The below notes were compiled for the 1st edition of the Long Drawn Aisle. They remain in draft form but are added for a completeness – and an aid to the reader.
PART I: A Loose Bundle of Sticks
Chapter 1:
Pg11: ‘You have forgotten me….And now I am returned’. – In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche blamed Euripedes for making the Chorus insignificant and having individuals attempting to resolve conflicts by arguments.
‘And I have learnt’ – Aeschylus, The Orestian Trilogy. Chorus: ‘Man must suffer to be wise’.
Pg 12: ‘Come back to me my love’ – Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Sorcerer.
‘trimmed black moustache with a hint of curls to its points’ – Alec D’Urbeville is described thus in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbevilles
Pg13: ‘his Hambledon; his New Lanark’ – Hambledon was the ‘model village’ creation by WH Smith; New Lanark that of Robert Owen, the ‘father of British socialism.’
Chapter II:
Pg20: ‘the moans of thunder…..’ – Allusion to the overthrow of Saturn by the Titans and Jove.
Pg21: ‘her dress, its dusty scarlet contours’ – In classical allusion, red is colour of charity.
Pg22: ‘with a wistfulness more apt to one sowing husks not seeds’ – Allusion to Demeter after the theft of Prosperine by Hades.
‘Hers was the water cup and balm’ – John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress..
Pg 23: ‘like Isabella…’ – Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene I: ‘What sin you do to save a brother’s life, nature dispenses with the deed so far that it becomes a virtue’.
Pg 24: ‘its test of affection’ – From Lord Byron, The Tear.
Chapter III:
Pg 26: ‘about the time that Magwitch’ – Allusion to Dickens, Great Expectations.
Pg 27: ‘the old Amelia’ – A missionary ship in that sailed up Congo in the 1842.
Pg 28: ‘the spirit of Empson and Dudley’ – Henry VII’s notorious tax collectors.
Pg 31: ‘look not to the rocky path, but askance to the easiest way’ – Ibid, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
‘white garment of treachery’ – Ibid, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
‘vales of Ulster’ – Reference to the Irish campaign for Home Rule.
Pg 33: ‘One does not talk of the taking of something….’ – In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates argues that love is always ‘of’ something, and therefore in a state of deficiency, suggesting the individual pursuit of happiness.
‘the very architect of logic’ – Ibid, Symposium. Socrates shows that truth can be found based on logical assumptions.
Pg 34: ‘Daily Express….enquiry’ – This ‘enquiry’ was actually printed in the spring of 1909.
Pg 39: ‘Mr Chamberlain’s original claim’ – Joseph Chamberlain’s speech on tariff reform in Birmingham, 1903.
‘economic jam tomorrow’ – Allusion to Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass.
‘no one but a woman would believe something as impossible as that’ – Ibid, Through the Looking Glass.
Pg 41: ‘the contents of the Dartmouth’ – The Dartmouth was the ship from which the tea was thrown in Boston Tea Party.
‘a loose bundle of sticks’ – Joseph Chamberlain referred to the colonies thus, in 1903.
Pg 43: ‘principles that….are as inalienable to their character and way of life’ – These ‘principles’ were in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.
‘the natural outcome’ – In Rich and Poor, Chamberlain claimed men were born with ‘natural rights’, following Burke.
Pg 45: ‘strong men retain riches’ – Proverbs, 11: 16
Chapter IV:
Pg 47: ‘Why is light given to a man whose way is hid’ – Job, 3:23
‘Yet man is born unto trouble’ – Ibid, Job, 5:7
‘burdened the song of slaughter and blood’ – From the Life of Hugh Price Hughes: ‘slaughter and blood has been the burden of their song for long enough’.
Pg 48: ‘not a matter of private life and prayer meetings’ – In 1887, Hugh Price Hughes wrote that: ‘we have dealt too exclusively with the individual aspects of the Christian faith…..as if it was simply a question of private life and prayer meetings’.
‘I am sick of love’ –Song of Solomon, 2:5
‘The winter is not passed….’ – Song of Solomon, 2:11
‘created by the boredom of nature’ – Ibid, The Anti-Christ. Nietzsche’s description of man.
‘one totality’ – Fichte spoke of the state alone being that which united a multitude of human beings.
‘not far from the Kingdom of God’ – John Wesley woke to these words, from Peter.
Pg 50: ‘suffused with all the rich adjectival wonders’ – Hugh Price Hughes quoted as speaking: ‘at a tremendous pace, and his adjectival vehemence was a cannonade.’
‘vivid green skirt’ – In classical allusion, green is the colour of hope.
Pg 51: ‘we’re nothing more than unripe apples’ – The promologatory theory of colonies, as put forward by Lord Durham, was that ‘ripe apples’ fell from the tree.
Pg 52: ‘Mr Bellman’s nodding head’ – Allusion to the affliction of Cain in Lord Byron, Cain, A Mystery.
Pg 54: ‘too preoccupied by what coat they should wear’ – Joseph Chamberlain was often portrayed as wearing ‘many different coats’.
‘a man may only move the earth when his feet have a firm a place to stand’ – Archimedes: ‘Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth’
Chapter V:
Pg 60: ‘autocratic power of a cog’ – Ibid, Anti-Christ: ‘To be a public utility, a cog…..is the kind of happiness of which the great majority alone are capable’.
Pg 61: ‘Clive, Seymour and Rhodes’ – The ‘men on the spot’ in, respectively, India, Egypt and South Africa.
‘an egg already laid’ – Gladstone’s remark that the taking control of Egypt was ‘the almost certain egg of a great African empire’.
‘Never a jewel in the Crown was there so costly as India’ – Disraeli’s remark.
Pg 65: ‘many satanic mills’ – Allusion to William Blake, Jerusalem.
Chapter VI:
Pg 67: ‘When you realise her greatness….’ – Extracts from Pericles’ speech in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.
‘How blessed would they be who the rains rained upon’ – Allusion to Edward Thomas poem, Rain.
Pg 68: ‘to turn tail….with little boots and mud’ – Allusion to Caligula’s unimpressive ‘leading’ of the German legion, from Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars.
Pg 69: ‘If Claudius could…’ – Allusion to Emperor Claudius’ reputed stammer.
Pg 70: ‘some enthusiasm’ – A term used to disparagingly refer to Methodists.
‘optimum non nasci, auf cito mori’ – Silenus’s advice to King Midas: ‘The best thing is not to be born: the next best to die soon’ .
‘principles of social life and its laws’ –Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Pg 71: ‘men to come down from the sky, gold growing in plants….’ – Various Ashante tribal beliefs.
Chapter VII:
Pg 79: ‘white, earth-spotted dress’ – In classical allusion, white is the colour of faith.
Pg 80: ‘I let you in. Like the good maid’ – Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V: ‘Let in the maid, that out a maid, Never parted more.’
Pg 81: ‘Play? Is that what they should do’ – Ibid
Pg 82: ‘I would not walk on your cloth. It is a shroud.’ – In Aeschylus, on Agamemnon’s return he submits to his wife’s demand to tread upon silk cloth, thereby offending Gods.
‘Bitter as wormwood’ – Proverbs 5: 3-5
Pg 83: ‘why are you not the woman you were when I loved you first’ – Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: Clerk’s Tale: ‘a love grown old is not the love once new’.
Chapter VIII:
Pg 85: ‘two angels are coming – but for their love they have forsaken Heaven’ – Allusion to Lord Byron, Heaven and Earth.
Pg 90: ‘It is too late, they say, too late’ – Allusion to Shelley, Epipsychidion (‘too late beloved’)
PART II: A Second Education
Chapter IX:
Pg133: ‘Lamia’ – Child devouring monster from Apollonius.
Pg137: ‘Janissaries’ – Regular levy of Christian boys (from Balkans) converted to Islam and trained as fighters to protect the Sultan.
Pg138: ‘sword to rule the world….horn to blow’
Allusion to Charlemagne and death of Roland in Chanson de Roland
Pg140: ‘Mr Cruikshank’ – 19th century reformer and advocate of tee-totalism.
Pg141: ‘kindly bone in their bodies’ – The Furies were also known euphemistically as the ‘Kindly Ones’
Pg144: ‘emigration rights’ – Of Canadian and Pacific Railway, as reported in the Times
‘turning like the Royal George’ – RN ship sunk in 1782 with 800 loss of life
Pg145: ‘K and K’ – Kaiserlich-Koniglich (Imperial-Royal), Austrian army
‘Catholics and they wouldnae see the 2nd coming for want of a written remonstrance’ – Catholics believed revelation of truth made through Church and Pope, whilst Protestants saw ultimate truth as coming only from Scripture.
Chapter X:
Pg156: ‘bulldozed for a hollow, vapid magnificence’ – Karl Kraus wrote that Vienna was being ‘demolished into a great city’
Pg158: ‘with his eyes’ – Allusion to Shakespeare, MND, Act I
‘fairy king and queen, stolen away from home’ – Ibid.
‘happy, married Austria’ – Ref to ‘Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube’
‘so proud, so jealous’ – Allus to Oberon in Ibid.
‘little drops of love in idleness’ – Allus to Ibid.
‘we commit this body to the deep to be turned into corruption’ – From service in Book of Common Prayer.
‘slumped down in the Mexican dust’ – The Emperor’s brother was executed in Mexico in 1868.
‘flames and mountains of Mayerling’ – The Emperor’s son, Crown Prince Rudolph, committed suicide with his lover there.
Pg159: ‘sparing her king nothing in grief’ – The Emperor’s alleged cry on murder of his wife that ‘he was to be spared nothing’.
‘triumph of the altar and the crown’ – Ref to Habsburg State.
‘guaranteed the peaceful development…’ – Ref to the Times report of the day.
‘bestrewn with cornflowers’ – Cornflowers were worn and thrown by Pan-Germans.
‘experimental station at the end of the world’ – Karl Kraus called Austria thus.
Pg163: ‘Deep in the shady sadness of the vale beneath’ – Keats, Hyperion A Fragment,
Chapter XI:
Pg177: ‘Why, I travelled, young Edward’ – Allus to Shakespeare, AYLI, act IV, scene I, (Ros: ‘a traveller! By my faith you have great reason to be sad. I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men’s); also Byron, Don Juan, xviii (‘what’s travel, unless it teaches one to quote and cavil’)
‘the fate of Ariane’ – Allusion to Ariane (Ariadne) auf Naxos, Strauss
Pg183: ‘like the Patna’ – Allus to the ship, which does not sink, in Conrad’s Lord Jim
Chapter XII:
Pg189: ‘Equal and different’ – Ref to 1867 constitution in which: ‘all ethnic groups in the nation have equal rights…’
Pg198: ‘cracked and broken visages’ – Allus to Shelley, Ozymandias
Chapter XIII:
Pg201: ‘The perpetrators would be harassed, vilified, beaten up…..dishonoured’ – Cited from Pierre Proudhom on Anarchy.
Pg206: ‘real first prize in the lottery of life’ – Parody of Rhodes’ quote on Englishman having won the lottery of life.
‘gemutlichkeit’ – ‘Cosiness’ – well-known expression for Viennese sentiment.
Pg218: ‘Life, life, eternal life’ – Allusion to Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress.
Chapter XIV:
Pg220: ‘Unpack his thoughts with words’ – Allus to Hamlet, Act II, s ii
Pg223: ‘but thee the better’ – Lucifer to Cain in Byron’s Cain
Pg227: ‘that Jew, Marx’ – Marx’s class consciousness was overriding factor for masses.
Pg228: ‘because this is our home’ – Allus to Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s observation that: ‘We must understand that we have a home, but no fatherland as Austria is only an apparition.’
Pg233: ‘never looking back’ – Allus to Orpheus and Eurydice.
Pg238: ‘Fie on you Friedrich….a pox on your lies’ – Petruchio and Kate in Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew.
Pg242: ‘Give strong wine unto him that is ready to perish’ – Bible, Proverbs 31:4 (‘It is not for kings to drink wine…..Lest they drink and forget the law’)
Chapter XV:
Pg252: ‘he joined the Greeks together’ – Theseus’ federalisation of Attica
Pg253: ‘For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink’ – Bible, Romans 14, 17
Pg257: ‘sometimes people are only happy once, and never again’ – Allus to Schnitzler, Liebelei, Act II, where Christine says: ‘I have been happy once. I don’t ask more of life.’
Chapter XVI:
Pg261: ‘thinking is die Qual fur der young man’ – Die Qual – torment.
Pg263: ‘the brothel of Europe’ – Allus Dante, Purgatory Canto VI: ‘Oh servile Italy, house of suffering, a ship without a pilot…not mistress of provinces but a brothel’
‘mere geographical expression’ – Metternich’s referred to Italy as such.
Pg266: ‘Gardiner’s skinny hand’ – Allus to Coleridge, Rime of Ancient Mariner.
Pg267: ‘and on it came, without wind or tide’ – Ibid
Pg268: ‘his skin was as white as….and his hair as golden as’ – Ibid
‘I have my man’ – Ibid
Pg269: ‘This is the curse which is upon you’ – Ibid
‘vacant, all absorbing purlind eyes’ – Allus to Byron, Prisoner of Chillon
Pg270: ‘sea of stagnant idleness’ – Ibid Byron
Chapter XVII:
Pg276: ‘love for the Viennese theatre endured yet’ – Allus to Emperor Franz Josef’s actress lover, Katherine Schratt.
Pg278: ‘was not ravished, rent limb from limb….down the Danube’ – The fate of Orpheus at the hands of the Maenads.
Pg280: ‘Aeroplanes instead. Will have better moral effect’ – Allus to Churchill who described the use of planes over men for the bombing of Iraq in 1922 thus.
Chapter XVIII:
Pg283: ‘It does not ache for you’ – Allus Keats, Hyperion, A Fragment
‘He sleeps, again’ – Ibid, in reference to Saturn.
Pg284: ‘he will flick his tongues at me whilst I am expected to roar’ – Bible, Peter 5:8 (Devil is ‘like a roaring lion’)
Pg288: ‘Oh brightest of my children’ – Ibid Hyperion AF, l.309
‘To blackest blackness west isles cast’ – Ibid Keats, Book 2 l.327
Pg289: ‘Oh Austria, where is my flesh/iron/golden men.’ – From Notker the Stammerer, Charlemagne.
Pg290: ‘started singing the fall of Troy’ – Allus to Nero in Suetonius, as he sung whilst watching Rome burn.
Pg294: ‘I’ll tell you how to burn’ – Ibid Keats.
Chapter XIX:
Pg295: ‘let no man now despise his youth’ – Bible, Timothy 1, 4 l.12
Pg298: ‘Walms Bay’ – German S/W Africa, now Namibia
‘Rinderpest and Herero People’ – History from British Imperialism, Cain and Hopkins & The South West Africa Company, Voeltz
Pg302: ‘loitered like a sluggard’ – Allusion Bunyan, PP (pp 125-126) & Bible, Proverbs, 13:4
Chapter XX:
Pg311: ‘liebelei’ – ‘Love games’. From Schnitzler. In his plays the girls are portrayed as lavishing their love of men who they know will almost certainly desert them.
‘women become far more attractive when they become less interesting’ – From Liebelei, Act I
‘it is quickly out of sight, out of mind’ – Ibid.
Chapter XXI:
Pg317: ‘past the house without eyebrows’ – Loos’ house in Vienna.
Pg322: ‘it will be he who leaves me; he who deserts me’ – Allusion to Ariadne.
Pg326: ‘pathless blue skies’ – Allus to Shelley, Alastor: ‘Lost…forever lost, In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep’.
‘his sails will billow, and they will blacken’ – Allus to death of Theseus’ father as he fails to change sails.
PART III: The Fox in the Desert
Chapter XXII:
Pg 327: ‘Fox in the desert’ – Bible, Ezekiel 13:4: ‘Oh Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts.’
Pg329: ‘the mould is invisible in their jars’ – Nietzsche, Anti-Christ. The Greeks believed that hope was the evil of evils (and that it was the ‘mould’ that was left in Pandora’s ‘jar’), as it kept the unhappy in suspense.
Pg330: ‘How does he bear all this’ – Allus to Isolde: (‘How did I bear it then, how do I bear it still?’)
Pg333: ‘not even adhere to the first rule’ – Allus to Early Christian Lives: (Anthony, after 20 years in desert: ‘Let this be the first rule….that no one should weaken in the firmness of their commitment to the way of life he has chosen’)
‘Olympian heights of philosophy’ – The accusation levelled against Balfour, that he could not descend from such heights.
Pg337: ‘works of Mr Hardy or Mr Wells’ – The two were on opposite sides of suffragette fence.
Pg342: ‘if you insist on just cutting the cake in half’ – Allus to the Lion and the Unicorn in Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Pg343: ‘proof of their existence’ – Descartes, A Discourse on Method. ‘Cogito, ergo sum.’ Dutch scholar, Frans Burman, tried to reduce assertion of ‘cogito, ergo sum’ to a syllogism: whatever is thinking exists: I am thinking: therefore I exist.
Pg344: ‘Of course it’s a sense.’ – Ibid. Aristotle’s adage that there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses
Pg351: ‘under the blue Ionian sky of love – Allus to Shelley, Epipsychidion: ‘We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, Under the roof of blue Ionian weather’
‘no church, no formal kitchen slavery, and no children’ – Allus to Nazi dictum: ‘kirch, kinder, keinde’
‘April, warning with smiles and tears’ – Ibid Shelley, Epipsychidion: ‘A vision like incarnate April, warning, with smiles and tears’.
Pg361: ‘pretending to be asleep’ – Allus Hardy, Tess. Alec accuses Tess of this in the wood before having his way.
Pg367: ‘what pity for her dumb looks then’ – Aeschylus, Orestian Trilogy: (On death of Iphigenia: ‘the pity her dumb looks beseech’)
‘he was immortal’ – Plato, Symposium (Aristophanes claims sex as desire to secure immortality through procreation)
‘words mean nothing in sleep’ – Ibid, Hardy.
Pg371: ‘sporting violets, watered by tears’
Napoleon’s supporters wore violets.
Pg372: ‘form would followed function’ – Phrase invented by Louis Sullivan in 1901
Pg381: ‘when they called for help, we did not come’ – Ref to 1848 revolution: ‘sie kamen nicht’ – they did not come; when no one came to help students against army)
Pg383: ‘not one spot on the entire map of the world….no good was done here’ – Allus to Gladstone’s remark of 1880: ‘There is not a spot on the whole map, where you can lay your finger and say, there Austria did good’
Pg384: ‘people saying peace’ – Bible, Ezekiel 13:10: ‘Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace:’
Pg388: ‘our ultimate end’ – Allus to Lionel Curtis, who believed that it was not peace but unselfish devotion to human welfare that was this. The International Commonwealth was therefore the ultimate end.
Chapter XXIII:
Pg398: ‘take fast hold instruction’ – Bible, Proverbs, 4:13
‘and the word of the Lord came unto me’ – Bible, Ezekiel 13
Pg402: ‘Bellman’s head nodded’ – Byron, Cain, refers to ‘involuntary shaking of the head’ as being the ‘mark’
‘reading the pale cast of his thoughts’ – Allus Shakespeare, Hamlet, actiii, si
Pg404: ‘the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power’ – Reference to Bunyan, PP
‘a man who….says and does not’ – Bible, James 2:14 ‘Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone’
Chapter XXIV:
Pg411: ‘all that was which now destruction is’ – Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, xlvi
Pg413: ‘Say woman, what is this which thou hast done’ – Milton, Paradise Lost, Book X, l.158
Pg416: ‘ladies on the tables’ – Allus to Sergeant’s painting, Hearts?
Pg419: ‘Luther nailing nine hundred and fifty’ – Ref to Luther’s 95 theses.
‘tongue could no man tame….unruly evil full of deadly poison’ – Bible, James 3:7
Pg422: ‘Zoe liking Cecelia’ – Allus to Woolf, A Room Of One’s Own: p,74: ‘Chloe like Olivia….’ as Woolf characterises traditional female literature.
Chapter XXV:
Pg426: ‘it is the garment that is the surety for the stranger’ – Allus Bunyan, PP
Pg431: ‘Hebertist head’ – Jacques Rene Hebert. French Revolutionary extremist.
‘all the things he knew, he only half knew’ – Reference to Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra. He encounters man who is being sucked by leeched, who says ‘Better to know nothing that to half know many things’
Chapter XXVI:
Pg433: ‘the Austrian heir presumptive’ – From the London Times
‘highest class in the public school’ – In the Times, 29th June 1914: ‘A student named Prinzip, belonging to the highest class in the public school.’
Pg434: ‘martial glint….of the most mercenary of blacksmiths’ – Byron, Don Juan.
‘So now, for glory, Onward my lads!’ – Ibid.
‘Oh, why Roseberry’ – Lord Roseberry. Liberal leader, Prime Minister, and leader of Liberal Imperialists.
‘Carrie….’ – Carrie is Pooter’s wife in Diary of a Nobody; Sarah is the servant.
Pg435: ‘life was all about mathematics, that was where the beauty lay’ – Pythagoras’ view that numbers were the essence of all things.
Pg440: ‘we have led a good life haven’t we’ – Bible, Ecclesiastes, 3
Pg444: ‘the worth of his life was as nothing when set aside the worth of the whole’ – Ibid, Ecclesiastes.
Pg445: ‘and that’s the Chancellor of the Exchequer’ – Lloyd George.
Chapter XXVII:
Pg446: ‘Deliver me from mine enemies…..’ – Bible, Psalm 59
Pg448: ‘the distracting condition’ –Allus Hardy, Two on a Tower: Swithin to Lady Constantine: ‘this distracting condition prevents all striving’ in ref to his love for her.
Pg449: ‘man knoweth not his time; as the fishes that are taken…’ – Bible, Ecclesiastes 9:11
Pg450: ‘we must be saved from the bloody men’ – Bible, Psalm 59:2
Pg451: ‘a fell monster’ – John Wesley denounced war as ‘that fell monster’.
Pg452: ‘a chance to be more positive in our faith’ – Hugh Price Hughes.
‘It is clearly understood that her majesty the Queen…’ – Cited from the 1870 contract guaranteeing Belgian neutrality.
‘Jeremiah’s stance could remain justifiable’ – Ref Bible. Arthur Peake, in response to argument that it was base to accept privileges of citizenship then refuse its primary obligations, cited Jeremiah, who saw best way to preserve country as opposing policy.
‘the words of St Peter – we must obey God, not men’ – Bible, Acts 5, 29
Pg454: ‘how brief her love’ – Allus Hamlet, actiii, sii
Pg455: ‘when one of us walks, the other is the shadow’ – German belief that the doppelganger was a person’s malignant soul that sets out to dominate the other’s life so that it becomes the substantial self and the original nothing more than the double’s double, a shadow swallowed up in evil.
Chapter XXVIII:
Pg457: ‘farewell Sophie’ – Franz Ferdinand’s wife.
‘for now, as eat we must, to luncheon’ – Gen Potiorek after conducting bodies of FF and his wife remarked: ‘Gentlemen, this is a terrible misfortune. Nevertheless, one must eat. Let us go to luncheon.’
Pg458: ‘and not quite so royal’ – Archduchess Sophie was never accorded Royal status.
Pg459: ‘fishing rods and shrimping nets’ – Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary, was away fishing in July.
‘more important coal-fired boats’ – The Kaiser was on a steamer visiting Tsar.
‘farewell Potemkin’s city’ – Loos referred to new Vienna as Potemkim’s city, Catherine the Great’s lover, who rigged up villages in Ukraine to fake prosperity.
Pg462: ‘manifest destiny of the land’ – The America ‘project’ as enunciated by Theodore Roosevelt.
Pg464: ‘I’ll do, I’ll do, for now I’ll do’ – Shakespeare’s witch in Macbeth
Pg465: ‘when I open the locks to the next who knocks’ – Ibid, Macbeth.
Pg466: ‘a jewel was being polished’ – Frederic Morton, Thunder at Twilight, p298: ‘On the morning of that day (19th July) the “jewel” had finally been polished to perfection.’ Refers to the note to Serbian King.
Pg467: ‘farewell to all the moving, the slipping and the sliding’ – Hugo von Hofmansthal (das gleitende).
Pg468: ‘end of Kulturkampf’ – Movement of 1890’s to loosen the bonds initiated by the removal of Bismarck.
‘thus with violence are capitals thrown down’ – Bible, Revelation 18:21
Pg474: ‘great note is like a Mozart symphony’ – Joseph II’s remark to Mozart that there were: ‘too many notes’ on opening of Seraglio?
‘mais il n’y a rien au dehors qui soulage les femmes’ – Ref Corinne: ‘Que les homes sont heureux d’aller a la guerre, d’exposer leur vie, de se livrer a l’enthousiasme de l’honneur et du danger. Mais il n’y a rien……’
‘too much comfort in our age’ – Schoenberg said: ‘Our age seeks much. What it has found above all is comfort’
Pg479: ‘reply as King Henry had to his mother on SBD’ – In response to Catherine de Medici’s question as to what to do with them, Henry replied: ‘kill them all.’
‘let the plague of darkness fall upon them’ – Bible, Exodus, 10
Chapter XXIX:
Pg484: ‘dark-skinned, gypsy aspect’ – Heathcliff is described thus by Bronte in Wuthering Heights
Pg485: ‘Cassivelaunus’ rotted stake stumps’ – Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain. Cassivelaunus implanted stakes into the bed of the Thames to destroy Caesar’s invading fleet. Allegedly.
Pg486: ‘better if you threw yourself off’ – In Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche cites WH Mallock’s noted aesthete figure who saw that to complete contemplation of Westminster Bridge at sunset required some poor unfortunate to throw themselves from the parapet. Beautifying of pain.
‘nothing was fair….that the spots were all around’ – Bible, Song of Solomon 4:7 (‘thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee’)
Pg487: ‘hatred…..stirreth up strifes’ – Bible, Proverbs 10:12
Pg488: ‘cannons to the left, cannons to the right’ – Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade.
‘little jumblies’ – Allusion Edward Lear.
‘robbed of my youth’ – Shakespeare, Henry IV PI, Hotspur’s death.
Pg491: ‘glorious roll of his martial eye’ – Allus Jack Johnson in Don Juan.
Pg496: ‘he was a brigadier’ – Byron, Don Juan 7:xviii ‘There were foreigners of much renown, Of various nations and all volunteers; Not fighting for their country or its crown, But wishing to be one day brigadiers’.
Pg500: ‘great Helvetian stamp’ – Helvetius argued that the differences between individuals was entirely down to education.
‘it was not the word, it was the act’ – Bible, ibid James
Chapter XXX:
Pg505: ‘debating with himself like Pyrrho’ – Philosopher who could never reach conclusions
Pg507: ‘Immortal in a bulletin’ – Byron, Don Juan 7:XX
Pg509: ‘Essay concerning human understanding’ – By John Locke
‘Principles of Political Economy’ – By JS Mill
Pg510: ‘Lord Derby’s bill’ – This was the bill to weed out those from jobs and ‘encourage’ them to sign up.
Pg515: ‘proposed retreat of Smit- Dorrien’s’ – Smith-Dorrien proposed withdrawing to straighten line. Dismissed by French because of it. Haig then proceeded to straighten line.
Pg516: ‘at all costs’ – Usual instruction on all battle orders issued by GB commanders.
Chapter XXXI:
Pg519: ‘flapper’s feather’ – The white feather of cowardice.
Pg522: ‘My, if one didn’t know…..well said’ – Byron, Cain 2:2 (Lucifer: ‘thy father loves him well – so does thy God’: Cain: ‘And so do I’: Lucifer: ‘Tis well and meekly done’)
Pg523: ‘one who loves God more than life’ – Reference to Abel, in Byron, Cain
‘virtually in rags’ – Allus Bunyan, PP, pp 29 (Passion will have everything now and would be ‘nothing left him but rags’ – in contrast to Patience)
Pg524: ‘life must follow by the opening of one gate or the other’ – Ibid, Christian chooses wicket gate to town of Morality instead of strait gate
Pg525: ‘forced into a thing counter to your feelings’ – Byron, Cain 2:2 (Lucifer: ‘let not be oversway’d by tyrannous threats to force you into faith ‘Gainst all external sense and inward feeling’)
‘the slothful man saith there is a lion without: I shall be slain in the streets’ – Bible, Proverbs 22:13
PART IV: A Close Fitting Coat
Chapter XXXII:
Pg529: ‘dulay’ – Du lait – milk
‘C3’ – Lowest category for those fit for active service in 1914.
‘Jerry’s fighting strength’ – Wiper’s Times satirical response to Hillaire Belloc’s claim. They estimated it at 16.
‘plum and apple jam pips’ – Only jam available.
Pg530: ‘tars’ – Royal Navy.
‘cuthbert’ – One on staff at home; one with a cushy job.
‘rainbow’ – Recruit arriving just after battle.
‘smudger and spud’ – Nicknames for those called ‘Smith’ and ‘Murphy’
‘gold stripe’ – For those wounded in action.
Pg531: ‘aunt sally’ – The Army Service Corps
‘rootie’ – Bread
‘tin opener’ – Bayonet
Pg532: ‘jippo’ – Juice
‘crown and anchor’ – Popular card game
‘In a bayonet assault…’ – From the King’s Regulations
‘jacks’ – Military Police
‘rat’ – Royal Engineer.
Pg533: ‘swinging the lead’ – Malingering.
Pg534: ‘pins’ – Grenades
‘dolly’ – Name for those called ‘Grey’
Pg535: ‘how offensive are you’ – Diktats from General Staff always asked this.
‘amo, amass, I love a lass…’ – From National Ballad and Song
Pg536: ‘tight’ – Drunk
Pg537: ‘chevy’ – Rhyming slang: chevy chase – face.
‘paying rent’ – Common belief among soldiery that French made English pay rent for trenches.
Pg538: ‘hussars’ – Brand of cigarette
‘he sighed and he begged…’ – From National Ballad and Song
‘pursued with forks and hope’ – Allusion Carroll, Hunting of the Snark
‘San fairy ann’ – Ca ne fait rien.
‘dead, nothing more’ – Charles Sorley: When you see the millions of the Mouthless dead.
‘Germans are more irritating than you are’ – Maurice Hankey claimed US intervened in WW1 because Germany irritated her more than Britain
‘your best associate’ – America joined war as an ‘associate’ power, not an ally.
‘fucking England….God I hate that word’ – Sorley wrote that he was ‘sick of the sound of that word (England)’. Lived in Germany before war and was sympathetic to their cause.
Pg541: ‘the objects in view of developing a soldierly spirit……’ – Reference from Military Handbook.
Pg542: ‘comsah’ – ‘Comme ca’
Pg546: ‘CCS’ – Casualty Clearing Station
Pg547: ‘Sylvia being not by…..shadow of her perfection’ – Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona
Pg548: ‘Better to be married than to burn’ – Bible, 1 Corinthians 7:9
‘distracting words’ – Allusion Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress (p30)
‘Retaliation do you seek……’ – From Wiper’s Times. Alluding to the artillery’s lack of accuracy.
Pg549: ‘Dick shot off’ – Distinguished Service Order.
Pg551: ‘indictments of impiety’ – Allusion Byron, Cain
Pg554: ‘Three English soldiers crossed the canal…..’ – From tune to Mademoiselle from Armentieres, several bowdlerised versions exists, in which Three German Officer ‘crossed the Rhine’ and did unpleasant things to the women, and drank the wine.
Pg557: ‘if Paris happens to be annihilated’ – Isnard, a Girondin depute, in 1793 said that this would happen to Paris if Hebert’s insurrections did not cease. Cited in Doyle, History of the French Revolution p233
Pg564: ‘Great Zopyrus’ – In Herodotus, Histories, Book 3, Zopyrus cut off his nose and ears and scourged himself to pass as a traitor enabling Darius to take Babylon.
Pg566: ‘I will go where I am wanted….’ – AE Houseman, A Shropshire Lad, XXIV
Chapter XXXIII:
Pg569: ‘the most fundamental breech of the contract’ – Lionel Curtis, World War, Its Cause and Cure.
‘no state could possibly hope to exist…’ – Ibid, Curtis
Pg570: ‘not a man reformed in thought’ – Hardy, Tess XLV: (On Alec: It was less a reform than a transfiguration’)
‘the flashes of fire did not last’ – Ibid Tess, XLV: (Tess to Alec: ‘Such flashes that you feel, Alec, I fear don’t last’)
‘tinkles and the sounding brass’ – Bible, 1 Corinthians, 13:1
‘the well was without water…’ – Bible, 2 Peter, 2:17
Pg573: ‘numbers are the only rational things that exist’ – Pythagoreans asserted this to be the case.
Pg575: ‘sometimes he had had the best of it’ – Allus to Carroll, the Lion and the Unicorn in ATLG
Pg576: ‘biography is the only history’ – Thomas Carlyle claimed this to be case.
‘great kingdom of magistrates’ – Burke on India.
‘how vain would it have been to sit down and write’ – Thoreau’s aphorism: ‘how vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live’
Pg577: ‘fishing fleet’ – Term used to describe young ladies who arrived seeking husbands in India.
Pg579: ‘closer integration of English speaking world’ – Phillip Kerr (member of Round Table and future ambassador to US), said the war had brought the idea of ‘integration of the English speaking world within possibility.’
Pg581: ‘less than ten per cent’ – Lord Chelwood’s observation – 8% actually!
Pg582: ‘we will not be treated like any other foreign debtor nation’ – Geddes (ambassador to US in 20s) observed that ‘they (US) look for the opportunity to treat us as a vassal state as long as the debt remains unpaid.’
‘sordid alliances’ – Allus to Anglo-Japanese alliance, which was not renewed in 1922, under pressure from US
Pg583: ‘matter of the Alaskan border’ – The Alaskan border dispute in 1903. US appointed 3 anti Canadians to commission and British judge voted with Americans, according to Jebb to ‘prove his impartiality’. Jebb, Studies in Colonial Nationalism.
‘Quebec Act’ – 1774. Guaranteed French-Canadian rights (Catholicism, language, civil law etc). None of rights would be legitimate under constitution of US.
Chapter XXXIV:
Pg590: ‘By the multitude of thy merchandise…’ – Bible, Ezekiel 28:15
Pg592: ‘Asclepius’ – Healer in Greek Mythology
Pg596: ‘the soul of the sluggard has nothing’ – Bible, Proverbs 13:4
Chapter XXVI:
Pg602: ‘John Brown’s baby’s got a…’ – From Somme, Lyn Macdonald
Pg604: ‘fire and movement’ – From Military Handbook.
‘electrified by bolts of lightning’ – Allus Byron, Don Juan 8: xxxii
Pg605: ‘battleaxe and weapons of war’ – Bible, Jeremiah
Pg606: ‘the lions without roared’ – Allus, Bunyan, PP
Pg607: ‘with an anxious look from left to right’ – Ibid (p12)
Pg608: ‘pale and ghastly glare’ – Byron, Heaven and Earth, siii: ‘Death hath risen: In the sun’s place a pale and ghastly glare hath wound itself around the dying air.’
‘close fitting coat’ – Moeller’s remark to Keyserling: ‘I need a close fitting coat to feel safe in my skin’.
‘sprites began to hop and skip’ – Allus Shakespeare, MND, act v, sii ‘Now is the time of night, that the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite’.
Pg609: ‘lie and rot in cold obstruction’ – Allusion, Measure for Measure
Pg616: ‘the blacklist’ – Division most feared by Germans. Usually led by Grenadier Guards, 51st Highland, and then whatever division you happened to be in next.
‘I will go where I am wanted’ – Ibid Houseman.
Chapter XXXVII:
Pg622: ‘Are you hurt?’ – Allus Woolf, Orlando (via Jane Eyre)
Pg625: ‘Eternal everywhere, eternal nowhere’ – Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, when Z encounters shadow who is seeking his home: ‘This seeking for my home, O Zarathustra, do you this seeking was my affliction, it is consuming me. Where is my home? I ask and seek and have sought it, I have not found it. Oh eternal everywhere, oh eternal nowhere, oh eternal – vanity!’
Simon Marshall 