The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

  I saw this wonderful room for the first time, in the company of the Reverend Achilles Daunt, on the afternoon of the 27th of October 1853. We had walked through the Park from the Rectory, with the declining sun in our eyes, talking of Mr Carteret.

  Away from his wife, Dr Daunt was an altogether different man – voluble, energetic, and enthusiastically companionable. In her presence he had seemed somehow lessened, and unwilling to set his own strong character against hers. Now, in the open air, as we strode together down the hill towards the river, he appeared renewed. We spoke of various matters relating to the Bibliotheca Duportiana, and I congratulated him again on his great achievement – it was, in my view, a work that would keep its compiler’s name alive amongst scholars of the printed book for generations to come.

  ‘The labour, of course, was very great,’ he said, ‘for the books had not been properly catalogued before, and were in some disorder. There was, to be sure, Dr Burstall’s hand-list of the seventeenth-century English books, which he drew up in – when was it, now? Eighteen ten, or thereabouts. Burstall,* as you perhaps know from his little book on Plantin, was a most careful scholar, and I was able to use many of his descriptions virtually verbatim. Yes, he saved me a good deal of work, though his hand-list also brought to light a little mystery.’

  ‘Mystery?’

  ‘I allude to the disappearance of the editio princeps of that minor but most noble work, Felltham’s Resolves.† The book, listed unequivocally in Burstall’s list, simply could not be found. I searched high and low for it. The collection contained later editions, of course, but not the first. It was impossible that Dr Burstall had included it in his list in error, and I was sure it had not been sold. I expended many hours, looking through the records of disposals, which have been most meticulously maintained over the years. The curious thing was that when I mentioned this to Mr Carteret, he distinctly remembered seeing this edition of the work – indeed, he knew that it had been read by Lord Tansor’s first wife, some time before her unfortunate death. It is hard to believe that it was stolen; a wonderful little book, of course, but not especially valuable. Mr Carteret searched her Ladyship’s apartments most assiduously, in case it had not been returned to the Library; but it was nowhere to be found. It has not been found to this day.’

  ‘Speaking of Mr Carteret,’ I said, as we approached the great iron gates of the Front Court, ‘I suppose that Lord Tansor will be obliged to find another secretary.’

  ‘Yes, I think that will certainly be necessary. His Lordship’s affairs are many and various, and Mr Carteret was a most conscientious and industrious gentleman. It will not be easy to replace him – he was no mere amanuensis. It may fairly be said that he performed the work of several men, for besides dealing with Lord Tansor’s business and estate correspondence, which is extensive, he was also the de facto keeper of the Muniments Room, librarian, and accomptant. There is an agent for the farms and woods, of course – Captain Tallis; but Mr Carteret was, in all other respects, the steward of Evenwood – although he was not always treated by his Lordship with that gratitude owed to a good and faithful servant.’

  ‘And you tell me that he was a good scholar besides?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Dr Daunt. ‘I believe he missed his true calling there, excellent though his other abilities were. Mr Carteret’s hand-list of the manuscript collection exhibits a knowledgeable and discerning intellect. With very little amendment, I was able to incorporate it in its entirety as an appendix to my catalogue. Alas, it will be his only monument, though a noble one. If only he had lived to complete his great work. That would have been a monument indeed.’

  ‘His great work?’ I asked.

  ‘His history of the Duport family, from the days of the 1st Baron. A mighty undertaking, on which he had been engaged for nigh on twenty-five years. In the course of his duties, he naturally had access to the family papers stored in the Muniments Room – a collection of voluminous extent, stretching back some five hundred years – and it was on the examination of these that his history was to be based. I fear it is unlikely now that anyone else will be found with the requisite talents and capacity for industry to finish what he had started, which I deem a great loss to the world, for the story is a rich and fascinating one. Well now, here we are at last.’

  *[‘The mother of a household’. Ed.]

  *[The Roxburghe Club was founded in 1812, at the height of the bibliomania craze, by the bibliophile and bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847). Ed.]

  *[Mrs Daunt was born in April 1797, so she was 56 when the narrator first encountered her in October 1853. Ed.]

  †[Thomas Taylor, ‘the English pagan’ (1758–1835), who devoted himself to translating and expounding the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, the Neoplatonists, and the Pythagoreans. He was an important influence on William Blake and on the Romantic poets (Shelley in particular), and much later on W. B. Yeats. Ed.]

  ‡[‘Concerning the Cave of the Nymphs’, an allegorizing interpretation of the Cave of the Nymphs on the island of Ithaca, described by Homer in the Odyssey, Book XIII. Ed.]

  *[Taylor’s translation of Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, which dealt with such matters as theurgy and divination, was published in 1821. Iamblichus (c.AD 245-c.325), born in Syria, was a Neoplatonist philosopher. Ed.]

  †[Despite extensive searching, I cannot find that Dr Daunt’s translation and commentary were ever published in the Classical Journal, even though they apparently reached proof stage. Ed.]

  ‡[A native of Messene, perhaps active as late as 280 BC. He wrote an influential fantasy travel novel, the Hiera anagraph, known mainly through fragments in the work of Diodorus Siculus; it was also quoted by the Christian apologist Lactantius. Ed.]

  *[i.e. what are now termed ‘incunabula’ (from the Latin ‘things in the cradle’), meaning books produced in the infancy of printing in the late fifteenth century. Ed.]

  *[John Burstall (1774–1840)was a close contemporary of the celebrated bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. In 1818 he published Plantin of Antwerp, a pioneering study of Christophe Plantin (1514–89), the French-born bookbinder and printer. Ed.]

  †[Owen Felltham or Feltham (1602?–68), essayist and poet. The first edition, or century, of his famous collection of moral essays and maxims was published c. 1623. It proved extremely popular and went through twelve editions by 1709. Ed.]

  24

  Littera scripta manet*

  We were standing before the great West Front, with its prospect of carefully tended pleasure-gardens, and the distant mass of Molesey Woods. A paved terrace, balustraded and lined with great urns – that same terrace where I had made the photographic portrait of Lord Tansor – stretched the length of this western range.

  As we entered the Library, the late-afternoon sun, streaming through the line of tall arched windows, transformed the interior of the great room into a dazzling confection of white and gold. Above us, Verrio’s ceiling was a misty swirl of colour; around us, rising from floor to ceiling on three sides of the huge space, was a glorious vista of white-painted book-cases, arranged in tall colonnaded bays. My eyes gorged on the sight that lay before me: row upon row of books of every type – folios, quartos, octavos, duodecimos, eighteenmos – exhibiting every facet of the printer’s and binder’s art.

  Taking a pair of white cotton gloves from his pocket, and drawing them carefully over his hands, Dr Daunt walked over to one of the bays, and reached up to remove a thick folio.

  ‘What do you think of this?’ he asked, gently laying the volume down on an elaborately carved giltwood table.

  It was a perfect copy of Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea, translated and printed by Caxton at Westminster in 1483: a volume of superlative rarity and importance. Dr Daunt procured another pair of cotton gloves from the drawer of the table, and offered them to me. My hands were shaking slightly as I opened the massive folio, and
gazed in awe at the noble black-letter printing.

  ‘The Golden Legend,’ said the Rector, in hushed tones. ‘The most widely read book in late mediaeval Christendom after the Bible.’

  Reverently, I turned over the huge leaves, lingering for some moments on an arresting woodcut of the Saints in Glory, before my eye was caught by a passage in the ‘Lyf of Adam’:

  A place of desire and delights. No better description of Evenwood could be found. And this paradise would one day be mine, when all was accomplished at last. I would breathe its air, wander its rooms and corridors, and take my ease in its courtyards and gardens. But greater than all these delights would be the possession of this wondrous library for my own use and pleasure. What more could my bibliophile’s soul ask for? Here were marvels without end, treasures beyond knowing. You have seen the worst of me in these confessions. Here, then, let me throw into the opposite side of the balance, what I truly believe is the best of me: my devotion to the mental life, to those truly divine faculties of intellect and imagination which, when exercised to the utmost, can make gods of us all.

  ‘This’, said Dr Daunt, laying his hand on the great folio that had so entranced my soul, ‘was the first volume for which I wrote a description. I remember it as if it were yesterday. August 1830. The 29th day-a day of furious wind and rain, as I recall, and so dark, if you will believe it for that time of the year, that you could hardly see beyond the terrace. We had the lamps burning in here all day long. The book was not in its proper place – you will observe that the bays in this section of the Library are arranged in alphabetical order by author – and I thought at first to remove it to where it belonged, and make my acquaintance with it at some later date; but then, on a whim, I decided to deal with it then and there. And so it has retained a special place in my heart.’

  He was smiling to himself as he stroked his long beard and gazed fondly at the open folio. I felt a great closeness to the dear old fellow in that moment, and caught myself wishing that I had had such a man as my father.

  He returned the book to its place, and then took down another: Capgrave’s Nova Legenda Angliae, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1516. As he left me to pore over this, he strode over to another bay and brought back the first printing of Walter Hylton’s great mystical treatise, the Scala Perfectionis, the Ladder of Perfection, printed, again by de Worde, in 1494, and the first book to which he put his name. I had hardly begun to examine it when he hurried back with yet another treasure – Pynson’s reprint of the Ars Moriendi. Then off he went again, returning this time with St Jerome’s Vitas Patrum, Caxton’s translation, completed on the last day of his life, and exquisitely printed in folio by de Worde in 1496.

  And so it went on, until darkness began to fall, and a servant appeared to bring us lights. At length, while the Rector was replacing a particularly fine copy of Barclay’s Sallust, I began to make my own perambulation of the room.

  In a recess between two of the arched windows that gave onto the terrace, I stopped to look into a little glass-topped display case, containing a curious piece of vellum, dirty and browned, a few inches wide and two or three inches from top to bottom, placed on a piece of blue velvet. It had plainly been folded up for a long period of time but had now been opened out for display, held down at each corner by round brass weights, each of which had been stamped with the Duport coat of arms.

  It was crammed with tiny writing, elegantly executed, and peppered with many little flourishes and curlicues, contractions, and abbreviations. A magnifying-glass lay on top of the cabinet, and with this I slowly began to make out the opening words: ‘HENRICUS Dei gratia Rex Angliae Dominus Hyberniae et Dux Aquitaniae dilecto et fideli suo Malduino Portuensi de Tansor militi salutem.’*

  As I mouthed the words to myself, I realized that it was the original writ, sent out by Simon de Montfort in the name of King Henry III, summoning Sir Maldwin Duport to attend Parliament in 1264 – a document of exceptional rarity, and probably unique of its kind. How it had survived seemed little short of miraculous.

  I was momentarily transfixed, both by the rarity of the document, and by what it signified. Knowing now that I was descended from Sir Maldwin Duport, what qualities of character, I wondered, had I inherited from this man of iron and blood? Courage, I hoped, and a bold, enduring will; a spirit not easily cowed; resolve above the common; and the strength to contend until all opposition failed. For I, too, had been summoned, like my ancestor – not by the will of some earthly monarch, but called by Fate to reclaim my birthright. And who can deny what the Iron Master has ordained?

  I laid down the magnifying-glass, and continued my inspection of the Library. At the far end was a half-open door, which, as my readers will already know, I am unable to resist. And so I put my head round it.

  The chamber beyond was small, and appeared to be windowless, although on closer examination I made out, high up, a row of curious glazed apertures, triangular in shape, that admitted just enough light for me to be able to discern its general character and contents. Picking up one of the lighted candles left earlier by the servant, I entered.

  From its shape, I realized that this must be the ground floor of the squat octagonal tower, of Gothic design, that I had noticed abutting the south end of the terrace. Standing against one of the angled walls was a bureau overflowing with papers; the rest of the room was fitted out with shelves and cupboards, the former stacked with labelled bundles of documents that reminded me irresistibly of those on my mother’s work-table at Sandchurch. Tucked away in the far corner was a little arched door, behind which, I surmised, must be a staircase leading to an upper floor.

  But what had instantly caught my attention on entering the chamber was a portrait that hung above the bureau. I raised the candle to observe it more closely.

  It showed a lady, full length, in a flowing black dress of Spanish style. Her dark hair, crowned with a cap of black lace rather like a mantilla, was drawn back from her face, and fell about her bare shoulders in two long ringlets. A band of black velvet encircled her lovely throat. She was looking away, as if something had caught her attention; the long fingers of her left hand rested on a large silver brooch attached to the bodice of her dress, whilst her right hand, in which she held a fan, dangled languorously by her side. The artist had depicted her leaning against a piece of ancient stonework, beyond which a bright moon could be seen peeping out from behind an angry mass of dark clouds.

  It was altogether an arresting composition. But her face! She had the most strikingly large eyes, with intense black pupils, and pencil-thin black eyebrows; striking, too, was her long but slender retroussé nose, and her delicately moulded mouth. The effect of her physical loveliness, combined with the expression of wilfulness in repose, which the artist had so skilfully caught, was utterly enchanting.

  I held the candle closer, and discerned an inscription: ‘R.S.B. fecit. 1819.’ I knew then, without a doubt, that this was Lord Tansor’s first wife – my beautiful, wayward mother. I tried to reconcile this surpassing beauty with the memories that I still had of sad, faded Miss Lamb, but could not. The artist had painted her in her prime, at the pinnacle of her beauty and pride – in the very moment before she took the fateful step that was to change her life, and mine, for ever.

  There was a noise behind me. Dr Daunt was standing in the doorway, a book in his gloved hands.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘I thought you would like to see this.’

  He handed me a copy of Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, the first edition of 1646.

  I smiled, thanked him, and began to examine the book, another constant companion of mine, but my mind was elsewhere.

  ‘So you have found your way into Mr Carteret’s sanctum. It seems strange to be here and not see him sitting in his customary place.’ He gestured towards the bureau. ‘But I see you have also found my Lady. Of course I did not know her – she died before we came to Evenwood; but people still remember and speak of her. She was, by all accounts, an extra
ordinary woman. The portrait is unfinished, as you will have noticed, which is why it hangs here. Goodness me, is that the time?’

  The clock in the Library had struck the hour of six.

  ‘I’m afraid I must return to the Rectory. My wife will be expecting me. Well, then, Mr Glapthorn, I hope the afternoon has not been too unpleasant for you?’

  We parted at the head of the path that led through a gate in the Park wall, past the Dower House, to the Rectory.

  The Rector paused for a moment, looking towards the lights of the Dower House.

  ‘That poor girl,’ he said.

  ‘Miss Carteret?’

  ‘She is alone in the world now, the fate above all others that her poor father feared. But she has a strong spirit, and has been brought up well.’

  ‘Perhaps she may marry,’ I said.

  ‘Marry? Perhaps she may, though I wonder who would have her. My son had some hopes once in that direction, and my wife – I mean my wife and I, of course – would not have been against the match. But she would not have him; and I fear also that her father was not fond of him. Mr Carteret was not a rich man, you know, and his daughter will now be dependent on Lord Tansor’s generosity. And then she has such decided opinions on matters that really ought not to concern a young lady. I suppose that comes from her time abroad. I myself have never left these shores, and hope I never have to do so. My son, though, has expressed a wish to go to America, of all places. Well, we shall see. And now, Mr Glapthorn, I must bid you a very good evening, and hope we may have the pleasure of seeing each other again very soon.’