Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome [102]
9. (p. 109) Hell Fire Club: During the eighteenth century, the rakish baronet Sir Francis Dashwood held orgies at his house in West Wycombe. The orgiasts called themselves the Hell Fire Club, and sometimes dressed up as the ‘Franciscans of Medmenham’.
10. (p. 109) Wilkes: John Wilkes (1727–97) was the best kind of English radical. Outlawed for his attacks on Lord Bute in his paper The North Briton and subsequently imprisoned, he was four times elected MP for Middlesex, but each time the House of Commons refused to admit him. Cross-eyed and hideously ugly, he boasted that he could ‘talk away his face in half an hour’.
11. (p. 111) Lowther Arcade: shopping arcade off the Strand, built in 1830 and covered by a series of glass domes. It specialized in children’s toys, and was demolished in 1904.
12. (p. 115) Henley week: a high point in the oarsman’s calendar, and the social Season, the Henley Regatta has taken place every July since 1839.It acquired royal status in 1851.
13. (p. 116) bean-feast: annual dinner given by employers for their workers.
14. (p. 116) Cubit’s: William and Thomas Cubitt prospered as builders and property developers in London in the 1840s and 1850s: their white stucco style is well represented in Belgravia and Pimlico.
15. (p. 116) Bermondsey Good Templars: a working-men’s charitable club.
16. (p. 120) Who shall escape calumny?: the poet in question was Shakespeare (Hamlet, III. i. 143).
Chapter 14
1. (p. 121) Lord Fitznoodle: useful shorthand for the goofier kind of peer. W. M. Thackeray (1811–63) used the pseudonym George Savage Fitz-Boodle when publishing the early chapters of Barry Lyndon in Frasers Magazine, 1842–3.
2. (p. 122) half a peck: a measurement used for dry goods; an imperial peck was equivalent to two gallons.
3. (p. 124) banjo: first associated with slaves in the Southern States of America, the banjo had crossed the Atlantic, and was much favoured by Nigger Minstrels and by fashionable young men eager to impress.
4. (p. 128) Babes in the Wood: old ballad about a wicked uncle who hires two villains to murder his nephew and niece. A robin covers their bodies with leaves; one of the villains repents and kills the other, and the wicked uncle dies miserably.
5. (p. 129) Seven Sleepers: legend of seven noble Christian youths from Ephesus who, in order to escape persecution during the third century AD, walled themselves up in a cave and slept for 187 years.
Chapter 15
1. (p. 134) brickfields: large ponds were created where clay had been extracted for the making of bricks.
2. (p. 135) River Lea: joins the Thames at Poplar in the East End, where Jerome spent so much of his youth.
3. (p. 141) rounders and touch: children’s games.
4. (p. 141) reef and luff: sailing terms. Taking in a reef reduces the amount of sail exposed to the wind; to ‘luff’ is to bring the boat’s head closer in to the wind.
Chapter 16
1. (p. 144) King Ethelred: the King of the West Saxons, he suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the marauding Danes. He was succeeded as king in 871 by his younger brother Alfred, who had earlier defeated the Danes at Ashdown. Known as ‘the Great’, Alfred went on to become one of the most celebrated of English kings.
2. (p. 144) Earl of Essex: a leader of the parliamentary forces during the English Civil War (1642–8).
3. (p. 144) Prince of Orange: William of Orange invaded England in 1688 and, with his wife Mary, was crowned (as William III) in 1689. He finally defeated the previous monarch, James II, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
4. (p. 144) John of Gaunt: (1340–99): fourth son of Edward III.
Chapter 17
1. (p. 151) pipeclaying: white shoes, canvas belts, etc. were smartened up by applying a mixture of white clay and water.
Chapter 18
1. (p. 155) Conservancy: The Thames Conservancy Board was established in 1857, and its powers were extended to cover the river from Staines to Cricklade in 1866.
2. (p. 157 f.n.) Fairfax: Thomas Fairfax (1611–72) commanded the parliamentary army during