by H. G. Wells
14. greensward: Archaic term for a turfed area.
15. osculatory: Characterized by kissing.
16. dubitating: doubtful.
17. crush hat: Collapsible top hat, also known as a ‘gibus' (see Ch. 5, § 3 and note 10).
18. au fait: Possessing a certain standard of knowledge, usually of etiquette (French).
19. vol au vent: Savoury dish made with sauce inside puff pastry (French).
20. what psychologists call a conversion: ‘The symbolic manifestation in physical symptoms of a psychic conflict' (OED), but Wells seems to describe a religious conversion.
21. bombe: Frozen dessert of moulded ice cream.
22. shaking the dust of the place… from his feet: An echo of Mark 6:11, where Christ sends out the disciples; ‘whosoever shall not receive you… when you depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them’.
23. some sort of musical box: A barrel-organ. Atlantic continues: ‘As a matter of fact, it was the very best sort of Harmonicon and specially made to the scale of the Hotel.’
24. counterscarp… Sousa: counterscarp: The outer side of a ditch of a fort. John Philip Sousa (1854–1932), American composer most famous for concert band music, loud and military.
25. a cask on Niagara: An anachronism, given when the novel is set: Annie Taylor was the first person to go over the falls in a barrel in 1901.
26. Metropolitan Music Hall: Popular music hall in Edgware Road.
27. wife: Atlantic Edition continues: ‘and succumbed to old habit’.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
KIPPS ENTERS SOCIETY
1. dance programme: Card at balls worn on a woman's wrist, which listed the partners for the evening's dances.
2. Ludo: Board game, also known as Pachisi, launched in Britain in 1896.
3. mumps bandage: Padded bandage worn around the jaw.
4. mill-race: The strong current caused by the action of a watermill.
5. ‘Cypshi’: Physic. ‘Wogdelenk’: knowledge, and ‘Sir Bubh’: rubbish.
6. Cnidian Venus: Famously beautiful fourth-century nude statue, after Praxiteles, reputed to be the image of the courtesan Phyrne.
7. deltoid: The muscle around the outer edge of the shoulder.
8. Shorncliffe: The site of a military barracks.
CHAPTER THE NINTH
THE LABYRINTHODON
1. LABYRINTHODON: Large and heavy dinosaur from the Triassic period, with bony plates on its belly.
2. four-wheeler: Horse-drawn cab with four wheels, such as a brougham.
3. Tosh: Nonsense.
4. Kew… house full of paintings of flowers: Kew Palace, formerly home of George III, was opened to the public in 1898 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
5. the Crystal Palace: After the 1851 Great Exhibition, the Crystal Palace was moved from Hyde Park to Sydenham in 1853 and rebuilt in a much larger form. Among the exhibits was a large bust of Joseph Paxton (1801–65), the original architect. The palace was destroyed by fire in 1936.
6. stucco tanks: In the 1890s, the fish were removed from the Crystal Palace aquarium.
7. iguanodons, and deinotheria, and mastodons: The iguanadon was a large herbivorous lizard from the Cretaceous period; both deinotheria and mastodons were enormous elephant-like extinct quadrupeds. The Crystal Palace featured replicas of these, and other, prehistoric animals.
8. while: The Atlantic Edition inserted:
Then he spoke with deliberation, ‘Sea air might be the saving of ‘im, Ann.’
He glanced doubtfully at Ann, and she was looking at him even fondly.
‘You think of other people a lot,’ said Ann. ‘I been looking at you sittin' there and thinking.’
‘I suppose I do. I suppose when one's ‘appy one does.’
‘You do,’ said Ann.
BOOK III
KIPPSES
CHAPTER THE FIRST
THE HOUSING PROBLEM
1. wing poke collar: Formal detachable standing collar with corners that point outwards.
2. electric brougham: Very early twentieth-century electric motor car.
3. Argus eyes: In Greek mythology, the many-eyed monster who guarded Io.
4. black-beetle: Cockroach.
5. unstopped: With tiles that don't have the gaps between them cemented on the inside, thus letting dirt in.
6. the extravagant swarm of new births that was the essential disaster of the nineteenth century: The population of the United Kingdom more than doubled between 1800 and 1900.
7. building a house. In 1899, Wells himself arranged to have his own home, Spade House in Sandgate, built; Kipps was completed in it.
8. Queen Anne style: Simplified architecture associated with Queen Anne's reign (1702–14): very plain and simple, with classic details.
9. shoot: Chute.
10. Moorish gallery: Internal balcony.
11. mésalliance: Marriage between people of unequal social class (French).
12. ménage: Household (French).
13. pourparlers: Discussions (French).
14. chiffonier: Chest of drawers.
15. noblesse oblige: The obligation of those of high rank to be honourable and generous, often used ironically (French).
16. Tantalus: Drinks cabinet in which bottles are visible but locked up.
17. ‘Sandringham’: Since 1862, the private residence of the Queen, in Norfolk.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE CALLERS
1. chromolithographs: Pictures printed in colours from a series of stones or plates.
2. Turkey carpet: Deep-pile carpet made from flax or hemp, often called ‘Turkish carpet‘.
3. digue: Dyke, or ditch.
4. Harvey monument: An 1884 statue of William Harvey (1578–1657), discoverer of the circulation of the blood, who was born in Folkestone.
5. rigor vitae: A joke by Wells: literally, ‘rigidity of life' (Latin); Rigor Mortis is the stiffness of the joints after death.
6. pariah-like: A pariah is the very lowest Hindu cast.
7. Juggernaut: Hindu idol drawn in a large cart under which devotees were said to throw themselves.
8. éclat: Brilliance, conspicuous energy (French)
9. the leaden goddess of the Dunciad: The goddess Dulness in the long poem The Dunciad (1728–43) by Alexander Pope (1688-1744).
CHAPTER THE THIRD
TERMINATIONS
1. quarter day: One of the four days a year on which rent is due.
2. Berncasteler Doctor: Wine produced by a famous German vineyard.
3. mercerized cotton: Cotton thread treated to be shinier and suitable for dyeing.
4. uncut pages: Many new books were still sold with leaves uncut.
5. sacristan: Person in charge of the contents of a church.
6. Nunc Dimittis: Now let thy servant depart (in peace) (Latin): a canticle using the prayer of Simeon Luke 2:29–32).
7. Nisbet and Lombroso: John Ferguson Nisbet (1851–99), author of The Insanity of Genius and the General Inequality of Human Faculty Physiologically Considered (1891), among other similar works; Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), author of an influential theory of the physiological origins of criminal behaviour.
8. knocked: Stunned taken a blow.
9. bassinet: Cradle.
10. the gleam of light in Watts' picture: After the Deluge: The Forty-First Day (1885–6), depicting Genesis 7–8, in which Noah and all in his ark watch the retreating waters of the Flood.
11. entomological: Of the science of insects.
12. Gerrik Club: Named after the actor David Garrick (1717–79), the Garrick Club in Covent Garden is a private club founded in 1831 for ‘actors and men of refinement and education’.
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