The Toilers of the Sea
Page 50
35. Bagpipe! . . . Guernsey remained calm: The reference is to Gilliatt's bagpipes (p. 67).
36. I am not entitled to be called Mess: For the Guernsey social hierarchy, see p. 107.
37. Ribeyrolles: See note 5.
38. chapters of this book: "The Bu de la Rue," pp. 60-64.
39. Tancred . . . Mazeppa: Tancred features in Tasso's poem "Jerusalem Delivered." Mazeppa was a seventeenth-century Cossack chief who was the subject of poems by Byron and Hugo.
40. Ile Saint-Louis . . . Quai des Ormes: an isle and embankment in central Paris.
41. "unknown Normandy": a reference to a book published by Hugo's son Francois-Victor.
42. John Brown: the militant American abolitionist whose raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859 made him a martyr to the antislavery cause.
43. Vadius and Trissotin: in Moliere's Femmes Savantes the pedant and the poet.
44. "J'ai pien . . . conjugal scenes here."): The joke turns on the Alsatian's Teutonic pronunciation, which confuses patois with badois (the language of Baden).
45. Montmorency: the Montmorencys were one of France's greatest noble families.
46. Cahaigne: a writer and politician who, like Hugo, was exiled to Jersey.
47. . . . whom it immortalizes: In fact, there was no mystery about it: it represented George II, but Hugo deliberately ignores this.
48. Beccaria: the great eighteenth-century economist and criminologist. Monsieur Dupin: a minor French politician of the early nineteenth century.
49. Tapner: Tapner was hanged in 1854; Hugo had made an appeal for his reprieve.
50. Jambage . . . poulage: compulsory deliveries of hams and poultry.
51. "Elle a-z-une . . .": The intrusive z is a mispronunciation.
52. Frobisher: Sir Martin Frobisher, the sixteenth-century English navigator and explorer of Canada's northeast coast.
53. Du Cange: a seventeenth-century scholar who published a glossary of medieval Latin. Barleycourt's: Barleycourt was the pseudonym of a certain Abbe Hugo whom Hugo liked to claim as an ancestor. Teutates: the Celtic god of war.
54. centeniers, vingteniers, and douzeniers: local officials at different levels. vingtaine and cueillette: subdivisions of the parish.
55. the viscount: a judge; also called the sheriff.
56. Bishop Colenso: See note 25. Elliott: John Elliott was a seventeenth-century doctor who made the remark about the sun in a private letter but was in fact brought before the court for attempted murder.
57. Chateaubriand: See note 6.
58. reminiscitur Argos: "Remembers Argos" is a quotation from Virgil's Aeneid, referring to a Greek nostalgic for his homeland.
59. the Edict of Nantes: edict that granted religious freedom to Protestants, which was revoked by Louis XIV in 1695, leading to a large-scale exodus of Huguenots from France.
60. duc de Berry . . . Louvel: The duc de Berry, heir to the French throne, was assassinated by a fanatic named Louvel in 1820.
61. . . . the country he had lost: Hugo arrived in Guernsey in 1855; Les Travailleurs de la Mer was published in 1866.
62. La clef . . . amourettes!: "The key of the fields, the key of the woods, the key of love affairs!" Prendre la clef des champs (to take the key of the fields) means escape to the country, to freedom.
63. Homo Edax: "Man the devourer"; an adaptation by Hugo of a phrase in a poem by Ovid.
64. Breche de Roland: a narrow gorge in the Pyrenees, said by legend to have been cut by Charlemagne's paladin Roland with his sword.
65. Xerxes: During his war against the Greeks, the Persian king Xerxes cut a channel across the isthmus on which Mount Athos stands.
66. Trinacria: the "three-cornered" island; the original name of Sicily.
67. Robert Wace: a twelfth-century Anglo-Norman poet, author of two verse chronicles, the Roman de Brut and the Roman de Rou. Pierson: Major Pierson was killed while fighting off a French attack on Jersey in 1781.
68. dromond . . . monstrum!: The dromond was a large boat used in medieval times for either war or commerce. Homo homini monstrum (Man is a monster to man): an adaptation by Hugo of a tag from Plautus, Homo homini lupus (Man is a wolf to man).
69. Bu de la Rue: The name ("Bout de la Rue," "End of the Street") is symbolic of the remoteness of the place. Beyond it there is nothing but the sea: cf. the last words of the novel.
70. Houmet Paradis: a small offshore island.
71. Amant alterna catenae: "Chains like changes": an adaptation by Hugo of a phrase in Virgil's Bucolics.
72. rods: vergees. There are two and a half vergees to the acre.
73. denerel: a sixth of a bushel.
74. Rosier's Dictionary . . . Advice to the People on Heath: The names of the books point to "left wing" interests that would shock the Reverend Jaquemin Herode and the emigre noble.
75. sarregousets . . . sins: apparently some kind of hobgoblins; the term sin is not otherwise known.
76. the Sommeilleuses: cliffs on the south coast of Guernsey.
77. Catioroc: off the northeast coast of Guernsey.
78. one St. Michael and the other: St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall and Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy.
79. douzaine: the bench of twelve magistrates (douzeniers) that was the local governmental authority in each parish.
80. vingtaine: a subdivision of a parish.
81. Gilliatt the Cunning One: Gilliatt le Malin. Malin is ambiguous: it means "cunning," but "le Malin" is an old name for the Devil.
82. Mess: short for Messire; see the description of Guernsey's social hierarchy on p. 107.
83. Martin: Thomas Martin, a plowman who became famous for his visions in the early nineteenth century.
84. Busios: the first month of the year in the calendar of Delphi.
85. bisquine: a three-masted fishing boat used in Normandy for catching oysters.
86. Bailli de Suffern: the celebrated eighteenth-century French admiral who fought against the British in America and India.
87. Portbail: a little port on the Cotentin peninsula, south of Cherbourg.
88. Jean Bart: the celebrated seventeenth-century French admiral who fought against the British in America and India.
89. Admiral Tourville: seventeenth-century French admiral who fought British and Dutch naval forces in European waters.
90. Ango: a leading sixteenth-century shipowner.
91. duc de Vivonne: seventeenth-century French marshal and naval commander.
92. Duquesne: seventeenth-century French naval officer. Duguay-Trouin: eighteenth-century French naval officer and privateer.
93. Duperre: the French admiral who took Algiers in 1830.
94. La Bourdonnais: eighteenth-century French sailor and government official.
95. ". . . with powder": The reference is to a firearm loaded with powder but not with ball. The old emigre was implying that Deruchette was unwittingly provocative.
96. Bible . . . help of chloroform: Genesis 3:16: "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children."
97. "Is it . . . work together?": Cf. Genesis 1:6.
98. La Croix-de-Jesus: a work of popular piety.
99. cabeza de moro: a Moor's head, acting as a punchball or arcade game target.
100. Oomrawuttee: Amravati, on the east coast of India.
101. . . . an immense white plume: The whole description of Rantaine reveals him as a royalist. He could recite Voltaire's Henriade, a glorification of Henry IV. He knew by heart "Les Tombeaux de Saint-Denis," a lachrymose poem on the royal skeletons in the abbey of Saint-Denis. Souloque was a black slave who rose to become emperor of Haiti. The Verdets ("Greens") were bands of royalists who ran a campaign of terror in the south of France in 1815.
102. neboissed: the term is unexplained. No connection with Turkish can be detected. A derivation from Russian has been suggested but seems unlikely. thaleb: student of Islamic doctrine.
103. Montebello: an American warship launched in 1812.
104. t
wo leagues an hour: six knots.
105. galgal: a combination of lime, oil, and tar.
106. afloat: A flot, "afloat," can also mean "doing well, prospering."
107. "In the future . . . Lons-le-Saulnier?": a play on words: Nancy and Lons-le-Saulnier are both towns in eastern France.
108. "a husband and a donkey": another play on words: A husband is mari, a donkey is ane.
109. Et vidit quod esset bonum: "And He saw that it was good" (Genesis 1:31).
110. Edward the Confessor: Hugo deliberately hyphenates the name Edou-ard.
111. Savoyard vicar: a character in Rousseau's Emile who preached tolerance.
112. philosopher: The reference is to the eighteenth-century French philosophes like Voltaire.
113. Montlosier: the Comte de Montlosier, an opponent of the clericalism of the extreme right during the Restoration.
114. "Bourmont . . . on purpose": Bourmont was one of Napoleon's generals who went over to Louis XVIII four days before Waterloo. There is an untranslatable pun in Lethierry's remark. It replaces the term trait d'union (hyphen, link) with traitre d'union (traitor of union).
115. Raca: See Matthew 5:22.
116. Chaussee d'Antin: See note 12.
117. Mariotte: Edme Mariotte, a famous seventeenth-century French physicist who formulated what is known in English as Boyle's Law (in France, Mariotte's Law).
118. Saint-Servan: a little town just outside Saint-Malo.
119. Villele: French prime minister, was forced to resign in 1828. two towns on the River Plate: Montevideo in Uruguay and Buenos Aires in Argentina, which are on opposite sides of the Rio de la Plata.
120. Diebitsch: a Russian general who passed through the Balkans on his way to defeating the Turkish army in 1828. Leo XII: Pope Leo XII died in 1829.
121. Berton: a French general who organized an insurrection in Saumur and was tried and executed in 1822. the Bidassoa: a Spanish river on the frontier with France, where a group of rebels tried to prevent French intervention in Spain.
122. Restoration: of the Bourbon monarchy in France, 1815-30.
123. . . . the social order of the day: The names in this paragraph are of various rebels and conspirators against the established order; the places that people avoided were the scenes of acts of repression by the Restoration government.
124. The men . . . Champ d'Asile: The men of the Loire were a group of French soldiers, demobilized on the Loire after Waterloo, who set out to establish a settlement on the Gulf of Mexico, the Champ d'Asile or Field of Refuge.
125. the Convention: the Revolutionary assembly that governed France between 1792 and 1795.
126. Bourgain . . . Seguin: financiers of the Revolutionary period.
127. Mandrin: a famous eighteenth-century bandit and smuggler. Comte de Charolais: a nobleman notorious for his violence and debauchery.
128. Sagane: a sorceress mentioned in a poem by Horace. Mademoiselle Lenormand: a clairvoyant and soothsayer.
129. Brocken: the mountain in the Harz that is the scene of the witches' sabbath in Goethe's Faust. Armuyr: identified by Hugo in Les Miserables (Part IV, Book XI, Chapter II) as the heath on which Macbeth encountered the witches in Shakespeare's play.
130. This was what the ghosts were saying: Hugo gives the conversation in Spanish (not reproduced here), followed by a French translation.
131. "Egurraldia gaiztoa?": "In bad weather?" (Basque).
132. Pundonor: "Point of honor" (Spanish).
133. Noguette: a bell brought from Brazil by the celebrated eighteenth-century privateer Duguay-Trouin.
134. Lacenaire: a notorious murderer of the early nineteenth century.
135. setier: an old measure of capacity that varied from region to region and according to the substance measured. liard: a quarter of a sou, which was five centimes.
136. Talleyrand: French statesman noted for his capacity for political survival, serving successive regimes from the Revolution to the July Monarchy (Louis Philippe). Dictionary of Weathervanes: The Dictionnaire des Girouettes, published in 1815, listed the many changes of allegiance among politicians since the French Revolution.
137. "How d'you do?": Hugo, who made a point of not knowing English, actually puts the greeting "Good-bye" in the old sea-captain's mouth.
138. Douvres: There is a group of rocks off Guernsey known as the Douvres, but not at the position assigned to them by Hugo.
139. the Moines: the Monks.
140. the Canard: the Duck.
141. Malouins: "Malouin, malin"; a play on words (malin means shrewd, cunning).
142. the Maisons: the Houses.
143. Surcouf: Robert Surcouf (1773-1827), a French seaman; originally a privateer who preyed on British shipping in the Indian Ocean, later a wealthy shipowner.
144. Duguay-Trouin: See note 92.
145. Odeon: the Theatre de l'Odeon in Paris, which was twice destroyed by fire.
146. a square toise: about forty square feet.
147. Marie Alacoque: a seventeenth-century nun who had visions of the Sacred Heart. Cadiere and the nun of Louviers: Catherine Cadiere and Madeleine Bavent, the nun of Louviers, were seduced by their confessors and subsequently accused of witchcraft.
148. Escobar: A famous eighteenth-century casuist, Escobar was a Spanish Jesuit. Leotade: a French friar, found guilty in 1848 of the murder and attempted rape of a girl of fourteen.
149. Boue Corneille: A boue is an underwater rock.
150. gestatorial chair: a chair in which the pope was carried on certain occasions. in abito paonazzo: the purple robes of a monsignore (the honorific title of a prelate or officer of the papal court).
151. the Sorbonne: Paris's university, originally a theological college and ecclesiastical tribunal.
152. Solus eris: "You will be alone." From a poem by Ovid, written during his exile from Rome.
153. It was . . . his father Zibeon: the reference is to Genesis 36:24. The Authorized Version differs from the text cited by Dr. Herode, which follows the Vulgate.
154. deputy viscount: a traditional title on Jersey, equivalent to deputy sheriff.
155. Barjesus: Acts 13:6-11. Elkesai: a first-century heretic. Aholibamah . . . Judith: Genesis 26:34 and 36:14. Reuben: the reference to Isaac's firstborn son is not explained in the Old Testament. Peniel: apparently an invented name.
156. Genesis 24:62-67.
157. and then they bleat: There seems to be an inventive pun here. The word moutonner (from mouton, sheep) that Hugo uses means, when applied to the sea, "to be flecked with foam"; but in the present context there is surely a reference to sheep bleating.
158. Gulf of Stora: in Algeria.
159. strangury: a medical term for retention of urine.
160. the Eel Bank: a submarine bank off the southern tip of Africa. Dumont-d'Urville: a celebrated early-nineteenth-century French navigator and explorer.
161. Toluca: in Mexico.
162. de Ruyter: the great seventeenth-century Dutch admiral.
163. Lisbon earthquake: the famous earthquake of 1755, which destroyed much of the city.
164. Firth of Forth . . . Scotland: What Hugo actually wrote is a prime example of his determination not to know the English language as well as his shaky knowledge of British geography. He gives the name of the cliff, in English, as the "First of the Fourth."
165. Annweiler valley: in the German Rhineland.
166. confervae: a species of alga.
167. Importunaeque Volucres: "And the birds of ill omen . . ." A quotation from Virgil's Georgics.
168. cagniardelle: an early-nineteenth-century invention, which used the principle of the Archimedean screw to produce a draft. trompe: a mechanism that produced a draft by the flow of water through a funnel.
169. gladiator: Hugo uses the term belluaire, a gladiator who fought against wild animals. Hence the reference in the next sentence to Gilliatt as a "tamer."
170. Danaids: In Greek mythology, the Danaids were condemned eternally
to pour water into bottomless pots as punishment for murdering their husbands.
171. syrinxes: passages in ancient Egyptian rock-cut royal tombs.
172. Enceladus: in classical mythology, a Titan imprisoned under Mount Etna whose breath caused eruptions of the volcano.
173. Amontons: a seventeenth-century physicist. Lahire: a seventeenth-century astronomer and mathematician. Coulomb: an eighteenth-century physicist.
174. . . . the man who performed this miracle: There is some doubt about the authenticity of this story.
175. Balmat: Jacques Balmat, a Chamonix guide, climbed Mont Blanc in 1786, and in the following year climbed it again with the Swiss naturalist and physicist Horace-Benedict de Saussure.
176. Marly waterworks: Marly was a small palace near Paris built for Louis XIV. The "waterworks" raised water from the Seine to supply the palace of Versailles.
177. Sub Re: Hugo seems to take this phrase (literally, "under the thing") to refer to the task with which Gilliatt was now faced.
178. Sub Umbra: "In the shadows."
179. Thomas: Alexandre Thomas was imprisoned on Mont Saint-Michel in 1840. Boisrose: Captain Boisrose and his men scaled a cliff near Fecamp in 1592 to take an enemy fort. Trenck: Baron von Trenck escaped from a Prussian fortress in 1746. Latude: Jean-Henri Latude was an eighteenth-century French adventurer who escaped once from the Bastille and twice from the prison of Vincennes.
180. Jean Bart: See note 88.
181. groyne . . . dike: The French term is epi; "groyne" seems the nearest English equivalent. "Dike" is presumably what Hugo intends with his word dick.
182. syzygies: conjunctions of the sun, moon, and earth.
183. Solem quis dicere falsum audeat?: "Who would dare to call the sun false?" (Virgil's Georgics).
184. "an eel under a rock": the French equivalent of a snake in the grass.
185. Surcouf: See note 143.
186. Napier: Admiral Sir Charles Napier (1786-1860).
187. Weepers' Tower: It was from the Weepers' Tower (Schreierstoren) in Amsterdam that sailors' wives watched their menfolk going off to sea.
188. Ango: See note 90.
189. Messier: Charles Messier (1730-1817).
190. Ceto: in classical mythology a Nereid, daughter of Earth and Sea.
191. Turba, Turma: "The crowd, the troop."
192. Lemery: Nicolas Lemery (1645-1715), French physician and chemist.
193. Malo viento toma contra el sol: "An ill wind turns against the sun."
194. Cap de Fer: on the coast of Algeria.
195. Stevenson: Robert Stevenson (1772-1850), the Scottish engineer famed for his lighthouses.