Michael c.o.x.
The Meaning of night a confession.
Editor"s Preface.
The following has been transcribed, more or less verbatim, from the unique holograph ma.n.u.script now held in the Cambridge University Library (Add. MSS 6492/D/3). It deals, apparently, with persons and events mainly from the 1840s and 1850s, though the narrative starts in media res in October 1854 and then moves, first retrospectively and then forwards, from that date. The ma.n.u.script came to the CUL as part of an anonymous bequest, with other papers and books relating to the Duport family of Evenwood in Northamptonshire, in 1948.
The ma.n.u.script is written, for the most part, in a clear and confident hand on large-quarto lined sheets, the whole being bound in dark-red morocco (by R. Riviere, Great Queen Street) with the Duport arms blocked in gold on the front. Despite a few pa.s.sages where the author"s hand deteriorates, apparently under psychological duress, or perhaps as a result of his opium habit, there are relatively few deletions, additions, or other amendments. In addition to the author"s narrative there are a number of interpolated doc.u.ments and extracts by other hands.
It is certainly a strange concoction, purporting to be a kind of confession, often shocking in its frank, conscienceless brutality and explicit s.e.xuality, though it also has a strongly novelistic flavour indeed it appears in the handlist that accompanies the Duport papers in the CUL with the annotation "(Fiction?)". Many of the presented facts names, places, events (including the unprovoked murder of Lucas Trendle) that I have been able to check are verifiable; others appear dubious at best or have been deliberately falsified, distorted, or simply invented. Real people move briefly in and out of the narrative, others remain unidentified or unidentifiable or are perhaps pseudonymous. As the author himself says, "The boundaries of this world are forever shifting from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death." And, he might have added, from fact to fiction.
As to the author, despite his desire to confess all to posterity, his own ident.i.ty remains a tantalizing mystery. His name as given here, Edward Charles Glyver, does not appear in the Eton Lists of the period, and I have been unable to trace it or any of his pseudonyms in any other source, including the London Post-office Directories for the relevant years. Perhaps, after reading these confessions, this should not surprise us; yet it is strange that someone who wished to lay his soul bare to in this way chose not to reveal his real name. I simply do not know how to account for this, but note the anomaly in the hope that further research, perhaps by other scholars, may unravel the mystery His adversary Phoebus Daunt, on the other hand, is real enough. The main events of his life may be traced in various contemporary sources. He may be found, for instance, in both the Eton Lists and in Venn"s Alumni Cantabrigiensis, and is mentioned in severeal literary memoirs of the period though on his supposed criminal career the historical record is silent. On the other hand, his now (deservedly) forgotten literary works, consisting princ.i.p.ally of turgid historical and mythological epics and a few slight volumes of poems and poetic translations, once enjoyed a fleeting popularity. They may still be sought out by the curious in specialist libraries and booksellers" catalogues (as can his father"s edition of Catullus, mentioned in the text), and perhaps may yet furnish some industrious Ph.D. student with a dissertation subject.
I have made a number of silent amendments in matters of orthography, punctuation, and so on; and because the MS lacks a t.i.tle, I have used a phrase from one of the prefatory quotations, the source of which is a poem, appropriately enough, from the pen of P. Rainsford Daunt himself. I have also supplied t.i.tles for each of the five parts and for the five sections of the so-called Intermezzo.
The sometimes enigmatic Latin t.i.tles to the forty-six sections or chapters have been retained (their idiosyncrasy seemed typical of the author), but I have provided translations in most cases. On the first leaf of the ma.n.u.script are a number of quotations from Owen Felltham"s Resolves, some of which I have used as epigraphs to each of the five parts. Throughout the text, my own editorial interpolations and footnotes are given within square brackets.
J. J. Antrobus.
Acknowledgements.
The words of his mouth were smoother than b.u.t.ter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.
[Psalm 55: 21]
I find, to him that the tale is told, belief only makes the difference betwixt a truth, and a lie.
[Owen Felltham, Resolves or, Excogitations. A Second Centurie (1628), iv ("Of Lies and Untruths")]
For Death is the meaning of night.
The eternal shadow.
Into which all lives must fall, All hopes expire.
[P. Rainsford Daunt, "From the Persian", Rosa Mundi, and Other Poems (1854)].
TO MY UNKNOWN READER.
Ask not Pilate"s question. For I have sought, not truth, but meaning.
Part the First.
Death of a Stranger.
October 1854.
What a skein of ruffled silk is the uncomposed man.
[Owen Felltham, Resolves (1623), ii, "Of Resolution"]
1:.
Exordium1.
_______________________________________________________________________.
After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn"s for an oyster supper.
It had been surprisingly laughably easy. I had followed him for some distance, after first observing him in Threadneedle-street. I cannot say why I decided it should be him, and not one of the others on whom my searching eye had alighted that evening. I had been walking for an hour or more in the vicinity with one purpose: to find someone to kill. Then I saw him, outside the entrance to the Bank, amongst a huddle of pedestrians waiting for the crossing-sweeper to do his work. Somehow he seemed to stand out from the crowd of identically dressed clerks and City men streaming forth from the premises. He stood regarding the milling scene around him, as if turning something over in his mind. I thought for a moment that he was about to retrace his steps and take an omnibus; instead, he pulled on his gloves, moved away from the crossing point, and set off briskly. A few seconds later, I began to follow him.
1 [An introduction to a treatise or discourse. Ed.]
2 [Nathaniel Wanley (163480). The book was first published in 1678. The subt.i.tle reads: "A general history of man: In six books. Wherein by many thousands of examples is shewed what man hath been from the first ages of the world to these times ... Collected from the writings of the most approved historians, philosophers, physicians, philologists and others". Ed.]
3 [Henry Colburn (d. 1852), the publisher and founder of the Literary Gazette. Ed.]
4 [A well-known fish and sea-food eating-place in the Haymarket. Ed.]
5 [Waterloo Bridge was known as the "Bridge of Sighs" because of the number of suicides who had leapt to their deaths from it. Ed.]
6 [From John Donne, "Elegie XIX: Going to Bed". Ed.]
7 [Boodle"s, a gentleman"s club of a semi-political character at 28 St James"s Street; White"s (originally White"s Chocolate House, established towards the end of the seventeenth century), was another celebrated club-house at 37 and 38 St James"s Street. Ed.]
8 [An adjective carrying the meaning of licentious or lewd, deriving from Cyprus, an island famed for the worship of Aphrodite. Ed.]
1 ["By name". Ed.]
2 [Opened in 1818, and formerly called the Coburg, it was situated in Waterloo Bridge Road, Lambeth. Ed.]
1 ["Forewarned, forearmed". Ed.]
2 [The society, founded by Sir Ashton Lever in 1781, was at the forefront of the revival of archery at the end of the eighteenth century. It obtained a lease from the Crown to establish its ground in the Inner Circle of Regent"s Park in 1833. Ed.]
1 ["From the cradle". Ed.]
2 [In Bond Street. Ed.]
3 [A quote from John Gay"s Dione, IV. vi. Ed.]
4 [A former gold English coin worth 20 shillings (i.e. one pound sterling). It is notoriously difficult to estimate comparative values; but using the indexes and formulas provided by J. O"Donoghue, L. Goulding, and G. Allen in Consumer Price Inflation Since 1750 (Office for National Statistics, 2004), in 1832 the value of the two hundred coins was roughly equivalent to 14,000 in today"s money. The coins would have carried the head of William IV (d. 1837). Ed.]
5 [Saducismus Triumphatus; or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions, by Joseph Glanvill (163680), an attempt to convince sceptics that such things were real. It was in fact an enlarged and posthumous edition (with additions by Henry More) of Glanvill"s A Philosophical Endeavour Towards a Defence of the Being of Witches and Apparitions, published in 1666, most of the copies of which were destroyed in the Fire of London. Glanvill"s position was that disbelief in demons and witches would inevitably lead to disbelief in G.o.d and the immortality of the soul. It is now regarded as one of the most important and influential of all English works on the subject. The first edition of Saducismus Triumphatus was published for S. Lownds in 1681. Ed.]
6 ["There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in our philosophy." Hamlet, 1: 5. Ed.]
1 ["Death is certain". Ed.]
2 [The Wandering Jew of legend. Ed.]
3 [The monumental gates, in the Egyptian style, that lead into the cemetery. Ed.]
4 [Isaac Watts (16741748), the Dissenting divine, poet, and hymn-writer. The cemetery, laid out on the former Fleetwood-Abney estate, had been opened in May 1840. Ed.]
1 ["He calls". The significance of the t.i.tle of this section is not altogether clear. Ed.]
2 [The line is from In Memorian (1850), cxx: "Let him, the wiser man who springs/Hereafter, up from childhood shape/His action like the greater ape,/But I was born to other things". Ed.]
3 [Thomas Netter (c.13751430), born in Saffron Walden in Ess.e.x (thus known in religion as Thomas Waldensis), was a Carmelite theologian and controversialist and confessor to Henry V. He played a prominent part in the prosecution of Wycliffites and Lollards. The Sacramentalia is the third volume of the author"s Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei ecclesiae catholicae, a complete apologia of Catholic dogma and ritual intended to counter the attacks of Wycliff and others. On the face of it, it is a strange work for the narrator to covet. Ed.]
1 ["In doubt". Ed.]
2 ["The Charge of the Light Brigade" was published in The Examiner on 9 December 1854. The poem was reprinted in Maud, and Other Poems (1855). Ed.]
1 ["A true friend". Ed.]
2 [On the north side of Piccadilly, 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.]
3 [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.]
4 [At 51 Brook Street, Berkeley Square. Opened in 1812 by James Mivart, it is now better known as Claridge"s. Ed.]
5 [Publius Syrus (42 BC), Maxims. Ed.]
1 ["Pray and Labour" (St Benedict). Ed.]
1 [The idealized pastoral world evoked by Virgil"s Eclogues. Ed.]
2 [Antonio Verrio (c.16391707), Italian decorative painter who settled in England in the early 1670s. He enjoyed much royal patronage, being employed at Windsor Castle, Whitehall Palace, and Hampton Court. He also worked at a number of great houses, including, besides Evenwood, Chatsworth and Burghley. Ed.]
1 [These paragraphs, written in darker ink than the rest, have been pasted in to the text at this point. Ed.]
1 ["Let it flourish", alluding to the school motto "Floreat Etona". Ed.]
2 [A boy who was not a King"s Scholar (KS for short) or Colleger (seventy in number), who boarded in Dames" houses in the town, and whose family therefore paid for his own upkeep. Ed.]
3 [An allusion to the Reform Bill of that year, intermingled with personal overtones. Ed.]
4 [Several printed pages from the Sat.u.r.day Review are interpolated here. Ed.]
5 [i.e. of the same year"s intake of Scholars. Ed.]
6 [Marcus Terentius Varro, poet, satirist, antiquarian, jurist, geographer, scientist, and philosopher, called by Quintilian "the most learned of Romans". Ed.]
7 ["Hoc volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas": "This is my will and my command: let my will stand as a reason". Juvenal, Satires, vi, 223. Ed.]
8 [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 gra.s.s 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 score. It is a highly physical game as each player attempts to make headway through a seemingly impenetrable ma.s.s of opponents. Ed.]
9 [The Duke of Newcastle Scholarship, Eton"s premier academic award, which would have financed Glyver"s time at King"s, Cambridge, the school"s sister foundation. Ed.]
1 ["Dust and shadow". Ed.]
2 [Edward Craven Hawtrey (17891862), 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 Roxburghe Club. Ed.]
3 [The Roxburghe Club. Ed.]
4 [The Christopher Inn (now Hotel), in Eton High Street. Ed.]
5 [Meaning one huge event piled on another, alluding to the giants, the Aloadae, in Greek mythology who attempted to reach the abode of the G.o.ds by placing Mount Pelion upon Mount Ossa, two peaks in Thessaly (Odyssey, XI, 315). Ed.]
6 [The famous "Philosopher"s Path" that leads up to the northern bank of the Neckar. Ed.]
1 [As in the last chapter, these lines have been pasted on to the page at this point. Ed.]
1 ["Everything changes". Ed.]
2 [Proverbs 24: 5. Ed.]
3 [Dr Richard Okes (17971888), Provost of King"s. Ed.]
4 [Robert Southey was Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death in 1843. Ed.]
5 [The poets Richard Hengist Horne (180384), Robert Montgomery (180755), Aubrey Thomas de Vere (18141902), John Abraham Heraud (17991887). Ed.]
6 [Henry Samborne Drago (181072), poet and critic. Ed.]
7 [The publisher Edward Moxon (d. 1858), whose authors at this time included Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Robert Browning, and Tennyson. Ed.]
1 After clouds, the sun". Phoebus was the sun G.o.d. Ed.]
1 ["Revelation", Ed.]
2 [In the Rue de Richelieu. Ed.]