The Mechanical Messiah

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

YVETTE AND VERITY

AND TO THE MEMORY OF

JAMES STUART CAMPBELL

1965—2010

The universe is a machine

In which everything happens

By figure and motion.

René Descartes

I’d like to be a machine.

Wouldn’t you?

Andy Warhol

1897

he foyer of the Electric Alhambra was lit to a pretty perfection.

One thousand vacuum bulbs, brought to brilliance by Lord Tesla’s latest innovation, the wireless transmission of electricity, illuminated a scene of lavish enchantment. Just so.

The foyer was crafted to the Moorish style, with a high central dome and surrounding arches. And all throughout and around and about, mosaics of turquoise and gold sparkled in the dazzling luminescence. These mosaics were wrought with cunning arabesques and details of intricate geometry. Here a hexagram, picked out in oriental amethyst and lapis lazuli. There a pentacle, in heliotrope and aquamarine. So rich and complex were these ornamentations as to baffle the eye and stagger the senses. To inspire both wonder and awe.

The foyer was furnished with settles and settees, copious couches and diverse divans. These were upholstered with sumptuous swan’s down, moleskin and marmot and pale astrakhans. Towering torchères with filigreed finials, tables of pewter and copper and brass. Inlaid and overlaid, fiddled and diddled, fantastic fittings and glittering glass.

But all of these wonders — and wonders they were —served only as an architectural hors d’oeuvre to the great banquet of gilded glory that was the auditorium. For beyond tall doors of embellished enamel, which rose like hymns in praise of pleasure, were Xanadu and Shangri-La made flesh in wood and stone. In bronze and in ormolu, travertine and tourmaline, crystal and silver and glittering gold.

The auditorium boasted seating for three thousand people in the most exquisite surroundings imaginable. Electrically lit and lavishly appointed, it was truly a marvel of the modern age.

But— There were certain folk who expressed certain doubts.

The Society columnist of
The Times
newspaper, for instance. He had coined a new term to describe the interior of the Electric Alhambra: ‘Architectural Sesquipedalianism’. Words such as ‘grandiloquent’, ‘overblown’, ‘ostentatious’ and, indeed, ‘intemperate’, flowed from his steam-powered fountain pen and figured large in his repertoire of damnation for this ‘Monstrous Testament to Bad Taste’.

For ‘The Thunderer’s’ columnist was a titled toff of the esoteric persuasion and the Electric Alhambra, a
Music Hall!

Now this was not to say that the gentry did not frequent the Music Hall. Not one diddly bit of it. But even those adventurous aristocrats who favoured titillation above temperance entered the portals of such establishments furtively and in heavy disguise, thereby perpetuating the belief that the Music Hall was really just for commoners — the hoi polloi and
not
the hoity-toity.

Upon this particular evening, a warm summer’s evening in early July, the hoi polloi held sway. Certain swank events here in the British Empire’s capital had drawn most of high social standing to the company of their own and the Electric Alhambra was the almost exclusive preserve of the downtrodden masses. Or at least those members of the lumpen-proletariat as could scrape together the price of admission: three fine, bright copper pennies.

But there were others present upon this summer’s evening. Others whose undeniable
otherness
distinguished them. Marked them out as
different.
Other men from other worlds were these. Beings from the bloated planet of Jupiter, or the cloud-girt world of Venus.

It was now twelve years since the Martian invasion of Earth, as recalled in that historical memoir of Mr H. G. Wells,
The War of the Worlds,
and two since Worlds War Two. Happily the Martians had been mercilessly destroyed and happier still the British Empire now extended to Mars. But the alliance and state of peace that existed between Earth, Venus and Jupiter was an uneasy one. There was a singular lack of trust and at times acts of open hostility were directed towards off-worlders who walked the streets of London.

But not
here.
Not here in the Music Hall. Whatever happened outside remained outside. Within, the Music Hall justly considered itself to be the very exemplar of egalitarianism. All were welcome and all were treated equally. Al-though those with more than three pennies to spend
could
occupy the better seats.

So, what of the Alhambra’s patrons this evening? What of their looks and their manners and styles? Mr Cameron Bell, that most private of private detectives, was known (by those in the know) to be capable of discerning a man’s occupation merely by the study of his boots.

The boots of those who now shuffled about upon the mosaic floor of the foyer spoke of many occupations. As indeed did their distinctive attire.

Here were the piemen and those who offered for sale upon the thoroughfares of the great metropolis such toothsome viands as mock-plum duff, straw muffins, mud pies, sawdust puddings and cardboard cakes. Shirts, once white, found favour with them, as did long, pale smocks of antique design, as worn by bakers in bygone days. When bread was oft-times made out of bread and rarely, as now, out of chalk.

Mingling amongst these fellows were to be seen the cockney street sellers of flypapers, beetle wafers and wasp traps, cockroach castles and sea-monkey sanctuaries. These were men of the ‘pattering class’, who plied their wares with silken tongues and honeyed words. Displaying a tamed spider or two, with which to garner interest from Samaritans. They sported suits of rough-cut plaid with patterns in beige and taupe, echoing those of Lord Burberry.

Many and various were the trades of London’s working class. Trades that had persisted since the dawn of recorded history and would no doubt prevail for ever, resisting all future trends. Crossing sweepers conversed with rat-catchers, bone-grubbers and those who gathered the Pure.
[1]
Mole—stranglers and ferret—stretchers shared jokes with horse-sniffers and donkey-punchers, the men who point at poultry and those who untwist dogs into the shape of balloons.

The owners of dancing ducks and industrious insects exchanged banter with characters who bruised peaches for public entertainment and others prepared to scrape tortoises in private, once a proper price had been agreed upon.

And here also were the folk of London’s underworld. The men ‘who would not be blamed for nothing’. The coiners and card sharps. The purloiners of parrots. Burglars of bunnies and budgerigars. Kidnappers of kittens. Procurers of poodles. Pimps of Pomeranians. Loudly dressed and loudly spoken were they, and in the company of women.

Women of easy virtue these and of boisterous disposition. Brightly frocked, given to the downing of gin and the employment of fisticuffs and foul language. And such immoderate laughter as to rattle light bulbs and set upon edge whatever teeth any possessed.

But not all women here were such as they. Others were decent working girls. Those ingénues, poor but honest, clean and well turned out. Girls in service to the houses of the great and the good. Parlour maids and linen-folders. Respectable spinsters who laundered lavender bags, pampered pillows and fluffed up the muffs of their mistresses. In comets and bustles, best gloves and bonnets, out for a night at the Music Hall.

And what a night this would prove to be for those who thronged the foyer upon this summer’s evening. Cooled by conditioned air that wafted from the patent ice grotto, yet warmed by anticipation for all that lay ahead.

Tonight they would thrill to the best that Music Hall had to offer. The topmost of all top turns. The greatest comics and songsters, dancers and novelty acts of this or any other age. And topping the topmost of the bill, none other than England’s best-loved entertainer, Mr Harry ‘Hurty-Finger ‘Hamilton. Four billings up from the now legendary Travelling Formbys and three above the remarkable Lovell’s Acrobatic Kiwis, Harry bestrode the London stage as a colossus, admired by men, adored by women.
A smile, a song and a
damaged
digit
— how could it get better than
that?

Tonight, Harry, all dapper in tailcoat and topper, would sing his heart out and raise the crowd to a standing ovation. And having done so, he would return to his six-star dressing room to toast his triumph with champagne and sherbet. In the company of ladies skilled in those arts which amuse men.

Or at least such was his intention.

But even the best of intentions can occasionally come to naught. And tonight things would not go quite as Harry had hoped that they would. Tonight an event would occur at the Electric Alhambra. An event that was definitely not listed upon the playbill. It would prove to be a tragic and terrible event. The first in a series of tragic and terrible events. Tragic and terrible events that would threaten not only the Music Hall, but London, the Empire and all of the Solar System.

Tragically.

And terribly.

They would involve, amongst others, a man and a monkey, as can sometimes be the case.

n a crowded communal dressing room, which owned to no stars upon its door but an abundance of kiwi birds flopping foolishly about, a man and a monkey sat and scowled.

Neither was speaking to the other.

That a man might have nothing to say would appear reasonable enough. Most ordinary men have the choice of speaking words when they wish to and withholding them when they do not. But not so monkeys, which are generally assumed to be wordless, at least in human terms. This, however, was no ordinary man and certainly no ordinary monkey.