Kipps
Page 40
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
CHITTERLOW
1. Fun: Comic paper that ran from 1861 to 1901.
2. the Library Indicator: A large board which indicated whether library stock was available or on loan.
3. the Folkestone corporation: The body of local government, founded in 1313.
4. oner: Something unique.
5. slop: Policeman.
6. cabinet photographs: Photographs approximately 11 cm. by 17 cm., usually portraits, of a size to fit in a cabinet.
7. Methuselah: Lived to be 969 years old (Genesis 5:22–7), so an ironic name here, used, somewhat improbably, to indicate the age of the whiskey (or the size of the bottle, as it is also the name of a wine bottle eight times the standard size). See also note 14.
8. Oxford frame: ‘A picture-frame, the sides of which cross each other and project some distance at the corners' (OED).
9. ‘rather a take-off’: An imitation or spoof.
10. bulldog pipe: Wooden pipe with a large, heavy bowl.
11. Hon.: Honourable, ‘applied to sons of peers below the rank of Marquess' (OED).
12. Ibsen and Maeterlinck: Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), writer of controversial social plays such as A Doll's House, first performed in England in 1889, and Ghosts (1891); Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949), Belgian playwright and essayist; leading figure in the Symbolist movement and very popular in his day.
13. flats: People who are easily deceived.
14. antediluvian: Literally from before the flood (in Genesis), hence very old; here, indicating Old Methuselah.
15. William Archer: Translator and theatre critic (1856–1924), who exercised much influence and helped to establish Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw in England.
16. knock 'em up: Wake them up by knocking at the door or window.
17. Rot: Nonsense.
18. the smalls: Small towns without a proper theatre.
19. Clement Scott: Famously splenetic theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph (1841–1904).
20. asbestos: Fireproof material, sold in cloth form in drapers' shops.
21. gift of the gab: Fluency of speech.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
‘SWAPPED’
1. ‘SWAPPED’: Dismissed.
2. G. V.: Governor, slang for ‘boss’.
3. curit: Curate, a deputy parish priest.
4. huckaback: Rough linen for towelling.
5. ‘screw’: Wages.
6. Spout: Pawn.
7. penny club: The Reading Room charges a penny for admission.
8. Knocke: On the west coast of Ireland.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
THE UNEXPECTED
1. Michelangelo: Italian sculptor and painter (1475–1564).
2. jiff: Very short space of time.
3. washing-book: Laundry account book.
4. Euphemia: As Kipps will discover in § 2, ‘Euphemia' means ‘to speak well‘, or ‘being of good repute’.
5. Zola: Emile Zola (1840–1902), French realist novelist.
6. eighteen hundred and seventy-eight: The year of Kipps' birth thus locates the present action of the novel in 1892.
7. zephyrs: Fine light cotton gingham.
8. Eng: Onomatopoeia for clearing the throat.
9. Inquire Within About Everything: First published in 1856 in 2d. monthly numbers, under the full title Enquire Within: A Work of Practical Instruction upon Literally Everything that a Housekeeper ought to Know, for the Use or Ornament of a Home, and the Health and Comfort of its Occupants, revised many times subsequently.
10. dickeys: Detachable shirt fronts.
11. Indian affairs… to give these here Blacks votes: The Indian National Conference was founded in 1885; the Indian Councils Act of 1892 allowed a very small number of Indians to hold office. Indian nationalism grew in strength during the late nineteenth century, although it was opposed in principle by the Governor-General Lord Curzon, appointed in 1898.
12. Gollys: More usually ‘golly‘, a corruption of ‘by God‘: an expression of surprise.
13. regardant passant: Walking while looking back over his shoulder (French).
14 fancy shop: Selling ‘fancy goods‘, rather than cloth, such as lace, buttons or ribbons.
15. mashing ‘em… Burlington Arcade: Respectively, flirting, making a display of himself, and a high-class covered shopping arcade on Piccadilly Street, opened in 1819.
16. Marie Corelli: The best-selling, if not the best, novelist of the Victorian era (1855–1924). The girl may be thinking of The Sorrows of Satan (1895), in which the hero is morally corrupted by the inheritance of a large fortune.
17. currs: Bogs.
18. gruntulous: Grunting (a Wells coinage).
19. cretonne: A heavy cotton fabric used for bedspreads and furnishings.
20. ticking: Strong hard linen for making mattresses or pillows.
21. embonpoint: Euphemism for plumpness.
22. ‘tegs’: Sheep.
23. black my face: Blackface minstrels were a common feature of seaside entertainmment: Bert Smallways briefly chooses this mode of employment in Wells's The War in the Air (1908).
24. Gaby: Simpleton.
25. Welsh rarebits: Dish consisting largely of cheese on toast.
26. these here things that will play you a piano: The pianola, or player piano, first patented in 1897, played music automatically by means of perforations on a paper roll.
27. bloater-paste: An easily spread preparation of ground salted smoked herring.
BOOK II
MR COOTE THE CHAPERON
CHAPTER THE FIRST
THE NEW CONDITIONS
1. jacket suit: A suit with an upper garment that is shorter than an outdoor coat.
2. Mooching: Idling, loafing.
3. I don't ’ardly know where I are: Unidentified.
4. ‘Abend’: Evening (German).
5. sang-froid: Composure; literally, cold blood (French).
6. occiput: The back part of the head.
7. vases in the Burslem Etruscan style, spills: Burslem is one of Staffordshire's Six Towns, or Potteries; Etruscan pottery (in this case mock-Etruscan) is usually either black or terra cotta with incised or relief decoration. Spills are tapers for lighting fires.
8. savoir faire: Knowing what to do and how to do it, polished social behaviour (French).
9. refs: References.
10. Pharisee: Self-righteous person, who strictly observes laws, but is mostly concerned about outward appearance; from a Jewish religious sect.
11. vamp: To improvise, without accompaniment.
12. sotto-voce: In an undertone; hence, confidentially (Italian).
13. bubble-and-squeak: Fried potato and cabbage.
14. gallipots: Small glazed pots for, e.g., sugar or jam.
15. Chambers's Journal… Language of Flowers: Respectively, a heavyweight Victorian periodical; Punch's Pocket-Book for 1875, Containing Cash Account, Diary and Memoranda for Every Day in the Year, and a Variety of Useful Business Information, as well as various humorous ephemera; Reflections on the Works of God and of His Providence, Throughout all Nature, for Every Day of the Year, by Christoph Christian Sturm (1740–86), first published in English in 1788; a Victorian school textbook of atlas geography produced by the Liverpool publisher George Gill; probably one of several books published on the subject of spinal curvature by Henry Heather Bigg (1853–1911); the standard textbook on human physiology, by William Senhouse Kirkes (1823–64), first published in 1848, subsequently revised many times; The Scottish Chiefs (1810), by Jane Porter (1776–1850), tells the story of the Scottish chieftain William Wallace; a number of books were published in the nineteenth century on the subject of ‘The Language and Sentiment of Flowers’.
16. Colossal style… the Handwriting on the Wall: A reproduction of a Neo-classical-style picture of the writing on the wall by a hand in Nebuchadnezzar's palace, forecasting his downfall (Daniel 5:5–28).
17. Chubes: Tubes.
18. the Wil
d Duck: Play (1884) by Ibsen, first performed in Britain in 1894.
19. the Warren: A landslipped undercliff in Folkestone historically rich in fossils.
20. royalty system: Payment by percentage, rather than purchase of copyright.
21. Don't: Don't: A Manual of Mistakes & Improprieties More or Less Prevalent in Conduct & Speech, by ‘Censor' (Oliver Bell Bunce), published in a revised edition by Ward, Lock in 1888.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE WALSHINGHAMS
1. Band of Hope: Temperance organization for working-class children, founded in 1847.
2. Rossetti's Annunciation… Watts' Minotaur: An autotype is a monochrome photographic facsimile; The Annunciation (or Ecce Ancilla Domini) (1850) by Rossetti; The Minotaur (1885) by George Frederick Watts (1817–1904). Both paintings are held in the Tate Gallery in London. (For Watts, see also III, 3, § 6 and note 10.)
3. phrenological: Phrenology was the nineteenth-century science which claimed to be able to identify abilities and personality traits from the shape of the skull. See also ch. 8, § 3.
4. the Bookman: Monthly periodical for booksellers, bookbuyers and readers, first published in 1891.
5. American cloth: Stiff cloth with a waterproof coating.
6. Samuel Warren's Ten Thousand a Year… Kingsley: Respectively, highly successful novel (1841), by Samuel Warren (1807-77), about a draper's assistant who inherits a fortune; John Ruskin (1819–1900), Victorian art critic and sage; Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92), Victorian poet, made laureate in 1850; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), American poet; Charles Kingsley (1819–75), novelist, cleric and social reformer.
7. Sartor Resartus… Dean Farrar: Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh (1833–4), a cod-philosophical idealist treatise on the philosophy of clothes by Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881); Twaddletome is an invented name, but Wells may be thinking of the scientific but mawkish Down among the Waterweeds; or, Marvels of Pond Life, by Mona B. Bickerstaffe (1867); The Life of Frederic William Farrar, Sometime Dean of Canterbury (1904), author of religious works and books for children (1831–1905), by his son Reginald Farrar.
8. Padrooski:Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860–1941), virtuoso pianist, who toured England several times in the 1890s.
9. Sesame and Lilies… Vitality: Sesame and Lilies (1865), by Ruskin, venerates womankind while re-emphasizing traditional Victorian sexual difference; Sir George Tressady (1896), by Mrs Humphry Ward; Vitality: perhaps one of two books on natural religion with this title produced by Lionel Beale Smith in 1900 and 1901.
10. The Art of Conversing: The Art of Conversing; or, Dialogue of the Day, by the author of Manners and Rules of Good Society (1897).
11. laylock: Lilac.
12. snow upon the mountains: Euphorbia marginata, a tall, hardy, white wildflower.
13. “let”: To rent rooms for money.
14. Boreas-looking: Affected by the Greek god of the North wind.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
ENGAGED
1. the old military canal… Lympne Castle: The Royal Military Canal, dug hastily in 1804 from Rye to Shorncliffe in Folkestone; as Wells added in the Atlantic edition: ‘the canal that was to have stopped Napoleon if the sea failed us‘. Lympne castle was built in the fourteenth century on the site of a Norman castle, overlooking the Romney marches.
2. canoes: The Atlantic edition has ‘Canadian canoes‘. Canoes are now more commonly known as kayaks.
3. ‘where the brook and river meet’: From ‘Maidenhood' (1841), lines 7–9 by Longfellow: ‘Standing with reluctant feet/Where the brook and river meet,/Womanhood and childhood fleet!’
4. Portus Lemanus: The Roman harbour at Hythe.
5. for ever:The Atlantic Edition continues: For ‘hither to this lonely spot the galleys once came, the legions, the emperors, masters of the world. The castle is but a thing of yesterday, King Stephen's time or thereabout, in that retrospect.’
6. Cuyp: Aelbert Cuyp (1620–91) was a Dutch landscape painter.
7. Cherubim: One of the orders of angels, usually depicted as winged children.
8. county family: Gentry family that historically had owned land.
9. “tate-eh-tate”: Tête-à-tête: an intimate meeting (French).
10. six weeks black with jet trimmings: Kipps has accidentally, or ominously, opened the chapter on mourning.
11. As You Like It: Shakespeare play (1600) mostly set in the Forest of Arden, and thus a popular choice for open-air theatres.
12. nap: The raised fibres of a rich cloth, or the direction in which they lie.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
THE BICYCLE MANUFACTURER
1. Foozle Ile: Fusel oil, a by-product of distilling spirits.
2. after Morland: In the style of George Morland (1763–1804), English landscape painter.
3. Manufacture bicycles: Following the development of the pneumatic tyre in 1888, bicycling became an extremely popular leisure pursuit; Wells himself was a very enthusiastic cyclist.
4. hipped: Put at a disadvantage.
5. swell: Well-off, especially fashionably dressed, person.
6. Owenite profit-sharing factory: Robert Owen (1771–1858), writer, industrialist and social reformer, founded a model community at New Lanark in Scotland.
7. spectacles: Goggles.
8. sammy: Euphemism for ‘soul’.
9. doocid: Deuced, meaning ‘confounded‘, a term of emphasis.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
THE PUPIL LOVER
1. “contre temps”: A contretemps is a disagreement or mishap (French).
2. Botticelli: Real name Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, Florentine painter (1445–1510). Best-known for The Birth of Venus; revered by Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites.
3. Arts and Crafts: The Arts and Crafts Society was founded, and held its first exhibition, in 1888.
4. navvy: Labourer, originally one who worked on navigation.
5. hansom cab: Two-wheeled, one-horse carriage.
6. ‘Brudderkins’: Childish way of saying ‘little brother’.
7. Extension Literature course: University teaching given to people who are not members of a University.
8. mess jacket: Jacket without a tail that ends at the waist.
9. bounders: Untrustworthy or bad-mannered fellows, especially those who are trying to ‘bound over' the limits of their class.
10. Gibus: Collapsible top hat, also called a ‘crush hat' (see Ch. 7, § 6 and note 17.)
11. ‘Christian, dost… smai-it them’: ‘Christian, does thou see them’, a hymn by St Andrew of Crete (c. 660–740), translated by John Mason Neale (1818–66), first published for congregational use in his Parish Hymn Book (1863). The ‘hosts of Midian' are also mentioned in Ch. 6, § 6.)
12. Deep… blowing to deep: Play on Psalm 42:7: ‘Deep calleth unto deep’.
13. Stylites… chancel: A stylite was an ascetic who lived on a pillar; surplice evening service: a more formal service, in which clergymen and choristers wear more elaborate vestments; chancel: the part of a church containing the altar, sanctuary and choir.
14. predestination: The belief that God or a divine power has already determined all future events.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
DISCORDS
1. ‘Escritoire’: Small writing case for holding stationery and documents (French).
2. streakiness: Indecisiveness.
3. the Day: The Day of Judgement.
4. Viking grudge: Vikings carried out violent raids on Britain and elsewhere in Europe from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, notoriously failing to respect places of worship. For example, the holy island of Lindisfarne off Northumbria was sacked by Vikings in 789; Bishops Moregenau and Abraham of St David's Cathedral in Wales were killed by Vikings in 999 and 1080, respectively; the Viking raider Hasting reputedly murdered the Bishop of Luna in Italy who had blessed him.
5. gaiters: Coverings for the ankle, often thought of as being worn by members of the cle
rgy.
6. If Chitterlow boasted his thousands… hundreds of thousands: Allusion to 1 Samuel 18:7: ‘And the women… said, Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.’
7. Mr Kipling's best-known songs… was Prime: Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), enormously popular poet, novelist and short-story writer. Both stanzas are from ‘The Ladies‘, in Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses (1892).
8. Ex pede Herculem: (You may judge, or recognize) Hercules from his foot (Latin); in other words, the whole by the part.
9. vortical: Whirlpool-like, confused.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
LONDON
1. Don't they go it just: Spend extravagantly or quickly.
2. rook: Cheat.
3. Underground Railway… going third: London has the world's oldest metropolitan underground railway, opened in 1863. There were, at this period, three classes for the traveller.
4. Commonweal: Published from 1885 by the Socialist League led by William Morris (1834–96).
5. South Kensington… Studying science: The home of the Royal College of Science, which, in its previous incarnation as the Normal School of Science, Wells had himself attended 1884–6.
6. Physiography: Wells's own Honours Physiography, co-written with R. A. Gregory, was published in 1893.
7. pute anything, non alienum. A corruption of nil a me alienum puto (nothing is foreign to me), Terence (c. 190–159 BC), Heau-ton Timoramenos, 77 (Latin).
8. Walt Whitman: Master Pornick is named after American poet Walt Whitman (1819–92), idolized by many on the political left in the late nineteenth century.
9. Walter Crane: Artist, illustrator and socialist (1845–1915).
10. Omi: In Japanese culture, high caste, or great.
11. the times are out of joint: Allusion to William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600–1601), I.v.188: ‘The time is out of joint’.
12. corner in wheat: Purchasing all the available stock in order to achieve a monopoly.
13. Rotten Row: Popular promenade for the well-off, in Hyde Park.