Pigeons

And other physical articles of research

(Not a hunting gamebook, but rather a page from the weather book of Thomas Jefferson's courtesy of the Library of Congress)

The Croom gamebooks

The source of Valentine Coverly's research is from the Croom family gamebooks. The search for a gamebook from that time period opened a can of worms I didn't expect - I can't find one.

The Genius of the Place

“The sketch book is the work of MR. NOAKES, who is obviously an admirer of Humphry Repton’s ‘Red Books’” (18).

Humphry Repton (1752-1818)

“From the ‘Red Book’ for Blaise Castle (1795-6)

INTRODUCTION

Sir,

It has been objected to the mode in which I deliver my plans, that they do not always convey instructions, sufficiently clear, to act as guides for the detail of execution; but this ought no more to be expected in gardening than in architecture, since no work can be so well compleated as under the eye of the person who projects the improvement or designs the building. I have therefore peculiar satisfaction in marking out such lines of roads and walks as cannot be described on paper, and being very anxious to to see the whole of my intentions, with respect to this place, compleated from my own directions given from time to time upon the spot, it may perhaps be asked for what purpose a plan is delivered, which rather follows than precede the improvement? To this I must answer by observing, that upon first visiting every new subject I am obliged to conceive in my own mind such a plan as I afterwards rend visible to others; and endeavour to fix on my memory the several leading features of each place by making sketches, without which from the multiplicity of various situations it would be impossible for me to pursue any regular system of improvement. Altho’ much of the matter contain in this small volume has been previously hinted in conversations on the spot, I hope the repetition will not be unacceptable in this more lasting form, and if it does not serve as a minute guide in the progress of the work, it will at least record the imprvoements and the principles on which they are suggested. I must also beg that it may record my gratitude for the friendly arttentions I have received from every part of the family at Blaise Castle.

I have the honour to be Sir Your most obedient

and obliged humble Servant

H. Repton

On the Spot August & October, 1795

Plan’d at Harestreet by Romford Feb. 7, 1796” (359).

Horace Walpole: “He leapt the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden”.

“Capability Brown doing Claude, who was doing Virgil. Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa.” (Hannah, 37).

“The picturesque was a British reaction to Romantic attitudes after the ‘Age of Reason’ and sensibility” in the decades before the 1809 setting of Arcadia. In this era of landscape art, the effect felt to the viewers would be a sense of “grandeur, melancholy and gaiety”, seen in the works of Claude and Salvator Rosa. Salvator Rosa, who inspired the fictional Richard Noakes’ architectural mood, was on the more ‘sublime’ side of the picturesque style, and descriptions of his work often include ‘savage’, ‘wild’ and ‘rugged’. The “eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag” on the garden of the Coverly family’s Sidley Park is the shift from the pastoral age, stemming back to the ideal of ancient Greek and Roman designs, like the poetry of Virgil.

"Daphnis, in radiant beauty, marvels at Heaven’s unfamiliar threshold, and beneath his feet beholds the clouds and stars. Therefore frolic glee seizes the woods and all the countryside, and Pan, and the shepherds, and the Dryad maids. The wolf plans no ambush for the flock, and nets no snare for the stag; kindly Daphnis loves peace. The very mountains, with woods unshorn, joyously fling their voices starward; the very rocks, the very groves ring out the song: ‘A god is he…!” - Virgil, Ecluges, 56-63.

“HANNAH. ...Oh!, but...how beautiful!

VALENTINE. The Coverly set.

HANNAH. The Coverly set! My goodness, Valentine!

VALENTINE. Lend me a finger. (He takes her finger and presses one of the computer keys several times.) See? In an ocean of ashes, islands of order. Patterns making themselves out of nothing. I can’t show you how deep it goes. Each picture is a detail of the previous one, blown up. And so on. For ever. Pretty nice, eh?

HANNAH. Is it important?

VALENTINE. Interesting. Publishable.

HANNAH. Well done!

VALENTINE. Not me. It’s Thomasina’s. I just pushed her equations through the computer a few million times further than she managed to do with her pencil.” (99-100)

Mathematics

This is a dense play in which the math and physics is used as metaphors how time moves and conflict occurs. Valentine’s major form of research deals with looking at the graphing of the grouse shot on the property starting from 1870 data. He also helps Hannah discover that what Thomasina had been working on is an early type of iteration, a type of equation where the points build off of each other, feeding back into the point before. “Each graph is a small section of the previous one, blown up. Like you’d blow up a detail a photograph, and then a detail of the detail, and so on, forever” (Valentine, 59). For Thomasina, with her set of coordinates [(a,b), (c,d) etc.], she ran out of pages. Looking back at the play, time is like iteration, the past inputting itself on the present, which builds onto what we learn in the future. For us in our seats in the audience, each scene of the past helps inform us about what the contemporary characters are learning.

Another major theme introduced verbally by Valentine is the concept of chaos: how even in the most controlled of circumstances, any variable can be changed and influenced for a different end result. Chaos is not randomness, but the idea that everything is so complex that even what seems inevitable or sure cannot truly be predictable. In the play, chaos is shown in the lives of the characters as interpersonal dramas, with a character in both the past and present being one that stirs the pot, and creating chaos. The unexpected results of research are part of this comparison to the chaos of the sciences, because you may have an inkling about what may turn out, but your predictions, even with everything aligned, could still turn out wrong because of unconsidered variables.

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