Love at All Ages (1959)

References for the novel Love At All Ages, by Angela Thirkell.

‘Relusions’ from the Moyer Bell 2001 edition.

Chapter 1

2 The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company – established by Montague Tigg in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.

3 Snip, snap, snout, this tale’s told out. – Ending to some fairy tales.

4 Sibyl – was a priestess of Apollo who prophesied.

Sylvia Gould and Dr. Ford – become emotionally involved at the end of The Demon in the House.

Angela Thirkell wrote to Margaret Bird in March 1960: ‘I had already—to my horror —realised how old everyone is now—including Sylvia Gould”.

5 William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, 1708-78, English statesman.

William Pitt, 1759-1806, twice Prime Minister.

Edmund Burke, 1729-97, British statesman.

The Palace of Westminster – the medieval royal palace used as the home of the British parliament, was largely destroyed by fire on 16 October 1834.

Gothic architecture – a style of architecture that flourished in Europe during the high and late medieval period. Its characteristics include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress.

The Gordon Riots – 1780 began as an anti-Catholic protest in London against the Papists Act of 1778. The protest evolved into riots and looting.

6 “A book about Queen Victoria’s Coronation by someone with a name like Turtle” – an in-chuckle. Mrs Gould is referring to Thirkell’s own Coronation Summer, published 1939.

George Knox – is “hurt because no one recognized his apt quotation” – I can’t either.

Grow old along with me! – The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
– Opening lines of “Rabbi Ben Ezra” by Robert Browning.

7 Sputnik 1 – the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957.

8 “I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings – it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”
– William Wordsworth in Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800.

9 Peter Pan – a character created by novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie (1860- 1937). He is a free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up.

10 Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough – and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. – Luke 9.62.

But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day – lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. – Hebrews 3,13.

A Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures – generally known as Cruden’s Concordance, is a concordance of the King James Bible that was created by Alexander Cruden (1699–1770).

2 George Sampson first courted Bella Wilfer – then transferred his attentions to her sister Lavinia, in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend.

Brave New World – Words spoken by Miranda at the end of The Tempest, Shakespeare. Also used, ironically, as title of novel by Aldous Huxley, 1932.

13 ‘When Mrs F’s Aunt lived at Hendon – Barnes’s gander was stolen by tinkers’
– from Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit.

The Almanach de Gotha – a directory of Europe’s royalty and higher nobility.
.
17 The Franks were the earliest of all the Germanic invaders to fix themselves in the Roman province of Gaul. – When their King, Clovis was told of the way Jesus suffered death on the cross, he grasped his battle-ax fiercely and exclaimed: “If I had been there with my Franks I would have revenged his wrongs!”
– Can this be the historical episode of which George is speaking?

18 But let my due feet never fail –
To walk the studious cloister’s pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
– From “Il Penseroso” by John Milton.

Moab is my wash pot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe. – Psalm 60.8.

Bluebeard – a French folktale character who lived in a sinister castle.

20 I don’t think any of these artists and artworks are real?
Panurge is one of the principal characters in Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. He is an exceedingly crafty knave, libertine, and coward.
Woolcott Jefferson Van Dryven married Betty Dean.

22 Simony – the act of selling church offices and roles.

23 “Younger than she are happy mothers made” – Paris in Romeo and Juliet Act I scene 2.

26 you, at such times seeing me, never shall –
With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As “Well, well, we know,” or “We could an if we would,”
Or “If we list to speak,” or “There be an if they might,”
Or such ambiguous giving out—to note,
That you know aught of me.
– Hamlet Act I scene 5.

27 Mrs Gamp – the midwife in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.

Why dost thou converse with … that roasted Manningtree ox – with the pudding in his belly…? Henry IV Part 1 Act II scene 4.

Manningtree – a town in Essex, noted for its Whitsun fair, where an ox was roasted whole.

28 “Often she thinks, Were this wild thing wedded –
More love would I have and much less care”
– From “Love in a Valley” by George Meredith (1828-1909).

Chapter 2

31 A heave offering – generally used in the positive sense of an offering to God.

33 Lucina – title of Juno as patroness of child-bearing and new-born infants.

36 Balliol and Oriel – are both colleges of Oxford University.

Alfred Lammle and Fascination Fledgeby – in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend.

37 Dido and Aeneas – in Virgil’s Aeneid.

39 John Constable – 1776-1837, English landscape painter.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum – say nothing but good about the dead.

44 “And as Jesus passed forth from thence – He saw a man sitting at the receipt of custom, named Matthew; and He saith unto him, Follow me.” – Matthew 9.9.

46 Tony’s adventure with the pram – happens in The Demon in the House.

48 Ay, now am I in Arden – the more fool I,
when I was at home, I was in a better place.
– Touchstone in Shakespeare’s As You Like It Act II scene 4.

50 “Frankie and Johnny” – a traditional American popular song telling the story of a woman, Frankie, who finds that her man Johnny was making love to another woman and shoots him dead.

51 Br’er Fox – a fictional character from the Uncle Remus folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris.

The Battle of Fort Sumter – (April 12–14, 1861) was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the Confederate States Army, and the return gunfire and subsequent surrender by the United States Army that started the American Civil War.

“All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight” is a poem by American writer Ethel Lynn Beers, first published in 1861.

52 Sir John Everett Millais – 1829-96, English painter.

53 Is she kind as she is fair? –
For beauty lives with kindness.
– From poem, “Silvia”, in Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare.

Brave New World – Words spoken by Miranda at the end of The Tempest, Shakespeare. Also used, ironically, as title of novel by Aldous Huxley, 1932.

55 In England, patrilineal ultimogeniture – (i.e., inheritance by the youngest surviving male child) is known as Borough English, after its former practice in various ancient English boroughs.

Robinson Crusoe – novel by Daniel Defoe, 1719.

Chapter 3

63 Time travels in diverse paces with diverse persons. – I’ll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. – Rosalind in As You Like It Act III scene 2.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream –
Bears all its sons away.
– From hymn by Isaac Watts.

64 Tare and Tret – the arithmetical rule used for calculating the net weight of goods by subtracting the tare and the tret from the gross weight.

Tare – is an allowance made from the gross weight of goods for the box, bag or other wrapping in which the goods are packed.

Tret – is an allowance of 4 lb. in every 104 lb. of weight, made as compensation for loss by waste.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field – 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.” – Matthew 13.24.

65 The Ingoldsby Legends – by R. H. Barham,1837.

66 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills – from whence cometh my help – Psalm 121.

67 A Group of Noble Dames short stories – by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

68 Sir John Franklin – 1786-1847, British explorer.

“Everything is Peaches Down in Georgia” – song by Grant Clarke, 1918.

69 “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women” – a polemical work by the Scottish reformer John Knox, published in 1558.

70 The Heir of Redclyffe – by Charlotte M. Yonge, 1853.

71 bear your body more seeming, Audrey – Touchstone in As You Like It Act V scene 4.

73 George Borrow – 1803-81, wrote several books about gypsies.

74 hectic is a medical term meaning face flushed with fever – as explained on pages 260-1.

76 “See on their glowing cheeks –
Heavenly the flush!
Ah, So the silence was!
so was the hush!”
– lines at the end of Bacchanalia; or, The New Age by Matthew Arnold.

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations – an American reference work that is the longest- lived and most widely distributed collection of quotations. The book was first issued in 1855.

79 Cherry Ripe – an English song with words by Robert Herrick (1591–1674) and music by Charles Edward Horn (1786–1849).

My Willie stands on board of a timbo –
And where to find him I do not know
But for seven long years I am constantly waiting
For to cross the Bay of Biscay O.

THE DEATH OF NELSON Recitative – O’er Nelson’s tomb, with silent grief oppress’d,
Britannia mourn’d her hero, now at rest;
But those bright laurels
ne’er shall fade with years,
Whose leaves are water’d by a nation’s tears.

Horatio Nelson, Viscount Nelson, 1758-1805, English naval officer.

80 81 The Mertons dined with the Pomfrets – and Ludovic sang in Aubrey Clover’s production, in What Did It Mean? (1954).

Coronation Summer would have been the perfect title for that book – which is centred on celebrations of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, but Angela Thirkell had already used that title in 1939 for a book about the coronation of Queen Victoria.

81 “The husband listens and sings. – But the wife remembers.”
– I can’t trace the original which is being parodied.

“Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold, –
And the mate of the Nancy brig,
And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain’s gig.”
– From “The Yarn of the ‘Nancy Bell” in the Bab Ballads by Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, 1869.

81 82 Dukes with the lovely maiden dealt, –
DUKE BAILEY and DUKE HUMPHY
Who ate her winkles till they felt
Exceedingly uncomfy.
– From “The Periwinkle Girl” “in the Bab Ballads” by W. S. Gilbert.

82 The Diana of Versailles – is a marble statue of the Greek goddess Artemis, also known as Diana à la Biche, Diane Chasseresse (“Diana Huntress”), Artemis of the Chase, and Artemis with the Hind.

83 There would be doubt, hesitation and pain –
Forced praise on our part—the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!
– from “The Lost Leader” by Robert Browning.

Giles Foster – first visited Pomfret Towers and met Sally Wicklow in Pomfret Towers.

84 Je t’attraperai bien, dit-il. Et voici comme. – from “L’OURS ET L’AMATEUR DES JARDINS” by Jean de La Fontaine.

you, at such times seeing me, never shall –
With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As “Well, well, we know,” or “We could an if we would,”
Or “If we list to speak,” or “There be an if they might,”
Or such ambiguous giving out—to note
That you know aught of me.
– Hamlet Act I scene 5.

Genesis – first book of the Old Testament.

Anthony Trollope – 1815-82, English novelist.

85 Or ever the silver cord be loosed – or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
– Ecclesiastes 12.6.

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, –
And universal darkness buries all.
– last lines of The Dunciad by Alexander Pope.

Mrs Proudie – Bishop Proudie’s wife in Trollope’s Barchester series.

86 canard – is the French word both for a duck and a false report.
Mrs Gamp is the nurse / midwife in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.

Chapter 4

87 No, good mother. Here’s metal more attractive. – Hamlet Act III scene 2.

88 Famous and Decisive Battles of the World – The Essence of History for 2500 Years by Charles King, 1899.

90 Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe When I am far away? –
– from Song-book Of The Commandery Of The State Of Pennsylvania.

91 George Crabbe – 1754-1832, wrote “The Village”, painting a grim picture of rural poverty.

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
– from Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray (1716-1771).

Alfred Mantalini – in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby refers to “a dem’d moist, unpleasant body”.

92 “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag, and Smile, Smile, Smile” is a World War I marching song, published in 1915 in London, written by George Henry Powell under the pseudonym of “George Asaf”.

A British Warm – is a type of woollen overcoat based on the greatcoats worn by British Army officers in the First World War.

93 And the LORD spake unto the fish – and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
– Jonah 2.6.

lepper, – Irish, not to be confused with leper – what does this mean?

94 Randolph Caldecott, – 1846-86, illustrated books for children..

Mrs. Mary Blaize – An Elegy on the Glory of her Sex: R. Caldecott’s Picture Books, 1885.

95 laudator temporis acti – a praiser of past times, from Horace’s Odes
Earth and sea bear England witness if he lied who said it.
– from “England, An Ode” by Algernon Swinburne.

Slough of Despond – from Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.

100 That I, the son of a dear father murder’d, –
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
– Hamlet Act II scene 2.

When Jack Tars growl, – I believe they growl with a big big D—
But the strongest oath of the Hot Cross Bun was a mild “Dear me!”
– from “The Bumboat Woman’s Story” in the Bab Ballads by W. S. Gilbert.

101 Eye of newt and toe of frog, – … Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark
– the witches in Macbeth Act IV scene 1.

Wackford Squeers, – schoolmaster of Dotheboys Hall in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby.

Rosa Dartle – from Dickens’s David Copperfield.

Ivanhoe – by Sir Walter Scott, 1819.

102 “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” – short story by Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-49.

103 Old Mother Slipper Slopper – from “The Fox”, a traditional English folk song.

In 390 BC Juno’s geese on the Capitol – warned Rome of the Gallic attack.

104 In Sheridan’s The Critic, – or A Tragedy Rehearsed, a preposterous tragedy called The Spanish Armada is presented by the author, Mr Puff. The characters include Elizabeth I’s chief minister who is supposedly too weighed down with affairs of state to communicate with anything but a portentous nod.

105 Alea jacta est – the die is cast. Attributed to Julius Caesar in 49 BC as he led his army across the Rubicon river in Northern Italy..

106 107 “Where wicked youths in crowds are stowed
He shall unquestioned rule,
And have the run of Hackney Road
Reformatory School!”
– last verse of “The Two Ogres” in the Bab Ballads by W. S. Gilbert.

108 109 drab baulo, dukkerin – Romany terms.

109 A Gorgio -is the gypsy name for a non-gypsy.

111 Archimedes – Greek mathematician born c. 287 BC. By displacing water in his bath he discovered the principle of specific gravity (relative density)..

Euclid – c.300 BC, Greek mathematician, compiled Elements, a collection of
postulates, rules, theorems and problems which form the basis of Euclidean geometry.

Chapter 5

114 Jaufré Rudel – born in the 12th century in Blaye, was an Aquitan troubadour. He wrote love songs in which he sings of “courtly love,” that is to say, love impossible and hopeless.

119 The Dale twins – are christened in County Chronicle. p.120.

120 Ah, past the plunge of plummet, –
In seas I cannot sound,
My heart and soul and senses,
World without end, are drowned.
– from “A Shropshire Lad” by A. E. Housman.

121 “Everything is Peaches Down in Georgia” – song by Grant Clarke, 1918.

123 James Graham – restores the fish-feeding bell in County Chronicle.

127 Of all the girls that are so smart, –
There’s none like pretty Sally!
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley!
– song by Henry Carey (1687?-1743).

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold. – Lady Macbeth in Macbeth Act II scene 2.

The die had been cast. – see above, p.105.

128 An éminence grise is a powerful decision-maker or adviser who operates “behind the scenes” or in a non-public or unofficial capacity..

Look not thou upon the wine when it is red – …Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.
– Proverbs 23.31-33. A VERY subtle joke by Lord William!

129 le mot juste – “The right word” in French. Coined by 19th-century novelist Gustave Flaubert, who often spent weeks looking for the right word to use.

132 “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women” is a polemical work by the Scottish reformer John Knox, published in 1558.

133 Why dost thou converse with … that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly…? – Henry IV Part 1 Act II scene 4.

Manningtree is a town in Essex, noted for its Whitsun fair, where an ox was roasted whole.

In the spring of 1812 – the British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley, Earl of Wellington, had driven the French from Portugal. With Napoleon obsessed by the invasion of Russia, Wellington turned toward Spain. The way was barred by two fortresses, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. When Ciudad Rodrigo collapsed after a short siege, Wellington prepared to break the fortress of Badajoz.

The sack of Troy – as recounted in Homer’s Iliad..

Who trusted God was love indeed –
And love Creation’s final law–
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed–
– from In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

134 A philippic – is a fiery, damning speech, or tirade.

135 English Civil War, – 1642–1651.

I have become all things to all men, – that I might by all means save some.
– 1 Corinthians 9.19.

“He was a man that had the root of the matter in him – but he was one of the most troublesome pilgrims that ever I met with in all my days.”
– from The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.

137 Royal Botanic Gardens, – Kew, Richmond, south London
other literary references on that page all self-explanatory?

Chapter 6

140 note copied from relusions for Before Lunch:
Princess Louisa Christina of Cobalt-Hatz (sometimes Herz)-Reinigen appears
also in Enter Sir Robert p.246, Three Score And Ten pp. 12, 42, Jutland Cottage p.167. Cobalt= Coburg – HT suggests a play on Windsor & Newton watercolours. Queen Victoria’s mother was a Princess of Leiningen, while Queen Adelaide was a Princess of Saxe-Meiningen; Reinigen means “cleaning”, hertz means “heart”, hatz means “hounding”, or is it just supposed to be “hats”? Jo March, of course, smartened up old hats by painting them…!

141 Juliana Starter talks constantly of Kornog – in Before Lunch..

Julia Margaret Cameron – 1815-79, photographer.

The Thin Red Line (Battle of Balaclava) – an 1854 military action during the Crimean War, with the British soldiers in red uniforms.

Nous avons changé tout cela – We have changed all that. from Le Médecin malgré lui by Molière (1666), Act ii, scene 6.

142 Mary Thorne in Trollope’s novel, Doctor Thorne, 1858.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles – by Thomas Hardy, 1891.

143 That Air and Harmony of Shape express, –
Fine by Degrees, and beautifully less.
– from “Henry and Emma” by Matthew Prior, 1774.

144 Augustus Moddle – in Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.

le mot juste – “The right word” in French. Coined by 19th-century novelist Gustave Flaubert, who often spent weeks looking for the right word to use.

145 Pliny the Elder, – 23-79 AD, Roman scholar.

The Dickens Fellowship, – founded in 1902, is a worldwide association of people who share an interest in the life and works of Charles Dickens.

146 The Mitre is an inn in Oxford.

147 Dorothea marries Casaubon in Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1871.

149 “All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight” is a poem by American writer Ethel Lynn Beers, 1861. – from “Invictus” by W. E. Henley (1849-1903)

154 The king’s daughter is all glorious within – her clothing is of wrought gold. – Psalm 45.1.

Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant – Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. – Luke 14.21.

Forty years on, growing older and older –
Shorter in wind, as in memory long,
Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder,
What will it help you that once you were strong?
– song written by Edward Ernest Bowen and John Farmer in 1872.

Battle of Waterloo – 1815;

Battle of Ramillies – 1706;

Senlac – a hill in Sussex, site of the Battle of Hastings, 1066.

Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house – and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances. – Judges 11.34.

155 Nunc Dimittis Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.

156 James Mcneill Whistler claimed that once when he uttered a witticism, Oscar Wilde said “I wish I had said that”. Whistler replied, ‘You will, Oscar, you will”.

Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show. –
But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.
–– A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act V scene 1 p.157

And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge –
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
– from The Passing of Arthur by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

158 When learning’s triumph o’er her bar’brous foes –
First reared the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose;
… Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toiled after him in vain.
– Prologue at the Opening of Theatre in Drury Lane” by Samuel Johnson, 1709-84

159 Echos du temps passé – collection of songs by Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin, 1821- 1910.

160 Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife –
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
– from Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray.

“Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, – and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.” – Jude 11.

So they gat up from the tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, on every side – and Dathan and Abiram came out, and stood in the door of their tents, and their wives, and their sons, and their little children.
– Numbers 16.27 Jude the Obscure, novel by Thomas Hardy, 1896.

162 What seest thou else –
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
– Prospero in The Tempest Act I scene 2.

163 This passage occurs in Private Enterprise:
“Yes, damn it, I shall,” – said Mr. Birkett. “And there I shall sit in my damned comfortable house, like Cicero in his retirement at Tusculum, working away at the Analects of Procrastinator, and wondering all the time if you are handling the Masters’ Common Room properly.” The passage is also in County Chronicle: [Mr. Birkett] was well-known to fall into a kind of author’s frenzy while working on the Analects of Procrastinator … – but no one has yet managed to trace them. Could it be a Thirkellian joke? Anecdotes about putting things off, delaying? >No idea who is supposed to have written a book about them and declined a knighthood.

The Rohans:
Louis de Rohan – (1635-1674)
Guy-Auguste de Rohan-Chabot – (1683-1760).
Louis Rene Edouard, Prince of Rohan – 1734-1803.

Duc I do not deign –
King I can not
Prince of Bretaigne
De Rohan I am.
« It would be the reply of vexation that the Vicomte de Rohan would have made when he was offered the title of Duke (“King, then, Duke no deign, Rohan am”). Indeed it was, before the birth of Louis XIII heir presumptive of the crown of Navarre. To calm his spite, King Henry IV gave him the title of Duke, whom he finally accepted. The true motto of the Rohan is “A plus”, which can be translated as “always higher”. » – I don’t know to which of the Rohans this refers.

164 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan –
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
– by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Arundel Society – Collection of chromolithographs of masterpieces of European art was created by the Arundel Society between the years 1848 and 1897.

St Ursula – was a princess who, at the request of her father King Dionotus of Dumnonia in south-west Britain, set sail to join her future husband, the pagan governor Conan Meriadoc of Armorica, along with 11,000 virginal handmaidens.

165 The Medici Society Ltd – founded in 1908, publishes Open Edition Prints.

Chapter 7

167 171 Noel’s fascination with Peggy Arbuthnot is recorded in Private Enterprise.

168 For Mercy has a human heart –
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
– William Blake (1757-1827)

“Maud is not seventeen, – But she is tall and stately.”
– Maud by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

170 William Barnes – 1801-86, colected Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect (1844)

But beauty vanishes; beauty passes –
However rare rare it be;
And when I crumble, who will remember
This lady of the West Country?
– Walter de la Mare (1873-1956).

a generation that knew not Joseph – Exodus chapter 1.

Mr Wopsle plays Hamlet in Dickens’s Great Expectations.

171 Mrs Gamp – is the nurse / midwife in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.
The title Sonnets from the Portuguese was given because “the Portuguese” was Robert Browning’s pet name for Elizabeth, because of her olive skin.

172 Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war! –
– from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Act III scene 1.

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. – hymn.

173 Mrs Fanny Dombey – first wife of Mr Dombey, according to his sister did not make an effort in giving birth to Paul, and consequently died.
– Dombey and Son.

174 Again, Angela Thirkell shows growing sensitivity to cold.

St. Francis referred to his body as Brother Ass.

177 All memories of events in What Did It Mean? See note to pages 80-1.
She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek.
– Viola in Twelfth Night Act II scene 4.

As sweet, and musical –
As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair
– Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost Act IV scene 3.

178 Thus I stand like a Turk with his doxies all round. –
– from The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay, 1728.

Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy – is a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1760.

179 HMS Birkenhead – was wrecked on 26 February 1852. There were not enough serviceable lifeboats for all the passengers.

The Raft of the Medusa – painted by Théodore Géricault, 1819.

Why does Lady Pomfret seem to reprove Noel Merton?

180 Woodstock – novel by Sir Walter Scott, 1651.

Jonah and the whale – Jonah chapters 1 and 2.
It vomited out Jonah upon the dry land – Jonah 2.6.

Down she came and found a boat, –
Beneath a willow left afloat,
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
– The Lady of Shalott. – by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

183 Miss Betsy Trotwood in Dickens’s David Copperfield.

186 The Vox humana – (Latin for “human voice) is a short-resonator reed stop on the pipe organ, so named because of its supposed resemblance to the human voice. The oboe stop is a single-rank reed stop used as both a solo stop and a chorus reed, widely used in French romantic organ music.

190 L–D! said my mother, what is all this story about?-
A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick
And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard.
– The last lines of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, 1759.

Rottingdean – autobiography again, childhood holidays at Rottingdean, Sussex.

191 ‘You needn’t, Oscar, you needn’t” – see above, p.156.

Echos du temps passé – collection of songs by Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin, 1821- 1910.

Lord Burleigh’s nod – see above page 104.

192 music as divine mathematics – a specific quotation?

193 — Ah! so the silence was! –
So was the hush! – see above, p.76.

Max Beerbohm – 1872-1956, English writer and caricaturist.

Chapter 8

195 Then all for Women, Paining, Riming, Drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
– from Absalom and Achitophel, by John Dryden, 1681.

Sally Pomfret – first came to stay at Pomfret Towers in Pomfret Towers.

197 Lupin Pooter – in The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith, 1892.

“Etiquette” – ” in the Bab Ballads by Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, 1869.

198 Ruth and Tom Pinch – in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit
Lord Stoke gives Edith Graham the pearls he had offered to Edith Thorne in Never Too Late.

200 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth – and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. – Genesis 11.9.

203 Stokey Hole – see The Demon in the House
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn novel by Mark Twain, 1884
Thomas Hardy 1840-1928, novelist and poet.

205 Weltschmerz German, a feeling of melancholy and world-weariness.

206 The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – by Edward Gibbon, published 1776-1788.

Ferdinand Gregorovius – wrote the 8-volume History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (1859–1872)

207 Marcel Proust – wrote the 12-volume À la recherche du temps perdu 1913.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! – The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. – Hamlet Act I scene 2.

Mr Micawber’s advice – in Dickens’s David Copperfield.

208 “May God have mercy upon your soul” – is a phrase used within courts in various legal systems by judges pronouncing a sentence of death.

“I pity his ignorance and despise him.” – is indeed spoken by Fanny Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev – 1818-83, Russian author.

The Dickens Fellowship – founded in 1902, is a worldwide association of people who share an interest in the life and works of Charles Dickens.

Thirkell frequently refers to the “snipe-flights” – of Laura’s conversation, after the zigzag flight of the snipe.

209 The Middle and Inner Temple – are two of the four Inns of Court, or Honourable Societies of Barristers.

A Queen’s Counsel – (postnominal Q.C.), or King’s Counsel (postnominal K.C.) during the reign of a king, is an eminent lawyer (mostly barristers).

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli – (810–50), commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women’s rights advocate.

Thomas Carlyle – 1795-1881, British man of letters.
The slang use of “beak” – for a magistrate or justice of the peace has not been satisfactorily explained. The earlier meaning, which lasted down to the beginning of the 19th century, was “watchman” or “constable.” According to Slang and its Analogues (J. S. Farmer and W. E. Henley, 1890), the first example of its later use is in the name of “the Blind Beak,” which was given to Henry Fielding’s half-brother, Sir John Fielding (about 1750). Thomas Harman, in Caveat or Warening for commen cursitors, 1573, explains harmans beck as “counstable,” harman being the word for the stocks. Attempts have been made to connect “beak” in this connexion with the Old English beag, a gold torque or collar, worn as a symbol of authority, but this could only be plausible on the assumption that “magistrate” was the earlier significance of the word.

210 Captain Hawdon and Lady Dedlock – in Dickens’s Bleak House.

Euclid – c.300 BC, Greek mathematician, compiled Elements, a collection of
postulates, rules, theorems and problems which form the basis of Euclidean geometry.

Hawfinch – I am baffled.

210 211 Gordian knot – Giles is becoming very like the young Tony Morland.

216 Do right and fear no man – c1450 Proverbs of Good Counsel in Book of Precedence ?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – novel by Mark Twain, 1884.

218 Roedean School – is an independent day and boarding school on the outskirts of Brighton, East Sussex. Connection with nuns, Huguenots?

Or Mayfield School – (formerly convent) in East Sussex, a restored medieval bishop’s palace?

220 Euterpe – the muse of lyric poetry.

Chapter 9

222 Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe. – Psalm 60.8.

223 Young Blight made a great show – of fetching from his desk a long thin manuscript volume with a brown paper cover, and running his finger down the day’s appointments, murmuring, ‘Mr Aggs, Mr Baggs, Mr Caggs, Mr Daggs, Mr Faggs, Mr Gaggs, Mr Boffin.
– from Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend.

224 Angela Thirkell shows a close eye for current and period fashions.
novel published 1959 – a reference to computers!

225 Jennifer Gorman – was despised by Clarissa Graham and Mrs Grantley in The Old Bank House (1949), but now has become a nice English girl, bien èlevèe.

226 The Almanach de Gotha – was a directory of Europe’s royalty and higher nobility, also including the major governmental, military and diplomatic corps.

228 Now the Dowager’s conversation resembles a “snipe-flight”, – after the zigzag flight of the snipe, as we are so often told that Laura Morland’s does .

230 Sir Walter Scott – 1771-1832, Scottish author.

233 Oscar Wilde – 1854-1900, British author
William Holman Hunt 1827-1910, British painter.

234 Aesop – fl. 6th cent. BC, author of Greek fables.

Catullus – 84-54 BC, Latin poet.

The Death of Chatterton – an oil painting by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis, 1856.

235 The Last of England – painting by Ford Madox Brown, 1855.

Henry Kingsley – 1830-76, wrote Geoffrey Hamlyn and The Hillyars and the Burtons, novels set in Australia which Alfred Deakin (Prime Minister of Australia 1903-10) called “A Charter of Australia”.

Charles Kingsley – 1819-75 wrote The Water-Babies.

236 suttee – is an obsolete Hindu funeral custom whereby a widow immolates herself on her husband’s pyre or commits suicide in another fashion shortly after her husband’s death.

237 Catullus 84 – is a humorous poem about a man named Arrius, who insisted on placing the “h” sound in his words in order to sound more Greek, and thus more educated. Catullus loathed this and wrote this poem to express his deep dislike of this ploy.

239 Mulier cum non olet – … actually means “A woman smells best with no smell”. Very tactful of Mr. Oriel,and clever of Angela Thirkell!

240 Wake Up and Dream – a musical revue of 1929 with a book by John Hastings Turner and music and lyrics by Cole Porter and others.

Chapter 10

246 Jean Baptiste Cavaletto – Dickens’s Little Dorrit.

248 Empedocles – c490–30 b.c, was a Greek philosopher and statesman who was reputed to have committed suicide by throwing himself into the volcano, Mount Etna. Mathew Arnold – wrote a long poem on the subject.

you, seeing me, never shall –
With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As “Well, well, we know,” or “We could an if we would,”
Or “If we list to speak,” or “There be an if they might,”
Or such ambiguous giving out—to note
That you know aught of me.
– Hamlet Act I scene 5

251 Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true. – from The Hunting of the Snark (1874) by Lewis Carroll.

252 Sara giving birth at ninety – Genesis chapter 17.

260 hectic – see also page 74.

261 William Lindsay Windus – painted a picture, “Too Late” in 1858.

Malvolio – the steward in Shakespeare’s Twefth Night.

263 We’re just two little girls from Littlerock –
We lived on the wrong sid of the tracks
– opening lines of song sung by Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in the 1963 film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

264 Woolcott Jefferson Van Dryven – married Betty Dean.

266 George Gordon – 6th Baron Byron, 1788-1824, had a club foot.

267 The Ziegfeld Follies – were conceived and mounted by Florenz Ziegfeld. The first Follies was produced in 1907 at the roof theatre Jardin de Paris.

The Sun’s rim dips –
the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
– From Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S. T. Coleridge.

268 obiter dicta – an opinion given incidentally.

269 Miss Betsy Trotwood – in Dickens’s David Copperfield.

Chapter 11

276 events in What Did It Mean? again.

278 laudator temporis acti – a praiser of past times, from Horace’s Odes, as page 78
Quintus Horatius Flaccus 65-8 BC, Roman poet and satirist.

279 et patati et patata – and so on, and so forth, etcetera.

Mlle Chiendent – dogtooth; may also mean hangover.

Fräulein Katzenjammer – hangover. Subtle linguistic jokes again!

280 Gotthold Lessing – 1729-81, German author.

Pierre Corneille – 1606-84, French dramatist.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – 1749-1832, German author.

Die Wahlverwandtschaften – a novel by Goethe, 1809.

Heinrich Heine – 1797-1856, German poet.

282 Rudyard Kipling – 1865-1936, English author
“A Code of Morals” by Kipling includes the lines:
For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband’s warning ran: –
“Don’t dance or ride with General Bangs – a most immoral man.”

284 Burke’s Landed Gentry – provides a detailed listing of families once holding or who continue to own large estates of land; first published in 3 volumes 1833–35, updated and re-issued frequently.

Debrett’s is a specialist publisher – founded in 1769 with the publication of the first edition of The New Peerage. Debrett’s is published under the name Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage, a book which includes a short history of the family of each titleholder.

“He was a man that had the root of the matter in him – but he was one of the most troublesome pilgrims that ever I met with in all my days.” – from The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.

– from “In Time of Pestilence” by Thomas Nashe, 1593.

287 Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres – from “Clair de Lune” by Paul Verlaine (1844-96), 1869.

Charles Baudelaire – 1821-67, French Symbolist poet.

“Clair de lune” – (“Moonlight”) Op. 46 No 2, is a song by Gabriel Fauré (1845- 1924), composed in 1887 to words by Paul Verlaine.

Claude Debussy – 1862-1918, French composer.

‘Entbehren sollst du – sollst entbehren –– Thou shalt forego, shalt do without.’ – from Faust by Goethe.

289 Ivanhoe novel by Sir Walter Scott, 1819
Wamba the Witless – character in Ivanhoe.

Chapter 12

291 Guido Strelsa – is also reported to have been turned out of every gambling hell in Europe in Pomfret Towers.

Professor Milward – the young historian at Pomfret Towers house party.

Guy Barton says – “Mother [Susan Barton] had three letters about her last book, one from Professor Marston, and one from Cardinal Boccafiume, and one from the Duke of Monte Cristo” in Pomfret Towers (where the same lines about Prof. Marston’s monumental footnote-comprising books appear).

292 Sherlock Holmes the detective apparently falls to his death in The Reichenbach Falls a waterfall in Switzerland, at the the end of “The Final Problem” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1893), but the author was persuaded to bring him back to life for more stories.

canard – is the French word both for a duck and a false report (as on page 86).

Sentimental Tommy – novel by J. M. Barrie, 1896.

293 Cardinal Thomas Wolsey – (1473-1530) was reputed when chancellor to speak thus to his secretary: “Ego et meus rex, his Majesty and I, command you …”

Rider Haggard – 1856-1925, English novelist.

Marie Corelli – 1855-1924, novelist.

Andrew Lang – 1844-1912.

294 George Morland – 1763-1804, English landscape painter.

296 events in Pomfret Towers again.

300 “Heureux qui meurt ici” – poem by by Jean Richepin (1849-1926)

Symbolism – a late nineteenth-century art movement in poetry, literature and other arts.

303 Harriette Wilson – (1786–1845) was a celebrated British Regency courtesan, about whom Angela Thirkell wrote The Fortunes of Harriette (1936).

306 Boreas – the North Wind.

Time travels in diverse paces with diverse persons. – I’ll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. – Rosalind in As You Like It Act III scene 2.

307 The Count of Monte Cristo – is an adventure novel by French author Alexandre Dumas (père), 1844.

308 Josiah Crawley travels with Farmer Mangle in The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope (1867)

310 Mr. Mantalini in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby refers to ‘ dem’d moist, unpleasant bodies’.

311 Guster – is the Snagsbys’ maidservant, prone to fits, in Dickens’s Bleak House.

Florence Nightingale – 1820-1910, insisted that Sidney Herbert (1810-61) as a politician kept working to achieve the reforms she desired, against his doctor’s orders, until his death aged 51.

Lilac Time – (Das Dreimaederlhaus) is a play with music in three acts – Original book by A. M. Willner and Heinz Reichert, music by Franz Schubert adapted by Heinrich Berte, 1916.

312 Popular Music of the Olden Time – Songs, Ballads, and Dance Tunes.

pure autobiography – “our Chappellunes.

318 Burke and Debrett – see notes to page 284 above.

320 That Air and Harmony of Shape express,
Fine by Degrees, and beautifully less.
– From “Henry and Emma” by Matthew Prior, 1774.

322 La Laitière et le pot au lait is one of the Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95, with the moral, don’t plan expectantly too far into the future.

Philip Winter brings Lydia the telegram – about Noel’s fate at Dunkirk at the end of Cheerfulness Breaks In.