The Good Soldier_ A Tale of Passion - Ford Madox Ford [126]
37. the Hotel Excelsior: ‘Excelsior’ means ‘A person who or thing which reaches or aspires to reach higher’ (NSOED). It is the comparative of the Latin word excelsus (lofty).
38. Fourteenth Hussars: ‘The 14th King’s Hussars, later the 14th/20th King’s Hussars, who captured Joseph Bonaparte’s carriage and retained a silver chamber pot as a trophy after the Battle of Vitoria (1813).’ Hence their nickname: ‘the Emperor’s Chambermaids’ (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1999).
39. Falls River, N.J.: there is no such place as ‘Falls River, New Jersey’ and Dowell almost certainly has in mind the city of Fall River, Massachusetts.
40. Martingales, Chiffney bits: a ‘martingale’ is ‘A strap or arrangement of straps fastened at one end to the noseband, bit, or reins of a horse and at the other to its girth, to prevent it from rearing or throwing back its head and to strengthen the action of the bit’ (NSOED). A ‘Chiffney bit’ is a special kind of mouthpiece on a bridle invented by the jockey Samuel Chiffney (c.1753–1807).
41. rode a plater down the Khyber cliffs: a ‘plater’ is an inferior racehorse, more likely to win one of the runner-up plates than the main prize. The Khyber Pass is a strategic mountain pass, forty-five miles long, in the Safid Kuh range of the Hindu Kush mountains connecting Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, with Peshawar in northern Pakistan, then part of the Northwest Frontier region of the British Indian Empire.
42. 42 Burlington Arcade: Burlington Arcade was designed in 1819 but has since been remodelled on a number of occasions, most recently after it was damaged in the Second World War. It runs north off Piccadilly and houses a number of well-known shops.
43. Gadarene swine: Matt. 8:28–32 describes how a herd of swine at Gadara in ancient Palestine all rushed violently down a slope and perished in the sea.
44. Brindisi: a seaport in Apulia, southeast Italy, on the Adriatic Sea. In the Middle Ages, it was an embarkation port for the Crusaders.
45. Wiesbaden… the Bonner Hussaren: Wiesbaden is a spa city in central Germany on the River Rhine at the foot of the Taunus Mountains. The Bonner Hussaren were a cavalry regiment based in the Westphalian city of Bonn.
46. Lelöffel: Ford and Violet Hunt met a ‘Count Lelöffel, one of the “favourite officers of the Kaiser”’, when they stayed at Nauheim in 1910 (Max Saunders, Ford Madox Ford, i, 313).
47. ‘And so the whole round table is begun’… Avanti!: in Arthurian legend, King Arthur received the Round Table from Leodegraunce of Cameliard when he married his daughter, Guinevere. Her adulterous love for Lancelot led to the break up of the Round Table and Arthur’s death. ‘Avanti’ means ‘forward’ in Italian.
48. Fachingen water: from the mineral springs of Fachingen, then in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau.
49. Nassau Schwerin: Nassau was until 1866 an independent and sovereign German duchy, while Schwerin, 129 miles north of Berlin, was capital of the grand duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. ‘Nassau Schwerin’, however, is one of Dowell’s inventions.
50. bonne bouche: literally a pleasant taste in the mouth, a treat (French).
51. his nephew, the Emperor: that is, Wilhelm II (1859–1941), Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia (1888–1918).
52. traps: baggage.
53. Kü mmel: sweet liqueur from north Germany. It is flavoured with cumin and caraway seeds, which give it digestive qualities.
54. Episcopalian… Quaker: an Episcopalian is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA founded in 1787. A ‘Quaker’ is a member of what used to be called the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian sect with no ordained ministers, sacraments or formal doctrine. The Quakers were founded by George Fox (1624–91) in the late 1640s and almost immediately suffered persecution in England. In 1682 William Penn led a colony of Quakers to the area of America which would soon take his name, Pennsylvania.
55. the cock… Aesculapius: Aesculapius