You have already learned something of the early history of Edward Glapthorn, which, though incomplete, was also a true account of the upbringing of Edward Glyver. I shall return to that history, and its continuance, in due course. But let us first put a little flesh on the bones of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, my illustrious but as yet shadowy enemy, whose name has already graced the pages of this narrative.
He will already be known to many of you, of course, through his literary works. No doubt, in due course, for the delectation of posterity, some enterprising drudge will assemble an anodyne Life and Letters (in three fat, unreadable volumes), which will reveal nothing whatsoever concerning the true character and proclivities of its subject.† Until then, let me be your guide instead – like Virgil leading Dante through the descending circles of Hell.
By what authority do I presume to take on such a role? My own. I have become the detective of his life, seeking, over many years, to learn everything I could about my enemy. You will find this strange. No doubt it is. The scholar’s temperament, however, which I possess in abundance, is not content with facile generalities, or with unsubstantiated testimony, still less with the distortions of self-promotion. The scholar, like the lawyer, requires corroboration, verification, and firm documentary evidence, of a primary character; he sifts, and weighs, and patiently accumulates; he analyses, compares, and combines; he applies the nicest of discrimination to separate fact from fabrication, and possibility from probability. Using such methods, I have devoted myself to many objects of study in the course of my life, as I shall describe; but to none of these have I given so much of my time and care as to this pre-eminent subject. Luck, too, has played its part; for my enemy has attained celebrity, and this always loosens tongues. ‘Ah yes, I knew him when he was a boy.’ ‘Phoebus Daunt – the poet? Indeed I remember him.’ ‘You should speak to so-and-so. He knows a good deal more about the family than I.’ And so it proceeds, piece by piece, memory by memory, until, at last, a picture begins to emerge, rich and detailed.
It is all there for the picking, if you know how. The principal sources on which I have drawn are as follows: the fragmentary recollections of Daunt’s time at Eton, which appeared in the Saturday Review of the 10th of October 1848; a fuller memoir of his childhood, adolescence, and literary career, punctuated throughout with little droppings of maudlin verse, and published in 1852 as Scenes of Early Life; the personal testimony of Dr T—, the physician who attended Daunt’s mother before and immediately after her son’s birth; extracts from the unpublished journal of Dr A. B. Daunt, his father (which, I regret to say, came into my hands by unorthodox means); and the recollections of friends and neighbours, as well as those of numerous servants and other attendants.
Why I began on this biographical quest will soon be told. But now Phoebus – the radiant one – attends us. Let us not keep him waiting.
*[‘A true friend’. Ed.]
†[On the north side of Piccadilly, almost opposite Fortnum & Mason. Formerly Melbourne House, built in 1770, it was converted into sixty-nine elegant bachelor apartments in 1802 by Henry Holland. The author properly refers to it as ‘Albany’ (without the definite article). Ed.]
*[Now obsolete Eton slang for a boy on the foundation (King’s Scholar or Colleger), from the Latin togati, or ‘wearers of gowns’. Ed.]
*[At 51 Brook Street, Berkeley Square. Opened in 1812 by James Mivart, it is now better known as Claridge’s. Ed.]
*[The volume was published in December 1854, post-dated 1855. The Latin motto from Horace reads: ‘Mix with your wise counsels some brief folly. / In due place to forget one’s wisdom is sweet.’ Ed.]
*[Publilius Syrus (42 BC), Maxims. Ed.]
†[An attempt was begun by J.R. Wildgoose (1831–89) in 1874 but was abandoned. A fragmentary biographical assessment of Daunt, based on Wildgoose’s researches, appeared in the latter’s Adventures in Literature (1884). Wildgoose was himself a minor poet and author of a short life of Daunt’s contemporary, Mortimer Findlay (1812–78). As far as I am aware, no further attempts have been made to memorialize Daunt’s life and work. Ed.]
PART THE SECOND
Phoebus Rising
1819–1948
I have never yet found Pride in a noble nature: nor humility in an unworthy mind.
Owen Felltham, Resolves (1623), vi, ‘Of Arrogancy’
9
Ora et labora*
He was born – according to his own account published in Scenes of Early Life – on the last stroke of midnight, as heralded by a venerable long-case clock that stood on the landing outside his mother’s room, on the last day of the year 1819, in the industrial town of Millhead, in Lancashire.
A year or so before this great event, his father had been presented to the living of Millhead by his College, when his Fellowship there was forfeited by marriage. At Cambridge, as a young Fellow of Trinity who had already taken the degree of Doctor of Divinity and, by way of diversion from theological dispute, had produced an admirable edition of Catullus, the Reverend Achilles Daunt had acquired the reputation of a man who had much to do in the world of learning, and meant to do it. Certainly his many friends expected much of him, and but for his sudden – and, to some, inexplicable – decision to marry, his abilities would, by common consent, have carried him with little effort to high College and University office.
It was at least widely acknowledged that he had married for love, which is a noble thing for a man of ambition and limited personal means to do. The lady in question, though undeniably a beauty and of acceptable parentage, was of delicate constitution, and had no fortune. Yet love is its own justification, and of course is irresistible.
When Dr Daunt conveyed his decision to the Master of his College, that placid gentleman did his kindly best to dissuade him from a step that would certainly delay, if it did not actually curtail, his University career. For the fact was that the College just then had only one vacant living of which to dispose. Dr Passingham spoke frankly: he did not think that this living would do for a man of Daunt’s temper and standing. The stipend was small, barely enough for a single man; the parish was poor, and the work hard, with no curate to lend his aid.
And then the place itself: an utterly unlovely spot, scarred by long-established mine workings and, in latter years, by numerous foundries, workshops, and other manufactories, around which had grown up a waste of smoke-blackened brick. Dr Passingham did not say so, but he considered Millhead, which he had visited only once, to be the kind of place with which no gentleman would wish willingly to be associated.
After some minutes of attempting quiet persuasion, it began to vex the Master somewhat that Dr Daunt did not respond to his well-meant words in the way that he had hoped, persisting instead in a desire to accept the living, and its attendant hardships, at all costs. At last, Dr Passingham had no choice but to shake his head sadly and agree to put the arrangements in hand with all speed.
And so, on a cold day in December 1818, the Reverend Achilles Daunt took up residence, with his new wife, at Millhead Vicarage. The house – which I have personally visited and inspected – stands, squat and dismal, with its back to a desolate tract of moor, facing a gloomy view of tall black chimneys and ugly, close-packed dwellings in the valley below. Here, indeed, was a change for Dr Daunt. Gone were the lawns and groves and mellow stone courts of the ancient University. To his daily contemplation now lay a very different prospect, peopled by a very different humanity.