The attraction of national interest: navigational compasses as cultural artefacts

PATRICIA FARA

Around the end of the eighteenth century, instructors from dissenting academies taught young children to read fluently from moralising texts intentionally printed with only scanty punctuation. One short fable related the confrontation in a collector’s cabinet between a beautiful diamond and a rusty loadstone, the iron ore used for magnetising compass needles. Juxtaposing these two particular minerals may seem contrived to us, but writers had been comparing them to preach lessons of hidden virtue since at least the sixteenth century. The loadstone stressed the dangers of judging from external appearances, breathlessly boasting about its own concealed qualities:

It is owing to me that the distant parts of the world are known and accessible to one another that the remotest nations are connected and all in a manner united into one common society that by a mutual intercourse they relieve one another’s wants and enjoy the several blessings peculiar to each. Great Britain is indebted to me for her wealth her splendor and her power the arts and sciences are in a great measure obliged to me for their late improvements and their continual increase.

This speech illustrates how understanding the value of magnetic compasses had become a standard component of the polite educational curriculum. Like other children’s tales, ‘The Diamond and the loadstone’ imparted at nursery level the polemical messages familiar to adult audiences which intertwined moral improvement, national expansion and the commercial benefits of progressive natural philosophy.’

Nowadays, interdisciplinary conferences, journals and departments are proli- ferating, but for historians, the word ‘interdisciplinary’ itself betrays how our portrayals of the past are framed by anachronistic distinctions. Before the construction of new academic specialities at the beginning of the nineteenth century, people lived in a predisciplinary culture: the ‘two cultures’ divide, so influentially articulated by C. P. Snow, had not yet been created. The disciplinary map has changed stilI further since Snow’s famous lecture of I 9 5 9. In a bid for unity, historians of science and literature have mutually explored the shared territory of the arts and the sciences: yet simultaneously, the academic world

I. Thomas and John Holland, Exercisesfor the memory and understanding, with a series of examin- ations, 4th edn (Bolton 1805). p.10-11. See James A. Secord, ’Newton in the nursery: Tom Telescope and the philosophy of tops and b d s , 1761-1838’. History of science 23 (1985). p.127-51: Larry Stewart, The Rise of pubhc science: rhetoric., technology, and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750 (Cambridge I 992).

British journalfor eighteenth-century studies 20 (1997). p.125-39 0 BSECS 0141-876X

126 PATRICIA FARA

has been characterised by a counter-process of splintering, as disciplines separate into increasingly restricted areas of specialisation.2 Modern scholars mostly allocate instruments such as old compasses to the domain of historians of technology. But, like other material artefacts, compasses acquired multiple meanings as they were used and represented in different contexts. Because of their diverse interpretations, compasses provide an opportunity to transcend current demarcations and enter into the eighteenth-century cultural world existing before the fabrication of limiting labels like physics, literary criticism or technology.

In eighteenth-century Britain, compasses were vital for the country’s economic welfare, and also resonated with symbolic associations rooted in maritime traditions and older cosmologies. Compasses guided not only the hardy mariners exploring the terrestrial globe, but also humble pilgrims voyaging through life towards God. While inventive entrepreneurs advertised the economic rewards of investing in new navigational devices, poets, preachers and artists drew on rich reserves of magnetic imagery for embellishing their texts. Compass needles represented the constancy of human souls irresistibly drawn to the divine centre of attraction, and magnetic powers were often portrayed as sympathetically bonding people to each other and to the rest of the universe.

Britain’s status as a wealthy maritime kingdom reinforced the potency and ubiquity of compass imagery. Bernard Mandeville’s disparaging remark that ‘the national Interest is the Compass that all Statesmen steer by’ was strengthened by the extent to which people perceived that compasses contributed to the national interest.3 The nation’s economic and imperial power stemmed from its naval strength. Ships brought back raw materials from overseas, exported finished goods, colonised new territories and engaged in naval warfare. But travelling by sea was extremely dangerous, partly because of shortcomings in navigational techniques. As one famous example, Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s shipwreck of 1707 became legendary: aiming for the Bristol Channel, he ran aground on the Scilly Isles, losing four ships and about 2000 sailors.4 Additional hazards of bad weather, pirates and disease prompted Samuel Johnson to quip that ‘being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned’, and shipwrecks featured prominently in contemporary art and literature.5

Natural philosophers, preachers and men of letters were meshed into a single web of nationalist rhetoric: while literary authors represented compasses as the infallible guides which had made Britain great, philosophical entrepreneurs emphasised the need for more reliable instruments to ensure continuing British

2. Stefan Collini. ‘Introduction’, C. P. Snow, The Two cultures (Cambridge 1993). p.vii-hi; George Levine, ‘One culture: science and literature’, Science and literature. ed. George Levine (Wisconsin 1987). P.3-32.

3. Bernard Mandeville. The Fable of the bees: or, private vices, public benefits, 2 vols, ed. F. B. Kaye

4. W. E. May, ‘The last voyage of Sir Cloudisley Shovel’, Journal of the Institute of Navigation I 3 (Oxford 1g23), ii.41-42.

(19601, p.324. 5. James Boswell, BosweZl’s Zije o/Johnson, 2 vols (London I927), i.232. See George P. Landow.

Images ofcrisis: literary iconology, 1750 to the present (Boston 1982). p.4-130.

Navigational compasses as cultural artefacts 12 7

supremacy. Writers also used religious epithets about compasses to endorse mercantile imperialism. Like many other natural theologians, James Hervey laced biblical quotations into a lengthy passage thanking God for this apparently ‘mean, contemptible, and otherwise worthless fossil ’:

And a sea-compass, which cost, perhaps, no more than half a crown, is the means of conveying into our harbours the rarities and riches of the universe [...I Through this channel, are imported to our island the choice productions, and the peculiar treasures, of every nation under heaven [...I [so that] [...I London becomes a moot of nations.6A popular journal explained that compasses enabled ‘the industrious bees, from the hives of Europe’ to reach and instruct ’the Indian and African savages [...I in the knowledge of that supreme Lord and Governor of the universe, of whom, before that, they had such odd and uncouthly confused notions’.7

Sermons, devotional poems and hymns often included images of God as a divine magnet attracting human souls. Their basic sentiment is clearly if clumsily expressed in this edifying couplet on a tombstone in Glasgow cathedral:

Our life’s a flying shadow, God is the pole The needle pointing to him is our soul.*

The design of compass roses embodied older religious and cosmological mean- ings. For example, the illustration on the lower right of Figure I exemplifies how the eastern cardinal point was often specially marked as late as the nineteenth century, a material residue of their complex history. Roses originated not on navigating instruments, but on Catalan sailing charts, where they represented wind directions. Charts and early maps were oriented with east at the top, since for Spanish and Portuguese travellers, east was the direction both of Jerusalem and of Paradise, Christ’s earthly and heavenly holy cities. For several centuries, the east was frequently indicated by a cross on European roses displayed on charts, maps and compasses.9 That this remained more than a notional symbol is indicated by Christopher Smart’s verses on using magnetic instruments to measure longitude. These reverberated with Christian imagery:

For the Life of God is i n the Loadstone, and there is a magnet, which pointeth due EAST. Let Martha rejoice with the Skallop - the Lord revive the exercise and excellence of the Needle. For the Glory of God is always in the East, but cannot be seen for the cloud of the crucifixion.. . For due East is the way to Paradise, which man knoweth not by reason of his fall ... For the Longitude is (nevertheless) attainable by steering angularly notwithstanding.

6. James Hervey. Theron and Aspasio: or, a series of dialogues and letters, upon the most important and

7. Universal magazine 6 (1747), p.118. 8. Notes andqueries 6 (1852), p.369. y. See E. G . R. Taylor, The Haven-finding arl: navigation from Odysseus to Cook (London 1956).

Recent literature is well summarised on p.395-98 of Tony Campbell, ‘Portolan charts from the late thirteenth century to I 500’ . The History gfcartography, 3 vols, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago and London 1987), i.371-463. There is considerable debate about the origins andmeaning of the fleur-de-lys indicating north.

interesting subjects, 2 vols (London 1813L ii.233-36.

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In these lines, the scallop is emblematic of the Christian pilgrim, aiming towards perfection like a needle striving towards the pole, magnetically directed to the spiritual east of the prelapsarian Garden of Eden.’”

The physical design of compasses changed during the eighteenth century, but the underlying concept of a magnetic pointer to the north remained stable. However, the meanings people attached to compasses varied enormously de- pending on the context; in other words, these material artefacts were culturally situated. The symbolic significance of compasses affected their design, but - less obviously, perhaps - compass metaphors were implicated in fashioning cultural transformations. Through retrieving the concealed connotations of compasses, this article explores how technological innovations are bound up with social interactions. I use compasses as a historical tool for examining how the relation- ships between different communities shifted, thus molding the structures and values framing modern society. First, I counteract glib narratives of technical progress by exploring the mixed responses to a new compass model: establishing this invention’s success was entrenched within the bids of natural philosophers to displace maritime practitioners as the legitimated authorities on magnetic affairs. Secondly, I draw on poetic sources to illustrate how writers adapted traditional religious imagery to consolidate new gender roles for men and women. By moving between a specific artefact and abstract representations of its ideal type, I demonstrate how material and symbolic objects are interactively bound within a common context. I hope to convince readers from any disciplin- ary background that examining instruments can enhance their appreciation of eighteenth-century Britain’s predisciplinary culture.

Inventing a new compass

For the first half of the eighteenth century, mariners relied on compasses very similar to those which had been in use a hundred years earlier. The needles were lozenges of soft iron wire roughly bent into a diamond shape, and pasted beneath the card. The card and needle were set in a wooden case, with a detachable base so that the wire could be remagnetised periodically with a piece of loadstone. When new, these compasses were stable but not very accurate, and in maritime conditions, the wood cracked, the needle rusted and the card warped. In the middle of the century, the Royal Society’s magnetic specialist, a physician called Gowin Knight, designed a new compass which soon became standard naval equipment. As Figure I shows, Knight introduced numerous modifications. For example, his needle was a narrow steel bar delicately balanced on a point: it remained permanently magnetised, and the fine divisions of the

10. Christopher Smart. The Poetical works of Christopher Smart. 4 vols. ed. Karina Williamson (Oxford 1980-1987), ii.39-40 (‘Jubilate agno’); Harriet Guest, Aform olsound words (Oxford 1989), p.232-38,

I 3 0 PATRICIA FARA

scale indicate its high level of accuracy. The protective casing was made of expensive but durable brass rather than wood. I1

Naval historians celebrate Knight as the inventor of the first ‘scientific’ compass. But although we tend to think that scientific means better, this criterion for judging improvement was not self-evident during the eighteenth century. Rather than automatically enjoying the elite status of modern scientists, natural philosophers were often satirised as dilettante virtuosi or scheming projectors marketing impractical suggestions. Gulliver’s travels, the most famous expression of such criticisms, is particularly relevant because of the flying magnetic island of Laputa. IZ Although historians often dismiss the eighteenth century as a period of little scienti6c importance, enormous social transformations took place which laid the basis for professionalised institutional science. Natural philosophers struggled to gain public recognition as experts in a range of fields - for example, those now labelled magnetism, geology and pharmacology - which originated in practical activities, but which became constructed as scientific disciplines at the beginning of the nineteenth century. To achieve power as publicly legitimated authorities, these self-styled men of science displaced traditional practitioners such as navigators, surveyors and herbalists.I3

Knight exemplifies the entrepreneurial natural philosophers who indelibly altered polite English culture. Seeking personal recognition and financial reward, they contributed towards constructing powerful public sciences, and - like other contemporary innovators - carved out new ways of earning a living.I4 The debates surrounding Knight’s compass provide a means of examining how local controversies are related to broader patterns of change, and how material artefacts can act as interfaces between diverse groups of people. There was general consensus that navigational techniques should be improved. However, interested groups such as navigators, experimental philosophers and naval administrators disagreed about how this should be achieved because they held contrasting attitudes towards navigation in general, and towards compasses in particular.

Knight himself regarded his compasses and other magnetic inventions as a gentlemanly source of income. The Royal Society provided a marvellous promotional platform, since he could mingle with influential people - including the head of the Admiralty - to ensure that the Navy adopted his compasses.

I I. Gowin Knight, ‘A description of a mariner’s compass contrived by Gowin Knight, MB FRS’. Philosophical transactions 46 ( I 750). p. j O 5-12, See W. E. May, A history of marine navigation (Henley- on-Thames 1973), p.43-107.

12. Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s travels (London 1966), p.163-205. Discussions include Dennis Todd, ‘Laputa. the whore of Babylon, and the idols of science’. Studies in philology 75 (1978). p.93-120. and John Christie. ‘Laputa revisited. Nature transfigured: sciencr and literature, I 700-1 900, ed. John Christie and Sally Shuttleworth (Manchester 1989), p.45-60.

13. See Jan Golinski, Science as public culture: chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820 (Cambridge 1992); Patricia Fara, Sympathetic attractions: rnagnetic practices. beliefs, and symbolism in eighteenth-century England (Princeton I 996). 14. Patricia Fara, ”‘Master of practical magnetics”: the construction of an eighteenth-century

natural philosopher’, Enlightenment and dissent 14 (199 j), p.52-87.

Navigational compasses as cultural artefacts 13 I

Knight developed diverse strategies for advertising his products, and he became notorious for his protective secretiveness, which contradicted the prevailing ethical code of openness amongst natural philosophers.

For his more idealistic coIleagues, Knight’s compass represented an oppor- tunity to advertise the public benefits of the research carried out at the Royal Society. Propagandists of the rewards natural philosophy could bring to commer- cial expansion constantly cited the famous trilogy of Renaissance inventions: printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass.I5 Rhetoricians at the Royal Society singled out Knight’s compass as a prime example of how studying the natural world could enable British people to realise the Enlightenment dream of controlling it. ‘Let those who doubt’, the eminent physician John Pringle declared, ‘view that Needle, which [...I directs the course of the British mariner round the world’.16 Knight was promptly awarded the Copley Medal, the Royal Society’s most prestigious award. In his presentation speech, the President boasted that this invention would help Britain ‘increase and promote greatly our foreign trade and commerce, whereby we are provided at home with the fruits, the conveniences, the curiosities and the riches of the most distant climates’.’ 7

Consolidating this profitable alliance between commerce and natural philosophy, he emphasised that the Society sought no financial reward for itself, but was engaged in the disinterested pursuit of useful knowledge for the nation’s benefit.

Polemical strategies about the benefits of science have been so successful that resistance towards Knight’s compass has been concealed. Not everyone perceived his invention as an unequivocal sign of progress. Maritime experts, men with a deep personal concern to avoid the rocky fate of Shovel1 and his crew, initially welcomed Knight’s new compass, but many were disappointed by its perfor- mance. James Cook, for example, reported that he had found it ‘to be of very little use on Board small Vessels at sea’, and George Rodney complained that it was ‘impossible to steer by’.I* One problem was that Knight, working in London rooms, had produced a sensitive instrument which gave accurate readings on a flat table. But on a ship rolling in an ocean storm, the needle circled without settling on a reading. As a mariner setting off for Tahiti explained:

The New Compass is a very fine Instrument for observing the Variation when the Ships in smooth water. It is likeways very good for observing the variation ashoar. but will not answer at Sea in bad weather when the Ship has a quick motion. It then runs round and never stands Steedy.Ig

Some of the changes which Knight regarded as improvements - such as increas-

IS. Herbert Weisinger, ‘English treatment of the relationship between the rise of science and the

16. John Pringle, ‘A discourse on the different kinds of air’, Philosophical transactions 63 (1774),

17. Royal Society Journal Book (copy), vol. XIX. p. 366 (Martin Folkes, 30 November 1747). 18. Letter from Cook to the Navy Board of 8 March 1768 -PRO: ADM 10611163. Rodney quoted

in David Spinney. Rodney (London 1969). p.ro7. 19. George Robertson, The Discovery of Tahiti: a journal of the second voyage of HMS Dolphin round

the world, under the command of Captain Wallis RN, in the years 1766. 1767, and 1768, ed. Hugh Carrington (London 1948). p.29.

Renaissance, 1740-1840’, Annals ofscipnce 7 (195 I) , p.248-74.

Appendix. p.28.

132 PATRICIA FARA

ing sensitivity - had made the compass less valuable at sea. Although he continued to implement minor alterations, this metropolitan inventor was never able to make his instruments entirely appropriate for maritime users.

Navigators held different expectations of their compasses from land-based natural philosophers. They regarded them not as reliable precision instruments, but as fallible guides indicating the ship’s general direction. The experienced Arctic sailor Charles Douglas was greatly impressed because he found Knight’s compass to be accurate within a point (over eleven degrees), whereas Knight himself was concerned about errors of fractions of a degree. Practical navigation texts contained fewer instructions about using and maintaining compasses than about traditional steering techniques which relied on expertise rather than instruments. One book maintained that ‘a learner will steer a s h p to a greater nicety by a mark-a-head [landmark], than a good helmsman can do without a mark by the compass’.2o In one of the century’s most popular epic poems, James Falconer’s ‘The Shipwreck’, the helmsman only turned to the compass as a desperate last resort:

The pilots now their rules of art apply. The mystic neeedle devious aim to try ... But here, alas! his science nought avails! Art droops unequal, and experience fails.’I

Basing his poem on his own experience of disaster at sea, Falconer expressed very different sentiments from authors celebrating English scientific achievements.

In addition to navigators, other naval Communities held their own views of Knight’s compasses. For example, Admiralty officials aware of Treasury supervision regarded them as yet another piece of expensive equipment for which funds had to be raised. In the dockyards, on the other hand, when compass makers saw their jobs being eroded by Knight - an outside contractor - sympathetic clerks performed some nifty accountancy work. Reducing compasses to collections of individually priced parts, they argued that it would be cheaper for local colleagues to assemble completed instruments than to buy them in from outside.2L

Resurrecting these negative perceptions of Knight’s compass amongst mari- time communities counterbalances conventional narratives of technological progress, and exemplifies the conflicts surrounding other contemporary inno- vations. As natural philosophers successfully established themselves as the country’s magnetic experts, they imposed their own methods and theories on to maritime practitioners. New criteria determined what it meant to be a good navigator. Naval promotion came to depend on learning how to use accurate

20. William Hutchinson. A treatise on practical seamanship; with hints and remarks relating thereto (17771, p.105-106.

21. William Falconer, The Shipwreck and other poems [...I with a life oj the author (London 1838). p.52; see Landow, Images ofcrisis. p.75-84.

22. Letters from Deptford Clerk of the Cheque to the Navy Board of 29 November I 756 and 8April1764-PRO:ADM 106/3381-2 andof 7January 1765-PRO:ADM 106/3401.p.7;Letters from Deptford to the Navy Board of 12 and 19 August 1768 -PRO: ADM 106/3401, p.431-32.

Navigational compasses as cultural artefacts I 3 3

instruments and mathematical techniques of navigation. Despite its drawbacks, Knight’s compass remained standard naval issue well into the nineteenth cen- tury. This survival reflects how his personal publicity campaign meshed with more widespread propaganda advertising the public benefits of natural philo- sophy.

The picture reproduced in Figure 2 expresses these polemical messages visu- ally, using the language of classical allegory to celebrate London’s vital role in Britain’s expanding trading empire. Commerce, or the triumph of the Thames, painted by James Barry for the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufac- tures and Commerce, was one of a series of murals portraying the progressive stages of human culture. Barry explained that famous British navigators, na- tional heroes like Francis Drake and James Cook, are dressed as Tritons. They are transporting Father Thames, who holds in his left hand a ‘mariner’s compass: from the use of which, modern navigation has arrived at a certainty, importance, and magnitude, superior to any thing known in the ancient world: it conquers places the most remote from each other: and Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, are thus brought together, pouring their several productions into the lap of the Thames’. Mercury, the god of commerce, hovers overhead as Nereids contribute manufactured goods from England’s developing industrial citie~.~3

Placing a compass at the centre of his picture, Barry invoked the past to display the centrality of this navigational instrument to commercial expansion and national glory. Barry carefully identified individual English heroes, but forbore from mentioning the crews essential for their success. Contemporary image makers constructed similar eulogising scenes signalling class differentia- tions. As elite landscape painters fortified their superior vantage points, they blurred the figures of distant field laborers into anonymity. Writers and artists commemorated the inventors and factory owners producing profitable new goods, yet effaced the workforce responsible for their manufacture. Similarly, as they defined scientific disciplines, natural philosophers wrote retrospective histories aggrandising men of genius for their momentous discoveries, while countless other contributors fell into oblivion. Supplanting maritime practitioners as the legitimated guardians of magnetic expertise, men of science levered themselves into a powerful position by sculpting their identity as indispensable contributors to the nation’s pr0sperity.~4

Compass metaphors

Although he may have heard of Knight, Barry’s compass is representational, and illustrates the concept of a compass rather than a specific contemporary

23 . James Barry, An account of a series of pictures, in the Great Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, a t the Adelphi (London I 783), p.59-60. See William L. Pressly. The LiJe and art of James Barry (New Haven and London 1981). p.86-122: John Barrell. The Political theory ofpainting from Reynolds to Huzlltt: ‘The body of the public’ (New Haven and London 1986), p.163- 221 (esp. p.192-99).

24. John Barrell, The Birth ofPundora and the division of knowledge (Basingstoke 1992), p.41-61: Maureen McNeil, ‘The scientific muse: the poetry of Erasmus Darwin’, Languages of nature: critical essays on science and literature. ed. Ludmilla Jordanova (London 1986), p.159-zo3.

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model. His depiction resembles those expressed verbally by armchair travellers, who - in marked contrast to oceanic voyagers like Falconer - polemically portrayed compasses as indispensable contributors to British might:

Hail glorious gift! design’d the world to bless, Transcended only by the teeming Press. The fearless pilot led by thee shall brave The turbid fury of the Atlantic w a ~ e . . . ~ s

Developing diverse figurative imagery, writers elaborated this abstract concept of an infallible compass to fashion cultural identities in a changing society.

Francis Quarles’s I 6 3 5 book of Emblems, repeatedly published and rewritten throughout the eighteenth century, was an important source of compass meta- phors which perpetuated an emblematic magnetic tradition stemming back to Petrarch’s love poems. The picture illustrating two verses later called ‘The Christian’s loadstone’ shows a winged angel welcoming a human soul, personi- fied as female, who clutches a compass to guide her towards God. Just as an oscillating compass needle eventually settles at true north, so, Quarles concludes, the soul ‘points alone to thee’. The accompanying motto - ‘I am my Beloveds, and his desire is towards me’ - expresses a seventeenth-century soul’s view of God’s possessive love, articulating the ambiguities of an attraction professedly based on love, but manifesting itself as power.zG

Religious polemicists drew on this devotional poem for composing hymns, instructing their pupils, and selecting tombstone inscriptions. John Norris, the clerical Cambridge Platonist renowned for his inspirational verses, very probably had Quarles’ symbolism in mind when he wrote The Aspiration, set to music by Henry Purcell. Like Quarles, he described the uncertainty of an equivocating spiritual pilgrim:

Ev’n here thy strong magnetic charms I feel. And pant and tremble like the amorous steel; To lower good. and beauties not divine, Sometimes my erroneous needle does decline; But yet so strong the sympathy, It turns again and points to

Particularly in the first half of the eighteenth century, religious polemicists frequently used this imagery to express the strength of God’s attraction, and the power of good over evil. Phrases like ‘God is the true great Magnet of our Souls’,

2 j. Joseph Cottle. ‘Science revived. or the vision of Alfred’, British critic 19 (1802). p.388-93 (quotation p.390).

26. Francis Quarles, Quarles’ emblums. divirw nnd moral: together witb bieroglyphics of the liji of man (London C.I 790). p.202-203. See Charles Moseley. A century of emblems: an introductory anthology (Aldershot 1989). p.3-6. 17. 92, 95. For some editions. the verses were entirely rewritten. but the illustration remained similar even when new plates were made.

27. John Norris, The Poems of John Norris of’Bem~t0n:fOr thefirst time collected and edited after the original texts , ed. Alexander Grosart, Miscellanies oftba Fuller Worthies’ library 3 (3) (1871). p.174.

136 PATRICIA FARA

or ‘The Magnetism of heav’nly Love,/Draws some to God above’ pervaded devotional texts.28

Writers increasingly applied such magnetic images not to divine attraction, but to the attraction between people. Unlike the harshly abstract laws of modern science, natural laws during the eighteenth century mapped the behaviour of a benevolent nature as well as a harmonious society. Newtonian promoters portrayed the sun gravitationally controlling the planets like the king ruling his subjects. But unlike gravity, which acts universally, magnetic power only operates on iron and steel. Furthermore, it resonated with sexual associations, since magnets were traditionally used to detect adultery, or to ward off the pains of childbirth. Writers used magnetic tropology not for portraying the moral sympathy binding communities together like gravity, but for representing the relationships between a particular couple.

Although modern physics teaches us to view magnetic attraction as inter- active, these eighteenth-century authors always used magnetism to represent an asymmetrical relationship of power: the strong magnet - in this case God - attracts a weak magnetic needle, the human soul. Because writers perceived magnetic action as asymmetrical, their images mirrored gendered hierarchies of power. John Cleland, for instance, had compasses in mind when he relished Fanny Hill’s ‘rage and tumult of my desires, which all pointed strongly to their pole: man’. More subtly, Percy Shelley portrayed magnetic power blissfully uniting a man to a woman whose lunatic subordination paralleled the moon’s devotion to the controlling masculine sun:

... by a power Like the polar Paradise Magnet-like of lovers’ eyes: I, a most enamoured maiden Whose weak brain is overladen With the pleasure of her love, Maniac-like around thee move ...’9

But female novelists like Fanny Burney and Elizabeth Hervey reversed the dynamic direction. Their heroines wielded power as what Burney called ’the general loadstone of attention’. Hervey wrote that ‘lovely Emma was the magnet that attracted’ rival suitors: as Burney’s Lord Orville courted Evelina, he declared

Far be it from me [...I to dispute the magnetic power of beauty, which irresistibly draws and attracts whatever has soul and sympathy: and I am happy to acknowl-

28. John Norris, Discourses upon several divine subjects, 3 vols (London 171 I), iii.12. Thomas Ken, The Works of the right reverend, learned and pious Thomas Ken, DD, 4 vols (London 1721), iv.64 (’Preparatives for death).

29. John Cleland, Memoirs of a woman ofpleasure: Fanny Hill (Hertfordshire 1gg3), p.38. Percy B. Shelley, The Works ofPercy Bysshe Shelley in verse andprose, 8 vols, ed. H. B. Forman (London 188o), ii.257 (‘Prometheus unbound): for further examples, see Paul M. S. Dawson. “‘A sort of natural magic”: Shelley and animal magnetism’, Keats-Shelley review I (1986), p.15-34.

Navigational compasses as cultural artefacts I 3 7

edge, that [...I we have goddesses to whom we all most willingly bow down [...I they h o w the attraction of the magnet that draws me3O

Like geometrical compasses, magnetic compasses had long been emblems of constancy. For a maritime nation, whose fortunes depended on overcoming stormy weather, coddence in magnetic fidelity was essential. In this couplet, John Gay portrayed a man’s unswerving dedication in the face of a feminised, stormy nature:

Change, as ye list, ye winds! my heart shall be The faithful compass that still points to thee.3I

Eighteenth-century writers modelled human sentiments by personifying in- struments which record change, such as barometers, thermometers and com- passes. Almost a century earlier, Quarles had eloquently described how a compass needle does not settle immediately, but

First franticks up and down, from side to side And restless beats his crystal’d Iv’ry case, With vain impatience: jets from place to place,

At length he slacks his motion, and doth rest And seeks the bosom of his frozen bride,

His trembling point at his bright Poles beloved breast.

Quarles thus gave a masculine identity to the authoritative needle which guided mariners across the oceans. However, his female soul typified classical characterisations of fickle feminine behaviour:

Ev’n so my soul, being hurried here and there, By ev’ry object that presents delight,

Fain would be settled, but she knows not where: She likes at morning what she loaths at night:

Later writers shared this perception of female changeability: Tobias Smollett, for instance, sardonically judged that, for a vacillating female admirer, ‘Humphry is certainly the north-star to which the needle of her affection would have pointed at the long run’.j2

But in the second half of the century, as men and women fashioned new gender roles appropriate for a culture of sensibility, authors increasingly used compass metaphors for celebrating the sensitivity of female spirits, and for molding their behaviour into a desirable constancy. Thus Frances Brooke created a heroine whose fashionable emotions were devastatingly attractive to her male admirer: ‘What a charm, my dear Lucy, is there in sensibility! ’Tis the magnet which attracts all to itself [...I ’tis sensibility alone which can inspire love’. But

30. Frances Bumey, Evelina, or, a young lady’s entrance into the world, 3 vols (London 1778), iii.53. Elizabeth Hervey, The Mourtrayfarnily, 4 vols (London 1800). ii.64. Burney, Evelina. i.186; iii.124.

31. Quoted in B. Stevenson, The Home book of quotations (New York 1967), p.306 (from ‘Sweet William‘s farewell to black-eyed Susan’).

32. Quarles, Emblems, p.261. Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry CZinker (Oxford 1984), p.213 (see also p.236). Terry Castle, ‘The female thermometer’, Representations 17 (1987)~ p.1-27.

138 PATRICIA FARA

Frances Greville begged to be relieved of the anguish experienced by a sensitive heart:

Nor ease nor peace that heart can know That. like the needle true,

Turns at the touch of joy or woe, But. turning, trembles too. 3 5

In contrast, male authors concentrated on female commitment. In his popular allegorical poem on botany and natural philosophy, Erasmus Darwin fantasised about the 'chaste Mimosa' growing in his botanic garden, visualising her as a veiled Moslem bride trembling towards the mosque:

There her soft vows unceasing love record. Queen of the bright seraglio of her lord ... So turns the needle to the pole it loves, With fine librations quivering. as it moves.

George Byron similarly intertwined religious and compass imagery for depicting a woman's single-minded devotion to her man. Confining the discarded yet faithful Julia within a convent, Byron portrayed her concealed within religious vestments, trapped like Quarles' frantic soul in an ivory case. As he captured her writing to Don Juan with 'small white fingers [which] trembled as magnetic needles do', he articulated a masculine version of the ideal tamed woman:

My heart IS feminine, nor can forget - To all. except your image, madly blind:

As turns the needle trembling to the pole It ne'er can reach. so turns to you. my soul.34

Grounding their visions in familiar navigational instruments, Darwin and Byron romantically steered their readers towards a new society; they presented exoticised religious versions of sensitive wives faithfully tending a more domestic sanctuary. As natural philosophers transformed the laws of nature from sym- pathetic embodiments of enlightened ethical guidelines into ruthless abstract forces, magnetic imagery gained a new power. Writers converted the former theological symbolism of faithful magnetic pilgrims wilfully turning themselves towards God into prescriptions for female conduct. By citing the needle's predeter- mined orientation, they endorsed these role models by appealing to the immuta- bility of women's created nature, inescapably governed by scientific laws.35

33. Carolyn Williams. 'The changing face of change: fe/male in/constancy'. British journal for riyhtrrrith-ceriturg studies 12 ( 1 9 8 ~ ) . p.r 3-2X: G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of sensibility: sex mid society i n eighteenth-century Britain (Chicago and London 1992): Janet Todd, Sensibility: an introduction (London 1986): Frances Brooke. The History of Einilg Montqzie. 2 vols (London I 769). i.83: Greville quoted and discussed in Todd. Sensibility. p.61 (from 'A prayer for indifference').

34, From Darwin's Economy qfvegrtation. lines 309-310. 313-314. quoted on p.139-40 of Pierre Danchin. 'Erasmus Darwin's scientific and poetic purpose in The Botanic garden'. in Science and irmcgiiiation in XVHIIltli-renttiry British culture. ed. Siergo Rossi (Milan 198 7). p.133-50. George Byron. 2 % ~ Complete poetical works. 7 vols. ed. Jerome McCann (Oxford 1980). v.72. 71 (Don Juan. canto I. lines 1579-1 j80, Z 557-1560).

35. Lorraine J. Daston. 'The factual sensibility', Zsis 79 (1988), p . 4 5 ~ - 6 7 : Evelyn Fox Keller. 'Secrets of god. nature, and life'. Historg ofthc humnn sciences 3 (1990). p.229-42.

Nflvigatioiial compasses as i7ultural arteJacts I 3 9

In the course of this paper, I have moved between specfic material artefacts and abstract representations of an idealised object, reflecting how these symbolic and material objects are inseparably bonded together within their contexts. Knight’s compass bore only a sketchy physical resemblance to the model Barry put in Father Thames’ left hand, yet they relied on each other. Knight’s entrepreneurial marketing tactics for his particular compass benefited from the rhetoric which Barry portrayed of national commercial expansion through progressive natural philosophy. Reciprocally, by making a compass central to his picture, Barry elliptically referred to one of the Royal Society’s specific and well-known achieve- ments, as he advertised the public benefits of investing in invention. I have emphasised the differences between the perceptions of compasses held by mari- time practitioners experienced at navigating through storms on the high seas, and those of armchair poets who romantically envisaged compasses as unerring guides to safety. Yet poets like Quarles and Darwin rooted their gendered imagery in material compasses: only someone who had used a compass could include detailed descriptions like the ‘crystal’d Iv’ry case’ or the needle ‘With fine librations quivering’. Like other material artefacts, navigational instruments mediated between communities mutually fashioning themselves against each other to construct new cultural roles.

THE OWEN TAYLOR RESEARCH FUND

Applications are invited for grants from the Owen Taylor Research Fund. This Fund was established in memory of Professor 0. R. Taylor (1912- 1983). professor of French in the University of London (Queen Mary College), and in recognition of his distinguished contribution to the study of French literature of the eighteenth century. The Fund is a registered charitable trust.

The purpose of the Fund is 'to promote research in the field of eighteenth- century studies by the provision of awards to registered research students and lecturers of not more than ten years standing in British universities, to assist such persons to travel to foreign libraries and archives and to acquire any necessary research material (not including books)'. Funds permitting, the Trustees hope to make annually an award or awards to assist with research travel expenses (not full maintenance) in accordance with these terms. Grants will normally be in the range €100-€500. within the funds annually available.

Eligible candidates should apply by 1 May 1998 on a prescribed form to be obtained from:

Owen Taylor Research Fund Voltaire Foundation 99 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 6JX

Applications should be supported by letters from two referees acquainted with the candidate's work (research students should normally nominate their supervisor as one referee).

A full statement of the nature of the research, and the reasons for and dates of the proposed travel. should be given. Awards cannot be made retrospectively.

Applications will be considered by a selection panel appointed by the Trustees, and a decision should be possible during June 1998.

The Owen Taylor Fund greatly welcomes further contributions, which can be made in the form of subscriptions or gifts under covenant. These should be sent to the above address, from which covenant forms are also

~

I available.

GRANTS FOR RESEARCH

I N EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH STUDIES, 1998