The Meaning of Night

by Michael Cox

Michael Cox

The Meaning of night – a confession

Edited by J. J. Antrobus

Professor of Post-Authentic Victorian Fiction, University of Cambridge

Editor’s Preface

The following has been transcribed, more or less verbatim, from the unique

holograph manuscript 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 manuscript 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 manuscript 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 a number of interpolated

documents 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 sexuality, 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 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 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 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 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 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-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 manuscript 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

Professor of Post-Authentic Victorian Fiction

University of Cambridge

Contents

Editor’s Preface

Dedicatory Note

DEATH OF A STRANGER: October 1854

1 Exordium

2 Nominatim

3 Praemonitus, praemunitus

4 Ab incunabulis

5 Mors certa

6 Vocat

7 In dubio

8 Amicus verus

PHOEBUS RISING: 1820–1850

9 Ora et labora

10 In Arcadia

11 Floreat

12 Pulvis et umbra

13 Omnia mutantur

14 Post nubile, Phoebus

15 Apocalypsis

Labor vincit

17 Alea inacta est

18 Hinc illae lacrimae

INTERMEZZO: 1850–1853

I: Mr Tredgold’s Cabinet

II: Madame Mathilde

III: Evenwood

IV: The Pursuit of Truth

V: In the Temple Gardens

19 Veritas odium parit

20 Lupus in fabula

21 Requiescat

22 Locus delicti

23 Materfamilias

24 Litera scripta manet

25 In limine

Gradatim vincimus

27 Ad idem

28 Spectemur agendo

THE BREAKING OF THE SEAL: November 1853

Suspicio

Noscitur e sociis

Flamma fumo est proxima

Non omnis moriar

Periculum in mora

Deposition of Mr P. Carteret, Esq., Concerning the Death of the Late Laura, Lady

Tansor

I Friday, 21st October, 1853

II Friday, 21st October, 1853 (continued)

III Saturday, 22nd October, 1853

IV Sunday, 23rd October, 1853

V Sunday, 23rd October, 1853 (continued)

34 Quare verum

THE MEANING OF NIGHT: 1854–1855

35 Credula res amor est

36 Amor vincit omnia

37 Non sum qualis eram

38 Confessio amantis

39 Quis separabit?

40 Nec scire fas est omnia

41 Resurgam

42 In cauda venenum

43 Dies irae

Vindex

45 Consummatum est

46 Post scriptum

Appendix: P. Rainsford Daunt: List of Published Works

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.

October 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 – 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.

We proceeded steadily westwards through the raw October cold and the

thickening mist. At length he turned into a narrow court, not much more than a passage,

flanked on either side by high windowless walls, that cut through to the Strand. I glanced

up at the discoloured sign – ‘Cain-court’ – then hung back, to make sure the court was

deserted.

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 the long

blade of my knife deep into his neck.

I’d 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 blade, 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, actually 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 carrotty hue of his hair and whiskers. He was dead for sure.

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. I dropped the

knife down a grating, along with my gloves – an old pair, with no maker’s label – and

walked smartly away, down the dimly lit steps, and into the enfolding, anonymous bustle

of the Strand.

Now I knew I could do it; but it gave me no pleasure. The poor fellow had done

me no harm. Luck had simply been against him – and 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 for

sure that I was capable of such a terrible act, and it was absolutely necessary to put the

matter beyond all doubt. For the dispatching 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