The Meaning of Night (18 page)

that expectation that naturally surrounds the holder of such a prize. Certainly he

continued to display real ability in his studies, but again with that indiscipline and

smartness that would have aroused the severe displeasure of his meticulous father. The

Rector’s old friend, Dr Passingham of Trinity, did his best to maintain a paternalistic eye

on the young man’s doings and would, from time to time, communicate discreet pastoral

reports on his progress back to Northamptonshire. It was not long before such reports

became troublesome to Dr Daunt.

From Le Grice, I received accounts of a number of incidents witnessed by him

that testify to a distinct shabbiness of character, and which luridly corroborate the more

sober notes of concern that flowed, with increasing frequency, between the Master’s

Lodge at Trinity and Evenwood Rectory.

The first might perhaps be seen as an undergraduate prank (though it was not so

construed by his father when it was reported to him). On being good-humouredly

reprimanded by the Dean of the College, for some trivial misdemeanour, young Daunt

placed a game hamper before that gentleman’s door, directed to him ‘With Mr Daunt’s

compliments’. When opened, the hamper was found to contain a dead cat, with an escort

of five skinned rats. On being arraigned and questioned, Daunt coolly maintained his

innocence, arguing that he would hardly have affixed his own name to the hamper had he

been the culprit. And so he was released with due apology.

The second incident is more substantial, with respect to Daunt’s developing

character.

He had been invited to a dinner given by the Provost. At the head of the table, Dr

Okes? sat in earnest discussion with the College’s Visitor, Bishop Kaye, whilst on either

side a dozen or so men conversed at their ease. Daunt, one of three freshmen present,

found himself sitting next to Le Grice; on the other side of the table sat a senior Fellow of

the College, Dr George Maxton, a gentlemen well advanced in years and of much

impaired hearing.

Towards the conclusion of the meal, Daunt leaned forward and, with a fixed

smile, spoke to this venerable figure.

‘Well, Dr Maxton, and how are you enjoying yourself?’

The good gentleman, seeing himself addressed, but hearing nothing above the

surrounding chatter, merely smiled back and nodded.

‘You think it a pretty fair spread, do you, you old fool?’ Another nod.

Daunt continued, still smiling.

‘The oysters were barely tolerable, the hock execrable, the conversation tiresome,

and yet you have found it all perfectly to your taste. What a rattlepate you are.’

He persisted in this impertinent and insulting vein for some minutes, making the

most uncomplimentary remarks to the poor deaf gentleman across the table as though he

were discoursing on the most common topics. All the while, Dr Maxton, unaware of what

was really being said to him, received the young man’s impudence with mute gestures of

touching courtesy.

There were other – indeed numerous – instances of such behaviour during

Daunt’s time at the Varsity, all of them displaying an innate viciousness and egotism. I

eagerly read Le Grice’s reports, which formed the beginnings of what was to become an

extensive repository of information concerning the history and character of Phoebus

Daunt.

I would be revenged on him. This became an article of faith with me. But I must

first come to know him as I knew myself: his family, his friends and acquaintances, his

places of resort – all the externalities of his life; and then the internal impulsions: his

hopes and fears, his uncertainties and desires, his ambitions, and all the secret corners of

his heart. Only when the subject of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt had been completely

mastered would I know where the blow should fall that would bring catastrophe upon

him. For the moment, I must bide my time, until I returned to England, to begin setting

my plans in motion.

At Evenwood, Dr Daunt’s great work on the Duport Library was drawing to its

triumphant close after nearly eight years’ labour. It had become a famous enterprise, with

articles on its progress appearing regularly in the periodical press, and the publication of

the final catalogue, with its attendant notes and commentaries, was eagerly awaited by

the community of scholars and collectors, both in England and on the Continent. The

Rector had written and received hundreds of letters during the course of his work, to the

extent that Lord Tansor had agreed to hire an amanuensis to assist him in the completion

of the great task. His own private secretary, Mr Paul Carteret, had also been seconded to

help the Rector when required; and so, aided by this little team, and driven daily by his

own unbounded eagerness and energy, the end was now in sight.

Mr Carteret’s assistance had proved invaluable, especially his extensive

knowledge of the Duport family, of which he was himself a member. His familiarity with

the family papers, stored in the Muniments Room at Evenwood, enabled Dr Daunt to

establish where, when, and from whom the twenty-third Baron Tansor had purchased

particular items, as well as the provenance of some of the books in the Collection that had

been acquired in earlier times. To Mr Carteret was also delegated the important and

demanding task of listing and describing the manuscript holdings, which were a

particular interest of his.

Lord Tansor had wanted a superior kind of stock-take; but he was not so much the

Philistine that he did not feel satisfied by the true nature of his asset, or pride in what had

been laid down by his grandfather for the benefit of posterity. Its material value proved,

in the end, difficult to calculate, except that it was almost beyond price; but its worth in

other terms had been indubitably confirmed by Dr Daunt’s work, and it now stood to the

world as one of the most important collections of its kind in Europe. For this

confirmation alone, and the great renown it threw on his name by the publication of the

catalogue, Lord Tansor was well pleased.

The intellectual and artistic glories of the Duport Collection had come to him

from his grandfather through his father. To whom would they now pass? How could they

be transmitted, intact, to the next generation, and to the next, and to their heirs and

descendants, and thus become a living symbol of the continuity his soul craved? For still

no heir had been vouchsafed to his union with the second Lady Tansor. In his Lordship’s

mind, the completion of Dr Daunt’s work merely served to underscore his precarious

dynastic position. His wife was now a poor stick of a woman, who meekly followed her

husband around, in town and country, forlorn and ineffectual. There was, it seemed, no

hope.

It was just at this time that Lord Tansor – egged on, I suspect, by his relative, Mrs

Daunt – began to lavish signs of especial favour on the Rector’s son. What follows is

based on information I obtained some years after the events described.

During the Long Vacation of 1839, Lord Tansor began to express the opinion that

it would be good for the young man if he ‘ran around a little’, by which his Lordship

meant to imply that a period of harmless leisure would not go amiss, even for so

accomplished a scholar. He suggested that a few weeks spent in Park-lane, whither he

was himself about to repair with Lady Tansor, would be productive of useful amusement

for the young. The young man’s step-mamma fairly purred with delight to hear Lord

Tansor expatiating so enthusiastically on what might be done for her step-son by way of a

social education.

As to his future, once his time at the Varsity was over, the young man himself

expressed a certain open-mindedness on the subject, which, doubtless, alarmed his father,

but which may not have been displeasing to Lord Tansor, whose tacit nods as the lad held

forth on the various possibilities that might lay before him after taking his degree – none

of which involved ordination and one of which, a career in letters, went completely

against his father’s inclinations – were observed and inwardly deplored by the helpless

Rector.

That summer, Phoebus Daunt duly ‘ran around a little’ under the watchful eye of

Lord Tansor. The debauchery was not excessive. A succession of tedious dinners in

Park-lane, at which Cabinet ministers, political journalists of the more serious persuasion,

distinguished ecclesiastics, military and naval magnates, and other public men,

predominated; for light relief, an afternoon concert in the Park, or an expedition to the

races (which he particularly enjoyed). Then to Cowes for some sailing and a succession

of cheerful parties. ‘My Rector’s boy, up at the Varsity. [Sotto voce] Very sound chap.

Got what it takes. Showing him around a bit. That’s the way.’

He would hold the flat of his right hand out stiffly, fingers and thumb closed tight

together, arm bent at the elbow, just behind the boy’s back, as he introduced him.

‘Phoebus, my boy’ – he had taken to calling him ‘my boy’ – ‘this is Lord Cotterstock, my

neighbour. He would like to meet you.’ ‘Phoebus, my boy, have you made the

acquaintance yet of Mrs Gough-Palmer, wife of the Ambassador?’ ‘The Prime Minister

will be down tomorrow, my boy, and I should like you to meet him.’ And Phoebus would

meet them, and charm them, and generally throw back the rays of Lord Tansor’s good

opinion of him like a mirror until everyone was convinced that he was the very best

fellow alive.

And so it went on, for the rest of the vacation. On his return to Evenwood in

September, he seemed quite the man about town. A little taller, with a gloss and a

swagger about his manner that he had completely lacked as a schoolboy only a little time

before. A gloss, too, about his appearance, for Uncle Julius had sent him off to his tailor

and hatter, and his step-mamma quite caught her breath at the sight of the elegantly clad

figure in bright blue frock-coat, check trousers, chimney-pot hat, and sumptuous

waistcoat , together with incipient Dundreary whiskers, that descended from the Duport

coach.

From then on, whenever he returned to Evenwood, the undergraduate would find

himself immediately invited up to the great house to regale Lord Tansor with an account

of how he had comported himself during the previous term. It was gratifying to his

Lordship to hear how well the boy was regarded by his tutors, and what a great mark he

was making on the University. A Fellowship surely beckoned, he told Uncle Tansor,

though, speaking for himself, he did not feel that such a course quite accorded with his

talents. Lord Tansor concurred. He had little time for University men in general, and

would prefer to see the lad make his way in the great world of the metropolis. The lad

himself could only agree.

Of the making of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt there seemed to be no end. With each

passing month, Lord Tansor devised new ways to raise the young man up in the world,

and lost no opportunity to insinuate him into the best circles, and put him in the way of

meeting people who, like Lord Tansor himself, mattered.

On the last day of December, 1840, in the midst of his last year at the University,

Daunt attained his majority, and his Lordship saw fit to arrange a dinner party in his

honour. It was a most dazzling affair. The dinner itself consisted of soups and fish, two

entrées, turtle heads, roasts, capons, poulards and turkeys, pigeons and snipes, garnishes

of truffles, mushrooms, crawfish and American asparagus; desserts and ices; even several

bottles of the 1784 claret laid down by Lord Tansor’s father, along with footmen and

waiters brought in especially – to the consternation of the existing domestic staff – to

dispense service à la Française.

The guests, some thirty or so in number, had included, for the principal guest’s

benefit, several literary figures; for Lord Tansor, a little against an innate prejudice

towards the profession of writing, had been impressed by the dedication to literature the

young man was beginning to display. He would often come across the lad tucked away in

a corner of the Library (in which he seemed to pass a great deal of his time when he was

home), in rapt perusal of some volume or other: on several occasions he had even found

him absorbed in one of Mr Southey’s unreadable epics, and it would amaze Lord Tansor,

on returning to the same spot an hour later, to discover the young man still engrossed – it

being unaccountable to his Lordship that so much time and attention could be devoted to

something so unutterably tedious. (He had once ventured to look into a volume of the

Laureate’s,? and had sensibly determined never to do so again.) But there it was. Further,

the boy had displayed some talent of his own in this department, having had a simpering

ode in the style of Gray published in the Eton College Chronicle, and another in the

Stamford Mercury. Lord Tansor was no judge, of course, but he thought these poetic

ambitions might be encouraged, as being both harmless and, if successful, conducive to a

new kind of respect devolving upon him as the young genius’s patron.

So up they had trotted to Evenwood, at Lord Tansor’s summons: Mr Horne, Mr