The Meaning of Night

^*[William Howard Russell (1820–1907), The Times’s correspondent in the Crimea. His reports of the conditions suffered by the British Army, and especially by the wounded in the hospital at Scutari, during the winter of 1854–5, scandalized the nation. Ed.]

^*[From the small amount of internal evidence, it appears that the narrator may have written this letter from the volcanic island of Lanzarote. Ed.]

^*[A passage from Donne’s Sermon XX, on Psalm 38: 3, in Fifty Sermons (1649). Ed.]

Appendix

P. Rainsford Daunt (1819–54) List of Published Works

Given in order of publication. Place of publication is London in all cases.

Ithaca: A Lyrical Drama (Edward Moxon, 1841)The Maid of Minsk: A Poem in Twenty-Two Cantos (Edward Moxon, 1842)The Tartar-King: A Story in XII Cantos (Edward Moxon, 1843)Agrippa; with Other Poems (David Bogue, 1845)The Cave of Merlin: A Poem (Edward Moxon, 1846)The Pharaoh’s Child: A Romance of Ancient Aegypt (Edward Moxon, 1848)‘Memories of Eton’, Saturday Review (10 October 1848)Montezuma: A Drama (Edward Moxon, 1849) The Conquest of Peru: A Dramatic Romance (Edward Moxon, 1850)Scenes of Early Life (Chapman & Hall, 1852)Penelope: A Tragedy, in Verse (Bell & Daldy, 1853)American Sonnets (Longman, Brown, Green & Longman, 1853) Rosa Mundi; and Other Poems (Edward Moxon, 1854)The Heir: A Romance of the Modern (Edward Moxon, 1854)Epimetheus; with other posthumous poems (2 vols., Edward Moxon, 1854 for 1855)The Art of the Epic (John Murray, 1856)

Acknowledgements

The literary and factual sources on which I have drawn are too numerous, too scattered over the years, and, in many cases, too obvious, to list in full. In particular, accounts of mid-Victorian London abound, and I have freely ransacked them. Thirty years ago, when I first began contemplating this novel, such works needed to be consulted in a major copyright library. Now many of them are freely available on the Web – I direct interested readers, for instance, to the excellent Victorian Dictionary site created and maintained by Lee Jackson (www.victorianlondon.org). Indispensable sources of background detail and ambience have of course included Henry Mayhew, whose London Labour and the London Poor of 1851 no one writing or fictionalizing about this period can afford to neglect, but also the less well-known non-fiction works of George Augustus Sala.

Three real places have contributed to the making of Evenwood, Glyver’s cursed obsession: Drayton House, the private home of the Stopford-Sackville family, and Deene Park, the former home of James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan (of Balaclava fame) – both in my own home county of Northamptonshire; and Burghley House, Stamford. The library of – I mean the books collected by – Lord Tansor’s grandfather has been based unashamedly on that of the 2nd Earl Spencer (1758–1834) at Althorp, another of Northamptonshire’s great houses. Residents of East Northamptonshire will also recognize the names of several local places in those of some of the characters – Tansor (a charming village outside Oundle) and Glapthorn (ditto), Glyver’s principal pseudonym, amongst them. Needless to say, the topography of Evenwood and its environs is pure invention, though Lord Tansor’s seat may be envisaged as lying in the north-east corner of Northamptonshire, in the area known as Rockingham Forest.

And so to the most important sources of advice, support, and inspiration: people.

At A. P. Watt: Natasha Fairweather, who has been, and who continues to be, everything an agent should be; Derek Johns; Linda Shaughnessy; Teresa Nicholls; Madeleine Buston; Philippa Donovan; and Rob Kraitt.

At John Murray: my editor, Anya Serota, who has lived in Glyver’s world as intensely as I have, and who has steered the book through to publication with consummate professionalism; Roland Philipps; James Spackman; Nikki Barrow; Sara Marafini; Amanda Jones; Caro Westmore; Ed Faulkner; Maisie Sather; and all the other people at John Murray and in the wider Hachette group, both in the UK and overseas, who have contributed so much.

Both my North American editors – Jill Bialosky at W. W. Norton in New York, and Ellen Seligman at McClelland & Stewart in Toronto – have been wonderfully supportive throughout the final stages of writing and publication. Grateful thanks also go to Louise Brockett, Bill Rusin, Erin Sinesky, and Evan Carver at Norton; Doug Pepper and Ruta Liormonas at McClelland & Stewart; and to everyone in both companies – again too numerous to name individually – who has been involved in publishing The Meaning of Night. I would also like to thank my foreign-language publishers for their enthusiastic commitment to making Glyver’s story available to readers in Europe, Japan, and South America, as well as acknowledging the not inconsiderable labours of the individual translators.

Amongst those who so generously responded to my requests for information, I must acknowledge first of all the advice supplied by Clive Cheesman, Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, at the College of Arms, on various matters relating to the (fictitious) Tansor Barony, and to the legal intricacies of Baronies by Writ. I cannot thank him enough for the care and courtesy with which he responded to all my enquiries. Any remaining legal or genealogical howlers that may have escaped scrutiny are, of course, most definitely my responsibility, not his.

Michael Meredith, Librarian of Eton College, and Penny Hatfield, the Eton Archivist, supplied help on several details concerning Glyver’s and Daunt’s time at the school, in particular the Ralph Roister Doister incident, although they should in no way be held responsible for the fictional results.

Gordon Biddle helped to establish how Glyver travelled by train from Stamford to London via Cambridge; whilst for advice on the technical aspects of Glyver’s passion for photography I am grateful to Dr Robin Lenman. Further advice on early photography was kindly provided by Peter Marshall.

I tender particular and admiring thanks to Celia Levett, for her miraculously meticulous copy-editing, and to Nick de Somogyi, for his equally rigorous proofreading. Both have saved me from much embarrassment.

I am indebted to David Young, for his enthusiastic and confidence-boosting verdict on a draft of Part 1, and to another old and valued friend, Owen Dudley Edwards, who gallantly undertook to read and comment on a proof copy over the course of a weekend.

To [Achilles] James Daunt, proprietor of Daunt’s Bookshop in London, may I also record my appreciation for not objecting to the fact that I unknowingly appropriated his name for the Rector of Evenwood.

I would like to express here, without elaboration, my gratitude, and that of my family, to a group of people who have – literally – helped give me the chance to finish what has been in my mind for so long: Professor Christer Lindquist, together with Beth McLaughlin, and all the other members of the Gamma Knife team at the Cromwell Hospital, London; Mr Christopher Adams; Dr Adrian Jones; Dr Diana Brown; and Professor John Wass.

Finally, like all authors who depend on those close to them for daily support and understanding, what is