Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR

The Meaning of Night

“Extraordinary…. Cox has crafted a fictional epic that’s reminiscent of Charles Dickens…. Unfailingly suspenseful.”

– USA Today

“Fascinating.”

— Globe and Mail

“An unadulterated pleasure…. Thrilling…. An entertaining love letter to the bizarre and dangerous hypocrisies of Victorian England.”

— The Independent

“Like the great Victorian novels, this one is brimming with assumed identities, lost birthrights, revenge, murder, treachery and subterfuge, ensuring suspense to the end.”

— Winnipeg Free Press

“A page-turning gothic thriller.”

— Harper’s Bazaar

“An enthralling literary page turner…. From start to finish, it’s a thrilling journey.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A rewarding, sinister yarn.”

— The Observer

“An enthralling journey into the depths of Victorian London and the psyche of a man obsessed…. The Meaning of Night will have you hooked from [the] stunning opening line to the thrilling final revelation.”

— InStyle

“Resonant with echoes of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens…. Its exemplary blend of intrigue, history and romance mark a stand-out literary debut.”

— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A bibliophilic, cozy, murderous confection.”

— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Also by Michael Cox

FICTION

The Glass of Time

BIOGRAPHY

M.R. James: An Informal Portrait

ANTHOLOGIES

The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories

(with R.A. Gilbert)

The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (with R.A. Gilbert)

The Oxford Book of Victorian Detective Stories The Oxford Book of Spy Stories

EDITOR

M.R. James: ‘Casting the Runes’ and Other Ghost Stories

(Oxford World’s Classics)

COMPILER

The Oxford Chronology of English Literature

For Dizzy. For everything .

Contents

Editor’s Preface

PART THE FIRST

Death of a Stranger: October–November 1854

PART THE SECOND

Phoebus Rising: 1819–1848

INTERMEZZO: 1849–1853

PART THE THIRD

Into the Shadow: October 1853

PART THE FOURTH

The Breaking of the Seal: October–November 1853

PART THE FIFTH

The Meaning of Night: 1853–1855

Post scriptum

Appendix: P. Rainsford Daunt List of Published Works

Acknowledgements

Editor’s Preface

The following work, printed here for the first time, is one of the lost curiosities of nineteenth-century literature. It is a strange concoction, being a kind of confession, often shocking in its frank, conscienceless brutality and explicit sexuality, that also has a strongly novelistic flavour; indeed, it appears in the hand-list that accompanies the Duport papers in the Cambridge University Library with the annotation ‘(Fiction?)’. Many of the presented facts – names, places, events (including the unprovoked murder of Lucas Trendle) – that I have been able to check are verifiable; others appear dubious at best or have been deliberately falsified, distorted, or simply invented. Real people move briefly in and out of the narrative, others remain unidentified – or unidentifiable – or are perhaps pseudonymous. As the author himself says, ‘The boundaries of this world are forever shifting – from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death.’ And, he might have added, from fact to fiction.

As to the author, despite his desire to confess all to posterity, his own identity remains a tantalizing mystery. His name as given here, Edward Charles Glyver, does not appear in the Eton Lists of the period, and I have been unable to trace it or any of his pseudonyms in any other source, including the London Post-office Directories for the relevant years. Perhaps, after we have read these confessions, this should not surprise us; yet it is strange that someone who wished to lay his soul bare to posterity in this way chose not to reveal his real name. I simply do not know how to account for this, but note the anomaly in the hope that further research, perhaps by other scholars, may unravel the mystery.

His adversary Phoebus Daunt, on the other hand, is real enough. The main events of his life may be traced in various contemporary sources. He may be found, for instance, in both the Eton Lists and in Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses , and is mentioned in several literary memoirs of the period – though on his supposed criminal career the historical record is silent. On the other hand, his now (deservedly) forgotten literary works, consisting principally of turgid historical and mythological epics and a few slight volumes of poems and poetic translations, once enjoyed a fleeting popularity. They may still be sought out by the curious in specialist libraries and booksellers’ catalogues (as can his father’s edition of Catullus, mentioned in the text), and perhaps may yet furnish some industrious PhD student with a dissertation subject.

The text has been transcribed, more or less verbatim, from the unique holograph manuscript now held in the Cambridge University Library. The manuscript came to the CUL in 1948 as part of an anonymous bequest, with other papers and books relating to the Duport family of Evenwood in Northamptonshire. It is written, for the most part, in a clear and confident hand on large-quarto lined sheets, the whole being bound in dark-red morocco (by R. Riviere, Great Queen Street) with the Duport arms blocked in gold on the front. Despite a few passages where the author’s hand deteriorates, apparently under psychological duress, or perhaps as a result of his opium habit, there are relatively few deletions, additions, or other amendments. In addition to the author’s narrative there are several interpolated documents and extracts by other hands.

I have made a number of silent emendments in matters of orthography, punctuation, and so on; and because the MS lacks a title, I have used a phrase from one of the prefatory quotations, the source of which is a poem, appropriately enough, from the pen of P. Rainsford Daunt himself. I have also supplied titles for each of the five parts, and for the five sections of the so-called Intermezzo.

The sometimes enigmatic Latin titles to the forty-seven sections or chapters have been retained (their idiosyncrasy seemed typical of the author), though I have provided translations. On the first leaf of the manuscript are a dozen or so quotations from Owen Felltham’s Resolves , some of which I have used as epigraphs to each of the five parts. Throughout the text, my own editorial interpolations and footnotes are given within square brackets.

J.J. Antrobus

Professor of Post-Authentic Victorian Fiction University of Cambridge

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.Psalm 55: 21

I find, to him that the tale is told, belief only makes the difference betwixt a truth, and a lie.Owen Felltham, Resolves or, Excogitations. A Second Centurie (1628), iv (‘Of Lies and Untruths’)

For Death is the meaning of night;

The eternal shadow

Into which all lives must fall,

All hopes expire.P. Rainsford Daunt, ‘From the Persian’,

Rosa Mundi; and Other Poems (1854)