From the Journals of Basil Bromley, Artist and Mechanician
Pimlico Wilde is proud to have been chosen to serialise Basil Bromley’s Journals. Here he covers his first art journey, as they came to be known, from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
Entry the First , 14th of May, 1873
It is with a mingling of relief and trepidation that I set down these words at the commencement of my newest enterprise. My previous invention, the Self-Tightening Cravat had aimed to save gentleman time and effort by – as the name suggests – saving them the bother of tightening their cravat against their neck by hand. It would have saved them several seconds a day, seconds that could have been used to learn German, smoke a pipe, etcetera, etcetera. Unfortunately early models led to several near-strangulations, and I received an order from the Home Secretary that I cease any further research into cravats of any sort.
I turned my attention instead to the problem of transportation. After many late nights and the expenditure of no small quantity of my meagre inheritance, I have contrived the world’s first Steam Unicycle. The public may scoff at its practicality, but then, they scoffed at Turner’s clouds. The public tend to scoff at anything new or exciting, and the Bromley Steam Unicycle is both new and exciting.
Today I travelled by rail toward Penzance, bearing the machine,dismantled and concealed within a great canvas sack,so that tomorrow I might commence my journey to John O’Groats from Land’s End itself. The bag, alas, is larger than the space permitted by the railway carriage’s corridors. The unicycle’s brass components, wrapped in cloth, protrude at awkward angles, striking the knees of fellow passengers so often that my journey was punctuated by continual apologies.
A gentleman of stiff collar and frosted beard asked whether I conveyed a boiler for some rural chapel. When I hinted at its true nature,a contrivance of transport,he adjusted his spectacles and muttered: “Monstrous.” And yet he lingered, pressing me for details of the gearing. I permitted him a glimpse of a polished valve, whereupon he softened, and we discoursed upon the relative virtues of piston versus rotary force until the train lurched into Truro.
Later, a boy of perhaps twelve asks me if I am carrying “a tuba or a dead body.” His father shushes him, but I reply that it is something rarer than both. He presses me to elaborate. I tell him it is an instrument, in a sense,an instrument of travel, an experiment in balance and propulsion. “Does it explode?” he asks, eyes bright. I assure him that it does not, at least not intentionally. He seems disappointed, though he waves to me with a certain respect when he disembarks at Newton Abbot
Evening finds me in Penzance, where I have procured lodgings of a decent but not distinguished order. The unicycle stands disassembled in the corner of my chamber, like some mechanical gargoyle awaiting resurrection. Tomorrow, God willing, I shall reconstitute the beast, wheel it to the Southernmost promontory of England, and there inaugurate my passage northward, a line drawn by steam across the spine of the isle.
I anticipate falls, perhaps injuries, perhaps ridicule. Yet I cannot relinquish the conviction that one must push beyond the tolerances of the ordinary,one must always retain fidelity to one’s self.
Thus ends the first day of my venture.
