The Meaning of Night Part 10

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 Okes3 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.'

He 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.

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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.sistance 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 twenty-third 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 ma.n.u.script holdings, which were a particular interest of his.

Lord Tansor had wanted a superior kind of stock-take; but he was not so much the Philistine that he did not feel satisfied by the true nature of his a.s.set, or 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 it threw 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 pa.s.s? 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 his soul craved? For still no heir had been vouchsafed to his union with the second Lady Tansor. In his Lords.h.i.+p'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 the young man if he 'ran around a little', by which his Lords.h.i.+p 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 in Park-lane, whither he was himself about to repair with Lady Tansor, would be productive of useful amus.e.m.e.nt for the young. 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 tacit nods as the lad held forth on the various possibilities that might lay 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 succession of cheerful parties. 'My Rector's boy, up at the Varsity. [Sotto voce] Very sound chap. Got what it takes. Showing him around a bit. That's the way.'

He 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 Amba.s.sador?' '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 throw back 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 little time before. A gloss, too, about his appearance, for Uncle Julius 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, check trousers, chimney-pot hat, and sumptuous waistcoat , together with incipient Dundreary whiskers, that descended from the Duport coach.

From then on, whenever he returned to Evenwood, the undergraduate would find himself immediately invited up to the great house to regale Lord Tansor with an account of how he had comported himself during the previous term. It was gratifying to his Lords.h.i.+p to hear how well the boy was regarded by his tutors, and what a great mark he was making on the University. A Fellows.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sing month, Lord Tansor devised new ways to raise the young man up in the world, and lost no opportunity to insinuate him into the best circles, and 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 last year at the University, Daunt attained his majority, and his Lords.h.i.+p saw fit to arrange a dinner party in his honour. It was a most dazzling affair. The dinner itself consisted of soups and fish, two entrees, 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, along with footmen and waiters brought in especially to the consternation of the existing domestic staff to dispense service a la Francaise.

The guests, some thirty or so in number, had included, for the princ.i.p.al 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 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 pa.s.s 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 unreadable 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 Lords.h.i.+p 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,4 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 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, 5 and a few others of their ilk 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 Mr 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,6 the distinguished reviewer and leading contributor to Fraser'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,7 a particular friend of his, had been so impressed by the verses 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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. So 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 her plans for ingratiating her step-son with Lord Tansor 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 he was receiving, other than to have fallen under the capacious wing of his Lords.h.i.+p's patronage. With the end of his labours on his catalogue in sight, 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 his patron'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 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 loosening his patron's grip somewhat on his son. He had therefore quietly arranged through a cousin, Archdeacon Cyprian 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.

14:.

Post nubile, Phoebus1 __________________________________________________________________________________.

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 old 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 p.r.o.nouncements of this sort, delivered in Lord Tansor's best baritone manner, Dr Daunt saw how things lay, and was dismayed.

The Rector's son 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 ent.i.tled Marchmont; or, The Lost Heir, undoubtedly describes that return, though transposed from summer to autumn for dramatic effect. I append part of it it here: FRAGMENT FROM 'MARCHMONT'

BY P. RAINSFORD DAUNT.

Beyond 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 which 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 little eminence just inside the gates, from where he would be able to see his favourite prospect of the great house across the intervening s.p.a.ce 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 on to the Park and pa.s.s out into pale sunlight once more. A few yards took him on to a stony path that ran off from the carriage-drive up towards the Temple, built on a rise and surrounded on three sides by a plantation of good-sized trees. He walked with his eyes deliberately fixed on the gravel path, wis.h.i.+ng 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 half way 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 pa.s.sed, a face looked out at him and momentarily held his gaze. The glimpse had been fleeting, but the image held steady in his mind as he watched the carriage crest the rise 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 sixth day 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 thought him uncouth and frightful in his antics, though she knew 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 her indifference 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.

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 of; for she had a serious and haunting beauty as well as a serious mind. Her father, Mr Paul Carteret, like Dr Daunt, saw, and was concerned by, Lord Tansor's indulgence of Phoebus, perceiving what even the Rector could not as yet see that he was rapidly turning into an arrogant young puppy. Mr Carteret had observed only too plainly which way the way 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.

Miss Carteret's father, 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. Mr Carteret disliked and distrusted Lord Tansor's protege. On more than one occasion he had come across him in the Muniments Room, where he had no obvious business, rummaging through the doc.u.ments and deeds that were stored there; and he was sure that he had surrept.i.tiously perused his Lords.h.i.+p's correspondence as it lay on the secretary's desk in the corner of the library.

But like 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 Lords.h.i.+p's approval, without the likelihood of severe consequences to his own interests? For the moment, he had no choice but to watch, and hope.

Of Daunt's reunion with Emily Carteret, when she at last came home from the Continent, little need be said. He had not seen her for two years, though they had corresponded. Her return now, a young woman, just as he stood on the brink of manhood, and exhilarated in his heart by his LordTansor's blossoming indulgence, naturally excited him greatly with its possibilities. But the reality did not quite match up to the quivering antic.i.p.ations of the hapless Gregorius, his fictional alter ego.

She received him affably enough, asked him 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. But he did not detect that pleasing warmth in her, infused with the memory of old times together, of which he had been dreaming for so long. She seemed still the disapproving and thoughtful little girl of their childhood, though now grown quite beautiful in her French clothes and bonnet a la mode, with its delicately shaded pointed ribbons and little bouquet of pale roses, violets, and primroses, from beneath which she looked out at him, steadily and critically, with her serious brown eyes.

During the many subsequent occasions on which they were obliged to meet over the course of the summer, Miss Carteret, to the relief of her father, maintained the same air of calm and courteous detachment towards her former playfellow, little knowing that after every such occasion the poet would immediately retire to the Rectory to lay furious pen to paper in the composition of aching paeans to the mistress of his imagination (many of which were published the following year as an addendum to his second great work, The Maid of Minsk; a Poem, in Twenty-Two Cantos).

As the year 1841 drew to a close, P. Rainsford Daunt, B.A., set his mind to conquering both the world of letters, in addition to the heart of Miss Emily Carteret. 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 masque at Buckingham Palace, at which the Court of Edward III and Queen Philippa was re-created in astonis.h.i.+ng 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 Lords.h.i.+p 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 was eventually to lead to Cain-court, Strand.

15:.

Apocalypsis1 _______________________________________________________________________.

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 Hotel des Princes2 a little expensive, but not more than I thought I could afford. Having 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 antic.i.p.ation of their being very soon replenished, and abandoned myself to the infinitely various pleasures 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 three highly entertaining weeks, I began to make my preparations for returning England.

Then, on the morning before my departure, I ran across Le Grice in Galignani's Reading Room,3 which had been my daily place of resort during my stay. We spent a delightful evening recounting the separate courses our lives had taken over the four years since we had last seen each other. Of course he had news of several old schoofellows, 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 pa.s.s 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 persuading 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 Ma.r.s.eilles, from whence we proceeded along the Ligurian coast to Pisa, before finally setting ourselves up, in some splendour, in a n.o.ble Florentine palazzo, close to the Duomo. Here we remained, 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 circ.u.mstances allowed. Le Grice departed for Trieste to take s.h.i.+p 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,4 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 the position of tutor to their two boys had become vacant, owing to the unsuitability of the previous inc.u.mbent, 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 indolence, neglected my own studies grievously. I thought often of my former life in England, and how I must one day return; and then this would always call up the shade of Phoebus Daunt, and the unfinished business that lay between us. (Even in Florence I'd 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'd said, 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. At this period, my lapses were modest, 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 pa.s.sions; and when he asked if 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.5 I was bewitched by this extraordinary city of white and gold, its great public buildings and palaces, its wide prospects, its ca.n.a.ls and churches. I found a set of rooms close to Nevsky Prospekt, began to learn the Russian language, and even embraced the fearsome winter with 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 Ca.n.a.l, or watch the ice floating downstream on the mighty Neva. But then my companion, Mr Furnivall, was obliged to return to London, and I was left alone again. Before departing, he 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 like 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, arriving at last in Portsmouth at the beginning of April.

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 pa.s.sed 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, an open book 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ning in the fire-glow, the great ears with grey tufts growing out of them, his lilting Norfolk accent, brought a sense of childhood rus.h.i.+ng 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.

'What will you do, Ed?' 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 my mother borrowed a hundred pounds from him before she died 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 pa.s.sion 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 enquiries concerning the possibility of my joining an expedition just then a.s.sembling to excavate the monuments at Nimrud.6 'It would be an experience, Ed, and a little money in your hands, and you could start to make your name for yourself in a growing field.'

I said 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 he and I go up there at the Professor's earliest convenience.

On we talked, hour after hour, about what I'd 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 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 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 sea in my ears.

A week or so later, Tom called to say that he had received a reply from Professor S, 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 I had read about in Rawlinson's account of his travels in Susiana and Kurdistan,7 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 att.i.tude, 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,8 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 November 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 pa.s.sed 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 fingernails in the heat and dust of the Mesopotamian desert was driven out.

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'd settled down with Buckingham's Travels in a.s.syria,9 lying back in the parlour window-seat that looked out to sea, in a vain attempt to a.s.suage my conscience at deceiving Tom; but by the time Beth came in to place lunch on my mother's old work-table I had grown weary of Buckingham, and turned instead to my much-thumbed 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 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 ten 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 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 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 t.i.tles gleaming in the firelight, a.s.sembled in strict order of publication, from Edith to Petrus; or, The n.o.ble 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 later stood 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 ma.s.s 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, and then to bind them up with string or ribbon or thin strips of taffeta and 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 Pharsalus10 I had once seen, with ma.s.sed and opposing squares and echelons. Nestling in the midst, surrounded on three sides by the encroaching walls of paper, was the s.p.a.ce, no wider than a piece of foolscap, in which she had worked.

There were, too, a number of small, perfectly square notebooks with hard, s.h.i.+ny 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 miniscule hand for the purpose. Why she had chosen willingly to put herself to so much trouble the notebooks were made especially for her by a stationer in Weymouth I never knew. A dozen or more of these little volumes now stood, line astern, on one side of the working s.p.a.ce, 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 little 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 antic.i.p.ation I felt as I walked over to the table began to arouse me from the drowsiness that had begun to come over me as I'd sat by the dying fire reading Lord Rochester's eloquent bawdy.

I took one of the little volumes 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. The first two pale yellow leaves contained little of particular interest, consisting mainly of brief and inconsequential resumes of daily activities. I was on the point of closing the volume and picking up another when, flicking forward, my eye lighted on the following pa.s.sage: 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 G.o.d'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. EG not in evidence and so made no mention of my lateness.

The pa.s.sage bore a date: '25. vi. 19'.