4. mess-kid: Tin for holding food.
5. Faynians: Fenians, precursors of the IRA.
6. the Widdy: Queen Victoria, the ‘Widow of Windsor’.
7. tattered Colours: Flags embroidered with regimental arms and battle honours.
8. fell acrost: Bumped into.
9. “Knee to knee!” … “Breast to breast!” … “hand over back!”: Phrases from the Masonic Third Degree Ritual, hence the colonel’s thanks to ‘Brother Inner Guard’.
10. “We’ve seen our dead”: The corpses had been mutilated by the Afghans.
11. lockin’-ring: Ring securing bayonet to rifle-muzzle.
12. asp on a leaf: Leaf of the aspen, also called the Trembling Poplar.
13. holted: Halted.
14. Roshus: Roscius, a famous Roman actor.
15. “Blood the young whelp!”: Alludes to ceremony of ‘blooding’ (see ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’, n. 49, above). A whelp is a puppy.
16. batman: Soldier acting as officer’s servant.
ON GREENHOW HILL
First published in Harper’s Magazine and Macmillan’s Magazine, September 1890; collected in Life’s Handicap (1891).
1. Rivals: A poem by Alice Kipling, Rudyard’s mother.
2. Snider: See ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, n. 47, above.
3. a hound on a broken trail: A foxhound trotting to and fro in search of scent.
4. ’list: Enlist.
5. Don Juan … Lotharius: Don Juan is a legendary seducer; Lothario a heartless libertine in Rowe’s The Fair Penitent (Mulvaney has been a theatre-goer).
6. bight: Loop.
7. drift: Passage in a mine.
8. sumph: sump, drainage-pit.
9. agaate: Doing.
10. jealoused: Scottish jaloused; suspected.
11. class-meetin’s: A ‘class’ was a small devotional group within the larger congregation. Active Methodists were expected to attend their weekly class-meeting.
12. shebeen: Drinking-shop.
13. Sitha: (Yorkshire) See here.
14. white choaker: Slang for a clergyman’s white collar.
15. “Th’ sword o’ th’ Lord and o’ Gideon”: Judges 7: 18.
16. th’ whole armour o’ righteousness: Echoes both Ephesians 6: 11 and 2 Corinthians 6: 7.
17. fightin’ the good fight: 1 Timothy 6: 12.
18. Forders: Cabmen (slang).
19. boggart: Ghost.
WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
First published in Macmillan’s Magazine, June 1890; collected in Life’s Handicap (1891).
1. Bitter Waters: Poem by Kipling.
2. of the Faith … born upon a Friday: A Muslim born on the day of prayer.
3. Aré koko, Jaré koko!: This cradle-song is also quoted in Lockwood Kipling’s Beast and Man in India, p. 30.
4. Ya illah!: O God!
5. Tobah, tobah!: Exclamation of reproof: Shame!
6. sitar: Stringed instrument like a guitar.
7. Rajah Rasalu: Ancient semi-legendary king of Sialkot in Punjab (NRG).
8. dhak-tree: Tree bearing red flowers.
9. vestrymen: Members of a parish council.
10. scald-head: Head diseased with ringworm.
11. janee: Beloved (NRG).
12. black cholera: See ‘At the End of the Passage’, n. 14, above.
13. there is no God but – thee, beloved!: Adapts the Muslim declaration: ‘There is no God but Allah’.
14. burning-ghat: Platform by the river where Hindu corpses are cremated.
THE BRIDGE-BUILDERS
First published in the Illustrated London News, Christmas number, December 1893; collected in The Day’s Work (1898)
1. CIE … CSI: Companion of the Indian Empire, Companion of the Star of India.
2. Kashi: Benares.
3. CE: Civil Engineer.
4. spile-pier: Pier built on timbers driven into the ground.
5. pukka: Good.
6. Cooper’s Hill: Site of the Royal Indian College of Engineering in Surrey, closed in 1906.
7. freshets: Streams of water, here caused by small floods.
8. Lascar: Sailor from India.
9. A Kharva from Bulsar: Bulsar is a Gujerati town; the Kharva are a Hindu people from Gujerat.
10. Rockhampton: Port in Queensland, northern Australia.
11. serang: Native boatswain in charge of Lascar crew (Hobson-Jobson).
12. donkey-engines: Auxiliary engines.
13. Mother Gunga: Gunga (or Ganga) is the Hindi name of the Ganges, worshipped as a goddess because its water is said to wash away sin. She is sometimes represented as a crocodile (NRG).
14. Kutch Mandvi: Mandvi is on the Gulf of Cutch, 200 miles from Bulsar (NRG).
15. Black Water: The ocean.
16. blue dungaree: coarse blue cotton cloth (Hobson-Jobson).
17. Chota Sahib: The ‘small master’, Hitchcock, as opposed to the ‘Burra Sahib’ or ‘big master’, Findlayson (NRG).
18. Quetta: Cargo ship of British India Associated Steamers, wrecked in 1890.
19. jiboonwallah: A made-up word to mean ‘baboon man’.
20. pujah: Worship, obeisance (Hobson-Jobson).
21. tar: A wire, telegram.
22. cribs: Timber supports on which the iron girders were mounted.
23. wire-rope colt: Wire whip.
24. pegged, and stitched craft: Boat fastened together without metal.
25. peepul: Pipal or sacred fig tree.
26. Bull: Ridden by Shiva, third in the Hindu Trinity of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Destroyer (NRG).
27. A green Parrot: A bird sacred to Krishna (NRG).
28. Mugger: ‘The destructive broad-snouted crocodile of the Ganges’ (Hobson-Jobson), a manifestation of the goddess Gunga.
29. Punchayet: council meeting (Hobson-Jobson).
30. Kali: Consort of Shiva who rides a tiger.
31. Kotwal: guardian (NRG).
32. A nose-slitten … Ass: Sitala or Mata, the goddess of smallpox. The ‘near universal’ Indian practice of slitting asses’ nostrils to minimize their braying is deplored in Lockwood Kipling’s Beast and Man in India, p. 77.
33. no small bridge: An allusion to Hanuman’s feat of building a bridge across the Palk Strait dividing Sri Lanka from the Indian land-mass, described in the Hindu epic, Ramayana.
34. the wreck of thy armies, Hanuman: ‘A notion exists among Hindus that the English may be his descendants … others, again, say that the English came from the “monkey army” ’; Lockwood Kipling, Beast and Man in India, pp. 56–7.
35. mahajuns: Bankers (Hobson-Jobson).
36. Prayag: Hindi name for Allahabad (NRG).
37. Puri, under the Image there: The statue of Jagan-nath (‘Juggernaut’) in the temple at Puri, Orissa (NRG).
38. Gopis: Milkmaids (NRG).
39. Krishna the Well-beloved: Symbol of beauty, often represented as a handsome boy and associated with Vishnu (NRG).
40. Karma: Kama, Hindu god of love (NRG).
41. lotahs: Water-vessels (Hobson-Jobson).
42. Goorkha: The Gurkha, a British steamship.
43. Brahm: Brahma the Creator, representing the divine eternity beyond the apparent universe of matter and mind, first in the great Hindu trinity (see n. 26 above).
44. pug: Paw-mark (Hobson-Jobson).
45. tufan: Storm, typhoon.
46. bear-led: Taken on tour.
47. seven koss: Approximately 14 miles.
48. Morphus: Mispronunciation of Morpheus, Roman god of sleep and dreams.
THE MALTESE CAT
First published in Pall Mall Gazette, 26 June 1895; collected in The Day’s Work (1898).
1. neat-fitting boot: Protection for the pony’s cannon bone and fetlock above the hoof (NRG).
2. drags, and dog-carts: Horse-drawn heavy coaches and two-wheeled vehicles.
3. tiffin: Light luncheon.
4. blinkers: Leather piec
es attached to a horse’s bridle to make it see only straight ahead.
5. flea-bitten: light grey spotted or streaked with darker colour.
6. ekka: One-horse cart.
7. vulcanite: A preparation of India rubber and sulphur hardened by intense heat.
‘THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD’
First published in Contemporary Review, July 1891; collected in Many Inventions (1893).
1. twenty-five shillings: £1.25; equivalent to about £75 today.
2. the edge of his washstand: Charlie is obliged to write in his bedroom.
3. Longfellow: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), American poet. The lines Charlie quotes are taken from, successively, ‘The Secret of the Sea’, ‘My Lost Youth’ and ‘Seaweed’.
4. ‘Pollock, Erckmann, Tauchnitz, Henniker’: A transliteration of Greek, pollak’ ekamon tou kniz’ heneka, which the narrator mistakes for actual names; the literal translation is ‘Often have I been weary, the rasping (or chafing) on account of’. Tauchnitz was a well-known German publisher.
5. metempsychosis: Transmigration of souls.
6. ‘Lara’: Like ‘The Bride of Abydos’, ‘The Corsair’, ‘Cain’ and ‘Manfred’, mentioned below, poems by Lord Byron.
7. ‘The Saga of King Olaf’: From the ‘Musician’s Tale’ in Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn.
8. cockchafer: Flying beetle.
9. Transmigration: Novel by Collins (1827–76), published 1874.
10. Furdurstrandi: Viking name for the ‘Long Beaches’ of ‘Vinland’.
11. “But Othere … Behold this walrus-tooth!”: From Longfellow’s ‘The Discovery of the North Sea’. Also quoted in ‘Knights of the Joyous Venture’, Puck of Pook’s Mill (1905).
12. playing knuckle-bones: Idly throwing and catching small objects.
13. Thorfinn Karlsefne’s sailing to Wineland: Narrated in Paul Henri Mallet (trans. Bishop Thomas Percy), Northern Antiquities (1770, repr. 1857), the source Kipling used for this story (NRG).
14. Bohn volume: Cheap edition of the classics.
15. bill-book: Leather wallet for holding bills flat.
16. Clive: Robert Clive (1725–74), key figure in the conquest of India.
17. Aquarium poster: For the Aquarium Theatre in London, demolished in 1908.
18. Northbrook Club: Founded in 1879 for gentlemen from India.
19. tulsi: Sweet basil, sacred to Vishnu (NRG).
20. purohit: Family priest (NRG).
21. khuttri: Merchant (NRG).
22. desi: South Asian (NRG).
23. Mlech: A Hindu term for a contemptible person. Hinduism divides people into a complex hierarchy of hereditary ranks or ‘castes’, each with its allotted duties and rights, from Brahmins at the top, from whose ranks come priests, to the ‘Dalits’ or ‘Untouchables’ at the bottom who deal with refuse. A ‘mlech’ comes very low in this order, ‘just above the Dalits’ according to NRG.
24. Wordsworth: Grish Chunder is alluding to stanza V of Wordsworth’s ode, ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’: ‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar.’
25. bus – hogya: Stop – at once (NRG).
26. Tit-Bits: Popular weekly magazine.
27. Argo: In Greek myth, the ship on which Jason sailed to recover the Golden Fleece.
28. Wardour Street work: Sham antique. In the nineteenth century this Soho street contained second-hand furniture shops.
29. centipede metres: Metres with too many ‘feet’. Charlie favours long lines rather than blank verse or ballad stanzas.
THE SHIP THAT FOUND HERSELF
First published in The Idler, December 1895; collected in The Day’s Work (1898).
1. Lucania: An ocean liner launched from Liverpool in 1893.
2. well found: Well equipped.
3. knees: L-shaped pieces securing the deck beams to their frames.
4. Cape Hatteras: Eastern point of North Carolina coast.
5. broken falls whipped the davits: Broken ropes struck the derrick from which the boat had hung.
6. Arizona: A ship which collided with an iceberg in 1879 but was saved by its bulkhead holding together (NRG).
7. the Paris’s engine-room: The City of Paris suffered a flooded engine-room when a propeller cracked in 1890 (NRG).
MRS BATHURST
First published in Windsor Magazine, September 1904; collected in Traffics and Discoveries (1904).
1. Simon’s Bay: Simonstown was the principal British naval base in South Africa.
2. coaling: Engaged in filling their ships’ coal bunkers.
3. Inspector Hooper: He is a railway inspector, not a detective.
4. tickey beer: Cheap beer. A ‘tickey’ was a silver threepenny piece, equivalent to 1p, worth about 70p today.
5. False Bay: Deeply indented coastline east of Cape of Good Hope.
6. Wankies: coal-mining town, now in Zimbabwe.
7. Belmont: Site of naval battle in 1899.
8. quart bottle: Two pints, 1.36 litres.
9. verbatim: Word for word (Latin); here, ‘verbally’.
10. Number One rig: Best uniform.
11. “purr Mary, on the terrace”: Joking allusion to Per Mare, Per Terram, ‘by land and sea’, Latin motto of the Royal Marines (NRG).
12. Vancouver: Vancouver Island, where the Royal Navy had its Pacific base.
13. steerin’-flat: Compartment in the stern of the ship housing the steering-gear.
14. within eighteen months of his pension: That is, throwing away his accumulated pension rights.
15. Salisbury: Now Harare, capital of Zimbabwe.
16. casus belli: Act occasioning war (Latin).
17. status quo: Short for status quo ante, ‘the situation as before’, here connoting ‘backside’ (Latin).
18. warrants and non-coms: Warrant and non-commissioned officers: minor navy officers.
19. peeris: Fairies, i.e. beautiful women.
20. Pusser: Purser, paymaster.
21. an enteric at the last kick: A person dying of typhoid fever.
22. the mornin’ an’ the evenin’ were the first day: Genesis 1: 5.
23. a Marconi ticker: A radio receiver recording Morse code.
24. “The rest … is silence”: Hamlet’s last words; Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2.
25. kapje: Bonnet (Afrikaans).
26. ‘On a summer afternoon … the one she loves the best –’: Opening stanza of ‘The Honey-Suckle and the Bee’, a popular late-Victorian song by Albert H. Fitz (1864–1922), with the once famous refrain, ‘You are my honey, honeysuckle / I am the bee / I’d like to taste the honey sweet / From those red lips, you see’. The quotation from this song, familiar to Kipling’s original readers in 1904, is the story’s final grim stroke.
‘THEY’
First published in Scribner’s Magazine, August 1904; collected in Traffics and Discoveries (1904).
1. hamlet which stands godmother to the capital of the United States: Washington, a Sussex village.
2. that great Down: Chanctonbury Ring, near the village of Washington.
3. six-inch Ordnance map: A map drawn to the scale of six inches to a mile, and therefore highly detailed.
4. the figure of the Egg: Allusion to the ancient belief that the world was egg-shaped; here, a mystic symbol of transcendence.
5. House Beautiful: in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the ‘House called Beautiful’ is a refuge and sanctuary for pilgrims.
6. tax-cart: A light two-wheeled cart, under taxable value (NRG).
7. shruck: Shriek (Sussex dialect).
8. Ushant: Ouessant, most westerly of French ports.
9. ‘In the pleasant orchard-closes’: From Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem ‘The Lost Bower’. The ‘marring fifth line’ is: ‘Listen, gentle – ay, and simple! listen, children at the knee.’
10. no unpassabl
e iron: Alludes to the folk belief that spirits could not endure the presence of iron – cf the story ‘Cold Iron’ in Rewards and Fairies (1910).
‘WIRELESS’
First published in Scribner’s Magazine, August 1902; collected in Traffics and Discoveries (1904).
1. ammoniated quinine: Once a popular remedy for colds.
2. Pharmaceutical Formulary: A handbook of drugs.
3. Nicholas Culpeper: Seventeenth-century herbalist and physician.
4. glass jars … of the sort that led Rosamond to parting with her shoes: In ‘The Purple Jar’, a story in Maria Edgeworth’s Early Lessons (1804), Rosamond chooses to buy an enticing purple jar which turns out to contain coloured water, instead of new shoes.
5. orris: Dried iris root.
6. vulcanite: A preparation of India rubber and sulphur hardened by intense heat.
7. some gay feathered birds and game, hung upon hooks, sagged to the wind: A detail later used by Hemingway’s ‘In Another Country’: ‘There was much game hanging outside the shops … and small birds blew in the wind, and the wind turned their feathers.’
8. See that old hare!: An allusion to the opening lines of Keats’s ‘The Eve of St Agnes’: ‘St Agnes’ eve – Ah, bitter chill it was! / The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold / The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass’.
9. chloric-ether: Spirits of chloroform.
10. Hertzian waves: Electromagnetic waves, the basis of radio.
11. cubeb: Spicy dried berry from a plant known as ‘Java pepper’ (Piper cubeba).
12. benzoin: Incense.
13. chypre: Cheap scent.
14. like a string of pearls winking at you: Cf. ‘with beaded bubbles winking at the brim’, Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, stanza 2.
15. ‘And threw warm gules on Madeleine’s young breast’: ‘And threw warm gules on Madeleine’s fair breast’, Keats, ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, stanza 25.
16. chromo: Chromolithograph, a coloured reproduction.
17. ‘And my weak spirit fails … Beneath the churchyard mould’: ‘And his weak spirit fails / To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails’, Keats, ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, stanza 2.
The Man Who Would Be King Page 79
