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moralities Bunyan Sterne Gibbon Huxley Carlyle
gothic slangs
"The fountains all dried up and ruind, whilst the very waters remained boiling; the Voragos of subterranean Cellars Wells and Dungeons, formerly Warehouses, still burning in stench and dark clowds of smoke like hell, so as in five or six miles traversing about, I did not see one loade of timber uncomsum'd, nor many stones but what were calcin'd white as snow, so as the people who now walked about the ruines appeard like men in some dismal desart, or rather in some great City, lay'd wast by an impetuous and cruel Enemy, to which was added the stench that came from some poore Creaturs bodys, beds, and other combustible goods..." (Evelyn)"So I down to the water-side, and there got a boat, and through bridge, and there saw a lamentable fire. Poor Michell's house, as far as the Old Swan, already burned that way, and the fire running further, that, in a very little time, it got as far as the Steele-yard, while I was there. Every body endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river, or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs, by the waterside, to another." (Pepys)
diarists John Evelyn (1620-) [ch] and Samuel Pepys (1632-1703) [ch] [extracts]
Pepys wrote in shorthand [info]
Diary of Samuel Pepys: concise, abridged, expurg
week 23 of pregnancy:
So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too.
'drought... and stunk mightily': after Pepys' diary via Peacock: [cite]
'drought': archaic spelling in UK (not USA): [cite]
'fifty mile or thereabout': after Defoe's Robinson Crusoe via Barnett and Dale's Anthology of English Prose (B&D) [cite]
'seed won't sprout': after George Savile (Marquess of Halifax) via Peacock: [cite]
Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness.
'dry flag... catch at first fire': after George Savile (Marquess of Halifax) via Peacock: [cite]
'All the world': after Defoe's "Education of Women" via B&D [cite]
'for aught they knew': after Pepys' diary via Peacock: [cite]
'big wind': the hurricane of 26Feb 1903 (while Joyce was in Paris)
Gifford suggests a Homeric parallel to the bad weather that forces Odysseus to shelter on Helios's island.
But by and by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first.
'poring up at them': after Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year via Peacock [cite]
'of the clock... soon as': after Pepys' diary via Peacock: [cite]
'Ely... Baggot... Duke's... Merrion... Holles': the route from George Moore's party to the hospital, presumably followed by Mulligan
Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman's gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore's the writer's (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite)
'upon the college lands': the Trinity College estates commission mentioned in ch7: [Eolus]
'but is now': after Pepys' diary via Peacock: [cite]
Joyce alluded to Moore's conversion in 'Day of the Rabblement' (1901): "the quest of a new impulse may explain his recent startling conversion" [etext]
chanced against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob (which are now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green) that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his coz and Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin
'the stage' = stagecoach
'coz... brother': mentioned in ch1: "--Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons." [Telem]
St Swithin's day is 15 July
and asks what in the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel, and all this while poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's.
'what in the earth... big of her age': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's... skittish': after Pepys' diary via Peacock: [cite]
the rain drives Bannon to join Mulligan
There Leop. Bloom of Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad for a racinghorse he fancied and Stephen D.
'covey': traced to Swift's 'MOS'?
'likely': after Pepys' diary via Peacock: [cite]
'brangling' = wrangling
Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, he having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be for a change
'dreamed tonight': his nap after Nausikaa [ambiguities]
'Turkey trunks': Molly's costume in ch15 hallucination: [Circe]
'those in ken' = dream-interpreters
'to be for a change': maybe, Bloom reclaiming his masculinity
and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, the midwives sore put to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they say, but God give her soon issue.
'pleading her belly': used by Defoe in Moll Flanders
'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand in the king's bible.
'Lady day' = 25 March
'nails': form during fifth month of pregnancy (week 23?)
superstition held that children's fingernails shouldn't be cut until they were one year old (the youngest Purefoy child turned one before 25 March)
'king's bible': King James edition (1611, Protestant)
Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the Sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear.
In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac (and I hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the Hindustanish for his farmer's gazette) to have three things in all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities no telling how.
'refreshed': from Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'fire shall come': cf fire brigade at end of ch14 [Oxen]
'prognostication of Malachi': Book of Malachi [KJV]
'farmer's gazette' = Irish Homestead (AE wasn't editor yet, though) [info]
Russell's theosophical leanings make it quite plausible he would have included a Sanskrit translation [background]
'queerities': traced to Steele [cite]
"There was something horrid and absurd in their way of sinning, for it was all a force even upon themselves; they did not only act against conscience, but against nature; they put a rape upon their temper to drown the reflections, which their circumstances continually gave them; and nothing was more easy than to see how sighs would interrupt their songs, and paleness and anguish sit upon their brows, in spite of the forced smiles they put on; nay, sometimes it would break out at their very mouths when they had parted with their money for a lewd treat or a wicked embrace. I have heard them, turning about, fetch a deep sigh, and cry, 'What a dog am I! Well, Betty, my dear, I'll drink thy health, though'; meaning the honest wife, that perhaps had not a half-crown for herself and three or four children. The next morning they are at their penitentials again; and perhaps the poor weeping wife comes over to him, either brings him some account of what his creditors are doing, and how she and the children are turned out of doors, or some other dreadful news; and this adds to his self-reproaches; but when he has thought and pored on it till he is almost mad, having no principles to support him, nothing within him or above him to comfort him, but finding it all darkness on every side, he flies to the same relief again, viz. to drink it away, debauch it away, and falling into company of men in just the same condition with himself, he repeats the crime, and thus he goes every day one step onward of his way to destruction."
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) [ch] [timeline] [bio] [bio] [extracts] [links]
'Joyce was a great admirer of Defoe. He possessed his complete works, and had read every line of them. Of only three other writers, he said, could he make this claim: Flaubert, Ben Jonson and Ibsen. Robinson Crusoe he called the English Ulysses.' (Budgen, 186)
1697: An Essay Upon Projects: PGut
1701: The True-Born Englishman: extract
1702: The Shortest Way With the Dissenters: Bartleby, Sun
1704: Giving Alms No Charity: text, Sun
1705: A True Relation of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal: Rutgers, Sun
undated: Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business: PGut, Sun
1719: Robinson Crusoe: Sun, Fern, UVa
1719? The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: PGut, Sun, Fern
1719: Dickory Cronke: The Dumb Philosopher: PGut, Sun
1719: On the Education of Women: Sun
1722: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders: PGut, Sun
1722: A Journal of the Plague Year: PGut, Perseus, Sun
1722: A Tour Through the Eastern Counties of England: Sun
1724: The Fortunate Mistress (Roxana): BlackMask
1724? Tour Through the Eastern Counties of England: PGut
1724? From London to Land's End: PGut, Sun
week 24 of pregnancy:
With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the letter was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him (for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on Stephen's persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit near by which he did mighty brisk.
'With this... the letter': something may have been skipped over in the narrative-- after the thunder, Bloom tried to calm Stephen, and the narrator blamed Stephen's anxiety on the sinful lifestyle the group follows
'came up Lenehan to the feet of the table': (from where?)
'swore with an oath... on Stephen's persuasion... mighty brisk': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
He was a kind of sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of woman, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat.
'merryandrew... honest pickle': from Defoe's "A Quack Doctor" via Peacock [cite]
'what belonged of woman': from Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'belonged of' = had to do with
To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip.
'hankered about... crimps... broad day': from Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'Paul's men': London equivalent of corner-boys, hanging out near St Paul's
'flatcaps' = apprentices wearing flat caps (17thC London)
'waistcoateers' = Elizabethan gallants (or whores?)
'sackpossets': drinks, containing sack (a white wine), sugar and raw eggs (traced to Swift's Tale of a Tub: cite)
He took his ordinary at a boilingcook's and if he had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself off with his tongue,
'boilingcook's... gotten... mess... victuals': from Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'tester': sixpence (from Defoe's "A Quack Doctor" via Peacock: cite)
'bring himself off with his tongue': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite] (suggestion of auto-fellatio)
some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every mother's son of them would burst their sides.
'punk': whore (from Defoe's "Colonel Jack": cite)
'every... their': possibly after Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year via Peacock [cite]
'every mother's son'... burst their sides': after Defoe's "A Quack Doctor" via Peacock: [cite]
The other, Costello that is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank (that was his name), 'tis all about Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go hang, says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it.
'that was his name... along of': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'along of' = on account of [def]
There's as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly he offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed wishly in the meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief design of his embassy as he was sharpset.
Odysseus tries to keep his crew eating fish rather than slaughter Helios's oxen
'offered to... wishly': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'design of his embassy': (from Defoe's "A Quack Doctor" via Peacock: cite)
Mort aux vaches, says Frank then in the French language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and the use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his volumes.
'Mort aux vaches' = death to the cows (French) = death to the cops (slang) = death to the British (implied)
'From a child... headborough': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'headborough' = constable
'beadle': traced to Goldsmith [cite]
One time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, then nought would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the Romany folk, kidnapping a squire's heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids' linen or choking chickens behind a hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to his father the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw him.
'the bearpit and the cocking main': gambling on fighting animals (bear vs dogs, or fighting cocks)
'Romany folk': gypsies
'kidnapping... naked pockets': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
What, says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this day morning going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wools, having been some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose or the timber tongue.
'with his hands across': with crossed/clasped hands? (after Evelyn's diary via Peacock: cite)
'earnest to know': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
Mr Stephen, a little moved but very handsomely, told him no such matter and that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief tailtickler thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to take the bull by the horns.
cf ch2: "it is regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here." [Nestor]
Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Stephen, and he sent the ale purling about.
'Come, come... plain dealing': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
Irish bull: nonsensical statement [def]
style changes mid-paragraph
"The worshippers of this deity had also a system of their belief which seemed to turn upon the following fundamental. They held the universe to be a large suit of clothes which invests everything; that the earth is invested by the air; the air is invested by the stars; and the stars are invested by the Primum Mobile. Look on this globe of earth, you will find it to be a very complete and fashionable dress..."
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) [ch] [timeline]
1696: A Tale of a Tub: PGut, Duke
1697: The Battle of the Books: PGut, Rutgers
1710-1713: The Journal to Stella: PGut
1712: A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue: Penn
1726: Gulliver's Travels: PGut, Jaffe
1729: A Modest Proposal: PGut
1732: The Lady's Dressing Room: Penn
An Irish bull in an English chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder of them all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains. What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my cousin german the Lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the road with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that he could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full he would rear up on his hind quarters to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bull's language and they all after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself (for that was the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground.
'slapped his posteriors': from Swift's Tale of a Tub [cite]
'cross': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'(for so they called him)': cf Defoe above '(that was his name)' [cite]
1494: Henry VII applies inappropriate English land-use laws to Ireland
And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he run amok over half the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion bull of the Romans, Bos Bovum, which is good bog Latin for boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it up on what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was that the men of the island, seeing no help was toward as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the Jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty: -- Pope Peter's but a pissabed.
A man's a man for a' that.
'ungrate': from Swift's Tale of a Tub [cite]
"My worthy Friend Sir Roger, when we are talking of the Malice of Parties, very frequently tells us an Accident that happened to him when he was a School-boy, which was at a time when the Feuds ran high between the Roundheads and Cavaliers. This worthy Knight, being then but a Stripling, had occasion to enquire which was the Way to St. Anne's Lane, upon which the Person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his Question, call'd him a young Popish Cur, and asked him who had made Anne a Saint?" [punchline]
[ch] [extracts] [djvu-archive]
1709-1711: The Tatler
1711-1712: The Spectator [etexts] [info] [essay] DJVU
Addison and Steele
Days With Sir Roger de Coverley: PGut
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Essays and Tales: PGut
Metamorphoses, by Ovid (trans): Sacred
1703-1713: Cato: A Tragedy in Five Acts: Const
Richard Steele (1672-1729) [bio]
1709: Isaac Bickerstaff, Physician and Astrologer: PGut
week 25 of pregnancy:
Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon, who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi Mulligan, Fertiliser and Incubator, Lambay Island. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating on his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey for the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies. After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had shielded it. The both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr Mulligan's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of his contention: Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut matres familiarum nostrae lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt while for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake and duck.
'buy a colour... list': after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
'her natural': likely from Swift's Tale of a Tub [cite]
week 26 of pregnancy:
Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man of his person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a passage that had befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an interesting condition, poor body, from woman's woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with the noted physician Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber.
"But pray, Dr. Slop, quoth my father, interrupting my uncle (tho' not without begging pardon for it at the same time) upon what principles was this self-same chariot set a-going? --Upon very pretty principles to be sure, replied Dr. Slop: --And I have often wondered, continued he, evading the question, why none of our gentry, who live upon large plains like this of ours, --(especially they whose wives are not past child-bearing) attempt nothing of this kind; for it would not only be infinitely expeditious upon sudden calls, to which the sex is subject, --if the wind only served, --but would be excellent good husbandry to make use of the winds, which cost nothing, and which eat nothing, rather than horses, which (the devil take 'em) both cost and eat a great deal..."
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) [ch] [extract]
1759-1767: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman: PGut, Japan
1768: A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy: Ore, Bartleby
week 27 of pregnancy:
Here the listener, who was none other than the Scotch student, a little fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture), to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the bottle, asked the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. Mais bien sûr, noble stranger, said he cheerily, et mille compliments. That you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give thanks to the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days! Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent Disseminator of blessing to all Thy creatures, how great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, Tut! cries Le Fécondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle avec lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, sans blague, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world. Pooh! A livre! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household word that il y a deux choses for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, nay, the only garment. The first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a bath... but at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge.
'sublunary': traced to Swift's Tale of a Tub [cite]
'cordial waters': possibly after Defoe's "Colonel Jack" [cite]
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