The Meaning of Night: A Confession

A touching account, is it not? And I am naturally sensible of the encomia that he has seen fit to bestow on me. We were friends for a time; I acknowledge it. But he comes the littérateur too much – seeing significance where none existed, making much of nothing, dramatizing the mundane: the usual faults of the professional scribbler. This is memory scrubbed and dressed up for public consumption. Worse, he exaggerates our intimacy, and his claims on the matter of our respective intellectual characters are also false, for I was the careful scholar, he the gifted dabbler. I had many other friends in College besides him, and amongst the Oppidans too – Le Grice in particular; and so I was very far from depending solely on Master Phoebus Daunt for company. A dull dog, indeed, I would have been, had that been the case! Finally, he omits to say – though perhaps this is understandable in the light of what happened – that the friendship that we enjoyed when we were first neighbours in Long Chamber had, by the end of our time at Eton, through his perfidy, crumbled to dust.

Yet this was the estimation of my character and abilities that Phoebus Daunt claims to have formed after our first meeting in School Yard, and which he saw fit to lay before the British reading public in the pages of the Saturday Review. But what was my estimation of him; and what was the true nature of our relation? Let me now place the truth before you.

My old schoolmaster, Tom Grexby, had accompanied me from Sandchurch to Windsor. He saw me down to the School, and then put himself up at the Christopher^* for the night. I was glad to know that the dear fellow was close by, though he left early for Dorset the next day, and I did not see him again until the end of the Half.

I did not feel in the least nonplussed by my new surroundings, unlike several of the other new inmates of College, whom I encountered standing or nervously scuffing around their allotted places in Long Chamber, some looking pale and withdrawn, others with affected swaggers that only served to show up their discomfort. I was strong in both body and mind, and knew that I would not be intimidated or hounded by any boy – or master, come to that.

The bed next to mine was empty, but a valise and canvas bag stood on the floor. Naturally, I bent down to look at the handwritten label pasted on the side of the former.

The name of Evenwood, though not of my as yet unseen neighbour, was instantly familiar to me. ‘Miss Lamb has come from Evenwood to see your mamma’; ‘Miss Lamb wishes to kiss you, Eddie, before she leaves for Evenwood’; ‘Miss Lamb says you must come to Evenwood one day to see the deer’. The echoes came ringing back across the years, faint but clear, of the lady in grey silk who had visited my mother when I was young, and who had looked down so sadly and sweetly at me, and had stroked my cheek with her long fingers. I found that I had not thought about her all this time, until the name of this place – Evenwood – had brought her misty image to my mind. Miss Lamb. I smiled fondly at the memory of her name.

Despite my sequestered upbringing at Sandchurch, without many friends to speak of, beyond a few desultory playmates amongst the local boys, I had, and have, a natural gregariousness, though I rarely exercise it. I soon made the acquaintance of my new neighbours in Long Chamber, and accounted for their names and places; together, we then clattered down to take the air in School Yard before dinner.

I saw him immediately, slouching disconsolately beside the Founder’s statue, and knew that it was my new neighbour in Long Chamber. He stood, hands in pockets, occasionally kicking the ground, and looking about him purposelessly. He was a little shorter than me, but a well-formed boy, with dark hair, like mine. None of the other boys had noticed him, and no one seemed inclined to go over to him. So I did. He was my neighbour, after all; and, as Fordyce Jukes was to point out to me many years later, neighbours should be neighbourly.

And so it was in this friendly spirit that I walked towards him with outstretched hand.

‘Are you Daunt?’

He looked at me suspiciously from beneath the crown of a new hat that allowed a little too much for future growth.

‘And if I am?’ he said, with a surly pout.

‘Well then,’ said I cheerfully, still holding out my hand, ‘we are to be neighbours – friends too, I hope.’

He accepted the proffered greeting at last, but still said nothing. I encouraged him to come over and join the others, but he was unwilling to leave the little patch of territory beneath the statue of King Henry in his Garter robes that he appeared to feel he had secured for his private use. But by now it was time for dinner in Hall and, gracelessly, he finally relinquished his place, dragging himself along beside me like some reprimanded but still defiant puppy.

Over our first meal together, I coaxed some hesitant conversation out of him. I learned that he had been taught at home by his father; that his mamma was dead, though he had a step-mamma who had been very kind to him; and that he did not much like his new surroundings. I ventured to say that I supposed he was naturally a little homesick, like several of the other new boys. At this, something like a spark of life arose in his pale blue eyes.

‘Yes,’ he said, with a curious sigh, ‘I do miss Evenwood.’

‘Do you know Miss Lamb?’ I asked.

He thought for a moment. ‘I know a Miss Fox,’ he replied, ‘but not a Miss Lamb.’ At which he giggled.

This exchange seemed to encourage him to greater intimacy, for he leaned forward and, lowering his voice to a whisper, said: ‘I say, Glyver. Have you ever kissed a girl?’

Well, the truth was, that I had known very few girls of my own age, let alone any whom I might have wanted to kiss.

‘What a question!’ I replied. ‘Have you?’

‘Oh yes. Many times – I mean I’ve kissed the same girl many times. I believe she is the most beautiful girl in the world, and I intend to marry her one day.’

He went on to describe the incomparable virtues of his ‘little princess’, whom I gathered was a neighbour of his at Evenwood; and soon the sulky reticence that he had earlier displayed had been replaced by excited volubility, as he spoke of how he intended to be a famous writer and make a great deal of money, and live at Evenwood with his princess for ever and a day.

‘And Uncle Tansor is so kind to me,’ he said, as we made our way from Hall back to Long Chamber, in which Collegers were then shut up for the night. ‘Mamma says that I am almost like a son to him. He is a very great man, you know.’

A little later he came and stood by my bed.

‘What’s that you have there, Glyver?’ he asked.

I was holding the rosewood box in which my sovereigns had been placed, and which my mother had insisted I take with me to Eton to remind myself of my benefactress, whom I continued to believe had been Miss Lamb.

‘It’s nothing,’ I replied. ‘Just a box.’

‘I’ve seen that before,’ he said, pointing to the lid. ‘What is it?’

‘A coat of arms,’ I replied. ‘It’s only a decoration, nothing more.’

He continued to stare at the box for some moments before returning to his own bed. Later, in the darkness he whispered:

‘I say, Glyver, have you ever been to Evenwood?’

‘Of course not,’ I whispered back crossly. ‘Go to sleep. I’m tired.’

Thus I became the friend and ally of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt – his only friend and ally, indeed, for he showed no inclination to seek out any other. The ways of the School appeared to mystify and disgust him in equal measure, making him the inevitable target of the natural vindictiveness of his fellows. He should have been well able to withstand such assaults, being, as I say, a well-made boy, even strong in his way; but he was completely disinclined to offer up any physical resistance to his tormentors whatsoever, and it often fell to me to rescue him from real harm, as when he was set upon, soon after our arrival in Long Chamber, and assailed with pins in the initiatory operation known as ‘Pricking for Sheriff’. New Collegers were expected to display cheerfulness and equanimity in the face of such ordeals, and even to embrace them merrily. But I fear that Daunt, KS, was somewhat girlishly vocal in his complaints, in consequence of which he attracted even more unwelcome attention from that class of boy who is ever ready and eager to make the lives of his compatriots thoroughly miserable. I myself was never subjected to such troubles after I shut the head of one of the chief tormentors, a grinning oaf by the name of Shillito, in the door to Long Chamber, refusing to release him until his face had near turned blue. I had declined to take part in some piece of horseplay, and he had tipped a jug of cold water over me. He did not do it again. Mine is not a forgiving nature.

Daunt calls it ‘thraldom’, this friendship of ours; but it was a strange kind of slavery in which no submission was asked of the enslaved. As time went by, his dependence on me became an increasing irritation. He was free to do what he wished, make friends with whom he chose; but he did not. He seemed willingly to embrace his dependent state, though I would encourage him to find wings of his own. Despite this adhesiveness, I found him an able and lively debater on topics of which I was surprised he had any knowledge at all, and soon I began to discover an elasticity of mind and comprehension, and also a sort of energetic cunning, that sat strangely with the strain of moping dullness that so often characterized his company.

I saw, too, the solid academic grounding that he had received under his father; but with this went a fatal inability to fix the mental eye steadily on its object. He would garner quickly and move on. I, too, was hungry to learn whatever I could of man and the world, but my haste was not self-defeating speed. He assembled bright impressive surfaces of knowledge admirably, but the inner structures that would keep the building in place were flimsy, and constantly shifting. He was adaptable, fluid, accommodating; always absorbent, never certain or definitive. I sought to know and to comprehend; he sought only to acquire. His genius – for such I account it – consisted in an ability to reflect back the brilliance of others, but in a way that, by some alchemical transmutation, served to illuminate and enlarge himself. These qualities did not hold him back in his work: he was generally accounted one of the School’s best scholars; but they showed me – gifted, as I like to think, with finer instincts, like his own father – his true measure.

And so we proceeded together through the School, and began to attain a measure of seniority. He seemed to have thrown off many of his former timidities, and now often distinguished himself on the Playing-fields and on the river. Though I had acquired a large circle of other friends, he and I continued to enjoy a special intimacy arising from our first meeting. But then he began to show signs of a return to his former ways, by expressing renewed disapproval of some of my new friends. He would appear at all times of the day to suggest some activity or other, when often I was most disinclined to participate, or when he knew I was definitely engaged elsewhere. It was as if he wished to possess my company completely, to the exclusion of all others. He simply would not leave me be, and his dogged clinging to my coat-tails, to the detriment of my other friendships, began at last to arouse real annoyance in me, though I fought hard against showing it.

Then things got to such a pitch that, one day, as we were returning from a walk down the Slough Road, he angered me so much by his insistence that I must stop going around with a number of fellows, of whom he disapproved, that I was forced to tell him to his face that I found his company wearisome, and that I had other friends whom I liked better. I immediately regretted my harsh words, and apologized for them. This exchange, I suppose, accounts for the accusation of ‘coldness’ from me, though I continued – against my better judgment – to give freely of my time to him when I could, even when I was racking myself hard with a view to gaining the Newcastle^* on leaving the School.

But then, not long after this incident, came an event that showed me Phoebus Rainsford Daunt in his true colours, and brought about my departure from the School. He mentions this crisis, briefly, and with estimable tact, in the account quoted earlier. I laughed out loud when I read it. Judge for yourself the trustworthiness of our hero as I now set matters before you in their true light.

^*[‘Let it flourish’, alluding to the Eton school motto ‘Floreat Etona’. Ed.]

^†[A boy who was not a King’s Scholar (KS for short). Oppidans boarded in Dames’ houses in the town, and their families paid for their upkeep. Ed.]

^‡[An allusion to the Reform Bill of that year, intermingled with personal overtones. Ed.]

^*[Several printed pages from the Saturday Review of 10 October 1848 are interpolated here. Ed.]

^†[i.e. of the same year’s intake of Scholars. Ed.]

^*[Marcus Terentius Varro, poet, satirist, antiquarian, jurist, geographer, scientist, and philosopher, called by Quintilian ‘the most learned of Romans’. Ed.]

^*[A reference to the Eton Wall Game, a unique form of football, played on 30 November, St Andrew’s Day. The first recorded game, played between Collegers and Oppidans, was in 1766. It takes place on a narrow strip of grass against a brick wall, built in 1717, some 110 metres end to end. Though the rules are complex, essentially each side attempts to get the ball (without handling it) down to the far end of the wall, and then to score. It is a highly physical game as each player attempts to make headway through a seemingly impenetrable mass of opponents. Ed.]

^*[The Christopher Inn (now Hotel), in Eton High Street. Ed.]

^*[The Duke of Newcastle Scholarship, Eton’s premier academic award, which would have financed Glyver’s time at King’s College, Cambridge, the school’s sister foundation. Ed.]

12

Pulvis et umbra^*

One Wednesday afternoon, in the autumn of 1836, as I was returning from Windsor with a small group of companions, to which Daunt had unwelcomely attached himself, I was summoned to see the Head Master, Dr Hawtrey, in Upper School.^†

‘I believe that you have been given exceptional permission to use the Fellows’ Library?’ he asked.

The Library was strictly out of bounds to all boys; but I confirmed that I had been given the key by one of the Fellows, the Reverend Thomas Carter, whose pupil I had been when he was Lower Master. Mr Carter, having read several papers that I had written, was sympathetic to my enthusiastic interest in bibliographical matters, and so had allowed me the unusual, though only temporary, freedom of the Library to gather material for a new paper that I was writing on the history and character of the collection.

‘And you have made use of this privilege recently?’ I began to feel uncomfortable at the questioning, but as I knew that I had committed no misdemeanour, and because I also knew that Dr Hawtrey was a distinguished bibliophile, I unhesitatingly said that I had been there the previous afternoon, making notes on Gesner’s Bibliotheca Universalis (Zurich, 1545).

‘And you were alone?’

‘Quite alone.’

‘And when did you return the key?’

I replied that normally I would have taken the key straight back to Mr Carter, but that yesterday I had gone out on the river with Le Grice, leaving the key in his boarding-house – in which I also had use of a room–until we returned.

‘So when you came off the river, you took the key back to Mr Carter?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Mr Glyver, I have to tell you that I have received a serious allegation against you. According to information I have been given, I have reason to believe that you have taken a most valuable item from the Library without permission, with the intention of keeping it.’

I could hardly believe my ears, and my utter surprise must have been only too evident to the Head Master, for he signalled me to sit down, and waited until I had composed myself before speaking again.

‘The item in question is the Udall. You know it, perhaps?’

Naturally I knew it: the unique copy, circa 1566, of Ralph Roister Doister, one of the earliest of English comedies, by Nicholas Udall, a former Head Master of the School. I had examined it only recently, in the course of my researches. A volume of exceptional rarity and value.

‘We know that it was in the Library on Tuesday morning, because it was seen by one of the Fellows. It is not there now.’

‘I assure you, sir, I know nothing of this. I cannot understand—’

‘Then you will have no objection if we examine your belongings?’

I replied in the affirmative without hesitation, and was soon following Dr Hawtrey’s gowned figure down the stairs and out into School Yard. A few minutes later we were in the room in Le Grice’s boarding-house, where I kept my personal effects and took my breakfast. On opening my trunk, I immediately saw that it was not as I had left it. Beneath a jumble of clothes could plainly be seen the brown calf binding of the missing book.

‘Do you still profess ignorance of this matter, Mr Glyver?’

Before I could reply, Dr Hawtrey had retrieved the book, and ordered me to follow him back to Upper School, where I found Mr Carter and the Vice-Provost – the Provost being absent on business in London – awaiting us.

I was questioned at some length for over half an hour, during which I felt my anger rising. It was clear that I had been the victim of some mean conspiracy to destroy my reputation, and bring shame and worse – the loss of my scholarship and consequent expulsion – upon my head. Was it possible? They had called me ‘the learned boy’ when I had first come to the School, whilst my prowess at the Wall had been the object of general acclaim. Was I not liked and admired by everyone, boys and masters alike? Yet someone had set out to bring me down – jealous, no doubt, of my abilities and my standing.

I could hear the blood beating louder and louder in my ears as rage welled up, like some scalding volcanic plume, from the depths of my being. At last I could stand it no longer.

‘Sir,’ I cried out, breaking in on the questioning. ‘I have not deserved this, indeed I have not! Can you not see how ridiculous, how risible, this charge is, how worthy of your contempt? I beg you to consider: what possible reason could I have for perpetrating such an act? It would have been the height of folly. Do you suppose that I am such a fool as to attempt to steal so celebrated an item? Only an ignoramus would believe that a book of this rarity could be easily disposed of – and by a mere schoolboy – without suspicion being aroused. Or perhaps you think that I intended to keep the book for myself, which is equally absurd. Discovery would have been inevitable. No, you have been gravely deceived, gentlemen, and I have been the object of a vicious calumny.’

I must have made an alarming, even intimidating, figure as I fumed and ranted, heedless of the consequences. But the genuineness of my passion was only too evident, and I thought that I could see in Dr Hawtrey’s face that the tide might be turning in my favour.

For some minutes more, I continued to protest my innocence most vehemently, as well as deriding the ludicrous nature of the charge. At last, Dr Hawtrey signed for me to resume my seat whilst he held a whispered consultation with his two colleagues.

‘If you are innocent, as you claim,’ he said at last, ‘then it follows that someone else was responsible for removing the Udall quarto from the Library, and for attempting to implicate you as the thief. You say the key was in your room. How long were you on the river?’

‘No more than an hour. The wind was exceptionally keen.’

There was more consultation between my interrogators.

‘We shall make further enquiries,’ said Dr Hawtrey gravely. ‘For the moment, you are free to go. You will not, however, be allowed to use the Library, and you are forbidden to go up town until further notice. Is that clear?’

The next morning, I was again summoned to see Dr Hawtrey. He immediately informed me that a witness had now come forward, who swore that he had seen me placing the book in my trunk.

There have been few times in my life when I have been lost for words; but on this occasion, I was momentarily struck dumb, utterly unable to believe what was being said to me. When I came back to myself, I angrily asked for the name of the witness.

‘You cannot expect me to give you that,’ said Dr Hawtrey.

‘Whoever this witness is, he is lying!’ I cried. ‘As I said before, I have been the victim of some plot. It is obvious, surely, that your witness must also be the thief.’

Dr Hawtrey shook his head.

‘The witness is of impeccable character. Furthermore, his testimony has now been corroborated by another boy.’

Knowing the impossibility that any witness, let alone two, could exist to a crime that I did not commit, I continued to argue as fiercely as I could for my innocence, and for what I considered to be the true state of the case: that I had been the object of a deliberate and vicious conspiracy. But it was useless. Motive and opportunity were already against me; and now came corroborated testimony, sealing my fate. My arguments were dismissed, and the verdict pronounced. My scholarship was to be terminated and I was requested to leave the School immediately, using any public pretence I wished. If I went without protest, then no further action would be taken against me, and the matter would be closed. If not, then I would face formal expulsion and public disgrace.

I thought of my poor mother, alone in the parlour at home, filling page after page for Mr Colburn; and then of Miss Lamb, my presumed benefactress, whose generosity had brought me here. For their sakes, I saw that I must go quietly, though I knew that I was innocent. And so I capitulated, though with a heavy heart, and with rage still boiling and bubbling inside me. Dr Hawtrey was kind enough to say how sorry he was to see me leave under such distressing circumstances, for he regarded me as one of the School’s best scholars, and certain to gain a Fellowship at the University in due course. He also tried to mitigate the immediate effects of my sentence by kindly suggesting that I should stay with one of the Fellows, who had a house a few miles from Eton, until my mother was informed, and arrangements could be made for me to be fetched. But I said that I did not wish him to write to my mother, requesting instead that I be allowed to give her my own account of why I would not be returning to Eton. After some thought, Dr Hawtrey agreed. We shook hands, without speaking, and my school days were over. Worse than this, there was now no chance that I would proceed to Cambridge, and my dream of a Fellowship there would remain forever unrealized.

As I was making my way to Le Grice’s boarding-house, I came upon Daunt in School Yard, standing with one of his new companions – none other than Shillito, whose fat head I had once shut in the door. (You will observe that, in his published recollections, Daunt stated, quite categorically, that he never saw me again after the evening we returned from attending Evensong in St George’s Chapel. That was a deliberate falsehood, as I shall now reveal.)

‘Been to see the Head Master again?’ he called. Shillito gave a little sneer, and I saw straightaway how things were. Daunt had contrived to take the key from Le Grice’s boarding-house and remove the book from the Library; he had then come forward as an unwilling witness – I expect that he put on a good show, playing also, no doubt, on his father’s acquaintance with the Head Master – before enlisting the help of Shillito in his plot. It was also clear why Dr Hawtrey had been so confident in the probity of his main witness. He thought that we were still friends, you see; that we were still the inseparable companions we had once been. He was not aware that I had broken away from Daunt, and so of course he could not believe that my best friend in the School could possibly bear false witness against me.

‘Glyver’s a great one for getting his nose into old books,’ I heard Daunt say to Shillito, as if he were speaking on my behalf. ‘My pa’s the same. He and the Head belong to a club for such people.^* I expect Glyver’s been talking to the Head about some old book or other. Isn’t that right, Glyver?’

He looked at me, coolly, insolently, and in that look was concentrated all the petty envy that he harboured against me, and the spiteful desire to make me pay for turning my back on him in favour of other, more congenial, companions. It was all written on his face, and in the attitude of casual defiance that he had adopted, like one who believes that he has unequivocally demonstrated his power over another.

‘Care for a walk up town?’ he then asked. Shillito threw me another contemptuous grin.

‘Not today,’ I replied, with a smile. ‘I have work to do.’

My apparent collectedness appeared to unsettle him, and I saw that his mouth had tightened.

‘Is that all you can say?’ he asked, blinking a little.

‘Nothing else occurs to me. But wait. There is something.’ I drew closer, interposing myself between Daunt and his acolyte. ‘Revenge has a long memory,’ I whispered into his ear. ‘A maxim you might wish to ponder. Good-bye, Daunt.’

In a moment, I had gone. I did not need to look back. I knew that I would see him again.

When I recounted this episode to Le Grice, over twenty years later in the comfort of Mivart’s, I experienced again the maddening anger that had consumed me on that day.

‘So it was Daunt,’ said Le Grice, after giving a little whistle of surprise. ‘You’ve kept that damned close. Why did you never tell me?’ He seemed rather put out that I had not confided in him; and, in truth, it now seemed absurd to me that I had never thought to do so.

‘I should have done,’ I conceded. ‘I see that now. I’d lost everything: my scholarship, my reputation; above all, my future. And it was all because of Daunt. I wished to make him pay, but in my own time and in my own way. But then one thing happened, then another, and the opportunity never came. And once you get into the habit of secrecy, it becomes harder and harder to break it – even for your closest friend.’

‘But why the devil is he trying so hard to find you now?’ asked Le Grice, a little pacified by my words. ‘Unless, perhaps, he wishes to make amends …’

I gave a hollow little laugh.

‘A little dinner à deux? Contrite apologies and regret for blackening my name and destroying my prospects? I hardly think so. But you must know a little more about our old school-fellow before you can understand why I do not think that remorse for what he did is the reason for Daunt’s present desire to find me.’

‘In that case,’ said Le Grice, ‘let’s settle up and decamp to Albany. We can put our feet up, and you can talk away till dawn if you want.’

Once ensconced in Le Grice’s comfortable sitting-room, before a blazing fire, I continued with my story.

The journey home to Sandchurch was made in the company of Tom Grexby, who had travelled up to Eton instantly on receipt of my letter. I met him at the Christopher, but, before I had a chance to speak, he had taken me aside to give me grave news: my mother had been taken ill, and it was not expected that she would recover.

Shock had been piled on shock, heaping Pelion on Ossa.^* To lose so much, in so brief a space! I did not weep – I could not weep. I could only stare, wordlessly, as if I had suddenly found myself in some strange desert landscape, devoid of any familiar landmark. Taking my arm, Tom led me out into the yard, from where we walked slowly down the High Street to Barnes Pool Bridge.

In my letter to him, I had held back the circumstances that had necessitated my leaving Eton; but as we reached the bridge, having walked most of the way from the Christopher in silence, I laid the matter out before him, though without revealing that I knew the name of the person who had betrayed me.

‘My dear fellow!’ he cried. ‘This cannot stand. You are innocent. No, no, this must not be allowed.’

‘But I cannot prove my innocence,’ I said, still in a kind of daze, ‘and both circumstance and testimony appear to prove my guilt. No, Tom. I must accept it, and I beg you to do the same.’

At last he reluctantly agreed that he would take no steps on my behalf, and we walked back to prepare for our journey to Sandchurch. To my relief, Le Grice was on the river, and so I was able to remove my belongings from his boarding-house without the need to lie about why I was leaving so suddenly, or why I would not be returning. When all was safely aboard, Tom climbed up beside me and the coach drove off towards Barnes Pool Bridge, taking me away from Eton for ever.

When we arrived at the little house on the cliff-top, late that evening, we were met by the village doctor. ‘I’m afraid you’ve come too late, Edward,’ said Dr Penny. ‘She’s gone.’

I stood in the hall looking blankly at all the old familiar things – the brass clock by the door, ticking away as I had always remembered it; the silhouette portrait of my grandfather, Mr John More of Church Langton; the tall cylindrical pot, decorated with dragons and chrysanthemums, containing my mother’s umbrella and summer parasol – and breathing in the comfortable smell of beeswax polish (my mother had been a tyrant for cleanliness). The parlour door was open, revealing her work-table piled high with paper. The curtains were drawn, though it was broad day outside. A burned-out candle, in its pewter holder, stood precariously on a little stack of books nearby, a mute witness to the final night hours of drudgery.

I ascended the stairs, oppressed by the insidious presence of death, and opened the door to her room.

Her last book, Petrus, had only recently been published, and she was preparing to embark on yet another romance for Mr Colburn — the first few pages still lay on the floor by her bed, where they had fallen from her hand. The years of unremitting toil had finally taken their toll, and I could not help feeling glad that her labours were over. Her once beautiful heart-shaped face was lined and sunken, and her hair – of which she had been so proud in her youth – was now thin and grey, though she was but forty years old. Thin, too, were her careworn fingers, stained still with the ink she had expended on meeting her obligations to her publisher. I placed a parting kiss on her cold forehead, and then sat by her side until morning, wrapped in the suffocating silence of death and despair.

She had been my only parent, and my sole provider until the generosity of my benefactress brought some relief to our circumstances; yet even then she had continued to write, with the same determination, day after day. What had driven her, if not love? What had sustained her, if not love? My dearest mother – no, more than a mother: the best of friends and the wisest of counsellors.

I would see her no more, bent over her work-table; nor sit with her, excitedly unwrapping her latest production before we placed it proudly on the shelf – made by Billick from the timbers of a French man-of-war shattered at Trafalgar – with all the others. She would tell me no more stories, and would never listen again, with that sweet half-smile, as I read to her from my translation of Les mille et une nuits. She had gone, and the world seemed as cold and dark as the room in which she now lay.

We buried her in the church-yard overlooking the sea at Sandchurch, next to her errant husband, the little-lamented Captain. Tom was by my side; and I was never more glad to have him there. At my request, to the sound of gulls and the distant pounding of the waves, Mr March, the incumbent of Sandchurch, read out a passage from John Donne; and then she was gone for ever, beyond sight and touch and hearing, a withered flower in her shroud of flinty earth.

My mother’s death provided a reason for my returning home from school that no one questioned; and the same excuse was conveyed by letter to Le Grice and my other friends at Eton. Only Tom knew the truth, and to him I now turned.

Mr Byam More, my sole surviving relative, offered to become my guardian; but, as I was firmly disinclined to remove to Somerset, it was agreed that Tom would temporarily stand in loco parentis, and that I would be placed under his educational care once again, whilst remaining – alone but for Beth and old Billick – in the house at Sandchurch, which had been left to me by my mother. The fifty sovereigns that I had insisted that she should keep as her own had been laid out on a number of unavoidable expenses; and so it became necessary to apply to Mr More, as my trustee, to release some of my remaining capital in order to maintain the household oeconomy.

In the meantime, I sought to accustom myself to the unexpected sensation of being master in my own house, at the age of sixteen. To be there alone, without my mother, gave me the most curious sensation at first, as if I half expected to meet her on the stairs, or see her walking down the garden path when I looked out from my bedroom window. Sometimes, at night, I became certain that I could hear her moving around in the parlour. I would hold my breath, heart beating fast, straining to make out what I had heard – whether it was, indeed, the sound of her poor ghost, unable to find rest from pressing pen to paper, pulling up her chair to the great work-table to take up some eternally unfinished work, or simply the timbers of the old house, creaking and straining as the wind howled in from the sea.

I lived at Sandchurch, tutored by Tom, and under his informal guardianship, until the autumn of 1838. My former school-fellows, including Phoebus Daunt, were preparing to leave Eton for the Varsity, and I too wished to continue my studies at some suitable seat of learning. Thus it was that, at Tom’s suggestion, I went to Heidelberg, where I enrolled at the University to take a number of classes, and indulged myself to the full in the pursuit of my many interests. My intellectual ambitions had been frustrated by having had to leave school prematurely, thus forfeiting the chance of proceeding to Cambridge and a Fellowship there; and so, though I did not intend to take a degree, I determined to use the time as well as I could.

I attended lectures and read like a perfect fiend, by day and by night: philosophy, ethics, jurisprudence, rhetoric, logic, cosmology – I fairly guzzled them down, like a man dying of thirst. Then I would run furiously back to the favourite subjects of my early youth – the old alchemical texts, the Rosicrucian teachings, and the ancient Greek Mysteries – and, through one of the Professors at the University, I imbibed a new passion for the archaeology of the ancient seats of civilization, Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea. Then I would be eager to search out paintings by the old German Masters in lonely forest-wrapped castles, or would travel on a whim all over the region to hear some local virtuoso play Buxtehude on an early eighteenth-century organ, or a village choir singing old German hymns in a white-painted country church. I would haunt the bookshops of the old German towns, unearthing glowing rarities – prayer-books, missals, illuminated manuscripts from the court of Burgundy, and other bibliographical treasures of which I had knowledge but, until now, had never seen. For I was mad to see, to hear, to know!

That was my golden time (Phoebus Daunt is welcome to his): in particular, the bliss of tracing the track of the Philosophenweg^* with an armful of books on a bright summer’s morning; to find my private spot high above the Neckar, from where I could gaze down on the Heiliggeist Church and the Old Bridge through the clear new air; and then to lie back on soft grass, the sun seeping through the branches, with my books and my dreams, with swallows wheeling against clouds that might have been painted by Poussin, an infinity of blue above me.

^*[‘Dust and shadow’. Ed.]

^†[Edward Craven Hawtrey (1789–1862), who had succeeded the infamous flogger Dr Keate as Head Master only two years earlier. He was, as Glyver notes, a great bibliophile himself and was a member of the premier association for bibliographical scholars, the Roxburghe Club. Ed.]

^*[The Roxburghe Club. Ed.]

^*[Meaning one huge event piled on another, alluding to the giants, the Aloadae, in Greek mythology who attempted to reach the abode of the gods by placing Mount Pelion upon Mount Ossa, two peaks in Thessaly (Odyssey, XI, 315). The narrator is doubtless alluding to Laertes’ words on the death of Ophelia: ‘Now pile your dust upon the quick and the dead / Till of this flat a mountain you have made / To o’ertop old Pelion’ (Hamlet, V.i.247). Ed.]

^*[The famous ‘Philosopher’s Path’ that leads up to the northern bank of the Neckar. Ed.]

13

Omnia mutantur^*

A man of knowledge increaseth strength, says the proverb;^† and this saying I proved to be true, as I daily enlarged my store of understanding in the subjects to which I applied myself. I experienced a dizzying feeling of expanding power in my mental and physical capabilities, until I could conceive of no subject too abstruse for my apprehension to grasp, and no task too great for my ability to accomplish.

And yet I suffered continually from bouts of gnawing rage, which often threatened to undermine this swelling self-confidence. A fearful black humour would descend upon me without warning, even on the brightest of days, when the world about me was alive with life and hope. And then I would shut out the light, and pace about my room like a caged beast, for hours on end, eaten up by only one thought.

How would I be revenged? I turned the question over and over in my mind, imagining the ways in which Phoebus Daunt might be made to feel what I had felt, and envisioning the means by which his hopes could be destroyed. He was at Cambridge now, as I knew from Le Grice, both having taken their places at King’s College. Daunt, as expected, had secured the Newcastle, and was received at King’s with that expectation that naturally surrounds the holder of such a prize. Certainly he continued to display real ability in his studies, but again with that tendency to indiscipline that would have aroused the severe displeasure of his meticulous father. The Rector’s old friend, Dr Passingham of Trinity, did his best to maintain a paternalistic eye on the young man’s doings and would, from time to time, communicate discreet pastoral reports on his progress back to Northamptonshire. It was not long before such reports became troublesome to Dr Daunt.

From Le Grice, I received accounts of a number of incidents witnessed by him that testified to a distinct shabbiness of character, and which luridly corroborated the more sober notes of concern that flowed, with increasing frequency, between the Master’s Lodge at Trinity and Evenwood Rectory.

The first might, perhaps, be seen as an undergraduate prank (though it was not so construed by his father when it was reported to him). On being good-humouredly reprimanded by the Dean of the College for some trivial misdemeanour, young Daunt placed a game hamper before that gentleman’s door, directed to him ‘With Mr Daunt’s compliments’. When opened, the hamper was found to contain a dead cat, with an escort of five skinned rats. On being arraigned and questioned, Daunt coolly maintained his innocence, arguing that he would hardly have affixed his own name to the hamper had he been the culprit. And so he was released with due apology.

The second incident is more substantial, with respect to Daunt’s developing character.

He had been invited to a dinner given by the Provost. At the head of the table, Dr Okes^* sat in earnest discussion with the College’s Visitor, Bishop Kaye, whilst on either side a dozen or so men conversed at their ease. Daunt, one of three freshmen present, found himself sitting next to Le Grice; on the other side of the table sat a senior Fellow of the College, Dr George Maxton, a gentlemen well advanced in years and of much-impaired hearing.

Towards the conclusion of the meal, Daunt leaned forward and, with a fixed smile, spoke to this venerable figure.

‘Well, Dr Maxton, and how are you enjoying yourself?’

The good gentleman, seeing himself addressed, but hearing nothing above the surrounding chatter, merely smiled back and nodded.

‘You think it a pretty fair spread, do you, you old fool?’ Another nod.

Daunt continued, still smiling.

‘The oysters were barely tolerable, the hock execrable, the conversation tiresome, and yet you have found it all perfectly to your taste. What a rattlepate you are.’

Daunt persisted in this impertinent and insulting vein for some minutes, making the most uncomplimentary remarks to the poor deaf gentleman across the table as though he were discoursing on the most common topics. All the while, Dr Maxton, unaware of what was really being said to him, received the young man’s impudence with mute gestures of touching courtesy; and still Daunt continued to derogate his fellow guest, smiling as he did so. This, as Le Grice observed, was behaviour most unbecoming to a gentleman.

There were other – indeed, numerous – instances of such behaviour during Daunt’s time at the Varsity, all of them displaying an innate viciousness and egotism. I eagerly read Le Grice’s reports, which formed the beginnings of what was to become an extensive repository of information concerning the history and character of Phoebus Daunt.

I would be revenged on him. This became an article of faith with me. But I must first come to know him as I knew myself: his family, his friends and acquaintances, his places of resort – all the externalities of his life; and then the internal impulsions: his hopes and fears, his uncertainties and desires, his ambitions, and all the secret corners of his heart. Only when the subject of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt had been completely mastered would I know where the blow should fall that would bring catastrophe upon him. For the moment, I must bide my time, until I returned to England, to begin setting my plans in motion.

At Evenwood, Dr Daunt’s great work on the Duport Library was drawing to its triumphant close after nearly eight years’ labour. It had become a famous enterprise, with articles on its progress appearing regularly in the periodical press, and the publication of the final catalogue, with its attendant notes and commentaries, was eagerly awaited by the community of scholars and collectors, both in England and on the Continent. The Rector had written and received hundreds of letters during the course of his work, to the extent that Lord Tansor had agreed to hire an amanuensis to assist him in the completion of the great task. His own private secretary, Mr Paul Carteret, had also been seconded to help the Rector when required; and so, aided by this little team, and driven daily by his own unbounded eagerness and energy, the end was now in sight.

Mr Carteret’s assistance had proved invaluable, especially his extensive knowledge of the Duport family, of which he was himself a member. His familiarity with the family papers, stored in the Muniments Room at Evenwood, enabled Dr Daunt to establish where, when, and from whom the 23rd Baron Tansor had purchased particular items, as well as the provenance of some of the books in the collection that had been acquired in earlier times. To Mr Carteret was also delegated the important and demanding task of listing and describing the manuscript holdings, which were a particular interest of his.

Lord Tansor had wanted a superior kind of inventory of his goods; but he was not so much the Philistine that he did not feel satisfied by the true nature of his asset, nor take pride in what had been laid down by his grandfather for the benefit of posterity. Its material value proved, in the end, difficult to calculate, except that it was almost beyond price; but its worth in other terms had been indubitably confirmed by Dr Daunt’s work, and it now stood to the world as one of the most important collections of its kind in Europe. For this confirmation alone, and the great renown thrown on his name by the publication of the catalogue, Lord Tansor was well pleased.

The intellectual and artistic glories of the Duport Collection had come to him from his grandfather through his father. To whom would they now pass? How could they be transmitted, intact, to the next generation, and to the next, and to their heirs and descendants, and thus become a living symbol of the continuity that his soul craved? For still no heir had been vouchsafed to his union with the second Lady Tansor. In his Lordship’s mind, the completion of Dr Daunt’s work merely served to underscore his precarious dynastic position. His wife was now a poor stick of a woman, who meekly followed her husband around, in town and country, forlorn and ineffectual. There was, it seemed, no hope.

It was just at this time that Lord Tansor – egged on, I suspect, by his relative, Mrs Daunt – began to lavish signs of especial favour on the Rector’s son. What follows is based on information I obtained some years after the events described.

During the Long Vacation of 1839, Lord Tansor began to express the opinion that it would be good for his Rector’s son if he ‘ran around a little’, by which his Lordship meant to imply that a period of harmless leisure would not go amiss, even for so accomplished a scholar. He suggested that a few weeks spent at his house in Park-lane, whither he was himself about to repair with Lady Tansor, would be productive of useful amusement for the young man. The young man’s step-mamma fairly purred with delight to hear Lord Tansor expatiating so enthusiastically on what might be done for her step-son by way of a social education.

As to his future, once his time at the Varsity was over, the young man himself expressed a certain open-mindedness on the subject, which, doubtless, alarmed his father, but which may not have been displeasing to Lord Tansor, whose nods of tacit approval as the lad held forth on the various possibilities that might lie before him after taking his degree – none of which involved ordination, and one of which, a career in letters, went completely against his father’s inclinations – were observed and inwardly deplored by the helpless Rector.

That summer, Phoebus Daunt duly ‘ran around a little’ under the watchful eye of Lord Tansor. The debauchery was not excessive. A succession of tedious dinners in Park-lane, at which Cabinet ministers, political journalists of the more serious persuasion, distinguished ecclesiastics, military and naval magnates, and other public men, predominated; for light relief, an afternoon concert in the Park, or an expedition to the races (which he particularly enjoyed). Then to Cowes for some sailing and a round of dull parties. Lord Tansor would hold the flat of his right hand out stiffly, fingers and thumb closed tight together, arm bent at the elbow, just behind the boy’s back, as he introduced him. ‘Phoebus, my boy,’ – he had taken to calling him ‘my boy’ —‘this is Lord Cotterstock, my neighbour. He would like to meet you.’ ‘Phoebus, my boy, have you made the acquaintance yet of Mrs Gough-Palmer, wife of the Ambassador?’ ‘The Prime Minister will be down tomorrow, my boy, and I should like you to meet him.’ And Phoebus would meet them, and charm them, and generally reflect the rays of Lord Tansor’s good opinion of him like a mirror until everyone was convinced that he was the very best fellow alive.

And so it went on, for the rest of the vacation. On his return to Evenwood in September, he seemed quite the man about town: a little taller, with a gloss and a swagger about his manner that he had completely lacked as a schoolboy only a short time before. There was now a gloss, too, about his appearance, for Uncle Tansor had sent him off to his tailor and hatter, and his step-mamma quite caught her breath at the sight of the elegantly clad figure – in bright-blue frock-coat, checked trousers, chimney-pot hat, and sumptuous waistcoat, together with incipient Dundreary whiskers – that descended from his Lordship’s coach.

From then on, whenever he returned to Evenwood, the undergraduate would find himself immediately invited up to the great house to regale his patron with an account of how he had comported himself during the previous term. It was gratifying to his Lordship to hear how well the boy was regarded by his tutors, and what a great mark he was making on the University. A Fellowship surely beckoned, he told Uncle Tansor, though, speaking for himself, he did not feel that such a course quite accorded with his talents. Lord Tansor concurred. He had little time for University men in general, and would prefer to see the lad make his way in the great world of the metropolis. The lad himself could only agree.

Of the making of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt there seemed to be no end. With each passing month, Lord Tansor devised new ways to raise the young man up in the world, losing no opportunity to insinuate him into the best circles, and to put him in the way of meeting people who, like Lord Tansor himself, mattered.

On the last day of December 1840, in the midst of his final year at the University, Daunt attained his majority, and his Lordship saw fit to arrange a dinner party in his honour. It was a most dazzling affair. The dinner itself consisted of soups and fish, six entrées, turtle heads, roasts, capons, poulards and turkeys, pigeons and snipes, garnishes of truffles, mushrooms, crawfish and American asparagus; desserts and ices; even several bottles of the 1784 claret laid down by Lord Tansor’s father; all attended by footmen and waiters brought in especially – to the consternation of the existing domestic staff – to dispense service à la française.

The guests, some thirty or so in number, had included, for the principal guest’s benefit, several literary figures; for Lord Tansor, a little against an innate prejudice towards the profession of writing, had been impressed by the dedication to literature that the young man was beginning to display. He would often come across the lad tucked away in a corner of the Library (in which he seemed to pass a great deal of his time when he was home), in rapt perusal of some volume or other. On several occasions he had even found him absorbed in one of Mr Southey’s turgid epics, and it would amaze Lord Tansor, on returning to the same spot an hour later, to discover the young man still engrossed – it being unaccountable to his Lordship that so much time and attention could be devoted to something so unutterably tedious. (He had once ventured to look into a volume of the Laureate’s,^* and had sensibly determined never to do so again.) But there it was. Further, the boy had displayed some talent of his own in this department, having had a simpering ode in the style of Gray published in the Eton College Chronicle, and another in the Stamford Mercury. Lord Tansor was no judge, of course, but he thought that these poetic ambitions might be encouraged, as being both harmless and, if successful, conducive to a new kind of respect devolving upon him as the young genius’s patron.

So up they had trotted to Evenwood, at Lord Tansor’s summons: Mr Horne, Mr Montgomery, Mr de Vere, and Mr Heraud,^† and a few others of their ilk. They were not, it must be admitted, first-division talents; but Lord Tansor had been much satisfied, both by their presence and by their expressions of encouragement, when Master Phoebus was persuaded to bring out one or two of his own effusions for their perusal. The literary gentlemen appeared to think that the young man had the mind and ear – indeed, the vocation – of the born bard, which gratifyingly confirmed Lord Tansor’s view that he had been right to allow the young man his head in respect of a possible career. The author himself was also flattered by the kind attentions of Mr Henry Drago,^* the distinguished reviewer and leading contributor to Eraser’s and the Quarterly, who gave him his card and offered to act on his behalf to find a publisher for his poems. Two weeks later, a letter came from this gentleman to say that Mr Moxon,^† a particular friend of his, had been so taken by the verses that the critic had placed before him that he had expressed an urgent wish to meet the young genius as soon as may be, with a view to a publishing proposal.

Before Daunt had finished his studies at Cambridge, he had completed Ithaca: A Lyrical Drama, which, with a few other sundry effusions, was duly published by Mr Moxon in the autumn of 1841. Thus was launched the literary career of P. Rainsford Daunt.

Mrs Daunt, now established as the de facto chatelaine of Evenwood, naturally watched these developments with a warm glow of satisfaction; it was most pleasant to observe that her plans for ingratiating her step-son with Lord Tansor were succeeding so well. Her husband, with more discernment, felt a good deal of disquiet at the palpably hollow lionization of his son, when the boy had done nothing, in his view, to deserve the plaudits that he was receiving, other than to have fallen under the capacious wing of his Lordship’s patronage. With the end in sight of his labours on his catalogue, the Rector now felt able to turn his full gaze on the character and future prospects of his son. But his position was weak in respect of Lord Tansor’s growing dominion over his only child. What could be done? Give up his comfortable living in this place of beauty and contentment and risk removal to another Millhead? That was out of the question.

And yet he felt impelled to do his utmost to retrieve his son, and put him back on a path more consonant with his upbringing and antecedents. It might not be possible to bring him to ordination – the Rector’s dearest hope – but it might be possible to dilute the effects of Lord Tansor’s increasingly prodigal attentions.

The Rector thought that he might have a solution to the problem. Removing his son from Evenwood and the influence of Lord Tansor for an extended period might have the effect of somewhat loosening his patron’s grip on his son. He had therefore quietly arranged through a cousin, Archdeacon Septimius Daunt of Dublin, for the boy to spend a further year of study at Trinity College. It now only remained for him to acquaint his son, and Lord Tansor, of his decision.

^*[‘Everything changes’. Ed.]

^†[Proverbs 24: 5. Ed.]

^*[Dr Richard Okes (1797–1888), Provost of King’s. Ed.]

^*[Robert Southey was Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death in 1843. Ed.]

^†[The poets Richard Hengist Horne (1803–84), Robert Montgomery (1807–55), Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902), John Abraham Heraud (1799–1887). Ed.]

^*[Henry Samborne Drago (1810–72), poet and critic. Ed.]

^†[The publisher Edward Moxon (1801–58), whose authors at this time included Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, her future husband Robert Browning, and Tennyson. Ed.]

14

Post nubila, Phoebus^*

A week after attaining his majority, P. Rainsford Daunt, plainly agitated and with a rather high colour, could have been seen leaving the Rectory at Evenwood, mounting his father’s borrowed grey cob, and making his way up towards the great house, where he was received as a matter of urgency by a concerned Lord Tansor.

The Rector had summoned his son early in order to present him with his decision that he should further his studies in Dublin, after taking his degree. Words were spoken – I do not have an exact transcript – and things were said, perhaps on both sides, which made compromise on the matter impossible. The Rector certainly told the boy, coolly and frankly, that if he did not fall in with the arrangement, he would himself go to Lord Tansor to request that he intervene on his behalf.

Poor man. He had no conception that it was already too late; that he had lost every chance of influence over his son’s future; and that Lord Tansor would do nothing to support his wishes in the case.

‘I do not, of course, say that it is a bad plan,’ Lord Tansor opined when, that afternoon, the Rector stood before him, ‘for the young man to go to Ireland – that, of course, must be a matter for you to settle with him yourself. I only say that travel in general is overrated, and that people – especially young people – would be better advised to stay at home and look to their prospects there. As for Ireland, there can, I think, be few places on earth in which an English gentleman could feel less at home, or where the natural comforts and amenities of a gentleman’s condition are less susceptible of being supplied.’

After more barking pronouncements of this sort, delivered in Lord Tansor’s best baritone manner, Dr Daunt saw how things lay, and was dismayed. His son did not go to Dublin.

Phoebus Daunt took his degree that summer, and so returned again to Evenwood, on a fine warm day, to ponder his future.

A fictional fragment, part of an uncompleted prose romance entitled Marchmont; or, The Last of the FitzArthurs,^* undoubtedly describes that return, though transposed from summer to autumn for dramatic effect. I append part of it here:Fragment from ‘Marchmont’

by

P. RAINSFORD DAUNTBeyond the town the road dips steeply away from the eminence on which the little town of E—is situated, to wind its tree-lined way down towards the river. Gregorius always delighted in this road; but today the sensation of a progressive descent beneath a vault of bare branches, through which sunlight was now slanting, was especially delicious to him after the tedium and discomfort of the journey from Paulborough, sitting with his trunks on the back of the carrier’s cart.At the bottom of the hill, the road divided. Instead of crossing the river at the bridge by the mill, he turned north to take the longer route, along a road that ran through thick woodland, with the aim of entering the Park through its Western Gates. He had in mind to sit a while in the Grecian Temple, which stood on a terraced mound just inside the gates, from where he would be able to see his favourite prospect of the great house across the intervening space of rolling parkland.The woods were chill and damp in this dying part of the year, and he was glad to gain the wicket-gate in the wall that gave onto the Park and pass out into weak sunlight once more. A few yards took him onto a stony path that ran off from the carriage-drive up towards the Temple, built on a steep rise, and surrounded on three sides by a Plantation of good-sized trees. He walked with his eyes deliberately fixed on the gravel path, wishing to give himself the sudden rush of pleasure that he knew he would feel on seeing the house from his intended vantage point.But before he was halfway along the path, he was aware of the sound of a vehicle entering the Park behind him from the western entrance. He was but a little way off the road, and so turned to see who was approaching. A carriage and pair were rattling up the little incline from the gates. Within a moment or two the carriage had drawn level with the spur of the path on which he was standing. As it passed, a face looked out at him. The glimpse had been fleeting, but the image held steady in his mind as he watched the carriage crest the incline and descend towards the house.He remained staring intently after the carriage for several moments after it had disappeared from view, puzzled, in a peculiarly keen way, that he had not immediately resumed his way towards the Temple. That pale and lovely face still hung before his mind’s eye, like a star in a cold dark sky.

Despite the crude attempt to disguise the location (‘Paulborough’ for ‘Peterborough’), and himself (as ‘Gregorius’), wrapped up and prettified though it all is, the place and source of the author’s lyrical remembrance are easily explicated and dated. On the 6th of June 1841, the day Phoebus Daunt came down from Cambridge for the last time, at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon, Miss Emily Carteret, the daughter of Lord Tansor’s secretary, returned to Evenwood after spending two years abroad.

Miss Carteret was at that sweetest of ages – just turned seventeen. She had been residing with her late mother’s younger sister in Paris, and had now come back to Evenwood to settle permanently with her father at the Dower House. Their nearest neighbours were the Daunts, just on the other side of the Park wall, and she and the Rector’s son had each grown up with a decided view of the other’s character and temperament.

Little Miss Carteret had been a serious young lady from an early age, with a serious mind and serious expectations of others. Her young neighbour, though capable of seriousness when he pleased, found her meditative disposition galling, when all he wanted to do was tumble down a slope with her, or climb a tree, or chase the chickens; for she would think about everything, and for so long at a time, that he would give up coaxing her in exasperation and leave her alone, still thinking, while he attended to his pleasures. For her part, the young lady sometimes thought him uncouth and frightful in his antics, though she knew that he could be kind to her, and that he was by no means a stupid boy.

It would have been strange indeed had not the boy found that her reticence towards him only increased her fascination. Though his junior by four years, Miss Carteret appeared to rule him with the wisdom of ages; and as they grew older, her sovereignty over him became complete. In time, of course, he asked for a kiss. She demurred. He asked again, and she considered a little longer. But at length she capitulated. On his eleventh birthday she knocked at the Rectory door with a present in her hand. ‘You may kiss me now,’ she said. And so he did. He began to call her his Princess.

To him, she was Dulcinea and Guinevere, every aloof and unattainable heroine of legend, every Rosalind and Celia, and every fairy-tale princess of whom he had ever read or dreamed; for she had a serious and haunting beauty, as well as a serious mind. Her father, Mr Paul Carteret, had observed only too plainly which way the wind blew in the mind of Phoebus Daunt with regard to his daughter, even before she had left for the Continent. Now two years of travel and education, as well as some exposure to the best Parisian society, had rendered her allure irresistible.

The fact was that Mr Carteret, in the face of received opinion at Evenwood, unaccountably failed to regard Phoebus Rainsford Daunt as a precocious specimen of British manhood. He had always found the Rector’s son ingratiating, plausible, slippery, cleverly insinuating himself into favour where he could, and ingeniously spiteful in revenge where he could not. It may therefore be supposed that he did not relish the prospect of his daughter’s return to Evenwood, and to the attentions of P. R. Daunt, at a time when that young gentleman’s star was on its seemingly irresistible rise. To put the matter frankly, Mr Carteret disliked and distrusted Lord Tansor’s protégé. On more than one occasion he had come across him in the Muniments Room, where he had no obvious business, rummaging through the documents and deeds that were stored there; and he was sure that he had surreptitiously perused his Lordship’s correspondence as it lay on the secretary’s desk.

But like that of his neighbour, the Rector, Mr Carteret’s position was also dependent on Lord Tansor’s good opinion. It was thus perplexing to Mr Carteret as to how he ought to proceed if and when – as seemed possible – the young man confided to his patron the nature of his feelings for his daughter. Could he actively forbid any amorous advances, especially if they were made with his Lordship’s approval, without the likelihood of severe consequences to his own interests? For the moment, he had no choice but to watch, and hope.

At their first encounter after her return from France, in the presence of her father, Miss Carteret received the young man with courteous reserve. She asked him politely how he had been, agreed that he had changed a good deal since their last meeting, and accepted an early copy of Ithaca, signed by the author. She had grown quite beautiful in her French clothes and bonnet à la mode, with its delicately shaded, pointed ribbons and little bouquet of pale roses, violets, and primroses; but her father was greatly relieved to observe that her character was as thoughtful, and her behaviour as obedient, as before. Gratifyingly, during the many subsequent occasions on which they were obliged to meet over the course of the summer, Miss Carteret studiously continued to maintain the same air of calm and courteous detachment towards her former playfellow.

As the year 1841 drew to a close, P. Rainsford Daunt, BA, set his mind to conquering the world of letters. The following spring, Lord Tansor arranged for his portrait to be painted, and there was intense excitement in the bosom of Mrs Daunt when an invitation addressed to the young gentleman arrived at the Rectory, requesting the pleasure of his presence at Her Majesty’s bal masqué at Buckingham Palace, at which the Court of Edward III and Queen Philippa was recreated in astonishing magnificence. A week later, he was formally presented at Court, at a levee at St James’s Palace, absurdly resplendent in knee breeches, buckle shoes, and a sword.

His saddened father, meanwhile, retreated to his study to correct the proofs of his catalogue; his Lordship spent a good deal of time in town closeted with his legal man, Mr Christopher Tredgold; and I had set my feet on the path that would eventually lead to Cain-court, Strand.

^*[‘After clouds, the sun’. Phoebus was the sun god. Ed.]

^*[It was published in Daunt’s Scenes of Early Life (1852). Ed.]

15

Apocalypsis^*

I left Heidelberg in February 1841, travelling first to Berlin, and thence to France. I arrived in Paris two days before my twenty-first birthday, and settled myself in the Hôtel des Princes^† – perhaps a little expensive, but not more than I thought I could afford. As I had reached my majority, the residue of my capital, which had been entrusted to Mr Byam More, was now mine. Inspired by this happy thought, I allowed myself to draw deeply on my reserves, in anticipation of their being very soon replenished, and abandoned myself to the infinitely various pleasures that Paris can offer a young man of tolerable looks, a lively imagination, and a good opinion of himself. But there must be an end to all pleasure, and soon the nagging apprehension that I must soon settle on a way to earn my living began to intrude most unwelcomingly on my days and nights. Reluctantly, after six highly entertaining weeks, I began to make my preparations for returning to England.

Then, on the morning before my intended departure, I ran across Le Grice in Galignani’s Reading Room,^‡ which had been my daily place of resort during my stay. We spent a delightful evening recounting the separate courses that our lives had taken over the five years since we had last seen each other. Of course he had news of several old school-fellows, Daunt amongst them. I listened politely, but changed the subject as soon as I decently could. I had no need to be reminded of Phoebus Daunt; he was constantly in my thoughts, and the desire to execute effectual vengeance on him for what he had done to me still burned with a bright and steady flame.

Le Grice was en route to Italy, with no particular purpose in view other than to pass some time in pleasant surroundings and congenial company whilst he considered what to do with himself. Given my own uncertainty on this subject, it did not take much persuasion on his part for me to abandon my plan of returning to Sandchurch, and join him on his ramblings. I immediately wrote to Mr More, requesting him to transfer the balance of my capital to my London account, and sent word to Tom that I would be remaining on the Continent for a little longer. The next morning, Le Grice and I began our journey south.

After many leisurely detours, we arrived at length in Marseilles, from whence we proceeded along the Ligurian coast to Pisa, before finally setting ourselves up, in some splendour, in a noble Florentine palazzo, close to the Duomo. Here we remained for some weeks, indolently indulging ourselves, until the heat of the summer drove us to the cooler air of the mountains and, in due course, to Ancona, on the Adriatic coast.

By the end of August, having made our way north to Venice, Le Grice was beginning to show signs of restlessness. I could not get my fill of churches, and paintings, and sculpture; but these were not at all in Le Grice’s line. One church, he would say wearily, looked very like another, and he expressed similar sentiments when confronted with a succession of Crucifixions and Nativities. At last, in the second week of September, we finally took our leave of each other, promising that we should meet again in London as soon as our circumstances allowed.

Le Grice departed for Trieste to take ship to England, whilst I, after a few days on my own in Venice, headed south again. For the next year or so, with Murray’s Hand-book to Asia Minor as my guide,^* I wandered through Greece and the Levant, reaching as far as Damascus, before sailing back through the Cyclades to Brindisi. After sojourns in Naples and Rome, I found myself in Florence once more, in the late summer of 1842.

On our first visit to the city of the Medici, we had met an American couple, a Mr and Mrs Forrester. Once back in Florence, I presented myself at the Forresters’ residence and, finding that the position of tutor to their two boys had become vacant, owing to the unsuitability of the previous incumbent, I immediately offered my services. I remained in the well-paid and undemanding employment of Mr and Mrs Forrester for the next three and a half years, during which time I grew lazy and, in my idleness, neglected my own studies grievously. I thought often of my former life in England, and how I must one day return; this, however, would always call up the shade of Phoebus Daunt, and the unfinished business that lay between us. (Even in Florence I had been unable to escape him: on my twenty-third birthday I was presented with a copy of his latest volume, The Tartar-King: A Story in XII Cantos, by Mrs Forrester, a notable bluestocking. ‘I doat on Mr Daunt,’ she had sighed, wiltingly. ‘Such a genius, and so young!’)

It was from this time that I began to form certain habits that have occasionally threatened to nullify irrevocably any vestige of the higher talents with which I have been blessed. My lapses were modest then, though I began to hate both myself and the life I was leading. At length, following an unfortunate incident concerning the daughter of a city official, I made my apologies to the Forresters and left Florence in some haste.

I still had no desire to return home, and so I set my course northwards. In Milan, I fell in with an English gentleman, a Mr Bryce Furnivall, from the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum, who was about to depart for St Petersburg. My conversations with Mr Furnivall had rekindled my old bibliographical passions; and when he asked whether I had a mind to accompany him into Russia, I readily agreed.

In St Petersburg we were kindly received by the celebrated bibliographer V. S. Sopikov, whose shop in Gostiny Dvor became my daily place of resort.^* Then after a week or so, my companion, Mr Furnivall, was obliged to return to London, but I chose to remain. For I was bewitched by this extraordinary city of white and gold, entranced by its great public buildings and palaces, its wide vistas, its canals and churches. I found a set of rooms close to Nevsky Prospekt, began to learn the Russian language, and even embraced the fearsome winters with a kind of delight. Bundled in furs, I would often wander the streets at night, with the snow falling all about me, to stand contemplatively on the Lion Bridge by the Griboedova Canal, or watch the ice floating downstream on the mighty Neva.

Nearly a year passed before I began to set my sights homeward at last. Before departing, Mr Furnivall had requested, with some warmth, that I should come to see him at the Museum on my return, to discuss the possibility of my filling a vacancy in the Department that had recently arisen. As I had no other career in view, it began to seem an attractive prospect. I had been an exile from my native country for too long. It was time to make something of myself. And so, in February 1847, I quit St Petersburg, travelling leisurely westwards, occasionally deviating from my route as the fancy took me, and arriving at last in Portsmouth at the beginning of June.

Billick brought the trap to meet me off the Portsmouth coach at Wareham. Having heartily slapped each other on the back for a second or two on first seeing each other, we travelled back for two hours and more in complete silence, save for the sound of my companion’s incessant chewing on an old piece of tobacco, to our mutual satisfaction, until we arrived at Sandchurch.

‘Drop me here, Billick,’ I said, as the trap passed the church.

As he continued on his way up the hill, I knocked on the door of the little leaning cottage next to the church-yard.

Tom opened the door, spectacles in hand, a book that he had been reading tucked under his arm.

He smiled and held out his hand, letting the book fall to the ground.

‘The traveller returns,’ he said. ‘Come on in, old chap, and make yourself at home.’

And a second home it had once been to me, this low, dusty room tumbled from floor to ceiling, and up the stairs from ground to roof, with books of every shape and size. Its dear familiarity – the three-legged dresser supported by a groaning stack of mouldering leather folios, the fishing rods crossed above the fireplace, the discoloured marble bust of Napoleon on a little shelf by the door – was both poignant and painful. Tom, too, his long lined face shining in the fire-glow, his great ears with grey tufts growing out of them, his lilting Norfolk accent, brought a sense of childhood rushing in on me.

‘Tom,’ I said, ‘I believe you’ve lost what little hair you had when I last saw you.’

And we laughed, and there was an end of silence for the night.

On we talked, hour after hour, about what I had done and seen during my time on the Continent, as well as reminiscing over old times, until at last, the clock striking midnight, Tom said that he would get the lantern and walk up the hill with me to see me safe home. He left me at the gate beneath the chestnut-tree, and I entered the silent house.

After nearly nine years of wandering, I lay down that night in my own bed again, and closed my eyes once more to the sound of the eternal music of sea meeting shore.

The summer passed quietly. I busied myself as best I could, reading a good deal, and attempting a little work about the house and garden. But as autumn came on, I began to feel restless and dissatisfied. Tom would come and sit with me most days, and I saw plainly that he was troubled by my indolence.

‘What will you do, Ned?’ he asked at last.

‘I suppose I shall have to earn a living,’ I sighed. ‘I have used up nearly all my capital, the house is in a very bad state of repair, and now Mr More has written to say that, before she died, my mother borrowed a hundred pounds from him of which he now has need.’

‘If you still have nothing definite in view,’ Tom said after a pause, ‘I might venture to suggest something.’

Whilst travelling in the Levant, I had written to him of my new passion for the ancient civilizations of Asia Minor. Apprised of my imminent return to England, and unaware that I was considering the position at the British Museum, he had acted on my behalf to make some tentative enquiries concerning the possibility of my joining an expedition just then assembling to excavate the monuments at Nimrud.

‘It would be an experience, Ned, and a little money in your hands, and you could start to make a name for yourself in a growing field.’

I said that it was a splendid idea, and thanked him heartily for putting me in the way of it, though in truth I had some reservations about the plan. The gentleman leading the expedition, known to Tom through a relation, lived in Oxford; it was soon agreed that Tom would write to him immediately, to suggest that he and I go up there at the Professor’s earliest convenience.

It was several weeks before an answer came, but then, one bright and windy autumn morning, Tom called to say that he had received a reply from Professor S— in Oxford^* who had expressed interest in receiving me in New College to talk over my candidature for the expedition.

The Professor’s rooms were crammed full of casts and fragments of bas-relief, inscriptions covered in the mysterious cuneiform writing that I had read about in Rawlinson’s account of his travels in Susiana and Kurdistân,^† and carvings of muscular winged bulls in glowering black basalt. Maps and plans lay all about the floor, or were draped over tables and the backs of chairs; and on an easel in the centre of the room stood what I at first took to be a monochrome painting of an immense crowned king, bearded and braided and omnipotent in attitude, beneath whose feet crouched a captive enemy or rebel, frozen in abject surrender to the might of the conqueror.

On closer inspection, I saw that it was not a painting at all, but what the Professor, seeing my interest, described as a photogenic drawing – a technique invented by Mr Talbot,^* a fellow student of the cuneiform texts. I stood amazed at the sight; for the image of the king – a gargantuan and looming stone presence standing in a waste of desert sand – had been made, not by some transient agent devised by man, but by eternal light itself. The light of the world; the sun that had once shone on ancient Babylon, and now struggled to light up the dreary October streets of Oxford in the nineteenth century, had been captured and held, like the slave beneath the king’s feet, and made permanent.

I tell you all this because the moment was a significant one in my life, as shall appear. Up until then, I had followed the familiar paths of knowledge that wound out from the safe harbour of the Liberal Arts. Now I saw that science, somewhat neglected in my education, held open possibilities of which I had not dreamed.

The Professor smelled a little overripe in the close confinement of his attic rooms, and seemed to think that standing very close to someone and talking loudly into their faces was the most convenient way of conducting an interview. He questioned me closely on my knowledge of Mesopotamia and the Babylonian kings, and on a variety of congeneric questions, whilst Tom hovered some distance off with a hopeful smile on his face.

It may well be that I passed muster. Indeed, I know it to be the case, for a few days after our return to Sandchurch, the Professor wrote to communicate his desire that I should return to Oxford as soon as it could be so arranged, in order to make the acquaintance of the other members of the proposed expedition.

But by then my heart had found a new desire. That glorious imprisonment of light and shadow, which I had observed in the photogenic image of the great stone king, began to consume me, and all thought of digging with my finger-nails in the heat and dust of the Mesopotamian desert was driven out. And besides, I had had enough of travelling. I wished to settle, find some congenial employment, and master the photographic art, which perhaps might one day furnish a means of earning my living.

To Tom I said nothing, but I skilfully contrived excuses for not returning to New College, as requested by the Professor, and, by feigning a slight but temporarily debilitating sickness, managed to keep myself close in the house for several days.

On the first day of my pretended illness, the rain came down hard from the south, and remained beating in from the Channel until darkness edged across the cliff-top and enveloped the house. In the morning, I had settled down with Buckingham’s Travels in Assyria,^* lying back in the parlour window-seat that looked out to sea, in a vain attempt to assuage my conscience at deceiving Tom; but by the time Beth came with my luncheon, I had grown weary of Buckingham, and turned instead to my dear old copy of Donne’s sermons, in which I lost myself for the rest of the afternoon.

After supper, I began to think about practicalities. There was much that I needed to do in order to establish myself in a firm and permanent way of success, lacking, as I did, a University degree. Until Tom’s intervention on my behalf, I had determined to sell the house and move to London, to see what I could try there in the way of some work that would draw on my capacity for intellectual application. I had planned, first of all, to take up the invitation of Mr Bryce Furnivall to put myself forward for the vacancy in the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum. It remained a congenial prospect; the bibliographical fire burned strong within me, and I knew that a whole life of useful work could be found in this – for me – absorbing study.

Whichever way I went – to Mesopotamia or Great Russell-street – I should need ready money to support myself in the beginning. A start would also have to be made on reviewing and arranging my mother’s papers, for I had been lax in this regard, and they had lain for the past eleven years, undisturbed and reproachful, in bound heaps on her work-table. That task, at least, could now be commenced. I therefore proposed to myself that I would begin looking over them first thing in the morning, lit up a cigar (a bad habit that I had acquired in Germany), pulled my chair close to the fire, and prepared to take my evening’s ease with a neat little edition of Lord Rochester’s poems.

But as the flames flickered, and the rain continued to hammer against the window, I put the book down and began to stare at the yellowed and curling piles of paper on the work-table.

On the wall flanking the table was the set of shelves, made by Billick, housing my mother’s published works, in two and three volumes, dark-green or blue cloth, their spines and blocked titles gleaming in the firelight, assembled in strict order of publication, from Edith to Petrus; or, The Noble Slave, her somewhat half-hearted attempt at the historical mode, published in the year of her death. Below this library was the arena of her labours itself – the great square work-table, fully eight feet across, that would later stand in my rooms in Temple-street.

It was a landscape of paper, with little peaks and shadowed troughs, tottering sheer-sided gorges, and here and there the aftermaths of little earthquakes, where a crust of curling sheets had slid across the face of its fellows beneath, and now leaned crazily against them. The mass of paper that lay before me contained, I knew, working drafts and fragments of novels, as well as accounts and other items relating to the running of the household. My mother’s curious system had been to parcel up little battalions of sheets and other pieces relating to a particular category, before binding them together with string or ribbon or thin strips of taffeta. Then she would stack them up, unlabelled, roughly in the order in which they had been created, one on top of the other. The effect, where it remained intact, was rather like a model of the battlefield of Pharsalus^* that I had once seen, with massed and opposing squares and echelons. Nestling in the midst, surrounded on three sides by the encroaching walls of paper, was the space, no wider than a piece of foolscap, in which she had worked.

There were, too, a number of small, perfectly square note-books with hard, shiny black covers, each closed up by delicate silk ribbons of the same hue, which used to draw my fascinated eye as a child because of their resemblance to slabs of the darkest chocolate. In these my mother would commit her thoughts by bending even closer to the page than she was wont to do when engaged on her literary work, for the leaves were small – no more than three or four inches square, requiring her to adopt a minuscule hand for the purpose. Why she had chosen willingly to put herself to so much trouble – the note-books were made especially for her by a stationer in Weymouth, which seemed a most uncharacteristic luxury – I never knew. A dozen or more of these miniature volumes now stood, line astern, on one side of the working space, held in formation at the edge of the table by the rosewood box that had once contained my two hundred sovereigns.

On a whim, I thought I would just look into one of these diminutive black books before retiring. I had never before known what they contained, and a rather anxious curiosity – I cannot account for the slight tingle of nervous anticipation that I felt as I walked over to the table – began to rouse me from the drowsiness that had begun to come over me as I had sat by the dying fire, reading Lord Rochester’s eloquent bawdy.

I took the first of the note-books from its place and undid its silk ribbon. Placing it beneath the candle’s light, I opened the hard black cover, and began to read the tiny characters that had been pressed onto the page from top to bottom with so much care and deliberation. They told of my mother’s last weeks at Church Langton before she and the Captain moved to Sandchurch. Intrigued, I read on for a few more pages, then closed the volume and picked up another. I continued thus, looking into one of the tiny books, and then moving on to its fellows, for near an hour. It was approaching eleven o’clock when I thought that I would put my nose into just one more volume before I went to bed.

The first two pale-yellow leaves contained little of particular interest, consisting mainly of brief and inconsequential résumés of daily activities. I was on the point of closing the volume and picking up the next when, flicking forward, my eye lighted on the following passage:That this is folly, sheer fatal folly, I know only too well. All my feelings revolt against it, everything that I hold sacred is appalled by the prospect. And yet – it is asked of me, & I cannot dash the cup from my lips. My nature is not my own, it seems, but must be press’d into shape by another’s hand – not God’s! We spoke at length yesterday. L was tearful at times, at others angry and threatening of worse than even what is proposed. Can there be worse? Yes! And she is capable of it. He wd not be home that night & this wd give us more time. After dinner L came to my room again and we cried together. But then her resolve return’d & she was all steel & fire once more, cursing him with a vehemence that was horrible to behold. She did not depart until first light, leaving me exhausted by her rage so that I did not return from E— to here until pm today. The Captain not in evidence and so made no mention of my lateness.

The passage bore a date: ‘25.vi.19’.

To gaze so fixedly upon my mother’s private journal seemed a gross intrusion; but I found I could not bring myself to secure the silk ribbon again and confine the contents to obscurity. For, being a journal or personal chronicle of some kind, then it must contain something of truth about her, something hidden but authentic about the little hunched and distracted figure, constantly writing, of my childhood memory. I felt impelled to uncover what lay behind the words that I had just read, even if it led to the postponement of my own plans to begin making my way in the world.

But what truth informed this enigmatic passage eluded me completely. For this was not simply a record of events, as earlier entries had been, but of some impending crisis, speaking of deep inward searching, the roots of which, it seemed, were as yet impossible to conjecture. A subsequent passage, dated a few days later, whilst clearer in its detail, appeared equally impenetrable to immediate interpretation:L’s appearance today, so wild & unexpected, at the door, was a great disturbance, made worse by Beth coming down the stairs just as she arrived, to hear her knocking furiously like the Devil himself. Beth asked if the lady was ill but I sent her off to fetch a drink as soon as I got L into the parlour & when she return’d L was as composed & gracious as you like. He had come back but had refus’d her again —& this time something more and terrible had happened that she wd not say but which had open’d up a new chasm between them. I saw the rage begin again and urged her with much tender anxiety to quieten herself – which she did in a little while. She had come all this way to tell me – trusting nothing but her own whispered words as she always does – that Mme de Q was to be in town next Mon. & Tues. & that I shd expect to hear something more quite soon thereafter.

Who was ‘L’? Who was the man so clearly referred to: the Captain, or someone else? And what of ‘Mme de Q’? I was now wide awake, held in an iron grip by what I had read. I tried to connect the memory of my mother’s quiet and industrious life to these clear intimations of some looming climacteric, in which she had become involved; but I quickly gave up, and began to read on, urgently scanning the tiny yellow pages, to see whether some light could be shed on this mystery.

And so it began. I opened another little black book, then another, in a kind of dazed concentration, alive to the strangeness of what I was reading but transfixed, until my eyes were wearied. At last, looking up as the second or third candle I had lit began to gutter, I saw that a pink arc of light was creeping above the line of horizon beyond the parlour window. A new day had broken, for the world beyond, and for me.

^*[‘Revelation’. Ed.]

^†[In the Rue de Richelieu. Ed.]

^‡[In the Rue Vivienne: ‘a great resource to the Englishman in Paris’, according to Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers in France (new edition, 1844). Ed.]

^*[A Hand-book for Travellers in the Ionian Islands, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor and Constantinople (John Murray, 1840). Ed.]

^*[Vasily Stepanovich Sopikov, book dealer and author of a standard essay on Russian bibliography. Ed.]

^*[I have not been able to identify ‘Professor S—’ and am unable to say why the author chose to respect his anonymity. He seems to have been involved in some rival enterprise to the expeditions to Nimrud of Austin Henry Layard (1817–94) that did not materialize. Ed.]

^†[The accounts of tours undertaken in 1836 and 1838 and written for the Royal Geographical Society by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810–95). Ed.]

^*[William Fox Talbot (1800–77), British pioneer of photography. He had been working on producing ‘photogenic drawings’ since 1835. A paper on his ‘photogenic’ techniques was read to the Royal Society on 31 January 1839. He patented his improved ‘calotype’ or ‘talbotype’ process for making negatives in 1841. Ed.]

^*[Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia (1830) by James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855). Ed.]

^*[In Thessaly, northern Greece, at which Julius Caesar defeated the Senatorial forces of Pompey in 48 BC. Ed.]

16

Labor vincit^*

Later that morning, I heard Tom’s knock on the front door. When I opened it to him, I did not have to feign exhaustion.

‘My dear fellow,’ he said stepping in and helping me back to my chair by the fireplace, where I had fallen asleep, fully clothed, only an hour before. ‘What is the matter? Shall I call for Dr Penny?’

‘No, Tom,’ I replied, ‘no need for that. I shall be right as rain soon, I’m sure. A temporary indisposition only.’

He sat with me for a while as I took a little breakfast. Then, noticing the copy of Buckingham’s book lying on the window-seat, he asked whether I had thought more about the expedition to Mesopotamia. He could see from the evasiveness of my reply that my interest in the project had lessened, but was friend enough to say that he expected I would see things differently when the indisposition had passed. But I could not let him think so, and told him straight out that I had definitely fixed against joining Professor S—in Nimrud.

‘I’m sorry to hear it, Ned,’ he said, ‘for I think it was a promising opening, with much to gain in all respects. Perhaps you have other possibilities in view for earning a living?’

I had not often seen Tom angry with me, but I could not blame him for feeling somewhat put out. The prospect of adventure and advancement in the field of archaeology had only been a temporary passion, and I should have squashed it firmly underfoot at the start, in fairness to Tom. I tried to mend the mood by saying that I was also considering an opening at the British Museum, but then spoiled it by adding that this, too, might not be quite suitable for me at the present time.

‘Well, then,’ said Tom, standing up to go, ‘I shall write to the Professor. Good morning, Ned. I hope to see you improved soon.’

I took the unspoken reprimand in his parting words without reply, and stood at the window gloomily watching him make his way back down the path to the village.

I should never now see Mesopotamia, and Great Russell-street would have to get on without me. For I was being drawn irresistibly back to the little black books that now lay scattered across my mother’s work-table. The urge to discover the meaning of what my mother had written was to grow ever stronger, and soon became all-consuming, leading inexorably to ends of which I could not then have conceived.

The decipherment of my mother’s journals and papers – for that, in effect, is what it became – began in earnest the next day, and continued in its first phase almost unabated for two or three months. Tom had departed to spend some time with a cousin in Norwich, feeling no doubt that it was best, for both of us, to leave any further discussions concerning my future to some later date. And so I remained indoors, alone and undisturbed, except for brief daily visits from Beth, and devoted myself night and day to my task, only occasionally leaving the house for a day or so to hunt out information that I needed to explain, or to confirm some reference or other.

Besides assiduously committing her private thoughts to her journals, it had been my mother’s habit, in all her practical dealings, never to throw anything away; accordingly, there were innumerable items – bills, receipts, tickets, odd scribbled notes, lists, correspondence, drafts, memoranda – all bound together in bundles on that battlefield of paper. Through these I now also began to pick, piece by piece, day by day, night by night. I sifted, collated, sorted, categorized, deploying all the skills of scholarship, and all the gifts of intellectual application and assimilation at my disposal, to reduce the mass to order, to bring the light of understanding and fixity to bear on the fleeting, fluid shadows in which the full truth still lay hidden.

Gradually, a story began to emerge from the shadows; or, rather, the fragmentary and incomplete elements of a story. As if extracting broken shards from the imprisoning earth, I painstakingly gathered the fragments together, and laid them out, piece by piece, seeking the linking pattern, the design that would bring the whole into view.

One word gave me the vital clue. One word. The name of a place that echoed faintly in my memory at first, but which began to ring out more clearly, bringing with it two seemingly unconnected images: one of a lady in grey silk; the other of a bag, an ordinary valise, carrying a label with the owner’s name and address written on it.

Evenwood. In a journal entry of July 1820, my mother – inadvertently, I supposed – had written out the name in full. Prior to this entry, and subsequently, it appeared simply as ‘E—’ and, in this form, I had stupidly failed to identify it. But once I had this name, links began to form: Miss Lamb had lived at Evenwood; Phoebus Daunt had come from a place with the same name. But was there perhaps more than one Evenwood? My mother had amassed a large working library, to assist her in her work, and Bell’s Gazetteer and Cobbett’s Dictionary^* quickly supplied the answer. No, there was only one: Northamptonshire; Easton, four miles; Peterborough, twelve miles; Evenwood Park – the seat of Julius Verney Duport, 25th Baron Tansor.

That first night at Eton, in Long Chamber, I had asked Daunt whether he knew Miss Lamb, and, later, he had enquired whether I had ever been to Evenwood. We had both answered in the negative, and I had thought no more about the coincidence. But, as I recalled it for the first time in fifteen years, his question seemed odd; or, rather, the guarded, almost suspicious tone in which it had been posed now struck me as being significant in some way. Yet what could Daunt have to do with all this?

I next considered the identity of ‘L’, the character at the centre of the mystery. Could it be Miss Lamb? For days I searched through piles of letters and other documents, in an attempt to establish that her Christian name, like her surname, began with the letter ‘L’; but, to my amazement, I could find not a single piece of correspondence from this person, nor, indeed, any mention of her. Yet this lady had visited us as my mother’s friend, and, as I thought, had showed extraordinary generosity towards me.

Frustrated and perplexed, I had retreated to the one certainty that I had: the place that connected Miss Lamb, Phoebus Daunt, and my mother. Taking down the 1830 edition of Burke’s Heraldic Dictionary,^* I turned to the epitome of the Tansor Barony:The Baron Tansor (Julius Verney Duport), of Evenwood Park, co. Northampton in England, b. 15 Oct., 1790, s. his father Frederic James Duport 1814 as 25th holder of the title; educ. Eton Coll., Trinity Coll., Cambridge; m. 1stly, 5 Dec., 1817, Laura Rose Fairmile (who d. 8 Feb., 1824), only dau. of Sir Robert Fairmile, of Langton Court, Taunton, Somerset, and had issue,Henry Hereward, b. 17 Nov., 1822, and d. 21 Nov., 1829. He m. 2ndly, 16 May, 1827, Hester Mary Trevalyn, 2nd dau. of John David Trevalyn, of Ford Hill, Ardingly, Sussex …

I read the paragraph over again, dwelling particularly on Lord Tansor’s first wife, the daughter of Sir Robert Fairmile, of Langton Court. Now, this latter was a name I knew well: he had been the employer of Mr Byam More, my mother’s uncle and my former trustee. My heart began to beat a little faster as I wrote down the date of the first Lady Tansor’s death. Then, opening one of the little black volumes, I turned to the entry dated the 11th of February 1824, which I now read for the first time:A letter from Miss E telling me that the end came on Friday evening. A light has passed from the world, and from my life, and I must now walk on through the twilight of my days until I too am called. In her letters L had seemed distracted and wildered of late, and I had begun to fear for her mind. But Miss E says the end was peaceful, with no preceding agonies, for which comfort I thank God. I had not seen her since she came here with the box for little E and to tell me what arrangements she had prepared for the time he should go to school. She was much changed, and I almost wept to see her thin face and hands. I remember E was playing at her feet all the time she was here, and oh! the pitiful look in her sweet eyes! He is such a fine, spirited young fellow, any mother would be proud of him. But she knew he would never know her, or that she had given him life, and it was a deadly pain to her. I marvelled at the persistence of her will, and told her so; for even at that moment, if she had been resolved at last to undo all that had been done, I would have surrendered him, though I love him like my own. But L was as fixed in her determination, though by now dreadfully oppressed by it, as she had been when she first recruited me to her cause, and I saw that nothing would ever move her. ‘He is yours now,’ she said softly before she left, and I wept to hear it. If she had been unfaithful to her marriage vows, then the case would perhaps be a little less dreadful. But he was lawfully conceived, and his father must now live out his days in ignorance of his son’s existence. She came to feel most keenly the wrong that she has done him; but nothing would persuade her to undo that wrong. Such is the curse of a passionate nature.We embraced and I walked with her up the path to where her carriage was waiting, with Miss E inside, beneath the chestnut-tree by the gate. I watched them descend the hill from the cliff-top to the village. Almost at the bottom, just as the carriage was turning through the bend in the road, a limp black-gloved hand appeared out of the window and waved a forlorn farewell. I shall never see that hand again. I go now to pray for her soul, that she may find, in eternity, the peace that her restless and impetuous heart was denied on this earth.

‘Miss E’ had been mentioned before, but I gave no thought to her; for it had quickly become apparent that references to ‘L’ began to decrease in succeeding entries until, in April 1824, they ceased altogether. There could be no doubt: Laura Duport, Lady Tansor, was ‘L’.

Yet solving this little puzzle had revealed an altogether greater mystery, the core of which seemed to be alluded to in this extraordinary passage, which fairly floored me when I first read it. I will not weary you further with how I came, by dint of much labour, to understand the implications of what my mother had written, and the identity of the person referred to as ‘little E’. When I did, finally, fit the last fragment of the truth into place, what did I feel? A hideous sense of desolation. An agony too deep for tears. I sat – for how long? An hour? Two hours? – staring out of the window towards the chestnut-tree by the gate, and beyond towards the restless sea. At last, with darkness falling, I rose and made my way down to the beach, where I stood at the water’s edge, and wept until I could weep no more.

Miss Lamb had never existed, other than as a name assumed by Lady Tansor when she visited us – my mother, and I. Now I knew why the lady in grey had looked upon me with such sadness as I had sat and played at her feet; why she had stroked my cheek so tenderly; why she had given me the box of sovereigns on my twelfth birthday; and why I had been sent to Eton at her behest. She had done these things because she was the woman who had given me life. Lady Tansor was my mother.

‘He is yours now.’ Disbelief quickly changed to angry incomprehension. Riddle me this: the mother I had loved was not my mother; my real mother had abandoned me; and yet it seemed that both had loved me. Whose child, then, was I? How my head ached in trying to disentangle it all!

The bare bones of the plot, at least, were now clear to me: my mother and her friend, Laura Tansor, who was in the early stages of pregnancy, had gone to France together; I had been born there, and had been brought back to England as the son of Simona Glyver, not of Lady Tansor. But the motives and passions that lay behind this simple sequence of events were still hidden from me, in an unknown number of secret places. How could they now be brought into the light?

Towards her who had sat on my bed every night as a child, who had walked with me on the cliff-top to watch the sun setting, and who had been the axis on which my little world had revolved, I felt both bitterness and pity: bitterness for keeping the truth from me; pity for what she must have suffered to maintain her friend’s secret. Her actions had been a kind of betrayal, for which I must censure her; and yet what better mother could I have had?

There was still so much to discover, but, slowly, I came to an acceptance: I was not the son of Captain and Mrs Edward Glyver. My blood was not theirs. It connected me instead to other places and times, and to another name – an ancient and distinguished name. I had nothing of the man I had thought was my father in me, nothing of the woman I had called my mother. The eyes that were reflected in my mirror on rising every day were not her eyes, as I had always liked to think. But whose were they? Whom did I resemble – my real father, my real mother, or my dead brother? Who was I?

The questions went round and round in my head, day and night. I would wake from fitful sleep in a state of extreme agitation, as if the ground had been cut away from under my feet and I was falling through infinite space. I would then get up and wander the silent house, sometimes for hours on end, trying to repudiate this dreadful feeling of abandonment. But I could not. I did not belong here, in this place I had previously called home, where the past no longer seemed to hold any meaning.

Little by little, I began to examine my situation with a clearer and cooler eye. I did not know yet why this thing had been done – that knowledge would only come later, and gradually; but if what I had deduced from my mother’s journals were true, then a simple fact, of extraordinary consequence, would follow: I was the heir, lawfully conceived, to one of the most ancient and powerful families in England.

It seemed absurd. Surely there must be some other explanation? But, after returning again and again to the journals, I could reach no other conclusion. Yet what use was the knowledge that I was convinced I now possessed? Who else would believe that what my mother – I still could not call her by any other name – had written was the honest truth, and not some fantastic fiction? Even if believed, how could it be proved? Unsubstantiated imputations, uncorroborated possibilities – nothing more. Such, surely, would be the immediate verdict if I went to law. But where was the substantiation? Where the corroboration? The questions began to multiply once more, hammering insistently in my brain until I thought I would go quite mad.

I looked again at the synoptic account of the Tansor peerage in Burke’s Dictionary. Four densely packed columns contained the names and pedigrees of people of whom I had never before heard, but who I must now call my ancestors. Maldwin Duport, the 1st Baron Tansor, summoned to Parliament in 1264; Edmund Duport, the 7th Baron, made an Earl under Henry IV, but who died without issue; Humfrey Duport, the 10th Baron, attainted and executed for treason in 1461; Charles Duport, the 20th Baron, who turned Papist and went into exile with James II;^* and then my nearer relatives – William Duport, the 23rd Baron and founder of the great Library at Evenwood; and at last my father, Julius Duport, the 25th Baron, who had succeeded to the title because of the death of his older brother; and my own deceased brother, Henry Hereward. I began to fill a note-book with their names, the dates of their births and deaths, and with every fact concerning their lives that I could glean from Burke, or from other authorities to which I then had access.

How strange it was, how infinitely strange, to consider myself as a member of this ancient line! But would I ever be given a place in some future epitome? Would a curious heraldic scholar, a hundred years hence, look into Burke and read of Edward Charles Duport, born on the 9th of March 1820, in Rennes, Ille-et-Vilaine, France? Only if I could find some source of unequivocal and incontrovertible proof to supplement the indirect and oblique testimony of my mother’s journals. Only then.Concluding the entry in Burke were the following notes on the Tansor peerage:Creation—By writ of summons, 49 HEN. III, 14 Dec., 1264. Arms—Quarterly, 1st and 4th Or three piles enarched throughout issuant from the dexter base gules; 2nd, Per pale indented ermine and ermines on a chevron per pale indented or and argent five roses gules barbed and seeded proper; 3rd, Argent gutty d’huile a lion’s rear gamb erased azure and transfixed through the thigh by a sword in bend sinister proper hilted pommelled and quilloned or. Crest—A demi man crowned royally proper crined and bearded argent vested in a robe gules lined ermine holding in his dexter hand a sceptre and in his sinister an orb gold. Supporters—Two lion-sagittarii each drawing a bow and arrow proper and banded about the temples with a fillet azure. Motto—FORTITUDINE VINCIMUS.

The Tansor arms were illustrated at the head of the entry. Contemplating the unusual device of the lion-sagittarii,^* I knew, with redoubled certainty, that what I had inferred from my mother’s journals was the truth. On the wooden box that had once contained my two hundred sovereigns were displayed the same arms.

Fortitudine Vincimus^† was the Tansor motto. It would now be mine.

From time to time, Tom would call and we would talk desultorily for half and hour or so. But I could see his dismay as he surveyed the sea of paper spreading across the work-table and spilling over onto the floor; and I also saw that he had observed the darting look of wild absorption in my eyes, which all too obviously signalled an eagerness to return to my work – to which I never attached any specific character—as quickly as possible. He had not entirely forgiven me for passing over the opportunity to go to Mesopotamia with Professor S—, and was concerned, I could see, that I was making no attempt to secure any other form of employment. My capital had diminished more quickly than I had anticipated, largely as a result of my years abroad; debts left by my mother, which she had been keeping at bay with her writing, had also been paid out of it, and it was now becoming imperative for me to find a source of regular income.

‘What’s happening to you, Ned?’ Tom asked one March morning, as I was walking him to the door. ‘It pains me to see you like this, shut up here day after day, with no firm prospect in view.’

I could not tell him that I had in fact formed the clearest possible ambition. Instead, I prevaricated by saying that I planned to go to London to find some suitable temporary position until a permanent course of action presented itself.

He looked at me doubtfully. ‘That is not a plan, Ned,’ he said, ‘but you must do what you think best. London, certainly, will offer many more opportunities than Sandchurch, and I would urge you to make your move soon. The longer you stay cooped up here, the harder it will be for you to break away.’

The following week, he called again and insisted that I leave the house and take some air, for in truth I had not stepped outside for several days.

We walked along the undercliff, and then down to the smooth area of wet sand washed by the waves. The sky was a perfect blue – the blue of my Heidelberg memories – and the sun shone in brilliant majesty, throwing down glancing points of light onto the ever-swelling wave-tops, as if God himself were casting a myriad new-born stars across the face of the waters.

We walked some distance in silence.

‘Are you happy, Ned?’ Tom suddenly asked.

We stopped, and I looked out across the dancing waves to where the vault of heaven met the shimmering horizon.

‘No, Tom,’ I replied, ‘I am not happy and, indeed, cannot say where happiness can be found in my life. But I am resolved.’ I turned to him and smiled. ‘This has done me good, Tom, as you knew very well that it would. You are right. I have immured myself here for too long. I have another life to lead.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say so,’ he said, grasping my hand. ‘I shall miss you, God knows. The best pupil I ever had – and the best friend. But it would grieve me more if you were to waste away here, and make no mark upon the world.’

‘Oh, I intend to make a mark on the world, Tom, have no fear. From this moment I am reborn.’

It was true. I had felt a surge of energy as I gazed out at the mighty rolling ocean, alive with sunlight – a new consciousness that my life now had purpose and definition. I had made my decision. I would go to London, and from there I would begin my great enterprise.

My restoration.

^*[‘Labour conquers’. Ed.]

^*[James Bell (1769–1833), A New and Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales (1833–4). William Cobbett (1763–1835), A Geographical Dictionary of England and Wales (1832). Ed.]

^*[John Burke (1787–1848), A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire, first published by Henry Colburn in 1826, and now generally known as Burke’s Peerage. The 1830 edition was the third. Ed.]

^*[Charles Duport (1648–1711) was created a Duke in the Jacobite peerage – a title without legal existence in England. His son, Robert Duport (1679–1741), a stout Protestant, inherited only the Barony. Ed.]

^*[i.e. sagittarius-lions, half-men, half-lions. Ed.]

^†[‘By Endurance We Conquer’. Ed.]

17

Alea iacta est^*

The only person whom I knew in London was my old school-friend and travelling companion, Willoughby Le Grice, to whom I immediately wrote to ask whether he could recommend suitable lodgings. He replied by return to say that a fellow at his Club had suggested I should write to a Signor Prospero Gallini, a former fencing master, who, by all accounts, now kept a good house in Camberwell.

I had taken the decision to abandon my given name of Glyver, except of course with respect to those few, like Le Grice and Tom Grexby, who already knew me. It was not mine by birth but was a kind of alias, imposed on me, without my knowledge or consent, by others. What loyalty did I owe the name of Glyver? None. Captain Glyver was not my father. Why, then, should I bear his name? I was who I was, whatever I chose to call myself; and so, until I could redeem my rightful name and title, I would put on whatever pseudonym suited my present purposes. My whole life would be a disguise, a daily change of dress and character. I would inhabit a costumed world, entering now as one character, now as another, as circumstance demanded. I would be Incognitus. Unknown.

There were, besides, practical considerations. In making enquiries concerning my true self, carrying the name of Glyver might be disadvantageous to my cause. Concerning the plot hatched by Lady Tansor, there were undoubtedly many aspects of which I was as yet unaware; and to use my mother’s married name would immediately reveal my interest and connexion to the protagonists. No, for the time being, it was better to work in the shadows.

I therefore wrote to Signor Gallini as Edward Glapthorn – the name by which I now became generally known in my new life. The following week, after receiving a satisfactory reply, I took coach from Southampton to make arrangements with my new landlord, whom I found to be exactly as Le Grice’s friend had described him: tall, courteous, and quietly spoken, but with a melancholy patrician bearing, like an exiled Roman emperor.

The village of Camberwell – despite the growing proximity of the metropolis – was charming, with open fields and market gardens all around, and pleasant walks through woods and lanes to nearby Dulwich and its picture gallery. Signor Gallini’s house stood in a quiet street close to the Green – not far, as I later discovered, from the birthplace of Mr Browning, the poet.^* I was offered two rooms on the first floor – a good-sized sitting-room with a small bedchamber adjoining – at a most reasonable rent, which I instantly agreed to take.

Just as I was leaving, our business having been concluded satisfactorily with a glass of wine and a cigar, both of excellent quality, the front door opened and in walked the most beautiful girl I thought I had ever seen. Already, I liked to fancy myself as a pretty hard-nosed young dog when it came to the female sex; but I confess that I felt like a callow schoolboy when I saw those lustrous black eyes, and the voluptuous figure that her light-blue morning dress and short lace-collared cape did little to conceal.

‘May I introduce my daughter, Isabella?’ said Signor Gallini. ‘This, my dear, is the gentleman who has been recommended to us. I am glad to say that he has consented to take the rooms.’

His English was perfect, though spoken with the still-detectable accent of his native country. Miss Gallini smiled, held out her hand, and said that she hoped I would like Camberwell, to which I could only reply that I believed I would like it very well indeed. So began my connexion with Isabella Gallini, my beautiful Bella.

The time had now come to leave Sandchurch behind me. I set about packing my mother’s journals and papers into three sturdy trunks, and instructing Mr Gosling, her former lawyer, to sell the house. It was hard to let Beth go, for she had been part of the household for as long as I could remember, and had continued to cook and clean for me since my return from the Continent; but it had been agreed that she would perform the same domestic duties for Tom, which eased my conscience a little. Billick took the news of my departure in his usual taciturn fashion: he pursed his lips, nodded his head slowly, as if in silent recognition of the inevitable, and shook me by the hand, most vigorously. ‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, receiving the small bag of coins that I had held out; whereupon he spat out a piece of tobacco, and walked off down the path to the village, whistling as he went. That was the last I ever saw of him.

I was not embarking on my new life entirely without some plan as to what I should do with myself. Ever since the moment that I had gazed upon the photogenic drawing of the great stone king in Professor S—’s rooms in Oxford, the idea had been growing in me that the production of such images might perhaps furnish a means of making a living, or at least of supplementing my income. I had not mentioned this to Tom, fearing that it would produce another disagreement between us, but I had quietly taken steps to acquaint myself more fully with the possibilities and techniques of this wonderful new medium. I flatter myself that I was amongst its pioneers and, but for the subsequent course of my life, I think I might have made my name in the field, and have been remembered by posterity for it, along with Mr Talbot and Monsieur Daguerre.^*

I had always been fascinated by the camera obscura and its ability to throw fleeting images onto paper, the creations of an instant, which then, just as rapidly, faded away when the camera was removed. Tom – to my utter delight – possessed one, and as a boy I would often harangue him, once our lessons were done on a fine summer evening, to go out into his little garden and let me look into ‘the magic mirror’. Those memories had been instantly revived by the photogenic drawing displayed in the Professor’s rooms, and I now determined to learn for myself how to catch and hold light and shadow in perpetuity.

To this end, a few weeks earlier, I had written to Mr Talbot, and he had kindly agreed to receive me at his house at Lacock,^* where I was inducted into the wonderful art of producing photogenic drawings of the kind I had seen in New College, and into all the mysteries of sciagraphs,^† developers, and exposure. I was even given one of Mr Talbot’s own cameras, dozens of which had lain all about the house and grounds. They were perfect little miracles: simply small wooden boxes – some of them no more than two or three inches square (Mrs Talbot called them ‘mousetraps’) – made to Mr Talbot’s design by a local carpenter, with a brass lens affixed to the front; and yet what wonders they produced! I had returned home to Sandchurch, afire with enthusiasm for my new hobby, and eager to begin taking my own photographs as soon as possible.

Then came the hot July day when I closed behind me the front door of the house on the cliff-top for what I thought would be the last time. I paused for a moment, beneath the chestnut-tree by the gate, to look back at the place that I had formerly called home. The memories could not be restrained. I saw myself playing in the front garden, eagerly climbing the tree above me to look out from my crow’s-nest across the ever-changing waters of the Channel, and trudging up and down the path, in every season and all weathers, to and from Tom’s school. I recalled how I would stand watching my mother through the parlour window, doubled over her work for hour after hour, never looking up. And I remembered the sound of wind off the sea, the cry of sea birds as I woke every morning, the ever-present descant of waves breaking on the shore below the cliff, thundering in rough weather like the sound of distant cannon. But they were Edward Glyver’s memories, not mine. I had merely borrowed them, and now he could have them back. It was time for my new self to begin making memories of its own.

During my first few weeks in Camberwell, I made several trips to town in search of employment. All proved fruitless, and, soon, with my little store of money diminishing fast, I began to fear that I should have to fall back on tutoring again – a most uncongenial prospect. Perhaps if I had possessed a degree, my way might have been made easier; but I did not. Phoebus Daunt had put paid to that.

The summer began to pass, and, determined I would not subside into idleness, I turned again to my mother’s journals. It was then that I made a great discovery.

My eye had happened to fall on an entry dated ‘31.vii.19’: ‘To Mr AT yesterday: L not present, but he kindly put me at my ease & explained what was required.’ ‘L’ was, of course, Laura Tansor; but the identity of ‘Mr AT’ was unknown to me. On an impulse, I searched out a tied bundle of miscellaneous documents, all of which dated from 1819. It did not take long to extract a receipt for a night’s stay, on the 30th of July of that year, at Fendalls Hotel, Palace Yard. Adhering to the back was a card:

‘Mr AT’, I thought, could now be identified, tentatively, as Mr Anson Tredgold, solicitor. This now explained an earlier entry: ‘L has agreed to my request & will speak to her legal man. She understands that I fear discovery & require an instrument that will absolve me of blame, if such a thing can be contrived.’ It seemed clear from this that some form of legal document or agreement had been drawn up, to which both women had been signatories. Of such an agreement I had found no trace amongst my mother’s papers; but, seeing its likely importance to my case, I began there and then to devise a way of getting my hands on a copy of it. My great enterprise had begun.

The next day I wrote to the firm of Tredgolds, in a disguised hand, and using the name Edward Glapthorn. I described myself as secretary and amanuensis to Mr Edward Charles Glyver, son of the late Mrs Simona Glyver, of Sandchurch, Dorset, and requested the pleasure of an interview with Mr Anson Tredgold, on a confidential matter concerning the aforementioned lady. I waited anxiously for a reply, but none came. The tedious weeks dragged by, during which I continued to make a number of enquiries concerning employment, without success. August came and went, and I began to despair of ever receiving a reply to my enquiry to Mr Anson Tredgold. It was not until the first week of September that a short note arrived, informing me that a Mr Christopher Tredgold would be pleased to receive me privately (the word was underlined) on the following Sunday.

The distinguished firm of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr has already been mentioned in this narrative, in connexion with my neighbour Fordyce Jukes, and as the legal advisers of Lord Tansor. Their offices were in Paternoster-row,^* in the shadow of St Paul’s: a little island of the legal world set in a sea of publishers and booksellers, whose activities have made the street proverbial amongst those of a literary inclination. The firm occupied a handsome detached house, on the other side of the street from the Chapter coffee-house; as I was soon to discover, part of the building, unlike many in the City, was still used by the present Senior Partner, Mr Christopher Tredgold, as his private residence. The ground floor formed the clerks’ offices, above which, on the first floor, were the chambers of the Senior Partner and his junior colleagues; above these, occupying the second and third floors, were Mr Tredgold’s private rooms. One peculiarity of the building’s arrangement was that the residential floors could also be reached from the street via two side staircases, each with its own entrance that gave onto two narrow alleys running down either side of the house.

It was a fine morning, bright and dry, though with a distinct feeling of impending autumn in the air, when I first saw the premises of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr, which were soon to become so familiar to me. The street was unusually quiet, but for the dying chimes of a nearby church clock and the rustle of a few newly fallen leaves drifting along the pavement and gathering beside me in a little twirling heap.

A manservant showed me up to the second floor, where Mr Christopher Tredgold received me in his drawing-room, a well-proportioned apartment whose two tall windows, looking down on the street, were swathed and swagged in plush curtains of the most exquisite pale yellow, to which the sunlight streaming in from outside added its own soft lustre.

All, indeed, was shine and softness. The carpet, in a delicate pattern of pink and pale blue, had a deep springy pile, reminding me of the turf against which I had lain in my little nook above the Philosophenweg. The furniture – sparse but of the finest quality, and much against the present ponderous taste – gleamed; light danced off brilliantly polished silver, brass fittings, and shimmering glass. The long sofa and tête-à-tête chair,^* in matching blue-and-gold upholstery, that were set around the elegant Adam fireplace – each item also enclosing an abundance of perfectly plumped cushions of Berlin-work – were deep and inviting. In the space between the two windows, beneath a fine Classical medallion, stood a violincello on an ornate wrought-brass stand, whilst on a little Chippendale table beside it was laid open the score of one of the divine Bach’s works for that peerless instrument.

Mr Christopher Tredgold I judged to be a gentleman of some fifty years or so. He was of middling height, clean shaven, with a full head of feathery grey hair, a fine square jaw, and eyes of the most piercing blue, set widely in his broad, tanned face. He was dressed immaculately in dove-grey trousers and shining pumps, and held in his left hand an eye-glass on a dark-blue silk ribbon attached to his waistcoat, the lens of which, during the course of our interview, he would polish incessantly with a red silk handkerchief kept constantly by him for this purpose. In all the time of our subsequent acquaintance, however, I never once saw him raise the glass to his eye.

Dulcis was the word that impressed itself on my mind when I met Mr Christopher Tredgold for the first time. Pleasant, soft, charming, mellifluous, refined: all these intangible impressions of character seemed to mix with the atmosphere of the room, its elegance and fragrance, to produce a sensation of sweet and dreamy ease.

Mr Tredgold rose from the seat he was occupying by the window, shook my hand, and invited me to make myself comfortable on the tête-à-tête chair, whilst he (somewhat to my relief) took a seat on the sofa. He smiled seraphically, and continued to beam as he spoke.

‘When your letter was passed to me – Mr … Glapthorn …’ – he hesitated for a moment as he glanced down at a little sheaf of notes he was holding —‘I thought it would be more convenient for us both if we conducted this interview in a private capacity.’

‘I am grateful to you, Mr Tredgold,’ I replied, ‘for giving up your time in this way.’

‘Not at all. Not at all. You see, Mr Glapthorn, your letter intrigued me. Yes, I may say that I was intrigued.’

He beamed again.

‘And when I am intrigued,’ he continued, ‘I can be sure that the matter in hand is out of the ordinary. It is a remarkable instinct I have. It has happened time and again. I am intrigued; I investigate the matter in a private capacity, carefully, quietly, and at my leisure; and then – it always happens – I find something extraordinary at the bottom of it all. The ordinary I can leave to others. The extraordinary I like to keep for myself.’

This statement was delivered in the smoothest of tenor tones, and with slow precision of enunciation, which gave it a chant-like quality. Before I could reply, he had consulted his notes again, polished his eye-glass, and had proceeded with what was evidently some sort of prepared introduction to our meeting.

‘In your letter, Mr Glapthorn, I find mention of Mr Edward Glyver and his late mother, Mrs Simona Glyver. May I ask what your relationship is to either of these two persons?’

‘As I stated in my letter, I have been engaged by Mr Edward Glyver as a confidential secretary, to assist him in the ordering and final disposal of his late mother’s papers.’

‘Ah,’ beamed Mr Tredgold, ‘the authoress.’

‘You know her work?’

‘By reputation.’

It did not strike me as odd then, though it did later, that Mr Tredgold was aware of the identity that lay behind the anonymous and pseudonymous works of my mother. He nodded at me to continue.

‘Mr Glyver is presently residing on the Continent and wishes to conclude his mother’s affairs as quickly as possible. As it is impossible for him to take on the whole task himself, he has delegated the business side of things to me.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Tredgold, ‘the business side. Indeed.’ Another polish of the eye-glass. ‘May I ask, Mr Glapthorn, you will excuse me, whether you have some authority on which we may proceed?’

I had come prepared for this, and reached into my coat.

‘A letter from Mr Edward Glyver,’ I said, ‘granting me temporary power of agency over his affairs.’

‘I see,’ he replied, taking the document and looking over it. ‘A little irregular perhaps, but this all looks to be in order, although of course I have not had the pleasure of meeting Mr Glyver, and I do not think we hold any correspondence from him.’

Again I was prepared.

‘A corroborating signature, perhaps?’ I asked.

‘Certainly that might suffice,’ said Mr Tredgold, and I handed him a receipt, signed of course by myself, for the supplying of a handsome pocket translation of Plato by Ficino (Lyons, 1550, in a pretty French binding) by Field & Co., Regent’s Quadrangle. This appeared to satisfy the Senior Partner, who, having polished his glass once more, leaned back and responded with a further question.

‘You spoke of a confidential matter in respect of the late distinguished authoress, Mr Glyver’s mother. May I know what it concerns?’

His cerulean eyes widened a little as he tilted his head to one side and stroked back a delicate feather of hair from his forehead.

‘I have found mention in Mrs Glyver’s papers of an agreement between herself and a certain lady, whom I have inferred must be a client of your firm’s. The late Laura, Lady Tansor?’

Mr Tredgold said nothing.

‘Unfortunately, Mrs Glyver does not seem to have retained a copy of this agreement, and her son is naturally concerned that it might contain some undertaking that he is obliged to discharge on her behalf.’

‘Most commendable,’ said Mr Tredgold. He rose from his chair, walked over to a little French writing-desk, opened a drawer, and took out a piece of paper.

‘This, I think, is the document you seek.’

^*[‘The die is cast’. Ed.]

^*[Robert Browning was born at 6 Southampton Street, Camberwell, on 7 May 1812. Ed.]

^*[Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), French photographic pioneer and inventor of the Daguerreotype process. Ed.]

^*[Lacock Abbey, near Chippenham in Wiltshire. Ed.]

^†[What Sir John Herschel later called ‘negatives’, the term we still use. Ed.]

^*[Paternoster Row was completely destroyed during the Blitz, on 29 December 1940. Ed.]

^*[A double chair, on which two people could sit side by side. Ed.]

18

Hinc illae lacrimae^*

I was amazed. I had expected lawyerly evasion and procrastination from Mr Tredgold, a firm rebuff even; but not such an easy and rapid capitulation to my request.

It was a simple enough arrangement.I Laura Rose Duport of Evenwood in the County of Northamptonshire do hereby solemnly and irrevocably absolve Simona Frances Glyver of Sandchurch in the County of Dorset from all accountability charge blame censure prosecution or crimination in law in relation to any private arrangement concerning my personal affairs that the said Simona Frances Glyver and I Laura Rose Duport may agree to or undertake and do further instruct that the said Simona Frances Glyver be exculpated and remitted from any prosecution or crimination in law in toto and in all respects from any consequences whatsoever and whenever that may arise from the said arrangement and that further and finally the provisions contained herein shall be incorporated at the proper time and place into those of my last will and testament.

The document had been signed by both parties and dated: ‘30th July 1819’.

‘This was drawn up by—?’

‘Mr Anson Tredgold, my late father. An old gentlemen then, I fear,’ replied his son, shaking his head.

I did not ask whether such an agreement would ever have held in law if challenged; for I saw that it did not matter. It had been a gesture merely, a willing acquiescence on Lady Tansor’s part to her friend’s natural desire to possess an illusion of protection, if all failed, from the clearly dangerous confederacy upon which they had been engaged.

‘I believe,’ Mr Tredgold went on, ‘that Mr Edward Glyver can be assured that nothing in this arrangement can now devolve upon him in any way at all. It remains – well, I should say it remains an unexecuted curiosity. As I said before, something extraordinary.’

He beamed.

‘Do you – did your father – have knowledge of the nature of the private arrangement referred to in this document?’

‘I’m glad you have asked me that, Mr Glapthorn,’ he replied, after a discernible pause. ‘I, of course, was not party to the drawing up of the document, having only recently joined the firm. My father was Lord Tansor’s legal adviser, and so it was natural that her Ladyship should have come to him to put her arrangements in hand. But after receiving your letter, I did undertake a little delving. My father was a methodical and prudent man, as we lawyers of course must be; but on this occasion he was, I fear, a little lax in his dealings with Lady Tansor. For I do not find he left any note or other sort of memorandum on the matter. He was, as I say, an elderly gentleman …’

‘And do you know whether Lord Tansor himself was aware that his wife had consulted your father on this matter?’

Mr Tredgold cleaned his eye-glass.

‘As to that, I think I can say with certainty that he did not. I can also say that the agreement you have in your hand was not finally incorporated into her Ladyship’s will, for she came to me some time later, with Lord Tansor’s full knowledge this time, specifically to prescribe new testamentary provisions following the birth of her son, Henry Hereward Duport.’

I had one final matter to raise with the Senior Partner.

‘Mrs Glyver …’

‘Yes?’

‘I believe certain arrangements were put in place, of a practical nature?’

‘That is so: a monthly remittance, which this office disposed through Dimsdale & Co.’

‘And that arrangement ceased … ?’

‘On the death of Lady Tansor, in the year 1824.’

‘I see. Well, then, Mr Tredgold, I need detain you no further. The business appears to have been concluded to the satisfaction of all concerned, and I think I can report to Mr Edward Glyver that he need have no further disquiet regarding this matter.’

I rose to go, but Mr Tredgold suddenly sprang up from his chair, with a speed that surprised me.

‘By no means, Mr Glapthorn,’ he said, taking my arm. ‘I shall not hear of it! You shall stay to luncheon – it is all ready.’

And with this wholly unanticipated expression of civility towards me, I was escorted to an adjoining room, where a substantial cold collation had been laid out. We chatted easily for an hour or more over what was a really excellent repast – prepared and brought in for Mr Tredgold by a protégé of no less a person than M. Brillat-Savarin^* himself. We soon discovered that the Senior Partner had spent some time in Heidelberg as a student, which precipitated some mutually happy memories of the town and its environs.

‘The receipt that you showed me earlier, Mr Glapthorn,’ he said at length. ‘Do you perhaps share Mr Glyver’s bibliographical interests?’

I replied that I had made some study of the subject.

‘Perhaps, then, you would give me your opinion on something?’

Whereupon he went to a glass-fronted case in the far corner of the room and took out a volume to show me – Battista Marino’s Epithalami (Paris, 1616 – the first collected edition, and the only edition printed outside Italy).^†

‘Very fine,’ I said admiringly.

Mr Tredgold’s remarks on the character, provenance, and rarity of the volume were accurate and judicious, and although his knowledge of the field in general was inferior to my own, he nevertheless impressed me with the extent of his expertise. He affected to defer immediately to what he kindly claimed was my obviously superior judgment on such matters, and ventured to suggest that we might arrange another visit, at which he could show me more of his collection at leisure.

So it was that I charmed Mr Christopher Tredgold.

I left by one of the side entrances, escorted down to the street door by the serving man who had let me in a few hours before. Just as we reached the bottom, Mr Tredgold shouted down: ‘Come again, next Sunday.’

And I did; and the next Sunday, and the following. By my fifth visit to Paternoster-row, in early October, I had formed a plan that I hoped would take advantage of my increasingly friendly connexion with the Senior Partner.

‘I fear, Mr Tredgold,’ I said, as I was about to depart for Camberwell, ‘that this may have to be the last of our pleasant Sundays.’ He looked up, and for once the beam had vanished.

‘What? Why do you say so?’

‘My employment with Mr Glyver was, as you know, only temporary. It will be over as soon as he returns from the Continent in the next few days and I can discharge the final portions of my duty to him in person.’

‘But what will you do then?’ asked Mr Tredgold, with every appearance of genuine concern.

I shook my head and said that I had no immediate prospect of further employment.

‘Why, then,’ he beamed, ‘I can give you one.’

It had fallen out even better than I had dared hope. I had envisaged the possibility of finding a way to join the firm in some junior or even menial capacity; but instead, here was Mr Tredgold offering to employ me as his assistant. In addition, he offered to introduce me to Sir Ephraim Gadd, QC, the recipient of many of Tredgolds’ most lucrative briefs, who was at that moment seeking someone to act as tutor in the Classical languages to those applying for admission to the Inner Temple who had not taken a degree.

‘But I have no degree either,’ said I.

Mr Tredgold smiled – seraphically – once more.

‘That, I can assure you, will be no bar. Sir Ephraim is always ready to take the advice of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr.’

With my new position came a good salary of a hundred and fifty pounds per annum,^* and a set of top-floor rooms in Temple-street, in a building owned by the firm, for which only a modest rent was requested. It was agreed that I would begin my employment – the precise nature of which remained almost deliberately vague – on the first day of November, in just over four weeks’ time, when the rooms I had been given were vacated by their present temporary occupant.

I returned to Camberwell elated by my triumph, but saddened at having to leave my comfortable lodgings. Signor Gallini, from whom I had received many kindnesses and attentions in the short time we had been acquainted, was the first new friend I made in London, and it was a real sadness to leave his quiet little house, not to mention the charms of the delectable Miss Bella, and move into the teeming heart of the city. But leave I did, and duly left Camberwell for Temple-street at the end of October. Now settled on this new course, I celebrated Christmas 1848 in the Temple Church, singing my heart out alongside the devout amongst my new neighbours, in a mood of genuine thanksgiving.

The first letter that I received in my new home was from Signor Gallini and Bella (with whom I had determined I should not lose contact), wishing me the compliments of the season and sending their very best hopes that I would prosper in my new career. A few days after Christmas two more letters were delivered, this time to the accommodation address that I had taken in Upper Thames-street, hard by, in order to receive any correspondence that might be directed to Edward Glyver.

One was from Mr Gosling, my mother’s legal man in Weymouth, advising me that the house at Sandchurch had been sold but indicating that, owing to its somewhat parlous condition, we had not achieved the price we had anticipated. The proceeds had been disposed of according to my instructions: the money owed to Mr More had been remitted to him, and this, in addition to other necessary disbursements, had left a balance of £107 4s. and 6d. This was far less than I had expected, but at least I now had employment, and a roof over my head.

The other letter was from Dr Penny, the physician who had attended my mother in her last illness.

Sandchurch, Dorset

4th January 1849MY DEAR EDWARD, —It is with very great sorrow that I have to inform you that poor Tom Grexby passed away last evening. The end was swift and painless, I am glad to say, though quite unexpected.I had seen him only the day before and he seemed quite well. He was taken ill during the afternoon. I was called, but he was unconscious when I arrived and I could do nothing for him. He died, quite peacefully, just after eight o’clock.The funeral is today week the 11th. I am sorry to be the bearer of such mournful news.I remain, yours very sincerely,MATTHEW PENNY

A week later, on a bitter January afternoon, I returned to Sandchurch, for the last time in my life, to see my dear friend and former schoolmaster laid to rest in the little church-yard overlooking the grey waters of the Channel. A keen wind was coming in from the east, and the ground was flint-hard underfoot from several days’ hard frost. I remained alone in the church-yard after everyone else had departed, watching the last vestiges of day succumb to the onset of darkness, until it became impossible to distinguish where the sky ended and the heaving expanse of black water began.

I felt utterly alone, bereft now of Tom’s sympathetic companionship; for he had been the only person in my life who had truly understood my intellectual passions. During my time as his pupil, by generously and selflessly putting his own extensive knowledge at my complete disposal, and by encouraging me in every possible way, he had given me the means to rise far above the common level of attainment. Eschewing the dead hand of an inflexible system, he had showed me how to think, how to analyse and assimilate, how to impose my will on a subject, and make it my own. All these mental strengths I would need for what lay ahead, and all these I owed to Tom Grexby.

I stood by the grave until I was fairly numb with cold, thinking over the days of my boyhood spent with Tom in his dusty house of books. Though I could not comfort myself with the pious certainties of Christianity, for I had already lost whatever allegiance I might have had to that faith, I remained susceptible to its poetical power, and could not help saying aloud the glorious words of John Donne, which had also been spoken at my mother’s funeral:And into that gate they shall enter, and in that house they shall dwell, where there shall be no Cloud nor Sun, no darknesse nor dazling, but one equall light, no noyse nor silence, but one equall musick, no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession, no foes nor friends, but one equall communion and Identity, no ends nor beginnings; but one equall eternity.^*

Desperately cold, and with a heavy heart, I left the church-yard, eager now to seek the warmth and comfort of the King’s Head. Yet, despite my discomfort, I could not help first walking up the cliff path, to take one final look at the old house.

It stood in the freezing gloom, dark and shuttered, the garden untended, the little white fence blown over in the late gales. I do not know what I felt as I regarded the creeping desolation, whether grief for what had been lost, or guilty sorrow for having abandoned my childhood home. Above me, the bare branches of the chestnut-tree, in which I had built my crow’s-nest, creaked and cracked in the bitter wind. I would never again clamber up to my old vantage point, to look out across the ever-changing sea and dream of Scheherazade’s eyes, or of walking with Sindbad through the Valley of Diamonds.^* But to the inevitability of change, all things must submit; and so I turned my back on the past and set my face into the east wind, which quickly dried my tears. I had a great work to accomplish, but I trusted, at the last, to come into that gate, and into that house, where all would be well; where, as Donne the preacher had said, fear and hope would be banished for ever, in one equal possession.

Death took another friend that cold January: Prospero Gallini, who died of a broken neck after falling down the stairs. Bella wrote to tell me the terrible news, and of course I immediately went down to Camberwell to be with her.

‘I do not know yet what I shall do,’ she said, as we walked back from the church after the interment, ‘but I must leave here, that is for sure. There are debts to be paid, and the house must be sold. I shall go to London and find a position as soon as I can.’

I told her that she must not fail to inform me when she was settled, and begged her to regard me as her friend and protector in London. As I was leaving, she gave me a charming little edition of Dante’s Vita Nuova that had belonged to her father.

‘This is for my kind and considerate friend,’ she said, ‘whom I shall always think of with affection.’

‘You promise to write to me?’

‘I do.’

Some weeks later, a letter arrived to tell me that she had found a position as companion to a Mrs Daley in St John’s Wood. I was glad of it, for her father’s sake, and determined that I would thereafter do my best, through regular correspondence, to watch over her. This I did, though it was to be four years until we met again.

The great table at which my mother had spent so many weary hours was now set before the window in my new rooms in Temple-street, Whitefriars. On it, the journals that had revealed my lost self were arranged in order, girded round, as at Sandchurch, by yellowing bundles of paper, dozens of them, each bundle now sorted into chronological order, and carrying a label denoting its contents. Blank note-books, fresh from the stationers, were stacked up in readiness; pencils had been sharpened; ink and nibs laid in. I was ready to embark on my great work, to prove my true identity to the world.

I had made an excellent beginning. The agreement drawn up between my mother and Lady Tansor, which lent its circumstantial weight to my claim, was now in my possession; and, by an unexpected stroke of luck, I had secured employment at Tredgolds, Lord Tansor’s legal advisers. What might come of this situation, I could not foresee. But some advantage, surely, would present itself, if I could gain the complete confidence of Mr Christopher Tredgold.

And an advantage, however small, is everything to the resourceful man.

My first visitor to Temple-street had been Le Grice, who arrived unannounced, late one snowy afternoon, a few days after I had returned from Tom’s funeral. His thundering ascent of the wooden stairs, and the three tremendous raps on the door that followed, were unmistakable.

‘Hail, Great King!’ he bellowed, pulling me towards him and slapping me on the back with the flat of his huge hand. He stamped the snow from his boots and then, removing his hat and taking a step back, surveyed my new kingdom.

‘Snug,’ he nodded approvingly, ‘very snug. But who’s that awful little tick on the ground floor? Poked his horrid nose round the door and asked whether I was looking for Mr Glapthorn. Told him, politely, to mind his own business. And who’s Glapthorn, when he’s at home?’

‘The tick goes by the name of Fordyce Jukes,’ I said. ‘Mr Glapthorn is yours truly.’

Naturally, this information produced a look of surprise in my visitor.

‘Glapthorn?’

‘Yes. Does it bother you that I’ve adopted a new name?’

‘Not in the least, old boy,’ he replied. ‘Got your reasons, I expect. Creditors pressing, perhaps? Irate husband, pistol in hand, searching high and low for E. Glyver?’

I could not help giving a little laugh.

‘Either, or both, will do,’ I said.

‘Well, I won’t press you. If a friend wants to change his name, and that same friend wishes to keep his reasons to himself, then let him change it, I say. Luckily, I can continue to call you “G” in either case. But if assistance is required, ask away. Always ready and eager to oblige.’

I assured him that I needed no assistance, financial or otherwise, requesting only that any correspondence sent to Temple-street, or to my employer’s, should be directed to Mr E. Glapthorn.

‘I say,’ he said suddenly, ‘you’re not working for the Government, in some secret capacity, I suppose?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘nothing like that.’

He seemed disappointed, but was true to his word and did not press me further. Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a folded copy of the Saturday Review.

‘By the way, I came across this at the Club. It’s a few months old now. Did you see it? Page twenty-two.’

I had not seen it, for it was not a periodical that I often read. I looked at the date on the cover: 10th October 1848. On the page in question was an article entitled ‘Memories of Eton. By P. Rainsford Daunt’, from which I have previously quoted.

‘Seems to be a good deal about you in it,’ said Le Grice.

So many years had gone by since Daunt had betrayed me; but my desire to make him pay for it was as strong as ever. I had already begun to assemble information on him, which I kept in a tin box under my bed: reviews and critical appreciations of his work, articles that he had written for the literary press, notes on his father from public sources, and my own descriptive impressions of his first home, Millhead, which I had visited the previous November. The archives were small as yet, but would grow as I searched for some aspect of his history and character that I could use against him.

‘I shall read it later,’ I said, throwing the magazine onto my work-table. ‘I’m hungry and wish to eat – copiously. Where shall we go?’

‘The Ship and Turtle! Where else?’ exclaimed Le Grice, throwing open the door. ‘My treat, old boy. London awaits. Take up your coat and hat, Mr Glapthorn, for I shall be your guide.’

In November 1854, settled before a roaring fire in Le Grice’s rooms in Albany, with a glass of brandy in my hand, I found it hard to believe that only six years had passed since I had left Sandchurch for London. It seemed as if a whole lifetime had gone by – so many memories crowding in, so much rosy hope, and so much bleak despair! Faces in the flames; the smell of a September morning; death and desire: impressions and remembrances floated before my eyes, coalesced, and separated again, a multitude of ghosts in an eternal dance.

‘I’ve never told anyone, you know,’ Le Grice was saying quietly, head thrown back, watching the smoke from his cigar curl upwards towards the ceiling, deep in shadow. ‘Never said a word, about this life you’ve been living. Whenever one of the fellows asks, I always say you’re travelling, or that I haven’t heard from you. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s what you wanted?’

He lifted his head and looked directly at me, but I did not reply.

‘I don’t know where all this is leading, G, but if what you say is true …’

‘It’s all true. Every word.’

‘Then of course I understand. You weren’t Edward Glyver, so you may as well be Edward Glapthorn. I thought you must have the money-lenders on your tail, or some such, though you wouldn’t admit it. But you had to keep things close, I see that, until everything could be made right. But what a story, G! I won’t say I can’t believe it, because I must believe it, if you tell me it’s true. There’s more to come, though, that’s clear, and I’m all ears, old boy. But do you want to go on now, or sleep here and carry on in the morning?’

I glanced at the clock. Ten minutes to two.

‘No sleep tonight,’ I said. ‘And now, let me tell you a little more about Mr Tredgold.’

^*[‘Hence these tears’ (Terence, Andria). Ed.]

^*[Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), whose most celebrated work, Physiologie du goût, was published in 1825. Ed.]

^†[Giambattista Marino (1569–1625), Italian Baroque poet, whose extravagant and sensuous images had an influence on the English poet Richard Crashaw. Ed.]

^*[About £12,500. Ed.]

^*[‘A Sermon Preached at White-hall. Feburary 29. 1627’. In XXVI Sermons (1660). Ed.]

^*[Described in the Second Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, in The Thousand and One Nights. Ed.]

INTERMEZZO

1849–1853I Mr Tredgold’s CabinetII Madame MathildeIII EvenwoodIV The Pursuit of TruthV In the Temple Gardens

I

Mr Tredgold’s Cabinet

Mr Christopher Tredgold had been as good as his word, and had duly advised that shining ornament of the legal profession, Sir Ephraim Gadd, QC, that he could do worse than engage my pedagogic services to dispense linguistic knowledge to candidates requiring admission to the Inner Temple who lacked the necessary University qualifications, over which persons Sir Ephraim exercised authority as a Bencher.^* These duties were not in the least arduous to me, and I fulfilled them easily alongside my daily employment at Tredgolds, of which I shall speak presently.

The marked partiality that Mr Tredgold had shown towards me at our first meeting had again been apparent on the first day of my employment. On my arrival in Paternoster-row, I was immediately taken up to his private office on the first floor by Fordyce Jukes. The latter was one of the longest-serving of Tredgolds’ clerks, and occupied an exalted position behind a high desk by the front door of the establishment, where, as the house’s gatekeeper, he would welcome clients, and conduct them up to one or other of the partners.

His admiration of the Senior Partner knew no bounds; but soon his professions of regard for me, whom he barely knew, became hardly less immoderate. He was continually obliging, ever affable, looking up eagerly from his work to smile, or nod ‘good-day’, as I passed.

I disliked him from the first, with his bull neck and thick flat nose. He wore his hair short, like a workhouse terrier crop, brushing it up at the front into a crown of little black spikes. The straightness of the line where the hair met the flesh of his neck, and around his ears and temples, made the whole arrangement appear like some strange cap or hat that he had placed over a perfectly normal head of hair. I hated too his moth-eaten little dog, his puce, clean-shaven face, and the leering quality of his look. He was always clicking his fingers, shaking his head, or scratching his crown of spikes, whilst in his small green eyes one detected a flickering, unquiet energy, which would never quite show itself plain, but perpetually hid and ducked, like some pursuing assassin melting into doorways and alleys to baffle his victim. All this rendered him repulsive in my eyes.

Before long, so insistent had his attentions become, whenever I appeared at the office of a morning, that I took to avoiding the front door altogether, and instead would gain my room by means of the side stairs; but still I would often encounter him, at the end of a day, hovering in the street, waiting for me. ‘There you are, Mr Glapthorn,’ he would say, in his strange high-pitched voice. ‘I thought we might walk back together. A little company and a friendly chat at the end of the day, so pleasant.’

Jukes’s most unwelcome interest in me had begun on my very first morning in Paternoster-row. As I entered through the front door, he jumped down from his desk and began bowing obsequiously.

‘Honoured to make your acquaintance, Mr Glapthorn,’ he said, shaking my hand furiously as he spoke, ‘honoured. I hope we may see much of each other, in a social as well as a business capacity. Neighbours, you know. New blood always welcome, sir – lubrication for the great Tredgold engine, eh? We must move forward, mustn’t we, Mr Glapthorn? Yes, indeed. So clever of the SP to bring you to us, but then we expect no less of the SP.’

He went on in this vein until we reached the door of Mr Tredgold’s office. He conducted me into the room, giving yet another oily obeisance, and then, with reiterated bobbings of his head, closed the door softly behind him.

The Senior Partner rose from his desk, beaming.

‘Welcome, welcome, Mr Glapthorn!’ he said, shaking me warmly by the hand. ‘Please sit down, sir. Now, is there anything you require? Shall I ring for some tea? It is a little cold this morning, is it not? Would you like to move nearer to the fire?’

He continued in this warmly considerate manner for some minutes, until I convinced him at last that I was not in the least bit cold, and that I did not require any warming beverage to fortify me. I then asked him what duties I would be expected to undertake at the firm.

‘Duties? Yes, of course. There are certainly duties.’ He gave his eye-glass a little polish, and beamed.

‘Might I ask, Mr Tredgold, what those duties might be?’

‘Of course you may. But first, Mr Glapthorn, you ought to know something of my colleagues. We are called Tredgold, Tredgold, & Orr, but there is only one Tredgold now – myself. Mr Donald Orr is the Junior Partner; and then there is Mr Thomas Ingrams. There are six clerks, including Mr Jukes, who is the most senior of their number. It is a varied practice. Criminal work, divorce, bankruptcy and insolvency (the particular interest of Mr Donald Orr), probate, the management of estates and properties, and so on; and of course we represent the interests of a large number of distinguished persons.’

‘Such as Lord Tansor?’

‘Indeed.’

‘And in which particular area of the practice will my duties lie?’ ‘You are a great one for duty, I see, Mr Glapthorn, and it is apparent you are keen to be at it.’

‘At what, Mr Tredgold?’

‘Well, now, let me see. I thought, to begin with, you might wish to cast your eye over some papers relating to a bankruptcy case that we recently conducted. Would that please you?’

‘I am not here to be pleased, Mr Tredgold,’ I replied, ‘I am here to please you, and to earn a living.’

‘But I am pleased,’ he cried, ‘and will be even more so if you will kindly consent to look over these papers.’

‘May I enquire whether you require me to do anything other than read the documents?’

‘Not at this time. Come!’

And with that, he took me by the arm and ushered me down the corridor and into a dark little room, with a large desk in the centre, and a cheerfully crackling fire.

‘Wait here, if you please,’ he said. A few minutes later he returned with a large bundle of papers, and set them down on the desk.

‘Will you be comfortable here?’ ‘Perfectly.’

‘Then I shall leave you to your labours. I shall be out of the office today. Leave when you wish. Good-day, Mr Glapthorn.’

I duly applied myself to the documents that Mr Tredgold had given me. When I had finished reading them, having nothing else to occupy me, I returned to Temple-street. For the remainder of the week, I would come into my little room every morning to find another bundle of papers waiting for me, which I would diligently read through, to no apparent purpose, and then return home. On Friday, as I was about to depart, the door of Mr Tredgold’s office opened.

‘An excellent week’s work, Mr Glapthorn. May I have the pleasure of your company on Sunday, at the usual time?’

Once again, I found myself in Mr Tredgold’s private residence, enjoying a most appetizing collation. Afterwards, as always, we fell into talking about books. As I was being conducted down the side stairs by the man, Harrigan, he handed me a key.

‘Please to use this, sir, at Mr Tredgold’s request, when you next come. No need to knock.’

Astonished at this sign of my standing with the Senior Partner, I looked at Harrigan for a moment, but his face showed no expression. As I did so I noticed, just behind him, a woman of about my own age, regarding me with a similar impassivity. These two persons – whom I had been told were husband and wife, Albert and Rebecca Harrigan by name – were the only other inhabitants of the building on the Sundays when I was entertained by Mr Tredgold. I would catch glimpses of them from time to time, going about their duties silently, and never saying a word to each other.

Another week passed. Every day I walked from Temple-street to Paternoster-row, read carefully through whatever papers Mr Tredgold had left on my desk, and then walked home. As I was leaving my room on the second Friday afternoon, a beaming Mr Tredgold issued another invitation to join him on Sunday in his private residence. This time, I had my key, and let myself in by the side door.

After luncheon was over, and we had settled ourselves on the ottomans in front of the fire, the conversation soon turned towards books. During our bibliographic chats, Mr Tredgold would often get up to pick out some volume from his collection to make a point, or to ask my further opinion on some matter of typography or provenance. On this occasion, he had been speaking of some of the unusual testamentary provisions that the firm had occasionally been asked to prepare, which led me to mention the mock last will and testament drawn up by Aretino^* for Pope Leo X’s pet elephant, Hanno, in which the poet solemnly bequeathed the beast’s private parts to one of His Holiness’s Cardinals.

‘Ah, Aretino,’ said Mr Tredgold, beaming and polishing his eyeglass. ‘The infamous Sixteen Postures.’

Now, having become something of a connoisseur in the history of warm literature during my time in Heidelberg (and possessing, as I did, good editions of Rochester and Cleland,^† as well as rare examples of the genre from earlier periods), I was instantly familiar with the reference, but taken aback somewhat by my host’s unabashed mention of this celebrated masterpiece of the erotic imagination.

‘Mr Glapthorn.’ He put down his red silk handkerchief and looked steadily at me. ‘Would you mind giving me your opinion on this?’

He stood up and walked over to a large walnut-fronted cabinet that I had often noticed, standing between the two doors that gave access to the room. Taking out a key on a delicate gold chain from his waistcoat pocket, Mr Tredgold unlocked this cabinet to reveal six or eight shelves of tightly packed books, as well as a number of slim, dark-green wooden boxes. Taking down one of the volumes, he re-locked the cabinet, and returned to his seat.

To my astonishment, it was the exquisitely rare 1798 Paris (P. Didot) edition of Aretino’s sonnets, with engravings by Coiny after Carrache, something I had never seen before in all my bibliographic searchings.

‘I have presumed, Mr Glapthorn,’ he said, ‘that such a work is interesting to you – as a scholar and collector. I hope I have not offended in any way?’

‘By no means,’ I replied, turning over the volume slowly in my hands to admire the binding. With the content of the illustrations, as well as the accompanying verses, I was naturally familiar: the muscular bodies, fiercely entwined limbs, and tumescent members, the urgent couplings against tasselled cushions beneath great canopied beds. That my employer should also be familiar with them, however, was wholly unexpected.

The production of the volume led to a more general discussion of the field as a whole, and it soon became clear that, in this department of bibliography at least, Mr Tredgold’s knowledge was considerably in advance even of my own. He invited me back over to the cabinet, unlocked the doors again, and we spent a pleasant hour or so admiring together the gems of venereal literature that he had collected over the course of some twenty years.

‘These, too, may perhaps interest you,’ he said, taking out and opening one of the slim green boxes that I had noticed earlier.

It contained a complete collection, laid lovingly on a bed of soft embossed paper, of those prints by Rowlandson in which the artist had depicted various accommodating ladies in the act of revealing their charms to the fervid male gaze. The other boxes held prints and drawings of a similar nature, by some of the finest practitioners.

My amazement was now complete.

‘It appears, sir,’ I said, smiling, ‘that you have hidden depths.’

‘Well, well,’ he replied, beaming back at me. ‘The law, you know, can be a dreary business. A little harmless diversion is certainly required, from time to time. As a corrective.’

The conversation went on pleasantly over tea as we discussed various rarities in the field of voluptuous literature that we were each keen to locate. Mr Tredgold was particularly eager to augment his collection with a copy of The Cabinet of Venus, the partial, anonymous translation put out in 1658 of the celebrated Geneanthropeia of Sinibaldi. I made a mental note of this, believing that I might know where I could lay my hands on a copy, and thinking that its acquisition would ingratiate me even further with my employer.

At about five o’clock, much later than my usual hour for departing, I rose to take my leave. But before I could say anything, Mr Tredgold had jumped to his feet and had taken me by the hand.

‘May I say, Edward – I hope you will not mind if I presume to address you by your first name – that I have been extremely satisfied by your work.’ One of his hands continued to hold mine tightly, whilst the other he placed gently on my shoulder.

‘I am glad to hear it, Mr Tredgold, though I do not know in what way I can possibly have rendered satisfaction.’

‘You have done what I asked of you, have you not?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’

‘And you have done it to the best of your ability, diligently, without shirking?’ ‘I believe so.’

‘So do I. And if I were to ask you a question concerning any of the documents you have read, do you think you would be able to answer it?’

‘Yes – if you would allow me to consult my note-book.’

‘You took notes! Capital! But perhaps you found the task a little irksome? No need to answer. Of course you did. A man of your talents should not be confined. I wish to liberate your talents, Edward. Will you allow me to do that?’

Not knowing how to reply to this curious question, I said nothing, which Mr Tredgold appeared to take as assent.

‘Well then, Edward, your probationary days are over. Come to my office tomorrow, at ten. I have a little problem that I wish to discuss with you.’

So saying, he wished me a pleasant evening, beamed, and retired to his study.

^*[One of the senior members of the Inns of Court. Ed.]

^*[Pietro Aretino (1492–1556), Italian poet. In 1524 he wrote accompanying sonnets to sixteen pornographic drawings by Giulio Romano, pupil of Raphael. Ed.]

^†[John Cleland (1709–89), author of the infamous Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1749), otherwise known as Fanny Hill. Ed.]

II

Madame Mathilde

The next morning, as requested, I presented myself at Mr Tredgold’s private office. When I left, an hour later, it was as the Senior Partner’s confidential assistant, a post which, as he was at pains to emphasize, would involve undertaking a variety of duties ‘of a discreet and private kind’. These duties, to which only Mr Tredgold and I were privy, I undertook for the next five years, with, I think I may say, some success.

It may be imagined that a distinguished, and successful, solicitor such as Mr Tredgold often needed to lay his hand on information essential for a case that was not – shall we say – readily obtainable through the usual channels. On such occasions, when it was best that he remain in ignorance of the sources of such information, as well as the means by which it came to him, Mr Tredgold would summon me, and suggest a turn or two round the Temple Gardens. A problem of particular concern for the firm would be set out – theoretically, of course – and discussed (in the abstract).

‘I wonder,’ he would say, ‘whether anything might be done about this?’

Nothing further would be said, and we would make our leisurely return to Paternoster-row, discoursing on nothing in particular.

No formal instructions were issued, no records of conversations kept. But when something needed doing – of a discreet and private kind – it became my task at Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr to ensure that it was done.

The first ‘little problem’ that Mr Tredgold placed before me, for theoretical consideration, concerned a Mrs Bonner-Childs, and may be taken as typical of the work that I subsequently undertook.

This lady had been a patron of an establishment in Regent-street called the Abode of Beauty, run by a certain Sarah Bunce, alias Madame Mathilde.^* Here, Madame enticed gullible females dedicated to the pursuit of eternal beauty (a not inconsiderable market, one would suppose) into parting with their – or more often their husbands’ – money, by dispensing ingenious preparations with exotic names (to effect the complete and permanent removal of wrinkles, or to preserve a youthful complexion in perpetuity) at twenty guineas a time. The establishment also offered a room sumptuously fitted out as an Arabian Bath. The unfortunate Mrs Bonner-Childs, having been tempted to partake of this last amenity, had come back to her clothes to find that her diamond ring and earrings had vanished. Upon confronting Madame Mathilde, she was informed by the proprietress that if she made a fuss over the loss, then Madame would inform Mrs Bonner-Childs’s husband – Assistant Secretary at the India Board, no less – that his wife had been using the Bath for immoral assignations.

The success of Madame Mathilde’s establishment – like Kitty Daley’s Academy – depended on the fatal spectre of public scandal doing its work on those unfortunates who succumbed to this and to other similar ruses; but in this case, Mrs Bonner-Childs immediately informed her husband of what had happened, and he, trusting completely in his wife’s innocence in the matter, instantly consulted Mr Christopher Tredgold.

My employer and I duly took a turn round the Temple Gardens. Mr Bonner-Childs was ready to prosecute if it came to it, but had expressed the hope that Mr Tredgold might be able to suggest a way by which this might be avoided, and his wife’s jewels returned. Either way, the question of the firm’s fee – at whatever level it might be set – was immaterial.

‘I wonder whether anything might be done about this?’ mused Mr Tredgold aloud, whereupon we returned to Paternoster-row, conversing as usual about nothing in particular.

The next day I set about observing the daily round of entrances and exits at the Abode of Beauty. In due course, I saw what I was looking for.

The late-morning drizzle had slowly thickened into rain. All around, the city thundered and roared. At every level of human existence, from the barest subsistence to luxurious indolence, its inhabitants crossed and re-crossed the clogged and dirty arteries of the great unsleeping beast, each according to his station – trudging through the murk and mud, insulated in curtained carriages, swaying knee to knee in crowded omnibuses, or perched precariously on rumbling high-piled carts – all engrossed by their own private purposes.

Though it was not yet midday, the light seemed already to be failing, and lamps were burning in the windows of houses and shops. It is a dark world, as I have often heard preachers say, and on that day the metaphor was made flesh.

I had been standing in Regent-street for some time, and was somewhat aimlessly glancing into the window of Messrs Johnson & Co.,^* thinking that perhaps I might make a present to myself of a new hat, when I saw the reflected image of a woman in the glass. She was about thirty years of age and, passing just behind me, had stopped before the Abode to look up at the luridly painted sign above the door. She hesitated, and then proceeded on her way; but she had taken only a few steps when she stopped again, and then returned to the door of the establishment.

She had an open honest face, and was wearing a fine pair of emerald earrings. I immediately stepped forward to prevent her entering. She looked momentarily shocked, but I swiftly persuaded her to move away from the door. This was my first lesson in boldness, and I learned it well. I also found, to my surprise, that I possessed a natural persuasiveness in such situations and quickly gained the confidence of the lady, who agreed, after we had retired a little way down the street to discuss the matter, to fall in with my plans.

A few minutes later, she re-entered the establishment and immediately requested a bath, taking off her clothes and jewellery in an adjoining room, as Mrs Bonner-Childs had done. Having observed that Madame Mathilde was the sole person within the premises at that moment, I had entered behind my accomplice and, waiting a few moments for her to enter the bath chamber, had the satisfaction of surprising Madame in the act of helping herself to the lady’s emerald earrings.

We exchanged a few words, with the result that Madame appeared to see the error of her ways. She lived exceptionally well from the Abode of Beauty, and could not risk prosecution, which I assured her would now be a simple matter to accomplish.

‘A mistake, sir, a simple mistake,’ she said plaintively. ‘I was just on the point of puttin’ them away for safety – like the girl did with the other lady’s, only I wasn’t aware at the time that she’d done so …’

And so on until, at last, she produced Mrs Bonner-Childs’s jewellery, with much self-pitying hand-wringing, and fervent promises to send the girl packing who had been so thoughtless as to hide away the items without telling anyone.

Mr Tredgold expressed great satisfaction that the matter had been resolved so quickly and quietly, without recourse to public prosecution, and Mr Bonner-Childs promptly settled a substantial bill from the firm for services rendered, a satisfactory portion of which was remitted to my account at Coutts & Co.

I must also mention, briefly, the later case of Josiah Pluckrose, as being illustrative of the more unpleasant side of the work I undertook for Mr Tredgold, and for other reasons, which will later become clear.

He was a common sort of man, this Pluckrose; a butcher from a long line of butchers, who had managed to amass a good deal of capital by means that Mr Tredgold described, in a whisper, as ‘dubious’. He had given up the art of butchery at the age of twenty-four, had done a little boxing, had worked as a waterman and as a brush-maker, and had then, miraculously as it seemed, emerged from the mire as a pseudo-gentleman, with a house in Weymouth-street, and more than a few pennies to his name.

Tall and thick-set, with reptilian eyes and a livid scar across one cheek, Pluckrose had a wife who had previously been in service at some great house or other, and whom he had treated abominably during the short period they had been married. One day in the autumn of 1849, this poor lady was found dead – beaten around the head in a most terrible way – and Pluckrose was arrested for her murder. He had previously engaged Tredgolds on a number of business matters, and so the firm was naturally retained as the instructing solicitors for his defence. ‘An unpleasant necessity,’ Mr Tredgold confided, ‘which, as he has introduced a number of clients to the firm, I do not think I can avoid. He protests his innocence, of course, but still it is all a little distasteful.’ He then asked me if I could possibly see any way round this particular ‘little problem’.

To be short, I did find a way – and, for the first time since I began such work, it went a little against my conscience. The details need not detain us here; the case came on in January 1850; Pluckrose was duly acquitted of the murder of his wife; and an innocent man later went to the gallows. I am not proud of this, but I discharged my office so well that no one – not even Mr Tredgold – ever suspected the truth. Good riddance to the odious Pluckrose, then.

Or so I thought.

With the business of Madame Mathilde, in February 1849, began a life of which I could have had no conception only six months earlier, so alien was it to my former pursuits and interests. I soon discovered that I had a distinct talent for the work that I was called upon to undertake for Mr Tredgold – indeed, I took to it with a degree of proficiency that surprised even my self-assured nature. I gathered information, establishing a network of connexions amongst both high and low in the capital; I uncovered little indiscretions, secured fugitive evidence, watched, followed, warned, cajoled, sometimes threatened. Extortion, embezzlement, crim.con.,^* even murder – the nature of the case mattered not. I became adept in seeking out its weak points, and then supplying the means by which the foundations of an action against a client could be fatally undermined. My especial talent, I found, was sniffing out simple human frailty – those little seeds of baseness and self-interest which, when brought to the light and well watered, turn into self-destruction. And so the firm would prosper, and Mr Tredgold’s seraphic beam would grow all the broader.

London itself became my workshop, my manufactory, my study, to which I devoted all my talents of application and assimilation. I sought to master it intellectually, as I had mastered every subject to which I had turned my mind in the past; to tame and throw a leash round the neck of what I came to picture as the Great Leviathan, the never-sleeping monster in whose expanding coils I now dwelled.

From the heights to the depths, from brilliant civility and refinement to the sinks of barbarity, from Mayfair and Belgravia to Rosemary-lane and Bluegate-fields, I quickly discerned its lineaments, its many intertwining natures, its myriad distinctions and gradations. I watched the toolers and dippers,^* and all the other divisions of the swell mob, do their work in the crowded affluence of the West-end by day, and the rampsmen^† at their brutal work as the shadows closed in. I observed, too, with particular attention, the taxonomy of vice: the silken courtesans brazenly hanging on the arms of their lords and gentlemen; the common tails and judies, and every other class of gay^‡ female. Each day I added to my store of knowledge; each day, too, I extended my own experience of what this place – unique on God’s earth – could offer a man of passion and imagination.

I have no intention of laying before you my many amorous adventures; such things are tedious at best. But one encounter I must mention. The female in question was of that type known as a dress-lodger.^§ It was not long after the affair of Madame Mathilde, and I had returned to Regent-street to look again at the wares of Messrs Johnson & Co. She was about to cross the street when she caught my eye: well dressed, petite, with a dimpled chin and delicate little ears. It was a dull, damp morning, and I was close enough to see tiny jewels of moisture clinging to her ringlets. She was about to join a small group of pedestrians on a swept passage across the street. On reaching the opposite pavement she stopped, and half turned back, fingering an errant lock of hair nervously. It was then that I saw an elderly woman, crossing the roadway a few yards behind her. This, I knew by now, was her watcher, paid by the girl’s bawd to ensure that she did not abscond with the outfits provided for her. Girls such as she were too poor to deck themselves out in the finery required to hook in custom, like the sharp bobtails of the theatre porticos and the Café Royal.

I began to follow her. She walked with quick steps through the crowds, sure of her way. In Long Acre, I drew level with her. The business was swiftly concluded, her watcher retired to a nearby public-house, whilst the girl and I entered a house on the corner of Endell-street.

Her name was Dorrie, short for Dorothy. She had become what she was, she said afterwards, to support her widowed mother, who could now find no regular employment of her own. We talked for some time, and I found my heart begin to go out to the girl. At my request, she took me, with her watcher still a few paces behind us, to a cramped and damp chamber in a dreary court hard by. Her mother, I guessed, was only some forty years of age herself, but she was bent and frail, with a harsh wheezing cough. When I saw the evident signs of perpetual struggle and weariness on her face, I was immediately put in mind – though the cases were very different – of my own mother’s constant labours, and the toll that they had taken on her.

Almost without thought on my part, an arrangement was made. I never regretted it. For several years, until circumstances intervened, Mrs Grainger came two or three times a week to Temple-street, to sweep my room, take my washing away, and empty my slops.

As she entered of a morning, I would say: ‘Good-morning, Mrs Grainger. How is Dorrie?’

‘She is well, sir, thank you. A good girl still.’ And that is all we would ever say.

Thus I became a kind of benefactor to Dorrie Grainger and her mother. Yet even this unpremeditated act of charity on my part was to become a connective strand in that fatal web of circumstance that was already closing round me.

^*[This lady appears to have been a precursor of the more famous Rachel Leverson, extortionist and thief, who was prosecuted in 1868 and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for exactly the same activities as Madame Mathilde. Ed.]

^*[Hatters to the Queen. Ed.]

^*[i.e. ‘criminal conversation’ – adultery. Ed.]

^*[Types of pickpockets. Ed.]

^†[Violent street robbers. Ed.]

^‡[Used in the contemporary sense of ‘immoral’, not in the modern sense. Ed.]

^§ [‘A prostitute who was provided with expensive-looking clothes by her keeper. Ed.]

GREAT LEVIATHAN

ON WAKING, FEBRUARY, MDCCL^*

O City! Deep and wide!

Womb of all things!This Sun, this Moon, these stars – I touch and feel them.

I burn. I freeze.

These mountains I grind to powder under my hand.

These torrents I consume, these forests I devour.I live in all things, in light and air, and music unheard.

O City of blood and bone and flesh!

Of muscle and sinew, of tooth and eye!Theatre of all vanity, the hell for which I yearn:

Wild and raging beneath my feet. My life.

My death.

^*[As with the passage on the Iron Master (p. 102), these lines have been pasted onto the page at this point. The reason for their inclusion here is not immediately obvious, though they were clearly of significance to the author, and we may perhaps further conjecture that they were written under the influence of opium. Ed.]

III

Evenwood

After taking up residence in Temple-street, and commencing my employment at Tredgolds, my photographic ambitions had languished for a while, though I continued to correspond with Mr Talbot. But, once settled, I constructed a little dark-room within a curtained-off space in my sitting-room. Here also I kept my cameras (recently purchased from Horne and Thornethwaite),^* along with my lamps, gauze, pans and bowls, trays and soft brushes, fixing and developing solutions, beakers, glasses, quires of paper, syringes and dippers, and all the other necessary paraphernalia of the art. I worked hard to familiarize myself with the necessary chemical and technical processes, and on summer evenings would take my camera down to the river, or to picturesque corners of the nearby Inns of Court, to practise my compositional techniques. In this way, I began to build up my experience and knowledge, as well as amassing a good many examples of my own photographic work.

The satisfaction of close and concentrated observation; the need to perceive minute gradations of light and shadow, and to select the correct angle and elevation; the patient scrutiny of backdrop and setting – these things I found gave me intense fulfilment, and transported me to another realm, far away from my often sordid duties at Tredgolds. My principal partiality, artistically speaking – the seed planted by seeing a photogenic drawing that Mr Talbot had made of Lacock Abbey – was to seek to capture the spirit or mood that certain places evoke. London offered such a variety of subjects – ancient palaces, domestic dwellings of every type and age, the river and its bridges, great public buildings – that I soon developed a keen eye for architectural line and form, shadow and sky, texture and profile.

One Sunday, in June 1850, feeling I had attained to a good level of competence, I decided I would show Mr Tredgold some examples of my photographic work.

‘These are really excellent, Edward,’ he said, turning over a number of mounted prints that I had made of Pump-court, and of Sir Ephraim Gadd’s chambers in King’s Bench-walk. ‘You have an exceptional eye. Quite exceptional.’ He suddenly looked up, as if struck by a thought. ‘Do you know, I think I could secure a commission for you. What would you say to that?’

I replied, of course, that I would be very happy for him to do so.

‘Excellent. I am obliged to pay a visit to an important client next week, and, seeing what you have done here, it occurs to me that this gentleman might wish to have some photographic representations of his country property, to provide an indelible record for posterity. The property in question would certainly afford the most ravishing possibilities for your camera.’

‘Then I shall be even more willing to agree to the proposal. Where is the property?’

‘Evenwood, in Northamptonshire. The home of our most important client, Lord Tansor.’

Whether Mr Tredgold saw my surprise, I cannot say. He was beaming at me, in his usual way, but his eyes had a guarded look about them, as if in anticipation of some disagreeable response. He cleared his throat.

‘I thought,’ he went on, ‘that you might also be curious to see the former home of Lady Tansor – I allude, of course, to her friendship with your last employer’s late mother, Mrs Simona Glyver. But if this proposal is against your inclinations …’

I raised my hand.

‘By no means. I can assure you that I have no objections at all to such an expedition.’

‘Good. Then it is settled. I shall write to Lord Tansor immediately.’

How could I possibly have refused to go along with Mr Tredgold’s adventitious proposal, when Evenwood was the one place on earth I wished to see? I was already familiar, from various published accounts, with the history of the great house, the disposition of the buildings, and the topography of the extensive Park. Now I had been given the opportunity to experience, in my waking being, what I had so often fashioned in imagination.

Since commencing my employment at Tredgolds, I had made little progress in my pursuit of some piece of objective evidence that would confirm what I had read in my mother’s journals. I had suggestions and hints, providing strong and, to me, compelling testimony to the truth concerning my birth; but they were not indubitable, and shed no light on the causes of the conspiracy between my mother and Lord Tansor’s first wife, or on how their plan had been accomplished. By now, I had read every word of my mother’s journals several times over, as well as making copious notes on them, and had begun to re-examine and index every scrap of paper she had left behind, from bills and receipts to letters and lists (my mother, I discovered, had been an inveterate list-maker; there were scores of them). I hoped to find some fragment of the truth that I might have overlooked; but it was becoming clear to me that little more could be gleaned from the documents in my possession, and that I would achieve nothing by remaining in my rooms, and brooding on my lost inheritance. If that inheritance was to be recovered, I must begin to widen my view; and what better way to start than by seeing my ancestral home for myself?

A few days later, Mr Tredgold informed me that Lord Tansor was happy for me to accompany him to Evenwood, where I would be given liberty to roam as I pleased. Next morning, both of us feeling relieved to be escaping the heat and dust of London, we took the train northwards to Peterborough.

Once we had boarded our train, Mr Tredgold and I immediately fell into our customary bookish talk, which we kept up all the way to Peterborough, despite several attempts on my part to encourage my employer to speak of Evenwood and its principal residents. Having arrived in Easton, some four miles from Evenwood, Mr Tredgold went on ahead to the great house, leaving me to accompany the trunk containing my travelling equipment in the carrier’s cart. At the gatehouse, just beyond the village of Evenwood, I got out, leaving the cart to trundle off. It was approaching two o’clock when I ascended the long incline that carries the road from the gates, and rested at the top to look down over the river towards the vista spread out before my hungry eyes.