Abstract
This introduction develops the theme of London’s rapid expansion and transformation into a modern city, with improved transportation by Underground Railway, electric trams and the omnibus, and unimaginably fast communication via the telegraph and (later) the telephone. It considers the dissemination of literature through the development of periodical publication and the ‘railway novel’, and the rise of free public libraries established through the Public Libraries Act of 1850. The introduction also contemplates London’s morally ambivalent role as the capital of an empire covering a quarter of the globe (as highlighted by the Diamond Jubilee of 1897), and social developments such as the ‘scandalous’ rise of the ‘New Woman’ and the struggle for female suffrage.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
W. H. Smith (1825–1891) became an MP in 1869 and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1874; he was satirised as Sir Joseph Porter in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H M S Pinafore.
- 3.
Gaiety Theatre: established as the Strand Musick Theatre in 1864.
- 4.
X-rays: discovered in 1895 by William Conrad Roentgen.
- 5.
radium: the first radioactive element to be discovered (by Marie Curie in 1898).
- 6.
Mansion House: official residence of the Lord Mayor of London.
- 7.
The Golden Jubilee is the setting for Gissing’s novel of domestic disenchantment In the Year of Jubilee (1894).
- 8.
To vote, a woman had to be aged 30 or more and to satisfy certain property conditions; full adult suffrage for women did not come until 1928.
- 9.
Praeterita, Vol. 1, ch. 6, Section 132. See also [3.11HN].
- 10.
costermongers: costermongers sold fruit and vegetables in the street.
- 11.
For London fog, see General Introduction, n.21.
- 12.
To William Watson: William Watson (1858–1935), a popular poet of the 1890s; twice passed over as Poet Laureate, in favour of Alfred Austin (now all but forgotten) in 1886 and Robert Bridges in 1913.
- 13.
Marvell also paid tribute to the dignified demeanour of Charles on the scaffold; see [1.27].
- 14.
Speak after sentence?: After sentence had been passed on Charles at his trial in Westminster Hall the President, John Bradshaw, forbade him to speak.
- 15.
art to him was joy: Charles built up a huge art collection at Whitehall, which was largely dispersed in the Commonwealth. He also commissioned the magnificent ceiling by Rubens in the Banqueting House.
- 16.
“magic casements”: Quoted from Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” St. 7. A casement is a window (in Keats’ case, “opening on the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”
- 17.
St Magnus: St Magnus the Martyr, in Lower Thames St. Medieval in origin, it was rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire, as an “Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold” (T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922).
- 18.
garment of beauty: Possibly alluding to Wordsworth, “Composed upon WestminsterBridge,” line 4 [3.12].
- 19.
For London fog, see General Introduction, n.21.
- 20.
Mr Whistler’s idea … at all: James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) was a friend of Wilde and an advocate of the Aesthetic Movement until the mid-1880s, when he became hostile to both—hence Wilde’s sarcasm.
- 21.
catholicity: inclusiveness, indifference to distinctions.
- 22.
school of facts … effects: Alluding to the opposing theories of whether the subject or the depiction of it is the more important.
- 23.
peplum: embroidered robe worn by women in ancient Greece.
- 24.
omnibus: see [3.21], n.82.
- 25.
when his organ is out of repair: Wilde implies that an Italian youth is likely to be a busking organ-grinder by trade (see [4.29], n.79); he may also intend a sly allusion to the youth’s penis, implying an alternative source of income.
- 26.
The Infant Samuel: See 1 Samuel 3.
- 27.
Burlington House: see [4.22], n.52 Bookmark not defined.
- 28.
The race is to the swift: An allusion to Ecclesiastes 9:11: “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.”
- 29.
claret-cup: “a mixture of iced claret with lemonade and various flavouring ingredients” (OED).
- 30.
chasuble: “an ecclesiastical vestment, a kind of sleeveless mantle covering the body and shoulders” (OED).
- 31.
velveteen: “a fabric having the appearance or surface of velvet, but made from cotton in place of silk” (OED).
- 32.
mœnads: (more usually maenads) Bacchantes, frenzied priestesses of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, theatre and religious ecstasy.
- 33.
stayless: without ‘stays,’ or stiffened corsets, to give shape to the garments.
- 34.
Slade School: The Slade School of Fine Art was founded as part of University College, London, in 1871 and soon became famous world-wide.
- 35.
Jew: “Owen Hall” (pen-name of Jimmy Davis), a musical comedy scriptwriter, born in Ireland.
- 36.
Regent’s Park: A Royal Park, situated in north-western London.
- 37.
Houses of Parliament: see [2.31], n.144.
- 38.
scullery: a small back-kitchen for washing dishes.
- 39.
Board school: a school set up under the Elementary Education Act of 1870 and regulated by the School Board of London to provide education for children aged between 5 and 12.
- 40.
Tension rose sharply between Britain and Russia over the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), giving rise to the catch-cry “The Russians shall not have Constantinople”.
- 41.
‘Metropole’: a luxury hotel between Trafalgar Square and the ThamesEmbankment, which opened in 1885 (now called the Corinthia Hotel).
- 42.
the flood had made: the flood tide had begun to rise.
- 43.
come to: come to a standstill.
- 44.
Gravesend: a town 26 miles downstream from London.
- 45.
Sir Francis Drake (?1545–1596) circumnavigated the world in his ship The Golden Hind and brought home immense treasure plundered from Spanish ships; he was knighted by Elizabeth.
- 46.
Sir John Franklin (1786–1847) in the Erebus and Terror searched for a route to the Pacific through the Arctic Ocean (the fabled ‘Northwest Passage’), but at some time in 1846–1848 his ships became icebound and were lost with all hands. In 2014, the Erebus was found west of O’Reilly Island, and the Terror south of King William Island in 2016.
- 47.
‘interlopers’ … trade: ships that poached the authorized trading of the East India Company.
- 48.
commissioned ‘generals’: authorized trading ships carrying general merchandise.
- 49.
holland blind: a kind of slatted window-covering with small spaces between the slats.
- 50.
At His Gates: serialised in Good Words January–December 1872; published in book form by Tinsley Bros; its title is taken from the parable of Dives and Lazarus, Luke 16: 19–31.
- 51.
genre: genre painting, hugely popular and very saleable in the Victorian period, depicted scenes from everyday life, modern or historical, often with a hint of a more-or-less sentimental narrative, like William F. Yeames’ famous “And When Did You Last See Your Father?” (1878), showing the young son of a Royalist officer being questioned by Roundheads during the Civil War.
- 52.
Associate … Academician: The Royal Academy of Arts was founded by George III in 1766, to raise the professional status of artists and promote contemporary art, with a membership limited to 34 Academicians, selected from the ranks of Associate Members of the Academy. Its headquarters are in Burlington House on Piccadilly.
- 53.
Philistine: indifferent or hostile to the arts.
- 54.
Titian: (ca. 1488–1576), one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school. While he was painting for the Emperor Charles V he dropped his pencil; the emperor picked it up, saying “To wait on Titian is service for an emperor” (see Anon. 1859, 269).
- 55.
Lady Caroline Lamb: (1783–1828), best known for her affair with Lord Byron in 1812; her novel Glenarvon, based on this, depicted Byron as Lord Ruthven. Her husband, William Lamb, later became Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister in 1834 and 1835–1841.
- 56.
Hill Street: In Mayfair, developed in the nineteenth-century with expensive mansions.
- 57.
Morris and Burne-Jones: William Morris (1834–1896; see [3.42HN]) and Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), a painter associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, who worked closely with Morris.
- 58.
Italian primitives: painters such as Giotto and Fra Angelico who flourished ‘pre-Raphael.’
- 59.
Louis-Quinze: style of architecture and decorative art characteristic of early to mid eighteenth-century France.
- 60.
girandoles: ornamental branched candle-sticks.
- 61.
Vernis-Martin: a type of japanning or imitation lacquer.
- 62.
L’Embarquement pour Cythère: painted by Watteau in 1717, depicting a fête galante.
- 63.
Madame de Pompadour: 1721–1764, chief mistress of Louis XV of France from 1745–1751.
- 64.
Boucher: François Boucher, 1703–1770, French painter of the Rococo period.
- 65.
Madame de Longueville: Anne Geneviève de Bourbon (1619–1679), daughter of Henri de Bourbon; married Henri II d’Orléans in 1642; mistress of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld and then of the Duke of Nemours; famed for her beauty, she posed as Diana and other goddesses. She exercised great political influence during the Fronde and later protected the Jansenists.
- 66.
pas de trois: a dance for three people.
- 67.
myself: this ungrammatical use of myself to avoid saying me, now (it seems) almost normalised, may then have suggested a certain social pretentiousness.
- 68.
the Mansion House: the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London, a grand Palladian mansion used for official City functions.
- 69.
polka: a lively Czech folk-dance in 2/4 time, popular throughout Europe from the 1840s; the Pooters are a little behind the fashion.
- 70.
Mr Perkupp: The principal of the firm in which Pooter is a clerk.
- 71.
Mrs James is regarded by the Pooters as a fashionable woman of taste.
- 72.
inexpugnable: impossible to evict.
- 73.
cyclopean prison: Pentonville model prison, called cyclopean because it comprised a sort of panopticon, with corridors radiating from a central point so that one guard could theoretically oversee the whole (the classical Cyclops had only one eye).
- 74.
Lambeth … Limehouse: All these suburbs (or parts of them) had become impoverished and disreputable by the 1880s; Limehouse, once a busy shipbuilding centre, became overpopulated and known for its gambling and opium dens.
- 75.
era of reconstruction: “The City of London has always been in a state of more or less continuous rebuilding. There have, however, been three periods when the rebuilding was especially rapid, intensive and visually transforming. The first was in the years after the Great Fire of 1666 [2.11]. The second was two hundred years later, when the City ceased to be the living place of a community and became an area almost exclusively of daytime business” (Summerson 1977, 163).
- 76.
Rotten Row: see [3.43, n.169].
- 77.
rookeries: slums; refuges for petty criminals.
- 78.
Rebecca … well: see Genesis 24:15–16, 45.
- 79.
organ-grinder: an itinerant street musician playing a barrel organ or hurdy-gurdy, frequently accompanied by a monkey.
- 80.
yoke … Captivity: alluding to the Babylonian Captivity, when Nebuchadnezzar forced the Israelites into exile in Babylon in the C6th bce.
- 81.
“To see my love suffices me”: refrain from Ballades in Blue China by Andrew Lang.
- 82.
fly: “any one-horse covered carriage, as a cab or hansom, let out on hire” (OED).
- 83.
omnibus: see [3.21], n.82.
- 84.
I … straight: i.e. ‘I immediately find a corner inside’.
- 85.
Brompton: At that time regarded as the artists’ quarter.
- 86.
Bull-and-Gate: Public house in Kentish Town, rebuilt in 1871; formerly, in Tudor times, the ‘Boulogne Gate.’
- 87.
Croesus: a rich man (from the semi-mythical King of Lydia, ca. 550 bce).
- 88.
Lucullus: Wealthy Roman soldier and politician, 118–56 BC; generous patron of the arts.
- 89.
intricate: pronounced inTRIcate.
- 90.
Old Jago: a fictional name for the Old Nichol, a slum area between Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road.
- 91.
Kate Street: in Victorian times a slum area in Balham; now demolished.
- 92.
Seven Dials: slum area in Covent Garden, notorious for filth and crime. See [2.18HN].
- 93.
Ratcliffe Highway: runs east from the City of London to Limehouse; notorious for poverty and violent crime.
- 94.
third plague of Egypt: an infestation of lice or gnats; see Exodus 10: 12–29.
- 95.
Metropolitan Railway: opened 1863 as an underground line, later with a branch from Baker Street.
- 96.
Vita Sackville-West: lived 1892–1962; prolific poet and novelist, remembered especially for her long poem “The Land” (1926) and her novel The Edwardians (1930).
- 97.
Mrs Dalloway: Clarissa Dalloway appears in A Voyage Out.
- 98.
Sphinx: one of two placed in 1882 to flank Cleopatra’s Needle, erected in 1878 on the ThamesEmbankment.
- 99.
Waterloo Bridge: designed by John Rennie; opened in 1817.
- 100.
PiccadillyCircus: junction built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with Piccadilly.
- 101.
London County Council … Night Schools: the LCC was established in 1889; its responsibilities included the management of adult education.
- 102.
For London fog, see General Introduction, n.21.
- 103.
Rotherhithe: by Elizabethan times already a port serving Southwark, when ship’s passengers would be rowed to and from London in ferry boats.
- 104.
Tower Bridge: built between 1886 and 1894.
- 105.
Euphrosyne: Greek goddess of joy and mirth.
- 106.
twenty miles across … nearly forty: in Jefferies’s day, roughly the extent of London.
- 107.
According to a German proverb, Mit Speck fängt man Mäuse (“with bacon you [can] catch mice”).
References
Bergonzi, Bernard. “Introduction” to George Gissing’s New Grub Street. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
Groves, Peter. “‘Opening’ the Pentameter: Hopkins’s Metrical Experimentation.” The Hopkins Quarterly 38.1 (2011): 93–110.
James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady, 1881.
Maxwell, Sir Herbert. Sixty Years a Queen. London: Harmsworth, 1897.
Olsen, Donald J. The Growth of Victorian London. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.
Pett Ridge, W. A Story Teller: Forty Years in London. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923.
Summerson, Sir John. “The Victorian Rebuilding of the City of London.” The London Journal: A Review of Metropolitan Society Past and Present 3.2, (1977): 163–85.
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Hiller, G.G., Groves, P.L., Dilnot, A.F. (2019). Period 4: London—Capital of Empire, 1871–1914 . In: Hiller, G.G., Groves, P.L., Dilnot, A.F. (eds) An Anthology of London in Literature, 1558–1914. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05609-4_4
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