The Man Who Would Be King
Page 81
First published in McCall’s Magazine, March 1928; collected in Limits and Renewals (1932).
1. C’estmoi … Et qui chante pour toi!: From the ‘gothic’ French writer Charles Nodier (1780–1844): ‘It is I, it is I, it is I! I am the Mandragora! The daughter of the good days who wakes at dawn / And who sings for you!’ Mandragora (mandrake) is a plant of the nightshade family with narcotic and poisonous properties.
2. cuts: Woodcut illustrations.
3. a couple of sovereigns: gold coins worth £1, roughly £70 today.
4. Upas-tree: Legendary poisonous tree said to kill everything underneath it (Hobson-Jobson).
5. three-guinea: Three pounds and three shillings (£3.15), worth about £200 today.
6. thirteen-and-sevenpence ha’penny: Thirteen shillings and seven and a half pence (67 p); roughly equivalent to £24.50 today.
7. Wardour Street: See ‘The Finest Story in the World’, n.28, above.
8. Supreme Pontiff: The Pope of Chaucer studies.
9. learned Hun: German scholar.
10. from Upsala to Seville: From Sweden to Spain.
11. gadzooking and vitalstapping: Writing dialogue full of sham archaisms: ‘Gadzooks!’ and ‘Stap my vitals!’
12. Vulgate: Latin translation of the Bible by St Jerome, used throughout the Middle Ages.
13. thirty-five shillings: one pound fifteen shillings (£1.75), roughly £120 today.
14. Alva and the Dutch: The Duke of Alva suppressed the Dutch Protestant rebellion against Roman Catholic Spanish rule in the Netherlands in 1567, with notorious brutality.
15. our Dan: Cf. ‘Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled / On Fame’s eternal beadroll worthy to be filed’: Edward Spenser, Faerie Queene, book iv, canto ii, line 23.
16. intoning to the gas: Declaiming to an empty room. Victorian rooms were commonly illuminated by gaslight.
17. KBE: Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
18. you had been faithful, Cynara, in your fashion: From Ernest Dowson’s fin de siècle poem ‘Non sum qualis eram’: ‘But I was desolate and sick of an old passion / I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.’
19. ‘Illa alma Mater ecca, secum afferens me acceptum. Nicolus Atrib.’: ‘Lo that bounteous Mother who accepts me and takes me with her. Nicolas Atrib[us].’ As shown in Kipling’s footnote on p. 517, reading the first letters of each word and then the second gives the acrostic ‘IAMES A MANALLACE FECIT’: ‘James A Manallace made [it]’. ‘Fecit’ is, appropriately, pro-nounced ‘fake it’.
20. black-letter: Gothic minuscule, used throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.
21. “verray parfit, gentil Knyght”: ‘true, perfect, gentle knight’; Chaucer, ‘Prologue’ to The Canterbury Tales, line 72.
22. old vellum: Old parchment.
23. his Gladstone: His suitcase.
THE MANNER OF MEN
First published in the London Magazine, September 1930; collected in Limits and Renewals (1932).
1. cinnabar-tinted: Coloured with red mercuric sulphate, used for dressing Roman sails (NRG).
2. verdigris in their dole-bread: The grain meant for distribution to the Roman people will be tainted by the copper ballast.
3. dressed African leathers on your private account: The captain is getting free transport for his private cargo of hides, used as bin-linings (NRG).
4. wings: Spaces between the grain-bins and the ship’s sides (NRG).
5. single-banker, eleven a side: A rowing-galley of twenty-two oars.
6. flesh-traffic: Slave trade.
7. Free Trader: Pirate.
8. Euxine: Black Sea.
9. a passenger, our last trip together, who wanted to see Caesar: The apostle Paul, whose shipwreck on his journey to Rome is related in Acts of the Apostles 27. Quabil’s account closely follows the Bible story.
10. sutlers: Sellers of provisions to the army.
11. Myra: Ancient port on the Lycian (Turkish) coast, now named Dembre: cf. Acts 27: 5.
12. Fairhaven: Acts 27: 8: ‘a place which is called the fair havens: nigh whereunto was the city of Lasea.’
13. bight: Loop of rope. Paul has things neatly sorted out.
14. lictor’s work … Jew scourgings: For Paul’s record of punishment, see 2 Corinthians 11: 24–5.
15. three-banker: Trireme galley.
16. the yelp of a bank being speeded up: Cries of oarsmen being whipped to row faster.
17. line his hold for a week in advance: Eat heartily while he still could.
18. pooped: Overwhelmed by a wave breaking over the poop (after-deck) from behind.
19. bo’sun-captain: One who has risen from seaman to captain.
20. kedge: Lightest ship’s anchor.
21. achatours: Purveyors.
22. under-Lebanon: Quabil’s home.
23. Thessalian jugglery with a snake: Acts 28: 3–6.
24. canvas I can cut: Paul was trained as a tent-maker (NRG).
*‘Not real. A trick.’
*Under coverture.
*Now first of the foemen of Boh Da Thone
Was Captain O’Neil of the Black Tyrone.
The Ballad of Boh Da Thone
*‘Get out, you dog.’
* Hop-picking
*‘The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat.’ A Diversity of Creatures.
*Officially it was on account of his good work in the Department of Co-ordinated Supervisals, but many true lovers of Literature knew the real reason, and told the papers so.
*Illa
alma
Mater
ecca
secum
afferens
me
acceptum
Nicolaus
Atrib.
*Quabil meant the coasters who worked their way by listening to the cocks crowing on the beaches they passed. The insult is nearly as old as sail.