Neal Stephenson. Quicksilver. Morrow, 2003. The Baroque Cycle.

We are fans of Neal Stephenson. We appeared to have a little extra time. It was time to tackle The Baroque Cycle. Quicksilver is the first volume. This volume, though, contains three books itself. It has a lot to say about the origins of our modern Western culture along with warnings about losing touch with important roots. At the same time, it is a collection of some truly entertaining stories.

Like Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, there are a number of historical figures in The Baroque Cycle. Unlike Cryptonomicon, some figure prominently, though the main characters are still fictional. We meet such well-known figures as William of Orange, Louis XIV, Isaac Newton, Samuel Pepys, John Locke, Gottfried Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, Nell Gwynn, Mother Goose, and the list goes on. Stephenson or his editors have included a list of characters typical of some editions of Russian novels to help the readers. I had to consult this a few times, especially when coming across a name of French nobility, of which there are many based on real people.

The first book in Quicksilver is itself titled “Quicksilver.” It is perhaps the most profound of the three pieces in this volume. The image of the planet, god, and element Mercury appear a number of times throughout this tale. At the most basic level, it is a story of the transition from alchemy and astrology to natural sciences (called at the time and in the book natural philosophy) and the scientific method. Indeed, the epigraph to the story is worth remembering today. It is from the introduction to Newton’s Principia written by his associate Roger Cotes, who also makes a brief appearance in the novel:

Those who assume hypotheses as first principles of their speculations…may indeed form an ingenious romance, but a romance it will still be. (1)

Romance, of course, in 1713 meant “fictional tale.” We see today too many hypotheses accepted as proven science when they are really mere hypotheses. I am old enough to recall the supposed end of the world by 1990 because of overpopulation, or the disaster that will be caused by global cooling in the eighties, not to mention the ongoing and ever-changing mythology of evolution. That is right, I said global cooling. People worried about a “new Ice Age.” Any wonder some of us old-timers are equally skeptical of global warming alarmists?

In Quicksilver, we mostly see the story through the eyes of one Daniel Waterhouse, son of a Puritan politician. The story goes back and forth between the early 1700s and the mid 1600s. Waterhouse and Isaac Newton were roommates at Cambridge, and they keep in touch. Waterhouse will eventually become Secretary of the Royal Society. The controversy at the time in the R.S. is how seriously should alchemy be taken. Clearly some ideas of the alchemists have been proven experimentally, but most are mystical hypotheses.

Waterhouse has a way of being peripherally involved in many exciting events—but always on the periphery. During the 1665 plague, Waterhouse visits Newton, who has had to leave Cambridge when it closed from the pestilence. Readers of history may know that it was during this time when Newton was confined to his mother’s country estate that he saw the apple fall from the tree and made the connection between gravity and planetary motion. In Quicksilver, Newton hints to his friend that he is working on something, but he expresses reluctance to talk much about it.

“Quicksilver,” the novel within the volume, is itself ingenious. We get Leibniz’s side of the calculus controversy which includes discussions of the base two or binary system and prime numbers. We also meet another R.S. member (a historical figure) John Wilkins. Wilkins, an Anglican Bishop, was among other things an author of numerous books, including a science fiction piece on life on the moon, some books on mathematics, and a book entitled Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger. This is generally credited as being first book in English on cryptography. In the novel it is called the Cryptonomicon. It not only presents ideas for safe written codes, but also speculates about the origin of language and finding numerical equivalents. Using the title Cryptonomicon could be considered a shameless plug on Stephenson’s part for his own work by that name.

Stephenson will, in the course of the volume, make use of coded writings using not only Wilkins’ hypotheses but Leibniz’s binary numbers. Of course, readers today are reminded of computer code. We can look back and say here were the origins. Indeed, the book quotes Leibniz, who seems to be extending Wilkins’ ideas:

Once the characteristic numbers of most notions are determined, the human race will have a new kind of tool, a tool that will increase the power of the mind more than optical lenses helped our eyes, a tool that will be far superior to microscopes or telescopes as reason is to vision. (260)

Indeed, much seemingly impossible mathematical and language work has been made possible by the computer.

Because the characters include Calvinists like Waterhouse and Newton and scientists of other theological stripes, there are some fascinating philosophical questions. Leibniz says when speaking to Waterhouse:

“This is one of the two great labyrinths into which the human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. You were raised to believe in the latter. You have rejected it—which must have been a great spiritual struggle—and become a thinker. You have adopted a modern, mechanical philosophy. But that very philosophy seems to be leading you back towards predestination. It is most difficult.” (279)

As Thomasina in Stoppard’s Arcadia asks: “Is God a Newtonian?”

While “Quicksilver,” the book, is a far-ranging tale of discovery during the early Enlightenment, it has sparks of real genius as it deals with questions we still deal with—and ideas that hopefully will get us thinking about what is true science and what is mere romance.

The second book in the volume Quicksilver is titled “King of the Vagabonds.” While there is some cross-pollination from the first book, especially with Waterhouse and Leibniz, this story focuses on a different set of characters.

Here we meet Jack Shaftoe, a Vagabond or street kid from London. He gets recruited by the diplomatic and noble family of the Churchills to be a messenger and serve in John Churchill’s army. He, like Waterhouse in the first book, encounters significant historical events, the main one being the Siege of Vienna in 1683.

Readers familiar with European history, understand that September 11, 1683, was the farthest incursion into Eastern Europe by Muslims under the Ottoman Turks. The Turks were repulsed beginning the next day by troops led the Polish King Sobieski.

Jack happens to be there and rescues a slave girl from a Turkish encampment. He also takes well-bred Turkish war horse and a fancy scimitar as the Turks retreat. The slave girl turns out to be Eliza, taken from the Scottish isles of Qwghlm and recently placed into the harem of a Turkish general. Because the general has been preoccupied with politics and war, she is still a virgin but has been given a very detailed sex education, growing up since about the age of five among the odalisques of the sultan’s harem. Her mother is still in the harem, but Eliza was given as a gift to the general.

The “King of the Vagabonds” is a picaresque novel, in some ways very different from “Quicksilver.” Jack and Eliza travel through much of central and northern Europe seeking adventure and ways to make money. They meet Leibniz in Leipzig and learn about silver mining in the mountains of Germany. They end up in Holland where there has been war with Spain and war with France is threatened. Eliza, very attractive and still a virgin, ends up in the French court. Let us just say that Jack Shaftoe physiologically resembles Hemingway’s Jake Barnes.

Eliza is also very intelligent. She has learned some science and math from Leibniz and some commerce and banking while in the Netherlands. She begins to see how politics can affect the markets and becomes an informal financial advisor and spy to some French nobles, notably the ambassador Jean-Antoine d’Avaux, son of a count and president of the French Parlement. He is often referred to as Count d’Avaux, though his older brother has the title.

Jack and Eliza live by their wits. They both manage to move on and move upward. Jack occasionally has crossed paths with Waterhouse and seems to have an understanding of what has been going on in English politics. At one point there is a kind of self-referential discussion about novels between Eliza and Leibniz, who is chuckling over a novel that he is reading:

“Oh, all these novels are the same—they are about picaroons—that means sort of a rogue or a scoundrel—could be male or female—they move about from city to city like Vagabonds (than, whom, however, they much more clever and resourceful)—getting into scrapes and making fools—or trying to—out of Dukes, Bishops, Generals, and

“…Doctors.” (435, italics and ellipsis in original)

Hmm. Jack escapes with his life a few times, including a claustrophobic episode where he is being chased by witches and witch-hunters through those silver mines. Some of the stories about him are spread orally and eventually are written down—with some exaggeration—into a collection of stories called L’Emmerdeur. The French get excited when they encounter Jack “l’Emmerdeur” and seem to respect Eliza because she knows him. The word Emmerdeur is politely translated “troublemaker,” but has stronger, scatological roots.

When we last see Jack, he is in the Mediterranean Sea on a ship. It seems that he may end up being captured by Turks as Eliza and her mother were back on Qwghlm. The tale will continue.

Stephenson is creating a mythos here, maybe akin to Yoknapatawpha Countys’s characters. People named Waterhouse and Shaftoe appear in his Cryptonomicon, set in the twentieth century. They are apparently descendants of the adventurers in The Baroque Cycle. Similarly, he brings up the (fictional) island pair of Qwghlm off the coast of Scotland. The Qwghlm language is what we would call a linguistic isolate. It has sixteen consonant sounds and is written without vowels. Not only does Eliza speak the language, but Jack has picked up some of it from his background. In some cases, using Qwghlm in Quicksilver reminds readers of Navaho code-talkers. Not only are people using cryptography, but using cryptography in a language that few people know.

“Odalisque,” the third book of Quicksilver, is set largely in the French court at Versailles, where Eliza has taken up residence as a nanny to a son and daughter of the Marquis d’Ozoir. She attends many social functions when they are masquerades because she is disguised so her escort can bring her without any social stigma. It is not giving away too much by saying that eventually she is given two titles, one by King Louis XIV himself for her intelligence (of both kinds).

The title is a bit ironic. The tale does focus on Eliza, with some side episodes involving Daniel Waterhouse, but she is not anyone’s mistress. Even though she has learned much about sex during her time in the Turkish harem, she really has kept herself aloof from most men’s advances. While it sounds oxymoronic, there is a sense of chaste ribaldry in these tales.

Eliza ends up in Holland. She and Waterhouse both become peripheral witnesses to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when William and Mary became monarchs of England. Waterhouse, a political survivor like his father, witnesses an episode in the escape of King James II. He then goes to London where he sees celebrations in the streets over the coming of William and Mary.

Eliza, mostly through letters written in code, is able to get the French to send their army farther south. Though France is technically at war with Holland and William, the information she shares with the French make it sound more urgent that they fight for the Palatinate in the southern Rhineland, leaving William’s forces free to go to England. William’s wife Mary is the daughter of King James II, but she is Protestant. Yes, Quicksilver includes a few royal genealogies so we can see the various claims to various kingdoms, dukedoms, and other entities.

Much of “Odalisque” is epistolary—we read the story largely through letters. Most of the letters are written by Eliza to D’Avaux and Leibniz with some return letters from them. There are goings on in the French court but also in various battlefields. At one point, trying to assist a French duchess in her claims on the Palatinate, she disappears. That is how she ends up in Holland.

We also get updated on some of the scientific and mathematical developments. Leibniz had admitted that his essay on calculus could probably only be understood by one other person in the world, namely Newton, but his letters do include some interesting scientific and mathematical observations.

One fascinating letter from Leibniz suggests that while the function mv (mass times velocity) is useful for understanding acceleration, because gravity’s effect is the inverse square, the function mv² may be more significant. Two hundred years later, of course, where c is the velocity of light, Einstein showed us that E=mc². Leibniz saw something, even if he could not quite put his finger on it.

In the same letter, he also speculates on what we now call the anthropic principle. We observe nature and can make calculations about how nature will behave, for example the gravitational attraction, centrifugal forces, or chemical reactions. How important are these numbers? Back then, Leibniz was interested them but skeptical of their significance. Now we know that even slight variation of any one of hundreds of constants would preclude life. Leibniz was wondering how much intelligence would be needed to put the universe together. Now we have pretty good idea.

Somewhere in her adventures, Eliza becomes pregnant. We also get occasional updates on the progress of Waterhouse’s difficulties with his bladder stone. Stephenson effectively juxtaposes the medical and political challenge of her breech birth with Waterhouse’s bladder surgery. Pepys encourages Waterhouse since he had a large stone surgically removed from his own bladder. Something old and irritating is being removed, while someone else is giving birth: a parallel to what has been happening to the British throne.

We are witnesses with our protagonists to much European history. This is significant history because Quicksilver shares the roots of our modern Western and especially Anglo-American culture. It reminds us of what freedom is and what the true scientific method is. In some ways people today are still struggling against despotism and alchemy. Stephenson suggests to his readers, though, that the truth will set us free.

P.S. When checking Samuel Pepys’ Diary, I did find out that Pepys indeed had a bladder stone surgically removed—no anesthetic in those days! It was about the size of a tennis ball. So Pepys setting up Daniel Waterhouse’s surgery fits in.

N.B, The Baroque Cycle originally came out in three volumes. The first two together contain five novels. Here I italicize the volume title and put the story title in quotation marks, though each is a novel in itself. Kindle sells both the Volume and the first novel as separate downloads. Similarly, the paperback versions of the Cycle are sold book by book, not by Volume. Be aware of that if you try to locate certain editions of this series.