References for the novel O, These Men, These Men!, by Angela Thirkell.
‘Relusions’ for the Moyer Bell 1996 edition.
Compiled by Hazel Bell (2017).
I have heard it said so. O, these men, these men!
Dost thou in conscience think,—tell me, Emilia,—
That there be women do abuse their husbands In such gross kind?
– Desdemona to Emilia Shakespear’s, Othello, Act IV, Sc. 3.
Chapter 2
24 OGPU was the secret police of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1934.
30 Attila, King of the Huns 434-53
31 Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read, Or teach the orphan-girl to sew,
Pray Heaven for a human heart, And let the foolish yeoman go.
– from “Lady Clara Vere de Vere”, Tennyson.
32 The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that
brought World War I to an end. It was signed in June 1919.
36 The Punch artist John Leech (1817-64) was an influential and popular figure in Victorian culture.
37 Isabella Beeton 1836-65, English writer on cookery.
Chapter 3
38 “young men in black shirts” – members of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union
of Fascists.
39 “Good old non-Aryan name” – the Fascists were anti-semitic.
42 Gustavus Adolphus was the King of Sweden from 1611 to 1632.
Chapter 4
51 52 I KNOW where I’m going,
I know who’s going with me,
I know who I love,
But the dear knows who I’ll marry.
– Irish song.
52 And all my days are trances
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances
And where thy footstep gleams.
– from “To One in Paradise” by Edgar Allan Poe.
Chapter 5
54 Gnaeus Julius Agricola, AD 37-93, Roman governor in Britain
Marcus Vispanius Agrippa, 63-12 BC, Roman soldier
Now tall Agrippa lived close by, – / So tall, he almost touch’d the sky; / He had a mighty inkstand too, / In which a great goose-feather grew;
– from Struwwelpeter : The Inky Boys by Dennis Jackson
55 Mr Murdstone is David Copperfield’s brutal stepfather.
57 Agrippina the Elder: mother of Caligula and of Agrippina the
Younger
Agrippina the Younger: mother of Nero
58 Uritur et loquitur: (Mis)understanding Passionate Speech in Catullus 83
Gaius Julius Caesar 102-44 BC, Roman soldier and statesman Cesare Borgia 1475-1507, Italian political leader
The song, “Tropical Heat Wave” includes the lines,
“She started a heatwave
just by letting her seat wave”
– perhaps this is what Hugh considers not respectable.
71 Hymettus is a mountain range in the Athens area of Attica, East Central Greece, noted for its thyme honey.
Virgil, Horace and Strabo all cited Sabina as the favoured land of woods, vineyards and olive groves.
Falstaff is billed for a halfpenny worth of bread and two gallons of sack
(wine) in Henry IV Part 1.
Presumably Anna can appreciate Shakespeare, just manage Latin, but Greek is beyond her.
74 A boy loves a girl is a poem by Heinrich Heine from 1822. In his book of songs it is listed as the 39th poem in the Lyrical Intermezzo. The poem is about how a broken love ultimately gains a unique meaning if it only meets one’s own self.
Chapter 6
78 Albert Einstein 1879-1955, physicist born in Germany .
Sergei Eisenstein 1898-1948, Russian film director 2
86 They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. I wept as I remember’d how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
from “Heraclitus” by William Cory
Chapter 7
112 The Black Brunswicker (1860) is a painting by John Everett Millais showing a man and a woman clinging together.
you, at such times seeing me, never shall
With arms encumb’red 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.
– William Shakespear – Hamlet Act I scene 2
113 The Marschallin sings this song in Act III of Der Rosenkavalier.
Cerberus, the dog which guarded the entance to Hades, had three heads.
Chapter 8
120 The Territory of the Saar Basin was a region of Germany occupied and governed by the United Kingdom and France from 1920 to 1935 under a League of Nations mandate.
Chapter 9
130 Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread /
For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.
– from “Kubla Khan” by S. T. Coleridge
131 QUOTH tongue of neither maid nor wife To heart of neither wife nor maid,
“Lead we not here a jolly life Betwixt the shine and shade?”
– from “Philip van Artevelde” by Sir Henry Taylor
134 William Horatio Powell (1892 –1984) was an American actor, a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Chapter 12
171 Julia Mannering and Vanbeest Brown are characters in Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott.
Chapter 13
188 The poem The Asra appeared in 1851 in Heinrich Heine’s third poem Romanzero. The 15th poem of the cycle Historien addresses the unfulfillable love of a slave to the Sultanstochter.
Chapter 14
210 Angela herself avoided the difficulty of apostrophes when she changed her first married name, McInnes, to Thirkell.
‘Relusions‘ (References for Angela Thirkell Books).
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