The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  A touching account, is it not? And I am naturally sensible of the encomia that he has seen fit to bestow on me. We were friends for a time; I acknowledge it. But he comes the littérateur too much – seeing significance where none existed, making much of nothing, dramatizing the mundane: the usual faults of the professional scribbler. This is memory scrubbed and dressed up for public consumption. Worse, he exaggerates our intimacy, and his claims on the matter of our respective intellectual characters are also false, for I was the careful scholar, he the gifted dabbler. I had many other friends in College besides him, and amongst the Oppidans too – Le Grice in particular; and so I was very far from depending solely on Master Phoebus Daunt for company. A dull dog, indeed, I would have been, had that been the case! Finally, he omits to say – though perhaps this is understandable in the light of what happened – that the friendship that we enjoyed when we were first neighbours in Long Chamber had, by the end of our time at Eton, through his perfidy, crumbled to dust.

  Yet this was the estimation of my character and abilities that Phoebus Daunt claims to have formed after our first meeting in School Yard, and which he saw fit to lay before the British reading public in the pages of the Saturday Review. But what was my estimation of him; and what was the true nature of our relation? Let me now place the truth before you.

  My old schoolmaster, Tom Grexby, had accompanied me from Sandchurch to Windsor. He saw me down to the School, and then put himself up at the Christopher* for the night. I was glad to know that the dear fellow was close by, though he left early for Dorset the next day, and I did not see him again until the end of the Half.

  I did not feel in the least nonplussed by my new surroundings, unlike several of the other new inmates of College, whom I encountered standing or nervously scuffing around their allotted places in Long Chamber, some looking pale and withdrawn, others with affected swaggers that only served to show up their discomfort. I was strong in both body and mind, and knew that I would not be intimidated or hounded by any boy – or master, come to that.

  The bed next to mine was empty, but a valise and canvas bag stood on the floor. Naturally, I bent down to look at the handwritten label pasted on the side of the former.

  The name of Evenwood, though not of my as yet unseen neighbour, was instantly familiar to me. ‘Miss Lamb has come from Evenwood to see your mamma’; ‘Miss Lamb wishes to kiss you, Eddie, before she leaves for Evenwood’; ‘Miss Lamb says you must come to Evenwood one day to see the deer’. The echoes came ringing back across the years, faint but clear, of the lady in grey silk who had visited my mother when I was young, and who had looked down so sadly and sweetly at me, and had stroked my cheek with her long fingers. I found that I had not thought about her all this time, until the name of this place – Evenwood – had brought her misty image to my mind. Miss Lamb. I smiled fondly at the memory of her name.

  Despite my sequestered upbringing at Sandchurch, without many friends to speak of, beyond a few desultory playmates amongst the local boys, I had, and have, a natural gregariousness, though I rarely exercise it. I soon made the acquaintance of my new neighbours in Long Chamber, and accounted for their names and places; together, we then clattered down to take the air in School Yard before dinner.

  I saw him immediately, slouching disconsolately beside the Founder’s statue, and knew that it was my new neighbour in Long Chamber. He stood, hands in pockets, occasionally kicking the ground, and looking about him purposelessly. He was a little shorter than me, but a well-formed boy, with dark hair, like mine. None of the other boys had noticed him, and no one seemed inclined to go over to him. So I did. He was my neighbour, after all; and, as Fordyce Jukes was to point out to me many years later, neighbours should be neighbourly.

  And so it was in this friendly spirit that I walked towards him with outstretched hand.

  ‘Are you Daunt?’

  He looked at me suspiciously from beneath the crown of a new hat that allowed a little too much for future growth.

  ‘And if I am?’ he said, with a surly pout.

  ‘Well then,’ said I cheerfully, still holding out my hand, ‘we are to be neighbours – friends too, I hope.’

  He accepted the proffered greeting at last, but still said nothing. I encouraged him to come over and join the others, but he was unwilling to leave the little patch of territory beneath the statue of King Henry in his Garter robes that he appeared to feel he had secured for his private use. But by now it was time for dinner in Hall and, gracelessly, he finally relinquished his place, dragging himself along beside me like some reprimanded but still defiant puppy.

  Over our first meal together, I coaxed some hesitant conversation out of him. I learned that he had been taught at home by his father; that his mamma was dead, though he had a step-mamma who had been very kind to him; and that he did not much like his new surroundings. I ventured to say that I supposed he was naturally a little homesick, like several of the other new boys. At this, something like a spark of life arose in his pale blue eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with a curious sigh, ‘I do miss Evenwood.’

  ‘Do you know Miss Lamb?’ I asked.

  He thought for a moment. ‘I know a Miss Fox,’ he replied, ‘but not a Miss Lamb.’ At which he giggled.

  This exchange seemed to encourage him to greater intimacy, for he leaned forward and, lowering his voice to a whisper, said: ‘I say, Glyver. Have you ever kissed a girl?’

  Well, the truth was, that I had known very few girls of my own age, let alone any whom I might have wanted to kiss.

  ‘What a question!’ I replied. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Oh yes. Many times – I mean I’ve kissed the same girl many times. I believe she is the most beautiful girl in the world, and I intend to marry her one day.’

  He went on to describe the incomparable virtues of his ‘little princess’, whom I gathered was a neighbour of his at Evenwood; and soon the sulky reticence that he had earlier displayed had been replaced by excited volubility, as he spoke of how he intended to be a famous writer and make a great deal of money, and live at Evenwood with his princess for ever and a day.

  ‘And Uncle Tansor is so kind to me,’ he said, as we made our way from Hall back to Long Chamber, in which Collegers were then shut up for the night. ‘Mamma says that I am almost like a son to him. He is a very great man, you know.’

  A little later he came and stood by my bed.

  ‘What’s that you have there, Glyver?’ he asked.

  I was holding the rosewood box in which my sovereigns had been placed, and which my mother had insisted I take with me to Eton to remind myself of my benefactress, whom I continued to believe had been Miss Lamb.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I replied. ‘Just a box.’

  ‘I’ve seen that before,’ he said, pointing to the lid. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A coat of arms,’ I replied. ‘It’s only a decoration, nothing more.’

  He continued to stare at the box for some moments before returning to his own bed. Later, in the darkness he whispered:

  ‘I say, Glyver, have you ever been to Evenwood?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I whispered back crossly. ‘Go to sleep. I’m tired.’

  Thus I became the friend and ally of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt – his only friend and ally, indeed, for he showed no inclination to seek out any other. The ways of the School appeared to mystify and disgust him in equal measure, making him the inevitable target of the natural vindictiveness of his fellows. He should have been well able to withstand such assaults, being, as I say, a well-made boy, even strong in his way; but he was completely disinclined to offer up any physical resistance to his tormentors whatsoever, and it often fell to me to rescue him from real harm, as when he was set upon, soon after our arrival in Long Chamber, and assailed with pins in the initiatory operation known as ‘Pricking for Sheriff’. New Collegers were expected to display cheerfulness and equanimity in the face of such ordeals, and even to embrace them merrily. But I fear that Daunt, KS, wa
s somewhat girlishly vocal in his complaints, in consequence of which he attracted even more unwelcome attention from that class of boy who is ever ready and eager to make the lives of his compatriots thoroughly miserable. I myself was never subjected to such troubles after I shut the head of one of the chief tormentors, a grinning oaf by the name of Shillito, in the door to Long Chamber, refusing to release him until his face had near turned blue. I had declined to take part in some piece of horseplay, and he had tipped a jug of cold water over me. He did not do it again. Mine is not a forgiving nature.

  Daunt calls it ‘thraldom’, this friendship of ours; but it was a strange kind of slavery in which no submission was asked of the enslaved. As time went by, his dependence on me became an increasing irritation. He was free to do what he wished, make friends with whom he chose; but he did not. He seemed willingly to embrace his dependent state, though I would encourage him to find wings of his own. Despite this adhesiveness, I found him an able and lively debater on topics of which I was surprised he had any knowledge at all, and soon I began to discover an elasticity of mind and comprehension, and also a sort of energetic cunning, that sat strangely with the strain of moping dullness that so often characterized his company.

  I saw, too, the solid academic grounding that he had received under his father; but with this went a fatal inability to fix the mental eye steadily on its object. He would garner quickly and move on. I, too, was hungry to learn whatever I could of man and the world, but my haste was not self-defeating speed. He assembled bright impressive surfaces of knowledge admirably, but the inner structures that would keep the building in place were flimsy, and constantly shifting. He was adaptable, fluid, accommodating; always absorbent, never certain or definitive. I sought to know and to comprehend; he sought only to acquire. His genius – for such I account it – consisted in an ability to reflect back the brilliance of others, but in a way that, by some alchemical transmutation, served to illuminate and enlarge himself. These qualities did not hold him back in his work: he was generally accounted one of the School’s best scholars; but they showed me – gifted, as I like to think, with finer instincts, like his own father – his true measure.

  And so we proceeded together through the School, and began to attain a measure of seniority. He seemed to have thrown off many of his former timidities, and now often distinguished himself on the Playing-fields and on the river. Though I had acquired a large circle of other friends, he and I continued to enjoy a special intimacy arising from our first meeting. But then he began to show signs of a return to his former ways, by expressing renewed disapproval of some of my new friends. He would appear at all times of the day to suggest some activity or other, when often I was most disinclined to participate, or when he knew I was definitely engaged elsewhere. It was as if he wished to possess my company completely, to the exclusion of all others. He simply would not leave me be, and his dogged clinging to my coat-tails, to the detriment of my other friendships, began at last to arouse real annoyance in me, though I fought hard against showing it.

  Then things got to such a pitch that, one day, as we were returning from a walk down the Slough Road, he angered me so much by his insistence that I must stop going around with a number of fellows, of whom he disapproved, that I was forced to tell him to his face that I found his company wearisome, and that I had other friends whom I liked better. I immediately regretted my harsh words, and apologized for them. This exchange, I suppose, accounts for the accusation of ‘coldness’ from me, though I continued – against my better judgment – to give freely of my time to him when I could, even when I was racking myself hard with a view to gaining the Newcastle* on leaving the School.

  But then, not long after this incident, came an event that showed me Phoebus Rainsford Daunt in his true colours, and brought about my departure from the School. He mentions this crisis, briefly, and with estimable tact, in the account quoted earlier. I laughed out loud when I read it. Judge for yourself the trustworthiness of our hero as I now set matters before you in their true light.

  *[‘Let it flourish’, alluding to the Eton school motto ‘Floreat Etona’. Ed.]

  †[A boy who was not a King’s Scholar (KS for short). Oppidans boarded in Dames’ houses in the town, and their families paid for their upkeep. Ed.]

  ‡[An allusion to the Reform Bill of that year, intermingled with personal overtones. Ed.]

  *[Several printed pages from the Saturday Review of 10 October 1848 are interpolated here. Ed.]

  †[i.e. of the same year’s intake of Scholars. Ed.]

  *[Marcus Terentius Varro, poet, satirist, antiquarian, jurist, geographer, scientist, and philosopher, called by Quintilian ‘the most learned of Romans’. Ed.]

  *[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 grass 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 to score. It is a highly physical game as each player attempts to make headway through a seemingly impenetrable mass of opponents. Ed.]

  *[The Christopher Inn (now Hotel), in Eton High Street. Ed.]

  *[The Duke of Newcastle Scholarship, Eton’s premier academic award, which would have financed Glyver’s time at King’s College, Cambridge, the school’s sister foundation. Ed.]

  12

  Pulvis et umbra*

  One Wednesday afternoon, in the autumn of 1836, as I was returning from Windsor with a small group of companions, to which Daunt had unwelcomely attached himself, I was summoned to see the Head Master, Dr Hawtrey, in Upper School.†

  ‘I believe that you have been given exceptional permission to use the Fellows’ Library?’ he asked.

  The Library was strictly out of bounds to all boys; but I confirmed that I had been given the key by one of the Fellows, the Reverend Thomas Carter, whose pupil I had been when he was Lower Master. Mr Carter, having read several papers that I had written, was sympathetic to my enthusiastic interest in bibliographical matters, and so had allowed me the unusual, though only temporary, freedom of the Library to gather material for a new paper that I was writing on the history and character of the collection.