The Meaning of Night (82 page)

nineteenth century the legal doctrine of heritable baronies by writ held full sway. Ed.]

? [The younger son of Sophia Mary Carteret, née Duport (1765–1836), Lord

Tansor’s aunt. Ed.]

? [Agrippa; with Other Poems (David Bogue, 1853). Ed.]

? [This process would have ‘barred’, or rendered ineffective, the entailed property

– i.e. the oldest part of the Tansor inheritance that included Evenwood and the other

principal estates that had been settled ‘in tail general’ on all heirs inheriting the title of

Baron Tansor. As entailed property, it could not in the normal way be disposed of by any

one possessor as absolute owner; but by breaking the entail, Lord Tansor would be free to

bequeath this property to his nominated heir. Ed.]

? [‘Truth begets hatred’: Terence, Andria, I. i. 68. Ed.]

? [The celebrated gambling house in St James’s. Ed.]

? [A curtain-raiser. Ed.]

? [‘Do not hope that what is fated by the gods can be altered by prayers’. Virgil,

Aeneid, vi. 376. Ed.]

? [‘The wolf in the story’ – i.e. ‘Speak of the Devil’. Terence, Adelphi, IV. 1. 21.

Ed.]

? [i.e. 1690. Ed.]

? [‘May he rest [in peace]’. Ed.]

? [John Snetzler (1710–85), the German-born organ builder to George III. Ed.]

? [A form of divination which consisted of taking the first passage from Homer,

or, later, Virgil, the eye fell upon as an indication of future events. The Bible was also so

used. Ed.]

? [Bibliotheca Duportiana. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Library Established by

William Perceval Duport, 23rd Baron Tansor, by the Reverend A.B. Daunt, M.A.

(Cantab). With an Annotated Handlist of Manuscripts in the Duport Collection by P.A.B.

Carteret (privately printed, 4 vols, 1841). Ed.]

? [‘The scene of the crime’. Ed.]

? [The phrase is from Macbeth, iv. iii. 208. Ed.]

? [The mother of a household. Ed.]

? [The narrator should have been more attentive. The volume’s dedication read:

‘For my Princess. Quos amor verus tenuit, tenebit’. The quotation (‘Those whom true

love has held, it will go on holding’) is from Seneca. Ed.]

? [The Roxburghe Club was founded in 1812, at the height of the bibliomania

craze, by the bibliophile and bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776–1847). Ed.]

? [Thomas Taylor, ‘the English pagan’ (1758–1835), who devoted himself to

translating and expounding the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, the Neoplatonists, and the

Pythagoreans. He was an important influence on William Blake and on the Romantic

poets (Shelley in particular), and much later on W. B. Yeats. Ed.]

? [‘Concerning the Cave of the Nymphs’, an allegorizing interpretation of the

Cave of the Nymphs on the island of Ithaca, described by Homer in the Odyssey, Book

XIII. Ed.]

? [Taylor’s translation of Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians,

Chaldeans, and Assyrians, which dealt with such matters as theurgy and divination, was

published in 1821. Iamblichus (c. ad 245–c.325), born in Syria, was a Neoplatonist

philosopher. Ed.]

? [Despite extensive searching, I cannot find that Dr Daunt’s translation and

commentary were ever published in the Classical Journal, despite their reaching proof

stage. Ed.]

? [A native of Messene, perhaps active as late as 280 bc. He wrote an influential

fantasy travel novel, the Hiera anagraphē, known mainly through fragments in the work

of Diodorus Siculus; it was also quoted by the Christian apologist Lactantius. Ed.]

? [i.e. what are now termed ‘incunabula’ (from the Latin ‘things in the cradle’),

meaning books produced in the infancy of printing in the late fifteenth century. Ed.]

? [Christophe Plantin (1514–89), French-born bookbinder and printer. He moved

to Antwerp in 1549 to set up his printing-press and became the leading printer in Western

Europe. John Burstall’s pioneering study, Plantin of Antwerp, was published in 1818.

Burstall (1774–1840), a close contemporary of the celebrated bibliographer Thomas

Frognall Dibdin, was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Ed.]

? [Owen Felltham or Feltham (1602?–68), poet and essayist. The first edition of

his famous collection of moral essays and maxims was published c.1623, when the author

was only eighteen. It proved extremely popular and went through twelve editions by

1709. Ed.]

? [‘The written word remains’. Ed.]

? [‘HENRY by the grace of God King of England Lord of Ireland Duke of

Aquitaine to his well beloved liegeman Maldwin Duport of Tansor, knight, Greeting.’

The writ, which is of great historical interest, is now in the Northampton Record Office.

The Latin text was printed in full in Northamptonshire History, vol. ixv (July 1974), with

a translation and commentary by Professor J.F. Burton. It is reproduced, with permission,

in Appendix 2. Ed.]

? [‘On the threshold’. Ed.]

? [Flash slang for ‘noose’. Ed.]

? [The bells of the church opposite Newgate Prison, which tolled to announce

impending executions. Ed.]

? [Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805–71), a former watchmaker from Blois who

became one of the greatest stage magicians of the nineteenth century. Ed.]

? [William Calcraft (1800–79), the most prolific of all English executioners, who

carried out over four hundred hangings between 1829 and 1874. Ed.]

? [Slang term for hangman. Ed.]

? [The Temple was finally demolished in 1919, by which time it was virtually a

ruin. Ed.]

? [A hired hand. Ed.]

? [Audrey was the country wench wooed by Touchstone in Shakespeare’s As You

Like It. Ed.]

? [On 28 June 1838. Ed.]

? [‘We win by degrees’. Ed.]

? [The poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793–1835), author of Tales and Historic

Scenes in Verse (1819), The Forest Sanctuary, and Other Poems (1825), Records of

Women, with Other Poems (1828), Songs of the Affections, with Other Poems (1830),

and many other works. She also published translations of the sixteenth-century

Portuguese poet Luis Vaz de Camoens. Ed.]

? [Harriet Martineau (1802–76), social reformer and woman of letters. Her works

included Letters on Mesmerism (1845), Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), Household

Education and her radical History of the Thirty Years’ Peace (both 1849), and her novel

Deerbrook (1839). Ed.]

? [Of one mind. Ed.]]

? [A case or trunk adapted for the roof of a coach or carriage. Ed.]

? [The Italian jeweller Fortunato Pio Castellani (1793–1865), who specialized in

making pieces that emulated the work of the ancient Etruscan goldsmiths. Ed.]

? [Gerald Valk (1651–1726), Dutch mezzotint engraver and publisher, and his

partner Pieter Schenk (1645–1715); Johannes Janssonius (Jan Jansson, 1588–1664),

Dutch mapmaker. Ed.]

? [‘It should not have happened . . .

What did he say? . . .

What could I do? . . . I could not tell him the truth . . .

But what will he do? . . .

He says that he will find him . . .

. . . My God, what was that?’ Ed.]

? [One of the famous Railway Guides published by George Bradshaw (1801–53),

the first volume of which was published in 1841. Ed.]

? [‘Let us be judged by our actions’. Ed.]

? [King’s is the neighbouring college to St Catharine’s. Ed.]

? [The Magus (1801) by Francis Barrett, born between 1770 and 1780, is a

seminal work on the subject of magic and occult philosophy. The Preface states that it

was written ‘chiefly for the information of those who are curious and indefatigable in

their enquiries into occult knowledge, we have, at a vast labour and expence, both of time

and charges, collected whatsoever can be deemed curious and rare, in regard to the

subject of our speculations in Natural Magic–the Cabala–Celestial and Ceremonial

Magic–Alchymy–and Magnetism’. Ed.]

? [‘Under guardianship or scholastic discipline’; i.e. undergraduates. Ed.]

? [Alexander Wale of St John’s College, then Senior Proctor. The incident took

place in April 1829. Ed.]

? [i.e. sent down from the university for a specified time. Ed.]

? [‘Suspicion’. Ed.]

? [The Sultan to whom Scheherazade tells her stories in The Arabian Nights’

Entertainments. Ed.]

? [Side-whiskers, narrow at the ears, broad and rounded at the lower jaw. Ed.]

? [In Fleet Street. Designed by Wren and completed in 1703. Ed.]

? [The Three Tuns Tavern was in Billingsgate. Its celebrated fish ‘ordinaries’ –

i.e. fixed price meals – were served at 1 and 4 o’clock; the charge was 1s. 6d., including

butcher’s meat and cheese. Ed.]

? [‘He is known by his companions’. The author’s narrative resumes from this

point in the MS. Ed.]

? [From Mozart’s Don Giovanni. It is sung by Don Ottavio, Donna Anna’s

finance. Convinced that Don Giovanni has killed Anna’s father, Don Ottavio swears to

avenge her and to return ‘as the messenger of punishment and death’. Ed.]

? [i.e. Tasmania. Ed.]

? [i.e. a member of King’s College. Ed.]

? [A slang term for the criminal classes. Ed.]

? [Heavily greased side-whiskers, which swept back to, or over, the ears. Ed.]

? [A common method of rigging races, along with pulling favourites and doping.

As Baron Alderson noted in his summing up of a case brought before the Court of

Exchequer after the 1844 Derby, ‘if gentlemen will condescend to race with blackguards

they must expect to be cheated’. Ed.]

? [At 153 Aldersgate Street. Ed.]

? [Ken-cracker: slang term for house-breaker. Ed.]

? [A terrifying cloaked figure that began to terrorize London in 1837. His usual

modus operandi was to pounce on unsuspecting passers-by, often women, and rip at their

clothes with claw-like hands. He was sometimes said to breathe fire, had eyes that burned

like hot coals, and was capable of leaping great heights over walls and fences. Whether

Jack was real or imagined is still debated, though the attacks were widely reported in the

press. Ed.]

? [Speeler: slang term for a cheat; buzzers: pickpockets; macer: a thief or sharp.

By ‘the Highway’ the author means the Ratcliffe Highway, which ran from East

Smithfield to Shadwell High Street. It was described by Watts Phillips in The Wild

Tribes of London (1855) as ‘the head-quarters of unbridled vice and drunken violence –

of all that is dirty, disorderly, and debased’. Ed.]

? [i.e. transportation. Ed.]

? [Slang term for a gullible victim. Ed.]

? [‘Flame follows smoke’ – i.e. there is no smoke without fire (Pliny). Ed.]

? [A mixture of opium and alcohol. Legal restrictions on the use of opium did not

come into force until 1868 and at this period laudanum was widely prescribed, and

widely abused. Initially a drug for the poor, laudanum became a favoured means of pain

relief for the middle classes: celebrated literary users included Coleridge, De Quincey,

and Elizabeth Browning. The novelist Wilkie Collins became virtually dependent on it

and confessed that much of The Moonstone (1868) had been written under its influence.

‘Who is the man who invented laudanum?’ asks Lydia Gwilt in Collins’s Armadale

(1866). ‘I thank him from the bottom of my heart.’ Ed.]

? [Milton, Comus, in a passage describing Chastity: ‘A thousand liveried angels

lackey her,/Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt’. Ed.]

? [‘Not all of me will die’: Horace, Odes, III. xxx. 6. Ed.]

? [Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d; or, The Artificiall Changeling

(1650), a history of bodily adornments and mutilations, by the physician John Bulwer (fl.

1648–54). Ed.]

? [This appears to have been the edition of Devotions published in octavo by

William Pickering in 1840, which also included (as well as the reproduced frontispiece

mentioned by Glyver) the famous ‘Deaths Duell’ sermon, preached before King Charles,

Lent 1630, and Izaak Walton’s Life of Donne. Ed.]

? [From the Music on the Death of Queen Mary, performed in March 1695. The

music was performed again at Purcell’s own funeral in November 1695. Ed.]

? [From Donne’s last sermon, the aforementioned ‘Deaths Duell’, preached before

Charles I at Lent 1631. Ed.]

? [‘There is danger in delay’ (Livy, Ab urbe condita). Ed.]

? [Celebrated pleasure gardens near Battersea Bridge. Regular entertainments

included fireworks, dancing, concerts, and balloon ascents. It was open from three in the

afternoon until midnight. After its respectable patrons had departed, it became an

infamous haunt of prostitutes. It finally became so great an annoyance to its neighbours

that in 1877 it was forced to close. Ed.]

? [Built in 1724 for the Maids of Honour of George II’s wife, Caroline of

Anspach. Ed.]

? [The author’s narrative temporarily concludes on the previous page of the

manuscript. The following account, on smaller sheets and in another hand, has been

bound in at this point. Ed.]

? [Lord Castlereagh (1769–1822). He became Foreign Secretary in February 1812

and committed suicide by cutting his throat with a penknife in August 1822. Ed.]

? [Spenser, Faerie Queene, II. xii. 65. Ed.]

? [Named after Hamnet Duport, 20th Baron Tansor (1656–1712), who made

extensive alterations to Evenwood in the 1690s. Ed.]

? [Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (c.1520–c.1584), French architect and engraver.

Ed.]

? [Ann Radcliffe (born 1764), author of the Gothic classic The Mysteries of