As spying missions go, Say’s was neither dangerous nor clandestine. He made no secret of his reasons for being in Britain. A gregarious Anglophile, he crisscrossed the country, obtaining access to mines, factories, and ports and, in his leisure time, to theaters and country houses. And since his last visit twenty-six years earlier, Say witnessed a nation transformed. He began his tour in Fulham, a village to the west of London where he’d spent time in his youth. He found it unrecognizable.
