by Henry James
14. (p. 67) a glass in one eye. i.e. a monocle.
15. (p. 67) linen. A word applied to personal as well as household linen; here, in particular, his shirt, collar and cuffs.
16. (p. 70) unconscious. i.e. unaware.
17. (p. 70) workhouse. These institutions for housing paupers, although less horrific than they had been in the eighteenth century, were still run on very harsh lines (in order to deter applicants), and were viewed with dread by those at or near the level of destitution. In 1882 there were 90,800 paupers in London, out of a total population of 3,814,571.
18. (p. 74) Modes et Robes. Fashions and dresses.
19. (p. 78) the dreadful place. Although not named until Chapter 28, p. 370, this is Millbank prison, which stood near Vauxhall Bridge. James wrote to his friend Thomas Perry, in December 1884: ‘I have been all the morning at Millbank prison (horrible place) collecting notes for a fiction scene. You see I am quite the Naturalist. Look out for the same – a year hence.’ It was in fact rather unusual for anyone to serve a long sentence in Millbank; most of the women, provided they behaved well, were transferred to Brixton as soon as a vacancy arose there. Although the prison was well kept, it had been built on low and marshy ground, and was very damp and unhealthy. The mortality rate (in 1854) was an appalling 6.91 per cent, as compared with i per cent at Brixton.
20. (p. 78) omnibuses. The first omnibus line, from Paddington to the City, was opened in 1829. The network of routes spread rapidly, and by 1853 it was calculated that the omnibuses of London were covering over 21 million miles a year. They were patronized mainly by the middle classes: although the fares were cheap, labourers found it embarrassing to board them in their working clothes.
21. (p. 78) the Tower. i.e. the Tower of London.
22. (p. 83) convulsions. Rare in the twentieth century, these were a common cause of infant and child mortality in the nineteenth. They were often the result of infectious diseases, but may also have been caused by poor nutrition (not necessarily confined to the poorer classes – the diet of the middle and upper classes was often notably lacking in fresh fruit and vegetables).
23. (p. 85) Dieu de dieu, qu’il est beau! Good heavens, how handsome he is!
24. (p. 86) Est-il possible, mon Dieu, qu’il soit gentil comme ça? Good lord, can he really be so sweet?
25. (p. 86) Mon pauvre joujou, mon pauvre chéri. My poor pet, my poor darling.
26. (p. 86) Il ne veut pas s’approcher, il a honte de moi. He doesn’t want to come closer, he’s ashamed of me.
27. (p. 87) Dieu le pardonne! God forgive him!
28. (p. 87) Ah, quelle infamie! What a slander!
29. (p. 87) Ah, par exemple! Really!
30. (p. 87) Dieu de bonté, quelle horreur! Good God, how dreadful!
31. (p. 91) Rebekah. The story of how she was chosen to be the wife of Isaac, son of Abraham, is told in Genesis 24. She represents, perhaps, the kind of virtuous wife that Miss Pynsent may have wished for Hyacinth.
32. (p. 91) the Empress of the French. Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. Since she was not of noble birth, the marriage was considered by many to be a misalliance: eventually, however, her virtues came to be appreciated. The introduction of these two female portraits at this point may be an oblique comment on Millicent, or rather on Miss Pynsent’s perceptions of her. (James makes a similar use of portraits in The Europeans.)
33. (p. 94) a pennyworth of gin. Until the Licensing Act of 1872 it was still possible for a publican to sell spirits to persons under sixteen. (See E. S. Turner, Roads to Ruin, 1950.)
34. (p. 96) a great haberdasher’s in the neighbourhood of Buckingham Palace. The Army & Navy Stores, opened in 1871. The first really large department store in London had been Whiteley’s (1863) in Bayswater.
35. (p. 96) another establishment, in Oxford Street. Possibly Marshall & Snelgrove’s, which had started in a comparatively small way in 1837, and was now expanding.
36. (p. 102) Michelet, Jules (1798–1874). Author of L’Histoire de France and La Révolution française.
37. (p. 102) Carlyle, Thomas (1795–1881). Described by W. B. Yeats in his Autobiographies as ‘the chief inspirer of self-educated men in the eighties and early nineties’. His many works include a History of the French Revolution (1837).
38. (p. 102) blouse. The smock worn by French peasants and workmen.
39. (p. 103) pewter. The standard material for beer mugs of the period.
40. (p. 106) torches. Mayhew and Binney (Criminal Prisons of London, 1862) describe such a scene as follows: ‘It is at these street markets that many of the working classes purchase their Sunday’s dinner, and after pay-time on a Saturday night, the crowd in some parts is almost impassable… There are hundreds of stalls, and every stall has its one or two lights; either it is illuminated by the intense white light of the new self-generating gas lamp, or else it is brightened up by the red smoky flame of the old-fashioned grease lamp. One man shows off his yellow haddocks with a candle stuck in a bundle of firewood; his neighbours make a candlestick of a huge turnip, and the tallow gutters over its sides; whilst the boy shouting, “Eight a penny, stunning pears!” has surrounded his “dip” with a thick roll of brown paper that flares away in the wind.’
41. (p. 106) carboniferous. i.e. laden with the smoke from industrial and domestic coal, of which in 1882 eight million tons were burned in the metropolitan area. The result was that until the Clean Air Act of the mid-twentieth century London was notorious for its fog.
42. (p. 107) fifty shillings a week. To put this figure in perspective: a semi-skilled labourer in the 1880s might earn from twenty-two to thirty shillings a week; a good plumber might make forty shillings for about sixty hours’ work; a middle-class income was defined as £300 a year at least (though it was not considered possible for a family to maintain a middle-class standard of living in the centre of London for much less than £500).
43. (p. 112) work off. Sell.
44. (p. 114) the Commune of 1871. The people of Paris, in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war, objected to the humiliating peace which was being negotiated by the national government under Thiers. They forced the latter to flee to Versailles in March. An elected municipal council was set up in Paris, but the city then found itself besieged by troops from Versailles. After a desperate defence, as the government troops began to invade the city, the Communards shot many hostages, including the Archbishop of Paris, and burned down the Palais de Justice, the Hôtel de Ville and the Palais des Tuileries. Government reprisals involved the execution of 17,000 men, women and children. The Communards had represented many shades of left-wing opinion, not only extremists, and the events of 1871 embittered political relations in France for years afterwards.
45. (p. 114) 1848. The Revolution of February 1848 resulted in the collapse of the Orléans monarchy and the setting up of a provisional government which carried out many social and political reforms.
46. (p. 115) Pickering, William (1796–1854). Publisher. He commenced business in 1820, and was instrumental in raising the standards of book design.
47. (p. 116) ouvrière. Workwoman.
48. (p. 116) proscript. Exile.
49. (p. 117) insularies. i.e. the inhabitants of the British Isles.
50. (p. 117) Michaelmas. 29 September, one of the traditional old feast-days of both France and England.
51. (p. 117) comme il faut – dans le genre anglais. Correct – in the English manner.
52. (p. 118) His schooling had been desultory, precarious. Hyacinth, having been born about 1856, would have been too old to benefit from the free, universal elementary schooling introduced by the Education Acts of 1870 and 1876.
53. (p. 118) a monthly nurse. One who looked after mothers and babies for the first month after a birth.
54. (p. 119) any direct contact with a library. Although an Act of Parliament authorizing the establishment of public libraries had been passed in 1850, local provision varied enormously. It was only towards the end of the c
entury that they were to be found in most London districts.
55. (p. 120) bien du mal. A lot of trouble.
56. (p. 120) La société lui doit bien cela. Society certainly owes him that.
57. (p. 121) intérieur. Home.
58. (p. 121) the Empire. That of Napoleon III, Emperor of France 1852–70.
59. (p. 122) the pauvre monde. The poor.
60. (p. 122) avènement. Coming.
61. (p. 123) in the breach. i.e. in the thick of the fight.
62. (p. 123) ‘forwarding’. A bookbinding term. The ‘forwarde’ puts a plain paper cover on a book, and generally prepares it for the ‘finisher’.
63. (p. 123) a villa almost detached, at Putney. A district surveyor writing in the magazine The Architect, in 1873, says: ‘The upper ten thousand and the abject poor still live and sleep in the metropolis. The middle classes… betake themselves to far-off spots, like Richmond, Watford, Croydon or Slough… The smaller fry content themselves with semi-detached boxes at Putney, Kilburn, New Cross, or Ealing.’
64. (p. 123) buttons. Refers to the double row of gilt buttons on the typical page’s uniform jacket.
65. (p. 124) accapareurs. Monopolizers.
66. (p. 124) ‘spy’. In the New York Edition, this becomes ‘governmental agent’; ‘middle-class spy’ (below) becomes mouchard.
67. (p. 125) J’ai la main parisienne. I’ve got the Parisian touch.
68. (p. 125) il n’y a que ça. It’s the only thing that matters.
69. (p. 125) ’89. The French Revolution starting in 1789, which eventually led to the First Republic.
70. (p. 125) the Versaillais. Thiers. (See note to p. 114 on the Commune.)
71. (p. 126) soyez tranquille! Don’t worry!
72. (p. 126) Mon ami. My friend.
73. (p. 126) ces messieurs. These gentlemen.
74. (p. 126) mon petit. My dear young man.
75. (p. 127) En v’là des bêtises! What nonsense!
76. (p. 128) savant. Scholar.
77. (p. 128) ma bonne. My dear.
78. (p. 128) an interne. An initiate.
79. (p. 128) obole. Mite, offering.
80. (p. 129) Mademoiselle. She is referring to Miss Pynsent.
81. (p. 129) désagrément. Annoyance.
82. (p. 129) It seems to be the custom in this country. It happened elsewhere too. Slick, in Sartre’s Les Mains sales (1948), has bitter memories of the pious ladies who used to come round to his drunken mother’s place and lecture her about the need for self-respect.
83. (p. 129) ces dames. Those ladies.
84. (p. 130) Ah bien, voilà du propre. Well, here’s a fine thing.
85. (p. 131) over the water. On the other side of the Thames.
86. (p. 131) the south-westerly court. Later we are told that this is in Camberwell, which is actually in south-east London.
87. (p. 131) Audley Court. Apparently another James invention. However, what is true is that Camberwell at this time was overcrowded and economically depressed.
88. (p. 131) Tennyson, Alfred (1809–92) published a poem called ‘Audley Court’ in 1842. Its idyllic setting is in ironic contrast with the street referred to here.
89. (p. 134) She sounded the letter r peculiarly. ‘Your London exquisite, for instance, talks of taking – aw – his afternoon’s wide – aw – in Wotton Wo – aw – aw – or of goin to the Opewa – aw – or else of wunning down – aw – to the Waces’ (Mayhew and Binney, Criminal Prisons of London, 1862). In the New York Edition, James is more explicit than here: ‘She sounded the letter r as a w.’
90. (p. 142) the demos. The common people.
91. (p. 144) the day they were presented to the Queen. The daughters of the aristocracy were always presented at Court before being launched into society. The custom persisted until quite recently.
92. (p. 147) She went to the wash-tub. Rose means that her mother supported them by taking in other people’s laundry.
93. (p. 147) an epidemic of typhoid. Such epidemics were common, even among the well-to-do (the Prince of Wales contracted typhoid in 1871), in an age when public water supplies were often contaminated and plumbing (where it existed at all) was often defective.
94. (p. 148) One might as well perish for a lamb as for a sheep. Hyacinth is reversing the normal wording of this proverb.
95. (p. 153) Canterbury Music Hall. This was opened in 1851, in Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth. The building, which had not been licensed as a theatre or music hall since 1927, was destroyed by a German bomb in 1942.
96. (p. 157) the Italian opera. As the price of opera stalls in 1882 was twenty-five shillings, this would have been beyond Hyacinth’s means. The normal price of a seat in the stalls at a West End theatre at this date was about five shillings.
97. (p. 159) verdancy. To be ‘green’ was to be gullible or lacking in sophistication.
98. (p. 160) Revue des Deux Mondes. By this date a fortnightly magazine, which had been first published in 1829. It contained serialized fiction, and articles on literary, social and historical topics. Hyacinth’s daydream comes virtually true: see Chapter 22, p. 307.
99. (p. 161) red cap of liberty. The Phrygian bonnet worn by some of the French revolutionaries, and by Marianne, the symbolic figure who represents the French Republic.
100. (p. 161) Marseillaise. The French national anthem, composed by Rouget de Lisle in 1792.
101. (p. 161) the Goddess of Reason. The cult of this goddess, instituted by the fanatically anti-Christian Jacques Hébert, only flourished for a few months, and came to an end with Hébert’s execution in 1794.
102. (p. 161) Gravesend. In August 1877 James wrote to his mother: ‘Yesterday was a very “close” Sunday; and in the afternoon, to take the air, I went down the river to Gravesend; but there was no air, and it was a dreary affair. Aunt Kate will be glad to hear that I abstained from the classic Gravesend treat – “tea and shrimps”; offered me by such tea-maidens!’
103. (p. 164) crush-hat. A hat containing a spring, which could be collapsed.
104. (p. 165) an extraordinarily mingled current in his blood. A characteristic which he shares with some of the heroes of the French Naturalist Zola, an author whom James admired and was conscious of imitating.
105. (p. 167) cause célèbre. Famous case.
106. (p. 167) in the blood-stained streets of Paris. This sounds like the revolution of 1830, in which the Paris mob threw up barricades and took over the Hôtel de Ville, the Louvre and the Palais des Tuileries. As a result the king, Charles X, was deposed, and replaced by Louis Philippe.
107. (p. 171) à charge de revanche. In return.
108. (p. 172) the International. In the New York Edition James altered this to ‘the Subterranean’, presumably to avoid confusion with the First International founded under the leadership of Marx and Engels in the 1860s, and the rival anarchist International formed in the 1870s by Bakunin and his followers.
109. (p. 172) nihilist. Properly speaking, nihilism was a movement peculiar to Russia, but contemporaries often used the term loosely when speaking of anarchists and others. In the New York Edition this word has been removed altogether, and the sentence reads: ‘Anyone can tell, to look at you, that you’ve taken some oath on bloody bones, that you belong to some terrible gang.’ This alteration and the one referred to in the note immediately above draw our attention to the fact that James’s knowledge of revolutionary movements was, at least in 1886, rather superficial.
110. (p. 177) the farce which preceded the melodrama. It was still very common to have a short ‘curtain-raiser’ before the main item.
111. (p. 178) stilettos. i.e. daggers (not heels!).
112. (p. 178) cachucha. The dance which was transformed, in the twentieth century, into the cha-cha-cha.
113. (p. 183) the fierce chandelier. As this would have been, by this period, a gas chandelier, it must indeed have been very hot.
114. (p. 187) Laws! A variation of ‘lawks!’, an uneducated euphemi
sm for, probably, ‘Lord!’
115. (p. 188) Mephistopheles. The diabolical tempter of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus (1604) and Goethe’s Faust (1808/32).
116. (p. 200) à quoi m’en tenir. Where I stand.
117. (p. 201) le premier venu. Just anybody.
118. (p. 205) Epping Forest. It was formally opened by Queen Victoria as a public recreation ground in 1882.
119. (p. 206) Astley’s. Astley’s Theatre Royal, in Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth, was an amphitheatre, originally opened in 1775. It was destroyed by fire, and subsequently rebuilt, on four separate occasions. From 1871–92 it was managed by the famous Sanger family. The building was finally closed as unsafe, and demolished, in 1893.
120. (p. 206) fond du sac. Bottom of the bag. The metaphor is reminiscent of conjuring.
121. (p. 209) shops. The reader will have noticed the word ‘shop’ being used colloquially in the sense of ‘place’. Here, it is referring to gentlemen’s clubs.
122. (p. 212) season. The English social season lasted only from May to July, and was very hectic.
123. (p. 225) the state of the labour market at the East End. The interested reader can find further details in Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People (1889).
124. (p. 231) en tout bien tout honneur, s’entend. All very proper and honourable, of course.
125. (p. 232) Bulwer’s novels. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–73) is best remembered for The Last Days of Pompeii (1834). Pelham: or the Adventures of a Gentleman (1828) may be the novel Hyacinth has particularly in mind.
126. (p. 235) già. Indeed.
127. (p. 235) Cara signora. Dear lady.
128. (p. 235) I went through my miseries long ago. As recounted in Roderick Hudson (1876).
129. (p. 235) Che vuole? What do you expect?
130. (p. 238) è vero? Haven’t you?
131. (p. 238) Capisco bene. I understand perfectly.
132. (p. 240) povera gente. Poor people.
133. (p. 243) Deutschland. Germany, Madame Grandoni’s country of origin.
134. (p. 244) bibelots. Ornaments.
135. (p. 249) American on the mother’s side, Italian on the father’s. Like Hyacinth, she is of mixed parentage.