Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

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 short time before. There was now a gloss, too, about his appearance, for Uncle Tansor 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, checked trousers, chimney-pot hat, and sumptuous waistcoat, together with incipient Dundreary whiskers – that descended from his Lordship’s coach.

From then on, whenever he returned to Evenwood, the undergraduate would find himself immediately invited up to the great house to regale his patron 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, losing no opportunity to insinuate him into the best circles, and to 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 final 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, six 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; all attended by 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 that 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 turgid 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 that 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 Montgomery, Mr de Vere, and Mr Heraud, †and a few others of their ilk. They were not, it must be admitted, first-division talents; but Lord Tansor had been much satisfied, both by their presence and by their expressions of encouragement, when Master Phoebus was persuaded to bring out one or two of his own effusions for their perusal. The literary gentlemen appeared to think that the young man had the mind and ear – indeed, the vocation – of the born bard, which gratifyingly confirmed Lord Tansor’s view that he had been right to allow the young man his head in respect of a possible career. The author himself was also flattered by the kind attentions of Mr Henry Drago, *the distinguished reviewer and leading contributor to Eraser’s and the Quarterly , who gave him his card and offered to act on his behalf to find a publisher for his poems. Two weeks later, a letter came from this gentleman to say that Mr Moxon, †a particular friend of his, had been so taken by the verses that the critic had placed before him that he had expressed an urgent wish to meet the young genius as soon as may be, with a view to a publishing proposal.

Before Daunt had finished his studies at Cambridge, he had completed Ithaca: A Lyrical Drama , which, with a few other sundry effusions, was duly published by Mr Moxon in the autumn of 1841. Thus was launched the literary career of P. Rainsford Daunt.

Mrs Daunt, now established as the de facto chatelaine of Evenwood, naturally watched these developments with a warm glow of satisfaction; it was most pleasant to observe that her plans for ingratiating her step-son with Lord Tansor were succeeding so well. Her husband, with more discernment, felt a good deal of disquiet at the palpably hollow lionization of his son, when the boy had done nothing, in his view, to deserve the plaudits that he was receiving, other than to have fallen under the capacious wing of his Lordship’s patronage. With the end in sight of his labours on his catalogue, the Rector now felt able to turn his full gaze on the character and future prospects of his son. But his position was weak in respect of Lord Tansor’s growing dominion over his only child. What could be done? Give up his comfortable living in this place of beauty and contentment and risk removal to another Millhead? That was out of the question.

And yet he felt impelled to do his utmost to retrieve his son, and put him back on a path more consonant with his upbringing and antecedents. It might not be possible to bring him to ordination – the Rector’s dearest hope – but it might be possible to dilute the effects of Lord Tansor’s increasingly prodigal attentions.

The Rector thought that he might have a solution to the problem. Removing his son from Evenwood and the influence of Lord Tansor for an extended period might have the effect of somewhat loosening his patron’s grip on his son. He had therefore quietly arranged through a cousin, Archdeacon Septimius Daunt of Dublin, for the boy to spend a further year of study at Trinity College. It now only remained for him to acquaint his son, and Lord Tansor, of his decision.

*[‘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 (1801–58), whose authors at this time included Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, her future husband Robert Browning, and Tennyson. Ed. ]

14

Post nubila, Phoebus *

A week after attaining his majority, P. Rainsford Daunt, plainly agitated and with a rather high colour, could have been seen leaving the Rectory at Evenwood, mounting his father’s borrowed grey cob, and making his way up towards the great house, where he was received as a matter of urgency by a concerned Lord Tansor.