The Rainbow
Page 61
like the Sleeping Beauty in the story: the princess who, put into an enchanted sleep by a fairy, slept for a hundred years until awakened by the kiss of a prince.
motor-car: Nottingham was a pioneering city in the development of the automobile, and there were already three suppliers by 1899: still, Kinkead-Weekes notes that there were still only 125 cars in all of Nottinghamshire three years later.
the Hemlock Stone: near Stapleford, Notts.
cynical Bacchus in the picture: Kinkead-Weekes suggests that the picture referred to is that by Caravaggio, in the Uffizi, Florence.
morris-dancing: traditional dance performed by men in fancy costume, probably deriving from pagan rituals. English folklore was undergoing something of a revival at this time.
slip: waistcoat.
Mahdi… Khartoum: the Mahdi is the Sudanese Muhammad Ahmad (1844–85), who staged a rebellion against Egyptian rule in 1884–5. He overran the city of Khartoum and killed General Gordon. His followers were defeated by Kitchener at the battle of Omdurman in 1898.
‘Appen: happen: ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’.
glaucous: usually in the sense of translucent sea-green, but here probably with the botanical meaning of’covered with a waxy or powdery bloom’.
loadstone: magnetic oxide of iron, or a piece of this used as a magnet.
pillar of salt: Lot’s wife in Genesis 19: 26 is turned into a pillar of salt as punishment.
fuse like a bead: to make a bead-like drop of molten metal fluid by means of intense heat.
‘And God blessed… all things’: Genesis 9:1–3.
‘And you… all flesh’: Genesis 9: 7, 12–15.
Noah… and japheth: cf. Genesis 7:10 ff.
maggots… kissing carrion: Shakespeare, Hamlet, 11. ii. 181.
‘The very hairs of your head are all numbered’: Matthew 10: 30.
war was declared… Boers in South Africa: on 11 October 1899. This war, between Britain and the Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, lasted until May 1902.
The good of the greatest number was all that mattered: a synoptic version of the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832).
the angel before Balaam: Numbers 22: 22–35.
crush hat: a soft hat which can be crushed flat.
the constant bad news of the war: specifically referring to the early months of the Boer War, which went badly for the British, with Mafeking, Kimberley, and Ladysmith all being under siege: the phrase would have wider emotional resonances in 1915.
matriculation examination: the matriculation examination of London University, which acted as an entrance qualification for university, and also qualified a student for employment as an uncertificated school teacher.
farouche: shy, like a wild animal.
stand-back: support.
Newnham: Cambridge women’s college, founded 1871.
Diana: Roman virgin hunter-goddess, associated with the moon.
the Buddhists a royal prince, the Egyptians their Osiris: the Buddha (560–480 BC) was Gautama, or Sakyamuni, the son of a king in northern India; Osiris, brother and husband of Isis, was worshipped as king of the Underworld and god of fertility by the Egyptians.
Moloch: a fierce God of the Ammonites, whose worship involved acts of cruelty and human sacrifice.
Lamb nor Dove… lion and the eagle: cf. John 1: 29, 32.
Zolaesque: referring to Émile Zola’s (1840–1902) novel of mining life, Germinal (1885).
vogue la galère: ‘let the world go how it will’ (lit. ‘row the galley’).
Donatello: Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi (1386–1466), Florentine sculptor.
Delia Robbia: Florentine family of sculptors and modellers of bas reliefs, of whom the best known are Luca (1400–82) and Andrea (1435–1525).
Benvenuto Cellini: (1500–71): Florentine sculptor, metalworker, jeweller.
Jack-gnat: small gnat.
board-school: a state school administered by a School Board, after the 1870 Education Act.
Schoolmistress: weekly newspaper, 1881–1935.
Gillingham was such a lovely name: but in reality Gillingham, near Chatham—close to where Lawrence’s own mother had been a pupil teacher—was in the most rapidly industrializing part of Kent.
‘Sweet Thames … my song’: refrain of Edmund Spenser’s (1552–89) Trothalamion’ (1595).
Wellingborough Green: near Croydon, where Lawrence himself had taught: again, this would have failed to match up to Ursula’s romantic imaginings.
‘C’est la mère … lui rendra—’: French children’s song: ‘It’s mother Michel who has lost her cat Who cries from the window, who’ll bring it back—’.
Brinsley Street school: based on the Wilmot Street Schoolroom (in a Methodist chapel just off Bath Street, Ilkeston) where Lawrence worked as a pupil teacher when attached to the Ilkeston Pupil-Teacher centre in 1903–5.
Mr Harby: based on the Principal of the Ilkeston Pupil-Teacher centre, Mr T. A. Bancroft.
swinging round the pole: the pole which conducted power to the tram from an overhead line, and which, when lowered and swung round at the end of a tram’s run, allowed the vehicle to progress back the way it had come without itself turning.
jelly-tray: an early duplicating method, using impressions made on a prepared gelatine surface.
Standard Five: at the time (1900–2) that Ursula was teaching, Nottingham bylaws had ensured that the school leaving age was 13. But it had been 10 until 1899, providing the Standard Five examination was passed: hence the particular obstreperousness of Ursula’s class, and the overcrowding in this, as other, schools.
stuff hat: made from a fur and wool mixture.
caution: odd, eccentric, out-of-the ordinary person.
Greuze: Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), painter known for genre scenes and portraits, especially of children.
Reynolds’s ‘Age of Innocence’: the painting of 1774 by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), in the National Gallery, London.
paid her scot: paid her share.
‘Board of Education’… Whitehall: the Board responsible for administering education in the County, and the location of the central government Ministry of Education.
mizzling: vanishing.
some work about ‘Woman and Labour’: deliberately vague, since Lawrence probably had in mind Olive Schreiner’s Woman and Labour, which was not published until 1911.
She shall be sportive … springs: from William Wordsworth’s ‘Three years she grew in sun and shade’ (1799).
Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’: unfinished narrative poem (1797–1800) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834).
an infant crying in the night: see Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850), section lv.
Willey Green: based on Moorgreen, near Eastwood.
Beldover: based on Eastwood.
Chesterfield: a large, over-stuffed sofa, recently fashionable.
Primavera… Aphrodite… Nativity: paintings by the Florentine artists Sandro Botticelli (1444–1510), the first two (La Primavera and The Birth of Venus) in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence; the third (Mystic Nativity) in the National Gallery, London.
Swinburne: Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet (1837–1909).
Meredith: George Meredith, novelist and poet (1828–1909).
Students’ Exhibition in the Castle: put on every two years by the Municipal School of Art and Design (founded 1843), which Gudrun attends.
The big college built of stone: the original Victorian Gothic building of University College, Nottingham (founded 1881) in Shakespeare Street.
moved and lived and had its being: cf. Acts 17:28.
Racine: Jean Racine, French dramatist (1639–99).
Livy: Titus Livius (59 BC–AD 17), Roman historian.
Horace: Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BC), Roman poet and satirist.
the Women’s Social and Political Union: a slight anachronism, since this militant wing of the women’s suffrage movement was not founded (by Emmeli
ne Pankhurst) until 1903.
Cassandra: daughter of Priam, king of Troy. Apollo granted her the gift of prophecy, but, since she spurned his attentions, he also contrived that no trust should be placed in her predictions—which included foreseeing the fall of Troy.
handicraft holiday school: the Co-operative Holidays Association held ‘summer assemblies’ at seaside resorts and in the Lake District.
‘There are so many dawns … not yet risen’: from the Indian Rigveda, probably via the citation on the title-page of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Morgenröte (The Dawn: 1881).
Beowulf: 3,200-line Anglo-Saxon poem: the manuscript dates from the late tenth century, although it was probably composed earlier.
jewjaws: gewgaws: gaudy trifles, playthings, or ornaments.
nucleolating: a neologism by Lawrence, signifying the formation of a nucleolus, a tiny rounded body within the nucleus of a cell.
Invisible Man: in H. G. Wells’s novel The Invisible Man (1897).
museau: muzzle.
‘Gewiss…. Frau Baronin’: ‘Certainly Baron—don’t mention it, Baroness’.
Westminster Cathedral: the new, Byzantine-style Roman Catholic Cathedral (1895–1903).
Whitsuntide: the festival of the coming of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost.
neat, low cottage: based on Violet Meynell’s cottage near Greatham, Sussex, where The Rainbow was finished.
She must go to London: to sit the examinations for the External degree of the University of London, for which University College, Nottingham’s students were entered until the granting of its own charter in 1948.
taxi-cab: another signifier of modernity London’s first motorized taxis were licensed in 1903.
persiennes: exterior shutters.
Simla: Indian hill-station, popular with colonial administrators’ wives and families during the hot season.
round furnace door: cf. Daniel 3: 23–8.
harpy: a predatory winged monster in Greek mythology
butt houses: more usually but-houses: outer rooms of cottages, kitchens.
Willey Water: based on Moorgreen Reservoir.
She felt… sit at the board: E. L. Nicholes, ‘The simile of the sparrow’, in Frederick J. Hoffman and Harry T. Moore (eds.), The Achievement of D. H. Lawrence (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953) indicates that the original source of this image lies in Bede’s account of the conversion of Edwin (History of the English Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955), 125)
the rainbow stood on the earth: cf. Genesis 9: 11 17
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