The Meaning of Night (41 page)

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, and of course 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 it had been read by Lord Tansor’s first

wife, some time before her unfortunate death. It is hard to believe 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, which is why, 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 first Baron, Lord Maldwin

Duport. 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.’

24:

Littera scripta manet?

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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 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 placing them carefully

on 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 medieval Christendom after the Bible.’

Reverently, I turned over the huge leaves, lingering for some moments over an

arresting woodcut of the Saints in Glory, before my eye was caught by a passage in the

‘Lyf of Adam’:

God had planted in the begynnge Paradyse a place of desyre and delytes . . .

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. October, 1830. The tenth day – a day of wind and rain, as I recall, and so dark

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 – a probably unique copy of

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 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 extraordinary 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. Believing 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; spirit not easily cowed; resolve above the common; and the

strength to contend until all opposition fails. 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 lay 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 the angled wall containing the triangular apertures 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

bust of her dress, whilst her right hand, in which she held a fan, dangled languorously by

her side. She appeared to be 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 delicate, beautifully formed mouth.

The effect of her physical loveliness, combined with the expression of wilfulness in