Difference between revisions of "ATD 892-918"

Revision as of 21:31, 23 January 2007

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page 892

coglioni
???

Bloomsbury
Fashionable London district including the British Museum and University College London.

west of Regents Park
The huge park is in northern central London. To the west are Lisson, Paddington, Westbourne Green, Kensal Town and other districts.

Page 893

taximeter cab
The taximeter is the device that measures and totalizes miles traveled.

Fedora
Capitalized because at the time it was recognized as a proper name: from Sardou's play Fédora. Description, picture and history on Wikipedia.

Lampo
Italian-made pistol.

Peckham Rye
District in southeast London.

Vitaï Lampada
The Newbolt poem quoted by Cyprian on page 813.

pietà
Works so titled commonly show Mary, the mother of Jesus, with his body after its removal from the cross.

Page 894

predators' wings
Western art mostly depicts angels with the wings of prey species, namely doves.

Angel of Death
This angel appears in V. and GR too.

Pegamoid traveler's satchel
Pegamoid: a fabric coated with plasticized nitrocellulose; used for early aircraft fuselages, convertible roofs and wallets. There is a Pegamoid Road in the borough of Enfield, London.

Page 895

capitalist temples . . . those of us who do
Is Dally a concrete being or an abstraction? Here she is flipping back and forth.

The Spirit of Bimetallism
Beautiful image of a perfectly spiritless policy.

semeuse
French: girl sowing seeds.

Charlie Sykes Charles Robinson Sykes was a sculptor who designed the hood ornament for Rolls Royce, called "The Spirit of Ecstasy." See also p. 1074.

Page 896

Ralph Vaughan Williams
English composer, 1872-1958 [1]. He premiered the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis in 1910.

Page 897

Page 898

mitzvah
Hebrew: good or worthy deed.

character juvenile
In a theater company the "juvenile" played a young man, counterpart to the ingenue. "Character" is almost an antonym for a stock player, having the ability to play many roles without limitation by physical type.

vocal range was half an octave
A song as simple as "Home on the Range" calls for a full octave of range. Half an octave is not much more than inflected humming.

Shaftesbury Avenue, the Strand, Haymarket, and Kings Way
The rough quadrangle bounded by these streets lies west of the City and includes Covent Garden, the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery and one entrance to Charing Cross railway station.

from Camberwell Green to Notting Hill Gate
Camberwell Green is in southeast London, Notting Hill Gate in the west central part of the area.

Scotch eggs
A delicacy Americans often just refuse to believe: a hard-boiled egg enrobed in sausage meat and deep-fried.

Page 899

beauties of photogravuredom
When newspapers used the gravure process, costs dictated they reserve it for pictorial material of special value, often publishing a separate section or even a magazine showing fashionably dressed women.

Page 900

Finsbury
North of the City of London and near the suggestively named Shoreditch.

Northumberland Avenue
Upscale street near Charing Cross and Scotland Yard.

in expensive déshabillé
Déshabillé is French: undressed. I.e., dressed (expensively) but not dressed to go out.

Page 901

Sirius, which ruled this part of the summer
Problem. In old beliefs, Sirius "ruled" late summer (the "Dog Days") by lining up with the Sun so that their heats added together. In other words, Sirius moves with the sun at this time of the year, setting just after sunrise or rising just before it. The Star in the text rises at sundown and continues ascending until about midnight; this is what Sirius does within a week or two of January 1. So the narrator (this narrator) has the wrong Star.

The bright stars Altair (in the constellation Aquila), Deneb (in Cygnus) and Vega (in Lyra) do ascend through the evening in the summer. None of them has much associated lore (benign/malign influences), and none is as brilliant as Sirius either.

It's worth asking whether Halley's or another comet might be involved here. But Halley's Comet was visible in April and May 1910, while the Great Daylight Comet of 1910 appeared around the first of the year.

This is not the only astronomical glitch in AtD; see the annotations to page 796 for another.--Volver 19:04, 23 January 2007 (PST)

Page 902

West End
Area, centered roughly on Shaftesbury Avenue, where London legitimate theaters concentrate. British equivalent of Broadway.

Page 903

Page 904

A royal charter . . . illuminating gas
This dark and complex passage (903-4) contains some startling references. I hope other members of the wiki will agree that a discursion on one of them is pertinent.

King Ernest Augustus of Hanover (1771-1851) was a younger son of British and Hanoverian King George III. He had a substantial military career and, as Duke of Cumberland, began to pursue a political one as well. His niece Victoria acceded to the British throne in 1837—the crown passing to her as heiress of an older son of George III—but Hanover's laws said a woman could not serve as monarch there, so the royal dynasty split. Ernest Augustus was named King of Hanover and occupied the throne until his death.

(Göttingen, by the way, lay in this kingdom. Its university was founded by Ernest Augustus' great-grandfather George II.)

The tunnel in question would link Galloway in Scotland to Ulster in Ireland, burrowing under 20 miles of seabed in waters some 100 fathoms (over 150 m) deep. In 1837-51 it was laughably unfeasible, and indeed it would not become an economic proposition until over a century later.

So the "charter" mentioned in the text was granted for an impossible project by a monarch who had no jurisdiction in the countries affected. The right to develop the tunnel, even if it could be built, was fictitious. The only value in the charter would be as a tool for fleecing investors. And not investors of the more alert class, either.

Questions about the charter, then: Why apply for it? Why, on the part of the king, grant it? And why hide it?

--Volver 20:06, 23 January 2007 (PST)

A railroad . . . East Roumelia
As in Mason & Dixon, another straight line cast across the land.

guilloche
Or guilloché, a pattern of interlaced curved lines.

A deed . . . east of Wolverton and north of Bletchley
Is it coincidence that this area contains the designed town of Milton Keynes?

Obock
A real French colony in present-day Djibouti; sovereignty is not made clear by the Wikipedia entry.

Sagallo
A Russian colony near Obock; another Wikipedia article.

Atchinoff
Or Achinov: adventurer who sought in 1889 to establish the colony of Sagallo.

the archimandrite Païsi
Archimandrite: a ranking priest in the Orthodox Church.

Page 905

lunes
A lune is the surface formed by cutting a sphere with two planes each including the center.

nacreous
Having the luster of pearl or mother-of-pearl.

Madame Entrevue
Mrs. Interview.

Page 906

but it's they who want to sell him something
Uh-oh. The device that Umeki took away is coming back.

Page 907

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Page 918

Annotation Index