The Complete Short Fiction (35 page)

24
billy-cock hat
(p.
178
) A kind of bowler hat.

25
A London free from the sin… mom to eve
(p.
179
) Elsewhere Wilde admired the spectacle of metropolitan life but regretted the social and economic inequality which made it possible. Cf. Hester Worsley's outburst in
WNI
: ‘You rich people in England, you don't know how you are living. How could you? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the poor. Living, as you do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season' (II, 260–65).

26
Arcady
(p.
179
) Arcadia, in Greek legend the ideal region of pastoral simplicity and contentment.

27
cigarette
(p.
180
) Cigarette smoking was more of a marker of fashion in the late nineteenth century than it is now. It is used by Wilde to indicate a ‘modern' or decadent consciousness: most of his heroes and some of his ‘fast' women are made to smoke.

28
crêpe-de-chine
(p.
180
) A white or coloured textured silk.

29
delicate little figures… near Tanagra
(p.
180
) Small statuettes of terracotta found in the last decades of the nineteenth century in tombs dating from the late fourth and third centuries BC at Tanagra in Greece. In the stage directions for Act I of
IH
, Wilde indicates Mabel Chiltern's delicacy and innocence by comparing her to a Tanagra statuette.

30
the Borgia
(p.
180
) Cesare Borgia, son of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, became notorious for his crimes, and is said to have inspired Machiavelli's
The Prince
.

31
Sheraton
(p.
182
) A style of furniture developed in England in the late eighteenth century, chiefly by Thomas Sheraton.

32
Buckingham
(p.
182
) I.e., a London club. Clubs were all-male preserves. Membership of them was an index of social prestige: Podgers does not belong to a club.

33
Ruff's Guide and Bailey's Magazine… the Pharmacopoeia… Erskine's Toxicology
(p.
183
) I.e.,
Ruff's Guide to the Turf and Bailey's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes
, both contemporary sporting journals; the
Pharmacopoeia
was (and – as the
British Pharmacopoeia
– is) an officially published book listing drugs and medicinal substances with directions for use and identification. Sir Mathew Reid's edition of Erskine's
Toxicology
is an invention.

34
aconitine
(p.
183
) A deadly poison whose manufacture began in 1847 and which in its naturally occurring (and less toxic) form is monk's-hood or wolf s-bane.

35
monsieur le mauvais sujet
(p.
183
) I.e., you scoundrel (or rascal).

36
On a fait des folies pour moi
(p.
184
) I.e., men lost their heads over me.

37
American novels
(p.
184
) A favourite butt for Wilde's humour. Cf. the exchange in
DG
: ‘“Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?” asked the Duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. “American novels,” answered Lord Henry' (p.
38
).

38
Lido… Florian's… Piazza
(p.
186
) The Lido is an island resort off Venice; Florian's is a cafe on the Piazza San Marco. Venice was extremely popular among the British leisured class in the late nineteenth century.

39
Pinetum
(p.
186
) The pine forest of Ravenna.

40
Danielli's
(p.
186
) Danieli's is a fashionable hotel in Venice, near the Piazza San Marco and overlooking the lagoon, well-known to nineteenth-century British travellers.

41
dynamite
(p.
189
) In fact, a fairly recent invention of 1867 by the Swede Alfred Nobel.

42
Scotland Yard
(p.
189
) A street off Whitehall which gave its name to the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police until 1890 when it was moved to New Scotland Yard on the Thames Embankment.

43
revolutionary tendencies
(p.
189
) The subject of Russian revolutionary politics was a topical one and had preoccupied Wilde in his play,
Vera; Or, the Nihilists
(1880), and the ‘Soul of Man Under Socialism'. Nihilism (mentioned slightly later in the text) was a Russian terrorist movement aimed at destroying the Tsarist state.

44
Tsar… ship's carpenter
(p.
189
) An allusion to the embassy sent by Peter I to Western countries for advice on modernizing the Russian navy. Peter himself went on the embassy as a volunteer sailor – under the name of Peter Mikhailov – and learned about shipbuilding at Deptford.

45
Marcobrünner
(p.
191
) Marcobrönn in the Erbach region is one of the great vineyards of the Rheingau. Fine wines figured prominently in both Wilde's work and his life. Rhine wines (known generically in English as hock) were a particular favourite.

46
hydra
(p.
192
) In Greek mythology the fabulous many-headed snake whose heads grew as fast as they were cut off.

47
I live entirely for my art
(p.
192
) The idea that art and criminality were linked in some way was one that fascinated Wilde. It formed the subject of the essay ‘Pen, Pencil, and Poison' in
Intentions
(1891), and isa theme of
DG
.

48
meat-tea
(p.
192
) Wilde is generally very precise about matters of social etiquette. For one of Lord Arthur's rank, tea would be a light
refreshment taken at four in the afternoon. In
IBE
it includes cucumber sandwiches. A meat-tea would be a more substantial meal, taken rather later; hence the references to different types of meal is being used as an indicator of class behaviour.

49
tape
(p.
193
) I.e., ticker tape, a continuous paper tape which printed out telegraphic messages, most usually from news agencies and the Stock Exchange. Ticker tape machines were invented by Edison in the early 1870s in the United States and were fairly common by the late 1880s.

50
Mudie
(p.
193
) Mudie's circulating library was one of the most famous nineteenth-century subscription libraries; it later merged with W. H. Smith's circulating library.

51
Dorcas Society
(p.
194
) A ladies' association (in a church) for making and providing clothes for the poor. It is mentioned again in
WNI
, and is meant to indicate worthy (if tedious) charitable service.

52
cap of Liberty
(p.
194
) The cap worn by the Jacobins in the French Revolution was known as the ‘cap of liberty'. More recently and more locally it had also been worn by some members of the Chartist movement in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s.

53
Liberty… French Revolution
(p.
194
) The centenary of the French Revolution in 1889 and the celebratory gift of the Statue of Liberty from France to the United States made the Revolution a topical subject. Wilde's specific reference is the ideal of liberty embodied in the Revolution's appeal to ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity'.

54
bull's-eye lantern
(p.
197
) A lantern with a lens (the bull's-eye) which focused its light into a beam.

55
Gaiety
(p.
197
) A West-End theatre noted for musical comedies. See Ray Mander and Joe Mitchenson,
Lost Theatres of London
(2nd edn, London, 1976).

1
Title
(p.
200
) One of Wilde's best-known poems is ‘The Sphinx', which was in turn a nickname he gave to his friend Ada Leverson. The story's title is reminiscent of an exchange in
WNI: ‘Mrs Allonby
: Define us as a sex.
Lord Illingworth
: Sphinxes without secrets' (I, 439–40). The subtitle – ‘an etching' – recalls Wilde's practice of subtitling his poems in terms taken from other art-forms, particularly music and painting.

2
believed in the Pentateuch
(p.
200
) I.e., the first five books of the Old Testament. During the course of the nineteenth century the authority
of the Bible had been challenged by scientific questioning of the historical accuracy of the book of Genesis: Murchison's old-fashioned virtues are being alluded to.

3
Madeleine… the Bois
(p.
201
) St Madeleine is a church in the 8th Arrondissement of Paris, between the Opéra and the Champs Elysées. The woods of the Bois de Boulogne are to the east of it.

4
Gioconda in sables
(p.
201
) Leonardo da Vinci's portrait, now more popularly known as the Mona Lisa, was assiduously discussed in the last decades of the nineteenth century, particularly in a ‘purple passage' by Walter Pater in
The Renaissance
(1873).

5
brougham
(p.
201
) A one-horse, closed carriage.

6
that wretched Row
(p.
201
) Rotten Row, a fashionable promenading place in Hyde Park.

7
ma belle inconnue
(p.
201
) I.e., my beautiful unknown (woman).

8
congestion of the lungs
(p.
204
) Congestion of the lungs is (as Wilde implies here) a symptom of pneumonia.

1
A Hylo-Idealistc Romance
(p.
260
) Hylo-Idealism was the doctrine of the Birmingham poet, Constance Naden, whom Wilde admired. The doctrine identified the spiritual as part of the material realm.

2
Dowager Duchess
(p.
206
) A dowager is a widow who enjoys the property or title that has come to her via her husband. Dowagers – whether duchesses or not – form a significant part of the comic world of Wilde's plays.

3
You are certainly very natural in America
(p.
207
) The contrast between naturalness (represented by America) and civilization (represented by Europe) is a theme common in Wilde's works, as indeed is an ironic tone towards things American. Cf.
DG
and
WNI
, where Hester Worsley, an American heiress on holiday in Britain, is said by another character to be ‘painfully natural'.

4
leading the German
(p.
207
) A dance, similar to the cotillon.

5
amazon
(p.
207
) In classical legend, Amazons were a race of female warriors.

6
Psychical Society
(p.
210
) A topical allusion: the Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882.

7
Fanny Davenport over Sara Bernhardt
(p.
210
) Fanny Davenport was a popular contemporary American actress; Sara Bernhardt was a French actress who attained great celebrity all over Europe and the United States, and was particularly famous for her voice. Wilde was
reported (by Vincent O'sullivan) to have said that he would have married Sara Bernhardt; she was to play the tide-role in
Salomé
in 1892 before the play was banned.

8
green corn, buckwheat cakes, and hominy
(p.
210
) Varieties of American cereals.

9
old man of terrible aspect
(p.
211
) An allusion to a line from Dante's
Vita Nuova
, III. 3: ‘d'uno segnore di pauroso aspette' – in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation, ‘O Lord of terrible aspect' (
Dante and his Circle
, 1874).

10
Monsieur de Voltaire
(p.
212
) The French satirist, historian, moralist and free-thinker who was exiled to England from 1726 to 1729 (when he presumably could have met the family of the Ganterville ghost).

11
Crockford's
(p.
212
) A famous gambling club established in 1827 in St James's Street in London by William Crockford. Charles James Fox, the great Whig statesman, died in 1806, and so was hardly likely to have gambled at Crockford's.

12
Lady Stutfield
(p.
212
) Like Lady Windermere, a character-name that recurs in other works.

13
Longfellow
(p.
215
) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the American poet, whom Wilde had met on his American tour in 1882. The allusion is to Longfellow's ‘The Skeleton in Armour'.

14
the Virgin Queen herself
‘(p.
215
) Elizabeth I.

15
Titan form
(p.
217
) Although Wilde frequently alludes to classical sources, the term here simply means ‘colossal' or ‘gigantic' rather than signifying Greek deities.

16
falchion
(p.
217
) A broad curved sword.

17
dimity
(p.
217
) A stout cotton cloth which is used undyed for a bedding material.

18
Chanticleer
(p.
218
) The cock in
Reynard the Fox
and in Chaucer's ‘The Nun's Priest's Tale' in
The Canterbury Tales
.

19
list slippers
(p.
220
) Traditionally worn by stage ‘ghosts' to give them a silent tread.

20
arquebuse
(p.
220
) An early type of portable gun where the barrel is supported by a tripod or forked rest.