impossible that I can ever love again.
If it is true, as the ancient sage averred, that confession of our faults is the next
thing to innocency,? then I hope this narrative will weigh something in my favour with
those who may read it.
I begin with my name. When ‘Veritas’ warned Bella that Edward Glapthorn was
not what he seems, he lived up to his pseudonym. To Bella, to my employer, to my
neighbours in Temple-street, and to others with whom you will soon become acquainted,
I was Edward Glapthorn. But I was born Edward Charles Glyver – the name by which I
had been known at Eton, when I first met Willoughby Le Grice, and by which, shortened
to ‘G.’, he has known me ever since. And if you had asked me, on our being introduced at
dinner, I would have told you that I was the only son of Captain and Mrs Edward Glyver,
of Sandchurch, Dorset. Yet even this was not my true name, and they were not my
parents. It all began, you see, in deceit; and only when the truth is told at last will
expiation be made and the poor unquiet soul, from whom all these troubles have flowed,
find peace at last.
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 volumes), which will reveal nothing
whatsoever concerning the true character and proclivities of its subject. 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 to 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
me.’ 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 October the tenth, 1849; a fuller memoir of his
childhood, adolescence, and literary career, punctuated throughout with little droppings
of maudlin verse and published in 1853 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; the unpublished diary of Dr A.B. Daunt, his father (which, I regret to say,
came into my hands by unorthodox
If it is true, as the ancient sage averred, that confession of our faults is the next
thing to innocency,? then I hope this narrative will weigh something in my favour with
those who may read it.
I begin with my name. When ‘Veritas’ warned Bella that Edward Glapthorn was
not what he seems, he lived up to his pseudonym. To Bella, to my employer, to my
neighbours in Temple-street, and to others with whom you will soon become acquainted,
I was Edward Glapthorn. But I was born Edward Charles Glyver – the name by which I
had been known at Eton, when I first met Willoughby Le Grice, and by which, shortened
to ‘G.’, he has known me ever since. And if you had asked me, on our being introduced at
dinner, I would have told you that I was the only son of Captain and Mrs Edward Glyver,
of Sandchurch, Dorset. Yet even this was not my true name, and they were not my
parents. It all began, you see, in deceit; and only when the truth is told at last will
expiation be made and the poor unquiet soul, from whom all these troubles have flowed,
find peace at last.
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 volumes), which will reveal nothing
whatsoever concerning the true character and proclivities of its subject. 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 to 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
me.’ 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 October the tenth, 1849; a fuller memoir of his
childhood, adolescence, and literary career, punctuated throughout with little droppings
of maudlin verse and published in 1853 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; the unpublished diary of Dr A.B. Daunt, his father (which, I regret to say,
came into my hands by unorthodox
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