Satirical extracts from future
newspapers almost constituted a
subgenre of their own in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, and few
of them carried glad tidings of things to
come. The following abridged novella
by Frances Power Cobbe is similarly
pessimistic, but it stands out from the
crowd in the way that it communicates
the author’s worries about women’s civil
rights and cruelty to animals with irony
and dark humour. In Cobbe’s imaginary
future, reactionaries use the language
of science and rationality as they try
to reverse social advancement; thus,
scholarly apes aside, this piece seems
oddly prescient.
THE GREATEST DISCOVERY ever achieved by man is beyond all question that which it is now our privilege to announce, namely, that of the new Prospective Telegraph. By this truly wonderful invention (exquisitely simple in its machinery, yet of surpassing power) the obstacle of Time is as effectually conquered as that of Space has been for the last generation by the Electric Telegraph; and future years – even, it is anticipated, future centuries – will be made to respond to our call as promptly and completely as do now the uttermost parts of the earth wherewith the magic wire has placed us in communication.
For obvious reasons the particulars of this most marvellous invention, and the name of its author, must be withheld from the public till the patents (and the enormous profits) be secured to the Company which is invited to undertake to work it (with limited liability). We are only permitted by special favour to hint that the natural Force relied on to set the machinery in action is neither Electric, Magnetic, nor Galvanic; nor yet any combination of these; but that other great correlated imponderable agency, whose existence has been for some time suspected by many intelligent inquirers, called the Psychic Force. That no scepticism may linger in the minds of our readers, we desire to add that we have at this moment in our hands a complete transcript of a newspaper dated January 1st, 1977. As the printed matter of this gigantic periodical equals at least in bulk the whole of Gibbon’s History, or Mr Jowett’s edition of Plato, we cannot attempt to do more than offer our readers a few brief extracts.
The name of this journal (which, we conclude, may be considered the Times of the twentieth century) is THE AGE OF SCIENCE, and obviously refers with pride to the consciousness of its readers that they live in a period of the world’s history when Science reigns supreme over human affairs, having triumphed over such things as War, the Chase, Literature, Art, and Religion. This appropriate title is printed, we may remark, in the largest and clearest possible Roman type: judging from the opticians’ advertisements of ‘Spectacles for Infants’, ‘Spectacles for Elementary Schools by the gross’, and ‘Cautions to Mothers’ against allowing babies to use their eyes, it would appear that unassisted vision has become rare, if not unknown. There are ten columns on each page, each ten times as long as it is broad, and there are a hundred pages in the journal, proving that the decimal system has been thoroughly adopted even in such details.
Spread out open, the Age of Science would cover the floor of a very large hall. The familiarity of the contributors with all substances of chemistry, all the bones of all the beasts, birds, and fishes, alive or dead, and all the diseases incidental to humanity, speaks volumes for the superiority of their scientific education over our own. At the same time, on two or three occasions when illustrations have been chosen from past History or Poetry, the writers betray that their studies have not been much extended in the direction of Literature. One gentleman thinks that Mr Gladstone wrote the Iliad on hints afforded by Dr Schliemann, and that Milton was the author of the Book of Genesis. Another refers to the period when Rome was founded by Romeo and Juliet, while a third mentions the ‘once-celebrated Divina Commedia by Molière’, and regrets that ‘so curious a specimen of archaic Japanese art as Titian’s Assumption should not have been spared from the pile in which the Transfiguration of Phidias and the Last Supper of Praxiteles were destroyed by order of the Committee of the Royal Academy, to stop the propagation of bad aesthetic taste’.
The first page is rationally devoted to Telegraphic Intelligence, which everyone may be supposed to desire first to read. However, since the invention of the ‘Army Exterminator’ forty years prior, followed up so rapidly by the invention of the ‘Fleet Annihilator’, international policy has necessarily undergone a great modification. As war has become impossible as an ultima ratio in any case, and the principle of Arbitration, on which such hopes were founded, has proved ineffective, a permanent state of discord between nations seems to have become established. The foreign news of the hour is somewhat unsatisfactory. In consequence of the generally lawless condition of the Southern Russian Republics, the great corn districts of those regions have for some years been falling out of cultivation; and no hopes are entertained that any more grain shall be imported from Odessa, or indeed from any quarter of the world.
Despite these developments, instead of political news these telegrams consist mainly of minute verbatim reports of the proceedings of over ninety Scientific Congresses, which seem to be taking place at the same time in Europe, Asia, America, Australia, and Africa. It would occupy more space than the whole of this volume to offer even the briefest condensation of these reports, as they are carried on in terms quite unintelligible to us, and refer to scientific disputes to which we do not possess a clue. Following this is a Report of the Assembly of Convocation – a topic which we were surprised to find possessed such prominent interest, till we discovered that the Convocation of 1977 will consist exclusively of Medical men. The Upper House seems to be formed of Physicians and Surgeons who have obtained titles of Nobility, and the Lower House to be a representative body elected by medical graduates throughout the kingdom.
After the Report of Convocation, the Age of Science contains one column of Stocks and Shares, not possessing any special interest for readers of the present day, but appearing to prove, strangely enough, that investments are much fewer than in our time, and cannot be made in any Foreign securities. It seems the dream of Free Trade has been exploded; following the example of the American Empire (which ceased to be a Republic decades beforehand), prohibitive duties are placed on each state’s own exports and the imports of other countries, meaning that commerce is considerably hampered. The restored native rulers of what was formerly called Britain’s Indian Empire, and China after its brief occupation, have adopted American and European ideas as to placing for this next year such duties on rice and tea as will almost prohibit the importation of those articles into the English market, while they have positively forbidden the introduction of English cotton or iron into their respective States. The bad and deceptive quality of the goods furnished by British manufacturers is the alleged cause of these unfortunate regulations.
After these, in lieu both of Naval and Military Intelligence, and of the Church, five columns are devoted to Medical Appointments and Promotions. After all these we find twenty columns devoted to Latest Intelligence, in short paragraphs, of which we cull a few of the most interesting.
‘OCCASIONAL NOTES. The magnificent Joss House now in process of erection by the Chinese of London forms a striking ornament to Regent Street, standing as it does on the site of the old deserted Langham Chapel. It will, we imagine, be the only place dedicated to religion’s purposes which has been built during the last twenty years in the metropolis, and almost the only one in actual use. Although we cannot, as a Scientific nation, formally join in the worship of Buddha, we must all regard with sympathy and satisfaction the honours paid to that great Teacher by the very important section of our community, the Chinese, of whom it is said more than half a million have contributed to the erection and adornment of this Temple. The statue of Buddha is a noble work of modern sculpture by Mr Merino. The traditional pose of the crossed legs is slightly altered to bring them within the rules of scientific anatomy, and the Sage is obviously pondering those profound lessons of Pessimism (that it is a bad world we live in, and that we need not expect a better) which have justly secured for him the reverence of cultivated Europe.’
‘An Accident of the ordinary sort occurred last night to the new Magnetic train, which was at the moment passing under the Channel, about ten miles from Dover. It appears that the engineers have been again at fault in the construction of the roof of the tunnel, and that the sea was rushing in with such violence that little hopes were entertained of bringing the train to the next watertight compartment; it must he assumed that the unfortunate passengers – numbering, it is supposed, about 800 – have been drowned like so many rats in a trap. The accident is unfortunate for the proprietors of Submarine Tunnel Stock, and also for several Insurance Companies, as extensive repairs will be required; but Science teaches us to regard these occurrences with composure, as serving to check the increase of a superabundant population.’
‘The Simian Educational Institute (on Frobel’s system), for members of the Ape family, continues to attract the strongest interest. In testing the educability of the Simian tribe, we are solving one of the most important problems of Science, and hitherto everything seems to promise the triumphant success of the experiment. There are now three Chimpanzees among the pupils at the Institute, whose grandfathers and grandmothers have all been well-educated monkeys; so that the set of the brain of these young people is already marked towards progress and civilisation. It is needless to observe that all the students are required to wash and dress themselves every morning in the becoming male and female habiliments provided by the taste of the Governors of the Institute. Great pains are also taken with their manners at meal times, and, to avoid temptation, nuts are not admitted at dessert.
‘One of the young gentlemen (Joseph Macacus Silenus, Esq., generally known by his intimates as “Joe”) is said to exhibit extraordinary talents, and to be able to answer any question in elementary science by means of an alphabet and a system of knocks – the best substitute for a spoken language, having been formerly invented by an ingenious race of impostors named Mediums, who flourished in the obscurity of the Victorian age. The plan adopted in France to employ the anthropoid apes as domestic servants has proved, we are informed, altogether successful in several families. Madame Le Singe, a fine specimen of the Gorilla tribe, has acted for some months as confidential Nurse in the family of M. Gobemouche, and is said to maintain discipline among her charges excellently well. It is an instructive spectacle to see Madame Le Singe walking on a fine day with the children, and pushing a perambulator in the Gardens of the Tuileries. The more ordinary employment found, however, for domestic Apes is that of cooks, when it is observed they occasionally call in the services of the household cat to assist them as kitchen-maid, especially when roast chestnuts form part of the entertainment.’
‘The absolute prohibition to Women to read or write – even in cases where they may have formerly acquired those arts (now recognised as so unsuitable to their sex) – will, we apprehend, tell importantly on the health of infants, and of course eventually on that of the community. So long as females indulged in no more deleterious practices than dancing in hot rooms all night, unclothing their necks and chests, wearing thin slippers which exposed their feet to deadly chills, and tightening their waists till their ribs were crushed inwards, the Medical Profession very properly left them to follow their own devices with but little public remonstrance. The case was altered, however, when, three or four generations ago, a considerable movement was made for what was then called the Higher Education of women. The feeble brains of young females were taxed to study the now forgotten Greek and Latin languages, and even Mathematics and such Natural Science as was then understood.
‘The result was truly alarming; for these poor creatures flung themselves with such energy into the pursuits opened to them, that, as one of their critics remarked, they resembled “the palmer-worm and the canker-worm – they devoured every green thing”, and not seldom surpassed their masculine competitors. At length they began to aim at entering the learned Professions – the Legal, and even the Medical. Our readers may be inclined to doubt the latter fact, which seems to involve actual absurdity, but there is evidence that there once existed two or three Lady Doctors in London, who, like Pope Joan in Rome, foisted themselves surreptitiously into an exalted position from which Nature should have debarred them.
‘Of course, it was the solemn duty of the Medical Profession to put a stop at once to an error which might lead to such a catastrophe, and numerous books were immediately written proving (what we all now acknowledge) that the culture of the brains of women is highly detrimental to their proper functions in the community; and, in short, that the more ignorant a woman may be, the more delightful she is as a wife, and the better qualified to fulfil the duties of a mother. Since Science has thoroughly gained the upper hand over Religious and other prejudices, the position of women, we are happy to say, has been steadily sinking, and the dream of a Higher Education has been replaced by the abolition of even Elementary Schools for girls, and now by the final Act of last Session, which renders it penal for any woman to read a book or newspaper, or to write a letter. We anticipate the very happiest results from this thoroughly sound and manly legislation.’
‘The cheerful ceremony of opening the new Incineration Hall was performed an hour ago in Manchester by the Lord Doctor of Manchester, attended by the Mayor. It is a magnificent building, with a furnace capable of reducing twelve bodies at a time to ashes, which, after a certain period, will be used in the manufacture of water-filters for the drinking-fountains of the town. It is especially fortunate that the Hall can be employed at once, since the number of persons despatched by Euthanasia has been so great during the past week all over the country that the other Cremation establishments have proved inadequate to dispose of the corpses with sufficient rapidity.’
‘An Important addition has been made to that instructive place of public amusement, the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park: a department to contain those species of animals which are rapidly dying out in Europe. Among these are the Ass, the Fox, the Dog, the Hare, the Pheasant, and Partridge. In this age of Science it is, of course, impossible to go on employing a creature like the Donkey, proverbial for its intellectual deficiency, and we have no regret that only two pair of animals of the species (both in the Regent’s Park collection) now survive in England, though a few are said to linger in Egypt. Connected with the dog there are so many traditional records of sagacity, having a certain scientific interest in connection with the form and size of its brain, that we should have been glad if a more complete collection of the varieties could have been preserved. However, the Foxhound, the Greyhound, Setter, and Pointer, seem all to have become extinct within about thirty years of the repeal of the Game Laws and the consequent cessation of field sports; and several of the more favoured kinds of dogs – Italian Greyhounds, Toy Terriers, Pomeranians, and Poodles – were, it is said, privately destroyed by the hundreds by their owners, who disgracefully sought to withdraw them from the researches of physiologists.
‘The remaining kinds have been perhaps rather recklessly used by vivisectors, whose ardour in the noble cause of science has caused them to experiment, on an average, on about 14,000 dogs apiece, and the result has been that we only find at present twelve animals surviving, of whom nine belong to the class Mongrel. One noble old Newfoundland, who would have greatly graced the collection, was drowned by his owner last year under interesting circumstances. After rescuing a physiologist’s son from drowning, the animal itself was so exhausted that its breathing and other symptoms suggested to the physiologist the scientific interest in watching it slowly drowning in a suitable vessel, where all the conditions of that death could be accurately investigated on so large a scale as that of a full-sized dog. The learned gentleman accordingly drowned the animal in a tub in his physiological laboratory as soon as his son was sufficiently recovered to witness the instructive and entertaining spectacle. The dog, when withdrawn half dead for a moment from the water, attempted to lick the boy’s face; the child was weak enough to implore his father to spare it, but the learned gentleman of course pointed out to the boy the folly of such a request, and the experiment was completed. We trust to see this young gentleman hereafter as sound and eminent a physiologist as his distinguished father.’
After some five columns more of similar Intelligence, the Age of Science proceeds to give its readers a few Reviews of Books. The brevity of the remarks vouchsafed to these productions seems to indicate that no great importance is attached to Literature properly so called, but only to treatises on Physical Science. The Notices run as follow:
‘REVIEWS. We do not usually in the Age of Science intrude on the province of the sixteen leading daily Scientific Newspapers devoted to critical notices of the books which pour from the press on Electrology, Physiology, Astronomy, Geology, &c. We are tempted to depart from our rule, however, so far as to offer our need of applause and congratulation on the publication of the last of the six splendid volumes forming the magnificent monograph on Cheese-mites, and the still more costly and exhaustive treatise on the great mystery of the Formation of Dust in Disused Apartments.
‘In the inferior non-scientific walks of Literature we find that no Histories have been published during the last twelvemonth, and only one Historical Essay, namely The Fall of the Church of England, by the late (and last) Dean of Westminster. The author of this book composed it, we are informed, during his retirement in the Isle of Anglesea, whither, like most of the clergy, and the Druids in former ages, he retreated after the great victory gained by Science, when the Cathedrals and Churches were made over by Parliament to the Medical Profession. The Dean traces the fall of the Anglican Establishment to the folly of a party in the Church, who, in an age of doubt and transition, when religion needed to be presented in its most spiritual shape, made it appear by their practices a matter of rites and forms altogether childish. We are persuaded, however, that the abolition of the Churches was due to a deeper and more widespread cause – namely, the growth of that sound philosophy which recognises Matter as containing itself the germ and potency of every form of life, and, of course, dismisses the dream of a Soul in man, which might enjoy existence after death. As soon as this great truth had had time to penetrate the minds of the masses, the collapse of Religion obviously became imminent.
‘FICTION. The Precession of the Equinox, and other Tales, by Wilkinson Collinson, Esq.: This is a highly sensational story, and will sell like wildfire at the bookstalls. The interest of the plot turns on the phenomenon in question, but embraces subsidiary problems respecting the sun’s path through the Zodiac. Daniel Allround, by George Evans: The chief attraction of this book lies in the abstruse technical terminology which the author has employed to illustrate profound observations of men and things, but too much space is lost by delineations of characters without tracing them to the laws of heredity. Edwin and Angelina, By J. Fitzparnell: The author of this charming novel has afforded his readers a perfect study of the effects of each of the passions – Pity, Sympathy, Regret, Disappointment, Hope, and Love – on the various glands which they respectively affect. The lucid explanation of the physiological reasons why Mothers love their children is particularly valuable, as calculated to explode the last stronghold of the superstitious reverence which was once paid to parents among semi-civilised nations.’
After these critical Notices of Books, the Age of Science proceeds to offer the following remarks on the Theatre:
‘At this season in former times, when boys were foolishly allowed to leave school for the holidays, the theatres (as some of us are old enough to remember) were much frequented, and were principally used for a silly kind of entertainment called Pantomimes. Of the three theatres in London which continue to be devoted to some sort of dramatic performance, and have not been transferred into Lecture Halls, one only (the Gaiety) seems successful this winter. Crowds attend every night to witness School, a piece in which there is no folly of love-making, but the anxieties of a Competitive Examination for Honours in Science are finely realised. A tragic interest is imparted to the plot by making the hero become insane just as he has achieved the object of his ambition.
‘At the Haymarket there has been a failure which we fear will result in the ruin of the lessee. This enterprising gentleman imagined it might be possible to revive in these days an interest in some of the old plays once popular in this country, and after (it appears) long consultation and deliberation, determined to bring The Merchant of Venice upon the boards. It was hoped that the proposal of one of the characters of the piece, named Shylock, to cut a pound of flesh from another, and the discussion whether this could be done without the effusion of blood, would excite the interest of the spectators. Unfortunately, as the author of the drama (Shakespeare, we are informed) stops short at the very crisis of the physiological experiment, and allows the intended subject to escape, the audience not unnaturally have exhibited disappointment, and the piece has been pronounced a failure.’
In the Age of Science, there are no less than fifty pages devoted to announcements and puffs of the most astonishing variety, including hundreds of articles whose names and uses are at present quite unknown. Of advertisements of servants and other persons requiring employment we have not found a single instance, but there were at least twenty columns of invitations to ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ to act in the capacity of housekeeper, steward, superintendent of the house, or some equally well-sounding office, the remuneration offered being at the lowest, it would seem, about £200 a year, with ‘the use of a steam carriage’, and ‘every other luxury desired’. We must, however, leave the columns of Advertisements for future examination, and proceed to give an account of the more important Law and Police Reports.
It seems that, by 1977, it had become necessary to hold assizes in at least twenty towns and villages in every county; and that the judges were incessantly occupied with cases of robbery, garrotting, arson, rape, stabbing, poisoning, and a number of offences with new names, of whose nature we can merely guess, such as ‘Debarrassing’, ‘Morbifying’, ‘Disbraining’, ‘Petroleumisation’, ‘Electroding’ and ‘Mesmeraciding’. For all these crimes the same class of penalties are allotted; the convicted persons are invariably sentenced by the presiding judge to so many weeks’ or months’ detention – not in prison, but in the Penal Hospitals of their respective towns or villages. The principle on which crime is thus visited appears from the addresses of several of the magistrates, who remark that the ‘diseased minds’ of criminals ‘obviously require careful medical treatment’. In numerous cases, as the offenders have been sentenced many times previously, the judge speaks of their crime as exhibiting ‘an intermittent fever’ of homicidal rage, or of covetousness. Extradition treaties have apparently been abandoned, and thanks to the invention of the aero-magnetic propeller, criminals of every country routinely take refuge in the neighbouring state to escape detention in the Penal Hospitals.
A very different method of treatment, however, is adopted towards another class of offenders, whom it would appear the authorities in the Age of Science are determined to put down in grim earnest. That our readers may not suppose we mistake the sense of the amazing paragraphs in which these new features of English legislation appear, we quote them as they stand in the Age of Science, pp. 63 and 64:
‘POLICE. At the Mansion House this morning, 79 men and 140 women were summoned for the non-attendance of their boys under two years old at the Public Infants’ Science Classes in the new kindergarten in the Tower. Various pleas were, as usual, put forth by the defendants, purporting to prove in some cases that the children were ill with small-pox and scarlet fever, and in several instances that they were dying or dead. Mr Alderman Busby remarked that “if they were to listen to such pleas, children would grow up to three or four years old without learning even the rudiments of astronomy or palaeontology”. He ordered all the fathers to be publicly flogged, and the mothers to receive each a dozen stripes of the birch privately. [Similar judgments are recorded at several other police-courts in London and the provincial towns.]
‘Considerable excitement prevails just now in many of our large towns in consequence of the needful, but somewhat troublesome, formalities required by law before any trade or handicraft may be exercised. Blacksmiths’ apprentices, we are told, very generally resent the necessity of passing their proper examinations in Metallurgy before they are qualified to shoe a horse; and the Artificial Flower Makers constantly evade attendance at the lectures on Botany, given expressly for their benefit. The candidates for licenses as Cabdrivers have more than once exhibited signs of discontent, when rejected on the grounds that they failed to answer some of the simplest examination questions on the principles of Mechanics applied to Traction, and on the correlation of Heat and Motion.
‘A strike (it is even rumoured) is impending among the stonemasons and bricklayers and slaters in a certain large city, because the Police, at the order of the Magistrates, having brought up several members of those trade-unions to the Local Examining Board for inquiry, it was elicited that none of them had acquired a competent knowledge of Geology in general, nor even of the formation of the strata of rocks wherewith their proper business is concerned. These difficulties were to be anticipated in the progress of Scientific knowledge among the masses, and we earnestly hope that no proposal to relax the late very wise legislation will be made in Parliament, but rather to reinforce the existing Acts by severer penalties upon ignorance and inattention. Who can for a moment think, for example, of allowing his shirt to be washed by a person who knows nothing of the chemistry of soap, blue, and starch? Or his dinner cooked by a man who (however skilled in the mere kitchen art of sending up appetising dishes) is totally ignorant of how much albumen, salts, and alkalies go to the formation of vegetable and animal diet?’
These citations now complete, we must conclude this imperfect but thoroughly reliable account of the remarkable journal of 1977, whose discovery has been the glorious first-fruits of the Prospective Telegraph. Nevertheless, it would ill become any of us who have the privilege to live in this enlightened age to entertain a shadow of a doubt that our Scientific method is the right one, and that by-and-by (while we respectfully wait the results of their experiments) our great medical men will discover the proper remedies for murder, rape, and robbery. For our own part, it is superfluous to assure our readers, we retain unwavering, unbounded faith in the resources of Science to provide a perfect substitute for Religion, for Conscience, and for Honour.