchase of a pistol, see _Times_ 20 April 1882,11.
431: It was a cheap pistol: a six-shooter of Belgian make: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11; Leeds Mercury 20 April 1882, 7; Birmingham Daily Post 4 March 1882, 5.
431:... it was formidable-looking enough for witnesses later to mistake it for a Colt revolver: _Times_ 3 March 1882, 5.
431:... his name was Campbell, he told the shopkeeper, and he needed the pistol because he was about to join the South African Cap Mounted Rifles: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
431:... by the end of the first one he gave Mrs. Sorrell notice: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
432: Maclean knew himself to be a brilliant actor: _Times_ 20 April 1882,11.
432: He would leave on Thursday morning, the twenty-third, to go to London and find employment in Harris's troupe: _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10.
432: She sent him another postoffice order, and pleaded with him to stay where he was and take on any job he could—even take up a broom and sweep street-crossings: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5; _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10.
432: Mrs. Sorrell gave him a couple shillings in return for his concertina and a scarf he owned: _Glasgow Herald_ 4 March 1882, 5.
432: That day, Maclean returned to the pawnbroker's, paid the remainder on the pistol, and took it away wrapped in an old piece of white linen: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882, 1.
432: He returned as well to the gunsmith's and bought as many pin-fire bullets as he could for a shilling: _Times_ 20 April 1882,11.
432: Mrs. Sorrell gave him a final gift of a better hat and pair of shoes than his own: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
432: Maclean collapsed outside of Maclachlan's garden gate in what Maclachlan was certain was an epileptic fit: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
433:... at 3:00 on that afternoon—Saturday 25 February—he arrived in Windsor: _Reynolds's Weekly_ , 23 April 1882, 1.
433: Maclean found accommodation at 84 Victoria Cottages: _Daily News_ , 4 March 1882, 5.
433: He did by one account have a single eccentricity: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
434: "I should not have done this crime": _Times_ 4 March 1882,10.
434: "Did you know this is a first-class waiting room—not the place for you?": _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
435:... he had been careful to ensure his good fortune by loading only four of them: _Daily News_ 3 March 1882, 5; _Times_ 3 March 1882, 5.
435: The daughter next in age, Louise, was far too free a spirit for Victoria to consider as a companion: Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 394.
436:... Beatrice had done much of the chaperoning: _Times_ 1 March 1882, 3.
436: But she wore another color as well, as was also usual on state occasions: _Times_ 2 March 1882, 8.
437: "What nerve! What muscle! What energy!": St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 428.
438:... "I plight my troth to the kindest of _mistresses"_ : Weintraub, _Disraeli_ 521.
438:... he flattered the Queen ceaselessly and shamelessly, laying it on, as he famously observed, "with a trowel": St. Aubyn, _Queen Vic_ toria 427.
438:... she preferred to see him as "full of poetry, romance and chivalry": Matthew and Reynolds.
439: "You have it, Madam," he declared to her: Weintraub, _Disraeli_ 544.
439: More than once he favored and sponsored legislation that she wanted and his Cabinet did not: Most notably the Public Worship and Regulation Act of 1874 and the Royal Titles Act of 1876. Weintraub, _Disraeli_ 529, 550.
439: Disraeli, according to Victoria, had "right feelings," and " _very large ideas_ , and _very lofty views_ of the position this country should hold": Matthew and Reynolds; Weintraub, _Disraeli_ 547.
439:... Victoria's concern for his own health was dictated "not so much from love of me as dread of somebody else": Guedalla 2:7.
440:... a righteous rage against Turkish atrocities in the Balkans reanimated him, forcing him once again into the political spotlight: Matthew.
440:... Gladstone made his case against Disraeli not to Parliament, but to the people directly, in rousing orations at mass meetings: Matthew.
440:... "like an American stumping orator, making most violent speeches": St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 442.
440: Her anger was mixed with more than a hint of jealousy: Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 487; St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria 442_.
440: She would rather abdicate, she wrote her private secretary, "rather than send for or have any _communication_ with that _half-mad_ firebrand": Weintraub, _Disraeli_ 625.
441: She kept him, as he noted, at "arm's length": Guedalla 2:39.
441: He spoke to her, she said, as if she were a public meeting: St. Aubyn, _Queen Victoria_ 384.
441: Victoria had feared that the coming Liberal government would be a "calamity for the country and the peace of Europe": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:73.
441: Of all her governments, she told Vicky two years later, this one was "the worst I have ever had to do with": Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 369.
442: The first two attempts... were thwarted when bystanders jostled the would-be assassins' arms: Burleigh 34; Radzinsky 177,199.
442: Alexander himself thwarted the third would-be assassin, a man named Alexander Soloviev: Burleigh 45.
442:... they tried to kill the royal family as they ate, secreting a good three hundred pounds of dynamite in a trunk below the dining room of the Winter Palace: Radzinsky 332–33.
443: Finally, People's Will planned an apocalypse from which Alexander would never escape: For accounts of Alexander II's assassination, see Burleigh 50–51; Radzinsky 411–16.
443: Sundays in St. Petersburg, Alexander would usually drive a mile from the Winter Palace and back in order to review his troops: Hingley 113.
443: "A fine one!": Radzinsky 414.
443:... with one arm he helped carry Alexander's body while with the other he held the briefcase containing the explosive: Radzinsky 416.
444: "Feel quite shaken and stunned by this awful news": Victoria, _Letters_ (second series) 3:202.
444: The bombers had obviously chosen the site for its symbolic value: Short, 50; K R M Short offers a fully-detailed study of the Fenian bombing campaigns in his _The Dynamite War_.
445: Rossa's hatred of the British had been born when his fatherless family was evicted during the worst of the Great Famine: Edwards.
445: The British government might protest, but the U.S. government—hungry for Irish votes—did nothing to stop him: Burleigh 3–4.
445: Rossa's politics—his refusal in particular to work with Parnell and the parliamentary nationalists—proved too militant for the largest body of the Fenians in the United States, the Clan-na-Gael: Gantt 132.
445:... Rossa's bombers targeted London, placing a cruder device—fifteen pounds of blasting powder lit by a fuse—in a niche outside Mansion House: Short 55.
446:... the discovery by police... of eight more "infernal machines"—slabs of dynamite with clockwork detonators: Short 69.
446: Guiteau, a failed lawyer, evangelist preacher, newspaper editor, lecturer, writer, and insurance salesman: Clark 1–2, 11, 18–19; Ackerman 134–5.
447:... Guiteau leapt to the conclusion that his speech alone was responsible for Garfield's election: Clark 38.
447: He preferred to become Minister to Austria; he would be happy with the consul-generalship in Paris; at the very least, he would accept a consulship in Liverpool: Clark 40.
447: Soon after Garfield's inauguration, Guiteau arrived in Washington, D.C. with a single shirt and five dollars: Clark 37.
447: He managed once to thrust a copy of his speech into Garfield's hands and once to speak to him; another time he slipped into a White House reception and had a conversation with Mrs. Garfield: Clark 37, 41–2; Ackerman 268.
447:... "Never speak to me again on the Paris consulship as long as you live": Ackerman 338.
447: As he lay in bed one night, the disappointed office-seeker had a burst of inspiration: Ackerman 346–47.
448: Within two weeks, he realized that his inspiration was divinely inspired: Ackerman 346.
448: But in the end he opted for economy, choosing a $9 wood-handled, .44-caliber five-shot snub-nosed revolver with a powerful kick, stamped "British Bulldog": Ellman 165–66 supports his claim that the handles were wood with a photograph; Clark 49, and Ackerman 355, claim that he actually bought the pearl-handled model. Despite its name, the pistol was probably not British, but a cheap American knockoff of the well-known pistol produced by the British firm Webley: Ellman 165–66.
448: A novice with a gun, Guiteau spent time the next day practicing shooting on the banks of the Potomac: Ackerman 355.
448: "The President's tragic death was a sad necessity": Ackerman 374.
448: At 8:30 that morning, he took up a position in the ladies' waiting room of the station: For accounts of Garfield's assassination, see Clark 56–63; Ackerman 375–380.
448:... Guiteau shot twice, the first bullet grazing Garfield's arm and the second plunging into his back, above his waist and four inches from his spine: Clark 58, 110.
448: The fifteen or so doctors who examined him, however, ensured that he would die: Clark 69.
449: Victoria, who had sent at least six messages expressing her concern during Garfield's long decline and death, immediately ordered her Court to go into mourning for a week: King, ed. 417–18.
_Chapter 23: Worth Being Shot At_
451: From their saloon car behind the Queen's own, the members of the household—Victoria's private secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby, her two equerries James Carstairs McNeill and Viscount Bridport, her current lady-in-waiting Lady Roxburghe, and her maids of honor—emerged: _Illustrated London News_ 11 March 1882, 228.
451: Ponsonby offered the Queen his arm: _Pall Mall Gazette_ 3 March 1882, 8.
452: Their head, Chief Superintendent Hayes, stood at the verge of the yard, ready to signal to his sergeant: _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10.
452:... he had let down the carriage stairs and was ready to hand her warm wraps for the short journey: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
452:... he was stouter and suffered several chronic illnesses: Cullen 165–8.
452:... Victoria enjoyed the cheers of the crowd, the shouting of the boys from Eton, she thought, drowning out the rest: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:265.
453:... about forty feet away from her: _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
453: Victoria heard the sharp report; she thought it had come from a train engine: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:265.
453: Chief Superintendent Hayes, who was nine feet away from him, was the first to reach him, shouting "scoundrel!" and grabbing him by the neck: _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10; 20 April 1882, 11.
453: Two of the Eton boys, armed with umbrellas, belabored Maclean over his head and shoulders with zeal but indiscriminate aim, smacking in the process at least one of Maclean's captors: _Times_ 20 April 1882,11.
453: Victoria... "saw people rushing about and a man being violently hustled": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:265.
453: The carriage sped up the hill, the other two carriages following: According to more than one account, Ponsonby and the equerries, about to enter the second carriage, dashed to the spot where Victoria's carriage had been, and reassured themselves she was uninjured before continuing on to the Castle. How they could possibly ascertain Victoria's state by examining the place she had vacated, however, is left unexplained: _Daily News_ 3 March 1882, 5; _Times_ 3 March 1882, 5.
453: The crowd—and particularly the Eton boys—wanted to lynch Maclean on the spot: _Aberdeen Journal_ 3 March 1882, 4.
454:... "Don't hurt me; I will go quietly": _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10.
454:... he declared "that man fired at your Majesty's carriage": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:266.
454: Victoria immediately ordered McNeill back to the station to see if anyone had been hurt: _Times_ 3 March 1882, 5.
454: "Was not shaken or frightened," she wrote: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:266–67.
454: She hurried to tell her one child in the Castle—Arthur—what had happened: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:267.
454: She then took tea with Beatrice while her account was telegraphed to the rest of her children and to other relatives: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:267.
455:... the Eton boys running beside them hooting, and Maclean demonstrating visible anxiety the whole way: _Daily News_ 3 March 1882, 3.
455: From the group of Eton boys, the two who had pummeled the captured Maclean with their brollies identified themselves: _Times 12_ March 1936, 10.
455: Fraser and Hayes examined his gun: two chambers loaded; two recently discharged; two empty: _Daily News_ 3 March 1882, 5.
455: Superintendent Hayes detained Maclean for shooting the Queen with intent to do her grievous bodily harm: _Times_ 3 March 1882, 5.
455: "Oh, the Queen": _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10.
455: Maclean was forced to wash himself: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 5 March 1882, 1.
455: A local surgeon, William Brown Holderness, was brought in to examine him: _Daily News_ 3 March 1882, 5. Other early accounts claim that Victoria's doctor, James Reid, also examined Maclean and pronounced him sane, but later denials suggest this to be unlikely.
456: Several diplomats who wished to offer up personal congratulations at the Palace were directed to call at Marlborough House: _Belfast_ _News-Letter_ 3 March 1882, 5.
456: Others made their way by train to Windsor Castle on the next day: _Pall Mall Gazette_ 3 March 1882, 8.
456: The House of Commons churned for a time that evening with a growing consternation: _Times_ 3 March 1882, 5.
456: "I hope the matter will not receive the same sort of judicial handling which a similar one as I recollect received from Mr. Justice Cleasby": Guedalla 2:179.
456:... many had collected outside newspaper offices throughout Britain to hear the results of Bradlaugh's bid for re-election in Northampton: _Bristol Mercury_ 3 March 1882, 8.
457: I have before me as I write a copy of an evening paper published in San Francisco on March 2nd: _Leeds Mercury_ 25 March 1882, 5.
457:... jamming the special telegraph wire to the Castle: _Pall Mall_ _Gazette_ 3 March 1882, 8; _Graphic_ 11 March 1882, 227.
457: She received messages: _Times_ 3 March 1882, 5; _Pall Mall Gazette_ 3 March 1882, 8; _Daily News_ 6 March 1882, 6; _Times_ 6 March 1882, 6.
458:... Victoria was particularly affected by President Chester Arthur's message to her: _Aberdeen Journal_ 6 March 1882, 3.
458: And postbags bulging with congratulations soon joined telegrams: _Aberdeen Journal_ 8 March 1882, 5. One newspaper reports that five hundred telegrams poured in by 6 March, another two thousand telegrams by the seventeenth. _Bristol Mercury_ 6 March 1882, 8; _Newcastle Courant_ 17 March 1882, 8; White 41.
458: "Telegrams, as well as letters," she wrote in her journal on 3 March, "pouring in": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:267.
458:... "the boys cheered as we passed... and everyone seemed so pleased": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:267.
458:... "anything like the enthusiasm, loyalty, sympathy and affection shown me is not to be described": Victoria and Victoria, _Beloved_ Mama 116.
458:... the bullet had been found by Inspector Noble of the Great Western Railway: _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10.
458: That truck had moved on to Reading, but Inspector Noble found it there that afternoon: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
458:... the apparent answer to which was that the bullet passed between the rear of the carriage and the rumble seat—between Victoria and John Brown: _Illustrated London News_ 11 March 1882, 230.
459:... "for it proves," she wrote, "that the object was not intimidation, but far worse": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:267.
459: I am not guilty of the charge of shooting with the intention of causing actual bodily harm: _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10.
460: He was thus a confident man when at 1:30 that afternoon, handcuffed to a plain-clothed officer, he was rushed in an open fly from the station house to Windsor Town Hall: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
461: "I saw the prisoner with a revolver in his hand. The line of fire was straight from my eye to one of the panels of Her Majesty's carriage": _Times_ 4 March 1882, 10.
461: "Have you fired a pistol in your life?": _Daily News 4_ March 1882, 6.
461: "That is a point in my favor": _Glasgow Herald_ 4 March 1882, 5.
462: "We have nothing to do with that": _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 6.
462:... some of the crowd rushed at the carriage: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5; _Times_ 4 March 1882, 5.
462: Superintendent Hayes, attempting to avoid confrontation by avoiding Windsor train station altogether, removed Maclean from the station in a closed fly through Eton and to the railway station at Slough: _Times_ 6 March 1882, 6.
462:... anything less, she thought, would have a " _painful effect"_ : Guedalla 2:181.
463:... "the dominant feeling in my mind has been that the whole of these deplorable attempts on the life of the Queen have proceeded from men of weak and morbid minds": Guedalla 2:180.
463:... Gladstone reversed himself, and the Cabinet, meeting on Saturday, agreed to follow the precedents of 1840 and 1842: Guedalla 2:180.
463: Victoria was satisfied with Parliament, and told Gladstone so: Guedalla 2:181.
464: The address was then read "extremely well": Victoria and Victoria, Beloved Mama 116.
464: Victoria, "visibly affected," replied briefly to the address: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8.
464: She shook the hands of her young saviors: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8. By some accounts Victoria promised the boys a commission in the army. With or without this incentive, one of the boys, Gordon Chesney Wilson, grew up to become a true son of the Empire: he served as aide-de-camp to Baden-Powell at the siege of Mafeking, married the daughter of the Seventh Duke of Marlborough and thus became an uncle to Winston Churchill, died in battle in Ypres in the first months of the First World War, and was buried in a Flanders field (Clutterbuck and Dooner 448–49).
464: Elisabeth, a devoted huntress, had been riding to the hounds in Cheshire for the past month, and had come... to offer Victoria her congratulations and her farewells: _Times_ 4 February 1882, 9; 7 March 1882, 10.
464: Luigi Lucheni[,] was an Italian anarchist who when caught admitted that he was out to kill the first royal he could lay his hands upon: Sinclair 174.
465:... he plunged into her body a short file sharpened to stiletto fine-ness, breaking her rib and piercing her lung, pericardium, and heart: Sinclair 177.
465:... that news was widely reported the next day, along with Maclean's stays in a Dublin asylum as well as Weston-super-Mare infirmary: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5; _Birmingham Daily Post_ 4 March 1882, 5; _Leeds Mercury_ 4 March 1882, 3.
465:... Wollaston Knocker[,] recognized Maclean from the first reports of the shooting and quickly telegraphed the Mayor of Windsor: _Daily News_ 4 March 1882, 5.
465: A few days later, Knocker's more detailed account of Maclean's earlier, bizarre behavior appeared in newspapers across the country: _Leeds Mercury 7_ March 1882, 8.
466: The Home Secretary, William Vernon Harcourt, did consider the possibility that Maclean was a part of a larger political conspiracy: TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281.
466: Most... called for the assassination of another "crowned ragamuffin" every month: _Times_ 26 May 1881, 11.
466:... "the present attempt on the life of Her Majesty the Queen was the work of a lunatic": TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281.
466: The horror one felt at learning the Queen had again been attacked, Gladstone proclaimed, was mitigated by one "remarkable consideration": "Attempt on the Life of Her Majesty."
468: "Your Majesty's Law Officers are sensible how important it is that there should be in this case a power of imprisonment without any limit of time": RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/116.
468:... "if there should be any fear of his not being convicted for intent to murder... the plea of insanity will be brought forward": RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1882,10 March 1882.
469: Maclean might have "a horrid, cruel face": RA VIC/ MAIN/L/14/115.
469: He might be the "utterly worthless" offshoot of "respectable relations": Victoria and Victoria, _Beloved Mama_ 116.
469:... she wrote Gladstone "she is glad to hear of this proposed arrangement for the trial of Maclean wh seems very satisfactory": Guedalla 2:181–82.
469: "The Mayor (to the prisoner) Have you any question to put to the witness?": _Daily News_ 11 March 1882, 3.
470: Stephenson had little to say about Maclean's state of mind besides noting that, as far as he could tell, there was nothing the matter with the man: _Times_ 11 March 1882, 10.
Chapter 24: Special Verdict
472:... he argued in it both that he had no intention of whatsoever of shooting the Queen, and that he had long been, and still was, insane: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882, 1.
472:... if his overblown prose and his later repeated but unsuccessful attempts to get the manuscript published are any indication: he apparently sought to gain with it the literary fame he knew he so greatly deserved: _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882, 1; Sims 67–70; White 56. Maclean's memoirs have disappeared, but fragments from and summaries of them appear in _Reynolds's Weekly_ following his trial, and in writer George R. Sims's own memoirs, _My Life: Sixty Years' Recollections of Bohemian London_.
472:... "to express from her heart how very deeply touched she is by the outburst of enthusiastic loyalty, affection, and devotion which the painful event of the 2d. inst. has called forth from all classes and from all parts of her vast Empire": _Times_ 14 March 1882, 10.
472:... "the bright sunshine and the sea, mountains, vegetation and lightness of the air and the brightness and gaiety of everything": Victoria and Victoria, _Beloved Mama 117_.
472: Rumors that three Fenian terrorists were on their way from Paris to assassinate Victoria had reached the ears of the police who accompanied her: Nelson 35; Lamont-Brown 132.
472: John Brown did not, and drove everyone to distraction by his frantic attempts to discover the assassins: Cullen 190.
472: Victoria attributed his hypervigilance not to any actual threat, but to "his increasing _hatred_ of being 'abroad'": Nelson 35.
472: Victoria and Beatrice returned to Windsor amidst the same heightened security, four days before Maclean's trial: _Daily News_ 15 April 1882, 5.
473: London's _cause célèbre_ of 1882: the Jumbo craze: For the Jumbo craze, see Chambers 116–164.
473:... last August, Jumbo had destroyed the zoo's elephant house: Chambers 109–110.
473: When led out the next day to walk the eight miles to Millwall Docks, Jumbo similarly refused: Chambers 125.
474: In mid-March, Jumbo fever peaked, as on one day 24,007 people packed the zoo: Chambers 146.
474:... Jumbo fever subsided quickly, the British sheepishly realizing that they could go on without Jumbo: Chambers 196.
474: When on 19 April two constables conveyed Maclean up from the subterranean passage and into the dock of the small courtroom at Reading, he appeared dirtier and shabbier than ever: Williams 115; _Illustrated London News_ 22 April 1882.
474:... a number of fashionably dressed ladies stared back at him, some through opera glasses: _Pall Mall Gazette_ 19 April 1882, 8.
474:... "Few who looked upon him... had any doubt that insanity had marked him for its own": Williams 115.
474:... they had otherwise provided for him well, paying for his meals at Reading Gaol: _Times_ 13 April 1882, 9.
475:... one reporter comparing the spectators to a Nonconformist congregation: _Pall Mall Gazette_ 19 April 1882, 8.
475: The Queen had that morning done the same, sending a primrose wreath to be placed on his grave at Hughenden: _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 5.
475: "We cannot help regretting," proclaimed _The Times_ , "that the accused has been treated so much _au sérieux": Times_ 19 April 1882,11.
475: "like employing a five ton Nasmyth hammer to crack a walnut-shell": _Reynolds's Weekly_ 23 April 1882, 4.
476: Guiteau had managed to turn the trial into a circus: Clark 125–39.
476: "As to Maclean there is no doubt of his insanity": Journal of Lewis Harcourt, rpt. White 52.
477: Much therefore had happened in the hour before Maclean stepped into the dock: _Times_ 20 April 1882,11; _Pall Mall Gazette_ 19 April 1882, 8.
477: The jury was then sworn without challenge: _Pall Mall Gazette_ 19 April 1882.
477:... a "matter of grave consideration for the jury": _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
477:... "satisfaction would be felt by every subject of the Queen at the thought that it was not from the ranks of those who were sane that a hand had been raised against our gracious Sovereign": _Times_ 20 April 1882,11.
477: "At the time of committing this act," Williams stated, "he was an irresponsible agent": _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 3.
478: Maclean's family, who could have provided volumes of evidence as to their brother's oddities, had, in their desire to detach themselves from their embarrassing relative, successfully requested that they not be called: TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281.
479:... "an absolutely irresistible moral impulse, as strong as if it was physical": _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
479:... "decidedly he would know at the time he fired the pistol that he was doing a wrong act": _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 3.
479:... "the real question of right or wrong does not present itself to a man in such a state": _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 3.
479: "I do not think he was capable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act he committed": _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 3.
479: "Crown authorities had come to the conclusion that the prisoner's mind was not in a healthy state": _Times_ 20 April 1882, 11.
479:... "men of undoubted ability and large experience": _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 3.
480: A week later, Home Secretary Harcourt ordered a warrant for his transfer; a week after that, Maclean made the short trip from Reading to Crowthorne and entered Broadmoor Asylum: TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281; BRO D/H14/02/2/1/1095.
480:... his life "saturated with insanity and its symptoms" _Times_ 20 April 1882, 9.
480:... "the jury took the only course compatible with the medical testimony, which did but itself confirm the impression produced by the bare narrative of the facts": _Daily News_ 20 April 1882, 4–5.
480:... in striking contrast to the painful ordeal Charles Guiteau had inflicted upon the American public: _Birmingham Daily Post_ 20 April 1882, 4.
480: "Am greatly surprised & shocked at the verdict on McLean!" she declared, confiding in her journal "it is really too bad": RA VIC/ MAIN/L/14/131; RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1882 19 April 1882.
481: "It is Oxford's case over again": RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/133,134; rpt. White 61.
481: If an assailant such as Maclean "is _not_ to be considered _responsible_ for his actions," she wrote angrily, "then indeed _no one_ is safe any longer!": RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/133.
481: "This always happens when a Liberal Government is in!": RA VIC/ MAIN/L/14/134.
481: "She was angry at the result of the Maclean trial as she does not understand the verdict of 'Not Guilty'": Journal of Lewis Harcourt 20 April 1882, rpt. White 61.
481: William Gladstone, to whom the Queen fired an incredulous telegram the moment she heard the verdict, was baffled: Hamilton 1:254.
481: "I did not then understand Your Majesty to disapprove": RA VIC/ MAIN/L/14/132.
481: Maclean's lifetime of confinement was more strongly guaranteed with the insanity verdict than it would have been with a guilty verdict, Harcourt argued: RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/139.
482: Granville noted the relief of finding Maclean to be a madman, and tried to flatter the Queen, praising her "calm and serene courage, when so highly tried": RA VIC/MAIN/L/14/138.
482: "Mr. Gladstone humbly feels with Your Majesty that when an individual, such as Maclean, has probably been sane in respect to the particular act for which he is tried": Guedalla 2:186–87.
483:... he expressed himself "deeply impressed with the gravity of the subject": Guedalla 2:187.
483:... he concurred absolutely with Victoria's position that the stigma of guilt would prevent "dangerous misapprehensions in morbid minds": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:278–79.
484: She " _very reluctantly_ " gave her consent, "but said it was a great mistake": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:276.
484: "The Queen cannot but feel that it will have the effect of a triumph to Home Rule and of great weakness": Guedalla 2:188.
484: "Is it possible that M. Davitt, known as one of the worst of the treasonable agitators, is also to be released?": Guedalla 2:189.
485:... "certainly the best reception I ever got in Ireland": Spencer 1:189.
485: "We are in God's hands. Do not be filled with alarm and fear.... I dare not dwell on the horror for I feel I must be unmanned": Spencer 1:189.
485: Lord Frederick Cavendish had decided that evening to walk from his office at Dublin Castle to his residence in Phoenix Park: For details of the Phoenix Park assassination, see Molony 20–27.
485:... the two proceeded arm in arm: Spencer 1:190.
485: "Ah, you villain!" cried Cavendish: Molony 27.
485: That night, Queen Victoria, who earlier had made her own triumphal procession through London in order to open Epping Forest as a park, learned the horrible news via two telegrams: Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:282–83.
485: "How could Mr. Gladstone and his violent Radical advisers proceed with such a policy, which inevitably led to all this? Surely his eyes must be open now": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:283.
485: It did not matter to Victoria that Gladstone theorized (incorrectly, as it turned out) that the attackers were Irish-Americans and not Irishmen... : Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:287.
486:... "she _cannot withhold_ from him that _she_ considers _this_ horrible event the _direct result_ of what she has always considered and has stated to Mr. Gladstone and to Lord Spencer as a most fatal and hazardous step": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:285.
486:... one day after Gladstone, crushed with grief, broke down in tears while speaking in the House of Commons of Cavendish: Molony 59.
486: "She wishes now to express her _earnest_ hope that he will make _no_ concession to _those_ whose Actions, Speeches & writings, _have produced_ the present state of affairs in Ireland & who would be _encouraged_ by weak and vacillating action to make _further demands"_ : Guedalla 2:194–95.
487: "Dearest Bertie": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:298–99.
487: In the meantime, Gladstone kept to his promise to change the insanity verdict: For the progress of the Trial of Lunatics Act, see White 63–67.
488: "He protected me so, was so powerful and strong—that I felt so safe!": Victoria and Victoria, _Beloved Mama_ 137.
488:... she pointedly did not thank Gladstone for anything else that he had achieved in the busy parliamentary session of 1883: "The Queen, before she took herself off to Scotland yesterday, treated Mr. Gladstone to a characteristic letter... referring with satisfaction to the amendment of the Criminal Lunacy Law alone out of all the measures passed this year!" Hamilton 2:475.
488: "It will be," she wrote, "a great security": Victoria _Letters_ (second series) 3:439.
488: The first person stigmatized by this verdict was a woman with a history of mental disturbance, Johanna Culverwell: For the Culverwell trial, see "Johanna Culverwell."
489:... it was his bedraggled and faulty muse, who came to him in a trance and ordered him to "Write! Write!" during the most "startling incident" of his life, in 1877: McGonagall _Autobiography_ 3.
489:... his efforts were rejected—by Keeper of the Privy Purse Lord Biddulph this time: McGonagall _Autobiography 9_.
489: At the gate he was ridiculed and sent on his way, and threatened with arrest if he ever returned: McGonagall _Autobiography 2_.
490: he read while the audience was permitted to throw eggs, flour, dead fish, and vegetables at him: Hunt viii.
490: McGonagall, "Attempted Assasination."
Epilogue: Jubilee
494: One dynamitard was caught with brass cylinder grenades, planning to throw them from the Strangers' Gallery at the full government bench at the House of Commons: Short 180. For the other dynamite targets, see Short 50–208.
494:... the Clan-na-Gael... agreed to refrain from violence to allow Parnell and the nationalist MPs their chance: Le Caron 246–47.
494: A month later, at a conference in Pittsburgh, the extremists of the Clan-na-Gael resolved to recommence terror-bombing: Le Caron 247–48; Funchion 97; TNA PRO HO 144/1537.
495:... the "Jubilee Plot" was the attempt on Victoria's life that never was: Christy Campbell provides a full-length history of the Jubilee Plot in his tantalizingly but not quite accurately titled _Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria_.
495: Also in their bags—or perhaps sewn into their coats—were over a hundred pounds of American-made Atlas A dynamite in slabs, and a number of detonators.: TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131; "Report from the Select Committee" 30; Campbell 236–37.
495:... he was actually John J. Moroney, one of the more militant members of the Clan-na-Gael, and a close friend of the Clan's most powerful leader in America, Alexander Sullivan: Le Caron 253; Campbell 322, 373.
495:... Michael Harkins, a sandy-haired thirty-year-old, his broad shoulders muscular from years of labor on the Reading Railroad: _Times_ 22 November 1887, 12; 4 February 1888, 5.
495:... he had lived a quiet life in the factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts, operating stocking-making machinery: _Times_ 22 November 1887, 12.
495: He was unmarried, and at forty-seven his hair was already graying: _U.S. Naturalization Record Indexes;_ "Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins."
495: He had fought at the Civil War battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Lookout Mountain, and marched with General Sherman from Atlanta to the Atlantic: Historical Data Systems.
496: "No better or braver soldier than he served in that noble old regiment": TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131.
496: In March, "General" Francis Millen, a twenty-year Fenian veteran, was commissioned by the Clan-na-Gael to sail to France: Campbell 218.
496:... in May two other conspirators... shipped to London: "Report from the Select Committee" 30.
497:... James Monro... commanded in 1877 a Special anti-terrorist Branch, formed in 1883 specifically to track down Fenian dynamiters: Allason 4.
497: The secret of the Jubilee Plot was an open one in the United States since at least the beginning of May: _New York Times_ 4 May 1887, rpt. in Campbell 226.
497:... "a pyrotechnic display in honour of the Queen's Jubilee or in other words a series of dynamite and incendiary outrages": _Times_ 1 June 1887, 8.
497:... he then sent the Chief Superintendent of the CID to confront him and inform him that they knew about the plot and his role in it: Campbell 270–71.
498:... for over twenty years, off and on, Millen had been an informer to the British government: Christy Campbell documents Millen's decades of double-dealing in his _Fenian Fire_.
498:... they searched the building the day before: Lant 74.
498: "I was never in a more delicate position in my life": Campbell 240.
498:... Victoria... had been reassured by her Home Secretary... that all was safe: Lant 74.
498:... "there was such an extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm as I had hardly ever seen in London before": Victoria, _Letters_ (third series) 1:321.
499: Victoria's children, children-in-law, and grandchildren approached and kissed her hand: Victoria, _Letters_ (third series) 1:324.
499: They all represented themselves as traveling salesmen—a dealer in tea, Thomas Callan told his landlady: "Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins"; TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.
499: Thomas Callan was twice sent to Windsor Castle with a stopwatch: "Report of the Select Committee," 31; TNA PRO HO 144/209/ A48131.
499: Callan, too, was observed to lurk about the place: "Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins."
499: Harkins was later found with a newspaper clipping detailing an upcoming public appearance of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Arthur Balfour: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.
499: Monro then quickly applied the same pressure upon Moroney that he had on Millen, setting a police guard upon him and sending a detective to his lodgings to question him "closely": TNA PRO HO 144/1537.
500: At the beginning of September, Joseph Cohen cashed two of the notes, writing his signature and address on them: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.
500:... Michael Harkins, with the help of a muscular cabman, moved the dynamite out of Cohen's lodgings: _Times_ 2 February 1888, 10.
500:... two police descended on his lodgings demanding he give an account of himself: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3; "Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins."
501: They soon released him for lack of evidence, but Monro set upon him an around-the-clock watch by six officers who moved into his lodgings: "Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins."
501: Monro appeared personally at the inquest and used the occasion to expose the dynamite plot to the public: _Times_ 27 October 1887, 12.
501: The detonators he threw into a local pond: TNA PRO HO 144/209/ A48131.
501:... he dragged the slabs into the back garden and into the lodging house's water closet: TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131.
501: On the evening of the seventeenth, a stranger came to his lodgings: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.
502:... for some time he remained in Monro's mind as a potentially dangerous loose end of the Jubilee Plot: HO 144/1537/2.
502:... a letter had arrived from Lowell with a draft for more money—and a prepaid passage to Boston on the Cunard Line: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3.
502: From the back garden of Callan's lodgings, the police were able to collect over twenty-five pounds of sodden dynamite, which police chemists were able to determine to be of American make: TNA PRO CRIM 1/27/3; "Thomas Callan, Michael Harkins."
502: He was released in 1892: TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131.
502:... "the most harmless of all the dynamiters with whom I have been brought into contact": TNA PRO HO 144/209/A48131.
502: "Poor Tommy Callan": "Poor Tommy Callan."
503:... he was thrown from a cart, smashed his leg, and died: "Poor Tommy Callan."
503: His assassination inspired Leon Czolgosz to kill American President William McKinley a year later: Laucella 85.
503: Bertie and Princess Alexandra chose to forgo their usual trip to Biarritz: St. Aubyn, _Edward VII_ 302.
503:... a boy jumped upon the carriage footboard, thrust a pistol through the window, and from six feet away fired two shots at the Prince: _Times_ 5 April 1900, 6.
503: Bertie later enjoyed joking in letters to his friends about the "pauvre fou": St. Aubyn, _Edward VII_ 302.
503: he was already a fanatical member of an anarchist club: Magnus 265; Brust 49.
504: The Prince of Wales asked Belgian authorities not to treat Sipido too severely: Brust 50.
504: He was later extradited to Belgium, where he was confined in a penitentiary until he reached the age of twenty-one: _Times_ 22 November 1900, 5; 30 December 1905, 5.
504:... "there were crowds out, we could not understand why, and thought something must be going [on], but it turned out it was only to see me": Weintraub, _Queen Victoria_ 514.
505: The second, under the direction of the Queen's imperialist Minister for the Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, celebrated the greatness of the British Empire: Lant 219.
505:... the Queen, in 1897 no longer able to walk into St. Paul's for the Thanksgiving Service, refused to be carried inside, and instead viewed from her carriage a short _Te Deum_ on the cathedral steps: Lant 223–24, 244–45; Matthew and Reynolds.
505: "No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those six miles of streets": Hibbert, _Queen Victoria_ 457.
506: "Everywhere," Victoria wrote, "the same enormous crowds and incessant demonstrations of enthusiasm": Hibbert, ed. 343.
506: "I saw your Majesty three times in the streets and in the Park": Rennell 41.
506: Victoria lived for eight months after that: For Victoria's last days, see Tony Rennell's _Last Days of Glory: The Death of Queen Victoria_.
506: "Another year begun, and I am feeling so weak and unwell that I enter upon it sadly": Rennell 57.
507: She died in the arms of her grandson Kaiser William, "a look of radiance on her face": Rennell 137–38.
507:... past a million of her subjects in the metropolis: Rennell 247.
508: "Reported sane since his reception," his Bethlem case notes state, that opinion restated emphatically with the same entry repeated through the years: "no change": Bethlehem Royal Hospital. The statement that Oxford was perfectly sane was repeated, and reasserted, in his Broadmoor records held in the Berkshire Record Office, BRO D/H14/D2/1/1/1.
509: He deserved a horse-whipping for his actions: Warren 571.
509: Bethlem became his university: Oxford's achievements are set out in both his Bethlem and his Broadmoor case notes.
509: He was from the start "the most orderly, most useful, and most trusted of all the inmates" there: _Times_ 13 January 1865, 10.
509:... his painting skills were in constant demand and allowed him in time to accumulate £50 or £60: _Times_ 13 January 1865,10.
509:... in 1876 Home Secretary Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy reviewed Oxford's record and made him a deal: BRO D/H14/D2/2/1/96.
509: 24 years earlier, George Henry Haydon had come to Bethlem as steward, and Oxford quickly discovered in him a friend: F. B. Smith 467.
510:... the _Suffolk_ , which the next March landed at Melbourne: _Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists_.
510:... "in the future no man shall say I am unworthy of the name of an Englishman": Freeman.
510: Oxford took up as a painter and grainer: _Argus_ 28 January 1870, 1.
510: He was amused to discover that people in Melbourne thought him "cosmopolitan" because of his London origins: Freeman.
510: He joined and became vice president of the West Melbourne Mutual Improvement Society: _Argus_ 28 February 1887, 4.
510: He... published his observations in Melbourne's leading newspaper: _Argus_ 28 March 1874, 4; 4 July 1874, 4; 22 May 1875, 9.
510: He joined the congregation of Melbourne's oldest Anglican church and served for several years as its churchwarden: _Argus_ 3 January 1889, 10; 22 February 1896, 8.
510: In 1881 he married a well-off widow and became a stepfather: _Argus_ 21 March 1881, 1.
510: "There are many old friends... in England," he wrote to Haydon, "who would be pleased to hear of me again": Freeman.
510: "Even my wife," Oxford told Haydon, "the sharer of my joys, and sorrows, is no wiser than the rest of the world": Freeman.
510: He took his secret to a grave, dying on 23 April 1900: F. B. Smith 472.
511: The place was a "purgatorial grinding mill rather than a torture chamber": Hughes 400.
511:... he emerged triumphantly, earning a six-month remission of his stay there by raising the alarm when a fire broke out: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
511: Two years later... he fell in love with a free sixteen-year-old girl, Martha Clarke, and married her: Archives Office of Tasmania CON 51/1/3.
511:... he found it with a Launceston builder who was impressed with his industry and sobriety: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
511:... a petition in his support was signed by the mayors of Hobart and Launceston, Launceston's Catholic bishop, and other notables: TNA PRO HO 45/3079.
512:... an episode in 1869 in Melbourne's insolvency court: _Argus_ 21 January 1869, 5; 29 May 1869, 6.
512: He died in 1885, aged sixty-three: _Australia Death Index_.
512:... his hard-labor sentence was modified to work at tailoring: _Examiner_ 15 October 1842.
512: During his last month of imprisonment, his father died: _London, England, Deaths and Burials_.
512: He attempted to take up his father's profession as a jeweler: London Metropolitan Archives, St. James, Clerkenwell, _Register of Banns of marriage_.
512: By 1851 John William Bean had given up his father's profession: 1851 _England Census_. 512: He did, however, manage to marry again, in 1863: _England & Wales, Free BMD Marriage Index_.
513:... he is listed there as a "newsagent out of work": 1881 _England Census_.
513: OPIUM POISONING AT CAMBERWELL: _Lloyd's Weekly_ 30 July 1882.
514: He was taken from Newgate to Millbank and then quickly on to Pentonville: TNA PRO PCOM 2/211; TNA PRO HO 24/16.
514:... critics, backed by statistics, claimed it was more likely to lead to madness than moral improvement: Mayhew and Binny 102–04n.
514:... Hamilton moved to the next rehabilitative step, shipping to the public works at the small penal colony at Gibraltar: TNA PRO HO 8/102; TNA PRO HO PCOM 2/137.
514:... in August 1854, he was granted his ticket of leave: "Convict Database."
515: He might have come to the attention of the authorities one more time, nearly twenty years later: _West Australian Chronicle_ 8 September 1885, 3.
515: "... we understand that he has shown no symptoms of insanity upon the passage": _Cornwall Chronicle_ 16 November 1850, 808.
515: His hard work earned him an eighty-day remission of his sentence: Bolam 14.
515: Pate acquitted himself well enough to earn Abbott's recommendation for a Conditional Pardon: TNA HO 45/3079.
515: He obtained his ticket of leave in September 1853: Archives Office of Tasmania CON 33/1/98.
515: That pardon was granted at the end of 1855: Bolam 14.
515: Announcements of the wedding said nothing of his being a convict and much about being an ex-officer of the 10th Royal Hussars: _Courier_ , 26 August 1852, 2.
515: He and his wife Mary Elizabeth resided among the elite of Hobart, in an eleven-room mansion: _Mercury_ 11 April 1863, 4.
516:... the old man had died in 1856, leaving the bulk of his £70,000 fortune to his only son: _Times_ 12 August 1856, 1; _Morning Chronicle_ 12 November 1856, 3.
516: In April 1865, the Pates, having sold their mansion, embarked on the _Robert Morrison_ for London: _Launceston Examiner_ 29 April 1865, 4.
516: Pate traveled to Wisbech to take care of his father's estate and his servants, to whom he was said to be "remarkably kind": Gardiner 330.
516:... he died in 1895, leaving his wife over £22,000: _England & Wales, National Probate Calendar_.
516:... an object reputed to be the cane with which Robert Pate struck the Queen went up for auction in London: _Lloyd's Weekly_ 1 January 1899, 17; _Times_ (New York) 15 January 1899.
517: He was discharged eighteen months after he was committed to Hanwell as fully cured: Geary 142.
517: His father having died, he claimed that his income was the principal support of his entire family: TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517:... he would be willing to travel to Australia if the government paid his expenses and found him employment: TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517: Henry Parkes, Premier of New South Wales, had taken a personal interest in his case and had procured him a clerkship with a prominent Sydney solicitor: TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517: O'Connor had been arrested for being drunk: TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517: "On his first visit he was a thoughtless youth": TNA HO 144/3/10963.
517: At other times he was compelled to escape: Callan Park Hospital, Medical case book.
518:... the doctors all believed his illness was caused by what the Inspector General of the Sydney Police first termed in 1881 "habits of self-indulgence": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
518:... Morton was "suffering from considerable mental irritation which is fostered by his debased habits": TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.
518:... the disorder was melancholia, the cause "masturbation": Callan Park, Medical case book.
518:... the cause of his madness was listed as "Onanism": Rydalmere Hospital Medical File.
518: O'Connor's asylum casebooks record instances of voices in his head, delusions of persecution, and wild hallucinations: Callan Park, Medical Case Book; Rydalmere Hospital Medical file.
518: In later years he took to writing persons of importance in New South Wales, pleading for a discharge: Rydalmere Hospital Legal Files.
519:... "you, I am sure are aware in questions of presumed insanity, duration of time of incarceration should not be considered": TNA PRO HO 144/95/A14281.
519: " _I am innocent_ of any guilty _intentions toward_ the Queen": BRO D/H14/D2/2/1/1905—in an undated petition, but dateable by internal evidence to c. April 1886.
519: "I should require at least one hundred per annum and I should not accept a farthing less whether from relations or strangers": BRO D/ H14/D2/2/1/1905.
519: "No language could express my sorrow for the past": BRO D/H14/D2/2/1/1905, petition dated 18 June 1885.
519: "If Her Most Gracious Majesty will allow me to go and reside in the isle of my ancestors Mull on the west coast of Scotland": BRO D/H14/D2/2/1/1905, petition dated 4 December 1885.
519: In 1894 Maclean made another attempt to reengage with the world: BRO D/H14/D2/2/1/1905, letter dated 5 August 1894.
520: Roderick Maclean died on 9 May 1921, apoplexy stated as the cause: BRO D/H14/D2/2/1/1905.
520: The news was reported as a sort of barely remembered bad dream: _Times_ 10 June 1921, 7.
520:... the cause of death listed as a painful abdominal ailment, tubercular peritonitis: Rydalmere Hospital Medical File.
WORKS CITED
ARCHIVAL SOURCES
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INDEX
A
Abbott, John,
Aberdeen, Lord, ,
Abinger, Lord, , 233–35
Adelaide, Queen Dowager, , , , 161–62, , 302–3
Ainsworth, William Harrison, ,
Albert of Saxe-Coburg betrothal of, 23–28
children of, 163–67, 257–58, , , , , , , 384–85, 435–36
death of, 359–60
marriage of, , 27–29, 53–54
role of, 28–29, 53–54, 162–65
royal balls and, 153–62
Alderson, Baron, , 340–42
Alexander II, Tsar, 442–43, 445–46,
Alexandra of Denmark,
Alibaud, Louis,
Allen, Henry, ,
Anderson, Robert,
Anne, Queen,
Anson, George, , , , 159–60, 163–66, , ,
Arbuthnot, Colonel, , , 182–83, ,
Arthur, Chester, ,
assassination attempts
by Arthur O'Connor, 385–86
by Edward Oxford, 54–64
by John Francis, 181–83,
by John William Bean, Jr., 212–16
on King George III, 42–43
on King Louis-Philippe, 223–25
on Prince of Wales, 503–4
on Queen Victoria, 54–64, 181–83, 212–16, 274–81, 315–17, 385–86, 452–54
by Robert Francis Pate, 315–17
on Robert Peel, 237–41
by Roderick Maclean, 452–54
by William Hamilton, 274–81
"Attempted Assassination of the Queen," 490–92
Augustus, Duke of Sussex, ,
B
Bailey, Samuel,
Balfour, Arthur, 499–500
Barkman, John,
_Barnaby Rudge_ ,
Barnum, P. T., 473–74
Barrett, Elizabeth, ,
Barrett, Michael,
Barry, Charles,
Bartley, George,
Baup, Monsieur, 93–94
Beach, Thomas,
Bean, Esther,
Bean, John William, Jr.
arrest of, 218–19
assassination attempt by, 212–16
defense of, 232–34
early years of, 207–11
escape by,
examination of, 217–21,
imprisonment of, 220–21, 227–31,
last years of, 512–13
sentencing, 234–35
trial of, 231–35
Bean, John William, Sr., ,
Bean, Sally,
Bean, Samuel,
Bedchamber Crisis, , , , ,
Bellingham, John, 88–89
Bentinck, George,
Bicknell, Thomas, , 138–39
Biddulph, Lord,
Bird, Mr., 210–11,
Black Death,
_Black Pirate,_
Blaine, James G., 447–48
Bleak House,
Bodkin, William Henry, ,
Bolívar, Simon,
bombings, 442–46, 493–503
Bow Street Runners, 61–62
Bradlaugh, Charles, , , 429–30,
_Bravo of Venice, The_ ,
Bresci, Gaetano,
Bridport, Viscount, 451–52,
Brougham, Lord,
Brown, George, ,
Brown, John, 362–63, , , 384–87, , 398–99, , , , ,
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett,
Bruce, Henry, , 411–13,
Brunel, Isambard Kingdom, , , 333–34
Bull Ring Riots,
Bunsen, Baroness,
Burke, Richard,
Burke, Thomas Henry, 485–86
Burnside, James, ,
Butcher, Susan, , 137–38,
C
Calcraft, William, 95–96, , ,
Callan, Thomas, 495–503
Campbell, Sir John,
Carlyle, Thomas,
Carroll, Sir George,
Carver, James, , , , , 202–3,
Castro, Thomas, 394–96
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 484–86
Chamberlain, Joseph,
Chowne, Dr., , 98–100
Churchill, Lady Jane, 384–85, ,
Cibber, Colley,
Claimant, Tichborne, 394–98
Clarendon, Lord, _266–67_
Clark, Dr., , ,
Clark, Sir Charles,
Clark, Sir James, , , , ,
Clarke, George,
Clarke, James Fernandez, , 82–83, , 100–101
Clarke, Martha,
Clarkson, William, 193–98,
Claxton, William, ,
Clayton, William, 59–60,
Cleasby, Baron, 405–11, ,
Clifden, Nellie,
Cockburn, Alexander, 243–45, , 335–42
Cockerell, Charles Robert,
Cohen, Joseph, , 500–501
Cole, Henry, , ,
Coleridge, John Duke, , 406–8, 416–18, , ,
Coleridge, Justice,
Colville, Governor, 412–13
Conolly, Dr. John, , 98–100, , , 335–39, ,
Conroy, Sir John, 12–17, , 22–23, , , , 302–3,
convict ships, , , , , ,
Cooper, Isabella,
Cooper, James Fenimore,
Cooper, Thomas arrest of,
capture of, 142–43
crimes by, 141–42
hanging of, 219–20
imprisonment of, 143–44, , 202–24
sentencing, 202–4
trial of, 199–202 Cope, Governor, , , , 97–99, 123–24, , ,
Corn Laws, , 262–63, , , ,
coronation, , 16–19, _77_,
costume balls, 153–62
Cottenham, Lord,
Courvoisier, François Benjamin, 45–46, , _67_, 85–88, 91–93, 96–97, ,
Cowling, Samuel,
Cronin, Dr. Patrick Henry,
Cross, Richard, 415–16,
"Cry of the Children,"
Crystal Palace, , , ,
Cubitt, William,
Culverwell, Johanna,
Czolgosz, Leon,
D
Dagnall, Samuel, ,
Daly, Timothy, 142–43, 199–200
Darmés, Marius,
Darwin, Charles,
Dassett, Charles Edward, 213–16, , 232–33
Dassett, Frederick, , , 232–33
Davis, John Birt,
Davitt, Mr.,
Denman, Chief Justice, ,
Derby, Lord,
Diamond Jubilee,
Dickens, Charles, , , , , 96–97, , 158–59, , , ,
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, 353–55, , , 399–401
Dillon, John,
Disraeli, Benjamin, , 84–85, 261–62, , , , , 437–41, ,
Dodman, Charles,
Donaldson, Thomas Leverton,
Dousbery, Thomas, ,
Driscoll, Charles,
Drummond, Edward, , 240–41,
Drury, Edward,
Duchess of Cambridge, ,
Duchess of Gloucester,
Duchess of Kent, , 12–17, , , , 127–28, , , 302–3, ,
Duke of Brunswick, 89–90
Duke of Buccleuch,
Duke of Cambridge, , , , ,
Duke of Clarence,
Duke of Cumberland, , , , ,
Duke of Devonshire,
Duke of Kent,
Duke of Sussex, 127–28, ,
Duke of Wellington, , , _76_, , 184–85, , , , , ,
Duke of York, , 41–42
Dundas, Sir David,
dynamite bomb, 442–46, 493–503
E
Earl of Beaconsfield, ,
Earl of Chesterfield, 370–71
Earl of Ellesmere,
Edward VII, , , ,
Elam, William, 145–46, 151–52,
Elephant Man,
Elisabeth of Austria, ,
Elizabeth II,
Erskine, Thomas,
Exhibition. _See_ Great Exhibition
F
famine, 262–64
February Revolution, 264–68
Field, Charles Frederick,
Fieschi, Giuseppe, 224–25
Fisher, Mr.,
Fitzclarence, Adolphus,
Fitzroy, Lord, ,
Follett, William Webb, , , 243–45
Forman, Mary Ann,
Forster, W. E.,
Foster, James, , 168–69
Foster, John,
Francis, Elizabeth,
Francis, Jane,
Francis, John
arrest of, 183–86,
assassination attempt by, 181–83,
assassination preparations by, 133–70
on convict ship, ,
examination of, 184–85
exile of, 205–6,
imprisonment of, 185–86, , , 194–95, 202–6
last years of, 511–12
motive of, ,
sentencing, 198–99, 203–6
trial of, 192–98
Francis, John, Sr., 146–47, , ,
Fraser, Inspector, 453–54
Frederick William of Prussia,
Freeman, Edward,
Freeman, John,
Fuller, John,
G
Gainsborough, Fanny,
Gardiner, William, 135–36
Garfield, James, 446–49, ,
Garfield, Lucretia,
Garrison, William Lloyd,
George II,
George III, , , , 40–43, 302–3, 505–6
George IV, , , ,
George V,
Gibbs, Robert,
Gibson, J. Rowland, , 407–8
Gilbert, W. S.,
Gladstone, William, , , , , 355–56, 363–66, 370–73, , , 392–94, 400–401, 409–11, , , 439–41, , 462–63, 466–69, 481–87, ,
Godrich, Alfred,
"Going to See a Man Hanged,"
Golden Jubilee, 493–503,
Good, Daniel, 133–50,
Good, Jane, 137–41
Good, Molly, ,
Goodman, Mr.,
Gordon, General,
Gould, Richard, 48–49, _67_, , 90–91,
Graham, James, , , 189–90, , 215–16, , , , ,
Grant, Ulysses S.,
Granville, Lord, , , 481–84
Gray, Henry,
Gray, J. J.,
Great Exhibition, , 284–85, 312–14, 327–33, 344–50, , ,
_Great Expectations_ ,
Greville, Charles, , , ,
Grey, Charles, ,
Grey, George, , , , , , , , ,
Grimaldi, Joseph,
Guiteau, Charles assassination of Garfield, 446–49
trial of, 449–50, ,
Gull, Dr. William, ,
Gurney, Judge,
H
Hadfield, James, 41–44, , 105–14, , 125–26, 199–200
Haining, William,
Hamilton, William arrest of, 275–76
assassination attempt by, 274–81, 391–92
early years of, 269–74
exile of, 286–87,
imprisonment of, _276–77_,
last years of, 513–15
sentencing, 286–87
trial of, 282–86
hangings, 94–96, 133–34, 143–45
Harcourt, Lewis, ,
Harcourt, William Vernon, 465–67,
Hardinge, Arthur, ,
Hardisty, Edward, ,
Harkins, Michael, 495–97, 499–503
Harmer, James,
Hartington, Lord,
Hastings, Flora, , 19–21, ,
Hawkes, Henry,
Hay, Charles, 323–24
Haydon, George Henry, 509–10
Hayes, Superintendent, 453–54, 459–62
Haynau, General,
Haynes, John,
Hayter, George, 9–10
Hearn, Thomas, ,
Henderson, Sir Edmund, ,
Herbert, Auberon,
He-Sing, 348–49
Hilton, Mr.,
Hobhouse, John Cam,
Hodgkin, Dr. Thomas, ,
Holderness, Dr. William Brown, ,
Home Rule Bill, ,
"homicidal monomania,"
Hood, Thomas, ,
Horry, Sidney Calder, 199–200, 232–34
Houghton, Thomas, 135–36
_Household Words_ ,
Hucker, Edward, , 430–33
Huddleston, John, , , , ,
Hughes, Inspector, 62–63, _67_, ,
Hume, Joseph, 228–29,
Hume-Williams, J. W., 404–7
Humphreys, William Corne, 79–81
Hungry Forties, , 260–61
Hutcheson, William,
I
Industrial Revolution,
insanity defense
in Cooper case,
in Francis case, 193–94
in Guiteau case, 449–50
in Hadfield case,
in Hamilton case,
in Maclean case, 468–69, 476–80
in McNaughtan case, 242–44,
in O'Connor case, 406–7
in Oxford case, 105–8, ,
in Pate case,
J
_Jack Sheppard_ , ,
Jackson, Sergeant,
James, Sir Henry, , , , ,
Jarvis, John, 48–49
Jarvis, Mary Ann, 48–49
Jenner, Dr. William, ,
Jervis, John, , , 323–24, 335–40
Jocelyn, Fanny, , 317–19
Johns, Charles, 150–52, 168–69
Johnson, Alexander,
Jones, Edward,
Jones, Jane, 137–41,
Joseph, Elisabeth, ,
Joseph, Franz,
Jubilee Day celebrations, 493–503
"Jubilee Plot," 493–503
K
Kean, Charles, ,
Kean, Edmund,
Kelly, Thomas,
Kennedy, Miss,
Kensington System, 13–16, ,
Kenyon, Chief Justice,
Key, Charles Aston,
Kiss, August,
Knight, Mrs.,
Knocker, Wollaston, 465–66
Kossuth, Lajos,
L
Labouchère, Henry,
Lamb, Daniel,
Laurie, Sir Peter, , , ,
Law Lords, , ,
Lawrence, Thomas,
Le Caron, Henri,
Lehzen, Baroness, , 16–20, 23–25, , , , 163–67, ,
Lenton, John,
Léon, Comte, ,
Leopold, Prince, 10–12, , , , , , , 221–22, , 278–79, , , 329–32, , 384–86, , , ,
Liddell, Georgiana,
_Lights and Shadows of Melbourne_ Life,
Lincoln, Abraham,
Loftus, Augustus,
_London Labour and the London Poor_ ,
Louis Napoleon, Prince, , , , , , , ,
Louis XVI, 41–42
Louis-Philippe, King, 223–25, , ,
Lovett, Mr.,
Lowe, Albert, 59–60
Lowe, Joshua, 59–60
Lucheni, Luigi, ,
Lyndhurst, Lord,
Lyttelton, Lady, , ,
M
MacDonald, Flora,
MacLachlan, Archibald, 432–33, ,
Maclean, Annie, 427–28, , ,
Maclean, Caroline, ,
Maclean, Charles, 423–25
Maclean, Inspector,
Maclean, Roderick arrest of, 453–54
assassination attempt by, 452–54
assassination preparations by, 434–36,
defense of, 477–78
early years of, 420–25
examination of, 456–62, 465–69
imprisonment of, , 474–76,
last years of, 519–20
trial of, 471–72, 474–81
Macready, William Charles,
Mahon, Charles, ,
Manning, Dr. Henry,
Manser, Sarah,
Marc, Charles Chrétien Henry,
Marchioness of Ely,
Marklew, Edward, , _67_, ,
Marquis of Anglesey,
Marryat, Captain,
Martin, Esther,
Martin, George, , ,
Mary Queen of Scots,
Mathews, Charles James, 148–50
Matthews, Henry,
Maudsley, Henry,
Maule, Fox, , 68–69,
Maule, George, ,
Maurice, Oliver,
May, Superintendent, ,
Mayhew, Henry, ,
Mayne, Commissioner Richard, , , , , , , ,
McCafferty, John, ,
McGonagall, William, 489–90,
McKinley, William,
McNaughtan, Daniel arrest of,
assassination attempt by, 237–41
defense of, , ,
examination of,
imprisonment of, 245–47
motive of,
sentencing,
trial of, 242–47
McNaughtan Rules, 250–51, , , , 477–78
McNeill, James Carstairs, , 454–55
Melbourne, Lord, 16–17, 22–28, , , _67_, , 160–64, ,
Melville, Joseph, 495–96
Mensdorff-Pouilly, Count, , , 186–87
Merrick, Joseph,
M'Gill, Inspector,
Millais, John Everett, , , _66_
Millais, William, , _66_
Millen, Francis, 496–501
Minton, Mr., ,
miscreants, , , , 223–28, , ,
Mitford, John,
monomania, , , 246–48
Monro, Edward, , , 335–39
Monro, James, 497–503
Montez, Lola,
Mordaunt, Sir Charles,
Moroney, John _J._ , 495–502
Morton, George, 414–15, , .
_See also_ O'Connor, Arthur
Moss, Charles, , 199–200
Most, Johann, 465–66
Mott, Charles, 142–43, ,
Moulder, George, ,
Murray, Charles Augustus, 174–75
N
Napoleon, Louis, , , , , ,
Napoleon III, ,
"Newgate novels," , ,
Nightingale, Florence,
Noble, Inspector,
Normanby, Lord, , , , ,
o
O'Connell, Daniel, , , ,
O'Connor, Arthur arrest of, 388–89,
assassination attempt by, 385–86
assassination preparations by, 379–84
confinement of, 417–18
early years of, 376–79, 391–92
examination of, 389–90, 402–4
exile of, 414–16
imprisonment of, 390–94, 397–98, 402–4
last years of, , 517–18,
sentencing, 409–14
trial of, 404–9
O'Connor, Catherine, , ,
O'Connor, Feargus, , 265–66, , ,
O'Connor, Francis Burdett,
O'Connor, George, 402–4, ,
Odger, George, , ,
O'Farrell, Henry James,
O'Gorman Mahon, Charles, ,
O'Keefe, Bridget, , 272–73,
O'Keefe, Daniel, 270–73, ,
O'Keefe, Edward, 272–73,
O'Kelly, James _J._ ,
_Old Curiosity Shop, The_ , ,
_Oliver Twist_ ,
Orton, Arthur,
O'Sullivan, Jeremiah, ,
Otway, Charles, 47–49, 62–63, _67_, , , , , ,
Oxford, Edward arrest of, , 65–66
assassination attempt by, 54–64
assassination preparations by, 49–54
confinement of, 123–29,
defense of, 79–86
early years of, 3–9, 30–44
examination of, 65–70, 82–84, 98–101
imprisonment of, 70–87,
last years of, 508–11
motive of, , ,
sentencing,
trial of, 100–122
Oxford, Edward, Sr., 30–32
Oxford, Hannah, 8–9, 30–32, , , _67_, , 80–83, , ,
Oxford, Susannah, . _See also_ Phelps, Susannah
Oxman, John, ,
Oxonian, Captain, , , , . _See also_ Oxford, Edward
P
Pacifico, Don David, , ,
Packman, Mrs., , ,
Paget, Matilda,
Palmer, Sergeant, ,
Palmerston, Lord, _67_, 305–11, 324–27, , ,
Parke, Baron James,
Parkes, Henry,
Parnell, Charles Stewart, 445–46, 483–84,
Partridge, James, , 214–15,
Partridge, William Henry,
Pate, Mary Elizabeth,
Pate, Robert Francis arrest of, , 321–22
assassination attempt by, 315–17
defense of, 335–41
examination of, 323–24, 334–35
exile of, ,
imprisonment of, 322–23, 342–43
last years of, 515–17
in London society, 299–300
mysterious behavior of, 293–99
sentencing, 341–42
trial of, 335–41
Pate, Robert Francis, Sr., 296–300, , , 342–43,
Patteson, Judge, , 201–2, ,
Paxton, Joseph, 328–29, 333–34, , ,
Pearce, Nicholas, , _67_, , , , ,
Pearson, George, 171–75, 177–78, , 195–96
Pearson, Matthew Flinders, 173–74,
Peel, Julia, , 330–31
Peel, Sir Robert, 21–22, , , , _76_, 159–60, , , , , , , , 226–30, 237–41, 248–49, 262–64, 304–5, , , 325–31, , 462–63,
Peel's Security and Protection Act, , , , 281–82, , , 392–93,
Pelham, Jabez, 81–83, 88–89
Penny, Inspector, , 201–2, 218–19
Perceval, Spencer, 88–89,
Perks, Samuel,
Peto, Morton,
Phelps, Susannah, , , , , , _67_, , ,
Phelps, William, ,
Phillipps, Samuel March, ,
Phillips, Charles, ,
_Pilot, The_ ,
Piolaine, Charlotte, ,
Playfair, Lyon, 327–28
Plug Plot Riots, ,
Poland, Harry Bodkin, 389–90
Pollock, Frederick, , 195–97,
Ponsonby, Henry, , , , 451–52, , ,
Portman, Lady, ,
potato blight, 262–64
poverty concerns, 157–59, , 260–61,
"powder and wadding," , , , 197–98
Powell, Clarinda, 33–34
Prince Alfred, , ,
Prince Arthur, 384–85
Prince Henry of Battenberg,
Prince Louis of Hesse,
Prince of Prussia, 318–19, , , , ,
Prince of Wales, , , , , , , , , 356–62, , 370–74, , , , , 503–4
Princess Beatrice, , 451–53
Princess of Wales, 361–62, 372–74, , ,
R
recessions, 156–59, 260–61
Reform Act of 1867
Reform Bill of 1832 , , ,
Regency Bill, 127–28, 162–63
Renwick, Robert, , , , ,
Rex, Ernestus, ,
Robertson, Leslie,
Robinson, Hercules, 413–15
Robinson, Mr., , ,
Roebuck, John Arthur, , 325–27
Rolfe, Baron, ,
Romilly, John, ,
Rose, Thomas,
Rosebery, Lord,
Rossa, Jeremiah O'Donovan,
Rowan, Commissioner Charles, , , 176–78, , 189–90, ,
Roxburghe, Lady, 451–52
royal balls, 153–62
Russell, James,
Russell, Lord John, 45–47, , , _67_, , , , , , , 305–9, , 325–28, , ,
Russell, Lord William, 45–46, , ,
Russell, Mark, 183–84
S
Sabben, James Thompson,
Sala, George Augustus,
Salic Law,
Salisbury, Lord, ,
Sandon, George,
"scamp," ,
Scarlett, James,
Scott, Harry, 495–96
Scott, Thomas, 495–96
Security and Protection of Her Majesty's Person Act, , , , 281–82, , , 392–93,
Sergeant, Marcus,
Shakespeare plays, 147–49
_She Would and She Would Not_ ,
Sheppard, Dr. Edgar, ,
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley,
Shiell, Queely,
Sibthorp, Charles, , 332–33,
Silver, James, , 317–18, ,
Sipido, Jean-Baptiste,
Sloman, Henry,
Smith, A. W., 38–39
Smith, Charles,
Smith, Henry,
Smith, William,
Smith O'Brien, William, _266–67_, ,
Smythe, John George,
"Song of the Shirt, The,"
Sorrell, Mrs., , 430–33
Speed, Robert, 135–36
Spencer, Earl, 484–85
Stanesby, Samuel, ,
Stanley, Lord, , , ,
Startin, James, 299–300,
Startin, William,
Stephenson, Augustus, 460–61,
Stephenson, Robert, ,
Stockmar, Baron, , , , , ,
Sullivan, Alexander, , ,
_Sybil, or the Two Nations_ ,
T
Talfourd, Justice,
Taylor, Sydney, ,
Tedman, John, , 46–47, ,
Templeman, John, 48–49
Tennyson, Lord,
terror bombings, 444–46, 493–503
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 94–96
Thistlewood, Arthur,
Thornton, Stephen, ,
"thorough scamp," ,
Tichborne, Henriette Felicité, 394–95
Tichborne, Roger Charles Doughty, 394–98
Tierney, John,
Tindal, Chief Justice Nicholas, , 195–99, , , 247–50
Tory opposition, , 127–28
Tory spies, 236–39
Tracy, Governor,
Trevelyan, Charles, 263–64
Trial of Lunatics Act, 488–89
Trounce, William, 181–82,
Truelock, Bannister,
Tuke, Dr. Thomas Harrington, 403–10, 416–18
Turner, Reverend,
Tussaud, Madame, , 97–98
Tweedie, Alexander, 417–18
Twining, Mr.,
"Two Pronunciations,"
typhoid fever, , , 370–71,
U
Umberto, King,
unemployment concerns, 157–59, 260–61,
Uxbridge, Lord, , ,
V
Vestris, Lucia, 148–50
Vicky, Princess Royal, , , , , , , 360–61
Victoria, Queen assassination attempts on, 54–64, 181–83, 212–16, 274–81, 315–17, 385–86, 452–54
betrothal of, 23–28
birthday celebration for, 255–68
children of, 163–67, 257–58, , , , , , , 384–85, 435–36
coronation of, , 16–19
death of, 506–7
early years of, 9–19
last years of, 493–520
marriage of, , 27–29, 53–54
royal balls for, 153–62
Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, , 12–19, , , , 127–28
Victorian age, , , ,
Vosper, Thomas, 233–34
W
Walker, William,
Walpole, Horace,
Webb, Henry, 218–19
Wemyss, William, ,
Whicher, Jonathan,
Whig opposition, ,
Wilde, Chief Justice, 285–86
William, Kaiser,
William IV, King, 12–16, , , ,
Williams, Justice, ,
Williams, Montagu, ,
Wilson, Gordon Chesney, ,
Wilson, Samuel,
Wylde, Colonel, , , 182–83,
Y
_Yestern: or The Story of My Life and Reminiscences_ ,
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Your intuition is the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. You know, like the hunch, feeling, inkling or message you get and you don't really know where it's come from. When something just doesn't seem right but you have no real grounds to say why. That's it. For some, it might be a voice or a physical reaction like hair standing up on the back of your neck. It's different for everybody and it's something that if you really learn how to listen to it, can be the key to unlocking your true self and find your direction.
I've got to admit, it's taken me a really long time to actually listen when my intuition is trying to tell me something. I would always second guess it and on those occasions, make the not-so-good choices that we all so readily do when we're learning. But now that I am aware of the cues and the feelings, it is literally like a voice whispering something loudly in my ear. And when I think 'really?!' it gets a little bit louder and almost has a 'trust me!' behind it. I have found after following these cues, it has come at the right time and has really helped me make a good decision.
But who or what is it?
Whether you believe it's the universe, your higher self, God or your subconscious, it's right for you. It doesn't matter what every other person on the earth thinks it is. Your intuition is just for you. It's just a matter of identifying it and learning to follow it when it comes about, and not to ignore it or rationalise it away. We all have baggage that we've collected along the way and some limiting beliefs that have crept in and these will often make you second guess it. But the more you identify the voice or the feeling, the more you will feel comfortable with it.
So next time you get that feeling or emotion or little voice in your head, don't ignore it. Just listen to what it's saying. Even if you don't act on it, just be open to listening and it might just steer you in the right direction. | {
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# ALSO BY SENATOR MIKE LEE
Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America's Founding Document
Written Out of History: The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government
Sentinel
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2019 by Mike Lee
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lee, Mike, 1971– author.
Title: Our lost declaration : America's fight against tyranny from King George to the deep state / Mike Lee.
Description: New York : Sentinel, 2019. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019003127 (print) | LCCN 2019004371 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525538578 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525538554 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: United States. Declaration of Independence. | United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783. | United States--Politics and government. | BISAC: HISTORY / United States / Revolutionary Period (1775-1800). | HISTORY / United States / General. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / General.
Classification: LCC E221 (ebook) | LCC E221 .L434 2019 (print) | DDC 973.3/13--dc23
LC record available at <https://lccn.loc.gov/2019003127>
Version_1
To James, John, and Eliza
# CONTENTS
ALSO BY SENATOR MIKE LEE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
AUTHOR'S NOTE
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
The Search for Unalienable Rights
CHAPTER ONE
"In General Congress Assembled"
CHAPTER TWO
Weakening the People's Representatives
CHAPTER THREE
John Adams Instructs the Crown in Its Own Law
CHAPTER FOUR
Centralizing Power
CHAPTER FIVE
Tea Leaves in the Harbor
CHAPTER SIX
Trade Wars
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Revolution in the Minds of the People
CHAPTER EIGHT
Committee of Five, Genius of One
CHAPTER NINE
Created Equal
CHAPTER TEN
King George's Call to Arms
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"America Is Lost!"
CONCLUSION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
# AUTHOR'S NOTE
Readers of my last two books will be familiar with my style of trying to bring the past to life in a way that actively engages readers beyond simply reciting facts. In some cases, this means taking some dramatic license with specific incidents or conversations. This project involved extensive research, and although the final product stays true to the facts and the vision of history that resulted from that research, some elements have been discreetly added to scene descriptions to bring them into fuller resolution for the reader. We may not know, for instance, exactly what words passed between Thomas Truxtun and Captain William Garnier of HMS _Argo_ , but we know they encountered each other in the Caribbean, and why not give some life to what must surely have been a rousing high-seas adventure?
We twenty-first-century Americans are extremely fortunate, too, that so many primary sources from the tumultuous days of our founding have not only survived, but also been digitized and made available for all to view. Thanks to these considerable resources, it has been possible to include dialogue drawn from contemporary accounts in a number of instances, making the scenes as true to life as possible. To all of the organizations and individuals involved in that important work of cataloguing and digitizing these early American documents and resources, I extend a special thanks.
# PREFACE
We hear a lot about the desperate state of American society today. The news is full of stories of divisions at home and interference from abroad and talk of indictment and impeachment. If you listen to the media, you might think America is falling apart.
These certainly are times that try the souls of nations (to paraphrase Thomas Paine, about whom we will hear much more in this book). Yet despite the challenges and controversies of the day, our nation can continue to thrive. Our system has held up miraculously well for more than two hundred years—making the United States the oldest-existing nation with a constitutional government in which we, the people, elect our own leader and representatives.
Much of that success is due to the foundations of our law in the U.S. Constitution. I never stop marveling at the genius of the Constitution; that's why after law school, I went into business to defend it: as an assistant U.S. attorney in Salt Lake City, as a law clerk for Samuel Alito (today a Supreme Court justice), and currently as a member of the U.S. Senate and its Judiciary Committee. After everything I've witnessed in these roles, I remain confident that our system of government protects people better than any other system of government the world has seen.
And yet, as much as we should all strive to preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution, the American system relies on more than the mechanics of government outlined in that document—three coequal branches, separation of powers, and the like—to keep the country functioning. What gives life to that system is our animating spirit, readily apparent in the Constitution's preamble but which was more fully articulated eleven years before, in the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration is certainly appreciated but too often not fully understood. Scores of students are busily engaged in the study of constitutional law, but who studies "Declaration law"? There are legitimate reasons for this imbalance, of course. For one thing, the Declaration is significantly shorter than the Constitution, clocking in at only 1,337 of (mostly) Thomas Jefferson's words. And technically speaking, the Declaration is not a legal document—it does not set out a legal code or contain the building blocks for a system of government. Its purpose is far simpler—and perhaps even more prescient.
Jefferson details, in clear and often indignant language, all the various outrages that King George III committed against his own subjects, who just happened to live on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean. Just governance, as British subjects understood it, was indeed falling apart. The Declaration's signers saw plainly that the decisions made by His Majesty's Government violated their natural rights to life, liberty, and property—rights that would have been upheld had they been living in Britain.
Moreover, as colonists with no representation in Parliament, our Founders and their forebears had no way to give their consent to be governed. Equal protection of rights and the consent of the governed . . . a simple set of principles, which proclaimed to the world a new nation which was, in the words of a great American of a later generation, "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
This was an unprecedented origin story for a country, and the Declaration of Independence was an unprecedented document. The truth that "all men are created equal" was so simple as to be "self-evident," the Declaration stated (although, as we will also see, these were not Jefferson's original words). Also self-evident was the truth that all were "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
That "spirit of 1776"—enshrining (albeit not fully achieving) the concepts of equal rights before the law and rejecting tyrannical government—gave birth to a truly exceptional nation. It has grown into a nation that has stamped out totalitarianism around the world and remains a beacon of hope for those in search of a better life.
But I worry that too many of us—including those who serve in government—are losing that spirit. We are becoming unmoored from the Declaration's ideals, flailing in the deep waters of our unnavigable regulatory state, an insatiable centralized government, and the winds of judicial activism—the tyrannical tendencies that rear their heads today. When American citizens can be hauled in front of administrative law judges for abiding by their honest religious convictions, as happened to baker Jack Phillips in Colorado in 2013, are all of our rights really as safe as we think?
What inspired our Founders in those first tumultuous years as thirteen colonies fought for recognition as united states? Their desire to never return to a monarchical system in which they were subject to the whims of a king and a powerful central government that acted in His Majesty's name. Indeed, this is why the bulk of the Declaration of Independence is taken up with detailing just what King George III had done that his former subjects found intolerable. And in reading this most significant, often-overlooked section of the Declaration today, one is struck by how timely so many of these grievances sound. Consider the following excerpts:
**"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."** When a president fails to enforce the law on the books or does so in bad faith because of political disagreements, he damages the public good.
**"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance."** Today, a massive regulatory state manned by "swarms" of unelected bureaucrats continues to harass our citizens with burdensome federal red tape.
**"For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever."** The individual legislatures of individual states have today been all but suspended in practice, as a flawed understanding of federalism allows for the creeping centralization of power in the hands of the federal government in Washington, DC.
Many of the problems the American colonists experienced with King George are, either directly or indirectly, still with us today. This is a consequence of a federal bureaucracy that has been allowed to expand under both Republican and Democratic presidents. It gathers more power however it can, stripping that power away from states, localities, and ultimately the people—contrary to the Founders' intent.
Jefferson warned us about the dangers of centralized, overreaching power in the Declaration, and by heeding these warnings today, we might be able to stop the march of government expansion. What if rediscovering the Declaration of Independence—even more than the Constitution—is the key to returning America to a land of limited government, individual rights, and personal freedom? Because if we actually adhered to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, we would have an improved state of affairs today.
In 1790, upon visiting a synagogue in Rhode Island, George Washington wrote to the Jewish worshippers that in this new nation, "all possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship." No longer were they subjects of a monarch whose personal biases—religious or otherwise—outweighed their dignity as beings created equal. "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of," Washington wrote, "as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights."
Nine years later, George Washington would pass away at his home of Mount Vernon, a plantation on which he lived and worked—with 317 human beings held as property. Washington's will declared that all the slaves owned legally by him—123 in all—would be freed after his wife, Martha, died. Despite this virtuous last act, an acknowledgment of the injustice of slavery, Washington and his fellow slave-owning Founders still perpetuated a system that violated the unalienable rights of others. Realizing the ideals in the Declaration of Independence would turn out to be a very long, bloody process—and there still remains work to be done.
This is something I can understand on a very personal level. I know it may seem strange—as a white male U.S. senator, what do I know about having your rights taken away? The answer has to do with the reason I serve in the Senate as an elected official from Utah and not, say, from New York or Illinois.
I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as are many of my Utah constituents. We Mormons didn't end up in Utah because everyone got the same coupon in the mail. Mormon pioneers, including my ancestors, moved west because they were banished from everywhere else they tried to live. The church had its beginnings in New York, but its members kept moving westward to Ohio, then to Missouri, then to Illinois, and finally to Utah—often one step ahead of an angry mob that was dead set against living in harmony with this faith. And these weren't simple disputes among neighbors. The discrimination against Mormons came from the top down. On October 27, 1838, Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issued an executive order stating, "The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary, for the public peace."
A sitting U.S. governor called for some of his people to be "exterminated" simply by virtue of the faith they practiced. This would seem to fly in the face of the protection of "unalienable Rights" that the Declaration guarantees. The "unalienable Rights" of the Missouri Mormons to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" were certainly not "self-evident" to Governor Boggs.
The Declaration can be ignored, perverted, and even trampled on by those who happen to temporarily hold power. We need to remain vigilant against abuses of that power even today. And there is no more powerful rebuke of overweening, centralized power than that document penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776.
This book is a reexamination of the Declaration of Independence that aims to restore its rightful place alongside the Constitution. I hope you will be convinced of its fundamental importance to our country's foundation and awed, as I am, by its prescient wisdom.
# INTRODUCTION
# The Search for Unalienable Rights
A seven-year-old New York boy's lemonade stand gets shut down by overzealous health inspectors. In Colorado, a cake baker gets his business shut down and protested because he refuses to design a cake celebrating a gay wedding because it violates his deeply held Christian belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Federal regulatory agencies get to police themselves and tell those of us in Congress charged with their oversight to shove off because of an obscure 1984 Supreme Court case, _Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council_. U.S. taxpayers are paying for a foreign war in Yemen that their elected representatives never voted to pursue, much like colonial Americans were dragooned into fighting the French at His Majesty's Government's direction. Administrative law judges wield singular judicial power over Americans who are subject to proceedings without a jury of their peers.
Usurpations of our rights happen every day in America, with barely any notice by those who claim to be champions of rights. Listen to progressives like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talk. It's an amazing thing. They've co-opted the language of our Founding Fathers by speaking of "rights." We have "rights," and we're entitled to them, the progressive Left tells us. A "right" to universal health care, a "right" to free higher education, a "right" to a guaranteed living wage, a "right" to kill the unborn, a "right" to switch genders. And so on.
Are these actually "rights"? Put a different way, are these the same "rights" that conservatives believe in? As with so many other concepts which the progressive Left latches onto, the concept of "rights" has been so perverted by them that it bears little resemblance to the idea of "rights" as the founding generation of Americans understood them—the "rights" they fought for and preserved in our founding documents. Those rights were designed to protect the individual against aggression from others and especially, in the eyes of the Founders, aggression from their government. The rights weren't gifts to be bestowed on citizens by government but rather a statement that the citizens had those rights conferred by nature and by God. Government's primary job was to ensure that those rights were not infringed.
For the first time in the annals of human history, the Declaration of Independence set out exactly what "unalienable rights" are. Our utter lack of knowledge about those rights is directly responsible for the growth of big government, in the form of both an unaccountable "deep-state" bureaucracy and the progressive politicians who think they can win their way into office by promising more government handouts than the next one and cloaking those handouts in the guise of "rights."
The Left's so-called rights are destroying lives, eroding liberty, and making it harder to pursue happiness every day in America. It's not just that the Left's "rights" are anathema to the true meaning of the word. It's that their "rights," by their very nature, usurp the rights of others. When governments grant collective rights, they erode individual rights, which in the United States are known as "negative rights." When a central government administers a sprawling health care program, for instance, it ends up coercing its citizens by taking both their liberty and property. The truth is it's still happening today, and we must be ever vigilant against a government—even with one branch led by a Republican or conservative—that encroaches on our rights.
But while the political Left grows more energized than it has been in generations, conservatives grow complacent. We've lost sight of what we are really fighting for beyond easy talking points like "conservative judges," "lower taxes," "less regulation." We agree those are good things. But _why_ are they good things? _Why_ , after all, do we call ourselves "conservatives"? _What exactly are we conserving?_
Our failure to answer those questions (and, let's face it, even to ask them in the first place) is why we are still in danger of losing not only the "culture war" but also the hearts and minds of an entire generation of young Americans. It's why a near majority of millennials, according to surveys, would rather live in a socialist economy than a capitalist one and vote overwhelmingly for liberals. It's also why we lose elections. It's why we lost the House of Representatives in 2018. It's why we could lose the presidency in 2020. And the stakes then will likely be even higher than they were in 2016. We're not looking at a Hillary Clinton–like figure, who despite her liberal bona fides is an establishment Democrat and always sides with Goldman Sachs and Davos over Occupy Wall Street and Code Pink. We're now looking at a Democratic Party intent on nominating the most liberal candidate for president in American history—an Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, or Robert "Beto" O'Rourke.
Should a candidate like this win the nomination and then the presidency, our future is almost certainly one of single-payer socialist health care, sky-high tax rates, and a federal government that funds everything from abortions at any time for any reason to elective surgeries for minors who identify as a different gender. It's a sobering thought, and one we need to come to terms with rather than simply wish it away or pretend it will never happen here.
This steady growth of government began in the United States in the early twentieth century, received massive boosts in the 1930s and 1960s, and has continued into the new millennium. The phenomenon has gone by many names. In its first years, it was branded "progressivism" by early adopters like Woodrow Wilson. Certain expansionist programs had their own catchy names, like Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" or Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." Those who took a more skeptical view of unchecked government expansion (no matter how lofty the stated purpose)—among whose ranks I include myself—used different terms. It could simply be called "big government," or the "administrative state," or even the "deep state."
No matter the name, the problem is consistent: There are millions of government personnel exercising powers over "the governed" to which they did not consent. Thomas Jefferson, as he so often did, had an apt phrase for this. In the Declaration, he charged that King George had "erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance." Well, the "swarms of officers" are gathering once again—but they're not in London; they're in Washington.
Over the last century, the administrative, or deep, state has grown to inordinate size and power. This growth has continued under presidents of both political parties, though some actively encourage it while others make valiant efforts to stop it. That's one of the most insidious qualities of the administrative state—it can perpetuate itself no matter who is nominally supervising it. It's like a monster that continues to live and breathe and grow no matter who is supposed to be guarding it. The government outlined by our Founders, which received its earliest articulation in the Declaration of Independence, has grown unchecked to the point where a powerful central government is once again exercising outsize power and influence over the American people—except this time it's of our own making.
Which brings us to why I wrote this book. Generally, those of us who call ourselves conservatives are the ones who want to keep government small, to prevent the growth of the administrative state. But what does that really mean, especially in an era where outright socialism—and the massive government expansion it entails—is becoming increasingly popular in the mainstream American political conversation? Our complacency is tantamount to consent!
Good governments, the Declaration points out, exist in a system in which they are "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." And how do "the governed" exercise their influence over the government?
There are a number of ways that the people give the consent by which the government derives its just powers: They elect representatives in Congress who use their powers of funding and oversight as a check against the executive branch; the executive branch itself is headed by an elected president, who then appoints people to supervise other parts of the government in ways that are consistent with his or her mandate; Supreme Court justices are appointed by the elected president to interpret the law and make sure the rest of the government is functioning within the boundaries of the Constitution. This is how it is supposed to work, at least in theory.
The problem is that in practice, a government—even one set up with the best of intentions—can become so large and convoluted that it ends up wielding some powers _without_ that all-important "consent of the governed." Instead of "just powers," its powers become unjust. And before you know it, millions of unelected bureaucrats are handling much of the day-to-day business of government through a tangled web of executive branch agencies.
The administrative state looms large as a presence in the affairs of too many Americans. Its influence creeps into our lives, holding sway over our families, our businesses, and our lands. By operating through this deep state, government is able to avoid being accountable to the citizens whom it is supposed to serve—to you and me.
The grassroots movement known as the Tea Party that came to prominence in 2009 helped spark a widespread national rediscovery of our Constitution. And yet, I'm convinced that too many of us—then and now—neglected the Constitution's older sister, the Declaration of Independence. That spirit of 1776 is what is missing in our civic life today.
> _We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness._
These words were written by a Virginian named Thomas Jefferson. He was a man who embodied all the advantages, faults, and contradictions of his era. He was a brilliant thinker and inventor who had time to think and invent because enslaved people worked his land and made his money for him. He wrote "all men are created equal" at a moment when, across the British colonies and even at his estate at Monticello, that statement wasn't exactly self-evident for scores of African Americans who lived in bondage.
Just as powerful in that sentence as Jefferson's bold statement of equality was the listing of inalienable (or in earlier drafts, "unalienable") rights, rights that no government can take away from individuals. Never before had these ideas been expressed in such a concise form.
And yet, for all the earth-shattering revelation contained within Jefferson's simple sentence and the rest of the relatively short document in which it is found, we—as modern heirs to its teachings—do not fully appreciate its gravity. Sadly, this phenomenon is both demonstrable and quantifiable.
A survey taken shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century found that more than 40 percent of Americans could not name Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence. Another poll a few years later found that more than a quarter of us could not name Great Britain as the country from which that independence was declared.
An even more disheartening expression of our lack of familiarity with the Declaration came in the summer of 2017. To celebrate the Fourth of July that year, National Public Radio's Twitter account tweeted out the entirety of the Declaration—line by line, word by word. The reaction of a number of Twitter users was surprising, to say the least.
When NPR tweeted America's grievances against King George III as listed in the Declaration—which acknowledged that he "obstructed the administration of justice" and concluded that "a Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people"—some on Twitter thought the broadcaster was talking about a very different leader: President Donald Trump. They misinterpreted Jefferson's words from 1776 as a rallying cry for insurrection today.
"So, NPR is calling for revolution," one Twitter user wrote. Another blasted the outlet for tweeting "propaganda." There was, of course, a notable commonality among the Twitter accounts that were so quick to take NPR to task—most of them appeared to belong to conservatives.
Conservatives might be forgiven for thinking NPR was out to get President Trump. That particular news organization is not known for erring on the side of generosity when it comes to giving fair coverage to right-of-center beliefs and those who express them. Perhaps the controversy ginned up by NPR's seemingly innocuous—even patriotic—tweeting says more about our current social-media outrage culture than it does about any particular ideology.
In 2018, Facebook removed a post from a Texas newspaper that posted sections of the Declaration of Independence. The post went "against our standards on hate speech," Facebook explained. The fact remains that Americans of all political persuasions should know the words of the Declaration of Independence when they see them. They should be studied, consulted for counsel and guidance, and cherished to ensure they will be passed down to the next generation. The most disrespectful thing we can do to the Declaration of Independence is to take it (and the principles underlying it) for granted. Regrettably, that's what many of us seem to be doing.
Perhaps the saddest statistic about America's knowledge of the Declaration is this one, from 2013: At that time, more than 70 percent of Americans thought the men who pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" by signing the Declaration would not be proud of how the America they fought for had turned out.
A few dozen intelligent men who lived on the edge of a vast wilderness 250 years ago understood the dangers of vast centralized power. While they were busy living, working, praying, and building a vibrant civilization, a monarch thousands of miles away and the government that acted in his name began chipping away at their rights—taxing them without their consent, boarding soldiers in their homes, imprisoning friends and family members for expressing their opinions. The grievances against a tyrannical King George in the eighteenth century increasingly bear a striking resemblance to the capricious actions of an out-of-control federal government today.
Fortunately, back then there were patriots who knew that unless they led a revolution on behalf of the rights of the individual against their government, the future of human history wouldn't be too different from the past—it would remain a brutal story of rulers taking advantage of the ruled. And so they got to work. Under penalty of treason and death, they put their names on a document that changed the world.
# CHAPTER ONE
# "In General Congress Assembled"
We were all in haste; Congress was impatient and the Instrument was reported, as I believe in Jefferson's hand writing as he first drew it.
—JOHN ADAMS, 1822
STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA
July 3, 1776
The heat was rising inside the Pennsylvania State House, in almost every conceivable way. The hot summer sun beat down upon the building, threatening to bake the clay bricks of the outer wall a second time over. Inside, the air was warm, muggy, and stagnant. Flies buzzed about the debating chamber, forcing the delegates to the Continental Congress assembled therein to shoo them away with hands and handkerchiefs, as if they were punctuating their remarks with even more hand gestures than usual.
Their talk was getting heated as well. Since the first of the month they had been debating the document submitted by the committee appointed to draft it, known as the Committee of Five. The principal author was Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Jefferson's draft had already gone through a number of revisions by his fellow committee members, particularly at the hands of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Now the entire membership of the Continental Congress was having a go at what would become the opening statement of a new era. All of them were conscious of this document's significance, and before it was approved, the full Congress wanted to make sure every sentence, every word, was exactly right. They knew that history demanded nothing less of them. And perhaps some of them—being politicians, after all—were anxious to make sure Jefferson's draft bore _their_ fingerprints as well.
Meanwhile, the paper's principal author sat sullenly on the sidelines of the debate. Jefferson himself did not engage in the discussion but was rather, in his own recollection, "writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms" leveled by some of his colleagues. To a writer of such great passion as Jefferson, it was no doubt disheartening to see and hear how his words were being tweaked, prodded, rearranged, and replaced by others.
While most of his fellow delegates were single-mindedly engaged with the editing at hand, Jefferson's obvious discomfort did not escape the notice of Benjamin Franklin. As a member of the Committee of Five and, along with Adams, one of the first to review Jefferson's work, Franklin had been responsible for some modest changes of his own. But now that Jefferson's work had been cast before the whole boisterous Congress, Franklin could see that the Virginian was taking the criticism hard.
At seventy years old, Franklin was the oldest member of the Continental Congress. He felt that his young, talented, but sensitive, friend might benefit from some of the wisdom that came with age. The old Philadelphian, his gray hair down to his shoulders, moving slowly on account of gout, shuffled over to Jefferson and sat down next to him.
"I have made it a rule," he told Jefferson, "whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body."
Both men knew it was a little late for that advice, but Franklin continued apace: "I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you." Whether Jefferson in his editorial agony wanted to hear it or not, a story was coming.
"When I was a journeyman printer," Franklin began, "one of my companions, an apprentice hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription."
The friend's name was John Thompson, and Franklin explained that he sketched out an image of what his sign would look like. It included the words "John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money," along with a picture of a hat. The design seemed simple enough.
"But," Franklin continued, "he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments." Here young John Thompson ran into trouble.
The first friend to take a look felt it unnecessary for Thompson to call himself a "Hatter" on the sign _and_ to say "makes and sells hats for ready money." Anyone who read that he made and sold hats would know he was a hatter. So Thompson scratched out "Hatter" from the sketch of the sign.
A second friend suggested getting rid of the word _makes_ "because," as Franklin explained, "his customers would not care who made the hats. If good and to their mind, they would buy by whomsoever made." "Makes" was thus crossed out.
Thompson's third friend offered the very practical advice of avoiding the phrase "for ready money," since it was bad business to sell hats or anything else on credit. Thompson should leave no question that his customers would have to pay, and so that phrase was similarly excised.
"The inscription," Franklin went on, "now stood 'John Thompson sells hats.' _Sells hats?_ says his next friend. _Nobody will expect you to give them away! What then is the use of that word?_ It was stricken out, and 'hats' followed it, the rather as there was one painted on the board.
"So," concluded Franklin, "the inscription was reduced ultimately to 'John Thompson' with the figure of a hat."
With this amusing story of an eighteenth-century "branding exercise," Franklin offered some comfort to Jefferson as they watched the other members of Congress argue over the wording of the Declaration of Independence. Like John Thompson the hatter, Jefferson had entrusted his ideas to others, each of whom made their own particular mark upon the original. And like Thompson's friends, Jefferson's colleagues in Congress meant no personal affront when they offered their suggestions for improvement. Still, the changes were personally painful to Jefferson. The sting had not faded even decades later when he referred to them in 1818 as "depredations" and "mutilations" committed against his original text.
One of these was the removal of especially brutal language against not just King George III but the British people altogether, whom Jefferson accused of sending "Scotch & foreign mercenaries" to the colonies—which understandably offended Continental Congress delegates of Scottish background. It was true that "foreign mercenaries" had been employed in combat in America, notably soldiers hired from Germany—the ancestral home of George III—who were especially hated by the colonists thanks to their particular zeal for looting and plundering.
Jefferson was so enraged that he wanted to cut all ties with the British, not just political ones, arguing that "manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren" and "we must endeavor to forget our former love for them." This severely Anglophobic language was watered down to preserve the hope of regaining normal relations with Britain in the future, but the final word on the former mother country was still Jefferson's: We would "hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends."
In the end, John Adams recalled, "Congress cut off about a quarter" of the original Declaration and in the process "obliterated some of the best of it." Historian Julian Boyd observes dryly: "That a public body would reduce rather than increase the number of words in a political document is in itself a remarkable testimony to their sagacity and ability to express themselves." Usually, the fewer words there are in government documents, the better for the people.
STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA
July 4, 1776
Once his fellow delegates had finished editing the Declaration, Jefferson's fellow Virginian Benjamin Harrison made the report that the document had been shaped into its final form. It was read aloud one more time, voted on, and officially adopted by the Continental Congress.
But what good was a Declaration if its message wasn't declared far and wide? As soon as the Declaration was officially adopted, the very next order of business for the Congress was to begin the process of disseminating it. Accordingly, they ordered "that the declaration be authenticated and printed" by one of the many printers to be found in Philadelphia. After that it was to "be sent to the several assemblies, conventions and committees, or councils of safety, and to the several commanding officers of the continental troops; that it be proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the army."
Note that as soon as the Declaration had been adopted, in its very next measure, the official records of the Congress were referring to "the United States." The colonies were no more. In addition, it was critical that the soldiers in the field fighting the King's soldiers were able to hear the Declaration too. Now they could hear an exquisite articulation of just what they were fighting for. And that fight was preparing to ramp up. On the very same day that Congress voted to adopt the Declaration, a fresh force of British troops under General William Howe completed landing operations on Staten Island in New York.
STATE HOUSE COURTYARD, PHILADELPHIA
July 8, 1776
They came from all over Philadelphia, called out of homes and shops by the bells that rang out from church steeples. It was, in the words of one account, a "warm sunshine morning" on Monday the eighth of July, as citizens gathered to hear the momentous news that had been spreading for the past few days.
The printer John Dunlop had worked through the night of the fourth to print the first official copies of the Declaration of Independence, and by Saturday the sixth it appeared on the front page of the _Pennsylvania Evening Post_. So the words of the Declaration had been circulating, but they had not yet received their first official public reading. This was to take place at noon on the eighth, and it was for this singular event that the bells pealed and the crowds gathered.
The man chosen for this solemn duty was not a member of the Continental Congress, but he was no less a patriot. John Nixon was a native Philadelphian and a colonel in the militia, currently in charge of the city's defense. As such, it had been the task of Nixon and his militiamen to keep the Continental Congress safe were the King's forces to attack. Now it was Nixon's privilege to read aloud the fruits of Congress's labor for the first time.
He stood in front of the crowd assembled in the State House courtyard, held up the parchment just a few days off the press, and began to read. His voice was loud and clear enough to be heard the next block over, and the people responded with "repeated huzzas." Some historians report that there were three cheers of "God bless the free states of North America!" (That has a nice ring to it, but it's probably best we stuck with "United States of America.")
Even after Colonel Nixon's reading, Philadelphia's bells continued to ring into the night. And before the celebrations were over, according to one newspaper, "our late King's coat of arms was brought from the Hall, in the State-House . . . and burned amidst the acclamations of a crowd of spectators." The official symbol of King George III's rule over the former colonies was literally and figuratively consigned to the ashes.
STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA
August 2, 1776
The celebrations had been over for some weeks, and an ominous silence now hung in chamber of the State House on the morning of August 2 as, one by one, the delegates of the Continental Congress filed up to formally sign their names to the Declaration of Independence. Among them was Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, who remembered even decades later "the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress, to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants."
The president of Congress was John Hancock, who had felt the King's injustice firsthand and is supposed to have signed his name extra large in order that George III might see it more clearly. This is likely, however, an entertaining fiction—Hancock probably signed in large letters simply because he signed first, as president.
There is another anecdote from that day for which we do have some documentation. Amid the "silence and gloom" that Rush remembered, Benjamin Harrison, known for his corpulent physique, made a clever remark to his more wizened colleague Elbridge Gerry. "I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing," observed Harrison. "From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead."
There was a "transient smile" at this jibe, but soon the gravity of the moment returned. The Declaration was known to the world now, including the British. There was no turning back. And as they affixed their names to the document, these men knew that it was as good as crafting a most-wanted list for the Crown. Yet they went through with it. Why endure such risk? Because, simply put, they had had enough. His Majesty's Government had pushed them this far.
# CHAPTER TWO
# Weakening the People's Representatives
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY
1768
On February 11, 1768, the Town House in Boston was, for a moment, the epicenter of rebellion.
New taxes imposed on the colonies by Parliament had gone into effect a few months earlier, in November 1767. Known as the Townshend Acts, these were another attempt by the government in London to squeeze revenue out of the American colonies after the repeal of the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act, a tax on all sorts of printed materials bearing an official royal "stamp," had been passed in 1765 but was so strenuously resisted by the American colonists on whom it was imposed that British merchants—in hopes of retaining their American business interests—successfully persuaded Parliament to repeal the law a year later.
But while the Stamp Act itself may have been struck from the books, its repeal was closely followed by the passage of the Declaratory Act, in which London made clear its view that all "colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain." With the Townshend Acts of 1767, His Majesty's Government was doubling down on that premise.
These new taxes, in the words of the eminent Bostonian Samuel Adams, were nothing less than "infringements of their natural and constitutional rights; because, as they are not represented in the British Parliament, his Majesty's commons in Britain, by those Acts, grant their property without their consent." In these early days when the American character was taking shape, our determination to protect our property rights was paramount. Luckily for us, that determination has remained strong.
The Townshend Acts also provided for more royal customs officers to be stationed in Boston, and Adams gave a warning about this expansion of government, observing that "officers of the Crown may be multiplied to such a degree as to become dangerous to the liberty of the people."
Adams and others felt that by calling out this injustice, they were only speaking up for their rights as Englishmen, and Englishmen had a right to speak against unfair taxes. It is important to remember that in 1768, the American colonists were not interested in separation from Britain, but rather full exercise of the same rights enjoyed by the King's subjects in Britain itself. If taxes like the Townshend duties would not be tolerated by a British subject in London, why should they be tolerated by a subject who happened to live in Boston?
But His Majesty's Government took a decidedly different approach when his American subjects decided to speak their minds. Disturbing news soon arrived that the London government had enacted a policy allowing colonists suspected of treason to be hauled away to England for their trial. And before this episode was over, the King's heavy hand would leave the many American colonists without any elected representation in their colonial governments at all.
* * *
—
Anyone approaching the Town House, the seat of government in colonial Massachusetts, could have no doubt as to whose town this was. The road that led up to the building from the bustling docks was called King Street, which in 1768 meant it honored George III. To make the journey from the wharves to the Town House (known today as the Old State House) was to travel the busiest commercial thoroughfare in Boston—indeed, one of the most important trade hubs in His Majesty's North American colonies.
Boston's Long Wharf ran directly into King Street, where cargo from all corners of the world was unloaded. The British Empire depended on its supremacy at sea to maintain the trade routes that brought more wealth and power back to the mother country—not to mention its ruler—and Boston was a significant economic powerhouse on this side of the Atlantic.
A traveler walking up King Street from the wharves would walk alongside shipments of exotic cargo, such as tea from the Far East, carried in wagons or carts or on the backs of laborers, making their way to the storehouses of Boston merchants. Fishmongers hawked their wares up and down the road. Bakers sold loaves of fresh bread to hungry sailors who had lived for months at sea on hardtack and salt pork. The local grog shops did a fair trade, too. The very cobblestones of King Street exuded commercial energy.
But to busy Bostonians, the brick edifice at the top of the road, overlooking the main public square, sat as a stark reminder of the ultimate beneficiary of their labors. Walking up King Street, one did not come to the front door of the Town House but instead to its east wall, the main feature of which was an ornate balcony in the center that looked out over the square and commanded a view of the bustling streets below. From this grand platform, the colony's governor (appointed by the King) would address His Majesty's loyal subjects gathered below, and royal proclamations would be read aloud to the public.
The powerful symbolism of royal commands being issued from on high must have been painfully obvious to the people clustered below. But as if that weren't enough, the east wall of the Town House was decorated with those incontrovertible symbols of the British throne—the lion and the unicorn. Looking up from the square, the people could see the unicorn with a crown around its neck (and that crown attached to chains) affixed to the roof to the right of the balcony. The lion, crown firmly on its head, was situated on the right. In that same arrangement, they still flank the royal coat of arms of Great Britain's sovereign today. The unicorn's head was carved looking ahead, over the roof of the building. The lion's head, however, was looking straight down, as if daring the Bostonians below to defy its might.
On the full British royal coat of arms from which these figures were taken, a motto appears beneath them, ironically in French: _Dieu et Mon Drot_ , meaning "God and my right." This is a reference to the divine right of kings to rule their subjects. The King sought to convince his people that defiance should be understood as an act of rebellion not only against the Crown but also against God Himself.
Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer—the head of the British treasury—was well aware that the laws bearing his name would be unpopular on the other side of the Atlantic. During debate in Parliament on the matter, Townshend quipped that "after this, I do not expect to have my statue erected in America." But he didn't let that stop him and went on to declare, "England is undone if this taxation of America is given up."
It was true that England was strapped for cash after the Seven Years' War against France, which ended in 1763. This began as a colonial conflict between the French and British in North America, but it soon grew into a costly global conflict between the two European powers. Several of its critical battles played out in the American colonies (where George Washington was then a young officer in His Majesty's forces). There, the conflict became known as the French and Indian War as the British colonists and their native allies were pitched into battle against French troops and _their_ native allies. But as many colonists were painfully aware, this was a faraway monarch's war in which they had been forced to fight.
* * *
—
International conflicts were expensive, and years after the end of the war, London was still trying to refill the royal coffers. Though Townshend himself died in September 1767, between his namesake acts' passage in June and their implementation in November, his presence was certainly felt by the American colonists in the ensuing months. And they certainly weren't in any mood to erect statues. Thanks to Townshend, they now faced new taxes on the tea they drank, the paint on their walls, the glass in their windows, and the paper on which they wrote. The Bostonians were determined to fight back, and despite the tax upon it, paper was to be their weapon.
On the second floor of Boston's Town House could be found the chamber of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and the gentlemen gathered within it on the morning of February 11 quieted down upon hearing Speaker Thomas Cushing rap his gavel on the desk. The House had come to order at ten that morning and quickly proceeded to the second order of business on the day's docket—the item that would prove the most consequential to history.
On February 4, the House had voted to appoint a committee to draft a letter to be sent to the legislatures of all other British colonies with the intent of addressing the "difficulties" brought about by "the operation of several Acts of Parliament for levying Duties and Taxes on the American Colonies." The leaders of Massachusetts were going to fight the injustices of the Townshend Acts, but they were not going to do it alone. It was time to call for support from their fellow legislators in the other colonial capitals.
The members of this committee tasked with drafting the "Circular Letter" included Speaker Cushing himself. Also among the committee's number were two of the leading lights of the revolutionary movement in Boston: James Otis and Samuel Adams. Otis had made quite a name for himself over the last few years, arguing against warrantless searches by colonial officials and publishing the pamphlet _Rights of the British Colonies_ (you can read more about him in chapter 7 of my previous book, _Written Out of History: The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government_ ). It was Otis and Adams who had argued most strongly for sending this letter despite the reluctance of some other legislators. Adams was also serving as clerk of the House of Representatives, and thus Speaker Cushing called upon him to read the draft of the letter aloud to their colleagues.
Samuel Adams stood up from his desk, parchment in hand, and looked about the chamber. He allowed himself to savor the moment. Though he read out many state papers as part of his duties as clerk, he took special pride in this one. The Circular Letter draft was primarily his own handiwork—with important edits from Otis and input from the rest of the committee. He and Otis had worked for weeks to convince their fellow House members that this was the right course of action. Now the fate of their efforts hung in the words he was about to deliver to his hushed, expectant colleagues. If his words could move them, perhaps they could move others beyond their own colony.
Adams began: "The House of Representatives of this province have taken into their serious consideration the great difficulties that must accrue to themselves and their constituents by the operation of several Acts of Parliament, imposing duties and taxes on the American colonies." The point was laid out clearly in the beginning—the taxes were the problem.
Now came the specific purpose of the letter: promoting intercolonial unity on the issue. Adams noted that because this was "a subject in which every colony is deeply interested," it was only fitting that "all possible care should be taken that the representatives of the several assemblies, upon so delicate a point, should harmonize with each other." It was therefore the intention of the Massachusetts House to "communicate their mind to a sister colony, upon a common concern."
Adams based his argument on the idea that the American colonists were full British subjects, and as such they had "an equitable claim to the full enjoyment of the fundamental rules of the British constitution." It was, furthermore, "an essential, unalterable right in nature, engrafted into the British constitution, as a fundamental law . . . that what a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent."
Adams called this a "natural and constitutional right," which was being violated by the Townshend Acts.
As he wound down his reading of the Circular Letter, Adams sounded notes of humility. He humbled the observations of the Massachusetts House before the legislatures of the other colonies. "They freely submit their opinions to the judgment of others," he read, "and shall take it kind in your house to point out to them anything further that may be thought necessary." He closed with lines that would seem obsequious to us now: "This House cannot conclude, without expressing their firm confidence in the king, our common head and father, that the united and dutiful supplications of his distressed American subjects will meet with his royal and favorable acceptance."
Samuel Adams took his seat to murmurs of approval from his colleagues. He and Otis had done their work well. Their letter was approved by the House, and now copies would be drawn up, signed by Speaker Cushing, and sent to the legislative chambers of Massachusetts's sister colonies.
With that accomplished, the House moved on to the next item on that morning's agenda. Samuel Adams stepped back from his temporary spotlight and settled back into his role as clerk. There were more-mundane matters to attend to. A gentleman from Rochester had petitioned the House to grant his local court permission to retry a lawsuit to which he'd been a party. His case had to be heard. The legislative business of the colony had to go on.
* * *
—
As it turned out, the colony's legislative business was stymied by the Massachusetts Circular Letter—as Adams's draft came to be called—thanks to an apoplectic reaction in London. When they got their hands on a copy of the letter in April 1768, the British authorities, according to historian Mark Puls, "viewed the circular letter as the colonies' most defiant act yet." And the idea of all the colonies joining forces in opposition to Parliament was even less palatable.
Wills Hill, the Earl of Hillsborough, then serving as secretary of state for the colonies, flew into a rage and dashed off official instructions to the royal governors in America in an attempt to cut off the Circular Letter's influence. To the governors of the twelve other colonies, he wrote that the message from Massachusetts was "of a most dangerous and factious tendency" and would "inflame the minds" of the colonists. "You will therefore," he ordered, "exert your utmost influence to prevail upon the assembly of your province to take no notice of it, which will be treating it with the contempt it deserves." But if any of the other colonial legislatures _did_ act in support of Massachusetts, Hillsborough ordered their governors "to prevent any proceedings upon it by an immediate prorogation or dissolution." The people's elected representative bodies were to be disbanded if they dared take up this letter.
In his letter to Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts, Hillsborough provided more detail. He reported that the King deigned to give the Massachusetts colonists the benefit of the doubt. His Majesty, according to Hillsborough, felt that the Circular Letter might be "contrary to the sense of the assembly, and procured by surprise." He would give his wayward subjects a chance to set things right. Bernard was ordered to "require the house of representatives, in his majesty's name, to rescind the resolution which gave birth to the circular letter," and formally as a body denounce "that rash and hasty proceeding." And if they refused? "It is the King's pleasure," Hillsborough told Bernard, "that you should immediately dissolve them."
On June 30, 1768, the Massachusetts House of Representatives met to consider the question of whether to rescind the Circular Letter. This would not be a typical legislative session. It was convened at eight o'clock in the morning, earlier than usual, and members had been officially advised the day before to "attend punctually." The scene in the chamber was tense, and after a few preliminary matters had been dispensed with, that tension took the form of unusual security measures.
In 1766, visitors' galleries had been installed in the House chamber so the people of Massachusetts could get a front-row view of their elected representatives in action. These were among the first public galleries ever to be installed in a legislative chamber anywhere in the world. But on this day, the members of the House were taking no chances—the galleries were ordered to be cleared. In addition, the doorkeeper was ordered not to let anyone in or out of the House chamber during this debate.
In this cloistered setting, the men of the Massachusetts legislature took up the question of whether or not to comply with the demand of the King and his ministers, relayed by his governor, that they rescind the resolution approving the Circular Letter. The final vote was decisive: by a margin of 92 to 17, the House voted to stand firm. In the official roll call, the first four names listed in the "Nay" column were those of James Otis, Speaker Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock.
The House then drew up a lengthy letter to Governor Bernard explaining their reasoning. Another letter would be sent to Lord Hillsborough. In the letter to Bernard, the legislators pointed out that they had been willing to work with the governor "so far as could consist with the important Purposes of preserving Life, Liberty, and Property," but had been most disappointed with his conduct during this affair. In the end, they justified their actions as "actuated by a conscientious, and finally, a clear and determined Sense of Duty to God, to our King, our Country, and to our latest Posterity."
A group of five House members was assembled to bring this response to Governor Bernard. He received it, and he was prepared to carry out his orders from London. The next day, June 31, the governor officially dissolved the Massachusetts legislature, leaving the colony, as Mark Puls points out, "without a democratic form of government." Samuel Adams spat that this was "despotism."
But the despot's victory was not exactly decisive.
Tucked into their list of reasons for refusing to back down on the Circular Letter was this very practical item: The letters had already gone out, and it would be impossible to simply pretend they had never existed. "The Circular Letters have been sent," they explained, "and many of them have been answered . . . the Public, the World must and will judge of the Proposals, Purposes and Answers."
It was true that the letters had already gone out to the other colonial legislatures. The fight against the Townshend Acts was spreading beyond Massachusetts. In a few months, its next skirmish would erupt in the South, and give a brand-new politician his baptism in the fires of revolution.
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
1769
Monday, May 8, 1769, was a busy day in Williamsburg. Of course, the opening day of the General Assembly session was always busy. This was the day when the members of the House of Burgesses, elected the previous fall, returned to the colonial capital to take their seats and begin their dealings with the royal governor—Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, facing his first assembly as governor—and the royally appointed governor's council.
There was always a certain sense of excitement when the legislators returned. More customers came in and out of the shops and tradesmen's yards. Foot, horse, and wagon traffic picked up all along the main thoroughfare of Duke of Gloucester Street. Pubs like the popular Raleigh Tavern became unofficial hubs of political influence almost as important as the capitol building itself.
Some of the men making their way to the _official_ capitol—a simple two-story brick building with a prominent porch over the main entrance on its western wall—were veteran legislators. Others were new to the House of Burgesses. Among the newcomers was one young man who would have stood out from his colleagues for any number of reasons. Perhaps it was his above-average height one noticed first—he was six feet two inches tall, some six inches taller than a typical man of his era. Or perhaps it was the red hair that stuck out most to the people of Williamsburg as they noticed him in their midst.
Of course, some of them would probably have recognized Thomas Jefferson. Though he was new to the legislature, he was very familiar with Williamsburg, having studied there at the College of William & Mary just a few years earlier. Now the proud alumnus had returned to take his seat representing Albemarle County in the House of Burgesses.
The elections in the colony had taken place on November 26, 1768. Historian Jon Meacham notes that Jefferson's "campaign consisted largely of buying drinks and cakes for the landowners" who could vote. The Virginia election of 1768 seems to have been a lively affair. The edition of the _Virginia Gazette_ of December 15 of that year, which announced the election of "Messrs. Thomas Walker and Thomas Jefferson, for Albemarle," also reported: "At the election in New Kent, a man who had drank a little too freely, and rode a young and skittish horse, in attempting to mount, received two kicks, which in a few hours put an end to his life. We have heard of one or two more deaths at the different elections."
Interestingly, the election report in this issue of the _Gazette_ was relegated to page two. The front page was devoted to news from Britain and other prominent colonial capitals. Among the news from Boston, it notes: "The Earl of Hillsborough had received the letter addressed to him by the late House of Representatives in June last, relating to the circular letter of the former House to the other colonies." The Massachusetts Circular Letter was still very much in the news despite the dissolution of the assembly, and as young Jefferson would soon realize, its effects were still being felt in Virginia.
At about ten that morning, Jefferson assembled with his fellow Burgesses in their chamber to take the oath of office. Eight commissioners specially appointed by the governor marched in and, assisted by the House's clerk, George Wythe, they administered the oaths. Thomas Jefferson's career in public life had officially begun. He was just a few weeks past his twenty-sixth birthday.
There followed an elaborate ritual to open the session. It involved a brief initial meeting with Governor Botetourt and the election of a Speaker—subject to the governor's approval, of course. Peyton Randolph, who had held the office previously, was elected and approved.
Then came a "very affectionate Speech" by Governor Botetourt in which he expressed his eagerness to work together with the Burgesses to "follow exactly, without Passion or Prejudice, the real Interests of those you have the Honour to represent." Botetourt was generally well liked by the Virginians. One historian notes that he was "charming, generous, and diligent in attending to business," and being the first Virginia governor in decades to actually live in the colony, he "became immensely popular" after his arrival in October 1768.
It was not long, however, before the governor's relations with the colonists' elected representatives would be sorely tested. Indeed, the trouble began in a matter of minutes.
When the Burgesses returned to their chamber after listening to the governor's speech, young Mr. Jefferson found himself with the first assignment of his political career. He was placed on the committee tasked with writing the Burgesses' official response to the governor's speech (a mostly routine, formal gesture). After that was dispensed with, Speaker Randolph made his first important announcement of the session.
He informed his colleagues that after the last session of the assembly, when the Massachusetts Circular Letter had been received and discussed, he had written his own letters to the other colonial legislatures expressing the Virginians' support for Massachusetts's efforts against the "sundry Acts of the British Parliament." In the intervening months, "several Letters in Answer thereto" had arrived, and Randolph submitted these "to be perused by the Members of the House." The Virginia legislative session had barely begun, and already the Massachusetts controversy was being discussed.
After this announcement from Randolph, the Burgesses went about the more mundane business of organizing themselves into committees. Jefferson was assigned to two: the Committee on Privileges and Elections and the Committee on Propositions and Grievances, both of which also included, among others, George Washington and Richard Henry Lee. For the next several days, the normal business of the legislature continued apace, as the Burgesses dealt with mainly local issues.
But on May 15, there was a shift in the agenda. In a change from dealing with local matters, the Burgesses decided that on the following day they would "consider the present State of the Colony" as a whole. They specifically made sure to bring the correspondence between Speaker Randolph and the other colonial legislatures on the Massachusetts matter into the discussion.
At eleven the following morning, Thomas Jefferson took his seat as usual. He was starting to get used to the rhythm of legislative business. The morning was taken up by a number of routine matters, but later in the day that rhythm shifted palpably as the House "resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House" to discuss the broader issues facing Virginia. This was no doubt an attempt to intimidate colonial "radicals" after the controversy in Massachusetts.
The Burgesses debated these issues among themselves as a "committee of the whole." Two critical aspects of their rights as British subjects were under threat: their right to fair taxes enacted by their own representatives and the right to fair trial conducted by their own courts. After much discussion, they arrived at four resolutions, which were read out by Clerk George Wythe.
"Resolved," Wythe intoned, "that it is the opinion of this committee, that the sole right of imposing taxes on the inhabitants of this his Majesty's colony and dominion of Virginia, is now, and ever hath been legally and constitutionally vested in the House of Burgesses lawfully convened."
Announcing the second resolution, Wythe declared that "it is the undoubted privilege of the inhabitants of this colony, to petition their sovereign for redress of grievances; and that it is lawful and expedient, to procure the concurrence of his Majesty's other colonies." The colonists had a right to not only press their case before the King but also present a united front in doing so. This was exactly what London feared.
The third resolution touched on the treason trial policy, with Wythe affirming that "trials for treason . . . or for any felony or crime whatsoever, committed and done in this his Majesty's said colony and dominion . . . ought of right, to be had and conducted in and before his Majesty's courts, held within the said colony." The colonists had every intention of upholding the law, but they were equally determined to police themselves in doing so through the lawfully constituted courts in their own colonies rather than in England, where a fair trial would be far more difficult to secure.
Finally, Wythe proclaimed the House's intention "that an humble, dutiful and loyal Address be presented to his Majesty, to assure him of our inviolable Attachment to his sacred Person and Government," but also to ask that he "quiet the minds of his loyal Subjects of this Colony, and to avert from them those Dangers and Miseries" which would come from the threat of a trial across the ocean.
Thomas Jefferson joined his colleagues in adopting these resolutions unanimously. Years later, he would recall that the day was infused with "a spirit manifestly displayed of considering the cause of Massachusetts as a common one." In keeping with that spirit of intercolonial unity, on the rise following the Massachusetts Circular Letter, the House also ordered copies of their resolutions to be sent "without delay" to the legislative bodies of their sister colonies.
The next day, May 17, 1769, the Burgesses picked up the business of their resolutions from the day before. They immediately ordered them printed in the _Virginia Gazette_. As it turned out, this was a wise move, and it was made none too soon. Several of the Burgesses spent the morning working on the "humble, dutiful and loyal address" to be sent to the King—and it _was_ exceedingly deferential—but even that wouldn't save them. Around noon that day, Governor Botetourt struck.
The Burgesses received a message that "the Governor commands the immediate attention of your House," and Speaker Randolph, George Washington, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, and all their colleagues left their seats to make their way to His Excellency. One account says that Botetourt was "dressed in scarlet" when he received them—perhaps adopting a more warlike posture. His message was simple.
"Mr. Speaker, and Gentlemen of the House of Burgesses," he began, unfailingly polite until the end. "I have heard of your resolves, and augur ill of their effect. You have made it my duty to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly." Just like that, the session was over, and the people's elected representative body in Virginia ceased to exist.
Or did it?
The House of Burgesses may have been officially dissolved, but they couldn't stop the former members from decamping from the capitol building to the Raleigh Tavern, a short distance away. There, in the privacy of the Apollo Room, they organized themselves into a "voluntary convention," as Jefferson called it. Peyton Randolph, no longer holding the official title of Speaker, was elected moderator. George Washington's diary from the time records that the meeting at the tavern went on late into the night—he didn't leave until ten.
The group reconvened at the Raleigh again at ten the next morning. The final outcome of their discussion was the Virginia Nonimportation Resolutions, in which the former Burgesses agreed, "by their own Example, as all other legal Ways and Means in their Power, to promote and encourage Industry and Frugality, and discourage all Manner of Luxury and Extravagance" in order to avoid purchase of any British goods that fell under the Townshend Acts, and they added a long list of other European products for good measure. Eighty-eight of these "late representatives of the people," including Thomas Jefferson, then affixed their signatures to the document.
Once again, King George's royal governor had stamped out an elected legislature for placing the will of the people above the desires of the King. And just like those in Massachusetts, the Virginians refused to let that stop them. They had their resolves printed up and sent copies to the other colonies to keep the cause afloat. And when they were barred from the capitol building, there was always the tavern.
* * *
—
The stories shared here were not the only instances of the dissolution of colonial assemblies in America on the orders of royal officials. But these examples, and their common thread of the members' refusal to back down, even in the face of severe intimidation, from their duties as elected legislators shows the commitment to representative government that has undergirded our American system since even before the nation came into being. And it reminds us that the legacy of those colonial legislatures—our independent Congress and our individual state legislatures—is something precious that must be preserved.
When a royal governor moved against a legislature in the King's name, it was the ultimate act of executive coercion against the people's elected representatives. Indeed, the notion of the executive having approval of the Speaker of the legislature meant that even when harmony reigned between all parties, the legislature would never be truly independent.
In the modern United States, it is absurd to imagine so blatant an act as a president forcibly dissolving Congress, or the federal government dissolving a state legislature. But this is a direct result of Jefferson's attacking King George for his coercion of colonial assemblies—something Jefferson had experienced firsthand. Because this grievance led to the War of Independence, when the Constitution was being drafted there was special care taken to ensure that the national legislative body would be a coequal branch of government and maintain its independence from the executive. It is also why the Bill of Rights was wrapped up with the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which left all powers not delegated to the federal government in the hands of the state governments (primarily to be exercised by the people of the states through their state legislatures).
King George's government did not attack only the elected colonial legislatures. The people's right to a fair trial came under attack as well, and no less a founding personage than John Hancock found himself in the King's crosshairs. The colonists' legislatures and justice system were both collapsing under the tyranny of the Crown.
# CHAPTER THREE
# John Adams Instructs the Crown in Its Own Law
For Depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury . . .
BOSTON HARBOR
June 10, 1768
The sailors of the Royal Navy attended to their task with grim efficiency. They boarded the trading sloop and formally took possession of her cargo in the name of His Majesty, the King. The vessel itself was to be taken in tow and impounded, to be kept under the dull gaze of Royal Navy cannons. The ship's name, in one of history's great ironies, was the _Liberty_. Its owner was a Boston merchant named John Hancock, and he was suspected of violating royal trade regulations.
The seizure of the _Liberty_ provoked an outrage that whipped Boston into a frenzy—in a way that would not be seen again until the Boston Massacre, two years later. It started with the business community, as local merchants friendly to Hancock, organized by Captain Daniel Malcolm, gathered at the pier where the _Liberty_ was under guard and demanded that the officials return the ship and its cargo to the rightful owner. When naval personnel ignored him, the mob of merchants turned into a riot, smashing the windows of the royal tax collectors' houses and burning one of their personal boats. Two of the tax agents were engulfed by the riot and beaten by the protesters.
The British customs commissioners feared they would suffer the same fate as the collectors, so British troops were deployed to Boston for their protection. A local newspaper reported:
> At about 1 o'clock, all the troops landed under cover of the cannon of the ships of war, and marched into the Common, with muskets charged, bayonets fixed, colours flying, drums beating and fifes, &c. playing, making with the train of artillery upwards of 700 men.
This occupation only angered Bostonians further, as the troops outside their houses came to represent the King's increasing authority and intrusion into their daily lives. This incident was more than a dispute over smuggling. When the matter finally came to court some months later, this was exactly the argument that Hancock's attorney—his friend John Adams—would make. The popular outrage at the _Liberty_ 's seizure gave Adams the fuel he needed to hold a fire to British legal authority.
COURT OF VICE ADMIRALTY, MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY
Winter 1769
When John Adams entered the courtroom of Judge Robert Auchmuty, he could not have helped but feel slightly out of his depth. He was, of course, a talented attorney, but revenue litigation was still a new field for him, and the British admiralty court was a proving ground for his abilities.
The admiralty courts as employed under King George were a dramatic break from British legal tradition. The courts consisted of judges appointed by the King and were often populated by those sympathetic to the interests of the Crown. Prior to the Sugar Act of 1763, these types of courts were used primarily to settle commercial disputes concerning trade.
Across the room stood Jonathan Sewall, who was serving as the attorney for the Crown. Sewall was advocate general of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a veteran lawyer for the King. In prosecuting John Hancock, Sewall demanded he pay penalties amounting to the extraordinary sum of £9,000.
Despite facing off against each other in this courtroom, Adams and Sewall shared a complicated relationship as friend and foe. Though their profession brought them into adversarial contact, the two maintained a close and jovial friendship outside of their trials. Just prior to the case, Sewall had personally offered Adams the chance to take his position as advocate general. Adams declined this honor repeatedly, telling his friend that accepting the position to work on behalf of Parliament and the Crown would be "wholly inconsistent with all my ideas of right, justice, and policy."
Had Adams accepted Sewall's offer, he would not only have been standing on that opposite side of the courtroom, arguing in defense of the King's authority, but he also would have been handsomely rewarded if successful. That was the prospect that awaited Sewall. For bringing the charges on behalf of the King, Sewall would have been entitled to one-third of the damages a defendant found guilty would pay.
But Adams was fighting for something more than financial spoils. The defendant in this case was his friend and fellow patriot John Hancock. Of course, that meant Adams was under added pressure to prevail. This was more than just a dispute over taxes—his friend's honor was at stake. And importantly, this case was a chance for Adams to take a stand against the decidedly unfair trend in the King's idea of justice.
British officials undermined the tradition of English common law when they sought to expand the powers of the juryless courts to unilaterally enforce their statutes. Generally speaking, until the 1760s, the American colonies' relations with the mother country were in an unofficial state of "salutary neglect," in which royal officials chose to only loosely enforce regulations over the American colonies. Therefore, criminal trade cases, such as avoiding duties on imports, were rarely upheld against traders like John Hancock. During this period, American colonists developed a feeling of general autonomy and liberty as a society operating far away from the Crown.
But this policy of "salutary neglect" was rolled back under King George III and was all but shattered with the Sugar Act of 1764. Under this law, the admiralty courts were granted the ability to rule on violations of customs and smuggling laws, meaning that British officials could direct cases to friendly judges when they felt that courts using local juries would rule against their interests. Judges friendly to the King could then unilaterally convict without a jury, in many cases turning the courts into a political tool to deprive the colonists of their freedoms. This meant that John Hancock was being tried under a law in whose passage he had had no say and without a jury of his peers—violating his rights as a British subject.
* * *
—
Settling in at his desk before the judge's bench, Adams carefully pored over the notes he had made for his argument. Hancock had been charged with failing to pay the full duty to the British Crown before his crew unloaded his cargo of Portuguese Madeira, a type of fortified wine. Royal officials claimed that Hancock had even boasted of his plans to defy the authority of these taxes.
His ship had arrived in Boston on the night of May 9, 1768. On the tenth, the crew reportedly unloaded twenty-five "Pipes" of wine, which were duly logged and taxed by the customs official. But another customs officer later emerged with a story that he had been forcibly locked in the hold by the _Liberty_ 's crew—Hancock's employees—on the night of the ninth while they illegally unloaded a great deal of wine before their "official" unloading on the tenth.
All told, the Crown accused Hancock of unloading one hundred pipes of wine in the dead of night to avoid paying the King's taxes. And this was no small amount—each pipe contained about 126 gallons. Madeira was, to say the least, a very popular libation in colonial America.
The British prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to fully prove that Hancock had taken part in smuggling, but Adams still faced an uphill struggle. He understood the difficulty of arguing before a judge who was friendly to the King, especially when the opposing evidence consisted of testimony from British duty collectors and other royal officials. With this in mind, he decided against focusing strictly on the issue of revenue. He decided he would make a legal argument that would change the course of history in the colonies.
Meanwhile, his opposing counsel, Jonathan Sewall, was concluding his remarks before the court, stating:
> John Hancock . . . well knowing, that the Duties thereon were not paid or secured and that the unshipping and landing the same, as aforesaid, was with Intent to defraud the said Lord the King as aforesaid, and contrary to Law.
Adams silently gave thanks to Providence for giving him the wisdom not to take Sewall's job. He knew he could not bear to stand as a royal advocate in a court that was—at least in this case—less a chamber of fair legal proceedings and more a political tool of King George III. One grievance in particular would become the crux of Adams's argument: Missing from that admiralty courtroom was a jury of Hancock's peers.
Under English law, cases such as smuggling were typically tried as a criminal offense in a court with a judge and a jury of citizens. The tradition of assembling a jury of peers to determine a citizen's guilt dated back to 1215 and the foundational document of English law, the Magna Carta. This seminal charter established the idea of judgment by one's peers as a foundation of a free society. Clause 39 states: "No man shall be taken, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land." Guilt was to be decided not by one man but rather by a group of his peers, naturally employing the norms and standards embraced by their society. But apparently things could change if a monarch decided to tighten his grip on his far-off colonies, as King George III did in the 1760s.
Thus, by the time the court proceedings began in November 1768, _Jonathan Sewall v. John Hancock_ had taken on a greater significance than simply proving Hancock's innocence; it was a challenge to the tyrannical foundations of the very court in which they stood. John Adams was aware of this and, brilliant legal mind that he was, crafted his argument accordingly. He wanted to win the case to help his comrade as well as to send a message.
His opposition tried to wear him down with procedural sandbagging. Judge Auchmuty prolonged the trial with countless excessive witness testimonies. Adams described it in his autobiography as "a painfull Drudgery," claiming there were few days without a court hearing during the winter of 1768–69. But the drawn-out trial, covered extensively by patriot broadsheets, combined with the presence of British Regulars in the city, kept patriot anger alive in Boston for the entire duration of the case.
In his ultimate defense, John Adams invoked both English common law and the Magna Carta to challenge the legitimacy of juryless criminal courts. His condemnation of the admiralty courts quickly gained traction in the public square. His argument that Hancock could not be convicted for smuggling hinged on several points.
On the practical side he argued that, because it was Hancock's crew who had allegedly committed this act, the government could not prove that Hancock himself had any awareness of the alleged wrongdoing. "Can it be proved that Mr. Hancock knew of this Frolick?" Adams asked. "If he neither consented to it, nor knew of it, how can he be liable to the penalty?"
But his more powerful arguments attacked the grounding of the law under which Hancock was being tried, and the court in which the case was brought. Adams argued that because American colonists lacked representation in Parliament, Hancock was being unjustly tried under a law in the passage of which he had had no say. "My client Mr. Hancock never consented to it," Adams declared. "He never voted for it himself, and he never voted for any man to make such a law for him. In this respect therefore the greatest consolation of an Englishman, suffering under any Law, is torn from him, I mean the Reflection, that it is a Law of his own Making."
Building upon this, Adams then proceeded to make another, ultimately stronger, argument that the Crown had infringed upon Hancock's fundamental rights as an English subject. In so doing, he invoked the original underpinnings of the English judicial system and sought to prove that the King had exceeded his authority under the law. By giving power to the admiralty court to hold trials without juries, Adams argued, the Crown violated the Magna Carta.
Excoriating the misuse of admiralty courts, he reasoned that "these extraordinary penalties and forfeitures, are to be heard and tried—how? Not by a jury, not by the law of the land—by the civil law and a single judge." He argued that in a betrayal of the noble English barons who wrote (and forced King John to sign) the original Magna Carta, "the Barons of modern times have answered that they are willing, that the Laws of England should be changed, at least with Regard to all America." This persecution of Hancock was less than what an English subject deserved. "Here is the Contrast that stares us in the Face!" He announced:
> The Parliament in one clause guarding the people of the realm, and securing to them the Benefit of a trial by the law of the land, and by the next clause, depriving all Americans of that privilege. What shall we say to this Distinction? Is there not in this Clause, a Brand of Infamy, of Degradation, and Disgrace, fixed upon every American? Is he not degraded below the Rank of an Englishman? Is it not directly, a Repeal of Magna Charta, as far as America is concerned?
This argument proved successful, and it led to a public victory for the growing patriot movement. On March 25, 1796, Jonathan Sewall withdrew the case. Adams had defeated his close friend in court. But he had done much more than that.
_Sewall v. Hancock_ expanded the legal foundations for American independence and the colonists' case for claiming the fundamental right to a fair and independent judicial system. King George III had used the Trade and Navigation Acts to consolidate power over the colonies' judicial systems. King George's expansion of admiralty courts showed the colonists that a free and independent court system—one that sought to uphold the fundamental and original values of a free, law-abiding society—was something worth fighting for. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson made sure to accuse King George of "depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury."
It is therefore easy to understand that, when the American revolutionaries became Founders, they felt so strongly about the need to disperse power among the three coequal branches of government and prohibit any one branch from unduly influencing another. After the Constitution had been drafted but prior to its ratification, James Madison warned the nation in Federalist paper 48: "The powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments. It is equally evident, that none of them ought to possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others."
This included keeping the judiciary independent and preventing its use as a tool of coercion, as the British admiralty courts had become in the American colonies prior to the Revolution. King George had used the power to exercise justice in his name to destroy a fundamental right outlined in the Magna Carta, which the King himself was supposed to enforce. He and his government violated the foundational limits that were placed upon him by the people, and the Founders sought to prevent that from ever occurring again.
John Adams used that argument to turn the Hancock case into a prominent public victory for the growing patriot movement in Massachusetts. But for his fellow colonists in North Carolina, however, who were trying to set up their own court system, justice was proving more elusive.
# CHAPTER FOUR
# Centralizing Power
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
NEW BERN, NORTH CAROLINA
February 1773
A cold winter wind came off the Atlantic Ocean, cutting through the night and blowing west, sending waves crashing onto the beaches of North Carolina's Outer Banks and winding its way up the Neuse River to the town of New Bern. There its ferocity soon ran up against the most imposing structure in town: the Governor's Palace, where candles could be seen still burning in the upper floor of the main house despite the late hour.
Inside, an even greater storm was brewing inside the mind of Governor Josiah Martin. He had hoped to have a quiet job ruling over a quiet backwater colony. He was wrong. By the time he first arrived in North Carolina, he found that tensions had been brewing for some time.
The revolutionary fervor that swept through many of Britain's North American colonies in the late 1760s had not passed North Carolina by. In 1769, Speaker of the House John Harvey had laid before the assembly "a letter which he received from the Speaker of the House of Burgesses in Virginia inclosing sundry resolutions of that House."
These were the resolutions passed in Virginia on May 16, 1769, which asserted that Britain's North American colonists had the right to tax themselves, petition the King for redress of grievances, and receive a fair trial—as well as a fourth resolution, determining that an appeal be made to the King directly to address these issues. In Virginia, the governor had dissolved the House of Burgesses the day after they passed these resolutions (but not before they were printed up and copies sent "to the Speakers of the several Houses of Assembly, on this continent"). In North Carolina, then governor Tryon waited four days before doing the same. The same John Harvey who had introduced these resolutions remained the Speaker of the House in the current session, and now he was Governor Martin's problem.
But North Carolina's issues were not confined to the legislature. Far from New Bern, in the western interior—the "backcountry"—independent-minded settlers had long bristled against the taxes and rules that the royal government based in the east had tried to impose on them. These hardy backcountrymen were known as the "Regulators," and sometimes their resistance turned violent.
In 1770–71, Regulators assaulted local officials and even confronted Governor Tryon and the colonial militia. The Regulator hostilities culminated in the Battle of Alamance in 1771, in which the rebellion was effectively put down by the government, which immediately began issuing pardons to Regulators in hopes of defusing the situation.
Though Governor Martin had not faced the violence of the Regulators the way his predecessor had, the tensions remained. A major source of contention was the colony's court system, which had been on shaky ground for several years.
The judicial system in North Carolina had been "unsettled, changeable and uncertain" for some time, well before Governor Martin took office, and even before George III took the throne of Great Britain. In April 1754, the government of George III's grandfather King George II—George III's father had died young, before taking the throne, so the crown passed from grandfather to grandson—raised an objection to a law passed in North Carolina eight years prior, in 1746. This statute set up courts for the colony, but the British government felt that setting up courts was something that only the King's government could do directly. It could not be done by the people of the colony themselves. Accordingly, they "disallowed" the 1746 law, effectively shutting down North Carolina's courts.
The fact that the British government saw fit to act retroactively against a law passed eight years prior was yet another failure of their colonial policy. They failed to understand—or were simply unconcerned by—the notion that vast gaps in time and location between the people controlling the laws and the people affected by those laws do not make for a smooth-running government. A sudden change in what appeared to be settled law would seem extremely arbitrary to the people of North Carolina who were familiar with the prior system. The settled expectations of the people—the rules of the game—had been upended, and this does not create the conditions for good governance.
Perhaps anticipating this, the government's man on the ground in North Carolina, Governor Arthur Dobbs, acted quickly to remedy the situation, and in January 1755 he approved new laws to set up colonial courts, which solved the problem until April 1759, when George II's government once again took issue with North Carolina's judicial system. While London's position had softened since 1754—it no longer objected to the North Carolinians setting up their own courts altogether—it still felt the laws gave too much power to the local judicial authorities at the expense of the King. The local county judges were, after all, more attuned to the sense of justice of the people who would be appearing before their benches, but to London it was the King's justice, not the people's, that mattered most.
In 1760, the colonists tried again, and in May of that year Governor Dobbs approved a law that once again established courts in North Carolina but added a Suspension Clause, which according to historian Edward Dumbauld rendered the law "temporary for two years until the King's pleasure could be known." Given the finicky nature of the "King's pleasure" when it came to North Carolina's court laws, the inclusion of this provision was understandable from the governor's perspective. The "King's pleasure" was made known in December 1761, and by this time, there was a new king: George III. His government followed that of his predecessor by once again striking down the law and even admonished Governor Dobbs for daring to approve it. But Governor Dobbs's luck turned in 1762, when he was able to oversee a compromise court bill crafted between the upper and lower houses of the North Carolina legislature and which also drew no ire from the government in London. For the moment, there was a place for justice in North Carolina again—the King's justice, at least.
The problem that would become Governor Martin's began in January 1768, when his predecessor, William Tryon, approved the renewal of the court laws. They contained a provision known as an Attachment Clause—a means by which North Carolinians could seek repayment of debts owed to them by people who did not live in the colony by "attaching," or garnishing, the property of their debtors. It gave the people of North Carolina some legal protections against absent British landowners, merchants, or anyone else who did business in the colony from afar and didn't pay their debts.
There were no issues with this provision until 1770, when an eagle-eyed adviser to the British Board of Trade happened upon it and raised the alarm. Historian Herbert Friedenwald recounts that the British government, upon review, found the Attachment Clause to be "a serious departure from legal form," but was magnanimous enough not to simply scrap the entire law as they'd done in the past. Instead, they merely suggested that the North Carolina Assembly amend the law to remove the problematic language on attachments. When this had not happened by February 1772, King George III formally instructed the new governor to refuse to approve any new court laws with an Attachment Clause unless they also contained a Suspension Clause—essentially making the law temporary and subject to the King's approval.
The governor to whom this edict was given was Josiah Martin, in whose hands the problem of North Carolinian justice currently rested. The court laws of 1768 were due to expire in 1773, and now the session had commenced in which they had to be renewed if courts were to remain in operation in the colony.
This was not the only example of the royal government interfering in the judicial affairs of the colonies. When the people of South Carolina, for instance, attempted in 1768 to set up more courts so that everyone was not required to travel to Charleston for justice, the King struck down the law—only because it provided that judges be paid "contingent upon their appointment during good behavior instead of during the king's pleasure." The Pennsylvanians, too, suffered "an entire failure in the administration of justice in this province" when Queen Anne's government struck down their court law in 1706. Courts were reestablished but struck down again in 1714, only to be set up once more.
Still, the North Carolina court controversy was a protracted dispute between colonists and the royal government that would, under the somewhat hapless Governor Martin, grow into a full-blown crisis. Over its course, the royal government would attack not only the judicial but the legislative representation of the North Carolina colonists—and the end to the crisis would come only in full-blown revolution.
* * *
—
As he sat brooding in his New Bern office, winds beating on his windows, Martin was in the midst of what was shaping up to be an extremely contentious session of the North Carolina legislature. It was hardly a surprise that the trouble was coming from the legislature's lower house, formally known as the House of Commons—borrowing the term from the "Mother of Parliaments" in London—but commonly called the assembly. The members of this body were elected by the colonists. It was up to the upper house—His Majesty's Honorable Council, whose members were appointed by royal decree—as well as Governor Martin himself to rein in the popular passions of the assembly and make sure business went smoothly in this corner of King George III's empire.
At the moment, Governor Martin knew things were not going very smoothly at all, and he had a feeling they were about to get worse. He paced nervously up and down his study, sometimes sitting down at his desk, where pen and paper were arrayed, along with copies of the notes from the assembly session so far. But he never sat long before he resumed his pacing, running his hand absentmindedly along the elegantly carved chairs and tables in the room or fingering the hand-tooled leather bindings of the many books in his library.
He was struggling to write a letter to William Legge, the second Earl of Dartmouth, in London. Lord Dartmouth was serving as secretary of state for the colonies, King George's right-hand man when it came to managing the affairs of Britain's far-flung possessions. Lord Dartmouth was the middleman between the King and his colonial governors, and Martin knew that when His Lordship sent a message, it may have been written in his handwriting, but it spoke with the King's voice. At the same time, Martin knew whatever he wrote to Lord Dartmouth would be passed directly to the King, along with Dartmouth's opinion on how Martin was handling himself across the ocean. To hold the favor of Lord Dartmouth, therefore, was to hold the favor of the King himself.
Governor Martin went back to his desk again, determined to choose his words carefully. He had hoped to send word back to London once the assembly had accomplished something positive, but he saw a fight brewing and felt it was his duty to warn Lord Dartmouth. But how? It was critical that he show his superiors that he had the matter in hand. At thirty-five, he was facing the biggest challenge of his career—a career that had so far been unimpressive. The army hadn't quite worked out. But he had been given a chance at a new start when he was appointed governor of North Carolina in 1771. Now, deep down, in thoughts that came to him only late at night, when he was the only one awake in the Governor's Palace, he was wondering if he was truly up to the task.
Josiah Martin's family originally came from Ireland, and he was born in Dublin, but the Martins were decidedly a colonial family. The family, according to historian Vernon Stumpf, "belonged to the country gentry class that had helped staff British imperial and provincial agencies since the sixteenth century." Martin's family was based at Antigua in the West Indies, and he had an uncle, also named Josiah Martin, living on Long Island, New York. Josiah the nephew would marry the daughter of Josiah the uncle—his first cousin. Thanks to "marriage alliances and careful investment," Stumpf notes, the Martins "acquired estates and plantations in the British Isles, the islands of the Caribbean, and North America."
They also sought to acquire positions of influence for themselves. Young Josiah's first attempt at this had been to enter the British Army, where he served as an officer from 1756 to 1769. Despite this lengthy service, during which he eventually reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, army life did not seem to agree with Martin. Finding himself in failing health and short on money, he sold off his military commission in 1769. In need of a new occupation, he sought the aid of his older half brother Samuel Martin, a well-connected Member of Parliament who held influence not only in politics but in royal circles as well, thanks to his service as treasurer to Princess Augusta, the King's mother.
Samuel was close with Lord Hillsborough, who was then serving as secretary of state for the colonies. When North Carolina's governor, William Tryon, was sent north to become governor of New York, Samuel's influence helped get Josiah Martin named to fill the vacancy. Josiah was not totally unqualified for the position—thanks to his uncle's influence, he had been able to dabble somewhat in the colonial administration in New York. But his debut as a royal governor did not have an auspicious beginning. His health problems flared up again—this time requiring multiple operations—and he was prevented from making the trip to North Carolina for some time.
But now, as he sat at his desk not quite two years later, Josiah Martin was very much in charge—on paper, at least. It was his responsibility to keep a firm hand on the troublemakers in the North Carolina Assembly, a task that was proving difficult.
Tensions between the colonists and the government had been rising for some time. As he looked around his sumptuously appointed office in the Governor's Palace, he was reminded once again, with a sinking feeling, that the ungrateful colonists even begrudged him these grand surroundings in the midst of which he sat.
The brick palace had been the brainchild of Governor Tryon— or more specifically, that of John Hawks, the architect whom Tryon had brought over from England specifically to build a new colonial administration building and governor's residence for North Carolina. Tryon formalized New Bern as the colony's capital and sought to erect the capitol building as an unassailable symbol of British elegance and power. Hawks drew up plans in the up-to-the-minute Georgian style, a grand brick main house with curved, colonnaded wings coming out from both sides, each of which was anchored with a smaller brick structure at the end. Construction began in 1767 and finished in 1770, when the building was formally opened with great ceremony and the Tryon family moved in.
Less inclined to celebrate were the average North Carolina colonists, particularly in the backcountry. In 1766 the assembly had initially appropriated five thousand pounds for the project, and to do so, they dipped into an existing fund for public construction—specifically, it would otherwise have been used to build schools. In 1768, it was determined that the ongoing construction would cost an additional ten thousand pounds, which was promptly appropriated from the public coffers. To compensate for this expense, the government did what governments are notorious for doing when they go over budget—they increased taxes. North Carolinians were subjected to liquor taxes and a poll tax, and they were none too pleased. The citizens of Orange County, in the western part of the colony, lodged a protest in 1768, declaring: "We are determined not to pay the Tax for the next three years, for the Edifice or Governor's House. We want no such House, nor will we pay for it."
But the "Edifice" remained. While Governor Tryon did not get to enjoy his creation for very long before he left for New York in 1771, Governor Martin, as the first governor to commence his term in what was deemed "the finest government house in the colonies," wasted no time in putting his own stamp on the place. A later historian would note that Martin "proceeded to fill the building with lavish furnishings at a time when the seeds of revolution were being sown in North Carolina and Britain's other American colonies."
These "lavish furnishings" were small comfort to Governor Martin as he sat dejected in his study, listening to the wind howl outside. As he looked out the window, he noticed how low the wicks of the candles in the candelabra on the windowsill had gotten. A glance at the clock told him it was later than he thought. He knew he had to begin his letter if he was going to get it started on its journey to London by messenger at first light. He pushed all thoughts of revolutionaries, regulators, and his own career prospects out of his mind and took up his pen.
"I have the honour to inform your Lordship," he began, and proceeded to explain to Lord Dartmouth that he had called the colonial legislature to order on January 25, "when"—he thought it might be best to open with some good news—"the House of Assembly was fuller, as I am informed, than it has ever been at the beginning of a Session." He was pleased with himself for remembering to include that detail. He continued his account of the opening of the assembly: "I then entertained the fairest hopes, that such a temper would govern their deliberations, & such measures be adopted, as could not fail to distinguish the Session honorably." Martin's hopes, he explained to Lord Dartmouth, "were formed upon the information I had received, that the people had made a better choice of Representatives than usual."
_Good_ , Martin thought to himself. Lord Dartmouth must understand that he thought he would be dealing with rational legislators, a better crop than usual—that they turned out to be otherwise could hardly be seen as Martin's fault. But realizing it would probably be prudent to highlight the wisdom of the royal agenda he put before the assembly, Martin added that his high hopes for this session also rested "upon my own Assurance, that I had nothing in Command from His Majesty to propose, that could cause the least difficulty or embarrassment."
Martin set down his pen and read over what he'd written so far. Certainly he had painted himself in the best possible light, but it was still the honest truth that he'd begun the assembly session with high hopes for its success.
"Gentlemen of His Majesty's Honorable Council," he had begun the formal opening proceedings on January 25 of that year (the King's representatives always came first), "Mr. Speaker, and Gentlemen of the House of Assembly." Martin remembered looking out at the assembled legislators. "I have chosen to meet you in General Assembly at this time of the year," he continued, "not only in regard to the common convenience of the members of the Legislature, but in assurance that as it is the season of most perfect leisure your minds will be entirely disengaged and disposed to enter upon the public business with all that calm fixed and deliberate attention which the momentous concerns of your Country seem now peculiarly to demand." With these words he had sought to put the men of the assembly in a good mood and encourage them to behave responsibly. Little had he known then that his entreaty would fall upon deaf ears.
He then went on to describe the business before the session, beginning—he hoped strategically—with an announcement of the King's intention to pardon those colonists who had taken part in the recent Regulator fracas. He followed that, however, with a lecture on the importance of defending the colony from "offenders against the public peace."
Governor Martin then came to a trickier part of the legislative agenda. Various colonial statutes were due to expire this year, and it would be the task of this session of the assembly to renew them. "The expiration of many fundamental Laws at this time," Martin reminded the members, "will furnish you with much business for the ensuing Session." He paused slightly before mentioning the most pressing of these, and the one most likely to prove contentious.
Of all the laws in need of renewal, Martin declared, "there appears to me none of greater consequence than the laws for the constitution of the Superior and Inferior Courts, the Channels by which we derive from our Sovereign that distributive Justice so essential to the security of Liberty and Prosperity, and that is so eminently the Blessing of British Subjects." North Carolina's court system was in disarray, and had been for some time. With the expiration of the court laws this term, Martin had a chance to preside over and overhaul the colony's court system, and he was not about to miss the opportunity to do so.
He explained that it was "no less my desire than my duty to promote the reputation of this Colony"—and perhaps, though he did not mention it, promote his own reputation as well. To that end, he urged the legislators "to frame the Laws relating to those Institutions upon the most liberal principles of Equity to make them permanent." The colony needed a stable judicial system—but according to the King's sense of justice, of course. "By these means, Gentlemen," exhorted Martin, "you will essentially raise the credit of your Country, give dignity and stability to its Courts of Judicature and obviate those great inconveniences and disadvantages that are incident to every state whose fundamental constitutions are unsettled, changeable and uncertain."
* * *
—
Up late in his office, Martin contemplated the next phase of his letter to Lord Dartmouth. He had begun with a pleasing account of the opening of the assembly, and an explanation of why he had every reason to expect it to go well. He had ably laid out a reasonable royal agenda before "a better choice of Representatives than usual." He knew he had to shift the scene, but how? He began to write:
"These favorable appearances, my Lord, lasted until the 24th, when the House of Assembly presented to me a Bill 'to Amend and continue an Act passed in the year 1768, for Establishing Superior Courts' etc., that by its limitation, would expire at the end of the present Session, which my duty obliged me to reject." Martin hastened to explain that the bill was "repugnant to His Majesty's Royal Instructions, relating to the attachment of effects of persons who have never resided in the Colony." Martin added that "this indispensable conduct of mine"—surely Lord Dartmouth would understand he was simply doing his job—spurred the members of the assembly to look into the attachment question, and the effect of the King's instructions, in more detail.
Once they had done so, the rumblings were not favorable. "I was yesterday informed," Governor Martin reported, "that there was a temperate but firm resolution in the majority of the House, rather to be without Courts of Justice, than conform to the direction of that Instruction." The people's elected representatives of North Carolina would rather shut down their courts than subject them to the unfair dictates of King George's justice.
As Governor Martin drew his letter to a conclusion, his heart swelled. He knew where his loyalties lay, and he wasn't about to allow these backcountry rabble-rousers to push him around. "Whatever may be the event," he wrote, "I do assure your Lordship, nothing on my part shall be wanting to bring the Session to such conclusion, as may be most conducive to the Public Welfare, and consistent with the honor of His Majesty's Government, and my Duty to my Royal Master." The letter was ready to go and would be sent by messenger as soon as possible in the morning. Martin went to bed determined that North Carolina would be ruled under the King's justice or none at all.
NEW BERN, NORTH CAROLINA
March 1773
It had become apparent that the people of North Carolina preferred no justice to that of King George III. The assembly, led by its revolutionarily minded Speaker John Harvey, had refused to yield on the subject of attachments in the court bill. On March 6, Governor Martin had agreed to sign a court bill complete with the Attachment Clause but also containing a Suspension Clause, pending the King's approval—but he was well aware that that approval would never come, rendering that bill effectively toothless and leaving the colony still without a court system. Still hoping to arrive at a more permanent solution, Martin then "prorogued," or suspended, the legislature for three days. North Carolina historian Milton Ready explains that this was "an effort to make the members more willing to yield on the attachments clause" and "give them time to think it over."
It did not have the desired effect. Governor Martin attempted to reconvene the assembly but found that most of its members had skipped town. As Ready recounted, "Most of the representatives simply went home."
Now, on March 12, Martin was struggling to find the words to report this latest setback to Lord Dartmouth in London. He did not mince words, recalling at once that his previous letter "implied my apprehensions that little public advantage would result" from this legislative session, "which I am concerned to inform your Lordships proved but too just and prophetic of the Event." He went on to explain that he had suspended the assembly until the ninth. But "on the morning of that day," he reported, "when I was preparing to open a new Session, I received information by the Clerk of the Assembly, with great surprise that there was not remaining in Town a sufficient number of Members." Martin recounted that he consulted with the Council, and then he decided to dissolve the legislative session formally—though in reality all he did was make official the dissolution that had already occurred in practice.
In his study, trying to make sense of the situation, Martin realized that there was no way to explain this that made him look favorable in Lord Dartmouth's eyes. He made sure to add, therefore, that though these events "must appear to you very irregular . . . it is not altogether unprecedented in this Colony." Furthermore, he allowed that "I have the satisfaction to find, and to assure your Lordship, no ill humor or disposition, has been discovered towards me." Government officials have always had a knack for finding ways to assure others "all is well" even as control slips speedily from their grasp.
After burnishing his own image, Martin then proceeded to shift blame onto the colonists' insistence on protection from nonpaying debtors. "The truth is, My Lord, they wanted a concession of the Privilege of Attachment as they call it, at all events," he explained, before suggesting there was personal mercenary motivation behind it: "I have reason to think it was the more strenuously insisted upon to serve the interests of some persons who had attachments actually depending." Even if that were true, collection of payments owed is supposed to be part of any functioning justice system—unless, of course, you were a North Carolina colonist and the person who owed you money was safely across the ocean.
This issue was never fully resolved for the people of North Carolina. Governor Martin attempted to set up his own courts directly under his authority, and through him the King's. But this was not acceptable to the North Carolinians, and the assembly used their "power of the purse" to shut down this scheme—they refused to appropriate funds to pay his judges. There was essentially no judicial system in North Carolina from 1773 until the end of British rule, and this impasse helped bring all legislative business between the governor and the assembly to a near complete standstill.
An account of the difficulties this imposed on the people of the colony is left by a distinguished visitor, the Boston patriot Josiah Quincy, who traveled on revolutionary business throughout the southern colonies in 1773. In early April he passed through North Carolina, and reported:
> The present state of North Carolina is really curious; there are but five provincial laws in force through the Colony, and no courts at all in being. No one can recover a debt, except before a single magistrate, where the sums are within his jurisdiction, and offenders escape with impunity. The people are in great consternation about the matter; what will be the consequence is problematical.
The consequence was "problematical" indeed: this "great consternation" among the people—brought about by the obstinacy of the royal government—helped propel North Carolina into the revolutionary cause with such fervor that it became the first colony to formally authorize its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from Great Britain. That same Congress would memorialize the North Carolinians' fight for justice in the Declaration of Independence.
* * *
—
How did such a local issue merit its own mention in a document of national—indeed, international—importance? Herbert Friedenwald suggests North Carolina was singled out due to "the political consideration that she had been the earliest to declare in favor of independence." Sydney George Fisher, another historian, notes that he was "able to find only one instance"—that of North Carolina—"in which a colony was deprived of courts by the king disallowing the law establishing them." Even at the time, Thomas Hutchinson, the former royal governor of Massachusetts who decamped for England and from there wrote a scathing rebuttal to the Declaration of Independence, found this judicial grievance obscure. He found himself "somewhat at a loss, upon first reading this article, to what transaction or to what Colony it could refer," but "soon found, that the Colony must be North Carolina" and proceeded to blame the colonists instead of the King. Perhaps Fisher was unaware that Hutchinson was unfamiliar with, or chose to ignore, the similar problems that had cropped up in South Carolina and Pennsylvania.
No colonial court crisis, however, was as dramatic as the situation in North Carolina, but these other accounts of the Crown's judicial malfeasance may shed some light on why, in his rough draft of the Declaration, Jefferson made clear that this court meddling had occurred in multiple places. His original version of this grievance read: "He has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these colonies, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers." Note the use of the plural in "some of these colonies."
When the Committee of Five edited Jefferson's draft, the word _colonies_ was changed to _states_. Julian Boyd, editor of Jefferson's papers, points out that "states" was added in handwriting other than Jefferson's, and Boyd was "inclined to believe that it is in the handwriting of John Adams."
The changes made to these lines by the whole of the Congress were more significant. They rendered the "states" versus "colonies" question irrelevant, making the statement more general and also softening it to read as follows: "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers." But in North Carolina, at least, Jefferson's original language was closer to the truth—it had not merely been "obstructed"; it had totally ceased.
Still, the wording of the final Declaration has a greater bearing when considering the modern implications of this issue. After independence, conflicts between the judiciary and the executive (as opposed to the monarch) did not disappear. In fact, this conflict flared up again to play a central role in an especially sad episode in America's early history as a nation: the removal of the Cherokee from Georgia.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in _Worcester v. Georgia_ in 1832 that the Cherokee nation was "a distinct community occupying its own territory in which the laws of Georgia can have no force." Any dealings with Native American tribes, Chief Justice John Marshall concluded, were up to the federal government, not state governments. "The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation," his opinion explained, "is, by our constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States." This meant that the state of Georgia's repeated attempts to push the Cherokee off their land or otherwise squeeze them out by regulation—including the law they used to arrest Samuel Worcester, a missionary living among them—were illegal.
But the executive branch would have to enforce this ruling to force Georgia to back down, and President Andrew Jackson refused to do so. He is widely reported to have remarked: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." In reality, this quotation is a distillation of a longer statement he made to Brigadier General John Coffee: "The decision of the supreme court has fell still born, and they find that it cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate." The effect was the same: Jackson indicated that the court could not enforce its own decision, and he would decline to do so.
The end result, as history shows, was all too painful. Jackson not only refused to help enforce the court's ruling but also continued to support policies of forced Native American removal and even sent troops to remove the Cherokee from the land in question. The Cherokee then embarked westward on their tragic Trail of Tears. For many, perhaps even into the thousands, that journey proved fatal. All because the voice of the people's justice went unheeded.
A more modern story, with a very different ending, shows the importance of a judiciary that stands up to the executive. In 1952, while the United States was engaged in the Korean War—a "war" which began, it must be noted, without a formal congressional declaration thereof—President Harry Truman attempted to seize America's steel mills to head off a labor dispute that, his administration felt, would hamper production critical to the war effort. In his executive order authorizing the seizure, Truman declared that "a work stoppage would immediately jeopardize and imperil our national defense and the defense of those joined with us in resisting aggression, and would add to the continuing danger of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen engaged in combat in the field."
The day after Truman made his announcement at an emergency hearing, attorneys for the steel companies made a request for a restraining order to stop the president. The presiding judge—who had himself been appointed by Truman—denied their request. A later court appearance led to a ruling in the steel companies' favor, and the case made its way to the Supreme Court as _Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer_. The court ruled that Truman had exceeded his authority and that his action "was not authorized by the Constitution or laws of the United States, and it cannot stand." Furthermore, there was "no statute which expressly or impliedly authorizes the President to take possession of this property as he did." Though Truman was reportedly "shocked," he backed down right away.
This case proved the value of an independent judiciary, especially considering that the first judge ever to review the matter (a Truman appointee) made the somewhat startling decision not to issue a restraining order. Apparently, his view of executive power under the Constitution was gravely different than that of the Supreme Court.
Both the North Carolina attachments dispute and Truman's attempted seizure of America's steel mills hinged on the interference of an executive (or monarch) in private commerce. In the earlier case, King George wanted to strip North Carolinians of their protections against being cheated out of money by debtors in England. Nearly two hundred years later, President Truman wanted to make himself the biggest steel baron in America to support a war he started without a declaration from Congress. Fortunately our independent judiciary was firmly established to prevent the abuse of power in the latter case. The colonists of early North Carolina would have been proud.
It was not a mere fluke of history that it was their property rights on which the North Carolinians chose to take such a forceful stand against the Crown. They were willing to engage in brinksmanship with a much more powerful force in order to make sure their courts enforced their property rights. Did they all read their Locke and understand their guaranteed rights to life, liberty, and property? Certainly not. But they understood their natural right to have their property respected, and they knew that if the rule of law were to be followed, their courts must uphold those property rights.
This same impulse has not diminished among American citizens today. When we seek to limit government's reach, we send a clear signal that whenever government strikes at a core value and threatens a key individual right, the people will respond. Even if government's encroachment seems mild at first, the people are right to push back. For the legislators of colonial North Carolina, the issue was not just the "Attachment Clause"—it was what it represented. It should have been easy to work out a fair fix for the law with the authorities in London. But what the royal government did was what governments unfortunately tend to do when they are challenged—they dug in. Whether or not the issue was truly critical, they sought to exercise their power because they _could_. Because the British Empire was a superpower.
They would learn, of course, that even a superpower is no match for ideas like rights and principles. And one of the most shocking demonstrations of the power of these ideas hit the British where it really hurt—their pocketbooks. The British fueled the expansion of their empire with taxation, with the successful colonies in North America a prime target for government shakedowns.
North Carolina was not the only place where colonists were at a tipping point over violations of their rights. Not long after their elected representatives took their stand in December 1773, another blow for political and economic freedom was struck by fellow colonists to the north.
# CHAPTER FIVE
# Tea Leaves in the Harbor
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent . . .
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
September 29, 1773
Any informed colonist who opened the September 29, 1773, edition of the _Massachusetts Gazette_ would find a report that would make his blood boil. The paper carried the news that between three hundred and six hundred chests of tea were headed for Boston. This was no ordinary shipment, however. The paper also commented, "We are assured the above is a scheme of Lord North's," King George III's prime minister.
A heavy tax on tea had been imposed on the colonies in His Majesty's name by the British Parliament—where the American colonists held no seats. The colonists maintained that this taxation without representation was a violation of their rights. The uproar spread through the major port cities. In Philadelphia, an anonymous writer using the pen name of Scaevola declared the approach of the tea "the most dangerous stroke, that has been ever meditated against the liberties of America." Scaevola castigated the officials of the East India Company in America directly: "You are marked out as political Bombardiers to demolish the fair structure of American liberty."
As a result of this uproar, the Ports of Philadelphia and New York had already rejected shipments of British tea, leaving Boston as the only entry point for this cargo. But Boston was also proving inhospitable. "It is much to be wished," the _Massachusetts_ _Gazette_ urged Bostonians in September, "that the Americans will convince Lord North, that they are not yet ready to have the yoke of slavery rivetted about their necks, and send back the tea from whence it came." When the tea shipments arrived, the Bostonians would be ready.
GRIFFIN'S WHARF, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
December 16, 1773
The winter nights in Boston were usually cold but quiet, as citizens sought shelter indoors, kindling fires and huddling under quilts to stay warm.
On any other night, the last of the merchants from nearby Faneuil Hall would have already begun packing away their goods and returning home to their families. The children carousing in the streets would have been called home to dinner, as the New England darkness quickly engulfed the streets. Down at the harbor, the great wooden ships, waiting to sail for ports around the world, would have been rocking quietly in the harbor as gentle waves pushed them up and back against the docks.
Three of these vessels in particular were loaded with special cargo that would soon fill the shops of Boston and line the pockets of British merchants—fresh tea leaves from the British East India Company. On any other night, the _Dartmouth,_ the _Beaver,_ and the _Eleanor_ would have sat peacefully, disturbed only by the occasional gust of wintry wind.
But this wasn't a typical winter night in Boston. The tea shipments, part of what the _Gazette_ had called Lord North's "scheme," had arrived, and the town was preparing its response. The citizens had protested to British officials for weeks in an attempt to turn the merchant ships around and return them to London. But the bureaucracy—as is its nature—was at a standstill. Without the approval of the royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the three ships could not leave the harbor until they were unloaded. To disobey the order would risk being fired upon by British troops. The deadline set by law for unloading the tea—December 17—was now approaching.
On the sixteenth, more than a third of the city's residents—some five thousand people—gathered at the Old South Meeting House to call for their removal from the harbor. Despite the size of the meeting house, colonists were still overflowing into the street, trying to peer into the great hall.
After weeks of debate, the throngs had gathered to hear the answer from the final plea laid before the royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson. Francis Rotch, the owner of the _Dartmouth_ , had gone before Hutchinson to request that the governor make an exception and allow the tea ships to leave the harbor without unloading.
Rotch walked silently through the door as a hush fell over the restless citizens. Now, at last, would come the conclusion to weeks of outcry and dissent. He stood at the front of the room. His face was visibly distraught; he too could not escape the feeling of uncertainty that pervaded the room. He announced that Governor Hutchinson had denied his request to exit the harbor and that he would be forced to unload the tea and pay the taxes by the next day. The room erupted into cries of shock and frustration.
The news provoked a group of patriotic citizens who called themselves the Sons of Liberty to make a final effort to stop the tea from being landed. According to some accounts, it was Samuel Adams himself who gave the word for the Sons of Liberty to begin their operation at Griffin's Wharf. After Rotch concluded his report, Adams rose up and shouted: "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country!" A nineteenth-century historian, George Bancroft, claims this was a covert order to the Sons of Liberty to exit the building and put their plan into action.
A group of men in costume—dressed as Native Americans—was set to board the three tea ships and destroy the cargo. Samuel Adams and the other patriot leaders—well known to the British—could claim ignorance while their foot soldiers, upon getting the word from the Meeting House, donned their costumes and marched to the wharf. Between six and seven o'clock, the men boarded the _Dartmouth,_ the _Beaver,_ and the _Eleanor_ , then took hold of the crates of British tea and began to throw them overboard. More than ninety thousand pounds of tea leaves seeped into the waters of Boston Harbor that night, as citizens cheered and British soldiers watched in horror. The next day, the _Boston Gazette_ reported the protest with a sense of exuberance:
> A number of brave & resolute men, determined to do all in their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted, in less than four hours, emptied every chest of tea on board the three ships . . . amounting to 342 chests, into the sea . . . without the least damage done to the ships or any other property . . . the people are almost universally congratulating each other on this happy event.
The Sons of Liberty risked their lives that night to stand against an overbearing King and Parliament. The amount of danger they faced was later made clear by Admiral Montague of the Royal Navy, who stated in his report: "I could easily have prevented the execution of this plan, but must have endangered the lives of many innocent people by firing upon the town."
This protest struck not only at an unjust tax but also at government intervention in the free market. The Townshend Acts of 1767 imposed a duty on imported tea and granted the East India Company a state-sponsored monopoly over the tea trade with America. The British Parliament, where the colonists were not represented, had effectively utilized taxes and duties to undersell and undermine the private enterprises of American colonists.
This, however, was not the first time the British government decided to levy an unfair and unjust tax against the American colonists. This was part of a series of acts and decrees that had pushed the patriots to the brink of hostility, starting with the Stamp Act. With the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, the colonists were forced to pay a tax on every sheet of paper printed in the colonies.
When prominent colonists like Patrick Henry decried the act as "Taxation without Representation," the author of the Stamp Act, Thomas Whately, argued that the colonists did not need to be directly represented in Great Britain to pay taxes. In the British Whig tradition, the right to vote was not connected to the ability of the King and Parliament to impose a tax. Their claim was that the King and Parliament were the representatives of the entire empire, and they would do what was best for all citizens and colonists.
But the colonists had other ideas. Stephen Hopkins, elected governor of the Rhode Island colony and eventual signer of the Declaration of Independence, refuted British thinkers like Whately. In 1764, he published _The Rights of the Colonies Examined_ , where he asserted that the colonists were subject only to the laws that they had consented to, therefore they could not be obligated "to part with their property." Even further, he questioned the efficiency of taxation in the first place: "The parliament, it is confessed, have power to regulate the trade of the whole empire; and hath it not full power, by this means, to draw all the money and all the wealth of the colonies into the mother country?" If the empire wanted to encourage prosperity for their subjects, he argued that taxation of the colonies was not the way to accomplish this goal—rather, greater trade should be encouraged to naturally grow the economies of both. Hopkins knew that this tyrannical taxation was not only morally wrong but also more economically destructive than a policy that could seek to promote more open trade between the colonies, Great Britain, and other nations.
This fight against rampant taxation carried on by Hopkins and others in the 1760s carried into the next decade, culminating on the night of the Boston Tea Party. The pamphlet elevated Stephen Hopkins's ideas beyond Rhode Island, spreading them far and wide. One New York merchant remarked that _The Rights of the Colonies Examined_ "meets the highest approbation, and even admiration, of the inhabitants of this city." It was the ideals of freedom and opposition to taxation expressed by thinkers like Hopkins that gave birth the Sons of Liberty in 1765. Though the patriots eventually pushed Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act after one year, the Townshend Acts proved that King George III and his Parliament would not end their attempts to restrict trade and implement taxes over the colonists.
A new tax on tea in 1773 was seen by the patriots as an attempt to reinstitute the unsuccessful and illegitimate taxation policy created by British aristocrats, just as Whately sought to do with the Stamp Act. The polemicist Scaevola of Philadelphia—whose work was reprinted in the _Boston Gazette_ —made the linkage clear: "The Stamp and Tea Laws were both designed to raise a revenue, and to establish parliamentary despotism, in America."
By the time Bostonians met in the Old South Meeting House to protest the tea at Griffin's Wharf and the taxes that came with it, they were well aware that if they did not take a stand, the unfair policies would keep coming. As Scaevola pointed out: "If parliament can of right tax us 10 [pounds] for any purpose; they may of right tax us 10,000, and so on, without end." And this wasn't just about taxes: ". . . if we allow them a fair opportunity of pleading precedent by a successful execution of the tea act . . . we may bid adieu to all that is dear and valuable amongst men."
As far back as 1764, colonial leaders like Stephen Hopkins understood that trade and economic growth were better routes to prosperity than taxation. His dissent upheld the idea not only that one must be properly represented to consent to a tax, but also that free trade was a pillar of liberty.
Similarly, the early American patriots understood that rampant taxation by the King and Parliament allowed the government in London to exploit their colonies. The economic situation in Great Britain was reeling after the large amount of debt incurred in connection with wars with France and other colonial powers. National debt in the mother country had soared to record levels. The colonies, meanwhile, had an abundance of resources and land that could prove not only profitable, but potentially capable of bailing out the British Empire. To the American colonists, this relationship was obviously inequitable. The faraway government of King George III sought to use taxes on Americans to refill the coffers of the royal treasury. But this left the average colonist, who was still a British citizen, stuck with the burden of paying taxes imposed by lawmakers who were not accountable to him.
If thinkers like Hopkins recognized the threat of unjust taxation, it was leaders like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty who recognized that the threat would always reemerge. Like the heads of a Hydra, when one is removed, two take its place. The Boston Tea Party was not an impromptu demonstration against the government, conducted out of blind public anger. It was a methodical and planned act of civil disobedience, a last resort, a plan carried out because the Sons of Liberty foresaw the unwillingness of their rulers to give in to the demands of justice. Even if they managed to defeat this unjust act, they knew their war against tyranny would continue.
The Hydra of unjust taxation by a strong central government is alive today, and its heads are now innumerable. After the Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote in 1791's _Rights of Man_ :
> . . . we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry. . . . Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretences for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey, and permits none to escape without a tribute.
* * *
—
The stories of unjust tax hikes slapped on industrious people by a bloated central government echo into our own era. We may not be bailing out the government for a costly imperial war with France, but instead we are forced to cover the cost of wasteful programs and gradual expansion of the administrative state. A powerful government with the ability to tax naturally gravitates toward "prosperity as its prey." Congress and the executive branch have continually proved Thomas Paine correct.
From the later twentieth century until today, excessive taxes have been increasingly levied upon American families, all in the interest of lining the pockets of a debt-stricken federal government. For example, the Parent Tax Penalty forces parents to pay Social Security and Medicaid taxes on income, then pay to raise their children as citizens who also pay into entitlement programs. Taxes latch onto the economic engine of the family unit and cause a drag, forcing parents to essentially pay taxes twice for choosing to raise children.
But this is just one example of the countless ways that our overly complicated tax code has placed the burden of supporting a voracious central government onto the taxpayers of today. The federal tax code has grown _187 times longer_ than it was in 1913. Today, we have more than seventy-four thousand pages of tax laws that demand the transfer of hard-earned money to the federal government.
Perhaps the most concerning development in this realm is that both Congress and the presidency have been responsible for the expansion of taxes that encroach on our liberty. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson placed the blame for taxes on King George III. After all, it was King George who enabled these taxes to be imposed on the colonists. But the Parliament that drafted and passed these acts cannot escape blame. In Britain, the legislative body and the executive worked in tandem to enact and enforce policies like the Stamp Act.
The U.S. Constitution states in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 that all bills that raise revenue for the federal government must originate in the House of Representatives. However, in the post–New Deal era, the executive branch has amassed enough power that it wields unilateral authority in many areas, including the power to impose tariffs! Our legislative branch is constitutionally supposed to hold the power of the purse and thereby keep taxation vested in the branch closest to the people—and the most _accountable_ to the people. If citizens don't like the way their senator or representative is spending their money, they can vote them out of office in two or six years. No such accountability exists among unelected bureaucrats, of course. And the unchecked growth of the administrative state nestled within the executive branch, staffed by those unaccountable bureaucrats, has led to unfortunate fiscal consequences—from Franklin Roosevelt's welfare state expansion to the more recent tax increases under Obamacare.
When the Sons of Liberty marched to Griffin's Wharf, they were fighting against tyranny through taxation. With every new tax, we move away from that legacy. Rather than recommitting the mistakes of British tax master Thomas Whately, Washington, DC, needs to look to the words of men like Thomas Paine and Stephen Hopkins, who warned us to keep government out of our pockets.
By the same token, a free people have the right to conduct business however they see fit (subject, of course, to the rule of law). This is a key tenet of the economic freedom that the Boston Tea Party demonstration was meant to promote. And during the Revolution, the Founders made clear that their new nation would be a freely trading nation—a radical new step that amounted to a declaration of economic independence from Britain even before political independence was voted on. Unjust taxes like those on tea had many implications for overseas trade, and they roused many rebels across the colonies.
# CHAPTER SIX
# Trade Wars
For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World . . .
THE CARIBBEAN SEA, OFF THE COAST OF SAINT EUSTATIUS ISLAND, WEST INDIES
January 1776
C _harming polly_ charged toward her destination, a small but proud vessel, stout enough to handle the passage down the American Atlantic coast but fast enough to swiftly ply her trade among the many ports and inlets of the West Indies, where hopping from one island to another often meant anchoring under the flag of a different country—of Britain, the Netherlands, France, or Spain. The collection of islands from Cuba to Trinidad, slung in a loose line between the Spanish colonies in Florida and South America, were outposts of all the great powers of Europe. For an adventurer from the American colonies, there was hardly a more exciting place anywhere in the known world.
It was just such an adventurer who stood at the bow of the _Charming Polly_ , his hand on the jib sheet—a line attached to the foremost sail—and his foot planted firmly at the base of the bowsprit, which sliced out into the clear blue sky ahead. Captain Thomas Truxtun, who had spent much of his life at sea since the age of twelve, was now, at the age of twenty, finally in command of his own ship. From his home port in New York City, he had already made two successful voyages to the Caribbean and back. But this third time would prove to be anything but charmed: Truxtun would end up a prisoner of His Majesty's Navy.
Captain Truxtun's first voyage to Jamaica had been a straightforward one. In the spring of 1775, according to historian Eugene Ferguson, trade between the American colonies and the West Indies was "exceptionally brisk." The American merchants would sail down with "products of farm and of forest"—like meat, corn, flour, and rough timber—and return from the islands with rum, molasses, sugar, and more exotic woods like mahogany. Although some products had been voluntarily banned by the colonists themselves through Nonimportation Agreements—designed to keep money out of London merchants' pockets—seagoing tradesmen like Truxtun could still earn a solid living.
While Truxtun was at sea on his first voyage, British Regulars clashed with Massachusetts militiamen at Lexington and Concord, and the dispute between Great Britain and her American colonies turned from a war of words into an armed conflict. Truxtun caught up with the news upon returning to New York in July 1775, and he immediately threw himself, his skills, and his ship into the service of the patriot cause. He set sail for Hispaniola, the large Caribbean island under French control in its west and Spanish control in its east—colonies that would grow into the modern nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At Hispaniola, Truxtun loaded up the _Charming Polly_ with gunpowder—precious to the fledgling American military effort—and sailed for home. He had officially become a rebel smuggler.
Those in command of the British ship now bearing down on him off St. Eustatius had no way of knowing that. They had no way of knowing, for instance, that this voyage saw him headed to the neutral Dutch island in search of more gunpowder, and guns too if he could find them. He had not even reached the island to seek out this illicit cargo. As far as the British knew, he was a simple merchant from the colonies, minding his own business. They had no right to detain him, did they?
Technically, they did.
On December 22, 1775, Parliament had passed the American Prohibitory Act, the latest in a series of trade restrictions designed to use purse strings to strangle the rebelliousness out of the American colonies. Earlier that year, in March and April, Parliament had passed the Restraining Acts, which aimed to restrict the colonies to trade only with Great Britain and other British possessions. His Majesty's Government did not want meddlesome foreign powers like the French providing funds through trade, knowing that such funds might ultimately end up supporting the American rebels. Initially the Restraining Acts covered only the New England colonies, but a second incarnation was soon passed, extending the restrictions to cover most of the other colonies as well. After a few months, the Restraining Acts were superseded by the even more draconian Prohibitory Act.
"Be it therefore declared and enacted by the King's most excellent majesty," this new law announced, ". . . that all manner of trade is and shall be prohibited with the colonies . . . and that all ships and vessels of or belonging to the inhabitants of the said colonies, together with their cargoes . . . shall become forfeited to his Majesty, as if the same were the ships and effects of open enemies." This law authorized the Royal Navy to seize American ships, and even capture any vessel coming into or out of an American port. All American seafarers were now "open enemies," including Thomas Truxtun.
Now on his third voyage to the West Indies, Truxtun was armed with a well-earned confidence that he could handle nearly anything the sea could throw at him. In many ways, his sailing career had begun like a great many sea stories, real and fictional. Born in the colony of New York, he lost his father at a young age and was sent to live with a family friend in the part of Long Island known as Jamaica (from a local Native American word meaning "beaver," having nothing to do with the Caribbean island). But by his twelfth year, "the kindling spark of that spirit"—according to an early biography—"which has since shone so conspicuously in his character, led him to the sea."
He spent a few years learning the ways of the mariner, sailing on merchant ships to Britain and back, until at the age of sixteen he found himself in a very different kind of service. It was the practice of the British Royal Navy in those days to "press"—forcibly compel into service—civilian sailors to fill berths on their warships. Truxtun was "pressed" and brought aboard the HMS _Prudent_ , a ship of the line sporting sixty-four guns. The teenager's "intelligence and activity" were noticed by the British captain, who "endeavored to prevail on him to remain in the service," recognizing that he could have a brilliant career ahead of him as a naval officer. But Truxtun was an entrepreneurial sort and had his eye on the greater fortunes to be made trading on the sea lanes. He took advantage of the earliest opportunity to leave the Royal Navy and return to merchant shipping. A few years later, he was master and part owner of the _Charming Polly_. And in April 1775, just six weeks after getting married, the young man from Jamaica, Long Island, had set sail on a voyage to Jamaica in the Caribbean—his first journey on his own ship.
By January 1776 he had gained much experience from his first two voyages, knew the territory well. His ports of call were to be the British islands of Antigua and St. Christopher (commonly known as St. Kitts) and the nearby Dutch island of St. Eustatius. He knew the waters well, and his expert seamanship and capable command of his crew had made for a swift, uneventful voyage—just as Captain Truxtun liked it.
"A ship to larboard, sir!"
The cry from one of his crewmen snapped Truxtun to attention. He had been looking to starboard, to the right of the ship, and following the outstretched finger of the sailor who had run up to join him, turned his gaze to the left, or larboard. He had to squint and shield his eyes from the sun, but eventually he saw her—two masts at least, probably one of the larger Caribbean merchant vessels. Hardly a threat, except in the commercial sense. Still, it never hurt to be wary on the high seas.
"Keep an eye on her," Truxtun ordered his crewman. "Aye, sir," came the prompt reply, and Truxtun headed aft toward his cabin to fetch his spyglass. His well-traveled sea legs gave him no trouble walking across the deck, but as he sifted among his belongings looking for the spyglass, he heard a cry from another shipmate that made his stomach contract.
"She looks to be flying the red ensign, sir!"
Truxtun hurried back out onto the deck, steadied himself against the rail, and held the spyglass to his eye. The gentle rolling of the ship meant it would take him a few seconds to focus, but soon, there she was in the center of his field of view. She had not two masts but three, and gun ports all along her side—a warship, a frigate by the looks of her. As he shifted the spyglass to take in the whole view, he saw what he had been dreading. From her stern she flew a red flag with a Union Jack in the upper left corner: the battle flag of the Royal Navy.
Truxtun cursed himself silently for not spotting her sooner. Maybe she had been hiding in a bay, partially hidden by the hilly point of land at the northern tip of St. Eustatius. But what was a British warship doing lurking around Dutch territory? She was probably based in the British harbor at St. Kitts. Truxtun's mind was beginning to race into high gear, but with time-tested effort he calmed it down. He had nothing to fear. Not yet, anyway.
Aboard the _Charming Polly_ , Truxtun had a decision to make. The British warship had clearly spotted him and was bearing down fast in his direction. The _Charming Polly_ was smaller and lighter. As it was, Truxtun had the weather gauge—if he caught the wind just right, he might be able to outrun the heavier frigate. But there were still those guns . . . all the King's ship had to do was pull herself into cannon range and let off a broadside. One nine-pound ball of iron round shot in the right spot would send the _Charming Polly_ to the bottom of the Caribbean, likely with captain and crew along with it. Truxtun was, as the old sailors said, "caught between the devil and the deep blue sea."
The frigate was within hailing distance now, and one of her officers was shouting at the _Charming Polly_ using a speaking trumpet. His words were carried by the wind in snatches at first, but soon they were close enough that his message came through clearly:
"This is His Majesty's ship _Argo_. In the name of King George, heave to at once!"
They were too close now. No time to run. Truxtun turned to his men. "Steady, lads," he said. If he projected calm to the crew, perhaps he'd start to feel that way himself. After all, he'd dealt with the Royal Navy before. "Let's heave to and see what they want." With a wry smile, he added, "Perhaps they'd just like to buy some tea!"
His men chuckled, but they understood what the command "heave to" meant and jumped into action. Some men eased the mainsail while others backed the jib to the windward side, and the helmsman steered the ship into the wind—all with the object of bringing the sloop almost to a complete stop. The _Argo_ was nearly alongside them now. Truxton could see her officers in blue coats and cocked hats gathered on the quarterdeck, and redcoat Royal Marines armed with muskets lined up along her rail. The gun ports were open, too—twelve nine-pound cannons were pointed right at the _Charming Polly_.
Truxtun knew the routine. When he observed her sailors preparing to lower a boat into the water, he went into his cabin to get his ship's papers. By the time he came back on deck, the boat had rowed the short distance between the two vessels, and a British officer was calling for the captain to lower himself down. With a final wink at his crewmen, Thomas Truxtun, sheaf of papers tucked under his arm, climbed down the ladder and greeted the officer politely. A few short oar strokes later, he was roughly hoisted onto the deck of the _Argo_ and presented to Captain William Garnier of His Majesty's Navy.
The _Argo_ had first put to sea in 1759, and it was nearing the end of its service life. In less than a year, in fact, she would end up scrapped back in England. Named for the ship that carried Jason and his comrades in Greek mythology on their quest for the Golden Fleece, this _Argo_ had indeed also chased riches—once helping to capture a Spanish galleon off the Philippines with a cargo worth some $1.5 million. Now, in her twilight years, she was cruising the Caribbean on the hunt for smaller prey.
Her captain, William Garnier, was a veteran commander with plenty of Caribbean service under his belt. He was a consummate professional—just the sort of officer Truxton had served under during his brief Royal Navy tenure, and exactly the kind of man with whom he knew how to deal. Or so he thought.
He greeted Garnier respectfully as a fellow mariner and presented his papers, knowing them to be all in order—so he was shocked when the captain informed him that his ship would nonetheless be impounded in the naval dockyard at St. Kitts. Truxton protested, but Garnier was unmoved.
"The Colony of New York is in rebellion, sir, and therefore this is a rebel ship," the British captain explained in calm, officious tones. "You have no choice but to proceed to St. Kitts under our escort." He paused, then added for emphasis: "Under our _guns_."
And so, Thomas Truxtun, on just his third voyage as a sea captain, was forced to sail the _Charming Polly_ into St. Kitts harbor and surrender her to the British authorities. He was a victim of the King's trade restrictions on American colonists, "a commander with nothing to command," as a later biographer puts it. The _Pennsylvania Gazette_ of February 21, 1776, citing a January edition of a newspaper in Antigua, published a list of several ships seized by the Royal Navy over the previous few weeks and deposited in St. Kitts, including "Sloop Charming Polly, Thomas Truxton [ _sic_ ] master, from New-York, brought in here by his Majesty's ship Argo, William Garnier, Esq; commander, the 2d January 1776." Incidentally, the adjacent column carried an advertisement for "The New Edition of Common Sense" on sale from a Philadelphia printer. This was a pamphlet that was causing a great stir in the American colonies at the time, and of which we shall learn more later.
As luck would have it, it was to Philadelphia, rather than his home port of New York, that Thomas Truxtun would return after being stuck in the Caribbean for a few months following the loss of the _Charming Polly_. The war against the King was personal for him now, and he would go on to become one of the most distinguished officers in the early history of the United States Navy, eventually commanding the USS _Constellation_. But here our story must leave Captain Truxtun and look a few months backward toward the arguments that drove a trade debate in the body that was meeting at the time he made landfall in Philadelphia: the Continental Congress.
PHILADELPHIA
October 4, 1775
The crisp fall air brought a chill to Philadelphia and carried on it some of the withered leaves that had already left the trees. The occasional drafts that made their way into the meeting chamber at the State House, where the delegates of the Second Continental Congress had gathered, were especially welcome on this day—because the debate was getting heated.
"I should be for the resolutions about imports and exports standing till further order," announced Thomas Johnson of Maryland.
"The question," observed John Rutledge of South Carolina, "is whether we shall shut our ports entirely, or adhere to the Association. The resolutions we come to ought to be final." Another member objected that the North Carolina delegation was absent but expected shortly, so they had better hold off on a final vote.
Sitting quietly at his desk, a pensive lawyer from Massachusetts, his brow furrowed in concentration, scribbled furiously with his pen. John Adams had a keen interest in trade policy, and—fortunately for history—was taking detailed notes on this debate.
The delegates were discussing how the united American colonies should conduct their trade with the rest of the world. Since 1774 they had been bound by the articles of the Continental Association, adopted by the First Continental Congress, which banned the purchase of goods from Great Britain. The Association had unified the various Nonimportation Agreements, which had sprung up in earlier years in different colonies, into a single cohesive policy. But in March 1775, Britain struck back with the Restraining Acts. The trade war between Britain and the American colonies was in full swing before the first shots of the Revolution rang out the following month.
On July 6, 1775, the Continental Congress issued their declaration on "the Causes and Necessity of their taking up Arms," authored primarily by Thomas Jefferson with the assistance of John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. Jefferson mentioned the boycott of British goods, stating, "We have even proceeded to break off our commercial Intercourse with our Fellow Subjects," calling this "the last peaceable Admonition, that our Attachment to no Nation upon Earth should supplant our Attachment to Liberty." Jefferson and Dickinson also attacked the trade restrictions imposed by the Restraining Acts, noting that "the commercial Intercourse of whole Colonies, with foreign Countries, and with each other, was cut off by an Act of Parliament" and that "several of them [the New England colonies] were entirely prohibited from the Fisheries in the Seas near their Coasts, on which they always depended for their Sustenance."
Now, with the summer turned into fall, the delegates were trying to decide whether their trade should be expanded or contracted, as the conflict with Britain showed no signs of abating.
Silas Deane of Connecticut raised an important point: the necessity of bringing in ammunition through trade. "Whether we are to trade with all nations except Britain, Ireland and the West Indies, or with one or two particular nations," Deane observed, "we cannot get ammunition without allowing some exports." He further explained that trading physical commodities was the colonies' only option, as the colonial money they printed for themselves would not be accepted elsewhere.
Robert Livingston of New York, whose very prominent family had been granted an estate known as Livingston Manor by the first King George, rose to hold forth after Deane. "We should go into a full discussion of the subject," he implored his colleagues. "Every gentleman ought to express his sentiments." He then proceeded to express his own view that an expansion of trade would be in everyone's best interest. "We have nothing to fear but disunion among ourselves," he observed. "What will disunite us, more than the decay of all business? The people will feel, and will say that Congress tax them and oppress them worse than Parliament." He then moved on to military concerns—"ammunition cannot be had unless we open our ports"—before reaching his conclusion: "I am for doing away our non-exportation agreement entirely. I see many advantages in leaving open the ports, none in shutting them up. I should think the best way would be to open all our ports."
After Livingston's extended oration, Adams recorded that the debate continued mostly between Johnson, Rutledge, and Lee of Virginia. John Joachim Zubly, a minister representing Georgia, who had been born in Switzerland, tried to keep everyone on task by reminding the delegates: "The question should be whether the export should be kept or not." Unfortunately, he was met with a "rambling speech" by Samuel Chase of Maryland which, as later historians point out, "appear[ed] to argue on both sides of more than one of the questions at issue."
The debate ended without a satisfactory conclusion as Edward Rutledge, John's brother, announced that he disagreed "with all who think the non exportation should be broke, or that any trade at all should be carried on," and Livingston declared that he was "not convinced by any argument."
The debate resumed the following day, October 5, and once again John Adams made notes of the proceedings. Christopher Gadsden took up the cause of his fellow South Carolina delegates, the Rutledge brothers, and sought to focus the question once again: "I wish we may confine ourselves to one point . . . whether we shall shut up all our ports, and be all on a footing."
Zubly, who had gathered his thoughts from listening to the previous day's debate, came out strongly against opening American ports, partly out of fear of Britain's renowned Royal Navy. "The Navy can stop our harbors and distress our trade," he cautioned, "therefore it is impracticable, to open our ports." He concluded his remarks by sounding a hopeful note of reconciliation with England: "I am clearly against any proposition to open our ports to all the world; it is not prudent to threaten; the People of England will take it we design to break off, to separate." His caution about offending the mother country was consistent with his general opposition to independence. A few weeks after this debate, Zubly quit the Continental Congress and joined the loyalist cause.
A few days later, in his lodgings, John Adams sat before his desk and poured out his thoughts on the trade issue in a letter to his friend James Warren, husband of the famous patriot writer Mercy Otis Warren. "A more intricate and complicated subject never came into any man's thoughts than the trade of America," Adams vented. "The questions that arise, when one thinks of it, are very numerous." But for Adams, they boiled down to one: "If we must have trade, how shall we obtain it?" He outlined a plan to bring more foreign merchants to America by advertisements and word of mouth, but he admitted that this depended on keeping American harbors safe for trade—"To talk of coping suddenly with [Great Britain] at sea would be Quixotic indeed."
A few months later, Thomas Truxtun would find out just how true that was.
PHILADELPHIA
April 1776
Much had changed since the contentious debates over trade in the fall of 1775. In late November of that year, Benjamin Franklin received intelligence from David Hartley, a Member of Parliament friendly to the American cause, that the prime minister, Lord North, was preparing to repeal the Restraining Acts passed some months before—not to loosen the British grip on American commerce but rather "to make way for a general bill including all America, and as I hear to make prizes of all American vessels that can be catched." That rumor was proved true when the Prohibitory Act was passed, on December 22, 1775, and on January 2, 1776, Thomas Truxtun's _Charming Polly_ was one of those American vessels unlucky enough to be "catched" by the Royal Navy.
In February, the Continental Congress found themselves once again debating whether or not to open American ports to foreign commerce. Some delegates still urged caution. James Wilson of Pennsylvania was not among them. Wilson was a Scotsman who had studied Adam Smith and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers at the University of St Andrews. Perhaps remembering Smith, he argued that merchants should be free to take risks in trading wherever they wanted. "I think the Merchants ought to judge for themselves of the danger and risk," he said. "Trade ought in war to be carried on with greater vigor."
Not everyone agreed. Roger Sherman of Connecticut argued that the risks were still too great: "We can't carry on a beneficial trade, as our enemies will take our ships. A treaty with a foreign power is necessary, before we open our trade, to protect it."
Meanwhile, Benjamin Harrison of Virginia fumed: "We have hobbled on under a fatal attachment to [Great Britain]. I felt it as much as any man but I feel a stronger to my country." Harrison clearly thought of his "country" as something already separate and distinct from Britain.
His fellow Virginia delegate, George Wythe, evidently felt the same way. He rose next and made a stirring argument connecting the Americans' economic independence to their political independence. "Americans will hardly live without trade," he observed. He admitted there were obstacles to attracting foreign trade, but that the colonies themselves should be able to influence their own destiny. "Why," Wythe asked the chamber, "should we be so fond of calling ourselves dutiful subjects" of Great Britain? "If we should offer our trade to the Court of France, would they take notice of it, any more than if Bristol or Liverpool should offer theirs, while we profess to be subjects? No. We must declare ourselves a free people."
Among colonial leaders, there was a growing sense that the total economic separation from Great Britain brought about by the Prohibitory Act was driving the colonies' political separation as well. On March 23, 1776, John Adams put pen to paper to write to General Horatio Gates, and shared these observations:
> I know not whether you have seen the Act of Parliament called the restraining Act, or prohibitory Act, or piratical Act, or plundering Act, or Act of Independency, for by all these Titles is it called. I think the most [appropriate] is the Act of Independency, for King Lords and Commons have united in Sundering this Country and that I think forever. It is a complete Dismemberment of the British Empire. It throws thirteen Colonies out of the Royal Protection, levels all Distinctions and makes us independent in Spite of all our supplications and Entreaties.
"It may be fortunate," Adams added, "that the Act of Independency should come from the British Parliament, rather than the American Congress," although he found it "very odd that Americans should hesitate at accepting Such a Gift from them."
Richard Henry Lee similarly wrote in a letter back to Virginia that he found it "curious to observe that whilst people here are disputing and hesitating about independancy, the Court by one bold Act of Parliament, and by a conduct the most extensively hostile, have already put the two Countries asunder."
Lee sent his letter on April 1, 1776, and just a few days later he and his fellow delegates gathered at the Pennsylvania State House to settle the trade issue for good. On April 3, it was ordered that the Congress devote special time as a "committee of the whole to take into consideration the trade of the United Colonies." That discussion was indeed held on the fourth, and Benjamin Harrison reported its results, but they were tabled until the next session. Because April 5 was Good Friday and Congress did not meet, with many members repairing to Philadelphia's various houses of worship, they next convened at ten on the morning of Saturday the sixth.
That morning, the Congress took a historic step toward America's economic—and eventually political—independence. They passed a resolution declaring that "any goods, wares, and merchandise" could be imported _and_ exported "from the thirteen United Colonies, by the inhabitants thereof, and by the people of all such countries as are not subject to the King of Great Britain, to any parts of the world which are not under the dominion of the said King." America's ports were officially open for business—to all nations except Great Britain.
Later that day, no doubt exhausted, John Adams stopped to record his own mixed opinions in his diary. "These Resolutions are on the Journal, and amount to something," he admitted. "They opened the Ports and set our Commerce at Liberty: But they were far short of what had been moved by Members from Massachusetts, Maryland and Virginia." He made sure to make special note of one of the resolutions passed: "Resolved that no Slaves be imported into any of the thirteen Colonies." Because the slave trade was mainly a British-run enterprise, the American colonies avoided it—at least temporarily—during the Revolution.
Other delegates hurried to spread the word to their home states and beyond. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts quickly dashed off a note to the president of his colony's Provincial Congress:
> Dear Sir,
>
> I have just time to send you by the post a newspaper, in which is inserted the resolves of Congress for opening of American Ports to all nations except such as are subject to the King of Great Britain. It is a matter of importance that these resolves should be published in all the papers, and sent to every part of Europe and the West-Indies not inimical to the colonies.
A letter from Joseph Hewes of North Carolina showed how close to home this issue came. "A 44 gun ship lies in the bay [near] the Capes and has taken several vessels," he reported, before noting that "Congress has agreed to open the Trade."
* * *
—
The firsthand experience of Captain Truxtun and the debates of the Continental Congress show how critical trade was to the eventual independence of the American colonies. When the colonies banded together to limit their trade with Britain, and later to revamp their trade policy in the face of aggression from London, they demonstrated the power of international trade to drive policy in other areas. They were fed up with the Crown intruding on their affairs, whether by interfering with their laws, their courts, or their trade.
Of course, it isn't only goods that move back and forth along trade routes. The American colonies were constantly importing new ideas as well, which came along with the new settlers who brought their skills and talents from the old world to the new. One such individual was Thomas Paine, a classic example of an intellect that could not be bound by the rigid social structures of England but who seemed tailor-made for revolutionary America. Indeed, Paine helped give revolutionary America its voice.
# CHAPTER SEVEN
# A Revolution in the Minds of the People
Nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independence.
—THOMAS PAINE, _COMMON_ _SENSE_
SOMEWHERE IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC
November 1774
The ship careened through the icy twenty-foot waves, tossing about barrels, pots, and people. Doing everything he could to keep the fever mixed with seasickness at bay, the weary passenger put his head back on the pillow on his bunk. He shivered and pulled the blanket as tightly as he could. His mind drifted. He thought back to his childhood—an idyllic one, really. The memories of the thatched cottage of his parents. The cows grazing in the rolling pastures that surrounded his village of Thetford, northeast of London. His father was a modest Quaker artisan who made ropes and ladies' corsets out of whale bones. His mother was a gentle Anglican homemaker. Thoughts of their smiling faces were comforting inside the dank, dark hull of a rocking vessel that might turn out to be a death trap.
But as much as he tried to keep his thoughts focused on cheerful reminiscences, Thomas Paine couldn't shake the hatred of his youth. It was a rage that filled him every time he thought back to his early years. The memory that stung most involved the hill that overlooked his family cottage. Known as "The Wilderness," it was where peasants were hanged regularly. They included family friends, and a young boy who had merely stolen a penknife. Women were regularly stoned to death. And each spring, a new round of peasants would be executed there, almost as a kind of sport for the local officials. The aristocrats would gather, wagering on how long it would take those hanging by a noose to finally succumb. Those memories had stuck with Paine, as had the rage against the injustice they engendered.
The nausea was coming back. Paine gripped the side of his bunk. With all the strength he could muster, he pulled his torso up so that he could vomit somewhere other than in his own bunk. As much as his fellow passengers didn't appreciate it, the floorboards were already soaked with all manner of fluids purged from bodies wracked by typhoid. A few already lay dead in their bunks.
In the throes of a blistering fever, Paine wasn't sure what had brought him to this frozen hell reeking of death in the middle of the North Atlantic. The stench of vomit and death permeated his nostrils and every part of his being. Some of his shipmates had long since expired, their corpses pitched overboard and consigned forever to a watery grave. At least they were out of their misery, Paine thought to himself.
As his fever broke, he then remembered who was responsible for his damnable predicament. Franklin. Benjamin Franklin. That rogue—a charismatic and lovable one though he was—had convinced him to abandon England, with its injustice and aristocracy, for the colonies. Though Paine hadn't been successful at keeping a job (father's apprentice, privateer, tax collector, teacher), or his wives for that matter (losing his first to childbirth, his second to divorce), Franklin saw in the penniless man an undeniable intellect and fiery rhetorician with a passion for justice and equality, all traits that could serve him well in a place like America.
Franklin directed Paine to his own hometown of Philadelphia. And so Paine sold everything he owned at auction to pay off his debts and hitch a ride aboard a ship headed west. With the might of his pen and a fresh start, Franklin had no doubt that the thirty-seven-year-old man could change his ill fortune. Maybe he could even change the world. But first, he would need to survive the rest of the journey.
Paine's mind drifted off again, this time into a long, deep sleep.
PHILADELPHIA
January 24, 1775
Paine held in his hands the fruits of his labor in the faint glow of a candle. The night was inky black, the windows shut tight against the driving snow. With the pride of a new father, he stroked the handsome blue cover and leafed through the pages with his ink-stained hands. "A magazine," he would say, "is the nursery of genius."
The debut issue of _Pennsylvania Magazine_ had been his responsibility as the new publication's executive editor. Its motto, _Fuval in sylvis habilare_ ("Happy it is to live in the woods") _,_ was emblazoned on the cover. The words matched how the broke Quaker felt about his adopted home, whose name translated to "Penn's Woods." To Paine, even bustling Philadelphia felt like a sprawling wilderness compared with the people-choked streets of London.
It had taken a full six weeks in Pennsylvania for Paine to feel well enough to begin work after his wretched voyage. He had disembarked from the vessel barely able to walk. But as soon as he staggered off the dock and his feet touched the cobblestones of Philadelphia's streets, his recovery—and his love affair with America—began.
Paine's hatred for monarchy burned even more fiercely in his new home than it had back in England. He had settled in Philadelphia at his friend Benjamin Franklin's urging. As he sought out work—he intended to become a teacher or private tutor—he carried with him a letter of recommendation from Franklin. Though he was still living in London on a diplomatic mission from the colonies, Franklin was easily the city's most recognized citizen. His inventions and brilliant writings made him world famous. His dabbling in radical politics in London's elite clubs had brought him into contact with Paine. "The bearer Mr. Thomas Paine is very well recommended to me as an ingenious worthy young man," Franklin's letter read.
Philadelphia was the largest, wealthiest city in America. Like the nation that surrounded it, Philadelphians brimmed with hope and boundless ambition. Its grid of modern streets lent a sense of civility to an otherwise-bustling port city (one that was a hundred miles from the ocean but nonetheless the biggest in the world, after London and Liverpool). The grid of streets, lit by whale-oil lamps, along with a library, hospital, and firehouse, was a bastion of civilization in the wilds. Like a reminder that man had not yet entirely conquered Mother Nature, pigs roamed the garbage-strewn streets. Mosquitoes congregated over pools of sewage.
All of this lent to the city a veneer of charm and a feeling of adventure for an expatriate British writer discovering his new home. Armed with a letter of recommendation from the city's most famous resident, Paine searched for work. He soon landed a job as the executive editor of the brand-new _Pennsylvania Magazine._
PHILADELPHIA
April 23, 1775
News had just reached Philadelphia that British troops and colonial militias had exchanged fire at Lexington and Concord, a several days' ride away. The skirmish left men on both sides dead. Paine was outraged. There was no doubt about his loyalties. "When the country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir," he wrote. "Those who had been long settled had something to defend; those who had just come had something to pursue; and the call and the concern was equal and universal," he added. Paine felt as one with his fellow Americans pushing for open rebellion.
Even with blood now shed, the idea of independence was still a taboo. If there was going to be a movement for independence or a war, it was more likely that it would be _between_ the colonies than on behalf of all of them. The colonies had very little in common and represented a patchwork of classes, cultures, faiths, and traditions. They squabbled constantly. That the thirteen colonial governments could somehow put aside their differences and organize an independence movement when they hadn't ever done so was unlikely at best.
Still, a few brave voices pushed the boundaries of what was deemed acceptable political speech. John Adams, a representative of the Massachusetts militiamen killed at Lexington and Concord, moved to have every colony create its own local government and pushed for independence at the newly created Second Continental Congress. It was a radical position, one that made him "an object of nearly universal scorn and detestation," his friend and fellow representative Benjamin Rush recalled. The Massachusetts governor was offering bounties of five hundred pounds (well over one hundred thousand dollars today) for the heads of rebels John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
Paine had better things to do than become an enemy of the Crown. After all, he had a fledgling magazine to tend. In the three months since its launch, the magazine had thrived. Eschewing controversial essays on politics and religion, _Pennsylvania Magazine_ kept things light and optimistic. With new-invention announcements, mathematical puzzles, and images of maidens and flowers, the magazine was quintessentially American in its quirkiness, diversity, and idealism.
But beneath the sunny facade, Paine's magazine and adopted city kept a lid on a simmering rage. A pacifist Quaker though he was, Paine was breathing in the combustible air around him. British rule was becoming ever more insufferable. Throughout the 1760s, the Crown had increased its punitive taxes and duties with legislation such as the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, and the taxes on tea. The King was sanctioning increasingly indefensible actions by British troops stationed in the colonies.
Worse still, and especially grating for Paine, was the undeniable attitude of superiority that British officials in the colonies took toward their citizens. They talked and walked among them as if they were "betters" over a crude mob of brutish American ruffians. There was nothing Paine loathed more than the remnants of the feudal system he had seen up close as a child in the British countryside. Now the British were trying to impose their rigid class system (which in many ways still exists today) on a land forged by the most unassuming and democratic of peoples, where a more egalitarian society might have a chance to flourish. Paine knew what it would mean if the aristocrats had their way in sullying America. He didn't want to see land, money, and power pass only from father to son, as he'd seen in his homeland. He thought back to the limp bodies swinging gently in the wind atop the hill behind his house.
The time for ignoring the increasingly volatile political situation was over—at least in Paine's mind. Over the objections of his employer, Thomas Aitken, Paine included increasingly incendiary essays in the magazine. Paine attacked the British and slaveholders in the South with increasing alacrity. He received hate mail in return. Paine wrote that the Americans' "attachment to Britain was obstinate, and it was at the time a kind of treason to speak against it. They disliked the ministry, but they esteemed the nation. Their idea of grievance operated without resentment, and their single object was reconciliation."
Independence was still unthinkable. King George had declared the colonies to be in rebellion, but the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Assemblies instructed their representatives at the Continental Congress to do nothing that would push them further away from the Crown. Even Paine's longtime friend Ben Franklin assured William Pitt back in London that no one "drunk or sober" across the Atlantic would dare favor breaking away. Franklin overstated things to be sure, but even in 1775, there was no organized movement afoot toward independence.
Paine resolved to do something about it. So he set about writing.
PHILADELPHIA
January 10, 1776
Paine was quietly at work in his office, pen in hand. On his desk were Thomas Hobbes's _Leviathan_ and an answer to it, John Locke's _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding—_ both of which had shaped his views on the role of just government and its relationship with the people it governed. Locke's words had haunted Paine for years: "When a ruler stops maintaining the welfare of his subjects, when he wields the power of the government against the people, when he allows Parliament and his ministry to become corrupt and a foe of human liberty, he is nothing but a tyrant, and it is the people's right to remove him." Was not King George the very sort of tyrant whom Locke portrayed? And if so, didn't the American people have a right to look for an alternative form of government?
Paine had a knack for blocking from his mind the steady din of morning foot traffic and drum of carriage wheels and horseshoes on cobblestones when he worked, but a loud rap at the door broke his concentration. It was Dr. Benjamin Rush—physician, writer, politician, man of letters, and one of Paine's closest associates this side of London. Rush had been urging Paine on his latest writing endeavor, and this time he came bearing the final fruits.
There in his outstretched hand were seventy-seven loosely bound pages. Rush had for months encouraged Paine to finally write a magnum opus—to channel the rage he felt after Lexington and Concord into a political treatise. Rush had become a de facto literary agent. When the manifesto was done, Rush had approached Philadelphia's top publishers, one by one, imploring them to make the words public.
None had the temerity to publish something so radical. After all, the pamphlet's author wasn't willing to affix his name to it; why should they? Publishing such an inflammatory tract could be construed as treason. They all passed. A Scottish printer on Third Street felt different. For taking such a risk, Robert Bell demanded half the profits and that Paine reimburse him if the pamphlet incurred any loss or legal liability. Paine could maintain his anonymity. The first edition, which Paine saw for the first time in Rush's hands, merely said "written by an Englishman."
This was not just another short magazine essay but rather a stand-alone work to be circulated on its own. Aside from newspapers and magazines, pamphlets had become the most popular form of publishing by the mid-eighteenth century, far cheaper and more accessible than books. At twenty-one thousand words, it had taken many weeks to write—weeks of agonizing late nights toiling away after finishing his full-time job at the magazine. Paine had included excerpts from his columns, but most of it was new and wholly original material. Like most everything he penned, Paine wrote it out by hand and then handed the scrawl to an assistant to typeset.
In the manner of lawyers and philosophers, these essays were typically carefully written and meticulously argued, drawing on obscure references to Tacitus and Montesquieu. With this essay _,_ there would be no mincing of words or the scholarship of Roman philosophers. This would be an impassioned barrage of words designed to stir hearts as much as minds. This was the language of the common people. It contained none of the lofty rhetoric taught in Latin classes at Harvard. There was no cover or binding, just pages sewn together, all for the price of a shilling.
For months, Paine's work had borne the working title _Plain Truth_. But now, in time for publication, he had settled on a name for his first pamphlet: _Common Sense._ Addressed directly to "the inhabitants of America," _Common Sense_ was a plea for independence. "The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind," the essay began. The sentence was shocking in its grandiosity. Thirteen infant colonies would somehow determine the fate of all mankind?
The words were ludicrous. But also prophetic.
MONTICELLO, ALBEMARLE COUNTY, VIRGINIA
February 1776
The office may have been lacking in physical size, but this was made up for by the ambition of its occupant. Indeed, the office was a testament to his vast and curious mind. A contraption that copied a handwritten note onto a separate paper—a primitive Xerox machine of sorts—sat on his desk. Strewn about were unanswered letters, books stacked high in at least five different languages, and maps depicting parts unknown. Outside the windows, the frostbitten orchards of Monticello stretched to the foothills of the Shenandoah and on to the tidewaters of Virginia.
Hunched over his desk, Thomas Jefferson was working feverishly to attack the pile of work. His travels had taken him to Philadelphia through Christmas, and the 250-mile journey had been especially grueling in the January winter. As much as duty called, he was glad to be back at his home, among his books and gardens.
Work and correspondence from friends and fellow patriots had piled up in his absence. It had taken him longer than usual to get through his work. He had endured weeks of mind-bending migraines, which had been made worse by all of the travel. But he had been attending to important business. In Philadelphia there stirred talk of war—and even of independence.
As he sifted and sorted slowly through the letters, humming and singing as he always did when he read, he came across something new—a parcel from Thomas Nelson, a fellow Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress. "I send you," Nelson's letter said, "a present of 2/ worth of Common Sense." Indeed, that was the pamphlet's title: _Common Sense._ Jefferson leaned back in his desk chair and began to read.
The plainspoken, egalitarian Englishman who barely survived his voyage to the New World had finally given voice to sentiments felt by hundreds of thousands in his adopted homeland. Almost overnight, it gave colonists the courage to voice opinions they hadn't dared to share in public. And its ideas had reached the very top of colonial society.
_Common Sense_ was shared and reprinted faster than any publication in the history of the world. In proportion to America's population at the time (2.5 million), it remains our country's best-selling work. Within three months, one hundred thousand copies had been sold. After a year, sales were up to half a million. A comparably performing book in present-day America would be one that sold a staggering _12 million_ copies in three months. It was read repeatedly in churches and public meeting places, expanding its audience at least tenfold. The essay was eventually published in German, French, Polish, Dutch, and Russian, though most of the European editions carefully omitted any of Paine's denunciations of hereditary rule.
Paine's words had leaped off the page and into the national conversation. Though his name was left off at first (he allowed it to be attached to later editions and proudly claimed authorship after independence), his ideas were a topic of discussion in just about every tavern, church, and public square throughout the colonies. His pamphlet inspired hundreds like it, some arguing vociferously against it, others in support—and many thousands of responses in the pages of local newspapers. Everyone had an opinion. Soon too would a generation of Founding Fathers, who would have the courage to translate Paine's polemical work into a political document that would shake the world.
_Common Sense_ was a forceful rejection of the hereditary rights that marked England's monarchy and aristocracy. Drawing on the examples of ancient Greece and Rome, Paine provided a new rationale for transmitting wealth and political power—a rationale based no longer on who your father was but instead on how hard you worked and how successful you were in persuading others to support you. It gave the language of republican democracy to colonists who read and shared the pamphlet with reckless abandon.
The essay convinced Americans that there could be life without a monarch. ("The king is not to be trusted without being looked after, or in other words, that a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of a monarchy.") There was no such thing as the divine right of kings, Paine argued. ("One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of the hereditary right in kings, is that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.") The laws of nature and the Bible itself proved so. Only children needed governing by someone else; adults could rule themselves if they created laws that a government enforced. ("That so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING.")
Paine was effectively offering a self-help guide for citizens. The residents of the colonies could wean themselves from the Crown if they so chose. The result wouldn't be anarchy but rather a government that reflected the American people's noblest ambitions. Kings had no special divine permission to rule over anyone else. Adults didn't need a fatherly monarch blessing their every move. They simply needed rule of law. They needed the ability to vote for their own leaders. Even the English system, which had some democratic protections for commoners, kept real power in the hands of the elites by virtue of a hereditary king and the nobility in the House of Lords. "For all men being originally equals," as Paine wrote in _Common Sense_ , "no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever."
More than that, Thomas Paine convinced Americans that theirs was not a traitorous cause but something much nobler. Their fight was nothing less than the struggle for English constitutional government dating back to the Magna Carta. They sought to reclaim the natural rights that God had bestowed on them and which King George had usurped. The basic liberty that let them engage in peaceful economic pursuits was hampered by excessive taxation. Furthermore, by subjecting the colonists to taxes approved by a Parliament in which they had no representation, the King was not deriving just powers from the consent of the people—he was acting unjustly.
He pointed out the paradox of the colonies' situation, which Americans had simply grown accustomed to. "There is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island," he wrote. The status quo was unsustainable, and surely if America only took hold of its destiny from its imperial overlords, it could not only survive but thrive on its own.
The only solution, Paine maintained, was independence. "We have every opportunity and every encourage[ment] before us, to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
His words crystallized the thoughts of more and more Americans who no longer wanted a negotiated reconciliation with Britain but a divorce altogether. Within weeks of its publication, no fewer than ninety separate declarations of independence were made by localities up and down the Eastern Seaboard. What remained was whether the leaders of the Continental Congress would make a declaration of their own on behalf of all the colonies—a declaration of a new nation.
The book also found an audience with the delegates to the Second Continental Congress, on whom the burdens of separation from or reconciliation with the British Empire were especially heavy. Indeed, because the first edition was published anonymously, guessing the pamphlet's authorship soon became a parlor game among those who gathered at Philadelphia to debate the political future. "People Speak of it in rapturous praise," one of John Adams's friends wrote to him. Another speculated to him that Ben Franklin was the author. "I think I see strong marks of your pen in it," suggested a third. But Adams confided to his wife, "I could not have written any Thing in so manly and striking a style."
"Have you seen the pamphlet _Common Sense_?" General Charles Lee wrote George Washington to ask. "I never saw such a masterly irresistible performance. . . . I own myself convinced, by the arguments, of the necessity of separation." Washington was impressed, enough so that for the first time he endorsed the idea of independence. The pamphlet, he readily admitted, was "sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning [that] will not leave members [of Congress] at a loss to decide upon the propriety of separation. . . . [It is] a wonderful change in the minds of many men." Even in his old age, Thomas Jefferson held the opinion that "no writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language."
Paine was different from almost all the Founding Fathers, who almost to a person were wealthy landowners: distinguished lawyers, traders, farmers, or plantation owners. Like his prose, most of Paine's political philosophy was raw, unsettling, and radical in its populism. His vision of democracy had no need for checks and balances; just the voice of the people.
Paine's radicalism was one reason why John Adams would turn against him in later years. Indeed, he spoke for many of his colleagues when he later assessed that _Common Sense_ was "so democratical, without any restraint or even an attempt at any equilibrium or counter poise, that it must produce confusion and every evil work." Adams had been the first and most outspoken of the Founders in favor of independence, but he would downplay Paine's role in making the idea broadly acceptable. "He is a keen Writer," Adams conceded, but _Common Sense_ was nothing more than "a tolerable Summary of the Arguments which I had been repeating again and again in Congress for nine months." Nearer to his death, Adams was less generous. The pamphlet was "a poor, ignorant, Malicious, short-sighted, Crapulous Mass." The second president maintained something of an unhealthy obsession with the man and his work. He would gripe to Jefferson, "History is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine."
In fact, early American history did not in fact ascribe much, if anything, to Thomas Paine. And that is a shame, because without him, independence would have come later, or perhaps not at all. Paine's role would be overshadowed by a generation that would include signers of the founding documents, presidents, vice presidents, chief justices, and the first elected representatives of an independent nation. Paine himself never sought, let alone attained, such positions.
Still, his importance cannot be understated, nor can the virtue of his example. Though he was among the poorest of the founding generation, he gave all the money—what would be equivalent to millions of dollars today—that he earned from the blockbuster sales of _Common Sense_ to support George Washington's Continental Army. "As my wish was to serve an oppressed people, and assist in a just and good cause, I conceived that the honor of it would be promoted by my declining to make even the usual profits of an author," Paine later said.
He put his resources and even his life on the line to fight for the ideals he described in his writings. Many may have thought Paine a radical, but in reality there was nothing radical about the notion that every individual human soul yearns for freedom. Paine, who had witnessed firsthand the shackled stratification of a society where one's social position could determine the course of one's entire life, tapped into that yearning and gave voice to it in eloquent terms that have echoed all the way to the present day. He understood that the very basic principle of individual liberty was simple, powerful, and true enough that it could form the basis for a new nation. At a time when founding a country on an ideal was barely thinkable, Paine made it seem possible in clear, pointed prose. In doing so, he helped bring that idea from seeming to being and changed the course of history.
Thomas Paine may have kindled inspiration for the idea of independence, but the actual implementation of that idea would fall to others. Paine could give voice to the desires of many of Britain's North American colonists, but it was up to those colonists' elected representatives in the Continental Congress to handle the mechanics of that momentous change. And this was done through the distinctly _un_ radical means of proper parliamentary procedure. Still, Paine's inspiration was clear; the politicians simply launched from the platform built by the polemicist.
On June 7, 1776, the Continental Congress took up _Common Sense_ as an official order of business. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia moved that Congress take up the pamphlet's recommendations to draft a new constitution, and of most significance, to draft what Paine called "a manifesto to be published"—one that would announce that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." A Committee of Five had been formed to take up the question of independence. Among them was the redheaded gentleman from Monticello who had thought so highly of Paine's work.
When the war for independence broke out months later, Thomas Paine was among the first to volunteer. He served with General Washington's army in New Jersey and earned a place for himself among America's earliest war correspondents by writing a series of dispatches about the war. Among his most famous lines from those dispatches, called _The American Crisis,_ was this one: "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it _now_ , deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
December 1776 wasn't the first time Paine had found himself going from a place where things had been to a place where they could be. Much like his journey across the Atlantic years earlier, his journey across the Delaware strengthened his resolve even as it brought about deep personal suffering and privation. Things worth fighting for require sacrifice. The ideas of independence were not yet won. But having captured the minds of the American people, Paine was now fighting to win the war sparked by his own words.
This war was not inevitable. While Paine had inspired the colonies to rebellion, it would take the mind and pen of another individual, with input from a few others, to state clearly and eloquently the grounds on which this rebellious stand was taken. If the Americans could not make a strong moral case, their efforts would cease to be a revolution of ideas and could instead be dismissed as mere colonial unrest. The task of finding the words to elevate their cause for political independence fell, of course, to Thomas Jefferson. And there was a straight and remarkably short line from Paine's _Common Sense_ to Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, which would be drafted several months after the pamphlet had lit the fires of independence in the minds of the American colonists—including that of Jefferson. Without the first document, it's not likely the second would have come into being—and certainly not in 1776.
# CHAPTER EIGHT
# Committee of Five, Genius of One
The committee for drawing the declaration of Independence desired me to do it. It was accordingly done. . . .
—THOMAS JEFFERSON, _AUTOBIOGRAPHY_
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
May 15, 1776
Since the Crown disbanded the House of Burgesses, Virginians had been governing themselves by convening periodically in Williamsburg. Although these meetings had occurred outside British government sanction, the earlier gatherings had not broached the topic of independence, and delegates even expressed hope for reconciliation with Britain. The delegates to the third convention—held in July 1775 and presided over by Edmund Randolph's uncle Peyton—upon their adjournment "publicly and solemnly declare[d], before God and the world, that we do bear faith and true allegiance to his majesty, George the Third, our only lawful and rightful King," and would "endeavor by every honorable means to promote a restoration of that friendship and amity which so long and happily subsisted between our fellow subjects in Great Britain and the inhabitants of America."
But by the time the Fifth Virginia Convention came to order in May 1776, the situation had changed significantly. In a sign of what was to come, some legislative "old business" was laid to rest before the new business could begin. On May 6, before the convention came to order, forty-five members of the old House of Burgesses gathered. According to their official minutes, "Several Members met, but did neither proceed to Business, nor adjourn, as a House of Burgesses."
Instead, they dissolved the old royally sanctioned colonial legislature for good, because, according to a later report, it was "their opinion that the people could not now be legally represented according to the ancient [British] Constitution, which has been subverted by the King, Lords and Commons of Great Britain." They needed something new—new representation in a system based around guarantees of unalienable rights and supported by the consent of the governed. They may not have known it yet, but they needed the Declaration of Independence.
Though the House of Burgesses had been previously disbanded by Lord Dunmore, it is a testament to the revolutionaries' commitment to self-government that they decided, in the words of one of the attendees, to "let that body die" by their own actions, not those of a royal appointee. They "dissolved themselves accordingly." After the last entry in their minutes, written in "dramatically large letters," was the word _FINIS_. The colonial legislature was gone for good, and full responsibility for representing the people rested on the 112 members of the Virginia Convention, which came to order later that same day.
They came from all corners of the colony, from the Chesapeake Bay coastline to the mountains and valleys beyond the Blue Ridge in what is now West Virginia. Among them were such luminaries as James Madison and Patrick Henry. Hugh Blair Grigsby, a legislator and historian in nineteenth-century Virginia who worked on state business with Madison, reported that "many of the members from the interior had come to the city well armed," in case Lord Dunmore, still lurking off the coast, "might peep in upon them . . . merely to see what they were about."
The people of Williamsburg hovered around the stately brick capitol building "to see what they were about" as well. Blacksmiths and farriers left their forges and stables, merchants left their shops, women arrived with children in hand. Even patrons of the local taverns left food and drink on their tables and wandered out to see what all the excitement was about. The Virginia Convention had been in session for more than a week, and word had spread around town that the delegates were preparing to take an important vote. On the grounds outside the Capitol, the assembled Virginians chatted among themselves as the air itself seemed to crackle with nervous energy.
It was nothing compared with the energy that animated the discussion on the other side of the wall. Inside the capitol building, Edmund Randolph sat at his place in the chamber, taking it all in. At twenty-two, Randolph was the youngest delegate to the Fifth Virginia Convention, the latest in a series of legislative assemblies that had taken place periodically since the summer of 1774, when Lord Dunmore, Virginia's royal governor, had dissolved the "official" colonial representative body, the House of Burgesses.
The Randolphs were an old and prominent family in the oldest and most prominent British colony in America. Edmund's father, John Randolph, had served as Virginia's attorney general under the royal administration. They were unquestionably members of the Virginia elite, in whose ranks were counted the descendants of the colony's (and North America's) earliest English settlers. They prided themselves on their close ties with the mother country and their status as the "fourth realm" of the British kingdom.
Revolutionary fervor was sweeping the colony, thanks in no small part to Thomas Paine's explosive tract, published several months earlier. Despite this upheaval, Virginia was still technically operating under its official Great Seal, which bore the motto "Behold Virginia the Fourth Realm"—placing the colony on equal footing with the Kingdom's other realms of Britain (England and Scotland), France, and Ireland.
The story of the Randolph family illustrates the personal divisions that were shaking the American colonies in the lead-up to their great political division with Britain. Though young Edmund Randolph was committed to the cause of revolution, his convictions put him at odds with his own parents. Wanting no part of rebellion against the Crown, his parents had returned to England. But Edmund was not the only revolutionary in the family: His uncle Peyton Randolph had embraced the cause as well and took his like-minded nephew under his wing.
In 1775, Edmund Randolph went north to put his life on the line as an officer on George Washington's staff. But his service with the Continental Army was cut short. The sudden death of his uncle Peyton brought him back to Virginia, where, in the spring of 1776, he found himself representing the City of Williamsburg as the capital's delegate to the convention being held there.
Despite his relative youth and political inexperience, Edmund was well aware that this was a critical meeting. The revolutionary activity in Britain's "fourth realm" was reaching a fever pitch. British administration had, in practice, ceased to exist in June 1775 when Lord Dunmore, fearing a rebel attack, had abandoned his office as governor of Virginia and fled to a British warship off the colony's coast. From his floating headquarters he attempted to organize loyalist militia within the colony, but his forces had been handily defeated by the revolutionary Virginians at the Battle of Great Bridge in December. On the first day of 1776, Dunmore's forces burned the port of Norfolk and sailed away.
With the royal governor gone, the Virginians were busy governing themselves, and the business in the early days of the Fifth Convention was fairly routine, though important. The members discussed mostly military matters important to the defense of Virginia against British and loyalist troops. The schedule was grueling, with committee meetings in the early morning, general convention sessions from the late morning into the evening, and more committee meetings late into the night. One delegate wrote: "The committees met at seven, and remained in session until the hour of nine, when the Convention was assembled, which rarely adjourned until five in the afternoon. After dinner and a little refreshment, the committees sit again until nine or ten at night."
After about a week of discussions following this intense timetable—which would give most politicians in today's Washington heart palpitations—the debate turned to the question of independence. By this point, however, there was only so much left to discuss. It was clear to the delegates that their constituents overwhelmingly favored independence from Great Britain. William Aylett, a delegate from King William County, observed that "the people of this Country almost unanimously cry aloud for independence," and the delegates from Cumberland County had been urged by their neighbors to "bid . . . a good night forever" to King George III.
Only one member of the convention voiced opposition to separation from Britain during the two days of debate in Williamsburg. Robert Carter Nicholas, grandson of the extraordinarily wealthy planter Robert "King" Carter, expressed his doubts about the American colonies' ability to go it alone. He was "a victim to conscience," Edmund Randolph explained, "being dubious of the competency of America in so arduous a contest." Nicholas's opposition must have been slightly awkward for the pro-independence Randolph—in just a few months, Randolph was to marry Nicholas's daughter Elizabeth.
Another note of caution was sounded early during the independence debate by a voice that few might have expected: Patrick Henry. Famous for his fiery rhetoric, Henry was in favor of breaking away from Britain, but he thought that perhaps the final blow should be delayed until other world powers, such as France, had been lined up to support the newly independent colonies.
But this was no time for caution. It was a time for action. And Patrick Henry, brilliant politician that he was, knew how to read a crowd. Soon, he was holding forth in his trademark style, and Edmund Randolph was entranced. Though at first Henry spoke dispassionately about independence, "after some time," according to Randolph, "he appeared in an element for which he was born." He was "aroused by the now apparent spirit of the people."
Rooted to his seat, Randolph listened to Henry's profound thunderations: "As a pillar of fire, which, notwithstanding the darkness of the prospect, would conduct to the promised land, he inflamed, and was followed by the convention. His eloquence unlocked the secret spring of the human heart, robbed danger of all its terror, and broke the keystone in the arch of royal power."
The resolution adopted by the convention on May 15 declared that all hope of reconciliation with King George III and his government was dead, since all attempts by colonists to deal amicably with London had, "instead of a redress of grievances . . . produced, from an imperious and vindictive Administration, increased insult, oppression, and a vigorous attempt to effect our total destruction." The Virginians resolved "that the Delegates appointed to represent this Colony in General Congress be instructed to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain." But self-government was a serious business, not to be taken lightly, so at the same time they resolved "to prepare a Declaration of Rights, and such a plan of Government as will be most likely to maintain peace and order in this Colony, and secure substantial and equal liberty to the people."
The resolutions passed unanimously.
As the final vote came down, the crowd outside the Capitol erupted in cheers. "The exultation here was extreme," wrote convention delegate Thomas Ludwell Lee to his brother Richard Henry Lee at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The British flag that flew from the Capitol was immediately hauled down, and in its place was hoisted the Continental Colors. This flag, later known as the Grand Union Flag, featured thirteen white and red stripes with a British Union Jack in the upper left corner. Until the adoption of the Stars and Stripes in 1777, this was independent America's first flag, a symbol of the colonists' respect for the British rights and liberties that they were willing to fight to reclaim from a king who had refused to respect them. If they couldn't claim those rights as British subjects, they would do so as American citizens.
It was official: Virginia's citizens had declared independence. Some three hundred miles to the north, the Continental Congress was prepared to consider that very question on behalf of their fellow Americans. And yet another Virginian would lead the charge.
"SIGN OF THE GOLDEN EAGLE" CABINETRY SHOP, PHILADELPHIA
May 16, 1776
At the moment, all Thomas Jefferson wanted was a mug of water. But to get a mug of water, he would have to get up from his bed. To get up from his bed, he would have to open his eyes. And that was the _last_ thing Jefferson wanted to do. If he kept his eyes closed, the headache subsided, if only a little bit.
They seemed to be lessening in intensity, or at least Jefferson hoped they were. He was by now accustomed to these debilitating headaches, which had been plaguing him since the age of nineteen. Now, at the age of thirty-three, he accepted that he could never be sure when they would strike—but when they did, there wasn't much he could do. The latest bout had first hit him about six weeks ago, and he had a good idea what had brought it on. The headaches often had something to do with stress, and at the end of March 1776, Jefferson had experienced one of the most stressful events that could befall a young man in the prime of life. On March 31, his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, had suffered a stroke and died.
The physical pain of the headaches compounded Jefferson's grief. They also made him unable to travel, thus delaying his return to Philadelphia to rejoin the Continental Congress. He finally did arrive on May 14, and he proceeded to the cabinetry shop run by Benjamin Randolph under the "Sign of the Golden Eagle" on Chestnut Street. Randolph also rented out rooms on his premises, and Jefferson had stayed there in the past, as had other congressional representatives. While his fellow Virginians in Williamsburg were busy debating independence, Jefferson was settling in in Philadelphia and trying to shake off the residual headache.
His colleagues at the Continental Congress had been busy in his absence as well. On May 10, they passed a resolution that encouraged self-government in each colony and even hinted at the prospect of national, independent self-government. They urged the people of each colony, who had been working under provisional governments since the breakdown of British rule, "to adopt such Government as shall in the Opinion of the Representatives of the People best conduce to the Happiness and Safety of their Constituents in particular, and America in general." This measure was pushed by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, and Adams later wrote that he considered its passage "a decisive Event."
Five days later, it was decided that this resolution needed an appropriate preamble, which Adams duly supplied. He argued that because "his Britannic Majesty, in conjunction with the Lords and Commons of Great Britain," had stripped his American subject of their rights as his subjects, ignored their pleas for redress, and sent his forces along with foreign mercenaries (including Hessians from King George's family homeland of Germany) to destroy them, "it appears absolutely irreconcileable to reason, and good Conscience, for the People of these Colonies now to take the Oaths and Affirmations necessary for the support of any Government under the Crown of Great Britain."
To that end, Adams declared, "it is necessary that the Exercise of every kind of Authority under the said Crown should be totally suppressed, and all the Powers of Government exerted under the Authority of the People of the Colonies, for the preservation of internal peace, Virtue and good order, as well as for the defence of their Lives, Liberties and Properties against the hostile Invasions and cruel depredations of their Enemies." This, in effect, was John Adams's declaration of independence.
Jefferson recognized its importance as well, and he knew he had to send word back to the Virginians then engaged in their convention. So, on May 16, he roused himself, furrowed his brow against the last vestiges of his headache, and sat down to write a letter to Thomas Nelson, his fellow Virginian, who had left the Continental Congress briefly to attend the convention in Williamsburg.
Jefferson explained that he "arrived here last Tuesday after being detained hence six weeks longer than I intended by a malady" (his headaches). He further noted that matters were made worse by his "uneasy anxious state"—he had wanted to bring his wife, Martha, along with him, but she was pregnant and unable to travel.
He enclosed a copy of the "vote of yesterday on the subject of government," and argued that "in truth it is the whole object of the present controversy; for should a bad government be instituted for us in future it had been as well to have accepted at first the bad one offered to us from beyond the water without the risk and expence of contest." If the colonies weren't able to get the business of self-government right, they might as well have remained under British rule.
He also asked Nelson for news of what was going on at the Virginia Convention. "I suppose they will tell us what to say on the subject of independence," he mused, then remarked that while he was back in Virginia he "took great pains to enquire into the sentiments of the people on that head," or at least the people who lived near him. "In the upper counties," he reported, "I think I may safely say nine out of ten are for it."
Unbeknownst to Jefferson, the Virginia Convention had voted just the day before to instruct their delegates in Philadelphia "what to say on the subject of independence"—they were for it, and ready to establish their own government as well. Furthermore, the person entrusted to carry the official copy of the Virginia Convention's resolution to Philadelphia was none other than Thomas Nelson, who was returning north anyway to retake his seat in Congress. Jefferson's letter likely passed Nelson in transit, but news of the Virginia Convention's resolutions soon reached Philadelphia anyway. The wheels were now in motion. There was no turning back.
GRAFF HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA
June 27
Things were quieter out here, away from the city center. And thank goodness, Thomas Jefferson thought. As he considered his project that had recently drawn to a close, he realized that it would have been difficult to finish had he remained in Benjamin Randolph's furniture shop. Almost as soon as he arrived in Philadelphia, Jefferson had complained: "I think, as the excessive heats of the city are coming on fast, to endeavor to get lodgings in the skirts of the town where I may have the benefit of a freely circulating air."
On the "skirts"—the outskirts—of Philadelphia, at the corner of Seventh and High Streets, he found new lodgings in the home of Jacob Graff. At the time, this was "a more pastoral setting," according to Patrick Glennon of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Graff was a brick mason and had recently completed a spacious brick home for himself and his family. Jefferson moved in on May 23. He took quarters on the second floor, which had a bedroom and a separate study in which he could work. Among the personal items he took with him from his first billet was a mahogany lap desk—also known as a "writing box"—which had been designed by Jefferson himself and crafted in Randolph's furniture shop. Such a convenient implement would come in handy in the weeks to come.
The Graffs lived downstairs, but Jefferson was not alone on the upper floors. Living with him was Robert Hemings, a slave who had traveled with him from Monticello. "Hemings," Glennon explains, "likely slept in the garret"—the attic—"of the Graff House, as was customary for personal slave servants at the time." The work undertaken by Jefferson at the Graff House in June 1776 touched significantly on the slave trade, and it is difficult to avoid speculation on whether the presence of Hemings had any influence on his thought, especially because of an even closer connection between the two men. Hemings also happened to be Jefferson's half-brother-in-law, the son of Martha's father, John Wayles, and an enslaved woman named Elizabeth.
But for the moment, Jefferson was alone in his study. Before him, laid upon his mahogany lap desk, was a sheet of parchment headed: "A Declaration of the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled." Tomorrow, on the twenty-eighth of June, the whole "General Congress assembled" would see this document for the first time, the product of the committee they had directed to draft it more than two weeks before. It was to be presented by the committee, but Jefferson was secure in the knowledge that it was mostly his work.
But it was another Virginian who set the process for its creation by Congress in motion. On June 7, Richard Henry Lee, whose brother Thomas Lee had written so excitedly from the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg, officially acted on the orders that the convention had issued. On behalf of the Virginia delegation and the people of his colony, Lee proposed the resolution that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
Independence was not to be decided on June 7, 1776, however. The Continental Congress was still a political body, and political processes still had to play out. Votes had to be counted and lined up, and the definitive stance of each delegation on the independence question ascertained. In order make time to do this, debate on Lee's resolution was postponed until July 1.
This did not mean the question of independence would remain dormant in the intervening weeks. In order to be ready for an eventual separation, Congress appointed a committee on June 11 to begin work on a formal declaration of the colonies' independence from Great Britain. Named to this committee were Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut.
The story of how exactly Jefferson was chosen to pen the initial draft has been the subject of debate since the early days of the Republic. Jefferson himself stated simply: "The committee for drawing the declaration of Independence desired me to do it." By John Adams's account, however, he was originally slated to work in tandem with Jefferson—"the Committee met," he recalled, "discussed the subject, and then appointed Mr. Jefferson and me to make the draught." Upon meeting with Jefferson shortly thereafter, he states that "Jefferson proposed to me to make the draught." Adams then recounted that he cajoled the younger man to take it upon himself entirely, over Jefferson's objections, by offering three reasons: "You are a Virginian, and Virginia ought to appear at the head of this business . . . I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; You are very much otherwise . . . You can write ten times better than I can." Thus, Adams convinced Jefferson to take on the work. But Jefferson, much later in life, disputed this account: "They unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught," he wrote in 1823.
Whether Jefferson was chosen outright or flattered into the job by Adams, one thing is agreed upon by all accounts: the recognition of Jefferson's skill with the pen. Adams recalled Jefferson's "happy talent at composition," and the "peculiar felicity of expression" in his writing. He already had a reputation as a "renaissance man," and almost exactly a year before had been heavily involved with the drafting of the "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms" on behalf of the Continental Congress.
The drafting of the Declaration was hardly the only piece of congressional business in which Jefferson was engaged at the time. He, like all of his fellow delegates, was kept busy with the work of a number of different committees. Jefferson was assigned to some thirty-four in the period between June 1775 and September 1776 alone. And he was known for throwing himself into all of his committee work. Adams recalled that "though a silent member in Congress, he was so prompt, frank, explicit and decisive upon Committees." We could use more "prompt, frank, explicit and decisive" members on U.S. Senate committees today!
With all of this other business going on, it is estimated that Jefferson spent only two or three days working on his original draft. Then he began an editing process, the details of which are still a source of fascination for historians. The definitive parsing of exactly who changed what in the Declaration draft and when is the subject of Julian Boyd's _The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text_ , first published during World War II. But even Boyd, and the historians who came after him, are unable to say with certainty who was responsible for all of the changes made to Jefferson's draft before it was presented to the full Congress.
The first people to see the draft after Jefferson finished it were Adams and Franklin. Jefferson himself reported this: "I communicated it separately to Dr Franklin and Mr Adams requesting their corrections; because they were the two members of whose judgments and amendments I wished most to have the benefit before presenting it to the Committee." In the original letter to James Madison in which he explained this, the word _separately_ was emphasized.
There is some evidence to suggest that though Adams and Franklin reviewed the draft separately, they did so at different times. Adams remembered that he objected to a passage "which called the King a Tyrant . . . for I never believed George to be a tyrant in disposition and in nature; I always believed him to be deceived by his Courtiers on both sides of the Atlantic, and in his Official capacity only, Cruel." Adams was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to George the man, but Adams had no doubt of the cruelty of his acts "in his Official capacity" as King George III, or of those taken by his government. In any event, he declined to change Jefferson's draft at this early stage, because "Franklin and Sherman were to inspect it afterwards." This would support Boyd's theory that "Jefferson presented the Rough Draft to Adams first, who made his copy, and later to Franklin."
During the drafting process, Franklin was dealing with a nasty attack of gout and spent most of his time at home. Fortunately, his home was only a block away from the Graff House. A note from Jefferson to Franklin survives in which Jefferson writes: "The inclosed paper has been read and with some small alterations approved of by the committee. Will Doctr. Franklyn be so good as to peruse it and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?" This note has been tentatively dated to June 21, 1776, and is thought to have accompanied a version of the Declaration draft. This would track well with a letter Franklin wrote to George Washington on the same day, in which Franklin noted: "I am just recovering from a severe Fit of the Gout, which has kept me from Congress . . . so that I know little of what has passed there, except that a Declaration of Independence is preparing," suggesting that he was involved in the editing process by this stage.
After Franklin and Adams reviewed the draft, it was submitted to the full Committee of Five. Later in life, the principals involved remembered only minor edits being made in these stages before the full congressional review. "I do not now remember that I made or suggested a single alteration," said Adams of his first review, "and I do not remember that Franklin or Sherman criticized any thing" in the committee. Jefferson, for his part, recalled that Franklin's and Adams's "alterations were two or three only, and merely verbal," after which he "reported it to the Committee, and from them, unaltered to Congress." Julian Boyd's estimation is somewhat more precise. He calculates that fifteen edits were made in the first round involving Adams and Franklin only, and a further thirty-two changes in the full committee editing stage—which in practice involved mostly Adams and Franklin again, with little participation from Livingston or Sherman.
But the question of which mind and which hand were responsible for which changes remains speculative in many cases. Even upon analyzing the handwriting and prose style of the original documents, it is difficult to definitively credit most of the individual edits to Adams, to Franklin, or to Jefferson himself. As the primary author, Jefferson certainly revised his own work as it was being drafted, and he even inserted three new grievances during the committee edit phase. But most of the changes were very minor. One of the more interesting was specifically credited to Franklin in a notation in the margin made by Jefferson: Franklin toned down the phrase "deluge us in blood" to the less graphic "destroy us" when referring to attacks by the King's soldiers, for instance.
The most widely recognizable change to the document before its submission to Congress is, perhaps not surprisingly, attributed variously to Jefferson and his two main editors. Jefferson's original draft opened the second paragraph with "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable." In the first round of edits, one of the three men changed "sacred and undeniable" to "self-evident." Popular biographies of Jefferson (by Jon Meacham) and of Franklin (by Walter Isaacson) give credit for this change to Franklin. But Boyd offers evidence that could point in any direction: "This famous and altogether felicitous change has been attributed both to Adams and to Jefferson," but the "feeling as it exhibits for precisely the right word is quite Franklinian in character." Then again, according to Boyd, the handwriting in which "self-evident" was written on the original parchment "bears the appearance of being equally Jeffersonian."
Unless some heretofore undiscovered document surfaces in a dusty archive somewhere, we may never know exactly who decided that we hold our founding truths to be "self-evident" rather than "sacred & undeniable." And perhaps that is precisely as it should be. While we rightly celebrate the genius of Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence, it is important to remember that he was not working completely on his own. None of the Founders were. Their strength came from their unity, despite their different backgrounds, skill sets, and points of view. On the issue that mattered most, the cause of liberty, they were united.
When Jefferson woke up on the morning of June 28, 1776, and joined his fellow committee members to present their work to Congress, they were not just presenting the work of Thomas Jefferson with contributions by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The document that Jefferson wrote and Adams and Franklin edited was to speak not just in their voices but with the voices of the whole Congress and, ultimately, the whole nation.
Unfortunately, once the document was submitted to Congress, Jefferson would learn how cacophonous so many voices could be.
# CHAPTER NINE
# Created Equal
Congress cut off about a quarter part of it, as I expected they would, but they obliterated some of the best of it . . .
—JOHN ADAMS, 1822
In his original draft of the Declaration, Jefferson wrapped up his list of grievances against King George III with a powerful finale, which deserves to be quoted in full, and in its original form:
> He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of **infidel** powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the **liberties** of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the **lives** of another.
That "cruel war against human nature itself" was, of course, the African slave trade. Jefferson sought to list this among King George's wrongdoings, in language that asserted the humanity of enslaved people and stood up for their rights, despite their not being remotely represented in the Continental Congress.
Jefferson was a product of and a participant in the slave system. He owned slaves himself and even traveled to Philadelphia with the aforementioned Robert Hemings, his enslaved half-brother-in-law. But this screed against the slave trade was not the first time Jefferson had taken a stand against at least some aspects of the slave system. He records in his memoirs that in his early political career, as a young member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, he "made one effort in that body for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was rejected." "Indeed," he grumbled, "during the regal government, nothing liberal could expect success." Thus, in the original Declaration, he made sure to call out the King for "suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce."
This passage also marked some of the most overtly religious language in Jefferson's original draft. Though "the laws of nature and of nature's god" were invoked by Jefferson's hand, reconciling Enlightenment and religious thinking, the phrase "endowed by their Creator" was not present in the first draft but added later. Jefferson originally stated that our rights were a result of our "equal creation" without mentioning the Creator Himself. But when he contrasted the "infidel powers"—an apparent reference to Muslim slave traders from the Middle East and North Africa—with "the Christian King of Great Britain" he argued in no uncertain terms that the slave trade was not only unwelcome in North America but against the Christian God, who had created not only the slave trader but also the King and the slave.
The editing contributions made by the whole Congress to the work of Jefferson and the Committee of Five should not be discounted. Indeed, Boyd argues, "it is difficult to point out a passage in the Declaration, great as it was, that was not improved by their attention," citing the involvement of such "keen minds" as James Wilson of Pennsylvania and John Witherspoon of New Jersey. There is certainly a case to be made that, rhetorically, sections of Jefferson's wording benefited from the streamlining efforts of his colleagues, which produced some of the memorable phrasing that is known around the world today.
But Julian Boyd, though a preeminent Jefferson scholar, originally wrote his analysis in 1943, and changing times can bend the arc of consideration of the Declaration's editing stage back toward the position staked out early on by Adams—that "some of the best of it" had been removed. This impassioned argument against the slave trade remains a painful reminder of a tragic missed opportunity.
Even at the time, however, John Adams knew that portion wouldn't last. When he first read Jefferson's draft at a meeting of the Committee of Five, he commended "the flights of Oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning Negro Slavery," a clause "which though I knew his Southern Bretheren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose." Jefferson himself also blamed his Southern colleagues for striking out the antislavery language: "The clause . . . reprobating the enslaving [of] the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it." But the Northern delegates did not get a pass in Jefferson's final judgment: "Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."
But how does this effort to strike a blow against the slave system with the Declaration, and the evident bitterness when that effort failed, factor into Thomas Jefferson's overall legacy on the issue of slavery? This is a question that is still being debated and no doubt will be for decades to come. Numerous people were enslaved by Thomas Jefferson to work his land. His relationship with one of them, Sally Hemings, has been well studied. His view of people of color in general was certainly not especially enlightened, and even in the draft passage denouncing the slave trade he argued they have been "obtruded"—imposed—onto the white colonists by the King's voracious economic appetite. This was a rhetorical stretch to say the least. Nobody was "obtruding" enslaved workers onto Jefferson at Monticello—nobody was _forcing_ him to keep them in bondage.
Dr. William Rasmussen of the Virginia Historical Society writes that "Jefferson's relationship with slavery was torturous as he wrestled with this evil for all of his adult life." His efforts to dilute its effect continued well after his work on the Declaration—as a member of Congress in 1784 he was narrowly defeated in an effort to keep slavery out of new states admitted to the Union.
That failure came back to haunt him in 1820 during the debate over whether Missouri should enter the Union as a free or slave state. "This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror," Jefferson wrote then. "We have the wolf by the ear," he said of the slavery question, "and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other." With his talk of "self-preservation," Jefferson was expressing his fear that black people, if freed from slavery, would turn on the whites who had oppressed them for so long, because the slave system had continued unchecked. He saw the free state versus slave state debate as "the knell of the Union," and tragically observed: "I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of '76, to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it."
The Union did not dissolve in Jefferson's lifetime, but the slavery question did indeed tear it asunder a few decades later. In the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln invoked Jefferson's words at Gettysburg, reflecting that our nation was "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and that this war was "testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure."
It has endured, and it will continue to do so as long as we remain dedicated to its founding principles. One American who understood that was Frederick Douglass, who had experienced the worst of America as a slave before claiming his God-given freedom and becoming a leading abolitionist. Asked to give a Fourth of July speech in 1852, he delivered a surprising assessment to his largely white audience. "What have I," he asked, "or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?" His answer, of course, was no, and he proclaimed: "This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn."
But despite all that, Douglass felt that the simple truths in the Declaration of Independence would be the tools with which true freedom would be eventually extended to all. Later in the speech, he called the Declaration "the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny." "The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles," he said. "Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost."
He ended with a powerful prediction that days of slavery in America were numbered. "While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age." Douglass expressed his confidence that the timeless principles of the Declaration, solidly grounding the technological and cultural advances brought about by American ingenuity and changing times, would clear the path to freedom.
And so they did, but it took time. In some ways, this is reminiscent of the simple prayer popularly attributed to St. Augustine: "God, make me good, but not yet." As St. Augustine understood that individual humans need time to develop into more moral and better—but never perfect—versions of themselves, so perhaps Jefferson understood that American society needed time to shed the immoral fetters of slavery. By attempting to mitigate the slave trade in the original Declaration, Jefferson expressed a will to start the process earlier than it would have otherwise.
And yet, there remains an undeniable tension between what the Founders believed and the way they lived. Modern minds remain boggled by the fact that Jefferson could write about the equal rights of man while his fellow human beings—wholly owned by himself and his family—worked without pay back at Monticello. Think what a shining example Jefferson might have set had he freed his slaves—or even if, upon his death, he had made provisions for their eventual freedom, as Washington did. He would have shown the superiority of the moral argument against slavery over the soulless economic argument in favor of it. Instead, the tension between moral and economic forces increased over nearly another century before they exploded into bloody war. Had more of our society been guided by conscience rather than by profit, perhaps the slave system would have been abolished earlier and the Civil War avoided.
But sometimes the generation that sparks a monumental change will not be the one to carry it out. Change sometimes depends upon generations that come after. Courage is required in the moment, however, to set the course that other generations can follow to eventually fulfill their promise. By expressing his disapprobation of the slave trade, and enshrining what Frederick Douglass called the "saving principles" of our society in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson set that course for future generations of Americans.
Before the new nation could continue on this course, however, it had to fight to keep from being reabsorbed into the British Empire. Across the Atlantic Ocean, His Majesty King George III was incensed at his subjects' disloyalty to the Crown and personal insult to himself. He was not about to lose his American colonies without a fight.
# CHAPTER TEN
# King George's Call to Arms
No people ever enjoyed more Happiness, or lived under a milder Government, than those now revolted Provinces.
—KING GEORGE III TO PARLIAMENT, OCTOBER 31, 1776
LONDON
October 31, 1776
Sir Francis Molyneux strode with purpose, his footsteps echoing in the cold, empty halls of the Palace of Westminster. He was the seventh of the Molyneux Baronets, a gentleman of the English aristocracy, a loyal courtier to his sovereign—and today he was fulfilling one of his most important duties. In his right hand, balanced on his shoulder, he carried a simple stick of dark ebony wood tipped with gold at both ends. This unique instrument gave Sir Francis his most impressive title—the "Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod," or simply "Black Rod" for short.
There had been a Black Rod serving the British Parliament going all the way back to the fourteenth century. Normally, his duties required him to maintain order and security in the House of Lords, Parliament's upper chamber, where the scions of Britain's oldest families and bearers of its most ancient titles held forth on the day's most pressing issues. Today, however, he was carrying an important formal message to the lower house, the House of Commons, whose members were elected by the people.
As Sir Francis drew closer to the House of Commons chamber, the doors were suddenly slammed shut. But Sir Francis did not break his stride. This was all part of the plan and had been for more than a hundred years. He walked up to the heavy oak doors, raised his rod, and banged deliberately three times.
"Who's there?" called a voice from within.
"Black Rod," Sir Francis answered clearly.
At this, the doors were opened and Sir Francis took his first measured steps into the chamber. Arrayed before him in their tiered benches on either side were the British people's representatives in government, presided over by their Speaker, Fletcher Norton. But the house where the people's voice was supposed to ring loudest was about to get a reminder of where the real power resided.
Sir Francis bowed and made the traditional announcement: "Mr. Speaker, the King commands this honorable House to attend His Majesty immediately in the House of Lords."
* * *
—
It was the opening day of the third session of the Fourteenth Parliament of Great Britain, and as usual, the centerpiece of the day was to be the speech made by the sovereign. The ruler formally known as "His Majesty George the Third, by the grace of God, of Great-Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith" had already arrived, and taken his place on the throne set up in the chamber of the House of Lords. It had been the task of Sir Francis Molyneux and his black rod to formally invite—or "command"—the Members of Parliament in the House of Commons to make their way to the upper chamber and listen to the speech from the throne along with their noble colleagues.
The activities of the day had so far followed the tradition and protocol so much a feature of British parliamentary rule—then and now. But thanks to unprecedented events thousands of miles away, this was going to be a king's speech unlike any other.
King George III took the throne in 1760, at the tender age of twenty-two, and that same year he commissioned the grand State Coach, which, drawn by eight horses, carried him that October day to the Palace of Westminster to open his Parliament. Now known as the Gold State Coach and still in use in Britain, the carriage drips with gilded carvings, all of which are loaded with symbolism meant to project the divine right and power of the British monarchy. There are lions, the national symbol; there are cherubs, signifying the monarch's rule by God's grace; but perhaps most prominently placed, looming over each wheel, are four figures of Triton.
Triton is a Greek water deity, and his inclusion is meant to symbolize the reach of Britain's—and thus, the King's—power across the seas. A formidable naval power, Britain was said, in the lyrics of a song that had been popular for decades, to "rule the waves" and thereby keep its far-flung colonies around the world in check.
One of those far-flung colonies, however, was in the midst of showing just how wide a gulf, greater even than the sprawling ocean between them, had developed between King George and some of the people he ruled. Three months earlier, English colonists in eastern North America had formally broken away from Great Britain and established themselves no longer as subjects of the Crown but as citizens of the "free and independent states" in which they lived.
In doing so, they claimed to be asserting their rights as Englishmen to enjoy "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to the same degree as their cousins in mainland Britain. Why, they reasoned, should an Englishman living in Boston be subjected to greater rules, regulations, taxes—and perhaps worst of all, the presence of armed soldiers on his streets—when these would have been considered outrageous to any Englishman in London?
It was no small irony that the idea of individual rights and liberties had been present in English government for some time, going back to the Magna Carta of 1215. An assertion of resistance to royal despotism was even built into the very ceremony over which George III was presiding today.
When the doors of the House of Commons had been shut in the face of Black Rod, the messenger of the King, and the nobility, it was a symbolic act of highlighting the independence of the people's elected representatives who met in that chamber. Its roots went back to an incident in 1642 when King Charles I, in the lead-up to the English Civil War, barged into the House of Commons chamber intending to arrest a group of rebellious members led by John Hampden. Such an attack on duly elected Members of Parliament was unconscionable, even by a monarch who ruled by supposed divine right. Hostilities began shortly thereafter, and in 1649 Charles I ended up losing not just his crown but his head.
While the House of Commons retained this flourish of symbolic defiance, they still would admit Black Rod, and they still would rise from their seats to walk to the House of Lords chamber to hear their sovereign speak. The opening of Parliament on October 31, 1776, was no exception. But much of their talk of late was about the rebellious colonists in America who instead of temporarily shutting out the symbols of the monarch's rule were apparently casting them off for good.
Their Declaration of Independence, the document by which the colonists had officially separated themselves from Great Britain, had been issued on July 4 in Philadelphia. In the next few days, word of this dramatic action had apparently reached General William Howe, the commander of British forces in New York. When from his base at Staten Island he dashed off the next dispatches to London, dated July 7 and 8, he focused on reporting troop movements but included this offhand note: "Several Men have within these last two Days come over to this Island . . . and I am informed that the Continental Congress have declared the United Colonies free and independent States."
Howe's letter was published in the _London Gazette_ on August 10, marking the first official announcement of the Americans' separation. By the following week, the full Declaration had been printed in the British press and the word was out far and wide.
One of the Members of Parliament now on his way to hear the King speak had had a particularly strong reaction when he heard what had transpired in Philadelphia in July. Edmund Burke, who was then representing the City of Bristol in the House of Commons, had long been one of the voices in support of the American colonists, urging the King and the prime minister, Lord North, to treat them with a spirit of respect and reconciliation. The previous year, Burke stated in the House that "in this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole," but that the "colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force" this freedom, which Burke noted was to the Americans "the only advantage worth living for."
Burke understood the Americans, and he had hoped for them to remain subjects of the Crown, but with the full panoply of rights enjoyed by other Englishmen. Now, however, the moment he had dreaded had come to pass. Burke said later that he was "sick at heart" when he heard about the Declaration of Independence. The news "struck [him] to the soul," and he saw there was no hope of reconciliation, no hope of turning back.
Perhaps Burke understood this immediately, and he was not the only parliamentarian who was convinced it was time to simply bid farewell to the American colonies and stop spilling British blood and treasure in a long war in which the colonies enjoyed an obvious home-field advantage. His sovereign, however, felt different, as he would soon reveal.
The members of the House of Commons made their way to the House of Lords chamber to join the noble Peers of the Realm and bishops composing the upper house. The nobles were dressed in brilliant red robes trimmed with ermine, the bishops in simple black and white. And in the center, seated on his throne, sat the man whose presence commanded theirs: King George III.
Not yet forty, the King nonetheless now had nearly two decades of experience on the throne. The crisis in America was, however, proving a difficult one to address. And His Majesty was taking it personally. George III was the first of his royal dynasty—called the Hanoverians, after the family's original seat in Germany—to rule Britain after having actually been born there. His two immediate predecessors, George I and George II, had been born in Germany. But _this_ George had been born in London, and he took his identity as an Englishman very seriously. When he first took the throne and made the customary speech to Parliament, into the ghostwritten remarks he added this sentence of his own: "Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Britain." Now some rebels sought to rip apart the Britain he held so dear, to tear away a major component of the empire over which he ruled and in whose name he gloried. It was not just his power that these Americans sought to attack—it was his very identity.
And yet, as the monarch sat in Parliament surveying his captive audience, these emotions were kept below the surface. His full—some might even say pudgy—face remained placid, betraying little emotion and giving away no hints as to his mood. George III had made no public pronouncements since news of the Declaration broke in England, and the lords and elected officials assembled waited to hear how he intended to address it.
From the beginning of his speech, his agenda was clear:
"My Lords and Gentlemen," he began, "Nothing could have afforded Me so much Satisfaction as to have been able to inform you, at the Opening of this Session, that the Troubles, which have so long distracted My Colonies in North America, were at an End." He condescended to add his wish that "My unhappy People, recovered from their Delusion, had delivered themselves from the Oppression of their Leaders, and returned to their Duty."
This was an especially awkward start. Not only were the troubles not at an end, they had gotten far worse. But the King swiftly acknowledged this: "So daring and desperate is the Spirit of those Leaders," he said, "whose Object has always been Dominion and Power, that they have now openly renounced all Allegiance to the Crown, and all political Connection with this Country."
His Majesty was almost directly parroting the language of the Declaration itself, as crafted by Thomas Jefferson, which declared that the colonies are "absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved."
The King further snarled that the colonists had "rejected, with Circumstances of Indignity and Insult," Britain's attempts at reconciliation—which in the colonists' view had come too little, too late—"and have presumed to set up their rebellious Confederacies for Independent States." He knew this disrespect could not stand and that the entire European colonial system could be in jeopardy if it went unanswered: "If their Treason be suffered to take Root, much Mischief must grow from it, to the Safety of My loyal Colonies, to the Commerce of My Kingdoms, and indeed to the present System of all Europe."
He then called for "unanimity at home" in the cause of pursuing the American war, perhaps anticipating that this latest development would put even more British politicians in the mind of Burke and let the Americans get away with it. To that end, he proceeded to give an update on British victories on the battlefield in New York, make assurances that the other European monarchs were behind him, and remind members of the House of Commons of their duty to fully fund his campaigns.
The King concluded with the opinion that "no people ever enjoyed more Happiness, or lived under a milder Government, than those now revolted Provinces." "My Desire," his final sentence proclaimed, "is to restore to them the Blessings of Law and Liberty, equally enjoyed by every British Subject, which they have fatally and desperately exchanged for all the Calamities of War, and the arbitrary Tyranny of their Chiefs."
His Majesty had saved the most disingenuous claims for last.
The government he claimed was "mild" had in fact visited great oppression, even violence, on the people of those "revolted provinces." They had been taxed into oblivion, bullied by soldiers in the streets of their hometowns, and had their representative assemblies disbanded. Thomas Jefferson had taken great care to detail these and other offenses in the list of grievances against George III, which made up the bulk of his Declaration.
Jefferson and his compatriots had indeed sought "the Blessings of Law and Liberty," but the simple fact was they were _not_ "enjoyed equally by every British subject." The British subjects in America were not guaranteed these blessings under the Crown anymore, so they set off to claim them for themselves. That the King still, after their formal split, dismissed this as a "delusion" and sought to bring the Americans to heel showed how out of touch he and his government remained, exhibiting the same lack of understanding that brought this situation into being.
Edmund Burke's first reaction when he heard the news of the Declaration was accurate. Nothing like the Declaration of Independence had been issued before as the foundation for a new nation. The map had been redrawn, the shape of the world had changed—there was no turning back.
LONDON
September 1775
There was a time when there was hope. There was a time when some of the leaders among the American colonists still felt that if they could make their case to the King, if His Majesty could read their words for himself rather than relying on the reports of his scheming ministers and advisers, he would see reason and loosen his stranglehold on their colonies. Further fighting like what had scorched Massachusetts, from Lexington to Concord to Bunker Hill, in the spring and into the summer of 1775 could perhaps be avoided. In September of that year, those hopes rested in the hands of two men: Arthur Lee and Richard Penn. They were charged with delivering a petition addressed "To the King's most excellent Majesty" from his "faithful subjects," the members of the Continental Congress.
The men who shared this mission also shared some aspects of their background: Both came from the ranks of the colonial elite, and both had been educated in England. But in the current conflict between the colonies and the Crown, they had taken different sides.
Richard Penn was the grandson of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and had previously served in the royal administration as lieutenant governor and later acting governor of that colony. A loyalist, he decamped for England when Philadelphia became a center of revolutionary activity, but he agreed to assist the Continental Congress in taking their case to the King.
Arthur Lee, on the other hand, came from that large and active Virginia family that had thrown its considerable resources behind the patriot cause. Two of Arthur's brothers, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee, were members of the Congress who had approved the document for which Arthur was now responsible. For him, this mission was not just a political errand but a family matter as well.
The petition borne by Penn and Lee may have been approved by the entire Continental Congress and signed by many of its delegates, but it was largely the brainchild of one man: John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. Dickinson was a leading moderate in the Congress, and in the summer of 1775, as Thomas Jefferson noted, "still retained the hope of reconciliation with the mother country." In the first days of July 1775, Dickinson and Jefferson wrangled over the "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms" against the King's forces, which Congress passed on July 6 of that year. In what Jefferson saw as a consolation prize for Dickinson, Congress allowed him to draw up a second and more conciliatory document addressed directly to King George. It became known as the Olive Branch Petition.
Its tone was almost servile. Greeting the King as "Most Gracious Sovereign," it begged to "entreat your Majesty's gracious attention to this our humble petition." It blamed government officials in London, not the King himself, for the present difficulties, but opted to "decline the ungrateful task of describing the irksome variety of artifices, practiced by many of your Majesty's Ministers," presumably to avoid offending the monarch's delicate ear. Still, Dickinson noted, these ministers "have compelled us to arm in our own defense, and have engaged us in a controversy so peculiarly abhorrent to the affections of your still faithful colonists." Then he really laid it on thick:
> Attached to your Majesty's person, family, and government, with all devotion that principle and affection can inspire, connected with Great Britain by the strongest ties that can unite societies, and deploring every event that tends in any degree to weaken them, we solemnly assure your Majesty, that we not only most ardently desire the former harmony between her and these colonies may be restored . . .
He concluded by asking the King to intervene more directly in colonial affairs, "that your royal authority and influence may be graciously interposed to procure us relief from our afflicting fears and jealousies."
Jefferson, for one, was appalled—and his memoirs suggest that he wasn't the only one. "The disgust against this humility was general," he said, "and Mr. Dickinson's delight at its passage was the only circumstance which reconciled them to it." Jefferson felt the whole exercise was a waste of time, "a signal proof of [Congress's] indulgence to Mr. Dickinson." Yet Dickinson's colleagues approved the document on July 8, 1775.
Jefferson could not help but recount an awkward incident following the petition's passage when, despite the debate being closed, Dickinson "could not refrain from rising and expressing his satisfaction" in an impromptu speech.
"There is but one word, Mr. President, in the paper which I disapprove," he said in conclusion, "and that is the word 'Congress.'"
At this, Jefferson's fellow Virginian Benjamin Harrison rose and responded: "There is but one word in the paper, Mr. President, of which I approve, and that is the word 'Congress.'"
By late August, the petition—bearing the signatures of Jefferson and Harrison among those of their fellow delegates, despite their objections—was in the hands of Richard Penn and Arthur Lee in London. They sent a copy to Lord Dartmouth, secretary of state for the colonies, for his advance review and requested a meeting to formally present him with the original. Seeking to bolster their case, Lee also wrote to Edmund Burke, whose sympathy for the colonial cause was well known, inviting him to join them for the meeting with Dartmouth.
Burke politely declined, but he wrote to Lee to express his support for the Congress's petition. "I am convinced," he remarked, perhaps overly optimistically, "that nothing is further from the desires of the gentlemen who compose it, than to separate themselves from their allegiance to their sovereign, or their subordinate connection with their mother country." Rather, Burke suggested, "I believe they sincerely wish for an end of these unhappy troubles, in which, while all are distressed, they must be the first and greatest sufferers."
Burke's words echoed in Arthur Lee's memory as he and Penn waited to be shown into Lord Dartmouth's office in London on September 2, 1775. The day before, they had finally presented him with the original petition, which he had promised to bring to the King himself. Now the two colonial agents were anxious for His Majesty's answer. But when Lord Dartmouth arrived, his news was surprising. "As His Majesty did not receive it on the throne," His Lordship reported, "no answer would be given."
Lee was aghast. If the fighting continued, soon it would stretch from New England down to his native Virginia. But he had found Dartmouth to be "a man of great candor and amiableness of character," so he felt free to speak his peace. He gave the only response that came to him.
"I am sorry," he told Dartmouth, "that his majesty has adopted a measure which will occasion so much bloodshed."
But Dartmouth was dismissive. "If I thought it would be the cause of shedding one drop of blood I should never have concurred in it," he replied. "But I cannot be of an opinion that it will be attended by any such consequences."
Lee would not back down. "My lord," he continued firmly, "as sure as we exist, this answer will be the cause of much blood being shed in America, and of most dreadful consequences."
With that, Lee and Penn excused themselves. They had to dash off a quick report of their meeting so it could make it across the Atlantic as quickly as possible. They left Dartmouth with that dire prediction ringing in the air.
They were right, of course. The consequences would be dreadful. Not least because King George had already made up his mind before the petition was even submitted: The rebels in America were not to be compromised with; they were to be crushed.
On August 23, as Penn and Lee were preparing for their meeting with Dartmouth, King George III issued a royal proclamation. His American subjects, it observed, "misled by dangerous and ill designing men, and forgetting the allegiance which they owe to the power that has protected and supported them," had "at length proceeded to open and avowed rebellion." His Majesty accused them of "traitorously preparing, ordering and levying war against us," and commanded that "all our Officers, civil and military, are obliged to exert their utmost endeavours to suppress such rebellion, and to bring the traitors to justice."
The King had decided that the time for compromise was over, and as such he was in no mood to receive the petition brought to him just days later. In the following weeks, he addressed Parliament and stated his resolve even more clearly. The colonists, he was convinced, were trying to break away, and His Majesty simply would not permit it:
"The rebellious war now levied is become more general," he observed on October 27, 1775, "and is manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire." King George was preparing for American independence well before the Declaration was issued. He viewed this as an affront to British identity—to _his_ identity:
> The object is too important, the spirit of the British nation too high, the resources with which God hath blessed her too numerous, to give up so many colonists which she has planted with great industry, nursed with great tenderness, encouraged with many commercial advantages, and protected and defended at much expence of blood and treasure.
To keep his empire together, King George III knew that more "blood and treasure" would be the answer.
# CHAPTER ELEVEN
# "America Is Lost!"
The present accounts from America seem to put a final stop to all negotiation. Farther concession is a joke.
—KING GEORGE III TO LORD NORTH, AUGUST 12, 1778
LONDON
January 31, 1778
It was nearly half past one in the afternoon when King George III sat down to compose a note to his prime minister, Lord North. More than two years of war in the American colonies had taken their toll on Great Britain—its soldiers were dying, money was flying out of the royal treasury, and yet the rebellious colonists still had not been brought to heel. In July 1776, they formally declared their so-called independence, as King George had predicted the previous fall. More recently, on October 17, 1777, his army had suffered a significant defeat at Saratoga in New York when British general John Burgoyne, surrounded by a superior force, surrendered his army of thousands to American general Horatio Gates.
Hardly anyone had thought the ragtag American troops capable of such a large-scale victory. The British were stunned. Even more significantly, the French, who had been weighing whether or not to formally support the American cause against their traditional British enemies, were impressed.
Though this was a setback, no doubt, it so distressed King George that by the beginning of the year 1778, his own prime minister was beginning to entertain the idea of negotiating a peace settlement with the American rebel leaders. Now was not the time for his top government official to go wobbly. His Majesty decided that Lord North's spine needed straightening and wrote to him to stiffen his resolve:
> You will remember that before the recess I strongly advised you not to bind yourself to bring forward a proposition for restoring tranquility to North America, not from any absurd ideas of unconditional submission my mind never harboured, but from perceiving that whatever can be proposed will be liable not to bring America back to a sense of attachment to the mother country, yet to dissatisfy this country, which has in the most handsome manner cheerfully carried on the contest, and therefore has a right to have the struggle continued until convinced that it is in vain.
His Majesty's account of the situation, however, had a few serious gaps with reality. Samuel B. Griffith II, a decorated U.S. Marine officer in World War II who became a military historian in later life, points out that George III's line about "absurd ideas of unconditional submission" is in fact "a falsehood," as His Majesty "had for years insisted on unconditional submission" by the Americans.
The King may have been attempting to soothe Lord North's anxieties and present his own views as less hard-line than they really were. As a matter of fact, while George III himself may have "in the most handsome manner cheerfully carried on the contest," the same could not be said for his prime minister. Lord North was anything but cheerful. Indeed, historian Andrew O'Shaughnessy points out that by this point he "lacked conviction in the cause and was increasingly despondent," while King George was "more than simply committed to the cause, but became the chief driving force in the war for America."
But events over the next few days would change the situation, and with it, His Majesty's tune.
_February 9_
The British spy network, the precursor to today's MI-6, had been hard at work. King George was able to report to Lord North that the latest intelligence, "if certain, shows the veil will soon be drawn off by the Court of France"—meaning France would openly declare an alliance with the Americans against Great Britain.
The French threat was enough to get George III to take the idea of peace terms seriously, and while he had held back Lord North from pursing that goal little more than a week prior, he now cajoled his prime minister. This news, he wrote, "makes me wish you would not delay bringing your American proposition . . . into the House of Commons."
But though King George entertained ideas of peace, his mind remained firmly fixed on war, which he intended to micromanage even if the French entered the fray:
> . . . should a French war be our fate, I trust you will concur with me in the only means of making it successful, the withdrawing of the greatest part of them [the troops] from America, and employing them against the French and Spanish settlements . . .
He further explained that "if we are to be carrying on a land-war against the rebels and against these two powers," their efforts would "be feeble in all parts and consequently unsuccessful." He was prepared to make the American rebellion into a war between European powers.
_March 13_
It had been a tumultuous day for the government. The French had made their move. The Marquis de Noailles, King Louis XVI's ambassador in London, formally informed the secretary of state, Lord Weymouth, that "a treaty of friendship and commerce" had been signed between King Louis and "the United States of North America, who are in full possession of independence, as pronounced by them on the fourth of July, 1776."
It was nearly eleven at night before King George III had time to communicate his thoughts to Lord North. As the candelabra flickered on his desk, he scratched out his observation that "the paper delivered this day by the French Ambassador is certainly equivalent to a declaration." His mind raced as he sketched out new ideas for the positioning of his forces across the ocean:
> [W]hat occurs now is to fix what numbers are necessary to defend New York, Rhode Island, Nova Scotia, and the Floridas: it is a joke to think of keeping Pennsylvania, for we must from the army now in America form a corps sufficient to attack the French islands, and two or three thousand men ought to be employed with the fleet to destroy the ports and wharves of the rebels.
Now that the French were firmly in the fight, King George was determined to direct a two-front war after all. But Lord North, still contemplating the prospect of peace, had other ideas.
_August 12_
Just three days after the French openly declared support for the American cause, Parliament approved a peace commission to travel to America and negotiate with the American government to bring the war to a close. Headed by Frederick Howard, the fifth Earl of Carlisle, the group set out in April with King George's reluctant approval.
Their mission, simply put, was a failure. According to Robert McNamee of Oxford University, "the Commissioners clearly tried to stir anti-Congressional feelings in the colonists"—one commissioner was accused of bribery, and Carlisle himself was challenged to a duel by none other than the Marquis de Lafayette after directing some undiplomatic comments toward the French. General George Washington, encamped with the Continental Army, observed in a letter that "the Enemy are beginning to play a game, more dangerous than their efforts by arms . . . which threatens a fatal blow to American independence, and to her liberties of course: They are endeavouring to ensnare the people by specious allurements of peace."
The Continental Congress would accept no offer of peace without Britain's recognition of their independence, which was, of course, a nonstarter for the royal commissioners. In their official rejection letter, the Congress pointed out that the Carlisle Commission's terms "suppose the people of these states to be subjects of the crown of Great Britain, and are founded on an idea of dependence, which is utterly inadmissible."
This rejection was issued July 17, and the news had reached England by August 12, when King George, perhaps feeling vindicated by the failure of a peace settlement, bluntly declared to Lord North: "The present accounts from America seem to put a final stop to all negotiation. Farther concession is a joke."
"We must content ourselves with distressing the rebels," the King wrote to his prime minister from Windsor Castle, "and not think of any other conduct till the end of the French [war], which, if successful, will oblige the rebels to submit to more reasonable [terms] than can at this hour be obtained."
War was still the answer. War and war alone would bring the American colonists back into the empire's fold.
At least, that's what King George hoped.
ST. JAMES'S PALACE, LONDON
June 1, 1785
The door shut, leaving only three men in the room. Standing just inside the door, having just entered, was John Adams, the first-ever U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James. Standing politely behind Adams, having just shown him in, was Francis Godolphin Osborne, Marquess of Carmarthen, Great Britain's secretary of state for foreign affairs. In front of them stood His Majesty King George III.
The King and the ambassador looked at each other for a moment. Ten years before, John Adams had been officially a subject of the man who stood before him. Then Adams had joined a rebellion in defiance of his sovereign. That rebellion had turned into a war to secure independence for a new nation, a nation it was now Adams's charge to represent. The war between Great Britain and her American colonies—now the United States of America—had ended two years before, and Adams's visit was to play a critical part in mending the transatlantic relationship.
Adams could have no way of knowing how deeply this meeting affected the man before him. Even in 1780, King George wrote, "I can never suppose this country so far lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant America independence." Two years later, peace negotiations were being conducted with the Americans.
In March 1782, King George III drafted, but ultimately never delivered, what would have been a truly remarkable speech. "A long Experience and a serious attention to the Strange Events that have successively arisen," he wrote, "has gradually prepared My mind to expect the time when I should be no longer of Utility to this Empire; that hour is now come; I am therefore resolved to resign My Crown." He was prepared to abdicate over the loss of the American colonies. The American Revolution not only toppled King George from dominance over eastern North America; it very nearly toppled him altogether.
And yet he chose to remain on the throne and gradually started to consider how an independent America would fit into his world. At some point in the 1780s, he sketched out some notes based on an essay by the agricultural scientist Arthur Young. "America is lost!" it began. "Must we fall beneath the blow? Or have we resources that may repair the mischief?" These notes discussed "mischief" largely of an economic nature, lamenting the wealth the American colonies no longer brought in before remarking:
> This comparative view of our former territories in America is not stated with any idea of lessening the consequence of a future friendship and connection with them; on the contrary it is to be hoped we shall reap more advantages from their trade as friends than ever we could derive from them as Colonies . . .
And now King George found himself in front of the man whose job it was to help form "friendship and connection" between Britain and the new nation. He was also a man who had helped tear the British Empire apart.
John Adams made the requisite three "reverences," or bows—the first upon entering the room, the second halfway toward the King, and the third upon stopping in front of His Majesty. The gentleman from Massachusetts then presented his credentials, uttering for the first time: "The United States of America, have appointed me their Minister Plenipotentiary to your Majesty."
Originally intending "to deliver [his] Credentials Silently and retire," Adams had been encouraged by fellow diplomats he met in London to make a speech before the King. He spoke of "restoring an entire esteem, Confidence and Affection, or in better Words, 'the old good Nature and the old good Humour'" between the people of Britain and the new United States.
The King listened politely to Adams before replying that "the Circumstances of this Audience are so extraordinary, the language you have now held is so extremely proper," as to make him favorably disposed to Adams's message of goodwill.
"I will be very frank with you," King George continued. "I was the last to consent to the Seperation. But the Seperation having been made, and having become inevitable, I have always said as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the Friendship of the United States as an independent Power."
After this formal exchange, the King disarmed Adams by remarking in a casual, even laughing manner, that he had heard Adams, who had just come from France, was "not the most attached of all Your Countrymen, to the manners of France."
Adams, truthfully but diplomatically, responded that "that Opinion sir, is not mistaken, I must avow to your Majesty, I have no Attachments but to my own Country."
To this the King responded—"quick as lightning," as Adams remembered—"An honest Man will never have any other."
# CONCLUSION
Since the days when early humans first organized themselves into groups for mutual protection and assistance, human societies have imposed rules intended to keep order. As societies evolved, those rules were written down and became systems of laws. A society's values are reflected in the system of laws it adopts to protect the rights of its people, and especially how much value that society places on each individual human soul. Sometimes these values are defined in the affirmative—when a society shows what it believes. Our American society does this in the Declaration of Independence. The Continental Congress, which approved this document, was issuing the manifesto of a new society free of British rule, one founded on a revolutionary combination of ideas.
The document leads off by explaining the truths the Congress's members held to be self-evident: that people have certain rights; that government's job is to protect these rights and remain answerable to the people in doing so; and that if government fails at this job the people can adjust it as they see fit. These simple statements in the Declaration's preamble contain thousands of years of human wisdom, distilled and interpreted in the mind of an authentic American genius.
Sometimes, however, just as much can be learned about a society by the values they define in the negative—that is, when they explain what they are definitively against. The Declaration does this, too, in the litany of grievances against King George III. This is why that section of the Declaration deserves consideration on its own, despite not being as rhetorically memorable as the passages that open and close the document. This is one of the imbalances that I have tried to correct in this book.
Most—but I fear increasingly few—Americans can recite the part of the Declaration that shows what America stands _for_ , but fewer are familiar with the Founders' explanation, in the same document, of what America stands _against._ American society remains committed to the principles of equality and liberty outlined in the Declaration's first lines. But the grievances listed later should remind us of what we fought against, and what we must not allow ourselves to become.
As we near the first-quarter mark of the twenty-first century, the steady growth of the administrative state under presidents of both political parties has made the central government based in Washington an all-too-common intruder into the lives of most Americans. In many ways, these lessons of the eighteenth century have never been more relevant.
We must remember that the Declaration of Independence is not just a manifesto for natural human rights, but it is a manifesto against a strong central government that would infringe upon those rights. It is against "swarms of officers" that "harass" the people. It is against the unchecked growth of executive power. It is against an administrative state.
The tragedy of American legislative bodies (federal and state) in the twentieth and into the twenty-first century is one of slow and steady unilateral disarmament. Bit by bit, state legislatures have become more comfortable giving up more and more of their power to the federal government. Likewise, the Congress in Washington has turned over much of its power to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats housed within the executive branch. In many areas where Congress once reigned supreme, it has now been reduced to a token "oversight" role at best.
The steady usurpation of legislative authority by the executive branch, and of state authority by federal authority, is a creeping phenomenon that is in some ways nearly as menacing to American liberty as a royal colonial governor who woke up on the wrong side of his feather bed. And the greatest indignity is that this is a problem largely of our own making. Over the last eight decades, the people's elected representatives have made countless choices that have steadily diminished their own power, and with it that of the people they represent. In many respects, they have done so for a simple, understandable, but indefensible reason: Delegating to others the difficult and contentious task of making law has a tendency to make reelection easier.
What is needed is an innovative, perhaps even a radical reimagining of the relationship between Congress and the executive branch, and between state governments and the federal government. This would be a system in which Congress actually exercises the power and authority it is supposed to, rather than delegating that power to a vast web of government agencies. In such a system, any powers not delegated to the federal government to the Constitution would actually be reserved for the state governments or the people, as the Tenth Amendment promises.
Although it might seem radical to us to put more power back in the hands of legislatures, that's only because we've had blinders on for too long. The Founders' original vision, forged in part by watching their elected legislatures in the colonies get trampled on and dissolved at will by the King's appointed governors, was one that vested as much power as possible in the place where it was closest to the people—the chamber of their elected representatives. And in a republic like ours, isn't that where most of the power should belong?
No other conclusion can be drawn from the colonists' response to the heavy-handed actions of King George III's government. The seeds of revolution were planted when that government, whose ruler combined a devoted British patriotism with a German absolutist idea of monarchy, decided to squeeze its American colonies tighter and tighter.
Those seeds took root when His Majesty's royal governors shut down the colonial legislatures where the people had their only say in government. They grew whenever a citizen was dragged before one of His Majesty's courts without benefit of a jury of his peers—a right any British subject should have enjoyed—or when the courts were shut down altogether due to conflicts with the King's law. They flourished despite the pressure of unfair trade restrictions, attempts to control the free market for products like tea. And finally they bore the fruit of revolution.
Of course, it took the work of several skilled hands to bring that fruit to bear. Thomas Paine's rhetoric lit the fire that would fuel the engines of independence. Edmund Randolph defied his loyalist father and fought with George Washington, then joined his fellow Virginians to lead the charge for breaking all ties with Britain. John Adams used his legal skill to remind the royal courts what justice really meant, and later added his expertise to the drafting of the Declaration. Benjamin Franklin, despite being stricken with gout, helped with the editing—and used his trademark wit to console the main author as the full Congress argued over the draft. It was Thomas Jefferson, of course, whom Franklin consoled—the man who staved off his headaches long enough to focus on the important task at hand, and shake loose from the shelves of his meticulously organized mental library the ancient and modern ideas he would use to explain the Americans' unprecedented act to an astounded world.
These men were not perfect, and neither was the system they created. They were keenly aware that as they signed their names to a statement that "all men are created equal," this was far from the reality for many of their fellow men and women. And for many Americans, it took far too long for this reality to come to pass. Millions of African Americans lived, worked, and died never knowing freedom simply because of the color of their skin, and their descendants in large swaths of the country were forced into second-class citizenry until the latter half of the twentieth century. Millions of Americans were not able to exercise that most precious of the rights of citizenship—the vote—until that same century due to their race or gender. There were the Mormons who were forced out of their communities by government forces because of their religion, and the Japanese Americans who spent years behind barbed wire on American soil because they happened to look like the enemy (even as their sons fought under the Stars and Stripes).
For many in marginalized communities in America to this day, the fight for real equality goes on. But what makes that fight so righteous is that we still look to the words of the Declaration for inspiration. When Jefferson and his colleagues signed their names to that document, they were making a bet on an idea. It's a bet that every succeeding generation of Americans has done its best to make good on.
Sometimes making good on it means expending blood and treasure. In the midst of the greatest struggle we have yet faced to preserve our founding ideals, one of America's greatest leaders turned to the Declaration of Independence for strength. Abraham Lincoln, despite his deep knowledge of and respect for the law rooted in the Constitution, viewed the Declaration as a perfect expression of our founding principles. He felt there was no firmer bedrock on which our nation could stand than the simple truth that "all men are created equal." Indeed, Lincoln observed that he "never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."
In 1854, during his famous series of debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln called that concept "the leading principle, the sheet anchor of American republicanism." And he used it to attack the institution of slavery, arguing that if slaves were indeed human, they too had the right to govern themselves according to the Declaration. "If the negro is a man," said Lincoln, "why then my ancient faith teaches me that 'all men are created equal'; and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another." That, according to Lincoln, was "despotism"—the very charge Jefferson leveled at King George.
Four years later, he told an audience in Chicago that what binds us all together as Americans, whether our families had been here since the founding or came in the latest wave of immigration, was that we could all rally behind the "father of all moral principle"—that doctrine of equality expressed in the Declaration. "That is the electric cord in that Declaration," he said, "that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world." It is recorded that applause erupted after this line—and it is easy to see why.
In February 1861, as he prepared to take over the presidency of a country inching toward war over the question of slavery, Lincoln spent George Washington's birthday in Philadelphia. In a short impromptu speech on the steps of Independence Hall, Lincoln considered the question of what had kept the country united in the decades since its founding. He concluded that the great unifying force was "that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time."
And in November 1863, as the war to make all Americans free raged around him, Lincoln addressed those gathered to dedicate a cemetery at the site of the recent Battle of Gettysburg. "Four score and seven years ago," he told those assembled, "our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." There was his "ancient faith" again. But now he cast the current struggle in no uncertain terms as an effort to reclaim our founding principles. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war," he said, "testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure." It was a test that, by God's grace, we passed.
Just as our nation has not always expressed perfectly that ideal of liberty among our fellow men, Lincoln's additional hope that this liberty be expanded across the entire world has sadly remained unfulfilled. But Lincoln understood then what we must understand now—that the Declaration of Independence must be a guiding light, always moving ahead of us, urging us onward, urging us to ever more perfectly follow the principles it sets out.
A century after Lincoln spoke those immortal words at Gettysburg, someone else stood in front of a colossal marble statue of Lincoln and made a proclamation that was no less immortal. "Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assured the throngs stretched out before him, "I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream." And then he told us what the American dream meant to him. "I have a dream," he said, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" The crowd cheered. Dr. King recognized our nation's creed in Jefferson's words, and he was urging us to better live up to it.
This is our task as Americans today, and it will be the task for every future generation. Armed with a greater understanding of the Declaration's principles and how it came to be, we will surely be able to fulfill it.
# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Once again, it has been an enjoyable process to work with my outstanding editor, Bria Sandford, along with Helen Healey and everyone else at Sentinel. My longtime agents, Keith Urbahn and Matt Latimer, provided inspiration and encouragement—not to mention the considerable talents of their entire team at Javelin, especially Dylan Colligan and Vanessa Santos. I am grateful, as always, to my family for putting up with yet another time-consuming project. Finally, to everyone who has taken a few minutes here and there out of their busy day to read this book, I truly appreciate your time.
# NOTES
PREFACE
. "From George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, 18 August 1790," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135>. Original source: _The Papers of George Washington_ , Presidential Series, vol. 6, _1 July 1790–30 November 1790_ , ed. Mark A. Mastromarino (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press), 1996, 284–86.
INTRODUCTION
. Valerie Strauss, "What Americans Don't Know about Their History," _The Washington Post,_ July 3, 2010.
. Strauss, "What Americans Don't Know about Their History."
. Amy B. Wang, "Some Trump Supporters Thought NPR Tweeted Propaganda. It Was the Declaration of Independence," _The Washington Post_ , July 5, 2017, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/05/some-trump-supporters-thought-npr-tweeted-propaganda-it-was-the-declaration-of-independence>.
. Frank Newport, "Most in U.S. Still Proud to Be an American," Gallup, July 4, 2013, <http://news.gallup.com/poll/163361/proud-american.aspx>.
CHAPTER ONE
. "From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 30 August 1823," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-3728>.
. "From Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, December 4, 1818," Online Library of Liberty, citing Jefferson, _The Works of Thomas Jefferson,_ Federal Edition, vol. 12, footnote 1 (New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904–5), <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/808>.
. "From Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, December 4, 1818."
. Thomas Jefferson, "An Anecdote of Dr. Franklin," History.org, Colonial Williamsburg, <http://www.history.org/almanack/resources/jeffersonanecdote.cfm>.
. "Hessians," MountVernon.org, Washington Library, MountVernon.org, Washington Library, Center for Digital History, <https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/hessians>.
. "From John Adams to Timothy Pickering, 6 August 1822," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7674>.
. Julian Boyd, _The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text_ (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress/Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Inc., 1999), 35.
. _Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789_ , vol. 5, eds. Worthington Chauncey Ford, Gaillard Hunt, John Clement Fitzpatrick, Roscoe R. Hill, Kenneth E. Harris, Steven D. Tilley (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1906), 516.
. Jon Meacham, _Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power_ (New York: Random House, 2012), 106.
. _The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography,_ vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1877).
. "July Highlight: George Rejected and Liberty Protected," Harvard University Declaration Resources Project, _Course of Human Events, Declaration Resources Project Blog,_ July 4, 2016, <https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/july-proclamations>.
. "To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 20 July 1811," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5659>.
. "To John Adams from Benjamin Rush, 20 July 1811."
CHAPTER TWO
. "Great Britain: Parliament—The Declaratory Act; March 18, 1766," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/declaratory_act_1766.asp>.
. "Massachusetts Circular Letter to the Colonial Legislatures; February 11, 1768," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/mass_circ_let_1768.asp>.
. "Massachusetts Circular Letter to the Colonial Legislatures; February 11, 1768."
. Dumas Malone, _Jefferson and His Time, vol. 1: Jefferson the Virginian_ (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1948), 136.
. Quoted in George Bancroft, _History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent,_ vol. 3 (New York: Appleton, 1896), 248.
. Quoted in George Bancroft, _History of the United States_ , 239.
. Mark Puls, _Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution_ (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006), 68.
. _Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts,_ 1715–1779, vol. 44 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1919–1990), 148.
. "The House of Representatives' Circular Letter to the Speakers of the Colonial Assemblies," February 11, 1768, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, <https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/2932>.
. "Massachusetts Circular Letter to the Colonial Legislatures; February 11, 1768."
. "Massachusetts Circular Letter to the Colonial Legislatures; February 11, 1768."
. "Massachusetts Circular Letter to the Colonial Legislatures; February 11, 1768."
. "Massachusetts Circular Letter to the Colonial Legislatures; February 11, 1768."
. Puls, _Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution_ , 74.
. Quoted in George Bancroft, _History of the United States_ , 284.
. Quoted in George Bancroft, _History of the United States_ , 285.
. _Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts,_ 1715–1779, vol. 45, 88.
. "History of the Old State House," BostonHistory.org, <http://www.bostonhistory.org/history>.
. _Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts,_ 1715–1779, vol. 45, 89.
. _Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts,_ 1715–1779, vol. 45, 89.
. _Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts,_ 1715–1779, vol. 45, 94.
. Puls, _Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution_ , 83.
. Quoted in Puls, _Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution_ , 83.
. _Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts,_ 1715–1779, vol. 45, 92.
. "Jefferson's Height," Monticello.org, an article courtesy of the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, <https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/jeffersons-height>.
. Jon Meacham, _Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power_ (New York: Random House, 2012), 44.
. _Virginia Gazette_ , December 15, 1768, 2, History.org, Colonial Williamsburg, http://research.history.org/DigitalLibrary/va-gazettes/VGSinglePage.cfm?issueIDNo=68.R.46&page=2&res=LO.
. _Virginia Gazette,_ December 15, 1768, 2.
. _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia,_ _1766–1769,_ ed. John Pendleton Kennedy (Richmond, Va.: The Colonial Press, E. Waddey Co., 1906), 189.
. "Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt (1717–1770)," Encyclopedia Virginia, <https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Berkeley_Norborne_baron_de_Botetourt_1717-1770#start_entry>.
. _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia,_ _1766–1769,_ 189–90.
. _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia,_ _1766–1769,_ 214.
. _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia,_ _1766–1769,_ 214.
. _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia,_ _1766–1769,_ 214.
. _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia,_ _1766–1769,_ 214.
. "Jefferson's Autobiography," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jeffauto.asp>.
. _Jefferson the Virginian,_ vol. XXXX, 136.
. _Jefferson the Virginian,_ vol. XXXX, 136.
. "Jefferson's Autobiography."
. "[May 1769]," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-02-02-0004-0013>. Original source: _The Diaries of George Washington_ , vol. 2, _14 January 1766–31 December 1770_ , ed. Donald Jackson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976), 146–54.
. "Virginia Nonimportation Resolutions, 17 May 1769," _Founders Online_ , National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0019>. Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 1760–1776, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 27–31.
CHAPTER THREE
. _Legal Papers of John Adams,_ vol. 2, note 9, Massachusetts Historical Society, <http://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/ADMS-05-02-02-0006-0004-0001#LJA02d042n9>.
. Noel Rae, _The People's War: Original Voices of the American Revolution_ (Guilford, Conn.: Globe Pequot Press, 2012), 72.
. Neal Nusholtz, "How John Adams Won the Hancock Trial," _Journal of the American Revolution,_ August 30, 2016, AllThingsLiberty.com, <http://allthingsliberty.com/2016/08/john-adams-won-hancock-trial>.
. _A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams_ , David Waldstreicher, ed. (Malden, Mass., and Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 72.
. Anne Husted Burleigh, _John Adams_ (New York: Routledge, 2017), 85.
. "The Vice Admiralty Courts," The Declaration of Independence, USHistory.org, <http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/vac.html>.
. _Legal Papers of John Adams,_ vol. 2.
. "Madeira," MountVernon.org, Washington Library, Center for Digital History, <https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/madeira>.
. _A Companion to John Adams and John Quincy Adams_ , 72.
. "Adams' Copy of the Information and Draft of His Argument: Court of Vice Admiralty, Boston, October 1768–March 1769," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/05-02-02-0006-0004-0002>. Original source: _The Adams Papers_ , Legal Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, Cases 31–62, eds. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel (Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1965), 194–210.
. West Virginia Association for Justice, "Trial by Jury: 'Inherent and invaluable,'" <http://www.wvaj.org/index.cfm?pg=HistoryTrialbyJury>.
. _Legal Papers of John Adams,_ vol. 2.
. Burleigh, _John Adams,_ 87.
. "Adams' Copy of the Information and Draft of His Argument: Court of Vice Admiralty, Boston, October 1768–March 1769."
. "Adams' Copy of the Information and Draft of His Argument: Court of Vice Admiralty, Boston, October 1768–March 1769."
. "Adams' Copy of the Information and Draft of His Argument: Court of Vice Admiralty, Boston, October 1768–March 1769."
. "The Federalist Papers: No. 48," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed48.asp>.
CHAPTER FOUR
. "Minutes of the Lower House of the North Carolina General Assembly," October 23, 1769–November 6, 1769, vol. 8, 105–41, Documenting the American South, Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, <http://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr08-0068>.
. "Resolves of the House of Burgesses, Passed the 16th of May, 1769," Encyclopedia Virginia, <https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/media_player?mets_filename=evr3808mets.xml>.
. William S. Powell, "Regulator Movement," NCPedia, 2006, <https://www.ncpedia.org/history/colonial/regulator-movement>.
. Edward, Dumbauld, _The Declaration of Independence and What It Means Today_ (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950), 108.
. Dumbauld, _The Declaration of Independence and What It Means Today,_ 108.
. Dumbauld, _The Declaration of Independence and What It Means Today,_ 109.
. Dumbauld, _The Declaration of Independence and What It Means Today,_ 109.
. Dumbauld, _The Declaration of Independence and What It Means Today,_ 109.
. Dumbauld, _The Declaration of Independence and What It Means Today,_ 109.
. Donald R., Lennon, "Attachment Clause," NCPedia, 2006, <https://www.ncpedia.org/attachment-clause>.
. Lennon, "Attachment Clause."
. Herbert Friedenwald, _The Declaration of Independence_ (New York: Macmillan, 1904), 231.
. Dumbauld, _The Declaration of Independence and What It Means Today,_ 111.
. Dumbauld, _The Declaration of Independence and What It Means Today,_ 111–12.
. Vernon O. Stumpf, "Martin, Josiah," NCPedia, 1991, <https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/martin-josiah>.
. Stumpf, "Martin, Josiah."
. Stumpf, "Martin, Josiah."
. Jonathan Martin, "Royal Governor Josiah Martin (1737–1786)," North Carolina History Project, NorthCarolinaHistory.org, <http://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/royal-governor-josiah-martin-1737-1786>.
. Vernon O. Stumpf, "Josiah Martin and His Search for Success: The Road to North Carolina," North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Colonial Records Project, vol. 53 (1976), 55–79, http://www.ncpublications.com/colonial/nchr/Subjects/stumpf.htm [inactive].
. Stumpf, "Martin, Josiah."
. Daniel W. Barefoot, "Tryon Palace," NCPedia, 2006, <https://www.ncpedia.org/tryon-palace>.
. "Tryon Palace," North Carolina History Project, NorthCarolinaHistory.org, <http://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/tryon-palace>.
. Barefoot, "Tryon Palace."
. Quoted in "Tryon Palace," North Carolina History Project.
. Quoted in Barefoot, "Tryon Palace."
. Barefoot, "Tryon Palace."
. "Letter from Josiah Martin to William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth," February 26, 1773, Documenting the American South, Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, <http://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr09-0166>.
. "Letter from Josiah Martin to William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth," February 26, 1773.
. "Letter from Josiah Martin to William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth," February 26, 1773.
. "Minutes of the Upper House of the North Carolina General Assembly," January 25, 1773–March 6, 1773, vol. 9, 376–447, Documenting the American South, Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, <http://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr09-0169>.
. "Minutes of the Upper House of the North Carolina General Assembly," January 25, 1773–March 6, 1773.
. "Minutes of the Upper House of the North Carolina General Assembly," January 25, 1773–March 6, 1773.
. "Minutes of the Upper House of the North Carolina General Assembly," January 25, 1773–March 6, 1773.
. "Letter from Josiah Martin to William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth," February 26, 1773.
. "Letter from Josiah Martin to William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth," February 26, 1773.
. "Letter from Josiah Martin to William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth," February 26, 1773.
. Friedenwald, _The Declaration of Independence,_ 232.
. Milton Ready, _The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina_ (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), 105.
. Ready, _The Tar Heel State,_ 105.
. "Letter from Josiah Martin to William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth," March 12, 1773, Documenting the American South, Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, <http://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr09-0177>.
. "Letter from Josiah Martin to William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth," March 12, 1773.
. "Letter from Josiah Martin to William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth," March 12, 1773.
. Friedenwald, _The Declaration of Independence_ , 232.
. Ready, _The Tar Heel State,_ 105.
. "Journal of Josiah Quincy," March 26, 1773–April 5, 1773, vol. 9, 610–13, Documenting the American South, Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, <http://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.php/document/csr09-0180>.
. Friedenwald, _The Declaration of Independence_ , 230.
. Sydney George Fisher, "The Twenty-Eight Charges Against the King in the Declaration of Independence," _The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography_ 31, no. 3 (1907), 257–303, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20085387.pdf?refreqid=excelsior:345c4cebe95fc2281cb9447d71222b4c>.
. "1776: Hutchinson, Strictures upon the Declaration of Independence," Online Library of Liberty, <http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1776-hutchinson-strictures-upon-the-declaration-of-independence>.
. "Jefferson's 'Original Rough Draught' of the Declaration of Independence," Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents, Library of Congress, <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html>. Original source: _The Papers of Thomas Jefferson_ , vol. 1, _1760–1776_ , ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 243–47.
. Julian Boyd, _The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text_ (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress/Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Inc., 1999), 33, n. 54.
. _Worcester v. Georgia,_ Oyez, <https://www.oyez.org/cases/1789-1850/31us515>.
. _Worcester v. Georgia._
. Tim Alan Garrison, _Worcester v. Georgia_ (1832), New Georgia Encyclopedia, Government and Politics, U.S. Supreme Court Cases, April 27, 2004, <http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/worcester-v-georgia-1832>.
. "Executive Orders, Harry S. Truman, 1945–1953," Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum, <https://www.trumanlibrary.org/executiveorders/index.php?pid=180>.
. Joshua Waimberg, "Youngstown Steel: The Supreme Court Stands Up to the President," _Constitution Daily Blog,_ National Constitution Center, November 16, 2015, <https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/youngstown-steel-the-supreme-court-stands-up-to-the-president>.
. _Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer,_ 343 U.S. 579 (1952), Justica, U.S. Supreme Court, <https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/343/579/case.html>.
. Waimberg, "Youngstown Steel: The Supreme Court Stands Up to the President."
CHAPTER FIVE
. "Philadelphia, September 29. Extract of a letter from London, August 4," Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/revolution/image-viewer.php?item_id=401&img_step=1&tpc=&pid=2&mode=transcript&tpc=&pid=2#page1. Original source: _The Massachusetts Gazette,_ 3; and _The Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser_ , no. 842, October 4–11, 1773.
. "The following was dispersed in Hand Bills among the worthy Citizens of Philadelphia," Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/revolution/image-viewer.php?item_id=417&img_step=1&tpc=&mode=transcript&tpc=#page1. Original source, _The Boston-Gazette,_ number 968, October 25, 1773, 2.
. "Philadelphia, September 29. Extract of a letter from London, August 4."
. "The Boston Tea Party: Introduction," Massachusetts Historical Society, <https://www.masshist.org/revolution/teaparty.php>.
. "Disguise of Sons of Liberty," Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, www.bostonteapartyship.com/boston=tea=party=disguise [inactive].
. "Announcement of the Boston Tea Party, December 20, 1773," Presentations and Activities, Library of Congress, <http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/amrev/rebelln/tea.html>. Original source, _The Boston Gazette,_ December 20, 1773.
. Peter D. G. Thomas, _Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773–1776_ (London: Clarendon Press, 1991), 20.
. The editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Boston Tea Party," Britannica Academic, www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Tea-Party.
. Thomas Whately, _Regulations Lately Made Concerning the Colonies_ (London: J. Wilkie, 1765).
. Stephen Hopkins, _The Rights of Colonies Examined,_ Evans Early American Imprint Collection, <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;cc=evans;view=text;idno=N07846.0001.001;rgn=div1;node=N07846.0001.001%3A2>, 4.
. Hopkins, _The Rights of Colonies Examined,_ 22.
. Thomas Williams Bicknell, _The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,_ vol. 3 (New York: The American Historical Society, 1920), 1083.
. "The following was dispersed in Hand Bills among the worthy Citizens of Philadelphia."
. "The following was dispersed in Hand Bills among the worthy Citizens of Philadelphia."
. Alvin Rabushka, _Taxation in Colonial America_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 867.
. "The Secret Plan," December 16, 1773, Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, <http://www.bostonteapartyship.com/the-secret-plan>.
. Thomas Paine, _Rights of Man,_ <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3742/3742-h/3742-h.htm>.
. Jason Russell, "Look at How Many Pages Are in the Federal Tax Code," _Washington Examiner,_ April 15, 2016.
CHAPTER SIX
. Eugene S. Ferguson, _Truxtun of the Constellation: The Life of Commodore Thomas Truxtun, U.S. Navy, 1755–1822_ (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1956), 19.
. Ferguson, _Truxtun of the Constellation,_ 18–19.
. Ferguson, _Truxtun of the Constellation,_ 19.
. Ferguson, _Truxtun of the Constellation,_ 20.
. "A Collection of All the Statutes Now in Force" (London: C. Eyre and W. Strahan, 1780).
. "Major Mark Park," New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, <https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/major-mark-park/history>.
. _Naval Biography: Consisting of Memoirs of the Most Distinguished Officers of the American Navy_ (Cincinnati: Morgan, Williams & Co., 1815), 27.
. _Naval Biography,_ 27.
. Ferguson, _Truxtun of the Constellation,_ 18.
. Nicholas Tracy, _Manila Ransomed: The British Assault on Manila in the Seven Years War_ (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), 76.
. Ferguson, _Truxtun of the Constellation,_ 20.
. Ferguson, _Truxtun of the Constellation,_ 21.
. _Pennsylvania Gazette_ , February 21, 1776, 3.
. "Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress] Oct. 3 [i.e. 4]," note 1, _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, [founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-02-02-0005-0004-0001. Original source: _The Adams Papers, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams,_ vol. 2, _1771–1781_ , ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), 188–92.
. "IV. The Declaration as Adopted by Congress [6 July 1775]," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0113-0005>. Original source: _The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,_ vol. 1, _1760–1776,_ ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 213–19.
. "[Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress] Oct. 3 [i.e. 4]," note 1.
. "[Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress] Oct. 3 [i.e. 4]," note 1.
. "[Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress] Oct. 3 [i.e. 4]," note 1.
. "[October 1775]," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-02-02-0005-0004>. Original source: _The Adams Papers_ , Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 2, 188–220.
. Jim Schmidt, "John J. Zubly (1724–1781)," New Georgia Encyclopedia, History and Archaeology, Colonial Era, 1733–1775, September 12, 2002, <http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/john-j-zubly-1724-1781>.
. "To Benjamin Franklin from [David Hartley], 23 November 1775," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0159>. Original source: _The Papers of Benjamin Franklin,_ vol. 22, _March 23, 1775, through October 27, 1776_ , ed. William B. Willcox (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), 267–68.
. "James Wilson (1742–1748)," Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, 2018. archives.dickinson.edu/people/james-wilson-1742-1798.
. "[Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress] [February 1776]," note 1, _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-02-02-0006-0002>. Original source: The Adams Papers, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 2, 229–34.
. "[Notes of Debates in the Continental Congress] [February 1776]," note 1.
. "From John Adams to Horatio Gates," 23 March, 1776, _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0023>. Original source: _The Adams Papers_ , Papers of John Adams, vol. 4, _February–August 1776_ , ed. Robert J. Taylor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 58–60.
. "From John Adams to Horatio Gates," 23 March, 1776.
. "Sender: Richard Henry Lee; Recipient: Landon Carter, Philadelphia, 1st April 1776," Lee Family Digital Archive, <https://leefamilyarchive.org/papers/letters/transcripts-gw%20delegates/DIV0275.html>.
. _Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789_ , vol. 4, eds. Worthington Chauncey Ford, Gaillard Hunt, John Clement Fitzpatrick, Roscoe R. Hill, Kenneth E. Harris, Steven D. Tilley (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1906), 257–58.
. "The Slave Trade and the Revolution," The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, <http://abolition.nypl.org/essays/us_constitution/2>.
. Edmund C. Burnett, _Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, August 29, 1774 to July 4, 1776,_ vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1921), 415.
. Burnett, _Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, August 29, 1774, to July 4, 1776,_ 417.
CHAPTER SEVEN
. Jill Lepore, "The Sharpened Quill," _The New Yorker,_ October 16, 2016.
. Richard M. Ketchum, _The Winter Soldiers: The Battles for Trenton and Princeton_ (New York: Owl Books, 1999), 4.
. Craig Nelson, _Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations_ (New York: Viking Penguin, 2006), 53.
. Nelson, _Thomas Paine,_ 77.
. Nelson, _Thomas Paine,_ 77.
. Nelson, _Thomas Paine,_ 76.
. Thomas Paine, _The Crisis_ , November 21, 1778, <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3741/3741-h/3741-h.htm>.
. Nelson, _Thomas Paine,_ 89.
. Quoted in Nelson, _Thomas Paine,_ 69.
. Pauline Maier, _American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence_ (New York: Knopf, 1997), 31.
. Lepore, "The Sharpened Quill."
. "To Thomas Jefferson from Thomas Nelson, Jr., 4 February 1776," _Founders Online_ , National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0148>. Original source: _The Papers of Thomas Jefferson_ , vol. 1, _1760–1776_ , ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 285–86.
. This is based on a calculation made by Richard Gimbel in 1956. Richard Gimbel, _A Bibliographical Checklist of Common Sense, with an Account of Its Publication_ (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1956); Thomas Paine, "The Crisis No. VII," _Pennsylvania Packet_.
. Lepore, "The Sharpened Quill."
. Quoted in Nelson, _Thomas Paine,_ 93.
. "From Thomas Jefferson to Francis Eppes, 19 January 1821," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1778>.
. Lepore, "The Sharpened Quill."
. Lepore, "The Sharpened Quill."
. Nelson, _Thomas Paine_ , 97.
CHAPTER EIGHT
. Quoted in Hugh Blair Grigsby, _The Virginia Convention of 1776_ (Richmond, Va.: J. W. Randolph, 1855), 7.
. "The General Assembly Adjourns, 1776," Encyclopedia Virginia, <http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_General_Assembly_Adjourns_1776>.
. John Burk, _The History of Virginia: From Its First Settlement to the Present Day,_ vol. 4 (Petersburg, Va.: M. W. Dunnavant, 1816), 138, <http://amarch.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A101264>.
. Quoted in "Final Meeting of the House of Burgesses ("Finis" Document), May 6, 1776," Education@Library of Virginia, edu.lva.virginia.gov/online_classroom/shaping_the_constitution/doc/finis.
. Burk, _The History of Virginia._
. "The General Assembly Adjourns, 1776."
. Grigsby, _The Virginia Convention of 1776,_ 36.
. Bruce Baskerville, "So Brave Etruria Grew," in _Crowns and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas Empires,_ eds. Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016).
. "Edmund Randolph to Thomas Jefferson, 8 May 1813," _Founders Online_ , National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0105>. Original source: _The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,_ Retirement Series, vol. 6, _11 March to 27 November 1813,_ ed. J. Jefferson Looney (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 108–9.
. John E. Selby, _The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783_ (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007), 95.
. Quoted in Grigsby, _The Virginia Convention of 1776,_ 16.
. Quoted in Selby, _The Revolution in Virginia,_ 94.
. Quoted in John Hampden Hazelton, _The Declaration of Independence_ (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1906), 400.
. Selby, _The Revolution in Virginia,_ 95–96.
. Quoted in _The National Centennial Commemoration: Proceedings on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Introduction and Adoption of the "Resolutions Respecting Independency"_ (Philadelphia: n.p., 1876), 25.
. "Preamble and Resolution of the Virginia Convention, May 15, 1776," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/const02.asp>.
. Quoted in Edmund Jennings Lee, _Lee of Virginia, 1642–1892_ (Philadelphia: Genealogical Publishing, 1895), 169.
. "Fryday, May 10. 1776," in "John Adams autobiography, part 1," through 1776, sheet 35 of 53, 11 April–16 May 1776, Massachusetts Historical Society, <https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=A1_35>.
. "Fryday, May 10. 1776."
. "From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Nelson, 16 May 1776," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0153>. Original source: _The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,_ vol. 1, _1760–1776_ , ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950).
. Selby, _The Revolution in Virginia,_ 97.
. "From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Nelson, 16 May 1776."
. Patrick Glennon, "The Philly Home Where the Declaration of Independence Was Born," _The Philadelphia Inquirer,_ September 15, 2007, <http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/the-philly-home-where-jefferson-took-pen-in-hand-20170915.html>.
. Jon Meacham, _Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power_ (New York: Random House, 2012), 103.
. "Declaration of Independence Desk," Monticello.org, an article courtesy of the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, <https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/declaration-independence-desk>.
. Patrick Glennon, "The Philly Home Where the Declaration of Independence Was Born."
. "Lee's Resolutions," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/lee.asp>.
. "Jefferson's Autobiography," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jeffauto.asp>.
. "From John Adams to Timothy Pickering, 6 August 1822," _Founders Online_ , National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7674>.
. "From John Adams to Timothy Pickering, 6 August 1822."
. "From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 30 August 1823," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-3728>.
. "From Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin, [21 June 1776]," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0168>. Original source: _The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,_ vol. 1, _1760–1776,_ 404–6.
. "From John Adams to Timothy Pickering, 6 August 1822."
. "1774 to 1783," Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606 to 1827, Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/collections/thomas-jefferson-papers/articles-and-essays/the-thomas-jefferson-papers-timeline-1743-to-1827/1774-to-1783>.
. "From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 30 August 1823."
. "From John Adams to Timothy Pickering, 6 August 1822."
. Julian Boyd, _The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text_ (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress/Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Inc., 1999), 28.
. Walter Isaacson, "Declaring Independence: How They Chose These Words," _Time,_ July 7, 2003, <http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1005150-1,00.html>.
. "From Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin, [21 June 1776]."
. "To George Washington from Benjamin Franklin, 21 June 1776," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-05-02-0036>. Original source: _The Papers of George Washington,_ Revolutionary War Series, vol. 5, 16 June 1776–12 August 1776, ed. Philander D. Chase (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 64–65.
. "From John Adams to Timothy Pickering, 6 August 1822."
. "From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 30 August 1823."
. Boyd, _The Declaration of Independence,_ 35.
. Boyd, _The Declaration of Independence,_ 32.
. Boyd, _The Declaration of Independence,_ 27.
. Boyd, _The Declaration of Independence,_ 27.
CHAPTER NINE
. "Jefferson's 'original Rough draught' of the Declaration of Independence," Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents, Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html>. Original source: _The Papers of Thomas Jefferson_ , vol. 1, _1760–1776_ , ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 243–47.
. "Jefferson's Autobiography," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jeffauto.asp>.
. Julian Boyd, _The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text_ (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress/Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Inc., 1999), 35.
. "From John Adams to Timothy Pickering, 6 August 1822," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7674>.
. "Jefferson's Autobiography."
. William M. S. Rasmussen, "Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence—The First Draft & Its Paragraph about Slavery," Virginia Repertory Theater. _Behind the Scenes Blog,_ October 3, 2016, <http://www.va-rep.org/blog/2016/10/03/thomas-jeffersons-declaration-of-independence-the-first-draft-its-paragraph-about-slavery>.
. "The Ordinance of 1784," History, Art, and Archives, United States House of Representatives, <http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1700s/Ordinance-of-1784>.
. "From Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 22 April 1820," _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1234>.
. Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the 4th of July," speech delivered on July 4, 1852, Rochester, New York, American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, <http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/frederickdouglassslaveto4thofjuly.htm>.
. Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the 4th of July."
CHAPTER TEN
. Jared Keller, "How the Declaration of Independence Went Viral," _Pacific Standard,_ June 28, 2016, <https://psmag.com/news/how-the-declaration-of-independence-went-viral>.
. "Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies," March 22, 1775, The Founders' Constitution, chapter 1, <http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch1s2.html>.
. Edmund Burke, remarks in Parliament, December 14, 1778, quoted in Alexander Charles Ewald, _Leaders in the Senate: A Biographical History of the Rise and Development of the British Constitution_ (London: William Mackenzie, 1884), 195.
. Richard Cavendish, "The Coronation of George III," _History Today_ 61, no. 9 (September 2011), <https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/coronation-george-iii>.
. "September Highlight: Extravagant and Inadmissible Claim of Independency," King George III, speech to Parliament, October 31, 1776, Harvard University Declaration Resources Project, _Course of Human Events, Declaration Resources Project Blog,_ <https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/september-kings-speech>.
. "Jefferson's Autobiography," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jeffauto.asp>.
. "Journals of the Continental Congress—Petition to the King; July 8, 1775," Yale Law School, The Avalon Project, <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_07-08-75.asp>.
. "Jefferson's Autobiography."
. Edmund Burke to Arthur Lee, August 22, 1775, in Richard Henry Lee, _Life of Arthur Lee_ (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829), 43.
. Lee, _Life of Arthur Lee,_ 45.
. Lee, _Life of Arthur Lee,_ 45.
. "Proclamation of Rebellion: August 23, 1775," Britannia Historical Documents, http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/procreb.html [inactive].
. "King George III's Address to Parliament, October 27, 1775," Presentations and Activities, Library of Congress, <http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/amrev/shots/address.html>.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
. King George III to Lord North, January 31, 1778, _The Correspondence of King George the Third with Lord North from 1768 to 1783,_ ed. W. Bodham Dunne (London: John Murray, 1867), 125.
. Samuel B. Griffith, _The War for American Independence_ (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2002), 469.
. Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, _The Men Who Lost America_ (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2014), 30.
. King George III to Lord North, February 9, 1778, _The Correspondence of King George the Third,_ 133.
. King George III to Lord North, February 9, 1778, _The Correspondence of King George the Third,_ 133.
. King George III to Lord North, February 9, 1778, _The Correspondence of King George the Third,_ 133.
. King George III to Lord North, March 13, 1778, _The Correspondence of King George the Third,_ 148.
. Dr. Robert V. McNamee, "Who Were the Carlisle Commissioners? Part One," _OUPblog,_ August 19, 2013, <https://blog.oup.com/2013/08/carlisle-commission-us-congress-part-1>.
. "From George Washington to John Banister, 21 April 1778," _Founders Online_ , National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, <https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-14-02-0525>. Original source: _The Papers of George Washington_ , Revolutionary War Series, vol. 14, _1 March 1778–30 April 1778,_ ed. David R. Hoth (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004), 573–79.
. "Response to British Peace Proposals, Continental Congress, June 13, 1778," TeachingAmericanHistory.org, <http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/response-to-british-peace-proposals>.
. King George III to Lord North, August 12, 1778, _The Correspondence of King George the Third,_ 207.
. King George III to Lord North, August 12, 1778, _The Correspondence of King George the Third,_ 207.
. King George III to Lord North, March 7, 1780, _The Correspondence of King George the Third,_ 310.
. Professor Arthur Burns, "The Abdication Speech of King George III," Royal Collection Trust, January 2017, <https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/georgian-papers-programme/the-abdication-speech-of-george-iii#/_ftnref100>.
. Dr. A. O'Donnell, "America Is Lost!," Royal Collection Trust, January 2017, <https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/georgian-papers-programme/america-is-lost>.
. George III, "Letter on the loss of America written in the 1780s precise year unknown," Royal.uk, <https://www.royal.uk/sites/default/files/media/georgeiii.pdf>.
. "From John Adams to John Jay, 2 June 1785," note 17, _Founders Online,_ National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-17-02-0078. Original source: _The Adams Papers,_ Papers of John Adams, vol. 17, _April–November 1785,_ ed. Gregg L. Lint, C. James Taylor, Sara Georgini, Hobson Woodward, Sara B. Sikes, Amanda A. Mathews, and Sara Martin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014), 134–45.
. "From John Adams to John Jay, 2 June 1785," note 17.
CONCLUSION
. "Address at Independence Hall," ed. Roy P. Balser, _The_ _Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,_ National Park Service, last updated April 10, 2015, <https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/independence-hall.htm>.
. "Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854," ed. Roy P. Balser, _The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,_ National Parks Service, last updated April 10, 2015, <https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/peoriaspeech.htm>.
. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2, Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865. <https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:526?rgn=div1;view=fulltext>.
. "Address at Independence Hall," ed. Roy P. Balser, _The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,_ http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/philadel.htm.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
# INDEX
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
Act of Independency,
Adams, John, ,
on Act of Independency,
on Committee of Five,
_Common Sense_ criticized by, –24
Declaration of Independence and, , , , , , , , , ,
Hancock smuggling trial and, –45, , –51,
independence endorsed by, , , –38
on Jefferson's abilities, ,
meeting with King George, , –82
royal advocate position declined by, ,
trade concerns recorded by, , , –2,
Adams, Samuel, , –29, , , , ,
administrative state, , , , , , ,
admiralty courts, , –47, , , , ,
_American Crisis, The_ (Paine),
American Prohibitory Act,
American Revolution. _See_ war for independence
American society, current state of, xi, xv
ammunition, trading of, –100
_Argo_ (ship), , ,
Attachment Clause, attachments dispute, –58, , , , –76
Auchmuty, Robert, ,
Augustine, St.,
Aylett, William,
Bancroft, George,
Battle of Alamance,
Bell, Robert,
Bernard, Francis, , –32
big government. _See_ centralized government; government expansion and overreach
Bill of Rights,
Boggs, Lilburn, xvi–xvii
Boston, Massachusetts
royal presence in, , –25
tea shipments to, –78,
as trade hub, –24
Boston Harbor, _Liberty_ seized from, –44
Boston Massacre,
Boston Tea Party, –81, , ,
Botetourt, Governor, , –35,
Boyd, Julian, , , –44, , ,
British class system,
British Empire, , , , , , , . _See also_ Great Britain
British Parliament. _See_ Parliament, British
bureaucrats, bureaucracy, xiv–xv, , , , ,
Burgoyne, John,
Burke, Edmund, , , , –70
Carter, Robert "King,"
centralized government. _See also_ government expansion and overreach
encroachment by, xiii, xiv, xv, , , , , –85
unjust taxation by, ,
Charles I, King, –61
_Charming Polly_ (ship), , , , , –95, ,
Chase, Samuel,
Cherokee nation, and removal from Georgia, –73
_Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council,_
Circular Letter, Massachusetts, –32, , , –38
Civil War, , ,
Clinton, Hillary, –4
coat of arms, royal, –18, –25
Coffee, John,
colonists, colonies
differences among, –14
in French and Indian War,
independence declared by, ,
legislatures of ( _see_ legislatures, colonial)
occupation of British troops and, , , , ,
rights of
deprivation of, xii, xiii, , , , –66
as English subjects, , –37, ,
salutary neglect and,
taxation of, –23, , , , , , , , , –84, , –15, ,
unity of, , –38
Committee of Five, , , , , , ,
_Common Sense_ (Paine), , , –18, –26, ,
Congress, U.S., , , , , , –86
conservatives, , ,
Constitution, U.S., xi, xii, , , , , ,
Continental Association,
Continental Congress, First,
Continental Congress, Second
atmosphere of, –12
Committee of Five appointed by, ,
_Common Sense_ and, –23, –26
Declaration of Independence and, , , –19, , , , ,
independence concerns of, , , –23, ,
North Carolina delegates to, –71,
Olive Branch Petition approved by, –68,
peace offer rejected by,
self-government resolution of, –38
trade debates of, –106
Cushing, Thomas, , , ,
Dartmouth, Lord, –60, –64, –67, , , ,
Deane, Silas, –100
Declaration of Independence
Americans' unfamiliarity with, xii, –9,
benefits of rediscovering, xv, xvii
_Common Sense_ 's influence on, –26,
vs. Constitution, xii, xvii,
debate over, –12
editing of, , –15, , –44, –46,
equality addressed in, xiii, , , , , ,
Frederick Douglass on, , –56
good governments defined in,
grievances detailed in, xii, xiv, –5, , , , , –72, , , –50, ,
guiding light role of,
Jefferson's authorship of, xii, xiv, xv, –5, , , , –72, , , , , –43, –47, –51, ,
Lincoln's view of, –89
modern-day relevance of, xiii, –86
official adoption of, ,
printing and dissemination of, –17,
reconciliation hopes ended by, ,
rights addressed in, xii–xiii, xvi–xvii, , , , , , –85
self-evident truths in, xiii, xvii, , , ,
signing of, –19, ,
_Declaration of Independence, The: The Evolution of the Text_ (Boyd),
"Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms" (Jefferson), ,
Declaratory Act,
deep state, , ,
Dickinson, John, , , –69
divine right of kings, , ,
Dobbs, Arthur, ,
Douglass, Frederick, , –56
Dumbauld, Edward,
Dunlop, John,
Dunmore, Lord, , , ,
East India Company, , ,
economic independence, , , ,
English Common Law, ,
equality, xiii, xv, , , , , , , , , , , ,
_Essay Concerning Human Understanding, An_ (Locke),
executions, –19,
executive branch, , , –75, , ,
fair trial, right to, , , ,
Ferguson, Eugene,
Fisher, Sydney George,
flag, America's first,
foreign mercenaries, ,
France,
support for American cause and, , , , ,
trade with, ,
wars with, , ,
Franklin, Benjamin, ,
"branding exercise" anecdote of, –14
on Committee of Five,
Declaration of Independence edited by, , , , ,
gout of, , ,
Paine influenced by, ,
thoughts on independence,
free market, ,
free trade, ,
French and Indian War,
Friedenwald, Herbert, ,
Gadsden, Christopher,
Garnier, William, ,
Gates, Horatio, ,
George I, King, ,
George II, King, , ,
George III, King, , , , , , , , , –60, , , , , , ,
abdication pondered by,
admiralty courts of, , , ,
allegiance to, –30,
attachment dispute and, , , ,
Burgesses' resolutions to, –37,
Circular Letter and, , ,
coat of arms of, –18, –25
committed to war, –76, , –79
declarations of independence from, , , , , , ( _see also_ Declaration of Independence)
speech to Parliament on, –65
economic independence from, ,
grievances against, xii, xiv, –5, , , –16, , , , –87
dissolution of colonial legislatures, xiv, , , , ,
judicial obstruction, , , –49, , , , , , , , ,
slave trade, –50, ,
taxation, , , , , , , –15,
trade restrictions, , , –92,
importance of British identity to, ,
on loss of colonies, –82
Olive Branch Petition to, –70,
response to American rebellion, –72
salutary neglect ended by,
tyranny of, , , ,
Gerry, Elbridge, –19,
Gettysburg Address, xiii, ,
Glennon, Patrick, –41
Gold State Coach,
government expansion and overreach, xv, , , , , , , –76. _See also_ centralized government
Governor's Palace (North Carolina), –63
Graff House, –41
Great Britain, , , , , , , . _See also_ British Empire
debt of,
economic independence from, , , ,
Jefferson's renunciation of, –15
naval power of, –60
political independence from, , , , –42,
trade issues with, –92, –106
Griffin's Wharf, Boston Tea Party on, ,
Griffith, Samuel B., II,
Grigsby, Hugh Blair,
Hampden, John,
Hancock, John, , , ,
Declaration of Independence signature of,
smuggling trial of, –45, , –51,
Harris, Kamala,
Harrison, Benjamin, –16, –19, , ,
Hartley, David,
Harvey, John, ,
Hawks, John,
Hemings, Robert, –41,
Hemings, Sally,
Henry, Patrick, , , –35
Hewes, Joseph,
Hillsborough, Lord, –30, , ,
Hobbes, Thomas,
Hopkins, Stephen, –83, –84,
House of Assembly, North Carolina, –65, ,
House of Burgesses, Virginia, –38,
dissolution of, , , , , –31,
resolutions passed by, ,
Howard, Frederick, ,
Howe, William, ,
Hutchinson, Thomas, , ,
independence
economic, , , ,
political, , , , –42
independence movement
_Common Sense_ urging, ,
endorsements of, , , , , , –35, ,
resistance to, –14, –16,
seeds of, –87
Jackson, Andrew,
Japanese Americans,
Jefferson, Thomas
appearance of,
British people renounced by, –15
on Committee of Five, ,
_Common Sense_ praised by,
Declaration of Independence drafted by, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, –5, , , , –72, , , , , –43, –47, –51, ,
Declaration of Independence editing and, , , –45,
at Graff House, –41
headaches of, , –37, ,
industriousness of,
letter to Virginia Convention and, –39
Olive Branch Petition and, , –69
slavery and, , , –53,
on trade restrictions,
in Virginia House of Burgesses, , , , , , , ,
Johnson, Lyndon,
Johnson, Thomas, ,
_Jonathan Sewall v. John Hancock,_ ,
judicial branch, –75
judicial system, colonial
admiralty courts in, , –47, , , , ,
in North Carolina, –59, –67, , , ,
in Pennsylvania, ,
right to fair trial in, , ,
in South Carolina, ,
juryless trials, , , , , , , ,
King, Martin Luther, Jr., –91
Korean War, –74,
Lafayette, Marquis de,
Lee, Arthur, –67, , ,
Lee, Charles,
Lee, Francis Lightfoot,
Lee, Richard Henry, , , , , –36, , , ,
Lee, Thomas Ludwell, ,
Legge, William. _See_ Dartmouth, Lord
legislative branch, , , ,
legislatures
colonial, dissolution of, xiv, , , , , , –40, , –69, , –31, , ,
state, modern-day, xiv, , ,
_Leviathan_ (Hobbes),
Lexington and Concord, battles of, , , , ,
_Liberty_ (ship), seizure of, –44
Lincoln, Abraham, xiii, , –90
Livingston, Robert, , , ,
Locke, John,
Louis XVI, King,
Madison, James, , ,
Magna Carta, –49, –51, , ,
Marshall, John, –73
Martin, Josiah, , , , , –62, –67, –70
Martin, Samuel,
Massachusetts legislature
Circular Letter of, –32, , , –38
dissolution of, , ,
McNamee, Robert, –78
Missouri
Mormons in, xvi–xvii
slavery in,
Molyneux, Francis, –58,
monarchy, rejection of, , ,
Montague, Admiral,
Mormons, xvi–xvii,
Nelson, Thomas, , ,
Nicholas, Robert Carter,
Nixon, John,
Noailles, Marquis de,
Nonimportation Agreements, , –99
Nonimportation Resolutions,
North, Lord, , , , , , , , , ,
North Carolina
attachments dispute in, –58, , , ,
Governor's Palace in, –63
judicial crisis in, –59, –67, , , ,
legislature dissolved in, –69
property rights of,
revolutionary fervor in, –55, –71
Obamacare,
Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, –2
Olive Branch Petition, –70
O'Rourke, Robert "Beto,"
O'Shaughnessy, Andrew,
Otis, James, , ,
Paine, Thomas, xi, –85, , , –12, , –18, –27, ,
Parent Tax Penalty,
Parliament, British
Act of Independency and,
Circular Letter and, ,
colonists denied representation in, xiii, , ,
independence of House of Commons in, –61
King George's addresses to, –65, –72
peace commission approved by,
taxation by, –22, , , , , , , , , ,
trade restrictions of, ,
Penn, Richard, –67, , ,
Penn, William,
Pennsylvania, judicial problems in, ,
_Pennsylvania Magazine,_ , , ,
Philadelphia
description of, –13
first reading of Declaration in, –17
tea shipments rejected by,
progressives, –3
Prohibitory Act, –92, ,
property rights, ,
Puls, Mark, ,
Quincy, Josiah,
Randolph, Benjamin, ,
Randolph, Edmund, , , –33, , ,
Randolph, John,
Randolph, Peyton, , , , , , , ,
Rasmussen, William,
Ready, Milton,
Regulators, ,
regulatory state, overgrowth of, xiii, xiv
religious intolerance, xvi–xvii,
Republican party,
Restraining Acts, , , ,
rights
of colonists ( _see_ colonists, rights of)
Declaration of Independence addressing, xii–xiii, xvi–xvii, , , , , , –85
progressives' views on, –3
property, ,
usurpations of, –2, ,
voting,
_Rights of Man_ (Paine), –85
_Rights of the British Colonies_ (Otis),
_Rights of the Colonies Examined, The_ (Hopkins), –83
Roosevelt, Franklin, ,
Rotch, Francis, –80
Royal Navy, , , , –93, , –97, , , –60
Rush, Benjamin, , ,
Rutledge, Edward, –101
Rutledge, John, ,
salutary neglect,
Sanders, Bernie, –2,
Scaevola, –78,
self-government, , , ,
separation of powers, , ,
Seven Years' War,
Sewall, Jonathan, –46, ,
Sherman, Roger, , , ,
slaves, slavery, xv–xvi, , , –41, –50, , –56, , –89
smuggling trial, of John Hancock, –45, , –51,
socialism, , ,
Sons of Liberty, –81, , ,
South Carolina, judicial problems in, ,
spirit of 1776, loss of, xiii,
Stamp Act, –82, , ,
repeal of, –22,
state legislatures, xiv, , ,
"states" vs. "colonies," in Declaration of Independence,
steel mills, attempted seizure of, –74
Stumpf, Vernon, ,
Sugar Act, , ,
Supreme Court, U.S., , , –73,
suspension clause, , ,
taxation
of colonies, –23, , , , , , , , , –84, , –15, ,
on tea, , , , , ,
vs. trade, ,
unjust present-day, , –87
U.S. Constitution on,
tax code, complexity of, –86
tea, taxation on, , , , , ,
Tea Party movement,
Tenth Amendment, ,
Thompson, John, –14
Townshend, Charles, ,
Townshend Acts, , , , , , , ,
trade
American–West Indian, ,
of ammunition, –100
Continental Congress debate on, –106
free, ,
of ideas and skills, –7
postwar, with Britain,
restricted, , , –92, , , –87
vs. taxation, ,
Trade and Navigation Acts,
Trail of Tears,
treason trials,
trial by jury, , –49,
Truman, Harry, –74,
Trump, Donald,
Truxtun, Thomas, –91, –97, ,
Tryon, William, , , , , ,
unalienable rights, xiii, xvi–xvii, , ,
values, societal, ,
Virginia
as Britain's fourth realm,
legislature of ( _see_ House of Burgesses, Virginia)
Nonimportation Resolutions of,
Virginia Convention, –32, –36, , , ,
voting rights,
war for independence, , , , , , , , , , –74, ,
Warren, Elizabeth,
Warren, James,
Washington, George, xv–xvi, , , , , , , , , , ,
Weymouth, Lord,
Whately, Thomas, , ,
Wilson, James, –3,
Wilson, Woodrow,
Witherspoon, John,
Worcester, Samuel,
_Worcester v. Georgia,_ –73
Wythe, George, , –37,
_Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. vs. Sawyer,_
Zubly, John Joachim, ,
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
# ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) is a tireless advocate for our founding constitutional principles. A former Supreme Court clerk, he serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Commerce Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee. He was recently named chairman of the Senate Steering Committee. His previous books are _Our Lost Constitution_ and _Written Out of History_.
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# Contents
1. Cover
2. Also by Senator Mike Lee
3. Title Page
4. Copyright
5. Dedication
6. Contents
7. Author's Note
8. Preface
9. Introduction: The Search for Unalienable Rights
10. Chapter One: "In General Congress Assembled"
11. Chapter Two: Weakening the People's Representatives
12. Chapter Three: John Adams Instructs the Crown in Its Own Law
13. Chapter Four: Centralizing Power
14. Chapter Five: Tea Leaves in the Harbor
15. Chapter Six: Trade Wars
16. Chapter Seven: A Revolution in the Minds of the People
17. Chapter Eight: Committee of Five, Genius of One
18. Chapter Nine: Created Equal
19. Chapter Ten: King George's Call to Arms
20. Chapter Eleven: "America Is Lost!"
21. Conclusion
22. Acknowledgments
23. Notes
24. Index
25. About the Author
# Landmarks
1. Cover
2. Cover
3. Title Page
4. Table of Contents
5. Start
# Print Page List
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8. viii
9. ix
10. x
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| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaBook"
} | 2,388 |
class QueueAsLinkedList < Queue
def initialize
super
@list = LinkedList.new
end
def purge
@list.purge
super
end
end
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 2,517 |
"God Is On the Move" is a song by Christian rock band 7eventh Time Down from their third album, God Is on the Move. It was released in 2015 as the album's lead single. One lyric video and one music video were created for the song.
Charts
Certifications
References
External links
2013 songs
7eventh Time Down songs
Songs written by Ian Eskelin
Songs written by Tony Wood (musician) | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 761 |
Q: VBA select vis cells only in range I'm trying to select the first visible cell and the last visible cell.
I can select both first and last vis cell with lastrow2 and firstrow but when I try to have the whole range selected it's giving the error "runtime error 1004" and not sure why.
i know it's basic ..still learning :)
With ActiveSheet
lastrow2 = .Cells(.Rows.Count, "BH").End(xlUp).Row
colI = Range("BH1").Column
.Cells(lastrow2, colI).Select
End With
With ActiveSheet
firstrow = Range("BH1").Select
ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
Do Until ActiveCell.EntireRow.Hidden = False
ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
Loop
End With
Set SelectVisCell = Worksheets("Tagged - All").Range(firstrow & lastrow2)
if i put the ranges in : Set SelectVisCell = Worksheets("Tagged - All").Range("BH2:BL" & lastrow2) - works like this, but this is not the first visible value.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 5,050 |
require File.expand_path('spec/spec_helper.rb')
describe Gauss::Distribution, "#initialize" do
it "should set the mean to 10.1" do
Gauss::Distribution.new(10.1, 0.4).mean.should == 10.1
end
it "should set the deviation to 0.4" do
Gauss::Distribution.new(10.1, 0.4).deviation.should == 0.4
end
it "should set the mean to 0.0 if the given mean is not finite" do
Gauss::Distribution.new(1 / 0.0, 0.4).mean.should == 0.0
end
it "should set the deviation to 0.0 if the given deviation is not finite" do
Gauss::Distribution.new(10.1, 1 / 0.0).deviation.should == 0.0
end
end
describe Gauss::Distribution, "#with_deviation" do
before :each do
@dist = Gauss::Distribution.with_deviation(25.0, 8.333333)
end
it "should have a default mean value of 25.0" do
@dist.mean.should == 25.0
end
it "should have a default deviation of 8.333333" do
@dist.deviation.should be_within(0.000001).of(8.333333)
end
it "should set the variance to 69.444438" do
@dist.variance.should be_within(0.0001).of(69.4444)
end
it "should set the precision to 0.0144" do
@dist.precision.should be_within(0.0001).of(0.0144)
end
it "should set the precision_mean to 0.36" do
@dist.precision_mean.should be_within(0.0001).of(0.36)
end
end
describe Gauss::Distribution, "#with_precision" do
before :each do
@dist = Gauss::Distribution.with_precision(0.36, 0.0144)
end
it "should have a default mean value of 25.0" do
@dist.mean.should == 25.0
end
it "should have a default deviation of 8.333333" do
@dist.deviation.should be_within(0.000001).of(8.333333)
end
it "should set the variance to 69.444438" do
@dist.variance.should be_within(0.0001).of(69.4444)
end
it "should set the precision to 0.0144" do
@dist.precision.should be_within(0.0001).of(0.0144)
end
it "should set the precision_mean to 0.36" do
@dist.precision_mean.should be_within(0.0001).of(0.36)
end
end
describe Gauss::Distribution, "absolute difference (-)" do
before :each do
@dist = Gauss::Distribution.with_deviation(25.0, 8.333333)
end
it "should be 0.0 for the same distribution" do
(@dist - @dist).should == 0.0
end
it "should equal the precision mean if the 0-distribution is subtracted" do
(@dist - Gauss::Distribution.new).should == @dist.precision_mean
end
it "should be 130.399408 for (22, 0.4) - (12, 1.3)" do
(Gauss::Distribution.new(22, 0.4) - Gauss::Distribution.new(12, 1.3)).should be_within(tolerance).of(130.399408)
end
end
describe Gauss::Distribution, "#value_at" do
it "should have a value of 0.073654 for x = 2" do
Gauss::Distribution.new(4,5).value_at(2).should be_within(tolerance).of(0.073654)
end
end
describe Gauss::Distribution, "multiplication (*)" do
it "should have a mean of 0.2" do
(Gauss::Distribution.new(0,1) * Gauss::Distribution.new(2,3)).mean.should be_within(0.00001).of(0.2)
end
it "should have a deviation of 3.0 / Math.sqrt(10)" do
(Gauss::Distribution.new(0,1) * Gauss::Distribution.new(2,3)).deviation.should be_within(0.00001).of(3.0 / Math.sqrt(10))
end
end
describe Gauss::Distribution, "#log_product_normalization" do
it "should have calculate -3.0979981" do
lp = Gauss::Distribution.log_product_normalization(Gauss::Distribution.new(4,5), Gauss::Distribution.new(6,7))
lp.should be_within(0.000001).of(-3.0979981)
end
end
describe Gauss::Distribution, "functions" do
describe 'value = 0.27' do
it "#cumulative_distribution_function should return 0.6064198 for 0.27" do
Gauss::Distribution.cumulative_distribution_function(0.27).should be_within(0.00001).of(0.6064198)
Gauss::Distribution.cdf(2.0).should be_within(0.00001).of(0.9772498)
end
it "#probability_density_function should return 0.384662" do
Gauss::Distribution.probability_density_function(0.27).should be_within(0.0001).of(0.384662)
end
it "#quantile_function should return ~ -0.6128123 at 0.27" do
Gauss::Distribution.quantile_function(0.27).should be_within(0.00001).of(-0.6128123)
end
it "#quantile_function should return ~ 1.281551 at 0.9" do
Gauss::Distribution.quantile_function(0.9).should be_within(0.00001).of(1.281551)
end
it "#erf_inv should return 0.0888559 at 0.9" do
Gauss::Distribution.inv_erf(0.9).should be_within(0.00001).of(0.0888559)
end
it "#erf_inv should return 0.779983 at 0.27" do
Gauss::Distribution.inv_erf(0.27).should be_within(0.00001).of(0.779983)
end
it "#erf_inv should return 100 at -0.5" do
Gauss::Distribution.inv_erf(-0.5).should be_within(0.00001).of(100)
end
it "#erf should return 0.203091 at 0.9" do
Gauss::Distribution.erf(0.9).should be_within(0.00001).of(0.203091)
end
it "#erf should return 0.702581 at 0.27" do
Gauss::Distribution.erf(0.27).should be_within(0.00001).of(0.702581)
end
it "#erf should return 1.520499 at -0.5" do
Gauss::Distribution.erf(-0.5).should be_within(0.00001).of(1.520499)
end
end
end
describe Gauss::Distribution, "#replace" do
before :each do
@dist1 = Gauss::Distribution.with_deviation(25.0, 8.333333)
@dist2 = Gauss::Distribution.with_deviation(9.0, 4)
end
it "should be equal to the replaced distribution" do
@dist1.replace(@dist2)
@dist1.should == @dist2
end
end
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 2,075 |
{"url":"https:\/\/codegolf.stackexchange.com\/questions\/37269\/can-you-beat-the-optimizer","text":"# Can you beat the optimizer?\n\nThis is an optimization\/algorithms challenge. Given two sets of points X and Y, which are to be thought of as points on a circle of circumference T, the challenge is to find the rotation which minimizes the distance from the set X to the set Y. Here the distance is just the sum of the absolute distance from each point in X to its closest point in Y. Here closest is really just the minimum distance you need to travel along the circle to reach a point in Y (remembering that you can go clockwise or anti-clockwise). Note that this measure of distance is not symmetric.\n\nIn order to be able to create the test data, you will need to be able to run Python, but your answer can be in any language of your choosing that is available without cost to run on Linux. You can also use any libraries you choose as long as they are easy to install on Linux and available without cost.\n\nThe test data will be created using the following Python code. It outputs two lines to standard out. The first is circle X and the second is circle Y.\n\nimport numpy as np\n#Set T to 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000, 10000000, 1000000000\nT = 1000\nN = int(T\/5)\n\n#Set the seed to make data reproducible\nnp.random.seed(seed = 10)\n\ntimesY = np.sort(np.random.uniform(low = 0.0, high = T, size = N))\nindices = np.sort(np.random.randint(0,N, N\/10))\nrotation = np.random.randint(0,T, 1)[0]\ntimesX = [(t + rotation + np.random.random()) % T for t in timesY[indices]]\n\nfor tX in timesX:\nprint tX,\nprint\nfor tY in timesY:\nprint tY,\n\n\nFor those who don't run python, I have also uploaded some test files. Each file has three lines. The first line is the points for circle X, the second is the points for circle Y, and the last is the score you get from the generic optimizer in the python code below. This score will be in no way optimal and you should do much better.\n\nhttp:\/\/wikisend.com\/download\/359660\/1000.txt.lzma\n\n\nHere is also a toy worked example of the distance between two sets of point to make the distance function clear.\n\nLet timesX = [2, 4, 98] and timesY = [1, 7, 9, 99]. Let us assume the circumference of the circle is 100. As it stands the distance is (2-1)+(7-4)+(99-98) = 5. Now if we rotate timesX by 3 we get [5, 7, 1] which has total absolute distance 2 to timesY. In this case this appears to be the optimal solution.\n\nHere is some sample code which assumes that the circles are called timesX and timesY, and outputs the minimum distance it finds. It doesn't, however, do a very good job, as you will see.\n\nfrom bisect import bisect_left\nfrom scipy.optimize import minimize_scalar\ndef takeClosest(myList, myNumber, T):\n\"\"\"\nAssumes myList is sorted. Returns closest value to myNumber in a circle of circumference T.\n\"\"\"\npos = bisect_left(myList, myNumber)\nif (pos == 0 and myList[pos] != myNumber):\nbefore = myList[pos - 1] - T\nafter = myList[0]\nelif (pos == len(myList)):\nbefore = myList[pos-1]\nafter = myList[0] + T\nelse:\nbefore = myList[pos - 1]\nafter = myList[pos]\nif after - myNumber < myNumber - before:\nreturn after\nelse:\nreturn before\n\ndef circle_dist(timesX, timesY):\ndist = 0\nfor t in timesX:\nclosest_number = takeClosest(timesY, t, T)\ndist += np.abs(closest_number - t)\nreturn dist\n\ndef dist(x):\ntimesX_rotated = [(tX+x) % T for tX in timesX]\nreturn circle_dist(timesX_rotated, timesY)\n\n#Now perform the optimization\nres = minimize_scalar(dist, bounds=(0,T), method='bounded', options={ 'disp':True})\nprint res.fun\n\n\nScoring\n\nYou should run your code for T = 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000, 10000000. Your code should output both the optimum rotation and the distance you get for it so that it can be checked. The scoring criterion is as follows.\n\n\u2022 You should calculate the sum of the distances you find for the five values of T. Low is better and the best possible is 0. You aren't allowed to cheat by looking at what rotation was used to create the data in the first place.\n\u2022 Then you should calculate 551431.326508571\/(the sum you just calculated) and report that as your score.\n\nEdit 1. Changed score so that high is better and removed time restriction so you can just run it on your own computer.\n\nEdit 2 Note that the function dist can be used as a verifier. Just put the points for circle X in timesX and the points for circle Y in timesY and set x to be the rotation you want to test. It will return a score which you can compare to what you get.\n\nEdit 3 Fixed the data creation code which wasn't exactly the code I had used to create the data.\n\n\u2022 Can we assume that the size of X and Y is equal? And is the minimum distance for T = 10, X={1,1,1,2} ,Y = {1,2,2,2} zero? Do we have to calculate the distance from every x to its closest y AND the distance for every x to its closest x? By 'absolute distance' do you mean the euclidean distance or just the arclength between both points? Sep 3, 2014 at 18:50\n\u2022 @flawr You can assume that T (the circumference) is the same for X and Y. They might however have a very different number of points as they in fact do in my test cases. The distance for T = 10, X={1,1,1,2} ,Y = {1,2,2,2} is zero but actually I assume that no point occurs more than once . The distance is the sum of the distance of every point in X to its closest point in Y. You never need to compare points in X to points in X. 'absolute distance' is just the arclength between both points.\n\u2013\u00a0user9206\nSep 3, 2014 at 19:05\n\u2022 Thank you for the clarifiaction: @Comparing only every point X to the set Y: So the minimal distance for X = {1,2} Y = {1,2,3} will be zero, but the minimal distance for X = {1,2,3} Y = {1,2} will be positive (not zero)? Sep 3, 2014 at 19:11\n\u2022 @flawr Yes that is exactly right. In fact the distance is 1 in your example (asuming T = 10 for example).\n\u2013\u00a0user9206\nSep 3, 2014 at 19:16\n\u2022 I have currently only looked at 1000.txt and 10000.txt, and I am slightly confused by the format. Why are there two newlines in each? Why is there only one number after the second newline? Sep 4, 2014 at 11:59\n\n## C++, 10.60236\n\nIf we assume nothing about the data then it seems unlikely that we can do much better than brute force\/Monte Carlo plus maybe some local minimization. The distance\/rotation graphs for T=1,000 and T=10,000 are already pretty noisy:\n\nHowever, assuming this is fair game, taking into account the fact that X is simply a rotated subset of Y with some small error, recovering the approximate rotation and minimizing locally is easy:\n\nCompile with g++ mindist.cpp -omindist -std=c++11 -O3.\n\nRun with .\/mindist T < dataset (e.g. .\/mindist 1000 < 1000.txt).\n\n#include <iostream>\n#include <vector>\n#include <string>\n#include <sstream>\n#include <algorithm>\n#include <iterator>\n#include <tuple>\n#include <cmath>\n\nusing namespace std;\n\n\/* Positive modulo *\/\ntemplate <typename T>\nT mod(T x, T y) { x = fmod(x, y); return x >= 0 ? x : x + y; }\n\n\/* Less-than comparison with a margin. Can be used to search for elements\n* within +-epsilon. *\/\ntemplate <typename T>\nstruct epsilon_less {\nT epsilon;\nbool operator()(const T& x, const T& y) const { return x < y - epsilon; }\n};\n\n\/* Calculates the distance between X and Y on a circle with circumference T,\n* where X is rotated by rotation. *\/\ntemplate <typename P, typename Ps>\nP distance(P T, const Ps& X, const Ps& Y, P rotation) {\nP dist = 0;\nfor (P x : X) {\nx = mod(x + rotation, T);\nauto l = lower_bound(Y.begin(), Y.end(), x);\nauto r = prev(l);\ndist += min(*l - x, x - *r);\n}\nreturn dist;\n}\n\n\/* Minimizes a function f on the interval [l, r]. f is assumed to be \"well-\n* behaved\" within this range. This is a simple n-iterations binary search\n* based on the sign of the derivative of f. *\/\ntemplate <typename T, typename F>\nT minimize(F f, T l, T r, int n = 32) {\nauto fl = f(l), fr = f(r);\nfor (; n; --n) {\nT m = (l + r) \/ 2;\nauto fm = f(m);\nT dm = (r - l) \/ 1e5;\nauto fm2 = f(m + dm);\nauto df_dm = (fm2 - fm) \/ dm;\n(df_dm < 0 ? tie(l, fl) : tie(r, fr)) = make_tuple(m, fm);\n}\nreturn (l + r) \/ 2;\n}\n\nint main(int argc, const char* argv[]) {\ntypedef double point;\n\nconst point T = stod(argv[1]);\nconst point error_margin = \/*+-*\/1;\n\n\/\/ Read input. Assumed to be sorted.\nvector<point> X, Y(1);\nfor (auto* P : {&X, &Y}) {\nstring line; getline(cin, line);\nstringstream s(line);\ncopy(\nistream_iterator<point>(s), istream_iterator<point>(),\nback_inserter(*P)\n);\n}\n\/\/ Add wrap-around points to Y to simplify distance calculation\nY[0] = Y.back() - T; Y.push_back(Y[1] + T);\n\nfor (point y : Y) {\n\/\/ For each point y in Y we rotation X so that the last point in X\n\/\/ aligns with y.\nauto rotation = mod(y - X.back(), T);\n\/\/ See if the rest of X aligns within the error margin\nif (all_of(\nX.begin(), X.end(), [=, &Y] (point x) {\nreturn binary_search(\nY.begin(), Y.end(), mod(x + rotation, T),\nepsilon_less<point>{error_margin}\n);\n}\n)) {\n\/\/ We found a rotation. Minimize the distance within the error\n\/\/ margin.\nrotation = minimize(\n[&] (point r) { return distance(T, X, Y, r); },\nrotation - error_margin, rotation + error_margin\n);\n\/\/ Print results and exit.\ncout.precision(12);\ncout << \"Rotation: \" << rotation << endl;\ncout << \"Distance: \" << distance(T, X, Y, rotation) << endl;\nreturn 0;\n}\n}\n\/\/ We didn't find a rotation. Something must have went wrong!\nreturn 1;\n}\n\n\nThe program assumes X is a rotated subset of Y with an error margin of \u00b11 for each point in X. It tries to rotate X such that it aligns with Y within this error margin (that is, s.t. each point in X is at distance at most 1 from Y.) The reason that we can do this efficiently is that we don't have to try arbitrary rotations: It's enough to choose an arbitrary point x in X and rotate X such that x aligns with each of the points in Y. For one such rotation it's guaranteed that X and Y align within the error range; for every other rotation, it's very unlikely that even two points will align, so we can abandon nonoptimal rotations very quickly. It's extremely unlikely that two different rotations will both align X and Y, so once the program finds a rotation that does it doesn't bother to look any further. Once a rotation is found, it's adjusted within the error margin to minimize the overall distance.\n\nResults:\n\nT Rotation Distance\n1,000 494.64423 5.59189\n10,000 6,967.55630 45.03235\n100,000 24,454.48700 471.71127\n1,000,000 974,011.50572 4,671.75611\n10,000,000 2,720,706.49829 46,816.15372\n\nTotal distance: 52,010.24535\nScore: 10.60236\n\n\u2022 Damn, that T=10,000 search space looks awful! No wonder my fancy simulated annealing can do no better than brute force. In fact it does worse :-( Sep 6, 2014 at 21:02\n\u2022 Thanks for this. Could you give instructions for how to reproduce your results please? Also, could you give some details of what your code does?\n\u2013\u00a0user9206\nSep 7, 2014 at 8:59\n\u2022 This is very impressive although I am saddened that a brute force method was good enough in the end. I need to ask harder questions :)\n\u2013\u00a0user9206\nSep 8, 2014 at 19:21\n\n## Mathematica, 1.04834\n\nOkay, maybe people just need to be shown how simple it is to perform better than the reference implementation.\n\nSo here is a random implementation. I'm simply trying out some 10,000 random rotations (basically, as many as I care to wait for) and pick the best one I find.\n\nFirst@SortBy[(\nr = RandomReal[t];\nf =\nNearest[Flatten[{First[z = Sort@Mod[y + r, t]] + t, z,\nLast@z - t}]];\n{r, Total[Abs[# - f[#][[1]]~Mod~t] & \/@ x]}\n) & \/@ Range@100, Last@# &]\n\n\nThis assumes t to be the circumference, x to be the X list and y to be the Y list.\n\nResults:\n\nT rotation dist Reference dist\n1000 494.669 5.59189 33.0305\n10000 6967.74 53.6250 429.212\n100000 24452.5 2774.90 4676.23\n1000000 974013. 27023.3 49149.0\n10000000 9315070 496149. 497144.\n=======\nSum: 526006.\n\nScore: 1.04834\n\n\nUnfortunately, T = 107 takes too long to run more than 600 trials, such that I can hardly beat the reference implementation there (and even more unfortunately, this dominates the score). This still shows that there is a lot of improvement possible.\n\nFun fact: I actually wanted to submit a proper solution, by using one of Mathematica's minimisers on the distance function, but somehow I couldn't convince Mathematica to use my compound statement as a function to be minimised (and I wasn't patient enough to figure out why it didn't work), so I thought - well, then let's just Monte Carlo it.\n\n# Java - 10.60236\n\nAs promised, Lembik:\n\nimport java.io.BufferedReader;\nimport java.io.IOException;\nimport java.util.*;\n\npublic final class SpinDots {\n\npublic static void main( String[] sArgs ) {\nfinal int T = Integer.parseInt( sArgs[0] );\nList<Double> LDX = new LinkedList<>(),\nLDY = new LinkedList<>();\n\ndouble RS = 0.;\n\ntry( BufferedReader BR = new BufferedReader( new FileReader( T + \".txt\" ), 65536 ) ) {\nString SX = BR.readLine();\nStringTokenizer STX = new StringTokenizer( SX );\n\nwhile( STX.hasMoreTokens() )\nLDX.add( Double.parseDouble( STX.nextToken() ) );\n\nString SY = BR.readLine();\nStringTokenizer STY = new StringTokenizer( SY );\n\nwhile( STY.hasMoreTokens() )\nLDY.add( Double.parseDouble( STY.nextToken() ) );\n\nRS = Double.parseDouble( BR.readLine() );\nBR.close();\n} catch( IOException ioe ) {\nSystem.err.println( \"Unable to read contents of file: \" + T + \".txt\" );\nSystem.exit( 1 );\n}\n\nfinal int NX = LDX.size(),\nNY = LDY.size(),\nRNY = 2*NY+3;\n\nfinal double[] DX = new double[NX],\nDY = new double[RNY];\n\nfinal int[] X = new int[NX],\nY = new int[RNY];\nint[] YS = new int[RNY],\nYSP = new int[RNY];\n\nint dx = 0;\nfor( Double dx_ : LDX ) {\nDX[dx] = dx_;\nX[dx] = (int)Math.round( dx_ );\ndx++;\n}\nArrays.sort( X );\nArrays.sort( DX );\n\nint dy = 1;\nfor( Double dy_ : LDY ) {\nDY[dy] = dy_;\nDY[dy+NY] = dy_+T;\nY[dy] = (int)Math.round( dy_ );\nY[dy+NY] = Y[dy] + T;\ndy++;\n}\nDY[0] = DY[NY] - T;\nDY[2*NY+1] = DY[1] + 2*T;\nDY[2*NY+2] = DY[2] + 2*T;\nY[0] = Y[NY] - T;\nY[2*NY+1] = Y[1] + 2*T;\nY[2*NY+2] = Y[2] + 2*T;\n\nSystem.out.println( \"Computing optimum shift for: |X| = \" + NX + \", |Y| = \" + NY + \", T = \" + T );\n\nint DO_ = scoreForShiftFirstPass( X, Y, YSP );\nList<Integer> LXO = new LinkedList<>(),\nLDXO = new LinkedList<>();\n\nfor( int iShift = 1; iShift < T; iShift++ ) {\nint D_ = scoreForShift( X, Y, iShift, YSP, YS );\nint[] YT = YSP;\nYSP = YS;\nYS = YT;\nif( D_ < DO_ ) {\nDO_ = D_;\nIterator<Integer> I = LXO.iterator(),\nDI = LDXO.iterator();\n\nwhile( DI.hasNext() ) {\nI.next();\nif( DI.next() > DO_ + NX ) {\nDI.remove();\nI.remove();\n}\n}\n}\nif( D_ <= DO_ + NX && LXO.size() < 100 ) {\n}\n\nif( iShift %(T\/100) == 0 )\nSystem.out.println( \"Completed \" + (iShift*100\/T) + \"% of coarse pass.\" );\n}\n\nSystem.out.println( \"Completed 100% of coarse pass. Coarse optimum is: \" + DO_ );\nSystem.out.println( \"Identified \" + LXO.size() + \" fine filtering candidates.\" );\n\ndouble ddoo = 0.;\ndouble DDOO_ = Double.MAX_VALUE;\nfor( int iShift : LXO ) {\ndouble DDO_ = doubleScoreForShiftFirstPass( DX, DY, iShift-1, YSP );\ndouble ddo = iShift;\n\nfor( int iFineShift = -999; iFineShift < 1000; iFineShift++ ) {\ndouble dd = iShift + iFineShift\/1000.0;\ndouble DD_ = doubleScoreForShift( DX, DY, dd, YSP, YS );\nint[] YT = YSP;\nYSP = YS;\nYS = YT;\nif( DD_ < DDO_ ) {\nDDO_ = DD_;\nddo = dd;\n}\n}\nif( DDO_ < DDOO_ ) {\nDDOO_ = DDO_;\nddoo = ddo;\n}\n}\n\nSystem.out.println( \"Fine optimum is: \" + DDOO_ );\n\ndouble ddooo = ddoo-1e-3;\ndouble DDOOO_ = doubleScoreForShiftFirstPass( DX, DY, ddoo-1e-3, YSP );\nfor( int iHyperFineShift = -999; iHyperFineShift < 1000; iHyperFineShift++ ) {\ndouble dd = ddoo + iHyperFineShift\/1.e6;\ndouble DD_ = doubleScoreForShift( DX, DY, dd, YSP, YS );\nint[] YT = YSP;\nYSP = YS;\nYS = YT;\nif( DD_ < DDOOO_ ) {\nDDOOO_ = DD_;\nddooo = dd;\n}\n}\nSystem.out.println( \"Optimal forward rotation in X: \" + ddooo );\nSystem.out.println( \"Optimal score: \" + DDOOO_ );\nSystem.out.println( \"Reference score: \" + RS );\n}\n\nstatic int scoreForShift( int[] X, int[] Y, int iShift, int[] YSP, int[] YS ) {\nint D_ = 0;\nfor( int x = 0; x < X.length; x++ ) {\nint x_ = X[x]+iShift;\nint y = YSP[x],\ny_ = Y[y];\n\nint D = x_ < y_ ? y_ - x_ : x_ - y_;\nint y_nx_ = Y[y+1];\nint D_nx = x_ < y_nx_ ? y_nx_ - x_ : x_ - y_nx_;\nwhile( D_nx <= D ) {\nD = D_nx;\ny_nx_ = Y[++y+1];\nD_nx = x_ < y_nx_ ? y_nx_ - x_ : x_ - y_nx_;\n}\nYS[x] = y;\nD_ += D;\n}\nreturn D_;\n}\n\nstatic int scoreForShiftFirstPass( int[] X, int[] Y, int[] YS ) {\nint D_ = 0;\nint y = 0;\nfor( int x = 0; x < X.length; x++ ) {\nint x_ = X[x];\nint y_ = Y[y];\n\nint D = x_ < y_ ? y_ - x_ : x_ - y_;\nint y_nx_ = Y[y+1];\nint D_nx = x_ < y_nx_ ? y_nx_ - x_ : x_ - y_nx_;\nwhile( D_nx <= D ) {\nD = D_nx;\ny_nx_ = Y[++y+1];\nD_nx = x_ < y_nx_ ? y_nx_ - x_ : x_ - y_nx_;\n}\nYS[x] = y;\nD_ += D;\n}\nreturn D_;\n}\n\nstatic double doubleScoreForShift( double[] X, double[] Y, double d_Shift, int[] YSP, int[] YS ) {\ndouble D_ = 0;\nfor( int x = 0; x < X.length; x++ ) {\ndouble x_ = X[x]+d_Shift;\nint y = YSP[x];\ndouble y_ = Y[y];\n\ndouble D = x_ < y_ ? y_ - x_ : x_ - y_;\ndouble y_nx_ = Y[y+1];\ndouble D_nx = x_ < y_nx_ ? y_nx_ - x_ : x_ - y_nx_;\nwhile( D_nx <= D ) {\nD = D_nx;\ny_nx_ = Y[++y+1];\nD_nx = x_ < y_nx_ ? y_nx_ - x_ : x_ - y_nx_;\n}\nYS[x] = y;\nD_ += D;\n}\nreturn D_;\n}\n\nstatic double doubleScoreForShiftFirstPass( double[] X, double[] Y, double d_Shift, int[] YS ) {\ndouble D_ = 0;\nint y = 0;\nfor( int x = 0; x < X.length; x++ ) {\ndouble x_ = X[x]+d_Shift;\ndouble y_ = Y[y];\n\ndouble D = x_ < y_ ? y_ - x_ : x_ - y_;\ndouble y_nx_ = Y[y+1];\ndouble D_nx = x_ < y_nx_ ? y_nx_ - x_ : x_ - y_nx_;\nwhile( D_nx <= D ) {\nD = D_nx;\ny_nx_ = Y[++y+1];\nD_nx = x_ < y_nx_ ? y_nx_ - x_ : x_ - y_nx_;\n}\nYS[x] = y;\nD_ += D;\n}\nreturn D_;\n}\n}\n\n\nMy approach is similar to Ell's in that it does a grid search over all potentials (first at integer resolution, then at a resolution of 1\/1,000ths, then at a resolution of 1\/1,000,000ths). Unlike Ell's approach, mine doesn't require or make use of the fact that the error in X is tightly bounded. I literally evaluate all 10,000,000 possibilities during coarse filtering in the T = 10,000,000 case and store a list of candidates with distance small enough to be within \"fine filtering\" distance of the optimum.\n\nModular arithmetic is slow, and Java doesn't support template methods for native types. Hence my implementation \"unwinds\" Y to avoid the use of remainder operators, and the four working methods are near-identical clones of each other with differing types and 1-2 lines of code that would be handled in C\/C++ using templates and macros.\n\nI compute shifts sequentially, which allows the nearest neighbour search to incrementally tweak values from the previous shift. As a result, the routine completes in about 2 hours, which was acceptable since I slept through it. ;)\n\nMy outcomes are technically better than Ell's since I search to a higher resolution, but the improvement is utterly negligible, and probabilistic to boot. In particular, a higher resolution search only yields an improved score if the number of shifted X values falling in the set of intervals [Y-eps,Y] is different from the number of shifted X values falling in the set of intervals [Y,Y+eps], where eps is the coarser resolution (0.000001, in the case of Ell's implementation). I don't know if this is the case for any of the datasets in this problem. In any event, his code should \"win\" since it predates mine.\n\nOutput\n\nOptimal forward rotation in X: 494.64500000000004\nOptimal score: 5.591890690289915\nReference score: 33.0305238422\n\nOptimal forward rotation in X: 6967.556309\nOptimal score: 45.032350687407416\nReference score: 429.211871389\n\nOptimal forward rotation in X: 24454.487003000002\nOptimal score: 471.7112722703896\nReference score: 4676.23391624\n\nOptimal forward rotation in X: 974011.505734\nOptimal score: 4671.756109326729\nReference score: 49148.9676631\n\nOptimal forward rotation in X: 2720706.498309\nOptimal score: 46816.15372609813\nReference score: 497143.882534\n\n\u2022 Thank you for this! As I commented above, I didn't intend this to be solvable by a brute force solution.\n\u2013\u00a0user9206\nSep 8, 2014 at 19:22\n\n## C++, Optimal, O(|X|*|Y|*log|X|)\n\nWhere X = T \/ 50 and Y = T \/ 5. It may take about 2 days on my laptop to finish the T = 10000000 case.\n\nGiven two set of points X and Y. We denote the function f(x) to be:\n\nf(x) = min(|x - y| for y in Y)\n\n\nAnd then answer we want is:\n\ndist = min(sum(f(x + t) for x in X) for t in [0, T))\n\n\nHowever, it's impossible and unnecessary to try all the values of t. Instead we try the t values on \"key points\". My approach is a scanning from t = 0 to t = T with the help of a priority queue. There will have |X| * |Y| key points and trying each will need O(log|X|) operations. So the overall time complexity is O(|X|*|Y|*log|X|).\n\n### Score\n\n T angle dist ref_dist\n1000.0 494.64422766 5.59189069 33.03052384\n10000.0 6967.55630010 45.03235069 429.21187139\n100000.0 24454.48700190 471.71127227 4676.23391624\n1000000.0 974011.50572340 4671.75610935 49148.96766310\n10000000.0 (still running...)\n\n\n### Code\n\n#include <iostream>\n#include <cstdio>\n#include <cassert>\n#include <string>\n#include <sstream>\n#include <cmath>\n#include <vector>\n#include <queue>\n#include <algorithm>\n\nusing namespace std;\n\ndouble angle;\ndouble dist;\n};\n\ndouble check(double T, const vector<double>& xs, const vector<double>& ys, Answer answer) {\ndouble dist = -answer.dist;\ndouble angle = answer.angle;\nfor(double x : xs) {\ndouble x1 = x + angle;\nwhile(x1 > T) x1 -= T;\nint i = upper_bound(ys.begin(), ys.end(), x1) - ys.begin();\ndouble d;\nif(i == 0) {\nd = min(ys[0] - x1, x1 - (ys.back() - T));\n} else if(i == ys.size()) {\nd = min(ys[0] + T - x1, x1 - ys.back());\n} else {\nd = min(ys[i] - x1, x1 - ys[i - 1]);\n}\ndist += d;\n}\nreturn dist;\n}\n\nAnswer solve(double T, const vector<double>& xs, vector<double> ys) {\nassert(ys.size() >= 1);\n\nsort(ys.begin(), ys.end());\nvector<double> ps;\nps.push_back(ys.back() - T);\nfor(int i = 0; i < ys.size(); i++) {\nps.push_back((ps.back() + ys[i]) \/ 2);\nps.push_back(ys[i]);\n}\nps.push_back((ps.back() + ys.front() + T) \/ 2);\nps.push_back(ys.front() + T);\n\nstruct X {\ndouble npd;\nint sign;\nint j;\nbool operator<(const X& rhs)const {\nreturn npd > rhs.npd;\n}\n};\npriority_queue<X> que;\nint count = 0;\ncur.angle = 0;\ncur.dist = 0;\n\nfor(int i = 0; i < xs.size(); i++) {\ndouble x = xs[i];\nint j = upper_bound(ps.begin(), ps.end(), x) - ps.begin();\nassert(j > 0 && j < ps.size());\nX q;\nq.j = j;\nq.sign = j % 2 == 1 ? 1 : -1;\nif(q.sign == 1) {\ncur.dist += x - ps[j - 1];\n} else {\ncur.dist += ps[j] - x;\n}\ncount += q.sign;\nq.npd = ps[j] - x;\nque.push(q);\n}\n\nans = cur;\nwhile(cur.angle < T) {\nX q = que.top(); que.pop();\ndouble da = q.npd - cur.angle;\ncur.dist += da * count;\ncur.angle += da;\nassert(cur.dist >= 0);\n\nif(cur.dist < ans.dist) {\nans = cur;\n}\ncount -= q.sign * 2;\nq.sign *= -1;\nif(q.j == ps.size() - 1) {\nq.j = 3;\n} else {\nq.j ++;\n}\nint j = q.j;\nq.npd = cur.angle + ps[j] - ps[j - 1];\nque.push(q);\n}\ndouble d_dist = check(T, xs, ys, ans);\ncerr << \"check: \" << d_dist << endl;\nans.dist += d_dist;\n\nreturn ans;\n}\n\nstringstream ss;\nstring line;\nwhile(line.empty()) getline(cin, line);\nss << line;\nvector<double> xs;\nwhile(ss) {\ndouble x;\nif(ss >> x)\nxs.push_back(x);\n}\nreturn xs;\n}\n\nint main() {\n#ifdef DEBUG\nfreopen(\"1000.txt\", \"r\", stdin);\n#endif\ndouble T;\ncin >> T;\nvector<double> xs = read_nums();\nvector<double> ys = read_nums();\ndouble ref_dist;\ncin >> ref_dist;\n\nAnswer ans = solve(T, xs, ys);\n\nprintf(\"%16s %16s %16s %16s\\n\", \"T\", \"angle\", \"dist\", \"ref_dist\");\nprintf(\"%16.1f %16.8f %16.8f %16.8f\\n\", T, ans.angle, ans.dist, ref_dist);\n}\n\n\n### A bit of details\n\nThe function f(x) is something like:\n\nSo the graph of sum d(t) = sum(f(x + t) for x in X) is will be a set of connected segments. We need to try each t on the connecting points, with the help of a priority queue.\n\n\u2022 That's very nice. I don't understand yet why you need the extra log factor. Or in other words, I don't fully understand why you need the priority queue. However, your answer \"100000.0 24454.48700190 471.71127227 4676.23391624\" doesn't seem to match \"100000 24452.5 2774.90 4676.23\" from Martin B\u00fcttner\" even though it is more or less the same rotation. Are you calculating the distance correctly?\n\u2013\u00a0user9206\nSep 8, 2014 at 21:07\n\u2022 Is it possible to implement an early stopping rule based on the current minimum distance found? This might speed your code up.\n\u2013\u00a0user9206\nSep 8, 2014 at 21:12\n\u2022 @Lembik The distance value should be correct. It was double checked using the function check. I think it's hopeless to set an early stopping rule, since trying each value cost O(log|X|) operations to maintain the priority queue. It cannot be stop halfway.\n\u2013\u00a0Ray\nSep 8, 2014 at 21:23\n\u2022 Still running? :)\n\u2013\u00a0user9206\nSep 12, 2014 at 6:36\n\u2022 @Lembik No, I halt it. It takes too long and won't get better result than others'.\n\u2013\u00a0Ray\nSep 12, 2014 at 7:27","date":"2022-07-03 17:13:01","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.4419322609901428, \"perplexity\": 6954.695382359827}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.3, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2022-27\/segments\/1656104248623.69\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20220703164826-20220703194826-00557.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Example</title>
<script src="../../dist/modular/js/core.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<link href="../../dist/modular/css/core.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="../../dist/modular/css/dropdown.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/icon?family=Material+Icons" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<script src="../../dist/modular/js/dropdown.js"></script>
</head>
<body style="padding: 8px;">
<button class="gj-button-md" onclick="alert($dropdown.value())">Get Value</button>
<hr/>
<select id="dropdown" width="200">
<option value="1">One</option>
<option value="2" selected>Two</option>
<option value="3">Three</option>
</select>
<script>
var $dropdown = $('#dropdown').dropdown();
</script>
</body>
</html> | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 8,384 |
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.IO;
using DevExpress.XtraEditors;
using DevExpress.XtraPivotGrid;
using EIDSS;
using EIDSS.RAM;
using EIDSS.RAM.Components;
using EIDSS.RAM.Components.DataTransactions;
using EIDSS.RAM.Layout;
using EIDSS.RAM.Presenters;
using EIDSS.RAM.Presenters.RamPivotGrid;
using EIDSS.RAM.QueryBuilder;
using EIDSS.RAM_DB.Components;
using EIDSS.RAM_DB.DBService.QueryBuilder;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
using bv.common.db.Core;
using bv.common.win;
using bv.tests.AVR.Helpers;
using bv.tests.common;
namespace bv.tests.AVR.UnitTests
{
[TestClass]
public class ViewReportTests:BaseReportTests
{
[TestInitialize]
public override void TestInitialize()
{
base.TestInitialize();
PresenterFactory.Init(new BaseForm());
PresenterFactory.SharedPresenter.SharedModel.ResetReportDataCallback = () => { };
}
[TestCleanup]
public override void TestCleanup()
{
base.TestCleanup();
}
[TestMethod]
public void PivotLayoutTest()
{
using (var pivot = new PivotForm())
{
DataTable dataTable = DataHelper.GenerateTestTable();
pivot.PivotGrid.DataSourceWithFields = dataTable;
string fileXml;
pivot.PivotGrid.SaveLayoutToXml("1.xml");
using (var reader = new StreamReader("1.xml"))
{
fileXml = reader.ReadToEnd();
Console.WriteLine(@"file xml length={0}", fileXml.Length);
}
string streamXml = GetLayoutXml(pivot.PivotGrid);
Assert.AreEqual(streamXml, fileXml);
SetLayoutXml(pivot.PivotGrid, streamXml);
}
}
[TestMethod]
public void PivotDataTransactionTest()
{
using (var pivot = new PivotForm())
{
DataTable dataTable = DataHelper.GenerateTestTable();
pivot.PivotGrid.DataSourceWithFields = dataTable;
for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++)
{
using (var transaction = (DataTransaction) pivot.PivotGrid.BeginTransaction())
{
Assert.IsTrue(transaction.HasData);
using (var innerTransaction = (DataTransaction) pivot.PivotGrid.BeginTransaction())
{
Assert.IsFalse(innerTransaction.HasData);
}
Assert.IsTrue(transaction.HasData);
}
}
}
}
[TestMethod]
public void GetPivotSummaryTypeTest()
{
using (var pivot = new PivotForm())
{
DataTable dataTable = DataHelper.GenerateTestTable();
List<WinPivotGridField> list = RamPivotGridPresenter.CreateWinFields(dataTable);
pivot.PivotGrid.Fields.AddRange(list.ToArray());
pivot.PivotGrid.DataSourceWithFields = dataTable;
Assert.IsTrue(Configuration.SummaryTypeDictionary.ContainsKey(typeof (string)));
CustomSummaryType type = Configuration.SummaryTypeDictionary[typeof (string)];
Assert.AreEqual(CustomSummaryType.Count, type);
Assert.IsTrue(Configuration.SummaryTypeDictionary.ContainsKey(typeof (DateTime)));
type = Configuration.SummaryTypeDictionary[typeof (DateTime)];
Assert.AreEqual(CustomSummaryType.Max, type);
Assert.IsFalse(Configuration.SummaryTypeDictionary.ContainsKey(typeof (bool)));
type = Configuration.DefaltSummaryType;
Assert.AreEqual(CustomSummaryType.Count, type);
Assert.IsTrue(Configuration.SummaryTypeDictionary.ContainsKey(typeof (int)));
type = Configuration.SummaryTypeDictionary[typeof (int)];
Assert.AreEqual(CustomSummaryType.Sum, type);
Assert.IsTrue(Configuration.SummaryTypeDictionary.ContainsKey(typeof (long)));
type = Configuration.SummaryTypeDictionary[typeof (long)];
Assert.AreEqual(CustomSummaryType.Sum, type);
}
}
[TestMethod]
public void LookupAggregateTest()
{
DataView view = LookupCache.Get(LookupTables.AggregateFunction.ToString());
Assert.IsTrue(view.Count >= 6);
}
[TestMethod]
public void SetLookAndFeelTest()
{
var panel1 = new GroupControl();
var panel2 = new GroupControl();
panel1.Controls.Add(panel2);
var button = new SimpleButton();
panel2.Controls.Add(button);
Assert.AreNotEqual("Black", button.LookAndFeel.ActiveSkinName);
Assert.IsTrue(button.LookAndFeel.UseDefaultLookAndFeel);
SharedPresenter.SetBlackLookAndFeel(panel1);
Assert.AreEqual("Black", button.LookAndFeel.ActiveSkinName);
Assert.IsFalse(button.LookAndFeel.UseDefaultLookAndFeel);
}
[TestMethod]
public void QueryInfo_DBTest()
{
using (var info = new QueryInfo())
{
Assert.IsNotNull(info.DbService);
Assert.IsTrue(info.DbService is QueryInfo_DB);
}
}
internal static string GetLayoutXml(RamPivotGrid pivotGrid)
{
string streamXml;
using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
{
pivotGrid.SaveLayoutToStream(stream);
stream.Position = 0;
using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(stream))
{
streamXml = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
Console.WriteLine(@"in memory xml length={0}", streamXml.Length);
}
}
return streamXml;
}
private static void SetLayoutXml(PivotGridControl pivotGrid, string streamXml)
{
using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var streamWriter = new StreamWriter(stream))
{
streamWriter.Write(streamXml);
streamWriter.Flush();
stream.Position = 0;
Console.WriteLine(@"stream xml length={0}", stream.Length);
Assert.AreEqual(stream.Length, streamXml.Length);
pivotGrid.RestoreLayoutFromStream(stream);
}
}
}
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 6,410 |
{"url":"http:\/\/cooking.visualspace.nl\/post\/17390149\/none","text":"This code sets the default sites for a sites ManyToMany property of a model to Site.objects.all(). This could easily be changed to Site.objects.get_current() to use the current site as default.\nSurely, we should be able to use default=[Site.objects.get_current() in the model but apparently ...","date":"2019-08-20 07:33:01","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.31977808475494385, \"perplexity\": 1449.2433926813}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2019-35\/segments\/1566027315258.34\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20190820070415-20190820092415-00074.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
var map = new BMap.Map("allmap");
map.centerAndZoom(new BMap.Point(116.404, 39.915), 11);
map.addControl(new BMap.MapTypeControl());
map.setCurrentCity("北京");
map.enableScrollWheelZoom(true);
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 7,752 |
Gliatech Inc., a biotechnology firm in Beachwood, is renovating a 12,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Solon. The plant will produce its Adcon-L gel. Adcon-L is designed to prevent scarring after lower back surgery. The plant, which initially will employ less than 10, should be up and running in early 2000 after approval of plant operations by the Food and Drug Administration, according to the company. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 1,084 |
Q: Add another item to array associative in php im having some issues adding a new item to an associative array,
This is how i'm creating my structure:
$cpdata[$count] = array(
'value' => $value->value,
'images' => array(
'color' => $value->color,
'image' => $value->image,
),
);
and this is how it looks like when i output like a json:
{
"value": "BOX",
"images": {
"color": "white",
"image": "white.png"
}
}
But i would like to add more items to images somthing like this:
{
"value": "BOX",
"images": [
{
"color": "white",
"image": "white.png"
},
{
"color": "black",
"image": "black.png"
},
{
"color": "gray",
"image": "gray.png"
}
]
}
I've tried with array_push and array_merge but i cant get it
i've tried array_push($cpdata['images'][$count]['images'], 'color'=>'red', image' => 'red.png')
Could you please help me?
Regards
Mario
A: In context of PHP, what you have there is a JSON variable. If that is coming to you as a string you'll have to decode it first using json_decode($string);
Then you can set up an object, populate it with the image variables and write it back to the $json object as an array, like:
<?php
// example code
$json = <<<EOT
{
"value": "BOX",
"images": {
"color": "white",
"image": "white.png"
}
}
EOT;
$json = json_decode($json);
$i = new stdClass;
$i->color = $json->images->color;
$i->image = $json->images->image;
$json->images = array($i);
After that you can push to it like
$newimage = new stdClass;
$newimage->color = "foo";
$newimage->image = "bar";
$json->images[] = $newimage;
output
print_r($json);
stdClass Object
(
[value] => BOX
[images] => Array
(
[0] => stdClass Object
(
[color] => white
[image] => white.png
)
[1] => stdClass Object
(
[color] => foo
[image] => bar
)
)
)
example https://www.tehplayground.com/oBS1SN1ze1DsVmIn
A: Before converting into json
$cpdata[$count] = array(
'value' => $value->value,
'images' => array(
'color' => $value->color,
'image' => $value->image,
),
);
// Cpdata array has $count which has `images` as an array and we want to push another element(array) into images array
array_push($cpdata[$count]['images'], ['color'=>'red', 'image' => 'red.png']);
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 4,087 |
Q: Zend 2.0 query route Hello I am using ZendFramework 2.0 and I would like to set routing with query params. For example I would like something like that to get working.
I want route that will match .../foo?my_param=number but will not
match .../foo or .../foo?not_allowed_param=value
'type' => 'Literal',
'options' => array(
'route' => 'foo',
'defaults' => ...// Route to some error handler
'may_terminate' => true,
'child_routes' => array(
'query' => array(
// there is some query so route to my action
'type' => 'Query',
'options' => array(
'defaults' => array(
'controller' => 'index',
'action' => 'fooAction',
),
),
),
),
),
On the other side I want be able to use $this->url('.../foo', array('my_param' => 3))
Ofc that this does not work. I hope you get the idea what behaviour I expect.
Thanks for any help!
A: Your answer suggests use of GET parameters. You could check in the controller if the variables have been passed.
If you want to do it through the router (as Sam notes) you can set up a segment style router. This is explained at this link:
http://framework.zend.com/manual/2.0/en/modules/zend.mvc.routing.html
An example of how this could look is included below:
'YourName' => array(
'type' => 'segment',
'options' => array(
'route' => '/property/search[/:action]',
'constraints' => array(
'controller'=>'[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_-]*',
'action' => '[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_-]*',
),
'defaults' => array(
'controller' => 'Module\Controller\Controller',
'action' => 'index',
),
),
),
Segments in square brackets are considered optional.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 2,447 |
Canada's Thomson family sold more than half a million shares in Thomson Reuters for a total value of more than C$27 million.
The family, headed by Thomson Reuters chairman David Thomson (photo), owns about 58 per cent of the conglomerate, formed in 2008 when the Thomsons acquired Reuters.
Its investment company Woodbridge sold 515,000 TRI shares on Tuesday, the day the stock went ex-dividend for a quarterly payout of C$0.335 per share on 15 September to investors of record on 20 August. The shares were sold at an average price of C$53.40, for a total value of C$27,501,000.00.
In recent analyst research reports, Canadian broker TD Securities on 31 July raised Thomson Reuters from Hold to Buy and boosted its price target for the stock C$57.00 from C$52.00. On the same day, Scotiabank reiterated a Sector Perform rating on the shares.
Thomson Reuters shares traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange closed 2.66 per cent lower on Thursday, reaching C$51.90. The stock's 52-week range is C$39.45 to C$54.47. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 5,377 |
{"url":"https:\/\/dsp.stackexchange.com\/questions\/55136\/average-linear-phase-group-delay-how-can-be-calculated-given-a-signal-sample","text":"# average linear phase (group delay)- how can be calculated, given a signal samples at frequency F?\n\nAverage linear phase (group delay)- how can be calculated, given a signal samples at frequency F? The definition doesn't help since the frequency is constant:\n\n$$-[signalPhase(n)-signalPhase(n-1)]\/[frequency(n)-frequency(n-1)]$$\n\nat n's point of data\n\n(matlab function 'grpdelay' gave a result but how can it be calculated approximately?)\n\n\u2022 You way want to change the index of the signalPhase() from to $n$ o $n-1$ and put a minus sign in front of this, but other than that, this should work (provided signalPhase is properly unwrapped) \u2013\u00a0Hilmar Jan 28 '19 at 21:32\n\u2022 yes, a typo here I edited but it's not the issue. \u2013\u00a0student Jan 29 '19 at 3:31\n\u2022 Then you should be fine. What's your problem ? \u2013\u00a0Hilmar Jan 30 '19 at 13:17\n\n## 1 Answer\n\nThe group velocity or group delay is the derivative of the phase with respect to the frequency. Hence, if the frequency is constant, then the phase is constant with respect to the frequency, and group delay is 0.","date":"2021-02-26 00:34:52","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 1, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8915404677391052, \"perplexity\": 832.6991589642316}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": false}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-10\/segments\/1614178355944.41\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210226001221-20210226031221-00157.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
{"url":"https:\/\/library.kiwix.org\/ai.stackexchange.com_en_all_2020-10\/A\/question\/10329.html","text":"## How to define the final \/ terminal state for Q learning?\n\n3\n\nI'm training an agent using RL and the SARSA function to update a Q function, but I'm confused how you handle the final state. In this case when the game ends and there is no S'.\n\nFor example, the agent performed an action based on the state S, and because of that the agent won or lost and there is no S' to transition to. So how do you update the Q function with the very last reward in that scenario because the state hasn't actually changed. In that case S' would equal S even though an action was performed and the agent received a reward (they ultimately won or lost, so quite important update to make!).\n\nDo I add an extra inputs to the State agent_won and game_finished and that's the difference between S and S' for the final Q update?\n\nEDIT: to make clear this is in reference to a multi-agent\/player system. So the final action the agent takes could have a cost\/reward associated with it, but the subsequent actions other agents then take could further determine a greater gain or loss for this agent and whether it wins or loses. So the final state and chosen action, in effect, could generate different rewards without the agent taking further actions.\n\n3\n\nSee https:\/\/ai.stackexchange.com\/q\/3758\/1641. That question is about Sarsa rather than $Q$-learning, but exactly the same concept applies.\n\n\u2013 Dennis Soemers \u2013 2019-01-31T13:36:45.427\n\nPerfect, thanks Dennis. I am using SARSA to update a Q-function so my question is identical to that one. Taking what I learned there, I set my final reward (the final gain\/loss of the game) as the transition into the final state. I then add another state, set a flag on the state, e.g. agent_state depending on whether the agent won\/lost, and set the reward into that state as zero as we expect to receive zero reward in future as it's a terminal state. \u2013 BigBadMe \u2013 2019-01-31T13:47:45.883\n\nThat's one way to implement it yes, although arguably a bit \"hacky\". Quite often people implement two cases of the update rule: they explicitly check if the episode has ended (which in many formulations does actually involve reaching a terminal state $S'$ in which there are no more legal actions), and if so run the update rule with only the reward term (no $Q(S', A')$ term). If the episode has not yet ended, they run the normal update rule. Such an implementation may be slightly cleaner \/ more easily readable \/ more explicit. \u2013 Dennis Soemers \u2013 2019-01-31T13:53:15.907\n\nAh okay. So, say I know I'm transitioning to the final state, and there will be no S', instead of doing this: target = reward + self.y * np.max(self.model.predict(state_prime)) I do this: target = reward + self.y ? \u2013 BigBadMe \u2013 2019-01-31T13:58:17.787\n\n2I would say that there still is in fact an $S'$: that's your terminal state. However, there's no subsequent action $A'$ anymore, so that's why you can't compute $Q(S', A')$ anymore and simply set that term to $0$. Anyway... self.y, is that the discount factor $\\gamma$? If so, that shouldn't be added, since that gets multiplied by the \"fake\" $Q(S', A') = 0$. You'd just want target = reward. \u2013 Dennis Soemers \u2013 2019-01-31T14:15:40.917\n\n1You're a star, Dennis. Thanks so much for your help. \u2013 BigBadMe \u2013 2019-01-31T14:19:23.487\n\nI've thought about this a bit more, and the one problem here is, taking a specific action into the final state could have a cost (negative reward) attached, e.g. spending money to build a unit. Only once other players have performed their actions will I then ultimately know if there was a reward from performing the final action. 1\/2 \u2013 BigBadMe \u2013 2019-01-31T14:37:37.120\n\nSo it's almost as if two exact same states, taking the same action then ultimately produce different rewards, which was why I was thinking I'd need to add another state once the game has finished with the game result in order to differentiate between them in some way. So performing that last action and the cost\/reward, isn't actually the final interaction the agent has, because the agent could then receive a reward based on the other agents taking their own actions. It's a bit of an odd un... 2\/2 \u2013 BigBadMe \u2013 2019-01-31T14:38:24.147\n\n1My comments were assuming a traditional, single-agent Markov Decision Process. If you have two or more agents, and\/or other complicating factors, the implementation may have to change a bit. You can edit such details into your question, and I'll probably be able to have a look at that later today (or maybe someone else already does in the meantime) \u2013 Dennis Soemers \u2013 2019-01-31T14:42:21.663\n\n1I realise now I didn't make clear that it was multi-agent, sorry about that. I'll update my question, and if you have any thoughts how I could implement it then I'd certainly welcome the input. \u2013 BigBadMe \u2013 2019-01-31T14:59:20.393\n\n2\n\nThe Sarsa update rule looks like:\n\n$$Q(S, A) \\gets Q(S, A) + \\alpha \\left[ R + \\gamma Q(S', A') \\right].$$\n\nVery similar, the $$Q$$-learning update rule looks like:\n\n$$Q(S, A) \\gets Q(S, A) + \\alpha \\left[ R + \\gamma \\max_{A'} Q(S', A') \\right].$$\n\nBoth of these update rules are formulated for single-agent Markov Decision Processes. Sometimes you can make them work reasonably ok in Multi-Agent settings, but it is crucial to remember that these update rules should still always be implemented \"from the perspective\" of a single learning agent, who is oblivious to the presence of other agents and pretends them to be a part of the environment.\n\nWhat this means is that the states $$S$$ and $$S'$$ that you provide in update rules really must both be states in which the learning agent is allowed to make the next move (with the exception being that $$S'$$ is permitted to be a terminal game state.\n\nSo, suppose that you have three subsequent states $$S_1$$, $$S_2$$, and $$S_3$$, where the learning agent gets to select actions in states $$S_1$$ and $$S_3$$, and the opponent gets to select an action in state $$S_2$$. In the update rule, you should completely ignore $$S_2$$. This means that you should take $$S = S_1$$, and $$S' = S_3$$.\n\nFollowing the reasoning I described above literally may indeed lead to a tricky situation with rewards from transitioning into terminal states, since technically every episode there will be only one agent that directly causes the transition into a terminal state. This issue (plus also some of my explanation above being repeated) is discussed in the \"How to see terminal reward in self-play reinforcement learning?\" question on this site.\n\n1Thanks Dennis. I understand what you're saying, but my question is how does the agent receive the final reward, which could be ultimately determined by another player making a mistake with their action? In a literal sense, how do I perform the update in that scenario? I keep a list of all of the experience tuples (S,a,r,S'), and I only update them once the game is finished, so I could conceivably just add the ultimate reward to the existing reward value for the final S a S' transition. Would that work? I must somehow give the final reward to the agent, I'm just not sure how... \u2013 BigBadMe \u2013 2019-01-31T20:35:19.667\n\n2@BigBadMe Yes, with the standard Sarsa\/$Q$-learning updates you simply give \"credit\" for the final reward (i.e. the win\/loss) to the last transition caused by your learning agent. For these algorithms to be applicable, you have to pretend that there is no other agent, they're just a part of \"the environment\" and any actions they select are just a part of \"the environment's transition dynamics\". That may not be ideal, but that's how it works when you try to apply a single-agent algorithm to a multi-agent setting. It may still work out in practice (especially with a proper self-play setup). \u2013 Dennis Soemers \u2013 2019-01-31T20:46:32.243\n\n2Perfect, I think I have the pieces put together now. Thanks again for all your input on this, much appreciated. If find this whole field absolutely fascinating, I really enjoy learning about it! \u2013 BigBadMe \u2013 2019-01-31T22:14:43.773","date":"2021-07-31 00:32:04","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 15, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.6637542247772217, \"perplexity\": 757.5455047903091}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-31\/segments\/1627046154032.75\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210730220317-20210731010317-00217.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
package firewall
import (
"fmt"
"config"
"plugins"
"entity"
)
const name string = "firewall"
type FirewallPlugin struct {
cxt *config.Context
}
func (h *FirewallPlugin) Init(cxt *config.Context) (err error) {
h.cxt = cxt
h.cxt.Channels.Log <- fmt.Sprintf("Init Plugin %s", name)
return nil
}
func (h *FirewallPlugin) Run() (err error) {
return nil
}
func (h *FirewallPlugin) Call(command *entity.Command) (result *entity.CommandResult, err error) {
return nil, nil
}
func (h *FirewallPlugin) Destory() (err error) {
return nil
}
func init() {
plugins.Register(name, new(FirewallPlugin))
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 7,600 |
Remarks: Don't miss out on this waterfront lot in Bayport, FL!( It includes both parcel 13 and 14.) Tis vacant land is close to the Bayport Marina and Weeki Wachee Springs. You can enjoy all Florida has to offer paddle-boarding, kayaking, scallpoing right out your front door. (Lots 4 and 5 on Benview Ave. directly behind these lots are also for sale) Buy Land-They aren't Making it Anymore! | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} | 1,616 |
seele implements connecting bridge as steel-glass construction
06/08/2021 Two specialist disciplines come together in skybridges: bridge-building and façade construction. With the erection of the 35m long Capricorn Bridge, façade specialist seele once again demonstrated its expertise in the implementation of connecting bridges.
With its unusual shape, the bridge's steel and glass construction sets a design accent in Düsseldorf's Media Harbour. Once again, this demonstrated seele's in-depth knowledge of materials, structural design and ingenious erection concept in the construction of footbridges.
Floating Capricorn Bridge
The unusual, apparently floating design of Capricorn Bridge is due to the bridge structure based on a framework of tubes and the arrangement of trapezoidal and triangular insulating glass units. According to the design of architects SUPERGELB Architekten (former Gatermann + Schossig), seele designed a space frame, as this footbridge was built subsequently and does not transfer any loads to the buildings it connects. It was commissioned by Projektgesellschaft Pirol Holzstraße GmbH + CO now connects the "Float" office building with Capricorn House on the opposite side of the road. Therefore, the structure consists of a central pier and two arms. All the loads are carried by the central pier, which is made up of 13 circular columns that are anchored in the subsoil via three bored piles. The bridge structure itself consists of a framework of tubular members: eight steel polygons plus longitudinal and diagonal members as the loadbearing steel framework for the glazing. Structural engineers for this project were osd (office for structural design) and Wilhelm & Partner.
The bridge was erected by seele in three segments. To do this, the central pier and middle part of the bridge structure were delivered to site prefabricated in three pieces, then placed on temporary supports before being lifted into position. Once the central pier had been anchored, the two prefabricated cantilevering bridge arms, weighing 12 and 26t, were lifted into position and secured in just one weekend. All glazing works for the bridge, involving about 60 elements in sizes up to 8.1 x 3m, and the central pier were completed very quickly. The unusual feature here is the triangular panes with acute angles plus their restraint-free support concept allowing for the significant deformations of the bridge compared with traditional façade construction. The central pier supports the cantilevering bridge arms – 12m to Capricorn House and 20m to the "Float" building.
Shaping Structural concepts
The structural concept is one key factor that defines the design. At the same time, user requirements (clear width/headroom, barrier-free layout, non-slip surfaces) and the building physics specification for the "bridge façade" (thermal/sound insulation, etc.) must be taken into account. One of the greatest challenges is achieving a precisely detailed transition to the building.
Building envelope made of brass and glass: CF TEC Bridge
The CF TEC Bridge in Toronto, realized in 2017, shows that seele is a specialist when it comes to filigree construction and outstanding execution quality. The footbridge made of brass and glass and designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects, today, CF TEC Bridge links the Hudson's Bay Shopping Mall and the Toronto Eaton Centre (TEC).
The scope of seele's work covered the design, production and erection of the laminated glass, commercial bronze plates, handrails, stainless steel flooring and structural steelwork. The initially twisted brass portal frames at the Hudson's Bay building end resolve into a stricter glass design language that blends in with the modern architecture of the TEC building, thus creating an apparently fluid transition between the two buildings. Owing to the challenging shape of the steel-and-glass structure, every brass plate was a one-off in terms of its geometry and the milling work required. Circular ornamentation was milled into the plates during the fabrication work before they were treated in an acid bath to achieve the bronze-coloured patina.
Erection in one piece
seele's ingenious erection concepts and detailed planning result in trouble-free transportation of the bridge and positioning with millimetre accuracy on the supports on the buildings.
Bridge as building envelope
Footbridges and their building envelope made by seele were based on different approaches and demonstrate the diversity in terms of the configurations and materials used for modern skybridges. Such bold designs are only possible with good interdisciplinary cooperation between owner, architect and engineer in combination with very latest design and production methods.
Capricorn Bridge: Floating Building Envelope at Düsseldorf's Media Harbour ©HG Esch
Press Release DE (pdf)
Press Release EN (pdf)
Capricorn Bridge: frames ©HG Esch (jpg)
Capricon Bridge: erection ©HG Esch (jpg)
Capricorn Bridge ©HG Esch (jpg)
TEC Bridge: mock-up ©seele (jpg)
TEC Bridge ©Sight on Site Inc. (jpg)
Your contact for media and public relations
MBA, Dipl.-Kommunikations-Designerin
Christine Schauer
christine.schauer(at)seele.com | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} | 2,922 |
Alterosa es un municipio brasileño del estado de Minas Gerais. Se localiza en los márgenes del Lago de Furnas y pertenece a la región administrativa de Alfenas/Varginha, en el sur de Minas. Su población recensada en 2010 era de 13.714 habitantes.
La sede del municipio se encuentra a 21° 14' 45'' de latitud sur y 46º 08' 30'' de longitud oeste, en la región sur del Estado de Minas Gerais. Posee una superficie de 367 km² y pertenece a la Asociación de los Municipios de la Micro Región de la Baja Mogiana, con sede en Guaxupé.
Referencias
Enlaces externos
Alterosa/MG en el MuniNet: Red Brasileña para el Desarrollo Municipal
Localidades de Minas Gerais | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 3,105 |
\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:introduction}
The observed neutrino oscillations \cite{Lipari:677618} suggest the possibility of charged lepton-flavor-violating (LFV) decays. Such decays are, however, strongly suppressed by the neutrino mass-squared differences and their predicted branching fractions \cite{Petcov:1976ff,Hernandez-Tome:2018fbq} are many orders of magnitude smaller than the present experimental limits \cite{Bellgardt:1987du,TheMEG:2016wtm}. Absence of a significant source of lepton-flavor violation in the Standard Model (SM) provides a strong motivation for searching for LFV processes as any observable LFV signal must come from physics beyond SM (BSM).
Axion-Like Particles (ALPs) are pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons that appear as a result of the spontaneous breaking of the anomalous $U(1)_{\mathrm{PQ}}$ symmetry \cite{Peccei:1977hh,DiLuzio:2020wdo,Brivio:2017ije}. These particles have found various applications in many areas of physics. ALPs provide a solution to the strong CP problem if they couple to gluons \cite{Dine:2000cj,Hook:2018dlk}. They can be good candidates for non-thermal Dark Matter (DM) \cite{Preskill:1982cy,Abbott:1982af,Dine:1982ah}. Furthermore, ALPs can be used to explain the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry \cite{Jeong:2018jqe,Co:2019wyp}. A significant region of the ALPs parameter space has already been constrained or will be accessible by future searches \cite{Mimasu:2014nea,Bauer:2017ris,Aloni:2019ruo,Haghighat:2020nuh,Ebadi:2019gij,Inan:2020aal}.
ALPs can have non-zero charged LFV couplings leading to observable BSM signals. As an example of the applications of such ALPs, it is worth mentioning that they provide a possibility to explain the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of muon \cite{Bauer:2019gfk,Cornella:2019uxs}. These ALPs can be produced through the LFV decays of the SM leptons $\tau$ and $\mu$. If kinematically allowed and if relevant ALP couplings are non-zero, the produced ALPs can decay into the SM particles. The LFV ALPs parameter space in terms of the ALP mass and its LFV couplings to the SM charged leptons have been probed to some extent in recent decades \cite{Bauer:2019gfk,ARGUSlimit,Baldini:2020okg,Aad:2019ugc,Calibbi:2020jvd}. In particular, the ALP-tau-electron and ALP-tau-muon couplings have been constrained for a wide range of ALP masses including the relatively light ALPs with masses $m_a\leq 1$ MeV \cite{Bauer:2019gfk,ARGUSlimit}. Constraints on these LFV couplings for light ALPs have been derived from collider searches for the LFV tau decay $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$, where $a$ denotes the ALP. Light ALPs can only decay into a photon pair. The ALP coupling to photons is, however, strongly constrained \cite{Bauer:2017ris} and therefore, the majority of ALPs produced at a collider escape the detector before they decay. Searches for light ALPs produced in the LFV decays of the tau lepton at colliders are, therefore, based on the $e/\mu + \slashed{E}$ signature. The big challenge in these searches is to overcome the huge background from the SM tau decay $\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$.
In general, the differential decay rate of the tau lepton into an electron (or a muon) and an ALP depends on the polarization direction of the decaying tau lepton. This is also the case for the SM decay $\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$. Comparing the properties of the polarized LFV and SM tau decays provides a way to discriminate the LFV signal from the SM background based on polarization-induced effects. Previous collider searches for LFV ALPs have not utilized such effects and are generally based on unpolarized decays. In this work, in addition to studying the unpolarized tau decays, we also consider the polarization-induced effects in polarized decays of the tau lepton and show that utilizing such effects can improve the sensitivity of the search significantly. We search for ALPs produced through the muon-anti muon annihilation into a tau pair followed by the LFV decay $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$. We study both the $e^\pm+ a$ and $\mu^\pm+ a$ final states of the tau decay and compute the expected upper limits on the ALP-tau-muon and ALP-tau-electron couplings. Taking the effects from the tau polarization into account, the limits become sensitive to the chiral structure assumed for the LFV ALP coupling. We assume three different chiral structures, i.e. the ALP coupling to right-handed leptons (V+A), the ALP coupling to left-handed leptons (V-A) and the ALP with a non-chiral coupling to the SM leptons (V/A), and study them independently. Finally, comparing the obtained expected limits on the LFV couplings with present experimental limits, we will show that the analysis presented in this study is capable of improving the present experimental limits by roughly one order of magnitude.
We assume a future muon collider suggested by the Muon Accelerator Program (MAP) \cite{muoncollider2,muoncollider1}. Muon colliders offer considerable advantages over other proposed alternatives \cite{Ali:2021xlw}. Searching for BSM signals at muon colliders is mostly motivated by the fact that they provide a relatively clean environment with less background compared with the hadron colliders, and that muon colliders are much more efficient than electron-positron colliders as muon beams produce very small synchrotron radiation compared with electron beams. Furthermore, unlike the hadron colliders, there is no ambiguity about energies of the colliding particles at a muon collider.
This paper is structured as follows: In Section \ref{sec:lagrangian}, we provide the theoretical framework for LFV ALPs. In Section \ref{sec:productionprocess}, we discuss the ALP production process and its main SM background assuming a muon collider. In particular, in Section \ref{sec:mumutautau}, we discuss the main properties of the muon-anti muon annihilation into a tau pair process for the two cases of unpolarized and polarized muon beams, and in Sections \ref{sec:BSMtaudecay} and \ref{sec:SMtaudecay}, we focus on the LFV and SM tau decays $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$ and $\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$. In Section \ref{sec:muoncollider}, we provide the basic information regarding the assumed future muon collider. In Section \ref{sec:eventgeneration}, SM background processes relevant to the ALP production process and the event generation method are discussed. Sections \ref{sec:eventselection} and \ref{sec:analysis} are respectively devoted to the employed event selection and event analysis methods, and Section \ref{sec:prospects} provides the prospects for upper limits on the ALP LFV couplings.
\section{Lepton-flavor-violating ALPs}
\label{sec:lagrangian}
Incorporating the anomalous global $U\mathrm{(1)}_{\mathrm{PQ}}$ symmetry in the SM Lagrangian, originally suggested by Peccei and Quinn, provides a way to address some of the SM problems \cite{Peccei:1977hh,DiLuzio:2020wdo}. The $U\mathrm{(1)}_{\mathrm{PQ}}$ symmetry is spontaneously broken and the resultant pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson is called ALP \cite{Brivio:2017ije}. ALPs are scalar, odd under the CP transformation, and derivatively coupled to the SM fermions. Unlike the Axion mass, the mass of the ALP is not related to its couplings and hence the ALP is theoretically allowed to have a wide range of masses. The interaction of an ALP with two charged SM leptons with different flavors is described by the effective Lagrangian \cite{Bauer:2019gfk,Calibbi:2020jvd}
\begin{align}
& \mathcal{L}_{\rm eff} =
\sum_{i\ne j}\frac{\partial_\mu a}{2 f_a} \, \bar \ell_i \gamma^\mu (c^V_{\ell_i \ell_j} + c^A_{\ell_i \ell_j} \gamma_5 ) \ell_j \, ,
\label{lagrangian}
\end{align}
where $f_a$ is the scale associated with the breakdown of the global PQ symmetry, $c^{V,A}_{\ell_i \ell_j}$ are hermitian matrices in flavor space and $i,j$ run over the integers $1,2,3$ with $\ell_i=e,\mu,\tau$. The charged LFV processes governed by the above Lagrangian can have different properties depending on the assumed chiral structure. We consider the three cases
\begin{itemize}
\item V+A: the ALP couples to right-handed leptons, i.e. $c_{\ell_i \ell_j}\equiv c^{V}_{\ell_i \ell_j}=c^A_{\ell_i \ell_j}$\,,
\item V$-$A: the ALP couples to left-handed leptons, i.e. $c_{\ell_i \ell_j}\equiv c^{V}_{\ell_i \ell_j}=-c^A_{\ell_i \ell_j}$\,,
\item V/A: either $c_{\ell_i \ell_j}\equiv c^{V}_{\ell_i \ell_j}\neq 0, c^{A}_{\ell_i \ell_j}=0$ or $c_{\ell_i \ell_j}\equiv c^{A}_{\ell_i \ell_j}\neq 0, c^{V}_{\ell_i \ell_j}=0$\,,
\end{itemize}
and study each case independently. We assume no leptonic couplings for the ALP other than the couplings in Eq. \ref{lagrangian}. To ensure the validity of the effective Lagrangian, the symmetry breaking scale $f_a$ is required to be much larger than the typical energy scale of the processes under consideration. If kinematically allowed, LFV ALPs can be produced through LFV decays of the SM leptons, e.g. $\tau^\pm\rightarrow e^\pm\,a$ and $\tau^\pm\rightarrow\mu^\pm\,a$. In this study, the ALP mass $m_a$ is assumed to be in the range 100 eV to 1 MeV. Such decays are always possible in this mass range.
The produced ALP can decay into visible SM particles if relevant ALP couplings are assumed to be non-zero and if the decay is kinematically allowed. With the assumed ALP mass range $100\ \mathrm{eV}\leq m_a \leq 1\ \mathrm{MeV}$, the ALP decay is kinematically restricted and the ALP can only decay into a pair of photons. Assuming a non-zero ALP-photon coupling $c_{\gamma\gamma}$, the width of the ALP decay into a pair of photons is given by \cite{Bauer:2017ris}
\begin{equation}
\Gamma(a \rightarrow \gamma\gamma) = \frac{m_a^3}{4\pi} \Bigl(\frac{c_{\gamma\gamma}}{f_a}\Bigr)^2.
\label{widtha2gaga}
\end{equation}
The cubic dependence of the decay width on the ALP mass implies that the di-photon decay mode is substantially suppressed for light ALPs. Light ALPs, if produced at a collider, are therefore likely to escape the detector before they decay. Using Eq. \ref{widtha2gaga}, the ALP decay length $L_a$ is obtained to be
\begin{equation}
L_a = \gamma\beta\tau = \frac{|\vec{p}_a|}{m_a}\frac{1}{\Gamma(a\rightarrow\gamma\gamma)} = \frac{4\pi}{m_a^4}\Bigl(\frac{ f_a}{c_{\gamma\gamma}}\Bigr)^2 |\vec{p}_a|\,,
\label{estimate1}
\end{equation}
where $\gamma$ is the usual boost factor, $\tau$ is the ALP proper lifetime, $\beta$ is the ALP speed and $\vec{p}_a$ is the three-momentum of the ALP. The region $c_{\gamma\gamma}/f_a>10^{-8}$ TeV$^{-1}$ of the ALP parameter space has been experimentally excluded \cite{Bauer:2017ris} for the ALP mass range considered in this work. As a result, using Eq. \ref{estimate1} and assuming an ALP mass of 1 MeV, one finds
\begin{equation}
L_a > \left(\frac{2.3\,|\vec{p}_a|}{\mathrm{GeV}}\right) 10^{19} \,\mathrm{m}\, .
\label{estimate2}
\end{equation}
$|\vec{p}_a|$ depends on the experimental setup. In a collider experiment, it varies with the center-of-mass energy, applied triggers, etc. Assuming that $|\vec{p}_a|$ is of the order of magnitude of 10 GeV or larger (which is typical at high energy colliders), one finds $L_a > 2.3\times10^{20}\,\mathrm{m}$. This lower limit implies that the ALPs travel a distance many orders of magnitude larger than the typical size of a detector ($\sim 10\,\mathrm{m}$) before they decay. Such ALPs manifest themselves as missing energy. As seen in Eq. \ref{estimate1}, the decay length is inversely related to $m_a^4$. Consequently, an ALP lighter than 1 MeV has larger decay length and therefore more tendency to escape the detector. Although the majority of the ALPs are invisible at the detector, one should consider the effect of the small fraction of ALPs which decay before leaving the detector. The probability that the ALP decays inside the detector $P_a^{\mathrm{\,det}}$ is given by
\begin{equation}
P_a^{\mathrm{\,det}}=1-e^{-L_{\mathrm{det}}/L_a},
\label{adecaylengthprob}
\end{equation}
where $L_{\mathrm{det}}$ is the distance of the calorimeter from the collision point. We take into account the effect of decaying ALPs in an event-by-event manner in this work.
\section{ALP production through $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$, $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$}
\label{sec:productionprocess}
LFV ALPs described by Eq. \ref{lagrangian} can be produced through the process $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$ with one of the tau leptons undergoing the decay $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$ and the other one undergoing a SM decay. Fig. \ref{feynmanDiagrams} shows Feynman diagrams contributing to this process.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.36\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{feyn1}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.36\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{feyn2}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{Feynman diagrams for the process $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$ followed by the LFV decay $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$.}
\label{feynmanDiagrams}
\end{figure}
Among SM backgrounds relevant to this process, the $\tau^+\tau^-$ production followed by the leptonic decay of one of the tau leptons ($\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$) is the most important one. In what follows in this section, we summarize main features of the assumed ALP production process and its dominant SM background, and then demonstrate that the kinematical variables of the final state lepton in the polarized tau decays $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$ and $\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$ can be utilized to reduce the $\tau^+\tau^-$ background.
\subsection{Tau pair production through $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$}
\label{sec:mumutautau}
The process of muon-antimuon annihilation into a tau pair proceeds through a $Z/\gamma/h$ $s$-channel mediator as seen in Fig. \ref{feynmanDiagrams}. How much each of the mediators contributes to the total cross section varies with the center-of-mass energy and the polarizations of the colliding muon beams. Each of the initial and final state leptons in this process can either be in a left- or right-handed helicity state, leading to 16 distinct helicity combinations. In general, all of the helicity combinations contribute to the process. However, in the ultra-relativistic limit, where the energy of the particles is much larger than their mass ($m_\tau\ll E_\tau$), the chiral and helicity eigenstates become identical and therefore, only four helicity combinations have non-zero contributions (other combinations are substantially suppressed by a factor of $m_\tau/E_\tau$). This is a consequence of the fact that only certain combinations of chiral eigenstates contribute to the interaction (this statement holds always, not only in the ultra-relativistic limit). Allowed helicity combinations in the ultra-relativistic limit are provided in Fig. \ref{helicityCombinations}. As seen, the outgoing tau leptons have opposite helicities.
Parity conservation is violated in the production and decay of the $Z$ boson leading to asymmetries in the final state tau leptons. Asymmetry properties of the tau leptons can be understood using the asymmetry observables, i.e. forward-backward asymmetry $A_{\mathrm{FB}}$, polarization asymmetry $P_\tau$, forward (backward) polarization asymmetry $P_\tau^{\mathrm{F}}$ ($P_\tau^{\mathrm{B}}$ ) and forward-backward polarization asymmetry $A_{\mathrm{FB}}^{\mathrm{P}_\tau}$. Forward-backward asymmetry is defined as
\begin{equation}
A_{\mathrm{FB}}=\frac{\sigma^{\mathrm{F}}-\sigma^{\mathrm{B}}}{\sigma_{\mathrm{total}}} \, ,
\label{eq:afb}
\end{equation}
where the total cross section ${\sigma_{\mathrm{total}}}={\sigma^{\mathrm{F}}+\sigma^{\mathrm{B}}}$, and $\sigma^{\mathrm{F}}$ and $\sigma^{\mathrm{B}}$ are given by
\begin{eqnarray}
\begin{aligned}
\sigma^{\mathrm{F}}=\sigma(h_{\tau^-}=+1,\cos\alpha>0)+\sigma(h_{\tau^-}=-1,\cos\alpha>0)\, ,
\\
\sigma^{\mathrm{B}}=\sigma(h_{\tau^-}=+1,\cos\alpha<0)+\sigma(h_{\tau^-}=-1,\cos\alpha<0)\, ,
\label{eq:sigmafb}
\end{aligned}
\end{eqnarray}
with $h_{\tau^-}$ being the helicity of the $\tau^-$ and $\alpha$ the angle between the momentum of the outgoing $\tau^-$ and the momentum of the incoming $\mu^-$ (see Fig. \ref{helicityCombinations}). The polarization asymmetry for the $\tau^-$ and $\tau^+$ is defined as
\begin{eqnarray}
\begin{aligned}
P_{\tau^-}=\frac{(\sigma_{++}+\sigma_{+-})-(\sigma_{-+}+\sigma_{--})}{\sigma_{\mathrm{total}}}\, ,
\\
P_{\tau^+}=\frac{(\sigma_{++}+\sigma_{-+})-(\sigma_{+-}+\sigma_{--})}{\sigma_{\mathrm{total}}}\, ,
\label{eq:ptau+-}
\end{aligned}
\end{eqnarray}
where $\sigma_{++}$, $\sigma_{+-}$, $\sigma_{-+}$ and $\sigma_{--}$ are the cross sections corresponding to the four allowed helicity combinations of the tau pair denoted as
\begin{equation}
h_{\tau-}h_{\tau+}=++, +-, -+, -- \, .
\label{eq:taupairhelicityCombinations}
\end{equation}
In the ultra-relativistic limit, $\sigma_{++}$ and $\sigma_{--}$ are negligible and it follows from Eq. \ref{eq:ptau+-} that
\begin{equation}
P_{\tau-}=-P_{\tau+} \, .
\end{equation}
The $\tau^-$ polarization asymmetry will hereafter be referred to as polarization asymmetry $P_\tau\equiv P_{\tau^-}$. The forward and backward polarization asymmetries are defined as
\begin{eqnarray}
\begin{aligned}
P_\tau^{\mathrm{F}}=\frac{\sigma^{\mathrm{F}}(h_\tau=+1)-\sigma^{\mathrm{F}}(h_\tau=-1)}{\sigma^{\mathrm{F}}}\, ,
\\
P_\tau^{\mathrm{B}}=\frac{\sigma^{\mathrm{B}}(h_\tau=+1)-\sigma^{\mathrm{B}}(h_\tau=-1)}{\sigma^{\mathrm{B}}}\, ,
\label{eq:ptaufb}
\end{aligned}
\end{eqnarray}
and finally, the forward-backward polarization asymmetry is given by
\begin{equation}
A_{\mathrm{FB}}^{\mathrm{P}_\tau}=\frac{[\sigma^{\mathrm{F}}(h_\tau=+1)-\sigma^{\mathrm{F}}(h_\tau=-1)] - [\sigma^{\mathrm{B}}(h_\tau=+1)-\sigma^{\mathrm{B}}(h_\tau=-1)]}{\sigma_{\mathrm{total}}}\, .
\label{eq:aptaufb}
\end{equation}
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.55\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{helicityCombinations}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{Helicity combinations contributing to the process $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$ in the limit $m_\tau\ll E_\tau$. Hollow (red) arrows show the direction of the momentum (spin) of particles. RR, RL, LR and LL denote the helicity of the incoming $\mu^-$ and the outgoing $\tau^-$.}
\label{helicityCombinations}
\end{figure}
Useful information can be extracted from the asymmetry variables introduced above. Simulating the $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$ process with the use of \texttt{MadGraph5\_aMC@NLO} \cite{Alwall:2011uj}, the results provided in Fig. \ref{tauAsymmetries} are obtained for the variables defined through Eqs. \ref{eq:afb}-\ref{eq:aptaufb}.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{tauAsymmetriesNewLegend}
\caption{Asymmetry variables of the tau leptons produced in the process $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$ assuming the center-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s}=126, 350, 1500$ GeV. Solid lines show the variables assuming unpolarized muon beams, dashed lines show the variables assuming that the $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam is $+0.8$ ($-0.8$) polarized and dotted lines show the variables assuming the $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam to be $-0.8$ ($+0.8$) polarized. Different colors correspond to different asymmetry variables.}
\label{tauAsymmetries}
\end{figure}
The obtained results correspond to the center-of-mass energies of 126, 350 and 1500 GeV. These center-of-mass energies have been proposed for a future muon collider as discussed in more details in Section \ref{sec:muoncollider}. Asymmetry variables have been computed for three different cases of the polarization of the initial muon beams, i.e. unpolarized beams, longitudinally polarized beams with $+0.8$ ($-0.8$) polarization for the $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam and longitudinally polarized beams with $-0.8$ ($+0.8$) polarization for the $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam (assuming that the beam polarization varies in the range $-1$ to $+1$). Positive and negative polarization signs denote the right- and left-handed helicity states, respectively. As seen, the forward-backward asymmetry $A_{\mathrm{FB}}$ changes very slightly with the polarization of the muon beams and varies in a range roughly between 0.45 and 0.7 for different center-of-mass energies. The majority of the $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons are therefore emitted in the forward (backward) direction with respect to the momentum direction of the initial $\mu^-$ beam. This is an important feature, especially when the polarization asymmetry properties are considered. The polarization asymmetry variables $P_\tau$, $P_\tau^{\mathrm{F}}$, $P_\tau^{\mathrm{B}}$ and $A_{\mathrm{FB}}^{\mathrm{P}_\tau}$ are sensitive to the polarization of the initial muon beams. Let's concentrate on the results obtained for the unpolarized muon beams case and the case with $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam being $+0.8$ ($-0.8$) polarized. As seen, the polarization asymmetry $P_\tau$ is always negative in the unpolarized case, while it is always positive with values roughly between $+0.55$ and $+0.95$ in the polarized muon beams case. The $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons are therefore $+0.55$ to $+0.95$ ($-0.55$ to $-0.95$) polarized on average in the polarized case. $P_\tau$ shows the average behavior of the polarization and doesn't depend on the momentum direction of the outgoing tau leptons. However, as the majority of the $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons are forwardly (backwardly) emitted, we are more interested in the forward polarization asymmetry $P_\tau^{\mathrm{F}}$ which shows the behavior of the polarization of the $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons emitted forwardly (backwardly). As seen, $P_\tau^{\mathrm{F}}$ is negative ($>-0.2$) in the unpolarized case, while it is positive with values roughly in the range $+0.90$ to $+0.98$ with polarized muon beams. This means that the $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons emitted forwardly (backwardly), which constitute the majority of the produced $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons, are highly polarized with a polarization roughly between $+0.90$ and $+0.98$ ($-0.90$ and $-0.98$) in the polarized muon beams case. This is an important feature of the $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$ process at the considered center-of-mass energies because it provides a way to produce highly polarized tau leptons. As it will be discussed in the rest of this section, kinematical variables of the tau decay (in both the $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$ and $\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$ decay modes) depend on the tau polarization and can be utilized to improve the search for the new physics decay $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$. The mean polarization of the backwardly (forwardly) emitted $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) is given by the backward polarization asymmetry $P_\tau^{\mathrm{B}}$. As seen, $P_\tau^{\mathrm{B}}$ is always negative ($>-0.2$) for unpolarized muon beams. In the case of polarized beams, it is $\approx +0.7$ at the center-of-mass energy of 126 GeV and roughly in the range $-0.3$ to $-0.2$ at the center-of-mass energies of 350 and 1500 GeV. The backwardly (forwardly) emitted $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons are not highly polarized at the center-of-mass energies of 350 and 1500 GeV and are therefore of no interest if one aims at utilizing the tau polarization to discriminate between the new physics and the SM decays of the tau lepton. This is, however, not the case at the center-of-mass energy of 126 GeV where the mean polarization of the backwardly (forwardly) emitted $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) is $\approx +0.7$ ($-0.7$). At this center-of-mass energy, the polarization asymmetry $P_\tau>+0.9$ and is much higher than the polarization asymmetry at other center-of-mass energies.
Dotted lines in Fig. \ref{tauAsymmetries} show that highly polarized tau leptons with a similar degree of polarization can also be produced assuming reverse polarizations for the initial muon beams, i.e. $-0.8$ ($+0.8$) polarization for $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam. As will be discussed, both cases considered for the muon beams polarization are expected to be equally useful in the search for LFV decays of the tau lepton. Comparing asymmetry variables obtained at different center-of-mass energies, it is seen that, going from $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV to $\sqrt{s}=1500$ GeV, the asymmetry variables experience slight changes. This is the case for both the unpolarized and polarized muon beams cases. The asymmetry variables obtained at $\sqrt{s}=126$ GeV are, however, substantially different from the asymmetry variables at 350 and 1500 GeV center-of-mass energies.
\subsection{Lepton-flavor-violating $\tau\ra e/\mu+a$ decay}
\label{sec:BSMtaudecay}
The products of the two-body decay $\tau\ra \ell\, a$ ($\ell=e,\mu$) are monoenergetic in the $\tau$ rest frame with
\begin{equation}
p_{\ell}= \sqrt{ \left(\frac{m_\tau^2+m_{\ell}^2-m_a^2}{2 m_\tau}\right)^2-m_{\ell}^2}\, ,
\label{eq:mono}
\end{equation}
where $p_{\ell}$ represents the momentum of the final state lepton. If $m_{a}\ll m_\tau$, one finds $E_{\ell}\simeq m_\tau/2$, where $E_{\ell}$ denotes the energy of the final state lepton. As the decay products appear in a back-to-back configuration, the ALP has the same momentum as the lepton $\ell$. Neglecting the mass of the final state lepton, the corresponding rest frame differential decay width is given by \cite{Calibbi:2020jvd}
\begin{align}
\label{eq:decayBSM}
\frac{\text{d} \Gamma(\tau^\pm \to \ell^\pm \, a)}{\text{d}\cos\theta} = \frac{m_{\tau}^3}{128 \pi f_a^2 } \left( 1 - \frac{m_a^2}{m_{\tau}^2} \right)^2 \left({ \vert c_{\tau \ell }^V\vert^2 + \vert c_{\tau \ell }^A\vert^2 } \mp 2 \mathcal{P}_{\tau} \cos \theta \, {\text{Re}(c_{\tau \ell }^V c_{\tau \ell }^{A*})} \right) \, ,
\end{align}
where $\mathcal{P}_{\tau}$ (defined in the range 0-1) is the degree of polarization of tau leptons and $\theta$ is the angle between the momentum of the final state lepton and the polarization vector of the decaying tau in the tau rest frame. According to Eq. \ref{eq:decayBSM}, the three assumed chiral structures for the LFV coupling of the ALP (see Section \ref{sec:lagrangian}) lead to the distinct angular distributions
\begin{align}
\frac{\text{d} \Gamma(\tau^\pm \to \ell^\pm \, a)}{\text{d}\cos\theta} = \frac{m_{\tau}^3}{128 \pi f_a^2 } \left( 1 - \frac{m_a^2}{m_{\tau}^2} \right)^2 \times\left\{
\begin{array}{ll}
\medskip
2c_{\tau \ell }^2\left(1 \mp \mathcal{P}_{\tau} \cos \theta \, \right) \,\,\,\,\,\,\, \mathrm{V\!+\!A} \\ \medskip
2c_{\tau \ell }^2\left(1 \pm \mathcal{P}_{\tau} \cos \theta \, \right) \,\,\,\,\,\,\, \mathrm{V\!-\!A} \\
c_{\tau \ell }^2 \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \mathrm{V/A} \\
\end{array}
\right. .
\label{eq:decaychiral}
\end{align}
Eq. \ref{eq:decaychiral} shows some qualitative features which we summarize in what follows. In the first two cases, the angular distribution of the final state lepton depends on the polarization of the decaying tau lepton. In the V+A case, the angular distribution of the final state lepton coming from the $\tau^\pm$ decay is proportional to $1 \mp \mathcal{P}_{\tau} \cos \theta$. This implies that the positively charged $\ell^+$ final state lepton coming from the $\tau^+$ decay is more likely to be emitted in the backward direction relative to the tau lepton polarization. On the other hand, the negatively charged $\ell^-$ lepton is more likely to be emitted in the forward direction. This angular orientation is exactly reversed for the V$-$A case since the respective angular distributions in the V+A and V$-$A cases only differ in the sign of $\theta$ dependent term. To be more precise, in the V$-$A case, the $\ell^+$ lepton from the $\tau^+$ decay is more likely to be emitted in the forward direction, and the $\ell^-$ lepton is more likely to be emitted in the backward direction. In the third case, the two choices $c^{V}_{\tau \ell}\neq0 \ \mathrm{and} \ c^A_{\tau \ell}\neq0$ lead to the same differential decay width. Furthermore, the angular distribution of the final state lepton is isotropic and does not depend on the polarization of the decaying tau lepton.
Fig. \ref{xsec} shows the cross section of the ALP production through the process $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$ with the subsequent decays $\tau^\pm\ra \mathrm{SM}$ and $\tau^\mp\ra e^\pm\,a$ against $c_{\tau e}/f_a$. Cross sections have been obtained using \texttt{MadGraph5\_aMC@NLO} (see Section \ref{sec:eventgeneration} for further details). Different center-of-mass energies and the two cases of unpolarized and polarized muon beams are assumed. Moreover, it is assumed that the ALP couples to right-handed leptons.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{xsec}
\caption{Cross section of the ALP production through the process $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$ followed by the decays $\tau^\pm\ra \mathrm{SM}$ and $\tau^\mp\ra e^\pm\,a$ as a function of the LFV coupling $c_{\tau e}/f_a$. The ALP couples to right-handed leptons and the mass of ALP is assumed to be 1 MeV. Solid (dashed) lines show the cross section assuming unpolarized (polarized) muon beams at the center-of-mass energies 126 GeV (blue), 350 GeV (red) and 1500 GeV (green). In the case of polarized muon beams, the $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam is assumed to be $+0.8$ ($-0.8$) polarized. The plot for the cross section of the ALP production through the decay mode $\tau\ra \mu\,a$ is similar and is not displayed for brevity.}
\label{xsec}
\end{figure}
As seen, the cross section decreases at higher center-of-mass energies which is expected because of the nature of $s$-channel processes. Furthermore, at the same center-of-mass energy, the cross section is higher when the muon beams are polarized which is also expected because of the spin-1 vector boson mediators involved in this production process.
Only a fraction of tau leptons produced at a collider decays through the LFV decay mode $\tau\to\ell \, a$ in the detector. Integrating Eq. \ref{eq:decayBSM} with respect to $\theta$, the total decay width is obtained to be
\begin{align}
{ \Gamma(\tau \to \ell \, a)} = \frac{m_{\tau}^3}{64 \pi f_a^2 } \left( 1 - \frac{m_a^2}{m_{\tau}^2} \right)^2 \left({ \vert c_{\tau \ell }^V\vert^2 + \vert c_{\tau \ell }^A\vert^2 } \right) \, .
\label{eq:decayTotal}
\end{align}
Using Eq. \ref{eq:decayTotal}, the corresponding decay length of the tau lepton is given by
\begin{equation}
L_\tau = \gamma\beta\tau = \frac{|\vec{p}_\tau|}{m_\tau}\frac{1}{ \Gamma(\tau\to\ell \, a)} = \frac{ {64 \pi } }{\left( {m_{\tau}^2} - {m_a^2} \right)^2}\frac{f_a^2 }{ \left({ \vert c_{\tau \ell }^V\vert^2 + \vert c_{\tau \ell }^A\vert^2 } \right)} |\vec{p}_\tau|\,.
\label{taudecaylength}
\end{equation}
The probability that the tau lepton decays through the LFV decay mode in the detector can then be obtained using $P_\tau^{\mathrm{\,det}}=1-e^{-L_{\mathrm{det}}/L_\tau}$. The decay probability depends on the mass and LFV couplings of the ALP and also on the tau momentum. In this study, we take into account the macroscopic decay length of the tau lepton event-by-event with the use of the decay probability $P_\tau^{\mathrm{\,det}}$.
\subsection{Standard Model $\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$ decay}
\label{sec:SMtaudecay}
Tau leptons decay both hadronically and leptonically in the SM through an off-shell $W$ boson. In the $\tau$ rest frame, the final state $\ell^\pm$ lepton from the SM decays $\tau^+\to \ell^+\,\nu_\ell\,\bar{\nu}_\tau$ and $ \tau^- \to \ell^- \,\bar{\nu_\ell}\,\nu_\tau$ ($\ell=e,\mu$) obeys the Michel spectrum \cite{Tsai:1971vv}
\begin{equation}
\frac{\text{d}^2\Gamma\left(
\begin{array}{ll}
\tau^+\to \ell^+\,\nu_\ell\,\bar{\nu}_\tau \\
\tau^- \to \ell^- \,\bar{\nu_\ell}\,\nu_\tau
\end{array}
\right)}{\text{d}p_\ell\, \text{d}\cos\theta} = \Gamma_{\tau} \frac{8\, p_\ell^2}{m_\tau^4} \left[3m_\tau-4E_\ell + \frac{3m_\ell^2}{m_\tau} - \frac{2m_\ell^2}{E_\ell} \pm \mathcal{P}_\tau \frac{p_\ell}{E_\ell}\left(4E_\ell - m_\tau - \frac{3m_\ell^2}{m_\tau} \right)\cos\theta\right]\, ,
\label{eq:decaySM}
\end{equation}
where $E_\ell$ and $p_\ell$ are the energy and the momentum of the final state lepton $\ell$, $\theta$ is the angle between the momentum of the final lepton $\ell$ and the polarization vector of the tau lepton, and $\Gamma_{\tau} = G_F^2 m_\tau^5/192\pi^3$ is the total leptonic decay width of the tau lepton when the mass of the final lepton $\ell$ is ignored. Neglecting the mass of the lepton $\ell$, Eq. \ref{eq:decaySM} can be simplified into
\begin{equation}
\frac{\text{d}^2\Gamma\left(
\begin{array}{ll}
\tau^+\to \ell^+\,\nu_\ell\,\bar{\nu}_\tau \\
\tau^- \to \ell^- \,\bar{\nu_\ell}\,\nu_\tau
\end{array}
\right)}{\text{d}x_\ell\, \text{d}\cos\theta}\simeq \Gamma_{\tau}\big[\left(3-2x_\ell\right) \pm \mathcal{P}_\tau(2x_\ell-1)\cos\theta\big]x_\ell^2 \, ,
\label{eq:decaySMsimplified}
\end{equation}
where $x_\ell$ ($0\leq x_\ell \leq 1$) denotes the lepton $\ell$ energy fraction defined as $x_{\ell}=2E_{\ell}/m_\tau$.
Some important features can be understood from Eq. \ref{eq:decaySMsimplified}. For the unpolarized tau leptons ($\mathcal{P}_\tau=0$), angular dependence of the differential decay width vanishes leading to isotropic distribution of the final lepton $\ell$. In the case of polarized tau leptons, the final lepton $\ell^+$ ($\ell^-$) is more likely to be emitted in the forward (backward) direction relative to the polarization vector of the decaying tau. Using Eq. \ref{eq:decaySMsimplified}, one finds
\begin{equation}
x^{\text{max}}_{\ell^\pm}=\frac{3 \mp \mathcal{P}_\tau \cos{\theta}}{3(1 \mp \mathcal{P}_\tau \cos{\theta})}\ ,
\label{eq:xmax}
\end{equation}
where $x^{\text{max}}_{\ell^\pm}$ is the position of the maximum of the Michel spectrum in the $\tau^\pm$ decay. In this equation, $\cos\theta$ varies in the range $-1<\cos\theta<0$ ($0<\cos\theta<1$) for $\tau^+$ ($\tau^-$) decay. For the range $0<\cos\theta<1$ ($-1<\cos\theta<0$), $x^{\text{max}}_{\ell}=1$ holds for the decay of $\tau^+$ ($\tau^-$). Eq. \ref{eq:xmax} implies that for unpolarized tau leptons, the outgoing charged lepton peaks at $x_\ell=1$ regardless of the angle $\theta$, which coincides with the final state lepton in the decay $\tau^\pm \to \ell^\pm a$ (see Section \ref{sec:BSMtaudecay}). In the case of polarized tau leptons, however, the angular dependence is preserved. Fig. \ref{xmax} shows the position of the maximum of the Michel spectrum against $\cos\theta$ for $\tau^-$ and $\tau^+$ decays.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{xmax}
\caption{Position of the maximum of the Michel spectrum $x_\ell^{\mathrm{max}}$ as a function of $\cos\theta$, where $\theta$ is the angle between the momentum of the final state charged lepton and the polarization vector of the decaying tau assuming $\mathcal{P}_\tau=1$. The green (pink) line shows $x_\ell^{\mathrm{max}}$ for $\tau^+$ ($\tau^-$) decay.}
\label{xmax}
\end{figure}
As seen, in the $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) decay, $x^{\text{max}}_{\ell}$ decreases as $\cos\theta$ approaches 1 ($-1$) and becomes minimum when $\cos\theta$ is 1 ($-1$). In other words, final leptons $\ell^-$ ($\ell^+$) emitted in a region close to $\cos\theta= 1$ ($-1$) are less energetic than those emitted in other directions. Such leptons are mostly separated from the leptons resulting from the LFV $\tau^\pm \to \ell^\pm \, a$ decay which peak at $x_{\ell}\simeq 1$. This feature can be utilized to search for $\tau^\pm \to \ell^\pm \, a$ decays if polarized tau leptons with a high enough degree of polarization can be produced. Luckily, this is the case for the production process $\mu^-\mu^+\ra\tau^-\tau^+$ when the initial muon beams are polarized as discussed in detail in Section \ref{sec:mumutautau}. Highly polarized tau leptons can be produced by colliding polarized muon beams at a future muon collider. For events with the final state lepton $\ell^-$ ($\ell^+$) being emitted close to the direction (opposite direction) of the $\tau$ polarization vector, the background due to the SM tau decay can be reduced with the help of the energy spectrum of the final lepton.
As discussed in Section \ref{sec:BSMtaudecay}, when the ALP couples to right-handed leptons, the final $\ell^-$ ($\ell^+$) lepton resulting from the LFV decay $\tau^\pm \to \ell^\pm \, a$ is more likely to be emitted in the forward (backward) direction. This angular behavior is exactly opposite to that of the final charged lepton in the SM tau decay leading to higher sensitivities for right-handed ALP couplings compared with the left-handed couplings. When the ALP couples to left-handed leptons, the angular distribution of the final lepton in the LFV tau decay is similar to that of the final charged lepton in the SM decay of the tau. As a consequence, the sensitivity is somewhat degraded. The sensitivity in the case of isotropic ALPs (V/A case) lies somewhere in between the left- and right-handed cases.
\subsection{Future muon collider}
\label{sec:muoncollider}
Synchrotron radiation from muon beams is suppressed by a factor of $10^9$ in comparison with electron beams of the same energy because of the large muon mass ($m_\mu / m_e \approx 207$). Muon beams can therefore be accelerated and brought into collision in a circular collider. In comparison with the hadron colliders where only a fraction of hadron energy is carried by the colliding partons, muon colliders are more efficient with a reasonable power consumption as all of the energy is carried by the colliding muons. As a consequence, the effective energy reach provided by a 14 TeV muon collider is similar to that of the 100 TeV FCC \cite{muoncollider2,Hinchliffe:2015qma}. Furthermore, muon colliders provide a much cleaner environment with less background compared with hadron colliders.
Until now, a great deal of time and effort has been dedicated to preparing a feasible design for a future muon collider \cite{muoncollider2,muoncollider1,muonColliders,Delahaye:2013jla,Ankenbrandt:1999cta,Gallardo:1996aa,Neuffer:1994bt,Skrinsky:1981ht}. Although no complete conceptual design has been reported yet, a finalized conceptual design report of a future muon collider is planned to be ready in the current decade. Muon Accelerator Program has developed a conceptual design for a potential muon collider \cite{muoncollider2,muoncollider1}. This muon collider will operate at different phases including the Higgs/top factory and multi-TeV phases. Tab. \ref{tab:muoncollider} presents the center-of-mass energy and the luminosity of different phases of this collider.
\begin{table}[!t]
\normalsize
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{cccccc}
& Higgs & Top-High Luminosity & & Multi-TeV &\\ \Xhline{1\arrayrulewidth}
Center-of-mass energy [GeV] & 126 & 350 & 1500 & 3000 & 6000 \\
Average luminosity [$10^{34} \mathrm{cm}^{-2} \mathrm{s}^{-1}$] & 0.008 & 0.6 & 1.25 & 4.4 & 12 \\
\end{tabular}
\caption{The center-of-mass energy and the average luminosity of different phases of a future muon collider as proposed by the Muon Accelerator Program taken from \cite{muoncollider1}.}
\label{tab:muoncollider}
\end{center}
\end{table}
In this work, considering the first three phases, i.e. the Higgs factory ($\sqrt{s}=126$ GeV), the top-high luminosity ($\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV) and the first Multi-TeV phase ($\sqrt{s}=1500$ GeV), we study the capability of this future muon collider to search for the LFV decay of the tau lepton.
\section{SM backgrounds and event generation}
\label{sec:eventgeneration}
There are different SM backgrounds relevant to the assumed ALP production process. The $\tau^+\tau^-$ production with one tau lepton experiencing the leptonic decay $\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$ and the $W^-W^+$ production when one of the $W$ bosons decays through the $W\ra e/\mu+\nu$ decay mode have the dominant contribution to the total background. In this analysis, we consider the production of $\tau^+\tau^-$, $W^+W^-$, top pair $t\bar{t}$, $hZ$, $ZZ$, $Z\gamma$, dijet $q\bar{q}$ ($q=u,d,c,s,b$) and dilepton $e^-e^+/\mu^-\mu^+$ as the SM backgrounds. The generation of backgrounds is performed assuming all possible final states and decay modes.
The Lagrangian, Eq. \ref{lagrangian}, is implemented into \texttt{FeynRules} \cite{Alloul:2013bka} and the generated Universal FeynRules Output (UFO) model is passed to \texttt{MadGraph5\_aMC@NLO} to generate hard events. Parton showering, hadronization and decays of unstable particles are performed with the use of \texttt{Pythia 8.2.43} \cite{Sjostrand:2006za}. The detector effect is simulated using \texttt{Delphes 3.4.2}~\cite{deFavereau:2013fsa} and the delphes card for muon collider\footnote{\url{https://github.com/delphes/delphes/blob/master/cards/delphes_card_MuonColliderDet.tcl}}. \texttt{FastJet 3.3.2} \cite{Cacciari:2011ma} is used to reconstruct jets with the use of the inclusive Valencia jet algorithm \cite{valenciaalgorithm}. At future lepton colliders operating at the energy frontier, performance of classical lepton collider jet algorithms is degraded by non-negligible levels of background. The Valencia jet algorithm is a sequential recombination algorithm which combines good features of the lepton collider and hadron collider jet algorithms to achieve a greater performance in the presence of background. $R$ and $\beta$ parameters in this algorithm control the distance criterion and the robustness against background, respectively. These parameters can be optimized to achieve the best performance and background rejection. The optimum values found in this study are $R=1.2$ and $\beta=1$. Tau tagging is performed to identify jets likely to originate from a tau lepton. The tau tagging algorithm uses the distance criterion $\Delta R<0.5$, where $\Delta R = \sqrt{\Delta\eta^2+\Delta\phi^2}$, with $\eta$ and $\phi$ being the pseudorapidity and azimuth angle, respectively. $\tau$-jets are tagged with a $80\%$ efficiency for tau leptons with transverse momentum $p_T>10$ GeV. The mistag rate for light ($uds$) jets and electron is $2\%$ and $0.1\%$, respectively. Simulation of polarized tau decays is performed using the TauDecay package \cite{taudecayspackage} which is constructed in the \texttt{FeynRules} and \texttt{MadGraph5} frameworks.
Event generation is performed for the three center-of-mass energies $126, 350,$ and $1500$ GeV. For each center-of-mass energy, two cases are considered for the polarization of the initial muon beams. First, the beams are assumed to be unpolarized, and second, the beams are longitudinally polarized with $+0.8$ ($-0.8$) polarization for the $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam. For the center-of-mass energies of 126 and 1500 GeV, the ALP mass $m_a$ is assumed to be 1 MeV while for the center-of-mass energy of 350 GeV, different mass scenarios ranging from $100$ eV to 1 MeV are considered. It is assumed that only one LFV coupling of the ALP is non-zero at a time, i.e. $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$, $c_{\tau \mu}= 0$ or $c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$, $c_{\tau e}= 0$. Event generation is performed for the two cases independently. In each case, the three chiral structures for the ALP LFV coupling (introduced in Section \ref{sec:lagrangian}) are assumed and event generation is independently performed.
\section{Event selection}
\label{sec:eventselection}
The two cases of $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$, $c_{\tau \mu}= 0$ and $c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$, $c_{\tau e}= 0$, hereafter referred to as $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ and $c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$ cases, respectively, are analyzed independently. In what follows, statements are true for both the cases unless stated otherwise. Reconstructed jets should satisfy the kinematical thresholds $p_T>30$ GeV and $\vert \eta \vert < 2.5$. $\tau$-tagged jets are required to only include exactly three charged hadrons, i.e. $\pi^+\pi^+\pi^-$ or $\pi^-\pi^-\pi^+$, and at most one photon. Restricting jet constituents to the three charged pion combination helps reconstruct the four-momentum of the decaying tau lepton more accurately. Furthermore, this restriction significantly suppresses jets stemming from sources other than tau leptons. Isolated electrons, muons and photons are identified with the use of isolation variable $I_{rel}$. Isolation variable for particle P is defined as $I_{rel}=\Sigma\, p_T^{\,i}/p_T^{\,\mathrm{P}}$, where the index $i$ runs over all particles (except for the particle P) with $p_T^{\,i}>p_T^{\,\mathrm{min}}$ and $\Delta R(i,\mathrm{P})<\Delta R^{\,\mathrm{max}}$. The particle P is then identified as an isolated particle if $I_{rel}<I_{rel}^{\,\mathrm{max}}$. The isolation parameters used here are $p_T^{\,\mathrm{min}}=0.5$ GeV, $\Delta R^{\,\mathrm{max}}=0.1$ and $I_{rel}^{\,\mathrm{max}}=0.2$. For isolated muons and electrons, the thresholds $p_T>10$ GeV and $\vert \eta \vert < 2.5$ are applied. For the $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ ($c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$) case, events should either have exactly one isolated muon (electron) or exactly one reconstructed jet and the only reconstructed jet should be also $\tau$-tagged (cut 1). Events with one $\tau$-tagged reconstructed jet cannot have any isolated muon (electron), and vice versa. That is, we select the decay modes $\tau\ra\nu+3\ \mathrm{charged\ pions}$ and $\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$ among all possible SM decays of the tau lepton. Furthermore, events should have exactly one isolated electron (muon) in the $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ ($c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$) case (cut 2). The reconstructed objects should pass a relative electric charge sign criterion. In the $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ ($c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$) case, the charge of the isolated electron (muon) should be opposite to the charge of the isolated muon (electron) or the $\tau$-tagged jet (cut 3). The necessity of this sign criterion is rooted in the opposite charges of the tau leptons undergoing the LFV decay and the SM decay in the ALP production process. Isolated photons are reconstructed requiring $p_T>10$ GeV and $\vert \eta \vert < 2.5$. A plane perpendicular to the momentum direction of the tau leptons divides the space into two hemispheres, one on the side of the tau lepton undergoing the SM decay and one on the side of the tau lepton undergoing the LFV decay. The direction of the tau leptons is estimated using a procedure fully discussed in Section \ref{sec:analysis}. On the side of the tau lepton experiencing the SM decay, there can be at most one photon with the maximum allowed energy of $E_{max}^{\mathrm{\, SM}}$, and on the opposite side, there can be at most one photon with the maximum allowed energy of $E_{max}^{\mathrm{\, LFV}}$ (cut 4). The energies $E_{max}^{\mathrm{\, SM}}$ and $E_{max}^{\mathrm{\, LFV}}$ are optimized so as to achieve the strongest limits on the ALP LFV couplings. Optimum $E_{max}^{\mathrm{\, SM}}$ values found for the center-of-mass energies of 126, 350 and 1500 GeV are 45, 60 and 90 GeV, respectively. For $E_{max}^{\mathrm{\, LFV}}$, the optimum values 35, 50 and 70 GeV which respectively correspond to the center-of-mass energies of 126, 350 and 1500 GeV have been found. In counting the number of photons, the allowed photon inside the $\tau$-tagged jet is ignored. Imposing this restriction on the number of photons suppresses the $Z\gamma$ background significantly. Event selection efficiencies obtained for the $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ and $c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$ cases at the center-of-mass energy of 350 GeV (for example) are presented in Tab. \ref{seleff}. Efficiencies corresponding to the unpolarized and polarized muon beams cases are presented independently. As seen, the SM $\tau^+\tau^-$ and $W^+W^-$ production processes have higher event selection efficiencies than other backgrounds. The SM $\tau^+\tau^-$ production followed by the decay $\tau\ra e/\mu+\nu \bar{\nu}$ of one of the tau leptons resembles the signal signature very closely and thus the $\tau^+\tau^-$ production has the highest event selection efficiency.
\begin {table}[t]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{cccccccccccc}
& & & signal & $\tau^+\tau^-$ & $W^+W^-$ & $t\bar{t}$ & $ZZ$ & $hZ$ & $Z\gamma$ & dijet & $ee/\mu\mu$ \\
\cline{1-12}
\parbox[t]{.05mm}{\multirow{5}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{Unpolarized}}} & \parbox[t]{3mm}{\multirow{5}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{$c_{\tau e}\neq 0$}}} & 1 & 0.2067 & 0.1219 & 0.0518 & 0.0022 & 0.0065 & 0.0070 & 0.0009 & 0.0001 & 0.0731 \\
& & 2 & 0.8164 & 0.5255 & 0.3987 & 0.4679 & 0.0999 & 0.2244 & 0.0563 & 0.0654 & 0 \\
& & 3 & 0.9998 & 0.9998 & 0.9998 & 0.9039 & 0.8030 & 0.8860 & 0.9833 & 0.8011 & 0 \\
& & 4 & 0.9989 & 0.9980 & 0.9980 & 0.9991 & 0.9861 & 0.9966 & 0.0847 & 0.9975 & 0 \\
& & total & 0.1686 & 0.0639 & 0.0206 & 0.0009 & 0.0005 & 0.0014 & 4.0e-06 & 6.4e-06 & 0 \\
\cline{1-12}
\parbox[t]{.05mm}{\multirow{5}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{Polarized}}} & \parbox[t]{3mm}{\multirow{5}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{$c_{\tau e}\neq 0$}}} & 1 & 0.2011 & 0.1131 & 0.0477 & 0.0021 & 0.0065 & 0.0068 & 0.0009 & 9.2e-5 & 0.0726 \\
& & 2 & 0.8818 & 0.5413 & 0.4518& 0.4656 & 0.1104 & 0.2334 & 0.0573 & 0.0672 & 0 \\
& & 3 & 0.9999 & 0.9997 & 0.9997 & 0.8933 & 0.7620 & 0.8943 & 0.9841 & 0.7501 & 0 \\
& & 4 & 0.9987 & 0.9982 & 0.9987 & 0.9991 & 0.9956 & 0.9978 & 0.0968 & 0.9974 & 0 \\
& & total & 0.1771 & 0.0611 & 0.0215 & 0.0009 & 0.0005 & 0.0014 & 4.8e-06 & 4.6e-06 & 0 \\
\cline{1-12}
\parbox[t]{.05mm}{\multirow{5}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{Unpolarized}}} & \parbox[t]{3mm}{\multirow{5}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{$c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$}}} & 1 & 0.1985 & 0.1178 & 0.0467 & 0.0021 & 0.0083 & 0.0066 & 0.0010 & 9.5e-5 & 0.0002 \\
& & 2 & 0.8901 & 0.5625 & 0.4441 & 0.4877 & 0.0771 & 0.2399 & 0.0499 & 0.0840 & 0 \\
& & 3 & 0.9998 & 0.9998 & 0.9998 & 0.9049 & 0.8271 & 0.8896 & 0.9844 & 0.8021 & 0 \\
& & 4 & 0.9987 & 0.9980 & 0.9983 & 0.9991 & 0.9895 & 0.9966 & 0.0794 & 0.9974 & 0 \\
& & total & 0.1764 & 0.0661 & 0.0207& 0.0009 & 0.0005 & 0.0014 & 4.0e-06 & 6.4e-06 & 0 \\
\cline{1-12}
\parbox[t]{.05mm}{\multirow{5}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{Polarized}}} & \parbox[t]{3mm}{\multirow{5}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{$c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$}}} & 1 & 0.1952 & 0.1095 & 0.0439 & 0.0021 & 0.0083 & 0.0066 & 0.0010 & 6.0e-5 & 0.0003 \\
& & 2 & 0.9401 & 0.5812 & 0.4945 & 0.4737 & 0.0884 & 0.2490 & 0.0548 & 0.1026 & 0 \\
& & 3 & 0.9998 & 0.9998 & 0.9997 & 0.8937 & 0.7719 & 0.8934 & 0.9828 & 0.7506 & 0 \\
& & 4 & 0.9988 & 0.9981 & 0.9987 & 0.9991 & 0.9957 & 0.9995 & 0.0866 & 0.9974 & 0 \\
& & total & 0.1833 & 0.0635 & 0.0217 & 0.0009 & 0.0006 & 0.0015 & 4.7e-06 & 4.6e-06 & 0 \\
\cline{1-12}
\label{efficiencies}
\end{tabular}
\caption {Event selection relative efficiencies corresponding to the cuts 1-4 (see text for the detailed description of the selection cuts) obtained for the ALP production process and different SM backgrounds. Results corresponding to both the cases of unpolarized and polarized muon beams and also both the $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ and $c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$ cases have been shown. It is assumed that the ALP mass is 1 MeV, the center-of-mass energy is 350 GeV and the ALP couples to right-handed leptons (V+A case).}
\label{seleff}
\end {table}
\section{Analysis}
\label{sec:analysis}
Selected events are analyzed to compute the variables which discriminate the ALP production process from the SM backgrounds. We employ a multivariate technique utilizing the Boosted Decision Trees (BDT) algorithm~\cite{Hocker:2007ht}. A proper set of discriminating variables is given to the BDT as input and training is performed considering all background processes according to their respective weights. The BDT output is examined in terms of the discriminating power with the use of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The BDT output distribution is used to constrain the ALP LFV couplings $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$, independently. The two cases $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ and $c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$, and different cases of the ALP coupling chiral structure and also the unpolarized and polarized muon beams cases are analyzed independently and the upper limit on the LFV coupling is obtained in each case.
Because of the invisible ALP and neutrinos in the final state of the tau decays, the momenta of the decaying tau leptons cannot be exactly determined and can only be estimated. How precise the momenta of the decaying taus are estimated is crucial to the sensitivity we achieve in the analysis. In what follows, we describe the procedure we use to estimate the momenta of the tau leptons. In the ALP production process, the two tau leptons decay through the LFV and SM modes $\tau_1\ra \ell\,a$ and $\tau_2\ra VX_\nu$, where $\tau_1$ ($\tau_2$) represents the tau lepton undergoing the LFV (SM) decay, $V$ is the visible part of the decay products which is either a system of hadrons (identified as a $\tau$-jet) or a lepton ($e,\mu$), $X_\nu$ is a system of neutrinos and $\ell=e,\mu$. The angle $\alpha_1$ is defined as the deviation angle of the momentum direction of the lepton $\ell$ from the direction of $\tau_1$ in the laboratory frame. Similarly, the angle $\alpha_2$ is defined as the deviation angle of the momentum direction of $V$ from the momentum direction of $\tau_2$. Fig. \ref{corrangles} depicts the decaying tau leptons in the ALP production process and the angles $\alpha_1$ and $\alpha_2$.
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.41\textwidth]{corrangles}
\caption{The angles $\alpha_1$ and $\alpha_2$ in the decays $\tau_1\ra \ell\,a$ and $\tau_2\ra V\,X_\nu$ of the tau leptons in the ALP production process in the laboratory frame. $V$ is either a system of hadrons (identified as a $\tau$-jet) or a lepton ($e,\mu$), $X_\nu$ is a system of neutrinos and $\ell=e,\mu$. $\tau_1$ ($\tau_2$) represents the tau lepton undergoing the LFV (SM) decay.}
\label{corrangles}
\end{figure}
Using the conservation of momentum, one finds
\begin{equation}
\cos\alpha_1=\frac{2E_{\tau_1} E_\ell + m_a^2 - m_\tau^2 - m_\ell^2}{2\,p_\ell\sqrt{E_{\tau_1}^2-m_\tau^2}}\, , \ \ \ \ \cos\alpha_2=\frac{2E_{\tau_2} E_V - m_\tau^2 - m_V^2}{2\,p_V \sqrt{E_{\tau_2}^2-m_\tau^2}}\, ,
\label{eq:corrangles}
\end{equation}
where $E_x$, $p_x$ and $m_x$ are respectively the energy, momentum and mass of the object $x$ as measured in the laboratory frame. $E_{\tau_1}$ and $E_{\tau_2}$ in Eq. \ref{eq:corrangles} cannot be experimentally measured because of the invisible particles in the final state of tau decays. However, ignoring the radiative emissions, the conservation of energy implies that each of the tau leptons carries half of the center-of-mass energy of the experiment, i.e. $E_{\tau_1}=E_{\tau_2}=\sqrt{s}/2$. We assume that the unit vectors $\hat{v}_1$ and $\hat{v}_2$ define the momentum directions of the tau leptons $\tau_1$ and $\tau_2$, respectively. Using the defined deviation angles $\alpha_1$ and $\alpha_2$, we have the dot products $\hat{v}_1.\,\vec{p}_\ell=p_\ell\cos\alpha_1$ and $\hat{v}_2.\,\vec{p}_V=p_V\cos\alpha_2$ with $\vec{p}_x$ being the momentum vector of the object $x$ (see Fig. \ref{corrangles}). Furthermore, as the tau leptons are produced in a back-to-back configuration, we have $\hat{v}_1=-\hat{v}_2$. These relations form the system of equations
\begin{eqnarray}
\begin{aligned}
& \hat{v}_1.\,\vec{p}_\ell=\frac{2E_{\tau_1} E_\ell + m_a^2 - m_\tau^2 - m_\ell^2}{2\,\sqrt{E_{\tau_1}^2-m_\tau^2}}\, ,
\\
&\hat{v}_1.\,\vec{p}_V=-\,\frac{2E_{\tau_2} E_V - m_\tau^2 - m_V^2}{2\,\sqrt{E_{\tau_2}^2-m_\tau^2}}\, ,
\\
&\vert\hat{v}_1\vert=1 \, .
\label{eq:}
\end{aligned}
\end{eqnarray}
This system of equations can be simultaneously solved and has two solutions for $\hat{v}_1$. We compute the average of the solutions and take it as $\hat{v}_1$. The momentum vectors $\vec{p}_{\tau_1}$ and $\vec{p}_{\tau_2}$ of the tau leptons can then be reconstructed using the obtained directions $\hat{v}_1$ and $\hat{v}_2$, the tau lepton mass and the energy of the tau leptons ($\sqrt{s}/2$).
The produced ALP is likely to escape the detector before its decay (see Section \ref{sec:lagrangian}). We reconstruct the four-momentum ($E_a,\vec{p}_a$) of the ALP using the relations
\begin{equation}
E_a = \sqrt{s} - E_{\tau_2} - E_\ell \overset{E_{\tau_2} = \frac{\sqrt{s}}{2}}{=} \frac{\sqrt{s}}{2} - E_\ell\, , \ \ \ \ \vec{p}_a = - (\vec{p}_{\tau_2} + \vec{p}_\ell)\, ,
\label{eq:epax}
\end{equation}
which are deduced from the energy-momentum conservation. The reconstructed ALP and $\tau$ leptons are used to compute some useful variables introduced in what follows. We found it effective to boost some variables into the $\tau_1$ rest frame because it provides a considerable discriminating power compared with the laboratory frame. In the two-body decay $\tau_1\ra \ell\,a$, the decay products are monoenergetic in the $\tau_1$ rest frame (see Section \ref{sec:BSMtaudecay}) while their energy in the laboratory frame varies over a wide range of values. Fig. \ref{EeEeRFCORRcomparison0} shows the energy of the isolated electron (or positron) $E_e$ in both the laboratory frame and the $\tau_1$ rest frame assuming unpolarized muon beams, $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ and $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV. As seen, the energy of the electron, which is widely distributed in the laboratory frame, is narrowly distributed in the $\tau_1$ rest frame. The rest frame distribution separates a significant amount of background from the ALP production process as seen in Fig. \ref{i0}. This figure shows the distribution of the electron energy fraction in the $\tau_1$ rest frame $x_e^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}=2E_{e}^{\,\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}/m_\tau$, for signal and different background processes. Boosting into the $\tau_1$ rest frame is also fruitful for the variable $\Omega^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}(\ell,a)$ which is defined as the angle between the momentum vector of the lepton $\ell$ and the momentum vector of the ALP in the $\tau_1$ rest frame (see Fig. \ref{corrangles}). Fig. \ref{g0} shows the distributions obtained for this variable. The distribution peaks at $\pi$ radians for the ALP production process, which is expected since in the two-body decay $\tau_1\ra \ell\,a$, the decay products are emitted in a back-to-back configuration.
The sensitivity that we achieve in this analysis strongly depends on how good the $\tau$ leptons are reconstructed. To see how effective is the procedure we employ for estimating the four-momenta of the $\tau$ leptons, we compare the distributions of the electron energy fraction in the $\tau_1$ rest frame $x_e^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}$ in the following two cases. First, $\tau$ leptons are reconstructed with the use of the estimation procedure described in this section, and second, the four-momentum of $V$ (see Fig. \ref{corrangles}) is taken as the four-momentum of $\tau_2$ (ignoring the effect of $X_\nu$) and $\tau_1$ is then reconstructed using the reconstructed $\tau_2$ and the collision center-of-mass energy. Figs. \ref{xeRFxeRFCORRcomparison0} and \ref{xeRFxeRFCORRcomparison80} show the $x_e^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}$ distributions in the two mentioned cases for unpolarized and polarized muon beams, respectively.
\begin{figure*}[t]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{EeEeRFCORRcomparison0}
\caption{}
\label{EeEeRFCORRcomparison0}
\end{subfigure} \\
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{xeRFxeRFCORRcomparison0}
\caption{}
\label{xeRFxeRFCORRcomparison0}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{xeRFxeRFCORRcomparison80}
\caption{}
\label{xeRFxeRFCORRcomparison80}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{a) Energy spectrum of the isolated electron or positron in the laboratory frame and the $\tau_1$ rest frame for the unpolarized muon beams. Electron energy fraction in the $\tau_1$ rest frame $x_e^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}$ obtained with (corrected) and without (uncorrected) the use of the described tau momentum estimation procedure, for b) unpolarized and c) polarized muon beams. The distributions are obtained assuming the process $\mu^-\mu^+\ra \tau^-\tau^+$, $\tau^\pm\ra e^\pm\, a$, $\tau^\mp\ra \mathrm{SM}$ with $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV and $m_a=1$ MeV. The ALP couples to right-handed leptons. }
\label{fig:comparison}
\end{figure*}
As seen, $x_e^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}$ varies over a wide range in the uncorrected case while it is narrowly distributed with a peak near 1 (as expected) when a correction is applied using the described estimation procedure.
The list of the discriminating variables used in this analysis to feed the BDT is provided below. The variables are defined using the same notation as in Fig. \ref{corrangles}. Unless stated otherwise, the frame in which a variable is measured is the laboratory frame.
\begin{itemize
\item Missing transverse energy $\slashed{E}_T$.
\item Transverse momentum and pseudorapidity of $V$, $p_{\,T}^V$ and $\eta^V$, where $V$ can be either a system of hadrons (identified as a $\tau$-jet) or an isolated lepton ($e,\mu$).
\item Transverse momentum of the isolated lepton $\ell$, $p_{\,T}^\ell$.
\item Invariant mass of the isolated lepton $\ell$ and the ALP, $M_{\ell a}^{\mathrm{inv.}}$.
\item Angle between the momentum vector of $V$ and the momentum vector of the isolated lepton $\ell$, $\Omega(V,\ell)$.
\item Angle between the momentum vector of the isolated lepton $\ell$ and the momentum vector of the ALP in the $\tau_1$ rest frame, $\Omega^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}(\ell,a)$.
\item Angle between the momentum vector of $\tau_1$ in the laboratory frame and the momentum vector of the isolated lepton $\ell$ in the $\tau_1$ rest frame, $\Omega^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}(\tau_1,\ell)$.
\item Energy fraction of the isolated lepton $\ell$ in the $\tau_1$ rest frame, $x_\ell^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}=2E_{\ell}^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}/m_\tau$.
\end{itemize}
The distributions obtained for these variables in the unpolarized muon beams case assuming $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ and $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV are provided in Fig. \ref{0}.
\begin{figure*}[!t]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{met0}
\caption{}
\label{a0}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{PTtau0}
\caption{}
\label{b0}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{EtaTau0}
\caption{}
\label{c0}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{PTe0}
\caption{}
\label{d0}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{invmasseaxCORR0}
\caption{}
\label{e0}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{angleetauCORR0}
\caption{}
\label{f0}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{Distributions of the discriminating variables obtained for the unpolarized muon beams case assuming $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$, $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV and $m_a=1$ MeV. The ALP couples to right-handed leptons. All processes including the ALP production process ($\tau\ra e\, a$) and the SM backgrounds are shown.}
\label{0}
\end{figure*}
\begin{figure*}[!h]\ContinuedFloat
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{angleeaxRFCORR0}
\caption{}
\label{g0}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{DeviAngleinPRFeCORR0}
\caption{}
\label{h0}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{xeRFtightAngleCORR0}
\caption{}
\label{i0}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{xeRFtightAngleCORR-zoomedin0}
\caption{}
\label{j0}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{Distributions of the discriminating variables obtained for the unpolarized muon beams case assuming $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$, $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV and $m_a=1$ MeV. The ALP couples to right-handed leptons. All processes including the ALP production process ($\tau\ra e\, a$) and the SM backgrounds are shown.}
\label{0}
\end{figure*}
In the presented plots, the distributions of SM backgrounds are normalized to $\sigma\times\epsilon\times L$, where $\sigma$ is the process cross section, $\epsilon$ is the event selection efficiency and $L$ is the integrated luminosity, and the total background is then normalized to unity. Furthermore, the signal distribution is normalized to unity. Distributions shown in the rest of the paper also use the same normalization convention. The obtained distributions indicate that the $\tau^+\tau^-$ production is the most severe SM background (which is expected as discussed in Section \ref{sec:productionprocess}). Fig. \ref{j0} shows the distribution of the energy fraction of the isolated lepton (electron or positron) in the $\tau_1$ rest frame $x_e^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}$ for the ALP production and the SM $\tau^+\tau^-$ production processes alone. As seen, the peaks of the two distributions coincide with each other. This is also the case for other introduced variables. Fig. \ref{cls0} shows the resulting BDT output for different processes.
\begin{figure}[!h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.48\textwidth]{cls0}
\caption{BDT response obtained for the ALP production process and the SM backgrounds. It is assumed that the muon beams are unpolarized, the ALP couples to right-handed leptons, $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$, $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV and $m_a=1$ MeV.}
\label{cls0}
\end{figure}
As seen, although a good discrimination is achieved for a significant amount of background, the new physics signal is overwhelmed by the SM $\tau^+\tau^-$ production in the case of unpolarized muon beams.
In case the initial muon beams are polarized, the signal-background discrimination can be improved using the kinematical variables of the decay of polarized tau leptons. In this case, tau leptons are highly polarized in a certain region of phase space. At the center-of-mass energies of 126, 350 and 1500 GeV, $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons emitted in the forward (backward) region are highly polarized and thus help suppress the $\tau^+\tau^-$ background as discussed previously in Section \ref{sec:productionprocess}. In the $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ case, events with the isolated electron (positron) being forwardly (backwardly) directed are therefore of great interest. Similarly, in the $c_{\tau \mu}\neq 0$ case, events with forwardly (backwardly) directed isolated muon (antimuon) are important. As discussed in detail in Sections \ref{sec:BSMtaudecay} and \ref{sec:SMtaudecay}, in the leptonic SM decays of the $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$), the final state leptons $\ell^-$ ($\ell^+$) directed close to the direction (opposite direction) of the polarization vector of the decaying tau are mostly separated from the leptons produced in the LFV decay $\tau^\pm \to \ell^\pm \, a$ which peak at $x_{\ell}\simeq 1$. The polarized decays with the final lepton being directed close to these directions can therefore improve the sensitivity. The forwardly (backwardly) directed $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons are highly polarized with a mean polarization $>+0.9$ ($<-0.9$) assuming $+0.8$ ($-0.8$) polarization for the initial $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam. Consequently, the direction of the momentum of the decaying tau (for both the $\tau^-$ and $\tau^+$) is the desired direction around which the final state $\ell^\pm$ leptons from the SM and LFV tau decays are mostly separated. The signal-background discrimination for events with final state $\ell^\pm$ leptons being directed close to the momentum direction of the decaying tau is therefore expected to be improved in the polarized muon beams case compared with the unpolarized case. Fig. \ref{80} shows the distributions obtained for the discriminating variables in the polarized case assuming $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$ and $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV.
\begin{figure*}[!t]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{met80}
\caption{}
\label{a80}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{PTtau80}
\caption{}
\label{b80}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{EtaTau80}
\caption{}
\label{c80}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{PTe80}
\caption{}
\label{d80}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{invmasseaxCORR80}
\caption{}
\label{e80}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{angleetauCORR80}
\caption{}
\label{f80}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{Distributions of the discriminating variables obtained for the ALP production process and the SM backgrounds. It is assumed that $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$, $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV, $m_a=1$ MeV, the muon beams are polarized and that the ALP couples to right-handed leptons. See text for further details.}
\label{80}
\end{figure*}
\begin{figure*}[!t]\ContinuedFloat
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{angleeaxRFCORR80}
\caption{}
\label{g80}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{DeviAngleinPRFeCORR80}
\caption{}
\label{h80}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{xeRFtightAngleCORR80}
\caption{}
\label{i80}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{xeRFtightAngleCORR-in80}
\caption{}
\label{j80}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{Distributions of the discriminating variables obtained for the ALP production process and the SM backgrounds. It is assumed that $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$, $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV, $m_a=1$ MeV, the muon beams are polarized and that the ALP couples to right-handed leptons. See text for further details.}
\label{80}
\end{figure*}
Fig. \ref{j80} shows the distribution of the energy fraction of the isolated electron (or positron) in the $\tau_1$ rest frame in a certain region of phase space. The phase space considered to obtain the distributions shown in this figure is restricted by the following two conditions. First, only events with forwardly (backwardly) directed final electron (positron) are allowed, and second, the deviation of the electron or positron direction in the $\tau_1$ rest frame from the direction of $\tau_1$ in the laboratory frame should satisfy the condition $\Omega^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}(\tau_1,e)<\pi/4$ radians. The former condition restricts the phase space to a region with highly polarized tau leptons, and the latter condition keeps the deviation angle $\Omega^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}(\tau_1,e)$ in a limited range near zero. The $\pi/4$ upper limit on the deviation angle is just a choice and has not been deduced from any criterion. As seen in Fig. \ref{j80} and as expected, the peak of the energy fraction spectrum moves to the left for the $\tau^+\tau^-$ production process and doesn't coincide with the ALP production peak in the assumed region of phase space. This is in contrary to the unpolarized muon beams case where the peak of the $\tau^+\tau^-$ background coincides with the signal peak regardless of the region of phase space which is considered (compare Figs. \ref{j80} and \ref{j0}). The separated energy spectrums in the polarized muon beams case provide a significant discriminating power and help suppress the SM $\tau^+\tau^-$ background. The distributions in Figs. 10a-i are obtained by a full phase space analysis. The BDT output obtained using the distributions in Figs. 10a-i is shown in Fig. \ref{cls80}.
\begin{figure*}[!t]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{cls80}
\caption{}
\label{cls80}
\end{subfigure} \\
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{cls-in80}
\caption{}
\label{cls-in80}
\end{subfigure}
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{cls-out80}
\caption{}
\label{cls-out80}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{a) BDT response obtained for the ALP production process and the SM backgrounds assuming polarized muon beams. This result corresponds to $c_{\tau e}\neq 0$, $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV, $m_a=1$ MeV and the assumption that the ALP couples to right-handed leptons. Using the two conditions imposed to obtain the distributions of Fig. \ref{j80}, the distribution in a) is divided into two complementary distributions shown in b) and c). See text for further details.}
\label{}
\end{figure*}
It is seen that in the polarized muon beams case, the discrimination between the ALP production process and the background is improved compared with the unpolarized muon beams case (compare Figs. \ref{cls0} and \ref{cls80}). This improvement mainly results from events belonging to a region of phase space where the $x_e^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}$ distributions of the signal and $\tau^+\tau^-$ production background are separated so that the $\tau^+\tau^-$ background can be suppressed. To see this more clearly, we divide the BDT response shown in Fig. \ref{cls80}, which is obtained by a full phase space analysis, into two parts corresponding to two complementary phase space regions. To do so, we use the aforementioned two conditions (on the angular orientation of the final state charged lepton and the deviation angle $\Omega^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}(\tau_1,e)$) assumed to obtain the distributions in Fig. \ref{j80}. The BDT response distributions for events satisfying the two above-mentioned conditions are shown in Fig. \ref{cls-in80}, and the BDT response distributions for events which don't satisfy at least one of these conditions are shown in Fig. \ref{cls-out80}. The distributions in Figs. \ref{cls-in80} and \ref{cls-out80} are complementary and their addition according to their respective weights forms the total distribution shown in Fig. \ref{cls80}. As seen, only the distributions of the signal and $\tau^+\tau^-$ production processes are shown in Fig. \ref{cls-in80}. This is because of the imposed two conditions which completely remove all the backgrounds other than the $\tau^+\tau^-$ production. As expected, the BDT response distributions in Fig. \ref{cls-in80}, which correspond to the phase space assumed to obtain the distributions in Fig. \ref{j80}, provide a much better signal-background discrimination compared with the BDT response distributions in Fig. \ref{cls-out80}. The BDT response shown in Fig. \ref{cls-out80} corresponds to a region of phase space where the $x_e^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}$ distributions of the signal and $\tau^+\tau^-$ background are less separated. As a result, the BDT response in this figure is similar to the BDT response obtained in the unpolarized muon beams case (shown in Fig. \ref{cls0}) in the sense that the peaks of the signal and $\tau^+\tau^-$ background distributions coincide.
In case the polarization of the initial muon beams is reversed, i.e. $\mu^-$ ($\mu^+$) beam is $-0.8$ ($+0.8$) polarized, forwardly (backwardly) directed $\tau^-$ ($\tau^+$) leptons are highly polarized with a mean polarization $<-0.9$ ($>+0.9$) as discussed in Section \ref{sec:mumutautau}. The polarized decays due to such tau leptons can also help discriminate between the signal and the SM $\tau^+\tau^-$ background in a similar way to the case discussed above. The only difference is that as the polarizations of the produced tau leptons are reversed, the desired direction (around which the final state $\ell^\pm$ leptons from the SM and LFV tau decays are mostly separated) is the opposite direction of the momentum of the decaying tau (for both $\tau^-$ and $\tau^+$). It is therefore expected that imposing the condition $\Omega^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}(\tau_1,e)>3\pi/4$ radians in this case would yield a similar $x_e^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}$ distribution to that of Fig. \ref{j80} which has been obtained with reversely polarized muon beams and the condition $\Omega^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}(\tau_1,e)<\pi/4$ radians. Similar signal-background discriminations and sensitivities are therefore expected for the two cases with reverse muon beams polarizations. In this study, we only consider the case where $\mu^-$ and $\mu^+$ beams are respectively $+0.8$ and $-0.8$ polarized and provide the corresponding results.
\section{Prospects for constraints on the LFV couplings}
\label{sec:prospects}
We compute expected upper limits on the LFV couplings $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ at $95\%$ confidence level (CL) using the BDT response distributions. Tab. \ref{tab:limits} presents expected limits on $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ obtained at the center-of-mass energies of 126, 350 and 1500 GeV for the unpolarized and polarized muon beams cases and also for different assumed chiral structures. Limits presented in the parentheses include an overall systematic uncertainty. To take potential systematic uncertainties into account, we consider an overall uncertainty of $10\%$ on the event selection efficiency of each analyzed process (including the signal and all background processes). At $\sqrt{s}=126$ and 1500 GeV, the presented limits correspond to the ALP mass of 1 MeV. At $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV, different ALP mass scenarios ranging from 100 eV to 1 MeV have been considered. Limits presented for the center-of-mass energies 126, 350 and 1500 GeV correspond to the integrated luminosities 2.5, 189.2 and 394.2 fb$^{-1}$, respectively. The assumed integrated luminosities are total integrated luminosities collected in one year corresponding to the average luminosities provided in Tab. \ref{tab:muoncollider}.
\begin{table}[!t]
\begin{subtable}{1\textwidth}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ccccccc}
& & {$m_a$ [MeV]}& V+A & V$-$A & V/A & \\
\cline{1-7}
\multirow{2}{*}{126 GeV} & {Unpolarized} & 1 & 9.02 (9.73) & 8.46 (9.12) & 12.24 (13.21) & \parbox[t]{.09mm}{\multirow{26}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{270}{Expected 95$\%$ CL upper limit on $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ [$10^{-5}$ TeV$^{-1}$]}}} \\
\cline{2-6}
& {Polarized} & 1 & 2.96 (3.18) & 7.32 (7.90) & 5.54 (5.97) & \\
\cline{1-6}
\multirow{22}{*}{350 GeV} & \multirow{11}{*}{Unpolarized} & 0.0001 & 6.63 (7.01) & 6.53 (6.90) & 9.37 (9.90) & \\
& & 0.1 & 6.68 (7.06) & 6.57 (6.94) & 9.37 (9.90) & \\
& & 0.2 & 6.69 (7.07) & 6.52 (6.88) & 9.39 (9.92) & \\
& & 0.3 & 6.69 (7.08) & 6.55 (6.91) & 9.38 (9.91) & \\
& & 0.4 & 6.71 (7.10) & 6.54 (6.91) & 9.40 (9.93) & \\
& & 0.5 & 6.71 (7.10) & 6.55 (6.91) & 9.36 (9.88) & \\
& & 0.6 & 6.69 (7.08) & 6.53 (6.90) & 9.40 (9.93) & \\
& & 0.7 & 6.71 (7.09) & 6.53 (6.90) & 9.35 (9.88) & \\
& & 0.8 & 6.70 (7.09) & 6.52 (6.89) & 9.37 (9.91) & \\
& & 0.9 & 6.73 (7.12) & 6.51 (6.87) & 9.39 (9.91) & \\
& & 1 & 6.70 (7.08) & 6.52 (6.89) & 9.34 (9.87) & \\
\cline{2-6}
& \multirow{11}{*}{Polarized} & 0.0001 & 2.45 (2.57) & 4.59 (4.92) & 4.11 (4.34) & \\
& & 0.1 & 2.44 (2.56) & 4.59 (4.92) & 4.13 (4.35) & \\
& & 0.2 & 2.40 (2.52) & 4.57 (4.90) & 4.16 (4.39) & \\
& & 0.3 & 2.40 (2.52) & 4.58 (4.91) & 4.05 (4.27) & \\
& & 0.4 & 2.41 (2.53) & 4.63 (4.96) & 4.08 (4.30) & \\
& & 0.5 & 2.41 (2.53) & 4.58 (4.90) & 4.16 (4.39) & \\
& & 0.6 & 2.39 (2.51) & 4.56 (4.88) & 4.14 (4.37) & \\
& & 0.7 & 2.43 (2.55) & 4.58 (4.90) & 4.10 (4.32) & \\
& & 0.8 & 2.40 (2.52) & 4.56 (4.88) & 4.16 (4.38) & \\
& & 0.9 & 2.41 (2.53) & 4.56 (4.88) & 4.16 (4.38) & \\
& & 1 & 2.36 (2.48) & 4.58 (4.90) & 4.14 (4.37) & \\
\cline{1-6}
\multirow{2}{*}{1500 GeV} & {Unpolarized} & 1 & 12.48 (13.15) & 12.24 (12.90) & 17.41 (18.35) & \\
\cline{2-6}
& {Polarized} & 1 & 4.80 (5.04) & 9.12 (9.75) & 7.14 (7.51) & \\
\cline{1-7}
\end{tabular}
\caption{}
\label{tab:limitstaue}
\end{subtable}
\caption{Expected $95\%$ CL upper limits on a) $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and b) $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ obtained assuming different center-of-mass energies and ALP mass scenarios for the unpolarized and polarized muon beams cases. The three chiral structures assumed for the ALP coupling, i.e. V+A, V$-$A and V/A, have been analyzed independently and corresponding limits are shown. Limits at the center-of-mass energies of 126, 350 and 1500 GeV correspond to the integrated luminosities of 2.5, 189.2 and 394.2 fb$^{-1}$, respectively. Limits including an overall systematic uncertainty are presented in the parentheses.}
\label{tab:limits}
\end{table}
\begin{table}[!t]
\ContinuedFloat
\begin{subtable}{1\textwidth}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ccccccc}
& & {$m_a$ [MeV]}& V+A & V$-$A & V/A & \\
\cline{1-7}
\multirow{2}{*}{126 GeV} & {Unpolarized} & 1 & {8.87 (9.57) } & 8.50 (9.17) & 12.26 (13.23) & \parbox[t]{.09mm}{\multirow{26}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{270}{Expected 95$\%$ CL upper limit on $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ [$10^{-5}$ TeV$^{-1}$]}}} \\
\cline{2-6}
& {Polarized} & 1 & 2.87 (3.08) & 7.25 (7.83) & 5.11 (5.51) & \\
\cline{1-6}
\multirow{22}{*}{350 GeV} & \multirow{11}{*}{Unpolarized} & 0.0001 & 6.63 (7.01) & 6.46 (6.82) & 9.25 (9.77) & \\
& & 0.1 & 6.62 (6.99) & 6.43 (6.79) & 9.25 (9.77) & \\
& & 0.2 & 6.62 (6.99) & 6.42 (6.78) & 9.25 (9.77) & \\
& & 0.3 & 6.60 (6.98) & 6.44 (6.80) & 9.26 (9.78) & \\
& & 0.4 & 6.63 (7.01) & 6.45 (6.81) & 9.23 (9.74) & \\
& & 0.5 & 6.62 (6.99) & 6.42 (6.78) & 9.27 (9.80) & \\
& & 0.6 & 6.63 (7.00) & 6.43 (6.79) & 9.27 (9.80) & \\
& & 0.7 & 6.63 (7.01) & 6.38 (6.74) & 9.27 (9.80) & \\
& & 0.8 & 6.66 (7.04) & 6.43 (6.78) & 9.25 (9.77) &\\
& & 0.9 & 6.65 (7.03) & 6.48 (6.84) & 9.24 (9.76) & \\
& & 1 & 6.62 (7.00) & 6.43 (6.79) & 9.19 (9.71) &\\
\cline{2-6}
& \multirow{11}{*}{Polarized} & 0.0001 & 2.23 (2.34) & 4.45 (4.75) & 3.76 (3.96) & \\
& & 0.1 & 2.15 (2.25) & 4.46 (4.74) & 3.77 (3.97) & \\
& & 0.2 & 2.18 (2.29) & 4.45 (4.75) & 3.79 (3.99) &\\
& & 0.3 & 2.13 (2.23) & 4.45 (4.75) & 3.72 (3.92) & \\
& & 0.4 & 2.18 (2.28) & 4.49 (4.80) & 3.76 (3.96) & \\
& & 0.5 & 2.17 (2.28) & 4.38 (4.68) & 3.75 (3.95) & \\
& & 0.6 & 2.14 (2.24) & 4.47 (4.78) & 3.76 (3.95) & \\
& & 0.7 & 2.21 (2.31) & 4.47 (4.78) & 3.57 (3.75) & \\
& & 0.8 & 2.15 (2.25) & 4.44 (4.74) & 3.75 (3.93) & \\
& & 0.9 & 2.10 (2.20) & 4.50 (4.81) & 3.77 (3.98) & \\
& & 1 & 2.17 (2.27) & 4.38 (4.68) & 3.74 (3.92) & \\
\cline{1-6}
\multirow{2}{*}{1500 GeV} & {Unpolarized} & 1 & 12.29 (12.95) & 12.13 (12.77) & 17.29 (18.22) & \\
\cline{2-6}
& {Polarized} & 1 & 4.49 (4.71) & 8.84 (9.44) & 7.86 (8.27) & \\
\cline{1-7}
\end{tabular}
\caption{}
\label{tab:limitstaumu}
\end{subtable}
\caption{Expected $95\%$ CL upper limits on a) $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and b) $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ obtained assuming different center-of-mass energies and ALP mass scenarios for the unpolarized and polarized muon beams cases. The three chiral structures assumed for the ALP coupling, i.e. V+A, V$-$A and V/A, have been analyzed independently and corresponding limits are shown. Limits at the center-of-mass energies of 126, 350 and 1500 GeV correspond to the integrated luminosities of 2.5, 189.2 and 394.2 fb$^{-1}$, respectively. Limits including an overall systematic uncertainty are presented in the parentheses.}
\end{table}
As seen in Tab. \ref{tab:limits}, the expected limits on $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ obtained for the polarized muon beams case are significantly stronger than the limits obtained in the case of unpolarized muon beams. This is the case for all the three studied center-of-mass energies and also all the three assumed chiral structures. This improvement is due to the suppression of the main SM background with the help of the energy $x_\ell^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}$ ($\ell=e,\mu$) spectrums as discussed before. It is also seen that, in the polarized muon beams case, different chiral structures assumed for the ALP LFV coupling lead to different sensitivities. The best and worst limits respectively correspond to the V+A and V$-$A structures and the limit for the V/A case has a moderate value. As discussed in Section \ref{sec:SMtaudecay}, this difference in the limits obtained for different chiral structures is expected and stems from the difference in the angular orientations of the final charged lepton in the LFV and SM tau decays. In the case of unpolarized muon beams, the limits obtained for the V+A and V$-$A cases are similar and stronger than the limit obtained for the V/A case. The relative weakness of the limit for the V/A case results from the smaller cross section of the ALP production in this case. Integrating Eq. \ref{eq:decaychiral} with respect to $\theta$, it is seen that the total width of the decay $\tau \to \ell a$ in the V/A case is half of the total width in the V+A and V$-$A cases. The ALP production cross sections in these cases also follow the same ratio and thus the limit for the V/A case is degraded. The degradation of the limit for the V/A case, as a result of the smaller cross section, also occurs in the case of polarized muon beams. However, in this case, it is fully compensated by the discriminating power provided by the kinematical variable $\Omega^{\tau_1\mathrm{RF}}(\tau_1,\ell)$ and the limit for the V/A case becomes stronger than the limit for V$-$A case.
Results presented in Tab. \ref{tab:limits} show that the expected limits on $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ obtained at the center-of-mass energy of 350 GeV (corresponding to the Top-High Luminosity operating stage of the assumed muon collider) are more stringent than the limits obtained at the center-of-mass energies 126 and 1500 GeV. The main reason lies in the combination of the center-of-mass energy and the integrated luminosity at this collider operating stage that enhances the signal statistics. It is also seen that the limits obtained for different ALP mass scenarios at $\sqrt{s}=350$ GeV are similar with nonsignificant discrepancies. This can be understood as a result of the smallness of the ALP mass in the considered range ($m_a\leq1$ MeV) when compared with the process center-of-mass energy and the mass of tau lepton ($\approx 1.777$ GeV). The cross section of the ALP production and also the distributions of the kinematical variables don't change significantly for different ALP masses in this mass range and thus the limit is not sensitive to the ALP mass.
Assuming unpolarized muon beams and an ALP mass of 1 MeV, the strongest expected limits (including systematic uncertainties) on $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ ($c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$) obtained in this work for the V+A, V$-$A and V/A chiral structures are 7.08$\times10^{-5}$ (7.00$\times10^{-5}$), 6.89$\times10^{-5}$ (6.79$\times10^{-5}$) and 9.87$\times10^{-5}$ (9.71$\times10^{-5}$) $\mathrm{TeV}^{-1}$, respectively (see Tab. \ref{tab:limits}). The corresponding limits obtained in the case of polarized muon beams are $2.48\times10^{-5}$ ($2.27\times10^{-5}$), $4.90\times10^{-5}$ ($4.68\times10^{-5}$) and $4.37\times10^{-5}$ ($3.92\times10^{-5}$) $\mathrm{TeV}^{-1}$. Comparing these limits with the current experimental limits on the LFV couplings $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ \cite{Bauer:2019gfk} shows that the limits obtained in both the unpolarized and polarized muon beams cases in this work are significantly stronger than the current experimental limits, and the experimental limits can be improved by roughly one order of magnitude with the help of the present analysis. It should be noted that as in the previous experimental searches for the $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ couplings the tau polarization-induced effects have not been considered, the reported experimental limits don't depend on the chiral structure of the ALP coupling.
\section*{Summary and conclusions}
\label{sec:conclusions}
The spontaneously broken global $U(1)_{\mathrm{PQ}}$ symmetry produces CP-odd scalars called Axion-Like Particles (ALPs). Such particles provide the possibility to address some of the long-lasting SM problems. ALPs can have lepton-flavor-violating (LFV) couplings to the SM charged leptons. Recently, there have been some proposals for an explanation of the anomalous magnetic dipole moments of muon and electron using LFV ALPs. ALPs with LFV couplings can also solve the strong CP problem if couple to gluons. Motivated by the numerous applications that ALPs have found in many areas, we have studied the capability of a future muon collider suggested by the Muon Accelerator Program (MAP) to search for LFV ALPs production. The production process assumed in this work is the muon-anti muon annihilation into a tau lepton pair followed by the LFV decay $\tau\ra\ell a$ ($\ell=e,\mu$) of one of the tau leptons. With the use of some suitable discriminating variables and a multivariate technique, we tried to discriminate between the signal and backgrounds. We have obtained expected $95\%$ CL upper limits (including systematic uncertainties) on the ALP LFV couplings $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ for light ALPs ($m_a\leq1$ MeV) assuming three different chiral structures for the ALP LFV coupling. The obtained limits have been computed assuming the center-of-mass energies of 126, 350 and 1500 GeV, which respectively correspond to the integrated luminosities of 2.5, 189.2 and 394.2 fb$^{-1}$. The obtained limits are significantly stronger than present experimental limits. However, it was seen that, when the colliding muon beams are unpolarized, the ALP production is overwhelmed by the SM $\tau^+\tau^-$ production background although the rest of backgrounds are significantly suppressed. Assuming $-$0.8/+0.8 (or +0.8/$-$0.8) polarized $\mu^-\mu^+$ beams, we have suggested an unprecedented procedure which utilizes tau polarization-induced effects to improve the sensitivity of the search. Highly polarized tau leptons resulting in such effects can be produced in the collision of polarized muon beams. The employed procedure is based on the differences in properties of the polarized LFV and SM tau decays. In the LFV decay $\tau\ra\ell a$, the lepton energy fraction $x_{\ell}\equiv2E_{\ell}/m_\tau \simeq 1$ and is independent of the momentum direction of the final lepton. However, in the SM decay $\tau\ra \ell\nu \bar{\nu}$, the energy fraction distribution of the final charged lepton depends on the polarization direction of the decaying tau. This dependence leads to separated $x_{\ell}$ distributions for the LFV and SM tau decays in certain momentum directions of the final charged lepton. Utilizing this effect, the SM $\tau^+\tau^-$ background has been suppressed to some extent and the limits have been improved. As the angular distribution of the charged lepton momentum in the LFV and SM tau decays depend on the polarization direction of the decaying tau, the limits obtained for different chiral structures of the ALP coupling are different from each other. The best and worst limits respectively correspond to the V+A and V$-$A cases and the limit for the V/A case lies somewhere in between. The improvement achieved by utilizing the polarization-induced effects is significant and suggests that this procedure can also be employed in similar collider searches to enhance the sensitivity. In the unpolarized muon beams case and assuming the ALP mass to be 1 MeV, the strongest expected limits on $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ ($c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$) obtained in this study for the V+A, V$-$A and V/A chiral structures are 7.08$\times10^{-5}$ (7.00$\times10^{-5}$), 6.89$\times10^{-5}$ (6.79$\times10^{-5}$) and 9.87$\times10^{-5}$ (9.71$\times10^{-5}$) $\mathrm{TeV}^{-1}$, respectively. The corresponding limits achieved in the case of polarized muon beams are $2.48\times10^{-5}$ ($2.27\times10^{-5}$), $4.90\times10^{-5}$ ($4.68\times10^{-5}$) and $4.37\times10^{-5}$ ($3.92\times10^{-5}$) $\mathrm{TeV}^{-1}$. A comparison shows that the limits achieved in both the unpolarized and polarized muon beams cases in this study are significantly stronger than the current experimental limits and the present analysis can improve the experimental limits on the $c_{\tau e}/f_a$ and $c_{\tau \mu}/f_a$ couplings by roughly one order of magnitude. It can be concluded that the present analysis can serve as a tool for searching for LFV ALPs as it provides the possibility to probe an unprecedented region of the parameter space.
\RaggedRight
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Q: How to send image with url in android Image is not able to reach on database
my doInBackground() method
try {
File file_name=new File("/storage/sdcard1/Received/IAF-Sarang.jpg");
DefaultHttpClient mHttpClient;
HttpParams par = new BasicHttpParams();
par.setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.PROTOCOL_VERSION, HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1);
mHttpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(par);
try {
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://www.hugosys.in/www.nett-torg.no/api/rpcs/uploadfiles/?");
MultipartEntity multipartEntity = new MultipartEntity(HttpMultipartMode.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE);
multipartEntity.addPart("post_id", new StringBody("1368"));
multipartEntity.addPart("user_id", new StringBody("62"));
multipartEntity.addPart("files", new FileBody(file_name, "Content-Type: image/jpeg\r\n\r\n"));
httppost.setEntity(multipartEntity);
mHttpClient.execute(httppost, new PhotoUploadResponseHandler());
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
System.out.println(""+e);
}
} catch (Exception e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
return response_string;
Here is the PhotoUploadResponseHandler class
private class PhotoUploadResponseHandler implements ResponseHandler<Object> {
@Override
public Object handleResponse(HttpResponse response)
throws ClientProtocolException, IOException {
HttpEntity r_entity = response.getEntity();
String rString = EntityUtils.toString(r_entity);
Log.d("UPLOAD", rString);
response_string=rString;
return rString;
}
}
There is one more block of code which i have tried but in that post_id is not reached
Image was posted sucessfully
// open a URL connection to the Servlet
FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream(sourceFile);
URL url = new URL("http://www.hugosys.in/www.nett-torg.no/api/rpcs/uploadfiles/?");
// Open a HTTP connection to the URL
conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
conn.setDoInput(true); // Allow Inputs
conn.setDoOutput(true); // Allow Outputs
conn.setUseCaches(false); // Don't use a Cached Copy
conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
conn.setRequestProperty("Connection", "Keep-Alive");
conn.setRequestProperty("ENCTYPE", "multipart/form-data");
conn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "multipart/form-data;boundary="+boundary);
conn.setRequestProperty("post_id", "1368");
conn.setRequestProperty("user_id", "62");
conn.setRequestProperty("files", file_name);
dos = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());
dos.writeBytes(twoHyphens + boundary + lineEnd);
dos.writeBytes("Content-Disposition: form-data;name=files[];filename="+file_name+""+ lineEnd);
//dos.writeBytes("Content-Type: application/octet-stream\r\n\r\n");
// "image/jpeg"
dos.writeBytes("Content-Type: image/jpeg\r\n\r\n");
// create a buffer of maximum size
bytesAvailable = fileInputStream.available();
bufferSize = Math.min(bytesAvailable, maxBufferSize);
buffer = new byte[bufferSize];
// read file and write it into form...
bytesRead = fileInputStream.read(buffer, 0, bufferSize);
while (bytesRead > 0) {
dos.write(buffer, 0, bufferSize);
bytesAvailable = fileInputStream.available();
bufferSize = Math.min(bytesAvailable, maxBufferSize);
bytesRead = fileInputStream.read(buffer, 0, bufferSize);
}
dos.writeBytes(lineEnd);
dos.writeBytes(twoHyphens + boundary + twoHyphens + lineEnd);
// send multipart form data necesssary after file data...
// Responses from the server (code and message)
int serverResponseCode = conn.getResponseCode();
serverResponseMessage = conn.getResponseMessage();
is=conn.getInputStream();
Log.i("uploadFile", "HTTP Response is : "+ serverResponseMessage + ": " + serverResponseCode);
InputStreamReader inputStreamReader = new InputStreamReader(is);
BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(inputStreamReader);
String bufferedStrChunk = null;
while((bufferedStrChunk = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null){
stringBuilder.append(bufferedStrChunk);
}
//close the streams //
fileInputStream.close();
dos.flush();
dos.close();
A: Have look This code for uploading image with other data on server using php webservices...
Code For Upload Button...
upload = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button1);
upload.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
public void onClick(View v) {
bitmap= BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.img);
new ImageUploadTask().execute();
}
});
This is async task to upload image with data on server...
class ImageUploadTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, String> {
private StringBuilder s;
@Override
protected void onPreExecute() {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
super.onPreExecute();
mProgress = new ProgressDialog(MainActivity.this);
mProgress.setMessage("Loading");
mProgress.setProgressStyle(ProgressDialog.STYLE_SPINNER);
mProgress.setCancelable(false);
mProgress.show();
}
@Override
protected String doInBackground(Void... unsued) {
try {
String sResponse = "";
String url = "http://www.hugosys.in/www.nett-torg.no/api/rpcs/uploadfiles/?";
HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url);
MultipartEntity entity = new MultipartEntity();
ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
bitmap.compress(CompressFormat.JPEG, 100, bos);
byte[] data = bos.toByteArray();
entity.addPart("post_id", new StringBody("1368"));
entity.addPart("user_id", new StringBody("62"));
entity.addPart("files[]", new ByteArrayBody(data,"image/jpeg", "test2.jpg"));
httpPost.setEntity(entity);
HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpPost);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent(), "UTF-8"));
s = new StringBuilder();
while ((sResponse = reader.readLine()) != null)
{
s = s.append(sResponse);
}
if(response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode() == HttpStatus.SC_OK)
{
return s.toString();
}else
{
return "{\"status\":\"false\",\"message\":\"Some error occurred\"}";
}
} catch (Exception e) {
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), e.getMessage(), Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
return null;
}
}
@Override
protected void onPostExecute(String sResponse) {
try {
mProgress.dismiss();
if (sResponse != null) {
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), sResponse + " Photo uploaded successfully",Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
}
} catch (Exception e) {
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), e.getMessage(),
Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
Log.e(e.getClass().getName(), e.getMessage(), e);
}
}
}
Add Permission in Manifest.xml..
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"/>
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} | 9,793 |
\section{Introduction}
For $n\in\mathbb N$ and $m\in(0,\infty)$, the solution to the Schr\"odinger-type equation on $\mathbb R^n\times\mathbb R$
\[
\begin{cases}
i\partial_tu(x,t)+(-\Delta)^\frac m2 u(x,t)=0,\\
u(x,0)=f(x)
\end{cases}
\]
is (formally) given by
\[
u(x,t)
=
e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac m2}}f(x)
=
(2\pi)^{-n}\int_{\mathbb R^n}e^{i(x\cdot\xi+t|\xi|^m)}\widehat{f}(\xi)\,\mathrm{d}\xi.
\]
Let $m=2$ in which case, it is the classical and standard Schr\"odinger equation in quantum mechanics. A fundamental problem is to determine the least smoothness $s$ of the initial data for which the pointwise convergence to the solutions
\begin{equation}\label{pw}
\lim_{t\to 0} e^{it(-\Delta)^\frac m2}f(x)=f(x)\quad \textrm{a.e.}
\end{equation}
is guaranteed, where the initial data $f$ is taken from a (inhomogeneous) Sobolev space $H^s(\mathbb R^n)$ defined by
\[
\|f\|_{H^s(\mathbb R^n)}
=
\|(1-\Delta)^\frac s2 f\|_{L^2(\mathbb R^n)}.
\]
This problem is often called Carleson's problem and traced back to work by Carlson \cite{Cr80} and Dahlberg--Kenig \cite{DK82} for the Schr\"odinger equation in the early 1980s. They solved it completely in one spacial dimension: The pointwise convergence \eqref{pw} with $(n,m)=(1,2)$ holds if and only if $s\geq\frac14$. The higher dimensional cases are more difficult to study. After many authors' contributions (see \cite{Sj87, Vg88, Br95, Lee06, Br13, LR17, LR19a}, for example), Bourgain \cite{Br16} (for which a nice expository paper by Pierce \cite{Pr20} is helpful), Du--Guth--Li \cite{DGL17}, and Du--Zhang \cite{DZ18} finally proved that $s=\frac12-\frac{1}{2(n+1)}$ is the critical regularity, although it is still unknown whether the pointwise convergence is true exactly at the critical point.
The fractional Schr\"odinger equations ($m\in(0,\infty)\backslash\{1\}$) are natural generalizations not only in mathematics but also in physics. For instance, L\'evy stochastic process generalizes the Gaussian process or Wiener stochastic process, in which context the parameter $m$ may be called L\'evy index.
Furthermore, the fractional Schr\"odinger equations have connections in optics related to Airy beam as well as water wave equations with surface tension. The reader may visit \cite{Ls00, Ls02, GH11, IP14, Longhi15} and references therein.
In view of the pointwise convergence problem, the case of the fractional Schr\"odinger equations are of interest in their own right.
When $m>1$, pointwise convergence is independent of $m$ \cite{Sj87, KPV91, MYZ15, CK18}, nevertheless it should be noted that the necessary condition of the convergence in higher dimensions is still open, in which direction there are several progress \cite{ACP21, EP22}.
Sj\"ogren--Sj\"olin \cite{SS89} and Barcel\`o--Bennett--Carbery--Rogers \cite{BBCR11} introduced a refinement of the pointwise convergence problem; measuring the Hausdorff dimensions of the so-called divergence sets. For $\alpha\in(0,n]$, a positive Borel measure $\mu$ is said to be a $\alpha$-dimensional measure if
\[
\sup_{x\in\mathbb R^n,r>0}\frac{\mu(B(x,r))}{r^\alpha}
<
c
\]
for some $c>0$. An $n$-dimensional ball of radius $r$ centered at $x$ is denoted by $B(x,r)$. We collect all $\alpha$-dimensional measures supported in the unit ball and denote such collection by $\mathcal M^\alpha$. The divergence set $\mathfrak{D}(f)$ for each $f\in H^s(\mathbb R^n)$ is the set on which the pointwise convergence fails, namely,
\[
\mathfrak{D}(f)
:=
\{x\in\mathbb R^n:\lim_{t\to0}e^{it(-\Delta)^\frac m2}f(x,t)\not=f(x)\}.
\]
Of course, quantifying the Hausdorff dimension of the divergence set is only meaningful to the smooth regularity $s$ for which the poinwise convergence holds, otherwise the dimension is trivially full.
In one dimension, Barcel\`o--Bennett--Carbery--Rogers \cite{BBCR11} revealed that
\[
\sup_{f\in H^s(\mathbb R)}\dim_H\mathfrak D(f)=1-2s
\]
for $s\in(\frac14,\frac12]$ (For the lower bound they used the results for the Bessel potential due to \v{Z}ubrin\'{c} \cite{Zb02}). One may note that there is an interesting jump at $s=\frac14$. For higher dimensions, there are some partial results but many cases are still wide open. The interested readers may visit \cite{Mt95,BBCR11,BR12,LR17,LR19a,DGLZ18,EP22b}.
When $m\in(0,1]$, it seems fairly different in nature, and less well known.
The case when $m=1$ corresponds to the wave equation and it has been discovered that $e^{it\sqrt{-\Delta}}f$ converges to $f$ almost everywhere for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R^n)$ if $s>\frac12$ by Cowling \cite{Cw82}, and it fails otherwise by Walther \cite{Wl97}. The higher dimensional cases are considered by Rogers--Villarroya in \cite{RV08} where they concerned space global estimates as well. There are several studies conducting deeper analysis regarding its divergence set, including the aforementioned \cite{BBCR11, LR19b}. One of the major differences from the case with $m\not=1$ is that there is nothing to do when $n=1$. When $n=2,3$, the Hausdorff dimension behavior of the divergence set is completely understood by \cite{BBCR11, HKL21}, but the case when $n\geq4$ remains open\footnote{
Barcel\'o et al. \cite{BBCR11} conjectured that
\[
\sup_{f\in H^s(\mathbb R^n)}\mathfrak D(f)
=
\begin{cases}
n+2-4s\qquad &\text{if $\frac12< s \leq 1$}\\
n-2s\qquad &\text{if $1< s \leq \frac n2$}
\end{cases}
\]
holds, and the lower bound has actually been verified in the sense of the corresponding maximal inequality.
}.
It is interesting and seems useful that there is a connection to the so-called spherical average Fourier decay, and the fractal Strichartz estimates (see \cite{Mt87, DZ18, HKL21} and references therein).
When $m\in(0,1)$, Cowling also pointed out in \cite{Cw82} that \eqref{pw} holds at least if $s>\frac m2$ in general $d\geq1$ and later Walther \cite{Wl95} proved that, in one dimension, \eqref{pw} holds if $s>\frac m4$ by considering the corresponding maximal inequality whose failure is also shown if $s < \frac m4$. The next question may be how big the size of divergence sets can be and our first result gives a reasonable upper bound.
\begin{theorem}\label{t:concave}
Let $n=1$ and $m\in(0,1)$. Then
\[
\sup_{f\in H^s(\mathbb R)}\dim_H\mathfrak D(f)
\leq
\max\left\{1-2s,\, \frac12+\frac{1-4s}{2(1-m)}\right\}
\]
whenever $s\in(\frac m4,\frac12)$.
\end{theorem}
By the standard argument (see \cite{CS21} for example), Theorem \ref{t:concave} follows from establishing the corresponding maximal estimate
\begin{equation}\label{e:max}
\|e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac m2}}f\|_{L_x^q(\mathbb I,\mathrm{d}\mu)L_t^\infty(\mathbb I)}
\lesssim
\|f\|_{H^s}
\end{equation}
for all $f\in H^s$ and for some $q\geq1$ whenever
\begin{equation}\label{s:verline}
s
>
\max\left\{
\frac12-\frac m4-\frac{(1-m)\alpha}{q},
\frac12-\frac{\alpha}{q}
\right\}.
\end{equation}
As we show, this is sharp in the sense that one can find an initial data and $\alpha$-dimensional measure such that \eqref{e:max} fails if $s<
\max\left\{
\frac12-\frac m4-\frac{(1-m)\alpha}{q},
\frac12-\frac{\alpha}{q}
\right\}$.
The proof is constructed in the spirit of \cite{Sh19} where the second author dealt with a similar situation for $m>1$. Overall, the case with $m\in (0,1)$ seems much more delicate on which we make further comments after the proof in Section \ref{s:vertical}.
It is worth noting that the dimension of the divergence sets now continuously varies (Figure \ref{fig:dim}). \\
\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=1.5]
\draw [->](0,0)--(4.5,0) node [below] {$s$};
\draw [->](0,0)--(0,3.5) node [left] {$\dim_H\mathfrak D$};
\node [below left] at (0,0) {$O$};
\draw (1.4,3)--(0,3);
\draw [cyan] (4,0)--(2,1.5);
\draw [magenta] (2,1.5)--(1.4,3);
\draw [dotted] (1.4,3)--(1.4,0) node [below] {$\frac m4$};
\draw [dotted] (2,3)--(2,0) node [below] {$\frac14$};
\node [below] at (4,0) {$\frac12$};
\draw [dotted] (2,1.5)--(0,1.5) node [left] {$\frac12$};
\node [left] at (0,3) {$1$};
\draw [dashed](1.4,3)--(2,3);
\draw [dashed,cyan] (2,1.5)--(0,3);
\draw [dashed,magenta] (2,1.5)--(2.6,0);
\node [below] at (2.6,0) {$\frac12-\frac m4$};
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption{The upper bound of the divergence sets when $m\in(0,1)$.} \label{fig:dim}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
More variations regarding the pointwise convergence problem have been studied.
Lee--Rogers \cite{LR12} and Lee--Vargas with the first author \cite{CLV12} considered pointwise convergence of solutions to the (standard) Schr\"odinger equations along a curve $\gamma$. When $n=1$, typically, it is given by
\begin{equation}\label{curve}
\gamma(x,t)=x-\theta t^\kappa, \qquad (x,t)\in\mathbb R\times\mathbb R, \quad \theta>0
\end{equation}
for $\kappa>0$. Figure \ref{fig:curves} illustrates the various paths that are discussed here.
The motivation in \cite{LR12} was to understand the pointwise convergence properties of the Shcr\"odinger equation with the harmonic oscillator. It turns out that it is equivalent to the one for the (standard) Schr\"odinger equation along a non-tangential curve $\sqrt{1+t^2}x$, which is classified the same as \eqref{curve}. In \cite{LR12} it was shown that the pointwise convergence of the Schr\"odinger equation\footnote{At least for a curve given by \eqref{curve}, our method generalizes the result to the fractional Schr\"odinger setting when $m>1$.} along a non-tangential curve given by \eqref{curve} (more generally $\gamma\in C^1$)
\begin{equation}\label{pw along curve}
\lim_{\substack{(y,t)\to(x,0)\\ y=\gamma(x,t)}} e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac m2}} f(y)
=
f(x)\quad \textrm{a.e.}
\end{equation}
holds for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ if $s\geq\frac14$. This result reflects our intuition since a non-tangential curve ``looks like" a vertical line around $t=0$ where pointwise convergence matters. (This can be more relaxed. For instance, there is no difference between a vertical line and a tilted line, \eqref{curve} with $\kappa=1$.)
When the curve is tangential, it can be different from a vertical line. Indeed, Lee, Vargas, and the authors \cite{CLV12,CS21} showed that \eqref{pw along curve} holds for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ provided that the curve is given by \eqref{curve} and $s>\max\{\frac14,\frac{1-m\kappa}{2}\}$.
The sizes of divergence sets have already been computed as
\[
\dim_H \mathfrak D(f\circ\gamma)\leq \max\left\{1-2s,\frac{1-ms}{2\kappa}\right\}
\]
for $m>1$, $\kappa\in(0,1)$, and $s\in(\frac14,\frac12)$ (see \cite{CL14,CS21}).
There are some partial results in higher dimensions \cite{LR12, LW18} but it is widely open at this moment.
\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.8]
\tikzset{->-/.style={decoration={
markings,
mark=at position .5 with {\arrow{stealth}}},postaction={decorate}}}
\draw [->](-1,0)--(6,0) node [below] {$y$};
\draw [->](0,-0.5)--(0,3.5) node [left] {$t$};
\draw [color=blue,->-] (5.5,3) to [out =-100, in=5] (2.5,0)
\draw [color=orange,->-] (2.5,3)--(2.5,0)
\draw [color=Green, ->-] (4, 3)--(2.5,0);
\draw [color=red, ->-] (-1,3) to [out =-10, in=95] (2.5,0)
\node [below]at (2.5,0){$x$};
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption{Typical four kinds of paths; \textcolor{red}{non-tangential curve}, \textcolor{orange}{vertical line}, \textcolor{Green}{tilted (angled) line}, \textcolor{blue}{tangential curve}.} \label{fig:curves}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
When $m=1$, there is no space to make it interesting in one spacial dimension while the case when $0<m<1$ seems surprisingly sensitive to the directions of the paths of convergence. Very recently, Yuan--Zhao \cite{YZ21} showed that the pointwise convergence along a curve $\gamma$ given by \eqref{curve} with $0<\kappa\leq1$ holds if $s>\max\{\frac12-\frac m4,\frac{1-m\kappa}{2}\}$. They also showed that the Hausdorff dimension of the divergence sets is bounded above by $\frac{1-2s}{m\kappa}$ whenever $s\in(\frac12-\frac m4, \frac12)$.
When $\kappa=1$, the curve $\gamma$ becomes a (tilted) line with its angle (from the vertical line) $\theta$ indicating how different from a vertical line. By comparison with Walther's result introduced earlier, their results teach us that the path along a tilted line with a small angle is somehow very different from the vertical line in this context. The following theorem reveals that this phenomenon can be even severer.
\begin{theorem}\label{t:nontan}
Ler $m\in (0,1)$, $\kappa\geq 1$ and $\gamma$ given by \eqref{curve}. Then, the pointwise convergence along the curve $\gamma$ holds that \eqref{pw along curve} for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ if $s>\frac12-\frac m4$. Furthermore, we have
\[
\dim_H\mathfrak{D}(f\circ\gamma)
\leq
\frac{1-2s}{m}
\]
whenever $s\in(\frac12-\frac m4,\frac12)$.
\end{theorem}
It is possible to replace the curve $\gamma$ by the one in more general class (Remarks in Section \ref{s:non-tangential}).
Theorem \ref{t:nontan} is obtained by the maximal(-in-time) inequality with respect to $\mathrm{d}\mu$
\begin{equation}\label{e:max general}
\|e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac m2}} f\circ\gamma\|_{L_x^q(\mathbb I,\mathrm{d}\mu)L_t^\infty(\mathbb I)}
\leq
C\|f\|_{H^2(\mathbb R)}
\end{equation}
for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ if $s>\max\{\frac12-\frac m4,\frac12-\frac{m\alpha}{q}\}$, which is sharp in the sense that there exist an initial data and $\mathrm{d}\mu(x)$ such that \eqref{e:max general} fails if $s<\max\{\frac12-\frac m4,\frac12-\frac{m\alpha}{q}\}$. In particular, the special case when $\mathrm{d}\mu(x)=\mathrm{d} x$ (implying $\alpha=1$) directly gives us \eqref{pw along curve}. As \eqref{e:max general} shows, the property of pointwise convergence along a curve given by \eqref{curve} with a large $\kappa$ suddenly turns nicer once the curve becomes its superposition as $\kappa\to \infty$ (i.e. a vertical line). This interesting shift is even significant when $m$ is close to $0$.
In fact, one aspect to understand why a non-tangential curve differs so much from a vertical line when $m\in(0,1)$ is that, formally speaking, if we consider $m=0$ and $\kappa>0$, we have
\[
\|\sup_{t\in \mathbb I}|e^{it(-\Delta)^{0}}f(x)\|_{L^2(0,1)}
=
\|f\|_{H^0}
\]
on one hand, and by a change of variables
\[
\|\sup_{t\in \mathbb I}|e^{it(-\Delta)^{0}} f(x-\theta t^\kappa)|\|_{L^2(0,1)}
\lesssim
\|\sup_{t\in \mathbb R}|e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac 12}} f(x)|\|_{L^2(0,1)}
\lesssim
\|f\|_{H^{\frac12+\varepsilon}}
\]
for arbitrary small $\varepsilon>0$ on the other hand. The cases when $m\in(0,1)$ capture a similar phenomenon of this shift in milder manners.
Theorem \ref{t:nontan} completes the study by providing reasonable sufficient regularities that guarantee pointwise convergence along a typical curve given by \eqref{curve} in one spatial dimension. Here is a brief summary: Let $m_<\in (0,1)$, $\kappa_\leqslant\in (0,1]$, $m_>\in(1,\infty)$, and $\kappa_\geqslant\in[1,\infty)$. It has been established that \eqref{pw along curve} holds for $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ if $s>\mathfrak{s}(m;\gamma(x,t))$, which are defined by
\begin{itemize}
\item $\mathfrak{s}(m_<;x)=\frac m4$
\item $\mathfrak{s}(m_<;x+\theta t^{\kappa_\geqslant})=\frac12-\frac m4$
\item $\mathfrak{s}(m_<;x+\theta t^{\kappa_\leqslant})=\max\{\frac12-\frac m4,\frac{1-m\kappa_\leqslant}{2}\}$
\item $\mathfrak{s}(1;x)=\frac 12$
\item $\mathfrak{s}(m_>;x)=\frac14$
\item $\mathfrak{s}(m_>;x+\theta t^{\kappa_\geqslant})=\frac14$
\item $\mathfrak{s}(m_>;x+\theta t^{\kappa_\leqslant})=\max\{\frac14,\frac{1-m\kappa_\leqslant}{2}\}$
\end{itemize}
and each $\mathfrak{s}(m;\gamma(x,t))$ is sharp in the sense of maximal inequalities.
\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=7]
\draw [->] (0,0)--(1+1/5,0) node [below] at (1+1/5,0) {$m$} node [below left] at (0,0) {$O$};
\draw [->](0,0)--(0,1/2+1/10) node [left] {$s$};
\draw [dotted, name path=v] (2/3,0)--(2/3,1/2) node [below] at (2/3,0) {$1$};
\draw [teal, name path=h] (2/3,1/4)--(1+1/5,1/4);
\draw [dotted, name path=h'] (0,1/4)--(2/3,1/4);
\node [left] at (0,1/4) {$\frac14$};
\draw [dotted] (0,1/2)--(1+1/5,1/2) node [left] at (0,1/2) {$\frac12$};
\draw [blue!50!teal!] (0,0)--(2/3,1/4);
\draw [brown, name path=decline] (0,1/2)--(2/3,1/4);
\draw [purple, name path=line] (0,1/2)--(1+1/5,1/4-1/20);
\draw [purple, dashed, name path=linebelow] (0,1/2)--(2/3-1/10,0);
\path [name intersections={of=h and line, by={A}}];
\path [name intersections={of=h' and linebelow,by={B}}];
\path [name intersections={of=v and line,by={C}}];
\draw [dotted] (A)--([yshift=-1/4*1cm]A) node [below] {$\frac{1}{2\kappa_\leqslant}$};
\draw [dotted] (B)--([yshift=-1/4*1cm]B) node [below] {$\frac{1}{2\kappa_\geqslant}$};
\fill [violet] (2/3,1/2) circle (1/3pt);
\fill [white] (2/3,1/4) circle (1/3pt);
\fill [white] (C) circle (1/3pt);
\draw (2/3,1/4) circle (1/3pt);
\draw (C) circle (1/3pt);
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption{The relations between the critical smooth regularities $s$ and $m\in(0,\infty)$.} \label{f:something}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
Lastly, we comment on another variation introduced by Sj\"ogren--Sj\"olin \cite{SS89} and Lee--Vargas with the first author \cite{CLV12}; pointwise convergence along a set of lines generated by a compact set $\Theta\subset \mathbb R^n$. When $n=1$, \cite{SS89,CLV12,Sh19} have shown that, for $m>1$, $\Theta\subset \mathbb R$ and $\gamma(x,t)=x-\theta t$ with $\theta\in \Theta$, \eqref{pw along curve} holds for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ if $s>\frac{1+\beta(\Theta)}{4}$, where $\beta(\Theta)$ denotes the Minkowski dimension of $\Theta$. The necessity of the conditions are known in some special cases when $\Theta=\{0\},[0,1]$ whose Minkowski dimension is $0,1$, respectively. For $\Theta$ having an intermediate dimension $\beta(\Theta)\in (0,1)$ it is still open. Some higher-dimensional results are available (see \cite{Jo10,LWY20}).
In the maximal inequality perspective, however, the authors very recently proved the optimality in a sense. In fact, there exists $C>0$ such that
\begin{equation}\label{e:max fractal}
\|e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac m2}} f(\gamma(x,t))\|_{L_x^4(0,1)L_t^\infty(0,1)L_\theta^\infty(\Theta)}
\lesssim
C
\|f\|_{H^s}
\end{equation}
holds for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ if $s>\frac{1+\beta(\Theta)}{4}$ (due to the second author \cite{Sh19}), and this result is sharp since there exist a compact set $\Theta\subset \mathbb R$ and an initial function contained in $H^s$ such that \eqref{e:max fractal} fails when $s<\frac{1+\beta(\Theta)}{4}$. For the sharpness considering $L_x^4$ is crucial in the argument. We do not know whether it can be extended to, say, $L_x^2$ which may be more closely related to the pointwise convergence formulation.
In the case $m\in(0,1)$, there is no result in this direction as far as the authors are aware.
Modifying the argument for Theorem \ref{t:nontan}, one can show that there exists some constant $C>0$ such that \eqref{e:max fractal} holds for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ if $s>\frac12-\frac m4+\frac{m\beta(\Theta)}{4}$ and its sharpness in the sense that there exist $\Theta$ and an initial data such that \eqref{e:max fractal} fails otherwise. As a consequence, we have the following.
\begin{theorem}\label{t:pw along lines}
Let $m\in(0,1)$ and $\Theta$ be a compact set in $\mathbb R$ whose Minkowski dimension $\beta(\Theta)\in[0,1]$. Then, the maximal inequality along lines generated by $\Theta$
\[
\lim_{\substack{(y,t)\to(x,0)\\ y=x-\theta t, \ \theta\in \Theta}} e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac m2}} f(y)
=
f(x)\quad \textrm{a.e.}
\]
holds for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ if $s>\frac12-\frac m4+\frac{m\beta(\Theta)}{4}$.
\end{theorem}
As we see the details in Section \ref{s:fractal}, Theorem \ref{t:pw along lines} can be generalized by replacing $\mathrm{d} x$ by $\mathrm{d} \mu$ so that one can compute an upper bound of the Hausdorff dimension of the corresponding divergence sets as
\[
\dim_H\mathfrak{D}_{s}(f\circ\gamma)
\leq
\max\left\{\frac{1-2s+m\beta(\Theta)}{m}, \frac{m\beta(\Theta)}{4s-2+m}\right\}
\]
for $s\in (\frac{2-m+m\beta(\Theta)}{4},\frac12)$, but we do not know its sharpness.\\
\subsection*{Organization}
Section \ref{s:outline} is devoted to the general framework of the proof of the sufficient conditions. We discuss the maximal estimates associated with vertical lines, non-tangential lines, and sets of lines in Section \ref{s:vertical}, \ref{s:non-tangential}, \ref{s:fractal}, respectively. Each section is divided into three; the proof of sufficiency, its sharpness, and technical remarks. Our main novelties are the sufficient part in Section \ref{s:vertical}, where we take a similar spirit in \cite{Sh19,CS21} but employ a non-trivial decomposition of frequency to deal with the delicate small $s$ less than $\frac14$, and the sharpness part in Section \ref{s:non-tangential}.
\subsection*{Notation}
Let us denote $\mathbb I$ the interval $(0,1)$. A cut-off function over an interval $I$ is given by $\chi_{I}$ that equals to $1$ on $I$ and $0$ elsewhere.
Suppose $\psi$ is a smooth bump function whose Fourier transform is supported in $\{\xi\in\mathbb R:2^{-1}\leq|\xi|\leq 2\}$ that may provide a standard dyadic partition of unity, under $\psi_k(\xi)=\psi(2^{-k}\xi)$. Then, for each $k\in \mathbb N$, define $\widehat{P_kf}(\xi)=\psi_k(\xi)\widehat{f}(\xi)$.
Regarding constants, for positive $A, B$, $A\lesssim B$ and $A\gtrsim B$ mean $A\leq CB$ and $A\geq CB$ for some positive constant $C$. We also write $A\sim B$ for both $A\lesssim B$ and $A\gtrsim B$.
\subsection*{Acknowledgment}
This work is supported by NRF grant no. 2020R1I1A1A01072942 and 2022R1A4A1018904 (Republic of Korea) (Cho), and JSPS Kakenhi grant 19H01796 and the Harmonic Analysis Incubation Research Group at Saitama University (Shiraki).
The second author would like to express his application to Mitsuru Sugimoto and Neal Bez for their continuous encouragement and several inspiring discussions. He also wishes to thank Jinbong Lee for his generous hospitality at Seoul National University, where part of this research was conducted.
\section{Outline of proofs for sufficiency}\label{s:outline}
By invoking Frostman's lemma, the upper bound of the Hausdorff dimension follows from \eqref{e:max general}, the maximal inequality with respect to the $\alpha$-dimensional measure $\mu$ and the curve $\gamma$ given by \eqref{curve} with $\theta\in[0,\infty)$ along which the convergence is considered. For the details, the readers may consult with \cite{BBCR11,CL14,CS21}, for instance.
To show \eqref{e:max general} for all $f\in H^s(\mathbb R)$ whenever $s>\frac12-s_*$ for certain $s_*\in[0,\frac12]$, we employ a standard argument presented in \cite{CLV12,Sh19,CS21}. Let $T=e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac m2}}$. By the Littlewood--Paley decomposition, \eqref{e:max general} follows from
\[
\|Tf\|_{L^q(\mathrm{d}\mu)L^\infty}
\lesssim
\|f\|_{L^2}
\]
for $f\in L^2$ whose frequency support is contained in $\{\xi:2^{-1}\leq|\xi|\leq 2\}$. Allowing a slight abuse of notation, one may see that it is enough to show its dual form
\[
\|T^*g\|_{L^2}^2
\lesssim
\lambda^{1-2s_*+\varepsilon}\|g\|_{L^{q'}(\mathrm{d}\mu)L^1}^2
\]
for all $g\in L^{q'}(\mathbb R,\mathrm{d}\mu)L^1(\mathbb R)$. Here, $T^*$ is defined by
\[
T^*g(\xi)
=
\chi(x,t)\int_{\mathbb R}e^{i(\gamma(x,t)\xi+t|\xi|^m)}g(\xi)\psi(\frac\xi\lambda)\,\mathrm{d}\xi
\]
for each $\xi\in \mathbb R$ and a fixed $\lambda\geq1$. We observe that
\[
\|T^*g\|_{L^2}^2
=
\int
g(x,t)g(x',t')\chi(x,t)\chi(x',t')K(\gamma(x,t)-\gamma(x',t'),t-t')\,\mathrm{d} x\mathrm{d} x'\mathrm{d} t\mathrm{d} t',
\]
where $K_\lambda(x,t)=\lambda\int_{\mathbb R}e^{i(\lambda x\xi+\lambda^m t|\xi|^m)}\psi^2(\xi)\,\mathrm{d}\xi$. If one shows that
\[
|K_\lambda(\gamma(x,t)-\gamma(x',t'),t-t')|\lesssim J_\lambda(x-x')
\]
for some $ J_\lambda$ structured so nicely that the following lemma is applicable and yields what we aimed for.
\begin{lemma}[\cite{CS_RIMS}]\label{l:Y/HLS}
Let $0<\alpha\le1$, \textcolor{black}{$q\geq2$} and $\mu$ be an $\alpha$-dimensional measure. There exists a constant $C$ such that for any interval $[a,b]$ in $\mathbb R$,
it holds that
\begin{align}\label{e:Young special case}
&\left|\iint\iint g(x,t)h(x',t')\chi_{[a,b]}(x-x')\,\mathrm{d} \mu(x)\mathrm{d} t\mathrm{d} \mu(x')\mathrm{d} t'\right|\\
&\qquad\le C(b-a)^{\frac{2\alpha}{q}}\|g\|_{L^{q'}_x(\mathrm{d}\mu)L^1_t}\|h\|_{L^{q'}_x(\mathrm{d}\mu)L^1_t}.\nonumber
\end{align}
Moreover, for \textcolor{black}{$0<\frac{q\rho}{2}<\alpha$} there exists a constant $C$ such that
\begin{align}\label{e:HLS-type}
&\left|\iint\iint g(x,t)h(x',t')|x-x'|^{-\rho}\,\mathrm{d} \mu(x)\mathrm{d} t\mathrm{d} \mu(x')\mathrm{d} t'\right|\\
&\qquad\le C\|g\|_{L^{q'}_x(\mathrm{d}\mu)L^1_t}\|h\|_{L^{q'}_x(\mathrm{d}\mu)L^1_t}.\nonumber
\end{align}
Here, the integrals are taken over $(x,t,x',t')\in \mathbb I^4$.
\end{lemma}
\section{Along a vertical line}\label{s:vertical}
In this section, we prove Theorem \ref{t:concave}.
\subsection{Sufficiency}
Fix $m\in(0,1)$, $\alpha\in(0,1]$ and $q\geq2$. Our goal here is to show that \eqref{e:max} with $\gamma(x,t)=x$ holds whenever $s$ satisfies \eqref{s:vertical}.
Let us set $s_*=\min\{ \frac m4+\frac{(1-m)\alpha}{q},\frac\alpha q \}$.
By the argument in Section \ref{s:outline} it is reduced to prove
\begin{equation}\label{e:kernel}
J_\lambda(x)
=
\lambda
\left(
\chi_{\{|\cdot|\leq\lambda^{-\frac{qs_*}{\alpha}}\}}(x)
+
\lambda^{-2s_*+\varepsilon}|x|^{-\frac{2\alpha}{q}+\varepsilon}
\right)
\end{equation}
for $(x,t)\in \mathbb I\times \mathbb I$, arbitrary small $\varepsilon>0$, and $\lambda\geq1$.
The first term of \eqref{e:kernel} is easily obtained from the trivial kernel estimate. Thus we may assume $|x|\gtrsim\lambda^{-\frac{qs_*}{\alpha}}$ in the rest of the proof. Denoting $\phi(\xi)=\lambda x \xi+\lambda^mt|\xi|^m$, we split the integral into two pieces as follows:
\[
\int e^{i\phi(\xi)}\psi(\xi)\, \mathrm{d} \xi
=
\int_{V_1}e^{i\phi(\xi)}\psi(\xi)\,\mathrm{d}\xi
+
\int_{V_2}e^{i\phi(\xi)}\psi(\xi)\,\mathrm{d} \xi
:=
I_1+I_2,
\]
where
\[
V_1(x,t)
=
\{
\xi\in(2^{-1},2): 2m\lambda^m |t||\xi|^{m-1}\geq 2^{-6}\lambda^{4s_*}|x|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}}
\},
\]
\[
V_2(x,t)
=
\{
\xi\in(2^{-1},2): 2m\lambda^m |t||\xi|^{m-1}< 2^{-6}\lambda^{4s_*}|x|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}}
\}.
\]
One can readily deal with $I_1$. Since $|\frac{\mathrm{d}^2}{\mathrm{d}\xi^2}\phi(\xi)|\gtrsim\lambda^{4s_*}|x|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}}$, van der Corput's lemma yields that
\[
|I_1(x,t)|
\lesssim
(\lambda^{4s_*}|x|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}})^{-\frac12}
\lesssim
\lambda^{-2s_*+\varepsilon}|x|^{-\frac{2\alpha}{q}+\varepsilon}.
\]
For $I_2$, we have
\begin{equation}\label{modify phase}
2m\lambda^m|t|^{\max\{1,\frac{4\alpha}{q}\}}|\xi|^{m-1}
\leq
2^{-6}\lambda^{4s_*}|x|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}}
\end{equation}
and note
\[
\lambda^m(\lambda^{4s_*-m}|x|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}})^{\max\{1,\frac{4\alpha}{q}\}^{-1}}
=
\begin{cases}
\lambda|x| \quad &\text{if $\alpha\geq\frac q4$},\\
(\lambda|x|)^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}}\quad &\text{if $\alpha<\frac q4$}.
\end{cases}
\]
Thus, we obtain
\begin{align*}
|\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d} \xi}\phi (\xi)|
\geq
\lambda|x|-m\lambda^m|t||\xi|^{m-1}
\gtrsim
\lambda|x|-\lambda^m(\lambda^{4s_*-m}|x|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}})^{\max\{1,\frac{4\alpha}{q}\}^{-1}}
\gtrsim
\lambda|x|
\end{align*}
so that van der Corput's lemma implies that
\[
|I_2(x,t)|
\lesssim
(\lambda|x|)^{-1}
\lesssim
\lambda^{-2s_*+\varepsilon}|x|^{-\frac{2\alpha}{q}+\varepsilon}.
\]
\qed
\subsection{Sharpness}
The proof of sharpness of \eqref{s:verline} is rather straightforward from the previous results in \cite{CS21,YZ21} based on the Knapp-type examples. In fact, under the usual setting $\mathrm{d}\mu(x)=|x|^{\alpha-1}\mathrm{d} x$, one may employ the initial data whose Fourier transform is given by $\lambda^{m-2}\psi(\lambda^{m-2}\xi+\lambda^m)$ for the first condition and by $\psi(\lambda^{-1}\xi)$ for the second condition.
\subsection{Remarks}
\begin{enumerate}[(i)]
\item To obtain Theorem \ref{t:concave}, let $q=2$ that provides the smallest bound of $s$.
\item The proof of sufficiency is much easier when $m>1$. As the second author essentially presented in \cite{Sh19}, one can choose $V_1$ and $V_2$ trivially as
\[
V_1(x,t)
=
\{
\xi\in(2^{-1},2): 2m\lambda^m|t||\xi|^{m-1}\geq\lambda|x|
\},
\]
\[
V_2(x,t)
=
\{
\xi\in(2^{-1},2): 2m\lambda^m|t||\xi|^{m-1}<\lambda|x|
\},
\]
then applying van der Corput's lemma to each case in order to obtain $s>\max\{\frac14,\frac{1-\alpha}{2}\}$ is sufficient.
\item In the proof given above for $m\in(0,1)$, the way of division $V_1$ and $V_2$ makes the argument on $V_1$ straightforward, then $s_*$ is determined only from the one on $V_2$. In comparison with the case $m>1$, in which \eqref{e:max general} holds if $s>\max\{\frac14,\frac12-\frac{\alpha}{q}\}$ for $\alpha \in (0,1]$, $q\geq2$ and $\gamma(x,t)=x$, one can utilize the same division $V_1$ and $V_2$: Set $s_*:=\min\{\frac14,\frac{\alpha}{q}\} \leq 1$. Instead of \eqref{modify phase}, we employ the fact that
\[
\lambda^{4s_*}|x|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}}
\lesssim
\lambda^{4s_*}|x|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}\max\{1,\frac{4\alpha}{q}\}^{-1}}
=
\begin{cases}
\lambda|x|\quad & \text{if $\alpha\geq\frac q4$},\\
(\lambda|x|)^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}} \quad & \text{if $\alpha<\frac q4$}.
\end{cases}
\]
This modification is independent of $m$, and so is the whole argument.
\end{enumerate}
\section{Along a non-tangential curve/tilted line}\label{s:non-tangential}
The aim of this section is to prove the maximal inequality \eqref{e:max general}. In contrast to the previous section, there is a trade-off that sufficiency is less difficult than the one for a vertical line while the part for sharpness requires more work.
\subsection{Sufficiency}
Let us recall $q\geq2$ and set $s^*=\min\{\frac m4, \frac{m\alpha}{q}\}$. Our goal is to show
\begin{equation}\label{e:kernelest along curve}
J_\lambda(x-x')
=
\lambda
\left(
\chi_{\{|\cdot|\leq\lambda^{-\frac{qs_*}{\alpha}}\}}(x-x')
+
\lambda^{-2s_*+\varepsilon}|x-x'|^{-2s_*+\varepsilon}
\right).
\end{equation}
Again, the first term is trivial so we shall assume $|x-x'|>\lambda^{-\frac{qs_*}{\alpha}}$ in the rest of the proof.
Here, we follow the argument in \cite{YZ21} for $\kappa\in(0,1]$ involved with a trivial division of $V_1$ and $V_2$ in order to emphasize the changes.
\[
\int e^{i{\phi}(\xi)}
=
\int_{V_1}e^{i{\phi}(\xi)}\,\mathrm{d}\xi
+
\int_{V_2}e^{i{\phi}(\xi)}\,\mathrm{d}\xi
=:
I_1+I_2,
\]
where ${\phi}(\xi)=((x-x')-(t^\kappa-t'^\kappa))\xi+(t-t')|\xi|^2$,
\[
V_1(x-x',t-t')
=
\{
\xi\in(2^{-1},2):2m\lambda^m|t-t'||\xi|^{m-1}\leq\lambda|x-x'|
\}
\]
and
\[
V_2(x-x',t-t')
=
\{
\xi\in(2^{-1},2):2m\lambda^m|t-t'||\xi|^{m-1}>\lambda|x-x'|
\}.
\]
Estimating $I_1$ can be done by simply applying van der Corput's lemma. For $I_2$, some extra care is needed since the relation $|t^\kappa-t'^\kappa|\lesssim|t-t|^\kappa$ is no longer valid when $\kappa>1$. Instead, we invoke the mean value theorem to see
\[
|t^\kappa-t'^\kappa|\lesssim|t-t'|
\]
for $\kappa>0$. Using this, we have
\[
|\frac{\mathrm{d}^2}{\mathrm{d}^2\xi}\phi(\xi)|
\sim
\lambda^m|t-t'|
\gtrsim
\lambda^m|t^\kappa-t'^\kappa|
\gtrsim
\lambda^m|x-x'|,
\]
and then apply van der Corput's lemma to complete the proof.
\subsection{Sharpness}
Let $\mathrm{d}\mu(x)=|x|^{\alpha-1}\mathrm{d} x$ as always. The sharpness of the condition $s\geq\frac12-\frac m4$ naturally comes out by considering the initial data whose Fourier transform is given by $\lambda^{m-2}\psi(\lambda^{m-2}\xi+\lambda^m)$. However, the case for the other condition requires some new ideas. For this proof let us first fix $m\in(0,1)$ and consider $f$ such that
\[
\widehat{f}(\xi)
=
e^{i((\frac12)^\kappa\theta\xi-\frac12|\xi|^m)}\lambda^{-1}\psi(\lambda^{-1}\xi)
\]
for some large $\lambda>1$. By the change of variables; $t=\frac12+\tau$,
\[
\sup_{t\in\mathbb I}|e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac m2}} f(\gamma(x,t))|
=
\sup_{\tau\in [-\frac12,\frac12]}\left|\int e^{i(\lambda(x-(\tau+\frac12)^\kappa\theta)\xi+\lambda^m\tau|\xi|^m)}e^{\lambda(\frac12)^\kappa\xi}\psi(\xi)\,\mathrm{d}\xi\right|.
\]
Taylor's expansion in $\tau$ around the origin gives
\[
(2\tau+1)^\kappa
=
\sum_{j=0}^{N-1}a_j(2\tau)^j+O(|\tau|^N),
\]
where $(a_j)_j$ are appropriate constants, and $N$ is so large that $1<mN$ holds. Now, if we set $x=2^{-\kappa}\sum_{j=1}^{N-1}a_j(2\tau)^j=:h_N(\tau)$, then it is easy to see that $h_N$ is bijection and monotone increasing on $(0,\frac{1}{100}\lambda^{-m})$. Hence, one can find a function $\tau(x)=h_N^{-1}(x)$ satisfying
\[
0=h_N^{-1}(0) \leq \tau(x) \leq h_N^{-1}(\lambda^{-m}) \lesssim \lambda^{-m}.
\]
Such pair $(x,\tau)$ leads the phase fairly small;
\[
|\lambda(x-(\tau(x)+2^{-1})^\kappa)\xi+\lambda^m\tau(x))+\lambda 2^{-\kappa}\xi|
\leq2^{-1},
\]
which implies that
\[
\|e^{it(-\Delta)^{\frac m2}} f(\gamma(x,t))\|_{L^q(\mathbb I,\mathrm{d}\mu)L^\infty(\mathbb I)}
\gtrsim
\lambda^{-\frac{m\alpha}{q}}.
\]
Recalling $\|f\|_{H^s}\lesssim\lambda^{s-\frac12}$ and sending $\lambda$ to $\infty$, we obtain the desired conclusion.
\subsection{Remarks}
\begin{enumerate}[(i)]
\item
If a non-tangential curve $\gamma$ is similar enough to a vertical line around $t=0$, for instance, a curve $\gamma_0(x,t)=x-e^{-\frac1t}$, one can show this curve behaves as a vertical line in this context since the term with $e^{-\frac1t}$ is negligible when $t$ is very small.
\item The same kernel estimate \eqref{e:kernelest along curve} holds for way more general curves $\gamma:\mathbb I\times \mathbb I\to \mathbb R$ that satisfy lipschitz in $t$ and bilipschitz in $x$, namely,
\[
|\gamma(x,t)-\gamma(x,t')|\leq C_1|t-t'|,\quad t\in\mathbb I,
\]
\[
|\gamma(x,t)-\gamma(x',t)|\geq C_2|x-x'|,\quad x\in\mathbb I,
\]
for some constants $C_1$, $C_2$ independent of $x$, $x'$, $t$, $t'$. Let us follow the argument in Section \ref{s:vertical} for the sake of an explicit demonstration. It is enough to give certain phase estimates in the case of $V_2$. For
\[
\{
(x,t,x',t'):|\gamma(x,t)-\gamma(x',t)|\gtrsim|\gamma(x',t)-\gamma(x',t')|
\},
\]
the first derivative of the phase is bounded below by $\lambda|x-x'|$ up to some constant since
\[
\lambda^{4s_*}|x-x'|^{\frac{4\alpha}{q}}
\leq
(\lambda|x-x'|)^m
\]
and
\[
|\gamma(x,t)-\gamma(x',t')|
\gtrsim
\lambda|x-x'|.
\]
For the remaining $(x,t,x',t')$, one may observe that the second derivative of the phase is bounded by
\[
\lambda^m|t-t'|
\gtrsim
\lambda^m|x-x'|
\gtrsim
\lambda^{4s_*}|x-x'|^\frac{4\alpha}{q}.
\]
\end{enumerate}
\section{Along a set of lines} \label{s:fractal}
Finally, we note a sketch proof of Theorem \ref{t:pw along lines}.
\subsection{Sufficiency}
Let $m\in (0,1)$, $q\geq2$ and $\Theta$ be a compact set of $\mathbb R$. We shall concern with the following maximal inequality in more general setting:
\begin{equation}\label{e:max fractal q}
\|S_t^mf(x-\theta y)\|_{L_x^q(\mathbb I,\mathrm{d}\mu),L_t^\infty(\mathbb I)L_\theta^\infty(\Theta)}
\lesssim
\|f\|_{H^s}.
\end{equation}
In this case a bit of care is needed because of the extra parameter $\theta$ before using the reduction argument in Section \ref{s:outline}. First of all, let us set
\[
s_*
=
\min\left\{\frac m4,\frac{\alpha}{q}\right\}
\]
and recall Littlewood--Paley decomposition $f=\sum_{k\geq0}P_kf$. Then, for each $k$, decompose $\Theta$ by intervals $\Omega_{k,j}$ of length $|\Omega_{k,j}|=(2^k)^{\frac{qs_*}{\alpha}}$. Hence, it is reduced to
\[
\|S_t^mf(x-\theta y)\|_{L_x^q(\mathbb I,\mathrm{d}\mu),L_t^\infty(\mathbb I)L_\theta^\infty(\Theta)}
\lesssim
\sum_{k\geq0}\biggl(\sum_{j=1}^{N_k}\|\sum_{\substack{t\in \mathbb I\\ \theta\in\Omega_{j,k}}}|S_t^mP_kf(x-\theta t)|\|_{L_x^q(\mathbb I)}^q\biggr)^\frac1q,
\]
where $N_k$ denotes the smallest number of the covering.
By the argument in Section \ref{s:outline} and the fact $N_k\lesssim(2^k)^{\frac{qs_*}{\alpha}\beta+\varepsilon}$ for small $\varepsilon>0$, it is suffices to show the following.
\begin{proposition}
Let $\lambda\geq1$, $q\geq2$ and $\Omega$ be an interval of length $\lambda ^{-\frac{qs_*}{\alpha}}$. For arbitrary small $\varepsilon>0$,
\[
\|\sum_{\substack{t\in \mathbb I\\ \theta\in \Omega}}S_t^mf(x-\theta y)\|_{L_x^q(\mathbb I,\mathrm{d}\mu)}
\lesssim
\lambda^{\frac12-s_*+\varepsilon}
\|f\|_{L^2}
\]
holds for all $f$ Fourier-supported in $\{|\xi|\sim1\}$.
\end{proposition}
The interval of $\Omega$ is chosen so in order to verify the relation
\[
|\theta-\theta'|
\leq
\lambda^{-\frac{qs_*}{\alpha}}
\lesssim
|x-x'|.
\]
We omit the further details of the proof of this proposition since it is similar to the one in the previous section containing a single line situation. The readers may also consult with \cite{Sh19,CS_RIMS}.
\subsection{Sharpness}
We show that for $m\in(0,1)$, $q\geq2$, and $\alpha=1$ there exist the initial data $f$ and the compact set $\Theta\subset \mathbb R$ such that \eqref{e:max fractal q} fails if $s<\frac12+\frac{m\beta(\Theta)}{q}-\frac{m}{q}$. Before the proof, we shall define the $r$-th Cantor sets $\mathfrak C(r)$ for $r\in(0,1)$ that plays an important role. By letting $\mathfrak C_0(r)=[0,1]$, the set $\mathfrak C(r)$ is constructed by infinite intersection of $\mathfrak C_k(r)$ that is inductively generated by removing an interval of length $r^k(1-2r)$ from the middle of each interval consisting of $\mathfrak C_{k-1}(r)$. One may write $\mathfrak C_k(r)=\bigcup_{j=1}^{2^k}\Omega_{k,j}$ with the interval $\Omega_{k,j}$ of length $r^k$ for each $k,j$. Note that $\mathfrak C_0(r) \supset \mathfrak C_1(r) \supset \dots \supset \mathfrak C_k(r) \supset \dots \supset \mathfrak C(r)$ and $\dim_M \Theta=-\frac{\log2}{\log r}\in (0,1)$ for $r\in (0,\frac12)$ and $\Theta=\mathfrak C(r)$.
By setting $\Theta=\mathfrak C(r)$ for a fixed $r\in(0,\frac12)$, the proof goes as follows: Let $\lambda_k=r^{-k}$ for each $k\in\mathbb N$ and $f$ satisfy
\[
\widehat{f}(\xi)
=
e^{i|\xi|^m}\psi(\lambda_k^{-\frac1m}\xi).
\]
Then, by the change of variables $t\mapsto 1-\tau$
\[
\sup_{\substack{t\in\mathbb{I}\\\theta\in\Theta}}
|e^{it(-\Delta)^\frac m2} f(x+t\theta)|
=
\lambda_k^\frac1m
\sup_{\substack{\tau\in\mathbb{I}\\ \theta\in \Theta}}
\left|\int e^{i(\lambda_k^{\frac1m}(x-\theta(x)-\tau(x)\theta(x))\xi-\lambda_k\tau(x)|\xi|^m)}\psi(\xi)\,\mathrm{d}\xi\right|.
\]
To make the phase fairly small, choose $\theta(x)\in \Theta$ and $\tau(x)\in \mathbb{I}$ such that $|x-\theta(x)|<\lambda_k^{-1}$ for $x\in \mathfrak C_k(r)\cap(\frac12,1)$ and
\[
\tau(x)=\frac{\theta(x)-x}{\theta(x)}.
\]
Hence, it gives that
\begin{align*}
\sup_{\substack{t\in\mathbb{I}\\\theta\in\Theta}}
|e^{it(-\Delta)^\frac m2} f(x+t\theta)|
\gtrsim
\lambda_k^\frac1m
\left(
\sum_{j=1}^{2^{k-1}}|\Omega_{k,j}|
\right)^\frac1q
\sim
\lambda_k^\frac1m 2^{\frac kq}\lambda_k^\frac1q.
\end{align*}
Combining this with $\|f\|_{H^s}\lesssim \lambda_k^{\frac{s}{m}+\frac1{2m}}$, we have
\[
\lambda_k^{\frac1m+\frac{\beta(\Theta)}{q}-\frac1q}
\lesssim
\lambda_k^{\frac sm+\frac1{2m}}
\]
since $2^k=(r^{-k})^{\beta(\Theta)}$. Letting $k\to\infty$ leads what we claimed.
\subsection{Remark}
In the $\alpha$-dimensional setting with $\alpha\in(0,1]$, set $\mathrm{d}\mu(x)=|x|^{\alpha-1}\mathrm{d} x$. The proof above, further applying the mean value theorem, may show $s\geq\frac12+\frac{m\alpha\beta(\Theta)}{q}-\frac{m\alpha}{q}$ is necessary for \eqref{e:max fractal q} when $m\in(0,1)$ and $\alpha\in (0,1]$.
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
} | 106 |
Nygmet Nurmakov (, 25 de abril de 1895 - 27 de setembro de 1937) foi um político do Cazaquistão que serviu como primeiro-ministro do Cazaquistão de outubro de 1924 a fevereiro de 1925.
Em 1926, ele foi acusado de apoiar o nacionalismo étnico e exilado do Cazaquistão.
Ele era o presidente do Conselho dos Comissários do Povo.
Primeiros-ministros do Cazaquistão
Políticos do Cazaquistão
Mortos em 1937
Nascidos em 1895 | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
} | 6,730 |
{"url":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/forum\/f-x-4x-1-4x-3-for-all-positive-integers-x-which-of-the-following-255936.html","text":"It is currently 23 Jan 2018, 01:48\n\n### GMAT Club Daily Prep\n\n#### Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.\n\nCustomized\nfor You\n\nwe will pick new questions that match your level based on your Timer History\n\nTrack\n\nevery week, we\u2019ll send you an estimated GMAT score based on your performance\n\nPractice\nPays\n\nwe will pick new questions that match your level based on your Timer History\n\n# Events & Promotions\n\n###### Events & Promotions in June\nOpen Detailed Calendar\n\n# f(x)=(4x+1)(4x\u20133) for all positive integers x. Which of the following\n\nAuthor Message\nTAGS:\n\n### Hide Tags\n\nMath Expert\nJoined: 02 Sep 2009\nPosts: 43378\nf(x)=(4x+1)(4x\u20133) for all positive integers x. Which of the following\u00a0[#permalink]\n\n### Show Tags\n\n21 Dec 2017, 19:25\n00:00\n\nDifficulty:\n\n35% (medium)\n\nQuestion Stats:\n\n52% (01:24) correct 48% (01:17) wrong based on 61 sessions\n\n### HideShow timer Statistics\n\n$$f(x)=(4x+1)(4x\u20133)$$ for all positive integers x. Which of the following cannot be a factor of f(x)?\n\nI. 7\nII. 16\nIII. 25\n\nA. I only\nB. II only\nC. I and II only\nD. I and III only\nE. I, II, and III\n[Reveal] Spoiler: OA\n\n_________________\nexamPAL Representative\nJoined: 07 Dec 2017\nPosts: 122\nf(x)=(4x+1)(4x\u20133) for all positive integers x. Which of the following\u00a0[#permalink]\n\n### Show Tags\n\n22 Dec 2017, 06:25\nAs it can often be hard to understand the rules underlying divisibility, we'll try a few numbers to see the pattern.\nThis is an Alternative approach.\n\nStarting with x = 1, we get\n5*1. Not divisible by 7,16 or 25.\n9*5. Not divisible by 7,16 or 25.\n13*9. Not divisible by 7,16 or 25.\n17*13. Not divisible by 7,16 or 25.\n21*17. Divisbile by 7!\n25*21. Divisbile by 25!\nSo all we need to know is if f(x) can be divisible by 16.\nTrying a few more options, we have\n29*25\n33*29\n37*33\nWe've already tried quite a few numbers without finding one that is divisible by 16 so we should feel comfortable marking (B).\nIn fact, since neither of our numbers will ever be divisible by 4 (as they are 4x+1 and 4x-3), their product cannot be divisible by 16.\n_________________\n\nDavid\nSenior tutor at examPAL\nSignup for a free GMAT course\n\nPS Forum Moderator\nJoined: 25 Feb 2013\nPosts: 836\nLocation: India\nGPA: 3.82\nf(x)=(4x+1)(4x\u20133) for all positive integers x. Which of the following\u00a0[#permalink]\n\n### Show Tags\n\n22 Dec 2017, 10:38\nBunuel wrote:\n$$f(x)=(4x+1)(4x\u20133)$$ for all positive integers x. Which of the following cannot be a factor of f(x)?\n\nI. 7\nII. 16\nIII. 25\n\nA. I only\nB. II only\nC. I and II only\nD. I and III only\nE. I, II, and III\n\nWorking through numbers has already been explained so here's an alternate approach\n\n$$4x+1$$ & $$4x-3$$ are ODD as $$x$$ is an integer. Product of Odd numbers will not be divisible by Even number. So $$16$$ cannot be a factor of $$f(x)$$\n\nSo options A & D are out. Now I is present in options C & E, if we can eliminate I then the answer will be B.\n\nif $$7$$ is a factor of $$f(x)$$, then either $$4x+1$$ or $$4x-3$$ has to be a multiple of $$7$$\n\nso if, $$4x-1=7k => x=\\frac{7k+1}{4}$$, where $$x$$ has to be an integer. clearly if $$k=1$$ then $$x=2$$, an integer\n\nor $$4x-3=7k=> x=\\frac{7k+3}{4}$$, if $$k=3$$ then $$x=6$$, an integer. So we can conclude $$7$$ can be a factor of $$f(x)$$\n\nSo we have eliminated Option A, C, D & E\n\n---------------------------------------------------------\n\njust to test $$25$$ as a factor of $$f(x)$$:\n\nNow if $$4x+1=25 => x=6$$ an integer so $$25$$ can be a factor of $$4x+1$$. Similarly if $$4x-3=25=>x=7$$. hence $$25$$ can also be a factor of $$4x-3$$. so we know $$25$$ can be a factor of $$f(x)$$\nf(x)=(4x+1)(4x\u20133) for all positive integers x. Which of the following \u00a0 [#permalink] 22 Dec 2017, 10:38\nDisplay posts from previous: Sort by","date":"2018-01-23 09:48:41","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.7613521814346313, \"perplexity\": 1709.389307586008}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2018-05\/segments\/1516084891886.70\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20180123091931-20180123111931-00799.warc.gz\"}"} | null | null |
package com.google.android.exoplayer2.source;
import android.net.Uri;
import android.os.Handler;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.C;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.Format;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.FormatHolder;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.decoder.DecoderInputBuffer;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.DefaultExtractorInput;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.DefaultTrackOutput;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.DefaultTrackOutput.UpstreamFormatChangedListener;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.Extractor;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.ExtractorInput;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.ExtractorOutput;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.PositionHolder;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.SeekMap;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.TrackOutput;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.trackselection.TrackSelection;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.upstream.Allocator;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.upstream.DataSource;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.upstream.DataSpec;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.upstream.Loader;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.upstream.Loader.Loadable;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.util.Assertions;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.util.ConditionVariable;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.util.Util;
import java.io.EOFException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Arrays;
/**
* A {@link MediaPeriod} that extracts data using an {@link Extractor}.
*/
/* package */ final class ExtractorMediaPeriod implements MediaPeriod, ExtractorOutput,
Loader.Callback<ExtractorMediaPeriod.ExtractingLoadable>, UpstreamFormatChangedListener {
/**
* When the source's duration is unknown, it is calculated by adding this value to the largest
* sample timestamp seen when buffering completes.
*/
private static final long DEFAULT_LAST_SAMPLE_DURATION_US = 10000;
private final Uri uri;
private final DataSource dataSource;
private final int minLoadableRetryCount;
private final Handler eventHandler;
private final ExtractorMediaSource.EventListener eventListener;
private final MediaSource.Listener sourceListener;
private final Callback callback;
private final Allocator allocator;
private final Loader loader;
private final ExtractorHolder extractorHolder;
private final ConditionVariable loadCondition;
private SeekMap seekMap;
private boolean tracksBuilt;
private boolean prepared;
private boolean seenFirstTrackSelection;
private boolean notifyReset;
private int enabledTrackCount;
private DefaultTrackOutput[] sampleQueues;
private TrackGroupArray tracks;
private long durationUs;
private boolean[] trackEnabledStates;
private long length;
private long lastSeekPositionUs;
private long pendingResetPositionUs;
private int extractedSamplesCountAtStartOfLoad;
private boolean loadingFinished;
/**
* @param uri The {@link Uri} of the media stream.
* @param dataSource The data source to read the media.
* @param extractors The extractors to use to read the data source.
* @param minLoadableRetryCount The minimum number of times to retry if a loading error occurs.
* @param eventHandler A handler for events. May be null if delivery of events is not required.
* @param eventListener A listener of events. May be null if delivery of events is not required.
* @param sourceListener A listener to notify when the timeline has been loaded.
* @param callback A callback to receive updates from the period.
* @param allocator An {@link Allocator} from which to obtain media buffer allocations.
*/
public ExtractorMediaPeriod(Uri uri, DataSource dataSource, Extractor[] extractors,
int minLoadableRetryCount, Handler eventHandler,
ExtractorMediaSource.EventListener eventListener, MediaSource.Listener sourceListener,
Callback callback, Allocator allocator) {
this.uri = uri;
this.dataSource = dataSource;
this.minLoadableRetryCount = minLoadableRetryCount;
this.eventHandler = eventHandler;
this.eventListener = eventListener;
this.sourceListener = sourceListener;
this.callback = callback;
this.allocator = allocator;
loader = new Loader("Loader:ExtractorMediaPeriod");
extractorHolder = new ExtractorHolder(extractors, this);
loadCondition = new ConditionVariable();
pendingResetPositionUs = C.TIME_UNSET;
sampleQueues = new DefaultTrackOutput[0];
length = C.LENGTH_UNSET;
loadCondition.open();
startLoading();
}
public void release() {
final ExtractorHolder extractorHolder = this.extractorHolder;
loader.release(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
extractorHolder.release();
}
});
for (DefaultTrackOutput sampleQueue : sampleQueues) {
sampleQueue.disable();
}
}
@Override
public void maybeThrowPrepareError() throws IOException {
maybeThrowError();
}
@Override
public TrackGroupArray getTrackGroups() {
return tracks;
}
@Override
public long selectTracks(TrackSelection[] selections, boolean[] mayRetainStreamFlags,
SampleStream[] streams, boolean[] streamResetFlags, long positionUs) {
Assertions.checkState(prepared);
// Disable old tracks.
for (int i = 0; i < selections.length; i++) {
if (streams[i] != null && (selections[i] == null || !mayRetainStreamFlags[i])) {
int track = ((SampleStreamImpl) streams[i]).track;
Assertions.checkState(trackEnabledStates[track]);
enabledTrackCount--;
trackEnabledStates[track] = false;
sampleQueues[track].disable();
streams[i] = null;
}
}
// Enable new tracks.
boolean selectedNewTracks = false;
for (int i = 0; i < selections.length; i++) {
if (streams[i] == null && selections[i] != null) {
TrackSelection selection = selections[i];
Assertions.checkState(selection.length() == 1);
Assertions.checkState(selection.getIndexInTrackGroup(0) == 0);
int track = tracks.indexOf(selection.getTrackGroup());
Assertions.checkState(!trackEnabledStates[track]);
enabledTrackCount++;
trackEnabledStates[track] = true;
streams[i] = new SampleStreamImpl(track);
streamResetFlags[i] = true;
selectedNewTracks = true;
}
}
if (!seenFirstTrackSelection) {
// At the time of the first track selection all queues will be enabled, so we need to disable
// any that are no longer required.
for (int i = 0; i < sampleQueues.length; i++) {
if (!trackEnabledStates[i]) {
sampleQueues[i].disable();
}
}
}
if (enabledTrackCount == 0) {
notifyReset = false;
if (loader.isLoading()) {
loader.cancelLoading();
}
} else if (seenFirstTrackSelection ? selectedNewTracks : positionUs != 0) {
positionUs = seekToUs(positionUs);
// We'll need to reset renderers consuming from all streams due to the seek.
for (int i = 0; i < streams.length; i++) {
if (streams[i] != null) {
streamResetFlags[i] = true;
}
}
}
seenFirstTrackSelection = true;
return positionUs;
}
@Override
public boolean continueLoading(long playbackPositionUs) {
if (loadingFinished) {
return false;
}
boolean continuedLoading = loadCondition.open();
if (!loader.isLoading()) {
startLoading();
continuedLoading = true;
}
return continuedLoading;
}
@Override
public long getNextLoadPositionUs() {
return getBufferedPositionUs();
}
@Override
public long readDiscontinuity() {
if (notifyReset) {
notifyReset = false;
return lastSeekPositionUs;
}
return C.TIME_UNSET;
}
@Override
public long getBufferedPositionUs() {
if (loadingFinished) {
return C.TIME_END_OF_SOURCE;
} else if (isPendingReset()) {
return pendingResetPositionUs;
} else {
long largestQueuedTimestampUs = getLargestQueuedTimestampUs();
return largestQueuedTimestampUs == Long.MIN_VALUE ? lastSeekPositionUs
: largestQueuedTimestampUs;
}
}
@Override
public long seekToUs(long positionUs) {
// Treat all seeks into non-seekable media as being to t=0.
positionUs = seekMap.isSeekable() ? positionUs : 0;
lastSeekPositionUs = positionUs;
// If we're not pending a reset, see if we can seek within the sample queues.
boolean seekInsideBuffer = !isPendingReset();
for (int i = 0; seekInsideBuffer && i < sampleQueues.length; i++) {
if (trackEnabledStates[i]) {
seekInsideBuffer = sampleQueues[i].skipToKeyframeBefore(positionUs);
}
}
// If we failed to seek within the sample queues, we need to restart.
if (!seekInsideBuffer) {
pendingResetPositionUs = positionUs;
loadingFinished = false;
if (loader.isLoading()) {
loader.cancelLoading();
} else {
for (int i = 0; i < sampleQueues.length; i++) {
sampleQueues[i].reset(trackEnabledStates[i]);
}
}
}
notifyReset = false;
return positionUs;
}
// SampleStream methods.
/* package */ boolean isReady(int track) {
return loadingFinished || (!isPendingReset() && !sampleQueues[track].isEmpty());
}
/* package */ void maybeThrowError() throws IOException {
loader.maybeThrowError();
}
/* package */ int readData(int track, FormatHolder formatHolder, DecoderInputBuffer buffer) {
if (notifyReset || isPendingReset()) {
return C.RESULT_NOTHING_READ;
}
return sampleQueues[track].readData(formatHolder, buffer, loadingFinished, lastSeekPositionUs);
}
// Loader.Callback implementation.
@Override
public void onLoadCompleted(ExtractingLoadable loadable, long elapsedRealtimeMs,
long loadDurationMs) {
copyLengthFromLoader(loadable);
loadingFinished = true;
if (durationUs == C.TIME_UNSET) {
long largestQueuedTimestampUs = getLargestQueuedTimestampUs();
durationUs = largestQueuedTimestampUs == Long.MIN_VALUE ? 0
: largestQueuedTimestampUs + DEFAULT_LAST_SAMPLE_DURATION_US;
sourceListener.onSourceInfoRefreshed(
new SinglePeriodTimeline(durationUs, seekMap.isSeekable()), null);
}
}
@Override
public void onLoadCanceled(ExtractingLoadable loadable, long elapsedRealtimeMs,
long loadDurationMs, boolean released) {
copyLengthFromLoader(loadable);
if (!released && enabledTrackCount > 0) {
for (int i = 0; i < sampleQueues.length; i++) {
sampleQueues[i].reset(trackEnabledStates[i]);
}
callback.onContinueLoadingRequested(this);
}
}
@Override
public int onLoadError(ExtractingLoadable loadable, long elapsedRealtimeMs,
long loadDurationMs, IOException error) {
copyLengthFromLoader(loadable);
notifyLoadError(error);
if (isLoadableExceptionFatal(error)) {
return Loader.DONT_RETRY_FATAL;
}
int extractedSamplesCount = getExtractedSamplesCount();
boolean madeProgress = extractedSamplesCount > extractedSamplesCountAtStartOfLoad;
configureRetry(loadable); // May reset the sample queues.
extractedSamplesCountAtStartOfLoad = getExtractedSamplesCount();
return madeProgress ? Loader.RETRY_RESET_ERROR_COUNT : Loader.RETRY;
}
// ExtractorOutput implementation.
@Override
public TrackOutput track(int id) {
sampleQueues = Arrays.copyOf(sampleQueues, sampleQueues.length + 1);
DefaultTrackOutput sampleQueue = new DefaultTrackOutput(allocator);
sampleQueue.setUpstreamFormatChangeListener(this);
sampleQueues[sampleQueues.length - 1] = sampleQueue;
return sampleQueue;
}
@Override
public void endTracks() {
tracksBuilt = true;
maybeFinishPrepare();
}
@Override
public void seekMap(SeekMap seekMap) {
this.seekMap = seekMap;
maybeFinishPrepare();
}
// UpstreamFormatChangedListener implementation
@Override
public void onUpstreamFormatChanged(Format format) {
maybeFinishPrepare();
}
// Internal methods.
private void maybeFinishPrepare() {
if (prepared || seekMap == null || !tracksBuilt) {
return;
}
for (DefaultTrackOutput sampleQueue : sampleQueues) {
if (sampleQueue.getUpstreamFormat() == null) {
return;
}
}
loadCondition.close();
int trackCount = sampleQueues.length;
TrackGroup[] trackArray = new TrackGroup[trackCount];
trackEnabledStates = new boolean[trackCount];
durationUs = seekMap.getDurationUs();
for (int i = 0; i < trackCount; i++) {
trackArray[i] = new TrackGroup(sampleQueues[i].getUpstreamFormat());
}
tracks = new TrackGroupArray(trackArray);
prepared = true;
sourceListener.onSourceInfoRefreshed(
new SinglePeriodTimeline(durationUs, seekMap.isSeekable()), null);
callback.onPrepared(this);
}
private void copyLengthFromLoader(ExtractingLoadable loadable) {
if (length == C.LENGTH_UNSET) {
length = loadable.length;
}
}
private void startLoading() {
ExtractingLoadable loadable = new ExtractingLoadable(uri, dataSource, extractorHolder,
loadCondition);
if (prepared) {
Assertions.checkState(isPendingReset());
if (durationUs != C.TIME_UNSET && pendingResetPositionUs >= durationUs) {
loadingFinished = true;
pendingResetPositionUs = C.TIME_UNSET;
return;
}
loadable.setLoadPosition(seekMap.getPosition(pendingResetPositionUs));
pendingResetPositionUs = C.TIME_UNSET;
}
extractedSamplesCountAtStartOfLoad = getExtractedSamplesCount();
int minRetryCount = minLoadableRetryCount;
if (minRetryCount == ExtractorMediaSource.MIN_RETRY_COUNT_DEFAULT_FOR_MEDIA) {
// We assume on-demand before we're prepared.
minRetryCount = !prepared || length != C.LENGTH_UNSET
|| (seekMap != null && seekMap.getDurationUs() != C.TIME_UNSET)
? ExtractorMediaSource.DEFAULT_MIN_LOADABLE_RETRY_COUNT_ON_DEMAND
: ExtractorMediaSource.DEFAULT_MIN_LOADABLE_RETRY_COUNT_LIVE;
}
loader.startLoading(loadable, this, minRetryCount);
}
private void configureRetry(ExtractingLoadable loadable) {
if (length != C.LENGTH_UNSET
|| (seekMap != null && seekMap.getDurationUs() != C.TIME_UNSET)) {
// We're playing an on-demand stream. Resume the current loadable, which will
// request data starting from the point it left off.
} else {
// We're playing a stream of unknown length and duration. Assume it's live, and
// therefore that the data at the uri is a continuously shifting window of the latest
// available media. For this case there's no way to continue loading from where a
// previous load finished, so it's necessary to load from the start whenever commencing
// a new load.
lastSeekPositionUs = 0;
notifyReset = prepared;
for (int i = 0; i < sampleQueues.length; i++) {
sampleQueues[i].reset(trackEnabledStates[i]);
}
loadable.setLoadPosition(0);
}
}
private int getExtractedSamplesCount() {
int extractedSamplesCount = 0;
for (DefaultTrackOutput sampleQueue : sampleQueues) {
extractedSamplesCount += sampleQueue.getWriteIndex();
}
return extractedSamplesCount;
}
private long getLargestQueuedTimestampUs() {
long largestQueuedTimestampUs = Long.MIN_VALUE;
for (DefaultTrackOutput sampleQueue : sampleQueues) {
largestQueuedTimestampUs = Math.max(largestQueuedTimestampUs,
sampleQueue.getLargestQueuedTimestampUs());
}
return largestQueuedTimestampUs;
}
private boolean isPendingReset() {
return pendingResetPositionUs != C.TIME_UNSET;
}
private boolean isLoadableExceptionFatal(IOException e) {
return e instanceof ExtractorMediaSource.UnrecognizedInputFormatException;
}
private void notifyLoadError(final IOException error) {
if (eventHandler != null && eventListener != null) {
eventHandler.post(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
eventListener.onLoadError(error);
}
});
}
}
private final class SampleStreamImpl implements SampleStream {
private final int track;
public SampleStreamImpl(int track) {
this.track = track;
}
@Override
public boolean isReady() {
return ExtractorMediaPeriod.this.isReady(track);
}
@Override
public void maybeThrowError() throws IOException {
ExtractorMediaPeriod.this.maybeThrowError();
}
@Override
public int readData(FormatHolder formatHolder, DecoderInputBuffer buffer) {
return ExtractorMediaPeriod.this.readData(track, formatHolder, buffer);
}
@Override
public void skipToKeyframeBefore(long timeUs) {
sampleQueues[track].skipToKeyframeBefore(timeUs);
}
}
/**
* Loads the media stream and extracts sample data from it.
*/
/* package */ final class ExtractingLoadable implements Loadable {
/**
* The number of bytes that should be loaded between each each invocation of
* {@link Callback#onContinueLoadingRequested(SequenceableLoader)}.
*/
private static final int CONTINUE_LOADING_CHECK_INTERVAL_BYTES = 1024 * 1024;
private final Uri uri;
private final DataSource dataSource;
private final ExtractorHolder extractorHolder;
private final ConditionVariable loadCondition;
private final PositionHolder positionHolder;
private volatile boolean loadCanceled;
private boolean pendingExtractorSeek;
private long length;
public ExtractingLoadable(Uri uri, DataSource dataSource, ExtractorHolder extractorHolder,
ConditionVariable loadCondition) {
this.uri = Assertions.checkNotNull(uri);
this.dataSource = Assertions.checkNotNull(dataSource);
this.extractorHolder = Assertions.checkNotNull(extractorHolder);
this.loadCondition = loadCondition;
this.positionHolder = new PositionHolder();
this.pendingExtractorSeek = true;
this.length = C.LENGTH_UNSET;
}
public void setLoadPosition(long position) {
positionHolder.position = position;
pendingExtractorSeek = true;
}
@Override
public void cancelLoad() {
loadCanceled = true;
}
@Override
public boolean isLoadCanceled() {
return loadCanceled;
}
@Override
public void load() throws IOException, InterruptedException {
int result = Extractor.RESULT_CONTINUE;
while (result == Extractor.RESULT_CONTINUE && !loadCanceled) {
ExtractorInput input = null;
try {
long position = positionHolder.position;
length = dataSource.open(
new DataSpec(uri, position, C.LENGTH_UNSET, Util.sha1(uri.toString())));
if (length != C.LENGTH_UNSET) {
length += position;
}
input = new DefaultExtractorInput(dataSource, position, length);
Extractor extractor = extractorHolder.selectExtractor(input);
if (pendingExtractorSeek) {
extractor.seek(position);
pendingExtractorSeek = false;
}
while (result == Extractor.RESULT_CONTINUE && !loadCanceled) {
loadCondition.block();
result = extractor.read(input, positionHolder);
if (input.getPosition() > position + CONTINUE_LOADING_CHECK_INTERVAL_BYTES) {
position = input.getPosition();
loadCondition.close();
callback.onContinueLoadingRequested(ExtractorMediaPeriod.this);
}
}
} finally {
if (result == Extractor.RESULT_SEEK) {
result = Extractor.RESULT_CONTINUE;
} else if (input != null) {
positionHolder.position = input.getPosition();
}
dataSource.close();
}
}
}
}
/**
* Stores a list of extractors and a selected extractor when the format has been detected.
*/
private static final class ExtractorHolder {
private final Extractor[] extractors;
private final ExtractorOutput extractorOutput;
private Extractor extractor;
/**
* Creates a holder that will select an extractor and initialize it using the specified output.
*
* @param extractors One or more extractors to choose from.
* @param extractorOutput The output that will be used to initialize the selected extractor.
*/
public ExtractorHolder(Extractor[] extractors, ExtractorOutput extractorOutput) {
this.extractors = extractors;
this.extractorOutput = extractorOutput;
}
/**
* Returns an initialized extractor for reading {@code input}, and returns the same extractor on
* later calls.
*
* @param input The {@link ExtractorInput} from which data should be read.
* @return An initialized extractor for reading {@code input}.
* @throws ExtractorMediaSource.UnrecognizedInputFormatException Thrown if the input format
* could not be detected.
* @throws IOException Thrown if the input could not be read.
* @throws InterruptedException Thrown if the thread was interrupted.
*/
public Extractor selectExtractor(ExtractorInput input)
throws IOException, InterruptedException {
if (extractor != null) {
return extractor;
}
for (Extractor extractor : extractors) {
try {
if (extractor.sniff(input)) {
this.extractor = extractor;
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// Do nothing.
} finally {
input.resetPeekPosition();
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}
if (extractor == null) {
throw new ExtractorMediaSource.UnrecognizedInputFormatException(extractors);
}
extractor.init(extractorOutput);
return extractor;
}
public void release() {
if (extractor != null) {
extractor.release();
extractor = null;
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}
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}
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"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} | 483 |
Article January 1, 2022 Local Works By Brian Hendershot
Lessons in leadership from outgoing or former mayors and council members
Brian Hendershot is the managing editor for Western City magazine; he can be reached at bhendershot@calcities.org.
The last two years have affirmed that the foundational elements of good leadership — namely empathy, listening, and integrity — are key to building successful city workforces, and by extension, thriving communities. As we did last year, we interviewed outgoing and former elected officials from throughout the state about the most important elements of leadership, their advice for newly electeds, and the local projects that they are most proud of.
John Dunbar, Yountville
Mayor John Dunbar is set to complete his third four-year term for the town of Yountville in 2022. He stressed the importance of partnerships and the value of listening to others when making difficult decisions. "I really think that's critical to strong leadership," Mayor Dunbar said. "To be strong, effective leaders, we need to be engaged with our residents, our business community, and our colleagues at all different levels."
Mayor Dunbar pointed to two small, but pivotal decisions that show how local works in Yountville: the addition of outdoor operation permits for businesses and a paid, phased transition away from gas-powered leaf blowers. Noting that the state has recently taken several actions to ban the sale of gas-powered leaf blowers he added, "Often some of these ideas start very locally and then they start to spread, and the benefits spread with them."
John Fasana, Duarte
John Fasana, a former Duarte council member whose 33 years of public service includes six terms as mayor, talked about the importance of teamwork, mutual respect, and cultivating knowledge. "You can accomplish so much if you're working as a team," he noted. "You can disagree on issues without being disagreeable. … [Developing subject-matter expertise also] really earns respect and credibility with our colleagues on a regional basis — whether it be at the League of California Cities, LA County, or the state — and it can really help you get more done."
Fasana pointed to several transportation projects, including the extension of the Metrolink Foothill Gold Line, as examples of how local works. He credits the city's successful projects to good planning, done in conjunction with the community. "If you don't have a plan, you will react to different things that are occurring in the day-to-day," Fasana warned. "But when it's done, you might not have accomplished some of the needs that are before you."
Neysa Fligor, Los Altos
In addition to consensus-building and listening, Los Altos Mayor Fligor spoke about the need to take bold action. "Some of those decisions and the reasons why you made those decisions may not be realized immediately," Mayor Fligor emphasized. She also encouraged new mayors and council members need set time aside each day to delve into and understand the issues. "You should ask [about] whatever isn't clear to you to help you get where you need to be," she said.
Mayor Fligor is particularly proud of two different projects: the ongoing construction of a 100-unit affordable housing development and the Los Altos Community Center. She noted the community center was completed thanks in part to the hard work of the previous city council. "They kept moving the community center forward, because they had that vision and understood how important and necessary it was for us to have to new community center," she said.
Sam Pedroza, Claremont
Sam Pedroza served on the Claremont city council for twelve years — twice as mayor. He emphasized the importance of listening to constituents above all else. "That was something I had to [learn] pretty quick coming into it. Cause I'm thinking I'm going to come in and bring development here and do this here," he explained. "And no. It was like: 'We don't need to do that.'"
One of the things Pedroza is most proud of, like Fasana, is the ongoing extension of the Metrolink Foothill Gold Line, which will connect Claremont to downtown Los Angeles via light rail. "You can start on something today, and it won't be completed for years after, but as long as you keep the train moving — that is really important," he noted.
What the future holds for these local leaders
With more than 60 years of experience as elected officials between them — and many more in public service — these outgoing or former mayors and council members have developed a wealth of knowledge about leadership. Their insight about the need to listen to others, communicate effectively, create trust, build consensus, and plan for the future, are wise words for new mayors and council members as they embark on their journey to lead their city forward.
Mayor Dunbar launched a campaign for Napa County supervisor. He credits his leadership skills and access to resources to his time at Cal Cities, which he has been an active member of since 2005. He was the president of the statewide advocacy and education organization for the 2019-20 term.
Fasana has retired from public service but remains active in his community, particularly the Duarte Rotary Club, a nonpolitical service organization. Above all else, he looks forward to spending more time with his grandson in Sacramento.
Mayor Fligor's term finishes in 2022; she has yet to announce her future plans. In addition to serving as mayor, she is also finishing a term as the president of the Cal Cities Peninsula Division.
Pedroza now works for the city of Industry as its assistant city manager. He sees his new position as an extension of his previous work at the city of Claremont and encourages other elected officials to consider similar roles.
Article January 1, 2022 Features By Melanie Perron
2021 Legislative Year in Review
For many, the beginning of 2021 felt like a continuation of 2020. COVID-19 continued to significantly impact the globe and cities throughout the state were still reeling from the economic impacts of the pandemic. Any guarantee of state or federal relief for cash-strapped cities was tepid at best. One silver lining was that the League of California Cities was able to build upon key relationships in the Legislature to advance top priorities for cities in 2021.
Article January 1, 2022 Executive Director's Message By League of California Cities Executive Director and CEO Carolyn Coleman
City leaders level up again in 2021, serving their communities and charting a clear path for Cal Cities' 2022 Action Agenda
2021 was another year of considerable change and challenges for our cities, yet these leaders remained resilient and dedicated to keeping their residents safe, rising to challenges, and taking action to ensure a strong recovery. When many of these same leaders came together late last year to review the achievements and accomplishments that the League of California Cities delivered in 2021 and plan for the year ahead, it was clear that they were ready and more prepared than ever to lead their communities in the new year.
Article January 1, 2022 News from the Institute for Local Government By Melissa Kuehne
Breaking the cycle: Steps for reducing negative discourse and incivility in public meetings
According to a recent report from the National League of Cities, more than 80% of local government officials have experienced some form of harassment, abuse, or violence while in office. That same report states that 87% of public officials have observed an increase in such behavior, with many noting a dramatic increase since the beginning of the pandemic.
Overview January 26, 2021 | {
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