Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome [100]
4. (p. 27) eight and sixpence: 42½p.
5. (p. 28) Gladstone: defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a ‘light portmanteau opening into two equal parts’, it was favoured by doctors and named after the Liberal statesman and Prime Minister, W. E. Gladstone (1809–98).
Chapter 5
1. (p. 35) Boots: man-servant employed in hotels and inns to clean customers’ boots and shoes. The best-known fictional boots is Sam Weller in Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers.
2. (p. 38) Great Coram Street murder: refers to scandalous murder in London on Christmas Day 1872.
3. (p. 38) Stanley: the Welsh-born adventurer and explorer H. M. Stanley (1841–1904) is best remembered for greeting David Livingstone with the words ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ after tracking him down on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in 1871.
Chapter 6
1. (p. 41) crowned there: several Anglo-Saxon kings were indeed crowned in Kingston-on-Thames: hence its entitlement to be a royal borough.
2. (p. 41) sack and mead: sack was a white wine imported from Spain and the Canary islands; mead an alcoholic brew made from honey: both were traditionally imbibed in the world of Merrie England.
3. (p. 43) Sandford and Merton: Thomas Day (1748–89) was a serious-minded educationalist and admirer of Rousseau. In his influential novel The History of Sandford and Merton – published in three volumes between 1783 and the year of his death – he tried to show how men can be made good by instruction and appeals to reason. Tommy Merton (rich and disagreeable) is set against Harry Sandford (kind and decent, and a farmer’s son): virtue prevails in the end, and Tommy emerges a better and (no doubt) a duller man.
4. (p. 44) the great cholera scare of 1871: given the state of the drains, cholera was one of the hazards of mid-Victorian England. The big cholera scare took place in 1854; during its course, John Snow proved that the disease was water-borne, so leading to improvements in drainage and water supplies.
5. (p. 45) ‘old blue’… willow-pattern: both are eighteenth-century china-ware, coloured in blue and white: willow-pattern was introduced in 1780, and incorporates Chinese designs.
6. (p. 45) Sarah Janes: maidservants.
7. (p. 47) Hampton Court: in 1514 the over-mighty Cardinal Wolsey set out to build himself the largest private house in England on the banks of the Thames. Henry VIII forced him to hand it over to him in 1526, and it became the king’s favourite palace. During the reign of Charles II, Christopher Wren added a further quadrangle to the Tudor Palace; all is in red brick.
8. (p. 47) maze: during the reign of William and Mary, formal Dutch gardens were laid out in the grounds of Hampton Court, including the famous maze.
Chapter 7
1. (p. 50) Moulsey Lock: One of the busiest and most popular locks on the Thames. Boulter’s Lock was even busier and more fashionable: ‘Boulter’s Lock – Sunday Afternoon’, by Edward John Gregory RA, gives a good idea of what life was like on the river towards the end of the nineteenth century (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight).
2. (p. 51) Margate nigger: Nigger Minstrels originated in the Southern States of America in the 1830s, and were a familiar feature of English piers and music halls by the 1880s. Nigger Minstrels were invariably ‘blacked-up’ white men; like George, they accompanied themselves on the banjo.
3. (p. 56) Kensal Green Cemetery: West London cemetery, opened in 1832; those buried there include W. M. Praed, Sydney Smith, Thomas Hood, Thackeray, Trollope, John Leech, Wilkie Collins and George Cruikshank.
Chapter 8
1. (p. 58) Kempton Park: a former seat of royalty, later converted into a race-course.
2. (p. 61) Pinafore: HMS Pinafore (1878) and Trial by Jury (1875) were among the best-known and most popular of the Savoy Operas, the words of which were written by W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the music by Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). They began their collaboration in 1871, and their joint efforts included The Pirates of Penzance, The Yeomen of the Guard, The Mikado and Iolanthe. Gilbert was one