Steam Unicycle Journeys

Entry the Second , 15th of May, 1873

This morning dawned with a pallor most unconvincing,Cornish light, hesitant, as though unsure whether to proclaim day or retreat into perpetual sea-mist. From my window in Penzance, I espied the harbour masts rising like so many quills from an overturned porcupine, and beyond them the grey Atlantic which attracted me – I would like to be the First Gentleman to swim to the New World.

For now though I have a different challenge. I rose early to reassemble the Steam Unicycle, a task attended by both pride and vexation. Pride, because each component,valve, sprocket, chimneylet,was polished to a sheen that would please the toughest Sergeant-Major. Vexation, because the chambermaid, having observed the reconstitution of the apparatus, declared it “unnatural,” and refused to enter my room again. She made the sign of the cross when the little boiler first hissed. I reassured her that the steam was no more devilish than her kettle, though admittedly less suited to the making of tea.

By midmorning I had wheeled the contraption through the narrow streets to Land’s End itself. There the cliffs present the impression of a land perpetually straining to flee the sea’s assault. I stood on the dangerous precipice, my machine in front of me and felt a stirring of great pride. To travel by a single wheel, driven not by legs but by steam, seemed wonderful. As I climbed aboard my vehicle I wondered if I would be knighted after this unique journey, though my mind was soon filled with other matters when the Steam Unicycle vibrated unexpectedly and jumped backwards. I was almost thrown over the cliffs, which would have not been the ideal start as I would have almost certainly been killed by the 300 feet drop.

I managed to select first gear and set off to jeers from local school children who – like everyone else in the world – had not seen a steam unicycle before. The inaugural ride was less triumphant than hoped. The machine lurched, coughed, and with a hiss just outside Penzance threw me unceremoniously against a gorse bush. A tramp, passing with a dog upon his shoulders, offered hearty laughter in place of sympathy. Yet, as I disentangled myself, he said, “If it carries you a mile, sir, it will carry you a hundred.” I chose to take this as prophecy.

Thereafter, progress improved. I mastered a rhythm of balance,leaning slightly forward to encourage the wheel’s obedience, then allowing the pistons to thrust me onward with their syncopated pulse. Villagers gaped, children ran alongside. One boy shouted, “A kettle upon a wheel!” I considered correcting him, then decided the epithet possessed a certain accuracy and graced him with a wave.

In the mid-afternoon it began to rain and as I travelled north getting wetter and wetter, I conceived of a new apparatus, which I called the Umbrella of Constant Orientation. It would be an umbrella, but fitted with gyroscopic fins, such that no matter the direction of the wind, the canopy shall remain steadfastly above one’s head. How society suffers the indignity of inverted umbrellas! It seems to me a simple matter of balance and weighted counter-shafts. I shall sketch it this evening. I do wonder sometimes if I am the Leonardo of these times. I wonder who is the Michelangelo.

By late afternoon I had reached St Just, where I found accommodation in a coaching inn. The innkeeper insisted that my unicycle remain in the stable with the horses. The beasts eyed it warily, and I could not help but think they recognised a rival. I placed a cloth over the boiler, lest they be disturbed by its gleam.

Thus concludes the second day: bruised, exhilarated, and not a little chastened by the unicycle’s temper, yet convinced that I have set in motion something more than mere travel. Perhaps an art of locomotion itself, where every puff of steam becomes a brushstroke upon the map of England.

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.