Dark Matter

What is equally beyond dispute is that Lord Halifax made a will leaving Mrs. Barton a bequest which, including the house, was worth, upon Lord Halifax’s death in 1715 from an inflammation of the lungs, some twenty thousand pounds or more. Nor is it beyond doubt that Halifax’s powerful relatives contested the will so that the house and most of the money remained in the Montagu family. It was only then that she married Mister Conduitt.

Thirty years have passed since then.

Newton was a good old man when he died. All the wise were his brothers. He admired Noah. Noah would surely have placed Newton in his Ark.

I was invited to Newton’s funeral, and despite my feeling ill, I was determined to attend, for I did bear the man great admiration, as did all who had the inestimable honour to know the Doctor’s mind.

Of wise men I saw a great many in the Abbey to see Newton laid to rest on the evening of his funeral, there being present almost every member of the Royal Society. While the Westminster bell tolled for Newton—nine times for his being a man, and then eighty-five times for his eighty-five years of age—Mrs. Conduitt (she that had been Miss Barton) presented each guest with a mourning ring while a servant handed about sprigs of rosemary, for remembrance, and to hide the smell of death, which, despite the best efforts of the embalmer, was beginning to be all too noticeable.

When she saw me, she coloured a little but maintained her composure. “Colonel Ellis, I wonder that you can set foot in a church,” were all the words she spoke to me.

To see Mrs. Conduitt again at Newton’s funeral and have her speak to me thus was most painful. For she was every bit as beautiful as I had remembered, and even though she was in mourning I was quite distracted by her, for black suited her very much and served to contrast her own natural colours in the same way that ebony or jet will offset gold to best advantage.

I was still in love with her, of course. Even after all these years. I married, some years after I left Newton’s service and took my commission; but my own wife died of the ague some ten years ago. It grieved me only a little to see Miss Barton married to Mister Conduitt, who was a Member of Parliament. Perhaps position in society was all that she ever desired. If so, then her uncle’s funeral must have gratified her very much. Those six members of the Royal Society that bore her uncle’s pall out of the Jerusalem Chamber, through a narrow door, and down a few steps into the candlelit nave of the Abbey, were the first in the realm. These were the Lord Chancellor, the dukes of Montrose and Roxburgh, and the earls of Pembroke, Sussex, and Macclesfield. The Bishop of Rochester, attended by the prebends and choir, performed the office while the mourners were led by a Knight of the Bath. Many more came than were bid, however, and by my own reckoning there were almost three hundred present that night to watch him laid, with every civility, in the floor.

It was a fine service, of infinite light, for there were so many candles lit which shone with such a triumphant splendour upon my head that it seemed to remind me of the absolute potentiality of infinity itself. And as I sat there, my thoughts returned to my conversation with Doctor Clarke and I wondered what satisfaction God could have in our having faith in the teeth of reason? What possible use was there in saying to God that I was convinced of something of which one could not rationally be convinced? Did this not make a lie of faith? The more I considered the matter in relation to Newton, the more I perceived his own dilemma. Faith required him to believe not that which was true but that which appeared to him, whose understanding was so great, to be false. The greatest enemy to his faith appeared to be his own genius. How could he whose whole life had been devoted to understanding, subordinate that which had defined him?

Perhaps alchemy provides the best metaphor for Newton’s own belief in God. For it seems to me his religion was like a regulus—the purer or metallic part of a mineral—which sinks to the bottom of a crucible or a furnace and is thus separated from the remaining matter. This regulus is hidden, and the secret is only in the hands of those who are adept. It was wisdom not yet instructed by revelation; all other religions are good sense perverted by superstition.

Is that what I believe? I should like to believe in something.

When the service was complete, a black slab was laid upon his grave, which lies but a few steps from those of the kings and queens of England. And so all broke up and I walked to Hell, which was a tavern near the entrance to Westminster Hall, in Exchequer Court; and there I thought about these matters some more.