This house, located in Devil's Acre, belongs to Myron Bentham. It serves as a museum to peculiardom and has the Panloopticon in it.
History[]
Caul and Myron Bentham built the original Panloopticon in the house. When Caul and his wights returned years after the Experiment of 1908, they broke the machine and forced Bentham to copy its loops into their fortress.
Library of Souls[]
After an injured Jacob Portman and Emma Bloom are rescued by Sharon and his cousins, they are taken to the house to be healed. It afterwards serves as an important setting because of the Panloopticon.
Description[]
The house is located in the "good" section of Devil's Acre and masquerades as the law office of Munday, Dyson, and Strype. Many decorative knobs and gargoyle faces protrude from the masonry.
There is a marble-columned entry hall, a formal dining room with tapestried walls and seating for dozens, and wings whose sole purpose seem to be the display of tastefully arranged furnishings. The cloakroom is crammed with coats, hats, and umbrellas. It is not a spacious or comfortable place, but it is at least private. The cloakroom is lit with lanterns.
Jacob's room[]
The bedroom that Jacob Portman recovers from his injuries in during Library of Souls is on the second story and has a bed, a night table by the bedside, a hulking wooden wardrobe in one corner of the room, a one-armed chair near the bed, and a small connecting bathroom. The bathroom has gleaming white tiles, heavy iron fixtures, and a sink. The bedroom's window has a ledge the size of Cornwall and handholds everywhere.
Museum[]
The small hallway leading to the museum has is stacked with wooden crates and boxes to the ceiling. The museum room is known as Rm. AM-157. The door is arched and the room is crammed with bulky objects beneath white dust covers. Underneath the white dust covers are glass-topped cases, waist high and about four feet square. There are two more rooms with dust-cover display cases.
Some display cases contain "wax models" of peculiars, as Bentham claims to Jacob and Emma. However, these are actually live peculiars being held still by Mother Dust's dust, and they are awakened and freed after Bentham becomes trapped in the Library of Souls. Bentham's collection is not limited to being in the initial museum rooms and is scattered around the house.
Exhibits[]
- Housewares Used By Peculiars on the Island of Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, South Pacific Region, circa 1750 (carved coconut husk, whale vertebra fashioned into comb, small stone axe, other items)
- Brightly colored silks worn by peculiars in Far East, circa 1800
- Entrance to a Peculiar Home in the Great Hibernian Wilderness, circa 1530 (door with iron hinges and knob made from tree knot)
- Weaponry of the Hittite Peculiars, Kaymakli Underground City (dead beetles and butterflies; stolen by wights in The Conference of the Birds)
- Sophronia Winstead (formerly)
- Miss Waxwing, Miss Troupial, Miss Grebe, Alexi (formerly)
- Suit of armor from fifteenth century Spain
Library[]
Jacob describes the library as being the most beautiful he had ever seen. It is at least three stories high, with shelves rising to dizzying heights and an array of staircases, catwalks, and rolling ladders constructed to reach them. A battalion of couches surrounds a flaming hearth whose warmth fills the room.
Panloopticon[]
Main article: Panloopticon
The Panloopticon rooms are on the floor above the museum, reached by climbing a utilitarian staircase at the end of three museum rooms. The landing door opens onto a long, lushly carpeted hallway. Each room is furnished, laid out, and wallpapered identically, and has a small brass plaque nailed to its door indicating the location it leads to. The machine is powered by a hollowgast in the battery chamber in the basement as of the first trilogy.
Known Residents[]
Gallery[]
