“The orphans,” Antonia reiterated.“Why were they brought here in the very beginning? For what purpose? My friend Mr. Traddles wasn’t able to learn it and none of us has ever known it.”
“Well, let me tell you first the original reason and then we’ll take up the second one, which was mandated by altered circumstances.”
I could not help myself: I leant forward, wearing, I have no doubt, the look of a young child who must know everything there is to know about a fantastical storybook kingdom. In a sense, Dingley Dell was itself just such a storybook place with a cloud of mystery overhanging it, as magical and mystical as any of the children’s stories to which Mr. Dickens had alluded. (Who was Cinderella? we had always wondered. Or Jack the Giant Killer or Sinbad the sailor? For they receive only the briefest mention in the novels of Dickens, and the tales ascribed to them aren’t provided upon the leaves of the otherwise most eclectically informative Ensyke.)
“Dingley Dell,” Miss Wolf began in the steady, starched voice of a professor standing stiff-armed behind his lectern, “which as you know was given that denomination by your ancestors in accordance with their wonted affinity for all things Dickensian (and in this specific case, Pickwickian), began life as a rustic valley comprised of a small village or two and a smattering of farms and a goodly amount of acreage, which was uncut and unfurrowed and pristine in nearly every way. And there was abundant wildlife here in those days and a scenic prospect, no matter where one stood, of such primitive beauty as to soothe and nurture the most troubled human breast. No prettier spot on earth could be imagined, prettier it was than even that which our present-day eye beholds, for Dingley Dell was greener then and the sky above it bluer, it would seem, and more vibrant, and the sun much warmer in its radiance. A true Arcadia.
“But a rather odd sort of Arcadia, orographically speaking, for the valley that would come to be known as Dingley Dell lies within what is known as the Allegheny Front — the dividing line between the eastern edge of the Allegheny Plateau escarpment…”
“…and the lower Allegheny Mountains,” broke in Mr. Graham, excitedly.
“This strange conjunction of different land forms created something most unusual — a contained valley put down almost as if it were a basin or caldera, with high ridges running north and south, and lower thicklywooded ridges running east and west. Almost unique as valleys go.
“And it was in this unique, isolated Arcadian state that the valley presented itself to a handful of men from Philadelphia who came hither to camp and fish upon the banks of the river you call the Thames, but which is known elsewhere as the Double Pine. These were men of science, big thinkers, staunch supporters of Mr. Darwin’s theories, of which I suspect you know a little something.”
That being put in somewhat the form of a question, Mr. Graham nodded in the affirmative.
“And it came to pass that these men, with no small fortunes to their names, decided to buy up all of this valley for the purpose of conducting an experiment on a rather ambitious scale. They wished to learn if Mr. Darwin’s theories were correct and if a species of animal — in this case, the one that comes by the scientific designation ‘Homo sapiens’—would in an identical environment evolve in much the same way over time as did our primate ancestors. Would the fittest remove the less fit, the stronger supplant the weak, the brightest bring to extinction the dim-lights? But you see, the experiment did not — could never resign itself to answering those questions alone, for there were many other theories which these scientific men were hungry to test, other questions for which they sought answers: how, for example, does language and culture develop when there are no precedents upon which to build? How would societal institutions grow with no historical or generational models to emulate? In its purest, most unadulterated form, the experiment would require that its subjects be infants — infants brought to the valley in their most unformed state, and then left there to raise themselves, like Tarzan without his apes — no, no, you wouldn’t know Tarzan, would you? Edgar Rice Burroughs didn’t foist that vine-swinging gentleman upon the reading public until around 1912. But the unfortunate fact of the matter is that baby humans aren’t precocial — not at all like cheeping, self-reliant little chicks. They are quite the opposite, their altricial nature demanding that they be nursed and nurtured for a time, or else they should die in the crib and the experiment come to naught. It was for this reason that children above the age of three were procured, and that even then all children were afforded — over a period of several years — sufficient training in very rudimentary forms of survival, as well as education in the sort of trades that might readily be found in a rural society of the 1870s. Any advancement beyond those basic skills imparted by specifically selected vocational teachers would be effected by the children and their descendants alone, and that would be the thrust of one aspect of the study. The scientific men were most curious to see how these young innocents and their descendants evolved over the years, how they should build upon what they’d been initially taught, and I must say, to interject a personal note, that in fine, you’ve acquitted yourselves quite commendably.”
I nodded to thank Miss Wolf on behalf of the other four Dinglians in the room, as well as our accomplished brothers and sisters, over 25,000 in number, both the quick and the dead. Then I interposed, “So this then is the reason why nothing that could not be obtained by a citizen of the 1880s was ever brought for barter by your tradesmen.”
Miss Wolf nodded whilst taking a sip of her brown drink. “A task which, I might add, became more and more difficult with the years, for so many of the objects that fitted and graced the everyday lives of citizens in the 1880s ceased to be manufactured over time. An entire clandestine industry therefore sprang up with the singular purpose of providing you Dinglians with such items as would have been used a good many decades ago: bear grease for the hair, for example; and macassar oil; outmoded, even currently illicit pharmaceuticals, largely of the opiate family; gas-light fixtures and steam engine fixtures and engine pumps; and oysters — tons and tons of oysters that must be brought at some expense from the Atlantic coast to feed the conceit that the superfluity of these shell creatures which existed in Dickens’ day continues still. (It does not, by the bye. They’re quite a delicacy nowadays.) What else? Hmm. Steel knitting needles — for you could never make them here the way they were once made in London. All manner of tobacco except for the ready-made cigarette, which didn’t hit its stride until after your quarantine began. Obtaining significant quantities of dry snuff has been especially difficult, I understand, because hardly anyone in the Outland takes snuff anymore.”
“Then what do they take?” sought Muntle, who occasionally turned to the snuffbox when his pipe was unavailable.
“They dip it. They dip a mash of it and apply it to the gums.”
“Revolting,” commented Antonia Bocker. “Disgusting and revolting.”
“What else?” mused Miss Wolf aloud. “Ah, yes. Exotic and now largely extinct perfumes and men’s scents.”
“Bouquet du Roi?” asked the vicar.
“Gone with the ages.”
“Bay rum?” sought Graham the librarian.
“Will always be with us.”
Mr. Graham released a sigh of relief that was shared by Muntle and myself.
“You’ve grown so successfully self-sufficient with your printing presses and your glass-blowing factory and your iron foundry and all your other mills and manufactories that it is only the more esoteric items, as you know, that generally find their way into the tradesmen’s waggons.”