The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

by Sarah Brooks

But the atmosphere of the library carriage is soothing; the smell of the books, the thick green carpet muffling the relentless sound of the rails, the inviting depths of the armchairs. The only other occupant of the carriage is an elderly steward, sitting beneath a large engraving of the train’s route. Grey examines the bookshelves. He notes with approval the selection of volumes on natural history, mostly English and French, and he quickly searches, as he does upon entering any bookshop or library, for the volume that bears his own name. Yes, here, on a lower shelf—On the Forms and Classifications of Mimicry in the Natural World. He picks it up to feel its solidity, the weight of all those hours lying unmoving on the grass to observe the bees in his garden and to prove, for the first time, that some were not bees at all but syrphidae, hoverflies—the weak taking on the guise of the strong, the mimicking of a more perfect form. This mimicry gave them advantages over predators and it was proof, he argued, that creatures strived to better themselves, to move gradually toward God’s own image. He had been praised, lauded, invited to leave his Yorkshire cottage and to lecture in London and Cambridge. He closes his eyes and remembers the feeling of those rooms, hushed with expectation; that eager attention upon him. Then he opens the book to the engraving of his name and sees that someone has defaced it with scribbled words—A holy fool. He slams it shut. When he spies Girard’s tr...