Shortly after two o’clock on June 3rd, 1769, Venus descended into the plane of the ecliptic and came between the Earth and sun. It is with awe that I treat of the event — so minute, so silent here upon the Earth — but there — one can scarce imagine the roaring of that vast orb through those frigid depths, tumbling, flung through the plane of our orbit; the glaring heat, the searing glare of Sol — and the gargantuan prodigality of that body, consuming its own substance ceaselessly while planets whirled like houris, veiled and ecstatic around the throne of some blast-turbaned, light-drunken king.
We lunched on a cold collation of duck and mutton shortly after noon; then betook ourselves to the instruments to observe the Transit. We had panes of smoked glass to peer through; and, for more precise accuracy, a refracting telescope trained upon a piece of paper, so that the image was cast down upon it. The day was not without its clouds, which Mr. 03-01 cursed; but though they passed over, they did not continually obscure the face of the sun, and so, when the fateful moment arrived and Venus made its first external contact, 03-01 could mark the moment with exactitude.
“Yes — first external contact,” he said, and Dr. 09-01, standing near the pendulum clock, noted the time. “It should now be about eighteen minutes before the planet is fully within the sun’s disk.” Mr. 03-01 squinted through a piece of glass. “My boy — we are on the lap of history. . . . This Transit happens but twice in this century. . . . If we are to derive use from it, it must be now. . . .” He continued speaking while ducking his head, shifting his legs, looking always at the sun, which cast odd spidery reflections across his face. “The last Transit — anno 1761 — was observed the world over . . . men standing aloft and squinting at the sun . . . in Lapland . . . in Africa, your native land . . . in Petersburg, Russia . . . in . . . where else? . . . in the East Indies, by order of the East India Company . . . in Tobolsk, which is the capital of the country of Siberia. . . . Across the world, look you, right now, men are standing on promontories . . . raising their glasses to the heavens . . . writing down figures. . . . My boy — we are a tiny race . . . involved in a vast pursuit . . . amidst the cold stars . . . and all bound together by reason and amity.”
We all were rapt at his distraction.
I write “we,” and “all”; though Lord Cheldthorpe had not understood that the Transit would take a full five hours before it was completed, and, having demonstrated a brief, masculine interest in the pursuits of science, began to chafe.
“D’you see?” Mr. 03-01 was crying, some eight minutes later. “It has achieved its horns.” And indeed it had — for Venus was now just perceptible by the spurs of light that crowned it to either side as it passed into the ring of the sun. “Some few minutes before total immersion. Dr. 09-01 — mark that Venus is half way to its first internal contact . . . half way . . . now.”
“Anyone for a swim?” said Lord Cheldthorpe.
“I will go, Your Lordship,” said Mr. Druggett. He was dabbling his hand in the duck grease and smearing it underneath his head-bandage.
My mother asked, “Octavian?”
“No, thank you, Mother.”
“No one?” insisted Lord Cheldthorpe, looking at my mother. “Swim?”
“I said, Your Lordship, I would swim with you,” offered Druggett again, applying more fat. “With this heat and the duck grease, I am prone to make gravy.”
“My Lord,” my mother murmured, low enough so that the others should not hear, “surely you are not suggesting that I should compromise my dignity so far as to disrobe and take the waters while you or any other man is in the vicinity?”
“Venus,” said Lord Cheldthorpe, “is the planet of love.”
“And, sir,” she said with warning, “it is drooping in the descendent.”
He laughed.
Mr. Druggett persisted, “I said I wished to swim with you, Your Lordship.”
Lord Cheldthorpe nodded. “While I honor the leveling spirit in America that sees no distinction between classes,” he admitted, “one draws the line at your gravy.”
So my mother and Lord Cheldthorpe sat off from us a ways, her drawing him with her head tilted, him standing with a bow, in the person of Actæon about to set off on the hunt; and she summoned me to pronounce upon the picture, and offer my criticisms so she might improve the likeness. They laughed at my pronouncements.
Though my mother was at all times dazzling, I never saw her more fascinating than on this day, when her spirits were, as I imagine, in such a ferment at these tokens of regard, the amorous compliments and blandishments of His young Lordship; and indeed, to take up the inevitable jest, it did seem as if she were the sun at the center of our system, and the radiance she shed throughout our company was so brilliant that we feared that if it should cease, we should forever see her image in negative, blank where she was black, her color still wanted by the eye.
Venus passed, and we marked its progress. I swam, and the waters of Champlain were so cool that they warmed, so chill they were as coals. The loons began their crying. I rose from the soft lake dripping. Night fell, the sun eclipsed behind the trees before Venus emerged.
Once it was dark, we remained by the instruments and saw the stars in their vaster orbits above us. My head lay upon my mother’s lap.
And I thought of the Transit of Venus: that though the bodies be vast and distant, and their motions occult, their hesitations retrograde, one could, I thought, with exceeding care and preparation, observe, and, in their distance, know them, triangulate to arrive at the ambits of their motivation; and that in this calculation alone, one might banish uncertainty, and know at last what constituted other bodies, and how small the gulf that lies between us all.