A Companion to Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour

Chapter Five

Apthorpe Placatus

1

216 Apthorpe Placatus
Placatus (Latin) means placated, pacified. The aim of suppliants in many ancient religions was to please the gods so that punishments would be diminished or withheld. In SH Guy is concerned to carry out Apthorpe’s last requests to him as a form of pietas or act of dutiful devotion. The spirit of Apthorpe would then be assuaged, though that spirit is only the influence Apthorpe still exerts over Guy, diminishing as it is.
The title Apthorpe Placatus is not present in OG. There this chapter is the first part of a larger chapter called Happy Warriors, a title which in SH is given to Chapter Six alone.

216 The sky over London was glorious
This is the skyscape of the Blitz, of course. German planes bombed London on over 200 successive nights from September 1940. Other British cities suffered too. For the age, the destruction was extensive, though later in the war German cities were to suffer far more terribly.

216 ‘Pure Turner’
A reference to the stunning impressionistic land and skyscapes by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), perhaps the greatest English painter of all. His paintings were expressionistic but also prefigured the work of the impressionists later in the century. He painted several pictures on the theme of The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, an event he witnessed with professional interest in 1834; these canvasses have much of the dizzying impression of light and colour upon which Guy remarks and may therefore be in his mind here.

216 ‘John Martin, surely?’
Kilbannock here betrays a slightly faulty appreciation which Guy proceeds to snub. Martin (1789-1854) painted large canvases of destruction, often inspired by Biblical subjects, such as The Fall of Babylon, The Deluge and The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but whereas Turner’s paintings betray genius in his portrayal of sky and wind and sea, Martin’s are often hidebound by the depiction of human figures in romantic distress and a pernickety classicism in minute particularisation of architectural details. His skyscapes are impressive in an organised, conventional manner, but they do not dominate the canvas in the way Turner’s do. Guy points all this out in his remark that ‘The sky-line is too low. The scale is less than Babylonian.’
Kilbannock is in any case displaying a journalist’s nose for the newsworthy rather than a connoisseur’s taste for excellence, for he is remembering, perhaps unconsciously, the recent revival of Martin’s art and reputation undertaken in the 1930’s by two German refugees from Nazism, Robert and Charlotte Frank, an endeavour which reached the national newspapers.

216 a group of experimental novelists in firemen’s uniform
EW is having a joke at the expense of fellow-writers who joined the fire service at the outbreak of war. They included his friend Henry Yorke (who wrote under the name of Henry Green) and William Sansom (who used his wartime experiences in a remarkable book of short stories called Fireman Flower). In OG these novelists were progressive rather than experimental. Other writers who joined the Fire Service included the poets Stephen Spender and Peter Quennell. Quennell was sacked on his first evening of action for smoking a cigarette on duty. Also, John Betjeman had a short spell in the fire service when he returned to London from Ireland in 1943.

216 Holy Saturday at Downside
Downside is the Benedictine Abbey and School near Bath. EW made it his practice to spend Holy Week in retreat there before celebrating Easter Day with his family. Guy, however, was a boy there and he is remembering the service as it was then carried out. Presumably the boys went home after the service in the morning (see two entries down for a description of this service).

216 the unfinished butt of the Abbey
Downside Abbey was built, in three stages, from about 1880 to 1925. When Guy was there as a pupil (say 1916 to 1921), the nave had not yet been built (it was soon to be designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott); the completed sections, the transept and the choir, are no doubt the butt or important but truncated block.

216 the glowing brazier … hyssop … blessing fire with water
On Holy Saturday evening occurs the Vigil of Easter, during which, in the open air and the darkness, the priest blesses the new fire of Easter and lights the great Paschal candle before he leads the congregation in procession into the empty, dark church. At least that is what happens now : the reforms of the 1950’s have returned the service to nearer its original timing. In the 1920’s (and the 1940’s) the service was held in the full light of Saturday morning nearly 24 hours before its true time.
Twigs of hyssop were used in biblical times to sprinkle water, though this is apparently not the plant used today for herbal and aromatherapeutic purposes. The chant sung while the priest was asperging the people before Holy Mass began with the words Asperges me Domine hyssopo et mundabor (Thou shalt sprinkle me, O Lord, with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed).

217 A preposterous suggestion
because no German in the planes above could see the light of a cigar, he thinks

217 A.R.P.
Air Raid Precautions. This abbreviation was worn by Air Raid Wardens, who were by tradition zealous in rooting out transgressors of the many petty and not-so-petty regulations introduced in wartime.

217 a pentecostal wind
Pentecost is more often known in England as Whit Sunday. It is the day when the church celebrates the Gift of the Holy Spirit (and its own creation), which The Acts of the Apostles characterise as follows :

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them cloven tongues like as of fire. (Chapter 2 verses 2-3, Authorised Version)

The wind that beats on Guy is therefore a bracing one accompanied by fiery manifestations.

218 ‘So your air marshal got into the club after all.’
Kilbannock’s deceit has backfired on him. He is landed with the air marshal as a club member.

219 Elderberry
In OG EW spelt this name Elderbury. I know of no reason why it should have been changed.

220 I am perfectly all right, thank you …
Beech’s cowardice could be justified by the regulations he says he is obeying, but EW is carefully pointing out that serving officers did not pay attention to such decrees. He is preparing the way for the behaviour of Major Hound and other officers in Crete.

220 the All Clear
a signal by the sirens informing the public that the German planes had gone. It was a continuous note.

220 Guy rang the bell.
Guy is making it clear that he is not a subordinate officer of the air marshal’s. He is also pointing out how one uses the services of the club.

221 Claridge’s
a prestigious London hotel, and very expensive to stay at

221 I should stick around here as much as you can. This is where one gets the amusing jobs
Blackhouse is thinking of the Commando he is in the process of forming. He is deliberately finding his officers from among his friends and cronies, and therefore partly from the members of Bellamy’s. He is giving Guy a hint that he will get an offer of a job from him soon.
This procedure echoes the historical event. The officers of 8 Commando were recruited from the acquaintances of its colonel, EW’s friend Robert Laycock, and among them EW himself. EW at first found this procedure admirable, but soon learnt that the ill-discipline of the recruits was a liability.

222 the gen
a wartime slang word meaning information, actually the shortened form of general information.

223 grandee and card-sharper, duellist and statesman
This is a reference to the club’s long and illustrious history. Possibly, the grandees are the dominant aristocrats of the Whig and/or Tory parties of the eighteenth century when such clubs first became popular, the card-sharpers the men of doubtful morality who used gambling as a means of making a living, the duellists the hot-headed young men of the pre-Victorian ages, and the statesmen distinguished predecessors of not-so-distinguished Elderberry and Box-Bender.

2

223 Charing Cross
the supposed site of the last of the crosses erected in 1290 by King Edward I to mark the progress to its burial in London of the body of his queen Eleanor of Castile. Charing Cross quickly became a central point in London. Since Victorian times it has also served as a railway terminus for trains to the south and south-east. (Actually the present Charing Cross, a Victorian re-imagining, is not on the site of the original one; that was near Admiralty Arch perhaps 250 metres away.)

223 Circe
A sorceress in ancient Greek legend, Circe was able to change humans into animals. In Homer’s Odyssey she changed the companions of Odysseus into swine. Odysseus himself, protected by the god Hermes, was invulnerable and forced her to restore them.
The soldiers look as if they have been changed into swine because they are wearing gas masks. The masks had rounded snout-like protuberances containing a charcoal filter through which they had to breathe.

223 Jerome Bosch
EW is comparing the phantasmagorical sight of soldiers marching along in gas masks with a typical scene from some of the mature paintings of Hieronymus Bosch (about 1450-1516). Bosch painted humans in agony and devils with a plethora of distorted features. (He was also able to paint calmer, more reflective and beautiful scenes.)

224 the nameless major
This man, whom EW takes conspicuous and awkward trouble not to name until near the end of SH, is the brother of Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole of the security forces in London, the man who is maintaining an elaborate security file on Guy’s supposed spying activities.

225 ‘The Unbroken Square’
I have not identified this painting though I have seen a print of it or a painting like it somewhere. It clearly shows the infantry squares typical of British military practice at the time of Waterloo. One of the best pictures in this field is Lady Butler’s Quatre Bras 1815, which you can see here. When charged by cavalry or lancers, the infantry simply formed squares which they could then defend on all four sides. The square was not a new device, however; it was invented by the Swiss as early as the fifteenth century as a means of neutralising charges by mounted knights.

225 Afridi banner
The Afridi are a Pashtun tribe inhabiting the mountain country straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan. (They have come into prominence again in the military action undertaken by the United States and her allies against the Taliban government of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002.) During the nineteenth century there were many little campaigns to control the Afridi that the British mounted from India, not all of them successful. In particular the British wished to keep the Khyber Pass open, an aim which was largely achieved by the judicious use of local militia, bribes and punitive expeditions.

225 gilt idol from Burma
In the nineteenth century the British fought three wars in Burma (now called Myanmar) when they realised that there was wealth to be exploited in the country and that there existed the possibility of opening up the great China trade route to British merchants. Each of these wars gained them territory, a process completed in 1885 with the incorporation of the whole country into the Indian Empire. This assimilation was anathema to the Burmese themselves, and on independence in 1948 they broke away not only from India but also the British Commonwealth.

225 the Napoleonic cuirasses
A cuirass is a metal plate covering the chest and sometimes the back, worn often but not only by cavalrymen. It is usually beautifully polished. This one must have been worn by a French soldier, perhaps a cuirassier or a carabinier, as it is a trophy of war.

225 the Ashanti drum
a trophy from the Ashanti wars (see my note to page 38)

225 the loving-cup from Barbados
A loving cup is a large drinking vessel with two handles, from which couples can drink alternately as lovers might wish to do.
The island of Barbados was a British colony for more than 300 years, the first English settlers moving there in 1627. The island was sometimes an object of attraction for other European nations, and British troops and ships had to defend it during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), the War of American Independence (1776-1783) and the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815).

225 Tipu Sultan’s musket
Tipu or Tippu (sometimes Tippoo) Sultan (about 1750-1799) was independent Sultan of Mysore in India from 1782. He was a prominent figure in the struggles against the British in southern India. He had been trained in warfare by French officers and wanted the French to be stronger in India in order to balance the power of the British. Finally the British learned of his secret negotiations with France and, led by the man who became the Duke of Wellington, their troops invaded Mysore and captured its capital, Seringapatam (1799). Tipu Sultan died leading his troops against the invaders. His palace was sacked : many of its artefacts can be seen in British museums and private houses to this day.

225 ‘I’ve lost a pip, too.’
He has dropped a rank, from major to captain.

225 We practically live on rations.
The rations doled out to the armed forces were of basic quality though sufficient quantity. A man used to delicate cuisine would certainly suffer.

226 ‘It couldn’t have happened in peacetime’
All the unknown captain’s words are complaints about organisation, or rather disorganisation. They point up Britain’s woeful shambles as the country geared up for war, a process which on an optimistic estimate took a full year.

227 A.T.
Usually pronounced at, this woman is a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, which existed to recruit women for work in the army, though never in a combatant role. It was later called the Women’s Royal Army Corps. From 1992 women could join the British Army itself, the WRAC having been disbanded.

227 missed an easy cannon
In billiards one scores points and continues the break mainly by striking the cue ball so that it touches first one and then the other ball on the table. This action is called a cannon and is worth two points. The shot is called a carom in the United States.

228 an act of pietas
The Latin word pietas has no exact equivalent in English, but means something like devotion, piety, dedication.

3

228 Livy
Titus Livius (about 60 BC-AD 17) was a great Roman historian. He wrote a vast History of Rome, of which only about a quarter survives; but it is clearly the work of an original, flexible mind.

228 the construe
Classical scholars, or at least those of us who tried to learn Latin or Greek at school, will remember the construe exercises with something approaching horror. One would translate the text, often word by word, the Latin or Greek followed by the English accompanied by an attempt to explain the syntax, attempting in a feeble way to create some kind of meaning that hung together at the end of the sentence.

229 unprepared passages
At least when one was construing a set book or a text given for homework, one could prepare ahead of the lesson, and pupils who wished to please the master would do this; but unprepared passages - sometimes, though not here, ones chosen at the moment, often randomly - could fox anyone.

228 conform
i.e. Mr Crouchback’s ancestor, instead of remaining resolutely Catholic, accepted the outward observances of the Church of England and the proposition that the monarch was the head of the church in England. Many Catholics did this in the late sixteenth century, often because they did not wish to be considered traitors by the authorities or their neighbours. In this way they hoped to maintain a quiet Catholic faith; but the sad outcome was the loss to the church of their children and grandchildren as acquiescence triumphed.
The distaste that latter-day Catholics might feel for ancestors who had conformed is indicated by the italicisation of the word; the boy emphasised it so that Mr Crouchback should rise to the bait.

229 Blessed Gervase
There are three degrees of recognition in the process of canonisation, which can take decades, even centuries, to accomplish. First a person who has been martyred for the faith or who has practised Christian virtue to a heroic degree is declared Venerable; you may ask him or her in private prayer to intercede with God on your behalf but he or she cannot be the object of public veneration. Later the person may be declared Blessed, which means that (s)he is declared worthy of a local or limited cultus (e.g. in a defined locality or in a religious order). Many holy men and women remain Blessed, for only those deemed worthy of veneration in the whole church go on to the third and final stage, which is of course to be declared a saint. It is the general practice these days to require two unquestioned miracles to be attributed to the putative saint for the cause to be successful.
It cannot be averred that the Blessed Gervase appears to enjoy a wide or even a limited cult, but it pleases my sentimental side to imagine that in 1970, at the age of 66, Guy will accompany his ‘son’ Gervase on a journey to Rome to witness the canonisation of the Blessed Gervase as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. (Please do not write to tell me that St Gervase Crouchback is not in your list of the forty martyrs!)

229 Challoner
i.e. Bishop Richard Challoner (1691-1781), Vicar Apostolic of the London District from 1758, who served the then small number of Catholics in southern England. He produced a number of great religious works, including a revision of the Rheims-Douay Bible, the devotional manual The Garden of the Soul, and an account of the British saints. His Meditations for Every Day of the Year were used even by non-Catholics.

229 St Omers records
The Society of Jesus founded a college to educate English Catholic boys at Saint-Omer in the Pas-de-Calais in France in 1593 (the town was then part of the Spanish Netherlands). The seminary later moved to Bruges and to Liège and finally ended up as Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. It might have preserved many records of the doings of the priests it prepared for missionary work. We learn from this information that the Blessed Gervase was a Jesuit priest.

229 Old Crouchers
It was (and still is, I judge from their conversation today) common for English schoolboys (though not schoolgirls) to give their teachers and other adults nicknames which simply added the suffix -ers to an element of their real name.

229 examined by the Council
The few facts that Mr Crouchback gives indicate that he was well aware of the legal steps, including torture, which were available to the authorities in Elizabethan times. This Council would be the Privy Council, or rather a delegated group of its members.
In the 1930’s EW wrote a biography, brilliant but tendentious, of the martyr Saint Edmund Campion. He described the course of his agonising examination in some detail.

231 an officer here today
This officer is a military billeting officer and turns out to be the quartering commandant. He is charged with finding rooms for soldiers because there is no barracks in the town.

232 ‘American parcel’
As EW says, these were just beginning to appear in numbers in Britain. Many Britons had relatives and friends in the United States who were distressed by the increasing privations suffered by the British people and sent off parcels usually packed with foodstuffs which were on the whole most gratefully received. Sometimes the contents were not well-considered (as here) but the packages were morale-boosting as well as generally useful.

232 ‘Pullitzer’s Soup’ … Brisko … ‘Yumcrunch’
These products sound like inventions by EW. American readers will no doubt put me right on the matter if I am wrong. I have learned already that Brisko, which we soon find out (page 236) is used in the States instead of lard, is probably intended to be Crisco, a vegetable shortening which is still sold in many diversified forms.

232 so unnecessarily
because Mr Crouchback believes that they should have been kept in Britain

232 an alcoholic onion
Mr Crouchback’s lack of understanding of the product he has received is a comment on his distance from anything that could be termed an active life in society.

233 P.O.W.
prisoner of war. Newspapers gave names of prisoners in their columns as they received them from Red Cross authorities.

233 Only regular Red Cross parcels
Box-Bender is technically correct here. But in fact the practice arose of sending wanted things through the Red Cross. The Red Cross arranged for next-of-kin to send a prisoner of war one parcel every three months; it could weigh up to eleven pounds (5 kg). Tony in his postcard makes the point that neutral embassies would do it better, but this channel was not one many people could use.

233 Dotheboys Hall
another reference to the atrocious school in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby; first it was used to characterise Kut-al-Imara and now Our Lady of Victory.

233 Glucose D
Glucose is a sugar of which the commonest form is dextrose. I can remember tablets of it being available in the fifties which gullible schoolboys imagined would help them run faster or further.

234 Boulestin’s Conduct of Kitchen
Xavier Marcel Boulestin (1878-1943) was London’s first modern chef. In 1925 he opened his Restaurant Français in Leicester Square, moving to Covent Garden two years later to open the Restaurant Boulestin. It was celebrated for its authentic French haute cuisine and its chic modern décor. He wrote a column in Vogue and in 1937 he recorded the BBC’s first television cookery programme. His most famous statement was “Cookery is not chemistry. It is an art. It requires instinct and taste, not exact measurements.”
Boulestin’s third book in English, published in 1925, was called The Conduct of the Kitchen. It was a series of essays, discourses, menus and recipes designed to help the housewife keep things under control for less than a pound a week. It also advised her about how to treat guests and manage her employees, including the cook.

234 Trumper’s Eucris
This is the name of not only a hair lotion but an aftershave and cologne supplied by George F. Trumper (died 1944) at his famous Mayfair hairdressing salon. According to advertisements it was known as the English scent.

234 Pilfering and breakages were becoming frequent on the railways.
My father, who was a railwayman during World War II, told me that this was undoubtedly true. Men whose families were suffering from reduced rations might make sure some leakages developed in the food wagons so that supplementary foodstuffs could be purloined.

235 the wireless
This early term for what we now call the radio lasted a long while. I remember it being in common usage until the sixties.

235 Why shouldn’t he? I don’t understand.
Mr Crouchback does not understand that since his youth warfare has itself changed in its nature, and with it people’s perceptions of appropriate responses. War was no longer a restricted affair conducted by elite cadres of professionals under strict if imaginary codes of honour but the grappling of entire nations fighting for survival.

236 ‘Private Parlour’
This inner sanctum would be where the Cuthberts themselves would relax. It would generally not be available for use by the hotel residents.

4

238 a buoyant busy personage
This is Winston Churchill himself, the Prime Minister. Churchill did conduct a surprising amount of business from his bed, thus combining relaxation with effort. His instructions were couched in the brief, clear language that EW imitates so well here.

238 ukase
a term from the Russian, where it was originally used of an order from the Tsar that had the force of law. By the time EW wrote OG it was used of any edict from Communist commissars which had to be obeyed blindly, whether it was rational or not.

238 P.M. to Secretary of State for War
i.e. Prime Minister (Winston Churchill) to Anthony Eden. At this point Eden was still at the War Office but Churchill was soon (in December 1940) to ask him to take up again his old post of Foreign Secretary, the British equivalent of the American post of Secretary of State.

238 no commander be penalized for errors in discretion towards the enemy
This instruction was in fact a notable characteristic of Churchill’s direction of the war. In his History of the Second World War, Volume 2 he states that he applied this directive in the case of the commanders in the Dakar fiasco. He wrote, No blame attached to the British naval and military commanders, and both were constantly employed until the end of the war, the Admiral attaining the highest distinction. It was one of my rules that errors towards the enemy must be lightly judged. They were quite right to try, if with their knowledge on the spot they thought that they could carry the matter through; and the fact that they under-estimated the effect produced on the Vichy garrison by the arrival of the cruisers and their reinforcements was in no way counted against them. (Chapter XXIV)
In this fashion EW provides a noble escape from disgrace for the brigadier and for Guy. In the real world EW at this time desperately searched around for a way out of the Royal Marines, where he knew his career was blocked. His acquaintanceship with powerful friends, including Bob Laycock and Churchill’s friend Brendan Bracken, helped him get into the Commandos.

238 H.O.O. H.Q.
i.e. Hazardous Offensive Operations headquarters, whose purpose I outline on page 58. EW, in a characteristic example of inter-novel linkage, places this headquarters in Marchmain House, the ugly modernistic block of flats which was erected on the site of the Marquis of Marchmain’s London home in Brideshead Revisited.

239 he was back in barracks and there he had sat ever since
Such behaviour seems incredible to us in the early 21st century, but it is a survival of the customs of an earlier age. Officers of the rank of colonel and above never officially retired, but could be called back at any time to contribute their experience and skills in a new emergency. Colonel Trotter has merely anticipated a call that would probably have never arrived. He has the right to use the Halberdiers’ facilities until he is positively ordered by a superior officer to do something different, such as go home. Since he is so useful, he is allowed to remain.

239 regularly attended Church Parade
On Sundays officers and men who announced no other religious affiliation would be required to attend Church Parade, a Church of England service. Men would have to spruce up their appearance and parade perhaps an hour early for it. These preparations made Church Parade extremely unpopular, and Catholics and others, who had no such formal preliminaries, were much envied and even resented. It cannot be said that Church Parade made religion popular. (In more modern times the practice has grown of ordering every soldier to parade, though only the C-of-E’s actually march to the service.)
The fact that Jumbo attends the Parade when it would not have been incumbent on him to do so, indicates the extent of his commitment to the Halberdiers.

239 ‘have a go at the Jerries’
a phrase from World War I but still used in the second war. Jerry is obviously a form of the word German.

239 Japanned-tin uniform case
a case made of metal covered in a shiny black lacquer

239 Gladstone
a small suitcase. It had two compartments which are hinged together. Doctors used to use them in old films.

240 the Home Counties
These are the counties nearest to London. The Encarta Dictionary tells us that they include Kent, Surrey, Essex, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, and East and West Sussex. They used also to include Middlesex, but that county has now disappeared, mainly into London.

240 the Total War
One of the phrases used by politically-minded commentators to characterise World War II. Another is the People’s War. The idea is to emphasise that the whole nation was involved in the war effort.
The phrase actually has a considerable philosophical history. It was coined by the German general and theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), who denied that wars could be fought by laws and stated that they tended to increase in violence as time went by. Eventually they would reach a stage of maximum violence - this would be total war. He however did state that war was a continuation of politics by other means, and so saw warfare as subordinate to political imperatives. On the other hand the German World War I commander Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937), in his book Total War (1935), put forward the view that peace was merely an interval between wars and that politics should be subsidiary to the conduct of war. So he advocated that in times of peace a nation should prepare all its resources for mobilisation in a war. Hitler was influenced by the ideas of Ludendorff, who had actually been a colleague of his in the abortive Munich beer-hall putsch of November 1923.

241 R.A.S.C.
Royal Army Service Corps

242 on the square
i.e. a Freemason. The origin of the phrase is obscure. It is now used to mean reliable and honest with others, often other freemasons but may date back to medieval times when square bricks were made out of mud and water; they had to fit together truly.
This consideration of Grigshawe’s for the property of the Cuthberts presents an example of the kind of behaviour many people objected to in freemasonry, stating that its members (sometimes secretly, often unwittingly) serve one another’s interests and in doing so prejudice the efforts of others who are not freemasons. EW seems to present Grigshawe’s action as the normal behaviour of freemasons.

243 Gestapo
The name by which the Nazi secret police Geheime Staatspolizei was known both in Germany and abroad. Its powers were virtually unlimited and its procedures barbarous.

245 eight guineas
The persistence of this ancient currency into the late twentieth century is one of those mysterious oddities which make life in Britain just a little bit special. The coin was current only between 1663 and 1813, but professional men (doctors, lawyers, etc.) insisted on invoicing in guineas long afterwards. It gave a certain cachet to the business to do so. I myself was charged in guineas on a couple of occasions.
A guinea was worth £1.05. So one may suspect that there was a keen-edged purpose behind charging in guineas rather than pounds : you could disguise a five per cent hike in prices. Eight guineas is £8.40 in modern terms and is quite a hefty price to pay for an hotel room in 1940.

5

247 The grammar … was defective
It is nevertheless the style deemed suitable for an advertisement in a personal column. Guy would have preferred to see the word Will precede the whole sentence. Other minor adjustments would please the delicate literary palate; for example where instead of when.

247 as though from the gorge of Roncesvalles
This is a reference to the horn of Roland, the great hero who commanded the rearguard during Charlemagne’s return from Spain in 778. The Saracens, according to the 11th-century epic Chanson de Roland, isolated and attacked his men at the Roncesvalles Pass in the Pyrenee Mountains. Roland tried to summon help by sounding his ivory horn, which cracked under the strain. Charlemagne heard it but arrived too late to save them. (To be historically accurate, it was the recently-subjugated Basques who killed them.)

247 Various cryptic prohibitions
As Britain creaked slowly into war mode, habits and perquisites which had developed in the easy days of peace were jettisoned in the quest for greater efficiency. New procedures, however, sometimes hindered efficient action. In normal times Guy would have found it easy to move Apthorpe’s gear.

248 Tsarskoe Selo
Now virtually a suburb of Saint Petersburg, this town (usually spelt Tsarskoye Selo today) was renamed after the Russian Revolution, first Detskoye Selo and then Pushkin in 1937. Its name means The Tsar’s Beautiful Village, and its origin justifies the appellation. Tsarina Catherine I (1684-1727, Empress from 1725) commissioned it as a palace and had it built by 1723, surrounding it with an extensive park. It was later enlarged and rebuilt in the 1750’s in the Russian Baroque style. Tsarina Catherine II the Great (1729-1796, Empress from 1762), loved the palace and improved it further (employing the Scottish architect Charles Cameron). The Germans gutted it during World War II, but the Russians have since restored the palace.

248 consigned in a ship to Canada and drowned in mid-Atlantic
This is a reference to the sinking of the Arandora Star on 2nd July 1940. It contained perhaps 1500 internees who were being taken to Canada.

248 a great rising was imminent
I myself came across a similar belief in relation to the subjugated peoples of eastern and central Europe after World War II. In my case there was some reason for it, since the Poles, Hungarians and Czechs did attempt to throw off Russian dominance before finally succeeding at the end of the 1980’s. There is no evidence of an extensive religiously-inspired uprising against the Nazis during World War II despite a number of individual protests of conscience.

248 this Pilgrimage of Grace
The original Pilgrimage of Grace occurred in 1536 as a response to the massive changes being made to the religion of England in the wake of Henry VIII’s securing of the headship of the church and the government’s seizure of church wealth and property. The dissolution of the monasteries provoked waves of discontent leading to rioting in some places. The culmination was the formation of an army of 30,000 men in Yorkshire led by a country gentleman named Robert Aske, who laid before the King’s representatives demands for return to papal obedience, the end of the dissolution of the monasteries, the dismissal of heretical bishops, and the calling of a parliament free from royal influence. The Duke of Norfolk, representing the king, vaguely promised redress and a free pardon, and Aske, thinking the campaign won, foolishly dispersed his forces. None of the promises were kept and the king took full revenge in 1537 when Aske and about 250 others were executed with the usual attendant horrors.
Modern historians, unable in their Marxist-reactive training to believe that the Pilgrimage primarily had religious motives, find economic imperatives underlying the actions of the protesters. That economic distress existed cannot be denied (when did it not?); but there can also be no doubt that the religious changes formed their first concern.

249 All Souls’ Day
i.e. 2nd November, the day after All Saints’ Day. This is the day when the Church celebrates all the multitude of faithful dead people. They have not attained Heaven immediately but are undergoing purification in Purgatory. (The Feast of All Saints celebrates all those who have attained Heaven whether their sanctity is recognised officially on earth or not.)
The Church provided a means of appreciably increasing the number of souls in Heaven by allowing each visit to a church during All Souls’ Day for a recital of prayers to be rewarded by the release of a soul from Purgatory. (For an explanation of Purgatory, see my note to page 105.) Mr Goodall avails himself of this power with considerable relish.

249 toties quoties
as often as he does it (Latin)

249 Vice Versa
the famous book by F. Anstey (pen-name of Thomas Anstey Guthrie, 1856-1934), a children’s classic, in which a boy takes over the body of his father while his father takes up residence in his, with hilarious but thought-provoking consequences. It has several times been made into a film.

250 “Senior”
Jumbo is referring to the United Services Club in Pall Mall, which ceased existence in 1976. (The building was then bought by the Institute of Directors.) The United Services Club was senior because it was a club for senior officers only, and the phraseology also distinguished it from the Army and Navy Club a little further along Pall Mall.

250 Gib
i.e. Gibraltar

250 “Mum’s the word”
i.e. Don’t tell anyone

250 he twigged
i.e. he understood immediately

251 Duke of York’s Steps
These steps, in Waterloo Square just by the United Services Club, are named in honour of the Grand Old Duke of York, the one who marched his men up and down hill to little effect. This duke (Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, 1763-1827) was the second and favourite son of King George III and was Commander-in-Chief of the British Army from 1798 to 1809 and again from 1811 until his death. In old age he was the heir to the throne of his brother George IV, but had no legitimate children to follow him. There is a statue of him at the top of Duke of York’s Steps placed on an extremely high column; this was paid for by every soldier in the army, who had their pay stopped for one day to fund its erection.

251 C.I.G.S.
Chief of the Imperial General Staff, i.e. the number one soldier in the British Army. At this time he was Field Marshal Sir John Dill.

252 every unemployed member of the British Communist Party
H.O.O. H.Q., or rather its original, Combined Operations, would not in 1940 have had many members of the Communist Party involved in its operations, firstly because it was entirely staffed by the services and not very large, and secondly because the communists, reeling from the alliance made by the Soviet Union with Hitler’s Germany, were not concerned at this time to promote the war. But when Lord Louis Mountbatten (the later Earl Mountbatten, 1900-1979) took charge in October 1941, he brought with him a number of advisors who were distinctly leftist in opinion. Mountbatten himself shared some of their opinions, despite his closeness to royalty. EW may be remembering the discontent felt by some traditional officers at this development.
Once the Soviet Union was an ally of Britain’s (from June 1941) things changed utterly, and communists busied themselves getting into positions of power within the military and the diplomatic service with deleterious effects for British security and diplomacy after the war.

252 D.S.O., M.C.
Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross, two medals awarded to officers for gallantry in war. The D.S.O. may be awarded to officers in all the Services while the M.C. is restricted to the Army.

252 Commandos
Commandos were not the first specialist ‘storm troopers’ of the British Army in World War II. There had been independent companies operating in the Norwegian campaign in April and May, and their experience helped in the formation of the newer units. In the immediate period after the fall of France, the Prime Minister himself urged the formation of Special Forces. They were to be both a means of continuing operations against the Germans and of having a nucleus of men for activities in the enemy’s rear should Britain be invaded.
The Army Commandos were formed in June, 1940. Towards the end of that month the first twelve Commandos came into being, one of them No 8 which EW was to join. The first Commando raid took place as early as 23rd June.

253 Mugg
an imaginary Scottish island, soon to be Guy’s domicile with the commandos

253 X Commando
The Commando units were in real life given numbers, the first twelve naturally being from 1 to 12. It is not entirely clear whether X is the Roman 10 or the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet. General opinion favours the latter.

253 got some good chaps in his Commando too
X Commando is based on 8 Commando, which EW joined. Technically 8 Commando was formed from London District and Household Division troops. In fact, as explained earlier (page 221), the officers tended to be friends from the upper and upper-middle classes.

6

254 Rum … Muck … Eigg
These are the names of real islands in the Inner Hebrides. If one pores over a map one can try to place the imaginary Mugg in a location suggested by EW’s clues, but I find I always fail. There seems to be no place where the isle of Mugg could be seen from Rum and Muck with the given shapes but not be seen from Eigg, especially as the highest mountain on Eigg is a thousand feet (300 metres) higher than any spot on Muck.

254 the mainland of Inverness
Inverness the county, that is, not the city. The port is certainly Mallaig.

255 to include curates on motor bicycles
EW’s pleasantry refers to the imaginative fictions cooked up by the press to impress the nation with the fighting qualities to be found in the most harmless people.

255 a captain of the Blues
Ivor Claire is in the Royal Horse Guards (known as the Blues), part of the Household Cavalry charged with protecting the monarch. The Blues were later to be amalgamated with the Royal Dragoons to form the Blues and Royals. The nickname Blues dates back at least to 1661, when their ancestors were called the Oxford Blues. EW himself was posted to the Blues later in the war.

256 Kümmel … Wolfschmidt
Kümmel is a colourless liqueur flavoured with cumin and caraway seeds. Wolfschmidt is a famous maker of it.

258 Formication
This is an hallucination which is generally caused by misuse of alcohol and/or drugs. One feels as if insects are crawling on one’s skin. But here it is, as the doctor explains, because of the morphia given to dull the pain of the accident.

259 Kong
As Eddie explains, this is short for King Kong, the giant skyscraper-climbing primate of the famous film (1933). He turns out to be Chatty Corner, the man Guy is looking for, and a man versed in African jungle and savanna lore rather than cliff-climbing. Such are the ways of the army. Its misuse of talent actually led to a government investigation which turned up some extraordinary misplacements (an electrician used as a cook, for example) and resulted in the introduction of aptitude tests.

260 Great West Road
the road out of London that ends up at Bristol. In other words, Trimmer comes from busy suburban west London and not from the quiet, empty glens of Scotland.

260 Pass of Glencoe
Glencoe is a steep-sided glaciated valley in Argyllshire, about half a mile wide and more than five miles long. It was once inhabited by members of the MacDonald clan but is virtually uninhabited now. In the settlement following the Glorious Revolution (1689-1690) it was the scene of a notorious massacre of the MacDonalds by the Campbells, their hereditary enemies (1692), under the pretext of defending the crown. 38 men were killed. The deed echoes down Scottish history and legend to this day.
It is intriguing that EW gives Glencoe as the Scottish location that Trimmer does not come from instead of, say, Bannockburn or Glasgow.

261 ‘Trimblestown’
It is difficult to know of whom or what EW (or Ivor Claire) is thinking here. There is no community called Trimblestown as far as I am aware. Angus Calder suggests that EW got this title from a passage in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson where a Lord Trimlestown is mentioned.

261 O.C.T.U.
Officer Cadets Training Unit

261 the Jocks
i.e. the Scottish. Jock is the common English nickname for a Scotsman. My father was known to all his English friends and most of his family in England as Jock but to relatives in his native Scotland as Willie. The origin of the nickname lies in the fact that the Scottish diminutive for John used to be Jock.

261 The rest of my battalion went off to Iceland.
The British, fearful that the Germans would occupy Iceland as they had Norway, with disastrous results for the war at sea, landed there in May 1940 to prevent such a development. The British promised not to intervene in Icelandic internal affairs, but were pleased to leave the island when a force of U.S. troops took their place in July 1941 after the American government declared Iceland to be under its protection, a contingency the British government had connived at.

263 factor
This is the name given in Scotland to the manager of an estate, who works for the owner but is given control of every aspect of the estate’s management.

263 Child Roland to the dark tower
Guy is remembering a snatch of verse. Shakespeare famously used it in King Lear, where he gives it to Edgar to sing to disguise the fact that he is not a madman. It is certainly a relic of an older ballad. It is a strange little poem, a compound of childishness and gripping imagery :

Child Roland to the dark tower came -
His word was still, Fie, foh and fum
I smell the blood of a British man.

The words have exercised a strange fascination over poets and readers ever since. Robert Browning wrote a poem called Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.
Child is simply an ancient term for a young knight and therefore means Sir.

263 Gordon Craig
Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966) was the illegitimate son of the actress Ellen Terry. He became an influential stage director and designer. He researched the art of using light and movement on the stage and proposed the use of moveable screens. In later life he extolled the employment of symbols rather than naturalistic representation in theatrical productions - everything should conspire to create atmosphere, he thought.

263 a play of Maeterlinck’s
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) was a Belgian playwright famous for his symbolist approach to literature. He presented his characters in shadowy half-worlds and gave them speeches of hesitancy and hidden meaning; light, gesture and movement were all closely controlled to provide an atmospheric effect. His greatest play was undoubtedly Pelléas et Mélisande.
The effect of a Maeterlinck play designed by Gordon Craig would be overwhelming. The screwed-up tension and misty mystery of the design and the action would lead to either cathartic release or hysterical laughter.

263 tableau from some ethnographic museum
i.e. a display specially arranged by the staff of a musem dealing with the early history of mankind, designed to show visitors what life was supposed to be like in far-off times and places.

263 prognathous hypothetical ancestor
Prognathous means having a prominent jaw, one that sticks out. You can see examples in any museum of mankind.
EW’s use of the word hypothetical alerts us to the probability that he had doubts about the theory of evolution. Though controversy about the reality of evolution had been continuous at least since 1860 (the date of the infamous Wilberforce-Huxley debate), by no means all intelligent people had accepted the theory of evolution by the 1950’s, when EW wrote SH. The opposition to evolutionary theory has not all been obtuse and biblically fundamental. Some scientific objections have been raised which need answering even today.
EW would have been aware of the Evolution Protest Movement in the thirties and forties, associated with Bernard Acworth, Douglas Dewar and Sir Ambrose Fleming, and now called the Creation Science Movement.

263 imitation Picassos
In this phrase and its context we can detect EW’s dislike of Picasso, though as a teenager and young man he had been appreciative of Picasso’s work. He was himself something of a designer and artist, but he came to prefer conventional art and disdained all modern experiments. Nevertheless in placing Picasso with primitive tribal art he recognises one of the sources of the strength and power of Picasso’s art.

265 stayed at country houses
Weekend visits to houses in the country were a great feature of upper-class British life in the inter-war years. Their comfort depended on the quality of the houses and the skill of the hostesses. Some of the visits were sporting in intention but many were just for idle pleasure, such as the ones Guy is remembering here.

265 tobacco company
It seems that Apthorpe was only a clerk in a tobacco company. We know that he was an alcoholic too. As Guy completes his pious duty, the illusion that was Apthorpe fades away completely.

266 Suddenly the wind dropped.
This wind, previously called pentecostal, seems here to be a wind of release rather than inspiration. Guy is now free from his captivation by Apthorpe. Perhaps the comparison between the wind of the Pentecost and this one is that they both free their recipients for confident activity.

7

267 Bismarckian rather than Wagnerian
i.e. of a massive, bourgeois quality rather than a stagily medieval one. Prince Otto von Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1815–1898) was Prime Minister of Prussia (1862–1890) and first Chancellor of united Germany (1871–1890) and gave his name to this era of confident German expansion. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was the composer of music dramas which often took as their basis events drawn from medieval legend.

267 taxidermist
The interior’s depressing quality was enhanced by its being decorated with many stuffed animals.

267 Hercules … Jason
The dogs have the names of heroes from Greek mythology.

268 cairngorms
Cairngorm is a variety of quartz found in Scotland which is used in some forms of jewellery. It is yellow, grey, or brown in colour. No doubt Colonel Campbell’s fastenings and other accoutrements were made of this stone.

268 doublet
A term usually used of garments from earlier ages, it is used here to signify a sleeveless jacket.

269 gun-cotton
or nitrocellulose, a highly explosive substance made by pouring a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids onto clean cotton. Extremely flammable, it explodes when detonated and is used in the manufacture of explosives.

269 Argyll myself
i.e. his regiment when he was younger was the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. This would be the natural regiment for a Campbell to join.

269 cross-posting
i.e. shifting officers from one regiment to another. It was rarely successful at maintaining corps d’esprit and was only desirable when the officer himself wanted a move or he was already a disruptive influence among his peers. In World War II the creation of more fluid cadres resulted in greater cross-posting than had happened in the first war.

270 Spice Islands
Guy is imagining for an ancestor of Katie’s a fruitful romance in distant lands. The Spice Islands was the name given to the islands of south-east Asia, particularly Indonesia, from which came many of the expensive spices used in European cookery and preserving.

271 the seventh child of a seventh child
In Celtic lands, such a child was supposed to automatically attain supernatural powers, including the fabled second sight. Such beliefs are not wholly extinct today.

271 ‘Six ships last week’
Miss Carmichael is referring to the number of British ships sunk by the Germans. She rejoices in the losses.
The reason for this is that she is a Scottish Nationalist of a type unimaginable today, when the party is conceivably within reach of achieving power. Nationalism then was very unpopular : Scots played a prominent role in the British establishment and were proud of doing so. The result was that Scottish Nationalism took two forms : firstly a fey sort of romantic twilight melancholy with no contemporary relevance; and secondly, a left-wing resentment at the supposed suppression of Scottish aspirations by the central authorities, a resentment that had a violent tinge. Katie’s nationalism has elements of both these forms but chiefly the latter.

271 We can’t get Berlin.
i.e. on the radio

271 Anglican Cathedral in Gibraltar
I have not yet found out whether sappers really did have something to do with the building of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Gibraltar. This is certainly a conceivable event, but when it happened I do not know.

272 ‘POLLITICAL PRISNER’
or ‘Political Prisoner’. Katie is referring to herself, a belief which indicates how far her mind is disturbed.

273 Khartoum .. It was lost to Kitchener and the Gatling-gun
Miss Carmichael is referring to the British capture of Khartoum in the Sudan after the Battle of Omdurman (2nd September 1898) and the consequent defeat of the Mahdist forces after seventeen years of control following the death of General Gordon. There is no doubt that the superior technology of the British forces contributed heavily to the victory.
Horatio Herbert Kitchener, later 1st Earl Kitchener of Khartoum (1850-1916), was the commander of the British forces in the Sudan. He went on to be commander-in-chief during the Boer War in South Africa and brought that conflict to a victorious conclusion too. He was then successively commander-in-chief in India and Proconsul of Egypt before accepting the post of Secretary of State for War in London at the outbreak of World War I. He was drowned when the ship in which he was travelling to Russia was torpedoed. Quite what Mugg found fishy about him is not clear, but Kitchener’s colleagues certainly agreed that he was a difficult man to get on with, as he was not a good team-player.
The Gatling gun was an early form of machine gun invented in 1862 by the American Richard Jordan Gatling (1818–1903). It had ten barrels which fired in rotation, and amazingly was capable, under perfect circumstances, of up to 50 rounds a second.

274 veteran of Spion Cop
or Spion Kop, as it is usually spelt today, a defeat in South Africa (24th January 1900) inflicted by the Boers on British forces under General Sir Redvers Buller. Spion Kop is a high hill which was raked by gunfire from neighbouring hills when it was climbed by the British troops. It was quickly littered with the bodies of British soldiers, 1700 men in total. In this early stage of the Boer War (1899-1902) the British suffered a number of reverses.

275 They were caught up … the stars of the Aegean.
This paragraph, with its cymbals and flutes and scented breezes, conjures up an image of an idyllic paradise in warm climes. In particular it evokes the world of ancient Greece. The contrast with the isle of Mugg is indeed ironical; but equally ironical will be the reality when Guy gets to the Mediterranean and sees the island of Crete as it really is in 1941.

275 Calvinist
a follower of the doctrines of Jean Calvin the reformer (1509-1564), or rather of a specialised view of them. Calvin formulated perhaps the most distinctive and rigorously expressed beliefs of Protestantism in the sixteenth century and put their social implications into action in Geneva from 1536.
A Calvinist came to mean someone of deep faith who has an assurance of salvation amounting to certainty which gives him a firm, unmoveable integrity though also an impatience with the contrary or modified beliefs of others.

275 baccarat shoe
an implement for the dealing of cards without their being touched by human hands. Its shape gives it the name of shoe. Baccarat is a simple game in which one tries to beat the cards built up by the bank, the winning hand being the one that totals nine points or is closest to nine points without exceeding this total.

275 ‘Banco’
Tommy proclaims his willingness to bet an amount equivalent to what is held in the bank, in this case £20. If he loses he forfeits his £20 and the bank goes up to £40.

276 half-crown ante and five-bob raise
The ante is the stake the players put into the pot before starting the game. Here it is two shillings and sixpence, or 12½p in modern currency. The amount to raise one’s bet is five shillings, twice as much. The betting is more moderate at the poker table than at the baccarat shoe.

276 one hundred and fifty pounds
a very large amount in 1940. It would be the annual wage packet of many manual workers.

276 CALL TO SCOTLAND … WHY HITLER MUST WIN
These words are of course the work of Katie and her eccentric friends. The number of Scots who would have worked to bring about a German invasion was very small.
The idea of taking advantage of a war to promote independence was not new, of course. Some Irishmen had had the same idea during World War I and organised the Easter Rising (1916), a fatuous event which was elevated into glory and legend only by the foolishness of the British government in its merciless pursuit and punishment of the malefactors.

277 the personal property of Colonel Ritchie-Hook
In other words, Guy cannot be assigned to any permanent post, such as company commander, though Blackhouse would welcome the promotion. Guy is in a kind of limbo until he learns what Ritchie-Hook is going to do with him.

278 Home Guard
see my note to Local Defence Volunteers on page 184

278 come here as an R.N.V.R. Lieutenant
Jumbo in fact sets out to do something of the kind. It was an easy way of transferring without the hassle of going through the usual channels.

278 C troop
Each commando had ten troops of sixty men each at this time, in theory at least.

279 daemon
Originally a being which was part-human and part-god and therefore able, if willing, to suggest remarkable courses of action, a daemon came to mean a guardian spirit, as here. Blackhouse is prevented from doing an action which might reflect on his career.