A Companion to Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour

Chapter One

Sword of Honour

1

1 French troops manned the defences of Rome
France continuously stationed troops in Rome from 1849, when they destroyed the short-lived Roman Republic whose soldiers were led by the young Garibaldi, to 1866, when increasing Prussian pressure required their return home. During this period Emperor Napoleon III wanted to maintain their presence in Rome in order to bolster the position of the Pope in his remaining Papal States, of which Rome was the capital, and to prevent the new Italian kingdom from annexing the city. (The Emperor’s purpose in doing this was to please Catholics at home.) After the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Italy had no fear of renewed French intervention and ordered troops to breach the walls and march straight into Rome, which was then declared the new capital city of the state. The Pope, unable to stop this action, withdrew into the Vatican, refused to recognise the new situation or the new state, and remained a “prisoner” there until the Lateran treaty of 1929.

1 Sovereign Pontiff
the Pope

1 side-saddle
The Cardinals rode side-saddle because their robes, like dresses on women, prevented their riding astride.

1 Pincian Hill
This is not one of the seven original hills of Rome, but it is just to the north of them. It had (and still has) extensive parkland and gardens and is the site of the Villa Borghese.

1 frescoed palaces
Frescos were painted directly onto wet plaster and therefore onto walls and ceilings. Palaces (of which Rome has very many) are often decorated with such murals. Before the widespread use of oil painting in the fifteenth century, fresco was a very popular technique, and it still produced many masterpieces later in the Renaissance period, e.g. the Sistine Chapel.

1 Pope Pius
This is Pius IX (Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, 1792-1878, Pope from 1846), known as “Pio Nono”, partly because of his title and partly because the liberal hopes with which he had started his pontificate had been destroyed by his experiences (which included being driven out of Rome in 1848 by revolutionaries who did not stop short of murder). He had the longest reign of any Pope after Saint Peter, more than 31 years. Pope John Paul II was the next longest-reigning pope (1978-2005).

1 suffered for their faith
That is, both Gervase and Hermione came from families who had remained Catholic after the Reformation in England and as a consequence suffered from the penal laws mentioned in the next entry but one.

1 Broome
the Crouchback estate in Somerset. (It is an imaginary place.)

1 the penal years
i.e. the years from the Acts against Catholics in Queen Elizabeth I’s time (starting in 1562) to the repeal of the punitive laws, dormant as they already were, in 1791. During this period Roman Catholics could not legally purchase land, hold civil or military offices or seats in Parliament, inherit property, or practice their religion freely without incurring civil penalties. In 1829 Catholics were at last permitted to sit in parliament for the first time in 250 years.
Full restitution of civil rights to Catholics, however, has still not been completed. By the Act of Settlement, 1701, the monarch may not be a Catholic or marry one, though any other religion is not barred by law. The Earl of Saint Andrews and Prince Michael of Kent lost their places in the succession to the throne when they married Catholics in 1988 and 1978 respectively, and so did the earl’s son Baron Downpatrick in 2003 and brother Lord Nicholas Windsor in 2001 when they converted.

1 the Quantocks to the Blackdown Hills
two ranges of hills in the county of Somerset (the Blackdowns go into Devon). This is quite a sizeable area of land by English standards.

1 died on the scaffold
for defying the penal laws referred to earlier. Though Catholic laymen did occasionally die, they were usually fined and imprisoned. Those executed were likely to be priests, who were thought at the height of the suppression to be traitors to their country for owing allegiance to a foreign king (i.e. the Pope).
The punishment on the scaffold for a traitor was grisly - hanging, drawing and quartering. This execution included torture as well as killing. It involved being hanged by the neck for two minutes (there was no drop, you were just hauled up and partially strangulated); next, being cut down, revived and then castrated and disembowelled while conscious; having your heart removed; and finally your legs and arms cut off. Generally your impaled head would then be displayed in a prominent public place until it rotted away.

1 illustrious converts
Throughout the nineteenth century there was a steady stream of British converts to Catholicism, as well as a strong catholicising element within the Church of England.

1 the Irish question
A perennial problem for the British government right up to recent times. England and then Britain had ruled Ireland, more or less continuously, since Tudor times and had had a presence there since the twelfth century. Through the centuries Irish nationalists, both Catholic and Protestant, wished for greater or lesser degrees of independence ranging from home rule right up to complete independence for the whole country. As the nineteenth century progressed and little was done to satisfy their demands, agitation became extra-political and more violent. Successive British governments were stymied in their attempts to deal with the Irish Question by strong entrenched interests within Parliament and the Irish establishment.

1 Catholic missions in India
A considerable talking point in Catholic circles at this time was the mission to India, which was regarded as a country just ripe for conversion. The British government, which ruled almost all of India in cooperation with local princes, took a basically neutral line in matters of religion, and there were already some millions of Catholics in areas of Portuguese and French influence. Pope Pius IX created nineteen new vicariates during his reign and his successor Leo XIII (reigned 1878-1903) raised a full hierarchy (including eight archbishops!) in 1886.

1 Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), Poet Laureate from 1850 and easily the most popular English poet of the age.

1 Patmore
Coventry Patmore (1823-1896), poet and friend of Tennyson’s who converted to Catholicism in 1864. His fame has faded but for many years his poetry was popular. His later poetry often exhibits a strange mixture of religion and eroticism.

2 taffrail
the rail that goes round the stern of the ship

2 Santa Dulcina delle Rocce
There is no such place, but during their honeymoon EW and his new wife Laura had stayed at Portofino at a villa owned by her family. In fact EW had first met Laura there. EW may be thinking of this villa (which the Herbert family named Altachiara) and of Portofino when he described Santa Dulcina.

2 pantiles
A pantile is “a roof tile made in an S shape so that the downcurving tail of the S overlaps the upcurving head of the S of the tile next to it” (Encarta Dictionary).

2 voluted facade
The facade would have columns or pilasters and other decoration characteristic of the Ionic order of architecture. The volute is a decorative carved scroll at the top of the column shaft.

2 lorgnettes
spectacles on a handle which one uses to hold the lenses up to one’s eyes

2 piazza
Almost everyone today knows that this is the Italian for a public square.

2 mimosa
a tree or shrub growing in warm climates which has pretty white, yellow or pink flowers.

3 English stocks
These are common English garden flowers.

3 ‘Castello Crauccibac’
This is what the locals call the Villa Hermione. It is of course ‘Castello Crouchback’ (which is what EW actually wrote in MA). In reality the sound is similar, so it is just the spelling which seems outlandish to readers with no Italian (and to Italians too!)

3 Abyssinian crisis
This is a reference to Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia) in 1935 and her subsequent conquest of the country. The event became a crisis because of international condemnation and feeble attempts by the League of Nations to apply sanctions against the aggressor.

3 Albergo del Sol
i.e. the Inn of the Sun, a name thought appropriate to commemorate Italy’s African conquest.

3 the Russian-German alliance
This is more commonly known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact. It was signed on 23rd August 1939 to the great shock of left-wingers in the western democracies who had believed up till then that those two nations were eternal enemies and utterly irreconcilable.
Soviet Russia’s attempts in 1938 to create an alliance with Britain and France against Germany in order to solve the Czech crisis had been ignored; and the Russian leader Joseph Stalin, fearing German expansionist plans in eastern Europe, had decided that a treaty with Hitler would now bring greater dividends. The treaty meant that the two nations could proceed together to the complete destruction and division of Poland in September 1939, and that Germany would be free in 1940 to deal with France and Britain in the West. Stalin’s illusions of security were shattered when Germany invaded Russia without warning on 22nd June 1941. At this point the left-wing supporters of Stalin in Britain were able with relief to discard their specious and unconvincing arguments about the necessity for Germany and Russia to be allies (arguments so tortuous that they aroused great delight and risibility in their opponents) and put all their energies into helping to win a now congenial war and to promote Communism at home.

3 young poets
Here, EW is mocking the many artists and intellectuals who not only adopted left-wing politics (understandable in a period of capitalist near-failure) but also looked to the Soviet Union as a beacon of reason and light. Among the writers in Britain to whom he might be referring were W.H. Auden (who was starting the process of moving to the right at this time), Christopher Isherwood, Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis and Louis MacNeice.

4 Eight years
This phrase tells us that Guy’s wife Virginia had left him in 1931. That was also the year his brother Ivo died mad.

4 the cause of Spain
EW is referring here to the Spanish Civil War, in which he thought the claims of the government side to righteousness and justice were exaggerated. He favoured General Franco’s Nationalist forces, but was well aware of their dubious principles. Germany sent planes and technicians to help Franco.

4 troubles of Bohemia
Bohemia is the ancient name for a major part of the Czech lands. In September 1938 the Munich Agreement had seen Britain and France abandon Czechoslovakia to Hitler’s mercies. The Czechoslovaks, knowing themselves abandoned, had then given in to German demands rather than fight.

4 When Prague fell
Only six months after Munich, Hitler sent his armies into the rump of Czechoslovakia (March 1939) and took over its government, renaming the western part of the country ‘the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’. (Slovakia had declared independence already and was ruled by a crypto-Fascist government.) Britain and France had proved so cowardly in letting him have the Sudetenland, the mountainous border region of Czechoslovakia (which in a war the Czechs might easily have defended for some months), that Hitler decided he might as well have the whole country.

4 But now, splendidly, everything had become clear.
Guy at this point expects Britain to declare war on both Germany and Russia, since they are conniving at the violation of Poland, a country with which Britain has a treaty of guaranteed support. Britain would thus line up magnificently against the two great evil empires at once. EW himself thought that this is what Britain ought to have done. This awesome confrontation, as events proved, was too idealistic, not to say foolish, for the government to contemplate, and it declared war only on Germany.

4 Arciprete
Archpriest, a parish priest who has achieved special honour for having a holy reputation or simply by longevity

4 Podestà
Originally a legal gentleman from a neutral neighbouring community who settled disputes in a mediaeval Italian town, by Fascist times the term had simply come to mean mayor.

4 St Dulcina
There is no such saint (as far as I am aware). She is not present in The Book of Saints compiled by the Benedictine monks of Saint Augustine’s Abbey, Ramsgate.

4 Diocletian
Roman Emperor (245-316, emperor 284-305) who was an able administrator but nevertheless conducted the last major persecution of the Christians. He was one of the few emperors able to abdicate successfully.

4 sacristy
or vestry, a room neighbouring the altar area (the sanctuary) where church vestments, plate and other necessary objects are stored.

5 aides-mémoire
reminders (to the ‘saint’!)

5 thunderbolt
Such things are said to exist but, when available for inspection, almost always turn out to be meteorites.

5 ‘il Santo Inglese’
‘the English saint’ (Italian)

5 Suora Tomasina
Sister Tomasina, a nun and schoolteacher. It was very common then for Catholic schools to have a weekly slot when all the Catholic children in a class went to confession.

6 ‘Beneditemi, padre, perchè ho peccato ...’
‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned’ (Italian). There is a misprint here, since the first word should be Benediteme. These words are the traditional formula for beginning a confession. You go on to state how long it is since your last confession and then relate your transgressions. The priest may question you about them, severely or gently as the recital deserves, and give advice on future conduct. If he is convinced of your penitence, he will absolve you and finish by imposing a penance.

6 ‘Sia lodato Gesù Cristo’ ... ‘Oggi, sempre’
‘May Jesus Christ be praised’ ... ‘Now, and for ever more’ (Italian)

6 three ‘Aves’
or Three Hail Maries in English. This was such a common penance for mild offenders that it became almost a joke.

7 simpatico
A difficult word to translate into English, though the Italian word has itself become more common in English since EW’s time. It implies being loved, admired, accepted and easy to get on with.

7 ‘wops’
an unpleasant slang word. It originated in the United States during World War I as a term of abuse for immigrants from southern Europe and quickly spread to Britain, where it was applied especially to Italians.

7 Royal School of Needlework
Founded in 1872 and based at Hampton Court Palace, the Royal School of Needlework uses traditional techniques of hand embroidery in the restoration and conservation of textiles, and especially military and masonic banners, uniforms, tapestries, chair covers and altar frontals. The School also makes new designs and copies of antique needlework. Among its many famous commissions have been the Coronation Robes of Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) in 1937 and Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

8 black-shirt
Fascist officials wore black shirts, hence the name.

8 ‘Everything will be brought to an arrangement.’
This comforting belief was widespread, and not only in Italy, in 1939. There was some justification for it when one considers what humiliations the democracies accepted in their attempts to maintain peace.

2

9 Downside
the Benedictine School for teenage boys near Bath, attached to an important Abbey

9 the Irish Guards
One of the five regiments of foot guards who make up the Guards Division charged with the responsibility of protecting the monarch. They are prominent when they mount guard at Buckingham Palace itself in bearskin caps and red coats. The other four guards regiments, similarly dressed but with distinguishing marks, are the Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots and Welsh Guards.

9 Kenya
To settle in Kenya on the high plateau was a common thing for British settlers to do in the period before World War II. There was an equable climate and fertile agricultural land.
There may be a hidden meaning here. Kenya was famous between the wars for attracting a sort of amoral, hard-living adventurer who caused sexual and social chaos among the quieter members of the community. ‘Happy Valley’ was the name given to their hunting-ground; its history is notorious though not as well known in EW’s time as it is now, perhaps. Virginia would have fitted very nicely into such a society with all its brittle brightness and temptations, but Guy no doubt concentrated on his farming rather than on social self-indulgence. Virginia probably wanted to get back to England to pursue an affair, though EW does not say so.

10 uninterrupted male succession since the reign of Henry I
Henry I, youngest son of William I the Conqueror, reigned from 1100 to 1135. It would certainly be a remarkable achievement to have the estate passing from male to male for 800 years and more. I am not sure that it has happened in England at all.
The unusual name of Crouchback certainly has Norman or at least medieval associations. Crouch is associated with the word cross (one sometimes reads of the Crouched or Crutched Friars who wore a cross on their habits), so a crouchback would be a man who had a cross emblazoned on his back. He would do this to show that he intended to go on crusade to the Holy Land or had returned from doing so. So the devout origins of the Crouchback family rather than any military ones are stressed in their name.
The whole of SH is concerned with the fitful crusade of apparently the last Crouchback, though one who does not display his cross openly in public.

10 sanctuary lamp
the red light over the altar area in a Catholic church which tells you that the Blessed Sacrament (the Body of Christ under the appearance of bread) is reserved nearby.

10 he thought it Guy’s plain duty
because he was now divorced and (in Box-Bender’s eyes) able to marry again. Guy as a Catholic knows that this is impossible while Virginia lives since his church does not accept divorce.

11 a rifle regiment; he had a son serving with them now
Tony Box-Bender has joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, popularly known as the Greenjackets because when they were formed in America before the War of Independence they wisely adopted that colour for their jackets rather than the famous red. Green jackets were less conspicuous and gave their wearers a much better chance of survival than the wearers of red coats enjoyed. (In 1966 they, the Rifle Brigade and the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry were formally united as the Royal Greenjackets.)

11 Lowndes Square
a notable address in the Belgravia district of London not far from Knightsbridge

11 The Government know just how many men they can handle
Box-Bender’s confidence in the government and the military’s efficiency is of course soon to be contradicted by Guy’s experience.

11 Maginot ... Siegfried Lines
The Maginot Line was a line of defence that the French created in the inter-war period as a precaution against German attack. It was immensely strong where it faced Germany but weaker elsewhere, with the result that it was easily by-passed when Germany did finally invade France; the Germans came through Belgium instead of attacking directly. The Siegfried Line was Germany’s equivalent bulwark against the French and was almost as easily breached in the latter days of the war.

11 The Germans are short of almost every industrial essential.
This comfortable delusion was widespread in the days before the war and in the early months of the conflict. Insofar as there was truth in it (for example, in a comparative lack of oil fuels) the deprivation acted as a spur to further German aggression - the oil fields of Romania became a target.

12 despatched to stay .. in Connecticut
There was a considerable flight of children abroad in the months before the war and during it. Those who could afford it preferred to see their sons and daughters safe out of the country.

12 repository for ‘National Art Treasures’
This evacuation too was a far-flung matter. Galleries and museums in London and the big cities were denuded of masterpieces out of a fear that the early days of the war would see the wholesale obliteration of centres of population. The authorities even used mine galleries deep underground to store these treasures.

12 billeting officers, civil or military
Troops in towns which had no army barracks had to stay in the houses of the local populace. A billeting officer assigned the soldiers to quarters in these homes, whether the house-owner wanted them or not. Considerable friction could result from insensitive decisions. (We see a billeting officer in action in Chapter 5, Apthorpe Placatus).
Likewise, there were billeting officers, usually civilian, who directed the allocation of evacuee children to houses in the receiving district. August and September 1939 witnessed a wholesale depopulation of towns when the children were sent off as school groups to live in safer areas of the country. Teachers and (sometimes) mothers accompanied them. It was a nightmare which was surprisingly successful as an administrative exercise. As a human experience, however, the evacuation was often the stuff of life-long nightmares and phobias.

12 happy groups of mothers and children
Clearly these are the words of the radio announcer. The evacuation of the children was a trial for everyone. Vast numbers of people, perhaps one and a half million altogether, mainly children, found themselves in a distant region where they had to cope with strange accents, different kinds of life-style and grudging hospitality.

13 the Irish Guards
Generally their officers were taken from the nobly-born and prominent, and one might think of Guy as a suitable candidate; but the fact he does not get in indicates that even he does not measure up. He may have been judged to be too old, of course.
Some may not understand why Guy and his brother Gervase thought of joining the Irish rather than the other guards regiments. No Irish connexion discloses itself in the Crouchback blood line or possessions; but many of the privates in the regiment would have been from Ireland and therefore Catholic, and Guy and his brother might have been attracted by this fact. Also, Guy may think that he might just get into the Irish Guards but that the Grenadiers and Coldstreams were well out of reach.

13 Bellamy’s
A London gentleman’s club situated, we are told on page 15, in St James’s Street. Here men of substance could find a congenial shelter when they were up in London, and make it a hub for their activities, social or otherwise. EW almost certainly means Bellamy’s to represent one of his own clubs, White’s, but all London men’s clubs had a basic similarity. Differences depended on their membership - some were literary, some sporting, some theatrical or artistic, for example.
EW derived the name Bellamy from one of the two versions of the last words of William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806), who died while Prime Minister. According to the official version, as he lay on his death-bed he said, ‘Oh, my country! how I leave my country!’ Much more likely, since Pitt’s early death was due to a too eager consumption of potables and comestibles, is the version which has come down by oral tradition : ‘I think I could eat one of Bellamy’s veal pies’.
John Bellamy was an official in the House of Commons (Deputy Housekeeper, actually) who in 1773 set up a dining room (later expanded) as a private venture supplying food to the members. This venture lasted until the Houses of Parliament burned down in 1834. Everybody who went to these rooms commented on the similarity of the ambience to that of a gentleman’s club.

13 linkmen
On dark nights in eighteenth century London you hired linkmen or linkboys to carry torches for you on your journey home.

13 painted out
Preparations for war included the imposition of black-out rules over the whole country. No chink of light was to show which might alert German bombers to the presence of targets beneath.

14 bandying of ladies’ names
Some of the more serious London clubs had conventions which prevented the discussion of ladies in any form which could be considered derogatory or judgmental. The fact that some clubs did allow such conversation indicates the slow decay of older ideas of gentlemanliness, which (in its purest form) could not allow any lady ever to be wrong. Such a convention put a tremendous strain not only on the men but also on the more scrupulous ladies, since they felt they should never compromise their men by any of their actions or words.

14 lawns ploughed
to make more arable land

14 dower-houses and shooting lodges
A dower house was a house on the estate where a member of the family now in altered circumstances (e.g. the widow of the late owner, or the eldest son and his young family) could reside. Their smaller size often meant that they were much more comfortable to live in than the great house.
A shooting lodge is a house on the moors or in the countryside which the estate-owners occupied or hired out in the shooting season. It could likewise be made cosy though most accounts inform us that generally they were horrendously under-equipped.

14 incidents and crimes in the black-out
There was a regrettable increase in crime in the early days of the war which the police found difficult to deal with simply because darkness was complete and easily hid the activities of the criminal classes. There was also a sharp rise in accidents, even deaths, because drivers could not really see where they were going.

14 a territorial searchlight battery
EW is thinking of a company (I believe situated at or near Sevenoaks in Kent) where a group of theatrical homosexuals (one of them Dennis Price) had managed to gather together for a war they intended to spend in congenial indulgence. Once the authorities had cottoned on to their activities, which scandalised the local populace, they were forcibly disbanded and separated.
They were territorial because they were members, not of a regular army regiment, but of a Territorial regiment, i.e. the volunteer reserve.

14 R.N.V.R.
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. These yachtsmen, however much their peacetime hobby was peripheral to their daily lives, were at least knowledgable about the sea to some degree and therefore made good recruits for the naval reserve. Despite this advantage they did not quickly gain the confidence of the regular naval officers.

14 Belgravia
the fashionable area of London where Box-Bender lives

14 two thousand years
2000 years before 1939 is 62 B.C. The Romans had not yet landed in Britain - Julius Caesar’s expedition was still eight years away and the conquest more than one hundred years in the future. There is little evidence of pre-Roman settlement in London, so the city’s importance seems to have been created by the Romans in the period A.D. 43 - 50. The first London bridge was built in the latter year.

15 aide-de-camp
an officer helping a senior officer with administrative affairs

16 No bombs fell.
This is the beginning of the period known as the Phony War. In fact, the Germans took a terrible toll of British shipping with a campaign at sea using U-boats and surface ships, but on land, nothing much seemed to happen for seven months. This was in great contrast both with the first months of World War I and with the expectations of the whole populace in 1939; they dreaded a vast bombing campaign in the first week.

16 Russia invaded Poland.
This happened on 17th September 1939, two weeks after Britain’s declaration of war on Germany for doing the very same thing. The Russians had an easy ride since the Germans had already virtually destroyed the Polish army and the eastern frontier was almost undefended. At the end of World War II the Soviets, as fruits of victory, retained the land they captured from helpless Poland at this time. The Soviet Union was in consequence the only country to increase its area considerably because of World War II.

16 Then why go to war at all?
Guy’s question is perfectly reasonable and his arguments are rational. Box-Bender and the soldiers do not and cannot answer Guy’s objections to Britain’s war policy. Unfortunately for Guy, no-one else thinks as he does on the matter. They are far more realistic about the number of enemies Britain can take on.

16 Oh, we had to do that, you know.
Box-Bender appears to be suggesting that Britain has gone to war to keep the socialists at home happy, that because Britain did not fight Franco in Spain it has willy nilly to fight Hitler now. It is not at all clear that his judgment (that the socialists would riot and cause civil war if Britain did not go to war) is justified, since the left-wing was in a dazed stupor at the unexpected alliance of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The extent of Box-Bender’s reluctance to go to war with Germany can be discerned from his expectation that the war will be a small-scale affair, just enough to save face on both sides before a satisfactory peace is concluded which will leave Germany immeasurably strengthened on the continent of Europe.
In fact the Government proved more resolute and principled than Box-Bender (and those who thought like him at the time) expected. There were indeed contacts between Britain and Germany in the Phony War period, but negotiations broke down when Britain insisted that the minimum requirement for peace was that German forces had to leave Poland.

17 Lord Kilbannock ... a gossip column
This character has some resemblance to a friend of EW’s, Patrick Balfour, later Lord Kinross. In the twenties he was one of the first of the modern gossip columnists (he was Mr. Gossip in the Daily Sketch); he chronicled the antics of the Bright Young People whom EW also wrote about, particularly in Vile Bodies. Balfour wrote an interesting and valuable account of those times called Society Racket.
At first EW did not want people to identify Balfour with the self-serving Lord Kilbannock, so in MA he made him a racing rather than a gossip columnist.

18 petrol coupons
One of the ways in which bureaucracy extended its grip over the populace in war-time was to regulate the issue of valuable materials, like petrol (gasoline), foodstuffs and clothing. Rationing was introduced very early, and in order to get these necessaries, one had to obtain and if necessary save up the requisite number of coupons.
Once government had taken to itself the power of controlling people’s lives like this, however necessary in wartime, it was unwilling to return those powers to the people in the days of peace. I myself remember as a teenager the final ending of the sugar ration, which happened no less than nine years after the war had ended. The extended restrictions on licensing hours for the drinking of alcohol, which were imposed in World War I as a means of restricting the intake of workers in the munitions and engineering industries but applied to the whole populace, lasted until the twenty-first century. They were not reformed until 2003, the new regulations, which abolished the concept of licensing hours, coming into effect in 2005. Before 1915 pubs could open at any time between 4 a.m. and 1 a.m. the following day, just as the landlord wished, though there were often additional local restrictions.

18 half the cottages were equipped with baths and chintz
The point is that very few cottages would have had bathrooms at that time. So this is a moderately prosperous place for nearly all the inhabitants. Chintz is a cotton fabric very popular with the general public because it was often brightly printed with colourful patterns, e.g. flowers.

19 Wallace Collection
A superb collection, mainly of French art but also containing (among other objects) magnificent Rubens canvases, left for display to the nation by the French widow of Sir Richard Wallace, illegitimate son and heir of the 4th Marquess of Hertford. It is situated in Hertford House in London and celebrated its centenary in 2000. Among the famous paintings on show are The Swing by Fragonard, Madame Pompadour and The Rising Sun by Boucher, The Music Party by Watteau, The Laughing Cavalier by Hals, and A Dance to the Music of Time by Poussin.

19 Sèvres
porcelain from the famous French factory near Paris, first operational in 1756

19 Boulle
André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732) was one of France’s leading cabinetmakers. He developed his own fashion of inlaying, now called boulle or buhl work. It main characteristic is elaborate marquetry employing metals (bronze, copper) and tortoiseshell as well as many varieties of exotic woods.

19 Bouchers
i.e. paintings (probably, Angela hoped, from the Wallace Collection) by François Boucher (1703-1770)

19 Hittite tablets from the British Museum
The British Museum in London is the national repository of many artefacts from ancient civilisations in all corners of the world. It is therefore a centre of research and scholarship. Hittite tablets would be one small part of the Museum’s range of expertise.
The Hittites were an Indo-European people who occupied the area now known as Turkey in about 2000 B.C. and created a great empire which collapsed suddenly in around 1190 B.C. About 25,000 cuneiform tablets have survived from the Hittite royal archives at Hattusha, and the language has been deciphered. The tablets deal mainly with administrative and religious matters.
Angela later (page 21) calls the tablets ‘the Hittite horrors’. (In Men at Arms these objects were mistakenly printed as Hittite tables!)

19 terrestrial and celestial globes
A terrestrial globe is a globe of the earth such as is commonly found today. A celestial globe represents the stars of the night sky in correct relationship with another. Frequently the figures of the conventional constellations were drawn in to help with the identification of individual stars. The ecliptic and the celestial equator were also generally marked. Once you had got the elevation of the pole correct for your latitude, you could rotate the globe to imitate the passage of the stars across the night sky that you see in your neighbourhood.

20 Arlington Street
a very select part of London neighbouring Green Park

20 It’s South African.
One wonders whether it deserves the designation sherry at all.

21 They packed up and went to Jamaica
Two groups of people fled the country when war came (or in some cases before it had actually been declared) : the fearful rich who fled to estates in the sun, and the generally left-wing young intelligentsia, who tended to go to the United States.

21 evacuees have gone back to Birmingham
This is still September 1939, so the evacuees have lasted only a few days in their new homes. Flight back home was a common experience as children communicated their unhappiness and parents began to think there had been no need to evacuate them in the first place.

21 P.A.D.
Passive Air Defence - i.e., here, observation. Passive Air Defence was in fact a much larger concept and included air raid shelters, camouflage, bomb disposal, air raid warning, construction of revetments, etc. In 1934 the government had issued a Handbook of Passive Air Defence which covered these topics. In the minds of soldiers the term P.A.D. naturally developed the ironical meaning of Doing Nothing!

21 asked why she wasn’t wearing a gas-mask
Gas masks were issued at the beginning of the war. One great fear was that the Germans would use their considerable air supremacy to bomb cities with poisonous gases which these cumbersome masks were supposed to neutralise. It is doubtful that they were very efficacious, but they were never put to the test since the Germans did not use gas. The masks did however give another splendid opportunity for petty officials to exercise their self-importance.

21 M.C.
Military Cross, an award given to commissioned officers of the rank of captain and below, and to warrant officers, for gallantry of a high order.

22 collecting binoculars and sending them to the War Office
Such odd crazes did occur, especially in the early years of the war. Some of them were government-inspired : local authorities and private citizens were encouraged to tear up the railings around their property to offer them for the war effort, though the metal they contained was unsuitable for any further use and eventually many were dumped in the Thames Estuary off Sheerness. Government thought the procedure justified because the activity raised morale in the civilian population. The result of this architectural folly was that many townscapes took on a new, denuded appearance which has not been entirely corrected today.

23 to scrape
i.e. to go to confession

23 the Awful
i.e. God. Awful is used in the sense of awesome, as was the usage of writers of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: Isaac Watts, for example, wrote a hymn which began How Sweet and Awful Is the Place. Hymnists and preachers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries imitated this diction to increasingly ludicrous effect. EW catches all Box-Bender’s unease with religion in his employment of the capitalised word and in his trite, meaningless sentence I shall be with you in spirit.

23 You were just a schoolboy
Guy was 15 when World War I finished, just like EW himself.

23 ghastly new chemicals
a reference to the anticipated gas warfare

24 Zeppelins
A Zeppelin was a motorised airship. Angela’s use of this word instead of airplanes indicates that she is still influenced by memories of World War I, when the Germans launched a total of 159 Zeppelin attacks on British towns and cities.

24 Domine non sum dignus
‘Lord, I am not worthy’ (Latin). The penitents (or, at that time, the assistants on the altar as their representatives) said these words at the altar-rail just before they received Holy Communion during Mass.

3

24 Matchet
There is no such town, but it seems to me a little like Weston-super-Mare.

25 the forty years that divided them
So Mr Crouchback was born in about 1863.

25 Racé rather than distingué
i.e. distinguished and elegant in his breeding rather than in just his appearance

25 ... and lived to see the night fall.
At this point and nearly a page further on, EW leaves out details of Mr Crouchback’s straitened circumstances that are given in MA. He seems to have felt it necessary to make him seem less penurious. In any case, he is proved after his death to have been shrewd in his disburdening himself of increasingly irksome and expensive responsibilities. The missing extract reads as follows :

England was full of such Jobs who had been disappointed in their prospects. Mr Crouchback had lost his home. Partly in his father’s hands, partly in his own, without extravagance or speculation, his inheritance had melted away. He had rather early lost his beloved wife and been left to a long widowhood.

25 anciently allied families
We learn more about the Crouchbacks elsewhere, but it is clear that in the past their Catholicism has encouraged friendship and marriage with trusted co-religionists and a habitual neglect of other English society. This special web of relationship still exists in Mr Crouchback’s mind as a defining feature of society.

25 the butcher, the Duke of Omnium
i.e. everybody else, whatever their class.
EW took the title Duke of Omnium from Anthony Trollope’s Palliser or political novels where the Dukes of Omnium are great political figures in the Whig party. Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, actually becomes Prime Minister in one of these novels.

25 Lloyd George
David Lloyd George was a great modern political figure, Prime Minister 1916-1922.

25 Neville Chamberlain
Prime Minister at the time of the opening of this novel.

25 James II
This king (James VII of Scotland) reigned from 1685 to 1688. He was the last Catholic king of Britain and was therefore forced off his throne by a motley crew of time-servers, turncoats (including John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough) and adherents of the Protestant religion, in what they were pleased to call the Glorious Revolution. His son (the Old Pretender, ‘James III’) and grandson (known to legend as Bonnie Prince Charlie, ‘Charles III’) made attempts to regain the throne in 1715 and 1745, but the crown was eventually confirmed in the hands of the Hanoverians. After the death in 1807 of the last of James II’s descendants in the male line, the Cardinal Duke of York (‘Henry IX’), the Stuart claim passed to the Bavarian royal house through the female line, where it subsists to this day.

26 The Marine Hotel, Matchet ...
Before this paragraph there is the second of EW’s excisions from MA which deal with Mr Crouchback’s genteel poverty. It reads :

In his actual leaving home there had been no complaining. He attended every day of the sale seated in the marquee on the auctioneer’s platform, munching pheasant sandwiches, drinking port from a flask and watching the bidding with tireless interest, all unlike the ruined squire of Victorian iconography.
‘… Who’d have thought those old vases worth £18? … Where did that table come from? Never saw it before in my life ... Awful shabby the carpets look when you get them out ... What on earth can Mrs Chadwick want with a stuffed bear? …’

26 prie-dieu
a piece of furniture which looks like a pew for one person, with a kneeler and a surface for resting one’s arms or a book. One kept it in a quiet room for one’s private prayers.

26 worth a tiff with the Church
Box-Bender thinks Mr Crouchback should encourage Guy to get married again in defiance of the Church’s laws on divorce, so that a legitimate male heir will be produced to inherit the Crouchback name and estate.

26 medieval excommunications
Clearly two ancestors of Guy’s had so displeased the Church that they were formally expelled from it. This was a serious matter since the inevitable consequence was eternal punishment in Hell. Moreover, in the Middle Ages excommunication was sometimes accompanied by civil penalties, especially if the state authorities agreed with the Church.

26 apostasy
a renunciation of the faith. In the seventeenth century this was most likely an accommodation with the national Church under the pressure of the penal laws (see note to page 1).

26 Lundy Island
Lundy is a granite island, 4 km² in size, in the Bristol Channel off the north coast of Devon. Lundy was owned by the British crown for many centuries, but at the time of SH it was owned by the Heaven family. The National Trust acquired the island in 1969. The name is from the Norse lunde, meaning puffin.

27 medal of Our Lady of Lourdes
Catholics, men and women, frequently wore religious medals at this time, and many still do. The Miraculous Medal promoted by Saint Cathérine Labouré was perhaps the most prominent, but Our Lady of Lourdes was certainly popular. It encouraged devotion to the Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception in fulfilment of the request conveyed to Saint Bernadette of Lourdes in visions she received in 1858. The medal shows Our Lady in the grotto at Lourdes with Bernadette kneeling in front of her.

27 The yeomanry haven’t had any horses since the year before last
Yeomanry were cavalry regiments raised in a defined region from among gentlemen who possessed horses. The first yeomanry were raised in 1761. Mr Crouchback is referring to the disbandment of all horse-based cavalry regiments in the British Army, which had happened in the late 1930’s, and their replacement by motorised units.

27 the Halberdiers
Here we are introduced to the corps which Guy will join as a cadet officer. There is in fact no such corps in the British Army, though halberdiers certainly existed as fighting men in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their weapon, the halberd, may best be described as three weapons in one : it consisted of a long pike with, at the business end, a curved axe blade balanced by a pick. Halberdiers were experts in combatting an armed man on a horse, the pike keeping the horseman at bay, the pick helping to drag him to the ground, and the blade finishing him off.
EW joined the Royal Marines in December 1939, so some of the customs and events he came across with the marines are associated in SH with the Halberdiers.

27 does everything for herself
Mr Crouchback reveals an upper-class surprise at the way children of other classes naturally develop ways of looking after themselves. When he was an infant he had a nanny and perhaps other servants to do things for him and to look after him; and no doubt Guy had the same upbringing.

28 chaff
i.e. tease jokingly

28 lotus-eaters
people who lead lazy, pleasant, undemanding lives. The phrase comes from Homer’s Odyssey, where people could eat lotus and find themselves dropping into a state of idle stupor. (The original Greek word lotos is sometimes used.) The lotus of these lotus-eaters is Zizyphus Lotus, a tree found in the Mediterranean region which has a sweet fruit. Whether it actually made strangers who ate of it forget their native country is very doubtful but the ancients believed that it did. The fruit was an important element in the diet of the poor, who made a kind of bread from it.

28 the rear echelon
This phrase means the companies of soldiers who have been assigned to defend or occupy the rear positions in an army. Here Major Tickeridge merely means that Halberdier Gold is with the servants.

31 Hore-Belisha stuff
Leslie Hore-Belisha (1893-1957) is more celebrated today for his promotion of the Belisha beacon as an aid to crossing busy roads - it was, and is, an illuminated orange globe on a black and white post indicating a marked-out area where one can cross.
By 1939 he had been Secretary of War for two years and had pushed through wide-ranging reforms of the army which were still being discussed and often opposed by regular officers like Major Tickeridge. Among the reforms, Hore-Belisha wanted easier promotion from the ranks to the officer corps and the appointment of younger senior officers. This meant unwelcome early retirement for older officers. In January 1940 Hore-Belisha was forced to resign because of army pressure on the Prime Minister. His career never recovered, despite his obvious competence and clear-sightedness. Some historians feel that he was too idle to regain any initiative in his career.

31 a brigade of our own
This was a signal honour for the Halberdiers. Usually brigades were drawn from several regiments.

31 cadre training
i.e. the new officers will be intensively trained by a group of specialised military professionals

31 Captain-Commandant
EW continues to give distinctive traditions to the Halberdiers by having their colonel called by this title.

31 Foot Guards
i.e. the Guards regiments as described on page 9