The Meaning of Night

our friendship when he learned what I had done, and what was now in my mind to do; but because there was mortal danger in knowing all, to which I would not expose him for all the world.

Calling for another bottle, I began to tell him, in outline, what I now propose to tell you, my unknown reader, in full and complete form – the extraordinary circumstances of my birth; the character and designs of my enemy; and the futile passion that has made it impossible that I can ever love again.

If it is true, as the ancient sage averred, that confession of our faults is the next thing to innocency,^* then I hope this narrative will weigh something in my favour with those who may read it.

I began with my name. When ‘Veritas’ warned Bella that Edward Glapthorn was not what he seems, he lived up to his pseudonym. To Bella, to my employer, to my neighbours in Temple-street, and to others with whom you will soon become acquainted, I was Edward Glapthorn. But I was born Edward Charles Glyver – the name by which I had been known at Eton, when I first met Willoughby Le Grice, and by which, shortened to ‘G’, he has known me ever since. Yet even this was not my true name, and Captain and Mrs Edward Glyver of Sandchurch, Dorset, were not my parents. It all began, you see, in deceit; and only when the truth is told at last will expiation be made and the poor unquiet soul, from whom all these troubles have flowed, find peace at last.

You have already learned something of the early history of Edward Glapthorn, which, though incomplete, was also a true account of the upbringing of Edward Glyver. I shall return to that history, and its continuance, in due course. But let us first put a little flesh on the bones of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, my illustrious but as yet shadowy enemy, whose name has already graced the pages of this narrative.

He will already be known to many of you, of course, through his literary works. No doubt, in due course, for the delectation of posterity, some enterprising drudge will assemble an anodyne Life and Letters (in three fat, unreadable volumes), which will reveal nothing whatsoever concerning the true character and proclivities of its subject.^† Until then, let me be your guide instead – like Virgil leading Dante through the descending circles of Hell.

By what authority do I presume to take on such a role? My own. I have become the detective of his life, seeking, over many years, to learn everything I could about my enemy. You will find this strange. No doubt it is. The scholar’s temperament, however, which I possess in abundance, is not content with facile generalities, or with unsubstantiated testimony, still less with the distortions of self-promotion. The scholar, like the lawyer, requires corroboration, verification, and firm documentary evidence, of a primary character; he sifts, and weighs, and patiently accumulates; he analyses, compares, and combines; he applies the nicest of discrimination to separate fact from fabrication, and possibility from probability. Using such methods, I have devoted myself to many objects of study in the course of my life, as I shall describe; but to none of these have I given so much of my time and care as to this pre-eminent subject. Luck, too, has played its part; for my enemy has attained celebrity, and this always loosens tongues. ‘Ah yes, I knew him when he was a boy.’ ‘Phoebus Daunt – the poet? Indeed I remember him.’ ‘You should speak to so-and-so. He knows a good deal more about the family than I.’ And so it proceeds, piece by piece, memory by memory, until, at last, a picture begins to emerge, rich and detailed.

It is all there for the picking, if you know how. The principal sources on which I have drawn are as follows: the fragmentary recollections of Daunt’s time at Eton, which appeared in the Saturday Review of the 10th of October 1848; a fuller memoir of his childhood, adolescence, and literary career, punctuated throughout with little droppings of maudlin verse, and published in 1852 as Scenes of Early Life; the personal testimony of Dr T—, the physician who attended Daunt’s mother before and immediately after her son’s birth; extracts from the unpublished journal of Dr A. B. Daunt, his father (which, I regret to say, came into my hands by unorthodox means); and the recollections of friends and neighbours, as well as those of numerous servants and other attendants.

Why I began on this biographical quest will soon be told. But now Phoebus – the radiant one – attends us. Let us not keep him waiting.

^*[‘A true friend’. Ed.]

^†[On the north side of Piccadilly, almost opposite Fortnum & Mason. Formerly Melbourne House, built in 1770, it was converted into sixty-nine elegant bachelor apartments in 1802 by Henry Holland. The author properly refers to it as ‘Albany’ (without the definite article). Ed.]

^*[Now obsolete Eton slang for a boy on the foundation (King’s Scholar or Colleger), from the Latin togati, or ‘wearers of gowns’. Ed.]

^*[At 51 Brook Street, Berkeley Square. Opened in 1812 by James Mivart, it is now better known as Claridge’s. Ed.]

^*[The volume was published in December 1854, post-dated 1855. The Latin motto from Horace reads: ‘Mix with your wise counsels some brief folly. / In due place to forget one’s wisdom is sweet.’ Ed.]

^*[Publilius Syrus (42 BC), Maxims. Ed.]

^†[An attempt was begun by J.R. Wildgoose (1831–89) in 1874 but was abandoned. A fragmentary biographical assessment of Daunt, based on Wildgoose’s researches, appeared in the latter’s Adventures in Literature (1884). Wildgoose was himself a minor poet and author of a short life of Daunt’s contemporary, Mortimer Findlay (1812–78). As far as I am aware, no further attempts have been made to memorialize Daunt’s life and work. Ed.]

PART THE SECOND

Phoebus Rising

1819–1948

I have never yet found Pride in a noble nature: nor humility in an unworthy mind.

Owen Felltham, Resolves (1623), vi, ‘Of Arrogancy’

9

Ora et labora^*

He was born – according to his own account published in Scenes of Early Life – on the last stroke of midnight, as heralded by a venerable long-case clock that stood on the landing outside his mother’s room, on the last day of the year 1819, in the industrial town of Millhead, in Lancashire.

A year or so before this great event, his father had been presented to the living of Millhead by his College, when his Fellowship there was forfeited by marriage. At Cambridge, as a young Fellow of Trinity who had already taken the degree of Doctor of Divinity and, by way of diversion from theological dispute, had produced an admirable edition of Catullus, the Reverend Achilles Daunt had acquired the reputation of a man who had much to do in the world of learning, and meant to do it. Certainly his many friends expected much of him, and but for his sudden – and, to some, inexplicable – decision to marry, his abilities would, by common consent, have carried him with little