The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  The Meaning of Night

  Michael Cox

  INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR

  The Meaning of Night

  “Extraordinary…. Cox has crafted a fictional epic that’s reminiscent of Charles Dickens…. Unfailingly suspenseful.”

  – USA Today

  “Fascinating.”

  —Globe and Mail

  “An unadulterated pleasure…. Thrilling…. An entertaining love letter to the bizarre and dangerous hypocrisies of Victorian England.”

  —The Independent

  “Like the great Victorian novels, this one is brimming with assumed identities, lost birthrights, revenge, murder, treachery and subterfuge, ensuring suspense to the end.”

  —Winnipeg Free Press

  “A page-turning gothic thriller.”

  —Harper’s Bazaar

  “An enthralling literary page turner…. From start to finish, it’s a thrilling journey.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “A rewarding, sinister yarn.”

  —The Observer

  “An enthralling journey into the depths of Victorian London and the psyche of a man obsessed…. The Meaning of Night will have you hooked from [the] stunning opening line to the thrilling final revelation.”

  —InStyle

  “Resonant with echoes of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens…. Its exemplary blend of intrigue, history and romance mark a stand-out literary debut.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A bibliophilic, cozy, murderous confection.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  Also by Michael Cox

  FICTION

  The Glass of Time

  BIOGRAPHY

  M.R. James: An Informal Portrait

  ANTHOLOGIES

  The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories

  (with R.A. Gilbert)

  The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (with R.A. Gilbert)

  The Oxford Book of Victorian Detective Stories The Oxford Book of Spy Stories

  EDITOR

  M.R. James: ‘Casting the Runes’ and Other Ghost Stories

  (Oxford World’s Classics)

  COMPILER

  The Oxford Chronology of English Literature

  For Dizzy. For everything.

  Contents

  Editor’s Preface

  PART THE FIRST

  Death of a Stranger: October–November 1854

  PART THE SECOND

  Phoebus Rising: 1819–1848

  INTERMEZZO: 1849–1853

  PART THE THIRD

  Into the Shadow: October 1853

  PART THE FOURTH

  The Breaking of the Seal: October–November 1853

  PART THE FIFTH

  The Meaning of Night: 1853–1855

  Post scriptum

  Appendix: P. Rainsford Daunt List of Published Works

  Acknowledgements

  Editor’s Preface

  The following work, printed here for the first time, is one of the lost curiosities of nineteenth-century literature. It is a strange concoction, being a kind of confession, often shocking in its frank, conscienceless brutality and explicit sexuality, that also has a strongly novelistic flavour; indeed, it appears in the hand-list that accompanies the Duport papers in the Cambridge University Library 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 identity 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 we have read these confessions, this should not surprise us; yet it is strange that someone who wished to lay his soul bare to posterity 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 Cantabrigienses, and is mentioned in several 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 principally 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 PhD student with a dissertation subject.

  The text has been transcribed, more or less verbatim, from the unique holograph manuscript now held in the Cambridge University Library. The manuscript came to the CUL in 1948 as part of an anonymous bequest, with other papers and books relating to the Duport family of Evenwood in Northamptonshire. It 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 passages 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 several interpolated documents and extracts by other hands.

  I have made a number of silent emendments in matters of orthography, punctuation, and so on; and because the MS lacks a title, 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 titles for each of the five parts, and for the five sections of the so-called Intermezzo.

  The sometimes enigmatic Latin titles to the forty-seven sections or chapters have been retained (their idiosyncrasy seemed typical of the author), though I have provided translations. On the first leaf of the manuscript are a dozen or so 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

  Professor of Post-Authentic Victorian Fiction University of Cambridge

  The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, 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.

  E.G.

  PART
THE FIRST

  Death of a Stranger

  October–November 1854

  What a skein of ruffled silk is the uncomposed man.

  Owen Felltham, Resolves (1623), ii, ‘Of Resolution’

  1

  Exordium*

  After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s† for an oyster supper.

  It had been surprisingly – almost 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; 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.

  We proceeded steadily westwards through the raw October cold and the thickening mist. After descending Ludgate-hill and crossing over into Fleet-street, we continued on our course for some distance until, at length, and after having refreshed himself at a coffee-house, my man turned into a narrow court that cut through to the Strand, not much more than a passage, flanked on either side by high windowless walls. I glanced up at the discoloured sign – ‘Cain-court’ – then stopped for a moment, to remove my gloves, and take out the long-bladed knife from the inside pocket of my great-coat.

  My victim, all unsuspecting, continued on his way; but before he had time to reach the steps at the far end, I had caught up with him noiselessly and had sunk my weapon deep into his neck.

  I had expected him to fall instantly forwards with the force of the blow; but, curiously, he dropped to his knees, with a soft gasp, his arms by his side, his stick clattering to the floor, and remained in that position for some seconds, like an enraptured devotee before a shrine.

  As I withdrew the knife, I moved forwards slightly. It was then I noticed for the first time that his hair, where it showed beneath his hat, was, like his neatly trimmed whiskers, a distinct shade of red. For a brief moment, before he gently collapsed sideways, he looked at me; not only looked at me, but – I swear – smiled, though in truth I now suppose it was the consequence of some involuntary spasm brought about by the withdrawal of the blade.

  He lay, illuminated by a narrow shaft of pale yellow light flung out by the gas-lamp at the top of the passage steps, in a slowly widening pool of dark blood that contrasted oddly with the carroty hue of his hair and whiskers. He was dead for certain.

  I stood for a moment, looking about me. A sound, perhaps, somewhere behind me in the dark recesses of the court? Had I been observed? No; all was still. Putting on my gloves once more, I dropped the knife down a grating, and walked smartly away, down the dimly lit steps, and into the enfolding, anonymous bustle of the Strand.

  Now I knew that I could do it; but it gave me no pleasure. The poor fellow had done me no harm. Luck had simply been against him – together with the colour of his hair, which, I now saw, had been his fatal distinction. His way that night, inauspiciously coinciding with mine in Threadneedle-street, had made him the unwitting object of my irrevocable intention to kill someone; but had it not been him, it must have been someone else.

  Until the very moment in which the blow had been struck, I had not known definitively that I was capable of such a terrible act, and it was absolutely necessary to put the matter beyond all doubt. For the despatching of the red-haired man was in the nature of a trial, or experiment, to prove to myself that I could indeed take another human life, and escape the consequences. When I next raised my hand in anger, it must be with the same swift and sure determination; but this time it would be directed, not at a stranger, but at the man I call my enemy.

  And I must not fail.

  The first word I ever heard used to describe myself was: ‘resourceful’.

  It was said by Tom Grexby, my dear old schoolmaster, to my mother. They were standing beneath the ancient chestnut-tree that shaded the little path that led up to our house. I was tucked away out of view above them, nestled snugly in a cradle of branches I called my crow’s-nest. From here I could look out across the cliff-top to the sea beyond, dreaming for long hours of sailing away one day to find out what lay beyond the great arc of the horizon.

  On this particular day – hot, still, and silent – I watched my mother as she walked down the path towards the gate, a little lace parasol laid open against her shoulder. Tom was panting up the hill from the church as she reached the gate. I had not long commenced under his tutelage, and supposed that my mother had seen him from the house, and had come out expressly to speak to him about my progress.

  ‘He is,’ I heard him say, in reply to her enquiry, ‘a most resourceful young man.’

  Later, I asked her what ‘resourceful’ meant.

  ‘It means you know how to get things done,’ she said, and I felt pleased that this appeared to be a quality approved of in the adult world.

  ‘Was Papa resourceful?’ I asked.

  She did not reply, but instead told me to run along and play, as she must return to her work.

  When I was very young, I was often told – gently but firmly – by my mother to ‘run along’, and consequently spent many hours amusing myself. In summer, I would dream amongst the branches of the chestnut-tree or, accompanied by Beth, our maid-of-all-work, explore along the shore-line beneath the cliff; in winter, wrapped up in an old tartan shawl on the window-seat in my bedroom, I would dream over Wanley’s Wonders of the Little World,*Gulliver’s Travels, or Pilgrim’s Progress (for which I cherished an inordinate fondness and fascination) until my head ached, looking out betimes across the drear waters, and wondering how far beyond the horizon, and in which direction, lay the Country of the Houyhnhnms, or the City of Destruction, and whether it would be possible to take a packet boat from Weymouth to see them for myself. Why the City of Destruction should have sounded so enticing to me, I cannot imagine, for I was terrified by Christian’s premonition that it was about to be burned with fire from heaven, and often imagined that the same fate might befall our little village. I was also haunted throughout my childhood, though again I could not say why, by the Pilgrim’s words to Evangelist: ‘I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment; and I find that I am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second.’ Puzzling though they were, I knew that the words expressed a terrible truth, and I would repeat them to myself over and again, like some occult incantation, as I lay in my cradle of branches or in my bed, or as I wandered the windy shore beneath the cliff-top.

  I dreamed, too, of another place, equally fantastic and beyond possession, and yet – strangely – having the distinctness of somewhere experienced and remembered, like a taste that stays on the tongue. I would find myself standing before a great building, part castle and part palace, the home of some ancient race, as I thought, bristling with ornamented spires and battlemented turrets, and wondrous grey towers, topped with curious dome-like structures, that soared into the sky – so high that they seemed to pierce the very vault of heaven. And in my dreams it was always summer – perfect, endless summer, and there were white birds, and a great dark fish-pond surrounded by high walls. This magical place had no name, and no location, real or imagined. I had not found it described in any book, or in any story told to me. Who lived there – whether some king or caliph – I knew not. Yet I was sure that it existed somewhere on the earth, and that one day I would see it with my own eyes.

  My mother was constantly working, for her literary efforts were our only means of support, my father having died soon after I was born. The picture that always comes to mind, when thinking o
f her, is of spindles of grey-flecked dark hair escaping from beneath her cap and falling over her cheek, as she sat bent over the large square work-table that was set before the parlour window. There she would sit for hours at a time, sometimes well into the night, furiously scratching away. As soon as one tottering pile of paper was complete and despatched to the publisher, she would immediately begin to lay down another. Her works (beginning with Edith; or, The Last of the Fitzalans, of 1826) are now quite unremembered – it would be disloyal to her memory if I say deservedly so; but in their day they enjoyed a certain vogue; at least they found sufficient readers for Mr Colburn* to continue accepting her productions (mostly issued anonymously, or sometimes under the nom de plume ‘A Lady of the West’) year in and year out until her death.

  Yet though she worked so long, and so hard, she would always break off to be with me for a while, before I went to sleep. Sitting on the end of my bed, with a tired smile on her sweet elfin face, she would listen while I solemnly read out some favourite passages from my precious translation of Monsieur Galland’s Les mille et une nuits;† or she might tell me little stories that she had made up, or perhaps recount memories of her own childhood in the West Country, which I especially loved to hear. Sometimes, on fine summer nights, we would walk, hand in hand, out onto the cliff-top to watch the sunset; and then we would stand together in silence, listening to the lonely cry of the gulls and the soft murmur of the waves below, and gaze out across the glowing waters to the mysterious far horizon.