Volpato: Giovanni Volpato (1733–1803), Italian sculptor and engraver.
Candid: here meaning ‘free from malice; not desirous to find faults’ (OED).
Taylor … leaps … influence of fear: Jeremy Taylor (1613–67), Anglican writer and clergyman, was much admired by De Quincey, who almost certainly has in mind ‘Of Fear and Violence, and how these can make an Action Involuntary’ in The Rule of Conscience, book IV, chapter I, section iii, rule 7 (The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, ed. Reginald Heber, 15 vols. (London, 1822), xiv. 389–98).
M’Keands: in May 1826 Alexander and Michael McKean (or McKeand) cut the throat of Elizabeth Bate, a servant at the Jolly Carter Inn at Winton, Eccles, near Manchester. They also drugged the landlord, Joseph Blears, and wounded his wife, Martha Blears. A servant boy, William Higgins, witnessed the crime and was pursued by the killers. At the trial he testified that in order to escape he ‘jumped over the bannister of the staircase on to the landing’ (R. Bulfield, The Trial of Alexander & Michael McKean (Manchester, 1826), 42). De Quincey himself tells the story of the McKeans in his 1854 ‘Postscript’ to ‘On Murder’ (see above, pp. 137–41).
Mannheim: Mannheim is in south-western Germany, on the right bank of the River Rhine. De Quincey’s story is fictitious but it may have been inspired by the notorious April 1824 murder of a Mannheim baker (see Frederick Burwick, ‘De Quincey and the Aesthetics of Violence’, Wordsworth Circle, 27 (1996), 77–80).
“fancied”: ‘the fancy’ was a term applied to those who were fond of a particular amusement or closely attached to some subject. It was generally used of the boxing fraternity.
Master of the Rolls: Jack Martin, a celebrated boxer, was a baker by profession and nicknamed ‘the master of the rolls’. He was an associate of John Thurtell (see above, p. 171). William Hazlitt mentions Martin in his famous essay ‘The Fight’ (1822).
Round the 14th: De Quincey’s blow-by-blow account of various rounds parodies Pierce Egan’s account of several fights in Boxiana (see above, p. 171).
geometrical exploits: fancy slang: lying horizontal (i.e., being knocked down).
mug: fancy slang: face.
pins: fancy slang: legs.
conk: fancy slang: nose.
‘Certainly … affliction than a strangury’: Taylor, ‘Of the practise of the Grace of Repentance in the time of Sicknesse’, in Holy Dying, ed. P. G. Stanwood (Oxford, 1989), 140.
Aurelius … Collers’ Translation: Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–80), Roman emperor, Meditations, III. i. De Quincey cites from the famous 1701 translation by Jeremy Collier (1650–1726), English bishop and critic.
entire lecture … expound their merits: De Quincey devotes most of his ‘Postscript’ to a detailed account of the Williams murders (see above, pp. 97–136).
John Petersen: the mallet ‘belonged to a German sailor from Hamburg named John Peterson’ (The Maul and the Pear Tree, 97).
murder of the Williamsons: on 19 December 1811 John Williams concealed himself in the King’s Arms pub in New Gravel Lane and then murdered John Williamson, the owner; his wife, Elizabeth Williamson; and their servant, Bridget Anna Harrington.
L. S——: the initials have not been explained. A personal reference seems possible, but no likely candidate has been identified in the Black-wood’s or De Quincey circles.
laudator temporis acti: Horace, Ars Poetica, 173: ‘a praiser of time past’.
Durer … Fuseli: Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), German Renaissance painter and printmaker. Henry Fuseli, Swiss-born painter (see above, p. 170).
falsetto: ‘a forced voice of a range or register above the natural’ (OED).
opinionum commenta … judicia confirmat: Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II. ii. 5: ‘The years obliterate the inventions of the imagination, but confirm the judgements of nature’.
Thurtell’s … dumb-bells: dumbbells were used by boxers for training and were thus a natural weapon for Thurtell, an accomplished amateur boxer.
Aeneid… Iliad: Virgil’s Aeneid was modelled on Homer’s Iliad.
place where … time when: De Quincey parodies Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, I. i. 230–48.
ought to be a good man: De Quincey parodies Aristotle, Poetics, xv. 1–2: ‘Concerning “character” there are four points to aim at. The first and most important is that the character should be good.’
‘diamond-cut-diamond”: a contest between equally matched rivals. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, xiv. 7–9: ‘Now if an enemy does it to an enemy, there is nothing pitiable either in the deed or the intention’.
‘to cleanse the heart … of pity and terror’: Aristotle, Poetics, vi. 2–4: ‘Tragedy … through pity and fear … effects relief to these and similar emotions’.
Abraham Newland: Abraham Newland (1730–1807) was Chief Cashier of the Bank of England from 1778 to 1807. For legal reasons, his signature appeared in the promissory clause on the Bank’s notes, with the result that these notes became known popularly as ‘Abraham Newlands’. His semi-legendary status was enhanced by the fact that, during his thirty years as Chief Cashier, he never slept away from the Bank.
Prester John: Prester John was a legendary Christian ruler of the East. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, various missionaries and lay travellers sought unsuccessfully to find his kingdom.
an affair of honour: a duel, especially one fought over a woman.
‘with every delicacy of the season’: the standard cliché for reporting society dinners in newspaper gossip columns.
Cockney: a slighting reference to Londoners, and part of Blackwood’s ongoing campaign against the London Magazine and its support of ‘Cockney School’ writers such as John Keats, William Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt.
tailors … to murder eighteen: proverbial, ‘Nine tailors make a man’. Cf. Thomas Carlyle seven years later in Fraser’s Magazine: ‘Does it not stand on record that the English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, addressed them with a: Good morning, gentlemen both!’ (Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, ed. Rodger Tarr (Berkeley, Calif.: 2000), 212).
Ingenuas didicisse … sinit esse feros: Ovid, Ex Ponto, II. ix. 47–8: ‘a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel’.
Annals of Edinburgh … undiscovered: De Quincey has his facts straight except for the date. In November 1806 William Begbie, Porter to the British Linen Company’s Bank, was stabbed to the heart with a bread knife and robbed of more than £4,000. A sizeable reward was offered, but Begbie’s assassin was never found (for details, see Mary Cosh, Edinburgh: The Golden Age (Edinburgh, 2003), 587–9).
Sed fugit interea … circumvectamur amore: Virgil, Georgics, iii. 284–5: ‘But time meanwhile is flying, flying beyond recall, while we, charmed with love of our theme, linger around each detail’.
‘Semper … nunquamne reponam?’: Juvenal, Satires, i. 1—2: ‘What? Am I to be a listener only all my days? Am I never to get my word in …?’
‘animus’: ‘animating spirit or temper, usually of a hostile character’ (OED).
Brutus: Marcus Junius Brutus (85–42 BC) was leader of the conspirators who assassinated Julius Caesar in 44 BC. Brutus died two years later by his own hand.
called aloud … his country hail!: Mark Akenside (1721— 70), poet and physician, The Pleasures of the Imagination, i. 496–8: ‘call’d aloud | On Tully’s name, and shook his crimson steel, | And bade the father of his country, hail!’
‘small deei: Shakespeare, King Lear, III. iv. 138: ‘But mice and rats, and such small deer’.
fungar vice … exsors ipsa secandi: Horace (65–8BC), Latin lyric poet, Ars Poetica, 304: ‘So I’ll play a whetstone part, which makes steel sharp, but of itself cannot cut’.
THE AVENGER
First published in Blackwood’s Magazine, 44 (August 1838), 208–33. On 25 May 1838 De Quincey told John Wilson that he was writing ‘a German Tale (scene laid in Germ., I mean, but entirely my own invention), turning upon secret murder’. Two weeks lat
er De Quincey had almost finished the tale. ‘I am sure of your liking the final part,’ he told Robert Blackwood. ‘Never was [the] secret of a catastrophe better kept.’ When Blackwood and his advisers read the tale, however, they felt it needed to be cut. De Quincey, cash-strapped and anxious to make a sale, agreed, and told Blackwood’s friends that they ‘need feel under no restraint or reserve or scruple in canceling or correcting upon the widest scale’. It is not known what cuts were made, or who made them (The Works of Thomas De Quincey: Volume Nine, ed. Grevel Lindop, Robert Morrison, and Barry Symonds (London, 2001), 264).
Why callest thou me murderer … with blood?: the first part of the epigram recalls Jesus’s ‘Why callest thou me good?’ (Matthew 19: 16; Mark 10: 18; Luke 18: 19). No other source has been traced.
the shadowy – the uncertain … palpable – and human: De Quincey draws on the aesthetics outlined by Edmund Burke in his 1757 Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. Adam Phillips (Oxford, 1990), 54: ‘To make any thing very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger … a great deal of the apprehension vanishes’.
one deep calling to another: cf. Psalm 42: 7: ‘Deep calleth unto deep’.
battle of Waterloo: on 18 June 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), Emperor of the French, was finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, ending twenty-three years of almost continual warfare between France and other powers in Europe. The French were beaten by an allied army of British, Prussian, Dutch, Belgian, and German forces.
French anabasis to Moscow: an ‘anabasis’ is ‘a military advance’ (OED). Napoleon’s invasion of Russia began in June 1812, and ended in disastrous retreat five months later.
en prince: in a princely manner.
haute noblesse: the old aristocracy.
Pharsalia: Pharsalia, in Thessaly, was the scene of the decisive battle of the Roman civil war (48 BC) in which Julius Caesar defeated Pompey.
Antinous: Antinoüs (c. ad 110–30) was a Bithynian youth of great beauty and a favourite of the emperor Hadrian.
modern Pygmalion: in Ovid, Metamorphoses, x. 243–97, Pygmalion, a sculptor, makes an ivory statue representing his ideal of womanhood and then falls in love with his own creation. The goddess Venus brings the statue to life in answer to his prayer.
Blending … summer skies: Wordsworth, ‘A Jewish Family’, ll. 19–20.
Jewish prophet … inspirations of wo: De Quincey links Maximilian to the legendary figure of the Wandering Jew, hinting broadly at his background and at his doomed status as exile and sinner. Cf. John Barrell, The Infection of Thomas De Quincey (New Haven, 1991), 29: ‘Throughout De Quincey’s autobiographical writings, he takes to himself the identity of the Wandering Jew’.
Margaret Liebenheim: De Quincey has chosen the name carefully. His wife’s name was Margaret, and he was deeply affected by her death in 1837, just one year before he published this tale. In German, ‘lieben’ is ‘to love’, and ‘heim’ is ‘home’.
‘Lead us not into temptation!’: Luke 11: 4.
stricken deer: Shakespeare, Hamlet, iii. ii. 271: ‘Why, let the strooken deer go weep’.
‘recoiled into the wilderness’: Wordsworth, ‘In the Pleasure-Ground on the Banks of the Bran, Near Dunkeld’, l. 128.
doing or suffering: Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 157–8: ‘to be weak is miserable | Doing or suffering’.
bijouterie: jewellery or ornate objets d’art.
tessellae: small squares or cubes, especially those forming part of a mosaic.
Amurath or Mahomet: De Quincey intends these names as representative of Islamic sultans such as Murad IV (1612–40) or Mahmud II (1785–1839).
acharnement: relentless ferocity.
wanderjahre: ‘journeyman years’, and famous as the title of the second volume of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister (1821–9).
Silesian: Silesia is a historic region in what is now south-western Poland.
acmé: highest point.
he heard me not – he saw me not: cf. Percy Shelley, The Revolt of Islam, xi. 1: ‘She saw me not – she heard me not’. De Quincey quotes directly from Shelley’s Revolt in the ‘Postscript’ to ‘On Murder’ (see above, p. 131).
‘dust to dust – ashes to ashes!’: from the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer.
My trial is finished: cf. John 19: 30: ‘Jesus … said, It is finished, and bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.’
“warfare is accomplished”: Isaiah 40: 2: ‘Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned’.
the funds: the ‘Funds’ were ‘the stock of the National Debt, considered as a mode of investment’ (OED).
transpired: figuratively, ‘to escape from secrecy to notice; to become known, especially by obscure channels’ (OED).
Morganatic marriage: a marriage which does not raise the status of the bride or confer rights of succession upon her children.
Maccabees: the Maccabees were a priestly Jewish family who organized a successful rebellion against the Syrian rulers of Palestine and reconsecrated the defiled Temple of Jerusalem in 164 BC.
Friedland and Eylau: Napoleon invaded East Prussia in 1807. At Eylau, on 7–8 February, he suffered his first major deadlock in a battle fought against the Russians and Prussians. At Friedland, on 14 June, he compensated for the setback at Eylau with a decisive victory over the Russians.
trepanned: ‘trepan’ is ‘to entrap, ensnare, beguile’ (OED).
scandalum magnatum: ‘offence to the authorities’.
daughter of Jerusalem!: cf. Song of Solomon 1: 5: ‘I am black, but comely (O ye daughters of Jerusalem)’. The phrase ‘daughters of Jerusalem’ is repeated six more times in the Song of Solomon.
“chamber of desolation”: De Quincey describes a tradition that seems never to have existed, although he may be distorting the actual Jewish custom of leaving part of the wall opposite the front door of a house bare (unplastered or unpainted) in memory of the destruction of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem.
great assembly of Jews at Paris: in 1807 Napoleon convened a so-called Sanhedrin of Jewish leaders with the objective of promoting integration and assimilation. He agreed to important reforms that promoted Jewish emancipation, but also extracted numerous concessions, including a declaration that France alone had claim on the political allegiances of the Jews.
Forty thousand lives: De Quincey alludes to Shakespeare, Hamlet, v. i. 269–71: ‘Forty thousand brothers | Could not with all their quantity of love | Make up my sum’.
SECOND PAPER ON MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS
First published in Blackwood’s Magazine, 46 (November 1839), 661–8. De Quincey sent the ‘Second Paper’ to Robert Blackwood on 24 September 1839 ‘in continuation of one published many years ago by your Father on Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts’ (National Library of Scotland, MS 4048, fos. 234, 235). De Quincey also compiled a series of fragmented notes relating to the ‘Second Paper on Murder’ (see The Works of Thomas De Quincey: Volume Eleven, ed. Julian North (London, 2003), 596–7).
DOCTOR NORTH: ‘Christopher North’ was the pen name of John Wilson, the fictive editor of Blackwood’s Magazine and De Quincey’s oldest and closest friend (see above, p. 168).
crutch: Christopher North, an athletic octogenarian, was closely identified with his crutch. Cf. Charles Dickens in 1841: ‘that old man of might, with his lion heart and sceptred crutch, Christopher North’ (The Speeches of Charles Dickens, ed. Kenneth Fielding (Oxford, 1960), 11).
On Murder (Oxford World's Classics) Page 28