Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches II
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[Back] Landor’s at Fiesole: Walter Landor (1775-1864), the English satirist and poet, lived at the Villa Gheradesca at Fiesole in Italy’s Tuscany region. There he entertained Emerson, Dickens, and James Russell Lowell.
[Back] Villa at Dinard: Not sure from this distance in time. Dinard is a resort town on the Brittany coast near St. Malo. Its mild climate and beaches has made it a fashionable spot for Brits to visit since the 1880s. The most notable author born there was writer, diplomat and historian Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) who was born in St. Malo.
[Back] Nero: The Roman emperor Nero (37-68) built Domus Aurea (“Nero’s House”), a lavish palace on a square mile of grounds that featured a solid gold facade.
[Back] Borgias: Possibly a reference to the Appartamento Borgia, a suite of rooms used by Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia, 1431-1503) and his family in the Vatican. They fell into disuse after the pope’s death, and in 1889 were restored and opened to the public.
[Back] Baedekers: Travel guides published by the German publisher Verlag Karl Baedeker. The company was founded by Karl Baedeker (1801-1859), who introduced the star-rating system. A two-star award was rare and highly valued.
[Back] Alnaschar: A character from the Arabian Nights. In “The Story of the Barber’s Fifth Brother,” Alnaschar was an idle man who invested inherited money in a basket of glassware he intended to sell. Sitting in the street awaiting customers, he dreamed of becoming so successful that he would be rich enough to marry the vizier’s daughter and live in a fabulous palace. His arrogant behavior toward his imaginary wife led him to lash out with his foot, causing him to turn over the basket and break his wares.
[Back] Diogenes: The Greek philosopher (412 or 404-323 B.C.) and founder of the Cynic school that advocated living an austere life, exemplified by as living in a wine jar.
[Back] Old Omar: A reference to a verse from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: “A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, / A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread—and Thou.” This version of 12th century Rubaiyat—a word which means “quatrain” in Arabic and refers to how the poems are structured—two-line stanzas with two parts per line—was translated by Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883).
[Back] Peterhof: The lavish Peterhof Palace was built by Russia’s Tsar Peter the Great (1721-1725).
[Back] L’envoi: A detached verse or verses at the end that conveys a moral to the reader or to a particular person.
[Back] Half buttoned up: Men’s shoes with buttons up the side were preferred for formal occasions. To fasten them, a buttonhook was inserted through the opening, hooked underneath the button, then drawn back, pulling the button through and closing the shoe.
[Back] Fremantle dock: Fremantle is a port on Australia’s southwest coast. The city grew during the gold rush of the 1890s and became a major shipping center much like San Francisco. There was much debate at this time about how to expand the dock facilities.
[Back] Balzac and Guy de Maupassant: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) was an influential French novelist and playwright. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a popular French writer who advanced the art of the short story.
[Back] Paradise Lost: An epic poem by John Milton (1608-1674) about the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The quote comes from Book IV, when two angels searching for Satan unknowingly encounter him and ask who he is. He replies:
“Know ye not me? Ye knew me once no mate
For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar!
Not to know me argues yourselves unknown,
The lowest of your throng; or, if ye know,
Why ask ye, and superfluous begin
Your message, like to end as much in vain?”
[Back] Always called Jane: Servants were typically named by their masters.
[Back] Fiddle-bridge: A piece of wood or bone placed at the tailpiece end of the instrument to raise the strings.
[Back] Deglutition: The process of swallowing.
[Back] Empty is the cradle: There are two possible sources, both from 1880, which suggests that one inspired the other. The phrase forms the last line of “Cradle’s Empty, Baby’s Gone” (1880) a song by Harry Kennedy (1855-1894). It also appears in “The Empty Cradle,” a poem by Robert Needham Cust (1821-1909), who spent two decades in India as a colonial administrator before retiring to a life as an author and linguist.
[Back] Perique: A type of tobacco cultivated near New Orleans that’s known for its earthy flavor from being cured in oak barrels.
[Back] Compound-condensing wonder: A description of a steam engine. The back-action refers to the direction the force flows out of the engine, as in the case of a steam locomotive; triple-expansion refers to the three chambers used in compound-condensing steam engines to draw energy from the high-pressure steam. Condensers captured the steam as it cooled and turned back into water, allowing it to be fed into the boiler again. Because these improvements created a more powerful, efficient engine, phrases of this variety were used as intensifiers when applied to a noun.
For example, when the 19th century magazine Merry’s Museum encouraged readers to send letters on any subject, it created a community with its own in-jokes, nicknames, humor, even minor flame wars. When too many letters flooded the magazine, the editor wrote that he had acquired a “double-back-action-high-pressure-condensatory-manipulator” to chop the letters down to size.
[Back] Un-soak our overcoats: To soak means to pawn, so Rotson wants to get their coats out of hock.
[Back] Might be identified: An echo from “The Adventure of the Second Stain” (1904), where Watson says “If in telling the story I seem to be somewhat vague in certain details, the public will readily understand that there is an excellent reason for my reticence.”
[Back] Avoirdupois: The system of weights used in the United States and most of the British Empire. It is from the Anglo-Norman French aveir de peis for “goods of weight.”
[Back] Sea-cow: An aquatic mammal called sirenias that lives in coastal waterways, rivers, and swamps. Manatees and dugongs are better-known examples of sirenias. In the Afrikaan language, hippopotamuses are called sea cows.
[Back] Sting-a-ree: Another word for a stingray.
[Back] Sign of the thirteen: A play off The Sign of the Four.
[Back] Dutch sandwich: It’s tempting to call this a typical smear against another country, such as “Dutch courage” (aided by alcohol) or “Dutch treat” (which is not a treat if you have to pay), but a Dutch sandwich, according to one period cookbook, consists of cottage cheese and chopped olives on buttered rye bread. If this doesn’t kill your appetite, the website “Stuff Dutch People Like” described a typical Dutch lunch as “eating bread smeared with some indiscernible lumpy matter.” The author emphasized avoiding “kip sate salade” (pureed chicken and peanut sauce), “garnalen knoflook salade” (blended shrimp and garlic) or “farmersalade” (blended farmer?).
[Back] Last Rose of Summer: A bleak song based on the 1805 poem by Irish poet Thomas Moore and sung to the traditional tune “The Young Man’s Dream.” It has been sung by artists as diverse as Sarah Brightman, Tom Waits, Charlotte Church, and Kanye West, who slid it into “Blood on the Leaves” from his Yeezus album. Sgt. Cuff frequently whistles the tune in Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, but in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Dorothea was pleased that her fiancé, Mr. Casaubon dislikes the song: “If he had always been asking her to play the ‘Last Rose of Summer,’ she would have required much resignation.”
[Back] M. Ganimard: Inspector Ganimard is Lupin’s nemesis who has sworn to capture him.
[Back] Sine qua non: Latin for “without which [there is] nothing,” meaning an essential action.
[Back] Hotel Drouot: A Paris auction house founded in 1852 and noted for selling art and antiques.
[Back] To the marines: A catchphrase originally intended to insult the Royal Marines as gullible. It first appeared in John Davis’ The Post Captain (1806) as “You may tell that to the marines,
but I’ll be d— —d if the sailors will believe it,” and was repeated in novels by Sir Walter Scott (Redgauntlet) and Anthony Trollope (The Small House at Allington). The meaning was flipped in the U.S. during World War I when James Montgomery Flagg designed a recruiting poster urging men willing to fight to “Tell that to the Marines!”
[Back] Rara avis: A phrase from the Latin meaning “rare bird.”
[Back] Reverse of the medal: A phrase meaning a turn for the worse.
[Back] Cachou box: A small box from the 19th century, usually made of gold or silver, used to hold pills to sweeten the breath. Cachou comes from the Malay kacu by way of Portugal.
[Back] I am mad: Or entering in a manner similar to the portly Alexander Holder, who asked Holmes to investigate the theft of the Beryl Coronet.
[Back] Abso-lutely: A curious exchange, particularly the insertion of the hyphen in the middle of “absolutely.” Perhaps Atkey wanted to imply that the coachman had added an intensifier in the middle of the word. Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang lists two possibilities traced back to this period: absoballylutely and absofuckinglutely.
[Back] Tipsy cake: A dessert cake consisting of layers of sponge cakes soaked in sherry or brandy.
[Back] Yclept: An archaic word meaning called, from the Old English word gecleopod. Pronounced “e-klept.”
[Back] Brown Study: In a state of deep thought. The phrase appears in a 1532 book, A Manifest Detection of the Most Vile and Detestable Use of Diceplay, and other Practices Like the Same: “Lack of company will soon lead a man into a brown study.”
[Back] Very ca’m: Not a typo, but an intentional way of characterizing a fictional character. Linguists call it “eye-dialect spelling,” used to suggest that a person may be illiterate or not very smart. In Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, Detective, for example, Huck expresses his concern to the reader when Tom stands before his aunt “very ca’m, and I could a shot him for it.”
[Back] Wid muh: Another example of the “eye-dialect spelling.” See the “Very ca’m” entry above.
About the Editor
Bill Peschel is a recovering journalist who shares a Pulitzer Prize with the staff of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. He also is a mystery fan who runs the Wimsey Annotations at Planetpeschel.com.
The author of Writers Gone Wild (Penguin), he publishes through Peschel Press the 223B Casebook Series of Sherlockian parodies and pastiches and annotated editions of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Whose Body? and Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The Secret Adversary. An interest in Victorian crime led to the republication of three books on the William Palmer poisoning case.
Peschel was born in Warren, Ohio, grew up in Charlotte, N.C., and graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He lives with his family and animal menagerie in Hershey, where the air really does smell like chocolate.
SHERLOCK HOLMES EDWARDIAN PARODIES AND PASTICHES II: 1905-1909. Notes and essays copyright 2016 Bill Peschel. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of the notes or essays may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in cases of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, email peschel@peschelpress.com or write to Peschel Press, P.O. Box 132, Hershey, PA 17033.
“By a Hair” by Jean Giraudoux, translated by Kai-Ho Mah, was published in the March 1970 issue of The Baker Street Journal and appears here with their kind permission.
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