I started reading, but then got distracted by footnote 5 (I wasn't up to 5; I was only up to 2--I had laughed at 1, and was expecting 2 to tell me that Howard's 1500s ancestors were, I don't know, Cossacks or something. I like your notion that he's autochthonous, though. But then I saw 5, and it seemed just so profound and so beautiful. "Nothing of the beloved past has been lost, not a girlfriend, a fiancé, or a vocation." It reminds me of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.

Now back to the main text.