CHAPTER X

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281.1 Mescal .... What had he said? ... No, Señor Cervantes ... mescal, poquito.

The Lost Weekend

Earlier [216] the Consul had said to Laruelle that if ever he were to start to drink mescal again, that would be the end; his choice now signals the beginning of that end. As Hill says [135], he orders mescal: "quite by accident, it seems. Well, now it's done, he might as well take it. Probably just what he needs –" (just as Don Birnam, in Charles Jackson's The Lost Weekend reasons [11]: "Oh well, I suppose I might as well drink it, now that I’ve ordered it"). The Consul evades responsibility by asking for mescal poquito, a little one; Yvonne had agreed [273] to his having a "poquitín", and the onus is now on Cervantes to keep it small.  Hill continues: "he tells the bartender ‘poquito’ – just a little one. Needless to say, the drink will be regulation size .... But the concept of the ‘little’ drink is cherished by those for whom every drink is too big."

281.2 the Salón Ofélia.

The name reflects the tragic fate of the heroine of Hamlet, who, despairing of her love for Hamlet, has cast herself into the brook and drowned. See #36.7 for details of the salón in Oaxaca run by one José Cervantes (mentioned by Day [243]). There may have been a salón by this name in Cuernavaca, to judge by a photograph in the Cortés Palace: "Portel Morelos: Aqui es Salón Ofélia" ("Morelos Gateway: Salón Ofélia is here").

281.3 that black open station platform.

In a letter to Margerie, written from Oakville [July 1944; CL 1, 459], Lowry tells of getting up at six, and going with Gerald Noxon to the Oakville Station to meet his wife Betty, who was returning from Virginia ("Lee" may be a Confederate echo). The letter reads as a trial run for the novel: the train expected at 7:40 but arriving late (or, rather, Noxon having mis-read the timetable, on schedule at 9); pacing the platform (with beer-cigarette-coffee hangovers); the lines going on into the far distance uphill; a bird flying across the lines; a tree like a green exploding sea-mine, frozen; the onion factory; coal companies, quasi-trimmers wheeling barrows or screening coal; rows of lamps like erect snakes; cornflowers and dandelions; and a garbage can like a brazier blazing among the meadowsweet. Then, trains arriving as described in the novel; the "clippertyclip" sound; a single useless strange eye; and picking flowers for Betty. Lacking are the literary allusions and flashbacks to other parts of the novel; but the letter shows Lowry's imagination stimulated by what he literally saw, and recorded.

281.4 Lee Maitland.

The "shadowy Lee Maitland" [Kilgallin, 124] has not been identified with any certainty and is probably intended to remain a mystery. An early short story, 'In Le Havre', tells of a woman named Lee who abandons her husband after five months of marriage and returns to the United States; it is partly based on events in Lowry's first marriage. The woman may epitomise the Angel of Death (the Remington Lee and Lee Enfield are types of rifle); compare the Consul's "the erections of guns, disseminating death" [207]. For aspects of this "fair-haired angel from Virginia" and Baudelaire's angel, see #281.5.

281.5 Baudelaire's angel.

The angel recurs throughout Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (1861), sometimes as the incarnation of a feminine ideal, more often as representing the aspirations within debased man for something higher and more spiritual, as in 'Bénédiction':

Like Geoffrey, Baudelaire often hears his angels speaking to him and addresses to the angel his cries of anguish, as in 'Réversibilité':

A hint to Lowry's specific reference (anticipating 'Un Voyage à Cythère', [293], but not directly alluding to it) is found in the earlier manuscripts [UBC 27-15, 1 (the "E" text), and UBC 31-6, 42; from the end of the chapter, first pages missing], which differ from the final version: "in that state of being where Baudelaire's angel indeed awakes in the debauchee but desiring only continuity, eternity, to meet trains perhaps [Lowry's cross-outs]. The only poem among Les Fleurs du Mal which has this immediate conjunction of debauchée and angel is 'L'Aube spirituelle' (“The Spiritual Dawn”), the theme of which is that discussed by Baudelaire in his Paradis artificiels: the exceptional state of spirit and sensuality that may occur under the influence of wine and hashish (Baudelaire in fact calls it "paradisiaque") where one feels the presence of superior powers and a sense of spiritual elevation and grace, "une espèce d'excitation angélique". The poem begins:

The Consul's desire to meet the train is therefore to meet this fair-haired angel, the Ideal, and to experience the sense of spiritual awakening; his failure to do so plunges the incipient dawn into greater darkness. In the margin of the manuscript at this point Lowry has written ‘Huxley’, presumably in reference to Aldous Huxley’s experiments with psychedelic drugs that might have a similar effect.

281.6 to meet trains.

Lowry comments ['LJC', 81]: "The opening train theme is related to Freudian death dreams." He refers to Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams [Vol.5, 385]: "Dreams of missing a train ... are dreams of consolation for another kind of anxiety felt in sleep – the fear of dying. 'Departing' on a journey is one of the commonest and best authenticated symbols of death." The Consul's desire to meet trains and recurrent thoughts of the corpse to be transported by express are expressions of his death-wish. The dream sequence (absent from the early drafts) may also have been initiated by Dunne [An Experiment with Time, Ch. 5, 30]. In a section called 'The Memory-Train', Dunne suggests that when the mind wanders without knowingly aiming at any goal, "the set of images which is then observed appears to be arranged in a sequence which has little correspondence with any previously observed succession of events." The opening of Chapter X exemplifies what Dunne means by images building up other images.

281.7 Suspension Bridge.

"Suspension Bridge" was formerly the name of two small towns on either side of the Niagara River, now incorporated respectively into the American and Canadian cities of Niagara Falls. It is also the name of a railway bridge over the Niagara River (near the Whirlpool Rapids). The first railway suspension bridge of its kind, it was built by John A. Roebling in 1855, measured 821 feet, and carried trains on an upper deck and other traffic below. This bridge was replaced in 1896 by another better capable of bearing heavier trains. The Consul's repeated "Suspension!" (here and on 314) underlines the precariousness of both his and the bridge's equilibrium.

282.1 Daemon's Coal.

The name accentuates the Hell-Railway [see #283.1]; "it's a black business but we use you white" may be a variation of the Dairy Queen slogan, "We treat you right" [Stefan Haag to CA]. The sweeps are labourers who sweep up dust and small pieces of coal; the braziers are fires in oil drums, lit to keep railroad workers warm. The scene as a whole closely resembles the opening of Joyce's Night-town episode in Ulysses.

282.2 Vavin.

A metro stop and square in the Montparnasse area of Paris at the intersection of Montparnasse and Raspail, then in the heart of the artistic and bohemian area; ‘Vavin’ and ‘Montparnasse’ were recorded in the ‘Pegaso’ Notebook [UBC 12-14], and in an early draft of this passage Lowry had accentuated the contrast with the present horror: "the Avenue d'Orléans, the Arrondissement 14er ... oh Vavin, oh Montparnasse." Compare Claude Houghton's Julian Grant Loses His Way [see #300.5].

282.3 a banshee playing a shrieking nose-organ in D minor.

A banshee (O.Ir. Ben Sidhe, "a woman of the fairies") in Irish or Scots folklore is a supernatural that takes the shape of an old woman (not unlike the old woman from Tarasco [51]), and to foretell death by wailing outside the dwelling of one fated to die. Pagnoulle [152] notes the combination of banshee and shrieking train at the beginning of Faulkner's Light in August; both trains pass through the town without stopping. The nose-organ may be a demonic mixture of mouth-organ and a nose-flute (a small flute played by blowing through the nostrils), and the key of D-minor is that of Mozart's quartet, K 421, the finale of which is heard in the Consul's dying imagination [374].

282.4 cornflowers ... meadowsweet ... queen's lace.

283.1 Hamilton, Ontario.

An industrial city at the head of Lake Ontario, some forty miles from Toronto on the route to Buffalo. D.C. Nimmo comments [N & Q, July 1969, 265]:

283.2 each wailing for its demon lover.

An infernal parody of Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan', the deep romantic chasm now a horrific abyss [see #200.3 & #338.11].

283.3 If you only kept quiet, Claus.

In 'Little Claus and Big Claus', Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75) tells how Little Claus gets the better of Big Claus by tricking him several times. At one point, when Big Claus kills his grandmother to get a bushel of money, the doctor tells him to stop babbling, but thinking him crazy the townspeople let him do what he likes.

Lowry told Margerie [July 1944; CL 1, 456]: "In the Oakville Inn sits an idiot: "If you only kept quiet nobody'd know your [sic] crazy" someone said to him brutally, so I was kind to him. Now he says nothing but, when one comes in and periodically for the rest of the evening: 'I'm watching you.' or: / 'I can see you.' / 'You won't escape me.' / (He doesn't know it but he's going into the Volcano.)"

283.4 the storm country.

The Great Lakes Basin, particularly the area near Niagara on the Lake. Lowry apparently heard the sentence "the lightning is peeling the poles ... and biting the wires" while living in Ontario in 1944; the references are repeated several times in October Ferry.

283.5 Mr Quattras.

In 'Elephant and Colosseum' [144-45], a Mr Quattras is a quartermaster who saves a fat Japanese woman; here, he is rescued by the Consul, who is unable to save himself. A Mr Quattrass [sic] is a Bellevue patient in 'Swinging the Maelstrom', a giant negro who sings incessantly and is called Battle in other texts. He may reappear in October Ferry [44].

283.6 Codrington.

A town on the eastern shore of Barbados in the Lesser Antilles.

284.1 portents of doom, of the heart failing.

Lowry seems to have in mind not only the strange happenings of the dark night before the murder of Duncan [Macbeth, II.iv.1-19], but also De Quincey's "the retiring of the human heart" in the "deep syncope of earthly passion", in his essay on the knocking on the gate in Macbeth [see #136.2].

284.2 C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit.

Fr. "It was during the horror of a dark night." From Racine's Athalie [II.v, l. 490]. Athalie (1691), Racine's last drama, is based upon the story of Athaliah and Joas in II Kings 11 and II Chronicles 22-23 and tells how the impious Athalie, queen of Judah and destroyer of the seed of the House of David, is troubled by a bad dream, which leads her to profane the temple by her presence. There she recognises in Joas the youth who in her dream had threatened her life and realises that he has somehow escaped her slaughter. Despite her endeavours, Joas is acclaimed king, and Athalie is hauled off to her death.

284.3 Jull.

St. Jude's cemetery

The "towering obelisk" is a monument to the Jull family in St Jude's cemetery, Oakville. The monument is of white marble or high-quality stone and rises in a slim four-sided column to some forty feet. The earliest name recorded on it is that of Ellen Hagaman Jull who died 3 April 1878, aged five; her parents, Bennett Jull and Mary Hagaman are also listed there, as well as several descendants. The word JULL in block capitals is inscribed on one face of the lower part of the monument. St Jude (not mentioned) is the patron saint of lost and hopeless causes, and as such was embraced by Lowry.

284.4 Mais tout dort, et l'armée, et les vents, et Neptune.

Fr. "But everything sleeps, the army, and the winds, and Neptune." From the opening scene of Racine's Iphigénie (1674), a play based on that of Euripides. The silence of the sea and winds is ominous for the Greek army gathered at Aulis preparing to go to Troy, since the oracle has demanded as the price of favourable winds the sacrifice of Iphigénie, daughter of Agamemnon. Torn between love for his daughter and obedience to the gods, Agamemnon finally gives in to Calchas and Ulysses and leads his daughter to the altar, where she believes she is to be given in marriage to Achilles. Although Iphigénie is prepared to accept her fate (and in Euripides does so), Racine depicts the outbreak of a struggle within the Greek camp, culminating in the alternative sacrifice of Ériphile (a character invented by Racine), also obscurely named Iphigénie.

284.5 Oakville.

An affluent suburb of Toronto, on Lake Ontario between Toronto and Hamilton, and associated in the Consul's mind (because of the similarity of spelling rather than sound) with his personal hell of Oaxaca. Lowry spent some months at Oakville in 1944 at the home of Gerald Noxon after his Dollarton shack had been burned, and there he completed the final manuscript of Under the Volcano.

284.6 I ain't telling you the word of a lie.

The grave-digger's words about the vault being dug up immediately remind the Consul of the corpse transported by express [see #43.1].

284.7 a natural waterfall .... cascada.

Chapultepec Park

The "natural" waterfall is based upon the artificial one (the flow-over from an aqueduct) that previously existed in Chapultepec Park, Cuernavaca [de Davila, 77], but which is now no more. The description may have been suggested in part by the "cascada bellisima de San Antón," the most beautiful waterfall of San Antón, a little west of Cuernavaca.

285.1 in hacienda days.

Since the colonial period, life in rural Mexico had been dominated by the hacienda system, under which most of the best land had passed into the hands of a few wealthy families in the form of haciendas, or huge estates. Most of the arable land in Morelos was divided into thirty properties belonging to eighteen families, the greed for more land increasingly leading to the disappearance of villages and small holdings (pleasant days for the few, but at the expense of the many; the echo is of ‘halcyon days’).

Morelos was the centre of sugar cultivation. Sugar cane was first planted in 1531, the first mill was operative in 1535, and production reached a high of 52 million kilograms in 1910 before a world glut brought lower prices and discontent to Morelos. The plantations functioned virtually as company towns with their own medical and social services, company stores and police forces, and the lot of the peasants working for their absentee landlords was little short of slavery. The mills and plantations were obvious targets for the Zapatistas to attack, since they represented Porfirismo at its worst, even though the burning of plantations and the destruction of machinery caused greater hardship to the peasants who worked the land than to the landlords, most of whom discreetly disappeared for a few years before returning to a system that was to remain little different in substance until Cárdenas began to institute his land reforms [see #107.4].

285.2 Originally settled by a scattering of those fierce forebears of Cervantes.

About 1116, a group of Toltec Indians escaping the destruction of Tula fled south and occupied the northern part of Morelos, from the volcanoes to Tepotzlán and Oaxtepec; they were immediately followed by a tribe of Chichimecas, a fierce and warlike people, other branches of whom set up the independent republics of Tlaxcala [see #295.2]. The two groups were quickly integrated [Aguirre, 73; Díez, 47].

The meeting of Cortés and Moctezuma

285.3 the traitorous Tlaxcalans.

The Tlaxcalans are sometimes considered by other Mexicans as traitors because in 1519 they sided with Cortés and the conquistadors in the destruction of Tenochtitlán and Aztec civilization [see #27.3]. As Lowry noted ['LJC', 82]:

285.4 the nominal capital of the state.

See #115.2(b): insofar as Parián assumes some of the attributes of Cuautla, this reference is probably to the brief period between 11 May 1874 and 1 January 1876 when Cuautla was the seat of government for Morelos [de Davila, 141].

285.5 a weeping pepper tree.

Sp. "El árbol de piemiento que llora", a small ornamental green-pepper tree, growing to between four and six feet (barely adequate to support a springboard); the name is derived from the secretion of small drops of water when the peppers are ready for plucking.

286.1 the Horseshoe Falls in Wales .... Niagara.

The Horseshoe Falls in Wales are near Llangollen and are so called on early ordinance survey maps, though they are more usually referred to as the Horseshoe Weir. Like the falls in Chapultepec Park, Cuernavaca [see #284.7], they are artificial, having been built by Thomas Telford as part of the system of supply and control for the Llangollen Canal. The weir takes water from the River Dee and returns it into the Shropshire Union Canal. The shape is a perfect horseshoe, but the "falls" are only about three feet high; hence their ironic juxtaposition against the Horseshoe Falls, Niagara, on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. These are more impressive and larger than the American Falls on the other side of Goat Island and derive their name from the large horseshoe-shaped indentation at their centre, rapid erosion progressively deepening the effect. Behind the Consul's casual observation lies the image of ‘whore's shoes’ [see #140.3].

William James notes in The Varieties of Religious Experience [385; quoting E.D. Starbuck]: "I never lost the consciousness of the presence of God until I stood at the foot of the Horseshoe Falls, Niagara. Then I lost him in the immensity of what I saw. I also lost myself, feeling that I was an atom too small for the notice of Almighty God."

The Maid of the Mist

286.2 the Maid of the Mist.

The small boats (usually two in operation) that carry tourists to the foot of the Niagara Falls. The service was begun in 1867, and new boats with the same name have replaced the original one since 1900.

286.3 The Cave of the Winds. The Cascada Sagrada.

The Cave of the Winds is a popular tourist spot on Goat Island between the Horseshoe and American Falls. The Cascada Sagrada (Sp. "sacred waterfall") puns on cascara sagrada, a dried bark used as a laxative. The obscenity anticipates the Consul's later comments on the seat of all decisions [293].

286.4 There were, in fact, rainbows.

Since the time of Noah, a sign of hope and a token of God's covenant to mankind.

286.5 a dance of the seeker and his goal.

The dance, symbolically, is an act that has as its goal the transformation of the seeker of wisdom into that which he is seeking, but the Yeats-like vision of transcendent unity (the dancer and the dance) is abruptly shattered by the apparition of Cervantes' cock. Like the opening train sequence, this was a late addition. It earlier appeared in Chapter XI [UBC WT 1-5, 5], as told from Yvonne's perspective (hence an obscure irony in the parenthesis, "which Yvonne couldn't of course have noticed"): "She was watching the vapours; a phalanx of ghosts, which, in the sunset, commingling with or isolating themselves from the main segment of a rainbow, suggested the dance patterns of some gruesome Maeterlincklan drama, for in these movements a certain identity of the searcher with his goal was expressed, the seeker pursuing still the gay colors he does not know he has assumed, or striving to identify the finer scene of which he may never realize he is a part." Markson suggests [139] echoes of Havelock Ellis, writing of the effects of mescal (the drug) in terms of the whirl of water at the bottom of a waterfall and the chaos of colour and design [‘Mescal’, 135-36], and of Goethe’s Faust, at the outset of Part 2, looking at a waterfall with its rainbow and deciding that life lives in the reflected colour; but the Maeterlinck reference implies equally the end of Our Eternity, where words like ‘seek’ and ‘goal’ are used of the human consciousness absorbed in the ever-changing infinite, the imagination which "dances on the real universe" [202-11]. There is a similar reading in Chapter 2 of In Ballast to the White Sea, where Lowry’s direct source is Charles Fort’s Lo! [Ch. 15, 186]:

286.6 Otro mescalito. Un poquito.

Sp. "Another mescal. A small one." The Consul may be asking for mescalito rather than mescal [see #40.4], but the diminutive plus the qualification ‘poquito’ maintains his pretence of having had only a few tiny drinks [see #281.1].

286.7 Muy fuerte, muy terreebly.

In garbled Spanglish, "very strong, very terrible." Cervantes is telling the Consul about the powers of his fighting cock, but the words apply equally to the sexual impulse and to the powers of mescal. Note, from the Consul's perspective, the pun on "materialized".

286.8 the face that launched five hundred ships.

Mephistophilis in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus evokes the vision of Helen of Troy:

Like Helen, who betrayed her country by going with Paris to Troy, Doña Marina, or Malinche, the Indian maiden who became the mistress of Cortés, betrayed her people by revealing to Cortés Moctezuma's plans for murdering the Spaniards in Cholula before he had even reached Tenochtitlán [see #11.5]. Malinche's treacherous beauty, the Consul implies, like Helen's, launched the ships of the Spanish conquistadors, and by her act of betrayal to her people she brought into being the worship of Christ in the New World. Cervantes, being Tlaxcalan, is likewise a betrayer of his people.

286.9 betrayed Christ into being.

A curious marginal note [UBC WT 1-9, A] reads: "reversing the role of Julian or somebody – betrayed Christianity into being in the Western hemisphere." This is Julian the Apostate (331-63 AD), the Roman emperor born in Constantinople whose advocacy of the old faith and religious tolerance during his short reign (from 361) did much to provoke the Christians into unity.

287.1 Half past tree by the cock, the other fellow had said.

The "other fellow" is the proprietor of Las Novedades [256], who told them the time when they tried to get a doctor for the dying Indian. The phrase thus looks back to the Consul's betrayal of humanity and forward to "half past sick by the cock", when he will perform his hideously mismanaged act of intercourse with María. Overtures of Peter's betrayal of Christ ("before the cock shall crow thrice") are present [see #232.7].

287.2 Cuautla.

The second town of Morelos, some thirty miles southeast of Cuernavaca (along the road taken by the camión in Chapter VIII). Once the state capital, it contributes to the town of Parián [see #115.2(b)] and is the setting of Lowry's poem, 'Thirty-five Mescals in Cuautla'.

287.3 to drink or not to drink.

As the Consul is surely aware, Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy [III.1.56-90] is a meditation on the pros and cons of suicide.

287.4 the earth was a ship, lashed by the Horn's tail … Valparaiso.

The contrast is between the hell of Cape Horn, described [47] as a scorpion's tail, and Valparaiso, whose name means "Valley of Paradise." In Blue Voyage [151], Conrad Aiken describes the doomed ship Silvia Lee, wrecked on her way round the Horn to Valparaiso. The imagery was familiar to Lowry from Masefield's early poetry. To Albert Erskine [20 March 1951; CL 2, 340] Lowry commented on his life: "Actually it has all been much worse than I said, but when old Vallipo looms through the sunshine it is easy to forget Cape Horn."

287.5 flaming swords.

After the eviction of Adam and Eve from Paradise, God placed at the gates of Eden angels and a flaming sword, as described in Genesis 3:24: "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." In occult and Cabbalistic thought, the flaming sword may represent "the Law of Mystery which watches at the door of initiation to warn away the profane" [Éliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic, 82].

Earlier, the Consul had beheaded a coquelicot poppy [see #61.2]; and recently he has seen Hugh in the bull-ring, symbolically killing the bull, an emblem of himself [see #303.2, "the razor edge keen in sunlight"]. In an earlier revision [UBC WT 1-9, 10] these connections were made explicit by having the Consul follow up the occult image of the flaming swords [see #39.3(c)] with a mundane memory of a red bull on an exquisite manor-house lawn. This suggested Ralph Hodgson's poem of the old unhappy bull [see #273.2], but Lowry wisely queried what he was trying to do [UBC WT 1-9, A]: "What does the Consul mean by 'Even bad poetry' etc? Is it relevant or just gaga? Is it psychologically (or philosophically) right? Discuss."

287.6 the American Express.

The American Express Company has sometimes been called on to handle such matters as the transportation of corpses, but the point is (again) the corpse transported by express to the American border [see #43.1]

287.7 What is man but a little soul holding up a corpse?

From Marcus Aurelius, Meditations [IV.41]: "Thou art a little soul bearing up a corpse, as Epictetus said." Epictetus (507-120 AD), for many years a slave, was a Roman stoic philosopher of Greek origin, whose works (including this fragment) are mostly lost; he is cited approvingly by the Roman emperor as one who expresses a common stoic ideal [see #108.11 and #305.1], and the fragment stands for Lowry in conscious opposition to the psalmist's "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" [see #29.5].

The sentiment was anticipated [UBC WT 1-9, 10] by a curious verse, its provenance unknown, almost a parody of the Emperor Hadrian's "Animula vagula blandula": "Issuing in blood and teares from the wombe. / Crawling in blood and teares to the tombe. / A ship of glasse, tossed in a sea of terror... / A tennis ball, tossed in a sea of error, Vigil ... ". Then, a verse of Chaucer (Troilus and Cressida [I.416-18] that Lowry much admired: "All stereless within a bote am I / Amidst the sea, between windes two / That in contrarie stand for evermore." This may explain the "..." after "Why lost?" and the Consul's reflection that "almost bad poetry" is better than life. The metaphor is the ship of the soul, a little "vision of order" blended into a "strangely sub-aqueous view" [see #128.1], but Lowry was trying too hard to make it get somewhere.

287.8 The soul! Ah, and did she not too have her savage and traitorous Tlaxcalans, her Cortés and her noches tristes ... her pale Moctezuma.

The Consul had earlier said to Mr Quincey [135]: "'Not real Indians ... And I didn't mean in the garden; but in here.' He tapped his chest again. 'Yes, just the final frontier of consciousness, that's all.'"

288.1 the maelstrom.

A famous whirlpool in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Norway, popularly supposed to suck in and destroy all vessels within a long radius and to be the entrance to the abyss beneath. In Erich Pontoppidan's Natural History of Norway [see #175.8] it is a stream whose "violence and roarings exceed those of a cataract" [I.iii, 77]. It is the destroyer of the Nautilus at the end of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. In Edgar Allan Poe's short story, 'A Descent into the Maelstrom', an old man tells of his inadvertent descent into the whirlpool. The maelstrom is at one point likened to the cataract of Niagara, and at the moment that the fisherman is trapped in the vortex, "the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek."

288.2 long gay tassels.

Lowry's mss. notes on 'Maria Concepçion'

In an early revision [UBC 31-5, 4] these were "scarlet and heliotrope". Lowry admits in a marginal note [UBC WT 1-9, B] that "Cervantes' tassels are, I believe, a plagiarism from Katherine Anne Porter." In 'Maria Concepçión' the hat of Juan Villegas, the betrayer, is "secured at the back by a cord of silver dripping with bright blue tassels." In an early revision to Chapter VIII [UBC 30-10, 17], the dying Indian is wearing a hat with magenta tassels, but that deliberate echo was dropped.

289.1 the Virgin for those who have nobody with .... And for mariners on the sea.

Church of La Soledad

A year later, Vigil will recall this visit to the Church of La Soledad, though he will not relish, as the Consul does, the magnificent irony of taking a revolver to a Red Cross ball and a church. The reference to "mariners on the sea" seems to be from Graham Greene's The Lawless Roads [252-53], where Greene describes both the loneliness of heartsick men and the Virgin's role as patroness of all sailors [see #6.8].

289.2 the knowledge of the Mysteries.

The Mysteries (Orphic, Eleusinian, Bacchic, Osirian, Cabbalistic, and so forth) are the esoteric knowledge and secret rites and rituals known only to adepts and initiates, through which transcendent spiritual enlightenment may be obtained. An excellent statement of them is offered in Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe [26]:

Ouspensky also notes [13] that "The idea of hidden knowledge and the possibility of finding it after a long and arduous search is the content of the legend of the Holy Grail"; the Consul's long and arduous search (particularly in Chapter V) seems rather to have degenerated into a Rabelasian quest for the holy bottle.

289.3 Destroy the world.

In Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902), Kurtz, his mind subject to the powers of evil, is entrusted by the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs to make a report. He begins eloquently, with burning noble words, then, like a flash of lightning in the serene sky, writes: "Exterminate all the brutes." The Consul's final cry, like that of Kurtz, expresses his wish not to be saved from the abominations he really desires.

289.4 the History of Tlaxcala, in ten volumes.

This set does not exist. Its closest parallel before 1938 is Diego Muños Camargo's Historia de Tlascala. Camargo was an educated Tlascalan of the mid-sixteenth century, baptised and instructed in the Christian faith, who wrote in Castilian Spanish a remarkable history of his nation, its chief deficiency being an overzealous attempt to prove how readily the Tlascalans were converted to Christianity (there is a similar emphasis in the travel folder later in the chapter). The History is not, however, in ten volumes. Lowry's drafts refer at this point to "The History of Oaxaca in 10 volumes". Again, there is no likely candidate: the only real possibility is the Historia de Oaxaca, by Prbo. José Antonio Gay, first published in four volumes in 1882, dealing with the story of Oaxaca from its prehistory up to the revolution of 1814.

289.5 I call my wife my mother.

The Spanish term Mamacita, "little mother", is a common endearment from a husband to his wife; the Oedipal theme is at some distance.

290.1 this plan to climb Popo.

Popocatepetl

Since Popocatepetl has for the Consul an intensely private symbolism, Hugh's frivolous ambition to climb the mountain (especially with Yvonne) has for Geoffrey something of the sense of a deliberate trampling over sacred mysteries. In his Autohagiography [Vol.2, 32], Aleister Crowley gives an account of his chamois-like ascent of the volcano.

290.2 Amecameca .... Tlamancas .... the Hotel Fausto.

Areas close to the volcanoes:

Amecameca

In a marginal aside [UBC WT 1-7 B] Lowry noted: "Geographical situation: Tlaxcala should have been placed in some imaginary juxtaposition to Parian state." The spelling of "Ameccamecca" persisted until the final revisions, but Lowry was more willing to give up the possibilities of ‘Fausto’ [UBC 31-5, 5]: Yvonne comments, "What an enchanting name"; then, "Fausto," she said, "When does Mephistopheles come in? Hi Geoffrey" (in the 1940 Volcano [291], "O, hello, Father").

290.3 the supper at Emmaus.

In Luke 24:13-53, after the Crucifixion, two of the disciples on their way to the village of Emmaus are joined by a third who walks beside them and whom they fail to recognise. The stranger at supper in Emmaus reveals himself as the risen Saviour.

290.4 the bill of fare.

Cervantes' menu is a veritable hot-pot of howlers and obscenities, relished by the Consul and Hugh though most of the "incredible chrestomathy" [UBC 28-5, 6] escapes Yvonne. In a letter to Clemens ten Holder [21 March 1951; CL 2, 344-61], Lowry explained to his German translator some of the more esoteric elements of the novel, including a detailed account of the menu, which he describes [345] as "not so much obscene as in the realm of a kind of gruesome wit or morbid hilarity." He claims [349] that his is a literal translation, "with certain reservations and improvements, of an actual Mexican menu, later lost, but in his possession when he wrote it. For all his attempt to maintain strict realism, he states that there is "an overtone of the fiendish (though expressed in a ridiculous manner)"; and suggests that the confusion of tongues relates to the Babel motif of Chapter XII. Lowry's comments (not always convincing) are introduced by "ML":

Dos Equis

291.1 Cerveca, sí, Moctezuma? Dos Equis? Carta Blanca?

There is no specific brand of beer called Moctezuma but the Moctezuma breweries of Orizaba produce the dark beer, Dos Equis (XX). Carta Blanca, the most widely drunk beer in Mexico, is a light clear beer brewed by the Cervecería Cuauhtémoc in Monterrey.

291.2 The Consul at first had ordered only shrimps and a hamburger sandwich.

Behind the innocuous choice lay, in the manuscripts, the Consul's intent to proclaim his cuckoldom [UBC 23-3, 8]: "The Consul ordered some camarones and a 'hambuggeress' sandwich, 'that ought to be complicated enough for me,' he said" [see #217.1].

292.1 Granada.

Granada, the romantic city of orange groves and summer nights in Andalusia, shapes itself in the Consul's mind to the city of his dreams, the city where he and Yvonne had plighted their troth. He imagines arriving from Algeciras (the seaport near Gibraltar), at the station (in the southwest of the town), and then moving in his mind onwards and upwards to the centre of the town, the Alhambra and the hills beyond. The bull-ring still exists in the southwest of the city, near the Paseo de Triunfo and between the station and the Moorish cemetery, but the Hollywood Bar and British Consulate are gone (though the former is described by Clarissa Lorenz in her 'Call it Misadventure').

There is not in Granada a Convento de los Angeles as such, but the Ermita de San Sebastian (near the Alhambra) has a capillary dedicated to Nuestra Senora de los Angeles. The Washington Irving Hotel is a quality hotel near the Moorish palace on the Paseo de la Alhambra; it is also near the Pension Carmona (the original of the Pension America here), and the Pension Mexico [40] where Lowry stayed when he was in Granada in 1933 [Day, 175]. The Alhambra Palace [see #39.10] rises above and dominates the town, and the Generalife Gardens are beyond and above it. 

By the ‘Moorish tomb’, Lowry probably means the "Silla del Moro," or Seat of the Moor – some shapeless ruins on the summit of the hill behind the Generalife, where the last Moorish king Boabdil sat and gazed mournfully upon his city during an insurrection.

292.2 The Washington Irving Hotel.

The hotel is named for the American writer, Washington Irving (1783-1839), who was attached to the American legation in Spain in 1826 and spent much time in Granada. Best known for his Rip van Winkle and Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), and his Life of George Washington (1855-59), he also wrote A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and Tales Of the Alhambra (1832).

292.3 the old number seven train.

Lowry told Clemens ten Holder [21 March 1951; CL 2, 353] that this should be the old number seven tram. In 'Bulls of the Resurrection' [UBC 8-1, 9], Sam and Rysdale "went up to the Alhambra on the number seven tram".

292.4 how many bottles since then.

292.5 dead Scotchmen on the Atlantic highlands. Empty whisky bottles, flung overboard and come to rest on the Atlantic Ridge, a massive submarine range of volcanic origin running the length of the mid-Atlantic, described by Donnelly [49] as "the backbone of the ancient continent which once accompanied the whole of the Atlantic Ocean, and from whose washings Europe and America were constructed." Lowry uses ‘highlands’ to emphasize the connection with Scotland.

293.1 How could he go back.

In a note to Albert Erskine [UBC 2-6], Lowry stressed the connection with an earlier scene in Chapter VII [207], where the Consul asks himself similar questions. Lowry asks "How ... could", but the key word is "factions" [see #362.1], Margerie's note [UBC WT 1-9] stating that "Malc" feels that the bottles passage and "coherent factions of his personality" [changed in the final text] is "derivative of something".

293.2 there was an Indian.

Fragments of the discussion between Yvonne and Hugh about the man by the roadside and the thief will continue to enter the Consul's consciousness, but in no logical order. The confusion reflects the uncontrollable mystery of time within the Consul's mind rather than any repetition of the actual words (it is possible to piece the conversation together in more or less sequential order by reading backwards and forwards over the pages).

293.3 Cave of the Winds, seat of all great decisions.

The pun, earlier anticipated [286], has come to pass, as it were. Any reference to the Island of Aeolus, in Homer's Odyssey [Bk. 10], where the winds were kept, is oblique.

293.4 little Cythère of childhood.

Cythera is an island, some eight miles from Cape Malea, the southernmost promontory of Greece. It is known for its two great caves, and as the island of Venus it was a centre from the rites of Love. Lowry's use of the Fr. Cythère rather than the more usual Cythera links his Cave of the Winds to Baudelaire's poem, 'Un Voyage à Cythère': Baudelaire imagines his soul, "Comme un ange enviré d'un soleil radieux" voyaging to Cythère, only to find an island "triste et noire", a desert with ferocious birds and ugly beasts, a tomb of sins and infamous cults. The poem concludes:

294.1 A stone.

Literally, to scrape himself with (though Cervantes relents and brings the travel folder instead). The word has a number of connotations pertinent to the novel:

All these implications are summed up in a manuscript variant finally deleted: the Consul reflects that there can be no peace "but must pay full toll to hell. For even were the stone of my own guilt rolled away there would still remain the guilt of the human race."

Lowry explained to Clemens ten Holder [21 March 1951; CL 2, 353]: "During my youthful wanderings in the mountains of Mexico (and Tlaxcala is such a cold mountainous region) the people are so hardy that I discovered that, other things lacking, one was expected to use a stone in lieu of toilet paper. This ascetic custom made an indelible impression upon me, as well it might, and it seems that if I could not exactly transform the wretched stone into art, I was determined somehow to revenge myself upon its memory." There is no record of Lowry wandering in the mountains of Tlaxcala.

294.2 Dangerous Clam Magoo.

In Robert Service's poem, 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew', published in The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses (1907), Dan dies, "pumped full of lead" in a saloon battle involving a struggle between two men over a worthless woman.

294.3 our poor spoiling brains and eggs at home.

Although this is a fair description of the Consul's present state of mind, the reference is to the meal that Concepta was to have prepared for them that night.

294.4 the apparition ... of the spectral chicken.

The pun on spiritualism, emanating from the reference to ectoplasm [291], is intentional.

294.5 Franklin Island.

A desolate island in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, some sixty miles north of Ross Island; it was discovered in 1841 by Sir James Ross. Lowry commented of The Voyage that Never Ends [MLR 20-21: 84-85]: "it is the enjoyment of suffering, indeed of the participation in the infinite misery, that is the trouble, the feeling expressed by your Mr. Poe, in Alfred [sic] Gordon Pym, when he speaks of man's desires not being for happiness alone, but 'to be led captive by barbarian hordes, on some Arctic island of wilderness and snow, in a land desolate and unknown.' I take this to be one of Poe's many admirable unconscious descriptions of hangovers."

294.6 excusado.

In Mexico, the usual euphemism for the euphemism.

294.7 Svidrigailov.

A character in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), the famous novel of guilt and expiation, in which Raskolnikov, having murdered a repellent old woman, finds himself incapable of supporting the burden of his guilt. He confesses, first to Sonia, then to the authorities, but accepts his seven-year exile to Siberia with joy, for it will mark a new beginning. Svidrigailov, who earlier tried to seduce Rasknolnikov's sister Dunya, visits Raskolnikov in Part 4 of the novel, to get Raskolnikov to put in a good word for him with Dunya, whom he now wishes to marry. Svidrigailov talks of his past life in the country, and in reply to Raskolnikov's "I do not believe in a future life," comments [Pt. 4, Ch. 1]:

The passage was originally [UBC 22-21, 32] part of the Consul's horrific vision of insects on his own bathroom floor, at the end of Chapter V, but the oblique reference to ‘Pulqueria’ (Raskolnikov's mother) is now made pertinent [see #109.3].

295.1 ¡VISITE VD. TLAXCALA! Sus Monumentos, Sitios Históricos y De Bellezas Naturales. Lugar De Descanso, El Mejor Clima. El Aire Más Puro. El Cielo Más Azul.

Sp. "Visit Tlaxcala! Its Monuments, Historical Sites and Natural Beauties. Place of Tranquility, The Best Climate. The Purest Air, The Bluest Sky." This, and the other Tlaxcaltecan passages, were taken almost verbatim from a travel folder which, according to Margerie Lowry, Malcolm had with him in Dollarton [Pottinger, 169]. The folder is not among Lowry's papers in the UBC Special Collections, nor in the records of the Tlaxcala Tourist Office, but (to judge by manuscript variants) changes from the original were only minimal, mainly deletions. Lowry's claim ['LJC', 82] that the folder described Tlaxcala as a centre of black magic should be taken with a grain of saltpeter, however. For the idea of incorporating a tourist guide in this way, see Melville's Redburn: the young hero arrives in Liverpool and uses an antiquated guide book to find his way around; Melville cites great chunks of it, but tongue in cheek reflects [Ch. 30]:

295.2 ¡TLAXCALA! SEDE DE LA HISTORIA DE LA CONQUISTA.

Conquest of Mexico

The Tlaxcalans were a people of Chichimec origin, closely related linguistically to the Mexica or Azteca tribe, who forcibly established the independent state of Tlaxcala in the thirteenth century. They were never dominated by the Aztecs, but were constantly at war with their neighbours, since their strategic geographic position blocked Aztec control of the gulf coast and since their fiercely defended independence gave hope to other tribes who resented Aztec rule (facts that were to be of considerable importance to Cortés).

Although romantic historians have likened Tlaxcala to Republican Rome, in contrast with Imperial Tenochtitlán, the comparison is not altogether just. The Republic consisted of the four separate states or señoríos of Tepictipac, Ocotelolco, Tizatlán and Quiahuiztlán, "bound together by a sort of federal compact" [Prescott, III.ii, 221], and by a common defensive policy. Each señorío was ruled by a senator, whose powers were both hereditary and absolute, from among whom, in times of war, a commander was chosen.

Tenochtitlán

In 1519, when Cortés approached Tenochtitlán via Tlaxcala, the senators disagreed about what action to take. Maxixcatzín, lord of Ocotelolco, wanted to comply with the Spaniards, but Xicotencatl, lord of Tizatlán, urged resistance. Fighting began on 31 August 1519 and lasted for three weeks, by which time the Tlaxcalans, having suffered great losses, sued for peace, and joined forces with the conquistadors in common cause against the Aztecs.

295.3 GEOGRAPHIC SITUATION .... CLIMATE .... HYDROGRAPHY.

Tlaxcala, to the east of Mexico and north of Puebla States, is the smallest state in the Mexican federation. The high surrounding mountains on every side, a natural defensive barrier against the Aztecs, mark off the state's natural boundaries. The valley is drained by the Rio Zahuapan, flowing northeast to southwest through the city of Tlaxcala and eventually linking up with (not "from") the Rio Atoyac to form part of Mexico's most extensive waterway. The Zahuapan supplies very little power to very few factories (in the dry season it is little more than a dirty trickle, and Tlaxcaltecan industry, until very recently, was conspicuously absent). The laguna de Acuitlapilco, now virtually bereft of web-footed fowl, is one of many such lagoons in the state; it does not drain directly into the Zahuapan system. Tlaxcala is primarily an agricultural area (the name meaning "land of bread"), its temperate climate favouring wheat, sheep, and cattle as well maguey. The standard of living among the "inhibitants" (the error is intentional) is, nevertheless, almost the lowest in Mexico.

297.1 CITY OF TLAXCALA.

Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala, capital city of the state and in Lowry’s day an attractive town of some twenty-five thousand inhabitants, makes some effort to keep alive the sense of its historical importance. The comparison with Granada was made by Cortés in his second letter to Charles V, trying to impress his royal majesty with the importance of the new conquest by "affirming, that it was larger, stronger, and more populous than the Moorish capital, at the time of the conquest, and quite as well built" [Prescott, III.v, 253]. The ‘Hotel for tourists’ is the Hotel Tlaxcala (on the Calle Morelos, just off the zócalo), mentioned on page 302. The ‘beautiful Central Park’ is the zócalo, now called the Plaza de la Constitución, an attractive park, bounded by "four lateral avenues", with fresno trees (ashes), fountains, and "seats all over"; the park was previously named for Francisco I. Madero (1873-1913), the president who replaced Díaz in 1910, but whose liberal reforms failed to unite the country (he was deposed and murdered by Victoriano Huerta in 1913 – see #44.6].  There is a causeway across the Zahuapan River at the point where the river divides to form an island, but any trace of a wood or cenadores (from Sp. cenar, "to dine" [under boughs or in an arbour]) has long gone, and thanks to increased air pollution, only on clear days can the "suggestive sceneries" of the volcanoes be admired.

Fresno trees

Marginal instructions [UBC 31-5, 14], such as "Elaborate from folder" and "Work up Tlaxcalan thing from this", show Lowry's resolve to turn a simple invitation to visit Tomalín [sic] for the sake of its clear air, and a poster inviting tourists to come to beautiful Tlaxcala, into a complex infierno of consciousness. Lowry integrated the folder with the dialogue: "Sede de la Historia ... Indian sitting with his back against the wall"; "glorious morning ... regular and healthy"; "Tlaxcaltecan warriors ... You can't escape me"; "City of Tlaxcala ... La Sepultura", etc, the point being the Consul's erratic apprehension of both.

297.2 Ejidal.

Lowry noted to Albert Erskine [UBC 2-6, 5]: "The phrase, by the way, on 418 – 'a bank that advances money to finance collective effort in the villages' is directly quoted from Ralph Bates' The Fields of Paradise (Did I say Rainbow Fields?). I can't see that matters. I spent some time in this kind of adventure with the Ejidal myself but I found myself unable to define our functions succinctly, so I have pinched his definition" [see #107.4].

298.1 SAN FRANCISCO CONVENT.

Church and Convent of San Francisco

The Church of San Francisco and the Convent of the same name are the oldest upon the American mainland, dating from 1521. Despite their present air of neglect and decay they capture, as no others can, the scene of the early years of the conquest:

Stone pulpit

298.2 THE CITY PARISH.

The Iglesia San José, the unusual feature of which is its location off the main plaza instead of on the zócalo. The church was originally intended as a private sanctuary, the gift of Charles V of Spain to the town and people of Tlaxcala. The words "consecrated to Virgin Mary" remind the Consul of his visit the previous night to La Soledad.

299.1 TLAXCALA ROYAL CHAPEL.

The "Capilla real" or "Royal Chapel" was rebuilt to become the Palacio de Justicia, and only the portico archway remains of the original building. The coats of arms displayed recognise Tlaxcala's contribution to the expansion of New Spain and the Catholic faith. Tlaxcala was the first city in New Spain to be granted its own coat of arms. This was decreed by Charles V in 1535, and in 1563 the city was granted the appellation of "Leale e insinge Ciudad" ("Loyal and distinguished city"), inscribed on both the coat of arms and the title engraved in the centre of the archway (an early draft [UBC 28-6, 22] indicates that this information was in the brochure but that Lowry chose to omit it).

299.2 the Pilsener Kindl.

Indentified in Under the Volcano simply as a pub in Mexico City which acts as a fascist meeting-place; in Dark as the Grave [99] it is called the Munchener Kindl, an old German restaurant in the Gante that by 1945 had been changed into a cantina. During the war, many Germans friends were forced from their businesses and made to leave Mexico City; some were resettled near Amecameca, right under the volcanoes.

299.3 a humming-bird.

Lowry had read in Lewis Spence [G of M, 61] of the Aztec belief that the souls of dead warriors were transformed into hummingbirds, to sip forever honey from the flowers of paradise. An early draft [UBC 28-5, 15] read: "the humming-bird returned, a minute kingfisher, nonpasserine autogiro: no paserán"; but the pun was dropped since the Spanish Civil War references [see #301.4] are more properly Hugh's.

299.4 SANTUARIO OCOTLÁN IN TLAXCALA.

Santuario y Colegiata de Ocotlán

The Santuario y Colegiata de Ocotlán is a little east of Tlaxcala, on a hill overlooking the town. It is an attractive church in the churrigueresque ("overloaded") style, decorated with ornate gold and stonework. The vestry has many fine pictures, ornate woodwork and a magnificent carved table. Although the present church was consecrated only in 1854 and dedicated in 1907, the legend it commemorates goes back to 1541. This is the story of Juan Diego and the Virgin of Ocotlán, an account similar to but predating the more famous apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe [see #200.6], also to an Indian named Juan Diego. The story of the Virgin of the Burning Pine (the "ocete ardiente") is told in pictures and inscriptions inside the church; one fine day in the spring of 1541 Juan Diego, on his way to get some water for the sick, met the Virgin in a pine forest; she promised him the next time they met to give him some water that would better "samarián" the sick. When Juan Diego next met the Virgin, on the edge of a barranca, he asked for the water, and she created a fountain of pure water from the rocks. Juan Diego's story was examined by the Franciscans, who went to the pinewood that night. There they saw a large pine burning without being consumed and, opening it, found inside a beautiful image of Mary, which was taken to the nearby Capilla de San Lorenzo. The next night, miraculously, the image of the Virgin had mysteriously assumed the place of the saint.

299.5 The Miztecs.

The Mixtecs inhabited the mountainous sierra of Oaxaca before and during the rise of the Aztec civilisation. Following the decline of the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs dominated the Valley of Oaxaca. The height of their civilization was reached in the thirteenth century, manifesting itself in the celebrated ruins of Monte Alban and Mitla and in carvings, codices, historical records and delicate metalwork. The Mixtecs resisted the Aztecs in the fifteenth century, but were subdued and forced to pay tribute. Their king Atonaltzín was murdered by his own subjects, who blamed disastrous alliances with the Tlaxcalans as one reason for their defeat. The name Atonalzín is that given by Lowry to Juan Fernando Marquez (Juan Cerillo) in his essay 'Garden of Etla', probably as a private allusion to his friend's murder (described in Dark as the Grave, 249ff.).

299.6 the Toltecs.

A civilisation of which little is known. Apparently of Nahuatl origin, the Toltecs dominated Central America after the mysterious collapse of Teotihuacán and before the rise of Aztecs. Militaristic and efficient, they created an extensive empire, with its capital at Tula (100 miles north of Mexico City). Its religion featured the worship of Quetzalcóatl and Tezcatlipoca [see #299.7]. Their sway was broken in the mid-twelfth century by a series of disasters: famine and drought, civil war, and invasions from the north. Tula was destroyed by invading barbarians, and the Toltecs scattered for all time.

299.7 Quetzelcoatl.

Quetzelcoátl

The plumed serpent, the most powerful of the gods in the pantheon of Teotihuacán, the city that dominated the central highlands in the Classic period, 200 BC to 1000 AD. After the inexplicable decline of Teotihuacán, the Toltec warrior Ce Acatl Tolpiltzin became a devotee of the ancient god and assumed the name of his deity. Incredible benefactions were attributed to Tolpiltzin-Quetzalcóatl: infinite knowledge, the planting of corn, the invention of writing, cultivated arts and the architecture of Tula. The god was content with sacrifice of flowers snakes and butterflies, unlike his bloodthirsty rival, the black magician Tezcatlipoca (identified by Spence [M & M of M, 274] with Hurakán), who tricked Quetzalcóatl into drunkenness and the violation of his priestly vows of chastity. Quetzalcóatl with his followers left Tula for Cholula, where they stayed some time, before the god went east, coasting out to sea on a raft of serpents and then flashing into the heavens as the morning star. His way was marked by arrows shot through saplings, leaving cross-like signs, and he sent word that he would come again in the year Ce Acatl. By tradition, he was fair and bearded (like Cortés and the Consul), and when, five centuries later in the year Ce Acatl (1519), the Spaniards appeared from the east, white and bearded, with crosses and strange powers, fears were aroused (even in Tenochtitlán, the city of Huitzilopochtli) that this meant the return of Quetzalcóatl – fears which Cortés did nothing to allay and which contributed in no small manner to his initial success.

299.8 the criollo ... the mestizo.

The criollo, or Creole, is the pure-blooded Mexican-born Spaniard, who, not having been born in Spain, was socially inferior to the Spaniard, but in turn superior to the mestizo, or half-breed, the offspring of mixed Spanish and Indian descent (who form more than 80 per cent of the present population). In early colonial days, social ranking by and large approximated to one's proportion of European blood, and even today, despite a conscious adulation of all things Indian, traces of this hierarchy persist.

300.1 SAN BUENAVENTURA ATEMPAN.

Tenochtitlán

After the disastrous Noche Triste and the retreat from Tenochtitlán [see #287.8(c)], Cortés resolved to assault the Aztec city by water as well as by land, and, from the safety of Tlaxcala, he had his carpenters build thirteen brigantines, fitted out with both sails and oars. These were to be built in sections, transported manually to Texcoco, and assembled on the lake shore. The bold strategy worked, and in the final attack upon Tenochtitlán, May 1521, the ships gave the conquerors a necessary edge.

Tlaxcala

The ships were built at Atempa, a small town close to present-day Tlaxcala, and tested on the Rio Zahuapan. As Prescott notes [V.vi, 487], quoting the Tlaxcaltecan historian Camargo: "Ansi se hicieron trece bergantines en el barrio de Atempa, junto a una hermita que se llama San Buenaventura" ("Thus thirteen brigantines were built in the suburb of Atempa, near a hermitage called San Buenaventura").

300.2 Mar Cantábrico.

The name derives from the Cantabri, who in ancient times inhabited the north coast of Spain The Mar Cantábrico (a modern equivalent of Cortés' brigantines) was a Spanish ship which took arms for the Republicans from the USA to Spain. In January 1938, just one day before a law was passed forbidding such shipments, the Mar Cantábrico set sail for Vera Cruz, where it picked up a further cargo, and thence to Spain. The ship was captured by the Nationalists, the Spaniards in her crew executed and the arms used against the Republicans. Since Hugh's venture is so much like that of the ill-fated Mar Cantábrico (Lowry undoubtedly is using it as a model), the question immediately arises as to the likelihood of his success.

The ship features in ‘Swinging the Maelstrom’, where Lawhill may join it. Lowry noted from Buckley [UBC WT 1-1 1, 2-3]: "The Nationalists also captured the government vessel Mar Cantabrico which left the United States with aeroplanes & other war material only a few hours before Congress extended the Neutrality Law ... the Mar Cantabrico had 70 planes on board, all fell into the hands of General Franco." Asals suggests ['Spanish Civil War', 23] that Lowry was attracted by Buckley's speculation [292] that the Mar Cantábrico had been hiding in "some Mexican port" to avoid the "immense net of secret service agents kept all over the world by the Germans".

300.3 the conquest took place in an organized community.

Prescott

In the 1940 Volcano [298], Yvonne's sentiment is directly attributed: "I know my Prescott well enough." Prescott's Conquest of Mexico begins with a survey of Meso-American civilisations, noting [18] that the area was thickly settled by various races, bred to arms like the Mexicans, "and little inferior to them in social organization." Prescott does not share the popular sentiment, espoused by Hugh, that the civilisation was as good or better than that of its conquerors, likening it [33] to "that enjoyed by our Saxon ancestors under Alfred", and [115] "far below anything, which the word [civilisation] conveys, measured by a European standard." Somebody does not know their Prescott well enough.

300.4 a civilization which was as good if not better than that of the conquerors.

Despite its militarism and emphasis upon human sacrifice, the Aztecs in amazingly short time created a civilisation that was not only "deep-rooted" but was in many ways far ahead of its European counterparts: in terms of civic organisation, plumbing, sewerage, cleanliness, education and quality of life, Tenochtitlán had achieved standards unmatched by any European city of the day. Rivera's mural on the Cortés Palace [see #211.4], of an Inquisitional burning set opposite an Aztec sacrifice, confirms Hugh's point graphically.

300.5 had they been ... there would never have been any exploitation.

A thesis derived from Claude Houghton's Julian Grant Loses His Way (1933). In the 1940 Volcano [299], Hugh had said that Communism "only came about when there was no more loot and I merely remarked that that wasn't original, that I had read exactly the same statement in a peculiar and lousy book called, I think, Julian Grant Loses His Way." Houghton's novel tells of a man whose life has been one of emotional suicide, who has missed his opportunity to love, and whose afterlife materialises as an endless arid plain. At one point [246] Julian comments: "We've reached the final stage of consciousness. Our civilisation has entered its Babel phase. No man understands the words of another. What is Order to one man is Chaos to the next." The explanation offered is an economic one: "The age of expansion is ended, and so there's no longer any loot. That's the point – just that – there's no loot. We're gangsters without victims."

In another draft [UBC 31-5, 11] the theory of exploitation is said to have derived "explicitly" from "a man named Houghton", in "a book about hell, by a man who had obviously not been there." Another note adds [UBC WT 1-9, B]: "Rickety reasoning in Hugh's and Yvonne's conversation. Non sequiturs, etc. I have missed out everything about loot – (that was extremely relevant) because it originated in Claude Houghton. But does the lack of relevant matter matter?"

300.6 Moctezuma ... Montezuma.

Moctezuma

Prescott [II.v, 164] discusses the name. Montezuma is the usual English spelling, but the name is consistently Moctezuma in Mexico. The Moctezuma breweries in Orizaba make Dos Equis beer, on the label of which (as the Consul said in the 1940 Volcano [298] there is "a feather-plumed impression of the glum chocolate-drinking washout." The Consul there stated, "That's all he is now, the name on a bottle of beer. And without the terrible and dangerous Tlaxcalans his descendants might still be rulers of Mexico." Lowry surprisingly leaves unstated any suggestion that the Consul, in his Cave of the Winds, may be suffering from Montezuma's Revenge.

300.7 TIZATLÁN.

Nah. "on top of the clay"; the first of the four señorios of the federation of Tlaxcala [see #295.2], a populous town in ancient times, ruled by the elderly blind Xiocohtencatl.  This señorio, more than the others, urged resistance to the invading Spaniards, and although the elder Xicohtencatl became reconciled to Spanish sovereignty and was baptised, his younger warrior son was not [see #301.3]. The ruins of the palace, just north of Tlaxcala, are still to be seen, "also the genuine decorations carved on the sides showing their own hieroglyphs" [UBC 28-6, 24]. The passage triggers off in the Consul's mind the image of his own father watching him; a like sense of inevitable destiny pressing upon him; the demands Yvonne is making upon him; and the need to escape.

301.1 OCOTELULCO.

Nah. "hill of pines"; the second of the four señorios of the federation of Tlaxcala [see #295.2], ruled over by Maxixcatzín who from the beginning had argued that the Spaniards be received cordially into Tlaxcala and who, according to tradition, willingly embraced the Christian faith. The reference to baptism triggers off in the Consul's mind images of rebirth, which linked together like Dunne's memory-trains [see #281.6], lead to thoughts of William Blackstone running, Napoleon's leg twitching, of being almost run over by the Englishman going to Guatemala, and the life-giving vision of Guanajuato. For the “Street of Kisses”, see #147.1(a).

301.2 MATLALCUEYATL.

Nah. matatl, "net" and cueyatl, "frogs"; the Nahuatl name for the volcano also known as Malinche [see #375.2(b)] and popularly described as "La he enaguas azules" ("She of the blue skirts"). The volcano is on the border of Tlaxcala and Puebla states and was revered as a sanctuary to the mother of the gods. Donnelly [100] discusses a picture in the Aztec codices representing "Matlalcueye, goddess of waters and consort of Tlaloc, god of rain" – the latter being a fearsome deity to whom children were sacrificed (suffocated in the water rather than drowned) to ensure the life of the waters and in the belief that life-giving rains would be in proportion to the sacrifices made.

301.3 Xicohtencatl.

Xicotancatl

Xicotancatl Axayacatzín, son of the senator [see #300.7], who led the initial opposition of the Tlaxcalans against Cortés, and even after peace was made never really accepted the alliance. Although he helped Cortés against the Aztecs, he felt (with justification) that the Spaniards were the greater threat, and during the final attack withdrew his aid, for which Cortés had him hanged. Xicohtencatl’s harangue to his soldiers before the first battle with the Spaniards is a celebrated piece of rhetoric recorded in the Conquista de Méjico (1684) by Don Antonio de Solís, but as Prescott sardonically notes [III.ii, 226]: “Solís, who confounds [the] veteran with his son, has put a flourishing harangue in the mouth of the latter, which would be a rare gem of Indian eloquence, – were it not Castilian.”

301.4 no pasarán.

Spanish Civil War

Sp. "they shall not pass"; the Republican cry of defiance in the Spanish Civil War as they blocked Franco's advance towards Madrid. One leader of the Spanish Communist party (then represented in the legitimate government) was Dolores Ibarruri ("La Pasionaria"), who spoke heatedly over the radio on 19 July 1936 urging resistance against the fascists. She ended her speech with the words: "It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. No pasarán." Like Xicotencatl's harangue to his warriors, the cry of defiance was a brave but ultimately futile gesture. The parallel between the two events in the Consul's mind sets off another train of images: "no pasarán" suggesting the Battle of Madrid; the Mexican Revolution; shooting on sight; his father watching; other desperate attempts to escape; they have got his number; and the corpse transported by express.

301.5 RAILROAD AND BUS SERVICE.

The Consul forms a complex plan by which he and Yvonne can accompany Hugh part of the way to Vera Cruz, as far as Tlaxcala. Tlaxcala is not served directly by rail, and since the Mexico City–Vera Cruz line Hugh will take goes far to the north of Tlaxcala and the nearby city of Santa Ana Chiautempan, the timing is tricky and the Consul is proud of having worked it out. There are two ways to get to Tlaxcala by train from Mexico City:

Tlaxcala

Santuario y Colegiata de Ocotlán

A pencilled insert [UBC 31-6, 26] states that the timetable was appended to the Tlaxcala brochure. The Flecha Roja option would cost $1.70 [pesos]; the Estrella de Oro $2.50. For the Consul, the journey is one to a whited city of death. Granada and Tlaxcala merge in his mind with the most beautiful white city at all, Tortu, where nobody interferes with the business of drinking. The vision that unfolds of white cities, the white sanctuary of Ocotlán, the white hotel, cold white sheets, white bottles and white cantinas may appear beautiful without, but within is full of all manner of corruption. In one revision [UBC 31-6, ts 27], the Consul has "a white Atlantic liner, gliding, empty and deserted, over a white sea." For the vision of whiteness, see Moby Dick [Ch. 42], 'The Whiteness of the Whale', where Melville associates the "certain nameless terror" of white, the mystical intensity, with "the knowledge of demonism in the world" and the "thought of annihilation".

302.1 happy as toads in a thunderstorm.

A delightful image, but for the quotation from Bunyan's Grace Abounding at the outset of the book: "Now I blessed the condition of the dog and toad ... for I knew they had no soul to perish under the everlasting weight of Hell or Sin, as mine was like to do."

302.2 Something was wrong.

The effect of many drinks, as well as the lemonade bottle of mescal in the excusado, is obviously showing, but the Consul will not admit this. Instead, he notes that Hugh and Yvonne are themselves "quite surprisingly tight", and if they can see that he is also, just a little, then it must be because Cervantes has betrayed him. Hill [136] offers a superb analysis of the Consul's state of mind:

303.1 Et tu Bruto!

A variant of L. "And you, Brutus!" (the Penguin Brute is an error). From Shakespeare's Julius Caesar [III.i.77], where Caesar on the point of death sees among the conspirators his adopted son, Brutus; the Consul sees Hugh, to whom he has been as a father, in the act of betraying him. Since his scarcely cold chicken ("un bruto") has probably suggested the words, the Consul's rhetoric is somewhat undercut.

303.2 the razor edge keen in sunlight.

The memory of Hugh shaving him fuses in the Consul’s mind with that of Hugh in the bull-ring that afternoon to form a composite image of death and supplantation. As A.E. Waite notes in his translation of Eliphas Lévi's Transcendental Magic [14] it is a commonplace of occult thought that in the search for the greater mysteries the one initiated must slay his initiator. The Consul immediately thinks of The Golden Bough, Hugh's threat of decapitation, and the grim figure prowling around the grave of Nemi, awaiting the one who is to supplant him [see #178.5]. For related images, see Lowry's 'Bulls of the Resurrection' (imagined execution in a bull-ring), and Aiken's Great Circle (the son's duty to execute ritually the father).

304.1 A Russian film about a revolt of some fishermen.

Revolt of the Fishermen

Hugh's story is set out in more detail in the 1940 Volcano [304]: "'I once saw a Russian film' said Hugh, 'In Frisco. It was about fishermen. A shark was netted with a shoal of smaller fish and killed. But even after it was dead it continued to swallow the live fish.'" In like manner, Geoffrey's headlong rush to oblivion will swallow anyone who happens to be near him, and his death will affect others after he is gone. The addition, "about a revolt", strongly suggests theatre impresario Erwin Piscator's Revolt of the Fishermen (1934), based on the novella by Anna Seghers. Strongly influenced by theatrical techniques such as the unseen Greek chorus, the film calls for united opposition to fascism.

304.2 Actinium, Argon .... Columbium.

To Derek Pethick [SL, 200], Lowry admitted taking the elements out of the dictionary, but with the serious purpose of implying that the Consul feels that his battle against the very elements (a magician should control them) is a war that is bound to be lost. In 'June the 30th, 1934' [P & S, 33-34] Lowry comments:

The twenty-six elements listed vaguely correspond to the letters in the alphabet, another potential source of power:

The Consul does well, until the end when his ‘ahip’ invalidates the entire ritual [see #307.9].

305.1 Matthew Arnold says, in his essay on Marcus Aurelius.

Matthew Arnold (1822-88), poet and critic, published his essay on Marcus Aurelius in 1865. In it he argued against John Stuart Mill's contention that Christianity is merely a protest against paganism that falls below the best morality of the ancients. Arnold tries to show that Christian morality is equal to the best of Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius (hence the effrontery of Hugh quoting Arnold in defence of atheistic Communism). 

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD), Roman emperor and stoic philosopher, was the author of twelve books of Meditations [see #108.11] and to Arnold "perhaps the most beautiful figure in history ... one of the best of men." Yet he persecuted the Christians, and Arnold seeks to explain why; not, he explains, because he and Antoninus Pius loved darkness rather than light:

306.1 Black Flowers.

In Spanish, ‘Flores Negras’, a sad love song by Sergio de Karlo (1937) about dark eyes, which, like black flowers, are untrue:

Ixtlilxochitl (Nah. "black flower"), lord of Texcoco, had been deposed with the help of Moctezuma and was hence the Aztec ruler's sworn foe; in return for his throne, he offered his services to Cortés, serving the Spaniards so diligently that he achieved the unenviable reputation of having done more than any other Indian (except Malinche) to "rivet the chains of the white man round the necks of his countrymen" [Prescott, V.vii, 502].

306.2 cuántos trenes hay el día para Vera Cruz?

Sp. "How many trams are there a day for Vera Cruz?"; the Consul is still adamant that his is a perfectly good idea." The town of Vera Cruz (originally, "La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz") was founded a few miles from the present city by Cortés in 1519 before he set off into the interior towards the Aztec empire. It was thus the first Spanish settlement on the Mexican mainland. Tlaxcala is on the way to Vera Cruz, "the True Cross," but the way of the True Cross, the Via Dolorosa, was also the way to death.

306.3 La superstición dice ... que cuando tres amigos prenden su cigarro con la misma cerilla, el último muere antes que los otros dos.

Sp. "Superstition says ... that when three friends light their cigars with the same match, the last will die before the other two." This superstition apparently grew out of a Russian belief that because three is a holy number only a priest could light three tapers; it passed to the English in the Crimean War (1854-56) and received a new emphasis in the Boer War (1899-1902) when the Boers' marksmanship was such that by the time a third cigarette was lit, they could take aim and fire. It was a commonplace in World War I.

306.4 Feurstick.

The Norwegian word for match is ‘fyrstikk’; Hugh’s word does not exist in that language.

307.1 the Indo-Aryans, the Iranians.

The Consul's phantasmagoria derive, Rick Asals discovered, largely from Rawlinson's India (1937), which Lowry read in 1943. The problem touched on here by the Consul concerns the disputed date of separation of the Iranians and the Hindus, who shared a common Indo-Aryan ancestry, and the consequences of that date for the development of their respective mythologies. Both groups, for instance, worshipped Agni and knew about Soma, but these and other similarities of ritual and worship cannot be placed indisputably into an historical context, nor can it be proven definitely, as tradition would have it, that the cause of the separation of the two groups was a spiritual conflict of some kind.

307.2 the sacred fire, Agni.

As an object of worship, fire was deified by the ancient Hindus as Agni, giver of good things, opponent of darkness and evil, whose three heads personified three forms of fire: the sun, lightning, and the sacrificial fire. Agni, or fire, had first been brought down from heaven for the use of man by the Hindu Prometheus, Matarisvan, at the command of Brighu, and the worship of Agni involved the ceremonial construction of the sacred fire altar and the ritual kindling (the agnyadheya) of the sacred flames. The fire-sticks (arani) were ceremonial rubbing sticks, the friction of which generated the initial spark for the domestic hearth, which was lit before the flames were conveyed, with appropriate rituals and oblations, to other sacred sites [Hindu World, I, 58-59].

Rawlinson reads [29; UBC WT 1-10, 1]: "Other gods, who fall into a somewhat different category, are Agni and Soma. Agni (Ignis) is the Sacred Fire, burning upon the family hearth, and summoned from heaven by the priest with his fire-sticks." Lowry in a marginal aside recalls the fire-sticks of In Ballast to the White Sea.

307.3 Soma, Amrita, the nectar of immortality.

Soma is a plant (today unidentifiable, but perhaps Asclepias acida, of the milkweed family) said to have been first cultivated in Indra's heaven and subsequently on Mount Mujavant. Indra performed all his heroic deeds under the influence of the juice extracted from the divine plant, which was said to confer vitality, transcendent vision and inspiration upon those who drank it. Soma was raised to the position of a deity and praised as everlasting, omnipotent, all-healing, a bestower of riches and giver of immortality. The ninth book of the Rig-Veda is devoted to the praise of soma and tells of the extraction and preparation of the sacred juice, the libations to the gods and the ritual drinking of Amrita (celestial soma, the nectar of immortality; not always distinguished from soma itself). In an earlier draft [UBC 28-5, 18] the Consul commented:

Lowry's ‘Notes on India’ [UBC WT 1-10, 1] from Rawlinson [29-30] read:

A note to this effect was added to the 1937 poem 'Thirty Five Mescals in Cuautla' [CP #25] some years after the original composition. The Consul's bhang is likened to mescal on Rawlinson's authority [30, note], where he identifies soma with bhang, or Indian hemp, "still widely used as an intoxicant."

307.4 bhang.

From Skr. bhanga, "hemp" or "hashish"; an Indian variety of common hemp, the leaves of which could be made into a drink with narcotic and intoxicating qualities (closely related to gañja, a similar derivative which is dried and smoked). The Consul's contention that it is "much the same as mescal" reflects Lowry’s mistaken belief that mescal is related to the hallucinatory drug, mescaline.

307.5 the Hamadan mosque.

Hamadan mosque

The Khanaqah of Shah Hamadan in Srinagar, originally built in 1395 but twice destroyed by fire (1479, 1731), is an outstanding example of Kashmiri wooden architecture. Located on the right bank of the Jhelum River, it consists of a large hall, 63 by 43 feet, with some fourteen chambers on the north and south sides, delicately carved wooden panels and complex lattice work, and a pyramidical roof raised 125 feet from the ground [History of Kashmir, 583]. The mosque is indeed similar to some of the Norwegian stave churches (such as that of Heddal), but the Consul's comparison is taken directly from Francis Younghusband's Kashmir [67]: "Near the third bridge is the fine Shah Hamadan mosque of an almost Norwegian type of architecture, built of wood with a tall taper spire and handsome ornaments hanging from the eaves."

307.6 The Borda gardens.

Borda Gardens

This is the sole reference to the Borda Gardens, one of the best known features of Cuernavaca, the reason being that Lowry has attributed so many of its qualities to Maximilian's ruined casa [see #12.4]. The gardens, more or less opposite the Ciné Morelos, were built in the late eighteenth century by Manuel de la Borda, son of José de la Borda, a Frenchman who had immigrated to Mexico as a young man in 1716 and made a fortune in silver from Taxco. The gardens, once a horticultural and architectural marvel, were let to run down badly, but they were restored under the brief and ill-fated monarchy of Maximilian and Carlota and today still possess much of their original enchantment.

307.7 the terrace of the Nishat Bagh.

Nishat Bagh terrace

The Nishat Bagh, or "Garden of Bliss" is, according to Francis Younghusband, "decidedly the favourite garden in Kashmir" [Kashmir, 82]. Laid out about 1630 by Asaf Khan (Some say Jehangir) on a site two miles south of the equally celebrated Shalimar Gardens [see #78.4(b)], it commands a magnificent view of the Dal Lake and the mountains to the west. The Nishat is arranged in ten terraces, three much higher than the others. The stream feeding the gardens enters at the upper end and flows down the terraces in cascades formed by stone masonry to vary the appearance of the waters. The gardens have pavilions at each end, fountains and reservoirs, and beautiful walks shaded by giant chenars and cypresses. Its beauty is said to be greatest at dawn. One of the Molyneux watercolours [see #83.1], opposite page 84 in Younghusband’s Kashmir, depicts 'A Terrace of the Nishat Bagh'.

307.8 the Vedic Gods.

The Vedas are the sacred texts of the Hindus, four in all, which celebrate numerous deities, of whom the most important are Vishnu, lord of the gods; Indra, god of the storm; Siva, god of destruction and regeneration; Agni, the god of fire; Varuna, deity of the water; and Yama, god of death. The earlier Vedic religion was a form of nature worship, but though the Consul is making the point that the Vedic gods, unlike Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, were distinct personifications of abstract forces of nature, there were nevertheless countless myths and legends that accrued about their figures.

307.9 not properly anthropomorphised.

Lowry notes from Rawlinson [31-32], with his own interpolations [UBC WT l-10, 2]: "The Vedic gods weren’t clearly anthropomorphized. No temples, no images, the ritual performed in a cleared & levelled piece of ground which was spread with the sacred grass & served as an altar. The sacrificial fire was kindled with the fire stick, & nearby was the stone Soma-press. The fire was fed with clarified butter; milk, grain and cakes were offered, and on occasion, rams, oxen and horses were sacrificed. The soma was pressed with elaborate ritual, diluted with milk, & drunk. Meanwhile the officiating priest (hotri) chanted verses from the Veda, while a host of assistants or servers performed their offices. 'The rites, simple at first,' said the Consul, 'became more elaborate & stereotyped as time went on. The ritual,' he added, conveying a mescal tremblingly to his mouth, 'had to be carried out with meticulous care, as one slip would render the sacrifice invalid,' he added." Rawlinson notes, but Lowry did not record, the belief that the spirit of a pious warrior reposes under shady trees, quaffing soma, but the unchaste, the liar and the unrighteous are hurled into a bottomless pit.

307.10 tee hee!.

From Aiken's Blue Voyage, a phrase used at odd moments by the protagonist Demarest, and imitated by Dana Hilliot in Ultramarine.

307.11 the immolation of wives.

Suttee, the Hindu practice of the voluntary (or involuntary) self-immolation of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. The word is derived from Sati, the wife of Siva, who committed suicide because of an insult to her husband. It is not a very ancient custom, since there is nothing about it in Vedas, but the Greeks recorded instances of the practice, and by the sixth and seventh centuries AD the life of a widow apart from her husband was unacceptable. The practice of suttee reached fearful proportions and was not checked until long after the advent of British rule. A description of such an attempted immolation is given in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days [Ch. 13].

307.12 a Levirate marriage.

In Old Testament times among some Jewish tribes, the required marriage between a man and his brother's wife if the brother died without a male heir, as in Deuteronomy 25:5:

A section of Lowry's Indian notes [UBC WT 1-10, 3] is headed "the immolation of wives", and discusses how man’s body might be taken to the funeral pyre, his wife following. Rawlinson adds in a footnote [32] that the old practice had been generally discontinued, but "The widow of a man who died childless might contract a Levirate marriage with her brother-in-law." Compare Donnelly [207]: "The same singular custom which is found among the Jews and the Hindoos, for 'a man to raise up seed for his deceased brother by marrying his widow', was found among the Central American nations." For the Consul, these matters are not irrelevant.

307.13 an obscure relation ... between Taxila and Tlaxcala.

The Consul's point, in brief, is that Alexander the Great would not have as readily conquered so much of India were it not for the aid of the king of Taxila, who gave him assistance against a neighbouring king, in much the same way that the Tlaxcalans had assisted Cortes against Moctezuma.

Lowry notes [UBC WT 1-10, 5], from Rawlinson's India [57-5 8]: "Alexander was already in communication with Ambhi, King of Taxila, who saw in an alliance foreign conqueror an excellent chance of overcoming his neighbour and rival, the Paurava monarch who ruled the country between the Jhelum and the Chenab." Lowry makes the connection explicit: "Taxila and Tlaxcala". The Tlaxcalans, by joining forces with Cortés, were able to conquer their neighbours, the Aztecs. Taxila is said [by Rawlinson] to stand "in a fertile valley near the mouth of the Khyber Pass".

Ignatius Donnelly

The Consul's Great Book is his attempt to "improve" on Donnelly [see #16.2, #86.1 & #257.3] by asserting an "intercourse" between Atlantis and the ancient Indian / Aryan civilisations, and specifically by identifying Indra with the Mexican god Huracán. Lowry toyed with such notions as having the Consul "slip" [UBC 31-5, 19] in calling the King of Taxila "the Peruvian, I mean the Paurava monarch". He erased a more elaborate conceit [UBC 31-5, ts. 20]: Younghusband tells how the mass of the Himalayas disrupts surveying instruments (239), and the Consul improves on this: "the attraction of the great mass of the Himalayas, for instance – a poor look-out for theodolites and drinking classes! Since they pull all liquids toward them, just as the moon attracts the ocean. Drunkards erect, wandering on the timberline for no reason, and theodolite plates tilting upwards. At Darjeeling they get as much as 51" out of true level, while at Mussouri – no, not Missouri, Yvonne, about 37", I believe, though talking of Missouri don't forget that Kashmir did once hold intercourse with America by sea." The word ‘obscure’ in the published novel hints at these depths, which now form part of the Consul's private mythology, an internal machine that yet shapes his doom.

307.14 Sir Thomas Browne.

Browne (1605-82) was an English writer and physician who lived at Norwich. He is famous for his combination of wit and curious learning, which, combined with a beautifully cadenced prose style, expressed his sceptical yet devout inquiries into matters of religion and science. Best known for his Religio Medici (1642), a confession of Christian faith tempered by a profound scepticism, he was also the author of Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Vulgar Errors (1646), the Garden Of Cyrus (1658) and Hydriotaphia, or Urne Burial (1658). The Consul's references are to Chapter 5 of this last work, which is a profound and moving meditation upon the power of death and time to obliviate all fame. 

308.1 Yus Asaf.

Jesus Died in Kashmir

The Consul is talking about the legend (which he found in Younghusband's Kashmir [129-30]) that claims that Jesus did not die upon the cross, but (with the connivance of Pontius Pilate and aid of Joseph of Arimathea) was taken down and later travelled east to Kashmir, under the name of Yus Asaf, to carry out the second part of his mission, that of finding the lost tribes of Israel, who had reputedly settled in Kashmir. There he preached, fathered children, and died a natural death at a ripe old age. His tomb, in a building called the Rozabal, is in Srinagar. The legend continues to thrive in Kashmir and elsewhere, even though evidence for it is extremely problematical.

Lowry's notes from Younghusband [UBC WT 1-12, 5] confirm his interest in this theme, and with the lost tribe of Israel. The Consul's identification with Yus Asaf, Christ and St Thomas (who also reputedly died in Kashmir) is implicit, but inexplicably in revision [UBC 31-5, 19] Lowry first gave this detail to Hugh.

308.2 the lost tribes of Israel.

Behind the Consul's words lies the notion that Kashmir was settled by the lost tribes of Israel, finding whom was the second part of Christ's mission on earth. Originally there were twelve tribes of Israel, descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob [Genesis 35:22-26], but after reaching the Promised Land, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin occupied the south and the other ten the north. When the ten tribes of Israel fell under the Assyrian yoke, they were taken east and resettled, so that "there was none left but the tribe of Judah only" [2 Kings 17:18]. Scripture is thereafter reticent about the fate of the tribes, but on the strength of references in the Apocrypha about their going further east, the legend arose of their travelling to India and of the descent of the Kashmiris from them. Like the identification of Yus Asaf with Jesus, the evidence is questionable.

308.3 The act of a madman or a drunkard, old bean.

What follows is an exact word-for-word quotation from Tolstoy's Second Epilogue to War and Peace, Modern Library Edition [1126] (thus confirming the Consul's claim [82] that he had once known the philosophical section by heart). Tolstoy's point is that our wider understanding of the causes of such action, the necessity of such action, diminishes the concept of freedom involved: "the more necessity is seen in it, the less freedom." The words form a statement of the infernal machine and thus tend to undercut the validity of the Consul's "choice" of hell at the end of the chapter.

308.4 that little bit in seven flats, on the black keys.

The "little bit in seven flats" (given the hint of childhood) may be the piece known to children as 'Daddy's Shirt', in which one finger plays the note of D-flat on every second beat, while another runs thrice down the black keys; but it is perhaps too simple. Chopin’s Étude Opus 10 #5 (the ‘Black Keys Étude’) is the best-known study in which the right hand (save for one note) plays entirely on the black keys, but it is in G-flat major (six flats, not seven). The key of C-flat major (or A-flat minor) theoretically has seven flats (it is the home key for the harp, but not keyboard instruments), but these are virtual entities, so a mystery remains as to what Lowry precisely means. Of Beethoven's (and his own) tendency to "overspread" himself, Lowry wrote: "most of his themes are so simple they could be played by just rolling an orange down the black keys" ['LJC', 79]. In Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea [Pt. I, Ch. 21], Captain Nemo is observed playing his organ: "The captain's fingers were then running over the keys of his instrument, and I remarked that he touched only the black keys, which gave to his melodies an essentially Scottish character." Whatever the piece, Lowry seems in accord with Conrad Aiken, 'The Habeas Corpus Blues"': "The poet prefers the black keys to the white, / he weaves himself a shroud of simple harmonics".

308.5 When we have absolutely no understanding of the causes of an action ... we ascribe, according to Tolstoy, a greater element of free will to it.

Tolstoy's War and Peace concludes with a long philosophical epilogue called ‘The Forces that Move Nations’, which concludes that we must renounce a freedom that does not exist and recognise a dependence of which we are not conscious [see #82.4]. Lowry cites the Modern Library edition (1931); Tolstoy's exact words are [1128]:

Tolstoy's "three considerations" are [1127]:

As Tolstoy says [1129]:

309.1 Moreover, according to Tolstoy.

The Consul is condensing the words [War and Peace, 1127] that follow immediately after Tolstoy’s "three considerations." The argument continues for some three pages, but Tolstoy's point is that the more we perceive of such influences as the Consul cites, the smaller must be the idea we form of a man's freedom, and the greater our conception of the necessity to which he is subject. Among the examples of "dishonest conduct" cited by Tolstoy is "the relapse of the reformed drunkard into drunkenness" [1129].

309.2 no, parras, por favor.

Sp. "No, parras, please." Parras is a strong, wine-based aguardiente [see #226.1(d)].

309.3 ignoratio elenchi.

L. "ignorance of the point in question"; the logical fallacy of arguing to the wrong point.

309.4 poor little defenceless China.

At that moment in the process of being brutally overrun by the Japanese, "astride all roads from Shanghai" [180], and, like Spain, torn apart by a cruel Civil War.

309.5 there's a sort of determinism about the fate of nations.

The Consul's insight is "not exactly original" for at least six reasons:

310.1 Poor little defenceless Ethiopia.

Recently overrun by vastly superior Italian forces (tanks against spears), with England acquiescing in the despoliation as "a recognized thing" [see #252.1]. The failure of the League of Nations to support that Abbysinia's sovereignty was an international disgrace.

310.2 poor little defenceless Flanders.

In 1914, Belgium, which had tried to remain neutral, was overrun by German armies to facilitate their attack on France. The "rape of Belgium" was an important element in Allied propaganda.

310.3 poor little defenceless Belgian Congo.

As Conrad's Heart of Darkness makes clear, Belgium’s exploitation of its territories in the Congo was an example of the evils of colonialism at their most rapacious. Brave little Belgium, soon to be a victim [see #310.2], had in her time been a conqueror. In Ultramarine [244-45] the sailors talk about the "Belgian ruddy Congo", and reckon that the Belgians have no right to a state of their own: "Poor little defenceless Belgium – all that bull." The 1940 Volcano [309] includes Belgium, but not Finland and Russia.

310.4 poor little defenceless Latvia.

Independent from 1918, after centuries of having been part of Poland or Russia, in 1938 about to be forcibly incorporated (as Lowry would have known) into the Soviet Union.

310.5 or Finland.

Finland was then fighting to retain its precarious independence from Russia, and though, unlike Latvia, it succeeded, success was bought at the cost of economic domination by the Soviet Union and the loss of territories in the Murmansk and Karelia regions.

310.6 or even Russia.

In context, the victim of Napoleon’s 1812 invasion; the Consul may also be anticipating the invasion of Russia by Hitler's Legions in 1941.

310.7 Countries, civilizations, empires, great hordes perish for no reason at all.

In Yeats's 'Lapis Lazuli', the survival of the human spirit is epitomised by the glittering gay eyes of the Chinamen who stare on the tragic scene of civilisations put to the sword.

310.8 Timbuctoo.

A town in Mali, in the central Saharan desert; equivalent to "the middle of nowhere". The Penguin ‘Timbuktu’ is an accepted variant.

310.9 poor little defenceless Montenegro.

The principality of Montenegro, alone of all the Balkan states, managed to retain its independence from Turkey, and at the Congress of Berlin (1878) its independence and territories were recognised by the European powers. However, with the growing power of Austria in the Balkans, Montenegran autonomy became increasingly dependent upon Austrian control, and although independence was maintained during "Tolstoy's day", the state was absorbed by Serbia at the end of World War I.

310.10 poor little defenceless Serbia.

Serbia had for centuries suffered from Turkish domination, and nationalistic uprisings in the early years of the nineteenth century, though supported by Russia, met with irregular success and invited cruel repression. In 1830 it became an autonomous principality under Turkish suzerainty, and in 1833 it achieved a precarious independence, sandwiched between the Turkish and Austrian empires, until incorporated in 1918 within the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.

310.11 poor little defenceless Greece.

Throughout the 1820s the Greek struggle for independence from Turkey was a rallying call to English liberals, and poets like Shelley and Byron took up the cause (Byron died at Missolonghi in 1824). In an effort to crush the rising, the Ottoman government called on the Egyptians for aid, and although Greek independence became a fact in 1830 with the Treaty of London, it was possible only because of the "interference" of the European powers. Shelley wrote a long poem, Hellas (1821), in defence of Greece and Panhellenism. "As it will be again, of course" refers to the coming World War II, when Greece was invaded by German troops.

310.12 Boswell's – poor little defenceless Corsica.

James Boswell (1740-95), the Scottish writer best known for his Life of Johnson (1791) and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), in his earlier days had much travelled upon the Continent, including Corsica, where he had become absorbed in the cause of Corsican independence. As a result, he published An Account of Corsica (1768) and Essays in Favour of the Brave Corsicans (1769), and in his Life of Johnson (26 April 1768) he replies plaintively to Johnson's advice to empty his head of Corsica:

Corsica had been under the domination of France or Genoa for centuries, but some years after the successful revolt against the Genoese in 1529, Paoli [see #310.13] set up an independent state in 1755. Genoa sold its "rights" in the island to France in 1768, and in 1769 Paoli's troops were defeated by the French, Corsica becoming part of France.

310.13 Paoli.

Pasquale Paoli (1726-1807), Corsican patriot and general who had resisted the sell-out and intervention by France in the affairs of his country, but who fled to England when the French took over the island in 1769. Boswell, who had called upon Chatham in Corsican dress to plead Paoli's cause and whose An Account of Corsica was dedicated to the general, hastened down from Scotland to meet him. Boswell stayed in London with Paoli, who tried unsuccessfully to break his drinking habits. On the outbreak of Revolution in 1789, Paoli returned to France and was appointed Lieutenant-General of Corsica, but disgusted by the excesses of the Revolution he returned to England in 1794.

310.14 Monboddo.

James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714-99), a Scottish judge with impassioned enthusiasms for Greek philosophy and natural history. He combined a brilliant legal career with an eccentric philosophy of language and nature. He is cited by the Consul, not for his views on Corsica, but for his primitivist way of life upon his small estate in Scotland where he delighted in living as a peasant-farmer. At Boswell's insistence, Johnson visited him there on their tour to the Hebrides in 1773, and the two men, despite a marked difference in their outspoken views, got on tolerably well.

310.15 Applesquires and fairies.

Idyllic innocence is undercut by the common eighteenth century meaning of applesquires as "catamites"; hence the rather ambiguous fairies. There is no basis for this particular eccentricity in Monboddo's life.

310.16 Rousseau – not douanier – knew he was talking nonsense.

Not Henri Rousseau, "the customs officer" and painter of jungle scenes [see #132.2], but Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), French philosopher and political writer, whose wretched life was sadly at odds with the ideals he professed. He is best known for his Confessions (published posthumously), but also for La Nouvelle Héloise (1761), Émile (1762), Du contrat social (1752), which express the essential ethic that sin is owing not to nature but to society and that man has fallen from the natural primitive state where he was once both good and happy. The Consul refers to Boswell's Life of Johnson [30 Sept. 1769], where Johnson dismisses Boswell's arguments for the "superior happiness of the savage life" by replying that whereas Monboddo talked insufferable nonsense about such matters, Rousseau talked nonsense so well that he must have known it was nonsense.

311.1 that conversation with the volunteers in the train.

As Hugh tries to point out, this is not in Tolstoy's War and Peace, but rather in his Anna Karenina (1875-76), the story of the adulterous love between Anna Karenina, wife of a wealthy Russian administrator, and Vronsky, a cavalry officer, for whom she leaves her husband and child. She is ostracised by society, the love affair dwindles, and in total isolation and despair she throws herself beneath a train. The episode to which the Consul refers is near the end of the novel [Pt. 8, Ch. 3], and the Consul's description is a fair report of what Katavasov sees and hears.

311.2 Katamasov or whoever he was.

From Anna Karenina, actually; Fyodor Vassilievitch Katavasov, a professor of philosophy is a minor character in that novel. The manuscript originally read Katavasov, so the error is Hugh's rather than Lowry's, but in Anna Karenina [Pt. 8, Ch. 15] the sentiment is uttered by Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev, brother of Levin (though in the presence of Katavasov), and is followed up further by Katavasov and Koznishev in the next chapter. Hugh thus aligns himself with Sergey Ivanovitch, but Katavasov (and Tolstoy) have by now a more pessimistic view of the truth.

311.3 a diplomatic corps which merely remains in San Sebastian.

San Sebastián, on the French border with Spain, was a popular resort town that acted as the seat of government during the hot summer months. In 1930-31 it had been the centre of the left-wing revolutionary activity that had eventually ousted the monarchy. The town was surrendered by the Basques to the Nationalists in September 1936, by which time the British embassy, having earlier moved from Madrid to San Sebastián, had set itself up in St Jean de Luz, on the French side of the International Bridge [Thomas, 346], where it remained for the duration of hostilities.

As Asals notes ['Spanish Civil War', 25-26], this derives from Buckley's description [217] of a disgrace in the last week of July, 1936: "The officers of the Embassy were all in San Sebastian on holiday. The Consul was on holiday. Everything was left to the Vice-Consul, and the assistant to the command attaché. Not till August 13 did the Consulate of the Embassy, Mr. G.A.D. Ogilvie-Forbes, on leave in England, return to Madrid. Before he arrived there was no British diplomatic official in Madrid to look after the colony or to inform the British Government what was taking place.  It looked very much indeed as if our Government had been waiting; that they thought that General Franco would win and that they would avoid having any diplomatic representation on the part of Sr Giral's Govemment. Yet mark you, in that period the most dramatic decisions which must vitally affect the future of Europe and of the British Empire had been taken."

312.1 War and Peace .... able to distinguish it from Anna Karenina.

Hugh is correct in that the conversation about the volunteers in the train is from Anna Karenina, but the Consul's real point is Tolstoy's epilogue on historical determinism at the end of War and Peace [see #308.5]. The Consul's pause and "..." conceal a reflection brought out more brutally in an early revision [UBC 31-5, 23]: "But it was a defeat, an undeniable defeat and it hurt ridiculously."

313.1 oratio obliqua.

L. "indirect speech". A formal rhetorical term found in Quintilian's study of oratory. A possible translation could be "indoor marksmanship".

313.2 the children I might have wanted.

Although the Consul's desire is a perfectly natural one (and one that appears to have been frustrated in Lowry's life with Jan), its occult implications are stated firmly by A.E. Waite  [The Holy Kabbalah VIII.ii, 378] in a section subtitled ‘The Mystery of Sex’:

In her memoir [Inside the Volcano, 58], Jan Gabrial recounts the circumstances leading to an abortion (27 March 1934): a decision as much Malcolm's as hers, but which left him with a lasting sense of guilt. In the 1940 Volcano [318, UBC 26-4, 1], Yvonne confesses to Hugh: "But it's true, Hugh – what he said is sort of true, about the abortions. I was having one that time you came to see me in Paris. I was going to tell you – but not like this." This crudity was only gradually reduced.

313.3 ninney-hammers.

Elizabethan slang, meaning "simpletons" (a contraction of "an innocent"). The force of "hammer" is uncertain, but the Consul gives it a markedly sexual emphasis. If "gills like codfish and veins like racehorses" is a quotation, it has not been traced.

313.4 prime as goals ... hot as monkeys ... salt as wolves.

In Othello [III.iii 402-5] Iago convinces an all-too-willing Othello that he has been cuckolded:

313.5 As if he plucked up kisses.

In Othello [III.iii 426-27] Iago, asked to give proof of Desdemona's infidelity, reports that he has heard Cassio say in his sleep:

313.6 paddling palms.

In The Winters Tale [I.ii 115], Leontes, King of Sicilia, is (like Othello) only too ready to detect in the willingness of his queen, Hermione, to give her hand to Polixenes signs of his imminent betrayal:

In earlier drafts, the Consul undermines his diatribe, for "Desdemona and Hermione were, after all, falsely accused" [Asals, Making, 175-76].

313.7 Poor little defenceless me.

Compare the list of bullied nations [310], who, according to the Consul, get what they deserve. The Consul's sudden realisation of this turns his great battle for the survival of the human consciousness [217], into a piddling little fight for freedom.

313.8 triskeles.

Triskeles, more commonly triskelions, are symbolic devices depicting three bent legs radiating from a centre, as in the emblem of the Isle of Man. The third leg is sometimes said to have sexual implications. The reference to "strumming" (triskeles / ukuleles) mocks traditional pictures of Hawaii and Hugh playing hot music on his guitar.

Lowry notes to Clemens ten Holder [23 April 1951; CL 2, 380] that the Consul "has something gruesome or delirious or even sexual in mind – there are some frightening looking triskeles: But the underlying thought is involved strangely with ukuleles. Ukuleles strum, no triskeles. Yvonne was born in Hawaii, the place of ukuleles. Hugh might be thought to play a sort of ukulele. (The 'eles' common to both words is the key.) 'I want to go where those ukuleles are strumming' – usually popular escape song, is perverted by delirium here into an intra-uterine-reversion image of escape symbolized by the centre of a triskele, but which becomes the abyss itself, where is the trismus or gnashing of teeth. Did I think of all that when I wrote it? No."

313.9 the infinite trismus.

Trismus, from Gk. trizein, "to grind the teeth", is a grinding or rasping, but in medical terms refers to tetanus or lockjaw. The Consul's image appears to be one of bodies locked together in an eternal brothel.

314.1 Lee Maitland ... Baudelaires angel.

The Consul fails to realise that he had been greeted that morning by Yvonne, who could have been the angel to waken the soul "Dans la brute assoupie" [see #281.5].

314.2 I choose .... Tlax .... Hell .... Because .... I like it.

Tlaxcala

Farolito

Tlaxcala throughout the book has been a metaphor for dishonour, betrayal, and death. At this moment, the Consul, "suspended" between the choice of Yvonne or the Farolito, life and death, makes his existential decision. Given the power of the infernal machine and the preceding discussion of historical determinism, the freedom of his choice is very much the point at issue. Compare Rimbaud's Un Saison en enfer: "Je me crois en enfer, donc j'y suis" ("I believe myself to be in hell, so I'm there"). As Asals notes [Making, 278], Lowry, by means of the "obsessive stutter" of "Tlax: tlax: tlax: tlax" integrates the Consul's twin visions of hell, the white haven of Tlaxcala, and the demonic black railway which will take him there.

314.3 In fact I'm running.

In one sense, like Faustus, "headlong into the earth"; but also like the hapless hero of Julian Grant Loses His Way, who near the end of the novel rushes from the Metropolitan Cafe only to wake up in hell, in a world (like the Farolito of Chapter XII) that is virtually the projection of his own interior state.

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