Michael Cox (61 page)

MY HUSBAND AND I go on very well, and I am now, I believe, as happy as I shall ever be in this life. He has overcome his former reticence and tells me often that he loves me, and that I am his comfort and joy, as he is assuredly and eternally mine. Indeed, there are not words enough in Mr Walker’s
Pronouncing Dictionary
, which I still regularly consult, to describe what I feel for Perseus, and what I am certain I shall continue to feel for him, until the day my heart grows tired of beating. Love can corrupt and destroy, distort and betray – this I know from my own bitter experience; but I now also know that, without love, we are nothing.
We walk and ride, and read together; and I often sit beside him as he plays on the Chapel organ, turning over the pages of the Bach fugues that he performs with such admirable dexterity and feeling. Sometimes, when he is unable to sleep, he will rise and go down to the Chapel to play; and then I will lay listening to the majestic cadences and harmonies rising and falling through the still night air, like God’s own music, until he returns.
One of my principal pleasures is to help Perseus with his work – reading to him, making fair copies, verifying points of historical fact. His poems, alas, do not sell well, despite his prodigious and relentless industry, and the money paid out to Mr Freeth for their production and promotion; but he looks to posterity to correct the unkind judgments of his contemporaries. It pains me so much to think that he may be disappointed.
However, he has now discovered a new commercial publishing house – Grendon & Co., Booksellers and Publishers, with premises in the Strand – that is willing to take him on at its own risk. I should rather say that the firm discovered
him
; for he was approached directly by the principal, Dr Edmund Grendon, who has deeply impressed Perseus with his erudition and taste, and with the informed enthusiasm he has expressed for his work. Although the firm is still a fledgling one, we begin to hope that, with Dr Grendon’s help, the literary success that Perseus so richly deserves, but which has so far eluded him, may be forthcoming at last.
Dr Grendon has already become greatly valued by Perseus as a friend and adviser, for which I am glad, as he has few other companions. Indeed, this gentleman has begun to exert so marked a fascination on Perseus that I am quite wild to make his acquaintance; but, being somewhat reclusive by nature, as well as being often absent on business, he has so far refused several invitations to visit us at Evenwood, obliging Perseus to make frequent visits to Town, sometimes for a week at a time, to consult with his new friend and mentor.
Thus we go quietly on, seeing little of the great world of society and its glittering emptiness, devoting ourselves instead to the care of our son and heir, and to preparing him for the day when he will become the head of this great family. Yet a shadow still hangs over us. We can never escape the legacy of what has been, especially here, in this house, where the past saturates the very air we breathe. Try as we may, for the sake of our son, we find that we are unable wholly to break free from the fetters that bind us to our former selves. I do not think we ever will.

II
Concerning Sleeping Dogs

THERE REMAINS ONE final incident to relate, and then I have done.
A few weeks ago, Charlie Skinner came to me with a message from Mr Wraxall asking whether I would be at liberty to meet him in the Library that afternoon.
On the table in his work-room lay a handsomely bound folio. It bore the title
Historia
on the spine, and the Duport arms were blocked on the front.
‘What is this?’ I asked.
‘Open it,’ said Mr Wraxall, unsmiling for once.
I did so, and began to leaf through it. It was not a printed book, as I had thought, but a bound manuscript, written on lined paper. It did not take me long to see what it was, and what it contained.
‘How did you come by it?’ I asked, closing the book.
‘A letter came yesterday. It was signed “A Well-Wisher” – perhaps you may remember that I have previously received a communication from a person using the same
nom de plume
. Our unknown correspondent revealed where the volume had been concealed for these twenty years and longer. It had been in the Library all the time, under our very noses.’
I asked him whether he still had the letter.
He turned to his work-table, opened a drawer, and took out an envelope. Having looked at the direction, I did not have to see the letter’s contents, noting only, with a frisson of alarm, that it had been posted in London.
‘It is from him,’ I said, handing back the envelope. ‘I am very familiar with the handwriting of Mr Basil Thornhaugh.’
‘Yes, my dear,’ said Mr Wraxall, replacing the letter in the drawer. ‘I believe you are right.’
He was alive, then, living somewhere in the world, perhaps in England, under some new name, no doubt, beneath the same declining sun that was now throwing shadows over the terrace. I had presumed as much, but my heart lurched at this unequivocal confirmation.
Mr Wraxall saw my look of apprehension, and placed a reassuring hand on mine.
‘Be still, my dear,’ he said. ‘He will not come. His day is done.’
He stood for a moment or two, his grey eyes bent on me with tender intensity.
‘What do you wish me to do with it?’ he then asked, picking up the volume, the contents of which had been brought to England so many years ago by Mr John Lazarus. ‘I spent the whole of last night reading it. It would tell you a great deal that you might wish to know, but perhaps much that you would not.’
Just then, the sound of the latch on the gate outside the work-room window caused me to look up.
Perseus, holding little Petrus by the hand, was coming through the archway on to the terrace. They stood together, looking out across the wintry Park. Then Perseus bent down, gathered his son into his arms, and kissed him.
‘Put it back,’ I said, in answer to Mr Wraxall’s question. ‘I do not wish to know where, and you must never tell me, or my husband. I shall be ruled by him no longer.’
Mr Wraxall nodded in agreement. Then he reached into his pocket.
‘This was inside,’ he said, passing me a small slip of yellow paper. ‘The gentleman who wrote it would be glad, I’m sure, that you have chosen to take his advice.’
I took the paper from him and read the few words written on it, in a small, precise hand:
These papers, delivered to me by Mr John Lazarus, shipping-agent, of Billiter Street, City, and bound together by Mr Riviere, using antique materials, to resemble a folio of the seventeenth century, were covertly placed – on the author’s instructions – in the Library of Evenwood Park, by me, Christopher Martin Tredgold, solicitor, on 30th November 1856, to be found by others, or not, as Fate or chance decided.
This much I was specifically instructed to say by the author. On my own account, I write only these wise words, to whosoever should read them:
Quieta non movere.
*
C.M.T.
‘Do you remember your Latin?’ asked Mr Wraxall.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember. I shall always remember.’

FINIS

Acknowledgements

This novel was written during a difficult period in my life. I wish specifically to acknowledge the contribution to its completion of the following:
At A.P. Watt: my agent, Natasha Fairweather; Naomi Leon; Judy-Meg Kennedy; Linda Shaughnessy; and Teresa Nicholls.
At John Murray: my editor, Roland Philipps; Rowan Yapp; James Spackman; Nikki Barrow; and Caro Westmore.
At W. W. Norton: my US editor, Jill Bialosky.
At McClelland & Stewart: my Canadian editor, Ellen Seligman and Lara Hinchberger.
I acknowledge once again the expert advice of Clive Cheesman – Rouge Dragon Pursuivant – at the College of Arms; and the copy-editing and proof-reading expertise of Celia Levitt and Nick de Somogyi respectively. Thanks are also due to my assistant Sally Owen for her administrative skills.
To all the consultants, doctors, and medical staff who have kept me going over the past two years, no words of thanks can ever be adequate. They principally include: Professor Christer Lindquist; Dr Christopher Nutting; Mr Michael Powell; Mr David Roberts; Mr Nigel Davies; Mr Naresh Joshi; Dr Diana Brown; Dr Peter Schofield; Dr Adrian Jones; and Professor John Wass.
Finally, family and friends. For their love, support, and patience, I mention particularly my wife, Dizzy, on whom I now depend more than ever; our daughter Emily (with apologies again for naming one of my central characters after her) and her partner Kips Davenport; my stepchildren Miranda and Barnaby; our grandchildren – Eleanor, Harry, and Dizzy Junior – and daughter-in-law, Becky; my parents, Gordon and Eileen Cox; my mother-in-law, Joan Crockett; and Jamie, Ruth, Joanna, and Rachel Crockett.
To all these, and to the many others I have not named who have helped and contributed in their various ways, I am properly and sincerely grateful.

Michael Cox
Denford, March 2008

*
Published by Edward Moxon in 1854, the year of Daunt’s death. Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s later verse-novel,
Aurora Leigh
(published 1856), it has a contemporary setting, but its form (as Miss Gorst rightly observes), and its language, are consciously based on the Miltonic epic model. It concerns the heir to a great estate, Sebastian Montclare, who is cheated out of his inheritance by an unscrupulous cousin, Everard Burgoyne. The absurdity of the plot is matched only by the ineptitude of much of the verse, yet the work was popular and well received; even now, some passages retain a certain swaggering grandeur and verve that display a distinct, though wasted, talent.
*
Rosa Mundi; and Other Poems
(London: Edward Moxon, 1854), the first of the two works by Daunt (the other being
The Heir
: see note to p. 71) to be published in the year of his death. The concluding two stanzas of the poem in question, entitled ‘From the Persian’, were copied out by Daunt’s murderer, Edward Glyver; the piece of paper on which they had been written was later found thrust into the victim’s hand. A final irony is that the author had previously sent his murderer – a former schoolfellow – a complimentary copy of the book.
*
Lucian Rawson Slake (1805–76), An Analytical and Descriptive History of the Gentile Nations (Smith, Elder, 1868), a comprehensive, but unfortunately almost unreadable history of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. A rival work, by George Smith (1800–68), had been published by Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans in 1853. This must have been a blow to Slake, who had been working on his magnum opus since 1833, but he continued with his work nevertheless. One fears it found few readers.
*
Penelope: A Tragedy, in Verse
(Bell & Daldy, 1853).
*
Epimetheus; with other posthumous poems
(2 vols, Edward Moxon, 1854 for 1855).
*
Norwich: Jarrold & Sons, printed for private circulation, 1874.
*
The Mount is better known now as the hill parish of Monte, famous for the toboggans that have long been provided for the descent to Funchal. The Palheiro de Ferreiro, or Smith’s Cottage, was built, and the extensive area around it planted, by João, 1st Count of Carvalhal.
*
A peculiarly Madeiran form of conveyance, being a kind of covered sledge drawn by two oxen.
*
A covered litter, normally carried by four bearers.
*
Battley’s Sedative Solution, a patent brand of laudanum containing opium, sherry, alcohol, calcium hydrate, and distilled water.
*
‘Villa of the Rosemaries’. Rosemary bushes grow to a large size in Madeira, large enough sometimes to form a hedge.
*
The church, with its spectacular views, was completed in 1818 on the site of a fifteenth-century chapel destroyed in the earthquake of 1748. On the Feast of the Assumption (15 August) penitents still ascend the seventy-four steps on their knees.
*
François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénélon (1651–1715), French Catholic prelate and writer.
*
A dealer in artists’ colours.
*
A reference to Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel, Chapter 37).
*
Caroline Daunt,
née
Petrie (1797–1874). The 25th Lord Tansor was her second cousin. She married Achilles Daunt in 1821.
*
Queen Mary: A Drama,
first performed at the Lyceum Theatre in April 1876 and published the following month.
*
The British military hospital (present-day Üsküdar, ancient Chrysopolis, in Turkey), made famous by its association with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War.
*
Originally a fashionable theatre, with the main entrance on Oxford Street. Its attractions included a picture gallery, a toy bazaar, and, on the ground floor, numerous counters offering a wide range of clothing items and fancy goods.
*
Edward Vernon Harcourt (1825–91), naturalist and MP for Oxford from 1878 to 1885. His
Sketch of Madeira; containing information for the traveller, or invalid visitor
had been published in 1851.
*
Der Struwwelpeter
[‘Shock-headed or Slovenly Peter’] by Heinrich Hoffmann (1809–74), an illustrated book of cautionary tales for children first published in German in 1845, and in an anonymous and hugely popular English version in 1848.
*
The Villa Eléonore-Louise, in the Avenue du Dr Picaud, built by Henry Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868), in 1834–5.
*
Milton,
Paradise Lost
(i.302): ‘Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks / In Vallombrosa…’
*
‘Behold a god more powerful than I, who, coming, will rule over me.’ Dante,
Vita Nuova
(I, ii).
*
Vincenz Priessnitz (1799–1851), a farmer’s son who founded the health cult of hydrotherapy, the centre of which was at the ‘water university’ of Gräf-enberg in Austrian Silesia (now Lázne? Jeseník in the Czech Republic).
*
The collapse of the discount bank Overend Gurney in May 1866, leaving debts of some £11 million, was the most spectacular of the nineteenth century.
*
Presumably,
Two on a Tower: A Romance
, published in October 1882. Hardy’s next novel,
The Mayor of Casterbridge
, was not published until 1886.
*
‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’