by H. G. Wells
NOTES
1. those abandoned chapters: See Introduction, pp. xvii–xviii.
List of Textual Emendations
Sources of the readings are explained in A Note on the Text.
A = Atlantic
Ed. = Editor
M = Macmillan
Reading accepted Reading rejected
3.8 ‘SWAPPED' Ed. “SWAPPED!” M “SWAPPED” A
7:20 windows A window M
8:13 mortarboards Ed. mortar-boards M, A
9:11 spoon, A spoon M
15:17 on A in M
16:6 crew); A crew) M
16:9 prohibition), A prohibition) M
16:10 parcel, A parcel M
17:10 copy-books A copybooks M
17:11 school-books Ed. school books M, A
20:1 offhandedly Ed. off-handedly M, A
24:22 Tit-Bits A Tit Bits M
28:36 trouser pocket A trouser-pocket M
28:38 a-thinking A a thinking M
30: 7 poll A pole M
32:2 baby-linen A baby linen M
32:27 Ladylike A Lady-like M
35:30 parcels; A parcels, M
36:15–17 beneath his… endless blankets A he dreamt of combing endless blankets beneath his overcoat, spare undershirt, and three newspapers. M
37:35 Terrace, A Terrace M
40: 10 days' A days M
47:27 don' A done M
50:1 Shakespeare A Shakespear M
50:3 Shakespeare A Shakespear M
52:25 girl,' Ed. girl” M girl,” A
53:2 oldish A elderly, oldish M
53:36 once, A once M
53:37 class-time, A class-time M
54:34 sacrifices, Ed. sacrifices M, A
55:14 Tonbridge A Tunbridge M
59:14 reely A reelly M
64:12 Reely A Really M
73:24 asked A asked, M
7 3: 3 1 illustration A illustration, M
75:2 maybe A may be M
75:10 trouser-leg Ed. trouser leg M, A
76:31 trouser-leg Ed. trouser leg M, A
77:18 woodcarving Ed. wood-carving M, A
77:22 window-dressing Ed. window dressing M, A
78:10 moonlit A moonlight M
87:24 window-tickets Ed. window tickets M, A
88:33 belongings; A belongings, M
94:22 pocket; A pocket, M
96:1 ‘“—on Ed. “—on M “‘— on A
96:1 seventy-eight—”’ Ed. seventy-eight—” seventy-eight—’” A
104:13 began, A began M
107:36 first-class A first class M
110:23 summertime A summer time M
113:16 Twenty-six A Twenty six M
113:30 Kipps. A Kipps M
115:22 ‘e'ed A e'd M
128:19 Densmore Ed. Densemore M, A
128:22 became A became M
132: 10 mortarboards Ed. mortar-boards M, A
139:15 Forgets A Forget M
139:35 egg-cupful Ed. eggcupful M, A
142:33 siphon Ed. syphon M, A
151:6 table-cloth Ed. tablecloth M, A
157:34 entrusted A intrusted M
159:19 begins, A begins M
170:19 said, A said M
172:22 There are A There's M
185:1 was A was, M
185:35 school play A school-play M
18:10 To whom A Whom to M
188:29 first fruits A firstfruits M
189:25 said, A said M
192:8 a-Beating Ed. a Beating M a-Beating A
209:28 sea-poppy Ed. sea poppy M, A
214:9 ‘Possible A Possible M
217:5 forgotten A forgotten M
219:13 centring A centering M
225:12 grey-brown A grey brown M
225:23 smiled, A smiled M
228:7 thin-wristed A thin wristed M
235:27 greensward A green sward M
244:26 ‘e Ed. e M 'e A
248:12 Edgware Ed. Edgewane M A
251:25 must A most M
258:23 greenish white A greenish-white M
264:14 said, A said; M
264:15 appeal, A appeal M
274:1 ‘earthrug A 'earth-rug M
281:31 house-agents Ed. house agents M, A
303:13 Kipps A Kipps' M
307:19 'sociate A 'ssociate M
315:1 mantel-shelf A mantelshelf M
333:18 breast pocket A breast-pocket M
Notes
Note on Pre-Decimal Coinage: There were twenty shillings to a pound, and twelve pence to a shilling (the equivalent of five pence in today's money). Pounds, shillings and pence were abbreviated as £ s d. Half a crown was two shillings and sixpence; a guinea was one pound and one shilling. A ‘bob' was slang for a shilling.
[EPIGRAPH]
1 MANNERS AND RULES OF GOOD SOCIETY, By a Member of the Aristocracy: Frequently revised and reissued: the 21st edition that Kipps consults in Book II, Chapter the Second, § 3, was published in London and New York by Frederick Warne in 1896. (See also II, 2, § 3 and note 10.)
BOOK I
THE MAKING OF KIPPS
CHAPTER THE FIRST
THE LITTLE SHOP AT NEW ROMNEY
1. daguerreotype: Early type of photographic reproduction on a silver-covered copper plate.
2. Dolly Varden hat: Large picture hat with flowers and with one side angled down, named after a character in Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge (1841).
3. mortarboards: Black cap with a square on top and a tassel, worn by academics.
4. newel: Central pillar of a staircase.
5. cubby-house: Snug, cosy place built by children to play in.
6. Olympian: Olympus, in Greek mythology, was the home of the gods: hence high, mighty, of divine standard.
7. drabbit: Euphemism for ‘damn it‘.
8. ‘Colic for the Day’: The Collect for the Day, a short prayer during Anglican church services.
9. Quodling: Or codlin, small cod fish.
10. nyar… 'im-singing: Respectively, a sound expressing derision, and hymn-singing.
11. pilaster: Shallow rectangular column attached to a wall.
12. National school: Endowed church school, a system of education that preceded Board Schools (see next note).
13. parents in ‘India’… board school: Many parents stationed in India, Britain's most important colonial dominion, chose to have their children educated in boarding schools in Britain. Rudyard Kipling, for instance, was born in India, but schooled in England. And later in this paragraph, boys from France: Kent is the closest English county to France. board school: The Education Act of 1870 made provision for the setting up of elementary schools by Local Boards.
14. F.S.Sc.: Before the Cross Commission (1886–8), there was no formal government provision for postgraduate teacher training.
15. Bunsen burner: Scientific apparatus that burns a mixture of gass and air to heat test tubes or similar.
16 ‘cram’: To prepare hastily for an exam.
17. ‘passed on’: A schoolchild in a line will pinch or punch the one next to him, and whisper, ‘pass it on‘.
18. plum-duff: Suet pudding.
19. Ahn's First French Course; or, France and the French: Wells has run together two school books: Dr Ahn's Easy and Practical Method of Learning the French Language, adapted to the Use of English Learners, first published in 1851, appearing in many subsequent editions; and France and the French in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century, by Karl Hillebrand (1829–84), first published in English in 1881.
20. Martello towers: Pillbox towers originally built around the English coast during the Napoleonic Wars; the towers were a landmark of Edwardian Folkestone.
21. boarded feet: With pieces of wood tied to the feet to stop them sinking into the shingle.
22 Hythe: The Army School of Musketry was stationed at Hythe and Lydd Ranges from 1853. Hythe is about nine miles from New Romney.
23. Toke: Food, usually bread.
24 Moloch: God worshipped
by impious Israelites in Canaan; children were sacrificed to Moloch by placing them in the mouth of a statue that contained a fire within.
25. Huron: Proud and fierce tribe of Native Americans from central Ontario.
26. distrait: Abstracted (French).
27. ironclads: Battleships with plates of steel fixed to the hull.
28. quid: Piece of chewing tobacco.
29. St Bavon's: Invention of Wells's. St Bavo (d. 655) was a hermit.
30. budded: Developed.
31. rock chocolate: Hard chocolate-flavoured candy.
32. cockchafers: Large grey beetles.
33. Tit-Bits:Cheap magazine of ephemera founded in 18 81 by Alfred Harmsworth.
34. jejune: Childish (French).
35. Folkestone: South Coast seaside resort that grew quickly to become a popular destination in the second half of the nineteenth century. According to a 1901 guidebook, ‘its position as a kind of halfway house between London and Paris enables the millinery and other establishments to display the very latest creations from both‘.
36. Portmanteau: Suitcase.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE EMPORIUM
1. drakes'-tails: Unruly hair at the back of the head.
2. born a German: Education in Germany in the nineteenth century was notoriously more systematized than anywhere else in Europe, a source of worry to many English educationalists, and of frequent complaint by Wells.
3. bankruptcy under the old dispensation: Before 1883, bankruptcy was pressed by creditors, rather than administered by an official receiver.
4. Houri-like: In Muslim belief houris are heavenly nymphs.
5. Napoleonic: Possessing delusions of importance, from Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), one-time emperor of France.
6. Manchester goods: Various cotton goods, produced in Manchester.
7. as the Reduvius bug collects dirt: The reduvius personatus, or bedbug hunter, can disguise itself as a ball of dust.
8. longcloth: Fine, heavy cotton for underwear and shirts, made in long pieces.
9. sweated: Excessive, exploitative.
10. chicory: Ground root used as a means of adulterating coffee.
11. ‘cost' mark: The difference between wholesale and retail price.
12. intercalary: Interpolated.
13. racket: Noise, especially that caused by an argument; or the argument itself.
14. along the Leas to the lift: The Leas are a well-kept area of parkland, between the town and the sea, for ladies and gentlemen to promenade. Parts of Folkestone are very steep, hence the need for several lifts to connect the Leas to the beach and the road, such as the Sandgate lift, opened in 1895.
15. argey-bargey: Disputatious argument, a row.
16. ‘premiums’: Rewards.
17. Portland: Prison in Dorset, built in 1848.
18. Quod… crib: Prison; and job, place, position, respectively.
19. happened on evil things: Echo of John Milton (1608–74), Paradise Lost (1674) VII, 25–6: ‘To hoarse or mute, though fall‘n on evil days, On evil days though fall‘n, and evil tongues‘.
20. Slavey: Female servant, especially a hard-worked one; a skivvy.
21. Early Closing Association: To prevent the exploitation of shop-workers, and compensate for Saturday opening, shopkeepers were encouraged to close for one half-day during the week.
22. Terah Valley: Tribal area on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
23. Masher: Both a dandy and someone who flirts.
24. ‘feller’: Sweetheart.
25. Sabbatical: Pertaining to the Sabbath, Sunday.
26. toga virilis… Platonic Eros: Mantle worn by a Roman youth to show that manhood had been attained (Latin). Platonic Eros: Sexual love, or desire for beauty, produced, according to Socrates in Plato's Symposium (360 BC, by the arrows of the god Eros.
27. ‘spooning’: Courting, especially in a foolish or sentimental way.
28. desperate: Dashing, daring.
29. temerarious: Reckless, used here somewhat ironically.
30. Great Lady who is daughter of Uranus and the sea: According to Hesiod (c. 700 BC), Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was born when Uranus' testicles were thrown into the sea. See also Ch. 3, § 1 and note 1.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
THE WOODCARVING CLASS
1. Venus Epipontia: Venus ‘on the sea‘, where the goddess was born.
2. ‘Parlez-vous Francey’: Correctly, ‘Parlez-vous français?’: ‘Do you speak French?’
3. Home Educator: Wells's generic name for a periodical correspondence course.
4. Bacon's Advancement of Learning, and the poems of Herrick: The Advancement of Learning (1605), by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), argues for empirical methods of education, in opposition to a more theoretical Aristotelian approach. Robert Herrick (1591–1674), poet, translator and cleric.
5. Ty Wear Tees ‘Umber: The Tyne, Wear, Tees and Humber, the most northerly of the eastern rivers of England, as adumbrated in The Rivers of England (1889) by F. Watt et al.
6. revivalistic: Of a, usually low-church, evangelical movement.
7. London Matriculation examination: The London University entrance examination was widely used by secondary schools as their official exam for certification.
8. Technical Education: The emphasis on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century adult education for the working class tended to be more vocational and practical than artistic or cultural.
9. Mrs Humphry Ward: Popular Victorian religious novelist (18 51 – 1920), best known for Robert Elsmere (1888), a sympathetic portrait of a clergyman who loses his faith.
10. ‘Self-Help’: This enormously popular Victorian doctrine was proclaimed in Self-Help (1859) by Samuel Smiles (1812–1904).
11. Hanoverian politics: George I, and the four subsequent monarchs of Great Britain, were of the House of Hanover, a state of northwestern Germany. As a woman, however, Queen Victoria was not permitted to ascend to the Hanoverian throne. Hanover was annexed by Prussia in 1866 and subsequently became part of the German Empire, in spite of nationalist calls for self-government.
12. Improver: ‘A person who works at a trade under an employer for the purpose of improving his or her knowledge or skill, and accepts the opportunity of such improvement wholly or in part instead of wages' (Oxford English Dictionary).
13. word in season: Alludes to Isaiah 50:4: ‘The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary' (Authorized version here and below).
14. Freehand: Calligraphy or drawing without the use of instruments.
15. a picture by Rossetti in the South Kensington Museum: Probably The Day Dream (1880), by the pre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82), in the Victoria and Albert Museum. (See also II,2, § 1 and note 2.)
16. Turgenev's novels: Ivan Turgenev (1818–83), Russian novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer.
17. ‘last year's Academy’… ‘Vargner’: Since 1786, artists have exhibited and sold their work at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition each year at Burlington House in Piccadilly, London, and a Catalogue (‘Academy Pictures' (II, 5, § 2) is published. ‘Vagner,’ or ‘Vargner’: Richard Wagner (1813–83), German composer.
18. ‘epigram’: Humorous, often paradoxical, remark, especially associated with the writer and aesthete Oscar Wilde (1854–1900).
19. epistolary: An archly over-long word, meaning ‘relating to letters’. (Expanded in the Atlantic Edition: epistolatory.)
20. Laocoon struggle: Laocoön, a Trojan priest, who was crushed to death by two sea serpents: proverbial for being entangled in difficulties.
21. ‘bleeding’: Also a swear word in colloquial English, hence the maiden lady's ellipsis.
22. Over-human: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) argued in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–5) and elsewhere that humanity was trapped in ‘slave morality’, and that the heroic superman, or overman, should
institute a new code of heroic, life-affirming values, and lesser beings should defer to him.1
23. Dickens… ‘out of pride’: Charles Dickens (1812–70), as was revealed by the ‘Autobiographical Fragment' in Forster's Life (1872–4), had worked in Warren's Blacking Factory as a youth; after most of William Makepeace Thackeray's (1811–63) money was lost in a bank failure, he first tried to earn his living as an artist. According to the 1791 Life of Samuel Johnson (1709–84) by James Boswell (1740–95), Johnson was too proud when a poverty-stricken student in Oxford to accept the gift of a pair of new shoes left at his door, and threw them away.
24. mute inglorious: Thomas Gray (1716–71), ‘Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard' (1762), line 59: ‘Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest’.
25. the public library: The Folkestone Public Library and Museum building was opened in 1888; classes ‘for the instruction of young people in Science and Art' were held in a building next door.