The Meaning of Night (81 page)

Henry More) of Glanvill’s A Philosophical Endeavour Towards a Defence of the Being

of Witches and Apparitions, published in 1666, most of the copies of which were

destroyed in the Fire of London. Glanvill’s position was that disbelief in demons and

witches would inevitably lead to disbelief in God and the immortality of the soul. It is

now regarded as one of the most important and influential of all English works on the

subject. The first edition of Saducismus Triumphatus was published for S. Lownds in

1681. Ed.]

? [‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in our

philosophy.’ Hamlet, 1: 5. Ed.]

? [‘Death is certain’. Ed.]

? [The Wandering Jew of legend. Ed.]

? [The monumental gates, in the Egyptian style, that lead into the cemetery. Ed.]

? [Isaac Watts (1674–1748), the Dissenting divine, poet, and hymn-writer. The

cemetery, laid out on the former Fleetwood-Abney estate, had been opened in May 1840.

Ed.]

? [‘He calls’. The significance of the title of this section is not altogether clear.

Ed.]

? [The line is from In Memorian (1850), cxx: ‘Let him, the wiser man who

springs/Hereafter, up from childhood shape/His action like the greater ape,/But I was

born to other things’. Ed.]

? [Thomas Netter (c.1375–1430), born in Saffron Walden in Essex (thus known in

religion as Thomas Waldensis), was a Carmelite theologian and controversialist and

confessor to Henry V. He played a prominent part in the prosecution of Wycliffites and

Lollards. The Sacramentalia is the third volume of the author’s Doctrinale antiquitatum

fidei ecclesiae catholicae, a complete apologia of Catholic dogma and ritual intended to

counter the attacks of Wycliff and others. On the face of it, it is a strange work for the

narrator to covet. Ed.]

? [‘In doubt’. Ed.]

? [‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ was published in The Examiner on 9

December 1854. The poem was reprinted in Maud, and Other Poems (1855). Ed.]

? [‘A true friend’. Ed.]

? [On the north side of Piccadilly, opposite Fortnum & Mason. Formerly

Melbourne House, built in 1770, it was converted into sixty-nine elegant bachelor

apartments in 1802 by Henry Holland. The author properly refers to it as ‘Albany’

(without the definite article). Ed.]

? [The volume was published in December 1854, post-dated 1855. The Latin

motto from Horace reads: ‘Mix with your wise counsels some brief folly./In due place to

forget one’s wisdom is sweet’. Ed.]

? [At 51 Brook Street, Berkeley Square. Opened in 1812 by James Mivart, it is

now better known as Claridge’s. Ed.]

? [Publius Syrus (42 bc), Maxims. Ed.]

? [‘Pray and Labour’ (St Benedict). Ed.]

? [The idealized pastoral world evoked by Virgil’s Eclogues. Ed.]

? [Antonio Verrio (c.1639–1707), Italian decorative painter who settled in

England in the early 1670s. He enjoyed much royal patronage, being employed at

Windsor Castle, Whitehall Palace, and Hampton Court. He also worked at a number of

great houses, including, besides Evenwood, Chatsworth and Burghley. Ed.]

? [These paragraphs, written in darker ink than the rest, have been pasted in to the

text at this point. Ed.]

? [‘Let it flourish’, alluding to the school motto ‘Floreat Etona’. Ed.]

? [A boy who was not a King’s Scholar (KS for short) or Colleger (seventy in

number), who boarded in Dames’ houses in the town, and whose family therefore paid

for his own upkeep. Ed.]

? [An allusion to the Reform Bill of that year, intermingled with personal

overtones. Ed.]

? [Several printed pages from the Saturday Review are interpolated here. Ed.]

? [i.e. of the same year’s intake of Scholars. Ed.]

? [Marcus Terentius Varro, poet, satirist, antiquarian, jurist, geographer, scientist,

and philosopher, called by Quintilian ‘the most learned of Romans’. Ed.]

? [‘Hoc volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas’: ‘This is my will and my

command: let my will stand as a reason’. Juvenal, Satires, vi, 223. Ed.]

? [A reference to the Eton Wall Game, a unique form of football, played on 30

November, St Andrew’s Day. The first recorded game, played between Collegers and

Oppidans, was in 1766. It takes place on a narrow strip of grass against a brick wall, built

in 1717, some 110 metres end to end. Though the rules are complex, essentially each side

attempts to get the ball (without handling it) down to the far end of the wall and then

score. It is a highly physical game as each player attempts to make headway through a

seemingly impenetrable mass of opponents. Ed.]

? [The Duke of Newcastle Scholarship, Eton’s premier academic award, which

would have financed Glyver’s time at King’s, Cambridge, the school’s sister foundation.

Ed.]

? [‘Dust and shadow’. Ed.]

? [Edward Craven Hawtrey (1789–1862), who had succeeded the infamous

flogger Dr Keate as Head Master only two years earlier. He was, as Glyver notes, a great

bibliophile himself and was a member of the Roxburghe Club. Ed.]

? [The Roxburghe Club. Ed.]

? [The Christopher Inn (now Hotel), in Eton High Street. Ed.]

? [Meaning one huge event piled on another, alluding to the giants, the Aloadae,

in Greek mythology who attempted to reach the abode of the gods by placing Mount

Pelion upon Mount Ossa, two peaks in Thessaly (Odyssey, XI, 315). Ed.]

? [The famous ‘Philosopher’s Path’ that leads up to the northern bank of the

Neckar. Ed.]

? [As in the last chapter, these lines have been pasted on to the page at this point.

Ed.]

? [‘Everything changes’. Ed.]

? [Proverbs 24: 5. Ed.]

? [Dr Richard Okes (1797–1888), Provost of King’s. Ed.]

? [Robert Southey was Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death in 1843. Ed.]

? [The poets Richard Hengist Horne (1803–84), Robert Montgomery (1807–55),

Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902), John Abraham Heraud (1799–1887). Ed.]

? [Henry Samborne Drago (1810–72), poet and critic. Ed.]

? [The publisher Edward Moxon (d. 1858), whose authors at this time included

Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Robert Browning, and Tennyson. Ed.]

? After clouds, the sun’. Phoebus was the sun god. Ed.]

? [‘Revelation’, Ed.]

? [In the Rue de Richelieu. Ed.]

? [In the Rue Vivienne: ‘a great resource to the Englishman in Paris’, according to

Murray’s Hand-Book for Travellers in France (New Edition, 1844). Ed.]

? [A Hand-book for Travellers in the Ionian Islands, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor

and Constantinople (John Murray, 1840). Ed.]

? [Vasily Stepanovich Sopikov, book dealer and author of a standard essay on

Russian bibliography. Ed.]

? [This appears to have been an unidentified rival enterprise to Austen Henry

Layard’s second expedition to Nimrud in 1845. I have not been able to identify

‘Professor S––’ and am unable to say why the author chose to respect his anonymity. Ed.]

? The accounts of tours undertaken in 1836 and 1838 and written for the Royal

Geographical Society by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810–95). Ed.]

? [William Fox Talbot (1800–77), British pioneer of photography. His first

‘photogenic drawings’ were produced in 1839. He patented his improved ‘calotype’ or

‘talbotype’ process for making negatives in 1841. Ed.]

? [Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia (1830) by James Silk Buckingham

(1786–1855). Ed.]

? [In Thessaly, northern Greece, at which Julius Caesar defeated the Senatorial

forces of Pompey in 48 bc. Ed.]

? [‘Labour conquers’. Ed.]

? [James Bell (1769–1833), A New and Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and

Wales (1833–4). William Cobbett (1763–1835), A Geographical Dictionary of England

and Wales (1832). Ed.]

? [John Burke (1787–1848), A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage

and Baronetage of the British Empire, first published by Henry Colburn in 1826, and now

generally known as Burke’s Peerage. The 1830 edition was the third. Ed.]

? [i.e. sagittarius-lions, half-men, half-lions. Ed.]

? [‘By Endurance We Conquer’. Ed.]

? [‘The die is cast’. Ed.]

? [Robert Browning was born at 6 Southampton Street, Camberwell, on 7 May

1812. Ed.]

? [Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851), French photographic pioneer and

inventor of the Daguerreotype process. Ed]

? [Lacock Abbey, near Chippenhan in Wiltshire. Ed.]

? [What Sir John Herschel later called ‘negatives’, the term we still use. Ed.]

? [Destroyed in 1942 during the Blitz. Ed.]

? [A double chair, on which two people could sit side by side. Ed.]

? [‘Hence these tears’ (Terence, Andria). Ed.]

? [Jean-Anthelme Brillant-Savarin (1755–1826), whose most celebrated work,

Physiologie du gout, was published in 1826. Ed.]

? [Thackeray’s The History of Pendennis was published in monthly parts between

November 1848 and December 1850, and in book form, in two volumes, 1849–50. The

discussion must therefore have concerned the serialized version. Ed.]

? [Giovanni Battista Marino (1569–1625), Italian Baroque poet, whose

extravagant and sensuous image had an influence on the English poet Richard Crashaw.

Ed.]

? [About £12,500. Ed.]

? [Described in the Second Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor, in The Arabian Nights’

Entertainments. Ed.]

? [This is the first of several pasted-in, dated insertions from the author’s own

journal. Ed.]

? [Pietro Aretino (1492–1556), Italian poet. In 1524 he wrote accompanying

sonnets to sixteen pornographic drawings by Giulio Romana, pupil of Raphael. Ed.]

? [John Cleland (1709–89), author of the infamous Memoirs of a Woman of

Pleasure (1749), otherwise known as Fanny Hill. Ed.]

? [This lady appears to have been a precursor of the more famous Rachel

Leverson, extortionist and thief, who was prosecuted in 1868 and sentenced to five years’

penal servitude for exactly the same activities as Madame Mathilde. Ed.]

? [Hatters to the Queen. Ed.]

? [i.e. ‘criminal conversation’ – adultery. Ed.]

? [Types of pickpockets. Ed.]

? [Violent street robbers. Ed.]

? [Used in the contemporary sense of ‘immoral’, not in the modern sense. Ed.]

? [Opticians, ‘chemical and philosophical instrument makers’, and also a leading

supplier of photographic equipment, at 121 and 123 Newgate Street. Ed.]

? [The famous stone roofing slates of northern Northamptonshire. Ed.]

? [Conrad Verekker (1770–1836). The first edition of his guide was published in

1809. Ed.]

? [In ‘Recollections of the Arabian Nights’, first published in Poems, Chiefly

Lyrical (1830). Ed.]

? [Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard (1802–72), a cloth maker from Lille. He

developed an improved version of the Calotype process that allowed paper negatives to

be prepared in advance and developed hours or even days after exposure. The negatives

also had greater sensitivity to light, and thus had shorter exposure times. In 1850

Blanquart-Evrard introduced the albumen paper print process, which became the primary

print medium until gelatine paper became available in the 1890s. He had sent examples

of his his experiments with negative/positive paper processes to the Great Exhibition in

May 1851, which is where we may assume the author had come across them. Ed.]

? [Dickens’ novel was published in monthly parts from 30 April 1849 to 30

October 1850, and in book form in November 1850. Ed.]

? [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.]

? [Baronies by Writ are, in fact, a legal fiction. As a result of decisions made in

the House of Lords and elsewhere, between the early seventeenth century and the early

nineteenth, a doctrine – now considered indefensible – grew up that where a man had

been directly summoned to attend one of a specific list of medieval parliaments, there

was evidence that he had done so, and he was not the eldest son of a peer or another

person also summoned to such a parliament, then he could be taken as thereby honoured

with a barony, in the modern sense of a peerage. It was further construed (as Mr Tredgold

rightly says) that such titles were heritable by heirs general of the first baron, though no

medieval writ deals with the matter of succession, for the simple reason that they were

not then conceived as creating an hereditary title of honour. However, by the mid