THE PRIME MINISTER (108 page)

2
   (p. 187).
the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds
: a duly qualified person is not allowed to resign a seat in the House of Commons, but can effectively do so by applying for this fictitious office, the holding of which debars a person from sitting in the House.

3
   (p. 192).
as drunk as Cloe
: a semi-proverbial expression for ‘exceedingly drunk’.

4
   (p. 206).
for ‘lovers lacking matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss’: As You Like It,
IV.i.69.

5
   (p. 215). Post equitem sedet atra cura: ‘Black Care sits behind the horseman’, Horace,
Odes,
III.i.40.

6
   (p. 215).
guano
: sea-bird excrement imported for use as fertilizer.

7
   (p. 229).
‘One has always to be binding one’s faggot,’
she said… having read her Æsop
: in the fable ‘The Bundle of Sticks’ (number 76 in Thomas James’s collection of 1852, for example), a husbandman convinces his quarrelsome sons that ‘unity is strength’ by demonstrating that though single sticks are easy to break, they are strong when bound into a faggot.

8
   (p. 229).
an Italian with a long name beginning with M
: presumably Marco Minghetti (1818–86),
twice Prime Minister of united Italy (1863–4 and 1873–6); or Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72), Italian patriot and revolutionary, who founded the association of Young Italy with the aim of promoting a free, united Italy.

9
   (p. 231).
the address
: the formal reply of the House of Commons to the Royal Speech at the opening of Parliament.

10
   (p. 232). Caveat emptor: (Latin) ‘Let the buyer beware.’

11
   (p. 233).
a Pitt or a Somers
: William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806), Prime Minister 1783–1801 and 1804–6; and John, Baron Somers (1651–1716), Lord Chancellor of England and patron of many writers and philosophers.

12
   (p. 236).
on Sir Bartholomew Bone’s staff in Canada
: Sir Bartholomew Bone has not been identified.

13
   (p. 255).
hippish
: low-spirited or off colour.

14
   (p. 268).
the club
over the way
: it is not possible to locate the Progress Club exactly, although it is on or near Pall Mall. The ‘club over the way’ therefore cannot be identified.

15
   (p. 278). Ruat ccelum, fiat – : a truncated form of the well-known Latin tag,
Ruat ccelum, fiat justitia
(‘Though the heavens fall, let justice be
done’), attributed to the Emperor Ferdinand I. The tag is given in full later in
the same paragraph.

16
   (p. 284). Æquam memento: Horace,
Odes,
II.iii.1–2:

Æquam memento rebus in arduis

Servare mentem, non secus in bonis

(‘Remember to preserve an equal mind in hard times, and likewise in prosperity.’)

17
   (p. 286).
The ballot will… prevent me… from knowing how an elector may vote
: the secret ballot was introduced by the Ballot Act of 1872.

18
   (p. 287).
a Conservative
prepared to give a cautious, but very cautious, support to the Coalition
: later it appears that Du Boung is in the ‘liberal’ interest – which may be consistent with his being in party terms a Conservative. But on page 292 he is referred to as a Liberal (with a capital L), and Lopez later writes about him as a ‘Liberal’ – see page 364.

19
   (p. 293).
to shake the dust off his feet
: see note 1
above.

20
   (p. 307).
kicking against the pricks
: see Acts 9.5.

21
   (p. 310).
the Law Courts which are to bless some coming generation
: demolition for new Law Courts in the Strand began many years before they were finally erected in the years 1874–82.

22
   (p. 327).
Epicurean con-course of atoms
: according to the Samian philosopher Epicurus (341–270
B.C.
) the cosmos developed by the combination
of a collection of atoms in space. Creation, change and decay occur from the combination, recombination and dispersal of atoms from natural causes, without the intervention of the gods. Since those things which are fittest for survival survive longest, living things can appear to possess purposive features.

23
   (p. 334).
feet of clay
: see Daniel 2.32.

24
   (p. 337).
to cotton to me
: to attach
himself to me.

25
   (p. 339)
all people said all good things
: one of Trollope’s favourite Latin tags in translation, from Terence,
Andria,
96:
‘Omnes omnia bona dicere’.

1
   (p. 358).
She had declared
: the context determines that ‘She’ is Lady Glencora, though grammatically Lady Rosina seems to be indicated. The text here accurately follows the manuscript

2
   (p. 371).
Kauri gum
: a resin used in making varnish.

3
   (p. 395).
My caravels are out at sea
: compare, for example,
The Merchant of Venice,
I.i.177, ‘Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea’.

4
   (p. 397).
there’s a good time coming
: the title of an optimistic poem by
Charles Mackay (1846), celebrating the repeal of the Corn Laws as a symbol of peace and progress. (See R. Mullen,
Anthony Trollope: A Victorian
in His World,
London, 1990, pp. 380–81.)

5
   (p. 401).
I’m like Shylock.you know
: see
The Merchant of Venice,
I.iii.32–4 – ’I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.’

6
   (p. 414).
the world in buckram
: stiff and starched. Buckram was also the cloth from which a lawyer’s bag was made.

7
   (p. 415).
Supreme of chicken after martial manner: supreme de volaille à la maréchale;
that is, chicken fillet dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, fried in butter, and served with truffles and asparagus tips.

8
   (p. 440).
You must throw me to the whale
: see Swift’s
Tale of the Tub
(1704), where the conceit of the title is that a story can be thrown to the populace to distract it from civil commotion,
just as sailors were said to throw a tub overboard for a whale to play with, to distract it from their ship.

9
   (p. 455).
Indian mail-packet
: since Lopez intends to take this to Guatemala, the West Indian mail-packet must be indicated.

10
   (p. 456).
the Israelites despoiled the Egyptians, and it was taken as a merit on their part
: see Exodus 3.22 and 12.35–6: ‘ye shall spoil the Egyptians…
And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.’

11
   (p. 472).
now madden to crime
: Byron,
The Bride of Abydos
(I.i.3–4), a poem in which
a tyrannical father kills his daughter’s lover, and the daughter in that instant dies of grief.

12
   (p. 479).
the Duke of Newcastle
: Thomas Pelham-Holles, first Duke of Newcastle, Prime Minister 1754–6.

13
   (p. 480). malgré lui: (French) in spite of himself; in an English literary context the phrase is often a glance at the tide of Moliére’s comedy
Le Médecin malgré lui
(1666) – ‘Doctor in
spite of himself’.

14
   (p. 481).
the cautious Dod: Dod’s Parliamentary Companion,
the successor from 1865 of
The Parliamentary Pocket Companion,
which started publication during the first reformed Parliament in 1833.

15
   (p. 483).
the winds of heaven… her: see Hamlet,
I.ii.140–42:

…so loving to my mother,

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly.

16
   (p.
485).
out of a full heart the mouth speaks
: Matthew 12.34.

17
   (p. 488).
Mentor… Telemachus
: in the
Odyssey
Mentor is the faithful friend of Odysseus, in whose care the latter left his son Telemachus and his household. The goddess Athena takes the form of Mentor when helping Telemachus.

18
   (p. 499).
the upas influence of her father’s roof-tree
: in fable the Javan upas tree is supposed to
poison all life for miles around it; the roof-tree is the ridge-pole of a house, used in the sense of ‘hearth and home’.

19
   (p. 513).
the committee…had not yet been held
: but we have previously read, ‘He was expelled from his club’
(p. 501)
. The earlier remark is either an error or is not intended legalistically.

1
   (p. 526).
more sinned against than sinning: King Lear,
III.ii.60.

2
   (p. 532).
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: Hamlet,
III.i.58.

3
   (p. 533).
almost as disgraceful
: this and subsequent mentions of Phineas Finn’s past refer to Trollope’s novels
Phineas Finn
and
Phineas Redux,
in the latter of which he stands trial for murder.

4
   (p. 534) a
neutral covert
: a covert to which neither of two neighbouring hunts has exclusive rights. (I am grateful
to the Secretary of the MFH Association for confirming this usage.)

5
   (p. 535). Ruat coelum: see note 15 to Volume II.

6
   (p. 538).
Sir Bayard
: a French knight who died in 1524, and who was known as the knight
sans peur et sans reproche
(‘without fear and without reproach’).

7
   (p. 540).
quints or semi-tenths
: divisions of the penny in the Duke’s earlier, unsuccessful scheme for decimalizing
the currency.

8
   (p. 541).
Cincinnatus, going back to his peaches and his ploughs
: called from his frugal life in the country to serve the state in 458
B.C.
, Cincinnatus thankfully returned to his farm after only sixteen days as dictator of Rome, having saved the Roman army and defeated its enemies.

9
   (p. 542).
a sounding cymbal of brass
: compare
1
Corinthians 13.1: ‘I am become as sounding
brass, or a tinkling cymbal’.

10
   (p. 547).
Aristides
: Aristides the Just was a noble Athenian of the fifth century
B.C.
, who was ostracized on the rise of Themistocles, but returned years later to command the Athenian army.

11
   (p. 550).
Sir Robert Walpole bad it
: Walpole (1676–174.5), the first ‘Prime Minister’, had the Garter conferred on himself in 1726, the first commoner to receive the
honour since the Restoration of 1660. His promotion
to the Order provoked fierce attacks from his opponents, and earned him the nickname ‘Sir Blue-string’.

12
   (p. 555).
Lord Earlybird’s proxy
: at one time a peer could give written authority to another to exercise his vote. Trollope may not have known that the practice of counting proxy votes in the House of Lords had been discontinued in 1868.

13
   (p. 562).
Warwick
: Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, called ‘the Kingmaker’ because he is supposed to have maintained Henry VI on the throne, until a change of allegiance to Edward IV brought about Henry’s fall.

14
   (p. 562).
Lord John
: Lord John Russell (1796–1878), Whig statesman who introduced the Reform Bill in 1831, led the opposition to Peel from 1841 until the repeal of the Corn
Laws in 1845, and was Prime Minister 1846–52 and 1865–6.

Sir Robert Peel
: Peel reversed traditional Tory policy and split the party by repealing the Corn Laws in 1845.

THE Duke
: the Duke of Wellington, the great soldier, was Tory Prime Minister 1828–30, and strongly opposed Parliamentary Reform in 1831–2, until forced to capitulate by Whig tactics. He remained an immensely inflential figure
until his death in 1852.

old Earl Grey
: Charles Grey, second Earl Grey (1764–1845), was Prime Minister in the Whig administration which passed the Reform Bill in 1832.

15
   (p. 562).
pearls before swine
: Matthew 7.6.

16
   (p. 565).
the oyster-shells become numerous
: For Aristides, see note 10 above. ‘Oyster-shell’ (used here to mean ‘vote for banishment’) is a misinterpretation of the Greek
ostrakon,
which should be taken in the sense of the fragment of pottery on which the name of the person to be banished would be written in the voting of an ostracism.

17
   (p. 565).
Exeter Hall
: the building in the Strand where missionary societies held their meetings.

18
   (p. 572).
Cookites and Hookites
: those whose foreign holidays were organized by the firm of Thomas Cook, and those who travelled
‘on their own hooks,’ or unaided.

19
   (p. 579).
It is like pigs carrying straws in their mouths
: compare the proverb, ‘When pigs carry sticks, the clouds will play tricks; when they lie in the mud, no fear of a flood.’

20
   (p. 581).
though he saw the better way, he was allowing himself to walk on in that which was worse
: see Medea’s soliloquy in Ovid,
Metamorphoses,
VII. 20–21,

video meliora
proboque

detoriora sequor.