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sake of modesty, an elegant portly man in his forties will suffice. I was, at the time, arguably the most well-known author in the country, so naturally I held some authority in the circumstances. Moving swiftly through the chamber, I approached the two biographers, who remained head-to-head, like a pair of fighting stags about to charge.
    â€œHorace.” I nodded to Tuttle, who nodded back but did not remove his gaze from D’Arcy nor drop the hand that held the white gloves at the ready. Then, with the careful but exquisite focus of a consummate observer, I walked around them as if examining an interesting tableau or statue.
    â€œHammer, is it not? I did enjoy your first book.”
    â€œThank you, sir,” D’Arcy stammered, awed despite his anger, but he still dared not move for fear those white gloves might again come flying in his direction.
    â€œThe accusation is plagiarism, is it not?” I deliberately kept my voice mild, indeed, perhaps too mild—my very tone made the accusation sound absurd.
    â€œIt is, and a flagitious one at that,” Tuttle thundered while D’Arcy wisely remained silent.
    â€œA duel would resolve nothing and would quite possibly result in a great literary loss for England,” I announced, passing my verdict. The men surrounding the two biographers murmured in agreement. D’Arcy, still transfixed by Tuttle’s dangling glove, appeared vaguely aware that I’d been both diplomatic and strategic enough not to clarify the death of which biographer might be considered a great literary loss. Then to D’Arcy’s visible relief, Tuttle dropped his glove. The younger biographer turned back to me.
    â€œWhat do you suggest then, sir?”
    â€œI suggest that such a duel is really Posterity herself and it is the one duel we writers all engage in whether consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly. Let both biographies be published. The reading public and history will decide which is the better book,” I concluded a little grandly. After which the whole of the reading room burst into spontaneous applause and D’Arcy was left with the vague but uncomfortable sensation of having lost. However, I couldn’t help noticing that it was he and not Tuttle who retrieved the dropped white glove—the property of his nemesis. Intrigued by the possibility of a further twist of plot, I said nothing.
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    That night D’Arcy dreamt he was attacked by copies of Tuttle’s manuscript raining down upon him like a fatal hail, only to be rescued by me, the epitome of the successful Victorian novelist, smiling banally down upon him; apparently I opened an umbrella to protect him. It was not a good dream and he awoke with a frightful headache.
    On arising, D’Arcy forfeited breakfast and went straight to the library of the Royal Institute, determined to discover in Joseph Banks’s archives some missed piece of research that might elevate his own biography. After greeting the librarian he retrieved the well-thumbed collection of journals, sketchbooks, essays, and general reportage Sir Joseph Banks himself had bequeathed to the library. Fighting a strong sense of hopelessness, he laid out the collection in order of events and scanned it mournfully. The collection was so well known to him after his six years of study that if he closed his eyes and placed his finger down blindly upon a page he would have been able to recite the paragraph from memory. In fact the travel diary of the young Joseph Banks, written during his trip on the
Endeavour
to Polynesia, was so vivid to D’Arcy that sometimes he became confused between his own memories and that of the naturalist himself.
    Resigned to a fruitless search, he flicked through a hundred or so more pages, then, as the study clock chimed three, closed the journal. There was nothing he’d missed, no new scandalous tidbit of behavior, anthropological