Epigraphs in The Hallmarked Man: Poetry
The epigraphs in The Hallmarked Man come from both poetry and prose, but we’ll look at the prose in another feature. Today, we are doing a deep dive into the poetry.
Fans of The Ink Black Heart will remember its epigraphs are drawn from the work of a selection of women writers of the nineteenth century, many not well known today. The poetry used in The Hallmarked Man comes from the works of just three famous men of the period, A. E. Housman, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning.
Chapter 1
Oh often have I washed and dressed
And what’s to show for all my pain?
Let me lie abed and rest:
Ten thousand times I’ve done my best
And all’s to do again.
XI, Last Poems, A. E. Housman
In this unpropitious mood he proceeded along Canterbury Road through a landscape of bare trees and sodden fields.
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Alfred Edward Housman was a very popular poet during his lifetime and the youngest of the three featured in The Hallmarked Man. Though he was born at the height of the Victorian era, in 1859 when Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published, he died in 1936, an era of cars, movie theatres and commercial air travel. Like Strike, Housman showed great academic promise and went to Oxford, though he studied classics rather than history as Strike did. Also, like Strike, he initially left without a degree. Though he was regarded as one of the greatest classical scholars of his day, he didn’t study for some parts of his exams and failed. Of course, Strike left for personal reasons, leaving after the death of his mother to join the Royal Military Police.
Housman is best known today for his collection A Shropshire Lad, though he hadn’t been to Shropshire when they were published. They are mournful, simple lyrics, which strongly evoke the English countryside and became very popular during the First World War. Last Poems, from which the epigraph to chapter one is taken, was published in 1922 and Housman’s brother published More Poems from the poet’s papers after he died.
Strike is in a mournful mood as he drives to Temple Ewell in Kent as The Hallmarked Man opens. He is visiting a potential client, Decima Mullins, who is only willing to discuss her case in person and on home ground. He’s expecting Decima to be a wealthy wife in a country manor who suspects her husband is having an affair. Instead, he discovers Delamore Lodge, where Decima is staying, is a run-down property with a wild garden and broken windows. Decima is not the well-groomed upper-class woman he was expecting either. He begins to worry she’s unstable when she tells him what she wants. She needs the agency to prove that the body found in the vault of Ramsay Silver in June was not the known criminal, Jason Knowles, as the police have suggested, but Decima’s missing boyfriend Rupert Fleetwood.
Strike’s unwillingness to take the case is increased when he learns Decima is the sister of Valentine Longcaster, one of his ex-fiancée Charlotte’s closest friends and stepbrother. Worse, Sacha Legard, Charlotte’s half-brother, is also involved in the case.
Chapter 3
Too suddenly thou tellest such a loss.
Merope: A Tragedy, Matthew Arnold
‘…she was currently lying in a hospital bed on a morphine drip, determined that as few people as possible should know why she was there.
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Robin Ellacott has told Strike she cannot join him on the trip to Kent because she has a sore throat and a high fever. In truth she is in hospital as the result of an ectopic pregnancy. Her surgeon tells her, with little warning or preparation, that she might not be able to conceive naturally. Her tubes, he tells her, are badly scarred because of a chlamydia infection, itself a result of the violent assault that ended her university career.
As well as this news, and pressure from her Met officer boyfriend Ryan Murphy to buy a house with him, Robin is also still dealing with the after effects of her extended stint undercover with the abusive, cultist Universal Humanitarian Church. Her work destroyed the cult, but she finds the endless stories in the press of the trauma they inflicted and disgrace of their leader, Johnathan Wace, traumatising.
Matthew Arnold was born in 1822, and was also an Oxford man and, like Housman, studied classics. When he returned to Oxford as professor of poetry though, he was the first to give his lectures in English rather than Latin. Merope is a dramatic poem based on a Greek tragedy, and the line in the epigraph is spoken by the chorus when a messenger arrives to tell the eponymous Queen, Merope, her son is dead. This tragedy too is compounded and complicated by mistaken identities, just like that at the centre of The Hallmarked Man.
Chapter 20
The when, and where, and how, belong
To me—’Tis sad work, but I deal in such.
Second Year 1731 – King Charles, Robert Browning
‘You should be a detective,’ said Strike.
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Robert Browning, the third of the poets featured in the epigraphs, is also the oldest and probably, given that his work is often studied in British schools, the most famous. Born in 1812, he was, like Arnold and Housman, academically gifted, but because his parents were evangelical Christians rather than members of the Church of England, he was barred from studying at Oxford or Cambridge. Arnold worked as a school’s inspector, and Housman in the post office until his independent scholarship earned him a professorship, but Browning’s family supported him financially while he pursued life as a poet. He had some early success, though he occasionally baffled his readers too. His wife Elizabeth, whose work features in The Ink Black Heart was much more successful in her day. The epigraph comes from one of Browning’s plays in verse and deals with a father and son struggling for power. The speaker, D’Omera, has been spying on Charles’s father.
In The Hallmarked Man Robin and Strike pick through the footage from Ramsey Silver from the day of the murder, including the delivery of the A. H. Murdoch silver. Murdoch was an eminent Victorian in the world of the story, who discovered a silver mine in Peru and collected an important collection of masonic artefacts. As well as the victim, who was working in the shop under the false name William Wright, and a couple of customers, Strike and Robin see Pamela Bullen-Driscoll. Pamela must sort out a mistake with the delivery – a large silver Nef, a table ornament in the shape of ship, has been delivered to her shop in the London silver vaults instead of to Ramsey Silver.
At just after one a.m. a shadowy figure turns the camera off. When it is turned on again, just under two hours later, the silver is gone, and the vault now holds the body of William Wright, the hallmarked man.
Chapter 36
A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
One that many loved in vain,
Looked into a forest well
And never looked away again.
XV, A Shropshire Lad, A. E. Housman
‘If it so happens that I have to testify in court that you’re a self-centred cunt who isn’t arsed when his desperate relatives go missing, trust me, I’ll be owning the fucking stage myself.’
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
In this poem from the collection, A Shropshire Lad, classicist A. E. Housman is referencing the story of Narcissus. In brief, Narcissus, a young hunter, sees his reflection in a pool and falls in love with it. Unable to look away, he wastes away from self-love and is transformed into a flower.
The narcissist in The Hallmarked Man is Charlotte Campbell’s half-brother and cousin of the missing Rupert, Sacha Legard. Strike has met Sacha before, he remembers going horse racing with him and Valentine Longcaster during the Chiswell investigation (Lethal White), and though he doesn’t remember Sacha mentioning a cousin, that’s not a surprise as Sacha’s conversation normally turned on himself. Sacha is now an extremely successful actor and a Lord, though he says he doesn’t use the title. He meets Strike at the National Theatre – a brutalist building Strike doesn’t like much – where he is starring in Death Is No Punishment. Sacha is unwilling to help Strike, though Strike manages to learn some details about his last encounter with Rupert. Whatever Sacha’s public image, Strike thinks him a snob and a coward. He gives Sacha his full and frank opinion of his character before wishing the actor a nice Christmas and leaving.
Chapter 43
The stars have not dealt me the worst they can do:
My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.
But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest,
The brains in my head and the heart in my breast.
XVII, Additional Poems, A. E. Housman
‘Robin’s nagging feelings of guilt and confusion manifested themselves outwardly as an increased niceness and consideration to her boyfriend.’
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Strike spends Christmas with his half-sister Lucy and her family, while Robin heads to her family home in Masham, North Yorkshire, with her boyfriend Ryan. Ryan is pushing plans for them to buy a house together, something Robin finds she can’t get excited about. Christmas is tense – Robin’s brother is fighting with his pregnant girlfriend, and Robin overhears her boyfriend and mother discussing the smear campaign being waged against Strike which causes a row. After too many whiskies in their local, the Bay Horse, she also encounters her ex-husband, Matthew. Then on Christmas Eve Robin opens her thoughtful, personal gift from Strike, a thick, silver charm bracelet, but hides it from Ryan.
As New Year begins, Robin is haunted by confusion and frustration.
The epigraph comes from an expanded collection of Housman’s work, published after his death. The poems are more autobiographical than the work published during his life, and many are said to deal with his long suppressed, and unrequited love for a friend.
Chapter 57
When the bells justle in the tower
The hollow night amid,
Then on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did.
IX, Additional Poems, A. E. Housman
‘The sordid Bijou business was weighing on his conscience, but Robin couldn’t know anything about that, could she?’
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Housman’s Additional Poems provide an apt epigraph for Strike as well as for Robin. Strike is on the Caledonian Sleeper, on his way to visit Jade Semple, wife of Niall, a missing ex-paratrooper with mental health problems, who might possibly be the hallmarked man in the silver vault. Strike had hoped Robin would be with him, but she has emailed to say she’ll be staying in London instead. Strike can tell that she is angry with him but is not sure why.
Strike still has a habit of hiding things from Robin, particularly when they are personal. He doesn’t want to look any more of a philandering idiot than he already does, and he is hoping he can resolve the fallout from his brief affair with barrister Bijou Watkins without Robin finding out about it. He’s painfully aware though that his careless romantic behaviour has made him vulnerable to a smear campaign being waged against him by journalist Dominic Culpepper. Self-disgust and a bleak fatalism have him in its grip. On the train he meets another journalist, Fergus Robertson, who hands him a plum bit of intelligence, but Strike is too anaesthetised by misery and alcohol to take much pleasure in it.
Chapter 59
Listlessly through the window-bars
Gazing seawards many a league
From her lonely shore-built tower,
While the knights are at the wars…
Tristram and Iseult, Matthew Arnold
‘I never knew ’ow it ’appened because he never told me what ’e was doin’ on operations.’
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Matthew Arnold is best known today for his poem, On Dover Beach, but he was also a literary and social critic, who created the term ‘Philistines’ for people who value material wealth over cultural. The dramatic poem from which the epigraph is taken is based on an Arthurian story of love denied, suppressed, or unrequited.
Jade Semple meets Strike at the house her husband inherited from his parents in the Perthshire town of Crieff. Strike suspects she’s a drinker but given he got through almost a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label on the overnight train, he thinks perhaps he shouldn’t judge. Jade does not know what her husband did during his military career, or how he received the injury which left him mentally unstable. She thought her husband might be the man in the basement because, a mason himself, he’d become more weirdly obsessed about freemasonry since leaving hospital. She also suspects, as does Iseult, that her husband loved another woman.
Chapter 64
She thought, moreover, real lies were—lies told
For harm’s sake; whereas this had good at heart…
Pompilia, Robert Browning
‘Me?’ said Robin, pausing to tighten her belt, as the dagger was slipping. ‘I’m great. Don’t worry about me.’
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
As the investigation into the body in the vault continues, threatening calls come into the office, and Robin is targeted. After an emotionally draining encounter with Valentine Longcaster, Robin is heading towards Wood Street station in Walthamstow when she realises, she is being followed by a man in a gorilla mask. It’s clearly been chosen specifically to torment her with memories of the man who assaulted her while she was at university.
Her pursuer delivers his warning and throws a masonic knife at her before running away. While Robin is concealing the knife, so she doesn’t get arrested on the tube, her mother calls, in tears with worry about her son Martin, his partner and their new baby.
While Strike hides his romantic mismanagements and the trouble they bring, Robin tends to hide her feelings of fragility from people who care about her. The last thing she needs, she thinks, as she considers telling Murphy about the threat is the burden of his concern. She believes that she can’t tell the people who are supposed to love her the truth, because they don’t want the truth.
The epigraph comes from part volume of The Ring and the Book, Browning’s poetic drama which established his reputation as an important poet after the death of his wife. It’s a sort of historical novel in verse, a seventeenth century true crime courtroom drama, told in a series of monologues, and though it has its fans, many readers find it difficult to work out the plot. Pompilia’s adoptive parents lied about her birth and their own wealth to marry her to a man with aristocratic lineage. It is her mother’s lies Pompilia defends, from her death bed – lies which led to a miserable marriage to a man who turned out to be a monster, and the murder of herself and her parents.
Chapter 87
… we shall be
But closer linked—two creatures whom the earth
Bears singly—with strange feelings, unrevealed
But to each other…
Pauline, Robert Browning
‘and she was battling a powerful urge to let out the things she hadn’t dared say to any other human being.’
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
While The Bell and the Book is the work of Browning’s maturity, Pauline is his earliest published poem. It is a wild, fragmentary confession of love and of grand poetic ambitions. In The Hallmarked Man it provides the epigraph for the chapter where Strike and Robin are on the island of Sark, following another lead about who the man in the vault might be. In their B&B, The Old Forge, Robin makes spaghetti carbonara and deals with texts from Ryan Murphy and from a potential witness she wants to interview. Before she and Strike eat though, she finds herself telling him about her ectopic pregnancy and the hidden consequences of the attack on her it has revealed. Strike is supportive and kind, but her confession of what she’s been dealing with means he can’t bring himself to add to her difficulties by confessing his own feelings for her. However, as they discuss the case it’s clear their professional relationship and respect for each other have only deepened over the years they have worked together.
Chapter 93
You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths:
The hand’s mine now, and here you follow suit.
Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays—
You do despise me…
Bishop Blougram’s Apology, Robert Browning
‘You said you like to return favours, Mr Strike,’ said Iverson.
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
‘You know, I’d feel safer if we were still recording,’ said Strike, folding his arms.
As the many threads of the investigation come together, Strike finds himself under arrest for breaking and entering after discovering a crime scene in Harlesden. As Strike says later, he and Robin have annoyed a lot of people over this case, and that definitely includes the team from the Met investigating the Ramsay Silver case. The officers interviewing him, DCI Northmore and the redheaded DCI Iverson, are hostile, suspicious of Ryan Murphy, and keen to pay Strike and Robin back for the embarrassment they are causing them. But Strike and Robin’s work mean that in the interview, Strike has cards of his own to play.
Bishop Blougram’s Apology is the longest poem in Browning’s collection, Men and Women. The collection also features My Last Duchess, which is probably his best-known poem today. Like many of his works Bishop Blougram’s Apology is a dramatic monologue, and the Bishop is making an apology in the traditional sense. He’s justifying his actions, not expressing remorse, in front of a hostile audience. Much like Strike.
Chapter 97
But still, as we proceed,
The mass swells more and more
Of volumes yet to read,
Of secrets yet to explore.
Empedocles on Etna, Matthew Arnold
‘Couple of long shots,’ said Strike, ‘but I’m ready to try almost anything at this point.’
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Robin has found something significant after reading Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry by Albert Pike, which Strike has downloaded but not looked at in detail. The book will provide many epigraphs for The Hallmarked Man, as well as this vital clue about the disappearance of Niall Semple. Strike is also on the missing soldier’s trail. He’s bought a new laptop to explore the cyber swamps of the dark web, searching for the secret of what might have happened on Niall’s last mission.
Though in Arnold’s poem, the speaker seems despairing that the mysteries they are studying can ever be understood, Strike and Robin are now getting very, very close to uncovering the truth of what happened to Niall, to Rupert and the Murdoch Silver, as well as resolving the dark secrets surrounding the silver vault and the hallmarked man…
