The Meaning of Night (80 page)

years and which was now exerting pressure on the optic nerves. For a time it seemed as if

the operation had been successful: my sight returned. But then it began to deteriorate

again and further treatment was required. Preparatory to this I was prescribed the drug

dexamethasone. It had a most remarkable effect, unleashing unstoppable, furious creative

energy. Unable to sleep, I took out the novel I had been working on and thinking about

for thirty years. To be accurate, it was actually several discarded first chapters, disjointed

scenes, and random passages of description. One of the discarded chapters seemed quite

promising; and so I started to rewrite it. In the space of a month I had written 40,000

words; within three months I was approaching 100,000 words. Dexamethasone had

kick-started the process; but what is now presented here is overwhelmingly the result of

normal brain power.

The Meaning of Night was written out of a long-standing fascination with the

middle decades of the nineteenth century and with the fiction it gave rise to. The 1840s

and 1850s seem to me to possess a peculiar character – recognizably modern, and yet

alien in so many ways, and becoming more so. I have made no attempt to emulate the

intellectual scale of the mid-Victorian novel, simply to try and evoke some of its

narrative qualities, and something of its atmosphere, in a way that is neither sterile

pastiche nor wilful satire. Above all, I hope, I have paid successful homage to the god of

story. Like Glyver, I fell early under Scheherazade’s spell, and it has been storytellers,

above all, who have shaped my literary taste. If Glyver’s story has kept his readers

turning the page, from the first to the last, then I shall be very happy.

Though I have tried throughout to make the implausible resonate with a degree of

plausibility, a real person – me – has been standing just behind my puppets, including the

indefatigable Professor Antrobus, pulling their strings. And in that capacity I have drawn

on a number of real things – people, places, sources – that need to be acknowledged.

David Copperfield started it, when I was – how old? Ten? Eleven? From then on I

became emotionally drawn to the mid-Victorian world and its fictional portrayals. Since

then I have read and researched, in a firmly amateur capacity, and this novel is the result.

That Dickensian well-spring also yielded the name – Emily – that my wife and I gave to

our daughter, the name I always knew she would bear, years before she was born, from

the moment I came across it in Dickens’s pages. Inevitably, it became the name of the

leading female character of this work almost without thinking – though there the

resemblance between Miss Carteret and my daughter most certainly ends.

Evenwood – Glyver’s cursed obsession – does not exist, though three places in

particular that have gone into its making do: Drayton House, the private home of the

Stopford-Sackville family, and Deene Park, the former home of James Thomas

Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan (of Balaclava fame) – both in my own home county of

Northamptonshire; and Burghley House, Stamford. Drayton I have yearned after from

afar for many years, as a kind of symbol of something fleetingly held and then lost, like

childhood. Both Deene and Burghley are periodically open to public view, so enabling

one to taste their pleasures directly and regularly. The library of – I mean the books

collected by – Lord William Duport has been based unashamedly on that of the 2nd Earl

Spencer at Althorp. Residents of East Northamptonshire will also recognize the names of

several local places in those of some of the characters – Tansor (a charming village

outside Oundle) and Glapthorn (ditto), Glyver’s principal pseudonym, amongst them.

As far as Glyver’s London is concerned, I have tried to be as topographically

exact as the demands of the narrative would permit, and have spent many hours poring

over contemporary maps and guidebooks; so, for instance, street names, shops, and the

location of hotels and restaurants all reflect contemporary reality. With one significant

exception: Cain Court is my own invention. I envisage it leading through from Maiden

Lane to the Strand, slightly west of the Adelphi Theatre (i.e on the north side of the

Strand). Similarly, the historical and legal aspects of Baronies by Writ, and the various

legal issues concerned with the Tansor inheritance, are as veracious as I could make them

(though of course the family and all their works are completely fictitious). I must

acknowledge here the invaluable advice provided by Clive Cheesman, Rouge Dragon

Pursuivant, at the College of Arms, on various matters relating to the Tansor Barony. He

also most kindly provided the Latin text and English translation of the writ that

summoned the first Baron Tansor, Maldwin Duport, to attend parliament in 1264. I

cannot thank him enough for the care and courtesy with which he responded to my

enquiries. Without his expertise, I do not know what legal and genealogical howlers I

might have committed. Anything in that line that may have slipped through the net is, of

course, most definitely my responsibility, not his.

With regard to background details, the published sources on which I have drawn

are too numerous, too scattered over the years, to list in full. In particular, factual

accounts of mid-Victorian London abound and I have freely ransacked them. When I

began contemplating this novel, more years ago than I care to think, such works could

only be dusted off on the shelves of a major copyright library. Now many of them are

freely available on the Web – I direct interested readers with pleasure and gratitude to the

excellent Victorian Dictionary site created and maintained by Lee Jackson (?

HYPERLINK “http://www.victorianlondon.org” ??www.victorianlondon.org?).

Indispensable source works of course include Henry Mayhew (who himself turned from

fact to fiction in collaboration with his brother Augustus – see, for instance, 1851; or, The

Adventures of Mr and Mrs Sandboys, and Family, who came up to London to ‘enjoy

themselves’ and to see the Great Exhibition), without whose London Labour and the

London Poor of 1851 no one writing or fictionalizing about this period can afford to

neglect.

Linguistically and stylistically, the novelists themselves – including Dickens,

Charles Reade, Trollope, Charlotte Riddell, George Augustus Sala (together with his

admirable non-fiction works), Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and, above all, the divine Wilkie

Collins, as well as the serialized and shorter fiction to be found in mid-century magazines

such as Temple Bar and Belgravia – have all, in their various ways, contributed texture,

details, and nuance, though to a text that (I hope) remains distinctly contemporary in its

tone and impact rather than a sterile exercise in literary re-enactment.

The thematic underpinnings, such as they are, have benefited by my former

associations at the University Press in Oxford (the ‘Other Place’, alas, which does not

figure much in this narrative) with a number of academics in the field of

nineteenth-century fiction, again too numerous and scattered to mention in full, but

amongst whom I must single out (though he will have no idea why) Professor John

Sutherland, especially his essential Companion to Victorian Fiction, which has lead me

into many pleasurable culs-de-sac.

I also have to thank Michael Meredith, Librarian of Eton College, and Penny

Hatfield, the Eton Archivist, for their help on some key details of Glyver and Daunt’s

time at the school, although they should in no way be held responsible for the fictional

results. Thanks must also go to Gordon Biddle, from whom (together with the late

Professor Jack Simmons) I had the pleasure of commissioning The Oxford Companion to

British Railway History and who helped to establish how Glyver travelled by train from

Stamford to London via Cambridge. Details (as Glyver knows) are important. For advice

on the technical aspects of Glyver’s passion for photography, I am grateful to Dr Robin

Lenman of the University of Warwick, editor of The Oxford Companion to the

Photograph, and another former commissionee (there is no such word, but perhaps there

should be).

For Natasha Fairweather, my agent at A.P. Watt, no thanks are profuse enough.

By taking me on she gave me much needed hope as I was emerging from a very dark

time in my life, and through her commitment and professionalism transformed my life –

the phrase is not too strong – and that of my family. Professionally speaking, I have been

lucky in so many ways, but particularly in my agent. Thanks must also go to Derek

Johns, who first read proto-snippets from what turned out to be The Meaning of Night

over a decade ago; to Linda Shaughnessy and her fantastic team, Teresa Nicolls and

Madeleine Butson, for getting the book to so many foreign-language publishers; to

Philippa Donovan; and to everyone else at A.P. Watt who have helped, and are helping,

to make it all happen.

To my British publisher, Anya Serota at John Murray, I shall always feel

immense gratitude. She was the first publisher to read the book, and it was her

overwhelming (and completely unexpected) enthusiasm that got the ball well and truly

rolling. She has been an unfailing source of encouragement and good sense, and, with

Natasha, has given me the confidence to finish what I started. My two other

English-language editors – Jill Bialosky at Norton in the USA and Ellen Seligman at

McLelland and Stuart in Canada – have also been enormously supportive. My

foreign-language publishers have been equally wonderful, and I must thank them all for

putting their faith in me.

My old friend and former colleague David Young, Chairman and CEO of the

Time Warner Book Group, deserves especial mention for agreeing to read the first part of

the novel. Apart from my agent, he was the first ‘pro’ to read it, and I shall always be

grateful for his encouragement, and for the friendship we’ve enjoyed over the years.

Finally, like all authors who depend on those close to them for daily support and

understanding, what is undeniably real about this novel is the debt I owe to my family: to

my darling wife Dizzy and daughter Emily, who have borne the brunt of my illness and

without whom I would have no reason to write; my stepchildren Miranda and Barnaby;

my grandchildren, Eleanor, Harry, and Dizzy Junior, and my daughter-in-law Becky; my

mother-in-law, Jo Crockett, in whose house large chunks of the novel were written; and,

last but never least, my wonderful parents, Gordon and Eileen Cox, who have supported

me through thick and thin.

Real, too, is the final and, to me, precious emotion. It’s over.

At last.

Michael Cox

Denford, Northamptonshire

? [An introduction to a treatise or discourse. Ed.]

? [Nathaniel Wanley (1634–80). The book was first published in 1678. The

subtitle reads: ‘A general history of man: In six books. Wherein by many thousands of

examples is shewed what man hath been from the first ages of the world to these times …

Collected from the writings of the most approved historians, philosophers, physicians,

philologists and others’. Ed.]

? [Henry Colburn (d. 1852), the publisher and founder of the Literary Gazette.

Ed.]

? [A well-known fish and sea-food eating-place in the Haymarket. Ed.]

? [Waterloo Bridge was known as the ‘Bridge of Sighs’ because of the number of

suicides who had leapt to their deaths from it. Ed.]

? [From John Donne, ‘Elegie XIX: Going to Bed’. Ed.]

? [Boodle’s, a gentleman’s club of a semi-political character at 28 St James’s

Street; White’s (originally White’s Chocolate House, established towards the end of the

seventeenth century), was another celebrated club-house at 37 and 38 St James’s Street.

Ed.]

? [An adjective carrying the meaning of licentious or lewd, deriving from Cyprus,

an island famed for the worship of Aphrodite. Ed.]

? [‘By name’. Ed.]

? [Opened in 1818, and formerly called the Coburg, it was situated in Waterloo

Bridge Road, Lambeth. Ed.]

? [‘Forewarned, forearmed’. Ed.]

? [The society, founded by Sir Ashton Lever in 1781, was at the forefront of the

revival of archery at the end of the eighteenth century. It obtained a lease from the Crown

to establish its ground in the Inner Circle of Regent’s Park in 1833. Ed.]

? [‘From the cradle’. Ed.]

? [In Bond Street. Ed.]

? [A quote from John Gay’s Dione, iv. vi. Ed.]

? [A former gold English coin worth 20 shillings (i.e. one pound sterling). It is

notoriously difficult to estimate comparative values; but using the indexes and formulas

provided by J. O’Donoghue, L. Goulding, and G. Allen in Consumer Price Inflation

Since 1750 (Office for National Statistics, 2004), in 1832 the value of the two hundred

coins was roughly equivalent to £14,000 in today’s money. The coins would have carried

the head of William IV (d. 1837). Ed.]

? [Saducismus Triumphatus; or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and

Apparitions, by Joseph Glanvill (1636–80), an attempt to convince sceptics that such

things were real. It was in fact an enlarged and posthumous edition (with additions by