The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  Whilst I languished thus in my dull sublunary life, pulled hither and thither by my demons, the rise of Daunt’s literary star had been ceaseless. The world, I concluded, had gone quite mad. I could hardly open a news-paper or a magazine without coming across some piece of eulogistic clap-trap extolling the genius of P. Rainsford Daunt. The volumes had flowed thick and fast from his prodigal pen, an unstoppable torrent of drivel in rhyming couplets and blank verse. In 1846 had come that ever-memorable monstrosity, The Cave of Merlin, in which the poet out-Southey-ed Southey at his most execrable, but which the British Critic unaccountably considered to be ‘sublime in conception’, averring that ‘Mr Phoebus Daunt is without equal, a master of the poetic epic, the Virgil of the nineteenth century’. This production was followed, in tedious succession, by The Pharaoh’s Child in 1848, then Montezuma in 1849, and, the following year, by The Conquest of Peru. With every publication, more inflated estimates of the poet’s oeuvre would greet me as I idly perused Blackwood’s or Fraser’s, whilst paragraphs would rise up before my affronted eyes in The Times, informing his eager and adoring public that Mr Phoebus Daunt, ‘the celebrated poet’, was presently in town, and then proceeding to enumerate his doings in tedious detail. In this way, I learned that he had been to Gore House to sit to the pencil of the Count d’Orsay,* who also later modelled in plaster a fetching bust of the young genius. Naturally, his inclusion with other notables at the ceremonial opening of the Great Exhibition† had excited no little interest amongst a certain impressionable section of society. I recall opening the Illustrated London News over breakfast in the spring of 1851 and being greeted by a preposterous engraving of the poet – dressed in dark paletôt, light trousers strapped under the instep, embroidered waistcoat, and stove-pipe hat – together with his noble patron, Lord Tansor, standing proudly with the Queen and the Prince Consort, beside the gilded cage containing the Koh-i-Noor diamond.‡

  With the rest of the world, I had also attended the Exhibition, drawn there by a desire to view the latest photographic advances. Accompanying me had been Rebecca Harrigan, Mr Tredgold’s housekeeper, with whom I had struck up a kind of friendship. On more than one occasion, I had caught her looking at me in an interested way. She had a fine little figure, and was pretty enough; but, as I quickly discovered, after engaging her in a little conversation, she also possessed a sharp mind, and a pleasingly audacious spirit. I soon began to take quite a fancy to her.

  One evening, in St Paul’s Church-yard, I encountered her sheltering under the portico of the Cathedral from a shower of rain. We chatted inconsequentially until the rain began to ease, and then I asked her whether she might care to take some dinner with me. ‘If your husband wouldn’t mind,’ I added, believing that she and Mr Tredgold’s manservant, Albert, were man and wife.

  ‘Oh, ’e ain’t my ’usband,’ she said, looking at me as cool as you like.

  ‘Not your husband?’

  ‘Not ’im.’

  ‘Then …’

  ‘I’ll tell you what Mr Glapthorn,’ she butted in, giving me a quite delightfully sly smile, ‘you take me to dinner, and I’ll come clean.’

  She was respectably and soberly dressed in blue taffeta, with a matching stole and bonnet, an ensemble which, with her delicate little reticule, made her look like a vicar’s daughter. So, after walking a little way, I hailed a hansom in Fleet-street and took her off to Limmer’s,* where I asked the waiter to find a table for myself and my sister.

  Over the course of the evening, Rebecca recounted something of her history. Her real name was Dickson. Orphaned at the age of nine, she had been obliged to fend for herself on the unforgiving streets of Bermondsey. But – like me – she was resourceful and had quickly found a protector, a noted cracksman,† for whom, as she said, she ‘thieved like a good ’un’ in return for food and a roof over her head. In due course, she graduated to whoring; but then, through the good offices of one of her customers, she succeeded in gaining a place in service, as a maid in the house of a Director of the East India Company. It was there that she had met Albert Harrigan, a servant in the same establishment. She and this Harrigan soon formed an attachment, even though her paramour (whose real name was Albert Parker) had an abandoned wife and child somewhere in Yorkshire. All went along nicely until their employer lost all his money in a failed railway speculation, and committed suicide. His legal adviser had been none other than Mr Christopher Tredgold, who happened just then to be in need of a manservant for his private residence. Harrigan was duly taken on, to be joined after a few weeks by his supposed wife. But their relationship had quickly soured, and now only convenience kept them together.

  She told me all this – peppering her account with several anecdotes of questionable propriety – with all the gusto of a tavern raconteur; but as soon as the waiter arrived with each course, the wily little slut instantly assumed an expression of the most perfect demureness, smiling sweetly and turning the conversation, without once dropping her aitches, to some topic of unimpeachable dullness.

  In the weeks following, Rebecca and I found occasion to promote our friendship, in ways that I am sure I do not need to describe. If Harrigan guessed how things lay between us, then it did not appear to trouble him. As for Rebecca, her good humour and healthy natural appetites, together with that optimistic artfulness that comes from having successfully made the most of a very bad lot, soon began to have a beneficial effect on me; and, as she had no wish to put a rope round my neck and lead me to the altar, we got on very well, meeting when the inclination took us, and pursuing our own interests whenever we wished.

  This, then, was my life, from 1849 to 1853. And so things would perhaps have continued, but for two events.

  The first occurred in March, of the latter year. I found myself in St John’s Wood, on Mr Tredgold’s business, and had just turned into a pleasant tree-lined street when the name on the gate-piers of a large white-painted villa, half hidden behind a screen of shrubs, brought me up short. Blithe Lodge – where the beauteous Isabella Gallini had lived for the past four years – stood before me. I have already written of how I renewed my acquaintance with Bella and how, under the auspices of Mrs Kitty Daley, she became my mistress. Until the great events of the autumn of that same year broke upon me, I discovered that I was able to remain faithful to Bella, saving a few minor and quite meaningless indiscretions, which I confess here for honesty’s sake. Rebecca, however, I did give up. She received the news with little emotion.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that don’t matter. I’ve still got Albert, such as ’e is. An’ I reckon we’ll stay friends, you an’ me. You’re a chancer, Edward Glapthorn, for all you’re a gennelmun, and so am I. An’ that makes us equals in a way, don’t it? Friends an’ equals. So, gimme a kiss, and let’s ’ear no more about it.’

  The second event was of a very different character, and of far more moment.

  It was the morning of the 12th of October 1853 – a date indelibly impressed on my memory. I was just leaving my room at Tredgolds, and was on the point of descending to the clerks’ room, when I saw Jukes leap up from his desk at the sound of the front bell. I could not see who the visitor was, but in a moment Jukes was hurrying up the stairs towards me.

  ‘Lord Tansor himself,’ he whispered excitedly as he passed.

  I leaned back against the wall and gazed down.

  He was sitting bolt upright, both hands clasping his cane before him. The office, before his arrival, had been quietly going about its business, with just the usual rustle of papers and scraping of pens, and the occasional sound of subdued conversation between the clerks breaking the silence. But in his presence, the atmosphere seemed suddenly charged, somehow put on alert, and a blanket of strained silence instantly descended. All conversation ceased; the clerks moved about the room with concentrated deliberation, opening their drawers with the utmost care, or silently closing doors behind them. I watched this phenomenon closely, and observed that several of the clerks would look up from their work fro
m time to time, and direct apprehensive glances over towards the seated figure, as if, sitting there tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for Jukes to return, he was about to weigh the feather of truth in the scales of justice against their sinful hearts.

  In a few moments, Jukes hurried past me again, heading back down the stairs to where the visitor sat. I stepped back into my room as his Lordship followed the clerk to the door of Mr Tredgold’s private office. As Lord Tansor entered, I heard the Senior Partner’s effusive welcome.

  Jukes closed the office door and began to make his way back to his position.

  ‘Lord Tansor,’ he said again, seeing me as he came past my door. He stopped, and leaned his head towards me in a confidential manner. ‘There are firms,’ he said, ‘that would give a great deal – a very great deal – to have such a client. But the SP keeps him tight with us. Oh yes, he’s Tredgolds’ as long as the SP is with us. A great man. One of the first men in the kingdom, you know, though who has heard of him? And he’s ours.’

  He delivered this little speech in a rapid whisper, looking back and forth to the door of Mr Tredgold’s office as he did so. Then he nodded quickly, and scampered back down the stairs, scratching his head with one hand, and clicking his fingers with the other.

  I walked back to my desk, leaving my door slightly ajar. At length, I heard the Senior Partner’s door open, and the muffled sound of conversation as the two men passed along the passage to the head of the stairs.

  ‘I’m obliged, Tredgold.’

  ‘Not at all, your Lordship,’ I heard Mr Tredgold reply. ‘Your instructions in this matter are much appreciated, and shall be acted upon without delay.’

  I sprang from my desk and went out into the passage.

  ‘Oh, pardon me,’ I said to the Senior Partner. ‘I did not realize.’

  Mr Tredgold beamed at me. Lord Tansor’s face was expressionless at first, but then he began to regard me more closely.

  ‘You seem familiar to me,’ he barked.

  ‘This is Mr Edward Glapthorn,’ prompted Mr Tredgold. ‘The photographer.’

  ‘Ah, the photographer. Very good. Excellent work, Glapthorn. Excellent.’ Then he turned to the Senior Partner, nodded his goodbye, and immediately descended the stairs with short rapid steps. In the next moment he was gone.

  ‘I notice it is a fine day outside, Edward,’ said Mr Tredgold, smiling radiantly. ‘Perhaps you might like to join me for a little stroll in the Temple Gardens?’

  *[Dolly’s Chop-House, Queen’s Head Passage, Paternoster Row. The London Restaurant was in Chancery Lane. Ed.]

  †[Isaac Pitman’s Stenographic Sound-Hand was first published in 1837. Ed.]

  *[The Peace of Amiens, 27 March 1802, between France and its allies, on the one hand, and Great Britain, on the other. It is generally seen as marking the end of the French Revolutionary Wars. Ed.]

  *[A hotel in Albemarle Street. Ed.]

  †[i.e. owned an opera-box at Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket. Ed.]

  ‡[A roadway for saddle-horses on the south side of Hyde Park, crowded during the Season with the most fashionable riders. Ed.]

  *[Count Alfred Guillaume Gabriel d’Orsay (1801–52), wit, dandy, and artist, who was a prominent member of Lady Blessington’s social and artistic circle at Gore House. Ed.]

  †[In May 1851. Ed.]

  ‡[One of the many attractions of the Great Exhibition. The cage had been made by Messrs Chubb. Ed.]

  *[A respectable first-class hotel in Conduit Street. Ed.]

  †[A burglar; safe-breaker. Ed.]

  V

  In the Temple Gardens

  Once away from the office, and having entered the Temple Gardens, Mr Tredgold began to outline, in his usual circuitous and abstract way, a ‘little problem’ with which he had been presented.

  ‘Tell me, Edward,’ he began, ‘how extensive is your genealogical knowledge?’

  ‘I have some slight acquaintance with the subject,’ I replied.

  ‘I find, my dear Edward, that you have some slight acquaintance with most subjects.’

  He beamed, took out his red silk handkerchief, and proceeded to polish his eye-glass as we walked.

  ‘Baronies by Writ, for instance. What can you tell me about them?’

  ‘I believe that such dignities are so called because they describe the old practice of summoning men of distinction to sit in the King’s Parliament by the issuing of a writ.’*

  ‘Correct!’ exclaimed Mr Tredgold. ‘Now, by several statements of law laid down since Stuart times, these Baronies are held to be heritable by heirs general – that is to say, through females as well as males. The present Lord Tansor’s peerage is just such a Barony. Perhaps,’ he continued, ‘it would be interesting to you, from an antiquarian point of view, to have a brief account of Lord Tansor’s noble line?’

  I said that nothing would give me greater pleasure, and begged him to proceed.

  ‘Very well – pray stop me if any of this is familiar to you. In the reign of Henry III, Lord Maldwin Duport was a person of power and influence. Of Breton extraction, an ancestor having come over with the Conqueror, he was memorably described in one of the chronicles as “a man of iyrn and blud”. A dangerous and belligerent man, we may perhaps assume, but one whose services were much in demand in those uncertain and violent times. He was a great landowner, already a baron by tenure, holding lands in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Warwickshire, and Northamptonshire, in addition to other properties in the North and the West Country.

  ‘In December 1264, Maldwin was summoned to attend the rebel Parliament called by Simon de Montfort in the King’s name – Henry himself, along with his son, Prince Edward, being then under lock and key following the Battle of Lewes. Maldwin was subsequently summoned to Parliament in 1283, 1290, and 1295, and his successors continued to be called into the next century and beyond. In the course of time, their constant presence in Parliament was interpreted as constituting a peerage dignity deriving from the 1264 Parliament, thus giving the Barony senior precedence, along with those of Despencer and de Ros, in the English peerage.

  ‘The Lord Maldwin’s principal estate, or caput, was the castle of Tansor, in Northamptonshire – a few miles to the south of the present Lord Tansor’s seat of Evenwood – and so he was summoned to Parliament as Malduino Portuensi de Tansor. Of course the family has suffered many vicissitudes of fortune – especially during the Commonwealth; but the Duports have generally married judiciously, and by the time of George, the 22nd Baron, at the beginning of the last century, they had risen to that position of eminence and influence that they continue to enjoy.

  ‘This position, however, is now under threat – at least, that is how the present Lord Tansor interprets matters. The absence of an heir – I mean of a lineal heir, whether male or female – has caused him great concern; and it is this lack, and the consequences that may flow from it, that he feels may signal a decline in the family’s fortunes. His fear is that the title and property could pass to a branch of the family in which, to put things in his own terms, the qualities that have been so conspicuously demonstrated by successive generations of his ancestors are lacking. His Lordship has certainly been singularly unlucky. As you may know, the only son from his first marriage died when still a child, and his present union has so far been without issue.’

  Mr Tredgold had taken out his handkerchief; but, rather than cleaning his eye-glass, he was using it instead to mop his forehead. I noticed that he had coloured a little, and so asked whether he would prefer to move out of the sun, which, though low in the sky, was unusually intense for the time of year.

  ‘By no means,’ he replied. ‘I like to feel the light of heaven on my face. Now then, where was I? Yes. In a word, then, it appears that there is, at present, ahem, no male heir of the direct line, which raises the distinct possibility that the title will pass to a member of one of the collateral branches of the family, an outcome to which his Lordship is deeply opposed.’

 
; ‘There are legitimate collateral claimants, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Tredgold. ‘His cousin and secretary, Mr Paul Carteret,* and, in due course, Mr Carteret’s daughter. But, as I say, his Lordship’s aversion to collateral succession is – well, entrenched and immovable. It is perhaps irrational, because the Barony has reverted to collateral relatives on a number of occasions in its history, but there it is. Come, I am a little tired of walking. Let us sit.’

  Taking my arm, Mr Tredgold drew me to a bench in the corner of the Gardens.

  ‘There may yet, of course, be time for a satisfactory outcome to Lord Tansor’s predicament in the normal course of events, as it were. His physician considers it possible that her Ladyship might still be capable of conceiving an heir. I believe these things have been known. But his Lordship is not prepared to put his trust in Nature, and, after considering the matter carefully for several years, has finally come to a decision. He has wisely rejected divorce, against which I strongly advised, there being no grounds other than the lack of an heir, and it would go hard on his Lordship’s standing and reputation to behave like some Eastern potentate, and take such a step. He understands this, and so has taken an alternative course.’