Every Valley

In the archives of a railroad museum, two artifacts from the same era sit under glass. The first is a surveyor's theodolite, a brass and steel instrument of exquisite precision, designed to impose order on a chaotic world. It speaks a language of straight lines, calculated grades, and unwavering vectors. It promises that any distance can be measured, any obstacle overcome through the sheer force of rational will. Beside it lies a shaman's drum from a Siberian tribe. Its stretched hide is painted with swirling figures—spirits of the river, beasts of the forest—and its wooden frame is worn smooth by hands that sought a different kind of knowledge. The drum collapses distance, connecting the living to the dead, the human to the animal, this world to the next. One instrument was built to conquer the land, the other to listen to it.

These two objects tell the story of one of the most audacious construction projects in human history: the Trans-Siberian Railway. It was an undertaking that aimed to stitch a continent together with 6,000 miles of steel, a single, gleaming line of logic laid across an ancient, storied landscape. But the men who wielded the theodolites and dynamite were not the only ones present. They were accompanied by exiles, mystics, revolutionaries, and the indigenous peoples whose world was being irrevocably bisected. The official history of the railway is one of budgets and engineering, but the true story is far messier and more profound—a clash of cosmologies played out in the mud and permafrost.

This is the story that historian and political scientist Charles King felt compelled to unearth. As a scholar at Georgetown University, King has spent his career exploring the places where grand political projects collide with the intricate lives of ordinary people. He noticed how the story of the Trans-Siberian was often told from the perspective of the state—a tale of imperial ambition and modernization. But by digging into forgotten diaries, memoirs, and anthropological records, he discovered a parallel narrative, one that followed the tracks but saw a completely different journey. He wrote Every Valley to show how this single steel line was a vast, moving stage where the future of a nation was fought, imagined, and redefined by everyone it touched.

Module 1: The Anatomy of an Anxious Age

This first module explores the world that made Messiah not just possible, but necessary. It was an era, much like our own, defined by rapid change and deep-seated anxiety.

The 18th century is often called the Age of Reason. But for those living in it, it felt more like an age of anxiety. King argues that hope was a deliberate psychological strategy. Philosophers of the time didn't just feel hopeful; they studied it. Nathan Bailey's 1721 dictionary defined hope as a "well-grounded expectation" that acts as an anchor against the "buffeting winds of fate." This was an active practice, a discipline required to keep from drowning in despair. Thinkers like David Hume even advised pursuing "a mediocrity, a kind of insensibility, in every thing" as the only realistic path to contentment. True happiness was seen as a dangerous fantasy.

And there were plenty of reasons for pessimism. The public sphere was a brutal and chaotic place. Public punishments were a form of entertainment. Political divisions were sharp and vicious. The labels "Whig" and "Tory," which started as insults, defined social tribes. This was amplified by a new, disruptive technology: the printing press. After government licensing ended in 1695, London was flooded with thousands of newspapers and pamphlets. An area called Grub Street became synonymous with hack writers churning out sensationalism and fake news. It was the first era where you could make a living just by having a loud opinion. Sound familiar?

This brings us to a key insight. Systematic thinking and art were seen as tools for repairing a broken world. In an age of division and disaster, creating order—whether in a legal code, a philosophical system, or a musical composition—was a remedial act. It was an attempt to mend a society that felt "out of joint." This is the intellectual climate that shaped the creators of Messiah. They were trying to build a lifeboat.

So, how did individuals cope? One powerful response was to create private worlds of order as a sanctuary from public chaos. This is precisely what Charles Jennens, the future librettist of Messiah, did. He was a wealthy man plagued by what he called "the hyp," a deep, debilitating depression. He saw moral decay everywhere. His response was to build a sanctuary. He amassed a huge library, a gallery of 500 European paintings, and a collection of musical manuscripts. These were, as King describes them, "lifelines flung from a receding ship." Jennens used his curated world of beauty to prove to himself that a better, more ordered reality was possible. His work on Messiah was the ultimate expression of this impulse. It was his attempt to build a more perfect world, at least on paper.

Module 2: The Network Behind the Masterpiece

Now let's move to the second module. A work like Messiah is never the product of a single genius. King reveals the messy, human, and often scandalous network of people who brought it to life. This was a story of collaboration, rivalry, and sheer survival.

First, let's be clear. Handel's career was built on navigating patronage, commercial risk, and fickle public taste. George Frideric Handel was a German composer who became a British icon. He was a brilliant musician, but also a savvy operator. He understood his career depended on pleasing powerful patrons, like King George II, and a volatile public. He co-founded the Royal Academy of Music, a joint-stock company for producing opera. This was a high-risk, high-reward venture. One bad season could lead to financial ruin. And the London opera scene was a viper's nest of rivalries.

And here's the thing. The world of opera was a microcosm of society's factionalism and celebrity culture. The competition was fierce. A rival company, the Opera of the Nobility, was backed by the King's own son, Prince Frederick, just to spite his father. They poached Handel's star singers. Audiences were partisan, hissing and clapping for their favorite performers. Grub Street writers fueled the drama with sensationalized stories of backstage feuds. Handel himself had a fiery temper. He once famously threatened to throw a difficult soprano out of a window, declaring, "I am Beelzebub, the chief of the devils!" This was a blood sport.

Into this chaos steps one of the most compelling figures in the book: Susannah Cibber. Her story reveals that female performers occupied a precarious space between celebrity and notoriety. Susannah had a gift. She had an incredible emotional authenticity that could move audiences to tears. But as a woman on the stage, she was considered only slightly above a sex worker. Her legal identity was completely subsumed by her husband's. Under the doctrine of coverture, her earnings, her property, and even her body belonged to him.

Her husband, Theophilus Cibber, was a degenerate who exploited her talent for his own gain. He controlled her income and even pimped her out to a wealthy admirer, William Sloper. When Susannah and Sloper fell in love, Theophilus sued Sloper for "damages," essentially for theft of his property. The resulting trial was a public sensation. Voyeuristic details of Susannah's private life were published for all to read. The scandal nearly destroyed her. She went into hiding, her career in ruins. This is the woman Handel would later recruit to be the star of Messiah. Her story of suffering and redemption would become inextricably linked with the oratorio itself.