Страница 85 из 86
EDWARD JOSEPH BURTON (1824–1895)
Richard Francis Burton’s younger brother shared his wild youth but later settled into army life. Extremely handsome and a talented violinist, he became an enthusiastic hunter, which proved his undoing—in 1856, his killing of elephants so enraged Singhalese villagers that they beat him senseless. The following year, still not properly recovered, he fought valiantly during the Indian Mutiny but was so severely affected by sunstroke that he suffered a psychotic reaction. He never spoke again. For much of the remaining thirty-seven years of his life, he was a patient in the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum.
THE CANNIBAL CLUB
In 1863, Burton and Dr. James Hunt established the Anthropological Society, through which to publish books concerning ethnological and anthropological matters. As an offshoot of the society, the Ca
CAPTAIN SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON (1821–1890)
1860 was one of the darkest periods of Burton’s life. Having returned the previous year from his expedition to locate the source of the Nile, he was engaged in a war of words with Lieutenant John Ha
MICK FARREN (1943–2013)
A singer-songwriter, music journalist and science fiction author, Farren fronted the proto-punk band the Deviants. During the late sixties, he was for a brief period at the helm of the underground newspaper International Times and also ran a magazine called Nasty Tales, which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. His essay for the New Musical Express, entitled “The Titanic Sails at Dawn,” is considered a seminal analysis of the state of the music industry during the mid-seventies and a clarion call for the birth of punk rock. Farren continued to write novels, poetry and songs, and to perform with the Deviants, right up until his death onstage at the Borderline Club in London on July 27, 2013.
GEORGE V (GEORGE FREDERICK ALEXANDER CHARLES ERNEST AUGUSTUS) (1819–1878)
George V, the son of Ernest Augustus I, was the last king of Hanover. His reign ended with the unification of Germany.
SIR DANIEL GOOCH (1816–1889)
Daniel Gooch was a railway engineer who worked with such luminaries as Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He was the first chief mechanical engineer of the Great Western Railway and was later its chairman. Gooch was also involved in the laying of the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable and became the chairman of the Telegraph Construction Company. Later in life he was elected to office as a parliamentary minister. He was knighted in 1866.
THE GROSVENOR SQUARE RIOT OF 1968
On March 17, Grosvenor Square, London, was the scene of an anti–Vietnam War demonstration that quickly turned into a riot due to what many regarded as heavy-handed police tactics. It ended with eighty-six people injured and two hundred demonstrators arrested. Mick Farren was present.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES, 1ST BARON HOUGHTON (1809–1885)
Monckton Milnes was a poet, socialite, politician, patron of the arts, and collector of erotic and esoteric literature. He was also one of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s closest friends and supporters.
JOHN HANNING SPEKE (1827–1864)
An officer in the British Indian Army, Speke accompanied Burton first on his ill-fated expedition to Somalia, which ended when their camp was attacked at Berbera. Speke was captured and pierced through the arms, side and thighs by a spear before somehow managing to escape and run away. This expedition also marked the begi
HERBERT SPENCER (1820–1903)
One of the most influential, accomplished, and misunderstood philosophers in British history, Herbert Spencer melded Darwinism with sociology. He originated the phrase “survival of the fittest,” which was then taken up by Darwin himself. It was also adopted, misinterpreted, and misused by a number of governments, who employed it to justify their eugenics programs, culminating in the Holocaust of the 1940s. Spencer, unfortunately, thus became associated with one of the darkest periods in modern history. Bizarrely, he is also credited with the invention of the paper clip.
SPRING HEELED JACK
Spring Heeled Jack is one of the great mysteries of the Victorian age (and beyond). This ghost or apparition, creature or trickster, was able to leap to an extraordinary height. Helmeted and cloaked, it breathed blue fire and frightened unsuspecting victims, mostly young women, over a period mainly from 1837 to 1888 but also extending into the twenty-first century.
ABRAHAM "BRAM" STOKER (1847–1912)
Born in Dublin, Ireland, thirteen-year-old Stoker was still at school in 1860. In adulthood, he became the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London. On August 13, 1878, Stoker met Sir Richard Francis Burton for the first time and described him as follows: “The man riveted my attention. He was dark and forceful, and masterful, and ruthless. I have never seen so iron a countenance. As he spoke the upper lip rose and his canine tooth showed its full length like the gleam of a dagger.” Stoker’s novel Dracula was published in 1897.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (1837–1909)
A celebrated poet, playwright, novelist and critic, Swinburne was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in every year from 1903 to 1907 and once more in 1909. In 1860, Swinburne returned to Balliol College, Oxford, having been rusticated the year before. He never received a degree and after leaving the college plunged into literary circles where he quickly gained a reputation as a great poet, an extreme eccentric, and a very heavy drinker. Swinburne is thought to have suffered a condition through which he sensed pain as pleasure, which might explain his masochistic tendencies. He and Burton were very close friends.
“And grief shall endure not for ever, I know . . .”
—From The Triumph of Time
“I hid my heart in a nest of roses . . .”
—From A Ballad of Dreamland, Poems & Ballads (second and third series)
TERMINAL EMANATION
Though it’s been theorised for many years, research was published during the writing of this novel that supports the proposition that the brain sends out a strong electromagnetic pulse at the moment of death. According to the Washington Post: “Scientists from the University of Michigan recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in nine anesthetized rats after inducing cardiac arrest. Within the first 30 seconds after the heart had stopped, all the mammals displayed a surge of highly synchronized brain activity that had features associated with consciousness and visual activation. The burst of electrical patterns even exceeded levels seen during a normal, awake state.” (Source: “Surge of Brain Activity May Explain Near-Death Experience, Study Says,” Washingtonpost.com, August 12, 2013.)