Dark Matter

Perceiving this self-righteous and peevish streak in Mister Defoe, Their Lordships dismissed him with a warning to be more careful of whom he accused in future. After which Lord Halifax moved that Lord Harley offer Their Lordships’ apologies for having had Newton endure such baseless charges by such worthless rogues as those we had seen. Lord Harley did so, but said that Their Lordships had only conducted this inquiry in the best interests of the Mint. And with that the hearing ended.

When we were outside the chamber, I congratulated Newton most warmly, and declared myself most mighty relieved at the outcome. “It is as Aristotle says in his Poetics,” I said. “That the plot is the soul of tragedy. For this plot could very easily have succeeded and left you dismissed from your office. Perhaps worse.”

“That it did not is partly thanks to your diligence, in discovering much about Mister Defoe,” said Newton. “And Mister Fatio’s, too. For it was Fatio who wrote to his friends on the Continent about Count Gaetano. But in truth my enemies were ill-prepared. Had they been stronger, they would have felt better able to reveal themselves.”

I shook my head. “To think of what might have happened, sir. You must return home at once.”

“Why must I?”

“Your niece, Miss Barton, will be most anxious to hear what has happened, will she not?”

But already his thoughts lay elsewhere.

“This has all been an unwelcome distraction from the main business in hand,” he said. “Which is the decipherment of that damned code. I have cudgelled my brains and still I can make nothing out of it.”

Over the next few weeks Newton continued to make only slow progress with the cipher, which moved me to suggest, when we were in the office one day, that he might seek the help of Doctor Wallis of Oxford. But Newton treated my suggestion with scorn and derision.

“Ask help of Wallis?” he said with incredulity, as he set to stroking the cat. “I should sooner solicit the opinion of Melchior. ’Tis one thing to borrow a man’s books, but quite another to make use of his brains. Go to him, cap in hand, and confess that I am baffled by this cipher? Why, then the man would bend Heaven and Earth to do something which I could not; and, having done so, would tell all the world. I would never hear the end of it. It would be better that I stuck a bare bodkin in my own side than let him put a thorn there to plague me with.”

Newton nodded angrily. “But it is right that you hold this up to me, for it serves to prick my thinking parts toward the devising of the solution of this conundrum. For I’ll not be dunned like some vulgar arithmetician who can practice what he has been taught or has seen done but, if he is in error, knows not how to find it out and correct it; and if you put him out of his road, he is at a complete stand.

“Yes sir, you encourage me, by God you do: to reason nimbly and judiciously about numerical frequency, for I swear I shall never be at rest till I get over every rub.”

Thus I observed that the cleverer the person, the more certain is his conviction that he is able to solve a puzzle which nobody else can solve; and that this goes to show the truth of Plato’s theory that knowledge involves true belief but goes beyond it.

After that, Newton was almost never without a black lead and a sheet of paper that was covered with letters and algebraic formulas, with which he strove to work out the cipher’s solution. And sometimes I altogether forgot that he did this work. But I well remember the time when Newton finally broke the code. All of a sudden there was great talk of a peace with the French near signing. Formal negotiations between ourselves and the French had been under way since May, at the Dutch town of Rijswijk. This was just as well, for it was common knowledge that the fleet was in a dreadful parlous state at anchor in Torbay, for want of provisions that was occasioned by the severe lack of good money. It was even said by my brother Charles that we had borrowed Dutch money to pay English sailors, and if so, then it’s certain nothing but a peace could have retrieved our situation.

The date was August the twenty-seventh, 1697, and I can still recall how I was a little surprised when Newton ignored my news of the peace and instead informed me, most triumphantly, that the deciphering of the letters was done and immediately made pertinent sense.

I accepted his word on the matter straightaway—for there was no denying the look of immense satisfaction on his face—and congratulated him most warmly upon the solution; and yet he still insisted on demonstrating the ingenious construction of the cipher in order that I might be satisfied of the truth of what he said. Newton drew his chair up to our table in the Mint office and, pushing Melchior away from his papers, showed me the many pages of his copious workings.