72
hypothecation : pawning; from a term used in Roman law.
73
saloon-pistols : pistols adapted for short-range practice.
gig-lamps : spectacles.
74
straw : straw hat, boater.
76
Jugurtha tarnen : Jugurtha, however. From the historian Sallust.
Pas si je le connai[s] : not if I know it.
Panurge : a companion of Pantagruel, in Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, who made grotesque faces.
77
a terrace of twelve large houses : a row of seaside boarding houses converted into a school. See the introductory poem with its reference to ‘Twelve bleak houses by the shore’, p. 5 above.
78
keep cave : keep a look-out, keep watch. Cave in Latin means beware (as in cave canem, beware of the dog), and until recently children used it as Stalky does.
79
Violet somebody : Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, 1814–79. French scholar and architect, more important as medievalist and restorer than as architect, whose ideas were (mainly) known through his Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française, published between 1854 and 1868. First translated into English by Benjamin Bucknall, 1874.
80
O Beadle : quotation from Edward Lear’s ‘There was an old man of Quebec’ (‘But he cried, “With a needle/ I’ll slay you, O beadle!” ’)
doggaroo : writer of doggerel; a word probably invented by Kipling.
81
Come to my arms, my beamish boy … Calloo, callay! : from the Jabberwocky poem in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, 1872.
82
Big medicine—heap big medicine! : from Uncle Remus.
83
There’s something about your pure, high, young forehead … innocent boyhood : more mockery of Dean Farrar’s books.
84
spidgers : a variant of spadgers, sparrows.
85
a gaudy lot : a fine lot. Here this word of many meanings is used just for emphasis.
‘With one shout and with one cry’ : misquoted from Macaulay’s ‘The Armada’, 1832: ‘And with one start and with one cry, the royal city woke’.
86
minute-gun : gun fired at intervals of a minute.
‘’Tis but a little faded flower’ : song by Ellen Clementine Howarth, American writer, 1827–99.
87
Lazarites : lepers, from the name of Lazarus.
Hoplites : heavily armed infantry in ancient Greece (as opposed to ‘skirmishers’).
88
a large cross, with ‘Lord, have mercy upon us,’ on the door : in times of plague, especially during the Great Plague of 1665 in London, houses were identified as plague-stricken by a cross and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ written on the door.
the learned Lipsius : Justus Lipsius, an eminent humanist, 1547–1606. His quality as an infant prodigy was also recalled by Laurence Sterne in Tristram Shandy: ‘You forget the great Lipsius, quoth Yorick, who composed a work the day he was born.’
90
Falling into the pit he has digged : reference to Ecclesiastes 10: 8, and Psalms 57: 4.
91
He ‘nursed the pinion that impelled the steel’ : Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, line 841.
privatim et seriatim : see note to p. 62.
the fishpools of Heshbon : Song of Solomon 7: 4.
92
certain lewd fellows of the baser sort : Acts 17: 5.
Bring out your dead : cry of the carters who went about at night collecting corpses during the Great Plague of London in 1665.
glandered : suffering from contagious horse-disease.
93
Cave : see note to p. 78.
94
ipso facto : by that very fact.
98
Summa : to sum up, or: the main facts.
99
pot-wallopers : see note to p. 11.
99
barbarous hexameters : quotation from Tennyson’s ‘On Translations of Homer’.
100
‘Roman d’un Jeune Homme Pauvre’ : by Octave Feuillet, 1821–90. This, his best-known novel, was published in 1858.
to elegise the ‘Elegy in a Churchyard’ : probably to put into Latin elegiacs Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’.
to punt-about : to kick a football about for practice.
101
‘But by the yellow Tiber …’ : from Macaulay’s ‘Horatius’ in Lays of Ancient Rome.
Belial somebody : see F. W. Farrar’s St Winifred’s: ‘Master Wilton—Belial junior, as Henderson always called him’. This suggests Mammon and Lucifer, his companion fiends in Paradise Lost.
the B.O.P. : the Boys Own Paper, 1879–1967, an influential magazine for boys, published by the Religious Tract Society, launched to appear weekly but from 1913 appearing monthly. Many famous writers for boys contributed to it. Beetle mocks its school-story views on school behaviour.
103
metagrobolised : from the obsolete French verb métagrobuliser, used and probably invented by Rabelais, meaning ‘to puzzle, mystify’.
106
Shylocks : usurers. The reference is of course to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
Head in a drain-pipe … : reference to one of Mr Jingle’s stories in Pickwick Papers, chapter 2.
107
Keyte’s : the school tuck-shop.
108
Cave : see note to p. 78.
111
the baser-side-of-imagination business : in Something of Myself, p. 23, Kipling wrote: ‘It was clean with a cleanliness that I have never heard of in any other school.’ He believed that ‘if masters did not suspect them [cases of homosexuality, etc] and show that they suspected, there would not be quite so many elsewhere.’
114
Mrs Oliphant’s ‘Beleaguered City’ : an ‘occult’ novel published in 1880. ‘A Story of the Seen and the Unseen’, it tells how the dead rise from their graves and take possession for a while of Sémur (in Haute Bourgogne), driving out the inhabitants and filling it with darkness and terror (Readers’ Guide to Rudyard Kipling’s Work, p. 445).
115
giddy palladiums of public schools : reference to Dean Farrar’s books. See p. 72: ‘ “The Sixth,” he says, “is the palladium of all public schools.” ’
They said it very loud and clear … from ‘I sent a message to the fish’ in Through the Looking Glass, chapter 6, by Lewis Carroll.
shibbuwichee or tokonoma : supposedly ju-jitsu terms, but they seem to be M’Turk’s invention.
117
Et ego… in Arcadia vixi : I too have lived in Arcadia; supposedly written on a tombstone; but here perhaps an indication that the Head, too, was young once, and remembers what he learnt then.
Prooshian : Cormell Price had acted as tutor to a nobleman’s son in Russia: hence the soubriquet ‘Rooshian’, transmuted in Stalky & Co to ‘Prooshian’.
119
lictor : officer attending ancient Roman consul (who had twelve lictors) or dictator (who had twenty-four), bearing fasces and carrying out sentences on offenders. Here, of course, meaning someone in authority.
he ain’t in Orders, thank goodness : Cormell Price, Kipling’s headmaster and family friend, and the model for Bates, was not in Holy Orders, nor was he a strong churchman, which was unusual in a headmaster at the time. In An English School Kipling writes: ‘I think that one secret of his great hold over us was that he was not a clergyman, as so many headmasters are. As soon as a boy begins to think in the misty way that boys do, he is suspicious of a man who punishes him one day and preaches at him the next’ (Land and Sea Tales, London, 1923, p. 257).
121
A Daniel come to judgment! : from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, IV. i.
the world … is too much with you sometimes : a reference to Wordsworth’s sonnet CCLXXVIII, ‘The world is t
oo much with us: late and soon’.
123
Abana and Pharpar : 2 Kings 5: 12. ‘Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them, and be clean?’ ’
my own Tenth Legion : the Tenth was Caesar’s favourite legion.
124
we ain’t goin’ to have any beastly Erickin’ … his neck : another reference to Eric. ‘D’you want to walk about with your arm round his neck?’ refers to the sentimental behaviour scorned by Stalky and Co, and the warm friendships between older and younger boys, as described by Farrar in his books.
‘As beautiful Kitty … tripping ——’: Irish song with traditional tune. The words in this version (there are others) are by E. Lysecht.
125
oratio directa : direct speech; oratio obliqua: indirect speech.
126
Galton’s ‘Art of Travel’’. The Art of Travel by Sir Francis Galton, 1854, later reprinted with additions.
wipe : handkerchief.
130
Isabella-coloured : greyish yellow. Which particular Isabella inspired the name has not been established for certain.
133
my giddy Narcissus … reflection! : Narcissus was a beautiful youth in Greek mythology, who saw his image reflected in a pool and fell in love with it. Then, unable to approach it, he killed himself. According to Ovid, his blood was then turned into the flower which still bears his name.
134
pax : see note to p. 31.
136
The only son of his mother … widow : Luke, 7: 12.
137
Augurs : official predictors of events in ancient Rome.
139
Venus and Liber : the goddess of Love and the god of Wine.
Charon : the boatman who ferried the souls of the dead across the river Styx to Hades.
140
a Major and his Minor : an older and a younger brother. Boys at school were then addressed as Smith (or whatever) major, Smith minor, and, if there was a third, Smith minimus. At a school with many brothers or cousins with the same name they might be known as Smith 1, 2, 3, 4 (cf. ‘Dick Four’) or by Latin equivalents like Tertius.
141
Look here, Har—Minor : this shows how at school even brothers did not address each other by their Christian names. Har—presumably Harold or Harry—was unusable as a name at school, even when the two were alone together. The same sort of thing can be seen in P. G. Wodehouse’s A Prefect’s Uncle, in which uncle and nephew, very close in age, address each other by their surnames. It was not always so; the earlier school stories use Christian names between friends, and at certain schools, in certain periods, this continues. But around the 1880’s it would have been usual to use surnames, indeed not to know the first name of most other boys. Kipling at school was able to pretend his name was John, since his first name was Joseph and he was thus J. R. Kipling.
quarter-decking : walking up and down, like a captain on his quarter deck.
143
Loungin’ round and sufferin’: Uncle Remus, chapter XII: ‘ “Lounjun’ roun’ en suffer’n,” sez Brer Terrypin, sezee.’
Blundells : a real public school, near Tiverton in Devon.
myall-wood : Australian acacia, with scented wood used for pipes.
segashuate: Uncle Remus, chapter II: ‘ “How duz yo’ sym’tums seem ter segashuate?” sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.’
the Cri : the Criterion (theatre).
Turn me loose, or I’ll knock the natal stuffin’ out of you: Uncle Remus, chapter II: ‘ “Tu’n me loose, fo’ I kick de natal stuffin’ outen you,” sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.’
Shotover : a filly which won the Derby and another major race in 1882.
Cetewayo : last King of Zululand, deposed after Zulu War (1879); arrived in England August, 1882.
Arabi Pasha : he headed a nationalist revolt in Egypt, which the Khedive was unable to deal with. After massacres at Alexandria, Britain intervened and Arabi Pasha was defeated at Tel-el-Kebir on 13 September 1882.
Spofforth : Frederick Robert Spofforth, known as the Demon Bowler, an Australian cricketer who took a record number of wickets in 1882.
144
Ti-yi! Tungalee! … I pick um pea! : from Uncle Remus, chapter XXIII, ‘Mr Rabbit and Mr Bear’, sung by Brer Rabbit to his children.
Ingle-go-jang, my joy, my joy! …: from Uncle Remus, chapter XXIV, ‘Mr Bear catches old Mr Bullfrog’, sung by Brer Bullfrog.
‘Pinafore’ and ‘Patience’ : Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and Patience (1881).
Mea culpa! : the fault is mine.
We : Stalky & Co.
145
the worst : i.e. homosexuality.
146
Dont ’spute with de squinch-owl… fier : from Uncle Remus. One of the ‘Plantation Proverbs’ that follow chapter XXXIV.
Dick’s nose shone like Bardolph’s : Bardolph is a character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, one of Falstaff’s gang. His red nose was much mocked.
or and sable : gold and black, in heraldic language.
147
R.N. : Royal Navy.
147
Stinking Jim: Uncle Remus , chapter X: ‘ “Brer Fox call Brer Tarrypin Stinking Jim” sez she.’
Hypatia : novel by Charles Kingsley, 1853.
148
the only begetter : reference to Shakespeare’s dedication of his sonnets: ‘To the Onlie Begetter of These Insuing Sonnets Mr W. H…
Tar Baby : character in Uncle Remus, chapter II, ‘The wonderful Tar Baby story’.
149
If you’re anxious for to shine … line : Bunthorne’s song in Patience, Act I, words by W. S. Gilbert.
heave-offerings : voluntary offerings lifted up before the Lord by Jewish priests.
Here I come a-bulgin’ and a-bilin’ ”: Uncle Remus, chapter XVIII. Two lines are combined here.
Miss Meadows : a character in Uncle Remus.
150
Symmachus : a convert from paganism who was Pope from 498–514.
151
Bishop Odo : Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was brother of William the Conqueror.
152
pot-hunting : to pot-hunt, academically, was to seek for rewards and prizes; in this case, presumably, to get them.
153
we must all bow down, more or less, in the House of Rimmon : we must all tamper with our consciences, and do what we know is wrong in order to do our job. Rimmon was the Babylonian god who presided over storms. Naamon got Elisha’s permission to worship the god when he was with his master (2 Kings, 5: 18).
not usually devout : see note to p. 119.
preter-pluperfect : echo of R. S. Surtees, Handley Cross, chapter XXXVI, where Jorrocks says to Benjamin: ‘Come hup, you preter-plupfeetense of ’umbugs.’
154
esprit-de-maisong : joke-French for ‘house-spirit’.
155
Chiron : a centaur, and teacher of young centaurs, famous for his knowledge of shooting, medicine, and music; also teacher of the great heroes of his age, Achilles, Jason, Aesculapius, Hercules, Aeneas, etc. Kipling uses him as an image of Bates, the headmaster, otherwise Cormell Price.
The Complete Stalky & Co Page 37