Biology in the Grid Graphic Design and

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Biology in the Grid
CARY WOLFE, SERIES EDITOR

46 Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life

Phillip Thurtle
45 Neurotechnology and the End of Finitude
Michael Haworth
44 Life: A Modern Invention
Davide Tarizzo
43 Bioaesthetics: Making Sense of Life in Science and the Arts
Carsten Strathausen
42 Creaturely Love: How Desire Makes Us More and Less Than Human
Dominic Pettman
41 Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds
Maria Puig de la Bellacasa
40 Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast: A Multispecies Impression
Julian Yates
39 Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary
Karen Pinkus
38 What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?
Vinciane Despret
37 Manifestly Haraway
Donna J. Haraway
36 Neofinalism
Raymond Ruyer
35 Inanimation: Theories of Inorganic Life
David Wills
34 All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy
John Ó Maoilearca
33 Necromedia
Marcel O’Gorman
32 The Intellective Space: Thinking beyond Cognition
Laurent Dubreuil
31 Laruelle: Against the Digital
Alexander R. Galloway
30 The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism
Steven Shaviro
29 Neocybernetics and Narrative
Bruce Clarke
28 Cinders
Jacques Derrida
27 Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World
Timothy Morton
26 Humanesis: Sound and Technological Posthumanism
David Cecchetto
25 Artist Animal
Steve Baker
24 Without Offending Humans: A Critique of Animal Rights
Élisabeth de Fontenay

(continued on page 263)

Biology in the Grid
Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life

posthumanities 42

posthumanities 43

posthumanities 44

Phillip Thurtle
posthumanities 45

posthumanities 46

posthumanities 47

posthumanities 48

posthumanities 49

posthumanities 50

University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis51
posthumanities
London

posthumanities 52

posthumanities 53
A multimedia website accompanies the theoretical and historical analysis presented in Biol-
ogy in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life. At immaterialwings.org you will
find vignettes from the history of biology, movie clips, images, and excerpts from specula-
tive fiction. These resources can be interwoven to help you envision scientifically robust,
imaginatively engaged, and visually rich stories about the role of bodies in the grid.

Copyright 2018 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys-
tem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press

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Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free paper

The University of Minnesota is an equal-­opportunity educator and employer.

25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Thurtle, Phillip, author.
Title: Biology in the grid : graphic design and the envisioning of life / Phillip Thurtle.
Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2018] | Series: Posthumanities ; 46 |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018008943 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0276-6 (hc) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0277-3 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Biology—History—19th century. | Biology—History—20th century. | Biology—
Graphic methods—History. | Art and biology—History.
Classification: LCC QH305 .T627 2018 (print) | DDC 570—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008943
For the warped, weird, and wandering
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

Introduction: The Varieties of Gridded Experience 1

1. Life on the Line: Organic Form 25

2. Envisioning Grids 55
3. Warped Grids: Pests and the Problem of Order 91
4. Modulations: Envisioning Variations 129
5. Drawing Together: Composite Lives and Liquid Regulations 167

Epilogue: Toward the Nonsynthetic Care of the Molecular Self 211

Acknowledgments215
Notes219
Index249
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
The Varieties of Gridded Experience

When I trained as a molecular biologist in the 1980s, I spent most of my

time characterizing biomolecules. I cloned genes to understand how that
gene product functioned in cells; I isolated RNA to see how and when
it was expressed; and I assayed under what conditions a specific protein
might be expressed. One evening, while learning a new protocol for iso-
lating proteins, I asked a postdoctoral fellow in the lab next to mine if he
ever thought that the molecular biological sciences would move toward a
science of “building things back up” after all this characterization. I was
interested in seeing how all the bits of knowledge we gathered fit together
to form a picture of how a cell, or an organism, might operate. Not in the
piecemeal fashion we were currently glimpsing, a cellular function dis-
covered in one part of the cell, a molecular signal glimpsed in another.
I wanted to see how all these insights might be orchestrated together. If
the protein expression problem I was working on could be compared to a
single musical instrument, I wanted to hear the grandeur and complexity
of the whole cellular symphony.
The postdoctoral fellow replied that he didn’t think the type of sci-
ence I was interested in would happen for a long time. As he saw it, there
was still too much characterizing that had to be done. In his view, the
molecular biological sciences of the twentieth century would remain as
mostly detailed depictions of molecules, cells, and organisms. We just
didn’t have enough information to develop a comprehensively synthetic
(as opposed to an overtly analytic) molecular biology. Only after we had
characterized the world sufficiently, would we be able to see how the
parts fit together. To be a successful scientist, he suggested, I needed
to dedicate myself to the intellectual world of a single amino acid on a
single molecule.

1
2 · Introduction

Well, the era of “building things back up” has most certainly arrived.
Many molecular biologists today embrace the use of computation, art, ani-
mation, engineering, systems thinking, and design to promote making as
a new form of understanding. Disciplines as varied as synthetic biology,
evolutionary and developmental biology, systems biology, bioengineering,
bioinformatics, and even biodesign flourish because of a deeply held com-
mitment that understanding how biomolecules interact to form organelles
and cells is important for understanding how living things operate. If we
frame this insight into terms of literary theory, one could claim that within
the last few decades, biomolecular scientists increasingly adopted world
building as a strategy for exploring the complex interactions that form liv-
ing things.1
I’m not the first to notice this shift in biology. Just ask the scientists.
Synthetic biologists have written on how “biology is technology” as cells
can be used as “platforms” to fabricate economically important biomole­
cules, such as pharmaceutical drugs.2 Disciplines such as evolutionary and
developmental biology temper the study of the selective pressure of envi-
ronments with a renewed sense of the importance of the internal molecu-
lar and physiological constraints of developing organisms,3 and scientists
have “pioneered” institutes dedicated to embracing “biological complex-
ity” to fearlessly decipher “vast amounts of data” “to gain valuable insights
and achieve breakthroughs across scientific disciplines.”4 Clearly some-
thing is afoot and people have noticed.
What I find especially surprising is the speed with which this change
appeared. For many commentators, the cause for the rapidity of this
change is clear: the use of computers in biology.5 Specifically, these com-
mentators point to the heavy use of computers in biological practices, with
their ability to store and correlate large amounts of data, and the use of
cyber­netic and biological metaphors for thinking about biological sys-
tems, giving researchers new conceptual tools to think about complex
processes. Although I don’t think these histories of biology are wrong, and
I will address these claims in more detail below, I think they are much too
limited. An overemphasis on computation as a historical agent obscures
two main points. The first is the problem of standardization. It is difficult
to turn something as complex as a fruit fly’s body into the data and oper-
able commands that a computer will recognize. There are a large number
of historical studies that have labored to demonstrate the conceptual and
technological innovations that needed to go into making a body calculable
 Introduction · 3

in the first place.6 This history should not just be swept under the carpet.
The second problem is the role of envisioning. I will offer a more concrete
definition of “envisioning” below. For now, however, we can think about
envisioning as a composite act that mixes imagination, visualization, and
desire. To envision something in the biological sciences means having a
vision for how something could occur under specific circumstances. Often
envisioning requires tangible images, movies, animations, or diagrams to
depict phenomena as well as the relations that birth them. Pointing to the
adoption of computers as the prime historical agent diminishes the values,
desires, and imaginative potentials that make science such an interesting
field of study. My goal as a scholar of the cultural and conceptual basis of
biology is to create stories that are historically informed, scientifically ro-
bust, and imaginatively captivating. Pointing to the increased rise of com-
puting, while it is a superficially correct claim, too often tempts authors to
condense these complex interactions into a single opaque technological
box of agency.
I have spent my career trying to understand these two moments in the
history of biology, the standardization of human, animal, and plant bodies
and the envisioning of how they work. My first book, The Emergence in
Genetic Rationality, was a study of the role of standardization in defining
biological relationships. At the time, it was one effort by many that were in-
terested in the problem. This book, Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and
the Envisioning of Life, is a study of the role of envisioning in defining bio-
logical relationships. Understanding why so many biologists adopt strate-
gies for world building all at once, however, demands we understand a bit
more about twentieth-­century consumption practices and the values that
they promote. This is key for understanding how computation and world
building in biology evolve as conjoined visions for a world that can be en-
visioned (imagined and controlled) in all its complex interconnectedness.

Envisioning Consumers
Early twentieth-­century industrialized economies had the capacity to
produce a lot of stuff; what industries needed were mechanisms to con-
vince consumers that they needed this stuff. Mid-­twentieth-­century busi-
ness achieved these goals by changing their relationship to consumers.7
Mechanisms for relating to consumers, such as advertising and marketing,
helped consumers visualize how products could change their lives, while
4 · Introduction

mechanisms for consumer feedback, such as focus groups, gave companies

ideas about which products might be successfully marketed. Producing
products no longer meant simply turning an assembly line on or off; it
meant ensuring the object would sell once it was produced.
The development of new ways for envisioning products was key for
ensuring the regulation of goods. Companies began using mechanically,
chemically, and electronically produced images to ensure that consum-
ers desired what companies were making. Magazines swelled with adver-
tisements for products, and newspapers promoted visually rich features,
such as comic strips, to ensure that they sold even on slow news days.
Publications and broadcasts splashed images across media, stores devel-
oped techniques to display goods in novel ways, and companies used nov-
elties and gimmicks to ensure they maintained that special relationship
between a brand and its consumer (do you remember the toy hidden in
the cereal box?). These initiatives led to innovations in product design and
distribution, and a world built on modern marketing ensued. Companies
became especially adept at using visualization technologies to paint the
consequences of a world transformed by consumption. This world was not
simply focused on using an object’s utilitarian function to sell a product; it
instead focused on the big picture, how these products could help a con-
sumer attain a certain lifestyle. This was a world that you could participate
in if you had the liquid income needed to purchase the advertised goods.
Our ability to envision organisms in the biological sciences not only relies
on some of these innovations, it remains tightly bound with the interplay
of desire and spectacle in a consumerist economy.8

The Spectacle of the Grid

One especially important innovation in visualization practices was the use
of grids for graphic design.9 Grids allowed designers to break down com-
plex forms into simpler elements and assemble them in novel configura-
tions for maximum effect. Texts and images could be combined in novel
ways, as publishers fought over the attention of readers. Grids also allowed
distributers to circulate images across various media, allowing publish-
ers to deliver scalable content to large audiences across diverse platforms
(print, broadcast, and web). Overtly commercial enterprises such as ad-
vertising and the entertainment industry weren’t the only publications
that used grids. Almost all publications began using grids as a standard-
 Introduction · 5

ized form of layout, including scientific publications, where gridded lay-

out design was especially welcomed for its ability to easily include more
advertisements and illustrations. The advent of graphical user interfaces
in personal computing programs ensured that even neophytes in graphic
design could produce elegant yet standardized documents using grids. (I
know, this neophyte used these programs to create some of the illustra-
tions in the book.) The history is clear. During the twentieth century it
became harder and harder to envision the world without using a grid.
The sheer prevalence of grids revealed new ways for thinking about
how organisms might build themselves. Scientists began seeing how bod-
ies could be constructed as a series of parts or modules, much like a grid
is composed of a series of panels.10 This not only offered scientists new
ways of thinking about how bodies might be constructed, it also suggested
new ways that bodies could be related. The key realization is that grids
allowed scientists to think about how the autonomy of individual parts
and the needs of the organism could work together. The key for this deli-
cate balancing act is in how grids are organized. Each module is part of a
larger array of modules, but it also has a degree of autonomy in defining
its self-­organization. This allowed for the creation of designs based on as-
semblages of various types of modules as well as the use of single modules
in multiple designs. Although it oversimplifies the complexity of how the
scientists were thinking about the problem, it might be helpful to see how
creating organisms is akin to assembling a structure with Legos. Legos use
basic building blocks, similar enough that they can recombine with one
another, but different enough that they can give one’s final creations dif-
ferent forms and functions when swapped with one another. Limbs can be
switched (such as a fruit fly’s small stabilizers for full blown wings), heads
modified (legs inserted where antenna should be), and (this is where the
Legos example falters) biochemical pathways can be refashioned.
Perhaps counter-­intuitively, theories of modularity provided biologists
with a strategy for understanding how an incredible diversity of differ-
ent forms could be created from seemingly homogenous building blocks.
Similarity and difference, it seems, are much more closely related than we
thought. These theories also reinvigorated old existential questions. If the
materials of construction for a fly and a human are the same (proteins,
nucleic acids, fats, and starches) and the process of construction is simi-
lar (with the same signals directing diverse, site specific structures), then
how different from each other are we? The answer, it seemed, increasingly
6 · Introduction

appeared to be in how the actual modules were assembled, where and

when they were placed to form an organism. Welcome to life in the grid,
where a key source for our ability to understand new forms of biologi-
cal complexity comes from one of the least likely sources, standardization
wrought by desires for advertisements and entertainments. Grids (and as
I will argue in the last chapter of the manuscript, layers for dynamic pro-
cesses, as well) provide the scaffolding for envisioning how living things
operate in the twenty-­first century. Analyzing our lives in the grid, then,
requires a bifurcated research strategy. It is imperative to recognize the
important political constraints and oppressive consequences of the use of
grids in thinking about controlling life. As I will argue in depth in chap-
ters 1 and 3, despite the homogenizing appearance of grids, not all lives
in a grid are treated similarly. Uncovering these differences is politically
important but also requires understanding how grids are ordered. This in-
volves asking questions such as “What are the specific values that grids are
intended to support?” Understanding life in the grid also demands the use
of imagination. In this way we see how grids can be used to reorder lives
to be less oppressive and more creative. Strangely, it is through a study of
the most monotone and bureaucratic of terms, “regulation,” that we see
how closely bound the impulse to control and the desire to imagine coexist
through envisioning.

The Varieties of Regulated Experience

The use of grids was just one aspect of a more important shift in the ways
that products were regulated. Most people are used to thinking of regula-
tion in terms of the application of rules or laws in social organization. For
instance, laws limit how fast we can move by setting speed limits, what
we can ingest by creating controlled substances, and how we interact with
other bodies by criminalizing specific behaviors. A growing number of
scholars from a remarkably diverse number of disciplines have argued that
this is much too limited a way to think about how bodies are regulated in
twenty-­first-­century society.11 Central to many of these claims is the work
of the late Michel Foucault in thinking in terms of how lives, economies,
and regulations interact to create regulatory practices supple in their ap-
plication and responsive to the challenges of random events. Especially
central to this new type of regulation is “the production of the collective
interest through the play of desire.”12 Economic practices, legal norms, and
 Introduction · 7

ideas about how bodies operate worked in tandem to create new forms
of regulatory functions.13 This subtle form of regulation appeared more
fluid in its application, more natural in its appearance, more insidious in
its presence, and more expansive in its reach. Visual technologies of mid-­
twentieth-­century capital played into this change in how products were
regulated. Regulation was no longer a matter of restricting which products
were produced for consumption. As noted earlier, it also meant developing
desire for the products in the first place.
Regulation is an increasingly important concept in biology as well.
Although biologists began figuring out how nucleic acids informed the
expression of proteins, they couldn’t figure out why only certain proteins
were produced at specific times and locations in organisms. This was an
interesting conundrum as living things seemed to always be changing.
How could the same materials that created a specific stage of an organism’s
life create other stages as well? Insects, such as fruit flies, not only grow
larger, they also dramatically change their forms as they grow. The un-
trained eye can find little similarity between the soft grub of a juvenile fly
and the well-­articulated, chitin armored appearance of the adult. Even hu-
mans go through subtle chemical metamorphoses, as some lactose intoler-
ant adults lose the ability to metabolize the sugar lactose, a metabolic skill
they relied upon as an infant. Why did they lose this ability? Or, in more
biologically precise terms, how could a limited nucleic acid code account
for all the changes organisms exhibit during their lives? Clearly, something
was happening to allow some parts of the code to be expressed at one time
and not at another. This implied that genes not only needed to be turned
on, they had to be turned on at the right time and in the right place. One
point that Biology in the Grid argues is that understanding the complexity
of genetic regulation not only involved changes in how scientists thought
about genes, it required a change in how the concept of regulation was
pragmatically deployed in society.
Genetic regulation metamorphosed from being a simple directive (such
as turning a gene “on” or “off ”) to a complex set of responses to localized
cues (such as the response to chemicals in specific cellular environments)
that occur in a specific order (where the expression of one chemical initi-
ates an expression of another chemical). Genomes now appear less like
a detailed set of instructions to build an organism and more like a set of
potentially coordinated responses to localized changes. Take, for instance
this claim, by developmental biologist Eric H. Davidson, that a genetic
8 · Introduction

regulatory network has two components. They are sensitive to cellular

signals, meaning that signals have the capacity to “affect transcription of
regulatory genes.” And they form networks, where “each regulatory gene
has both multiple inputs . . . as well as multiple outputs . . . so each can be
conceived as a node of the network.”14 This vision of genetic regulation as
multicausal and conditionally responsive is much more complex than a
single directive to turn a gene on or off. In this case, it is not just the code
of the genes that makes a difference, it is how, when, and where the codes
are translated and transcribed. This idea of genetic regulation was key for
the emergence of world building in the biological sciences.
Although this shift in the idea of regulation has registered greater im-
pact in some fields of biology than in others, it has been surprisingly far
reaching. Its influence on the field of evolutionary and developmental
biology is especially profound, as the concept of genetic regulation has
played a key role in thinking about how organisms develop. Genetics, too,
has had to wrestle with how genes respond to cellular environments. The
result has been the characterization of a long list of factors implicated in
regulating genes. We now have specific nucleic acid sequences identified
(such as initiation and termination sequences, promoters, enhancers, and
microRNAs), specific proteins identified (such as transcription factors),
and even modifications to the architecture of the nucleic acids (through
methylation and histone interactions).15 Understanding the rich inter-
play between all these factors has led to productive debates in proteomics,
structural biology, epigenetics, cell biology, bioengineering, and even syn-
thetic biology. Grids not only helped structure how these interactions were
thought to occur, in many cases they enabled the visualizations that al-
lowed for thinking about interactions in the first place. Grids allowed for
scientists to see how things could be put together in a way that wasn’t just
propositional, it was additive and supple.
This turn to world building has been fruitfully envisioned as a return to
a biology of organic holism.16 The more I studied the development of this
new way of thinking in biology, though, the more I found parallels with
contemporary economic practices more compelling than parallels with
older biological theories. Let me offer an extended example to illustrate
what I mean. I hate to buy clothes. I really dislike spending an afternoon
shopping. I find very little interest in trying things on, waiting in lines,
and being jostled by others. Increasingly, I have relied on purchasing my
clothes online. A series of innovations in online retail has made it pos-
 Introduction · 9

sible for me to drastically reduce my visits to physical stores. For instance,

I now have accounts at retail clothing sites that remember my body size
and can even suggest small adjustments in size if a brand is known to run
a little smaller or larger than other brands. Some sites even have virtual
methods for trying on clothes, such as “virtual fitting rooms.” These can
rely on mechanisms such as providing measurements made at home to
create a virtual mannequin with the dimensions of your body or upload-
ing an image so that this mannequin resembles you in more than your
formal dimensions. In one sense the online experience of buying clothes
is becoming more like the store experience, or even the much older, now
elitist practice of going to a tailor.17 On the other hand, this process is
clearly built from processes of standardization that made it possible to buy
off-­the-­rack in the first place. Yet the process more thoroughly adjusts for
how standards can be varied to build a body profile that accommodates
even hard to fit parts of my body, such as my peculiarly short arms.
Interestingly, innovations in how goods and information are regulated
keep my buying habits of clothes and biologists’ conception of development
from being a return to pre-­twentieth-­century emphasis on handcrafted or-
ganic holism or a simple extension of twentieth-­century standardization.18
When I purchase my shirt online, there is now a layer of informational
practices added to a simple retail purchase. Information about my buying
habits is stored, my body size and shape recorded, different products virtu-
ally compared, and new means of negotiating payment utilized. The same
is true for envisioning the development of organisms. The movement of
individual cells and molecules has been tracked, potential outcomes from
molecular interactions are evaluated, cellular and physiological changes
remembered, and complicated issues involving the physics of different
scales of interaction are accounted for. Consequently, the seeming return
to holism in biology is predicated upon the detailed regulatory apparatus
of molecular development even as it confounds the reductionist assump-
tions of its practitioners. New forms of regulation have not only shaped my
clothing buying habits, they have also informed how scientists think about
the methods organisms use to shape themselves.

From Visualization to Envisioning

Images play an especially important role in industrial economies for un-
derstanding how things fit together. Two points are especially important to
10 · Introduction

my argument, and I appeal to the work of media theorist and philosopher

Vilém Flusser to help me explain them.19 The first point is phenomenologi-
cal. Flusser grasped that readers engage with images differently than they
do texts. He argued that reading lines of text requires readers to follow a
structure “imposed upon us” as our eyes “follow the text of a line from
left to right” and “jump from line to line from above to below it” and then
“turn the pages from left to right.” Viewers of images on surfaces, such as a
printed page, however, “may seize the totality of the picture at a glance, so
to speak, and then proceed to analyze it.”20 Flusser is careful to acknowl-
edge that this isn’t a difference in freedom, where our eyes are free to roam
a page when looking at an image, but in the order of synthesis and analysis.
Texts require analysis first, which can then lead to specific forms of syn-
thetic meaning making, which Flusser terms “historical thought.” Images,
however, provide a synthesized experience that invites specific types of an-
alytics. “The one aims at getting somewhere, the other is already there, but
may reveal how it got there.”21 The real difference involves the temporality
of perception as each treats the viewer’s relationship to “past, present, and
future” in different ways.
Recognizing this phenomenological point is important for understand-
ing how visual technologies are especially useful, but not necessarily re-
quired, for the types of open-ended regulations we discussed earlier. As
most advertising executives know, images are especially useful for evok-
ing desires. They present worlds where associations can be made and pos-
sible futures promised. As most lawyers know, images are very difficult
for thinking in terms of laws.22 They infrequently provide clear prohibi-
tions (the strong prohibition of a nonsmoking symbol is the exception)
and often don’t suggest strong and clear causalities. Clearly, different
forms of informing are important for suggesting different ways that things
can be regulated. This is what makes images so useful for world build-
ing. They excel at providing a way to imagine how elements fit together
to make a complex scene without necessarily saying how these elements
specifically interact. This is one reason why many scientific models rely
on visualization—­they allow a viewer to see how things might fit together.
Flusser’s second important point about images is political economic.
Flusser recognizes that images produced through technological means
operate differently than traditional images. Consequently, they are impli-
cated differently in meaning making. For instance, technical images are
not direct representations of the world, they are mostly composed. The
term Flusser uses, and I have appropriated, is “envisioned.” Image makers
 Introduction · 11

(he calls them “envisioners”) draw “the concrete out of the abstract” by ar-
ranging bits of data into informative patterns. As anyone who has zoomed
too closely into the pixels of a digital image can attest, electronic images
are little more than collections of specific data points. What makes them
meaningful is how they are arranged (or regulated). The representational
veracity of these images, then, comes from the series of commands that
organize pixels in specific locations in the image. This act of envision-
ing always takes place through the capabilities of a technical apparatus.
“The technical image is an image produced by apparatuses.”23 This is what
makes his point political economic, as all images are the products of the
capability of the technological apparatus. In the universe of technical
images, then, all images reflect the scientific statements that allowed for
their production. “As apparatuses themselves are the products of applied
scientific texts, in the case of technical images one is dealing with the indi-
rect products of scientific texts.”24 When one envisions a world with tech-
nical images, one is always envisioning this world through the technical
capacities of the society that created the imaging apparatus.
This insight doesn’t necessarily suggest that images are now postrepre­
sentation (as other theorists have argued).25 It does suggest that the dis-
tinction between representation and imagination is no longer a very
interesting epistemic criterion by which to judge scientific images: “The
gesture of the envisioner is directed from a particle toward a surface that
never can be achieved [because of its abstraction], whereas that of the
traditional image maker is directed from the world of objects toward an
actual surface.”26 Consequently, envisioners are much more interested in
using data (visual data bound with the codes of the apparatus) to create in-
formative configurations of images. “Envisioners press buttons to inform,
in the strictest sense of that word, namely, to make something improbable
out of possibilities. They press buttons to seduce the automatic apparatus
into making something that is improbable within its program.” Traditional
images inform by either reflecting (representation) or escaping (imagina-
tion) the normative visual qualities of a world. Technical images inform by
creating unlikely images that reveal new relationships.
Let’s analyze a specific image from evolutionary and developmental
­biology to anchor Flusser’s abstract insights with the particularities of bio-
molecular practice. Figure I.1 shows a drosophila embryo stained so that a
viewer can visualize the expression of eve or even skipped pair rule genes in
the upper part of the image.27 This regulatory protein is expressed as a series
of discrete bands, in a modular fashion, arranged along the longitudinal axis
12 · Introduction

Figure I.1. A fruit fly embryo stained for the eve or even skipped pair rule gene bands (the seven prominent bands
in the upper image and the seven less prominent bands in the lower image). The eve gene has seven different
regulatory sequences that can be activated independently. Each of these regions is responsible for producing a
discrete band. Each eve gene, then, acts as a module that is both dependent upon its placement in the whole
organism as well as able to act independently. The fluorescent stipples dispersed across the bottom image help
visualize individual nuclei of cells. The diffuse central band on the bottom image is the gene product, kruppel.
This beautiful picture is also a testament to the sophistication of visualization techniques in biology that can
combine the visual detail of confocal microscopy, the color of multiple forms of fluorescent staining, the specificity
of monoclonal antibodies, and genetically engineered probes to identify single molecules. Photograph courtesy of
David W. Knowles and Mark D. Biggin of the Berkeley Drosophila Transcription Network.

of the embryo. The bottom image combines the eve staining pattern with a
stain that creates a stippled pattern used to visualize each of the cells in the
embryo. The more diffuse single central band is a stain specific for the gene
kruppel.28 Eve and kruppel are called “gap genes” in that if mutated, whole
segments of the developing drosophila larva will be skipped during devel-
opment. With eve, the even numbered segments of the larva are skipped
during development, while kruppel deletes a massive segment from the pos-
terior of the embryo (kruppel is German for “cripple”). During the decade
 Introduction · 13

between 1990 and 2010, the pages of journals such as Nature, Science, and
Cell were saturated with gorgeously detailed colored pictures tracking the
expression of single molecules in (mostly) drosophila larvae. What makes
these images a good example of Flusser’s concept of envisioning?
First, these images are not directly represented in the same way that
a traditional image is. They were produced using highly specific stains
(using either monoclonal antibodies or specific nucleotide sequences) that
effectively amplify the visual presence of molecules within a complex mo-
lecular soup. They could not be visualized without it. Second, the imaging
apparatus, confocal microscopy, is different from conventional light mi-
croscopy. Confocal microscopy is known for its ability to provide complex
images with especially high resolution. These images are created, however,
by scanning the whole specimen as a series of closely focused two dimen-
sional planes that are then reassembled into a grid of three dimensional
images with stunning detail. Confocal microscopy is especially useful in
the biological sciences as it gives researchers the ability to visualize planes
of three dimensional objects with relatively little invasiveness. And finally,
but certainly not exhaustively, the whole ability to identify and map these
molecules in the first place comes from the creation of mutant flies who
have lost the ability to express these genes in the first place. The ability
to envision the normal banding of a developing fly is predicated upon
the unlikely events of seeing mutant flies in the past. As Flusser argues,
“Envisioners press buttons to inform, in the strictest sense of that word,
namely, to make something improbable out of possibilities.”29 So, as you
see, the technological coding that produces images of gene expression
during development requires multiple levels of envisioning in a techni-
cal society. This point was impressively brought home to me when I or-
dered this image from the Berkeley Drosophila Transcription Network
(BDTN). Specifically, I learned that no one fly is represented by this image.
The BDTN created this composite image upon my demand by envisioning
data from multiple images that they already had stored in their database.
This image of eve expression in drosophila is what Flusser is referring to
when he writes that envisioners draw “the concrete” from an “abstract”
collection of particles or data points. It’s not that this image isn’t real, as it
actually portrays how eve is expressed during drosophila development. It’s
just that judging this image through the categories of real vs. unreal is less
informative than with traditional images.
Some of what Flusser argues will appear familiar to readers of media
theory. Flusser’s recognition of the importance of the medium (or in
14 · Introduction

Flusser’s case, apparatus) in shaping messages can at times seem like Mar-
shal McLuhan’s emphasis that the medium is the message. Flusser’s focus
on the role of envisioning to create anomalous outcomes, however, shifts
the focus of analysis away from the normative effects of a medium in mean-
ing making.30 It’s not so much that “the medium is the message,” but that
under specific circumstances envisioners can inform using media. His
characterization of the abstract qualities of technical images can, at times,
seem like Jean Baudrillard’s depiction of the “hyper-­real.” Flusser, though,
emphasizes the production of concrete results from abstract processes, in-
stead of allowing all meaning to implode through symbolic exchange.31 In
a sense, Flusser stands Baudrillard on his head as he is interested in how
the abstract elements of symbolic exchange still inform concrete processes.
Also, in some circumstances, Flusser’s view of envisioning can seem a lot
like Alexander Galloway’s conception of protocol, where envisioners and
apparatuses are following protocols to create images.32 Yet, there is a major
difference. Flusser thinks that use of technical images is industrial and not
just informational. Consequently, the logic of the apparatus is also a chemi-
cal logic of association and not only an informational association through
protocols. This is an important distinction as the experiences of industry
might be chemically synthesized, but they are most certainly not informa-
tionally propositional in the way that protocols are. These distinctions are
important for my argument as it helps me more deeply explore how bodies
become industrially calculable before they became informationally com-
putable. It also suggests why the industries of advertising and entertain-
ment are especially useful for envisioning life in the twenty-­first century.
Understanding how technical images are produced helps one to realize that
bubbling below the slick sterile surface of the modern biological laboratory
is an amusement show of special effects. Excess, illusion, and imagination
fuel our hunger for knowledge about living organisms, shape the content of
what it is we find, and drive the limits of what we think possible.

The Chapters Envisioned

Flusser’s two insights about images, that images promote associative
thought and that technical images reflect the codes of a technical society,
allow me to argue several important claims in the book that follows. The
first insight is that the associative power of images has been especially impor-
tant for biology. Chapter 1, “Life on the Line: Organic Form,” explores this
 Introduction · 15

insight through an analysis of the images of nineteenth-­century morpholo­

gist Ernst Haeckel by looking at how the aesthetics of his images relate
to his theories of life. It begins by asking how one illustrates that some-
thing is alive. In addressing this question, the chapter then analyzes how
in Haeckel’s work, a materialist idea of life as organic (meaning composed
of carbon) is in tension with a formalist idea of life as organic (meaning
the form of the organism regulates the assembly of the parts). The chap-
ter traces these ideas through a formal analysis of Haeckel’s use of curved
lines in his masterwork, Kunst-­Formen der Natur. It argues that Haeckel
used an openly curved or wavy line to suggest vitality and a closed circular
line to build architectural volumes for his forms. The chapter closes with
a political analysis suggesting that an aesthetic analysis that privileges or-
ganic forms is insufficient to analyze the types of oppression that occur in
twenty-­first-­century society.
The second insight from Flusser developed by this book is that the codes
of technical images reflect the codes and values of an industrial society. This
insight structures much of the content of chapter 2, “Envisioning Grids.”
This chapter documents the adoption of grids in the twentieth century as
a publishing and display aesthetic: first in advertising and promotions and
then in scientific print and electronic publications. The chapter suggests
that grids promote two moments in design: a moment of partitioning a
complex process into simpler elements and a moment of the reconstruc-
tion of these elements in a larger assemblage. This second moment is espe-
cially important when looking at the use of grids in the history of graphic
design as it allows designers to build diverse displays from similar items.
According to philosopher Vilém Flusser, this constructivist moment is due
to the visual “magic” performed by images as they create meaning by dem-
onstrating associations across surfaces. Flusser then contrasts this form of
associative meaning making with the historical and sharply causal knowl-
edge promoted by texts. The twentieth century especially, saw a prolifera-
tion of images, most of which were made using chemical and electronic
technologies. Almost all of these images used the disciplinary logic of
grids in their construction. According to Flusser, technologies now create
images by assembling representations from quanta, bites, dots, or grains of
silver. These quanta, when taken individually, are inherently absurd in that
they have no intrinsic meaning. They only acquire meaning when they are
assembled into specific patterns through the associative power of grids.
What technological images represent then, is never just the content of the
16 · Introduction

image, but the political economic circumstances that produce the image
and give it meaning. The chapter ends by showing how the development
of printed scientific journals in the late twentieth century and the display
of web-­based scientific journals adopted the regulative power of grids to
bring coherence to the disparate facts, values, and sensory experiences
produced by a technologized society. Science is thus seen as a construc-
tivist practice in that it uses social codes to make meaning from inher-
ently absurd collections of data. The idea of construction, though, has now
changed from a conception of building up potential meanings from parts
to a conception of using the codes of technical images to create visual con-
straints. Constructivism isn’t just a simple assembling of things but a path
to creating meaning by limiting the inherently powerful act of association
involved in all image making.
The third insight from Flusser, that unlikely events are the most infor-
mative, drives much of the analysis of chapter 3, “Warped Grids: Pests and
the Problem of Order.” The point behind this chapter is that grids are more
than ideal conceptual constructs, they can be strangely responsive mate-
rial constructs for ordering actual spaces. This chapter takes the historical
phenomenology of grids developed in chapter 2 and applies it to a cul-
tural analysis of how bodies, grids, and regulation were related in mid-­
twentieth-­century popular media. It begins with an analysis of a poster
advertising 20th Century Fox’s 1958 motion picture The Fly to suggest
how the seemingly unrelated spheres of the teleportation of goods and the
elimination of pests are products of a desire to develop new strategies for
regulating bodies. In the movie, the body parts of a housefly and a man are
switched during a teleportation experiment when the teleportation device
misregulates the reassembly of the two organisms. It then shows how this
idea of mutation by misregulation was originally developed in biology in
the work of biologist William Bateson, the father of cyberneticist Gregory
Bateson. It does this by concentrating on how William Bateson’s focus on
the role of variation in inheritance is an important milestone for thinking
about the importance of regulation of bodies (most specifically through
his studies of homeovariants). The chapter then moves to an analysis of
Foucault’s later work on biopower and its relationship to the development
of neoliberalism (from Security, Territory, and Population as well as The
Birth of Biopolitics) that casts life and liberty as a problem of the regulation
of the circulation of goods and bodies. The chapter ends with thoughts on
how the regulative function of grids promotes some lives over other lives,
 Introduction · 17

suggesting that the way a society circulates goods contributes not only to
“the power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die,”33 as claimed by Foucault, but in the
very terms of what life might be and how it structures itself. It makes this
point, however, by demonstrating how in society and biology, grids are
always material orders of spaces. Most complex spaces consist of many
grids, or types of order, existing in relation with each other. So, although
grids have defined the possibilities of life, grids can also interact, effectively
warping each other, to create degrees of freedom for the pests they intend
to control. This is an important insight as it broadens one’s political analy-
sis away from the identification of conditions to seeing how conditions
allow for specific types of futures.
The fourth insight is that envisioning not only is a property of image
surfaces, its use on surfaces helps define how we look at things; in this case,
how organisms are regulated during development. Chapter 4, “Modula-
tions: Envisioning Variations” begins by demonstrating how important the
concept of “modules” is for the development of contemporary biology and
for the discipline of evolutionary and developmental biology specifically.
Modules, a single panel within a grid, are defined as having two key prop-
erties: they possess a degree of autonomy, meaning that they can act as in-
dividual agents with internal dynamics, and they are integrated with other
modules, meaning that the functions of the entire grid depend upon the
relationship of modules to each other. I locate William Bateson’s theories
on variation as a key moment in biology for thinking in terms of modules.
Through an analysis of Bateson’s illustrations and writing, the chapter sug-
gests that Bateson’s ideas on segmental variation are an important precur-
sor to the development of modularity in evolutionary and developmental
biology. Bateson identified two types of variations: substantialist varia-
tions, based on how a part is put together; and meristic variations, based
on how the parts are arranged. The chapter then turns to the work of Nobel
Prize winning geneticist Edward B. Lewis to demonstrate how this concept
of modularity works visually in Lewis’s illustrations, as well as conceptu-
ally, in Lewis’s arguments about how development occurs as a sequence of
specific genetic events. According to Lewis, the expression of phenotypic
traits, such as the wings of a fruit fly, depend on how molecular events
are regulated at the time it was developed. Sean Carroll has elegantly de-
scribed this conceptual variation as the “logic of making a series of initially
similar modules and then making them different from one another.”34
This concept of development synthesizes a depiction of the developmental
18 · Introduction

sequence (as found in Haeckel) with the importance of variance (as found
in Bateson). Most importantly, this logic of making modules and then
varying them into new things allows for the development of an important
insight in evolutionary developmental biology, that regulation can lead to
variance despite the similarity of materials and processes.
The final chapter of the book is an extension of Flusser’s theories on tech-
nical images into the role of grids and layers for envisioning, and controlling,
over time. Chapter 5, “Drawing Together: Composite Lives and Liquid Regu­
lations,” begins where the last chapter left off, with the work of Ed Lewis. It
does so, though, by returning to the question asked in the first chapter: how
do you illustrate a living thing? Ed Lewis seems to have thought that he could
best illustrate development by learning animation. Lewis used stop-­motion
animation to put his ideas into motion so that he could show how muta-
tions could be used to understand the steps of developmental sequences.
This chapter reads Lewis’s animations through the lens of Thomas Lamarre’s
theories of animation, where changes over time derive from the differential
layering of images over each other, a technique in animation called “com-
positing.”35 I argue that scientists use animation to draw multiple types of
evidence together in a single presentation and then order them alongside
each other. This technique allowed animators to freely mix texts and dia-
grams with live action images, juxtapose different rates of change, and freely
change scales between molecular, cellular, and organismic interactions. Bio-
logical explanations, I argue, are at their most robust when they draw on
multiple sources to present compelling visions of life.

The Importance of Aesthetic Analysis

Sprinkled throughout these chapters are several important insights about
what it means to live composite lives within a grid. I will close this in-
troduction by pointing to a few that I think are the most important. The
first of these is the claim that how we order the world is a product of how
we envision it. This insight carries with it aesthetic as well as epistemic
consequences. Scholars of biology have long used the categories of “form”
and “function” to explain why organisms are created the way that they
are.36 An analysis of an organism’s functions often stresses how specific
traits help an organism exploit an ecological niche. A simple example of
this is how the development of the limb of a fish into a fin will help that
fish swim. An analysis of an organism’s form, however, usually stresses how
 Introduction · 19

the parts of an organism have been ordered to fit together in the whole
organism. The presence of vestigial organs, such as the human tail bone,
for instance, are often thought to be preserved because of similarities in
development between humans and other primates even though humans
have no tail.
As I explore, mainly in chapters 1, 2, and 4, that while I see a resurgence
in an emphasis on form in biology, we must not be too quick to assume it
is a simple return to the holism of nineteenth-­century biology as some
have assumed. I concur with Richard Burian when he claims, “The key
to the integration of organisms is not dependent on a master plan, but on
the coordination of quasi-­autonomous modules.”37 In fact, I would even
go so far as to claim that the type of formal principles operative in biology
today are similar to those described by philosopher Gilbert Simondon in
his important L’individuation psychique et collective.38 Simondon rejects
the idea of form as hylomorphic in that it presupposes what something
will become. Instead, he posits the idea of “information” as process that
occurs through the transductive ontogenesis of an individual.39 I believe,
however (and this is very different from Simondon), that the history of
twentieth-­century biology suggests that understanding how bodies are in-­
formed also demands understanding how modules interact through the
relationships of grids.

Not Just Computing

As I mentioned earlier, others have noticed the shift toward world building
in biology but tend to emphasize the use of computation and algorithms as
the historical catalyst. For instance, Alireza Iranbakhsh and Seyyed Has-
san Seyyedrezaei argue that “The advent of computer and information
technology thereafter has been making such conspicuously remarkable
changes in every aspect of life that its importance cannot be over accen-
tuated.”40 I understand the seductiveness of this view of history. Biolo-
gists today use computers to create databases and evaluate data, process
images, keep records of samples, and model outcomes. Even seemingly
mundane scientific tools, like water baths, are now computerized to lend
them greater precision and programmability. Specifically, scholars have
tended to identify the computer’s impact through two different mecha-
nisms: the increasing number of uses with which computers are applied
in biology41 or the use of computational and informational metaphors to
20 · Introduction

explain biological processes.42 I think there are compelling historical, so-

ciological, and political reasons to complicate these narratives as they tend
to underemphasize the amount of experimental and conceptual work that
went into making bodies calculable in the first place and underestimate
how firmly rooted scientific practice is in contemporary streams of capital.
My first issue with this claim is historical. Biologists turned to compu-
tation relatively later than their colleagues in other disciplines, and even
when they did adopt computers, it was initially only in a few applications
with robust institutional and conceptual ties to other disciplines. As Rob-
ert Ledley wrote in 1959, most biologists and medical professionals using
computers “are . . . relatively isolated research workers who are, with only
few exceptions, people with extensive cross-­disciplinary backgrounds.”43
One of the key places that computers made their presence felt is in the role
of molecular modeling, most notably with the studies of John Kendrew on
myoglobin, where increasing the resolution of the X-­ray crystallographic
data demanded more complex Fourier synthesis calculations.44 As Ledley
points out, “Computers are being used to assist in the complicated and
extensive computations that are frequently involved in obtaining infor-
mation about the precise atom-­structure or the over-­all size and shape of
crystallizable molecules, from x-­ray diffraction patterns.”45 As important
as it is to recognize how computers were used for calculating model mo-
lecular structures, it is also important to recognize that researchers in other
fields used different tools for helping them visualize complex problems.
This consideration is especially important for understanding the work of
geneticist Ed Lewis, whose experiments play a central role in the book
that follows, as he turned to learning stop-­motion animation to help him
explain his models for genetic contributions to development. Animating
his model allowed Lewis to depict the complicated developmental changes
of fruit flies while combining representational practices of illustration and
live action photography at a time when computers could not.
The second issue with this claim is sociological. Many recent sociolo-
gies of science have stressed the importance of work as an indicator of the
effort that needs to go into making scientific claims.46 The focus on work as
an analytic allows researchers to understand the important role played by
an investigator’s tacit knowledge, the interaction of scientists with instru-
ments and samples, and the institutional support that goes into making
scientific claims. It also helps reveal how making items fit into grids re-
quires constant policing. Much like a garden, scientific insights need to be
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“Then, no doubt you are ready for something to eat? Susan, you
may take the young man down the village and introduce him to Mrs.
Hogben, and, on the way, you can show him the motor.” Then, to
Wynyard, “And as you find it, I shall expect you to keep it. I will give
you further orders in the morning.” Then, in the voice of a person
speaking to a child: “Now, go with Miss Susan. You won’t be long?”
she added, addressing her sister; “there are those letters to be
answered.”
“No; but anyway I must run up to the Rectory. I’ve just had a note
from Aurea; she came home last night.”
 CHAPTER VII
MRS. HOGBEN AT HOME

Miss Susan preceded Owen, and as he stalked along the great

flagged passage, he noted her trim, light figure, quantity of well-
dressed, grizzled hair, and brisk, tripping walk, and he made up his
mind—although they had not as yet exchanged a word—that he
liked her immeasurably the better of the sisters! How could Leila say
they were “dear old things!” Miss Parrett was neither more or less
than an ill-bred, purse-proud little bully. On their way out he caught
sight, through open doors, of other rooms with mullioned windows,
and more vague efforts at refurnishing and embellishment.
“We are not long here,” explained Miss Susan, reaching for her hat
off a peg, and they crossed a vestibule opening into a huge enclosed
yard, “though we lived here as children; it’s only lately we have come
back to our own—or rather my sister’s own,” she corrected, with a
little nervous laugh. “The Manor has been occupied by a farmer for
twenty-five years, and was really in a dreadful state of neglect: the
roof and upper floors dropping to pieces, and everything that should
have been painted was neglected, and everything that should not
have been painted, was painted.”
In the yard a small black spaniel, who was chained to his kennel,
exhibited convulsions of joy on beholding Miss Susan. As she
stooped to unfasten the prisoner, he instantly rushed at Wynyard, but
after a critical examination received him with civility.
“You are highly favoured,” remarked the lady; “Joss, although a
nobody himself, is most particular as to who he knows. He means to
know you.”
“I’m glad of that—I like dogs. What breed is he?”
“That is a question we are so often asked. His mother is a prize
poodle, his father a small black spaniel. We have never quite
decided what we shall bring him up as, sometimes we think we’ll clip
him and pass him off as a poodle.”
“Oh, he is much more of a spaniel—look at his ears and tail,”
objected the new chauffeur. “Of course he is a bit too leggy.”
“Yes; I’m afraid poor Joss’s appearance is against him, but his heart
is in the right place.”
“Dogs’ hearts always are.”
“Joss is so sporting, if he only had a chance,” continued Miss Susan.
“He swims like a fish and is crazy after water-fowl—that is the
spaniel side. The poodle blood makes him clever, sly, inquisitive, and
as mischievous as a monkey.”
“Is he your dog, miss?”
“No, he belongs to my sister, though she does not care for animals;
but she says a dog about the place makes a topic of conversation for
callers. We country folk are often hard up; the weather and gardens
are our chief subjects. Joss is a capital watch—though I hate to see
him chained here day after day. I believe a young dog requires
liberty—yes, and amusement—as much as a human being.” She
glanced at Owen. “You will think me silly!”
“No, miss, I’m entirely of your opinion.”
“And poor Joss leads such a dull life; there are no young people to
take him out, and no dogs of his own class in the village, and now”—
as she began to draw the bolts of a coach-house door, but Owen
came forward—“here is the motor;” and, taking a long breath, she
ejaculated, “There!”
There indeed was the car, newly painted, and dark green, as
described. It was a closed motor brougham to hold four. Owen
examined it critically, and with the eye of an expert. Within the last
few days he had become rather wise respecting cars. This was an
old-fashioned machine, which had seen a great deal of hard wear,
and would not stand much rough usage—no, nor many long
journeys.
“Isn’t it nice?” said Miss Susan, “and do look at all the lovely pockets
inside,” opening the door as she spoke.
“Yes; but I don’t see any Stepney wheel,” he said.
“Why, it has four—what more do you want?”
To which he replied by another question:
“Where did Miss Parrett get hold of it?”
“Oh, she bought it through an advertisement from a gentleman who
had ordered a larger car, and as he didn’t want two—indeed, he
made rather a favour of selling it—he parted with this one, a
bargain.”
“Oh—a bargain!” he repeated helplessly.
“Well, I suppose it was cheap for five hundred?”
Wynyard made no reply; in his opinion the machine would have been
dear at fifty. It was evident that some unscrupulous rascal had
foisted an old-fashioned rattle-trap upon these ignorant and
unsuspicious ladies.
“My sister is so nervous,” exclaimed Miss Susan, “and I don’t think
she will use the car as much as she supposes. Even in a cab she
sits all the time with her eyes closed and her hands clenched. She
would never have purchased the motor, only our brother-in-law, the
parson here—who is rather a wag in his way—chaffed her, and, just
to contradict him, she bought one within a week!”
Miss Susan was evidently a talker, and Wynyard listened in civil
silence as, chattering incessantly, she accompanied him down the
drive and out into the village street.
“Now I am going to take you to your lodgings, where I hope you will
be comfortable,” and she looked at him with a kindly little smile.
“There is where we lived for thirty years,” pointing to a pretty old red
cottage, with a paved walk through a charming garden—at present
gay with daffodils and crocus.
“Do you know I planted every one of those bulbs myself,” she said;
“I’m a great gardener—my sister only potters. The gardens at the
Manor have run to seed like the house, and it will take a long time to
put them straight. After we left it, on my father’s death, the tenant
was a farmer, and only lately my sister has bought it back. A relative
we never saw left Bella all his fortune, and money comes just a little
strange to her at first. We have always been poor—and so
sometimes she—is——”
Miss Susan faltered, blushed, and came to a full stop; she felt
conscious that she was forgetting herself, and talking to this stranger
—a man-servant—as if he were her equal! Her tongue always ran
away with her; unfortunately, she could not help it, and it was
absolutely true, as Bella repeatedly told her, “she was much too
familiar with the lower orders!”
“Ahem! I dare say you will find Ottinge dull after London. Do you
know London?” she inquired, after a conscious silence.
“Yes, miss, I know it well.”
“There’s no one much of your stamp in the village; they are all
Ottinge born and bred, and you seem to be a superior sort of young
man.”
“I don’t think I’m at all superior, miss; anyway, I’ve got to earn my
bread the same as other people.”
“Here we are at Mrs. Hogben’s,” she announced, and, opening a
gate, walked up the flagged path leading to an old two-storeyed
cottage, and a broadly built, elderly woman, with a keen, eager face
and a blue checked apron, came to meet them, hastily wiping her
wet hands.
“Here is your lodger, Mrs. Hogben; his name is Owen,” explained
Miss Susan; and Mrs. Hogben’s astonishment was so complete that
she so far forgot herself as to drop him half a curtsey. “You have
given him the top back-room, I understand?” continued Miss Susan,
“and, remember, it’s not to be more than half-a-crown a week; he will
arrange about his board himself.”
“Yes, Miss Susan; to be sure, Miss Susan.”
“And you will do his washing moderately, and cook, and make him
comfortable, won’t you?”
“Of course, Miss Susan.”
“I don’t suppose you will eat meat more than once a day,” turning to
him, “eh?”
“I can’t say, miss,” he answered, with a slow smile, “a good deal
would depend upon the meat.”
“Well, I think you will find everything here all right. Mrs. Hogben’s
son, Tom, is one of our gardeners, and you can come up in the
morning with him. Good-evening to you!” Wynyard touched his cap,
and she hurried off. He stood and watched her for a moment, the
slim, straight-backed figure tripping up the village towards the tall
grey church, which dominated the place.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Hogben had looked him over from head to foot; her
sharp, appraising eyes, rested with satisfaction on her lodger; taken,
womanlike, by a handsome face, she said in a pleasant voice—
“So you’re the shover! My word, it do seem main funny, them ladies
a-settin’ up of a motor—and last year they hadn’t as much as a
wheelbarrow. Folks do say all the money—and it’s a lot—has gotten
to Miss Parrett’s head, but she was always a terrible hard,
headstrong old woman. Now, Miss Susan there is a nice friendly
lady; all the place is main fond of Miss Susan.”
“She seems—a good sort.”
“Yes, and quite girlish still, and gay in herself, though well over fifty,
and thinks nothing a trouble. You’ll be takin’ your meals here?”
“Yes, with your permission, Mrs. Hogben.”
“We don’t have many high notions of food—just plain and plenty, ye
understand?”
“That will suit me all right.”
“I’ll give you your victuals in the little parlour,” and she opened the
door into a small gloomy room, with dead geraniums in the window,
a round table in the middle, a horse-hair sofa against the wall, and
shells upon the mantelpiece. Evidently the apartment was rarely
used; it smelt intolerably of musty hay, and was cold as a vault.
“I think, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll take my meals in the kitchen.”
“All right,” she assented, “there’s only me and Tom. Now come away
up, and I’ll show you your room.”
The stairs, which climbed round a massive wooden post, were so
narrow, so low, and so steep, that getting up was by no means an
easy performance.
“Eh, but you’re a fine big man!” declared Mrs. Hogben admiringly,
“and somehow you don’t seem to fit in a place of this size; it’s main
old too—some say as old as the Manor.”
“Oh, I shall fit all right,” he answered, looking about his chamber.
It was very low and scrupulously clean: the window was on a level
with the bare boards, there was a wooden bed, with a patchwork
quilt, a chest of drawers, a washstand, and a rush-bottomed chair.
“I shall want a bath,” he announced abruptly.
“A bath! Well, I never!”
“Yes; or, if the worst comes to the worst, an old wash-tub.”
“Oh,” reflecting, “I do believe Mrs. Frickett at the Drum has a tin one
she’d lend—no one there wants it.”
“I’ll carry up the water myself.”
“Will you so? I suppose your box is at the house, and Tom will bring
it down on the barrow. He will be in to his tea directly. Here he is,” as
the sound of clumping boots ascended from below.
When confronted with Tom, Wynyard found him to be a man of thirty,
in rough working clothes, with one of the finest faces he had ever
seen, a square forehead, clear-cut features, and a truly noble and
benevolent expression. The general effect was considerably marred
by the fact that Tom wore his thick brown hair several inches too
long, and a fringe of whiskers framed his face and met under his
chin, precisely as his father’s and grandfather’s had done.
“Tom, here be Miss Parrett’s shover,” announced his mother, “the
man-servant, you know, as will bide with us. You’ll take him in hand,
and show him about, eh?”
“Ay, ay,” agreed Tom, seating himself heavily at table; then,
addressing the guest—
“It’s very tricky weather?”
“Yes, it generally is in April.”
Tom stared hard at the newcomer. The young man used grand
words, had a strong look in his face, was well set-up—and clean-
shaved of a Wednesday!
“Yer from London, eh? One can see that. Ye must be as hungry as a
dog.” With an impulse of hospitality, he pushed the loaf towards him,
and subsequently experienced a sense of relief and pleasure as he
noticed the new chap’s hands, the hands of a working man!
The meal consisted of home-made bread, boiled eggs, cold bacon,
and tea. The two hungry men made considerable ravages on bread
and bacon, and no attempts at conversation. Meanwhile, Mrs.
Hogben’s sharp eyes and wits were still engaged in taking stock of
the newcomer. He did not say much, but when he did speak, it was
the pure talk of gentry-folk; yet, he was not uppish, his coat was well
worn, and he spoke quite humble-like to Miss Susan.
After a short silence, Mrs. Hogben—a notable gossip—undertook the
talking for all three.
“Of course it was Miss Parrett herself as come here about a room for
you, Mr. Owen, and says she to me, ‘I want you to take a
respectable young man on reasonable terms; of course I can’t have
him at the Manor, on account of the maids.’”
“Why not?” inquired her lodger, with his mouth full.
“’Cause,” with a laugh, “she thought you might be making love to
them, I expect! And says she, ‘Mrs. Hogben, you having no
daughters, and no young woman in the house, it will be quite safe.’”
“Oh, I see,” he assented, with an amused smile.
“Though for that matter,” and she nodded at Tom, “I’m going to have
a daughter-in-law one of these days.”
Tom buried his face in a mug and spluttered.
“Ay, it’s Dilly Topham, and a main pretty girl too; but Tom will mind
her.”
“Miss Parrett is terrible strict,” said Tom, recovering his self-
possession, “and this do be a model village”; and he winked at
Wynyard.
“I’m none so sure!” objected his mother; “there’s a good lot of beer
and quarrelling at the Drum, especially of a Saturday night; and there
was Katie Punnett—well—well—I say no more.”
“Oh, the girls are all right, mother.”
“Some on ’em; of course that’s Missie’s doing—she’s so friendly with
’em, so nice and so gay; but a good few of the Ottinge girls is of no
account. There’s Mrs. Watkins with three big young women on her
hands; they won’t stay in service at no price, and they won’t do a
turn at home. Their mother holds the house together, and has them,
as well as her man, to work for, poor soul!”
“Oh, Watkins, he does ’is share as carrier,” protested Tom.
“I don’t know what you call a share, Tom,” said his mother sharply. “I
know of a cold winter’s morning she gets up and milks the cows, and
takes the milk round herself, and comes back, and there’s not a fire
lit, and them four lazy sacks are all still abed—ay, and asleep. I’ve
gone in of an afternoon, too, and seen Maudie and Brenda stretched
on their backs a-reading penny novels—it’s all they care for, that and
dress, and young men; if I was their mother I’d let out at them!” and
she paused for breath. “I never had no schoolin’, and I’m not sorry;
laziness and light readin’ is the plague.”
“Well, Watkins—he don’t read overmuch.”
“No, but he smokes and drinks, and is main idle. You know yourself I
offered him the good grass off the orchard for the cutting, for his
horse—lovely grass it were, too—but it were too much trouble, and
he grazes the poor beast along the road in every one’s way instead.
And there’s Jake Roberts—his father left him a fine business as
wheelwright and carpenter, and he has let it all go over to Shrapton-
le-Steeple ’cause it was too much fag, and he lives on his wife’s
washing.”
“Ye see how my mother is down on Ottinge,” said Tom, with another
wink, “not being an Ottinge woman herself.”
“No, thank the Lord! I’m from another part, and all for work. But I’ll
say this—that Ottinge is the healthiest spot ye ever put yer foot in.
We gets the free air for miles over the pastures, and at the back
we’re in shelter from the hills between us and Brodfield—that’s the
big town ten miles off.”
“So you have no doctor?” said Wynyard.
“Indeed we have, and a good doctor too; there is not much call for
him or for medicines. Ottinge isn’t as big as it looks; though so
rambling and showy, it’s real small.”
“Are there many gentry around?” inquired the stranger.
“There’s the parson, Mr. Morven—his lady is dead. She wur a
Parrett, and handsome. He’s a good man, but terrible bookish, and
just awful for readin’ and writin’. There’s Captain and the Honourable
Mrs. Ramsay, as live nearly opposite in the house covered with ivy,
and three rows of long windows, inside the little brick wall. They are
not much use; she sells plants and cuttings, and little Pom puppies
now and then, and keeps what she calls a ‘Dogs’ Hotel or Boarding-
House’; did ye ever!” and Mrs. Hogben laughed. “Ay, and she
advertises it too! She’s so terrible busy with dogs, and takes them
walking out, and has all sorts o’ food for them, and young Bob
Watkins as their servant. Her father was a lord they make out, and
her husband, the Captain, he got some sort of stroke in the Indies
and is queer—some say from drink, some say from a stroke, some
say from both. He never goes into no company, but walks the roads
and lanes of an evening a-talkin’ to himself right out loud. Then he
slopes up to the Drum, and though he was an army officer, he sits
cheek by jowl with common men, drinkin’ his glass, and smokin’ his
pipe. However, he is quiet enough—quiet as the dead—and Mrs.
Ramsay is good pay.”
“That’s something,” remarked her listener, and his tone was dry.
“There’s a rare bit o’ money in Ottinge, though ye mightn’t think it,”
continued Mrs. Hogben, delighted to have a listener after her own
heart; “folks being well left, and mostly having a snug house, and
nothing going out but quit rent.”
“But who lives round the village? Are there any big places?”
“There’s a good few within ten miles. The Wardes of Braske, the
Cranmers of Wells Castle, the Woolcocks of Westmere Park—it was
the Davenants’ for hundreds of years, and Woolcocks’ father he was
an iron-monger!”
“An ironmaster,” corrected her son, with a touch of impatience.
“Well, ’tis all the same. The Davenants were real great folk, and the
Hogbens served them for many a day; indeed, the late Sir Henry
Davenant shot Hogben’s father himself.” She folded her arms as she
made the announcement, and looked at her lodger as much as to
say, “What do you think of that?”
“Shot! What do you mean—on purpose?”
“No, ’twas a pheasant he was mistook for—but he killed Tom
Hogben stone dead in the top cover, and then sent a carriage to
fetch him home. Of course the shooting was given accidental, and
the family had a pension; and I will say this, the Davenants were
always free and never a mite afraid of spending money, till every
stiver was gone.”
“What you call open-handed.”
“Yes, and the last of the gentlemen, when the place was ate up of a
mortgage, lived in a bit of a cottage by the roadside, and was just as
proud and grand as if he had forty servants. This Ottinge is a mighty
queer quarrelling sort o’ place, as you will soon see for yourself. Last
year a parson come, when Mr. Morven was in Switzerland with the
General—a very gay, pleasant young man, a-visitin’ everywhere, and
talkin’ to every one, and amusin’ the parish, and gettin’ up cricket,
and concerts, so when he left they gathered up to make him a
present, and bought him a lovely clock (as he preferred to a bit of a
ink-bottle); but it just shows up Ottinge! there was so much wicked
jealousy and ill-feelin’ that there was no one to give it to him—you
see, one wouldn’t let the other!—and he’d never have got it at all,
only, at the last, they stuck in a child—a little girl, as no one wanted
to get the better of—and so that settled it, but it may give ye some
idea of the place.”
“Ye see my mother hasn’t a good word for it,” put in Tom; “but I’m
Ottinge, and was born here.”
“As to the gentlefolk,” continued Mrs. Hogben almost as glibly as if
she were reading aloud, “there’s the doctor and his wife. She is
gayish, and great at theatricals and games—no harm, though. Ay, ’tis
a dull place for young folk, and only fit for some to come and end
their days. There’s the Woolcocks of Westmere Park—terrible rich—
they bought the Park when the Davenants were broke, as I tell’d ye.
They keep a crowd of servants, and three motors. There’s mister
and missus, and a son and two daughters—one of them’s married.
They give a fair lot of employment too—but still, folks ’ud rayther
have the old fam’ly.”
“My mother goes round telling of folk here and there, and she’s left
out the one that matters most, that starts everything in the village,
and is the prettiest girl—bar one—in ten parishes—and that’s Miss
Aurea!”
“Why, Miss Aurea, of course, she’s not to be overlooked,” said Mrs.
Hogben, “not nowhere—Miss Parrett’s niece, and the parson’s
daughter; but she’s not here now, she’s a-stoppin’ up in London with
her father’s brother the General—often she does be there—the only
child to go round in three families.”
Wynyard said to himself that he was actually better posted up in
village gossip than Mrs. Hogben; she did not know, as he did, that
Miss Aurea had returned home!
“She manages her aunt wonderful, that she do; indeed, she
manages most things.”
“She’s awful taken up with settling the Manor House and the
garden,” added Tom; “she has a lucky hand, and a real love for
flowers.”
“Ay, and folk do say that Woolcock of Westmere, the only son, has a
real love for her,” supplemented Mrs. Hogben, as she rose and
pushed back her chair; “it would be a sensible thing to wed old family
to good money.”
The newcomer rose also, picked up his cap, and walked to the open
door. He had heard the latest news of Ottinge-in-the-Marsh, and now
he intended to have a look round the village itself.
“I believe I’ll take a bit of a stroll and smoke a pipe,” he said, as he
put on his cap and went out.
“What do you think of the new lodger, Tom?” asked his mother, as
she noisily collected plates and cups.
“I think—it’s hard to say yet; but I likes him. He’s not our sort,
though.”
“Why not? He’s had a good eddication, that’s sure, and talks up in
his head like gentry, but his hands is just the hands of a working
man; and look at his box—that’s no class!”
In the opinion of Mrs. Hogben the box settled the question, and she
went off into the scullery and closed the door with a slam of finality.
 CHAPTER VIII
OTTINGE-IN-THE-MARSH

Wynyard strolled out into the little front garden along the red brick
path to the wooden gate; as he closed this, he observed that it bore
in large characters the enticing name of “Holiday Cottage.” He
smiled rather grimly as he looked back at his new residence, a wood
and plaster construction, bowed in the upper storey, with small,
insignificant windows. Then he glanced up and down the empty
thoroughfare, and was struck by the deathlike silence of the place.
What had become of the residents of Ottinge? A flock of soiled,
white ducks waddling home in single file from the marshes, and a
wall-eyed sheep-dog, were the only live objects in sight.
Ottinge was undeniably ancient and picturesque, a rare field for an
artist; the houses were detached—no two alike—and appeared to
have been built without the smallest attempt at regularity. Some
stood sideways at right angles; others had turned their backs upon
the street, and overlooked the fields; many were timbered; several
were entirely composed of black boarding; one or two were yellow;
but the majority were of rusty brick, with tiled and moss-grown roofs.
Wynyard noticed the ivy-clad house or “dogs’” hotel, with its three
rows of long, prim windows, and close by another of the same class,
with a heavy yew porch that recalled a great moustache. On its neat
green gate was affixed a brass plate and the inscription—D. Boas,
M.D. Farther on at intervals were more houses and a few scattered
shops; these looked as if they were anxious to conceal their identity,
and only suffered a limited display of their wares. Chief among them
was one double-fronted, with tins of pressed beef and oatmeal on
view, and above the door the worthy signboard—T. Hoad, Grocer.
“Quality is my Watchword.” Next came John Death, Butcher, with a
wide window, over which an awning had been discreetly lowered.
Almost every house had its front garden, with a brick wall or palings
between it and the road. One, with a flagged path, an arbour, and a
bald, white face, exhibited a square board close under the eaves, on
which was briefly inscribed the seductive invitation, “Tea.” An
adjoining neighbour, with absolutely bare surroundings, had affixed
to his porch the notice, “Cut Flowers”; and, from the two
advertisements, it was evident that the all-penetrating motor had
discovered the existence of Ottinge-in-the-Marsh!
The next object of note—and in daring proximity to the church—was
the Drum Inn; an undoubtedly ancient black-and-white building, with
dormer windows, an overhanging top storey, and stack of imposing
chimneys. It was strikingly picturesque without (if cramped and
uncomfortable within), and stood forth prominently into the street
considerably in advance of its neighbours, as if to claim most
particular attention; it was a fact that the Drum had been frequently
sketched, and was also the subject of a (locally) popular postcard.
The tall church, grey and dignified, was a fitting conclusion to this
old-world hamlet; parts of it were said to date from the seventh
century. Splendid elms and oaks of unknown age sheltered the
stately edifice, and close by, the last house in Ottinge, was the
dignified Queen Anne rectory. Surrounded by shaven lawns and an
imposing extent of garden walls, it had an appearance of mellow
age, high breeding, and prosperity. The sitting-room windows stood
open, the curtains were not yet drawn, and Wynyard, noticing one or
two flitting figures, permitted his mind to wonder if one of these was
Miss Aurea, who, so to speak, ran the village, ruled the Manor, and
was, according to Thomas Hogben, the prettiest girl—bar one—in
ten parishes?
Pipe in mouth, the explorer wandered along for some distance, and
presently came to a farmhouse, encircled by enormous black barns
and timbered outhouses, with thatched, sloping roofs; but there was
no smoke from the farm chimney, no sound from stables or byre; the
yard was covered with grass, the very duck-pond was dry. A former
tenant and his family, finding the old world too strong for them, had
fled to Canada many years previously, and ever since Claringbold’s
farm had remained empty and desolate. In autumn, the village
urchins pillaged the orchard; in winter, wandering tramps encamped
in the outhouses. Never again would there be a sound of lowing
cows, the humming of threshing gear, the shouts of carters
encouraging their horses, or children’s voices calling to their dogs.
The newcomer leant his arms upon the gate and surveyed the low,
flat country with its distant, dark horizon. Then he turned to
contemplate the hills behind the church, dotted with sheep and
lambs and scored with lanes; he must learn his bearings in this new
locality, as behoved his duty as chauffeur. He had now inspected
Ottinge from end to end, from the low-lying grey Manor, projecting
into its fields, to the Queen Anne rectory, a picture of mellowed
peace.
So here he was to live, no matter what befell. He wondered what
would befall, and what the next year held in store for him? For nearly
an hour he remained leaning on the stout old gate, giving his
thoughts a free rein, and making stern resolutions. Somehow he did
not feel drawn to his billet, nor yet to Miss Parrett, but he resolved
that he would play the game, and not disappoint Leila. She had, as
usual, taken her own line; but had he chosen his fate he would have
preferred a rough-and-tumble town life, active employment in some
big garage, and to be thrown among men, and not a pack of old
women! However, in a town he might be spotted by his friends; here,
in this dead-and-alive village, his position was unassailable, and
possibly Leila was right—it was her normal attitude.
At last he recognised that the soft April night had fallen, bats were
flitting by, the marsh frogs’ concert had commenced—it was time to
go back to Holiday Cottage, and turn in, for no doubt the Hogbens
were early birds.
The ceiling of his room was so low that he hit his head violently
against a beam, and uttered an angry swear word.
The place, which held an atmosphere of yellow soap and dry rot,
was palsied with age; a sloping, creaking floor shook ominously
under his tread; if it collapsed, and he were precipitated into the
kitchen, what an ignominious ending!
In a short time Mrs. Hogben’s new lodger had stretched himself upon
his narrow, lumpy bed, and, being tired, soon fell asleep, and slept
like the proverbial log, until he was awoke by daylight streaming in at
the window, and the sound of some one labouring vigorously at the
pump. He looked at his watch—seven o’clock—he must rise at once
and dress, and see what another day had in store for him.
 CHAPTER IX
THE NEW CHAUFFEUR

As the new arrival wandered up the street, and inspected the village,
he had been under the impression that the place was deserted—he
scarcely saw a soul; but this was the way of Ottinge folk, they spent
most of their time (especially of an evening) indoors, and though he
was not aware of it, Ottinge had inspected him! Girls sewing in
windows, men lounging in the Drum, women shutting up their fowl,
all had noted the stranger, and wondered who this fine, tall young
gentleman might be? An hour later they were amazed to learn that
he was no more and no less than the Parretts’ new chauffeur, who
was lodging with Sally Hogben—Sally, who could talk faster and tell
more about a person in five minutes than another in twenty. This
intelligence—which spread as water in a sponge—created a
profound sensation, and shared the local interest with the news of
the sudden death of Farmer Dunk’s best cow.
The following morning it was the turn of the chauffeur to be
surprised. When he repaired to the Manor, to report himself and ask
for orders, he encountered Miss Parrett herself in the hall, who
informed him, in her shrillest bleat, that as she did not propose to
use the car that day, and as there was nothing else for him to do, he
could put in his time by cleaning windows. When Wynyard heard
Miss Parrett’s order, his face hardened, the colour mounted to his
forehead, and he was on the point of saying that he had been
engaged as chauffeur, and not as charwoman; but a sharp mental
whisper arrested the words on his lips:
“Are you going to throw up your situation within twenty-four hours,
and be back on Leila’s hands after all the trouble she has taken for
you?” demanded this peremptory voice. “You must begin at the
bottom of the ladder if you want to get to the top. Let this old woman
have her own way, and bully you—and if you take things quietly, and
as they come, your affairs will mend.”
After what seemed to Miss Parrett a most disrespectful silence,
during which she glared at Owen with her little burning eyes, and
mumbled with her toothless jaws, he said slowly—
“All right, ma’am. I’ve never cleaned windows yet, but I’ll do my best;
perhaps you will give me something to clean them with?”
“Go through that door and you will find the kitchen,” said Miss
Parrett. “The cook will give you cloths, soap, and a bucket of water.
You may begin in the dining-room;” and pointing towards the
servants’ quarters, she left him. As he disappeared, Susan, who had
overheard the last sentence, boldly remonstrated—
“Really, Bella, that young man is not supposed to undertake such
jobs! He was only engaged as chauffeur, and I’m sure if you set him
to do housework, he will leave.”
“Let him, and mind your own business, Susan,” snapped her sister.
“He is in my employment, and I cannot afford to pay him two guineas
a week—six shillings a day—for doing nothing. I am not a millionaire!
As it is, my hand is never out of my pocket.”
“But you engaged him to drive the car, and if you are afraid to go out
in it, is that his fault?” argued Susan, with surprising courage.
“Who says I’m afraid?” demanded Miss Parrett furiously. “Susan, you
forget yourself. I shall have the car to-morrow, and motor over to call
on the Woolcocks.”
Meanwhile Owen passed into the back premises, which were old
and spacious. Here, in a vast kitchen overlooking a great paved
yard, he found a tall woman engaged in violently raking out the
range. She started as he entered, and turned a handsome, ill-
tempered face upon him.
“Can you let me have some cloths and a bucket of hot water?” he
asked in his clear, well-bred voice.
“Yes, sir,” she answered, going to a drawer. “What sort of cloths—
flannels or rubbers?”
“Something for cleaning windows.”
“Oh, laws, so you’re the new chauffeur! Well, I never!” And, leaving
the drawer open, she turned abruptly, leant her back to the dresser,
and surveyed him exhaustively.
He nodded.
“And so that’s the sort of work the old devil has set you to? Lady
Kesters engaged me for this place, and by all accounts she did the
same kindness by you and me! I understood as this was a proper
establishment, with a regular housekeeper and men—a butler at
least and a couple of footmen; there isn’t as much as a page-boy. It’s
a swindle! I suppose you take your meals with us?” (Here, with an
animated gesture, she dismissed an inquisitive kitchen-maid.)
“No; I board myself.”
Her face fell. This good-looking chauffeur would be some one to flirt
with, and her voice took a yet sharper key.
“You’re from London, I can see, and so am I. Lord! this is a
change”—now casting herself into a chair. “Ye see, I was ordered
country air, and so I came—the wages being fair, and assistance
given; and thinking we were in a park, I brought my bicycle, and
expecting there’d be some society, I brought a couple of ball-gowns,
and find this!” and her expression was tragic.
“Have you been here long?” he asked civilly.
“Two weeks too long. I give notice next day, and am going at the
month, and you won’t be long after me, I bet! Do you bike?”
“No,” he answered rather shortly.
“Well, anyway, you’ve the use of your legs! To-morrow is my evening
out, so you come round here at five, and I’ll give you a nice cup o’
tea, and we’ll go for a stroll together. We ought to be friendly, seeing
as we both come from Lady Kesters’ recommendation.”
To walk out with the cook! This was ten times worse than window-
cleaning! Wynyard was beating his brain for some civil excuse when