H G Wells Omnibus, page 367
13. Goulds: Jay Gould, American financier (1836–92) who caused a panic when he almost succeeded in cornering the gold market.
14. flotations: Launchings of companies.
15. Ol Amjig: Susan’s rendering of Edward’s label ‘Ol. Amygd., standard abbreviation for Oleum amygdalae, almond oil.
16. as Baedeker says, ‘rewarding’: The Baedeker series of guidebooks (extremely popular from around 1860 until 1940) thus praised destinations that the tourist would find worth the trouble of visiting.
17. Crystal Pallas: The Crystal Palace was a vast glass hall built for the Great Exhibition of 1851.
18. Union Pacifics: Referring to shares of the stock in the booming American company, the Union Pacific Railway; George later refers to the company and its shares by the initials U.P.
19. hills toward Yare… by Hazelbrow: Yare is possibly fictional (and clearly not the river Yare in Norfolk), but Hazelbrow is a place name found near the town of Guildford, about twenty miles away from the fictional Wimblehurst.
20. Beeching… Steadhurst: Apparently fictional.
21. ‘The world was all before them… and Providence their guide’: From the closing lines (12:646) of Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667).
22. Spencers and Huxleys: Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), prominent sociologist and author; Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95), polymath scientist under whom Wells briefly studied.
23. Pil.Antibil.: Anti-bilious pills, typically made of camomile, herbs and an emetic; supposedly for curing peevishness and ill-temper.
24. Goodwood: A racecourse in Sussex.
25. Eozoon: The name for what was believed at the time to be the earliest known animal (the fossil remains were later proved to be mineral).
26. Chislehurst: Suburb of London, in Kent.
27. Board School: A government-established school under the management of a school board, for working-class children.
28. Temperance Hotel: A hotel where no alcohol was served.
29. Tottenham Court Road: Busy commercial street, notable for the furniture shops that George and Marion visit in II.4. §5.
30. the Cobden statue: The statue of Richard Cobden (1804–65), political reformer; Edward and Susan’s rooms are in or near Mornington Crescent.
31. London… didn’t ‘get blacks’ on her: The soot in the air did not leave black specks in the pores of her skin.
32. sandwich men: Men who were paid to wear advertising placards that hung over their chest and back.
33. Aerated Bread Shop: One of a large chain of teashops founded in the 1850s.
34. in the stalls: The most expensive seats in a theatre.
35. watch this place: An advertising slogan: ‘watch this space’.
BOOK II
THE RISE OF TONO-BUNGAY
CHAPTER 1
How I Became a London Student, and Went Astray
1. 1688: The year of the ‘Glorious’ or ‘Bloodless Revolution’ when James II fled from England and was replaced on the throne (early in 1689) by William and Mary.
2. Mayfair… St James’s: Rich and fashionable districts of London, as are the places named in the next paragraph.
3. Gregorian telescope: A type of telescope that used both mirrors and lenses, invented in 1663 by James Gregory.
4. but lightly touched by the American’s profaning hand: Before rich American customers encouraged the shops to stock more vulgar kinds of goods.
5. Charing Cross station… that came smashing down in 1905: When the roof of the train-shed at Charing Cross station collapsed (slowly enough to cause only five deaths).
6. daedal earth: A common poetic phrase meaning the earth that is ‘variously adorned’ or ‘with manifold works‘.
7. Vincent Bradley scholarship… at South Kensington: Fictional, like the other scholarships and schools in this paragraph; the Consolidated Technical Schools at South Kensington is based on the Normal School of Science (a Normal school is a teachers’ college), renamed in 1890 the Royal College of Science; the ‘Consolidated’ in its fictional name alludes to its creation from the merger of an earlier school with courses taught at other nearby schools.
8. by Victoria and not by Cannon Street: He arrived in London through Victoria railway station in the west of London, near the great museums in Exhibition Road, not through Cannon Street station towards the east, in the City (the financial district of London).
9. hoardings: Advertising billboards.
10. Life’s Morning: That is, the time of youth, but the phrase alludes to George Gissing’s novel, A Life’s Morning (1888), which traces the disasters in the life of a downtrodden young clerk.
11. painted ceiling at Hampton Court: Perhaps the ceiling of the King’s Drawing Room at Hampton Court Palace, portraying Jupiter and the naked Semele.
12. F.R.S.: Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the highest honours available for British scientists.
13. Canary Sack: A fortified wine imported from the Canary Islands.
14. Fabian Society: See Introduction, p. xxii.
15. intercourse: In the general sense of communication with others.
16. the Art Museum: The South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum.
17. supernumerary clerk: One not regularly employed but available for hire when needed.
18. grangerized: A grangerized book is one that has had illustrations inserted in it; named after James Granger, the publisher (in 1769) of an English history with blank spaces that the owner might fill with suitable illustrations.
19. Birkbeck Institute: A school for adult education, founded as the London Mechanics Institution in 1825, renamed the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution in 1866, Birkbeck Institute in 1891, finally Birkbeck College in 1906; linked since 1894 with what is now the University of London.
CHAPTER 2
The Dawn Comes, and My Uncle Appears in a New Silk Hat
1. Raggett Street… Farringdon Street: Perhaps Snow Hill, with fish and poultry markets at the Farringdon Street end; Charterhouse Street, one street beyond, off Farringdon Road, had a fruit and vegetable market.
2. Tantalus: A stand for holding whisky bottles.
3. I’m afloat, I’m afloat… my bark is my bride: The opening of a popular song dating from 1841 with words by Eliza Cook and music by Henry Russell; Edward misremembers ‘rolling tide’ as ‘flowing tide‘.
4. nuclear spot: Central or cardinal point (no scientific connotation); the OED cites Wells referring in 1940 to ‘nuclear men’ who will carry out the next revolution.
5. It’s nothing more or less than…: As described in the Introduction, the contents and history of Tono-Bungay are very closely based on Coca-Cola; the original Coca-Cola formula included cocaine (in the form of extract of coca leaves), caffeine and extract from the kola nut.
6. Papin’s digester: A pressure cooker invented by Denis Papin (1647–1712?); used as the basis of early steam engines.
7. niggers: In this context (and in many other nineteenth-century usages), not used as an insulting term for dark-skinned persons, but as a term for English industrial workers who perform the kind of menial labour typically performed by slaves.
8. like justice on circuit: Like judges returning periodically to the towns on their circuit (a practice that persists in courts held in smaller towns in England).
9. Lord Radmore, who did it on lying about the alkali in soap: Possibly an allusion to W. H. Lever (1851–1925; he did not become Lord Leverhulme until 1911), who had brought a libel action against the Daily Mirror for denigrating as disguised profiteering the healthy village that he had built for his workers at ‘Port Sunlight‘; the lie about the ‘alkali in soap’ seems to be Wells’s invention. The ‘Ponderevo Patent Flat, a Machine you can Live in’ (1.2.§4) may be an allusion to the modern, efficient architecture of the homes in Port Sunlight.
10. Peruvian bark: A source of quinine and other medicines.
11. Carlyle’s test – solvency: Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), polemicist, author of The French Revolution, A History (1837); he almost certainly never expressed the view of financial solvency that Edward attributes to him, but Edward could perhaps be misremembering Carlyle’s metaphorical references to solvency, such as his account of the eighteenth century as having ‘gone at length utterly insolvent, without real money of performance in its pocket’ (History of Friedrich II of Russia, Called Frederick the Great, Book I, Chapter 1, 1858).
12. Gower Street: Near the British Museum; the Ponderevos are now living in Bloomsbury, a more central, and more solidly middle-class, neighbourhood than Mornington Crescent.
13. the School Board place – as it was then: The London School Board (founded in 1870) had its offices in its own building on the Embankment between Arundel Street and Essex Street; the Board was replaced in 1904 by the Education Committee of the London County Council, with offices elsewhere.
14. diggings: Slang for lodgings.
15. Pecunia non olet – a Roman emperor said that: The Latin phrase meaning ‘money does not smell‘; attributed to Vespasian (AD 9–79), but not in fact quoted in the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius (AD c.75–c.160), which reports that Vespasian’s son Titus had objected to a tax on the urine from public urinals (used by clothmakers); Vespasian pointedly asked Titus if a coin derived from the tax had a smell, and Titus said it did not.
16. Morris: William Morris (1834–96), poet, craftsman and socialist visionary, founder of the Socialist League, and author of a rural utopian idyll, News from Nowhere (1891).
17. mustard plaster: Powered mustard applied to the skin to relieve inflammation.
18. Ho’born Restaurant: The vast and elaborately decorated Hol-born Restaurant was a common destination for celebratory meals.
19. Mudie’s: Mudie’s Circulating Library, a rental library widely popular among middle-class readers from its founding in 1842 until the early twentieth century; every reader would have recognized that the ‘pile of yellow-labelled books’ mentioned earlier in II.2.§6 came from Mudie’s.
20. Here-er Shee Rulk lies Poo Tom Bo – oling: Edward’s version of the opening, line of the song ‘Tom Bowling’ by Charles Dibdin (1745–1814): ‘Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling’.
CHAPTER 3
How We Made Tono-Bungay Hum
1. that antiquated Encyclopaedia: To relieve its financial difficulties the Times of London sponsored the tenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1902–3; George alludes to the fact that it did not update the ninth edition of 1875–89 but merely added eleven supplementary volumes to the original twenty-four.
2. Aix-to-Ghent rides: Alludes to the poem by Robert Browning (1812–89) about a heroic ride, ‘How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix’ (1845).
3. travellers: Travelling salesmen.
4. Cook’s office, or in the Continental Bradshaw: A widely used travel agency (Thomas Cook and Sons, founded in 1841) and the commercially published railway timetable for the European continent.
5. en brosse: A French phrase meaning ‘with the hair cut short, in a stubble’ (like the bristles of a brush).
6. substratum: Ewart’s confused allusion to the philosophical notion of an invisible level of being that lies below, or forms the basis of, a visible one.
7. that poem of Longfellow’s: Edward misattributes a poem titled ‘Form’ by ‘Owen Meredith’ (pseudonym of Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, 1831–91); the line he quotes reminds him of the standard schoolbook example of the first declension of Latin verbs: amo, amas, amat.
8. jipper – Xylo-tobacco: Jipper is gravy; the prefix xylo- refers to wood; Edward is imagining that wood shavings soaked in gravy could be sold as the exciting-sounding product ‘Xylo-tobacco’.
9. Cana: The site of the wedding at which Jesus turned water into wine (John: 2).
10. friable: Easily broken into powder.
11. Triturating: Reducible to a powder.
CHAPTER 4
Marion
1. Haeckel… the Freethinker… The Woman Who Did: Writers and writings that could be regarded as advanced, racy or daring. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a popularizing evolutionary biologist who made a point of rejecting religious teachings; the Freethinker was an anti-religious weekly begun in London in 1881; The Woman Who Did (1895) was a novel by Grant Allen (1848–99) about a woman who refuses to marry her lover because the marriage laws are unfair to women.
2. Ealing: A suburb to the west of London, accessible from Pad-dington or Waterloo train stations; George wants to live somewhere in the east or south accessible to Cannon Street station.
3. debased West Kensington: That is, a self-consciously artistic middle-class style of dressing.
4. Pampas grass: A popular ornamental plant introduced into Europe in the mid-nineteenth century.
5. shandy-gaff: A mixture of beer and ginger beer.
6. Mrs Grundy: Proverbial personification of severe social restraint and disapproval of all sorts of impropriety; from the play Speed the Plough (1798), by Thomas Morton (c.1764–1838), in which one character repeatedly asks fearfully, ‘What will Mrs Grundy say?’ (Mrs Grundy herself never appears in the play.)
7. cold douches: Cold showers.
8. Dolls’ Island: Apparently the name that George and Ewart had given to the imaginary ‘island doll’s city all our own’ mentioned in 1.1.§7.
9. Rodin’s great Hand: One of the sculptures by Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) of clenched, claw-like hands, probably the Large Clenched Right Hand (c.1885), but possibly (and anachronistically) the Large Clenched Left Hand (c.1906–7) that towers threateningly over a miniature figure.
10. like a lost china image in the coal-chute of an ironclad: Like a delicate piece of chinaware porcelain, with a picture painted on it, lost in the mass of coal pouring down the coal-chute to the engine room of a large iron-sided warship.
11. the Will in things: A quasi-evolutionary idea common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that matter, especially biological matter, has an unconscious will towards progress, intelligence, knowledge, etc.; Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), for example, used the phrase ‘the Immanent Will’ in this sense in his poem ‘The Convergence of the Twain’ (1912).
12. grog-tubs: Large bowls used for drinking grog (a mixture of rum and water).
13. poker-work: Artworks made by burning lines on a white wooden surface with a heated instrument sold for this task.
14. Decree Nisi: In English law (then and now), the initial divorce decree, which does not take effect until a Decree Absolute has been granted (generally after financial and property matters are settled).
15. Orpington: A somewhat characterless southern suburb of London.
16. Mantegna’s pictures: Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), a painter in Mantua, elevated and ennobled the subjects of his paintings through dramatically illusionistic use of perspective and space.
17. I have still to fly: A slightly puzzling comment, as it seems to be contradicted by later events, and Wells may have changed his mind about the plot after writing this. George’s phrase perhaps means that he has not yet flown in a powered heavier-than-air craft like that used by the Wright Brothers.
18. she put up glass: ‘Glass’ was a common synonym for ‘greenhouses’.
19. eupeptic: Having a good digestion, or having the mood that results from having a good digestion.
BOOK III
THE GREAT DAYS OF TONO-BUNGAY
CHAPTER 1
The Hardingham Hotel, and How We Became Big People
1. Gnostic symbols: For example, a snake swallowing its own tail; from the Gnostic sect whose adherents believed they possessed an inherent secret spiritual knowledge. Edward has been influenced by nineteenth-century spiritual charlatanism that offered a sense of superiority.
2. a fur suit of Esquimaux cut: An all-in-one fur suit in the style used by the Eskimo.
3. Dr Haig and uric acid: Alexander Haig (1853–1924) argued in Uric Acid as a Factor in the Causation of Disease (1892) that uric acid caused many diseases by breaking down human blood cells, and that uric acid was ingested by eating meat; Edward avoids eating meat products at breakfast under the influence of Haig’s theories.
4. Chinese-cracker: A firecracker that bursts two or three times.
5. Domestic Convenience Campaign: See Book I, Chapter 1, note 7.
6. like the Ruskins took their John: The parents of the writer and artist John Ruskin (1819–1900) took him on a series of European tours during his adolescence in order to encourage his precocious talents.
7. History of the Thebaid: That is, a history of a place where nothing important ever happened; in the Roman Empire, the southern provinces of the Nile valley were called the Lower Thebaid and Upper Thebaid; early Christian hermits founded monasteries there that faded away not long afterward.
8. Mercure de France: A Parisian literary magazine, founded by advanced young writers in 1890, sympathetic to Oscar Wilde and other writers in the Aesthetic Movement in England. The magazine serialized French translations of some of Wells’s novels and stories.
9. black-lead firm… the Black Prince: Black lead is carbon mixed with a slight amount of lead, used for giving a black sheen to ironwork; Edward, the Black Prince (1330–76), was the eldest son of King Edward III (his surname seems to refer to his black armour).
10. Pepys: That is, in the diary of Samuel Pepys (1633–1703); curiously enough, his diary mentions black lead, but in the sense of pencil ‘lead’.
11. Housemaid’s Knee: An inflammation caused by kneeling.
12. these greenwood chaps: Obscure; perhaps refers to one of many groups of artists who preferred archaic, supposedly natural styles instead of mechanical and modern ones.
13. Do Ut: The company’s stock-market abbreviation.
14. Lilienthal, Pilcher, and the Wright Brothers: Otto Lilienthal (1849–96) and Percy Pilcher (1866–99) were early experimenters with gliders, both of whom died in crashes of their aircraft; Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) and Orville Wright (1871-1948) achieved the first powered, heavier-than-air flight.
15. projectors: The standard term, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, for anyone who devised a scientific or technological project.
14. flotations: Launchings of companies.
15. Ol Amjig: Susan’s rendering of Edward’s label ‘Ol. Amygd., standard abbreviation for Oleum amygdalae, almond oil.
16. as Baedeker says, ‘rewarding’: The Baedeker series of guidebooks (extremely popular from around 1860 until 1940) thus praised destinations that the tourist would find worth the trouble of visiting.
17. Crystal Pallas: The Crystal Palace was a vast glass hall built for the Great Exhibition of 1851.
18. Union Pacifics: Referring to shares of the stock in the booming American company, the Union Pacific Railway; George later refers to the company and its shares by the initials U.P.
19. hills toward Yare… by Hazelbrow: Yare is possibly fictional (and clearly not the river Yare in Norfolk), but Hazelbrow is a place name found near the town of Guildford, about twenty miles away from the fictional Wimblehurst.
20. Beeching… Steadhurst: Apparently fictional.
21. ‘The world was all before them… and Providence their guide’: From the closing lines (12:646) of Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667).
22. Spencers and Huxleys: Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), prominent sociologist and author; Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95), polymath scientist under whom Wells briefly studied.
23. Pil.Antibil.: Anti-bilious pills, typically made of camomile, herbs and an emetic; supposedly for curing peevishness and ill-temper.
24. Goodwood: A racecourse in Sussex.
25. Eozoon: The name for what was believed at the time to be the earliest known animal (the fossil remains were later proved to be mineral).
26. Chislehurst: Suburb of London, in Kent.
27. Board School: A government-established school under the management of a school board, for working-class children.
28. Temperance Hotel: A hotel where no alcohol was served.
29. Tottenham Court Road: Busy commercial street, notable for the furniture shops that George and Marion visit in II.4. §5.
30. the Cobden statue: The statue of Richard Cobden (1804–65), political reformer; Edward and Susan’s rooms are in or near Mornington Crescent.
31. London… didn’t ‘get blacks’ on her: The soot in the air did not leave black specks in the pores of her skin.
32. sandwich men: Men who were paid to wear advertising placards that hung over their chest and back.
33. Aerated Bread Shop: One of a large chain of teashops founded in the 1850s.
34. in the stalls: The most expensive seats in a theatre.
35. watch this place: An advertising slogan: ‘watch this space’.
BOOK II
THE RISE OF TONO-BUNGAY
CHAPTER 1
How I Became a London Student, and Went Astray
1. 1688: The year of the ‘Glorious’ or ‘Bloodless Revolution’ when James II fled from England and was replaced on the throne (early in 1689) by William and Mary.
2. Mayfair… St James’s: Rich and fashionable districts of London, as are the places named in the next paragraph.
3. Gregorian telescope: A type of telescope that used both mirrors and lenses, invented in 1663 by James Gregory.
4. but lightly touched by the American’s profaning hand: Before rich American customers encouraged the shops to stock more vulgar kinds of goods.
5. Charing Cross station… that came smashing down in 1905: When the roof of the train-shed at Charing Cross station collapsed (slowly enough to cause only five deaths).
6. daedal earth: A common poetic phrase meaning the earth that is ‘variously adorned’ or ‘with manifold works‘.
7. Vincent Bradley scholarship… at South Kensington: Fictional, like the other scholarships and schools in this paragraph; the Consolidated Technical Schools at South Kensington is based on the Normal School of Science (a Normal school is a teachers’ college), renamed in 1890 the Royal College of Science; the ‘Consolidated’ in its fictional name alludes to its creation from the merger of an earlier school with courses taught at other nearby schools.
8. by Victoria and not by Cannon Street: He arrived in London through Victoria railway station in the west of London, near the great museums in Exhibition Road, not through Cannon Street station towards the east, in the City (the financial district of London).
9. hoardings: Advertising billboards.
10. Life’s Morning: That is, the time of youth, but the phrase alludes to George Gissing’s novel, A Life’s Morning (1888), which traces the disasters in the life of a downtrodden young clerk.
11. painted ceiling at Hampton Court: Perhaps the ceiling of the King’s Drawing Room at Hampton Court Palace, portraying Jupiter and the naked Semele.
12. F.R.S.: Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the highest honours available for British scientists.
13. Canary Sack: A fortified wine imported from the Canary Islands.
14. Fabian Society: See Introduction, p. xxii.
15. intercourse: In the general sense of communication with others.
16. the Art Museum: The South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum.
17. supernumerary clerk: One not regularly employed but available for hire when needed.
18. grangerized: A grangerized book is one that has had illustrations inserted in it; named after James Granger, the publisher (in 1769) of an English history with blank spaces that the owner might fill with suitable illustrations.
19. Birkbeck Institute: A school for adult education, founded as the London Mechanics Institution in 1825, renamed the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution in 1866, Birkbeck Institute in 1891, finally Birkbeck College in 1906; linked since 1894 with what is now the University of London.
CHAPTER 2
The Dawn Comes, and My Uncle Appears in a New Silk Hat
1. Raggett Street… Farringdon Street: Perhaps Snow Hill, with fish and poultry markets at the Farringdon Street end; Charterhouse Street, one street beyond, off Farringdon Road, had a fruit and vegetable market.
2. Tantalus: A stand for holding whisky bottles.
3. I’m afloat, I’m afloat… my bark is my bride: The opening of a popular song dating from 1841 with words by Eliza Cook and music by Henry Russell; Edward misremembers ‘rolling tide’ as ‘flowing tide‘.
4. nuclear spot: Central or cardinal point (no scientific connotation); the OED cites Wells referring in 1940 to ‘nuclear men’ who will carry out the next revolution.
5. It’s nothing more or less than…: As described in the Introduction, the contents and history of Tono-Bungay are very closely based on Coca-Cola; the original Coca-Cola formula included cocaine (in the form of extract of coca leaves), caffeine and extract from the kola nut.
6. Papin’s digester: A pressure cooker invented by Denis Papin (1647–1712?); used as the basis of early steam engines.
7. niggers: In this context (and in many other nineteenth-century usages), not used as an insulting term for dark-skinned persons, but as a term for English industrial workers who perform the kind of menial labour typically performed by slaves.
8. like justice on circuit: Like judges returning periodically to the towns on their circuit (a practice that persists in courts held in smaller towns in England).
9. Lord Radmore, who did it on lying about the alkali in soap: Possibly an allusion to W. H. Lever (1851–1925; he did not become Lord Leverhulme until 1911), who had brought a libel action against the Daily Mirror for denigrating as disguised profiteering the healthy village that he had built for his workers at ‘Port Sunlight‘; the lie about the ‘alkali in soap’ seems to be Wells’s invention. The ‘Ponderevo Patent Flat, a Machine you can Live in’ (1.2.§4) may be an allusion to the modern, efficient architecture of the homes in Port Sunlight.
10. Peruvian bark: A source of quinine and other medicines.
11. Carlyle’s test – solvency: Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), polemicist, author of The French Revolution, A History (1837); he almost certainly never expressed the view of financial solvency that Edward attributes to him, but Edward could perhaps be misremembering Carlyle’s metaphorical references to solvency, such as his account of the eighteenth century as having ‘gone at length utterly insolvent, without real money of performance in its pocket’ (History of Friedrich II of Russia, Called Frederick the Great, Book I, Chapter 1, 1858).
12. Gower Street: Near the British Museum; the Ponderevos are now living in Bloomsbury, a more central, and more solidly middle-class, neighbourhood than Mornington Crescent.
13. the School Board place – as it was then: The London School Board (founded in 1870) had its offices in its own building on the Embankment between Arundel Street and Essex Street; the Board was replaced in 1904 by the Education Committee of the London County Council, with offices elsewhere.
14. diggings: Slang for lodgings.
15. Pecunia non olet – a Roman emperor said that: The Latin phrase meaning ‘money does not smell‘; attributed to Vespasian (AD 9–79), but not in fact quoted in the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius (AD c.75–c.160), which reports that Vespasian’s son Titus had objected to a tax on the urine from public urinals (used by clothmakers); Vespasian pointedly asked Titus if a coin derived from the tax had a smell, and Titus said it did not.
16. Morris: William Morris (1834–96), poet, craftsman and socialist visionary, founder of the Socialist League, and author of a rural utopian idyll, News from Nowhere (1891).
17. mustard plaster: Powered mustard applied to the skin to relieve inflammation.
18. Ho’born Restaurant: The vast and elaborately decorated Hol-born Restaurant was a common destination for celebratory meals.
19. Mudie’s: Mudie’s Circulating Library, a rental library widely popular among middle-class readers from its founding in 1842 until the early twentieth century; every reader would have recognized that the ‘pile of yellow-labelled books’ mentioned earlier in II.2.§6 came from Mudie’s.
20. Here-er Shee Rulk lies Poo Tom Bo – oling: Edward’s version of the opening, line of the song ‘Tom Bowling’ by Charles Dibdin (1745–1814): ‘Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling’.
CHAPTER 3
How We Made Tono-Bungay Hum
1. that antiquated Encyclopaedia: To relieve its financial difficulties the Times of London sponsored the tenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1902–3; George alludes to the fact that it did not update the ninth edition of 1875–89 but merely added eleven supplementary volumes to the original twenty-four.
2. Aix-to-Ghent rides: Alludes to the poem by Robert Browning (1812–89) about a heroic ride, ‘How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix’ (1845).
3. travellers: Travelling salesmen.
4. Cook’s office, or in the Continental Bradshaw: A widely used travel agency (Thomas Cook and Sons, founded in 1841) and the commercially published railway timetable for the European continent.
5. en brosse: A French phrase meaning ‘with the hair cut short, in a stubble’ (like the bristles of a brush).
6. substratum: Ewart’s confused allusion to the philosophical notion of an invisible level of being that lies below, or forms the basis of, a visible one.
7. that poem of Longfellow’s: Edward misattributes a poem titled ‘Form’ by ‘Owen Meredith’ (pseudonym of Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, 1831–91); the line he quotes reminds him of the standard schoolbook example of the first declension of Latin verbs: amo, amas, amat.
8. jipper – Xylo-tobacco: Jipper is gravy; the prefix xylo- refers to wood; Edward is imagining that wood shavings soaked in gravy could be sold as the exciting-sounding product ‘Xylo-tobacco’.
9. Cana: The site of the wedding at which Jesus turned water into wine (John: 2).
10. friable: Easily broken into powder.
11. Triturating: Reducible to a powder.
CHAPTER 4
Marion
1. Haeckel… the Freethinker… The Woman Who Did: Writers and writings that could be regarded as advanced, racy or daring. Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was a popularizing evolutionary biologist who made a point of rejecting religious teachings; the Freethinker was an anti-religious weekly begun in London in 1881; The Woman Who Did (1895) was a novel by Grant Allen (1848–99) about a woman who refuses to marry her lover because the marriage laws are unfair to women.
2. Ealing: A suburb to the west of London, accessible from Pad-dington or Waterloo train stations; George wants to live somewhere in the east or south accessible to Cannon Street station.
3. debased West Kensington: That is, a self-consciously artistic middle-class style of dressing.
4. Pampas grass: A popular ornamental plant introduced into Europe in the mid-nineteenth century.
5. shandy-gaff: A mixture of beer and ginger beer.
6. Mrs Grundy: Proverbial personification of severe social restraint and disapproval of all sorts of impropriety; from the play Speed the Plough (1798), by Thomas Morton (c.1764–1838), in which one character repeatedly asks fearfully, ‘What will Mrs Grundy say?’ (Mrs Grundy herself never appears in the play.)
7. cold douches: Cold showers.
8. Dolls’ Island: Apparently the name that George and Ewart had given to the imaginary ‘island doll’s city all our own’ mentioned in 1.1.§7.
9. Rodin’s great Hand: One of the sculptures by Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) of clenched, claw-like hands, probably the Large Clenched Right Hand (c.1885), but possibly (and anachronistically) the Large Clenched Left Hand (c.1906–7) that towers threateningly over a miniature figure.
10. like a lost china image in the coal-chute of an ironclad: Like a delicate piece of chinaware porcelain, with a picture painted on it, lost in the mass of coal pouring down the coal-chute to the engine room of a large iron-sided warship.
11. the Will in things: A quasi-evolutionary idea common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that matter, especially biological matter, has an unconscious will towards progress, intelligence, knowledge, etc.; Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), for example, used the phrase ‘the Immanent Will’ in this sense in his poem ‘The Convergence of the Twain’ (1912).
12. grog-tubs: Large bowls used for drinking grog (a mixture of rum and water).
13. poker-work: Artworks made by burning lines on a white wooden surface with a heated instrument sold for this task.
14. Decree Nisi: In English law (then and now), the initial divorce decree, which does not take effect until a Decree Absolute has been granted (generally after financial and property matters are settled).
15. Orpington: A somewhat characterless southern suburb of London.
16. Mantegna’s pictures: Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), a painter in Mantua, elevated and ennobled the subjects of his paintings through dramatically illusionistic use of perspective and space.
17. I have still to fly: A slightly puzzling comment, as it seems to be contradicted by later events, and Wells may have changed his mind about the plot after writing this. George’s phrase perhaps means that he has not yet flown in a powered heavier-than-air craft like that used by the Wright Brothers.
18. she put up glass: ‘Glass’ was a common synonym for ‘greenhouses’.
19. eupeptic: Having a good digestion, or having the mood that results from having a good digestion.
BOOK III
THE GREAT DAYS OF TONO-BUNGAY
CHAPTER 1
The Hardingham Hotel, and How We Became Big People
1. Gnostic symbols: For example, a snake swallowing its own tail; from the Gnostic sect whose adherents believed they possessed an inherent secret spiritual knowledge. Edward has been influenced by nineteenth-century spiritual charlatanism that offered a sense of superiority.
2. a fur suit of Esquimaux cut: An all-in-one fur suit in the style used by the Eskimo.
3. Dr Haig and uric acid: Alexander Haig (1853–1924) argued in Uric Acid as a Factor in the Causation of Disease (1892) that uric acid caused many diseases by breaking down human blood cells, and that uric acid was ingested by eating meat; Edward avoids eating meat products at breakfast under the influence of Haig’s theories.
4. Chinese-cracker: A firecracker that bursts two or three times.
5. Domestic Convenience Campaign: See Book I, Chapter 1, note 7.
6. like the Ruskins took their John: The parents of the writer and artist John Ruskin (1819–1900) took him on a series of European tours during his adolescence in order to encourage his precocious talents.
7. History of the Thebaid: That is, a history of a place where nothing important ever happened; in the Roman Empire, the southern provinces of the Nile valley were called the Lower Thebaid and Upper Thebaid; early Christian hermits founded monasteries there that faded away not long afterward.
8. Mercure de France: A Parisian literary magazine, founded by advanced young writers in 1890, sympathetic to Oscar Wilde and other writers in the Aesthetic Movement in England. The magazine serialized French translations of some of Wells’s novels and stories.
9. black-lead firm… the Black Prince: Black lead is carbon mixed with a slight amount of lead, used for giving a black sheen to ironwork; Edward, the Black Prince (1330–76), was the eldest son of King Edward III (his surname seems to refer to his black armour).
10. Pepys: That is, in the diary of Samuel Pepys (1633–1703); curiously enough, his diary mentions black lead, but in the sense of pencil ‘lead’.
11. Housemaid’s Knee: An inflammation caused by kneeling.
12. these greenwood chaps: Obscure; perhaps refers to one of many groups of artists who preferred archaic, supposedly natural styles instead of mechanical and modern ones.
13. Do Ut: The company’s stock-market abbreviation.
14. Lilienthal, Pilcher, and the Wright Brothers: Otto Lilienthal (1849–96) and Percy Pilcher (1866–99) were early experimenters with gliders, both of whom died in crashes of their aircraft; Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) and Orville Wright (1871-1948) achieved the first powered, heavier-than-air flight.
15. projectors: The standard term, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, for anyone who devised a scientific or technological project.
