‘Ah! That must have been one of Rutton Singh’s villages,’ said Dick Four; and we smoked for some time in silence.
‘I say,’ said M‘Turk, casting back through the years. ‘Did Stalky ever tell you how Rabbits-Eggs came to rock King that night?’
‘No,’ said Dick Four.
Then M‘Turk told.
‘I see,’ said Dick Four, nodding. ‘Practically he duplicated the trick over again. There’s nobody like Stalky.’
‘That’s just where you make the mistake,’ I said. ‘India’s full of Stalkies—Cheltenham and Haileybury and Marlborough chaps—that we don’t know anything about, and the surprises will begin when there is really a big row on.’
‘Who will be surprised?’ said Dick Four.
‘The other side. The gentlemen who go to the front in first-class carriages. Just imagine Stalky let loose on the south side of Europe with a sufficiency of Sikhs and a reasonable prospect of loot. Consider it quietly.’
‘There’s something in that, but you’re too much of an optimist, Beetle,’ said the Infant.
‘Well, I’ve a right to be. Ain’t I responsible for the whole thing? You needn’t laugh. Who wrote “Aladdin now has got his wife”—eh?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Tertius.
‘Everything,’ said I.
‘Prove it,’ said the Infant.
And I have!
THE END
1 “A Conference of the Powers,” Many Inventions.
1 ‘Look out; you’ll fall!’
Explanatory Notes
Isabel Quigly
11
spadger-hunt : spadger is a dialect or colloquial word for sparrow.
stalky : cf. p. 13: ‘“Stalky”, in their school vocabulary, meant clever, well-considered and wily, as applied to plans of action; and “stalkiness” was the one virtue Corkran toiled after.’
potwallopers : roughly speaking, it means householders, property owners, as opposed to labourers, vagrants, and people who own nothing. In the eighteenth century it meant someone who ‘dressed his own victuals’, i.e. ‘boiled his own pot’ in his own house, and in certain places was entitled to vote for a member of parliament. In the nineteenth century it went down in public esteem and from meaning, more or less, a respectable villager, it came to mean someone rough, rude, and clumsy.
12
Corky : Corkran’s nickname until this episode gave him the name of Stalky.
13
thrown out any pickets : sent out anyone to keep a look-out. According to the OED, pickets are ‘a small detached body of troops, sent out to watch for the approach of the enemy, or his scouts’. In the Army Regulations it is spelt ‘piquets’.
15
quickset : hedge made of living plants set in the ground to grow, especially hawthorn.
18
Tweakons : let us tweak (schoolboy compound of English and French).
19
A people sitting in darkness and the shadow … : echo of Isaiah 9: 2: ‘The people that walked in darkness … they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death.’
22
swottin’ dumb-bells : working furiously hard; dumb-bells being clubs for exercising, with weights on each end.
24
‘Pon my Sam : jocular asseveration, perhaps from ‘’pon my sang’ (blood).
26
Sweeter than honey : echo of Psalm 19: 10: ‘sweeter than honey and the honeycomb’.
29
pugs : from the Hindustani word ‘pag’, the track of a beast.
30
‘Bother! Likewise blow!’ : Slightly misquoted from W. S. Gilbert, The Bab Ballads, ‘The Bishop of Rum-ti-foo’. The original reads: ‘ “Bother!”, also “Blow”.’
His rebus infectis : not having accomplished these things.
destricto ense : with drawn sword.
31
Pax : literally ‘peace’. Colloquially used to mean: ‘Stop it, Let’s make a truce’; even: ‘I apologize’.
fags : in Something of Myself Kipling wrote (p. 29): ‘Oddly enough, “fagging” did not exist, though the name “fag” was regularly used as a term of contempt and sign of subordination against the Lower School.’
Jorrocks : the sporting hero of R. S. Surtees’s hunting stories, which first appeared in the New Sporting Magazine and were collected into a book in 1838 as Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities, followed by other books of Jorrocks stories. On p. 32 we learn that Handley Cross (1843) is the book Stalky has with him that day. Surtees is often quoted or referred to, especially by Stalky.
32
you blind lunatic! : this is one of several references to Beetle’s poor sight, some kindly or at least friendly, because they come from friends, like this one; but in one case (in ‘The Moral Reformers’) rousing Beetle into one of his few powerful rages.
a tergo : from behind.
Handley Cross : see note to p. 31.
35
the Castle : Dublin Castle, the seat of government in Ireland.
deep calling to deep : echo of Psalm 42: 7: ‘Deep calleth unto deep’.
36
Out of the mouths of —: Psalm 8: 2. Colonel Dabney omits ‘babes and sucklings’.
37
‘Oh, Paddy dear …’: first line of the Irish nationalist song ‘The Wearin’ o’ the Green’.
young-eyed cherubim: The Merchant of Venice, V.i.
39
the Pleasant Isle of Aves : from Charles Kingsley’s poem ‘The Last Buccaneer’, 1857: And such a port for mariners I ne’er shall see again
As the pleasant Isle of Aves, beside the Spanish main.
Chingangook : sc. Chingachgook: a Red Indian chief, skilled in fieldcraft and stalking, who figures in Fenimore Cooper’s novels The Last of the Mohicans, The Path-Finder, The Deerslayer, and The Pioneer.
40
in loco parentis : in the place of a parent; responsible for the boys.
cachuca : sc. cachucha: a Spanish dance.
40
‘But what’s the odds, as long as you’re ’appy?’ : there seems to be something of an anachronism here. George du Maurier quoted this line (origin unknown) in Trilby, which appeared in 1894. Thus, it was obviously too late for Stalky to quote it in the early 1880s, but not, of course, for Kipling, who wrote ‘In Ambush’ in 1898.
vice : in place of.
42
flagrante delicto : in the very act of crime.
43
linhay : a shed, open in front.
45
‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ : Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347–8: ‘Who will guard the guards themselves?’
‘… Zeal, all zeal, Mr Easy’ : a reference to one of their favourite books, Captain Marryat’s Mr Midshipman Easy, 1836.
Hounds choppin’ foxes … vice : quotation from Handley Cross.
46
paddy-wack : rage, fit of temper. The word ‘paddy’ is used in the same sense today.
47
evil-speakers, liars, slow-bellies : cf. Titus 1: 12.
‘Thou hast appealed to Caesar: unto Caesar shalt thou go’ : Acts 25: 12.
48
the Caudine Toasting-fork : the Caudine Forks was a narrow pass in the mountains near Capua, where in the second Samnite war the Roman army was surrounded in 321 bc and made to pass under the yoke, the greatest humiliation that could be inflicted upon it. Stalky was obviously referring to the phrase ‘We’ve got him on toast’.
‘Too much ticklee, him bust’ : a reference to the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, in which Mr Buzzard could not stand being tickled. Uncle Remus, once a slave, tells stories from Negro folklore to a little boy, the son of the house in which he is now a valued servant. Uncle Remus and his Legends of the Old Plantation and Uncle Remus or Mr Fox, Mr Rabbit and Mr Terrapin were published in England in 1881, and one of the Stalky stories, ‘The United Idolators’, is about the craze for the Uncle Remus stories which swept the school.
&nbs
p; 49
‘Wine is a mocker, strong drink is ragin’ ’ : Proverbs 20: 1.
quodded : imprisoned. First used about 1700, origin unknown. Quod means prison; to quod, to imprison.
Chingangook : see note to p. 39.
50
‘Take not out your ’ounds on a werry windy day’ : R. S. Surtees, Handley Cross, chapter 38. Surtees was quoting from Peter Beckford’s Thoughts on Hunting, 1781.
Heffy is my only joy : reference to ‘Phyllis is my only joy’ by Sir Charles Sedley (c.1639–1701).
53
Monte Cristo: The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–5) by Alexandre Dumas (père).
suppressio veri : suppression of the truth; suggestio falsi: suggestion of the false.
54
Aladdin: Alladin, or the Wonderful Scamp, by H. J. Byron, first acted 1861.
55
Arrah, Patsy …: music-hall song by Edward Harrigan, pub. 1878.
John Short : the College bell-ringer.
56
A gray princess-skirt : a princess-dress or petticoat is one without a seam at the waist, so a ‘princess-skirt’, presumably starting at the waist, seems a contradiction in terms; perhaps Kipling simply did not realize what ‘princess’ implied in dressmaking language.
imposition-paper : paper used for impositions, written tasks imposed as punishments, generally ‘lines’ by the hundred, often Latin. Colloquially called ‘impots’; therefore, on pp. 61, 105, 235, and 237, impot-paper; and on p. 226, impot-basket, a basket in which impositions were placed and collected by the master.
Gigadibs : a reference to Browning’s poem, ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’. ‘So you despise me, Mr Gigadibs’ comes early in the poem (line 13); King here changed it to ‘Master Gigadibs’, probably also echoing Kipling’s school nickname of Gigger.
57
Fors Clavigera : a series of monthly pamphlets by John Ruskin in the form of letters, 96 in all, begun in 1871 and continued, not quite regularly, until 1884: ‘Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain’. ‘Fors Clavigera is fortune bearing a club, a key and a nail,’ Ruskin wrote, ‘symbolising the deed of Hercules, the patience of Ulysses, and the law of Lycurgus.’ Lycurgus was the legislator of Sparta in ancient Greece.
58
I’ll correct his caesuras for him : I’ll deal with him. The caesura, in Greek and Latin prosody, is the division of a metrical foot between two words, especially in certain recognized places near the middle of the line; and so it has come to mean, in English, a pause or break in the middle of a line. Here perhaps Kipling uses the word in a broader sense, to mean gaps, shortcomings.
you chaps are communists : in ‘An English School’ (Land and Sea Tales), Kipling says that the three friends ‘lived as communists and socialists hope to live one day, when everyone is good … their possessions were in common, absolutely’.
59
his unlovely name : see J. C. Dunsterville, Stalky’s Reminiscences (London, 1928), p. 45: ‘His nickname of “Rabbit’s-Eggs” was due to his having offered for sale six partridge eggs which he stoutly maintained were “rabbut’s aigs”. He genuinely believed them to be so. He was passing a clump of bushes when a rabbit ran out of them, and for some reason or another he peered into the bushes, and there, sure enough, were the six eggs, obviously the produce of the rabbit!’
a fat, brown-backed volume of the late Sixties : obviously the poems of Robert Browning, as the reference to Gigadibs shows, and later the one to men and women. In 1855 Browning published two volumes of poems called Men and Women, the best known of which are the dramatic monologues (‘Fra Lippo Lippi’, ‘Andrea del Sarto’, etc.).
60
the Opium-Eater. Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859), who wrote Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (in book form, 1822 and 1823; reprinted in a longer form in 1856).
children of noble races trained by surrounding art : Ruskin, misquoted.
61
beastliness : homosexuality. This is the word generally used in school stories, where the subject is treated very obliquely.
à la Fagin : reference to the trainer of young pickpockets in Oliver Twist.
62
Eric, or, Little by Little (1858) and St Winifred’s; or The World of School (1862): famous school stories by F. W. Farrar, much mocked by Stalky and Co for priggishness, exaggeration, and mawkishness.
‘strong, perseverin’ man : see R. S. Surtees, Mr Facey Romford’s Hounds (1865), chapter 19. Facey advertises for a ‘strong, persevering man, to clean horses’.
privatim et seriatim : medieval Latin, meaning privately and one after another.
these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers : see R. S. Surtees, Handley Cross, chapter 51, where Jorrocks calls someone ‘you hossifer in the ninety-fust regiment, who looks like an ’airdresser’.
Binjimin, we must make him cry ‘Capivi!’ : we must make him admit his fault. Another quotation from Handley Cross. Jorrocks was presumably confusing capivi with peccavi, I have sinned.
a basket-hanger : the term basket-hanger is thereafter used as one of abuse by Stalky and Co. M’Turk explains what it means in the next paragraph: ‘He [King] has a basket with blue ribbons and a pink kitten in it, hung up in his window to grow musk in.’ See p. 295, where Stalky says to Abanazar: ‘Pussy, if I thought that basket-hanger——’ ‘Hah! He remembered that ,’ said M’Turk. ‘That two-anna basket-hanger governed India, I swear I’d become a Muscovite tomorrow.’ M’Turk’s exclamation makes it clear that the term ‘basket-hanger’ is taken from their private language, still remembered after fifteen years from King’s basket with the kitten in it; a concrete example of the hold which school experiences and the memories and phrases they produced still had on the adults the boys grew into.
Down went M’Turk’s inky thumb : as in a gladiatorial contest, when thumbs down was a signal for the coup de grâce to be given to the vanquished.
63
Placetne : literally, Does it please you? (i.e., do you agree?).
‘Or who in Moscow toward the Czar …’ : from Robert Browning’s poem ‘Waring’.
bargees : originally bargee meant a barge-man, one who worked on a barge. It is used throughout the book as a term of abuse; for instance, on p. 216, Stalky uses it to describe the MP who comes to lecture on patriotism; and on p. 221 Beetle says of Stalky, ‘he cursed me like a bargee’.
Actum est : [King’s] done for.
‘ There’s a great text in Galatians …’: from Browning’s ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’.
64
Setebos …: from Browning’s ‘Caliban upon Setebos’.
Strong, perseverin’ man : see note to p. 62.
Capivi : see note to p. 62.
Beans : to give someone beans means to punish or to scold.
65
It’s a way we have in the Army : song by J. B. Geoghegan (1863).
Habet! : literally: he has [it]. In other words, he’s had it. Cry of the spectators when a gladiator received the fatal blow.
67
Gibbon : Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Casabianca : at the battle of the Nile in 1798, Louis Casablanca, captain of the French flagship l’Orient, fought on to the end, though the Admiral had been killed. His son, aged thirteen, refused to leave him and died, too. Mrs Hemans’s poem, ‘Casabianca’—‘The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all but he had fled’-often mocked and embroidered, is about his fate.
67
Number Five lavatory : the word does not mean WC, as it does now, but ‘washroom’, which is closer to the Latin root. Here there were several baths, probably tin ones.
68
‘Shockin’!’ …: further mockery of Farrar’s St Winifred’s.
69
It’s an alibi, Samivel : quotation from The Pickwick Papers.
gallipots : small earthern glazed pots; probably called after galleys, as they were brought in galleys from the Mediterranea
n.
The Complete Stalky & Co Page 36