Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

Thus I became a kind of benefactor to Dorrie Grainger and her mother. Yet even this unpremeditated act of charity on my part was to become a connective strand in that fatal web of circumstance that was already closing round me.

*[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. ]

§[‘A prostitute who was provided with expensive-looking clothes by her keeper. Ed. ]

G REAT L EVIATHAN

O N W AKING , F EBRUARY , MDCCL *

O City! Deep and wide!

Womb of all things!This Sun, this Moon, these stars – I touch and feel them.

I burn. I freeze.

These mountains I grind to powder under my hand.

These torrents I consume, these forests I devour.I live in all things, in light and air, and music unheard.

O City of blood and bone and flesh!

Of muscle and sinew, of tooth and eye!Theatre of all vanity, the hell for which I yearn:

Wild and raging beneath my feet. My life.

My death.

*[As with the passage on the Iron Master (p. 102), these lines have been pasted onto the page at this point. The reason for their inclusion here is not immediately obvious, though they were clearly of significance to the author, and we may perhaps further conjecture that they were written under the influence of opium. Ed. ]

III

Evenwood

After taking up residence in Temple-street, and commencing my employment at Tredgolds, my photographic ambitions had languished for a while, though I continued to correspond with Mr Talbot. But, once settled, I constructed a little dark-room within a curtained-off space in my sitting-room. Here also I kept my cameras (recently purchased from Horne and Thornethwaite), *along with my lamps, gauze, pans and bowls, trays and soft brushes, fixing and developing solutions, beakers, glasses, quires of paper, syringes and dippers, and all the other necessary paraphernalia of the art. I worked hard to familiarize myself with the necessary chemical and technical processes, and on summer evenings would take my camera down to the river, or to picturesque corners of the nearby Inns of Court, to practise my compositional techniques. In this way, I began to build up my experience and knowledge, as well as amassing a good many examples of my own photographic work.

The satisfaction of close and concentrated observation; the need to perceive minute gradations of light and shadow, and to select the correct angle and elevation; the patient scrutiny of backdrop and setting – these things I found gave me intense fulfilment, and transported me to another realm, far away from my often sordid duties at Tredgolds. My principal partiality, artistically speaking – the seed planted by seeing a photogenic drawing that Mr Talbot had made of Lacock Abbey – was to seek to capture the spirit or mood that certain places evoke. London offered such a variety of subjects – ancient palaces, domestic dwellings of every type and age, the river and its bridges, great public buildings – that I soon developed a keen eye for architectural line and form, shadow and sky, texture and profile.

One Sunday, in June 1850, feeling I had attained to a good level of competence, I decided I would show Mr Tredgold some examples of my photographic work.

‘These are really excellent, Edward,’ he said, turning over a number of mounted prints that I had made of Pump-court, and of Sir Ephraim Gadd’s chambers in King’s Bench-walk. ‘You have an exceptional eye. Quite exceptional.’ He suddenly looked up, as if struck by a thought. ‘Do you know, I think I could secure a commission for you. What would you say to that?’

I replied, of course, that I would be very happy for him to do so.

‘Excellent. I am obliged to pay a visit to an important client next week, and, seeing what you have done here, it occurs to me that this gentleman might wish to have some photographic representations of his country property, to provide an indelible record for posterity. The property in question would certainly afford the most ravishing possibilities for your camera.’

‘Then I shall be even more willing to agree to the proposal. Where is the property?’

‘Evenwood, in Northamptonshire. The home of our most important client, Lord Tansor.’

Whether Mr Tredgold saw my surprise, I cannot say. He was beaming at me, in his usual way, but his eyes had a guarded look about them, as if in anticipation of some disagreeable response. He cleared his throat.

‘I thought,’ he went on, ‘that you might also be curious to see the former home of Lady Tansor – I allude, of course, to her friendship with your last employer’s late mother, Mrs Simona Glyver. But if this proposal is against your inclinations …’

I raised my hand.

‘By no means. I can assure you that I have no objections at all to such an expedition.’

‘Good. Then it is settled. I shall write to Lord Tansor immediately.’

How could I possibly have refused to go along with Mr Tredgold’s adventitious proposal, when Evenwood was the one place on earth I wished to see? I was already familiar, from various published accounts, with the history of the great house, the disposition of the buildings, and the topography of the extensive Park. Now I had been given the opportunity to experience, in my waking being, what I had so often fashioned in imagination.

Since commencing my employment at Tredgolds, I had made little progress in my pursuit of some piece of objective evidence that would confirm what I had read in my mother’s journals. I had suggestions and hints, providing strong and, to me, compelling testimony to the truth concerning my birth; but they were not indubitable, and shed no light on the causes of the conspiracy between my mother and Lord Tansor’s first wife, or on how their plan had been accomplished. By now, I had read every word of my mother’s journals several times over, as well as making copious notes on them, and had begun to re-examine and index every scrap of paper she had left behind, from bills and receipts to letters and lists (my mother, I discovered, had been an inveterate list-maker; there were scores of them). I hoped to find some fragment of the truth that I might have overlooked; but it was becoming clear to me that little more could be gleaned from the documents in my possession, and that I would achieve nothing by remaining in my rooms, and brooding on my lost inheritance. If that inheritance was to be recovered, I must begin to widen my view; and what better way to start than by seeing my ancestral home for myself?

A few days later, Mr Tredgold informed me that Lord Tansor was happy for me to accompany him to Evenwood, where I would be given liberty to roam as I pleased. Next morning, both of us feeling relieved to be escaping the heat and dust of London, we took the train northwards to Peterborough.

Once we had boarded our train, Mr Tredgold and I immediately fell into our customary bookish talk, which we kept up all the way to Peterborough, despite several attempts on my part to encourage my employer to speak of Evenwood and its principal residents. Having arrived in Easton, some four miles from Evenwood, Mr Tredgold went on ahead to the great house, leaving me to accompany the trunk containing my travelling equipment in the carrier’s cart. At the gatehouse, just beyond the village of Evenwood, I got out, leaving the cart to trundle off. It was approaching two o’clock when I ascended the long incline that carries the road from the gates, and rested at the top to look down over the river towards the vista spread out before my hungry eyes.