Pitt’s Paradox

Extracted from the journal of Rev. Bartholomew Pitt, Naturalist

December 2nd, 1786

At first glance I assumed that the creature was a hoax.

I am, of course, familiar with the fanciful creations of the Chinese taxidermists, who sew together the body parts of sharks & lizards & swans & goats & monkeys & unfortunate orphans in order to confect “angels” & “mermaids” & “imps”, which they pickle in jars of formaldehyde & tout to credulous travellers along the wharves of the Orient. However, upon closer examination of the creature’s hide, I could not see any of the tell-tale stitch-marks that are habitual in such frivolous deceptions. So, despite my first misgivings, I purchased the skin from a sailor recently returned to London from the South Seas, intending to place it in my cabinet of curiosities.

I had chanced upon the hide’s owner in a public house in Billingsgate. The sailor was “half seas o’er” with strong spirits, but he conveyed to me that his whaler had been blown off course by a typhoon & that it had drawn fresh water in van Diemen’s Land. He had bartered the creature, then still alive, for a pocket-knife from the savages that inhabit that part of Terra Incognita Australis.

He had housed the creature, which he referred to as a “mole-duck”, in a cage on the whaler’s deck & he had attempted to tame it. However, the ungrateful creature had rewarded his ministrations by striking him with a spur located on its hind leg which contained venom. The poison had been exceedingly painful &, in the words of the sailor, his thumb had burnt “like Lucifer’s own blazes.” After several days of agony the ship’s barber had been obliged to amputate the sailor’s thumb; a bodily mutilation which my intoxicated interlocutor saw fit to brandish in my face. The so-called “mole-duck” had subsequently refused to eat ship’s biscuit & shortly thereafter had perished. Its innards had been served up in a stew by the whaler’s cook & pronounced good eating by all who partook of it. Fortunately, the sailor had successfully cured the beast’s skin.

The sailor accepted a glass of gin, a mutton pie & a guinea in gold for the creature’s hide. I fear I haggled but poorly & had I let the old tar swill more I could have purchased the skin for less. But I was anxious to return to my parish in Hackney before nightfall & it did not seem proper for a gentleman of the cloth to promote public drunkenness.

To describe the creature’s skin, it is of a quadruped about the size of a large rabbit. However, I am persuaded the creature is no earth-burrower. Rather, its dark brown fur is as short & fine & thick as an otter’s coat & its front & rear paws are webbed, from which I surmise that its native habitat is aquatic. Its tail is broad & short, somewhat like a beaver’s paddle, & it evidently once held the creature’s store of fats, as with our own goats. Needless to say these traits are all characteristic of animalae of the class mammalia, as described by Herr Carl Linnaeus in his great ordering of nature, Systema Naturae.

However, I have searched the creature’s skin most diligently for nipples & found none. Nor can I discern a navel. Furthermore, unless there has been a mistake in curing the skin, the beast has only one rear vent for the purposes of excretion, urination & reproduction; that is, a cloaca, a trait which every taxonomist knows is typical of the class amphibia. As indeed is its employ of venom, for innumerable snakes, toads & lizards produce poison, but no mammals.

Moreover, I have not yet come to this creature’s most astonishing feature. Growing above its mouth is a plate of ludicrous appearance, somewhat resembling a duck’s bill, although the creature is most definitely not of the class of the aves, that is, of the birds. The bill itself is not horny & brittle, but somewhat rubbery. The creature’s mouth lies directly beneath it & I hypothesise that the bill is in some manner a greatly modified nose, similar to the proboscis of the elephant. However, whereas the function of the elephant’s trunk, that is to drink water & to manipulate objects, is immediately evident, I can not conceive of the purpose of this creature’s peculiar appendage.

I have closely examined the cuff of skin between this bill & the creature’s hide for signs of manipulation, but I have found no signs of fraud. I am therefore convinced that the skin is the remains of a creature as paradoxical as the chimera, the part-lion part-goat part-snake of myth. And yet the beast is no aery illusion of a poet’s fevered imagination. It lies before me on my desk as real & substantial as the horse in my stable or the domestic fowl in my yard.

As the creature’s discoverer to science, it will be my privilege to christen it, as once it was Adam’s honour to name the common beasts. I confess it fascinates me. How did it come to be how it is? And where it is? For if Nature is God’s sermon, & if by studying His Creation we may know more closely the mind of our Creator, I ask why did our all-loving & almighty Lord God fashion this strange animal? The goat, the cow, the dog, & the humble bumble bee, these all serve Mankind in some manner. But what possible use has this bizarre beast to God or to Mankind? What higher purpose does this spiteful “mole-duck” serve? And why did our Lord hide it away on the other side of the Earth, far from his chosen people, where only the most primitive & godless savages abide?

It is a mystery indeed!

April 3rd, 1787

I have been rebuffed where most I sought admittance & repudiated by those whose esteem I most crave. It is  insupportable, but bear it I must!

Wishing to apprise the scientific community of the peculiarities of my paradoxical creature, and eager to earn a reputation as a Naturalist of importance, I exhibited its skin to the Society’s fellows, whose company I have frequented with pleasure on previous occasions, & into whose ranks I am desirous to be elected. At first my hide aroused curiosity, for there has been great interest in the fauna of Terra Australis since Captain Cook brought back the hide of a kongourou aboard the Endeavour.

However, when I read my paper on the creature the learned gentlemen’s curiosity turned first to skepticism, then to incredulity, & finally to outright disbelief. I believe the stumbling of my speech, for I am afflicted since childhood by an unfortunate stammer, did not aid my cause. Perhaps my clerical collar also provoked the learned gentlemen’s mirth, for the Society’s fellows are notorious free-thinkers & scoffers at organised religion.

The crisis came when I had finished describing my creature’s physiognomy, and I questioned whether it should be classed as a mammal or as a reptile or as something new & previously unknown to science. Finally I dared propose that it should be named Pittus paradoxus - that is to say “Pitt’s paradox” in our vulgar English tongue. For if our monarch King George III can be so bold as to claim an entire continent as his possession by the act of planting his flag upon its soil, why should I not claim this singular beast as my own from my possession of its hide?

I fear it was this audacious attempt to immortalise my name that caused the learned gentlemen to shake their heads & to mutter in disapproval, for there is a blinkered (and to my mind, out-dated) convention that one should not name a species after oneself. The unrest rose to such a level that I had to abandon my paper with my peroration unread. The general opinion was that I was an innocent dupe of the Chinese taxidermists, but I sensed that my own honour was not beyond question. I was particularly incensed by one gentleman’s observation that my creature had no place in a temple of science & that its hide were better displayed to the hoi polloi at the Royal Exchange, alongside the tumbling dwarf, the bearded woman & such like fanciful extravagances. Even the great Linnaeus was not so ridiculed when he included such dubious beasts as the monoceros or unicorn, the phoenix & the draco or dragon, under the order monstrosi in his encyclopaedic catalogue of nature.

To add to my discomfiture, as I was leaving Somerset House, I was drawn aside by Mr. Banks, the Royal Society’s President. He regretted that the Society could not consent to the publication of my paper in their Philosophical Transactions, for “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, & a single hide of doubtful provenance was insufficient backing for my large claims. Etcetera, etcetera.

Thus I am dismissed in disgrace & my creature remains nameless & unrecognised by science! I am a proud man, and the humiliation cuts deep.

Nonetheless, I shall be vindicated, for though “the mills of God grind slow, they grind exceeding small”. I have contracted privately with a certain Captain Anderson of the ship Cerberus, who is to set sail shortly with a cargo of convicts - thieves, bankrupts, worn-out whores & such like dregs of our society - for our proposed penal settlement in Terra Australis. In return for a generous commission he is to fetch me further specimens of my creature. As a country parson of thirty-eight years of age, unmarried & possessed of a good living, & of that middling estate, neither too high nor too low, which philosophers ancient & modern agree is the happiest state of Man, I thank the Lord that I have sufficient means to pursue my quest for knowledge in this wise. I am a fortunate man!

I must exercise patience, for Captain Anderson’s circumnavigation of the globe will take nigh on two of our planet’s circuits of the sun. Also, I must pray fervently for his vessel’s safety when it rounds the dreaded Cape Horn. But, if God wills it, I shall prove incontrovertibly that my Pittus paradoxus is no fraud, nor I any fraudster; & that, instead, my “mole-duck” occupies a unique place in our Lord’s creation.

Until that day dawns, I must busy myself with my sermons, & with my studies of the insects & fowl native to Hackney.

December 13th, 1787

It is Saint Lucy’s day, the darkest day of the year, and the day on which Annette, my servant girl, was born.

I am sat in my armchair in my inner sanctum, my study, drinking an infusion of tea & eating the sweet-meats that Annette has brought in. The house is still. Only the crackling of the fire in the hearth disturbs the hush. From where I am sat the flickering of the fire’s flames is reflected in the glass frontage of my cabinet of curiosities. Behind the play of fire I can see my particular treasures on its shelves: my globe, my herbarium, my well-thumbed edition of Linnaeus, my collection of beetles, the ivory tooth of a type of whale called a narwhal (which the ignorant commonly mistake for the horn of the mythical unicorn), a lump of sweet-smelling ambergris (which is the vomit of one of the great whales), several beads of amber (one of which encases a beetle of a peculiar morphology), & in pride of place the hide of my Pittus paradoxus.

As I sit here in my “den” I lack for nothing. Though I am not immune from the urgings of the flesh & I am in possession of a good fortune, I most certainly do not lack for a wife. For who would willingly tie a knot with his tongue that he can not untie with his teeth? No, a discreet visit when required to a certain establishment in the Haymarket is sufficient in that regard. And, though I love to turn my globe with my fingers & to picture foreign lands in my mind, I have no desire to venture upon the high seas or to seek my fortune in our colonies. No, I am content with my lot; my world is round & orderly & complete.

I suppose that I have always been possessed by a mania for classification. As an infant, whilst my older brother & his fellows would play rough & tumble in the woods, I would sit quietly at my mother’s knee, sorting through her needlework basket & settling her needles & threads & thimbles & buttons neatly in their ordained pockets. I can not express the tranquility I felt when I was so engaged. Never again have I felt so certain of God’s goodness.

Later, when I had mastered pencraft, I affixed labels to all the pots & pans & other implements in the kitchen, with the name of each & every object & where it should be kept stored written out in my careful hand, to the great amazement of Sarah, our cook. At school I took a particular pleasure in Latin, with its plethora of cases & declensions, whilst in the holidays I made an inventory of my father’s library & organised his books by author on its shelves - no small endeavour!

Given this peculiarity I was inevitably drawn to the study of natural history with its precise divisions of all vegetable & animal life into kingdoms & phyla & classes & orders & families & genera & species, & its multitude of names to be conned & memorised. Some of my happiest & most untroubled hours have been spent sketching & cataloguing my collection of beetles & ordering them in little boxes by genera & species. And truly our Lord God has singularly blessed we entomologists, for He has created beetles in the most extraordinary abundance for us to classify!

In my darkest hours (for I am periodically afflicted with a poisonous necrosis of the soul) the world threatens to overwhelm me with its terrifying tumult & disorder. At such times not even my beetles or the smiles of Annette are able to dispel my dejection. But by naming each object that presses in on my consciousness & by thus so to speak cataloguing it, I find I can impose a limit on the bedlam in my mind & obtain some relief from my despondency - for I believe that through the mere act of naming an object in some wise we cast a spell on it. Indeed, was it not by naming the elements that Almighty God first ordered the primordial chaos & separated the light from the darkness & the waters from the land?

It was, I suppose, this compulsion for order (as well as a younger son’s need for a living) that drew me to holy orders. For, as a priest, I keep two cabinets in my mind. In one I file human virtue in little drawers labelled chastity & temperance & charity & diligence & kindness & patience & humility; & in the other I file human sin in drawers labelled pride & greed & wrath & envy & lust & gluttony & sloth. In this way I tidy away the muddle & chaos of my flock’s all-too-human affairs. And all that remains for me is to perform the ceremonies required of a village priest, that is to christen, to marry & to bury my congregation, & to lecture them on Christian virtue for a quarter of an hour on Sundays.

It grows late. My fire has burnt down to a bed of embers & I can hear a mouse scratching beneath the floorboards. It is more than six months since the Cerberus set sail. She must have rounded the Cape of Good Hope & be approaching the terra nullius of Australia by now. Before I take to my bed I will pray for Captain Anderson & her crew.

May the good Lord bring all those who venture on the high seas to safe harbour!

September 20th, 1788

Lauda finem! Praise be to the end! Today I have completed my monograph on our native English songbirds.

My faith has been unexpectedly shaken by its making. In the course of my study I observed sundry nests of dunnocks, meadow pipits & warblers discovered for me by Thomas, my gardener. By my count no less than two-thirds of these nests were visited by a female cuckoo. At first the interloper would hover hawk-like over the songbird’s nest, the barred plumage of her breast & her square tail imitating the appearance of the songbirds’ natural predator, the sparrowhawk. Once the cuckoo had startled the mother songbird off her clutch, she quickly laid a single egg in each nest before departing. The songbird’s own eggs she left untouched. Shortly after the cuckoo’s visitation, the mother songbird returned &, unable to recognise the interloper’s imposition, she resumed the incubation of her clutch.

As far as I can discern the cuckoo builds no nest of her own & relies on this fraud to procreate. It is wondrous that the cuckoo’s eggs, though a little larger than the songbirds’ own, closely imitate in pattern & colour those of her hosts. And this even though the dunnock’s, the meadow pipit’s & the warbler’s eggs are dissimilar to one another. I know not how the mother cuckoo works this prodigious deception.

A fortnight later, I witnessed the newly hatched cuckoo-chick cruelly murdering its innocent step-siblings by pushing them out of its nest, for it tolerates no rivals for its step-parents’ affections. Then, as the summer progressed, it was terrible to behold this monstrous parasitical chick, grown to many times the size of its step-parents, so incessantly & voraciously demanding food from them that it drove them to their deaths of exhaustion.

Truly the cuckoo is an abhorrent bird. It perpetrates a heinous outrage on its hosts’ natural love for their own young. And yet it does not sin, for it is merely acting according to its innate instincts. So how can it be that our Lord God who directs us to love our neighbours as ourselves, not only permits such an epitome of ingratitude to exist, but indeed created it? How can He combine such wanton cruelty towards harmless songbirds with His supposed bounteous love for all living things?

Understand me rightly. It is not that I do not believe in God. I am not so foolish as to be an atheist. The idea that a creature so miraculous as Man assembled itself from nothing, without a Maker, is too absurd for words. How could such a complex mechanism - featuring such marvels as a beating heart, breathing lungs, seeing eyes & a functioning brain - have somehow made itself? It would be like finding a gold pocket watch in a glade & believing that the timepiece assembled itself from the leaf litter & detritus scattered over the forest floor. Such a thought is a folly so patent no man of reason could ever countenance it!

Nor do I question God’s omnipotence. To question the power of our universe’s Maker would be equally absurd. No, I only question God’s benevolence. For if Nature is God’s sermon to us, & if by studying His creation we may know His mind, of what goodness can one speak of a Creator who created the cuckoo?

I have no answer to this perplexity. For what is God if He is not good? But as I seek out God’s countenance reflected in His creation, I do not perceive the face of the New Testament God of forgiveness. Instead I behold the stern Old Testament deity who commanded his chosen people to slaughter the Midianites, man & boy, & to rape their daughters. For is not His creation as pitiless & bloody as that savage edict? Such a God must be feared, but He can not be loved!

And what does it speak of us, creatures created in God’s image, that we have permitted such a monster as the cuckoo, which indeed is listed as an abomination in the Book of Leviticus, to be celebrated as our herald of spring?

These reflections disturb my soul. I sleep poorly, in fits & starts, for I am a sinner like other men, & I have need of God’s love & forgiveness. But what if He has none? What if He is the God of the cuckoo?

I have no news from Captain Anderson, nor indeed can expect any, until he returns home. Or not. By my estimation, the Cerberus should currently be battling the perilous winds & waters of Cape Horn on the final leg of his circumnavigation of the globe. I shall pray again for his vessel’s safety before I take to my bed.

March 21st, 1789

Praise be to the Lord! The Cerberus has anchored safely in the pool of London!

In the morning I will ride up to London. I am in a mania of impatience & curiosity. Shall I have the proof I require of my creature’s existence? Shall I be vindicated? Shall my reputation as a naturalist be restored to me? And will the learned gentlemen of the Society elect me to their number?

It has been two long years of intellectual agony. Tomorrow I will know all!

March 22nd, 1789

Captain Anderson has excelled himself beyond all expectation. He has brought back a pair of my creatures from Terra Australis - alive!

I rode up to London & was shown to the Cerberus’s mooring. Most of its crew were ashore, “drinking & whoring or worse, most like,” as the Captain was pleased to put it. Those men who had remained on board were of a most unkempt & ferocious appearance: their clothes were ragged & their hair untrimmed, their flesh was unwashed & tattooed like that of savages, & their language was unGodly & barbarous in the extreme.

I went below decks. The very timbers of the ship stank of confined humanity. In Captain Anderson’s narrow cabin I was greeted by two of my creatures imprisoned in wicker cages. I can scarcely describe the emotion that swelled up in my breast as I watched them scamper about in their cages. Had I been another man I would have hollered in triumph: I had my vindication!

Over a bottle of Madeira wine Captain Anderson told me of his voyage. The colonists had set sail in a convoy of two warships & nine transports with eight hundred and nine convicts aboard, which number was increased by seven babies born to loose women en route. Though the convicts packed into the ship’s hold had suffered horribly in the stifling heat & had been sorely afflicted with thirst, the Cerberus had made good time & it had only lost five units of its cargo in transit - two whores & a new born babe from the lack of water, & one thief killed in a fight over ship’s biscuit, whose murderer the Captain had summarily hanged from the yardarm to deter further squabbles.

After eight months at sea the convoy penetrated the coral reef that protects the shores of Terra Australis & dropped anchor at Botany Bay. However, the colonists quickly found the proposed site of their settlement unsuitable, and moved to a better suited cove & there began to build their huts & to farm the land. The convicts were much discomfited by hunger & by the thieving of the natives. Captain Anderson described these natives as utter savages, ignorant of the use of metal & of farming & of any form of law, with only the use of fire & stone tools to raise them above the level of brute beasts.

In the Captain’s telling Terra Australis (or “that damned devilish hell-hole” in his parlance) is a hostile, scorched, God-forsaken land. He lost three men to snake bite, spider bite & scorpion sting, whilst the remainder of his crew fell sick with strange fevers or were plagued to distraction by bull-ants, leeches & biting insects. Even the plants of that new land were hostile to the settlers’ plans: the Captain told me of a brood mare which foolishly browsed on the leaf of one shrub & which then became so violently deranged that it had to be shot.

As for the new continent’s fauna, Captain Anderson said his men had shot a running bird which looked something like an ostrich or a cassowary, & also many kongourou, which were good eating. He related that the kongourou hops about swiftly on its hind legs & that the females have a pouch in their belly inside which they keep their young, much as a housewife might keep her keys & purse in a pocket of her smock. I confess this description amused me!

I inquired if he had seen any of our native creatures there, bar the farm animals the colonists had brought with them aboard the ships. The Captain answered that the beasts & fowl of Terra Australis had been wholly novel to him, excepting one swan. However, unlike our own swans, this contrary bird had sported black plumage. “Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno” indeed!

Captain Anderson’s account of this strange new world perplexes & confounds me. Why did our Lord see fit to make two entirely separate creations? And of such different character, since by the Captain’s account, almost every creature in this perverse new world is poisonous or otherwise hostile to Mankind in some wise. What is the meaning of it? Did the kongourou lie down in Noah’s Ark to escape the Flood alongside the lion & the lamb? I find it hard to countenance. Or was Terra Australis somehow spared the flood, even though in the Book of Genesis we read that the firmament’s waters closed over even the highest mountains on Earth & that all the animals of the earth not housed inside the Ark were drowned? And, for that matter, whence came such a huge volume of water? And whither has such it flowed away since? Or should I doubt the foundation of my faith - the truth of God’s Word as given to us unworthy mortals in the Bible? I know not what to make of it.

To return to the Captain’s tale: after four months riding in harbour, the Cerberus was dispatched to carry news of the new colony’s fortune back to London. Before their departure Captain Anderson’s men succeeded in netting a freshwater creek & capturing two of my beasts. The beasts had thriven aboard his vessel on a diet of chopped fish. I thanked him fulsomely, paid him his commission in gold & said I would send a cart to collect the creatures.

I thought that was the end of our business. But, as we were about to part on deck, Captain Anderson halted, jingled my guineas in his waistcoat pocket & said he hoped, as a man of God, I would not be offended, but he had one more curiosity to show me. Naturally, I was much intrigued by this introduction.

I followed my guide down into the ship’s hold. There in the foul-smelling darkness I saw a pair of brown eyes, more frightened than frightening, staring back at me. As my own eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw the eyes belonged to one of the savages of whom the Captain had spoken. He was naked bar a pair of tattered breeches & he was shackled by an iron collar around his neck, to which a chain had been fixed, as one might chain up a ferocious guard-dog.

Captain Anderson explained that his crew had roped & tied this blackfellow & a female as they had attempted to pilfer some of their supplies shortly before their departure. It had seemed equitable to the Captain that, as he had transported common English thieves to Australia, so he should transport these native thieves back to England, supposing there might be some value in their public exhibition.

Once the Cerberus had cleared the sight of land the two savages had roamed freely aboard ship. However, the female had been so foully misused by the crew (wild men all) that she had suffered a dislocated pelvis &, in excruciating pain, she had hurled herself overboard & drowned. After that mishap this fellow had become sullen & morose & the Captain had considered it prudent to chain him up in the vessel’s hold. Though reluctant to learn at first, the blackfellow had mastered a few words of our English tongue on the voyage home.

I must admit the presence of the savage placed me in a quandary. There is some dispute in law about whether “the air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe”, for our law makes no provision for subjugation but neither forbids it absolutely.

Likewise, the Church of England does not object outright to the institution of slavery. It is evident from the Old Testament that the Hebrew patriarchs kept both concubines to share their beds & chattel slaves to till their fields. The twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Leviticus specifically decrees: “Both thy male slaves & thy female slaves, which thou shalt have, shall be of the Heathen that are around you; of them shall ye buy male slaves & female slaves.” Nor is this approval of human bondage limited to the Old Testament. In the New Testament St. Paul returns a runaway slave to his master, thus upholding the institution by implication. Indeed, in our own time, the Church benefits richly from its sugar cane plantations in Barbados & Jamaica, which are worked by negro slaves uprooted from Africa.

However, despite such ancient precedent, I believe slavery is “a custom best honoured in the breach than in the observance.” If I had been present in Terra Australis I would have encouraged the release of the thieves, with perhaps a whipping to discourage repetition of their pilfering. But now the savage was here in England there was no going back on what had been done, for it may be many years until a new fleet is sent out to our nascent colony. Thus, if I did not take responsibility for the savage’s bodily & spiritual welfare, the likelihood was that he would be sold to another master & put on public display. Then, when the public had tired of the novelty, as they invariably do, the savage would either be sold on to another, crueller master & worked to death, or he would fall prey to the surgeons & his body used to practise their butchery.

So, having but little choice in the matter (or so I conceived), I bargained with Captain Anderson for his captive. And, for the price of twenty guineas, I am become the owner of a slave. I shall not drive a nail through my new possession’s left earlobe & into my doorpost, as the Book of Leviticus instructs us slaves are to be marked. Nor shall I keep him bound in chains. Instead I shall treat him with kindness & instruct him in our faith, in the hope that the Lord will have mercy on my soul.

I write this at home in Hackney, having returned from London saddlesore & dog-tired. I have hired a carter to bring my purchases here on the morrow & I eagerly anticipate their arrival.

March 23rd, 1789

My creatures have arrived by cart. To prevent their escape we opened their cages inside my walled garden. I was correct to surmise the beasts were aquatic, for as soon as they realised that they were at partial liberty, they sought security in the lily pond in the centre of my garden.

Their gait on land is interesting: their legs extend sideways from their body in the reptilian manner, rather than supporting them from underneath, as is typical of mammals. Once in the water the creatures swim powerfully, using their two webbed front paws in turn as paddles, whilst holding their back paws sleek against their body. We allayed their hunger with earthworms dropped into the water, which tidbits they devoured voraciously. Fortunately, the weather is mild & their mammalian fur seems to insulate them sufficiently against the cold. I have warned my servants (that is Sarah, my cook, who came with me out of Sussex, Annette, my servant girl, & Thomas, my gardener) that the creatures carry poison & that they are only to be handled with leather gauntlets. My people are greatly afraid of the creatures & I do believe, if I were not their protector, they would be killed forthwith.

The savage also arrived by the same means, running on his chain behind the cart. He was a picture of misery, bound by the iron collar around his neck, caked in mud & shivering against the cold. To look at him I was reminded of the ancient dictum: “I thank the gods that I am a Greek & not a barbarian; a free man & not a slave; & a man & not a woman.” For at that moment I was truly grateful to my Maker that I was bred an English gentleman & not born a savage!

I asked my new possession his name, but he stared blankly at me, as if he did not understand my question. So I will call him Christian, in the hope that he may become one, so far as his apprehension allows.

My first act of friendship was to release him from the iron collar & its accompanying chain. Once unshackled he looked around my garden warily, as if he could scarcely countenance his freedom. For a moment I thought he might run & we would have the trouble of recapturing him, but Annette fetched a plate of jam tarts from the kitchen. The savage gazed gog-eyed at the pastries & then gobbled them up greedily, thrusting them with both hands into his mouth & smiling broadly as he chewed open-mouthed - for his manners leave much to be desired.

I shall now attempt to describe him. He is a young man of perhaps seventeen or eighteen summers of age. His skin is the colour of tea, his hair woolly, his beard thin & wispy, & his nose wide & flattened & to my eyes of a repugnant appearance. In contrast, his brown eyes have a natural quickness about them. The teeth are strong; the lips full; the skin smooth.

So much for the head. The body is splendid; lithe & muscled, the body of a runner of long distances. The male parts have been circumcised, as with the Jews. The feet are wide & flat, & their soles thickly calloused from a lifetime of walking without shoes. I dare say if you saw a young stallion in such fettle at a fair you would purchase him & enter him in the Derby!

According to Captain Anderson in their native state the savages go about without clothes. However, as our climate is considerably less clement, I have given Christian some of my old shirts & breeches & a wool blanket to keep him warm. I do not trust him so bladed tools are kept from him & I have forbidden him the house. Instead, he is to sleep in my stable with my horse & dog.

Naturally the arrival of such an exotic stranger caused much curiosity & consternation in the village. I have had many calls from local children, the elder of whom consider the newcomer to be a devil or gypsy or bogeyman, or some other monstrous outsider fetched from their storybooks. The younger children, in contrast, scarcely notice the colour of his skin & after playing with his hair awhile, they befriend him.

I am uncertain how to classify my new possession. My master, Linnaeus, in the Tenth Edition of his Systema Naturae, argues against Man being a separate kingdom of nature & of divine origin. Instead, he concedes the animal nature of man, placing him in the order Anthromorpha, together with the quick-witted monkeys of the genera Simia (such as the orang-u-tan) & the incurious sloths of the genera Bradypus.

The learned Swede delineates four “varieties” of Mankind: Homo americanus rubescens, the unyielding, cheerful & free-spirited redskin of America; Homo europaeus albus, the light, wise & inventive white man of Europe; Homo asiaticus fuscus, the stern, haughty & greedy yellow race of Asia; & Homo africanus niger, the sly, sluggish & lazy black race of Africa. However, I believe Christian to lie outside this scheme, & to be a representative of a fifth sort of human, unknown to Linnaeus, whom I shall provisionally christen Homo australis primoplastus. That is, primordial man.

Whether Christian be a representative of merely a new sub-species of humanity, or a wholly new species I can not tell. According to Aristotle’s definition of a species (that is, that any male & female of one kind can couple together & produce fertile offspring) it is evident from many lamentable examples in our colonies that a white man may successfully copulate with the females of the three other varieties of humanity recognised by Linnaeus & sire fertile progeny. However, I do not intend to make test of this distinction with Christian by attempting to breed him with a white woman. It is too disturbing a thought to contemplate.

I confess I am troubled by Christian’s existence. Did our Lord create this primordial human race as He created us? Is Christian a lineal descendant of Adam & Eve, as we are? And, if so, why did our Lord leave Christian’s people in such an extremity of indigence & ignorance? Why did He deny them His blessings? Or is Christian the fruit of a second & lesser creation? Does he, like we do, possess an immortal soul? Can he be saved? Or is he ab initio damned?

I have no answer to these questions. I regret that I did not ask Captain Anderson if the female savage had a pouch in her stomach to keep her young, as the kongourou does. I shall write & inquire of him.

April 18th, 1789

My creatures have dug two burrows in the earthen banks of my lily pond, inside which they rest. They are mostly active at night, although I sometimes see them swimming at dawn & at dusk. They do not seem interested in my golden carp. Rather, they hunt for tiny creatures hidden in the pond’s muddy bed.

I was puzzled how the creatures detect their food at night & in such silty water; occasions when their eyes must be of little use. I decided on an experiment. I had Thomas catch one of the creatures with a net, a task he performed with understandable trepidation. I anaesthetised the creature with a drop of ether placed on my handkerchief. Whilst it was unconscious I examined it closely & determined that it indeed possesses a single cloaca, like a reptile. I was thus unable to determine its sex; or if, indeed, these peculiar creatures have a male & a female, as other animals do. Likewise, despite its thick fur, I could not discover any nipples. Thus, I can only conclude that if my paradoxical beast is a reptile then it is unlike any reptile known to science, & if it be a mammal then it is unlike any other mammal. As for its duck-like bill, it lacks teeth, as birds do, & it consists of two plates of a hard yellowish substance.

Before the creature recovered consciousness I placed a ribbon around its head, so as to blindfold it, fixing it with horse glue, which will weaken in water. Once it had recovered, I released it back into the pond, placing several live shrimps in the mud. Though unable to see, the creature swam through the water, swinging its head from side to side as it did. It located its prey & snapped it up with marvellous accuracy before its blindfold fell away.

Lately, it has been discovered (by Mr. Williamson & others) that our thoughts are electrick in nature, & similar (though weaker) to the charge of the electrick eel. Is it this electrick life-force that the creature senses with its bill? Does it use its prey’s own thoughts to doom them?

I have heard much the same said of Satan; that he can detect our wicked intentions & use them to lead us to our damnation. Is it not terrifying to imagine the devil sweeping over our houses at night with a great duck-like bill, sensing our most shameful & sinful thoughts & snapping up our souls, as though they were no more than tasty tidbits? I shudder at the thought, for who amongst us does not have secrets he would wish remained hidden and forgotten?

I shall now make some observations on Christian.

I directed Thomas to put him to labour on my land (which consists of my garden, a horse-paddock & a fifteen acre oak wood). However, he has little interest in any activity, such as planting, pruning, watering, or weeding, that does not bring him immediate reward. I believe he lives only in the present, without taking thought for the future, as well he may in his native clime where his winters are as comfortable as our summers. Furthermore, when mattocking up the earth, he has a vile propensity to seize upon & devour bugs & grubs. In a moment of misdirected generosity he even divided up an earthworm & offered me a half. I refused in disgust & he was offended. I regret my action now, for it was a proffer of friendship.

Our domestic animals are as unfamiliar to him as his native creatures are to us. At first he was much afraid of Argus, my mastiff, though since they have become the best of friends & they sleep together in my stable. He stood stock-still & gazed open-mouthed in amazement the first time he saw a rider dismount a horse. I do believe that he had thought he was looking upon a whole creature, like a centaur, & he was astounded when it fell apart into two living halves. Milking likewise astounds him.

He ran & hid when he first came upon a windmill. Perhaps, like Don Quixote, he beheld not a machine for grinding grain, but a terrifying giant brandishing whirling blades in its four wheeling arms. As for the blacksmith’s forge, he will not go near it. I suppose the hammering of iron unhappily reminds him of his former collar & chain.

My attempts to interest him in religion have so far fallen on stony ground. However, he gazes at pictures & prints with fascination. As an experiment I gave him an old hand-mirror. When Christian caught sight of himself in its glass he jumped up & down with excitement & babbled in his own tongue. However, when his reflection did not reply he grew frustrated & threw it down. Then, realising that the mirror was not a window through which he could communicate with his own people, & that he was merely gazing on his reflection, he began to whimper inconsolably.

He does not sit on his tail-bone, as we do. Rather he squats on his haunches to rest. Yesterday I found him like this in my barn. Beneath him he had placed the mirror on its dirt floor & he had made a sort of path across it from different coloured pebbles. I inquired of him what it meant, & he explained in his broken English that the mirror was the great water that he had crossed, & that each stone was a memorable event on that journey. It was, I suppose, a kind of map or chart so that one day he could retrace his steps to his native land. I asked him what one particular pebble meant, but his face went dark & he refused to answer. Foolishly I persisted, & I asked him if the female savage who had been so cruelly misused aboard the Cerberus had been his woman or his wife. He muttered bitterly that she had been his mother, kicked away his memory stones, & wept.

After that I did not dare ask if she had a pouch in her stomach, like the female kongourou. I do not think so now.

I am sorry to say that my one real influence on Christian has been a bad one. I gave him a pipe of tobacco to try & he has quickly become addicted to it & he begs the weed from me at every possible occasion.

I fear to offer him strong liquor, or even small beer, for the effect it may have upon him, for he was not suckled on gin & milk to quiet him as a babe, as we English are.

In contrast to Christian’s defects as a labourer, his skills as a hunter are remarkable. He has fashioned himself a spear from a bough of a tree blasted by lightning, sharpening its point with the edge of a shattered flint & hardening it in fire. Armed with this weapon he prowls my woodland & hunts squirrels, rabbits & hedgehogs, with which he supplements his diet.

However, he does not understand fences or the laws of property. In his mind all animals are fair game & it is only with difficulty that I have restrained him from murdering my neighbours’ livestock. As for trespassing on their land, he seems to believe that the Earth is a living creature, & that we belong to it, as fleas might belong to a dog, & not it to us, & I can not bring him to understand otherwise.

My parishioners are much afraid of him. I have received a delegation requesting me to send “the darkie” away, or to chain him up before he commits some abominable outrage. I believe it is only my prestige as a gentleman & a priest that has saved him from a cudgelling, or perhaps worse.

However, I am more & more convinced that Christian is a person as others are, & perhaps more intelligent than many, & that we differ only in the colour of our skins & the fortunes of our birth. But, if that is so and we are of one kind, then how did his ancestors arrive on that terra nullius where all the other animals are of a different creation from our own? There is a profound mystery here. It seems most unlikely that a people who live so poorly could have built & sailed ships across the treacherous waters that surround that great island continent. But how else could they have found their way there?

On a lighter note, I can also report that Christian has a sweet tooth. Annette, who pities him, has been taking pastries to his stable. Yesterday her cone of sugar ran out. When Christian learnt of this, he ran into my wood & climbed nimbly a tree where he knew there was a beehive. Ignoring the stinging of the bees (which fortunately were drowsy at this time of year) he raided the hive for her, bringing home combs dripping with golden honey & smiling broadly despite the stings on his arms & face.

I am eating Annette’s honey-cakes with my tea as I write this in my study & I thank him for his feat, for they melt most pleasingly in my mouth.

April 29th, 1789

The cuckoo has returned from its wintering grounds. I hear its call heralding spring in my wood. I have given Thomas orders to shoot it on sight. The world would be better without it. It should not exist.

I am also troubled by Annette. She has completed sixteen winters & this spring she is blossoming into a woman. There is something of her mother in her smile & the way she moves & I think of her in a way I must not. I hope the devil can not detect the urging of my flesh!

Lastly, my melancholy is upon me again. My remaining faith in God’s goodness seems but the fragile flickering of a candle hemmed about with an immense darkness of night. And, as I stare into the void of disbelief, I sense its terrifying emptiness staring back at me & entering my soul.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will complete forty years of age. I will ride into London & pay a visit to the Haymarket. Perhaps that will alleviate my abject despondency.

If only I could sit at my mother’s knee & order her sewing basket again!

May 25th, 1789

Argus, my mastiff, is dead.

Thomas had let him off his chain for exercise in my stable-yard. By accident or design I know not, (for Thomas is no friend to either Christian or to my “devil-rats”), he omitted to close the gate of my walled garden. Though usually stolid & phlegmatic, Argus scented my creatures & charged into the garden. As I looked down from my bedchamber’s window, I watched Argus plunge headlong into the pond. He seized one of the creatures in his jaws before it could find refuge in its burrow. A moment later he howled in pain & dropped the bloodied creature. Evidently, the beast had spiked him.

I hurried to the scene. Argus writhed on the ground as if he were being burnt alive. I watched him suffer terribly for half an hour but the pain did not subside. At last, I begged Thomas to fetch my shotgun & put the poor beast out of his agony, which he did.

As for the creature Argus attacked, it fled through the open garden-gate & onto the public road. It bled as it ran & I do not know if it is now dead or alive. Thomas offered to shoot the other “devil-rat” & to be done with “the damned beasts”, but I forbade it. The creature is too important to science. To lose one “duck-mole” is a heavy blow to my hopes, but to lose both would be a catastrophe.

Christian was deeply affected by the death of his friend. He sat over Argus’s corpse weeping & singing softly in his own language for an hour. He has now taken the dog’s body to my wood & wedged it between two branches halfway up a tree. I presume he is repeating the funeral customs of his people. I will not interfere.

I am angered by Thomas’s negligence & I must remonstrate with him. I must also warn my flock of the escape of one of my creatures & the danger of its poison in my sermon. I fear it will not improve their uncharitable disposition towards Christian.

May 28th, 1789

Thomas has shown me a strange thing that Christian has made.

At the heart of my wood there is a clearing where an old oak tree, its trunk rotten with fungus, fell in the storm of ’85. Where the sunlight penetrates wood’s broken canopy a copse of hazel has sprung up. In the midst of this copse Christian has made a sort of bower by bending & weaving the green hazel shoots into an arch. Beneath this arch he has scattered last year’s leaves to make a sort of bed, whilst at the archway’s entrance he has arranged with an artist’s eye various objects that he has collected in his roving - cornflower heads, shards of Delft pottery, robins’ eggs, a piece of painted wood, & two or three of Annette’s ribbons - all of them as blue as Annette’s own eyes. The overall effect is striking. I suppose it is a shrine to his one of his pagan gods or goddesses.

Thomas (who is fierce & narrow in his religion) begged my permission to destroy “this devilry.” He also proposed that we baptise Christian by force in the village pond “an’ if the heath’n won’t go, then duck ‘is head & drown ‘im.” But I will not consent to either suggestion. There is no coercion in matters of salvation. Christian must be brought to our faith willingly, if at all.

Alas, there have been no sightings of my fugitive “duck-mole”. I assume that it has either died of its wounds or it has been taken by a fox.

June 1st, 1789

As I laboured on my sermon this morning, my literary endeavours were interrupted by a loud splash. I looked out of my study’s window & saw an extraordinary sight: Christian had jumped into my lily pond & plunged his arm up to his elbow into the burrow of my remaining creature. Before I could cry out & warn him of its poison, he pulled his closed fist out of its burrow, grinning triumphantly.

I hurried outside & Christian unclasped his fist to reveal two small eggs. I begged them of him. The eggs were white & the size of marbles. Their shells were soft & leathery, like the eggs of a lizard.

Annette ran out of the kitchen. She quarrelled with Christian, upbraiding him for his recklessness. But he, as familiar with the creature as we might be with a rabbit, laughed at her fear & declared that he had used no courage at all, for only the male “duck-rats” (his chosen name for my creature) were poisonous & (pointing to the eggs as proof) the animal whose burrow he had raided was a female.

I was astounded, nay, dumbfounded, by the proposition that a creature with fur laid eggs. In my disbelief my first thought was that the eggs must have been deposited by a newt or a snake which had ventured into the creature’s burrow. To test the truth of my supposition I opened the two eggs in my study & examined their contents with my looking-glass. Naturally Christian was right: the minuscule hairless foetuses inside were the young of my paradoxical creatures - they must have paired before the escape of the male. I could even discern an egg-tooth, or caruncle, on the young creatures’ bills. Both embryos squirmed & wriggled a little before they perished.

I do not know how to account for this bizarre revelation. What disorder in creation can be responsible for an animal that so defies every rule of taxonomy? In my darker hours my creature seems to me to be one of those nightmarish combinant monsters pictured in the hellscapes of the Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch.

Thomas is right: it is indeed the devil’s work!

June 3rd, 1789

Yesterday Christian told Annette a legend of his people which I persuaded her to relate to me. Christian talked of a time of dreams during which the world was made, recounting that in this time the land animals, the water animals & the sky animals went severally to the “duck-rat” to ask him to join their respective tribes. However, the “duck-rat” decided not to join any one tribe, but to remain apart, for he did not need to be a part of any group.

It seems that Christian’s people also sense the singular nature of my creature! I am more & more convinced that the beast holds the key to unlocking a great mystery.

Christian has also told Annette his name in his own tongue. She will not tell it to me, for she has made him a promise. Apparently amongst his people it is forbidden to share your name with strangers & knowing it gives her a power over him.

I must warn Annette about Christian’s attentions, for he is a favourite of hers & she does not sense the danger. I do not think he will force her, but his eyes do not leave her. I do not blame him. It is only natural that he wishes to elevate his blood. But it must not be. He has no prospects. And though Annette is illegitimate & a servant, I am fond of her like a daughter & I would see her raise her station in life. The blacksmith’s oldest boy, although coarse in speech, is sweet on her. He will inherit the forge, which prospers, being situated advantageously on the Great North Road. I am sure Annette’s love would improve the boy’s manners. I will encourage her to place her affections there.

June 5th, 1789

Alea iacta est. The die is cast! I have killed & anatomised the remaining beast, as science demands.

Thomas stopped up its burrow with earth whilst it was resting, so that it could not escape into the pond. Then he dug down into its refuge from the top. As he pulled one last clod of earth away he opened a window on a sight scarcely to be credited. Three tiny pink pups, no larger than my fingernails, lay wriggling upon the creature’s chest, lapping at a milky substance that had leaked out from her flesh & pooled in her fur. Beside the mother another egg lay, waiting to hatch.

I killed the creature by pressing a handkerchief dipped in laudanum to its mouth, so as to not damage its hide. I took its lifeless body to my office & dissected it upon my desk. I paid particular attention to its jaw, knowing that the arrangement of the bones at its corners is different in reptiles & mammals. However, I discovered that my creature is neither one thing nor the other, but a higgledy-piggledy mish-mash of both, as if an inferior hand had botched together a lizard & an otter. Whilst dissecting the creature’s mouth-parts I also noted that the branch of the trigeminal nerve that animates its bill was uncommonly large. This supports my hypothesis that the sensibility & discrimination of the bill is great, just as the sensibility of the hand is in man, or the trunk is in the elephant.

The creature’s hide I have sent away to London to be stuffed & mounted, alongside its unhatched eggs & one of its young, who I have directed shall be placed feeding on the creature’s milky breast. It will make a fine exhibit. I shall also clean & wire together the creature’s bones & make fair copies of my anatomical sketches.

I have not wasted the creature’s meat. It is indeed it is good eating, to my palate not unlike rabbit. Of the white substance that leaked from its breast, there was only an acorn’s cupful. But I tried it & it tasted much like milk.

I can not believe that the learned gentleman of the Royal Society will pass over my creature a second time, for I possess in abundance the extraordinary proof that even the most extraordinary claims require. I fully anticipate my soonest elevation to the rank of fellow.

July 14th, 1789

Alas, fear has grown from curiosity, & not familiarity. Any evil that happens in the parish is blamed on Christian. Though the Bible commands us to love our fellow man, Christian falls outside that definition in the eyes of my parishioners. He is a devil, a “darkie”, a less than human “other” on which any mishap can be pinned.

If my parishioners were to be credited Christian is a wizard of great power. If a horse goes lame or if the milk goes sour, then it is because Christian has put the evil eye on it. If a cow wanders out of its field & grazes upon a yew bough in the churchyard, its death is upon Christian. And if the rope frays & the bucket falls into the well then that is also Christian’s working.

There is an evil whispering in the village, particularly at night in the tavern. It is led by the blacksmith’s son, who foolishly supposes that this is the way to win Annette’s heart. I believe Thomas also rails against Christian in his cups. Last Sunday I deemed it necessary to remind my flock from the pulpit that Christian is my property, & that whoever deprives me of my property is guilty of theft, for which the penalty in this life is transportation to Terra Australis, & in the next damnation.

By such stratagems I aim to preserve my slave’s liberty!

July 21st, 1789

It was foolhardy, of course. I should not have shared my thoughts about the cuckoo’s true nature with my congregation. Such abstruse philosophical speculations are to be kept for the learned gentlemen & not shared with an audience of “coarse mechanicals”.

And now I have the consequence: a letter from my bishop inquiring into my “spiritual welfare”. That is, in plain English, his lordship is worried that a scandal is brewing in my parish. Evidently, he has informants amongst my flock. “Let God’s people believe God’s creation is good,” he reproaches me. “Do not frighten them with this talk of a devil-bird. Leave such fear-mongering to the Methodists. That is their stock in trade, not ours.”

In his letter his lordship also inquired about Christian. He does not criticise me directly for the possession of another human being. He is far too circumspect to venture into such a thorny controversy. No, as always, he is more concerned with the appearance of propriety than with the substance of morality. He wonders if it is appropriate to maintain “a savage” in such a tranquil corner of King George’s realm as Hackney. My parishioners, he informs me, are frightened that Christian will spear their cattle & rape their daughters. Etcetera, etcetera. His Lordship suggests it might be better if I sent Christian abroad, perhaps to the West Indies, where he could be employed in profitable labour. Perhaps, indeed, upon the Church of England’s own sugar plantations!

I know not how to reply. I do not mistreat Christian. I have unshackled him. I have never whipped him. How many fathers can say that of their own sons? Many a farmer treats his farmhands & his own children worse. I have no way to return him to his own people in Terra Australis, as I might wish. I refuse to sell him to another master, who will most likely maltreat him. And if I were to set him free & drive him away, what would I achieve? Dogs would be set on him were he to roam the roads of England. All I can promise to his lordship is that I will disarm my slave & instruct him to keep strictly to my land.

As for my unfortunate sermon on the cuckoo, I must obfuscate. I will supply a written copy of the offending disquisition to his lordship, as requested, but I shall omit certain passages. And I shall promise his lordship to speculate no more on God’s role in His own creation & His tolerance, nay, His apparent acquiescence, of evil. Henceforth I will limit myself to reading out his lordship’s own sermons verbatim from my pulpit.

In Paris the Bastille, that is to say the French Tower of London, has been stormed by a mob & the King of France’s prisoners confined inside released.

Everywhere old certainties fail & chaos reigns. My only refuge is my beetles!

August 10th, 1789

Calamity!

I have been mocked & driven out of the temple of science. I am mortified!

I rode up to London to find the city in ferment. The news from Paris is that the French King’s liberty is constrained. There is a palpable fear of an overturning of the social order amongst the better classes in the city & a scarcely concealed enthusiasm for a revolution amongst our own sans culottes.

But enough of politics; I care not for them!

I exhibited the articulated skeleton & the stuffed hide of my creature to the learned gentlemen of the Society. They examined both with curiosity, scarcely able to credit that a furred creature had a cloaca & one that laid eggs nourished its young with milk.

I also read the paper that I had prepared. The gentlemen listened attentively to my description of the behaviours of Pittus paradoxus, including its poisoning of my dog & its mysterious ability to detect the life force of other creatures with its bill. I then recounted my discoveries from my dissection of the creature. Although I sensed that some of the learned gentlemen were resistant to there being such a disorder in nature as to permit the existence of such a singular & paradoxical creature, I judge that if I had stopped there the evening would have been a success & my name immortalised.

Alas, it was the question of the cuckoo, the problem of evil, that drove me on to my ruin. I chose to speculate more broadly on the fauna of Terra Australis, that unexplored land beneath our feet where our midday is its midnight & our midsummer is its midwinter. Drawing on Captain Anderson’s experiences, I noted how its pouched land creatures were entirely different from our own beasts of the field, & how even its swan sported ebony plumage & not ivory.

I then rashly ventured beyond natural history into the realms of theology. I noted that in the histories & legends of all faiths, both pagan & Christian, hell was located beneath our feet, just as heaven was to be found above our heads. What if, I speculated, hell were not located in the innards of the earth, but on the other side of it, at its antipodes? Was not Terra Australis subject to scalding heat? Were not its fauna so misshapen & ill-favoured that they defied classification, & so poisonous & inimical to Mankind that even my humble Pittus paradoxus carried venom? Was it not possible that these perverse creatures had been made not by the master hand of our divine Maker, but that they had been bungled & botched together by an inferior craftsman in savage parody of our Lord’s original creation? That is, was it not possible that these monstrosities were the handiwork of the Prince of Darkness, Satan himself?

It was at this point the learned gentlemen began to look at me as if a lunatic had escaped from Bedlam & erupted into their midst. However, it was too late to turn back. To support my contention that Terra Australis was the underworld of legend I argued that the inhabitants of this “damned devilish hell-hole”, as Captain Anderson had termed it, were most likely the descendants of the corrupt & sinful people who the Bible teaches us were washed away in Noah’s great flood. And that was why the Lord had left them in ignorance of His religion; because He had damned them & all their generations & denied them His salvation. I concluded by urging the immediate evacuation of our colony in Terra Australis, for who could be so foolish as to settle Lucifer’s abode & to seek commercial advantage from it?

I finished reading my paper to a stony embarrassed silence in the hall. The silence was broken after a few seconds by a loud guffaw from one gentleman & a snort of “balderdash!” from another. A general muttering followed that the Society was no place for such religious ravings & that it was reserved for serious scientific inquiry. The meeting broke up with the consensus being that I was a lunatic & my creature almost certainly a fraud.

My heart boiled with a most unGodly rage at my honour being impugned in this manner. Being a gentleman of the cloth, mild by nature & not skilled in steel or lead, I dared not seek satisfaction from the fellows. Instead, I ground one of my molars down to the quick as I strode out of Somerset House in high dudgeon, more angry than I have ever been in my life.

May God forgive me, but I kicked a stray dog in the street in my wrath. I shall not visit the Society again.

So ends my career as a natural philosopher. Lauda finem!

August 11th, 1789

I shall never forget the look of utter helplessness in his eyes. Had he not been chained up I think he would have fallen on his knees & begged me for mercy. I dare say he would have even licked my riding boots!

But I did not defend him from the mob. Instead, still bitter & resentful from my humiliation at the hands of the learned gentlemen, I gave in to my nature. My true human nature. Because He who made the cuckoo also made me. And I, who by all rights should be a civilised man, reverted in my hour of trial into the worst kind of savage.

I had arrived back in Hackney around midday. I had stayed the night in a London inn, though barely sleeping a wink from chagrin & bed bugs. In the morning I had ridden out of the city with my mind in a tormented black haze, scarcely noticing the harvesters working in the cornfields or the woods in their summer glory.

There was an ominous silence in the village as I rode through it. The door of the tavern was open & it was empty inside, the forge’s flames were unwatched & animals were wandering about unattended. Then, as I passed the church, I heard a tumult coming from my house.

I dismounted & hurried through the rectory’s gates. In the stable-yard I saw a sight I shall never forget. Christian, as naked as the day he was born, was surrounded by a baying mob led by Thomas & the blacksmith’s son, with half the older children of the village amongst its number. Somehow the mob had managed to place the iron collar around Christian’s neck again & to shackle him to a post. The blacksmith’s son held in his hands the cup & shears his father uses to geld colts, whilst Thomas was holding a bottle of gin to Christian’s mouth. The firewater scorched Christian’s throat & he tried to spit it out, but Thomas roughly forced the bottle between his teeth. Meanwhile Annette, dressed only in her night-shirt, was wailing desperately for the mob to stop what they were about.

I discerned at once that she & Christian had been surprised in bed. I knew at once from the desperation of her pleas that he had not forced her, but that she had consented willingly to his caresses.

I should have stopped the savagery there & then. I should have ordered the mob off my land. I should have insisted on the law. But my pride was offended because I had been duped & deceived, & I was envious because in my secret heart I had lusted after Annette myself, & I was angry because Christian had presumed to rise above his allotted station, & I was covetous because I had supposed he was my property to dispose of as I pleased. But most of all I simply wanted to hurt, to hurt blindly, like an angry child, as I myself had been hurt. So I took the revenge of a coward who, when beaten by the strong, returns the blow upon the defenceless. For when Thomas asked me if I wanted to “breed devils” or if the rapist should get his just desserts, I nodded my consent for the mob to continue what they were about.

I shall never forget Christian’s howls as he lost all that he held most dear. The blacksmith’s son was the worse for liquor & unskilled & blood spurted out grievously from Christian’s parts as he emasculated him.

Once the deed was done Annette glared at me like her world had come to an end. I perceived instantly that she would never forgive me. A poisonous bitterness overwhelmed my consciousness. Determined to make the final break between us myself, I growled at her pitilessly, “This is your handiwork, hussy. Your mother was a whore & now you are made one as well.” Then I turned my back on her & strode into the house.

The mob slunk away like beaten dogs, knowing that they had worked evil. Annette unshackled Christian, helped him into the house & laid him in her bed. Sarah tells me that he has lost so much blood that his life is in danger.

I write this in my study, drinking strong spirits & full of regret. I have sent for the doctor to tend to Christian’s wounds & I have turned out Thomas. Let him find another master. Let him starve to death. I care not.

I pray to God for guidance but He is as silent as the grave. A dark chaos fills my mind, overwhelming my thoughts, & no amount of naming can drive it away.

All is darkness.

August 14th, 1789

We buried Christian this morning.

It was raining hard & nobody attended his burial except Sarah & myself. She had sewn his body into a bed sheet & between us we rolled it into a freshly-dug grave. Though I do not know if Christian accepted our faith at the end, I read from the Book of Common Prayer. Then I shovelled the dirt over him myself.

Christian lost consciousness in the night after his mutilation & developed a high fever. In his delirium he began speaking his own tongue & I think visited his own land in his dreams. Annette sat by his bedside nursing him for sixty hours straight. However, for all her ministrations & prayers, Christian’s fever did not abate & he died in the small hours of the third day.

I have my definitive proof, if I needed it, that Christian, for all his lack of manners, was as much a human being, a Homo sapiens, as I am. Though Annette had claimed it was their first time that they had lain together as she had begged for his life, her belly gives her the lie, for judging by her swelling she is three or four months with his child.

I discern now that Annette loved Christian with all her heart. I do not know how I could have been so blind, except that my own prejudice made me so. Like the nose in front of mine own face, the truth lay right before my eyes, but I could not see it.

I do not know what will become of her. In the village the word is that the blacksmith’s son will not have her now she is with “the blackie’s bastard.” She fell into a coma once she realised Christian had slipped away & we buried him without her. She is still sleeping like the dead now & I do not know if she will ever wake.

As for myself, I await another missive from his lordship the Bishop with dread, for the scandal is the talk of the village, & indeed the county.

August 16th, 1789

She knew. She knew.

Though sworn to secrecy, my old cook Sarah must have told her; it can only be so.

I awoke this morning early & rang for my usual infusion of tea. Annette (who awoke yesterday after sleeping for over twenty-four hours) did not appear. It was like the sun did not rise for me. I rang again. Again, no reply. I got up & proceeded in my nightshirt down to the kitchen. The stairs creaked beneath my feet. The silence in the house was evil.

I had been so afeared that I would find the poor girl hanging from a rafter that I was almost glad when I found the note addressed to me on the kitchen table.

But that was before I read it.

Annette accused me of killing Christian, of course. Even though I had released him from his chains & I had treated him with all possible kindness. At least, I had until I had been put to the test & my mettle found wanting.

But there was worse. “My mother was no whore,” she wrote, her usually neat handwriting rendered shaky by her white-hot anger. “My mama thought you would marry her, but you decided that she was beneath you. You ruined her. And the shame killed her. But the shame should be yours.”

I shook uncontrollably as I read her words & I blurted out to the empty house that it wasn’t true. Yes, I had refused to marry Annette’s mother, but she would have died in childbirth all the same had we been married or not. And she had been beneath me. She was the daughter of one of my father’s tenants; I was a gentleman’s son. And had I not taken care of her child as best as I could?

Annette concluded that she was gone to Portsmouth to take ship as a free-woman on the new convoy bound for our colony in Terra Australis. It seems that she & Christian were planning to elope together, but were caught in flagrante mere days before they could effect their escape.

Annette did not call me father, “for you are not worthy of that name”, nor bid me adieu, but there was a post script: “p.s. I beg you, do not leave him without a stone. So you may know what to write, his name was Bunga-karee. He was of the Kuringgai people.”

Sarah is gone as well so I am left without attendance. Perhaps that is as well, for I could not look her in the face.

I disgust myself. Though the law absolves me, I am responsible in some manner for two deaths. And for two ruined lives as well. I do not know why the earth does not open up & swallow me whole, unless it is as repulsed by me as I myself am.

I have written to my bishop resigning my living & in a few minutes’ time I will bid farewell to this house, mount my horse & ride on. I know not whither. I will let the road decide.

January 3rd, 1800

The new century is born.

So far it is much like the old. The hopes of the Revolution in France have ended as revolutions often end - not in liberty, but in an even more constrictive tyranny. Vive le roi Napoleon!

A few weeks ago I came across a yellowing & dog-eared copy of “Nature’s Miscellany” in the lending library here. A certain naturalist called George Shaw has described my creature based on a hide sent to him from from Terra Australis. Mr. Shaw has named it “Platypus anatinus”, or, so to say, “flat-footed duck”. He makes no large claims about the creature’s nature or provenance & so his work is accepted by science.

I could claim precedence & insist on my name of Pittus paradoxus, but I have no wish to reopen old wounds. It is many years since I last leafed through my copy of Linnaeus, or studied my collections of beetles & songbirds, or indeed opened this journal. Let Mr. Shaw have the glory of naming the creature - “the paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

Though it is no longer my concern, I have concluded that I entirely misunderstood the platypus. It is not misshapen & disordered at all. It lives. It feeds. It breeds. It survives & thrives in its native habitat, that is, the rivers of Terra Australis. In its place it is perfect - just as the camel & its hump are suited for the desert, & as the tiger’s stripes permit it to blend in with the foliage of its jungle home.

As for the platypus’s rightful classification in the catalogue of nature, & whether it be a reptile or a mammal or something else, & how it can came to be how it is, this is a mystery greater than I can solve. Perhaps this new century will bring forth an answer.

But I believe now I was wrong to seek out God’s reflection in His creation. That endeavour was no more valuable than speculating how many angels can crowd together on a pinhead, as the scholiasts did in the Middle Ages. Science & religion, like blood & milk, do not mix. We mock the ancients for believing that they could divine the future from the flights of birds or the entrails of sacrificed animals. Perhaps a time will come when future generations will similarly mock our first feeble attempts to comprehend the natural world.

I also now believe the true paradox of the natural world is not the platypus, but we humans. For we are at once almost God-like in our intellectual capacities & able to appreciate the music of a Mr. Haydn. Yet we are also an animal, capable of the most brutal & bestial deeds. As I know only too well from my own history.

How do I live?

I live without love, as befits a man who killed love not once, but twice.

I live without a past. I scarcely remember now that I once sat at my mother’s knee, sure that I was loved both on earth & in heaven. That child inside me has died.

I live in fear. I am frightened of being recognised in the street & exposed to public scorn. I do not think my heart would survive the shock.

I live without faith. I can not pray & I do not go to church. I reason with Epicurus: “Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able & willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?”

The rest of my tale I can tell in a few words. After I resigned my living I took furnished rooms in this seaside spa town in Kent where my name & past repute are unknown. I rely upon my private means, which are not ample, but which are sufficient to keep body & soul together.

I do not live a wholly solitary life. There are many ageing gentlemen here home from our colonies in Barbados & Jamaica, or who made their fortunes with the Royal Africa Company or the East India Company. One suspects that many of them have done dark deeds in their pasts, for no “primitive” on Earth is more savage than a white man hungry for gold. However, these men have sloughed off their histories with their return & they pretend to an honour that they most likely do not merit. They have a hollowness about them, as if they left some part of themselves at the scenes of their crimes. I associate with them, for, though I never left the confines of this island, I am something like to them & “birds of a feather flock together”. We play cards at the assembly rooms, or we take the air along the seafront, or we bump into one another at a certain house of ill repute. We hail one another as good fellows, but we are always too wary of revealing our past indiscretions to be true friends.

Other than that I drink spirits to alleviate my melancholy & I spend much time despising myself without ending my life. Lately I have developed a persistent cough & a troubling tightness in my chest which means I may not need the draught of laudanum that I have laid aside in readiness for when I can go on no more.

I have not heard from Annette.

But my thoughts often turn to our colony in Australia, as it is now called. I hope she is prospering there. I am sure she has not lacked for offers, despite her bastard, for she is young & free & fair of face & the newspapers say there is a great want of women of any kind & a great abundance of opportunity for men of enterprise.

As for her child, my grandchild, I do not know if it is a boy or girl, or even if it came safely into the world. But if I could pray, it would be my last prayer on earth that he or she grows up knowing both their parents’ tongues, so that he or she might explain the white man’s ways to those Australians there from the beginning, & also their ways to us, & so make a bridge of understanding between our peoples.

However, I fear that this is a vain hope, for I read that the first Australians are much depleted by smallpox & indeed by the common pox, & that many violent disputes have arisen between them & the rabble of thieves & murderers that we are settling there. If the new continent has indeed become a hell on earth, it is not the devil’s doing, but because we ourselves have made it so.

As for my former slave, Bunga-karee of the Kuringgai people, I do not ask for his forgiveness. That would be more than I deserve. I only hope his spirit lives on in his child.

And with that wish I lay down my pen & glance again at the bottle of laudanum on my bedside table. Perhaps I will find the courage to drink it tonight & put an end to my misery. Perhaps not.

Lauda finem! Praise be to the End!