The Meaning of Night (20 page)

ribbons and little bouquet of pale roses, violets, and primroses, from beneath which she

looked out at him, steadily and critically, with her serious brown eyes.

During the many subsequent occasions on which they were obliged to meet over

the course of the summer, Miss Carteret, to the relief of her father, maintained the same

air of calm and courteous detachment towards her former playfellow, little knowing that

after every such occasion the poet would immediately retire to the Rectory to lay furious

pen to paper in the composition of aching paeans to the mistress of his imagination (many

of which were published the following year as an addendum to his second great work,

The Maid of Minsk; a Poem, in Twenty-Two Cantos).

As the year 1841 drew to a close, P. Rainsford Daunt, B.A., set his mind to

conquering both the world of letters, in addition to the heart of Miss Emily Carteret. The

following spring, Lord Tansor arranged for his portrait to be painted, and there was

intense excitement in the bosom of Mrs Daunt when an invitation addressed to the young

gentleman arrived at the Rectory requesting the pleasure of his presence at Her Majesty’s

bal masqué at Buckingham Palace, at which the Court of Edward III and Queen Philippa

was re-created in astonishing magnificence. A week later, he was formally presented at

Court, at a levee at St James’s Palace, absurdly resplendent in knee breeches, buckle

shoes, and a sword.

His saddened father, meanwhile, retreated to his study to correct the proofs of his

catalogue; his Lordship spent a good deal of time in town closeted with his legal man, Mr

Christopher Tredgold; and I had set my feet on the path that was eventually to lead to

Cain-court, Strand.

15:

Apocalypsis?

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I left Heidelberg in February, 1841, travelling first to Berlin and thence to France.

I arrived in Paris two days before my twenty-first birthday, and settled myself in the

Hôtel des Princes? – a little expensive, but not more than I thought I could afford. Having

reached my majority, the residue of my capital, which had been entrusted to Mr Byam

More, was now mine. Inspired by this happy thought, I allowed myself to draw deeply on

my reserves, in anticipation of their being very soon replenished, and abandoned myself

to the infinitely various pleasures Paris can offer a young man of tolerable looks, a lively

imagination, and a good opinion of himself. But there must be an end to all pleasure, and

soon the nagging apprehension that I must soon settle on a way to earn my living began

to intrude most unwelcomingly on my days and nights. Reluctantly, after three highly

entertaining weeks, I began to make my preparations for returning England.

Then, on the morning before my departure, I ran across Le Grice in Galignani’s

Reading Room,? which had been my daily place of resort during my stay. We spent a

delightful evening recounting the separate courses our lives had taken over the four years

since we had last seen each other. Of course he had news of several old schoofellows,

Daunt amongst them. I listened politely, but changed the subject as soon as I decently

could. I had no need to be reminded of Phoebus Daunt: he was constantly in my thoughts,

and the desire to execute effectual vengeance on him for what he had done to me still

burned with a bright and steady flame.

Le Grice was en route to Italy, with no particular purpose in view other than to

pass some time in pleasant surroundings and congenial company whilst he considered

what to do with himself. Given my own uncertainty on this subject, it did not take much

persuading on his part for me to abandon my plan of returning to Sandchurch and join

him on his ramblings. I immediately wrote to Mr More requesting him to transfer the

balance of my capital to my London account, and sent word to Tom that I would be

remaining on the Continent for a little longer. The next morning, Le Grice and I began

our journey south.

After many leisurely detours, we arrived at length in Marseilles, from whence we

proceeded along the Ligurian coast to Pisa, before finally setting ourselves up, in some

splendour, in a noble Florentine palazzo, close to the Duomo. Here we remained,

indolently indulging ourselves, until the heat of the summer drove us to the cooler air of

the mountains and, in due course, to Ancona, on the Adriatic coast.

By the end of August, having made our way north to Venice, Le Grice was

beginning to show signs of restlessness. I could not get my fill of churches, and paintings,

and sculpture; but these were not at all in Le Grice’s line. One church, he would say

wearily, looked very like another, and he expressed similar sentiments when confronted

with a succession of crucifixions and nativities. At last, in the second week of September,

we finally took our leave of each other, promising that we should meet again in London

as soon as our circumstances allowed. Le Grice departed for Trieste to take ship to

England, whilst I, after a few days on my own in Venice, headed south again. For the

next year or so, with Murray’s Hand-book to Asia Minor as my guide,? I wandered

through Greece and the Levant, reaching as far as Damascus, before sailing back through

the Cyclades to Brindisi. After sojourns in Naples and Rome I found myself in Florence

once more, in the late summer of 1842.

On our first visit to the city of the Medici, we had met an American couple, a Mr

and Mrs Forrester. Once back in Florence, I presented myself at the Forresters’ residence

and, finding the position of tutor to their two boys had become vacant, owing to the

unsuitability of the previous incumbent, I immediately offered my services. I remained in

the well-paid and undemanding employment of Mr and Mrs Forrester for the next three

and a half years, during which time I grew lazy and, in my indolence, neglected my own

studies grievously. I thought often of my former life in England, and how I must one day

return; and then this would always call up the shade of Phoebus Daunt, and the

unfinished business that lay between us. (Even in Florence I’d been unable to escape him:

on my twenty-third birthday I was presented with a copy of his latest volume, The Tartar

King: A Story in XII Cantos, by Mrs Forrester, a notable bluestocking ‘I doat on Mr

Daunt,’ she’d said, wiltingly. ‘Such a genius, and so young!’) It was from this time that I

began to form certain habits that have occasionally threatened to nullify irrevocably any

vestige of the higher talents with which I have been blessed. At this period, my lapses

were modest, though I began to hate both myself and the life I was leading. At length,

following an unfortunate incident concerning the daughter of a city official, I made my

apologies to the Forresters and left Florence in some haste.

I still had no desire to return home, and so I set my course northwards. In Milan, I

fell in with an English gentleman, a Mr Bryce Furnivall, from the Department of Printed

Books at the British Museum, who was about to depart for St Petersburg. My

conversations with Mr Furnivall had rekindled my old bibliographical passions; and

when he asked if I had a mind to accompany him into Russia, I readily agreed. In St

Petersburg we were kindly received by the celebrated bibliographer V.S. Sopikov, whose

shop in Gostiny Dvor became my daily place of resort.? I was bewitched by this

extraordinary city of white and gold, its great public buildings and palaces, its wide

prospects, its canals and churches. I found a set of rooms close to Nevsky Prospekt,

began to learn the Russian language, and even embraced the fearsome winter with

delight: bundled in furs I would often wander the streets at night, with the snow falling all

about me, to stand contemplatively on the Lion Bridge by the Griboedova Canal, or

watch the ice floating downstream on the mighty Neva. But then my companion, Mr

Furnivall, was obliged to return to London, and I was left alone again. Before departing,

he requested, with some warmth, that I should come to see him at the Museum on my

return, to discuss the possibility of my filling a vacancy in the Department that had

recently arisen. As I had no other career in view, it began to seem like an attractive

prospect. I had been an exile from my native country for too long. It was time to make

something of myself. And so, in February, 1847, I quit St Petersburg, arriving at last in

Portsmouth at the beginning of April.

Billick brought the trap to meet me off the Portsmouth coach at Wareham. Having

heartily slapped each other on the back for a second or two on first seeing each other, we

travelled back for two hours and more in complete silence, save for the sound of my

companion’s incessant chewing on an old piece of tobacco, to our mutual satisfaction,

until we arrived at Sandchurch.

‘Drop me here, Billick,’ I said, as the trap passed the church.

As he continued on his way up the hill, I knocked on the door of the little leaning

cottage next to the church-yard.

Tom opened the door, spectacles in hand, an open book he had been reading

tucked under his arm.

He smiled and held out his hand, letting the book fall to the ground.

‘The traveller returns,’ he said. ‘Come on in, old chap, and make yourself at

home.’

And a second home it had once been to me, this low, dusty room tumbled from

floor to ceiling, and up the stairs from ground to roof, with books of every shape and size.

Its dear familiarity – the three-legged dresser supported by a groaning stack of

mouldering leather folios, the fishing rods crossed above the fireplace, the discoloured

marble bust of Napoleon on a little shelf by the door – was both poignant and painful.

Tom, too, his long lined face shining in the fire-glow, the great ears with grey tufts

growing out of them, his lilting Norfolk accent, brought a sense of childhood rushing in

on me.

‘Tom’, I said, ‘I believe you’ve lost what little hair you had when I last saw you.’

And we laughed, and there was an end of silence for the night.

‘What will you do, Ed?’ he asked at last.

‘I suppose I shall have to earn a living,’ I sighed. ‘I have used up nearly all my

capital, the house is in a very bad state of repair, and now Mr More has written to say that

my mother borrowed a hundred pounds from him before she died of which he now has

need.’

‘If you still have nothing definite in view,’ Tom said after a pause, ‘I might

venture to suggest something.’

Whilst travelling in the Levant, I had written to him of my new passion for the

ancient civilizations of Asia Minor. Apprised of my imminent return to England, and

unaware that I was considering the position at the British Museum, he had acted on my

behalf to make some enquiries concerning the possibility of my joining an expedition just

then assembling to excavate the monuments at Nimrud.?

‘It would be an experience, Ed, and a little money in your hands, and you could

start to make your name for yourself in a growing field.’

I said it was a splendid idea, and thanked him heartily for putting me in the way of

it, though in truth I had some reservations about the plan. The gentleman leading the

expedition, known to Tom through a relation, lived in Oxford; it was soon agreed that

Tom would write to him immediately, to suggest he and I go up there at the Professor’s

earliest convenience.

On we talked, hour after hour, about what I’d done and seen during my time on

the Continent, as well as reminiscing over old times, until at last, the clock striking

midnight, Tom said he would get the lantern and walk up the hill with me to see me safe

home. He left me at the gate beneath the chestnut tree, and I entered the silent house.

After nine years of wandering, I lay down that night in my own bed again, and

closed my eyes once more to the sound of the sea in my ears.

A week or so later, Tom called to say that he had received a reply from Professor

S––, who had expressed interest in receiving me in New College to talk over my

candidature for the expedition.

The Professor’s rooms were crammed full of casts and fragments of bas-relief,

inscriptions covered in the mysterious cuneiform writing I had read about in Rawlinson’s

account of his travels in Susiana and Kurdistân,? and carvings of muscular winged bulls

in glowering black basalt. Maps and plans lay all about the floor, or were draped over

tables and the backs of chairs; and on an easel in the centre of the room stood what I at

first took to be a monochrome painting of an immense crowned king, bearded and

braided and omnipotent in attitude, beneath whose feet crouched a captive enemy or

rebel, frozen in abject surrender to the might of the conqueror.

On closer inspection I saw that it was not a painting at all, but what the Professor,

seeing my interest, described as a photogenic drawing – a technique invented by Mr

Talbot,? a fellow student of the cuneiform texts. I stood amazed at the sight: for the

image of the king – a gargantuan and looming stone presence standing in a waste of

desert sand – had been made, not by some transient agent devised by man, but by eternal