As a man at the forefront of Science, and therefore with a rational and measured explanation for everything, Isaac showed some humility with the fear of God in his eyes as he pleaded with me to accompany him on his flight from Cambridge in the summer of 1665.
The black-rat and flea borne plaque was virulent and merciless in the cities and had even caused a small Derbyshire village, so it was reported in the broadsheets, to shut itself away in a bid to survive the boil-blown blisters which signalled a lingering death.
Isaac's family home was a two day journey by horse drawn coach across the Fens and then into the rolling hills east of Nottingham and towards the small market town of Grantham. Isaac called it a place of great tedium and from whence no one of any substance, fame or notoriety in matters of business or politic would ever be likely to emerge. It was a town of shop keepers, he said.
Woolsthorpe was not a lot more inspiring in my eyes which were more accustomed to the urban vistas. A tiny village it was and Isaac's family occupied the largest, grandest house therein. A large yellow natural stone edifice of a building, exploded forth from an artisan cottage as fortune favoured the familial endeavours and now a bit pretentious with many outbuildings, landed areas and a mature orchard of, on my summers day arrival, heavy fecund boughs laden with green apples just turning to a rosy hue and ripeness. I would perhaps steal away and partake of my own scrumping in the coming weeks, or if the plaque persisted - who knew when.
A wagon arrived a couple of days later stacked high with Isaac's equipment for science. Items were boxed and labelled as to where in his study they should be carefully placed. I was aware then of the depth and breadth of his great mind. He was much feted and admired in academic circles for his work on calculus, optics and celestial issues. He was wholly wed to his research and as long as I had been acquainted ,no female of any guile or intention could appeal to his more base instincts, if at all he harboured any behind that determined and focused visage when engaged in his science.
We had therefore upped-sticks and encamped in rural Lincolnshire. I would have plenty of time to myself if Isaac disappeared into his study for the duration of the daylight hours for the purposes of his experiments with light refraction and prisms. The quality of light was significantly improved to that in Cambridge where a sudden domestic smoke smog could destroy an intricate daylight dependant study so rapidly and send Isaac into a great melancholic stupor.
The only intrusion on his dissection of light experimentation turned out to be the house cat, Mistress Nell, so named after that amusing whore who was keeping King Charles abed and humoured. I would be sat engrossed in a book or pamphlet when Isaac would scream for Mistress Nell to be removed by his domestic staff, usually his long suffering mother Hannah, after another uninvited incursion into his study. The room, darkened by a heavy felt hanging at the window to create a perfect environment for studies in light, was pitch black and a stubborn Isaac would be heard stumbling around falling over the furnishings rather than light a taper for navigation purposes.
Mistress Nell, a favourite companion of Isaac out of office hours would insist on pushing open the heavy panelled study door on an ingraciating visit oblivious to the accompanying flood of dust carrying sunbeam light that would occur in her wake. Issac was on the verge of a breakthrough and was excited and agitated in equal proportions over what he had perceived to be the fracturing of a single beam of sunlight through the heavy window cover and via an intricate bauble of a glass prism into multiple rainbow streams which he called a spectrum. Hannah, poor thing now at the ripe old age of 43 was struggling to cope with the return of the Prodigal Son whom everyone insisted on telling her was a genius. Pots, plates and undergarments were the same to her whatever the status of the person who soiled them and left them for her to retrieve on the weekly wash day for pewter and linen.
On one occasion of being summoned in such a disrespectful manner she had mentioned that Isaac should either kill the cat or apply his pioneering and inventive mind to the problem. Always relishing a challenge Isaac tore away a small parchment fragment from one of his expansive drawing sheets and mused on the dilemna. Cat-door-light-dark. The ensuing sketch was, as I later saw, quite infantile in form and content. The annotation was confusing to my non-scientific outlook. A-Cat, B-door, C-Light and the easy one of the four, D-Dark. Mistress Nell was fashioned in the diagram from two chubby circles, two triangular ears and the absent minded stroke of a quill pen for whiskers. It would not have looked out of place as a satirical cartoon to the wit of Mr Samuel Johnson in his London Salon.
In the following hours there was a riot of hammering, nailing and a tirade of foul cursing from Isaac at the door to the study. Then perspiring but smiling he revealed his solution to alleviating the intrusive movements of the cat. It was a large hole about six inches from the base of the door, a cat sized hole. On the room face of the hole he had tacked a long, extended corridor piece of surplus felt from the window screen. Mistress Nell, with some reticence was physically bundled towards the aperture. She was not well pleased and with claws out and straddling the ominous hole she was not going to participate in the first demonstration of the 'Cat-Hole'. Isaac cajoled and poked the animal with increasing impatience but events had reached an impasse.
I dashed to see the cook in the scullery and returned with a morsel of calves liver which I had remembered engendered an addictive tendency in felines. I wafted it just inside the extended felt sheath. A twitch and a screech later Mistress Nell detached herself from the seasoned oak and shot through into the room. It did take a few more performances of this nature to reinforce the association of the cat hole with the reward of food on the other side. Isaac was understandably proud of his invention. I saw no further possibilities for such a crude opening in a door for the voluntary and unsupervised passage of cats. When , some months later, Mistress Nell (the cat) fell pregnant, ironically to Charles, the large male cat from the adjacent farm, Isaac knocked out a series of smaller holes lower down in the door for the tiny kittens to use. Bright mind he may have had but no common sense. The small offspring would simply follow their mother through the main cat hole and ignore what was now a spoiled, draughty and almost ineffective closure to the study.
I was witness later on to the revenge strategy undertaken by Mistress Nell for the indignity of her treatment at the hands of a previously affectionate and attentive master. She would defecate around the study in a systematic way along the narrow footways in an otherwise crammed full floorspace so that Isaac could not fail to step into something. His documents developed a strange off white tint and acidic pungent smell overnight. He drew another sketch on the matter of improving the influx of air to the room, a sort of air conditioning but was soon distracted by other issues of a less fanciful and futuristic theme.
The pinnacle of Mistress Nells reprisals was out of doors. If Isaac became dulled and of pale pallor from his darkened cavelike existence he would take to a short recreational in the grounds of Woolsthorpe. If a fine day, with little prospect of developing a chill on his delicate chest, he could be found in the orchard, staring at the patterns of light through the leafy boughs, torturing a poor insect to a fiery death using his prism to concentrate a heated sunbeam or just sat with his back to the gnarled trunk of a one of the apple trees.
On such a sunny, still day I had spied Mistress Nell skulking out of the house, no doubt in pursuit of one of the many mice that infested the place.However, she was on an altogether more vindictive quest. She made for the orchard and using the technique of claws out which had prevented, momentarily, her being thrust into that human made hole she easily ascended the fruit tree under which a contented Isaac was sleeping lightly and no doubt dreaming about some convoluted equation of numbers and symbols.
She edged out on her still distended birth swollen belly along the bough directly above Isaac. With a swift and deft swipe of her paw she dislodged a large, somewhat maggoty apple which fell with some velocity but dropped quietly into the thick pip spattered soil at the base of the trunk and slightly to the right of the prone form. Frustrated, but cool and intent on exacting some satisfaction for her previous maltreatment on her master, she tried again.
The next apple was a bit smaller, but ripened and glistening with a mixture of wasp spittle and residual dew. It was attached with some elasticity by its woody stalk connection to the bough and insisted on swinging like a pendulum when initially agitated by paw and claw. Akin to playing with her favourite ball of wool on the floor of the study which had always been to the amusement of her previously attentive and formerly faultlessly considerate master Mistress Nell persisted. She continually punched and pummelled the apple before under an irresistible force it eventually worked loose and fell, straight and true onto the prominent, intelligent and studious head of Isaac Newton.
(repeated from July 2012)
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