When Lorenzo Fowler woke on Thursday morning to the sound of waves and seagulls, and the scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the wave, he had trouble initially guessing where he was. He normally woke to the sound of London traffic and coster boys. Freshwater Bay had been an impulsive decision, prompted by little Jessie complaining of the fug of Ludgate Circus (‘Pa, this heat!’) and accomplished with a spirit of ‘What are we waiting for?’ that had ‘yankee’ written all over it.
Lorenzo as a caring father needed no other incitement than his little daughter’s cry. She was a pale, freckly child with orange ringlets, and he still felt guilty at transplanting her to England – such a backward land in terms of diet, clean water and fresh air. So at her first complaint, he shoved a few heads in boxes, packed his charts and silk blindfold in violet tissue, selected some hot, progressive Fowlers & Wells pamphlets (subjects included anti-lacing, temperance, tobacco, octagonal architecture and hydropathic cholera cures) and took the earliest train to the New Forest.
Even in a mercy dash, it seemed, a phrenologist did not travel light. For phrenology was Lorenzo Fowler’s lifelong pursuit, and after thirty years he was not so much proud of this highly dodgy profession as still busting the buttons of his fancy satin waistcoat. Some people grow tired of fads, but not Lorenzo Fowler. For him, phrenology was the fad that would not die. Talk to him ignorantly of phrenology as the science of ‘bumps’ and he might throw back his magnificent head to laugh (baring his excellent white teeth) before genially setting you straight for half an hour, dazzling you with his specialist vocabulary, and at the end of it selling you a special new demountable model of the brain for the knock-down rate of two and nine.
Of course, for practising the craft of head-feeling, all you needed were a pair of hands, a good spatial sense, and a map of the mental organs fixed firmly in your mind. But Lorenzo Niles Fowler was more than a phrenologist. He was also showman and evangelist, whose personal belief was that the market for phrenology had never been so vigorous, not even in its heyday in his native United States. Why, already on this trip to the Isle of Wight he had used a cursory reading to pay the carter from Yarmouth, telling him, ‘Such a large Self Esteem you have! And what Amativeness!’ Gratified by this mysterious, flattering talk from an exotic foreigner, the normally morose carter had gladly waived the fee when he dropped his passengers at the Albion Hotel, right on the edge of the bay. Lorenzo smiled. It worked every time. Tell people they have abnormally large Amativeness (sexuality by a fancier name) and they are well disposed to phrenology – and phrenologists – for ever after. It’s just something they happen to enjoy hearing.
Jessie was awake and dressed already, playing with heads in the chintzy sitting room. She was eight, and precocious, and though the scene might strike an outsider as altogether gruesome, she was happy enough, having known no other dollies in her life save these big bald plaster ones with nothing below the neck. Poor kid. She had no idea how it looked. Not only were there detached heads all over the floor, but she had on a thick dress of red tartan – a tragically bad choice when you consider the ginger hair.
‘Pa?’ said Jessie. ‘Oh there you are, Pa! Ada and I breakfasted already, but we made them save you some brains!’
‘My favourite!’
This was the Fowlers’ daily joke. It was funny because they were vegetarians as well as phrenologists – and looking on the bright side, at least it was generally dispensed with quite early in the day.
‘Brains! Ha ha, ho ho!’ laughed Lorenzo, slapping his knees, while the nun-like Ada, their British maid, wordlessly unpacked some pamphlets from a trunk, and tried not to count how many times she’d heard this one before. You have to look at it from Ada’s point of view. A family of American freaks that delighted in brain jokes? No, the gods of domestic employment had not exactly smiled upon Ada.
‘Test me on the heads, please, Pa! Ada can’t do it, she’s too silly. She’s too British!’
‘Try not to be rude about Ada, dearest,’ said Lorenzo, while he blindfolded his horrid little daughter, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
‘Tight enough? Not too tight? We are guests in this country, Jessie,’ he continued, as he secured the strings with a dainty bow at the back of the little girl’s well formed head. He was a big man with deft fingers. His hands were always warm.
‘We have a duty to behave with the very best of manners. In particular we should lead the way in courtesy to the lower orders.’
‘But what if our hosts are all sillies and nincompoops like Ada?’ asked Jessie.
Ada left the room, and slammed the door.
‘Well, I agree, dearest,’ said Lorenzo. ‘That sometimes makes it hard.’
Lorenzo had brought a selection of plaster heads on holiday, the way another man might bring a selection of neck ties. Spreading them on the rug in a semi-circle, he handed them one by one to the blindfolded Jessie, who sat with her legs out straight, bouncing her calves alternately up and down.
‘Take your time,’ he said, as her little hands swarmed over the polished plaster. But his breath was wasted. Time was something Jessie clearly did not need.
‘It’s too easy, Pa,’ pouted the little girl.
‘No, it is not. Phrenology is a high science.’
‘Well, this one’s the Idiot of Amsterdam, aged twenty-five, I know that.’
‘Very well. I take away the Idiot of Amsterdam, aged twenty-five. But first tell me about him. How do you ascertain his idiocy, Oh little clever one?’
‘But it’s so obvious! The flat, short brow, indicating no reflective or perceptive qualities! A cat could tell you that! I mean, if a cat had the Organ of Language, which of course it doesn’t. A cat has a large Organ of Secretiveness!’
Jessie never stopped showing off. It was one of the reasons why she had so few friends. (The other reason was that she never minced words about other people’s cranial deficiencies.)
She picked up another head, felt it quickly, and cast it aloft. ‘You can take away the Manchester Idiot, too, Pa, while you are about it.’
Lorenzo caught the head before it fell to the floor. Jessie was getting over-excited.
‘Now, now, child,’ he said. ‘These things cost money.’ He handed her another. ‘Who’s this?’
Jessie whooped. ‘It’s the Montrose Calculator! Papa, you brought the Montrose Calculator! With the enormous Organ of Number!’
‘What’s the story we tell about the Montrose Calculator, Jessie?’
‘That when asked how he could calculate the number of seconds a person had been alive, he’d say’ (and here she assumed a terrible Highlands accent) ‘I dinna ken hoo I do’t. I jest think, and the ainsa comes inta ma heed!’
He patted her shoulder, partly to congratulate her, partly in the hope of slowing her down.
‘That’s enough for now,’ he said, but ‘No! One more! One more!’ she pleaded, and blindly reached out her chubby arms. How could he resist his darling? Especially when she looked so lovely – so right – in that violet blindfold? Lorenzo opened a special, individual box, and handed her a new head.
‘Who’s this,
