Jermyn, Arthur

   In “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family,” a poet and scholar who sets fire to himself after examining a boxed object from Africa. The entire Jermyn line is marked by a strange history. In the eighteenth century, Sir Wade Jermyn, Arthur’s great-great-great-grandfather, explored the Congo, bringing back with him a mysterious wife. Sir Philip Jermyn, Wade’s son and Arthur’s great-great-grandfather, though a baronet, joins the navy as a common sailor and disappears one night as his ship lay off the coast of the Congo. Sir Robert Jermyn, Arthur’s greatgrandfather, kills his entire family except for a two-year old grandson, when he learns certain information about his past. Philip’s second son, Nevil, marries a commoner and sires a son, Sir Alfred Jermyn, who is Arthur’s father. He joins the Barnum & Bailey circus (never explicitly named, but alluded to as “The Greatest Show on Earth”) but is killed by a gorilla with whom he was conducting a boxing match.