Tartarus: the Genius Loci, part 2

All the search party knows regarding the location of Captain Grant’s shipwreck is that it occurred at 37 degrees latitude, so they follow that line in their search for him. Eventually, they’ll learn the other coordinate, 153 degrees longitude and you may recognize 37 and 53 as masonic numbers.

In the 37th chapter of Castaways, the natural world is suddenly likened to symmetrical Greco Roman architecture, the “interminable arches” of Australian eucalyptus trees that resemble pillars or Roman columns:

“They [the trees] were like so many columns exactly mated, and could be, counted by hundreds, spreading at a vast height into capitals of finely-shaped branches adorned with vertical leaves… All day long our travelers pursued their way under these interminable arches.”

Miss Marple’s much later Tour 37 of homes and gardens, or architecture and outdoor landscape, is an echo of Jules Verne’s imagery of the 37th parallel: melding trees into columns, an outdoor landscape morphing into architecture.

Columns are often used to support the arch, the interminable arches, and when Jules Verne likens trees to Roman columns, we’re seeing masonic symbolism from a masonic author. The two columns of freemasonry are called Joachim and Boaz, and refer back to the pillars of Solomon’s Temple. (In this video, I covered Kubrick’s handling of this same symbol throughout the movie The Shining.)

Once the search party exits the Roman columns of trees, they walk into the village of Seymour, still on the 37th parallel, a place that’s “a simple parish that would like to become a municipality.”

Wikipedia defines a municipality this way: “In ancient Rome, the Latin term municipium referred to a town or city. Etymologically, the municipium was a social contract among municipes ('duty holders'), or citizens of the town. The duties (munera) were a communal obligation assumed by the municipes in exchange for the privileges and protections of citizenship. Every citizen was a municeps.”

What is the duty that citizens owe? Other than taxes, the primary “call of duty” is military duty. And this is a duty we sort of have backward. As citizens, we’re programmed to think that military protection is a benefit of citizenship, but it’s really the other way around. Military duty is the cost of citizenship. The able-bodied young have a duty placed upon them to serve in the military—they are duty bound to serve—and if the government’s incentives don’t draw in enough young people, the young will be drafted, forced to pay this “duty.”

Several decades after Jules Verne described Seymour, Australia as wanting to become a municipality, Puckapunyal army base was built just outside Seymour on the 37th parallel. The town of Seymour was named for Lord Seymour, the son of the 11th Duke of Somerset, and here we find a few more buried details linking Castaways to Agatha Christie’s Nemesis.

The Seymour family is the second family to hold the title Duke of Somerset, a title that’s connected with two “houses,” both called “Somerset House,” and this word, alone, echoes Tour 37 of the Famous Houses and Gardens of Great Britain (even though, in the BBC version, it reads Homes).

The first Somerset House was a town house in Mayfair once occupied by the 11th Duke of Somerset, Edward Adolphus Seymour. His son, for whom Seymour, Australia was named, left this house to his daughter, who sold it before it was demolished in 1915, to be replaced by an apartment building of “flats” designed by the architect named Frank Verity. In fact, Frank and his father, Thomas Verity, were both architects, taking us back to the concept of architecture, and the “arch.”

The Verity family included several architects, including Terence Verity, Frank’s nephew, and even Oliver Hill, “celebrated for designing the British Pavilion at the Paris Exposition of 1937 and for his grand country houses.”

Notice that Thomas was born in 1837 and his son, Frank, died in 1937. Thomas was 53 years old when he died, as was his grandson Terence Verity… a series of masonic numerological coincidences.

The other Somerset House is more well known as a government office building, but the site originally held a Tudor palace. It was rebuilt and became a government or “Publick” office in 1775. Military offices there included the Navy Office and the Office of Ordnance. It also housed “learned societies” like the Royal Society.

The Royal College of Art (originally called the Government School of Design) was located at Somerset House from 1837 to 1853, two very masonic numbers. It was replaced, in 1853, by the Registry of Births, Marriages, and Deaths. Coincidentally, civil registration of births first began in England in 1837. Again, a series of masonic numerological coincidences.

Somerset as a place—a genius loci—is mentioned once in Nemesis, here: “They discussed the many tours they had been on… and finally the County of Somerset where Miss Lumley and Miss Bentham lived, and where the difficulties of getting suitable gardeners could hardly be believed.” This was referring to the fact that, during World War I, the Somerset Light Infantry suffered nearly 5,000 casualties. According to Wikipedia, “War memorials were put up in most of [Somerset] county's towns and villages.” Recall that Anthea Bradbury-Scott expressed the same problem: “[D]uring the war one could not get any gardeners. We had a very young gardener and then he was called up. One does not of course grudge that…” Again, war was considered the duty of the young and not something Anthea should be complaining about. She had, after all, inherited the Old Manor House precisely because the young, rightful heir was killed in war.

In Castaways, the search party had the necessary information to find Captain Grant all along, but not in the form of coordinates. The partial note in the bottle contained most of the name of the island that he was shipwrecked on, a name missed by everyone in the search, including the expert geographer, Paganel. So when they finally find him, it’s a complete accident.

Captain Grant tells the search party that he wrote the island’s name, Tabor, on the note in the bottle. But Paganel thinks this particular island is called something else.

Paganel then asks him, “How Tabor Island? It is Maria Theresa.”

Grant responds, “Maria Theresa on the English and German, but Tabor on the French maps.” His crew mates then berate Paganel, saying, “A fine geographer you are!”

So what is Jules Verne telling us, in this “geographical” novel in which geography fails to locate the castaways?

The underlying message here is the necessity of having both a place and a name, an echo of the legal cases of Coke and Bacon that we looked at in Part I. In the case of Marriot v. Pascall, the hospital’s lease used a name that failed to designate, in “certainty,” the corporation’s physical location. Here in Castaways, the name on a note, Tabor, also fails to designate the physical location of Captain Grant.

The same issue comes up in the Case of Sutton’s Hospital, where Bacon argued for the necessity of both a corporate name and place, because “…a place by a known name is not sufficient to support the name of an Incorporation, but the same ought to be described by metes and bounds…” On the small scale,“metes and bounds” are no different than geographical coordinates on the large scale, and Bacon was arguing that corporate law should require both. Hundreds of years later, Jules Verne reiterates the same truth, that name, alone, isn’t always enough, placing a higher importance on place and its coordinates of measure.

Don’t forget that the connection between both stories, focused on young anarchists and orphans, is a geographical 37. And this number also comes up, along with an occasional 53, in the history of orphan handling in the U.S. For example, the Children’s Aid Society was formed in 1853, a man named Charles Loring Brace served as its executive secretary for 37 years, and its first shipment of children, sent to Michigan, successfully placed 37 orphans… nice, neat, masonic numbers. Recall the noteworthy parallel that the Civil Registry for births in England began in 1837 and that the Registry for births moved to Somerset House in 1853… masonic numbers connected to a government office recording which births were heirs, growing up on heritable land, and which births were orphans.

Charles Loring Brace formed the Children’s Aid Society because he was appalled at the number of orphans living on the streets of New York City. According to Wikipedia, “The only options available to such children at the time were begging, prostitution, petty thievery, and gang membership, or commitment to jails, almshouses, and orphanages.” You might think the obvious solution would, in fact, be the orphanages mentioned, but Brace had another idea. He wanted to ship orphans into the midwest as slave labor. This project became known as the Orphan Trains, and in her book, The Orphan Trains, Marilyn Holt reported that the children were usually placed or adopted out as farm labor: “Charles Loring Brace… had resolved to make use… of the endless demand for children’s labor in the Western country.” Martha Ulman also cites Mary Ann Mason, writing, “labor was still the main attraction for prospective families in the early days of placing out.”

We can see from this disclaimer put out by the Children’s Aid Society that the restrictions used on the children are similar to those of cults, today: “Children are not allowed to correspond with any friends or relatives without obtaining permission to do so from the Society.”

But perhaps this cult-like organization selling orphans as farm labor wasn’t any worse than what the orphanages were doing. This is a photo from the Louisville, Kentucky Masonic Widows and Orphans Home, built by the Olmsted Brothers in the 1920s.

The Olmsted landscape and architectural firm was founded by Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the landscapes for sites like New York City’s Central Park. His firm passed to his sons and would later design masonic places like the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, atop Shuters Hill in Alexandria, Virginia: another memorial located on a hill, a high point of land.

Frederick Law Olmsted as a landscape architect placed high design importance on the genius loci. In fact, Olmsted’s biography was entitled Genius of Place. And Olmsted turns out to have been a lifelong friend, from childhood, of Charles Loring Brace.

In 1853, Olmsted was commissioned to travel throughout the American south, which happens to be an area defined by its northern boundary: the 37th parallel. It’s interesting to note that Olmsted, Illinois, a town founded just 20 years later, sits on the 37th parallel. And though the mainstream narrative denies a connection between the landscape architect and the town, according to Michelle Gibson’s research, Olmsted studied surveying in his youth, making a connection not only possible but likely.

Oh, and Olmsted, Illinois also sits on Illinois Route 37.

The masonic numbers 37 and 53 feature prominently in the timelines of both Brace and Olmsted, and Charles Loring Brace provides a further connection, through his work with orphans, to the British Registry of Births, with start-up dates featuring the same masonic numbers. But the fact that the Verity family of architects connect back to the Registry’s location at Somerset House makes me wonder if Agatha Christie’s clues in Nemesis were pointing to something much larger, with all its commentary on young anarchists and young gardeners being called up for war.