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Overview
Signal&Noise is the epic page-turning story of the laying of the trans-Atlantic cable, and the men and women who are caught in its monumental tide. It is also a novel about the collision of worlds seen and unseen: the present and the future; the living and the dead; the real and the imagined.
On a wet London morning in 1857, American engineer Chester Ludlow arrives on the muddy banks of the Isle of Dogs to witness the launch of the largest steamship ever built, the Great Eastern. Also amidst the tumultuous throng is Jack Trace, a lonely bachelor and sketch artist hoping to make his name as an illustrator and journalist in the hurly burly of Fleet Street. Other witnesses include a drunken German by the name of Marx; the child who will christen the massive vessel by the wrong name; and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the ship's apoplectic and dwarfish architect who will soon die in ignominy. As chief engineer for the Atlantic Cable Company, the charismatic Chester enters the orbit of business and showmanship embodied by J. Beaumol Spude, the bombastic Western beef magnate who will mastermind the funding of the project; Joachim Lindt, creator of the Phantasmagorium, an animated tableaux vivant; and his beautiful wife, the musician Katerina Lindt. Drawn by the demands and adventure of creating the first transoceanic telegraph, Chester leaves behind his fragile wife, Franny, at the family estate of Willing Mind in Maine.
Abandoned and still mourning the accidental death of their four-year-old daughter, Franny finds solace in the company of Chester's troubled brother, Otis, who introduces her to the mysteries of the world of spiritualism just as séancing is becoming all the rage in the jittery times leading up to the Civil War. As Chester achieves renown as the glamorous engineer of the trans-Atlantic project, Franny, desperate to contact her dead child, becomes the preeminent spirit conjuror of a war-torn America.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429961301 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Picador |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2004 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 640 |
| File size: | 679 KB |
About the Author
John Griesemer is also the author of No One Thinks of Greenland, a novel Esquire magazine called "that rarest of first-novel achievements: an across-the-board success." Griesemer lives with his family in Lyme, New Hampshire.
John Griesemer is also the author of No One Thinks of Greenland, Signal&Noise, and Hearts of Men. Griesemer lives with his family in Lyme, New Hampshire.
Read an Excerpt
Signal & Noise
By John Griesemer
Picador
Copyright © 2003 John GriesemerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-6130-1
CHAPTER 1
At the Theater
New York, December 1857
Checking the House
If there was a more desirable woman than his wife in the theater that night, Chester Ludlow didn't see her. The glow from the cold and the flicker of light from the melting snow crystals still shone on Franny's face as they looked for their seats in the crowded auditorium. The entire audience sparked and buzzed with anticipation. No one seemed to mind as Franny and Chester made their way along the row, excusing themselves and shuffling between knees and seat backs. Some of the people smiled at the couple. Perhaps they recognized her. Then, too, perhaps they recognized him.
As he straightened his waistcoat before he sat down, Chester faced away from the stage's huge curtain and stole one last look toward the back of the house and up to the few rows visible in the mezzanine. It was a reflexive survey, something he'd been doing quite without thinking ever since reaching manhood. He wanted to see if a face caught him; if here amid a large and random gathering, there was a woman who attracted him. It mattered little whether he would ever speak to this woman, although in his bachelor days, he would have striven mightily to make the opportunity happen. It was enough to know that near him was the commingling of qualities in face, carriage, bosom, hair — the aggregate of attractors — that could set his desire chanting. And even if that chant were only a distant, low pulse, Chester felt comforted, in a tantalized way, that he was in a room, on a street, in a crowd, with someone who drew him toward her. The theater was a wonderful place to have it happen.
The incline of the room, slanting upward from the front rows toward the back of the house, made Chester feel as if he were back on the ship. He'd just crossed the Atlantic. He felt he should lean into the slant as he had into the slope of the deck on that rolling ship. It was a sea of faces before him. Jewels sparkled like spray; cuffs and collars flashed like whitecaps on waves; soft necks and throats and shoulders swirled like foam.
But he did not see a face that caught his eye. Instead he felt a tug on his sleeve.
He looked down. And there was the face that caught him: Franny's. She looked so happy.
Chester had recently arrived from London, where he'd begun his duties as cable engineer, where he'd designed the checking mechanism that everyone assured him would be the key to the project's success. He had stayed long enough to see the failed launching of the Leviathan and had returned to America to find his name and picture in the newspapers as the man who "will shrink the Atlantic." His star was on the rise. People occasionally pointed at him on the street.
Once in New York, he had wired Franny, encouraging her to come down from Maine. Just being back in America had made his cold disappear. He felt buoyant. The rendezvous was his idea: spend the holidays in New York. Something, he hoped, that might bring her out of her mood, the one he'd left her in, the one she seemed to be making them both live under for going on three years now. And the plan was working. She looked so happy. No mention of Betty. He had engineered a success.
He and Franny had walked through the falling snow all the way from their hotel, lingering to admire the Christmas ribbons and yew boughs hanging from the gaslights in Gramercy. They had even held hands and, when they realized they were late, ran laughing across Broadway, dodging the hansom cabs and barouches that were converging on the theaters. Such gaiety was almost out of mind for them of late.
"Dear ... Sit down." She smiled.
Chester felt himself flush, and he sank into his seat. Franny's hand settled on his wool sleeve.
"Checking the house?" she whispered.
She gave him that coquettish, downturned smile that made dimples appear in her cheeks. It made him think — always had made him think — that he could do things that made himself irresistibly amusing to her.
"You looked like an old stage manager, counting heads," she said. "Peeking out from the peephole, getting an idea what the take is."
"Did I?"
Tiny beads of snowmelt still shone in her hair. A sea creature, he suddenly thought. A siren risen out of the groundswell of the audience, her voice floating to him from somewhere amid the waves. It was difficult for him not to be thinking of the sea, of ships, even here in the theater, gazing into his wife's brown eyes.
"Yes," she said. "You always like to do that. I've noticed."
He could feel himself flush again. "I didn't know I did."
"Or are you hoping someone will recognize you? Like a young actor, looking for a compliment from someone who's seen your latest performance."
"I think I prefer hearing more about your knowledge of old stage managers," Chester said, "than of young actors."
"I care only about the performance of a young engineer," she said. She raised a gloved hand to brush, ever so slightly, his cheek.
He took a deep breath. The smell of perfume in the hollows of flesh, of tobacco smoke still trapped in whiskers, the scent of cordials and whiskey on whispers that buzzed all around him, filled his head. He wished the show would begin.
"Aren't they late?" he asked, and nodded toward the crimson and gold curtain glowing in the gaslight. He had come with Franny to see Camille, the French play that was causing a sensation in New York.
"Probably because of Mademoiselle Heron," Franny whispered. "'La Heron' is known for making an audience wait."
Franny squeezed Chester's hand. He turned and nuzzled her ear, pressing his lips against her skin, smelling her perfume, the last of the moisture in her hair. The one woman in the crowd who aroused his ardor was right there, next to him, his wife.
"My imp," he whispered to her, feeling his lips graze the velvet folds of her ear. It was all he could do to keep his tongue in his mouth. Someone coughed behind them, probably scandalized. Chester pulled away from Franny. She shone with a victor's smile. Her husband was in her thrall. This was like the old days.
The lights began to go down. The ushers were moving from sconce to sconce, lowering the gas. Franny sat straighter in her seat. Chester could see the smile vanish from her face. She was alert, focusing her attention now on the stage and the towering red curtain. He could almost feel her pulse quicken in his own chest. She had had a career on the stage, and she still felt a thrill, she said, right before a play was to start. She knew what was going on beyond the glowing curtain in these final moments.
"It's about to begin," she whispered. Again, Chester thought of them on a ship. They were in a trough between waves, just before the ship was to begin a long surging rise toward the wave's crest, from which they would be able to see for miles.
"It's about to begin," Franny repeated softly as the curtain started to rise.
The Actress and the Engineer
Chester had met Frances Piermont ten years before, while he was studying metallurgy and mathematics in Glasgow under William Thomson and she was recovering from what the doctors had called incipient phthisis — the beginnings of consumption. They had met on a North Sea packet sailing from Bergen, Norway, back to England. Chester had been on holiday, a fortnight's walking tour above the fjords near Aurland. Franny had been at a sanatorium outside Bergen, recuperating. She had collapsed onstage in London. They had first told her it was pneumonia, then revised their diagnosis. The doctors had said her case was mild; her constitution had been strong, and her cure could be complete. But, they'd also said, she should give up the theater; the life of an actress was — how to put it? — too extreme for her now somewhat compromised health.
She had told all this to Chester as they sailed toward Newcastle. He had approached her while she stood at the windward rail of the ship as they cleared the last of the outlying islands off Bergen's harbor. Chester's student friends were on the quarterdeck, smiling and looking on eagerly for signs of his progress. He was the only one of them who'd had the courage to speak to the beautiful young woman gazing toward the snowcapped Norwegian mountains that were falling off to the stern.
One of the students had recognized Franny as the American actress who had made a stir two years before in London as Isabella in a production of Measure for Measure. It was seen as an act of cheek: a little-known American performing the role in London no less. But her managers knew what they were doing. Franny had won over the audiences and critics with what was often referred to as her "flash."
"It is in the eyes where her proficiency resides," a freelancer had written for the Mail and Sun. The writer had garnished his review with a flattering sketch, "taken from this reviewer's notebook."
"Her technique is serviceable," he had written, "and her countenance pleasing — she of rosy cheek and well-formed arm, erect carriage and agile movement: all of it hinting at the forthrightness and heartiness of her New World homeland perhaps more than of the Viennese nunneries, prisons, and halls of the play — but her eyes tell stories perhaps even the Bard himself would have stopped his pen to hear. What is this power? Reader, you must see for yourself."
Chester had never seen the reviews, had never heard of her brief London triumph. It was when he stood close to her on the deck of the westbound packet that he learned about the "proficiency" of those dark and inviting eyes.
He and Franny talked very nearly through the whole crossing. Chester's fellow students went from amusement at his success to disgruntlement. He had thrown them completely over for this actress. Such an old story.
For her part, Franny was intrigued with the blond, bespectacled engineer. He held her gaze; he talked of things other than the theater, of which he confessed to know little. He was working with electricity and telegraphs, metals and mechanics. He tried to explain to her about something he called periodic oscillations by using the sea waves all around them as examples, but he was only able to make her laugh. She could feel even the most trivial things they said take on a burnished glow. She knew even before the sun went down off the starboard bow that she was falling in love.
They talked through the night, never going belowdecks. This abashed Chester's friends and caused no small amusement among the sailors. Chester had fetched blankets for himself and Franny, and they wrapped themselves up and sat on the forward cargo hatch, near the mast. When dawn came, Franny was asleep on Chester's shoulder. As the sun rose and the rigging was singing around them, Tynemouth hove into view.
Chester further irked his friends by purchasing a train ticket to Liverpool, Franny's point of departure for America. They rode together and made plans. He would finish his studies within a year and return to her. They would write. He would court her through the mail. This they did. They were married a year and a day after meeting on that North Sea packet. Three years later Betty was born. Four years after that, having suffered occasional, undiagnosable maladies — not unlike fits or seizures — the little girl fell from the bluffs near Willing Mind, the home on the coast of Maine Franny and Chester had inherited from Franny's father. Betty died on the rocks by the sea below the house. And then began the years that had closed hard around the couple. Until — for Chester — he received the call to work on the cable, and until — for Franny — this brief moment, this night of snow and gaslight and theater, a temporary stay of the darkness.
A New Kind of Show
Chester hadn't told Franny that he might be called away during the play. He had even forgotten about it himself. As the curtain went up, he found himself swept up in Franny's and the audience's excitement. They had gotten seats, after all, for Dumas's Camille. Reputed to be autobiographical, the play's subject was the fall of a renowned Parisian courtesan. Laura Keene had done a production in London. Barnum's American Museum was even doing a version. But this was Camille with Matilda Heron.
A couple of minutes into the play, Mademoiselle Heron made her entrance. The theater exploded with applause. The force and suddenness of the ovation made Chester's breath catch. He sat up straighter in his seat. The cheering subsided only after it was obvious the actors weren't waiting any longer and had resumed performing the play.
Heron's voice surfaced out of the noise as she spoke her lines to the actor playing Varville: "My dear friend, if I were to listen to all the people who are in love with me, I should have no time for dinner."
Laughter. As the audience was settling in to the show, Chester noticed, with a twinge of disappointment, that Mademoiselle Heron was, he thought, almost unattractive. Dark browed, thin, angular. Surprisingly mannish, he would have said. He'd hoped, from all he'd heard and read about her, that he'd be able to sit there in his seat and be seduced watching an alluring actress in a provocative play.
Instead, he turned to look at Franny. Her face blushed with light from the stage. He could see a tiny pulse in her neck. Her chin rose elegantly above her throat. The voices coming from the stage seemed far away. He always had such trouble concentrating on plays. He kept seeing people moving around in a box with only three walls. Absorption into the story was almost impossible for Chester; his mind would always wander. But Franny was the perfect audience: rapt, quick to gasp or cry out, she'd mutter imprecations at villains, sigh for the lovers. Even when reading a book at home in bed, she'd interrupt the silence of an evening with her exclamations.
"I wish Mr. Dickens were here to listen to you," he'd say as they lay together, him reading aloud to her.
And she'd roll over, smiling, those eyes teasing, her hands reaching for him under the covers. "I don't," she'd say.
But that was in former times. He recalled all this, there in the theater, and the play began to fade away.
It was the shifting of people around him that brought Chester back. Someone was tapping his shoulder. He turned to his right and saw a line of faces looking toward him. At the far end, a man, bent low in the aisle, was signaling Chester to come. Chester recognized the man.
He clasped Franny's hand and whispered that he had to go.
"Go?" she asked. "Why?"
"Spude."
He saw a tightening below the glow of her skin.
"I'll be back here soon," he said. "I promise."
He hunched and shoved and apologized his way down the row and soon was out of the theater, walking hastily through the snow with the man.
"He knows I'm at the theater with my wife?" Chester asked.
"He knows."
The man walked ahead on the cobbles into the darkness. Though he had a limp that sprang his stride, his head seemed gimballed on his shoulders and remained steady while the rest of him flapped and swiped along down an alleyway. The man kept up such a pace that Chester was hard-pressed to stay with him as they dodged through a warehouse district, avoiding snow piles and slushy pools of horse stale left from the day's commerce. They traveled down an unlit street still near the theater but that seemed distant and deep in a darker night than the one Chester had walked through hand in hand with Franny less than an hour ago. The snow had stopped. In the slits visible between the crowded buildings, Chester could make out a violet and brown night sky. Somewhere a bell chimed.
It occurred to Chester how preposterous, perhaps even sinister, it was that he was being taken to a man of J. Beaumol Spude's stature through a place like this. As he hurried behind the limping man — Spude's manservant, Agon Bailey — Chester kept thinking that they would round a corner into a brighter and more accommodating neighborhood or that there would be a carriage waiting to convey them to Spude's office.
"He knows I can't very well leave my wife alone in a theater."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Signal & Noise by John Griesemer. Copyright © 2003 John Griesemer. Excerpted by permission of Picador.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Prologue: The Isle of Dogs (London, November 1857),Book One Otis Ludlow's Journal (Ireland, 1866),
Chapter I At the Theater,
Chapter II Under the Thames,
Chapter III At Willing Mind,
Chapter IV An Explosion,
Chapter V The Phantasmagorium Show,
Chapter VI Back at Willing Mind,
Chapter VII The Great Stink,
Chapter VIII The Other Worlds,
Chapter IX Assignations and Encounters,
Chapter X Between America and the Infinite,
Chapter XI Final Preparations,
Chapter XII Willing Mind Is Empty,
Book Two Otis Ludlow's Journal (Ireland, 1866),
Chapter XIII The Expedition,
Chapter XIV "We Landed Here in the Woods",
Chapter XV Waking a Nation,
Chapter XVI The Engineer Ascendant,
Book Three Otis Ludlow's Journal (Ireland, 1866),
Chapter XVII The Laughingstock and the War,
Chapter XVIII The Ludlow Gun,
Chapter XIX Little Rents in Time,
Chapter XX Jack at War,
Chapter XXI The Secret Train,
Chapter XXII Franny's Reckoning,
Chapter XXIII Thirty Drops,
Chapter XXIV Cannisteo Gorge,
Chapter XXV Far to the West,
Book Four Otis Ludlow's Journal (Ireland, 1866),
Chapter XXVI Cablemen,
Chapter XXVII Unspooling the Cable; Unraveling the Past,
Chapter XXVIII The Hotel Ammonoosuc,
Chapter XXIX The Dissolution,
Chapter XXX To Heart's Content,
Epilogue,