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Close Ties in European Local Governance: Linking Local State and Society Filipe Teles
ISBN 978-3-658-43887-6 ISBN 978-3-658-43888-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43888-3
Tis book is a translation of the original German edition “Superschwache Beziehungen” by Stegbauer, Christian, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH in 2023. Te translation was done with the help of an artifcial intelligence machine translation tool. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically diferently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.
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Preface
Super weak relationships that hold our culture together? Somehow that sounds daring. However, I believe I can present arguments that prove this—I can show that the way we behave largely depends on other people, most of whom we don't even know, but with whom we share time and space, whom we can observe or whose behavior we can perceive in some way. Te relationship, which usually only comes about passively, but still has a great infuence on us, lies in the transmission and learning of possible behaviors.
But let's take it one step at a time: When Marc Granovetter's essay, which described the strength of weak relationships, appeared in the early 1970s, it was a sensation. Discussing weak relationships and their signifcance was considered a signifcant innovation at the time, leading to many new explanations for social phenomena. My book here takes the idea of weak relationships a step further: Only the inclusion of super-weak relationships can explain how we behave in many situations and why most others around us do the same. Such relationships, which were not previously considered as such, are more signifcant than some might have thought.
Before we get to the content, I use the preface to frst say a word about the style of the book: I combine observations, experiences, examples based on my own experiences, with sociological knowledge and experiments relevant to everyday life. I am interested in writing down something that I have been thinking about for a while, and that is inevitably somewhat subjectively infuenced. I apologize to the purists of scientifc methodology at this point, because the text does not ofer a strictly scientifc analysis in this sense. Nevertheless, it is intended to be a contribution to the debate in the feld of network research, and, as far as possible, I try to approach it with some lightness. Te text is of course written from the perspective of the sociologist and network researcher that I am. Most of the time, I quote from memory, which I know can sometimes play tricks on one (and certainly on me). I have tried to present the results of my thinking through the observed behaviors as uncomplicatedly and with as little technical jargon as possible. A criticism that thinks that systems theory also ofers an explanation or that new materialism—just to name two examples—also provides enlightenment, misses the intention of this contribution. I ask such critical voices to present their perspective in their own works. However, you are certainly welcome to discuss the diferent views.
Another point that also belongs in a preface. In the feld of research from which the ideas originate, network research, we frst look at structures of relationships. Tis requires a change of perspective. From this point of view, it's not about subjectivity or personal experience, but primarily about what happens behind people's backs. Behind the back means that we often do not perceive much of what defnes us and leads us to our behavior, and often are not even capable of it. If someone packs a leather jacket (as known from club-bound motorcyclists, for example) for a classical concert or puts on a suit, this also has something to do with individual experience. But there is something else behind it. What leads us to this specifc behavior is not simply derived from our own experience. Tis is also a reason why most sociological methods tend to draw false conclusions: Qualitative interviews, which focus on the entire person, their development and their subjective perspective, fail in many respects just like the often so-called quantitative “royal road”, where one seeks to learn something about the social through
aggregated combinations of characteristics. Tese two approaches have a certain justifcation, but they should not be overestimated—they are often blind to essential processes, even if they afect us. Such processes are often not or only difcult to perceive by the individual. Te individual is merely the instance of experience, as Georg Simmel (1917: 8–9) once formulated1—rational choice, for example, is located at this level. When we talk about people making decisions and making their decisions based on calculations, we adopt the perspective of this very instance of experience. What we do not see is the universe before and after—this of course also refers to the social limitation of what can be chosen at all.
To be content with that would be reckless, because opportunities are just as tied to structural-social situations. Opportunities arise and the resulting decisions are made without knowing their consequences. Relationships are entered into, in times and situations, during which we are open to them. Tese relationships signifcantly infuence our preferences (Stegbauer 2016). Although we have no idea what is happening behind our backs, it is still a part of us.
What actually happens is subject to a kind of order that we do not (or only rarely) feel and often cannot even perceive. Tis order is not as orderly as we would like to imagine. Much of what appears to us as order is much more contingent than we normally believe. Chance plays a role, although this chance also follows an order—who we meet and when, for example, is both random and predictable. Te reason for this is that encounters follow certain rules. A term commonly used in sociology for this is structuration. We can consider this structuration as a social-cultural order that is established on the side and is largely not perceived. It is hardly accessible to our experience. Te cultural patterns we follow are negotiated with others or arise in relation to others, whom we sometimes do not even know.
Nevertheless, the way in which negotiations and adaptations are made is subject to a certain order. It is the result of everyday cultural negotiations. Such negotiations are usually not explicit, but can be considered as recognition of the actions of others, and this arises further through contradictions and eforts at distinction. In addition, there is also the trying out of new things. On current occasions, one could say
that cultural patterns, especially on a small scale, mutate and are tested again and again at the micro level. Whether behaviors, interpretations, ideologies prevail beyond this enormously important micro level, this becomes apparent when others adopt these components and carry them forward themselves.
Tinking within the framework of networks involves a change in perspective. We switch from the instance of experiencing with individual people, to patterns in relationships. Tis change in the way we view social phenomena impressed me so much at the time that I have not been able to let go of it to this day. So many interesting insights emerge that are worth describing. Tis book aims to convey an impression of this.
Perhaps the attempt to approach the whole thing with a bit of humor is where the topics for the examples come from. However, the examples are only for illustration, it's not so much about their content—they represent underlying mechanisms that are supposed to provide explanations for social phenomena. So we are dealing with such everyday phenomena as: What clothes do we wear? If everyone rummages their clothes out of the closet in the morning, why do we then fnd similarities in clothing, for example, between those who are in a relationship? Can this be explained with super weak relationships? Why could super weak relationships be responsible for this? Another example is connected with the questions: What do we do on vacation? What do we do before or after pizza, perhaps even on a piazza? If the beach becomes too boring and we no longer know how to position ourselves in the deck chair because of the sunburn we acquired there, does the educational part come then? Is this the reason why we visit historical monuments? Well, of course, the question follows, what does this have to do with sociology and social networks.
My explanation will not surprise you much given the title of the book: Super weak relationships are involved. Super weak relationships help us orient ourselves in diferent environments, especially where we are strangers. We then adopt the behavior of others. We adapt our
behavior to these other people, without even knowing these other people. An aspect that is usually not addressed in network research, but should actually be within its scope. However, the inclusion of such super weak relationships could help us understand certain phenomena. Many thanks to Gerd Paul and Stefan Klingelhöfer, both of whom reviewed an early version of the manuscript and to whom I owe numerous suggestions. For further great help, I thank Jutta Wörsdörfer and Nina Rodmann.
Christian Stegbauer
Note
1. Simmel (1917: 8 f.) “When viewed in isolation and with precision, individuals are by no means the ultimate elements, “atoms” of the human world. Te perhaps insoluble unity that the concept of the individual signifes is not an object of knowledge at all, but only of experience; the way in which everyone knows it in themselves and in others is incomparable to any other kind of knowledge.”
1
Why Super Weak Relationships?
How does it happen that everyone in the audience at a concert moves their heads in the same rhythm, that of the music?1 Why do all people snap similar photos when they are traveling? Why can you recognize people’s professions and felds of study by their clothing? Why is there such a respectful atmosphere in cases of mourning? In this book, I ask about the mechanisms behind the emergence of such phenomena. We deal with the development of culture and the question of how it is passed on in a social context. Te key—as the result already anticipated here—is found in relationships between people. Tis also involves, but not primarily, our partnerships, friendships, and kinship relationships. We do not primarily focus on the looser relationships with acquaintances, whom we rarely meet. Here, it is about even looser relationships, which only arise through shared presence and the possibility of mutual observation. Te answer to the questions raised is found in the super weak relationships.
Te order of society is primarily an order of relationships. Te science of such relations, sociological network research, classifes relationships according to their strength: there are strong and there are weak relationships—these two categories have fxed places in their universe when it
C. Stegbauer, Super Weak Ties, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43888-3_1
comes to explaining the world of the social. What does not exist in the science of networks so far is what concerns me in this book, namely the relationships weaker than the weak ones. Such relationships are actually not relationships in the classical sense—and yet they exist and are very efective. However, they hide even better than the other types of relationships behind the individual’s experience. Our experience does not refect the whole reality. When I write this, I do not mean a conspiracy theory—not chemtrails or possible evil powers that bring this about—it is a social interplay, which, however, is usually not or hardly perceptible for us at our current location. Much is therefore happening behind our backs, and we need to change perspective from time to time to recognize and understand this—but I will report more about this later in the book.
Super weak relationships, therefore, do not actually occur, one could claim. You do not fnd these if you stick to the classic classifcations with their distinction between strong and weak relationships. Relations that depict structures that only refer to these categories of relationship strengths inadequately describe the social order surrounding us. Order is always precarious, but necessary for us, so that we humans can cope with the complexity of the world at all. Terefore, orders are established and constantly renewed by people—certain components of orders are thus subject to dynamics. Who is in relationship with whom and how, decides the fate of us all. An organization, a club, a friendship, a family, all this results from orders of relationships. Relationship institutions, like the ones mentioned, reduce the complexity of our everyday life because they help us to fnd our way in the otherwise existing jungle of relations. We can describe such orders as structures.
Te structures that surround us are only perceived in fragments by us humans. From the orders established by humans, which are perhaps also somewhat perceptible, new structures result—one could say that these subsequent structures are far less planned or plannable. Tey are unintended side efects of planning, and I would even go so far as to say that the largest amount of the structures efective for us belong to the class of unplanned consequences. Intended relationships are, for example, those that we maintain in organizations with colleagues, superiors, and employees. For the informal relationships in organizations, the part
planned by management is to be seen as a condition of possibility— but the informality develops relatively independently from the original planning. What I mean is that in every organization, plans are made that then bring people together who would otherwise have had nothing to do with each other. Also, the conditions of action in organizations are crucial for our further relationships: Who can we even get to know if we work in shifts and cannot meet the “normal workers” at the end of the day? In which area do we spend the big break, and which other people do we meet there? Who else is on the train on the way to work? Who is therefore eligible for potential relationships? Te answers to these questions result from planning for organizations, although they are not planned themselves. All this is not in our hands, but is the result of planning that takes place elsewhere.
In the way described, people come together, and this has its efect. We do not look at the type of relationship that is anchored in traditional human thinking. We also do not look at the representation of relations as they are traditionally captured by those who research networks. Te fact that the people around us provide orientation allows us to talk about relationships. I think this also applies when these can only be described as “super weak”. Tis book is about the efect of people around us, with whom we come together every day, but to whom we can hardly specify a relationship. Often the only thing that connects us is that we are in the same place at the same time—and perhaps also that we can observe each other. And sometimes it is enough to hear or read about them, as is often the case in social media. Observing each other, however, is not even an unconditional prerequisite in all cases. It is often enough if the perception is one-sided. A one-sided perception invites observation and learning of how others behave; simultaneous presence and being under observation create an even stronger compulsion to adapt.
We would probably mostly refer to the people to whom I claim a connection here as strangers—we often have (almost) nothing to do with these people. Nevertheless, they are important to us. Tey give us orientation. Trough them, we learn many things. What we learn, we can confdently call aspects of culture. Super weak relationships are also signifcant for how much we feel included or excluded. We usually meet
these strangers in public spaces, where we go and stay: when shopping, strolling in the park, on public transport, in the theater, at festivals and also on vacation, whether it’s the Ballermann or the trekking tour in the high mountains. We encounter these people in certain situations, while waiting, during ceremonies, when they argue or picnic. Te people we meet behave in a certain situation-specifc way. We observe this and try not to fall out of role. Tis means, we adjust our behavior. Sometimes, however, we deliberately do not do this. Tis can then be an expression of rejection of the observed behavior, but even then this happens in a way that refers to the others.2
We adapt to the behavior of others and modify it at the same time. Te adaptation I am talking about often goes unnoticed by us, but it is there. Sometimes we only become aware of it when someone fails to adapt or is unable to do so for some reason. Such adjustment to others, even unknown people, is constantly happening. Imagine you are shopping at the Saturday market. You line up at a stand that specializes in potatoes. How do you talk to the saleswoman? High German with chosen words? Something like you remember from a seminar at the university? If you work in a bank, do you then speak when buying vegetables as it would be customary among the colleagues there? But even if you do not have an academic degree, if you earn your bread in a craft business, for example, you will not talk the same way at the market as at work. No, even before we have heard others speak, we change our language. We do this in a way that we expect to ft the situation. Te talk of expecting is probably even wrong, because there is no direct decision behind the adaptation—the language and behavior change mostly happens by itself. It is a genre-specifc language that is then further adapted when it comes to conversation. “Genre-specifc” in this context means that types of situations are associated with a certain culture. So we adapt to the situation we are in. When such mutual adaptation occurs, we speak of “alignment”. Not only the language, but also the course of such conversations is subject to rules.3
But it’s not just the language that adapts, our behavior also changes with the situation and the people with whom we have no, at most a “super weak”, relationship. Tis becomes noticeable in situations where we feel insecure. Ten we are particularly looking for orientation. But
there are also moments that are special and need to be captured. Tink of a trip to Italy to Tuscany. Such a trip usually includes a visit to the beautiful city of Pisa. We are probably initially irritated by the strange behavior of the other tourists with a view of the leaning tower. We consider what the others are doing there as slightly crazy. However, we (or at least most of us), as soon as we understand what they are doing, also join in and do the same as the others. We take pictures of each other pretending to prevent the tower from falling (see chapter on the Leaning Tower). We take such pictures for ourselves and also to show to friends, and fnally they also serve to upload to social media. After the trip, we can show of to our friends with them, or we send the pictures directly to our closer relationships. So what the other tourists teach us on site is not just for the moment of observing the others; we involve our closer relationships in the newly learned behavior.
So when we talk about networks with diferent categories of relationships, we mean that the diferent types of contacts do not exist independently of each other. What we learn through super weak relationships, we pass on to our strong and sometimes also to our weak relationships. When we think of the diferent categories of relationships, we might think it’s like a tableau. Like in a matrix, we fnd references between the diferent types of relationships. An event that I encounter—such as street musicians on the shopping street and the xenophobic reaction of the market seller to it (to whom I have a slightly stronger super weak relationship than to the other passing pedestrians),— becomes a noteworthy experience because of her choice of words. Reported at home, the incident becomes a situation in which the strong relationship that has been there for decades is confrmed and perhaps even slightly strengthened. Te narrator already knows anyway that the listener holds a similar opinion. Te passed on experience strengthens the cohesion in our strong relationship. We cannot understand the behavior of the market woman, in fact we even reject it. In the future, as a result of processing the morning anecdote, we will avoid this market stall if possible. We try to do this, but the private boycott puts us in a dilemma: Unfortunately, they have the best sausage salad at the market. A fact that hopefully will not shake the new jointly made resolution already in the following week.
So there is a connection between the diferent categories of relationships—but we should not think that this is completely static. With whom we are in a relationship changes over time. New friendships are formed and old ones are dissolved. Perhaps the term tableau actually fts quite well. In such a tableau, the diferent types of relationships are interconnected: So strong relationships without their weak and super weak counterpart are of much less importance—but this also applies in the opposite direction.
While I’m talking about behavior and its observation here, what I mean becomes much clearer with the interplay of diferent relationship strength categories when we briefy think back to the Covid pandemic. Early main distribution hubs for the Corona virus were the après-ski orgies in Ischgl in the Alps, similarly structured strong beer festivals in Eastern Bavaria and a carnival celebration near Aachen (Stegbauer 2020b)4. Te virus jumped at such superspreader events to people who did not necessarily know the infected directly. Te transmission also took place here via super weak relationships. Once infected, the virus then spreads via weaker contacts at work or even more so via the very strong relationships within families to which one returns. Tis means that the information (here from the genetic material of the virus) travels across connections of several strength categories of relationships. Information and the experiences made about behavior in diferent situations take similar propagation paths. Just like with viruses, accounts of experiences are diferently contagious—which here means, worth sharing.
We are very closely connected with our life partner. We know close and distant relatives. We often see our best friends; we only meet less close friends on certain occasions. Other friendships are tied to certain activities, like sports friends for example. So we divide into those people who are close to us, and those who are less close to us. Tis helps us establish a cognitive order. Te relationship order is therefore double—it is in the institutions as general rules; in the company, such rules are recorded in the organization chart, for example. But this is usually not necessary at all, because relationships in the company have settled in. At the same time, our brain stores who we need to turn to when we need something. We know who we can call upon for a move or who we
can ask for advice when we need a doctor for an impending ailment. So there is an order in our head that only exists in our imagination. Tis makes it easier for us to deal with our relationships.
Not only this—the information contained therein can also be communicated. We can describe to others how we stand with whom. When we tell others about our relationships, the relationship structure also becomes transparent for them. If they in turn (usually dressed up in stories) tell about their relationships, then we are able to locate ourselves and others in the social environment. In addition to communication about direct contacts, we also talk about other people—about those who are not present. It’s not just about their properties and peculiarities. No, we also talk about how these people relate to those around them. Tis usually happens through stories of incidents that seem worth sharing. In this way, we can fnd out that we are in a whole network of social relationships.
Talking about relationships may be important to fnd out who stands how to whom in our environment. Usually, the relationship is not talked about directly—the messages are hidden in anecdotes about events and often just in gossip. When someone new comes along, for example when a good friend fnds a new partner, you need to know who this person is. Te new partner of the friend enters a certain competition with us for time, attention and support. Perhaps this person also relieves us of the worry that we are not taking enough care of her. An indication of who the new life partner comes from and who else he knows is somewhat reassuring. Tis way, you can see that the newcomer is also embedded, possibly even in your own environment. In the network of people to which one belongs. Close people are extremely important to us because we receive support from them in many ways. Tese are the ones we trust, the ones we help and who also help us when it matters.
Another category of connections are those we call weak relationships. Tese represent the universe of all our relationships (at least what is traditionally considered as such), minus those that belong to the “close ones”, the strong relationships. We only occasionally come together with such people at certain meeting points, or the encounter is unexpected. We know each other, but we don’t cross paths every day. We
chat briefy while shopping or at another meeting with the former college colleague or with the mother of a child who was in the same school as our own ofspring. We ask each other about work, health, children. We learn about a car accident that Helga, a mutual acquaintance, had. Te treatment required as a result is also discussed. Tis category of relationships is important because it is associated with access to information that is not in the inner circles of those who are very close to each other. In the case of Helga’s accident, this might be the address of a good physiotherapy practice. Registering this could help oneself when it comes to combating one’s own neck tension, or we could pass on the information to someone else whom we know has similar problems.
Such information can be important for each of us to know what is happening in distant areas of our network—such as when it comes to the spread of gossip (Bergmann 2017). We then also feel connected to such people whom we only see rarely, and we know where we belong in a somewhat larger context. More often in research, however, the instrumental importance is emphasized: the possibility of learning about new positions, the new job thus depends on such hints passed on via acquaintances.
It is quite diferent with the super weak relationships that are in the foreground here. Tese are ones that we might not even call relationships normally. We don’t know any names of the people we relate to. We do this only briefy and often very one-sidedly. It’s about people who are “accidentally” in the same place. In fact, as is usually the case, this is not a coincidence—rather, the coincidence is guided by certain things—we will come back to this later.
When we fnd ourselves in a certain place at a certain time, we observe others. How are they behaving? Are they in the same situation as us, perhaps as tourists? Are they also waiting for the bus? Are they standing in an orderly line and we are not? Trough observation, we can question our behavior. Shouldn’t we also join the line? Are we violating a rule that applies here? While we ponder this question, we prefer to stand two waiters further back. At that moment, we adjust our behavior and learn something for future similar situations in this country.
Perhaps we also pick up a good idea from someone else? If you take your bike on the train and simply lean it in the bike compartment, it may roll away or even fall over when the train accelerates or brakes.
If another passenger boards the carriage with their bike and secures it with a bungee cord to one of the designated hooks, we start to consider, especially when we worry that another passenger might be afected by our bike, whether this is not a good idea. Maybe we adopt it, and a plan emerges. We get a similar rubber band with hooks from the bike dealer. Ten we are no longer worried that the wheels might slip away or even topple over on the next trip. Such a chance encounter, which we introduce here as an example of a super weak relationship, prompts us to change our behavior in a certain situation. Moreover, adopting the bungee cord would again provide an opportunity for others to observe, which, if it happened many times, would lead to a difusion of this behavior due to super weak relationships.
A behavior transfer takes place—we have observed the other person securing their bike. If we now orient ourselves to this person, we learn something, namely from people we don’t even know. Overall, we learn more from closer contacts and tend to orient ourselves to them. It can probably be said that the closer the contact, the more we learn within the relationships. However, in the cases mentioned, these are neither people with whom we are close, nor are they weak relationships—we are not familiar with these people in any way. Te only thing that connects us is that we are at the same place at the same time. Tis makes it possible to observe others in what they do. Such learning, tied to observation, creates a similarity in behavior. One could even go further and claim that this is culture. Te described mechanism can be referred to as difusion of culture, as it leads to the spread of ideas and behaviors.
Most of the time we just observe other people, at most we talk to such people in a purely formal setting, like a market stall. Since there is no conventional term for such cases so far, I call this type of relationship “super weak”. It is mostly a pure observation relationship. A prerequisite for relationships to be considered super weak is that there is no personal relationship and that, if there is direct communication, little or no personal information is exchanged.
However, not only does behavior migrate between largely unknown people, sometimes something else does too: Super weak connections also play a role in the pandemic. If we get too close to a person, they may pass on the virus.
Te described applies not only to infection—it also applies to protection against it. I was recently in Barcelona. It was not entirely clear to me what regulations applied in the city center. Tus, a number of people in the pedestrian zone wore masks outdoors. Was this now a rule or not? What should I as a traveler orient myself to? I then did not wear the mask, provided a certain distance was possible. However, in the market halls almost everyone wore a mask—this observation was also guiding for me. Tis probably also works during the numerous demonstrations against the Corona measures. Tere, the distance rules can hardly be maintained. If the others explicitly do not wear a mask, then as a demonstrator you naturally orient yourself to these. Here too, the mediation of the behavior typical in this milieu takes place through observation. In the anti-corona measure demo, it is part of the demands that there should be no mask requirement. Terefore, the argument presented here is likely to apply to only a few participants. In this situation, one can even expect that mask wearers will be explicitly targeted by opponents.
Even the demonstrators are people who are in the same or a similar situation; they are at the same place at the same time. Tis is the prerequisite for being able to observe each other. Te relationship between these people is as weak as possible—yet there is still a kind of relationship. Tis is enough to let oneself be infected in terms of one’s own behavior. If numerous people orient themselves to these others, a collective pattern develops. From such patterns, culture emerges, the way one behaves, solidifes into expectations among the participants, who orient themselves to these expectations at the next opportunity. Observers who switch between diferent situations notice the diferences. Tey can then play with it and may be able to infect others with their behavior (or incur resentment). Te latter, in turn, is likely to strengthen the local microculture, as it is critical of changes and closes ranks. As imaginary as such communities (Anderson 1987) may be, they do become behaviorally efective in common situations.
Tis book is about such sometimes infectious super weak relationships. As an author, I wonder what signifcance these relationships have and what the prerequisites are for a transfer of behavior to take place.
What are situations in which a transfer takes place? But frst, we deal with the question of what types of relationships play a role in network research.
Notes
1. Tis also includes the question not addressed here, why hardly anyone does this at jazz concerts, even though it is known about jazz: “It must swing!”—a statement attributed to Blue Note label founder Alfred Lion. So there would be enough rhythm—actually also a topic that could be addressed here and could be explained with the considerations made.
2. Gofman (1973) thought something similar when he made considerations about role distance.
3. In addition to the actual alignment, such conversations are subject to certain rules. One can also speak of communicative genres (Bergmann 1987; Keppler 1987).
4. Even after two years of pandemic in 2022, the incidence of Corona infections is still rising where Carnival is celebrated, for example in Cologne (“Incidence rises sharply after Carnival”, FAZ, 08.03.2022, p. 9).
2
The Human in the Network of Relationships
Networks consist of nodes and edges. Nodes are usually considered to be people, but they can also be other social structures, such as organizations or states, etc. Te edges represent the in-between, namely what stands between the nodes and connects them—and sometimes also separates them. Tus, the edges represent the relationships. In a certain set (e.g., a group or certain people who come together somewhere), some nodes are connected to each other and others are not. Te latter is also interesting, i.e., looking at where there is nothing, where the relationships are missing. Te defnition is very similar in the book, which is occasionally referred to as the bible of network research and was written by Wasserman and Faust (1994). Tey write there that the network consists of relationships/non-relationships within a set of nodes. As researchers in the feld of network research, we are interested in the pattern we fnd there. We call such a pattern “structure”. Tis structure is examined for its properties and its meaning. Te basis of such analyses is always a resolution of the structure into relationships between two. Such relationships are called dyads. Te entire network, as it is typically considered, can thus be broken down into relationships between specifed dyads. Tis does not necessarily mean that we
C. Stegbauer, Super Weak Ties, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43888-3_2
would be particularly interested in the pairs of relationships underlying the network (Radclife-Brown 1940)—their embedding in the network is much more interesting. Te fact that dyads nevertheless form the basis for traditional network research is mainly due to the conditions of mathematical formalization. So if relationships are the prerequisite for network research, what does it mean if this relationship cannot be named in the traditional sense, if one only observes other people and yet orientates oneself towards each other? Can we still speak of networks in such cases? We will see.1
Simultaneous Presence and its Measurement: Two-Mode Networks
In most cases, networks are formed from the linkage of nodes of the same type. Tis means that in network research we construct networks between people. Sometimes we also form networks between countries or between chickens or monkeys (Maryanski 1987; Chase 1974). One can then investigate in which direction the relationships exist, whether the afection is reciprocated or not. Such networks are called unimodal networks—they consist of only one mode. In addition to these unimodal networks, network research is also interested in bimodal networks (Breiger 1974)2, usually as a kind of “crutch” for the most important type of analysis, namely that of total networks—I think that’s fair to say. It is a “walking aid” insofar as one tries to read out from the simultaneous presence with others at certain events what the relationship status between the involved persons is. Te so-called Southern Women have become classic for this, who were frst reported in a study by Davis et al. (1941) and later became known through their consideration in Homans’ classic on the theory of the social group (frst 1951, in German 1960). Tis community study was conducted in the enchanting southern town of Natchez, located directly on the Mississippi (which should not distract from the fact that this enchanting charm would not have been possible without the exploitation of slaves). To collect the data, reports from the local newspaper were evaluated. Tere it
was described which ladies of society were involved in certain events. Tese were card game evenings, charity bazaars and the like. Te data from the newspaper articles were compiled into a table of 18 women and 14 events. From the simultaneous mention in a newspaper article about the same event, the researchers concluded that a relationship exists. In fact, it turned out that the female society of the city was divided into two groups.3
However, the analysis possibilities of network research are far from exhausted. For the investigation of the phenomenon of super weak relationships, the analysis of joint participation in events is just one of the existing possibilities. If you take a closer look at the concepts of cultural toolkits (Swidler 1986), microcultures (Fine 1979) and chains of situations (Collins 2005), you come to the conclusion that there could be more to it (Stegbauer 2016) than just the direct relationships between the participants. Te goal could also be to register who has experienced an event together with others and thus got to know parts of the special culture there.
However, the construction of two-mode networks also has weaknesses (Stegbauer 2013); especially when the number of participants increases. Te problem is that a relationship is defned between all participants of an event. Te larger the event, the more relationships are constructed in the course of the analysis. Te number of constructed relationships grows quadratically. Tis can be easily understood when you consider that the number of constructed relationships (which are always symmetric in the bimodal case) is three for three people, six for four people, ten for fve people, and eighteen for six people. If you continue the series and compare, for example, 5, 50, 500, and 5000, it becomes clear what I mean: for 5 it’s 5 × 4/2 = 10; 50: 1225; 500: 124,750; 5000: 12,497,500 relationships that arise when using this method. When the number of participants increases, at some point you can no longer speak of a direct relationship between all persons, in fact, you can practically rule out this idea. At large music festivals with, let’s say 80,000 participants and even long before—as the example shows— the method doesn’t help much to identify relationships. Tis also applies if there are numerous “real” friendships or acquaintances among
the 80,000. Tis can be assumed because very few participants of such events arrive alone.
With the many relationships that one constructs at such large events, one might be able to do something if one has information about numerous such events. Ten, regularities in the pattern of participation at such events could possibly be identifed; these would be social structures. We once conducted a similar study for various “events” on Wikipedia and actually identifed elements of the “core structure” of the community that created Wikipedia (Stegbauer and Rausch 2009).4 Although in principle anyone could participate in the creation and maintenance of the encyclopedia, a relatively small core community actually emerged over the course of the work. If one is not only interested in a small core, the method will not lead much further.
What interests us here, however, is something else, namely the question of whether it is not sufcient in some places to behave appropriately to the situation, with the appropriateness being established through super weak relationships. Super weak relationships are found between participants at such large events like music festivals. You come into contact with others when you camp on the festival grounds, when you stand together in front of the stage or borrow a can opener. Te criterion of super weak contact is also already met by observing. You look at and admire how the others are dressed and how they try to cope with the requirements on site with the simplest means. How do they deal with it when it rains and the heavily used meadow turns into a mud feld? When watching stage acts, there comes the moment when the audience takes out their lighters or, due to the lack of smokers nowadays, shines with the digital equivalent, the mobile phone fashlights. Te headbanger (the rhythmic up and down movement of the head) is also a collective afair, which follows the rhythm, but still a communal pattern. As already initially said, the individual is the only instance in which experience is possible. However, this experience also depends on the others, these surrounding people, to whom at most a super weak relationship exists. In the case of festivals or football games, for example, there are collective experiences that require participation in order to be able to share in the experience.
Perhaps these examples already make it clear that while the neighbors and their behavior play a role in the transmission of behavior patterns, what happens on stage may be a bit more important. When the singer starts clapping above her head, this is understood as an invitation for the entire audience. Participating creates an involvement, which makes the relationship (even if it is only super weak) tangible for everyone. Although everyone who is observable by others may infuence the event a little, the stage, overall, has signifcantly more infuence.5 We learn from this that there is an inequality regarding who is able to transmit culturally relevant behavior also through super weak relationships. Such an unequal pattern is found—according to the theory—also in the collective rhythm of the glowing of frefies (Watts 2003), where the insects orient themselves on the one hand to the neighbors, on the other hand apparently to particularly brightly glowing or particularly exposed specimens. Tis is the only way to explain how the frefies can adjust their blinking to each other so quickly. If the insects were only oriented towards their neighbors, it could be that it is already morning again before the adjustment between all animals has succeeded. For the festival phenomena of mobile phone lighting and headbanging, this should apply in a similar way. Watts’ idea was that some nodes are more visible or exposed than others, which leads to the others being able to orient themselves to these. When the musicians on stage demonstrate something, they are in visual contact with the many fans in the audience. Tey thus hold a position that can only be described with the power law. Tis power law (Barabási 2002) applied to these phenomena means that a majority of the audience follow the musicians and their behavior with their eyes. Although the participants also pay attention to their neighbors, their reach—assuming there would be an adoption of their behavior—is much smaller. If one were to represent the number of observation relationships to the participants in a diagram, we could immediately recognize that the people on stage have an extremely high number of such relationships: Te rest of the audience has much fewer of them, because visual contact is only possible with the neighbors. Such extremely skewed distributions are often found, mostly on the internet, because there, the collection of contacts does not encounter cognitive limits. Te number of contacts on social media is essentially
unlimited, as the ability to remember relationships is not dependent on the capacity of our brains. Te computer memory of the providers will accurately record and remember the relationships, because that is what their product consists of—the advertising is personally tailored based on the characteristics of the participants and their interaction with others. However, the number of friendships on Facebook has been limited (to 5000)6. So-called “friendships” there are designed symmetrically, i.e., a person who receives a friend request must confrm it. Tis means that no direction is apparent. If I am friends with a prominent person, then this person is also friends with me. Tus, this friendship is symmetrically constructed by design. In contrast, follower relationships can be asymmetric (if one follows each other, we would also consider this as symmetric). But the number of followers is essentially unlimited. Popular participants have several million followers. Such popular participants are often referred to as infuencers: Tey infuence their audience with their public media behavior (usually with paid PR). Observing these “infuential” media personalities could also be described as super weak relationships. Here too, we fnd the extremely skewed power-law distribution (very few have extremely many, the vast majority have few) of follower relationships, which we have just learned about in a similar way using the example of music festivals. However, the commonality of the situation, which constitutes super weak relationships in non-media contexts, dissolves at this point: Mutual observation is not so easily possible with the media product. If we watch a video on YouTube, the infuencer who produced it cannot also observe us. At most, they could respond to comments left behind. What well-known YouTube personalities (or their team) do, however, is observe other producers, even if they do not know each other. Te orientation thus takes place elsewhere— one could say that mutual orientation primarily occurs between the producers7, but one-sided infuence is exerted from the product to the consumers. However, among the viewers, there is usually also a social loop that provides evaluations of the content. Tis is called a two-stepfow of communication: Media content is often discussed again in social groups, i.e., in contexts with predominantly stronger relationships (Katz 1957; Katz and Lazarsfeld 1962).
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But it was on the way home in the carriage that he disillusioned me by removing his hat, and showing me a little drawing of a gravestone he had made therein.
“Just an idea that occurred to me,” he said, “to perpetuate the memory of poor papa. We want to do something better than keep it green, you see. The weather and the lichen pay us all that compliment. So I suggest having the inscription very small, on a stone something the shape of a dining-room clock, and over it a magnifying glass boss, like one of those paperweights, you know, that have a little view at the back. The tooth of Time could never touch that. What do you think now?”
I thought it a very pleasant and kind idea, and told him so, at which he was obviously pleased. But it was never carried out, no more than many another he developed; and in the end—but that was long afterwards—a simple headstone, of my own design, commemorated my beloved father’s virtues.
The few mourners returned with us to the hotel, where, in a private room, we had cake and sherry wine. Afterwards Mr. Quayle, when all but he were gone, asked the favour of a final word with Uncle Jenico.
He appeared to find it a word difficult of utterance, walking up and down, and puffing, and getting a little red in the face, while Uncle Jenico sat beaming in a chair, his legs crossed and finger-tips bridged.
At length Mr. Quayle stopped before him.
“Mr. Paxton,” said he, “when time’s short formalities are best eschewed, eh?”
Uncle Jenico nodded.
“Surely,” said he. “I ask nothing less.”
“Then,” said Mr. Quayle, stuttering a little, “you are prepared to accept our friend’s trust, for all it’s worth?”
Uncle Jenico nodded again, though I thought his countenance fell a trifle over the emphatic qualification. However, he recovered in an instant, and rubbed his hands together gleefully “Capital, sir,” he said; “a little capital. That’s all Richard and I need to make our fortunes.”
He spoke as if we had been long partners, but hampered by insufficient means.
“Ah!” said Mr. Quayle, decisively; “but that’s just the point.”
“Just the point,” echoed Uncle Jenico, still nodding, but weakly, and with a dew of perspiration on his forehead.
“Just the point,” repeated Mr. Quayle. “I stood close to our friend. I know something of his affairs—and habits. He was—d’ye understand French, Mr. Paxton?”
“Yes, certainly,” answered my uncle, proudly.
“Well, listen to this, then: ‘Il a été un joueur invétéré celui là; c’est possible qu’il a mangé son blé en herbe.’”
He drew back, to let his words take effect.
“God bless me!” said Uncle Jenico, weakly. “You have reason to know?”
“My dear sir,” replied Mr. Quayle, “I know how some of us occupy our time on circuit when we’d be better abed. I know a punter when I see one. I may be right; I may be wrong; and for your sake I hope I’m wrong. But the point is this: A good deal of our friend’s paper has come my way; and I want to know if, supposing I take it to market with bad results to the estate, you are going to swear off your trust?”
Then Uncle Jenico did an heroic thing; how heroic I could not realise at the time, though even then I think a shadow of the truth was penetrating my bewilderment. He got to his feet, looking like an angel.
“Mr. Quayle,” he said, “you’ve spoken plainly, and I don’t conceal your words are a disappointment. But if they are also a prophecy, rest assured, sir, that Richard and I stand or fall together. We are the surviving partners of an honourable firm, and there is that in there, sir” (he pointed to his inseparable despatch-box), “to uphold our credit with the world.”
Mr. Quayle seized his hand, with an immense expression of relief on his face.
“You’re a good soul,” he said. “Without that assurance I should have felt like robbing the orphan. I hope it may turn out better than we suppose.”
“I hope so, too,” said Uncle Jenico, rather disconsolately.
CHAPTER IV.
MY FIRST VIEW OF THE HILL.
I turned out not so badly, yet pretty badly. Uncle Jenico took cheap lodgings for us in the town, and for two or three months was busy flitting between Ipswich and London winding up my father’s estate. At the end, when the value of every lot, stick, and warrant had been realised, and the creditors satisfied, a sum representing perhaps £150 a year was secured to us, and with this, and the despatch-box, we committed ourselves to the future.
It appeared that my Uncle Jenico’s inventions had always been more creditable than profitable to him, and this for the reason that unattainable capital was necessary to their working. Given a few hundreds, he was confident that he could make thousands out of any one of them. It was hard, for the lack of a little fuel, so to speak, to have so much power spoiling on one’s hands. I would have had him, when once I understood, invest our own capital in some of them; but, though I could see he loved me for the suggestion, he had the better strength of affection to keep loyal to his trust, which he administered scrupulously according to the law. Afterwards, when I came to know him better, I could not but be thankful that he had shown this superior genius for honesty; for his faith in his own concerns was so complete, and at the same time so naïve, that he might otherwise have lacked nothing but the guilt to be a defaulter.
As to the patents themselves, they represented a hundred phases of craft, every one of which delighted and convinced me by its originality. There was a design amongst them for an automatic dairymaid, a machine which, by exhausting the air in a number of flexible tubes, could milk twenty cows at once. There was a design for making little pearls large, by inserting them like setons in the shells of living oysters. There was a plan for a ship to be driven by a portable windmill, which set a turbine spinning under the stern. Uncle Jenico’s contrivances were mostly on an heroic scale, and covered every form of enterprise—from the pill which was to eliminate
dyspepsia from the land, to a scheme for liquidating the National Debt by pawning all England for a term of years to an International Trust. At the same time, there was no human need too mean for his consideration. He was for ever striving to economise labour for the betterment of his poorer fellow-creatures. His inventiveness was a great charity, which did not even begin at home. His patents, from being designed to improve any condition but his own, suffered the neglect of a world to which selfishness is the first principle of business competence. His “Napina,” a liquid composition from which old clothes, after having been dipped therein, re-emerged as new, could find no market. His “Labour-of-Love Spit,” which was turned by a rocking-chair moving a treadle, like that on a knife-grinder’s machine, so that the cook could roast her joint in great comfort while dozing over her paper, could make no headway against the more impersonal clock-work affair. And so it was with most of his designs, but a few of which had been actually tested before being condemned on insufficient evidence. What more ridiculous, for instance, than to denounce his “Burglar’s Trap” on the score that one single idiot of a householder had blundered into his own snare and been kept there while the robbers were rifling his premises? What more scandalous than to convict his Fire-Derrick—a noble invention, like a crane dangling a little cabin, for saving life at conflagrations—because the first time it was tested the box would not descend, but kept the insurance gentlemen swinging in the air for an hour or two; or his Infallible Lifebelt, which turned upside-down in the water for the single reason that they tried it on a revenue officer who had lost his legs in an explosion? No practical innovation was surely ever started without a stumble. But Uncle Jenico had no luck. He sunk all his capital in his own patents without convincing a soul, or—and this is the notable thing—losing his temper. That one only of his possessions remained to him, fresh and sound as when, as a little boy, he had invented a flying top, which broke his grandmother’s windows. No neglect had impaired it, nor adversity ruffled for more than a moment. If he had patented it and nothing else, he could have made his fortune, I am certain.
Still, when we came to be comrades—or partners, as he loved to call us—his restless brain was busy as ever with ideas. Nothing was
too large or small for him to touch. He showed me, on an early occasion, how his hat—not the black one he had worn at the funeral, but the big beaver article that came over his eyes—explained its own proportions in a number of little cupboards or compartments in the lining, which were designed to carry one’s soap, toothbrush, razor, etc., when on a short visit. He had the most delightful affection for his own ingenuities, and the worldliest axioms for explaining the secret of their success. On the afternoon when Mr. Quayle, after the kindest of partings with me, had left us, and while he was yet on the stairs, Uncle Jenico had bent to me and whispered: “Make it a business principle, my boy, never to confess to insolvency. You heard the way I assured the gentleman? Well, Richard, we may have in our despatch-box there all Ophir lying fallow for the lack of a little cash to work it; but we mustn’t tell our commercial friends so—no, no. We must let them believe it is their privilege to back us. Necessity is a bad recommendation.”
It may be. But I was not a commercial gent; and Uncle Jenico had all my faith, and should have had all my capital if it had rested with me to dispose of it as I liked.
During the time my uncle was engaged in London, George, good man, remained at Ipswich to look after me, though we were forced reluctantly to dismiss him as soon as things were settled. It was impossible, however, on a hundred and fifty pounds a year to keep a man-servant; and so presently he went, and with him my last connection with the old life. Not more of the past than the clothes I stood in now remained to me. It was as if I had been shipwrecked and adopted by a stranger. But the final severance seemed a relief to Uncle Jenico, who, when it was accomplished, drew a long breath, and adjusted his glasses and looked at me rosily.
“Now, Richard,” he said, “with nobody any longer to admonish us, comes the question of our home, and where to make it. Have you any choice?”
Dear me; what did I know of the world’s dwelling-places? I answered that I left it all to him.
“Very well,” he said, with a happy sigh; “then I have an original plan. Suppose we make it nowhere?”
He paused to note how the surprise struck home.
“You mean——” I began, hesitating.
“I mean,” said he, “supposing we have no fixed abode, but go from place to place as it suits us?”
What boy would not have jumped at the suggestion? I was in ecstasies.
“You see,” said Uncle Jenico, “moving about, I get ideas; and in ideas lies our future prosperity. Let’s look at the map.”
It was a lovely proposal. To enter, in actual being, the mysterious regions of pictures-on-the-wall; to breathe the real atmosphere, so long felt in romance, of tinted lithographs and coloured prints; to find roads and commons and phantom distances, wistful, unattainable dreams hitherto, made suddenly accessible to me—it was thrilling, it was rapturous. My uncle humoured the thought so completely as to leave to me the fanciful choice of our first resting-place.
“Only don’t let it be too far,” he said. “Just at present we must go moderate, and until I can realise on the sale of a little patent, which I am on the point of parting with for an inadequate though considerable sum.”
I spent a delightful hour in poring over the county map. It was patched with verdant places—big farms and gentlemen’s estates— and reminded me somehow of those French green-frilled sugarplums which crunch liqueur and are shaped like little vegetables. One could feel the cosy shelter of the woods, marked in groves of things that looked like tiny cabbages, and gaze down in imagination from the hills meandering like furry caterpillars with a miniature windmill here and there to turn them from their course. The yellow roads were rich in suggestion of tootling coaches, and milestones, and inns revealing themselves round corners, with troughs in front and sign-boards, and perhaps a great elm shadowed with caves of leafiness at unattainable heights. But the red spit of railway which came up from the bottom of the picture as far as Colchester, and was thence extended, in a dotted line only, to Ipswich, gave me a thrill of memory half sad and half beautiful. For it was by that wonderful crimson track that my father and I had travelled our last road together as far as the old Essex town, where, since it ended there for the time being, we had taken coach for Suffolk.
“Made up your mind?” asked Uncle Jenico, by-and-by, with a chuckle.
I flushed and wriggled, and came out with it.
“Can’t we—mayn’t we go to the sea? I’ve never been there yet; and we’re so close; and papa promised.”
“The sea?” he echoed. “Why, to be sure. I’ve long had an idea that seaweed might be used for water-proofing. It’s an inspiration, Richard. We’ll beat Mr. Macintosh on his own ground. But whereabouts to the sea, now?”
I could not suggest a direction, however; so he borrowed for me a local guide-book, which dealt with places of interest round the coast, and left me to study it while he went out for a walk to get ideas.
I had no great education; but I could read glibly enough for my eight years. When Uncle Jenico returned in an hour or two, our choice, so far as I was concerned, was made. I brought the book, and, laying it before him, pointed to a certain description.
“Dunberry,” he read, skipping, so as to take the gist of it—“the Sitomagus of the Roman occupation, and later the Dunmoc of East Anglia. Population, 694. (H’m, h’m!) Disfranchised by the Reform Act of ’32. (H’m!) Formerly a place of importance, owning a seaport, fortifications, seven churches and an abbey. In the twelfth century the sand, silting up, destroyed its harbour and admitted the encroachments of the sea, from which date its prosperity was gradually withdrawn. (H’m, h’m!) Since, century by century, made the devouring sport of the ocean, until, at the present date, but a few crumbling ruins, toppling towards their final extinction in the waves below, remain the sole sad relics of an ancient glory which once proudly dominated the element under which it was doomed later to lie ’whelmed.”
Uncle Jenico stopped reading, and looked up at me a little puzzled.
“There’s better to come,” I murmured, blushing. He nodded, and went on—
“A hill, called the Abbot’s Mitre, as much from its associations, perhaps, as from its peculiar conformation, overlooks the modern village, and is crowned on its seaward edge by the remains of the ancient foundation from which it takes its name. Some business is
done in the catching and curing of sprats and herrings. There is an annual fair. Morant states that after violent storms, when the shingledrifts are overturned, bushels of coins, Roman and other, and many of considerable value, may be picked up for the seeking.”
Uncle Jenico’s face came slowly round to stare into mine. His hair seemed risen; his jaw was a little dropped.
“Richard!” he whispered, “our fortune is made.”
“Yes,” I thrilled back, delighted. “That’s why I chose it. I thought you’d be pleased.”
He looked out the direction eagerly on the map. It was distant, by road, some twenty-five miles north-east by north from Ipswich; by sea, perhaps ten miles further. But the weather was fine, and watertransport more suited to our finances. So two days later we had started for Dunberry, in one of the little coasting ketches that ply between Harwich and Yarmouth carrying farm produce and such chance passengers as prefer paying cheap for a risk too dear for security.
It was lovely April weather, and a light wind blowing up the shores from the south-east bowled us gaily on our way. I never so much as thought of sickness, and if I had, Uncle Jenico, looking in his large Panama hat like a benevolent planter, would have shamed me, with his rubicund serenity, back to confidence again. Our sole property, for all contingencies, was contained in the despatch-box and a single carpet bag; and with no more sense of responsibility than these engendered, we were committing ourselves to a future of ravishing possibilities.
Throughout the pleasant journey we hugged the coast, never being more than a mile or two distant from it, so that its features, wild or civilized, were always plain to us. It showed ever harsher and more desolate the farther we ran north, and the tearing and hollowing effect of waves upon its sandy cliffs more evident. All the way it was fretted, near and far, with towers—a land of churches. They stood grey in the gaps of hills; brown and gaunt on solitary headlands. Sometimes they were dismantled; and once, on a deserted shore, we saw a belfry and part of a ruined chancel footing the tide itself. It was backed by a great heaped billow of sand, which —so our skipper told us—had stood between it and the sea till
storms flung it all over and behind, leaving the walls it had protected exposed to destruction.
As evening came on I must confess my early jubilation waned somewhat. The thin, harsh air, the melancholy cry of the birds, the eternal desolation of the coast, chilled me with a creeping terror of our remoteness from all that friendly warmth and comfort we had rashly deserted. Not a light greeted us from the shore but such as shone ghastly in the lifeless wastes of foam. The last coast town, miles behind, seemed to have passed us beyond the final bounds of civilization. So that it was with something like a whimper of joy that I welcomed the sudden picture of a hill notched oddly far ahead against the darkening sky. I ran hurriedly to Uncle Jenico.
“Uncle!” I cried. “Uncle, look! The Abbot’s Mitre!”
The skipper heard me, and answered.
“Aye,” said he, “it’s the Mitre, sure enow,” and spat over the taffrail. There was something queer in his tone. He rolled his quid in his cheek.
“And like enow, by all they say,” he added, looking at Uncle Jenico, “to figure agen for godliness.”
“Eh?” said my uncle; “I beg your pardon?”
“Granted,” answered the skipper shortly; and that was all.
There was an uneasy atmosphere of enigma here. But we were abroad after adventure, when all was said, and had no cause to complain.
I stood holding my uncle’s hand, while we ran our last knot for home in the twilight. As we neared the hill its peculiar shape was gradually lost, and instead, looking up from below, we saw the cap of a broken tower showing over its swell. Then hill and ruin dropped behind us, a shadowy bulk, and of a sudden we were come opposite a sandy cleft cutting up into the cliff, and below on the shingle a ghostly group of boats and shore-loafers, though still no light or sign of houses.
We brought to, the sails flapping, and the skipper sent a long melancholy boom sounding over the water from a horn. It awoke a stir on the beach, and presently we saw a boat put off, and come curtseying towards us. It was soon alongside, revealing three men, of whom the one who sat steering was a little remarkable. He was
immensely tall and slouching, with a lank bristled jaw, a swarthy skin, and, in spectral contrast, eye-places of such an odd sick pallor as to give him the appearance, at least in this gloaming, of wearing huge spectacles. However, he was the authoritative one of the three, and welcomed us civilly enough for early visitors to Dunberry, hoping we should favour the place.
“None so well as thee, Jole, since thy convarsion,” bellowed the skipper, as we pushed off.
There followed a chuckle of laughter from the ketch, and I noticed even that the two men pulling us creased their cheeks. Their companion, unmoving, clipped out something like an oath, which he gruffly and hastily coughed over.
“The Lord in His wrath visit not the scoffer,” he said aloud, “nor waft him blindfold this night upon the Weary Sands!”
In a few minutes we slid up the beach on the comb of a breaker, and half a dozen arms were stretched to help us out. One seized the carpet-bag, another—our tall coxswain’s itself—the despatch-box; and thereby, by that lank arm, hangs this tale. For my uncle, who was jealous of nothing in the world but his box, in scrambling to resecure it from its ravisher, slipped on the wet thwarts, and, falling with his head against a corner of the article itself, rolled out bleeding and half-stunned upon the sand.
I was terribly frightened, and for a moment general consternation reigned. But my uncle was not long in recovering himself, though to such a dazed condition that a strong arm was needed in addition to his stick to help him towards the village. We started, a toilful procession, up the sandy gully (Dunberry Gap its name), I carrying the precious case, and presently, reaching the top, saw the village going in a long gentle sweep below us, the scoop of the land covering it seawards, which was the reason we had seen no lights.
It had been Uncle Jenico’s intention to look for reasonable lodgings; but this being from his injury impracticable, we let ourselves be conducted to the Flask Inn, the most important in the place, where we were no sooner arrived than he consented to be put to bed, with me in a little closet giving off his room. It was near dark by the time we were settled, and feeling forlorn and bewildered I was glad enough, after a hasty supper, to tuck my troubles between the
sheets and forget everything in sleep. But how little I guessed, as I did so, that Uncle Jenico had, in falling, taken possession, like William the Conqueror, of this new land of our adoption.
CHAPTER V.
THE STORY OF THE EARTHQUAKE.
P , I cannot but believe, had all this time humoured us along a seeming “Road of Casualty,” which was, in truth, the direct path to its own wonderful ends. We talk of luck and accident and coincidence. They are, I am certain, but the veils with which It blinds us to Its inexorable conclusions. My chance selection of our destination, my uncle’s mishap—what were these but second and third acts in the strange drama which had begun in the law courts of Ipswich, where my father had given his life for a truth, which was to be here, thirty miles away, proven and consummated. The dénouement was distant yet, to be sure, for Providence, having all eternity to plot in, works deliberately. Nevertheless, It never loses sight, I think, of what we call the Unities of Art.
I awoke from a dreamless sleep, a restored and avid little giant. It was bright morning. A clock on the stairs cleared its throat and sang out six times. The house was still, save for a shuffling of drowsy maids at their dusting below. I lay quiet, conscious of the most unfamiliar atmosphere all about me—of whitewashed walls; of a smell between wood-smoke and seaweed and the faint sourness of beer; of cold boarded floors gritty with sand; of utter remoteness from the noise of traffic habitual to a young denizen of towns. This little gap of time had lifted me clean out of my accustomed conditions, and dumped me in an outpost of civilization, amongst uncouth allies, friendlies in name, but as foreign as foes to my experience.
I got up soon very softly, and washed and dressed and went out. I had to pass, on my way, through my uncle’s room; and it relieved me to see him slumbering peacefully on his pillow, though the white bandage across his forehead gave me a momentary shock.
I emerged upon a landing, on a wall of which, papered with varnished marble, hung a smoke-stained print of a hunt, with a case of stuffed water-birds on a table beneath. No one accosted me as I
descended the little creaking flight of stairs. I passed out by the unlatched private door of the tavern, and found myself at the seaend of the village street. It was a glowing morning. Not a soul appeared abroad, and I turned to the path by which we had come the night before, thrilling to possess the sea.
The ground went gently up by the way of a track that soon lost itself in the thin grass of the cliffs. Not till I reached the verge did I pause to reconnoitre, and then at once all was displayed about me. I drew one deep delighted breath, and turned as my foremost duty to examine the way I had come. The village, yawning from its chimneys little early draughts of smoke, ran straight from the sea, perhaps for a quarter of a mile, under the shelter of a low, long hill on which a few sheep were folded. Beyond this hill, southwards, and divided from it by a deepish gorge, whose end I could see like a cut trough in the cliff edge, bulged another, the Abbot’s, the contour which gave it its name but roughly distinguishable at these closer quarters. The ruins we had passed overnight crowned this second slope near its marge; and inland both hills dropped into pastures, whence the ground rose again towards a rampart of thick woods which screened all Dunberry from the world beyond.
It looked so endearing, such a happy valley of peace, one would scarcely have credited the picture with a single evil significance; yet —but I am not going to anticipate. Tingling with pleasure, I faced round to the sea.
It was withdrawn a distance away, creaming at the ebb. All beyond was a sheet of golden lustre fading into the bright mists of dawn. Right under the rising sun, like a bar beneath a crest, stretched the line of the Weary Sands, a perilous bank situate some five miles from shore; and between bank and coast rode a solitary little twomasted lugger, with shrouds of gossamer and hull of purple velvet, it seemed, in the soft glow. Even while I looked, this shook out sails like beetles’ wings, and, drawing away, revealed a tiny boat speeding shorewards. I bent and peered over Ten fathoms beneath me the gully we had climbed in the dark discharged itself, a river of sand, upon the beach; and tumbled at its mouth, as it might be débris, lay a dozen pot-bellied fishing boats. Right and left the cliffs rose and
dropped in fantastic conformations, until they sank either way into the horizon. It was a wonderful scene to the little town-bred boy.
Presently I looked for the rowing-boat again, and saw it close in shore. In a minute it grated on the shingle, and there heaved himself out of it the tall fisherman who had escorted us last night. I was sure of him, and he also, it appeared, of me; for after staring up some time, shading his eyes with his hand, he turned, as if convinced, to haul his craft into safety. I watched him awhile, and was then once more absorbed in the little vessel drawing seawards, when I started to hear his voice suddenly address me close by He must have come up the gully as soft-footed as a cat.
His eyes were less like a marmoset’s by daylight; but they were still a strange feature in his gaunt forbidding face. I felt friendly towards every one; yet somehow this man’s expression chilled me, as he stood smiling down ingratiatory without another word.
“Is that your little ship out there?” I asked, for lack of anything better.
“Lor’ bless ’ee, no, sir,” he answered, heartily, but in a sort of breathless way. “What makes ’ee think so?”
“Weren’t you coming from it?”
“Me!” He protested, with a panting chuckle. “Jole Rampick own that there little tender beauty! I’d skipped out fur my morning dip, sir if you must know. A wonderful bracing water this—if folks would only credit it.”
His unshorn dusky face was not, I could not help thinking, the best testimony to its cleansing properties. But I kept my wisdom to myself, and turned to go back to the inn. Mr. Rampick volunteered his company, and on the way some instructive information.
“Aye,” he panted huskily; “man and boy fur nigh on fifty year have I known this here Abbot’s Dunberry, but never—till three months ago —the healing vartues of its brine.”
“Who told you of them?” I asked.
“The Lord,” he answered, showing the under-whites of his eyes a moment. “The Lord, sir, through his minister the parson—that’s Mr. Sant. Benighted we were—and ignorant—till the light was vouchsafed us; and parson he revealed the Bethesda lying at our very doors.”
“What’s Bethesda?” I had, I am sorry to say, to ask.
“A blessed watering-place,” he said—“I’m humbly surprised, sir; like as parson calc’lates to make of this here, if the Almighty will condescend to convart our former wickedness to our profit.”
“Were you wicked?”
“Bad, bad!” He answered, setting his lips, and shaking his head. “A nest of smugglers and forswearers, till He set His hand on us.”
“Mr. Rampick! How?”
“It tuk the form of an ’arthquake,” he said, with a little cough.
I jumped, and ejaculated: “O! Where?”
“Yonder, in the Mitre,” he said, waving his hand towards the hidden bluff. “It’ll be fower months ago, won’t it, as they run their last contraband to ground in the belly of that there hill. A cave, it was supposed, sir; but few knew for sarten, and none will ever know now till the day when the Lord ‘shall judge the secrets of men.’ There was a way in, as believed, known only to the few; and one night, as believed, them few entered by it, each man with his brace o’ runlets and they never come out agen!”
I gasped and knotted my fingers together. It did not occur to my innocence to question the source of his knowledge, or conjecture.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Why?” he echoed in a sort of asthmatic fury. “Why, sir, because it was a full cargo, and their iniquity according; and so the Lord He spoke, and the hill it closed upon ’em. In the dark, when we was all abed, there come a roaring wind from underground what turned our hearts to water; and in the morning when we gathered to look, there was the hill twisted like a dead face out of knowledge, and the Abbey —two-thirds of what was left—scrattled abroad.”
I could only stare up at him, breathing quick in face of this wonderful romance. It had, I knew, been a year strangely prolific in earth-shocks.
“Yes, sir,” he said soberly; “if all what’s believed is Gospel true, there at this moment lays those poor sinners, bedded like flints in chalk—and the hill fair reeking with Nantes brandy.”
He groaned hoarsely.
“Hallerloojer! It was a sign and a warning. The shock of it carried off th’ old vicar, and in a week or two arter Mr. Sant he come to take
his place. He found us a sober’d people, Hallerloojer! and soil meet fur the Lord’s planting. You be the fust fruits, sir; and we favourably hope as when you go away you’ll recommend us.”
Perhaps I vaguely understood by this something of the nature of our welcome. Given an isolated fishing village skipped by tourists because of its remoteness; given the sudden withdrawal from that village of its natural advantages for an illicit trade; given a clerical enthusiast, introduced at the right moment, to point out to a depressed population it’s locality’s potentialities as a watering-place, and to show the way for them to win an honest prosperity out of the ruins of evil; given, to top all, a dressing of local superstition, and the position was clear. Such deduction, no doubt, was for the adult rather than the child; but though I could not draw it at the time, it was there to be drawn, I am sure.
As we talked we had reached the inn, and my companion, touching his cap, passed on. But he came back before I had time to enter, and addressed me breathlessly, as if on an after-thought.
“Begging your pardon, sir—but you makes me laugh, you reely does—about that there lugger belonging to poor Jole Rampick.” And he went off chuckling, and looking, with his little head and slouching shoulders and stilts of legs, like the hind-quarters of a pantomime elephant.
I found my uncle sitting up in preparation to breakfast in bed. He was very genial and happy; but, so it seemed to me, extraordinarily vague. I told him about my adventure and the story of the earthquake, which he seemed somehow unable to dissociate from his own accident.
“I knew it, Richard,” he said; “but it was taking rather a mean advantage of a lame man, eh? There’s no security against it but balloons—that I’ve often thought. You see, when the ground itself gives underneath you, where are you to go? If one could only pump oxygen into one’s own head, you know. I’ll think about it in the course of the morning. I don’t fancy I shall get up just at present. That despatch-box, now—it was a drastic way of impressing its claims upon me, eh? Well, well!”
He laughed, rather wildly I thought.
“Uncle,” I said, “you’ve never told me—how did you get lame?”
“How did I get lame?” he murmured, pressing the bandage on his forehead. “Why, to be sure, it was a parachute, Richard—a really capital thing I invented. But the wires got involved—the merest accident—and I came to the ground.”
He was interrupted by two young ladies, daughters of the inn, who came themselves—out of curiosity, I think—to serve us breakfast. They were over-dressed, all but for their trodden slippers, with large bows of hair on their heads, and they giggled a good deal and answered questions pertly.
“Well, my dears,” said Uncle Jenico, “how about the earthquake?”
They stared at him, and then at one another, and burst out laughing.
“O, there now!” said one; “earthquake yourself, old gentleman! Go along with you!” And they ran out, and we heard them tittering all down the stairs.
Uncle Jenico got clearer after his meal, though he was still disinclined to move. I sat with him all the morning, while he showed and explained to me more of the contents of his box; and about midday a visitor, the Reverend Mr. Sant, was announced. I stood up expectant, and saw a thin, dark young man, in clerical dress, enter the room at a stride. He had the colourless face, large-boned nose, and burning eyes of a zealot, and not an ounce of superfluous flesh anywhere about him. Much athletic temperance had trimmed him down to frame and muscle, but had not parched the sources of a very sweet smile, which was the only emotional weakness he retained. He came up to the bed, took my uncle’s hand, and introduced himself in a word.
“Permit me,” he said; “I heard of your accident. I know a trifle of surgery, and our apothecary visits us but twice in the month. May I look?”
He examined the hurt, and, saying he would send a salve for it, settled down to talk.
Now, I could not follow the persuasive process; but all I know is that within a quarter of an hour he had learned all my uncle’s and my history, and the reason for our coming to Dunberry, and that, having once mastered the details, he very ingeniously set himself to appropriating them to the schemes of Providence.
“It is clear,” he said, “that you, free-lances of Destiny, were inspired to select this, out of all the world, for your operations. We looked for visitors to report for us upon the attractions of the place; you for a quiet and healthful spot in which to develop your schemes.”
“Very true,” said Uncle Jenico. “I’ve long had an idea for extracting gold from sea-water.”
“You see?” cried Mr. Sant, greatly pleased. “It’s a clear interposition of Providence. This coast is, I am sure, peculiarly adapted, from the accessibility of its waters, to gold-seeking.”
I could not restrain my excitement.
“Please,” I said, “did-d-d the smugglers hide it there?”
Mr. Sant glanced at me sharply.
“Who told you about smugglers?” he demanded.
“Mr. Rampick,” I whispered, hanging my head.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, and turned to my uncle. “Old Joel Rampick, was it? One of the most cherished of my converts, sir; a deeply religious man at bottom, though circumstances long obscured the light in him. Old Rampick, now! And talked about smuggling, did he? He’ll have drawn the moral of it from his own experience, I don’t doubt. Dunberry, there’s no use concealing, has been a long thorn in the side of the Revenue, though happily the earthquake has changed all that.”
“Ah, to be sure!” said my uncle; “the earthquake.”
“It was without question a Divine visitation,” said Mr. Sant, resolutely.
“Do you think so?” said my uncle, his face falling. “My purpose in coming here was really most harmless, sir.”
Mr. Sant looked puzzled; then went on, with a dry smack of his lips:
“I am afraid that my predecessor lacked a little the apostolic fervour. He was old, and liked his ease, good man. Perhaps long association with the place had blunted his prejudices. I must not play the Pharisee to him, however No doubt so circumstanced I should have failed no less to sow the seed. Heaven sent me at a fruitful moment: to Heaven be the credit and the glory! This little boy now— nephew Dicky? He knows his catechism?”
“Ah!” said Uncle Jenico, with a cunning look; “does he?”
“Chit-chit!” protested the clergyman. “I hope not altogether ignorant of it?”
He was decently shocked, and won an easy promise from my uncle that I should come up to him for an hour’s instruction every day. Then he rose to go.
“You’ll excuse me,” he said, bending his brows, “but I trust you are satisfied with your quarters?”
“Well, yes,” answered my uncle, hesitating; “but—an inn, you see. It’s a little more than we can—than we ought to—eh?”
Mr Sant brightened immediately We came to know afterwards that he strongly disapproved of these flashy Miss Flemings, and had once expressed in public some surprise that they had not been impounded as skittish animals not under proper control.
“There’s the widow Puddephatt, ripe and ready for visitors,” he said, “and perfectly reasonable, I am sure. May I give you her address? It’s No. 3, the Playstow.”
My uncle thanked him warmly; and, smitten with a sudden idea, caught at his coat as he was leaving.
“O, by the way!” he said, “these coins to be picked up on the beach, now. There are enough left to make it profitable, I suppose?”
Mr. Sant stared at him.
“The coins, Roman and other,” persisted Uncle Jenico, anxiously scanning the clergyman’s face; “the antiques, which Morant tells us litter the beach like shells after storms?”
Mr. Sant shook his head.
“I have heard nothing of them during my time,” he said; “but I should hardly think smuggling would have got such a hold here if it were the Tom Tiddler’s ground your friend supposes it to be.”
Directly he was gone, Uncle Jenico turned to me, rubbing his hands, with a most roguish smile puckering his mouth.
“Richard,” he said, “we are in plenty of time. The obtuseness of the rustic is a thing astonishing beyond words! Here, with all Pactolus at his feet, he needs a stranger to come and show him his opportunities. But, mum, boy, mum! We’ll keep this little matter to ourselves.”
CHAPTER VI.
MRS. PUDDEPHATT AND FANCY-MARIA.
T following day my uncle was near himself again, and we left the Flask inn and took lodging with the widow Puddephatt. The Playstow was a little green, about half-way down the village, where the villagers reared their may-pole on May-day, and built their fires on Midsummer’s Eve, and caroused in September on the harvestlargesse won from passers-by. Round about, in a little square, were cottages, detached and exclusive, the élite of Dunberry; and to one side was the church—but now in process of completion—in whose porch the daring would seat themselves on St. Mark’s eve to see, at midnight, the wraiths of the year’s pre-doomed come and knock at the door. Mr. Sant had, however, limited that custom, as well as some others less reputable; and the fact that he was able to do so spoke volumes for his persuasiveness. At the present time the villagers, under his stimulus, were transferring, stone by stone, to the long unfinished fabric and its adjoining school-house, the less sacred parts of the ruined foundation on the hill.
Mrs. Puddephatt, though Dunberry-born, was a comparative acquisition to the village, to which she had been summoned, and to her natural succession in No. 3, the Playstow, through the death of an only sister without encumbrances. She had, in fact, gone very young, a great many years ago, into service in London, and had never set foot again in her native place until this inheritance, now two years old, had called her. She brought with her an ironic atmosphere of the great world, and a disdainful tolerance towards the little, in which her lot was now to vegetate. She had, in her high experience, “’tweenied,” “obliged,” scullery-maided, kitchen-maided, housemaided, parlour-maided, and old-maided; and she had somehow emerged from this five-fold chrysalis of virginity the widow Puddephatt—no one knew by what warrant, other than that of a sort of waspish charity-girl cap, with a knuckle-bone frill round her face. But then her knowledge of men was so matrimonial that it was
