What Darkness Brings

Author’s Note

The theft of the French Crown Jewels from the Garde-Meuble in Paris in September of 1792 was essentially as described here, although the involvement of Danton and Roland, while suggested, has never been proven. Napoleon’s determination to recover the French Crown Jewels, as well as the ruthlessness of the methods he employed, was likewise real.

The identification of the Hope Diamond as the recut French Blue is now generally accepted. An old lead cast of the French Blue with a label saying it belonged to “Mr. Hoppe of London,” recently discovered in a drawer in the French National History Museum in Paris, was donated in 1850 by a descendant of the Archard family. Interestingly enough, Charles Archard was both a close associate of the Hopes and one of the lapidaries tasked by Napoleon to recover the French Crown Jewels. How Hope acquired the diamond is not known, although multiple theories exist. I have chosen the one best suited to my story. It is significant that Napoleon, who surely knew more than we do about the events of September 1792, always believed that the Duke of Brunswick (father of the Princess of Wales, Caroline) had been bribed with the diamond not to attack Paris. There is also considerable evidence to support the belief that Brunswick sent his jewels to Caroline when his duchy was threatened by Napoleon, and that she sold them after his death.

Hope and Co. did indeed run into financial difficulties as a result of the war and was sold to Barings in 1813.

The recut blue diamond reappeared, briefly, in London in September 1812, exactly twenty years after its original theft, when a Huguenot lapidary named Francillon drew up a sales prospectus for a London diamond merchant named Daniel Eliason. Since that gentleman did not meet a violent death (and was as far as I know nothing like the nasty character here portrayed), I have changed his name to Daniel Eisler in making him my murder victim. What happened to the diamond after September 1812 is not known, although there is considerable evidence that it was acquired by the Prince Regent and was in his possession until his death in 1830. At that point it reappeared in the possession of Henry Philip Hope, although he always refused to divulge its origins.

Numerous books have been written about the history of the Hope Diamond; arguably the most useful and current are Patch’s Blue Mystery, Kurin’s Hope Diamond, and Fowler’s Hope: Adventures of a Diamond.

Blair Beresford is of my own creation. However, Thomas Hope’s marriage to Louisa de la Poer Beresford was much as described here. After Hope’s death, she married her cousin William Carr Beresford, the illegitimate son of her uncle the Marquess of Waterford. A general under Wellington, he was eventually made Viscount Beresford. Interestingly, he was the commander responsible for the unauthorized, disastrous attack on the River Plate region in Argentina that played a part in Where Serpents Sleep.

The Walcheren Expedition and the deadly fever that resulted from it are both real.

The grimoire known as The Key of Solomon is real. Probably written in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, it became hugely popular, although it continued to exist largely in handwritten manuscript form until late in the nineteenth century, when it was finally printed. There was a very real upsurge of interest in grimoires, or magic handbooks, in the nineteenth century. Most of those that became popular dated back to the Renaissance, for reasons Abigail McBean explains to Hero.

London’s vibrant molly underground-with its accompanying dangers of extortion and prosecution-was essentially as described here, although more vibrant in the eighteenth century than by the early nineteenth.

The Black Brunswickers were a real volunteer corps raised by Duke Frederick William, Princess Caroline’s brother, to fight in the Napoleonic Wars after the French occupied his duchy.

The life of London’s crossing sweeps was as described here, with these biographical portraits being loosely based on some of those recorded by Henry Mayhew. Mayhew’s work, which appeared midcentury, also serves as the inspiration for the collection of articles Hero is writing. Some of the crossing sweeps did indeed go to the Haymarket after dark, where they played a part in supplying girls to gentlemen in carriages.

The Abbey of St. Saviour in Bermondsey, Southwark, had almost entirely disappeared by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Besides the lay church (which still stands), all other traces vanished somewhere between 1804 and 1812. Since there is some dispute as to when, precisely, the gatehouse and its attached structures were demolished, I have taken the liberty of using them here.